Top Tips For Migrating from Windows to Linux

Datamation ^ | 05 October 2015 | Matt Hartley

[ShadowAce]

It's easy to forget how intimidating it can be when trying something completely new for the first time. This is especially true when a power-user comfortable with Windows tries Linux. Since I'm a power user of various Linux distros, Windows and OS X, I have some insights that I think people looking to migrate to Linux need to read. Let's get started, shall we?

Linux is not Windows

The first thing that people who migrate from Windows need to understand is that Linux is not Windows. People seem to forget this fact when they experience something completely foreign while using Linux. Like when the audio doesn't appear to work despite the volume slider being adjusted or the default video driver doesn't offer expected gaming performance, among other areas of confusion.

Linux newcomers must realize: this is Linux, and 99% of the time there is a reason or a fix that addresses an unexpected issue.

For example: If you're not hearing audio when the volume is turned all the way up, this is probably because PulseAudio has the app's volume turned down. Main output settings can be overridden by app specific settings within the volume controls. Same applies for microphone inputs vs app specific settings.

Then there is the issue with the gaming performance. On Windows, you're using video drivers that provide good performance out of the box (usually). Under Linux, you're usually using Open Source video drivers. Depending on your distro, there is usually a tool provided to allow you to install the proprietary video drivers very easily. But newcomers rarely know this without either reading it someplace or being told ahead of time.

Getting Linux newcomers to rationalize these differences is difficult. Let's face it, human nature is adaptive...but not without kicking and screaming the entire way.

Before switching

One of the simplest and wisest things a user can do before jumping over to Linux is to setup a flash drive with persistent storage incorporated into it. This flash drive would be loaded with their preferred Linux distro and then the person should learn to "live in it" for a period of time.

Taking this approach does the following:

• It forces the new user to learn to live within something new and unusual.
• Should it turn out that the user is unwilling or unable to fit this experience into their lives, they're able to easily go back to Windows.
• The user will experience any potential hardware incompatibilities immediately, before a hard drive install. Personally, I've experienced a whopping two PC component incompatibilities - ever. The only issue I can see anyone facing in 2015 is the occasional issue with those dastardly Broadcom wifi chipsets. They can in some instances prove to be problematic. Outside of that, it usually smooth sailing.

By taking this approach, anyone looking to try out Linux with any level of seriousness is able to have a full desktop experience limited only by the size of their USB flash drive storage space. It's simple and based on my own trials with folks, it helps the end user to determine if Linux is a good fit.

Preparing for the switch

Surprisingly, I've found it's easier than it used to be for home users to make the switch. Because they rarely have a preference on which office suite they're using and most of them are using Web based email. This helps users overcome half the battle of switching right out of the gate. And if they also took my advice on using a flash drive with persistent storage, they know if Linux is going to work for them long term or not.

Backing up pictures, videos and documents is pretty obvious. And with modern browsers like Firefox and Chrome providing built-in synchronization tools, all one needs to do is login to their browser to extract all of their user data with the utmost ease. It's critical, however, that the synced data be tested on a secondary machine before wiping the Windows installation. This ensures nothing is lost during the migration.

Important: Make a list of the software you use on Windows, then visit "AlternativeTo" in order to match it up with an open source replacement. I'd suggest installing the found applications onto the persistent USB flash drive install for testing. This step alone will save the newcomer a lot of frustration.

Making the switch

Once the newcomer has established that Linux on their desktop is hardware compatible with their PC, have found applications they like and haven't hit legacy software roadblocks that would pull them back to Windows, it's time! Let's throw the switch!

First, backup all of your data before doing anything permanent! Next, triple check that you have your product key(s) and related "media" for all of your Microsoft and Adobe products. Lose these keys and reverting back to Windows will be a lot more unpleasant. Plus, you might wish to run them on another PC someday in the future.

With a bootable flash drive or DVD of their preferred distribution, begin the installation. Once the installation is complete, run your distribution's updates. If the user relied on a persistent flash drive install for any length of time, they're aware that the next step is to install any missing proprietary media codecs.

Next, using the software list gained from AlternativeTo, install the related software. Ubuntu based distros will allow the user to do this via the Software Center or Synaptic. Other distributions may have other package managers for making this happen.

Working with your new installation

Assuming the installation went well, the newcomer is ready to begin customizing the desktop! After all, that's half the fun of using Linux!

The methods used to customize your desktop will largely depend on the desktop environment that has been selected. Here are some of the major desktop environments and how to customize them: GNOME, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, XFCE.

Now that the installation is fully customized to meet the user's needs, they're ready to use it in much the same way as they did with Windows. The key differences are as follows:

• If the user needs to reinstall, they'll never be nagged for a product key. This applies to the distro and to installed software.

• They're free to backup the user data and try new distributions and desktop environments.

• New releases of a selected distro won't mean buying new peripherals. Anyone claiming Windows matches the sheer back-catalog of peripheral support offered by Linux is badly misinformed. Windows depends on the peripheral vendor to provide the drivers, usually installed from local media or via Windows Updates. With Linux it either works or it doesn't. Usually 99% of the time, peripherals just work out of the box. The exception to this rule are with brand new (less than a year old) peripherals that are waiting for the latest Linux kernel.

Personally, I have never, ever run into an issue where my peripherals were unsupported out of the box. Those who run into issues are usually dealing with printers from one of the following vendors: Lexmark and Canon. I've found Epson and HP to be very well supported. I'd say overall HP wins for the best support as it provides the hplip tool that supports functions like wifi printing. When purchasing a new peripheral such as a printer, I recommend checking the OpenPrinting website first. There are printers out there that are simply not compatible. Thankfully, the list of supported far outweigh those unsupported.

Important: As a general rule, any of the peripherals found in the top results by brand on sites like Amazon are supported. For example: query Lexmark, results are MS312dn, CS310n (laser printers) and S305, 1512, and X5650 (inkjet). In the case of Lexmark, all the laser printers work, as does the S305 inkjet. The 1512 is unknown and the X5650 is known not to work.

If you're buying an inkjet all-in-one, make it one of the HP models. I own a HP Officejet Pro 8600 and it has flawless support both locally connected via USB or connected over my LAN by wifi. I simply installed hplip and set it up using this approach. One could take the easier approach and just install it using the built-in desktop environment's printer dialog via USB, but using hplip also provides wireless scanning capability using Simple Scan. So the aforementioned approach is preferred.

Linux isn't hard, it's just different

I realize that some folks reading this will immediately latch onto the following as "proof" that using Linux on the desktop is more difficult. I would argue it depends on ones perspective.

• Besides geeks and techs, no one installs operating systems. And learning to setup and configure settings in any operating system takes time to learn. Last time I checked, casual users sought help from a tech or a geek when something goes wrong with Windows. - In terms of sheer numbers, Linux has greater peripheral support. This isn't a debate, it's a fact (circa 2008). Realize that most of the support is brand centric. NVIDIA, Intel, HP, Logitech among others are brands that are friendly to Linux. They also have a back-catalog of driver support dating back pre-USB. Windows does not offer this as Windows doesn't maintain older drivers for new Windows releases – vendors may or may not. Even lesser friendly to Linux peripherals have device models that work, though it's just not as extensive.

• Customizing and setting up a Linux box is simply a matter of repetition. Most of the "complicated" steps people see for stuff like setting up wifi printing with a supported HP all-in-one printer, is simply typing a word or a phrase. A script then does the work for the user.

Ease of use and compatibility are funny things. I own a netbook built for Windows 7 Starter Edition, I installed Windows 10 on it and critical features won't work. All of the hardware is detected, however the function keys needed for basic operation are no longer compatible. I've researched and verified that ASUS has no intention of doing anything about it.

This means that I cannot use wireless (it's disabled despite being detected) and I cannot adjust the back-lighting. I researched this issue extensively – it's planned obsolescence at its finest. By happenstance, I also own a second netbook of the same model. I have Ubuntu MATE installed and with a simple phrase added to the grub menu (used for booting), it has working function keys and fully functional Intel 802.11n wireless.

By using Linux, I'm free from the planned obsolescence found with proprietary operating systems. Linux answers to one master – its user. Does this mean Linux is harder? I think that's a matter of personal perspective. Oh, before it comes up – I don't compile software. There is no need to, so anyone making this claim that it's still a "must" is telling you stories.

With a community of folks willing to help you, I've found there is very little Linux on the desktop can't do. I hope newcomers looking to migrate are able to join me in this experience.

[Desron13]

Bookmark

[Scrambler Bob]

M4L linux

[stylin_geek]

You and me both.

[stylin_geek]

It’s possible to buy Dell computers with Ubuntu installed instead of Windows.

[RepRivFarm]

Can someone suggest a good, modern, easy to understand book that would hold your hand and take you step-by-step through the process described in the above article? First installing it on a bootable jump drive and then on your computer?

Covering where to get the open-source code, how to set up security, best browsers, office tools, video tools, and so on? Really interested in trying this.

Thanks

[daniel1212]

One great thing about Linux to which the article alludes is that you can take an old, end-of-life PC and turn it into a modern system just by installing Linux.

Having tried every major and some minor Linux distros, that is what i have found. I have Xubuntu installed on an old laptop (dual with XP) , which distro i found to be the best for old HW, as other distros failed on wifi. And I installed Debian recently (instead of Mint this time) on a another HD. Rather than messing with my window partitions, i unplug that HD and connect another via a cheap sata USB adapter cable (and use the PC power supply) and install Linux on that. Then i shut down and also plug in the Windows drive and tap F12 (may differ on other PCs) to get a boot options screen, and boot from Windows.

By so doing i can easily save docs in my Windows drive, as well as Firefox profiles and LibreOffice (i still like Apache better). And Wine works to run BPBible, which is critical for me.

But despite the hype of some, Linux invariably has problems (often with a myriad of solutions proffered) and or fails to provide certain customization one can easily get with Windows.

Full or any functionality with printers and wifi can be buggy, and getting permissions over your own files, even if temporarily, can require opening up a terminal to learning what to code, while (depending on the Distor) things like simply right clicking on an icon and finding the source, and making a shortcut can be missing. I spent a lot of time on forums to no avail trying to find a way to remap the CapsLock key to ctrl+c, and Esc to ctrl+v, as that really helps me is my stiff arthritic fingers, and which AutoHotKey easily enables via adding to a script (CapsLock::^c Esc::^v mbutton::^x) . AutoKey simply is not on the same level. But which is why I am using Debian, as I found I can at least change the first two.

Then there is the lack of legal multimedia codecs (US) unless you buy them. Yet Windows is also messing with that model.

Posted under my W/10 (free upgrade), which with easy customization (such as classic shell is like W/7 but better. Thank God.

[ShadowAce]

While I have not been looking (so I'm not the most up-to-date) at general Linux books, I think that something like that would be very difficult to write. There are several reasons for this

• Linux is constantly changing. While people complain about how many updates Windows has, Operating systems built around the Linux kernel tend to have just as many, if not more. Thus, any book that was published would almost certainly be out of date before it hit the shelves..
• "Best" of any software category is very subjective. However, there are many choices, with many feature sets. This allows you to experiment and choose those which work best for you--in your situation.
• There are many distributions ("distros" in Linux jargon) that you can get from multiple sources. Each distro fills a specific desire or need that the developer thought needed to be filled. This allows Linux OSes to fit into an environment based on the needs of the environment, and not have to be shoehorned in like a one-size-fits-all OS like Windows.

With the above in mind, I will say that if you are truly interested, you need to start researching and determining your needs/wants regarding the OS on your computer. The first place I would start is "a href="http://distrowatch.com/">DistroWatch which follows the more popular and common distros out there, with links to the website for each distro and some reviews. Each distro's website will have a download link and install instructions.

Keep looking even beyond DistroWatch--Search engines are your friend in this case. You will get more hits than you know what to do with.

There are two major divisions in the Linux world that are based on how software is handled. RPM-based distros tend to follow and are modelled after Red Hat. Debian-based distros are based after--wait for it--Debian. There are minor filesystem difference between to the two types, but the kernel will be the same.

I've heard good things about Elementary OS, PCLinuxOS, Kirin, and Mint as good introductory distros for Windows users. I have not, personally, tried any of them out. I run Fedora, which is Red Hat's community distro. You can get the details on each of the previous distros on DistroWatch.

[upchuck]

Thanks for preserving the links, formatting, etc. from the original article.

[ShadowAce]

Arrgh. I hate typos.

The first place I would start is DistroWatch which follows the more popular and common distros out there, with links to the website for each distro and some reviews.

[daniel1212]

If you have reason to use W/10, with a little easy customization you can have your Start Menu (Classic Shell) and right click menu look like this, and add the Quick Launch (%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch) toolbar

"

[Mr. K]

what do you do for a living?

[zeugma]

I have not seen a blue screen in 10 years... what version of Windows are you running?

I've had 2 over the last year on win7. It's a laptop provided by my employer that I've only messed with from the basic provided load to install vmware player so I can do real work in a linux VM.

I figure 2 in a year is pretty good for microsoft, so I don't worry about it.

[zeugma]

Re: Evolution. I used that for a long time when I needed the ability to connect to exchange (ugh). Do they have a GPG plugin for Evolution these days?

[wally_bert]

Those three things has generally kept linux use limited for my purposes.

[daniel1212]

Note: The ability to add a multiplicity of commands to right click menus referred to above is via the http://www.thewindowsclub.com/right-click-context-menu-extender-for-windows-7-released

[TexasTransplant]

BKMK

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Try any one of the Linux books in the “xxxxxx For Dummies” series. Not joking. They do exactly what you are looking for.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

In general, data processing.

You?

[Delta 21]

Classic Shell was installed within 30 minutes of Win10 installation but not before 3 unexplained crash/reboots.

My Freeping is much too important than to leave it in the hands of Microsoft.

If all they want to do is hide all the useful commands as part of the planned obsolescence of the OS.......well, I’m just done with them.

[daniel1212]

Yes, hiding the useful commands (and paths, but finding them is harder in some Linux distros), and setting the default explorer view to small icons, and hiding file types, and system files, while populating the start menu with icons, as things i normally quickly attack on a fresh install. Of course, i also change the default view in Linux to Details, and “show hidden files.

But Winkey +X is a help, to which you can add things to.

But making changing time made difficult under W/10. Solution: Run (press Windows key and tap r key, let both go, then paste the following) control.exe /name Microsoft.DateAndTime and hit OK.

Other Canonical names that work via the Run command: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee330741%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

control.exe /name Microsoft.DefaultPrograms

control.exe /name Microsoft.DevicesAndPrinters

control.exe /name Microsoft.Display

control.exe /name Microsoft.FolderOptions

control.exe /name Microsoft.IndexingOptions

control.exe /name Microsoft.InternetOptions

control.exe /name Microsoft.Mouse

control.exe /name Microsoft.Personalization

control.exe /name Power Options

control.exe /name Microsoft.ProgramsAndFeatures

control.exe /name Microsoft.Recovery

control.exe /name Microsoft.Sound

control.exe /name Microsoft.Taskbar

control.exe /name Microsoft.NotificationAreaIcons

control.exe /name Microsoft.UserAccounts

control.exe /name Microsoft.WindowsDefender

Some obscure system paths:

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

or %appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

“C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp”

%UserProfile%\Desktop