Although in many of the tests I have seen, the performance was not actually better in general.
The main benefit so far seems to be not so much a synchronisation that performs better but one that works much more closely to how Windows does it natively thus helping some programs that don’t work well with Wine.
Linux is linux. In the end it’s more your personal taste with just a little sprinkle of use case that decides.
The main differences are:
Update speed: How quickly are the repositories getting updates. That’s a spectrum between getting cutting edge version in days or weeks or having things unchaged for up to several years. Or in other worlds you will see more bugs in freshly released software, but also bugfixes often within days. Compared to getting new feature only after years, but rarely any bugs (the very few ones that slip through… well, you will get the fix in a few years). That’s also where use case plays a bigger role. If you use very new hardware and want software that uses their newest features, a rather stale slow updating distro might not be the right fit for you.
Update scheme: Fixed vs. continues release. Continues releases are slowly but constantly changing over time but once installed they can basically used forever. While fixed releases are mostly just shipping critical bugfixes and security patches and doing everything else in big release steps (think in terms of Windows upgrades here: You mostly have the same thing for years but at a certain point there is a newer version that might bring changes in defaults, new pre-installed software, UI changes etc. and after a couple of years you lose support if you don’t do that step).
Also more depending on your personal taste and habits:
How much are you willing or interested in tinkering? Basically all distros give you access to all software. But what is pre-installed changes, both in what is provided by default and also how much software is there already. For example do you want stuff for video editing set up already or don’t you care as you will test out all the options available anyway?
The same is true the basic desktop environment. Gnome and KDE are the two big ones (with some more oftens based or forked from those two). And it mostly a difference of “here is our environment exactly as we think it’s best with very little customisation” (Gnome - also the one with most forks, by people who did not agree with the Gnome devs vision) and “have fun customising” (KDE). Is customising stuff to your liking your thing? Or do don’t care and also prefer something as close to what you are used to on Windows? Again: Distros have all the options available. But some have one environment or the other pre-installed. Or they come in different flavors from the beginning. If customisation isn’t your cup of tea the decision on a certain distro matters much more.
Other considerations:
Things to not consider:
No, why would it bother me.
Some people need to voice their opinions loudly, some don’t. Doesn’t matter much for me.
The number of “I’m switching to Linux” comments or the change in frequency however is a reasonable indicator for public opinion (under the assumption that there is no sudden global increase in extroverts needing to voice their opinion loudly…).
Why not revert to the Internet of the 1990s, before it was commercialized
Because the idea is pushed on commercial platforms that would suppress the idea otherwise. There are probably more people spanning several generations wanting that internet back. After all that’s a comment you can read dozens of times a day. But you won’t see that message spread on the usual platforms and neither see other media pick up the story.
Element uses the Matrix open standard which supports bridges. I don’t know if the WhatsApp bridge uses the web interface or API for the PC desktop app, but that one is working for quite some time already.
For people not wanting to configure it all from scratch there are already pre-build complete packages bundling up all your usual messengers in one location/app like Beeper.
Kind of… the regular driver officially supports everything from Maxwell to the newest cards.
But then there is the new open source driver now, supporting Turing and above. Which is recommended to try by Nvidia developers, but also still has issues (like power management problems on Turing for example).
Also CUDA-specific stuff still pulls the proprietary driver as a requirement anyway.
As someone with an ancient 750ti happily running on the regular nvidia drivers…
Dedicated support for “older cards” as in “requiring different drivers” usually starts much later (Kepler and before), so about 4 generations before an 1660Super.
Yes, preventing the boot process when something tempers with the files is the whole point of secure boot.
And beside the backups you should always have (remember: no backup, no pity for you…) the keys to sign your EFI files with are on the encrypted disk so the running system can get updated. So deactivating secure boot again, unlocking your encrypted disk from some live boot stick and fixing it is always an option (as is having a live system at hand signed by the same keys if you want to…).
That article triggered an unexpected roller coaster of “there is something called vimdiff I never heard about?” to “no, there isn’t because for me vim is just an alias for nvim” to “oh, it’s actually just vim -d anyway…”
You are just moving things. When you change your EFI partition from being unencrypted and asking for your password to the BIOS asking for your password (or other credentials) you just shift the attack surface.
Somewhere there has to be an unencrypted part to start with.
Lock your unencrypted ESP down with secure boot and your own keys (shitty as it is that is in fact the one conceptional usecase of secure boot, not that stupid marketing bullshit MS is doing with getting vendors to pre-install Microsoft keys) to prevent tampering and you are good to go.
Arch comes without socks by default. It’s up to you which ones you install buy.
manjaro 2.0
Was that insult intentional and if yes then what did they do to deserve it?
Why do you think the most unanimously hated windows versions
I know that people hated every single one since Windows 98SE… it’s basically a constant cycle of releasing shit, then keeping it relevant -mostly via forcing people to buy it with their PC- long enough that people resignate and believe tech has to be that bad, then forcing the next and even worse version on people. So which were those unanimously hated versions. Or -maybe easier- which version was widelys adopted before people had no choice because all support for older ones was cut?
People are used to Microsoft Office, Acrobat Reader, Outlook, the Creative Cloud, etc.
And that is some kind of law of nature? Or the result of paying massive amounts of money to flood everything with this shit for free? Seriously… I think you competely misjudge the majority of users. They are not so much clinging to the familiar as just lazily sticking to whatever pops up when they press the power button.
Why do you think chromebooks sell so well?
They do? I have seen one chromebook in real life. Which I would probably not have noticed between all the other laptops and tablets if it wasn’t for the fact that this was the most overpriced piece of shit constantly having issues with even the most basic stuff.
(Edit/PS: I just did a quick search and most numbers I found point to chromebooks being more rare than Linux. Which is an achievement given that barely any piece of basic consumer laptop/tablet/whatever comes pre-installed with Linux.)
But I know the sales internationally were declining for quite some time until they spend a lot of money to bribe governments to hand them out as the tech version of a gateway drug.
So for example at the moment increases in chromebook sales in the last years are mainly caused by government procurements in Asia. Japan alone saw sales increase by a factor of 20 in 2024… so I really, really doubt anyone actually wanted a chromebook. But this will probably change after the next generation of students conditioned to think that this shit is how it’s supposed to be enters the market. *sigh*
“They use Windows because they are used to Windows” is not an argument but a cop out.
“They know Windows better because they use Windows” is not an argument because… guess what… people can learn. That’s how they got their (probably very basic) knowledge of Windows in the first place.
Paid and externally supported Linux/Foss exists. Choosing Windows instead because that’s somehow magically the only one with support available is just a recursion to #1.
If you want to talk facts however, start with money spend on lobbying, on pushing it on education early, on forcing people to buy their hardware with Windows pre-installed etc…
The ‘random numbers’ I mostly generate are UUIDs…
which can indeed be done nicely in the terminal by just reading directly from the kernel’s rng at /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid
Ubuntu:
It has strong security, automatic updates, and great hardware support.
As basically all distros (or in the case of auto updates: all DEs) have.
Mint:
It’s stable, lightweight
As every Linux is compared to Windows.
Zorin OS:
supports many Windows applications through Wine
Is there a reasonable distro that doesn’t?
Pop!_OS:
it has built-in NVIDIA and AMD driver support
So again like basically all distros that don’t go out of their way to only use free-software… for NVIDIA that is, AMD drivers are part of the kernel anyway.
Debian:
supports several desktop environments like GNOME, KDE, and Xfce
Same, same… again.
Seriously… How many sloppy “Which distro is for you?” articles do we need to finally get a single one competently describing differences and not trying to pin general Linux features to specific distros? 🥱
So Manjaro…
Middle and High school kids are flashing ROMs on their phone by themselves these days
No.
Some do. They other 98% are absolutely clueless and wouldn’t even know that there are alternatives to the stock OS. In fact they wouldn’t even know what an OS is or that “Android” isn’t a device brand.
cares about anything other than students committing violence
Many are just like bad police. They care about showing off how well they work by catching someone. Doesn’t matter that there wasn’t a problem in the first place or that there are actual real problems that could use the ressources. As long as they can catch and punish someone (for purely imaginary stuff even…) to pretend how well they are doing their job they are happy.
“Your system is reproduceable, but your personality unstable” 😂