I’m so glad I can mostly just ask my Linux questions to AI now instead of hoping I can find someone who will tell me how to do what I want instead of berating my choices and attitude.
I hear you’re sent to the Shadow Realm where you need input a satanic passphrase to escape, only known to those who have signed the deal with the Devil himself! He’s also known as Joe from IT, so just ask him.
Tbh, I haven’t experienced too many issues other then modifying a couple prgrams to be compatible with OpenRC. On my main desktop I use Debian 12 and Systemd with my 2080 SUPER and haven’t encountered any issues.
Although, when I tried to install the open kernel version of the NVIDIA driver, my system didn’t like it, so I ended up installing the full proprietary driver and it works well. Will be switching to AMD once I need to buy another graphics card.
(I use Gnome as my DE with two 1440p 144hz monitors)
Wait, you use Unstable? My favorite DM still does, but basically noone is both tech savvy enough, and crazy enough to use Unstable Debian. That’s just a Sisyphean task.
The guys that run Unstable Debian end up creating bug reports like this:
It’s so easy for you young people. Back in my day, in order to hate Microsoft, we had to understand the virus risks of Windows, we hand to have needed to go into the registry to make some minor customization change; we had to know about Microsoft’s nefarious dealings bribing game dev companies to use Directx when they saw the threat of opengl. We had to know about Bill Gates’s dark side (which he did, really well - but we have Behind the Bastards now). We had to be mad about crap like how they locked down gui customization, killing litestep and bb4win. We had to deeply care about the deep innards of your computing experience (read: ricing) to understand why Microsoft sucked so bad.
Today, you kids have it so easy - they’re putting ads in the operating system, their core software is all subscription, they’re talking about making the OS itself subscription based. These days they make it so obvious that we’re not their priority, making good software isn’t their priority; their priority is getting our money.
(I feel like I made the joke already - Microsoft’s really easy to hate these days, you get it - but I’m having fun, so I’m going to keep going.)
They used to put freecell right on your computer - I’m telling you, we had to go seriously digging to find reasons to hate M$. Freecell, minesweeper, solitaire, that weird pinball game my dad liked - we had to be seriously ungrateful shits to head over to Ubuntu dot com.
And now, with one click installers, active discord help channels, eager, excited, and friendly people all over, just happy to see the FOSS community grow - engaging in a healthy relationship with computing has never been so easy - 3 or 4 clicks! Asserting your self respect and aligning your daily experience with your ethics was never like this when I was young.
We used to have to ask on the arch forums where 99% of the time we were told to rtfm (because we hadn’t); we had to be super careful not to let on that we were asking the arch forums about our Ubuntu issues. We had to search for random forum threads that inevitably ended with “nvm i fixed it” - if there was any follow-up at all. We had men whose back sweat trickled down through their unkempt back hair before disappearing into their plumber crack; you guys today have stunningly beautiful men and women who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be “developer advocates” - there are twitch streamers who are getting paid super well at their fancy Netflix jobs but still spend hours and hours of their day sharing their knowledge with newcomers - literally just because they enjoy helping people learn about computers.
Kidding aside Linux is pretty ok, I hope you enjoy it.
Windows has been getting shittier, but I feel that Microsoft as a company has better products now. WSL, GitHub, ChatGPT, even VS is enjoyed by many people.
they didn’t buy wsl. they bought sfu way back when but wsl is all fresh code since sfu had been depreciated for ages by the time they got around to doing wsl development.
They finally accepted that the real money is in being the world’s datacenter rather than trying to make the default operating system for every computer, especially when some crazy nerds will do that for free
I don’t buy the datacenter argument. The Azure is in the market minority, while Windows and Office are still their main cash cows, even in a slowly diminishing market. Seems like their current play is at some form of videogame dominance with ActiBliz purchase and whatever the deal they have with Ubisoft and others to host all their servers on Azure, but that’s a very dubious strategy given how gaming industry has been eating itself last decade. Honestly, they should’ve kept pushing the windows mobile instead.
So I’ve never looked up Microsoft’s financial reporting before but from what I can glean they report 3 business units with the following revenue for 2023:
Productivity and Business Processes 69 Billion
Intelligent Cloud 88 Billion
More Personal Computing 54 billion
It’s not very clear where the gaming and Windows business units fall in there nor how they compare to eachother, but what is clear is that Azure is absolutely killing it in revenue for Microsoft
Here’s a report of the current market breakdown. Azure is over 23% of the entire cloud market and gaining ground rapidly.
I’ve probably made some errors in this quick data grab, but it’s extremely clear that azure is a significant portion of Microsoft’s interests right now.
Huh, the more you know. I was under impression that google and amazon had much bigger market share and Microsoft was at 10% at best, but I never actually looked that up. Now looking at it, what you’ve said makes much more sense, thanks.
This exactly. All the things they’ve bought they’ve slowly started pushing towards monetization, away from users.
Old Microsoft was specifically fighting Bill Gates’s personal crusade for IP law; now that his influence is diminishing, they’re seeing the dollar signs that are written all over the phrase “free code.”
You can install it onto a USB key. A search for it gives a lot of results. That’s, ah, about as far as I’ve gotten into the process (oh and I’ve bought a couple of usb flash drives), but it’s looking promising. I might even make some progress and click one of those links tonight, though not sure if I’m feeling that ambitious today.
You can try it out before you install. Most Linux distro offer a “live USB” for install where it will boot a full copy of the distribution that you can verify all of your hardware is recognized and even try out the OS without touching your disk
If you’ve got a sizable USB drive, try Ventoy! Then you can put a bunch of .ISOs on it and boot from any one you want. It’s good for trying distros, or sharing Linux with others, or even putting recovery/rescue software on it. Like if you want to run memtest or alter partition data with Gparted or rescue a system that’s not booting.
Great tool to have. You can even use the leftover space like a normal flash drive and it doesn’t mind!
Ventoy is so awesome! It’s the tool I wish it existed a decade ago. The entire process of creating botable usbs was so tedious and time consuming, and now it’s just copying the isos just like any other file. It works for almost any iso or img file, and even allows us to have windows isos as well.
Is it though? Last time I checked on a friend’s computer POSIX message queues were not available. They had to install Ubuntu to code their operating systems homework. Unless mqueue is not part of the POSIX specification, MacOS doesn’t seem POSIX compliant to me.
Yeah lots of unix-likes out there but it’s not running the linux kernel so it’s decidedly not linux. I was just trying to stir up shit in a shit stirring thread.
Now, to possibly stir up more shit: Its ancestry might even be closer to unix than linux itself since darwin was derived from nextstep/bsd whereas linux was a mix of minix and torvalds going “fuck this licensing shit i’ll just make my own”
I will say, any time i’ve had to deal with a macos system i’ve appreciated being able to drop into a familiar shell. DOS commands drive me insane. dir is 50% longer than ls! Who has time for that!
This may not be the place to ask, but is there a guide you’d recommend for a lifelong windows user to try out Linux?
I’ve had a Steam Deck for a while now and love it and feel I could probably make the leap.
I have no idea why this comic in particular motivated me to finally ask.
Edit: I just want to say an incredible thank you to everyone and your advice. I was just looking for a link to a guide and ya’ll wrote them yourselves.
I think the prevailing advice of creating a virtual machine to play around in seems like a very good place to start.
I’d run some linux on a live USB. Try some of the FOSS software we use like Libre Office, Krita, Kdenlive. Check out the software app. Im a big KDE fan if it isnt obvious enough. Make your windows stuff more portable or interoperable. Get passwords into a database like KeePass, check out Markdown document making. Find out what Linux has for you and your computer interests.
If you want to check out some linux distributions, I would suggest you use Ventoy. You can then copy the ISO’s to your USB drive and boot from them without having to reformat your usb drive all the time. It’s a really cool tool and I can highly recommend it. I always carry ventoy with me for work with rescue disks, clonezilla, etc.
Personally I would recommend either Ubuntu or Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE - it’s what I use). It’s a one of the most popular distributions and well-documented and supported.
If you want to have a look at what’s available, check out distrowatch.com
Edit: If you’re not ready to install on your own hardware, try playing around with Virtual Machines - like Virtualbox.
I’ve been on Linux for about a year and a half. So just passing the newbie phase I guess.
My advice is to dive right in. Don’t know what that file does? Delete it. Punch in cd /; rm -rf, try to us ethe find command, think you understand the find command. Then avoid the find command like your creepy uncle. Open up vim, have no idea what vim is, and restart your computer because there’s a snowballs chance in hell of figuring it out once you’re already in vim. Fuck the install of your first distro beyond recognition, download a new one and do it again. That last one isn’t advice, it’s going to happen so you might as well embrace it.
Just try shit. Say: I wonder how I… And then figure it out. Look into what all the symbols on the bash scripts do. Be curious and brave and remember that as long as you back up the important shit you may fuck something badly enough that it’s not worth fixing but a reinstall doesn’t take very long and it gives you a chance to try another distro anyway.
I’m telling you when the terminal “clicks” it’s such a good feeling. When you write a short bash script that works the first time without looking for help it feels GOOD. But nothing as good as peeling back layer after layer of abstraction and seeing there right in front of you all the shit Microsoft keeps from you. Sure most of an s trace is total fucking jibberish and probably always will be because I don’t have myself enough to learn C but just look at all the stuff my computer does! Boy, look at it go.
Bottom Line is that you can read all the books and how to guides in the world but none of them will do more to carry you forward into the perplexing and frustrating world of computers like a wild-eyed sense of curiosity and a bottle full of Xanax
Honestly, depends what helps you learn the best. I would recommend at first use Linux Mint, it’s ubuntu without the bullshit, will look familiar to you and use that as a way to learn more. Or Pop_OS if you want something a little bit more different from the windows interface. I would also recommend YT channels like The Linux Experiment, DistroTube and Chris Tech Tips. I will also recommend the Arch wiki (even though Linux Mint is not based on Arch it can still be helpful), install tldr for short descriptions of terminal commands, use man for long descriptions, and so on.
In general the best way is fuck around and find out (keep regular backups). Don’t be scared of messing around or fixing stuff, it can be easy and of it isn’t an OS reinstall will take about 15 minutes anyways so you’re good.
Also depends on what you wanna do. If you justbwant to browse the web and use a few common programs you can just install Linux Mint and remember to install programs via the package manager (app store) and you’re generally good. Gaming? Use Steam (enable the proton compatibility mode) whenever possible, lutris should be able to handle the rest. And lastly also look at AlternativeTo when you find programs that aren’t available or you don’t like.
Approach it more like a hobby than like anything else. Test out true waters with a virtual machine (Google is your friend) and YouTube/any other guides. If it’s not for you, so be it.
If it piques your interest, keep going on down the rabbit hole, and continue exploring. And even then, if you get the feeling you know enough, or are satisfied, you will at least have a workable environment to your liking or have the knowledge to change it so.
recommend for a lifelong windows user to try out Linux?
Try out, what of Linux?
Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 - you get the full command line 🔧, and can kind of run some desktops. Thanks to HyperX, it runs in a “sister” VM to Windows, so zero performance penalty (compared to Windows). Easiest, fastest, not necessarily the best.
Cygwin - no Linux kernel, just userland software, that is command line, some desktop, some software. Quick to start 🐇, but somewhat limited.
OSBoxes - pick any distro, download a preinstalled image, fire it up in either VirtualBox or VMware. Great for a quick first contact. Great to mess things up and not care 💥, including if you try to manually rebuild the kernel and it refuses to boot. Hardware is partially emulated, so not 100% like the real thing, but it comes really close. But look at the beautiful desktops! Pretty pictures! 🤩 (this is what most people think they want, judging by most distro reviews and comparisons).
Android - it’s Linux, it lacks most of the userland but it can be added (see Termux), and you’re likely to find a cheap smartphone/tablet to mess with.
Cloud virtual private server / Bare hardware hosting - if you’re going to mess up a system, why mess up your own? Rent a cheap option, and mess it up.
THE MAXIMUM GAMING PERFORMANCE 🚀 - …try some of the previous ones first, you’ll need the experience. Then look into how to dual-boot, or better yet, get a second PC and install your favorite Linux distro (which you’ll know which one it is by now) as the only OS. Tweak, fix, patch, etc. until your eyes bleed out, and you get those extra 2 fps you never knew you needed to make your life complete!
ROCK SOLID WORKHORSE 💪 - try all the above, then pick two distros: dual boot, mess the partitions, recover them, go into one distro, login as root and delete half the files at random, shut down the computer, power it up and recover the messed up distro from the second working one without reinstalling, reboot again into the first distro, “upgrade” it to the second one without reinstalling, clean it up so it looks like it was freshly installed… then delete it, reinstall, and see what you should have backed up in order not to lose stuff, make your backup, delete the distro, recover from backup. Practice until you lose zero data in the process, now automate the process. Finally, install and fully customize Gentoo. After that… whatever you pick, you’ll be fine 🙂
I mean, none of yall have given me shit for singing the praises of Valves supported version giving me the bridge to switch with yet, so at least the gate keeping isnt happening at the gate!
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