Mastodawn

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:

Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.

Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.

I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.

Timothy Roes Jun 5

@david_chisnall This is such great advice. I think that's how the French police managed it in the early 2000's. They first switched users to LibreOffice. It's also what made me switch. I first got into the command line on macOS, then felt comfortable to make the switch.

Guillaume Courtois Jun 5

@TimothyRoes
Not the police but the Gendarmerie, but the difference is not relevant here.
400.000 users migrated and millions of public money saved.
And other administrations start or plan to do the same.
Thank you Trump !
@david_chisnall

@david_chisnall

Couldn't agree more. That's exactly what I did and in Linux FOSS apps are better because they all autoupdate unlike on windows so when you switch you even feel an improvement right off the bat!

@david_chisnall This. So. Damn. Much.

I got my dad off from XP that way as well. Switched him to OpenOffice, TuxGuitar, etc.

Themed his taskbar grey.

And then one day he had Xfce instead of XP, he almost didn't notice that differences.

Now he is back to Windows because he moved in with his new gf and she couldn't get his printer to work... that is, they didn't try because she instantly loaded the driver CD and then spent hours figuring out to install wine and install those programs, instead of just plugging the printer in. She gave up and they bought a new one, declaring it's too complicated.

When I stopped around a month later, I plugged the printer in and it just worked™. But she still insists "You must install the driver CD!!"

Oh, also this new system was much faster than his old Linux. Well, yeah, if you replace a old Pentium(!) with 4GBs memory some i7 with 16GBs... . I doubt it's the Windows that's making your PC faster, ffs.

@david_chisnall There's a tangent here to be had about good cross-platform apps that look roughly the same on all systems. Unfortunately that seems to have died.

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Jun 5

Good cross-platform apps integrate with the platform's native behaviour and UI models. That's why they're so hard to write.

Switching between Windows and most open-source environments is fairly easy because the native apps are inconsistent anyway. Last time I daily drove such a thing, I counted four different sets of keyboard shortcuts for navigating within a text box in the apps I was using regularly. That's improved a bit due to consolidation on GTK and Qt, but using apps from GNOME on KDE or vice versa is still not ideal and big things like LibreOffice and Firefox do their own things. On Windows, they've decided on a new shiny GUI toolkit every few years since .NET launched and you get a mix of these and of things where people have given up and gone with Electron, Qt, or something else to avoid dealing with Microsoft's mess.

Moving from macOS is harder, but Apple's push to mess everything up with Catalyst and SwiftUI is helping a lot.

@david_chisnall Yup, I wholly understand the difficulty of the problem (and I'm glad I'm not working in that part of the industry), but as you say: There's been both some good consolidation as well as some really unnecessary moves that make shifting/adjusting harder.

@david_chisnall From looking at a financial services firm, the ship-jumping mainly affects the non-IT parts of the firm.
Here's what runs on NIXes: core banking stack (client accounts, payment processing etc.), trading systems, the grids for risk simulations, online banking, settlement systems, reporting engines, data lakes etc.
Here's what runs Win: laptops.
On these laptops: a browser running cloud services like the GUIs for the above-mentioned services, also Jira but also sharepoint (Which I guess can run on Linux?).
And here's the big one: MS Office, incl. Teams.
That's it. That's the one big thing that keeps Linux off these laptops.
I do not like MS Office, but I have to admit that no Libre Office or Thunderbird comes near it when it comes to the office workflow.
However, I wonder if Copilot and Co do not reduce the switching hurdle. If I e.g. ask Copilot to compare two Excel tables and highlight the differences, I no longer mind if it's doing it in Excel or Calc or Sheets or Lotus 1-2-3.

Abhijit Menon-Sen Jun 5

@david_chisnall I installed Slackware, decided it was too much for me, did "rm -rf /" because that sounded pretty cool, and forgot that /dosc was automatically mounted. That's how I ended up switching. ;-)

Expired Token Jun 5

@amenonsen @david_chisnall Damn, you reinvented suicidelinux !
https://qntm.org/suicide

Suicide Linux @ Things Of Interest

doboprobodyne Jun 5

@david_chisnall Great point. I think this idea of migrating one's applications first and *then* the OS also applies to many hardware platforms. For example, degoogled android OS for mobile telephones. I've seen many people who tried to migrate OS first complain their apps didn't work, but those who had been gradually transitioning toward more privacy-respecting open-source apps before switching OS seemed to have a grand old time.

#grapheneOS #degoogle #defenestrate #FOSS #software #operatingSystem

surfsup31 Jun 5

@doboprobodyne I’m actually doing this for iPhone and windows pc simultaneously and it makes the two work better together with each shift as well.

Wish the sun to stand still 🌞Jun 5

@doboprobodyne @david_chisnall

For example, degoogled android OS for mobile telephones.

However, Android has added a desktop UI.

Android's potential likely out-classes anything from the "Desktop Linux" realm. The latter doesn't even really exist, IMO, as its a loose collection of things that confuse non-technical users.

We must stop trying to lure the general population to Unix culture. They will keep spitting it out.

@david_chisnall Interesting observation. As someone who's been using both Windows and Linux (different DEs and WMs) for over 20 years my main problem with my (first, current) work Mac has absolutely been window management and keyboard layout, applications have absolutely not been problem - but I guess as a dual (or tripe OS) user I've been relatively flexible in my choice of tools and alternatives anyway.

But I don't disagree, my main PC at home is still on Windows unfortunately, because of some small things I couldn't get configured (or running) as I'd like, despite preferring Linux anyway.

SlightlyCyberpunk Jun 6

@wink @david_chisnall I think it depends on the individual too though. Sometimes you gotta actually prevent yourself from using the other stuff or you'll just keep going back to it. Part of my transition to Linux was a second old PC and a crossover ethernet cable because I couldn't get the wifi working and I had to find a way to make it feasible :)

(That was also about 20 years ago when that sort of compatibility was a bigger issue!)

@david_chisnall

I mainly maintain my Windows (game) computers because of the games / steam currently runs best on Windows, if Steam and NVidia (and perhaps AMD) get their act together I would be happy to change tack, for everything else (besides work) I use the Linux already.

Radomír Žemlička Jun 5

@hnapel @david_chisnall What games do you play? Is any of them broken on Linux if you check ProtonDB? Nvidia for the most parts works fine already on Linux. (I run Pop OS with RTX 2070 Super and I've had no problems so far.)

@Razemix @david_chisnall

Picking berries in Horizon Zero Dawn mostly.

@hnapel @david_chisnall My daughter has been on Bazzite Linux for a while because she did not want to use Windows 11.

There's been some minor issues but most games work fine.

@aerique @david_chisnall

A true radical!

Dud and Forgotten.Jun 5

@david_chisnall Looking back, that's pretty much what I did. Moved to OSS apps that were cross platform, so the final jump wasn't too long.

Alerta! Alerta!Jun 5

@david_chisnall My main issue was - and still is - the OS layer.

I used MacOS (Yes! Capital "M") for 25 years. Some things are engrained in muscle memory.

I tried using linux for a few years but there were some parts that didn't go away and still slowed me down even after several years.

And investing several days to dig into the depths of driver configuration and libraries on linux to just get the trackpad-behaviour right didn'T pay off.

In the end I went back to macOS.

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Jun 5

Yup, the transition from macOS is harder because OS X was consistent and tightly integrated, from the command-line up through the GUI.

When we were doing Étoilé, I joked that F/OSS DEs would pass OS X usability in 20 years even if the F/OSS people didn't change anything, just due to the rate at which OS X was getting worse. I think Apple's been doing their best to make that prediction true in the last couple of releases.

Alerta! Alerta!Jun 5

@david_chisnall Oh absolutely! 😁

Jef Verbeeck Jun 5

@david_chisnall @heiglandreas I recently started using Linux in parallel to macOS and I prefer KDE Plasma DE over Apple's desktop. But when switching between different apps, mac apps are so much morer consistent in keyboard shortcuts!
Anyway: great advice in your original post!

[email protected]:~$

@david_chisnall I like your point about corp/org migrations. Another advantage to transitioning programs first is, once that happens it becomes possible for others in the org to use another OS and still engage with others without needing all sorts of workarounds.

It is also the easier migration to do in my experience. The hard migration is usually IT & Security, who are quick to throw out words like: "No", and "Impossible", and also happen to usually be in a position to more or less veto such initiatives. In a Windows-entrenched environment, IT probably does not know how to deploy Linux across the org, much less support it. They also often have a lot of networking tools, telemetry, management engines etc that are Windows-specific, and depending on how hard they lean into corpo-spyware mess there may be no viable Linux alternative.

But by going applications-first, one by-steps all the fights with IT & Security. At worst, they just have to white-list a few more apps.

Overwhelmed entity Jun 5

@david_chisnall Thanks, seems like great advice I can pass on to people who wanna switch

@david_chisnall this is really, really good advice. I guess I'd also suggest checking compatibility with your existing hardware too. you buy some peripheral that only supports Windows and that doesn't seem at all like a problem until it's time to switch and you're kinda stuck

cheesemergency Jun 5

@david_chisnall i loved xp and 7 but 8 and up i hated. when i was forced to buy a new machine and go from 7 to 10, i full switched to linux and never looked back. i hated not having control over my machine anymore.

surfsup31 Jun 5

@makeitmythic great point. working with legal teams in education I’m realizing how much everyone (who is paying attention) hates not having control over their machines! as one example- constantly having to dodge ai and “smart” features when working with student information is exhausting people.

cheesemergency Jun 5

@surfsup31 its v frustrating and disheartening trying to find a medical provider who doesnt use ai, as well.

@david_chisnall I was technical lead for a customer Y2K migration to NT4.0 including over 900 applications.

It was a huge job but we managed it. It would have been way easier doing it as you suggest and without the impending time constraints that we had.

The rationale and stack are different, but I think the same principles apply.

@david_chisnall that's what the French gendarmerie did, took them 10 years, but they saved millions.

@david_chisnall
Our workplace decided to free themselves from Microsoft licenses and rolled out openoffice across the board. Except they never updated it to assure interoperability with MS Office users. Then they made exceptions for folk who needed excel because of macros, then people who had to send a lot of docs to other places then people who complained because him at the next desk had "real" office. Eventually the whole initiative just fell apart.

on a personal level, I switched to linux on my laptop because it wouldn't upgrade to Windows 11. (Using it now. It's fine.)

@david_chisnall From my experience, not migrating the OS first is too much of a tentation to go back to your "usual" tools at the first friction.

happyborg Jun 5

@david_chisnall in the past, more than applications it was device drivers that would cause problems for me because if they don't work you can't use that printer, scanner, track pad etc, or are stuck with a crap screen/desktop crashes etc.

That's what took me from initially trying Debian to Ubuntu. I think this is less of an issue now so am considering trying Debian again, but I don't think this should be left out.

So testing with live distro before installing is important.

@david_chisnall good advice! Is there a "quitting smoking" parallel somewhere in there?

Radomír Žemlička Jun 5

@david_chisnall Yup, worked for me. The only thing I miss is Notepad++, but KWrite is a good enough replacement. It fortunately also worked for my wife. Even on Windows, she already used LibreOffice, Audacity and MuseScore. The only last-minute change was swapping Chrome for Firefox, but thet went pretty smoothly too. So now we are a completely Windows-free household. 😄

@david_chisnall on one hand this makes lot of sense, on the other this makes the app switch worse. many apps that work on windows work there slightly differently and often are actually harder to use... which can be a deal breaker for people who are not sure about the entire thing (those who really want to make the switch will find the way one way or the other). as an example try to use something like darktable on windows.

Nils Fuhrmann Jun 5

@david_chisnall

2025 Schleswig-Holstein switched to Open Xchange, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and Nextcloud

2026 Schleswig-Holstein started to switch from windows to Linux 💪

#SchleswigHolstein #openxchange #Thunderbird #LibreOffice #linux

@david_chisnall

Switching software/apps first and then the operating system was and is a good advice.

A good place to find alternative software which run on Windows and Linux is the community driven https://alternativeto.net

Sadly Microsoft accelerates in changing Windows to a user unfriendly system so the pressure to get rid of Windows as fast as possible grows too.

AlternativeTo - Crowdsourced software recommendations

AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android Tablets, Web Apps, Online, Windows Tablets and more by recommending alternatives to apps you already know.

AlternativeTo

@david_chisnall then some drone in Finance comes to you with some subscription Excel vbs macro + application that requires so many old Windows dependencies that you want to cry, and of course you can't port that. And that team gets to keep Windows and Office. Then everyone else wants it, too, because they don't want to adapt to anything new, ever.

@david_chisnall This is exactly what made my Linux transition smooth - ever since Windows 11 came out (a bit before, even), I've been making an effort to slowly switch my Windows-only apps for open source or at least Linux-compatible alternatives - RawTherapee replaced Adobe Lightroom, Davinci Resolve replaced Adobe Premiere, stuff like that.

So, when a few months ago Windows 11 pissd me off so much that I finally decided I was done with it, switching to Linux felt like a breeze - all my apps still worked, but the OS also worked.

It definitely was not seamless (I would describe the experience as seamful, in fact) - but not needing to replace all my applications at the same time made it 10x smoother

Ray McCarthy Jun 5

@david_chisnall
You can even copy over Thunderbird and browser profiles / content / history

Word Dictionaries can be edited in a text editor (Notepad++). Remove one line and they can work on LO Writer.

Import Doc & Docx, but only save / edit in odt. Extra Save As in Word 2007 docx for export.

Some VB6 programs that won't run on any 64 bit windows will run on 32 bit WINE on 64 bit Linux.

I'd not bother with WSL2.

Techtrest Jun 5

@david_chisnall I’ve been a Windows user since '95, but I never made the jump from 10 to 11. Instead, I switched to Fedora, and I haven't regretted it for a single minute. I leaned on AI to help me navigate a few setup hurdles, but now everything is running flawlessly. I get your logic, but I personally preferred just jumping into the cold water.

Father Hardstone Jun 5

@david_chisnall People in my part of the world ( #Pakistan) cos how easy it was to run a usb flashdrive there and the somewhat flashy and modern GUI (compared to Windows 98)

David, a Bostonian in Tokyo.Jun 5

@david_chisnall

FWIW, Window NT was (and it's descendents remain) a serious OS. It was a reimplementation (with improvements) of the widely respected VMS.

The Mac folks didn't have a protected mode multitasking OS for another ten years, when they finally ported a version of Unix. Prior to that port, MacOS was as bletcherous a disaster as all of the pre-NT Windowses.

Nowadays, all the OSes are protected mode multitasking. so which one you use makes no difference.

turbulent Jun 5

@david_chisnall For many corps and orgs switching from proprietary microsoft office format to ODF would be a manageable step that would take them most of the way towards FOSS

Stephen Dioxide

@turbulent @david_chisnall I've been trying to convince people of this for a while now. Mostly, I got blank stares.

Silmathoron ⁂Jun 5

@david_chisnall I don't understand why it's so hard for IT departments to understand that...

crabbypup Jun 5

@david_chisnall

I switched basically full time to Linux in 2008, after vista blew up two months in a row and I'd spent time rebuilding my install.

But I'd already been using only open source cross platform available tools on windows for several years at that point.

Before windows XP, all our machines ran OS/2, with star office on them - so openoffice and later libreoffice was something I was already comfortable with.

Al & Val's Modern Homesteading Jun 5

@david_chisnall That's the exact strategy I took back in 2007 while managing my own IT business. I was a "certified Microsoft everything" but had been working with pretty much every OS out there at the time because my clientelle was diverse. I switched to open-source software first, one here, one there, and eventually had replaced all things MS. I then ran a dual-boot system until I was comfortable with using my new open source OS. 19 years later, I've almost convince my wife to give it a up

surfsup31 Jun 5

@alandvalonline i was double booting back in 2010-2012 to learn Linux as a high schooler (with pretty low interest, low background knowledge in tech) while still doing my homework and projects mostly on windows where i was faster with apps. it’s a good way to try something new if possible.

Korben Dallas Jun 5

@david_chisnall I would love to get my workplace off of Windows just so I wouldn't have to use Teams. We could easuly do a slow rollout of LibreOffice and other productivity platforms, we have so many niche software platforms that sell maybe 1,000 very expensive server licenses per year so they never bother to release anything other than Windows and the niche is too small to have any sort of well-supported Linux alternative.

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Jun 5

@multipass Windows is, weirdly, the platform with the worst Teams client. The macOS, iOS, and Android ones are all better. I never understood that when I worked at MS.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Jun 5

@david_chisnall I'm going to pass this brilliant advice along to our IT department, who foreshadowed Linux as a pending option almost a year ago but look like deer in the headlights every time I ask about it 😝

(most "IT departments" are really Microsoft support departments & are just as terrified of switching as casual non-techie users...)