All modern distros let you install them all and just select which one you wish to use from the login screen. You don’t need NixOS or anything specifically to do this, in fact it’s easier on other distros because usually nothing more than installing the packages is required, no config editing, rebuilding or even rebooting.
If that’s happening on your distro then try any of the modern big names and it’ll be fine. Left over cruft being a problem beyond some extra disk space usage is a thing of the past.
The cost to try it is time. Take a laptop you can afford to wipe, install Linux Mint Cinnamon, and just see how you like it.
But in your specific use-case, I do not expect this is a good idea. You are not going to save money on any scale that matters to a law firm. You can run LibreOffice on Windows just fine, and if it doesn’t work out, you can rent Office 365 (Dollars A Year). You’re not in a profession where FOSS tools like Blender and GIMP might displace obscenely-expensive industry standards.
What free-as-in-speech software might mean to you is control. Windows 10 does some dumb shit. Windows 11 is even worse and getting worse… er. Even more worse? Even dumber. Linux distros and open-source programs are made by the kind of ultranerds who said “absolutely not” and are limited to problems entirely of our own creation.
if you want to try other distros, try using gnome-boxes for a bit - it lets you easily spin up a virtual machine. there’s better vm apps out there but boxes is really simple to use. I played around with getting Arch installed via cli last night in a vm (via boxes) - didnt actually install it of course, just re-partitioned the /dev/vda, etc.
I was using mx linux for a while on my testbench machine, switched over to kde neon recently and it’s a much better experience.
My general advice would be: look at the apps you use (or would need to use) on Windows. If you’re generally dealing with word documents, PDF’s, webpages, and videos that are viewable on VLC.
See if LibreOffice/OpenOffice/OnlyOffice on Windows work as expected for the documents. If not, see if M365 through the browser does (your can run Edge on Linux and accessing the MS ecosystems seem to be the primary reason many do so.
If you can’t do those things, Linux may not be for you, or at least may not meet the needs for your work.
For personal use, I’m all with users taking the plunge, seeing if Linux works for them, and/or some the adjustments they need to make. For many, it’s a matter of a different UI for the same applications/tasks, but less invasive while being more customizable. In many cases I dual-booting or a VM, in case that user runs into a special case holding them to Windows (maybe a particular game). You could also dual-boot and flip to Windows if the edge cases it’s needed are few and far between, but you’d still need to make sure to keep both OS’s updated.
For a business user who may face time crunches, the last thing I’d want is for somebody to find out that the proprietary file format they’re provided in the regular course of business only works on a proprietary software that only runs on Windows.
At the very least, grab a cheap windows license (got can purchase legit pro license codes online for cheap and then download the image for a USB installer from MS), run Linux as your primary and keep a Windows install in a VM (i.e. using KVM/libvirtd) for a bit in case edge cases emerge. For those that just need business apps (i.e. not games, graphics-intensive design tools or social hardware) that’ll bridge the gap just fine.
Another option would be to try something like Windows with Ubuntu installed via WSL (subsystem for Linux) and i.e. MobaXterm to access the various Linux graphical apps. However that pretty much gives you access to Linux tools without the OS UI, and all the headaches of running with an MS operating system as the primary.
For my own job, I could go 90%-95% of what I need purely in Linux, with the 5-10% left being stuff like editing Visio documents, screen-sharing with sound or only for a specific app (in our workplace’s conference app). Assuming you only need to join Teams/Zoom/etc conferences with audio and video, that part works fine from browser in either OS.
In short… it’s a business, so I can’t recommend just diving in, but it’s for the same reasons I wouldn’t recommend a business just switch their vehicle fleet to 100% EV’s or move their office to a different city/state/country without a well thought-out transition plan, preferably built in stages. It may work out great and overall be a better experience nearly all the time, but if it prevents work at a crucial moment without a backup plan that can still be a deal breaker.
Whatever you know best. My personal choice of distro is Gentoo, my gaming pc and my carry laptop both run it. My games run great in gentoo, and because I understand it best, I deal with few issues. For a long time it was Arch, and before that Ubuntu. I used Ubuntu for only maybe 2 months before moving onto Arch then Gentoo. My games always worked, but once I really understood Linux, they ran great.
Is Online Office 365 good enough for you? Or, is an ‘almost fully compatible’ word processor enough?
The features are there, but it’s a whole new interface to learn, and if you export to a word document, the document produced may look wonky when viewed in word. OTOH, whatever PDFs you produce, those will look right. And if Online Office 365 is enough, that’s great, because you won’t have to worry about that.
You’ll need to establish a workflow, and others in your office will need to use (and get used to) the same workflow.
It’s not a small leap for an office to take. I love Linux, but check out that it has what you need before you fully commit. Give it a try by dual-booting or by installing it on a secondary system.
Liberation fonts, Noto fonts, Deja Vu fonts and Nimbus fonts pretty much. Add in Cantarell too and you are set I would say. Those are the ones you should install for compatibility.
I always install Inter for UI and JetBrains Mono for terminal usage. I find they render way better than pretty much anything else.
Update: Discovered Geist and Geist Mono and they are amazing, I am going to replace Inter and JetBrains Mono from now on: github.com/vercel/geist-font
depending on the type most NVR’s are just custom linux builds, so VLC has few issues. I have yet to find an NVR video I could not run on my box, but my sample size is not huge, and its not corporate surveillance level gear im testing with
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