Well one is trying to crack down on people using adblockers and the other is lobbying governments they don’t pay taxes to so that they are allowed to continue using forced ethnic slavery to make their products.
If you need more ammunition they recently also changed it so all links in Outlook opens in Edge even if it’s not the default browser. You have to go to settings and find an entirely separate default browser setting to stop it.
Do it. It’s not as hard as it used to be thanks to systemd-boot existing. I literally reinstalled Windows the other day and nothing happened to systemd-boot. GRUB, is a bit of a mess though.
The only issues I had with dual booting is an out of sync clock (due to Windows using local time), and Windows wiped one of my Linux drives (I installed Windows second, so unplug any unused drives before installing Windows). The last issue I am still unsure what caused it, however I remember installing Windows and the next time I use Linux the drive is empty.
My reason was that I had heard windows 11 was considering ads in their file explorer. Win10 already has enough prompts pushing edge and OneDrive. That, and many of my professors use Linux, and the ease with which they would install Python or C compilers was too much.
I wish I could. My gaming rig has an nvidia gpu and linux support really sucks because of the proprietary driver situation…
Steams new gamepad ui is a slideshow running at 5fps and I loose HDR so I have to remain on Windows for now. Every other desktop I own is UNIX tho.
There’s probably some programs that you always want to run with the dedicated GPU, though.
Copy the launchers for those from /usr/share/applications to ~/.local/share/applications, and edit the Exec= line to include prime-run?
Or, assuming prime-run is inheritable (since otherwise apps that need renderer subprocesses wouldn’t work), run an application launcher/menu itself with prime-run?
What does “NVIDIA Control Panel” look like these days? It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen it. No options in there?
I’m assuming you still want the IGPU and not the discrete GPU for rendering the desktop/simple programs, for power consumption and performance reasons, so you’re not willing to just turn the IGPU off or stick your entire session under prime-run or export its environment variables in ~/.profile or whatever.
It looks like there are also GPU switcher taskbar applets for both KDE and GNOME. This sounds like it would be easy enough.
…I think back when I was setting up a NVIDIA laptop, I might have just put a toggle for optimus-manager somewhere, or something.
I got a RTX 3080 myself and no matter what distro I used the new gamepad UI lagged so much that it was unusable… maybe this has been fixed, I haven’t tried it in a while.
Also are you using x or wayland?
But you can Dual Boot and only use Windows for gaming. I did that initially
Sadly I wont switch until this is resolved. But I use this rig only for gaming and navigate through gamepadui so I dont have to see Windows lol.
I use UNIX (Linux / macOS) on all other hosts.
I’m guessing they’re distro hopping. People often jump from Manjaro to Endeavor to get a more clean Arch experience. This is what I did too, on my laptop a couple of years ago, and I’ve stayed on EndeavourOS since.
Do you ever run into upstream bugs, or Idk, package version incompatibilities, on Endeavour? The idea that the 2-week package grouping and delay might help avoid those is one of the main things that drew me to Manjaro.
Started on Manjaro but I was annoyed when they let their SSL certificates expire several times so I moved to EndeavourOS. Now I am using NixOS, and I probably stay with it for a while.
Nix is a good tool, but don’t think I’d personally want to give up the Linux FHS for it. Manjaro’s management does indeed have a somewhat concerning track record.
linux support really sucks because of the proprietary driver situation.
Stop listening to everyone online. The driver situation “sucks” because of ideologies (which I happen to agree with), but from a functionality perspective Nvidia’s Linux drivers are solid.
The same driver you install is the same driver they use in their half a million dollar DGX AI systems. And those systems don’t run Windows. Only Linux.
I don’t know why you’re having that issue, but I have three systems with Nvidia cards (1080ti, 2060 laptop, 1660 laptop) that I use Steam on and the new big picture mode is entirely usable. It’s not perfect, and does hiccup someone’s, but it works fine.
I’m guessing the laptops are using Optimus and are maybe running big picture using the integrated graphics, hence being smoother on them. 1080ti I don’t know, maybe it’s just in issue with RTX cards or something. iirc it was to do with HW acceleration but not sure
A few others have mentioned Pop_OS! for their Nvidia driver support which is what I’m running too. I think I’m on version 535.93 or something like that. Most of the Ubuntu downstream (Ubuntu, mint, pop_os, etc,.) already include The proprietary drivers in their repos. Pop_OS is known for Nvidia support being a bit quicker than the others.
I’d suggest looking into dual booting (thats what I do, there are a few things that work better on windows). It’s super easy to set up, and it’s an easy low risk way to see if it works for you.
True for Windows as well. Ever upgraded to a new version before the first SP? Linux just gets upgrades a lot faster than Windows (and I mean the conservative distros like Debian. Bleeding-edge distros are on a completely other level).
Microsoft have been known to ship a product with thousands of known bugs on its release date. In the networking space (Windows NT), there were Technet CDs that were released to fix all manner of known bugs just so the corporates wouldn’t have to wait for a Service Pack
Perhaps a better statement would be, if a for profit service is free, you are the product. Obviously it’s possible for someone to make free stuff if they want to, but if someone is making money from you using something, but you aren’t paying them, then they’re making that money by selling someone else access to you.
This “solution” completely ignores the volumes of software that is still only compatible with Windows. This is exactly the belief that Microsoft wants you to have: the illusion that you have a choice between Windows and other, equal alternatives. And before someone starts spouting off about WINE: it truly is a wonderful piece of software, and I don’t mean to disparage any of its talented contributors, but it will likely never even approach feature parity with Windows. I mean, it still can’t run the industry standard 3D modeling program.
I think that compared to video games, productive softwares, especially “industry standard” ones, rely more on Windows APIs at much more accuracy (and since Wine and its forks such as Proton have to rely on black-box reverse engineering to avoid copyright infringement), the API calls may not have the exact values 100% of the time which is more tolerable to videos games but much less on productive softwares.
Another reason is that most of these softwares unlike most video games are likely using many Windows’ quirks or bugs and are likely less using standard (such as WinUI, DirectX,…) or cross platform toolkit (Qt, GTK,…), making reimplementing the environments and libraries to run the softwares much harder.
Oh, and not even counting that many of those softwares may also use kernel-level DRMs which Wine/Proton/Crossover/… are only userspace level to prevent pirates. This was actually a problem in video games too when many video games, mostly multiplayer ones implement kernel level anticheats or DRMs, until Valve contacted the anticheat/DRM developer as well as the release and popular of the Steam Deck make developers care more about Wine/Proton compatibility, but even then there are some developers still don’t implement Wine/Proton compatibility or even worse ban Linux users for circumvent the artificial incompatibility.
Meh gamepass is cool for now. It will probably go up in price and become shitty when they get enough market share but until then it is super cool. And honestly I think bing/edge is now the better choice as a search engine/browser compared to Google/chrome. But no way I will give up my Firefox.
What part of the $1299 MacBook Pro and iMac, the $999 MacBook Air, or the $599 Mac Mini is over priced?
You would struggle to find the power of those for lower prices, especially with the quality and support Apple provides. And it’s nearly impossible to find hardware like that with full Linux support.
I’m holding onto hope actually. I recently started dual-bootung into Mint and the installation process was a breeze. The only thing I could imagine a “typical” user finding difficult is setting up the flash drive for booting/installation. The UI is nice and familiar too. As a Linux newbie I hear that Mint is basically Ubuntu, and that (modern) Ubuntu is hot garbage, but even if it caused my computer to take an actual shit on the floor, it still beats Windows by a country mile.
I think (perhaps too optimistically) that with some more awareness we could see a fairly sizeable migration.
I didn’t mean to make it seem like I had any opinion either way, just that it has received some hate over the years. I did some research - admittedly it was cursory - and it looks like the issues are somewhat exaggerated.
Canonical, it seems, has made a number of poor decisions but apparently they pay attention to user complaints and revert / make adjustments accordingly. Some of the controversial things I saw were related to the Snap package manager, possible telemetry, bloatware, and some partnership with Amazon.
Some of those things were either nothingburgers or simply overblown (one person said the only thing they could see as bloatware was… a few board games), so I would take their anecdotes with a grain of salt.
Again, I’m a relative idiot when it comes to Linux, but my takeaway is that Ubuntu suffers from the typical growing pains / compromises that a relatively popular OS will inevitably encounter. Especially when most of the Linux userbase consists of power users who prefer having complete control (which is perfectly fair too!)
Use whatever distro fits your needs; as long as you ditch Microsoft, you’re making a good choice :)
With the way the average person uses a computer, the Linux user experience would probably melt their brains. No offense to the average computer user, but we have seen time and time again that they are not the brightest when it comes to tech literacy or just don’t care and refuse to care since it goes against the grain, so to speak.
Hi, average user here, I’ve been daily driving Linux (primarily Ubuntu) for a decade or more. Most of my life in a computer is spent in a web browser, word document, or maybe a spreadsheet. Even at my office job it’s the same, except for some proprietary time tracking and billing software. I’d imagine 90 percent of consumers spend the vast majority of their time on computers in the web browser. Most people don’t mess around with much beyond that.
I just don’t understand what is lacking in the Linux user experience. It’s not any different from a Windows user learning to use a Mac computer. Figure out how to connect to wifi, figure out how to mess with the volume, open a browser and that’s it.
I’m sorry, but I kind of doubt you are what I consider a “normal user”, seeing as you’re in a technology community on Lemmy. Just the fact that you are here indicates a higher than average tech literacy.
Sometimes Microsoft is such a turd… I’ve seen this thing posted several times, however I didn’t see the fix in this thread, so I’ll post it here. Sorry, I couldn’t find the Lemmy post that had the information on how to remove it, but I found one on Reddit:
It’s basically a combination registry changes, and also directory modifications to prevent writing to the directory where BGAUpsell.exe resides.
It’s pretty shitty we have to do this. Please, hold all your “switch to Linux” comments, because they are stupid, and superfluous; I see that dumb shit all the time since I came to Lemmy.
Finally, a person with an actual voice. I feel like the, “Switch to Linux,” don’t realize they sound like, “Just get an iPhone people.” To me it all sounds like, “well if you don’t like being in this country then just leave.”
Linux is not the answer for all people the same as switching to an iPhone should never just be the answer.
The overwhelming majority of people who work on a computer are stuck with windows.
Another mass majority of people will buy a computer and use whatever is on it. They aren’t tech savvy enough to switch OS’s and they know how to use it because they use it for work.
You want more people on Linux? Get more companies to switch to Linux and get more box stores like Walmart and Best Buy to stock Linux OS’s on PC’s at sale.
Linux growth right now will be slow. It will still happen, but it’s not going to be fast. Steam released the steam deck which runs Linux and the OS saw a MAJOR spike in users. That’s because a device is being sold with Linux stock on it. Now do the same with laptops. Some will say desktops, but desktops aren’t as popular as laptops. It won’t hurt to package with desktops but laptops are key to that.
Honestly, I would like more people using it as support from companies would improve and my experience would get better, and competition breeds innovation. But I’m not going to push for it. I’m happy with what it does for me and I don’t really care if other people use it or not. I just get annoyed when people complain without wanting to hear about solutions or alternatives. I know people who complain because they are chronic complainers and they are not interested in actually fixing any of their problems.
Because the product doesn’t suck for everyone on the entire planet because you think it sucks.
“Christ you guys sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.”
You guys sound like a fucking cult sometimes. Like Linux is this perfect OS or that doesn’t break when a repository fails to update.
Wanna know what my first time with Linux was like, Everytime my mouse moved the screen refreshed. Every, frame.
Linux is not the answer for every person especially for my mom who barely knows how to send an email and the answer is to tell her how to boot from a live USB and expect her to understand partitioning a drive.
Look, I love Linux just as much as you guys but I also appreciate Windows especially doing the work I do. Linux is not the damn answer to everything.
And your analogy to abusing another human is honestly quite shit. Humans abusing another need to seek help.
I disagree, Microsoft is very abusive to both its users as well as other companies. Just because you want to bury your head in the sand about how they have zero respect for their customers, build shit software, are anticompetitive and have a stranglehold on the entire industry, that’s on you.
I’m not suggesting you use Linux, honestly every OS sucks, but Windows actively works against you. If you want to complain about these problems deliberately created by Microsoft but reject any suggestions of something that might be a better alternative, you’re just a whiner.
But hey, at least Apple didn’t win the OS war. We’d all be stuck with only Apple hardware, no standards and walled gardens. I guess we can thank Microsoft for having an alternative to that.
Anyways, use whatever works for you. And I guess you can complain without wanting a solution to your problems, a lot of people complain like that.
I’ve been running Linux on all the machines I own for years, but I still have to run Windows for work. Not everyone can just switch and I doubt there are many reading this who are unaware they could switch to Linux (or Mac, BSD, etc.).
Oh I also have one MacBook running MacOS because Apple decided to only allow iOS development and parental controls, of all things, on Apple devices running Apple software.
Yes MS and Apple suck but it’s not as simple as “just switch.”
And, no, VS Code is not a comparable replacement no matter how many extensions you add. I say that as someone who uses VS Code for almost everything…except C#.
Yep, definitely have to pick the right tool for the job. If you use these things, you’re stuck with Windows. Would be nice if you could install needed software on whichever OS you choose.
More importantly, the reason why all of those apps don’t have Linux versions is not because of some anti-Linux conspiracy, but because Linux userspace has for most of its existence prioritized distro-packaged-and-provided software, at the expense and sometimes even exclusion of binary software distribution.
This is not just a technical limitation, but I’d also argue a cultural one, driven by folks who consider proprietary/nonfree software irrelevant and not worth supporting in a first-class way. Unfortunately, the companies who make both the software that entire industries are built around and the games that you play when you get off work disagree. Valve was probably the company in the best position to make native Linux games a trend, and the fact that they’re more focused on Proton these days is pretty telling.
The only developers in the Linux ecosystem who I feel are taking the problem seriously are the Flatpak developers. They do amazing work, with great tooling that builds against a chrooted runtime by default. But it needs more widespread usage and acceptance, as well as better outreach to developers from other ecosystems who might’ve had horrendous experience making Linux builds in the past.
There is a future out there with native Linux builds of industry-standard tooling and even games. But it’s a future the Linux community has to willing to actually work towards.
Is it not “serious” to work towards a better future because that’s more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom. The games industry has changed over the years and it is my hope people will not tolerate it forever. Even if I achive no impact with my games I can look back and see I tried for what I thought was the better moral outcome.
Why not both? I don’t see how proprietary software on Linux will slow down FOSS at all, and it’ll only bring more users to Linux who otherwise have to use windows for their software, so overall more FOSS users in the community
And programs like Blender have already matured to a professional level, so I’m pretty optimistic that other FOSS apps will eventually follow, too
If the goal is software freedom for everyone then proprietary software working on Linux isn’t the end goal. Maybe it’s good - a step towards the end game - but I worry it’s a peak which is difficult to get down and up to a higher peak. Proprietary software on Linux is convenience above freedom.
Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at, proprietary software on Linux is just a step forward towards a fully FOSS future
For the most part, there aren’t many professional fields that have a good FOSS option, so in the meantime their only option is to keep using the industry standard until a good alternative matures like Blender has
At the very least, people would have the freedom to not use microsoft or apple while still working professionally in their respective industry, so that’s more free overall
AutoCAD has been industry standard for 40 years now, and it’s never going away. Can’t run it on Linux. It and Revit are 100% mandatory in construction/ arch / engineering
I have heard of those examples before but I have no use for that so I have not learned specifics to talk about.
Would bet it is harder to combat that “this will never change” mindset in the userbase than actually making alternatives. For 20 years from the 50’s it was normal for ALL software to be public domain. Times change, and it’s up to us users if they want better.
Is it not “serious” to work towards a better future because that’s more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom.
I do not believe that distros ignoring the problem of binary software distribution is actually accomplishing anything productive on that front. All it does is put a gigantic KEEP OUT sign for most outside developers who might have briefly considered porting their software. Package maintainers are also incredibly overburdened, and are often slow to update their packages even on rolling release distros.
Worse, it also inconveniences their userbase, pushing them to solutions their that bypass the distro completely such as third-party repos, Steam, Wine, Flatpak, Docker, or even running Linux in WSL. All of them function as non-free escape hatches, but all of them are inferior to distros getting their act together and deciding that binary software distribution is a problem worth collaborating on and solving together.
I think they’ve finally heard the appeal for functionality before idealist principles. Debian, since version 12, are following the trend of abandoning the purist approach of only offering FOSS at install. They now detect and offer to install proprietary drivers at install.
If the alternatives are not there or lacking then people can’t switch. If people don’t use it and contribute (e.g. reports, donations) then it is difficult to justify creating alternatives.
This is not a stalemate however. It is a slow transition of pioneers frustrated with the status quo.
“Please don’t.” looks lovingly but fearfully at her two year old daughter “He’ll… He won’t like it.”
Sorry to anyone who may have PTSD related to abuse, my point is this…
@rivalary SAY THAT AGAIN, YOU SON OF A BASTARD, I FUCKING DARE ANYONE TO SAY YOU AREN’T AN ENTITLED ASSHOLE WHO HAS THE MONEY AND CONNECTIONS TO JUST UP AND LEAVE IF YOUR RELATIVELY FREE COUNTRY STARTS TO ACTUALLY TAX YOU! TRY LEAVING NORTH KOREA AS A NORTH KOREAN PEASANT AND SEE HOW EASY IT IS TO “jUsT fUcKiNg LeAvE”!
It’s not what they do it’s the answers people give.
Compare them all you want but the day Linux truly becomes an OS you are crazy to think devs will keep all of of the stuff FOSS when their is money officially to be made. Just ask the RedHat users.
What else would be the answer, then? Windows is a commercial product by Microsoft. They will never get better unless forced to. They will keep getting worse for profit because, well, that’s what they do.
The whole point about an open-source operating system is that you can make it yours, and nobody can take that away from you. And the more people use linux, the better it gets. Commercial closed sources products can never have the same qualities.
Linux is not as great a replacement as every one makes out to be. The community is hella toxic. Frequently leads to them shooting them selves in the foot. Right now they’re trying to pick a fight with Nvidia because they dared to call Linux’s sacred GPL syscalls
The Linux community is full of elitist assholes who think they’re special because they have the ability to install an OS. However, there are also amazing people making amazing tools, completely free of charge. You can’t paint everyone with the same brush.
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems so that we’re not all bound to one OS under the complete control of one company.
My understanding of the Nvidia situation is that they are not respecting the kernel’s GPL license, which isn’t right. Nvidia has always done awful, selfish things, which makes sense as they are a market dominant company. It doesn’t mean the Linux developers have to allow them to break the license agreement. Intel and AMD seem to be doing just fine, it’s always Nvidia…
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems
They do. The US NSA being of note with SE Linux.
It doesn’t mean the Linux developers have to allow them to break the license agreement
Yes. Completely agree. The problem is, from my reading, is that Nvidia violated GPL by calling GPL functions as opposed to code stealing. The problem with GPL is that it forces everything to be GPL or you’re in violation of the license. Link a GPL library, your code now has to be GPL. Called a GPL function, congratulations, your code has to be GPL. This critical fault in GPL has been brought up time and time again. Thankfully this issue is infrequently enforced. But that just means it becomes a ticking time bomb.
Let me be clear, I’m not defending Nvidia’s actions. Just that in the blame game, GNU’s toxic attitude should be called out
Interesting, I kinda figured that there was some funding by governments but not nearly enough. SE Linux I always assumed was maintained by Redhat, like many other Linux components.
That makes the Nvidia situation a little more interesting. I’d imagine other proprietary software uses GPL’d libraries, like Steam? Doesn’t seem fair if only certain software is being targeted for violating the license. At the same time I’m annoyed how little Nvidia contributes back. It feels like AMD is creating open standards like Freesync while Nvidia won’t let others play with their toys in the sandbox, like G-Sync.
The Linux community is full of elitist assholes who think they’re special because they have the ability to install an OS.
I personally was elitist because of having a different taste which made me wish to use something open, more personal and more customizable. Do not mix us, please.
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems so that we’re not all bound to one OS under the complete control of one company.
Corruption likes one or few big private companies to supply stuff. So it’s maybe better that governments don’t finance these things at all.
Intel and AMD seem to be doing just fine, it’s always Nvidia…
Well, on the other side of things - Nvidia has an official proprietary driver for FreeBSD.
Linux people like security, it’s a security concern to give Nvidia’s proprietary drivers such low level access
If their calls violate GPL then I don’t even know why you’re being sarcastic. Not acceptable. Copyleft licenses HAVE to be respected legally. Silly to pretend like the license shouldn’t have to apply to Nvidia. If a user wants to install proprietary Nvidia drivers, they still can. But Linux isn’t picking a fight, GPL is what makes Linux Linux.
I see it here on Lemmy all the time, and you can just see it in this whole comment thread too.
I’ve been a software engineer for decades. I know my way around Windows, OSX, and Linux systems. I’m not a casual computer user. I AM a gamer though, and jumping through hoops to play games on Linux is not worth my time. Unless there is a native Linux distribution of the game, you’re jumping through hoops trying to get it to run through Proton, or whatever other means. Driver support is another thing… Yeah it’s gotten better, but sometimes it just like forcing a square peg through a circle hole.
No thanks, I’m very happy with my native gaming experience.
And sure, for dev systems, or servers, Linux is great. All of my professional work is interacting with Linux based systems, containers, etc. I also work on a MacBook Pro, so I understand the tooling for Unix systems is great for that work.
My personal life though, I’m not fighting Linux just to game.
BTW Starfield is great… Check it out lol. I just did a quick search for “Starfield on Linux”. First results are something like “Runs on Proton after some tweaks”. I’m good.
I did this with the registry edits on my personal computer. However. This does nothing at all to help with those of us still seeing this stuff on work computers or places where we are not the administrator.
Or the courts should force MS to split off into an os company, an online services company, an office productivity software company, and a gaming company.
So would Google to some extent. This actually sounds like a good plan. We should go back to the 90’s antitrust law. Before we made it toothless and basically unenforceable.
As usual, it’s only Big Tech that’s able to compete with Big Tech. They all love to throw their weight around when they can, and join forces when it’s convenient.
Neither corporation should be defended or trusted with your data.
The only thing that’s kinda funny here is the irony of Microsoft tryna poach Chrome users into their own… wait for it… Chromium-based browser.
I’ve been using windows for nearly as long as it has existed and I used to always be happy with updates. Even windows vista, despite all its problem, still felt like an upgrade compared to xp.
Then windows 8 started changing things in a direction I was not happy with, but at the same time it also had improvements over win7. Windows 10 repeated that with plenty of bad things but still overshadowed by massive improvements in many areas.
At this point windows was at its peak in some areas, like stability (when was the last time you saw a BSOD without actual faulty hardware?) and usability. Multiple Desktops, WSL2, the new Terminal…so many great things added in win10 updates.
And then comes win11 and shits at everything. Removed a ton of core features that didn’t need removing, broke a lot of compatibility with older stuff (something that Microsoft used to care deeply about) and adds… Nothing. It’s been quite a while since win11 released and there’s still nothing I can point at and say it does better than win10.
If you’re going to do all sorts of stuff with my data you should at least try to make me happy with your product in exchange, not make me dread using it every time.
Ditto (Japanese: メタモン Metamon) is a Normal-type Pokémon introduced in Generation I.
In its natural state, Ditto is a light-purple or pink blob-like Pokémon with vestigial facial features. It is often referred to as amorphous, but has a relatively consistent appearance in official artwork, including two small nubs on its “head”, a few soft lumps at its base, and two pseudopod-like protrusions in place of arms. The face consists of beady eyes and a simple mouth; almost always pulled into a smile.
It is capable of transforming into an exact replica of any physical object or living creature, including its form and abilities. Each Ditto has its own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to transforming; being unable to remain transformed while laughing and getting details of its transformation wrong if based on memory being apparently universal.
Which core functions did they remove and which did they break?
I can’t say that I miss anything from Windows 10 or before that. I disliked the new settings they introduced at first but I think it has seen some improvments (or maybe I am better at navigating it?) but it has really grown on me.
Being backwards compatible can be important (I really appreciated it when I wanted to install a game for Windows 95 on Windows XP) but you have to cut support at some point in order to implement features otherwise not possible, or to just save time and money doing it. It is like trying to develop for the web and you still see people talking about support IE6 (or IE in general).
Win 10 and 11 are nowhere close to a fully transitioned unified settings menu, they somehow made dialouge box hell worse. its easier to list what doesnt.
Control Panel will propably remain for another 20 years, just like everything else in Windows, but I still like more. Combined with winget-cli, installing and uninstall is almost as good as on Linux.
I’m sorry, but I just have to mention that I find funny that the features you chose to illustrate “peak” Windows are all prime Linux features. Including installing Linux itself as a sub-system. At that point might as well cut-out the middle man.
Coworkers have been complaining on Teams all day about how the Bing bar is suddenly showing up on their desktops. When did Microsoft stop giving a fuck about businesses? I wish to fucking god we could run Linux on our work machines.
I am so glad it wasn't just me! Like the article said, I legit thought I had some sort of malware on my machine. Which I guess is true, they just call it windows. I really only use my machine for gaming and every time I've tried to switch to linux I had all sorts of compability issues.
Open question to all. Is SteamOS all that it's cracked up to be? I'm still gonna have game by game issues right?
The only machine you wanna be using SteamOS on is the Steam Deck. Use a standard Linux distribution like Ubuntu if you're gonna do it on any other machine. The reason being that the version of SteamOS for generic PCs is horribly outdated, and the one on the Deck is very much built exclusively for the Deck's hardware.
Gaming mostly works out of the box with almost all games on Steam on Linux (SteamOS is not special in this regard) but there is an important caveat; be careful of games that use anticheat software - some work but others do not or may trigger bans. Check ProtonDB for your specific games to see if there are issues.
SteamOS is mainly for the Steam Deck not regular PC or laptop. For a gaming distro I would recommend one of PopOS, Manjaro or Garuda.
I suggest grabbing the live image for each of them, booting it, and seeing how it feels without committing to anything. I usually test to see if everything works out of the box on the live mode — music, video, network shares, wifi, any peripherals you might have like headphones, fancy mouse or keyboard etc.
Thank you for the suggestions! I mean, the SteamOS was really my only touch point for linux gaming, I haven't paid attention much to linux since trying wine out like a.... decade ago? I'll give those distros a look and see what feels right! ♥
Basically a good distro + Steam is similar to Windows + Steam, with all the proton stuff and the same (optional) big picture mode as the Steam Deck. It'll handle setting up most games for you real nicely.
For a DE personally I love Plasma; xfce or Cinnamon would be my next choices. I don't understand why so many power users like the modern gnome (Ubuntu default)
Random other tangent: I really miss the old Big Picture mode. Few things about the new one are good, but most is worse and a few things are relatively broken still. I know I'm in the minority thinking that though
As a recent penguin I don’t get the gnome thing either. To each their own and whatnot but to me it just reminds me of the weird themes from the early 2000s. I clicked into plasma loved it.
But, you know, it’s Linux. So I can try gnome and tweak it anytime I want to see if it grows on me. Love it.
I use a steam deck for about 2/3 of my gaming and I rarely have issues with games. That said, I mostly play indie games, but there is so much of my library that is supported that I’m never going to run out of things to play. Proton has really done wonders for gaming on Linux. Are you wanting to play multiplayer games or brand new releases? Or are you more of the patient gamer type?
I wouldn’t run steamos on a full desktop, but you can still get a lot of the benefits just by using steam on Linux. Definitely recommend trying it out.
Oh I am definitely a very patient gamer, my GF talked me in to baulders gate with her. But it's been years since I bought something new. The majority of my steam library is indie stuff. I poked around on ProtonDB and it looks like 70% of my library is rated highly. So I am thinking this is a serious option for me. Gonna give days or two to think on it before committing to the hassle of a dual boot, but all these tools and comments are giving me a lot of peace of mind to try.
I installed Pop OS on my laptop since it’s pretty gaming friendly. Between that and the Steam Deck, Windows 10 might be my last version of Windows for personal use.
I did 2 months ago. The OS is truly awsome but many many software are just inferior to the windows version. For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page. You have to do it in two separate software or with a CLI application. I’m a daily anydesk user, I have license as well, their console is broken on ubuntu (or just gnome, not sure). I had to weed out certain things from gnome from a javascript file so I can use my PC while anydesk running. So depending on what you want to do it can be a very good experience or a borderline hell trying to replace your basic software with something worse. I will not give up at this point and I stand by it it is not linux’s fault, however you are not just using an OS but many software on that said OS and many of those software will suck. Fortunately things like Photoshop no longer an issue as you have Photopea in the web browser. Web3 is really helping linux out.
you can but it has many other issues as it is not a PDF reader. It has no bookmarks, every PDF is opened editable so if there are shapes or text you can accidentally move them, there is no continuous scrolling through a document it is divided into individual pages. PDF is simply not solved on linux at the moment.
No. I rarely edit PDFs. I sign them, bind them, reorganize pages, comment on them. I was an adobe x user then a foxit reader guy on windows, there you can do it all. There is a foxit reader for linux with fraction of the features and have crashed for me constantly (back to my original point that multi OS developments have inferior linux version) Ideally I would prefer a single software to manage my PDFs just like for example I prefer a single software to play my different format of videos.
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Unfortunately, pdf signing is problematic still on Linux, I use it as a daily driver and found a compromise with existing functionality. You can try okular, which is able to sign PDFs without altering them, but has a huge signature block and doesn’t permit adding a scan of a signature. My workaround: I created a stamp in the PDF reviewing tools with my signature, I can place that on the document and then sign it afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for pre-signed PDFs as it will alter the signed version.
Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw can sign PDFs, but also can’t insert signature scans (yet, there’s an open feature request) and is sometimes not understanding when PDFs change to landscape, in general it’s not nice to render a many-pages document in LO Draw and hope that it won’t mess up the document upon signing.
For adding / removing pages, I agree - it’s a pity there’s no GUI application, but I have gotten used to qpdf / pdftk and they are quite powerful and more efficient 90% of the time. Still doesn’t excuse no GUI application, but it keeps me able to work.
Xournal++ is old, but it can directly write on PDFs with both pen tablet and scanned image insertion, and can probably add/remove/reorder pages too— Technically I think its file format links to/embeds the whole PDF file, and then probably exports a new one with stuff added on top, or something like that, but the end result is usually that you can directly edit the PDF.
Or do you mean some kind of cryptographic signing? Well, it looks like Adobe offers a webtool too?
I meant tamper-proof cryptographic signatures, yes. A webtool is absolutely out of the question if you consider that it means uploading your potentially confidential document to an enterprise like Adobe.
gnome has those little icon on the top bar and anydesk also creates one while running. That little icon created a big unclickable are in the corner of the screen and i could not close my full screen windows. I had to delete a javascript file from gnome that places those icons in the topbar to solve this issue as anydesk has no setting to hide it.
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Xournal++ should be a proper PDF reader that can sign a PDF and add and remove pages. Haven’t tried doing the latter personally though. It looks a bit old and might be hard to find, but it’s always worked suspiciously fine for me and is still in active development.
The “Adobe Acrobat” brand apparently also has a web app for signing PDFs. This is like, the first web search result for “PDF signing”.
I’ve also tried Inkscape import as vector and then reexport, which works fine for visually signing single pages. Just make sure you render the text to paths on import, instead of converting them to SVG text— And don’t actually do this, because it’s kinda dumb, so just use Xournal++ or the Adobe website instead, but there are options.
Granted, depending on how your experience with Xournal goes, these options are indeed not as convenient or easy as they should be.
Web3 is really helping linux out.
No! This term refers to, like, three three different things already, all of which have largely been either practical failures or grifts. Prescriptivism is usually just pedantry, but HTML5 web apps aren’t even on that inauspicious list.
There are already solutions to sign a pdf or reorganize the sheets or make comments. My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. Like if you want to use paint and the fill bucket is in a separate application. Just makes no sense. I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. […] Just makes no sense.
Ah, well, “UNIX Philosophy”, maybe. Each tool does one thing, and does it well, and it’s up to the user to figure out what they want to accomplish by using multiple tools together— Though it probably made more sense in CLI than in the GUI realm. I think it works for 95% of cases. I don’t want to need an entire office suite just to be able to make a mark on a page. But when you’re working a lot on one particular document (be it a PDF, video edit, source code, digital illustration, or whatever), then yeah, having a “complete solution” with an efficient workflow can be hugely important as well.
I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
You could check if CodeWeavers Crossover, the money behind the WINE project, can run your preferred Windows applications but do it on Linux:
Kde neon user here, so kubuntu with latest kde apps.
No not even close. I can turn off any reporting and tracking. Yes cononical is moving more and more towards snaps but i can always just download and use the deb or flatpack
Oh my god! ReactOS is so old, I completely forgot about it! My first thought was “I hope this is not written with ReactJS”. It’s nice to see that they’re still active.
Depends on what you want to use it for. Run age-old hardware requiring age-old NT-only drivers? Sure. Run modern games? Forget it. And for the age-old hardware stuff (think control board for an electron microscope or something) people usually use FreeDOS, the number of devices that specifically need 32-bit NT is comparatively small. And that’s if they even upgrade at all often it’s just easier to slap an RPi in front of ancient hardware to isolate it from and adapt it to modern surroundings (but yes mainboards with ISA slots are still getting produced, electron microscopes are expensive).
Pretty impressed at just how many notifications, popups and systems MS creates to continually try and funnel you into bing. At some point it moves past being annoying and now I’m just surprised at their tenacity / endurance
Nobody is feeling bad for Google … if I was using duckduckgo, or anything else, I still wouldn’t want to see those popups. Then again, that’s one of the many reason why I stubbornly stick to linux ;)
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