The Linux infiltration of PC gaming communities has been one of the most successful covert operations in the history of espionage. So successful that the agents don’t even need to hide their identities.
I just dont get it, you pay for the OS, they monitor you like a hawk and sell that shit. Now they are like we need to make sure they get all these ads too, also we are going to ruin any app that you use, like search or notepad. We will milk this mother dry then claim users dont understand how much it costs to run the company.
In Windows 11 it saves every text file you open as a new tab, so every time you open a text file you’ll have tabs upon tabs of every previous text file you’ve ever opened.
Here’s a Reddit post with some people talking about how to disable it, how frustrating it is, and even how it’s causing problems by straight up opening the wrong file if it’s named the same as a text file you’ve opened in the past.
Not only that. Opening the same file again, opens it in a new tab ffs. I noticed this, when my ssh-config file (which has no file extension and is thus not linked to a program) had like 10 tabs open… Why would someone do that?
Wow finally. I remember when I moved to Notepad++ a decade ago when I still used Windows, to get that behaviour. Being able to close it without losing all the open tabs was a game changer.
Yeah, I noticed it in the new Notepad. Nifty feature. Notepad++ is still my go to for everything. Especially dumping “temporary code” in unsaved tabs, then like 6 months later trying to figure out if any of its still relevant or safe to finally close.
So what’s the deal with vim? I spooled up a vps recently and decided to forgo the gui options, like a real Linux server admin. I have been using nano and it seems to do all I need from a basic text editor in the terminal. I get that vim/emacs meme-bantering but actually why. It accepts texts and stores them in files. What is the actual point/difference?
Visual Studio is the full IDE, VS Code isn’t. Visual Studio and VS Code are completely different products, even though both carry Visual Studio branding.
What would be missing from VS Code or VS Codium that an IDE needs?
I’m an ex Visual Studio user, now writing all my code in VS Codium. I organize my project tree in VS Codium, I build from it and, like a Visual Studio user, I press F5 to debug, set breakpoints and inspect variables.
And that’s just the default install using the vanilla C/C++ extension it ships with, not some complicated setup that takes any time to get working.
If you have a monopoly and need to maximize profits then the question becomes: Why not?! You could extract more money this way, and it’s not like your users would go anywhere else at this point.
That is why it’s so important to fight and break up monopolies, and to limit what these companies can do. Because they have no reason not to squeeze every penny they can get out of you!
Issue is, I don’t think even the current competition is helping them to get better, if they became smaller for some reason they’d just go back to their active sabotage days.
What I’d think would help to actually wither Microsoft’s monopoly in addition of breaking it up is forcing them to open source Windows, thus taking their main leverage on the market. Windows would be a good (not great) OS if it wasn’t for MS and its shareholders trying to monetize it as much as possible, and trying to make all computers like what the Junkman had in the Superhero Team vs. Genocidal Purple Guy Part 3.
Because you could replace the text of this mene with Nvidia drivers or any number of pain in the ass sub systems. Fuck even anti cheat for many games as well. Windows for the most part just works. Search works just fine and 98% of users couldn’t give two fucks about notepad.
This is the norm of what shareholder-driven companies in a situation of monopoly will tend to do. They try to see how much they can abuse their position of dominance on the market to maximize their profits. Microsoft’s primary goal isn’t to make a good user experience, or even a good OS. Their main goal is to milk as much money as possible from its assets for its shareholders. They’ve been playing that game for decades, only backtracking when the consumer backlash is strong enough to threaten their sales or when the government threatens to break them up.
On top of that, Microsoft has a long history of letting arrogant elements of top management take control of projects who will then force their “vision” down the throats of their customers who don’t want any of it. They will only backtrack once the sales numbers become disastrous enough. Then usually the control returns to more competent people and a decent product tends to result from it. Think how Windows Vista lead to Windows 7. And how Windows 8 lead to Windows 10. Or even how the XBox One was originally designed and marketed as some sort of stupid way to watch NFL games on your TV with Kinect controls until they realized they were losing the console war and then started treating it like a gaming console again.
I mean it’s not complicated. If you don’t want to use Windows, your options are:
Pay thousands for a Mac computer that may not have the features you want, and never be able to upgrade or repair it, or
Get a software engineering degree so you can figure out how to install, use and regularly debug Linux. Because even techy people you know that might want to help you don’t know anything about Linux.
I walked my 83 year old dad through a Linux Mint install on his laptop over the phone a few weeks ago when the Windows install shit the bed. All he needs is a browser, he’s good now.
Get out of here with that “software engineering degree” BS.
And this is why it will never be more popular: A community that refuses to acknowledge the shortcomings, and animosity for anyone who questions it or asks for support.
Linux is great until it isn’t. As soon as you venture outside of whatever packages user interfaces offer you, the “degree” analogy applies. For some, the thought of editing a text file to configure an option blows their mind.
It is easier more than ever to install linux today.
People like to use words like “easy” and “hard” to describe clicking buttons and typing letters into a display. These are the wrong words. The word is “complicated”.
Doesn’t matter if it’s easier, the fact remains that it is complicated and likely always will be.
The process to install Ubuntu vs Windows is pretty much the same.
Create a user, choose a timezone, connect to Wi-Fi or LAN and wait for setup to finish. It is not complicated by any mean.
As I mentioned, most people never install an OS in their life, so they don’t know how to create a boot drive and install an OS.
So the issue isn’t that installing Linux is complicated, it’s that installing an OS on an empty drive is not a thing that the vast majority of pc users has done or will ever do.
So the issue isn’t that installing Linux is complicated, it’s that installing an OS on an empty drive is not a thing that the vast majority of pc users has done
Lmfao guess he doesn’t need you to help him setup his email port settings or have any issues with audio drivers or any of the other common issues we see with Linux installs.
Why would a random 83 year old set up his own email port configs? He signs into gmail.com like everyone else, let’s be realistic if we’re gonna talk shit
I worked for an ISP residential tech support for 3 years. Don’t tell me what’s realistic lmfao. I experienced it very, very often. And they sure as fuck couldn’t do it in windows.
We can compare anecdotes if you want, I’ve been in tech twice as long as you were and I can count on one hand the number of people doing their own IMAP setup. That remains the same if you go back to me being a child.
There’s no need to be a dick man, this is a nerd forum for awarding fake internet points. Chill out.
Pay thousands for a Mac computer that may not have the features you want, and never be able to upgrade or repair it, or
M1 Air costs USD $750 where I live.
Get a software engineering degree so you can figure out how to install, use and regularly debug Linux. Because even techy people you know that might want to help you don’t know anything about Linux.
Hyperbole to sell an easily disprovable false narrative. For what?
That MacBook will have 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is completely useless, not to mention fucking highway robbery when you can buy a Windows laptop for half of that with better specs.
Hyperbole to sell an easily disprovable false narrative.
LOL I’d love to see you prove me wrong. Go on ahead. It’s easy!
That MacBook will have 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is completely useless, not to mention fucking highway robbery when you can buy a Windows laptop for half of that with better specs.
You said thousands of dollars. They’re not thousands. And yeah, you can get a cheaper machine. And put some flavor of GNU/Linux on that too!
LOL I’d love to see you prove me wrong. Go on ahead. It’s easy!
Niche suppliers normies have never heard of. Can’t find them on retail sites or in stores. Also very expensive.
I know all of these things. I use Linux. I think Linux is better than Windows. I’m just answering the question of why so many people continue to use Windows.
Cost to run the company? They will proudly milk as much money as they can to maximize profits. Having a bigger margin is a point of pride for them. Watch any shareholder meeting. They will publicly brag about it.
Well it's good to see that - unlike Lemmy - Reddit users have found a way to bash Windows without using pre-transition images of Elliot Page. So they've got that going for them, at least. (I'm assuming this post is also poking fun at Reddit, for being riddled with ads)
EDIT: Apologies, I shouldn't have made this comment. I'll leave it up, so the replies have some context.
It was two, fwiw. They were also upvoted, and engaged with (which is what the trolls want, of course). I shouldn't have made that comment - it's a sign that I've been on my phone too much this morning. I'll amend it, and then go out for a walk or something.
Well, yes, that transphobic post was very bad yesterday :( It was one person and the poster got a 30 days community ban on lemmy.world (check the modlog). The copy of the post was gone on lemmy.world but was still visible on lemmy.ml later, downvoted a lot.
At this point I’m not sure if this is a meme or what…
Last time I switched distro a few years ago I tried a dozen of them (dropped the ISOs on a Ventoy drive). None of them had trouble getting a usable desktop of correct resolution.
Now sure, if you want an optimal, accelerated driver, on some of them you may have to figure out that distro’s preferred way of doing it. But that’s also true on Windows. And on Windows the vast majority of people don’t bother beyond the install, because it makes no difference to them.
Optimal drivers are essential only to a small subset of users like gamers and I expect a PC gamer to be able to figure out how to install a driver.
But I repeat it’s not even an issue on most modern distros. (I have an Nvidia card too.)
Absolutely not. Just the other day I saw a post about one of the desktops getting something close to working DPI scaling out of the box. And no, you don’t need to figure out shit on Windows. You download the driver, double click and it’s done. The only thing even moderately annoying is HDR calibration which is a mess in itself on Linux. I understand Linux is getting closer, but it’s not on par with ease of use.
Jesus Christ, of course Nvidia has the base drivers. Y’all are just pouty over the reality check. Until Linux desktop is easier and better supported Windows will continue strong.
I’ve seen “computer illiterate” folk using windows computers without properly working graphic drivers causing scrolling to look horrific or being limited to something like 1280x800 while owning a FullHD screen that I’m 100% convinced something like this doesn’t matter for most “normal” users.
The main issue for them is getting it installed in the first place. They buy a computer, turn it on, windows with all its bloatware is there and they use it. Would it boot to any kind of Linux desktop they would use this and most probably wouldn’t even consciously recognise that they aren’t using windows anymore.
To a certain extent this is correct, especially if this person works or used to work an office job in the last let’s say 15 years. But even then what are the use cases of office suites at home, mainly writing letters and maybe for the slightly more tech literate something like logging personal finances in a spreadsheet. In case of writing a letter those files are usually printed and the spreadsheet are usually considered confidential data. These people rarely, if ever, share those files with anyone, so interoperability is likely not an issue.
I’m therefore convinced if you just guide those persons to e.g. libre office writer and just say that’s “The word” on this machine, they’re going to be fine with it. Also almost all of these people use webmail instead of mail clients so the absence of Outlook is usually also not a problem.
Imho this includes 90% of the 50+ years computer user that can be migrated to Linux this way. The “problematic” ones are the ones who know some stuff, like how to click by click import my mail account into Outlook 2016 and want their new computer to behave exactly the same way and will go bananas otherwise. If I encounter one of those in my circle of relatives who need help with their computer I usually just leave them with their windows 7 machines or whatever they’re using cause it’s not a battle worth fighting.
Nah, the last time this user tried Linux was probably 2005. You can get to a desktop and install proprietary drivers from the app store relatively painlessly on most distros.
Commits to tf, open tofu, CNCF, Apache. You’ve used my code today in all probabilty. You ain’t got shit for an answer to the constant support questions for Linux desktop so you back to baseless claims.l on my resume.
Now, send me the copy pasta with do you know who I am as if you weren’t the one making up crap for karma points.
What ever makes you feel like the bigger man. The most annoying thing I run into are distros not supporting proprietary codecs and formats out of the box.
If that’s where we’re at right now I’m pretty happy with the state of Linux, especially since it’s only a couple of distros that intentionally do that.
But that person claims to have contributed some code to server software, so he’s clearly super qualified to comment about 2005 desktop stuff!!11!1
The most annoying thing I run into are distros not supporting proprietary codecs and formats out of the box.
It’s not like Windows supports all the codecs out of the box either. Downloading something like VLC (or insert your competing favorite playback thingie here) is pretty much required when dealing with offline media files.
Your post is confusing friend. Also if you can figure out how to get heic image formats working on fedora I’d love to know. I fixed it by SSHDing into my mother’s desktop and converting everything heic into jpeg from my arch instance.
I wanted her to have a good experience with Linux so I avoided Ubuntu.
It is interesting how many people reports that distros does not work out-of-the-box. While for me, most things work. It’s hard to partition things correctly but that’s that…
Nope, last Christmas I struggled to get Linux Mint to play a Steam game using Proton. Booting would lead to a crash, adding some flags would lead to the game being incredibly laggy. Mint had an option for proprietary drivers, but the game would crash regardless of the flags. In the end, turns out Mint was downloading the wrong drivers, and I had to manually download the correct ones from Nvidia’a website to finally get the game to work with average performance.
It took multiple hours of troubleshooting during my one Christmas vacation of the year. Meanwhile my brother, who had an identical laptop playing the same game on Windows, ran it flawlessly with great performance.
I’m sorry to hear that, dual graphics can be a pain. If you feel like trying it again I’d love to recommend pop os, it should handle dual graphics out of the box. It’s just something that isn’t well supported thanks to Nvidia’s proprietary graphics.
If it weren’t Nvidia’s fault, like, as in they don’t support linux on purpose “because fuck you, you do not matter, you’ll use the OS we choose and like it,” maybe you’d have a point. They could do it, easily, but they don’t because they do not care about their users.
Doesn’t change the fact that those hurdles are caused by nvidia on purpose and they could fix it tomorrow if they wanted, either. Don’t be mad at linux about falling victim to it, be mad at nvidia for doing it. That matters to the users, even if they falsely blame linux about it.
You’re the one angry and completely ignoring the thread 🤷♂️ raging over the popularity of Windows making up excuses for third parties that don’t make a difference for end users.
Windows is popular. It will be popular until Linux desktop gets its shit together and gets rid of it’s compatibility issues.
Well, if you’re complaining about how nvidia doesn’t support linux, seems like it matters to their customers to me. Stop your crying about it then if you don’t care so bad.
nvidia gets its shit together and gets rid of it’s compatibility issues.
Not complaining. I use Windows for games. I don’t deal with any of that right now. I’m stating reality. Again, you’re off thread and just looking for an argument. Some how mad that I pointed out most users won’t change a thing because of Linux challenges. Then starting on some off topic rant about Nvidia being assholes.
Yes they are assholes. It doesn’t change a thing and this enrages you.
I’m off thread? I’m directly responding to your comment, so you’re off thread then. Guess you should stop commenting “off thread” lol.
By “linux challenges,” you mean “nvidia challenges.” Again it is nvidia’s fault whether you accept that or not. You’re complaining about problems with nvidia and pretending they’re problems with linux, I’m simply trying to inform you that you incorrectly place the blame on the wrong party, you in turn are being obtuse, this is a you problem lol.
“The users” meaning “the company nvidia?” Because they’re the only ones that need to change anything to support linux, linux users just use AMD or Intel, or one of the workarounds to get nvidia supported by the hacked together drivers that “the users” have made. It is nvidia themselves that prevent their hardware from running well on linux.
I’m not enraged by nvidia, I just don’t give them money, I use their competitors. I’m not even enraged by stupid people putting blame on linux or “the users” for something done by their precious god-company and then doubling down on being too stupid to understand why anyone would have the audacity to point out why you were wrong and misplace your blame, I’m not enraged at all, I’m laughing at you.
No, I didn’t. I have a faster GPU at a lower price with my timing and I can play every single one of my games. It’s easy and I don’t have to do shit. I don’t have to make sure drm doesn’t work and I don’t have to find some utility it script to get DPI resolution scaling working. You’re just pouty because Linux isn’t a good solution for a large chunk of users.
It's SUPER hard to use. I had to download an .iso from my distro's website, make a bootable USB drive, plug that into my computer and boot into it, answer a few questions and wait a few minutes, A FEW MINUTES... can you believe that??
And then It had the audacity to give me a super easy, working, private OS! Like what the fuck!
How bloody dare you make my life difficult. I was expecting to be TRACKED and EXPLOITED and BOMBARDED with ads all day.
Instead I get all this calm and happiness??
FFS!
As a Linux main, I don’t think it’s hard, but it’s also still not as good as Windows in some ways I find important. Fractional scaling for instance. I had a different resolutions multimonitor setup, and I definitely had more issues than on Windows. Also, now with two same reso monitors, I still have to switch to Windows to RDP into my work Win machine, because on Linux it’s so blurry due to difference in scaling, it hurts my eyes. Of course, I’m most likely in minority of a minority, but it’s still a thing.
It didn’t affect me, due to using startallback. It replaces start menu, taskbar and explorer. So my start menu is Win7 and my task and explorer are Win10.
It used to have a 100 day all access free trial and was 5 bucks, but I haven’t checked lately. I gotta keep a Windows machine around for art. My Gaomon tablet was able to use wacom drivers on Linux with some terminal tinkering, but it couldn’t map the scroll wheel by design, which was a deal breaker.
<span style="color:#323232;">On Reddit: “Windows is being enshitified. How can we cope with it?”
</span><span style="color:#323232;">On Lemmy: “Windows is being enshitified. Good thing we’ve moved to Linux”
</span>
I think I see a pattern here.
Interesting. I guess it has to do with what you are used to and what feels comfortable.
When you say ‘I wrote a program that crashed Windows,’ people just stare at you blankly and say ‘Hey, I got those with the system, for free.’
If I think back of the days that I was using Linux and I saw friends and family using Windows95 that had just launched (with a massive hype, and using a Rolling Stones song to promote it) the Blue Screen of Death was fairly normal for folks. And they lived with it, and they continued to live with it because they thought that they had no choice, and they were incredibly happy to not having to use DOS anymore. Later some of the folks I knew after having their Windows computer flocked with Windows viruses they bought a Mac, and as a matter of saying, lived happily ever after. Not everyone can afford Macs though.And not every “normie” is ready to use Linux.
Nobody who enjoys freedom or has principles uses apple products, and nobody building a decent computer and knowing what they’re talking about then installs iOs. Know what you’re paying for lol, don’t buy marked up fascist crap, and stop masturbating in public about it. It’s disgusting to glorify them in that way, like eating a shit pie and telling everyone it’s delicious.
Mac did have a better OS than Win 95 -Win98 It was smoother and crashed less.
The difference was that Windows still ran DOS programs, 5.25" floppy disks etc… They made the decision to maintain backwards compatibility.
Mac decided to drop support regularly for what they considered “outdated software and technology.” For example: when USB drives came out they canceled support for 3.5" floppies in their OS. Machines that had a 3.5" drive installed could no longer use it. Put a floppy drive in and nothing happened.
Although Mac was a smoother more stable OS, windows had more functionality and greater compatability. Windows was a far superior product because of it. Even with the regular apearance of the blue screen of death.
Linux at the time also suffered from being a terminal based OS. Too much like DOS for way too long. I used it for specific tasks where it excelled at.
I just switched to Kubuntu for my ThinkPad (not my first choice but hardware incompatabilities) over the last few days, and it still very much is a terminal-based system. It took me ~4 days to set everything up, and nearly every step aside from “change things in the settings UI” was “in a terminal, type…”
I dipped my toes into Linux… 19 years ago? As someone who likes windows up until 10, and heard all of the ‘it’s so amazing’ gospel from Linux users, two decades later I’m like: “it’s still not ready”
Shit, I wanted to install Debian 12(.5) with KDE on this TP. It has a snapdragon X55, that I need working, and previous attempts at getting it working (year+ ago) failed. I read docs, did more research, I was ready. Made a live USB, install it in the live environment, restart, and… it hangs during boot. Research, ‘use the option presented at the boot menu’. Okay. “no network” errors, that’s fine, it’s not a net installer. Done, restart. Hangs. Research. “use rufus, it solved my problem”. Rinse, repeat, hang. Isn’t Debian supposed to be super reliable? And Kubuntu booted fine, like what the hell?
Then cue the 4 days of setup. This machine is a very light use box, mostly to be a hotspot. Browser, email, password manager. Btrfs for snapshots (WHY IS THERE NO SNAPSHOT UI IN ANY DISTRO I TRIED?!). I’m far from a novice, been trying to switch for two decades. This will be easy.
deep breath
WHY IS GRUB NOT TAKING MY UPDATED SETTINGS (it’s a known bug in Ubuntu since 20.04?!)? WHY CAN’T I GET HOWDY TO INSTALL? WHY AM I GETTING APT ERRORS ON A FRESH INSTALL? WHY IS BITWARDEN FAILING TO SYNC? WHAT IS THE NEW-NEW-NEW METHOD OF SETTING UP NEXTDNS? WHY CAN’T I RESIZE A PARTITION (/) LIVE? WHY DOESN’T MY HOTSPOT WORK WHEN I USE WPA3 (still broken, actually, and WPA2 isn’t an acceptable solution imo)? WHY DON’T I GET ANY ERROR MESSAGES WHEN THIS HAPPENS (a recurring theme)? WHY DO I HAVE TO SIFT THROUGH 3 DIFFERENT LOGS? WHY IS SEVERAL HUGELY-POPULAR PROGRAMS NOT IN THE DEFAULT REPO (omfg - Librewolf, Telegram, Element, Signal, Discord, Bitwarden…)? WHY DO THESE ALL TAKE DIFFERENT STEPS TO INSTALL ON MY SYSTEM WHAT THE FUCK WE HAVE A SYSTEM FOR THIS SCREAMS
E: WHY DOES KDE CONNECT JUST DECIDE THAT IT’S NOT GOING TO CONNECT TODAY UNTIL I TROUBLESHOOT FOR 3 HOURS, CHANGE NOTHING, THEN WORK?
And then, the 5G modem. Why in the shit doesn’t the fcc unlock tool just fucking detect, and unlock, automatically. Why. WHY. This is simple, the installer is already detecting hardware. It’s right there. This could be easy. Instead I had to dig through pages of solutions that didn’t work, until I landed on a page for my laptop (but seemingly a different architecture?) for Debian 13 (unstable) talking about needing to edit the installer with commands (omfg what) or the screen will just show nothing on boot, that you need to change wifi and bt stuff or they don’t work, etc etc… But in this heap of “I should just revert”, there was one line, the line I needed, to run this stupid fucking fcc unlock tool - and how to find the hardware address. Enter both, nothing (a ‘success’ message would be nice…). No further instructions in the doc. Luckily, I am persistent and went into the networkmanager anyway, tell it to connect to mobile broadband. Fill in my apn. Save. It works.
There’s a ton of stuff I glossed over, but it should not take FOUR DAYS with the terminal essentially living on my screen, with my browser having a dozen tabs at any given time for troubleshooting, for someone who has done all this shit before (minus the modem) many times in the past. It’s done, I’m setup, but there isn’t a soul alive who would switch their generic Dell machine running windows, spend several hours a day for several days, just to get their base system running. And the second they see “open the terminal”, which is still very much a necessity, they’ll be running to the hills.
I have a friend asking me questions about Linux since I’ve been harping on this the last few days, and I’m like… it’s not the easy path everyone says it is. I don’t want to push them away, but fuck they use many of the same programs that aren’t one-click installs, and I haven’t even touched gaming, multiple sound cards, gpu drivers; they use their machine for gaming, and mine is on W10 for a reason. It would be a nightmare guiding them through the minefield I just emerged from. Not to mention games that aren’t handled by steam/proton and don’t have guides, old games like Midtown Madness/2, Midnight Club 2, Insane/2…
I always viewed the think pad line as more of a business line of products. I know it isn’t owned by IBM anymore, but considering how much involvement they had with Redhat, you might have better luck trying a fedora based distro. I’m running fedora Fedora 40 beta plasma and it was basically install and start working.
At the time (a couple of years ago), I tried a Dell… Precision? laptop, but it had a different cell modem in it (I was just starting my interest in cellular computers) and my provider AT&T locked it to an utter shit plan where I could pay like $45 for 15gb of data with overage fees per month, fuuuuuck that. I was searching for one that would be bound to their ‘tablet’ plans, as they got unlimited data for $20 (this is a business account, not consumer). AT&T offered the TP X13 Gen 2 Intel from them, that was guaranteed tied to the unlimited plan, with 0% financing, so I jumped. It is my first TP, but an ex has an older TP and had mostly positive things to say about it. And the modem (and antenna?) gets blazing fast speeds, like 400-500Mb/s. But that’s why I have the TP, it’s a “business” line for my (families) business.
I tried Fedora last year but again couldn’t get the X55 modem to work, which was frustrating. Information about it in the X13 is scarce since it wasn’t offered with Linux officially afaik, and you either got it early and Ubu or something ‘just worked’ with it out of the box, or you had to compile the driver from source for some reason (I don’t remember but they yanked the driver from newer releases I think). I guess at some point it was re-added but again nobody talks about this machine and it’s WWAN card so I got super lucky to find that one Debian 13 info page.
While I’ve played with Fedora briefly when I was distros hopping to see what worked last year (and before that), and the ex had it on his TP, I don’t actually know what the difference is vs Debian-based systems, since I try to stick with that as it’s what I started on and know/am comfortable with. All I know is its based (?) on RHEL. Care to give me a tl;dr major differences?
Haha I just spent this weekend getting my ThinkPad set up with Arch and KDE Plasma. Two weeks ago was my final straw with W11, and I used this weekend for the plunge.
Now, I know I have an unusual setup; ThinkPad X1 laptop, eGPU w/ Nvidia 4070 (BIG mistake, I bought it to play games and do 3D rendering since the onboard graphics on my laptop are non-existent, didn’t do my homework and should’ve bought an AMD), and two external monitors. It’s has been an adventure to say the least, and my wife popped in every now and again asking if I’m having fun playing with my computer (she has Mac everything and not an absolute clue lol) while pulling my hair troubleshooting shit I haven’t even thought about in a long time.
It’s been probably 4-5 years since I’ve worked with a Linux desktop, and I forgot what it takes to get a system set up from more or less scratch. Of course I could have gone with a more complete, out-of-the-box distro, but where’s the fun in that? My home server runs Debian and I almost never have to touch it outside biweekly logins to make sure everything is kosher and up to date, otherwise it just chugs along and it’s been going strong for probably 5-6 years at this point. But I still had fun doing it, and I also have more confidence that my current setup isn’t doing nefarious shit while I’m not paying attention. My W11 install liked to wake up from sleep and I’d walk in to hear the fans on my eGPU case cranking, so I’m a bit suspect. I’m near positive I don’t have an malware or viruses on my machine, but I dunno what the deal is, and I may have let my paranoia get the best of me.
But to your point, it will probably be a while before Linux is ready for the mainstream. Especially until we get a native port of the MS Office suite. Like it or not, MS Office is the gold standard in business, and while different FOSS suites are pretty good, they still lack full compatibility which won’t fly in the business world. That, and you can’t expect your average Joe to spend and hour or two scraping forums to fix a printer issue.
Second big paragraph: I usually have ethernet ports that just decide to wake the system up, almost all my machines in the last 15 years do this. Disabling the ability to wake from sleep (from the ethernet port) has always resolved this. Just something to look at.
Third: yeah, and it’s fine to not be ready - I’d rather it not be and everyone accept that. Problem is (and what I was alluding to) is that many don’t. I’ve got attacked here, reddit, and elsewhere because “er mah gerd I found the perfect build guide and didn’t care about the distros so I followed everything to a T and you too should have no creativity or desire for exploration so that you can be as much of a sheep as I am” and it’s like… I like the hardware I selected, I like the distro and want to see it improve because of [feature], etc but god damn some people if you step out of their mental line, they lose their shit. Tell them that X doesn’t work because of Y and they want to rip you to shreds for breaking their perfect bubble they’ve built. Spend any time in a Linux-heavy gaming community and their holy penguin can do no harm.
I dunno if my venting above comes off as it, but I want this project to succeed. It’s just, every time it’s been a wall of issues, every time “oh it’s better now” but ‘better’ is ‘we fixed the old issues’ and doesn’t touch on ‘and we added some new ones, too’. That’s the catch. Two steps forward, one step back - but it’s progress.
I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.
If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.
I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there… Fuck that.
I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.
It was happening on wifi. I’ll admit I didn’t really do much troubleshooting on it outside of basic poking around. Ethernet is only available through the dock, but I didn’t have it plugged in until I started my Linux install.
Dude I feel ya. I think what everyone forgets is that anyone that has any form of Linux knowledge is already somewhat tech savvy. Hell, anyone on Lemmy is usually pretty tech savvy, if not to have the basics just to wrap their heads around the concept of federation. Most people would have no clue where to start to even install a fresh copy of windows, because they see the hardware and OS as a singular monolithic unit.
I think the only way Linux would get into the mainstream is to have a dedicated hardware company built desktops and laptops that ship with a barney-basic distro preinstalled, and have a dedicated support staff. I don’t think most see computers as a separation of hardware, OS, and software, but as a screenbox that runs their favorite apps.
If love to see popular adoption of Linux as well, especially since it will further accelerate improvements in its development. But I think it’s a pipedream that the majority of people will jump ship. I do think that many just want to see MS’s demise, but that isn’t going to happen, anytime soon anyway.
“To make my computer do as I wish I simply need to lie about my country of residence. I am very technically adept.”
TBF I do find that confusing. I’m used to human-readable conf files that persist across updates. But I can see how non-technical users might think understanding a collection of tricks is knowledge of their OS.
Now that I think about it, the decline of ubuntu began when they inserted amazon affiliate links in their ui a long time ago. The final straw for me is forcing snaps when attempting to install some apps via apt. I replaced all my ubuntu machines with debian without any issue.
The Amazon story is really old and Ubuntu did hear the critical voices and reverted the change. The terminal ads can be annoying on servers but you can turn them off.
If you want to throw dirt on Ubuntu, let’s talk about Snaps and the messy Snap Store and how the current Ubuntu site looks like (not desktop user friendly really), and what they did to LXD
I still don’t understand what LXD does that LXC doesn’t do. LXC is significantly more popular. All the major control panels (like Proxmox, SolusVM, Virtualizor, etc) support OpenVZ or LXC but not LXD.
I’m not trying to argue? I legitimately don’t know what advantages LXD has since I don’t see it used widely in the industry, whereas LXC is everywhere.
LXD also has some cool features like launching VMs in a way that’s nearly indistinguishable from containers, which can be useful if you need to do something like run a distro that uses cgroups v1 (e.g. CentOS 7) on a more modern distro.
AFAIK the “terminal ads” were suggesting Ubuntu Pro when using the package management. It’s very far away from actual ads. Just the free version suggesting the paid one. Not ad space sold to third parties.
Just the free version suggesting the paid one. Not ad space sold to third parties.
You’ve read it here, folks. Microsoft just needs to promote Xbox deals and such, then it’s not an ad space sold to third parties. (Either that or you’re holding Canonical to a different standard than Microsoft.)
It would be more like MS selling extended support, which is fair and relevant to something being on the update page.
Would it be bad if a community driven distro had a donations link once a year in the package manager? Not really. A bit annoying, but we still live in a world where they need money too.
which is fair and relevant to something being on the update page.
The Ubuntu paid ad doesn’t show just in the updater either. Seems like double standard allowing Canonical advertising their paid product every time the terminal is opened and Microsoft would be only fine to be allowed to advertise paid updates in the updater.
Would it be bad if a community driven distro had a donations link once a year in the package manager? Not really.
I’m a packager of a small but public repository. Over the years some of the packages were actually picked up by the upstream distribution (minor stuff to scratch my own itch, nothing noteworthy, IMO, but still). I was never offered a few cents of whatever donations came in. Such money goes to the distribution leaders, not the actual community and even less so to the actual upstream software developers. If anything, the upstream software developers should get the money, not a downstream distribution where most of the work is automated anyway and yet replacing bookmarks in the default browser to customized ones for the distribution is common practice. Back when people still bought MP3 music, Canonical replaced the affiliate IDs for MP3 music stores to funnel money off upstream developers into their own pockets.
A bit annoying, but we still live in a world where they need money too.
Windows 10 started out as a free upgrade to Win7 and Win8 users (at least the Home variant, not sure about Pro and higher). Since then Win11 has also been a free upgrade. Do we live in a world where Windows developers need to make money from their product then?
So how are people going to know who you are and how to support you? First time I’m hearing from you. Leave a note somewhere. Your altruism is appreciated, but you do need to eat too! Don’t passively let capitalism take advantage of you. You don’t need to extend your values to corporate.
Money still runs the world. Windows or FOSS devs. I wish things were different, but you are wasting your political support on something that is not a big deal.
Ubuntu Pro is hardly an ad and not comparable to candy crush. Letting people know of a service to get more support is within scope (which is a target for enterprise anyway). To be clear there are better things to criticize about Canonical.
So how are people going to know who you are and how to support you? First time I’m hearing from you. Leave a note somewhere. Your altruism is appreciated, but you do need to eat too! Don’t passively let capitalism take advantage of you.
I do have a regular job. I’m doing fine. I don’t want or need money donated to Linux distributions. Updating a few packages is hardly any work at all because the majority of tasks is automated (as I said: my repo is small and for my own use. I don’t advertise its existence but I also don’t hide it either). Actually developing software is. I don’t want distributors nagging users for money to then put in their pockets. Distributors can promote pledge drives to fund hosting on their website.
Ubuntu Pro is hardly an ad
Yes, it is.
Letting people know of a service to get more support is within scope
Cool, so Microsoft’s “Back up to OneDrive” once per month and “Get more OneDrive storage” don’t count then…
Look my you ran an update and the update program is letting you know how you can get extended support if you needed. It is with in the scope of the activity in a way that Candy Crush and One Drive are not. If Kden live was more explicit about being part of the KDE universe I don’t think there is harm to that either. Ubuntu pro is not malicious or vendor locking (in its current state). What is the big deal that you spend so much energy here? Letting people know how to get 12 years of support instead of just the standard 5? There is a cost to doing that and ensuring quality. The discussion on the distribution paying upstream is important, but kind of a separate matter (and yes they could be doing more).
This is supposed to be for a company that has multiple machines and needs security back ported. Any regular desktop user can just opt out. Real question, what changes do you want to see to make things better? Like we do need to improve communication on how to support FOSS in general. I am not a particularly good programmer, so don’t commit bug fixes. I live in the shit hole US South and 50% below median for the state, so my money contributions are never that high. If we are allergic to Ubuntu Pro or x packages are looking for funding. in npm, how do we really address anything? I get that ads are very invasive, but i think you are picking the least impressive hill to die on here.
Ah yes. MicroCanonicalSoft. Ubuntu used to be great. But they are working hard to ruin it.
I am currently looking for an alternative that has a similar allround-ish support for hardware. Ubuntu supports my Macbook and my Acer Tablet out of the box while others do not competely do so. I could write a whole rant about the tablet with 64-bit processor but 32-bit eufi bios and intel processor that kinda obscures access to the audio and wifi devices unless you use a specific driver.
I’d prefer something debian based but I can’t stand flicking in video playback or scrolling through a webpage. Which is why I like Wayland at the moment, since it fixes those things.
It was ok at best. I first tried Linux around the time opensuse was released, and even then the only reason it was more popular was due to coming out a bit earlier and sending live CDs. Then Suse fucked the Linux community alongside MS for like a decade, and now it’s canonical’s turn to help out.
I could write a whole rant about the tablet with 64-bit processor but 32-bit eufi bios
If you have <4gb RAM, just use a x86 version of the distro. AFAIK it essentially has no downsides, and possibly requires less resources.
I’d prefer something debian based but I can’t stand flicking in video playback or scrolling through a webpage. Which is why I like Wayland at the moment, since it fixes those things.
Right, ever since the release of Windows 11 I’m using Explorer Patcher to hide that annoying recommended section, and to restore the windows 10 explorer.
Man, securing the privacy of a Windows PC can really wear you down. Remember all those times I spent tweaking the Group Policy Settings? Turning off each and every one of them was a chore, but the real kicker was having to do it all over again after every update.
And don’t even get me started on that spyware.exe in the task manager. It seemed like it was everywhere, hiding in plain sight and multiplying with each passing day. Finding and closing all those instances was a real headache.
But the icing on the cake was the constant need to check the privacy settings after every update. I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off the ball, and the fear of something breaking or getting compromised was always present.
The whole experience left me feeling drained and frustrated. I mean, who needs that kind of stress in their life? That’s why I made the switch to Linux – it was a welcome relief and a breath of fresh air.
i messed with eos, it’s alright. I had some problems with the mirrors breaking, to which the solution to fixing the broken keyring trust was “untrust the key, and forcibly install it” which i didn’t really like. Other than that it seemed ok.
Run the eos updater tool and it takes care of all of that for you. The broken mirrors isnt an actual issue either since there’s redundant mirrors on the mirror list I believe
oh believe me i did, it was fucked. The problem was that the keyring for EOS was out of date, and since i hadn’t updated in long enough, there was literally zero chain of trust for that keyring to be updated somehow. So i had to forcibly update it.
I tried a variety of things, including updating eos mirrors iirc, nothing worked until i fixed the keyring lol.
what? shouldn’t blocked domains be routed to 0.0.0.0 instead of loopback? This might cause the system generally to wait for a response instead of instantly realizing those domains don’t exists
How did you build this list? This is likely to break other things. Azureedge isn’t just for ads, and msftconnecttest is literally only used to detect if your internet connection is working.
Add comment