How To Switch To Linux For Beginners… 

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Instructions unclear the rain is blowing in from where the windows were

Why are mutuhar titles so alarming😭

Thanks Mutahar. I am a 55 year old woman and know NOTHING about Linux. Have a laptop from 2012 on which I have now installed it. Just to try. If all goes well, my main computer will get a turn too. That you could explain it so well that a 55 year old woman could understand it. You are a genius.

i work in a retail setting, and our IT department made a custom distribution of linux for our desk computers. its got custom built applications to serve as our POS machine and our timeclock portal, but we can also watch youtube videos when we're bored :P

I broke my window. Does that work?

5:37 basic overview of what Linux and distributions are 7:20 downloading linux mint and picking desktop environment 9:10 flashing it to a USB with balena etcher 10:18 how to boot from the USB 12:24 going through the installer 15:24 installing the proper graphics drivers 16:48 linux mint setup screen (change theme, setup system backups, updating the system's packages) 21:05 overview of the desktop 22:13 how to install an alternative web browser (any program really) from the developers website 23:25 how to install an alternative web browser (and other programs) from the package manager (the recommended method) 26:20 installing steam 28:13 installing wine (dependency of lutris, used to run windows programs under linux) 29:03 installing lutris for running non steam games and launchers 29:25 using web browsers 30:27 setting up steam to use proton for windows games and running games, and how to install anticheat from steam 33:18 using lutris to install game launchers and games 35:50 where help?

Wow Linux Mint has come a long way since I tried it a decade ago. Slapped a new drive in my PC and followed Muta's advice and I'm so happy, everything I've tried so far works and I've no reason to boot back into Windows. It automatically mounted my main drive so I can still access all my files on Windows too! So hyped

There's a few things to keep in mind: · Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, etc.) won't have any sort of hardware acceleration available on Linux most of the time, only Firefox has that, so if your PC is slower and struggles playing videos at higher resolutions and/or 60 fps on Linux, that might be why. You either live with the lack of acceleration or use Firefox. Don't expect that to change soon either, it's an issue that has been going on for years and it doesn't seem it will be addressed anytime soon. · Printers are a hit or miss, and while most of them are covered, if you're unlucky to have a printer without drivers for Linux, you're SOL, you won't be able to use it at all. · If you're a musician, audio production is a joke on Linux since there's no VST support, so you're just going to have to rely on what your DAW offers you. I'm also unsure about how well or bad audio interfaces work under Linux. · If you're a streamer, keep in mind that some stuff like Streamlabs Chatbot or MixItUp won't work on Linux, or even troubleshooting stuff for Twitch, even with Wine (last I tried a few years back, at least). I'm pretty sure there's some OBS plugins that won't work on Linux either, so if you use a more complex setup, that might be an issue. · Wine and Proton, being things that translate calls from one system to the other will take an important amount of resources, which will cause your games to run at lower framerates under Linux. If you have a fast machine, it will probably be unnoticeable or barely noticeable, but if you have a mid-range PC or something older, your experience gaming on Linux might be a bit poorer than on Windows. · If you're used to Adobe stuff, forget about it, you will have to look for alternatives. DaVinci Resolve is a great alternative to Premiere Pro, but for Photoshop there isn't anything that comes close, GIMP is barebones in comparison, and you might have issues getting your drawing pad to work with it, if it works at all. All in all, I'd recommend you to maybe get a cheaper, smaller SSD, get Linux installed on it and give it a spin with your software and hardware of choice first before you make the commitment of switching, try doing everything you do on Windows on Linux and see if it works out for you. If you don't do much beyond browsing and single player gaming and your machine is well specced, you should be fine, but there's things you're gonna have to keep in mind, and while you learn this stuff, you'll find yourself googling stuff and browsing Reddit A LOT looking for answers, and you're going to have to use the dreaded terminal sooner than later, so it's gonna be time consuming at first. Good luck!

At this point Mutas titles spike my anxiety when it’s something small, he could have a title like “you’re gonna get cancer” and it’s about a ultra rare almost non existent threat and I’m over here stressin

I fully switched to Linux 2 weeks ago and ever since then I've had a growing urge to announce that fact to random people

This video is becoming even more relevant by the second MY PSU IS HERE. I'M JOINING THE FUCKING LINUX BROOTHERHOOD WRAHHHH 🦅

Already deleted, been on Linux Mint since 21.1 and I've had a much better time with updates. I can update my system while I play games, and it has never forced me to restart unexpectedly.

Muta you should do a RU-vid series where you go through from start to finish how to fully set up your PC for people who don’t know how, like a straightforward, and no nonsense walk-through of how to set up your PC and how to operate all the different systems within it

We makin it to 5% with this one!!!🔥🔥🔥

I made the switch to Linux today. Thank you, Mutahar!

Up until 4 years ago, my uni (Informatics faculty) used to give out Mac laptops to Bachelor students; then for some reason they had to switch, and got Dell's with Ubuntu; completely switched almost all my workflows / games on that, and use my old Windows laptop only for Microsoft / wirk related stuff. Sadly this year they seem to have switched back to Mac :-(

Bro, what's gonna stop the wind, rain, and the birbs from getting inside my home? I need my windows.

“Delete Windows Now” What is it now Muta?

I’ve been daily driving Fedora for about a month now. As a life long Windows user, and someone who now works as a Systems Administrator, I am loving it. The customization alone is amazing. Not to mention when something goes wrong or doesn’t work, I’m actually learning useful professional skills in the process of fixing it. Still have a nice Windows laptop that can run games that aren’t well rated in Proton.

I just built a new rig yesterday for local LLMs. Great timing!

You heard him delete system 32! Edit: damn most likes I've had, so glad I got your systems sorted ;)

I just deleted my windows and now there's rainwater in my living room.

Been using Linux since your "Poor Shamed computer" video! I'm never gonna install windows on my main computer never again! Thanks to you enlightening me! Love ya.

A while ago, you posted a video about how you made your computer "frankenstein or billy" can't remember. I followed your guide, and every sonce have been daily driving linux. So, thanks. I moved away from manjoro into arch. Also pursuing a career in computer science.

Actual title: "How to setup Linux + Tips for beginners" For some reason Mutas falling down the rabbit hole of baiting people with the titles now

12:40 for non English users. Pick English as a language anyway because many programs are not fully translated and your programs will print some parts in native language and some in english. Formats like date can be kept native. Also if the error messages will be in english then it will be much easier to search for help online.

Thanks Muta. Been on the fence about switching but this video made me do it. Also been following you on X but had to follow here too as your content is gold.

There are a couple of things in this video I want to expand on (and sometimes correct): 1. While distro choice nowadays does not matter as much as it had mattered 15 years ago, there is still one meaningful difference between them, and that's how close is that distro to upstream, or, in other words, how fresh its kernel and software is. Some distros are more conservative with their software selection to provide more "stable" experience (although stable doesn't necessarily means bug-free), some are "bleeding edge", aiming to provide the latest versions of software available, and a lot of them are kind of in-between. Linux Mint tends to be on the "stable" end of this axis, and while it is good at what it tries to do (which is to be a safe, reliable and easy to use Linux distro that requires very little maintenance) it is not always the best choice when it comes to newest hardware or gaming. Sometimes a new game isn't properly working because you need some newest piece of software, that isn't available in official repositories (of course, you can always find a way, like adding a third-party repo, or downloading tarball binaries directly, but sometimes it can open a whole can of worms, like resolving dependencies conflicts, that could make even more experienced Linux users shudder). In my opinion, bleeding edge distros like Fedora, Arch Linux or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed are much better choices for gaming, despite having some downsides, like having a bit higher entry threshold or requiring more system maintenance. After all, there's a reason why SteamOS for Steam Decks since version 3.0 went from being Debian-based to being Arch-based. 2. Xfce is no longer the best option for "weaker systems", nowadays its resource usage is more or less on par with KDE Plasma 5, and KDE is usually considered one of the heaviest desktop environments out there. Besides, I disagree with Muta's definition of a "weaker system": if your PC is "from like a decade ago" it doesn't mean it's too weak. Basically, judging from my experience, rule of thumb is that if your PC is capable of running Windows 7 without any trouble, then you could run any Linux distro with any desktop environment. Only if you have a mid-2000s era machine or something similar in terms of horsepower, then it's officially a "weaker system" and you could start bothering with excessive resource usage by looking at things such as LXQt or window managers. Although those kind of machines are probably falling out of the scope for this video, because for the most part to game on Linux you've GOT TO HAVE a Vulkan-supporting GPU, otherwise your experience is going to be rather limited. 3. You don't necessarily need an >=8 GB USB drive, most of the Linux distros provide minimal "netinstall" images, usually those have a size of 300-700 MB and will download any necessary packages from the servers during the installation process. Of course, you do need a fast and stable Internet connection for that. But there's also an upside, because network installer will usually download and install the latest available versions of software, so you don't have to do a system upgrade later, like at 20:00. 4. For Windows users I would also recommend Rufus, it's pretty easy to use (although it's not that straightforward as Etcher), but it's also could be invaluable if you're creating a bootable USB for installation on a non-UEFI BIOS system (basically, that's most of the PCs released before 2011). 5. 12:20 Well, LiveCDs long ago stopped being unique to Linux, because since Windows 8 there's such thing as WindowsToGo that allows you to install a full-blown Windows on a USB drive; and as for WinPE, those were available since the release of Windows XP. So, it's kind of incorrect, but it doesn't really matter in the context of this video. 6. 16:11 Opensource drivers are pretty much work in progress for newer Nvidia GPUs and nowhere near "kind of there" for their older GPUs (and probably never will be). Also, "the only tradeoff" wouldn't be just ideological, because proprietary Nvidia drivers are notorious for breaking stuff and causing troubles. 7. 21:25 It's not like "you will NEED the terminal" per se, it's just some thing are much easier to do in terminal then in GUI. 8. 23:00 Yum is being literally dead for the past 10 years, it got replaced with DNF in Fedora/RHEL ecosystem at 2015, and openSUSE uses Zypper for as long as I can remember. 9. 24:53 'Course it is a fair bit, because you're installing a Flatpak version of it, with all of the dependencies. Try installing Emacs via Flatpak, it would pull a ~1.5 GB of dependencies for a text editor. 10. Wow, Wine 6.0.3 non-staging in 2024, this is freaking old. That's why stable distros are usually not the best choice for gaming purposes. Although Flatpaks and Lutris are helping to mitigate that in some way. 11. 35:46 Well, not "everything". For example, HDR is still sort of non-existent on Linux. But overall, this is a pretty decent entry-level video, although it downplays some things a bit. Gaming on Linux is mostly good right now, but it's not perfect. And for using Linux in general you WILL have to change at least some of the "muscle memory" mentioned in 38:37, because otherwise things won't always be rosy for you.

Fear mongering title scared me lmao

We deleting windows with this one

After trying to make Windows 11 work for more than 6 months I got mad, wiped my SSD and spent 2 sleepless nights installing and configuring Arch. More than a year passed since that moment I booted into MATE. This system NEVER betrayed me.

3:00 the fact that neither of my pc had windows preinstalled but i still had windows on every of my pc lol😂

Being an old Linux user, and one who closet uses Mint, I was screaming at the screen 4 seconds ahead of Muta, telling him what to use and do, for each task, and then he did it. I am fully convinced my input made all the difference.

Muta, easiest way to guide users to BIOS screen is (at the windows lock screen) hold down shift and click on restart and when the advanced boot menu shows up click UEFI options. Way easier than guessing the right hotkey at boot.

I just asked for this guide a few weeks ago! Tysm muta, youre awesome!

One very important thing: Disable bitlocker encryption on windows BEFORE doing any of this if you intend to dual boot. If you abort installation midway because you need to do this (you can't dual boot without doing it) you will brick the iso of whatever version of mint you're trying to install. It's easy enough to fix, just go back and download the previous version of the OS and update once you've installed, but it's still a pain. And since microsoft decided to enable bitlocker encryption by default on windows 11 now it's a problem people are going to run in to.

Once Windows 10 is sunset and Windows 11 is the only Windows, this video will become incredibly relevant. Just wish the title would actually reflect what it's about...

Thanks man, leaving windows feels like moving out of a house that you've lived in for most of your life. It can be a little scary taking that leap, but your guides make the process that much more simpler unlike moving out of a real house xD

Great timing and great entry-level tutorial! I'd love to see a series, maybe playing with the idea of building good practices in easy distros like Mint in order to prepare to move to Arch.

Just got a framework laptop and wanted to dive into Linux using this. Followed your guide the setup was super easy to do. Thank you so much for the guide Muta.

Threw a chair out my window, what next

Sadly, I can't delete Windows... because I already replaced it with Linux years ago.

This is exactly what I was looking for, Thank you!!

I have been intersted in having Linux on a USB for some time now. Never used Linux or have any advanced computer knowledge. I hesitate to go through this quest, I feel like I'm going to hit a wall as soon as I start clicking. This video helped me get some courage, thanks mate

Note : There is a new open source Vulkan driver called NVK for Nvidia(Turing and later) GPUs available in Mesa 24, it is Vulkan 1.3 conformant, the driver isn't made by Nvidia, it uses the "nouveau" kernel module and with the GSP firmware(Turing and later) you can have good performance because of reclocking now working(GPUs older than Turing architecture can't be reclocked because Nvidia hasn't released the firmware for it).

Thanks, Muta. I'm going to slowly ease into Linux Mint and when Win 10 Support ends next year I will wholly switch over to Linux.

As someone who was just looking for this exact video but couldn't find it due to the title, thank you for changing it only after I took forever to find it lol

People buy consoles, other than exclusives, because it's simple and doesn't require any knowledge. A step above that is a Windows PC where you need to know to replace parts, setup settings and optimize performance. And then there's Linux, it requires even more knowledge to setup, plus not all apps support Linux, which I'm sure you can bypass, but it again requires even more knowledge. That's the way I see why less people use Linux, I personally reside in the middle, on the basic PC Windows setup.

I started using Linux in middle school because I didn't want to pay $100 for Windows. eventually I realized you didn't have to register it, and I dual booted from then on. About 4 years ago however, my windows partition corrupted itself. I gave up on Windows and never looked back

You should title the video better so even non-subscribers can find this useful piece of content.

Happy to have been a part of moving up to 4%, switching within the last few years and LEAVING WINDOWS BEHIND! Just hoping HDR support will come soon, as I still have to switch back to for the occasional game or best experience, though I am able to spend 95% of my time running Linux. Also had no idea GOG Galaxy would run under Linux... had been installing each manually. Learn something every day!

Love the way you explain everything, will try linux for myself. Thanks allot! Subbed!

My very first experience with Linux Mint was installing it onto a Lenovo Ideapad Z575 that I've had since 2012; it has a measly 1.9 Ghz dual core processor and became practically unusable by having Windows 10 forcefully installed onto its HDD. Despite its age and the hardware limitations, after installing Linux Mint with Cinnamon onto a fresh SSD (and later maxing out the memory from 4 GB to 16 GB) in the IdeaPad, it essentially breathed new life into it and I now use it as my work computer. While it can be slow when under intense load, like opening up a bunch of browser tabs all at once, it easily competes with any modern Chromebook, all while keeping this laptop I've had since middle school out of a landfill. Since then, I've completely migrated over to Linux and never looked back.

Perfect timing. Windows 11 crashed 3 times today during a stream. I've about had it since that's 5 crashes since last week. I'm going to try duel booting first and see how that goes.

If linux is really slow and you can’t find out why and you are on an Ubuntu based distribution, try, going into settings about and see if automatic updates is turned on. I would suggest turning this setting off.

Muta, love the enthusiasm, you need to do a Part 2. OpenRazer and stuff to get the peripherals working in a windows-like state and then pipewire to get Atmos replacement. Thats been the big thing for me. I know these things are pretty easily done but if you made a video setting it up it would really go a long way to Linux Adoption. Also we need to get on discords ass to add screen sharing to linux. i love streaming my games to friends and cant do that yet :/

I switched to Linux 4 days ago, I am super happy with my change and love it, I can game and stream and do all the things I love doing. I went with Nobara and joined their discord, there has been no elitism that o have seen yet, everyone I’ve met in the Nobara Linux community have been super helpful and accepting of a noob like me. Another good thing I like about Nobara is it comes with all the gaming / streaming tools on it , wine , proton , lutris, steams , obs… and more.

I think that linux mint is quite literally the perfect distro. It's stable, fast, begginer friendly but still open enough for experts and it is one of the only "bigger" linux companies that isn't closed source, creepy or spying (canonical, redhat etc.)

With steam's proton I haven't needed windows outside of work in years.

I'm so glad this guide exists. So many other guides claim to be aimed towards beginners and then the guide brings out the terminal and they start coding, changing everything about their desktop environment. If I didn't watch this video first, I wouldn't have switched to Linux.

Instruction unclear, punched and broke literally every window in the apartment, it's kinda cold here now.

It’s all fun and games until you don’t boot for a few months, and then update everything at once.

"Is Linux legal or illegal" lol that one cracked me up

Inspired me to start a dual boot with Linux and Windows (R6 and other multiplayer games), have wanted to do for years but you helped me on that path! To years of Linux!

I finally got around to installing Linux in a dual-boot scenario about a week ago. I was amazed by how good gaming on Linux is now. I'd heard it was easy and games ran well. I didn't expect running games in Proton to work better than in Windows natively.

I will always appreciate the fact that SOG got me into VMs and Linux, thanks brother hope you having a good one!

i didnt even realize youtube could reload the title as you watch until i started watching this. why has there already been like 5 titles for this video already 😭

I don't have a ton of Linux experience, but I would recommend Mint for those moving from Windows. It's the most "plug and play" main distro, and it's very stable.

I don't have a good set up rn, but I truly appreciate this. I've always wanted to try Linux, but was anxious for all the things you touched on. 100% watching this video when I get a new pc up an running

Just installed Linux Mint on a 2nd computer I recently built thanks to videos like yours. Microshaft trying to push everyone towards the absolute failure that has been Windows 11 and implementing real-time spyware was the last straw for me. I'd been curious about Linux for many years and my only concern was whether I'd be able web browse efficiently and play my games and I can do both so the timing was right. I'm amazed how easy, fast and lightweight the installation was!

I think I messed up. My apartment has no windows and now the mosquitoes are making themselves at home. Welp, it's their place now. Thanks Muta!

It's crazy how I was in the middle of thinking about switching my win10 laptop to linux and then this video appears

Instructions unclear, deleted bios

I tried to delete my Windows but when I went to I got shot at by men in blue helmets and had my roof struck by predator drones.

No

Thanks Muta, I wanted to get into linux for a while now but I always find hard to understand videos on internet and I was always getting confuse. Now thanks to you I can try it when I get my new computer in a few months I'll maybe try with mint or manjaro but at least now it doesn't seem complicate. Keep making videos like this please

Thank you for this introduction, I'll use it in future when I buy my first desktop PC

You re-encouraged me to get back to Mint when you explained that I can play Switch and old PC games. Very informative video, simple to follow and has awesome punchlines 😊. Thank you for your time and efforts. God bless you.

The only thing stopping me from going into linux are my local files and the compatibility. I'm glad that compatibility appears to be getting increasingly better, the dual boot option is very tempting but if I go through the trouble of switching to linux I would want to 100% switch else I don't see the point.

unfortunatly none of my sim racing peripherals work on linux, until companies make linux drivers most of us are stuck with windows

While it's great to see a "how to install Linux for new people video" (I've been using Linux since 1995), it's also great to see that your "recommended" RU-vid video feed is about as hellscape-y and rubbishy as mine! I no longer feel that RU-vid hates me specifically. ;o) My suggestion to people new to Linux: AVOID toxic communities. Don't let them make you run back to Windows in frustration.

Hey I must say you made me try out Arch and I loved it! I followed your older install guide for Arch then I ran it about 4-5 months without any major problems. The only thing that made me switch back was my daughter wanting to play Roblox... I'm thinking to get Arch again with dual boot just to be able to play Roblox with her :)

Watching this on Linux Mint Cinnamon. Very happy to throw off the shackles of Windows and Mac OS (but I do have to use those occasionally).

The way I started with Linux was to get a two or three year old pc and install Linux Mint on to that.A friend wanted to try Linux so I got a pc from eBay a Lenovo ThinkCentre M93P Mini it work very well.Keep up the good work.

thank you, looking forward to switching to this for writing my novel 👍

Thank you. This was a very helpful video.

I'm not comfortable with switching to Linux just yet, but I'll put this vid in my favorites for when I'm ready.

I'm sorry muta but no, I won't. I've been using linux for years now on my laptop and I will continue to but I will never replace windows with linux on my main desktop. My desktop is built for gaming and I need it to run ANY game, ANY software, ANY anticheat and ANY emulator flawlessly. Linux does NOT do that as of now. It is simply not worth the tradeoffs. I respect and understand open source software and privacy as a software dev but for my use case and I'm sure for many others, linux does not cut it.

Thanks for the brief time shift tutorial, I've been daily driving Linux for months but still hadn't set it up until I watched this haha

Very useful. Some of the things you said I had no idea.

Medschool required us to install this jank spyware thing to monitor us during exams and I wasn't gonna install it on my main PC. good call because the laptop died after the semester because of it. Bootup took 30+min and I couldn't get to the uninstaller before it freezes. This video helped me bring the laptop back to life in under an hour.

Terminal is love, terminal is life.

bruh you're literally the reason I don't trust Google docs anymore 😂

After all the talk of Microsoft recording your screen, im seriously considering switching to linux

Me watching this when I'm already on Mint. "Interesting..."

The shirt change helped me find where the sponsor ended, thank you SOG!

I heard that if you press alt + f4 you get instant access to your own desktop

13:28 Here you skipped the most complicated and confusing part because you are using a VM. 99.9% of people will already have windows on their machine, and the options at this stage if you have an operating system installed already are pretty confusing (I'm a senior software engineer at a big tech, even I thought it was confusing and had to look up the best practice for partitioning my drive when I was setting up Mint a couple years back). You should go over this step.

broke all the windows on my car instructions unclear