Finally migrated from Windows to Linux. For anyone wondering, what is the state of Linux as your primary OS for home PC\laptop in 2023.
I've finalised my Archlinux installation yesterday, I dropped of Linux more than 10 years ago and experience in 2023 in comparison is awesome and beyond even wildest dreams back then:
- For average user looking for more out of the box experience I would suggest something Arch based (people in comments suggest EndeavourOS, please do your research). Archlinux installation took me quite some time
- Almost everything works out of the box, by just installing corresponding package
- KDE Plasma environment is fast and beautiful
- Pipewire audio server (Jack\Pulseaudio replacement) works great
- Wayland window server is not there yet, especially if you have Nvidia with proprietary drivers and want to use VR. Waking up, session restoration and other scenarios have issues. Use X11.
- Wine is great!
- Music making - Bitwig Studio DAW has linux native version, yabridge allow you to use windows VSTs, which are easily installed via wine
- Gaming works out of the box with Steam for majority of titles, some games have native linux version. Performance is great. In worst case windows game might loose 5-15% in performance. Was not case for my titles
- Gaming outside steam is fine too. Use Wine, Lutris, Proton
- VR is a mixed bag. Not everything is there (Desktop view, sound control and mirroring, camera, motions smooth, lighthouses do not wake up os go to sleep. I use my phone to turn them on/off). But if its not the problem for you, quite some titles work. Tried: native HF Alyx, Lab, windows: Beat Saber and Boneworks. For me it's a surprise, I did not count on it. Performance is great.
So overall my experience is great. Eventually I'm going to get rid of WIndows on other computers and laptops at howe. I can finally wave goodbye to Windows, with lots of ads and bloatware. Alway glad to help with answers regarding installation while my memory and history logs are fresh. ^^
There was a good suggestion about usimg VMs, but if you want the bare metal expwrience use something like OpenSUSE Leap, slowroll, or Tumbleweed. if you wreck your system trying sruff,you just reboot and choose an earlier snapshot.
Holy shit, I love you! That's what I was always wanting in any OS.
Honestly it is great, i have run the same install since 2017 without having to reinstall. the filesystem is btrfs, it is configured to take a pre and poat snapshot whenever you enter any of the Yast2 GUI GTK apps for system changes, or use zypper cli etc. You can add remove software or make manual changes and break your system. Reboot, go into advanced option scroll through the time stamped snapshots and select the one you want to boot with. it will be read only, but if it is back to the state you want, drop to command line and issue "sudo snapper rollback" that will set current readonly snapshot as your default writable boot snapshot. you can also manually generate a snapahot at any time using the yast fileaystems. They take up little space or time because it is only saving the delta differeneces.