Linux mint and pop os are winner so far
I tried Linux Mint, and enjoyed my experience and even setup everything and then when I booted up Factorio Steam didn't use my 3080 somehow. Pop OS worked but I didn't like the experience. I'll have to give Linux Mint a shot again.
That is almost certainly because Factorio has a native Linux version and Steam installed that instead of the Windows version. It was trying to use OpenGL and defaulting to CPU rendering because you likely haven't altered the default configuration.
If you force Steam to use steam play, it will download the Windows version and run it through Proton which will use the right hardware.
I’m confused. Shouldn’t me downloading the native Linux factorio and native Linux Steam be enough? Why would it default to something else?
I've not played Factorio but I've seen a vidjeo about it. How is the Windows version on Proton better than a Linux native version?
Wouldn't the correct answer be to fix the graphics driver or configuration? And why doesn't OpenGL just work? Or better yet, Vulkan?
It's this nonsense that keeps people locked in to Windows.
This is gonna be an unpopular opinion here but telling people who have used Windows their entire lives to just switch to Linux as if it's that easy is entirely unhelpful and makes the Linux community look elitist and out of touch.
I think I understand your broader point as saying that a switch to Linux being as simple as switching from Coors to Miller is underselling the fact that Linux is a fairly different environment/ecosystem. You’re right on that. But as someone who’s made a switch to Linux (Ubuntu) after a lifetime of other OS use, I have to say that I think it’s worth it, even with the learning curve.
I have been exclusively a Mac user and Apple cultist for at least twenty years now and only knew Windows (3.0-ME) prior to that. I have a few 2011 Intel Macs that I use for work and home exclusively (two of which were hand-me-downs) and have not been receiving updates for awhile now. I’m not in the financial position to buy a new computer and I randomly read that Ubuntu runs great on these old Macs. So I decided to give it a try. It was a bit of work that was bolstered by the fact that I do have a bit more computer know-how than the average person (but nowhere near most of the people I see on the Fediverse). But I’ve come to love it and am now working my way over to this being a permanent change.
I’m only sharing this as an example that even deeply entrenched people can learn to use this stuff. And I was a Mac guy! Apple holds your hands and does so much thinking for you! I’d think with Windows, the switch over to something like Mint would be fairly easy, given the GUI (I specifically chose Ubuntu over Mint because Mint’s GUI is described as “Windows-like” and I personally hate all things Microsoft—which is definitely a “me problem” lol—but I’m probably going to load it onto an older ThinkPad of my wife’s that we want to set up for our son).
I mean... they are out of touch. I'm sure its possible to have a pain free switch over but when I had trouble the advice was interspersed with quite a few caveats. In essence Linux is 'easy to setup but...' Still gonna try again though, also guys that laptop you all said was dying because linux made it crash is still working fine on windows with no sign of trouble.
Life is a long learning experience. Installing (or asking that nerdy relative to install) a Linux distro is no biggie anymore and when picking a good all-around distro like Mint, for example, pretty much anyone who has some basic experience on computers can do it.
I do agree that life is a learning experience, but I might say that you're overestimating what "basic experience on computers" means, and I tend to find that this is fairly typical of people who have more advanced skills because this stuff is basic to us. But we can sometimes lack perspective in that regard.
Basic experience on computers for most people means "can use Office apps, can send emails, can more or less use the internet". Essentially, they can use the computer for their work or for some light entertainment. It certainly doesn't mean that they know how to or that they even can configure the BIOS to boot from a USB, or for that matter what the BIOS is or that it exists. It doesn't mean that they can use the terminal, or use WINE to run their favourite Windows applications or troubleshoot an operating system that is entirely alien to them. I'd even go as far as to say that most people don't even know what an operating system is - to them, Windows is the computer and they don't know or care about anything different. This is the kind of person I'm talking about. Everything you said might as well be Ancient Greek to that person.
It’s easier to use than Windows
Just give GUI troubleshooting instead of CLI
It’s easier to use than Windows
LOL, good one!
I especially loved the user friendliness of my distro randomly disconnecting my BT mouse and refusing to reconnect. Had to edit grub to get it back to working order.
Or how I changed the lock screen image through settings. Now I can see it - in Settings. Only. Because if I lock my device, I still see the old one.
Or how on Kubuntu, my previous distro, the applications' menu (the one with "File", "View", "Help", etc.) just disappeared from all apps. Spent two days trying to sort it out and ended up switching to Tuxedo OS.
Such an easy to use OS, especially for those who've never done one bit of troubleshooting themselves!
I swapped from Windows 10 specifically because I didn't want to be in the Windows 11 and forward environment. (I use Arch btw)
I really don't regret it, the set up was really painful but once that was done, the KDE had so many good features that I immediately felt at home. I'm floored by how good Proton/Steam is at handling games, I don't think I've had to skip on any game due to my OS (so far).
I stopped using windows while using Win XP, maybe 16 or 17 years ago. When I try using current windows I become useless, I can barely figure out how to use it.
That's how I feel when I use Linux or MacOS
Too bad, only 1 out of my approx. 150 customers have their IT dept. using Linux as server during my 6 years in - the rest of it is Windows... all the users have either Windows 10, 11 or they use Apple.
Halp.
Edit: not counting the educational users, as they come in hordes
try mas for activiating ESU
Probably what I'm gonna do. I used to live in a country where it was completely normal to illegally download software from ThePirateBay, and that's how everyone got their Windows versions, but I don't even feel like doing that anymore.
Switching from Windows to Linux on an older computer is like when you finally get around to clearing the bathtub drain after years of hair and crud building up. Who knew a bath could drain that fast!? And now there's no pool of water building up when I shower. Anyway, I highly recommend both Linux and clearing the drains.
Nice analogy. I should clean my shower.
It's like they are not even trying. I have a laptop with 7th gen CPU that works perfectly fine. I don't have any choice than install Linux, lol.
As someone tried to build the snes9x-nwaemu fork from scratch today after spending hours fighting the Linux mint updater getting stuck, ahhhhhhhhjjj. I still have to have windows for a couple of things anyway which makes this all the more annoying. The update also wrecked my davinci install which I need to produce videos. Also, I work two jobs so not a ton of time for this.
Edit: it turns out that upgrading mint also broke the video editing software I need to use (divinci resolve). Yay. Also python version conflicts trying to use an open source project and other shenanigans. Python has some sort of virtual env or something, apparently, but I'm done; I do not have the time or energy to throw at this and it's just frustrating. Back to windows I go.
Don't build from scratch then. I also use resolve in Linux, other than the odd Nvidia driver botch it works fine
My alternative is to try to run a bunch of stuff in wine (not sure if it would work) for the one case and I'd rather run it natively. I don't know, for the video editing case, if it would run in wine (and if it did, would I lose my ability to use hardware rendering).
I get this, I have limited time and it realy only works "out of the box" on the surface. Still, so get it's been worth putting in the effort.
This is the problem I see with most people adopting Linux.
It's great when it works but when things go awry you end up sinking hours of time into an issue. Generally on Windows or Mac, the most you'll have to do is remove it and re-add it.
If more is needed, the userbase is so large that there's a high probability that someone has had your exact issue and posted a solution about it somewhere online, you just need to go and find it.
Linux is very hit and miss on a lot of these points. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it sucks.
Windows tends to suck all the time, but the vast majority of the time it only sucks a little bit, because it's Windows... It works, but it's not great.
I'm all for Linux, but as someone who is more interested in doing useful work on my computer, not troubleshooting my system to get it to operate at all, I've stuck to Windows for a while now. I support Linux and prefer it to alternatives when running any server-based service, but for my desktop? I can't justify the time investment in getting it to the same operational level as my current Windows install.
This is the same reason I bought a Dell, knowing full well that I could get more performance and a better value by building my own system. I absolutely can build a system for myself, I choose not to because it's simply more work that I don't care to spend time on. To be fair, my system is a precision 2RU HEDT, but that's another discussion entirely.
Please don't take me wrong: Linux is great and should see more adoption. My argument is that there's a nontrivial number of people who want a system that simply operates, not one that turns into a science project because of a borked update. Windows updates have caused problems, but usually not everything-is-broken type problems... More that printing doesn't work or something like that...
I have tablets that run android and an old laptop I run on Linux and it's great. For video editing, games, and niche software, it can suck for someone with little time.
Having to use windows 11 for work for the last few years.
(1) Randomly a program on the taskbar just has an invisible icon. Like you can click it but if you don't know it's there it just seems like that program is gone. I keep waiting it to be fixed after every forced update 3-4x a week. Still happening.
(2) Sometimes the entire process just disappears graphically. Not even an invisible icon on the task at. Still running in the background but it's gone in the UI. Have to manually kill it or restart.
(3) I can't unzip multiple ZIP files at the same time. Like I can't select multiple ZIP files and extract them all into their own folder. Something that worked since I've used windows. Worked on windows 10, 7, and XP. It now just unzips only the file you right click even if multiple are selected.
I'm sure there are more but I avoid using windows and mostly just use it to connect to a work VPN and SSH into my redhat VM. Still, all 3 of these really common issues have existed for at least two years. The first two are constant on MS teams and Outlook. Literally no excuse, they are windows apps. Total garbage OS.
At my work IT requires admin privileges to kill processes in the task manager and it's some real psycho shit.
If it gets bad enough I just yank the cord, fuck em.
Yeah, when I started at my workplace it took me a week to realize my computer was on W11 and not something archaic. Definitely did not impress.
My CPU and motherboard are from 2016. I don't mind updating harware to reach windows 11 compability, it's about time anyway.
I would be angry if updating to 11 from 10 would also cost money directly.
With Windows 11 you don't have to pay for the OS because you are the product through profiling and advertising, like Facebook and Google.
That sounds way, way worse to me that the old Win7 & Win10 model where you'd pay your ~$30 oem license (or $60 retail) once and be done forever without being heavily tracked and monitored.
i've only ever used linux for servers as a web dev but friday i decided to erase windows on my laptop and install mint and i'm basically obsessed now (the best part is how updates just happen but they don't restart your computer randomly when you don't ask)
Everything seems to be pretty plug and play flawless on mint. With the exception of some not so good kernels the last 2 updates resulting in little hiccups on steam. Everything else is polished and great.
LOL the suppliers I work with ONLY Support IE 6 to 9. If they could still get away with DOS and intranets they would.
The simple fact is there will always be that one little thing that stops windows users fron switching. If 99.999999% of all windows software worked on Linux windows users would say "well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works". The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that. I would take that one step forward and say that when Windows 10 goes EOL half of people wont care and the other half will get new computers, the amount of people who switch to Linux will be statistically insignificant.
"well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works".
I am well past the point in my personal life where if it doesn’t work on Linux, or in many cases isn’t FOSS itself, it just doesn’t exist to me. I can be motivated to learn new programs when it feels like there’s a good purpose behind it.
I’m in my 40s so maybe it’s combination of “I’m too old for Windows’ shit” and “I’m not too old to learn a few new tricks.”
The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that.
Linux Mint Cinnamon may not be that, but it is very close.
My parents mentioned the windows end of life message to me a few weeks ago, and I think I’m going to try mint for them. As far as I know they basically need a file explorer to copy photos from SD cards, and of course a web browser.
Sadly the vast majority of people (even most Linux users) dont understand the benefits of FOSS. Thats why I love organizations like the FSF, EFF, and OSI. However, the sad truth is most people simply do not care.
Sad but true. I switched to Linux mint for private use.
Statistically insignificant is one way to put it, but I would argue it is somewhat significant. Just perhaps not to the extent we'd like to see. What I'll be watching for is the major uptick in viruses, malware and ransomware infecting that one half of users that will stay on win10 without a care in the world.
I'm really curious what things people can't get running or didn't have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn't choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.
If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?
In my experience:
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MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)
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KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don't have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)
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The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.
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I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)
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I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I'm not sure, because I didn't need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you'll probably have to worry about it.
Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don't - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.
One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn't create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a 'suite' in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.
(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)
edit: spelling error / typo
I've managed to banish all but one windows and one osx install from my house. What's stopping me is a bazillion little windows utility programs for things like updating firmware on radios and such, and some hardware integrated commercial software: Ableton Live, and Serato DJ. I've tried lmms, mixxx, ardour, xwax, and many others. I just haven't been able to be creative with making and mixing music with the open source tools out there. Mixxx is getting really close, but doesn't have video integration last I checked.
I keep asking these two companies when they will put out a build for linux and have been met with varied responses from corpo garbage to laughter. It's disappointing.
Plenty of video games that will not run on Linux simply because of stuff like anticheat. Like Apex Legends (ran fine for a while but got blocked again recently) and Valorant, just to name 2 I'm personally aware of that's stopping some of my friends from going to Linux.
You can say that dual booting would fix that, and my bf actually does that, but that's obviously not a workable solution to the vast majority of people.
As long as games like that won't run on Linux it's simply impossible for a lot of people to switch.
I love Linux. But my biggest problem is recommending it to users that use more than just the browser (and maybe some office suite), that I know won't be comfortable with the command line (and who don't want so spend time learning it).
As soon as it comes to hardware support (printers, scanners, heck even Nvidia graphics cards) you will at some point run into an error that needs you to use the command line to fix it.
I've heard many times "everything can be done in GUI". But people saying that are almost always people using the command line regularly. In my experience this just isn't the case.
And even if everything could be done in GUI, the most fixes you find online are terminal based.Linux is the best OS. Thanks to Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and the Linux community.
Firefox likes to crash with the nvidia driver
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Where is the conversation about the mountain of e-waste that’s heading to landfills if a concerted effort is not made to put Linux on millions of machines and to put those machines into the hands of people who can benefit from them?
Generations worth of peoples E-waste *
Let's not forget we produce 3, 4, or more models of phones, tablets, laptops, and so much more each year, per manufacturer and there are a shit load if brands. That's an alarming planet amount of E-waste and we don't have the raw materials to keep up this pace forever, the energy supply. It's totally outlandish.
We need to not be carbon neutral we need to massively be carbon negative.
I don't wanna be a politics guy in a Linux sub. But this is not just a problem with Windows or even the choice of software. This is a fundamental problem with capitalism and won't simply go away if every company suddenly replaced every OS with Linux. The same material incentives would still exist. Look at what Android OS has become. Would it be better for nerds like us? Sure. But software freedom goes hand in hand with the economic structures and incentives of our economic system. Windows is used because of how unfriendly it is. Linux is not used because of how much freedom it gives the end user. And if it is used it's a special packaged restricted version of Linux.
If you happen to be a economics nerd and a Linux nerd I can't recommend this video enough. There is too much to be said on how we got to this state we live in today in a single comment.
I'd switch in a heartbeat if Linux can play all my games including non-steam ones
You can. Now it's mostly games with kernel anti-cheat that don't work.
For epic and gog you can use the heroic launcher. For ther stuff with an installer, you can use wine to install it and manually add the exe to steam.
Ugh I have ONE game that’s 20 years old and does not work on Linux whatsoever. It’s an extremely important game to me because my best friends and I play together. We’re the only people who play it anymore. I can’t live without it, so I’m stuck on Windows for my main game machines.
My other machines? Linux lawl
But....
Conversely, I’m coming to the conclusion that I could probably live with just a steam deck, instead of a laptop etc. A portable screen, or my projector, my nice Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and I reckon it’ll do everything I really need day-to-day.
I ditched my laptop for a steam deck. I use a desktop at home and whenever I need to go to the office I just bring the deck and some peripherals.
I know just enough about Linux to know I should have been getting into it when I graduated over a decade ago.
I also know just enough to know it can do pretty much everything I need, as long as I'm willing to switch to a Linux alternative with similar capabilities.
However, I am Linux-dumb and deeply set into my windows, to the point where I'm not sure I have the technical savvy to switch.
From my understanding, Linux works very well, as long as you know what you're doing.
I'm sure I'm overestimating the learning curve but it's still intimidating.
Checkout Bluefin (or Bazzite if you're more into games). They do a pretty good work at making you not need to know anything about Linux to use it well.
Unless you happen to need some uncommon driver or software, you can "just use" it.
I felt the exact same way, still do, but I bought a new drive and installed Linux Mint on it (it's the most Windows like experience I've found). I kept my old windows drive just in case, but I haven't needed it so far.
The only time I ever used something that wasn't Windows was DOS when I was very little.
It's definitely overwhelming when trying to get certain things working that aren't natively supported, but thankfully those are few and far between. There's also a lot of people in the Linux community that are passionate about it, and tend to be very helpful.
You can always download what I think is called a live distro, and run it off a thumb drive just to test the waters. Nothing you change will be kept though, and it will be sluggish comparatively.
The os itself doesn't require a whole lot of learning, if you stick to something user friendly like mint cinnamon. Key differences are how you install programs and drivers. File structure is very different. After two years of daily driving mint cinnamon, I find it more difficult to do basic stuff in windows, especially 11. If it feels intimidating, the recommended approach is to try it out on another pc, dualboot, or use it in a virtual machine.
Go for it. You don't need to install Linux in order to start getting your feet wet. Get a USB 3.0+ flash drive and put a "live" (CD/USB, whatever the distro wants to call it) distro on there. There are plenty of directions out there on how to make one from Windows. Most live distros nowadays are persistent, so any programs you install will be there next time you load it up. It will definitely be slower than a normal install, but it'll let you get a feel for how things work.
Go ham wild on there, break stuff, see if you can fix it, don't, then remake it again. Try different desktop environments (DEs) and see what you like. Your distro of choice is less important if you're just starting, but any of the big ones will be fine. I'd recommend trying a few different DEs from the same distro, see what you like the feel of, then try a different distro with what you liked best. They'll usually all have gnome, kde, and a third lightweight option, but in my experience if Wayland (the other choice is X11) works well, kde and gnome will feel pretty light. I use kde Wayland on this guy and trust me, this review is giving it a lot of grace. Windows 10 was completely unacceptable on it, so if your specs are any better then this, you'll be fine with whatever you choose. Beware that Nvidia cards have driver issues, they're fixable but if you do have an Nvidia card, I'd just use the built in graphics chip for trying out Linux at first.
Don't start with arch, btw.
What's wrong with Windows?
The better question is why Linux over something you know how to use. Both systems have there own issues.
Check here: protondb.com
There are a few multiplayer games that don't work, but most do. Basically every singleplayer game does. It doesn't matter where you download it. Steam makes it slightly more convenient, but Heroic Games Launcher, or others, make it pretty easy to add any executable from anywhere to it and runs it.
Honestly, dont install Linux. There is absolutely no reason for you to do so. The fact is Linux will NEVER run all Windows games, it is simply impossible. Furthermore Linux will never run exactly like Windows or look exactly like Windows. So as a Linux user, just install Windows 11.
That's probably true. Windows cannot run all Windows games either.
Voice of reason right here
That's why I switched go Linux. Fuck Microsoft and their corporate spyware.
Lots of comments about gaming from people assuming that companies will continue supporting their kernel anticheat on Windows 10 after it hits eol.
Windows 11 is much more convenient for identity tracking, so they'll probably push for people to upgrade because Windows is too "insecure" for their games.
Linux is better than Windows.
When I get back to my personal computer, I'm going to finally move to Linux. I'm a developer primarily on Microsoft technologies, but I'm willing to see if there is a way for me to work on Linux and branch out to other tech.
Vscode and dotnet core (5+) work well on linux
You can also run SQL Server via docker
Do you even need docker for MS-SQL?
feel free to donate them to me, they work great as servers.
So glad I came back to Linux a couple years ago. I only use my windows partition to play a game that won’t work as well in Linux, and that list is pretty small for the games I play. Even BG3 worked great in Mint, using a 6 year old build.
So glad I made the switch to Mint back when the EoL for win10 was announced. It has "just worked" with a bit of research beforehand. I like it way more than win10 - looks better, feels better, runs everything I want it to (except games with kernel level anticheat, but whatever), hardware is under less strain and PC no longer sounds like a jet engine. No regrets at all.
And, another perk I didn't hear as much about, it is really easy to automate stuff. For instance, I play CloneHero streaming from my PC on an Nvidia Shield on a controller with a USB dongle plugged into the shield (shield doesn't do that normally, linux allowed me to connect to the dongle over wifi with a little finagling) and I have it set up to automatically connect to my computer any time it's plugged in. I also have certain files set to automatically back up to cloud storage with a simple crontab task (automatically repeating tasks are very easy via crontab).
Mint may not be as fancy as a lot of other distros, but damn if it doesn't work well.
Repeating tasks is a trivial thing on windows too, at least since xp - though I wouldn't doubt this sort of thing might require a professional edition.
the penguin migration was going just fine, until nvidia 570.124.04 dropped, which is when the misery started. :|
Got to check if I can roll back to earlier version.
Linux is super reliable, and unless you use cutting edge distro, it's pretty rare than anything breaks. Even Fedora is pretty stable from experience
The only true problems I ever had (and still has), were with Nvidia. And switching distros ain't saving you. Linux mint? Breaks on suspend. Nobara? Memory leak. Trying newer versions to see if it fixes it? Where's my bootloader...
I do understand that laptop RTX 3070 are not common, but still. I just want it to work, and have cuda on it. Is that too much to ask?
Linux is super reliable
It depends on what you want to do with it, which version of which component you run and a couple of other things. In my own experience, if you want a "super reliable" system, get OpenBSD. Linux has a severe lack of QA, mainly because of its decoupled nature.
This is the main barrier for me (other one is migrating a janky access database). I really don't want to spend my 2 hours free time an evening troubleshooting Nvidia driver issues (4800S series).
Anyone with this card have an experience to share?
I'm currently on that version. May I ask what happened or what should I expect?
rtx3090, 5800x3d, wayland, sddm, kde:
- whole system freezes on boot (with somewhat garbled display) when display manager starts (sddm) - IF >1 displays are plugged in/powered on.
- no issues if sddm starts with one display, and THEN powering up second. - But this has to be done while in sddm, before logging in.
- whole system can (with high chance) freeze again on desktop if at any point a screens are connected/disconnected
- krunner works exactly once, after that it logs errors in journal that some display reference is wrong (the exact wording escapes me atm)
all these things were fine with 570.86.something - the previous version, which apparently was beta.
Still very happy with Mint after a month and a half. Highly recommended!
Games and especially modding. I'm holding on to 10 until I can't. Then i'll figure out Linux.
tip: Windows 10 21h2 IoT Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2032
Honestly Windows 11 isn't terrible. It is mostly the same as Windows 10 except more demanding for seemingly no reason.
I've tried it a couple times and I hate it. The UI sucks, I can't find shit, and they've stripped back control panel even further. Tried to help my mother with virtual disc's and you can't simply mount them anymore, instead there was some strange 3rd-party tool I'd never heard of and it didn't even export files that were too deep in the folder tree. Fucking useless.
All the bloatware sucks, search defaulting to AI and Bing instead of your own computer sucks. Removing administrative controls sucks.
But I'm a visual designer and the market needs powerful industry-ready software like Adobe and Affinity. I can't design publishing in fucking GIMP. The Linux alternatives aren't enough. I'm considering using a Linux home machine with Mac for work but the apps I own already are Microsoft so it would be very expensive to switch. So I'll probably end up using W11 and just complain the whole time.
Coming from windows 10, last year I tested installing linux mint which is one of the most accessible distros. I found that around a third of the stuff I had running perfectly under Win10 didn't work. I didn't find alternatives that were good enough either...
So I said fuck it and did a clean windows 11 install, It's been a month now and I can really say that it's way easier to upgrade to windows 11 and turn off all the shit, than to deal with all the stuff that won't run under linux.
Hopefully this changes in a few more years...
there are no settings for all the shit, just some of it, that Microsoft is permitting to switch off. you therefore just have a half-still-shit-on system. that's totally fine, i don't expect anyone to invest time into anything. we ain't got much to start with. but no one using windows is really in control
I jumped ship from windows 10 to Linux on August and it's been smooth I have found alternatives for everything, but to be fair I used a lot of foss already on Windows 10.
Started with Debian but although I love it for my homelab I didn't like it being behind on KDE release so I switched to endeavourOS and I just love it.
No, it's not. And I say that as an almost-exclusively Linux users since at least 20 years.
What do you mean? My computer has never had Windows installed on it, so the end of Windows 10 support doesn't affect me at all. I'm not sure what could be more simple than that.
At work we run some software that while you can get it to run under Linux it's not worth the effort even for me to bother.
One supplier is slowly moving towards the runtime being available on BSD at least. They also somewhat decoupled from visual studio in the latest release, while still being mandatory still it's a step in the right direction.
Even if software does support Linux chances are it is a worse version. The exception is foss.
This always falls on its face for work. No one does collaboration as easy as Microsoft and that’s not changing anytime soon. I mean, everyone would have to move all at once. I can move to Linux on my personal devices and it’s not going to change stats one bit.
Not sure what you mean by "collaboration". If your are talking about working on documents, spreadsheets, calendar, slides, with your coworkers, sharing, manage access, etc. Google does that pretty well. My company uses everything Google for many years and it's very good from this perspective. It works absolutely the same from any operating system, Google Chrome is the OS at this point. I am not saying that Google is better than Microsoft as a corporation, just saying that Microsoft has legitimate competitors on the office collaboration market.
No one does collaboration as easy as Microsoft
Try Apple.
Collaboration as in what? Programmers use version control or use an IDE with collaborative coding tools like Jetbrains. That stuff is OS agnostic. If you mean office work Google and Infomaniak provide similar tools as Office365.
Most offices really don’t need Microsoft. They just are stuck in their habits. And MS has a better sales team.
I've had a Steam Deck for a few years, and it runs Linux. I have come to the conclusion that I could easily switch at any time if I needed to. Windows only has an an advantage when hot swapping between my office and TV dock. Linux just doesn't yet handle desktop resizing on the fly well.
Laughs in rolling release
laughs in kernel panics
I'm running nixos unstable. I did get some panics while hibernating with one kernel version, but otherwise it's been super stable.
Enabling threadedirqs (real-time feature) on the kernel command line does make the kernel panic on boot though.
This comes up with every windows EOL announcement and it never really ends up with everyone switching to linux
Well the thing about the future is sometimes the thing that always happens doesn't, or sometimes the thing that "won't happen" suddenly does.
I understand the cynicism and I don't think anything will radically change overnight, but we are CLEARLY in a new status quo, you will start to see serious uptick in linux users, for a million different reasons.
For the most basic casual PC gamer SteamOS will be a game changer once they add more hardware support for it.
Bazzite wants to say hello
So does Nobara.
You mean Nvidia hardware. Nvidia purposefully sucks overall on Linux. Don't reply with "mine works great" because you're lying or haven't had an issue yet. Fuck Nvidia.
This keeps getting brought up, but the reality is that there is nothing special about SteamOS 3. If people want a SteamOS-like OS (Immutable, Steam/Proton integrated, Steam Big Picture as Primary interface), then it already exists. Chimera, Bazzite, probably others. The only thing Valve could realistically improve on is the installation experience.
SteamOS's only real advantage is that it is hardware restricted. Valve is able to test against a narrow field of hardware and insure a high degree of stability because of it.
I have to make the switch..
You seem to be missing the point. All software has a point where it reaches end of support. The problem is Windows 11 has significantly increased the system requirements so that only computers produced in the last 7 years or so are "compatible" and lots of perfectly workable but slightly older machines are now destined for the ewaste burn pit purely because of that decision
Yeah, but the system requirements for Windows 11 are a good way above those for 10. Many people would need new machines; whereas Linux still runs decently on hardware from 2003.
Rolling releases go brrrrrr.
Here's a list of End-of-Life dates for CentOS Stream which is a rolling release.
I’m in the middle of moving, but once I’m set up I’m going to look into dual booting. I’m not sure I’ll 100% be able to get rid of windows, though. For a start, I’ve heard NVIDIA is a nightmare on Linux and I’ve only recently got a new computer so i don’t really want to buy more hardware.
Hopefully dual booting will allow me to experiment and try alternatives for software which doesn’t have a Linux version, and i hear that one of the things that chatbots are actually good at is diagnosing and fixing Linux issues. So I’m hopeful, but I’m not assuming it’ll be entirely painless.
No issues with Nvidia for me on arch. The drivers are fine and there's even a cool Linux version of shadowplay if you use that.
The Nvidia open-source driver situation has been improving. Supposedly Valve has been working with them on it alongside their ARM support.
You can also try your hand with the closed source drivers but ymmv.
Circle jerk intensifies
