I made the switch around this time last year and haven’t looked back. A few things have taken a bit of effort to figure out, but largely it has been a breeze. I should’ve done this many years earlier.
I got my good bud to finally swap to Linux months ago. We have to occasionally boot windows for some games. He laments it every time, even despite having plenty of issues on Linux. Windows just feels worse in every way. He said “At least the problems on linux are fun and I can fix most of them.” - and he’s no linux expert.
Maybe it’s finally almost the year of the linux desktop :')
I get it. Problems in Linux feel like they’re mine. I prefer it.
The agency of just being able to fix something yourself is amazing.
Most of my open source contributions are bug fixes and reports. Can’t do that with closed source!
“Microsoft Windows: Why wait? We broke it for you.”
The worst part about windows problems is search engines return pure unadulterated garbage. You can search 100 different windows issues and get 7 sets of results.
Thats my exact thing on Linux. It has “issues” but theyre fricken fixable. And they won’t happen again, likely. With windows its way harder to fix anything if it won’t work beyond the “close and reopen again” technique and then if you do fix it a damn update breaks it again!!! Plus the bloat and spyware, ick.
then if you do fix it a damn update breaks it again!
Just fixed a fairly common issue with Windows Update on my wife’s W11 machine. Stuck at 99% forever. All you need to do is terminate the Windows Update process and try it again, or delete a cache somewhere.
Want Windows’ “official” advice if you’re “having trouble”?
Try reinstalling Windows . 😂 ROFL
Plus the bloat and spyware, ick.
I was also quite unnerved when the “location data” task item came up on startup, and listed Windows Explorer as using it for a second. Sorry what? Wtf does Explorer need location data for?
So happy to go back to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I want to convert some family members’ computers too when I finally get a chance for it.
And they won’t happen again, likely.
Until the next update
Yeah. When I can’t do something on Linux, or something breaks, I may have to figure out how to fix it, but most of the time it’s less painful to fix than just trying to do basic stuff on windows and getting paywalled/adspammed/stuck in some kind of error hell you can’t fix even if you know what’s wrong.
My windows dual boot rig gets progressively less use on the W11 boot over the last year. I may move it to an even smaller SSD… It only exists to run a few programs.
I
100% relatable. There is a huge difference between, “It broke and I can fix it or that’s annoying but not worth me spending time to learn how to change it (but I could if I was really really bothered by it)” and “It broke again and Windows forced another update and it’s broke and now I have to fix it or that’s annoying and it bothers the shit out of me and and there is nothing I can do to change it.”
Things just feel way better, even when it’s all going wrong, when the problems are within your control. I left Windows a long as time ago because of this very thing.
I have windows installed for some work-related stuff still, but I can’t use it because windows decided it doesn’t want to connect by wifi and I’m not gonna buy more hardware to just maybe get windows to be functional. Linux just works with it without having to mess with drivers, install software, etc. Also my work laptop won’t connect to my bluetooth headset anymore after an update, so I have to connect it to my phone and then use AudioRelay to have wireless audio on my laptop. If just one
Meanwhile linux problems are mostly just companies not wanting to support linux, so finding workaround to get their software to run or finding alternative software that works. The core functionality just seems so much more reliable, so I’m not constantly just trying to find ways to deal with all of the new problems that come out of nowhere.
Maybe it’s finally almost the year of the linux desktop :')
If you guys could just stop fucking jinxing it!
;D
Got to know a 66yo woman recently. She is not great with tech but curious and wants to try things.
So, she got herself a new laptop for work. Old one was “old” and couldn’t do things. Someone gave her a tip to install Linux on it. She did. She claims Linux Mint made her laptop work again.
Today I gave her access to my Jellyfin instance. She couldn’t run a movie off her windows laptop but Linux one worked straight away. Same Browser and all. Weird, right?
For real, I have little to no patience with the myriad of Windows bitching posts these days. I’d say “skill issue”, but Linux is easier to set up and maintain than Windows. The only work I’ve had to put in was when I decide to fuck with perfectly functional defaults just because I can.
You can say “skill issue” anyway, even if the skill is flashing an image to a USB stick
It’s been very entertaining to watch the microslop shitshow unfold watching from the sideline as someone who isn’t using Windows at all. 10/10 can recommend. Back when I switched to Linux it’s because I thought it was cooler, not because it was better. But now Linux is so much better. It’s not even a contest. If it’s a race windows showed up drunk, ran into the wrong direction and then straight into a wall.
Jumped to Bazzite a few weeks ago and already feeling pretty good about it. Not sure that I could have done it earlier (or at least would have kept Windows for dual boot), since I primarily use my PC for games and the improvements to gaming on Linux the last few years had been astonishing.
Windows? just get some blinds smh
How has nobody developed a distro called Blinds or Curtains yet?
This is the way
This! I didn’t even realize how bad things were until I stepped outside. Using a sensible OS took a big load off my shoulders.
I can’t even remember the last time I logged in to Windows.
If it wasn’t for work, if never log into windows. At home, pure Linux.
I sometimes have to, but it kind of makes me feel I have to wash my hands afterwards.
At first I didn’t understand this because the bottom text was scrolled out of view. Then I scrolled down and was like “OMG YES!” I just love this. I’d totally buy you a beer to celebrate. Virtual cheers 🍻
Desktop linux has never been better.
Also the bitlocker issues: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3163280/junes-windows-10-patch-has-a-bitlocker-lockout-problem-again.html
Finally managed to get most games working on Mint . The only thing I still need Windows for is VR desktop for gaming. Once someone makes a decent Linux version then I’m pretty much done.
That’s my holdout too! But then Windows forcibly removed support for WMR to paperweight those anyway, so…
What headset do you use? They just ported the Oasis driver to Linux for WMR devices (I have a Sumsung Odyssey+) and I can’t wait to try that!
There’s also the “Envision” project that streamlines getting all the drivers and builds and stuff going for various headset software on Linux. Some have better results than others. :)
Some really good guides here, and there’s also a (hrk 🤢) Discord called “Linux Vr Adventures”
Are there partial vision headsets where I can still see what’s going on around me while I can look up and see my apps? Linux only.
That would be super rad but I don’t think something like that exists yet. (Would be COOL to be wrong though!) The best I would think would be how many headsets let you look through the infrared cams.
I’d guess Steam Frame might be the best bet right now just because it’s Linux-first and open, and I think it offers an upgrade for color passthrough cameras.
Hey, me too! I ditched W10 for Linux Mint in Sept last year, so much to learn but it’s been a blast. I’ve never experienced having such a smooth working PC.
I really like nixos, which will not even tell you to reboot if the kernel is unchanged. Plus it will restart my services correctly when I update or pull new container images on my server.
It’s very very nice.
nixos is one I hear people talking about positively but don’t know much on. What’s so great about it? And is it a niche distro for certain users (the subset who like to tinker with their machines?) or is it good for general use?
The short version is it makes your whole system deterministic and auditable, and that does some automatic stuff that is very nice.
Basically you write a configuration for your computer, then it generates atomic images from your config and manages your system for you. You update by generating then switching to the new snapshot. If anything goes wrong, you roll back, and your system is exactly as it was.
The whole system lives as code, it’s tied to git, and up to hardware specific things, I can checkout the exact same system across machines.
This is really great for people like me who dislike having to manage long term state like a grub config change or managing firewall rules or fiddling with committing systemd changes and managing them directly.
The packages are very well thought out.
For example if you add a systemd service it has rules for starting and stopping and the system is smart enough to know when to use them. That makes things like updating a server really nice, it’s just one command and everything is done for you, anything not affected by an update doesn’t restart, so services run smoothly (I have one config that manages all my services, their URL, firewall rules and healthcheck, and automatically adds them to a system monitoring dashboard for example).
As another example I can manage accounts on my system very easily, and I can clean them up by just removing that user from the nix files, and the system will do all the Linux user management stuff for me. This is great on a server where you want limited permissions users running specific applications — I just define what they should have and it works.
That has costs. Everything has to be thought of as either a system package or a user package, updating system packages is always a snapshot change with lock file update. You’re also locked into using nix packages which can lag releases (though this is most package managers).
Your average Arch Linux user probably doesn’t care or like this, they like the full control and flexibility Arch provides (which is just different tastes/philosophies).
You can install user local applications too outside of your main nix configuration (with something like homebrew, which works great on nix), or you can use home-manager to add more nix and manage your apps and generate user account dot files files.
You can also use nix-env to create reproducible software builds without containers, but I find it a little heavy to manage and haven’t learned it.
Thanks for the thought out reply!
Going to linux from windows was eye opening. No more ‘oh you don’t want this well we’ll remind you again in a few days’ or microsoft trying to upsell their services on my own machine or fighting with the operating system in order to do something simple. It is so nice to feel like I own my own machine.
Context for the photo?
No idea where it originated from. I’ve just seen it as a meme template.
