Haha, I had a partition on my pc for the longest time to put Linux on it. But I do a lot of game dev stuff, so I’ve been reluctant to switch from windows.
(Unreal engine also has a specific Linux page, but I don’t have an epic games account so I can’t view it - www.unrealengine.com/en-US/linux )
Wine basically let’s you run windows-only software on Linux by making a directory that emulates windows, installs needed dependencies, etc. Most windows programs can be run smoothly using wine in my experience, the main ones that can’t are games with kernal-level anticheat. If you’ve heard of Proton, that’s valves fork of wine that they’ve built up specifically for games
I have heard of Proton. Just didn’t realize it was for gaming. Thanks for the info! I’m seriously thinking about switching now. Just gotta figure out what to do with all my current game repository on windows.
You could get a second hard drive and install Linux on that so you can boot into either, you can also access the files on your Windows drive from Linux (and vice versa) so you can grab the files if needed. If by game repositories you mean GitHub repos you can also just clone those down to the Linux one too
You can also transfer those files to the Linux partition directly, your file browser will (or at least should) be able to find your Windows drive or partition and let you browse all the files there, it’s easy to then drag them to a folder on the Linux side and get them copied over
Real question. Is gaming (not game dev) significantly better than it was 5 years ago on Linux? I really want to switch, but I also really don’t want to give up everything “just working” and doing it smoothly when gaming on windows.
I’ve even considered having 2 PC’s for my 4 monitors, and having the middle monitor run windows and the other 3 on a Linux box. I used to use a program that could simulate my mouse moving from one pc to an entirely different one even across windows and Linux, and also share the clipboard. I could try that again.
But if the gaming experience is sufficient and convenient on Linux I might switch entirely.
It’s vastly better than it was 5 years ago. You can get an idea by going to protondb.com and looking at games. Basically, most games work out of the box with minimal to no issues. Even most new games work on release without major issues.
The biggest issue is anti-cheat and DRM. That can be a show stopped for some users, but for me it hasn’t been an issue.
That’s what a lot of Linux people miss. They’ve been dealing with it for a while already so a lot of them are like “it’s so easy!” and then they have to start explaing repos and containers to people and the person just sticks to Windows.
I switched full time to Linux about 3 months ago, I had been wanting to for a long time since I prefer dev work on Linux and generally hate Windows.
Gaming is nearly as easy on Linux as on windows, especially through steam imo. Almost all games will work right out of the box, just set steam to use proton for any non linux-natve games and it does it. The only game I’ve had an issue with is cyberpunk 2077, and that was fixed with a few minutes of googling, then pasting a launch config into the settings, now it runs perfectly. One thing to watch out for, no games that use a kernal-level anticheat will work on Linux unless they specifically support it, sucky but those anticheat software makers are coming around to support it slowly.
I actually prefer installing software on Linux to doing it on Windows. Same process for finding software, just Google it and look for stuff that works on Linux. Even proprietary stuff runs natively on Linux sometimes, I personally look for free and open source software as an alternative every time and it usually is better imo. Once you find what you want, it’s super easy to install. No need to deal with downloading files, clicking them to install, and all that jazz. Just open a terminal and do “yay -S {package name}” and it’ll install. Also makes it very easy to install multiple things at once, especially if you already know what software you want. Cherry on top, updates aren’t forced on you. You can update all of your packages with “yay -Syu”, or update individual ones if you want, there’s a lot of control over it, and you don’t need to rely on the app to have its own update tool.
Sometimes there’s windows specific software that isn’t on Linux, it kind of sucks, but almost everytime I’m able to find free and open source software that’s natively Linux compatible and is better than the closed source software I initially wanted. Even with windows-specific software, most things can be run with wine and work just like a native Linux app. Sometimes things don’t work on wine, but basically all of them will have free and open source alternatives you can use instead, or there are workarounds that are probably easy to find.
If you wanted to do the 2 PC’s you definitely can, I would recommend one PC and just add a Linux partition or hard drive, you then boot into Windows or Linux but don’t need a whole new PC. You have to reboot to go between them, but you can access each systems files from the other one (can’t run games, but like documents and such). If you do go with 2 PC’s though, I recommend using an app called Barrier for the mouse/keyboard sharing. I use it between my PC (Linux) and my work laptop (windows) and it’s great, my work laptop stays folded up and I have only one mouse and keyboard on my desk.
I have a 64bit Mac that can’t play 32bit Steam games anymore (which is all of them). I’m thinking of switching to Linux specifically for games. What you’re saying so I could play whatever on Linux via steam? And Steam isn’t a massive pain in the ass to install and configure like it used to be?? Holy shit, that’s game changing. Pun intended.
Is Master Chief Collection on Steam? That would be amazing since the only instance of Windows I had decided to change it’s own password and essentially lock me out.
Yep! Idk if the apple architecture caused any issues but I highly doubt it. At least on arch Linux it’s as easy as “sudo pacman -S steam”. It has some dependencies obviously, but after that it’ll be installed and you can sign in easy peasy. It’ll install proton through the steam downloader too, the only setting you even need to change is steam > settings > compatibility > Enable Steam Play for all other titles; run with proton experimental.
Master chief collection is on steam, and is playable with proton
Dammnn you just made my day! I’m not using my Mac for that. It doesn’t have enough storage space on a good day. I have a Windows 10 computer that decided to change it’s own password that I’ll erase and put Linux on.
Do you have any recommendations on Linux OS? Right now I’m using Fedora but it seems like there are better options out there, especially if playing games.
Avoid Ubuntu, it uses flatpak. Besides that it’s really personal preference. I personally love endeavouros, very easy installation process and a lot of desktop environments to choose from. Comes with some helpful initial setup tools too. It’s arch Linux based and there’s a ton of resources for arch too, but arch does come with a learning curve. Backups are your friend
I’ll look into barrier, thanks. I work in the gaming industry (from home, on my own pc) and so I am constantly running games and doing non-gaming tasks on and off so dual booting is not really an option for me. I often need to do normal tasks while games are running too. Which is why I wanted that 2 pc setup I mentioned above.
However I think I might dual boot just to try Linux out with gaming for now (I have a spare ssd I can use to keep it simple) since I see a lot of people saying it’s pretty good now. Then if it works out I can just transition to only Linux.
If you have the money for a second PC then I see no reason not to do it. If you want to use the same PC, you can also very easily make a windows virtual machine to do windows specific work in if you have something that doesn’t work with wine for whatever reason. A vm won’t be able to play the kernal monitoring anticheat games as far as I know, but any miscellaneous programs that may not like or run well on wine can be run there if needed
If you play a lot of competitive multiplayer games, it would be better to keep a windows partition for them (overwatch is the only game that I had a good experience on Linux).
I used to play some competitive Apex, I was overjoyed when I heard anti cheat support is available on Linux, and quickly installed it. I tried it a couple of times since then, the most recent being last month - The game is playable but not on a competitive level imho. The smoothness is just not there. Then again this might be because of my low spec hardware.
Games like Valorant just won’t work because of their kernel level anticheat. (But hey we have Conter-Strike 2 now)
AAA games run just fine for the most part, its playable and I usually get performance similar to windows.
The steam deck uses a custom Linux distro made by valve specifically for it. So it’s at least good enough for gaming that valve trusted it for their mainstream handled gaming PC.
I’ve got one and tbh it’s pretty good. As long as you stick to games that are rated as either verified or playable on steamdeck you’ll probably have a good time.
You’ve made me remember that quite not long ago I wanted to play on Linux (precisely on Mint, but I’ve also tried pop os), and I had three results:
1 - Game not even trying to launch/wine error (usually related to graphics) (did happen once or twice, tested few games): Factorio, without magic wine parameters and magic overall
2 - Game runs, but graphical glitches makes it unplayable: Factorio after tweaks
3 - Game running fine, fps lower or equal than on windows: Minecraft, Kerbal space program
(Yes, now I know Factorio also had Linux version, but it’s too late for that)
So while it may be playable for some 9999 IQ rice master couch-looking moderator after just touching the demon named Wine, I don’t have the brains, patience or time tweaking every little parameter/environmental vars/wine prefixes on top of each other to make a game play at 2 fps. It also didn’t help that when trying to resolve apt conflicts, Mint just killed itself (looking at you aptitude). My overall experience of Linux isn’t bad, it may be good for customization masters, but for me, which would like having things “just working”, and maybe after that some trial and error tweaks, Windows is closer to that wish. Although when MS forces W11 onto me, I’m jumpshipping to Linux, no matter how shitty my UX is (at least I hope so)
Edit: forgot that there is markdown, formating fix
Honestly that is a pretty awful experience. Proton is infinitely better for games than wine in my opinion though, I definitely recommend giving it another try. I have a good 20 games on steam from AAA to indie, the only one to have any issues was cyberpunk 2077 and even that was a simple launch command fix that I found in a couple minutes of googling the problem and it runs fine now.
I admittedly haven’t dealt with wine too much since most games can be run with proton and I avoid programs that don’t support Linux, but I was able to run heavily modded Minecraft at basically the same fps as on windows with no wine tweaking. Lutris is also a good platform that can make installing non-steam games much easier
If you want a good os to try instead of jumping ship at random, I’d recommend grabbing endeavour os and picking whatever desktop environment you like on top of it, all of their stuff looks good right out of the box and gets you a lot of the necessities. Any of their official desktop environments (except i3) are super easy to use and should be familiar to windows users, I’m a strong believer in arch superiority because if there’s a problem, someone else has already fixed it and you can steal their solution even though there is a learning curve to customizing it
It’s what proprietary software tends to target, so for someone just coming from Windows, it’s a decent first choice.
OpenSUSE/Fedora don’t support media codecs without knowing you need to add Packman/RPMFusion
Debian just released Bookworm, so it might be an okay recommendation for now, but as a general rule it’s probably not the best first distro
For someone used to Windows staying the same for years, jumping straight to a rolling release like Arch or its derivatives is a massive change
NixOS is too much configuration for a first time user
Linux Mint is maybe a better first recommendation, but it’s still downstream of Ubuntu (I wouldn’t recommend LMDE for a first time Linux user)
Your response is exactly why people find it so difficult to pick a distro to start. Ubuntu may not be the perfect distro for you or I, but there’s a decent reason it’s one of the biggest, and it has conservative defaults
Until that user knows what things bother them about it or what more they need, we’d just go back and forth all day about upsides and downsides of each distro
Fedora saved my old Windows laptop and it was a pretty smooth switch from Windows for me (though I had a bit of Linux experience). That thing became quicker than when I first bought it haha.
Linux Mint is by far the most popular for noobs on older hardware, has a clean if simple interface, and will run on tiny amounts of RAM, so if you have no other suggestions and don’t know much about Linux, I’d say start there.
Linux Mint is not Ubuntu, but based on it, so there’s a lot of support. As a Windows and Mac user I found the Linux Mint “Cinnamon” desktop environment easy enough to navigate, it’s solid in terms of broad hardware support, and there are a LOT of resources if you have questions, want to watch a tutorial, or need a helping hand, all pluses for a noob. (And I don’t think I had to touch the command line once, when I had it installed: bonus.)
But the cool thing is that most Linux distros have a “LiveUSB” install, meaning that you can load the .iso of your choice onto a 4GB USB drive, boot off the USB, and take the hardware for a spin without installing anything. LiveUSB means you can try as many distros as you like until you get tired of making USB drives, and all for free.
Somebody else here suggested “Ubuntu” to you without saying another word about it, but there’s a lot more to it than that. You still have to pick a desktop environment, for example, and while there’s nothing wrong with plain Ubuntu, I honestly don’t think that’s the most user-friendly distro you could start with.
Try it, see if you like it. Most distros are completely free, including Ubuntu. But if you’re just looking at finding ONE to start with, again, try Linux Mint: it’s popular for Linux noobs for a reason, it’s stable, and even if you find you don’t like it, it’s a great place to dip your toe in and see how Linux works for you personally.
I agree with every point you make except for the desktop environment front end.
While it is nice to install a distro with a given desktop environment OOTB, you can always change it, and even have multiple ones installed at the same time. This is typically a better approach to testing out desktop environments because you don’t have to reinstall every time.
I am testing both, so for me a mix of both is best.
While it is nice to install a distro with a given desktop environment OOTB, you can always change it, and even have multiple ones installed at the same time.
This is true for Debian, but not for many others. Even Fedora ships with preloaded DE “spins” now. And changing it post-install requires more than beginner level knowledge, specific to that OS. For someone coming over to Linux directly from Windows/Mac, that’s not really feasible upfront.
If you just need a general purpose desktop and it’s your your first time, I would suggest just picking a popular and stable one with lots of documentation like Debian, Mint or Ubuntu.
I’m leaning towards Debian myself. I don’t like the direction Ubuntu (mint is essentially Ubuntu too) is going. Ubuntu is ran by a for profit company, and it is only going to get worse after snaps.
From what I’ve read Debian is about as new user friendly as Ubuntu is.
I only play Team Fortress 2, and it runs with no issues) But when it comes to normally-windows games, people say it’s mostly fine. Haven’t yet tried myself though.
Choose a variation of Mint. They have a lighter weight build that is perfect for older hardware just read their site. Mint operates and feels extremely close to w7 and its easy to use! Promise you’ll like it
My Signal app on Linux keeps crashing. I write to them for support. They suggest I install the Beta version. Why would they suggest I install a version that openly state is “for users who do not mind discontinuity in service and are willing to work with us to understand and test issues.” to fix an issue, I haven’t the slightest, but I take a look regardless.
“To install on MacOS, download and install this file”
“To install on Windows, download and install the file”
“To install on Linux open a terminal and copy and paste these commands”.
So I open the terminal and copy and paste the commands and I get some generic error message I don’t understand and now I…fuck off because I’m not a software engineer and don’t know how to fix this shit. That’s before even getting into the 2 other commands I’m supposed to run that I don’t understand what they are or what they do.
My ProtonVPN client on Linux is incredibly basic and unstable, and has been for many years while the Windows client is beautiful and functions perfectly in the background with zero interaction.
People who think Linux is fine for the general public are, frankly, delusional. I don’t have another word to explain how you can be under that impression.
You make a fair point. ProtonVPN was a nightmare for me to set up and get working too but I think that’s Proton’s fault more than Linux’s. I have many other applications that I simply installed with one click from the Software application and then have never needed to touch again. It seems not all app developers are equally motivated to make their stuff easy to run.
EAC depending on the title works out of the box from what I’ve seen, I don’t have much time these days to play many competitive shooters or games in general but Battlebit and PlanetSide look to work fine through proton.
There’s still a lot of little things that are still a pain for someone who doesn’t know how things work. Many are not the OS’ fault but still, different experiences.
For example, say you’re running discord. Next week there’s a discord update, it’ll not apply the update automatically, it’ll only download a deb file. An user familiar with windows may try to open the deb file… And it’ll launch the package manager, but the only option available is to uninstall. In order to install the update you’ll need the terminal.
There are a lot of little things like this. This one is just something you need to learn, but others are a real pita when you have no experience.
And if you have a 4k screen and Nvidia gpu when you try Linux for the first time, I guarantee you’re going to hate the experience.
I think it depends, I guess you “just” need the right distro and compatible hardware (e.g. a Thinkpad). I started as a complete Linux noob too, but most problems I encountered I could easily solve in no time because a lot of things are nicely documented or someone else had them before and documented their solution on the internet. But depending on your usecase and other factors I understand Linux can be a pain in the ass.
In the way that you will be expected to memorize a plethora of commands that you then type into a text-based interface the same way you would have with Windows DOS in 1998.
No shit. It doesn’t matter because any type of troubleshooting and most installations require you to dive into the CLI or download an appimage, open the properties and select an executable. This is not remotely intuitive. I mean I could go on and on and on with this but anyone who uses Linux knows it already. I just don’t understand why they can’t see how incredibly unintuitive the entire system is, with seemingly no plans to make it easier.
It’s not that it’s unintuitive at all if you pick a simple distro, it’s just slightly different from Windows which has been shoved in your face throughout your entire education and career.
Yes there is some small amount of learning involved, but there are many Linux distros nowadays that are setup for ease of use and require no CLI knowledge or use from the user. There are many desktop environments that mimic Windows versions to make the switch pretty seamless, too.
If you first tried Linux many years ago, I could understand you saying that it’s unintuitive, but nowadays that just isn’t the case.
I’d like to add that you should just pick the OS you prefer. I’m not one of those needs that look down on anyone who chooses to use Windows over Linux. I personally have both on my machine because games. I just wanted to clarify that it isn’t unintuitive at all, just different than what you were forced to learn in school.
No. It is not “slightly different”. In my 30 years of using Windows I have never used the CLI, which you have to use on a regular basis on Linux to complete basic tasks. I detailed this example elsewhere. There’s absolutely nothing intuitive about the CLI.
You don’t have to really use the CLI on the simpler Linux distros nowadays is what I am getting at. Mint and Ubuntu for instance. My grandparents use Mint, and believe me, they don’t know what the terminal is.
Also, windows installers run Command Prompt stuff in the background. You are basically doing the same process but clicking buttons to setup a CLI command. They are more similar than you think.
You are just used to the GUI way of doing things, and you can get by fine on Linux nowadays. If you were forced to learn Linux growing up, you would think Windows was the unintuitive OS.
I’m not trying to convince you one is better than the other, just telling you that it is not unintuitive.
You don’t have to really use the CLI on the simpler Linux distros nowadays
Yes. You do.
You are basically doing the same process but clicking buttons to setup a CLI command
How do you not realize how clicking a bunch of sensibly-labeled buttons is one thousand times easier and more intuitive than memorizing a library of commands and when and how to use them?
No you don’t have to use the CLI on Linux at all You are just wrong about that. Modern Mint and Ubuntu come with completely GUI driven package managers for installing and updating. It hasn’t always been like this but it is now.
The only reason you would have to use the CLI is if you are doing some power user stuff that you would have to do on CLI or powershell in windows, as well.
You do realize this is just your opinion and not a fact. Your opinion is that is unintuitive. My opinion is that it is not, its literally impossible to be wrong here. I can find tons of people who think Windows way of doing things is more unintuitive. The only fact here is that neither of them actually are unintuitive in reality. People just have preferences and biases because of what they are used to.
You sound awfully close minded and angry for some reason too.
Modern Mint and Ubuntu come with completely GUI driven package managers for installing and updating.
Okay and…what about the cornucopia of software that is not available in those repositories?
The only reason you would have to use the CLI is if you are doing some power user stuff
No it’s not. You’re just wrong about that and I don’t understand why you feel the need to lie about it. Any kind of diagnostics or troubleshooting you try to find support for Linux will be almost guaranteed to send you into the CLI.
You sound awfully close minded and angry for some reason too.
I am not closed-minded but I am angry because people throw around “it’s easy” all the time with zero concept of what a typical person is capable of. So idiots like me dive into it and spend hours and hours trying to make it work until we just give up and then have to go back and undo all of it just to get shit working again, which is just a giant fucking waste of time.
Okay fair points. Like I said earlier. I am not knocking your choice of windows or anything, I am just trying to add that I have had the opposite experience with noob users on Mint, especially. There is not a single application that I could think of that noob users would want to use that aren’t in the included repositories to begin with. I just don’t want people to be scared away from trying Linux just because they are unexperienced.
I feel like you may be a step above your average noob and can figure out how to do some advanced things on windows, but you just don’t want to put in the time to relearn what you already know. That’s completely fair.
You have to hunt for software on windows way more than on Linux. And it also doesn’t always have a CLI installer: Say you want to control a Huawei E3372 not via its web interface (which sucks). Where do you go? You find a project on github, install go via chocolatey, then compile the project, then drop the exe somewhere.
You just go to the website that makes the software and download and open the .exe
As I said: You have to hunt for software. That, precisely, there, is hunting for software. Where do you get that software from? Random .zip domains? And .exe installers? People don’t even manage to use, or demand, .msis.
I even had to install drivers on windows. Drivers. The only hardware-related thing I dealt with manually in the last I think decade on Linux was a usb mode switch daemon… precisely for that Huawei modem I mentioned, actually. Because apparently Windows does not come with bog-standard USB network drivers those things first register as USB mass storage, offering you drivers to install, then with some magic switch to USB network mode. So the reason I need to lift a finger on Linux is because companies are hacking around Windows deficiencies by making their devices act in bonkers ways, “here, windows, autostart this, install drivers, then start this program to bit-bang the usb interface to switch modes”.
Oh I also had a look into reversing the stereo channels of my headphone output because I messed up and soldered my cable backwards, before realising implementing a software bodge was a rather stupid idea especially with the soldering iron still hot.
And don’t get me started on Explorer’s performance – I know it’s not ntfs’ fault, or even the vfs, nushell has no issues listing gigantic directory structures, recursively, in seconds. Still slower than the same operation on linux but at least it’s tolerable. Explorer takes minutes to sort a single large directory by modified date. In currentyear. On an nvme.
The only reason I still have a windows install is because some people insist on using it and I can’t exactly test windows builds on wine. Well, I do, but occasionally you have to try the real deal. I use Linux because it just works.
As I said: You have to hunt for software. That, precisely, there, is hunting for software. Where do you get that software from? Random .zip domains? And .exe installers? People don’t even manage to use, or demand, .msis.
And as I said, we’re discussing software not found in package managers, which is a lot of it. The only way to find it is to “hunt for it”, which usually involves typing the name into a search engine and clicking the first link that pops up and then clicking the “download” button.
The difference is there is no download button for Linux, just a bunch of code you’re expected to type into the CLI that doesn’t work.
I even had to install drivers on windows. Drivers.
LOL like you don’t on Linux? I mean sometimes you don’t because they literally don’t exist. Like pretty much any fingerprint reader or Nvidia graphics card?
And don’t get me started on Explorer’s
I don’t know what Explorer is other than a shitty SUV.
I use Linux because it just works.
That is just the most hilariously incorrect nonsense. If it were true, no one would pay money for Windows and Microsoft would go out of business.
And as I said, we’re discussing software not found in package managers, which is a lot of it.
Do you have any specific examples in mind or are you planning on leaving that as an assertion?
The difference is there is no download button for Linux, just a bunch of code you’re expected to type into the CLI that doesn’t work.
AppImage. All the user-friendly distros are configured so that installing/running those is a button click.
LOL like you don’t on Linux? I mean sometimes you don’t because they literally don’t exist. Like pretty much any fingerprint reader or Nvidia graphics card?
I have never used a fingerprint reader by in case you’re interested, my graphics tablet works more seamlessly under linux, both x11 and wayland, than with windows. Can’t say much about NVidia Graphics cards but they do, in fact, have drivers. If you’re running the likes of Ubuntu it’s going to use FLOSS drivers by default (which are getting better and better) and installing the proprietary ones is a couple of clicks.
I don’t know what Explorer is other than a shitty SUV.
It’s the fucking file manager. Have you ever used windows. Also the desktop shell, actually.
If it were true, no one would pay money for Windows and Microsoft would go out of business.
Do you have any specific examples in mind or are you planning on leaving that as an assertion?
If you need examples, you’ve probably never used Linux. The majority of programs I use have to be installed through CLI or appimage while the same software on Mac and Windows are installed with a simple executable file or installation wizard.
AppImage. All the user-friendly distros are configured so that installing/running those is a button click.
You’re lying again. You have to download them and then enable them to run as executable, and then everyone one of them launches with a generic image, you can’t pin them to your launcher, and you can’t launch them on startup, you have to launch them from within the file manager. The system does not treat them as an app at all. Just a random file.
It’s the fucking file manager. Have you ever used windows
Yeah. We just call it a fuckin file manager.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Okay so just to be clear, you believe that people pay extra money to use Windows, even though Linux is just as good, or better? This is the position you want to take?
Honestly it’s hilarious that you pointed out drivers on Windows because that is a massive sore point on Linux and further solidifies your delusional nature.
The majority of programs I use have to be installed through CLI or appimage
What the hell are you using, then. Seriously. Especially stuff that you wouldn’t have to download manually on Windows. I’m waiting. Name them.
You have to download them and then enable them to run as executable, […] The system does not treat them as an app at all. Just a random file.
They do? I might’ve had snap or flatpack in mind. I don’t keep track of that stuff everything I need is actually in nixpkgs. Distro integration may differ. What are you basing your whole opinion on, here, Linux from Scratch?
Okay so just to be clear, you believe that people pay extra money to use Windows, even though Linux is just as good, or better? This is the position you want to take?
No. Windows has a head start on the Desktop due to Microsoft’s FUD, illegal bundle deals with computer stores, and whatnot. Schools teaching MS Office. People thinking it’s the only thing – heck many users don’t even know what an OS is, they equate PC and Windows, the other thing being Mac, which is different hardware.
You just go to the website that makes the software and download
That’s literally hunting for the software dude. You gotta open up a web browser, and if you don’t know the webpage already you gotta search for it, find the download page on that website, get passed the likely popups and other crap and then finally select the right version of the software to download.
Package managers are 10000% better. Even Microsoft knows this, it’s why they created winget.
Putting in winget search software nameCopying the package name from the search result Putting in winget install pasted package name is significantly fewer steps. No Google search, no finding the download page, no popup crap, and no fake download button ads trying to get you to install malware. You just install the software in less time than it would take to even write your crappy comment.
You gotta open up a web browser, and if you don’t know the webpage already you gotta search for it, find the download page on that website, get passed the likely popups and other crap and then finally select the right version of the software to download.
Which is all 1000x easier and more intuitive than installing an appimage or tar.gz or whatever other 1000 Linux filetypes need to be installed using the CLI. It honestly boggles my mind that you can’t understand this.
Package managers are 10000% better.
Yes I agree but we were specifically discussing software that’s not found in package managers, which is a lot of it.
Putting in winget search
WTF is a winget?
no popup crap, and no fake download button ads trying to get you to install malware
If you are installing software from websites with pop-up ads and malware, that is a whole other problem not related to the OS.
I think it depends on what you’re trying to do. Normal stuff like web browsing, email and working with documents is fine. For example, my partner has been running her business from a Linux laptop for the last year or so and I don’t think she ever touches the terminal.
Me too !! Been loving Ubuntu the last couple of months. Had very few issues other than one time my Gui stopped working and it would only boot into terminal, if anyone knows how to fix that it would be great incase it happens again . Last time I just did a fresh install.
I’m not sure about the browser, but a lot of malware used to ship with the tor binary and used it to connect to the CNC. I can totally see it ending up in the indicator list.
I love bashing MS as much as the next guy, but this is not completely indefensible behavior given typical user use cases and needs. As long as it’s easy to add an exception of you installed it on purpose.
Yeah I’m guessing this is a false positive based on heuristic analysis, i.e. the TOR program has a lot of the same behaviors as malicious programs. Of course it is more accurate to say that the malicious programs are copying TOR behavior or just straight using TOR code, whatever the case may be.
My main issue is that it kind of shows a lack of due diligence. I assume the official TOR binaries are signed, so the official TOR binaries should be exempted from these heuristic positives. If the binaries are unsigned/have no valid certificates, then I can totally understand the false positive. At that point, the user should know they are installing software that cannot be automatically verified as being safe, and antivirus should never assume that something is safe otherwise. Like you said, for typical users this should be the expected behavior. Users can always undo Windows Defender actions and add exemptions.
Because it makes it the easiest thing to spoof an .exe which enables attacks of which you will never get out of. A legit.exe vs a spoofed legit.exe will be the exact same in every way except the coding in spoofed fucks you.
Edit: you’re trading security risk for security risk that makes it easier to hide. Not worth it.
Edit 2: their is nothing 100% secure MD5 and Sha1 are both spoofable. Checksums and anything is capable of being man in the middle. You people act like you just found something that can’t be broken. This is the real world the moment you switch most black hatters and white hatters will switch too…
I’m not sure that these things work the way you think they do… an antivirus wouldn’t just look for the name of an executable to be “legit.exe” but rather would look at what the program calls itself in it’s manifest, compute the hash for the executable binary file, and compare that hash against a database of known good hashes. If the contents of the executable compute a hash identical to the known good hash, then you know the contents of the executable are clean.
Still getting into programming and having a bit of trouble understanding what a “manifest” is. What does this technically entail? Are “manifests” implemented differently by PL or OS?
The manifest (at least how I am using the term) is whatever metadata a file has, and the format and location of this metadata can differ between operating systems. Usually the manifest is generated by the operating system based off of header data from the file itself, and details about the file that the operating system can deduce, such as file size, origin, location, file type, etc. In Windows you can view this info by right clicking/opening the context menu on any file and selecting “Properties”, on macOS by opening the context menu and selecting “Get Info”, and on other OSes such as linux/freeBSD it will be something similar.
There are other usages for “manifest” depending on the context, for example a manifest.xml would be something a developer would include with an android app that has configuration settings and properties for the app.
Lmao your edit 2 is completely silly. SHA-256 is what would be used for checksum verification, and SHA-256 is pretty much collision resistant, and even then if two files computed the same hash they would have such different contents/properties that it would be obvious they are not the same file. MD5 and SHA-1 have been phased out for any serious usage for a while now.
Seriously tho, if you don’t know what you are talking about you should probably stop making a fool of yourself
Windows has both WDAC and Applocker for allowlisting, not just for exes, but stuff such as powershell scripts and what drivers run in the kernel as well.
In it’s strongest form (a signed WDAC policy) even admin access can’t easily override it, and a well written policy can even enforce stuff such as downgrade protection (example: only allow firefox.exe signed by Mozilla at or above a certain version) which prevents an attacker from loading older versions of an executable.
The problem is that it’s not so easy to use in practice - an installer will often drop loads of unsigned files. Tor Browser ironically enough is a prime example, and any WDAC policies allowing it have to fallback on hash rules, which are fragile and must be regenerated every update, or filepath rules which are not so robust.
Microsoft is trying to make allowlisting more accessible with Smart App Control, which runs WDAC under the hood. It does save the hassle of managing one’s own policies (and also blocks certain filetypes like lnks commonly used for malware), but it is not very customizable.
From my experience, Windows by default completely blocks non-Microsoft-verified .exes. It’s called S mode and usually requires a Microsoft account to exit.
Do you mean that it’s enough just to be on a microsoft account? On 10, I didn’t technically do anything to exit that and I just have an annoying popup first time I’m using an unverified app. I can just allow them.
It’s defensible only from the perspective that it’s safer to flag many innocent apps than to miss something harmful. That said, it heavily punishes many legitimate developers and creators, as documented here. I was personally affected on many occasions and there hasn’t been a single one where Microsoft wouldn’t admit to false-flagging upon a manual review.
Eu4 with little to no actual knowledge of how the things in my OS work, I just know what Google is. Also I can’t afford a new PC or to risk screwing up my current one
If you’ve got a USB stick lying around you can make a “live disk” (or whatever it’s called nowadays) and run Linux off it to try it out. 90% of being a techie is having an interest and knowing how to do a web search so you’re most of the way there already!
oh noes, my karma! Oh wait - there’s no such thing on lemmy :) In all honesty, I think most people downvoting did not fully understand my comment in relation to the one I was replying to. I think they misread it as “people with half a brain cell or more don’t use windows” and pushed the arrow down.
If we define malware as something having functions to harm the user and not only things build soley for this purpose, then of course Windows is malware.
I’ve run into antiviruses blocking code I’ve written just because I pulled in certain cryptographic libs. Literally pulling in some Microsoft cryptography libraries in c# made it think I was writing a crypto locker.
Sometimes people use Tor just to get around ‘This site is blocked in your country’
But hey, I hear ya! I’ve been running Linux as my daily driver since 2015, and the more they enshittify Windows, the more I recommend others make the switch.
I really need to bite the bullet and wipe windows off my new laptop. I've had an arch based distro downloaded and ready to go since mid August. Just don't want to have to download my steam library again. My shitty Internet is painful sometimes.
At the best of times, moving steam games is a mess as more and more games use third party download systems.
But also? Going from Windows to Linux is an extra mess.
What I ended up doing to migrate from windows to linux for gaming without taking a poo on my data cap was:
Enable LAN transfers of games in Steam
Install/login to Steam on my linux laptop. If you don’t have a spare PC, this can largely be replaced with a raspberry pi with a big ass external drive attached.
Install the games I want to preserve. Steam is smart enough to realize it is the same files between windows and linux in this case
When that was done, reformat my desktop
Basically do the opposite direction and have my desktop stream the game files from my laptop.
Stuff like warframe was still a full redownload. But helped a lot.
Oof, I hear ya there. At least in my case I pretty much only play older games from GOG, usually in a virtual machine, so no Steam for me.
I did however go out of my way to download and compile the source code for Descent 1 and 2 directly on Linux, that was fun figuring out how to compile LOL!
Good luck with your Steam library though. If it was me, I’d test Linux out in a virtual machine first so you can test out copying your games over without outright wiping Windows first.
Agreed. I thought of ISP restrictions too, but I would say if where you live places a level of censorship due to political reasons or otherwise and you need to access it for whatever reasons so you need Tor then by all means Microsoft is not your friend since they’re a privacy nightmare.
There are also VPNs for banned media, I typically wouldn’t want to use Tor for anything more than textual content as it puts too much load on the Tor network.
I typically wouldn’t want to use Tor for anything more than textual content as it puts too much load on the Tor network.
While I agree that the Tor network is slow, it also depends on excess traffic to “bury” the more sensitive stuff. Part of why Tor works is because the actual sensitive stuff gets buried under all of the noise of regular users. Without all of that excess traffic, it’d be much easier to track what is happening.
As an extreme example, imagine how insecure the Tor network would be if there were only two users. It’d be blatantly obvious that those two users are communicating. By adding more users and more traffic, those two users can more easily hide in the sea of traffic. In short, more use does slow things down, but it’s also better for privacy overall.
Now that POW DDOS protection has started to roll i am actually finding tor to not be much worse than regular browsing. The markets are quick, dread is quick, tor times is quick, and pitch is quick. Where i find it slow is going back to the clearnet. If it ends with .onion though it loads pretty damn quick
Me too. I noped out of Win10 after fighting with Win7 too much. Most people tell me I’m just unusual however I think more people than will admit just browse the web and can’t handle Win95 levels of customization and lack of making decisions for you. People are generally overwhelmed with the mere idea that they could customize their computer to work in different ways… Heck, on Windows it’s varied if you can even reasonably change to a different default browser without being “techie” (stupid low bar considered techie by many)…
I have to say, my computing life changed A LOT for the better when I stopped playing games on the PC back when the PS3 was out. I got so tired of Windows getting screwed up by various games and their anti-cheat crap. I think in 2023, it might make sense to separate out functions a little - used computers run Linux just fine and are cheeeap. So if you want a yar har, web browsing, e-mail processing, programming etc computer, do that on the more private / (to be better) OS and then have your game only computer for gaming.
At least on Arch Linux, I've gotten a heavily modded Skyrim to run just fine (tbh, even better than on windows), so it should definitely be doable, although perhaps a bit tricky.
This was with a vanilla wine & some winetricks and a quite old Skyrim base game, though, so not sure about the newer Skyrim iterations.
This is a bad response to this news. There are many reasons why you might want to run tor on Windows and gatekeeping people out of tor because they are not on a chosen OS is a terribly way to get more people into thinking about privacy and security practices. Yes if you have the highest threat model you might want to avoid Windows as well, but not everyone needs absolute privacy/security for what they do. But why should you not have access to a tool that can help improve things even if you are not able to switch everything to a more private/secure alternative?
Really you should want everyone and anyone to run on tor, even if they don’t need it, even if they are on windows. The more people using it the more secure it is for those that do require it.
Yeah I agree. To be clear, if you take the reverse of my statement, i.e. if you’re on Windows, you shouldn’t use Tor, then I would be gatekeeping.
But I’m not implying that, but rather the reverse. I’m saying if you have use Tor for whatever reasons to bypass censorship, do illegal stuff and avoid being tracked, you should at least be aware that at the kernel level, how you’re accessing the internet has already been compromised by Microsoft, and consider alternatives OSes
Of course I’d still want people running Windows to be able to use Tor, and also I’d say leaving Windows isn’t something you would only do at the “highest threat model”.
Privacy will almost always be a trade-off with convenience, I’m pushing the awareness to get people to act, should they choose to. That’s all.
You might not have intended to imply that, but your original words can be taken in many different ways. Such as a dismissive well this news does not matter because you should not be using TOR if you are on windows. You did not say that exactly, but either interpenetration needs some reading between the lines as you did not really say all that much. So it could be taken that way just as much as the way you actually intended. And on the internet if things can be interpreted multiple ways they will be.
Taking “If P then not Q” as equivalent to “If not Q then not P” is just straight up broken thinking. We shouldn’t have to preface each comment with a primer on the basics of how to think.
I’m not saying you’re wrong (frankly, I’m on your side), but the majority of the general population, i.e. windows users, would take it as such. This is more to do with the failure of the various education systems more so than anything else.
If you have to bust out explanations from IQ test questions to explain yourself, then you’ve failed to communicate with 98% of whoever reads your comment. You can’t expect people to put in more than a modicum of effort to understand your message.
I know you meant well, but I don’t think their interpretation implied any logical fallacy. I used a conditional statement but my statement was prescriptive, not descriptive.
The difference between “I should” and “I have to/must” is a modal one. I implied “if I have to X then I shouldn’t Y”. They swapped X and Y around to get “If I have to Y then I shouldn’t X”, which is just a plain misinterpretation. The use of what is and what ought implies a recommendation or opinion, not mutual exclusivity. For that, I would have to use the same modality “If I have to X then I must not do Y”.
It’s like mixing up “If I have an infectious disease, I shouldn’t go outside” vs. “If I have to go outside, I shouldn’t have an infectious disease”. To me, they have a subtle difference. There is compromise and decision-making involved.
I’ll spell it out anyway because why not. I can’t be bothered to edit my original comment. While it’s sensational-sounding, anyone who take issue with what I said don’t take surveillance properly so I can’t help them, while those that misinterpreted me like nous did can find out for themselves here.
spoilerIf I have to use Windows, then I can still use Tor understanding and accepting that the OS at the kernel level is a black box that logs and tracks whatever it wants. I can compromise because I might just want to read a blocked news site or Wikipedia. Likewise, if I’m stuck somewhere and I have to use Windows to use Tor then it is a compromise. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use Tor. I’m responsible for my bad opsec should anything bad come my way. versusIf I have to use Tor, then something is wrong with the way I’m able to access and/or spread information (I handle sensitive or illegal topics, that can harm me or others if found out), and I can’t do it privately because there is surveillance involved. At the kernel level windows is a blackbox that mishandle my data and has the ability to observe everything I do. Therefore I ought to not use Windows.
I'd love to switch, but my laptop makes that quite hard and the computer still has years in it before I probably need to think about replacing it.
I've got an asus rog and sometimes need the backlight on the keyboard. As far as I could tell, no one had figured out how to do it without the windows only asus made software.
I keep a small partition set aside in case I need it for settings, but I leave the keyboard on one setting all the time.
Fedora by far has the best bootloader setup for modern bleeding edge hardware. Their Anaconda system (not related to Python’s “conda”) uses a shim key that is signed by Microsoft’s 3rd party UEFI key signing arrangement. Outside of the questionable philosophical implications around this arrangement and system, overall the setup is ideal for the end user. Fedora can on coexist with a windows partition easily, encrypt the entire thing and Windows can’t mess with anything on the Linux side. Personally, I haven’t ever actually used Windows since W8. My workstation router runs on a whitelist firewall so W11 is in a post internet age where it rightfully belongs. It might as well be a tab in the UEFI bootloader settings for all I care.
Fedora also has a system that builds the Nvidia kernel module from scratch every time the Linux kernel is updated. Around half of the updates still require me to do a quick restart after initial boot to enable the Nvidia kernel module. It falls back to the open source alt driver and still works fine, but I do AI stuff and need the CUDA API, so I have to reboot to get that working once a week or two. Fedora really is quite easy now. I would use something like NIX, but the Anaconda system is unmatched and too good to give up. You will have secure boot locked all the time even if you can not register custom keys or do not care to set them up manually.
Oh, I don't need the keyboard to be pretty. Just lit up at all which seems to be effective locked by asus.
When I tried, I had put Ubuntu on it. That process seemed to go pretty good except the keyboard. Even got the WiFi working just fine. I may give fedora a try, but I'm way too lazy to switch back and forth between os's depending on how dark the room I'm in is.
Have you considered learning how to type? (I know, kind of snarky) I don’t need to look at my keyboard or see my hands, there’s little bumps on the home keys and then you just type based on location.
It's not regular typing. It's primarily using the f-keys and numbers. Particularly for functions in my IDE.
Most of the time I'm using an external monitor and keyboard, so get very little practice on the built in one except when it's in less than ideal situations like flying.
When I get my next laptop, I'll be keeping Linux capabilities in mind. But that's years away. I'm not even sure where to start with reverse engineering the hardware, and also don't see myself spending months of my free time to make it work. I don't have that much free time and there are too many other things I'd like to be using that time for.
Does it not stay set at a default or have some amount of functionality? Like my Gigabyte Aorus has the full settings nonsense app in Windows, but if I set it to one thing, the change is persistent. I just always keep it on low and green. The function keys will let me alter the brightness between medium, bright, and alien abduction; which is super annoying because I can’t get back to low, but there is something.
You may find some info searching too, some people occasionally make their own kernel modules or app for individual machines. I would take a look at Linux Hardware Probe (linux-hardware.org) to see what shows up with your model, although the peripheral accessories are not usually the focus, they may be mentioned.
The main thing I was worried about with the proprietary settings like RGB was actually the thermal management settings that are also in that app. I have the 3080Ti, aka the 16GBV monster GPU. I can’t say any details about how the thermal performance will work with gaming or whatnot, but I do some AI training loads that hold the GPU at absolute max load for hours and it has never gotten above 80C. It throttles as expected, and each laptop’s thermal design will vary, but I can put the laptop with its vent inlet ports directly in front of a window AC and the GPU will hold max load at 70C for as long as I have ever pushed it (3-5hours straight). I’m playing with buggy code, much of it written by myself, and I never attempt to override the Nvidia settings, but with daily use since the beginning of July, I’ve had no complaints. This was the big thing weighing on me in the back of my mind. Just thought I might mention it if you change your mind and want to make the switch.
FWIW I just put Windows onto a ROG GX531GX to gift it to a family member, (I told him it was a testament of my love that I was going from Linux TO Windows on a system for the first time ever) but have been gaming on it under Linux for a couple of years, and under KDE plasma was a slider for the keyboard backlight with the power settings, which required no extra attention from me (that I can recall) to get there.
I may have had to install an "asus laptop" or similar labeled package from my package manager and forgotten about it, but it was for sure no more than that or I'd have remembered.
Edit: I'm posting this from a different computer but it was likely one of these.
someone is giving them money and rewarding the fuckery - and has been for several decades now.
i wish the MS benefactors would at least make the payments conditional on improvement.
It blows my mind that Windows can be and is so incompetent. If they did not hold the level of market share that they do, that would be out of business.
People are literally locked in because the software is not made for Linux. But Linux keeps marching and getting better.
We have the games, now all we need are a few professional applications and then Windows can easily be replaced.
It’s not just defender, Window has so many problem. Like constant ads to try to get me to use Bing and Edge. It is bundling a bunch of random software and games during install. It is forcing users to create a Microsoft account when setting up the computer.
On top of all of this, it is the only operating system to crashes on on me during use. Even though it is on my most powerful hardware, it is the computer that runs sluggishly all the time.
You don’t have to create a Microsoft account to use Windoows. In corporate environments most issues are usually mitigated by administrators via group policy. Crashing and bad performance are not typical. Windows is very reliable,
It’s better to use Whonix or Tails if you want to use TOR browser securely. If I ever had to use Windows again it would not be for anything private.
I’m certain there are people who use Tor in a way that it would make sense to use a secure OS.
But I use Tor to get around stupid public wifis and suchlike that have content blockers. I’m not scared that the police are going to beat the shit out of me so I just use Windows or Android.
I'm confused about what you meant by your last sentence. Are you trying to throw a hint that using distros such as Whonix and Tails means you will be doing something illegal?
I'm not afraid of the police coming after me because I've done nothing wrong. One of the reasons I use Linux distros and distros that are specialized like Whonix and Tails is because I value my privacy which Windows won't give you.
No, I’m making a comment about the word “securely” in the post I responded to. i.e. “Secure” means different things for different people.
I like to use Tor on occasion for the reason stated but I’m sure as hell not booting up an OS to do it for my use case. That would be inconvenient especially as I’m using Tor to subvert a stupid netnanny, and not endangering myself or putting myself in legal peril. So using Tor this way is plenty secure - I can hold a secure conversation with a website of my choosing without netnanny interfering.
Other use cases may vary and your need for “secure”. Maybe you absolutely value your privacy above all else, or are up to something you don’t want others to know about. In which case do, go and use Tails or whatever.
A little context, one of the larger exit nodes was compromised and would send malware to your computer. The behavior shield probably caught this and correctly marked the program as a trojan, since, by definition, that’s literally what it was acting as when connected to that node. More advanced AVs (like malwarebytes) will instead block the malicious connection rather than blanket-banning the entire program.
Hot take, I see no issue with this. If you’re savvy enough to know about Tor and its purpose, you’re also savvy enough to know how to add a security exclusion in Defender. People who don’t know how to whitelist a program in Defender probably did not install Tor themselves and won’t be safe using a program with the capability to access the dark web.
It’s extra frustration for those trying to legitimately use Tor, but it’s also a safety check in the case of an unintended install.
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