Really trying not to be that “use Linux” person, but it’s easy to underestimate the impact this has on user perception. It was communicated to me by these actions that this isn’t my computer. It kept pissing me off, so I went with something that respects me.
I think Microsoft is okay with that because their operating system isn’t a main profit center anymore. It’s cloud stuff.
Over the years, Microsoft has been quietly taking away control from the users.
There’s been a transition from normal settings that you can do whatever you want with, to “yes / remind me later” settings that Microsoft uses to badger you until you submit, to finally just no setting at all - just quiet compulsory data collection and surveillance; with various bits of mysterious software that you can’t uninstall or disable or halt - because you’re not the admin - Microsoft is.
It’s not even good for non technical users. Microsoft takes admin responsibility, but then they manage it poorly by applying updates that haven’t been properly tested and using your system as the guinea pig.
I’ve seen this happen to family. Forced update comes in, breaks system.
People have talked about proton and how it can play practically everything these days (I even got it working with games that don’t work with modern windows) but if you play multiplayer games with anti-cheat, here’s a useful site areweanticheatyet.com
In my case, many of my games are purchased through Steam, which automatically handles Linux compatibility for most games. The product page of the game lists the compatible operating systems as SteamOS, Linux, or SteamPlay. You can also set up proton directly for other games, which is a fork of Wine that has really good gaming support these days.
I wouldn’t call it a completely solved problem. It’s always possible to find games that just won’t work, but most of them do. Even most DRM works. If the DB covers the games you care about then you’re golden.
I’m pretty sure Windows is a key part of their “cloud stuff” strategy. You are right that consumers are not the direct focus of Windows, since they are not the direct paying audience, and that shows in the direction Windows is going, but getting consumers to use Windows is a big part of creating corporate buy in for Microsoft cloud services. Corporate environments will shun Microsoft cloud services if employees can’t use Windows, or Windows features run afoul of corporate policies (like blanket LLM bans).
I mean sure, c# is better than java, but c# also makes you dependant on MS and all their shenanigans. Java is free of such burdens. Oracle sure is a dependency, but you’re free pick another vendor or fork your own.
Even the small things. When work upgraded to Win11 overnight and I logged into the Start being in the middle, I almost lost it. Yes, I could fix it, and a few other things, but I had a moment.
I don’t mind the taskbar in the middle, it’s like Apple’s dock. What I really hate, is the news popup on the left… and I don’t even mind the floating Start menu, I’ve been using MadAppLauncher for like a decade or more.
I hadn’t minded it if it were on the center. As you know, it was actually somewhere around the center, changing its position every time I added an icon or whatever in the taskbar. And they were proud enough to call it a UX revolution. WTAF…
if you feel comfortable mucking about in your BIOS, disabling TPM will pretty much guarantee they don’t spring 11 on you. they are really dead set on that requirement for some reason.
I understand it’s not for everyone but I jumped ship to Linux 10 years ago or so. The defining moment was me disabling Cortana only to have her reappear after an update.
At least with Linux when I’m fighting the OS it doesn’t feel like the OS developers are fighting back.
Yep. I tolerated Edge reinstalling itself for a long time. I used 3rd party tools to try to make Windows my own, but they failed repeatedly.
If MS would sell me a license to own my computer, I would buy it, but they don’t offer that. Instead it’s ads and spam and data collection. And I want nothing to do with that.
If MS would sell me a license to own my computer, I would buy it, but they don’t offer that. Instead it’s ads and spam and data collection. And I want nothing to do with that.
I kind of feel like that about Google’s services (to a lesser extent). Like, Google produces some really outstanding services. YouTube is great, and I’d have no problem with paying for it. But I have no idea whether, if I buy YouTube Premium or whatever Google calls it, I can buy privacy or whether it’s just going to mean that they can link my data to my financial information and carry on data-mining.
I mean theoretically you don’t have to pay for anything, just disable it in your account settings, but I don’t believe any of that for a single second.
Same motivation here, but it took me until last year to make the switch. Pushing Office on me combined with all the good things I’ve been hearing about gaming on Linux was enough to push me over. I installed in dual boot, but I have never wanted to nor had the need to boot into my Windows install in at least three months.
I did the same thing about the same time as you. I did boot into Windows at one point and it updated, and it absolutely fucked my system. It removed or disabled the boot loader and I think it fucked up the partition table too IIRC. I then removed everything Windows and installed another distro I wanted to try and it’s been smooth sailing since, with no reason to regret removing Windows.
Edit: I was able to recover the partitions, but the Windows section of the bootloader I was never able to get working again after getting it to boot into my Linux install. That’s the moment I decided to just clear out that drive and switch distros.
I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since the 1990s. I’m certainly not opposed to people using Linux on their desktop. But I can definitely think of things, even in 2024, that someone might want Windows for.
If you go and buy a piece of hardware from a vendor, even really obscure stuff, there will almost certainly be a Windows driver. These days, Linux support is pretty common, and stuff like USB device classes providing a standard interface for a lot of hardware deals with a lot of that. But if I were getting something weird like, oh, one of those projectors that displays 3D images on mist, I’d be more-cautious. VR headsets are probably one of the more-prominent recent examples. Yeah, you can get a VR headset for Linux, but not all of the VR headsets out there are Linux-compatible.
Maybe a more-prominent issue – while it’s rare for hardware to not work, it’s more-common for some functionality not to be available. tries to think of an example Okay, here’s one. I have a flightstick and throttle from CH from some years back. These are standard ol’ USB Human Interface Devices. Their axes and buttons are detected, and I can use them just fine. But they also have a little button on both their throttle and joystick that – besides acting as a button – cycles a series of one illuminated LED through three LEDs, green,yellow,red. I believe that it’s intended to switch between different “profiles” – so, like, say you’re just flying along, you have one set of controls, but then you enter into combat in some flight system, you can toggle to the “yellow” profile by tapping a button. Whatever software CH ships to handle that on Windows isn’t shipped for Linux. Okay, you could probably set something similar up for Linux if you’ve the time and technical chops, and maybe there’s a way to do it for Steam games using Steam Input. But there isn’t gonna be software provided to do it out-of-the-box on Linux, whereas there is on Windows.
There are still a few pieces of software that you can’t run. If you specifically need or really want to run something, that may be a problem. There are very few games on Steam that I can’t run, but one happens to be https://store.steampowered.com/app/1076160/Command_Modern_Operations/, which suffers from both relying on 3d hardware – so not being VM-friendly – and not having anyone manage to get it working. There are other military simulation games, but no real direct alternatives. Now, I can live without that software package, though I sure would like to run it, but there may users that don’t have that kind of flexibility.
There’s also some software that you can make use of on a machine running Linux, but need to run in a Windows VM. That…works, but is also kind of annoying. A good example might be something like Solidworks, which doesn’t support Linux. There are engineers out there who are going to need to use Solidworks to do their work. I understand that you can run it in a VM – and there’s sufficient demand that apparently the company certifies VM environments with a dedicated GPU for pass-through use with the VM but that’s kind of annoying, if you’re someone whose work revolves around the package.
I agree there are plenty of reasons some people may still want Windows. I think we all know this, and it doesn’t need to be stated every time. However, there are also reasons to switch from Windows to Linux that are better. I just switched GPUS (AMD) today and literally just plugged it in and it’s ready to go. Package managers are also hugely more convenient than the Windows method of each application managing its own updates.
Sure, if you need Windows then you need Windows. Most people don’t.
Man. Work moved us to windows 11 and you couldn’t ungroup windows on the taskbar… We use RPG / as400 and throughout the day you’ll end up with 4-5 windows… having them all grouped is annoying when I have to hover over a popup to see which window I need.
Googling revealed that win11 wasn’t shipped with that functionality and it was only patched into the operating system in late q3 of last year.
Guess no one at Microsoft realized people use computers differently and more options is always better than one. Or they intended to have the option and either forgot to include it or it was buggy. Either way it was #2 on my "how do you disable this" list, and I had to deal with it for a while. I get how grouping can be good for some things, but when you want to be able to bounce between various windows and some happen to use the same app, it was a pain.
I have to say I’m not particularly against it either… AS LONG AS they let me pick alternative AI backbends, like they have been forced to do with web browsers (antitrust attorneys, get ready).
Microsoft, forever and always, will keep trying to pivot Windows to whatever they think the Next Big Thing is going to be, and then fuck it up every time. They tried to pivot to Mobile (Windows Mobile), then Tablets (8, 8.1), then digital assistants (Win 10 Cortana), then 3D (Win 10 Paint3D, 3D Objects folder) and AR (why a bunch of Win10 got the semitransparent glass aesthetic), now AI. Maybe they got ahead of the curve enough to be the “leader” in “AI” this time, but that doesn’t make it a Good Operating System.
They were doing ok. But the github thing and the 11 thing and the edging and now this - I can’t wait to buy a machine that can run windows virtualised. I need it for my work apps, but this virt thing has been a dream of mine for a long time. Compartmentalization
It’s perfect timing too. Right as Linux becomes an extremely strong competitor (feature wise, not market share yet) they decide to enshitify more than they already were and decide to fuck the user. It made me leave about a year ago, and it’s been amazing since.
This is why they are doing it. They fear that Linux/MacOS/ChromeOS is eating their lunch. The problem is that their approach to preventing anyone else from eating their lunch is to make Shit Sandwiches.
Yeah, it’s a minor annoyance… another minor annoyance on top of all the others. And another personal data leak (or siphon) to go with all the others.
This on its own is not worth switching OSs for - but as a piece of a larger picture it’s yet another reason to consider it. And for some people this may be what tips the scales in their evaluation.
This may have been true historically but I’m not sure it still holds up. I switched to Linux Mint as my regular OS a while back and the only driver issue I’ve had was that the installer didnt properly install my wifi card’s proprietary driver (which was working during live boot from usb), so I had to tether to my phone to download the driver through the driver manager. It even installed Nvidia drivers just fine.
It might still be an issue for more barebones or heavily customisable systems but I’m fairly certain nobody’s recommending people switch to Arch for their first Linux experience.
Driver issues usually only happen if the manufacturer doesn’t provide a Linux driver. Usually it is best to do some research to ensure the hardware will work before purchasing. Otherwise, the driver usually is included with the kernel so it is plug and play even for things that require manually downloading and installing on the Windows side.
Also, I’m not trying to get on any high horse. I personally think Linux is a great alternative to Windows and would love for everyone to at least try it out and see if it is right for them. It could save them tons of headaches and open the door to a new skill set, or just to breathe new life into that old laptop in your closet gathering dust. Linux has a lot of great uses that aren’t possible with Windows. Give peas a chance.
Oh, I use both, I was just poking fun. That being said, I unfortunately I don’t feel comfortable trying to get my parents on Linux… or even friends.
Most people just want things to work and won’t do any sort of troubleshooting themselves. “It just works” is worth the intrusiveness that comes with Windows.
oh, i reckon most people in this nice little corner of the internet are communist programmer atheists using linux and firefox, and are likely some flavour of queer.
yeah, ive been meaning to switch, but it doesnt really compare in sheer quantity of little crappy things stacked on top of one another.
i think the main thing though, is that i can switch away from ubuntu and still be on same ol linux. and switching the rare stuff i dont like is as easy as doing it once and never worrying again.
And I don’t see why Arch is relevant to the discussion. My point is that software being non-proprietary is not a guarantee for preventing fuckery like Microsoft’s. Profit-maximizing companies will maximize their profits, proprietary software or not. Canonical, which sells a non-proprietary Linux distribution, is an example of this.
I asked it how to uninstall itself. It responded with the command line. I copy and pasted (this was probably dangerous, given that LLMs lie, but whatever). Now I no longer have it on my task bar. This is sort of like the open edge to get Firefox deal I’ve always had when using a fresh install.
This is like staying in an abusive relationship and then complaining about how abusive their partner is. Get the fuck out of there. Linux works like a charm. OK, now come at me with your bullshit excuses of “Linux bad” “mah games”, “my Adobe” blah blah blah. Staying in this abusive relationship is what makes microshit what it is.
I want to switch to Linux, but I honestly don’t know how/where to even start or the proper way to even ask.
I asked once on a Linux forum when the whole Cortana debacle happened, and I was called a moron or sent a link to “Linux from scratch”…which was definitely above my technical knowledge at the time. I’ve been scared to post on Linux communities ever since lol
Oh absolutely. Looking back I probably asked in a hardcore Linux enthusiast community (no fault to them, we all get tired of our parents/siblings/coworkers asking us to “fix the wif”)
I just don’t know where the Linux-noob safe spaces are. Is Lemmy’s Linux community one?
I recommend taking a look at this Linux gaming wiki guide about getting started. It is geared towards gaming, but even if that is not your primary focus there is a lot of really useful tips and steps to take for anyone trying to switch to Linux. If you have some other questions you can shoot me a DM, I’m by no means an expert but I’ve been using Linux for around 4 years now so I like to think I’m at least moderately experienced!
We have actual gaming distros. They’re literally put together for gamers. GloriousEggRoll, the dude who made protonGE spun up “Nobara” off of Fedora as a gaming distro. You have Garuda Linux and others.
Thanks for the link, I’ll take a look at the guide over the weekend! Someone already mentioned Linux Mint as a starter, but if I have any questions I’ll definitely take you up on the DM offer!
From what I found, Lemmy is much better in this regard. I’ve gotten lots of helpful answers here, so give it a go! There is also a ton of tutorials on YouTube, I recommend something like this for beginners.
From what I found, Lemmy is much better in this regard. I’ve gotten lots of helpful answers here, so give it a go! There is also a ton of tutorials on YouTube, I recommend something like this for beginners.
From what I found, Lemmy is much better in this regard. I’ve gotten lots of helpful answers here, so give it a go! There is also a ton of tutorials on YouTube, I recommend something like this for beginners.
I second this. Been using a few distros in the last 20 years, going back and forth between windows and Linux, but I’ve been using Mint in the last year and I don’t feel like switching anymore. Teams, office and outlook all have a web app so no need for a native office installation anymore, and most Windows games on steam work well with proton.
I’m so sorry this happened to you. We do have some assholes on our forums. But from experience, I can assure you that people on Lemmy are much nicer. Also, Linux is now so very easy to install. All you need is to get your ISO and burn it onto a USB stick then boot from that USB from the Bios. Linux even has a “live environment” where you get to try it and see if your hardware works. Don’t worry too much about what “distro” to install for now. They’re all the same except minor differences and how often they get updated. Your only mission is to choose which desktop environment you like. If you like how macos looks like, choose gnome. If you like windows, choose KDE plasma, if you like a windows 7ish look, choose xfce or cinnamon. If you want the easiet way to burn an ISO to a USB, then check out Fedora media writer. It even downloads the iso for you. Just stick your USB into your pc and launch the app and go from there. It does everything for you. It’s available for all OSs. Fedora comes with both KDE and gnome and others. I’d stick with the distros that are the easiest to install and where everything works out of the box. Fedora and Linux mint are the ones I’d choose from. And also, now YouTube is full of amazing Linux channels like this man Jay Lacroix. He is freaking awesome and has so many videos that will help you. Here is his channel. He even made a video the other day on how to dual boot with windows. If you have any questions at all, please post them in the Linux community here on Lemmy and we will all help you.
It is getting better but there are still alot of things you just can’t do on Linux.
Like for my work we have alot of specialized software that is only for Windows. Sure I might be able to get it working under Linux but what do you think will happen if I need get software Support for this software? They will say i am using an unsupported OS and hang up.
And for my home, there is so many anti cheat software that refuses to work on Linux or potentially get you banned.
Linux has come a very long way in the last 5 years but there is still alot of situations the abusive relationship is your only option.
For work is understandable. I use nothing but windows at work because work requires it. I don’t give a shit if they used a potato, as long as I get my paycheck. At home, though, sorry my friend, I won’t ever understand no matter how many excuses you give me. If a company doesn’t want to support my os then to fucking bad, I won’t give them my money, and will move on to the ones that do.
I won’t ever understand no matter how many excuses you give me. If a company doesn’t want to support my os then to fucking bad, I won’t give them my money.
Sure the is commendable but end of the day it is what is important to you. If my group of friends is playing a game and that game isn’t supported on Linux. That affect me a lot more then it would affect the company.
Unfortunately Linux does not “work like a charm” and you need a fucking degree in command line to use it because that’s the way Linux developers and users like it.
Lol. I am not. Try it out for yourself. If you run a “works out of the box” distro, you’ll not need to touch the terminal, unless you choose to. Try Linux mint, fedora, zorin OS, elementary OS, Ubuntu, pop os… Etc. On those, you literally won’t need to touch the terminal for your day to day work. Everything works.
Sounds like a you issue. I promise, I’m not lying, I don’t ever need to use the terminal, unless I choose to, or in some rare instances. Pick a simple works out of the box distro
For real. Literally yesterday, reboot my computer and Nvidia drivers that had worked fine the day before no longer functioned resulting in my screen resolution being reduced and unchangeable.
Had to run a few commands to fix it but they are not obvious to me as a new-ish Linux user. Something about dkms being a dependency but not configured?
To recover, I had to:
sudo apt purge nvidia-*
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dkms/nvidia/
sudo apt install nvidia-dkms-550
(Reinstall Nvidia 550 drivers)
Why did I have to do all this? I ask that rhetorically, but Id like to know so I can understand what went wrong. Linux is non-trivial and people who deny that are not seeing things clearly. Then again, triviality of use isn’t particularly the most salient to me. Rather, it’s a mixture of is there enough compatibility to what I use my desktop for, is it reasonably easy to use for most tasks, and does it give me the freedom I want for the device.
Some don’t realize it’s an abusive relationship, because they never saw anything else. Or they are addicted (let’s call it Adobe drug or certain games drug). But these are the minority. Most people simply don’t care.
BTW just for the lolz, in 2010 I predicted that we would 10 years later (in 2020) have probably 30% market share on Linux desktop. Boy I was off.
My relationship with my Linux installation was disfunctional in its own way. It was that partner that went into a meltdown when presented with any new, slightly complicated situation that was outside of its extremely limited comfort zone. I guess that works for people that have the time and patience to hold its hand and convince it that it can actually do everything. But Linux definitely isn’t suitable for all people in all situations.
That is kind of the problem with Linux though. I definitely had hardware-distro compatibility issues, and I get how for some people, trying out a dozen different distros to find the one that works best for them is a lot of fun, and that’s totally valid. It’s just not a good fit for everyone. I think fans of Linux can overestimate its stability, ease of use, and suitability for all use-cases. It’s right for some people, but not everyone.
Yep, to me there are two groups that linux works well for (at home)
tinkerer type who likes new tech.
completely computer/ tech illiterate type ( like my wife or mom)
In the 2 category if they just need a computer for netflix, browsing, email and zoom calls you set them up with a stable diatro and it works the same every day with no windows surprises.
Yep, I agree with that breakdown. It’s the people in the middle: tech literate enough to need their computer to do a lot, but not sufficiently interested in tinkering to spend time arguing with their OS, that are often better off using Windows or MacOS.
That’s the correct answer. I run endeavourOS, and it’s even considered a “terminal distro”. Set it up once and never had any major issues after that. I’ve used Debian testing for like 2 years before that, and oh my god, that fucker was solid af. I literally had 0 issues. Like nothing. The thing just worked all the time. Fedora was the same for me.
I had great luck with OpenSUSE Leap on two machines. Another machine was really old and OpenSUSE was a bit slow on it so tried debian, it struggled with all debian based distros I tried. But NixOS has been amazing on it with 0 issues. It really is a dice roll.
Normal users can quickly hide it with a taskbar setting, power users (or those who can Google) can disable the feature entirely through a group policy.
‘Data Detectors’ in MacOS are just as bad. Just like how sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes a string of numerals is just a string of numerals.
It is not a phone number or a flight number or a ticket number, it is just a string of text that happen to all be numerals.
I asked Apple Support how to disable data detectors in Preview (MacOS’s native PDF and image viewer) so I could highlight some part numbers without MacOS trying to make a FaceTime call and they told me to use Adobe Acrobat instead! The problem is that Acrobat is worse.
It decided my aggressive language was not okay and kept ending the “conversation” which only managed to piss me off even more.
If I want to curse at my f$king computer, I’m going to curse at my f$king computer. I paid for the damned thing, and it is a thing, not a person, I can yell at it all I want and not hurt it in any way so this policing of what we can say to it is all the more bizarre to me.
Between this, and manually uninstalling a lot of bloat (or using a specific type of windows install) and a few other tweaks, windows becomes significantly more usable.
Disabling garbage in the task bar, removing Cortana and indexing services, etc etc, it can also add a fairly decent uplift in performance.
I’m sure there is still telemetry being collected but significantly less and less impact on my user experience and day to day performance.
Oh and make sure you turn off auto/feature updates!
It’s literally just the Edge feature transplanted onto windows. I wouldn’t be surprised if they integrated Edge/WebView2 into Explorer just to do this.
Have Windows users ever wanted a single thing they added since XP? It seems like every time I upgrade they add some cluttery nonsense I can’t get rid of. I moved to Windows 10 for software compatibility, and I still hate it.
They added a lot of things since XP that I enjoy, like window management, multiple desktops. I don’t know if they were specifically requested by windows users, but contrary to your opinion they are welcome changes. Users don’t always know what they want.
Eh fair, to me that’s just severely outweighed by the bloatware and needing third party apps to customize the UI how I used to like. It feels uglier and bulkier and like they took away a ton of good functions.
Have Windows users ever wanted a single thing they added since XP?
The new terminal for example is a rather neat improvement over the old command prompt, especially with the integration of Linux systems. Winget also is rather nice. Just two examples. So yeah with all the valid criticism Microsoft deserves for quite a bit of policies, I don’t think your hyperbole holds up.
Ehhhh, if you have expertise in ANY field outside of like programming, you can easily test various models and see that they produce a lot of crap. That doesn’t require you to understand how LLMs work exactly.
The distinction is irrelevant and “AI” is what businesses and normal folks call this stuff. Just like the age old arguments that the media should say something like “cyber criminals” instead of “hackers” or “cloud” is just other people’s computers. LLM, GNU/spicy-auto-correct, whatever. To the populous it’s all “AI”.
It’s not just text generating AI, like those transformer models, but also image classificators and generators, time series predictors, and a bunch of other stuff you get.
But yes, even though you seem not to like it, it is AI.
Copilot is no more “intelligent” than Clippy from Microsoft Bob in 1995.
I can’t share that experience.
It just appears to be to people who also have low intelligence.
Their obsession is they see how much people use and like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa, and they have employees who have worked at Apple, Google, and Amazon, so they know exactly how much data collection those services do. Their obsession is that They’re behind in the market and would like that sweet sweet money
They all do. Google search is one big primitive Digital Assistant. Apple’s Siri is less functional than its predecessor Voice Control. Amazon’s product recommendation algorithm and Alexa are also successful digital assistants.
Meanwhile the YouTube algorithm, Netflix, and Metas recommendations are notoriously frustrating, pumping out irrelevant recommendations and obfuscating constant that you actually want to consume.
Microsoft haven’t had any effective Digital Assistants to date and must they feel like they are being left behind. Their attempts to emulate successful product from other companies are either unnoticeably irrelevant or laughably bad. Even the terrible content recommendations of Netflix and YouTube keep people hooked.
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