Ditching Windows
After spending all of my adult life enjoying Microsoft Windows and having a passion for the world of Linux, i've decide to uninstall Windows 11 and migrate fully to Manjaro Linux. There are many reasons why I have decided to do this now, some I have bullet pointed below:
- More ad's in the software, despite paying for it
- More and more bloat - AI for one
- Restricted customization - Can't officially move the task bar to the top of the screen, can't adjust the Start menu contents beyond a token amount
There are more, but that's the crux of it.
Deciding what Distribution
One of the biggest initial hurdles of adopting Linux is picking a distribution. There are a few main trees to go down, ARCH based, Debian Based, BSD based and so on. Once you have picked a tree, you then need to pick a branch, Ubuntu (Debian), Manjaro (Arch), etc. Each one with pros and cons out of the box. Mainly the branch you pick will start you down a road of discovery and options. You also have to decide on a Window Manager (the GUI of the system). Again there are few choices to go down here and it really is a personal preference.
In the past, I have stuck to Debian based distributions with KDE Plasma as my Window Manager. However as my workstation is equipped with an Nvidia RTX50 Series graphics card - this did not work out for me out of the box. Most stable distributions wont bake in 50 Series support until September 2025. This posed a problem as I do want to game on the computer as well as work.
After reaching out the community on Mastodon, I got pointed at ARCH and Manjaro. I have not used ARCH for many years, but decided to give it a go. Whilst my initial impression was good - it booted up, saw my RTX and displayed at my native resolution, I could not change settings like the refresh rate or make changed to the resolution.
It turns out that Manjaro is still in the position of finalising support for the RTX 50 series. So I had a choice - go back to Windows 11, or find a solution. I went through the ARCH and Manjaro forums and I found that the unstable development build had the correct versions of the drivers in. So a few commands later and I was on the Unstable build.
Now my graphics work amazingly and I can play PC games and VR games on my Meta Quest 3 headset.
Windows in the rear view mirror
Now I have been running for a few months, I can't see myself ever needing or wanting to go back to Windows. I have everything I need in this setup and much more.
I can setup the screen how I need to fit my workflow!
- Task bar at the top of the screen ✅
- Start Menu to my liking ✅
- Snapping Zone to my preference ✅
- No Ad's in the OS ✅
- No Bloat in the OS ✅
- Gaming (Steam, EA, GOG etc) ✅
- VR Gaming ✅
My desktop setup:
