I really need to stop putting it off and install Linux on my PC and laptops
Yes, exactly.
(Kinda unrelated side note: Nobody around me is getting that all these apps are STUPID and MAKES YOU THE PRODUCT. Just why are they critisizing without even trying them?)
I’m between living locations and can’t carry my desktop around.
So I grabbed an old laptop and put Linux mint on it. It’s been near perfect. Extremely smooth experience.
It detected my printer and auto installed. I installed steam and played Terraria without issue. Small performance problem but I don’t have a GPU. Even works good with my docking station.
My only complaint is the audio device doesn’t switch automatically when I dock/undock.
I’d recommend making a USB and boot into it for a test drive.
Awesome, thanks for the insight. I was actually looking at Linux Mint myself. I need around 4Gb on a USB to boot it, correct?
That might do it. I don’t own anything smaller than 16 GB sticks. I used Rufus on windows to make my stick.
Rufus is great and I still keep a copy around, but I haven’t gone back since I found Ventoy. You just run Ventoy on your stick, and then drag and drop any and all bootable ISOs into it. When you boot it, you get a list of all the ISOs to work with.
The only caveat is that you absolutely have to eject the USB, or else Ventoy probably will corrupt. That’s a small price to pay to have Arch, Mint, Fedora, NixOS, and Win11 all on one OS ISO toolkit drive, plus I always eject my drives as a rule of thumb. Then all I have to do is update them every couple months.
Yeah I should switch to Ventoy.
I dual booth Win11 and Fedora Desk 42. It feels gross starting windows but there are 2, TWO! Apps that don’t have Linux version that I still need.
When Linux wizards figure out a way to use win apps without the intimidating complexity of installing Wine or virtualization, more people will switch.
intimidating complexity of installing Wine
I would give that a shot. The full guide is install ‘wine’ and ‘winetricks’ the same way you install any other software you use. Then in winetricks, select ‘default prefix’, then ‘run arbitrary executable’, and point it to your .exe installer. After that, you just open the program like any other program on your system.
You generally don’t need to do more than that and might let you forgo ever dual booting again.
Haven’t booted windows in over a month now. If I want to play pubg or bf1, thats about the only reason I need windows. And I do a lot of gaming, just not aaa multi-player. But I am enjoying computing again just like when I was younger and computers were interesting and fun and not corpo ad stations on your machine.
I recently jumped on pure Mint after buying a new desktop PC with no OS pre-installed. Within a week I was dual booting it on my laptop too. It’s so much faster and efficient. Battery feels like it lasts 50% longer.
And the control is amazing.
I was very skeptical of Linux, as I had a shitty experience previously with OpenSUSE where nothing worked. Mint is the way to go tho, been so smooth.
How many laptops do you own lol?
Families exist. I’m the “IT guy” for 3 people using laptops
They are all my personal laptops from different parts of my past, that I just never threw away when I upgraded
If you keep forgetting them for another ~15-25 more years they might have value in the retro space.
Shadow retirement fund
That’s reasonable; I just wouldn’t have called my wife’s laptop my laptop I guess. It was either that or there was probably an interesting story behind it.
I end up with all the “broken” laptops my family replaces after they buy new ones.
I’ve got like 9 laptops. Active ones are my Linux one, work one (windows 11) and my wife’s school one (windows 11). We both have win 10 desktops still.
2, though they are both quite old
Linux Mint would like a word. Best choice tech wise I ever made. Shit just works and it’s dead simple, polished, easy to learn and read programs. Fuck Windows. I will never go back. Make the jump!
That’s good to know. Mint was going to be my distro of choice
I always find it odd that posts like this get any downvotes at all. Like, are people really that in love with Windows and or Microsoft?
It’s because we’ve seen this post 1000 times
and yet you persist. why?
(sorry, this is totally a troll)
It’s because LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
GNU! GNU!
Because the people that would or can switch would already switch after it’s been posted for the 1000th time. It’s not realistic because the vast majority of people simply don’t care. People hate windows updates enough as it is, to most average people this is good news.
Not caring is why these corporations have the power they do.
I downvoted it.
For starters I’ve seen this exact post a few times over the past 3 months in this community.
Secondly, the comments go exactly the same in these threads:
- “linux can do everything, no faults at all, windows sucks”
- “but I use windows for x and y and linux can’t do it”
- “how dare you insult linux, you should not be doing x and y, just do it with this app (which is completely inferior)”
Next, windows does everything I want it to do, I disabled and uninstalled everything I didn’t want easily through settings & group policy, and it hasn’t bothered me since.
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That’s not the flex you think it is.
Your preoccupation with image here hurts you more than it helps you.
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Putting Bill Gates’ dick in my mouth is far too high of a licensing fee. I’ll just play Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe instead. But no judgment. You live your best life.
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I’ve had windows update disabled for years so the fact that it’s “end of life” don’t mean shit to me. It’ll keep chugging along for years more.
That said, I installed Mint a week ago and love it!
EOL means no more security updates, which means attack vectors don’t get patched.
If you keep using a Windows installation (or any OS for that matter) that isn’t patched regularly you are very likely to be victim to some malicious actor eventually. It’s not manual hacking anymore, it’s bots scraping the whole internet exploiting known vulnerabilities completely automated.
The risk is much lower if you’re in a home network with NAT, where your PCs IP is not publicly reachable, but if you communicate with any webservices you’re still vulnerable.
As example. If you nowadays put a Windows XP machine live on the internet with a public IP, it will be compromised within minutes.
So yeah. Good call switching to Mint, but please don’t use unpatched Windows.
Nat is not a security feature.
Just use ipv6
If you’re behind a conventional router they still do NAT afaik.
Per default your IPv6 address should be an internal one if it’s enabled.
My third world country gives us normal IPv6 addresses that can be accessed from the web if you configure the router xd
Mint was my first Linux OS, and it’s been really nice.
Not my first, but the one I landed on after years. It’s just so good.
Installed Linux Mint a few months ago and have been dual booting. Hardly use Windows at all now.
Linux is exactly what an OS should be.
I’ve been a full time dev since 2012 and needed a Mac, I had barely used windows over that time but beforehand ran a PC service business.
Anyway, Ive been using Linux as a daily driver for the past 6 months for reasons.
… The other day I got a new cheap laptop I needed to setup for run a single application.
Holy fuck what a shitshow.
It took me 2 hours just to get to the desktop. Shit didn’t work, bullshit login screens, ads everywhere.
It was a massive pile of dog shit.
After battling to get the system setup for the rest of the day I gave up, chucked Fedora Kinoite On it… Took 30 minutes from creating boot media to getting a desktop going, chucked the app I needed to run in a Flatpack, chucked it on a USB, and it was up and running.
No bullshit.
Just works.
Truly the year of the Linux desktop.
I’m guessing the cheap laptop was running Windows? You didn’t mention, it sounds at first like you’re saying you were using Linux on it.
What ads were everywhere? Why did it “take 2 hours to get to the desktop” - you mean, that’s how long it took to install or something?
People here so full of shit. I just reimaged my lenovo t570 with windows 11 took less then 10mins to install. Another 5 to remove all the bs built in software like solitaire Cortana etc and then another 10-15 to apply all windows updates. Bam done.
Takes a lot more to fully deshittify it, though. I’ve been down that road. So much registry diving, so many third party apps, strongarming uninstallations of bloatware through brute force, and just all around weeks of work.
When the screenshot shit was announced the first time, I just got tired of looking for workarounds to disable or remove Microsoft’s active attempts of policing, spying, and triple-dip profiting off it’s paying customers.
Install the IoT version, that comes without any of the bloat and works just fine. Not even the Microsoft store is bundled in.
I have heard about the IoT version. I’d have to look more into it, but I doubt I’m going back now that I’ve learned so much about Linux. I can troubleshoot most of Arch without touching the docs or asking online now, so it really defeats the purpose of switching back.
I also enjoy putting in a little effort to get things working. That’s the thing about Linux. Most people that daily drive it get a dopamine release from tinkering with it and fixing things, and I’m one of those people.
I know there has been a big “its for everyone” push these days, but its really not. So I’m glad the IoT version exists for those that want or need it.
Yeah Linux is great, no doubt. I’ve been using Xubuntu since forever, never really touched Arch, but fundamentally if you know your way around one system, you’ll manage another.
Still, there are a bunch of applications that I must run under Windows, so it’s good to have the no frills version available for that.
Where does one purchase a single license for windows 10 iot lts? Isn’t that only for volume purchases by large enterprises?
Yeah, I’m not sure why anybody is mentioning Windows IoT. When you lookup where to buy this, Microsoft themselves tell you to call or email a salesman; it’s an enterprise-only thing. Recommending this for individuals is misguided.
Yeah, sure. But I don’t run a shop anymore and just picked up an off the shelf machine from a retailer.
Turned it on, connected it to wifi, then it took forever to try and update itself, which failed, required another reboot, then made me sign in, which also failed, needed a reboot
I dont want a fucking ms account, I don’t want to wait for every update, just ask my name and take me to the desktop
Sounds like a personal skill issue. Especially if you bought some crappy off the shelf laptop.
Also you dont need any of that to use windows so again pushing false narrative since you can use windows with an offline account perfectly fine. Since I use mine for school and dont sign into Microsoft.
In the end I popped up the terminal and used some pot command with some flag I can’t remember to skip the login step on setup.
I reckon there is good chance you aren’t using windows 11 home though right?
You can even skip step 2 by using one of the IoT editions (either Win10 or Win11) which come minus the prepackaged bloatware.
Microsoft is mostly interested in making everything bullshit for home users. If you convince them you’re an enterprise customer, preferably by running up the old Jolly Roger, suddenly your life is a lot easier.
Sorry answered it elsewhere, yep windows 11.
The forced update took forever and failed and then it also fucked out with the Microsoft account. It was legit 2 hours from boot to seeing a desktop. I wanted to skip the updates and the Microsoft account.
The start menu is full of ads for software I don’t want. If I buy software off you, stop trying to upsell me.
The end of windows 10 support is approaching. Windows 10 will go on for a while yet.
Yeah but my W10 shoved a giant full screen ad telling me to get rid of my PC and get a new one with W11 twice. Support might be ending but if it constantly nags you to upgrade, that’s just BS.
I mean, if whole EU countries can do it, so can you.
Can’t wait for the “The end of Windows 11 is approaching…” article in a few years. Keep me posted.
Windows 12, with AI even moreso integrated.
Nah, there’ll be a new boogeyman by then.
Im seeing these posts twice a day at this point. So someone like myself who is totally ignorant on Linux, I have some questions if anyone can lend advice?
I’ve been on PC windows for over twenty years now. And I use it mostly for video software like davinci resolve. Adobe software workflow. Unreal engine. I use clients harddrives and often times my own for working off of. And often times will send those harddrives to other people and their computers to finish the work. I also occasional play games on steam and Xbox App.
With that said, is it even possible for me to switch over to Linux and keep using all the same software and workflow I have for high end video production workflow?
- Davinci? Yup
- Adobe? Not even remotely.
- Unreal…yes? I’m pretty sure th development tools still run on Linux at least.
- Crossplatform work? As long as it’s in the same format from the same application, you should be fine. Just format the drive in something Windows can understand.
- Steam? Works flawlessly as do most games now. You will need to change one option in settings, because Steam will by default only show games that are verified by valve to work (most games do though). Your biggest hurdle will be the developers that specifically block Linux.
- Non-Steam games? You’ll need to do some work, but you can get them running just as well as steam games
- Xbox App/Xbox GamePass? Nope.
While I’m pretty sure you’re correct on majority of cases, there’s still some stuff, like non-steam games, which just won’t work no matter what you do. So, on paper these things work but your mileage may vary.
Davinci, yes but it can be frustrating to set up.
Unreal, I’m pretty sure yes. I don’t see why not. I think it takes effort to setup though.
Adobe, No.
You might unironically want to go for Mac. Either the laptop or desktop XD
Haha ya I assumed those things. I have a Mac that I use as well. But typically prefer a PC when worki by from home :/
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can do most of your work in linux and boot windows as a ‘secondary’ OS for stuff like adobe? I do this, and share NTFS SSDs/hard drives between them.
You are hitting weak points of linux though. I do all media work on linux (a lot through vapoursynth or ‘lower level’ frameworks than resolve I suppose), but TBH do most of my gaming on Windows, not just for convenience but for performance reasons too.
What?! I’m still working on my spreadsheet comparing 7 and 8!
OK, really good article and I like Libreoffice (although I prefer Only office) and Linux. I browse on it, game, watch videos, do pretty much everything. I am also a technical person, who can create a VM in 10 mins, add a required boot parameter, etc.
Now. I want to send this article to my colleague/friend who’s not technical at all. In the blog post I read
Start by testing Linux and LibreOffice on a second partition of your PC (for individuals)
“Second partition” literally means nothing to most people. I know: just learn, just read. But most people will not bother, or they will simply not understand the tutorials. That’s the unfortunate reality.
I think Linux and Libreoffice can become mainstream if a regular Joe/Jane can buy a laptop from Walmart with a distro and office apps pre-installed and use them like Microsoft Office. Before that time all this Linux and FLOSS stuff is limited to technical, or at least curious people willing to put some effort.
P.S. My relatives are on Linux and Onlyoffice, because I installed it for them. And it’s so much easier and more rare for me to manage and troubleshoot than Windows. But I cannot see them installing it by themselves.
I don’t understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?
We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.
Your business critical system will no longer be supported with security updates which will leave it vulnerable to attack.
I guess, if it’s not connected to any sort of outside network, and has no way of accepting data from media like discs or thumb drives then it’s perfectly safe, but if that’s the case, and it works in isolation, how “business critical” is it?
You would be amazed in the industrial world. There are tons of large and incredibly expensive special purpose machines that are operated by super antiquated PC architecture computers running geriatric operating systems, sometimes still even DOS or Windows 3.x.
Think industrial CNC mills and lathes, presses, pick-and-place machines, specialty lab testing equipment, electron microscopes, etc.
Process control, i.e. production line automation, is usually driven by dedicated PLCs. But the user interfaces connected to them are almost invariantly some old ruggedized panel mounted PC running Windows. An absurd number of them in my experience are still on 2000 or XP. NT4 is pretty easy to find, too.
Granted often these are not networked, and in cases where they are they’re not connected to the internet, or may even talk to other workstations via RS-485 serial (!) or some other gimcrack method that is unlikely to be a vector for modern malware.
As long as they aren’t networked, there’s no problem there!
Critically, the people who build these machines don’t typically update drivers to port them to a new OS. You buy a piece of heavy equipment, investing tens, or maybe even a hundred thousand dollars, and there’s an OS it works on, maybe two if you’re lucky. The equipment hopefully works for at least 20 years, and basically no OS is going to maintain that kind of compatibility for that long. Linux might get the closest, but I’ll bet you’re compiling/patching your own kernels before 20 years is up.
This kind of dynamic is unavoidable when equipment vendors sell equipment which has a long usable life (which is good), and don’t invest in software support (which is them being cheap, to an extent), and OSes change enough that these time horizons likely involve compatibility-breaking releases.
Hahahahahaha, I still periodically see win2k/2k3 on the network at some clients, with SMBv1 enabled across the domain to make the CISO’s eye twitch
If you are running business critical applications on Windows 10 that is a problem. Windows 10 is only meant for end user machines. Other services should be running on OS’s that are meant for the application such as Windows Server or server versions of Linux distros running LTS kernels.
Not to mention, near every piece of software I’ve been involved with at work has required specific versions of Windows Server and whatever database it uses, if you want to upgrade the software you use, then upgrading the OS is part of the task.
What Microsoft probably expects you to do is get your management to buy new computers that support Windows 11 and/or whatever the hell their current server OS is, and in the process give them and their hardware vendor partners a lot of money.
What you can do instead is switch to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC which is what I did at my workplace recently. It’s supported until 2032 with security updates. Not feature updates, but I suspect that business users probably don’t care about those much. In fact, most people would probably treat that as a benefit. It also comes with basically no bloatware (except goddamned Edge), which is surprising. No Copilot, no Cortana, no Recall. None of that shit.
We have a fleet of machines that “can’t” be upgraded to Win11 because of hardware shortcomings, at least without overriding the requirements with Rufus or similar. Unfortunately we also rely on a small but important spread of proprietary Windows-only applications which have no open source or Linux replacements, and at least two of them absolutely will not run in Wine. Believe me, I tried.
The only wrinkle with this is that you cannot upgrade or license swap in place. You have to do a full reinstall, which for us is not a problem because we have a modest number of computers and I have physical access to all of them. None are bricked up behind a wall or anything.
We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ??
Because you should be using a server grade os instead of janking things together with desktop OS installs that just make everything so much harder (and aren’t supported for as long).
Sorry, I have to clean up installs like this at least once a year when we take on clients from internal IT that just made things work instead of making something that works right, so I’ve got opinions.
Because either way you’re taking a risk.
Security flaws and aging hardware are two obvious problems.
I’d very much question why you’d use windows 10 over something better supported— maybe not Linux but at least Windows Server OS.
Their answer would probably be to run Windows Server 2022, which is supported until 2031.
The obvious conclusion is that Windows 10 is not fit for purpose in your business environment and the person in charge of IT procurement dun goofed picking it in the first place.
I don’t know what kind of software that particular machine runs, but for server and backup Linux appears to be the go to tool. I’m not saying that you have to migrate everything to Linux. I just say that for servers and the like the transition is probably easier than for desktop.
The problem is that Microsoft is ending Win10 support so you won’t be able to get updates and such (especially security updates) for the OS anymore which will ultimately lead to things breaking or being vulnerable anyway, plus if that business-critical software ever gets updated to the point where it also doesn’t support win10 anymore (I’ve run into this in the past with XP/Vista) then you’re going to have to change anyway. But you don’t have to change to win11. Companies and governments all over Europe are switching their mission-critical systems to linux and FOSS, yeah it’s a pain, but it’s going to save you pain down the road.
Why should the financial sector ever switch away from their amazing COBOL code base? Why should anyone switch away from VGA, works just fine? No need for USB, PS2 etc. work just fine.
Somehow, windows 11 is even MORE spyware than 10!
Now with AI! So Windows can use your processing power to record and analyze every use of your computer, and report back useful findings to MS. What data is sent back? Who knows? You certainly won’t be told what ‘core telemetry’ is required at any point in time.
You certainly won’t be told what ‘core telemetry’ is required at any point in time.
Except the Diagnostics Data Viewer has been a thing for a long time and tells you exactly what data is sent back as telemetry. Now if you don’t believe it that another topic.
at least I haven’t seen anyone prove it sends all data of your machine
Have you ever looked at what’s in that thing? It’s not exactly transparent. There’s heap of data that’s is not clearly labelled or easily readable. Also, again, what data is sent can changes from update to update - without any any control from the owner of the computer; and without so much as a notification or even an update log.
What is the highest spec pc I am likely to find for sale when people realise it cant go to windows 11?
TMP 2.0 released in October 2014, so I don’t think that you can find particularly powerful systems up for grabs.
