I’ve been working on a project to get myself to where I can safely get off of Windows. Why? Well, since the tail end of Windows 10 moving into Windows 11 world, things just kept getting more out of my control. A few of the more egregious things were:
- Windows 11 update full screen splash screens regardless of if the machine could upgrade.
- Perfectly good machines being excluded due to the arbitrary requirements Microsoft was shipping it with (TPM?).
- Requiring an online Windows ID just to install the OS.
- Less control of when updates happen.
- Ads for their other software and software partners.
- AI being put into everything they can without clear information on what it might be doing in the background. (how long until this becomes a paid subscription?)
- OneDrive begging to back-up your home folder to their services.
- Changing browser from Edge to Chrome (only Chrome) begs you to stay on Edge.
- Deceptive dialog boxes where buttons they don’t want you to click are shown as text or links and not buttons.
And I haven’t even addressed the security concerns… I don’t need to go into it, if you are here, likely you feel some of the above.
What Are My Goals?
Ideally, I want everything to just work. Ok, that’s a bit vague. Let me break it down, my biggest points is:
- Needs to run Adobe Lightroom or something similar (somehow) that doesn’t lose the work put into my current catalogs.
- Needs to run Davinci Resolve (there is a Linux version*), I moved to this when I could no longer afford Adobe’s full suite.
- Needs to use my Highpoint raid card. This is what us PCIe 4th Gen people used to achieve insane read and write speeds.
- Needs to have something for my Stream deck including some plugins too that match what I do, this feels it’ll be the most long term sub-project.
- Needs to be stable. I have a history back in the day of experimenting too much with my Linux machines and some times things got.. weird.
- Needs to run most of the games I regularly play. I’ll sacrifice some to the compatibility Gods, but I will only spill so much on that altar.
Other Hardware I Hope To Still Use
My PC is a hybrid Gaming and Video Editing machine. With that, I do have some extra hardware I’d love to still be able to use once I fully switch. These include:
- The aforementioned Highpoint raid card.
- The aforementioned Elgato Stream deck.
- Elgato Wave 3 mic.
- Logitech MX Master 3 mouse (bluetooth or dongle).
- My NDI driven Mevo Start wifi Webcam
- Belkin Nostromo Speed Pad n52
- Xbox 360 controller dongle
- Xbox One controller dongle
- Logitech Pro X 2 Headset
Some of these items should work right away, some will likely work with basic functionality. I’ve already tested the Highpoint card and did manage to both get it to work and read my existing files on it.
Current Prep Work
While this could be a “pull the band aid off” moment, I’m going to do some prep work. I did the former when I left Premiere, mostly because my subscription ended and there was no recourse. Davinci Resolve became a hurdle for the next couple months and I still silently complain why some features behave so differently. I’m going to try to minimize that pain this time. To do that, I’m researching what software I might go and if it exists on Windows too, testing it. I’ll save that for another set of posts.
Choosing Your Linux
Linux has been made by the work of many different people, and open so those many different people can make it their own, or at least express (for better or worse) way to improve it. Through that, Linux evolved something called Distributions, or Distro for short. Primarily a Distro comes down to what is included with the base version of Linux and how fast do you get updates as they happen. You can spend a year looking at different Distros and still not see them all, and then learn 50 more just updated or were created. But you don’t need to check them all, you can take some basic looks at the main offerings and then drill down from there.
I may put the cart before the horse here, but to me if I will be looking at the GUI all day, I’ll want it to work with me, not against.
Step 1. Looking at Display Managers
I was and still am a Gnome Display Manager fan. I really like the interface, but I also want to make it look a little more like Windows so that I don’t need to go too nuts relearning things. I played around and found a really good pile of extensions that when tweaked the right way really give me back the Windows 10 vibes.
But this really is a lot to redo every time, not something I will memorize overall, and I have set this up about 7 times already and I bet each one is slightly different.
KDE is the next main display manager you can use. Out of the box it does look very Windows 7 like with a hint to Windows 10 mixed in. It’s modern, but not the most modern looking. I’ll accept it if it is a default option, but if I find Gnome to play better on a machine, I’m switching to it.
Finally on my list is Cinnamon, it’s the staple behind Mint (a specific Distro). I was good with it first, but eventually was frustrated with how plain it looked that I even started to dislike just the system notifications. If I had to recommend a solid system for someone basic, I would definitely steer them toward this one. But it’s not for me unless the other two somehow are impossible.
Step 2. Decide On a Distro
Most of the top distros come in multiple “flavors”. Each one is a slightly different mix to give you a different Display Manager setup. That said most Linux distros can change their Display Manager, but unless they support it, you’ll be looking to do a lot of extra work, not recommended for those just starting out.
The top three I am looking at are:
Fedora and Ubuntu are in there because they are very well known and stable. I didn’t include Arch or CachyOS (based on Arch) because while they claim to be up to date, Arch recently (early 2026) had really bad hacks where their software repo was poisoned with malware. Check the news for more details on that.
I also tested Nobara which is similar to CachyOS and one of its system updates killed my laptop. I spent hours fixing it, I would not want to wish that on someone just switching.
TuxedoOS was created by Tuxedo for their line of computers but also exists as a general distribution anyone can install. They originally were based on Ubuntu, but their next big update is switching to Debian Sid. They claim to make efforts to tame some of the updates from Debian Sid to help it’s unstable nature. So far it’s been pretty good.
You’ll also notice two of the listings are KDE. I’m willing to look at KDE first and Gnome second. I had some bad experiences with KDE in the past but that seems to have improved. I still have problems with the installer and scaling the screen correctly on a Lenovo P1 Gen 1 with a 4k screen. But after installing, it worked fine.
Step 3. Actually Commit To a Distro
One problem people can get stuck in is what is known as “Distro Hopping”. You try one, find something you don’t like, try another. Normally this is a good thing, but if you never decide on one, you’ll be stuck for a long long time.
After much consideration, I’m going with TuxedoOS (Debian). I think they are in a good spot and the company itself is a Linux-first computer manufacturer. While I don’t expect my needs to meet yours, I hope you’ll give them a look. Maybe they will hit just the right spots for you to make it your own. If my choice changes, I’ll be sure to post something about it.
Step 4. Install It And Run With It
As I said, I want to make sure most of my workflow will transfer over or at the very least I have a plan for each of my requirements. That means I’ll be testing this first on my Linux daily driver laptop, running with a mobile RTX 3070, 2TB NVMe, and 32GB DDR4 ram.
I’ll test Davinci Resolve. It is written to install on Rocky Linux, a variant of Fedora (and RedHat). Someone clever wrote a convert script (instructions) that will unpack the installer and rebuild it as a package you can install on anything based on Debian, including Ubuntu and TuxedoOS. I also want to install Lightroom via Winboat (windows inside docker but no GPU accel, yet…), but I recently heard someone got Adobe running in Neutron.
I have my work cut out for me..
Takeaway
If you take a little time to figure out what you do with your computer first, your decisions will be easier. For me, TuxedoOS might be it. I may change my mind as I’m apt to do, but right now, this is it.
