Dooooooittttttt!

Well, it’s not GONE. There are still plenty of games that won’t run well on Linux, or they won’t allow online multiplayer because their anti-cheat software is restricted to Windows. But that number is getting smaller every day.

roblox:

I’m just waiting for full real parity (HDR, and some RT stuff), and I’m gone.

Can you run Adobe software via proton? As soon as that works I’ll be on Linux.

There are some games that just will not work even under proton, or that have functional restrictions. It’s way fewer games than it used to be, but it’s still not an absolutely perfect solution. I would love to make Linux my gaming OS instead of my “getting shit done” OS like it currently is, I’ve been advocating for it for a few decades at this point and it’s almost there, but it’s not to a point yet where I can unreservedly recommend it to gamers. If you aren’t a gamer I’d say it’s already good enough for anything you need.

How easy was setting up the pi-hole?

Congrats on picking an awesome distro! :) Pop is really nice, and I’m really excited to see what they do with their desktop environment. I feel like we’re spoiled for choice right now on Linux.

There are always things to configure, just like on Windows. I think some people kind of forget that they had to learn to configure things on Windows at one point. xD

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is rather easy.

But anyway, no mainstream user-friendly Linux distribution is that hard to use if you can read and think.

So when people say that they can’t manage one on their desktop - they also usually can’t manage Windows on their desktop, they just think they can.

I use Windows, macOS, and Linux, but all in separate ways. Haven’t used a desktop Linux in quite some time — only headless Linux servers.

Why? I switched to Linux in 2023.

It’s very obvious that they rushed Copilot. What should have been an assistant like Jarvis in Iron Man, has literally no purpose and can’t do anything useful.

Bro, remember when VR was all the rage? EVERYTHING was pushing VR, so much so Facebook Meta went all in on it.

Now it’s a fucking novelty at best.

Yep, the reason Macs are more usable is not that they are usable in general, it’s that they can’t keep the pace with Windows.

Probably the fact that, even if you define the account as Admin in windows, you still need to select "Windows sudo" (run as Administrator) before it actually elevates privilege.

between pinned items in start menu and on the taskbar, putting quicklaunch back and populating it, and a few desktop shortcuts... i maybe 'search' for an application like that once a year, at most.

That would be because Cortana was hot garbage at doing anything and was significantly slower than just typing my query by hand.

If they built an assistant that was worth half a fuck maybe we might have used it now and then. I'm not very confident that Copilot is that. But it's going to be more useful than Cortana was almost no matter what they do with it.

Similar experience here. The first month was rough as I got everything installed and configured. But it's been pretty solid in the 4 months since then. I am glad I switched.

Some of my hardware even works better: the drawing tablet’s drivers don’t crash

Curious what application you’re using with that drawing app. My Huion wasn’t great last time I gave Linux a shot on as my daily driver.

I already have a Raspberry Pi and a Linux VM for development reasons, but I also need Windows for that very same reason. Sometimes Windows APIs are much better than what we have on Linux (ALSA is a janky and laggy mess), and some dev tools are nicer there too (at least with VSCode, one can have some GUI for gdb).

Two main things are Lightroom and Maschine.

I know about Darktable. And lots of others. The photo editing application is the easy part - lots of options. The lightroom secret sauce is fully integrated workflow with mobile and desktop. I am content to pay money for this as it deserves to cost money. However, Adobe does not play nicely with Linux. For this use case, I could likely dual boot (or virtual box).

Music production is a challenge though. Dual booting isn’t an option as it’s my main use case. Maschine (the HW) doesn’t run on Linux. Yes, I know someone a few years ago wrote a partially functional driver for a previous incarnation of the HW, that works in midi mode, but that’s not how I use it. Paid good money for it - not keen on burning it.

I even considered running it in a box (assuming can pass through the usb), but as I started to tally up the dependencies, I would come close to having to put it all on the vbox, ending up with a setup that could only be appreciated by the most zealous Rube Goldberg afficionado…

On the software side, I can likely get wrappers to run a lot of it, but it’s an ongoing dice roll. The DAW is easy (Reaper). But I have a bunch of stuff I use constantly that I paid for and I don’t want the OS to work against me. (And I want to be able to hold the vendors’ feet to the feet when things don’t work properly - I’ve had support concerns (for legit bugs) that fell on deaf ears when I said I use Reaper, which was not officially supported by a certain vendor. How much luck would I have with Linux?

Then there’s the audio interface. Yes - it’ll probably run. But it’s certainly not supported.

Unless vendors actually start supporting Linux (flatpaks/snappaks/whatever would be just dandy), running Linux remains an obstacle, not a solution. However, they won’t start supporting until user base grows. Chicken. Egg. Ugh.

It’s most unfortunate - I definitely try to kick tires on it to see if it’s feasible every few years, but I continue to hit a wall.

In the meantime, I, and, I hope others will keep pressure up on vendors whenever possible.

Edit - spent a few hours last night trying to get plugins to work on Linux/reaper. Yabridge. Couldn’t get a single one to work. Tried Vital. Linux version crashes - the recommended solution seems to be to run it under the windows version under Yabridge! I haven’t even got to trying my more heavily used stuff! I know most, not all (and some stuff that used to run will no more as wine doesn’t support some of the new features in Windows), of these things have solutions, but

I sincerely take pleasure in getting things to run in Linux. I really do. But sometimes the effort becomes about trying to get what you need to work to work, rather than actually doing the work you needed to do in the first place!

I will keep trying periodically.

I used to use it as a daily driver about 20 years ago. I use it on an old laptop currently (though thunderbird is… unpleasant).

I use WSL constantly.

I’m quite familiar with Linux.

But until hardware vendors actually support the OS, it’s a matter of scraping some eager coder’s git repo for things that work. Sort of. But not really.

Very frustrating.

.

So Linux is just the kernel. You still have to choose a distro and a Desktop Environment (aka DE) with an included Window Manager (aka WM) or a pure WM (like i3, awesome, QTile etc.) if you dare.

KDE is the DE you want that does all that Windows can do and much much more.

You can layout everything how you want it. Beautiful Widgets (e.g. for monitoring hardware, RSS, network activity) are built-in. You can put them on the desktop or into tray-bars (aka panels). You can have multiple panels, order them on any monitor edge you want or have them floating and show only when mouse-hovered. Multiple virtual desktops is a given since ages in most DEs (e.g. Mate, Gnome, Cinnamon).

It has a built-in facility to download new themes, widgets and scripts for kwin (KDEs WM). A lot of themes are gorgeous. Most of the scripts, themes and widgets are user-contributed.

If you own an android device, you’re in for a treat as KDE comes with KDE-Connect. Best thing since sliced bread. Your phone will become part of KDE. Send files from the file-manager (Dolphin) and from the phone. Enter text on your phone from the PC-keyboard. Send the clipboard content. Use your phone as a remote via the acceleration and gyro-sensors. Show notifications from your phone within the desktop tray. Control music and video players on the desktop from your phone and vice-versa.

The file-manager (Dolphin) has Tabs and split panels to show two file-trees at the same time to easily copy files. It can easily integrate things like nextcloud or other remote filesystems like SFTP.

It’s got KRunner which is a unified application-starter, calculator, search engine for your documents or the web and to quickly switch between open apps. It’s a small textbox that shows up if you press alt-F2. It’s fast and you can configure en detail what searches it should do (e.g. only your installed apps). If you dare you can remove all panels and the start menu from KDE via a few clicks and only use KRunner.

It’s got a new built-in tiling manager (Bismuth is cool too) and much more.

So you need to decide which Linux Distribution (distro) you want. You mostly get them by downloading single-file iso’s. Put those (even multiple) on a USB-Stick prepared with Ventoy. Start from the stick. Choose one distro from the start menu and boot into the live-system (which won’t touch your hard-drives). You can start the installation on your hard-drive from a prominently placed button in the live-distro which usually starts Calamares (an easy as pie graphical installer). I can’t stress enough what a good idea it is to buy a second SSD just for your linux system. Don’t do win/linux dual-boot from one disk. Then within Calamares make sure you choose the correct SSD. Use systemd-boot instead of grub if there is an option. Choose not to many DEs while installing. Preferably only one. Applications are often programmed on specific DE-libraries (like gtk for gnome or Qt for KDE) but you don’t need to install the full DE to use applications from another DE you haven’t installed. The package-manager (you’ll love it) takes care to install a small subset of those libraries automatically if you want to use an app from another DE.

The distro basically is an opiniated selection of packages, DEs/WMs and default settings for your desktop. Also they’re mostly based on different base distros. Mint, MX, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Pop! OS are based on Debian. Manjaro, Endeavour, Steam OS are based on Arch. Then there are base distros that don’t seem to have spawned a lot derivatives like Fedora and OpenSUSE (both very good).

A big distinction between Debian based and Arch-based is, that the latter is a rolling release distro. That means that all your software, the OS, the DE gets constantly updated and you’re always on the latest version. That means you can get some gigs of updates daily/weekly. So better don’t be on a metered connection. If you aren’t then rolling is a fantastic for gaming, e.g. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Arch or Endeavour. With other non-rolling distros you often have to reinstall everything on a major distro-upgrade. It had the misconception that non-rolling distros like Fedora or Mint have the need to be reinstalled on major version releases. But they have facilities like Ubuntu’s do-release-upgrade.

Linux has another big plus: you won’t have to ever surf to a website for bleeding edge software. The package-manager takes care and another big distinction of distros: from where comes the software (repositories), how was it build and how does the end-user install it. Arch based has something very special in its sleeve: The AUR (Arch User Repository) which is an addition to Arch’s official repos and completely managed by users. If a package doesn’t exist for Arch someone will prepare a script, that directly builds it from github (or other sources) and put that in the repos. In my 5

They have shown us a new VM system, which has windows 11 clients soni assume its in the works but rhe windows 10 rollout to 6000 employees was a nightmare.

Unless I’m much mistaken, Windows 10 EOL isn’t until 2025, so two years left to run.

Botnet gang :/

Doubtful. It’s hard enough to get programs past our security team and having half malware bundled programs like this won’t be an easy task.

Openshell on github. I don’t know that it’s the same code, but I’m pretty sure the Classic Shell website linked to it.

tbh i liked the win8 start menu

Back to cluttering the desktop with shortcuts to everything it is then.

For some fucking brilliant reason, searching update shows discord, so to find updates I have to spell it wrong

sometimes you can’t find an application even when you spell it out correctly, hafta go through the apps list to find them.

Let’s be real, the Navy continued to stick with Windows XP…

The "cloud thing" ensures that every person using the system is a subscription-paying customer. You don't see the benefit in that?

I hadn’t thought about it that way. Thank you!

I think there’s a very real part of that which is because Microsoft charges for people to get certifications and how to handle their operating system. If it was documented really well and easy to work with at a low level, then they wouldn’t be able to sell any of their training would they?

This is how I feel about every single vendor that I work with. Specifically designed to be obtuse and difficult to understand so that after sales services must be purchased in order for the product to be usable.

I find freebsd worked really well for me and it was a really easy transition from Linux. I still did most things GUI as I am still relearning command line (my preferred method). I got everything to function out of the box on a laptop that had a free/libre bios (libreboot). I don’t game on it, I use it primarily for emails, documents, browsing, etc. I was tired of distro hopping and decided to try something completely new.

Edit: NetBSD can pretty much run on anything. Openbsd is a very secure system.

Asahi is also what I’ve been looking at for a while and it seem very promising

projectbluefin.io takes silverblue and adds many of the things that you were likely to be waiting for. It did for me.

Well, my laptop’s already there, but i really don’t feel like dealing with system reinstallation on my games pc. It’ll be much easier for me to just stick with W10 for the next few months, and then jump ship, seeing as the upgrade i have planned won’t be using any components from my dekstop.

But trying to make cloud filesystems work is a pain in the ass

Do games work on proton on release day, or does it take work by the community or someone to get new games working?

I mean, i only ever use my current desktop for games. My laptop where i do basically everything else is already running mint.

I have embraced all the good parts of Windows 11. I will continue to cut out the telemetry and other creepy elements like the cancer that it is.

Windows 10 did have tiles at first, but they were corralled into the top of the start menu iirc. And… Did you not read the article?

Yup on 4. Mess at all with the hostfile and Windows Defende won’t stop harassing you about a threat. User autonomy is a threat to Windows.

And so we did. Linux users unite

If it’s got a nvidia graphics card you could use prime-run

And everybody’s just happy to bitch about whatever the headline suggests without ever checking if it’s even true.

I recently ordered one from Lenovo and you could select no os for -100 Euro.

Like why would I pay them 100 for a windows plus extra bloat, when I can get a windows for like 30 from somewhere else.

But also imma try a Linux

Oh that is so annoying, trying to open something and you bing search it.

Also the search having to load is a balls, it used not do that on Windows 7.

I disabled that realy quickly… If I wanted to search the Web I would use a browser. I can only recomment that, it speeds up search a lot and it now actualy works as one would expect

I’ll try it!

My login screen has my 2 monitors flipped and I can’t figure out how to fix it. Otherwise, I like it.

“Oh, don’t tell me what to be disappointed with!”

Are the plugins VST by chance? If so, check out yabridge, you can install the plugins with wine and even supports 32-bit plugins

Have you seen recent benchmarks? Windows games actually run faster on Linux at this point.

On some games. This channel tested 20 of the most popular games last year. Several of the titles didn’t run on Linux at all. Windows had an average win on 4K, and Linux had an average win on 1080p. This is much closer than it has been in years, but it’s definitely not a clean sweep. As you explain, Linux also have major issues with anti-cheat which is used on some of the most popular games today. From experience, I also can’t use my very expensive wheel and peddles because of a lack of drivers. So I can’t make the move to Linux completely.

The issue isn’t benchmarks the issue is many popular titles won’t run on PC without windows. Even wine isn’t perfect.

Fuck Nvidia.

Also:

• upgrades don’t need forced restarts

• major OS versions are, usually, non-breaking

• new DE… same as the old DE but may contain new features. Long live the DE!

***ads may be shown more than once per hour if traffic is high.

It works inconsistently for me to the point that I just can’t rely on it.

I can give a very recent example, my W11 has also be freshly installed and there’s not much stuff installed yet.

I have portable version of HWinfo located in My Documents folder.

If I start typing “hwi” into search it will sometimes find it, sometimes it will find it only if I type “hw” but not find it if I type “hwi” so if I type fast I must then delete character… And sometimes it needs me to type whole name of the application and sometimes it won’t find anything no matter what I type.

Then there is Riva Tuner Statistics Server which is an installed application located on C: in Program Files folder. It launches with RTSS.exe… It may as well not exist for Windows search because no matter what I type it can’t ever find it.

Unfortunately it has a habit of jumping around due to its asynchronous weird fuzzy search. So when typing fast you sometimes randomly launch the wrong action. It is especially inconsistent, because files are also indexed and by default it also includes web searches so the behavior is always changing.

I believe this got introduced with Windows 10 and feels just bad. Unless you are typing slowly and actually scan the results the search is doing a bad job as an application launcher like it was with Windows 7 for example.

yeah, I use my start button all the time to quickly open stuff. Hit start, start typing the program name, hit enter because it shows up immediately as a suggestion. super quick with no need to touch the mouse

• Win+X U U Shutdown
• Win+L Lock
• Win+V Clipboard history (might need to be enabled but * very useful)
• Win+Tab Visual alt tab
• Win+D Show desktop
• Win+S Screen snipping tool (for partial screenshot)
• Win and start typing for search
• Win+1-9 switch between windows (works well if your apps are pinned to taskbar in specific order)

Use all of these and more

Only if it’s shipping as the default OS on hundreds of millions of new devices, and easy enough that a 65 yo can install their 12 year old copy of TurboTax software on it, while their grandson plays Roblox on it. :P

Gotta be usable by the lowest common denominator before the return window at a rural BestBuy is up.

I can’t find the words to describe how absolutely fucking disgusted I am with the fact that we don’t even have 11 out in full swing and they’re talking about selling us 12 after the “10 would be the last” bullshit.

For fucks sake microturd, get your shit together and stop trying to bleed everyone dry… We know literally every other company in the world is doing that, but it doesn’t make it right… :/

They didn’t. That was an “evangelist” talking to Devs one time and the media ran with it.
They didn’t seem to dissuade anyone of the notion, but they never repeated it officially.

Given Microsoft’s track record, it’s also not hard to believe, which makes it even worse

I am planning to change/ move to Ubuntu LTS during coming summer. Currently studying at university & don’t want disruptions with study activities. Compatibility issues etc.

For someone graduating in entrepreneurship, i believe Ubuntu with other open source software will be sufficient towards my main objectives at work life.

I only know of Win 7 and Win 10, never touch 8, 8.1 nor 11. I still use win10 at work and the start menu is very odd. I like to use the win key to summon the menu and search, but the behavior is very inconsistant, sometimes it’s fast, sometimes very slow, sometimes I can search, sometimes not, sometimes it gives me the file/app i am looking for, and sometimes it decides to go for bing results. I must admit, I actully never ever navigate the menu itself appart from turning off the laptop. It is a very slow and inefficient design element in my opinon.

Tumbleweed KDE is definitely sweet. Can also recommend Fedora.