Beginners • Attempt to switch from MS Windows to Linux (2026)

Hello pi fans,

I just want to share my experiences when I tried to replace my family’s Windows 10 desktop computer with a raspberry and Linux. To be more specific: I use a Pi 5 with 16 GB RAM which boots the most recent Raspberry Pi OS, Debian 13, from a NVMe SSD installed in a HAT. It is connected to a 4k (UHD) monitor. Maybe someone has any advice for some of the problems I ran into.

• 1. Reboot leads to pointer on black screen:
  Because the computer is used by multiple users, I disabled "Desktop auto login". Now always after a reboot, sometimes after boot, I only see the pointer on a black screen. Right mouse button brings up a menu where I can choose exit and the login screen shows up.
• 2. No possibility to switch users:
  Neither in lock screen nor in main menu is there a possibility to switch users. When I lock the screen no other family member can log in. I can’t keep my programs open because logout is the only option for an other user to log in.
• 3. No hibernate (suspend to disk) option.
  Is there a road map or feature wish list?
• 4. Difficult or impossible to change keyboard layout:
  We have stickers to add Cyrillic alphabet to our keyboard. I really miss a taskbar icon to show and switch layout. With adduser I added a second user who is by intention not in sudoers group. This second user sees German and Ukrainian keyboard layouts and Ctrl + Ctrl combination to switch in control centre. So this seems to be a computer wide setting and that’s fine. But it doesn’t work. The second user’s keyboard layout is always English.
• 5. Screen doesn’t turn on after power saving:
  After some time with no user input the screen turns off like it’s supposed to. In my case the screen’s power state LED changes from blue to orange. But no matter what I try, moving or clicking the mouse, pressing keys on the keyboard, press Pi’s power button… the screen is not turned on again. I have to power cycle the screen.
• 6. No custom screen scaling factor:
  In MS Windows it worked to have an odd scaling factor like 1.64 to exactly match the screens actual dpi. I could put a sheet of paper on the screen and it matched the sheet in LibreOffice writer at 100 % zoom. Is there a config file where I could try this on the raspberry? A factor of 2 makes things too large. An there are problems with the pointer size. In some programs like opensnitch-ui the pointer becomes gigantic.
• 7. How to switch audio output?
  As the pi 5 doesn’t have analogue audio out I use a USB adapter to the speakers. Mabe I’ll plug in a headset too. I’m missing a taskbar icon like in Windows where I can easily switch the devices.
• 8. No button in taskbar to minimize all windows.
• 9. Can I define a keyboard shortcut to lock the screen?
• 10. No function to arrange multiple windows like tiles on the screen.
• 11. Missing option to add own toolbars, basically folders, to the taskbar to expand and browse through. Is this PIXEL desktop extensible like it can be done with Gnome shell extensions?

After reading critics about snap packages I didn’t want to use Ubuntu but I’ll try it out now.

Statistics: Posted by schnabeltier — Sat Jan 31, 2026 4:54 pm — Replies 7 — Views 135

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