n3m37h@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 14:32
nextcollapse
Yep, fuck M$
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Apr 14:33
nextcollapse
Only semi-related: Why do they always show pictures of Gates when he hasn’t been involved in MS in a long time? Why never Satya Nadella?
EDIT: Also, yes, related to the actual question already living Linux full time and when October rolls around probably gonna back up everything from the Windows side of my dual-boot and wipe the 1TB NVMe Windows is on to use as storage.
I couldn’t name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate’s mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids
omgitsaheadcrab@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 15:01
nextcollapse
Steve Ballmer! Developers developers developers! That’s the other one I know
Pantsofmagic@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 15:03
nextcollapse
I’m somewhat in the same boat but I remember Mister “Developers Developers Developers” Steve Ballmer who was also immortalized by the “Ballmer Peak” XKCD. xkcd.com/323/
It’s weird how MS’s putting developers first became a joke. Back in the 80’s, companies like HP and IBM had open warehouses with coders at desks lined up like factory workers. MS was the first big company to give a private office to every programmer.
I’m here, so I’m more likely to know who that is or what he looks like. But I don’t. I do now because you mentioned him and I looked up how he looks like. Your average Joe is gonna be even less likely to know who that is or what he looks like. So I’m guessing that’s why. Some CEOs just avoid the spotlight. Or maybe I’ve just been avoiding MS news, dunno
Because he set the general, evil directions for MS. Like keeping users uninformed and locked in, smearing the competition, sabotaging open standards, taking your control over your hardware and data away from users, etc. All happened during evil Bill’s reign.
ICastFist@programming.dev
on 05 Apr 17:10
collapse
Not to mention the many deals with hardware manufacturers in order to avoid competing OSs to have any chance. They managed to kill BeOS and dominate the Japanese market in the 90s
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:23
nextcollapse
I was wondering why Bill Gates would be talking about Steam users.
My gaming PC is on Win 11 because it’s recent and I’m lazy and it’s convenient. My laptop runs Win 10 so it’ll be Linux I guess. Not really looking forward to finding a distro and reinstalling and whatnot but what can you do. It’s been a good few years since I last had a Linux box so I’m pretty rusty and not up to date on the recent best distros.
I used to use UbuntuStudio back when I was playing around with music recording and production ages ago because it ran the real-time kernel which was important for JACK I think. Last time though was just Mint.
Well, Mint is still one of the top recommendations for new users. It gets support for the newest hardware at a bit of a delay, so if you wanted to follow suit with your new gaming PC, it might not be as great of a choice for that for now, but for your laptop, that’s what I’d recommend, if you’re not looking to experiment.
Well, that was kind of a general statement. Mint is boring. That’s what it’s good at. That’s why it’s loved and why it’s recommended for new users. Specifically, it’s similar to Windows in many ways. It’s somewhat more customizable, but that’s about it.
With you having used Linux twice before, you could consider something less Windows-like, less boring. I’ll be talking about the desktop environment (DE) rather than distro, because it has much more influence on this. You can use these DEs on various distros.
My personal favorite DE is KDE Plasma. The default-layout is also Windows-like, but it’s got all of the bells and whistles and options you could imagine. It’s kind of power-user heaven and almost like a toolbox to build whatever workflow you want.
The other big, popular DE is GNOME. It’s more macOS- and Android-like and focuses on a specific workflow. People who can get used to that workflow, then often really like it. The workflow itself is sometimes frustratingly uncustomizable, but it’s also fairly customizable when it comes to the details, typically by virtue of also having lots of features, which can then be customized.
Well, and I guess, I’ll throw in Xfce, too, since that’s likely what you used, back when you used Ubuntu Studio. (Ubuntu Studio uses KDE since the October 2020 release, but used Xfce before then.)
Xfce isn’t necessarily what modern beauty standards would get flustered by, but many folks like it for its simplicity and because it is perhaps even more boring than Mint (without being Windows-like). There’s a good chance that it still works a lot like back when you used it.
Perhaps also worth mentioning that Mint’s DE is called “Cinnamon”, although it’s developed by the Mint devs, so if you like that a lot, it’s typically worth sticking to Mint.
Wow, thank you for the extensive reply! I did used to use xfce back in the day, yes. Never had a problem with it, but those were maybe simpler times. Might look into KDE this time, why not.
I was really thinking less of the DE and more along the lines of if you had any recommendations that weren’t Ubuntu- or Debian-based, as that’s pretty much all I’ve used I think. But maybe that’s too much experimenting…
Yeah, I always hesitate to recommend distros. 😅
There’s tons out there and they all exist, because some smart person decided to put in lots of work, as the existing ones didn’t match what they wanted.
If we exclude Ubuntu/Debian-based, that narrows it down somewhat. The other major distros are:
Fedora: Rather much tied to the corporate side (Red Hat / IBM), tends to be rather up-to-date. Kind of has a focus on GNOME, but other “Spins” are available.
Arch: Community-driven, pretty much a DIY distro, so the initial setup is somewhat challenging. It’s really up-to-date, so much that it’s referred to as “bleeding edge” (rather than cutting edge), meaning you might get faulty updates from time to time. It’s also often loved by minimalists, because they can decide for each component, if they want to install it.
Well, and perhaps the most niche of these – which is what I’m on – openSUSE: Has the best integration of KDE (not by a huge margin, but still). I like it in particular, because of its snapshotting system. It automatically starts snapshotting your OS (not the user files) once per hour or whenever you make changes to the installed packages. If something breaks, you can boot into a previous snapshot from the bootloader and roll things back.
It’s the most “maximalist” mainstream distro, in that it preinstalls relatively much software. Personally, I think the other distros are a bit silly with their minimalist tendencies, but yeah, I’m biased. And well, downsides of openSUSE are that it is somewhat niche. You’ll find a helpful, tight-knit community, but it’s less likely that guides mention how to do things on openSUSE. Similarly, you’re less likely to find pre-packaged software for openSUSE. May have to compile from source more often, although SoS has a good amount of software, too.
As for whether a different distro is too much experimenting, if you do jump into it, you’ll understand why I talked about the desktop environment instead. 🙃
The DE makes a much bigger difference. Some people conflate distro and DE, because certain distros will have certain default DEs.
But if you used the same DE on two distros, honestly the main difference you’d notice is a different package manager. Where Ubuntu Studio and Mint use apt, openSUSE uses zypper, Fedora uses dnf and Arch uses pacman. They handle somewhat differently, but largely do the same things (i.e. install/update/remove packages).
Obviously, there are more differences to the distros, like how quickly they update and some of the default configuration, like the snapshotting I raved about, but ultimately it’s still a Linux system with much of the same software running on both…
Thanks again for the rundown! Snapshotting like that is definitely cool, I can see why you enjoy it. I’m no stranger to having to nuke the system partition and reinstalling because I broke something so snapshots definitely sound like a convenient tool. Though I might be older and lazier now and less prone to do a bunch of weird things.
I know the memes of “Arch, btw” and have always been scared of it tbh. Maybe it isn’t so bad though? I’ve also heard people praise Bazzite, but I might lot end up doing much gaming on my laptop as I said.
Is the whole thing about real-time or low-latency kernel still a thing, or is that old news? Just in case I wanted to play around with JACK again.
Yeah, I don’t have first-hand experience with Arch for that reason either. Well, and also because I do want a distro to set things up for me. You could set up the snapshotting (with BTRFS and Snapper) on theoretically any distro, but not having to figure out how and what settings are good, that’s why I go with openSUSE.
I might look into NixOS at some point. It obsoletes the need for OS snapshots, because the entire OS configuration is made in configuration files. But from what I hear, it helps to be a programmer (which I am) to really appreciate NixOS.
And yeah, don’t know much about Bazzite either, but from what I’ve heard, it really has some design decisions that make it feel more like a games console. The atomic/transactional updates, for example. As I understand, updates and such are applied to a copy of your OS, which gets swapped in when you do the next reboot. This helps keep the system stable after applying updates, but implies that you can’t really just poke around manually in your root partition.
It can be helpful for users not looking to experiment, but yeah, can be a pain, if you do want to.
As for a real-time kernel, the JACK FAQ says you don’t need it, but the distro might limit real-time scheduling anyways: jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html
I’ve had JACK running on my system about a year ago, although I didn’t really have a need for low latency, so I can’t say, if it actually worked correctly.
Perhaps also worth pointing out that “Pipewire” is becoming a thing, which tries to make interfacing with JACK and PulseAudio much easier. I believe, I also used Pipewire back then. But yeah, folks who’ve dealt with JACK a lot more than I have, seem to be really excited about it, so it’s presumably doing a great job.
You are just a font of information, thank you so much! I’m starting to feel like I have a handle on the landscape. NixOS sounds like a cool idea, though I am not a programmer so maybe it’s not for me at this current time.
I probably know what to start looking at now when the time comes to make the change, this has been a great help. Pipewire sounds great and I’ll definitely look into that, I do remember tearing my hair a bit occasionally dealing with PulseAudio back in the day 😅
gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com
on 05 Apr 14:50
collapse
For gaming, people often recommend Pop!_OS, Bazzite, or Zorin, but you can use whatever you want if you are a tinkerer. I use Debian and have a great time gaming.
Outside of gaming and if Windows software compatibility isn't really something you're worried about, you can use any distro you want.
You can try some of them out using a web browser with DistroSea if you feel like it, though they don't have every distro because that would be nuts.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 15:01
nextcollapse
I’ve been on Kubuntu for a while, but snaps are starting to bug me. When I build a new PC, I’m in the market for a new distro. Do you have a solid recommendation for a KDE-based distro that doesn’t have a Windows-esque update step during shutdown and restart?
gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com
on 05 Apr 15:12
nextcollapse
I'm not familiar enough with KDE to know what you mean by a Windows-esque update step, but if you can explain further I'll see if I can find something for you.
Alternatively, someone else might pop in with some options.
I sampled Fedora a few years back, but, much like Windows, when it installs updates for certain core components, on shutdown and boot-up, it will have a “Please wait while we install updates” screen. Meanwhile, in Kubuntu, it installs everything in the background while I’m using my computer normally, and the change takes place on next restart, when I’m good and ready, with no additional time waiting at that update screen.
gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com
on 05 Apr 16:27
nextcollapse
Hmm, I suppose the big difference between Fedora and Kubuntu is that Fedora is a fixed point release distro (similar to rolling release but less frequent) that applies updates only on restart, so it's possible that it needs a moment to ensure that everything is compatible.
It's certainly a weird choice to kidnap your desktop, so I don't blame you for being annoyed. If that's causing this, then you might want to try a stable release distro. This is part of why I like Debian, because it doesn't change very quickly and updates are unlikely to need special care to ensure stability. Debian also doesn't have the issue you're talking about, it updates right away in the background.
Kubuntu is Ubuntu-based (duh) so if you like how it behaves, you could try Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) or try another flavour of Ubuntu. Pop!_OS and Zorin are both Ubuntu-based and should definitely be on DistroSea.
Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 11:55
collapse
I’m using Fedora workstation (Gnome) and the updates are done while turning off the computer.
Next time I start it, it starts without having to apply or download anything.
The only thing which could be improved is that you still have to go to the software center to download updates, but you can apply them whenever you want.
To choose your distro you must first decide whether you want a a stable distribution (debian) or a bleeding edge one (arch). Then you have to decide whether you want it to be a rolling release (tumbleweed) or a fixed point release distribution (fedora).
There's a lot more that could be said about each of these distros, but they all have KDE sessions.
Snaps are a pest and Ubuntu is more or less a failed experiment. I had way less trouble installing and maintaining a couple of plain vanilla Debian hosts than Ubuntu machines for years. The killer argument for Ubuntu was easiness of installation. Nowadays a standard Debian install is a matter of a few clicks. Sure a custom install like encrypted LVM over several partitions is still a demanding task even for an ecperienced user - but at least it is possible.
Does Debian have the same update woes I ran into with Fedora? Or if there was a way to tweak that in Fedora, I couldn’t find the option, and it was several years ago besides.
No. Debian updates tend to be interruption free. Apt/dpkg is a lot more consistent than RPM and deals very nicely with dependencies in both directions.
Same. I just gotta figure out what distro I want to run. Nobara, Bazzite, Mint, Zorin, Kubuntu, idk. I get analysis paralysis. I’ve run Ubuntu, Fedora, and even tried Arch once, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been full Linux. I’m definitely done with Windows tho (at least outside of work, but I can’t control that).
I’m using Garuda and it has a setup specifically for gaming. The gamer look it comes with out of the box is ugly in my opinion, but that’s easy to change.I highly recommend it. It’s Arch based, so the AUR and Arch wiki work great with it. It’s really great and (in my opinion) user friendly.
Awesome, thank you for the recommendation! I’ve been wanting to try out Arch on my laptop but I don’t have as much time on my hands as I used to. Have been reading that POP OS is good for gaming but I will definitely do some reading on Garuda.
Garuda is great because it comes with a tool where you can select a bunch of packages you may need (but also most won’t, so it’s not built in), then it’ll install them for you. You don’t need to search for what you’ll need because they’re listed with a description for you right on the first boot. It makes it very quick and easy to get set up, while still being Arch underneath.
Plenty of sim racing on Linux. Just not iracing or (I think) rfactor.
But Automobilista 2, AC, ACC, ACEvo, Raceroom, Dirt Rally 2.0, Beam. Ng drive, and others all run fine on my gaurda machine
omgitsaheadcrab@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 17:18
collapse
I basically only use iRacing at the moment for serious stuff, beam ng for fun. Might try that from arch and see how it goes!
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com
on 05 Apr 14:43
nextcollapse
I’ve been trying to get a good domain authed nix set up for a while. Alternately, if I could set up a gaming server using sunshine/moonlight.
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 14:46
collapse
Moonlight is still alive? I used to use it constantly and was really disappointed when support for it discontinued.
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com
on 05 Apr 15:02
nextcollapse
Well I see it I repos and app stores, not real sure of the development, last update on the Google store was Feb 2024. Still seems to work when I’ve played with it
Sunshine is still very much in active development for the server side of things, and the client app is also still active. Both seem to still work flawlessly in Windows and Linux on Nvidia cards for me, and as far as I know there’s very solid support for AMD cards as well.
Most people won’t budge. It doesn’t matter if Win10 is unsupported or isn’t getting a security update, I reckon a solid 40 of 43% will just stay on it until programs they use stop working.
justsquigglez@lemm.ee
on 05 Apr 15:17
nextcollapse
Basically my plan until I can scrounge enough money up for a new computer. My current one literally won’t let me upgrade due to some component/driver it lacks.
tyler@programming.dev
on 05 Apr 15:36
nextcollapse
You can pay to keep getting windows security updates and prolong the upgrade even further.
It’ll let you upgrade to Linux. It doesn’t play those stupid games with you like MS does.
KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:04
nextcollapse
For some of the hardware requirements, there are edits you can make to get it to install, but you do have to also force it every time there is a major release, minor updates go through fine.
beastlykings@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 15:25
collapse
Definitely you should look into Linux, it’s really gotten quite good. Especially if you don’t need games with anti cheat.
But if you just want to use Windows 11, it’s super duper easy. Just Google “download Windows 11 iso” and grab the iso file from Microsoft website.
Then download Rufus.
Then pop in a thumb drive that’s at least 8gb. Open Rufus, select your thumb drive and the iso, then choose the option to remove windows requirements, then click start.
Backup your files on Windows 10, save them somewhere. Then pop in the thumb drive and install windows 11 fresh.
The requirements aren’t actually required. Win 11 runs fine on all sorts of hardware. Support stops at 8th Gen Intel, but I’ve installed it on 5th Gen. My work laptop is 2nd or 3rd Gen. It’s fine 🤷♂️
Technically less secure? Yeah, in some ways. But it’s miles ahead of running unpatched windows 10 after September.
justsquigglez@lemm.ee
on 06 Apr 16:07
nextcollapse
Oh shit this is actually really helpful, I might end up doing the Rufus USB route when I get my stuff back up and running (apartment flooded and I have to wait until the finish fixing my ceiling before I can plug everything back up.)
venotic@kbin.melroy.org
on 05 Apr 15:22
nextcollapse
I predict Valve will stop supporting Windows 10 in probably another 3 - 4 years at most.
Zoomboingding@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 15:45
nextcollapse
Yeah I’m just going to stick on Win 10 for a while. Apparently the enterprise version is getting support for longer so maybe I’ll see if I can get on that.
Yep, I feel like people overestimate how much anyone cares about official support or security patches or whatever. People will assume it’s fine until they’re either forced out or something goes horribly wrong.
Regular folks will most likely let it be if possible, until it’s time for a new PC anyway.
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com
on 05 Apr 17:40
nextcollapse
My brother in law was still using windows 7 and it had never occurred to him that this might be a security risk. Normal people don’t care.
brightandshinyobject@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 17:32
nextcollapse
Windows 10 ltsc massgrave.dev
GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today
on 06 Apr 01:57
collapse
Yep. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but valve dropping support for windows 7 was what made me switch to linux. Until the computer stops working for the average user, they won’t change.
My gaming 'puter is running win 10, and the plan is to replace it with one running Manjaro. Will have to see when that happens, not upgrading to win 11.
I upgraded as soon as I had the chance, to Windows 11. But I never boot into it because my games run absolutely fine on Arch using Steam and the Proton compatibility layer. 👍 No reason to boot Windows whatsoever. I can’t remember the last time I did. Every time I boot into it, the last system update finishes and a new one is available. 💀
I've heard about this, but can anybody who's gone through it describe how much effort it was? Do you have to do a from-scratch Windows install? Did you lose any of your stuff? What level of computer expertise would you say is enough to handle installing LTSC, e.g. could your parents do it?
It’s super easy, particularly if you follow a guide your first time. Your parents could absolutely do the install if you set up the USB for them. The hardest part is finding a safe download for the OS (they are .iso files) and setting it up on a USB stick (I recommend using a program called ‘Ventoy’ to do this).
I know that it’s a fediverse sin to post reddit links here, but there’s a genuinely superb megathread for Windows 10 LTSC IoT available that I recommend:
In terms of actually installing you can initiate it by plugging the USB stick in and going through the start menu settings; or, when you boot up the computer you press F2/F12 to enter the BIOS screen, and you select the plugged in USB stick as your “boot drive”. This makes the computer open the USB stick instead of your already-installed OS.
Disagree - I’ve done it, it is easy and straightforward, but anyone who hasn’t installed an OS on bare metal and used a certain tool that you can get from Github to activate MS products, isn’t going to explain the process as “super easy”. More like “a mother-fucking pain in the ass” and “why did you suggest this” and “what the fuck is an iso”.
This is definitely “I’ll swing by this month and install it” territory, not “here’s a guide, ez pz” for anyone older than 40 who didn’t major in CS.
Most of those points are why I mentioned that setting up the iso on a removable drive is probably the hardest part. If you can boot to it then the rest of the installation process at that point is pressing ‘next’ through the W10 initialization.
But I’ll also concede that an average mom and pop likely can’t handle opening powershell to run massgravel and activate windows, even though it’s as simple as copying and pasting, then pressing ‘1’
Already did and it’s glorious! Steam works beautifully and the only final thing that I’m missing is Adobe products.
I recommend, if you want to try Linux, that you try out the ‘Debian’ distribution, and use the ‘KDE Plasma’ desktop environment. It makes for a very Windows-like experience and really assisted me with the transition between OSs.
PopOS (scroll down to the “Pop_OS with Nvidia” link).
It is tailored for Nvidia cards, is Debian(Ubuntu) based, & super friendly for new users.
EDIT: Here’s a link to the 24.04 release that provides only the Cosmic desktop environment (no X11, no gnome or kde). This is what I use, but it’s in alpha so user beware.
Drivers being outdated is not a big deal, unless you use recent hardware, then it might make sense to make a jump to current testing release (trixie), or just stay on testing indefinitely.
Also it being “barebones” is a good thing in my eyes, since I can configure it how I want.
It’s definitely a good thing if you’re interested and knowledgeable enough to build what you want. I was just arguing it’s not the best choice for a casual user because a lot things they’ll want won’t work out of the box.
Even updating to the next stable Debian version requires editing system files and running the command line.
Drivers can matter quite a bit if for example you’re on an Nvidia card and the Debian drivers are 2 years old. It happened to me and caused dlss to not work in some games. And with Nvidia you can’t just move to testing, you need to backport the driversc and that’s quite involved.
I definitely agree with most of the points but I don’t get what do you mean that you can’t move to testing, because that’s what I literally did recently by upgrading from bookworm to trixie with no issues whatsoever and I have Nvidia card, although older one (GTX 1060 3GB).
When I tried it, testing was on the same version of Nvidia drivers as stable so it didn’t solve my problem. It was possible to manually backport them, but it wasn’t straightforward to do.
Cris16228@lemmy.today
on 05 Apr 15:40
nextcollapse
and the only final thing that I’m missing is Adobe products.
I miss Affinity Designer! Bought a license and I like it but no linux port 🙄
I can’t get used Inkscape, it’s so different and confusing for me
But for average users, they accomplish 90% identical tasks, but Krita, while less mature, is more intuitively designed (superiorly designed I would argue), and uses better algorithms for things like select & fill.
Also Krita is less ugly. Sorry, I’m notoriously shallow.
Cris16228@lemmy.today
on 05 Apr 16:32
nextcollapse
So Mint is the ‘distro’, which is actually based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. In simple terms, a distro is a bundle of programs and configurations assembled for you. Basically, Debian is a stripped down version of Mint.
A ‘desktop environment’ is a separate program(?) that changes what your desktop looks like, and they can be downloaded on any distro. So you can try out KDE Plasma on your Mint installation! The one that you’re likely using right now is called ‘Cinnamon’, which I personally didn’t like and turned me off of Linux my first time trying to switch over years ago.
Something cool about KDE Plasma is that you can download themes and make your desktop environments look really cool. For instance, sometimes I like to rock this Windows 7 theme: www.pling.com/p/2142957/
I went to Manjaro (Arch) with KDE from Mint about 5 months ago, and it’s been nearly flawless, allowed me to easily install a real time processing kernel for audio production, and it’s run every game I’ve thrown at it performs better than Winblows.
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 19:47
nextcollapse
Yeah Manjaro + KDE is kinda what I was thinking, thanks!
Nednarb44@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:47
nextcollapse
I would recommend endeavor os with plasma instead honestly. Its a similar setup, but you won’t have to deal with manjaro holding back updates.
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 00:37
collapse
Oh okay! Thanks, that’s helpful. So EndeavorOS has pretty frequent updates then? I’m ngl since switching I look forward to them, which is funny! It’s like “oh cool my computer got better and also new toys instead of worse and more bloated!”
Ahh I should’ve done this years ago but better late than never
Yeah, it should get updates exactly the same as arch. And I’m the same way, I check for update every time I log in lol. It does feel nice that you’re always up to date
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 12:09
collapse
I used to give manjaro to a lot of people because i was an arch user and supported a bunch of linux users, it was a massive mistake, arch is just a strictly better version of manjaro, the things manjaro claims to do it doesn’t do well because it’s just kind of hacked onto arch. Let me give you an example of something stupid that manjaro does:
normally, in linux, all packages are upgraded centrally, however, manjaro has decided to make an exception for the kernel, and now the kernel is versioned, and each version upgrades separately… this can result in you being stuck with an ancient kernel. I had to go into peoples computers, boot into a console, manually swap out the kernel, and put on the latest one, because the updater wouldn’t update due to the newest drivers being incompatible with the old kernel.
This happened enough times, that and the concerns raised in manjarno make me think it really isn’t for anyone. The team is laughably incompetent (they can’t even get their certs sorted out? really?) and you don’t want an incompetent team running your desktop.
If you’re enough of an expert to fix these things… just use arch, it’s strictly better. If you don’t know what you’re doing, an arch based distro is a terrible choice and you should go with bazzite.
I’m willing to troubleshoot infinitely over matrix for free and have 15 years of experience, feel free to message me!
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 14:38
collapse
Very helpful, thank you!
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 12:10
collapse
If it works for you, that’s great, but you’re lucky so far and it’s a ticking timebomb.
I used to give manjaro to a lot of people because i was an arch user and supported a bunch of linux users, it was a massive mistake, arch is just a strictly better version of manjaro, the things manjaro claims to do it doesn’t do well because it’s just kind of hacked onto arch. Let me give you an example of something stupid that manjaro does:
normally, in linux, all packages are upgraded centrally, however, manjaro has decided to make an exception for the kernel, and now the kernel is versioned, and each version upgrades separately… this can result in you being stuck with an ancient kernel. I had to go into peoples computers, boot into a console, manually swap out the kernel, and put on the latest one, because the updater wouldn’t update due to the newest drivers being incompatible with the old kernel.
This happened enough times, that and the concerns raised in manjarno make me think it really isn’t for anyone. The team is laughably incompetent (they can’t even get their certs sorted out? really?) and you don’t want an incompetent team running your desktop.
If you’re enough of an expert to fix these things… just use arch, it’s strictly better. If you don’t know what you’re doing, an arch based distro is a terrible choice and you should go with bazzite.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 06:56
collapse
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I completely disagree. Debian is not beginner-friendly. Go with Bazzite if your focus is gaming.
It is a gaming-focused distribution. It’s also an “atomic” distribution, which basically means it’s really hard to break it. It’s more like Android or IOS where the OS and base system are managed by someone else. They’re read-only so you can’t accidentally break them.
For example, instead of trying to manage your own video card drivers, they come packaged with the base system image, and they’re tested to make sure they work with all the other base components.
I’ve been using Linux since the 1990s, so I’ve run my share of distributions: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Even for someone experienced, atomic distributions are great. But, for a newcomer they’re so much better.
I find this interesting as I’m a beginner with only about 3 months of Linux use under my belt, whereas Ive used Windows since I was like 5 years old, and I found Debian to be a really good introduction to Linux. I was originally recommended Mint, like many are, and I found the experience to be a negative one as opposed to my later experience with Debian. (Note I have no experience with Bazzite or any other distros).
The additional ‘bloat’ in Mint obfuscated from me various aspects of Linux. It insulated me from learning how Linux is different from Windows, and that actually hindered me from understanding the OS. By starting with Debian I got a feel for using the CLI, setting up my drivers, package installer, and desktop environment. And, while those aspects can be complicated for new users, i think its somewhat necessary that they get a feel for them if Linux is going to be recommended as their OS.
Debian is fine as an introduction to Linux, if that’s what you want. But, as a beginner, you’re going to screw up, and Debian doesn’t do anything to protect you from that.
Atomic distributions let you use Linux but make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot. It’s much harder to break the system in a way you can’t just reboot to fix it.
It all depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to learn Linux by using it, then by all means, go for a traditional distribution. Debian is nice, but I’d go for Ubuntu. But, if your goal is to have a stable system that you can’t screw up as a beginner I’d go with an atomic distribution. If your goal is to play games, Bazzite is hard to beat.
You can still learn Linux if you use an atomic distribution. Configuring and using the desktop environment is basically the same. But, you don’t need to worry about your drivers, and you don’t install packages the traditional way. If you want to learn those things, you can run a VM or a distrobox.
histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 17:48
nextcollapse
In what world is a Debian base not beginner friendly my fiancé that could barely use windows is using it just fine
Has your fiancé had to update drivers? Has he had to upgrade to a new release? Has he had to figure out how to install a version of something that isn’t in the Debian stable repositories?
If the only application your fiancé uses is Firefox, then he might go a long time before having any kind of problem. It all depends on how he uses it.
If it’s a her, you mean fiancée, fiancé is used only for men. And, it’s basically a chromebook in how she uses it. But, chromebooks are designed so that you never have to do any system administration. You never have to upgrade drivers or figure out how to get to the next release.
She probably hasn’t had to deal with that yet, but eventually the system will have to be updated. Over time, cruft piles up and makes it harder and harder to upgrade and manage. Atomic distributions are designed to be much more like chromebooks. Someone else manages the upgrades and the tricky choices, and then you just install their base image.
Autocorrect on my phone always chooses fiancé for some damn reason but I showed her how to update when I set it up for her and she’s been keeping up with it checking once a week and she’s had a couple questions I’ve had to answer but less then when she was just trying to do basic things on windows so it’s been great for me
How does Bazzite fare when I want to do something a bit different. Install docker, Python, PHP, sqlite, etc. I’d normally just install them, but does this work for Bazzite and other atomic/immutable distros?
So, there are multiple ways of installing things. For GUI apps the standard way is flatpaks. Some non-GUI things are installed that way, but it’s less common.
The method I like for apps that have a lot of interdependencies is to use a distrobox. If you want a development environment where multiple apps all talk to each-other, you can isolate them on their own distrobox and install them however you like there.
I currently have a distrobox running ubuntu that I use for a kubernetes project. In that distrobox I install anything I need with apt, or sometimes from source. Within that kubernetes project I use mise-en-place to manage tools just for that particular sub-project. What I like about doing things this way is that when I’m working on that project I have all the tools I need, and don’t have to worry about the tools for other projects. My base bazzite image is basically unchanged, but my k8s project is highly customized.
If you really want to, you can still install RPMs as overlays to the base system, it’s just not recommended because that slows down upgrades.
Awesome, thanks for the explanation! I’d been put off Bazzite and other immutable distros because I had seen threads saying you basically needed flatpak for everything, but it sounds like that’s not true.
I don’t need a project at the moment but I will give this a go once I am ready for one!
Yeah, I only use flatpak for GUI apps that don’t need any special handling. To be fair, that’s a decent number of the things I use most often: Firefox, Thunderbird, Signal, Kodi, Discord, Gimp, VLC. I think it’s also how I installed some themes for KDE / Plasma.
Console stuff I’ve either done in a distrobox using the conventions of that OS (apt for the Ubuntu one, DNF for the Fedora one), or I’ve used homebrew. But, I haven’t used too much homebrew because I want my “normal” console to be as unchanged as possible.
There are a few things I’ve used distrobox-export to make available outside the distrobox.
It took me a little while to understand how you’re supposed to think about the system, but now that I think I get it, I really like it. My one frustration is that there’s an nVidia driver bug that’s affecting me, and nVidia has been unable to fix it for a few months. I think I’d be in exactly the same situation with a traditional distro. The difference is that if they ever fix it, I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks until the fix makes it to the Bazzite stable build. I suppose I could switch to Bazzite testing and get it within days of it being fixed instead of weeks. Apparently just use a “rebase” command and reboot. But, I’m hesitant to do that because other than the nVidia driver, everything’s so stable.
I moved to endeavouros. First time using a rolling release, and I was struggling with some webdev stuff cause node was on a recent non-lts build and a few other things.
Not a problem for building, cause I already have that containerised. But things like installing packages was refusing, and obviously couldn’t run dev workflows.
Until I realised I should just work inside a container.
I know vscode is still Microsoft (and I’m sure I could get it to work with vscodium), but the dev container workflow is fantastic.
Absolute game changer.
And I know I can easily work on a different platform, os whatever. And still have the same dev environment.
Until I realised I should just work inside a container.
Yeah, it’s a game changer. Especially if you have different projects on the go. I’m used to having to deal with an ugly path with all kind of random things in it because I need them for one project. But, with containers / distroboxes / toolbx you can keep those changes isolated.
As long as you’re running KDE, it will feel familiar to a Windows user. I started with Kubuntu which was great until I had a system update, and it completely shat itself. Wanted to try Bazzite next, but the installer wouldn’t work properly, so I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I’ve seen no reason to switch since.
Creat@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Apr 18:10
nextcollapse
If you’re into primarily gaming, try PikaOS. It’s Debian based and uses the same tooling, but it’s on an optimized kernel. Is generally geared toward gaming.
There are other gaming specific distros of course, this is just the “Debian”-related one. I would not recommend the real debian if you’re mainly into gaming. It’ll need manual intervention and/or optimization to get games running, or at least get them running well. It’s not impossible (it even hard if you’ve got but is Linux experience), but just harder than necessary.
Outside of Steam, how have you found gaming compatibility? I know Xbox Gamepass doesn’t work as that’s very specifically a Windows app, but how about other standalone games/platforms?
Outside of steam will be a case by case basis. I wouldn’t expect a lot of luck, and it may require that you use a compatibility layer like Wine.
MECHAGODZILLA2@midwest.social
on 05 Apr 14:55
nextcollapse
I’ll be switching fully to Linux this summer, but will also “upgrade” windows 10 to 11 on the last week of support. I’ll only use it then if I have to, on a separate drive.
My system isn't even that old (maybe 4 years) and the first few times I got that very annoying popup that I should try to upgrade it told me in vague terms that I couldn't. So be it, everything runs fine now. I have backups of everything, so if WIn10 doesn't continue to work as simply unsupported one day I'll look for ways to "fix" it like someone mentioned with a 3rd party, or go to Linux and adapt to it. Anyone who has ever had a drive failure knows that the solution is to use a recovery USB which will be a portable Linux, so it will be just another version of that.
DaseinPickle@leminal.space
on 05 Apr 22:49
collapse
Check out Bazzite Linux. It has been very stable for me and all the games I tested just works.
Already moved all my PC stuff to Linux. Laptop, desktop, media server. Been wanting to do this for years. Thanks, Valve and Proton, and to all those Linux developers who made this transition possible. Fuck M$
Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com
on 05 Apr 15:16
nextcollapse
I’m probably gonna go full Linux, I already run it on my laptop and my closet computer lol
I wonder if Steam OS will be ready for desktops before this
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 15:29
nextcollapse
If they are ready by then, it would be perfect timing to grab a TON of users.
I meant something owned/maintained by Valve, it’s a name people can trust and would catch a lot of angry Win10 users switching
personally I don’t need any specific distro, but it would be a big boost for Valve
venotic@kbin.melroy.org
on 05 Apr 15:19
nextcollapse
I'm not making the jump to Linux fully.
I will and have done this thing where I will wait until Microsoft has enough of their head out of their ass to make another decent Windows version again, before I consider hopping to it. They're due to make one sometime soon, don't they? They'll soon realize Windows 11 like 8, Vista and ME before it, was a stupid idea and do something nicer for Windows 12 or whatever they do with Windows next after 11. Windows 11 is already like 4 years old and one of its versions is going to expire next year. What will they do then?
Linux doesn't have my full attention because I don't think it'll run everything I use for Windows. My user activity/behavior is slowing down to where I'm probably a casual user at best who does the bare minimum. Yet, there's things I'd like to run without having to use third party software as a bridge to get to what I want to run as simple as it would if it was on Windows with a simple click or two. Oh and not to mention, hardware driver and support with Linux is one of my major concerns and I don't think there's a Linux driver for every piece of my hardware.
baropithecus@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 15:27
nextcollapse
My home (gaming) pc is going back to linux for sure., on the very day they drop support for 10.
ClamAV, if you want more than just common sense. Firewall is built-in to kubu.
LostWanderer@lemmynsfw.com
on 05 Apr 15:40
nextcollapse
I’m sticking with Linux due to the bullshit that Microsoft is constantly pulling. Currently, my PC is running Fedora 41, and I love it quite a bit; currently I can’t imagine a future where I return to Windows 11. Proton Compatibility Layer makes gaming on any distro fairly easy!
ElectroLisa@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Apr 15:45
nextcollapse
It’s not like Windows 10 will magically stop booting or something…
paultimate14@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:09
nextcollapse
Right?
I never understand why people are so obsessed with not getting updates. They usually just break everything and bloat the OS.
“But my security!” OS updates are going to protect you from 99% of the bad actors out there. They do nothing against social engineering. They don’t make you use strong passwords. Most of the security flaws OS updates are addressing are the kinda of attacks that only state actors or organized crime rings have the resources and abilities to exploit.
Governments? Heck yeah they need to be concerned. Large enterprises? Definitely. Small businesses? Eh it’s probably for the best to protect your livelihood even if you aren’t the juiciest target. But for an individual using their PC for gaming, social media, streaming content, online shopping, etc… The cost-benefit analysis is different.
It’s not different from physical security. Theres a reason you don’t need to go through TSA to get on a bus.
Frozengyro@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 17:14
nextcollapse
While I agree, I have seen TSA working at the bus station.
The problem is that as soon as a security issue is found on windows 10 it won’t be fixed, it is perpetual. In Windows 11 it will probably be fixed before you even know it exists.
You seem awfully optimistic about Microsoft’s response time lol.
How many people are out there today with broken locks on their doors or windows? How many stores do you think close every night with the minimum wage worker forgetting to lock up properly? How many people out their use incredibly weak passwords, share their credentials with others, or leave everything on post-it notes?
Security is a cost-benefit analysis. Depending on what exactly this hypothetical exploit requires I might very well be comfortable running Windows 10 anyways. The vast majority of security exploits require physical access to the machine- we only hear about the remote ones more often because they are scarier.
It might be a remote exploit or it might not. An OS is not just a program that runs in the background, if it is critically important.
These kind of exploiters don’t tend to attack you in particular, they have botnets scanning the web for any compromised machine.
Running windows 10 is fine today, might not be fine after EOL. It is irresponsible to shrug it off and not even consider the alternatives out there, including windows 11.
That’s where the “analysis” part of “cost-benefit analysis” comes in and it doesn’t make sense to generalize like you seem to want to.
Is it really that much more responsible to run Windows 11? You seem to have a LOT of faith in Microsoft to keep you safe. There’s plenty of reasons to not switch to Windows 11.
I also use Linux on some machines. But I can also see why there are reasons why one distro or another, or even Linux in general, may not be the right call for some people.
Is win11 more cryptographically secure, absolutely.
Does that matter if you don’t trust the holder of the keys (the Microsoft keys stored in the tpm) not really.
implementing a more secure platform doesn’t mean much if the only way you are doing it is by handing over control to a third party.
Would you trust a better lock on your front door if it meant a proven bad actor was the one who could unlock it?
histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 17:53
nextcollapse
For the avg person why not trust them I’m not too worried about what they can collect on an average person I use Linux personally so I’m not shilling for Ms but 11 will keep out more hackers then 10 cause I wouldn’t be worried about them stealing my card info but a hacker yes i would be
Even if you trust their intent to not misuse your data, there are now a lot of live rpc hooks into your operating system, controllable by anyone who can compromise their azure implementation, which has happened at least twice in recent memory. If the data never leaves your device, and they didn’t have a way in, they wouldn’t have those things to lose in the first place.
The interdependency itself, regardless of intent, is inherently more dangerous than the previous separate paradigm that used to exist.
If the EU is allowed to employ guards in MS’s buildings and to roll their own secured version of Windows, I wouldn’t mind sticking to Windows 11 EU. On the other paw, if DOGE is given access to Microsoft, I shall flee to Linux. Hopefully, SteamOS Desktop will be a thing if the latter happens.
I’m pretty sure all personal data leaks to me and my friends and family have nothing to do with personal EOL OS on personal PCs/laptops.
My Dad, ran Windows 7 (yes, 7) until he passed last year, almost 80. We had his credit locked down, we had antivirus running, we kept the browsers up to date, and he was very good about not clicking weird links or calling fake support numbers.
His biggest data breach (and ours too)? Was from myChart a couple years ago, he got a letter that his data was part of the big hack, yada yada yada free credit reporting - so sorry. If you don’t know, myChart is like The Main medical everything portal in the US at least for most doctors and hospital systems. So all your test results, making appointments, sending messages, requesting Rx refills, all through myChart’s website. The hospitals and doctors using MyChart can see pretty much everything in your myChart health record (some exceptions)
So using super secure OS on your personal computer means nothing when you are part of a hundreds of millions data dump from someone hacking into that. Not having an account just means you don’t have access to your own records, they are still part of the system.
But Yes, I was in the process of getting Dad an upgrade to a flavor of Linux that would be the closest to what he was used to. And the only reason was because browser support was coming to EOL for Windows 7. He really didn’t want to change or lose his solitaire games and he deserved a stress-free life to play his damn games like he wanted.
THAT SAID - if businesses are using EOL OS and getting hacked - they definitely need to do whatever they need to do and protect their customer data. But EOL OS for an average person checking email, making doctor’s appointments, checking headlines, and playing solitaire while streaming music certainly doesn’t call for a need to panic.
IF you are a power user doing sometimes sketch things (according to Apple/MS anyway) probably switch to Linux sooner than later.
We have computers running Linux, Windows 10 (one of which was on 8.1 until a year ago), and Windows 11 in our house. The one on 11 is being tested basically, and will probably be reinstalled with Linux. But we are trying to give it a shot.
Your dad probably got lucky, and your router’s firewall probably did a lot of the heavy lifting. If you were to connect a win 2000/XP computer to the internet today without a firewall between, it would be compromised in minutes (there are loads of videos of people demoing this).
While I don’t have proof that 7 would be the same, I strongly suspect it would be the same. 10 will get there soon too. Firewalls will stop most of the low hanging fruit, but an application that bridges connections through the firewall are that much more vulnerable to exploitations that won’t be integrated by your running kernel.
I would not be surprised if some vulnerability is kept until Microsoft does not provide any patches as it is worth more then.
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 15:54
nextcollapse
Made the jump already since I built a new computer and there were lots of missing windows 10 drivers for the new hardware and there was no way in hell I was going to main on windows 11.
Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Apr 15:56
nextcollapse
I’ve been on Windows 11 since it was released. The only problem I had were NVIDIA drivers sometimes causing a bluescreen (mainly my fault).
Linux doesn’t work for me currently, since I use RDP to connect to systems for work, and RDP clients on Linux are ass.
Remmina is better than windows native remote desktop shit imo
Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Apr 16:52
collapse
Used it, it was probably the best, but still bad. If not for work, it would have been good enough though.
Most of the RDP implementations are also just based on FreeRDP, so they’re basically the same. I had terrible picture quality on all of them, even over local network, and the USB passthrough barely worked.
Tbh since I need the system for work, I wasn’t able to test stuff super long. Maybe I should install Linux on a secondary system, so I can just play around and try stuff.
73CC@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Apr 15:56
nextcollapse
I tried it a few months ago but had issues with various games and lowered performance in almost all of them. I still don't know if I will just cave in and upgrade to win11 or try linux again, i've got a free partition waiting but the issue is lack of time and motivation to dive into troubleshooting the OS on a daily basis
specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 15:58
nextcollapse
Just moved my Win10 machine to Pop OS. No issues at all. Haven’t tried Steam VR on it yet.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:31
nextcollapse
Me too a couple months ago, Pop OS has been awesome for me
I’m running Linux everywhere incuding the machine I am writing on right now. I have one single dual boot machine with Windows 10 as the mainly used OS for the simple reason that I need to run one specific software (and some of the “ecosystem” around it) that is not available for Linux. The only alternative is Apple which is even worse in my opinion. So I think I’ll be forced to update. All the rest of my daily computing stuff has been moved to Linux for a long time.
I gave Linux Mint a try last week when I received the news about the obligatory MS account for W11. Not that I’ll “upgrade” to W11 but anyway.
Very smooth installation experience. The OS and software like Steam, Brave, Nvidia drivers and some audio & video stuff installed through the package control in no time. I could actually work with it.
Half of my game library is made only for W though. Or the small blocker things like GTA V that works well in Mint in story mode, the Battleye thing won’t start of course, so expect no GTA Online in Mint either.
I think I’ll keep Linux Mint and Windows under dual boot and use Windows only when necessary. Or run W10 in a virtual box in Mint 😎.
Thing is, before battleye, gta online worked perfectly. I played it for years on every remotely popular linux distro, from debian, to ubuntu, linux mint, fedora etc. It’s just the fucking anticheat.
Dual boot is the way for right now. Proton is huge, but there are still a good number of games with compatibility issues or rootkit anticheats. Personally I advise steering clear of the latter, but that’s neither here nor there.
I use CachyOS as my daily driver and booted up the Windows partition maybe 3 times since setting this up back in February (and most of those times were just to play REPO because Elgato hardware with dual input and output has serious issues with Linux, but I’ve sorted that out now with a workaround)
CCMan1701A@startrek.website
on 05 Apr 18:33
collapse
I was able to run SimTower on Linux. I haven’t tried SimCoopter, but there are so many bugs in that game it likely won’t work lol
SolidShake@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:12
nextcollapse
Make the jump to Linux and loose 90% of the games you play as well. If all you play is steam games and don’t care about many that can’t be played then sure.
I get the appeal. But windows 11 is the same thing as 10.
y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 16:16
nextcollapse
90%?
Do you only play games with kernel level anti-cheat? Because those are literally the only games i haven’t been able to play, and fortunately for me I don’t want to play those games.
I use DAWs, havent had luck with wine not crashing games. So yes. You MUST be right, haven’t used Linux at all actually. Just saw a word document about it.
God you people are the worst
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Apr 18:13
collapse
Pretty much, 1% of games don’t work on Linux and its the top 1% most popular games
My problem is 100% of the DAWs I use don’t work on Linux
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 06 Apr 14:10
collapse
Yeah, sometimes there are software that just won’t have a Linux version. Thats to be expected because Linux isnt a Windows clone so itll never run all Windows software. If that software is important to you I would reccomend just installing Windows 11.
bzah@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Apr 16:16
nextcollapse
I will dualboot to keep a windows 10 for software that only runs on it, but I really hope I will be able to be gaming on linux only.
I can't afford a new computer right now and tariffs meaning higher prices means I can't anticipate affording one in the near future. My plan is to see where everything's at when they stop doing updates. Unfortunately.
I'm somewhat open to the idea, but the thought of messing up and not having any computer other than my phone until i figure it out is tough to get over.
ninjaturtle@lemmy.today
on 05 Apr 17:50
nextcollapse
If you can install another driver onto the computer, you can put Linux on that and kept the windows OS still, in case you need it. This is dual booting. You chose which OS you want when booting up.
Is this something that's relatively fool proof to do? I'm very good at imagining disasters. That's the big mental block I got when I thought about dual booting before.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 07:30
collapse
If you install ventoy on a usb and put windows and bazzite on it, you can easily switch between things.
i have 15 years of experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot on matrix
Thank you! The wall in my brain keeping me from doing it is a bit smaller now
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 10:46
collapse
note that you should absolutely make a backup of all your important files before you muck about with installing different operating systems, it will wipe your drive, so, yeah.
if you do that and have both on a ventoy usb it is pretty much impossible to fuck something up
histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 18:01
nextcollapse
As long as you go with a mainstream distro you can’t really mess it up if you play games try bazzite it’s a atomic distro so it’s hard to break since the system files are read only and if an update breaks it has a duplicate file system to fall back on from before the update and is just as easy if not easier then windows to install
You could always reinstall Windows if something does go wrong. Just create an installer USB as backup.
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:19
nextcollapse
I might get downvoted or whatever but Windows 11 is fine. I get it if your PC straight up can’t run it, that’s a tough spot. But as an OS it’s fine, even has a few handy features (besides all the AI crap shoehorned in). I actually like the File Explorer changes and the window snap stuff can work in the right setting.
I think for many people its about how invasive it is to your privacy. Especially with the upcoming changes where you be forced to sign in with their microsoft account.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:33
nextcollapse
No it isnt, the bloat is actually insane.
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:43
collapse
Can I ask how you got Win11? And are we talking MS feature bloat or third party stuff? I had Micro Center build my PC so it didn’t come from a manufacturer. There doesn’t seem to be any third party bloat, besides the occasional fucking ad for an app in the Start menu.
The ads for apps, Xbox games, trial versions of Office preinstalled, the minesweeper and solitaire collection that are preinstalled but actually ad supported or non-free, depending on the region spotify/TikTok/Facebook also come preinstalled, “Movies & TV”, Bing/MS News…
I think all of those count as bloat. I haven’t included Edge because I guess having a browser is a necessity, or copilot/cortana because you said “excluding AI features”.
The reason I switched from Windows is the telemetry. Yes, you can disable it but I don’t know for sure it’s actually off. I’m sure it has other back doors too. It sucks because they had something great with Windows 7 and they ruined it. Also, forcing an online account really pissed me off. I couldn’t even install WSL without using the Microsoft Store. Funny enough, the complaint I remember most about Windows 11 didn’t bother me at all. The start menu being in the center I kinda liked. I remember using an app on Windows 10 to achieve the same thing.
YoiksAndAway@lemmy.zip
on 05 Apr 16:29
nextcollapse
I think I’m going to get the $30 1-year ESU and kick that can down the road. I need to run windows-only software and I can’t upgrade because of my processor. Maybe in a year’s time I’ll be ready for a new build.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:30
nextcollapse
Went to Linux a couple months ago, its freaking awesome, you’ll never look back. And it is way easier to use than people make it out to be. Also my PC has never been faster thanks to having zero bloat.
Been using Linux since 2005. Really don’t understand why so many people put up with Microsoft planned obsolescence, spyware, ads, etc. Linux is easier now than it’s ever been. Most things work out of the box if you pick a reasonable distro. If you’re going to be pushed to learn a new paradigm, do it once more by learning Linux and stop being pushed.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:34
nextcollapse
For gaming, It’s mostly niche windows things in my experience. In my case I opted to stay on linux anyway. Also worth noting, I find that outside of gaming linux is superior for work and general pc use.
Some manufacturer programs for doing things like mouse macros or controlling LED lighting, auto hotkey scripts, some types of overlays tied to directx apis (yolomouse), etc. These things don’t and probably will never work. I think some of them might if you really know your stuff with wine, but that usually ends up being dependency hell for me and I give up more often than succeeding when trying to force a windows native program to run.
Yeah I’m aware of openrgb, it has limited compatibility but seems to work ok for most of my stuff. Still haven’t found a great way to run my favorite corsair keyboard reactive lighting theme I had setup with their software in windows, but what I came up with in openrgb is good enough.
However, I didn’t think it was possible to run autoIt or autoHotkey at all in Linux. Are you suggesting a Python script to replace it, or something else? AHK has a very peculiar syntax which I don’t believe would translate well to other languages.
Depends if your on x11 or Wayland ahk does have a port to x11 scripts do require modification otherwise ydotool is available on Wayland I haven’t done much research into it but appears it can do a lot of what you might want
I have an older pc that I use as a a Plex server so as soon as I get some time I will fully switch to Ubuntu.
commander@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 16:44
nextcollapse
The more people hop onto Linux the faster and better funded support for Linux development becomes. If you’re a single player gamer or play Valve multiplayer games primarily, make the jump to Linux. Get on Mint, get on Fedora, Ubuntu, etc and get off Microsoft’s shitboat. You already took off from Reddit. Wean off all these other money/data leeches
Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 17:17
nextcollapse
I’m on Mint and have been for 2-3 years now and I’ve never had any problems with non-valve multiplayer. I don’t use any VMs and just run everything through proton and have never struggled.
Battlebit, Helldivers, Lethal Company (+mods), Risk of Rain 2, Rocket League, Minecraft, and Split Fiction to name a few. I guarantee there are others I’ve played, but I can’t remember.
Nephalis@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Apr 18:05
nextcollapse
No Kernel level anti cheat will ever work on linux. But probably Windows will disable the possibillity to manipulate on kernel level either in the future.
Thanks for this link, neat to see that Uncharted Waters Online apparently runs on Linux despite it’s ridiculously strict anti-cheat. (To this day it’s the only game I’ve played that had an issue with Process Explorer running in the background 🤦♂️)
I've been wondering for a little while now if WinApps will work for gaming. It uses a VM in the background but, supposedly, has a "native" experience. Thoughts?
yourNewFavouriteUser@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 16:59
nextcollapse
Can anyone recommend a distro (and desktop environment?) that’s going to be almost the same as desktop mode on the Steam deck? I’m getting more comfortable in that than I expected to be in any Linux, and to my surprise and delight I haven’t had to delve into the command line at all yet.
The steam deck uses KDE Plasma 5 as its desktop environment, so anything that uses that should feel very similar. I recommend bazzite if familiarity is something that would appeal to you.
+1 for Bazzite. It has just enough guard rails to keep you from (easily) making your system unusable while still providing more freedom than windows. Install is cake. Literally clear a drive or partition for your OS and storage, download it, and you’re off to the races.
just make sure to always check your build against protondb For games to see if there are any special run commands to put into steam, and you will be golden.
Very much so. Even for non-gaming, most stuff works out of the box from the package manager, everything else you can get working with a distrobox. Ended up getting blender to work better on Bazzite with AMD GPU rendering than I could on Windows lol
Would I fuck myself over by putting it on a partition on the same drive as my Windows install? It’s my fastest hard drive, but I can’t just immediately give up everything I have on Windows.
I hav heard that there can be issues with windows updates messing up Bazzite if installed on the same drive. I got a separate drive just for my Bazzite install to be on the safe side.
That is the old Debian-based operating system that ran on Steam Machines and is no longer supported. Valve really needs to remove it from their website. The version of SteamOS running on the Steam Deck is Arch-based.
Ditto. They are stopping support, but I highly doubt they will just brick all Windows 10 machines. If they do, I will just throw Linux on a flash drive and boot from that to recover my data ahead of switching fully to Linux.
I remember seeing a leaked paper about them putting an omnipresent advertising ticket at the top of the screen that will be displayed regardless of full screen status. The only reason I can think that they are forcing this so hard is that a lot of their forced ad servicing plans are not possible to implement in earlier versions of Windows due to root level functionality that cannot be changed. I’m guessing things like direct injection of ads in running processes or that ticker.
Ads have no place in an OS, especially not as kernel level processes. If ads on the internet have taught us anything, it is that bad actors can inject malicious code directly into them without content servers or hosts knowing and compromise untold numbers of machines who just, let me check, rendered the ad.
Between the aggressive plans for in OS advertising and the privacy abolishing actions and policies with AI datascraping, I am done with MS. Windows 10 will be the last one of theit OS’s I run. If work needs me to do something on Windows, it will be on a virtual machine that I remote into.
Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 18:48
nextcollapse
They won’t brick it, but you can bet that a lot of people are sitting on unreleased 0-days for win10. It will likely be dangerous to connect to the internet on day 1.
Luckily I already don’t trust the internet already and don’t go anywhere online without script blockers and I don’t open emails as a rule of thumb. I am sure it will be dangerous, but I am not relying on passive security already.
Every packet you send/receive relies on passive security. Your nic drivers, the driver kernel model, all of the userland applications that sit on top of it. I get that in practical terms, your firewall will do a lot of the heavy lifting but there are passive rce vulnerabilities in previous unsupported versions of Windows that are trivially exploitable today.
Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 03:32
collapse
Man, I wish these people would fucking be cool. I just want to play games. There is nothing valuable on my desktop for you
Me too brother, but I disagree with your assessment on value
An non-blacklisted residential IP address with reasonable throughput is valuable in and of itself. DDOS botnets, proxies to bypass geo blocks or to obfuscate illicit traffic, etc. Also your gaming PC could be used for distributed compute workloads of compromised, usually crypto mining.
Any hardware/connection has value if it’s “free”. It’s just a numbers game beyond that.
Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 12:51
collapse
You’ve convinced me. They want access to my connection and maybe some processing power; they DON’T want my dungeons and dragons notes.
When ML training farms run out of new text to train on, “they” may very well want your original writing too…
Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 14:29
collapse
Mother of god. They might steal my ‘Brown’ Elemental, that eats excrement and excretes clean, potable water. It will cimb up your ass and kill you if you sleep in the sewers. They definitely are going to steal this, specially.
I’m blocking addresses at the router daily. I could live with 11 if I could uninstall their garbage. I’ve tried any number of things to keep crapilot 365 off of my domain machines but I’m told I have to have the enterprise edition to do that.
Yeah, legislation needs passed that any software on any device purchased or leased must be removable without voiding warranties or service contracts. That would go a long way towards making phones, computers, and other devices less invasive and actually privacy protected.
For now, ctt winutil does a pretty good job at removing the cruft. I’ve long since switched to debian for my daily driver, but as a remote-access sunshine host for games that require kernel level anticheat, it’s surprisingly usable.
I need something automated that I can run on each machine in the domain. I haven’t read any of the docs on this utility. Perhaps it has a way to do that.
Plus, I just want to own my fucking computer. I shouldn’t have to go into the registry to get rid of edge.
User79185@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Apr 17:49
nextcollapse
IIRC W11 share is barely near W10 and they are already forcing it out and crapton of perfectly usable hardware, if it is not planned obsolescence i don’t know what it is!? Fuck microsoft!
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 18:31
collapse
I want to point out, planned obsolescence only really applies to their surface offerings.
Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 19:10
collapse
Why? I’ve been running a Surface Go 1 with Fedora since 2020 and I plan on keeping it until 2029 at least.
So I can’t see the planned obsolescence except if you meant the ability to upgrade its internals…
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 19:25
collapse
I was pointing out that M$ neither made other hardware that doesn’t support W11, or (directly) profits from hardware being outside support for W11. So planned obsolescence doesn’t really apply in any way to 99% of cases people try to say it does.
Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 21:34
collapse
Okay I understand now, but I think the formulation could have been better then😇
RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 17:55
nextcollapse
Bought a new PC and switched from dual boot Win10/Linux to Linux only. All of the games I’m playing work well, so no need for Windows 11
Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 17:59
nextcollapse
I use Opensuse MicroOS on half a dozen PCs but I keep one on Windows until I can run Fortnite on Linux.
ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 18:00
nextcollapse
Upgrade? How is 11 an upgrade?
namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
on 05 Apr 19:05
collapse
When is the last time anything Microsoft made was an upgrade…? Word 97??
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Apr 18:18
nextcollapse
I have personally been using Linux for a few years now and I absolutely love it, however a lot of people will switch to Linux and be extremely disappointed. If you’re going into Linux expecting an open source Windows clone you’ll be solely mistaken. If you want an operating system that looks and works exactly like W11 youll be better off installing W11 and using something like classic shell. However if you’re willing to accept that its a completely different OS (so it naturally will work differently and have different software) then go ahead.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 18:29
nextcollapse
I spent a couple hours trying to get Baldur’s Gate 3 running on Linux. It was rough but I got it to run at 1440 but the latency made it sort of unplayable. It runs great in Windows 10 at 4k with the default settings. I have some other windows-only software so I guess I’m going to “upgrade” all my computers that are able to do so but I don’t feel good about it. All my computers dual boot windows/linux, I would love to be linux-only.
Edit: lots of people are saying theirs runs smoothly, I’m going to have to do further testing. Thanks for the input!
Take advantage of your store’s refund policy as needed, but I can count the games I’ve had compatibility problems with on one hand, and one of them is because Indiana Jones is pushing ray tracing as mandatory.
TheGenuineGT@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 19:06
nextcollapse
In case you’re not aware, and for any uninitiated that see this comment www.protondb.com/app/1086940 protondb is a fantastic database of Linux compatible games and crowd sourced suggestions on getting the best performance.
Baldurs Gate 3 ran flawless for me, but everyone’s mileage may very depending on computer specs and Linux distro. Proton, and its counter part Proton-GE, work wonderfully the majority of the time. Biggest issue I run into anymore is anti cheat. Which can also be verified by areweanticheatyet.com
For reference, I’m running all AMD with hardware thats a few years old now. Fedora 41 with some tweaks like feralinteractives’ gamemode installed. You can install and use ProtonUp-QT to manage the Proton-GE versions and keep them up to date. I’ve been primarily Linux at home for a couple of years and have not missed windows. I hope more people are encouraged to try Linux and see what it has to offer
I know of that site, but in many ways I can’t stomach following trial-and-error debugging steps to try to get a perfect experience. Very rarely has it been one command line option and then the game runs as perfectly as Windows.
hangonasecond@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 19:55
collapse
That’s really unusual. I’ve found, if anything, most of my games run better since switching to Linux. Nothing runs so much worse and I have rarely needed to apply launch options. I wonder if your games aren’t running on your iGPU inadvertently? That’s the only thing that comes to mind that would cause that much of an issue.
Edit: I just realised you weren’t the same person who posted the top level comment, disregard
neidu3@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 19:16
nextcollapse
Wut? BG3 runs flawlessly out of the box for me. Pretty vanilla Mint install, Nvidia 4060.
Ubuntu 24.04, as far as I know I have all the right Proton stuff installed and the latest Nvidia drivers.
hangonasecond@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 19:56
nextcollapse
That’s really unusual. I’ve found, if anything, most of my games run better since switching to Linux. Nothing runs so much worse and I have rarely needed to apply launch options. I wonder if your games aren’t running on your iGPU inadvertently? That’s the only thing that comes to mind that would cause that much of an issue.
Switch to Linux. As a big-time gamer, I did it last year and it’s been fantastic. Only issue is if you main games with root kit anticheat…but with enough momentum in Linux direction, game studios will be forced to abandon those dubious detection methods anyway.
I’ve been hard at trying to get games i like to work in mint. It takes a lit of time but it’s going ok. Like you said though kind of sucks for multi-player. I can’t even get diabolical multi-player to work (after I looked up how to fix the instant crashing audio driver issue) . It’s also a lot of qork getting any racing game to work with my DFGT…even though linux does see the axis and buttons, the force feedback is all messed up. Wish I knew how to code so I could fix these issues! But I don’t have 12 hours a day to ever learn that
Bazzite refused to boot for me…I stuck with mint as it’s always ran pretty good. Old amd fx 8 core and a Radeon rx580
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 20:05
collapse
Use Bazzite. It is a distro dedicated to gaming and user friendly for beginners. It still has some limitations but it is better compared to others when it comes to gaming. You don’t really require more tweaking unlike other distros to make games work.
2nd_Fermenter@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 20:13
collapse
This is the advice I came here looking for. I’m intimidated by the switch and have no time, but if there’s a distro that’s easy to get going, I’m there for it. I’ll check it out!
I just wasn’t sure fedora based (bazzite) would be as easy to troubleshoot as mint (Debian based) since arguably debian/Ubuntu are the most popular distro.
Another distro that’s easy to get going for gaming is Garuda.
Also, the easiest way to switch to any distro is to get a USB drive and install a program called Ventoy. Then you throw your install iso onto the Ventoy drive, boot from USB, and you’re good to go.
As a tip, pick up an external drive large enough for your Steam library. Then in Steam, you right click on each game and select Manage/Back up game files.
Doing it this way will save you days of downloading.
TylerBourbon@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 19:50
nextcollapse
Sadly I use way too many programs that only work on windows or Mac that Linux would handicap me. The free open source versions of yhe apps I use are no where near as capable.
My only option I can think of would be running a virtual machine of Win10 on a Linux install so I can still use those apps.
Bruhman482@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 20:06
nextcollapse
Would you mind sharing a couple of the names of the programs that only work on Windows for you? I’m a bit curious.
pancakes@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 20:54
nextcollapse
I’m not the OP but I have a similar situation. I work in multimedia design and use a wide array of software from the full Adobe suite, to in-house command line apps, to the Articulate suite and everything in between.
I’d love to be on Linux but that just isn’t a possibility for me.
I mean, sure you can do this, but you have to also sympathize with the folks that have years if not decades of experience in a program/suite, and that experience is what they use to market themselves. Like, in a perfect world, everyone could make the switch to FOSS alternatives, but it’s not so cut and dry for those who can’t spend up to years of their personal time to just get back to being as efficient as they were with the other, just to not support a scummy company. I’ve been moving pretty much entirely over to FOSS for everything I do, but it’s been years in the making, and substantial effort on my part. And I have it easy, since I work in software development. We in the FOSS community can’t expect all others to do the same.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 21:07
nextcollapse
I’m not Tyler Bourbon, but it’s Fusion 360 for me. I sound like a broken record at this point, but it’s the only piece of software that keeps a windows install in my house
Not OP, but for another data point: recently I did quite a bit of Linux-related research on the three Adobe apps I use (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, in this order of prominence), and they are all reported as some level of broken via Wine and their Linux alternatives are missing important features and/or a pain in the arse to use :/
Unfortunately, any app that needs a GPU would be difficult to work with in a VM. You have to manually set up GPU-passthru, which requires figuring out the PCI addresses and whatnot of your card, along with using a terminal. As I understand it, this process also prevents you from using that GPU outside of the VM, which is cruddy.
I was hoping to have a Linux Mint + Windows 11 VM back in January, but that didn’t work out. I am hoping that the upcoming SteamOS Desktop would make Linux friendly enough for games that aren’t native to Steam, such as my GOG collection, Window 3.1 stuff like Stars!, modding, and assorted Japanese locale games.
JakobFel@retrolemmy.com
on 05 Apr 21:42
nextcollapse
SteamOS isn’t going to be the “Windows killer” people think it’ll be. I’m a massive Valve and Steam fan but SteamOS isn’t any better than any of the other major distros when it comes to gaming.
I think it’ll feel like pop os. Pretty much set up for gaming right out of the box, but anything deeper and you’re forced to touch the terminal. What I do think it has going for it however is the publicity of Steam, plus a promise on Steam’s part to continue to dump a bunch of resources in to making it a better experience. I’m not expecting mass migrations, but it will likely be what gets all the folks on the fence to switch over, at least among gamers
Terminal usage is inevitable with Linux. It’s not as scary as it seems and can actually create a sense of accomplishment when you use it. Pop is a solid distro for sure but you don’t need a “gaming distro” to game on Linux these days (not that Pop is a gaming distro specifically). There’s actually a Linux Experiment video where he proves this with a thorough test. All major distros work fine for gaming.
I encourage people to not go for SteamOS unless you’re setting up a PC you want to use solely as a home console, or if you’re flashing it to a different handheld.
That, all coming from a big Valve fan. I simply don’t think it’s a good idea for people to get their hopes up over SteamOS somehow being a no-terminal, peak gaming Linux experience. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to hold off until SteamOS gets its full PC release, because most major distros today will work just as well. It’d literally only benefit people to start learning Linux now so that by the full SteamOS launch, they’ll be more informed as to whether it’ll be something they’ll find useful enough to use as a daily driver.
I understand where you’re coming from. I myself prefer using a terminal for most things, and use arch (btw) for the PC I game on. I understand that learning Linux is the best move for folks, but I don’t see that being an option, at least initially, for people on the fence.
I know that, from a Linux user’s perspective, it is the wrong move, but I have plenty of friends that want a “no terminal, gaming ready” distro before they make the move. I see it more as a first step, removing the barrier for making the switch to Linux. Once they are already there, it’s much easier to convince themselves to learn Linux a bit deeper if needed over time.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just naive and hopeful, but there are a good number of my friends that I think will make the switch to Linux that wouldn’t have without SteamOS.
The way I see the root kit anticheat situation is that because Valve has their own Linux based OS, these companies making anticheat are probably going to end up tailoring it to whatever kernel Valve (or whatever the biggest/most widely used distro made by a large game corporation) uses to ensure people aren’t cheating.
With a kernel that can be swapped out for another with varying degrees of difficulty, why wouldn’t they just tailor their work to whatever the biggest corporate game company supporter of Linux is using? If SteamOS (or any other distro made by maybe someone like EA, heaven forbid) ends up becoming what these anticheat devs see as the defacto Linux distro for gaming, I guarantee they’ll probably just focus all their efforts on making sure SteamOS (or whatever it ends up being) works as best they can and hanging out everyone else to dry.
A real “Wanna run the latest CoD (or something similar) on your device? Make sure you use the kernel we say you have to use!” kinda situation is what I foresee happening.
There’s also an OpenBSD song with a few lines of lyrics that I think could sum up what could (and sadly most likely will) happen, in metaphorical Odyssey kind of way:
Corporate monsters, many closing passages\ Tempting harpies\ 13 years of treachery
Though it’s definitely going to be more than 13 years.
rocky1138@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 19:07
nextcollapse
I’m a Linux user who had Windows 10 on one computer for VR but once I saw Microsoft’s CEO at Trump’s inauguration I removed that last install, deleted my Meta accounts, and put my Quest 3 in a box.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:54
collapse
If you want to run VR on Linux with your Quest headset, WiVRn works absolutely flawlessly. Been running VR with my Quest 2 for a while with it.
Not sure if jailbreaks exist for the Quest 3, but I’ve considered jailbreaking my Quest 2 in order to run it without a Meta account.
rocky1138@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 00:17
collapse
Thanks for this. All efforts are dead in the water until I can use it without Meta. Until then it stays in the box. Appreciate the info thought though, cheers.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 03:41
collapse
Cheers mate
Thcdenton@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 19:10
nextcollapse
Been on it for years
randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Apr 19:13
nextcollapse
I keep recommending BazziteOS but Jorge Castro over at the universal Blue project has a really good point “Most people don’t install their operating systems” and that plain fact is what stops people from moving to Linux.
Valve has momentum because they are selling you a system with the OS already on it. Sell more gaming PCs with pre installed Linux on it and the support will follow. Valve’s first attempt at getting Linux based gaming hardware out there failed but that didn’t stop them and the real push is coming this time.
If you do install your OS (most people here have once or twice), try Bazzite out. I’m running it on the minisforum Bd790i with a radeon 7800xt and it works great!
I don’t like the rootkit. I do everything I possibly can on Linux aside from the one game that requires it. That said, since they started using the rootkit, there has been a steep drop-off in bots in the game. As in I don’t see any anymore. So, annoying and a huge security risk? Absolutely. Dubious? Maybe? Depends on what you mean.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 19:39
nextcollapse
Just waiting for daddy gabon to release steamos. If not I swear I’m going to just use the most windowsxp distro available. I thought I was being simple by going with mint and KDE. Dare me.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:52
collapse
You installed KDE on Mint? Why not just install Debian with KDE?
SteamOS getting an official PC release (if/when) is going to cause the first time I’ve spent a lot on PC hardware in a long while.
I’ll build it from parts of I must, but I really hope they go for a tie-in deal with Alienware or System76 and just let me buy a big pre-installed tower to play on.
I’d consider switching if somebody spoonfed me into being able to use/know it’s basics.
I am currently way too overstimulated with switching to privacy-focused and less (US-)corpo-reigned alternatives (like lemmy instead of reddit)
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 20:27
nextcollapse
I installed Linux on a raspberry pi recently (first time using Linux in 15+ years), and in addition to reading stuff on Lemmy, I found that this is a really good use case for chatgpt or similar LLMs.
I was able to get chatgpt to explain stuff to me, ask it to dumb it down further, provide examples, correct my incorrect assumptions, etc.
Have you considered making a Linux virtual machine now, and learning small things a few minutes at a time between other tasks? That ought to give you a head start when it comes time to commit.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:50
nextcollapse
Start with something simple like Linux Mint. You can run it in a VM, if you want to “try before you buy (in)”.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 06:57
collapse
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 06:57
collapse
I do infinite free troubleshooting/support on matrix, and I have 15 years of experience, feel free to reach out!
Zidane@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 19:56
nextcollapse
The only real reason I’m still on Win 10 is because of Escape from Tarkov and Photoshop. I need to get a new m.2 and just start sorting through my crap I guess but I haven’t gotten the motivation yet lol
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub
on 05 Apr 20:05
nextcollapse
I’ve gotten to a point where the quality of a PS2 game is higher to me than most AAA releases. I mostly play retro games, more open multiplayer games that don’t block users like TF2(and TF2) and indies… so, no. I don’t really need Windows for anything.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 20:08
nextcollapse
I still use steam on Windows 7. I don’t see the problem.
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 20:31
nextcollapse
Just please make sure it’s not internet connected if you value such things as your privacy, and bank accounts not being breached extremely easily. End of security support is no joke.
Using a browser isn’t the only way it would be connected to the internet though, I know for sure there are malware bots actively searching for network connected XP machines that can brick systems just for existing on a public network, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same wasn’t the case for 7. Anti-virus can only do so much for you if you’re a victim of ransomware or some remote execution exploit found since EOL
Well, I have the ultimate defense against ransomware, full disk backups. Honestly, with automated backups, the whole world is a little less scary.
MeowKittyWow@lemmy.ca
on 05 Apr 20:08
nextcollapse
I’m gonna switch to Linux. My laptop still works fine, no need to upgrade yet.
Infynis@midwest.social
on 05 Apr 20:11
nextcollapse
I have procrastinated the switch this far, I’ll be damned if my laziness gives in now! Lol
iterable@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 20:16
nextcollapse
Why? Nothing requires Windows 11. It doesn’t even have a new directx which is why most had to upgrade from 7. Browsers and malware software will work for years. Hell malwarbytes still updates for Window 7.
I do and if the computer is for work yes update to 11. But for gaming only why would anyone care if it doesn’t break your games? I do nothing but game on a PC and have no need to update until it is required for gaming. Also it is not like on that date all security updates to that point vanish. Firefox and Chrome will still update for security. Malwarebytes will still also update for security.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
on 05 Apr 20:18
nextcollapse
Linux. I’ve been putting if off because of hardware reasons that would be annoying to explain beyond the solution is upgrading the motherboard, which is bottlenecking me anyways.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 20:22
nextcollapse
I don’t know. If more devs start to support Linux, I probably will.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
on 05 Apr 20:30
nextcollapse
Why need upgrade at all? I’ve never needed “support” before
XP might actually be somewhat safe to connect by now. Most of the viruses and worms have updated past it by now.
GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today
on 06 Apr 01:51
collapse
Noooooo. There was an article in the last 6 months about someone connecting a windows xp to the internet just to see what happened, and within 10 minutes it had been scanned and infected. They repeated the experiment several times.
It’s child’s play (like, literally script kiddie level) to run automated scans and if a vulnerability, like a really old operating system, is found to then attack it.
Well, security through obscurity never really did work
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
on 05 Apr 20:45
nextcollapse
The “support” most importantly includes security updates. You better bet every hacking group has been working at finding fresh zero days for Windows 10 and is stockpiling them to start hammering any PCs that can’t be upgraded this October
Would you rather leave door wide open and signs saying come inside and take all the info about me, along with all my moment
Or
Have your data, & money protected in all kinds of defense systems so it makes billions times harder to take all of that
That’s what security updates are for. Same for other apps as well when they find things bad actors will try to exploit
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 21:05
collapse
In fairness, after October that security system will still be in place. The difference is that as soon as attackers finds a bypass, the security system will be worthless against future threats
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some exploits that have already been discovered that people have been sitting on in anticipation of support ending soon.
secret300@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Apr 20:44
nextcollapse
Been using Linux for years and the only issue with it is the incompetence of big studios. And them going out of their way to make sure stuff doesn’t work on Linux.
Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
on 05 Apr 20:53
nextcollapse
I’m on 12, and will be upgrading to 13 when Trixie hits stable.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 21:22
nextcollapse
I left Windows ~2-3 years ago since I got tired of having to keep up with ways to disable the MS account requirements or disable the ads every time there is a major version upgrade on a platform I use every day.
Took some time to settle, for various reasons, but I’m currently on Fedora Silverblue.
I tried some of its derivatives (Aurora, Bazzite), as well as OpenSuse, but came back to Fedora and Gnome because of various issue with KDE and OpenSuse asking for root password everywhere.
20 years for me (even thought I used Windows for a year in there). There’s no point in using Windows at all, unless you’re forced at work, or stuck because you don’t want to learn an alternative tool.
Yes, but honestly, I find that games enforcing incompatible AC are often poorly developed games. The latest that disappointed me was EA WRC. It was quite good, but the gameplay was less interesting that Dirt Rally 2, for exemple, and since they enforced AC, they also started to deploy DLC, and destroy the game. The lesson was to never ever buy something from Electronic Arts (the last time was more than 10 years ago for me). And kernel level anti-cheat is NO GO on my computer. It doesn’t matter if the game is awesome or not, I disagree with the fact that a game company has root access on my computer just for entertainement.
I am on Fedora. But i still have Windows dual boot left. But I dont use Windows 10 that often - I don’t see the need. I just have it as a backup OS. I have free enough diskspace on my SSD so currently not doing anything.
But I dont use Windows 10 that often - I don’t see the need. I just have it as a backup OS. I have free enough diskspace on my SSD so currently not doing anything.
I did exactly that for many years. And then one day I had something that called for booting to a separate OS, so…
my solution
Trusting Windows with whatever it was still made me nervous, and I crammed an Ubuntu Live USB into a USB port and booted to that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But keeping Windows around on unused disk space didn’t do me any harm.
JakobFel@retrolemmy.com
on 05 Apr 21:37
nextcollapse
Switching to Linux with no intentions of moving back. I’m fed up with MS. I’m not settled on which distro (and I don’t want to distro hop on my main machine) but I know for sure that I’m switching.
I love trying other distros but I can’t afford to regularly be down a few days to a week to restore backups, which is why I want my main system to stick with a distro long-term. Mint is definitely one of my strongest considerations for sure.
Linux for gaming and most other use cases, Windows for the one proprietary application I use. Although I suppose I might go IoT LTSC.
Someone8765210932@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 21:43
nextcollapse
I technically have a Win10+Linux dual boot setup right now, but I haven’t used the Linux install in forever, and I think it’s broken. So I’ll probably fix this and then use Linux when possible and continue using the unsupported win10 for everything that needs windows.
I remember people mentioning the win10 LTCS version with 10 years support, but I’m not going to buy anything from them. Maybe I’ll use it unactived if needed.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:47
collapse
Cough MassGravel Activation Scripts Cough
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
on 05 Apr 21:55
nextcollapse
I have Windows only for League, no Steam installed. Ergo I don’t count
MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 22:11
nextcollapse
My (perfectly good) PC isn’t Win 11 compatible, so I can’t upgrade from 10. I’ve got Linux running on an old laptop so I’m thinking of installing it on my PC. Buuut a few years back I moved from Google Drive to OneDrive and so now I’m looking at Proton Drive instead. It’s all a big time soak, sigh. But worth it? I guess… The timing isn’t great either - I’ve got an exam in October that I need to study hard for and do practical prep as well, plus I have travel plans. It’s all a bit much. I’m too old to be this busy!
buddascrayon@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 22:16
nextcollapse
I had read that Steam on WINE is pretty stable. Is it not?
theneverfox@pawb.social
on 05 Apr 22:23
nextcollapse
Steam runs natively and uses proton for game compatibility, similar idea to wine but it’s geared for games
It’s pretty good. Most games will run, sometimes with a little jiggling to get it to work, although performance isn’t quite as good (some games are particularly rough)
I’m technically dual booting, but I haven’t launched Windows in almost a year, and there’s only been a handful of games I passed on primarily because of support
My top pick right now is fedora silverblue, I’m running it on my test bed/server and I’ve been impressed
I’m running bazzite on my main one, which is related but geared towards steam and maximizing game support, it’s pretty good and closer to “just works” for any kind of gaming device, it’s less polished but it’s still pretty good
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:45
collapse
Valve made a compatibility layer for the Steam Deck and Linux called Proton. It uses a lot of technologies, including WINE, dxvk, and more to make Windows games run well on Linux. It basically takes Windows API calls and translates them to Linux with little to no performance penalty.
Steam also has native builds for Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, and Linux now, so you can just install it. Most Linux distros have Steam right in their software manager now.
Typically, unless the game has blocked Linux with something like kernel-level anticheat, it’ll “just work” on Linux now. There is a community database called ProtonDB that has a list of games and how well they do or don’t work.
Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions.
Cocopanda@futurology.today
on 05 Apr 22:30
nextcollapse
If I can still game. I might just move to Linux. But also am enjoying pricing out a windows 11 build with my imaginary budget.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:41
nextcollapse
Check Proton DB. If the games you enjoy work fine on Linux, which is the case for most games these days thanks to Proton, you should be good. The big exception is games with kernel-level anticheat.
If not, you can always dual boot for the few games that don’t.
I made the switch to pure Linux gaming when I got my Steam Deck two years ago. Been loving it ever since. Even SteamVR games work great streaming to my Quest headset.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 07:24
collapse
The only things that don’t work at this point have actual malware as a mandatory requirement
Cocopanda@futurology.today
on 06 Apr 07:32
collapse
I’m sure WarThunder is included in that.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 07:56
collapse
Made my jump to Arch (btw) a couple of years ago and haven’t really looked back. I have Win10 as a second boot option, but that’s reserved specifically for Game Pass and VR, but it’s very rare I boot it. Don’t care to upgrade even after EOL, and I’d never recommend Arch to anyone but the most comfortable with Linux, but it’s been a great option for me.
DaseinPickle@leminal.space
on 05 Apr 22:48
nextcollapse
I moved back to Linux and it works wonderfully. Except for HDR. That require a bit of tinkering. And there is no good way of getting it to work in any Linux browser, except for some very clunky workarounds. Hopefully that will be fixed.
My 15 year old desktop also “couldn’t do windows 11”, but you can bypass whatever bullshit limitations Microsoft puts on the installation process. That computer has been running 11 for several years now without any issues at all. Rock solid.
forkDestroyer@infosec.pub
on 05 Apr 22:57
nextcollapse
Jumped to linux with a new laptop, but not gaming on it. It’s fine for what I need. My old machine will be for gaming only.
Been a Linux user for ages, I do have Windows 11 installed on another partition but I rarely - if ever - boot into it.
I mention the above spiel because I don’t understand what additional points people have against windows 11? It seems very similar to windows 10 for me - what’re the reasons for people hating it?
Genuinely not trying to be obtuse, here - I’m just wondering what the primary pain points are of win 11?
Is it the requirement for using a Microsoft account to log in vs. a normal local account? Or the one drive stuff? (upon install it did move most of my personal folders into a weird OneDrive directory, and I had to use the registry to wipe out OneDrive and move them back. Very annoying.)
The inability to easily turn off copilot and the hiding setting between 3 different menus was the thing that finally did me in. I know you can turn copilot off but I didn't like the idea that Microsoft could "accidentally" re enable their spyware on my system. To be clear I am not being hyperbolic I really do think that recall and copilot are spyware that is just Microsoft approved. And then there is one drive just being pain in the ass constantly.
Those all sound shitty - granted, I’m pretty sure I don’t have Copilot on my system, but maybe it didn’t ask me during the upgrade? Either way - my original point still stands: all of these seem just as bad as Win10 (to me, a person who barely used either).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad people are joining us on the Linux bandwagon, it just seems like the reasons for making the switch are almost arbitrary. Another way of putting it would be: "This is what finally pushed you over? ‘Copilot’?"
Anyway, regardless, I’m happy that people are making better choices - regardless of the reasons for doing so!
HollowNaught@lemmy.world
on 05 Apr 23:00
nextcollapse
Swapped to Linux last week. Currently dual booting. Over the coming months, I’m going to slowly transfer all my stuff over as well
BingBong@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Apr 23:19
nextcollapse
Bought my wife a framework laptop, slapped fedora on it and have been helping her make the switch. So far so good other than Obsidian not working the same as OneNote.
How’ve you/her liked the Framework? Which one did you get? I’ve been considering one for months but I don’t have a huge need but it’d be nice to have a solid laptop rather than my Chromebook that I’m running Arch on when I’m on my couch.
Framework 13 DIY edition. I’ve been quite happy so far and so has she. Configuring it was trivial and the one issue I ran into (setting up backups) was due to my not being familiar with fedora and KDE. Build quality is good, the bezel was the only part that gave me pause. She doesn’t use it a ton so it’s likely any minor nagging quirks will take a while to tease out.
It was tricky to get it to snap into place cleanly and I had to jostle some of the monitor wires into place while installing. The instructions did note that this was a common challenge point and so I was prepared for moving the wires. Once installed it’s good quality.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 07:23
collapse
Already done. I dual boot at work (translated: I have a dormant win10 partition just in case, but I’m more likely to use my win10 VM in Linux) and at home I’m Linux only, having wiped my windows partition to reclaim the space within weeks of installing Linux.
I use Mint Cinnamon in both places. It’s a very polished, all in one, install and go OS. But it’s still Linux so I have the terminal available and I can find out how to fiddle with and change whatever I want.
For all manner of 2D desktop use, I find it superior to windows. Even being a very full-featured distro, when the software is made to serve the user and not 50 competing corporate priorities, you can tell. It’s so much more responsive and nice to use. (It is not flawless of course)
For gaming, I don’t play the newest stuff or multiplayer games with crazy anti-cheat, but I have not had any regrets so far. Many games have native Linux versions, probably thanks to valve and the Steam deck, but windows games running in proton have been smooth sailing for me.
I think I’ve just dealt with enough computer crap in my life that I prefer using not just Linux apps but FOSS software for as much as I can. If some game or some photo editing suite will absolutely not work in Linux or work acceptably in a VM, I am fine with it not existing in my world. I used to not find that acceptable, but now I’m over it. In a chill way though, not an angry anti-Microsoft way.
danciestlobster@lemm.ee
on 05 Apr 23:34
nextcollapse
I would love some advice, personally. How big of an issue is this really? Like…do I really have to care if there aren’t system updates anymore? How big of a security risk is it actually?
VanillaFrosty@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 00:10
nextcollapse
Well the thing is, we don’t know. Maybe 10 is patched so well that no one is hanging onto a major exploit just waiting for EOL. Or so well that no new major exploits are found (extremely unlikely). Then so long as you’re just gaming or watching YouTube it doesn’t really matter.
But someone could be holding onto one or someone could stumble into one. And all it takes is one. So it’s always just a gamble with unknowable odds.
I wonder if I could jail it from the rest of my network.
The problem I guess is if I dual boot, I wont feel like the data on linux is safe, and Id need to ensure I set up and take down the jail while booting windows…
I guess I should just fix the linux issues that make my gaming experience less fun. Maybe I need a fancier graphics card.
In the short-term (0-6mo, maybe less): probably nothing really changes. It’s not super likely that anyone would be holding on to a massive flaw, waiting for EOL. Nothing stops Microsoft from patching after EOL for something major, they’ve done it before.
Medium-term (maybe up to a year or two): you’re looking at real potential to get infected with --who-knows-what–. Hard to say how long it would take or how widespread it would be.
Longer term: massive, massive security hole. Microsoft has probably even patched a major thing or two by now (despite EOL), but there will always be more
Sooner or later the issue will be that some software probably won’t be available any more for your system.
beastlykings@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 15:28
collapse
This is a minor issue compared to the security risks. See the other comment in this thread for a good explanation.
Hazelnutcookiez@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Apr 23:48
nextcollapse
My old as hell PC died I’m getting a steam deck as a replacement with a dock and …so I’ll just be dual booting into windows 11 and obviously steam OS when I decide to play hand held.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world
on 05 Apr 23:52
nextcollapse
Going to migrate to Bazzite. Just need a free weekend to do it.
Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 01:00
nextcollapse
100% worth it. I’ve had a few issues early on but I’m rocking oldish hardware (6700k, 2080 ti). It’s been rock solid for the last 6 months though. A lot of games that ran semi poorly in Windows run great now (Control and Arkham Knight def come to mind) and some cpu heavy bullet hell style games slow to a crawl now much earlier on (I can get sub 20 fps real quick in Rogue Genesia).
The basics (getting the OS installed, some initial settings to your liking etc) is quick. Managed to go from “completely untouched build” to “we gaming on Linux now boys” in a couple hours and most of that was waiting for BG3 to download on my 100Mbit connection. Pretty much everything I needed worked right on the first boot. Then again, I didn’t have much data to transfer over.
I tried a few but couldn’t get them to work. I think the issue was my 1080ti GPU. I did get one of the other recommended Debian kde plasma builds installed and that one is looking nice. I was having issues with getting the same games to run that work on my steam deck. Probably just need to spend more time on it.
EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de
on 06 Apr 16:37
collapse
SteamOS-like distributions probably aren’t for you right now. nvidia has massively improved over the year but it’s still not on par with AMD.
Using an immutable distro (which Steam OS and its kind are) is just going to complicate things. Your easiest bet is using a distro that will install the correct drivers at install, like pop_os or mint.
I literally just swapped my key for my win10 pc’s to win10 ltsc iot with mass and now dont have to worry for wayy longer. I suggest everyone without the option to switch to do the same.
cryptid@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 06 Apr 01:06
collapse
“bought” is an interesting word choice when they used massgrave :D
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 00:52
nextcollapse
It’s going to be purchase a new hard drive and then jump to Linux Mint this August.
It’s not an experience I am looking forward to (5080S, I do a lot of modding, and enjoy fangames/indie games which do not always play nice with linux) but needs must - the Linux community in general is very friendly, so we’ll get through it, even if the first 6 months are rough. I’ll keep the dual boot and push the windows partition to 11 if needed by work, that way I can put off rewriting my elderly access database for another few years.
Honestly, Microsoft are committing suicide when it comes to home users. It won’t be sudden, but the wheels are turning, all the IT savvy folks are switching people over (already did my aunt’s potato, mum’s demi-tato is next week). Eventually, a tipping point will be reached and offices will start switching - I hope that day comes before I die of old age!
It essentially (if I’ve understood things correctly) aims to replicate the behaviour of proton.
Works like a charm, I have a simple alias set up that will run almost any .exe - even installers and stuff. Only thing that hasn’t worked so far was my digital exam software (that is essentially a windows rootkit) because it couldn’t find the cursor images lol.
…all the IT savvy folks are switching people over…
Totally feels strange because my dad’s laptop doesn’t have the TPM requirement and he was telling me about how he was talking to the IT guy at his work about possibly switching to Linux just so he can keep his laptop. No clue if he’s gonna have me or ask if Mr. IT can do it, though, if he follows through. Absolutely insane because I might not be the only person in my house using it anymore (android not included because I view it as a completely separate entity).
I was telling him that day that I could flash Mint (have the most recent addition on my laptop) to a thumb drive if he was actually wanting to switch over. He’s definitely an average computer user, so nothing too special, but it still feels real weird.
Though this will also suck for a while because the tech savvy people helping them switch over will also be running IT for these people who have never used Linux before and most likely have never even used windows CMD either. Cannot wait for stories of people being fed up because their parent/aunt/uncle/friend/whoever looked up how to fix their device and entered the cursed rf command without thinking once about it.
good thing about the terminal is it scares most general users so much that they won’t touch it even with instructions. There will be many issues, but I don’t think people running random commands in the terminal will be common
So, in the case of my aunt, there were a few teething troubles. That said, a lot of it was just requests to add web page shortcuts to her desktop.
The really big thing is that she’s stopped complaining about how slow her laptop is, and openly says she finds it easier to use.
Most of the troubleshooting is going to be around office software and games. It’s also going to be about replacing windows tools (I am really going to miss my “.bat cave”), and learning new troubleshooting skills (wine is a bit rough to troubleshoot unless you’re willing to get your mining gear out and dig deep into logs).
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 12:05
collapse
Mint
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
So, oddly enough, I’m not a complete novice. My background is mostly just lubuntu, puppy, mint and a bit of debian. I’ve shifted away from Ubuntu after the pro service ads in terminal, and the absolute fucking nightmare that is snap.
I’ve done my time in “oh shit I fucked up Linux again” purgatory, and it’s my daily driver for work. Terminal is a place I’m generally ok with; I know enough to find my way around and fix things as needed.
My issue is I’ve never really run dedicated graphics from a Linux distro, and because of the continual updates and proprietary elements I worry about keeping up. I don’t mind breaking things, it comes with the territory.
That said, bazzite sounds interesting - especially the optimisation. The guides on the main page also alerted me to something I’d not considered - going to have to redo my filesystem on every drive. Thanks for the idea of an alt distro, will dig into this a bit more - if it’s built in fedora I might have a bit of a learning curve (never used it as a distro).
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 13:35
collapse
Again, infinite free troubleshooting if you run into any issues, feel free to message me! I’ve given a bunch of people bazzite at this point, and can run you through just about anything.
Make sure not to accidentally choose “steam gaming mode”, on the download since that’ll turn it into basically a steam-deck interface.
When that time comes I’ll probably either remove networking from, or just wipe win10 entirely.
Been using mint as my daily for a while now and I hate booting into windows 😂
Dumbkid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 01:34
nextcollapse
No way I’m switching to Linux yet, multi monitors support with mixed resolutions and vrr on nvidia still kinda sucks. As soon as someone makes that work I’ll try it out on a separate partition. Buy last time I tried my other monitors had all kinds of issues when I had games open with gysnc
I’m using multi monitors with mixed resolutions and a very old nvidia card (gtx 670).
The only problem I have is that if I put them to sleep, while autorandr or whatever gets me the resolutions and layout back, the app windows move around like crazy because they all wake up at different times, likely due to a mix of HDMI + DVI + DisplayPort connections.
Edit: I see now, this is only an issue when we are talking about vrr simultaneously.
A couple weeks ago I attempted to switch over to Linux. Tried installing both Cachyos and Nobara. It was kind of a shit show, nothing worked correctly, stuff was erroring out and crashing left and right, and after a couple days I gave up.
Today I went ahead and installed windows 11. There were some issues… It wouldn’t recognize my CD key, and I accidentally wiped a partition from the wrong drive. But as for the os itself, I spent a few hours getting things set up, and it’s not as horrible as I thought it would be. I was able to simply turn off most of the shit like copilot and recall, and all the advertisements, and I pretty much have it working as I want it to.
RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com
on 06 Apr 01:46
nextcollapse
I’ve been using Linux for years and I’ve never heard of the distros you just named.
I’m not surprised at all that you had trouble using niche distros. Try something more popular with good documentation so you have a community supporting you with bug testing, guides, and Q+As when people run into issues you might run into later.
My priorities are being able to run Davinci resolve and Steam games. Nobara ticks those boxes while advertising itself as user friendly. I have heard too many stories of people having trouble getting this stuff running on something like Linux mint, so I didn’t go in that direction. I need to do more with my computer than just view web sites or write code.
maybe try bazzite? i’ve found it to be a better experience than nobara and steam games run fine for me, aside from the obvious big titles that have anticheat issues.
I don’t really feel like going down the rabbit hole of trying a hundred different distros to maybe find one that works. My experiences with those two were that things were completely broken, randomly. Like just trying to boot the USB installer would lock up half the time, the installer itself would fail partway through most of the time, when things got fully installed, trying to update or install new things would just fail randomly. The kde desktop would crash just from me changing settings in the kde menus.
sounds like you’ve made up your mind. wnjoy windows 11!
RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com
on 06 Apr 18:54
collapse
I would try Ubuntu in your shoes, personally. It’s got downsides but it’s definitely plug and play. I don’t know what metrics distrowatch uses to rate distros but it’s widely known that Ubuntu is user friendly as hell.
RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com
on 06 Apr 06:00
collapse
Where are you getting these distros from? Most popular distros do more than “just view websites or write code.”
If you ever give it a go again, I’d suggest trying to get used to software that you’d need to use on Linux (aka, alternatives that won’t work well outside of windows). I already used a lot of free openscource software that works on Linux like libre office, krita, kdenlive, obs, when i used windows. That made swapping a lot more comfortable. Next I really recomend something like Linux mint, or popos (look up screenshots and decide witch one looks cooler) then, if you are enjoying it after a few months, give arch or nixos a try, or don’t if the distro you use does what you want, and you found ways to make it work for you, then stick with it. I hope the next time you give it a try works out better for you.
Da Vinci Resolve has native Linux builds though and should work. And does on Ubuntu based, Rocky Linux, arch and NixOS. I’m not sure about Nobora (Fedora based).
Though it’s hard to know what went wrong with vague descriptions like “everything was crashing”…
terrifyingtuba@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 01:42
nextcollapse
I am going to attempt to switch to Linux, I’m definitely not going to willingly use windows platforms again.
humpacactus@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 02:23
nextcollapse
As a lifelong windows gamer I’ve just switched to cachyos and honestly it’s been fantastic. Performance seems on par (or within 5 percent) and it’s super customizable. Haven’t had any issues getting things working, including non-steam alphas. Went into it thinking I’d probably switch back, but have no need currently. You definitely need some troubleshooting skills, but nothing too crazy if you already tinker a bit in windows.
Edit: I’m also running triple monitors at 144hz and it’s been completely fine (and I’m on Nvidia).
For those of us who didn’t know, CachyOS is and Arch-based distor with performance focus and some ease of use tools.
this blog explains some difference to other Arch-based distros
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
on 07 Apr 02:07
collapse
I bought a new computer a few years ago that has 11 on it. With how the Steam Deck has seemed to really promote Linux for gaming, I’m seriously considering it on my next build.
It is very obvious to me that Windows is becoming increasingly subject to enshittification.
terrifyingtuba@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 03:34
collapse
Yeah, proton seems to really work wonders, and it seems it’s only going to get better. I have windows 11 on my work laptop and I hate it.
sdtg5afwooasiwefr@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 01:45
nextcollapse
This year will be the year of the Linux desktop for shure. I believe in it like the years before.
I tried a rest run with Kubuntu on an old laptop I had, and it runs 95% flawlessly. My biggest issue is my new Brother printer that I’m trying to install connected to Wi-Fi. The system sems to know it’s there, but then doesn’t seem to install the drivers. My Android phone prints there just fine.
Plan on, if possible, cloning my account to a new account on a new internal drive (preferably a 2TB+ drive) to save all my stuff that I want and don’t feel like moving over due to laziness. Then on another partition, I plan on having the rest of the space being used for Linux. All I gotta do is make sure the win10 partition doesn’t receive an ounce of Internet connectivity at all and pray I don’t end up with a virus or something similar somehow (because even the safest internet practices aren’t safe enough anymore).
Hopefully I can turn that partition into a cold partition where I can keep the current games I have that aren’t downloaded through Steam installed to ensure I can still play them. Then I can slowly debloat it by uninstalling everything I don’t need on there and get rid of a ton of files/unnecessary programs so that way I can still have roughly 500-600GB for win10 just in case I ever need it for anything, like a program I genuinely cannot figure out how to get working on Linux.
r_deckard@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 04:27
nextcollapse
I’ve got a few computers - my daily driver is Win10, there’s a media player still on 8.1 (only accesses music streams and it’s not spotify, it’s URLs like das-edge15-live365-dal02.cdnstream.com/a98345), the main pihole machine runs vanilla Debian, the backup pihole on a Raspberry Pi also running Debian, and a couple of older laptops also running Debian.
By emulating the Android version, yes. But The java version is better anyway.
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
on 06 Apr 04:51
nextcollapse
Man, I really tried today to get Linux on my Framework laptop.
I can’t believe how goddamn frustrating the experience has been, and I’ve dabbled in Linux for decades.
I try Mint. Install as a dual boot… Installation done. Reboot. Straight into Windows. Check partitions and nothing has changed.
Try again. All seems fine. Boot. Some error screen that won’t let me get into Mint.
Do this like four more times with no luck.
Tried Ubuntu. No easy way to install as a dual boot unless I want to mess around with custom paritions. Also, GNOME sucks ass, but Ubuntu seems way more polished than Mint.
I did get mint on a mini PC I have running through my TV. But audio wasn’t working, so that took a while to sort out. And the onscreen keyboard does nothing on the lock screen. So unpolished, and I have no idea why it’s recommended “for beginners” when it feels unfinished.
With windows, there’s no messing around. Everything just works. And I fucking hate that I feel forced to choose a miserable, hacky, terminal-based experience with countless hours of installing shit through commands… Or a smooth, reliable, easy one with bloatware and spying on the backend. Goddammit!
Yeah with Linux if it doesn’t work you’re often just screwed.
I can recommend a rolling release distro, having the latest and greatest can sometimes give you bugfixes that are critical for your setup. It can also break stuff but nothing a rollback won’t fix.
Another reason to prefer rolling release is the upgrade path. For Ubuntu upgrading is just awful when you do any tinkering. I ran Kubuntu 20.04 for a while and because I had some custom package sources installed it wouldn’t let me upgrade to 24.04. Nobody could help, and the package manager is awful it doesn’t let you trace which packages are blocking the upgrade.
I’m kind of miffed that everyone is recommending mint as a starter distro because as soon as they start looking for guides on how to tinker there is a high chance they are going to make their system un-upgradable.
Yeah with Linux if it doesn’t work you’re often just screwed.
This has been my experience for decades. Even if it works, something will suddenly stop working and I’ll have no way to fix it without hours of research and messing around.
With windows, I can fix anything quickly through the GUI. But haven’t had to in a very, very long time.
I’m going to look at other options. I want to stick with a distro that is fully supported by my laptop to avoid even more issues. But the options are limited.
Had the completly oposite experience: mint installed in 2 hours with everything working. No bloatware, no bullshit.
Biggest obstacle was, that changing the device bootorder is nog enough- uefi seetings needed some love to. I can imagine that this is not necessery if you do not use dual boot ( like win…talking about experience…)
For me everything works perfect- mint is my primary os now
After posting, and a little soul-searching, I decided to install Ubunu and give things another try.
Installation failed the first time, seemingly right at the end! Tried again, and it went through.
Set things up, and things seem to be OK. I’m only running a browser, and needed to try a paid windows program through Wine, which installed and loaded up without any real issues.
I go for a walk during lunch. Come back to the Linux login screen (expected, as I’d assume it locks like Windows). Log in… blank slate. All my work was closed, and it was like a fresh reboot. What the hell??? No error messages or anything. I literally have the browser and like a few other programs installed, so it’s not like the system is a mess from years of bad software installations.
Sigh…
Then I try another paid Windows program used to convert video files. It seems to work, but it’s not detecting my Intel graphics card. As I look for help on how to do this (officially, from my Laptop vendor), I get pages and pages of things to try… all through the terminal.
I mean, this is stuff that just works on Windows. No messing with stuff.
I really want Linux to be my daily driver, and even I type this from Ubuntu, I can’t help but feel like something is going to catastrophically self-destruct at any moment, and that kind of anxiety is never felt while using Windows.
I couldn’t imagine setting linux up for my wife, if this is the experience I’m having.
CitricBase@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 06:25
nextcollapse
Your experience is not invalid, but It’s fucked up that you’re giving Windows credit for “just working” when Windows doesn’t even try to support dual booting. In fact the reason Linux is having so much trouble is because it has to tiptoe so that Windows doesn’t break.
If you don’t like Gnome or Mint Cinnamon, why not try KDE? Something like Kubuntu, perhaps? I use Fedora KDE myself.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 06:57
nextcollapse
Couldnt OP use the boot loader feature of Windows and add their distro as anotger option?
From Window’s perspective, there’s no need to dual boot. But I get what you’re saying. I’m not trying to defend Microsoft, and think that they’ve been enshittifying windows for years now.
But everything works without jumping through hoops. And if it doesn’t, the fix is usually very easy and done through a GUI 99% of the time.
But you are right. There are many flavours of Linux to try. Aesthetics aren’t my priority, though. I do need things to work without spending hours trying to figure it out.
I’m at an age where messing around on my computer for days on end is long gone. 😵
Gonna be a useless recommend, but try Fedora or Bazzite (Fedora Silverblue gaming with tweaks to make it easier).
I’ve had some friends with similar complaints about Mint having one off issues with hardware, which is usually because its downstream Ubuntu which means kernel support can be all over the place.
Fedora is probably best bang for buck in latest stable release without entering the realm of unstable rolling like Arch. Really the only thing I’ve found that it lacks is more varied support for ARM boards out of box and a cross compile package for ARM from x86.
By default it does have a slightly annoying repo setup because software that isn’t FOSS ends up on RPMFusion which you have to enable as a user, which is why I suggest Bazzite, which also uses the immutable Linux design which makes it much easier to prevent from breaking or fixing by rolling back a change.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 06:51
collapse
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Fedora and Ubuntu are officially fully supported by laptop, so it’s Mint and a few others to a lesser extent.
I won’t use Fedora due to it being American, but the Fedora experience was quite nice the last time I tried.
I may explore other options through the Framework (laptop) community to see what else I can try.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 13:33
collapse
Bazzite works around the issues with american patents, if that’s the problem.
If your problem is american control over your computer, I assure you, they have extremely limited control, at best, they own the package manager, which only runs if you tell it to.
I can’t switch to Linux due to software requirements for work. On my personal computer I’m using Xubuntu for well over a decade, I didn’t like the unity window manager of Ubuntu. I heard they changed to something else by now, but I can’t be bothered to switch.
kyub@discuss.tchncs.de
on 06 Apr 05:09
nextcollapse
Obviously Linux is the correct choice but I fear most will simply continue to suck it up and update to W11.
It’s the other way around. In general, you should choose Linux over Windows, and only if you really need it, use Windows. Also, if you need Windows just temporarily for some things, consider running it in a VM inside Linux just for those occasions.
Why - well, to keep it short, Linux’ main weaknesses for common users (difficulty, compatibility) are gradually fading away (they are already almost non-existent these days if you have mainstream hardware and a mainstream desktop distro like Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu) while Windows’ main disadvantages (forced stuff like cloud/AI integrations/ads, complete disregard of user’s privacy, increasing security issues due to outdated stuff being kept in the OS for backwards compatibility reasons, and many more things) keep on increasing at a rapid rate. Microsoft has a big business interest in getting all users locked into their cloud ecosystem, locked into a subscription with ever-increasing monthly fees, and give up control over their own computer and their digital privacy. They want users to pay them with their data AND monthly subscription fees. MS Office, for example, will probably not have a pure locally runnable version after 2029 (or around that year) anymore. This Microsoft train is heading towards that wall. And the speed is increasing. And tons of users are still inside that train. And Windows itself likely won’t be spared either. They want you to pay monthly for M365 and they will get their customers there, eventually.
Furthermore, by supporting Microsoft you’re supporting a very unethical company. They partner with big surveillance companies like Palantir and they are an active participant in the despicable ad-tech-industry (the industry that’s spying on literally everyone and buying/selling/storing tons of intimate user data even though it’s illegal in most countries), they partner with the military, law enforcement and other things.
Also, they are a US company, and we all know how US politics is like these days, and this can have a big influence on how “trustworthy” US-based proprietary software will become in the near future. Since 2020, arguably no US-based proprietary software or online service is trustworthy anymore anyway, because of the CLOUD act, which is current law in the US - it means that the US government has access to any customer data stored by a US-based company, regardless of where on Earth they are storing it. This means the often-used claim “my data stored by that US company is safe because it’s in a European-based datacenter!!!11” is false since at least 2020, because MS is forced by US law to grant technical access to customer data to their government. Also, all previous “data transfer privacy agreements” between EU and US like Privacy Shield were all a joke and were dismantled in courts already. So there’s currently zero legal data protection - any data you send to a US company is theirs to do with as they please, essentially. And even if there were any meaningful legal data protections left, those big tech companies might still simply ignore that data protection law and only face minor or no fines at all.
So this is not a baseless claim. Just because I might keep some statements short doesn’t mean that there are no backing arguments. It’s a very good idea to reduce your dependency on Microsoft’s (or in general, US-based) proprietary software and services. For multiple reasons. Digital sovereignty has never been more important than these days. It has always been important but it was maybe too abstract in the past for many common users to realize. They are slowly starting to realize now that dependencies on proprietary software from any rogue regime (and the current US regime also falls into that category now) are not great to have. Plus, there is Microsoft on its own already putting ever-increasing user- and customer-hostile features into their products. It’s like being in an abusive relationship (as the one being abused). It’s just not good for you long-term.
So as a user, you should instead choose software which allows you to retain your digital sovereignty and control over your own computing, and simply not take all that abuse. Linux- or *BSD-based OSes with their open/transparent development models, fork-able/modifiable code bases, permissive licensing and essentially zero unwanted crap like adware, spyware, bloatware etc. offer exactly that. And because mainstream Linux distros have already become so easy to use these days, there are almost no reasons not to start using them.
All your arguments are logically sound and completely miss the main point.
The issue with Linux is not that “it’s getting there” in terms of user friendliness. It’s that it’s not there YET.
On top of that you have the community - just the other day I was searching to solve an issue, found a very similar thread, and the only reply the guy got was “here’s a link to the ArchWiki, welcome to the Linux world, you need to figure this out yourself”.
My 80 year old mother is not figuring out shit, she’s terrified when she has to copy a photo from a USB stick to here Photos folder.
Saying “Linux is fine for the massestoday” is just showing how detached many Linux users are from reality.
PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
on 06 Apr 05:13
nextcollapse
Linux doesn’t support VR.
TroublesomeTalker@feddit.uk
on 06 Apr 06:12
nextcollapse
ALVR isn’t awful. I needed new hardware and bit the bullet knowing I was likely going to lose VR, but with the hardware upgrade, it’s nicer in the new machine (Bazzite, 7900XT) than the old (Win 10, 2080 Super Max Q). Definitely not a drop in replacement yet though.
of course, the only good VR game is Alyx and once you finish that it’s only tech demos and chat rooms - nothing else really worth the bother of strapping a monitor to your face.
They are on that website, not just only the activator. They are better than retail isos because they come without bloat. I use iot LTSC permactivated with HWID on all my PCs and VMs
Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de
on 06 Apr 06:16
nextcollapse
I’m already on Linux, gaming isn’t as good but I only play old games anyway so it doesn’t matter.
Mandelbrot@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 06:39
nextcollapse
Use my PC for gaming and RTX so Windows only I’m afraid.
SpaceCheeseWizard@lemm.ee
on 06 Apr 06:53
nextcollapse
Linux would still be a good option. The driver isn’t as simple as AMD but not nearly as complicated as you would think. Unless you’re a Destiny 2, Fortnite, or League player you wouldn’t have any issues gaming either.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 06:56
nextcollapse
Already fiddling around enough with tge stuff I do with my PC which I installed Win11 on and I am in the EU meaning less BS than the US version (no forced upgrades, no ads (as described by US citizens) and so on).
I use Debian on my server as it’s a tool. Same for my pc. And I have a steamdeck.
And every tool has it’s worth no matter if it’s made from shitty chinesium or baller titanium.
I like the way Windows handles most things and I prefer it over having to fiddle with the way every Linux distro does it’s own thing (and I will never use Ubuntu).
Sooo, I’m in the same boat. Only, I sold my GPU expecting to get an upgrade and then didn’t for a long while - which is when I decided to make the switch to Linux, just to see how things go.
Now I added the GPU and - with issues - managed to get gaming going. It’s fine, I think. Played Hogwarts Legacy yesterday for a couple of hours. Got a 7800x3d and RX 9070 XT, with everything on Ultra (including Ray Tracing) and upscaling disabled, my GPU would be sitting between 80 and 100% utilisation, but FPS was very comfortable (don’t have a counter so don’t know exactly how many, but it was smooth).
HOWEVER, after a couple of hours my main monitor turned off and the other one turned… green. I think the graphics driver crashed? Not sure, honestly. Anyway, after a reboot everything was fine. Overall, I had a nice four hour-long session yesterday.
I guess what I’m saying is - give it a go! KDE is beautiful (do recommend Garuda Linux just for the design choices, but they also have A TONNE of “I’m a noob, help” features pre-configured), gaming is fine, you might enjoy it. And if you don’t, just switch back to Windows.
Is there an easy way to port all my stuff to Linux? I would not have made the switch in the past, but all the good will I attributed to Microsoft is pretty much gone. I’ve heard Mint is petty easy to hop onto?
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 06:51
collapse
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Thank you for you detailed response! I think something like Bazzite would be more up my alley based on what you said. Something that is hard to mess up is something I’d be more comfortable with for sure.
I appreciate your offer for troubleshooting help as well!
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 07:22
collapse
Make sure to not to choose steam gaming mode when you download it, it makes it a console like experience!
my matrix account is on my profile
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 06:49
nextcollapse
Jumped to linux for a test on an old laptop, currently on windows on my main PC but got parts on the way for a new build that’s going to be Linux.
Welcome to the other side, make sure to enjoy and use actual documentation of your software instead of random Q&A answered by ‘Community Moderators’ on Windows forums :)
SpaceCheeseWizard@lemm.ee
on 06 Apr 06:54
nextcollapse
Made the switch over a year ago. No regrets, everything works as I would want it to.
I have an ad hoc media server on 10. If it’s super working, you can bet I will replace it with something other than Microsoft. Unless work requires it, everything I use is Linux, Android, or Apple based. I don’t hate Windows, I just like everything else more.
Yeah I do OS installs for other people all the time but my main PC is a hot mess and I run a bunch of problematic software including VR. I’ll probably end up setting up a dual boot of Win11 & Linux and avoid Windows as much as possible. But I will procrastinate because I already use both OS’s on other PCs so I know what to expect. I’ll put it off as long as possible, hoping they postpone. Never do today what you can put off til next year :)
Firipu@startrek.website
on 06 Apr 07:38
nextcollapse
I run Linux on a small mini pc for some casual browsing.
I run windows on my main pc.
As long as some kernel anticheat (fortnite, cod, etc…) doesn’t run on Linux, I won’t be swapping.
30+y of windows use also makes me infinitely more comfortable with windows. All the complaints I always read about are totally moot for me (I understand the issue of privacy in windows. It’s the price I pay to have an OS that “just works” for me) .
While I enjoy tinkering, Linux is a royal PITA to use if you’re not used to it. I spend hours trying to figure out how to fix something that takes me 5m max in windows. I understand it’s a more a me than a Linux problem. But I’m certain many people struggle with the same things.
loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 08:30
nextcollapse
Maybe the last time you tried Linux was 30 years ago, but Linux compared to Windows just works.
If it takes you HOURS to find a fix to something that takes you literally 5 minutes on Windows, you are doing something wrong. Your research methods are flawed.
Some of my friends still use Windows, fixing their problems takes me half an hour to find a solution, while on Linux, I just open the terminal and insert one command. Last time that happened it was about a VPN kill switch. So the person had a VPN App installed on Windows with a kill switch enabled. Then they uninstalled the VPN application and the kill switch was still there.
How do you remove the kill switch? On Linux it’s ‘nmcli c ‘killSwitchName’ del’ on Windows it’s a journey to a new adventure.
For how I use my pc, everything just works. To give you a counter argument. My logitech devices just work out of the box on windows. For Linux I had to get a little specific tool.
Also try installing Japanese language input on Linux. Compare how much simpler it is on windows.
Linux is NOT simpler than windows in all situations. Maybe your own research methods are flawed?
I game, manage my NAS (truenas running jellyfish for media etc) , sail the high seas, and browse on my pc. I also remote into a small spare mini pc running Ubuntu server with a minecraft server on it. (Could’ve ran the server on windows, but wanted to tinker with Linux to learn)
It all works flawless.
Also, give me a Linux alternative for parsec that just works as well for remote gaming, both from other desktop devices as from a mobile devices.
Good on you. If more people were on linux, it’d give companies more incentive to make games accessible from there.
MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 08:24
nextcollapse
My gaming pc has just switched over to bazzite (as I use it like a console/htpc). Been wanting to do it for ages but needed to get an amd card beforehand for the best experience. Windows really started to grind my gears in the last few months too.
Made the upgrade last week to Linux mint and I’m loving it. Got my Arr stacks and stuff setup as dockers and it’s never worked so well. All the connection issues I’ve had on windows is now gone.
The interface is nice and not bloated. And I’m not being tracked which feels liberating.
Welcome :), if we’re being honest lot of the tracking still happens on Linux once you open your web browser but it definitively feel nice to be liberated of the one at OS level and a solid start for caring about online privacy
Yeah, it’s about reducing the amount of tracking though. I’ve since deleted my Google account, stopped using gmail, moved to proton, stopped using online password managers, deleted Reddit, quit watching YouTube, moved everything I can to open source programs. Libre office instead of 365 etc.
So 43% of Steam users are the kind of stickler that refuse to update their Windows to an objectively better version because it’s something new and different and breaks their habits. What would make you think these people would possibly just switch to a different OS altogether if a simple update was too much to ask for the past years?
Maybe 43% have hardware that is not supported by Windows 11. And don’t want to run windows 11 on unsupported hardware or go through the hassle of even installing on unsupported hardware.
If doing one registry edit and installing Win11 from the iso to bypass the silly “processor unsupported” message is a too high barrier for these 43%, how do you realistically expect these same people to go out of their way and install a Linux distro? Why should they be motivated to learn in which ways it works differently from the Windows architecture? And let’s not get started with “unsupported hardware” - even though the Linux experience has gotten so much smoother, it’s still not uncommon to have components with subpar or no real support.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Linux and I use it for work - but to think a huge part of gamers will switch to Linux with just because they don’t want to update their Windows is just illusory.
I don’t expect them to switch. I think it’s more likely they will stay until there games are no longer supported. Simply because a lot of people just don’t want or can’t edit the registry, because they think stats for people with technical knowledge. But I also don’t believe they will all switch to Linux.
I have no idea. I rely on music software that doesn’t have a Linux port. This sucks, because that software cost money, and if I can’t get it running reliably on Linux I might have to… either that, or get a Mac :/
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 09:15
nextcollapse
How do I even get started? Do I just install Mint and figure it out from there? Linux seems so complicated but it’s been a decade since I last tried. Nowadays, I feel old and this seems like it needs too much research
MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 09:19
nextcollapse
Honestly, one of the great uses for gen ai is “write me a script to diagnose this problem” and then pass the output back with “write me a script to fix it”
I don’t have the bandwidth in my life to diagnose and tinker for fun, and it’s really made a bunch of big annoying things easy.
I found KDE way more intuitive than gnome, even though I was last on a Mac before the switch. Perhaps pick a KDE distro.
Also maybe list here if you have any deal-breaker apps or workflows to the folks can say if it’s worth your effort.
Kage@discuss.tchncs.de
on 06 Apr 09:39
nextcollapse
I would recommend to try linux first by dualbooting. Try Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux MINT and KDE Neon (i really like it because it has a Windowsy feel). You can see how those distros look here: distrosea.com
I personally dont like the stock ubuntu, was really suprised by fedora.
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 11:11
collapse
Can second, Ubuntu sucks (but they did a lot of formative work in getting desktop Linux going), Fedora is great
dustyData@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 10:57
nextcollapse
Whatever you do. Don’t dualboot. It gives a wrong impression of what Linux is, and complexity is not inherently a part of it. Try Mint as a live USB OS first. That means the OS runs from a USB thumb drive. This will allow you to dip your toes before you dive in. Just like dipping toes, it’s a no-compromise way of testing, but if you choose to install you already have 90% of what you need.
Also it’s soooo easy for someone not very knowledgeable to misconfigure the boot loader. Don’t touch boot loaders unless you’re okay with potentially losing access to both your original OS and the new Linux install. You’d then have to either learn on the go and repair it yourself, or beg/pay someone else to repair it.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 12:04
collapse
Mint
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
thericofactor@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 12:46
collapse
I have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows. Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on. Have been using it for years.
The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup.
Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 12:53
collapse
I have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows.
So is KDE, that’s why I recommend it over cinnamon and not gnome.
Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on.
That has (mostly) nothing to do with your desktop environment!
Have been using it for years. The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup.
Just because you’re familiar with it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for beginners. People want HDR, mixed refresh rates, and mixed DPI displays to work properly, they do on KDE, they possibly never will on cinnamon. Just as an example, look at the rate of development on KDE based distros vs cinnamon… cinnamon is entirely outclassed. The KDE team is massive, the cinnamon team is a few people with no real funding. ( if you don’t believe me, here are the stats for the last month cinnamon side: github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly vs github.com/KDE/plasma-desktop/pulse although you’ll note kde isn’t developed on github and that’s just a mirror. It’s not even close, cinnamon has less monthly than 1/10th of the weekly for kde. The KDE text editor alone outpaces all of cinnamon dramatically, github.com/KDE/kate/pulse ) The rate of code output and refinement is not even close. The level of customization you can do with KDE vs cinnamon isn’t even comparable. If you run into an issue with cinnamon, you’re SOL, whereas KDE can actually worry about your bugs, because they have so many more developers.
That’s not even going into the massive disparity in security between the two, KDE uses wayland by default, and as a result is SIGNIFICANTLY more secure, just off the top of my head, here’s some problems with cinnamon that will not be resolved anytime soon, that have all already been resolved by this transition KDE-side:
Every single app can read your keyboard input without asking
Every single app can see what every single other app is doing without asking
Apps can fullscreen themselves and go over everything else, because they can control their own window placement to any degree they want, again, without asking.
Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.
Windows does have it… actually, it only has it. UAC already prevents you from modifying system files. There’s no way to turn it off without mucking about in the console. And it’s not a personal preference thing at all, it’s objectively superior for a beginner, and anything you can do with a normal distro can still be done with an immutable one assuming you have root access.
Reminder that just because something works for you, doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for a beginner. Try all the options extensively before you make a suggestion, you might not have made the right choice for everyone just because you have made the right choice for yourself. I make these suggestions after YEARS of extensive testing with many people as my guinea pigs.
I have tried giving people cinnamon, it has gone disasterously, usually due to DPI problems. But I don’t think it’s a safe recommendation at all, just given the security issues.
In short, i think the only reasonable recommendations for beginners in terms of desktop environments, are KDE or Gnome (if they’re mac users and are willing to learn something different), unless their hardware is TERRIBLE and old, in which case they might want lxqt or xfce, maybe.
ulterno@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 09:16
nextcollapse
Unfortunately not. Even as an IT person I can say I just wanna come home and boot up my games without hassle. Sure alot of things have been done with proton etc but still a massive amount of games don’t work without Soo much dang tweaking. I don’t have time for that especially with a job/being a single parent. I am highly interested in steamos though.
gigglybastard@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 09:47
nextcollapse
that’s also my excuse, but then again, i don’t even game that much. and i’m on rtx 3070 which will be getting too old soon for new games and new GPUs are just too expensive.
And god i hate w11. i mean it’s not that different than w10 but things just don’t work!
my logitech mouse stutters for no fucking reason, 10 year old games lag for no fucking reason. the whole windows lags after being waken up from sleep after a few days, i could go on and on. none of these problems existed on w10.
Why not dual-boot with steamos in that case?
Sure, some things may not work out-of-the-box now, but work is constantly being done and at least won’t regress like the step from W10 to W11.
gigglybastard@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 11:21
collapse
honestly, i’m just lazy. I would need to clear out one of my drives, i have three of them, 256gb, 512gb and 2tb. I keep windows on the smallest one. I would need to clear out the 512gb one and just get it done.
might get it done when w11 pisses me off a few more times :D
I had the same outlook before switching to Arch Linux, but honestly gaming on Linux is actually the lesser of my hassle. I can genuinely just grab msi files or exe files for games and feed them to Steam to get them playing via Proton. There’s only one (1!) game that I can’t play, and I’m 99% certain it’s a problem with my hardware, not my OS (Monster Hunter Wilds seems to hate my GPU and crash all the time). But even that was fixed with a mod (up until the latest update).
With that said, I’ve had a lot of hassle handling other things that are upstream of gaming so it’s not like you’re unreasonable in wanting an OS that is mostly stable. Then again, I made the decision to use Arch Linux, there’s distros that are simpler afaik.
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 11:03
collapse
Is Windows actually stable though? I used to have to use it for work, it’s a disgusting OS. Now I use Ubuntu for work, also disgusting, but it’s much better than Windows
“Mostly stable”. I’ve had my fair share of issues with Windows.
But one of the big benefit is that it is much easier to diagnose an issue on Windows, just by sheer volume of mainstream usage (IE users complaining about issues and seeking help online). Also, tech support won’t turn you around because you are on Linux, an OS they straight up refuse to support.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 11:13
collapse
I thought the same, especially since I had tried Linux on my main several times since the 90s (my first dual boot was with Slackware).
Then maybe 8 months ago I did the transition, and installed Pop!OS since I’m a gamer plus I have a NVidia graphics card and didn’t want to go through the whole hassle related to that (Pop!OS has a version which already comes with those drivers).
Mind you, I did got a separate SSD for Linux and meanwhile added a new one, which is where my games directory is mounted and upgraded the root one to something a bit bigger,
So, this time around, what did I find out in about 8 months of use:
Once, I did had to boot into CLI mode and have apt do some failed upgrades, which included doing some kind of rebuild thing (you get instructions of what command to run when apt fails). This was due to a upgrade of the apt itself, I believe. All the other times it just boots to graphics mode (I’m using X rather than Wayland) or if it fails to start it (happened only a handful of time) you just reboot it.
In general even though I’ve done things like add and change hardware components, I have done little tweaking via CLI and some of it I did it because I’m just more comfortable with it or wanted so obscure options (for example, I wanted to mount the drive shared with Windows with a specific user and group, so I had to edit fstab). Except for the more obscure stuff there are UI tools for all management tasks and one doesn’t have to actually do much management and things almost always just work (for example, I changed graphics card - whilst staying with NVidia - and it just booted and worked, no tweaks necessary)
As for games, I use Steam for Steam Games and Lutris for all other game versions including GOG. Both have install scripts specific for each game, that configure Wine appropriately, so you seldom have to do anything but install, launch and play. That said in average I have had to tweak maybe 1 in 10 games. Further, about 1 in 20 I couldn’t get them to work. If you do install pirated games, then there is no install script and you do have to do yourself the whole process of figuring out which DLLs are missing and configure them in Wine using Winetricks (curiously, I ended up having to install a pirated game because the Steam version did not at all work, and the pirated version works fine). Note, however, that since I don’t do multiplayer games anymore, I haven’t had problems with kernel-level anti-cheat not working with Linux.
Interestingly, for gaming you have safety possibilities in Linux which you don’t in Windows: all my games launched via Lutris are wrapped in a firejail sandbox with a number of enhanced security restrictions and networking limited to only localhost, so there is no “phone home” for the games running via that launcher (Steam, on the other hand, is a different situation).
I still have the old Windows install in that machine, but I haven’t booted into it for many months now.
Compared to the old days (even as recently as a decade ago), nowadays there is way less need for tweaking in Linux in general and for gaming, even Windows games generally just install and run as long as you use some kind launcher which has game-specific install scripts (such as Steam and Lutries), but if you go out of the mainstream (obscure old games, pirated stuff) then you have to learn all about tweaking Wine to run the games.
If you have a desktop and the space to install the hardware, just get a 256GB SSD (which are pretty cheap) and install a gaming-oriented Linux distro (such as Pop!OS or Bazzite) there, separate from Windows and you can dual boot them using your BIOS as boot manager: since the advent of EFI, booting doesn’t go through a boot sector shared by multiple OSs anymore, so if you install each in their own drive then they don’t even see each other (you can still explicitly mount the Windows partitions in Linux from the Files app to access them, but otherwise they have no impact whatsever on booting and running Linux) and only the BIOS is aware of the multiple bootable OSs and you can get it to pop up a menu on boot (generally by pressing F8) to change which one you want to boot.
For the 20 or 30 bucks of a 256GB SSD it’s worth the try and if you’re comfortable with it you can later do as I did and add another bigger one just for the directory with you games (or your home directory, though granted to migrate your home like this you do have to use the CLI ;))
CatZoomies@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 10:08
nextcollapse
It’s been going great! Everything works as I expected. I now have full confidence that I will never switch back to Windows. It really does feel liberating having an OS that doesn’t track me.
Steam OS, Batocera, Bazzite, Linux Mint… so many great distros for gaming alone.
WasteWizard@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 10:21
nextcollapse
Already prepared everything for the jump. Switched MS Office for LibreOffice, and Outlook for Betterbird. Tested install, configuration and access to backups in a VM. Next vacation I take I’ll go for it. Mint is my choice of Distro, because of Steam/Gaming reasons. With the US being antagonistic, if not outright hostile, right now, and Microsoft having their disgusting Copilot AI Analysis Fingers in everything, it’s the rational choice I think.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 12:02
nextcollapse
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Thanks, that was some great insight. Especially the drawbacks regarding cinnamon. Those are 100% things no normal user should ever have to think or worry about.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip
on 06 Apr 20:01
collapse
Didn’t know about betterbird! Nice :)
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
on 06 Apr 10:31
nextcollapse
If you use Windows as mere game launcher, you better have a application firewall set to whitelist Steam only anyway.
TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 10:41
nextcollapse
I switched a year ago and I love it. All my old games run better on linux than windows at this point. Proton is fucking amazing.
Nope, will probably avoid 11 as long as I can though. I have an Mvidia card (drivers are notoriously troublesome on Linux). And I need professional design software for work (as in, industry standard: Adobe or Affinity).
But I put 11 on my laptop to try it and I hate it. So many terrible UI changes, UX noticeably worse. Like they changed stuff just to say they changed stuff.
I considered going Linux for personal use and development, and then using another machine or dual boot for Mac for design software. But i learned about the Nvidia issues after I upgraded my card :/ and swapping to Mac’s walled garden after avoiding it for decades is… a sign of how bad W11 feels to use.
solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 11:35
nextcollapse
Might be worth testing Linux with a separate drive. I know people still have trouble with Nvidia, but there are a lot of people (myself included) that just had to install the drivers and have had zero issues thereafter. Mine is a slightly older gaming laptop.
I have a desktop with an AMD card that I tried to put Linux on and couldn’t get the drivers to work. I’m going to try again in the summer and hope they’ve caught up.
ohshit604@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 11:47
nextcollapse
Bonus points for optimal performance follow CUDA doc & OptiX doc for Ray-Tracing & utilization of Nvidia cuda cores.
thepineapplejumped@lemm.ee
on 06 Apr 12:42
collapse
On Ubuntu you can also just run:
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 12:01
nextcollapse
Bazzite makes nvidia pretty easy, although it can still be troublesome, they are working on it. There’s a different iso to install that is designed for nvidia, couldn’t be more straightforward.
DaedalousIlios@pawb.social
on 06 Apr 15:17
nextcollapse
If you have a newer NVIDIA, you should be good. It’s a little rough around the edges here and there (steam overlay flickered for a friend, but that was months ago and could well be fixed) , but to my understanding, the worst issues have been solved. And having previously used an RTX 2040, it worke perfectly where it truly matters.
Like others have said, try a dualboot. It can’t hurt.
I have an Mvidia card (drivers are notoriously troublesome on Linux).
They haven’t been for a while now. On some newer distros they’ll install the Nvidia drivers at the same time as the OS itself.
stormdahl@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 11:20
nextcollapse
I’ve been on 11 since before it was officially released. Honestly never had any issues with it, but I’m interested in hearing what sort of issues anyone else might have had? Are we talking about privacy concerns, bugs or performance issues?
solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 11:39
collapse
Privacy, UI/UX, admin controls, ads, pop ups or notifications, nagging about online services, AI, forced account creation, not working with older hardware.
stormdahl@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 11:48
nextcollapse
I mostly just use my PC for video games, movies and music production, so that hasn’t really affected me.
Regarding UI I think it’s been horrible since Windows 8. I really miss 7!
I have a Win11 laptop for work, and they changed the Start menu. Now it’s recent apps and recommendations for your starting point, and you have to click an option to see installed apps. Every. Time. There is a setting with 3 options - more recently used apps, more recommendations, or an even split of both, but the option to go straight to installed apps is mysteriously missing…
I will never install Win11 directly onto my hardware. If I have to use it, it will go into a VM of one flavor or another.
andybytes@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 11:37
nextcollapse
Windows is a weapons contractor that is entangled in the domestic markets. Linux is not. Windows is spyware and anti consumer. It is time to at least be familar with Linux. Try it on a old laptop or something. Linux is free.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Apr 11:38
nextcollapse
How to give it a go:
Get a 256GB SSD and install it on your computer alongside the existing drives.
Install a gaming-oriented Linux distro such as Pop!OS, Bazzite, SteamOS or similar, on that drive (don’t let it touch any other drive - those things generally have an install mode were you just tell it “install in this drive” which will ignore all other drives)
Unless your machine is 10 years old or older, during boot you can press a key (generally F8) and the BIOS will pop-up a boot menu that lets you choose which OS you want start booting (do it again at a later date if you want to change it back). If your machine is old you might actually have to go into the BIOS and change the boot EFI (or if even older, boot drive) it boots from in the boot section of the BIOS.
Use launchers such as Steam and a Lutris since they come with per-game install scripts that make sure Proton/Wine is properly configured, so that for most game you don’t have to do any tweaking at all for them to run - it’s just install and launch. In my experience you still have to tweak about 1 game in every 10.
If it all works fine and you’re satisfied with it, get a bigger SSD and install it alongside the rest. Make one big partition in it and mount you home directory there (at this point you will have to go down to the CLI to copy over your home directory). You’ll need this drive because of all the space you’ll be using for games, especially modern ones and launchers like Steam and Lutris will install the games in your home directory so having that in it’s own partition is the easiest way to add storage space for games.
As long as you give a dedicated drive to Linux and (if on an old machine before EFI) do not let it install a boot sector anywhere else but that drive, the risk exposure is limited to having spent 20 or 30 bucks on a 256GB SSD and then it turns out Linux is still not good enough for you.
When NOT to do it:
If you don’t know what a BIOS is or that you can press a key at the start of boot to get into it.
If you don’t know how to install a new drive on your machine (or even what kind of drive format it takes) and don’t have somebody who can do it for you.
If you don’t actually have the free slot for the new drive (for example, notebooks generally only have 2 slots, sometimes only 1).
YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 12:27
collapse
Considering I’m unemployed and job hunting, and Windows says I can’t upgrade my current (old) PC, and I regularly play Warzone with friends? No, probably not any time soon.
Maybe if I get a job with a six digit salary in a city with a reasonable cost of living (or remote) so I can jump out of debt before 6 months? But I’m not holding my breath.
gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 11:55
nextcollapse
Swapped to Arch Linux! I wouldn’t say it’s been a bug free swap but it’s been extremely doable and everything I needed to work worked like a charm. Gaming was uninterrupted and nothing hasn’t worked yet.
I need to figure out how to connect my stupid printer but I couldn’t do that on windows either, which is sad cause I thought printers were gonna be easier on Linux but I guess this brother model is a pain in the ass or something. Oh and connecting to network drives while on a VPN. That’s my list of pending problems and I’ve been on Linux for two months. Not bad really.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 06 Apr 13:40
collapse
My laptop still works perfectly well so if Microsoft don’t want to support it any more then I’ll bung Linux on it. I’ve already got my Mint stick ready, just need to get round to it.
Nice! I was lucky to have extra drives when I switched to Linux on my PC, haven’t done it on a laptop yet. Do you just back up all your data to an external SSD/HD beforehand or go the partition route?
I wiped it after I left my last job so there’s next to nothing on it anyway now. They did give me a laptop but due to a stupid conflict between the AV and VPN one of the processor threads was maxed out causing the fan to run on full noise mode all the time.
beastlykings@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 12:41
nextcollapse
Got a new laptop about a month ago. Put Fedora Bluefin on it immediately. Couple other computers/server have been running Debian flavors for year or two.
My main desktop is still Windows, but I literally never use it, especially since getting the laptop. I’ll switch it over when I get time.
I’m still tied to windows for three apps. I’ve found a Linux replacement for one, I just haven’t done the work to convert the database.
Another one I’m trying to run it’s Android version in a waydroid docker, but I’m hitting walls, no time to dig deeper.
And the last one has no replacement, and it’s too delicate to try emulating, I don’t want to nuke the shared database it’s attached to, it’s not worth the headache. So I keep a Windows VM around for the once a month I need to use that program for 🤷♂️
I’m purposely being vague about the programs, they are very identifying, but trust me there’s no alternatives.
Even with all that, I’m not looking back, win11 sucks.
I’m in Windows 11. I have regret it, but after so many tweaks of the system, removing telemetries, changing menus, and other Windows shit, i had not the energy to move back to Windows 10.
Only OS change i am willing to make is to move to Linux, but gaming is not there yet, and am now trying to move from big proprietary companies to FOSS, so time is needed.
glog78@digitalcourage.social
on 06 Apr 13:05
nextcollapse
Nvidia user, i saw a 10-15% performance difference (maybe more in some games), some anti-cheat do not work, so i can not install these games. I used both Mint and Nobara with latest drivers running and proton-GE.
Might be game dependent but nowadays games like withcher 3 run better on linux then windows for me.
Anti-cheat is admittedly a pain though. Chivalry 2 used to work and now no longer does.
Though those anti cheats tend to be very invasive so i prefer if everyone moved to a system thats is user personal security first so the market would align with that.
sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 13:18
nextcollapse
My experience with Linux gaming has varied pretty wildly. My old r9 290x could hardly run anything on linux. And if it did, it would run horribly compared to on windows.
Recently I upgraded to an rx 7600, and nearly everything works out of the box or with minor tweaks. And it performs similarly to windows, even better on occasion.
Gaming on Linux has never been better. Out of the top 100 (mostly Windows platform) games, only 7 are entirely unplayable according to www.protondb.com
80/100 are Gold or Platinum rated which means very playable. I often get better performance in Linux than Windows, even with the default open source drivers. I am using an AMD GPU which gives an advantage as they have better open source support, but for NVIDIA all the Linux distros I’ve used have had a documented path to install their binary drivers for better performance. My only bugbear is the game developers that actively hate Linux and that try to disable their game from working via anti cheat.
It’s true that it sometimes takes a bit more tinkering, especially if you’re using some esoteric controller or other funky hardware, but in the days of LLMs that can coach you through issues it’s more accessible than it’s ever been.
Nvidia GPUs are not good in Linux at the moment. And yeah all what you said. But i had tried Linux for gaming like something 5-8 years ago, and the situation is so much better now.
When I say they’re ‘not good,’ I mean they run slower. AMD and Intel GPUs perform nearly as well as they do on Windows, but Nvidia GPUs can suffer up to a 20% performance loss on Linux, depending on the game.
My Steam profile is apparently 30% platinum, 21% gold, 10% varying levels of broken, 39% unrated.
But Genshin Impact, one of my main games, doesn’t even appear on ProtonDB, and as far as I heard you need a custom Linux launcher for it, that results in occasional banwaves, which I will not risk :/ (Edit: if ProtonDB only lists Steam games, that would explain why Genshin is missing.)
Windows 11 -> Linux just for gaming and I am satisfied!
However, I also do not play things with big graphics requirements, kernel-level anticheat, and I do not have any fancy GPUs like Nvidia that make things incompatible. I transitioned on a laptop. So YMMV.
peteyestee@feddit.org
on 06 Apr 13:00
nextcollapse
Didn’t they get rid of some 11 requirements? Won’t most regular people just do the upgrade to 11?
JackbyDev@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 13:38
collapse
They didn’t get rid of it, they’re allowing you to upgrade to 11 and calling it unsupported. Just like 10 is unsupported.
LeFantome@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 17:12
collapse
With Win 11, you still get the security updates though right?
JackbyDev@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 19:22
collapse
Yes, the “not supported” thing is just their terminology. They could decide to stop pushing them at any time. Though technically they could pull the plug on anything whenever, but they’re explicitly saying “we might stop supporting these unsupported Windows 11 installations at any time.”
I was running mint, but had to go back to windows because of a hardware bug I’m still trying to fix where my PC will randomly not wake up from sleep and that results in corrupted drives, which windows can fix with it’s automated repair at boot, but Linux has done commands that I need to run and if I fuck it up it would fuck my computer up even more, so until I can fix the hardware bug I’m stuck on windows, but by fuck do I hate it. I prefer Linux so much more over windows, so much more convenient, efficient, personalizable and it actually works in many places where windows simply doesn’t even with a lot of fiddling around in settings and shit
I’ve even taken out the drive that I had Linux installed, windows still has the issue, it started barely happening a year or so ago but recently it’s gotten much much worse and it happens in waves(?) where it’ll not have any issues for several days and then one day it will fail to wake up every time it goes to sleep, except when I’m testing. I recall testing the drive check on both Linux and windows, but both came out clean.
My bf and I have narrowed it down to probably being the power supply (last year there were a bunch of power outages after a historical flood here in southern Brazil) but the ram is also unstable at timings that it used to run perfectly fine, but the ram test came out clean so it’s a big mess of possibilities RN. I’m just waiting for Monday to be able to buy a new power supply and a UPS to test, but even then we’re still unsure if this will truly fix it or if I’ll need to get a new motherboard.
Hey, what’s your usecase like that requires sleep in the first place? I’ve never used Sleep since I moved to using an SSD as a boot drive. My computer boots in around 12 seconds with the SSD that it just made sleep unnecessary.
I keep getting called away from my computer in the middle of whatever I’m doing and I don’t want to leave it unlocked while I’m away and I don’t want to have to reopen 4 or 5 programs including a game, if I could shut it down instead of sleeping I would but sadly I can’t
OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
on 06 Apr 13:09
nextcollapse
Upgrade tool says my hardware isn’t supported, seems like I can enable TPM on my motherboard but it doesn’t work right for some reason I think I managed to install Windows 10 without secure boot or something, not sure if those two are even related. I was thinking maybe I’d have to reinstall windows 10 with those modules enabled in order to upgrade to windows 11… Has anyone else encountered something similar?
JAWNEHBOY@reddthat.com
on 06 Apr 13:19
nextcollapse
Yeah, said I had to buy a tpm module for my mobo to upgrade to win11. My steam deck works so well running arch based Linux I searched “gaming arch Linux” in DuckDuckGo and installed CachyOS. Easier and cleaner than installing windows 10 when I built my PC and the constant updates are awesome (they also offer long term support LTS builds). Highly recommend, I have an Nvidia 2070 Super and CachyOS has been a great upgrade from Windows 10.
deepfuckingdumb@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 15:44
collapse
Those two are related. Windows 11 requires both UEFI (secure boot) and TPM. Microsoft has a tool for converting a legacy install to UEFI. (backup your data beforehand as always)
OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
on 06 Apr 15:56
collapse
Wow, looks like exactly what I need! I’ll give it a try, thanks!
MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 13:18
nextcollapse
My plan is to use my Linux box as my main PC with Steam installed so that I can remote play from my Windows gaming PC since not all titles natively work on Linux for me. That way, the only activity being performed on my Windows machine is gaming and everything else will live in Linux Mint
glog78@digitalcourage.social
on 06 Apr 13:37
collapse
Since you wanna Game using network anyway did you ever thought of Cloud Gaming (aka Geforce Now) ? That way you don't have a "unsecure" device in your network. From a security standpoint even an device only used for gaming is a security risk ;)
I have used nvidia on my private PC on linux for more than a decade now. They provided a stable usable 3D acceleration in KDE1 when no other company did give a fuck about linux and voodoo had only their glide interface on the console.
As a customer i am very sad about the current state on linux and as a customer my next graphics card might be an AMD. The reasons are not only the driver but also that amd provides just more memory for the same money and i think that nvidia currently is cheating their way throu the consumer market (for real imaginary AI Pictures is a performance improvment ???).
But and thats why i disagree hardly with the "fuck nvidia" ... they deserve the respect for the support much longer than any brand out there and therefor they deserve a respectfull way to express where they imho do wrong.
They deserve respect? For the criminal methods they used back then? FCK nvidia! That’s like paying respect to MS or Intel + Nvidia to destroy the market in the long term in monopoly positions.
( First of all, this is not a criticism of the users. I used to use Intel and Nvidia myself. It’s towards Nvidia and their dirty company policy. )
MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 16:40
collapse
That would require me to abandon half of my Steam library and pay an additional cost for games I already can play. My device is on Windows 11 so I am not worried about security updates, more so the Recall “feature” and AI training.
I already switched to Bazzite Desktop and it’s been so good. I had some pains configuring somethings to my liking, but that was more due to me not being familiar with Linux. I’m never going back.
Well, I cannot comment about PopOS because I simply don’t know how it is, but Bazzite on desktop has been great. I didn’t need to install anything related to gaming because it already comes with everything on it.
Pretty much anything I needed is on the discovery store and it’s handled like the app store on Android, so no headache of messing it up with installations or worrying about updates. Although, Bazzite is an immutable OS so anything that you need to install that’s not on the store can be a headache.
Also, my computer is an old laptop, so I got a performance boost as the system feels way smoother now than with Windows.
About games, I played some indie games on Steam and Lutris and it worked flawlessly. But do note that for more recent systems, it appears to be some headaches, especially with NVIDIA graphics cards. I only play new games on streaming services, so I don’t have those problems.
But I do have some problems with the streaming service using my 8BitDo controller, but it’s not related to the system, it’s related to the service’s bad drivers. When I stream the game using Steam, it’s smooth sailing.
I have used both Bazzite and PopOs for more then a year. They are both great distros. The reason I stuck with Bazzite is ease of updates since its immutable (I am lazy and updated PopOS only when I absolutely needed, and updating bunch of system packadges after a long time always causes something else to screw up). PopOS on the other hand gives you complete control over how to install things, and system configuration.
TLDR, if you are a power user, then decide based on if you want an immutable system or not. If you are not, you can just flip a coin and choose, Bazzite has better ease of use compored to PopOS on theory, but if you encounter issues PopOS will be easier to troubleshoot because it has more users / information online.
WetBeardHairs@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 14:15
nextcollapse
I just gave up on windows gaming. If the game cant be played on my steamdeck, I just find something else. Otherwise its macos and linux for anything non-professional that requires windows. And even then I fucking hate it. Oh look at that… all my documents say “Auto-recover (version 1)” because it forcibly rebooted on me.
This! A game is a game. There are often good alternatives that gives as much entertainment. If a publisher doesn’t want you to play, that’s their problem, they won’t get money from you.
Even the Playstation OS is better than this. It asks you whether to update before shutdown or the next time it starts up. ‘You’re 33% there’ is gaslighting, especially when you’re just shutting down the machine to go to bed.
tsuzuku@discuss.tchncs.de
on 06 Apr 14:16
nextcollapse
I don’t care to much about steam at the moment so no real problem. But I will make the switch to linux on the machine used for gaming. No Win 11 there probably, some Arch-related, EndeavourOS is my actual choice.
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk
on 06 Apr 19:47
collapse
This should be the test all millionaires and billionaires have to take yearly. If they fail, they are no longer fit to own or lead a business.
LeFantome@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 16:50
collapse
I always think the same. But everybody knows Bill Gates by sight. Do you think everyone instantly recognizes Satya Nadella?
CodeBlooded@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 17:59
collapse
Who?
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Apr 20:35
collapse
The current CEO of Microsoft.
darthelmet@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 15:05
nextcollapse
I got a new PC recently so unfortunately I am now on Windows 11. I’ve been wanting to make the swap to Linux but I can’t really make a clean break because at least some of the games I play a lot won’t work on Linux. I do think I’m gonna try to set up another hard drive with Linux on it to try to slowly start learning it and ideally move over anything that I can over there eventually and just keep the windows drive for those few games.
Does anyone have any recommendations related to that? Distro for gaming/ease of use? What’s the best option for setting up the dual boot? Anything I wouldn’t have thought of that’s relevant?
One of the reasons i am sticking with Arch is because steamdeck os is build on it, whats good enough to game for valve is good enough for me.
I have both Arch and my old windows install on separate m.2 ssds. By default i log into the arch one which uses the windows ssd as a game installation drive.
This way when i do have to use windows for some game modding or testing, i can easily access and sometimes run the games from there.
There’s a spattering of steam games that don’t list Linux support. Probably the ones I play the most are Deep Rock Galactic and Last Epoch. Outside of Steam I play TFT a lot, which doesn’t work on Linux since they added the anti-cheat software.
Those first two are reported to work incredibly well using proton compatibility on steam. Proton is not the same as native support, which is why its not mentioned in any official game Information but it is native to steam. (Also works in heroic and litrus for gog/epic/other)
A platinum (community) rating is as high as it gets, may as well be native or better then on windows.
For TFT i found they use the same anti cheat as some other games. Used to work before, no longer does now but with dual boot all your current stuff is just a minute away (windows updates not included)
Kurallier@programming.dev
on 06 Apr 17:30
nextcollapse
If you’re a tech savvy person then I’d recomend Arch, but if you’d prefer a more streamlined approach then Baazite, PopOs, and Mint are all good starting points. As for dual booting, no matter which distro of linux you use you’ll use something called GRUB. The tl;dr of grub is that it’ll let you select which operating system you want to boot into when you boot up your pc
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 18:33
nextcollapse
Just in case you are thinking this like I used to, don’t go by “unplayable on steam deck” to determine what games you won’t be able to play on a Linux desktop. While those games include incompatible with Linux games, they also include ones that the deck hardware can’t handle at a decent framerate but otherwise play fine on Linux.
no. you can play a crap load of “windows only” games on linux. the trick is to enable steam play in steam settings and use community versions of proton. works like a charm
racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml
on 07 Apr 01:28
collapse
Since your computer is running Windows 11 already, I would recommend you look for a Linux distro without considering if it’s gaming-friendly. Linux is great for certain productivity tasks.
For dualbooting, most official Linux installation guides offer detailed steps for that. Grub (the boot management program) is well tested and widely used.
JigglySackles@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 16:17
nextcollapse
It’s tricky because I have things that just don’t translate well to linux, or become considerably more expensive or time consuming to manage / deal with. Linux has a lot to offer and a lot of great. But I’m just going to keep running an out of date OS until I can switch.
JigglySackles@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 21:29
collapse
I don’t want to get into a big debate on it so if you are just curious and have a couple suggestions I’m down to talk about it. But I’m tired of people telling me that my reasoning isn’t good enough for them. Like, great, thanks, glad you can be happy with it, but we aren’t the same person. So I’d prefer to avoid any conversation where I’m just told to suck it up and deal with something. I am working on finding alternatives but all the ones I’ve come across so far are coming up short in a way that’s non negotiable.
My biggest one is my O365 bundle with office apps, oneNote, and OneDrive.
I am going to be trying out libreoffice and OpenOffice this year to see if I can replace word and excel. Last time I tried they weren’t there for me.
OneNote is my second most vital. I’m looking at Notesnook at the moment but I’m really not enthused by a monthly price or the idea of self-hosting in a docker container. I’ve hated most note apps and OneNote was the only one I’ve clicked with so far. I refuse to touch markdown so that kills a lot of them. I’m taking notes with minor edits, and I refuse to add markdown to the process just to do that. I also will not be ok with a webapp. I don’t like webapps in general.
OneDrive is probably my most vital. I have 1TB for me and 1TB each for 5 family accounts. So 6TB total. And I definitely use the space. On top of that I rely heavily on its integration to the file explorer and the mfa locked personal vault section. I don’t want to deal with a web interface or separate app, outside of an authentication hook for the vault, just to access storage.
Outside of the 365 bundle, it’s mostly running dedicated game servers that have no Linux option. And that’s it I believe. Certainly the most impactful applications. I think most other things I run, I can find acceptable alternatives to or can run in wine or something similar without major issue.
I wasn’t going to berate you or anything. I was genuinely curious.
I am going to be trying out libreoffice and OpenOffice
LibreOffice is great. I use it on my work system at a medium to larger sized company (every single other person uses o365). I haven’t heard anyone complain yet about doc comparability and I haven’t had any issues myself.
Stay away from OpenOffice. It’s practically a dead product. When Oracle bought OpenOffice, the community forked the project which became LibreOffice. LibreOffice is where all the development and community focus and effort has gone since.
OneNote is my second most vital
I don’t have any recommendations here. I’ve never really found a “perfect” solution for this. Currently I use a few different solutions, but it’s all centred around markdown, so they’re all interchangeable.
OneDrive is probably my most vital.
I personally wouldn’t touch OneDrive with a hundred meter pole. MS does so much screwing around with your data that you can never be sure if the data stored is what you uploaded. They’ve been known to just up and delete files they scan and think is malicious, even if it’s a false positive. Then they’re known to scan all your documents for everything, including potential passwords, then use those passwords to open password-protected files and then scan them also.
Then there’s the situation from a year or so ago where they automatically switched everyone’s documents folder to a “cloud first” folder, where they just auto-uploaded everyone’s local files, deleted the local copies, and did it all without user consent or even informing users. And this resulted in all kinds of wild crap like people not having access to their documents because they were offline and were expecting local files. Then some people had their metered data connection getting maxed out. While others couldn’t even modify their files or even save a file to their “My Documents” folder because the default storage allocation was far less than the total data of their local files. So effectively the data was held for ransom.
it’s mostly running dedicated game servers that have no Linux option.
Most newer games that you can run your own dedicated server will almost certainly have a Linux option, which suggests you might taking about older games, in which case something like Lutris (Wine) might be an option.
But are you hosting these game servers on your desktop?
JigglySackles@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 23:53
collapse
Yeah I know OneDrive is a bad option anymore. I’m definitely looking for options there but nothing is coming close so far. Hardest part is space but each requirement presents an issue.
Thanks for telling me about openoffice, looking at things i think i meamt Only Office. Any opinions there? I’m not keen on the AI push but it also seems optional. Thanks for the positive endorsement for Libre being compatible in an office setting. Looks like they have a good dark mode too which I’m very happy about. I love having a black background to write against and has stopped me from adopting things in the past. I can’t do white backed apps anymore. They hurt lol
The hosting is on my old desktop which is running server 2016. I’d like to replace the OS on it too. I don’t keep the box online so I’m not keen on using it for anything other than game servers.
Appreciate you not going aggro on me over it. Lots of times I mention not being quite there for migrating it gets into this really aggravating back and forth where someone aggressively pushes Linux at me and doesn’t like that I’m not instantly on board or that I have reasons they don’t like. 🙄
looking at things i think i meamt Only Office. Any opinions there?
If I remember correctly, Only Office uses LibreOffice as its core and then adds or changes default stuff. I might be wrong about that. But ultimately I hear positive things about Only Office.
The hosting is on my old desktop which is running server 2016. I’d like to replace the OS on it too. I don’t keep the box online so I’m not keen on using it for anything other than game servers.
Sounds like a perfect situation for loading something like Proxmox and then visualizing the Windows Server 2016 instance. You would basically have the exact same functionality but with way more options like cloning and backing up the server.
Appreciate you not going aggro on me over it.
No worries at all. I think the automatic defensiveness from Linux people comes from old misconceptions being repeated often. Or sometimes it comes from how something is read and interpreted. Someone might say “I can’t switch because I need XYZ”, to which a very literal response is “you can use ABC which does the same thing, so you can switch”. When what the first person meant is "I can’t switch because IpreferXYZ", which is a completely valid reason.
JigglySackles@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 00:49
collapse
Right on, I’ll have to check out proxmox, i don’t have any experience with it yet. That’d be dope to switch at least one computer over to something linix based.
Honestly, I still don’t know. My 3070 worked well on linux the last time I used it so hardware won’t be an issue. I also don’t play many modern games so that’s not a problem either. It’s just my partner is schizo with what games they wanna play. Rn they’re obsessed with minecraft and bedrock doesn’t work on linux. I know for sure I’m not going to 11 though. I’ve used it before and absolutely hated the UI layout.
People might get a little emotional about it but I bounce between Linux Mint, windows 10, and windows 11 and honestly I totally agree that windows 11 is trash. When my windows 10 computer reaches it’s limit, I might try to figure out how to run games on Linux/proton or whatever that is.
blixtuwu@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 06 Apr 18:24
nextcollapse
I already moved to linux (In my case Linux Mint) two weeks ago ^^
Worstdriver@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 18:28
nextcollapse
I have no plans to either update to win11 or change back to chanting magic spells at my computer to get it to work (Ubuntu, many years ago).
My computer works and does everything I want it to. Basic internet security and reasonable precautions are sufficient for a low level user like me to stay safe.
Possibly/Probably but as I said. Right now win 10 runs all my productivity, gaming and streaming software such as OBS and Veadotube.
They run and run well. I have literally no incentive to switch to either a Linux distro or win11. If that changes, then I’ll consider changing my OS, but until then…why would anyone?
kazerniel@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 18:30
nextcollapse
I’ll upgrade to 11 Enterprise via massgrave.
Sadly with Adobe and some of my online games not supporting Linux, I have to stick with Windows :/ I’ll just try to disable all the telemetry and AI crap via O&O and group policies.
Retrograde@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 19:30
nextcollapse
Damn, Adobe doesn’t support Linux at all? Guess I’m staying on Windows too :/
The only way to use Adobe products on Linux are the web apps (which are limited) or in a windows virtual machine (slow) or by dual booting into windows (annoying).
You can run really old versions of Photoshop via Wine. But if your needs are that simple, you can probably just use Photopea.
For my use case of Lightroom for accessing and editing final photos across my computer and phone, and occasional photoshop use (mostly for printing) I am able to get by with the web apps, and windows virtual machine.
I would love to drop adobe. But the Lightroom Mobile cloud storage sync feature is too invaluable to me right now and there is no other option that comes close to that feature.
No, all the current versions are reported various levels of broken :/ Generally they can’t install, so you have to copy an installation from Windows, then there are some that don’t load at all, some only load to splash screen, some do work after you patch their broken UI and manually copy some Windows DLL-s. So idk, you might get lucky with the specific program/version/feature combo you need, but it just sounds like a pain to me.
What is O&O? I’m not to keen on jumping to Linux either, but I REALLY don’t like the idea of having recall active and having Microsuck know literally everything I do…
DimFisher@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 19:14
nextcollapse
Does it really matter? I have xemu (xbox emulator), retroarch for anything else, and PSX2 to be sure on Lubuntu, combine together how many games all those have and you just don’t need steam
swag_money@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 19:15
nextcollapse
Full Linux, I’m not installing that anti-privacy, ad-ridden Windows 11 OS. It’s dangerous to use an unsupported system, so I’m going to be deleting my Windows partition. I know I’ll run into some issues on Linux, but I’m forcing myself to learn more and work through them!
I’ll keep using linux on my main pcs and I’ll still keep using windows 10 on my secondary laptop
VOwOxel@discuss.tchncs.de
on 06 Apr 20:26
nextcollapse
I moved from Win 10 to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 2 months ago. Going very well so far, even for music production and gaming. I also got a friend of mine to dual-boot Tumbleweed/Win11, coming from Win11.
October is when security patches for windows 10 will stop. Its when it goes full out of support. LTSB will continue getting security patches for a couple years though.
You can’t. Every single hack/exploit that goes unpatched will be a gaping door for hackers
racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml
on 07 Apr 00:31
collapse
All you guys said is true. You could get hacked blah blah blah. But to a gamer, a machine exclusively for gaming doesn’t take any of that as a concern. Want to hack my machine? Go ahead! As long as you don’t delete my games, be my guest. I don’t save credit card information on it anyway.
But none of that happens in my case. I don’t game on or run Windows. I’m just here to provide a point of view.
Your local network is compromised, not just 1 windows device. It could potentially leak enough personal information for more targeted attacks.
The chances are slim but AI may enable targeted hacking at scale. I simply wouldn’t risk downloading shit on a device with known security vulnerabilities, without any scope of fixes.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 20:41
nextcollapse
I jumped ship to Linux Mint almost a year ago. No Microsoft products live here anymore. No regrets.
frankgrimeszz@lemmy.world
on 06 Apr 20:56
nextcollapse
I tried out going 100% Linux a year ago. Unfortunately I was playing one of the very few games that has Linux issues. 100% CPU all the time was bugging me. It’s not the fault of Linux. Anyway, that’s how it played out. I may be tempted to try again soon.
I just deleted windows and installed Bazzite Linux. Everything just works
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 06 Apr 21:53
nextcollapse
I’ll have to use some sort of windows for VR, I need to investigate the various debloat options
SSNs4evr@leminal.space
on 06 Apr 22:02
nextcollapse
I’ve enjoyed Linux since Windows MEllennium Edition convinced me that I didn’t like paying a lot, in money and time, to be an unpaid product testing guinea pig. A work friend put Windows 2000 on that laptop when ME went bad. I used it until a got a blue screen of death one day, and switched to Linux. The 1st was a $230 ePC that could be had with Windows XP or XanderOS (a flavor of Linux). I chose the latter, and had a great time of it. I’ve since used Mint and Ubuntu.
Imagine that, Windows 11 can remember everything you did in the past 3 months, it’s making sure that you didn’t forget about Office 365, Xbox Live subscriptions, and about Edge, the browser embedded deeply in the OS…
Sometimes, for your convenience, it will put Edge as the default, but you totally can change it back to what it was!
Are you sure you don’t want to switch? You’re missing a lot there…
All my games run (almost) perfect and (almost) everything has been working perfectly.
Overall it is much nicer than Windows and isn’t that hard getting used to.
Would much recommend!
Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 06 Apr 22:44
nextcollapse
I’m a lifelong Windows user and tried Linux many many times but could never wrap my head around it. Recently I installed Nobara and it’s exactly the noob-friendly experience I need. All of my games run flawlessly, even the VR game I play. And everything is just FASTER. I never realized how bloated Windows was until now. I can’t imagine going back to Windows at this point.
I have been thus far entirely unsuccessful in convincing anyone else to make the jump. Normal people do not give a fuck, will not lift a finger to improve their digital lives. I’ve been telling friends and family about adblockers for YEARS, and not a single one ever bothered to do it of their own volition. If I don’t do it for them, then they just sit through ads like complacent sheep. None of them are going to change operating systems if they can’t even install a browser extension.
hydroxycotton@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 01:55
nextcollapse
I really just don’t understand this. Folks will not lift a finger or a brain cell to figure out tech.
I was thinking about this earlier today for myself. Not specifically about computers, but the same principle. If I have something that bugs me and wastes 10 seconds of my time every single day but I could permanently fix the problem in an hour - logically it’s worth fixing. Even if it eventually saves time, I have to invest an hour of time and brainpower right now. If it’s something I don’t really care about, it’s just not worth it. I don’t need that hassle, I’ll just have a small annoyance every day instead of a big annoyance today. I’ve got better things to do. Like browsing Lemmy apparently
I’m been a Linux power user for more than half of my life, 8 last years spent on NixOS. I self-host my everything. I’ve bootstrapped a toolchain and a Linux distro from scratch^Wtcc for giggles twice, first without a package manager, then without one. For the last five years, I earn a living by working on a Linux distro. I still have my only decent GPU in a Windows 10 box half a continent away I stream games from. Would you be able to convince me to switch?
Just face it, Windows is the gaming console firmware.
I’m talking about normies, not gamers, and not power users like yourself.
Normies touch their pc for less than one hour a day, because everything they could want is in their phone. Many normies don’t even have internet connections in their home because they exclusively engage with the internet through their phone. I’ve talked to normies who don’t have pcs at all because their ipads do everything they could possibly want.
It’s a fact that there are certain games that simply do not run on linux, because of drm or developer stupidity or any number of reasons. As a separate argument, I’d argue that those games are not worth playing. I used to be a hardcore gamer, I’ve gotten old since then and become a casual. I don’t have time nor energy to dedicate to figuring out why game x won’t run on pc y with configuration z. If the big green play button doesn’t work, I refund the damn thing, and in my almost 2 years of linux usage I have yet to need to do that. Another separate argument is my disdain for AAA games, the lack of ethics in their creation, and the abysmal conditions in which they always launch in these days.
So as to your actual question, can I convince you to switch your gaming pc to linux? No, and I’m not even going to try. If you insist on playing the latest AAA slop that the megacorps shovel at you, then you must have windows and you must continue to allow microsoft to continue to rape your digital existence in order to have crappy entertainment that I wouldn’t dignify with the time of day.
I switched to Linux mate and been using heroic games launcher for the windows games I want to play
AvailableFill74@lemmy.ml
on 07 Apr 00:44
nextcollapse
Linux has some problems that I just can never find answers for.
#1. Can’t do 4k 340hz on my display port 1.4 cable. Even though I can on windows and Mac. In Linux the option is there with the nvidia driver, but the screen goes black anytime I try to use it. No solution.
#2. Ubiconnect won’t work with Ann 1800 even though it’s good on proton.db and others are reporting it works great, I was never ever able to get it working or find reliable steps to get it working.
It’s a needle in a haystack trying to find fixes for things like this. Linux offers a lot, but still doesn’t offer the most important thing ease of fixing problems quickly so you can just do what you want to do.
Run a game and work at the native resolution.
SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de
on 07 Apr 06:46
nextcollapse
Yea thats how my spouses laptop ended up with fedora and our main/gaming PC ended up with Nobara. For some reason certain distros and certain configurations do not go well with each other.
TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
on 07 Apr 09:58
nextcollapse
#1. Can’t do 4k 340hz on my display port 1.4 cable. Even though I can on windows and Mac. In Linux the option is there with the nvidia driver, but the screen goes black anytime I try to use it. No solution.
I had a similar issue on my 1080ti, I fixed it by setting Adaptive Sync to Never in my display settings.
Unpopular opinion but I’m just using 11. I deal with enough problems with Linux at work and as hard as it is to believe, Windows just work and fits my workflow too well. Linux works great on my Steam Deck but the occasional weird quirks it has with certain games/launchers means I can’t use it as my main gaming platform, it’s only fine on the Deck because it has advantages for the form factor.
novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one
on 07 Apr 01:16
collapse
All games work in 11. You will get the best picture quality for graphics on 11. More DX9 games work in 11 than worked in 10. Path tracing is best on 11. I have some games that are DVD installs, no game store launcher.
There are different Linux programs that address most Windows issues but not all. With Windows, you can install Win 11, install GPU driver, and start playing games. I do avoid using Steam due to their extortion, so eventually I find games that can’t run on Linux.
Windows 11 has better image quality? I’m sorry what?
Kobie123@lemmynsfw.com
on 07 Apr 01:03
nextcollapse
Dual booting with EndeavourOS now. Once i know i can repeat my workflow on it, i’ll switch over for good.
kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 07 Apr 01:05
nextcollapse
What does Bill Gates have to do with this, he hasn’t been directly involved in Microsoft in 17 years? He hasn’t even been on the board for 5 years.
LockheedTheDragon@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 01:41
nextcollapse
I’m going to move over to Mint on my laptop, it’s older but still working great after I swapped an SSD drive in. Biggest issue is backing up the laptop before installing Linux.
I have another computer I plan on duel boot with Windows 10 so I have access if I need windows for certain programs.
I have no control over my work computer so Windows 11 there.
And unless one of my brothers steps up and buys our Dad a Windows 11 computer (I bought the Windows 10 computer, which is why it was so cheap it can’t take 11. 😆 ) since I’m his tech support if my brothers don’t step up he is going to Linux. No matter what I’m going to have to listen to him complain about how it is different so it will be a good time to move to Linux. Probably a version that tries to mimic Windows.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
on 07 Apr 02:05
nextcollapse
I have 11, so not directly affected. But with “no more security updates” being the only real reason one needs to change, the obvious question here is if there is 3rd party software that can protect a Windows 10 system?
I remember when anti-virus software was in common use.
That’s my plan so far. I just use it for emulators anyway.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 07 Apr 02:25
nextcollapse
I’ve been daily-driving Linux Mint (LMDE 6) on my Thinkpad T14 G1 for almost a year now. At this point, that laptop is easily the most dependable machine I’ve ever had. My gaming PC is the last remaining Windows machine in my house. Recently I’ve been making sure everything is backed up (Syncthing is great for this) and finding alternatives for programs that don’t have a Linux version.
My plan is to create images of both my SSDs (500GB & 2TB, both NTFS 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️) onto a 4TB hard drive. Then start from scratch, migrating data from the images (Steam games, config files, personal documents I may have missed, etc) when/if I need it.
julysfire@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 03:04
nextcollapse
Made the jump to Linux. No issues so far, very happy with the switch
SolidShake@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 03:16
nextcollapse
yeah i need star citizen, ableton, fl studio, premier, photoshop and more before i can dedicate a jump to linux
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 07 Apr 04:10
collapse
don’t forget that LTSC is also a solution, you don’t have to give in to 11
desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 07 Apr 13:57
collapse
it’s a death by a thousand cuts situation, more friction to use a local account, less convenience in accessing rarely used settings (most recently I was trying to help someone change a setting located in the advanced power management control panel thing), more pressure to use edge, continuing to shove one-drive down our throats, copilot, implementing features that knowingly make third party tools work significanly less well without proper customization to fix it, weirdness around Multi-Display setups on laptops, the maps app getting worse at giving directions.
So… in my experience edge runs better than all other browsers with the ability to mute individual tabs without an addon. I disabled copilot. I disabled one drive and use local storage only. All settings can be accessed by just typing what you want in the search bar. If you need advanced settings for anything you just click the button that says “advanced settings”
To me it’s fairly simple, but it’s all I’ve ever used. My Mac knowledge is minimal and my Linux knowledge is also minimal, so for me both those OS’s are difficult to use and navigate.
I also like the ability to double click something to install it and not have to open a command box and do child coding just to use something.
So I get what your saying. If I had Linux only for the last 30 years I would also find windows to be confusing and stupid.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 08 Apr 18:52
collapse
I had windows for 20 years. enough is enough. I’ll never accept all the bullshit of 11. but if you use edge, I see you have different values, like privacy is not really important to you
So you couldn’t just answer the question? What do I need security from? I don’t input credit card information. So I generally want to know
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Apr 03:38
collapse
I’m not talking about credit card information. I’m talking about all the kinds of commercial data mining that is happening basically all over the internet. Personally, I’m sick of it. and while firefox has problems, anything chromium based won’t even try to project your privacy, to the contrary, especially edge. if you like having all your digital and a lot of irl activities collected in data broker databases for profiling, targeted ads, personalized costs and whatnot, then edge is the ideal browser for you.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 07 Apr 05:03
nextcollapse
too late already did switch to linux :3
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
on 07 Apr 05:28
nextcollapse
Most problems people have with Linux, I think, come from trying to be Linux power users from the start by performing very advanced techniques beyond their time and patience: dual booting multiple operating systems (so they don’t have to buy Linux-dedicated hardware), using any graphics card (the latest and greatest GPUs are all closed source and developers who work on Linux do so because they despise closed source), using the least expensive hardware (which are typically closed source and buggy with anything except Windows), and emulating Windows apps so they don’t have to learn new workflows or abandon their favorite games (technically, Proton with Steam allows Windows games like FFXIV to be played, but it’s a neverending journey to get it working and keeping it working.
If you switch to Linux, accept that for a smooth experience you’ll have to pay more than you would for a Windows machine (e.g. System76, Framework)
And if you want graphics card support for your emulated Windows games on Steam, you’re going to have to use the specific flavor of Linux the manufacturer supports.
That said, if you value free/libre open source software, then making the switch from Windows is totally worth it.
BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 05:50
nextcollapse
Can you elaborate on the incompatibility of the newest GPUs? It looks like Nvidia publishes a Linux driver for the Blackwell series and there are a number of AI applications (like supporting Triton and pysam-based methods) which seem harder to get working on Windows than on Linux.
I’m considering switching over but I hear mixed things about Nvidia support. Some people seem to say it’s a pain to get the drivers working and others seem to think that’s an issue that’s been resolved. Not sure what to think in terms of how difficult the switch would be.
I’m not sure about the specific AI apps you mention, but from my personal experience the “AMD works way better than Nvidia on Linux” mindset is no longer a thing.
When I upgraded to a new gpu a few years ago, I first got an AMD gpu because of that mindset that was all over the internet (I believed them), but for the life of me I couldn’t get games to run properly with it. A week later I traded it for an Nvidia card and it just works.
I do suffer from system wake from sleep issues that I think are the nvidia drivers fault, but atleast I can play games if I decide to.
BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 13:25
nextcollapse
Can I ask what distro you’re running? Some of the gaming-focused ones like Bazzite still seem to gather some comments about working better with AMD, though it seems like there are some workarounds. I am resolved to leave Microsoft behind completely at the W11 switch so I’m trying to get my bearings!
Of course, I run EndeavourOS. My guess is that nowadays it doesn’t matter if you run amd or nvidia (likely won’t run into problems with either).
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
on 07 Apr 14:06
collapse
but from my personal experience the “AMD works way better than Nvidia on Linux” mindset is no longer a thing.
Oh my god it absolutely is, and until NVK becomes the standard everywhere it will most likely stay that way. That shit breaks so often on a laptop I gonna sell soon, on my families’ computers and apparently also in computers from people in my local hackerspace. Some distros just managed to work around those drivers’ problems really well, sometimes by including them from the start of creating their own well-working packages (like Arch’s nvidia-dkms).
I think this may be out of date now, dual booting is relatively simple to set up and there are a wealth of tutorials online for it, setting up a graphics card (nvidia) was a breeze, and for the wide majority of games in my library (I play both indie and AAA), I’ve had very few issues running native, and most that haven’t ran out of the box have guides posted on protondb.com, most are up and running in 5 mins.
DimFisher@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 08:48
nextcollapse
Got a 7900xtx a few days ago and worked out of the box. Had to update the drivers after install but that took 5 minutes.
TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
on 07 Apr 09:57
nextcollapse
Many Linux distros are not very user friendly and intuitive when it comes to normal users with two left hands when it comes to PCs. Lots of Linux power users need to get off of their high horse and realize this. If I had some issues, my parents definitely will.
You are right about trying to be power users. I switched to Linux recently and definitely struggled with my sudden reduction is understanding. I got everything I needed for gaming setup up in a few hours. Then I tried to set up some productivity workflows and slammed into a brick wall of my own ignorance. I definitely considered just going back to Windows.
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
on 07 Apr 14:01
collapse
It’s already really good to hear you got gaming set up so quickly. A lot of people struggle with that as well either because team green (Nvidia) is involved since their drivers are utter garbage, or due to trying Linux on an older machine that doesn’t support Vulkan (which is a necessity if you want Proton to just work).
The value of getting a perfectly supported machine from a Linux vendor like System76, Tuxedo, Slimbook, StarLabs, NovaCustom etc. can’t be understated. Even more so since you also buy their customer support with it. We must not forget that, even though Linux runs on basically anything, most consumer devices are first-and-foremost Windows machines.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
on 07 Apr 05:38
nextcollapse
I won’t be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don’t really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it’ll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.
However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.
I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.
I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they’re changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10’s user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don’t know why they thought any of it was a good idea.
I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won’t get started on that right now.
For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn’t been any meaningful progress in the OS that’s mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don’t think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the “new look” or whatever the fuck.
Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.
Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.
I would pivot to W10 LTSC to avoid Windows 11… So why would I move to the LTSC version of the OS I’m trying to avoid?
Makes zero sense.
Randelung@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 09:37
nextcollapse
If it only was just moving things around. The control panel has been further castrated while the settings app is just bad. Something about their CPU scheduler changes straight up broke VMware, and obviously MS is in no hurry to fix it resp. cooperate with VMware, being a competitor.
Rounded corners? I couldn’t care less. It’s a functional downgrade, though.
Install size has gone up, its sluggish on my surface pro 7, its constantly wanting to grab my attention to put towards their other products, windows 10 was bad as it seemed to be ms’s first iteration of their now billboard, but at least I could offline install, make a local account and mostly be left alone. And windows 11 is aweful for its kiddy gloves.
While I get why they want to do all online accounts, no. Just no.
Ironically, for business users, online accounts are basically the way the industry is moving. Some integration with Azure active directory (now known as “Entra ID” - a useless rebranding of the exact same product), you can connect systems using someone’s email, and it can tightly integrate with your work email account on Microsoft 365, and everything just kind of fits together.
This prevents admins from having to go and do prep/setup on each system and/or maintain a library of system images with all the standard settings for the organization, since connecting with AAD/Entra can also enroll the device into Intune and those policies are just as powerful, if not more powerful than what you can do with images and prep; just now is entirely automatic.
For home users, it’s less about the convenience of system management and more data harvesting of their clients. The irony is that a lot of the business versions still have an option to bypass the online account (usually by selecting an option that you will be joining a classic domain).
So business has the option and largely, business is moving away from it, and home users don’t, but that’s something that a large number of home users want.
The only thought I have on it is that: bitlocker is enabled by default on many newer versions of Windows, by signing in with your M$ account to the PC, those bitlocker keys are backed up. If you don’t use an online account, it’s up to you to back then up, and users either don’t do that, or do it in such a way that it’s ineffective, like saving the recovery key to the very drive that needs that key to unlock it in the event of a problem.
I’ve seen more than one person fall victim to their own lack of knowledge and understanding when bitlocker is enabled, and Windows update screws their boot sequence to the point where they need to do a recovery, which requires the recovery key, which they do not have. It basically makes all of their data inaccessible, and gigabytes of data, just from the people I’ve known affected by this, has already been lost as a result.
I hear what you’re saying, but, there have been some pretty significant improvements to Windows, generation after generation.
Windows 10 finally seemed like they were on the right (and hopefully final) track with the direction of the operating system. Probably the last big improvement was to bring basically everyone to 64 bit.
XP moved us from the 9x kernel to the NT kernel that’s used in Windows today. Vista introduced security features and driver updates that help to keep systems free from many common root kits. 7 brought in a very standard UI, that would be the basis for things going forward, 8/8.1 existed… Then 10 basically uplifted everyone to 64 bit as a default.
Of course this is far from a complete list.
What did W11 add that we didn’t have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?
You’re not wrong, and I agree in that it feels like W10 is where MS finally got it right.
However, hindsight is 20/20, and those sentiments were definitely not felt in the first few years after W10 was released. Once all the big issues were worked out and people figured out how to remove the bloat/spyware shit though, it was a solid OS. I still run it on my gaming PC (for now - tested some crucial programs last night on my laptop running LMDE6, great success)
What did W11 add that we didn’t have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?
W11 right now is essentially a shitty skin on top of W10, with all that extra shit. The kernel is still version 10.x.whatever FFS 😅. But SHINY INTERFACE and ONEDRIVE
Yea just set up a windows 11 pc for the first time and the experience was basically:
It forces you into making a Microsoft account or log in with one, then it told me mine was locked even though I was able to log in fine elsewhere. I had to use the alternate log in method to get in (I know you can make a local account but I already had one set up for this).
Then it tries to force you to “back up from your old pc” which this was an entirely different system so I’m not even sure why I would want that.
Then it tries to convince you to send them a bunch of telemetry while reminding you that you’ll still get ads if you don’t, they just won’t be targeted towards you.
Then it tries to push microsoft office on you.
Then it needs to do updates which took like 45 minutes.
Then you’re finally at the desktop where you get probably half a dozen othe pop ups between windows and the vendor.
Then it’s “usable”
By comparison Bazzite took like 20 minutes to get to a usable desktop and isn’t nagging me about ads at all. I have a laundry list of things still to figure out but so far way less annoying.
There is a workaround for installing win 11 with local account, it’s still horseshit
the fact that they think that just because they still show ads it’s ok in any way shape or form to collect any personal information is insane
don’t forget they are also trying to screen record 24/7 and then store it in the cloud (yes they store it “locally” in you appdata, that they then decided to sync with OneDrive)
Yea, I had a throwaway account already to use for the login so I didn’t bother trying it. They still managed to make it annoying even when I did it their way and agreed it is horseshit.
Agreed.
I DID forget about that. Thanks for reminding me I need to figure out how to opt out (assuming it’s even possible).
Can’t upgrade because my 4 years old mobo is apparently too old (haven’t checked out the workarounds yet). Installed Linux Mint to give it a try and I am positively surprised so far.
I finally committed to Linux at the end of last year. Enough is working to make it preferable to Windows now. I’m still having a lot of bugs, and it’s costing quite some time. But at least my computer is mine again. No more telemetry, ads, and UIs that treat me like a toddler. No more updates forced onto me instead of being done whenever I want it.
Me too. Most things just work for me BTW. Laptop battery went from 4 hours to 10+, with better performance too. But most important for me is privacy, which is way better/easier to manage in Linux.
Ironically my laptop, which has been Linux-only since 2015 or something, has finally stopped working properly. The dedicated GPU (NVIDIA Quadro K1100M) no longer has working drivers with the kernel from Ubuntu 24.04. Then again, it wouldn’t run windows 11 either probably.
OtherPetard@feddit.nl
on 07 Apr 11:01
nextcollapse
I’m using 10+ years old hardware, Microsoft has already told me I can’t upgrade, followed by several messages asking me to upgrade…
In other news, Linux Mint works nice and I just need to check Protondb to get Warframe running at frames per second and not seconds per frame
if you’re on Linux mint, check to see if mint itself is out of date. When I installed mint, the only install media I could find was 2 versions behind. Getting to the current version fixed my warframe problems.
Ill bet right before the deadline, they will magically make TPM optional, even though they said they wouldn’t.
VolumetricShitCompressor@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 07 Apr 11:41
nextcollapse
Just imagine 43 % market share in the next hardware survey.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com
on 07 Apr 12:12
nextcollapse
Just bought a laptop and put bazzite on it to try it out and figure out if I can do all the things I want to do on it. If that all works out I’ll be switching my desktop over.
Yeah I remember thr same thing. Everything else was suppose to be a package update.
But back-end technology and usage expectations change, and there’s a limit to what front-end changes an existing user tolerates. That was never a promise they could keep.
It has lasted a really long time, though. I don’t decry 11 existing. I’m upset they’re sunsetting 10 without giving us a chance to wait for 11 to get better, let alone for ‘oops we fixed the fuckups’ W12.
benjaminoakes@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 13:25
nextcollapse
Well, it can be the last version of Windows for you. 🙂
Ubuntu is nice. I use it daily. Others in my family too. And there are other options too. I hear Mint is nice though I haven’t used it much.
No complaints about Fedora KDE specifically. I’ve had it on my spare laptop since version 30 or so. Desktop is on 41 now. The only “issues” I’ve had running this full-time is lack of support for Fidelity Active Trader Pro (which kinda sucks anyway), I haven’t been able to make my bluetooth shipping label printer work yet, and I haven’t gotten my Logi MX Keys / Master S mouse working as it works in Logi Options (on windows or mac) to switch over to my work mac as intended. Otherwise, I prefer it to other distros I’ve used.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 13:56
nextcollapse
I want to move to Linux, but I need to be able to use the VPN service my work uses and I’m just not sure how to get it working on Linux. I should just dual boot.
tomenzgg@midwest.social
on 07 Apr 14:22
nextcollapse
Dual-booting was how I first got into Linux; it truly leaves open the ability to keep everything you’re worried about not having.
Without prodding too much into what VPN you work uses
Most VPN solutions run on linux just fine, even Microsoft PPTP VPN solution works fine. I would probably check with your IT department what protocol they use and any connection caveats (like machine certificates used for authentication) and look into the different VPN solutions (some examples; WireGuard and OpenVPN are very well supported, IPSec (libreswan or strongswan are options here) depends on setup, PPTP/L2TP should work with most setups (I have to admin I havn’t touched those enough), vpnc works with Cisco base IPsec setups and openconnect works with most SSL VPN connection)
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 14:46
collapse
It’s Watchguard. Though looking at their site, it seems like there might be support that I wasn’t able to find last time I looked into this. Definitely want to dual boot at some point. I’ve got a Surface Book 3 though, and I know it needs special kernel stuff to get working properly, so I’d almost rather just wait until my boss retires and everyone’s out of a job to dive into Linux. Easier than finding spare time in my life. Living the dream
I have not any experience with WatchGuard, but it from some quick searching around it seems to not be far from the easiest to set up for linux. dual-booting is probably the easier solution.
I hope you find a solution to what sounds like not the best life situation, and may you have an otherwise have a nice Linux journey.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world
on 07 Apr 19:24
collapse
Sorry for that, it gets hard sometimes when I start accidentally living the examined life for a second
My friend was unable to update to windows 11 due to the TPM requirements and looking to switch to linux. I upgraded my CPU and said they should buy my old one. They finally said OK and asked if I could help them install it before they switched to Linux. I installed the CPU and they never switched to Linux because now they have a CPU that meets the TPM requirements.
Windows users really hate change. Microsoft will force them to update and the users will whine but 1 week later they will be used to it then they will stick on windows 11 till EoL.
threaded - newest
Yep, fuck M$
Only semi-related: Why do they always show pictures of Gates when he hasn’t been involved in MS in a long time? Why never Satya Nadella?
EDIT: Also, yes, related to the actual question already living Linux full time and when October rolls around probably gonna back up everything from the Windows side of my dual-boot and wipe the 1TB NVMe Windows is on to use as storage.
I was thinking the same thing. He will just forever be known as the guy. Maybe it will change once he dies?
Maybe, he is indeed looking hella rough in this photo.
Seems he’s using the same orange tan as the other orange guy haha
I don’t think so. Gates’ shoes are big ones.
businessinsider.com/bill-gates-harassment-inappro…
You’re right, it’s really hard to fill the shoes of someone who abuses their power and position to try to hook up with women.
Well, I guess that Gates can’t fill their own shoes too
Not that hard unfortunately. I’m sure someone up to the task can fill his shoes no problem
Didn’t work for Steve Jobs.
It’s maybe some kind of circular logic, but my brain doesn’t recognize a picture of Satya Nadella = “Microsoft’s CEO” for some reason.
Maybe your brain would, if it had a chance to connect the two if they posted more pictures of Satya and Microsoft in the same context…
Yeah, its maybe some kind of circular logic that their brain doesn't make that link
It’s probably some kind of circular logic, I dunno. 🤷♂️
I couldn’t name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate’s mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids
Steve Ballmer! Developers developers developers! That’s the other one I know
I’m somewhat in the same boat but I remember Mister “Developers Developers Developers” Steve Ballmer who was also immortalized by the “Ballmer Peak” XKCD. xkcd.com/323/
I could but that’s because a friend of mine works on the legacy rendering code in Excel. He has some traumatic war stories to share.
Holy shit I remember that article too!
Gabe Newell?
He would be also be a reasonable person to include on an article citing Steam data.
Personally, I think this picture of Steve Balmer is so much more iconic and should be used for every single article about Microsoft or Windows:
<img alt="Developers developers developers developers! Developers developers developers developers! Developers developers developers developers! Developers developers developers developers! Developers developers developers developers!" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/e315ea64-d172-4a64-b08f-8e496cd2c1b5.webp">
It’s weird how MS’s putting developers first became a joke. Back in the 80’s, companies like HP and IBM had open warehouses with coders at desks lined up like factory workers. MS was the first big company to give a private office to every programmer.
The approach isn’t what became a joke, it was the absolutely unhinged way in which it was presented in that famous Ballmer stage appearance.
Oh sure, it was crazy. But the sentiment behind it was good. It’s like how Howard Dean got dunked on for his scream.
I’d take that any day over the unhinged AI focus from all these companies now or Google’s awful documentation from the past few years.
I’m here, so I’m more likely to know who that is or what he looks like. But I don’t. I do now because you mentioned him and I looked up how he looks like. Your average Joe is gonna be even less likely to know who that is or what he looks like. So I’m guessing that’s why. Some CEOs just avoid the spotlight. Or maybe I’ve just been avoiding MS news, dunno
It’s a vicious cycle. The media don’t use Satya Nadella’s name or picture much, so people don’t know who he is or how he looks like.
Because he set the general, evil directions for MS. Like keeping users uninformed and locked in, smearing the competition, sabotaging open standards, taking your control over your hardware and data away from users, etc. All happened during evil Bill’s reign.
Not to mention the many deals with hardware manufacturers in order to avoid competing OSs to have any chance. They managed to kill BeOS and dominate the Japanese market in the 90s
I was wondering why Bill Gates would be talking about Steam users.
Optics or marketing, it’s the same reason LLMs are all called AI.
Under his watch they did form the anti-opensource and EEE mantra
My gaming PC is on Win 11 because it’s recent and I’m lazy and it’s convenient. My laptop runs Win 10 so it’ll be Linux I guess. Not really looking forward to finding a distro and reinstalling and whatnot but what can you do. It’s been a good few years since I last had a Linux box so I’m pretty rusty and not up to date on the recent best distros.
What distro did you use before?
I used to use UbuntuStudio back when I was playing around with music recording and production ages ago because it ran the real-time kernel which was important for JACK I think. Last time though was just Mint.
Well, Mint is still one of the top recommendations for new users. It gets support for the newest hardware at a bit of a delay, so if you wanted to follow suit with your new gaming PC, it might not be as great of a choice for that for now, but for your laptop, that’s what I’d recommend, if you’re not looking to experiment.
I’m probably not going to be doing much gaming on my laptop, if any. I could be persuaded to experiment if you have any other suggestions.
Well, that was kind of a general statement. Mint is boring. That’s what it’s good at. That’s why it’s loved and why it’s recommended for new users. Specifically, it’s similar to Windows in many ways. It’s somewhat more customizable, but that’s about it.
With you having used Linux twice before, you could consider something less Windows-like, less boring. I’ll be talking about the desktop environment (DE) rather than distro, because it has much more influence on this. You can use these DEs on various distros.
Xfce isn’t necessarily what modern beauty standards would get flustered by, but many folks like it for its simplicity and because it is perhaps even more boring than Mint (without being Windows-like). There’s a good chance that it still works a lot like back when you used it.
Perhaps also worth mentioning that Mint’s DE is called “Cinnamon”, although it’s developed by the Mint devs, so if you like that a lot, it’s typically worth sticking to Mint.
Wow, thank you for the extensive reply! I did used to use xfce back in the day, yes. Never had a problem with it, but those were maybe simpler times. Might look into KDE this time, why not.
I was really thinking less of the DE and more along the lines of if you had any recommendations that weren’t Ubuntu- or Debian-based, as that’s pretty much all I’ve used I think. But maybe that’s too much experimenting…
Yeah, I always hesitate to recommend distros. 😅
There’s tons out there and they all exist, because some smart person decided to put in lots of work, as the existing ones didn’t match what they wanted.
If we exclude Ubuntu/Debian-based, that narrows it down somewhat. The other major distros are:
It’s the most “maximalist” mainstream distro, in that it preinstalls relatively much software. Personally, I think the other distros are a bit silly with their minimalist tendencies, but yeah, I’m biased. And well, downsides of openSUSE are that it is somewhat niche. You’ll find a helpful, tight-knit community, but it’s less likely that guides mention how to do things on openSUSE. Similarly, you’re less likely to find pre-packaged software for openSUSE. May have to compile from source more often, although SoS has a good amount of software, too.
As for whether a different distro is too much experimenting, if you do jump into it, you’ll understand why I talked about the desktop environment instead. 🙃
The DE makes a much bigger difference. Some people conflate distro and DE, because certain distros will have certain default DEs.
But if you used the same DE on two distros, honestly the main difference you’d notice is a different package manager. Where Ubuntu Studio and Mint use
apt, openSUSE useszypper, Fedora usesdnfand Arch usespacman. They handle somewhat differently, but largely do the same things (i.e. install/update/remove packages).Obviously, there are more differences to the distros, like how quickly they update and some of the default configuration, like the snapshotting I raved about, but ultimately it’s still a Linux system with much of the same software running on both…
Thanks again for the rundown! Snapshotting like that is definitely cool, I can see why you enjoy it. I’m no stranger to having to nuke the system partition and reinstalling because I broke something so snapshots definitely sound like a convenient tool. Though I might be older and lazier now and less prone to do a bunch of weird things.
I know the memes of “Arch, btw” and have always been scared of it tbh. Maybe it isn’t so bad though? I’ve also heard people praise Bazzite, but I might lot end up doing much gaming on my laptop as I said.
Is the whole thing about real-time or low-latency kernel still a thing, or is that old news? Just in case I wanted to play around with JACK again.
Yeah, I don’t have first-hand experience with Arch for that reason either. Well, and also because I do want a distro to set things up for me. You could set up the snapshotting (with BTRFS and Snapper) on theoretically any distro, but not having to figure out how and what settings are good, that’s why I go with openSUSE.
I might look into NixOS at some point. It obsoletes the need for OS snapshots, because the entire OS configuration is made in configuration files. But from what I hear, it helps to be a programmer (which I am) to really appreciate NixOS.
And yeah, don’t know much about Bazzite either, but from what I’ve heard, it really has some design decisions that make it feel more like a games console. The atomic/transactional updates, for example. As I understand, updates and such are applied to a copy of your OS, which gets swapped in when you do the next reboot. This helps keep the system stable after applying updates, but implies that you can’t really just poke around manually in your root partition.
It can be helpful for users not looking to experiment, but yeah, can be a pain, if you do want to.
As for a real-time kernel, the JACK FAQ says you don’t need it, but the distro might limit real-time scheduling anyways: jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html
I’ve had JACK running on my system about a year ago, although I didn’t really have a need for low latency, so I can’t say, if it actually worked correctly.
Perhaps also worth pointing out that “Pipewire” is becoming a thing, which tries to make interfacing with JACK and PulseAudio much easier. I believe, I also used Pipewire back then. But yeah, folks who’ve dealt with JACK a lot more than I have, seem to be really excited about it, so it’s presumably doing a great job.
You are just a font of information, thank you so much! I’m starting to feel like I have a handle on the landscape. NixOS sounds like a cool idea, though I am not a programmer so maybe it’s not for me at this current time.
I probably know what to start looking at now when the time comes to make the change, this has been a great help. Pipewire sounds great and I’ll definitely look into that, I do remember tearing my hair a bit occasionally dealing with PulseAudio back in the day 😅
For gaming, people often recommend Pop!_OS, Bazzite, or Zorin, but you can use whatever you want if you are a tinkerer. I use Debian and have a great time gaming.
Outside of gaming and if Windows software compatibility isn't really something you're worried about, you can use any distro you want.
You can try some of them out using a web browser with DistroSea if you feel like it, though they don't have every distro because that would be nuts.
I’ve been on Kubuntu for a while, but snaps are starting to bug me. When I build a new PC, I’m in the market for a new distro. Do you have a solid recommendation for a KDE-based distro that doesn’t have a Windows-esque update step during shutdown and restart?
I'm not familiar enough with KDE to know what you mean by a Windows-esque update step, but if you can explain further I'll see if I can find something for you.
Alternatively, someone else might pop in with some options.
I sampled Fedora a few years back, but, much like Windows, when it installs updates for certain core components, on shutdown and boot-up, it will have a “Please wait while we install updates” screen. Meanwhile, in Kubuntu, it installs everything in the background while I’m using my computer normally, and the change takes place on next restart, when I’m good and ready, with no additional time waiting at that update screen.
Hmm, I suppose the big difference between Fedora and Kubuntu is that Fedora is a fixed point release distro (similar to rolling release but less frequent) that applies updates only on restart, so it's possible that it needs a moment to ensure that everything is compatible.
It's certainly a weird choice to kidnap your desktop, so I don't blame you for being annoyed. If that's causing this, then you might want to try a stable release distro. This is part of why I like Debian, because it doesn't change very quickly and updates are unlikely to need special care to ensure stability. Debian also doesn't have the issue you're talking about, it updates right away in the background.
Kubuntu is Ubuntu-based (duh) so if you like how it behaves, you could try Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) or try another flavour of Ubuntu. Pop!_OS and Zorin are both Ubuntu-based and should definitely be on DistroSea.
Thanks. That seems like a good jumping off point.
I’m using Fedora workstation (Gnome) and the updates are done while turning off the computer.
Next time I start it, it starts without having to apply or download anything.
The only thing which could be improved is that you still have to go to the software center to download updates, but you can apply them whenever you want.
To choose your distro you must first decide whether you want a a stable distribution (debian) or a bleeding edge one (arch). Then you have to decide whether you want it to be a rolling release (tumbleweed) or a fixed point release distribution (fedora).
There's a lot more that could be said about each of these distros, but they all have KDE sessions.
The bleeding edge distro is called “unstable”, not “Arch”. /s
Snaps are a pest and Ubuntu is more or less a failed experiment. I had way less trouble installing and maintaining a couple of plain vanilla Debian hosts than Ubuntu machines for years. The killer argument for Ubuntu was easiness of installation. Nowadays a standard Debian install is a matter of a few clicks. Sure a custom install like encrypted LVM over several partitions is still a demanding task even for an ecperienced user - but at least it is possible.
Does Debian have the same update woes I ran into with Fedora? Or if there was a way to tweak that in Fedora, I couldn’t find the option, and it was several years ago besides.
You can update fedora through the terminal which skips the reboot part.
No. Debian updates tend to be interruption free. Apt/dpkg is a lot more consistent than RPM and deals very nicely with dependencies in both directions.
.
Starting to plan my next build and will likely go full Linux
Same. I just gotta figure out what distro I want to run. Nobara, Bazzite, Mint, Zorin, Kubuntu, idk. I get analysis paralysis. I’ve run Ubuntu, Fedora, and even tried Arch once, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been full Linux. I’m definitely done with Windows tho (at least outside of work, but I can’t control that).
I’m using Garuda and it has a setup specifically for gaming. The gamer look it comes with out of the box is ugly in my opinion, but that’s easy to change.I highly recommend it. It’s Arch based, so the AUR and Arch wiki work great with it. It’s really great and (in my opinion) user friendly.
Awesome, thank you for the recommendation! I’ve been wanting to try out Arch on my laptop but I don’t have as much time on my hands as I used to. Have been reading that POP OS is good for gaming but I will definitely do some reading on Garuda.
Garuda is great because it comes with a tool where you can select a bunch of packages you may need (but also most won’t, so it’s not built in), then it’ll install them for you. You don’t need to search for what you’ll need because they’re listed with a description for you right on the first boot. It makes it very quick and easy to get set up, while still being Arch underneath.
Unfortunately, I use some software that’s Windows-only, and can’t be bothered to set up a VM or anything
That sure is unfortunate 🙃
It’s easier to install it than reconfiguring default Windows.
Yeah I’ve been Linux only since like 2012 but lately booting into windows 10 for sim racing, that’s just not a thing on Linux it seems :(
Plenty of sim racing on Linux. Just not iracing or (I think) rfactor.
But Automobilista 2, AC, ACC, ACEvo, Raceroom, Dirt Rally 2.0, Beam. Ng drive, and others all run fine on my gaurda machine
I basically only use iRacing at the moment for serious stuff, beam ng for fun. Might try that from arch and see how it goes!
I’ve been trying to get a good domain authed nix set up for a while. Alternately, if I could set up a gaming server using sunshine/moonlight.
Moonlight is still alive? I used to use it constantly and was really disappointed when support for it discontinued.
Well I see it I repos and app stores, not real sure of the development, last update on the Google store was Feb 2024. Still seems to work when I’ve played with it
Moonlight and sunshine are very much alive and active.
github.com/moonlight-stream github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine
Running with Linux (Nobara) for a while now, stability and updates come much faster than Steam client updates, IMO.
Sunshine is still very much in active development for the server side of things, and the client app is also still active. Both seem to still work flawlessly in Windows and Linux on Nvidia cards for me, and as far as I know there’s very solid support for AMD cards as well.
Most people won’t budge. It doesn’t matter if Win10 is unsupported or isn’t getting a security update, I reckon a solid 40 of 43% will just stay on it until programs they use stop working.
Basically my plan until I can scrounge enough money up for a new computer. My current one literally won’t let me upgrade due to some component/driver it lacks.
You can pay to keep getting windows security updates and prolong the upgrade even further.
“you can pay us, and we won’t break your legs for a while longer” -ms
W10 IoT is a thing, and will get updates for a few more years, no mafia shakedown required.
It’ll let you upgrade to Linux. It doesn’t play those stupid games with you like MS does.
For some of the hardware requirements, there are edits you can make to get it to install, but you do have to also force it every time there is a major release, minor updates go through fine.
Definitely you should look into Linux, it’s really gotten quite good. Especially if you don’t need games with anti cheat.
But if you just want to use Windows 11, it’s super duper easy. Just Google “download Windows 11 iso” and grab the iso file from Microsoft website.
Then download Rufus.
Then pop in a thumb drive that’s at least 8gb. Open Rufus, select your thumb drive and the iso, then choose the option to remove windows requirements, then click start.
Backup your files on Windows 10, save them somewhere. Then pop in the thumb drive and install windows 11 fresh.
The requirements aren’t actually required. Win 11 runs fine on all sorts of hardware. Support stops at 8th Gen Intel, but I’ve installed it on 5th Gen. My work laptop is 2nd or 3rd Gen. It’s fine 🤷♂️
Technically less secure? Yeah, in some ways. But it’s miles ahead of running unpatched windows 10 after September.
Oh shit this is actually really helpful, I might end up doing the Rufus USB route when I get my stuff back up and running (apartment flooded and I have to wait until the finish fixing my ceiling before I can plug everything back up.)
Thanks for the in-depth info!
What comes after fresh install? Massgrave ?
I predict Valve will stop supporting Windows 10 in probably another 3 - 4 years at most.
Yeah I’m just going to stick on Win 10 for a while. Apparently the enterprise version is getting support for longer so maybe I’ll see if I can get on that.
Yep, I feel like people overestimate how much anyone cares about official support or security patches or whatever. People will assume it’s fine until they’re either forced out or something goes horribly wrong.
Regular folks will most likely let it be if possible, until it’s time for a new PC anyway.
Like the climate
My brother in law was still using windows 7 and it had never occurred to him that this might be a security risk. Normal people don’t care.
Windows 10 ltsc massgrave.dev
Yep. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but valve dropping support for windows 7 was what made me switch to linux. Until the computer stops working for the average user, they won’t change.
Thought maybe steam is for next desktop. That or run win10
My gaming 'puter is running win 10, and the plan is to replace it with one running Manjaro. Will have to see when that happens, not upgrading to win 11.
I upgraded as soon as I had the chance, to Windows 11. But I never boot into it because my games run absolutely fine on Arch using Steam and the Proton compatibility layer. 👍 No reason to boot Windows whatsoever. I can’t remember the last time I did. Every time I boot into it, the last system update finishes and a new one is available. 💀
Windows 10 IoT LTSC has support until 2032. Just saying…
I've heard about this, but can anybody who's gone through it describe how much effort it was? Do you have to do a from-scratch Windows install? Did you lose any of your stuff? What level of computer expertise would you say is enough to handle installing LTSC, e.g. could your parents do it?
It’s super easy, particularly if you follow a guide your first time. Your parents could absolutely do the install if you set up the USB for them. The hardest part is finding a safe download for the OS (they are .iso files) and setting it up on a USB stick (I recommend using a program called ‘Ventoy’ to do this).
I know that it’s a fediverse sin to post reddit links here, but there’s a genuinely superb megathread for Windows 10 LTSC IoT available that I recommend:
www.reddit.com/r/…/windows_ltsc_megathread/
In terms of actually installing you can initiate it by plugging the USB stick in and going through the start menu settings; or, when you boot up the computer you press F2/F12 to enter the BIOS screen, and you select the plugged in USB stick as your “boot drive”. This makes the computer open the USB stick instead of your already-installed OS.
Disagree - I’ve done it, it is easy and straightforward, but anyone who hasn’t installed an OS on bare metal and used a certain tool that you can get from Github to activate MS products, isn’t going to explain the process as “super easy”. More like “a mother-fucking pain in the ass” and “why did you suggest this” and “what the fuck is an iso”.
This is definitely “I’ll swing by this month and install it” territory, not “here’s a guide, ez pz” for anyone older than 40 who didn’t major in CS.
Most of those points are why I mentioned that setting up the iso on a removable drive is probably the hardest part. If you can boot to it then the rest of the installation process at that point is pressing ‘next’ through the W10 initialization.
But I’ll also concede that an average mom and pop likely can’t handle opening powershell to run massgravel and activate windows, even though it’s as simple as copying and pasting, then pressing ‘1’
Already did and it’s glorious! Steam works beautifully and the only final thing that I’m missing is Adobe products.
I recommend, if you want to try Linux, that you try out the ‘Debian’ distribution, and use the ‘KDE Plasma’ desktop environment. It makes for a very Windows-like experience and really assisted me with the transition between OSs.
for newcomers, maybe this is the best combo. Debian stable with KDE Plasma.
Unless you’re using NVIDIA. Didn’t work out of the box for me and required a couple hours of fiddling. Mint worked seamlessly.
PopOS (scroll down to the “Pop_OS with Nvidia” link).
It is tailored for Nvidia cards, is Debian(Ubuntu) based, & super friendly for new users.
EDIT: Here’s a link to the 24.04 release that provides only the Cosmic desktop environment (no X11, no gnome or kde). This is what I use, but it’s in alpha so user beware.
Saving this.
Manjaro with KDE Plasma has been working pretty flawlessly with an nvidia card for me.
Wrangling my Nvidia drivers into Mint also took a couple hours for me but I haven’t had problems afterward
That’s weird. It worked for me just fine. I have GTX 1060 3GB.
Debian is not a good choice for beginners. It’s extremely bare bones compared to Ubuntu or Mint.
Drivers on Debian stable are also heavily outdated
Drivers being outdated is not a big deal, unless you use recent hardware, then it might make sense to make a jump to current testing release (trixie), or just stay on testing indefinitely.
Also it being “barebones” is a good thing in my eyes, since I can configure it how I want.
It’s definitely a good thing if you’re interested and knowledgeable enough to build what you want. I was just arguing it’s not the best choice for a casual user because a lot things they’ll want won’t work out of the box.
Even updating to the next stable Debian version requires editing system files and running the command line.
Drivers can matter quite a bit if for example you’re on an Nvidia card and the Debian drivers are 2 years old. It happened to me and caused dlss to not work in some games. And with Nvidia you can’t just move to testing, you need to backport the driversc and that’s quite involved.
I run a Debian server and it’s amazing for that.
I definitely agree with most of the points but I don’t get what do you mean that you can’t move to testing, because that’s what I literally did recently by upgrading from bookworm to trixie with no issues whatsoever and I have Nvidia card, although older one (GTX 1060 3GB).
When I tried it, testing was on the same version of Nvidia drivers as stable so it didn’t solve my problem. It was possible to manually backport them, but it wasn’t straightforward to do.
I miss Affinity Designer! Bought a license and I like it but no linux port 🙄
I can’t get used Inkscape, it’s so different and confusing for me
Have you ever seen how to draw a circle in GIMP?
Krita > Gimp
Krita and GIMP are tools for different use cases.
On a more professional/advanced level I agree.
But for average users, they accomplish 90% identical tasks, but Krita, while less mature, is more intuitively designed (superiorly designed I would argue), and uses better algorithms for things like select & fill.
Also Krita is less ugly. Sorry, I’m notoriously shallow.
I hate you :c that was… Disturbing
I think torrenting a copy of Photoshop would be faster than drawing a circle in GIMP
I went with Mint but I’m thinking about KDE (or maybe KDE flavored Arch? Idk I’m new) on my second computer. Pretty painless?
So Mint is the ‘distro’, which is actually based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. In simple terms, a distro is a bundle of programs and configurations assembled for you. Basically, Debian is a stripped down version of Mint.
A ‘desktop environment’ is a separate program(?) that changes what your desktop looks like, and they can be downloaded on any distro. So you can try out KDE Plasma on your Mint installation! The one that you’re likely using right now is called ‘Cinnamon’, which I personally didn’t like and turned me off of Linux my first time trying to switch over years ago.
Something cool about KDE Plasma is that you can download themes and make your desktop environments look really cool. For instance, sometimes I like to rock this Windows 7 theme: www.pling.com/p/2142957/
Eh Arch can be quite stable if you’re careful, but it could also be a frustrating experience, there’s lots of manual configuration
I went to Manjaro (Arch) with KDE from Mint about 5 months ago, and it’s been nearly flawless, allowed me to easily install a real time processing kernel for audio production, and it’s run every game I’ve thrown at it performs better than Winblows.
Yeah Manjaro + KDE is kinda what I was thinking, thanks!
I would recommend endeavor os with plasma instead honestly. Its a similar setup, but you won’t have to deal with manjaro holding back updates.
Oh okay! Thanks, that’s helpful. So EndeavorOS has pretty frequent updates then? I’m ngl since switching I look forward to them, which is funny! It’s like “oh cool my computer got better and also new toys instead of worse and more bloated!”
Ahh I should’ve done this years ago but better late than never
Yeah, it should get updates exactly the same as arch. And I’m the same way, I check for update every time I log in lol. It does feel nice that you’re always up to date
Manjaro is legitimately a terrible choice, github.com/arindas/manjarno
I used to give manjaro to a lot of people because i was an arch user and supported a bunch of linux users, it was a massive mistake, arch is just a strictly better version of manjaro, the things manjaro claims to do it doesn’t do well because it’s just kind of hacked onto arch. Let me give you an example of something stupid that manjaro does:
normally, in linux, all packages are upgraded centrally, however, manjaro has decided to make an exception for the kernel, and now the kernel is versioned, and each version upgrades separately… this can result in you being stuck with an ancient kernel. I had to go into peoples computers, boot into a console, manually swap out the kernel, and put on the latest one, because the updater wouldn’t update due to the newest drivers being incompatible with the old kernel.
This happened enough times, that and the concerns raised in manjarno make me think it really isn’t for anyone. The team is laughably incompetent (they can’t even get their certs sorted out? really?) and you don’t want an incompetent team running your desktop.
If you’re enough of an expert to fix these things… just use arch, it’s strictly better. If you don’t know what you’re doing, an arch based distro is a terrible choice and you should go with bazzite.
I’m willing to troubleshoot infinitely over matrix for free and have 15 years of experience, feel free to message me!
Very helpful, thank you!
Manjaro is legitimately a terrible choice and should not be recommended, github.com/arindas/manjarno
If it works for you, that’s great, but you’re lucky so far and it’s a ticking timebomb.
I used to give manjaro to a lot of people because i was an arch user and supported a bunch of linux users, it was a massive mistake, arch is just a strictly better version of manjaro, the things manjaro claims to do it doesn’t do well because it’s just kind of hacked onto arch. Let me give you an example of something stupid that manjaro does:
normally, in linux, all packages are upgraded centrally, however, manjaro has decided to make an exception for the kernel, and now the kernel is versioned, and each version upgrades separately… this can result in you being stuck with an ancient kernel. I had to go into peoples computers, boot into a console, manually swap out the kernel, and put on the latest one, because the updater wouldn’t update due to the newest drivers being incompatible with the old kernel.
This happened enough times, that and the concerns raised in manjarno make me think it really isn’t for anyone. The team is laughably incompetent (they can’t even get their certs sorted out? really?) and you don’t want an incompetent team running your desktop.
If you’re enough of an expert to fix these things… just use arch, it’s strictly better. If you don’t know what you’re doing, an arch based distro is a terrible choice and you should go with bazzite.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I completely disagree. Debian is not beginner-friendly. Go with Bazzite if your focus is gaming.
It is a gaming-focused distribution. It’s also an “atomic” distribution, which basically means it’s really hard to break it. It’s more like Android or IOS where the OS and base system are managed by someone else. They’re read-only so you can’t accidentally break them.
For example, instead of trying to manage your own video card drivers, they come packaged with the base system image, and they’re tested to make sure they work with all the other base components.
I’ve been using Linux since the 1990s, so I’ve run my share of distributions: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Even for someone experienced, atomic distributions are great. But, for a newcomer they’re so much better.
I find this interesting as I’m a beginner with only about 3 months of Linux use under my belt, whereas Ive used Windows since I was like 5 years old, and I found Debian to be a really good introduction to Linux. I was originally recommended Mint, like many are, and I found the experience to be a negative one as opposed to my later experience with Debian. (Note I have no experience with Bazzite or any other distros).
The additional ‘bloat’ in Mint obfuscated from me various aspects of Linux. It insulated me from learning how Linux is different from Windows, and that actually hindered me from understanding the OS. By starting with Debian I got a feel for using the CLI, setting up my drivers, package installer, and desktop environment. And, while those aspects can be complicated for new users, i think its somewhat necessary that they get a feel for them if Linux is going to be recommended as their OS.
Debian is fine as an introduction to Linux, if that’s what you want. But, as a beginner, you’re going to screw up, and Debian doesn’t do anything to protect you from that.
Atomic distributions let you use Linux but make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot. It’s much harder to break the system in a way you can’t just reboot to fix it.
It all depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to learn Linux by using it, then by all means, go for a traditional distribution. Debian is nice, but I’d go for Ubuntu. But, if your goal is to have a stable system that you can’t screw up as a beginner I’d go with an atomic distribution. If your goal is to play games, Bazzite is hard to beat.
You can still learn Linux if you use an atomic distribution. Configuring and using the desktop environment is basically the same. But, you don’t need to worry about your drivers, and you don’t install packages the traditional way. If you want to learn those things, you can run a VM or a distrobox.
In what world is a Debian base not beginner friendly my fiancé that could barely use windows is using it just fine
Has your fiancé had to update drivers? Has he had to upgrade to a new release? Has he had to figure out how to install a version of something that isn’t in the Debian stable repositories?
If the only application your fiancé uses is Firefox, then he might go a long time before having any kind of problem. It all depends on how he uses it.
It’s basically a Chromebook for her
If it’s a her, you mean fiancée, fiancé is used only for men. And, it’s basically a chromebook in how she uses it. But, chromebooks are designed so that you never have to do any system administration. You never have to upgrade drivers or figure out how to get to the next release.
She probably hasn’t had to deal with that yet, but eventually the system will have to be updated. Over time, cruft piles up and makes it harder and harder to upgrade and manage. Atomic distributions are designed to be much more like chromebooks. Someone else manages the upgrades and the tricky choices, and then you just install their base image.
Autocorrect on my phone always chooses fiancé for some damn reason but I showed her how to update when I set it up for her and she’s been keeping up with it checking once a week and she’s had a couple questions I’ve had to answer but less then when she was just trying to do basic things on windows so it’s been great for me
The thing with autocorrect is that you don’t have to accept the correction.
Yea iOS does it automatically unless you select it I’m just lazy
Did she set it up herself?
For the most part
How does Bazzite fare when I want to do something a bit different. Install docker, Python, PHP, sqlite, etc. I’d normally just install them, but does this work for Bazzite and other atomic/immutable distros?
So, there are multiple ways of installing things. For GUI apps the standard way is flatpaks. Some non-GUI things are installed that way, but it’s less common.
For CLI apps, homebrew is installed by default and it’s recommended as a way to install CLI things.
The method I like for apps that have a lot of interdependencies is to use a distrobox. If you want a development environment where multiple apps all talk to each-other, you can isolate them on their own distrobox and install them however you like there.
I currently have a distrobox running ubuntu that I use for a kubernetes project. In that distrobox I install anything I need with apt, or sometimes from source. Within that kubernetes project I use mise-en-place to manage tools just for that particular sub-project. What I like about doing things this way is that when I’m working on that project I have all the tools I need, and don’t have to worry about the tools for other projects. My base bazzite image is basically unchanged, but my k8s project is highly customized.
If you really want to, you can still install RPMs as overlays to the base system, it’s just not recommended because that slows down upgrades.
More details here:
docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/
Awesome, thanks for the explanation! I’d been put off Bazzite and other immutable distros because I had seen threads saying you basically needed flatpak for everything, but it sounds like that’s not true.
I don’t need a project at the moment but I will give this a go once I am ready for one!
Yeah, I only use flatpak for GUI apps that don’t need any special handling. To be fair, that’s a decent number of the things I use most often: Firefox, Thunderbird, Signal, Kodi, Discord, Gimp, VLC. I think it’s also how I installed some themes for KDE / Plasma.
Console stuff I’ve either done in a distrobox using the conventions of that OS (apt for the Ubuntu one, DNF for the Fedora one), or I’ve used homebrew. But, I haven’t used too much homebrew because I want my “normal” console to be as unchanged as possible.
There are a few things I’ve used distrobox-export to make available outside the distrobox.
It took me a little while to understand how you’re supposed to think about the system, but now that I think I get it, I really like it. My one frustration is that there’s an nVidia driver bug that’s affecting me, and nVidia has been unable to fix it for a few months. I think I’d be in exactly the same situation with a traditional distro. The difference is that if they ever fix it, I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks until the fix makes it to the Bazzite stable build. I suppose I could switch to Bazzite testing and get it within days of it being fixed instead of weeks. Apparently just use a “rebase” command and reboot. But, I’m hesitant to do that because other than the nVidia driver, everything’s so stable.
Lucky for me I don’t have any Nvidia so things sail a bit smoother.
Thanks for all the advice 🙂
I moved to endeavouros. First time using a rolling release, and I was struggling with some webdev stuff cause node was on a recent non-lts build and a few other things.
Not a problem for building, cause I already have that containerised. But things like installing packages was refusing, and obviously couldn’t run dev workflows.
Until I realised I should just work inside a container.
I know vscode is still Microsoft (and I’m sure I could get it to work with vscodium), but the dev container workflow is fantastic.
Absolute game changer.
And I know I can easily work on a different platform, os whatever. And still have the same dev environment.
Yeah, it’s a game changer. Especially if you have different projects on the go. I’m used to having to deal with an ugly path with all kind of random things in it because I need them for one project. But, with containers / distroboxes / toolbx you can keep those changes isolated.
As long as you’re running KDE, it will feel familiar to a Windows user. I started with Kubuntu which was great until I had a system update, and it completely shat itself. Wanted to try Bazzite next, but the installer wouldn’t work properly, so I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I’ve seen no reason to switch since.
If you’re into primarily gaming, try PikaOS. It’s Debian based and uses the same tooling, but it’s on an optimized kernel. Is generally geared toward gaming.
There are other gaming specific distros of course, this is just the “Debian”-related one. I would not recommend the real debian if you’re mainly into gaming. It’ll need manual intervention and/or optimization to get games running, or at least get them running well. It’s not impossible (it even hard if you’ve got but is Linux experience), but just harder than necessary.
Not having access to Adobe products is a feature not a bug.
maybe give debian testing a go for a little more up to date software :)
Outside of Steam, how have you found gaming compatibility? I know Xbox Gamepass doesn’t work as that’s very specifically a Windows app, but how about other standalone games/platforms?
Outside of steam will be a case by case basis. I wouldn’t expect a lot of luck, and it may require that you use a compatibility layer like Wine.
I’ll be switching fully to Linux this summer, but will also “upgrade” windows 10 to 11 on the last week of support. I’ll only use it then if I have to, on a separate drive.
I play only on Linux, and it works great. Come on over!
Come to Linux, it’s all I’ve used since Windows 7 and it works great.
I dual boot but I’m on Windows 11 for my windows partition because the fucking thing just upgraded itself one day.
My system isn't even that old (maybe 4 years) and the first few times I got that very annoying popup that I should try to upgrade it told me in vague terms that I couldn't. So be it, everything runs fine now. I have backups of everything, so if WIn10 doesn't continue to work as simply unsupported one day I'll look for ways to "fix" it like someone mentioned with a 3rd party, or go to Linux and adapt to it. Anyone who has ever had a drive failure knows that the solution is to use a recovery USB which will be a portable Linux, so it will be just another version of that.
Check out Bazzite Linux. It has been very stable for me and all the games I tested just works.
Already moved all my PC stuff to Linux. Laptop, desktop, media server. Been wanting to do this for years. Thanks, Valve and Proton, and to all those Linux developers who made this transition possible. Fuck M$
I’m probably gonna go full Linux, I already run it on my laptop and my closet computer lol
I wonder if Steam OS will be ready for desktops before this
If they are ready by then, it would be perfect timing to grab a TON of users.
Bazzite? Bazzite Steam OS?
I meant something owned/maintained by Valve, it’s a name people can trust and would catch a lot of angry Win10 users switching
personally I don’t need any specific distro, but it would be a big boost for Valve
I'm not making the jump to Linux fully.
I will and have done this thing where I will wait until Microsoft has enough of their head out of their ass to make another decent Windows version again, before I consider hopping to it. They're due to make one sometime soon, don't they? They'll soon realize Windows 11 like 8, Vista and ME before it, was a stupid idea and do something nicer for Windows 12 or whatever they do with Windows next after 11. Windows 11 is already like 4 years old and one of its versions is going to expire next year. What will they do then?
Linux doesn't have my full attention because I don't think it'll run everything I use for Windows. My user activity/behavior is slowing down to where I'm probably a casual user at best who does the bare minimum. Yet, there's things I'd like to run without having to use third party software as a bridge to get to what I want to run as simple as it would if it was on Windows with a simple click or two. Oh and not to mention, hardware driver and support with Linux is one of my major concerns and I don't think there's a Linux driver for every piece of my hardware.
My home (gaming) pc is going back to linux for sure., on the very day they drop support for 10.
Installed kubuntu on the laptop so I can get used to it. Still trying to find a AV and firewall app I like
ClamAV, if you want more than just common sense. Firewall is built-in to kubu.
I’m sticking with Linux due to the bullshit that Microsoft is constantly pulling. Currently, my PC is running Fedora 41, and I love it quite a bit; currently I can’t imagine a future where I return to Windows 11. Proton Compatibility Layer makes gaming on any distro fairly easy!
It’s not like Windows 10 will magically stop booting or something…
Right?
I never understand why people are so obsessed with not getting updates. They usually just break everything and bloat the OS.
“But my security!” OS updates are going to protect you from 99% of the bad actors out there. They do nothing against social engineering. They don’t make you use strong passwords. Most of the security flaws OS updates are addressing are the kinda of attacks that only state actors or organized crime rings have the resources and abilities to exploit.
Governments? Heck yeah they need to be concerned. Large enterprises? Definitely. Small businesses? Eh it’s probably for the best to protect your livelihood even if you aren’t the juiciest target. But for an individual using their PC for gaming, social media, streaming content, online shopping, etc… The cost-benefit analysis is different.
It’s not different from physical security. Theres a reason you don’t need to go through TSA to get on a bus.
While I agree, I have seen TSA working at the bus station.
For now yes but when a zero day is found 1 guy could literally take down every single 10 install and Microsoft won’t be bothered to fix it
I mean… That could happen to Windows11 and be almost as catastrophic even if Microsoft does eventually fix it.
The problem is that as soon as a security issue is found on windows 10 it won’t be fixed, it is perpetual. In Windows 11 it will probably be fixed before you even know it exists.
You seem awfully optimistic about Microsoft’s response time lol.
How many people are out there today with broken locks on their doors or windows? How many stores do you think close every night with the minimum wage worker forgetting to lock up properly? How many people out their use incredibly weak passwords, share their credentials with others, or leave everything on post-it notes?
Security is a cost-benefit analysis. Depending on what exactly this hypothetical exploit requires I might very well be comfortable running Windows 10 anyways. The vast majority of security exploits require physical access to the machine- we only hear about the remote ones more often because they are scarier.
It might be a remote exploit or it might not. An OS is not just a program that runs in the background, if it is critically important.
These kind of exploiters don’t tend to attack you in particular, they have botnets scanning the web for any compromised machine.
Running windows 10 is fine today, might not be fine after EOL. It is irresponsible to shrug it off and not even consider the alternatives out there, including windows 11.
That’s where the “analysis” part of “cost-benefit analysis” comes in and it doesn’t make sense to generalize like you seem to want to.
Is it really that much more responsible to run Windows 11? You seem to have a LOT of faith in Microsoft to keep you safe. There’s plenty of reasons to not switch to Windows 11.
I also use Linux on some machines. But I can also see why there are reasons why one distro or another, or even Linux in general, may not be the right call for some people.
I use Linux exclusively but I don’t think it’s relevant to the discussion.
I would rather use windows 11 than any other EOL version of windows. I loved windows XP when it came out, wouldn’t dare to use it today.
Why not? They were fixing Windows XP remote-execution exploits all the way up to 2017. For free, for anyone to download.
And that stuff is only used to take down children’s hospitals, they don’t waste 0-day exploits on some rando’s home PC.
Running an EoL operating system is surely what you want to do with your personal dat-
Aaaaaaand it’s been compromised
Isn’t that exactly what’s happening as soon as you install win11?
Security wise 11 is better
Depends on how you define security.
Is win11 more cryptographically secure, absolutely.
Does that matter if you don’t trust the holder of the keys (the Microsoft keys stored in the tpm) not really.
implementing a more secure platform doesn’t mean much if the only way you are doing it is by handing over control to a third party.
Would you trust a better lock on your front door if it meant a proven bad actor was the one who could unlock it?
For the avg person why not trust them I’m not too worried about what they can collect on an average person I use Linux personally so I’m not shilling for Ms but 11 will keep out more hackers then 10 cause I wouldn’t be worried about them stealing my card info but a hacker yes i would be
Even if you trust their intent to not misuse your data, there are now a lot of live rpc hooks into your operating system, controllable by anyone who can compromise their azure implementation, which has happened at least twice in recent memory. If the data never leaves your device, and they didn’t have a way in, they wouldn’t have those things to lose in the first place.
The interdependency itself, regardless of intent, is inherently more dangerous than the previous separate paradigm that used to exist.
If the EU is allowed to employ guards in MS’s buildings and to roll their own secured version of Windows, I wouldn’t mind sticking to Windows 11 EU. On the other paw, if DOGE is given access to Microsoft, I shall flee to Linux. Hopefully, SteamOS Desktop will be a thing if the latter happens.
To be fair, plenty of telemetry is still being sent by Microsoft in Windows 10. It’s not as bad as 11 though.
I’m pretty sure all personal data leaks to me and my friends and family have nothing to do with personal EOL OS on personal PCs/laptops.
My Dad, ran Windows 7 (yes, 7) until he passed last year, almost 80. We had his credit locked down, we had antivirus running, we kept the browsers up to date, and he was very good about not clicking weird links or calling fake support numbers.
His biggest data breach (and ours too)? Was from myChart a couple years ago, he got a letter that his data was part of the big hack, yada yada yada free credit reporting - so sorry. If you don’t know, myChart is like The Main medical everything portal in the US at least for most doctors and hospital systems. So all your test results, making appointments, sending messages, requesting Rx refills, all through myChart’s website. The hospitals and doctors using MyChart can see pretty much everything in your myChart health record (some exceptions)
So using super secure OS on your personal computer means nothing when you are part of a hundreds of millions data dump from someone hacking into that. Not having an account just means you don’t have access to your own records, they are still part of the system.
But Yes, I was in the process of getting Dad an upgrade to a flavor of Linux that would be the closest to what he was used to. And the only reason was because browser support was coming to EOL for Windows 7. He really didn’t want to change or lose his solitaire games and he deserved a stress-free life to play his damn games like he wanted.
THAT SAID - if businesses are using EOL OS and getting hacked - they definitely need to do whatever they need to do and protect their customer data. But EOL OS for an average person checking email, making doctor’s appointments, checking headlines, and playing solitaire while streaming music certainly doesn’t call for a need to panic.
IF you are a power user doing sometimes sketch things (according to Apple/MS anyway) probably switch to Linux sooner than later.
We have computers running Linux, Windows 10 (one of which was on 8.1 until a year ago), and Windows 11 in our house. The one on 11 is being tested basically, and will probably be reinstalled with Linux. But we are trying to give it a shot.
Your dad probably got lucky, and your router’s firewall probably did a lot of the heavy lifting. If you were to connect a win 2000/XP computer to the internet today without a firewall between, it would be compromised in minutes (there are loads of videos of people demoing this).
While I don’t have proof that 7 would be the same, I strongly suspect it would be the same. 10 will get there soon too. Firewalls will stop most of the low hanging fruit, but an application that bridges connections through the firewall are that much more vulnerable to exploitations that won’t be integrated by your running kernel.
It’s windows users were talking about here, data security is not exactly top of mind. But maybe many of them are about to find out it should be…
I would not be surprised if some vulnerability is kept until Microsoft does not provide any patches as it is worth more then.
Made the jump already since I built a new computer and there were lots of missing windows 10 drivers for the new hardware and there was no way in hell I was going to main on windows 11.
I’ve been on Windows 11 since it was released. The only problem I had were NVIDIA drivers sometimes causing a bluescreen (mainly my fault).
Linux doesn’t work for me currently, since I use RDP to connect to systems for work, and RDP clients on Linux are ass.
Remmina is better than windows native remote desktop shit imo
Used it, it was probably the best, but still bad. If not for work, it would have been good enough though.
Most of the RDP implementations are also just based on FreeRDP, so they’re basically the same. I had terrible picture quality on all of them, even over local network, and the USB passthrough barely worked.
Tbh since I need the system for work, I wasn’t able to test stuff super long. Maybe I should install Linux on a secondary system, so I can just play around and try stuff.
Linux
I tried it a few months ago but had issues with various games and lowered performance in almost all of them. I still don't know if I will just cave in and upgrade to win11 or try linux again, i've got a free partition waiting but the issue is lack of time and motivation to dive into troubleshooting the OS on a daily basis
Just moved my Win10 machine to Pop OS. No issues at all. Haven’t tried Steam VR on it yet.
Me too a couple months ago, Pop OS has been awesome for me
As long as your not streaming to a quest vr is great cause at least last time I tried it didn’t work that was a year or 2 back now though
I’m running Linux everywhere incuding the machine I am writing on right now. I have one single dual boot machine with Windows 10 as the mainly used OS for the simple reason that I need to run one specific software (and some of the “ecosystem” around it) that is not available for Linux. The only alternative is Apple which is even worse in my opinion. So I think I’ll be forced to update. All the rest of my daily computing stuff has been moved to Linux for a long time.
I gave Linux Mint a try last week when I received the news about the obligatory MS account for W11. Not that I’ll “upgrade” to W11 but anyway.
Very smooth installation experience. The OS and software like Steam, Brave, Nvidia drivers and some audio & video stuff installed through the package control in no time. I could actually work with it.
Half of my game library is made only for W though. Or the small blocker things like GTA V that works well in Mint in story mode, the Battleye thing won’t start of course, so expect no GTA Online in Mint either.
I think I’ll keep Linux Mint and Windows under dual boot and use Windows only when necessary. Or run W10 in a virtual box in Mint 😎.
Thing is, before battleye, gta online worked perfectly. I played it for years on every remotely popular linux distro, from debian, to ubuntu, linux mint, fedora etc. It’s just the fucking anticheat.
Dual boot is the way for right now. Proton is huge, but there are still a good number of games with compatibility issues or rootkit anticheats. Personally I advise steering clear of the latter, but that’s neither here nor there.
I use CachyOS as my daily driver and booted up the Windows partition maybe 3 times since setting this up back in February (and most of those times were just to play REPO because Elgato hardware with dual input and output has serious issues with Linux, but I’ve sorted that out now with a workaround)
I was able to run SimTower on Linux. I haven’t tried SimCoopter, but there are so many bugs in that game it likely won’t work lol
Make the jump to Linux and loose 90% of the games you play as well. If all you play is steam games and don’t care about many that can’t be played then sure. I get the appeal. But windows 11 is the same thing as 10.
90%?
Do you only play games with kernel level anti-cheat? Because those are literally the only games i haven’t been able to play, and fortunately for me I don’t want to play those games.
I play many kinds of games. Using a Windows emulator in Linux doesn’t count as “running on Linux”
Lol what
Ha, get a load of this guy, he thinks wine is an emulator!
You should look up what Wine stands for.
If the game plays on your linux distro who cares what you call it?
Wine sometimes gains performace over windows though, so why do you care?
It's 2025, not 2007. This is a huge exaggeration. Maybe try it again sometime.
I might when the DAWs I use will work natively.
Yeah you definitely didn’t play on Linux for more than 5 minutes
I use DAWs, havent had luck with wine not crashing games. So yes. You MUST be right, haven’t used Linux at all actually. Just saw a word document about it. God you people are the worst
Pretty much, 1% of games don’t work on Linux and its the top 1% most popular games
My problem is 100% of the DAWs I use don’t work on Linux
Yeah, sometimes there are software that just won’t have a Linux version. Thats to be expected because Linux isnt a Windows clone so itll never run all Windows software. If that software is important to you I would reccomend just installing Windows 11.
I will dualboot to keep a windows 10 for software that only runs on it, but I really hope I will be able to be gaming on linux only.
Build new computer. Old computer to be a home server running Linux or something fancy.
I can't afford a new computer right now and tariffs meaning higher prices means I can't anticipate affording one in the near future. My plan is to see where everything's at when they stop doing updates. Unfortunately.
You can likely use that same pc for linux if youre open to that
I'm somewhat open to the idea, but the thought of messing up and not having any computer other than my phone until i figure it out is tough to get over.
If you can install another driver onto the computer, you can put Linux on that and kept the windows OS still, in case you need it. This is dual booting. You chose which OS you want when booting up.
Is this something that's relatively fool proof to do? I'm very good at imagining disasters. That's the big mental block I got when I thought about dual booting before.
If you install ventoy on a usb and put windows and bazzite on it, you can easily switch between things.
i have 15 years of experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot on matrix
Thank you! The wall in my brain keeping me from doing it is a bit smaller now
note that you should absolutely make a backup of all your important files before you muck about with installing different operating systems, it will wipe your drive, so, yeah.
if you do that and have both on a ventoy usb it is pretty much impossible to fuck something up
As long as you go with a mainstream distro you can’t really mess it up if you play games try bazzite it’s a atomic distro so it’s hard to break since the system files are read only and if an update breaks it has a duplicate file system to fall back on from before the update and is just as easy if not easier then windows to install
That sounds pretty cool, actually, that it.s protected against me breaking it. I've always got that worry
You could always reinstall Windows if something does go wrong. Just create an installer USB as backup.
I might get downvoted or whatever but Windows 11 is fine. I get it if your PC straight up can’t run it, that’s a tough spot. But as an OS it’s fine, even has a few handy features (besides all the AI crap shoehorned in). I actually like the File Explorer changes and the window snap stuff can work in the right setting.
I think for many people its about how invasive it is to your privacy. Especially with the upcoming changes where you be forced to sign in with their microsoft account.
No it isnt, the bloat is actually insane.
Can I ask how you got Win11? And are we talking MS feature bloat or third party stuff? I had Micro Center build my PC so it didn’t come from a manufacturer. There doesn’t seem to be any third party bloat, besides the occasional fucking ad for an app in the Start menu.
The ads for apps, Xbox games, trial versions of Office preinstalled, the minesweeper and solitaire collection that are preinstalled but actually ad supported or non-free, depending on the region spotify/TikTok/Facebook also come preinstalled, “Movies & TV”, Bing/MS News…
I think all of those count as bloat. I haven’t included Edge because I guess having a browser is a necessity, or copilot/cortana because you said “excluding AI features”.
You can turn it off/remove the stuff though. Annoying, but tbh. less work than every time I had to dig into ProtonDB to get some issues resolved.
The reason I switched from Windows is the telemetry. Yes, you can disable it but I don’t know for sure it’s actually off. I’m sure it has other back doors too. It sucks because they had something great with Windows 7 and they ruined it. Also, forcing an online account really pissed me off. I couldn’t even install WSL without using the Microsoft Store. Funny enough, the complaint I remember most about Windows 11 didn’t bother me at all. The start menu being in the center I kinda liked. I remember using an app on Windows 10 to achieve the same thing.
I think I’m going to get the $30 1-year ESU and kick that can down the road. I need to run windows-only software and I can’t upgrade because of my processor. Maybe in a year’s time I’ll be ready for a new build.
Went to Linux a couple months ago, its freaking awesome, you’ll never look back. And it is way easier to use than people make it out to be. Also my PC has never been faster thanks to having zero bloat.
Jumping to Linux just picking a distro
Been using Linux since 2005. Really don’t understand why so many people put up with Microsoft planned obsolescence, spyware, ads, etc. Linux is easier now than it’s ever been. Most things work out of the box if you pick a reasonable distro. If you’re going to be pushed to learn a new paradigm, do it once more by learning Linux and stop being pushed.
Linux is the way
I upgraded to Windows 11.
I tried Linux but but so much stuff isn’t supported so I got rid of it.
What other then adobe and rootkit anti cheat’s don’t work
For gaming, It’s mostly niche windows things in my experience. In my case I opted to stay on linux anyway. Also worth noting, I find that outside of gaming linux is superior for work and general pc use.
Some manufacturer programs for doing things like mouse macros or controlling LED lighting, auto hotkey scripts, some types of overlays tied to directx apis (yolomouse), etc. These things don’t and probably will never work. I think some of them might if you really know your stuff with wine, but that usually ends up being dependency hell for me and I give up more often than succeeding when trying to force a windows native program to run.
For the first 2 there are 3rd party programs for it the rest yea probably won’t work
Yeah I’m aware of openrgb, it has limited compatibility but seems to work ok for most of my stuff. Still haven’t found a great way to run my favorite corsair keyboard reactive lighting theme I had setup with their software in windows, but what I came up with in openrgb is good enough.
However, I didn’t think it was possible to run autoIt or autoHotkey at all in Linux. Are you suggesting a Python script to replace it, or something else? AHK has a very peculiar syntax which I don’t believe would translate well to other languages.
Depends if your on x11 or Wayland ahk does have a port to x11 scripts do require modification otherwise ydotool is available on Wayland I haven’t done much research into it but appears it can do a lot of what you might want
Hey that’s pretty cool, I happen to be on x11 still but plan to switch to Wayland once Cosmic is in beta.
This is great info, will look into this further. Ty!
I have an older pc that I use as a a Plex server so as soon as I get some time I will fully switch to Ubuntu.
The more people hop onto Linux the faster and better funded support for Linux development becomes. If you’re a single player gamer or play Valve multiplayer games primarily, make the jump to Linux. Get on Mint, get on Fedora, Ubuntu, etc and get off Microsoft’s shitboat. You already took off from Reddit. Wean off all these other money/data leeches
I’m on Mint and have been for 2-3 years now and I’ve never had any problems with non-valve multiplayer. I don’t use any VMs and just run everything through proton and have never struggled.
Battlebit, Helldivers, Lethal Company (+mods), Risk of Rain 2, Rocket League, Minecraft, and Split Fiction to name a few. I guarantee there are others I’ve played, but I can’t remember.
Can Linux run Valorant?
No Kernel level anti cheat will ever work on linux. But probably Windows will disable the possibillity to manipulate on kernel level either in the future.
Sort of, right?
We know Windows will continue cracking down on kernel module adds, since the Crowd strike disaster.
But I figure most anti-cheat will just shift to non-kernel and keep working.
Of course, at that point most anti-cheat of will then work under Proton, on Linux, too.
Which was maybe your point.
Okay, I don’t think I added anything for you, but I’ll leave this in case it helps someone reading along with us.
Watching you reason this out was fun
No.
Thanks for this link, neat to see that Uncharted Waters Online apparently runs on Linux despite it’s ridiculously strict anti-cheat. (To this day it’s the only game I’ve played that had an issue with Process Explorer running in the background 🤦♂️)
Installed bazzite today. Was easier than installing windows.
.
I've been wondering for a little while now if WinApps will work for gaming. It uses a VM in the background but, supposedly, has a "native" experience. Thoughts?
linux, either endeavor or nobara
Can anyone recommend a distro (and desktop environment?) that’s going to be almost the same as desktop mode on the Steam deck? I’m getting more comfortable in that than I expected to be in any Linux, and to my surprise and delight I haven’t had to delve into the command line at all yet.
The steam deck uses KDE Plasma 5 as its desktop environment, so anything that uses that should feel very similar. I recommend bazzite if familiarity is something that would appeal to you.
+1 for Bazzite. It has just enough guard rails to keep you from (easily) making your system unusable while still providing more freedom than windows. Install is cake. Literally clear a drive or partition for your OS and storage, download it, and you’re off to the races. just make sure to always check your build against protondb For games to see if there are any special run commands to put into steam, and you will be golden.
Yeah I can’t say I’ve used it myself but it seems pretty straightforward and very in line with SteamOS philosophies.
Very much so. Even for non-gaming, most stuff works out of the box from the package manager, everything else you can get working with a distrobox. Ended up getting blender to work better on Bazzite with AMD GPU rendering than I could on Windows lol
Would I fuck myself over by putting it on a partition on the same drive as my Windows install? It’s my fastest hard drive, but I can’t just immediately give up everything I have on Windows.
I hav heard that there can be issues with windows updates messing up Bazzite if installed on the same drive. I got a separate drive just for my Bazzite install to be on the safe side.
The most recent update ships Plasma 6 I believe.
That update is still is preview curently. The stable branch is still on Plasma 5
Oh my bad.
You can also install SteamOS which is literally what the Steam Deck runs.EDIT: Disregard, I can't read.
That is the old Debian-based operating system that ran on Steam Machines and is no longer supported. Valve really needs to remove it from their website. The version of SteamOS running on the Steam Deck is Arch-based.
Weird, I found the Arch-based one once but now I can't find it. Everything keeps pointing me back to that page...
EDIT: All I can find now is HoloISO - which seems to be in a reasonable place, I guess.
docs.bazzite.gg/…/Installing_Bazzite_for_Desktop_…
The desktop environment is called KDE Plasma. Every distribution with KDE will look and feel very similar.
Fedora is a good and safe bet for a distribution.
No, I use windows 11 and it works great.
lol
Sticking with 10 for a bit, moving to Linux
Ditto. They are stopping support, but I highly doubt they will just brick all Windows 10 machines. If they do, I will just throw Linux on a flash drive and boot from that to recover my data ahead of switching fully to Linux.
I remember seeing a leaked paper about them putting an omnipresent advertising ticket at the top of the screen that will be displayed regardless of full screen status. The only reason I can think that they are forcing this so hard is that a lot of their forced ad servicing plans are not possible to implement in earlier versions of Windows due to root level functionality that cannot be changed. I’m guessing things like direct injection of ads in running processes or that ticker.
Ads have no place in an OS, especially not as kernel level processes. If ads on the internet have taught us anything, it is that bad actors can inject malicious code directly into them without content servers or hosts knowing and compromise untold numbers of machines who just, let me check, rendered the ad.
Between the aggressive plans for in OS advertising and the privacy abolishing actions and policies with AI datascraping, I am done with MS. Windows 10 will be the last one of theit OS’s I run. If work needs me to do something on Windows, it will be on a virtual machine that I remote into.
They won’t brick it, but you can bet that a lot of people are sitting on unreleased 0-days for win10. It will likely be dangerous to connect to the internet on day 1.
Luckily I already don’t trust the internet already and don’t go anywhere online without script blockers and I don’t open emails as a rule of thumb. I am sure it will be dangerous, but I am not relying on passive security already.
Every packet you send/receive relies on passive security. Your nic drivers, the driver kernel model, all of the userland applications that sit on top of it. I get that in practical terms, your firewall will do a lot of the heavy lifting but there are passive rce vulnerabilities in previous unsupported versions of Windows that are trivially exploitable today.
Man, I wish these people would fucking be cool. I just want to play games. There is nothing valuable on my desktop for you
Me too brother, but I disagree with your assessment on value
An non-blacklisted residential IP address with reasonable throughput is valuable in and of itself. DDOS botnets, proxies to bypass geo blocks or to obfuscate illicit traffic, etc. Also your gaming PC could be used for distributed compute workloads of compromised, usually crypto mining.
Any hardware/connection has value if it’s “free”. It’s just a numbers game beyond that.
You’ve convinced me. They want access to my connection and maybe some processing power; they DON’T want my dungeons and dragons notes.
When ML training farms run out of new text to train on, “they” may very well want your original writing too…
Mother of god. They might steal my ‘Brown’ Elemental, that eats excrement and excretes clean, potable water. It will cimb up your ass and kill you if you sleep in the sewers. They definitely are going to steal this, specially.
I’m blocking addresses at the router daily. I could live with 11 if I could uninstall their garbage. I’ve tried any number of things to keep crapilot 365 off of my domain machines but I’m told I have to have the enterprise edition to do that.
Yeah, legislation needs passed that any software on any device purchased or leased must be removable without voiding warranties or service contracts. That would go a long way towards making phones, computers, and other devices less invasive and actually privacy protected.
For now, ctt winutil does a pretty good job at removing the cruft. I’ve long since switched to debian for my daily driver, but as a remote-access sunshine host for games that require kernel level anticheat, it’s surprisingly usable.
For anyone looking to keep windows around in some capacity, I strongly recommend it. github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
I need something automated that I can run on each machine in the domain. I haven’t read any of the docs on this utility. Perhaps it has a way to do that.
Plus, I just want to own my fucking computer. I shouldn’t have to go into the registry to get rid of edge.
IIRC W11 share is barely near W10 and they are already forcing it out and crapton of perfectly usable hardware, if it is not planned obsolescence i don’t know what it is!? Fuck microsoft!
I want to point out, planned obsolescence only really applies to their surface offerings.
Why? I’ve been running a Surface Go 1 with Fedora since 2020 and I plan on keeping it until 2029 at least.
So I can’t see the planned obsolescence except if you meant the ability to upgrade its internals…
I was pointing out that M$ neither made other hardware that doesn’t support W11, or (directly) profits from hardware being outside support for W11. So planned obsolescence doesn’t really apply in any way to 99% of cases people try to say it does.
Okay I understand now, but I think the formulation could have been better then😇
Bought a new PC and switched from dual boot Win10/Linux to Linux only. All of the games I’m playing work well, so no need for Windows 11
I use Opensuse MicroOS on half a dozen PCs but I keep one on Windows until I can run Fortnite on Linux.
Upgrade? How is 11 an upgrade?
When is the last time anything Microsoft made was an upgrade…? Word 97??
I have personally been using Linux for a few years now and I absolutely love it, however a lot of people will switch to Linux and be extremely disappointed. If you’re going into Linux expecting an open source Windows clone you’ll be solely mistaken. If you want an operating system that looks and works exactly like W11 youll be better off installing W11 and using something like classic shell. However if you’re willing to accept that its a completely different OS (so it naturally will work differently and have different software) then go ahead.
I spent a couple hours trying to get Baldur’s Gate 3 running on Linux. It was rough but I got it to run at 1440 but the latency made it sort of unplayable. It runs great in Windows 10 at 4k with the default settings. I have some other windows-only software so I guess I’m going to “upgrade” all my computers that are able to do so but I don’t feel good about it. All my computers dual boot windows/linux, I would love to be linux-only.
Edit: lots of people are saying theirs runs smoothly, I’m going to have to do further testing. Thanks for the input!
Ah good to know, i was thinking of buying this game.
Take advantage of your store’s refund policy as needed, but I can count the games I’ve had compatibility problems with on one hand, and one of them is because Indiana Jones is pushing ray tracing as mandatory.
In case you’re not aware, and for any uninitiated that see this comment www.protondb.com/app/1086940 protondb is a fantastic database of Linux compatible games and crowd sourced suggestions on getting the best performance.
Baldurs Gate 3 ran flawless for me, but everyone’s mileage may very depending on computer specs and Linux distro. Proton, and its counter part Proton-GE, work wonderfully the majority of the time. Biggest issue I run into anymore is anti cheat. Which can also be verified by areweanticheatyet.com
For reference, I’m running all AMD with hardware thats a few years old now. Fedora 41 with some tweaks like feralinteractives’ gamemode installed. You can install and use ProtonUp-QT to manage the Proton-GE versions and keep them up to date. I’ve been primarily Linux at home for a couple of years and have not missed windows. I hope more people are encouraged to try Linux and see what it has to offer
I know of that site, but in many ways I can’t stomach following trial-and-error debugging steps to try to get a perfect experience. Very rarely has it been one command line option and then the game runs as perfectly as Windows.
That’s really unusual. I’ve found, if anything, most of my games run better since switching to Linux. Nothing runs so much worse and I have rarely needed to apply launch options. I wonder if your games aren’t running on your iGPU inadvertently? That’s the only thing that comes to mind that would cause that much of an issue.
Edit: I just realised you weren’t the same person who posted the top level comment, disregard
Wut? BG3 runs flawlessly out of the box for me. Pretty vanilla Mint install, Nvidia 4060.
Huh. I’m on Ubuntu 24.04 with a 2080 Ti 🤔
Have you tried running it with GE-Proton?
What Linux distro and version do you run? Do you have proton installed and all the drivers? It should run flawlessly.
Ubuntu 24.04, as far as I know I have all the right Proton stuff installed and the latest Nvidia drivers.
That’s really unusual. I’ve found, if anything, most of my games run better since switching to Linux. Nothing runs so much worse and I have rarely needed to apply launch options. I wonder if your games aren’t running on your iGPU inadvertently? That’s the only thing that comes to mind that would cause that much of an issue.
Nvidia?
I’ll stick with 10 until steam itself stops supporting it I think
The only thing stopping me from really considering Linux is because I’m a Destiny player
Switch to Linux. As a big-time gamer, I did it last year and it’s been fantastic. Only issue is if you main games with root kit anticheat…but with enough momentum in Linux direction, game studios will be forced to abandon those dubious detection methods anyway.
I’ve been hard at trying to get games i like to work in mint. It takes a lit of time but it’s going ok. Like you said though kind of sucks for multi-player. I can’t even get diabolical multi-player to work (after I looked up how to fix the instant crashing audio driver issue) . It’s also a lot of qork getting any racing game to work with my DFGT…even though linux does see the axis and buttons, the force feedback is all messed up. Wish I knew how to code so I could fix these issues! But I don’t have 12 hours a day to ever learn that
As somebody who’s been running it for about a year now, please look into Bazzite
Bazzite refused to boot for me…I stuck with mint as it’s always ran pretty good. Old amd fx 8 core and a Radeon rx580
Use Bazzite. It is a distro dedicated to gaming and user friendly for beginners. It still has some limitations but it is better compared to others when it comes to gaming. You don’t really require more tweaking unlike other distros to make games work.
This is the advice I came here looking for. I’m intimidated by the switch and have no time, but if there’s a distro that’s easy to get going, I’m there for it. I’ll check it out!
I just wasn’t sure fedora based (bazzite) would be as easy to troubleshoot as mint (Debian based) since arguably debian/Ubuntu are the most popular distro.
Another distro that’s easy to get going for gaming is Garuda.
Also, the easiest way to switch to any distro is to get a USB drive and install a program called Ventoy. Then you throw your install iso onto the Ventoy drive, boot from USB, and you’re good to go.
As a tip, pick up an external drive large enough for your Steam library. Then in Steam, you right click on each game and select Manage/Back up game files.
Doing it this way will save you days of downloading.
Sadly I use way too many programs that only work on windows or Mac that Linux would handicap me. The free open source versions of yhe apps I use are no where near as capable.
My only option I can think of would be running a virtual machine of Win10 on a Linux install so I can still use those apps.
Maybe check out Bottles [1]. It’s similar to Proton/Wine, but for regular Software and it runs pretty damn well.
[1] github.com/bottlesdevs/Bottles
Would you mind sharing a couple of the names of the programs that only work on Windows for you? I’m a bit curious.
I’m not the OP but I have a similar situation. I work in multimedia design and use a wide array of software from the full Adobe suite, to in-house command line apps, to the Articulate suite and everything in between.
I’d love to be on Linux but that just isn’t a possibility for me.
I’m a professional graphic designer that dumped Adobe years back and I’ve been able to keep working using open source design applications.
I mean, sure you can do this, but you have to also sympathize with the folks that have years if not decades of experience in a program/suite, and that experience is what they use to market themselves. Like, in a perfect world, everyone could make the switch to FOSS alternatives, but it’s not so cut and dry for those who can’t spend up to years of their personal time to just get back to being as efficient as they were with the other, just to not support a scummy company. I’ve been moving pretty much entirely over to FOSS for everything I do, but it’s been years in the making, and substantial effort on my part. And I have it easy, since I work in software development. We in the FOSS community can’t expect all others to do the same.
I’m not Tyler Bourbon, but it’s Fusion 360 for me. I sound like a broken record at this point, but it’s the only piece of software that keeps a windows install in my house
Hey Autodesk you should put F360 on Linux
FreeCad is getting much more capable, have you tried it?
Not OP, but for another data point: recently I did quite a bit of Linux-related research on the three Adobe apps I use (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, in this order of prominence), and they are all reported as some level of broken via Wine and their Linux alternatives are missing important features and/or a pain in the arse to use :/
Unfortunately, any app that needs a GPU would be difficult to work with in a VM. You have to manually set up GPU-passthru, which requires figuring out the PCI addresses and whatnot of your card, along with using a terminal. As I understand it, this process also prevents you from using that GPU outside of the VM, which is cruddy.
I was hoping to have a Linux Mint + Windows 11 VM back in January, but that didn’t work out. I am hoping that the upcoming SteamOS Desktop would make Linux friendly enough for games that aren’t native to Steam, such as my GOG collection, Window 3.1 stuff like Stars!, modding, and assorted Japanese locale games.
SteamOS isn’t going to be the “Windows killer” people think it’ll be. I’m a massive Valve and Steam fan but SteamOS isn’t any better than any of the other major distros when it comes to gaming.
I think it’ll feel like pop os. Pretty much set up for gaming right out of the box, but anything deeper and you’re forced to touch the terminal. What I do think it has going for it however is the publicity of Steam, plus a promise on Steam’s part to continue to dump a bunch of resources in to making it a better experience. I’m not expecting mass migrations, but it will likely be what gets all the folks on the fence to switch over, at least among gamers
Terminal usage is inevitable with Linux. It’s not as scary as it seems and can actually create a sense of accomplishment when you use it. Pop is a solid distro for sure but you don’t need a “gaming distro” to game on Linux these days (not that Pop is a gaming distro specifically). There’s actually a Linux Experiment video where he proves this with a thorough test. All major distros work fine for gaming.
I encourage people to not go for SteamOS unless you’re setting up a PC you want to use solely as a home console, or if you’re flashing it to a different handheld.
That, all coming from a big Valve fan. I simply don’t think it’s a good idea for people to get their hopes up over SteamOS somehow being a no-terminal, peak gaming Linux experience. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to hold off until SteamOS gets its full PC release, because most major distros today will work just as well. It’d literally only benefit people to start learning Linux now so that by the full SteamOS launch, they’ll be more informed as to whether it’ll be something they’ll find useful enough to use as a daily driver.
I understand where you’re coming from. I myself prefer using a terminal for most things, and use arch (btw) for the PC I game on. I understand that learning Linux is the best move for folks, but I don’t see that being an option, at least initially, for people on the fence.
I know that, from a Linux user’s perspective, it is the wrong move, but I have plenty of friends that want a “no terminal, gaming ready” distro before they make the move. I see it more as a first step, removing the barrier for making the switch to Linux. Once they are already there, it’s much easier to convince themselves to learn Linux a bit deeper if needed over time.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just naive and hopeful, but there are a good number of my friends that I think will make the switch to Linux that wouldn’t have without SteamOS.
I get that, I just hope they don’t end up disappointed and go back to Winblows.
You can just add those to steam or use a launcher like heroic.
Another big component that makes it hard to switch for some is also the fact that many programs and web apps won’t work on Linux.
As an example , if you use peacock on your browser to watch things like wrestling PLEs, peacock(and other services) straight up block Linux users.
It’s annoying when the product will work but it’s being gatekept by these greedy fucking companies.
Are they somehow able to detect the OS by something other than the user agent headers or have you tried changing your user agent?
I have no idea how they do it. I did try some addons to change my user agent but that doesn’t work. At least it with peacock.
Run a browser on wine, they are likely detecting from widevine itself. Or try this tutorial: thebrokenrail.com/…/xfinity-stream-on-linux.html
This is likely easily remedied with an extension to tell Peacock you’re on a supported system. Artificial incompatibility.
It doesn’t work. I tried everything. User agent switching, etc.
The way I see the root kit anticheat situation is that because Valve has their own Linux based OS, these companies making anticheat are probably going to end up tailoring it to whatever kernel Valve (or whatever the biggest/most widely used distro made by a large game corporation) uses to ensure people aren’t cheating.
With a kernel that can be swapped out for another with varying degrees of difficulty, why wouldn’t they just tailor their work to whatever the biggest corporate game company supporter of Linux is using? If SteamOS (or any other distro made by maybe someone like EA, heaven forbid) ends up becoming what these anticheat devs see as the defacto Linux distro for gaming, I guarantee they’ll probably just focus all their efforts on making sure SteamOS (or whatever it ends up being) works as best they can and hanging out everyone else to dry.
A real “Wanna run the latest CoD (or something similar) on your device? Make sure you use the kernel we say you have to use!” kinda situation is what I foresee happening.
There’s also an OpenBSD song with a few lines of lyrics that I think could sum up what could (and sadly most likely will) happen, in metaphorical Odyssey kind of way:
Though it’s definitely going to be more than 13 years.
I’m a Linux user who had Windows 10 on one computer for VR but once I saw Microsoft’s CEO at Trump’s inauguration I removed that last install, deleted my Meta accounts, and put my Quest 3 in a box.
If you want to run VR on Linux with your Quest headset, WiVRn works absolutely flawlessly. Been running VR with my Quest 2 for a while with it.
Not sure if jailbreaks exist for the Quest 3, but I’ve considered jailbreaking my Quest 2 in order to run it without a Meta account.
Thanks for this. All efforts are dead in the water until I can use it without Meta. Until then it stays in the box. Appreciate the info thought though, cheers.
Cheers mate
Been on it for years
I keep recommending BazziteOS but Jorge Castro over at the universal Blue project has a really good point “Most people don’t install their operating systems” and that plain fact is what stops people from moving to Linux.
Valve has momentum because they are selling you a system with the OS already on it. Sell more gaming PCs with pre installed Linux on it and the support will follow. Valve’s first attempt at getting Linux based gaming hardware out there failed but that didn’t stop them and the real push is coming this time.
If you do install your OS (most people here have once or twice), try Bazzite out. I’m running it on the minisforum Bd790i with a radeon 7800xt and it works great!
Bazzite ftw Bazzite
I am on Linux and won’t change to W11 for sure.
I too choose your path of not being tempted away from Linux by the lure of an ad-riddled Microsoft-account-locked expensive “upgrade” to Windows 11.
I don’t like the rootkit. I do everything I possibly can on Linux aside from the one game that requires it. That said, since they started using the rootkit, there has been a steep drop-off in bots in the game. As in I don’t see any anymore. So, annoying and a huge security risk? Absolutely. Dubious? Maybe? Depends on what you mean.
Neither.
Just waiting for daddy gabon to release steamos. If not I swear I’m going to just use the most windowsxp distro available. I thought I was being simple by going with mint and KDE. Dare me.
You installed KDE on Mint? Why not just install Debian with KDE?
I don’t know. I might build a new PC, and make this one a steambox. SteamOS does sound VERY exciting, and I haven’t ever been excited for an OS.
Nice!
SteamOS getting an official PC release (if/when) is going to cause the first time I’ve spent a lot on PC hardware in a long while.
I’ll build it from parts of I must, but I really hope they go for a tie-in deal with Alienware or System76 and just let me buy a big pre-installed tower to play on.
I’d consider switching if somebody spoonfed me into being able to use/know it’s basics.
I am currently way too overstimulated with switching to privacy-focused and less (US-)corpo-reigned alternatives (like lemmy instead of reddit)
I installed Linux on a raspberry pi recently (first time using Linux in 15+ years), and in addition to reading stuff on Lemmy, I found that this is a really good use case for chatgpt or similar LLMs.
I was able to get chatgpt to explain stuff to me, ask it to dumb it down further, provide examples, correct my incorrect assumptions, etc.
LLMs have been trained so heavily on Linux documentation that you can even have it hallucinate a Linux terminal at you!
I’ll second recommending Raspberry Pi as a secondary machine. That way your primary computer is still around as a fallback.
If you have a spare monitor to add, a Raspberry Pi 400 for $100.00 is a great way to try out Linux on dedicated hardware.
The Canakit version even comes with a printed welcome guide.
I have 15 years of experience and am willing to do infinite of that on matrix.
Jumping to Linux for sure. The hardest part is going to be finding time to learn it first…
Have you considered making a Linux virtual machine now, and learning small things a few minutes at a time between other tasks? That ought to give you a head start when it comes time to commit.
I like to suffer
Start with something simple like Linux Mint. You can run it in a VM, if you want to “try before you buy (in)”.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I do infinite free troubleshooting/support on matrix, and I have 15 years of experience, feel free to reach out!
The only real reason I’m still on Win 10 is because of Escape from Tarkov and Photoshop. I need to get a new m.2 and just start sorting through my crap I guess but I haven’t gotten the motivation yet lol
I’ve gotten to a point where the quality of a PS2 game is higher to me than most AAA releases. I mostly play retro games, more open multiplayer games that don’t block users like TF2(and TF2) and indies… so, no. I don’t really need Windows for anything.
I still use steam on Windows 7. I don’t see the problem.
Do you worry about connecting it to the internet?
Nope
Just please make sure it’s not internet connected if you value such things as your privacy, and bank accounts not being breached extremely easily. End of security support is no joke.
I don’t really use the browser on that machine. It still has basic virus protection, and such.
Well really… that all depends on if you’re laughing.
Using a browser isn’t the only way it would be connected to the internet though, I know for sure there are malware bots actively searching for network connected XP machines that can brick systems just for existing on a public network, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same wasn’t the case for 7. Anti-virus can only do so much for you if you’re a victim of ransomware or some remote execution exploit found since EOL
Well, I have the ultimate defense against ransomware, full disk backups. Honestly, with automated backups, the whole world is a little less scary.
I’m gonna switch to Linux. My laptop still works fine, no need to upgrade yet.
I have procrastinated the switch this far, I’ll be damned if my laziness gives in now! Lol
Why? Nothing requires Windows 11. It doesn’t even have a new directx which is why most had to upgrade from 7. Browsers and malware software will work for years. Hell malwarbytes still updates for Window 7.
You really don’t understand security updates.
I do and if the computer is for work yes update to 11. But for gaming only why would anyone care if it doesn’t break your games? I do nothing but game on a PC and have no need to update until it is required for gaming. Also it is not like on that date all security updates to that point vanish. Firefox and Chrome will still update for security. Malwarebytes will still also update for security.
Linux. I’ve been putting if off because of hardware reasons that would be annoying to explain beyond the solution is upgrading the motherboard, which is bottlenecking me anyways.
I don’t know. If more devs start to support Linux, I probably will.
Why need upgrade at all? I’ve never needed “support” before
I hope this is a sarcastic joke.
If it’s not, support means updates. More importantly security updates.
There is a reason you don’t put a windows XP machine on the internet.
XP might actually be somewhat safe to connect by now. Most of the viruses and worms have updated past it by now.
Noooooo. There was an article in the last 6 months about someone connecting a windows xp to the internet just to see what happened, and within 10 minutes it had been scanned and infected. They repeated the experiment several times.
It’s child’s play (like, literally script kiddie level) to run automated scans and if a vulnerability, like a really old operating system, is found to then attack it.
Well, security through obscurity never really did work
The “support” most importantly includes security updates. You better bet every hacking group has been working at finding fresh zero days for Windows 10 and is stockpiling them to start hammering any PCs that can’t be upgraded this October
Maybe I’m remembering it wrong, but didn’t MS push important security updates to Win7 even after end of support?
They are doing that only for paying users for 10
…microsoft.com/…/windows-10-supports-ends-on-octo…
That was an exceptional case, I think with the WannaCry malware. Not something they’ll regularly do.
Think of it this way:
Would you rather leave door wide open and signs saying come inside and take all the info about me, along with all my moment
Or
Have your data, & money protected in all kinds of defense systems so it makes billions times harder to take all of that
That’s what security updates are for. Same for other apps as well when they find things bad actors will try to exploit
In fairness, after October that security system will still be in place. The difference is that as soon as attackers finds a bypass, the security system will be worthless against future threats
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some exploits that have already been discovered that people have been sitting on in anticipation of support ending soon.
Been using Linux for years and the only issue with it is the incompetence of big studios. And them going out of their way to make sure stuff doesn’t work on Linux.
I’m on 12, and will be upgrading to 13 when Trixie hits stable.
I left Windows ~2-3 years ago since I got tired of having to keep up with ways to disable the MS account requirements or disable the ads every time there is a major version upgrade on a platform I use every day.
It has been already 2 years for me, I have no intention of looking back. It even works better than Windows at times.
Whatd you jump to?
Took some time to settle, for various reasons, but I’m currently on Fedora Silverblue.
I tried some of its derivatives (Aurora, Bazzite), as well as OpenSuse, but came back to Fedora and Gnome because of various issue with KDE and OpenSuse asking for root password everywhere.
20 years for me (even thought I used Windows for a year in there). There’s no point in using Windows at all, unless you’re forced at work, or stuck because you don’t want to learn an alternative tool.
There’s also the issue of people who regularly play games with kernel AC, particularly with studios who intentionally refuse Linux support.
Yes, but honestly, I find that games enforcing incompatible AC are often poorly developed games. The latest that disappointed me was EA WRC. It was quite good, but the gameplay was less interesting that Dirt Rally 2, for exemple, and since they enforced AC, they also started to deploy DLC, and destroy the game. The lesson was to never ever buy something from Electronic Arts (the last time was more than 10 years ago for me). And kernel level anti-cheat is NO GO on my computer. It doesn’t matter if the game is awesome or not, I disagree with the fact that a game company has root access on my computer just for entertainement.
I am on Fedora. But i still have Windows dual boot left. But I dont use Windows 10 that often - I don’t see the need. I just have it as a backup OS. I have free enough diskspace on my SSD so currently not doing anything.
I did exactly that for many years. And then one day I had something that called for booting to a separate OS, so…
my solution
Trusting Windows with whatever it was still made me nervous, and I crammed an Ubuntu Live USB into a USB port and booted to that.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯But keeping Windows around on unused disk space didn’t do me any harm.Switching to Linux with no intentions of moving back. I’m fed up with MS. I’m not settled on which distro (and I don’t want to distro hop on my main machine) but I know for sure that I’m switching.
I distro hop a lot, myself, but I always hear nice things about Linux Mint. (And last time I used Mint, I had no complaints.)
Edit: Folks here also swear by Bazzite for gaming.
I love trying other distros but I can’t afford to regularly be down a few days to a week to restore backups, which is why I want my main system to stick with a distro long-term. Mint is definitely one of my strongest considerations for sure.
Linux for gaming and most other use cases, Windows for the one proprietary application I use. Although I suppose I might go IoT LTSC.
I technically have a Win10+Linux dual boot setup right now, but I haven’t used the Linux install in forever, and I think it’s broken. So I’ll probably fix this and then use Linux when possible and continue using the unsupported win10 for everything that needs windows.
I remember people mentioning the win10 LTCS version with 10 years support, but I’m not going to buy anything from them. Maybe I’ll use it unactived if needed.
Cough MassGravel Activation Scripts Cough
I have Windows only for League, no Steam installed. Ergo I don’t count
My (perfectly good) PC isn’t Win 11 compatible, so I can’t upgrade from 10. I’ve got Linux running on an old laptop so I’m thinking of installing it on my PC. Buuut a few years back I moved from Google Drive to OneDrive and so now I’m looking at Proton Drive instead. It’s all a big time soak, sigh. But worth it? I guess… The timing isn’t great either - I’ve got an exam in October that I need to study hard for and do practical prep as well, plus I have travel plans. It’s all a bit much. I’m too old to be this busy!
I had read that Steam on WINE is pretty stable. Is it not?
Steam runs natively and uses proton for game compatibility, similar idea to wine but it’s geared for games
It’s pretty good. Most games will run, sometimes with a little jiggling to get it to work, although performance isn’t quite as good (some games are particularly rough)
I’m technically dual booting, but I haven’t launched Windows in almost a year, and there’s only been a handful of games I passed on primarily because of support
I have a small laptop that I’m testing this stuff out on before I put together a new computer from parts I ordered before the tariffs took effect.
My top pick right now is fedora silverblue, I’m running it on my test bed/server and I’ve been impressed
I’m running bazzite on my main one, which is related but geared towards steam and maximizing game support, it’s pretty good and closer to “just works” for any kind of gaming device, it’s less polished but it’s still pretty good
Valve made a compatibility layer for the Steam Deck and Linux called Proton. It uses a lot of technologies, including WINE, dxvk, and more to make Windows games run well on Linux. It basically takes Windows API calls and translates them to Linux with little to no performance penalty.
Steam also has native builds for Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, and Linux now, so you can just install it. Most Linux distros have Steam right in their software manager now.
Typically, unless the game has blocked Linux with something like kernel-level anticheat, it’ll “just work” on Linux now. There is a community database called ProtonDB that has a list of games and how well they do or don’t work.
Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions.
If I can still game. I might just move to Linux. But also am enjoying pricing out a windows 11 build with my imaginary budget.
Check Proton DB. If the games you enjoy work fine on Linux, which is the case for most games these days thanks to Proton, you should be good. The big exception is games with kernel-level anticheat.
If not, you can always dual boot for the few games that don’t.
I made the switch to pure Linux gaming when I got my Steam Deck two years ago. Been loving it ever since. Even SteamVR games work great streaming to my Quest headset.
The only things that don’t work at this point have actual malware as a mandatory requirement
I’m sure WarThunder is included in that.
Uhhh…
www.protondb.com/app/236390
Made my jump to Arch (btw) a couple of years ago and haven’t really looked back. I have Win10 as a second boot option, but that’s reserved specifically for Game Pass and VR, but it’s very rare I boot it. Don’t care to upgrade even after EOL, and I’d never recommend Arch to anyone but the most comfortable with Linux, but it’s been a great option for me.
I moved back to Linux and it works wonderfully. Except for HDR. That require a bit of tinkering. And there is no good way of getting it to work in any Linux browser, except for some very clunky workarounds. Hopefully that will be fixed.
FF 138 has HDR support www.reddit.com/r/…/hdr_in_firefox_now_works/
Well my PC can’t do windows 11, and upgrading is now impossible thanks to a certain someone. So yeah…
My 15 year old desktop also “couldn’t do windows 11”, but you can bypass whatever bullshit limitations Microsoft puts on the installation process. That computer has been running 11 for several years now without any issues at all. Rock solid.
Jumped to linux with a new laptop, but not gaming on it. It’s fine for what I need. My old machine will be for gaming only.
Been a Linux user for ages, I do have Windows 11 installed on another partition but I rarely - if ever - boot into it.
I mention the above spiel because I don’t understand what additional points people have against windows 11? It seems very similar to windows 10 for me - what’re the reasons for people hating it?
Genuinely not trying to be obtuse, here - I’m just wondering what the primary pain points are of win 11?
Is it the requirement for using a Microsoft account to log in vs. a normal local account? Or the one drive stuff? (upon install it did move most of my personal folders into a weird OneDrive directory, and I had to use the registry to wipe out OneDrive and move them back. Very annoying.)
The inability to easily turn off copilot and the hiding setting between 3 different menus was the thing that finally did me in. I know you can turn copilot off but I didn't like the idea that Microsoft could "accidentally" re enable their spyware on my system. To be clear I am not being hyperbolic I really do think that recall and copilot are spyware that is just Microsoft approved. And then there is one drive just being pain in the ass constantly.
Those all sound shitty - granted, I’m pretty sure I don’t have Copilot on my system, but maybe it didn’t ask me during the upgrade? Either way - my original point still stands: all of these seem just as bad as Win10 (to me, a person who barely used either).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad people are joining us on the Linux bandwagon, it just seems like the reasons for making the switch are almost arbitrary. Another way of putting it would be: "This is what finally pushed you over? ‘Copilot’?"
Anyway, regardless, I’m happy that people are making better choices - regardless of the reasons for doing so!
Swapped to Linux last week. Currently dual booting. Over the coming months, I’m going to slowly transfer all my stuff over as well
Bought my wife a framework laptop, slapped fedora on it and have been helping her make the switch. So far so good other than Obsidian not working the same as OneNote.
How’ve you/her liked the Framework? Which one did you get? I’ve been considering one for months but I don’t have a huge need but it’d be nice to have a solid laptop rather than my Chromebook that I’m running Arch on when I’m on my couch.
Framework 13 DIY edition. I’ve been quite happy so far and so has she. Configuring it was trivial and the one issue I ran into (setting up backups) was due to my not being familiar with fedora and KDE. Build quality is good, the bezel was the only part that gave me pause. She doesn’t use it a ton so it’s likely any minor nagging quirks will take a while to tease out.
Cool, thank you. What’s up with the bezel? Flimsy?
It was tricky to get it to snap into place cleanly and I had to jostle some of the monitor wires into place while installing. The instructions did note that this was a common challenge point and so I was prepared for moving the wires. Once installed it’s good quality.
I recommend trying out zim, I love it!
Already switched the laptop over to Mint. Desktop to follow.
Already done. I dual boot at work (translated: I have a dormant win10 partition just in case, but I’m more likely to use my win10 VM in Linux) and at home I’m Linux only, having wiped my windows partition to reclaim the space within weeks of installing Linux.
I use Mint Cinnamon in both places. It’s a very polished, all in one, install and go OS. But it’s still Linux so I have the terminal available and I can find out how to fiddle with and change whatever I want.
For all manner of 2D desktop use, I find it superior to windows. Even being a very full-featured distro, when the software is made to serve the user and not 50 competing corporate priorities, you can tell. It’s so much more responsive and nice to use. (It is not flawless of course)
For gaming, I don’t play the newest stuff or multiplayer games with crazy anti-cheat, but I have not had any regrets so far. Many games have native Linux versions, probably thanks to valve and the Steam deck, but windows games running in proton have been smooth sailing for me.
I think I’ve just dealt with enough computer crap in my life that I prefer using not just Linux apps but FOSS software for as much as I can. If some game or some photo editing suite will absolutely not work in Linux or work acceptably in a VM, I am fine with it not existing in my world. I used to not find that acceptable, but now I’m over it. In a chill way though, not an angry anti-Microsoft way.
I would love some advice, personally. How big of an issue is this really? Like…do I really have to care if there aren’t system updates anymore? How big of a security risk is it actually?
Well the thing is, we don’t know. Maybe 10 is patched so well that no one is hanging onto a major exploit just waiting for EOL. Or so well that no new major exploits are found (extremely unlikely). Then so long as you’re just gaming or watching YouTube it doesn’t really matter.
But someone could be holding onto one or someone could stumble into one. And all it takes is one. So it’s always just a gamble with unknowable odds.
I wonder if I could jail it from the rest of my network.
The problem I guess is if I dual boot, I wont feel like the data on linux is safe, and Id need to ensure I set up and take down the jail while booting windows…
I guess I should just fix the linux issues that make my gaming experience less fun. Maybe I need a fancier graphics card.
In the short-term (0-6mo, maybe less): probably nothing really changes. It’s not super likely that anyone would be holding on to a massive flaw, waiting for EOL. Nothing stops Microsoft from patching after EOL for something major, they’ve done it before.
Medium-term (maybe up to a year or two): you’re looking at real potential to get infected with --who-knows-what–. Hard to say how long it would take or how widespread it would be.
Longer term: massive, massive security hole. Microsoft has probably even patched a major thing or two by now (despite EOL), but there will always be more
Sooner or later the issue will be that some software probably won’t be available any more for your system.
This is a minor issue compared to the security risks. See the other comment in this thread for a good explanation.
My old as hell PC died I’m getting a steam deck as a replacement with a dock and …so I’ll just be dual booting into windows 11 and obviously steam OS when I decide to play hand held.
Going to migrate to Bazzite. Just need a free weekend to do it.
100% worth it. I’ve had a few issues early on but I’m rocking oldish hardware (6700k, 2080 ti). It’s been rock solid for the last 6 months though. A lot of games that ran semi poorly in Windows run great now (Control and Arkham Knight def come to mind) and some cpu heavy bullet hell style games slow to a crawl now much earlier on (I can get sub 20 fps real quick in Rogue Genesia).
The basics (getting the OS installed, some initial settings to your liking etc) is quick. Managed to go from “completely untouched build” to “we gaming on Linux now boys” in a couple hours and most of that was waiting for BG3 to download on my 100Mbit connection. Pretty much everything I needed worked right on the first boot. Then again, I didn’t have much data to transfer over.
Where’s that steam os release
If you want SteamOS there are plenty of options that are effectively the exact same thing but with a different name.
I tried a few but couldn’t get them to work. I think the issue was my 1080ti GPU. I did get one of the other recommended Debian kde plasma builds installed and that one is looking nice. I was having issues with getting the same games to run that work on my steam deck. Probably just need to spend more time on it.
SteamOS-like distributions probably aren’t for you right now. nvidia has massively improved over the year but it’s still not on par with AMD.
Using an immutable distro (which Steam OS and its kind are) is just going to complicate things. Your easiest bet is using a distro that will install the correct drivers at install, like pop_os or mint.
I literally just swapped my key for my win10 pc’s to win10 ltsc iot with mass and now dont have to worry for wayy longer. I suggest everyone without the option to switch to do the same.
What
They bought the long term commercial version of Windows 10 instead of upgrading to 11 or Linux.
They suggested other people do the same
Thank you, I just couldn’t make my brain wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
“bought” is an interesting word choice when they used massgrave :D
It’s going to be purchase a new hard drive and then jump to Linux Mint this August.
It’s not an experience I am looking forward to (5080S, I do a lot of modding, and enjoy fangames/indie games which do not always play nice with linux) but needs must - the Linux community in general is very friendly, so we’ll get through it, even if the first 6 months are rough. I’ll keep the dual boot and push the windows partition to 11 if needed by work, that way I can put off rewriting my elderly access database for another few years.
Honestly, Microsoft are committing suicide when it comes to home users. It won’t be sudden, but the wheels are turning, all the IT savvy folks are switching people over (already did my aunt’s potato, mum’s demi-tato is next week). Eventually, a tipping point will be reached and offices will start switching - I hope that day comes before I die of old age!
Tip: Add your non-steam games to steam to launch launch them with Proton. thats probably the easiest way.
Otherwise there’s Bottles and Lutris (and maybe HeroicLauncher)
There’s also umu!
It essentially (if I’ve understood things correctly) aims to replicate the behaviour of proton.
Works like a charm, I have a simple alias set up that will run almost any .exe - even installers and stuff. Only thing that hasn’t worked so far was my digital exam software (that is essentially a windows rootkit) because it couldn’t find the cursor images lol.
Thanks for the tips!
Lutris I’ve used with some success, and I’m somewhat ok with wine when it works out if the box (or troubleshooting using the wine wiki).
Do you recommend any other sites/guides for troubleshooting?
Bottles is just a GUI to help you set up wine environments without having to deal with wine directly.
For troubleshooting just the lutris forums and wine bugtracker. I mostly play steam games so protondb is the best source of troubleshooting tips.
Totally feels strange because my dad’s laptop doesn’t have the TPM requirement and he was telling me about how he was talking to the IT guy at his work about possibly switching to Linux just so he can keep his laptop. No clue if he’s gonna have me or ask if Mr. IT can do it, though, if he follows through. Absolutely insane because I might not be the only person in my house using it anymore (android not included because I view it as a completely separate entity).
I was telling him that day that I could flash Mint (have the most recent addition on my laptop) to a thumb drive if he was actually wanting to switch over. He’s definitely an average computer user, so nothing too special, but it still feels real weird.
Though this will also suck for a while because the tech savvy people helping them switch over will also be running IT for these people who have never used Linux before and most likely have never even used windows CMD either. Cannot wait for stories of people being fed up because their parent/aunt/uncle/friend/whoever looked up how to fix their device and entered the cursed rf command without thinking once about it.
Best part is, if they do switch over they won’t go back. Not having to deal either bloat and telemetry is worth it.
good thing about the terminal is it scares most general users so much that they won’t touch it even with instructions. There will be many issues, but I don’t think people running random commands in the terminal will be common
So, in the case of my aunt, there were a few teething troubles. That said, a lot of it was just requests to add web page shortcuts to her desktop.
The really big thing is that she’s stopped complaining about how slow her laptop is, and openly says she finds it easier to use.
Most of the troubleshooting is going to be around office software and games. It’s also going to be about replacing windows tools (I am really going to miss my “.bat cave”), and learning new troubleshooting skills (wine is a bit rough to troubleshoot unless you’re willing to get your mining gear out and dig deep into logs).
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
So, oddly enough, I’m not a complete novice. My background is mostly just lubuntu, puppy, mint and a bit of debian. I’ve shifted away from Ubuntu after the pro service ads in terminal, and the absolute fucking nightmare that is snap.
I’ve done my time in “oh shit I fucked up Linux again” purgatory, and it’s my daily driver for work. Terminal is a place I’m generally ok with; I know enough to find my way around and fix things as needed.
My issue is I’ve never really run dedicated graphics from a Linux distro, and because of the continual updates and proprietary elements I worry about keeping up. I don’t mind breaking things, it comes with the territory.
That said, bazzite sounds interesting - especially the optimisation. The guides on the main page also alerted me to something I’d not considered - going to have to redo my filesystem on every drive. Thanks for the idea of an alt distro, will dig into this a bit more - if it’s built in fedora I might have a bit of a learning curve (never used it as a distro).
Again, infinite free troubleshooting if you run into any issues, feel free to message me! I’ve given a bunch of people bazzite at this point, and can run you through just about anything.
Make sure not to accidentally choose “steam gaming mode”, on the download since that’ll turn it into basically a steam-deck interface.
When that time comes I’ll probably either remove networking from, or just wipe win10 entirely.
Been using mint as my daily for a while now and I hate booting into windows 😂
No way I’m switching to Linux yet, multi monitors support with mixed resolutions and vrr on nvidia still kinda sucks. As soon as someone makes that work I’ll try it out on a separate partition. Buy last time I tried my other monitors had all kinds of issues when I had games open with gysnc
I’m using multi monitors with mixed resolutions and a very old nvidia card (gtx 670).
The only problem I have is that if I put them to sleep, while autorandr or whatever gets me the resolutions and layout back, the app windows move around like crazy because they all wake up at different times, likely due to a mix of HDMI + DVI + DisplayPort connections.
Edit: I see now, this is only an issue when we are talking about vrr simultaneously.
Dual mon with diff res works as expected here. I even have different hz I think
A couple weeks ago I attempted to switch over to Linux. Tried installing both Cachyos and Nobara. It was kind of a shit show, nothing worked correctly, stuff was erroring out and crashing left and right, and after a couple days I gave up.
Today I went ahead and installed windows 11. There were some issues… It wouldn’t recognize my CD key, and I accidentally wiped a partition from the wrong drive. But as for the os itself, I spent a few hours getting things set up, and it’s not as horrible as I thought it would be. I was able to simply turn off most of the shit like copilot and recall, and all the advertisements, and I pretty much have it working as I want it to.
I’ve been using Linux for years and I’ve never heard of the distros you just named.
I’m not surprised at all that you had trouble using niche distros. Try something more popular with good documentation so you have a community supporting you with bug testing, guides, and Q+As when people run into issues you might run into later.
My priorities are being able to run Davinci resolve and Steam games. Nobara ticks those boxes while advertising itself as user friendly. I have heard too many stories of people having trouble getting this stuff running on something like Linux mint, so I didn’t go in that direction. I need to do more with my computer than just view web sites or write code.
maybe try bazzite? i’ve found it to be a better experience than nobara and steam games run fine for me, aside from the obvious big titles that have anticheat issues.
they have a guide for davinci resolve, too: universal-blue.discourse.group/t/…/1197
I don’t really feel like going down the rabbit hole of trying a hundred different distros to maybe find one that works. My experiences with those two were that things were completely broken, randomly. Like just trying to boot the USB installer would lock up half the time, the installer itself would fail partway through most of the time, when things got fully installed, trying to update or install new things would just fail randomly. The kde desktop would crash just from me changing settings in the kde menus.
sounds like you’ve made up your mind. wnjoy windows 11!
I would try Ubuntu in your shoes, personally. It’s got downsides but it’s definitely plug and play. I don’t know what metrics distrowatch uses to rate distros but it’s widely known that Ubuntu is user friendly as hell.
Where are you getting these distros from? Most popular distros do more than “just view websites or write code.”
They are ranked number 3 and 13 on distro watch, so they are hardly unknown. And lots on Linux YouTubers were talking about how great they were.
If you ever give it a go again, I’d suggest trying to get used to software that you’d need to use on Linux (aka, alternatives that won’t work well outside of windows). I already used a lot of free openscource software that works on Linux like libre office, krita, kdenlive, obs, when i used windows. That made swapping a lot more comfortable. Next I really recomend something like Linux mint, or popos (look up screenshots and decide witch one looks cooler) then, if you are enjoying it after a few months, give arch or nixos a try, or don’t if the distro you use does what you want, and you found ways to make it work for you, then stick with it. I hope the next time you give it a try works out better for you.
Da Vinci Resolve has native Linux builds though and should work. And does on Ubuntu based, Rocky Linux, arch and NixOS. I’m not sure about Nobora (Fedora based).
Though it’s hard to know what went wrong with vague descriptions like “everything was crashing”…
I am going to attempt to switch to Linux, I’m definitely not going to willingly use windows platforms again.
As a lifelong windows gamer I’ve just switched to cachyos and honestly it’s been fantastic. Performance seems on par (or within 5 percent) and it’s super customizable. Haven’t had any issues getting things working, including non-steam alphas. Went into it thinking I’d probably switch back, but have no need currently. You definitely need some troubleshooting skills, but nothing too crazy if you already tinker a bit in windows.
Edit: I’m also running triple monitors at 144hz and it’s been completely fine (and I’m on Nvidia).
For those of us who didn’t know, CachyOS is and Arch-based distor with performance focus and some ease of use tools.
this blog explains some difference to other Arch-based distros
I bought a new computer a few years ago that has 11 on it. With how the Steam Deck has seemed to really promote Linux for gaming, I’m seriously considering it on my next build.
It is very obvious to me that Windows is becoming increasingly subject to enshittification.
Yeah, proton seems to really work wonders, and it seems it’s only going to get better. I have windows 11 on my work laptop and I hate it.
This year will be the year of the Linux desktop for shure. I believe in it like the years before.
For Shure maybe, but what about for other audio products companies?
P. S. I unironically believe 2025 may be looked back on as the year of the Linux desktop. May have finally got through the trough, we’ll see though.
linux primary with dual boot for a windows install just because of the games that won’t work.
I upgraded last year, have lost no functionality
Me too! I upgraded to Fedora Linux. It’s amazing how everything just works, even all the games I play.
Upgraded to Linux or Windows 11?
Because nobody is claiming you’ll lose functionality with Windows 11, so your post seems to imply Linux but I’m unsure.
Linux
No, I do not plan to jump to Linux, which doesn’t play many games still without a lot of headaches. Any other questions?
Yes, I do have questions, why?
why do you care about those games so much when 90% (actually more I think) work perfectly and the few that don’t fail because they have malware?
I’m planning on it.
I tried a rest run with Kubuntu on an old laptop I had, and it runs 95% flawlessly. My biggest issue is my new Brother printer that I’m trying to install connected to Wi-Fi. The system sems to know it’s there, but then doesn’t seem to install the drivers. My Android phone prints there just fine.
I assume you tried adding a new printer through KDE? There’s usually no driver needed if all you need to do is simply print/scan.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.secnd.me/pictrs/image/bbe5d638-f4cb-4744-b35b-9ca1d134431f.png">
Does it fail with both options?
Linux is fine. Ive been using it since before ubuntu was invented. But Windows has the most goddamn computer games.
The vast majority of which now run fine on linux with proton.
I don’t plan on doing anything until I have no choice but to buy a new computer.
Not gonna upgrade.
Have already had Linux for decades.
Linux still can’t handle anticheats for the games I play, so primarily on Windows I stay.
Plan on, if possible, cloning my account to a new account on a new internal drive (preferably a 2TB+ drive) to save all my stuff that I want and don’t feel like moving over due to laziness. Then on another partition, I plan on having the rest of the space being used for Linux. All I gotta do is make sure the win10 partition doesn’t receive an ounce of Internet connectivity at all and pray I don’t end up with a virus or something similar somehow (because even the safest internet practices aren’t safe enough anymore).
Hopefully I can turn that partition into a cold partition where I can keep the current games I have that aren’t downloaded through Steam installed to ensure I can still play them. Then I can slowly debloat it by uninstalling everything I don’t need on there and get rid of a ton of files/unnecessary programs so that way I can still have roughly 500-600GB for win10 just in case I ever need it for anything, like a program I genuinely cannot figure out how to get working on Linux.
I’ve got a few computers - my daily driver is Win10, there’s a media player still on 8.1 (only accesses music streams and it’s not spotify, it’s URLs like das-edge15-live365-dal02.cdnstream.com/a98345), the main pihole machine runs vanilla Debian, the backup pihole on a Raspberry Pi also running Debian, and a couple of older laptops also running Debian.
So no, I don’t plan to upgrade.
.
Which one, Bedrock or Java?
For Bedrock there is an unofficial launcher: flathub.org/apps/io.mrarm.mcpelauncher (Disclaimer: Never tried it)
For Java there is the offical launcher: flathub.org/apps/com.mojang.Minecraft
Alternatively, for Java, there are also the much better unofficial launchers like Prism: flathub.org/apps/org.prismlauncher.PrismLauncher
By emulating the Android version, yes. But The java version is better anyway.
Man, I really tried today to get Linux on my Framework laptop.
I can’t believe how goddamn frustrating the experience has been, and I’ve dabbled in Linux for decades.
I try Mint. Install as a dual boot… Installation done. Reboot. Straight into Windows. Check partitions and nothing has changed.
Try again. All seems fine. Boot. Some error screen that won’t let me get into Mint.
Do this like four more times with no luck.
Tried Ubuntu. No easy way to install as a dual boot unless I want to mess around with custom paritions. Also, GNOME sucks ass, but Ubuntu seems way more polished than Mint.
I did get mint on a mini PC I have running through my TV. But audio wasn’t working, so that took a while to sort out. And the onscreen keyboard does nothing on the lock screen. So unpolished, and I have no idea why it’s recommended “for beginners” when it feels unfinished.
With windows, there’s no messing around. Everything just works. And I fucking hate that I feel forced to choose a miserable, hacky, terminal-based experience with countless hours of installing shit through commands… Or a smooth, reliable, easy one with bloatware and spying on the backend. Goddammit!
Yeah with Linux if it doesn’t work you’re often just screwed.
I can recommend a rolling release distro, having the latest and greatest can sometimes give you bugfixes that are critical for your setup. It can also break stuff but nothing a rollback won’t fix.
Another reason to prefer rolling release is the upgrade path. For Ubuntu upgrading is just awful when you do any tinkering. I ran Kubuntu 20.04 for a while and because I had some custom package sources installed it wouldn’t let me upgrade to 24.04. Nobody could help, and the package manager is awful it doesn’t let you trace which packages are blocking the upgrade.
I’m kind of miffed that everyone is recommending mint as a starter distro because as soon as they start looking for guides on how to tinker there is a high chance they are going to make their system un-upgradable.
This has been my experience for decades. Even if it works, something will suddenly stop working and I’ll have no way to fix it without hours of research and messing around.
With windows, I can fix anything quickly through the GUI. But haven’t had to in a very, very long time.
I’m going to look at other options. I want to stick with a distro that is fully supported by my laptop to avoid even more issues. But the options are limited.
Had the completly oposite experience: mint installed in 2 hours with everything working. No bloatware, no bullshit. Biggest obstacle was, that changing the device bootorder is nog enough- uefi seetings needed some love to. I can imagine that this is not necessery if you do not use dual boot ( like win…talking about experience…)
For me everything works perfect- mint is my primary os now
Ok, a quick update.
After posting, and a little soul-searching, I decided to install Ubunu and give things another try.
Installation failed the first time, seemingly right at the end! Tried again, and it went through.
Set things up, and things seem to be OK. I’m only running a browser, and needed to try a paid windows program through Wine, which installed and loaded up without any real issues.
I go for a walk during lunch. Come back to the Linux login screen (expected, as I’d assume it locks like Windows). Log in… blank slate. All my work was closed, and it was like a fresh reboot. What the hell??? No error messages or anything. I literally have the browser and like a few other programs installed, so it’s not like the system is a mess from years of bad software installations.
Sigh…
Then I try another paid Windows program used to convert video files. It seems to work, but it’s not detecting my Intel graphics card. As I look for help on how to do this (officially, from my Laptop vendor), I get pages and pages of things to try… all through the terminal.
I mean, this is stuff that just works on Windows. No messing with stuff.
I really want Linux to be my daily driver, and even I type this from Ubuntu, I can’t help but feel like something is going to catastrophically self-destruct at any moment, and that kind of anxiety is never felt while using Windows.
I couldn’t imagine setting linux up for my wife, if this is the experience I’m having.
Your experience is not invalid, but It’s fucked up that you’re giving Windows credit for “just working” when Windows doesn’t even try to support dual booting. In fact the reason Linux is having so much trouble is because it has to tiptoe so that Windows doesn’t break.
If you don’t like Gnome or Mint Cinnamon, why not try KDE? Something like Kubuntu, perhaps? I use Fedora KDE myself.
Couldnt OP use the boot loader feature of Windows and add their distro as anotger option?
From Window’s perspective, there’s no need to dual boot. But I get what you’re saying. I’m not trying to defend Microsoft, and think that they’ve been enshittifying windows for years now.
But everything works without jumping through hoops. And if it doesn’t, the fix is usually very easy and done through a GUI 99% of the time.
But you are right. There are many flavours of Linux to try. Aesthetics aren’t my priority, though. I do need things to work without spending hours trying to figure it out.
I’m at an age where messing around on my computer for days on end is long gone. 😵
Gonna be a useless recommend, but try Fedora or Bazzite (Fedora Silverblue gaming with tweaks to make it easier).
I’ve had some friends with similar complaints about Mint having one off issues with hardware, which is usually because its downstream Ubuntu which means kernel support can be all over the place.
Fedora is probably best bang for buck in latest stable release without entering the realm of unstable rolling like Arch. Really the only thing I’ve found that it lacks is more varied support for ARM boards out of box and a cross compile package for ARM from x86.
By default it does have a slightly annoying repo setup because software that isn’t FOSS ends up on RPMFusion which you have to enable as a user, which is why I suggest Bazzite, which also uses the immutable Linux design which makes it much easier to prevent from breaking or fixing by rolling back a change.
Fedora is fully supported on my Framework laptop (as is Ubuntu and Mint), and I did have it working off an external SSD to try.
But… Sigh…
It’s American, so I won’t use it. American is one big reason why I want to quit Windows. Maybe I’ll just keep trying. 😮💨
Bruh, uh… maybe OpenSUSE lol?
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I appreciate the reply.
Fedora and Ubuntu are officially fully supported by laptop, so it’s Mint and a few others to a lesser extent.
I won’t use Fedora due to it being American, but the Fedora experience was quite nice the last time I tried.
I may explore other options through the Framework (laptop) community to see what else I can try.
Bazzite works around the issues with american patents, if that’s the problem.
If your problem is american control over your computer, I assure you, they have extremely limited control, at best, they own the package manager, which only runs if you tell it to.
I can’t switch to Linux due to software requirements for work. On my personal computer I’m using Xubuntu for well over a decade, I didn’t like the unity window manager of Ubuntu. I heard they changed to something else by now, but I can’t be bothered to switch.
Obviously Linux is the correct choice but I fear most will simply continue to suck it up and update to W11.
Spoken like a true fundamentalist, completely disconnected from reality! The top of the Linux breed!
Linux is not “obviously” the “correct” choice, mate. It CAN be. In CERTAIN scenarios. It’s awesome if people do it, but you need to be real here.
It’s the other way around. In general, you should choose Linux over Windows, and only if you really need it, use Windows. Also, if you need Windows just temporarily for some things, consider running it in a VM inside Linux just for those occasions.
Why - well, to keep it short, Linux’ main weaknesses for common users (difficulty, compatibility) are gradually fading away (they are already almost non-existent these days if you have mainstream hardware and a mainstream desktop distro like Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu) while Windows’ main disadvantages (forced stuff like cloud/AI integrations/ads, complete disregard of user’s privacy, increasing security issues due to outdated stuff being kept in the OS for backwards compatibility reasons, and many more things) keep on increasing at a rapid rate. Microsoft has a big business interest in getting all users locked into their cloud ecosystem, locked into a subscription with ever-increasing monthly fees, and give up control over their own computer and their digital privacy. They want users to pay them with their data AND monthly subscription fees. MS Office, for example, will probably not have a pure locally runnable version after 2029 (or around that year) anymore. This Microsoft train is heading towards that wall. And the speed is increasing. And tons of users are still inside that train. And Windows itself likely won’t be spared either. They want you to pay monthly for M365 and they will get their customers there, eventually.
Furthermore, by supporting Microsoft you’re supporting a very unethical company. They partner with big surveillance companies like Palantir and they are an active participant in the despicable ad-tech-industry (the industry that’s spying on literally everyone and buying/selling/storing tons of intimate user data even though it’s illegal in most countries), they partner with the military, law enforcement and other things. Also, they are a US company, and we all know how US politics is like these days, and this can have a big influence on how “trustworthy” US-based proprietary software will become in the near future. Since 2020, arguably no US-based proprietary software or online service is trustworthy anymore anyway, because of the CLOUD act, which is current law in the US - it means that the US government has access to any customer data stored by a US-based company, regardless of where on Earth they are storing it. This means the often-used claim “my data stored by that US company is safe because it’s in a European-based datacenter!!!11” is false since at least 2020, because MS is forced by US law to grant technical access to customer data to their government. Also, all previous “data transfer privacy agreements” between EU and US like Privacy Shield were all a joke and were dismantled in courts already. So there’s currently zero legal data protection - any data you send to a US company is theirs to do with as they please, essentially. And even if there were any meaningful legal data protections left, those big tech companies might still simply ignore that data protection law and only face minor or no fines at all.
So this is not a baseless claim. Just because I might keep some statements short doesn’t mean that there are no backing arguments. It’s a very good idea to reduce your dependency on Microsoft’s (or in general, US-based) proprietary software and services. For multiple reasons. Digital sovereignty has never been more important than these days. It has always been important but it was maybe too abstract in the past for many common users to realize. They are slowly starting to realize now that dependencies on proprietary software from any rogue regime (and the current US regime also falls into that category now) are not great to have. Plus, there is Microsoft on its own already putting ever-increasing user- and customer-hostile features into their products. It’s like being in an abusive relationship (as the one being abused). It’s just not good for you long-term.
So as a user, you should instead choose software which allows you to retain your digital sovereignty and control over your own computing, and simply not take all that abuse. Linux- or *BSD-based OSes with their open/transparent development models, fork-able/modifiable code bases, permissive licensing and essentially zero unwanted crap like adware, spyware, bloatware etc. offer exactly that. And because mainstream Linux distros have already become so easy to use these days, there are almost no reasons not to start using them.
All your arguments are logically sound and completely miss the main point.
The issue with Linux is not that “it’s getting there” in terms of user friendliness. It’s that it’s not there YET.
On top of that you have the community - just the other day I was searching to solve an issue, found a very similar thread, and the only reply the guy got was “here’s a link to the ArchWiki, welcome to the Linux world, you need to figure this out yourself”.
My 80 year old mother is not figuring out shit, she’s terrified when she has to copy a photo from a USB stick to here Photos folder.
Saying “Linux is fine for the masses today” is just showing how detached many Linux users are from reality.
Linux doesn’t support VR.
ALVR isn’t awful. I needed new hardware and bit the bullet knowing I was likely going to lose VR, but with the hardware upgrade, it’s nicer in the new machine (Bazzite, 7900XT) than the old (Win 10, 2080 Super Max Q). Definitely not a drop in replacement yet though.
steamVR works on it
of course, the only good VR game is Alyx and once you finish that it’s only tech demos and chat rooms - nothing else really worth the bother of strapping a monitor to your face.
Already switched to linux
Already transitioning. Been half doing it for ages. This’ll just be the last bit.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3f272bad-263b-4dd9-aeae-480bbf8778c2.png">
massgrave.dev
That’s LTSC versions, they aren’t meant for normal consumers, although you can find them if you want.
Or, of course, you can use their script to just activate it.
They are on that website, not just only the activator. They are better than retail isos because they come without bloat. I use iot LTSC permactivated with HWID on all my PCs and VMs
I’m already on Linux, gaming isn’t as good but I only play old games anyway so it doesn’t matter.
Fwiw, a great majority of my Steam library plays great in SteamOS.
Indeed. I use a steam deck primarily for gaming and it surprises me every day how well it performs.
Been on linux for years :3
Well, then this question wasn’t really for you then?
Nope :3
Use my PC for gaming and RTX so Windows only I’m afraid.
Linux would still be a good option. The driver isn’t as simple as AMD but not nearly as complicated as you would think. Unless you’re a Destiny 2, Fortnite, or League player you wouldn’t have any issues gaming either.
Already fiddling around enough with tge stuff I do with my PC which I installed Win11 on and I am in the EU meaning less BS than the US version (no forced upgrades, no ads (as described by US citizens) and so on).
I use Debian on my server as it’s a tool. Same for my pc. And I have a steamdeck.
And every tool has it’s worth no matter if it’s made from shitty chinesium or baller titanium.
I like the way Windows handles most things and I prefer it over having to fiddle with the way every Linux distro does it’s own thing (and I will never use Ubuntu).
Sooo, I’m in the same boat. Only, I sold my GPU expecting to get an upgrade and then didn’t for a long while - which is when I decided to make the switch to Linux, just to see how things go.
Now I added the GPU and - with issues - managed to get gaming going. It’s fine, I think. Played Hogwarts Legacy yesterday for a couple of hours. Got a 7800x3d and RX 9070 XT, with everything on Ultra (including Ray Tracing) and upscaling disabled, my GPU would be sitting between 80 and 100% utilisation, but FPS was very comfortable (don’t have a counter so don’t know exactly how many, but it was smooth).
HOWEVER, after a couple of hours my main monitor turned off and the other one turned… green. I think the graphics driver crashed? Not sure, honestly. Anyway, after a reboot everything was fine. Overall, I had a nice four hour-long session yesterday.
I guess what I’m saying is - give it a go! KDE is beautiful (do recommend Garuda Linux just for the design choices, but they also have A TONNE of “I’m a noob, help” features pre-configured), gaming is fine, you might enjoy it. And if you don’t, just switch back to Windows.
Is there an easy way to port all my stuff to Linux? I would not have made the switch in the past, but all the good will I attributed to Microsoft is pretty much gone. I’ve heard Mint is petty easy to hop onto?
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Thank you for you detailed response! I think something like Bazzite would be more up my alley based on what you said. Something that is hard to mess up is something I’d be more comfortable with for sure.
I appreciate your offer for troubleshooting help as well!
Make sure to not to choose steam gaming mode when you download it, it makes it a console like experience!
my matrix account is on my profile
Jumped to linux for a test on an old laptop, currently on windows on my main PC but got parts on the way for a new build that’s going to be Linux.
Welcome to the other side, make sure to enjoy and use actual documentation of your software instead of random Q&A answered by ‘Community Moderators’ on Windows forums :)
Made the switch over a year ago. No regrets, everything works as I would want it to.
I have an ad hoc media server on 10. If it’s super working, you can bet I will replace it with something other than Microsoft. Unless work requires it, everything I use is Linux, Android, or Apple based. I don’t hate Windows, I just like everything else more.
Neither
This sounds like October’s problem.
October 2025, right?
.
.
.
Right?
10 bucks says they delay it.
Yeah I do OS installs for other people all the time but my main PC is a hot mess and I run a bunch of problematic software including VR. I’ll probably end up setting up a dual boot of Win11 & Linux and avoid Windows as much as possible. But I will procrastinate because I already use both OS’s on other PCs so I know what to expect. I’ll put it off as long as possible, hoping they postpone. Never do today what you can put off til next year :)
I run Linux on a small mini pc for some casual browsing.
I run windows on my main pc.
As long as some kernel anticheat (fortnite, cod, etc…) doesn’t run on Linux, I won’t be swapping.
30+y of windows use also makes me infinitely more comfortable with windows. All the complaints I always read about are totally moot for me (I understand the issue of privacy in windows. It’s the price I pay to have an OS that “just works” for me) .
While I enjoy tinkering, Linux is a royal PITA to use if you’re not used to it. I spend hours trying to figure out how to fix something that takes me 5m max in windows. I understand it’s a more a me than a Linux problem. But I’m certain many people struggle with the same things.
Maybe the last time you tried Linux was 30 years ago, but Linux compared to Windows just works.
If it takes you HOURS to find a fix to something that takes you literally 5 minutes on Windows, you are doing something wrong. Your research methods are flawed.
Some of my friends still use Windows, fixing their problems takes me half an hour to find a solution, while on Linux, I just open the terminal and insert one command. Last time that happened it was about a VPN kill switch. So the person had a VPN App installed on Windows with a kill switch enabled. Then they uninstalled the VPN application and the kill switch was still there.
How do you remove the kill switch? On Linux it’s ‘nmcli c ‘killSwitchName’ del’ on Windows it’s a journey to a new adventure.
For how I use my pc, everything just works. To give you a counter argument. My logitech devices just work out of the box on windows. For Linux I had to get a little specific tool. Also try installing Japanese language input on Linux. Compare how much simpler it is on windows. Linux is NOT simpler than windows in all situations. Maybe your own research methods are flawed?
I game, manage my NAS (truenas running jellyfish for media etc) , sail the high seas, and browse on my pc. I also remote into a small spare mini pc running Ubuntu server with a minecraft server on it. (Could’ve ran the server on windows, but wanted to tinker with Linux to learn)
It all works flawless.
Also, give me a Linux alternative for parsec that just works as well for remote gaming, both from other desktop devices as from a mobile devices.
I would say sunshine, but from personal experience the encoder never works and your stuck with horrible fps. Parsec is magic.
Yeah, nothing beats parsec tbh.
Maybe use a more friendly distro like Linux mint. It’s very similar to windows, and you don’t need to use the terminal.
I use popOS. Windows is still simpler
I’m going to Linux because I have an older i5 (I think 5th or 7th gen?) which isn’t compatible.
I only really kept Windows for gaming but Valve has put a lot of effort into making Linux gaming more accessible and I’m willing to try it out now
Good on you. If more people were on linux, it’d give companies more incentive to make games accessible from there.
My gaming pc has just switched over to bazzite (as I use it like a console/htpc). Been wanting to do it for ages but needed to get an amd card beforehand for the best experience. Windows really started to grind my gears in the last few months too.
Made the upgrade last week to Linux mint and I’m loving it. Got my Arr stacks and stuff setup as dockers and it’s never worked so well. All the connection issues I’ve had on windows is now gone.
The interface is nice and not bloated. And I’m not being tracked which feels liberating.
Welcome :), if we’re being honest lot of the tracking still happens on Linux once you open your web browser but it definitively feel nice to be liberated of the one at OS level and a solid start for caring about online privacy
Yeah, it’s about reducing the amount of tracking though. I’ve since deleted my Google account, stopped using gmail, moved to proton, stopped using online password managers, deleted Reddit, quit watching YouTube, moved everything I can to open source programs. Libre office instead of 365 etc.
So 43% of Steam users are the kind of stickler that refuse to update their Windows to an objectively better version because it’s something new and different and breaks their habits. What would make you think these people would possibly just switch to a different OS altogether if a simple update was too much to ask for the past years?
Maybe 43% have hardware that is not supported by Windows 11. And don’t want to run windows 11 on unsupported hardware or go through the hassle of even installing on unsupported hardware.
If doing one registry edit and installing Win11 from the iso to bypass the silly “processor unsupported” message is a too high barrier for these 43%, how do you realistically expect these same people to go out of their way and install a Linux distro? Why should they be motivated to learn in which ways it works differently from the Windows architecture? And let’s not get started with “unsupported hardware” - even though the Linux experience has gotten so much smoother, it’s still not uncommon to have components with subpar or no real support.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Linux and I use it for work - but to think a huge part of gamers will switch to Linux with just because they don’t want to update their Windows is just illusory.
I don’t expect them to switch. I think it’s more likely they will stay until there games are no longer supported. Simply because a lot of people just don’t want or can’t edit the registry, because they think stats for people with technical knowledge. But I also don’t believe they will all switch to Linux.
I have no idea. I rely on music software that doesn’t have a Linux port. This sucks, because that software cost money, and if I can’t get it running reliably on Linux I might have to… either that, or get a Mac :/
Wine works for a lot of software you could always try running your precious software on linux before jumping straight onto Mac
Sure, but music production programs don’t work well under wine. Also, setting up linux for realtime music production is tough even without using wine.
You can definitely do production on wine, but recording instruments live isn’t feasible.
What music software?
The German one o.o
How do I even get started? Do I just install Mint and figure it out from there? Linux seems so complicated but it’s been a decade since I last tried. Nowadays, I feel old and this seems like it needs too much research
Honestly, one of the great uses for gen ai is “write me a script to diagnose this problem” and then pass the output back with “write me a script to fix it”
I don’t have the bandwidth in my life to diagnose and tinker for fun, and it’s really made a bunch of big annoying things easy.
I found KDE way more intuitive than gnome, even though I was last on a Mac before the switch. Perhaps pick a KDE distro.
Also maybe list here if you have any deal-breaker apps or workflows to the folks can say if it’s worth your effort.
Linux is no more complicated than Windows, we just know what we know.
Start by trying one of the big names like Ubuntu or Fedora.
There’s not exactly better distros for gaming, it’s just about what’s preinstalled, that’s why Bazzite exists.
A good idea is to install something like VirtualBox on your Windows machine and test out some distros to learn your way around them.
I love linux too, but linux is absolutely more complicated for a typical computer user
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3ea56690-97d6-4933-b1ad-1b5e8aa45a3e.png">
I would recommend to try linux first by dualbooting. Try Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux MINT and KDE Neon (i really like it because it has a Windowsy feel). You can see how those distros look here: distrosea.com
I personally dont like the stock ubuntu, was really suprised by fedora.
Can second, Ubuntu sucks (but they did a lot of formative work in getting desktop Linux going), Fedora is great
Whatever you do. Don’t dualboot. It gives a wrong impression of what Linux is, and complexity is not inherently a part of it. Try Mint as a live USB OS first. That means the OS runs from a USB thumb drive. This will allow you to dip your toes before you dive in. Just like dipping toes, it’s a no-compromise way of testing, but if you choose to install you already have 90% of what you need.
Also it’s soooo easy for someone not very knowledgeable to misconfigure the boot loader. Don’t touch boot loaders unless you’re okay with potentially losing access to both your original OS and the new Linux install. You’d then have to either learn on the go and repair it yourself, or beg/pay someone else to repair it.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows. Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on. Have been using it for years. The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup. Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.
So is KDE, that’s why I recommend it over cinnamon and not gnome.
That has (mostly) nothing to do with your desktop environment!
Just because you’re familiar with it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for beginners. People want HDR, mixed refresh rates, and mixed DPI displays to work properly, they do on KDE, they possibly never will on cinnamon. Just as an example, look at the rate of development on KDE based distros vs cinnamon… cinnamon is entirely outclassed. The KDE team is massive, the cinnamon team is a few people with no real funding. ( if you don’t believe me, here are the stats for the last month cinnamon side: github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly vs github.com/KDE/plasma-desktop/pulse although you’ll note kde isn’t developed on github and that’s just a mirror. It’s not even close, cinnamon has less monthly than 1/10th of the weekly for kde. The KDE text editor alone outpaces all of cinnamon dramatically, github.com/KDE/kate/pulse ) The rate of code output and refinement is not even close. The level of customization you can do with KDE vs cinnamon isn’t even comparable. If you run into an issue with cinnamon, you’re SOL, whereas KDE can actually worry about your bugs, because they have so many more developers.
That’s not even going into the massive disparity in security between the two, KDE uses wayland by default, and as a result is SIGNIFICANTLY more secure, just off the top of my head, here’s some problems with cinnamon that will not be resolved anytime soon, that have all already been resolved by this transition KDE-side:
Windows does have it… actually, it only has it. UAC already prevents you from modifying system files. There’s no way to turn it off without mucking about in the console. And it’s not a personal preference thing at all, it’s objectively superior for a beginner, and anything you can do with a normal distro can still be done with an immutable one assuming you have root access.
Reminder that just because something works for you, doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for a beginner. Try all the options extensively before you make a suggestion, you might not have made the right choice for everyone just because you have made the right choice for yourself. I make these suggestions after YEARS of extensive testing with many people as my guinea pigs.
I have tried giving people cinnamon, it has gone disasterously, usually due to DPI problems. But I don’t think it’s a safe recommendation at all, just given the security issues.
In short, i think the only reasonable recommendations for beginners in terms of desktop environments, are KDE or Gnome (if they’re mac users and are willing to learn something different), unless their hardware is TERRIBLE and old, in which case they might want lxqt or xfce, maybe.
Upgrade
to Linux
Been on Linux for like 15 years now
You walked so our games would run 🫡
Unfortunately not. Even as an IT person I can say I just wanna come home and boot up my games without hassle. Sure alot of things have been done with proton etc but still a massive amount of games don’t work without Soo much dang tweaking. I don’t have time for that especially with a job/being a single parent. I am highly interested in steamos though.
that’s also my excuse, but then again, i don’t even game that much. and i’m on rtx 3070 which will be getting too old soon for new games and new GPUs are just too expensive.
And god i hate w11. i mean it’s not that different than w10 but things just don’t work!
my logitech mouse stutters for no fucking reason, 10 year old games lag for no fucking reason. the whole windows lags after being waken up from sleep after a few days, i could go on and on. none of these problems existed on w10.
Why not dual-boot with steamos in that case? Sure, some things may not work out-of-the-box now, but work is constantly being done and at least won’t regress like the step from W10 to W11.
honestly, i’m just lazy. I would need to clear out one of my drives, i have three of them, 256gb, 512gb and 2tb. I keep windows on the smallest one. I would need to clear out the 512gb one and just get it done.
might get it done when w11 pisses me off a few more times :D
<img alt="" src="https://feddit.uk/pictrs/image/413873be-7c56-4eb0-bdfc-3f2600c4581f.webp">
I had the same outlook before switching to Arch Linux, but honestly gaming on Linux is actually the lesser of my hassle. I can genuinely just grab msi files or exe files for games and feed them to Steam to get them playing via Proton. There’s only one (1!) game that I can’t play, and I’m 99% certain it’s a problem with my hardware, not my OS (Monster Hunter Wilds seems to hate my GPU and crash all the time). But even that was fixed with a mod (up until the latest update).
With that said, I’ve had a lot of hassle handling other things that are upstream of gaming so it’s not like you’re unreasonable in wanting an OS that is mostly stable. Then again, I made the decision to use Arch Linux, there’s distros that are simpler afaik.
Is Windows actually stable though? I used to have to use it for work, it’s a disgusting OS. Now I use Ubuntu for work, also disgusting, but it’s much better than Windows
“Mostly stable”. I’ve had my fair share of issues with Windows.
But one of the big benefit is that it is much easier to diagnose an issue on Windows, just by sheer volume of mainstream usage (IE users complaining about issues and seeking help online). Also, tech support won’t turn you around because you are on Linux, an OS they straight up refuse to support.
I thought the same, especially since I had tried Linux on my main several times since the 90s (my first dual boot was with Slackware).
Then maybe 8 months ago I did the transition, and installed Pop!OS since I’m a gamer plus I have a NVidia graphics card and didn’t want to go through the whole hassle related to that (Pop!OS has a version which already comes with those drivers).
Mind you, I did got a separate SSD for Linux and meanwhile added a new one, which is where my games directory is mounted and upgraded the root one to something a bit bigger,
So, this time around, what did I find out in about 8 months of use:
I still have the old Windows install in that machine, but I haven’t booted into it for many months now.
Compared to the old days (even as recently as a decade ago), nowadays there is way less need for tweaking in Linux in general and for gaming, even Windows games generally just install and run as long as you use some kind launcher which has game-specific install scripts (such as Steam and Lutries), but if you go out of the mainstream (obscure old games, pirated stuff) then you have to learn all about tweaking Wine to run the games.
If you have a desktop and the space to install the hardware, just get a 256GB SSD (which are pretty cheap) and install a gaming-oriented Linux distro (such as Pop!OS or Bazzite) there, separate from Windows and you can dual boot them using your BIOS as boot manager: since the advent of EFI, booting doesn’t go through a boot sector shared by multiple OSs anymore, so if you install each in their own drive then they don’t even see each other (you can still explicitly mount the Windows partitions in Linux from the Files app to access them, but otherwise they have no impact whatsever on booting and running Linux) and only the BIOS is aware of the multiple bootable OSs and you can get it to pop up a menu on boot (generally by pressing F8) to change which one you want to boot.
For the 20 or 30 bucks of a 256GB SSD it’s worth the try and if you’re comfortable with it you can later do as I did and add another bigger one just for the directory with you games (or your home directory, though granted to migrate your home like this you do have to use the CLI ;))
Already upgraded to Linux Mint - lemmy.world/post/24365609
It’s been going great! Everything works as I expected. I now have full confidence that I will never switch back to Windows. It really does feel liberating having an OS that doesn’t track me.
Steam OS, Batocera, Bazzite, Linux Mint… so many great distros for gaming alone.
Already prepared everything for the jump. Switched MS Office for LibreOffice, and Outlook for Betterbird. Tested install, configuration and access to backups in a VM. Next vacation I take I’ll go for it. Mint is my choice of Distro, because of Steam/Gaming reasons. With the US being antagonistic, if not outright hostile, right now, and Microsoft having their disgusting Copilot AI Analysis Fingers in everything, it’s the rational choice I think.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Thanks, that was some great insight. Especially the drawbacks regarding cinnamon. Those are 100% things no normal user should ever have to think or worry about.
Didn’t know about betterbird! Nice :)
If you use Windows as mere game launcher, you better have a application firewall set to whitelist Steam only anyway.
I switched a year ago and I love it. All my old games run better on linux than windows at this point. Proton is fucking amazing.
Nope, will probably avoid 11 as long as I can though. I have an Mvidia card (drivers are notoriously troublesome on Linux). And I need professional design software for work (as in, industry standard: Adobe or Affinity).
But I put 11 on my laptop to try it and I hate it. So many terrible UI changes, UX noticeably worse. Like they changed stuff just to say they changed stuff.
I considered going Linux for personal use and development, and then using another machine or dual boot for Mac for design software. But i learned about the Nvidia issues after I upgraded my card :/ and swapping to Mac’s walled garden after avoiding it for decades is… a sign of how bad W11 feels to use.
Might be worth testing Linux with a separate drive. I know people still have trouble with Nvidia, but there are a lot of people (myself included) that just had to install the drivers and have had zero issues thereafter. Mine is a slightly older gaming laptop.
I have a desktop with an AMD card that I tried to put Linux on and couldn’t get the drivers to work. I’m going to try again in the summer and hope they’ve caught up.
I dunno man, Debian makes it pretty easy.
x64 Kernel headers:
Disable secure boot & add ‘Contrib’ repository to sources list:
Install Nvidia driver
Restart system.
Bonus points for optimal performance follow CUDA doc & OptiX doc for Ray-Tracing & utilization of Nvidia cuda cores.
On Ubuntu you can also just run:
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstallBazzite makes nvidia pretty easy, although it can still be troublesome, they are working on it. There’s a different iso to install that is designed for nvidia, couldn’t be more straightforward.
If you have a newer NVIDIA, you should be good. It’s a little rough around the edges here and there (steam overlay flickered for a friend, but that was months ago and could well be fixed) , but to my understanding, the worst issues have been solved. And having previously used an RTX 2040, it worke perfectly where it truly matters.
Like others have said, try a dualboot. It can’t hurt.
They haven’t been for a while now. On some newer distros they’ll install the Nvidia drivers at the same time as the OS itself.
I’ve been on 11 since before it was officially released. Honestly never had any issues with it, but I’m interested in hearing what sort of issues anyone else might have had? Are we talking about privacy concerns, bugs or performance issues?
Privacy, UI/UX, admin controls, ads, pop ups or notifications, nagging about online services, AI, forced account creation, not working with older hardware.
I mostly just use my PC for video games, movies and music production, so that hasn’t really affected me.
Regarding UI I think it’s been horrible since Windows 8. I really miss 7!
I have a Win11 laptop for work, and they changed the Start menu. Now it’s recent apps and recommendations for your starting point, and you have to click an option to see installed apps. Every. Time. There is a setting with 3 options - more recently used apps, more recommendations, or an even split of both, but the option to go straight to installed apps is mysteriously missing…
I will never install Win11 directly onto my hardware. If I have to use it, it will go into a VM of one flavor or another.
Windows is a weapons contractor that is entangled in the domestic markets. Linux is not. Windows is spyware and anti consumer. It is time to at least be familar with Linux. Try it on a old laptop or something. Linux is free.
How to give it a go:
As long as you give a dedicated drive to Linux and (if on an old machine before EFI) do not let it install a boot sector anywhere else but that drive, the risk exposure is limited to having spent 20 or 30 bucks on a 256GB SSD and then it turns out Linux is still not good enough for you.
When NOT to do it:
Thank you I’m saving this whole thread
Considering I’m unemployed and job hunting, and Windows says I can’t upgrade my current (old) PC, and I regularly play Warzone with friends? No, probably not any time soon.
Maybe if I get a job with a six digit salary in a city with a reasonable cost of living (or remote) so I can jump out of debt before 6 months? But I’m not holding my breath.
Swapped to Arch Linux! I wouldn’t say it’s been a bug free swap but it’s been extremely doable and everything I needed to work worked like a charm. Gaming was uninterrupted and nothing hasn’t worked yet.
I need to figure out how to connect my stupid printer but I couldn’t do that on windows either, which is sad cause I thought printers were gonna be easier on Linux but I guess this brother model is a pain in the ass or something. Oh and connecting to network drives while on a VPN. That’s my list of pending problems and I’ve been on Linux for two months. Not bad really.
aur.archlinux.org/…/brother-cups-wrapper-ac this might help you if regular cups doesn’t work!
It wasn’t a silver bullet. I’ll keep working on this. HL-L2400DW. Freaking nightmare printers are.
Thanks for trying.
So many perfectly working older computers are going to be headed to the landfill as e-waste. That’s the horrible part.
What a waste tech dollars just to play some stupid game.
I hope many of us are able to pick them up cheap instead.
Yes, “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order. It is better to sell or give away an old PC instead of just sending it for recycling or even landfill.
Yeah but larger organisations just don’t work that way.
My laptop still works perfectly well so if Microsoft don’t want to support it any more then I’ll bung Linux on it. I’ve already got my Mint stick ready, just need to get round to it.
Nice! I was lucky to have extra drives when I switched to Linux on my PC, haven’t done it on a laptop yet. Do you just back up all your data to an external SSD/HD beforehand or go the partition route?
I wiped it after I left my last job so there’s next to nothing on it anyway now. They did give me a laptop but due to a stupid conflict between the AV and VPN one of the processor threads was maxed out causing the fan to run on full noise mode all the time.
Got a new laptop about a month ago. Put Fedora Bluefin on it immediately. Couple other computers/server have been running Debian flavors for year or two.
My main desktop is still Windows, but I literally never use it, especially since getting the laptop. I’ll switch it over when I get time.
I’m still tied to windows for three apps. I’ve found a Linux replacement for one, I just haven’t done the work to convert the database.
Another one I’m trying to run it’s Android version in a waydroid docker, but I’m hitting walls, no time to dig deeper.
And the last one has no replacement, and it’s too delicate to try emulating, I don’t want to nuke the shared database it’s attached to, it’s not worth the headache. So I keep a Windows VM around for the once a month I need to use that program for 🤷♂️
I’m purposely being vague about the programs, they are very identifying, but trust me there’s no alternatives.
Even with all that, I’m not looking back, win11 sucks.
It’s not like that shits gonna make your computer explode the day they end support lol
Sure, but I wouldn’t recommend using a system that gets no security updates. Its more than worth upgrading or switching to linux to avoid that.
No that feature is only planned for TPM v3
The viruses and exploits will though.
Solution:
<img alt="" src="https://pawb.social/pictrs/image/b2f4622b-937e-4f5e-adef-307bb0c6ec54.jpeg">
I’m in Windows 11. I have regret it, but after so many tweaks of the system, removing telemetries, changing menus, and other Windows shit, i had not the energy to move back to Windows 10.
Only OS change i am willing to make is to move to Linux, but gaming is not there yet, and am now trying to move from big proprietary companies to FOSS, so time is needed.
@nuko147 @The_Picard_Maneuver
May i ask why gaming on linux isn't for you ?
I assume he is playing an FPS game with anti-cheat, everything else just works.
Or League of legends. Cant play on Linux with riot anticheat
Nvidia user, i saw a 10-15% performance difference (maybe more in some games), some anti-cheat do not work, so i can not install these games. I used both Mint and Nobara with latest drivers running and proton-GE.
Might be game dependent but nowadays games like withcher 3 run better on linux then windows for me.
Anti-cheat is admittedly a pain though. Chivalry 2 used to work and now no longer does.
Though those anti cheats tend to be very invasive so i prefer if everyone moved to a system thats is user personal security first so the market would align with that.
My experience with Linux gaming has varied pretty wildly. My old r9 290x could hardly run anything on linux. And if it did, it would run horribly compared to on windows.
Recently I upgraded to an rx 7600, and nearly everything works out of the box or with minor tweaks. And it performs similarly to windows, even better on occasion.
Yeah NVIDIA GPUs, like mine, suck at Linux.
Gaming on Linux has never been better. Out of the top 100 (mostly Windows platform) games, only 7 are entirely unplayable according to www.protondb.com
80/100 are Gold or Platinum rated which means very playable. I often get better performance in Linux than Windows, even with the default open source drivers. I am using an AMD GPU which gives an advantage as they have better open source support, but for NVIDIA all the Linux distros I’ve used have had a documented path to install their binary drivers for better performance. My only bugbear is the game developers that actively hate Linux and that try to disable their game from working via anti cheat.
It’s true that it sometimes takes a bit more tinkering, especially if you’re using some esoteric controller or other funky hardware, but in the days of LLMs that can coach you through issues it’s more accessible than it’s ever been.
Nvidia GPUs are not good in Linux at the moment. And yeah all what you said. But i had tried Linux for gaming like something 5-8 years ago, and the situation is so much better now.
They’ve been perfectly fine for years. And now they’ve never been better for desktop DEs.
When I say they’re ‘not good,’ I mean they run slower. AMD and Intel GPUs perform nearly as well as they do on Windows, but Nvidia GPUs can suffer up to a 20% performance loss on Linux, depending on the game.
My Steam profile is apparently 30% platinum, 21% gold, 10% varying levels of broken, 39% unrated.
But Genshin Impact, one of my main games, doesn’t even appear on ProtonDB, and as far as I heard you need a custom Linux launcher for it, that results in occasional banwaves, which I will not risk :/ (Edit: if ProtonDB only lists Steam games, that would explain why Genshin is missing.)
Windows 11 -> Linux just for gaming and I am satisfied!
However, I also do not play things with big graphics requirements, kernel-level anticheat, and I do not have any fancy GPUs like Nvidia that make things incompatible. I transitioned on a laptop. So YMMV.
Didn’t they get rid of some 11 requirements? Won’t most regular people just do the upgrade to 11?
They didn’t get rid of it, they’re allowing you to upgrade to 11 and calling it unsupported. Just like 10 is unsupported.
With Win 11, you still get the security updates though right?
Yes, the “not supported” thing is just their terminology. They could decide to stop pushing them at any time. Though technically they could pull the plug on anything whenever, but they’re explicitly saying “we might stop supporting these unsupported Windows 11 installations at any time.”
I was running mint, but had to go back to windows because of a hardware bug I’m still trying to fix where my PC will randomly not wake up from sleep and that results in corrupted drives, which windows can fix with it’s automated repair at boot, but Linux has done commands that I need to run and if I fuck it up it would fuck my computer up even more, so until I can fix the hardware bug I’m stuck on windows, but by fuck do I hate it. I prefer Linux so much more over windows, so much more convenient, efficient, personalizable and it actually works in many places where windows simply doesn’t even with a lot of fiddling around in settings and shit
Do you have a swap partition? Is it the correct size? Also I think you can do a drive check on boot by changing an option in fstab.
I’ve even taken out the drive that I had Linux installed, windows still has the issue, it started barely happening a year or so ago but recently it’s gotten much much worse and it happens in waves(?) where it’ll not have any issues for several days and then one day it will fail to wake up every time it goes to sleep, except when I’m testing. I recall testing the drive check on both Linux and windows, but both came out clean.
My bf and I have narrowed it down to probably being the power supply (last year there were a bunch of power outages after a historical flood here in southern Brazil) but the ram is also unstable at timings that it used to run perfectly fine, but the ram test came out clean so it’s a big mess of possibilities RN. I’m just waiting for Monday to be able to buy a new power supply and a UPS to test, but even then we’re still unsure if this will truly fix it or if I’ll need to get a new motherboard.
Hey, what’s your usecase like that requires sleep in the first place? I’ve never used Sleep since I moved to using an SSD as a boot drive. My computer boots in around 12 seconds with the SSD that it just made sleep unnecessary.
I keep getting called away from my computer in the middle of whatever I’m doing and I don’t want to leave it unlocked while I’m away and I don’t want to have to reopen 4 or 5 programs including a game, if I could shut it down instead of sleeping I would but sadly I can’t
Upgrade tool says my hardware isn’t supported, seems like I can enable TPM on my motherboard but it doesn’t work right for some reason I think I managed to install Windows 10 without secure boot or something, not sure if those two are even related. I was thinking maybe I’d have to reinstall windows 10 with those modules enabled in order to upgrade to windows 11… Has anyone else encountered something similar?
Yeah, said I had to buy a tpm module for my mobo to upgrade to win11. My steam deck works so well running arch based Linux I searched “gaming arch Linux” in DuckDuckGo and installed CachyOS. Easier and cleaner than installing windows 10 when I built my PC and the constant updates are awesome (they also offer long term support LTS builds). Highly recommend, I have an Nvidia 2070 Super and CachyOS has been a great upgrade from Windows 10.
Those two are related. Windows 11 requires both UEFI (secure boot) and TPM. Microsoft has a tool for converting a legacy install to UEFI. (backup your data beforehand as always)
Wow, looks like exactly what I need! I’ll give it a try, thanks!
My plan is to use my Linux box as my main PC with Steam installed so that I can remote play from my Windows gaming PC since not all titles natively work on Linux for me. That way, the only activity being performed on my Windows machine is gaming and everything else will live in Linux Mint
@MattTheProgrammer @The_Picard_Maneuver
Since you wanna Game using network anyway did you ever thought of Cloud Gaming (aka Geforce Now) ? That way you don't have a "unsecure" device in your network. From a security standpoint even an device only used for gaming is a security risk ;)
FCK nvidia
@IceFoxX
I have used nvidia on my private PC on linux for more than a decade now. They provided a stable usable 3D acceleration in KDE1 when no other company did give a fuck about linux and voodoo had only their glide interface on the console.
As a customer i am very sad about the current state on linux and as a customer my next graphics card might be an AMD. The reasons are not only the driver but also that amd provides just more memory for the same money and i think that nvidia currently is cheating their way throu the consumer market (for real imaginary AI Pictures is a performance improvment ???).
But and thats why i disagree hardly with the "fuck nvidia" ... they deserve the respect for the support much longer than any brand out there and therefor they deserve a respectfull way to express where they imho do wrong.
They deserve respect? For the criminal methods they used back then? FCK nvidia! That’s like paying respect to MS or Intel + Nvidia to destroy the market in the long term in monopoly positions.
( First of all, this is not a criticism of the users. I used to use Intel and Nvidia myself. It’s towards Nvidia and their dirty company policy. )
That would require me to abandon half of my Steam library and pay an additional cost for games I already can play. My device is on Windows 11 so I am not worried about security updates, more so the Recall “feature” and AI training.
I already switched to Bazzite Desktop and it’s been so good. I had some pains configuring somethings to my liking, but that was more due to me not being familiar with Linux. I’m never going back.
If I was considering Bazzite and Pop OS as options, which would you suggest I go with?
Well, I cannot comment about PopOS because I simply don’t know how it is, but Bazzite on desktop has been great. I didn’t need to install anything related to gaming because it already comes with everything on it.
Pretty much anything I needed is on the discovery store and it’s handled like the app store on Android, so no headache of messing it up with installations or worrying about updates. Although, Bazzite is an immutable OS so anything that you need to install that’s not on the store can be a headache.
Also, my computer is an old laptop, so I got a performance boost as the system feels way smoother now than with Windows.
About games, I played some indie games on Steam and Lutris and it worked flawlessly. But do note that for more recent systems, it appears to be some headaches, especially with NVIDIA graphics cards. I only play new games on streaming services, so I don’t have those problems. But I do have some problems with the streaming service using my 8BitDo controller, but it’s not related to the system, it’s related to the service’s bad drivers. When I stream the game using Steam, it’s smooth sailing.
I have used both Bazzite and PopOs for more then a year. They are both great distros. The reason I stuck with Bazzite is ease of updates since its immutable (I am lazy and updated PopOS only when I absolutely needed, and updating bunch of system packadges after a long time always causes something else to screw up). PopOS on the other hand gives you complete control over how to install things, and system configuration.
TLDR, if you are a power user, then decide based on if you want an immutable system or not. If you are not, you can just flip a coin and choose, Bazzite has better ease of use compored to PopOS on theory, but if you encounter issues PopOS will be easier to troubleshoot because it has more users / information online.
I just gave up on windows gaming. If the game cant be played on my steamdeck, I just find something else. Otherwise its macos and linux for anything non-professional that requires windows. And even then I fucking hate it. Oh look at that… all my documents say “Auto-recover (version 1)” because it forcibly rebooted on me.
This! A game is a game. There are often good alternatives that gives as much entertainment. If a publisher doesn’t want you to play, that’s their problem, they won’t get money from you.
Even the Playstation OS is better than this. It asks you whether to update before shutdown or the next time it starts up. ‘You’re 33% there’ is gaslighting, especially when you’re just shutting down the machine to go to bed.
I don’t care to much about steam at the moment so no real problem. But I will make the switch to linux on the machine used for gaming. No Win 11 there probably, some Arch-related, EndeavourOS is my actual choice.
I would like to switch to Linux on my gaming machine but me and my girlfriend play Valorant together so I can’t switch just yet.
My server and laptop already run NixOS, I’m just looking forward to the day my gaming/main machine join them too
Why Gates in the picture tough?
He stepped down as a chairman over 10 years ago and didint he leave the microsoft board like 5 years ago?
He was the face of Microsoft for most of OP’s life.
Let us not forget the single most impressive feat of athleticism in the 20th century.
This should be the test all millionaires and billionaires have to take yearly. If they fail, they are no longer fit to own or lead a business.
I always think the same. But everybody knows Bill Gates by sight. Do you think everyone instantly recognizes Satya Nadella?
Who?
The current CEO of Microsoft.
I got a new PC recently so unfortunately I am now on Windows 11. I’ve been wanting to make the swap to Linux but I can’t really make a clean break because at least some of the games I play a lot won’t work on Linux. I do think I’m gonna try to set up another hard drive with Linux on it to try to slowly start learning it and ideally move over anything that I can over there eventually and just keep the windows drive for those few games.
Does anyone have any recommendations related to that? Distro for gaming/ease of use? What’s the best option for setting up the dual boot? Anything I wouldn’t have thought of that’s relevant?
What games are they?
One of the reasons i am sticking with Arch is because steamdeck os is build on it, whats good enough to game for valve is good enough for me.
I have both Arch and my old windows install on separate m.2 ssds. By default i log into the arch one which uses the windows ssd as a game installation drive.
This way when i do have to use windows for some game modding or testing, i can easily access and sometimes run the games from there.
There’s a spattering of steam games that don’t list Linux support. Probably the ones I play the most are Deep Rock Galactic and Last Epoch. Outside of Steam I play TFT a lot, which doesn’t work on Linux since they added the anti-cheat software.
Those first two are reported to work incredibly well using proton compatibility on steam. Proton is not the same as native support, which is why its not mentioned in any official game Information but it is native to steam. (Also works in heroic and litrus for gog/epic/other)
A platinum (community) rating is as high as it gets, may as well be native or better then on windows.
www.protondb.com/app/548430
www.protondb.com/app/899770
For TFT i found they use the same anti cheat as some other games. Used to work before, no longer does now but with dual boot all your current stuff is just a minute away (windows updates not included)
Cool. Didn’t know about that site. Thanks.
If you’re a tech savvy person then I’d recomend Arch, but if you’d prefer a more streamlined approach then Baazite, PopOs, and Mint are all good starting points. As for dual booting, no matter which distro of linux you use you’ll use something called GRUB. The tl;dr of grub is that it’ll let you select which operating system you want to boot into when you boot up your pc
Just in case you are thinking this like I used to, don’t go by “unplayable on steam deck” to determine what games you won’t be able to play on a Linux desktop. While those games include incompatible with Linux games, they also include ones that the deck hardware can’t handle at a decent framerate but otherwise play fine on Linux.
Oh I was looking at system requirements on the store page. Is that accurate?
no. you can play a crap load of “windows only” games on linux. the trick is to enable steam play in steam settings and use community versions of proton. works like a charm
Since your computer is running Windows 11 already, I would recommend you look for a Linux distro without considering if it’s gaming-friendly. Linux is great for certain productivity tasks.
For dualbooting, most official Linux installation guides offer detailed steps for that. Grub (the boot management program) is well tested and widely used.
It’s tricky because I have things that just don’t translate well to linux, or become considerably more expensive or time consuming to manage / deal with. Linux has a lot to offer and a lot of great. But I’m just going to keep running an out of date OS until I can switch.
What kind of things are holding you back?
I don’t want to get into a big debate on it so if you are just curious and have a couple suggestions I’m down to talk about it. But I’m tired of people telling me that my reasoning isn’t good enough for them. Like, great, thanks, glad you can be happy with it, but we aren’t the same person. So I’d prefer to avoid any conversation where I’m just told to suck it up and deal with something. I am working on finding alternatives but all the ones I’ve come across so far are coming up short in a way that’s non negotiable.
My biggest one is my O365 bundle with office apps, oneNote, and OneDrive.
I am going to be trying out libreoffice and OpenOffice this year to see if I can replace word and excel. Last time I tried they weren’t there for me.
OneNote is my second most vital. I’m looking at Notesnook at the moment but I’m really not enthused by a monthly price or the idea of self-hosting in a docker container. I’ve hated most note apps and OneNote was the only one I’ve clicked with so far. I refuse to touch markdown so that kills a lot of them. I’m taking notes with minor edits, and I refuse to add markdown to the process just to do that. I also will not be ok with a webapp. I don’t like webapps in general.
OneDrive is probably my most vital. I have 1TB for me and 1TB each for 5 family accounts. So 6TB total. And I definitely use the space. On top of that I rely heavily on its integration to the file explorer and the mfa locked personal vault section. I don’t want to deal with a web interface or separate app, outside of an authentication hook for the vault, just to access storage.
Outside of the 365 bundle, it’s mostly running dedicated game servers that have no Linux option. And that’s it I believe. Certainly the most impactful applications. I think most other things I run, I can find acceptable alternatives to or can run in wine or something similar without major issue.
I wasn’t going to berate you or anything. I was genuinely curious.
LibreOffice is great. I use it on my work system at a medium to larger sized company (every single other person uses o365). I haven’t heard anyone complain yet about doc comparability and I haven’t had any issues myself.
Stay away from OpenOffice. It’s practically a dead product. When Oracle bought OpenOffice, the community forked the project which became LibreOffice. LibreOffice is where all the development and community focus and effort has gone since.
I don’t have any recommendations here. I’ve never really found a “perfect” solution for this. Currently I use a few different solutions, but it’s all centred around markdown, so they’re all interchangeable.
I personally wouldn’t touch OneDrive with a hundred meter pole. MS does so much screwing around with your data that you can never be sure if the data stored is what you uploaded. They’ve been known to just up and delete files they scan and think is malicious, even if it’s a false positive. Then they’re known to scan all your documents for everything, including potential passwords, then use those passwords to open password-protected files and then scan them also.
Then there’s the situation from a year or so ago where they automatically switched everyone’s documents folder to a “cloud first” folder, where they just auto-uploaded everyone’s local files, deleted the local copies, and did it all without user consent or even informing users. And this resulted in all kinds of wild crap like people not having access to their documents because they were offline and were expecting local files. Then some people had their metered data connection getting maxed out. While others couldn’t even modify their files or even save a file to their “My Documents” folder because the default storage allocation was far less than the total data of their local files. So effectively the data was held for ransom.
Most newer games that you can run your own dedicated server will almost certainly have a Linux option, which suggests you might taking about older games, in which case something like Lutris (Wine) might be an option.
But are you hosting these game servers on your desktop?
Yeah I know OneDrive is a bad option anymore. I’m definitely looking for options there but nothing is coming close so far. Hardest part is space but each requirement presents an issue.
Thanks for telling me about openoffice, looking at things i think i meamt Only Office. Any opinions there? I’m not keen on the AI push but it also seems optional. Thanks for the positive endorsement for Libre being compatible in an office setting. Looks like they have a good dark mode too which I’m very happy about. I love having a black background to write against and has stopped me from adopting things in the past. I can’t do white backed apps anymore. They hurt lol
The hosting is on my old desktop which is running server 2016. I’d like to replace the OS on it too. I don’t keep the box online so I’m not keen on using it for anything other than game servers.
Appreciate you not going aggro on me over it. Lots of times I mention not being quite there for migrating it gets into this really aggravating back and forth where someone aggressively pushes Linux at me and doesn’t like that I’m not instantly on board or that I have reasons they don’t like. 🙄
If I remember correctly, Only Office uses LibreOffice as its core and then adds or changes default stuff. I might be wrong about that. But ultimately I hear positive things about Only Office.
Sounds like a perfect situation for loading something like Proxmox and then visualizing the Windows Server 2016 instance. You would basically have the exact same functionality but with way more options like cloning and backing up the server.
No worries at all. I think the automatic defensiveness from Linux people comes from old misconceptions being repeated often. Or sometimes it comes from how something is read and interpreted. Someone might say “I can’t switch because I need XYZ”, to which a very literal response is “you can use ABC which does the same thing, so you can switch”. When what the first person meant is "I can’t switch because I prefer XYZ", which is a completely valid reason.
Right on, I’ll have to check out proxmox, i don’t have any experience with it yet. That’d be dope to switch at least one computer over to something linix based.
Honestly, I still don’t know. My 3070 worked well on linux the last time I used it so hardware won’t be an issue. I also don’t play many modern games so that’s not a problem either. It’s just my partner is schizo with what games they wanna play. Rn they’re obsessed with minecraft and bedrock doesn’t work on linux. I know for sure I’m not going to 11 though. I’ve used it before and absolutely hated the UI layout.
First off, bedrock is cancer it’s just off-brand Minecraft.
But second, there is an unofficial launcher that works on Linux
flathub.org/apps/io.mrarm.mcpelauncher
Just upgrade yall are so dramatic for no reason at all. If 11 is that bad just switch to Linux.
People might get a little emotional about it but I bounce between Linux Mint, windows 10, and windows 11 and honestly I totally agree that windows 11 is trash. When my windows 10 computer reaches it’s limit, I might try to figure out how to run games on Linux/proton or whatever that is.
I already moved to linux (In my case Linux Mint) two weeks ago ^^
.
I have no plans to either update to win11 or change back to chanting magic spells at my computer to get it to work (Ubuntu, many years ago).
My computer works and does everything I want it to. Basic internet security and reasonable precautions are sufficient for a low level user like me to stay safe.
The Linux experience has changed quite a lot over the years. You’re unlikely to have trouble getting your computer to work with it now.
Possibly/Probably but as I said. Right now win 10 runs all my productivity, gaming and streaming software such as OBS and Veadotube.
They run and run well. I have literally no incentive to switch to either a Linux distro or win11. If that changes, then I’ll consider changing my OS, but until then…why would anyone?
I’ll upgrade to 11 Enterprise via massgrave.
Sadly with Adobe and some of my online games not supporting Linux, I have to stick with Windows :/ I’ll just try to disable all the telemetry and AI crap via O&O and group policies.
Damn, Adobe doesn’t support Linux at all? Guess I’m staying on Windows too :/
The only way to use Adobe products on Linux are the web apps (which are limited) or in a windows virtual machine (slow) or by dual booting into windows (annoying).
You can run really old versions of Photoshop via Wine. But if your needs are that simple, you can probably just use Photopea.
For my use case of Lightroom for accessing and editing final photos across my computer and phone, and occasional photoshop use (mostly for printing) I am able to get by with the web apps, and windows virtual machine.
I would love to drop adobe. But the Lightroom Mobile cloud storage sync feature is too invaluable to me right now and there is no other option that comes close to that feature.
Ah, yeah - Lightroom itself is their crown jewel these days, let’s be honest
No, all the current versions are reported various levels of broken :/ Generally they can’t install, so you have to copy an installation from Windows, then there are some that don’t load at all, some only load to splash screen, some do work after you patch their broken UI and manually copy some Windows DLL-s. So idk, you might get lucky with the specific program/version/feature combo you need, but it just sounds like a pain to me.
Ya I can’t live without Adobe suite so same boat
What is O&O? I’m not to keen on jumping to Linux either, but I REALLY don’t like the idea of having recall active and having Microsuck know literally everything I do…
O&O Shutup10++ (theoretically works on 11 too)
Not sure what it can do on Home/Pro editions, I’ve only ever tried it on Enterprise.
That looks awesome, thanks for sharing!
.
Found the village idiot
.
Does it really matter? I have xemu (xbox emulator), retroarch for anything else, and PSX2 to be sure on Lubuntu, combine together how many games all those have and you just don’t need steam
i jumped 🫡
Full Linux, I’m not installing that anti-privacy, ad-ridden Windows 11 OS. It’s dangerous to use an unsupported system, so I’m going to be deleting my Windows partition. I know I’ll run into some issues on Linux, but I’m forcing myself to learn more and work through them!
I’ll keep using linux on my main pcs and I’ll still keep using windows 10 on my secondary laptop
I moved from Win 10 to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 2 months ago. Going very well so far, even for music production and gaming. I also got a friend of mine to dual-boot Tumbleweed/Win11, coming from Win11.
What happens if still use win 10?
You are compromising yourself, though I think you’ll still get security patches for a bit longer
October is when security patches for windows 10 will stop. Its when it goes full out of support. LTSB will continue getting security patches for a couple years though.
Source
You’ll be more vulnerable to malware because it won’t be patched against newly discovered exploits.
You can’t. Every single hack/exploit that goes unpatched will be a gaping door for hackers
All you guys said is true. You could get hacked blah blah blah. But to a gamer, a machine exclusively for gaming doesn’t take any of that as a concern. Want to hack my machine? Go ahead! As long as you don’t delete my games, be my guest. I don’t save credit card information on it anyway.
But none of that happens in my case. I don’t game on or run Windows. I’m just here to provide a point of view.
Your local network is compromised, not just 1 windows device. It could potentially leak enough personal information for more targeted attacks.
The chances are slim but AI may enable targeted hacking at scale. I simply wouldn’t risk downloading shit on a device with known security vulnerabilities, without any scope of fixes.
I jumped ship to Linux Mint almost a year ago. No Microsoft products live here anymore. No regrets.
I tried out going 100% Linux a year ago. Unfortunately I was playing one of the very few games that has Linux issues. 100% CPU all the time was bugging me. It’s not the fault of Linux. Anyway, that’s how it played out. I may be tempted to try again soon.
Linux Baby, Linux 🐧😘
I just deleted windows and installed Bazzite Linux. Everything just works
I’ll have to use some sort of windows for VR, I need to investigate the various debloat options
I’ve enjoyed Linux since Windows MEllennium Edition convinced me that I didn’t like paying a lot, in money and time, to be an unpaid product testing guinea pig. A work friend put Windows 2000 on that laptop when ME went bad. I used it until a got a blue screen of death one day, and switched to Linux. The 1st was a $230 ePC that could be had with Windows XP or XanderOS (a flavor of Linux). I chose the latter, and had a great time of it. I’ve since used Mint and Ubuntu.
Been Linux exclusively for 20 years. Win 11 sure isn’t going to change that
Imagine that, Windows 11 can remember everything you did in the past 3 months, it’s making sure that you didn’t forget about Office 365, Xbox Live subscriptions, and about Edge, the browser embedded deeply in the OS…
Sometimes, for your convenience, it will put Edge as the default, but you totally can change it back to what it was!
Are you sure you don’t want to switch? You’re missing a lot there…
I despise Microsoft just as much as you do, but I’ve never encountered the things you just wrote. Ist that a home edition problem?
Switched to Linux (mint) recently.
All my games run (almost) perfect and (almost) everything has been working perfectly. Overall it is much nicer than Windows and isn’t that hard getting used to.
Would much recommend!
I’m a lifelong Windows user and tried Linux many many times but could never wrap my head around it. Recently I installed Nobara and it’s exactly the noob-friendly experience I need. All of my games run flawlessly, even the VR game I play. And everything is just FASTER. I never realized how bloated Windows was until now. I can’t imagine going back to Windows at this point.
What headset? I have my Index mostly working on Nobara, but can’t figure out how to get it to show as an audio device.
Quest 3. I only play Resonite which has native Linux compatibility so it might be easier for that reason.
I switched to linux full time almost a year ago.
I have been thus far entirely unsuccessful in convincing anyone else to make the jump. Normal people do not give a fuck, will not lift a finger to improve their digital lives. I’ve been telling friends and family about adblockers for YEARS, and not a single one ever bothered to do it of their own volition. If I don’t do it for them, then they just sit through ads like complacent sheep. None of them are going to change operating systems if they can’t even install a browser extension.
I really just don’t understand this. Folks will not lift a finger or a brain cell to figure out tech.
I was thinking about this earlier today for myself. Not specifically about computers, but the same principle. If I have something that bugs me and wastes 10 seconds of my time every single day but I could permanently fix the problem in an hour - logically it’s worth fixing. Even if it eventually saves time, I have to invest an hour of time and brainpower right now. If it’s something I don’t really care about, it’s just not worth it. I don’t need that hassle, I’ll just have a small annoyance every day instead of a big annoyance today. I’ve got better things to do. Like browsing Lemmy apparently
These are the people that companies like Apple pander to, with the whole “it just works” schtick.
I’m been a Linux power user for more than half of my life, 8 last years spent on NixOS. I self-host my everything. I’ve bootstrapped a toolchain and a Linux distro from scratch^Wtcc for giggles twice, first without a package manager, then without one. For the last five years, I earn a living by working on a Linux distro. I still have my only decent GPU in a Windows 10 box half a continent away I stream games from. Would you be able to convince me to switch?
Just face it, Windows is the gaming console firmware.
I’m talking about normies, not gamers, and not power users like yourself.
Normies touch their pc for less than one hour a day, because everything they could want is in their phone. Many normies don’t even have internet connections in their home because they exclusively engage with the internet through their phone. I’ve talked to normies who don’t have pcs at all because their ipads do everything they could possibly want.
It’s a fact that there are certain games that simply do not run on linux, because of drm or developer stupidity or any number of reasons. As a separate argument, I’d argue that those games are not worth playing. I used to be a hardcore gamer, I’ve gotten old since then and become a casual. I don’t have time nor energy to dedicate to figuring out why game x won’t run on pc y with configuration z. If the big green play button doesn’t work, I refund the damn thing, and in my almost 2 years of linux usage I have yet to need to do that. Another separate argument is my disdain for AAA games, the lack of ethics in their creation, and the abysmal conditions in which they always launch in these days.
So as to your actual question, can I convince you to switch your gaming pc to linux? No, and I’m not even going to try. If you insist on playing the latest AAA slop that the megacorps shovel at you, then you must have windows and you must continue to allow microsoft to continue to rape your digital existence in order to have crappy entertainment that I wouldn’t dignify with the time of day.
I switched to Linux mate and been using heroic games launcher for the windows games I want to play
Linux has some problems that I just can never find answers for.
#1. Can’t do 4k 340hz on my display port 1.4 cable. Even though I can on windows and Mac. In Linux the option is there with the nvidia driver, but the screen goes black anytime I try to use it. No solution.
#2. Ubiconnect won’t work with Ann 1800 even though it’s good on proton.db and others are reporting it works great, I was never ever able to get it working or find reliable steps to get it working.
It’s a needle in a haystack trying to find fixes for things like this. Linux offers a lot, but still doesn’t offer the most important thing ease of fixing problems quickly so you can just do what you want to do.
Run a game and work at the native resolution.
Yea thats how my spouses laptop ended up with fedora and our main/gaming PC ended up with Nobara. For some reason certain distros and certain configurations do not go well with each other.
To point 1.: WTF?
I had a similar issue on my 1080ti, I fixed it by setting Adaptive Sync to Never in my display settings.
Unpopular opinion but I’m just using 11. I deal with enough problems with Linux at work and as hard as it is to believe, Windows just work and fits my workflow too well. Linux works great on my Steam Deck but the occasional weird quirks it has with certain games/launchers means I can’t use it as my main gaming platform, it’s only fine on the Deck because it has advantages for the form factor.
All games work in 11. You will get the best picture quality for graphics on 11. More DX9 games work in 11 than worked in 10. Path tracing is best on 11. I have some games that are DVD installs, no game store launcher.
There are different Linux programs that address most Windows issues but not all. With Windows, you can install Win 11, install GPU driver, and start playing games. I do avoid using Steam due to their extortion, so eventually I find games that can’t run on Linux.
Windows 11 has better image quality? I’m sorry what?
Dual booting with EndeavourOS now. Once i know i can repeat my workflow on it, i’ll switch over for good.
What does Bill Gates have to do with this, he hasn’t been directly involved in Microsoft in 17 years? He hasn’t even been on the board for 5 years.
I’m going to move over to Mint on my laptop, it’s older but still working great after I swapped an SSD drive in. Biggest issue is backing up the laptop before installing Linux. I have another computer I plan on duel boot with Windows 10 so I have access if I need windows for certain programs. I have no control over my work computer so Windows 11 there.
And unless one of my brothers steps up and buys our Dad a Windows 11 computer (I bought the Windows 10 computer, which is why it was so cheap it can’t take 11. 😆 ) since I’m his tech support if my brothers don’t step up he is going to Linux. No matter what I’m going to have to listen to him complain about how it is different so it will be a good time to move to Linux. Probably a version that tries to mimic Windows.
I have 11, so not directly affected. But with “no more security updates” being the only real reason one needs to change, the obvious question here is if there is 3rd party software that can protect a Windows 10 system?
I remember when anti-virus software was in common use.
It should be easy to get updates with a little hacky help, they’ll be available on the long term support schedule.
Windows 10 LTSC gets updates for a while longer. I forget the exact number, but I wanna say it goes into the 2030s?
If ya want to not be plugged into the internet, or use new external media, ya can probably run it safely forever.
That’s my plan so far. I just use it for emulators anyway.
I’ve been daily-driving Linux Mint (LMDE 6) on my Thinkpad T14 G1 for almost a year now. At this point, that laptop is easily the most dependable machine I’ve ever had. My gaming PC is the last remaining Windows machine in my house. Recently I’ve been making sure everything is backed up (Syncthing is great for this) and finding alternatives for programs that don’t have a Linux version.
My plan is to create images of both my SSDs (500GB & 2TB, both NTFS 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️) onto a 4TB hard drive. Then start from scratch, migrating data from the images (Steam games, config files, personal documents I may have missed, etc) when/if I need it.
Made the jump to Linux. No issues so far, very happy with the switch
yeah i need star citizen, ableton, fl studio, premier, photoshop and more before i can dedicate a jump to linux
don’t forget that LTSC is also a solution, you don’t have to give in to 11
There’s nothing wrong with windows 11 imo
it’s a death by a thousand cuts situation, more friction to use a local account, less convenience in accessing rarely used settings (most recently I was trying to help someone change a setting located in the advanced power management control panel thing), more pressure to use edge, continuing to shove one-drive down our throats, copilot, implementing features that knowingly make third party tools work significanly less well without proper customization to fix it, weirdness around Multi-Display setups on laptops, the maps app getting worse at giving directions.
So… in my experience edge runs better than all other browsers with the ability to mute individual tabs without an addon. I disabled copilot. I disabled one drive and use local storage only. All settings can be accessed by just typing what you want in the search bar. If you need advanced settings for anything you just click the button that says “advanced settings” To me it’s fairly simple, but it’s all I’ve ever used. My Mac knowledge is minimal and my Linux knowledge is also minimal, so for me both those OS’s are difficult to use and navigate. I also like the ability to double click something to install it and not have to open a command box and do child coding just to use something.
So I get what your saying. If I had Linux only for the last 30 years I would also find windows to be confusing and stupid.
I had windows for 20 years. enough is enough. I’ll never accept all the bullshit of 11. but if you use edge, I see you have different values, like privacy is not really important to you
What privacy would I need man? I’m not on some super secret server making plans for global domination lol.
“super secret server” what, we are talking in discord servers now?
privacy is not for “super secret” people. it is for everyone who does not mindlessly throw it away.
So you couldn’t just answer the question? What do I need security from? I don’t input credit card information. So I generally want to know
I’m not talking about credit card information. I’m talking about all the kinds of commercial data mining that is happening basically all over the internet. Personally, I’m sick of it. and while firefox has problems, anything chromium based won’t even try to project your privacy, to the contrary, especially edge. if you like having all your digital and a lot of irl activities collected in data broker databases for profiling, targeted ads, personalized costs and whatnot, then edge is the ideal browser for you.
I think you might be paranoid a little bit.
too late already did switch to linux :3
Most problems people have with Linux, I think, come from trying to be Linux power users from the start by performing very advanced techniques beyond their time and patience: dual booting multiple operating systems (so they don’t have to buy Linux-dedicated hardware), using any graphics card (the latest and greatest GPUs are all closed source and developers who work on Linux do so because they despise closed source), using the least expensive hardware (which are typically closed source and buggy with anything except Windows), and emulating Windows apps so they don’t have to learn new workflows or abandon their favorite games (technically, Proton with Steam allows Windows games like FFXIV to be played, but it’s a neverending journey to get it working and keeping it working.
If you switch to Linux, accept that for a smooth experience you’ll have to pay more than you would for a Windows machine (e.g. System76, Framework) And if you want graphics card support for your emulated Windows games on Steam, you’re going to have to use the specific flavor of Linux the manufacturer supports.
That said, if you value free/libre open source software, then making the switch from Windows is totally worth it.
Can you elaborate on the incompatibility of the newest GPUs? It looks like Nvidia publishes a Linux driver for the Blackwell series and there are a number of AI applications (like supporting Triton and pysam-based methods) which seem harder to get working on Windows than on Linux.
I’m considering switching over but I hear mixed things about Nvidia support. Some people seem to say it’s a pain to get the drivers working and others seem to think that’s an issue that’s been resolved. Not sure what to think in terms of how difficult the switch would be.
I’m not sure about the specific AI apps you mention, but from my personal experience the “AMD works way better than Nvidia on Linux” mindset is no longer a thing.
When I upgraded to a new gpu a few years ago, I first got an AMD gpu because of that mindset that was all over the internet (I believed them), but for the life of me I couldn’t get games to run properly with it. A week later I traded it for an Nvidia card and it just works.
I do suffer from system wake from sleep issues that I think are the nvidia drivers fault, but atleast I can play games if I decide to.
Can I ask what distro you’re running? Some of the gaming-focused ones like Bazzite still seem to gather some comments about working better with AMD, though it seems like there are some workarounds. I am resolved to leave Microsoft behind completely at the W11 switch so I’m trying to get my bearings!
Of course, I run EndeavourOS. My guess is that nowadays it doesn’t matter if you run amd or nvidia (likely won’t run into problems with either).
Oh my god it absolutely is, and until NVK becomes the standard everywhere it will most likely stay that way. That shit breaks so often on a laptop I gonna sell soon, on my families’ computers and apparently also in computers from people in my local hackerspace. Some distros just managed to work around those drivers’ problems really well, sometimes by including them from the start of creating their own well-working packages (like Arch’s nvidia-dkms).
I think this may be out of date now, dual booting is relatively simple to set up and there are a wealth of tutorials online for it, setting up a graphics card (nvidia) was a breeze, and for the wide majority of games in my library (I play both indie and AAA), I’ve had very few issues running native, and most that haven’t ran out of the box have guides posted on protondb.com, most are up and running in 5 mins.
Very accurate comment!
New GPUs don’t work on Linux? Where did you get that idea from?
I had the same question, my 6750xt works just fine and it’s fairly new.
Got a 7900xtx a few days ago and worked out of the box. Had to update the drivers after install but that took 5 minutes.
Many Linux distros are not very user friendly and intuitive when it comes to normal users with two left hands when it comes to PCs. Lots of Linux power users need to get off of their high horse and realize this. If I had some issues, my parents definitely will.
You are right about trying to be power users. I switched to Linux recently and definitely struggled with my sudden reduction is understanding. I got everything I needed for gaming setup up in a few hours. Then I tried to set up some productivity workflows and slammed into a brick wall of my own ignorance. I definitely considered just going back to Windows.
It’s already really good to hear you got gaming set up so quickly. A lot of people struggle with that as well either because team green (Nvidia) is involved since their drivers are utter garbage, or due to trying Linux on an older machine that doesn’t support Vulkan (which is a necessity if you want Proton to just work).
The value of getting a perfectly supported machine from a Linux vendor like System76, Tuxedo, Slimbook, StarLabs, NovaCustom etc. can’t be understated. Even more so since you also buy their customer support with it. We must not forget that, even though Linux runs on basically anything, most consumer devices are first-and-foremost Windows machines.
I won’t be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don’t really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it’ll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.
However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.
I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.
I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they’re changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10’s user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don’t know why they thought any of it was a good idea. I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won’t get started on that right now.
For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn’t been any meaningful progress in the OS that’s mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don’t think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the “new look” or whatever the fuck.
Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.
Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.
You can pivot to W11 LTSC if you want
… But why?
I would pivot to W10 LTSC to avoid Windows 11… So why would I move to the LTSC version of the OS I’m trying to avoid?
Makes zero sense.
If it only was just moving things around. The control panel has been further castrated while the settings app is just bad. Something about their CPU scheduler changes straight up broke VMware, and obviously MS is in no hurry to fix it resp. cooperate with VMware, being a competitor.
Rounded corners? I couldn’t care less. It’s a functional downgrade, though.
Install size has gone up, its sluggish on my surface pro 7, its constantly wanting to grab my attention to put towards their other products, windows 10 was bad as it seemed to be ms’s first iteration of their now billboard, but at least I could offline install, make a local account and mostly be left alone. And windows 11 is aweful for its kiddy gloves.
While I get why they want to do all online accounts, no. Just no.
Ironically, for business users, online accounts are basically the way the industry is moving. Some integration with Azure active directory (now known as “Entra ID” - a useless rebranding of the exact same product), you can connect systems using someone’s email, and it can tightly integrate with your work email account on Microsoft 365, and everything just kind of fits together.
This prevents admins from having to go and do prep/setup on each system and/or maintain a library of system images with all the standard settings for the organization, since connecting with AAD/Entra can also enroll the device into Intune and those policies are just as powerful, if not more powerful than what you can do with images and prep; just now is entirely automatic.
For home users, it’s less about the convenience of system management and more data harvesting of their clients. The irony is that a lot of the business versions still have an option to bypass the online account (usually by selecting an option that you will be joining a classic domain).
So business has the option and largely, business is moving away from it, and home users don’t, but that’s something that a large number of home users want.
The only thought I have on it is that: bitlocker is enabled by default on many newer versions of Windows, by signing in with your M$ account to the PC, those bitlocker keys are backed up. If you don’t use an online account, it’s up to you to back then up, and users either don’t do that, or do it in such a way that it’s ineffective, like saving the recovery key to the very drive that needs that key to unlock it in the event of a problem.
I’ve seen more than one person fall victim to their own lack of knowledge and understanding when bitlocker is enabled, and Windows update screws their boot sequence to the point where they need to do a recovery, which requires the recovery key, which they do not have. It basically makes all of their data inaccessible, and gigabytes of data, just from the people I’ve known affected by this, has already been lost as a result.
Ftfy.
That said, there is something to be said for how popular Windows is, and the modifications and QoL improvements offered by 3rd party devs.
I hear what you’re saying, but, there have been some pretty significant improvements to Windows, generation after generation.
Windows 10 finally seemed like they were on the right (and hopefully final) track with the direction of the operating system. Probably the last big improvement was to bring basically everyone to 64 bit.
XP moved us from the 9x kernel to the NT kernel that’s used in Windows today. Vista introduced security features and driver updates that help to keep systems free from many common root kits. 7 brought in a very standard UI, that would be the basis for things going forward, 8/8.1 existed… Then 10 basically uplifted everyone to 64 bit as a default.
Of course this is far from a complete list.
What did W11 add that we didn’t have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?
You’re not wrong, and I agree in that it feels like W10 is where MS finally got it right.
However, hindsight is 20/20, and those sentiments were definitely not felt in the first few years after W10 was released. Once all the big issues were worked out and people figured out how to remove the bloat/spyware shit though, it was a solid OS. I still run it on my gaming PC (for now - tested some crucial programs last night on my laptop running LMDE6, great success)
W11 right now is essentially a shitty skin on top of W10, with all that extra shit. The kernel is still version 10.x.whatever FFS 😅. But SHINY INTERFACE and ONEDRIVE
And 25% of users in Asia still use Windows 7. People are going to stay on the OS for as long as possible.
If only we had a reason to upgrade.
Instead, we have many reasons not to.
Yea just set up a windows 11 pc for the first time and the experience was basically:
It forces you into making a Microsoft account or log in with one, then it told me mine was locked even though I was able to log in fine elsewhere. I had to use the alternate log in method to get in (I know you can make a local account but I already had one set up for this).
Then it tries to force you to “back up from your old pc” which this was an entirely different system so I’m not even sure why I would want that.
Then it tries to convince you to send them a bunch of telemetry while reminding you that you’ll still get ads if you don’t, they just won’t be targeted towards you.
Then it tries to push microsoft office on you.
Then it needs to do updates which took like 45 minutes.
Then you’re finally at the desktop where you get probably half a dozen othe pop ups between windows and the vendor.
Then it’s “usable”
By comparison Bazzite took like 20 minutes to get to a usable desktop and isn’t nagging me about ads at all. I have a laundry list of things still to figure out but so far way less annoying.
Yea, I had a throwaway account already to use for the login so I didn’t bother trying it. They still managed to make it annoying even when I did it their way and agreed it is horseshit.
Agreed.
I DID forget about that. Thanks for reminding me I need to figure out how to opt out (assuming it’s even possible).
I got ahead of the game a little bit by switching to Linux in 2008.
Ah yes, back when Windows Vista and KDE 3 were the hot shit… laggy shit, but still hot…
Already switched to Nobara. Only have Windows dual boot because Space Engineers Multiplayer doesn’t seem to work on Linux.
Been perfectly happy with Nobara. Windows is dead to me and I’m free from my League addiction.
Can’t upgrade because my 4 years old mobo is apparently too old (haven’t checked out the workarounds yet). Installed Linux Mint to give it a try and I am positively surprised so far.
I finally committed to Linux at the end of last year. Enough is working to make it preferable to Windows now. I’m still having a lot of bugs, and it’s costing quite some time. But at least my computer is mine again. No more telemetry, ads, and UIs that treat me like a toddler. No more updates forced onto me instead of being done whenever I want it.
Me too. Most things just work for me BTW. Laptop battery went from 4 hours to 10+, with better performance too. But most important for me is privacy, which is way better/easier to manage in Linux.
Ironically my laptop, which has been Linux-only since 2015 or something, has finally stopped working properly. The dedicated GPU (NVIDIA Quadro K1100M) no longer has working drivers with the kernel from Ubuntu 24.04. Then again, it wouldn’t run windows 11 either probably.
I’m using 10+ years old hardware, Microsoft has already told me I can’t upgrade, followed by several messages asking me to upgrade…
In other news, Linux Mint works nice and I just need to check Protondb to get Warframe running at frames per second and not seconds per frame
if you’re on Linux mint, check to see if mint itself is out of date. When I installed mint, the only install media I could find was 2 versions behind. Getting to the current version fixed my warframe problems.
Gonna have to.
I don’t mind it, just using w10 for simplicity’s sake.
Upgrade to win11 or change to Linux?
Linux of course.
Then all I can do is welcome you and wish for you to have a nice journey
Ill bet right before the deadline, they will magically make TPM optional, even though they said they wouldn’t.
Just imagine 43 % market share in the next hardware survey.
Just bought a laptop and put bazzite on it to try it out and figure out if I can do all the things I want to do on it. If that all works out I’ll be switching my desktop over.
I thought I read some time ago that Windoze 10 would be the last version of Windoze ever…
Yeah I remember thr same thing. Everything else was suppose to be a package update.
But back-end technology and usage expectations change, and there’s a limit to what front-end changes an existing user tolerates. That was never a promise they could keep.
It has lasted a really long time, though. I don’t decry 11 existing. I’m upset they’re sunsetting 10 without giving us a chance to wait for 11 to get better, let alone for ‘oops we fixed the fuckups’ W12.
Well, it can be the last version of Windows for you. 🙂
Ubuntu is nice. I use it daily. Others in my family too. And there are other options too. I hear Mint is nice though I haven’t used it much.
Give it some thought. 🙂
i remember it as “the last version of windows you’ll ever need” and they were absolutely correct.
I think I will switch to Linux, possibly dual boot with Win 11 just in case there are games I can’t play on Linux.
I run Fedora KDE now, but I’m going to keep my Windows 10 install on Windows 10.
How are you finding it?
No complaints about Fedora KDE specifically. I’ve had it on my spare laptop since version 30 or so. Desktop is on 41 now. The only “issues” I’ve had running this full-time is lack of support for Fidelity Active Trader Pro (which kinda sucks anyway), I haven’t been able to make my bluetooth shipping label printer work yet, and I haven’t gotten my Logi MX Keys / Master S mouse working as it works in Logi Options (on windows or mac) to switch over to my work mac as intended. Otherwise, I prefer it to other distros I’ve used.
Thanks for the feedback - currently weighing up disros (was thinking mint, but a few folks have praised fedora KDE based distros now).
Already on Linux. And proud.
I want to move to Linux, but I need to be able to use the VPN service my work uses and I’m just not sure how to get it working on Linux. I should just dual boot.
Dual-booting was how I first got into Linux; it truly leaves open the ability to keep everything you’re worried about not having.
What’s the VPN?
Without prodding too much into what VPN you work uses
Most VPN solutions run on linux just fine, even Microsoft PPTP VPN solution works fine. I would probably check with your IT department what protocol they use and any connection caveats (like machine certificates used for authentication) and look into the different VPN solutions (some examples; WireGuard and OpenVPN are very well supported, IPSec (libreswan or strongswan are options here) depends on setup, PPTP/L2TP should work with most setups (I have to admin I havn’t touched those enough), vpnc works with Cisco base IPsec setups and openconnect works with most SSL VPN connection)
It’s Watchguard. Though looking at their site, it seems like there might be support that I wasn’t able to find last time I looked into this. Definitely want to dual boot at some point. I’ve got a Surface Book 3 though, and I know it needs special kernel stuff to get working properly, so I’d almost rather just wait until my boss retires and everyone’s out of a job to dive into Linux. Easier than finding spare time in my life. Living the dream
I have not any experience with WatchGuard, but it from some quick searching around it seems to not be far from the easiest to set up for linux. dual-booting is probably the easier solution.
I hope you find a solution to what sounds like not the best life situation, and may you have an otherwise have a nice Linux journey.
Sorry for that, it gets hard sometimes when I start accidentally living the examined life for a second
Why is Bill Gates in the picture? lol
Anybody tried a steam deck with dock? Gaming and casual desktop should be doable with that.
Steam deck with dock is amazing. I picked up a dock about 6 months ago and have gotten so much use out of it.
My Windows 10 PC’s only function at this point is to play FFXIV in my living room, so I’m not super worried about viruses or anything.
But maybe eventually I’ll switch to Linux on that box and do that weird set-up to get FFXIV running there.
43% of Steam is still on Windows
10 with support…
Seems not so many.
And if they are ending in 7 month why bother.
Just put the lin
e break right, the
n it’s understanda
ble.
Never again, bye Microsoft Windows 😁 Hi GNU/Linux my new friend.
My friend was unable to update to windows 11 due to the TPM requirements and looking to switch to linux. I upgraded my CPU and said they should buy my old one. They finally said OK and asked if I could help them install it before they switched to Linux. I installed the CPU and they never switched to Linux because now they have a CPU that meets the TPM requirements.
Windows users really hate change. Microsoft will force them to update and the users will whine but 1 week later they will be used to it then they will stick on windows 11 till EoL.
Being a deck owner not over obsessed in the latest tripe A games.
<img alt="551bc55de7e4fb8463755dd63056e74fa1-21-kermit-tea.2x.rhorizontal.w710_2048x.progressive-2794050104" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1dc55d00-33e5-4743-b888-0374c55c42a8.jpeg">
I switched to Mint a year ago. Don’t miss a thing.
I’ve seen a lot of people praising Mint in here. It sounds like that’s the distro for me to try first.
Good. The one issue I’ve had installing it is needing to choose Grub2 instead of Grub for the bootloader. No idea why or what the difference is.
Steam OS time