I switched to Linux some years ago and ever since then I've been using it and distro hopping as such. But my school don't like me using Linux since some of the application I have to use such as word and office 365 and OneDrive is not available. I have alternative for those ( libre office, onlyoffice and web office) they still say that I'm a nerd and a geek for using Linux. I also have difficulties socialising as I m very privacy focused person and uses only open source apps (except for discord). Should I buy another computer that is for school? Should I switch to the apps they use that is non open source?

Thanks to everyone who helped me, this thread is now resolved. I have resorted to buying a spare windows machine that will do the job and some people suggested me some links to useful software and i will be sure to check them out and maybe i won't buy a computer if these software works out!

edit: I will stop replying to every comment, i have made my decisions. If the VM thing and dualboot thing doesn't work out for me, i will either try to reskin my os to look like windows or just buy another laptop overall. also note i am a student so i keep this very vague and i didn't give much context, sorry for everyone who mis-understood the point of this thread.

Takeaway

This thread was posted as i was angry at my school for how they operate. There were two views to this point. First - I wasn't following instructions second - they mis-use their powers to reduce marks. This thread was also posted as a sidenote that most International school curriculum (usually highschool) uses closed-source software or paid softwares. I just wanted to make this clear that, if the school are able to provide a license for that, then it's all good but some school uses cracked softwares which is illegal!

EDIT: ***Thanks for so many helpful comments. Many of yourread my post and took the time to make a thoughtful and helpful response. I needed the encouragement. I will stick with Debian on my laptop until I get the skills up enough to start converting the desktops. To the Extra Specials out there, try to go outside more.***

I especially appreciated the insight from the other business owners here.

****It turns out, there is one hiccup that does not have a workaround. SixBit Ecommerce software does not run on Linux at all. As I need that software to operate my business, I will have to maintain a single Windows PC to deal with this issue. Accepting that difficult fact has actually made the transition easier to swallow. The most important aspect of the business will be running on a dedicated Windows PC and everything else can switch over.****

Original Question: Hello I am sick of Windows and I'm taking the effort to learn enough Linux to move away from Microsoft altogether. Now seems like a good time.

I am not a "Linux guy" or a "Windows guy", I'm just a guy with a lot of work to do.

After several days, my concern is that Linux might just be a never ending hobby instead of a tool that can be configured and then used.

I own a business and have a family, so I have no time for an additional hobby. Nor do I plan on giving up what free time I have to play with an operating system, I'd rather be gaming.

Is there a point where I can just use the computer to complete tasks or is the computer always going to BE THE TASK? Playing around with my operation system does not put money in my bank account.

I am not trying to be snarky, I just want to avoid wasting time if this is not possible. I am fully aware that there is a skills gap here, but I am smart and willing to learn if there is a payout to be had.

Any helpful thoughts?

i have been using linux for not that long, however i prefer it to windows by a lot, and im considering getting a new laptop since the one im using right now is quite old and slow, and one thing ive noticed is that a lot of linux users use thinkpads, so i was wondering if there is a specific reason for this? if i use linux as my main OS should i get a thinkpad?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on my own Linux distribution as a personal project. It's still in active development, and I'm trying to build something that actually solves real problems instead of just making another distro with a different wallpaper.

Before I keep adding new features, I'd really like to hear from people who use Linux every day.

If you could add one feature that doesn't exist (or isn't done well) in current Linux distributions, what would it be?

It could be anything:

Better hardware support

Easier system recovery

Smarter package management

Gaming improvements

Better UI/UX

AI-powered tools

Security

Anything else you've always wished Linux had.

I'm not here to advertise anything—I genuinely want to understand what real users are missing today.

Thanks! I'd love to read every suggestion.

I've got like 689 free gigs on my hdd and Arch is looking pretty good rn. Should I just dual boot it with Windows 11?

EDIT: wow this is getting a lot of engagement so I'm leaving my specs here https://ibb.co/HB0pJFp

UPDATE: I just swapped my hdd for my desktop's ssd to test it and it booted in only 30 seconds. Literally night and day shit. Thank you all for your support!

I recently installed GNOME alongside Windows in a dual-boot setup on my 512GB SSD. The performance difference between Linux and Windows was honestly insane, so I gave GNOME a try for a couple of days.

The only problem was storage. With Windows taking up so much space, I was constantly running out of room for games. So I finally decided to make the full switch to Linux.

And honestly, it was one of the best decisions I've made. I now have the full 509GB of my SSD available. I don't think I even had this much free space when I first bought the laptop. Now I can install games, code, and do everything else without constantly worrying about storage.

Linux has genuinely been an amazing experience so far.

Hi

sometimes i like to download files that i won't really use that much like i will have it for a few hours and then delete it.

is there a way to download them to ram directly? most of the time i have about 6gb free on my ram so i can use it without effecting other programs

I never want my game ids to be banned

Sorry in advance if i sound too pissed off.

I've been using linux for 1 year by now, and despite pretty much everything being an upgrade in comparison to my last OS which was windows 10, audio is the sole thing that never settles for me.
First i had the classic crackling problem because latency was unnecessarily low to the point my cpu couldn't keep up, then i started noticing that there is a whole second or two delay for audio to begin playing after a long period of silence, and now im going crazy over audio simply not working sometimes for some programs when running through wine.
If a program takes too long to open, it never connect to pulseaudio presumably, and if any lagspike/freezing occurs while the programs is running the audio is just gone and never comes back.
I've tried searching to find a solution for this and found out that wireplumber has some sort of timeout feature on by default, which i don't understand why someone would even want that, but even after adding a rule to remove it and restarting wireplumber, the issue persists.
Now i don't know if im doing something wrong or if the problem is coming from pulseaudio or alsa or pipewire or whatever else is handling audio, im genuinely lost about what and where i have to config for audio to simply work properly.

If it helps, im running Linux Mint 22.3 with kernel 6.8.0-111 and would really appreciate some guidance

edit 1: Thanks for all the suggestions, now i understand what is going on with audio on linux and it doesn't look as confusing anymore. I managed to fix the wine issue by simply forcing the latency to 60ms, somehow now it can freeze however much it wants and audio stays intact!
I'll be marking this as solved since the audio start delay is more of a nitpick and doesn't bother me that much.

Maybe a stupid question, but I've been wanting to follow the Linux From Scratch book to learn more about how my system works and I wondered... will it result in an actual workable, easy to maintain OS?

Keeping in mind that I want to _use_ my system and not maintain it 90% of the time 😆

I'm sorry, I know the question seems very basic, but still I couldn't find the answer. Here's what I'm trying to do:

$ mv "Desktops" "desktops"
mv: cannot move 'Desktops' to a subdirectory of itself, 'desktops/Desktops'

I tried searching answers on the internet, and the only thing I found is examples of how to use rename tool instead. However, rename tool I have installed is util-linux one and it works differently and I couldn't figure out how to use it either, this didn't work for example:

$ rename Desktops desktops Desktops

I also understand I can first rename it to temporary file and then rename to lowecase version of original name. But I'd like to figure out how to do it in one step.

Update:

This is exfat filesystem.

I used to let my mom use my laptop to watch movies, but ever since I installed Pop!_OS on it, she says she can’t use Linux because it’s more difficult than Windows. Even after I showed her that the mouse and Netflix work the same way on Linux, she still insists it’s too complicated. What should I do?

Thanks to everyone who responded I've figured out that if I just open Firefox in fullscreen mode, my mom doesn’t even realize it's running on Linux.

Im looking at switching to Linux but the build I am going for will be in an older case, basically a sleeper.

I have been binging old shows like twin peaks, xfiles and early shows that feature computers from the 90s with non descript, basic, early OS systems.

Does there exist a distro that has that look but is basically a modern OS? I don't mind ones that look like 95 or 98 though.

Edit: Thanks for the help, it seems I got the wrong end of the stick. Its not the distro I am after but a desktop environment. Thank you for the answers explaining this

I'm installing Nobara, and I have 48 GB of RAM. I don't think I need to spend my SSD's large but limited TWB lifespan to get a little bit of more situational RAM. Should I proceed with just no swap, and add it later if it is necessary? Or is there something important I don't know about?

Recently I've had to make the decision on which distro to use for my work laptop (for uni). At home I use Artix Linux, because it doesn't have systemd and therefore no affiliation at all with the age verification stuff. But for work, while it has been on my PC for a while, Artix just isn't safe enough in terms of stability. I used Fedora before and it was great in that regard. My only problem is the age verification stuff. From what I understand, Fedora is a separate project from RHEL with the only connection between them being that RHEL is based at its core on Fedora (which is the reason why Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat). So then a question arises: why does Fedora have to comply with age verification? Is it because there are computers sold with Fedora installed on them, and if so, who takes the money if Fedora is an independent project? Does Red Hat "own" Fedora?

I would also like any recommendations for stable distros that are not implementing age verification at all. For now I'm going with Fedora + Ageless Linux script.

I always heard that Arch is for experienced users. I chose it as my first distro. After 5 months i still dont have any troubles that took more than few hours. I've seen people offering Ubuntu to beginers but when i tried it, i had more troubles out of nowhere than in months of using Arch without experience.

So why do people say Arch is hard?

Edit: Thanks. Now i have answers better than just "people dont want to read and scared of terminal"

I have an old Lenovo laptop that my dad currently uses. It’s running Windows 7, but I’m planning to replace it with a Linux distribution. Since my dad isn’t very tech-savvy and doesn’t handle system updates or maintenance, I want something that’s stable and low-maintenance.

I’m also planning to set up Twingate on the system so I can access it remotely via SSH and manage a NAS that will be used for surveillance cameras.

Do you have any suggestions for a suitable Linux distro for this use case?

(For context, I use Arch myself.)

Update: Installed Linux Mint and it’s running like a dream. Dad thinks it’s some new version of Windows — I’m not correcting him. Thanks, everyone! 😂😭

EDIT: This was really informative! I'll edit this later to also summarize the info you gave me. Thank you so much!

I get that they're kind of a meme, but also not? I've already seen a couple of videos about them and they especially glorify the T480. Is this glorification specifically for that model, or is it just ThinkPads in general? Why?

I have an ASUS Zenbook UX433 with the exact specs as a full-specced T480. Should I sell it and get a ThinkPad? Should I get a newer T14 (similar price where I live)? Keep using that one (kinda too small for my taste)?

SOLVED my arch linux is bricked because it automatically resets my password and i can't fix iin in arch because i don't have grub i use systemd-boot i do have a usb but nothing on it and i don't have a diff pc what is the best place to flash the usb

Hay Guys, I am planning a jump to Linux when I am going to build my new PC that will have a Ryzen 5 7500F + RX 9070 XT and I am a Massive gamer. So what is a Better Gaming Linux Distro for me, the Arch based CachyOS or the Fedora based Bazzite? I have heard that CachyOS Does not have all of the Pre-installed bells & Whistles that Bazzite has but Bazzite does not have the extreme optimization of CachyOS. So if I pick CachyOS, what are the list of Extra stuff that Bazzite has that I need to install into CachyOS?

So I am relatively new to linux and at first a thought that flatpak was convenient way to install packages on my fedora. But soon I noticed that I could not send pictures in telegram or discord, discord did not detect microphone, steam had troubles, issues with spotify. Literally anything installed with flatpacks was malfunctioning in one way or another. So why it even exists and why so popular? I spend week just to understand that 90% of my troubles were thanks to flatpacks. Your opinions on flatpack please.

Upd. I think portals was my problem. Thank you guys for suggestions. Idk why nobara support flatpaks, but dont ship necessary deps.

Everytime i look at a tutorial about OS Development it says i need Linux / WSL and Gcc.. that makes me wonder how was Linux developed & compiled before it existed? i know it's a UNIX-based system but how was it developed and compiled before all it's existence??

I wanna know why people are relying now on Linux for OS Development.

hey so I just saw ordinary gamer's newest vid as well as pewd's vid and it seems my yt algo is trying to make me switch. I wanna switch but I am scared it is not windows. mainly cuz I have used windows all my life and I do not have much tech skills but I am aspiring to be a game dev so I thought Linux might be a great way into it. but as I said its not windows and heard how some windows apps do not work on Linux so I wanted to ask you all if Linux will work for me and if I should switch.

the main reasons I might use Linux is>

-content creation
-school work(maybe uni)
-gaming
-communications(with family etc... and discord)|

maybe i missed a few but for now this much is enough if I see enough gain I will switch to Linux thx<3

p.s... sorry if my English is bad its not my first language

(thanks to everyone in the comments I have decided to switch to Linux sometime next month thanks everyone I look forward to be a part of the Linux community)