I had a call out today, to a HP all-in-one machine, whose W11 install had died.
Died in a BIG way - the SSD was no longer detectable.

Options were install W11 - and pay for a W11 license....or Linux Mint.

The client wanted Linux Mint, after I demo'd the Mint Live USB.
The client said to me that they HATED W11 after the upgrade from W10, and it did not take more then the live-USB demo to convince them to move to Linux.

Another one bites the dust, to quote Queen....

---

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

Now I have both Win 11 and Mint running (different but similar boxes) I can get a better comparison. Ignoring the fact that Linux is free there are some interesting things.

Bluetooth and, sometimes, USB are generally handled better in Windows. (My bluetooth problems might be a fault with the Linux driver. However, Bluetooth is a standard and anything that works on Windows *should* also work on Linux)
Even if you have multiple desktops in Mint they are not as flexible as they are in Windows.
Minor things like setting an alternative search engine or browser are easier in Windows.

However,
Linux is better at handling anything that requires permissions for particular users.
Mint's appearance is more configurable then Windows 11.
The whole updates system is *far* better handled by Linux.

There will be many others, but you get the general idea. :)  It's been many years since I used Linux as my main system - the last install was a fairly early version of Mint.

I don't think moving from Win 10 to Mint is much more traumatic than moving to Win 11. That has it's own idiosyncrasies.

I have read "I don't know" as I'm only four days in to Linux, that later versions of Linux are pretty good with hardware drivers, apparently Ubuntu is very good, which is why I chose it for now.

I have various Bluetooth devices including mouse, external sound system, watch and others and they are all handled and setup up exactly the same way as my Windows 11, similar screens and options, everything has just worked flawlessly.

Desktop layout and settings are almost identical to Windows11 for my dual screens.

It even found my new EPSON printer on the LAN, I just clicked "Add network printer", I'm very impressed
.
Edited 2025-10-30 19:13 by KeepIS

Maybe we need a Forum for those shifting to Linux, it would be a nice place to go when looking for programming app recommendations and other utilities the we normally run on windows.

I feel a lot of us Win users on here my start shifting across.

I take it back....

I found the instructions for the keyboard and I was doing it wrong. Mint now connects to it just fine. All is forgiven. :)
There was a reason though. The part of the instructions for connecting a Bluetooth keyboard, in the English section of the instruction leaflet, is in German! As I understand virtually no German whatsoever that makes things slightly awkward.

--- Posted from Mint. :)



-----------------------------------------------
And for Minecraft fans: It runs Luanti (used to be Minetest) very nicely. :)  Install comes straight from Mint, no need to mess about.
.
Edited 2025-10-31 01:10 by Mixtel90

  KeepIS said  

Maybe we need a Forum for those shifting to Linux, it would be a nice place to go when looking for programming app recommendations and other utilities the we normally run on windows.

I feel a lot of us Win users on here my start shifting across.

How many win users want linux really? they would have switched years ago?
use linux then wine seems daft

It all depends, Stan. There are more reasons to move now than there used to be. For a start, not all machines will run Win 11 (at least not legally). That leads to having to spend money on new hardware, sometimes just to run a single program. There are a lot more applications now too, so it doesn't matter whether they run on windows or Linux.

Wine is useful if you have *some* applications for which there is no Linux alternative. It's a second best approach though, the native programs run better.

I think some people are biased. I first used ubuntu 20 years ago, free cd from Holland.
Dual boot, crt monitor and not a clue but files showed win 3d tron game and clicked it and it ran... didn't realise it was auto running under wine .
Next linux was raspberry pi 1 and putty. Then thought this is linux.
who uses dos in win nowadays? that's the point of nice gui but it can't do everything.
same with linux but more so. going to spend more time under the hood.
if linux was so good and free then why all pc you buy use win?

I offer 1 to 15 minute arguments  

ms offered win 11 that didn't need "illegal" to work.

seen this?

The version that they offered that didn't need TPM 2.0 wasn't eligible for any updates or support. Fine as a sampler but you shouldn't trust your whole system to an OS that's like that. You weren't really getting anything useful.

Nope, not seen that screen. If I do I'll have two machines running Mint rather than one. :)

My first Linux was Slackware. All command line driven at that time. I hardly understood any of it. :)

this is an ex office optiplex 3020 win pro 21h2
dual boot or live linux stick

  Grogster said  

I had a call out today, to a HP all-in-one machine, whose W11 install had died.
Died in a BIG way - the SSD was no longer detectable.

Options were install W11 - and pay for a W11 license....or Linux Mint.

The client wanted Linux Mint, after I demo'd the Mint Live USB.
The client said to me that they HATED W11 after the upgrade from W10, and it did not take more then the live-USB demo to convince them to move to Linux.

Another one bites the dust, to quote Queen....

tried disc genius to restore partition or was it really dead? I had a dead kingston

You can do nice things to HDD partitions by booting into Linux and using Gparted. Delete them, resize them, format them - all sorts.

  stanleyella said  

  KeepIS said  

Maybe we need a Forum for those shifting to Linux, it would be a nice place to go when looking for programming app recommendations and other utilities the we normally run on windows.

I feel a lot of us Win users on here my start shifting across.

How many win users want linux really? they would have switched years ago?
use linux then wine seems daft

No you missed my point, I don't want to run Windows apps, BUT I HAVE a SPECIFIC NEED, only for a short while.

If the latest reported search engine data is correct on searches for running Linux instead of Windows is any indication, there are huge numbers looking at Lunix for FREE alternative to run most general apps, which as you know, Linux does natively.

My thought was not so much about how many on the Forum my switch, but more to keep the Micro processor Forum section free of the possible increasing posts on Linux distros.

Perhaps that is not a problem after all

  stanleyella said  

tried disc genius to restore partition or was it really dead? I had a dead kingston

  Mixtel90 said  

You can do nice things to HDD partitions by booting into Linux and using Gparted. Delete them, resize them, format them - all sorts.

Yes, tried that.
I actually used a Mint live USB, to boot the machine, and then used the DISKS app followed by the DISK USAGE ANALYZER to try to see the SSD - neither of them can see the SSD at all, and when you boot up the machine, the HP BIOS moans that there is no bootable device, go into it's BIOS, and the HP machine can't see the SSD either - it's REALLY dead.

Ah... It is no more. It has gone to meet it's maker. It is an ex-SSD.

-----------

When a lot of applications now run in a browser it doesn't matter what the underlying OS is. You may as well use a free one (legally, not pirated or supplied as oem, possibly under a shady licence!) that won't go out of date in a few years.

Mick,

It does matter. If in any way possible, use Firefox.
Firefox is not tied into Apple(Safari)/Microsoft(Edge)/Google(Chrome), and it is at the moment the main remaining hope browsers can stay independent.
Of coarse there are alternatives (Brave/DuckDuck/Opera/....) but their marketshare is even smaller.

Regards,

Volhout
Edited 2025-10-31 18:33 by Volhout

Waterfox is a very nice fork of Firefox, with, supposedly, even less privacy issues. It runs nicely in Mint and accepts the Ublock-Origin extension for Firefox. I use it with Startpage as the home screen and as the search engine (once again because of security).

linux is supposed to revive older pcs but I got a dell and hp laptop... that ran win 10 when the free dual boot from win 7 was an option.
anyway searching for 32 bit linux and there's not much. it's all 64 bit ie modern pcs