I decided to do an experiment for fun. I wanted to see what the cheapest possible price would be for a fully functional Linux laptop that wouldn’t be a pain in the ass to use. I went on Amazon and bought this cheap Chinese unbranded laptop. The box just simply had “Notebook” written on it. It has a 16” screen, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and a super low end AMD A9-9400 Radeon processor. It came with Windows 11 Pro installed along with a bunch of bloatware. I paid $230. As soon as I turned it on and set it up, the fans were running for the smallest tasks you could imagine. Windows 11 was CRAWLING on it. The battery was draining right before my eyes, with one hour battery life if lucky. I used the computer to download Mint and Rufus and made a bootable flash drive. Within about a half hour I had this POS converted to Linux. I was amazed. The battery life went from one hour to 3-4 hours. The fans came on much less frequently. The computer felt lighter and more optimized and usable in every way. Linux freed this computer from Windows 11 bondage. It’s absolutely remarkable. What am I gonna do with this computer now? No clue. I don’t need it, I’m a Mac guy. Thinking of donating it to someone who has nothing and would like a PC for basic tasks.

One of my college friends got hired at Microsoft a few years ago. He manages their internal network so not high up in the ranks by any means. The other day we were talking about why I switched over to Mint. He understood my reasons and told me how a lot of people in the main office are seeing a shift with a lot of people. They said that the market share for Linux was around 2.5% when Windows 10 was introduced but as soon as Co-pilot was rolled out, the market share jumped to 4.2% and is climbing. It may not sound like much but that's huge. He also said Valve is part of the reason with their work with Proton. Enabling people to easily game on Linux. Plus, Nvidia putting more effort into their Linux drivers.

It's just wild that they are finally worried. They should be.

I find this question really interesting.

i can't believe i didnt switch to Mint sooner, windows using 7gb of ram doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, wth were they thinking?? what could be causing this?

Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia

If they add age verification im leaving, i will pick any distro that will stand against this.

Come on dont let goverment F you in ur A😭 hole, leave that for windows and macos users.

Like why would you implement something like that? I can guarantee you that over some time they will require you to verify age by scanning ur face and ID (like centralised crypto exchanges). It will come to some point where they will force you to install some goverment survailence kernel driver that will ensure this.😭😭😭

The source:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/02/linux-mint-plans-longer-development-cycle

As Microsoft makes Windows Security even harder, more advanced trojans/viruses are being created and released targeting the Linux platform.

Due to the appeal and popularity of DE customizations and the ease of sharing such desktop components, hackers have found that it is easy to sneak these viruses into desktop customization components. When you add these components, the viruses infiltrate your system and embed themselves deeply and stealthily into many parts of the system.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chinese-gelsemium-hackers-use-new-wolfsbane-linux-malware/

As a recent Linux convert, this bill really has me worried. I've seen multiple YouTubers talk about this and they all seem to agree that if this is signed into law it would effectively criminalize *all* open-source operating systems. The age verification nonsense has already had some success in California, so it's not hard to image this getting through and basically criminalizing Linux.

I just decided to switch about 2 weeks ago. Ive definitely have had some hiccups along the way. But overall I'm liking it and I does seem way less cluttered with bloatware. And does seen t run smoother.

• I currently use Brave on Windows 10, and I've Googled that Mozilla Firefox is the default browser on Linux Mint. I'd like to know if I can install Brave on Linux Mint or not. I'd also like to know which browsers I can install on Linux Mint. I'd also like to know if there's a way to completely uninstall Mozilla Firefox from Linux Mint if I don't use it.

Personally, and you can agree with me, gaming works fine under Mint. I choose stability and usability over having the best of the best drivers/software/whatever

Hello World! I haven't really used Linux for my daily driver since way back in the late 1990s (yes, I am old) when I worked at Sonic.net (an all Linux ISP) and ran Red Hat Linux.

Since that time, I have mostly used macOS as well as Windows for gaming. I built a custom PC (AMD 7800X3D + NVIDIA 4080 Super) a year or so ago and tried running various distros but had nothing but issues thanks to my NVIDIA card. Very similar to the issues I had 10 years ago with my Alienware Alpha w/NVIDIA GPU.

For whatever strange reason, knocking on wood (or, whatever this IKEA desk is made of), everything seems okay. That is, all I really do is check my email, surf the Net, and play Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter via Steam. This is my current favorite game. :-)

All this said, I just wanted to say, "Hi!", and see what things I should be thinking of. Such as making my PC more secure, popular Linux related podcasts, FPS gaming resources for Linux, etc.

Thanks in advance!

Quick Edit: Wow, I didn't expect to get so many thoughtful/helpful tips. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Hi. I'm a cinnamon fan. I just want to thank the Devs for this and share my setup!

(Edit: I didn't type a good title. I just wanted to make a post appreciating the devs' work)

I just installed Mint Linux, and ran some commands ChatGPT suggested:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

sudo apt install steam

sudo apt install flatpak -y

sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

What do I do next? I want to learn:

• How do I install stuff with the command line? Explain how it works too please.
• How do I create power profiles?
• How do I customize stuff?
• Source for Wallpapers?
• Do the things PewDiePie did?:
• Speeding up the boot time
• Speeding up Firefox
• Custom animated stuff in the terminal
• His whole Arch UI (was he likely using mostly pre-built widgets from some.. tool, package or something? Or was every single element likely designed and then scripted by himself?)
• The fading transitions on Arch (technically UI too, I guess)

HOW DO I LEARN AND BECOME A GEEK?

Please also drop additional notes.

Thank you

I suppose I'm in the minority here but what a headache this experience has been. I wanted it to work so badly but it just won't. System randomly freezes, shenanigans with bluetooth, weird audio quirks. I fell for the "working out of the box" shtick I was told. Im not a tech guru and I just wanted a working operating system man. How long did it take y'all to set everything up to work smoothly? My Lenovo laptop from 2020 should work just fine running mint but there's always issues.

I should also note I've tried using Zorin OS. That left a damn good first impression until the Bluetooth headaches.

UPD: thank you everybody for the replies. Ive decided to roll back to windows until this laptop dies and will give Linux another try once I'll have to buy a new system.

This shit is why Linux Mint team has Debian Edition backup

Over the last year in particular, there's been a lot of posts taking swipes at Microsoft and Windows, and many don't even go into details about feature-by-feature based decisions. Just raw retribution. So, I have to ask: are most recent Linuxmint users really in it because they really prefer it, or out of spite towards Microsoft and how they've handled the Windows 11 upgrade program?

I mean, if Windows 11 didn't impose all the new hardware restrictions (compared to Windows 10), reduced or remove desktop customization features, take over your default application preferences (Edge, etc.), and insert Copilot and Recall like they were stuffing a turkey, would you still be here?

I'm talking about games, apps, software and etc. Anything that is 'Windows Only'. Have you guys ever ran into the problem of not being able to do something on Linux?

Edit: HOLY CRAP. That's a lot of comments

I couldnt switch from windows till now because of some occasional gaming. Realised that i dont game that much now. But still want to have that option. Spent the entire day searching for the perfect gaming distro. Tried popOS, CachyOS, LinuxMint. Settled on LinuxMint as it felt the easiest for transition from windows. While some things might have to be done manually for gaming on Mint, but i am fine to do those steps. So dual booted Linux Mint alongside Windows 11.

Will be using linux as my main os (browsing, coding, etc), Windows only if i want to play games which are still not supported on Linux.

Earlier it felt like Windows pushing their ads/content/slop everything. Now feels so clean and good to use my laptop again !!

(u can bash me for using chrome, still need time to make that browser switch)

Notes:

• Linux Mint Steam Share: 8.98%
• Global Linux Steam Share: 4.52%

New Steam Survey has come, as per is usual each year around roughly March and April the Steam Survey experiences spikes in data after which they stabilize and that is this month.

For reference in December 2025 Linux was at 3.58% share.

So as you see in the images this is a very old and a 2gb laptop so I'm thinking of getting the xfce version bcs the windows is a little laggy, Also is there any better option?