Why wait for Microsoft to catch up with what we've been doing for decades?
Get Plasma, a modern, fully functional, clean, privacy-respecting, non-intrusive operating system now, regardless from where you live and ditch Windows for good.
@SanchoPanza@kde@kde Sure it's not a full operating system but Plasma and the KDE Frameworks and apps are a large portion of the user space, has a lot of hardware integration and is that the user interact with not with the kernel directly.
@SanchoPanza@kde@kde Also it's way easier to communicate to non Linux users that Plasma is an operating system than a desktop environnement has Windows and macOS have no concept of desktop environnement.
@kde@kde KDE, I enjoy the software + the cute artwork, but please don't be rude to Microsoft!! They also include Linux and they like Linux too, so you and Microsoft should be friends :3
Take it from an old-timer: Microsoft would crush KDE without a second thought if it ever grew beyond what they considered acceptable in the desktop/end user market share.
All the MS ❤️ Linux is at best for servers only, not anything that can benefit the common people. KDE aims for the common people.
@Bro666@kde@kde oh that's bad :c I'm sorry for misunderstanding, I think both organizations should be fair to each other that's all, thank you so much for clarifying!! c:
How can they ever be. one is greedy predatory megacorporation only motivated by power and money.
The other is a grassroots volunteer-powered association that explicitly advocates both in word and action improving the lot of fellow humans by giving control over technology to everybody.
They both produce software which is often functionally similar. A collision sooner or later is inevitable.
@01adrianrdgz@Bro666@kde@kde right when Microsoft said "Microsoft ❤️ Linux", they also announced something big: .NET MAUI. .NET is Microsoft's standard library and runtime when coding C#. It had become cross-platform already, so you can now compile for Linux. Only thing missing was a good UI framework. MAUI was invented to address this. You know what happened? MAUI supports Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone. Not Linux.
Microsoft doesn't love Linux, Microsoft loves using Linux for Azure.
Interestingly related: when KDE devs complained to Microsoft that, due to the fact that name of their new product and similarity in functionality to KDE's own Maui project
You are right. Also, a desktop environment, at least from an end user’s perspective, is as part of the OS as a kernel, terminal, and its associated tools. We are just using the language that a non-techie can understand and act upon.
Either way, “operating system” is a woolly and ambiguous term that is hard to define precisely and changes meanings depending on who you ask. The common denominator in common non technical English seems to be “software that allows you to manage you hardware and applications”. If that is so, yep, Plasma fits the bill.
I love Linux and the community surrounding it. I love the flexibility, the privacy and the way Debian lets me choose my desktop environment at login.
But all of us know why people still use windows. It’s because you don’t have to install four different distros until you find one that detects your Bluetooth mouse.
Two weeks ago is not a long long long long time in my book. Lenovo ThinkPad silent mouse and a ThinkPad X13 Gen2. Fedora: no. Ubuntu: surprisingly no. I forget which one I tried next before Debian finally detected it. Do you want to talk about fingerprint readers working out of the box?
advertising/ăd′vər-tī″zĭng/ noun The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.
Why can’t it be both? Advertising isn’t necessarily always a negative.
In fairness it used to be a lot of trouble to set up and maintain a Linux desktop. That hasn’t been true for years but the attitude didn’t come from nowhere.
@Bro666@holycrap
I install it from a USB stick. It's not hard. Last time that took me less than 10 minutes. I'm not an IT person, never using the command line or any IT things.
Linux is not perfect, but very usable. The distro I use looks after itself. If anything does mess up, I can simply reinstall.
I’m curious when this was. A modern plasma desktop today just works. I have very, very little trouble with it. Conversely, my Windows machine (required for accessing my work VPN) is a nightmare of constant problems.
I personally know a lot of bioinformaticians that run linux on their desktops. If you live in the terminal you don’t wanna be bothered with all Windows bs and linux comes with everything you need. Most don’t even care about the DE that much.
Been wondering about jumping ship to Linux after I got some hands on experience through the Steam Deck, but I hear that they don’t have the same wide compatibility with various Hardware, plus there are a lot of programs you can’t get.
If I want Clip Studio Paint, be able to play games with anti cheat AND be able to stream comfortably with OBS and the XLR microphones I have… Can I reasonably expect to be able to do all these things without a hitch?
Since most people don’t use Linux, drivers and software aren’t usually developed for it. Although, a reasonable company would develop just in case or help you get a solution, it’s unusual. Most computers are supported, but there is very specific hardware that may not have support or you’ll find bugs.
I’d recommend you to search (and test with an USB in Live mode) about your hardware and ask in communities about this specific topics. There are music communities, movies, math, streaming, etc.
And no, I don’t think you’ll find anticheat support because most Linux users don’t want closed shady software modifying their kernel (but there are solutions being worked on).
drivers and software aren’t usually developed for [Linux].
This is not very accurate. Despite having a small user base, kernel developers add hundreds of drivers every new version, and the number of end user programs developed by communities (such as KDE and GNOME) and independent teams, has ballooned in recent years.
You’re right, I should specify that it’s mostly for niche hardware. But even though there are developers trying, sometimes those devices are barely usable or have bugs and/or vulnerabilities.
Sure. So the catalogue of natively supported software is large and growing fast all the time. There some more devices that need specific drivers supplied by the provider, and some are not supported at all. It just means you factor one more thing when buying hardware: Is there support under Linux? And that is not one half as hard as it used to be.
Have been trying Linux Mint on a spare laptop as a complete N00b. Can’t get a huion screen tablet to work, nor an older xp non-screen one. Only option I’ve found for software is Krita (which isn’t bad, actually), but no CSP.
Couldn’t get a controller to work properly either without having to install some stuff via command line / terminal, which I wasn’t comfortable doing (I commented about having to do this on another post elsewhere and some guy was like super aggressive about how I didn’t need to, and was lying apparently… 🤷 )
Other than that, it’s a been a pretty smooth experience. That’s not sarcasm, its genuinely been interesting experience poking about and giving it a go. May just not be ready for my use case yet.
I actually found the whole bootloader and how to dual boot thing a bit non-intuitive and generally unclear as to what I should do. But maybe that’s just me. In the end, as it was a spare laptop, I just went full Linux Mint, reasoning that I can always reinstall Windows later…
@closetfurry@kde Please be slightly more specific regarding "anti-cheat". Do you play competitive shooter games? If yes, then you're probably out of luck for those unfortunately :(
Hardware support is pretty damn good now, but may require some research beforehand to ensure you get a system with no driver gotchas. Honestly, I have more trouble with driver setup on Windows than on Linux these days. That said, I won’t buy a computer that comes with any incompatibilities, so your experience may vary.
Gaming is easy on Linux now (assuming your system is set up properly) thanks to Steam’s Linux compatibility layer, which is built with WINE. They also have it on the Steam Deck, so you’ve actually probably used it already, you just didn’t know.
The only sticking point is Clip Studio Paint. Apparently it can be set up using WINE, but it’s not going to be as good as a native experience. Or at least, that would be my guess.
Maybe OP should try Krita. From what I read on the CSP site, Krita has everything CSP has and then some: comic module, manga module, animations module, hundreds of brushes and effects,… the works. It also works fine with all the main art hardware. XP Pen even sponsors on of the contributors and their tablets work flawlessly out of the box.
I actually love the steam deck, but there are some favs that I can’t play due to anti cheat, plus I like playing a lot of older titles on GoG. Do those work just as well?
You generally need to get software and hardware that is compatible with your operating system and processor architecture. It’s true that the most used platforms will have the best support, but you have that problem with any OS.
And it’s also not like games with anti cheat generally don’t work with Linux. Proton+Steam does support Valve Anti-Cheat, Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye. It’s just that developers have to explicitly enable Linux support for EAC and BattlEye.
@kde@kde "We turned your computer into a platform designed to bombard you with ads, full of useless bloatware, a system designed to pigeon hole you into using and paying for Microsoft products, which is unsafe to connect to the internet without an antivirus and which will break every time we force an update on you." = What Microsoft would say if they were honest describing Windows!
@kde@kde I use #gnulinux and KDE, now #kdeplasma since "I don't remember when" years, before the existence of #fedora.
I use it at work, home, to play videogames, for everything, and I can only recommend them. Step forward, respect yourself, take back your freedom and give them a chance.
@kde@kde Never heard of Plasma, nor am I in linux ecosystem yet, but from brief googling Plasma telemetry and developer attitude towards it is concerning
@shved@kde@kde
You mean the completely opt-in thing that is off by default and enables people to anonymously contribute user information so the developers know they're on the right track for new features, support, and updates?
There's even a slider after you opt in to determine how much information you want to share. I'm concerned about software that develops with no user input.
@jex@kde@kde@radioactiveradio While its FOSS, the telemetry is a slippery slope, and a single module now is the sign of a direction they've chosen. The flippant attitude of a developer mentioned in that reddit thread is worrying to say the least.
I'm aware its a single example about a project I know nothing about.
I can't think of a single project that is concerned with directly user-facing elements that doesn't gather data about its users needs. Gnome uses telemetry, too. Otherwise, we end up with KDE 2007 again.
Slippery slope my ass.
You really think a community driven project such as KDE would be allowed to add invasive telemetry? The same community that would rather hard fork audacity then deal with their bs? KDE is not muse group or canonical, it’s just not going to happen and it hasn’t happened over the 3y period since that brain dead Reddit post.
What flippant attitude? The part where they tell the poster to just read the source code? That’s not flippant that’s the exact answer to the question. If you don’t trust it just check out the source, it’s all out in the open. If you don’t like it don’t use it, same as the telemetry alsame as the desktop. FOSS is about choice, you can choose to use Gnome or fork KDE and remove the telemetry yourself. Or maybe just flip a switch and turn it off.
Edit: Also the whole argument about how the “average user can’t read source code” is useless. Remember when audacity put ‘actually questionable’ telemetry in their code? Everyone was up and arms about it, distros still don’t provide the new updated versions of audacity in their repos. Now imagine that with KDE, it’s a much bigger project, any average user would figure it out with 5 seconds of reddit or a simple google search.
Been using it for over a year now and there’s just one slider for telemetry that sends them anonymous desktop/KDE apps usage data, and you can limit how much you wanna send them. And i personally haven’t heard of any controversy surrounding that. Also its opt in unlike windows.
@shved@kde@kde Sorry, but this is a pretty opinionates post about a simple feature. Yes, KDE has Telemetry options. But these are entirely opt in, so unless you explicitely choose to send data you will never send data. The data that is being sent is fully transparent, as we have access to the source code. I belief it is mostly used for interface decisions (such as what window sizes are people using). So I cannot see the point.
The telemetry is transparent, you literally know everything that gets sent. You don’t even have to read the source code, it deadass tells you. Unlike Windows.
Yep, and it’s opt-in so if you’ve never turned it on explicitly, then it’s off.
Seriously though, KDE’s slider that lets you adjust how much / how little data to send (if any) is probably the best implementation of opt-in telemetry that I’ve seen in a while.
No telemetry gets collected unless you explicitly give permission (and they don't nag or try to trick you into giving it). Overall, KDE is incredibly good for privacy
@kde@kde I love plasma for not being gnome but I'm tired of all the bugs I've got with each and every update on arch. Your stable channel is actually a forever beta channel.
At this point I'm just waiting and hoping Cosmic will be good enough.
To @johnfocker in particular: All software contains bugs, but if you could provide some examples of the ones you find most annoying, maybe we can see if they are already solved or look into their cause.
@brb@kde An ad for a completely free product with no ads, no DRM, no privacy issues, and better security than Windows or Mac. Most people need that ad.
@Bro666 I wish Plasma had a panel that could fit this much utility into this little space. (Note also the stacked panel that Plasma does not support.) I also wish I didn't have to keep deleting org.kde.dolphin.FileManager1.service so KFind will stop opening things in Dolphin.
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