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.
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.
Haha, yes. Same.
Windows? just get some blinds smh
How has nobody developed a distro called Blinds or Curtains yet?
This is the way
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
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 :')
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.
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?
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
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.”
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
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
ive had pretty good results with wine/proton for gaming on linux. i dual booted for a while but it felt like climbing in a polluted swamp every time i booted up windows, and it kept fucking up my boot partition randomly. giving it up for good hurt for a second but it was so worth it its crazy. i dont even use it at work anymore.
I only boot it to play wardogs or to debase myself by playing league of legends or rainbow 6 (rarely thankfully). otherwise proton works for literally every other game I play. i never would have envisioned this ever being the case 10 years ago.
Windows is a bloated corpse and I wait for the moment I can reclaim its SSD space with bated breath
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.
As much as I like seeing people making the jump, I’m seriously surprised how many people are still putting up with microsoft. Like yes, I get it, your grandma won’t care, but I know people who are absolutely capable of installing another OS but still stick with windows, even tho there’s not a lot of software that just won’t run on linux. Some games like fortnite or league, yeah, but other than that … it’s just weird. Especially because they keep yapping about something breaking or not working all the time.
One of my mates got himself a steam deck and was so frustrated with Linux, he desecrated it and installed windows. Mental. It was all because he could wrap his head around a slightly different way of using an OS.
This was me until roughly a year ago, because I was still under the assumption that it would be a difficult transition, and I just never heard much news about progress even in techie spaces.
I already had a negative view of Microsoft and was constantly frustrated with Windows. It still didn’t even occur to me to consider jumping ship until the end of security updates was announced for Win 10. Once I looked into it a little and it became obvious that I wouldn’t be making nearly as big of a sacrifice as I had thought, I just did it immediately and haven’t looked back lol
My point I guess is that changing a fundamental part of machines most people interact with every day (and probably already have a mixed relationship with, both b/c computers are complex tools and because windows is windows) is a hurdle that takes a lot of momentum to clear, especially when it’s “common knowledge” that switching to Linux is hard. I’d like to hope that the public perception will change quite a bit over the next few years though
I’m seriously surprised how many people are still putting up with microsoft
Last Friday I showed a colleague that the computer he had been using to control a robot arm with a CNC mill that day, is running Linux (Ubuntu). I opened a terminal, listened to the obligatory “wow, are you hacking?!”, and typed
uname.“THAT’S Linux?!”… And he is a clever nerd.
Clever, but obviously not too curious 😉
Eh, not curious about operating systems at least. I know a few hardware people who don’t give a shit about the software side of things. I’m a software guy, and I’m largely that way about hardware too. I have my logitech whatever-the-fuck mouse and keyboard, and who-the-hell-cares headset, and I’m good. Same with graphics cards/cpus/etc. I will be making the effort to switch to AMD when I next upgrade because fuck nvidia at this point, but historically, I didn’t care. I stuck with nvidia because I understand the versioning system. Dumb reason, I know, but also wtf AMD, why do I need a calculator to figure your shit out?
There are entire business models built around customer complacency. Most people don’t want to make a change unless their hand is forced, even with a steady decline in quality.
I‘m old(er), need my PC for work since my livelyhood depends on it, and unfortunately only have a limited amount of fucks to give per day. That made it quite the daunting task to switch OS since I‘m stuck with Windows for over 20 years now.
Got new hardware recently and will take my time to set up Zorin OS while keeping the old Windows machine running in parallel for a while. It is the softest of switches I could think of all in all, and I‘m looking forward to it. Sometimes things take time, especially when people have essentially been indoctrinated with Windows since their early school days.
A lot of nerds would be perfectly capable of installing a different OS. But i atleast often forget that screwing around with the computer itself isnt the focus for a lot of them. They just use the computer to get shit done in their field of special interests. Like for me the whole administrative overhead of switching to Linux was only bound by the resource of time. But i really looked forward to it and had a blast when i finally secured enough time to do it. In the end i just learned a new aspect for my hobby. For others that would just take time away for the things they want to do. Interest in open source, privacy, beeing in control of your digital shit etc also isnt as common as one would hope even for computer nerds.
With that said in the last two years i still saw a big shift. Atleast in the other online spaces i frequent and even in my private life tons of people picked up Linux. Just because the strain of windows became so insuffereable.
I’ve converted a few people to Linux who have no interest in the technical side just because Windows is that bad a few hours installing an OS has become far preferable to continuing to use windows. Something like Mint or Bazzite works much the same from their perspective, just without all the bloat slowing them down.
I’ve tried to switch to Linux a handful of times on my secondary machine, from Vista era up to Windows 11. My primary use case at the beginning was DVR. Couldn’t beat Windows Media Center for that in the Vista/Win7 era. Then WMC got the axe so my use case shifted to Plex with other content sources. Tried Linux for that changeover. As an unseasoned Linux toe-dipper, that process was just a bunch of blindly running commands from a setup guide to install everything, usually without an explanation of what each command does. Some stuff wasn’t working and I didn’t have an idea of how to fix it where to start looking, so I aborted Linux and ran Windows 10. As a largely headless machine (accessible via KVM, but I usually just used remote desktop to manage), Windows 10 updates were a frequent hassle with the full-screen nags for OneDrive and whatnot that interrupted the boot to desktop (and thus prevented my background services from starting), but I lived with it for years, and remoted in when I had to fix something.
This past year, I finally did a fresh start with TrueNAS running all the same apps I was using on Windows. It took a while to figure out permissions, and the process of getting there was messy, but everything is working.
In anticipation of the Valheim 1.0 release, I wanted to setup a dedicated server. I initially tried setting up a spare laptop to run it in Mint, but I ended up reallocating that laptop to my wife so she could dip her toes in Linux. I then shifted to trying to set up a Docker container for it, but had a misunderstanding of where to paste the Docker compose, so I gave up and installed a Mint VM and setup the server inside that VM. Then a couple months passed, and I’d forgotten what installation type I used and also what commands to update/configure, which motivated me to delete the VM and figure out what I was doing wrong with Docker. Got it set up after a little struggle with file paths to a separate storage pool, but it’s now working perfectly. Now I have an easy update button in the GUI so I don’t have to remember or document any commands. I’d go so far as to say the vanilla dedicated server running as a Docker app inside TrueNAS is a cleaner, easier experience than the default method in Windows. Now I have a friend asking for a server-side mod, so we’ll see how that goes…
As for my wife, her main use case is simple Libre Office and web browsing, so there’s basically no struggle there. There was one hiccup with her touchpad not working, but she resolved that. She did try to run Clone Hero and ran into an issue with button mapping with her Xbox 360 guitar but didn’t have the will to look into it at the time. She’ll get around to it.
As for me, I’m a gamer and an engineer. Until all my games and SolidWorks run on Linux, I won’t be switching my primary PC off of Windows.
If you have to use Windows and Office at work, you’re kind of stuck. At home I finally ditched Win10 and found LibreOffice perfectly fine to use. Not everyone can make that choice or would want to have one type at home and one at work.
But it’s okay, Microsoft seems to want to shoot themselves in the foot every chance they get. Even making the mistakes they are, they can’t even easily topple the monopoly dependence they built up.
I‘m currently considering Softmaker office suite. It supposedly runs well with Windows formats, which I’m hoping is true, as I have to use DOCX and the like heavily in my work.
As someone who had been doing lots of Excel work with macros, this looks interesting. Don’t need it now, and I’ve adapted to using LibreCalc’s Basic which is very similar to VBA, but still, good to see some true competition now. Looks like they’re mainly aiming for the Europe crowd with the FreeOffice comparisons.
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Only if you’re into lowest common denominator multiplayer slop.
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Most new multiplayer games
If you’re a Riot fanboy, maybe. Haven’t heard a lot of other new multiplayer games that have issues with Linux.
Maybe because you’re a trash player
Ah yes, really mature and thought out argument
I think the funniest implication here is that he seems to think he is somehow superior to us mere Linux simpletons for playing fucking Fortnite. Or League.
and let’s not forget, he also gets the privilege of having Valorant’s anticheat looking through everything he does on his computer. You know, just in case.
Let’s let that marinate for a moment, because I truly do think that invasive kernel anticheat is something that people will be really kicking themselves over accepting somewhere down the road in this, the modern digital panopticon, the dying days of privacy. This individual seems to wholeheartedly and truly believe, that it is somehow the superior, intelligent choice to use an OS that will allow random software companies (that are not your hardware or OS vendor) to take complete control of your computer with the pinky swear they won’t do anything untoward with that access. For a fucking video game. (Sometimes, one you paid actual money for!) Especially now, in the days of forced arbitration clauses and constant corporate data breaches. “no no, guys, you see, you have to let our
malwareanti-cheat have kernel access because we can’t be fucked to actually employ humans to moderate the game nor hire another anti-cheat vendor that actually knows how to detect cheats without getting all up in your OS’s guts (they do exist, you know), I sweeeeaaaarrrrrr nothing bad will happen!”
Oh yeah, he’s a genius alright. I shudder in the presence of such brilliance. (no one tell him, it’ll be funnier)
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you’re lucky if you can get a game that works with linux
I guess I’m very lucky because I haven’t found a game I play that doesn’t work yet. Even gacha games, notorious for their anti-cheats and always online requirement, can be run on Linux. I’m afraid the skill issue is on your side.
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And here folks is the perfect example of why a huge number of people have absolutely zero interest in playing games like league or fortnight.
Again skill issues. Thats a terrible game as well way too team oriented so you can get held hostage for 20 minutes.
Nope. Missed the point completely. A little introspection will be required, but I’m not holding my breath.
Your social skills have a skill issue
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Get away from the mirror.
That’s not strictly true. Most Steam games work just fine on Linux. Even a lot of live service games. Just from the ones I personally play - Overwatch, Elder Scrolls Online, Arknights and Arknights: Endfield have no issues running via Proton even though they all clearly have some degree of anti-cheat.
The real issue is kernel level anti-cheat that some publishers stick to, like Riot.
kernel level anti-cheat isnt even the issue by itself. most of them work on linux just fine but you can configure them in a way to specifically block linux.
I’ve been watching this shitshow for two and a half and oh boy am I glad I bailed when I did. The last Windows I truly loved was 7 (I’d still use it if I could, but Mint can get close enough for me in terms of look and feel without too much ricing, and, like Win7, things just… work), everything Microsoft has done since has just been a slowly degrading dumpster fire.
Same, Windows 7 was the last one I used too, but I was already dual-booting with Linux before then. Once Microslop rolled out the Windows 8/10/11 idiot parade, I jumped to Linux entirely.
I’m a mint guy myself. Never disappoints
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.
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.
That’s the thing. The whole Windows ecosytem is a massive Pluto’s Cave.
I face some issues with updates on linux breaking things (Arch btw) but it’s usually an hour debugging and then a “hey, someone already made a fix for this as a pull request that you could install now if you compile from git”.
That’s a hassle, but it’s better than spending an hour debugging, realizing the only real solution is to wait for a hotfix from the powers that be, then several more hours trying to get a workaround, then the five stages of grief ending in admitting defeat and waiting for the hotfix that’ll break something else.
On Linux, there’s always a way to do what you want to do, with all the risk and reward that comes with that.
Same here. I sometimes have issues with updating even Fedora. Point of fact, just yesterday I logged in and noticed Firefox acting like a slideshow when scrolling. Videos would also lag (I could tell it was lagging because I was watching a video about recompilation projects and the onscreen game was Dusklight running at 60 yet my screen was lagging) and games even would too.
I got frustrated and updated everything again through Discover and it was back to normal.
I do NOT like to update my Linux or Windows computers because I have shit luck and there is always something going wrong on either. :'-]
I’ve been pretty happy with being downstream of Debian stable. I’ve only been burned by outdated packages a couple of times, which hasn’t been that bad. I’m much more of a “set and forget” type of user.
that is the beauty of Linux distributions. there is something for everyone
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.
I moved from Proxmox on my trio of home servers to NixOS a year ago and loved it so much i switched my 2019 intel MacBook as well a few weeks ago. Headless on the servers and Hyprland/Quickshell on the laptop. It’s just so fucking good
Ohh I have an old i9 intel MacBook I could migrate to do this…
Only had 512gb though, it’s an old dev machine.
How’s the Linux support on it? Since it’s all thunderbolt ports I’m wondering how well it works.
Mine’s a t2 so my choices were t2linux or nothing, not sure about yours. As far as support, the only thing not working is bluetooth but that’s because i put zero effort into fixing it since i don’t use it. The install was a PITA but well worth it in the end
EDIT: forgot to mention that all ports are working too. I switch between using just the laptop and 2 external monitors no prob
Also the bitlocker issues: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3163280/junes-windows-10-patch-has-a-bitlocker-lockout-problem-again.html
