Framework

I've been using Linux for more than 20 years. I have found that computing is an inherently and unavoidably frustrating activity. However, you do get to decide what kind of frustration you experience. If you use MacOS or Windows, the frustration will be the result of a highly sophisticated and carefully choreographed strategy to manipulate, then bully and finally to coerce you into giving more of your money to one of the two wealthiest companies on the planet. If you use Linux, the frustration will be the result of some volunteers, among whom about a third are idealistic teenagers, making some unintentional fuckup for which they will be genuinely sorry.

Linux actually has a superior "out of the box" experience on most hardware these days, including the Framework. All the drivers are built in, and most of the application software is packaged and usually installed by default. Where it's likely to be frustrating for a new user is mostly due to the fact that it just works differently and makes different assumptions.

For me, it's absolutely worth it, though, simply to have a little less corporate bullshit in my life.

Yes

You can dual boot (Linux + Windows) and have the best of both worlds.

Windows doesn't work out of the box, you always have to mess with drivers, download your software from websites, and other workarounds to get basic tasks done.

Linux has most drivers included in the kernel, and most Hardware just works. You get a package manager which takes care of installing software and keeping everything up to date. Only for edge cases you have to download software from a website.

I suggest going with fedora, you'll geht a recent kernel and a desktop of your choice with the different spins.

I recommend KDE plasma when coming from windows, since it offers a windows 10 style by default but can be customized to fit your personal workflow.

It depends greatly what you're doing with your computer. I've been an Ubuntu primary user for at least a decade now, but there are still one or two things I can't do with Linux... at least not as easily. Specifically in my case I have a PC dedicated to my synthesiser/MIDI setup simply because drivers, tools and plugins are readily available and supported on Windows while in Linux the support is good but has issues. A prime example is that my main synths are Roland synths, and Roland has a bad habit of not supporting standards fully for audio or MIDI over USB. I love my Roland synths but it made it too difficult to go Linux primary. That and some of the best tools are Windows-based like Ableton. However, that's not to say you can't do all of this in Linux; Renoise is a fantastic DAW as well that runs natively in Windows or Linux and there are plenty of great audio editing tools... it's just interfacing with external gear is sometimes problematic and again some of my synths are plugins (VST's) that either don't work or aren't well supported in environments other than Windows and Mac.

If your primary use case is web browsing and maybe gaming (Steam works great with their Proton runtimes for most games) then you can easily switch to Linux and never miss a beat. Firefox and Chromium (not Chrome) are great and well supported, and while Microsoft Office isn't directly supported you can run the web Office365 just fine or install LibreOffice and still mostly be able to edit documents and files. For photo editing and the like there's GIMP and if you're a photographer there are amazing tools like DarkTable that are absolutely brilliant and in some cases are so good I would run them on Windows as well.

Ubuntu is probably one of the most mature and well-supported distros out there. Mint is also good and you won't have any trouble with it, but when you do have issues with it the amount of support you can get for Ubuntu is among the best. There are things that Canonical do that annoy the Linux purists (systemd, Wayland as prime examples) for the average user these issues are pretty much moot. Even I who first installed Slackware Linux in 1993 and liked it don't really care too much because the operating system gets out of my way and just works. I have one tool that requires me to run Xorg instead of Wayland (the GUI framwork... it's complicated) but that's literally the only issue I've had.

HTH

If you really hate feeling "locked in" to windows, you really should switch to Linux and see if it works for you. Really depends on the programs you run and whether they are readily available under Linux.

If you find you need programs that only run under Windows, you need to decide if dual booting or running a Windows VM is worth it to you.

What I love about my new Framework 13 laptop is how very easy it is to swap NVME sticks. I also like how inexpensive 2TB sticks are today. I've been easily swapping out sticks to go between Windows 11 and Linux a lot to evaluate Framework Linux support.

If you want to escape windows, BSD or linux are the options you have usually. BSD is much harder tho.

As for linux, depends on what skill level distro you use. Debian is an average skill level distro as is devuan. I have had wireless mouse issues with one of my computers on devuan, but that could and probably is an anomaly.

Linux is for you if:

You want to escape windows badly If you are willing to learn how to make things functional in a new OS type situation, takes some patience I will admit, the first two years I switched back a few times let me tell you, especially the first.

But if you want your computer to not die within a few years due to malware, or really, ever for the most part, linux is definitely for you.

Btw, wine-staging can help bypass the gaming issue. Although, not all of them. If you like triple A games, it could be a mess. If you are like me and think triple A games suck massive dong, then you will likely not be missing much. The newest and only game I would ever have interest in would probably be starcraft 2. Currently, not working for me, but my comp is old so... yeah. Idk

Anywho, your mileage may vary.

10 years of linux for me so far, possibly more. I switched to it hoping to escape gaming, due to the toxicity. But no longer a problem for me.

Anywho, I would say, ZorinOS might be a good ubuntu alternative. It looks extremely flashy like windows whether its their xp design, or their newer ones which look similar to 10, etc... its likely a good way to get the proprietary support you want and the open source security you desire.

IF you want a challenge, anything artixlinux-like or archlinux-like.

But I doubt you do, given your frustration, more mentioning this in general for anyone. Avoid text mode installer installations is a given probably for you. IF you want to figure stuff out, you can always use virt-manager or virtualbox to test which linux is best for you. Or disk clone your windows before you switch to save all your info that you need.

Many tactics exist, hope you have a good one tho!

yup, try arch+sway. I like running a separate windows machine to VNC into from linux

I'm in the same boat.

But leaving win for good (no dual boot).

Torn between Fedora vs Garuda atm. (still waiting for my FW)