What are some preparations you think people should know about in advance of migrating to Linux?

For example, I saw a post the other day detailing how to set up a Brother laser printer on Kinoite. That's not something I would have initially considered a potential problem to be solved. Another I ran into some years ago had to do with an Edimax WiFi dongle that used some weirdly specific Realtek 8812 radio, for which you had to set up the driver via dkms. A little prep and knowledge in advance would have saved days of searching online.

I've started a personal to-do list of things to research and make sure I have all my ducks in a row before I make the full-time switch on my main desktop, so besides the usual "back up your files" advice, I'm hoping y'all can point out some QoL things I and others may often miss!

sukhmel ,

If you use some very old, very new, very peculiar, and especially branded by the seller hardware, try finding out what exactly that hardware is and search for issues.

Nowadays hardware seems to work out of the box, sometimes better than in paid OS, but there could still be surprises. I once had a fun time trying to get the internet dongle branded by ISP to work, luckily it was not my single source of the internet and I was able to identify what dongle it really was and how to fix the issue with it on Linux

Telorand OP ,

That particular Edimax dongle I mentioned was sold as an 802.11ac option for Raspberry Pi's. I didn't know at the time that it was a unique case, so even the best of intentions can still sometimes wind up biting you. I would have bought something else, had I known!

At least you can find the package module in most community repositories, now.

onlinepersona ,

Pick an easy to use distro, put it on a USB stick, boot into it and test it. While in there, check hardware compatibility using https://linux-hardware.org/ . For programs, use https://alternativeto.net/ to find alternatives of whatever software you're using that work on linux.

Anti Commercial-AI license

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

My one and only bit of advice is for a first timer to only use a live usb/disc for a week, doing the most common things.

That assumes they don't know anyone willing to put the time and effort into helping them migrate. If you have help, I don't believe you'd have to have as long a trial period. A day or two at most.

Reasoning is that you never notice everything that might need troubleshooting the first few days. Making sure of that is much better done before trying to install and jump in, even with a dual boot set up.

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