6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?
6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?
6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?
My friend was unable to update to windows 11 due to the TPM requirements and looking to switch to linux. I upgraded my CPU and said they should buy my old one. They finally said OK and asked if I could help them install it before they switched to Linux. I installed the CPU and they never switched to Linux because now they have a CPU that meets the TPM requirements.
Windows users really hate change. Microsoft will force them to update and the users will whine but 1 week later they will be used to it then they will stick on windows 11 till EoL.
Can’t upgrade because my 4 years old mobo is apparently too old (haven’t checked out the workarounds yet). Installed Linux Mint to give it a try and I am positively surprised so far.
Never again, bye Microsoft Windows 😁 Hi GNU/Linux my new friend.
Already on Linux. And proud.
I finally committed to Linux at the end of last year. Enough is working to make it preferable to Windows now. I'm still having a lot of bugs, and it's costing quite some time. But at least my computer is mine again. No more telemetry, ads, and UIs that treat me like a toddler. No more updates forced onto me instead of being done whenever I want it.
I think I will switch to Linux, possibly dual boot with Win 11 just in case there are games I can't play on Linux.
I won't be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don't really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it'll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.
However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.
I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.
I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they're changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10's user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don't know why they thought any of it was a good idea. I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won't get started on that right now.
For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn't been any meaningful progress in the OS that's mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don't think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the "new look" or whatever the fuck.
Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.
Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.
too late already did switch to linux :3
I switched to linux full time almost a year ago.
I have been thus far entirely unsuccessful in convincing anyone else to make the jump. Normal people do not give a fuck, will not lift a finger to improve their digital lives. I've been telling friends and family about adblockers for YEARS, and not a single one ever bothered to do it of their own volition. If I don't do it for them, then they just sit through ads like complacent sheep. None of them are going to change operating systems if they can't even install a browser extension.
My Windows 10 PC's only function at this point is to play FFXIV in my living room, so I'm not super worried about viruses or anything.
But maybe eventually I'll switch to Linux on that box and do that weird set-up to get FFXIV running there.
Why is Bill Gates in the picture? lol
Most problems people have with Linux, I think, come from trying to be Linux power users from the start by performing very advanced techniques beyond their time and patience: dual booting multiple operating systems (so they don't have to buy Linux-dedicated hardware), using any graphics card (the latest and greatest GPUs are all closed source and developers who work on Linux do so because they despise closed source), using the least expensive hardware (which are typically closed source and buggy with anything except Windows), and emulating Windows apps so they don't have to learn new workflows or abandon their favorite games (technically, Proton with Steam allows Windows games like FFXIV to be played, but it's a neverending journey to get it working and keeping it working.
If you switch to Linux, accept that for a smooth experience you'll have to pay more than you would for a Windows machine (e.g. System76, Framework) And if you want graphics card support for your emulated Windows games on Steam, you're going to have to use the specific flavor of Linux the manufacturer supports.
That said, if you value free/libre open source software, then making the switch from Windows is totally worth it.
Just imagine 43 % market share in the next hardware survey.
Ill bet right before the deadline, they will magically make TPM optional, even though they said they wouldn't.
Switched to Linux (mint) recently.
All my games run (almost) perfect and (almost) everything has been working perfectly. Overall it is much nicer than Windows and isn't that hard getting used to.
Would much recommend!
What does Bill Gates have to do with this, he hasn't been directly involved in Microsoft in 17 years? He hasn't even been on the board for 5 years.
Just bought a laptop and put bazzite on it to try it out and figure out if I can do all the things I want to do on it. If that all works out I'll be switching my desktop over.
I'm a lifelong Windows user and tried Linux many many times but could never wrap my head around it. Recently I installed Nobara and it's exactly the noob-friendly experience I need. All of my games run flawlessly, even the VR game I play. And everything is just FASTER. I never realized how bloated Windows was until now. I can't imagine going back to Windows at this point.
Linux Baby, Linux 🐧😘
Made the jump to Linux. No issues so far, very happy with the switch
Only semi-related: Why do they always show pictures of Gates when he hasn't been involved in MS in a long time? Why never Satya Nadella?
EDIT: Also, yes, related to the actual question already living Linux full time and when October rolls around probably gonna back up everything from the Windows side of my dual-boot and wipe the 1TB NVMe Windows is on to use as storage.
Personally, I think this picture of Steve Balmer is so much more iconic and should be used for every single article about Microsoft or Windows:
Under his watch they did form the anti-opensource and EEE mantra
I couldn't name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate's mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids
Steve Ballmer! Developers developers developers! That's the other one I know
I'm somewhat in the same boat but I remember Mister "Developers Developers Developers" Steve Ballmer who was also immortalized by the "Ballmer Peak" XKCD. https://xkcd.com/323/
Gabe Newell?
Holy shit I remember that article too!
I could but that’s because a friend of mine works on the legacy rendering code in Excel. He has some traumatic war stories to share.
Because he set the general, evil directions for MS. Like keeping users uninformed and locked in, smearing the competition, sabotaging open standards, taking your control over your hardware and data away from users, etc. All happened during evil Bill's reign.
Not to mention the many deals with hardware manufacturers in order to avoid competing OSs to have any chance. They managed to kill BeOS and dominate the Japanese market in the 90s
I was wondering why Bill Gates would be talking about Steam users.
Optics or marketing, it's the same reason LLMs are all called AI.
I'm here, so I'm more likely to know who that is or what he looks like. But I don't. I do now because you mentioned him and I looked up how he looks like. Your average Joe is gonna be even less likely to know who that is or what he looks like. So I'm guessing that's why. Some CEOs just avoid the spotlight. Or maybe I've just been avoiding MS news, dunno
It's a vicious cycle. The media don't use Satya Nadella's name or picture much, so people don't know who he is or how he looks like.
Full Linux, I'm not installing that anti-privacy, ad-ridden Windows 11 OS. It's dangerous to use an unsupported system, so I'm going to be deleting my Windows partition. I know I'll run into some issues on Linux, but I'm forcing myself to learn more and work through them!
43% of Steam is still on Windows
10 with support...
Seems not so many.
And if they are ending in 7 month why bother.
Just put the lin
e break right, the
n it's understanda
ble.
I just gave up on windows gaming. If the game cant be played on my steamdeck, I just find something else. Otherwise its macos and linux for anything non-professional that requires windows. And even then I fucking hate it. Oh look at that... all my documents say "Auto-recover (version 1)" because it forcibly rebooted on me.
Unpopular opinion but I'm just using 11. I deal with enough problems with Linux at work and as hard as it is to believe, Windows just work and fits my workflow too well. Linux works great on my Steam Deck but the occasional weird quirks it has with certain games/launchers means I can't use it as my main gaming platform, it's only fine on the Deck because it has advantages for the form factor.
The more people hop onto Linux the faster and better funded support for Linux development becomes. If you're a single player gamer or play Valve multiplayer games primarily, make the jump to Linux. Get on Mint, get on Fedora, Ubuntu, etc and get off Microsoft's shitboat. You already took off from Reddit. Wean off all these other money/data leeches
I'll keep using linux on my main pcs and I'll still keep using windows 10 on my secondary laptop
Already did and it's glorious! Steam works beautifully and the only final thing that I'm missing is Adobe products.
I recommend, if you want to try Linux, that you try out the 'Debian' distribution, and use the 'KDE Plasma' desktop environment. It makes for a very Windows-like experience and really assisted me with the transition between OSs.
for newcomers, maybe this is the best combo. Debian stable with KDE Plasma.
I completely disagree. Debian is not beginner-friendly. Go with Bazzite if your focus is gaming.
It is a gaming-focused distribution. It's also an "atomic" distribution, which basically means it's really hard to break it. It's more like Android or IOS where the OS and base system are managed by someone else. They're read-only so you can't accidentally break them.
For example, instead of trying to manage your own video card drivers, they come packaged with the base system image, and they're tested to make sure they work with all the other base components.
I've been using Linux since the 1990s, so I've run my share of distributions: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Even for someone experienced, atomic distributions are great. But, for a newcomer they're so much better.
How does Bazzite fare when I want to do something a bit different. Install docker, Python, PHP, sqlite, etc. I'd normally just install them, but does this work for Bazzite and other atomic/immutable distros?
I find this interesting as I'm a beginner with only about 3 months of Linux use under my belt, whereas Ive used Windows since I was like 5 years old, and I found Debian to be a really good introduction to Linux. I was originally recommended Mint, like many are, and I found the experience to be a negative one as opposed to my later experience with Debian. (Note I have no experience with Bazzite or any other distros).
The additional 'bloat' in Mint obfuscated from me various aspects of Linux. It insulated me from learning how Linux is different from Windows, and that actually hindered me from understanding the OS. By starting with Debian I got a feel for using the CLI, setting up my drivers, package installer, and desktop environment. And, while those aspects can be complicated for new users, i think its somewhat necessary that they get a feel for them if Linux is going to be recommended as their OS.
In what world is a Debian base not beginner friendly my fiancé that could barely use windows is using it just fine
and the only final thing that I'm missing is Adobe products.
I miss Affinity Designer! Bought a license and I like it but no linux port 🙄
I can't get used Inkscape, it's so different and confusing for me
Have you ever seen how to draw a circle in GIMP?
maybe give debian testing a go for a little more up to date software :)
As long as you're running KDE, it will feel familiar to a Windows user. I started with Kubuntu which was great until I had a system update, and it completely shat itself. Wanted to try Bazzite next, but the installer wouldn't work properly, so I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I've seen no reason to switch since.
Not having access to Adobe products is a feature not a bug.
If you're into primarily gaming, try PikaOS. It's Debian based and uses the same tooling, but it's on an optimized kernel. Is generally geared toward gaming.
There are other gaming specific distros of course, this is just the "Debian"-related one. I would not recommend the real debian if you're mainly into gaming. It'll need manual intervention and/or optimization to get games running, or at least get them running well. It's not impossible (it even hard if you've got but is Linux experience), but just harder than necessary.
I went with Mint but I'm thinking about KDE (or maybe KDE flavored Arch? Idk I'm new) on my second computer. Pretty painless?
So Mint is the 'distro', which is actually based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. In simple terms, a distro is a bundle of programs and configurations assembled for you. Basically, Debian is a stripped down version of Mint.
A 'desktop environment' is a separate program(?) that changes what your desktop looks like, and they can be downloaded on any distro. So you can try out KDE Plasma on your Mint installation! The one that you're likely using right now is called 'Cinnamon', which I personally didn't like and turned me off of Linux my first time trying to switch over years ago.
Something cool about KDE Plasma is that you can download themes and make your desktop environments look really cool. For instance, sometimes I like to rock this Windows 7 theme: https://www.pling.com/p/2142957/
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I went to Manjaro (Arch) with KDE from Mint about 5 months ago, and it's been nearly flawless, allowed me to easily install a real time processing kernel for audio production, and it's run every game I've thrown at it performs better than Winblows.
Eh Arch can be quite stable if you're careful, but it could also be a frustrating experience, there's lots of manual configuration
Nope, will probably avoid 11 as long as I can though. I have an Mvidia card (drivers are notoriously troublesome on Linux). And I need professional design software for work (as in, industry standard: Adobe or Affinity).
But I put 11 on my laptop to try it and I hate it. So many terrible UI changes, UX noticeably worse. Like they changed stuff just to say they changed stuff.
I considered going Linux for personal use and development, and then using another machine or dual boot for Mac for design software. But i learned about the Nvidia issues after I upgraded my card :/ and swapping to Mac's walled garden after avoiding it for decades is.... a sign of how bad W11 feels to use.
I tried out going 100% Linux a year ago. Unfortunately I was playing one of the very few games that has Linux issues. 100% CPU all the time was bugging me. It's not the fault of Linux. Anyway, that's how it played out. I may be tempted to try again soon.
Already prepared everything for the jump. Switched MS Office for LibreOffice, and Outlook for Betterbird. Tested install, configuration and access to backups in a VM. Next vacation I take I'll go for it. Mint is my choice of Distro, because of Steam/Gaming reasons. With the US being antagonistic, if not outright hostile, right now, and Microsoft having their disgusting Copilot AI Analysis Fingers in everything, it's the rational choice I think.
I jumped ship to Linux Mint almost a year ago. No Microsoft products live here anymore. No regrets.
I switched a year ago and I love it. All my old games run better on linux than windows at this point. Proton is fucking amazing.
I'm in Windows 11. I have regret it, but after so many tweaks of the system, removing telemetries, changing menus, and other Windows shit, i had not the energy to move back to Windows 10.
Only OS change i am willing to make is to move to Linux, but gaming is not there yet, and am now trying to move from big proprietary companies to FOSS, so time is needed.