Yes they do. They know a Mac is different to a PC and they know a phone isn't the same as a desktop. They just don't know what that's called. They still have an intuitive understanding. They still understand that phones do annoying things like denying file system access. They understand that Microsoft products make it harder to save files for no reason. Most people understand the appeal of Linux if you explain it in familiar language. They've just been conditioned by society to fear change.
Worked on me, I finally switched (like, REALLY switched) on my primary PC this year after using Linux only for servers and hobby projects for a long time. My only regret is that I may not live long enough to have used Linux longer than I used Windows. I'd have to make it to my mid 80's just to break even.
Valve gets all the credit. Gaming was the main thing holding me back all this time.
Same here and for me too it was gaming holding me back, though I mostly buy my games via GoG hence use Lutris and it've had a pretty low rate of games that won't work at all (and, curiously, one of them which won't work in Steam works fine if I use a pirated version with Lutris), though maybe 1/3 require some tweaking to work properly.
It's also interesting that by gaming in Linux with Lutris I can make it safer and protect my privacy because Lutris let's me do things like run the game inside a firejail sandbox which I have set up as default for all games including disabling network access for the game.
Still have the Windows partition around just in case, though the only time I booted it in the last several months was to clean up some of the stuff to free one of the disks to make it a dedicated Linux disk.
Yeah I haven't completely gotten rid of Windows. I have it installed on another SSD but in the last 8 months since I switched, I've only needed it for Dyson Sphere Project (needed AutoHotKey), Deadlock (crashes too often in Linux and they ban you for 2 hours every time you leave a game), and whenever I feel like playing C&C Generals which for some reason runs like absolute dogshit on my Linux box despite everything else working fine.
But that Windows SSD has nothing, NOTHING on it but Steam games and Winamp. Microsoft isn't getting access to a damn thing anymore when it comes to personal data. I'm tired of protecting myself against them, and FFS I've been a Microsoft backoffice sysadmin for over 25 years so I know how, but I'm still sick of it! I don't even surf the web on that install. I play my game and when I'm done I boot back to Tumbleweed!
Gonna have to look into Lutris, I really like the idea of that sandboxing!
My only regret is that I may not live long enough to have used Linux longer than I used Windows.
I hear that, I've been using Windows since '98, and only had Linux on my primary computer for a few weeks. I didn't think I'll be going back even though HDR support is spotty.
I've been using Windows since 3.11. I've been supporting it for a career since 1998 (although almost entirely servers not desktops for the last 23 years). I'm tired of Microsoft's bullshit.
On the other hand, my expertise at resolving their (server) bullshit over the last couple decades sure did pay well. So I guess it wasn't all bad. But these days they can kiss my ass.
HDR support is spotty but holy fuck was it bad when I was using windows
Playing my HDR game? Add a few seconds of loading time while my screen turns off and then on. In game it's fine, but alt-tab, or receive a notification while playing, and the screen has to turn off and on again to display the SDR content, which takes long enough for the notification to be gone anyway. I can't even tell you how good or bad the HDR is on my screen lmao
7800x3D / 7900XTX / Samsung Neo G9 OLED, so really it's not an hardware issue
The way everyone talked about Linux, I thought it would be a transient interest I would eventually tire of. I've known a lot of professors who say they liked Linux back in the 90s, but decided they couldn't keep up with it, and have gone back to windows/apple.
I never anticipated that 4 years ago, when I booted up Linux for the first time, that it would also be the last time I shut down Windows. Furthermore, the likelihood of me ever going back seems to be getting smaller and smaller every day.
WSL is the best thing that’s ever happened to windows
WSL is great but the NT kernel was/is more important, then userspace GPU drivers (which Linux still lacks), then WSL.
People now in their 20s don't realize how utterly bad Win9x and then the first consumer grade NT-based WinXP were (and those older may have forgotten). Win7, 10, and 11 are paradise by comparison. These days I can cope with Windows. I don't love it but it's not a daily cause of anger like the Windows dark ages. Heck, winget even makes software installation bearable.
Winget-ui (renamed to something annoying I choose not to remember) is pretty great. Does Winget, Choco, pip, and some others. Better package manager ui by far than the laggy garbage on a lot of Linux distros, even if you do have to deal with annoying UAC nonsense on the regular.
I found WSL kinda useless when it first came out, you didn’t have any low level access and they explicitly refused ssh connections unless you paid for windows professional and interacting with files on windows was either impossible or just very buggy I’m still not quite sure which, I think the problem was that they used the wrong slash in the file system and most programs that interacted with it didn’t understand that, not to mention networking was a chore.
Keep dreaming, people will keep on using Windows because they don't care about the bloat, they just want something that works and that doesn't require fucking around for hours every time they plug something new in!
To be fair, I'm using Linux, MacOS with Darwin Nix for managing it, Windows, and I still am not sure what exactly is an operating system, what's the role of kernel and all of the possible system software is. Well, I think kernel is for hardware abstraction, but other than that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I use Linux myself, but my work laptop they gave me is windows. I can honestly say that I believe in near future the average Linux experience is going to be smoother than windows. Because I cannot believe how insanely annoying windows 11 is. It's really not good. And modern Linux has more than good enough software and hardware compatibility.
But of course it's gonna take a long while before Linux overtakes windows because social inertia. And that's not gonna change easily because there is no humongous international corporation that spends billions every year to get their Linux based OS pre-installed on almost every new computer.
I only see it for people who could easily replace their computer with a tablet. Just getting my Sound Blaster G3 (USB soundcard) to work was a pain in the ass and the only way it started working was by installing Discord and even then until a recent update I sometimes had to open discord for it to become visible in my audio devices!
My work laptop was your standard Dell with windows and M365. I am now able to dual boot Linux, which is what my computer boots into by default now.
I can honestly say that in the current day, Linux Mint gives a much smoother experience on the same hardware. It even supports multiple monitors better.
I will grant that I’m a computer nerd like plenty of others here, so there may be some speed bumps that didn’t even register for me. But everything from installation, to daily use, to updates, is SO much smoother and faster.
It really is amazing how I can mess up Linux installs for the weirdest of reasons.
Install arch from scratch on a laptop? Now it either doesn't go to sleep when you close the laptop or a kernel panick.
Manjaro? Edited the config for the touchpad (of course it's a random config file that you have to change line by line and read 3 wiki pages for, because Linux) because it doesn't feel like windows and ran updates from the built in manager within the os. Now it doesn't boot at all and causes the boot logo to ghost while using windows 10 installed on another partition.
Pop_os? Worked mostly fine, used it for months, broke it only once when using the built in package manager somehow fixed it, but stopped using that laptop and now I can't boot into it at all.
Not to mention all of the software that partially doesn't work or work at all. Like, my personal choice for image editing is paint.net, it's not a useless meme like MS Paint, but also isn't the equivalent of using a bucket wheel excavator for digging a hole in your backyard like Gimp. It also doesn't work on Linux at all
It was actually 2022, the year when steam deck released. The proton compatibility shot through the roof. Linux now supports a far wider array of software than MacOS, even.
It'll probably be 2025, when adoption hits 5% a few months before Windows 10 support ends. The 5% will make people take Linux more seriously when looking for alternatives to Windows 10, which will increase adoption even more, which will cause hardware and software providers to offer better Linux support, which will just cause the whole thing to snowball.
The "year of the Linux desktop" was ages ago when Intel started developing drivers upstream in Linux, Mesa, and Xorg. This lead do AMD and others doing the same. None of the current developments, including Steam Deck, would have happened without that.
I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong. If Linux reaches 5% market share for desktop use in the next year I will print this message out on paper and eat it.
Turning an OS to subscription based. World class assholes. The alternative is win11, which is even more shit while they are working hard to fuck that shitshow even more up. Yeah, Linux is the way to go.
Windows 11 isn't that bad. Like any other OS, you have to get used to certain things, but overall I don't understand why people have such an issue with it, other than Microsoft being a shitty company
They recently disabled the old configuration screens, meaning you have only the fancy looking broken settings. Try to remove a Bluetooth device. You can't. "failed to remove device". It can't forget the Bluetooth data. This is one of many flaws. Many settings are gone now.
it's impossible to remove Edge now.
there are ads within the OS.
they stopped support for several apps, for instance to use the Xbox kinect as a 3D scanner.
it's now harder, sometimes impossible, to boot from a USB as win11 has too much control over the bios and makes UEFI sometimes impossible to use. It automatically boots into windows, even when told otherwise, and "repairs" the changes made.
I can continue for hours why win11 sucks donkey balls. Recent news from MS about their plans for win11 are also very troublesome. As well as the paid subscription for win10 for security updates. Like, wtf! I have 3 machines running win10, so I need to pay 90 a year? For real? Just so I won't have to use the win11 aids.
I mean for one it supports a lot less hardware. Second it's significantly less reliable. Third it has thing like Co-Pilot built-in. I don't know how people aren't criticizing it more frankly.
Yeah I honestly legit enjoyed my fond time with old Windows machines back when they were fun and user-oriented instead of the user-exploitative SAAS monsters they are now.
Win10 wasn't even SO bad as everyone says...well, until recently when they started forcing Microsoft Accounts on install and harass you with their ads every 3 forced updates. Ugh.
Now they're on the Ai bandwagon? Yeah they're real small in my rearview mirror now.
I think it's just a different landscape now, and I'm glad Linux was there to jump to after all these companies started losing their collective minds.
It’s an Archer T3U, which uses a Realtek chipset. I was living in Africa at the time I bought it and you don’t get much choice when it comes to electronics. I heard of a guy who had to travel to Spain to get a USB mouse.
Anyway, the problem is that I’m actually trying to install it on a Beaglebone Black which is stuck on the 5.10 LTS kernel. The chipset is actually supported in the latest kernel, but the BB version hasn’t been released yet.
i have been lucky with all my computers and peripherals, everything worked out of the box. but there's a weird issue in our household, none of the windows machines can connect or stay connected to our wifi but all phones and linux machines have no issues...
Yep, had to fuck around for a while on Mint, managed to get it working with a driver found on GitHub and disabling the default driver and making sure it's plugged in an USB 3.0 port... As you say, plug and play on Windows.
Is it one of those ASUS or similar ones? There is a wifi dongle that has drivers for linux, and says on the box linux support, but actually both the kernel and the provided drivers for the chipset are broken, you need to clone the github of the CHIP manufacturer, and compile it. After that, it works.
Dad didnt allow me to use Windows cause of "viruses". So grew up using Mandriva Linux.Transitioned to Ubuntu when mandriva got discontinued. Currently using Arch BTW.Funny how he had the knowhow to install Linux AND was worried about viruses (XP era though).
XP was totally a wild time, to Dad's credit though! hahaha
It was that funky era of needing like 4 different anti malware programs, and downloading game patches from various hopefully-trusty file hosts, or nabbing the suspiciously convenient "Linkin-Park-Meteora-FULL_ALBUM.exe" off of Kazaa which would promptly rootkit your whole system.
Routinely running Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, AVG, and CCleaner to combat constantly-reinstalling spyware.
Heck, I consider myself kinda smart but I still had Bonzi Buddy for a while! ...I mean, c'mon, funnee purpl monke. Who could resist?
Like wow, now that I think back on it, you really needed a bit of "street smarts" back then. Nowadays security has gotten a lot better and one can get away with just "Not downloading weird Russian Web3 games off the dark web" and they'll usually be relatively fine. Lol.
TL;DR: Windows XP was compatible with Bonzi Buddy, Mandriva was definitely a more secure choice, seeing as it couldn't run Bonzi Buddy unless you were determined with WINE maybe?
... It's cool you got introduced to Linux so early. Cool dad. :)
I find myself actually considering paying 30$ a year for prolonged windows 10 support because I find the switch to linux really overwhelming.
Like being sent grocery shopping, but all lables are in traditional chinese. Some things you can figure out very easily, but troubleshooting anything takes me days.
Fair disclosure, I personally run OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, BUT...
Honestly for this situation I think Linux Mint might be your on-ramp. It's very familiar from a user experience perspective from someone coming from Windows, and everything can be done with GUI apps.
It updates the entire system smoothly through an "app store" so it stays nice and secure. "Cinnamon" is also a highly attractive and smooth desktop environment.
I've switched a few people to it who were sick of Windows on older machines, but NOT computer people at all, and they've enjoyed it a lot! The nicest thing is it will feel like your computer again, not like you're leasing it from Microsoft.
Don't try and "completely switch over" in one go.
Look up how to try Linux in a virtual machine on your existing setup (so you don't have to risk anything!) and just try it and play around with installing and using it.
An old laptop or something is also a great way to try it out.
You can always dual-boot if you want. I sure did for a while until Win10 started BSODing for no discernable reason, and refused to let me "refresh this PC" because "Sorry, can't. Goodbye."
I still have it, just in case, but it's been most of the year since I've even bothered logging into it.
If you game: you'll want Heroic Launcher for your GoG/EA stuff, and Steam of course, and maybe Bottles to run your old CD/DVD games maybe. :)
Sometimes things take a little tweaking, but Mint's community is fantastic and helpful. You really will start to learn a lot about computers just by using Linux a little and trying things, while Windows makes every effort to hide things from you. ("wE'rE gEtTiNg ThInGs ReAdY" who's "we"?!)
As you start to get comfortable with it, it will grow with you. You can start trying to get the hang of the terminal, or jump to another distro once you learn why you might prefer to.
But you really can't go wrong just trying Mint out. It's overall just a pleasant OS.
ProTip: You'll be asked about a file system when you install any distro. I spent COUNTLESS HOURS on researching this question. BTRFS can be a bit of an advanced file system, but if you just "set it and forget it", it has the ability to take incremental snapshots without taking a ton of space! So if something really goes south, you can use an app called "Timeshift" to just roll back.
This is great for your root drive / partition, but I wouldn't suggest it for your home folder. :)
(Just like Windows rollback used to do, but...more reliable lol)
Lol sorry for the ramble but I hope this might help you feel a little less lost at the grocery store. ;)
Lol sorry for the ramble but I hope this might help you feel a little less lost at the grocery store. ;)
Thank you for your detailed comment. :)
I am dual booting Linux Mint Cinnamon, and you are totally right. The "app store" is very nice and I was honestly impressed how much control Cinnamon offered and made it accessible for beginners through GUI. It felt more streamlined than Win10 in some places.
Steam's Proton is also a huge deal, as most games work great with it enabled out of the box.
I do however often feel lost. I didn't expect that but the thing most difficult for me is basic stuff, like navigating the start menu. I really like the customization Win10 offered and miss it dearly.
I guess it is part not having a feeling on how Cinnamon works yet. After using Windows since 2006 I know my way around it failry well, and I don't have that "gut-feeling" in Linux yet. It will come with time, but atm I am feeling a little defeated.
If you send me a message on matrix or a dm here I can help you with that unlimited no strings attached, I have over 10 years of experience and am very free!
I personally won't pay for the extra security updates, and will switch to Linux, but like you said, it'll be very overwhelming at first.
I've used kubuntu on my laptop for a while now, but it's hard to rewrite my own software for Linux because it uses native system APIs.
I get it. I also don't want to signal to Microsoft that switching to a subscription model is valid, for an OS I already payed for. I worry they'll adapt it for all services released in the future, which are declining in quality. They are basically becoming Adobes ugly sibling.
I know, this is a contradictory statement to what I have written before which was driven by frustration mainly. Managed to troubleshoot a few things since then.
If I didn't have to wait for games I'm anticipating before release to work on Linux, I would have happily learned how to use Linux years ago. I pretty much only use my PC as an entertainment system; games, movies/tv, internet use. I like to mod my games and modding on Windows has become so easy that it's actually feasible to help my PC inept friends get a working load order without committing a weekend. Unless the larger nexus modding community as a majority switch to Linux, I don't see myself switching for a long time
I couldn't play starfield on day one when I had proton installed. I know a lot of people hated that game, but I was looking forward to that game more than anything else at that point in my life and proton fucked my first weekend trying to play.
As far as I know wabbajack doesn't work on Linux and that's the only way I'll be able to play with hundreds or thousands of mods because I don't have the time to meticulously creating a working load order anymore, I wasn't very good at it when I did have the time either, I would always make it stable, then add a bunch more until it wasn't. With curated mod lists, I actually play instead of being addicted to modding. If I'm wrong about wabbajack and linux, I'll retract that
It's still pretty heavily work progress, but I recommend that you at least keep an eye on the Nexus mods app, It's designed to be compatible with both Windows and Linux, but it's as of yet only compatible with a few games and doesn't yet update properly, But that's one of the things they're working on sooner rather than later from what I've seen.
I'll be that guy. Up to ME it was pretty good and it just worked. Then it took up the every other version being good thing that we're used to up to 10. It's only really now that they're trying to kill 10 and push us onto 11 that it's really become a problem.
I use Windows 11 without an MS account and with Classic Shell. You can hardly tell a difference. I will continue using it. Because I can't be bothered not to. It also came with my computer (well, W10 did but the upgrade worked painlessly).
The "without an MS account" is the hard part. Don't you have to basically use a hidden debug feature to actually do that on install in windows 11 ? And then if it's anything like windows 10, they might trick you into tying the OS to your account if you log into it for visual studio/office/Windows store or whatever, that happened to me on my laptop and it was a major pain in the ass to revert
It's been some time, but IIRC, I downloaded W11 onto a flashdrive with the MS media creation tool, booted of this drive and did a fresh install over my W10 installation. In this process I wiped my disk. Before that I googled what to do in order to be able to install without an internet connection. This allowed me to complete the installation without an MS account. This procedure might have changed since then. AFAIK there are still some hoops you can jump through in order to get it running without an MS account.
I have to say that I am getting pretty good at Linux. I use it on my gaming desktop, my 8 year old Lenovo, on a specialized workstation at work, and I have two servers running it. It's approaching general utility.
That said, I am being defeated by Broadcom wireless drivers on a HP Enterprise laptop. They aren't just working, and the wireless soft switch isn't just turning on. Until we can get to the point where the average user can just try a bunch of .deb (or whatever) files until they hit the jackpot, it isn't going to be as easily adopted.
That's defo Broadcom's fault. Unfortunately when Linux is a second class citizen, hardware vendors will make crappy Windows and maybe Mac drivers, but a lot of Linux support seems like it needs to be reverse engineered or something, if the company itself refuses to play ball. :(
This was the case with NVIDIA for a long while. Still kinda is. Hopefully that's improving though.
It is absolutely Broadcom's fault, but it's also still the state of things.
Thanks to Ubuntu, Mint is quite well endowed with functional software. If it can receive the same level of support as Windows or MacOS, it will probably outpace them both.
Me with cachyos and still dualboot windows 10, man linux is really nice and flexible I can leave windows but I don't feel very confident but cachyos is a really good arch based distro i can try void some time but i am conformable with cachyos.
Replies should not be serious, boring and/or don't to know seem to know what a stupid memepost is for.
Windows users should be rebutting this with equally stupid memes about xorg.conf or cups or
maybe another panel where death is unable to kill windows because it lost the archlinux-keyring to unlock the scythe.
Thing is, and I say that as a windows user with a little experience in linux: I got no idea what you are talking about, and I doubt many windows users do.
Make some other stupid meme or joke that windows does understand then.
Maybe it turns our death is secretly using adobe creative cloud on a windows to design the gravestones.
I m not going on /c/windowsmemes to make boring serious complaints about why I don't understand regedit.
You've got to at least to be funny about it on a meme, otherwise it's just depressing.
Theres enough deprssing shit on the serious linux forums.
Or maybe there should be a new meme community linuxwindowstrollbait that is for snarky comments.
Or maybe I just stop moaning and unsubscribe fron this one.
MacOS (X) used to be the absolute best operating system around but ever since Apple became a phone company and Macs are merely an afterthought, macOS is indeed mostly a joke, not because the technological foundation is bad (actually that is quite good) but because of Apple's dumb commercial decisions: The absolutely dumbest thing is Metal (their non-standard take on DirectX), deprecating OpenGL, and not adopting Vulkan.