Breaking free from Windows

My hatred for Windows 10 and Windows in general is never a secret. Never been. Windows 10 specifically has been my prime target, because quite frankly, WinXP and 7 were great, but Win10 kept making me discover new layers of hatred for all the dumb bollocks it would do.

Updates broke basic functionality like clockwork. I stopped counting the number of swears I let out when I wasted three hours fixing my stupid bloody WiFi because the stupid bloody Win10 update broke it and I have to figure out what exactly went wrong and what broke.

Speaking of auto-updates, random rebooting on me and updates taking forever to install was another major point of aggravation for me. It's no secret I went berzerk when Win10 BSODed on me when I was working on the BSS RPG and corrupted my files forcing me to go back in time to a 7 month old backup. Sure, you can make the argument it's my fault for not regularly backuping, and fair enough, but the crux of this is, it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

But, those are all part and parcel of the wonderful Win10 experience. And I say this with the thickest sarcasm I possibly can.

My laptop came bundled with this bollocks because of course it did. Can't buy a stupid bloody PC with a blank hard drive.

I tolerated it as long as I could. And then I decided that ENOUGH WAS BLOODY ENOUGH.

I got a second drive, and switched over to Linux.

Steam works just fine. I am testing Proton for Windows Steam game compatibility.
WINE works just fine. I have just fired up RPG Maker MZ, working A-1.

Everything I need doing, Linux can do, and most often, do better. So dear old shitty Win10 will rot away on the M2 SSD in my laptop until the glorious day where I get to delete this virus.

Switching 100% to Linux is going to require a few brain cells, and some time. It's not as easy as M$ bollocks. But, it's a switch I am glad I pulled the trigger into finally making.

Gone are the autoupdates.
Gone are the BSOD.
Gone is the resource hogging.
Gone are the headaches.
It's like someone pulled a large shard of broken glass from my side and nursed the wound back to health.

Burn in Muspelheim, Windows 10. And even that is too good for this bloated resource-hog crashy piece of trash.

Fuck Windows 10.

Nice!

The only OS worse than W10 is W8 (and of course Vista).

When I reinstalled W10 I had to spend some time setting the privacy options off, disabling the cloud thingy and making sure Cortana wouldn't run by messing with the registry.

By the way who uses Cortana? It's totally useless.

W8 was terrible though. Do you remember when it came out and people were confused because there was no start menu to speak off and you add to use an app to get that feature back? I want to say good times but frankly it was a major pita.

Vista was like Win7 1.0 -- had plenty of flaws, but it needs to be acknowledged as historically important because it is, this flop led to the best version of Win ever, something that has never ever been matched. Also, for Win10, did you download the nifty Spybot Anti-Beacon? Takes care of nearly all the telemetry and spying options of Win10

Cortana is useless toot -- it's basically an evesdropping spy, I avoid those useless "assistants" like the plague. Same on iPhone, I disable Siri, and I nuked Bixby on my S20.

I myself was fortunate enough to skip Win8 completely, so I only have heard the whispers of how terrible it was. I suppose in a way I can see trying to merge the tablet interface, but it was so dumbed down it wasn't funny.

Here is the Linux flavour I installed. It's Ubuntu based sadly but I can hardly tell because it looks and feels so MacOS like. The Application story is pretty terrible and I ended up sideloading stuff through Flathub.

WINE worked just fine so now I can use Windows MZ in Linux and I crossed all my data over. Of course it's not a perfect solution, but most of the important stuff will work just fine. Takes a bit of time and a few braincells to get running, but well worth it.

All that remains to test is Proton, and I am about to fire Viscera Cleanup Detail to see how well it handles Windows games on Linux. Valve is actively working on it because they value Linux as a gaming platform, so if that works well, then Windows has lost it's only edge.

Have a look and see if you fancy it. Battery life on my Acer Nitro 5 has been shockingly good with Linux.

https://elementary.io/

Nice, I'll keep that in mind. I just reinstalled W10 the other day so I'm not too keen on going through the entire process of installing an OS just yet.

Update --

So every distro of Linux I tried, along with BSD, had some manner of issue with either Steam or WINE.

After being reminded of it by a friend of mine, I went ahead, downloaded and installed Fedora 35. The installation was quick and painless, and within less than 20 minutes it was up and running.

The interface, which I am told is GNOME, a desktop manager I have personally never used, took a bit of getting used to, but I don't mind it.

The next step was to install Steam, and WINE. Fedora has a GUI package manager, but I went old school and did it through BASH, Again, the process was quick and easy.

So I fired up Steam, and enabled Proton 6.8, for all unsupported games. This is where it got really interesting. Even with Proton enabled, ElementaryOS, FreeBSD, openSUSE, all would not run certain games. Fedora, OTOH, handled every single Windows-only game I threw at it without even breaking a sweat. Carmageddon Max Damage, Skyrim, Viscera Cleanup Detail, Deux Ex, DOOM, Wolfenstein... all ran just fine. So did all Windows native RPG Makers.

Next up on the chopping block was WINE. And this was the make or break for me. I have a non-Steam version of RPG Maker MZ, so it requires Windows emulation. Except for the fact I have no sound, WIndows MZ works just fine on Fedora also.

So at last I can finally stop distro-hopping. I've been running Fedora as my daily driver all week, and I only booted Win11 for copying files and so on.

Proton is smashing down the last barrier that was preventing users from moving away from Windows. MS should be very, very worried about this.

Bottom line -- at last I can truly toss Win11 in the bin. And I couldn't be any happier about it. Fedora has proven to be a sleeper hit, and I am glad I did go ahead and tried it.

Well, after a brief honeymoon with Fedora, it all went tits up. So I am back on the hunt again, and next up is Manjaro. I hate Arch and Arch-based distros but at this point I know Arch repositories are going to have what I need, so... Here we go again

Good hunting!

The problem with Arch is that it's an elitist club who think they are better than everybody else. There's a meme going around in Linux groups saying "BTW I use Arch" to point out they have no lives and wasted way way too much time compiling a bloody distro from absolute scratch.

Now don't get me wrong, I pulled it off with Gentoo back in the day (same kind of philosophy, Linux Lego bricks) and quite frankly while the outcome of a personalized distro custom fitted for your hardware is amazing it's not something I want to do again. Manjaro bypasses all this bollocks and keeps the Arch software repos which is a win-win.

If all else fails I am just going to go back to the roots and return to Slackware, the old reliable.

Manjaro is so far not bad. The only big issue is I downloaded the KDE version and switching to XFCE instead is a bit of a pain.

The big advantage of Manjaro is the rolling releases -- no need to upgrade, it does so automatically. And that's a huge point in it's favour.

Tha said I have not given up on my true love FreeBSD. I am going to be an absolute madman and do a triple boot of 11, Manjaro and FreeBSD. Fuck it.

So a few months later, and after many experiments, I want to revisit this topic.

So far, the most solid contenders I have seen to be a true Windows replacement are Fedora, Manjaro, Xero, OpenSUSE.

Fedora is the testing branch for Red Hat Linux. It is rock-solid, stable, and once you get your way around, it works very well. This was the first true Windows replacement that grabbed my attention. Fedora is an independent, and is not based on any other distro.

Manjaro is Arch-based, and for the most part has all the good and bad of Arch. The good is excellent hardware support, the bad is that updates sometimes break the system. While it's usually no big deal for someone with some Linux experience... it happens. Manjaro comes with Steam built in, and it works just fine, and Proton also.

XeroLinux is also an Arch-based distro. This one has KDE Plasma, has excellent NVIDIA support, including Optimus support for hybrid graphics, allowing switching between the onboard GPU and the main NVIDIA card. Just like Manjaro, it has pacman for updates and general update management, and I for one really, really enjoy Xero so far. It is pushing my hardware further than Fedora did, and I have not had the same issues I had with Fedora when it came to running Proton-emulated RPG Maker MZ. Xero by default comes with KDE, though it's not a problem installing a other desktop.

OpenSUSE is the FOSS version of SUSE Linux, on the same level as Red Hat. OpenSUSE has the excellent YaST tool to perform a variety of software and update related tasks. Hardware support is also really good, and it lets you pick your flavour of desktop from KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXQT.

Gentoo has to be my personal favourite. Portage is just so so good and solid, and a properly done Gentoo install gives you unparralleled flexibility and performance on your hardware. However, this is a Master-level endeavour and is NOT recommended for beginners. Gentoo, however, has a few distros based on it, like Sabayon and Redcore.

FreeBSD remains my original love along with Gentoo, but unfortunately gaming on FreeBSD with Linux emulation is just too rough to properly work. I couldn't get MZ to even launch on FreeBSD with Proton despite a lot of head scratching and documentation reading.

So bottom line:

Beginners: ElementaryOS, beautiful and simple
Intermediate: Manjaro, Fedora, OpenSUSE. Accessible but powerful
Advanced: Arch, Slackware. Closest to the BSD spirit
Master level: Gentoo. Difficult, but rewarding.

Elementary is 64 bits only, right?

Yes. Elementary is Ubuntu based (and Ubuntu is Debian based) and the *buntus have long dropped support for 32 bit, so has Fedora and most of the others. Only a handful of 32 bit remain, namely Debian, BunsenLabs, Bodhi being the biggest. Heads up about elementary, the Panthenon desktop is a MacOS clone and behaves like one.

Debian has fixed cyclic releases every 2 years so it's stable but very outdated compared to say, Gentoo and Arch. Fedora gets updates once a week. Debian sadly is the best choice for 32 bit systems. Gentoo still has 32 bit support but like I said, this is master-level required. Redcore has all the good of Gentoo in a more user friendly package but no 32 bit.

That said a 2013 laptop is very likely to support 64 bit. So I am not worried your mum's won't be able to run something modern like Fedora LXQT or Xfce.

Cool. Last time I tried anything like this was with a very old laptop and I was going for lubuntu. I'm going to give it a go. The 2013 laptop is still running but Windows is slowing it down so much it's become a major pain.

Correction: Arch officially has terminated 32 bit support but it's branched off as ArchLinux32 which is regularly maintained.

Arch is not a beginner distro though. Powerful but not very user friendly. That said following the handbook it's not too bad (unlike Gentoo) but Arch doesn't hold your hand.

Good to know. I'm a bit concerned about the time required to maintain this. Truth be told I don't know if I'll find the time to tackle the install let alone maintenance. I may end up getting a new machine and just leave my laptop at my mother's for her to use it.

Fedora requires very little in terms of maintenance. Once a week just run the command "sudo dnf update" and update the packages and that's it. Arch OTOH gets updates every day so it's very bleeding edge at the cost of some occasional instability.

That said, if you want to get a new machine, then the possibilities are wide open. There is a user friendly Arch-based distribution called XeroLinux that has been impressing me big time. It looks good, works great and hybrid graphics are not an issue. I just set mine to NVIDIA by default and everything runs off my 1050. Redcore is a good Gentoo-based distro but I will be brutally honest Gentoo's package manager Portage is a nightmare for the uninitiated and without prior Gentoo experience ir a lot of handbook reading Gentoo is not friendly at all. Arch's pacman and Fedora's DNF are solid. Manjaro also uses pacman.

Fedora has the Calamares GUI installer which keeps things simple as does Xero. A Fedora install takes less than 20 minutes. Quite frankly I would pick an Arch-based distro or Fedora over anything *buntu.

Unfortunately I won't be able to run a regular maintenance schedule on my mom's machine and she's really not inclined to do that herself (quite the understatement) so I'm looking into options (but not for the immediate future, that's more like some time by the end of the year or next year). Since I will be sharing any new machine with my partner we will most certainly be looking into dual booting so we can get the best of both worlds. What do you think about dual booting? Do you have any pointers to share on the subject?

Dual-booting? Mate that's child's play, I quadruple-boot W11, Gentoo, Xero and Fedora. Fedora likely replaced with FreeBSD again soon.

In all seriousness, in this day and age it's not an issue. Distros configure GRUB automatically to coexist with Winblows and most of my suggestions save for Arch and Gentoo have the Calamares installer which makes partitioning pretty easy.

Calamares installer can handle partitioning automatically. I would strongly recommend giving Linux it's own HDD/SSD if you can. If you want to handle partitioning manually, here is all you need to keep in mind:

1x 512MB FAT32 EFI system
RAM divided by 2 for Linux swap
The rest for your filesystem. Generally Linux uses ext4, but you can use btrfs, XFS or in some specific distros, ZFS, which is just

Hit me up if you have any questions or need anything. I have not goven up my quest to ditch Winblows

I'm a noob when it comes to this but my girl actually makes a living with computers the only problem is that she doesn't really like talking shop when she's not working (plus in all fairness whenever I ask her something computer related I tend to get a lot more information than I can process).

She works in IT? I am sorry to hear that

Frankly if you buy new hardware I would go for either Xero or Fedora. Xero harnesses the power of Arch in a user friendly package while Fedora is establishing itself as the new gold standard distro. Ubuntu's  days are numbered.

Steam Proton can run a fairly wide array of games without too much hassle on Linux, but the big AAA you'll have to stick to Windows for.  Otherwise Xero is more than good enough for a daily driver.  It requires tinkering but you'll get used to it quickly. Pacman is a powerful package manager. Plus if you don't use the AUR (Arch User Repository) and stick to the "official" packages offered by Pacman the chances of something breaking is slim to none.

I am really liking Redcore too but the Gentoo components will throw you off.

Manjaro also could be a good choice. Arch devired also so uses Pacman also.

Plus, if you go for a desktop, you won't have to deal with the headache of hybrid graphics. It's still very much a pain in the arse and the tools to handle it are still getting there though to be fair I had minimal issues with Optimus Manager when switching to NVIDIA instead of the onboard GMA card.

I haven't had a desktop in decades so it will be a welcome change!

Thanks for the detailed information. Not having to deal with that dual card thing is going to be a blessing.

My partner is actually a developer so it's a lot better than it sounds.

The Optimus hybrid graphics is an NVIDIA problem... Intel+NVIDIA equals , AMD+ATI is fine.

Nvidia refuse to open source their drivers (until recently but I am not convinced) so the workarounds are unofficial and based on older drivers.

Fuck NVIDIA. Cunts.

In my quest for personal nerdiness and to find what would work best for you, I have been downloading and testing several Linux distros.

The list of victims was as follows: Xero, Fedora, Manjaro, Elementary, Mint, Bodhi, Debian, OpenSUSE.

All have their pros, and their cons, but only two have consistently stood out to me -- Xero, and Fedora.

Fedora you already know is rocksolid, stable and fairly user friendly and it's becoming a gold standard. I was using it until recently, prior to borking up my EFI partitions and having to reinstall.

Xero, aka Arch, has consistently been the clear winner for me in all the time I used it. Originally I thought that Arch was an elitist arsewipe distro, but no, it really is THAT good. I have been using Xero for over a month now and I love it so much it has secured a permanent spot on my secondary hard drive, which it shares with it's distant cousin FreeBSD.

Personally, I would go with Xero. But Fedora is also a solid contender.

http://xerolinux.xyz

That's one hell of a recommendation coming from you. Thanks for the tip.

Don't get me wrong Fedora is also one hell of a contender and you might initially prefer it more depending on your level of skill with Linux.

The only major differences are the package managers and how you do updates. For Fedora, updating the packages is simply sudo dnf update. With Arch it's pacman -Syu.

Both are rolling releases so install once and upgrade to new versions. Fedora gets weekly updates, Arch gets daily (!!) updates. So Arch is much more bleeding edge.

Both are great choices. I would happily recommend Fedora as I do Xero. Both are Live images so you can test before installing.