Things to consider going from Windows to Linux [closed]

"There is no general answer to your question, that covers all aspects of such a switch.

The best way to get an overview of what to consider and prepare for such a switch, is to

Install applications that are available on both Windows and Linux, on your current Windows system, and try using them, and/or...
Get a Linux live CD, or install a separate Linux test environment on your hardware as a dual install, and try it."

A fairly big gotcha is it's media capabilities. Many Linux distros don't include proprietary codecs for playing back MP3's, DVDs, etc. While you can obtain these and install them, this involves messing with your repositories, and some distros go to annoying lengths to prevent you from installing these.

"If you are thinking of making the switch from Windows to Linux my biggest piece of advice I can give you is this:

consider your hardware

Modern Linux distros have come a LONG way to make the user experience as easy and fun to use as you may consider Windows, but the major speed bump for most first time adopters is hardware problems. The Linux kernel has had a lot of work go into driver management, and new drivers are being worked on and added every day, but there are still so many pieces of hardware out there that it wouldn't be too surprising for you to get at least one piece that isn't out of the box Linux ready.

i.e. on my Toshiba Satellite I have an Intel Graphics card that does work out of the box, but has some issues with showing video and doing the new UI stuff that comes with apps like Compiz, but there are a few hacks I've learned to apply to get around those. The notebook also as a Realtek 8187b built-in wireless card, which isn't completely functional without having to install the linux-backports-modules, but then it works without any problems."

"Linux, particularly user friendly builds like Ubuntu is getting better day by day.

Jaunty is an excellent OS easily as good as it's commercial rivals.

My biggest beef with Linux is the hardware support is a bit behind Windows you may have to wait a while for top of the line hardware to work, particularly if the vendor has lousy FOSS support.

That said, the legacy hardware support is unmatched - hardware that stopped working for me in XP, still works in Linux.

Depending what you're doing with your computer, the other major issue is software support, whilst there is software in Linux to do everything, commercial software is lagging behind."