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 (Pop!_OS, Fedora), the real choice came down to Zorin OS and Linux Mint — they tick more or less the same boxes. Zorin (version 18.1 at the time of writing) 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 Ubuntu LTS base. Stable, well-documented, huge package ecosystem.
- An openly mainstream focus. I'm migrating; I'd rather not spend my evenings rebuilding my graphical session.
- European, not American. Zorin is built in Ireland. The issue isn't American tech itself — it's the uncertainty the American government creates. Given two technically equivalent distros, I'd rather pick one based outside that zone of instability.
- 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.