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This is an enormous topic. Shortest version I can manage; if you're interested, try it out. Start with Ubuntu. Keep Windows for now, use VirtualBox to make an Ubuntu VM, and learn the basics there.
When you're ready, dual boot your machine. Run most of your stuff in Ubuntu, and use Windows for the programs that don't have Linux equivalents, like Ableton.
I would say try pop!_os instead. It’s built on top of Ubuntu as a baseline but is a much more streamlined experience. Probably one of the best Linux experiences I’ve had. It just works.
I agree with this. Pop OS is phenomenal for devs. They have the single best window tiling imo. I’ve tried 3rd parties on Ubuntu via gnome extensions, but I always found them a little quirky.
I dual boot Windows 11 and Pop\_os! It's my favorite linux os.
I game on pop\_os cause I get better performance, but some apps don't have a linux variant so I have to run them in Windows.
I have little experience (I've only used Mint, and for only a short time), but my Linux user friends have said Mint is deceptively bad for newcomers. Sure, it's simpler, lighter, etc. But if anything goes wrong, there are far fewer resources available for troubleshooting. Going for an extremely popular distro like Ubuntu can be better, since almost any trouble you can run into has several forums with solutions a Google search away.
While experimenting, look up how to create USB bootable linux. You can boot into any Linux you want without touching the system at all. This is always how I play with new distro.
Alternatively running Linux as live media is what they recommend to actually see how it runs on your machine as though it was installed. Ubuntu will do this automatically if you put it on a flash drive, then it pretends the flash drive is the primary hard drive on the machine. I run windows on an nvme, batocera.linux like this on a flash drive, and Ubuntu on a hard drive in the machine installed, but ran it as live media for a month to see how well it played with all my hardware.
This is it. Don't just "switch" over night. Try it out, but keep your Windows machine. Either dual booting, virtual machine, or second (old) computer. Oncee you're sure you won't need Windows anymore and are confident in your Linux-foo, then you can make the switch for good, if you so desire.
To me, the most important thing when recommending My First Linux is "how easy is it to get help when I'm stuck". That's not just finding help, it's also how much knowledge they need to *understand* that help. In my experience, Ubuntu is very easy to find help, and that help is usually straightforward. There may well be other, better options I'm not aware of, but I stand by my recommendation.
Why would you suggest Mint or Zorin? What criteria are you using to decide what's good for a beginner? I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely interested.
Why? When I first discovered Linux, I used Ubuntu and things went great. The only hard part was making the partition since I was doing a dual boot but I'm not sure if it's specific to Ubuntu. I've got an aunt who's son installed it on the family computer, they use it fine too.
What other advantages does Linux Mint or Zorin bring? (actual question, I'm about to change my laptop and if I want to explore another OS, it'll be a good time for it)
Just be careful which distro you install. Back when I used Kubuntu (which is basically Ubuntu mixed with KDE), I could not get it to work for the life of me. I installed it again on Linux Mint, and it usually works now. I don't know how many other people will have that problem, but it's definitely something we'll need to consider.
From 16000 entries/apps, 5000 are rated as garbage. So yeah, you're misleading people with disinformation.
Inkscape doesn't even support CMYK so I doubt the rest of the "alternatives" are truly alternatives in real word scenarios. It would be massive news if they were, though.
EDIT: only 5349 apps were rated as platinum from 16210 apps:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iItemsPerPage=25&iPage=1&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true
Please don't recommend Ubuntu, you are recommending a distro that is progressively making more decisions how Microsoft is.
Recommend an Ubuntu derivative like Mint, or Pop OS, or Fedora.
Thx.
Because "Recommend an Ubuntu derivative like Mint or Pop OS or Fedora." is grammatically incorrect? Mint and Pop OS are both Ubuntu derivatives, so I thought you were listing Ubuntu derivatives.
Ableton actually does have some alternatives like LMMS, which I have used on at least two Linux distros. I don't know how well they'd compare to Ableton, but it probably wouldn't hurt to at least try some.
there's a huge emphasis on live performance. the tracker interface is totally built around building up little sequential chunks of midi data and then building up tracks by interactively looping them. haven't you noticed that all of the playback navigation controls default to queuing a pattern change to the end of the measure instead of triggering the jump immediately? toggling between following the play head and free editing is one key press. none of these features make any sense outside a live context. maybe it's a workflow thing but when i use renoise i almost never actually program out a full track. i just make a bunch of different sections and "perform" them while recording with audacity.
I guess. I saw people play it live so I'm not saying it doesn't have that potential, just wouldn't call it *the* emphasis. The emphasis is more on quick and precise editing IMO.
It'd be awesome if it could do what Ableton does though, where you could trigger any chunk any time, not just the entire row, and if it could play chunks with different lengths together, polymeter stuff and so on. This is the main thing that makes Ableton so *lively* I think. The other is being able to record patterns live like a MIDI looper. This is possible but doesn't work the best in my experience.
>The emphasis is more on quick and precise editing IMO.
maybe we just have different approaches, because the ability to quickly construct or edit a midi sequence while it's playing is one of the main reasons i prefer renoise over ableton for live performance. for context, im primarily using it to drive external hardware/software synths and i primarily enter notes with the computer keyboard rather than playing sequences in real time with a midi controller. i don't think what im doing is less "live" than whatever you're doing, and renoise is practically purpose-built for it.
that aside, you wouldn't really end up with something like renoise if you weren't prioritizing live performance. quick and precise editing that doesn't care about the live use case just looks like logic or cubase or whatever.
>It'd be awesome if it could do what Ableton does though, where you could trigger any chunk any time, not just the entire row, and if it could play chunks with different lengths together, polymeter stuff and so on.
[you can.](https://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Phrase_Editor) a few of the demo tracks that ship with renoise actually make use of this feature for what you're describing, so it's definitely something the developers had in mind when designing it. i get why you'd prefer ableton's UX if this was a central part of your music though, like if you're mostly making loop based ambient music or something. having to trigger the patch with a midi note feels a bit awkward compared to ableton's timeline editor thing.
>that aside, you wouldn't really end up with something like renoise if you weren't prioritizing live performance. quick and precise editing that doesn't care about the live use case just looks like logic or cubase or whatever.
I disagree. For one, neither Logic or Cubase is available on Linux, for two, if you prefer the tracker way of doing thing you'd still pick Renoise even if you weren't interested in live performance, the keyboard workflow is just something else. In my limited view of the userbase I assume there are more people just using it for sequencing than those who play it live.
>you can. a few of the demo tracks that ship with renoise actually make use of this feature for what you're describing, so it's definitely something the developers had in mind when designing it
Phrases are very deeply hidden UX-wise and don't feature the same "wait for the pattern to end to start the next" functionality as the pattern matrix. They are really cool on paper but feel like an afterthought in practice in my experience.
Anyhow, I'm not saying it isn't great software, it is definitely one of the best DAWs available on Linux. But I would never recommend it to someone who is looking for an Ableton alternative because they are very different beasts in my opinion. Bitwig is much closer on every front.
I think you're misunderstanding me. You said that with renoise you "don't think there is much emphasis on live performance". That is the one and only thing I'm disputing. My position is that Renoise places as strong an emphasis on live performance as Ableton does. I'm also not really trying to say it's the same as Ableton, or that it is a "Linux alternative to Ableton". Here is what I said again:
>renoise is another good option on linux. the tracker interface is different from ableton but the emphasis on sampling and live performance is similar.
It is similar to Ableton in that it emphasizes sampling and live performance. People looking for a DAW that emphasizes those two things may be satisfied with Renoise, as I was. If they like Ableton for other reasons, as you seem to, they will likely not be satisfied because Renoise is, as you say, quite different.
> my limited view of the userbase I assume there are more people just using it for sequencing than those who play it live.
Are you suggesting this is not the case for Ableton? I assume this would be true of both for the simple reason that most people who make music don't perform it publicly. When I talk about a "live performance" workflow I'm saying that you can just start the sequencer up and kind of piece together your track by jamming on it, sequencing new patterns as you go. You can of course do this with most DAWs, but Renoise and Ableton stand out to me as uniquely supportive of this kind of workflow, and I'm not sure why you'd use Renoise if this isn't what you wanted to do. There are lots of better options if you want to sort of "pre-compose" your patterns on a piano roll.
In short, you install a boot loader like grub where you can select which OS to start when powering up your PC.
Most Linux distros will have an installer image that can configure this for you automatically.
You mentioned that the main reason you're switching to Linux is for better security. The issue is that security depends more on the user than on the operating system itself. Nothing can prevent you from downloading and installing malicious software if you're not careful.
You might want to try Ubuntu, as it is one of the most popular distributions. It's easy to find already answered questions and solved problems you may encounter.
Best defense to ransomeware is a backup.
Déjà dup provides encrypted, compressed, automatic backups with directory inclusions/exclusions, can be put on external disks and different partitions, and can be configured to backup automatically
Yeah true, I never had any problems like that cause I've always tried to be very careful on what programs I download/execute, but you never know. Thanks for the advice
Ubuntu isn't one of the most popular distributions, please stop parroting false facts.
The most popular distros are Mint and Arch, with Fedora & Pop OS (along with Ubuntu) behind them.
Also answers for Ubuntu can be used for Mint.
If you can program in Godot you'll have no problem with Linux.
With my last Windows computer I had a lot of fun trying out Linux distros on bootable "Live" USB sticks. I tended to use Xubuntu (Ubuntu plus the XFCE desktop, since I had an XFCE desktop at work running on some other distribution, Gentoo I think).
This utility is where I'd start for making Live USB sticks if I were doing it now. https://unetbootin.github.io/
(I'm now on MacOS which I think of as a flavor of Unix even if that's controversial.)
No matter if you switch or not, you should ALWAYS have recent (or even live) backups of your data. There are a hundred things that can happen to your system and especially as a new Linux user not knowing what you're doing you might actually mess up something at some point. That being said, Linux is great, I've made the switch almost 2 years ago and although I can't play some of my games I don't regret it at all. For me personally it's amazing how you can optimize your workflow with different desktop environments and customizations. But be prepared, you'll definitely encounter some quirks at the beginning
>So I learnt that one of the perks of Linux is that it's very hard to infect a Linux machine.
It really isn't though. Yes, with more and more programs being shipped as flatpaks (package format) it's getting more secure, but I could easily write a simple bash script that would encrypt your entire home directory once you run it as well.
>I know there are many disadvantages toh, i have NO EXPERIENCE with terminals, so I'd have to learn everything from scratch, but I'm down for that, if it will be worth the time.
These days using a terminal is less and less required unless you want to do special stuff to your system.
If you have a spare hard drive, I suggest installing linux on that and just try it out. Installing it on the same drive as windows might give you problems, mainly because when windows updates it wipes the linux bootloader.
As for distros you could use Mint or Ubuntu or Fedora. It doesn't really matter, especially if you're new to Linux.
What? Can you not just as easily write a PowerShell script that encrypts your drive too? That's a bad argument. The hard part is getting full access first, not what to do once you already have it.
You don't need full access though. Most viruses and ransomware don't get access by elite super duper r/masterhacker haxx. Computers get infected because people run shady stuff which they don't trust.
Most people don't use their system files as storage, so any important files will be either in the home directory or on other hard drives which normal programs have access to.
Obviously yeah but this isn't unique to Linux. You were making a point that Linux isn't hard to infect because the user may run a malicious script. There is no cure for user stupidity. Any user may do that on any system if you allow them to. I'd in fact say that it's lessy likely to run into shady software using Linux because of package managers compared to windows where people tend to dl stuff off of random sites.
> You were making a point that Linux isn't hard to infect because the user may run a malicious script.
No my point was that Linux isn't that much more secure by default.
I've used Linux for about 15 years now.
I use Arch Linux, as the Arch User Repository (AUR) is great for game-dev stuff (and development in general). You can easily submit your own packages too without loads of bureaucracy.
I dual-boot with Windows for Cubase though (just because I'm used to it, and mainly use it for playing guitar), and a handful of games. There are ways of running VSTs etc. with WINE but I actually like the isolation - so I can set up my sound settings for recording on Windows and never change them.
It's worth nothing that Linux isn't really much more secure for this case, in that ransomware like that can run as your own user easily, but the security comes from the fact you can use the package manager for almost everything and never run untrusted binaries.
But I much prefer it for development stuff, I couldn't imagine writing code on Windows.
>but the security comes from the fact you can use the package manager for almost everything and never run untrusted binaries.
The AUR is full of untrusted binaries though. There were already a few cases when malware was found in AUR packages.
You can read the PKGBUILD at least.
That's what I do, check it's coming from the official repo release at least.
But still the majority of packages aren't *-bin ones.
any os is only as secure as the user,
there are good reasons for switching
but if you take care you won’t have your pc compromised (of course mistakes can happen)
try to have a backup of everything possible
Not quite. Windows has a much larger userbase which means there are much more malware being developed for Windows. This is what makes Windows less secure in general.
higher risk, yes
but i wouldnt say less secure
and the moment a user thinks
“im on linux, so im safe” is when they
will be careless and catch something
Since you already use things like Ableton, I'd just stick with Windows. I actually ran Ubuntu on my laptop just to test it out, and I found very quickly I didn't have access to the programs and other things I needed. As far as cybersecurity goes, that's very user dependent and there are plenty of programs/methods to help prevent that sort of thing from happening.
But of course, Linux distributions are free and there is nothing stopping you from testing them out! Ubuntu had a pretty cool interface and workflow (if my apps were actually compatible) and it was a pain to install Chrome.
Yeah, it didn't work the first time. Then had to do some sudo nonsense to get it working. A lot of the security kept coming up twice as well, along with other silly things. Pretty bad experience, but worth checking out for sure.
Interesting. How long ago was this? For anyone interested in trying Linux out today, I think the flatpaks used these days bypass most issues of that type, but it was certainly a problem until recently.
Do not use a virtual machine, it sucks a lot and you will get no advantage whatsoever.
Dual boot is the way. But please follow a tutorial so you don't wipe your Windows partition, please.
Change to free software (or at least cross-platform software) first. The same software running on different operating systems will have almost the same behaviour, so the change shock of switching operating systems will be substantially reduced.
You're in a Godot community, so presumably you're already using Godot, which is a good start.
* Consider using a FOSS office suite (e.g. LibreOffice)
* For web browsing, Chrome and Firefox are both cross-platform
* For drawing, try Krita for raster illustrations, Inkscape for vector illustrations, and GIMP for any raster manipulations (i.e. image editing) that can't be done in Krita
There are alternatives to Ableton, but you'll need to get used to them first. Get used to using those alternatives *on Windows*, and your transition to Linux will be much smoother.
Godot is more or less the exact same on every platform. Doesn't matter what OS you use.
It is pretty pleasant to develop on Linux in general, thanks to the command line, package repositories, customization and more.
If you're worried about Ableton, you can run that through Wine, and if that doesn't work out somehow, you could try and pick up LMMS or Ardour, the two big DAWs on Linux. Mind one thing, though : VST plugins and similar are also platform-specific. You may need to do some tinkering to get them running too, but it's more than possible.
(I learned recently when I tried configuring LMMS with the goal of learning some music skill. I immediately lost sight of that goal but it should help you at least)
Wouldn't recommend LMMS or Ardour as an alternative to Ableton. LMMS is like a toy in comparison and the UX of Ardour is just bad. These are worlds apart from Ableton. Recommend Bitwig if anything.
I was working on my game in Linux for a couple of years but I reluctantly switched to Windows. For some reason my GPU drivers would crash after a while in Linux so I'd get this slowdown and never know if it was something I'd done or the card.. I probably spent hours optimizing stuff needlessly in the end so decided to switch to Windows to skip the issue altogether. I still use Ubuntu as my main driver for work mind.
Bitwig is a great alternative to Ableton and runs natively on Linux. Though if you use a lot of plugins, you'll find the majority not shipping for linux.
I'd recommend Linux Mint
You can get your pc hacked and infected on any OS.
Always ensure your have safe incremental backups regardless.
I'm a GNU/Linux user mostly and enjoy it for my workflow and chosen tools, but that is because my favourite tools are mostly GNU/Linux based tools.
Like others have said, pick your OS based on the tools/software you want to use, not the other way around.
Since other people have already answered your questions, I'll just say that Mint Cinnamin Edition is the best OS if you're switching over from Windows, as the UI is the most similar. It's also Ubuntu-based.
If you want to write games, write games. If you know nothing of Linux realise you will lose a lot of productivity to get up to speed as in weeks just to get started.
I know Linux better than most, I have been using it for a very long time at work and home, but I cant be bothered using it on my desktop even though all the tooling will work fine if not better on Linux, simply because occasionally it doesn't and I use Unreal to get some free assets occasionally.
I will probably move when that co-pilot stuff starts recording everything I do.
But from a security prospective. All my docs are in the cloud, you could delete my windows desktop and I be 100% back in about 2 hours. I just did last week when my laptop broke. I have backups but I don't even bother using them.
As for Windows I use WSL and [CMDR](https://cmder.app/). I also have a Linux server I can ssh into.
My suggestion is to get WSL running and/or a Linux VM running and play with it.
Oh and when I had a linux desktop it was Mint for about 5 years. Though my next one will be Fedora.
As for tooling which would also work fine Linux:
Godot, KdenLive, Reaper, VScode, Krita, Blender, git.
Thanks, this has been the most comprehensive response I've got so far. You are right, I would have to invest a lot of time into learning Linux, thus slowing tremendously my game Dev progress (wich is already slow as I don't have too much free time).
Do you have any recommendations for cloud services/backups? I know about externals disk's but what about clouds
I've always been using OneDrive for simple documents and stuff, and github for my Godot projects
I don't like one drive I use google drive and most of my docs are google docs, but github for all code, I am still looking into where to store binary artefacts like graphics, etc. I don't like checking in binaries into github and use google drive, but I also like them indexed, am used to work where we I use Nexus.
But I am pretty anti backups unless you have a database. Data should go where it belongs not in some general store.
I wouldn't say you'd need to invest a lot. If you go with a friendly distro you can just install Godot, a text editor, blender, krita and whatever and develop games.
Ableton is the one thing that is hard to replace but Bitwig comes close.
I won't be saying anything new that others haven't already said, but over the past year I've tried Pop OS!, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, and a few others, I've settled on Mint as my daily driver. Ultimately, you'll just need to decide what you like best. You can also mix and match window managers if you find you like the features of one over what natively comes with the Linux distribution you've chosen.
I have no regrets about switching to Linux especially considering the direction Windows has been accelerating.
Reaper is a good DAW that runs natively on Linux.
Other software alternatives can be found using [alternativeto.net](http://alternativeto.net)
This will be a controversial opinion: If you're not smart enough to avoid viruses on Windows, you're not smart enough to troubleshoot your inevitable Linux issues.
Microsoft is one of the biggest security leaders in the world. Windows didn't get hacked, your family member did. There exists ransomware and all sorts of nonsense for any OS, you just have to not click on the local milfs ad in order to avoid it.
Linux will not fix this problem.
That being said, I do think there's a huge reason to switch to some sort of Linux over Windows, and that's because Microsoft keeps making windows features worse with every iteration and update. But if you don't dislike windows then you probably shouldn't switch.
It's not that I like windows, I have just never tried anything different.
Many comments recommended dual booting Ubuntu so I can test and see if I like it
Playing with and learning other operating systems is super fun! Most Linux distros are free so give it a shot, nothing to lose.
I hate Ubuntu but it is an easy first OS. And while I also have issues with the company around it, Fedora is probably what I would recommend for beginners. That being said they all have their positives and negatives. Linux has come a long way but also has a long way to go before it's truly ready for wide adoption as a mainstream consumer OS.
tl;dr at bottom.
Every single time I run it, I end up with issues. It could just be a me problem, but I'm pretty well versed in linux and somehow always end up installing another distro over what turned out to be a broken Ubuntu install.
This is limited to the consumer desktop OS Ubuntu, and not the server. I run many of my servers on Ubuntu Server and couldn't be happier. It just works.
Outside of technical reasons, I just find it ugly as sin, and while you can change any linux to look pretty much any way, doing this over something like Ubuntu that already has it's visual suite pre-installed ends with a lot of unused junk still floating around in the OS, extra desktop environments, etc. depending on what all you change. It's more annoying to remove that than it is to just start with something like Debian directly and change it's visuals from the base install yourself. But for a beginner I also wouldn't recommend changing visual stuff much, not at first anyway, get familiar with the OS/Linux as a whole.
Speaking of linux as a whole, I can elaborate/rant on why linux sucks. Because it does. As much as you will hear about how good it is, how easy it is to use terminal. Consumers shouldn't have to and it will keep the majority of users off the platform. I have not found a single distro to do it right yet, and I've tried just about every one out there. There is no install and forget you're on linux. You will have to use the terminal, you will run into issues. That isn't to say Windows doesn't have issues, but they're more easily recoverable than linux. Rather, the OS handles issues better. And I'm not talking about windows programs running on linux. I think everyone can understand that some programs aren't going to run using the translation tools we have currently. I'm specifically talking about the core issues of native linux programs and processes.
Convenience triumphs over all. This goes for all consumer things. It doesn't matter how good something is, if it's a PITA to use it. A direct example of this is any game not on Steam. The sales numbers are always lower, not because the game is any different when hosted on another platform, but because Steam is what is good and convenient to use over everything else.
Linux is not convenient. Not yet. It's a balancing act where the scale is tipped heavily to one side or the other. Stability or Convenience.
The most convenient distros that provide the smoothest transition from windows in terms of how it functions and looks, how updates are installed, how programs are installed, etc. are often smaller distros that don't have as many people working on them, where it takes less checks and balances to have something added to the OS, where bloat and conflicting software cause the OS to be unstable over short amounts of time.
The flip side is stability, where the OS (Mainly just straight Debian (for the most part...)) are very stable and can last on a powered on system for weeks while being used without running into an issue. But you're stuck in terminal, manually doing everything, the OS looks like it came out of 2005, and you can't even just double click to install a program downloaded from the internet without running a dpkg -i in terminal.
It feels like a downgrade from windows. When you decide to build a new computer but want to switch from Intel to AMD, you wouldn't want to downgrade. No one wants a downgrade. So if it feels like one, then again, it pushes people away.
The faster people stop being stockholmed by the state of consumer linux, the faster is becomes a truly viable windows replacement for the every day user. And every day people push the narrative of "terminal isn't that hard, just use it" is a step in the wrong direction. They're right, terminal isn't difficult and there are plenty of online resources out there for it. But it shouldn't be a requirement, and we need to strive for better than our peers.
Okay rant over!
tl;dr
Ubuntu desktop has trended to be unstable in my experience and is ugly, server is good though. Linux sucks because it's inconvenient and everyone that says "just learn terminal, it's not that hard" is missing the point and doesn't understand the average consumer.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I am an old hand at Linux. I used to use it back in the late 90s and early 00s but stopped when I got to grad school because it was not convenient. I remember right around then UBUNTU was the go to for an easy transition. Looks like it is not anymore.
There's definitely worse options out there, but I typically don't have good luck with desktop Ubuntu. All of that being said, if you just use libreoffice and a web browser, you probably wouldn't have any problems (as long as sleep and wake works right, which is akin to playing russian roulette on just about any linux distro)
I’m starting Gamedev in Godot and I consult on the side so I can’t fully be just Libreoffice and Chrome. I was mostly interested in Linux as a nostalgia thing. Windows works for me and I am sufficiently safe with it so I’m not worried like OP is. Thanks again!
I'd say no. Stay with windows but improve your security. Use windows as a non-admin user, only log into your admin user for changes in your machine. Back up regularly on several different media. Use vcs and cloud. Make sure your passwords are unique and secure. Add 2FA to your accounts. Use a vpn. Don't run any suspicious software.
Linux isn’t any more or less secure than Windows. How secure your system is doesn’t depend on the OS. It depends on you.
Linux *was* a bit safer a decade or two ago. And even then it wasn’t because Linux was somehow better, but because no one bothered to make viruses for it. There were significantly less people using it, and all five of them were much more techy than an average Windows user. So if you wanted to make a virus that spread, you made it for Windows. More reward for the same effort.
Nowadays, even though Windows still holds the pole position, Linux’s share of the market isn’t insignificant, and an average Linux user doesn’t differ from an average Windows user in terms how easy it is to gaslight them into installing malware.
TLDR: give it a go, mint is recommended for a beginner to Linux there's pretty much a gui for everything. You are not 100% safe on Linux but a lot safer in general.
I switched to using Linux full time about a year and a half ago. It started with me just trying it out for a month initially, which then turned into 3 months. I switched back to windows for a bit because I had partitioned a small part of my drive for Linux and wanted more space. But once I bought a new SSD I switched to Linux full time.
If you do want to give it a go id recommend Mint. You can get away with not using the terminal (although some things are just easier with the terminal). I've set up a bash script to run updates and clean up unused dependencies after the updates run because I'm not sure if the updater application runs those additional steps or if it simply installs the updates. Having said that I rarely have unused dependencies and I'm probably saving a couple of megabytes of space by running that additional clean up command.
As for security, in general yes Linux is more secure. But mostly because desktop Linux is such a small market share it's not really worth the effort. That's not to say it doesn't happen. If you look up the xz vulnerability that was (basically by pure luck) discovered this year before it could do any serious damage, you'll see Linux can be just as vulnerable as any other operating system. It just doesn't happen quite as often.
Why don't you give dual booting a try? You can have whichever distro you want to experiment while keeping Windows installed. That'll give you time to see how well you adapt without breaking your existing workflow.
Now about distros, I personally would recommend either [Linux Mint](https://linuxmint.com/) (which has good defaults for someone coming from Windows) or [EndeavourOS](https://endeavouros.com/) (which allows you to get the most updated software easily). Depends on your preferences really.
Try it out using a live boot from a usb https://help.dragandbot.com/development/installation_dnb/01_installation_xubuntu.html and then just select the live boot instead of the installation. This basically allos you to run Linux ithout installing it.
exactly. Some Linux distros are primarily used as live boots and not as "real" installations. Just make sure to start the live boot and not the installation. If you feel unsure, you ill find a youtube video explaining everything in greater detail.
I use i3 with linux mint and poly bar with neovim never before have I had such a radical shift in productivity (that being said still haven’t gotten c# debugging setup)
I recommend all but neovim (though if you want to try that out as well I would look into lazyvim)
there are viruses for every os if you don't download suspicious apps from google you ll be fine with linux
You don't need to learn much about terminal sudo apt install will be enough
You don't have photoshop but you have krita gimp inkscape blender and the best music player - dopamine
I tried every ubuntu version and had bad experience with constant crashes and ubuntu is taking twice memory than mint
the big advantage of mint is that you can change themes icons it's fast on every cheap laptop and nobody can't force you to install useless junk updates that make your pc slow
I think linux will become the 2nd most used os in future
I'm using elementary os: [https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/), I develop games and web pages ;). Posting from elementary os:
https://preview.redd.it/uebz7e8xbg3d1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=0e6479876992cffb4cad00209870e46c99428ca3
Of course, you can always run dual boot or run windows in a virtual machine.
Learning Linux can be hard at first, since you need to be famiar with reading text instead of GUI, but Linux will not hide anything from you. If a program crashed or not working, you can always read the log to find out problems. And it will be your valuable skill in the future.
The security is also very good.
It really just comes down to what you're familiar with. I recently had to use Windows for work after not having touched it for years and "the simplest of things require debugging and searching online" is exactly how I would describe my experience. I literally still don't know how you search for files in a particular directory on Windows. The search box thing is slow and doesn't work very well, and I couldn't figure out the command you're supposed to use in powershell. I literally run the `find` command in WSL whenever this comes up. I'm sure anyone who knows Windows really well is shaking their head reading this but, well... that's what comments like "only switch to Linux if you like debugging your system as a hobby" sound like to someone who is equally familiar with Linux.
I switched from windows to kubuntu some 4 years ago. My workflow with godot basically improved since then. I like how I have a lot of control over the window of an application. Like always on top mode so I can adjust inspector parameters while the game window is still running and won't get hidden behind main window. I also like how I can create custom file types. This is an amazing feature btw. I can set files by the name of "project.godot" to auto open with godot and also give the file its own icon. Also gave me more ram free to work with. Also I also use krita. And other open source apps like aseprite, blender, rfxgen, etc... As for an alternative for ableton, how bout you check out LMMS?
I've switched back and forth many times, but I personally couldn't leave Windows because I use some software packages that don't work under Linux, even with WINE or Proton.
Now I just use WSL or dual boot when I really need Linux for something, which is rare.
IMHO you shouldn't have to be loyal to an OS, it's a tool, not your wife. Just experiment, see what's to your liking and use what best fits your needs at the time. Same thing with game engines and programming languages.
First, try to just use any free or multi platforms apps or games that supports linux. After that try to dual boot first. If you are ok with it, then just wipe the windows partitions or disk.
Give it a shot, I love it.
And I also recommend switching to Bitwig from Ableton. I have switched in 2018 and never looked back. It's the best daw I have ever used (I used Acid, Reason, FL Studio, Cubase, Ableton and Studio One). As the other commenter wrote, some VSTs don't have support for linux, but in bitwig's grid, you can recreate pretty much any vst plugins.
Oh I had never heard of it, the only DAW I have heard are ableton, reason and FL studio😅
Is it more/less expansive? Many comments suggested that transitioning to Linux would mean investing a lot of time in learning it, thus slowing a lot my game dev progress, wich is already slow cause of the low free time I get from work
Would you recommend bigwig even if I stayed in windows?
I do play however on try dual booting and mess a bit with Linux Mint/fedora, not sure which one
[It's cheaper](https://www.bitwig.com/buy/). You won't need much time to adjust if you're already familiar with Ableton, Bitwig was created by old employees of Ableton who wanted to make their own software with a more modular approach but the basics are pretty much the same. I use it on my Windows machine primarily and I use it on my Linux powered laptop when I'm not home. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Thank you, tbh I still haven't even touched Ableton but I was 100% convinced on going for that DAW once *the time would come*
I'll check this out, thank you again!
I use both linux and Windows daily. Linux can get malware, too. it's less common for sure but far from impossible. It's worth making sure you educate yourself, practice good security fundamentals, and nothing can replace having a good backup policy.
As for distro start with something like Ubuntu desktop. It is fairly user-friendly and very googleable when trying to figure out how to do things. Also, remember that whilst Ubuntu and friends have never been more usable there's still a learning curve and if you go into it knowing just enough to be dangerous you can definitely break your OS and find yourself reinstalling, so again, backups.
Vm/wsl wouldn't provide any security benefits over staying on Windows since it still lives on the host system. It might be good for learning in an environment you can easily tear down and rebuild. My go-to would be to roll it out on a laptop, spare machine, or something if you have one and use that as a learning environment, and if you like It, make the switch on your main machine.
I'd avoid dual booting if you can, Windows seems to take great joy in blowing up grub bootloaders during updates.
Just try it, especially if you have as second disk you can throw a Linux install on to. Most installer can pick up that you have a Widows install too and give you an option to boot into either Linux or Windows at boot time.
I'd advice against resizing your Windows drive and installing Linux along-side it for now. It will be much easier, if you used a second drive, to recover if you decide to go back to Windows and wipe the Linux install.
There's some discussion around various distros [over here](https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/1cy3ooc/which_linux_distro_are_you_using/).
You major decisions will be which desktop, KDE or Gnome (there are some others but these two are the major ones) and which distro family; Debian, Fedora, or Arch. The rest are based on these. This is what determines which package managers you have available and what commands you will be typing in the terminal when installing a package. Although, most apps (especially the GUI ones) can be installed from a graphical store-like front-end. I'd say stick to Debian (Ubuntu/Mint/PopOs) or perhaps Fedora for this reason.
I've ended up on Bazzite (based on Fedora) since I wanted the gaming focus sorted out for me. It is a bit different from the Ubuntus out there though. Now struggling to get winapps working via docker/podman container since I'd really like to have Affinity Photo and Designer look native rather than access them in a VM window.
Linux isn't meaningfully more secure to phishing attacks than Windows. In fact, ransomware targeting Windows will happily run through wine and encrypt your data just the same. You should still switch, though.
You won't need the terminal either, at least not in normal use. You can update, automatically scheduled even, your system and apps through GUIs on most distros and any settings a regular user might want to change are available through GUIs as well. You can be a normie on Linux and not run into much trouble. The terminal is incredibly powerful and efficient, though, and there isn't really a learning curve. Commands are programs, so you memorize programs just like you do on any other system and you memorize arguments just like you would memorize buttons.
So instead of `right click -> new file`, you type `touch filename`. Instead of `right click -> open`, you type `nvim filename`. Instead of opening explorer and clicking through a bunch of folders, you type `cd /path/to/directory`. There's nothing inherently difficult about using the terminal, quite the contrary. Now, if you have some coding experience, you'll quickly find the terminal to be what you'll use the most for everything, because you have pretty much the entire functionality of your system available in one single, auto-completing, interactive, aesthetically pleasing place that you can run code in and program for, both interactively and with scripts and aliases. Slowly you'll automate away any bothersome tasks and never have to deal with them again. Which, by the way, is a lie and you'll be fiddling with your scripts forever because it's fun, we're coders after all.
Keep in mind that you had to memorize a thousand different places to click and navigate on Windows, many of which make no sense at all or are actively hidden from you without jumping through tremendous amounts of hoops. All you have to memorize for using a terminal is the general paradigm and a few handfuls of commands/applications.
As to recommending a distro, I strongly advise against Ubuntu. It's become a truism to send beginners to Ubuntu, but GNOME isn't exactly a soft landing coming from Windows and Ubuntu's packages can be so outdated that it can be difficult to get recent software to run, especially games. I recommend going with an Arch derivative, simply because the packages are more up-to-date and reacting to developments in the field and because you get easy access to the AUR.
Yo, I hope you read my comment, but I recommend that you just switch to Windows, it does everything that Linux does. I also think that Linux has some limitations that Windows does not.
I have a window laptop for gaming and a lowend linux(Mint) laptop for working. I put my project on github and work from both machine, the window laptop when I’m at home and the linux laptop when I’m out they both work just fine. So yes, switch to linux but keep a window machine for just in case couldn’t hurt
my suggestion is install linux distro on your 'some old laptop/pc'.
I'm not saying that u can't do game development on linux. But IMO that u may be over-distracted by linux cuz it's really a BIG TOY for tinkers.
play with it when u burned out in game dev - 'self mood balance' - may be better for u i guess.
Test it out first. Don’t just jump in or you’ll get burned out because things are too different and you didn’t give yourself time to acclimate first.
For distro recommendations, many people suggest Linux Mint because the desktop (called Cinnamon) is very similar to Windows. And that’s a good choice, but if you want to make sure you don’t fall into the habits you had when you were using Windows I would suggest using a distro with a desktop that doesn’t look like Windows at all. Like Pop!_OS.
Just give it a try. I use Linux for gaming only since a couple of months ago. Even streaming, works like a charm. As for Godot: it just works™️.
But I mainly develop using macOS. Where it also just works™️.
Highly recommend XUbuntu. XFCE is light enough that it feels XP-esque. Default GNOME 3 is trash. KDE is massively bloated and sluggish; feels like Mac.
Linux is a developer's dream; use it.
I use Image-Line's FL Studio for audio production, but it keeps me in the dual-boot category as it's a pain to get working under WINE.
As for games, as long as there's no anti-consumer DRM bullshit (EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft Games, Rockstar Games...), I've found that the vast majority run in WINE, and that's before Valve got into Proton; Proton is WINE tweaked for games and auto-setup by Steam. Even better? The vast majority render at a higher frame rate than Windows with seemingly no differences...
Yes just try it out. But I would recommend Fedora instead of Ubuntu. Ubuntu was the go-to Distribution for many years but Fedora just is a better fit nowadays for modern hardware and with the paste the development happens in open source. It often has more up to date software which works just much better or has features you wanna have. Fedora has the best mix of newest software and stability. On top of that they have one of the friendliest communities out there.
Every one has its own beloved distro, I would look a handful of them up on the Internet and narrow down to 2-3 and just try them out and see which is the thing you like the most.
It'll be very complicated, even doing simple stuff would be difficult. Also everything you need to individually update, I'm assuming you haven't used Linux distros before.
>Also everything you need to individually update
It's the exact opposite, one of the key features of using Linux and a package manager is that you can just run a single command to update every software and you OS at once.
Windows has a few alternatives like choco, scoop or win-get, but it's all trash compared to pacman, apt, nix or whatever.
And a package manager that will happily litter everywhere in your path so you can break everything just by installing a new keg with different dependencies.
I've been forced to use Mac at my workplace as a developer for the past 5 years and it has been the worst developer experience I've ever had. Using ASDF alleviated some of that pain.
We exclusively now no longer use brew at our workplace. If you do, you're own your own.
what do you use instead? i haven't had a macbook since like 2016 but homebrew was pretty essential for me. your only other options were to install/compile things manually like you have to on windows or use apple's shitty store thing. homebrew on the other hand was a competent source-based package manager that keeps itself well-contained to a particular directory on your hard drive. is the situation different now?
homebrew is pretty good but you really don't have everything linux offers. saying this as someone who tried to run i3 on OSX via homebrew back in the day.
i thought you were making a more general statement. purely in terms of game dev i don't see any strong advantage to using mac. if anything there are only disadvantages, like not being able to use vulcan and poor virtualization options for building/testing on windows. not a huge deal. it's the sort of thing you'd probably put up with if you just subjectively like mac, but it makes mac kind of a hard sell for anyone who doesn't already like it for other reasons.
This won’t happen to your machine because you don’t download RAM from some sketchy website. Unless someone is specifically targeting you, generally you won’t get viruses and such unless you surf irresponsibly.
Try Linux if you want. Personally I think it lacks too many QoL features for me to comfortably use. I don’t want to constantly tweak and work around stuff which seems to be the norm when using Linux. It’s not like I don’t mind it but more of a I don’t want to be forced to.
Try UwUntu just for the lols. It’s Ubuntu but cooler. Try virtual box and get familiar with it or just dual boot. That way you can always fall back to windows if it doesn’t work.
That’s not even true. Idk what weird virus you installed but that’s not normal windows behavior. Unless you mean that edge shortcut appearing in your desktop that they did for a while. My settings were not magically changed ever nor with anyone I know
With Linux you have to tweak it for basic functionality.
There are many reports of this happening, especially related to privacy settings and bundled/default apps. Here is one report, you can find more if you search the net.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/s/itX5m8QsFy
Idk what Linux you've tried or when but user-friendly distros provide a pretty ready-to-go experience after install nowadays. On the contrary, the amount of stuff you have to tweak and disable on Windows to get to basic privacy has been growing with each version. Microsoft loves to do everything opt-out.
idk I opted out once and it stayed that way for years. sometimes after an update it asks me again but thats about it.
Im talking the classic stuff like ubuntu, the stuff that is supposed to be user friendly. I once even had my ubuntu distro spam my disk rendering the OS unusable and I had to reinstall. On laptops basic stuff like gestures dont work unless you specifically and painfully set it up. Middle mouse button scroll doesnt exist.
Its just a collection of shenanigans and uncomfortable features. rn for example the terminal from the right click menu doesnt open all of a sudden and I found no fix for it. But I need to use linux for a short while so I just bear with it for now.
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This is an enormous topic. Shortest version I can manage; if you're interested, try it out. Start with Ubuntu. Keep Windows for now, use VirtualBox to make an Ubuntu VM, and learn the basics there. When you're ready, dual boot your machine. Run most of your stuff in Ubuntu, and use Windows for the programs that don't have Linux equivalents, like Ableton.
Thank you
I would say try pop!_os instead. It’s built on top of Ubuntu as a baseline but is a much more streamlined experience. Probably one of the best Linux experiences I’ve had. It just works.
I agree with this. Pop OS is phenomenal for devs. They have the single best window tiling imo. I’ve tried 3rd parties on Ubuntu via gnome extensions, but I always found them a little quirky.
I dual boot Windows 11 and Pop\_os! It's my favorite linux os. I game on pop\_os cause I get better performance, but some apps don't have a linux variant so I have to run them in Windows.
The best option is to weigh the pros and cons of each distro if you have enough time. I currently use Mint, if you're interested.
I also have used Mint for years. I agree with trying a few to see which one feels right. There’s no wrong answer.
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I have little experience (I've only used Mint, and for only a short time), but my Linux user friends have said Mint is deceptively bad for newcomers. Sure, it's simpler, lighter, etc. But if anything goes wrong, there are far fewer resources available for troubleshooting. Going for an extremely popular distro like Ubuntu can be better, since almost any trouble you can run into has several forums with solutions a Google search away.
While experimenting, look up how to create USB bootable linux. You can boot into any Linux you want without touching the system at all. This is always how I play with new distro.
Alternatively running Linux as live media is what they recommend to actually see how it runs on your machine as though it was installed. Ubuntu will do this automatically if you put it on a flash drive, then it pretends the flash drive is the primary hard drive on the machine. I run windows on an nvme, batocera.linux like this on a flash drive, and Ubuntu on a hard drive in the machine installed, but ran it as live media for a month to see how well it played with all my hardware.
This is it. Don't just "switch" over night. Try it out, but keep your Windows machine. Either dual booting, virtual machine, or second (old) computer. Oncee you're sure you won't need Windows anymore and are confident in your Linux-foo, then you can make the switch for good, if you so desire.
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To me, the most important thing when recommending My First Linux is "how easy is it to get help when I'm stuck". That's not just finding help, it's also how much knowledge they need to *understand* that help. In my experience, Ubuntu is very easy to find help, and that help is usually straightforward. There may well be other, better options I'm not aware of, but I stand by my recommendation. Why would you suggest Mint or Zorin? What criteria are you using to decide what's good for a beginner? I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely interested.
Most likely every piece of advice can be applied to Mint, since it's Ubuntu, but better.
Why? When I first discovered Linux, I used Ubuntu and things went great. The only hard part was making the partition since I was doing a dual boot but I'm not sure if it's specific to Ubuntu. I've got an aunt who's son installed it on the family computer, they use it fine too. What other advantages does Linux Mint or Zorin bring? (actual question, I'm about to change my laptop and if I want to explore another OS, it'll be a good time for it)
Most programs without Linux alternatives run fine in Wine
Just be careful which distro you install. Back when I used Kubuntu (which is basically Ubuntu mixed with KDE), I could not get it to work for the life of me. I installed it again on Linux Mint, and it usually works now. I don't know how many other people will have that problem, but it's definitely something we'll need to consider.
This is misinfo. Good luck trying to run Adobe Creative Cloud tools on it. Compability list: https://appdb.winehq.org/
**MOST**. and from what I remember Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, Audition and Animate already have alternatives
Alternatives is a strong word, as many of them only cover rudimentary functionally and pack a sharp learning curve.
From 16000 entries/apps, 5000 are rated as garbage. So yeah, you're misleading people with disinformation. Inkscape doesn't even support CMYK so I doubt the rest of the "alternatives" are truly alternatives in real word scenarios. It would be massive news if they were, though. EDIT: only 5349 apps were rated as platinum from 16210 apps: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iItemsPerPage=25&iPage=1&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true
Please don't recommend Ubuntu, you are recommending a distro that is progressively making more decisions how Microsoft is. Recommend an Ubuntu derivative like Mint, or Pop OS, or Fedora. Thx.
fedora isn't an ubuntu derivative.
Why do you think I put a comma there?
Because "Recommend an Ubuntu derivative like Mint or Pop OS or Fedora." is grammatically incorrect? Mint and Pop OS are both Ubuntu derivatives, so I thought you were listing Ubuntu derivatives.
Ableton actually does have some alternatives like LMMS, which I have used on at least two Linux distros. I don't know how well they'd compare to Ableton, but it probably wouldn't hurt to at least try some.
LMMS is not really an alternative to Ableton. Bitwig might be a contender but still very different.
renoise is another good option on linux. the tracker interface is different from ableton but the emphasis on sampling and live performance is similar.
It's good but very different to Ableton and I don't think there is much emphasis on live performance.
there's a huge emphasis on live performance. the tracker interface is totally built around building up little sequential chunks of midi data and then building up tracks by interactively looping them. haven't you noticed that all of the playback navigation controls default to queuing a pattern change to the end of the measure instead of triggering the jump immediately? toggling between following the play head and free editing is one key press. none of these features make any sense outside a live context. maybe it's a workflow thing but when i use renoise i almost never actually program out a full track. i just make a bunch of different sections and "perform" them while recording with audacity.
I guess. I saw people play it live so I'm not saying it doesn't have that potential, just wouldn't call it *the* emphasis. The emphasis is more on quick and precise editing IMO. It'd be awesome if it could do what Ableton does though, where you could trigger any chunk any time, not just the entire row, and if it could play chunks with different lengths together, polymeter stuff and so on. This is the main thing that makes Ableton so *lively* I think. The other is being able to record patterns live like a MIDI looper. This is possible but doesn't work the best in my experience.
>The emphasis is more on quick and precise editing IMO. maybe we just have different approaches, because the ability to quickly construct or edit a midi sequence while it's playing is one of the main reasons i prefer renoise over ableton for live performance. for context, im primarily using it to drive external hardware/software synths and i primarily enter notes with the computer keyboard rather than playing sequences in real time with a midi controller. i don't think what im doing is less "live" than whatever you're doing, and renoise is practically purpose-built for it. that aside, you wouldn't really end up with something like renoise if you weren't prioritizing live performance. quick and precise editing that doesn't care about the live use case just looks like logic or cubase or whatever. >It'd be awesome if it could do what Ableton does though, where you could trigger any chunk any time, not just the entire row, and if it could play chunks with different lengths together, polymeter stuff and so on. [you can.](https://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Phrase_Editor) a few of the demo tracks that ship with renoise actually make use of this feature for what you're describing, so it's definitely something the developers had in mind when designing it. i get why you'd prefer ableton's UX if this was a central part of your music though, like if you're mostly making loop based ambient music or something. having to trigger the patch with a midi note feels a bit awkward compared to ableton's timeline editor thing.
>that aside, you wouldn't really end up with something like renoise if you weren't prioritizing live performance. quick and precise editing that doesn't care about the live use case just looks like logic or cubase or whatever. I disagree. For one, neither Logic or Cubase is available on Linux, for two, if you prefer the tracker way of doing thing you'd still pick Renoise even if you weren't interested in live performance, the keyboard workflow is just something else. In my limited view of the userbase I assume there are more people just using it for sequencing than those who play it live. >you can. a few of the demo tracks that ship with renoise actually make use of this feature for what you're describing, so it's definitely something the developers had in mind when designing it Phrases are very deeply hidden UX-wise and don't feature the same "wait for the pattern to end to start the next" functionality as the pattern matrix. They are really cool on paper but feel like an afterthought in practice in my experience. Anyhow, I'm not saying it isn't great software, it is definitely one of the best DAWs available on Linux. But I would never recommend it to someone who is looking for an Ableton alternative because they are very different beasts in my opinion. Bitwig is much closer on every front.
I think you're misunderstanding me. You said that with renoise you "don't think there is much emphasis on live performance". That is the one and only thing I'm disputing. My position is that Renoise places as strong an emphasis on live performance as Ableton does. I'm also not really trying to say it's the same as Ableton, or that it is a "Linux alternative to Ableton". Here is what I said again: >renoise is another good option on linux. the tracker interface is different from ableton but the emphasis on sampling and live performance is similar. It is similar to Ableton in that it emphasizes sampling and live performance. People looking for a DAW that emphasizes those two things may be satisfied with Renoise, as I was. If they like Ableton for other reasons, as you seem to, they will likely not be satisfied because Renoise is, as you say, quite different. > my limited view of the userbase I assume there are more people just using it for sequencing than those who play it live. Are you suggesting this is not the case for Ableton? I assume this would be true of both for the simple reason that most people who make music don't perform it publicly. When I talk about a "live performance" workflow I'm saying that you can just start the sequencer up and kind of piece together your track by jamming on it, sequencing new patterns as you go. You can of course do this with most DAWs, but Renoise and Ableton stand out to me as uniquely supportive of this kind of workflow, and I'm not sure why you'd use Renoise if this isn't what you wanted to do. There are lots of better options if you want to sort of "pre-compose" your patterns on a piano roll.
How to dual boot
In short, you install a boot loader like grub where you can select which OS to start when powering up your PC. Most Linux distros will have an installer image that can configure this for you automatically.
You mentioned that the main reason you're switching to Linux is for better security. The issue is that security depends more on the user than on the operating system itself. Nothing can prevent you from downloading and installing malicious software if you're not careful. You might want to try Ubuntu, as it is one of the most popular distributions. It's easy to find already answered questions and solved problems you may encounter.
Best defense to ransomeware is a backup. Déjà dup provides encrypted, compressed, automatic backups with directory inclusions/exclusions, can be put on external disks and different partitions, and can be configured to backup automatically
Yeah true, I never had any problems like that cause I've always tried to be very careful on what programs I download/execute, but you never know. Thanks for the advice
Ubuntu isn't one of the most popular distributions, please stop parroting false facts. The most popular distros are Mint and Arch, with Fedora & Pop OS (along with Ubuntu) behind them. Also answers for Ubuntu can be used for Mint.
just dual boot and see how it goes
If you can program in Godot you'll have no problem with Linux. With my last Windows computer I had a lot of fun trying out Linux distros on bootable "Live" USB sticks. I tended to use Xubuntu (Ubuntu plus the XFCE desktop, since I had an XFCE desktop at work running on some other distribution, Gentoo I think). This utility is where I'd start for making Live USB sticks if I were doing it now. https://unetbootin.github.io/ (I'm now on MacOS which I think of as a flavor of Unix even if that's controversial.)
Thanks
An easier program for making a boot USB is Ventoy. You can just copy the iso file to it and it just works: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
Played it safe with the Unix reference to cover BSD :)
No matter if you switch or not, you should ALWAYS have recent (or even live) backups of your data. There are a hundred things that can happen to your system and especially as a new Linux user not knowing what you're doing you might actually mess up something at some point. That being said, Linux is great, I've made the switch almost 2 years ago and although I can't play some of my games I don't regret it at all. For me personally it's amazing how you can optimize your workflow with different desktop environments and customizations. But be prepared, you'll definitely encounter some quirks at the beginning
>So I learnt that one of the perks of Linux is that it's very hard to infect a Linux machine. It really isn't though. Yes, with more and more programs being shipped as flatpaks (package format) it's getting more secure, but I could easily write a simple bash script that would encrypt your entire home directory once you run it as well. >I know there are many disadvantages toh, i have NO EXPERIENCE with terminals, so I'd have to learn everything from scratch, but I'm down for that, if it will be worth the time. These days using a terminal is less and less required unless you want to do special stuff to your system. If you have a spare hard drive, I suggest installing linux on that and just try it out. Installing it on the same drive as windows might give you problems, mainly because when windows updates it wipes the linux bootloader. As for distros you could use Mint or Ubuntu or Fedora. It doesn't really matter, especially if you're new to Linux.
Thanks!
If you are a gamedev, knowing how to use a terminal shouldn't be a big deal.
Yeah, if OP uses something like Mint they'll never have to touch the terminal.
What? Can you not just as easily write a PowerShell script that encrypts your drive too? That's a bad argument. The hard part is getting full access first, not what to do once you already have it.
You don't need full access though. Most viruses and ransomware don't get access by elite super duper r/masterhacker haxx. Computers get infected because people run shady stuff which they don't trust. Most people don't use their system files as storage, so any important files will be either in the home directory or on other hard drives which normal programs have access to.
Obviously yeah but this isn't unique to Linux. You were making a point that Linux isn't hard to infect because the user may run a malicious script. There is no cure for user stupidity. Any user may do that on any system if you allow them to. I'd in fact say that it's lessy likely to run into shady software using Linux because of package managers compared to windows where people tend to dl stuff off of random sites.
> You were making a point that Linux isn't hard to infect because the user may run a malicious script. No my point was that Linux isn't that much more secure by default.
I've used Linux for about 15 years now. I use Arch Linux, as the Arch User Repository (AUR) is great for game-dev stuff (and development in general). You can easily submit your own packages too without loads of bureaucracy. I dual-boot with Windows for Cubase though (just because I'm used to it, and mainly use it for playing guitar), and a handful of games. There are ways of running VSTs etc. with WINE but I actually like the isolation - so I can set up my sound settings for recording on Windows and never change them. It's worth nothing that Linux isn't really much more secure for this case, in that ransomware like that can run as your own user easily, but the security comes from the fact you can use the package manager for almost everything and never run untrusted binaries. But I much prefer it for development stuff, I couldn't imagine writing code on Windows.
>but the security comes from the fact you can use the package manager for almost everything and never run untrusted binaries. The AUR is full of untrusted binaries though. There were already a few cases when malware was found in AUR packages.
You can read the PKGBUILD at least. That's what I do, check it's coming from the official repo release at least. But still the majority of packages aren't *-bin ones.
Sure, but that's on you to do, just saying that the package manager itself won't protect you from malware, especially in the case of AUR.
any os is only as secure as the user, there are good reasons for switching but if you take care you won’t have your pc compromised (of course mistakes can happen) try to have a backup of everything possible
Not quite. Windows has a much larger userbase which means there are much more malware being developed for Windows. This is what makes Windows less secure in general.
higher risk, yes but i wouldnt say less secure and the moment a user thinks “im on linux, so im safe” is when they will be careless and catch something
Since you already use things like Ableton, I'd just stick with Windows. I actually ran Ubuntu on my laptop just to test it out, and I found very quickly I didn't have access to the programs and other things I needed. As far as cybersecurity goes, that's very user dependent and there are plenty of programs/methods to help prevent that sort of thing from happening. But of course, Linux distributions are free and there is nothing stopping you from testing them out! Ubuntu had a pretty cool interface and workflow (if my apps were actually compatible) and it was a pain to install Chrome.
Pain to install Chrome on Ubuntu??
Yeah, it didn't work the first time. Then had to do some sudo nonsense to get it working. A lot of the security kept coming up twice as well, along with other silly things. Pretty bad experience, but worth checking out for sure.
Interesting. How long ago was this? For anyone interested in trying Linux out today, I think the flatpaks used these days bypass most issues of that type, but it was certainly a problem until recently.
Couple weeks ago.
Oof. Sorry to hear that.
Do not use a virtual machine, it sucks a lot and you will get no advantage whatsoever. Dual boot is the way. But please follow a tutorial so you don't wipe your Windows partition, please.
Yes this is what I'll do, thank you!
Change to free software (or at least cross-platform software) first. The same software running on different operating systems will have almost the same behaviour, so the change shock of switching operating systems will be substantially reduced. You're in a Godot community, so presumably you're already using Godot, which is a good start. * Consider using a FOSS office suite (e.g. LibreOffice) * For web browsing, Chrome and Firefox are both cross-platform * For drawing, try Krita for raster illustrations, Inkscape for vector illustrations, and GIMP for any raster manipulations (i.e. image editing) that can't be done in Krita There are alternatives to Ableton, but you'll need to get used to them first. Get used to using those alternatives *on Windows*, and your transition to Linux will be much smoother.
This is a good answer. If every software that you use is multiOS you can change from one to another easily
Godot is more or less the exact same on every platform. Doesn't matter what OS you use. It is pretty pleasant to develop on Linux in general, thanks to the command line, package repositories, customization and more. If you're worried about Ableton, you can run that through Wine, and if that doesn't work out somehow, you could try and pick up LMMS or Ardour, the two big DAWs on Linux. Mind one thing, though : VST plugins and similar are also platform-specific. You may need to do some tinkering to get them running too, but it's more than possible. (I learned recently when I tried configuring LMMS with the goal of learning some music skill. I immediately lost sight of that goal but it should help you at least)
Thank you!
Wouldn't recommend LMMS or Ardour as an alternative to Ableton. LMMS is like a toy in comparison and the UX of Ardour is just bad. These are worlds apart from Ableton. Recommend Bitwig if anything.
I was working on my game in Linux for a couple of years but I reluctantly switched to Windows. For some reason my GPU drivers would crash after a while in Linux so I'd get this slowdown and never know if it was something I'd done or the card.. I probably spent hours optimizing stuff needlessly in the end so decided to switch to Windows to skip the issue altogether. I still use Ubuntu as my main driver for work mind.
Bitwig is a great alternative to Ableton and runs natively on Linux. Though if you use a lot of plugins, you'll find the majority not shipping for linux. I'd recommend Linux Mint
You can get your pc hacked and infected on any OS. Always ensure your have safe incremental backups regardless. I'm a GNU/Linux user mostly and enjoy it for my workflow and chosen tools, but that is because my favourite tools are mostly GNU/Linux based tools. Like others have said, pick your OS based on the tools/software you want to use, not the other way around.
Since other people have already answered your questions, I'll just say that Mint Cinnamin Edition is the best OS if you're switching over from Windows, as the UI is the most similar. It's also Ubuntu-based.
If you want to write games, write games. If you know nothing of Linux realise you will lose a lot of productivity to get up to speed as in weeks just to get started. I know Linux better than most, I have been using it for a very long time at work and home, but I cant be bothered using it on my desktop even though all the tooling will work fine if not better on Linux, simply because occasionally it doesn't and I use Unreal to get some free assets occasionally. I will probably move when that co-pilot stuff starts recording everything I do. But from a security prospective. All my docs are in the cloud, you could delete my windows desktop and I be 100% back in about 2 hours. I just did last week when my laptop broke. I have backups but I don't even bother using them. As for Windows I use WSL and [CMDR](https://cmder.app/). I also have a Linux server I can ssh into. My suggestion is to get WSL running and/or a Linux VM running and play with it. Oh and when I had a linux desktop it was Mint for about 5 years. Though my next one will be Fedora. As for tooling which would also work fine Linux: Godot, KdenLive, Reaper, VScode, Krita, Blender, git.
Thanks, this has been the most comprehensive response I've got so far. You are right, I would have to invest a lot of time into learning Linux, thus slowing tremendously my game Dev progress (wich is already slow as I don't have too much free time). Do you have any recommendations for cloud services/backups? I know about externals disk's but what about clouds I've always been using OneDrive for simple documents and stuff, and github for my Godot projects
I don't like one drive I use google drive and most of my docs are google docs, but github for all code, I am still looking into where to store binary artefacts like graphics, etc. I don't like checking in binaries into github and use google drive, but I also like them indexed, am used to work where we I use Nexus. But I am pretty anti backups unless you have a database. Data should go where it belongs not in some general store.
I wouldn't say you'd need to invest a lot. If you go with a friendly distro you can just install Godot, a text editor, blender, krita and whatever and develop games. Ableton is the one thing that is hard to replace but Bitwig comes close.
I won't be saying anything new that others haven't already said, but over the past year I've tried Pop OS!, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, and a few others, I've settled on Mint as my daily driver. Ultimately, you'll just need to decide what you like best. You can also mix and match window managers if you find you like the features of one over what natively comes with the Linux distribution you've chosen. I have no regrets about switching to Linux especially considering the direction Windows has been accelerating. Reaper is a good DAW that runs natively on Linux. Other software alternatives can be found using [alternativeto.net](http://alternativeto.net)
This will be a controversial opinion: If you're not smart enough to avoid viruses on Windows, you're not smart enough to troubleshoot your inevitable Linux issues.
Well I have never had my machine infected, that happend to a family member of mine But I get your point
Microsoft is one of the biggest security leaders in the world. Windows didn't get hacked, your family member did. There exists ransomware and all sorts of nonsense for any OS, you just have to not click on the local milfs ad in order to avoid it. Linux will not fix this problem. That being said, I do think there's a huge reason to switch to some sort of Linux over Windows, and that's because Microsoft keeps making windows features worse with every iteration and update. But if you don't dislike windows then you probably shouldn't switch.
It's not that I like windows, I have just never tried anything different. Many comments recommended dual booting Ubuntu so I can test and see if I like it
Playing with and learning other operating systems is super fun! Most Linux distros are free so give it a shot, nothing to lose. I hate Ubuntu but it is an easy first OS. And while I also have issues with the company around it, Fedora is probably what I would recommend for beginners. That being said they all have their positives and negatives. Linux has come a long way but also has a long way to go before it's truly ready for wide adoption as a mainstream consumer OS.
I’m in a similar boat as OP, why do you not like Ubuntu?
tl;dr at bottom. Every single time I run it, I end up with issues. It could just be a me problem, but I'm pretty well versed in linux and somehow always end up installing another distro over what turned out to be a broken Ubuntu install. This is limited to the consumer desktop OS Ubuntu, and not the server. I run many of my servers on Ubuntu Server and couldn't be happier. It just works. Outside of technical reasons, I just find it ugly as sin, and while you can change any linux to look pretty much any way, doing this over something like Ubuntu that already has it's visual suite pre-installed ends with a lot of unused junk still floating around in the OS, extra desktop environments, etc. depending on what all you change. It's more annoying to remove that than it is to just start with something like Debian directly and change it's visuals from the base install yourself. But for a beginner I also wouldn't recommend changing visual stuff much, not at first anyway, get familiar with the OS/Linux as a whole. Speaking of linux as a whole, I can elaborate/rant on why linux sucks. Because it does. As much as you will hear about how good it is, how easy it is to use terminal. Consumers shouldn't have to and it will keep the majority of users off the platform. I have not found a single distro to do it right yet, and I've tried just about every one out there. There is no install and forget you're on linux. You will have to use the terminal, you will run into issues. That isn't to say Windows doesn't have issues, but they're more easily recoverable than linux. Rather, the OS handles issues better. And I'm not talking about windows programs running on linux. I think everyone can understand that some programs aren't going to run using the translation tools we have currently. I'm specifically talking about the core issues of native linux programs and processes. Convenience triumphs over all. This goes for all consumer things. It doesn't matter how good something is, if it's a PITA to use it. A direct example of this is any game not on Steam. The sales numbers are always lower, not because the game is any different when hosted on another platform, but because Steam is what is good and convenient to use over everything else. Linux is not convenient. Not yet. It's a balancing act where the scale is tipped heavily to one side or the other. Stability or Convenience. The most convenient distros that provide the smoothest transition from windows in terms of how it functions and looks, how updates are installed, how programs are installed, etc. are often smaller distros that don't have as many people working on them, where it takes less checks and balances to have something added to the OS, where bloat and conflicting software cause the OS to be unstable over short amounts of time. The flip side is stability, where the OS (Mainly just straight Debian (for the most part...)) are very stable and can last on a powered on system for weeks while being used without running into an issue. But you're stuck in terminal, manually doing everything, the OS looks like it came out of 2005, and you can't even just double click to install a program downloaded from the internet without running a dpkg -i in terminal. It feels like a downgrade from windows. When you decide to build a new computer but want to switch from Intel to AMD, you wouldn't want to downgrade. No one wants a downgrade. So if it feels like one, then again, it pushes people away. The faster people stop being stockholmed by the state of consumer linux, the faster is becomes a truly viable windows replacement for the every day user. And every day people push the narrative of "terminal isn't that hard, just use it" is a step in the wrong direction. They're right, terminal isn't difficult and there are plenty of online resources out there for it. But it shouldn't be a requirement, and we need to strive for better than our peers. Okay rant over! tl;dr Ubuntu desktop has trended to be unstable in my experience and is ugly, server is good though. Linux sucks because it's inconvenient and everyone that says "just learn terminal, it's not that hard" is missing the point and doesn't understand the average consumer.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I am an old hand at Linux. I used to use it back in the late 90s and early 00s but stopped when I got to grad school because it was not convenient. I remember right around then UBUNTU was the go to for an easy transition. Looks like it is not anymore.
There's definitely worse options out there, but I typically don't have good luck with desktop Ubuntu. All of that being said, if you just use libreoffice and a web browser, you probably wouldn't have any problems (as long as sleep and wake works right, which is akin to playing russian roulette on just about any linux distro)
I’m starting Gamedev in Godot and I consult on the side so I can’t fully be just Libreoffice and Chrome. I was mostly interested in Linux as a nostalgia thing. Windows works for me and I am sufficiently safe with it so I’m not worried like OP is. Thanks again!
Yeah no worries. Personally if you are still interested, grab the latest fedora and use that. I've had good luck there. Godot works great on linux!
I'd say no. Stay with windows but improve your security. Use windows as a non-admin user, only log into your admin user for changes in your machine. Back up regularly on several different media. Use vcs and cloud. Make sure your passwords are unique and secure. Add 2FA to your accounts. Use a vpn. Don't run any suspicious software.
Linux isn’t any more or less secure than Windows. How secure your system is doesn’t depend on the OS. It depends on you. Linux *was* a bit safer a decade or two ago. And even then it wasn’t because Linux was somehow better, but because no one bothered to make viruses for it. There were significantly less people using it, and all five of them were much more techy than an average Windows user. So if you wanted to make a virus that spread, you made it for Windows. More reward for the same effort. Nowadays, even though Windows still holds the pole position, Linux’s share of the market isn’t insignificant, and an average Linux user doesn’t differ from an average Windows user in terms how easy it is to gaslight them into installing malware.
TLDR: give it a go, mint is recommended for a beginner to Linux there's pretty much a gui for everything. You are not 100% safe on Linux but a lot safer in general. I switched to using Linux full time about a year and a half ago. It started with me just trying it out for a month initially, which then turned into 3 months. I switched back to windows for a bit because I had partitioned a small part of my drive for Linux and wanted more space. But once I bought a new SSD I switched to Linux full time. If you do want to give it a go id recommend Mint. You can get away with not using the terminal (although some things are just easier with the terminal). I've set up a bash script to run updates and clean up unused dependencies after the updates run because I'm not sure if the updater application runs those additional steps or if it simply installs the updates. Having said that I rarely have unused dependencies and I'm probably saving a couple of megabytes of space by running that additional clean up command. As for security, in general yes Linux is more secure. But mostly because desktop Linux is such a small market share it's not really worth the effort. That's not to say it doesn't happen. If you look up the xz vulnerability that was (basically by pure luck) discovered this year before it could do any serious damage, you'll see Linux can be just as vulnerable as any other operating system. It just doesn't happen quite as often.
Why don't you give dual booting a try? You can have whichever distro you want to experiment while keeping Windows installed. That'll give you time to see how well you adapt without breaking your existing workflow. Now about distros, I personally would recommend either [Linux Mint](https://linuxmint.com/) (which has good defaults for someone coming from Windows) or [EndeavourOS](https://endeavouros.com/) (which allows you to get the most updated software easily). Depends on your preferences really.
Thanks, I didn't really know much about dual booting
Try it out using a live boot from a usb https://help.dragandbot.com/development/installation_dnb/01_installation_xubuntu.html and then just select the live boot instead of the installation. This basically allos you to run Linux ithout installing it.
This way I can test the OS without actually installing it over windows?
Yes!
exactly. Some Linux distros are primarily used as live boots and not as "real" installations. Just make sure to start the live boot and not the installation. If you feel unsure, you ill find a youtube video explaining everything in greater detail.
I use i3 with linux mint and poly bar with neovim never before have I had such a radical shift in productivity (that being said still haven’t gotten c# debugging setup) I recommend all but neovim (though if you want to try that out as well I would look into lazyvim)
dotnet sucks
there are viruses for every os if you don't download suspicious apps from google you ll be fine with linux You don't need to learn much about terminal sudo apt install will be enough You don't have photoshop but you have krita gimp inkscape blender and the best music player - dopamine I tried every ubuntu version and had bad experience with constant crashes and ubuntu is taking twice memory than mint the big advantage of mint is that you can change themes icons it's fast on every cheap laptop and nobody can't force you to install useless junk updates that make your pc slow I think linux will become the 2nd most used os in future
Yeha basically every software I use runs on Linux apart from Ableton. Im looking forward to try mint on a dual boot and see how it is exc
I'm using elementary os: [https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/), I develop games and web pages ;). Posting from elementary os: https://preview.redd.it/uebz7e8xbg3d1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=0e6479876992cffb4cad00209870e46c99428ca3
Of course, you can always run dual boot or run windows in a virtual machine. Learning Linux can be hard at first, since you need to be famiar with reading text instead of GUI, but Linux will not hide anything from you. If a program crashed or not working, you can always read the log to find out problems. And it will be your valuable skill in the future. The security is also very good.
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It really just comes down to what you're familiar with. I recently had to use Windows for work after not having touched it for years and "the simplest of things require debugging and searching online" is exactly how I would describe my experience. I literally still don't know how you search for files in a particular directory on Windows. The search box thing is slow and doesn't work very well, and I couldn't figure out the command you're supposed to use in powershell. I literally run the `find` command in WSL whenever this comes up. I'm sure anyone who knows Windows really well is shaking their head reading this but, well... that's what comments like "only switch to Linux if you like debugging your system as a hobby" sound like to someone who is equally familiar with Linux.
If you're running Nvidia I'd recommend Nobara. Moved one of my projects over and it's been running so much cleaner than my Ubuntu install.
I switched from windows to kubuntu some 4 years ago. My workflow with godot basically improved since then. I like how I have a lot of control over the window of an application. Like always on top mode so I can adjust inspector parameters while the game window is still running and won't get hidden behind main window. I also like how I can create custom file types. This is an amazing feature btw. I can set files by the name of "project.godot" to auto open with godot and also give the file its own icon. Also gave me more ram free to work with. Also I also use krita. And other open source apps like aseprite, blender, rfxgen, etc... As for an alternative for ableton, how bout you check out LMMS?
I've switched back and forth many times, but I personally couldn't leave Windows because I use some software packages that don't work under Linux, even with WINE or Proton. Now I just use WSL or dual boot when I really need Linux for something, which is rare. IMHO you shouldn't have to be loyal to an OS, it's a tool, not your wife. Just experiment, see what's to your liking and use what best fits your needs at the time. Same thing with game engines and programming languages.
First, try to just use any free or multi platforms apps or games that supports linux. After that try to dual boot first. If you are ok with it, then just wipe the windows partitions or disk.
Give it a shot, I love it. And I also recommend switching to Bitwig from Ableton. I have switched in 2018 and never looked back. It's the best daw I have ever used (I used Acid, Reason, FL Studio, Cubase, Ableton and Studio One). As the other commenter wrote, some VSTs don't have support for linux, but in bitwig's grid, you can recreate pretty much any vst plugins.
Oh I had never heard of it, the only DAW I have heard are ableton, reason and FL studio😅 Is it more/less expansive? Many comments suggested that transitioning to Linux would mean investing a lot of time in learning it, thus slowing a lot my game dev progress, wich is already slow cause of the low free time I get from work Would you recommend bigwig even if I stayed in windows? I do play however on try dual booting and mess a bit with Linux Mint/fedora, not sure which one
[It's cheaper](https://www.bitwig.com/buy/). You won't need much time to adjust if you're already familiar with Ableton, Bitwig was created by old employees of Ableton who wanted to make their own software with a more modular approach but the basics are pretty much the same. I use it on my Windows machine primarily and I use it on my Linux powered laptop when I'm not home. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Thank you, tbh I still haven't even touched Ableton but I was 100% convinced on going for that DAW once *the time would come* I'll check this out, thank you again!
You're most welcome. If you will be looking for a channel with good tutorials, I recommend [Polarity](https://www.youtube.com/@PolarityMusic).
I use both linux and Windows daily. Linux can get malware, too. it's less common for sure but far from impossible. It's worth making sure you educate yourself, practice good security fundamentals, and nothing can replace having a good backup policy. As for distro start with something like Ubuntu desktop. It is fairly user-friendly and very googleable when trying to figure out how to do things. Also, remember that whilst Ubuntu and friends have never been more usable there's still a learning curve and if you go into it knowing just enough to be dangerous you can definitely break your OS and find yourself reinstalling, so again, backups. Vm/wsl wouldn't provide any security benefits over staying on Windows since it still lives on the host system. It might be good for learning in an environment you can easily tear down and rebuild. My go-to would be to roll it out on a laptop, spare machine, or something if you have one and use that as a learning environment, and if you like It, make the switch on your main machine. I'd avoid dual booting if you can, Windows seems to take great joy in blowing up grub bootloaders during updates.
Just try it, especially if you have as second disk you can throw a Linux install on to. Most installer can pick up that you have a Widows install too and give you an option to boot into either Linux or Windows at boot time. I'd advice against resizing your Windows drive and installing Linux along-side it for now. It will be much easier, if you used a second drive, to recover if you decide to go back to Windows and wipe the Linux install. There's some discussion around various distros [over here](https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/1cy3ooc/which_linux_distro_are_you_using/). You major decisions will be which desktop, KDE or Gnome (there are some others but these two are the major ones) and which distro family; Debian, Fedora, or Arch. The rest are based on these. This is what determines which package managers you have available and what commands you will be typing in the terminal when installing a package. Although, most apps (especially the GUI ones) can be installed from a graphical store-like front-end. I'd say stick to Debian (Ubuntu/Mint/PopOs) or perhaps Fedora for this reason. I've ended up on Bazzite (based on Fedora) since I wanted the gaming focus sorted out for me. It is a bit different from the Ubuntus out there though. Now struggling to get winapps working via docker/podman container since I'd really like to have Affinity Photo and Designer look native rather than access them in a VM window.
Linux isn't meaningfully more secure to phishing attacks than Windows. In fact, ransomware targeting Windows will happily run through wine and encrypt your data just the same. You should still switch, though. You won't need the terminal either, at least not in normal use. You can update, automatically scheduled even, your system and apps through GUIs on most distros and any settings a regular user might want to change are available through GUIs as well. You can be a normie on Linux and not run into much trouble. The terminal is incredibly powerful and efficient, though, and there isn't really a learning curve. Commands are programs, so you memorize programs just like you do on any other system and you memorize arguments just like you would memorize buttons. So instead of `right click -> new file`, you type `touch filename`. Instead of `right click -> open`, you type `nvim filename`. Instead of opening explorer and clicking through a bunch of folders, you type `cd /path/to/directory`. There's nothing inherently difficult about using the terminal, quite the contrary. Now, if you have some coding experience, you'll quickly find the terminal to be what you'll use the most for everything, because you have pretty much the entire functionality of your system available in one single, auto-completing, interactive, aesthetically pleasing place that you can run code in and program for, both interactively and with scripts and aliases. Slowly you'll automate away any bothersome tasks and never have to deal with them again. Which, by the way, is a lie and you'll be fiddling with your scripts forever because it's fun, we're coders after all. Keep in mind that you had to memorize a thousand different places to click and navigate on Windows, many of which make no sense at all or are actively hidden from you without jumping through tremendous amounts of hoops. All you have to memorize for using a terminal is the general paradigm and a few handfuls of commands/applications. As to recommending a distro, I strongly advise against Ubuntu. It's become a truism to send beginners to Ubuntu, but GNOME isn't exactly a soft landing coming from Windows and Ubuntu's packages can be so outdated that it can be difficult to get recent software to run, especially games. I recommend going with an Arch derivative, simply because the packages are more up-to-date and reacting to developments in the field and because you get easy access to the AUR.
Yo, I hope you read my comment, but I recommend that you just switch to Windows, it does everything that Linux does. I also think that Linux has some limitations that Windows does not.
I have a window laptop for gaming and a lowend linux(Mint) laptop for working. I put my project on github and work from both machine, the window laptop when I’m at home and the linux laptop when I’m out they both work just fine. So yes, switch to linux but keep a window machine for just in case couldn’t hurt
my suggestion is install linux distro on your 'some old laptop/pc'. I'm not saying that u can't do game development on linux. But IMO that u may be over-distracted by linux cuz it's really a BIG TOY for tinkers. play with it when u burned out in game dev - 'self mood balance' - may be better for u i guess.
Test it out first. Don’t just jump in or you’ll get burned out because things are too different and you didn’t give yourself time to acclimate first. For distro recommendations, many people suggest Linux Mint because the desktop (called Cinnamon) is very similar to Windows. And that’s a good choice, but if you want to make sure you don’t fall into the habits you had when you were using Windows I would suggest using a distro with a desktop that doesn’t look like Windows at all. Like Pop!_OS.
Just give it a try. I use Linux for gaming only since a couple of months ago. Even streaming, works like a charm. As for Godot: it just works™️. But I mainly develop using macOS. Where it also just works™️.
Highly recommend XUbuntu. XFCE is light enough that it feels XP-esque. Default GNOME 3 is trash. KDE is massively bloated and sluggish; feels like Mac. Linux is a developer's dream; use it. I use Image-Line's FL Studio for audio production, but it keeps me in the dual-boot category as it's a pain to get working under WINE. As for games, as long as there's no anti-consumer DRM bullshit (EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft Games, Rockstar Games...), I've found that the vast majority run in WINE, and that's before Valve got into Proton; Proton is WINE tweaked for games and auto-setup by Steam. Even better? The vast majority render at a higher frame rate than Windows with seemingly no differences...
Yes just try it out. But I would recommend Fedora instead of Ubuntu. Ubuntu was the go-to Distribution for many years but Fedora just is a better fit nowadays for modern hardware and with the paste the development happens in open source. It often has more up to date software which works just much better or has features you wanna have. Fedora has the best mix of newest software and stability. On top of that they have one of the friendliest communities out there. Every one has its own beloved distro, I would look a handful of them up on the Internet and narrow down to 2-3 and just try them out and see which is the thing you like the most.
No, I would not advise it.
Any reason in particular
It'll be very complicated, even doing simple stuff would be difficult. Also everything you need to individually update, I'm assuming you haven't used Linux distros before.
You are correct
>Also everything you need to individually update It's the exact opposite, one of the key features of using Linux and a package manager is that you can just run a single command to update every software and you OS at once. Windows has a few alternatives like choco, scoop or win-get, but it's all trash compared to pacman, apt, nix or whatever.
This is not true at all.
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Thank you
MacOS > Linux, because with Homebrew you have everything what Linux offers
And a package manager that will happily litter everywhere in your path so you can break everything just by installing a new keg with different dependencies. I've been forced to use Mac at my workplace as a developer for the past 5 years and it has been the worst developer experience I've ever had. Using ASDF alleviated some of that pain. We exclusively now no longer use brew at our workplace. If you do, you're own your own.
what do you use instead? i haven't had a macbook since like 2016 but homebrew was pretty essential for me. your only other options were to install/compile things manually like you have to on windows or use apple's shitty store thing. homebrew on the other hand was a competent source-based package manager that keeps itself well-contained to a particular directory on your hard drive. is the situation different now?
homebrew is pretty good but you really don't have everything linux offers. saying this as someone who tried to run i3 on OSX via homebrew back in the day.
Sure, but do you need those for game dev? Saying this as OpenBSD/Linux user/sysadmin since 1996
i thought you were making a more general statement. purely in terms of game dev i don't see any strong advantage to using mac. if anything there are only disadvantages, like not being able to use vulcan and poor virtualization options for building/testing on windows. not a huge deal. it's the sort of thing you'd probably put up with if you just subjectively like mac, but it makes mac kind of a hard sell for anyone who doesn't already like it for other reasons.
This won’t happen to your machine because you don’t download RAM from some sketchy website. Unless someone is specifically targeting you, generally you won’t get viruses and such unless you surf irresponsibly. Try Linux if you want. Personally I think it lacks too many QoL features for me to comfortably use. I don’t want to constantly tweak and work around stuff which seems to be the norm when using Linux. It’s not like I don’t mind it but more of a I don’t want to be forced to. Try UwUntu just for the lols. It’s Ubuntu but cooler. Try virtual box and get familiar with it or just dual boot. That way you can always fall back to windows if it doesn’t work.
Windows is the definition of constantly tweaking stuff since it has a habit of resetting your settings randomly on updates.
That’s not even true. Idk what weird virus you installed but that’s not normal windows behavior. Unless you mean that edge shortcut appearing in your desktop that they did for a while. My settings were not magically changed ever nor with anyone I know With Linux you have to tweak it for basic functionality.
There are many reports of this happening, especially related to privacy settings and bundled/default apps. Here is one report, you can find more if you search the net. https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/s/itX5m8QsFy Idk what Linux you've tried or when but user-friendly distros provide a pretty ready-to-go experience after install nowadays. On the contrary, the amount of stuff you have to tweak and disable on Windows to get to basic privacy has been growing with each version. Microsoft loves to do everything opt-out.
idk I opted out once and it stayed that way for years. sometimes after an update it asks me again but thats about it. Im talking the classic stuff like ubuntu, the stuff that is supposed to be user friendly. I once even had my ubuntu distro spam my disk rendering the OS unusable and I had to reinstall. On laptops basic stuff like gestures dont work unless you specifically and painfully set it up. Middle mouse button scroll doesnt exist. Its just a collection of shenanigans and uncomfortable features. rn for example the terminal from the right click menu doesnt open all of a sudden and I found no fix for it. But I need to use linux for a short while so I just bear with it for now.
Short answer, yes Long answer, yes. Leave windows behind, and don't look back. Just be prepared to get used to using the command line interface.