Figure it out.
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Anon's on 4chan. He literally just has to go from v to g to have a treasure trove of information on how to not deal with this exact problem.
Honestly I've been eyeing Linux more and more, but it also scares me a little. What I'm mostly worried about is losing any functionality I've gotten used to.
I switched to Fedora KDE a couple years ago and am happy, but the desktop Linux experience does have it's rough edges. Do research and experiment before you make the full switch
I'm a big Linux advocate these days and my best advice is to set realistic expectations. If your intent is to recreate your Windows experience exactly, you'll always be left disappointed. There's simply nothing better than OneNote at what it does, but I migrated my note taking habits over to Obsidian and I'm perfectly happy there now. Turns out I didn't need 90% of OneNote's immense functionality.
At the end of the day though, Linux is FOSS: it's made by people, for people, to solve the computing problems people have. There are a variety of solutions out there. Reexamine your workflows and be open to fitting new solutions to them, there are just SO MANY choices out there for how to handle most problems.
Aside from that, there's always going to be a small learning curve. People tend to view that as simply a hassle that takes time to overcome and while that's not entirely wrong, it very much undercuts the real value of learning how to operate and maintain the OS that you most likely use every day, all day. It's extremely hard to accurately describe the value of investing that time and having an OS that isn't bloated with corporate nonsense and fighting you to dictate your workflows into their intended patterns so they can agitate you with ads and paid services at every step. There's a reason we all come out sounding like zealots and while I acknowledge it can feel a little cult-ish, who you gonna trust? Your online nerd community or a corporation who has shown time and time again that they do not value you as an individual user?
Your comment nailed it. I just switched a couple of weeks back and it really wasn't awful. There is a bit of a learning curve, mostly around setting up your system the way you want it, but there are so many good text and video tutorials available.
Now I have a system that just works, has improved my laptop's battery life by over 20% (the fan is no longer cranking the whole time it's on), and actually has greater functionality than when I was on Windows without all the shit I don't want.
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I switched two years ago and it's mostly fantastic. You might "lack" something windows does because you are used to it, but you get a vast amount of choice in other features, depending on how much you try and experiment.
I recently moved to EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma and immeditately loved it, and so much of the UI is customizable by default and super easy. PoP!_OS just works, Mint or just Ubuntu are also often mentioned as nice picks.
Of course there might also be situtations where you have to look up solutions online because some software/hardware might not be automatically supported, but I personally can count the issues on one hand that took me longer than a few minutes to fix.
As someone else suggested, give dualboot a try and feel some different distros out. Could also just make a ventoy (fantastic tool) usb stick and try multiple distros very easily without fully installing.
I think as long as you don't expect it to "be exactly like Windows" it could be great to switch.
Edit: it's also much easier nowadays to use and/or to find solutions for isses i think. I tried ubuntu the first time in 2013 but it didn't stick. Nowadays I could not imagine going back to Windows
You can try Linux with dual booting ( but be careful or windows will fuck everything up)
My thinking was that one day, microsoft will pull the rug beneath my feet and i will lose a ton of data and features brutally. I did the switch 3 weeks ago to fedora and i have no regrets, i actually gained many features for free
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this is the way… to fix that: https://www.xda-developers.com/startallback-review/
Why would I pay for what I get for free with linux?
i didn’t pay for it…
and although i use linux, this is for people who have to use windows for one reason or another.
if you don’t, then no, this windows program won’t run on linux.
I literally just want Windows 7 again but with security updates, driver support, and back end technology upgrades.
For now I'm settling with Window's current state with some Linux use mixed in with the intent to nearly fully migrate for my next desktop build. I'll only use Windows for whatever games refuse to budge on anti-cheat, assuming by then I'm even still interested in playing pvp games at all considering how enshittified they are with engagement based matchmaking and FOMO battlepasses.
What made me switch permanently to Linux was the KDE Plasma Desktop Enviorment, using Archlinux (SomeOrdinaryGamers had this as his setup.) Basically has what I love about windows 7, and more. Even the desktop widgets!
For me, learning the GUI isn't the biggest issue but taking full advantage of my hardware and some online game's anti-cheat.
I know Linux driver support that Nvidia has put out has brought it to a pretty good place, but my understanding is that its still not at parity and there is a performance impact to switching.
Think of the steamdeck. That's Linux, it'll play modern games on decent settings and it's 3 year old hardware now. It's not an optimized OS like a PS4 ( nearest analog in terms of performance specs) it's a full linux desktop OS.
I know, I own one. I just also have a desktop with a 4070 super.
Can't say much on the technical shit, but I've only had one game perform worse on linux. Most actually seem to do better, and I have an nvidia card. Though I don't play much in the way of multi-player or online stuff, so mileage may vary.
Fair enough, maybe I could give it another try.
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there is a program that makes windows 11 exactly like windows 7, it’s called StartAllBack:
https://www.xda-developers.com/startallback-review/
i switched to windows 11 recently, spent about a week battling all the bullshit, then found StartAllBack and it’s been beautiful.
i also recommend MalwareBytes “Windows Firewall Control”, which is actually free without pirating it… which i’m sure no one on here would ever do… but it lets you control exactly what programs can access the internet….
like, every time i open the file manager, explorer.exe tries to access the internet, i’ve been manually denying it for a while and it works exactly the same, so now i can just permanently disable it from going online….
but, StartAllBack is amazing, and everyone should have it… or really there should be an open source version by now….
lol, no… the link i posted is to a review about it.
i do love it, though….
Do you get a licensing cut or a referral link?
Like Glasswire i think it was? And Tinywall. That category is called application firewall.
neato
I personally see Linux Mint exactly as a Windows 7 but with modern support (there is even a cool Aero theme for it) :P
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I still use 7 on my media PC in the living room. Its wild how much better it still is to use. Gamepass seems to be all that is keeping one PC in my home running windows 10, and when that ends so will my use. Never going to 11.
Unless that windows 7 computer is entirely air-gapped from your network, you should switch it to Linux or Windows 10 (which is going out of support in October).
Even if you have it on a separate VLAN or have it restricted from accessing the internet, there are attacks that can use another device on the network as a starting point for attacks.
Having a Windows 7 computer anywhere near your network is an enormous security risk. And one that is frankly not worth it, given the alternatives that exist.
Ha, no it is not. As someone who worked many years in the industry, nothing is really secure but also nothing is really attacked in that way anymore. (Unless you think people are going around warwalking looking for vulnerabilities in private networks). There are are still many networked devices running old windows even now (in some really sensitive areas as well). The constant fear mongering about security updates from Microsoft being anything but too little/too late is just crap talk to keep people employed.
The main risk currently is social engineering, to a degree that (outside major nations/companies) the other attack vectors are a rounding error. You and anyone else worth less then a few millions best approach to online security is to back up often, change passwords often, and don't click links in emails.
Window's 11 is pretty annoying to use on various levels. I only upgraded to it because my brother encouraged me. Hes always been a little bit of a mainstream tech cheerleader though. Hes always cheered on Intel, Nvidia, and Windows. Its funny though right now I (somewhat resentfully) have an Nvidia because of my performance demand and he has a Radeon because of budget.
I think I might need to start trusting myself on my hardware searches a lot more. Of course I probably wont be buying new hardware for a while anyway.
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I've been using windows my entire life and have never run into any of the issues Linux users talk about all the time.
Lucky you.
I just had to use my job's OEM device to connect to our new contactor's site since it doesn't work with my machines for some reason (standard deb stable and a popos machine). When I boot into it the lock screen was so overwhelming with weather info, news and other junk I just had to laugh. Its crazy how much junk you need to disable to have a usable device. I haven't really seen vanilla windows for awhile, but it seemed like Vegas slot machine with how many notifications I was getting.
We may call it junk, but a lot of users want those kinds of features.
It also isn't an "unusable device" just because it shows if it is going to be cloudy. Stop being so pedantic.
And all of it can easily be disabled with a simple easy-to-find setting. But it is on by default because a majority of users don't look into their settings and thus wouldn't know it is available.
You have to remember that Windows was made for non-tech savvy users. Not for you and me.
a lot of users want those kinds of features
I had to re-enable them on computers at my company. I changed a policy to get rid of it and by the end of the day I had a dozen or so emails (~10% of the company) asking for them back.
YMMV of course and I don't personally like them. But a lot of people actually do. I think a lot of the people in communities like this forget how much of a power user they really are, and what actual users really want.
I mean it was 4 years ago (still 10) and in rough EU area (luckily, nobody but Apple cares enough to not include Swiss) so it was no that bad. But it was a developer device with admin rights, so everything that popped up a notification without good reason got removed.
Btw, every and each driver vendor installs a background service "for updates" on Windows, that tracks you and occasionally shows ads or flips out to eat all CPU. You can just copy the driver file, uninstall that crap and install the driver file via HWManager. Sorry, i don't remember the file extension, have to google it.
I have a Win11 ThinkPad for work, so I get MS ads, Lenovo ads, and 2 or 3 versions each of Teams and Outlook. We use SharePoint, so when I open a file from there via the web interface, I don't want to deal with that BS for printing. Depending if it's Word or Excel, the button/link for opening in the desktop app will be located differently (or maybe it's based on editing permissions), but it never fails to throw a dialog saying it couldn't open the file in desktop mode and asking if i want to cancel or try again...just before the desktop app opens.
Some of these things don't happen every day, but they all happen every week, and anyone who doesn't see a problem with that hasn't used a half-decent OS (and I'm willing to include early-release Win10 in that group, telemetry and Cortana notwithstanding).
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