I wish I could use Linux at work but the software used does not have any alternative (that I can use) and I can’t be bothered with debloating and all that jazz. I try to keep work and private seperate instead.
How modern, I can’t believe your computers support Windows 11.
Why should my computer not be able to supprot Windows 11?
To me the funniest part is that telemetry is usually for ads to convince people to buy stuff, and secondly for nation states to track you, but the debloat crowd usually never leaves home (a registered address) or buys anything, and surprisingly apt at credit card points with the money they do spend (the og trackers).
I get your point. I would asume that those who chose to remove adware and remove telemetry would also be the same group that use ad blockers.
Tried get my dad to use Linux for his work but had problems with his clients not being able to open the files he sent using the Linux word and Excell programs. So that’s clear for him not to use Linux.
My brother-in-law installed Linux Mint for his parents and they are very happy with it. The only problem was downloading epubs with Adobe DRM, so I taught her how to use knock1 in the terminal and then import the book into Calibre to upload them to her ereader.
[1] The original repo is either private or has been removed, but all code and binaries can be found here https://web.archive.org/web/20221010074634/https://github.com/BentonEdmondson/knock/releases
My work has a process for requesting software. Over the last five years, I’ve been slowly getting open source alterntives approved, using them, and telling coworkers they’re approved. It’s just one super specialized software left.
Nice!
I work at a very small company, so there is no policy for which software to use and I would replace the one software that is Windows only if I could, even if I had to remain on Windows. The problem I have in this case is that we rely external tools that only work with this software, only on Windows. :-(
Teams.
I fucking hate teams.
Why are we using teams.
Why did they change outlook, it used to actually be good.
Teams can go fuck itself with a rock. We’ve taken licensing now that doesn’t include it.
Still holding on to classic outlook as long as possible. The new version/skin/glow-up can go share the aforementioned rock with teams. Where’s my VBA, where’s my ribbon customisations, and why must it be dumbed down to Fisher-Price levels of ‘user friendliness’?
A lot of my answers to user questions these days are ‘Because Microsoft ™️’.
There used to be a linux repo for installing teams but they recently removed it. Now you’re forced to use the shitty excuse of a PWA.
The browser-based versions of the M365 apps work great* for me in Firefox tabs on Linux. I prefer them being just apps/sites that I use as needed and not deeply integrated with the OS just because the same company made the two.
- I mean they work as intended for the same stuff I’ve used the Windows versions for, not that they are great apps on their own, lol
Teams doesn’t work well for me on Linux w/Firefox (it doesn’t detect my headset properly) but it works great in Edge.
Either way I’m stuck on W11 at work. No way am I installing teams on my machine at home.
Beginner friendly??? Not sure how to explain this to Linux users that post on Lemmy but we’re not the regular pc user and have a very different view on beginner friendly lol
Yeah, one of the biggest reasons people won’t try Linux isn’t necessarily because it is difficult, but because it would require learning anything at all. Never underestimate how much effort a person is willing to make to avoid making an effort.
I tried explaining to some of my non-technical friends what a “Linux distribution” is. Most don’t quite understand what I mean by “operating system”. I think we’re in a bit of a bubble here.
Heck yeah. I usually have to explain what an OS is in the first place too. I usually use android versus iOS as an example. I feel kinda fortunate sometimes that my wife’s hobbies don’t line up with my own most of the time because it does keep my brain in check from falling into those bubbles. She appreciates having free tech support on hand of course lol
You need to KISS your explanation. Don’t talk about OS’s or even distros. Avoid the technical stuff, save that for later as they ask about it. Instead just tell them it looks different, but in the end works the same. And it does it without the hassle, bloat or cost of Microsoft.
I recently swapped to Linux Mint and it really was not harder than Windows, and I know functionally nothing on how anything Linux related actually works.
Oh I’m not saying that it’s hard for us here. Most people don’t know that Mac and Windows are different if they aren’t in a tech position let alone know that Linux exists at all. I’m talking about the general person on the street, it’s hard to remember that we don’t always fit into that group.
And there is little to nothing to fear. The big bad terminal and command line isn’t needed for day to day use anymore. It’s been years since the last time I needed to compile anything. And if I ever do need to do that again, something is definitely wrong.
Well, that’s my concern. There are plenty of settings that are only accessible via command line.
This entire thread talking about how a distro is better than the next because you “only” have to update keyrings to update so even basic users should get it.
I’m a programmer at a tech company. Last month, I tried setting up two different distros on my personal computer, in anticipation of Windows 10 EOL.
I experienced:
- Total failure of wifi drivers
- Graphical corruption returning from sleep mode
- Inability to load levels in Deck-certified games
- Critical input delays in a reflex-based online game
- Inability to install a particular Linux-native app on my particular distro; not only unavailable by main package manager, but also by its alternative container-based strategy.
- Right-click menus that hid the options I’m used to finding on Windows, with no visible way to turn them on.
- Repeated overriding of my customization of keyboard shortcuts
- Inability to assign Ctrl+Tab as a keyboard shortcut for a terminal app (Tab was unrecognized)
- UI forms altering my selection when I was attempting to scroll past them
- No discernible methods to pin frequently used folders to the sidebar of the file explorer
- No discernible way to remove/edit Application entries (leading to games that I created an entry though off Steam’s install dialog being stuck there even after the game was deleted)
So no, don’t keep telling me I’m staying on Windows out of idiocy. If someone replies to this with a doctoral on why every single issue is actually somehow my fault, it completes the trifecta.
Linux distros need to take a step back for a long, lengthy discussion on good user experience before they rush back to making memes like these.
This. I need to get work done, not work on my os.
Oh, they have lengthy discussion on good user experience. Have you seen gnome argue with the entire planet about whether the shutdown menu should let you shut down?
(I may be misremembering, maybe they wouldn’t let you log out or put the computer to sleep or something stupid because their only concept of design is deleting features and creating backlogged tickets to reimplement the same function in a new “better” way)
Personally I have experienced most of that too on desktop. I use Linux for my home servers (oops I used zfs cause everyone says it’s good and better than btrfs and now the one dude who runs the arch zfs gitlab went awol so I haven’t updated my arch computer in 5 months).
I tried setting up two different distros
Would you mind telling what were the two distros you were trying to setup just for reference?
I installed Distro A, and Distro B, and you’re about to reply:
“Oh, well there’s your problem! A and B aren’t great for beginners (even though you read they were from someone else). I’d strongly recommend, C, D, E, or F.”
Whether it’s installing a new distro off new recommendations or spending time tinkering to get one of them working right, it’s still the same annoyance, and it’s unlikely to change. That said, if you have read that and will restrain from jabbing back about it or are just genuinely curious:
Distros
Linux Mint 21, then Linux Mint 22, then Bazzite
mfs dont know about “O&O ShutUp 10++”
There’s no beginner friendly Linux OS, but…if you willing to learn a thing or two about linux (at least know how to install programs, updating system, & install your favorite Windows program on wine bc you can’t find equivalent linux program) i think you’ll loved Linux so much because it’s so flexible.
If you encounter errors, don’t worry, there’s answer how to fix it, all you need is Google/DuckDuckGoUbuntu is absolutely a beginner friendly OS. If I give a computer to somebody that knows nothing more than how to turn it on, Ubuntu will be no more difficult for that person to surf the internet than it would be in Windows. I’ve been teaching people how to use their computers for more than half my life and the vast majority of problems are ignorant people on Windows. Linux isn’t inherently more difficult to use, it’s just different. For adept Windows users, switching and expecting to be just as familiar is where it gets more tricky.
As a Linux user for a few years now I have to disagree. My friends who still rely on Windows only software for either school or their jobs use Revision OS and installs it with a tool called playbooks which takes only a few minutes and automatically disables feature updates; only allowing security updates to go through. This makes it so all “system updates” are through the playbook app which is pretty cool, it pretty much makes it a Windows fork and won’t revert or break anything when updating
1, Revision OS is awesome, and good on you for sharing it!
2, I don’t think that’s you disagreeing really, just offering a “third path”.
Anybody know of citation software such as Zotero that runs stably on LibreOffice? I will gladly switch but this is holding me back.
What issue do you face specifically? Because my Zotero and LibreOffice run very smoothly together on my Linux Mint machine.
But if you want to poke around and look for alternative software, check this wiki page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software
I tried Zotero/Libre with Ubuntu and it had some bugs. Unfortunately I don’t have time to troubleshoot software combinations or go into source code… I’m just a user.
- The third route: install Win11 IoT Enterprise LTSC
- The fourth route: install Gentoo
Quite a few clients were unable to upgrade to Windows 11 on their current devices, I let them try out Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon edition and most of the switched over quite happily knowing it would let them do their daily tasks, the one’s who needed specific tools or games I setup a VM desktop for them to play with.
I love Linux, a lot. I’ve distro hopped and tinkered to my hearts content. But I can’t let windows go, which is why I dual-boot with Windows 11 and currently, Bazzite.
Windows doesn’t have the ghub for my logitech mouse and headset. I can’t use my plugins for elite dangerous or extra software, like EDMC. Many games don’t work for various reasons (anti-cheat, or many other reasons). Can’t say, “well don’t play those games.”. Well, I want to. I like those games, and they don’t work on linux.
There is no AMD Adrenaline for my AMD GPU. I can’t use frame gen or many other features my card has. Battle.net games just refuse to work for me, try as I might to follow every tutorial ever (I just wanted to play Diablo IV T_T ). Those features are important to me.
OBS is much crappier on linux than on windows, due to no AV1 encoding support. As a streamer, AV1 looks MUCH better than whatever linux obs uses.
And lastly, Windows (even Windows 11), just works with everything. Any software you want, you just install it. On steam you don’t have to check proton.db, you’re 100% guaranteed for it to work. Any software you see, it works on windows. Any peripherals, just work. All their associated software, works.
I know not everyone games, but it’s the highest grossing entertainment market, so it’s important to more people than not.
According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. To put that in perspective, the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, while the movie industry was valued at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is making more than three times as much money as the music industry and almost four times as much as the movie industry. source
I can’t use my plugins for elite dangerous or extra software, like EDMC.
Why not? The github page even says it will work with wine. I’ve not played ED for a long time. But, I am sure I had EDDiscovery at least working with it in linux a few years ago. Other games like WoW I have external tools that interface with it working fine, some within the same wine environment, some even external. You just need to make sure the drive is mapped (you can always go via the Z: drive too) where the app expects it.
From my experience, I have steam working and pretty much every game I want to play has worked. I don’t play games with kernel anti-cheat even in windows, so I’m not missing anything there. Battle net runs fine even with ray-traced shadows in wow. Pretty much everything else I need works. The only things I miss are the games that are part of XBOX/Windows store, but that’s hardly Linux’s fault. Maybe visual studio too. But I do have the OSS “Code” to cover most I did in VS so…
I have dual boot, I’ve not used it to go to windows in weeks. Almost everything just works fine.
Battle.net for me wouldn’t install in steam as an extra app, it wouldn’t work in heroic, but lutris was happy to do it, and the performance is excellent. Linux mint.
What I have heard on coding shows is making the Windows game available for Linux is clicking a check box for export/compile for Linux. And companies don’t.
Urm. No. In a few cases thats true, but for most complex systems, or even just ones that rely on non-default engine extensions (a category that includes nearly all games), they really do need work invested into them. Steam and proton are are making this better but its really not at ‘just check a box’ levels of ease yet.
Just conveying what coders say, can’t comment on which engines. But since Linux doesn’t care what binary it loads into memory to execute it doesn’t seem hard to support a translation layer.
I’m very curious what those coders meant! For what it’s worth, what you’re describing is essentially Proton and it has been extremely difficult to develop and requires a great deal of ongoing support. Cross-compiling is super hard, its the reason Android runs on (essentially) the JVM and that windows implemented UWP, and its the root cause behind driver compatability issues. I’m just not sure what you mean, I guess.
I assume since the Linux kernel doesn’t care what executable code gets run in memory, it was an engine that adda info for system call translations. Could be wrong, they did not elaborate.
And lastly, Windows (even Windows 11), just works with everything. Any software you want, you just install it. On steam you don’t have to check proton.db, you’re 100% guaranteed for it to work. Any software you see, it works on windows.
This is not my experience at all. I was recently trying to play Command and Conquer: Tiberian Firestorm, an older RTS on Windows. I own the game through Steam. On Windows, the game wont open. It crashes immediately on launch. If i run the game in XP compatibility mode, it launches but when playing the game there is some sort of microstutter: every unit is blinking, the mouse cursor is blinking, and the game plays at a crawling pace. Also everything freezes whenever you move the camera.
When i boot into Fedora on the same PC, install with steam and launch with Proton, the game works fine. I was even able to install a resolution patch for windows to get higher resolutions available.
I find this to be a pretty common experience for me when trying to play older Windows PC games. There are quite a few I cant seem to get working (or playable) on Windows, but that work fine on Linux. I mostly play older games anyway so for me, Linux is more of a game console OS.
Sorry to hear Battlenet doesn’t work for you. D4 is another one i play only on Linux, in thas case because i get some weird graphical artefacts when playing on Windows. I haven’t bought the new expansion yet though, maybe after the holidays are over.
Battle.net games just refuse to work for me, try as I might to follow every tutorial ever (I just wanted to play Diablo IV T_T ). Those features are important to
Battlenet games just working on Linux and not working on Windows is what drove me to uninstalling Windows
And lastly, Windows (even Windows 11), just works with everything. Any software you want, you just install it.
How did you get Mac apps to run and the Metro desktop on w11? I suppose you can get Gnome Web to work through WSL
Look man. I use my computer primarily for gaming, with a little web browsing. The second Linux can support all games without me having to wrangle and worry about compatibility, plus whatever else config shit I have to go through that I’m sure I’m unaware of, I’ll jump ship headfirst. I’m fucking sick of Microsoft’s bullshit.
Linux supports most games nowadays. It will never support “all” games. Just like windows doesn’t support all games. At this point in time, saying Linux is not good enough with gaming is weird…
At this point games that doesn’t support Linux are games that use anti-cheat
The part that most don’t talk about is that installing and getting games up and going in Linux that can run in Linux, often takes allot of configuration and trying, but on the plus side it can run many games from older versions of Windows with some configuration.
It is the configuration that one has to learn how to do which most casual users aren’t skilled enough to do. It is after you learn how to do it that between the Linux Native Games and most other games from Windows.
Right, BattleEye is hit or miss depending on the game developer.
Another significant drawback I have is OBS compatibility. It technically works, but just having it open drops my framerate by ~30%, and having it record drops it by ~50%. I haven’t found a fix for it yet, so I’m effectively unable to stream or record gameplay on Linux. The same settings used in Windows hardly impacts my framerate.
I’ll continue using Linux, but I haven’t deleted my Windows partition yet.
Depending on what games you play it’s anywhere from unusable (games with incompatible anticheat) to flat out better than windows even ignoring all the surrounding bullshit. But many of these gsmes with anticheat are among the most popular games in the world, so there’s plenty of reason not to change just bc of those for a lot of people.
In my experience, Linux supports a handful, maybe even a large handful, but we’re far away from “most.”
User-friendly Linux distro is a myth.
I guess it depends on the user… I have more problems (if at all possible) configuring and maintaining a windows installation than linux. That’s why I ditched it completely, as thankfully the last thing that kept a windows installation on my PC is basically solved by Valve…
I decided to spend a day debugging linux boot failure, which I found to be caused by the Nvidia driver.
My home firewall blocks ads and telemetry, no matter device/OS.
Maybe M$ one day decided make Windows unbootable because it cannot connect to somesussymicrosoftprivacyviolater.com
It still would have to get past my firewall to try to make it so.
So your firewall is going to prevent OS updates?
It already does. I like to review the updates and wait a while to see if they cause any issues. When I’m confident with the updates, I temporarily remove the block from the firewall.
I’m more and more a fan of keeping my devices without any internet connection.
I’d just rather use Windows and not have to deal with my games not being supported, explaining to people how to print a word document or have to mess with wifi drivers.
A lot of those stereotypical problems have been non-issues for a long time. Last time I had to fuck around with wifi drivers was somewhere around 2012.
There are comments on this post proving that those “non-issues” are still issues.
Earlier this month I bought a cheap Asus laptop for my gf and put zorin on it only to find that no one makes Linux drivers for the included WiFi card. Bought a new WiFi card and ended up returning the laptop because the touchpad wouldn’t work correctly either.
Anecdotal evidence blahblahblah. For example: I just had to reverse engineer some epson drivers to get my fucking printer to play with my USB hub. Shit sucks sometimes, and I’m not going to pretend windows doesn’t also have it’s moments, but they sure as hell are less frequent (for me recently) than they are on windows.
Linux by its nature is very fractious (See: the Gentoo vs Debian debate that had been going on since the dawn of time…), and that means we don’t get one general distro. Linux’s big strength is in it’s customizability, and while for you and me it’s clearly a great option that we love and cherish, for my grandma it’s just not there in terms of plug-n’-play usability. Also, it was probably made by the wrong sort of Baptist or something, my grandma is awful.
…
Anyways, while I love Linux, it’s nice that there’s an option for the people who just don’t care. I’d love for them to start caring, because they should, but until I’m made omnipotent dictator for life it’s just not going to happen. And that sucks, but at least I don’t get calls at 4am asking why they cant get a flatpak working on debian. (I know it’s supported but…)
