For others who have recently made the switch over, what was your experience like? Any issues? Any tips or helpful suggestions to share?
Switched from Win10 to Kubuntu a few months ago. Had a pretty easy transition, but I work in software development so I’m quite familiar with Linux as a server which helps.
I think it still needs too much fiddling with terminal + config files to be able to recommend it to less tech-savy family members, but that’s not a problem for my own usage. Went with the LTS version initially which was a mistake - almost all problems I had were solved my migrating to 25.10.
Biggest annoyance right now is the poor support for fingerprint readers. I got the hardware to work by installing drivers from Dell, but I’m banging my head here trying to get it working in both Login and Unlock screens - I get one functioning and the other breaks, would really appreciate some help with this. But even then it’s awkward and inconsistent as you can’t just put you finger on the reader like you do in Windows, you have to move mouse/press a key (in the unlock screen) or press enter in the password field (in the login screen) before it responds to the reader.
One very impressive thing was Steam+Proton - it works way better than I expected and got me more interested in a Steam Deck or similar device.
Overall I’m very happy with the migration and can’t see me going back to Windows for my personal PC - the annoyances are fairly minor compared to stuff like “oh, here’s Windows Defender eating a ton of resources once again”.
I’m probably thinking of a bigger timeline, don’t recall the last time I tried to migrate but it was probably between 5 and 10 years.
Biggest improvement is Steam+Proton. Gaming in Linux was a huge PITA in the past and nowadays it just works automagically.
Wayland was a big deal to me since it supports some features I needed like per-screen scaling, using my 13’’ notebook on a desk without that gets really straining. I’m using KDE and I also think Linux GUIs have massively improved in usability.
Hardware support improved a lot, though there are still gaps like fingerprint readers which honestly still suck in Linux. But at least all the essential stuff works very well out of the box.
Docker standardizing deployments made it easier to use any OS you want for coding… which is probably a bigger win for MacOS to be honest. More cross-platform support for development tools (including .Net on Linux) also help since that avoids the need of dual-booting when your day job involves these.