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Everyone's final straw with Windows is a little bit different. Maybe it's a headline about yet another privacy issue. Maybe it's an update at a really inopportune moment. Maybe it's Edge dark patterning itself into being your default web browser again. Or maybe it's just the sudden realization that your operating system is supposed to serve the user instead of serving ads. Whatever your reason, you're here. You're watching this now and it's time to actually do something about it. Inspired by our recent Linux challenge, Reddit user Jill Dwe created a tool to simplify the process of migrating all of
your important files and applications. You can give that one a try, but it's currently in alpha, so maybe it's safer to migrate manually. The good news is it's not much harder to do it the manual way, and you might find the process both rewarding and liberating. Now, I know I often sound like a Linux evangelist now, but I'm not actually trying to convert you to a religion. I don't care if you fully appreciate the uh virtuousness of open-source software or whatever. My sales pitch is way simpler. Do you like to search a thing and it responds right away instead of querying the web? Do you like to put your laptop to sleep and it actually stays asleep instead of waking up and trying to melt itself in your
computer backpack from ltdttore.com? Now available in a slick green color with British Miller and waxed fabric. Well, then you're going to love Linux. Not everything about it, but enough things that it's worth giving a shot. Just like I'm going to take a shot of Segue to our sponsor, Meter. They want to help aspiring network builders and operators get their career going with their grant program. So, if you want to break into the field, learn more about Meter's funding for certifications and more down below. Everyone's Linux journey begins pretty much the same way. MICROSOFT. OKAY. NO, I meant right after that when you sit down to choose a Linux distribution or DRO. Now, I could just tell you which
one to install and move on, but I believe that like choosing a family vehicle or an outfit for prom, a DRO is a personal choice. And my goal is not to make personal choices for you today. I'm not Microsoft. Rather, my goal is to equip you with the knowledge and the tools that you need to make those decisions for yourself. So, how do you choose a DRO? Well, you could Google search, ask on Reddit, or consult an LLM. But the best way is to try them for yourself. And the hands down fastest way to do that is with a handydandy tool called DROC C with zero commitment. You don't even need to download an ISO or format a USB drive. It lets you test dozens of different distros directly in
your browser. If you find that overwhelming, Dro Chooser is a great place to start. It's a questionnaire style picker that will spit out a half a dozen or so options based on your preferences. Finally, if you're more just wondering what's trendy, which in open source can often be equivalent to what's best supported, DROWatch is a great resource that tracks and ranks distros by popularity, lists release news, and has many reviews for most major distributions. With your DRO chosen, it's time to take the plunge. Obtaining the ISO is easy. Find your DRO's website, select your architecture, probably x8664 if you didn't come through a time machine to watch this video, and then you wait. And while you wait, you can pick up a tool to turn
that ISO file into a bootable USB drive. The most popular tools for this are Bolina Etcher and Rufus, with Ventoy being another big one, but it's kind of fallen out of favor lately for using some pre-ompiled binary blobs that could compromise its security either now or in the future. Anyway, whatever dro you choose, this is the part where you stop for a moment and formulate a strategy. If you have a NAS or a networkattached storage device, or if you use cloud storage, then backing up your data is relatively straightforward. Just grab everything of value from C/ users/youname folder and copy it there to be manually migrated after the fact. Also, don't forget to dig through your installed
programs and see if any of them have kind of wackadoodle user data storage schemes. Over the years, I've seen ones that stash it in hidden app data folders or even ones that keep it in the program files directory, which is a huge yikes. If you don't have either a NAS or cloud storage, then it's decision time. Installing Linux will involve wiping your operating system drive. So, do you want to grab another drive to use as a backup target? Or, this can actually be a really elegant solution for reasons I'll get into later. Do you want to pick up a new drive altogether? Install Linux to that and then choose which operating system you want every time the system boots. Whichever route you go, once
you've backed up your important data, we would strongly recommend physically disconnecting every drive from the system that isn't the one that you want to wipe and install Linux on. Next, open up your systems UEFI BIOS. You can do this either by holding shift and restarting in Windows or by mashing the requisite hotkey on your motherboard during system boot, usually F2 or delete. You're going to want to familiarize yourself with the boot device selection menu. Find your USB drive and set that as your primary boot device. And while you're in here, it might be worth figuring out where your settings are for secure boot. If it's not enabled, you can turn it on now, but some drivers may require an extra
machine owner key enrollment step later. Once we see this menu, believe it or not, a lot of the hard stuff is already over. Even compared to just a few years ago, setting up Linux has gotten incredibly simple. Not like, iCloud magically makes my new Mac exactly like my old Mac simple, but easy enough that most people should be able to understand what's being asked and end up with the right settings enabled when they finally land on the desktop. At which point, they're probably going to ask, "Where is everything?" There are some distros that are built specifically to cater to Windows refugees or Mac for that matter.
Framework has a great little guide on migrating from Apple investment disclosure. But the point is most distros don't aspire to be Windows. So while your system tray might be in the bottom right, it also might be in the top right or the bottom bar or even hidden by default. Don't freak out. You will get used to it. And the best way to do so is to just not go running back to Windows and immerse yourself. Let's start then by firing up your file manager, the Linux equivalent of the Windows file explorer. This will be Dolphin on KDE or Thuner, Nautilus, Nemo, etc. on some of the other desktop environments. Right away, you'll be greeted by a folder structure that looks a little alien at first, but is more
intuitive the more time you spend with it. See, while Windows gives every drive a letter and its own separate folder tree underneath that, Linux has one tree that starts at slash and then every drive gets attached or mounted somewhere inside that tree. So, no more scared d/game. Instead, it'll be slashmount/game or whatever path you decide to map that drive to. Okay, what about the rest of this stuff? Most people are only ever going to need/home/username. That sits on your OS drive and is the direct equivalent of C/ users/ username. It contains your documents, your downloads, your pictures, and the like. So, go ahead and copy all of those files over. Now, the rest here is generally
system territory. /c holds config files. /v is for data that changes often and that isn't tied to a specific user. Logs are the most common thing that you might go digging for in here, but it also covers things like package manager caches, print cues, and mail spools. / user holds installed programs and /bin and sbin are where the actual core OS binaries live. /lib holds the shared libraries that those programs depend on and /boot is what starts the machine. /proc and slashdev are virtual, so not real files on the disk. /proc exposes live information about running processes and the kernel and /dev represents your hardware as files. You might never touch any of these directories, but it's still
worth knowing that they exist. The exception is you might occasionally edit something in /c if you're following an online guide. Otherwise, leave the rest alone and Linux will remind you of that by requiring sudo, the rough equivalent of administrator access on Windows before it lets you do so. For a much more detailed guide on all of these, How-To Geeks breakdown covers every directory. Now, it's time to get some apps. Depending on your DRO, this might work a little differently than what you're used to. In place of an app store, most distros have a graphical package manager where you can download software. If you're allergic to black screens with white text, these are a great place to start. Now, you can go to
the developer website to download an application like you would on Windows, but Linux doesn't really have a universal version of something like a.exe file on Windows. And different dros will use different package managers for their software. So, if you try to download software that way, the compatibility can be pretty hit or miss. I'd say the closest thing is probably Flatpack. It's a self-contained package that has essential dependencies bundled into it and then it is sandboxed by default from the rest of your system and installable on pretty much any DRO. It's kind of become the default way that most people install software on Linux.
FlatHub, where most flat packs can be found, hosts around 2,800 apps and pulled a record 435 million downloads in 2025. That's a 21% increase year-over-year with over a thousand of those apps published directly by their original developers rather than being repackaged by volunteers. You're the Linux desktop baby. It's coming. But you still won't find everything there. So what about the rest? For Windows only applications that have no Linux equivalent, bottles is going to be your best option. It's a wine front end that lets you install Windows applications in contained environments, managing their dependencies and configuring their compatibility settings without getting lost in the terminal. Not everything
works, but it is significantly more approachable than vanilla wine. Wine HQ's app DB is worth checking out beforehand, by the way, to see how a specific Windows app is known to run. For the ones that don't, it's time to talk options. First up is dual booting. I alluded to this earlier having the two separate drives and Luke did a great video about this recently. This is realistically the only bulletproof workound when it comes to games that have kernel level cheat and some professional applications that just have no Linux equivalents. Option number two, I guess I spoiled that there is uh finding a Linux equivalent that can serve your purposes. Now, I'm not going to get into specific app recommendations that there's too much subjectivity here
and it can get a little emotional, but what I will do is cover off some of the basics and point you again to our companion article on ltlabs.com where Udkar demonstrates that he's clearly wearing flame warp proof underwear. Probably comfortable marino blend underwear in our new error style ltdstore.com. Anywh who, browsers are easy. Firefox, Chrome, Brave, and Opera all have native Linux versions, which means 90% of what most people do on their computer is already covered. Anyway, as for gaming, Steam offers up more than just native support for Linux, but they also add the Proton compatibility layer. We've covered this in more detail before, but Proton allows many Windows games to run directly on
Linux without any tom foolery or user configuration. Not everything works. As I mentioned, some anti-cheat and some DRM schemes can run into trouble. But if you treat your Linux PC more like a console, you know, something that supports many games, but not all games, you might find that there is plenty to do to pass the time. And you aren't even limited to just Steam. Heroic Launcher is worth checking out for Epic Games and DRM free titles from GOG. And Lutris is another great tool for your toolbox if you happen to be into emulation. Now, at this point, if everything's going according to plan, you should be pretty much good to go. But it's possible it didn't. Let's talk drivers. Most dros
come with all the drivers you could want. Windows could really learn a thing or two here, but Nvidia drivers can famously be a bit of a sticking point sometimes. Some distros proactively address this for you, but for others, you might need to make some choices here. The unofficial open- source driver NVK is making pretty good progress. In fact, it recently even picked up experimental DLSS support, but it's probably not what you want for gaming just yet. So, your main options are between the two versions of Nvidia's official driver, Nvidia and Nvidia Open. They're both the same thing with identical performance. It's just that Nvidia Open has the kernel facing half open sourced, while on both the part that communicates with your games is
closed. The main reason to choose one over the other really comes down to support. Open only works on RTX 20 series and newer, and RTX 50 series cards exclusively use the open version. Nvidia, in fact, now defaults to it on every card that supports it. And for the folks that are still rocking GTX 10 series and older, the classic driver is your only option. Getting it installed can be as easy as pressing one button, or it can lead you to feel like Sisphus himself, depending on your DRO. But there are tools to help. Ubuntu, Basite, and Pika OS include driver managers that will handle it for you. And on Archbased Distros, you can use big driver manager.
And that's it. Your Penguin build. Now, how does it feel? Pretty good, I bet. Updates used to interrupt you Midame, but now they run only when you tell them to. Your app menu used to try to sell you things, and now it just does its job. Background processes used to phone home for reasons that you never agreed to or even knew about. And now, I don't know, well, they might still do that depending on what kinds of apps you install, but at least your operating system won't do it. Sure, you spent some time and precious brain energy, but you gained back a lot of control, more of it than you probably expected going in, and you're just getting started. Don't like your desktop environment? Install a
different one. Want to change what loads at boot, how tasks get scheduled, how a window looks when you drag it? It's all up to you. Heck, if you're feeling ambitious, you can even set up an animated pop-up warning that unauthorized users haven't said the magic word or something. The point is, you can do pretty much anything you want pretty well, free of charge, and it's a great feeling. Now, for a free segue to our sponsor, Meter. They build enterprise networks from the ground up, but they need your help. That's because they've noticed that the talent in the field is getting scarcer by the day. So, they launched their network grants program. It is estimated that about 1/4th of today's network engineers will
be retiring within the next 5 years. And that is why Meter wants to start funding education for the next generation today. Meter is providing funds for certifications, courses, and tools to help aspiring network builders and operators get started. It doesn't matter if you're a student, if you're tired of your current career path, or if you're self-taught. Meter wants to help get you to the next level. If you go to meter.com/grants or you use our link down below, all you have to do is tell them what you want to learn and why, and you could be eligible for up to $2,000
to get started. Then, when the form asks you how you heard about the grant, make sure you let them know that LT sent you. If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out DGoole Your Life Part One? Um, part one specifically, part two was taken down by YouTube, but uh there are other places you can access it lg.gg/loplay SL playing
