#switching to linux

But also has an easy way of installing clip studio version 3.0, as thats the license I have, and the one I use the most brushes of.

With security that works well for someone who doesnt want chat control to check every single thing I do.

Pc specs are pretty good! Certain parts are 4 years old at most. Just have to put a lot of art on a USB stick so its safe to do a full wipe on it without issues.

What would y'all recommend, even if its not 100% a perfect fit?

At this point, to be honest, all the stuff you have to do to Windows to de-AI it…turning off registries and installing programs and using the command line…

(For example as per this post:)

Installing Linux is in fact easier than doing all that. Like I mean that genuinely.

“But some people have to use Windows for work!” In which case they’re probably using a company computer and don’t have access to the registry or have the ability uninstall or turn off any of that stuff in the first place! This is clearly not about them.

This is about your personal computer.

What to use

I recommend Linux Mint: Cinnamon. It’s really easy to install and it’s really easy to use right away. You can do this.

You have three main options:

Run Mint off a USB and see if you like it

Install Mint alongside Windows on your computer so you can choose which to boot

Completely replace Windows with Mint

If you’re really unsure, I recommend #1. If you are convinced you absolutely cannot do without Windows for certain activities, go with #2. If you’re able to make the full commitment (like if you don’t need Windows or you have a spare computer), do #3.

…

And if you’ve read this far, you probably hate Office and Google Docs too. That’s where Libre Office comes in. It’s free. You can download it on your Windows computer to try it out if you want.

I run Mint on my old Windows laptop and it works great. I have Discord, Steam, and the internet. I run Libre Office when I need it.

and it went off without a hitch! Which is amazing because I am a monkey on a typewriter when it comes to computer shenanigans and this is a very different Linux distro (Ubuntu Studio) and my super-specific instructions only covered Linux Mint. But friend is asking for MY help because he clearly has no better alternative and also had to struggle with the mess four OS updates made in three days.

How desperate Windows 11 has made us.

Wasn't that hard though. It took about an hour to make the bootable USB drive, start up Ubuntu Studio for the first time and then get back into WIndows and most of that time was waiting for the computer to finish down/up-loading stuff (and of course playing around with all the new toys time).

Hopefully it'll work out for him.

This website is great if you just wanna poke around at different types of Linux and see what you like best:

And this (thank you again @balletinthestars) is the guide I used:

Over the past couple years Windows 10 has been giving me progressively more asinine problems to deal with, from desktop issues and bloatware, to automatically installing out of date drivers to replace the ones I've manually installed.

Before you ask, I attempted using Windows 11 when it came out and I refuse to acknowledge its existence after the hell it put me through.

Most recently Windows 10 has seemingly made a point of making ASIO and all audio devices and software I use functionally useless, causing ridiculous amounts of crackling audio. No rollbacks fixed it, no re-installs fixed it, not even Reloading Windows fixed it. The reason for using ASIO is that Windows default audio protocol, WDM, has too much latency for live real-time use. This issue not only makes things like live-streaming basically impossible but it also outright made my Digital Audio Workstation and Video Editing Software incapable of processing audio for longer than a second without hanging. Both Mixcraft and DaVinci Resolve became useless on Windows 10, and OBS was barely holding it together. When I tell you I did everything to resolve this, I mean I spent an entire Month troubleshooting this. The only solution I could find was to abandon Windows all together.

I've been meaning to switch my Setup to Mint Cinnamon for a while as I've been testing it out in Virtual box for a year or so, and after this nonsense I got a new NMVe basically immediately to run Mint on, and after switching properly I have to say I'm likely to never use Windows as my Host OS again. And yes I tested Windows on the NMVe. The issue persisted there aswell. And testing Mint via Virtual Box on Windows with Hardware Exposed via PAE and AMD-V showed the issue was entirely on Windows.

In my research I found this site that can be useful for anyone else needing to jump to linux