- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Like, I’d understand a free version of Windows that has the ads and bloat, but the idea that people are paying $100 for this disrespect is insane.
It isn’t your computer, user license clearly states you’re renting the software. You always have been, it’s just now they can enforce that agreement more readily. Microsoft is making a lot of bad decisions at the moment, but the majority of consumers really don’t care - adverts and surveillance are what they grew up with.
You can switch to Linux, but as much as I love it (it’s my daily driver for work and for travel gaming, oh and the community is absolutely amazing), it’s not 1-1. You will have to jump through hoops sometimes to get things to run (but damn me there are amazing people out there who can and do help). Then again, you own it because it is free, and it will run most things with the right tweaks.
I can’t speak for MACs (too poor to use one, my devices tend to be upgradable or VERY long life), but I hear they’re a better experience in terms of less bloat/adverts. Again though, you are renting with Apple, and are largely trapped in their ecosystem, and they have a ‘reputation’ for lack of repairability…
It isn’t your computer, user license clearly states you’re renting the software
It IS your computer, it’s just not your software.
Whoa whoa whoa an operating system is not software depending who you ask lol. It’s the program that manages both your PC’s hardware and software resources. /s
When I switched to Linux (year 2011), jumping through hoops reduced significantly, because:
running games on builtin Intel cards etc, that is, kinda second-class citizen hardware, was anyways PITA ;
it made my stuff run terribly faster ;
those hoops are not too different in complexity from installing mods for games under Windows ;
for trying to learn programming Linux is much less problematic (have ADHD, so didn’t learn much back then, but) ;
the main issue of uninstalling McAffee went away for free ;
I was at school, so didn’t have any problems with office suites’ incompatibilities and such ;
and also Linux in 2011 was in general easier, don’t believe RedHat fanboys and such, it was very nice before PulseAudio, systemd and widespread adoption of GTK3, say, to change colors you just needed a 20-line .gtkrc-2.0 and .Xresources, and your WM’s config file, it’s 20 minutes from fresh install to feel normal ;
the community was friendlier, somehow back then RTFM was considered acceptable, but people rarely used it, now everybody behaves as if RTFM was very bad, but also too many people use it, sometimes to avoid admitting that they are wrong and a certain thing is absent in TFM.
I’ve been a macOS user for over a decade and I am never going back to Windows. That being said, Apple does have iCloud (their version of OneDrive) which is tightly integrated into the OS and they’re not shy about asking you to pay for more storage. They also want you to log in with an Apple ID when you first start your computer and I don’t know how easy it is to use a local account.
It’s not the same as Windows in terms of aggressive ads and upsells, but Apple aren’t innocent in wanting more of your money. If you want true freedom you have to pay with your time and energy and run Linux.
It’s not that people ignore it, it’s just that they don’t really have an alternative. You can rent from Microsoft or Apple, or go the Linux way where you don’t have the proper UX an average user needs and is accustomed to with Windows or macOS.
Ask your doctor if Linux is right for you
He prescribed me a medication but when I went to get it from the pharmacy they just gave me a bunch of precursor chemicals which are just toxic if not combined in the right way. When I asked for help the pharmacist just said “RTFM”
Also, what is a comorbidity?
I’m struggling to transition still, honestly… Windows visualised as a street gives me access to all the shops and window browsing I need, everyone wants to be there and get my attention, and despite the masses of intrusive advertising and shady people around every corner watching me, I don’t have to actively navigate the street itself very much. It’s a dystopian street of neon distractions and side hustles but you can mostly shut it out and walk.
Linux as a street is a lot barer, the street is cleaner and less intrusive, I’m not being watched from the alleyways… but there are knee high walls every few meters, there are open manhole covers here and there, and I have to actively persuade some shops to let me in or even open.
I don’t walk down a paved street for the joy of navigating an assault course, I walk down it to get places with the least amount of friction possible and I just can’t seem to get that from Linux yet. Then again Windows would like to start stopping me every few meters and asking intrusive questions or hocking me tat, so my move is inevitable.
Linux never looked so hot.
Using windows will do that.
That makes the OP eligible for Windows-refugee status tbh.
In Linux I wanted a window to open in a specific place on boot. Fairly simple bash script.
In Windows FUCK YOU.
With llm’s you can get a lot of bad info but for Linux commands, basic tutorials and scripting Linux is WAY easier to learn nowadays.
Edit didn’t mean to imply Linux is easier than Windows to learn in general.
Edit didn’t mean to imply Linux is easier than Windows to learn in general.
It is though. People just neglect that in today’s world, no one “learns” Windows from scratch.
Learning to do anything from scratch is easier on most Linux distros than on Windows. The tools are better and the documentation is light years ahead. Windows is a steaming pile of horseshit in comparison. But once you’ve made yourself a cozy nest in the middle of said pile, getting to the comfy whirlpool hot tub that is linux requires you to scale over the walls of horseshit surrounding your nest. And that is what makes people claim “but Linux hard, muh duh!”
Would you mind sharing that script? That sounds incredibly useful lol. I’m new-ish to linux as my daily driver and love customizing it!
In atleast 3 distros I wanted to add program at start-up, easy peasy on windows , Linux is mess , some has gui for that but these three distorsion HAD ZERO option for it and I still don’t know how to do it.
In windows i want to serch for here is program installed, so easy to know and find . In Linux I had to fight multiple terminal commands ( in 2024 no less) and ev n then indid not come across whwre is the program installed
In Linux I plugged in hdd and wanted a program to acess its content, turns out I can’t do that without mumbo jumbo or wv n with it Whwre as in windows , inplug it and VOILA! I can access it across anything.
Linux MAY be good at something , but it still sucks for real Common usage.
I had none of these issues and i don’t know what you are talking about.
If you install programs through your package manager they come with a start-menu entry just as easily findable as in Windows. If you don’t install programs with an installer in Windows you get the same problem.
Also mounting HDDs made its content accessible to all my programs so far, without any issue. I think you must have chosen extremely obscure distros or fucked things up by yourself during install processes.
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Which distros? Just saying Linux is kind of pointless. Linux is the kernel.
Some distros come with more pre-installed features and functions, some come with less.
Some are more average user-friendly than others.
I put Debian on my laptop and have not had any problems accessing external drives or plugging in multiple monitors.
No disrepect intended, but you do seem exceptionally tech challenged
With all due respect you seem like a friendless cunt that everyone cringes at when you enter the room because you act like you can’t be bothered with any conversation that doesn’t involve a lone condescending atoadaso without any further contribution to the conversation because that would take effort. We’ll done! You have lived up to the asshole IT guy noone liked way before you became useful.
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Registry keys are inferior but they do exist. The last time I used Windows I just had to set some magic reg keys and it was easy to make that happen.
I always found that deeply problematic. Here is some obscure path to follow to set some obscure value where half of the naming does not indicate what exactly you are doing there. Also if you don’t set the data-type exactly it wont work. For a fucking 0 or 1 off/on value flag.
It sucks, but at least it’s in a centralized location. Back in the INI file days you’d have to set the config in various places. Which, come to think of it, is kind of how things work in Linux.
Related to the OPs problem, do you know if there is a Startup folder in Windows still? Back in the Windows 95 days we could just drag a BAT script to that folder and it would always run on login.
Not like Linux and it’s loads of shell scripts and commands is so much different.
Yesterday I booted an antivirus live-cd compiled by a computer-magazine (aimed at IT-professionals and tinkerers). The ISO is a Ubuntu 22 release. The things I had to find out (as a mainly Windows user) to set a static IP was way too annoying. When I finally found out how to configure netplan and when I did I got a nice error that gateway4 is deprecated and to please use routes.
As someone else in a thread said: It’s nice and all that Linux fits some specific uses and users but it’s not really fit for every user.
Additionally there are too many ways to do the same thing. And it applies to distros as well. A Debian-solution might work to some degree in Ubuntu but if a RHEL way works in Debian or Ubuntu is your best guess.
What’s the use case?
Just setup for various hobbies.
For example Launch freecad on my main screen, cura & firefox etc in their preset positions and windowed sizes on the second screen.
on my i3wm workstation it’s literally a one liner in my config file, which is comprehensive across all of i3wm. Ignoring external scripts.
Oops
Thanks in party to the spirit in Lemmy (thanks guys and gals) and getting pissed off at the ever more enshittification, I really went full-on on taking back control, and I don’t mean just changing my home PC (mainly used for Gaming) from Windows to Linux, but also replacing the TV Box that’s bundled with my ISP subscription (and will be changing ISP when the current contract is over) with my own Mini-PC with Lubunto and Kodi (which is also my Torrenting host with an always-on VPN and my home’s NAS) replacing the original Samsung Android (which had been bloated due to updates to the point of filling up all memory) of my aging tablet, with LineageOS and even doing the same on my brand new Smartphone.
Granted, I’ve always had the spirit of avoiding “smarts” in stuff that doesn’t need it - like TVs - but now I went and as much as possible took back control on even the stuff that does need “smarts”.
So far I’m quite happy with it all: I’ve maintained (improved, even, such as my Tablet now having more available memory) my level of Tech access whilst cutting of the ways in which companies exploited my time and patience for advertising money - I definitely feel I’m better now than before: a lot of things became more convenient and less restricted than they were before.
Things are becoming really bad out there when it comes to treating customers as cattle to be milked and I reckon that the only future were Tech is actually a pleasure to use for users is for those people who take control back from the corps on all of their devices.
also thanks to lemmy I made the switch from Windows to Linux and I’ll never go back.
What distro did you settle on for your PC?
Since that machine is mostly for gaming, I went with Pop OS!
Pop!_OS is great, not just for gaming
doing the same on my brand new Smartphone
Watch out, rooting a phone may have unexpected consequences, like losing LTE on Samsungs or losing access to banking apps.
Banks are a bunch of dicks anyway. I recently received a ToS that forced me to have all my OSs on their latest update, and never install anything that doesn’t come from official stores.
Next day all of my money was in another bank.
You don’t lose banking apps, banks lose you
I’d like to leave a warning for anyone working with Uber or Lyft as well, a friend of mine flashed his phone with a custom ROM and couldn’t work for a week until I managed to reflash the original ROM on it.
It took a while cause his phone was from a not so well known brand and it took a lot of hours on russian forums to find the stock ROM.
https://plexus.techlore.tech/applications/uber
Gotta check before you flash and fuck up a livelihood…
Note that if you are Uber user (idk about driver) their website is good enough; for me it works in Firefox mobile (in “Desktop” mode only). Lyft is app only…
Yes, I was talking about the driver apps. The apps won’t work on custom firmware, I know there’s some magisk thing you can do but there’s reports of account blockages in my country following that method.
Well, that phone is a Xiaomi, not a Samsung (who had already made my shit list some years ago thanks to all their bloat), and the new ROM is just a bloat free MIUI, so from the same maker as the phone.
And yeah, as somebody else mentioned, if the banking app stopped working it would be the bank losing me - it wouldn’t be the first time I changed banks because they pissed me off.
Retail banking as a service is a commodity - they’re pretty much all the same - so sticking or not with a bank should be something one does based on cost and convenience and a banking app that doesn’t work on my phone reduces convenience.
As it so happens my banking app works fine.
That said, your alert can be important for other people and points one more reason to avoid Samsung like the plague.
Xiaomi is such a hidden gem. I just got a new wifi6 router off AliExpress for like $50 and threw openwrt on it in like 5 minutes.
Let’s be honest, very few people who talk about how much they hate Microsoft will even consider alternatives
It’s not a failure to consider the alternatives that slows adoption, it is the very real material problems with those alternatives.
It’s not fair that a multinational corporation gets to wield virtually limitless power to starve the alternatives of oxygen and create as much friction as possible in the process of switching, but it is a very real problem, and blaming the users won’t solve anything.
Can you provide a citation for your claims about the process of switching?
The comment I replied to didn’t source their claim that it’s the users’ fault, but I notice you didn’t ask them to source their claims.
Perhaps you could explain why your skepticism is so selective before I answer your question.
And perhaps you could be more specific about what claim you want “sourced”. That the switch to linux has a lot of friction? That it’s difficult? That Microsoft has deliberately cultivated that friction? That users aren’t simply failing to consider it? That blaming the users isn’t the solution?
What exactly do you want me to source?
I didn’t notice or care about their comment, it was meaningless bs. Yours is something for which it’s feasible to provide evidence, it’s a novel claim, and I saw nothing to back it up other than hostility.
That the switch to linux has a lot of friction? That it’s difficult?
Everyone mostly agrees on this, not interesting. Also you didn’t even directly claim this in your post, so obviously I wasn’t asking about this. You’re just seemingly using this hostile badgering approach to stifle the conversation.
That Microsoft has deliberately cultivated that friction?
This is the interesting claim. After all Linux deliberately shoots its legs off every few years, why does Microsoft need to help?
Honestly your original question was so vague and terse I almost didn’t reply, it just seemed so pointless. If you don’t want hostility, don’t come with an attitude like that. Do the work to make yourself understood the first time. And don’t just demand citations - you’re not my professor. Just ask questions like a normal fucking person. Ask for information.
Given you’re asking for evidence of Microsoft’s sabotaging of open source projects including Linux, I’m going to have to assume you’re coming from a place of actual curiosity and not bad faith. It’s actually one of the most famous examples of anticompetitive behaviour in history. Start there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
I used to help maintain a Linux distro, and there is a level of polish Windows has that I feel cannot be reached by the FOSS ecosystem due the resources dumped into hiring dedicated teams at MS. Microsoft has tons of money. I’m sad about the direction of windows, but it generally works pretty well for how it’s designed (which is in some cases awful).
I’m sad about the direction of windows, but it generally works pretty well for how it’s designed
That is a bold claim. And absolutely wrong for many configurations.
there was a time where that may have been the case, but microsoft has been chipping away at any polish they had for years. sure there’s still some rough edges in linux, but it’s only getting better where windows continues to get worse
I agree with your point, but I never would have thought of describing Windows as “polished”.
It’s a sliding scale
Sure. I could accept hearing “Windows is more polished than most Linux distro’s”. But to say blankly that Windows is polished is crazy talk. It’s jank as balls. Its got like 3 totally discrete and independent UI frameworks for the menus operating in parallel, and somehow none of them provide all the functionality you would need, have to mix and match them.
That’s just a single example. I could rant for hours.
please do, i LOVE long rants about windows :]
A good amount of Linux distros don’t seem to want to get the basics down. Constant churn vs stable but way out of date is more how is describe the choice, while windows at it’s core is actually a pretty stable platform. I don’t have to, for example, get annoyed at Firefox middle mouse scroll not working because I forgot this distro still defaults to x11 even though it installs Wayland too blah blah blah.
Firefox middle mouse scroll works fine in X11. I use it all the time. But I guess that’s beside the point; I’m sure we could come up with a different example.
You right, that’s just a weird firefox setting
Was thinking of touch: https://superuser.com/questions/1151161/enable-touch-scrolling-in-firefox
That’s my point, people may complain but nothing else competes.
Yes, because I need Adobe to do my meh wage part-time job in developing country from my one and only working laptop and I don’t have the luxury of surplus money, time, and mental energy to do anything about it.
But I get your point. If I have the means, I will fix my broken Thinkpad and definitely install Linux there the first chance I get. Either that or Adobe finally release Linux version, which will probably be released after Half-Life 3.
I can’t wait to try Endeavor (so I can finally be an obnoxious person who say “I used Arch-based distro, btw”)
Either that or Adobe finally release Linux version, which will probably be released after Half-Life 3.
Yeah, I’ve seen what Adobe’s support looks like. I remember the Linux version of Flash Player. The guy in charge of it whined on the official Adobe blog on the subject that he had to support “minority browsers” which at the time was everything but Internet Explorer on Windows.
You can run adobe products on Linux with Wine.
Adobe products barely work correctly on Windows, I wouldn’t want to try to run them in an environment that was even less supported
Honestly that would make me want to run them in wine more. Wine environments can be controlled a lot easier than a Windows install can be.
Maybe by you but I just want to use illustrator lol
What I am saying is that if Illustrator breaks on Windows, you might have to reinstall Windows. If it breaks on Linux, you just reinstall in a new wine prefix, or restore from a backup or snapshot. The rest of the system remains unaffected. Does that make sense?
Not really. If illustrator breaks on Windows at the most I’ll have to power cycle the PC. I’ve never heard of it taking Windows down with it.
To even get it functional on wine I’d have to invest untold hours of research and tomfoolery, and then any time it didn’t work I’d not know if it was adobe’s fault or wine’s.
I wouldn’t mind doing this kind of thing for a hobby, but not for production software unfortunately.
you could always duel boot or VM for your adobe stuff.
That’s my point exactly, Linux doesn’t come without sacrifice and few are willing to sacrifice anything for freedom
Adobe, you mean photoshop? https://github.com/MisconceivedSec/photoshop-22-linux
Most people believe they will start seeing problems where there were none before. They need to invest time into research about their use-cases, which is a cost even before switching.
The typical user used Windows since before they became scared of change, so that’s what they’ll stick with.
The pain of using Windows still can and will be higher without the majority of people switching to anything.
The typical user used Windows since before they became scared of change, so that’s what they’ll stick with.
In some ways this was me, then win 11 came around and I really didn’t like it, and it was pretty unstable for me, so I was stuck between two options for change, neither being what I would call “comfortable” (I had to, win 10 was blue screening literally every other day) which was when I saw the steam deck announcement, (also the LTT Linux Challenge) and I haven’t given win 11 a serious try sense
I don’t want to point fingers/cast shade or anything. Hell, I myself resist change where I can.
It costs incredible amounts of energy and time to change, and that change might even be counter productive to some or most of the things you do.
Gratulations on starting Linux, I hope it does everything you need it to do. Even if you should end up using it only for a short amount of time, I hope the experience enriches you.
I’m not allowed to do my full-time job from any other computer besides the windows one assigned to me.
Doesn’t apply to the author here, so I don’t understand why you brought it up?
I don’t understand why this meme [template] exists. Did they rocket this guy up there to shoot him? Why would be be in space if he couldn’t be trusted with the truth?
I think the original showed the earth being a flat disk and the first astronaut says “it’s really flat?” And the second one says “always has been”. But is about to shoot him to keep the knowledge of it safe from the masses.
But in this case, the one with the gun is Microsoft.
I’m not sure why you were downvoted but you’re right about the origin. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wait-its-all-ohio-always-has-been
Yes and why the fuck would someone like that be flown into space
It’s a meme.
It is? I remembered the original as the continent being a giant Idaho and the first astronaut asks “it’s all Idaho?”
Here’s what I found about it. https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-wait-its-all-ohio-the-always-has-been-meme-explained
PERFECT!
It’s so weird to me that Lemmy is full of anti-Windows, anti-Google posts but the comments are always “I’m thinking about switching.”
How about… just do it?
I don’t know what I’m trying to say but being 20 years into “Windows-free” a few years of “Google-free” it’s tiring. I know everyone isn’t me but it’s tough watching this from the other side.
Every day, a large number of people start using Linux for the first time. But the internet has a lot of people on it - so you can expect to see “I’m thinking about switching” posts for many years to come. Posts like that won’t slow down until Windows is in minority. (And that is unlikely to happen any time in the foreseeable future.)
You know it’s not the same person posting every time
Some people have moved passed thinking about it. Others have just started. Its a growing sentiment and more people are starting to feel it.
It’s not easy committing to the change when you have no knowledge of the platform. The status quo is always easier until it no longer is.
Having seen how different Linux is from what it was 20 years ago, it’s way more approachable than it used to be. Most people could adjust pretty quickly, but with so much of the technical bits hidden from sight, the average PC user these days isn’t as tech savvy as they were many years ago, and making the switch can be intimidating.
Good point — I’m pretty far down the rabbit hole. I haven’t really wanted to mess with a non-UNIX/Linux based OS in ages.
Side note: what OS would that be besides DOS or Windows? Old-school Mac OS comes to mind (System 7) but I like playing with modern platforms more than older ones.
BeOS/Haiku?
Linux won’t work for my needs. I would switch if it did.
What are your needs, if I may ask?
Specific flight simulator hardware and specific audio/video hardware and software
I built my entire flight sim setup around Linux, X-Plane 12 has a native Linux version and all my hardware works flawlessly. MSFS2020 also works through Wine/Proton. But you can always create a Windows VM with GPU and SSD passthrough, (you can also pass through other PCIe and USB devices) and use that for your Windows-specific tasks. I use that for online games that require Windows-exclusive anti cheat solutions.
If you have windows in a VM do you need a license key
Nah, just use massgrave.dev
Getting rid of Google would require switching phone for me as there isn’t a google free ROM for the Redmi K50 Pro.
GrapheneOS for the Google Pixel. I’m using a Google Pixel 4 which was like $120 and super easy to flash. I’m from the US, so I understand if things might be different where you are.
That would be a hilariously bad downgrade. I could probably afford to replace mine with a Google Pixel 6, but that would still be a significant downgrade (90Hz screen). After having two phones at 120Hz, I won’t go lower.
25% reduction in refresh rate to only 4x the historical standard that most humans alive grew up with balanced against any semblance of privacy seems like an easy win…
It’s not just that though is it? It’s a slower SoC, less RAM, possibly less storage, lower screen resolution, and I would be spending money to get it after just upgrading my phone a few months ago. So a downgrade in every other category while paying for it. On top of that losing banking apps and breaking the warranty. In what world does that make sense?
It’s something I could consider when looking for a new phone, but not right now. The fact you have to buy a new phone just to get a different ROM is absurd. In the PC world you can just install any different OS you pretty much fancy, with relatively few hardware issues in the way (such as Nvidia).
I don’t know what you’re responding to, I’m responding to a comment about refresh rate.
They have the Google Pixel 8 which has a 120Hz refresh rate, if you can afford it.
I am sure it’s great, but I don’t want to spend that much on a phone. Honestly I think I will just keep my current phone for a couple more years, then buy something.
Also I don’t really want to lose access to my banking apps.
Calyx uses ug and I haven’t had banking issues. You can check plexus for your bank.
The Pixel 9 will come out in October, and the Pixel 8 will get much cheaper. Also there will be many used Pixel 8’s that will get sold for relatively cheap. These things aren’t like iPhones, they lose their value on the used market very quickly.
I’ve never owned an iPhone, so that comparison isn’t needed.
I can relate to the anxiety that comes with the thought of switching and finding out you’re missing something essential.
It wasn’t a big deal for me since I’ve used FOSS alternatives for almost everything even on Windows and was hardly gaming anymore when I made the switch (but somewhat ironically I started again on Linux). But that’s hardly the position most unhappy Windows users are in.
That’s a good point too.
I’m primarily a web developer so essentially my entire toolkit is already FOSS and it doesn’t make sense to even run half of it on Windows. Windows is usually the odd one out with weird hacks to make it play nice.
I use macOS a lot too and because it’s UNIX my Linux toolset is available and ported to the OS with (what I understand to be) minimal changes.
And I’ve never needed to deploy to some Windows Server either (the thought frightens me).
I gave Linux a try 2 or 3 times back when I was in school. It was a horrible user experience and games wouldn’t work back then.
Now that games on Linux are a thing, I would love to give it a try once more. But now I have a full-time office job and a family. When I’m off work, I just want to fire up the PC and have everything work, which it does with windows. I also have the Pro version of Windows 11 and don’t experience all of the ad horror that everyone here is talking about.
If I gain back the free time and mental capacity, I’ll give it a try.
It’s not like it’s difficult to switch these days. Try something like Bazzite or Nobara and gaming should work out of the box.
Keep in mind it’s still a drastic reduction in security by default.
What are you talking about? Windows isn’t very secure to begin with. Bazzite in particular is one of the more secure Linux desktop distros as it’s immutable and comes with SELinux enabled by default. It’s secure enough to actually cause me problems lol.
It’s a real challenge to get a fully encrypted system with secure boot (easier now but still hit or miss with Linux) and tpm.
What you’re describing is the user never security model which is as you said restrictive enough to be annoying, and more controlled than windows.
I don’t use or particularly believe in secure boot.
I have a fully encrypted root partition, with automatic unlocking using the TPM. Wasn’t even that hard to setup either. Bazzite makes it fairly easy to enroll a secure boot key if you really want that, as do some other distros. Nothing you are describing is that difficult.
A lot of systems use AppArmour instead of SELinux, as this is easier to work with while still providing enhanced security.
Bookmarking this comment, never heard of those distros!
They are gaming and content creation specific distros designed to work out of the box for those use cases. Lots of patches and stuff to improve performance and compatibility for gaming. Some hardware compatibility stuff is added too, such as bazzite having different images for laptops.
Only computer I have Windows on is my laptop and that’s only because it’s fairly new and laptops are notorious for proprietary hardware that’s hard to get decent drivers for. My desktop has had Linux for a couple of years and everything else runs Linux.
If you’ve got an external USB drive bigger than the laptop’s, and are willing to take the time, you could back it up by making a disk image with Clonezilla so you’re sure you have a backout option if you run into too much trouble getting Linux working
I tried a live USB image of Ubuntu and couldn’t get the touchscreen to work. I didn’t try out everything, but that was the first major issue.
Give it a couple weeks and maybe by then I’ll hopefully have upgraded from win10 on my desktop to either Spiral or Netrunner. Only thing holding me back from upgrading on my desktop right now is how much stuff I have to save to my new external drive and how it feels like a Herculean task.
Poor you
I’m using Linux on servers and for self hosting, but Linux on a desktop is a sick joke.
Linux on desktop is amazing. My experience has been absolutely flawless.
Cool story.
Lmao, are you seriously salty that I gave my experience after you gave yours? Grow up little man.
Lol, who’s salty, kiddo?
That would be you, the one acting childish and calling people “kiddo”
You started it, I’m just using your type of language so it’s easier for you to understand. But I guess you play too much League Of Legends…
Except for (raytraced) games, for your Logitech keyboard, your Razer headset, your Xbox Controller not connecting, your Windows-only Software that won’t work.
It’s terrible. You probably just found a way to live with it and get used to.
Ray tracing works fine, I don’t know what you mean?
I don’t have a Logitech keyboard, but I find it hard to believe something as simple as a keyboard doesn’t work. I have a Logitech mouse and that’s completely fine.
My Xbox controller connects just fine with no special behaviour required.
Windows only software mostly works flawlessly. Almost all of my games are “windows only”, and they all work fine. Which is astonishing, really. How many other OSes virtually flawlessly run software from other OSes without any tinkering?
It’s amazing. Everything just works. Plug and play. No headaches like with Windows.
- Well Raytracing doesn’t work in Cyberpunk 2077. Besides that, some other games also have terrible performance. Even Minecraft, that’s running natively. Constant stutters with low GPU utilization.
- Logitech keyboard works but I cannot configure it because the software is not supported on Linux
- Xbox controller does not connect with the dongle unless I install the xone drivers
- I can think of a dozent more software other than the Logitech one that don’t have an installation for Linux
Sure you can fix any of these problems above like running Windows software with Wine or installing the appropriet drivers. But I don’t want to do that if I can just use Windows with no extra work.
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Ray tracing works in everything I’ve tried it in. I don’t have Cyberpunk but a quick Google tells me that it does have ray tracing and it does work in Linux.
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So the keyboard does work, you just insist on using one specific piece of software to make the keys pretty and refuse to use any others? Does it have a MacOS/iPadOS/Android version? I suspect not. Sounds like a shit product tbh, but it clearly works, unlike what you said earlier.
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Again, Xbox controller works fine. Wired, with the dongle, Bluetooth. All work great, no additional steps, completely plug and play.
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I can name a bunch of software that doesn’t support Windows, Mac, iOS, Android. I don’t see how this is an OS problem. Linux has wider software support than anything else.
You know you have to install drivers in Windows, right? And that it’s more cumbersome? With Linux in 99% of cases it’s in the kernel and you don’t need to install anything. Sometimes you’ll need to do something like type “Nvidia” into your software centre and click install.
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- Well Raytracing doesn’t work in Cyberpunk 2077. Besides that, some other games also have terrible performance. Even Minecraft, that’s running natively. Constant stutters with low GPU utilization.
I suspect you have GPU driver issues. What distro and graphics card are you running? Have you installed GPU drivers if your on Nvidia.
- Logitech keyboard works but I cannot configure it because the software is not supported on Linux
You just install solaar instead of the official software, one and done. Have you even tried?
- Xbox controller does not connect with the dongle unless I install the xone drivers
So install it then.
Sure you can fix any of these problems above like running Windows software with Wine or installing the appropriet drivers. But I don’t want to do that if I can just use Windows with no extra work.
None of this is extra work compared to working around Microsoft and Windows trying to push their garbage. Two Windows 11 systems breaking is what led to me switching back to Linux for the last time. Having to reinstall because of Windows issues is a lot more effort than installing a couple things.
Ray tracing works on Linux just fine. I don’t know what your talking about. I have software to control the lights on my Asus laptop keyboard if needed, my other keyboard is not addressable RGB anyway. I’ve seen Linux work with controllers too. Maybe not Xbox specifically, though I think there is a way to do that too.
Edit: Logitech keyboards have support: https://pwr-solaar.github.io/Solaar/
There are projects for supporting the Xbox controllers too: https://github.com/medusalix/xone
As I said in another post
I’m very well aware that all of these problems can be fixed. But you need to put extra work in. There is no benefit for doing that.
But you need to put extra work in
Uh, no? You just install one application to configure your Logitech peripherals. Just like you would install an application on Windows. It takes like 15 seconds to google “logitech keyboard linux” and the second result you get is Solaar.
For Xbox controllers, it’s just one package that you need to install.
This is one of the few rare cases, where the Linux kernel doesn’t include a driver, and you manually need to install it. It’s the exact opposite on Windows. You basically need to install all your drivers manually, since Linux is mostly a monolithic kernel, and Windows is not. I can name enough cases where you need to install extra drivers on Windows, in order to get basic functionality. For example if you want to connect your Android phone, every manufacturer has their own drivers that you need to manually install on Windows. On Linux, these are built in.There is no benefit for doing that.
There are many benefits. Linux is free, doesn’t force you to create an account, doesn’t show you ads, doesn’t collect and sell your personal data, doesn’t try to force you to use a specific browser, has lower resource usage and better performance, especially on older devices, doesn’t have stupid and arbitrary hardware requirements, has better security, most of the applications are free and open source, you can customize your OS to suit your needs and there’s a great community. And most importantly, you have full control over your computer.
The benefit is you don’t have to use windows. Obviously, it’s not a trade off that’s going to satisfy everybody.
The duality of Linux users… I faced many problems but managed to work around them, one by one.
At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I’ve left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won’t boot the next morning.
I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted. I manage a small fleet of a few hundred windows systems and all updates have been fine for years.
In the windows admin user groups there are more than a few that are deploying updates within 24hrs of release to thousands of servers and workstations and have not reported issues.
Lastly I think that tech bloggers say things like this to get clicks, so they can get ad revenue. Then they also tell you how to disable updates so they can get more clicks and ad revenue.
It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.
I‘ve had several faulty Windows updates in recent years and my machine is pre-built. And going by the threads I sifted through in search of solutions I am far from the only one. It‘s perfectly fine to not have the newest update at all times so as long as you update once a month when you can afford a potential faulty update. Having an older than most recent version is far from your biggest concern regarding security. I would even say it‘s a non-issue compared to good old fishing mails.
I hate Windows for all the monetisation and privacy issues but I never really had problems with it killing my computer.
I had a Windows 10 update fuck up my laptop for about 15 hours until it somehow magically unfucked itself and started working again once.
But thats about it
The primary issues that I faced with Windows (Win10 nearly a decade ago) are
- very slow updates
- constant 100% disk usage after boot
- high background process usage
- [Rare] messing with my dual partition setup
- The final error which caused me to format my PC -> After logging in, the desktop froze, no icons showing up, no task manager.
If I had never used Linux, these wouldn’t even seem like problem; just normal Windows shenanigans. But after using Linux, I can never go back. I don’t know how much worse/better Win11 is now but can’t be bothered to try.
My biggest issue with Windows (at least on my desktop) is with my GPU driver for my Intel Arc A770 LE. Windows Update will not stop automatically “updating” my driver to a driver that was made about a year and a half ago. It’s too old that Intel Arc Control doesn’t even work with it. It doesn’t matter how I install the latest driver from Intel, I can DDU the old one, install the driver and wipe all custom configurations or just install it normally. Nothing works, upon the next reboot, it automatically says “there’s an update” and installs regardless if I want it or not. The driver installation also has a 50/50 chance of blue screening my whole system when installing, both the installation from Windows update, and from Intel. The Window driver “updates” for my driver have also just happened randomly with no notice, they’ve occurred during hour long Blender renders, crashing it and wasting hours of my time redoing work. (This is all on Windows 10). It is frustrating to deal with
Meanwhile, my Linux install on the same computer just runs mesa and I’ve had no issues at all with my GPU. (Or any issues with drivers really, it all just works).
Although it didn’t “kill” my computer. Whenever I still used Windows, it would spontaneously install this outdated driver which would either blue screen or crash whatever I was in the middle of doing such as working in Blender, playing a game, etc.
A future Linux enjoyer spotted
I LOVE Linux and I am still to lazy to use it on my gaming PC… normal folks don’t want anything to do with it. Effort is an allergen.
what afford is there with steam?
but yeah if it is not steam, fair
Not everyone likes Linux.
Why wouldn’t you?
Hard to figure out. Have to settle for similar but different apps. Video drivers not built in. Inconsistant bluetooth. Update all breaks everything. Hard to get support for your individual set-up when Linux is so fractured.
Just to name a few.
Huh. I find windows way harder to figure out. I guess it depends on DE, but Windows is kinda just layers of cruft, with old confusing menus mixed with newer ones, installing apps in particular is a confusing mess.
Updates breaking things I guess depends on distro. If you go with something like Arch you’re gonna have a bad time, but that’s on you for installing Arch. If you installed Debian or something, stuff will break faaaar less often than with Windows.
Video drivers not being built in is an odd one, because… they aren’t in Windows, but are in Linux, assuming you use AMD or Intel. With Nvidia it’s usually a case of typing in “Nvidia” in your software centre, clicking install, then being done.
Support can be hard or easy, that’s very true. Although most stuff I see in terms of windows support is “have you tried a system restore? Oh it didn’t work? Ok reinstall Windows then”, which isn’t very helpful at all.
Man. That’s some weak-sauce arguments against linux. In my experience, just a default Mint install with no stuffing around of any kind came with fully-functional video drivers and bluetooth. No update has ever broken anything; and the first thing that launches after a fresh install is a menu with bunch of different ways to get personal support for Mint.
I don’t like Ubuntu that much but one thing they really do right is a tool that made installing the few drivers not built into the kernel stupid easy. That’s the number one thing I see people mess up with Nvidia drivers. You always install Nvidia drivers through your distro app store/package manager never the website.
I understand the mistake but it’s painful to see someone manually install Nvidia drivers from their website just for it to shit the bed in a kernel update.
I’m sure the update manager was probably very important back in the day but I am glad updates come through the software manager now. Even though I don’t use it it’s very intuitive.
When I installed Mint my entire video screen was tinted blue. Bluetooth sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. People yelled at me for having a Dell PC in support forums, and when I followed the advice of someone trying to help, he suggested to update all, and when I did the fans stopped working.
Hard to figure out.
It’s much easier nowadays. I find Windows much more hard to figure out now that I’ve made the switch. At the very least, everything in Linux takes very few steps to perform tasks and install programs compared to Windows.
Have to settle for similar but different apps.
The sooner you do it, the faster you’ll be free. Once you do, you can be confident that said program won’t undergo enshitification since it’s open source. That said some apps can’t be replaced like Photoshop if it’s for work. I like Gimp, but I understand it’s not for everyone.
Video drivers not built in.
It pretty much is now if you install an Nvidia specific distro. AMD is preferable of course.
Inconsistant bluetooth.
Totally fair.
Update all breaks everything.
Use a rolling release distro like Debian or Fedora and you should be fine.
Linux is not perfect, but it’s better than Windows. Nobody will force you to use your computer in a way you don’t want to. It’s so awesome and it’s free. There is no way I’ll ever go back to Windows. Linux is the ideal OS for so many people (especially those who go the extra mile to modify Windows heavily) they just don’t know it yet.
Use a rolling release distro like Debian
?
Hard to figure out
Which part? The one where to install an app, instead of downloading a .exe you search for the app in the package manager?
Have to settle for similar but different apps.
That’s not exclusive to Linux though. Like for example moving to MacOS you wouldn’t really expect for all the apps to work either?
Video drivers not built in.
Video drivers aren’t built into Windows either? And on Linux, AMD’s drivers are (as I understand it), and for Nvidia, you’ll probably have Noveau installed.
Inconsistent bluetooth.
How? I’ve found BT to just work on Linux, while on Windows I had to track down the specific drivers.
Update all breaks everything.
Unless you installed Arch (or any rolling release distro) as your first distro, this probably won’t be an issue.
Hard to get support for your individual set-up when Linux is so fractured.
Then maybe install Mint, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS or anything more widespread that does have the support you want?
Ah, I see. So because YOU understand something, and know what you’re doing, and haven’t had anything fail on YOU, then it must be everybody ELSES fault, right? Meanwhile Linux has less than 5% of PC userbase, and that INCLUDES Chromebooks.
I don’t think it’s even fairly controversial to say that Windows over the last couple of versions have turned into an unmitigated privacy dumpster fire, and only looking to get worse, and MacOS is and always has been a walled garden which offers very little in the way of customization or individuality.
Yet despite all that, Linux only has about 4% marketshare, because nobody is able to use it. But hey, must be 95% of societys fault, and not the direct result of a confusing to use interface, right? And if YOUR bluetooth works fine, and doesn’t refuse to connect at random until you restart, that must be something I’m making up and doesn’t exist, right?
I’ve been using windows 11 since general release and have had zero issues. Not with ads, not with updates, not with one drive. Well, unless you count clicking away pop-ups to use new features from time to time. Not once has a file been saved to onedrive.
It’s kind of disingenuous of you to proudly say, “I don’t use the same version of Windows that this person likely does and I don’t have the same issues that this person does so they must be full of shit”.
It’s kind of a wide disparity for something that’s so locked down, though. It’s not as though one person is saying they get occasional issues and the other is they often have issues… it’s one person basically saying their own personal computer is nigh unusable and the other providing an example of a large number of examples of that being extremely unlikely…
It’s far more likely this individual is fucking up their computer on a regular basis, or has a very high bar of usability that is broken any time there is even the slightest hiccup or inconvenience.
There aren’t many versions of windows since 10 and 2016. They are all very similar now.
There are vast differences between Windows home and Windows pro and Windows Enterprise editions as far as how easy it is to control and block off the annoyance ware that Microsoft builds into it.
If you use deployment software to roll out your images after standardizing them and have a set image that you can deploy to a thousand computers as easily as one then it’s very simple to sign in with a local domain account and disable the windows things through a group policy and just start rocking and rolling whereas your average Windows home user is not going to even have access to GPO and we’ll have to tediously for each and every single computer every single time they reset it redo all of the things to disable all of Microsoft’s crap activation.
They are not entirely different but definitely distinct versions of Windows and dismissing the home and non-enterprise users that their experience is inferior to your experience on the Enterprise side is what I’m saying is disingenuous
I’ve found the more you mess with defaults the more likely you’ll encounter problems.
The article author was talking about their work PC anyways.
Gpo/Intune just allows you make mistakes at scale.
The author was talking about their work computer suddenly not booting up the next day. The windows version differences wouldn’t cause this.
That’s the difference between the Home and Pro versions though. The things that generally break on the Home versions are all the things not generally enabled on a domain controlled Pro version. Thisbis more about Microsoft just being bad at small updates versus these giant roundup packages they like to ship.
What things? Home just doesn’t have GPO as far as I know.
The interesting thing for me is that I own two different surface pro 7 tablets. I have one for work and one for home (now that work doesn’t require me to bring my own device anymore). The work surface has windows 10 pro on it. My home one doesn’t, The difference is very interesting. The IT team have disabled a lot of stuff on my work surface that I don’t even have access to on my home unit. I don’t often have bugs from updates breaking things at work. I do at home though which is enough for me to perhaps upgrade the windows key on my home unit someday. If I don’t install linux first which is a possibility.
I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted.
“I’ve never experienced what you describe, so it must be either imagined or your own fault.”
I’ve seen this nonsense over and over again in communities of all kinds, most often in tech forums (where there are always a few participants suffering from a big-fish-little-pond effect). It’s a very rude and foolish bit of human behavior.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I think the guy you’re replying to is probably right, just because you can tell from the article the author is not really an expert or advanced user.
But I upvoted you because honestly we do not get enough random Shakespeare on online comments lol
Not just me, many others.
It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.
That is probably why Microsoft forced updates on people in W10.
My two cents, I could say the same as the author. My Windows work laptop most of the times cannot wake up from sleep (you know, opening the lid after it’s closed) so I have to force a restart. There’s a 50% or less chance that Bluetooth and WiFi won’t work at all (they won’t be displayed on Windows, like it’s not even a feature) after I turn the laptop on, so most of my pre-work morning is restarting the laptop until it’s working as intended. It’s the third laptop I got from them, they’re different models but they’re all HP, and they all had problems. The Macs and the same HP laptops running Linux have none of these issues.
There have been two distinct Windows updates in recent memory that have broken things.
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The one that stopped network printers from working, and you had to change a specific GPO setting which was not available in Intune at the time, meaning I had to do it manually on each computer.
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The one that removed all shortcuts to Office 365 apps from the desktop and start menu, necessitating a repair… manually on each affected machine.
So it does happen on occasion. It’s not as bad as in the XP days, but it still can be a little sketchy at times
I had an update completely and permanently bricked my webcam, and another that fucked up my audio (but that eventually got fixed months later).
Oh yes, I remember the audio one, too!
Odd, i didn’t need to address either of these.
I would have scripted it for Intune.
This was before proactive remediations were a thing. Script probably would’ve worked, although I find them a bit vague as to how they work
Intune was def missing a lot of features early on.
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Doesn’t even need updates, in the 10 years I was on Windows it didn’t want to start after shutting it down again like 7 times
I hated having to reinstall every year
I can kind of feel the author on this. I’m in charge of a lot of “special projects” at work that basically come down to, “figure out a way to replicate this extremely expensive technology or software using low cost or free alternatives”. It ends up being an unholy mix of programs and hardware that is held together with duct tape and super glue and any minor perturbation means something breaks.
Sounds like less of a Windows problem than an individual problem, though.
Blaming Windows cause your Frankenstein machine breaks often is disingenuous.
I’m not passing blame. Just giving an example.
Seriously, anytime people make complaints like these about windows, it just tells me they are either
- Tweaking their system in ways far beyond what the OS is designed for (which is fine, but then don’t blame Microsoft when updates break your system)
- Doesn’t know how to use a computer
- Knows how to use a computer but is willfully ignorant so they can rant at MS and get clicks
- Incredibly unlucky and not representative of the general population
Tweaking their system in ways far beyond what the OS is designed for
That’s the issue: the way microshit is taking windows is not acceptable for an increasing number of people.
Why would I allow Satya the creep to control my PC that I paid money for.
Also, why are they putting ads into it.
Updates rolling back privacy settings, although this stopped now.
Forced online accounts.
At what point is it too much for you? I bet over next few years microshit will get to you too lol
While I agree with most of what you’re saying, it’s also stupid to blame Microsoft for breaking your computer if you forcefully uninstall the Windows store, despite the fact that it’s needed for parts of certain updates.
A lot of the “debloaters” have no fucking idea what they’re actually doing and are uninstalling/disabling critical parts of the OS so the task manager shows less RAM usage (because God forbid you actually use your damn RAM).
Yeah they just need to accept their fate and join Linux.
At some point, fucking with Windows is more time and you have to be always doing it.
Linux you have set it up but after that it just works
#1 is by and far the cause I see when people ask me ‘why did thing break?!’
There’s a lot of ‘Well, I edited the registry and then deleted these two files and installed this 3rd party software so that it looks like it did in Windows XP!’ floating in my circles, which almost entirely correlates to the people who are mad that their install is, yet again, broken/not working as expected/having weird problems.
Of course, people are doing this because Microsoft can’t stop shitting up Windows in a way that annoys people, and thus leading them to do things that maybe aren’t the best idea.
So, in summary: it’s a land of contrasts, but stop adding bullshit nobody wants Microsoft.
Yet further proof that all anyone really wants is Windows xp with modern support.
That is what people want out of Windows, it dove off a cliff from there. I’d still be using Linux, but it’d be a harder choice if the alternative was XP instead of Data Harvesting Simulator 11 begging me to subscribe to me own hardware.
Well, people are trying to do just that. Small team and moves slowly, but slow progress is still progress.
Will it run on a Raspberry Pi 4, 4GB?
The year 2000 was peak human technology. It’s been downhill in every way since, until generative AI - which is f’in amazing. But let’s be real, the future belongs to the bots.
Can confirm. N64 existed before year 2000…but not WWF No Mercy, which came out in 2001. Lets call it 2002 was peak. Pretty sure GTA Vice City was out by then.
Honestly, I’d get on-board with just about anytime 2000 to 2010. The enshittification of the internet and social-media-driven comment culture didn’t start in earnest until smart phones took off.
The thing that usually kills windows is shitty drivers. So people with different hardware can have completely different experiences.
LIBREBOOT! LIBREBOOT! LIBREBOOT!
I just got a new laptop and was genuinely gonna try windows 11 and wsl for my coding needs. But in first boot, it demands internet to do updates. Ok, I connect to coffee shop wifi. Nope, won’t do it because it can’t handle the click through screen to accept wifi ToS. Fine. I take it home, where my Internet is great but has a glitch where it drops out for a few seconds now and then. Turns out that windows will literally cancel updating and demand I reconnect and restart for the kind of drop that I barely notice day to day. So I gave up, plugged in my ArchLinux thumb drive, and
mkfs.ext4before rsyncing my entire old computer to itYou use Arch Linux but can’t fix your wifi?
Actual autism I know
You sound like a Linux veteran.
I mean you probably want to have internet when you install any OS…
Haha… NO
Right. Having your OS up to date is not important, I suppose?
There is a difference between asking nicely and shoving down the throat.
Microsoft tried nicely during the XP era. We all know how it ended. The average user shall never be trusted with security.
I didn’t say otherwise…
I’m down but if it can’t handle a 5s dc then rip
the fact the install media can’t provide a working desktop by itself is pathetic.
The fact that it’s a requirement - and moreover automatically creates and integrates with MS cloud services - is what people don’t like.
Nobody is arguing that it’s a bad idea to let your chosen distro installer automatically pull the most up-to-date packages.
That’s great but none of that was mentioned in the comment I replied to.
They gave it access to the internet twice.
