The writing is on the wall–I suspect the next Windows OS will be a subscription service. Gather your ISOs while ye may.
Help your friends install linux today!
I am an apostle of Saint Penguin.
I regret upgrading to 11 on my home machine. I want to either go back to 10, or just migrate to Linux Mint. Only two things stopping me from jumping is a) My graphics are Nvidia, and b) making time for it.
The Linux and nvidia situation is getting better, I haven’t had problems in a while.
I switched to mint this year with a Nvidia 4080. so far I have been able to get everything I need running with minimal or no involvement. Counterstrike 2 is the most obnoxious which requires me to disable my secondary monitors. That doesn’t happen with anything else and most new games have been good.
If you don’t play something with an ajticheat you know is incompatible with Linux I’d definitely reccomend jumping.
Mint’s Nvidia support has gotten A LOT better over the last few years. You can try it out and see how it goes. Message me if you want help with that.
Thanks very much!
Is it better than PopOS’s NVIDIA-specific ISO?
Personally I’ve never used PopOS so I can’t speak to it.
Fair enough. :)
I urge everyone to install linux on an old notebook and see if it works for you with firefox as a browser and thunderbird for emails
Or better yet try it on your main notebook/desktop. Try to get the same things done you did before with Windows and if it works for you, stick with it.
yeah, Id recommend switching on your secondary machine, so you can try it out and use it properly, but not get frustrated if it does something you don’t expect.
Whatever linux version is on the Steam Deck wasn’t bad to use when I needed Desktop mode. It was pretty similar experience-wise to windows (no mac experience).
That’s probably KDE - the K Desktop Environment. Linux variants are called “distributions” and they are basically software bundles maintained by groups.
Desktop environments are basically bundled themes and software to present a desktop, bars, effects, and so on. Windows basically has one desktop environment, but linux has many: Most popular are KDE (windows like) and Gnome (Mac like), but there are more like Cinnamon, XFCE, LXQt, LXDE, which look more like windows.
Desktop environments also have window managers - they do what they say, manage your windows: maximize and minimize them, stack them (stacking window managers), tile them (tiling window managers), or even allow only one window at a time (like kiosks).
If you want to start your linux journey, grab bazzite if you want to game or linux mint debian edition (comes standard with cinnamon desktop environment, but you have the choice during installation to use KDE too) and give it a go!
You can also test distros (linux mint for example) online!
This is good to know. I want to put Mint on my laptop but I do like the look of steamdeck desktop too.
That linux distro tester is really cool. Bazzite is also pretty neat. Thanks for sharing!
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SteamOS is based on Arch, which you do not want to use and maintain as a beginner. what matter is the desktop environment, which in SteamOS’ case is KDE Plasma, a great choice in my completely unbiased opinion.
Good points. Its worth mentioning that while SteamOS is based on arch (a famously unstable distro), it is immutable, so the user will have a much harder time bricking their system. KDE plasma was the right choice I agree, considering the number of windows users Valve is marketing towards.
Why Thunderbird
I’ve been using Thunderbird for years and it’s great as an Outlook substitute.
Because it works well
What about round cube?
It is cross platform. Users can try it, regardless of the OS and do not have to switch behavior when switching the OS.
I love Linux but Programs like CAD and professional graphics software don’t run. Still Linux is only an option for programming and gaming.
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Well but Thunderbird can get mails from dozens of email addresses at the same time.
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cue the "one of our devs slipped and fell on a keyboard, completely coincidentally hitting all the right keys in the right order to code this. Completely coincidentally! "
this is just proof that the internet will complain about the most meaningless things.
Small businesses that can’t afford a dedicated IT department and pro licenses are gonna love this. I’m sure Linux will pick up more users but the real winner will likely be Apple and Macs.
Small business that can’t afford dedicated IT usually outsource to a consultant or MSP, who damn well better sell them on Pro.
If you can’t afford proper licensing as a business, I doubt you’re gonna make it
I have friends in the SMB consulting space - ALL of their clients run Pro, with at least one DC. Their smallest clients are 2-3 person environments.
A business needs a lot more than a workstation or two - backup, security (IDS/IPS/firewall/spam filtering), email (pretty much all hosted these days). You’re not doing this without pro licensing. You can’t even use Group Policy on home.
These issues truly only affect home users - specifically the non-technical. And that’s such a small set of people it’s almost doesn’t matter to MS, which is why they’re pushing this crap there.
That kind of depends on the business, doesn’t it? I’m sure there are plenty of small businesses that don’t even know what a SMB consulting space is. I suspect there a lot of people running businesses off their laptop. You might have a narrow view of what constitutes a small business.
the real winner will likely be Apple and Macs
I’m sure they will find a way to enshittify in a equally intrusive manner.
Honestly, kinda glad that my win10 PC “doesn’t have the specs” to run win11. Stupid, because I’m running an 18-core Xeon w/ 128 gigs of ram and a 2070 super, but of course the stupid TPM chip. But oh well, guess I won’t be able to get ads on my own product.
The bummer is I’ll likely need to install it on something because I occasionally need to go back to windows to use certain programs… maybe someday wine will work well enough to actually use reliably…
Is it possible to run what you need in a VM? That’s how I’ve been running things that need Windows to function correctly and it hasn’t broken yet. Can even get 11 working with an emulated TPM, including Windows Subsystem for Linux inside the VM if you’re feeling particularly bored.
Are you absolutely sure the programs you need don’t work in wine/proton? The last few years have been a renaissance in terms of increased compatibility.
One game I used to play recently started working suddenly in the latest proton major release (I think 9), it wasn’t mentioned in the release notes and it has no community around the game since it was released around windows vista, as well as being pulled from stores for many years (I still have it on steam) so I don’t think anyone intentionally fixed it but probably just a result of some system call being implemented or tweaked to behave closer to correct.
So yeah, it’s very good to test your broken wine apps every 6 months to a year because slowly anything I ever had issues with in wine is starting to work.
I tried fusion360 last week and it was broken; some big update they released broke it and now I just gagged to wait for it to get fixed, I guess. Will try it again in a month or so asked are if it’s fixed… but I’ve always had awful luck getting wine working. Same w/ photoshop
Ah-hem: https://reactos.org/
I’m still learning how to use this but let me know what you think.
Get LTSC and run the MS scripts to permanently license it.
I’ll drop links in a bit - on phone atm.
I have LTSC 2021 officially (MSDN) and I have to say I’m not very impressed. You still can’t turn off the telemetry crap. There is still a windows store. There’s a bit less bundled scamware but beside that it’s a bit overrated IMO.
Group Policy.
Enterprises can’t allow such external accesses/data for security and compliance issues (depending on the industry).
Via GP, all that can be disabled.
I am someone that is a Microsoft professional by trade and have been for about 20 years. I have absorbed everything that Microsoft has ever done in the Windows, Server and Cloud ecosystems, but Windows 11 was what really broke this lovely glass dream.
Under Windows 10, I was ale to create a custom image and use advanced policies to block the crap, Windows 11 on the other hand you can still do the same but with every update, it reverts settings back to their “default” without notification or even recorded information.
I would say to anyone that has the “but Windows is better for gaming…” you are living in the 00s to early 10s! With the Wine program and Valves Proton program, I am able to run all games that I own (1000+ games… I am a Valve sales bundle addict alright?!?). I am able to play games such as Star Citizen, Planetside 2, PalWorld, Helldivers 2 with a few clicks of a button, and only a couple of clicks if the game is Proton gold or above.
From my testing on several distros I would say start with something friendly such as Mint Cinnamon or PopOS (linux die hards, remember not everyone wants to spend time figuring things out on a daily basis and these OS from my experience are the most Windows-esque - i mean I started with Garuda and I am stubborn to learn it instead of jumping to another distro). Then spend a bit of time just getting the basics of a Linux system of your choice, such as the file system and how to install packages (apps). Don’t forget you also have platforms such as YouTube that people will show you click for click on what to do!
But… yes there is a but… if you have an nVidia GPU your experience might not be as smooth. If you want to take a leap and have the best experience, have at least an AMD GPU and even better an AMD system. Unfortunately this is purely on nVidia still having their finger up their ass on open source drivers.
Granted I’m not a gamer but my Linux multi-OS desktop machine has zero problems with its nVidia GPU. YMMV, as we used to say.
It definitely has gotten a lot better in the nVidia driver side but it’s not on AMD levels yet. But this is my experience with a 960 and 3080Ti. My 6800XT and 5700XT have been smooth sailing.
Sheesh, talk about overreaction.
Almost all commercial software are advertising their manufacturers other stuff. Ever installed a graphics card driver? How many ads does that show for games and software that can run on the card? Steam also pushes sales by pop-up advertisements.
Google has been fined multiple times because they went much further than just advertising their own stuff.
Can you disable ads on an ad platform with a single setting? Didn’t think so.
So no, Windows 11 is not an ad platform, not even close.
I don’t see an ad in my graphics driver. Even update notifications are optional.
When I open steam, it is because I’m thinking of gaming and most often, I’m hoping for a game deal popup.Though, I’d love to not require opening Steam when I just want to play a game.
And that’s why I’m willing to forego regional pricing and pay almost 4x for GoG games, at least for games I feel like I will be playing for a long time.Are we really comparing a store showing ads to an operating system showing ads?
Google is shit tho, we all know that. But windows 11 is an ad platform.
We are introducing a new Game Pass recommendation card on the Settings homepage.
They are saying like they just invented something amazing, yet they are just pushing a fucking ad.
The Game Pass recommendation card on Settings Homepage will be shown to you if you actively play games on your PC.
How would you know what we actively do on our PCs, huh? Huh???
Good news is that you can turn off most ads, including app promotions in Windows 11’s start menu.
For now, but you have to be extremely naive to believe they don’t plan to change this as soons as they reach a certain number of users. They already did things like that in the past.
Enshittification comes for all things eventually. “You’ll own nothing and like it.”
Yeah that slogan really captured very well the intentions at the world economic forum.
I know it’s not what they officially stated but it really captured (they since walked it back and said it only was meant to “describe emerging trends”) the intentions of what happens when they all come to Davos and divide the world between them.
But I don’t believe “as a service” models are more sustainable. They will just enable more rent-seeking behaviour meaning we will get even less for our money. The incentive to deliver will be even lower as they will get paid anyhow.
My Sibling in Christ, giving us less for our money and giving them more control over our lives is the intent of all of this. Time to seize the means of computation.
Probably something that could be dns blocked. Hopefully anyway.
I hope so, sincerely hope so.
How long before the majority of game development is defaulting to Linux/Unix instead of windows? Getting native Linux games to run on windows is only becoming easier and easier with WSL? To me it seems like less of a hastle than trying to go the other way like we do today with proton and wine. Can someone enlighten me?
I’m naive enough to think it would happen faster if there were more market demand, but that’s likely my 1990s programming failing to adjust to the 21st century.
According to Steam’s own survey, Linux is still less than 2% of the user base and it doesn’t look like it’s changing much. I don’t know how it has looked historically though but probably not too much different.
Realistically speaking, it’s only a small percentage of people who bought the Steam Deck, and they probably already had a gaming PC, which means they probably had a Windows PC.
So unfortunately, I don’t think Linux gaming is anywhere close.
3 things I’m still looking to get in one distro and Windows will be gone. Not looking to have my desk/lap turn into another ad platform like phones did.
Easy drive mapping for remote shares, most have this but some are a bit clunky.
Solid games support, mostly a WINE thing. One called Bazzite looks promising with a pile of pre-configured profiles.
Easy and reliable connection to a DC so the same creds can be used across multiple machines. This is probably the hardest part in Nix at this point.
Otherwise pretty well every app I use is web based and hosted on some local server, or has a Nix native variant.
I wonder if Fedora would have a toolchain for networked credential management, with its connection to RedHat and everything
I have had some good luck with Bottles.
Its pretty freaking solid!
Linux has had LDAP and other ways to use the same credentials across multiple machines since forever ago.
Carls JrMicrosoft Windows. Fuck you, I’m eating!I’m very glad that my definitely-100%-legit copy of Windows 10 seems to have no idea how to upgrade to 11. It still gets other updates, my hardware is definitely compatible. The thought of upgrading to 11 just never seems to enter its mind. I suspect I’ll be sticking with Windows 10 for a long, long time, until either Microsoft give up on this ridiculous idea in response to customer backlash, or Linux becomes a viable option for my usecase (Nvidia GPU, lots of proprietary software that I need to use for university and future career). It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve held onto an older version of Windows for a protracted period of time, skipping a dreadful iteration or two, and then upgrading when Microsoft have learned their lesson.
I stuck with 7 for an extremely long time under similar reasoning. Like I missed win 8 completely and only got 10 in maybe 2018. And only because I needed a version of directX for work that was unsupported on 7.
And it was the same shit back then. 10 was pulling a lot of the same tricks. Ads, reinstalling candy crush without permission, more bloat and antifeatures.
Eventually a combination of third party tools and understanding of how to keep the garbage at bay made 10 tolerable. And, I guess, now 10 is the semi-reliable legacy alternative to the current shitfest.
Is there a Shutup10 analogue for Windows 11? Or an LTSC? Not looking forward to having to go through that dance again. But I assume the day will come.
I’ve been a late adopter of every version of Windows I’ve ever used - and I skipped 8 too, switching to 10 around the same time you did because my software required it. It does seem the best way to avoid most of the problems: Microsoft has moved on to pulling its old tricks on the newest version, and there are more tools for modifying the old version. So I figure I’ll switch to 11 or 12 when Microsoft is doing awful things with 13.
I stuck with 7 for an extremely long time under similar reasoning. Like I missed win 8 completely and only got 10 in maybe 2018. And only because I needed a version of directX for work that was unsupported on 7.
I only upgraded to 10 in early 2021, and only because I had reached a point where I didn’t see another option. My next upgrade is increasingly likely to be something Linux. Every new bit of info about Win 11 just makes me want it less.
You. I like you. We can be friends.
I am definitely happy to be friends. :)
Awesome. Hello Friend!
Hello friend! It’s lovely to meet you! :)
How are you? :)
Not too bad. How are you?
I mean, this particular cyberpunk dystopia isn’t what I had hoped for . . .
