Agreed. I've been lazy because I'm a gamer, but at this point it's time. I hope the other game companies can figure out something like Proton to play on Mint.
You can play nearly anything through proton by adding the game's .exe as a non steam game. ProtonDB is a valuable resource.. You can install Mint alongside windows anyway and just boot winders for the games that don't run on Linux.
Can you dualboot with bitlocker? Are there any halfway decent full drive encryption methods with recovery keys that won't regularily corrupt the system? I'm mainly hesitant to make the switch based on those requirements. Plus, I have been in the MS ecosystem for such a long time. All I know and I worked on it as a sysadmin as well for many, many years. Big comfort zone.
You get a distro (arch) wrapped up into an excellent gaming device, and can drop into desktop mode for productivity needs. For 400 bucks, it's a pretty sweet setup, imo.
Or, if you have the machine already, certainly take advantage of the enhancements Steam has contributed to proton, and game on.
Yeah I had a catastrophic lighting strike and ended up having to buy a nice gaming pc during the pandemic. I love everything I've heard about steam deck but will be pc bound until I get my money's worth xD
I bought one for this reason but have been meaning to dual boot it. Partially because Im not wild about its desktop but also I want to seperate my gaming and nongaming more.
Yeah - fortunately I gave up gaming long ago (got too addicted and had to step away to maintain a productive healthy lifestyle). I need it for Office productivity apps, CAD and 3D slicing software, and photoshop. All of my needs are available as open-source programs, or Photopea does almost everything I need from photoshop these days lol.
So my only excuse lately has just been that I'm too lazy to make the switch since I have everything mostly setup in windows how I like it. But it wouldn't be hard to export some profiles and import them into the Linux versions of the same applications.
But windows actions lately have really pushed me towards linux - I hear they're trying to put ads into the windows 11 start menu. Its ridiculous that I now need to install third party menus and file explorers if I want to still use my operating system ad-free.
I agree, I think if this is how windows goes forward a lot of tech people will leave their ecosystem entirely. The one thing stopping them is the convenience of windows (mostly free if you know what you are doing and most processes don't need to be thought about). A subscription based OS throws everything out the door. This gives them an unbelievable amount of control over what you see/do/store. Want to view a website for linux installation? "Nope that goes against our T&Cs, you've been banned from your OS with all your information on it".
The upside I see will be linux will start becoming easier on everyday users because the tech people switched and want the convenience
Most "tech people" I know are using Mac or Windows, and a few crazy ones are exclusively using iOS and no traditional computer at all. I don't know anyone IRL that daily drives any flavor of Linux.
Depends on who you define as "tech people" - lots of IT professionals absolutely switched long ago.
I am technical to a point (Building and running a farm of 3D printers, developing and running an e-commerce site, etc). But my time is valuable so while I tried to make a switch to Linux 15 years ago, it just wasn't "convenient" enough for my office/work productivity needs. Now that I've circled back around, I'm pretty pleased with the evolution I've seen.
Plus most of the open-source software I already use is obviously also available on Linux so the transition will be easier this time around.
mint user here. rocksolid distro, maybe not bleeding edge but very good as a daily driver; also for music production. reasonably customizable desktop with cinnamon.
only caveat: some vst plugins do not work well with wine when it comes to their copy protection (#izotope and #ssl among them), others do (such as #kilohearts)
Thanks for the feedback! I was shocked to see them still floating around. Just installed a latest stable distro of Linux Mint on a friend's older laptop and he's thrilled to have his computer back and "bug-free" lol.
I'm actually excited to make the switch - Windows seems to get worse and worse with every generation. Windows 8 and newer seems like I have to fear every major update because it might break something else with my software (like last year - my pop-up calendar in windows10 does not work anymore since they added the "news & interest" segment to the taskbar)
Linux distros like Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint and Pop! have been fully capable of replacing Windows for typical work and home uses for several years.
Even gaming is very close to being on-par now.
There are still niches dependent on Windows, like specialized engineering software or anyone that simply refuses to use anything other than Adobe products.
I used Kubuntu in a Windows shop for 10 years. Was the only one capable of keeping server VMs running in my dev environment as well. Don't even get me started on the frikkin' updates.
Yup, I totally have been making the switch to Open-Source software or browser-based software (like Photopea) for the past few years to ensure I'd be able to easily make the switch when windows finally pisses me off enough. But I think I'm already at that stage - every major windows-10 update seems to break more and more features on my computer lol
I'm pretty sure you meant to actually select Edge, so I'll go ahead and switch that to your default so we don't need to bother you again next time. You're welcome!
I've had great success with a Fedora respin called "Jam". It has a high precision kernel, and a great KDE control panel as well as excellent driver support. Binary drivers don't come included, but you can pull in the Fedora closed source repository and install the additional drivers very quickly.
Getting online to do that is the only part that might be tricky if you have a wifi chipset that needs closed source drivers. I bought a few cheap USB wifi devices for $15 each and one of them worked.
I've dabbled in Linux for decades, but fully switched to Linux as my daily driver about 5 years ago. I still have a Windows partition set up for dual boot, but only boot into it once every couple months now to run very specific software. I can honestly say I miss nothing about Windows. Linux has matured leaps and bounds even in the past 5 years. Gaming, productivity, programming, hobby. It can do it all. I will admit there is still a technical barrier to entry. You will need to get used to the command line and searching the web frequently for how to do something. But if you have those skills I don't think it's a contest anymore. Linux is the better OS.
Why can Linux not get over this obstacle? I'm sorry, but no matter how much we want them to, normal people are never going to get comfortable with a command line. If that was possible, the industry would not have needed to invent GUIs in order to go mainstream in the first place.
I've been on Fedora for about a year and I'm very particularly making a point of never opening the terminal to prove it's no longer necessary.
So far, haven't needed it.
I don't have a problem doing things by the command line... it's certainly sometimes easier that way. This is just a response to the people that complain about having to use it. Turns out, they really don't.
Yeah I've used Linux before, I started with command line back with Microsoft DOS and Windows 3.1 back in the day. Just stopped using it because it lacked compatibility and WINE was still not quite evolved enough to be usable for much. I'm not a gamer so that's not a big hassle.
But I've started playing with linux mint again on a friend's older laptop and impressed at how far it's come (little things like automatically detecting the touch-screen on his laptop, or the wireless printer in the other room without having to tell it anything) make it far easier to use.
I honestly think I'm ready to make the switch for good on my nice 32" HP All-in-one Envy PC - windows just keeps getting more buggy on this computer with every new windows update lol.
You could try distrosea before committing to an install.
It gives you a VM online to play around in for almost any distro you can think of.
Don’t forget that desktop environment (DE) and distro are decoupled in Linux, so if you didn’t like the feel of Ubuntu (GNOME DE) you can go with Kubuntu (KDE Plasma DE). Both are on DistroSea.
Yeah? I tried Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on a friend's computer and the Gnome they're running seemed sufficient for my needs. Is KDE really that much better "out of the box" without the need to customize?
Ask 3 Linux users and you'll get 5 dissenting opinions. Mine is that KDE Plasma is very simple out of the box and more familiar to Windows users. A previous Windows user can use it without any kind of deep learning. Gnome is a bit more alien, borrows a bit more from OSX, and does force its workflow on the user more.
KDE also offers an insane amount of easy customization for those of us with a desire to tweak or enjoy a different aesthetic or workflow. The built-in shop for widgets, wallpapers, themes, cursors, etc makes that very accessible to anyone. Gnome customization requires a lot more command line and editing of configs.
Wow! That's really awesome thanks for that - I'll have to dig around before I choose a flavor. I was going to go with Linux mint because I had good success with them previously overall and I'm surprised they're still kicking along haha
But I'll still dig around to see how other distro's look and feel. Thx again for the link
Here in Germany, we are forced to use Windows in schools because "it's what the kids need in the real world".
By forcing Windows to work cloud-only, they are literally making it illegal to use in schools here, because we can't force children to use anything doing data-harvesting in order to pursue their education.
Well they are not wrong I guess. Windows will continue to be the main operating system everywhere. But smart and interested kids will pick linux still. :)
At this rate if Germany becomes a leader in exporting non data harvesting devices/vehicles I can assure you I'll be buying all my electronics from Germany soon enough.
At the very least, their vehicles (mine at least) require you to opt-in if you want data harvesting.
For Mercedes' app, the privacy policy outlines everything that needs to be shared with them for its functionality and then anonymized telemetry is opt-in, rather than opt-out. I didn't opt in because even if it's anonymized, I don't need anybody knowing certain things, like how fast I drive. Also it explicitly stated that if you opt into the telemetry, you "have to inform anyone who borrows your vehicle that anonymized data is being collected". I appreciate that, it's a lot more transparent than most companies are.
Microsoft has recently announced Windows Copilot, an AI-powered assistant for Windows 11. Windows Copilot sits at the side of Windows 11, and can summarize content you’re viewing in apps, rewrite it, or even explain it. Microsoft is currently testing this internally and promised to release it to testers in June before rolling it out more broadly to Windows 11 users.
Assuming this will use OpenAI API like other Microsoft’s AI products, this is going to be expensive to operate. Subsidizing it indefinitely is surely not an option. How would Microsoft monetize it? By charging subscription like GitHub Copilot, or monetizing it somehow using users data they collected? I assume it would be the latter.
There's talk about Microsoft SoCs on their own products, much like Apple does the M1 SoCs.
These Microsoft SoCs would be used in Surface devices and likely have dedicated AI hardware. Again, much like Apple.
If we're talking about specialized models, not one generic LLM for everything a la GPT4, they might not have to be THAT big and could run on reasonably powerful devices.
I really doubt that, at least for the next few years. “AI Assistant” usually means LLMs, and even M2 struggles to run them mostly due to large compute and RAM requirements. If Microsoft could somehow release a truly local AI assistant feature that can run on average windows users’ hardware, that would be shake the whole ML industry.
Oh, M$ is so disgusting, I never gonna switch to the new platform!
In a few months/years
Well, my apps/hardware are not working, time to switch anyway. Not because it's not working anymore, but because the platform is mature and I actually like it.
We've seen this spiel a few times, companies want to move to the cloud and then don't because it's ridiculous and plenty of things are just fine on local machines.
I don't lend this any more credence than all the "we'll all be gaming in the cloud in 10 years" crap when stuff like GeForce Now was popping up.
I mean, you can at least run offline PWAs, Android apps and Linux apps on ChromeOS just fine. It doesn't try to stream the entire desktop over as a service...
With Chromebooks? ChromeOS is a pretty solid Linux distro if you'd ask me. It is built around cloud-sync and Google Drive, but otherwise perfectly fine to use offline. Even Steam is supported nowadays
The best thing I ever did with that one used Chromebook I bought was install Gallium OS on it. I ended up with a fully functioning laptop that was able to fulfill my mobile computing needs for $50. It’s a shame Gallium got discontinued. ChromeOS was very primitive and restrictive when I tried it 5 or 6 years ago, but you say they even support Steam now, so apparently they’ve made some improvements. Still wouldn’t want to use it over a Linux distro like Gallium that would let me have full control of the device, though.
In case anyone reading this is interesting in alternatives to ChromeOS, more info can be found here: mrchromebox.tech/#alt_os
How is this supposed to work in countries that have bandwidth caps, or slow internet connections?
It seems like every company these days wants to move everything to the cloud, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen. While something like this makes sense in some instances (like kiosks or similar maybe?) for the vast majority of use cases this is a non-starter.
Did you know Windows10 LTSC exists? It's mainly free of any telemetry and you can tweak it fully, and even remove Edge by force if you need to ( though I believe you can also force remove Edge in the normal versions). Been much happier with the version.
Although it's generally good idea, you will have hardware/software issues in the future. As I remember there is LTSB out there and it was pretty solid, but in times I used it long ago, I already had a lot of issues that required hours to find a workaround.
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