 How can you avoid making your life miserable when switching to Linux? Let's find out. Here's the deal, folks. A lot of people are always wanting to switch to Linux. Oh, I've been wanting to switch to Linux for years. I'm sick of auto-updates. I'm sick of proprietary software and spyware and stuff like that, so they want to switch to Linux. Here's why. There's an irony in people who switch to Linux, actually, because there's a tradition among Linux users is when someone says they want to switch to Linux, you actually give them the absolute worst advice, the worst possible, or you tell them to do the stupidest things. The most difficult things to do on Linux, you tell a noob that they should do. And it's not just to install Gen2. It's actually even worse than that. Installing Gen2 is easier than all this stuff. What do I mean by this? Okay, when people want to switch to Linux, and, you know, this is an understandable thing, they want to use software that they're familiar with. I want to use Adobe Photoshop. I want to use Adobe After Effects. I want to use Adobe Whatever. I want to use Fubar on Linux. Any software they're familiar with. Now, I will go ahead and tell you the punchline to this video. The right thing for someone, a Linux user to say is, try using Linux native applications. In the long term, it will be better for you. Here are some things you can look at. In fact, you might want to change your workflow. In fact, expect to change your workflow when you switch to Linux. That should be the thing that people say. But what people end up saying in all these forms is that they tell these people to do the most difficult and impossible things on Linux. They tell them, oh, if you want to run all these Windows programs that you know and love, just use Wine, okay? Wine is this Windows emulator, which is a pain to install, a pain to configure, a pain, like they're just a million bugs with every kind of program that runs. It's a pain. And we tell newbie Linux users to use it, which is stupid. We'll tell them, oh, well, I don't. People out there do it. Okay? So use Wine. People say, oh, why don't you just run a virtual machine on Linux? Just run like a little Windows virtual machine. That's another thing, incredibly difficult to functionally set up on a Linux machine. I don't think I've ever successfully done it. I may have, but it's not like a normal thing to do on Linux. It's a very rarefied thing that a normal Linux user will never have to do, but for whatever reason, we tell new users. We talk as if running virtual machines is like the normal thing, okay? So we'll tell them to use Wine. We'll tell them to use virtual machines. We'll even tell them to do this, what is it? Like the GPU pass through, whatever. I don't even know. I'm not quite sure how that thing works, but I know that it's difficult. I've know that I've looked into how to do it. I don't freaking know how to do this. None of this stuff is, it's just a big pain. So what we do is we take new, like people who want to use Linux and we tell them to do the most stupid, difficult things and then we wonder, oh, why don't they like Linux? I don't get it. You can run all their software. I mean, what's the problem, buddy? So it's kind of sadistic. I don't know what really motivates it. I think people are just trying to be nice. They're trying to say, oh, Linux is cool. It can run all these programs. It just is incredibly difficult to do all this kind of stuff. The real answer, the real answer for people like this should be when you switch to Linux. And this is like, prep them for the worst case scenario, which won't happen, but prep them for it. Tell them this. If you want to use Linux, install Linux on just some random computer, not your main computer, or if you have two computers, just keep Windows on one, use Linux on the other. Don't do any virtual machine nonsense. Just install it on the actual bare metal and expect to get absolutely nothing out of it. Expect to just play around. And when you use it, use only native Linux applications that run in your, you know, Distribution's native package manager. If you're running Arch or Artix, just use stuff you can install with Pac-Man or the AUR. Just leave it at that. If you're using Ubuntu for some reason, just use AppGit, okay? Just use native applications and experiment not just with Linux, but with the Unix philosophy. There's a different way. I mean, if you're using Linux correctly, okay? And this is hard for people to understand if they're new users, because on macOS and Windows, they work sort of in the same way. You're expected, like, to do everything within these giant programs, okay? Whereas in Linux, Linux is tied into the more classic Unix philosophy, where instead of having one giant program that does a million things, you might have a couple small programs that interact between each other very well and can actually get things done way more efficiently. But sometimes it takes a little time for you to figure out how that works or to really understand, you know, the idea behind it. I did a video a couple of weeks ago on extensibility and why that's important, okay? So I think if someone is, like, the biggest problem when people switch over to Linux is they're just trying to replicate their Windows workflow, okay? Which in most cases you can actually do if you put in the work, but I'm not gonna guarantee it's worth your time at all. In fact, it's especially bad if people are using Linux allegedly, oh, I care about free software, I care about my privacy and security, so I'm gonna use Linux. Oh, and now I'm just gonna install all of this, like, spyware that I was using on Windows. Oh, I'm just gonna use Steam now again. Oh, I'm just gonna use all this Adobe junk again. It's like, why even use Linux? I mean, I'm not gonna say that it's not some improvement if you're using Linux rather than Windows, but if you're using all the same programs and you're just trying to, like, the operating system that runs Windows programs best is Windows. It's always gonna be Windows. And if you are tied into that workflow and you are not willing to, like, not willing to experiment in different waters, you are gonna be miserable if you switch to Linux no matter what. That is inevitable. That is just going to happen. You're not gonna have, now, of course, this is not me saying Linux is hard to use. This is not me saying Linux, I mean, Linux, like, the possibilities with Linux are so much more, I don't know, inexplicably large than on Windows and macOS. It's hard to explain this to people who have never used it or have used it, but they only use, like, default to Buntu or something like that. You can do so much more and you have so many more potentialities, but, like, using, like, getting into Linux has to be a learning process for people. It has to be something, like, they have to see it for themselves, sort of. They have to, and this is one of the reasons why I'm not a big fan of any kind of distribution or any kind of new way of installing packages. I've talked about Snap and Flatpak. I'm not a big fan of any of these kind of systems that try and make Linux more Windows-like, more familiar-like, even if it makes it more usable in some degree. Usually that ends up you paving over the actual good things about Linux. And so people are in this kind of sandbox where they don't really know what they can do with their system. And, like, using, like, that's the point of using Linux. I don't think... I don't know. It's just whatever. But anyway, all of this is to say I think it's sadistic when people tell new Linux users to use Wine or to use VirtualBox or any of this kind of stuff. I think you should always recommend people just tinker with the machine yourself. Like, hey, I mean, frankly, watch my videos or people who do videos like mine where we're not even doing videos on, like, giant programs or just, oh, here's this little terminal script or, like, this minor incurses program or just, like, this little way of doing something different on Linux. Because, really, Linux is not, like, five different... You know, it's not like... It's not supposed to be, like, Windows or Mac, where it's just, like, five or six major giant applications that do, like, a million little things. It's really a bunch of little programs that do, I don't know, they work together. It's hard to explain. It's a fugue. You just have to experience it yourself. And gradual experimentation with Linux is the way to go. If you are starting out using Linux, just trying to replicate your Windows workflow, you are going to be sentencing yourself to nothing but pain. You might even be successful. Congratulations if you are. But that's just not the best way to induce... to induct people into Linux by making them, you know, do all this kind of stuff. Anyway, that's it.