Turns out the reply in my thread telling me the best way to combat not caring about Linux is to care about Linux was absolutely correct.
I picked up a laptop, installed Linux Mint Cinnamon, and I’m already obsessed. I haven’t had this much fun with a PC in a long time and it’s just a cheapo Dell Inspiron 3520.
This seems like a good thread to ask this… I’m sure I could find the answers I need myself but frankly I trust the userbase here more than most online articles.
As my username hints at, I’m a lawyer. I’m considering starting my own firm as a solo practitioner. I need a computer and/or laptop for it, and as a new business my budget would be pretty tight. I’ve mostly only ever used windows, but I’m getting fed up with the bullshit, so I’m considering going with Linux.
I assume Linux is capable of doing everything I need, which is primarily handling word documents, viewing PDFs, watching evidence videos, and online research. But my concern is that some of the more commonly used video types might have trouble on Linux, or that some of the word document templates I use in Windows might have compatibility issues.
I’m also nervous about using an OS I’m not familiar with for business purposes right away.
So I guess I’m asking a few questions. What is a reliable yet affordable option to get started? Are my concerns based in reality or is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues? What else might I need to know to use Linux comfortably from the get go? Is it going to take a lot of time and effort to get Linux running how I need it to?
For reference, I do consider myself to be somewhat tech-savvy. I don’t code or anything, but I’ve built my last two home computers myself and I’m not scared of general software management, I just don’t make it myself.
So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.
Word will be your biggest problem.
On rare occasion, you might get some sort of advanced PDF feature that will trip you up (embedded 3D objects or some weird encryption or something), but 99% will work as expected.
Linux is literally the home turf for major video player development. VLC works like a charm for literally everything.
Only office is what I use for school and it’s excellent, otherwise the full MS suite is available in the browser.
You can always do a test run from a Linux live CD / USB with no commitment. So you can try Linux for as long as you want without disrupting you current environment.
VLC should sort you for video. It’s been said before, but word docs may trip you up. Try libreoffice, if that’s not working for you and you want to stick with Linux you’ve got a few options:
Office 365 online - might be controversial, but IMO if that’s the only thing keeping you back at least it’s not windows and office
Google docs - another viable option
Windows VM running under Linux just for office.
As for the first point, never had issues with video reproduction on Linux myself.
As for the second: a year or so ago MS released it’s office suite on the web, so if libreoffice (free and open source office suite pre-installed in many Linux distros) has trouble reading your documents (proprietary formats like .docx that not always work on libreoffice) there’s always the web version of MS office.
I would say if anything MPV player can play more types of video than VLC.
Meh, they both support a ton of formats and encodings. Just use whichever feel best, even install both.
Both use ffmpeg. The ffmpeg build they come with may have more or less things enabled but broadly speaking support should be equally extensive.
You’ve got a lot of responses already, but as a business owner, I highly recommend not taking risks like this when you first start out. You don’t ever want technical problems like word documents not opening correctly to mean the difference between getting your work done and spending time working on… well, not work. This is why I’ve always advocated that Linux is great, especially for my home compute, but when it comes to work, it’s about being the most effective/efficient.
I would say that security and privacy are also very important. That’s something you can’t get with Windows.
One option that doesn’t require any commitment is to just make a bootable usb drive that you can run to ‘test drive’ Linux. Ubuntu is probably the easiest for beginners to learn since there is so many forums online to look at when you have issues.
Definitely tradeoffs to consider.
I made the jump about 2 months ago for the same reasons you’re considering. My job also being very similar in usage to yours. Literally 0 issues so far, couldn’t be more satisfied that I made the jump. I went with mint and there was basically zero learning curve for me coming from w10.
Do it.
I think you are good to go. Just chose distro (pop os for me) and be amazed how everything works out of the box.
Lot of people recommend libre office and its great, but in my experience Only Office is super compatible with ms office and its perfect for me. You can try only office on windows and see is it working for you. I bet it does.
I have few apps for work that cant run on linux, but thats mostly professional engineering software (cad, cam, nesting and few more) and some of them can probably be used with wine or simmilar.
Even if you want to play games linux is not far from windows today.
Im not advanced user, fully switched to linux only 6 months ago. just my 2c
For professional work cases, Linux is a very good choice. You don’t need to pay for the corporate windows licences and security is overall better than windows since security by obscurity is a no no which windows intends.
Try going with a solid distro. Use mint or fedora. I would recommend you use the KDE desktop environment as it is very sleek and matches the windows look.
As for your video codec issue, if you are using distros which “respect” American patent laws, use the world wide versions. For example in Fedora, you must install the free world versions.
And the most important tip for you switching to Linux, ask questions and read up if you get stuck on something, however trivial you might think the issue is. The community is very open and very supportive.
Good luck all your endeavours :)
About word documents, I’d suggest using onlyoffice instead of the default libreoffice. I’m using it as an academic researcher, and It has been well above my expectations. I used to have some trouble when submiting my works, but onlyoffice has been smoother than ms word for docx documents. I don’t know about the kind of formating in your files, though, maybe the experience can vary.
It really comes down to apps.
The only flag you mentioned that caught my attention was Word and Word templates. I’ve not tried Word templates.
I figure your options are either Libre Office or something cloud based, eg, Google Docs.
One thing you could try is to set up a VM or boot a live CD (USB) and try on the things that most concern you.
If word is a sticking point office365 exists too.
For more complex documents, O365 does not work well, sadly.
For simple documents it also doesn’t work well, but at least it’s expensive and slow so it’s got that going for it.
Easiest (and cheapest) way to get into Linux and find out if you encounter any problems in your workflow is to try it out using a virtual machine. Basically you can run Linux (or any other OS) in a sandbox on your Windows machine. Virtualbox is a popular and easy-to-use tool for that, just download it and an ISO (basically a virtual CD) of the Linux distribution you want to try out, start up a new VM from inside Virtualbox and tell it to boot from the Linux ISO.
Install Linux inside the VM (the ISO is an installer) and then just try to do everything you would normally do on your Winows machine and see if there are any problems. If you choose that Linux sucks or is too much work to get into, you can just delete the VM and your Windows machine will be unaffected from the entire venture.
This is all free (and legal) and you get the 100 % Linux experience of your distribution (minus some performance, you’re running two operating systems after all).
I agree that this is an easy way to try out Linux; but I wouldn’t advice doing it like this if you have intentions to eventually make Linux your main OS. If you’re using Linux in a virtual machine, then it will always feel like it’s another layer of work, another layer of abstraction, another few clicks to get started… it just adds a bit of friction. So although the virtual machine can show you what the OS looks like and how it works etc. The experience of possibly using it as a main OS will be skewed in a negative way by having to set up and run a the virtual machine.
So I’d say virtual machine is ok if you just want to look around for curiosity; but if you have intentions to make it your primary OS, then I reckon go straight to dual boot, and make Linux the default boot option so that the friction is in switching back to Windows rather than in trying the new and unfamiliar OS.
If this was the typical use case of a private person unsure whether they should use Linux for their personal computer, I’d whole-heartedly agree.
However, since OP is making the decision whether to use Linux for their business, I think they should definitely try it out first and especially try to simulate their workflow in order to ensure Linux will suit their needs. It’s one thing if your operating system is wonky while you’re trying to watch Netflix, it’s a whole different thing if you can’t watch evidence videos which will prevent you from doing your lawyer work but woopsie, you fully committed to Linux.
Definitely just try everything out before making the business decision to switch over to Linux.
And if you plan on trying different distributions, use Ventoy. It will create a bootable USB memory stick that you can copy your various ISO files to. When booting from it, you can then select which ISO to boot. Saves you from overwriting the same memory stick time and time again. Or having multiple memory sticks, one for each ISO.
This is the biggest pitfall of Linux: Microsoft doesn’t make Office for Linux and the compatibility layers we do have don’t work well enough.
There are alternatives like LibreOffice, however, don’t expect them to be perfectly compatible with Office.
Everything else you listed is perfectly fine: Most browsers ship Linux versions, and those can be used for PDF viewing.
I’d recommend familiarizing yourself with the Linux command line, as most advanced system configuration has to be done through the CLI.
In addition, remember to do your research before asking for help. Good resources include the system manual pages, Arch Wiki, and of course, Google.
As for choice of distro, I’ll recommend Fedora, as it’s reasonably up to date with software and has a nice GUI for dealing with updates.
afaik onlyoffice has better compatability with office documents than office itself
Any ffmpeg based media player like mpv can play pretty much any video format that you will ever have to watch.
PDF viewing can be done even in your browser if there’s no PDF viewer to your liking.
Handling word documents is going to be a big problem… But even running Linux, then setting up a virtual machine to run windows on for some tasks, is better than running windows.
Windows has spyware, so that should be enough reason to not use it for someone like you. You will have to spend some time to learn GNU/Linux, but for most office tasks it shouldn’t be difficult, especially if you are good with computers. Most popular distros already come with a PDF viewer and Libre Office, so it should be able to do almost everything you want out of the box. VLC player can play all common video types and is easy to install. Libre Office might have issues with some Word documents though, so you might need to look into that. A web browser (usually Firefox) and probably some email client will be preinstalled as well.
You might need to check if your printer and scanner will be supported out of the box or if extra drivers from the manufacturer are needed (then check if they are available on their website). I think printers will probably work fine out of the box, but scanners might require extra drivers (this depends on the model - there are models that don’t).
If you need more motivation, look into the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Ag1AKIl_2GM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Running my small business on Manjaro Linux for 5 years now and wouldn’t change back to Windows ever.
I’m using a cloud based customer database with implemented billing - I’m using Libre office for all my office needs and Canva, Inkscape and Gimp for any graphics I could need. Installing printers and other hardware is a breeze.
Manjaro is a rolling release with very few problems. I can highly recommend it.
Highly recommend against Manjaro for anyone for any use case
See: https://manjarno.pages.dev/
I can corroborate the article from my personal experience, Manjaro is a terrible OS with constant stability issues
I’ve literally never had any issues. But there are enough other brginnerfriendly distros out there :)
I highly recommend you try Linux Mint or Fedora, both are simple to use, stable, and well supported.
I personally use Fedora for development and gaming, but you might enjoy mint more for your use case
PDFs, at least static ones, are no issue, you can download Okular to trial-run that. Neither are video codecs: On windows you can give mpv or vlc a spin, both play practically everything under the sun1
MS Office is the actually iffy point. If it’s just your own templates that’s not much of an issue, you can migrate them in one fell swoop (and re-do them while at it probably making them better), but if you have to regularly deal with templates or worse advanced Excel stuff produced by others then that’s going to be a never-ending saga. As with video, you can trial-run that stuff by installing LibreOffice on windows. Dunno whether that’s an option for lawyers but you could also use the online version of MS Office.
It also runs in a VM. You can give different distros a spin without committing anything but a bit of bandwidth and disk space. Next step: Boot from USB to go over hardware support.
1 except variable bitrate realmedia, the only thing that ever seems to have been encoded with it is the ArsDigita lecture series, now re-coded on youtube no issue. The reaction on IRC when I asked about that more than 10 years ago was “It’s always those lectures, isn’t it” and “No”. Side note in case you have some time to kill
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
in case you have some time to kill
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
As others have said, only word documents may give you annoyances.
I’d suggest trying it in a virtual machine first. See if you can do what you want to do. Switch to different distros if you need to. If/when you’re convinced, make a proper installation.
It will most probably take more time than be worth it for you, especially regarding the document templates.