Statcounter reports that Windows 11 continues to lose its market share for the second month in a row. Windows 10, meanwhile, is gaining more users and is now back above the 70% mark.
You pay a subscription for support, kind of like with RedHat or SUSE. Or with Office 365, if you want something more consumer-oriented.
There wouldn’t be major releases of the OS, just continual improvements as long as you keep paying. So instead of paying $100-150 every 5 years or whatever, you’d pay $20-50 every year.
For the user, generally smaller changes and staying up-to-date. It’s why I use a rolling-release Linux distro (openSUSE Tumbleweed) instead of a release-based distro, I don’t like big changes and I like staying up-to-date. I think Windows 10 users were excited to have something similar, where they get the same UX, but with improvements coming in a steady stream instead of periodic major releases.
For the company, a more steady income stream. That’s part of why big, online games like Apex Legends are so popular for big gaming companies, getting a steady income stream is preferable to a bunch of money every game release with nothing between launches. In fact, my company is selling off part of the business because it’s too variable (profitability is based on commodity prices) and focusing on the segments of the business that are more consistent. I’ve heard we’d rather have lower average profit margins than highly variable profit margins.
Same. But if I’m getting value from it, it may be preferable to making larger payments less frequently.
But if you remove the payment aspect from it (i.e. it’s free either way), there are plenty of reasons to prefer a steady stream of updates to an infrequent dump of updates.
So then the steady stream vs dump comes down to cost, would you rather pay $120/year, or $10/month? Some may even prefer the $10/month to a modest discount (e.g. $100/year) if it means avoiding the larger, one-time payment.
Personally, I prefer one-time payments w/ discount and a steady stream of updates.
I totally agree with your last statement. Honestly, I usually pirate or buy keys so I’m not one of those people paying full price for software, but regular updates are preferable.
And the latest macOS has pretty much the same user experience as the original OS X, just with added features and whatnot. They didn’t do a massive overhaul like Windows does every release.
I remember i had to go from xp to 7 back in the day because of their Frameworks such as directx and .net because new games/apps just didn’t launched without new versions of them, i bet they’ll repeat this once more to push everyone. edit: to Linux
yeah i hated that move. XP was so much better than 7. they went really bland, moved all the most useful quick controls, started the process of destroying the control panel… ugh
Inb4 microsoft is forced to bring back support for windows 10. Seems nobody believes in innovation anymore since all it means now is AI „helping” you with tasks you could do yourself or ads everywhere you look.
Same shit going on everywhere. I recently fixed my iphone 12 pro because upgrading by three generations literally would get me a usb-c port and an additional fucking button.
I genuinely think Microsoft won’t extend anything for Win10 unfortunately, no matter how many users cling to it. 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.
They’d get a bunch of support, but I think they know that people would just continue to ride Win10 even longer, than actually spend the extra time upgrading.
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.
You will simply have an OS that is no longer supported and will be vulnerable against attacks that hackers withheld until then.
It’s your choice to stay with Microsoft either by accepting an insecure OS or upgrading your hardware, or jump ship to something that isn’t Microsoft (Apple, Linux, ChromeOS, …) depending on your needs and expectations.
Speculation on my part (so was my parent comment to be fair), prior to Windows 11 and even the later major updates to Windows 10, Windows had a horrible rep for physical security. It was well known that if someone stole your computer, all your data is compromised and whoever stole it just needed a YouTube video on various lock screen bypasses.
Microsoft wanted to do something about this, so Windows 11 relies on the TPM so that BitLocker can be enabled, and having the TPM makes it entirely transparent to the user. Enforcing the Microsoft account requirement gives a recovery avenue should something go wrong like the TPM changes.
Unfortunately, they would rather that the image of Win11 is this really secure OS, rather than let users who don’t have a TPM upgrade anyway, which really will just leave more users insecure on Win10 and overall in a much worse spot from a security perspective.
Unfortunately, they would rather that the image of Win11 is this really secure OS
(This is in no way an indictment of what you’ve said here, it is entirely directed at MS.) If that’s their objective, they’ve done an absolutely horrific job of making that clear. I guess part of that is they claim everything they do is for security, so no-one believes them.
Not to mention, I’m pretty sure the vast, vast, vast majority of Windows users aren’t concerned that if their PC gets stolen people can get into it. They’re much more concerned with the lost PC itself.
Either way, they look, frankly, incompetent. The OS is maligned by users, and they’ve stuffed so many embarrassing things like ads in the search bar or whatever, that any illusion of its benefits are lost behind a wall of garbage.
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 have no real reason to upgrade to 11 from 10. My system doesn’t have any hardware that 11 can take advantage of better than 10. At this point I’m just waiting for 11 to finish baking or 12 to roll out. 11 doesn’t natively have a vertical taskbar… like… come’on. Who needs a 32" wide taskbar?
My main monitor is a 27 inch so the task bar is only like 23 inches, but the amount of stuff I have open at any given time has my taskbar 2/3 of the way across my screen. That said, I’ve had mine at the top of the screen ever since my iMac G3 and Windows 11 doesn’t allow that either
I have been running a vertical task bar since Windows XP and have been on KDE as well(like now). The fact it’s not an option for Windows 11(my work laptop) drives me insane.
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.
Sounds like what happened when Windows 8 came out. Oops I meant Windows Vista. My bad, I’m thinking of Windows Me. Sorry, I might have it confused with NT 3. Everyone loved Windows 2.0 right?
98 Second Edition was 'da bomb at the time :) Much more stable than Win95, and not yet phoning home like XP. I get nostalgic seeing the splash screen.
After that, I switched to Win2K, as the last windows that did not phone home - and then straight to Linux, a decision I have never regretted and will never regret.
I’m also a decade long Linux user and it drives me insane too. I’m happy to support someone if they have questions ABOUT Linux, but otherwise I don’t shove it down their throat or really mention it. I nearly lost friends being the way so many other Linux users are and that was the changing point for me.
It is extremely irritating - admittedly I used to do the same many moons ago but then I grew up.
I think with experience/perspective people can see that windows is needed. There’s just no way all the computer illiterate people (most people) will be able for Linux, not unless it’s simplified to be exactly like windows… (I don’t want to hear about how your 120 year old grandma learned arch at 100 having never touched a computer before and now teaches software dev - exceptions prove the rule)
I also grow tired of every year hearing it’s going to be the year of Linux desktop.
So for all people that are on the fence about switching to Linux: Here’s a sort of review and starter guide from a guy who switched to Mint about 4 weeks ago.
Are you someone who mostly plays non-competetive games (games without anticheat) and browse the web? You’ll probably have a hassle free life on Linux. Steam’s Proton layer does a lot of heavily lifting. Even if games are not officially supported. Turn the compatability on in the steam settings.
If you play VR or competetive games, it’s a different story. VR is dependant on the headset. I unfortunately have all Oculus Headsets, which there is no good controller support for right now from the open source community. Anticheat simply doesnt work on Linux.
Design softwareFrom what I’ve read, the affinity suite now can be used through Wine (a program that lets you use windows apps on Linux) However, from my time with Wine, it is hit and miss. One update from either the application or Wine can break everything. So it is not reliable, unless you freeze all updates from both the application and Wine. Wine can be great (working out of the box) but also the biggest pain in the ass with hours of debugging. Stay away if you dislike troubleshooting.
Inkscape can be an alternative to Illustrator if you don’t do heavy design work.
I haven’t touched Gimp for about 6 years (used to be my main editor) but when I switched to photoshop it qas no competition. Don’t know what the state of Gimp is now, will try it over the coming year.
music softwareCubase or any of steinbergs plugins outright will not work on Linux (unfortunately my main DAW) However, I will probably switch to Bitwig (native Linux), which looks really promising. I got some VSTs working through Wine (all arturia stuff works great) but have had hours of troubleshooting without luck with others. Use Yabridge as a vstlink for windows VSTs. If you’re a professional musician with thousands of dollars in plugins, I’d be hestitant to switch to Linux. You’ll be dependant on Wine a lot, which is kind of a pain to rely on for professional use.
overall tipsMight be a bit controversial, but if you’re a novice: don’t dump all the solutions you find online in your terminal. Actually, try to use the machine as much as possible like you normally would on Windows, unless you want to do Terminal stuff. If you dislike terminals, you’ll only be frustrated by all the terminal advice people give you, which might even break stuff on your machine.
Try to download .deb packages from the official sources.++ Software center on Mint is great, but will moatly be outdated or flatpacks. Flatpacks can work, but I’ve had many issues with permissions and flatpacks (like an arduino flatpack that didn’t give permission to use the USB port…)
Welp, I’m out of time, so I’ll just randomly stop my reviewish/comment here
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.
Thanks for the link. And yeah, maybe not something you’d want to rely on. But it’s worth a try as a compliment to running Windows in a VM to run Affinity.
Also in terms of games…I know Steam compatibility is supposed to be great, but if you use other platforms, you might run into some issues. Most of my library is in the Epic Games store (I know, terrible to admit this online…but they give you a lot of free shit), and I just could not get it to work at all the last time I tried Linux (maybe 6ish months ago).
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.
I would highly advice against using Wine. It requires constant root access, just like virus scanners, making your system vulnerable. EDIT: I was wrong :)
I want to make the switch as win10 moved to 11 without asking and 11 sucks donkey balls. It even has ads as notifications, soon it will have ads in the start menu (not that I use it, but wtf Microsoft!). The games are no issue anymore now a days, so that’s fine with me. I just don’t want to switch DAW. I just got a work flow using ableton for recording, editing and mastering my dawless setup. Kind of same story with photoshop, used to the work flow and don’t want to switch. Other than that, I don’t see a reason why not. So maybe it’s going to be a multiboot. I’m definitely going back to win10 but support will stop next year or so, so I have to use Linux by than anyway.
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.
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.
Did you know you can edit your posts? Could be helpful for other readers since you were incorrectly posting in several messages that wine needs root access.
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.
Losing Ableton and all my VSTs are dealbreakers with Linux for me. Would be fine with the games I play, being all mostly single player indies. I could relearn a new video editing software, and I assume Citrix will work fine for all my work programs, but maaaan I’m not losing my favorite VSTs.
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.
@Legonatic@birdcannon - you might want to take a close look at Bitwig. It’s a top-notch DAW developed by former Ableton developers. I hear it’s fairly similar workflow to Ableton, but also that it’s better in certain ways. This is without even taking into consideration that Bitwig supports Linux. I don’t have any association with Bitwig, don’t even own it (yet?), but just wanted to let you know.
I think I’ve heard that some VST support may be tricky though. I could be misremembering, but also worth researching.
Nice to know, but it’ll really come down to VST support. I can relearn a new DAW, but I can’t magic up new libraries. I also don’t really wanna have to learn futzing with Linux when I have enough hobbies. As much as windows sucks, it’s convenient that their product supports everything I want out of the box. Once a Linux distro can do the same for my needs, I’m all in.
I feel you man. I’ve finally used Cubase enough to get proficiently fast at editing stuff, and I can’t get it to work on Mint. It is quite the dilemma. From what I’ve seen from Bitwig, I still might switch though. It looks a lot like Ableton, but I much prefer Bitwig’s UI. And my most used plugins (arturia stuff) happens to run without any hassle on Wine (for now).
Still, I’ll probably keep dual booting for a while. I have so many Cubase projects backed up that I don’t feel like converting all to Bitwig projects.
About anticheat: it depends which games you’re playing. If they use Valve’s EasyAnti Cheat you should have no problem (been playing dota2, cs2, csgo… without trouble for some time now). If they use malware kernel-level anticheat (iirc helldivers 2, valorant, league of legends) you won’t be able to run them in linux and should keep a windows dual boot.
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.
You can change flatpak permissions with flatseal (you’ll need to install it). A lot of them have absolutely braindead defaults It’s really not great to get in the habit of installing random debs from the Internet. Aside from being a massive security issue, you’ll never get updates. If mint repos don’t get updated though, I suppose that’s the easiest workaround
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.
Yeah when you’re downloading from sites like those, there’s not a security risk anymore. The thing is that Linux software generally expects you to be using a package manager, so it doesn’t update itself. When you download and install debs, you lose auto update functionality. But when you’re on a distro like mint with old packages, that doesn’t really matter since you’re not getting up to date software through the repos anyway
I recently moved my media PC to Linux Mint. I had Bluetooth issues with windows despite my hardware not that old and ‘Windows 11 ready’. Zero problems on Linux. I play the same games thanks to Steam Proton library. I use Mac for work. So I finally did it. No more Windows. I tried to switch 5 years ago. But today Linux is polished. And mostly works as expected. You still need to open terminal a few times to change some settings. I’m happy. Highly recommended.
I switched recently to Nobara after having a great experience with my steam deck. However, I’ll probably add windows as a dual boot option since CS2 doesn’t run properly (like 16fps…).
I dont have CS2 because, well, the obvious reasons. But I do have the original Skylines, and its linux version is also a festering pile of rancid dogshit.
Running the windows version via proton made it run smooth, stable (well, as stable as can be expected with a few hundred mods…lol), and without headache.
so yeah, install windows version and use proton. Overall better experience probably.
Honestly, i think thats my advice about gaming on linux in general, to generally avoid the native version. Personally, I’ve only run into two games that the native version wasnt shit, and that was Stardew Valley and Rimworld.
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 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’ll have a look into that. For work I use Mint and really like it, however wanted to have a gaming distro that already delivers everything that I need and since I already used ProtonGE it was a natural choice for me. But i already had some issues with it probably due to NVidia drivers. Seems to be better now with the latest kernel
I think I get slightly better performance on Bazzite than on mint. Mint e.g. still has the 535 Nvidia drivers as recommended (we’re at 550 now). On Bazzite you’ll probably have to enable x11 until the new update with explicit sync drops mid May. (At least I had a ton of flickering on Wayland with my rtx 3060)
Using Bazzite, myself. I have a weird issue with rebooting, though. Tends to freeze at the boot screen (grub doesn’t show up at all) then the whole boot/login process becomes a slideshow. This doesn’t happen if I manually turn my PC off and turn it on, though. Really odd problem that I haven’t had on other distros.
Automatic screen lock and auto-sleep get disabled everytime I install a KDE DE. I could take a closer look at energy savings, but I don’t think there’s much else I can do there. I know it’s not hardware-related, as this doesn’t happen with any other distro. May be an issue with KDE 6, for all I know. Gonna have to look into it more when I get home from work.
I had a lot of crashes as soon as I installed it. Must have been some driver/hardware issues probably. I’m not knowledgeable enough (and frankly had no energy to troubleshoot) I just installed mint which ran without (much) trouble. I was interested in a more up to date system and KDE plasma as well as pipewire already integrated and looked at bazzite (after another unsuccessful try at nobara) - have been t running it for a few weeks now and I’m perfectly happy with it. CS 2 also runs without problems - but I mainly cast matches instead of playing myself.
Windows just sucks at handling Bluetooth. It’s ridiculous that you can’t change audio codecs, or choose between handsfree and high quality audio. You have to let windows guess at both
Yeah in college I tried to switch for nerd cred and it sucked, but over the past year I switched and while I’ve had some hiccups, I honestly think it’s more a result of me going with an arch based distro than a Debian one. I’m thinking I may hop soon, but I assume it’ll be a massive pain
I switched from Win10 to Arch and now I do have problems with bluetooth, because my mouse officially only supports Windows. Think I will just force my mouse to support Arch (or the other way around). Still way better and faster than Windows.
This one should work via bluetooth, some pages online indicate so, and it would be very rare that a bluetooth mouse does not work on linux.
And it should absolutely work via the little usb dongle that came with the mouse, as for example my logitech wireless mouse even works in my uefi/bios with the usb receiver.
Whenever I try switching to Linux, there is always something that doesn’t work right and takes forever to finagle with to fix if it’s even possible. I’m primarily a Linux Mint fan (daily drove it on my aging desktop until it died of old age a few years back), but I’ve also dabbled in a few other noob-friendly distros like Ubuntu (was really into it when everything was still orange and brown lol) and Pop OS.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love using Linux to breathe new life into older systems, but it just isn’t a good option for me personally if my device hasn’t gotten sluggish yet.
As an example, I have an aging laptop that started blue screening a bunch. It doesn’t support the Win 11 upgrade due to it’s processor not meeting minimum specs. So I thought it was finally time to see if Linux would improve it.
First of all, I had a hell of a time installing various distros without having them boot to a black screen after installation completes. Took absolutely forever to finally sus this out on the various distros I tried. Then I find that the couple extra buttons on my basic Logitech mouse don’t work. These are essential buttons for me that I use constantly. I go through a million troubleshooting steps before finding out that it’s a Wayland issue, so I switch back to Xorg and everything is cool. But then I start running into lag issues which never occurred on my Windows install. I also tried playing some games I had in my Epic Games library. I could not for the life of me get it to work, no matter which platform I tried. I get that Steam has better Linux compatibility, but not all of us have all of our games on Steam.
Finally got tired of the whole ordeal and switched back to Windows. Did a bit more troubleshooting and seemed to have resolved the blue screen issues and now it seems to work perfectly and much better out of the box than Linux. It’s not an old enough device a Linux refresh to be worth it yet.
I get that Lemmings are die hard Linux fans, and I think Linux has some fantastic use cases…but for many users it actually isn’t a good alternative. I find it works best when you want to breathe new life into older hardware or if you have every component specifically built to work for a particular Linux distro. But when basic features don’t work properly without hours of troubleshooting (if you can ever get them to work at all), it’s a little hard to just recommend it to your average Joe whose Windows/Mac computer works just fine.
This “everything just works” Linux experience a lot of people talk about on Lemmy/Reddit has absolutely never been my experience, even though I’ve been a casual Linux fan for over a decade now. Meanwhile, I’ve had the opposite experience with Windows (unless you’re talking really old Windows versions like Win XP and older).
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.
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”.
I had almost exactly this same issue years ago when I tried Mint. I was trying to get something to work (I think install games on Steam? Something like that) and it would just do nothing, no message, etc. When I asked for help, I was told “This is super obvious” and after trying their suggestions and having them all fail, was told “just go back to windows.”
Ok, done?
(It also doesn’t help that there is a huge difference between ‘you can use the terminal’ and ‘you have to use the terminal.’ I’m an 80’s kid, I grew up with DOS, so I understand how to navigate terminals, I just don’t want to constantly.)
I’ve had similar experiences. Never posted questions myself, but I’ll be Googling for help and find forum posts that are as toxic as you describe.
It’s been bad enough that the Linux elitism on Lemmy leaves a bad taste, even if I haven’t seen as much of the toxic parts here. I know I’m not the only person of my friends group that feels this way about Lemmy’s Linux crowd.
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.
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 may yet try it in the next few years. I think one large frustration I anticipate (among others) is keyboard shortcuts. I’ve become very experienced with those on Windows, and my brief efforts at Linux (eg, on my Steam Deck’s monitor hookup) have not come across enough matches for them.
I can absolutely see value in enduring the pain of a large switch though.
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
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.
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.
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.
Work laptops in particular suck, I find. My first one was lagging, freezing, and crashing within months. The second one is three times as expensive but the same brand and is still not happy.
I also use Windows at home and haven’t had the same experience. I think it’s really manufacturer dependent
I use W11, I have no problems with it, sure the settings menus are shit but I just open the control panel directly and its the same since W95. The rest I don’t care that much, for work I use Kali anyway.
WSL and installing python from the store (with all the PATH issues automagically solved) is pretty great.
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.
It’s not going to be a shitshow at all. Business will mostly move to 11 whether they like it or not and consumers will just use unpatched win10. The exact same way they did with XP and the exact same way they did with 7.
It’s only gonna be a shitshow if there is some earth shattering vulnerability found that a worm can exploit and even then MS would probably just push out an out of band update.
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 have Windows 11 for work and I find the new package manager winget as a Godsend. I am doing all program installations and upgrading over it and it works pretty well. Also the terminal is a very nice addition.
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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
Aren’t there already? With vendor splash screens and all the graphics in the BIOS settings menus? Why don’t I get paid every time Asrock gets to display their logo on my monitor at boot?
Okay, this seemed wrong. As the article said, even Win8 didn't go down in usage over time. So I went and checked the methodology for the source data.
Turns out, this number is based on social media and search engine referral data. Also turns out, they warn that while they do track Bing chat referrals when you follow through a link, they don't see chat responses where you only read the AI response but don't click through:
We have no way of measuring the number of queries performed in bing chat. However, we also don't measure the number of queries to regular search engines like bing or google either. Instead we track search engine referrals.
i.e. If you go to a search engine and do a search for anything and you click on a website result, we'll record that click as a search engine referral if that website had the statcounter code installed. It's the click to a website that we measure, not the actual search queries that were performed.
When you do a search using bing chat, and you click on one of the "learn more" websites we can track that as a search referral. So we are monitoring bing chat in the same way we measure the regular bing search engine.
From this data we can see from the statcounter network of webites, that the amount of traffic being sent to websites from bing chat is very, very small. Less than 1/100 of 1 percent.
So from our data we can say that bing chat is not currently translating into enough clicks to our network of websites to change the search share.
Of course you are less likely to click on a source website from bing chat than a regular search, as it is intended to give you the answer rather than have you go visiting websites to find the answer. So that needs to be factored in when using our stats for your analysis.
That is very interesting. That's a likely culprit for Win11 specifically to have gone down a couple of percentage points in the US and EU (the other territories seem to remain flat), but it's hard to prove.
It's also a bit concerning in terms of measuring the effects of AI search in both network traffic and in how search results are consumed. If that's the cause it does suggest that AI chat users are less likely to follow through to the source info, which seems risky, although it's also hard to prove what that does to receiving truthful info.
Lots of counterintutitive, hard to parse implications from this one data point, but I'd be surprised if it was as simple as "people have randomly decided to roll back to Win10 (and Win8, which also grows) for no reason".
I think we just need to move on from this methodology of data collection. Firefox is often cited as very unpopular because it blocks statcounter tracking by default, social networks have absorbed some search volume too. I do think it makes logical sense that people are dropping 11; I did so myself last year. But this data is likely bad, so it’s pointless to try and extract a reason based on it.
Well, a data point is a data point is a data point. You just can't make all your decisions based on a single one, at least without understanding what's behind it.
FWIW, the Steam survey has Win 11 growing by 3.5% last month, with Win10 going down by about the same amount (Linux stays at 1.9% there). Neither data source is wrong or bad, necessarily, but you do want to be aware that one is an opt-in survey of gamers and the other is a tracker of search engine referrals.
So the takeaway is that people are probably not deserting Win 11 in droves, but maaaybe their use of online search is being impacted by MS's integration of AI search or something else changing Win11 users' behavior around social media or search engines. Or mostly that it may be too early to tell and we may need more sources of info. For all the glee and schadenfreude in this thread, the big teachable moment is that data and stats are nuanced and hard to read and that confirmation bias is a bitch.
Just so we're clear, the data in the headline refers to the share of Windows editions among Windows users. By their count Windows actually went up slightly in the overall Desktop OS share last month, while Linux remains basically flat at 4%.
I mean, it is higher than a decade ago at least. I think most people are expecting some Linux growth when Microsoft finally axes 10 and millions of machine with no TPM have to move to Linux or face a life of no security updates
Same, its just like everywhere enshitification of companies who try to get more profitable by spying,advertising and many anti consumer practices. Linux just stays good. and / or if you dont like your distribution just swap to another, its easy :D
Windows is just more trouble than it’s worth nowadays.
To be fair that’s exactly how Microsoft management feels. For half a decade now Microsoft is a company that sells Linux and opensource judging by their yearly reports, other departments either don’t grow nearly as fast or are just straight detrimental. So they do want you to dump that shit, preferably gaining some cash before it happens naturally.
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