Can’t run Windows 11? Don’t want to? There are surprisingly legal options
Honestly I’m getting a bit tired of discussions about Windows getting hijacked by people almost aggressively pushing Linux as the go-to alternative. I’m sure Linux is good, but it often feels less like helpful advice and more like proselytizing. I think most users aren’t looking for a whole paradigm shift, they want improvements within the environment they already know, not a completely different system with its own learning curve and compromises.
I really feel like the linux thing is far more cultural than practical, and if you don’t actually enjoy fiddling around with settings and software, you’re probably not going to enjoy the community either.
I have no idea what I’m going to do, I can’t afford a new PC nor do I have the desire to buy a new PC just because Microsoft says jump through this new hoop. I’ll probably just do a bypass and ask around the docks for a security key “workaround” from the friendly, local, sailors with eyepatches and peg legs.
“Linux is great ha ha you just have to know which one you want and they are all vague and technical ha ha if there’s a problem just program a solution yourself you know programming ha ha we’re not a cult I swear anyway I told my grandma she’s a piece of shit because she didn’t want to switch to Linux even though she doesn’t own a computer I only yelled at her for five hours straight about it”
Though for real I might actually try it out, I like open source stuff and my friend said it’s not hard.
Yeah, if you’re interested, you should give it a shot.
I’m been using Linux full time since 2004, and while I think it is good to let people know it is there, I don’t recommend it to people I’m not willing to personally support. But, I also let them know I just can’t help with Windows problems either, and they should address their complaints to their OS vendor.
I file Debian bugs if I have a problem with my OS, and have received fixes that way. This is better support that I ever received from MS during my first 2 decades of using MS OSes.
Linux isn’t good. Not for home users that want it to just work, imo. Linux will fight you at every step of the way, over every little thing. I’ve tried various versions over the years and I’ve always been put off by how anti-user it is. Want to set a custom dpi? Fuck you. Want to set a custom cursor size or colour? Fine, but fuck you it won’t work in a browser window. Want an on screen keyboard? Fuck you. Want to update or install anything that isn’t in a package store? Fuck you, terminal.
“I see you’re worried about abuse by priests in the Catholic Church. Can I interest you in Buddhism?”
I’m not sure I get the analogy here… Do you think there will be less abuse by priests if there are more Catholics?
I’m not sure I get the analogy here… Do you think there will be less abuse by priests if there are more Catholics?
🤦♂️
First, do you think Microsoft would do less shady shit if there were more Windows users? I’m sort of confused about where you’re finding that interpretation of the metaphor.
But more importantly, as I explained in my other reply I was just riffing on the proselytizing comment. It made me chuckle to think about someone being advised to change religions after voicing a (legitimate) frustration with their religious leadership.
No, I think more MS users = MS shady shit. So, to discourage MS shady shit, I encourage people to not use MS software. I also think that people who are worried about abuse by priests should not tithe or otherwise donate to Catholic churches (belief matters less than action here; and it’s less reasonable to swap out belief system, I guess.)
That’s why your analogy seems backwards to me.
Doesn’t matter anyway. I guess I just don’t get it. Have a nice day.
It may be my perspective comes from western civilization, but do Buddhists have similar child abuse scandals?
It may be my perspective comes from western civilization, but do Buddhists have similar child abuse scandals?
I have no idea, that wasn’t my point with the metaphor.
I was riffing off the “proselytizing” comment and comparing someone complaining about some shady shit Microsoft does and then being advised to change to Linux, with someone complaining about some shady shit the Catholic Church does and then being advised to change to Buddhism.
It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it gave me a chuckle when I thought of it.
I picked those religions because Catholicism in its singular “what the Vatican says goes for everyone” approach mapped well onto Microsoft and Windows, and I thought Buddhism, a religion with many flavors, some of which are more structured than others, mapped well onto Linux and its various distros.
People always talk about the learning curve and compromises, but Linux is finally in the “shit just works” stage, so it’s not much different than the Mac/PC decision people make every day.
Heck, in a lot of ways it is more similar to Windows than Mac is, so it should be an easier decision. For some reason though, everyone still treats it like… Well… It would be like treating Windows like you still have to know DOS.
That’s just not true anymore.
Have you asked the question “why do so many discussions get hijacked by people saying to switch to Linux”? It’s not because there are a bunch of Linux nut jobs that need to validate their questionable choice by getting other people to make the same choice. It’s because Linux works and it works well. Out of the box, with no command line configuration, Linux will serve most end users computer needs. For those of us that use Linux, this Windows 10 thing is a joke, because its a problem that has a simple solution. There is no need to go through installing a whole different Windows 10 OS when you can switch to Linux and be done.
Then you should have no issue naming a distro that is a 1:1 equal of Windows 10 or maybe even 7, but with none of the enshittification and only upsides.
I switched to Mint last year. Had a few hiccups, but I have everything working just how I want it now.
Windows problem solved.
I see that we’ve entered the bargaining period.
Jokes on them! I got rid of windows last week and now have Linux Mint on my PC! It’s great! All my games run and I’ve set up my own screenshot shortcut in a way that I want. Installing software through terminal commands is also a lot of fun.
Haha. I too switched to Linux Mint last week. So far no regrets. I’ve actually enjoyed making everything I need to work. Especially because it seems to work better that on the operating system it was designed for. Strange.
How does Mint work with (old) NVIDIA drivers? I’m going to have to do the switch sometime this year and I am still debating which distro would give me the least troubles running games and applications via Proton / Wine.
deleted by creator
Install Linux and be done with the Microsoft bullshit. No windows, no copilot, no shit teams, no outlook, nothing of the nonsense, just software that actually works
Tell that to my employer
Yeah hook me up with their number I’ll do it
I’m a developer, and I can’t just skip Windows support, also the “GUI” for debuggers on Linux aee pretty much just separate terminals for gdb, and often I can’t just jank my way out with
printf()from various issues.also the “GUI” for debuggers on Linux aee pretty much just separate terminals for gdb, and often I can’t just jank my way out with printf() from various issues
And that is an issue because…?
Is the second point supposed to be a negative rather than an implementation detail?
Anyway, vscode would probably work for you. Or try clion. Like VS, but with decent cmake support, clang integration, better auto complete, simpler tool chain management, faster index, no daily crash/hanging, better git/lab integration, cross platform support… Actually never mind, there is indeed nothing like VS IDE wise. Whatever that means
I personally use RemedyBG + Kate + langservers (I might even make my own), which is actually better than VS.
I have so many old games and programs on my win10 PC that the amount of effort it would take to get everything back to the way it was, would almost argue for just getting a New PC and not bothering with the migration.
I know that its not based in science… but I just dont trust windows OS migration. I did it once from Vista to 7, and something messed up, and had to reformat the entire drive and fresh install, losing everything.
as for getting a new PC , hardware wise, it will cost me several thousand and will probably only be a fraction of an increase of the system I have right now. its just not worth it.
so all in all, I think Im going to just play danger zone, and ride Win10 into the digital apocalypse for a while.
I have on the same windows install gone from 7 to 10 to 11 without much issue. There were several win 10 updates that fucked with my setup more then the upgrade process.
ltsc iot is on my gaming pc that I spin up once biweekly. Got the os from massgrave and most of the games from fitgirl.
If it’s a competition of getting work done, Linux is clearly superior. Windows has always just gotten in my way when I’m trying to do something with the OS.
There’s no denying though that you gotta use the right tool for the job. I ain’t forkin my time over to get Linux to work with triple-A pirated games and all that VM and wine shit. I’m just going to install ltsc and forget about it. Just as how I’m not wasting my time on Windows to install software packages, libraries, or whatever the fuck Subsystem is.
I recently switched to PopOS! And it’s been great. Not being pressured into Microsoft applications and using your Microsoft account is great
Just the name itself sounds like an an angsty teenage dream. Not really selling it there.
I didn’t like the name, but it was a nice option for Nvidia laptops esp. from System76.
I ended up replacing it with Ubuntu; but I can’t remember exactly why. I normally use Debian.
I don’t know how you got “angsty teen” from a cute name like Pop.
It just makes me laugh because they have a “!” At the end of their name. It just looks kinda goofy, kinda like when influencers have sponsored posts and they include the “™” in their copy haha
That being said, PopOS! is actually a great os.
That’s about as ‘judging a book by it’s cover’ as it gets.
Ultimately OP isn’t trying to sell it to you, they’re just saying that for them, they’ve been happy with it.
And hey, if you choose your distros based on their name, I’d like to see you sell that idea.
Linux mint is another really good windows refugee friendly distro. And if you want a gaming COVID one then bazzite is the one to go for (it’s basically steam OS, but there’s a full fledged desktop version too)
i hate you guys so much. once in their lifetime, theregister writers actually manage to recommend something useful, and you guys start to shit all over the comment section.
for the microsoft forum admins: no, ltsc is fine. you can install a store, but since its running on an early feature version with fresh security updates, xbox gamepass wont like it much. same goes with the cod launcher.
for the neckbeard freedomfighters: linux cannot solve every problem.
ive been using 10 ltsc for 5 year now. still not as great as win7, but nothing ever gonna beat that os. less telemetry, less services, no ms store (but can be installed with 3rd party softwares). runs a ton more smoother on laptops as well. main problem will be getting updates from certain softwares: programs only check for the main build version, and ltsc is going to look like its outdated, your programs might deny your updates (i would say 3 years from now). keep in mind, 11 also has an ltsc version: no bloat in the start menu, no store, less telemetry…but still looks like arse. i would recommend getting an oem key for cheap, or yohoho on the massgrave site, dont support ms with a full price.
neckbeard freedomfighters
LOL, that is delicious.
Been downvoted plenty of times for saying I don’t get 1/10th of the Windows hassle lemmy talks about, probably less. Don’t have the LTSC version of 11, but it’s from a plain Jane ISO, not a factory install, which I would bet is the cause of many people’s pain.
A sensible response. Windows has its pros, and Linux has its cons. I personally don’t care for Windows anymore, but that’s because I grew up with Linux in the home alongside Windows, ultimately chose Linux despite the cons.
Switch to Linux
I would but my DJ gear is over a decade old and none of it is compatible with Linux. It won’t even run on a modern CPU without crashing Serato, so I use an old laptop with a 4th gen i5 running LTSC to power my turntables and mixer; it all runs smooth as butter on period-correct hardware.
Eventually I will get new gear and try to get it working in Linux, but I don’t have thousands to drop right now on updated hardware, so I make do with what I have.
Why not encapsulate Windows 10 in a VM? You can run it indefinitely as long as you don’t give it Internet.
What would be the point? That’s just staying on Windows, with extra steps and lower performance.
The VM protects somewhat from network attacks and spread. But, I do imagine most vulnerabilities of Win10 would still be exploitable, and you would be sacrificing some performance, yes.
They mention their equipment is legacy and only supports Windows 10. An Airgapped VM of Windows 10 is a good option to continue supporting legacy hardware.
Because I don’t want to run hardware that needs to operate in realtime over a USB 2.0 connection through a VM. I have digital turntables with high-resolution platters. These are precision instruments that require the absolute lowest DPC latency obtainable; I need to eliminate as much overhead as I can, and have my equipment running as close to the bare metal as I can get from a modern OS.
What kind of music do ya play?
Not sure if you’re using a desktop or laptop (unclear if you’re doing DJ stuff for mixing privately or gigging on the road), but hardware passthrough through something like SR-IOV would make latency a non-issue.
However, I get what you’re saying. I was more thinking of the “I want to run this on a legacy operating system for as long as I can” aspect of things. Eliminating the concern of the hardware no longer supporting a more modern operating system was what I was trying to get at. Sorry if that didn’t come through.
My company has decided to dedicate me and another coworker to go computer-2-computer and check if they have TPM 2.0 support.
I’m doing my best to push a Linux switch in our workplace!
It’s not just tpm 2.0 support, but simply Intel 8th gen or higher or Ryzen
Intel 6th gen CPUs could totally support tpm 2.0 but they decided to cut them off because $$$
There is no real technical reason, management wanted the line to go up so they had meetings and meetings with the engineering teams in order to find a somewhat reasonable excuse to send to the landfill millions and millions of perfectly usable computers
I thought what the public health sector gonna do if they don’t allow W11 in old PCs, and later I remember that in Mexico they use W7 with IE, lol. BTW I think they could use Linux, my mum was a nurse there and she only used OpenOffice and a web browser
Issue with healthcare IT is they cannot just upgrade willy nilly. They have to make sure that whatever computer they’re changing isn’t responsible for something big and they have to make sure everyone who uses it can use it. You still have some critical system PCs in hospitals that run DOS and sometimes even older.
LTSC is supported, yes, but it’s an edge case not intended for desktop (or most server) applications.
If you don’t want to move to 11, install a flavour of Linux. Don’t run LTSC.
There it is. Top post is always someone casually telling you to “Just install Linux.”
I see your point but the correct answer is to install current branch. If you want pain and suffering, skip the appetizer and go straight to Linux.
Only shit thing is a couple online games I like playing are dicks about their anti cheat and not wanting to be Linux compatible.
Small price to pay
Not really. I pretty much exclusively use my desktop pc for gaming. I have a laptop for doing work on.
Even smaller then
I’ve been using 10 LTSC for a few months now, it works great with the few Windows-only apps I still use. I mainly use it to organize my media library, but it’s not had any problems with the few games I’ve installed with Kernel-level anti-cheat (Destiny 2, Delta Force)
I had to download the Xbox Accessories app to control my Elite controller, but that’s really it.
You might likely run into issues with GPU (and other) windows drivers, which might stop supporting old windows 10 versions. At least that happened already with LTSC/LTSB. I expect this to happen especially when ordinary windows 10 EOL is reached.
Is that much of a big deal though? Running old GPU drivers is fine, other than maybe if you like playing the latest AAA games down the road.
I mean eventually it will be an issue, but for a long time I imagine they will work just fine.
I’ve certainly had games stop working with older drivers. Older games, even.
But maybe.
Personally I just moved to Linux with Proton, but is not for everyone.
Well, it just depends on your use-case. Sometimes new games or applications require newer drivers or directly a newer Windows version. This is something you just have to be aware of.
At least that was a reason I switched LTSC Windows over to Enterprise for some people.
What is this disclaimer warning about? I have used LTSC exclusively as a desktop OS since 2019 and everything works. I have not had an instance of something not working that would have otherwise worked on Enterprise or Home, etc. I game in 4k, edit videos, run a jellyfin server, mine monero. I’m confused about what you mean
I even upgraded the system without a clean installation and everything worked perfectly and I have huge customization in my pc.
I am curious as to why you think so that it’s not intended for desktop applications. I don’t really have a say in server applications as I don’t use any such software. What I use W10 LTSC is mainly for my engineering softwares which won’t work properly with WINE. All normal software that you expect to work in home version also seems to be working minus all the bloat and more control over configuration. I feel like it’s the most clean version of windows that one can use now.
Simply, because Microsoft says so. The amount of “omg micro$oft is such garbage” more professional versions of that that can be attributed to not RTFM is fairly significant. It’s interesting how much effort people will put in to making a OSS project work, and give up fairly quickly in Windows land. Merely an observation; all respect to those who daily drive on Linux (and to be fair it’s been quite a few years since I tried).
More specifically, you can run into driver and software issues both inside and outside of the Microsoft space. The “Feature Updates” that are put out do include a fair bit under the hood sometimes and you miss that. Less likely in the personal use space, but quite significant in the business space. When the IT curmudgeon deploys LTSC across 1500 devices and 2 years later needs to implement a newer capability, it’s a hell of a lot of work.
Your use case is realistically the intended use case, outside of industrial equipment/embedded systems. You’re using WINE for most stuff and poke your head into Windows occasionally.
Specifically on what they say:
They intend it for stuff that really is specialty systems or single apps, like ATMs or stuff that drive CAT scans. Not geberal-purpose systems.
Doesn’t mean it won’t work for a whole lot of other people, though.
My employer has been using it for desktop AutoCAD installs for year now.
I don’t know how to install Linux in my MacBook Pro 2014 without fucking up macOS, I do have Win10 installed already with Bootcamp, so this LTSC version already looks more interesting to me than any of the Linux flavors.
Did you attempt to look it up?
Yeah I did install Linux (Mint) on my MacBook Pro 2014. Maybe three months ago. Do. Not. Recommend.
It installed fine. I had to search and install three or four drivers. Fine. But getting the webcam to work was a jumble of mismatched, often contradictory tools and instructions. After lots of hacky attempts, I finally got off-color, blocky, low frame rate video out of it. And there was one other aspect—maybe sleeping—where I tried a bunch of shit and never got it to work. Not to mention it was slower doing comparable tasks vs. MacOS
I have two other Linux machines in the house. They work great for what they need to do. But it’s not the right tool for every application, and anyone who says it is is just being silly.
Comparing your experience with macOS would be a bit unfair, how about with Windows?
For example I can tell the sleep feature works better in macOS than Win10… Battery backup as well…
Once several years ago, I needed to use 3rd party tools and I wasn’t too confident to mess up with the MacBook, which is considerably more locked than previous laptops I have ever used, that is why I wanted to stay in the Boot Camp field.
so end of LTSC is the year of the Linux desktop?
Any day now
Why even bother at this point? Linux has become so good it’s actually easier and more familiar to use than the clusterfuck that is windows 11.
Linux user here, I really hate this kind of bullshit. Just stick with the facts there are loads of reasons to use Windows. And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.
Another twenty plus years Linux server and devices admin and user that found last year that Linux is finally mature and stable enough to replace my desktop too without having the fiddle with it every once in a random update. It was a decision that I can accept making workarounds for legacy windows software and l can live without other eco system. Yeah, there are plenty of reasons that people are still running Windows and keep doing so.
Don’t make being user of an operating system your identity, people. It’s just as annoying and unnecessary as those Apple fanboys we all know and dislike.
Exactly. I’ve been Linux exclusive for something like 15 years, and I’m usually the first to tell people to stick with Windows if there’s even one piece of software they say they’ll miss. If they really want to use Linux, they’ll ignore me. If they would’ve bailed when something didn’t work perfectly, they would likely write it off and never try it again, so it’s better to leave that door open IMO.
Exactly. These type of comments only come from an immature POV that how they use Linux is how everyone would use Linux.
And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.
Eh, only if someone needs it.
For instance my 75 year old father is happily using Linux Mint on his laptop. Why? Because all he’s doing with it is web surfing, watching youtube, and checking his email. At home that’s all most people are doing, especially older people. I set his up so that it backs up his stuff and auto-updates. It just works and if it does get broken I can recover it with minimal effort.
It’s the same for me at home. My main PC is Linux Mint where I do almost everything. For the occasions I need Windows I have an Intel NUC attached to my KVM. For work I’ve got LM installed on my work laptop and when I need Win11 I have a VM setup in QEMU/KVM with it.
Are there people who have workloads, or gameloads, that only run on Windows? Sure there. We all know that.
But there are a lot of people, especially home users, who could easily run Linux and don’t.
This… It’s not so much that I’d never advocate a windows install, it’s that linux should be the first port of call and Windows be the specialist fallback for when Linux doesn’t handle the use case well.
How well does Linux run Solidworks?
Oh right, it doesn’t…at all.
Linux is useful for many things but just doesn’t cut it for the majority of people reliant on single deal breaker items.
You’re also SOL if you have a couple of decades of music projects in various DAWs (though predominantly Ableton, plus a decent number of Maschine & Reason projects, for me) using all sorts of VSTs from over the years. I keep several versions of some VSTs installed so I can open older projects, and those older versions are never getting patched to fix broken Linux support by the developer, even if a more modern version does get fixed. It’s all got to come from wine devs, which frankly probably have more important issues to focus on.
I’ve tried a few times to get Ableton working with all my plugins and MIDI hardware and it’s always been an exercise in madness ultimately resulting in failure and usually a lost weekend. It particularly doesn’t like anything with my iLok key involved, last I tried a couple of years ago.
I happily run Linux elsewhere, but my main desktop is going to mainly run Windows for the foreseeable future unless something drastically changes. At least my projects aren’t all in Logic!
There’s also some software I use for my photography that didn’t properly work on Linux when I last tried (e.g. GPU features in PureRAW are the main thing I remember), but I think there’re some alternatives there I’d look at if I could get the audio production stuff working perfectly.
I’ve been working on getting set up for music production on Linux, it is possible, but it has a lot more challenges. Manjaro Linux running the 6.13 RT kernel has worked well for stability with Bitwig Studio and Ardour, but the amount if plugins that are impossible or very difficult to install makes it feel limited.
Heard of dual boot?
Been doing it for the better part of 20 years now.
Can’t say I would recommend dual booting both OSes off the same drive. Windows causes too many problems. Put Windows on an entirely separate drive instead and boot to it by changing the boot device in the BIOS.
Why not put it in VM?
The only thing I’d suggest if you do that is to have at least 32 GB of RAM, because I was in a situations where running few Electron apps, and Win11 VM caused RAM to fill up. But if you’re not running Electron apps you should be fine with 16 GB.
And if you’re planning to play games, you could use GPU passthrough for near-native performance, but from what I’ve heard it’s a bit hard to set up.
Oh, I do both. My whole point was to avoid partitioning one physical disk to install both OSes on.
My current setup:
-Windows 11 installed on one NVMe. This is only for playing games that absolutely won’t work any other way.
-Pop OS on another NVMe. This is my main OS.
-Windows 11 VM in VirtualBox for work stuff and normal applications (Adobe…)
Proc is a Ryzen 5 9600x. Machine currently has 64gb DDR5 RAM at 5200mhz.
I run a dual boot system with no issues at all. Just need a second drive for Linux and let GRUB chain load the Windows disk.
That’s effectively the same as what I described, is it not? The only difference is you’re using GRUB to choose what to boot into. It’s still a two disk setup with Windows separate from the Linux disk.
When’s the last time you tried? I had a hell of a time dual booting in ~2016, but as of the last five years or so I’ve set up half a dozen dual boots without issue, and Windows (LTSC) hasn’t messed up any of the partitions.
I have one, it still isn’t great. Windows update routinely fucks with it. Currently using windows as my daily driver because I can’t be arsed to fix my Linux partition again
This is basically what killed my Linux laptop. Some windows update borked the partitions (and not just grub) so that Linux wouldn’t boot anymore. I would never recommend using both on the same disk.
I don’t really use that laptop for much anymore though.
Yeah I wanted to use my new pcie 5.0 nvme for both Linux and windows but it’s not even being recognized as nvme in windows apparently, so I think I’m gonna reset all this shit and put windows on my old nvme and Linux on the new one but it’s a hassle.
- To use Windows only and legacy software.
- Some laptops don’t support Linux due to missing drivers.
- Some very old people hate change and would want to use windows 10 till the end of times, matter of fact I had seen a full office with about 5 desktops that is still running windows xp. (Spoiler alert:they got a ransomware 2 years ago.)
- finally, Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations. In comparison, a bad Linux update could fuck your boot loader beyond repair (it happened to me twice in fact, once on openSUSE tumbleweed and the other on Clear Linux).
Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations.
Are you new? Windows will barf all over itself and all your files doing regular updates. Happened to my wife’s computer just recently. She has almost nothing installed on it aside from Steam and Chrome. Windows update turned itself into a hot mess, and it’s a known issue. The only option was to do a completely fresh install of Windows.
Idiot proof my ass.
I have to disagree about the idiot proof. KDE Plasma and Mate Desktop are more idiot proof and easy for newbies than Windows 10-11, yet have more features in their simple control panels.
I’ve had no bootloader problems in the last 10 years of Debian, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu (15-20 installs, plus another 20-30 if you count VMs.) However, my work computer’s bootloader was semi-bricked twice in 2019 (Windows 7).
- To use Windows only and legacy software.
This is a fair point. If you’re a creator and need adobe software then Linux is pretty much a no go. However, a lot of windows software have Linux equivalents (and those
- Some laptops don’t support Linux due to missing drivers. are generally free as well), so its a matter of doing research.
If you pick the right distribution it may include all the drivers you need. So far I tested 5 distributions and they all worked straight out of the box. I’ll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I’m optimistic it will just work also.
Some very old people hate change and would want to use windows 10 till the end of times, matter of fact I had seen a full office with about 5 desktops that is still running windows xp. (Spoiler alert:they got a ransomware 2 years ago.)
Fine. These people who refuse to adapt to the world can just keep using windows. No skin off my nose either way.
finally, Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations. In comparison, a bad Linux update could fuck your boot loader beyond repair (it happened to me twice in fact, once on openSUSE tumbleweed and the other on Clear Linux).
Now this “idiot proof” take is really funny. You see, I’ve been using Mint for about a month now, never having to log into Windows. Yesterday I needed to log into windows and was immediately met with an update (against my consent), followed by a blue screen of death and when I restarted my laptop my profile couldn’t be acceded and I was instead logged into a safe Environment.
I ended up having to troubleshoot using the Registry to get my account back. If this is idiot proof I have no idea what you consider a system that just works (which is what Linux does in my experience). You’d feel like Heaven is on Earth. On another note, WiFi never autoconnected on login in on windows in my laptop, but it does on Linux.
As for the issues you had, I understand. Rolling releases aren’t for everyone and if you’re not particularly into tinkering or just use your laptop to browse the web, an immutable distro is pretty much unbreakable.
Otherwise, Linux Mint is very conservative so it won’t break with updates (and in the rare instance that does, you can just use Timeshift to rollback the updates anyway).
I’ll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I’m optimistic it will just work also.
I have Mint running on 2011 and 2014 Mac minis. It’s basically flawless. The only trouble you might have is finding the wifi driver, depending on which model you’re using. Iirc, the minis were fine, but the 2011 MacBook Pro I put it on was a little more difficult to track down. But ethernet worked right out of the box, so it wasn’t a huge deal.
Linux on Apple Silicon is a trickier proposition, but getting less tricky all the time.
Sounds lovely, thank you for that feedback. I’m very excited to try. I’m gonna try to install Aurora OS (immutable) and boot from a pendrive on my wife’s Mac (it has an Intel processor still, so it should be fine). If everything works well, I’m sure shell be very happy.
Windows is idiot proof
Could we at least add more idiot support to system crashes?
Windows has a QR code for you to scan, you can make a personalized recovery drive so that it restores your computer, ctrl alt delete gives you options to click on.
Windows only applications mostly. The ones I use are Fusion 360, Photoshop, Lightroom, and NI Labview. Unfortunately CAD/Graphic design software also often really struggles to run in WINE, especially with updates happening fairly often.
I’ve thought of a windows VM, but that’s just not worth the extra effort of dealing with hardware passthrough to get proper GPU acceleration.
I really like Linux, all my servers and VMs run Debian or Alpine. But it’s just a lot of work for desktop use in my experience (yes I know some of you have never had a single thing break), stuff just randomly breaks for no reason, I’ll do a system update and just get a black screen from botched GPU drivers, or back when I ran GNOME my extensions would randomly break after an update and never work again, sometimes installing a simple application like steam would nuke my package manager.
As much as people complain about windows and some do have poor experiences, for me it’s pretty much set and forget, I installed W11 on my desktop maybe 4 years ago shortly after release and it’s just… there. It works fine, it doesn’t break, all my apps, games, and drivers still work after updates.
Fusion 360 is a big sticking point for me too. I tried FREECAD but it ran like ass on every system I’ve tried it on. I’m currently dual booting but windows already wiped the secure boot key once which rendered the Linux os unbootable somehow even after I turned off secure boot. That was like a week after setting it up. I hadn’t even got started on the laundry list of other shot I needed to get working on Linux.
The number of times I have read people say the “need” Photoshop and the works is crazy high. I am really curious what important work all of you are doing with all that proprietary software you list as necessary.
Also that is why you should only learn open source software from the start. I’m learning Blender atm and I absolutely refuse to touch anything like Maya. I don’t want to be locked into an operating system by some software.Photoshop I can mostly replace with Photopea and Penpot, but Lightroom alternatives are not easy to use (or are RAW editors only and don’t do photo management) and I haven’t figure out what to do there yet.
Fusion 360 is the real sticking point, there’s no replacement for that or anything that even comes close.
I’ve been trying out several Linux distributions over the past couple of weeks to figure out where to go after Windows 10.
I’m very open to switching. but if I have to be honest, there are still plenty of UX problems in my experience. It’s frustrating enough that I keep going back to Windows.How long did you try each one? Usually when trying anything new it takes a little while to get used to the things that you readily accept as “just how things are” with something you have been using for a while. I am a long-term Linux user and I can tell you that Windows has plenty of major UX problems when I occasionally have to use it on someone else’s PC.
When the keyboard doesn’t work correctly, that is not “just how it is” though…
I’m not going to relearn how to type accents for the sake of switching to Linux. The OS should just work correctly out of the box, or at the very least give me the option to fix the behaviour without having to go 20 internet forums deep and delving into the depths of the system files.
I tried Mint for four days before getting fed up with things not working as they should, went back to Windows for a week and then tried Fedora for two days again running into very similar issues.
You might need to switch to a keyboard layout with or without dead keys depending on your preference. Not quite sure how Windows does it these days other than some vague nightmares about the layout switcher thing in the task bar from a few years ago that kept switching back semi-randomly when switching applications. Some of the changes in how accents are typed are actually related to using accented characters less than the characters on their own (e.g. backticks) but others might also be related to making things easier for people with disabilities that prevent them from pressing certain key combinations.
The issue I’m talking about is unrelated to keyboard layouts. It’s how deadkeys are implemented.
The deadkeys are seemingly defined separately from keyboard layout, and there is no way that I could find to redefine them other than either turning dead key behaviour on or off in the keyboard layouts
Which distribution did you try?
Mint Cinnamon and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop.
I ran into various issues, one of them being (for example) incorrect behaviour of dead keys for accented characters. That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.
That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.
What desired behaviour are you talking about exactly?
Because I have used those exact two distros, also with deadkeys since I type in Portuguese and Spanish alongside English, and deadkeys works just fine for me.
So the keyboard I’m using is US International (with deadkeys), which is the standard keyboard for the Netherlands.
Certain key combinations should create an accented character, but certain other key combinations should simply print the accent followed by the character. Typing this way is essentially muscle memory for me, so if it deviates from what I’m used to it really trips me up badly.
Example:
', followed byeshould typeé(which Linux did correctly)
', followed bymshould type'm(where Linux typed an accentedḿ)
', followed bycshould typeç(where Linux typed an accentedć)
', followed by'should type''(where Linux typed')
', followed by[]should type'(which Linux did correctly)I checked several forums, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to change this behaviour in Linux. Dead key behaviour is seemingly consistent between keyboard layouts, and it can only either be on or off?
Edit: It shouldn’t even be that complex of an improvement to the OS.
If they were to add a defintion as to how deadkeys are supposed to work as part of the keyboard layout file, this wouldn’t be an issue. I could just make my own “US Intl. with Dead Keys (NL)” layout and it would be fine.Hey, so I just tested this and you’re right, it doesn’t work as you described.
I suppose I unconsciously found workarounds and just ran with it.
For the examples you mentioned:
I’m is achieved by typing ’ and then space.
ç you can get with AltGr+<
The other two, I have no idea what they are, but I trust your judgment.
I also went around some forums and yeah it appears other people report it doesn’t work as it should. A bummer.
Maybe there already are some custom keyboard layouts out there you can download?
To get
Wow! Thank you for going through the effort of figuring out whether there was a solution for me. I really appreciate it!
And yeah… I could probably type all the characters I need to type through workarounds. But my problem is that I don’t think I should have to relearn how to type in order to switch to Linux. It’s a relatively niche issue I ran into, but I’m clearly not the only one running into it.
Which is a shame because I do want Linux to be more widely used than it is currently, and I think small annoyances like this are part of what is holding it back. It makes it more of a hassle to overcome the hurdle of switching OS.
… because I have a Samsung Odyssey+ VR headsets, which needs “Windows Mixed Reality” (Windows VR) and was gutted/removed from Windows 11 (and doesn’t work on Linux).
https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/hardware/ According to this your VR headset works with “✅Monado SteamVR plugin” on Linux
deleted by creator
I hear you, but me get this straight:
Windows fleeced you out of a technology they were supposed to support for the years to come, but you’re still gonna snide Linux and stay with Windows? Lol.
Well, unless this is an offer to buy me a replacement Quest or Pico (all of which, work on Linux) “yes, I’m going to stay with Windows 10” (and/or maybe dual boot).
Developers decide what platforms they want to support based on what resources they have available and the kinds of users they wish to target. They create versions of software where they expect to garner enough market share or based on what gives them the most return on investment. Even at a 4% market share, Linux is still pretty much an edge case for many companies, though I agree that a corporation like Samsung can absolutely afford to make their software available on Linux
I wish I could use Linux for everything, but there are still things you need Windows to run. It would be amazing to be able to run Nuke, Houdini, Ableton Live and the Native Instruments manager on Linux, but it’s not remotely possible now.
I don’t know man, I’ve been trying to mount my network share on Ubuntu for a few days already.
I don’t have experience with setting up networks on Linux, but Ubuntu should have some guides available, no?
In any case, I was speaking from the perspective of someone who used Linux Mint and Fedora. Both work pretty much out of the box with little tinkering.
CIFS or NFS?
Jesus Christ this community never fucking misses a chance change a discussion to Linux. It’s tiresome.
Sorry for trying to improve everyone’s lives. How selfish of us to share superior technology.
I guess we’ll just hoard all the good stuff and not let you guys have any of it from now on.
Yes well done, thanks for spreading the good news, I’ve been saved.
Torvalds be with you. Go in peace.
deleted by creator
Biggest one is going to remain gaming. If anything, I’m beginning to feel like Steam Proton is starting to harm Linux gaming efforts more than helping them. I’ve known games that have dropped native Linux support because “It works on Proton!” only for the game to not actually work on Proton.
If we could get to a world where every game could actually be run on Linux with minimal hassle, maybe then you can beat the drum that there’s no point using Windows. Until then, it’s going to remain the OS for gaming.
That’s a weird way to spell Linux Mint
Is mint windows-like out of the box? I’ve already forgotten what Linux is like outside of i3/sway
Yeah, cinnamon has a windows-like taskbar, startmenu and icon tray.
People fixate on those things. I don’t think those are the key things.
If I had to define what makes something Windows-like I’d point at the software and drivers being self-contained, self-installable executables and the old DOS-style disk handling and directory structure.
I mean, I don’t think that’s necessarily a great thing, but it’s been a long time since Windows took the “press key, type what you want to run, press enter” thing from… I’m gonna say MacOS. That start menu, taskbar and icon tray thing was a differentiator with Windows 95, but probably not since Windows 8.
I don’t understand this comment.
So you think Linux users have to use a command line to launch applications?
Also, there are appImages for Linux that run exactly like .exe files if that’s how people want to run software, but there are also like 3 other ways to install software, it’s up to the user.
I guess the file structure is different if that’s really a big deal to anyone.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding?
No, what? I’m saying all current desktop OSs (and mobile OSs, for that matter) will default to an app search interface when you press their respective Windows/Meta/whatever key or shortcut, so there being a “start” menu and a taskbar instead of a search bar and a dock ribbon makes no difference and is intuitive when going from Windows to Linux no matter what distro or DE you choose.
And that there being “like 3 other ways” to install applications is the issue. Windows users go to a place, click on a the “download” button, then click on the file they download and go. In Linux you could try to approximate that, but it’s the least convenient option. Instead you have an app manager that sort of looks like an app store from the other OSs, but sometimes not everything is in there and you have to manually add repositories and sometimes a thing IS there but it shows up like four times because there are multiple ways for apps to be packaged and it’s not obvious at a glance whether you’re downloading a containerized instance, a bundle of loose file dependencies or straight up code you’re about to autocompile. And when you ask online people will (correctly) tell you it’s actually easier to just use the command line package manager, except those are all distro-dependent and they all use subtly different syntax depending on what flavor of Linux you’re using.
So yeah, that’s a bigger difference and barrier to entry than “the start menu”.
The file structure you should need less often if you’re not a power user, since the user home directories are pretty much the same across the board. But hey, still, it’s very different on Windows compared to other systems, what with devices and volumes being automounted at the root level with a consistent drive name as opposed to a /mnt location and most of the pieces and dependencies of an app being kept in a consolidated folder. So yeah, it’s still a bit of a moment when you eventually have to edit a config file or manually navigate to a removable drive or something and it’s not immediately obvious where that would have gone by default.
That, and to this day it still trips me up that Linux GUI file managers mount network locations and Samba shares in arbitrary real paths you can’t easily navigate to in CLI but mounting them in CLI makes them appear in the file manager in a way that is visually indisinguishable, despite being mounted in a completely different place. That is not awkward because it’s different from Windows, that’s just weird and bad in absolute terms and I don’t get why it’s that way at all.
Thanks for clarifying.
Yeah what you say about launching I agree with, it’s not a big deal anymore.
There are several ways to install on Windows as well. Either installers, a standalone exe, or via the Windows Store. That’s not really any different than what I’m talking about with the exception of there being more than one “type” of exe (deb, rpm, etc).
On Linux, most people just use the store front that comes with their distro while more advanced users can build from source or whatever b/c they need bleeding edge releases or b/c it’s “fun”.
Adding repos is the Devil & my last resort because that shit will break a system, so I’m w you there.
So yeah, if your main argument is the hurdle to changing systems goes beyond the Start Menu, I agree. That said, it’s not that hard & most people just use a browser anyways, tbh.
I’m not a fan of the “most stuff just goes in the browser” argument, because then your OS is just Chrome and it doesn’t matter what you use underneath it. If anybody genuinely believed that people wouldn’t get so militant about the stuff you use to boostrap your PC and launch your real OS.
I also don’t agree that things are comparable just because MS keeps a vestigial proprietary app store (and a vestigial but quite competent CLI app manager, while we’re at it). Standalone installers are the default for Windows and there are very few times you’re forced to deviate from that, including for driver installations. That is a fundamental change, even before you get to the absolute mess that is the variety of repos, package formats and package managers across the Linux ecosystem. Even if you choose to use the Windows Store for some reason it has a single possible setup and more in common with a mobile store than with Linux package management.
Maybe it’s having recently switched to Fedora with GNOME and being frustrated by how patchy and unreliable their GUI software app is, but even after installing additional repos most of the stuff I want to use isn’t there and I’ve started defaulting to CLI because it’s just more reliable. It is by far the biggest hurdle I’d foresee for a newcomer, and if I had to recommend a distro/DE combo to a Windows user I’d focus on what package manager works best and most straightforwardly out of the box before anything else.
And yes, I did break something badly during that whole process and had to do some serious patching up at one point, so I do appreciate the empathy.
Linux mint has an app store like Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
I think it supports flathub, which has every app you could need, but I haven’t checked since I run a very customized NixOS.
People don’t really download .exes anymore, it’s just people who are used to windows 7 and earlier who still do that.
Citation gonna be extremely needed there. I have no idea what the penetration of the MS store is these days, but I’d be surprised to find most people punch in “VLC” in their app store before doing it in Chrome. Never mind that growing up with Windows 7 puts you in your mid 20s, who in their right mind bought into the Windows 8-era iteration of UWP? If you had said Windows 10 I would have rolled with it, but… yeah, gonna need so much citation.
But in any case, as I said above, the MS Store app is not the same as the multiple Linux package managers. You’re not going to write VLC and find three different identical-looking results with only fine print revealing which is which type of installer (none of which you can tell apart if you come from Windows anyway).
The assumption was that nobody used win8 lol
But again I think people who grew up with 10/11 are more likely to use the windows store than you think. They used an iPad before they got a chromebook before they got a windows computer. My little cousins don’t play minecraft Java, they play minecraft bedrock. I don’t think they know what VLC is.
I mean, it may be higher than I think, because the amount I think is pretty low.
But I don’t think it’s the default. I am not THAT detached from younger people. iPads and Chromebooks are very region-specific options.
If you have numbers to any of that feel free to share them, because this is very far from a binary thing. There are literal billions of Windows PCs out there and that split isn’t going to be 90/10 (which would still leave you with hundreds of millions in the small bit anyway).
KDE2/3 like?
I haven’t used those. But KDE Plasma is also similar, so I guess, yes.
Linux mint is more windows-like than windows itself. I know that sounds odd but watch some videos if you’re curious and you’ll see what i mean.
Mint under the hood is still Linux, but for basic tasks like webbrowsing, it’s very similar to or easier than Windows.
No, it’s not “Windows-like” in anything but some basic appearance (and that would be Windows from the previous decade). It’s not similar in anything else, and from my experience the similarity in appearance only confuses users.
I really wish people stopped recommending Mint as if it was some proper Windows replacement because it’s overall a very mediocre distro that’s IMO more likely to detract users from using Linux than anything else.
People still recommend libreoffice… I just tried onlyoffice and it is much more similar to the modern office suite. I find libreoffice excel hard to use - it’s stuck in 97 without modern features and placement I expect. The word processor is fine though
I personally use Fedora (starting yesterday actually), but Mint is definitely a serviceable distro that works for a wide variety of people.
I simply don’t like how it stays so behind on updates (I see that as a big security and privacy risk), but if you don’t need windows-only proprietary software, or all you do is browse the web, then Linux Mint is a familiar and usable enough distro.
If you’re going to criticize Mint for being behind in packages, then you also need to criticize Debian, because that’s where the philosophy comes from.
Yeah I think in the future, we’ll figure out how to make NixOS configuration modular enough to be viable for laymen, but Linux Mint works well enough for Windows refugees.
I threw it on an old PC a few weeks ago and am pleasantly surprised at how polished it is.
deleted by creator
until you wanna play games on it, at which point you start running into driver issues…
Pre-installed Nvidia drivers will likely be fixed in the next two years, but:
- You’ll have zero driver issues if you use an Nvidia compatible distro like PopOS or Nobara
B. The 25% of gamers not using Nvidia GPUs do not have driver issues on Linux
III. Windows has tons of driver issues, so I’m not sure why Linux Nvidia drivers are a significant detail here. We don’t expect little Jimmy to know to install drivers, and know what to do when windows update fucks your drivers randomly. Linux actually soves those issues for you.
The 25% of gamers not using Nvidia GPUs
*%10 unfortunately
III. Little Jimmy doesn’t really need to, because the amount of times that windows update completely bricks your drivers is pretty low. You’re clearly overestimating the driver issues that people experience with Nvidia or otherwise on Windows. Neither myself nor any of the people I know have ever experienced any significant driver-based issues while playing on Windows, and the truth is that the vast majority of Windows users do not even need to know what a graphics driver is to be able to easily play games on Windows.
Yeah it’s great that AMD support seems to be great and I agree that Nvidia sucks as a company, but I’m not the one claiming Linux is the greatest gaming system.
Ok fair, last time I used windows you had to install gpu drivers manually. I think you still are recommended to do so, since the windows ones are really old.
But yeah manual driver installation/specialized distros for Nvidia is a problem that’s in the process of getting fixed with NVK, Nova, and the official drivers. Intel and AMD are there already.
I would rather have one extra manual step like that than dealing with/paying for Windows 11
If it was just one extra manual step, it’d be fine. In my experience working with Nvidia drivers on Mint and later Ubuntu, it’s more like 15 extra steps and some things still don’t work. Sure, it’s better than dealing with Windows 11, but from my experience it has not felt like less hassle than getting games running on Windows 10. Maybe that’s just an Nvidia issue, and I certainly would love to upgrade to an AMD system for better Vulkan support, but that’s not happening anytime soon.
No, I don’t.
