2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He’s running Windows 7 right now, so I’ll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
I do, in VirtualBox. I have a 20 year old printer, and the drivers don’t work in newer Windows versions. I mean, at all. The installer crashes, and automatic driver installer only gets the scanner working.
Anyway, I don’t use Windows. It works on Linux. Kinda. In Linux Mint, I just can’t use high DPI, but I can scan, print, and see “remaining ink” just fine.
Manjaro is another story. Only “Normal Grayscale” works, hp-toolbox doesn’t even show the color cartridge. So I just use Windows 7 with the drivers as the heaviest printer driver ever.
But when I have to use Windows (e.g.: at school), I prefer Windows 7. Windows 10/11 have really weird control, and they are SLOW. Also, when installing Windows 10 onto school computers, nobody bothered to install drivers.
I like the ThinkPad T440s laptops that are in one class. But after upgrade to Windows 10 they have some battery charging issues, and some of them just fail to boot from time-to-time. I use the last one with Windows 7 because it just works.
You really should not be using Windows 7. If you need to for old software make sure it is isolated and doesn’t have network access. It is very insecure at this point.
Perhaps because this is such a typical Linux-bro meme?
By no means is it more user friendly. I drive it daily, my grandmother most definitely could not, they’re way too many times when something stops working or goes wrong with DEs.
It depends on what you mean. For me, it’s pretty user friendly, but I’m also fairly comfortable using a terminal and am very technologically literate. The fact it handles tedious tasks automatically (or can be made to trivially) is so much nicer than Windows. You can easily update all applications and your system in a matter of seconds. Compared to Windows where the application itself has to check for updates when it launches, sends you to download the installer, you have to run that and close the previous version, relaunch, and then you’re finally updated for that single application. Let’s not talk about system updates. Linux is more friendly. It requires a certain level of competence that Windows doesn’t, but if you’re above that level it’s generally better.
Sure, things can go wrong with DEs and other stuff, but it’s often easier than when things go wrong in Windows. Have you ever had the desktop or Explorer crash in Windows? It’s a bad time. Windows is not user friendly. People are just used to it.
They both do things that are more user-friendly than the other. The fact you think it isn’t user-friendly is really showing who doesn’t understand the term. I listed a few things Linux handles better than Windows, and there are many more. Windows fails at many steps, but people accept they understand Windows and deal with it. Windows also doesn’t have any options for customization, so it’s the same bad for everyone, which does help people solve issues, though they maybe shouldn’t have had them in the first place.
I also find those constant Linux comments annoying but one should really avoid using Windows 7. Win 7 has been out of support for a long time, either update to Win 10 (if possible), air gap it, install some other OS like Linux, or consider replacing the computer.
Windows has more minor problems that are superficial and easy to fix, Linux has less problems but when it does they’re more significant and detrimental.
Yeah I’m a Linux and Windows sysadmin for almost 15 years and don’t really care what it is in practice, just disagree with Microsoft on many things. People have actually argued to me here why I shouldn’t use Windows Server in an enterprise setting, as if a sysadmin who doesn’t prefer Windows would have any bearing on such things. It’s also funny how people seem to think managing Windows is very different than managing Linux, you’re basically doing the same things, I really only interact with Windows in the same manner I interact with Linux it’s just remote powershell instead of ssh. Building Windows server is just running a powershell script, building Linux server is just running the playbook.
Also I disable mostly everything through group policy on Windows and remove all the dumb stuff with remove-appxpackage. Use both for workstations too.
That’s my experience as well. I’ve been a Mint user for around 6 years (2012 to 2018 or 2019), with different DEs (Gnome, Cinnamon and Mate) and installations and there was always something that stopped working all of a sudden, or something wrong with Mint altogether that made the experience bittersweet. I even tried LMDE for a bit and didn’t last a week using it.
I ended up hopping to Antergos (RIP) and have been with it ever since.
I’d love if Linux could do everything but I still keep a Windows laptop. Mostly because I don’t want to go forum diving to update the firmware on my synthesizers or exert effort into something that should be thoughtless and trivial.
I used Windows 7 in 2023. It’s the best windows that still ran stuff but obviously that’s changing. I made the switch in April and have been dumbfounded by just how great proton is at running all my games.
I’m pretty sure that this is because steam uses chromium as its backend and chromium new version doesn’t run on windows 7. It’s still not good because there are some games that won’t run on newer systems and therefore 7 is required for preservation.
As many of you pointed out, yes I agree proton is the answer if possible. YMMV
This change is required as core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.
It might not fuck over people as bad as their abandoning XP did, but its still really fucking shitty that they abandon OS’s like this.
Simply because it means people who have games they used to be able to play on old machines, now cant get those games anymore, cause the service itself wont run on it on those machines.
They should at least fork off a special legacy version that lets people download their old games on their original platforms.
but they dont want to do that, not because of supporting it, because they dont want people to remember how sleek, slim, and fast steam used to be.
because there are games that people fucking own that don’t run on newer platforms, that they should still be allowed to fucking play and not have defacto taken away from them?
How is that hard to understand?
I swear to god the absolute short sightedness of gamers. If this prevented you from playing one of your games you’d be here spewing shit and fire and brimstone over it.
“how dare you call me out for defending the corporation when all i’m doing is viciously trying to attack you and shift the blame to you for your mild criticism of them!”
Expecting Valve to support an operating system that the creator of the OS doesn’t even support isn’t tenable. How much longer should Valve be forced to support Windows XP by that logic?
Valve sold games on steam that only run on XP via its digital download service
It should support XP with a legacy downloader for as long as people want to play their XP games on XP.
This shouldnt even be a controversial opinion, Y’all are whats wrong with modern gaming and why its become such a festering cesspit of microtransactions and theft.
Don’t LEASE digital games on a DRM platform then be surprised when it doesn’t work forever on outdated software that isn’t even supported by the original creator.
No one owns these games and pretending you do is just setting yourself up for disappointment.
You’re the one trying to keep Windows 7 alive and commercially viable.
And if you want to really get off topic to “original hardware/software”, I’m a big advocate for FPGA replacing original hardware for most users. The MiSTer and similar projects are real preservation and very much not “corpo dick sucking”.
“I’m not corpo dick sucking, now why don’t you go buy a 500+ dollar device from one of the companies selling it instead of doing your filthy peasant retrogaming”
The DE-10 nano is sold by Intel typically at a loss to assist with educational endeavors. The retro gaming community just kind of adopted the platform due to its cheap nature.
I think the MiSTer is the exact opposite of what you’re saying. It’s a corporation essentially subsidizing video game preservation for a period of time.
MiSTer is also open source software and hardware.
Again, you’re the one buying digital games on steam and calling others corporate dick suckers. You’re the one funding it without paying basic attention.
I’d rather blame the customer who keeps buying from the corporation but claims some moral high ground over the company.
Put your money where your mouth is. This isn’t the first time Steam has dropped support for an Operating System and you’re acting like this is some new revelation.
If you’re so against what these corporations are doing, stop giving them so much money. I’m not sure how much more you can glaze a company than you already have with your wallet.
All the blame should be on the customers, We should never try to hold the blessed companies accountable or criticize them in any way for their behavior, because it is the filthy customers fault for it all.
afterall, the customers just downright refuse to use their future sight to avoid problems, so they deserve it.
Yes yes, it’s all the companies fault even when the customer refuses to read the terms of service or acknowledge the company’s history of similar moves.
If you really cared, there are other platforms you could be using.
Anything to avoid personal responsibility.
Your comments read like someone who eats at McDonald’s and then blames them for being overweight.
Your comments read like someone who eats at McDonald’s and then blames them for being overweight.
Thats literally what you’re doing in this entire thread. “Customer should have known the coffee was hot and should have been more careful” is your entire argument.
Your ability to twist comments to fit your narrative in your own head are hilarious.
Steam leases digital games with a shitty Term of Service and the ability to change their agreements at any time. You’re the one blindly consuming then getting upset at the natural consequences.
Take some personal accountability for once.
I bet you’ll still be buying on Steam this time next year.
Your ability to twist comments to fit your narrative in your own head are hilarious.
Uh huh.
Steam leases digital games with a shitty Term of Service and the ability to change their agreements at any time. You’re the one blindly consuming then getting upset at the natural consequences.
And now we’re back to the same old “You should have known the coffee was hot, its your fault for being careless and getting burned” arguments.
Take some personal accountability for once.
Accountability for me, but not accountability for billion dollar businesses, Right?
You didn’t stop buying games when they killed XP support. They announced at the begining of this year (at least by March 2023) that they were dropping windows 7 support and you still kept buying.
Why do you keep doing the same thing but expecting a different outcome?
Stop spending money at places you claim are anti consumer. You are the problem. You. There are other companies you could support but you want to keep funding Steam while crying victim.
All this because I said valve should have a legacy downloader so people can still play the things they bought that dont work on modern OS’s.
Something that would cost valve, a multibillion dollar company, almost nothing in the grand scheme of things.
But apparently caused so much offense, that you’ve sat here clawing your hair out at the sheer audaciousness the comment.
You really need to go outside and take a few calming breaths and realize how fucked up it is that you are this defensive over criticism of a company that doesnt give a single shit about you.
Yes yes, a legacy downloader that doesnt effect you, is such an egregious and evil thing and totally deserving of this crazy, borderline mental illness reaction you’ve sustained.
And now we’re to the point where you keep repeating the same arguments and demanding the same answers, in an attempt to make the other person walk away so you claim a pathetic “win” and strut around like a high street cock.
I’ve been on the internet a long time, friend. Your tactics are not clever, or new.
I haven’t asked why you wouldn’t upgrade before, nor about the broken compatibility features included with Windows.
Direct your anger at the company causing your issues (Microsoft), not the one that hurt you because you couldn’t figure out hardware acceleration with remote play.
Upgrade your windows install to a supported version and then use the mods to make the game work. Then you’ll have windows 8 or 10 or 11 and a working game.
You’ve already tried that tactic, too, and I provided several links the last time you tried it.
If youre memory is this bad, and you are this prone to irrational anger, I strongly suggest you get someone you can trust to take you to the ER immediately for an evaluation, Your health matters.
You’re buying a license which is subject to conditions decided upon by the developer, publisher, platform, and others. If you want to own a copy of the game, don’t buy it on Steam.
Downvote all you want, reality isn’t changing to match your feelings. Stop supporting DRM or quit bitching while simultaneously strengthening the system you are choosing to ignore.
I strongly reccomend Zorin OS. I was in his exact shoes when I decided to switch to Linux and for very similar reasons. It feels pretty similar to Windows 7 IMHO, and I like its default dynamic background that changes throughout the day. Steam games run great on it btw.
The other reason I reccomend Zorin is that it is aimed at windows users and Mac users. There’s an “app store” that is in fact a software manager, most windows apps run pretty well (although I reccomend using Bottles for that) and the layout is designed to feel similar to Windows. All the fun Linux stuff is still right there for you to use, it’s just slightly out of sight so it doesn’t overwhelm you at the beginning.
If your friend ends up not liking the GNOME desktop environment because it’s so radically different from the Windows UI, then maybe add the K in Ubuntu, I guess.
Well it very much does just work on mint. Selinux could potentially screw people but it seems better than that one arch based “extremely optimised” (forgot name) distro which broke on my first install. And fedora base is quite solid.
All these people saying “use this or use that distro instead” is why Windows users don’t go into Linux. Ubuntu is a solid choice for beginners because that’s a distro with a lot of tutorials online if not the most.
It’s about Ubuntu behaving lightly like Microsoft with a closed source backend for the store, having had ads in the apps drawer, putting ads on the motd in cli with apt… It’s small things like these
No I did not. My actual opinion would be to recommend Nobara OS. What I did was agree with OP’s decision. It doesn’t matter in the end which they use but if someone is deadset on Ubuntu and you hear several people saying “pick mint” “no pick pop os” “no actually Debian” it becomes overwhelming. Agreeing with OP’s decision does not make me a hypocrite.
I somewhat disagree. Sure, telling windows users they have so many options will overwhelm them so it’s best to just give them 1 or 2 options. But telling other linux users who are about to put/suggest linux on someone else’s computer that there’s better options is good.
For example, let’s take Ubuntu pushing snaps. A noob won’t know what they are, and there’s good chances they will have a bad experience with them and not understand what they are, they will probably think it’s a Linux problem rather than an Ubuntu problem and there’s a good chance they will leave linux because of them. I personally learned the problems I was having at the start of my linux journey were problems with snaps only because I read it somewhere in the zorin discord server or something like that. If it wasn’t for that I would have thought it’s a linux problem. Tho this wasn’t easy information to find and I was already well on my way to becoming a Linux nerd and I was interested in learning more, but the average user, in my experience, doesn’t know/want to look these things up and if you try to explain to them there’s a good chance you’ll lose them halfway through (which is normal, package managers aren’t a fun topic) Telling a linux user about it and that linux mint (for exampel) may be a better introduction for their resident noodles doesn’t run the risk because they’re already a linux user.
I use Ubuntu for my VMs, and Snaps never feel bad. Why are Snaps bad? At this point, I am only aware that “Snaps are bad” because people keep parroting that idea. Is there an empirical benchmark that compares the “speed” (whatever that is defined as) of a Snap app vs other packaging formats? If there is a claim to be made, there should be evidence supporting it.
If we’re going by anecdotal data, then I have had fewer Snap issues than Flatpaks and Rpm. So technically, Snaps are superior, according to my experience. At that point, it becomes an anecdotal debate, which is meaningless.
for some people snaps work, for most they don’t. If they work, we all good, but when they don’t people will blame Linux for this issue. And that’s just snaps there’s a lot of shady bs Canonical is doing. Meanwhile we know Linux Mint’s packages, for example, work well and rarely has anyone complained about them. There are some benchmarks but that isn’t the main issue.
Yeah exactly. People expect beginners to know the distro for VoIP phones, when in reality all they need to know is how to install plain Ubuntu that is not a server.
I dislike GNOME, but I would still recommend Ubuntu to anyone, because it just works. There’s no reason to recommend Arch Linux or openSUSE etc. if someone never used (GNU/)Linux before.
There’s a lot of people out there that hate to hear this, but ubuntu is probably the best gateway to Linux we have at the moment. Go ahead, let them come in on the distro that’s pretty well supported, preconfigured with everything on and newbie friendly, then once they’ve cut their teeth, let they have the option to move to something that’s a little more tweaked.
I’ve used Ubuntu for 10 years. I love it for stability, ease, and simplicity If i need to do anything there are plenty of guides. I learned how to do a lot of cool stuff on linux but I don’t really need or want to do any of it.
Mostly I just pirate movies, use a vpn, torrent, listen to music, write. My career doesn’t require much computer stuff. Why should I try something different?
I’m not working with a huge amount of interest in or energy for complicated customization. I just wanna turn it on and have it work.
Power to you, friend. But with current snap store out of the box it’s really hard to recommend Ubuntu to anyone. Linux Mint seems such a better choice to newbies.
At the end of the day it’s not really a big deal, people should just use whatever feels best.
If you use apt-get you aren’t using snaps, you are unaffected.
Snap is a format created by Canonical which has a really funky proprietary back end. The default application store in Ubuntu uses this format and has been plagued with an impersonation problem. Since everyone could submit snaps there was a lot of spyware posing as legit software. My main gripe was when the snap store just decided to unilaterally close and update my Firefox while I was using it.
Linux Mint does NOT have snaps and even had a debian based version. Pretty neat
As a windows user who’s been doing some research and looking to switch this is really the post I needed to see. I know everyone seems to have their favourite distro and means well when suggesting them but its nice to have someone point out a distinct beginner friendly one with no caveats.
To be perfectly honest they’re all fine. Most of the major distributions are install it and run it. If you try one and you don’t like it don’t get discouraged try another. If you have trouble getting your hardware working on one try a different one.
Win 7 64-bit handily beats any distro of Linux at .69% (nice). Comparing only to 32-bit isn't a fair comparison. Not that I'm against using Linux, I use Pop_os on a spare computer as a Linux test bed for gaming.
Does distro breakdown matter that much though? It only really matters on windows because each version has significant compatibility changes. AFAIK as long as you update your system Linux compatibility with tools like wine/proton shouldn’t change much between distros.
0.69% (nice) on windows 7 64bit. That’s 0.75% total or 0.91% including windows 8 which is also dying. This is slightly under half of the linux user base according to these statistics
I think the 1.91 also includes the stream deck, but for some reason it isn’t included in the list (it is included if you select only Linux). It is about 5.5x Arch so around 0.8% of the total installs.
So the discontinue versions are around the same number as Linux desktop installs.
I have the throw my opinion in here, I recommend Debian. Ubuntu is based off of it, as is most of the other distros people are recommending. With AMD processor and GPU, Debian has been my best OS experience to date. No bloat, recent kernel, and stable as hell. Only advantage of Ubuntu is the plethora of tutorials and guides written for it, but most of those will work with bookworm if you use Ubuntu jammy repos and guides.
I beg to differ. The no bloat might simply turn out as an issue when they have an Nvidia Card or try to install drivers for it. Additionally the installer is not very intuitive. (And Ubuntu has other Problems where why not just use Mint which has so many UX und GUI Features from windows, it even prompts you to install drivers using an simple GUI application)
Like others already mentioned, I would suggest Linux Mint as well. It’s better Ubuntu than Ubuntu and similarity to Windows UI would make his transition much better.
Seconded. Switched my wife to Mint two years ago, and she never cared about going back to Windows. Not that she cares about Mint, either; the point of contention was the transition, which was much smoother than she was afraid of.
I highly recommend Linux Mint (cinnamon) as an entry level Linux distro. It looks and feels similar to Windows, and it’s based on Ubuntu, so it has a lot of support and compatibility.
Really liked Mint, unfortunately the kernel was not new enough to support my 7900 XTX when I upgraded GPU so I ended up switching to Pop_OS which works fine as well.
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