…and it went very smoothly. I installed on a spare PC for now, but I could absolutely see this becoming my daily driver. I’m mostly surprised at how snappy and responsive it is, even on 10 year old hardware!

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    I am surprised it’s snappy since pop_os is one of the heavier distros but it’s still better than windows 11 I guess lol.

    I am actually curious how much the speed changed exactly now are there any experiences like “it used to take 20 minutes to boot on windows” and so on?

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Well, the PC is an older one and hadn’t been in use in years, so it has HDDs (a small SSD for the OS), was running windows 8 still, and I think has an unusual amount of DDR3 RAM. Maybe 24gb?

      It was taking 5-10min to boot (the first boot took 20, and I was worried it was dead). When I was transferring files off of it before formatting everything, it was so slow that I had to leave it on overnight. Basic tasks were hanging. Just imagine your typical end of life, bloated Windows PC that hadn’t had a fresh reinstall in a while.

      Now, Pop!_OS boots in a matter of seconds, minimal delay in opening apps/moving files/downloading stuff/etc. It could probably be faster, but it feels like it’s brand new relative to how it was functioning before.

      • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
        0·
        11 months ago

        Oh geez, I completely forgot the feeling of installing a fresh new windows on a comp (like windows XP, hung onto a version called XP-black for the longest). Now adays it’s more about removing crap windows installs so it runs smoother. I wish I felt that way about linux, it is faster but I’m always jumping between distros and feels more like a test run to see if I like it.

    • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      11 months ago

      Well, my KDE-based distro on my 10-year-old cheapo (350€) laptop feels snappier than Win11 on my brand new 1500€ work-laptop.
      Admittedly, there are some company specific things like security scanner apps (and the mandatory MS-Office behemoth…) that are not present on the Linux-machine, but it is still a 20-core/64GByte high end machine behaving more sluggish than a 2-core/8GByte totally outdated potato…
      So, I am not really surprised about OP’s snappiness observation.

    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Is actually kind of sad. Microsoft Windows does have a really stable and performant core. It has some bad decisions made years ago that legacy compatibility holds them back on, but even so it’s amazing it works as well as it does.

      But they ruin all that by piling on the BS literally nobody wants but they have decided you must have.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      0·
      11 months ago

      I use Linux Mint Cinnamon, which is the main full-featured flavor that basically looks like the win10 desktop at first startup.

      It runs like greased lightning compared with Windows on the same machine, or any windows install I’ve used recently.

      That was one of my favorite things about switching to FOSS in general. It is made by people who care about it being good at it’s purpose, and probably use it themselves. Compare that to commercial software, where the list of stakeholders in major decisions is a mile long, and the primary stakeholders that everybody wants to please (shareholders) are often not associated in any way with the creation or the use of the program.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    11 months ago

    I find this funny because I’ve been aware of, and even using, Linux for a lot longer than I have been using Lemmy (or Lemmy or even ActivityPub has even existed). Are many people really becoming more aware of Linux because they are moving from Reddit to Lemmy and then noticing people talking about Linux here?

    • jqubed@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      I’ve known about Linux since the late ’90s; I haven’t been around any significant concentration of people talking about it and how to use it until I joined Lemmy.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      I was generally planning on switching once windows 10 died but being on Lemmy helped convince me to not only switch earlier, but also I just dove right in with arch. I’d say it was like 2/3 Lemmy and 1/3 Proton that made me switch not because I felt I needed to but because I was actually excited to

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      The open source nature of Lemmy attracts the same people who are also attracted by the open source nature of Linux.

      Lemmy is a bit of an echo chamber because of that.

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      I’ve always been aware of it, but I guess I just needed the extra push. Being on Lemmy has been like having one of those Civ missionaries in my base spamming “spread religion” for 2 years, and I think they’ve successfully converted me.

      • apftwb@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 months ago

        I swear Lemmy just turns everyone in a variation of the same person. Its bizarre. We all subconsciously end up watching the same YouTube channels and read the same books.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        0·
        11 months ago

        I hate them, wish I could go all Mao on their asses. But yeah, Linux rocks. Heard great things about Pop. Looking forward for your meme posts asking for help here.

        • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          11 months ago

          I subscribed to a bunch of Linux communities today with that in mind, but I haven’t drilled down to figure out which are the most active or are open to random questions.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
            0·
            11 months ago

            If you make a meme out of it, this is one of the most helpful and active. Otherwise the others are good too, some perhaps not as active.

  • salacious_coaster@infosec.pubdeleted by creatorEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    What distro/DE? I was also surprised with the snappiness! You use Windows/Mac on modern hardware for so long and think it’s the best it can be, but nope!

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      After watching videos about different distros until my brain went numb, I went with Pop!_OS. It seemed like a really polished and noob-friendly option, which has felt true so far.

      • NeedyPlatter@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        I also switched to Pop!_OS a couple days ago. I’ve only used Windows all my life and this distro made everything so easy. The Pop Store is a lifesaver.

          • salacious_coaster@infosec.pubdeleted by creatorEnglish
            0·
            11 months ago

            COSMIC and GNOME are definitely going for a mac-like feel. Not my thing, but that’s why there’s KDE!

            • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
              0·
              11 months ago

              I love how much you can customize whatever you want. I saw some cool setups while watching videos about distros, and I think I could get unhealthily obsessed with that if I let myself.

          • NeedyPlatter@lemmy.caEnglish
            0·
            11 months ago

            I’ve only used Apple computer a handful of times, but there is a lot of elements to Pop!_OS that remind of Mac. Particularly the tiny loading circle your mouse creates after opening a window reminds me of the similar that used to come up on my elementary school old Macs.

            • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
              0·
              11 months ago

              I just really love the persistent top bar, the floating dock, and the way you mount apps to install. It all feels so natural for some reason.

              Oh, and the search bar for finding apps/files. I’m glad Pop OS uses that too.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 months ago

        Heck, I’ve been hacking Linux for a quarter century and I’ve installed Pop! OS on my main machines because I just want shit that works.

  • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    Me too! Just replaced my eight year old (and bear to crap) Chromebook with a corporate hand-me-down laptop that I stole got when they ordered new laptops! Just played around with both Mint and Ubuntu for a couple weeks and I’ve seriously loved it.

  • Squiddork@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
    0·
    11 months ago

    I hope you find it a suitable replacement, I haven’t used Windows in years thanks to Linux.

    My advice, the good documentation on parts of Linux is quite literal it’s best not to skim over sections. Sometimes the authors choice of words will infer answers to questions you might have.

    A bit of competency in the shell/command line will go a long way, being able to view hardware (lsblk, lspci) mount drives, traverse the filesystem (ls, cp, mv, chmod etc) and a few of the basic commands for example

    This should give you the ability to:

    1. Back up all your important data from a live environment in the event that your distro is completely borked before reformatting

    2. Gives you solid foundations to learn more in-depth parts of Linux if needed, access to internal documentation (man pages etc) from the shell itself is useful too.

    Don’t be afraid to dive in, it’s hard to break things learning the basics if you’re not root.

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      I am looking forward to getting more comfortable in terminal. At the very least, I know how to navigate around the file system, use SSH, and some other basic stuff. I find it hard to retain this info unless I’m learning it for a specific need/purpose, so I’ll probably slowly pick it up in a random order as I have problems to solve.

  • MynameisAllen@lemmy.zip
    0·
    11 months ago

    Welcome aboard! Now start fighting about which distro is best with more passion than trying to convince folks to switch to Linux