Ok, so Windows 11 has finally annoyed me to the point that I'm giving dual boot with Linux a go on my laptop. I've gone for Mint Cinnamon, and opted for Evolution for email, Chrome, and I've got WhatsApp and discord on there so far. I'm loving how clean everything is to be honest.
Not so thrilled on the lack of MS Office and Onedrive so far, but could see this being a daily driver if I can sort out Onedrive.
Does anyone have any advice to somebody coming voer from Windows for the first time? I'm familiar with Linux in a terminal sense as I play with RPi's a fair bit. Not really dabbled in desktop before though.
I converted fully about 2 years ago. Wiped windows from the desktop and laptop and switched. It was a bit of work. I run a business and we have lots of mail merge documents we use, and these all had to be converted completely. Rebuilt as libreoffice writer documents instead of ms word. Never going back now though.
Libreoffice is just as good as office in my opinion. It's the usual thing - you have to get used to it. I did not realise how much I'd become accustomed to quirks in word and things that did not work quite right. Now I would not be very good at using ms word and I've found there are things in libreoffice that work better (and things that are not as good). Whatever you are used to is what you use best. If I was forced to switch back to windows now I'd still use libreoffice. No doubt about it.
Onedrive is easily replaced. Use nextcloud. I installed my own instance of nextcloud on linode. It is superb. I have not lost anything. And nextcloud is free and fully open source. Also has a great notes functionality that I use now instead of evernote.
I started on Mint, and that's what I still have on the laptop. On the desktop I have Manjaro KDE and it's a beautiful looking OS. Very regular updates from Manjaro and everything runs smooth. This system has been installed for about a year and a half and it runs like clockwork. I never have problems.
For photoshop - use GIMP. I used to pay for photoshop but now I do the same simple editing I need to do in gimp.
For PDF editing functionality, like I used to get from Acrobat Pro, I now use PDF Studio from Qoppa. I pay for that. I need to do stuff with pdfs.
I used to use syncbackpro to keep various hard drives mirrored. Now I use freefilesync. It's just as good. I was cynical at first because of the way it looks, but I've been backing up my data and mirroring it with freefilesync for 2 years and it's never put a foot wrong.
I tried Evolution but it does not work that great. I switched to Thunderbird and it's very good.
All my contacts and calendars are in the cloud and accessible from my phone like they used to be when I used google apps and later the microsoft equivalent. Except now they are in nextcloud so private - which is a nice change.
If you stick with it you will probably find that it's a myth that you need windows to get stuff done. I used to think that, but I've found I was wrong.
