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 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.
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.
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
It’s easier to use than Windows
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.
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.
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
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
You have GOT TO be joking right now…
Please elaborate!
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
stick it to the US”
Google and Valve are US companies so I don’t think people are sticking it to the US when they use their products
I’m sorry, WHAT?
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.
You have GOT TO be joking right now…
Have you tried either? Windows is always blue screening, black screening, or having apps freeze
Steps to troubleshoot Windows:
- Reboot, pray
- Google the error, if any
- 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.
- Reboot again, just in case
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.
Linux at least gives us useful logging
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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?
unless you use cutting edge distro
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!
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.
Linux is super reliable
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:
- whole system freezes on boot (with somewhat garbled display) when display manager starts (sddm) - IF >1 displays are plugged in/powered on.
- no issues if sddm starts with one display, and THEN powering up second. - But this has to be done while in sddm, before logging in.
- whole system can (with high chance) freeze again on desktop if at any point a screens are connected/disconnected
- krunner works exactly once, after that it logs errors in journal that some display reference is wrong (the exact wording escapes me atm)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Laughs in rolling release
laughs in kernel panics
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.
Coming from windows 10, last year I tested installing linux mint which is one of the most accessible distros. I found that around a third of the stuff I had running perfectly under Win10 didn’t work. I didn’t find alternatives that were good enough either…
So I said fuck it and did a clean windows 11 install, It’s been a month now and I can really say that it’s way easier to upgrade to windows 11 and turn off all the shit, than to deal with all the stuff that won’t run under linux.
Hopefully this changes in a few more years…
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
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people have claimed over the years this happens, but I’ve never had this happen with windows 10
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.
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.
No one does collaboration as easy as Microsoft and that’s not changing anytime soon.
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.
No one does collaboration as easy as Microsoft
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.
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!
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.
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.
