Hopefully that’ll push for more investment in opensource and security. SELinux being the default with either containerised or sandboxed apps would be great.
This means we need to keep being the best community we can be. Welcoming, helpful, and distro agnostic. I might occasionally Stan for the distros I love, or talk a little smack about ones that left a bad taste in my mouth, but when we’re helping new users, we need to meet them where they’re at, and give them the little boost they need to stick with it.
I’ve used Linux professionally and personally for about 12 years. Yesterday was the first time I tried Wine after nuking Windows on my gaming computer. Pretty impressed with it so far, even if it will need a bit of tuning.
further, heroic games launcher isn’t just for epic and gog games, you can install any exe. i use it for the ea games launcher because the lutris script was broken at the time. and in the wine manager in hgl settings you can choose either wine-ge latest or proton-ge latest (or whatever number version) as your default layer, which you can also change per game/app if you have trouble.
edit: and also you can set it to add to steam so you can still just use steam as your main launcher, for example on steam deck or using a media center rig in big picture mode.
I’ve switched a few months ago mostly for gaming, and here are few tips and issues I ran into, in case you run into them too.
Not sure what distro you are using, but I’ve run mostly into issues when trying to get NVIDIA and Proton working on Fedora. Just getting the drivers to work took a few tries, and I never managed to get stuff like cutscenes to work properly.
However, I then switched to Nobara (I suppose PopOS may also work), and the experience was wastly better, with everything working out of the box (I did switch to KDE Plasma on X11, since Wayland kept freezing on me).
I’m not sure what of the many changes Nobara does helped solve my issues, but I guess it may be related to it including Proton GE by default, which I recommend getting, and a slightly streamlined installation of NVIDIA drivers.
I also recommend checking out Lutris, instead of using Wine directly. However, I never really managed to get it working, aside from WoW, so your mileage may wary. But I have most of my games on Steam, where everything is working out of the box, so it wasn’t that much of na issue. I only sometimes have to switch Proton version (by right clicking the game - properties - Force a specific version of compatibility tool).
Copilot being back on the taskbar after removalafter taking my show desktop button (also removed) was it for me as well. Already enjoying it. Some quirks, but I think I’m going to spend way less time configuring than I am trying to unfuck windows once a week.
Could be the actual GNOME distro or they just forgot to type the name of the distro, which they’re using the GNOME version of. Sometimes that happens to me too, where I just leave out a word.
Gnome is a desktop environment, which you can install into virtually any distro. It’s the default for Fedora, which is a good enough place to try Linux for the first time.
i dont recommend it as a daily driver, im just testing out the latest between kde plasma and gnome desktop environments to see who handles touchscreens better.
im one of those people that like poking the monitor.
They are in linux forums spruiking chatgpt/copilot as well. Mods deleted my comment the last time I told them to get lost. The rampant commercialism is so frustrating. The FOSS community has done so much to empower users/developers and give everyone the tools to learn, grow and customise their systems with amazing documentation and access to source code. And it is going to be Disneyfied within a generation with the fruits of our labor locked up behind billionaire controlled subscription services in flagrant disregard of our copyright and licences. Our kids won’t know how to tie their shoelaces without paying Nadella, Altman and their shareholders for instructions.
Ads in Windows Explorer was the final straw to make me switch to Linux a few years back. I would imagine that ads in the Start Menu could convince some others to do the same.
Ads in Windows 10 back in like 2017 were major contributing factors for me to switch back then. But then when I mentioned I got ads in Windows 10, people looked at me like I had two heads. Perhaps there was some kind of A/B testing going on, and I was the unlucky one. This followed a forced update from Windows 8 Professional to Windows 10 Home, so I lost some control over my PC in that transition, as they took Pro features away from me.
Again, Windows 8 Pro, forcibly upgraded against my will, with no ability to decline, to Windows 10 Home. It wasn’t the same version of Windows downgraded from Pro to Home.
Microsoft is seeking feedback on the changes, so it’s possible the company could decide to ditch these ads […]
are they really looking to see if people want to see more ads? i can’t imagine this is anything more than a meaningless corporate “we value your feedback” message. they already know what people think about ads in their operating system, they’ve tried it many times
They are not seeking feedback between “I like it” and “I hate it”, they want feedback between “I tolerate it because I still feel locked in” and “that’s it I’m moving to a competitor”.
That whole sentiment only works in a monopolistic / oligopolic market. In a free market, competition would make companies sell better products. Only if there is no decent competition does enshittification work.
No; in a free market without regulation. the bigger fish outcompetes the smaller ones, or buys them outright. Which then is exactly why enshittification works in the first place.
What you’re saying is true, but in my book, a market is not free because of the lack of regulations.
Free markets are not stable things, and without regulation, they fail. Regulation keeps markets free. My definition of a free market is the econ 101 one, which is many competing companies, who all are individually unable to affect market prices. Not the weird ancap one, where we throw the reins in between the horses and let companies consolidate into a fascist dictatorship.
It’s likely they’re looking for feedback from their shareholders, and their advertising partners rather than the users themselves. They know they’ve got a good portion of the market cornered and if it looks profitable to them; why wouldn’t they do it?
After dithering with dual boot for years I jumped ship to Linux only (LMDE) with their incessant reminders about moving to W11 from W10 popped up. Missing a few apps but fuk’ em.
Small brain move: install Windows as a guest on a Linux host. Rip out so much of it’s guts it can’t show any ads and barely works at all. Declare victory over the desecrated husk of Microsoft Windows.
small brain move: install windows on a seperate disk to linux and then let your BIOS decide what it wants to boot, instead of relying on a unified boot loader
This is like one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen on this platform. Like yeah dude, the legions of users who sat through Windows 10 ads, Windows 8 ads, Windows Vista, EOL support for every OS, and forced packaged apps everywhere have finally had it with Windows 11 sir. The tidal wave of users embracing the glory of Linux is nigh.
If you find yourself running the same set of commands over and over, throw 'em in a shell script and keybind it! It may be obvious, but good to keep in mind.
One fun one is to pipe clipboard to qrencode — it’s a simple and (nearly) universally supported way of getting a URL, etc., from a laptop/desktop to a phone.
Another great one is to take a screenshot, upload to your server, and put the URL in the paste buffer. Bonus points to put the URL in the middle click buffer and the image itself in the ctrl-v buffer.
One fun one is to pipe clipboard to qrencode — it’s a simple and (nearly) universally supported way of getting a URL, etc., from a laptop/desktop to a phone.
Hyprland has permanently changed the way I use a computer, pretty much everything I need on speed dial and opens/closes almost instantly
Also wrote a script to cycle through my audio devices and bound that to a button because I used to forever be fucking around with the gui every time I wanted to show someone a video on speaker or something
I anticipate switching to a full Linux setup once I build my new PC, hopefully later this year. I can’t see myself even unwillingly buying pirating buying Windows.
For windows you dont need to buy it, you can activate it using microsofts own tools, its on github (dont remember its name right now.)
As for linux, i would recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed, it is fresh, and the best part about it is that whenever you update the system, it creates a snapshot, so if the update had some kind of undesired sideeffects, you can just startup the old version. (These snapshots only effect the system’s packages, your apps will keep their state iirc. My brother uses tumbleweed and he is very content with it.)
When building the computer, go for generic middle of the road normal hardware. Fairly easy to do with off the shelf ATX PC hardware. Inside the case, this usually means look out for weird graphics cards or motherboards. I’ll warn you that Asrock RGB lighting doesn’t like to play with open source control software. Outside the case, pick a keyboard and mouse that don’t require (much) in the way of configuration because Razer and Corsair don’t publish their bullshitware for Linux yet.
Back up your files.
I recommend spending some time with whatever current hardware you have trying out a few distros in a virtual machine. Don’t just look around and go “ah that’s nice. ah that’s weird.” Actually use it to do your work. Even though you’re running Linux IN Windows, try to use Linux to do actual stuff.
Back up your files.
Choosing a distro. Isn’t really all that important, at least at first. Most of the meaningful differences are going to be in the Desktop Environment anyway. There’s about 18 different GUIs you can use, from weird tiling window managers the hardcore nerds tend to like, to more Windows like experiences in KDE and Cinnamon, to more Apple like experiences with Gnome and Pantheon. Try a few out in virtualbox.
Back up your files.
Learn a little bit about the terminal. A lot of people hate and fear that suggestion, but it can honestly be fun. Wait till you see what the command fortune | cowsay | lolcatdoes. Learn how to edit files, run commands, install software via the terminal, even if you don’t plan on doing it that way routinely. Mainly, so that if you ask the community for help, you’re not completely in the dark when given a terminal command to run. Which is often the case; because “click here then here then there then tell us what it says” is harder to convey than “copy paste this command into the terminal, and then copy-paste what it says.” There’s a lot of cool stuff hidden in there.
A very important one besides backing up your files is that you should more or less stop searching the web for applications to download and install. You should first try to use your package manager (read the wiki of your distribution to know which one it is and how to search for and install software with it). If you miss some applications from Windows, you could have a good chance to look for alternatives at sites like www.opensourcealternative.to
Do not fear the terminal too much. I know, Windows tried to make it as dreadful as possible to use, but if you do not run sudo rm -rf / (deletes your whole filesystem), there is not much that can go awfully wrong. And you should only execute commands you understand. If something does go wrong however, it is a good thing to have a backup ready (I would recommend Pika Backup or Vorta, both based on the great CLI application borg)
For things that are not explained in the wiki of your distro, you have a pretty good chance to find a good explanation and even troubleshooting tips at the Arch Wiki (e.g. I use Void Linux and still search for most things at the Arch Wiki). It is also good to read some parts of the manual pages if you did not find enough information at the Arch Wiki (the command man is your friend) and the software’s wiki page if it exists.
If you ever find yourself in the editor vi or vim, type :q and press enter to quit until you feel the need to potentially invest a lot of time in learning vim movements to increase your editing speed and you never want to go back. Use nano, micro or a graphical app at first instead and keep using it if you are not someone who edits text a lot.
I’ve tried Linux gaming for a good bit but it doesn’t seem like it’s quite there yet. For the games that worked it was amazing! The only other thing that was annoying was the constant downloading for the shader caches basically every day with steam (yes I know they can be disabled). I was using Bazzite for those wondering.
I have the total opposite experience. Ubuntu, Endeavour, SteamOS. Gaming on Linux has been great in the last 2 years especially. Shader caches are a very small price to pay for having a system that doesn’t crash due to Windows driver BS and being able to reinstall and keep my home directory intact.
It depends on what „quite there yet“ means for you.
Performance wise linux gaming can be on par or better than windows. Statistically it should always be better by now because the resource hog that is called windows slows older systems down.
The shader caches are bad, ngl. I have enabled downloading/precaching them in the background so its no big deal as long as you have steam open.
So, for those used to windows and being picky enough to not accept any inconvenience for the tons of upsides: linux isnt for you yet.
For those who are able to accept the tinyest inconveniences for a limited time: linux is a lot better than windows.
Performance wise it was better for almost every game I played! I’m more used to Linux because that’s what I use at work, but I don’t have the greatest Internet connection, so that’s why the shader caches suck.
Thats very understandable. I hope it will get better at some point. I can’t even remember what the exact reason is. Probably because the engines run on directx and linux uses vulcan or something?
What are the tons of upsides? Does my computer get 20% better performance in games? Do games never crash on Linux? I’m curious what these “tons of upsides” are. I game just fine on windows so I’m not sure what another OS can do to improve my gaming experience past what it already is.
I dont know your computer. As I said, statistically its going to be better since the vast majority of computers are not racehorses and will benefit from less bloat. There are a ton of things you can do on linux that you either cant do at all or with significantly more effort on windows. You’re also not at the mercy of microsoft and whatever freeware runs on windows to make it fit your taste better because in linux you write or download a config to change things, no special programs needed.
Games usually dont crash more often on linux than on windows these days, linux also keeps you from installing anti cheat rootkits as well (by being incompatible with it) which might be a downer if you’re really into an enshittified game.
I can go on about this all day but in case your question was rhetoric and you just want to veil your undying love for windows, thats up to you.
As always in life: If your concern is being right, you will always find arguments for it. If you want to learn stuff, there is plenty of opportunity.
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