Windows 11 keeps trying to install different stuff, notifying you about how great edge is, requires new hardware, and more. Windows 12 is rumored to be cloud only with a subscription?
What will do you?
As 12 comes out I think we will see a lot of gamers moving to Linux thanks to the much anticipated SteamOS release. Windows 12 will still be “successful” among the general public but Linux usage will skyrocket as Microsoft break that straw on the camels back for the more experienced users.
Personally I will move to Linux, likely start with dual boot in the transitional phase and as SteamOS improves and game publishers realise they need to support Linux and take it more seriously.
Not a Linux fan at all but with my steamdeck usage and setting up Mint on a NUC for a server I’ve been very impressed with Linux progression. It’s still not perfect, needs to be more user friendly but it is getting there.
They said that with Windows 8 and Steam OS
Every year is the year of Linux
If they had dropped support for win7 and earlier to force users to win 8, it might have happened more. Though at that time, Linux gaming wasn’t in the state it is today, too.
Linux is just the base OS. There’s not much to like or dislike about “Linux” as a whole from an end-user perspective, unless you happen to have hardware that’s not well supported, or software you use that isn’t available. Single distros or desktop environments, you can definitely dislike, but “Linux” itself is just a kernel and a bunch of hardware drivers. You’ve seen it yourself with the Steam Deck. Its what the distribution maintainer makes it, and what software you run on top (including the UI/desktop environment/window manager you interact with).
I’m curious what you find less user friendly about Mint (guessing you went with the default Cinnamon environment?) vs the Windows UX. IMHO, the modern Windows experience is a convoluted mess of options hidden in different places, inconsistent UI, and confusing options that like to disappear between releases? Hell, my tray icons refuse to stay all visible on my Win 11 partition, I can’t move my taskbar to the top anymore (really useful with a large monitor), etc.
IMHO, the only reason people still find Windows user friendly is familiarity. I think the largest problems with Linux these days are:
- how confusing it can all be to figure out what’s a distribution, why there are many, which one to choose, etc
- obviously drivers, especially WiFi stuff and very new/bleeding edge hardware (cough cough and Nvidia being assholes)
- software availability/compatibility: the biggest one, IMHO, and it’s getting much better in certain areas, especially gaming, with Proton which you’ve experienced already.
It’s interesting that you find the taskbar to be better in Mint, that’s the thing I’ve had by far the most trouble with. Specifically the fact there doesn’t seem to be any way to mirror the taskbar to all screens. You can’t copy it from one screen to another either, you have to meticulously recreate the taskbar on each screen. Even then some elements can only appear on one panel so if you need to adjust sound level but you happen to have something full screen over it you’re shit out of luck, either close the full screen application or go into the full sound manager instead. Then the taskbar only shows windows that are open on that screen too, which I suppose some users would like but is absolutely not what I want. I believe there was a “show all workspaces” checkbox but that either didn’t work or doesn’t include second screens. The best part is if you open a window on one screen then move it with keyboard controls in some cases it doesn’t update the taskbar, so now your window doesn’t appear in the taskbar on the correct screen at all but might show up on another.
Overall, not impressed. I need one taskbar that appears identically on all screens.
Needing to remount my Steam library from other drives every time I reboot is a tad inconvenient too.
See, this is exactly two of the points I just made.
One, the criticism you just made, and the one I keep hearing, is that you don’t like that it doesn’t work like Windows. We jump in it with some preconceptions of what a computer should act like because of familiarity.
Second, Mint/Cinnamon is merely one desktop environment on one distribution. It’s not Linux, it’s that one program (Cinnamon’s taskbar) you happen not to like. Same for the disk auto mounting, many desktop environments support doing that. Seems like Cinnamon doesn’t?
Are you really trying to dismiss criticism that the taskbar’s Grouped Window List doesn’t always display windows visible on that screen is just an issue of the user expecting Windows? Dismissing every user issue as “just stop expecting Windows” is exactly toxic fanboy the attitude that drives people away from Linux. You might notice that I didn’t even mention Windows once, I was talking exclusively about taskbar issues affecting my workflow in Mint.
I’m still using Mint+Cinnamon but I’m not going to pretend it’s perfect.
Oh, there are indeed issues and bugs. For what it’s worth, I get a similar bug on Windows where sometimes a window doesn’t change taskbars when I drag it to the next monitor, and my app windows get all moved around after waking from sleep ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Again, my point was your arguments are illustrating my initial take really well. You’re - rightfully so - criticizing Cinnamon, but describing it as a “Linux” thing. You didn’t mention Windows once, but you also did describe Windows’ multiple taskbar’s behavior as the thing you need. Can we not dismiss everything I say like I’m being a fanboy just for telling you software issues and bugs on one desktop environment are not a “Linux” thing, but a "software on top of Linux " thing? Yes, on Windows, your window manager is part of Windows. On Linux, it isn’t. Hell, some don’t even have panels by default.
FWIW, I’m far from a fanboy. I love macOS, still use and like Windows for other reasons, and am also extremely critical of Linux where it fails to perform. OSes are just tools, means to an end, IMHO. Please, let’s not devolve the conversation to this kind of tribalism. The Linux world can be confusing enough as it is, coming back to my first comment again… Sometimes the “fanboys” are just people who have been bitten by these things for longer than you (I’ve been using some form of Linux for ~16+ years) and wanted to help or explain some common misconception.
If this can help, I think all of KDE Plasma (both the default ones, and Latte), MATE and XFCE lets you duplicate panels.
but describing it as a “Linux” thing.
Where? Please point to the part where me responding to you commenting on Mint+Cinnamon’s taskbar is criticising all of Linux.
You said “not a Linux fan […] needs to be more user friendly”, I straight up asked you what was more user friendly about Windows, and this was your answer, which sparked this very exchange.
Edit: OK, I see where my confusion came from. I thought you were the person I was answering to initially, and you are not. My bad, you indeed didn’t say that.
Really help things out if all the anti cheat software would be Linux compatible. I’m stuck using windows (and not getting to use my steamdeck) on some of those damned games because of it.
It’s one of the biggest problems, yeah. The thing is, the way these work, they range from rather intrusive process/memory watching to literal rootkits that can access and do anything on your computer. Unless the anti-cheat software’s developers make it explicitly compatible with Proton or natively to Linux, the chance they’d work on anything not Windows is close to nil. So it’s up to game developers.
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I had Windows 10
I tried Windows 11
I moved to Linux
Windows isn’t the only choice, but I also won’t flame anyone who decides to use Windows over Linux.
After seeing how incredible the Steam Deck is, I’ve completely have no reason to stay with Microsoft and Windows.
W11 works fine for me. I’ll update to 12 if there are no major issues with it. Same thing I’ve done with every Windows update. Like it or not, Windows still wins in software compatibility, and that saves me the most amount of time.
I bet you’d be surprised at what saves you the most time. Sure, short term sticking with what you know may be faster, but I switched to KDE Neon the other day and it’s great.
One thing I didn’t consider that’s an amazing QoL feature is updates to software, including the OS, are all handled mostly in one place. I can view all updates and install them all with one button press. With Windows you need to launch the application (assuming it’s set up to check for updates, if not you have to check manually), wait for it to check online for updates, go to the web page to download the installer, run installer, relaunch the application. It sucks. Theres many other features Linux just handles more elegantly than Window’s pile of shit software. Windows functions but it isn’t good or fast.
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That would be a big problem. I would not pay a subscription. But I’m also not buying into the hype saying that it’s going to have a sub. That was based on a “leaked” email that wasn’t even clear about what they were talking about.
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Even apple hasn’t gone to a subscription based model yet. I highly doubt Microsoft is gonna be like “yeah that’d be a great idea.”
The last time I heard about something going subscription based was with Bungie and Destiny 2 from a “leak,” which was just bollocks.
I’m sure they’d know that going that route would result in a lot more problems.
Linux is so approachable now, I don’t see a reason not to make a full dive.
How well does Linux handle HDR? For me it’s now a requirement and I don’t see myself switching until it’s fully supported.
It’s theoretically possible right now if you use specific drivers with an AMD GPU and use Gamescope, but that’s not very easy or usable. KDE Plasma 6 is going to release in February with HDR support so that should be nice, and Cosmic is being worked on and should support HDR as well when it comes out.
Hot take: Microsoft stops supporting Windows altogether and switches to maintaining its own Linux distro (yes, it does exist, but it’s not for consumers)
I’m looking at Linux for my next gaming PC with either a Win10 partition or VM for poorly supported games/tools. But I also only update hardware every 5-10 years, so I’m not a bleeding edge kinda fella anymore.
I saw W11 in action on a different PC and that made me stay on W10. In the meantime, I researched Linux and dipped my toes in it for a while. Just made PoP! _OS my daily driver (installed on my main NVME), with much less pain than I thought, while I moved W10 on a secondary, old and small SSD, only for those games that don’t work in Proton/Wine.
It is a bit difficult to learn everything from scratch, but it’s a small price to pay, to be honest
I will update my Arch distro to Arch 2
Wow, I’m not alone. Been trialing linux in preparation of what’s to come and it’s actually quite OK. Went with Kubuntu because Ubuntu doesn’t feel like Windows and Steam has official support for it or something? It was easy as pie to install.
Once Windows 10 doesn’t work, it’s probably curtains for windows on my PC.
Honestly, ubuntu has been rough a couple times and had I not tried it on a server for a long time before, I‘d probably given up. Most people strongly recommend mint these days. I should check it some day.
But steam is insanely good. Running most games and a lot of them faster than on windows these days. Most normal software has an open source equivalent and if you know scripting, you basically have a spaceship. Linux can do a lot of cool stuff.
I‘ll not go back, pretty sure.
Personally I’m switching to Pop!_OS and installing KDA Plasma on top of it. I’ve already tested it out on my old laptop
Steam has official Linux support, distro doesn’t really matter
Switching to Linux. Undecided what distro, but BunsenLabs has been my go-to light distro since #! (CrunchBang) died and Mint Debian Edition is also looking tempting.
Proton is good enough now that my entire argument for sticking with Windows has collapsed. I have no need for Windows anymore.
I’ve already been test-driving distros on my laptop. Still deciding whether to stick with Win10 on my desktop until I put another PC together, or go ahead and make the jump now.
The further into the tech world I get, the more inviting Linux seems. I manage multiple PCs for my business, and holy shit is it aggravating to have to uninstall added garbage and shut off more background processes every time there’s an non optional update. The update that was deemed critical a few weeks ago to protect against whatever new virus is around seemed reasonable, until I opened OOSU and saw outside of the security update, it also happed to turn telemetry back on, gave Microsoft apps permission to use the camera and microphone, reinstalled edge, and added a new update app that’s not located with other apps and can’t be found by REVO. It’s difficult to make it what I want, but at least it’s not impossible.
The way w11 is right now, if 10 gets dropped I’m jumping ship.
I just want a familiar, easy to use, lightweight os. My partner and I both have the same laptop. Mine is my modified w10 build, theirs is the best I could do with w11. Mine starts faster, the battery lasts longer, searching and file transfer is faster, and my temps are lower. I start with 28 background processes, theirs has 73. We do roughly the same things on them, and mine is better in virtually every way.
Want to change a setting? W10 already has 2 extra unnecessary menus to go through to find what you want. W11 put two more on top of that. I tried to use teams for business communication, but the machines took such a performance hit I got rid of it, and on 11 it’s permanent and “functionally necessary” even though it will never be used.
W10 claimed IE, Cortana, Edge, Xbox, and OneDrive were necessary for the OS to work, but I can rip them out and every thing still works. On 11, the menus and file explorer will disappear if you remove programs you never wanted.
There is nothing better about the newer os’ than windows 7. I don’t want more ‘features’. I don’t want more ‘ease of use’ garbage. I don’t want app based programs and menus. I don’t want device syncing and cloud backups. I want computer settings, a file explorer, and the ability to install the programs I use and nothing else. How has no company done that yet?
Get yourself a cheap SSD and a usb3.2 enclosure. Use Ventoy to add ISOs to it, and you can choose the distro at boot and test them at close to installed speeds.
I’ve got about a dozen different distros that I’m trying out to see what’s the best fit for me :)
I’ll have to give it a go soon. I’m just a bit disappointed I’ll have to develop another hobby to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Yeah, I know that feeling.
On the bright side, apart from the initial learning curve, it’s pretty straightforward, and gives you some extra skills :)
Are you using Enterprise edition? Standard hardware across users? Active Directory to push a standard set of GPOs and registry edits? Most of this stuff shouldn’t be that hard to manage if you have an actual environment set up to do so and not a cobbled together unmanaged mess that grew/was built ad-hoc. That said not all of us are lucky enough to have any better than ad-hoc, and Microsoft in their infinite wisdom stopped offering general desktop and server management courses that might teach this shit a few years back.
Beyond that, you should probably hold back non-security patches and updates by a few weeks to a month. That gives you time to test on a pilot machine and identify what new settings you’ll have to push to client machines, and time for the internet and MS to find any issues before you have to do so yourself.
Change to a Linux-only system. Parity is still not quite there, but hopefully it’ll be enough by the time LTS Windows 10 dies.
As always: I’ll do what I have to to be able to play the online games I want to play. Linux for everything else.
Windows 10 will be my last Ms box. I’ve been cheating with Mint for a bit and I’ll make the switch when the Ms box no longer works.
Yeah, this is what I’ve decided, too. I’ll probably keep a Windows install going as long as 10 still works, but then after that I’ll cancel gamepass and live without any games that won’t work on Linux.
Microsoft never seems to stop making it harder to use Windows. At this point I have Windows 10 relegated to a USB SSD, and I only boot it in extreme circumstances. I have tried to install Windows 11, and it’s just not happening. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows to Go years ago, and the installer simply will not play nice with my disk setup. I sunk more hours into troubleshooting Windows 11 installation than I have with any Linux distro I’ve used, and I still walked away without a working install.
So at this point it’s all Linux, (almost) all the time.
I’m not going to lie and say that using Linux is a perfectly smooth experience. It’s not. But neither is using Windows. As Thomas Jefferson once said: “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.” The inconveniences of Windows are only getting more severe as time goes on.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had Windows exposure since 3.1, and I somehow hate it more all the time.
In one of my last jobs I was a system admin, and the laptop they gave me had nearly-unfixable problem out of the gate. Microsoft’s own fix it tools did nothing, repeatedly. I eventually had to go scorched earth on the registry to get anywhere with it. I have never struggled with Linux so much.
