If you’re using your computer for work and can’t afford to spend some time figuring out how to do something that would be second nature for you on Windows, you shouldn’t switch. It would probably be more expensive than just buying a Windows license.
That said, you shouldn’t expect too many problems. You can try out your Word templates right now in Libre Office. Or just run the web version of Microsoft Office in Linux. Video codecs are usually just one command away.
In terms of what distribution to choose, I would choose something popular that’s stable and comes with sane defaults. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSUSE Leap.
The main difference for a newbie will probably be how to install software. On Linux you usually don’t go to the manufacturers website and download an installer. Instead you go to your software center and search there for what you need. Similar to the App Store and Play Store on phones.
Agree. Linux isn’t that hard but there is a bit of a learning curve and you shouldn’t gamble your business on your ability to pick up a brand new OS. If you can afford support or an “IT Guy” then take the plunge. For general clerical stuff there should be zero compatibility issues.
Could be familiarity? I saw an article go by recently about how projects that aren’t on GitHub suffer from lack of contributions. Although that matters more for smaller projects, Mozilla is a beast and could probably pull people off GitHub if it wanted to.
Also if anyone should be trying to build up an alternative to GitHub, it should be Mozilla
If you are at a skill level, where you can meaningfully contribute to a project like this, registering for an alternative git provider should not be an obstacle
It’s super cool that it supports this, heck I’ve used it when no other options were there (and thank git I could! It made a nightmare into just a little more work instead).
I will say though, it’s most of the other software forge features that people normally talk about adding Activity Pub support for (issues tracking, merge requests, tracking forks, CI tooling, handling documentation, etc).
Pull people off GitHub? I get the impression from others that contributing to Mozilla projects, particularly Firefox, is a painful experience. But afaik one former Mozilla project uses GitHub for everything: Rust, the programming language.
It’s the most widely used platform that the most people are familiar with that they get to use likely for free. Newer projects of theirs are also hosted there. Why would you say it makes no sense?
One of my computers has windows on one of the ssds because I have to use windows for work software once every week or so for about 20-30 minutes and there are a few other windows programs that I need to use occasionally.
Basically I use Windows for a couple of hours a month and Linux the rest of the time.
Thanks for sharing your work at Lemmy! I say this because although I don’t use Reddit, I’m sure that logically because there are more users there and being more famous, it is the preferred platform for developers to share their work.
Think you’ll implement a replay feature in the future? I love that feature.
And is there any chance of porting your job in the future to Wayland? Currently there is no program (only OBS, as far as I know) that allows recording in Wayland, it would be great to have more options.
I haven’t made the jump to Wayland yet. I basically live in the terminal (when I’m not playing games!) so haven’t been in any rush. I definitely want to support Wayland going forward because it seems everyone has switched but me!
I know that most people will write off San Francisco because “Apple bad,” but I really do love it. Simple, looks great, and does its job with nothing crazy. Same goes for New York. Credit where it is due: I think Apple makes great fonts.
This article is strange… The author uses “being able to open Microsoft Office documents” as a common example of what an OS that claims to be easy to use should be able to do. Then says…
When people download Ubuntu 23.04 they get an OS that can do everything Windows 95 did - with 23.10 they don’t
No default installation of Microsoft Windows EVER opened Microsoft Office documents. If this was a simple oversight in the write-up it’d be fine, but the point is hammered over and over again.
I don’t have an opinion about Ubuntu including or not including more software in the default installation (my guess is it became too big to fit on a DVD?) but this article failed to make it’s point to me by making a comparison to Windows that isn’t true.
Also…
the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system (that’s Ubuntu, for those of you playing dumb)
Is this supposed to be a cocky joke? I can’t tell. What metric of “most popular” is the author using?
This author really needs to take a step back to reality.
The average person who’s already technically knowledgeable enough to download Ubuntu and burn a DVD or make a USB stick is already aware of the App Store on Mac and whatever the Windows App Store is called.
I’ve been using Ubuntu on a yoga 2 for nearly a decade. I haven’t used the touchscreen in ages but I used to do a lot of inking and it was pretty good out of the box. It only has a 4 gigs of ram though and isn’t upgradeable so it’s not as useful as it was
I wiped my drive with a lot of non-backed-up data on it intentionally because the Fedora installer was too confusing. Lost among other things my Celeste and Minecraft saves, a lot of images, and other stuff with sentimental value.
Damn. I am sorry for that loss. I agree, I am always boggled every time I use the Fedora installer. I don’t know how I clicked the wrong disk. I didn’t read close enough, or I don’t know.
I hope the new things you make are better than what was wiped.
Tbh I don’t even remember much of the stuff that I lost anymore. I had a lot of images, a legally downloaded series, a good amount of legally downloaded music that I keep forgetting I don’t have on my phone, the aforementioned game saves, and I don’t remember more rn. I was luckily more creative during school so the more important stuff (Siberian sniper crocodile) was on another device.
Nothing special, I just kept distrohopping and backing up my home folder to a seperate drive each time via rsync. Eventually I messed that up somewhere, some data was lost. I think that was early this year.
Nothing to major, bit of a nuisance is all. And a grim reminder that eventually you WILL mess up. It’s just a matter of time really. So try to minimize the factors that lead to mishaps like distrohopping and be diligent with your backups.
Personally, I keep the redundant backup as cold storage to minimize loss. Three 8TB content or archival drives that are always attached via USB but not powered until needed, plus another on NAS for streaming, and two more 8TB each for double backup that are only turned on when I want to do a sync. So the drives get minimal wear, and whenever a primary dies, the backups get promoted and a new one is bought to be third in line. I have lost too much data in the past. As well as I can manage, never ever again.
What is kind of funny is that my computer has the SSD for system and home, and I only ever used the storage to copy over files from my home. I also have a little 1TB SSD That I could have used as an offline backup… but didn’t do that. I had the tools, just never thought to do it. I will look into a NAS, that would be nifty. Can’t bork that with a new install.
It only takes a few tragic events before “backup frequently, often and offline” really takes hold and doing preemptive backup becomes a neurosis. You have to experience a certain amount of fear, loss and regret to get there.
edit: the upside is I haven’t reinstalled a primary OS in years. Something is fucked? Restore that last image and keep rolling.
If you must and you have the hardware maybe run Windows in a VM just for those applications. You can even suspend the vm state to resume from where you were.
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