I'm going to try to replace windows 10.

Thats it, ive had enough of windows. The latest anniversary edition turns my laptop into a hairdryer & I'm sick of the constant updates & reboots.
I'm not a linux noob. I have worked with it for the past 15 years in server environments, but am at the stage in life now where I dont want to be messing with computers when I get home. I just want them to work.
I am new to the desktop side of it though.
The machine is a clevo p170sm I think, a few years old.
I have reviewed my installed apps & to be honest there is not much on there. I use my chromebook more these days. The only thing I really need is a hypervisor to run my work virtual machine, with passthru for usb headset. I know vmware workstation works under linux, or used to anyway.
So after a few searches I've decided to try mint and elementary linux.
Criteria is reliability, speed & easy of use. I really dont care about endless customization.
Let the trials begin!

EDIT - It didnt work. In fact it was a blessed relieve to get back to windows 10. Great as a server, probably ok as a desktop if it works with your hardware, but it didnt with mine.

I keep having similar ideas but then discover some embedded coding I'm doing either is not supported or one spends days trying to get all the right bits together.

However I'll follow your progress with interest.

I would just get Windows 7

I wouldnt use Linux as a desktop if you paid me, and I run everything I can on Linux. But for desktop it has to be OSX.

SMN said:

I wouldnt use Linux as a desktop if you paid me, and I run everything I can on Linux. But for desktop it has to be OSX.

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"I'd rather let a cat **** in my mouth every hour than use OSX as an every day desktop" is a quote I recently heard from a technical expert, and while I don't feel as strongly about it as him, I personally wouldn't use OSX either.

Windows 7 is my OS of choice, right before MS decided to OSX/baby the OS. Although I support 8.1 and 10 at work, I can't see me using them at home until it's no longer an option to run 7.

Linux is acceptable as a daily desktop choice, but, for me it depends on what I am doing. General office duties, web browsing, email no issues at all. Photo editing, I just can't get past Photoshop/lightroom.

I used Arch and Ubuntu for 2007-2013 and they were just too unstable and lacking in support for common applications readily available on OSX/Windows such as Spotify, OneNote, Office, etc. I like OSX as its stable - it 'just works' and has proper Office and Photoshop (not the awful alternatives), yet i can get a native shell in 2 seconds, plus tools like 'Alfred' are unsurpassed in any other operating systems.

I use elementary on one of my desktops. I really like it.

Using Ubuntu for my work laptop that I use all day every day and then personally at night as well.

It does everything I need it to and if there is anything I need windows for I whip out VirtualBox and use the Windows7 I have installed within that.

Windows10 for gaming and OSX as my preferred operating system, to this day OSX Snow Leopard is my favourite OS

Steveocee said:

Using Ubuntu for my work laptop that I use all day every day and then personally at night as well.

It does everything I need it to and if there is anything I need windows for I whip out VirtualBox and use the Windows7 I have installed within that.

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Does virtual box do usb passthrough for audio devices? Thats a must have for me, so I can use the headset for skype whilst booted into my work virtual windows7.

phil-k said:

I would just get Windows 7

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Yes thats an option. I took a disk image of my win7 install before 'upgrading' to windows10. So reverting is possible for sure.

m_cozzy said:

Thats it, ive had enough of windows. The latest anniversary edition turns my laptop into a hairdryer & I'm sick of the constant updates & reboots.
I'm not a linux noob. I have worked with it for the past 15 years in server environments, but am at the stage in life now where I dont want to be messing with computers when I get home. I just want them to work.
I am new to the desktop side of it though.
The machine is a clevo p170sm I think, a few years old.
I have reviewed my installed apps & to be honest there is not much on there. I use my chromebook more these days. The only thing I really need is a hypervisor to run my work virtual machine, with passthru for usb headset. I know vmware workstation works under linux, or used to anyway.
So after a few searches I've decided to try mint and elementary linux.
Criteria is reliability, speed & easy of use. I really dont care about endless customization.
Let the trials begin!

Click to expand...

What problems do you have with win 10? I find it's a good OS. Running it on different ages of systems and it's a pleasure to use.

Oracle Virtual box for virtualisation. That's what I use on a workstation Ubuntu machine at home.

Well I tried elementary loki.
My laptop has 2 ssd's, 1 for windows, 1 was for vmware & a spinning 1tb + a 2tb usb disk. It has an intel/nvidia graphics setup, optimus I think its called. I dont use the laptop as a laptop. Its desk based with the screen shut & connected to a mouse, keyboard & 30" dell screen.
The install was a faff. Had to go backwards/forwards a few times to get the next button to highlight. Disk partitioning was a massive pain, had to do it all manually as it wanted to resize my windows partition whereas I wanted to install it on the 2nd free vmware disk.
Once in the desktop looks ok, nothing special though after reading how awesome elementary should look. I've never used a mac, but I gather its mac like.
Didn't notice any obvious issues with hardware, it seemed to be ok in my brief usage.
Now for some software! Couldnt find libreoffice in the app centre, despite searching & there being a dedicated tile for office apps! So onto google, which disappointingly started to make loads of references to command line install, not what I expected seeing how this distro is advertised. Also needed a package to make .deb files work.
I went to add my printer, a brother 3040, scrolled down the huge list of drivers to find the model completely missing. Whoo, I feel like I'm back in 2002. Getting quite frustrated now. No bother, its not a day 1 requirement.
Downloaded vmware workstation. This comes with a .bundle extension. Of couse it didnt work, locking up the window. Again busted out the cli, chmod to make it executable then installed once i had su'ed up. I tried to test a vm but it started grumbling about no 3d acceleration. The guides I found on how to install the nvidia software were to no avail.
I also didnt really like the left x close button, especially when I installed chrome and all the close/max/min buttons were in the usual place, not consistent.
Oh and it wouldnt mount my exfat 2tb drive without another cli install of some package.
At this point after 90 mins or so, I had had enough, this wasn't working for me.

So a quick boot back to windows, redo the usb stick for mint & off we go again. Threw an error about sdb being mounted, but the partitioning worked seanlessly, it allowed me to select the 2nd ssd & just installed. Once booted it automatically found my printer & said it was ready to go, plus the exfat disk had an icon on the desktop & could be accessed! This is looking much better already.
Further testing of mint tomorrow.

Thanks for the write up, 2020 hindsight and all, but I would have started minty, elementary being the new kid and all.

P.S. after a potential virus issue, I got my mum booting a recent ubuntu.
Her only real application requirements are libre office (she s used to on win 10) and browsing.
I'd assumed she'd be the ideally switcher candidate, fair play to a recent ubuntu the live USB booted on her hardware off the bat (MSI Cubi).

She hated it though, libre office was newer and had a different UI, she found the main interface clunky and generally couldn't wait to go back to win 10 as soon as I could check the system with for potential issues.

She also (incorrectly) blamed ubuntu for Google continually warning of new device sign in's such was her distaste.

Personally if I could get my games and Adobe CC over, I'd be on something debian based in an instant btw.

I've Linux Mint on the laptop for around 3 years now, been pretty good really, saying that I develop on/for/with Linux embedded systems so love the cli, don't think I've ever installed something via the gui package manager...

I wish gaming was more feasible on Linux tbh as that's the only reason I still have 1 machine running Linux... I'm sure the year of the linux desktop will come, like in 2050 or so

opethdisciple said:

What problems do you have with win 10? I find it's a good OS. Running it on different ages of systems and it's a pleasure to use.

Oracle Virtual box for virtualisation. That's what I use on a workstation Ubuntu machine at home.

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If your usage type doesn't fit a very narrow mainstream demographic Windows 10 is far less pleasant to use - like the OP I frequently bump heads with Windows update and its frustrating as all ****. Unfortunately whoever is calling the shots on that aspect is both stubborn and stupid - with it causing significant issues for people who stream seriously they've been forced to make changes with the upcoming edition - but instead of just seeing sense and putting proper control back in the hands of the user they've yet again special cased around the specific problem - which is just going to increasingly lead to more clunky workarounds in the future.

Wish my usage and gaming needs didn't mean I'm stuck with Windows as I'd far rather use something Debian based than Windows 10 at this point.

m_cozzy said:

Does virtual box do usb passthrough for audio devices? Thats a must have for me, so I can use the headset for skype whilst booted into my work virtual windows7.

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Yes.
I use the USB passthrough for both my Tomtom and for a radio programming software for a radio Chirp couldn't handle.

I think there is a 1 liner command you need to run once to give VB the permissions to use the USB but once you've ran it once its done and you don't look back.

***Replace $USER with your linux user name. Log out and log back in.

I'm planning something similar, well at least to move some of my usage onto linux.

One thing that I never found time to work around was the boot loader always wants to install to my primary drive even if I want it on a secondary drive. This can cause issues when I wipe the secondary for any reason..

Have just had a quad 2.5" dock delivered to I can pop out and swap the drives when needed, but also figure I can pop out windows while installing, then slot it back in. I'll just use the bios hotkey to enter the boot menu when I actually want to use windows - typically for gaming or photoshop.

Also in the process of virtualising my WHS2011 onto Xen so I can switch some of the services it currently supports over to instances of ubuntu server (cli). Keeping WHS just as the backup client as in my experience, nothing can touch the automated backup for windows machines apart from more expensive windows server versions.

I have no issues with win 10 performance, My AMD E-60 netbook struggles but it's better in performance than fully updated win 7 and at least it allows you to uninstall all the update so my installs with page file are still <15GB
I also have a celeron J1900 brix and even that runs fine for web browsing, skype and an old DX9 model aircraft sim. Fan rarely kicks in and he CPU load is low. Surprised how well it runs, for desktop apps I wouldn't know it was a low power box.

Desktop is an I5 so no issue there.

Moving to Linix more to build my experience and the family is growing up... more machines required and I'd like to pay less Microsoft tax. Currently running point linux mate on the netbook, which runs really well, though is a very light distro.

Interested to follow this thread and hear from anyone with any common tips. E.g. compatibility with netflix, iplayer, linux backup solutions etc.

AD

Well ive given up & gone back to windows.
Mint initially looked good, but I cannot get it to work with my optimus gtx770m / intel graphics. Lots of cinnamon crashes, lots of cli stuff to try & fix it, going round and round in circles looking for a solution.
Other issues were fans running too quickly and usb mouse not waking up from standby.
Yes I didn't give it that much of my time. Yes I'm sure these issues could be fixed with time and googling, but I simply cannot be bothered when windows works out of the box.
Shame, linux seems to have the same sort of issues I faced 16 years ago when I last tried it as a desktop.

EDIT I may persevere more at the weekend.

If you do try again it might be worth trying disabling the nvidia side if possible in Linux, I assume you're not gaming anyway in which case the intel graphics should be fine I assume?

nvidia are awful at the best of times in Linux, let alone a feature that's very much aimed at gaming. Their open source support especially is pretty useless, which I assume/believe is what would be installed by default.

Intel on the other hand, whilst no real performance does seem to have pretty stable/usable open source drivers.

Fans could well be related to the graphics, but fan/thermal management can be very hit and miss, I haven't got much control on the laptop but my htpc for example is fine/simple. Like most of these things it's that annoying chicken and egg problem, manufacturers do weird/non-standard stuff for whatever reason and sort out the windows drivers as that's what most people use and ignore everything else, but as not that many people use Linux that won't change and very few people research hardware based on Linux capability, those that do are probably those most likely to be able to fix any issues but don't 'need' to, fun times...

No idea on the mouse/standby, my laptop is (pointlessly) on 24/7 cause why not...