I use EndeavourOS and it’s great, but for linux newbies or folks who just want a stable OS as a daily driver i’d recommend some other ones. I used POP_OS before switching to Endeavour and that was a solid one for me

Fedora is my recommendation of choice. The default Fedora + Gnome workflow out of the box is absolutely flawless.

Endeavour OS. . . . everything I’ve needed it to do, with the exception of a few games has worked either right out of box or with minor tweaks.

If I may ask, have you tried MS Office on your Endeavour OS box, and if so, what version and what were your results? Seriously, if you have a minute, I’d really appreciate hearing your specific experiences with MSOffice if you’ve tried it on Endeavour.

I inquire only because MSOffice is the only reason I wasn’t on Linux years ago, and any distro that can run MSOffice out of the box, macros included, I will install today. Not exaggerating: I have been trying out various distros for the last month, and MSOffice is literally the sole dealbreaker. I even have an Endeavour Cassini Nova LiveUSB ready to go; I’m on Zorin 16.3 Core right now for the same reason.

Let me know if you can, and thanks in advance.

Companies have got around this by only officially supporting one distro, like Steam with SteamOS (I think they also support Ubuntu). Steam also do static linking of the common libraries inside of ~/.local/share/Steam so that developers can be guaranteed to have something like zlib installed.

I think there is also an argument that linux distributions are converging due to systemd being ubiquitious. Although I personally don’t enjoy using it and have substituted openrc on my Linux desktop, I can accept that developers can’t reasonably support it and I would need to find a workaround to use their software.

The rise of Flatpaks will alleviate this issue, I think. Build a Flatpak for your app and you’re good to go.

For some word documents the layout is just fucked. Especially headers and footers seem to be problematic.

militant vegans

Well, then don’t. But don’t be surprised when things keep getting worse.

They don’t use it because there’s absolutely no need for them to do so when Windows is a fantastic OS for their needs

The issue has never been whether Windows is a good OS or not. Almost anything you can do with Linux you can also do with Windows[1]. The issue has always been the risk that Microsoft could pull the rug from under your feet and the fact that there’s nothing you can do about it as long as you’re on their platform. You can see all the bullshit that people have had to deal with in the past 10 years as the result of people being comfortable with taking that risk - shitty upgrades, telemetry, ads, and now this. And nobody even knows what other kinds of bullshit they’ll try to pull in the future.

None of this to say that you have to choose one platform or another. Everything is a calculated risk. Use Windows if that’s what you want, but by this point, it’s clear that you will have to continue with putting up with more and more of this abusive behavior from Microsoft if that’s the choice that you’re making.

[1]: This is somewhat starting to change though. These days, for a lot of programming- and data science-related tasks, Linux is starting to pull further and further ahead and Windows is becoming more and more unusable.

For me new Windows releases grow more annoying, slow and counter-intuitive. Switching PCs at work made it mandatory that I went through all ‘bad’ Windows, like Vista and 8, now on w10. Sure, XP-7-w10 weren’t\aren’t that bad, but they all feel worse than the previous one. Nevertheless, I could’ve sticked to one of them, get used to, no problem. But they all get outdated, can’t use X RAM, don’t have DirectX N, aren’t supported with security updates and are blocked from installing latest software.

Configuring it was very limited too. In W10 I can’t call TotalCMD or other file manager instead of win expoler from other apps. It eats RAM like candies for no reason. Touchscreen interfaces with empty spaces and no right click are everywhere. Undoing telemetry and defender requires know-how or executing scripts, otherwise it’s bloated. Start up times aren’t the best too.

Linux is a headache and it’s still far from a thing regular PC users would trust without a doubt to handle their usual tasks. The same state Windows slowly comes to, imho. But without being free and insanely customizable. The only things that I need to emulate are superproprietary DRMed products with no alternatives. They are a minority. Most users don’t need them, so they have one less argument against switching.

That’s my personal account tho. I’m a bit asurprised you like windows as a home system, so I’d want to hear about your positive experience with it if you have some outstanding moments with it.

People don’t use Windows because it’s a “fantastic” OS for their needs. It very evidently is not “fantastic” (or anywhere close) for anyone’s needs but Microsoft’s. People use Windows because it comes bundled with their PCs due to Microsoft’s monopolistic malpractices, and because they can’t get bothered to figure out how to get rid of that bloatware / malware (or, they would get rid of it if possible, but are held hostage by the software — or malware, e.g., Adobe — they need to work only working on Windows, again due to said monopolistic malpractices).

When was the last time you used Linux on the desktop? It has come a long way and is getting better every month

A Linux user watching someone use (and bitch) about Windows is like watching someone right click to copy & paste.

If you know of a vast improvement, why would you keep the benefits of better things to yourself?

Think about how often Windows users bitch about Windows. Think about how many zillions of things they bitch about and how many new things they find to bitch about all the time. Think about how many Windows users say things like, “I love this OS!” or, “This OS is so cool! Look what I can do!”

Now think about how many Linux users you see bitching about Linux. Think about how many are super excited about it and how many instantly become, “fanatics” practically overnight.

There’s a reason

Even when you’re a bit more savvy it’s easy to configure Windows to your liking without all the bloat and spying

Bootlicker spotted.

This has not been true since at least win10

Try stopping start or search services from pinging daddy sataya microshit and see how that shit works for you

Also, they revert privacy settings after updates.

There was nothing accidental about Linus. He did it on purpose, the system very clearly told him not to.

And Proton works much better than you imply. I don’t know about their new “tiered” rating, but 30% games get Platinum rating (top 1000 most popular titles by player count). Besides that 45% have Gold, and nowadays more often than not that means the game simply just works.
Trying to say “oh, but it doesn’t always work perfect!” is just nonsense.
How many games work perfectly without any issues on Windows?

And please don’t say anything about “UI polish” on Windows when it can’t even keep all its UI consistent - it’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

And Twitch… almost every game in top #10 works perfectly without any troubles, so what’s your point exactly?

I only use my over speed PC for one thing. Gaming. I’ve looked into going to Linux and shuddered at the immense trouble trying to make it work for me. I’m with you in that I have the knowledge, having used it for a couple decades, but I just don’t care to put myself through mountains of bullshit for an idea.

I also do programming and am fairly used to the terminal, and I still have a headache when thinking of going back to linux, because even when I want to do something as simple as watching netflix on firefox I had to go through a maze of troubleshooting via the terminal to get the correct packages installed. I can’t imagine what someone who isn’t tech savvy who tries to switch to linux would do.

The user experience on linux and its distributions just aren’t there for the everyday user, and until they are, windows will always be the preferable choice because it actually works. You don’t have to end up having a dispute with it on some arbitrary software download because it doesn’t quite like it, and have to wrangle through many software alternatives that aren’t always available or even anywhere near feature ready because they aren’t available on the platform.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

when Linus tried to install Steam on Pop_OS.

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Linus fucked up his os by entering the command that prompted him “are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do? if you don’t know, then it isnt.” and presed yes. windows does the same when doing a factory restore, if you click “yes i’m sure” then that’s on you. yes, ideally steam worked and he wouldn’t have had to try to fix it, but that kind of thing happens all the time on all software, linux just gives you the option of fixing it yourself instead of going “welp i’m not using that”.

this fix-it yourself mode of functionning is really what sets it apart from other OSes, for examp,e if you have a windows problem good luck finding anything beyond “have you tried dism /online?”, which by the way is also a console command and is like the very first step in all windows troubleshooting.

as for gaming, I daily drive debian and i’m not really encountering any setbacks beyond the obvious “this game developpers is incapable of making a linux anti-cheat so it won’t run on there at all” problem, or its cousin “this game developper is incapable of going into their EAC dashboard and click ‘enable linux support’” (yes, it is that easy, i have done it personally).

Also worth mentionning that Linus is accused by ex-employees of misconduct, and is generally an asshat when it comes to technology despite being a technology reviewer.

This is actually funny because I installed steam on pop os without issues. But that said, sometimes it freeze my whole pc and I have to hard reboot it (idk why)

edit: I don’t understand the down votes, it was supposed to be (as stated) funny and not insulting

unless you’re just naturally adventurous like me

LMAO

People like you are the reason I haven’t tried Linux.

I’m not up my own ass enough to proudly declare myself “naturally adventurous,” but I have stayed at a few Holiday Inn Expresses in other towns before. I use Debian and Ubuntu somewhat regularly, but mostly use Windows and MacOS in daily life, and I don’t understand where the “sinking ship” metaphor comes in. Microsoft will attempt this recurring-revenue monetization, and it will either be successful, or it won’t; Windows won’t go away if it isn’t. Otherwise, Apple prints money from its beautifully made consumer-friendly hardware, which also features shockingly good in-house silicon.

No ships are sinking. This isn’t some grand narrative where Linux awaits us all at the end of personal-computing history.

tRUth hUrtS

StackSocial’s parent company, StackCommerce, is listed as a partner with Microsoft, so they’re probably legit. Speaking for myself, the Win 11 key and two Office keys I’ve bought before haven’t had any problems.

Two things that boggle my mind:

1. In a thread where the discussion is about Microsoft possibly giving away a “free” future version of Windows and monetizing features, someone thinks it unlikely that Microsoft could sell Windows now at a loss hoping to push Office 365 and OneDrive subs, and

2. That some people feel such a sense of entitlement they’ll go to fantastic lengths to not pay for services or products they use. They think that just because they decide a movie, or album, or operating system is too expensive they can can acquire it without paying for it. (Not you obviously, since the nagware version of Windows is technically free, just… other people).

MS Office has long been replaced with Google Docs.

No it hasn’t. My Son is currently in Engineering School here in the States and MSO is a requirement. My Niece is working on her BSN at a different College and MSO is a requirement.

Then you graduate and find out that nearly every business is also using MSO and you’ll be interacting with it daily at work. So when you get home and need to type something up…well…there’s a reason that Microsoft has 50 Million subscribers to it’s MS Family Plan.

This website is a godsend https://www.protondb.com/

You can search any game in steam, and it will tell you exactly what to expect.

For most games, it’s as simple as checking one box in the steam settings for the first time.

Linux gaming has made mind blowing progression thanks to Valve.

If you’re using Steam, most games run, zero fiddling needed.

I’m running Void Linux and have no issues running most games. Proton pretty much handles everything. And performance is often better than on Windows these days.

Other platforms are a bit more difficult. There are several apps that take care of the heavy lifting, but a bit more knowledge is required.

Pretty much thrown out every Windows installation and haven’t missed them at all.

like the other guy said with steam its just like on windows, no fiddling 95% of the time.

you can lso use heroic for other launchers like epic or gog I believe so it’s hassle free

and lutris for anything else like older games (which are better on linux as well, because they don’t mess with your screen resolution and they might even run on linux where they can’t on windows)

Check out protondb.com … click explore and check out how many games run perfectly on Linux now.

Valve / the steam deck is really pushing development.

There has been a lot of progress recently due to the SteamDeck, but it’s still not as good as Windows gaming. There are a few outlier examples where games run better on linux, but those are few and far between. Give it another few years, and hopefully things will improve even more.

Pretty much the only games that don’t work now are games with anticheat.

Steam really pushed windows games on Linux after the steam deck.

It’s been at the point for awhile now that I can just buy games on a whim without looking up any sort of compatibility, and I just assume they work. It’s worked every time so far. Right now I’m like 100 hours into Bauldurs Gate 3 lol. The other online game I play is Genshin Impact, which I just had to install with the exe through wine and then it just works.

Pretty rare that you run into an issue at all these days, but one big bummer is that non-steam-workshop mods are a pain to install. Basically anything that uses a mod manager.

Short answer: no. You can expect to fiddle at least sometimes. Many games will run out of the box in proton, but there a million things that can throw a wrench in the gears. I’ve personally never had a 100% seamless experience for the duration of a game.

This has been true across a couple distros, although none that were specifically geared toward gaming. Maybe I’ll change my tune next time I hop distros.

In my opinion, Inkscape is a great competitor to Adobe Illustrator. The problem comes in with the fact that we don’t have a viable image manipulation software. Gimp just aint it.

sounds like laziness to me