Yo linux team, i would love some advice.
I’m pretty mad at windows, 11 keeps getting worse and worse and I pretty done with Bill’s fetishes about bing and ai. Who knows where’s cortana right now…
Anyway, I heard about this new company called Linux and I’m open to try new stuff. I’m a simple guy and just need some basic stuff:
- graphic stuff: affinity, canva, corel, gimp etc… (no adobe anymore, please don’t ask.)
- 3d modelling and render: blender, rhino, cinema, keyshot
- video editing: davinci
- some little coding in Dart/flutter (i use VS code, I don’t know if this is good or bad)
- a working file explorer (can’t believe i have to say this)
- NO FUCKIN ADS
- NO MF STUPID ASS DISGUSTING ADVERTISING
The tricky part is the laptop, a zenbook duo pro (i9-10/rtx2060), with double touch screens.
I tried ubuntu several years ago but since it wasn’t ready for my use i never went into different distros and their differences. Now unfortunately, ready or not, I need to switch.
Edit: the linux-company thing is just for triggering people, sorry I didn’t know it was this effective.
I’m going to toss in another recommendation for Linux Mint. The interface is very similar to classic Windows and it has a large user base so it shouldn’t be hard to find instructions online if you get stuck. Software-wise, Linux Mint 21.3 is entirely compatible with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Use the default Cinnamon version.
Coming from Windows, the only other very important non-obvious thing is that you should look for software on the app store application first instead of downloading packages from the Internet. Unlike the Microsoft Store, Linux app stores are often connected to a variety of software sources, and they will also update your software to the latest versions automatically whenever you download system updates. Almost all of the software you mentioned can be found in the app store. It’s very convenient!
Pick this guide from a 20 year Windows user. Ubuntu GNOME. Interact as less as you need with Linux “community”, it gives tension, headache and stress. You will not regret it.
Unfortunately Corel, Affinity etc will be a problem, keep Windows aside for that on a secondary SSD. Use Windows with Ameliorated Project, it will make Windows saner to use.
Really can’t recommend GNOME to new users coming over from Windows. Either pick Cinnamon (Linux Mint) or KDE Plasma (openSUSE/Fedora KDE).
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Can you explain why you don’t recommend GNOME? I installed Pop when I built my first PC about a month ago and I haven’t noticed anything problematic
It’s very different from Windows, and thus harder to learn for new users. Linux Mint (which uses Cinnamon) is basically made for Windows users, it has a more familiar interface and is easier to learn how to use. My personal favorite is KDE, it is also quite similar to Windows but allows for unlimited user customization. It follows the concept “Simple by default, powerful when needed”, which in my opinion is a good representation of the entire Linux ecosystem. Pop!_OS is not the stock GNOME experience, in fact, it’s quite different. It adds some functionality and changes how GNOME works. It’s better than normal GNOME, but not perfect.
I did not start with KDE or Cinnamon. Start menu paradigm is unneeded when people will discover GNOME is giving the peak experience upon hitting Super/Windows key, when they can just search anything on the system or multitask that way.
I do not miss the Start menu much, even though I use both Debian and Windows 10. Most of the time, I am using Everything/FSearch to find files.
Also, the priority is stability and not needing to continously look up Terminal commands or ask the toxic community for help or minimise internet searches for help. GNOME is the absolute uncontested king DE to get the job done with least amount of it getting in the way.
I dunno if it’s already been mentioned, but there’s VSCodium, it’s vscode without Microsoft
Try Linux Mint.
I got a laptop with a touch screen for a young kid in my family, installed Fedora Workstation with its native Gnome desktop, and touch worked great without any tinkering.
Gnomes workflow is a big departure from windows, but with its gesture navigation on a trackpad, I think it’s a highly superior way to use a laptop. My desktop gets KDE Plasma, but if I had a laptop it would use gnome
Gnomes workflow is a big departure from windows, but with its gesture navigation on a trackpad, I think it’s a highly superior way to use a laptop. My desktop gets KDE Plasma, but if I had a laptop it would use gnome
+1, GNOME dumps the whole desktop and taskbar thing in favor of gestures and the overview. Once you get a feel for it I think it’s honestly a lot more usable than traditional taskbar and desktop icon GUIs.
Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.2 touch support works perfectly with my Asus T100 “tablet” (I lost the keyboard dock). Also, I specified the version because LM v21.2+ removed the traditional panel option (taskbar with labels), like what MS did to Win11 :(
Honestly anything shipping a MATE desktop edition would be good too. MATE is similar enough to windows that most people get it pretty quickly.
It doesn’t have as great of support as cinnamon
I’m not sure which distro would work with your laptop. I would suggest experimenting with live USB images. Maybe using something like Ventoy which enables you to try out multiple live images from one USB stick. But as far as applications go:
- GIMP is native to Linux and should work fine. You might also want to give Krita and Inkscape a whirl. Also, massive props for ditching Adobe. I hate that company as much as it hates their customers.
- Blender works on linux.
- So does Davinci. Allegedly. Haven’t used it, but their website says Linux support is available.
- I don’t code so, um, no idea. Sorry. Hopefully someone else will weigh in.
- Good news, Linux has working file explorers!
- No ads, at least for the most part. Ubuntu had Amazon’s search integrated into their search bar a while back, which caused quite a kerfuffle. Later, they added a toggle to turn this off, but this was years ago. Might want to check just in case.
Thanks! I’ll check Ventoy. Yea, i just don’t want to change everything to end up with amazon search bar instead or bing.
No ads, at least for the most part.
Don’t forget terminal ads for Ubuntu pro
From what I’m reading, Ubuntu is slowly turning into Windows.
Ubundows? Winbuntu? I’ll see myself out…
I mean, they’ve been partnered for a decade… EEE anyone?
No…
Ubuntu is not very cool but they are not Windows.
Yeah, a company that’s been partnered with Microsoft for a decade, and has had horrible corpo ideas like selling user searches to Amazon and running ads in the terminal, has totally nothing to do with windows. Nope, definitely not spelunking in MS’s ass to get defaulted in WSL and Azure, it just happened because it’s the most beloved and bestest distro ever…
I mean, Canonical is a for profit company so I’m not sure what anyone was expecting. Ubuntu had its moment in the sun where it was considered the newbie friendly Linux distro for free users but now they’re going pretty hard for corporate customers and enterprise features. Which is fine, they need money to stay afloat and some enterprises are into them so more power to them - they contribute a lot of time and money to various Linux projects. They’re the Debian derived redhat equivalent these days and that’s okay, if they pivot too far in their own interest people will just stop using their distro.
As a fellow Windows user tipping ever further towards finally making the switch, this resonates on a lot of levels. Also I saw what you did with the “company called Linux” thing and thought it was funny 🙌
Sounds like a pihole on your network would solve all of your issues.
Does that stop the ads in the Windows UI? I would not have thought so.
Also you don’t have to have a pi to run a pi hole. You can run it in windows using WSL. Just search Google for pi hole WSL. All you do is run the power shell script and it does practically everything for you
It’s just blocking the urls, if you block the ones that Windows use then it will
Also, winaerotweaker makes it easy to turn of ads, telemetry, auto updates and tons of other stuff
The most obvious difference for the end-user compared to Windows is that you can choose different desktop environments, such as KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXQt, Mate or Cinnamon to name the most prominent among others. As you are used to the look-and-feel of Windows, I’d suggest giving KDE a try.
For a beginner, I’d recommend using a ‘beginner friendly’ distribution such as Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE) or Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu using Mate/Cinnamon DE). Fedora, Linux Mint Debian Edition or plain Debian are also suitable, but for a more experienced user.
Linux is the kerbal, the company would be GNU.
/s
Maybe the kernel? :)
Ah damn. Didn’t proof-read myself. It’s a fun typo though, maybe Linux is related to Jebediah?
Isn’t Google dismantling the flutter team?
Doesn’t mean your company didn’t bet on the wrong horse. Luckily we stay far away from anything Google touches, but I have friends in other companies who weren’t as lucky.
So far we’ve been lucky. But, we are concerned with some of our stack. We help where we can, but it’s a bit of an unknown. The google graveyard basically screams to keep away from any of their tech.
It was supposed to be the react-native killer!
I’m still recovering from the news.
Fedora will always be my go-to, and the KDE spin should be pretty familiar layout wise for former windows users.
Since you have an nvidia gpu, Pop OS will probably be your best bet if you need it working immediately.
I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu anymore, as it’s been pushing snaps (package manager) MS-style, and it’s gotten some shit from the community for various reasons over the years.
Linux Mint is also good, too. It’s very easy to just get up and going, perfect for people who aren’t familiar with Linux, too.
The worst part about snaps isn’t the fact that their packaged like Windows files, it’s that it makes updating everything on your computer confusing as fuck when you don’t really want to ever think about it.
Me updating my system then updating Flatpak because the gpu driver difference breaks everything
The NVIDIA proprietary driver recently got decent update, but not all necessary changes might be in distros just yet. It should be pretty complete ootb experience in a month or two. My advice is to use something recent, like Fedora or Arch{,-based} for the easiest time with NVIDIA.
Affinity and Corel don’t have Linux ports (like most big commercial productive apps sadly), and running them with Wine might be possible but can bring mixed results, see https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=18332 https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=5321 Canva seem to be available and they distribute it via AppImage. Gimp is native and trivial to install on most distros, or even bundled by default. If you want to try Windows software with Wine, use Bottles.
Blender is native and available in any Linux repo as it’s FOSS app. Rhino 3D looks like possible to run with Wine…
Linux version of Davinci Resolve is available, but it’s famous for being a bit of a pain to install and being slightly limited with some codecs/functionality missing.
You should be fine with coding unless you wanted something like .NET and full blown VisualStudio. VS Code is ok.
There’s wide range of file explorers on Linux, and since it’s rather good idea to stick to whatever is default for your desktop (For instance Dolphin on KDE) you can even change the default to something else if you don’t like it.
It would be actually hard to get something with embedded ads on Linux desktop. Canonical tried with their Amazon „integrations” in Ubuntu like 12 years ago, and boy did they regret…
Most .NET development is arguably superior on Linux than on Windows. I would certainly say this for console, web or cloud, especially if you are using containers. Mobile dev is a bit more of a mixed bag. Obviously if you are building desktop Windows apps explicitly then that is better on Windows. However, if you are building cross-platform .NET apps ( eg. Avalonia or Uno ), you are back to Linux being better.
If you like a full IDE like Visual Studio then you want Rider on Linux ( which is better than VS even on Windows IMHO ). If you are a Visual Studio Code person, you can use that on Linux natively. Of course, if you are a neovim or Emacs user, we are back to Linux being better.
Many distros ship .NET in their repos these days. One issue with that is that you may want to update .NET more often than your distro does. While you can do that, I think it is best not to do that. For this reason, I think choosing a distro that stays up-to-date is best for .NET dev. My recommendation would be an Arch derivative like EndeavourOS. EOS includes .NET in the repos and provides very timely updates.
You can use JetBrains Rider for C# (.NET), it’s available natively for Linux, you can download it as a flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/com.jetbrains.Rider
Even .NET isn’t terrible on Linux. I mostly write in C# using .net stuff myself and I’ve yet to have any compatibility or performance issues running on Ubuntu. I can’t speak to graphical side though as I’m mostly backend or command line tools.
Edit: the linux-company thing is just for triggering people, sorry I didn’t know it was this effective.
Heh it really was wasn’t it? Been on Linux for near to twenty years now and I’m still surprised to see it. :D
KDE Neon is a fantastic choice for those coming from Windows. https://neon.kde.org/
Just grab yourself some Linux Mint, and try to ignore Arch and Gentoo crowd here.
Half of the apps you mentioned have Linux version right in the system package manager. Davinci has Linux version on their website.
CorelDraw might be a problem, WineHQ lists it’s compatibility for the latest version as garbage, so you will probably need to switch to Inkscape.
Anyway, I heard about this new company called Linux
Pedantic explanation about GNU/Linux is coming in 3… 2… 1…
Here you go ;-)
What you guys are referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
I second your advice against Arch, EndeavourOS, or Manjaro as I would not call them ‘beginner-friendly’.
What you guys are referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux.
That’s not necessarily true any more. There are distros built without the GNU tools.
I know, Android is probably the most prominent one, but also e.g. Alpine.
I mean, it’s always nice to know more. I’m not here pretending to know linux or kernels in details.
Arch user here (by the way). I agree - ignore us.
