For my “convenience” and because in this way they can show ads and clickbait
Also: I SET A FUCKING GROUP POLICY THAT DISABLES THE SEARCH BAR; WHY THEY FUCKING IGNORE IT???
For my “convenience” and because in this way they can show ads and clickbait
Also: I SET A FUCKING GROUP POLICY THAT DISABLES THE SEARCH BAR; WHY THEY FUCKING IGNORE IT???
If its for work I would suggest picking a “stable” distribution like Debian, Kubuntu or OpenSuse.
A lot of people recommend Arch or Fedora but the focus of those is getting the very latest releases, which increases your chance of stuff breaking.
A lot of people will suggest niche distributions, those can be great for specific needs but generally you will always find Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL support for commercial apps.
I would also suggest looking at the KDE Desktop, many distributions default to Gnome but it is unique in how it works, KDE (or XFCE) will provide a desktop similar to Windows 11.
Lastly I would suggest looking at Crossover Linux by Codeweavers.
Linux has something called WINE, its an attempt to implement the Windows 95 - 11 API’s so windows applications can run on linux.
WINE is how the Steam Deck/Linux is able to play Windows games. Valve embedded it into Steam and called it “Proton”.
WINE is primarily developed by Codeweavers and they provide the Crossover application that makes setting up and running a Windows application really easy.
People will mention Lutris but that has a far higher learning curve.
There is an application database so you can see in advance if your applications would work: https://appdb.winehq.org/
Thanks for the long response. I was thinking Mint maybe, had some experience with it a few years ago. But it’d replace both my private and work stuff over, so some gaming, too (mainly through steam). Stability is key to me. My current Windows install hasn’t needed anything for 4 years or so, so I’m absolutely not going for Arch. I need this stuff daily, I cannot waste time trying to troubleshoot for hours or relying on backups, etc.
Mint was a reaction to Gnome 3, the unique workflow upset a lot of people and the people behind Mint decided to build Cinnamon desktop (its Gnome 3 made to look/work like Gnome 2). They needed a distribution to build/test their work and so based a distribution off of Ubuntu and called it Mint.
As a bit of explanation, there are only a few projects which attempt to build an entire linux distribution from scratch. This involves finding code from thousands of sources, work out packaging, etc… We call these ‘base’ distributions, Debian is the base distribution for Ubuntu, Ubuntu is the base distribution for Mint.
Ubuntu tends to be slightly ahead of Debian in the software versions it uses and automatically enables the ‘non-free’ repositories. Ubuntu tends to push some Canonical specific things like Snaps (which everyone hates)
I believe Mint rolls the Canonical specific things out of Ubuntu and you get the latest version of Cinnamon.
Its all a bit…
I know it has a shitty “95-ish” look to it, but https://distrowatch.com/ is quite possibly your best resource in finding out at a glance which of the distros you’re interested in are stable or rolling, and how popular they are. Go down the page hit ranking on the right, and start clicking: you will see the root build of every distro, whether it’s stable or rolling, the last release date, links to reviews, etc.
It won’t get you to your final decision, but it will get you to a shortlist. And then you can start making LiveUSB sticks to test drive your distros of choice in RAM without having to install anything. There are very few distros that require a full install to try out; if you run into one you can always use old hardware or a spare disk, etc. Mint has a LiveUSB of all its DE choices, Pop!OS has a LiveUSB, you just need the USB sticks and something like Rufus to make them with, and you’re ready to test drive.
Well worth the trouble, IMO. Good luck.
Yeah I honestly wouldn’t use Arch or indeed any rolling release distro for any machine that’s used for revenue. Go with a stable release distro. Mint is one of the very few I even bother considering, there’s a reason it’s been as popular as it has for so long.
Just a heads up OpenSUSE is phasing out leap so it won’t have a stable release “soon” unless the things with ALP shake out well.
Apart from Wine, Proton also includes some other stuff that helps gaming.
Also here is the Proton comparability site: https://www.protondb.com/
As someone who is currently in the process of moving everything to Linux, this is a genuinely helpful comment. I have it saved now, lol. Thank you for taking the time to write this out, much appreciated.