Its time to switch to Linux!

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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    52 minutes ago

    I feel like Microsoft fully intends to remove the TPM 2.0 requirement in the nearish future

    Otherwise it wouldn’t be so easy to disable when writing an iso to a USB drive.

    Looking at it from a capitalistic point of view, they gain nothing by keeping people from installing their OS on the long term, the lock out was just for the short-term gains they got out of OEMs selling new computers for Windows 11 and such.

  • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Yeah. Gotta find a distro soonish. My 3-4 year old laptop tried to update to W11 and has failed twice. Guess it doesn’t meet the hardware reqs. (Thank you RNGesus)

    • thawed_caveman@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Currently writing from a Mint laptop, works perfectly with minimal setup and no command line whatsoever, the only annoying thing is that the caps lock key behaves differently. Though Linux’s reputation is that it can probably be modded out.

      I also installed Diodon to recover the cool clipboard function that Windows has.

      I could probably get the customizeable start menu, but i actually don’t miss it that much

    • Rolivers
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      6 hours ago

      Any distro will do. I suggest using one that has a complete installer like Mint or OpenSuse and then use KDE Plasma as desktop, which closely resembles Windows.

    • agnomeunknown@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I can vouch for mint, I picked it up recently after not touching Linux for almost 20 years and it was very intuitive and Windows-like. Haven’t dug very deep into it yet but it was at least easy to setup and get the necessities working

      • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Dude. I have a 2002 Dell laptop with Mint 16 on it.

        It’s completely unusable. Takes like 10 mins to open a browser. But it fuckin’ works. Its incredible.

  • M137@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    I’m absolutely certain the grammatical clusterfuck in so many memes and posts is done fully consciously. Like, someone sat there and actually thought about how to make it grammatically fucked yet get the point across, just to get those extra comments pointing it out. And it’s fucking horrifying that this is where we are, deliberately making things dumb to get more “clicks”.

  • padge@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    I’m testing out Linux on my laptop, October 13 my desktop moves over too.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      I recommend you cut over at least a few weeks before. Not all hardware is always supported. It’s a million times better now than it was decades ago, but sometimes(depending on distro) hardware can throw a sold kink in your otherwise perfect log.

  • shastaxc@lemm.ee
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    22 hours ago

    Is this post from the future? Windows 10 still has support for another year.

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    bully everyone into upgrading to Windows 11 so you can force data scraping in the guise of AI down their throats. nice game

  • auzy@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    The biggest issue with Linux at the moment isn’t the os. It’s the community, and because of that, they keep scaring off developers, and ironically many developers only stick around now because they’re hired by a large company

    I’ve seen so many developers (including myself), who got smashed by the community so we just gave up

    It has definitely gotten better though (vastly) in the past 20 years

    • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      WHOA BUDDY! This is Lemmy. You are required to pretend Linux is made of sunshine and blowjobs here. There has never been a single issue with any distro of the operating system and if you try to claim there is you are literally worse than Hitler.

  • Katana314@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    In the last month, I made a genuine effort to switch to Linux Mint, then Bazzite, as my daily driver. Mint could not run Hitman 3 for unexplained reasons. Bazzite frequently got graphical corruption issues when returning from sleep. Neither could run niche indie games and gave no error codes.

    I knew I’d be doing some tweaking to get Linux working how I wanted, but it was missing configuration as well as being unreliable by default. I like the principle of using a non-MS OS, but I need it to work.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      9 hours ago

      Really bummed your experience has been like that! :(

      In my humble experience, I’ve gotten almost everything new and old to run via Steam, or my GoG games to run via Heroic. Vermintide 2, Metro: Exodus, Enter the Gungeon, X-COM 2, BattleTech, MechWarrior 5, I even got old stuff like Sims 2 working flawlessly via Bottles.

      Trying to install stuff like you would on Windows by running installers manually seems to not be so great though…could that have been it perhaps?

      Using front-ends that manage Proton / WINE for you makes the process so much easier.

      I ditched Windows entirely because Vermintide kept BSODing my Win10 install, and it wouldn’t even let me “refresh” the OS. Fully doing work and play on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed these days and the only thing I’m REALLY missing is VR.

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        I knew I had whole folders of indie games that are just a folder with an executable, so I trialed those with Lutris. It needed a huge setup form just to run one of them, and when I finished, it wouldn’t run and gave no errors.

        Having that as my experience for, as I said, a whole folder of games, wasn’t really in my interest. It takes too long for the community to say “Hey, I got Assassin’s Creed running! Just use Proton 8.13 beta, and add these 8 command line options”

    • dingus@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      Yeah I’ve always been a very casual Linux enthusiast (key word is casual) since I was a teen. Setup and things “just working” out of the box have absolutely never been the case, even in 2024, and even though people like to say it does. In an ideal situation on an ideal computer with ideal hardware, you don’t have to tweak anything. But for most people, there are going to be some annoying issues and tweaks you have to work through.

      If a Linux system has already been set up and tested for the end user, then it is a great alternative. But in my experience, these systems absolutely never work perfectly out of the box and it takes some technical know how to get to that point. Ever since Windows 7, Windows has “just worked” out of the box… especially because it comes pre-loaded on your device.

      I have been dealing with some issues with my Bluetooth module in Windows. I had eventually solved the problem, but the fix seemed to have reverted itself somewhat recently. Annoyed, I thought I’d finally commit to a switch to Linux on my daily driver since my laptop doesn’t support Win 11. Well, I chose Linux Mint since it doesn’t use Wayland which for some reason has poor compatibility with my common Logitech mouse. Everything had been fine but then I found instead of the Bluetooth module crashing like in Windows, which just makes me have to reset the module, the entire system crashes in Linux instead and requires me to reboot it. Frustrating to say the least.

      And then, as you’ve brought up, gaming on Linux is just generally not a good experience unless you have all of your games on Steam.

      Linux can be awesome but it’s absolutely not for everyone…especially people with less technical knowledge (unless it is set up for them), people who want something to “just work” without any fiddling, or people who do a lot of gaming outside of Steam.

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I was lazy and went with pop!_os. Required minimal tweaking, and so far there are very few games I couldn’t run

      • vulture_god@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 hours ago

        Same for me, running for a few months and all my steam games work great. I had to install some extra software to run my Logitech mouse and get the scroll wheel to be more sensitive. Otherwise though it’s been a great experience so far.

        Although I’m an IT professional, I really don’t want extra work when I’m sitting down to game. So POP! has been great overall for my use case, with the bonus of Linux for any coding projects I tackle otherwise.

  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Windows 10? I’m on Linux Mint 22, which is more than double the number.

    Checkmate Microsuck.

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I have a crazy idea.

    What if y’all get together, and make a guide on an easy way to switch to idk Arch, since Valve is working with it.

    You know, so that they don’t have to spend a lot of money, and don’t have to worry about losing all their data, and hopefully so they don’t have to learn everything about Linux so they can enjoy using it right away.

    Ha, I almost believed that was realistic rereading it.

    • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 hours ago

      Arch would be a bad idea, as if a user finds installing Fedora too hard Arch ain’t doing them any favors.

      And there are guides. Youtube “how to install (linux distro),” if it’s popular there’s already 500 guides.

      As for data loss this should come as no surprise: back it up. Preferably on an external hdd/ssd, or your choice of cloud service if you’re one of those people. Erasing your entire hard drive and installing a new OS will perhaps unsurprisingly wipe all your data without a backup. Frankly you should already have backups, idk why people pretend data loss is impossible on windows but it has happened to me and I can’t be the only one.

    • foo@feddit.uk
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      2 days ago

      Exactly. Us Linux users, as a collective, tend to shoot ourselves in the foot here because we can’t decide on the “best” distro for beginners. If we all just said one thing, with confidence and without arguments, and without saying “it depends…”, more would probably make the switch.

      No major outlets that the average user would frequent are likely to sell laptops with any Linux distro pre installed. Many non-technical users wouldn’t even reinstall Windows by themselves, let alone Linux.

      Any of the usual starter distros would be a good choice because once they are in the ecosystem they can find their own path. When a non technical person asks how to get Linux, there is no worse answer than a barrage of information followed by more questions. Just pick one, say it confidently, and assist them to make it happen.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 hours ago

        Problem though is it does depend, if they want to game pop or brazzite may be best, if they just want an lts then an lts is best, if they want all the updates fast maybe Fedora or endeavor, but if they want a more windows-y experience instead of mac-y then maybe FedoraKDE instead of Gnome…

        • foo@feddit.uk
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          21 hours ago

          The type of user who needs to ask where to start with Linux probably doesn’t know how the difference between LTS and non-LTS will affect them in their daily life, yet. By the time you’ve finished explaining it to them, they’ve already decided that maybe Windows isn’t so bad after all. Hence, my original point.

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            21 hours ago

            I assumed you knew what the acronym stood for (and you clearly do) so I didn’t type it out, but I think “Long-Term Stable” is fairly self explanatory at least to the level a newcomer would need.

            • foo@feddit.uk
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              19 hours ago

              I didn’t say they wouldn’t know what it meant, I said they would be unlikely to know how it will affect them in their daily usage.

              Most Windows users are accustomed to installing and updating their own applications, and letting the OS deal with its own updates and patches. They probably don’t think much about all the dependencies and what version they’re on because the installers deal with it.

              When deciding whether to use a Linux LTS they may think it sounds like a good idea, with no appreciation for what happens when a package gets out of date, and their package manager won’t update it, and they don’t know why. They go down the rabbit hole of adding PPAs etc, which solves it in the short term maybe. Then it only gets worse from there, because they didn’t understand that using an LTS means you have chosen to accept some packages being out of date for a while, until the next LTS is released.

              Maybe they’re the kind of person that is happy with that, or maybe they’re not. But if you try to explain to the average Windows user about package repositories, Flatpaks, Snaps, LTS, rolling releases etc, you can pretty much guarantee they’ll never try it because it sounds too damn hard.

              Which brings me back to my original point… Us Linux users argue amongst ourselves too much about this stuff to attract Windows users, no matter what Microsoft does with their data.

              • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                17 hours ago

                “If you want super up to date stuff, an LTS is not your best choice, I’d go for something like Fedora and just keep back ups or set up snapper using this easy guide on youtube.” (For example.)

                ”Package managers are basically your app store, you’ll probably have the official one for your distro and then a general one called flatpak, use these for downloading your ‘apps.’" They can understand a few basic things, they’re windows users not Amish.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        People like choice, but people don’t want to have to spend time choosing or learning.

        That’s why I mentioned Arch - because of the tie in with the Steam Deck. Nice and easy for gamers to make a connection to.

        What becomes the difficult sell is that people, in general, don’t understand computers. It’s the bane of my existence. Any Linux distro requires a basic understanding of how computers work. The Windows PC and Apple products were successful because they required no learning and the user was relatively protect from messing anything up.

        The Steam Deck was successful because it took that same approach. It just uses a variant of their Big Picture mode users are already used to.

        Linux, by it’s very nature, is not something that can be widely adopted by consumers. I think that’s why Apple and Windows (hell, even Google with Android and Chrome OS) can get all the invasive technology to the user they want, and force users to adopt even more invasive things. Because people just won’t learn anything else. And that’s not something any of us can do anything about.

      • Ohbs@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        And which distro would you pick with confidence? (Legitimately asking, I don’t know which one I’d pick)

        • foo@feddit.uk
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          1 day ago

          I intentionally didn’t include it in my post because I didn’t want the wave of differing opinions to distract from my point.

          Personally, on balance, I would suggest Mint (Cinammon) for a new user, especially if it’s an Internet stranger. Of course, I expect many, many replies disagreeing or explaining why I’m wrong and should pick … something else.

          There are loads of distros that are, or claim to be, friendly to new users. As with everything, all have advantages and disadvantages. My kids use Bazzite on their laptops because I can support them and deal with anything unexpected. I wouldn’t recommend it to a random person because the installation isn’t as friendly as others, and it’s not as prevalent, so there is less support via search engines. The forums are quite active, and the community is friendly, but many folk would rather look for an existing answer than ask anything new. Then of course there’s Ubuntu (with Snap et al), Pop!_OS, Elementary, Deepin etc etc. We could probably discuss the merits and detractors of each forever, just like currently happens in so many threads on Lemmy, Reddit and others.

          So, why would I suggest Mint? Simply because it’s not a wrong answer. It’s easy to get, easy to install, has a great and welcoming community, and serves as a great place to introduce users to the ecosystem. After using it for a while, they can make their own, more informed choice of their next distro. There are plenty of other not wrong distros to choose from, but Mint is the one I would suggest.

        • not a cop@links.hackliberty.org
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          1 day ago

          I’m so anti-Ubuntu but I would probably put that out there and roll with it. You can move on to something better once you figure it out anyway.

    • twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      It’s actually pretty easy with the guided installer currently shipping with arch, and there are actually numerous guides on how to install Arch.

      Choosing not to is perfectly reasonable, but it’s not for lack of effort from the Linux community trying to make things easier and more accessible.

    • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      If these businesses wouldn’t switch to a newer version of windows, what makes you think they’ll switch to arch or any linux distro?

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      There’s a bunch of beginner friendly distros, it’s just that when you want to make things work as well as they did on Windows then you hit a wall.

      I’m using Mint (which is as beginner friendly as it gets)… Because my display signal dropped whenever there was load on the GPU on Bazzite (Fedora based) which is also supposed to be beginner friendly…

      No easy way to disable the audio outputs I don’t actually use. On Windows? Couple of clicks, all done through GUI.

      Wifi antenna didn’t work, had to install unofficial drivers from GitHub.

      I’ve got a multi display setup and sometimes I want to switch where things are displayed. On Windows I downloaded Monitor profile switcher and it does everything for me, just had to save the setup to a profile and assign a keyboard shortcut (which isn’t essential as there’s a shortcut to switch it on the taskbar), it’s all done inside the program. On Mint I had to create a script to choose what to display with what resolution and create a new keyboard shortcut in a separate program because the alternative was to have to open the file explorer to open the folder where the script it saved to execute it.

      Playing games is easier than ever! Except that games that have both a Linux and Windows version fuck up when it comes to cloud saving on Steam because the save game folder isn’t necessarily the same (and the Deck installs the Windows version by default so fuck compatibility between that Linux running machine and Linux PCs!) so you still have to force install the windows version even though there’s a perfectly playable Linux version!

      Don’t want to use the terminal? “Everything can be done without it but using it makes things easier…” When people say that they mean that you can browse the web and write stuff on LibreOffice but as soon as you deviate from stuff that you can accomplish with a simple Android tablet you’re fucked because you’ll have issues you couldn’t imagine. If you don’t want to use the terminal at that point you need to write scripts outside the terminal and then execute them so technically you didn’t do what you needed to do in the terminal but the end result is the same!

    • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Absolutely not, even if we could all work together that would be a horrible idea. Linux is not a Windows replacement and the Linux community doesn’t need to be overwhelmed with Windows users asking why a specific feature doesnt work exactly the same.

      • Red_October@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Then maybe “just use Linux” shouldn’t be the top advice for literally every computer issue presented here.

        • foo@feddit.uk
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          1 day ago

          I agree. If people are drawn to Linux because they like the idea of it and accept they have a learning curve, that’s great! But, moving to Linux through hatred or frustration with Windows will likely lead to even more frustration when Linux doesn’t work the way they expected.

          • Katana314@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            It’s not just learning curve. It’s feature set, compatibility, and user experience.

            Certain distros’ window managers may work just the way you like, or they might not and it may not be so simple to change it. The preferences menu on some of them is tiny.

            That’s before getting into just how perfectly it will work on your hardware. I tried Mint 21 first on my machine, and even though my hardware is ancient, it didn’t support the wi-fi card at all. That stuff is kernel level. I even looked up version numbers and it was supposed to work.

            (Mint 22 worked but that’s ridiculously late to finally start supporting this hardware. And, it could not run games as well as Steam Deck)

        • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 day ago

          Agreed, unironically Linux should never be recommended to anyone who wants their computer to work the same. If someone says '“I want Windows without Microsoft” I usually respond with tough luck that doesn’t exist.

    • thinkyfish@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      If you want Arch just use EndeavourOS. Its got an easy installer and a slightly less break-neck update schedule and you get the Arch User Repository for all the cool stuff.

  • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Every OS has a limited life span of support. Linux is no different. Every distro I’m aware of does 5 years or less of support vs Microsoft’s 10 years.

    • tequinhu@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I would disagree on the basis that Linux upgrades don’t require hardware upgrades (unless you have a very low end hardware that’s hanging by a thread already)

      For example, I don’t remember seeing all this fuss about upgrading when people were moving from 8.1 to 10 (but it could just be me on my bubble)

      • Xatolos@reddthat.com
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        1 day ago

        The difference is you now need a TPM 2.0 chip. That’s pretty much it. Hardware requirements were the same as Win8.

        If you are using a desktop computer, all you need to do is buy a $20-30 TPM 2.0 module and install it. It connects to a few pins and your done. It’s cheap, simple, and easy to do.

        The issue is most people now have laptops and quite a few didn’t have that chip or that version (some have TPM 1.2, which isn’t as secure anymore.) and you can’t install it on a laptop motherboard. TPM 2.0 has been available since mid-2016, but some manufacturers might have cheapened out and not added it to save costs as it wasn’t a necessary part. So basically, any laptop that is 9 years or older (or the manufacturer cheapened out) won’t be able to upgrade to Win11.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          10 hours ago

          Unless something has changed they took an axe to all 7th gen and older Intel CPUs and Ryzen 2000 and older AMD CPUs. This is the big challenge since this includes some very capable systems that are now just ewaste because Microsoft didn’t want to maintain compatibility all the way back to the Pentium 4 and Core 2 Duo and cut off platforms that still have life left in them

          • Daveyborn@lemmy.world
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            15 hours ago

            I don’t have any without. I do have ones where it’s not mentioned in the manual but clearly there though. Edit: double checked the 9 boards I have laying around. All of them going back to 4th gen intel have them. dont have any pre ryzen amd laying around to check though.

            • spookedintownsville@lemmy.world
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              15 hours ago

              I’m likely going to have to upgrade to ryzen or similar if I wanted to dual boot 11. I’m on an FX-8350 so it might be time anyway.

              • Daveyborn@lemmy.world
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                14 hours ago

                You’ve gotten good time out of that system for sure. You can find good deals on ryzen 3000 and 5000 stuff right now.