That is super exciting, I’ll give it a try. Thanks for pointing that out, I thought it was still in the rumours and supported speculation phase. If this trend continues then Linux will be more and more viable going forward. SteamDeck pushing the gaming scene has been huge, I hope the momentum just keeps increasing.
Thank you for the insight, that is actually useful information for me. I currently have a 4tb nvme with a small (250gb) C drive and the rest as an E drive (Program installs and Games) for Windows, the same general setup with a second 4tb nvme for Linux, and a 3rd separate SATA SSD that acts as my “home” drive with Documents/Pictures/Downloads /etc. I planned and sharing that third drive between Windows and Linux so I don’t require duplicating data.
A home server/NAS is also in the works, and I’ll be looking into Samba. It’s just been a bit enlightening finding out all the unicorns and rainbows on the Linux side of the fence are equines of indeterminate parentage with paper cones glued to their foreheads and RGB light strips soldered together with a “trust me” sticker on them.
Microsoft is still a ghetto, and Apple is a WASP country club where the HOA president lives next door and is “retired”. Computers are both at an all-time high for choice and in some of the worst states it’s been in.
There’s the rub. Every distro has vocal supporters and detractors, and appears simultaneously good or “dog shit”. Determining who is accurate is a crapshoot, and there apparently is no right answer. Manjaro was attractive because of built-in automatic snapshots for recovery when I inevitably break my installation. There was also previously a well reviewed gaming focused Manjaro fork, though I stuck with the main fork.
Mint had just as vocal of detractors saying it was unstable. Same with Ubuntu and I dislike the company focus anyway. Arch is Arch, and Manjaro is an Arch fork anyway. It’s the same problem someone looking at starting One Piece or Bleach or Naruto have: there is too much and even the fans appear to hate it more than anyone else, lol.
I don’t want to distro hop, that doesn’t interest me at my current stage. I want long term (at least a year) in between reinstallations. More self hosting is lined up for the future, so desktop is dipping my toes in the water as my server is piecemealed together.
I am mid switch, but it’s not been smooth or easy. I chose Manjaro and maybe I chose poorly. I am a lifelong techie, and have used Ubuntu and Mint in short stints in the past, but the transition is rough.
I didn’t attempt the switch before because I primarily played Destiny 2 and Bungie hates Linux. The enshittification of Destiny drove me away, and in theory the games I am playing now should work. I have had mixed results however.
I play Darktide and Vermintide 2 and heavily use their modding scenes to make them fully playable. Vortex mod manager is a huge bonus for this, and I still haven’t been able to set this up.
My Elgato equipment has community support, but has a bunch of steps to get working that I haven’t spent the time to fully research or attempt.
I still haven’t set up an automatic mount point for my shared NTFS drive to load on boot, both because I don’t have a good grasp on the fstab and because Windows does a chkdisk every time I mount it in Linux. Dual access storage still seems iffy as of 2025.
I am going to keep trying, because I hate Microsoft right now more than I dislike the learning curve and limitations. Not sure if that is enough to make this the year of the Linux desktop though.
You’re absolutely right, I feel almost as bad attempting to use Mac as I do Linux but it is a less powerful OS and I just accept there are things I can’t do. Plus it IS designed to be idiot proof.
For Linux, I run into the problem that there is a floor of knowledge assumed in every tutorial. Auto mount my secondary NTFS drive at boot? Just do XYZ in fstab. Don’t know where fstab is and where to make that entry? You’re SOL. I am comfortable in command line to an extent, but it’s been a long time since I dailied DOS, honestly don’t spend a lot of time in PowerShell, and networking equipment is a completely different beast.
Microsoft may suck, but I can usually find my way through a script or formula or something with their knowledgebase. My skill set doesn’t translate well, and I am finding it harder to learn than I probably should. I probably need to take an introductory Linux course.
This right here drove me to dual boot Manjaro. I can’t be the only person who has stacked monitors instead of side-by-side monitors. The UI is an abomination and the telemetry even moreso.
Linux is not turn key, and as a significantly PC gaming user it has limitations. I still have not set up modding yet, and whether Vortex mod manager will work or not is still unclear. I can’t get more than 60Hz out of my monitor on HDMI, which is required if I want 175Hz and 10bit color due to DisplayPort 1.4 limitations. Sleep causes my motherboard to permanently display a “CPU unknown” QLED Code. Instructions on simple tasks like creating a permanent drive mount at boot are confusing because there are steps that seem to be just assumed by everyone writing them. Etc.
I am working my way through these, but still find myself in Windows 11 most of the time because unfortunately it just works. Software is natively written for it, there is no searching for how to get peripherals or programs to work. I say this as a lifelong tech nerd who started on Windows 3.1 and DOS, and who’s job involves working with Linux based equipment. This shouldn’t be as hard as it has been to transition, but it is.
I’m sure Mint is in a great place now, I enjoyed it when I tried it 8-10 years ago during my last foray into Linux. I looked at the reviews complaining about Mint as outliers, but did the same for Manjaro and PopOS and all the others. PopOS was what I was initially planning on for Nvidia support, but my 2080S started acting like it might be dying and I picked up a 7900XTX to open up my Linux options more.
BTRFS snapshots sounded like a good “training wheel” for easy restoration after I inevitably break something, which was a selling point for Manjaro. Rolling release is also both a plus and a minus. It is easy to get choice paralysis with trying to jump into Linux, especially if you don’t want to do a bunch of initial distro hopping to feel out the different options.