Had a couple of issues when installing (tried CentOS first) with it crashing and not detecting my WIn 10 for multiboot etc. Then I decided to try another distribution (happened to be Linux Mint). Mint gave me similar issues however the difference was a more descriptive error. I was trying to install Linux in UEFI mode rather than BIOS (Win 10 was installed in BIOS mode).
Once I got that figured out (probably CentOS would have worked if I knew this), Linux Mint installed very smoothly, detecting Win 10 and created proper multi-boot entry. It even installed drivers for my laptop's nVidia GPU
The biggest challenge was to find and install applications similar to the ones I was used to on Windows.
Guess what (I was quite surprised)!
- Setting up my Angular development environment for programming was easy - great support
My favorite programming IDE 'Atom' works
GitKraken is perfect for GIT repositories with a nice interface (on Windows I use SourceTree)
Skype for Linux exists
Installed Gimp and set it up to look almost like Photoshop
I prefer Google Chrome - Installed Chromium Browser and signed in to Google Account to get all my synced bookmarks/history/passwords
Audacity for audio editing works
Steam for Linux - not a problem, most of my games support Linux (still have Win 10 for the other 3 games which do not have Linux support)
Samsung network printer - just downloaded the Linux driver, and works as well.
I also have a Qnap NAS, which has 2-way sync setup between my Windows devices. Unfortunately, Qnap do not have Qsync software for Linux which is a shame. In this case I will have to create a network share for Linux, then find a Linux software which can just 2-way sync with it. First I need to find a way to permanently mount a network share.
What surprised me the most is that if Win10 on SSD loads up in 5 seconds, and Linux Mint loads up in 7 seconds on my SATA, this proves quite a lot with regards to performance that Linux Mint wins. I am wondering if I actually install Linux Mint on an SSD - would it load in less than 3 seconds? Just guessing and throwing a number
Wish me luck with getting over the last few challenges so that I am completely off Windows!