Advice for a middle-age, moderately pc knowledgeable person to finally switch to or become proficient with Linux?
This is my third attempt. Partly to rage quit Windows, and partly to gain utility and control with some professional AV software.
I have converted an old Asus netbook to Ubuntu netbook remix and used it for a while. I was impressed with how much better that tiny thing ran with Linux than Windows. But in the end it still had less power than a TI-84. So I stopped using it, and never really learned Linux proper.
I dual boot my Chromebook, so I can use gimp for photos on vacation, but everything I do with the Linux partition is cut and paste from articles by people who know what they're doing. (I was motivated to post here by a meme about that.)
I'm thinking of dual booting my main desktop, because I need Windows for some fairly processor intense A/V software I use for work. So what would be a good distro to look into for a novice and where should I look for a tutorial? I would ultimately like to see if I can use Linux to run my AV software in emulation and add drivers for some professional audio interfaces. I'm fed up with windows and trying to see how far I can get without it. Your help is appreciated in advance, and if this is inappropriate for this topic, let me know and I'll delete it.
Windows is a liability. I'm forced to use it because of the propriatary nature of the games (and tech) I play.
There is nothing awesome coming out of Microsoft.
Proton and steam work pretty great these days. Try it out.
RT isn't available and few games using EAC still need support for Linux. Additionally Logitech headphones aren't supported on Linux (proprietary drivers for virtual surround)
Besides that I'm very well aware of proton's existence and I'm planning on building a new instance of Gentoo just for gaming.
Agreed, derivative me too stuff is what they’re doing. But then, with the world using Office, they don’t have to work too hard to keep the lights on and their bellies full.
I agree with the first sentence, but the second is wrong due to Proton, and the third is demonstrably wrong if you take a look at their GitHub. Windows Caldulator is better than anything Linux has, and WinGet is a decent attempt at making Windows finally have a native package manager.
WinGet even does manage packages like you'd expect when installing and uninstalling MSIX packages, and the ease of merely requesting manifests even beats the OBS.
Of course they're making good software. Why wouldn't they be? They're a competent software development company that much of the world chooses to rely upon. There's gonna be a reason for it. System admins on a whole generally aren't totally stupid.
Even whilst Balmer was CEO, some under-the-hood Windows and Azure changes were quite impressive. He merely screwed up everything he was able to touch, which admittedly was an absolute tonne.