Now i’ve been considering moving to linux. I don’t have much of a history using a computer and find it tougher to use than my phone. But I also really appreciate the foss movement. I’ve currently got an old laptop running windows 11 I think and it would prolly speed up with linux too. But I’m afraid I’d fuck smth up trying to download linux, understand it or while using it. Is it worth switching and how different is it to a windows experience.
Thanks I appreciate the detailed response. Luckily I dont game. I’ll be honest I was hoping/ expecting it to suddenly be twice as fast and that was a major factor in considering linux. But if it decreases overheating I’m still happy with that.
I have been degoogling and going the foss roite on my phone to the point of considering graphene os for my phone too so won’t be going the google route thats for sure.
There are devices on which Linux is actually twice as fast, often devices with weak CPUs that get bogged down by antivirus software (as Linux doesn’t have consumer antivirus software as competent as what you’ll find built into Windows, saving you the overhead). On slow hard drives, Windows can also be slower, because Windows 11 pretty much assumes you’re using an SSD as far as I can tell. Only way to tell is to give it a try!
If your laptop keeps overheating and Linux doesn’t help, you may get more of a performance boost out of a fan replacement, and maybe removing+reapplying the thermal paste between the heatsink and the CPU.
Even if you wanted to game casually, getting Steam and games running is straightforward these days. You just need to enable Steam Play for all titles in settings.