Execs: Holy shit. Give him a raise.

Lay off everyone else while you’re at it.

Ads will continue till the users fall in love with ads

With that attitude, you’ll never work in marketing…

REPLACING the start menu with AI is the way to go!!!111

Where is the research part of “marketing research”? lol

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Good god that’s actually insane. Corpos have completely lost it.

Sponsored product recommendations cannot be loaded without an internet connection. Please configure a wireless/ethernet adapter and connect to the internet to continue.

Nah you’ll have to download a half-english app, sign up on a website you haven’t heard before, request BIOS access code, wait up to a month and then you can do that

If they are gonna put advertisements in the bios then ill flash my pc with libreboot

BaaS??! Oh FFS. It’s too real.

Don’t give them any ideas. They are watching the forums 😂

The funny part is that windows will change your boot order back without your consent.

Anyone who does should be trialed for crimes against humanity.

Just comment or comment with post?

Exception: 95 and 98

Seems like they’re on track to break the streak with Windows 12.

XP was terrible until sp2 and in fact so insecure that people all over the world got infected by all kinds of shit.

If you had a touchscreen, 8 was great. I ran 8 on my Yoga and enjoyed it. But I must admit 8.1 was significantly better than 8.

And 10 was better than 8.1, so I mostly disagree with you.

But yeah, I really didn’t mind 8/8.1.

Far better. Let the crowd shout. Win 8.1 was the last version enjoyable.

Linux mint keyboard shortcuts mimic those of windows tho, Linux mint is the best choice for windows refugees, this is one of the things majority of Linux community is agree about. Edit: in Linux mint you also can change keyboard shortcuts with gui tools already pre installed

Funny, one of my longstanding frustrations with windows was that I didn’t get a say in my keyboard shortcuts. Namely the fact that the shortcut to swap keyboard layouts has historically been very easy to accidentally hit.

If you ever do switch I suggest something with KDE, I love keyboard shortcuts and I find anything other(Windows the most) extremely lacking in that field.

As someone who uses all 3 (work-issue MBP, personal dev laptop on fedora 40, overbuilt gaming-oriented desktop on w10 with a dual boot Ubuntu partition I haven’t used in ages because WSL lets me do what I need to most of the time), it’s really not that bad. Then again, I’ve had a trifecta like that for well over a decade at this point, so maybe I’ve just fully acclimatized to switching machines and OSes for different primary activities all the time.

This. I have dabbled with various Linux distros over the past 15+ years out of curiosity. I have, without fail, had to spend days troubleshooting and fixing various problems of all kinds. Sometimes it was WiFi drivers, sometimes it was GPU drivers, sometimes it was power management issues, and most recently it’s soundcard drivers and poor audio control/quality issues. I always installed Linux as dual-boot so I had my normal Windows install to fall back on but I just couldn’t see myself able to fully switch primary OS over.

Nowadays I couldn’t switch over even if I wanted to because numerous programs I use for my work are not supported properly or at all. Linux has indeed come a long way over the years in terms of UX and software compatibility, but not everyone uses their computer just for games. There is a lot of creative and productivity software (and devices!) that have limited or zero Linux support and many FOSS alternatives are not sufficient. I hate Adobe as much as the next person and Photoshop is a bloated pile of trash, but part of my soul dies whenever a Linux fan tells me I can just replace Photoshop with GIMP. GIMP is clownware.

Another major issue I had was the community itself. When troubleshooting the issues I’ve had over the years, one big problem that kept popping back up was how toxic and condescending the Linux community can be. On more than a few occasions my requests for help on forums were met with passive aggressiveness and hostility because I “should have known better” or something along those lines. The most recent example I can think of was someone asking me to post a debug log to troubleshoot an issue I had and I had to ask him where to find the log. He told me the folder it would be in but not the folder path to get there. When I asked again where to find the log, he just told me that “maybe Linux isn’t for you”.

You know what? Maybe it isn’t. It sure isn’t for most people and I can’t see that changing soon.

To comment on the first paragraph, that is just a skill issue. Before I switched to Linux I was pretty adept at Windows, but some things are hard to figure out because it’s hidden behind layers of bullshit. Running commands that obscure what exactly they’re doing, just because some guy on some forum said it worked for him, is how you get around on Windows and that knowledge is something you build over many years. Knowing where specific settings are or what values to use takes time. The same counts for Linux. If you stick to it, that knowledge will come with experience.

Just remember the dism and sfc scannows, registry hacks etc the average Joe doesn’t know about. Your learnt it, you didn’t start using Windows with that knowledge. The same will happen with Linux.

I’ve been exclusively Linux for years, and all the crap now going on with AI and ads being shoved into literally everything makes me happier than ever with that decision.

But you’re absolutely right. Linux is “it just works” in a relatively narrow use-case.

Just going on the internet to browse and play some Facebook games (my parents). It’ll absolutely work out of the box.

Doing some light creative work (design, writing, etc…) No tinkering needed.

But from there it becomes a scale from “probably work fine” to “hours of work and extra repositories needed”.

Video editing or 3D modelling with an NVIDIA card because CUDA, it SHOULD be easy to install, but there’s a chance it won’t be. You take your chances.

Gaming through proton? Single player games, yeah. I’ve literally had 95% work out of the box because Valve is awesome. But I don’t play online multiplayer. If you need to play nice with anticheat software, good luck.

I too get frustrated with the fundamentalist Linux base who think its the right fit for everyone. Because it absolutely is not, and its okay to admit that because admitting that drives the motivation to improve it.

I don’t think Linux is for aging hardware. It just depends of your needs. Linux support all mainstream hardware, I guess. Never had any problems with something not working on Linux. I remember many years ago I had a scanner, which used to work only with Win XP or Vista because of outdated drivers. Windows 7 was too modern for it. I tried it with Linux and it worked. Now I have some random-hardware PC, everything works. It’s Intel Core 11400 hardware, AMD RX-GPU, quite modern. I think problems could be on laptops with display backlight, sleep mode or something else. Desktop PC’s should be good. Even if you have last-gen hardware, just use the latest kernel. I haven’t heard about Linux build hardware. It used to be a thing for Hackintosh builds.

My previous company HP laptop worked better on Linux, it wasn’t that hot all the time. Because Linux was consuming less system resources. My work: Browser + IDE. I had dual-boot Win10 and Ubuntu. Ended up with Windows because of Pulse Secure crap and some specific network restrictions. It was years back.

I remember I gave up with Ubuntu 5 years ago at home because after system update It just failed to boot. I didn’t touch anything. I don’t know if it’s possible today. And Proton wasn’t here and I wanted to play games. I remember I was using Lightroom, but for my very basic photographer needs Darktable works perfectly. And it’s free!

All you need is basic troubleshooting skills. You need to google sometimes. I know that it could be an issue. Linux not for everyone. And it’s fine. It’s good to have a chose. Linux gives that choice.

Now I’m a bit curious how a mouse could theoretically be windows only?

IIRC bluetooth mice use basically the USB protocol but through bluetooth instead of a cable.

Hey fellow HoTS Linuxer!

CS2 linux version has some issues. Sometimes forcing steam to install the windows version and to run it via proton makes things better.

I tried to get nobara to run a few times but sth was always broken. I’m now on Bazzite after testing Linux Mint a few months. Bazzite seems to be the more polished fedora based gaming distro.

I just got a steam deck, and needed to install FF14 (non steam) so I was mucking around in desktop mode… yeah. I’ll prob be getting a spare drive for my tower now to try out Linux. I’d love nothing more then to cut ties to windows.

I thought Arch was more tricky, than Debian

Hell you can even just change desktop environments to shake things up as well.

But I keep hearing everyone here saying this year is totally the year of the Linux desktop.

So you removed all of the windows 11 from the windows 11, sounds pretty tolerable.

I heard it’s pretty good with the bloat stripped. Honestly, if I’m going to start modifying my system I decided I’d rather have an OS that supports it properly.

More power to you though!

Do you have any guides or tips for others that might want to do the same?

‘clean up your PC’ type programs get sketchy, so reliable recommendations would be appreciated

Same, but I run a “pro” version that I acquired from work like a decade ago.

American software is terrible at handling multi lingual users, aka people outside the US. Web browsers and Google services suffer from similar problems, but the random quotes in the lock screen are certainly something new to me.

I’m actually scared to dual boot. I’ve heard too many stories of Windows updates messing up the bootloader

Nope. As a Linux user, even I’m annoyed.

I’ve seen people ask legitimate Windows troubleshooting questions and then don’t get an answer but dozens, if not more, messages to switch to linux.

It drives people away.

I use Beastie btw

I have lived the time when unpatched windows was the norm. Oh the network worms which roamed freely and created huge bot nets. Sad that Microsoft has forgotten that.

I think there’ll be some users but honestly? I think you’ll have three general kinds of users. Those that just bite the bullet and upgrade to 11, those that don’t care and will continue to use Win10 for more years to come, and the minority that care enough to try this “Linux thing” out.

Yes, I think a minority group of IT enthousiasts will be pushed towards Linux. But for a lot of average users, it is way too much of a hassle, unless the ONLY thing they do is browse the web.

In my 4 weeks with Mint, I encountered: -Complete system freezes from plugging in USB to USB hubs. -Bluetooth not working (fix was updating to a newer Kernel… ok… why is that kernel not standard when bluetooth is broken on the older kernels?) -Random inconsistant UI scaling issues when working with two monitors (and even on the same monitor) -permission issues when instaling flatpacks from the software manager (let’s disable USB permission for arduino… yeah… that’s silly)

I figure all the shit out because I want it to work. But it’s not the be-all end-all that people here on Lemmy make it out to be.

Switching an OS is always difficult. In 2006 I switched to Mac for about 6 years. The first few months were pain and agony. After that, it was great. Same with many Windows upgrades. And the same will be true for switching to Linux.

2025 is going be the year of cheap hardware. A lot of people will just buy new computers/laptop’s.

I’m helping some people already with setting up Linux. But most average users will not set up Linux. It’s just to scary.

The same thing happened with Windows 7 and XP. People will still with EOL 10 until their current machine dies. A few people might choose to explore other options, but for the average Joe not getting updates seems like a good thing, because the computer will stop rebooting over night or taking several mintss to boot post patch. Of course they don’t think about the security implications, but that is true about most people in most cases.

I don’t think they’ll extend it, but I’m predicting that there will be some massive bug or security issue found in Windows 10 after its support has ended, and Microsoft will be forced to create an update for it since Windows 10 will retain such high market share.

Not sure why so many companies are so focused on making a miserable user experience these days. I know it’s mainly about appeasing shareholders, but it feels like there should be a few more long-sighted people in the mix who can see this backfire in the end.

I’d love to be eating my words here, but I think Microsoft would rather pull all the marketing tricks out the book to force everyone into Win11.

What confuses me is their weird TPM and whatever else requirements. I have a decent system, but it doesn’t support Windows 11 (thank the gods), so what is their plan for people like me exactly? Like I’m going to replace my motherboard and CPU just to use windows 11? This feels like multiple parts of Microsoft fighting each other.

However, if they say ‘okay guys, we heard you, one more year of support!’. This way they could farm so much PR points its insane.

Cant guess which one they will choose tbh.

I’d love to be eating my words here, but I think Microsoft would rather pull all the marketing tricks out the book to force everyone into Win11

Windows is not what Microsoft gains profit from, they clearly say that in their yearly reports for like a decade. They don’t want you to upgrade to Win11, that’s why they set the upgrade requirements. They don’t want to make Windows, they want to sell cloud Linux and other opensource because it brings money and raises stock value. They want you to drop Windows without any lawsuits against them. Preferably gaining some ads money before you do.

Lack of Ableton Live support is also why I probably won’t switch to Linux. Even though years ago I used to dual boot Ubuntu and quite liked it as an OS, the lack of DAW support is the real deal breaker for me too. Ableton Live is just too good and I know it too well to switch away from it.

Some kernel anticheats work too, I had no issues playing Helldivers and Hell Let Loose, both of which use EAC. Developers have to enable Linux support, which AFAIK is just one checkbox, so you still get games that don’t allow it (like EVE Vanguard), but most of them are OK.

League and Valorant is a different story, those don’t work.

Games that use Vanguard don’t work afaik, but Helldivers 2 works just fine via Proton.

Helldivers 2 works on Linux.

Good to know!

Helldivers 2’s AC works also

I would highly advice against using Wine. It requires constant root access, just like virus scanners, making your system vulnerable.

This can’t be right. Was it maybe a particular workflow you used that required root access? I know I’ve used wine as part of Steam’s Proton as well as via Lutris and neither app has ever requested privilege escalation. I’ve also run wine manually from the terminal also without being root.

I think you’re mistaken there.

Wine is a vanilla Linux executable that runs as the user who launched it. The Windows program it runs thus also runs under that user. That’s possible because Wine doesn’t do anything system-wide (like intercepting calls or anything), it already gave the process its own version of i.e. LoadLibrary() (the Windows API function to load a DLL) and can happily remap any loaded DLL to Wine’s reimplementation of said DLL as needed.

Here are, for example, the processes created when I run Paint Shop Pro on my system (the leftmost column indicates the user each process is running as):

Also, some advice from WineHQ:

I would say: don’t rely on Wine if you’re dependent on the programs it runs somehow. If you don’t want to spend hours troubleshooting programs, then accept your losses.

After days of messing about getting music VSTs to work, I decided to stop troubleshooting any error I have within Wine. If a program works with Wine straight away: lucky me! If something doesn’t work: I count my loss and accept I won’t be able to use that program on Linux for now.

And obviously, don’t install and run andom programs that you wouldn’t install on Windows either. But that’s just common sense.

Haha agreed.

I got my info from the Affinity Forum

No first hand experience. However, with my short time with Wine, I’m hestitant to rely on it. Any update from either Wine or the software it’s running could break things. Cool if it works, but not something I’d want to bet my work on.

I think for that usecase, Lutris might help. It is basically Wine for games, where it tries to find the right settings for your specific games. If the Epic store installs at all, that is.

But I’ve commented this a few times now: Wine is… very hit and miss and might not be worth your time.

Thanks for the heads up about flatpaks! I’ll look into it.

I believe debs are installed through my Software Manager ? When I said “get debs from official source” I meant that bigger software like Godot, Steam, Handbrake etc I prefer to download from their official website. Most stuff in software managers are several versions behind.

I agree that you shouldn’t be downloading random debs for some small apps made by a random person, for obvious security reasons.

End of life ≠ breaking it. It will continue working as long as Microsoft doesn’t touch it and apps support it.