The first question, before the distros, before the tools, before the backups: do I still need Windows?
For years the answer would have been a confident yes. But looking at what I actually do on this machine — browsing the web, a bit of office work — I realised there wasn't much left that specifically needed Windows. The browser runs the same everywhere, and the office stuff either lives in a tab or in an open-source suite. A few Windows-only utilities, maybe, but nothing irreplaceable.
Except in one area: games.
Linux and games: is it viable?
That's the brake that held me back the longest. As long as gaming on Linux meant "wrestling with Wine", I stayed. But between Proton, the Steam Deck, and the mountain of community reports on ProtonDB, the picture has shifted enormously. The majority of the games I actually play now run with zero fiddling — a few with a launch flag, almost none asking me to crack open the engine.
There will still be edge cases — games with kernel-level anti-cheat, a few very specific editors — but it stops being the rule and becomes the exception. For the first time, the trade-off feels acceptable.
Picking a distribution: Zorin OS 18.1
After looking at the usual suspects, I first ruled out the American bases (Pop!_OS, Fedora). The issue isn't American tech itself — it's the uncertainty the American government creates, which makes me prefer, given technical equivalence, a project based outside that zone of instability.
That leaves two European candidates, on the same Ubuntu (UK) / Debian (a global community project with no hard ties to the US) lineage:
- Zorin OS — built in Ireland (version 18.1 at the time of writing).
- Linux Mint — led between Ireland and France.
They tick more or less the same boxes. Zorin won out in the end. A few reasons:
- The Windows look without the gunk. The desktop is familiar, my muscle memory survives. What changes is what sits underneath.
- An openly mainstream focus. I'm migrating; I'd rather not spend my evenings rebuilding my graphical session.
- Brave by default. The pre-installed browser is Brave, not Firefox. Firefox and I never really clicked — finding Brave already in place saves me the "uninstall, reinstall" round-trip.
Not the most exotic choice, and that's precisely the point: a soft landing.
I jumped
Install is done. The workstation now runs Zorin. The real work — configuring, migrating my data, finding my habits again, gaming — is what this blog is going to be about.
With one question running through it all: can a beginner — not a sysadmin, just someone who wants an OS to live with — make the same move? This blog is also here to find out.
To help me through it, I can count on my faithful friend Claude — Anthropic's AI. Note for the beginner in the audience: any other AI should do just as well. Putting a question into words, pointing me at the right command, unpacking an error message — without that safety net, this trip would probably take twice as long.
And no, this blog isn't an ad for Claude or for Anthropic — nobody asked me to mention them. It's just the tool I happen to use day to day; swap it freely for whichever AI you prefer, the principle is the same.