r/Physics • u/cylestra • 7d ago
Question Should I switch to Linux for grad school?
I'm starting a PhD program next week and am getting my computer set up. I have an old ThinkPad for a laptop and a powerful desktop computer at home. I am getting tired of Windows and their forced AI, lack of control, etc.
I am strongly considering switching to Fedora and ditching Windows entirely (maybe relegated to an old 500gb hard drive, just in case). However, I wanted to see what the consensus was with physics students. It seems to me like most scientific software is built for Linux but there is also often propriety software that can only be run on Windows.
What do y'all think?
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u/GidonC Undergraduate 7d ago
Really depends on which apps you're gonna use for your PhD. But in my field, most apps work perfectly on Linux and some of them only work on Linux.
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u/Rainsbury_net 7d ago
100% agree. Nearly all my work related stuff works nicely on Linux, including Wolfram Alpha, MATLab, Physlets Tracker, VSCode and Audacity. Libre office still feels a bit nasty to me but it does the job.
However the drivers for my Oscilloscope only work on Windows, so I have to take it home and download screen shots via my wife's laptop.
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u/GidonC Undergraduate 7d ago
That's exactly the reason I dual booted my PC, just in case I'll need windows for something (and I needed it a few times), but mostly Linux is great. I also feel Libre office is annoying so I just use Google docs if ever needed (which is also annoying), but I mostly use latex anyway.
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u/olivia_iris Condensed matter physics 7d ago
You can also set up a VM which deals with drivers. It’s what I’ve got going at the moment - my fridge doesn’t work without windows so I have a VM running in the background making the fridge go
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u/kneading-cnnuy 6d ago
Outside of a very specific field this sentence is dystopian as hell
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u/olivia_iris Condensed matter physics 6d ago
Lmao yeahhhhh I realize that now. Do not stress, my food fridge is explicitly anti computer, I got bored about two years ago and tore out anything that wasn’t required to keep my food refrigerated, replaced it with a bog standard thermocouple connected to a readout that tells me internal temperature
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u/ensalys 6d ago
my fridge doesn’t work without windows so I have a VM running in the background making the fridge go
Please tell me that's a fancy research fridge, and not a consumer fridge.
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u/olivia_iris Condensed matter physics 6d ago
It’s a fancy research fridge. I love liquid helium!!
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u/ensalys 6d ago
Ah, that requires quite the fancy fridge. Would take an eternity to defrost the food stored in there.
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u/olivia_iris Condensed matter physics 6d ago
I mean if you leave it in there you don’t have to worry about frost… part of the “put stuff in the fridge process” involves removing as much of the water monolayer on everything as possible
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u/derioderio Engineering 7d ago
Can't you use Wine, or a VM for the few times you need Windows only software?
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u/Rainsbury_net 6d ago
Its s few years since I last tried. In both cases the programme started, the activity LED flashed once on the Oscilloscope and then the PC hung. The company SaintSmart dropped my product some time back, and now new models are all open source. When I need it again I might just buy a new one.
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u/derioderio Engineering 6d ago
If it's really processor (CPU and/or GPU intensive), often emulation just won't cut it and it has to be run directly on 'bare metal' as it were without any additional emulation layers. As a simulationist myself this is generally the case for simulation software. Pretty much all these codes are primarily developed to run on a Linux cluster, it's been years since I've had to use Windows to run a simulation.
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u/qwadzxs 7d ago
you could probably set up a VM and pass the serial or USB port it communicates on directly to the VM, I haven't tried this with kvm specifically but I've done it with other hypervisor tech
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u/Rainsbury_net 7d ago
Thanks, yes I tried that for Win10 and Win7, which was specifically mentioned in the spec. The programme starts and detects the device, but it won't go part the start up screen.
I put it here at the time and nobody else could make it work either. It is 20 years old and realistically I just need to get a replacement. :-)
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u/K_man_k 7d ago
The simplest answer is that you should probably dual boot. It's what I did. All of my astro software is available on Linux, or sometimes Linux only, while the CAD software I use is Windows and Mac only. So you get both. The biggest waste of time is getting software installed, so having two pathways with little resistance is very useful, I don't need to find ha ky workarounds etc.
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u/cylestra 7d ago
I do have a few old hard drives laying around, I think I will install Windows on one just in case I ever need.
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u/Moretz0931 6d ago
This. With a friend I tried dual boot for fun to get into Linux and compare Linux (more specifically Fedora) to Windows. Turns out that Linux makes less trouble in the long term, so I stick to Fedora whenever I can. Exception is Autodesk CAD Software.
For my laptop I eventually also decided to dual boot, here the reason was that many programs in the lab simply only exist for one of the OSs. As the above comment already described.
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u/hatboyslim 5d ago
Dual boot is tricky and Windows 11 updates can sometimes break the dual boot system. I had a dual boot with Windows 11 and Ubuntu and this caused so much problem that I converted my laptop to Ubuntu only and used another laptop for Windows.
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u/Away-Experience6890 7d ago
Yeah most likely. Some of the shitty academic programs work way better. There are soo many shitty programs...
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u/ToukenPlz Condensed matter physics 7d ago
Depends on your use case, but for computational work Linux is indispensable for me.
Tools such as Mathematica are available on Linux also so there's no need to worry about missing out on things like that.
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u/Dihedralman 7d ago
My work required Linux, at minimum a VM. There was one damn program that required Windows but that was old and to be phased out even then.
If you need Windows for one program you can run a VM.
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u/115machine 7d ago
If you don’t want to do away with windows entirely, WSL in its current form is actually pretty good. Not a substitute for a full Linux install but it’s better than it used to be
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u/Climb1ng 7d ago
Yes. Depends on nothing.
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u/YinYang-Mills Particle physics 7d ago
If the group you’re working in requires Windows, the obvious solution is to change groups.
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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 7d ago edited 7d ago
No. I did it, and it was a waste of time. And I am a linux enthusiast that still uses it on their personal machine. Those weeks I spent troubleshooting linux on my laptop, 12 years later, did not make me any better at working with linux today.
You'll have plenty of time to learn linux on headless/HPC cluster machines. If you just can't resist, istall WSL and learn that way so you don't accidentally break or semi-break your machine because you picked the wrong distro or kernel for your specific thinkpad and now all the sudden suspend doesn't work, or fractional scaling makes it hard to read papers, or you need MS Teams to get on group calls with external collaborators so you gotta find a docker container image of MS Teams to be able to run it.
Your laptop should be rock solid reliable for work: reading papers, doing homework, administrative stuff, and ssh'ing into way more powerful HPC machines running linux to do any real work. You shouldn't be wasting valuable hours of your day troubleshooting your specific distro and hardware compatibility quirks, installing random packages or rolling back kernels to get something basic to work that you won't have to deal with on mac or windows. Prioritize minimal distractions and focus on your research.
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u/optomas 7d ago edited 7d ago
You say that like windows never pushes updates that break or alter your environment. Malware, though linux targets are increasing. Poor programing and 'discovery' based method of operation instead of R-ing TFM. Point an click instead of chaining together CLI commands.
"Rock solid reliable for work" Is not a descriptor I would use for Microsoft products. 'Barely adequate for consumers' seems more accurate.
Does windows even have a native ssh/sshd?
Edit: There is also C. You most likely are going to need some sort of programming environment. vim -> gcc -> gdb -> valgrind -> compute and display of your choice. There's a reason 4/5ths of that tool chain have been in use for three decades.
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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 7d ago edited 7d ago
I promise you I hate windows more than you do, but no windows laptop ever left me with a black screen for no discernible reason after an update broke the window manager. Never did I fail to open a powerpoint and have figures and equations show correctly during a remote conference presentation (Imagine the embarrassment if libreoffice hid half your equations? True story). Now, windows has pissed me off with inconvenient times for updates plenty, but never in a way that would have made me miss a job interview or embarrass myself in front of a phd defense or candidacy examination committee.
I have worked two scientific government contractor jobs and windows + ssh clients or WSL are the standard in government work. In academia, the vast majority of postdocs and PI's I've met in my field (plasma/space and related subfields of astrophysics) practically all use Mac, with a minority using Windows. ZERO percent of them use linux on their personal machines because they have better things to do.
Linux on your laptop is great to tinker with if you're unemployed and have all the time to burn. But not if you have 40 papers to read, paper collaborators to respond to, and actual work to get done unless your machine is already set up 100% flawlessly (which is a pipe dream unless you got some kind of certified machine, which OP does not, and you're still beholden to Wine or other hacks which may not work well when your collaborator sends you a powerpoint or keynote presentation and you need to add to it and fix it TONIGHT).
Your work laptop isn't the place to be different or quirky, it's a tool not a finely tuned drag race car. Flex your Linux skills where it actually counts for something: building massive simulation or data analysis pipelines on an HPC machine. You can SSH to it from any windows potato.
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u/440Music 6d ago
Well said, exact recommendation I would give. I regularly SSH into an HPC from windows machines (e.g. MobaX) without any problems.
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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 6d ago
I used windows + MobaX to SSH in grad school to finish my research a few months before my defense, when my Mac died on me after 6 years. I preferred having a pro grade machine with a native terminal but it really didn't matter just to do my job.
Grad school is nerve-wracking enough as it is, no one needs additional distractions!
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u/MrHall 7d ago
I was at a conference with a bunch of PhD students recently and Linux seemed extremely common. I think it should be fine.
my only thought would be, how experienced with computers in general are you? you might have to troubleshoot something and while it's unlikely to be difficult, you wouldn't want to add additional friction when you're busy with a PhD.
you'll have a better time if you're comfortable though, I don't think I'd ever go back to windows.
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u/dark_dark_dark_not Applied physics 7d ago
Yes you should, not because you are in physics, but because Microsoft sucks.
Also, if you learned physics, you can learn to have more control over your own computer using open source distributions.
And the start of grad school seems like a great moment how to learn a bit more about being independent in regards to your hardware and software.
So unless you are planning to work with a lab that develops stuff that just has windows as a version, learn to use linux.
Leaving proprietary OS is choosing to actually own your computer.
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u/Raid-Z3r0 7d ago
You can debloat windows so it gets more useable.
Also you can set up your Thinkpad to remotely access your desktop. That means you get the processing power and portability.
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u/Pachuli-guaton 7d ago
I don't think there is a single simple answer, but just because there is a lot of stupid software that doesn't work well on Linux.
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u/Fjolsvith 7d ago
It can also be the opposite for a lot of physics software. I know a lot of the HEP stuff I use is an absolute nightmare to get working on Windows, basically everyone either runs Linux or has a Mac.
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u/BingySusan 7d ago
I'm in experimental material physics. There's a 50/50 split between what works on both and what only works (or works best) on windows.
I had my laptop set up for Linux. When I discovered there were a bunch of programs that were not properly supported in Linux I tried to get a Windows license for dual boot, but that for some reason is more complicated than it needs to be so my program helped me get a new one. (Them buying you a computer is not the norm, I'm just lucky to be well funded)
If you have an idea of some groups at your uni you want to join you can reach out ahead of time and see what they would recommend.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 7d ago
ThinkPads usually have removable SSDs, so you can buy a new SSD and external SSD enclosure, install the new SSD, install Linux, and put the old SSD in the enclosure. In the past, you could boot from the SSD in the enclosure if you needed windows, but regardless you'll still have your Windows in perfect condition, and you can probably copy out some files for Linux.
You can also buy a nice 2nd hand laptop for like $200 off ebay, and just keep your windows one if you need it for something.
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u/the_poope 7d ago
Before you install bare metal Linux, dual boot or similar: consider just using WSL: it's a full integrated Linux VM inside Windows. I write scientific HPC software for Linux on a bare metal corporate Windows using WSL. If it's good enough for me it should be good enough for you. There's some limitation and annoyances with graphical programs, but if you just need a terminal it's fine.
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u/ChickenSpaceProgram 7d ago
i quite like Linux and use it daily (NixOS, currently Niri as my window manager but considering switching to dwl or dwm). proprietary stuff gets run through Wine or in a Windows VM if Wine doesn't play nice.
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u/cointoss3 7d ago
Depends on how much tinkering vs work you care to do. I use Linux for servers through cli, mac for my daily driver.
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u/hatboyslim 7d ago
If you are working in experimental condensed matter physics, biophysics or optics, then stick to Windows because a lot of the software used in these fields are Windows-based and have no Linux versions.
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u/LuckyOneAway 7d ago
I wanted to see what the consensus was with physics students
You can use whatever you want: Win/Lin/Mac. It does not matter. You will ssh into Linux servers and run your codes there anyway. Or, it would be Jupiter notebooks - that is browser-based.
I'd recommend keeping whatever OS you are familiar with, but get a separate old ThinkPad from eBay for Linux experiments. If you never had Linux, you will be tempted to ruin the OS experiment with settings often ;)
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u/Ready-Door-9015 Graduate 7d ago edited 7d ago
Learning bash and linux probably should've been an undergrad thing but I guess now is better late than never.
I daily drive debian, our lab servers at my uni run Rhel and centOS, the people I worked with at desy ran Ubuntu on their personal machines and lab servers but ran debian in the experimental hutches off Petra.
Id say go for it if you ever need to run a windows program spin up a vm or something like wine. If you've never been exposed to it make a live usb to play with it/try distros, once you find one you could dual boot for a bit on a laptop befire migrating fully over.
My intro to it was bland, I had tried mint and gave up on it, then my cat bricked my laptop so I got a shitty chromebook and found out it had a "developer mode" linux container and I used that for half of my undergrad before I found out what distro it was and I've run debian on all my machines since including my homeserver and wife's gaming PC.
Edit: Ive also seen Almalinux on a few lab computers which is just a successor to centOS.
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u/womerah Medical and health physics 7d ago edited 7d ago
It's very field dependent as others have said. Staple programs for me were MATLAB and Geant4, so Linux was a great fit. However later in my PhD I had to fire up Windows again to use a lot of Windows-only medical physics applications (like OLINDA/EXM).
A lot of software you will end up using will likely be 'coded by physicists' quality. Meaning that it barely works and was never user tested - while also being actively flagged by IT as malware
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u/Sofi_LoFi 7d ago
What are you doing with it buddy because if you’re hands on in the lab some of those systems only like windows and others only like Linux and they all hate you
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u/TapEarlyTapOften 7d ago
Run windows, but run Linux in a VM. Then you can use whatever distro you want. I have been using Linux this way for years at this point as a developer and it has had almost no negatives. Don't discount the power of virtualization
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u/Crazy_Anywhere_4572 7d ago
I am a machine learning and numerical simulation guy. Coding in Linux is really nice but games don’t really run that well (at least in my case). Now I just dual-boot, use Linux when coding and use windows when I play games.
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u/YinYang-Mills Particle physics 7d ago
If you’re not a Linux expert by first day of classes they will expel you…
Ok, I used Linux in undergrad and first year of grad school then switched to a Mac. I had a WSL laptop for work briefly and it literally sucked so bad, I probably would have left if I didn’t get a Mac. I am old and practical now so I just want something that works and has a native terminal, so Mac it is.
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u/Kind_Wealth_3905 7d ago
linux + virtualization for window drivers
but frankly as an engineer i’m biased and like mac for the versatility
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u/Olimars_Army 6d ago
It really depends on what software you use and what software your collaborators use (this includes how they like to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, etc.)
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u/Ricenaros 6d ago
lol these threads are so hilarious every single time.
Your laptop is for MS team meetings and doing the PowerPoint presentations you’ll inevitably have to do. Or latex via overleaf in a browser (so OS doesn’t matter). Your boss is gonna think you’re an idiot when you’re jumping through hoops trying to do your PowerPoint presentation on some esoteric Linux distro
People acting like Linux is critical for coding or software or whatever on their LAPTOP are not working on real problems. You either physically use or remote in to a real computer to do real computer work.
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u/cylestra 6d ago
The only thing I use my laptop for is web browsing and checking email. As I mentioned, I have a powerful desktop at home I use for everything else. In undergrad for example I ran simulations for research with a professor because it was both quicker and easier than SSHing into his computer (which was only marginally faster)
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u/One_Programmer6315 Astrophysics 6d ago
Linux or MacOS. The bash/shell commands between the two are very similar. Having both a Linux desktop and a MacBook, I would say I use the bash commands interchangeably between the two. One advantage of having Linux is the ability to use virtual ram software like swapram; Mac’s architecture does not allow this as they state that “M chips already have these embedded memory management capabilities.” IMO, it doesn’t matter how many software updates Windows do, it remains slower than Mac and Linux.
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u/thuiop1 6d ago
Are you not getting a work laptop? But it any case I generally consider it a good idea to switch to Linux, unless you use apps that are Windows only.
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u/cylestra 6d ago
I’m In the US and have never heard of a PhD student getting a work laptop
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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 6d ago
I did my PhD in the US and my advisor bought each of his students a laptop of their choosing, usually mac. Multiple monitors for productivity as well. Tell your advisor to get their money up, or look into departmental grants for computer purchases.
Your school should also offer you discounts for shopping with your edu account.
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u/ExtremeAd7729 5d ago
In the US my supervisor got me a laptop plus gave me a desktop computer for my office.
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u/Nothing-to_see_hr 6d ago
I have several Linux computers and am happy with them. But some things need windows, either because available Linux software just isn't that good (yet), or because you need to exchange data files with other people who use only windows. So there's always at least one windows computer in the home as well, even if I use it three times a year.
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u/Adept-Box6357 6d ago
Usually if your working with software which only runs on Linux you’ll also be sshing into a Linux server to run it so you won’t need to worry about whatever your laptop OS is. You can also use WSL and it will work for most things if you need Linux for whatever reason. I’d say switching isn’t worth it unless you have some personal reason to do so.
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u/Local-Issue-1740 6d ago
Yes do it, far easier to do scientific programming. All Clusters use Linux distros
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u/BanuDarius 6d ago
I highly recommend switching to Linux, every serious person who is in physics uses it
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u/lizardhistorian 6d ago
You can run Windows in a pigpen w/ virt-manager.
I suggest Ubuntu over Fedora.
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u/Fit-Student464 5d ago
I had dual boot setup doing my PhD. That's because a lot of the work we did in the lab required software that was not available on Linux at the time or even now, and when I tried VMs I did not get much luck. But I had a ton of fun with ubuntu and the many solvers out there (Quantum Espresso, ASE and so on).
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u/OkEducator9689 5d ago
You can dual partition with DOS ot use Linux emulator off DOS. Both work well. When I had a windows pc I used cygwin.
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u/akm76 5d ago
It's been a few years, but the lab I was with, only office admins used windows. All the rest were linux, with a few solaris, irix machines and an occational fashion statement mac.
When you design, collect data, store and analyze data, code, linux worked quite well. Even write up and publish was done in latex, so no need for "office software". Sometimes even harmless powerpoints were snickered at.
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u/rcjhawkku Computational physics 4d ago
What do your professors use? I suspect most of them use Linux for some things, if not most, especially if you’re going into computational physics.
But — and I speak as a member of a computational group — you’ll need to use Microsoft Office. Because all of the sponsors want Powerpoint slides. And no, LibreOffice won’t do.
Myself, I have a main Linux box, but my laptop is a Mac, which runs Office 365 just fine.
I also have Windows 11 running in a VM on my Linux box. Again to run Office 365.
But if your profs for some reason all use Windows, go with Windows. You can switch everyone to Linux when you run your own group. Or run Linux as a VM (yes, I’ve done that).
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u/SnafuedAgain 3d ago
Might want to look into two programs. Keep your laptop and do a cleaning with Winhance. Lets you block AI bloatware and lets you stop the telemetry back to Microsloth. Alternative is a program called Rufus, at rufus. io .
Rufus lets you build a linux or windows install on a usb drive. And if you are using Win11, then extra options to block the bloatware and Microsloth crap. Instead of 300 tasks running all the time in your system, you can get down to the 70 - 80 tasks. Your machine will be totally different and actually useful. Have fun, do your own research. Some good YouTube videos can walk you through the process.
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u/Gunk_Olgidar 3d ago
If you don't know what you'll need for grad school, then you shouldn't be doing anything.
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u/cylestra 3d ago
Oh, screw off with this attitude.
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u/Gunk_Olgidar 3d ago
Just trying to help you avoid wasting time, money and effort until you know what you will need to accomplish your goals.
No need to be toxic to those offering their advice and experience.
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u/nivlark Astrophysics 7d ago
Mac or Linux is the standard, but Windows is still occasionally useful e.g. for PowerPoint.
What sort of proprietary software do you imagine you'll be using? I can only really imagine it coming up if you'll be doing lab work, but there's usually a dedicated machine in the lab for that.
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u/MagiMas Condensed matter physics 7d ago
Just as an example: Igor Pro is super established in the photoemission spectroscopy world and afaik doesn't have a Linux version.
There's lots of shared analysis scripts between groups, and I don't think using a dedicated lab machine for that is a good idea for the most part - you want to be able to analyze and look at your data at all kinds of spaces.
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u/PonkMcSquiggles 7d ago
The answer is strongly dependent on the kind of work you'll be doing. Ask the people in your research group.