Hey there Linux community. I’ve been interested in Linux lately and have been considering switching to Linux Mint from windows 11. My main pc is a Surface Laptop Studio with an intel i7, 32g ram, 1 terabyte ssd, and an rtx 3050 ti gpu. I’m thinking about trying out dual booting to see how I like it, but I have some questions.
I use my laptop for a lot of creative work, video editing, web design, music production, photography, etc. I’m not too worried about it because I’ve come across many promising FOSS alternatives, but there’s some software I’d like to ask about specifically. I ditched Adobe Premiere in favor of Davinci Resolve a while ago and I know that there’s a native Linux version of Resolve, and I’m just curious about how well that runs for the people that use it?
As far as music production goes I’m an avid user of Ableton Live. It’s been my go to for years and I know that support for it on Linux isn’t the best, if it’s even there at all. I’ve seen a few people claim they’ve gotten it working but it seems a little suspicious to me. So to anyone in the music space, what are the best Linux supported alternatives? Or, in the event I decide to switch, should I maintain my dual boot setup to just stick with Ableton?
I’m also pretty locked into the Microsoft ecosystem with OneDrive (I get a terabyte of cloud storage for free so it’s where almost all of my files are). I’m in the process of trying to setup my own cloud storage with nextcloud or something similar, but until then I’m curious if I’d be able to set up OneDrive live file syncing in my Linux environment, similar to how it works on windows? If anyone has any experience with that I’d love to hear some input.
Not something that’s absolutely necessary, but I’m just curious if the touch support of my laptop would be maintained. Since it’s a surface device it’s actually a really nice touch screen, and the pen input is great, my wife borrows it for digital drawing sometimes and loves it. I don’t use it all the time but I do occasionally and it’d be a huge plus if it still worked just as well.
I think those are pretty much the only things holding me back from fully dedicating myself to switching, so I’d really appreciate some input. Thanks!
One thing you could do that I don’t see mentioned here is to install Virtual Box in Windows and create a Linux Mint Virtual Machine. It’s basically installing a computer within a computer. You should be able to find some tutorials online.
This would let you try Linux Mint in a sandbox within Windows so that you could experiment a bit with everything before changing anything.
Just keep in mind that within the VM, things will be less performant, especially graphically, and certain peripherals, etc. might not work. But it would let you test out installing the software you want, the cloud storage solution you want, browsing around, etc.
Speaking of graphics, you’ll want to do some research about how well supported your GPU is. It will almost certainly “work” out of the box, but if you want to get the most performance out of it, like Windows, you’re going to need special drivers. I’ve heard Nvidia can be a bit of a pain, but I think it varies by model.
I wouldn’t be too worried about the touch screen as that will probably work - or at least has on every laptop I’ve tried. I’ve had more issues with things like fingerprint scanners generally speaking. Definitely check out everything you can think of when you install, like Bluetooth, cameras, microphone, peripherals, etc. Oh and when using the laptop definitely manually knock yourself down out of performance mode using the upper-righthand corner in gnome. For me at least, it makes a huge difference in battery life if I’m in performance vs balanced vs power saver. Windows is better at automatically making those adjustments.
I’ve also heard that lately Microsoft is making dual-boot harder - notably that Windows updates will just casually break your dual-boot and revert it to just Windows. I don’t know the details since it’s been years since I’ve done it myself, but something to keep in mind.
Finally I’ll throw out there to make sure you have a recovery plan if the install goes south. Have all your files backed up. Have a copy of Linux and Windows installers ready. It honestly should be fine, but especially if this is your only PC you don’t want to be stuck if you have some kind of issue, accidentally blow away your laptop’s SSD, etc . Not trying to scare you or anything, but better safe than sorry, right?