The simple fact is there will always be that one little thing that stops windows users fron switching. If 99.999999% of all windows software worked on Linux windows users would say "well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works". The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that. I would take that one step forward and say that when Windows 10 goes EOL half of people wont care and the other half will get new computers, the amount of people who switch to Linux will be statistically insignificant.
"well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works".
I am well past the point in my personal life where if it doesn’t work on Linux, or in many cases isn’t FOSS itself, it just doesn’t exist to me. I can be motivated to learn new programs when it feels like there’s a good purpose behind it.
I’m in my 40s so maybe it’s combination of “I’m too old for Windows’ shit” and “I’m not too old to learn a few new tricks.”
The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that.
Linux Mint Cinnamon may not be that, but it is very close.
My parents mentioned the windows end of life message to me a few weeks ago, and I think I’m going to try mint for them. As far as I know they basically need a file explorer to copy photos from SD cards, and of course a web browser.
Sadly the vast majority of people (even most Linux users) dont understand the benefits of FOSS. Thats why I love organizations like the FSF, EFF, and OSI. However, the sad truth is most people simply do not care.
Statistically insignificant is one way to put it, but I would argue it is somewhat significant. Just perhaps not to the extent we'd like to see. What I'll be watching for is the major uptick in viruses, malware and ransomware infecting that one half of users that will stay on win10 without a care in the world.
I was in a meeting today with a few people where we were discussing what direction we want a part of a European government to go in for tech. Getting rid of USA companies and on-boarding open-source solutions. The main issue, as usual, are the users. They're so used to the M365 suite they won't accept anything else.
Apart from the fact that most open-source solutions don't cover the stack Microsoft delivers, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
We need more guidance from the EU to start producing viable alternatives.
The whole stack is the issue. E-mail, VM's, office 365, cloud management, powerBI, copilot, it's one beautiful ecosystem. There is simply no viable alternative at the moment. It will need to be created.
Of course one can always replace office 365 with libreoffice, but after that it gets more difficult.
I certainly agree, but you can't replace your entire software, server and groupware stack in a day. Start by transitioning the easiest stuff off of Microsoft, tie it into your existing stack then slowly transition away. Shutting off the last domain controller is a lot easier when you only have a handful of Windows workstations that rely on it than when you have 5000 of them
Personally I think the opposite is better, we need more people telling Windows users "hey if you're going to Linux expecting Windows just use Windows". The simple fact is Linux is not a Windows replacement because Linux is fundamentally not Windows. For Linux users like me thats absolutely incredible (we dont want Windows but OSS), but for people who love Windows less so. Linux desktops look different (especially Gnome), Linux software works differently, the terminal is completely different on Linux (its not needed to use Linux but its so powerful that learning it is reccomend), there are installation files (DEB and RPM) but on Linux most people use software repos, and fundamentally the mindset behind Linux is vastly different from Windows.
I have a bad professional habit of treating windows machines like Linux, abusing PS Sessions like its SSH, downloading everything via winget, and generally trying to do as much of my admin work without popping open RDP as I can. Sometimes that works super well, and sometimes it throws me for a loop. But most importantly, it opens certain doors that remain shut for folks who insist on always RDPing in and using the GUI
I tried to use language a Windows user might understand, obviously not since nobody packages installers for Linux like Windows (because installers suck)
It is very dangerous downloading and installing random packages. It introduces instability since the package manager maintains the entire system and untested packages can create all sorts of issues.
Best to use native packages that have been tested upstream. If that isn't possible you want to use some sort of sandbox that can be easily blown away and created. (A container)
I get where you are coming from but it is best to encourage good practices.
One of us, one of us! Hahaha. I think at the core of it we care about other people and don't want to see them be stuck in a privacy nightmare with no way to escape.. and they paid for that experience. But yes, I also support people doing what they like, I sincerely mean that.
Ugh I have ONE game that’s 20 years old and does not work on Linux whatsoever. It’s an extremely important game to me because my best friends and I play together. We’re the only people who play it anymore. I can’t live without it, so I’m stuck on Windows for my main game machines.
Holy shit! You just brought on sooooo much nostalgia! Did you know that for turned into a full fledged game? I saw a year out two back, but I know they made it into something more.
I have the same issue. I have a 10 year old laptop that I use as well. My solution was to dual boot Linux mint & Win10. Most of the time I use Mint on that computer and load the windows only when playing that game.
I’m huge on the Contender. I’m terrible at naked kung fu.
I have the least experience amogus my friend group but sometimes I do a bit of blow while playing… Every time I do, I top the leaderboards. It’s wild. PED.
Conversely, I’m coming to the conclusion that I could probably live with just a steam deck, instead of a laptop etc.
A portable screen, or my projector, my nice Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and I reckon it’ll do everything I really need day-to-day.
I know just enough about Linux to know I should have been getting into it when I graduated over a decade ago.
I also know just enough to know it can do pretty much everything I need, as long as I'm willing to switch to a Linux alternative with similar capabilities.
However, I am Linux-dumb and deeply set into my windows, to the point where I'm not sure I have the technical savvy to switch.
From my understanding, Linux works very well, as long as you know what you're doing.
I'm sure I'm overestimating the learning curve but it's still intimidating.
I felt the exact same way, still do, but I bought a new drive and installed Linux Mint on it (it's the most Windows like experience I've found). I kept my old windows drive just in case, but I haven't needed it so far.
The only time I ever used something that wasn't Windows was DOS when I was very little.
It's definitely overwhelming when trying to get certain things working that aren't natively supported, but thankfully those are few and far between. There's also a lot of people in the Linux community that are passionate about it, and tend to be very helpful.
You can always download what I think is called a live distro, and run it off a thumb drive just to test the waters. Nothing you change will be kept though, and it will be sluggish comparatively.
The os itself doesn't require a whole lot of learning, if you stick to something user friendly like mint cinnamon. Key differences are how you install programs and drivers. File structure is very different. After two years of daily driving mint cinnamon, I find it more difficult to do basic stuff in windows, especially 11.
If it feels intimidating, the recommended approach is to try it out on another pc, dualboot, or use it in a virtual machine.
Go for it. You don't need to install Linux in order to start getting your feet wet. Get a USB 3.0+ flash drive and put a "live" (CD/USB, whatever the distro wants to call it) distro on there. There are plenty of directions out there on how to make one from Windows. Most live distros nowadays are persistent, so any programs you install will be there next time you load it up. It will definitely be slower than a normal install, but it'll let you get a feel for how things work.
Go ham wild on there, break stuff, see if you can fix it, don't, then remake it again. Try different desktop environments (DEs) and see what you like. Your distro of choice is less important if you're just starting, but any of the big ones will be fine. I'd recommend trying a few different DEs from the same distro, see what you like the feel of, then try a different distro with what you liked best. They'll usually all have gnome, kde, and a third lightweight option, but in my experience if Wayland (the other choice is X11) works well, kde and gnome will feel pretty light. I use kde Wayland on this guy and trust me, this review is giving it a lot of grace. Windows 10 was completely unacceptable on it, so if your specs are any better then this, you'll be fine with whatever you choose. Beware that Nvidia cards have driver issues, they're fixable but if you do have an Nvidia card, I'd just use the built in graphics chip for trying out Linux at first.
Beware that Nvidia cards have driver issues, they’re fixable but if you do have an Nvidia card, I’d just use the built in graphics chip for trying out Linux at first.
Well, shit. Extra work for me. I knew I should have waited for the AMD series to be in stock...
Ehhh it's not as bad as it used to be. Depending on the distro you might have some finagling to install it to begin with but otherwise their drivers tend to be fine.
It is however much nicer when you can just boot up a bog standard kernel and not have to worry about installing third party drivers, but it's not the end of the world if you do have to toss some third party drivers in there
Checkout Bluefin (or Bazzite if you're more into games). They do a pretty good work at making you not need to know anything about Linux to use it well.
Unless you happen to need some uncommon driver or software, you can "just use" it.
There are a few multiplayer games that don't work, but most do. Basically every singleplayer game does. It doesn't matter where you download it. Steam makes it slightly more convenient, but Heroic Games Launcher, or others, make it pretty easy to add any executable from anywhere to it and runs it.
Honestly, dont install Linux. There is absolutely no reason for you to do so. The fact is Linux will NEVER run all Windows games, it is simply impossible. Furthermore Linux will never run exactly like Windows or look exactly like Windows. So as a Linux user, just install Windows 11.
Switching from Windows to Linux on an older computer is like when you finally get around to clearing the bathtub drain after years of hair and crud building up. Who knew a bath could drain that fast!? And now there's no pool of water building up when I shower. Anyway, I highly recommend both Linux and clearing the drains.
This is gonna be an unpopular opinion here but telling people who have used Windows their entire lives to just switch to Linux as if it's that easy is entirely unhelpful and makes the Linux community look elitist and out of touch.
I mean... they are out of touch. I'm sure its possible to have a pain free switch over but when I had trouble the advice was interspersed with quite a few caveats. In essence Linux is 'easy to setup but...' Still gonna try again though, also guys that laptop you all said was dying because linux made it crash is still working fine on windows with no sign of trouble.
I think I understand your broader point as saying that a switch to Linux being as simple as switching from Coors to Miller is underselling the fact that Linux is a fairly different environment/ecosystem. You’re right on that. But as someone who’s made a switch to Linux (Ubuntu) after a lifetime of other OS use, I have to say that I think it’s worth it, even with the learning curve.
I have been exclusively a Mac user and Apple cultist for at least twenty years now and only knew Windows (3.0-ME) prior to that. I have a few 2011 Intel Macs that I use for work and home exclusively (two of which were hand-me-downs) and have not been receiving updates for awhile now. I’m not in the financial position to buy a new computer and I randomly read that Ubuntu runs great on these old Macs. So I decided to give it a try. It was a bit of work that was bolstered by the fact that I do have a bit more computer know-how than the average person (but nowhere near most of the people I see on the Fediverse). But I’ve come to love it and am now working my way over to this being a permanent change.
I’m only sharing this as an example that even deeply entrenched people can learn to use this stuff. And I was a Mac guy! Apple holds your hands and does so much thinking for you! I’d think with Windows, the switch over to something like Mint would be fairly easy, given the GUI (I specifically chose Ubuntu over Mint because Mint’s GUI is described as “Windows-like” and I personally hate all things Microsoft—which is definitely a “me problem” lol—but I’m probably going to load it onto an older ThinkPad of my wife’s that we want to set up for our son).
Life is a long learning experience. Installing (or asking that nerdy relative to install) a Linux distro is no biggie anymore and when picking a good all-around distro like Mint, for example, pretty much anyone who has some basic experience on computers can do it.
I do agree that life is a learning experience, but I might say that you're overestimating what "basic experience on computers" means, and I tend to find that this is fairly typical of people who have more advanced skills because this stuff is basic to us. But we can sometimes lack perspective in that regard.
Basic experience on computers for most people means "can use Office apps, can send emails, can more or less use the internet". Essentially, they can use the computer for their work or for some light entertainment. It certainly doesn't mean that they know how to or that they even can configure the BIOS to boot from a USB, or for that matter what the BIOS is or that it exists. It doesn't mean that they can use the terminal, or use WINE to run their favourite Windows applications or troubleshoot an operating system that is entirely alien to them. I'd even go as far as to say that most people don't even know what an operating system is - to them, Windows is the computer and they don't know or care about anything different. This is the kind of person I'm talking about. Everything you said might as well be Ancient Greek to that person.
I get it. That's why I included the part about "the family tech guy". And I think some sparkle of interest must be had in order to learn about that stuff. Or any stuff, like learning Ancient Greek. One has to be able to use a web search (or write a prompt to an LLM) for "beginner install linux" or some such. If the spark isn't there, maybe buying a new Windows/Mac is the correct way to go.
To a newbie, Windows is just as alien as Linux. If someone has no computer experience, they have to learn Linux, Windows or Mac anyway. May as well get them started with the software that isn't actively trying to invade their privacy and paste ads in their face.
A friend of mine was a console gamer and we convinced him to game on a PC.
We walked him through an Arch install, via the terminal and the wiki for his first build. I think it took 6 hours to get him to the point where he could reboot into a GUI. He broke something within a few days (an incompletely typed chmod -r command). Then we showed him EndevourOS's installer and he was back up and running in about 2 hours.
He knows how to use the Arch wiki, he can enable Steam debugging in order to Google any errors that occur, he isn't scared of the terminal (though he prefers a GUI if possible.
Previously he'd only ever used Windows to run Microsoft Office in a corporate environment. Now he has, on his own, installed a NAS with an ZFS array running Docker, Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, etc. He doesn't even have Windows installed (and would probably have a hard time learning it now)
Most people who are really against Linux are Windows users who have spent years learning Windows and don't want to spend the time to learn something different. Sure, it takes some time, but the skill is well worth the time that it takes to develop.
I can read the manual that comes with a camera and it will teach me how to set it up and take some pictures. Most (at least all that I've used) linux distros have something similar. Unless there's some sort of incompatibility with your system it should not be an issue. If you do have problems you get to choose whether or not to troubleshoot them but in my experience doing so on Linux is a lot easier.
When I first set up Ubuntu I was astonished by the fact that I could just download a windows executable and double-click to start it. But I loved how simple it was to download stuff using the package manager.
I had a bit of experience with the Windows terminal and had been coding for two years at that point so I was able to almost fully switch over within two weeks and found it significantly easier.
More like the "Tech Wizards" like Linus from LTT have the elitist attitude of being good with Windows means they should automagically be "Tech Wizards" with every other OS. Or the elitist attitude of just expecting the hardware you bought that's Windows compatible should be Linux compatible or it's a failure of Linux. No body does that when switching from Windows to Mac or Mac to Windows. When upgrading to the latest version of Windows and suddenly your hardware is not compatible anymore, nobody says, OMG all of Windows is a failure. It's Microsoft's vendor lock-in strategy that has forced companies to spend their engineering dollars primarily on Windows.
I think people are pretty lucky today, that there is a high probability that their hardware will be supported out of the box with Linux. It never used to be that way. You just bought Linux compatible hardware, just like people bought Windows compatible hardware and Mac compatible hardware. If it wasn't for the BSOD situation in Windows caused by crappy Windows drivers that forced Microsoft to develop and enforce WHQL certification. OEM manufacturers wouldn't have all unified around the same IP's for the components in their machines. This allowed the IP vendor to do the Windows and Linux driver support. With out that, all these Windows users would be stuck with Windows10.
So how about a these "tech wizards" take a bite of humble pie, learn the Linux way of doing things and go to their local LUG and get help, so it is "that easy". So they spend 20 minutes getting setup and learning the ropes instead of assuming they know everything and expecting everything to be done the Windows way. That's what we did, twenty and thirty years ago.
I especially loved the user friendliness of my distro randomly disconnecting my BT mouse and refusing to reconnect. Had to edit grub to get it back to working order.
Or how I changed the lock screen image through settings. Now I can see it - in Settings. Only. Because if I lock my device, I still see the old one.
Or how on Kubuntu, my previous distro, the applications' menu (the one with "File", "View", "Help", etc.) just disappeared from all apps. Spent two days trying to sort it out and ended up switching to Tuxedo OS.
Such an easy to use OS, especially for those who've never done one bit of troubleshooting themselves!
Could that be because he's had fewer issues with Windows and hasn't had a need to troubleshoot it?
Windows 11 is a shitty version of Windows, but it's not Windows ME or Vista. It sucks because of the arbitrary CPU and TPM requirements, plus having AI forced into a user's desktop. Not to mention Microsoft is dragging its feet fixing performance issues in Explorer.
It's still very stable on good hardware with stable drivers. Point out the actual shit parts of Windows, not lazy callbacks to the days of Windows 98.
So you can afford 128GB of ram, a motherboard that can support that, a processor that can address that... and you're running a 2080ti?
It's such an odd configuration I wouldn't be surprised if the Nvidia driver were causing the issue. Contrary to the concept of a "unified driver," the code for your GPU probably hasn't been touched by nvidia in a while. Either that, or maybe you've got all that hardware, but you're running Windows 8 or something else odd.
You seem to be confused. We're talking about an "OS for the masses". What you're talking about is so far beyond the "high end for the top tier enthusiasts" that it's not even funny.
It seems like a weird middle-ground that might be used in a weird 5 year old server. Probably not great for gaming. But I too had stability issues with all of my windows installations. (1.5 laptops, a prebuilt and later the machine I use now which I started using with windows) All of them had regular BSODs (though the laptops were a little older and might not always have been that way) and one pc even broke the Windows Bootloader so that I couldn't boot it anymore.
Could that be because he’s had fewer issues with Windows and hasn’t had a need to troubleshoot it?
It's actually the opposite. Worked in IT for 20 years, had to troubleshoot every conceivable issue with Windows.
Here's the difference: 90% of the time, once you've installed the OS, it's smooth sailing*. If it's not, reboot, and it will be fine. For the fringe cases, just search online to find help.
This last bit is what kills Linux as "user-friendly OS" - you have one distro, but solutions you find are for five different distros and each one looks and feels slightly differently, so things are in different places.
EDIT:
* I should've added: TODAY. It used to be VERY different, but these days? It's mostly "fire and forget".
I've also spent my fair share of time in IT. I can't recall any common issue with the reliability of Windows in the enterprise. Single user issues that originally appeared to be an OS problem later turned out to be caused by hardware. Usually hard disks, though I did find a bad stick of RAM once.
The vast majority of issues I typically saw were application related, usually industry specific software. What I did come to hate was industry applications written to run on the Java Runtime environment. Especially when a user needed several different apps which were not all compatible with a common JRE version. There's DLL hell, dependency hell, and then there's JRE hell.
Here's the problem with sweeping statements on the Internet like the one you just did - you never know who you're talking to.
You have no clue how hilarious your comment reads from the perspective of someone who's worked in IT for the past 20 years. :D
Here's the difference between Linux and Windows TODAY (that's a CRITICAL point) - the average user gets the OS installed, fires it up and just uses it. If there's a problem, a reboot will fix it 99% of the time. For that 1% there's a bajillion different forums where they'll find help.
Now, Linux? You install it, fire it up, and it runs without issues. Or it doesn't! You use an app, and it works - or it doesn't! You start searching for solutions online and find that the issue you've had has been resolved but on a different distro, things look different on yours and you have no clue how to proceed.
Windows is not a perfect OS, but it's as good as it gets (next to MacOS) in terms of "I'm John, this is my first computer, I just learned how to log in and now I want to have some fun". Linux is FAR from that, still.
Empirically, you are getting Windows and Linux mixed up
Also more end user devices are Linux than Windows
Linux is ideal for people who don’t want to spend all day troubleshooting and not getting anywhere. It’s for people who want things to just work without extra effort
Empirically, you are getting Windows and Linux mixed up
I'm honestly not sure you understand what "empirically" means... But I might be wrong! Please elaborate!
Also more end user devices are Linux than Windows
Yes, nowadays especially, when people are trying to "stick it to the US". Which doesn't change the fact that most of these will return to Windows within 6 months, and even with them it's still an insignificant minority compared to the hegemony of Windows and MacOS.
Linux is ideal for people who don’t want to spend all day troubleshooting and not getting anywhere
I'm sorry, WHAT?
It’s for people who want things to just work without extra effort
Randomly change registry settings, delete files, install software on the advice of random Internet people/LLMs until the software works or the randomware kicks in.
Thank god you've never had to touch a Linux terminal, clearly a fate worse than death.
Looks fairly similar to what you would do on Linux. Change registry to config file (unless you're using Gnome, then it's both). You're right though, on Windows, people don't usually have paragraph long commands to paste into the terminal to fix some issue. Instead, on Windows you have Microsoft support posts where a "Microsoft Community Support" non-employee pastes non-helpful boilerplate tech support copypasta which are somewhat adjacent to the user's issue.
Linux at least gives us useful logging and the software packages have documentation that is accessible without paying for a Microsoft Support contract.
The Linux community support can actually fix your problems without boilerplate copypasta and doesn't cost anything but you'll get the customer service that you pay for.
You do know I made that very point about how Microsoft's support knowledgebase is garbage these days, don't you?
Linux Community support can help you fix your issue. Once greybeards become jaded in a given community though, you see more and more "read the man pages".. which would be helpful if not for the fact that some of them are as concise as a freight train.
Mate, don't take it the wrong way, but you're living in a fantasy world if you think an average user has any semblance of idea as to where logs are or how to read them.
The Linux community support can actually fix your problems without boilerplate copypasta
LOL, nice one! :D
I've read "just recompile the kernel" together with "just switch to [distro_x]" more times than I can count to... :D
Randomly change registry settings, delete files, install software on the advice of random Internet people/LLMs until the software works or the randomware kicks in.
See? Here's your problem. You're doing random stuff without understanding what it does or even without a guide. Try that on Linux and tell me how well your OS works. :)
In general, seems like you've been sheltered from Windows for the past, I don't know, 15 years? In terms of reliability and stability, 10 and 11 are on par with MacOS.
I've never heard of someone using bcdedit to change a boot flag, so a Bluetooth adapter will behave.
The lock screen problem I've seen myself a while back. At least in my case, I did not have permissions to the session manager config file, and the gui tool did not account for that. But I think I had to install the tool from the repo. It wasn't part of the base install.
The menu problem could be a Kubuntu or early plasma issue. Either way, not something I've ever seen in Windows.
Lots of comments about gaming from people assuming that companies will continue supporting their kernel anticheat on Windows 10 after it hits eol.
Windows 11 is much more convenient for identity tracking, so they'll probably push for people to upgrade because Windows is too "insecure" for their games.
So glad I came back to Linux a couple years ago. I only use my windows partition to play a game that won’t work as well in Linux, and that list is pretty small for the games I play. Even BG3 worked great in Mint, using a 6 year old build.
Where is the conversation about the mountain of e-waste that’s heading to landfills if a concerted effort is not made to put Linux on millions of machines and to put those machines into the hands of people who can benefit from them?
Let's not forget we produce 3, 4, or more models of phones, tablets, laptops, and so much more each year, per manufacturer and there are a shit load if brands. That's an alarming planet amount of E-waste and we don't have the raw materials to keep up this pace forever, the energy supply. It's totally outlandish.
We need to not be carbon neutral we need to massively be carbon negative.
I don't wanna be a politics guy in a Linux sub. But this is not just a problem with Windows or even the choice of software. This is a fundamental problem with capitalism and won't simply go away if every company suddenly replaced every OS with Linux. The same material incentives would still exist. Look at what Android OS has become. Would it be better for nerds like us? Sure. But software freedom goes hand in hand with the economic structures and incentives of our economic system. Windows is used because of how unfriendly it is. Linux is not used because of how much freedom it gives the end user. And if it is used it's a special packaged restricted version of Linux.
If you happen to be a economics nerd and a Linux nerd I can't recommend this video enough. There is too much to be said on how we got to this state we live in today in a single comment.
Linux is super reliable, and unless you use cutting edge distro, it's pretty rare than anything breaks. Even Fedora is pretty stable from experience
The only true problems I ever had (and still has), were with Nvidia. And switching distros ain't saving you. Linux mint? Breaks on suspend. Nobara? Memory leak. Trying newer versions to see if it fixes it? Where's my bootloader...
I do understand that laptop RTX 3070 are not common, but still. I just want it to work, and have cuda on it. Is that too much to ask?
yea well, "arch btw". Haven't had issues really, been running it for years on other systems but my gaming pc with nvidia is the only one with issues... because of course it does. :D
Never had an issue with Nvidia. But then I'm using an Ubuntu distro because I just want my computer to work and I don't care about bleeding edge / rolling distros.
And I will move to Wayland in a few years when all the issues are sorted out, which I suspect is part of people's problems.
It depends on what you want to do with it, which version of which component you run and a couple of other things. In my own experience, if you want a "super reliable" system, get OpenBSD. Linux has a severe lack of QA, mainly because of its decoupled nature.
This is the main barrier for me (other one is migrating a janky access database). I really don't want to spend my 2 hours free time an evening troubleshooting Nvidia driver issues (4800S series).
Anyone with this card have an experience to share?
I see. Then it's possible that it doesn't affect older cards. I have GTX 1660Ti and haven't seen a problem, yet. However I do remember I had to downgrade Nvidia (on tty) a couple years back because it borked my system completely.
Entirely possible, dunno. And not like a 3090 is that new anymore either.
Basically all of the issues mentioned above have been mentioned in various threads over at nvidia's forums, etc. So they're not unknown, but kinda wild a released driver has all of these issues whereas the previous beta was seemingly unaffected - feels like someone was bit too triggerhappy to release an untested version to production.
It'd be nice if I could just drop the nvidia card and swap to amdgpu but.. that'd require "a bit" of money so I could maintain same (or better) level of performance - and atm I just don't want to spend that kind of money. :/
Yeah, it's possible. This is not the first time they did this, probably won't be the last. Though they solve the issues relatively faster comparing to years ago. That's something.
It’d be nice if I could just drop the nvidia card and swap to amdgpu but… that’d require “a bit” of money
I'm in the same boat but I'll most likely use this card until it's dead or really old. I cannot imagine how the people think about that email they got from Microsoft.
Having to use windows 11 for work for the last few years.
(1) Randomly a program on the taskbar just has an invisible icon. Like you can click it but if you don't know it's there it just seems like that program is gone. I keep waiting it to be fixed after every forced update 3-4x a week. Still happening.
(2) Sometimes the entire process just disappears graphically. Not even an invisible icon on the task at. Still running in the background but it's gone in the UI. Have to manually kill it or restart.
(3) I can't unzip multiple ZIP files at the same time. Like I can't select multiple ZIP files and extract them all into their own folder. Something that worked since I've used windows. Worked on windows 10, 7, and XP. It now just unzips only the file you right click even if multiple are selected.
I'm sure there are more but I avoid using windows and mostly just use it to connect to a work VPN and SSH into my redhat VM. Still, all 3 of these really common issues have existed for at least two years. The first two are constant on MS teams and Outlook. Literally no excuse, they are windows apps. Total garbage OS.
i've only ever used linux for servers as a web dev but friday i decided to erase windows on my laptop and install mint and i'm basically obsessed now (the best part is how updates just happen but they don't restart your computer randomly when you don't ask)
Everything seems to be pretty plug and play flawless on mint. With the exception of some not so good kernels the last 2 updates resulting in little hiccups on steam. Everything else is polished and great.
does that use space on your drive? the thing i liked in windows was it just streamed the files so I didn't need all the space available (my full drive is like 400gb)
I'm really curious what things people can't get running or didn't have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn't choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.
If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?
In my experience:
MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)
KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don't have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)
The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.
I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)
I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I'm not sure, because I didn't need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you'll probably have to worry about it.
Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don't - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.
One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn't create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a 'suite' in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.
(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)
Plenty of video games that will not run on Linux simply because of stuff like anticheat. Like Apex Legends (ran fine for a while but got blocked again recently) and Valorant, just to name 2 I'm personally aware of that's stopping some of my friends from going to Linux.
You can say that dual booting would fix that, and my bf actually does that, but that's obviously not a workable solution to the vast majority of people.
As long as games like that won't run on Linux it's simply impossible for a lot of people to switch.
CoD, Fortnite, basically any major multiplayer games are case by case basis. While most of them have turned to microtransaction shit I thought others should know a few big names. Check out resources like Arewewanticheatyet and The protondb.
I can't think of a single game, which is blocked by anticheat, that isn't a microtransaction infected mess that uses FOMO to compel people to login daily.
I thought I'd miss those kernel anticheat games, but there are more good games than I have free time. So if some of those games disqualify themselves it doesn't affect my fun. I have MANY high quality games to choose from even without the option to play Apex Legends.
I just installed Mint on my gaming TV table. I'm currently struggling to install a driver that works with my displaylink adapter. I'm also having an issue with my VTT (Arkenforge) where it fails to update and crashes.
Hahaha, thank you. To anyone wondering, I deleted the automatic updater out of the Wine directory and that has fixed the crashing, and I've given up on the driver for my USB to HDMI adapter and I'm going to just use VGA.
I knew there would be some growing pains, but I'm mostly surprised at how much stuff just works out of the gate, and how relatively easy it's been.
I love Linux. But my biggest problem is recommending it to users that use more than just the browser (and maybe some office suite), that I know won't be comfortable with the command line (and who don't want so spend time learning it).
As soon as it comes to hardware support (printers, scanners, heck even Nvidia graphics cards) you will at some point run into an error that needs you to use the command line to fix it.
I've heard many times "everything can be done in GUI". But people saying that are almost always people using the command line regularly. In my experience this just isn't the case.
And even if everything could be done in GUI, the most fixes you find online are terminal based.
I've managed to banish all but one windows and one osx install from my house. What's stopping me is a bazillion little windows utility programs for things like updating firmware on radios and such, and some hardware integrated commercial software: Ableton Live, and Serato DJ. I've tried lmms, mixxx, ardour, xwax, and many others. I just haven't been able to be creative with making and mixing music with the open source tools out there. Mixxx is getting really close, but doesn't have video integration last I checked.
I keep asking these two companies when they will put out a build for linux and have been met with varied responses from corpo garbage to laughter. It's disappointing.
At work we run some software that while you can get it to run under Linux it's not worth the effort even for me to bother.
One supplier is slowly moving towards the runtime being available on BSD at least. They also somewhat decoupled from visual studio in the latest release, while still being mandatory still it's a step in the right direction.
This always falls on its face for work. No one does collaboration as easy as Microsoft and that’s not changing anytime soon. I mean, everyone would have to move all at once. I can move to Linux on my personal devices and it’s not going to change stats one bit.
Not sure what you mean by "collaboration". If your are talking about working on documents, spreadsheets, calendar, slides, with your coworkers, sharing, manage access, etc. Google does that pretty well. My company uses everything Google for many years and it's very good from this perspective. It works absolutely the same from any operating system, Google Chrome is the OS at this point. I am not saying that Google is better than Microsoft as a corporation, just saying that Microsoft has legitimate competitors on the office collaboration market.
Collaboration as in what? Programmers use version control or use an IDE with collaborative coding tools like Jetbrains. That stuff is OS agnostic. If you mean office work Google and Infomaniak provide similar tools as Office365.
Most offices really don’t need Microsoft. They just are stuck in their habits. And MS has a better sales team.
I've tried it a couple times and I hate it. The UI sucks, I can't find shit, and they've stripped back control panel even further. Tried to help my mother with virtual disc's and you can't simply mount them anymore, instead there was some strange 3rd-party tool I'd never heard of and it didn't even export files that were too deep in the folder tree. Fucking useless.
All the bloatware sucks, search defaulting to AI and Bing instead of your own computer sucks. Removing administrative controls sucks.
But I'm a visual designer and the market needs powerful industry-ready software like Adobe and Affinity. I can't design publishing in fucking GIMP. The Linux alternatives aren't enough. I'm considering using a Linux home machine with Mac for work but the apps I own already are Microsoft so it would be very expensive to switch. So I'll probably end up using W11 and just complain the whole time.
there are no settings for all the shit, just some of it, that Microsoft is permitting to switch off. you therefore just have a half-still-shit-on system. that's totally fine, i don't expect anyone to invest time into anything. we ain't got much to start with. but no one using windows is really in control
I jumped ship from windows 10 to Linux on August and it's been smooth I have found alternatives for everything, but to be fair I used a lot of foss already on Windows 10.
Started with Debian but although I love it for my homelab I didn't like it being behind on KDE release so I switched to endeavourOS and I just love it.
What do you mean? My computer has never had Windows installed on it, so the end of Windows 10 support doesn't affect me at all. I'm not sure what could be more simple than that.
Most people normal people now days need a web browser and LibreOffice (or google docs variant). Pair that with Bazzite or other "ready to go" OS that comes pre installed with multimedia codecs, navidia drivers, a mobile like app store, a mobile like DE and it can be that simple.
Yeah it really isn't that simple as Windows is deeply entrenched into society. If someone is looking to try Linux it is fairly simple to get into but saying it is somewhat a drop in replacement is not quite true.
Not sure that's 100% true anymore. It's not uncommon for people to go years without interacting with a windows PC, most will just use their mobile instead. When I say interacting I am not talking about using a self check at a grocery store running an app in kiosk mode, I mean startup, shutdown, update, install apps and use them.
I friend asked me for a laptop last year and had not used one for 8 years since his previous job. Even then his previous job was as a traidy and he only used it for generating invoices. I am sure their would be an app/service for that now.
Windows is in decline mainly because desktop and laptops are irrelevant for large swaths of the general population.
Provided the OS does not get in the way of what people are trying to accomplish (mainly accessing the web browser) it does not matter anymore.
When I get back to my personal computer, I'm going to finally move to Linux. I'm a developer primarily on Microsoft technologies, but I'm willing to see if there is a way for me to work on Linux and branch out to other tech.
My rule with trying a new install is to "try docker first" and if it doesn't work then I don't bother trying to debug docker because it's usually easier to just try native OS stuff.
But when docker works it's always great. Most of the time it works perfectly and I have only ever had problems when I need cuda support and their is some version mismatch with some random half ass DockerFile someone made.
I did that 2 moths ago and rarley boot into windows any longer. It's a learning curve for sure, and I'm at the bottom part of it, but it feels nice to expand your knowledge bit by bit.
Yeah, I love the DIY mindset but sometimes it feels like people are trying to learn to surf in big punishing waves and deciding that if they can't learn to surf those that surfing is too frustrating.
It is totally legit just to dip your toes in bit by bit, thank you for making that point!
So glad I made the switch to Mint back when the EoL for win10 was announced. It has "just worked" with a bit of research beforehand. I like it way more than win10 - looks better, feels better, runs everything I want it to (except games with kernel level anticheat, but whatever), hardware is under less strain and PC no longer sounds like a jet engine. No regrets at all.
And, another perk I didn't hear as much about, it is really easy to automate stuff. For instance, I play CloneHero streaming from my PC on an Nvidia Shield on a controller with a USB dongle plugged into the shield (shield doesn't do that normally, linux allowed me to connect to the dongle over wifi with a little finagling) and I have it set up to automatically connect to my computer any time it's plugged in. I also have certain files set to automatically back up to cloud storage with a simple crontab task (automatically repeating tasks are very easy via crontab).
Mint may not be as fancy as a lot of other distros, but damn if it doesn't work well.
Repeating tasks is a trivial thing on windows too, at least since xp - though I wouldn't doubt this sort of thing might require a professional edition.
Probably what I'm gonna do. I used to live in a country where it was completely normal to illegally download software from ThePirateBay, and that's how everyone got their Windows versions, but I don't even feel like doing that anymore.
You mean Nvidia hardware. Nvidia purposefully sucks overall on Linux. Don't reply with "mine works great" because you're lying or haven't had an issue yet. Fuck Nvidia.
This keeps getting brought up, but the reality is that there is nothing special about SteamOS 3. If people want a SteamOS-like OS (Immutable, Steam/Proton integrated, Steam Big Picture as Primary interface), then it already exists. Chimera, Bazzite, probably others. The only thing Valve could realistically improve on is the installation experience.
SteamOS's only real advantage is that it is hardware restricted. Valve is able to test against a narrow field of hardware and insure a high degree of stability because of it.
I swapped from Windows 10 specifically because I didn't want to be in the Windows 11 and forward environment. (I use Arch btw)
I really don't regret it, the set up was really painful but once that was done, the KDE had so many good features that I immediately felt at home. I'm floored by how good Proton/Steam is at handling games, I don't think I've had to skip on any game due to my OS (so far).
It tweaked my interest when the forums said steam works great with it. And it does! Been playing RDR2 on it and my laptop only has the built-in graphics chip.
This is very realistic and fair, I don't subscribe to the ideologist out of touch bs personally even though I first compiled Gentoo 20 years ago.
I run Mac as my daily driver for convenience and stability but use the terminal for a ton of things and SSH into various Linux servers for my work. I run a VM in Parallels for the handful of apps which only work on windows, and generally avoid them unless they're the only option.
Basically, what I'm saying is even if you're dependent on some Windows only apps, you might find you have a better quality of life by making those the exception (running them in a VM) but using a more stable OS as the underlying OS.
Yeah I don't feel like running an emulation or a script to just play a game though. If I want to use Linux. I'll use it on a laptop for web browsing. It's a useless OS for me personally for every day life that has very little support from other companies.
Linux has great DAWs, bridges for vsts, alternatives for Adobe software and tons of games. The issue is your unwillingness to try something new, which is fine, but that's not a knock to Linux.
Name a real alternative to Adobe Acrobat. Especially Pro. Adobe has their crap on lockdown. And they know it, and they rape your wallet for it.
GIMP is good enough for me, and it may be a good cheaper alternative for budget minded professionals. But GIMP's UI and workflow design pale in comparison to Photoshop. I haven't used GIMP 3 yet though, maybe it's gotten better.
As someone tried to build the snes9x-nwaemu fork from scratch today after spending hours fighting the Linux mint updater getting stuck, ahhhhhhhhjjj. I still have to have windows for a couple of things anyway which makes this all the more annoying. The update also wrecked my davinci install which I need to produce videos. Also, I work two jobs so not a ton of time for this.
Edit: it turns out that upgrading mint also broke the video editing software I need to use (divinci resolve). Yay. Also python version conflicts trying to use an open source project and other shenanigans. Python has some sort of virtual env or something, apparently, but I'm done; I do not have the time or energy to throw at this and it's just frustrating. Back to windows I go.
My alternative is to try to run a bunch of stuff in wine (not sure if it would work) for the one case and I'd rather run it natively. I don't know, for the video editing case, if it would run in wine (and if it did, would I lose my ability to use hardware rendering).
This is the problem I see with most people adopting Linux.
It's great when it works but when things go awry you end up sinking hours of time into an issue. Generally on Windows or Mac, the most you'll have to do is remove it and re-add it.
If more is needed, the userbase is so large that there's a high probability that someone has had your exact issue and posted a solution about it somewhere online, you just need to go and find it.
Linux is very hit and miss on a lot of these points. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it sucks.
Windows tends to suck all the time, but the vast majority of the time it only sucks a little bit, because it's Windows... It works, but it's not great.
I'm all for Linux, but as someone who is more interested in doing useful work on my computer, not troubleshooting my system to get it to operate at all, I've stuck to Windows for a while now. I support Linux and prefer it to alternatives when running any server-based service, but for my desktop? I can't justify the time investment in getting it to the same operational level as my current Windows install.
This is the same reason I bought a Dell, knowing full well that I could get more performance and a better value by building my own system. I absolutely can build a system for myself, I choose not to because it's simply more work that I don't care to spend time on. To be fair, my system is a precision 2RU HEDT, but that's another discussion entirely.
Please don't take me wrong: Linux is great and should see more adoption. My argument is that there's a nontrivial number of people who want a system that simply operates, not one that turns into a science project because of a borked update. Windows updates have caused problems, but usually not everything-is-broken type problems... More that printing doesn't work or something like that...
My experience with Windows not working is looking through three sites of search results landing me on answers.microsoft.com where the expert doesnt really help so I give up.
Linux not working is being five forum cross links deep to find an issue on the gnome networkmanager gitlab, finding out the problem was already fixed but your distro hasn't bothered to release in like 3 years so you haven't gotten the fix yet, so I give up
I can't tell you how pissed I was when they did they. They invalidated so many links to solutions.
Granted, there was a lot of useless slop on there too, mostly from eol versions of Windows like 2000, millennium edition....
They threw all of it away, both good and bad, without warning. Without any opportunity for anyone to archive it. WTF Microsoft.
To their credit, their new documentation seems to be much better, they actually have useful help articles on not only how to do something, but also explaining the mechanisms, requirements and limitations of things. Not everything is in their new docs but I have to give credit where it's due, the technical document writers are doing good work.
With all that being said, it doesn't mean that Windows, or Microsoft are on a good trajectory.
Their new operating systems and updates are some of the worst updates and changes I've seen to their systems. Adding ads and basically spying on paying customers...
There are some controversial changes I'm in favor of, like the TPM requirement. A lot don't realize it but Apple integrated a TPM in basically everything they make over the years. The migration was slow but it happened almost silently, without anyone really noticing. All major smartphones have some version of a TPM, so the last bastion of not having/needing one is the PC market.
The PC market has known they should include this stuff for years before Windows 11 was released. If you go and look at mid to high end motherboards, even for custom/retail units, there are at least TPM headers on most of them. OEMs knew this was coming and instead of just integrating it into their product, like everyone else did, they made it an optional feature. Since nobody knew what the fuck a TPM is, nobody bought into that option. Now millions of computers are destined for ewaste because manufacturers couldn't be bothered to add a small IC to the system without being obligated to do so by someone like Microsoft. An entire industry of technology has this one thing that nobody even fucking knows exists, and they're the hold out.
.... And everyone is mad at Microsoft about it.
I'm not. TPM chips are a good addition to systems. It shouldn't even be a debate. I blame OEMs for not bothering to add them when they could have/should have, and making it mandatory on all prebuilts, all retail motherboards, all boutique systems, all custom builds... Everything. The cost difference would have been into the tens of dollars at most. It would have barely made any difference at all.
I've used Windows 10 since it's release. I had to reset it twice because I had a virus, which very much was my misstake. Other than that it did just work fine.
I've switched to Mint 2 months ago and I am troubleshooting a lot. Most of that comes from inexpeariance, but the point still stands.
Exactly this. And pretty much everyone here is a techie in some way, shape, or form.
Why does anyone think that a non-tech would take the time to troubleshoot their system the way we do? A user would hit their first issue and in the process of trying to solve it, just go and buy a MacBook.
This isn't going to endear people to Linux.
We will not win the majority of the market with Linux in it's current form. We need better integration and package management. Self repairing subsystems. We need Linux to basically fix itself when these ridiculous issues come up that non techs simply can't be arsed to try to fix.
There's a long way to go before pushing Linux on anyone outside of tech circles. Unless you want to be the 24/7 free tech support, it's easier just to throw a cheap Windows system or Mac at them and let them deal with it instead.
I hate the term "it just works" because it's almost never true, but I can say that for non techs, Windows and Mac "just work" more often than Linux does.
I love Linux. I love everything about it. From the origin story, the ability to make your system lean and clean, running at optimal performance, and being able to adjust every knob and setting to my heart's content. I love it. But I'm a realist. All the things I love about Linux, are largely reasons that non techs would hate Linux.
I have tablets that run android and an old laptop I run on Linux and it's great. For video editing, games, and niche software, it can suck for someone with little time.
Too bad, only 1 out of my approx. 150 customers have their IT dept. using Linux as server during my 6 years in - the rest of it is Windows... all the users have either Windows 10, 11 or they use Apple.
Halp.
Edit: not counting the educational users, as they come in hordes
Yeah, but the system requirements for Windows 11 are a good way above those for 10. Many people would need new machines; whereas Linux still runs decently on hardware from 2003.
You seem to be missing the point. All software has a point where it reaches end of support. The problem is Windows 11 has significantly increased the system requirements so that only computers produced in the last 7 years or so are "compatible" and lots of perfectly workable but slightly older machines are now destined for the ewaste burn pit purely because of that decision
I tried Linux Mint, and enjoyed my experience and even setup everything and then when I booted up Factorio Steam didn't use my 3080 somehow. Pop OS worked but I didn't like the experience. I'll have to give Linux Mint a shot again.
That is almost certainly because Factorio has a native Linux version and Steam installed that instead of the Windows version. It was trying to use OpenGL and defaulting to CPU rendering because you likely haven't altered the default configuration.
If you force Steam to use steam play, it will download the Windows version and run it through Proton which will use the right hardware.
Running the native version requires the user to configure their system correctly and then it would work. Most people who are coming to Linux from Windows are not interested in editing config files or using the terminal and, in any case, the vast majority of Linux gaming is done by running Windows games via WINE.
Proton is WINE packaged with the software and configuration scripts so that it 'just works' without user intervention. If you're on Linux, you can install Steam and Go to Settings -> Compatibility and check 'Allow Steam Play for all other titles' and, from that point on, it will install the Windows version of the game and run it with Proton with no user interaction (other than clicking 'Play').
It’s this nonsense that keeps people locked in to Windows.
It isn't nonsense, it makes perfect sense.
You can follow the error messages (which it prints to stdout when the game launches) and determine what the problem is so that you can fix it. The problem is completely understandable, the game logs would show exactly what device it was using and you could see what piece of software is responsible and go and look at the online documentation for that project to determine the exact configuration change that you need to make.
That's how you should be troubleshooting problems, but you can't do that on Windows because everything is a black box and provides little to no logs. If you're lucky you'll get an error message.
If you have a problem on Windows you first reboot and pray. Or, if that doesn't fix it, you search random social media or forum posts, apply arbitrary registry changes recommended by Reddit comments, upgrade drivers, downgrade drivers, install motherboard firmware and dig through the various Windows GUI menus, which are change completely between Windows 8, 10 and 11 (but not 9, which doesn't exist for some arbitrary reason), to locate a switch or checkbox that you can flip (and reboot again) until finally the problem resolves itself seemingly on its own. To me, this is the nonsense.
It shouldn't require editing config files, except maybe in an Nvidia Optimus or AMD Switchable Graphics configuration. The fast/efficient GPU support was a dumpster fire the last time I had Linux on a laptop with it.
I know what Proton is.
No, it does not make perfect sense that a Linux native version of a game is more difficult to use than the Windows version on Proton. That may be how it is, but it does not make sense. Whatever method WINE or Proton uses to connect the Windows game to a supported graphics API in Linux must be entirely possible to do in a native Linux version of a game as well. For whatever reason, the game developers either chose not to or were incapable of developing that code.
At the third party application level, Windows applications are a black box. That has nothing to do with Windows, though. Complain to third party developers
It reads like you lack experience troubleshooting on Windows. If you're praying to some higher power to make your software issues go away, you may also want to revaluate your troubleshooting methodology. Nearly everything you said can also apply to troubleshooting issues with Linux. Except for the whole skipping of "Windows 9", which no one truly cares about.
You clearly feel a lot of hate towards Microsoft, and they certainly deserve a lot of it. However, it serves no purpose to resort to exaggeration and hyperbole.
It is enough, provided that you have your system configured correctly. Which, in this case, is designating a graphics card to use. Without that it defaults to using CPU rendering.
Most people don't want to deal with the headache of configuring their systems and would rather use something more automatic.
That's what Proton does for you. If you're using Proton then it can assumed that you're gaming and so defaults can be set to support that.
Whereas people use Vulkan for many different projects and so it chooses safe defaults and depends on further configuration by the user (which Proton does for you).
Native Linux games work just fine (I play native Rimworld every week or so), you just have to configure your system manually.
Or just use the preferred method of running Windows games via Proton. You're going to be doing it anyway in order to game on Linux and so it is often more work to run the native version than it is to run the Windows version and let Proton handle the automatic configuration.
I’m in the middle of moving, but once I’m set up I’m going to look into dual booting. I’m not sure I’ll 100% be able to get rid of windows, though. For a start, I’ve heard NVIDIA is a nightmare on Linux and I’ve only recently got a new computer so i don’t really want to buy more hardware.
Hopefully dual booting will allow me to experiment and try alternatives for software which doesn’t have a Linux version, and i hear that one of the things that chatbots are actually good at is diagnosing and fixing Linux issues. So I’m hopeful, but I’m not assuming it’ll be entirely painless.
I've had a Steam Deck for a few years, and it runs Linux. I have come to the conclusion that I could easily switch at any time if I needed to. Windows only has an an advantage when hot swapping between my office and TV dock. Linux just doesn't yet handle desktop resizing on the fly well.
With Windows 11 you don't have to pay for the OS because you are the product through profiling and advertising, like Facebook and Google.
That sounds way, way worse to me that the old Win7 & Win10 model where you'd pay your ~$30 oem license (or $60 retail) once and be done forever without being heavily tracked and monitored.
Well the thing about the future is sometimes the thing that always happens doesn't, or sometimes the thing that "won't happen" suddenly does.
I understand the cynicism and I don't think anything will radically change overnight, but we are CLEARLY in a new status quo, you will start to see serious uptick in linux users, for a million different reasons.
The simple fact is there will always be that one little thing that stops windows users fron switching. If 99.999999% of all windows software worked on Linux windows users would say "well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works". The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that. I would take that one step forward and say that when Windows 10 goes EOL half of people wont care and the other half will get new computers, the amount of people who switch to Linux will be statistically insignificant.
I am well past the point in my personal life where if it doesn’t work on Linux, or in many cases isn’t FOSS itself, it just doesn’t exist to me. I can be motivated to learn new programs when it feels like there’s a good purpose behind it.
I’m in my 40s so maybe it’s combination of “I’m too old for Windows’ shit” and “I’m not too old to learn a few new tricks.”
Linux Mint Cinnamon may not be that, but it is very close.
My parents mentioned the windows end of life message to me a few weeks ago, and I think I’m going to try mint for them. As far as I know they basically need a file explorer to copy photos from SD cards, and of course a web browser.
Sadly the vast majority of people (even most Linux users) dont understand the benefits of FOSS. Thats why I love organizations like the FSF, EFF, and OSI. However, the sad truth is most people simply do not care.
Statistically insignificant is one way to put it, but I would argue it is somewhat significant. Just perhaps not to the extent we'd like to see. What I'll be watching for is the major uptick in viruses, malware and ransomware infecting that one half of users that will stay on win10 without a care in the world.
I think there will be a big jump in Europeans switching to Linux because of America going to hell at least.
I was in a meeting today with a few people where we were discussing what direction we want a part of a European government to go in for tech. Getting rid of USA companies and on-boarding open-source solutions. The main issue, as usual, are the users. They're so used to the M365 suite they won't accept anything else.
Apart from the fact that most open-source solutions don't cover the stack Microsoft delivers, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
We need more guidance from the EU to start producing viable alternatives.
Ubuntu supports AD authentication out of the box, so for users whose duties primarily occur in a web browser that rapidly becomes a vary viable option
The whole stack is the issue. E-mail, VM's, office 365, cloud management, powerBI, copilot, it's one beautiful ecosystem. There is simply no viable alternative at the moment. It will need to be created.
Of course one can always replace office 365 with libreoffice, but after that it gets more difficult.
I certainly agree, but you can't replace your entire software, server and groupware stack in a day. Start by transitioning the easiest stuff off of Microsoft, tie it into your existing stack then slowly transition away. Shutting off the last domain controller is a lot easier when you only have a handful of Windows workstations that rely on it than when you have 5000 of them
Agreed! A phased approach is what we're looking at, moving critical processes first and working from there.
Honestly I don't really see why some Linux users are pushing so hard for everyone to move to Linux. Use whatever floats your boat.
Personally I think the opposite is better, we need more people telling Windows users "hey if you're going to Linux expecting Windows just use Windows". The simple fact is Linux is not a Windows replacement because Linux is fundamentally not Windows. For Linux users like me thats absolutely incredible (we dont want Windows but OSS), but for people who love Windows less so. Linux desktops look different (especially Gnome), Linux software works differently, the terminal is completely different on Linux (its not needed to use Linux but its so powerful that learning it is reccomend), there are installation files (DEB and RPM) but on Linux most people use software repos, and fundamentally the mindset behind Linux is vastly different from Windows.
I have a bad professional habit of treating windows machines like Linux, abusing PS Sessions like its SSH, downloading everything via winget, and generally trying to do as much of my admin work without popping open RDP as I can. Sometimes that works super well, and sometimes it throws me for a loop. But most importantly, it opens certain doors that remain shut for folks who insist on always RDPing in and using the GUI
Downloading a package is not a "installation file."
Other than that you are spot on
I tried to use language a Windows user might understand, obviously not since nobody packages installers for Linux like Windows (because installers suck)
It is very dangerous downloading and installing random packages. It introduces instability since the package manager maintains the entire system and untested packages can create all sorts of issues.
Best to use native packages that have been tested upstream. If that isn't possible you want to use some sort of sandbox that can be easily blown away and created. (A container)
I get where you are coming from but it is best to encourage good practices.
Ok I could only install native packages from the offical repo or I can install tons of packages from the AUR :3
(I use Arch btw)
One of us, one of us! Hahaha. I think at the core of it we care about other people and don't want to see them be stuck in a privacy nightmare with no way to escape.. and they paid for that experience. But yes, I also support people doing what they like, I sincerely mean that.
Working in IT also changes your perspective as well. It all boils down to ain't nobody got time for that
Sad but true. I switched to Linux mint for private use.
I'd switch in a heartbeat if Linux can play all my games including non-steam ones
You can. Now it's mostly games with kernel anti-cheat that don't work.
For epic and gog you can use the heroic launcher. For ther stuff with an installer, you can use wine to install it and manually add the exe to steam.
Ugh I have ONE game that’s 20 years old and does not work on Linux whatsoever. It’s an extremely important game to me because my best friends and I play together. We’re the only people who play it anymore. I can’t live without it, so I’m stuck on Windows for my main game machines.
My other machines? Linux lawl
Even with wine profile and setting Windows version to "emulate"?
Unfortunately yes D:
Which is it?
It’s a Half Life 1 mod called “The Specialists”.
I'm shocked that doesn't work. Have you tried using Xash3D? What versions of WINE/Proton have you tried?
Holy shit! You just brought on sooooo much nostalgia! Did you know that for turned into a full fledged game? I saw a year out two back, but I know they made it into something more.
This and Synergy Co-Op were my shit growing up
I have the same issue. I have a 10 year old laptop that I use as well. My solution was to dual boot Linux mint & Win10. Most of the time I use Mint on that computer and load the windows only when playing that game.
Why won't you share which game it is? :)
I did in another comment~ it’s a Half Life 1 mod called “The Specialists”. It’s amazing.
Kung fu only or see who clicks faster with 5-7?
Hahaha a person of culture.
I’m huge on the Contender. I’m terrible at naked kung fu.
I have the least experience amogus my friend group but sometimes I do a bit of blow while playing… Every time I do, I top the leaderboards. It’s wild. PED.
I played this a lot back in the day online, and it was the absolute jam at LAN parties. Happy to hear people still keep the magic going
But....
Conversely, I’m coming to the conclusion that I could probably live with just a steam deck, instead of a laptop etc. A portable screen, or my projector, my nice Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and I reckon it’ll do everything I really need day-to-day.
I ditched my laptop for a steam deck. I use a desktop at home and whenever I need to go to the office I just bring the deck and some peripherals.
I know just enough about Linux to know I should have been getting into it when I graduated over a decade ago.
I also know just enough to know it can do pretty much everything I need, as long as I'm willing to switch to a Linux alternative with similar capabilities.
However, I am Linux-dumb and deeply set into my windows, to the point where I'm not sure I have the technical savvy to switch.
From my understanding, Linux works very well, as long as you know what you're doing.
I'm sure I'm overestimating the learning curve but it's still intimidating.
I felt the exact same way, still do, but I bought a new drive and installed Linux Mint on it (it's the most Windows like experience I've found). I kept my old windows drive just in case, but I haven't needed it so far.
The only time I ever used something that wasn't Windows was DOS when I was very little.
It's definitely overwhelming when trying to get certain things working that aren't natively supported, but thankfully those are few and far between. There's also a lot of people in the Linux community that are passionate about it, and tend to be very helpful.
You can always download what I think is called a live distro, and run it off a thumb drive just to test the waters. Nothing you change will be kept though, and it will be sluggish comparatively.
The os itself doesn't require a whole lot of learning, if you stick to something user friendly like mint cinnamon. Key differences are how you install programs and drivers. File structure is very different. After two years of daily driving mint cinnamon, I find it more difficult to do basic stuff in windows, especially 11. If it feels intimidating, the recommended approach is to try it out on another pc, dualboot, or use it in a virtual machine.
Go for it. You don't need to install Linux in order to start getting your feet wet. Get a USB 3.0+ flash drive and put a "live" (CD/USB, whatever the distro wants to call it) distro on there. There are plenty of directions out there on how to make one from Windows. Most live distros nowadays are persistent, so any programs you install will be there next time you load it up. It will definitely be slower than a normal install, but it'll let you get a feel for how things work.
Go ham wild on there, break stuff, see if you can fix it, don't, then remake it again. Try different desktop environments (DEs) and see what you like. Your distro of choice is less important if you're just starting, but any of the big ones will be fine. I'd recommend trying a few different DEs from the same distro, see what you like the feel of, then try a different distro with what you liked best. They'll usually all have gnome, kde, and a third lightweight option, but in my experience if Wayland (the other choice is X11) works well, kde and gnome will feel pretty light. I use kde Wayland on this guy and trust me, this review is giving it a lot of grace. Windows 10 was completely unacceptable on it, so if your specs are any better then this, you'll be fine with whatever you choose. Beware that Nvidia cards have driver issues, they're fixable but if you do have an Nvidia card, I'd just use the built in graphics chip for trying out Linux at first.
Don't start with arch, btw.
Well, shit. Extra work for me. I knew I should have waited for the AMD series to be in stock...
Ehhh it's not as bad as it used to be. Depending on the distro you might have some finagling to install it to begin with but otherwise their drivers tend to be fine.
It is however much nicer when you can just boot up a bog standard kernel and not have to worry about installing third party drivers, but it's not the end of the world if you do have to toss some third party drivers in there
What's wrong with Windows?
The better question is why Linux over something you know how to use. Both systems have there own issues.
Checkout Bluefin (or Bazzite if you're more into games). They do a pretty good work at making you not need to know anything about Linux to use it well.
Unless you happen to need some uncommon driver or software, you can "just use" it.
Check here: protondb.com
There are a few multiplayer games that don't work, but most do. Basically every singleplayer game does. It doesn't matter where you download it. Steam makes it slightly more convenient, but Heroic Games Launcher, or others, make it pretty easy to add any executable from anywhere to it and runs it.
Honestly, dont install Linux. There is absolutely no reason for you to do so. The fact is Linux will NEVER run all Windows games, it is simply impossible. Furthermore Linux will never run exactly like Windows or look exactly like Windows. So as a Linux user, just install Windows 11.
That's probably true. Windows cannot run all Windows games either.
Voice of reason right here
Switching from Windows to Linux on an older computer is like when you finally get around to clearing the bathtub drain after years of hair and crud building up. Who knew a bath could drain that fast!? And now there's no pool of water building up when I shower. Anyway, I highly recommend both Linux and clearing the drains.
Nice analogy. I should clean my shower.
This is gonna be an unpopular opinion here but telling people who have used Windows their entire lives to just switch to Linux as if it's that easy is entirely unhelpful and makes the Linux community look elitist and out of touch.
I mean... they are out of touch. I'm sure its possible to have a pain free switch over but when I had trouble the advice was interspersed with quite a few caveats. In essence Linux is 'easy to setup but...' Still gonna try again though, also guys that laptop you all said was dying because linux made it crash is still working fine on windows with no sign of trouble.
I think I understand your broader point as saying that a switch to Linux being as simple as switching from Coors to Miller is underselling the fact that Linux is a fairly different environment/ecosystem. You’re right on that. But as someone who’s made a switch to Linux (Ubuntu) after a lifetime of other OS use, I have to say that I think it’s worth it, even with the learning curve.
I have been exclusively a Mac user and Apple cultist for at least twenty years now and only knew Windows (3.0-ME) prior to that. I have a few 2011 Intel Macs that I use for work and home exclusively (two of which were hand-me-downs) and have not been receiving updates for awhile now. I’m not in the financial position to buy a new computer and I randomly read that Ubuntu runs great on these old Macs. So I decided to give it a try. It was a bit of work that was bolstered by the fact that I do have a bit more computer know-how than the average person (but nowhere near most of the people I see on the Fediverse). But I’ve come to love it and am now working my way over to this being a permanent change.
I’m only sharing this as an example that even deeply entrenched people can learn to use this stuff. And I was a Mac guy! Apple holds your hands and does so much thinking for you! I’d think with Windows, the switch over to something like Mint would be fairly easy, given the GUI (I specifically chose Ubuntu over Mint because Mint’s GUI is described as “Windows-like” and I personally hate all things Microsoft—which is definitely a “me problem” lol—but I’m probably going to load it onto an older ThinkPad of my wife’s that we want to set up for our son).
Life is a long learning experience. Installing (or asking that nerdy relative to install) a Linux distro is no biggie anymore and when picking a good all-around distro like Mint, for example, pretty much anyone who has some basic experience on computers can do it.
I do agree that life is a learning experience, but I might say that you're overestimating what "basic experience on computers" means, and I tend to find that this is fairly typical of people who have more advanced skills because this stuff is basic to us. But we can sometimes lack perspective in that regard.
Basic experience on computers for most people means "can use Office apps, can send emails, can more or less use the internet". Essentially, they can use the computer for their work or for some light entertainment. It certainly doesn't mean that they know how to or that they even can configure the BIOS to boot from a USB, or for that matter what the BIOS is or that it exists. It doesn't mean that they can use the terminal, or use WINE to run their favourite Windows applications or troubleshoot an operating system that is entirely alien to them. I'd even go as far as to say that most people don't even know what an operating system is - to them, Windows is the computer and they don't know or care about anything different. This is the kind of person I'm talking about. Everything you said might as well be Ancient Greek to that person.
Relevant XKCD
I get it. That's why I included the part about "the family tech guy". And I think some sparkle of interest must be had in order to learn about that stuff. Or any stuff, like learning Ancient Greek. One has to be able to use a web search (or write a prompt to an LLM) for "beginner install linux" or some such. If the spark isn't there, maybe buying a new Windows/Mac is the correct way to go.
To a newbie, Windows is just as alien as Linux. If someone has no computer experience, they have to learn Linux, Windows or Mac anyway. May as well get them started with the software that isn't actively trying to invade their privacy and paste ads in their face.
A friend of mine was a console gamer and we convinced him to game on a PC.
We walked him through an Arch install, via the terminal and the wiki for his first build. I think it took 6 hours to get him to the point where he could reboot into a GUI. He broke something within a few days (an incompletely typed chmod -r command). Then we showed him EndevourOS's installer and he was back up and running in about 2 hours.
He knows how to use the Arch wiki, he can enable Steam debugging in order to Google any errors that occur, he isn't scared of the terminal (though he prefers a GUI if possible.
Previously he'd only ever used Windows to run Microsoft Office in a corporate environment. Now he has, on his own, installed a NAS with an ZFS array running Docker, Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, etc. He doesn't even have Windows installed (and would probably have a hard time learning it now)
Most people who are really against Linux are Windows users who have spent years learning Windows and don't want to spend the time to learn something different. Sure, it takes some time, but the skill is well worth the time that it takes to develop.
I can read the manual that comes with a camera and it will teach me how to set it up and take some pictures. Most (at least all that I've used) linux distros have something similar. Unless there's some sort of incompatibility with your system it should not be an issue. If you do have problems you get to choose whether or not to troubleshoot them but in my experience doing so on Linux is a lot easier.
When I first set up Ubuntu I was astonished by the fact that I could just download a windows executable and double-click to start it. But I loved how simple it was to download stuff using the package manager.
I had a bit of experience with the Windows terminal and had been coding for two years at that point so I was able to almost fully switch over within two weeks and found it significantly easier.
More like the "Tech Wizards" like Linus from LTT have the elitist attitude of being good with Windows means they should automagically be "Tech Wizards" with every other OS. Or the elitist attitude of just expecting the hardware you bought that's Windows compatible should be Linux compatible or it's a failure of Linux. No body does that when switching from Windows to Mac or Mac to Windows. When upgrading to the latest version of Windows and suddenly your hardware is not compatible anymore, nobody says, OMG all of Windows is a failure. It's Microsoft's vendor lock-in strategy that has forced companies to spend their engineering dollars primarily on Windows.
I think people are pretty lucky today, that there is a high probability that their hardware will be supported out of the box with Linux. It never used to be that way. You just bought Linux compatible hardware, just like people bought Windows compatible hardware and Mac compatible hardware. If it wasn't for the BSOD situation in Windows caused by crappy Windows drivers that forced Microsoft to develop and enforce WHQL certification. OEM manufacturers wouldn't have all unified around the same IP's for the components in their machines. This allowed the IP vendor to do the Windows and Linux driver support. With out that, all these Windows users would be stuck with Windows10.
So how about a these "tech wizards" take a bite of humble pie, learn the Linux way of doing things and go to their local LUG and get help, so it is "that easy". So they spend 20 minutes getting setup and learning the ropes instead of assuming they know everything and expecting everything to be done the Windows way. That's what we did, twenty and thirty years ago.
It’s easier to use than Windows
Just give GUI troubleshooting instead of CLI
LOL, good one!
I especially loved the user friendliness of my distro randomly disconnecting my BT mouse and refusing to reconnect. Had to edit grub to get it back to working order.
Or how I changed the lock screen image through settings. Now I can see it - in Settings. Only. Because if I lock my device, I still see the old one.
Or how on Kubuntu, my previous distro, the applications' menu (the one with "File", "View", "Help", etc.) just disappeared from all apps. Spent two days trying to sort it out and ended up switching to Tuxedo OS.
Such an easy to use OS, especially for those who've never done one bit of troubleshooting themselves!
Spoken like someone who hasn’t had to troubleshoot Windows
Could that be because he's had fewer issues with Windows and hasn't had a need to troubleshoot it?
Windows 11 is a shitty version of Windows, but it's not Windows ME or Vista. It sucks because of the arbitrary CPU and TPM requirements, plus having AI forced into a user's desktop. Not to mention Microsoft is dragging its feet fixing performance issues in Explorer.
It's still very stable on good hardware with stable drivers. Point out the actual shit parts of Windows, not lazy callbacks to the days of Windows 98.
2080 ti and 128gb of ram - it is definitely not stable and unlike Linux isn’t ready out of the box
So you can afford 128GB of ram, a motherboard that can support that, a processor that can address that... and you're running a 2080ti?
It's such an odd configuration I wouldn't be surprised if the Nvidia driver were causing the issue. Contrary to the concept of a "unified driver," the code for your GPU probably hasn't been touched by nvidia in a while. Either that, or maybe you've got all that hardware, but you're running Windows 8 or something else odd.
W10/11
And yes the gpu needs an upgrade, but I don’t have a server in need of it yet so it stays in my personal computer
And on Linux it handles everything I need
You seem to be confused. We're talking about an "OS for the masses". What you're talking about is so far beyond the "high end for the top tier enthusiasts" that it's not even funny.
If Windows doesn’t work on that, then it’s not for the masses
It seems like a weird middle-ground that might be used in a weird 5 year old server. Probably not great for gaming. But I too had stability issues with all of my windows installations. (1.5 laptops, a prebuilt and later the machine I use now which I started using with windows) All of them had regular BSODs (though the laptops were a little older and might not always have been that way) and one pc even broke the Windows Bootloader so that I couldn't boot it anymore.
It's actually the opposite. Worked in IT for 20 years, had to troubleshoot every conceivable issue with Windows.
Here's the difference: 90% of the time, once you've installed the OS, it's smooth sailing*. If it's not, reboot, and it will be fine. For the fringe cases, just search online to find help.
This last bit is what kills Linux as "user-friendly OS" - you have one distro, but solutions you find are for five different distros and each one looks and feels slightly differently, so things are in different places.
EDIT:
* I should've added: TODAY. It used to be VERY different, but these days? It's mostly "fire and forget".
I've also spent my fair share of time in IT. I can't recall any common issue with the reliability of Windows in the enterprise. Single user issues that originally appeared to be an OS problem later turned out to be caused by hardware. Usually hard disks, though I did find a bad stick of RAM once.
The vast majority of issues I typically saw were application related, usually industry specific software. What I did come to hate was industry applications written to run on the Java Runtime environment. Especially when a user needed several different apps which were not all compatible with a common JRE version. There's DLL hell, dependency hell, and then there's JRE hell.
1000% this!
Here's the problem with sweeping statements on the Internet like the one you just did - you never know who you're talking to.
You have no clue how hilarious your comment reads from the perspective of someone who's worked in IT for the past 20 years. :D
Here's the difference between Linux and Windows TODAY (that's a CRITICAL point) - the average user gets the OS installed, fires it up and just uses it. If there's a problem, a reboot will fix it 99% of the time. For that 1% there's a bajillion different forums where they'll find help.
Now, Linux? You install it, fire it up, and it runs without issues. Or it doesn't! You use an app, and it works - or it doesn't! You start searching for solutions online and find that the issue you've had has been resolved but on a different distro, things look different on yours and you have no clue how to proceed.
Windows is not a perfect OS, but it's as good as it gets (next to MacOS) in terms of "I'm John, this is my first computer, I just learned how to log in and now I want to have some fun". Linux is FAR from that, still.
Empirically, you are getting Windows and Linux mixed up
Also more end user devices are Linux than Windows
Linux is ideal for people who don’t want to spend all day troubleshooting and not getting anywhere. It’s for people who want things to just work without extra effort
Can’t compare to Mac personally
I'm honestly not sure you understand what "empirically" means... But I might be wrong! Please elaborate!
Yes, nowadays especially, when people are trying to "stick it to the US". Which doesn't change the fact that most of these will return to Windows within 6 months, and even with them it's still an insignificant minority compared to the hegemony of Windows and MacOS.
I'm sorry, WHAT?
You have GOT TO be joking right now...
Through my own experiences not just what I’ve read. Constantly being asked to fix “Windows not working” and there never being any fixes found
Google and Valve are US companies so I don’t think people are sticking it to the US when they use their products
Install and forget, the only issue I’ve had that isn’t a 5 minute fix is a broken pipe error on updates that doesn’t interfere with anything.
Have you tried either? Windows is always blue screening, black screening, or having apps freeze
Steps to troubleshoot Windows:
Looks fairly similar to what you would do on Linux. Change registry to config file (unless you're using Gnome, then it's both). You're right though, on Windows, people don't usually have paragraph long commands to paste into the terminal to fix some issue. Instead, on Windows you have Microsoft support posts where a "Microsoft Community Support" non-employee pastes non-helpful boilerplate tech support copypasta which are somewhat adjacent to the user's issue.
Linux at least gives us useful logging and the software packages have documentation that is accessible without paying for a Microsoft Support contract.
The Linux community support can actually fix your problems without boilerplate copypasta and doesn't cost anything but you'll get the customer service that you pay for.
Event Manager.
You do know I made that very point about how Microsoft's support knowledgebase is garbage these days, don't you?
Linux Community support can help you fix your issue. Once greybeards become jaded in a given community though, you see more and more "read the man pages".. which would be helpful if not for the fact that some of them are as concise as a freight train.
Mate, don't take it the wrong way, but you're living in a fantasy world if you think an average user has any semblance of idea as to where logs are or how to read them.
LOL, nice one! :D
I've read "just recompile the kernel" together with "just switch to [distro_x]" more times than I can count to... :D
Sfc /scannow
Dism something
Are the most common troubleshooting steps and that’s in command prompt
If that doesn’t work then registry
If that doesn’t work reinstall the whole OS
If that doesn’t work just accept that x not working is part of the experience
See? Here's your problem. You're doing random stuff without understanding what it does or even without a guide. Try that on Linux and tell me how well your OS works. :)
In general, seems like you've been sheltered from Windows for the past, I don't know, 15 years? In terms of reliability and stability, 10 and 11 are on par with MacOS.
Windows never has issues, does it?
Not like that, it doesn't.
I've never heard of someone using bcdedit to change a boot flag, so a Bluetooth adapter will behave.
The lock screen problem I've seen myself a while back. At least in my case, I did not have permissions to the session manager config file, and the gui tool did not account for that. But I think I had to install the tool from the repo. It wasn't part of the base install.
The menu problem could be a Kubuntu or early plasma issue. Either way, not something I've ever seen in Windows.
Hey, thanks for being the voice of reason in this thread!
Windows is, by all means, not a perfect OS. But people claiming that it's "easier to use" for the average user are just detached from reality.
Lots of comments about gaming from people assuming that companies will continue supporting their kernel anticheat on Windows 10 after it hits eol.
Windows 11 is much more convenient for identity tracking, so they'll probably push for people to upgrade because Windows is too "insecure" for their games.
So glad I came back to Linux a couple years ago. I only use my windows partition to play a game that won’t work as well in Linux, and that list is pretty small for the games I play. Even BG3 worked great in Mint, using a 6 year old build.
Where is the conversation about the mountain of e-waste that’s heading to landfills if a concerted effort is not made to put Linux on millions of machines and to put those machines into the hands of people who can benefit from them?
Generations worth of peoples E-waste *
Let's not forget we produce 3, 4, or more models of phones, tablets, laptops, and so much more each year, per manufacturer and there are a shit load if brands. That's an alarming planet amount of E-waste and we don't have the raw materials to keep up this pace forever, the energy supply. It's totally outlandish.
We need to not be carbon neutral we need to massively be carbon negative.
I don't wanna be a politics guy in a Linux sub. But this is not just a problem with Windows or even the choice of software. This is a fundamental problem with capitalism and won't simply go away if every company suddenly replaced every OS with Linux. The same material incentives would still exist. Look at what Android OS has become. Would it be better for nerds like us? Sure. But software freedom goes hand in hand with the economic structures and incentives of our economic system. Windows is used because of how unfriendly it is. Linux is not used because of how much freedom it gives the end user. And if it is used it's a special packaged restricted version of Linux.
If you happen to be a economics nerd and a Linux nerd I can't recommend this video enough. There is too much to be said on how we got to this state we live in today in a single comment.
https://youtu.be/oLLxpAZzy0s
the penguin migration was going just fine, until nvidia 570.124.04 dropped, which is when the misery started. :|
Got to check if I can roll back to earlier version.
Linux is super reliable, and unless you use cutting edge distro, it's pretty rare than anything breaks. Even Fedora is pretty stable from experience
The only true problems I ever had (and still has), were with Nvidia. And switching distros ain't saving you. Linux mint? Breaks on suspend. Nobara? Memory leak. Trying newer versions to see if it fixes it? Where's my bootloader...
I do understand that laptop RTX 3070 are not common, but still. I just want it to work, and have cuda on it. Is that too much to ask?
yea well, "arch btw". Haven't had issues really, been running it for years on other systems but my gaming pc with nvidia is the only one with issues... because of course it does. :D
Of course. Mileage may vary. On some systems it may always work, on others it's "what's broken this week".
word. some devices just have angry machine spirits which just can't be pleased.
Have you tried feeding them your youngest children?
haven't forked, no children. will neighbour's do?
Good idea. Try and report back. If it does not work, sorry!
I use downgrade.
e.g.
Never had an issue with Nvidia. But then I'm using an Ubuntu distro because I just want my computer to work and I don't care about bleeding edge / rolling distros.
And I will move to Wayland in a few years when all the issues are sorted out, which I suspect is part of people's problems.
It depends on what you want to do with it, which version of which component you run and a couple of other things. In my own experience, if you want a "super reliable" system, get OpenBSD. Linux has a severe lack of QA, mainly because of its decoupled nature.
Nobara memory leak? I've been using Nobara for a year and a half and have never heard of this.
It also happens on fedora but to a lesser extent (somehow). It's all hidden under the Wayland session process
It's always when I'm using my dedicated GPU, so I guess it's the driver being fucky.
I have an oddball graphic card so might happen only on it
I'm running a 7800XT, FWIW.
This is the main barrier for me (other one is migrating a janky access database). I really don't want to spend my 2 hours free time an evening troubleshooting Nvidia driver issues (4800S series).
Anyone with this card have an experience to share?
I'm currently on that version. May I ask what happened or what should I expect?
rtx3090, 5800x3d, wayland, sddm, kde:
all these things were fine with 570.86.something - the previous version, which apparently was beta.
I see. Then it's possible that it doesn't affect older cards. I have GTX 1660Ti and haven't seen a problem, yet. However I do remember I had to downgrade Nvidia (on tty) a couple years back because it borked my system completely.
Entirely possible, dunno. And not like a 3090 is that new anymore either.
Basically all of the issues mentioned above have been mentioned in various threads over at nvidia's forums, etc. So they're not unknown, but kinda wild a released driver has all of these issues whereas the previous beta was seemingly unaffected - feels like someone was bit too triggerhappy to release an untested version to production.
It'd be nice if I could just drop the nvidia card and swap to amdgpu but.. that'd require "a bit" of money so I could maintain same (or better) level of performance - and atm I just don't want to spend that kind of money. :/
Yeah, it's possible. This is not the first time they did this, probably won't be the last. Though they solve the issues relatively faster comparing to years ago. That's something.
I'm in the same boat but I'll most likely use this card until it's dead or really old. I cannot imagine how the people think about that email they got from Microsoft.
Having to use windows 11 for work for the last few years.
(1) Randomly a program on the taskbar just has an invisible icon. Like you can click it but if you don't know it's there it just seems like that program is gone. I keep waiting it to be fixed after every forced update 3-4x a week. Still happening.
(2) Sometimes the entire process just disappears graphically. Not even an invisible icon on the task at. Still running in the background but it's gone in the UI. Have to manually kill it or restart.
(3) I can't unzip multiple ZIP files at the same time. Like I can't select multiple ZIP files and extract them all into their own folder. Something that worked since I've used windows. Worked on windows 10, 7, and XP. It now just unzips only the file you right click even if multiple are selected.
I'm sure there are more but I avoid using windows and mostly just use it to connect to a work VPN and SSH into my redhat VM. Still, all 3 of these really common issues have existed for at least two years. The first two are constant on MS teams and Outlook. Literally no excuse, they are windows apps. Total garbage OS.
At my work IT requires admin privileges to kill processes in the task manager and it's some real psycho shit.
If it gets bad enough I just yank the cord, fuck em.
Yeah, when I started at my workplace it took me a week to realize my computer was on W11 and not something archaic. Definitely did not impress.
i've only ever used linux for servers as a web dev but friday i decided to erase windows on my laptop and install mint and i'm basically obsessed now (the best part is how updates just happen but they don't restart your computer randomly when you don't ask)
Everything seems to be pretty plug and play flawless on mint. With the exception of some not so good kernels the last 2 updates resulting in little hiccups on steam. Everything else is polished and great.
i think the only thing i found that doesn't have an equivalent is google drive (which mounts as a drive on windows and streams files) :(
You can mount Google drive (even better, Koofr) in Linux.
does that use space on your drive? the thing i liked in windows was it just streamed the files so I didn't need all the space available (my full drive is like 400gb)
It doesn't. You can mount it as a network drive.
oooh great, that was my main concern! (i didn't want to try it and then end up filling up my hdd)
Unless it's a kernel update!
It only asks you to restart?
Yes? I was just trying to provide information.
I'm really curious what things people can't get running or didn't have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn't choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.
If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?
In my experience:
MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)
KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don't have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)
The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.
I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)
I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I'm not sure, because I didn't need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you'll probably have to worry about it.
Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don't - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.
One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn't create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a 'suite' in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.
(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)
edit: spelling error / typo
Plenty of video games that will not run on Linux simply because of stuff like anticheat. Like Apex Legends (ran fine for a while but got blocked again recently) and Valorant, just to name 2 I'm personally aware of that's stopping some of my friends from going to Linux.
You can say that dual booting would fix that, and my bf actually does that, but that's obviously not a workable solution to the vast majority of people.
As long as games like that won't run on Linux it's simply impossible for a lot of people to switch.
CoD, Fortnite, basically any major multiplayer games are case by case basis. While most of them have turned to microtransaction shit I thought others should know a few big names. Check out resources like Arewewanticheatyet and The protondb.
I can't think of a single game, which is blocked by anticheat, that isn't a microtransaction infected mess that uses FOMO to compel people to login daily.
I thought I'd miss those kernel anticheat games, but there are more good games than I have free time. So if some of those games disqualify themselves it doesn't affect my fun. I have MANY high quality games to choose from even without the option to play Apex Legends.
I just installed Mint on my gaming TV table. I'm currently struggling to install a driver that works with my displaylink adapter. I'm also having an issue with my VTT (Arkenforge) where it fails to update and crashes.
Welcome to the Linux experience :) Good luck, have fun!
Hahaha, thank you. To anyone wondering, I deleted the automatic updater out of the Wine directory and that has fixed the crashing, and I've given up on the driver for my USB to HDMI adapter and I'm going to just use VGA.
I knew there would be some growing pains, but I'm mostly surprised at how much stuff just works out of the gate, and how relatively easy it's been.
Once you start customizing your shell/terminal and learning hotkeys, you'll know you've made it! 😁
I love Linux. But my biggest problem is recommending it to users that use more than just the browser (and maybe some office suite), that I know won't be comfortable with the command line (and who don't want so spend time learning it).
As soon as it comes to hardware support (printers, scanners, heck even Nvidia graphics cards) you will at some point run into an error that needs you to use the command line to fix it.
I've heard many times "everything can be done in GUI". But people saying that are almost always people using the command line regularly. In my experience this just isn't the case.
And even if everything could be done in GUI, the most fixes you find online are terminal based.
Firefox likes to crash with the nvidia driver
I've managed to banish all but one windows and one osx install from my house. What's stopping me is a bazillion little windows utility programs for things like updating firmware on radios and such, and some hardware integrated commercial software: Ableton Live, and Serato DJ. I've tried lmms, mixxx, ardour, xwax, and many others. I just haven't been able to be creative with making and mixing music with the open source tools out there. Mixxx is getting really close, but doesn't have video integration last I checked.
I keep asking these two companies when they will put out a build for linux and have been met with varied responses from corpo garbage to laughter. It's disappointing.
At work we run some software that while you can get it to run under Linux it's not worth the effort even for me to bother.
One supplier is slowly moving towards the runtime being available on BSD at least. They also somewhat decoupled from visual studio in the latest release, while still being mandatory still it's a step in the right direction.
Even if software does support Linux chances are it is a worse version. The exception is foss.
This always falls on its face for work. No one does collaboration as easy as Microsoft and that’s not changing anytime soon. I mean, everyone would have to move all at once. I can move to Linux on my personal devices and it’s not going to change stats one bit.
Not sure what you mean by "collaboration". If your are talking about working on documents, spreadsheets, calendar, slides, with your coworkers, sharing, manage access, etc. Google does that pretty well. My company uses everything Google for many years and it's very good from this perspective. It works absolutely the same from any operating system, Google Chrome is the OS at this point. I am not saying that Google is better than Microsoft as a corporation, just saying that Microsoft has legitimate competitors on the office collaboration market.
Anything in M365 works reasonably well in Linux, even when accessed via Firefox. I do it all the time.
And you can just install Edge if you really want to. It's on flathub
Yeah I know. I've done that as well. I just wanted to point out that it can be done in FF.
Try Apple.
Collaboration as in what? Programmers use version control or use an IDE with collaborative coding tools like Jetbrains. That stuff is OS agnostic. If you mean office work Google and Infomaniak provide similar tools as Office365.
Most offices really don’t need Microsoft. They just are stuck in their habits. And MS has a better sales team.
That’s my point.
And the one big customer who has standardized on xlsx, docx etc and use one of the two features that make the file look awful on anything not ms.
Games and especially modding. I'm holding on to 10 until I can't. Then i'll figure out Linux.
tip: Windows 10 21h2 IoT Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2032
Honestly Windows 11 isn't terrible. It is mostly the same as Windows 10 except more demanding for seemingly no reason.
I've tried it a couple times and I hate it. The UI sucks, I can't find shit, and they've stripped back control panel even further. Tried to help my mother with virtual disc's and you can't simply mount them anymore, instead there was some strange 3rd-party tool I'd never heard of and it didn't even export files that were too deep in the folder tree. Fucking useless.
All the bloatware sucks, search defaulting to AI and Bing instead of your own computer sucks. Removing administrative controls sucks.
But I'm a visual designer and the market needs powerful industry-ready software like Adobe and Affinity. I can't design publishing in fucking GIMP. The Linux alternatives aren't enough. I'm considering using a Linux home machine with Mac for work but the apps I own already are Microsoft so it would be very expensive to switch. So I'll probably end up using W11 and just complain the whole time.
there are no settings for all the shit, just some of it, that Microsoft is permitting to switch off. you therefore just have a half-still-shit-on system. that's totally fine, i don't expect anyone to invest time into anything. we ain't got much to start with. but no one using windows is really in control
I jumped ship from windows 10 to Linux on August and it's been smooth I have found alternatives for everything, but to be fair I used a lot of foss already on Windows 10.
Started with Debian but although I love it for my homelab I didn't like it being behind on KDE release so I switched to endeavourOS and I just love it.
Laughs in rolling release
laughs in kernel panics
I'm running nixos unstable. I did get some panics while hibernating with one kernel version, but otherwise it's been super stable.
Enabling threadedirqs (real-time feature) on the kernel command line does make the kernel panic on boot though.
No, it's not. And I say that as an almost-exclusively Linux users since at least 20 years.
What do you mean? My computer has never had Windows installed on it, so the end of Windows 10 support doesn't affect me at all. I'm not sure what could be more simple than that.
Linux and Windows are different beasts entirely. Linux is perfect for some but needlessly complex and hard to support for others.
Most people normal people now days need a web browser and LibreOffice (or google docs variant). Pair that with Bazzite or other "ready to go" OS that comes pre installed with multimedia codecs, navidia drivers, a mobile like app store, a mobile like DE and it can be that simple.
Yeah it really isn't that simple as Windows is deeply entrenched into society. If someone is looking to try Linux it is fairly simple to get into but saying it is somewhat a drop in replacement is not quite true.
Not sure that's 100% true anymore. It's not uncommon for people to go years without interacting with a windows PC, most will just use their mobile instead. When I say interacting I am not talking about using a self check at a grocery store running an app in kiosk mode, I mean startup, shutdown, update, install apps and use them.
I friend asked me for a laptop last year and had not used one for 8 years since his previous job. Even then his previous job was as a traidy and he only used it for generating invoices. I am sure their would be an app/service for that now.
Windows is in decline mainly because desktop and laptops are irrelevant for large swaths of the general population.
Provided the OS does not get in the way of what people are trying to accomplish (mainly accessing the web browser) it does not matter anymore.
When I get back to my personal computer, I'm going to finally move to Linux. I'm a developer primarily on Microsoft technologies, but I'm willing to see if there is a way for me to work on Linux and branch out to other tech.
Vscode and dotnet core (5+) work well on linux
You can also run SQL Server via docker
Do you even need docker for MS-SQL?
It doesn’t appear so.
I run Arch, so docker was the easiest method of installation.
Rather than try and figure out how to install a .deb manually (and lose package manager perks)
My rule with trying a new install is to "try docker first" and if it doesn't work then I don't bother trying to debug docker because it's usually easier to just try native OS stuff.
But when docker works it's always great. Most of the time it works perfectly and I have only ever had problems when I need cuda support and their is some version mismatch with some random half ass DockerFile someone made.
Windows is becoming increasingly uncomfortable in that regard. I've been thinking about switching to Linux Mint for a while now.
Make a flash drive bootloader so you can preview what it is like? Why not?
if it is something I would like to do.
I did that 2 moths ago and rarley boot into windows any longer. It's a learning curve for sure, and I'm at the bottom part of it, but it feels nice to expand your knowledge bit by bit.
Yeah, I love the DIY mindset but sometimes it feels like people are trying to learn to surf in big punishing waves and deciding that if they can't learn to surf those that surfing is too frustrating.
It is totally legit just to dip your toes in bit by bit, thank you for making that point!
So glad I made the switch to Mint back when the EoL for win10 was announced. It has "just worked" with a bit of research beforehand. I like it way more than win10 - looks better, feels better, runs everything I want it to (except games with kernel level anticheat, but whatever), hardware is under less strain and PC no longer sounds like a jet engine. No regrets at all.
And, another perk I didn't hear as much about, it is really easy to automate stuff. For instance, I play CloneHero streaming from my PC on an Nvidia Shield on a controller with a USB dongle plugged into the shield (shield doesn't do that normally, linux allowed me to connect to the dongle over wifi with a little finagling) and I have it set up to automatically connect to my computer any time it's plugged in. I also have certain files set to automatically back up to cloud storage with a simple crontab task (automatically repeating tasks are very easy via crontab).
Mint may not be as fancy as a lot of other distros, but damn if it doesn't work well.
Repeating tasks is a trivial thing on windows too, at least since xp - though I wouldn't doubt this sort of thing might require a professional edition.
LOL the suppliers I work with ONLY Support IE 6 to 9. If they could still get away with DOS and intranets they would.
Probably what I'm gonna do. I used to live in a country where it was completely normal to illegally download software from ThePirateBay, and that's how everyone got their Windows versions, but I don't even feel like doing that anymore.
Still very happy with Mint after a month and a half. Highly recommended!
For the most basic casual PC gamer SteamOS will be a game changer once they add more hardware support for it.
Bazzite wants to say hello
So does Nobara.
You mean Nvidia hardware. Nvidia purposefully sucks overall on Linux. Don't reply with "mine works great" because you're lying or haven't had an issue yet. Fuck Nvidia.
This keeps getting brought up, but the reality is that there is nothing special about SteamOS 3. If people want a SteamOS-like OS (Immutable, Steam/Proton integrated, Steam Big Picture as Primary interface), then it already exists. Chimera, Bazzite, probably others. The only thing Valve could realistically improve on is the installation experience.
SteamOS's only real advantage is that it is hardware restricted. Valve is able to test against a narrow field of hardware and insure a high degree of stability because of it.
I swapped from Windows 10 specifically because I didn't want to be in the Windows 11 and forward environment. (I use Arch btw)
I really don't regret it, the set up was really painful but once that was done, the KDE had so many good features that I immediately felt at home. I'm floored by how good Proton/Steam is at handling games, I don't think I've had to skip on any game due to my OS (so far).
CachyOS?
I'm on good ol' Arch Linux with plasma KDE
You're a better man than I. I just dipped my toes in Arch by going with CachyOS.
Hey chad, I hadn't heard of CachyOS until you brought it up, good on you for finding an OS that matches your needs and going for it
It tweaked my interest when the forums said steam works great with it. And it does! Been playing RDR2 on it and my laptop only has the built-in graphics chip.
Id run Linux if it could run the apps I need efficiently
use alternatives if possible
It's not possible
This is very realistic and fair, I don't subscribe to the ideologist out of touch bs personally even though I first compiled Gentoo 20 years ago.
I run Mac as my daily driver for convenience and stability but use the terminal for a ton of things and SSH into various Linux servers for my work. I run a VM in Parallels for the handful of apps which only work on windows, and generally avoid them unless they're the only option.
Basically, what I'm saying is even if you're dependent on some Windows only apps, you might find you have a better quality of life by making those the exception (running them in a VM) but using a more stable OS as the underlying OS.
What apps?
Ableton, FL Studio plus all the vsts I use. Plus all the adobe I use plus all the games I play that are windows only
All the games that I play are Windows-only too and they run just fine via Proton.
Yeah I don't feel like running an emulation or a script to just play a game though. If I want to use Linux. I'll use it on a laptop for web browsing. It's a useless OS for me personally for every day life that has very little support from other companies.
You open Steam, click Play, and the game launches.
The same as it does on Windows.
Linux has great DAWs, bridges for vsts, alternatives for Adobe software and tons of games. The issue is your unwillingness to try something new, which is fine, but that's not a knock to Linux.
I've used gimp. I pay for Adobe. I paid for FL and Ableton and used them for over 10 years. Why would I switch?
Name a real alternative to Adobe Acrobat. Especially Pro. Adobe has their crap on lockdown. And they know it, and they rape your wallet for it.
GIMP is good enough for me, and it may be a good cheaper alternative for budget minded professionals. But GIMP's UI and workflow design pale in comparison to Photoshop. I haven't used GIMP 3 yet though, maybe it's gotten better.
As someone tried to build the snes9x-nwaemu fork from scratch today after spending hours fighting the Linux mint updater getting stuck, ahhhhhhhhjjj. I still have to have windows for a couple of things anyway which makes this all the more annoying. The update also wrecked my davinci install which I need to produce videos. Also, I work two jobs so not a ton of time for this.
Edit: it turns out that upgrading mint also broke the video editing software I need to use (divinci resolve). Yay. Also python version conflicts trying to use an open source project and other shenanigans. Python has some sort of virtual env or something, apparently, but I'm done; I do not have the time or energy to throw at this and it's just frustrating. Back to windows I go.
Don't build from scratch then. I also use resolve in Linux, other than the odd Nvidia driver botch it works fine
My alternative is to try to run a bunch of stuff in wine (not sure if it would work) for the one case and I'd rather run it natively. I don't know, for the video editing case, if it would run in wine (and if it did, would I lose my ability to use hardware rendering).
This is the problem I see with most people adopting Linux.
It's great when it works but when things go awry you end up sinking hours of time into an issue. Generally on Windows or Mac, the most you'll have to do is remove it and re-add it.
If more is needed, the userbase is so large that there's a high probability that someone has had your exact issue and posted a solution about it somewhere online, you just need to go and find it.
Linux is very hit and miss on a lot of these points. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it sucks.
Windows tends to suck all the time, but the vast majority of the time it only sucks a little bit, because it's Windows... It works, but it's not great.
I'm all for Linux, but as someone who is more interested in doing useful work on my computer, not troubleshooting my system to get it to operate at all, I've stuck to Windows for a while now. I support Linux and prefer it to alternatives when running any server-based service, but for my desktop? I can't justify the time investment in getting it to the same operational level as my current Windows install.
This is the same reason I bought a Dell, knowing full well that I could get more performance and a better value by building my own system. I absolutely can build a system for myself, I choose not to because it's simply more work that I don't care to spend time on. To be fair, my system is a precision 2RU HEDT, but that's another discussion entirely.
Please don't take me wrong: Linux is great and should see more adoption. My argument is that there's a nontrivial number of people who want a system that simply operates, not one that turns into a science project because of a borked update. Windows updates have caused problems, but usually not everything-is-broken type problems... More that printing doesn't work or something like that...
It doesn't work though, and official windows tech support is basically useless anyways.
My experience with Windows not working is looking through three sites of search results landing me on answers.microsoft.com where the expert doesnt really help so I give up.
Linux not working is being five forum cross links deep to find an issue on the gnome networkmanager gitlab, finding out the problem was already fixed but your distro hasn't bothered to release in like 3 years so you haven't gotten the fix yet, so I give up
i think microsoft purged their forums or something because most of the search results seem to redirect to homepage now
I can't tell you how pissed I was when they did they. They invalidated so many links to solutions.
Granted, there was a lot of useless slop on there too, mostly from eol versions of Windows like 2000, millennium edition....
They threw all of it away, both good and bad, without warning. Without any opportunity for anyone to archive it. WTF Microsoft.
To their credit, their new documentation seems to be much better, they actually have useful help articles on not only how to do something, but also explaining the mechanisms, requirements and limitations of things. Not everything is in their new docs but I have to give credit where it's due, the technical document writers are doing good work.
With all that being said, it doesn't mean that Windows, or Microsoft are on a good trajectory.
Their new operating systems and updates are some of the worst updates and changes I've seen to their systems. Adding ads and basically spying on paying customers...
There are some controversial changes I'm in favor of, like the TPM requirement. A lot don't realize it but Apple integrated a TPM in basically everything they make over the years. The migration was slow but it happened almost silently, without anyone really noticing. All major smartphones have some version of a TPM, so the last bastion of not having/needing one is the PC market.
The PC market has known they should include this stuff for years before Windows 11 was released. If you go and look at mid to high end motherboards, even for custom/retail units, there are at least TPM headers on most of them. OEMs knew this was coming and instead of just integrating it into their product, like everyone else did, they made it an optional feature. Since nobody knew what the fuck a TPM is, nobody bought into that option. Now millions of computers are destined for ewaste because manufacturers couldn't be bothered to add a small IC to the system without being obligated to do so by someone like Microsoft. An entire industry of technology has this one thing that nobody even fucking knows exists, and they're the hold out.
.... And everyone is mad at Microsoft about it.
I'm not. TPM chips are a good addition to systems. It shouldn't even be a debate. I blame OEMs for not bothering to add them when they could have/should have, and making it mandatory on all prebuilts, all retail motherboards, all boutique systems, all custom builds... Everything. The cost difference would have been into the tens of dollars at most. It would have barely made any difference at all.
Anyways. I'll stop now.
I've used Windows 10 since it's release. I had to reset it twice because I had a virus, which very much was my misstake. Other than that it did just work fine.
I've switched to Mint 2 months ago and I am troubleshooting a lot. Most of that comes from inexpeariance, but the point still stands.
Windows is more or less stable most of the time.
Exactly this. And pretty much everyone here is a techie in some way, shape, or form.
Why does anyone think that a non-tech would take the time to troubleshoot their system the way we do? A user would hit their first issue and in the process of trying to solve it, just go and buy a MacBook.
This isn't going to endear people to Linux.
We will not win the majority of the market with Linux in it's current form. We need better integration and package management. Self repairing subsystems. We need Linux to basically fix itself when these ridiculous issues come up that non techs simply can't be arsed to try to fix.
There's a long way to go before pushing Linux on anyone outside of tech circles. Unless you want to be the 24/7 free tech support, it's easier just to throw a cheap Windows system or Mac at them and let them deal with it instead.
I hate the term "it just works" because it's almost never true, but I can say that for non techs, Windows and Mac "just work" more often than Linux does.
I love Linux. I love everything about it. From the origin story, the ability to make your system lean and clean, running at optimal performance, and being able to adjust every knob and setting to my heart's content. I love it. But I'm a realist. All the things I love about Linux, are largely reasons that non techs would hate Linux.
I have tablets that run android and an old laptop I run on Linux and it's great. For video editing, games, and niche software, it can suck for someone with little time.
I get this, I have limited time and it realy only works "out of the box" on the surface. Still, so get it's been worth putting in the effort.
That's how I feel when I use Linux or MacOS
Opposite for me. Windows 8 was the big change for me haha.
Too bad, only 1 out of my approx. 150 customers have their IT dept. using Linux as server during my 6 years in - the rest of it is Windows... all the users have either Windows 10, 11 or they use Apple.
Halp.
Edit: not counting the educational users, as they come in hordes
Linux mint and pop os are winner so far
Na Bazzite and Fedora
Won't say fedora is a good substitute for windows user.
Well...
Yeah, but the system requirements for Windows 11 are a good way above those for 10. Many people would need new machines; whereas Linux still runs decently on hardware from 2003.
Rolling releases go brrrrrr.
Here's a list of End-of-Life dates for CentOS Stream which is a rolling release.
CentOS is sadly dead anyways.
So it's a semi-rolling release then.
You seem to be missing the point. All software has a point where it reaches end of support. The problem is Windows 11 has significantly increased the system requirements so that only computers produced in the last 7 years or so are "compatible" and lots of perfectly workable but slightly older machines are now destined for the ewaste burn pit purely because of that decision
It's like they are not even trying. I have a laptop with 7th gen CPU that works perfectly fine. I don't have any choice than install Linux, lol.
try mas for activiating ESU
I tried Linux Mint, and enjoyed my experience and even setup everything and then when I booted up Factorio Steam didn't use my 3080 somehow. Pop OS worked but I didn't like the experience. I'll have to give Linux Mint a shot again.
That is almost certainly because Factorio has a native Linux version and Steam installed that instead of the Windows version. It was trying to use OpenGL and defaulting to CPU rendering because you likely haven't altered the default configuration.
If you force Steam to use steam play, it will download the Windows version and run it through Proton which will use the right hardware.
I've not played Factorio but I've seen a vidjeo about it. How is the Windows version on Proton better than a Linux native version?
Wouldn't the correct answer be to fix the graphics driver or configuration? And why doesn't OpenGL just work? Or better yet, Vulkan?
It's this nonsense that keeps people locked in to Windows.
Running the native version requires the user to configure their system correctly and then it would work. Most people who are coming to Linux from Windows are not interested in editing config files or using the terminal and, in any case, the vast majority of Linux gaming is done by running Windows games via WINE.
Proton is WINE packaged with the software and configuration scripts so that it 'just works' without user intervention. If you're on Linux, you can install Steam and Go to Settings -> Compatibility and check 'Allow Steam Play for all other titles' and, from that point on, it will install the Windows version of the game and run it with Proton with no user interaction (other than clicking 'Play').
It isn't nonsense, it makes perfect sense.
You can follow the error messages (which it prints to stdout when the game launches) and determine what the problem is so that you can fix it. The problem is completely understandable, the game logs would show exactly what device it was using and you could see what piece of software is responsible and go and look at the online documentation for that project to determine the exact configuration change that you need to make.
That's how you should be troubleshooting problems, but you can't do that on Windows because everything is a black box and provides little to no logs. If you're lucky you'll get an error message.
If you have a problem on Windows you first reboot and pray. Or, if that doesn't fix it, you search random social media or forum posts, apply arbitrary registry changes recommended by Reddit comments, upgrade drivers, downgrade drivers, install motherboard firmware and dig through the various Windows GUI menus, which are change completely between Windows 8, 10 and 11 (but not 9, which doesn't exist for some arbitrary reason), to locate a switch or checkbox that you can flip (and reboot again) until finally the problem resolves itself seemingly on its own. To me, this is the nonsense.
It shouldn't require editing config files, except maybe in an Nvidia Optimus or AMD Switchable Graphics configuration. The fast/efficient GPU support was a dumpster fire the last time I had Linux on a laptop with it.
I know what Proton is.
No, it does not make perfect sense that a Linux native version of a game is more difficult to use than the Windows version on Proton. That may be how it is, but it does not make sense. Whatever method WINE or Proton uses to connect the Windows game to a supported graphics API in Linux must be entirely possible to do in a native Linux version of a game as well. For whatever reason, the game developers either chose not to or were incapable of developing that code.
At the third party application level, Windows applications are a black box. That has nothing to do with Windows, though. Complain to third party developers
It reads like you lack experience troubleshooting on Windows. If you're praying to some higher power to make your software issues go away, you may also want to revaluate your troubleshooting methodology. Nearly everything you said can also apply to troubleshooting issues with Linux. Except for the whole skipping of "Windows 9", which no one truly cares about.
You clearly feel a lot of hate towards Microsoft, and they certainly deserve a lot of it. However, it serves no purpose to resort to exaggeration and hyperbole.
I’m confused. Shouldn’t me downloading the native Linux factorio and native Linux Steam be enough? Why would it default to something else?
It is enough, provided that you have your system configured correctly. Which, in this case, is designating a graphics card to use. Without that it defaults to using CPU rendering.
Most people don't want to deal with the headache of configuring their systems and would rather use something more automatic.
That's what Proton does for you. If you're using Proton then it can assumed that you're gaming and so defaults can be set to support that.
Whereas people use Vulkan for many different projects and so it chooses safe defaults and depends on further configuration by the user (which Proton does for you).
Native Linux games work just fine (I play native Rimworld every week or so), you just have to configure your system manually.
Or just use the preferred method of running Windows games via Proton. You're going to be doing it anyway in order to game on Linux and so it is often more work to run the native version than it is to run the Windows version and let Proton handle the automatic configuration.
I have to make the switch..
feel free to donate them to me, they work great as servers.
I’m in the middle of moving, but once I’m set up I’m going to look into dual booting. I’m not sure I’ll 100% be able to get rid of windows, though. For a start, I’ve heard NVIDIA is a nightmare on Linux and I’ve only recently got a new computer so i don’t really want to buy more hardware.
Hopefully dual booting will allow me to experiment and try alternatives for software which doesn’t have a Linux version, and i hear that one of the things that chatbots are actually good at is diagnosing and fixing Linux issues. So I’m hopeful, but I’m not assuming it’ll be entirely painless.
No issues with Nvidia for me on arch. The drivers are fine and there's even a cool Linux version of shadowplay if you use that.
The Nvidia open-source driver situation has been improving. Supposedly Valve has been working with them on it alongside their ARM support.
You can also try your hand with the closed source drivers but ymmv.
I've had a Steam Deck for a few years, and it runs Linux. I have come to the conclusion that I could easily switch at any time if I needed to. Windows only has an an advantage when hot swapping between my office and TV dock. Linux just doesn't yet handle desktop resizing on the fly well.
My CPU and motherboard are from 2016. I don't mind updating harware to reach windows 11 compability, it's about time anyway.
I would be angry if updating to 11 from 10 would also cost money directly.
With Windows 11 you don't have to pay for the OS because you are the product through profiling and advertising, like Facebook and Google.
That sounds way, way worse to me that the old Win7 & Win10 model where you'd pay your ~$30 oem license (or $60 retail) once and be done forever without being heavily tracked and monitored.
This comes up with every windows EOL announcement and it never really ends up with everyone switching to linux
Well the thing about the future is sometimes the thing that always happens doesn't, or sometimes the thing that "won't happen" suddenly does.
I understand the cynicism and I don't think anything will radically change overnight, but we are CLEARLY in a new status quo, you will start to see serious uptick in linux users, for a million different reasons.
Circle jerk intensifies