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Sorry but Linux is becoming too mainstream for me now. Time to hop on to BSD
Oh no, I feel it already the “I was on Linux before it was cool”
Dragonfly BSD, or else it will still be mainstream :)
Check out mister Mainstream over here. The rest of us snooty OS connoisseurs use Collapse OS.
Windows 11 is a strong motivator. I suspect like many other people, the only reason I was keeping Windows around was gaming. But thanks to Proton and the Steam Deck, the number of games in my library that won’t run on Linux is vanishingly small. I deleted my Windows partition a few months ago and haven’t looked back.
Install Linux or buy a Mac, fuck Windows.
Don’t buy a Mac. That’s more limiting than a Windows. But yeah install linux.
More limited, but also less enshittified than Windows.
If you want a good, well-polished experience for certain creative workloads, or even programming, MacOS is great and their Apple Silicon CPUs are excellent.
If you want to do ANY gaming besides WoW (which surprisingly enough has always had great MacOS support) or you can’t stand the lack of configurability, Linux is immediately the superior choice by far.
I would like to add that if you want to do any real customization of your setup don’t get mac either.
Oh definitely
The whole business model of Apple is to force a hardware upgrade cycle on you and force all your devices to be in that same ecosystem.
I mean, I can see the advantages of it on the short term, but on the longer term having stuff that keeps on working even as always even in older hardware (or you just install new hardware under it and it just recognizes it and keeps on working) is a massive benefit versus a $1500+ bill every
twofive years and having to migrate your stuff.It’s more like 6-7 years and the migration tool basically clones your drive in 15 minutes
Even though I do hate Apple as a company, they do make great products, they just charge out the ass for them
Nah, even their hardware consists out of laptops with screen protection falling off, phones bending themselves into breakage and cables with the sensitive connectors on the outside so they’ll break often.
Their OS is surprisingly buggy, too.They’re actually just shit all around, in my experience.
I dislike Apple as a company but I love Apple hardware. Old Macs are my favourite thing to run Linux on.
Gaming works pretty damn well as far as I’m concerned, the few that I can’t get to work are irrelevant.
I’m keeping Windows around for work… fuck Autodesk and fuck Dassault. So I am trying to get a VM with GPU pass through to work (had it working once but then I screwed it up and now I can’t seem to get it working again).
Having done the transition some months ago, there is still some stupid shit one has to deal with (especially, but not only, for games NOT from Steam) at times, more than in Windows, but it’s all so much better than it was before and by now quite close to the Gaming experience in Windows.
Then on top of that there are all the the longer term peace of mind things versus Windows: upgrading your Linux costs zero, changing your hardware won’t invalidate your Linux “OEM License” (plus it will probably just boot up as normal with if you just move your SSD to a whole new machine rather than throw you into driver nightmare), games that work in today’s Linux will keep on working in tomorrow’s and so on - this is actually massive advantage of Linux versus Windows which is seldom talked about: more often than not, hardware migration with Linux is to just move your SSD to a whole new machine, with all the stuff just the way you like it and all you files, and it just boots with and keeps on working.
(PS: Especially relevant for gamers who have to upgrade due to the increasing demands on hardware from the gaming side of things even though the hardware is fine for everything else they do in that machine, and who would rather that all those other things they’ve installed and kept on using rather than uninstall after “finishing the game”, just carry on configured just the way they like it and working just the way they’ve always did, even when they do upgrade the hardware because of games. People who are fine with hardware dedicated to gaming and with replacing the whole thing - hardware and software - for newer games, just get XBoxes or similar consoles, not PCs)
Linux not only saves you from enshittification, keeps control in your hands and preserves your privacy, it’s also a reliable and functional long term OS layer for your hardware that doesn’t force hardware upgrades on you.
I dicked around with the VM route for a while and could never really get it working 100% to my liking. There was always a trade-off. I ended up just getting a second PC and tucking it in a cabinet out of sight. When I need Windows I just use remote desktop to connect to it.
Mac?! Darwin no, that’s doing the opposite of liberating yourself and it has less gaming than Linux I’d say.
It does. Gaming on mac is a pain. Gaming on linux is a much better experience, and has much better support at this point. Apple really alienates developers.
I didn’t mean for gaming specifically, probably should have used a transition statement. For creative and professional use cases, macOS is still far far better than Windows. For gaming yeah that’s not your platform, Linux is.
I don’t think “liberating” your machine is the reason people are just now getting mad at windows.
- “I can’t choose when to update, anymore”
- “I can’t uninstall all sorts of things, anymore”
- “I can’t even use my perfectly fine laptop of 6 years old, anymore”
It’s all about liberation, I’d say.
“I can’t choose when to update, anymore”
That changed with windows 8 12 years ago.
“I can’t uninstall all sorts of things, anymore”
Unless you installed the embedded versions of windows you’ve never been able to do that, best you could do was turn like 5 things off in the features screen.
“I can’t even use my perfectly fine laptop of 6 years old, anymore”
I wouldn’t call your computer not getting updates so you install a different OS “liberating” it.
Also your computer not getting updates doesn’t magically turn it into a brick, you can still use it just fine. This is something I’ve never understood. As long as your web browser still gets updates that’s the biggest security vulnerability that I’d be afraid of. Chrome supported Windows 7 until 109 in 2023, and Firefox ESR is still going until September this year. 10th gen and older intel machines don’t get graphics updates anymore, are those machines ewaste? Shit some shitty laptops never get bios updates and there’s a whole host of vulnerabilities there.
That changed with windows 8 12 years ago.
Oh yeah, it’s been a gradual process.
And not to mention specific equipment such as train management that uses Windows XP, Windows 98 or 95. Just one example.
the number of games in my library that won’t run on Linux is vanishingly small
at this point, it’s pretty much only about Roblox.
…which I don’t want to play, I’m not happy about my nephews playing, but that seems like the only big one which really continues to struggle on Windows.
edit: that’s from my limited POV, as someone who loves gaming but i don’t follow or try out big new titles, I’m pretty much happy with my 30 favs, trying out like 5 new games a year, usually older or indie titles.
Roblox is about the only reason why I can’t switch my kid’s computer to Linux, they play almost exclusively that and Minecraft. Once win10 goes EOL, I’ll probably start budgeting to replace my laptop with a new PC and give them the laptop. The old PC will then get Linux and handle 3d printer stuffs
I might be out of date but for a long time my 2 nephews (10 and 13, cousins to each other) have been playing Blox Fruits, which I understand is pretty much a standard “grind” MMORPG. (Which I don’t necessarily find that bad; having to put a lot of work in a character and seeing it grow slowly and steadily can be a lesson.) I like how they are having fun trying to coordinate and take out a boss together (sometimes dying all the time), but I suppose other games can give that, perhaps even better-looking ones and certainly ones made by less shady companies. (Oh, and actually working on Linux/steam deck)
So I was wondering if there are other games that I could introduce them to, if only to remind them that world outside Roblox exists. I never played any MMORPG’s (or pretty much anything multi-player, except Minecraft/Terraria/etc. with the kids) so I’m out of the picture. I’ve only tried few in my life and never stuck for long.
Albion Online seemed child-like enough, albeit a little boring for my taste. One I really enjoyed recently is Path of Exile (and I it looks more than good enough to be hard to resist for a kid), but who knows – is that safe for 10 to 13 year olds…?
at this point, it’s pretty much only about Roblox.
It’s Honkai: Star Rail for me.
Petty as it may seem, I’ll begrudgingly dual boot Win10 until H:SR is playable on Linux.
I’m Linux user since 2008 and as much as I want to agree with you, I can’t. Even if Mac is much closer to Linux with its BSD roots, I probably would choose Windows over Mac. Why? Because Windows is much more open and less restrictive than OS X. And there is the support and compatibility of Steam games (and games in general) in Windows. The hardware repair ability is terrible on Apple too.
Yes, Microsoft is bad, Windows is bad; so is Apple and OS X. I personally can’t live with the restrictions Apple has.
Same here. If I could get Vortex Mod Manager to work under Wine/Proton, I wouldn’t use Windows at all.
Nexus Mods is working on an AppImage version of their mod manager that works perfectly in my testing.
Currently it only supports Stardew Valley and Cyberpunk i think.
I’m excited for it to have parity with Windows Vortex.
Give it a shot again, something changed recently in Proton (I assume) that made Vortex “just work” for me on my Steam Deck. I didn’t even need to do any fiddling, I just ran the installer exe from desktop mode using Lutris and whatever Proton was latest, and it installed perfectly. Vortex now runs entirely as expected, even from game mode.
What games are you using it for? I’ve used Mod Organizer 2 for Skyrim SE and it’s worked great on the deck
Really? The last few times I’ve tried (granted it was a year or more ago) I got like 15 FPS on a heavy modlist running on my desktop, which had a GTX 2080 and was running Arch, btw. Trying to get MO2 to launch the Linux version of Skyrim running via Steam/Proton and not the Windows version of Steam running through WINE was a fun mess to deal with. Once all that was handled, then half of the modding programs (xEdit, Nemesis, BodySlide, etc…) didn’t work with MO2s virtual FS. It was just way too many layers of abstraction to deal with 🤯
Yes, really haha. I don’t think I would consider the mod list I used heavy, at least not graphically. I didn’t use any of those programs you mentioned.
Trying to get MO2 to launch the Linux version of Skyrim running via Steam/Proton and not the Windows version of Steam running through WINE was a fun mess to deal with
I recall using some sort of script that installed MO2 and handled all of this (at least for the Steam Deck).
Either way, I hope their new cross-platform launcher works out well.
Nice, thanks I’ll give it a try again because Windows 10 is really pissing me off regarding how practically anything that you used to be able to easily disable now requires one or multiple registry hacks that may or may not work anymore.
I totally understand you not giving all that a try because while it is a handheld Linux PC, it’s probably more of a pain in the ass to use on that screen and with the standard input (obviously docking it would solve these issues) than it’s worth. I just keep Windows on my Desktop to play a few games, my home server is my workhorse and I have a Linux laptop that work gave me (literally, they laid me off and never asked for it back).
I checked out Mod Organizer 2 recently, but it didn’t support Subnautica the last time I tried it. I only use mods for a few games, line Stardew Valley and the Fallout games.
Vortex should be easy to get working, it probably just needs the Dot Net and Visual C libraries installed, which I think you can get via Wine Tricks.
Literally the only reason I keep Windows around is because modding Skyrim (using MO2, not Vortex) is a nightmare. I use Wabbajack as well, so the idea of installing 500+ mods manually in Vortex doesn’t sound ideal, also since Vortex’s conflict management is an absolute nightmare compared to MO2’s.
FREEBSD >0.009% RAAAAAH 👹👹👹💪💪💪💪💪🦾🔥🔥🔥
BSD is dying
It is sad but we build up Linux so we have a libre privacy and freedom alternative
im doing my part 💪
switched to arch a week or so ago, absolutely loving it
I’m doing my part
Linux Mint here. Soon to switch to a more “manual” distro.
The only real reason to switch to another distro nowadays is because you want to get updates faster (rolling release [like Arch] vs steady releases) and/or you want the ability to customize the OS more easily. Also, if you wanna be that person that wants to remove SystemD from Linux or have a version controlled OS.
Or if you’re sold on the hype of atomic distros (such as Fedora Kionite)
Or if you’re sold on reproducable OS configuration (Nix)
Or if you simply like the defaults of another distro better and don’t want to have to deviate from standards.
Or…
Nah, there’s still a lot of variety to Linux systems.
I like mint cause it stays out ofy way for literally everything.
I can’t think of time where I needed anything more than Mint for a desktop. It’s been on at least one device in my house since 2010.
Time to speak to our representatives to switch to Linux Systems as Switzerland did for cyber security and for fiscal responsibility.
We must not fall behind that smart country once again.
What?! All that noise about Switzerland mandating usage of open sourced software in gov (there was a great step, but it’s far from mandating anything) was already weird, now we are switching to linux? And caring about security and fiscal responsibility? There has to be another country called Switzerland than the one I live in.
You’re right, I believe the only thing Switzerland mandated (or wants to mandate?) is for projects built FOR the government to be open sourced - and even then, there are exemptions.
Of course, unlike you, I don’t live in Switzerland, so I’m probably not as informed.
Il feels like every month that passes Linux keeps breaking all time highs! So exciting
Microsoft’s advertising campaign for people to switch to Linux is working great.
YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
We’re gonna hit that 5%
It is kinda crazy. Been using Linux since 2005 or 2006 on my desktop/notebook. I cannot believe we are almost mainstream now.
Now that we do so many things through a browser and WebKit/Blink (which run everywhere) have become the de facto standard browser engines, the OS no longer matters as much as it used to.
going to surpass ‘unknown’ any year now. it’s happening.
Yes
Nobody using TempleOS? =(
THE LORD NEEDS NO NETWORKING!!! THE LORD IS THE NETWORK!
U glowing
It is 16% in India, lessgo!
Cool. My wife switched to LMDE yesterday, so that’s one more into the fold.
If only MS Office worked well on Linux, due to her muscle memory, my wife would’ve switched to Fedora for her laptop. Aside from light gaming (Sims 4, mostly), she’s not a tech-person at all, so that’s saying something in my book!
She might adjust to LibreOffice, it borrows heavily from the MS Office UI. I think it’s also available on Windows if she wants to try it before switching. Sims 4 works great on Linux too.
Is someone kind enough to post a screenshot of the stats? I can’t access it, because its a known tracking site and get blocked by the plugins.
Okay, I have bit the bullet and made an exception to provide screenshots myself:
Thanks for your service, comrade.
Next time try out visiting the page through archive.org
I didn’t think of it, because I always think or archive.org as older pages/versions. The problem is, is it updated to current? It’s a big site, so probably it will be. Good idea, I’ll check that next time through archive.org.
You can always* request a new archive of a website. If you log in (warning: it has to load google code at least when registering) you can also request a screenshot (which I don’t know how you find later on, but right after you get a link) and recursive archiving with a depth of 1.
Interactive elements remain interactive nowadays, but it has limitations.In some cases archive.today is worth a try too. It has workarounds for e.g. facebook, or at least in the past it had a fake account to be able to save facebook content.
But this one loads whatever code from yandex, so if that’s problematic for you be sure to block it. uMatrix is best for that task, probably uBO can do it too, the Firefox version I mean.These sites are basically my “remote browser”, and often it’ll be even useful for others that I requested an archive. Quite often I’m requesting the first one.
* mostly, but you can’t if the site was very recently archived, like in 30 minutes. Then there are some sites that are blacklisted for some reason but not much.
I wonder what happened to OS X
It does not mean that something happened with MacOS / OS X. If it stays the same and everyone else gets bigger, then the same gets smaller relatively speaking. Look at the dip for OS X in Nov 2023. Looks like almost the same amount of up for Windows. Also Chrome OS went a bit down and Unknown went up, only Linux stays the same.
So either something in their software changed or it was really a phase of people buying new computers and changing their OS. For a fact, I also build my PC in Nov 2023 (but stayed on Linux). Maybe that was a time of new hardware or lower prices, don’t remember exactly.
I’m so happy.
But also liked when linux felt like a secret.
Microsoft finally did something right: they made their shitty product shitty enough for people to realize it.
But also liked when linux felt like a secret.
Don’t worry. You can still tap into that sweet sweet Linux elitism by running an Arch based system or a tiling window manager.
That’s old news, NixOS is the new hotness
Also what the fuck is a tiling window manager? I want it!
Instead of having your windows float around, they perfectly snap and fill the space of the monitor depending on how many windows you have open. A new DE in alpha right now called Cosmic has both floating windows and tiling, you can change with just a toggle.
Cosmic is great so far, I run it on Fedora.
Oh my gosh I need this now.
Fedora? 🤢 jk
The big common ones are i3, Hyprland, or Awesome. However, there are tons out there and there is no right answers.
I want my windows anywhere I want them, and in Cinnamon I can snap windows to corners, o top, or bottom… Being forced to work tiled is backwards.
If as someone mentioned in Cosmic you can toggle it off and on ( and the toggle is esasily accesible, not buried in settings) I’m fine with that
“Being forced to work tiled” that’s the main feature of a tiling wm though…
If you tried it for a while, you’d realize just how annoying floating windows really are. All that manual positioning, focus issues, getting them stuck or hidden behind other windows, etc. For big monitors, I would say tiling is just flat superior to floating windows managers.
Only if you’ve installed Arch itself, using a GUI is noobs.
I see your Arch and raise you a Gentoo.
I’m sorry, can you clarify what you wrote? I read it but then got distracted by my cursor moving on its own while I was reading an article about xzutils. Perhaps I should read it again since it made no sense the first time.
I think Gentoo with no binaries should be the new archlinux. I’ve literally used archlinux virtually unchanged outside of updates for years now. It’s been trouble free outside of some minor bugs and I change my settings in the kde settings panel 90% of the time.
soon we will reach the magic number companies need to finally consider supporting Linux for once
What is that magic number?
Always 5% higher than it currently is.
100%
At this rate the Year Of Linux On The Desktop will be 2033!!!
2033!!! = At least 16
Call me naive, I know I am. But how can Linux be a moderated product to sell for desktop? I know phones run Linux, and many other products like streaming pucks run Linux (or is called unix?), but what would it take for an operating linux system to be centralized into a package to toss into a lenova laptop you’re staring at in best buy?
how can Linux be a moderated product to sell for desktop
It kinda depends on each individuals’ use case; there’s lots of different Linux distributions that are better (or worse) for specific workloads.
Any given laptop I’m staring at in a store will probably work perfectly fine as a general-use machine with Linux Mint installed. This is my go-to distro when repurposing a machine because it works great out of the box. If I were running a computer store and wanted to sell consumer laptops with Linux on them, I’d default to Mint.
If someone is looking to turn their PC into something more specialized for gaming, they can look at something like Bazzite or Batocera. These will generally require some tinkering.
If an individual or company is looking to build an office with many workstations and user accounts, they might consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux so they can benefit from official support channels if something needs troubleshooting. Many computer labs at NCSU used RHEL when I attended many years ago.
Want a stable server environment? Debian is a standard pick.
Want a barebones system with no bells and whistles (but great battery life)? Alpine oughta work.
So Linux has many options for end users to pick from, which can be seen as a good thing (more options is generally good), but also a bad thing (many end users might consider the plethora of options to be overwhelming if they’ve never used Linux before).
Linux (or is called unix?)
Linux (Or GNU/Linux) operating systems are a modern implementation of an old research OS that was called “Unix”. Spiritual successors to Unix like Linux and BSD try to bring a lot of the design philosophies of Unix into modern OSes (I believe this is generally called the “POSIX” standard. e.g.: macOS is a POSIX compliant OS, iirc).
If I’ve gotten any of this information incorrect, please don’t tell Richard Stallman.
This is the greatness of Linux. Instead of having to change your workflow to be compatible with your OS, you can change your OS to be compatible with your workflow.
So if you did open a computer shop and are selling this plethora of Linux options, doesn’t that leave you liable if there are issues with the operating system?
If I buy a laptop and my windows is running poorly don’t I have windows support taking care of my windows problems?
If I buy a laptop from you with mint installed and am having problems I can’t contact Linux for support, I’ll have to contact you the shop owner.
Won’t this liability discourage shop owners from selling laptops/desktops with Linux?
I’m no legal expert; I assume support can be either offered or completely avoided depending on the shop owner’s preference. Most Linux distributions come with a “this software is free (as in freedom) and comes with no warranty or guaranteed functionality” disclaimer.
If I wanted to engage more with my clients and build more trust, I might offer some degree of troubleshooting/support for the Linux machines I sold. But I don’t think I’d be under any legal obligation to offer that service just for selling the laptops.
Whether or not the computer shop offers support might affect whether or not a customer wants to shop at my store. Maybe I can sell my laptops cheaper if I don’t offer support, or maybe my laptops cost a bit more because I do offer aftermarket support.
It’s a tough sell because there is no monetary incentive to get Linux on laptops and desktops. Dell has a few computers that ship with Ubuntu, and Lenovo with Fedora, and there’s System76. The problem is that the big manufacturers (namely Dell) get push-back from Microsoft if they start to sell other OSes with their products, so they no longer have 100% domination. Microsoft will say “Oh you’re selling a few products that come with Linux? Well, we won’t offer you the ability to sell Windows anymore…” which would obviously be a huge impact to their business. They have gotten around this, but their offerings are still really slim. The market just isn’t there compared to Windows based computers. Shelf space is expensive so they go with what sells: Windows based products.
Is it because Microsoft is the big dog with money and Linux is no dog because there is no company backing Linux? Windows sells solely because Windows can push the product?
Would it be benificial (albeit this will be extremely frowned upon by this community I believe) for a Linux distro to be backed and monetized via a corporation with a legal team to help push a Linux product on the shelves? In the short run it’s a bad idea, but in the long run it’ll familiarize the public, and push software developers for compatability. The incentive being that there’s money now involved and it won’t be a project for people.
Because right now to use Linux for the majority of user case operations you’d need at least computer science 101 to start installing a distro, partitions, manual software installation, to get running. Or am I wrong on this part?
There are a couple of OEMs like System76 and Starlabs that sell laptops with Linux on them, provide tech support for customers and so on.
And no, installing most distros aren’t hard. You just click the buttons to proceed and fill out the username and password box, select your time zone and select your wi-fi network if you’re using wifi.
You can do manual partitioning but why would you if you don’t know what you’re doing?
Installing software in the GUI is as easy as installing software from the Microsoft Store. Just search or look around and when you see something you want, just click the Install button.
Some laptop manufacturers (and at least one of the larger ones) already offer Linux (Ubuntu) as a pre-installed OS. I suspect this will become more common if/when Linux becomes more popular as a mainstream desktop OS. Most likely it will still be 1 or 2 pre-selected distros though even then.
That’s really cool I didn’t know that was an option already. How does Ubuntu and windows compare for operating system support if I have a problem with the laptop? Is the manufacturer liable for the smooth running of the operating system? Or is the owner of the operating system liable?
It’s a good question but I honestly have no idea how that works even today with windows actually because I have not owned a laptop in 15 years. In my mind, the laptop manufacturer has to guarantee compatibility with any OS it provides but even then, some support from the OS side may be needed. The best way to handle that would be if the manufacturer started contributing to the Linux kernel and provide full driver support because then everybody wins in the long run.
One way to do it is for each company to develop their own flavor to ship with their laptop, in much the same way phone manufacturers just modify Android and ship it.
As an example, check out System76 and their laptops featuring their Pop!_OS distro, which is very user friendly and stable in my experience.