In the cold and desolation; the mad wizard had been eeking out his existence letting the wild know about the horrors that awaited them in Redmondland.
But few listened
Then slowly the kings of Redmondland began to become more crazed in their power; wanting more and more from their subjects. Until a few, a small band of subjects took off their blinders and released the kingdom had spread so far that the mad wizard Linus was in their midst.
They stopped and listened to him
They grew tired of telling the king about everything they did and needing his permission to do anything in their own lives.
The mad wizard wasn’t crazy… he was just upset; it was the king who’d gone mad wanting to control his kingdom…
It’s basically the same time I started using Linux somewhat more. I didn’t go Windows-free until 2007 though and then returned to Windows because I needed it for something with my Master’s thesis. I kind of shudder at the thought how my old setups looked under the hood. You learn a lot in 18 years… Probably copy-pasted a lot of shell commands back then. But UT2k4 in its OpenGL glory was worth it
It’s funny how conservative Windows is, it still has components from the NT.
That calling: ensuring things are compatible with old software and not fucking your users over. Just for fun I tried to install Photoshop 6 from 2000 on Windows 11 and it works just fine. Same goes for MS Office 2003.
Why bother with Windows? Mostly the same reasons moving from Windows to a Mac can be a pain, however on macOS you get better professional software support and less reasons to virtualize Windows from time to time. To be fair, what’s the point of using X operating system if some of the tools you need require a virtual machine or you’ve to use alternatives that are sub-par, will make you waste time and have a worse experience. Again even under macOS with Microsoft’s own MS Office for Mac things sometimes aren’t as compatible as they should be.
Linux desktop is great, I love it but I don’t sugar coat it nor I’m delusional like most posting about it. Here is a list of cases that aren’t easy to deal in Linux:
People who need the real MS Office because once you have to collaborate with others Open/Libre/OnlyOffice won’t cut it;
Designers who use Adobe apps that won’t run properly without having a dedicated GPU, passthrough and a some hacky way to get the image back into your main system that will cause noticeable delays;
People that run old software / games because not even those will run properly on Wine;
Electrical engineers: Circuit Design Suite (Multisim and Ultiboard) are primarily designed for Windows. Alternatives such as KiCad and EasyEDA may work in some cases but they aren’t great if you’ve to collaborate with others who use Circuit Design Suite;
Labs that require data acquisition from specialized hardware because companies making that hardware won’t make drivers and software for Linux;
Architects: AutoCAD isn’t available (not even the limited web version works) and Libre/FreeCAD don’t cut it if you’ve to collaborate with AutoCAD users;
Developers and sysadmins, because not everyone is using Docker and Github actions to deploy applications to some proprietary cloud solution. Finding a properly working FTP/SFTP/FTPS desktop client (similar WinSCP or Cyberduck) is an impossible task as the ones that exist fail even at basic tasks like dragging and dropping a file.
If one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
Windows licenses are cheap and things work out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive Linux desktop experience. It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.
Also, the guys take on “what you go for it’s entirely your choice” when it comes to DE is total BS. What usually happens is that you’ll eventually find out while you can use any DE in fact GNOME will provide a better experience because most applications on Linux are design / depend on its components and installing them on KDE will simply give you small issues here and there, windows that don’t pick on your theme or simply create a frankenstein of a system composed by KDE + a bunch of GTK components.
Im curious about your WINE comment, because you can go into the dialog that selects which version of Windows it “emulates”. The drop down has what looks like every release of windows back to DOS.
As for can’t collaborate, that depends on the industry. Teamcenter PLM and Siemens NX CAD work on both RHEL and SUSE desktop. When W10 came out it made those programs less performant so I switched to OpenSUSE and installed the NX CAD to get performance back.
WINE comment, because you can go into the dialog that selects which version of Windows it “emulates”.
Until the emulation fails at some basic Window API feature like window tabs with multiple rows that any Windows version from 95 does just fine. Or… until you try to get MS Office 2016 working and it requires dozens of hacks to end up with something very slow to startup and have graphical glitches… or 2019 also not working, or not being able to install 2021. Or… until you find out that Wine is still unable to just tell applications the screen size fucking up everything that depends on it. Wine is far from perfect and it isn’t that good.
As for can’t collaborate, that depends on the industry
Yes, you are lucky you got NX CAD for Linux, because for most people that’s not the case. Adobe products are a no go, AutoCAD is a no go, same goes for Multisim / Ultiboard.
WINE doesn’t emulate it translates the code so that it can run natively, so any problem you have is because you haven’t installed the windows dependencies of the program you are trying to run which you can do trough winetricks. And wine comes with a configuration tool called winecfg, and on there you can edit the window scaling, wine can in fact tell apps to screensize up
I just jumped ship completely (last was dealing with scanner & printer) with windows, where can I find replacements for the 5 people I “follow” on youtube (ukraine war reports & beginner chess)? I mean is there even an alternative?
Nobody has the attention span to read them - as proven by the declining buy-in on YouTube videos longer than a TikTok reel - let alone write them. Written media will continue to rapidly decline.
Not sure why you went on the defence, my generation is the reel addicted monkeys that stopped learning anything and instead started spouting off “knowledge” from doomscrolling. We’re the ones that are killing printed media, and we’re the ones either airing or producing worse and worse garbage on TV as well.
We’re killing our own attention span year by year and none of us want to be uncomfortable for a second by admitting it’s a problem.
I feel like a I’m an old dinosaur yelling at the clouds because I can’t stand most video content. There’s a time and place for it but an 8 paragraph op-ed would suffice for content like this.
For me it’s the bloody “video essay” format. Hyper narrated, spoken straight to the camera. Waste of traffic, waste of storage, waste of attention. People think the argument carries more weight, or is just more persuasive, when someone is speaking at you with some vaguely related visual in the background. But really a written piece could be pulled apart so much more quickly.
Unfortunately OpenAI’s Whisper doesn’t do written transcriptions fast enough on my workstation yet for me to use it full time.
Somehow unrelated to what this video proposes, Linux has taught and gave me so many possibilities that I would never, ever be able to if I (still) were using Windows to this very day. In other words… thanks to Linux, I can now operate and have fun in a under 3W device.
I like the idea of ditching Windows because of all the telemetry but I just need a machine that’s going to do what I need it to do without a fucking battle. Everything on Linux is just so difficult, it’s like every time I give it a go I wind up spending hours trying to figure out how to do something that would take ten seconds on Windows. I wanted to make a desktop shortcut that would run a script with root privileges. On Windows that’s right click, drag, and select the option to make a shortcut. Takes a few seconds. Took me ages to figure it out in Ubuntu, mostly because it wasn’t working as it should. Yesterday I did an apt upgrade on another machine and it wiped out the WiFi. I’m still working on fixing that and now I’m looking into compiling my own drivers.
I felt the same when I started using Linux.
My whole computing experience was on Windows, and when I switched, I expected Linux to be working the same and being a 1:1 replacement.
Just don’t expect it to be the same.
Even if it sometimes looks like it (e.g. Mint oder KDE-based distros) it absolutely isn’t similar.
People don’t have the same expectations on MacOS, so why should we on Linux?
And if you really don’t like it at all, then stay on Windows. No shame at all. Use the right tool for the right task.
Interesting, I feel like this describes what windows itself does to a pc
It’s definitely not normal to lose wifi working drivers with an update. I would say it’s very rare in fact. As far as what you’re saying takes ten seconds on windows, no it doesn’t. You would still need to run as administrator and (I think) type your password, which probably takes longer than opening a terminal and typing sudo
Funny, for me it’s windows that I’m constantly battling.
Be it having to constantly restart and do updates that take forever.
Searching online and downloading then clicking through installers for software I want, rather than just going into an app store.
Having to manually remove ads from my start menu
Remove as much telemetry as I can (that of course accidentally gets reset by some updates)
I have dark mode set, yet so many programs (even first party MS stuff that’s part of the OS!) doesn’t respect it, so I get randomly blinded at night
Each individual app running their own updater services in the background
Having to remember to run disk cleanup every once in a while because temporary files and old update files hang around for ages, eventually slowing my system down and taking dozens of GB of space
There are some good things - Win11’s window tiling is genuinely excellent, for example. But man, overall, Windows is just difficult and tedious to use. The only reason people use it is because it’s the default. Not because it’s good or it’s easy.
You are lucky. Last night both Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates broke in my house and held me at gunpoint until I made my choice. (Tim Cook would have been there too, but apparently he was guided down the wrong street.)
No i can’t. There is no powerful processor for word and spreadsheet on Linux libre office is just a shadow of what MS office native software can do…
No I can’t finding an executable and adding it to startup is HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY easy than to use which , where , locate , find commands
No I can’t cause ripping entire dvd with one go is easy as click and done . I don’t have to “remux” or encode or whatever I just want a dvd to be copied in folder and that’s it.
No I can’t cause Linux is HARD for simpleton like me . It’s not useful for simple tasks listed above without touching command line
I stopped caring. When my GF bought a laptop I just installed Linux there and she has no issues using it. Linux is where I always wanted it to be. Now when I see someone using Windows I just think “you poor soul” to myself and move on.
Me - Yes. I use Debian 12. No intention any time to go back because of how much I love using Debian. May fire up a VM of Arch so I can run some specific AUR packages I am curious to try out, but we’ll see. I am cautious to go on another distor hopping bender between Debian and Arch as they are my 2 favorite distros and I am easily led to do that.
Work - No and that is fine me. I have no control over that and I’m still productive with Windows/Microsoft products.
Family - I am the tech support person of the household. I prefer for people to use what they are comfortable with because that’s less on me to maintain.
it always fascinates me when somebody tells about something they do and ppl first of any other reaction spits out how they should do instead. Not interesting at all and often annoying if it isn’t at least preceded by a “I find it interesting you did choose this approach, mind to share thenwhy and more details?” :D
As soon as gaming is mostly flawless and similar or better performance than windows, I’ll be 100% over. Gaming has come so far, all the way into the 2010s the only games on Linux were like Portal, HL, minecraft, and KSP. But it’s still got a little ways to go.
It’s always worth remembering that Linux is not a product, it is free software. So if you are switching you can’t go into it with the mindset of “somebody better fix this or I’m leaving” because there is nobody that will feel that pressure or care. You have to use Linux because it’s something you want to do.
If that’s the only barrier, you should try again. It’s further along than you think. Thanks in large part to the Steam Deck, compatibility is miles better. I have run into 2 games since I switched 1.5 years ago that won’t run - both are EA titles (shocked Pikachu face). That was my reason not to switch too.
I’m well aware of how far out has come, I was a second batch pre-order for the steamdeck. And yes, just in the time it’s been out, Linux gaming has come sooo far. For me, all of my games don’t run seamlessly and as well, some do still just shit themselves, so I still keep a win10 boot drive for gaming. Once major support for win10 ends I think Linux gaming will be even better and my gaming will finally be all Linux.
You don’t play many competitive multiplayer titles then. Anticheat us always a pain.
Battleye and Easy Anti Cheat are Linux native, but just cause that’s the case doesn’t mean they will work. Half of the games using them either never had an official linux version or are currently broken again.
A few games using Xigncode and nProtect work too, but there the number is even lower.
Punkbuster worked on wine for 5 years but often needs to be installed manually.
As for the more aggressive ones like Riccochet and Vanguard, you can’t even run them in a VM environment.
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