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What are some preparations you think people should know about in advance of migrating to Linux? (reddthat.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/linux

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For example, I saw a post the other day detailing how to set up a Brother laser printer on Kinoite. That's not something I would have initially considered a potential problem to be solved. Another I ran into some years ago had to do with an Edimax WiFi dongle that used some weirdly specific Realtek 8812 radio, for which you had to set up the driver via dkms. A little prep and knowledge in advance would have saved days of searching online.

I've started a personal to-do list of things to research and make sure I have all my ducks in a row before I make the full-time switch on my main desktop, so besides the usual "back up your files" advice, I'm hoping y'all can point out some QoL things I and others may often miss!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

            
              Great advice. I had specific apps I have or was planning to research, but it would probably behoove me to double check everything.
A live USB is advice I hadn't considered. I've done that several times, and I've done a handful of VMs, but I never considered it might help sus out some potential hardware issues.
I've actually practiced setting up Arch in a VM, and while I got everything to work just fine, I think pure Arch is just not for me. Something Arch-based would be okay, like BlendOS, but I don't get that nice feeling of accomplishment in pure Arch from tinkering with every little system config file and dependency—just annoyance and exasperation.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I actually suggest getting Ventoy which is a fantastic utility that allows you to copy bootable images to a folder, and when you boot the drive you can select from the ISO/Images available on the drive. Super handy!

The Live USB may not solve all HW issues, but it's a good jumping off point.

I can't blame anyone not going the pure arch route, and choosing an Arch based distro. Besides getting my GPU working as I wanted it, running and maintaining my Arch install is no work at all at this point. With Timeshift installed, as well as the grub hook, and pacman hook, it makes it a cake to revert if something breaks.

The other advice I have for Linux is an often overlooked. When switching to Linux you can't always approach fixing a problem or operating the machine the exact same ways one would on Windows. So being flexible, and learning to change habits helps.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I'll have to give Ventoy another try, since they just had some updates. I had originally tried booting it on a spare laptop (multiple times), but it would never boot, as if the MBR was broken.