I wish I could use Linux at work but the software used does not have any alternative (that I can use) and I can't be bothered with debloating and all that jazz. I try to keep work and private seperate instead.
My work has a process for requesting software. Over the last five years, I've been slowly getting open source alterntives approved, using them, and telling coworkers they're approved. It's just one super specialized software left.
I work at a very small company, so there is no policy for which software to use and I would replace the one software that is Windows only if I could, even if I had to remain on Windows. The problem I have in this case is that we rely external tools that only work with this software, only on Windows. :-(
The browser-based versions of the M365 apps work great* for me in Firefox tabs on Linux. I prefer them being just apps/sites that I use as needed and not deeply integrated with the OS just because the same company made the two.
I mean they work as intended for the same stuff I’ve used the Windows versions for, not that they are great apps on their own, lol
Teams can go fuck itself with a rock. We've taken licensing now that doesn't include it.
Still holding on to classic outlook as long as possible. The new version/skin/glow-up can go share the aforementioned rock with teams. Where's my VBA, where's my ribbon customisations, and why must it be dumbed down to Fisher-Price levels of 'user friendliness'?
A lot of my answers to user questions these days are 'Because Microsoft ™️'.
Tried get my dad to use Linux for his work but had problems with his clients not being able to open the files he sent using the Linux word and Excell programs. So that's clear for him not to use Linux.
My brother-in-law installed Linux Mint for his parents and they are very happy with it. The only problem was downloading epubs with Adobe DRM, so I taught her how to use knock^1^ in the terminal and then import the book into Calibre to upload them to her ereader.
Because you talked about my computer not supporting Windows 11?? So I clarified that it does support it and came pre-installed, and I would still prefer pop_OS (i.e. not relevant, as you said).
I can’t believe your computers support Windows 11.
I don't understand why that would have to do with anything to being with, though.
To me the funniest part is that telemetry is usually for ads to convince people to buy stuff, and secondly for nation states to track you, but the debloat crowd usually never leaves home (a registered address) or buys anything, and surprisingly apt at credit card points with the money they do spend (the og trackers).
Yeach windows has problems but stability is definietly not one of them. Likewise linux has problems but in fact it is not harder to use ( in fact it is so easy to use that it is reasonably popular to put some easy distro in some forsaken by time laptop instead of windows for pepole who use browser and literaly nothing else ).
Frankly speaking most pepole just dont give enough f about their system. The best i can say about it is that pop os specificaly just looks better ( i am in the apparent minority of pepole that very much likes the looks of gnome ).
The best way to populrize linux is to have it by deafult instead of windows on laptops and prebuilds but that will never really happen ( they make insane amount of money on Markup by having windows installed despite the fact that they get it for really really cheap. Its really apparent when you compare some laptops that can be bought without the os preinstalled )
It isnt that hard, moved from wondows 10 to mint, and a few months later to arch, and it took me less than 2 hours to install arch, and thats with slow internet.
And i learned a lot whole doing it, like Dekstop environments, disk partitoning(root, swap, and boot), filesystems, and a lot more.
I wouldnt recommend it to everyone, but it is great if you want to learn more about computers.
The wiki is actually good for beginners, too. As you are often forced to reallylly read through subpages and cross-referenced topics until you somewhat understand why you are doing something instead of just how. Doesn't make it easy ofc but a beginner can totally handle the wiki, it just takes more time.
Yeah, this has more or less sold me on giving arch a shot in the near future. I really need to get some fundamental Linux knowledge under my belt, and the arch wiki is legendary for being pretty comprehensive.
I may get stabbed for this but, go for Endeavour, unless a (probably needlessly) tedious install process is important to you.
I had vanilla Arch up and running for a bit but kept having issues with Steam, so switched to Endeavour and haven't had any issues since. Its still a pretty basic version of Arch, with a few minor QoL improvements like having yay and a DE already installed.
Beginner friendly???
Not sure how to explain this to Linux users that post on Lemmy but we’re not the regular pc user and have a very different view on beginner friendly lol
I tried explaining to some of my non-technical friends what a "Linux distribution" is. Most don't quite understand what I mean by "operating system". I think we're in a bit of a bubble here.
Heck yeah. I usually have to explain what an OS is in the first place too. I usually use android versus iOS as an example. I feel kinda fortunate sometimes that my wife’s hobbies don’t line up with my own most of the time because it does keep my brain in check from falling into those bubbles. She appreciates having free tech support on hand of course lol
You need to KISS your explanation. Don't talk about OS's or even distros. Avoid the technical stuff, save that for later as they ask about it. Instead just tell them it looks different, but in the end works the same. And it does it without the hassle, bloat or cost of Microsoft.
I recently swapped to Linux Mint and it really was not harder than Windows, and I know functionally nothing on how anything Linux related actually works.
Oh I’m not saying that it’s hard for us here. Most people don’t know that Mac and Windows are different if they aren’t in a tech position let alone know that Linux exists at all.
I’m talking about the general person on the street, it’s hard to remember that we don’t always fit into that group.
And there is little to nothing to fear. The big bad terminal and command line isn't needed for day to day use anymore. It's been years since the last time I needed to compile anything. And if I ever do need to do that again, something is definitely wrong.
For daily use, you don't need the command line. Only in fairly rare instances do you need to resort to it when things go wrong. And those commands are a mere google away. So don't let the that big bad scary terminal stand in your way. It's not the stumbling block you think it is.
Then it's a habit not a fear. I also am comfortable with the cli since I started with Linux back at RedHat 5 and Mandrake 6. It was learn it or die in those days. But as time has passed, I find myself using it less and less because I don't really need it everyday. But while I might need to google a specific command because I forgot it, I still remember it's possible and handy.
This entire thread talking about how a distro is better than the next because you "only" have to update keyrings to update so even basic users should get it.
Ehhh....as a Linux beginner on Ubuntu I disagree... I spent a couple hours trying to get an AppImage application as a desktop icon.
Spent an additional hour or two to mount NAS drives. Fstab?? Wtf.
My secondary monitor flickers to black randomly for a just couple minutes after startup and there's no way I'm going to dig through Wayland to figure out why. Monitor orientation is incorrect on startup and I again don't want to dig through Wayland or whatever cfg file I need to open.....yet.
Still needed to browse at least 5 different sources for answers.
I'm glad Firefox doesn't crash at 500 tabs or w/e but Linux still has issues with some primitive tasks that windows has well figured out.
It's funny because as somebody that's been using Linux full-time for over 10 years I actually really really really really hate that Ubuntu is considered beginner friendly because I often find very very simple tasks incredibly frustrating on it.
I know that everybody disagrees with me but I genuinely think that something based on arch like Endeavor OS is genuinely more beginner friendly. You don't have to fight with repositories to get up to date drivers, virtually any piece of software you could ever want is either already in the extra/community repo or available through the Aur. And while yes it is possible that an update could end up causing an issue on your system Pac-Man is just way way better about not completely destroying the system and it is pretty easy to roll back. Even in a really really bad worst case scenario booting from a live USB and rolling back with chroot is easy enough I've actually walked people through it before.
Meanwhile the amount of times on both Debian and Ubuntu that I have had apt completely eviscerate a system just trying to do basic updates and then just bail out Midway leaving the system so broken that the terminal barely functions anymore is frustrating. And there's no particularly easy path to fixing that because dpkg is a fucking nightmare. Yes in the majority of those cases the system was multiple years out of date but that's no excuse I have updated art systems that were upwards of almost 10 years out of date and other than me having to manually update the key ring and reinitialize the signatures it was able to Simply jump right to the latest just fine.
True, even user-friendly Linux distros have their pain points. The real difference between Linux and corporate OS products is that you don't periodically need a new version because of a product churn schedule.
Do you have to use Wayland? If something's buggy in Wayland, I always switch back to x11. Wayland's finally gotten to a point where I can use it without bugs, but that's taken many years.
It's mind boggling to me how many people don't even use desktops anymore. Or do "serious" things like buy plane tickets on their phone. The younger generation is almost entirely phone-only.
This won’t be popular but I haven’t had a stability problem on my home Windows 11 pro (server) machine. I disabled online login during first boot setup so maybe that’s why … my network handles telemetry shenanigans so I’m not worried about that. Never bothered to put a Linux on it, which was the plan, since it’s not failed once, it’s been a few years since it was spooled up. 🤷🏼♂️
I found it impossible to set up 11 pro without a Microsoft account. Did you put one in for install and disable it after?
On 10 if you cut network access during install it'd let you set up offline accounts. On 11 it refuses to finish the installation until you connect to the internet somehow. I had to put my linux laptop in AP mode and connect a patch cable to the windows PC because i hadnt loaded the wifi drivers on the USB i had.
Shift +f10 to open a command prompt in the installer
OOBE\bypassnro
It reboots and restarts the out of box experience, but this time 'I don't have internet' will be available as an option
Bonus tip, don't choose a password either, as it will force stupid recovery questions. You can add that after first boot with net user on the command line.
Eero Secure does a pretty decent job by itself but addresses can be blacklisted as well (hi Roku). If I had more money, time, and could figure out my double NAT, I’d probably switch from Secure to a Firewalla device, probably a Purple. Overall the eero’s have been a great, I don’t have to think about it, mesh system. Of course you have to be okay with Amazon owning them.
Look man. I use my computer primarily for gaming, with a little web browsing. The second Linux can support all games without me having to wrangle and worry about compatibility, plus whatever else config shit I have to go through that I'm sure I'm unaware of, I'll jump ship headfirst. I'm fucking sick of Microsoft's bullshit.
Linux supports most games nowadays. It will never support "all" games. Just like windows doesn't support all games. At this point in time, saying Linux is not good enough with gaming is weird..
Right, BattleEye is hit or miss depending on the game developer.
Another significant drawback I have is OBS compatibility. It technically works, but just having it open drops my framerate by ~30%, and having it record drops it by ~50%. I haven't found a fix for it yet, so I'm effectively unable to stream or record gameplay on Linux. The same settings used in Windows hardly impacts my framerate.
I'll continue using Linux, but I haven't deleted my Windows partition yet.
The part that most don't talk about is that installing and getting games up and going in Linux that can run in Linux, often takes allot of configuration and trying, but on the plus side it can run many games from older versions of Windows with some configuration.
It is the configuration that one has to learn how to do which most casual users aren't skilled enough to do. It is after you learn how to do it that between the Linux Native Games and most other games from Windows.
Depending on what games you play it's anywhere from unusable (games with incompatible anticheat) to flat out better than windows even ignoring all the surrounding bullshit. But many of these gsmes with anticheat are among the most popular games in the world, so there's plenty of reason not to change just bc of those for a lot of people.
Took hours to get wifi working on Mint after wasting a day trying to get my GPU working on Bazzite (all AMD setup before someone asks)
Meanwhile I install windows with English UK as my language and don't get any of the bullshit people complain about AND everything works.
I'll play Fallen Order on Linux (shader issue on Windows causes stutter while they're loading while the game is running) and will probably uninstall it and just continue using Windows.
Still have an absolute mess on Linux Mint with my projector, wrong aspect ratios everywhere, sometimes only one screen is selected. Maybe it has something to do with how and when I connected/booted/powered each device...
It should be flipped, tho. In my opinion, any “beginner distro” consumes more time in the long run run, compared to the “lightweight” ones (I bet my Arch is way fatter than many beginner distros, lol)
As a Linux user for a few years now I have to disagree. My friends who still rely on Windows only software for either school or their jobs use Revision OS and installs it with a tool called playbooks which takes only a few minutes and automatically disables feature updates; only allowing security updates to go through. This makes it so all "system updates" are through the playbook app which is pretty cool, it pretty much makes it a Windows fork and won't revert or break anything when updating
I love Linux, a lot. I've distro hopped and tinkered to my hearts content. But I can't let windows go, which is why I dual-boot with Windows 11 and currently, Bazzite.
Windows doesn't have the ghub for my logitech mouse and headset. I can't use my plugins for elite dangerous or extra software, like EDMC. Many games don't work for various reasons (anti-cheat, or many other reasons). Can't say, "well don't play those games.". Well, I want to. I like those games, and they don't work on linux.
There is no AMD Adrenaline for my AMD GPU. I can't use frame gen or many other features my card has. Battle.net games just refuse to work for me, try as I might to follow every tutorial ever (I just wanted to play Diablo IV T_T ). Those features are important to me.
OBS is much crappier on linux than on windows, due to no AV1 encoding support. As a streamer, AV1 looks MUCH better than whatever linux obs uses.
And lastly, Windows (even Windows 11), just works with everything. Any software you want, you just install it. On steam you don't have to check proton.db, you're 100% guaranteed for it to work. Any software you see, it works on windows. Any peripherals, just work. All their associated software, works.
I know not everyone games, but it's the highest grossing entertainment market, so it's important to more people than not.
According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. To put that in perspective, the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, while the movie industry was valued at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is making more than three times as much money as the music industry and almost four times as much as the movie industry. source
Battle.net for me wouldn’t install in steam as an extra app, it wouldn’t work in heroic, but lutris was happy to do it, and the performance is excellent. Linux mint.
And lastly, Windows (even Windows 11), just works with everything. Any software you want, you just install it. On steam you don't have to check proton.db, you're 100% guaranteed for it to work. Any software you see, it works on windows.
This is not my experience at all. I was recently trying to play Command and Conquer: Tiberian Firestorm, an older RTS on Windows. I own the game through Steam. On Windows, the game wont open. It crashes immediately on launch. If i run the game in XP compatibility mode, it launches but when playing the game there is some sort of microstutter: every unit is blinking, the mouse cursor is blinking, and the game plays at a crawling pace. Also everything freezes whenever you move the camera.
When i boot into Fedora on the same PC, install with steam and launch with Proton, the game works fine. I was even able to install a resolution patch for windows to get higher resolutions available.
I find this to be a pretty common experience for me when trying to play older Windows PC games. There are quite a few I cant seem to get working (or playable) on Windows, but that work fine on Linux. I mostly play older games anyway so for me, Linux is more of a game console OS.
Sorry to hear Battlenet doesn't work for you. D4 is another one i play only on Linux, in thas case because i get some weird graphical artefacts when playing on Windows. I haven't bought the new expansion yet though, maybe after the holidays are over.
I can’t use my plugins for elite dangerous or extra software, like EDMC.
Why not? The github page even says it will work with wine. I've not played ED for a long time. But, I am sure I had EDDiscovery at least working with it in linux a few years ago. Other games like WoW I have external tools that interface with it working fine, some within the same wine environment, some even external. You just need to make sure the drive is mapped (you can always go via the Z: drive too) where the app expects it.
From my experience, I have steam working and pretty much every game I want to play has worked. I don't play games with kernel anti-cheat even in windows, so I'm not missing anything there. Battle net runs fine even with ray-traced shadows in wow. Pretty much everything else I need works. The only things I miss are the games that are part of XBOX/Windows store, but that's hardly Linux's fault. Maybe visual studio too. But I do have the OSS "Code" to cover most I did in VS so..
I have dual boot, I've not used it to go to windows in weeks. Almost everything just works fine.
Battle.net games just refuse to work for me, try as I might to follow every tutorial ever (I just wanted to play Diablo IV T_T ). Those features are important to
Battlenet games just working on Linux and not working on Windows is what drove me to uninstalling Windows
And lastly, Windows (even Windows 11), just works with everything. Any software you want, you just install it.
How did you get Mac apps to run and the Metro desktop on w11? I suppose you can get Gnome Web to work through WSL
What I have heard on coding shows is making the Windows game available for Linux is clicking a check box for export/compile for Linux. And companies don't.
Urm. No. In a few cases thats true, but for most complex systems, or even just ones that rely on non-default engine extensions (a category that includes nearly all games), they really do need work invested into them. Steam and proton are are making this better but its really not at 'just check a box' levels of ease yet.
Just conveying what coders say, can't comment on which engines. But since Linux doesn't care what binary it loads into memory to execute it doesn't seem hard to support a translation layer.
I'm very curious what those coders meant! For what it's worth, what you're describing is essentially Proton and it has been extremely difficult to develop and requires a great deal of ongoing support. Cross-compiling is super hard, its the reason Android runs on (essentially) the JVM and that windows implemented UWP, and its the root cause behind driver compatability issues. I'm just not sure what you mean, I guess.
I assume since the Linux kernel doesn't care what executable code gets run in memory, it was an engine that adda info for system call translations. Could be wrong, they did not elaborate.
The privacy stuff? I've seen it happen in 11 for sure. I always check after an update now out of habit. But, not seen it in a while.
Resetting dual boot stuff? Before EFI/UEFI it would happen on most windows updates. It would just overwrite the boot record in a totally arrogant fuck you to whatever was already there. But since EFi/UEFI it plays nice with other operating systems generally.
It already does. I like to review the updates and wait a while to see if they cause any issues. When I'm confident with the updates, I temporarily remove the block from the firewall.
I've been on linux for years, I work the Nvidia libraries all the time, I alternate booting wayland and X... I even use my AMD IGP as output these days, instead of the Nvidia card.
And I STILL hold my breath wondering if I'm going to get a blackscreen, and have to go into tty mode or boot from a usb stick to investigate and fix it.
I... have had an NVIDIA 2080ti since they are sold (so.. about 6 years?) and use it daily, gaming, using it for selfhosting AI a bit with CUDA and... just works, from gaming to tinkering. I don't get those comments. Sorry you had such a bad experience, it's not mine.
Same thing here. There was a big update earlier this year that made it so I can use Wayland, where before that, it was impossible. At this point, I can't tell you the last time I've had any GPU related issues. Further, I believe that Nvidia is now working with Linux for driver support, so it should get even better going forward.
IF you are a distro hopper try openSUSE, nVidia maintains a repo on their own servers for the SUSE/OpenSUSE drivers. I have not had any GPU issues for 7 years.
Works pretty well on pop!_os (with X) barring some oddities that I'm not even sure are specific to Nvidia cards (like the compositor losing its shit when I try to pop out a video from my browser and put it over a game's window)
I've been lucky then, only problems I'm having (Wayland + NVidia) are:
Steam menu corruption, mostly on friends window (can be solved by maximising window)
Maximising browser on my second screen results in not all the screen being used, but buttons react as if they were using the whole screen (so you're not clicking where you think you are). Solution is to resize window to maximum manually. Minor annoyance.
Oh and I disabled stand-by entirely. It's was 50/50 if it would return from it. I think most problems are because I have mismatched resolutions (1080 and 1440).
That 2nd monitor window thing sounds like a DPI scaling issue, especially if your main screen has different scaling than the one causing issues. I get this a lot at work because of my setup and the software I use (on windows btw) and I got so used to manually moving the window and smashing it against the top of the screen to maximize it that I don't really mind. But maybe the term can help you troubleshoot it further
Yeah some softwares are also just bad at handling this stuff on startup I guess. Visual studio fucks up the code window's scaling all the time for me. UE4 used to literally never open a window with the correct scaling on my second (smaller) monitor window too but it got a lot better with UE5
In the screen, where you type your password to log into your computer, there is an option to choose which of the installed desktop environments / window manager you want to use.
On gnome standard login screen, it is down in the right corner, but there are many of this “lock screens” available and each can place the dropdown(or dropup, lol) anywhere they want. Just search your screen where you have to type your password to login for options.
I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it's still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.
As some background - I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).
I had my first UNIX class in about 1990.
I run a Mint laptop (for the hell of it, and I do mean hell) . Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won't even POST.
Windows would never do this, no, Windows can never do this. It is incapable of running a battery to zero, it'll shutoff before then to protect the battery. To really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero.
There no way even possible via the Mint GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions. None, nada, zip, not at all. Command line only, in the twenty-furst century, something Windows has had since I don't recall, 95 I think (I was carrying a laptop then, and I believe it had hibernate, sorry, it's been what, almost thirty years now).
There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying "you should manage data in a proper database app". While I don't disagree with the sentiment, no, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.
Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? Again, in the 21st century?
Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. In the 21st century?
Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won't even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a third-party download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of Windows since Win2k (at the least) and would probably work on Win95.
Someone else said it better than me:
Every time I've installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it's gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn't look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works.... only it doesn't save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically.. but that doesn't work, so now I can't boot.. so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that... then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution... wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it's been four hours, it's 3:00am and I'm like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren't supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can't wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can't do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I've loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
Linux doesn't even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it's own way), and that's a massive barrier for users.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).
Haha at the Logitech mice, here’s me swapping side plates on my Razer naga trinity all the functions work great, even the RGB (couldn’t care less really) has a configurator available in the distro repos - but it works out the box.
Some pretty wild claims in there. It's okay to just not like it without making stuff up like 'Linux doesn't support Logitech mice' or 'windows can never run a laptop battery to zero'.
I'm a programmer at a tech company. Last month, I tried setting up two different distros on my personal computer, in anticipation of Windows 10 EOL.
I experienced:
Total failure of wifi drivers
Graphical corruption returning from sleep mode
Inability to load levels in Deck-certified games
Critical input delays in a reflex-based online game
Inability to install a particular Linux-native app on my particular distro; not only unavailable by main package manager, but also by its alternative container-based strategy.
Right-click menus that hid the options I'm used to finding on Windows, with no visible way to turn them on.
Repeated overriding of my customization of keyboard shortcuts
Inability to assign Ctrl+Tab as a keyboard shortcut for a terminal app (Tab was unrecognized)
UI forms altering my selection when I was attempting to scroll past them
No discernible methods to pin frequently used folders to the sidebar of the file explorer
No discernible way to remove/edit Application entries (leading to games that I created an entry though off Steam's install dialog being stuck there even after the game was deleted)
So no, don't keep telling me I'm staying on Windows out of idiocy. If someone replies to this with a doctoral on why every single issue is actually somehow my fault, it completes the trifecta.
Linux distros need to take a step back for a long, lengthy discussion on good user experience before they rush back to making memes like these.
I installed Distro A, and Distro B, and you're about to reply:
"Oh, well there's your problem! A and B aren't great for beginners (even though you read they were from someone else). I'd strongly recommend, C, D, E, or F."
Whether it's installing a new distro off new recommendations or spending time tinkering to get one of them working right, it's still the same annoyance, and it's unlikely to change. That said, if you have read that and will restrain from jabbing back about it or are just genuinely curious:
::: spoiler Distros
Linux Mint 21, then Linux Mint 22, then Bazzite
:::
Thank you for the full disclosure, I think it adds weight to your post and no don't worry I wasn't going to argue with you about your distro choices, not at all.
I'm a very average Joe which also when into heaps of trouble when I tried to setup a Linux distro (mainly tried Pop_OS and Fedora KDE) so I feel the same as you 👌
Oh, they have lengthy discussion on good user experience. Have you seen gnome argue with the entire planet about whether the shutdown menu should let you shut down?
(I may be misremembering, maybe they wouldn't let you log out or put the computer to sleep or something stupid because their only concept of design is deleting features and creating backlogged tickets to reimplement the same function in a new "better" way)
Personally I have experienced most of that too on desktop. I use Linux for my home servers (oops I used zfs cause everyone says it's good and better than btrfs and now the one dude who runs the arch zfs gitlab went awol so I haven't updated my arch computer in 5 months).
Garuda is amazing, but it definitely isn't a beginner distro. Also, a lot of the design choices are questionable, so I still wind up changing a lot of things after installing it.
I don't know about Tumbleweed. Garuda isn't difficult, unless you have to troubleshoot something. There are a few things to keep in mind, though:
It's an Arch distro. Arch is considered not beginner-friendly to begin with, and Garuda does some things differently. It's very opinionated, and, like I said, some of the design choices are questionable.
If you need to do anything on the command line, you should be aware that Garuda uses the fish shell instead of bash (which is the standard for Linux distros). You might also want to check out ~/.config/fish/config.fish, because there is some interesting, funny, and weird things in there. For example, ls is aliased to eza.
Do you like macOS? Because that's the default setup: global menu, dock, etc. You can change all that, but it takes a lot of work.
There are a lot of good things about Garuda, though. There is tons of eye-candy. The fish shell is much more enjoyable to use than bash. The chaotic-AUR repository gives you access to even more software than standard Arch repos. And whenever you upgrade, it automatically takes a snapshot of your system, so that if something breaks, you can roll your system back to a previously-working version!
Honestly I've found most distros pretty solid. It's just the software that can be buggy. Gnome for me crashes on gpu's with 4gb of vram, like the rx 5500 and 1650. Steam is better now but I remember the interface being very jank. Left clicking something just made the drop down menu disappear and not actually select it. A lot of programs still not scaling right on Wayland even tho xorg has been dead for years on years. Ect...
But even with all these issues I've had recently and not so recently... Still so much better than windows
If you debloat Win10 and 11 your system will run better. Debloaters are aggressive to differing degrees (I recommend Chris Titus), but a lot of things are turned on by default that shouldn't be - like the Xbox service when you don't have an Xbox - using resources for no reason.
Quite a few clients were unable to upgrade to Windows 11 on their current devices, I let them try out Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon edition and most of the switched over quite happily knowing it would let them do their daily tasks, the one's who needed specific tools or games I setup a VM desktop for them to play with.
After months of trying, I still can't get Linux to recognize the 2.5Gbit network cards, or to function with multiple monitors. If the hardware support was better, I would ditch Windows for good instantly.
Recently I have problem with high you and cpu usage, mainly GPU(GeForce 1060). Trying to troubleshoot it and updating drivers but so far it's still doing it with game that shouldn't be that demanding (timber born). So I'm debating switching completely to Linux already have Linux mint on second drive but remember having problems with the GPU drivers too. So while I like the simplicity and not bloated os not sure I want to troubleshoot other stuff and learning new os and using command line. I'm still very much noob with Linux so just want to ideally set it and for it just work and occasionally update without stuff breaking.
-just a bit of rant about deciding, sorry if it doesn't belong here.
I fucking hate this thing that's becoming more and more common. Obvious bad grammar and spelling mistakes in memes like this, it's become the rule rather than the exception in just the past year.
And I'm certain it's rarely not done on purpose, it's the same with post and video titles both here, reddit, youtube etc. It gets clicks and comments and people fucking suck so they do it with no shame.
I have a PC with a version of Ameliorated Windows 10 on it. At a glance the project seemed promising, but then after install it did this thing where the lockscreen background is supposedly a blurred picture of the guy who made it. No matter how much I dug through the settings apparently I, as the owner of my PC, do not have high enough admin privileges to get rid of that despite my account being the administrator...? Pretty sus.
On top of that the update process takes more effort, so I haven't updated the system in literally years. The whole situation overall leaves me unable to trust my own computer, but even that feels more trustworthy than the default Windows-is-malware experience.
Next time I turn that PC on will be to install Debian.
I tried Zotero/Libre with Ubuntu and it had some bugs. Unfortunately I don't have time to troubleshoot software combinations or go into source code... I'm just a user.
Is it possible to remap the copilot key on the new computers back to the control key? I keep pressing it to skip words, but end up needing to use two hands now.
I'm on Aurora and while I got it mostly working now, I would not call it user friendly.
I'd just rather use Windows and not have to deal with my games not being supported, explaining to people how to print a word document or have to mess with wifi drivers.
A lot of those stereotypical problems have been non-issues for a long time. Last time I had to fuck around with wifi drivers was somewhere around 2012.
Anecdotal evidence blahblahblah. For example: I just had to reverse engineer some epson drivers to get my fucking printer to play with my USB hub. Shit sucks sometimes, and I'm not going to pretend windows doesn't also have it's moments, but they sure as hell are less frequent (for me recently) than they are on windows.
Linux by its nature is very fractious (See: the Gentoo vs Debian debate that had been going on since the dawn of time...), and that means we don't get one general distro. Linux's big strength is in it's customizability, and while for you and me it's clearly a great option that we love and cherish, for my grandma it's just not there in terms of plug-n'-play usability. Also, it was probably made by the wrong sort of Baptist or something, my grandma is awful.
...
Anyways, while I love Linux, it's nice that there's an option for the people who just don't care. I'd love for them to start caring, because they should, but until I'm made omnipotent dictator for life it's just not going to happen. And that sucks, but at least I don't get calls at 4am asking why they cant get a flatpak working on debian. (I know it's supported but...)
Earlier this month I bought a cheap Asus laptop for my gf and put zorin on it only to find that no one makes Linux drivers for the included WiFi card. Bought a new WiFi card and ended up returning the laptop because the touchpad wouldn't work correctly either.
There's no beginner friendly Linux OS, but.......if you willing to learn a thing or two about linux (at least know how to install programs, updating system, & install your favorite Windows program on wine bc you can't find equivalent linux program) i think you'll loved Linux so much because it's so flexible.
If you encounter errors, don't worry, there's answer how to fix it, all you need is Google/DuckDuckGo
Ubuntu is absolutely a beginner friendly OS. If I give a computer to somebody that knows nothing more than how to turn it on, Ubuntu will be no more difficult for that person to surf the internet than it would be in Windows. I've been teaching people how to use their computers for more than half my life and the vast majority of problems are ignorant people on Windows. Linux isn't inherently more difficult to use, it's just different. For adept Windows users, switching and expecting to be just as familiar is where it gets more tricky.
I guess it depends on the user... I have more problems (if at all possible) configuring and maintaining a windows installation than linux. That's why I ditched it completely, as thankfully the last thing that kept a windows installation on my PC is basically solved by Valve...
Actually Windows is much more convenient to use, if you just log-in everywhere and use it as a "normal human". The thing is we don't like companies taking our lifes, we demand freedom, thats why windows is a hell for us, but for most its convenient.
But a huge part is conditioning because people are forced to use Windows early and get used to it.
I have made the exact same "oh, this just works and is quite intuitive and convenient"-experience with Linux installs... for people lacking that prior forced contact with Windows (say older relatives with their first PC for example...).
Yeah, but when linux fucks up, you are screwed, you need to have some technical knowledge or smart friend to fix it, and in windows its often just restart
In my experience the fuck ups on the level where you need technical help are more in line with a "just freshly reinstall Windows yet another time"-scenario
I wish I could use Linux at work but the software used does not have any alternative (that I can use) and I can't be bothered with debloating and all that jazz. I try to keep work and private seperate instead.
My work has a process for requesting software. Over the last five years, I've been slowly getting open source alterntives approved, using them, and telling coworkers they're approved. It's just one super specialized software left.
Nice!
I work at a very small company, so there is no policy for which software to use and I would replace the one software that is Windows only if I could, even if I had to remain on Windows. The problem I have in this case is that we rely external tools that only work with this software, only on Windows. :-(
Teams.
I fucking hate teams.
Why are we using teams.
Why did they change outlook, it used to actually be good.
There used to be a linux repo for installing teams but they recently removed it. Now you're forced to use the shitty excuse of a PWA.
Either way I’m stuck on W11 at work. No way am I installing teams on my machine at home.
The browser-based versions of the M365 apps work great* for me in Firefox tabs on Linux. I prefer them being just apps/sites that I use as needed and not deeply integrated with the OS just because the same company made the two.
Teams doesn't work well for me on Linux w/Firefox (it doesn't detect my headset properly) but it works great in Edge.
Teams can go fuck itself with a rock. We've taken licensing now that doesn't include it.
Still holding on to classic outlook as long as possible. The new version/skin/glow-up can go share the aforementioned rock with teams. Where's my VBA, where's my ribbon customisations, and why must it be dumbed down to Fisher-Price levels of 'user friendliness'?
A lot of my answers to user questions these days are 'Because Microsoft ™️'.
You used to be able to paste any number of emails into a group in outlook. Now you have to add one email at a time.
Got 100 email addresses to add to a group? Fuck you.
No “upgrade” has impeded my productivity as much as W11 and the new office.
Tried get my dad to use Linux for his work but had problems with his clients not being able to open the files he sent using the Linux word and Excell programs. So that's clear for him not to use Linux.
My brother-in-law installed Linux Mint for his parents and they are very happy with it. The only problem was downloading epubs with Adobe DRM, so I taught her how to use knock^1^ in the terminal and then import the book into Calibre to upload them to her ereader.
[1] The original repo is either private or has been removed, but all code and binaries can be found here https://web.archive.org/web/20221010074634/https://github.com/BentonEdmondson/knock/releases
How modern, I can't believe your computers support Windows 11.
Why should my computer not be able to supprot Windows 11?
Because of the requirements like TPM2 and a bunch of of others.
Most places I know need to replace all their devices to support Windows 11. For the workload they are expected to run that hardware was fine.
Computer is new, win11 pre-installed. Would still prefer pop os.
Understandable, I don't really see how it's related to this thread though.
Because you talked about my computer not supporting Windows 11?? So I clarified that it does support it and came pre-installed, and I would still prefer pop_OS (i.e. not relevant, as you said).
I don't understand why that would have to do with anything to being with, though.
To me the funniest part is that telemetry is usually for ads to convince people to buy stuff, and secondly for nation states to track you, but the debloat crowd usually never leaves home (a registered address) or buys anything, and surprisingly apt at credit card points with the money they do spend (the og trackers).
I get your point. I would asume that those who chose to remove adware and remove telemetry would also be the same group that use ad blockers.
If it takes you hours to debloat Windows, you better stick with an OS you do know.
Yeach windows has problems but stability is definietly not one of them. Likewise linux has problems but in fact it is not harder to use ( in fact it is so easy to use that it is reasonably popular to put some easy distro in some forsaken by time laptop instead of windows for pepole who use browser and literaly nothing else ). Frankly speaking most pepole just dont give enough f about their system. The best i can say about it is that pop os specificaly just looks better ( i am in the apparent minority of pepole that very much likes the looks of gnome ). The best way to populrize linux is to have it by deafult instead of windows on laptops and prebuilds but that will never really happen ( they make insane amount of money on Markup by having windows installed despite the fact that they get it for really really cheap. Its really apparent when you compare some laptops that can be bought without the os preinstalled )
Tell me you don't work in IT, without telling me you don't work in IT.
Crowdstrike: "hello"
Just make them install Arch, I did just fine...
Why not Gentoo?
Because debian.
I installed black arch once, even my right click was weird
Same, but normies wont bother to RTFM
The wiki is great for those, who have some experience in Linux, not so for beginners.
It isnt that hard, moved from wondows 10 to mint, and a few months later to arch, and it took me less than 2 hours to install arch, and thats with slow internet.
And i learned a lot whole doing it, like Dekstop environments, disk partitoning(root, swap, and boot), filesystems, and a lot more.
I wouldnt recommend it to everyone, but it is great if you want to learn more about computers.
The wiki is actually good for beginners, too. As you are often forced to reallylly read through subpages and cross-referenced topics until you somewhat understand why you are doing something instead of just how. Doesn't make it easy ofc but a beginner can totally handle the wiki, it just takes more time.
Yeah, this has more or less sold me on giving arch a shot in the near future. I really need to get some fundamental Linux knowledge under my belt, and the arch wiki is legendary for being pretty comprehensive.
I may get stabbed for this but, go for Endeavour, unless a (probably needlessly) tedious install process is important to you.
I had vanilla Arch up and running for a bit but kept having issues with Steam, so switched to Endeavour and haven't had any issues since. Its still a pretty basic version of Arch, with a few minor QoL improvements like having yay and a DE already installed.
Beginner friendly??? Not sure how to explain this to Linux users that post on Lemmy but we’re not the regular pc user and have a very different view on beginner friendly lol
I tried explaining to some of my non-technical friends what a "Linux distribution" is. Most don't quite understand what I mean by "operating system". I think we're in a bit of a bubble here.
Heck yeah. I usually have to explain what an OS is in the first place too. I usually use android versus iOS as an example. I feel kinda fortunate sometimes that my wife’s hobbies don’t line up with my own most of the time because it does keep my brain in check from falling into those bubbles. She appreciates having free tech support on hand of course lol
You need to KISS your explanation. Don't talk about OS's or even distros. Avoid the technical stuff, save that for later as they ask about it. Instead just tell them it looks different, but in the end works the same. And it does it without the hassle, bloat or cost of Microsoft.
I recently swapped to Linux Mint and it really was not harder than Windows, and I know functionally nothing on how anything Linux related actually works.
Oh I’m not saying that it’s hard for us here. Most people don’t know that Mac and Windows are different if they aren’t in a tech position let alone know that Linux exists at all. I’m talking about the general person on the street, it’s hard to remember that we don’t always fit into that group.
And there is little to nothing to fear. The big bad terminal and command line isn't needed for day to day use anymore. It's been years since the last time I needed to compile anything. And if I ever do need to do that again, something is definitely wrong.
Well, that's my concern. There are plenty of settings that are only accessible via command line.
For daily use, you don't need the command line. Only in fairly rare instances do you need to resort to it when things go wrong. And those commands are a mere google away. So don't let the that big bad scary terminal stand in your way. It's not the stumbling block you think it is.
Oh, I live in the terminal, even on Windows. I like having that capability. Not everybody does though.
Then it's a habit not a fear. I also am comfortable with the cli since I started with Linux back at RedHat 5 and Mandrake 6. It was learn it or die in those days. But as time has passed, I find myself using it less and less because I don't really need it everyday. But while I might need to google a specific command because I forgot it, I still remember it's possible and handy.
This entire thread talking about how a distro is better than the next because you "only" have to update keyrings to update so even basic users should get it.
Ehhh....as a Linux beginner on Ubuntu I disagree... I spent a couple hours trying to get an AppImage application as a desktop icon.
Spent an additional hour or two to mount NAS drives. Fstab?? Wtf.
My secondary monitor flickers to black randomly for a just couple minutes after startup and there's no way I'm going to dig through Wayland to figure out why. Monitor orientation is incorrect on startup and I again don't want to dig through Wayland or whatever cfg file I need to open.....yet.
Still needed to browse at least 5 different sources for answers.
I'm glad Firefox doesn't crash at 500 tabs or w/e but Linux still has issues with some primitive tasks that windows has well figured out.
It's funny because as somebody that's been using Linux full-time for over 10 years I actually really really really really hate that Ubuntu is considered beginner friendly because I often find very very simple tasks incredibly frustrating on it.
I know that everybody disagrees with me but I genuinely think that something based on arch like Endeavor OS is genuinely more beginner friendly. You don't have to fight with repositories to get up to date drivers, virtually any piece of software you could ever want is either already in the extra/community repo or available through the Aur. And while yes it is possible that an update could end up causing an issue on your system Pac-Man is just way way better about not completely destroying the system and it is pretty easy to roll back. Even in a really really bad worst case scenario booting from a live USB and rolling back with chroot is easy enough I've actually walked people through it before.
Meanwhile the amount of times on both Debian and Ubuntu that I have had apt completely eviscerate a system just trying to do basic updates and then just bail out Midway leaving the system so broken that the terminal barely functions anymore is frustrating. And there's no particularly easy path to fixing that because dpkg is a fucking nightmare. Yes in the majority of those cases the system was multiple years out of date but that's no excuse I have updated art systems that were upwards of almost 10 years out of date and other than me having to manually update the key ring and reinitialize the signatures it was able to Simply jump right to the latest just fine.
True, even user-friendly Linux distros have their pain points. The real difference between Linux and corporate OS products is that you don't periodically need a new version because of a product churn schedule.
🤔not sure if it is true frustration or just a great meme
Do you have to use Wayland? If something's buggy in Wayland, I always switch back to x11. Wayland's finally gotten to a point where I can use it without bugs, but that's taken many years.
Android and iOS already replaced Windows for normies.
It's mind boggling to me how many people don't even use desktops anymore. Or do "serious" things like buy plane tickets on their phone. The younger generation is almost entirely phone-only.
Big purchase. Big screen.
True - remember Windows phones? Me neither.
This won’t be popular but I haven’t had a stability problem on my home Windows 11 pro (server) machine. I disabled online login during first boot setup so maybe that’s why … my network handles telemetry shenanigans so I’m not worried about that. Never bothered to put a Linux on it, which was the plan, since it’s not failed once, it’s been a few years since it was spooled up. 🤷🏼♂️
This is where I am too. Just built a new gaming pc and was planning to do dual boot.
Installed windows 11 LTSC and honestly, it’s everything I want in a gaming pc so I guess no need to install Linux.
Having said that, I bought a pc that came with windows; can’t wait to kill it with fire!
I found it impossible to set up 11 pro without a Microsoft account. Did you put one in for install and disable it after?
On 10 if you cut network access during install it'd let you set up offline accounts. On 11 it refuses to finish the installation until you connect to the internet somehow. I had to put my linux laptop in AP mode and connect a patch cable to the windows PC because i hadnt loaded the wifi drivers on the USB i had.
Shift +f10 to open a command prompt in the installer
OOBE\bypassnro
It reboots and restarts the out of box experience, but this time 'I don't have internet' will be available as an option
Bonus tip, don't choose a password either, as it will force stupid recovery questions. You can add that after first boot with net user on the command line.
Thanks! I appreciate learning the magic incantation
Some command line shenanigans if I remember. Not sure that still works on newer patches.
How is your network handling telemetry shenanigans?
Eero Secure does a pretty decent job by itself but addresses can be blacklisted as well (hi Roku). If I had more money, time, and could figure out my double NAT, I’d probably switch from Secure to a Firewalla device, probably a Purple. Overall the eero’s have been a great, I don’t have to think about it, mesh system. Of course you have to be okay with Amazon owning them.
Look man. I use my computer primarily for gaming, with a little web browsing. The second Linux can support all games without me having to wrangle and worry about compatibility, plus whatever else config shit I have to go through that I'm sure I'm unaware of, I'll jump ship headfirst. I'm fucking sick of Microsoft's bullshit.
Linux supports most games nowadays. It will never support "all" games. Just like windows doesn't support all games. At this point in time, saying Linux is not good enough with gaming is weird..
At this point games that doesn't support Linux are games that use anti-cheat
Right, BattleEye is hit or miss depending on the game developer.
Another significant drawback I have is OBS compatibility. It technically works, but just having it open drops my framerate by ~30%, and having it record drops it by ~50%. I haven't found a fix for it yet, so I'm effectively unable to stream or record gameplay on Linux. The same settings used in Windows hardly impacts my framerate.
I'll continue using Linux, but I haven't deleted my Windows partition yet.
The part that most don't talk about is that installing and getting games up and going in Linux that can run in Linux, often takes allot of configuration and trying, but on the plus side it can run many games from older versions of Windows with some configuration.
It is the configuration that one has to learn how to do which most casual users aren't skilled enough to do. It is after you learn how to do it that between the Linux Native Games and most other games from Windows.
Depending on what games you play it's anywhere from unusable (games with incompatible anticheat) to flat out better than windows even ignoring all the surrounding bullshit. But many of these gsmes with anticheat are among the most popular games in the world, so there's plenty of reason not to change just bc of those for a lot of people.
My experience is the opposite.
Took an hour just to get a mouse to work on Mint
Took hours to get wifi working on Mint after wasting a day trying to get my GPU working on Bazzite (all AMD setup before someone asks)
Meanwhile I install windows with English UK as my language and don't get any of the bullshit people complain about AND everything works.
I'll play Fallen Order on Linux (shader issue on Windows causes stutter while they're loading while the game is running) and will probably uninstall it and just continue using Windows.
That's wild. Mice are a generic driver just like on Windows. It should be plug and play on either OS.
Why did it take an hour? Any idea what was happening?
Still have an absolute mess on Linux Mint with my projector, wrong aspect ratios everywhere, sometimes only one screen is selected. Maybe it has something to do with how and when I connected/booted/powered each device...
This one makes a lot more sense.
It should be flipped, tho. In my opinion, any “beginner distro” consumes more time in the long run run, compared to the “lightweight” ones (I bet my Arch is way fatter than many beginner distros, lol)
i've seen someone installed Ubuntu LTS on his gaming pc. he said he has been spending hours to use it, in the end he decided to reinstall windows 11.
As a Linux user for a few years now I have to disagree. My friends who still rely on Windows only software for either school or their jobs use Revision OS and installs it with a tool called playbooks which takes only a few minutes and automatically disables feature updates; only allowing security updates to go through. This makes it so all "system updates" are through the playbook app which is pretty cool, it pretty much makes it a Windows fork and won't revert or break anything when updating
I love Linux, a lot. I've distro hopped and tinkered to my hearts content. But I can't let windows go, which is why I dual-boot with Windows 11 and currently, Bazzite.
Windows doesn't have the ghub for my logitech mouse and headset. I can't use my plugins for elite dangerous or extra software, like EDMC. Many games don't work for various reasons (anti-cheat, or many other reasons). Can't say, "well don't play those games.". Well, I want to. I like those games, and they don't work on linux.
There is no AMD Adrenaline for my AMD GPU. I can't use frame gen or many other features my card has. Battle.net games just refuse to work for me, try as I might to follow every tutorial ever (I just wanted to play Diablo IV T_T ). Those features are important to me.
OBS is much crappier on linux than on windows, due to no AV1 encoding support. As a streamer, AV1 looks MUCH better than whatever linux obs uses.
And lastly, Windows (even Windows 11), just works with everything. Any software you want, you just install it. On steam you don't have to check proton.db, you're 100% guaranteed for it to work. Any software you see, it works on windows. Any peripherals, just work. All their associated software, works.
I know not everyone games, but it's the highest grossing entertainment market, so it's important to more people than not.
Battle.net for me wouldn’t install in steam as an extra app, it wouldn’t work in heroic, but lutris was happy to do it, and the performance is excellent. Linux mint.
This is not my experience at all. I was recently trying to play Command and Conquer: Tiberian Firestorm, an older RTS on Windows. I own the game through Steam. On Windows, the game wont open. It crashes immediately on launch. If i run the game in XP compatibility mode, it launches but when playing the game there is some sort of microstutter: every unit is blinking, the mouse cursor is blinking, and the game plays at a crawling pace. Also everything freezes whenever you move the camera.
When i boot into Fedora on the same PC, install with steam and launch with Proton, the game works fine. I was even able to install a resolution patch for windows to get higher resolutions available.
I find this to be a pretty common experience for me when trying to play older Windows PC games. There are quite a few I cant seem to get working (or playable) on Windows, but that work fine on Linux. I mostly play older games anyway so for me, Linux is more of a game console OS.
Sorry to hear Battlenet doesn't work for you. D4 is another one i play only on Linux, in thas case because i get some weird graphical artefacts when playing on Windows. I haven't bought the new expansion yet though, maybe after the holidays are over.
OBS supports AV1 hardware encoding on linux with
Software encoding has been supported for longer
Why not? The github page even says it will work with wine. I've not played ED for a long time. But, I am sure I had EDDiscovery at least working with it in linux a few years ago. Other games like WoW I have external tools that interface with it working fine, some within the same wine environment, some even external. You just need to make sure the drive is mapped (you can always go via the Z: drive too) where the app expects it.
From my experience, I have steam working and pretty much every game I want to play has worked. I don't play games with kernel anti-cheat even in windows, so I'm not missing anything there. Battle net runs fine even with ray-traced shadows in wow. Pretty much everything else I need works. The only things I miss are the games that are part of XBOX/Windows store, but that's hardly Linux's fault. Maybe visual studio too. But I do have the OSS "Code" to cover most I did in VS so..
I have dual boot, I've not used it to go to windows in weeks. Almost everything just works fine.
Battlenet games just working on Linux and not working on Windows is what drove me to uninstalling Windows
How did you get Mac apps to run and the Metro desktop on w11? I suppose you can get Gnome Web to work through WSL
What I have heard on coding shows is making the Windows game available for Linux is clicking a check box for export/compile for Linux. And companies don't.
Urm. No. In a few cases thats true, but for most complex systems, or even just ones that rely on non-default engine extensions (a category that includes nearly all games), they really do need work invested into them. Steam and proton are are making this better but its really not at 'just check a box' levels of ease yet.
Just conveying what coders say, can't comment on which engines. But since Linux doesn't care what binary it loads into memory to execute it doesn't seem hard to support a translation layer.
I'm very curious what those coders meant! For what it's worth, what you're describing is essentially Proton and it has been extremely difficult to develop and requires a great deal of ongoing support. Cross-compiling is super hard, its the reason Android runs on (essentially) the JVM and that windows implemented UWP, and its the root cause behind driver compatability issues. I'm just not sure what you mean, I guess.
I assume since the Linux kernel doesn't care what executable code gets run in memory, it was an engine that adda info for system call translations. Could be wrong, they did not elaborate.
The privacy stuff? I've seen it happen in 11 for sure. I always check after an update now out of habit. But, not seen it in a while.
Resetting dual boot stuff? Before EFI/UEFI it would happen on most windows updates. It would just overwrite the boot record in a totally arrogant fuck you to whatever was already there. But since EFi/UEFI it plays nice with other operating systems generally.
TBF it's only happened to me once on 8.1 and once on 10. I think it's an uncommon bug
My home firewall blocks ads and telemetry, no matter device/OS.
Maybe M$ one day decided make Windows unbootable because it cannot connect to somesussymicrosoftprivacyviolater.com
It still would have to get past my firewall to try to make it so.
So your firewall is going to prevent OS updates?
It already does. I like to review the updates and wait a while to see if they cause any issues. When I'm confident with the updates, I temporarily remove the block from the firewall.
I’m more and more a fan of keeping my devices without any internet connection.
Another day another cope post
I would rather use gentoo on my gaming rig than fuck around with DLLs for even a second
Unless you have an Nvidia card.
I've been on linux for years, I work the Nvidia libraries all the time, I alternate booting wayland and X... I even use my AMD IGP as output these days, instead of the Nvidia card.
And I STILL hold my breath wondering if I'm going to get a blackscreen, and have to go into tty mode or boot from a usb stick to investigate and fix it.
I... have had an NVIDIA 2080ti since they are sold (so.. about 6 years?) and use it daily, gaming, using it for selfhosting AI a bit with CUDA and... just works, from gaming to tinkering. I don't get those comments. Sorry you had such a bad experience, it's not mine.
Same thing here. There was a big update earlier this year that made it so I can use Wayland, where before that, it was impossible. At this point, I can't tell you the last time I've had any GPU related issues. Further, I believe that Nvidia is now working with Linux for driver support, so it should get even better going forward.
IF you are a distro hopper try openSUSE, nVidia maintains a repo on their own servers for the SUSE/OpenSUSE drivers. I have not had any GPU issues for 7 years.
Works pretty well on pop!_os (with X) barring some oddities that I'm not even sure are specific to Nvidia cards (like the compositor losing its shit when I try to pop out a video from my browser and put it over a game's window)
I've been lucky then, only problems I'm having (Wayland + NVidia) are:
Oh and I disabled stand-by entirely. It's was 50/50 if it would return from it. I think most problems are because I have mismatched resolutions (1080 and 1440).
That 2nd monitor window thing sounds like a DPI scaling issue, especially if your main screen has different scaling than the one causing issues. I get this a lot at work because of my setup and the software I use (on windows btw) and I got so used to manually moving the window and smashing it against the top of the screen to maximize it that I don't really mind. But maybe the term can help you troubleshoot it further
I thought that too, and things got better when I set 1x scaling on both (it was 1/1.5) but it's not stopped the problem entirely.
Yeah some softwares are also just bad at handling this stuff on startup I guess. Visual studio fucks up the code window's scaling all the time for me. UE4 used to literally never open a window with the correct scaling on my second (smaller) monitor window too but it got a lot better with UE5
And nothing sops you from starting a X session for a specific game, anyway
I fear top commenter lost patience just a tiny bit too early
Just out of curiosity, how would one do this (in general terms)?
I hope I never have to because I’m sure I would not figure it out lol
In the screen, where you type your password to log into your computer, there is an option to choose which of the installed desktop environments / window manager you want to use.
On gnome standard login screen, it is down in the right corner, but there are many of this “lock screens” available and each can place the dropdown(or dropup, lol) anywhere they want. Just search your screen where you have to type your password to login for options.
I've yet to have an actual game dislike wayland. But you're right, there is always the option to swap.
I had issues with minecraft, last time, I tried, maybe it just workes by now 🤔 I think it was an issue with java and xwayland
I use Ubuntu and don't know anything about technical stuff 😋✨
My standard response to "just go Linux" :
I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it's still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.
As some background - I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).
I had my first UNIX class in about 1990.
I run a Mint laptop (for the hell of it, and I do mean hell) . Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won't even POST.
Windows would never do this, no, Windows can never do this. It is incapable of running a battery to zero, it'll shutoff before then to protect the battery. To really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero.
There no way even possible via the Mint GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions. None, nada, zip, not at all. Command line only, in the twenty-furst century, something Windows has had since I don't recall, 95 I think (I was carrying a laptop then, and I believe it had hibernate, sorry, it's been what, almost thirty years now).
There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying "you should manage data in a proper database app". While I don't disagree with the sentiment, no, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.
Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? Again, in the 21st century?
Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. In the 21st century?
Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won't even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a third-party download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of Windows since Win2k (at the least) and would probably work on Win95.
Someone else said it better than me:
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
Linux doesn't even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it's own way), and that's a massive barrier for users.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).
Haha at the Logitech mice, here’s me swapping side plates on my Razer naga trinity all the functions work great, even the RGB (couldn’t care less really) has a configurator available in the distro repos - but it works out the box.
Some pretty wild claims in there. It's okay to just not like it without making stuff up like 'Linux doesn't support Logitech mice' or 'windows can never run a laptop battery to zero'.
I'm a programmer at a tech company. Last month, I tried setting up two different distros on my personal computer, in anticipation of Windows 10 EOL.
I experienced:
So no, don't keep telling me I'm staying on Windows out of idiocy. If someone replies to this with a doctoral on why every single issue is actually somehow my fault, it completes the trifecta.
Linux distros need to take a step back for a long, lengthy discussion on good user experience before they rush back to making memes like these.
Would you mind telling what were the two distros you were trying to setup just for reference?
I installed Distro A, and Distro B, and you're about to reply:
"Oh, well there's your problem! A and B aren't great for beginners (even though you read they were from someone else). I'd strongly recommend, C, D, E, or F."
Whether it's installing a new distro off new recommendations or spending time tinkering to get one of them working right, it's still the same annoyance, and it's unlikely to change. That said, if you have read that and will restrain from jabbing back about it or are just genuinely curious:
::: spoiler Distros Linux Mint 21, then Linux Mint 22, then Bazzite :::
Thank you for the full disclosure, I think it adds weight to your post and no don't worry I wasn't going to argue with you about your distro choices, not at all.
I'm a very average Joe which also when into heaps of trouble when I tried to setup a Linux distro (mainly tried Pop_OS and Fedora KDE) so I feel the same as you 👌
This. I need to get work done, not work on my os.
Oh, they have lengthy discussion on good user experience. Have you seen gnome argue with the entire planet about whether the shutdown menu should let you shut down?
(I may be misremembering, maybe they wouldn't let you log out or put the computer to sleep or something stupid because their only concept of design is deleting features and creating backlogged tickets to reimplement the same function in a new "better" way)
Personally I have experienced most of that too on desktop. I use Linux for my home servers (oops I used zfs cause everyone says it's good and better than btrfs and now the one dude who runs the arch zfs gitlab went awol so I haven't updated my arch computer in 5 months).
Just use winutil tool. Very fast to debloat and disabled telemetry. Of course if you can't reasonably switch to Linux atm.
Arch is driving down the middle, flipping off both sides while having the time of your life.
(Caution: May be best or worst. Commenter may be heavily biased as he uses Arch btw.)
If you are installing Windows with that route, you sure as hell won't be picking beginner friendly distro.
i will try Garuda. i will not go for the easiest, because i want to improve
Garuda is amazing, but it definitely isn't a beginner distro. Also, a lot of the design choices are questionable, so I still wind up changing a lot of things after installing it.
i tried tumbleweed, so i should be able to handle it, right?
I don't know about Tumbleweed. Garuda isn't difficult, unless you have to troubleshoot something. There are a few things to keep in mind, though:
It's an Arch distro. Arch is considered not beginner-friendly to begin with, and Garuda does some things differently. It's very opinionated, and, like I said, some of the design choices are questionable.
If you need to do anything on the command line, you should be aware that Garuda uses the fish shell instead of bash (which is the standard for Linux distros). You might also want to check out
~/.config/fish/config.fish, because there is some interesting, funny, and weird things in there. For example,lsis aliased toeza.Do you like macOS? Because that's the default setup: global menu, dock, etc. You can change all that, but it takes a lot of work.
There are a lot of good things about Garuda, though. There is tons of eye-candy. The
fishshell is much more enjoyable to use thanbash. The chaotic-AUR repository gives you access to even more software than standard Arch repos. And whenever you upgrade, it automatically takes a snapshot of your system, so that if something breaks, you can roll your system back to a previously-working version!i know these, i tried it in live enviroment. But ls ran for me as ls
Honestly I've found most distros pretty solid. It's just the software that can be buggy. Gnome for me crashes on gpu's with 4gb of vram, like the rx 5500 and 1650. Steam is better now but I remember the interface being very jank. Left clicking something just made the drop down menu disappear and not actually select it. A lot of programs still not scaling right on Wayland even tho xorg has been dead for years on years. Ect...
But even with all these issues I've had recently and not so recently... Still so much better than windows
Who the fucks tries to debloat windows?
If you debloat Win10 and 11 your system will run better. Debloaters are aggressive to differing degrees (I recommend Chris Titus), but a lot of things are turned on by default that shouldn't be - like the Xbox service when you don't have an Xbox - using resources for no reason.
Me back when I needed HDR and Linux didn’t have it 😭
I debloat my windows by using corporate EU windows 🤭but I game on endeavourOS 🤷🏻
So gentoo it is then
Real Windows escapees go right for LFS........Maybe arch if they are scared.
mfs dont know about "O&O ShutUp 10++"
Quite a few clients were unable to upgrade to Windows 11 on their current devices, I let them try out Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon edition and most of the switched over quite happily knowing it would let them do their daily tasks, the one's who needed specific tools or games I setup a VM desktop for them to play with.
Let me guess... its a laptop isn't it?
I decided to spend a day debugging linux boot failure, which I found to be caused by the Nvidia driver.
After months of trying, I still can't get Linux to recognize the 2.5Gbit network cards, or to function with multiple monitors. If the hardware support was better, I would ditch Windows for good instantly.
Straight to advanced Linux. Rip the bandaid off now. It's only going to hurt more later.
Recently I have problem with high you and cpu usage, mainly GPU(GeForce 1060). Trying to troubleshoot it and updating drivers but so far it's still doing it with game that shouldn't be that demanding (timber born). So I'm debating switching completely to Linux already have Linux mint on second drive but remember having problems with the GPU drivers too. So while I like the simplicity and not bloated os not sure I want to troubleshoot other stuff and learning new os and using command line. I'm still very much noob with Linux so just want to ideally set it and for it just work and occasionally update without stuff breaking. -just a bit of rant about deciding, sorry if it doesn't belong here.
There is Bazzite which is setup for gaming, and has ISOs specific to hardware type
And yet still manages graphical corruption from sleep, and input lag in games on a tailor-built ISO!
Does it? I'm on NixOS and OpenSUSE, both have been good. OpenSUSE using nVidia own maintained repo seems this avoid graphical glitches
English hard, apparently.
I fucking hate this thing that's becoming more and more common. Obvious bad grammar and spelling mistakes in memes like this, it's become the rule rather than the exception in just the past year. And I'm certain it's rarely not done on purpose, it's the same with post and video titles both here, reddit, youtube etc. It gets clicks and comments and people fucking suck so they do it with no shame.
Some people make mistakes when typing and miss them while proofreading and sometimes people aren't native English speakers.
If I may ask, which spelling mistakes caught your eye specifically?
Maybe "just to notice"
But I'm not a native speaker so beware!
I have a PC with a version of Ameliorated Windows 10 on it. At a glance the project seemed promising, but then after install it did this thing where the lockscreen background is supposedly a blurred picture of the guy who made it. No matter how much I dug through the settings apparently I, as the owner of my PC, do not have high enough admin privileges to get rid of that despite my account being the administrator...? Pretty sus.
On top of that the update process takes more effort, so I haven't updated the system in literally years. The whole situation overall leaves me unable to trust my own computer, but even that feels more trustworthy than the default Windows-is-malware experience.
Next time I turn that PC on will be to install Debian.
Anybody know of citation software such as Zotero that runs stably on LibreOffice? I will gladly switch but this is holding me back.
I tried Zotero/Libre with Ubuntu and it had some bugs. Unfortunately I don't have time to troubleshoot software combinations or go into source code... I'm just a user.
Is it possible to remap the copilot key on the new computers back to the control key? I keep pressing it to skip words, but end up needing to use two hands now.
I'm on Aurora and while I got it mostly working now, I would not call it user friendly.
Although I agree in spirit, there is a bloatfree version of windows 11 called LTSC.
Makes me one happy windows user.
Unfortunately I have to do both ;n;
... or at least I will have to when I try to get my homemade game engine working on Windowsintoyourbrowsinghistory 11
I'd just rather use Windows and not have to deal with my games not being supported, explaining to people how to print a word document or have to mess with wifi drivers.
A lot of those stereotypical problems have been non-issues for a long time. Last time I had to fuck around with wifi drivers was somewhere around 2012.
There are comments on this post proving that those "non-issues" are still issues.
Anecdotal evidence blahblahblah. For example: I just had to reverse engineer some epson drivers to get my fucking printer to play with my USB hub. Shit sucks sometimes, and I'm not going to pretend windows doesn't also have it's moments, but they sure as hell are less frequent (for me recently) than they are on windows.
Linux by its nature is very fractious (See: the Gentoo vs Debian debate that had been going on since the dawn of time...), and that means we don't get one general distro. Linux's big strength is in it's customizability, and while for you and me it's clearly a great option that we love and cherish, for my grandma it's just not there in terms of plug-n'-play usability. Also, it was probably made by the wrong sort of Baptist or something, my grandma is awful.
...
Anyways, while I love Linux, it's nice that there's an option for the people who just don't care. I'd love for them to start caring, because they should, but until I'm made omnipotent dictator for life it's just not going to happen. And that sucks, but at least I don't get calls at 4am asking why they cant get a flatpak working on debian. (I know it's supported but...)
Earlier this month I bought a cheap Asus laptop for my gf and put zorin on it only to find that no one makes Linux drivers for the included WiFi card. Bought a new WiFi card and ended up returning the laptop because the touchpad wouldn't work correctly either.
Left thing is the right thing
Really?
Because nothing I use works in Linux or at least doesn't easily.
My 10 year old Logjtech mouse doesn't work, at all, until I Google how to make it work.
Then there's OneNote, which syncs directly with every machine, no server required.
Or excel - got Tables in Libre office yet? You know, what 97% of people use Excel for?
I could go on for days. At every turn, Linux is inferior to Windows as a desktop.
And I use Linux every day as a server: Truenas, Proxmox, Freedombox, Rpi, etc. It's briliant for purpose-built systems.
There's no beginner friendly Linux OS, but.......if you willing to learn a thing or two about linux (at least know how to install programs, updating system, & install your favorite Windows program on wine bc you can't find equivalent linux program) i think you'll loved Linux so much because it's so flexible.
If you encounter errors, don't worry, there's answer how to fix it, all you need is Google/DuckDuckGo
Ubuntu is absolutely a beginner friendly OS. If I give a computer to somebody that knows nothing more than how to turn it on, Ubuntu will be no more difficult for that person to surf the internet than it would be in Windows. I've been teaching people how to use their computers for more than half my life and the vast majority of problems are ignorant people on Windows. Linux isn't inherently more difficult to use, it's just different. For adept Windows users, switching and expecting to be just as familiar is where it gets more tricky.
User-friendly Linux distro is a myth.
I guess it depends on the user... I have more problems (if at all possible) configuring and maintaining a windows installation than linux. That's why I ditched it completely, as thankfully the last thing that kept a windows installation on my PC is basically solved by Valve...
Actually Windows is much more convenient to use, if you just log-in everywhere and use it as a "normal human". The thing is we don't like companies taking our lifes, we demand freedom, thats why windows is a hell for us, but for most its convenient.
But a huge part is conditioning because people are forced to use Windows early and get used to it.
I have made the exact same "oh, this just works and is quite intuitive and convenient"-experience with Linux installs... for people lacking that prior forced contact with Windows (say older relatives with their first PC for example...).
Yeah, but when linux fucks up, you are screwed, you need to have some technical knowledge or smart friend to fix it, and in windows its often just restart
In my experience the fuck ups on the level where you need technical help are more in line with a "just freshly reinstall Windows yet another time"-scenario
Yeah, but if its critical, small problems are automatically fixed, while in linux small problems become bigger if you don't fix them.