I could never go back to Windows, after having tasted the freedom of Linux.
Linux has its flaws, but so does Windows. And for me, the flaws in Windows became much more annoying than the ones in Linux. Game compatibility was the main factor that kept me backt from using it on a desktop, and that’s a non issue nowadays.
Game compatibility
Steam+Proton is pretty impressive. I can play Baldur’s Gate 3 on my Thelio. Does get a little toasty, though …
Why would you buy that? Overpriced and with that case it’s no wonder that things get toasty. There’s like fuck all for airflow. If you want a case with wood accents, there’s the North from Fractal Design, which have great airflow thanks to their open fronts.
I’m so happy something like this exists. I hate RGB and love wood on my electronics. Think I’m gonna pick one of these up.
I didn’t buy it for a gaming machine. I was pleasantly surprised that a fancy new Windows game ran on it at all!
I thought you were just being a dick but then I checked out the North from Fractal Design and wow it’s beautiful!
I’m just calling out those idiotic cases that completely choke your hardware of air. You want an open front (or similar depending on the form factor) to get a bunch of silent fans in to let your system breath properly. Bad airflow will just cause your temps to rise, which also severely increases the noise.
Yeah I mean you’re probably right. I think people just downvoted to hell because of how you phrased it.
At least not on kbin (18 vs 0).
Thermaltake coreV21 has entered the chat. https://youtu.be/xwOL5QYxJD4
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I don’t see any wood on that. Personally I had bad experiences with TT’s quality too, but that was admittedly a long time ago with the Shark.
Because it’s open source i.e. fully upgradable and repairable, and the mission behind the company is something I would want to support.
It’s a prebuilt company that doesn’t use proprietary garbage to force each and every customer to buy an entire new system when their original purchase starts to become obsolete.
I don’t own anything from system76, I’ve built my own my whole life, but I still believe prebuilts should be for people who can’t build their own, not a timeless and somehow socially acceptable way to scam your customer and still have them come back for more
Are there prebuilt desktop PCs that aren’t? I have personally yet to see one, even though I build my own. Maybe some small form-factor office rigs would be a hassle, but those are not really marketed to usecases where upgrading makes much sense anyway,
That doesn’t make sense. Many hardware stores offer an assembly of your hand picked hardware, which gives you 100% control over the components and actually fair prices, as well as the option to use a more sensible case. Of course it costs a bit extra to let them do that and you have to buy everything in one store, which might be more expensive than spreading it out, but it is still better than 90% of those prebuilt systems.
And nothing there is open source, you can install Linux on any computer you want, regardless of where it came from. They just save the Windows license costs.
Flaws I didn’t pay for piss me off a lot less.
While that’s certainly also part of it, I would still stand by my opinion even if Windows was completely free.
Raise your hand if you ever paid for that hot chunk
I consider myself forced to pay for it every time I buy a laptop whose price has to include Microsoft’s cut off the action.
You are not forced, plenty of manufacturers offer FreeDOS variants for so many years, just support them instead.
I bought myself a copy of NT 4.0 back in the day.
I’m still dualbooting Windows to play games with a controller until I can get off my ass and buy a USB hub. Reason being that the Xbox Series controllers has issues with my mobo’s Bluetooth chipset, even when updating the firmware. Bluetooth support is particularly inconsistent with these.
But outside of the odd app that needs Windows (and I can just boot a VM for that), Linux has been really good on the desktop.
I invested in an Icy Box IB-AC6110 powered 10 port usb hub a while ago too, but it is more for additional controllers, specifically joysticks and the likes. Mainboards just don’t have enough USB ports for all that. Dual sticks or a hotas? Two gone. Maybe some pedals? Now it is 3. How about a camera and a head tracker? Well, 4-5 depending on your product solution. Defo gives me some peace of mind to be good on USB ports.
yeah, thankfully I can go a bit more basic than that, I just need to figure out what hub, or even cable, I wanna get.
I have been using this hub. Works fine in Linux and windows.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0871ZHCKK?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
I also use this usb dongle for my Xbox controller. It works fine in Linux. I really should try playing a few games on Linux.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0785SFKYF?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
For me it’s the basic things that drive me crazy in Windows: the Start menu doesn’t work half of the time, and it shows web results above the program you want to run. File operations are slow and the File Explorer crashes a lot. Application windows constantly steal focus from the one I’m typing in, leading to passwords being typed into code, documents, web browsers or other unsafe places. Background indexing is constant and eats up CPU, and the file search still takes forever despite all this indexing.
These are all basic things that Microsoft has had decades to get working, and they’re all still broken. Microsoft always seem to be paying attention to anything but the quality of the user’s experience.
By contrast, Linux is just relaxing.
Man that MS indexing is so terrible. I shut it off because it was robbing my system when trying to work, and as you said it is slow anyway. Compared to GNOME desktop where the indexing is invisible to user, I hit the Suoer key type a few letters it instantly shows me results as you would expect indexing to work.
I don’t understand how Microsoft manage to make it so bad. What kind of index is it building that it can be so slow?
Asking the real questions
Mine is VST’s and games. Never had much luck using a vst bridge/wine, so i just went back to windows.
and that’s a non issue nowadays.
Again, this community is delusional lol. If you consider only about 5% of Steam games being Linux-friendly these days as “a non issue nowadays,” I’d hate to see your game library.
I game on linux regularly, primarily thanks to Valve. In the last 2 months steam lists 11 different games I’ve “Played Recently”.
- 7 worked flawlessly (Baldur’s Gate 3, Destroy All Humans!, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Besiege, Deep Rock Galactic, Shotgun King, Call of Cthulhu)
- 1 the native linux version doesn’t work, but the windows version works perfectly (Northgard)
- 1 didn’t initially work, but worked a month later after proton was updated. (Grounded)
- 1 I had to choose an older version of Proton (due to the external launcher breaking things), but with enough performance hitching during cutscenes that I chose to just play it on windows (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order)
- 1 I couldn’t get to work, but I honestly don’t know if it’s a linux issue because the game’s discussion forums are full of people saying the game is riddled with game breaking bugs on windows (The Sinking City)
I’ve been gaming on linux for a couple of years now, over that time I’ve put many hours into WoW, Sea of Thieves, Rimworld, Golf with your Friends, Core Keeper, Outer Wilds, and dozens more without any issues at all. 90%+ of the time the game starts up and just works.
I’m just one datapoint, but yeah, Linux as a gaming platform is totally viable for me these days.
Also, protondb lists 19% Verified and 16% Playable, so your 5% number is just demonstrably wrong.
Cheers.
I had to choose an older version of Proton
Which in turn caused the performance problems. Fast shader compilation extensions are available only on Proton 8 and newer.
Not sure why you’re getting down voted, you’re totally right. I wish I could have gotten it running on current proton as the recent performance updates are massive. Alas, EA Play ruined it. I found a GitHub issue for it and gave as much data as I could to help debug it.
Side note, when I ran the game on windows, EA Play was not only installed, but automatically configured to launch on startup. I just can’t imagine an app ever doing that to me on Linux.
If you consider only about 5% of Steam games being Linux-friendly these days
No matter how you twist and turn things, this is just flat out wrong…
Survey says…No.
The only games that don’t work are essentially the ones using DRM/anticheat implementations that don’t support multiple platforms. Meaning more like 75% of all Windows titles work under Linux just fine.
Again, this community is delusional lol. If you consider only about 5% of Steam games being Linux-friendly these days as “a non issue nowadays,” I’d hate to see your game library.
Speaking of delusional. You don’t seem to have a whole lot of ideas about Linux gaming if you truly believe this ignorant nonsense.
79% of my library has a Silver or higher rating on ProtonDB, 65% are Gold or Platinum rated. For the Top 100 in Steam it’s even better with 89% Silver+ and 79% Gold+. Of the Top 1000 Steam games it is 87% Silver+ and 75% Gold+. Even if we look at the entire Steam catalog we have 13% & 11% respectively, and that’s only so low because there’s literally just no reports. Only 1% of the titles are considered to be “Borked”, another 1% are Bronze rated.
You can check the data for yourself here: https://www.protondb.com/
And again, that’s just Steam and what has been tested by people. Most titles just run, others require minimal tweaking, some require a little tinkering.I’m curious what the number is excluding top games with DRM or anti cheat incompatibility
DRM isn’t really an issue. The main one that’s used nowadays is Denuvo and that has no issues with Linux. Anticheat usually only for competitive games, which I personally don’t give a damn. Other multiplayer games and their anticheat work fine, since they aren’t on a kernel level type rootkit.
Most of what you are missing out on are games that require some form of anti cheat. Most other stuff just runs. Most new triple A games just run these days.
I always see people say this but does no one here use professional apps like solidworks or revit? Are there good Linux alternatives? I’d switch to Linux but I need solidworks for work I do.
Windows is the defacto standard for desktop PCs for a reason. In a corporate setting it’s kind of the ideal.
Because of the sheer number of users, most software is built with Windows in mind and therefore has the most support. It’s pretty rare that you find an application that doesn’t have a Windows build available.
On top of that tools like Active Directory, and group policy makes managing thousands of machines at scale a reasonably simple affair.
Microsoft is a corporation rather than a community so you can always expect their main goals to be profit-driven and that comes with some nasty baggage, but it’s not enough that it’s easy for professionals to make the switch.
Linux has made lightspeed progress over the last decade, especially with Proton making games mostly work cross platform, but outside of specialist use cases, the vast majority of business PCs and by extension home PCs will be running Windows for the foreseeable future.
The popularity of Windows is largely due to the fact it’s pre installed on most PC’s when you buy them, people literally think Windows ‘is the computer’. Such popularity has little to do with Windows being a great OS. In many ways Windows is like McDonalds: It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, it just fills that hump in the bell curve.
Due to the fact Linux has no marketing department, it’s unlikely this will ever change.
Windows comes pre-installed on PCs when you buy them because it’s what people are generally comfortable using, because it’s what they use at work too.
And Windows is used on business PCs largely because of how manageable they are at scale. Windows is expensive. Like, really expensive. If you have 1000 PCs that have Windows and Office E3, assuming a bulk discount, that’s an up front cost of ~$200000 with the subscription costing an additional ~$20000/month. If it was feasible for business to change to a free alternative, I guarantee they would’ve done so.
You’re right in that that Windows is not some super great OS, but it does some things way better than anything else that make it an ideal choice for business use.
No, Windows comes preinstalled on most PC’s due to clever marketing. As stated, it’s more a case of people thinking Windows is the computer as opposed to any form of comfort regarding a fragmented touch/desktop UI making poor use of screen real estate.
I come across a number of Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa types that outright struggle with Windows; the device they feel comfortable with is the iPad.
No, Windows comes preinstalled on most PC’s due to clever marketing
I’d say it comes preinstalled because Microsoft has threatened OEMs to forbid Windows installations if they sell computers with Linux preinstalled.
The possibility does exist. I think the Adobe CC hasn’t been released under Linux for a similar reason, as Microsoft and Apple know that should Linux get the Adobe CC, people will flock to Linux.
A number of years back Adobe accidentally released a slide showing the Adobe CC running under Ubuntu, but strangely the product was never released on the platform.
And Windows is used on business PCs largely because of how manageable they are at scale.
… Linux being manageable at scale is kind of the reason why Linux is the standard for servers. Many enterprises run Linux workstation distros, and they can be managed at scale just fine, it’s just different tooling. You can deploy a Linux desktop OS with Ansible as easily as a Linux server.
You can replace pretty much the entire Office suite with Nextcloud and OnlyOffice, both of which can be easily hosted on-prem, for a fraction of the cost of paying MS for roughly the same thing on their awful infrastructure.
If it was feasible for business to change to a free alternative, I guarantee they would’ve done so.
They have. Just because you haven’t heard about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It’s pretty easy (and inexpensive) these days to run Linux desktop OSes like RHEL, Debian or Ubuntu on a VM running on Proxmox or OpenShift, complete with multiple monitor support and GPU. Hell, you can even run a Windows VM if you want. All you need is a system (like a thin client) with enough grunt to run a browser, and enough ports to handle multiple monitors and USB accessories.
And businesses aren’t interested in “free”, they’re interested in support, which they are willing to pay for. This is how companies like Ubuntu, Red Hat and SUSE make their money. The OS is free, but you can pay for professional support.
I work in software and I haven’t touched windows in a very long time. Even back whenever I worked on FPGA development all of that software ram on Linux, so I think you’ll find that this is very field dependent.
Closest thing I use to a professional app is DaVinci Resolve Studio on a distribution that is not officially supported by Blackmagic. Not only does Resolve Studio work perfectly, I am able to use Blackmagic hardware (Intensity Pro 4k, Speed Editor) without having to mess around with settings, config files, permissions, packages, etc.
The caveat here is the initial setup: I use an AMD GPU, and it’s a bit of a pain to get the free and licensed versions of Resolve working with those under Linux. However, once that’s out of the way, it’s completely seamless.
As for CAD…yeah that’s where everything falls over. There are tons of FOSS alternatives out there but I have yet to see any of them in a professional setting. Even Fusion360 is hit or miss under Wine, I spun up a Windows VM just to use that for my 3D printer tinkering.
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Onshape web based CAD from former SW employees. or if work is paying licenses you can run Siemens NX12 on linux (REL, SUSE, or OpenSUSE)
Idk is it CAD software? I know there are webapps for that now
Windows with WSL became a lot better to what Windows used to be but with the TPM requirement Win11 became factually less compatible that modern Linux (at least without fiddling to override that requirement).
And even WSL is essentially just a Linux VM.
Enough with the fan wars. Let’s be perfectly honest for once. Windows, Linux, MacOS - they all suck. Sometimes in similar ways, sometimes in different ways. But they all suck.
Windows users - I get you, you use it because it sorta works 40%, of the time and sucks in the way you understand.
Linux users - I get you, you know all of the arcane incantations you need to quickly install, update, and troubleshoot your os in a terminal window. It works - once you apply your custom bash script that applies every change you need to get everything exactly how you like it. But again, it sucks in the way you understand.
MacOS users - well I don’t really get you. You know what you’ve done.
We deserve better than this, guys. We deserve an os that just works, is easy to use, easy to configure, doesn’t require an IT degree to use, and that we can recommend to our grandma without a second thought.
Windows: “We dropped support for that thing you bought brand new 5 years ago”
Linux: “We are considering dropping support for something that has existed for longer than you had”
I’ve worked exclusively with Linux servers since 2002 and exclusively Linux desktop since 2004 and I’ve come to the point where I prettyuch refuse to touch windows for fear it will infect me somehow.
I know most people don’t know any better but it’s insanity to me that anyone still pays money for windows. It’s a scam, no other words for it.
Don’t even get me started on Windows servers. It’s just sad to see how much money is spent on a company that has so litte focus on quality.
Even the online services suck. Dear God Microsoft, would it kill you to understand that people might have gasp TWO tabs open with your teams “app”?
Even azure runs Linux
To think that even daedric prince would do that.
I guess I pay for the convenience that I get when I buy a new game, simply press Install and start playing. I spend most of my free time playing games on PC, I have no other reasons to stick to Windows. I’ll happily switch to Linux on the day when every new release works with no extra problems, tinkering, waiting or searching caused by my choice of OS.
This is going to sound selfish, but I don’t have the “energy” of fighting against whatever the current meta is - I just have to appreciate the more invested people that drive Linux forward. I’ll just follow and use the OS where I get the smoothest overall experience for gaming (including thing like mouse/kb driver support). Windows is the current answer for this, one day it’ll be something else - hopefully Linux.
Shit’s been progressing really fast recently - I guess Steam Deck is doing some heavy lifting when it comes to motivating developers to keep Linux in mind. Direct support will always give the best results for everyone.
I’ll happily switch to Linux on the day when every new release works with no extra problems, tinkering, waiting or searching caused by my choice of OS.
Let me give you an honest answer that no Linux users is willing to give you (certainly because they fear to scare people off of Linux): you will never see the day where Linux will be equal if not better than Windows for gaming (which it can be sometimes, but it’s not always the case) if not a certain amount of people get out of their comfort zone and are willing to try something new. In fact, nobody can improve anything in their life if they’re not willing to get out of their comfort zone.
You’re already using a PC to play video games, I did this choice too, so trust me, you definitely have the energy to change for a better OS, something ever you recognize as having qualities outside of games. Otherwise, you would’ve played exclusively on console where you actually have a plug and play experience… unfortunately at the cost of your freedom to use the machine you bought however you want, besides all the other considerable disadvantages.
For me, Linux made as much progress as it can do, meaning now, for Linux to be viable for gaming, either companies start to move their asses and make Linux native games (which they can easily do, if they’re willing to use the right tools for their game like Vulkan) but I hardly see that coming any time soon, or new users have to come to Linux so that companies would finally care. Personally, I made my choice by making the first step.
Games don’t always run perfectly under Windows on release either.
I specifically remember one of the CoD games running just long enough to use up all my vram, whereby it would promotly crash. Took about about two weeks to sort that one out.
My tinkering under Linux consists of downloading a game under Steam, ticking a compatibility checkbox, and playing the game. For other launchers, I simply open Bottles and install the launcher of my choosing. Been playing Diablo 4 under Battle.net just fine since launch.
It blows my mind just how bad file system performance is under Windows compared to Linux. I mean, you literally have to have an SSD in order for the OS to be responsive. Granted, most have SSD’s these days, but performance on spinning rust shouldn’t be that bad.
I’ll happily switch to Linux on the day when every new release works with no extra problems, tinkering, waiting or searching caused by my choice of OS.
Yes, it’s definitely getting close now…
2003 wants is comment back :p.
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I’m specifically talking about the experience of installing and playing games, not installing the OS. I haven’t had any issues with installing Windows either, but apparently we have a different experience with that part - but even then, installation/configuration of OS happens like once per 5 years so I don’t really care if it takes 15 or 90 minutes. I do agree that Linux is quite easy to set up too, no issues there either.
I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say “constantly having to un-fuck Windows”. I just open my PC and open whatever program/game that I was planning to?
But: if installing a new game requires more than pressing install from the service I bought it from due to the choice of my OS, that is the issue that I’m trying to minimize. If one OS is more likely to give me a smoother purchase-to-gameplay experience, I’ll prefer that one.
Basically if 90% of games work equally well on both platforms but 10% require extra tweaking (or literally don’t work) on Linux, I’ll just stick to Windows. Proton is great, but not a perfect answer for everything - but I’m not sure what you mean by “easier than Windows” since I don’t know what could be easier than pressing install.
I guess I’ve just been lucky with my experience overall.
I obviously do use the PC for other stuff too (video editing, browser, music, the usual), but those would work equally fine on Linux - it’s just the gaming part that’s keeping me on Windows, and it’s also the main thing I do on a daily basis.
It’s amazing to me that some company writes some awesome tech that allows users of one OS to run games on another OS that the game was never designed for and they complain because they might have to read protondb.com and copy something into a box in settings and maybe click another checkbox and select proton experimental from a drop-down list. I’ve been on linux as my daily driver at home since 2002-ish. I went years without playing most games (other than some wine experiments and old school rogue-likes), and right now the world has completely changed. If the AAA studios would enable a checkbox, most of their games would work with anti-cheat, but they want too much control of your system. I play games on an older nvidia cpu that work amazingly well. I had no desire to go back to Windows before, let alone now that gaming went from famine to feast in just a few years on linux. Valve has completely changed the linux landscape and has made it much much easier to get rid of Windows for good.
“Unfuck Windows” is not a rarity. Our house has a couple of Windows machines left. The latest Windows 11 fuckup was it deciding to press the Windows key in software at all times. The kernel apparently does this sometimes. The only fixes are to permanently disable the Windows key with a registry edit or to reinstall the OS.
No OS is perfect, but that’s an impressively shitty bug.
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I stopped gaming a long time ago but what I’m reading is that gaming in Linux has improved immensely and these days is in the same level as Microsoft Windows. I’d give that a try
Linux people will never admit that it’s like that though. I have a few friends on Linux and when we all boot a game to play, the windows users like me sit in the lobby waiting for my friends to trouble shoot why battlefield 1 isn’t launching on Linux, then they give up and just boot into windows and magically the game starts.
I haven’t had this exact experience, but I struggled to game on linux for years before I asked my self why I was struggling to prove nothing to nobody when I could just not.
I’ve used Linux since about 2004 for personal use. On my homer server(s) and desktop. 95% of them Gentoo (stable). For my relatives I’ve installed some EL workstation distro. Especially my father needs a install-and-forget system, which Windows isn’t.
But I do install and fix Windows PCs at my work. It’s because how Windows works (or rather not work) I get paid. That said, the more I use Windows the more I get frustrated with it.
One of the worst things lately was the accidental activation of BitLocker. It got activated even when the user didn’t have Microsoft account (from where he/she would retrieve the encryption key to decrypt the data if Windows decides to lock the drive). “Oh I’m sorry, but because M$ fuckup your data is gone. Do you have backups? 😇” To avoid any BitLocker issues the secure boot should be disabled. BitLocker shouldn’t then be available for activation.
Some of the frustrating sides of Windows can be avoided by using Pro version of Windows. But that’s simply not enough.
IMO the only reason to use (suffer from) Windows is if you play some games that require it.
My personal solution to that problem ist to not play those games. There’s plenty of stuff to play on Steam that runs fine on Linux.
not play those games
My tactic as well. 😉
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it started all with knowing a little bit of linux and applying for every position with linux in the description.
Thanks. Gives me hope for the better.
My job description may change soon. However, if it doesn’t, I may start doing exactly that - looking for a better job.
It’s the professional software that’s lacking in Linux, and that’s the only reason I keep a Windows machine around. For music production, video production, design work, photography and so on, Windows has good commercial software that is well established in these professions.
But for most people, including gamers, Linux is a very good option right now.
I recently setup a Windows vm for my mum because she also needs photo and video editing sw and isn’t happy with the Linux alternatives. This works astonishingly well. Virtualbox even has a mode now to fully integrate the vm into the existing desktop, so basically she just gets the windows status bar in addition to the Linux one when she starts the vm. Windows programs open as if they were running natively. Might be worth a try for you.
I prettyuch refuse to touch windows for fear it will infect me somehow.
Don’t worry. It won’t. It’ll just frustrate you. Windows has gone seriously downhill since 7.
It was alret horrible at 95. I used windows for about a good 2 years in my life. I’ve been on Amiga is before, Unix osses for a while and over 21 years now on Linux. Windows, any version, compared to any of those is a joke
I love windows… I appreciate Linux but as a standard user, I have no need for Linux. I’m careful and I’d say an advanced user. I avoid dodgy websites and idk… I have a dual boot with fedora but I really don’t use fedora because no need?
Let’s assume you’re not a power user who would be confined to Microsoft’s “can’t do” or “too complicated” rules; why do you pay for windows?
And if you pirate, why? Then just use Linux, it’s tree and does all you need
And if iou “got it for free with your computer”, you didn’t, you paid Microsoft ab obligatory tax, like ot or not. Why?
The KDE UI looks and feels the same like windows but is superior, you don’t always have to reboot after any minor issue or change, it’s free, it doesn’t spy on you, and you don’t have the virus bullshit for a variety of reasons
If you don’t know better, I can understand, but you do. You know Linux is out there, why windows?
Thanks. I’d say I’m a power user for program use (multiple windows, programs, etc.).
I got it for free with my computer (lol) when I bought an open box product from a large computer store on discount.
I used to be a sailor but have hung up my hat. The seas seem to be calling me though.
I guess I haven’t really been confined by windows as much as I have been free to do things. Maybe the things I want to do are not extending beyond the limitations that you see. What are some things that you can do that you can’t normally do on windows?
Are there distros that you recommend over others? Do different distros do different things? Are they for different purposes? I have some experience in fedora, Ubuntu, and very little in kali2 (school teaching)
I’d recommend Kubuntu. Been using it for ages. I’ve been on Linux desktop for 20 years now and kubuntu is by far my favorite. It had the KDE desktop (on Linux you have different desktop brands) and KDE is by far the most powerful, prettiest, and most windows like. See it as windows desktop on steroids.
Ubuntu (on which kubuntu is based) also has a nice way of how it manages the files though that is more a oeiet user thing.
Can’t recommend Kubuntu enough
Windows requirements: sprawling list of unsupported hardware based on an arbitrary requirment for a security chip that doesn’t actually improve security at all
Linux: CPU (optional)
I like Linux a lot, but saying you can’t understand why someone would run Windows on a server just shows a lack of knowledge. Linux is great in a lot of server applications in the application realm. However, it doesn’t get close to the power of Active Directory and Group Policy for Windows device management. Besides that, a lot of people are more comfortable with a UI for managing DHCP, DNA, etc in a SMB environment. Even if they prefer a command line for those tools PowerShell allows those people to coexist with those that prefer a GUI. Under certain circumstances, (mainly ones where a business is forgoing AD for AAD), Linux can be the right choice. Pretending that there’s no place for Windows Server, though, is asinine.
This community is very much a “Windows bad” community. I personally find that annoying as I use Windows and Linux. Both have their pros and cons. Windows though is seen here as the shitest OS out there which far from the truth.
PowerShell is amazing and I install it on my Linux desktop.
The main problem are companies forcing windows servers and technologies when they are not the good ones for the task.
If one needs to set up desktops for accounting, windows is fine. But I saw companies setting shared NFS drives used by Linux severs on windows machines! Not joking!
I know companies that even deploy kubernetes clusters on windows servers!
Just because finding cheap windows engineers is easy, everyone has had an experience on windows to put on a cv. Than some of that cheap labor go up the hierarchy as head of a random infrastructure team because all good sys engineers moved to manage linux servers after some time, he recruits people like-minded, and in few years you ends up with a team refusing to do the right thing because “we know windows and windows can do the same as Linux and Microsoft is good for governance and Linux bad”. Execs don’t understand the difference and force architecture to go along because they don’t believe it’s worthy to rebuild a team, we are anyway using windows for accounting and execs laptops, it can’t be that bad! Even accenture and mckinsey consultants us it! And they told us that wls2 is the holy grail
Corporate IT is the peak of suboptimal tools for the job because politics and money
We use both. Its not my department but i know the server guys are using windows for some servers and linux for others and the decision is normally made based on which is going to be best for the specific needs of the function of that server.
Pretending one is outright better than the other is childish. Just use whats best at the time.
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Have you used windows before? It’s flaming garbage. Been using various oses for decades and I still rediscover how shitty windows is on the regular.
Yeah, and Linux still doesn’t have a good answer to AD for managing suites of end user machines. Linux has a lot going for it - but windows isn’t strictly inferior or anything.
Honestly, the entire AD suite with auth and everything else built in is genuinely a good product. And if what you want is supported by Microsoft, their other services are decent as well.
freeipa is pretty good, although i agree that it’s easier to just use AD
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Lmao that’s not just for AD
I only know OpenLDAP and FreeIPA, if there are any other alternatives you got please mention them
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But if the windows fanboy doesn’t know about it, it’s not real. Or if it is, it’s not good! /s
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Notice how you’re ignoring the machine management and selectively choosing to focus on the user management. User management might be fine with Linux, but machine management can’t compete with GPOs, especially for managing Windows clients, which is what businesses are using for workstations whether we like it or not.
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I upgraded my Intel system to AMD today. And I didn’t have to reinstall a damn thing, because my existing Linux installation Just Worked™. It really is to the point that I could never imagine going back to Windows.
Everyone acts like nvidia support on linux is completely broken. I game with nvidia on mine regularly and have never had a driver bug.
It’s not that it’s broken, it’s that the open source driver stack and AMD cards are a superior experience. The Nvidia Linux driver is just like the Windows driver.
I think it’s more that they are broken (esp. on Wayland) and that they are closed source and that they are not pre-installed in Mesa and that they lack basic features such as GAMMA_LUT for night light on Wayland…
Meanwhile, Wayland itself is still in a state of perpetual beta and lacks basic functionality regarding a vast number of features.
It comes by default on plenty of distros and people don’t even notice the change.
In the meanwhile, nvidia doesn’t support the linux kernel itself (though it is changing slowly) that’s why it can’t support wayland.
Except people do notice the change, as a workaround many still rely on certain aspects of X via Xwayland in an attempt to keep things running. Even Steam doesn’t support Wayland.
Fact is, Wayland’s been in development for a good decade or more, it’s still in a state of perpetual beta, and that’s a situation that isn’t likely to change any time soon.
You do realize that the whole of meaningful architecture we have builds on, and often gives way for legacy ones? XWayland is made by Wayland, because obviously not every software will port overnight or ever. That’s a positive thing.
It’s almost like the linux community is not controlled by a dictator like Apple, where they can just say “we are using this API from next version, if you wanna work, port”. Wayland required a critical mass before it actually started flying - but it definitely flies now.
Xwayland makes use of legacy features of X. If we were to compleately drop all aspects of X tomorrow, the Linux desktop would essentially compleately break and become unusable.
The fact is, at this point in time after 10 years or more of development, Wayland is still very much in a state of perpetual beta. At this point in time, and for the foreseeable future, Wayland involves compromises that make it unsuitable for many users.
Hopefully things improve in time, the problem is development is progressing at snails pace.
NVIDIA user here, my experience is largely faultless and performance is great.
Raytracing is mostly fucked though, otherwise I’d be gaming exclusively on Linux as well. Aside from that though I’ve never had any issues with Nvidia on Linux.
What do you mean it’s fucked? I’ve read this before but honestly Cyberpunk 2077 runs way better for me on Linux and I think it looks great. Never checked settings in detail since it seemed to do a good job of automatically selecting graphics settings. I have an Nvidia card on pop_OS and it works better than I ever thought gaming on Linux could!
Is that using Dynamic Res Scaling? I was also impressed with the ray tracing performance of cp2077 on linux until I realized that was doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
The reality is, it’s going through a translation layer, so it’s simply not possible for linux to run better than windows on the same hw, unless there is something hampering the windows config. But it does run better than I thought it could.
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My wife and I play Grim Dawn and other ARPGs on a regular basis. I run Ubuntu 23.04 (Snap-less, of course); she runs Windows 10. I ALWAYS host, and that should tell you something…
A grim dawn player, how is the game? Their updates actually add things these days? I have the game but not played it too much but I was surprised they still update it
My wife and I have somewhere around 450 hours in it (each). It’s fantastic.
I game … regularly and have never had a driver bug
Presses X to doubt…
Way to prove my point.
I was flirting with Linux for 20 years. There was always something that put me off an I went back to Windows. Recently I installed ubuntu with Kde plasma and I’m not going back. It just works and is heaps faster on older hardware. The old driver issues are gone, compatibility is awesome. The only issue is getting used to new software names.
You know, I’ve been using Linux on desktops and laptops for like 20 years now. I can count on one hand then number of times I’ve had hardware support issues. Outside of a fingerprint scanner, I’ve been able to solve all of those issues.
Meanwhile, my adventures across the years dealing with Windows drivers led me to finally say “fuck it” earlier this year and nuke the Windows install on my gaming rig in favor of Nobara.
I’ll take Linux hardware support over Microsoft any day of the week.
I have the opposite experience. For 15 years I’ve been installing windows on laptops and desktops. Never did I had to ‘solve’ driver issues. They were either easy to find, by clicking ‘search in windows update’ or were supported directly through windows itself. No need to solve anything…
The opposite was true for my few Linux (Ubuntu and Linux mint) adventures. Every time something would just not work. The most frustrating for me was the broken sleep function. There was no way to get my laptop to sleep properly. It would wake up at random times or just not boot anymore thereafter.
Just saying that these kind of things really depend on what you work with and what you want to get out of a system
I totally get that. The world is a funny place, and no two people will habe the same lived experience.
And FTR, as weird as this may sound to you, the big deal to me was that on Linux (usually Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, or a derivative of those three) there were significantly fewer problems in the first place, never mind whether or not they got solved. I may just have gotten a lucky spin on the Great Hardware Roulette Wheel.
Windows is definately not immune to sleep issues. I can state with absolute honesty that sleep under Windows never worked for me until the advent of Windows 10.
I can’t remember the last time I had a sleep issue running Linux on any of my laptops, all with Intel iGPU’s.
I’m not saying Windows doesn’t have issues. Just saying that I have a very different experience than the person I’m replying to :)
I switched to arch using qtile wm a few months ago. Couldn’t be happier. If a game doesn’t run on my rig either though stream or lutris well I just don’t play it, there’s way more games to discover and play.
That reminds me of a Microsoft-branded USB WiFi adapter that I was making heavy use of back in mid-2000s. The MN-510. You could buy it brand-new circa 2006. It had a $75 launch MSRP, about $114 adjusted for inflation. Come 2009, we find out that Windows 7 wasn’t going to support it. And given what we know about OS development cycles, they presumably made that call in '08 or even '07. Looking back on it, I think this was one of the major catalysts for me to reconsider Linux as a drop-in replacement. Because, wouldn’t you know, the adapter kept working just fine when I tried it out in Ubuntu. Support was simply there in the kernel. Plug-and-play. I suddenly had this whole other operating system providing an it-just-works network connection, for free. It was amazing. So I used that adapter for several more years until I could afford a network upgrade. And I’m still using Linux the majority of the time today.
This! I literally give Windows a chance every version. I even kind of liked Windows 11 this go around.
But something always breaks and no matter how much I trouble shoot the fix is to reinstall windows. To which I say screw that and start distro hoping.
11 with 2022 gaming laptop just stopped updating. The only non native app I had on the thing was STEAM! I have been using Linux for 18 years because it’s the only way I know how to fix Windows.
I’d rather stick my head in the rotating blades of a combine harvester than deal with HP printer drivers…
Well, you’ve got me on that one.
Fuck Goodix
Sorry, I feel like I’m going to regret asking but… what?
Goodix is the manufacturer of some popular FP readers (at least it’s the one I have on my 2021 XPS).
And it’s known to not support Linux at all.
So for me it’s just a useless button sitting there doing nothing.
It’s just when you have peripherals, you might just not find a driver for Linux at all
I remember having some issues with Ubuntu 10 because I had a janky pentium 4 built out of scrap. I think it was an pci ide card I had issues with.
Linux will run on anything
Ps3. Raspberry pi. Phones. All computers ive ever tried to install it on… and even M-chip macs.
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Wha? Even a bleeping potato can run Linux nowadays, with zero issues at day 1.
t. Got a Orange pi zero 3, and the lil’ bastard is rocking solid – even with (near zero) support.
Imagine not having all your drivers baked in into your kernel
Imagine not knowing about kernel modules 🤣
shit like this comment thread is why regular people use windows. who the fuck wants to learn about this kind of stuff when you can just point and click? especially when the people who should be helping you post brain-dead self-congratulatory gate-keeping shit like this.
if y’all want people to use linux maybe make it palatable instead of maintaining its difficulty so you can get a chubby about how smart you are
What a weirdly specific thing to get mad about.
i sort of get them, actually. as a nontech person who shifted to Linux out of necessity, i just wanted it to work.
i dont have to imagine not knowing what a kernel module because i still dont, despite using it for years.I guess I would also be pretty sore if I didn’t have… checks notes - all my drivers baked into my kernel?
A joke about potatoes? You elitists.
@sab @OsrsNeedsF2P @GustavoM @Kidplayer_666 @db2 @AngrilyEatingMuffins @bear I bet these idiots don’t even butter their drivers before baking them into the kernel
smug senses of superiority in the FOSS community?
amazing… no wonder linux use has only grown if you include the steam deck and closed off governmental systems
The reason Linux only grew with the Steam Deck is because an operating system only grows if it’s preinstalled on a popular device. Average users do not install their own OS. If you were actually in tune with average users, you would know this. It has nothing to do with Linux users making jokes amongst themselves.
shit like this comment thread is why regular people use windows
No, regular people use Windows because that’s what their device they purchased came with. If they bought a Chromebook instead for example, they’d be using ChromeOS which is based on Linux, and if they bought a Smart TV, it’d probably be running some sort of Linux-based OS as well.
Regular people don’t know or care about Linux, nor what operating system their device is running - they just want a device that’s easy to use, looks good, has a good price and can let them use Facebook, Zoom etc or whatever it is they’re expecting from that device.
who the fuck wants to learn about this kind of stuff when you can just point and click
There’s no need to learn about this stuff, Linux is already just point and click. The main hurdle these days is installing it on a PC, egular people don’t mess around with the OS on their device, they just use whatever it is that came on their device. They shouldn’t have any big issues using Linux (especially if it’s a user-friendly distro like Zorin OS), as long as it’s already installed on their machines.
if y’all want people to use linux maybe make it palatable
It is already palatable, we just haven’t gotten mainstream manufactures to sell preloaded devices to the masses. There are some OEMs like System76 that are doing a good job, but they haven’t hit mass market yet. What Linux needs is a partnership with mainstream manufacturers and some big $$$ invested into marketing, plus partnering with retail outets like Best Buy etc. And maybe have a hardware certification program, like how Windows has the WHQL. Market the hell out of it, pass out shiny “Linux compatible” stickers to vendors, put Linux on sleek and shiny MacBook-like devices, and you’ll find regular people getting into Linux.
also the front page of this very community has multiple posts from people whose systems aren’t working, or who are worried about software being incompatible with linux. it’s still not easy. and Ubuntu came pre-loaded on computers a decade ago and that didn’t really do anything.
this is copium my friend. look at these forums, you don’t find people talking about proselytizing ubuntu and mint, it’s people circlejerking about how cool they are for using kali and arch and knowing whatever minutiae of computing
You might need another muffin. You’re a little hangry.
another smug message! surprise
god forbid i actually want people to use FOSS
You could try not being a dick. Just a thought.
Edit: after seeing your other comments it’s pretty clear you’re a troll.
I’d say the same to you
pretty telling that the community takes criticism of gatekeeping superiority complexes as being equivalent to trolling
if y’all want people to use linux maybe make it palatable instead of maintaining its difficulty so you can get a chubby about how smart you are
I wont speak for others but personally, I’m not really interested in point and clickers using linux - there are people who work on mint and ubuntu and stuff for them.
again, personally, i don’t think linux is the right choice for people don’t want to learn some of that and who won’t ever use Command line interface.
I wouldn’t recommend it for them - tbf mostly because I’ve no interest in being tech support for them, just like i didn’t for windows back when i knew how to solve some problems ( type “regedit”).
unless they only have a potato, then i think linux is more likely to fit a decent amount of their needs.
though i would normally say it costs them little more than a few hours to test out a live usb boot system.but the main point is that the linux community is very diverse, as are all the different distros and projects - so it is not easy to pigeonhole all of them as sharing any one sentiment.
some of the people and distros will be supportive of those users, others won’t.
it’s a bit like most collections of humans in that respect.
If someone made a GUI to handle kernel modules and people could point and click through them, would that be okay?
that really doesn’t have anything to do with what i’m talking about.
You said people wanted to point and click. I agree: I’ve seen many Windows admins VNC to a desktop environment to get to a shell rather than use SSH
So if everything in Linux was accessible from a GUI, would that make it better? Because Windows does similar things, and so does Mac OS. They just use pretty pictures instead of words.
ah, i see now. it’s more about things just working and it being right there
even what distro to choose is already a thing people have to actively research. most people are more interested in just having the thing simply work, than they are having it work in a way that they’ve customized, if that road takes more than minimal effort. i think that the divide is actively growing now, and that the easy access of smartphones and most apps not having much customization is probably part of it.
I remember when you had to use this newfangled “kernel module” business if you had two Ethernet cards using the same driver, because a non-module driver would only detect one …
Nvidia users
I think the main trouble makers for consumers are the odd network or bluetooth controllers, especially in laptops, which often come with some exotic bullshit.
I have a lot of trouble with Bluetooth on laptops so I tend to run 2.4GHz wireless peripherals instead of Bluetooth. That’s my only complaint these days.
Imagine being in the orange forum and thinking everybody’s using Mac…
Some builds can get really tetchy about laptop hardware, but that’s almost always older hardware.
Though I will say it took entirely too long for most builds to have a “change what closing the lid” does menu option rather than making you modify a .conf file.
And don’t get me started on resolution switching when hot swapping display inputs.
They have a point. I’m in the market for a new laptop and I have, so far, returned two of them.
First, I tried a Huawei Matebook 16. I was foolish, but I thought it was “easy”. No NVidia, no dGPU at all - just part that looked very standard. It was based on the info I had gathered from a few years of Linux usage: “Basically avoid NVidia and you’re good”. It was anything but. Broken suspend, WiFi was horrible, random deadlocks, extreme slowness at times (as if the RYZEN 7 wasn’t Ryzen 7-ing) to become less smooth than my 5 year old Intel laptop, and broken audio codec (Senary Audio) that didn’t work at all on the live, and worked erratically on the installed system using generic hd-audio drivers.
I had a ~€1500 budget, but I raised it to buy a €1700 ThinkPad P16s AMD. No dGPU to speak of, sold with pre loaded Linux, boasting Canonical and Red Hat hardware certifications.
I had:
- Broken standby on Linux
- GPU bugs and screen flickering on Linux
- Various hangs and crashed
- Malfunctioning wifi and non working 6e mode. I dug, and apparently the soldered Wi-Fi adapter does not have any kind of Linux support at all, but the kernel uses a quirk to load the firmware of an older Qualcomm card that’s kinda similar on it and get it to work in Wi-Fi 6 compatibility mode.
Boggles my mind that the 2 biggest enterprise Linux vendors took this laptop, ran a “thorough hardware certification process” on it and let it pass. Is this a pass? How long have they tried it? Have they even tried suspending?
Of course, that was a return. But when I think about new laptops and Windows 11, basically anything works. You don’t have to pay attention to anything: suspend will work, WiFi will work, audio and speakers as well, if you need fractional scaling you aren’t in for a world of pain, and if you want an NVidia dGPU, it does work.
Furthermore, the Windows 11 compatible CPU list is completely
unofficialarbitrary, since you can still sideload Windows 11 on “unsupported” hardware and it will run with a far higher success rate than Linux on a random laptop you buy in store now. Like, it has been confirmed to run well on ancient Intel CPUs with screens below the minimum resolution. It’s basically a skin over 10 and there are no significant kernel modifications.To be clear: I don’t like Windows, but I hate this post as a consumer of bleeding edge hardware because it hides the problem under the rug - most new hardware is Windows-centric, and Linux supported options are few and far between. Nowdays not even the manufacturer declaring Linux support is enough. This friend of mine got a Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition, and if he uses ANY ISO except the default Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 audio doesn’t work at all! And my other friend with a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition has various GPU artifacts on the screen on anything except the relative Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 image. It’s such a minefield.
I have effectively added €500 to my budget, to now reach an outrageous €2000 for a premium Linux laptop with no significant trade-offs (mostly, I want a good screen and good performance). I am considering taking a shot in the dark and pre ordering the Framework 16, effectively swaying from traditional laptop makers entirely and hoping a fully customized laptop by a company that has been long committed to Linux support will be different.
Linux does support more CPU architecture (x86 Arm PowerPC RISC) while Windows only support x86 and some Arm CPU so technically Linux support more CPU but Windows does support more GPU and Plug and Play devices (controller, external sound card…)
