Wow, so many wrong comments. My parents using Linux laptops for 10 years (which i give them second hand when i buy a new one). Now i set up NixOS with auto updates, and never needed to touch it again myself.
Let’s be real. Most people can’t really use Windows, either. Anything harder than clicking the Chrome icon is beyond most users.
Question: Would I still struggle to get games working on a desktop using Linux as I have in the past (always some driver issue for some crucial bit of hardware; either the GPU can’t do 3D or the NIC doesn’t function, etc) or would they work as well as on a Steam Deck, that doesn’t have to account for a variety of hardware differences? Almost every single person I have seen lately saying gaming on Linux is awesome now, is using a literal device designed for it. But what about my hardware? Is getting wrappers for nVidia drivers still a fucking PITA with a 50/50 chance of actually working correctly?
I love Linux for just basic computing needs or running servers. But I’ve always had a bad time when trying to play games.
I swapped to Arch Linux in the last month and it’s been great. Gaming has been fun. The Nvidia drivers are still kinda confusing, and honestly I wouldn’t put my mom on Arch Linux as of right now, but it’s good enough.
I’m writing a document so my SW engineering friends can swap over as well within a day and be up and running, and it’s just neat to see Linux gradually growing in my circles.
If you’re on Linux, don’t forget to donate to your favorite SW creators even if they’re less flashy than say Larian studios or what have you lol.
The other type I see is people who complain that Linux isn’t usable, and it gradually turns out that the only thing they’d consider usable is an OS exactly like Windows.
Had a friend of mine rib me for “not just paying for a license (for windows)”. Tried to explain that wasn’t the point to their befuddlement. Smh
I switched 15 years ago. It was ready then. It is ready now. I was in my teens and have used it ever since.
If you see this meme and think “well actually, I had a really difficult time last time I tried to install Linux” - did you ask for help? That’s what the internet is for.
You don’t see how terrible Windows is until you’ve switched to another OS and need to interact with it again.
The constant pop-ups, the ads everywhere, the settings hidden away.
It really feels like your PC isn’t yours.
I never see much love for ZorinOS, but I find it a very solid replacement. I still use my Macbook for certain things, but I am slowly moving away from even that thanks to Apple’s spying and whatnot.
I used to think I could just stick to macOS. But I don’t trust the USA and by extension, I don’t trust Apple.
Switching to Linux isn’t a choice anymore. It’s a requirement for freedom.
Yeah, Apple will just cave when necessary. Honestly, even if the USA is removed from the equation, nobody is really safe from any government or corporation. We’re only in better and worse condition because no one has done the unthinkable yet. The UK online safety bill, Signal’s threat to leave Sweden, France busting activists using Swiss VPN. If you can’t host it yourself, secure it yourself, rebuild it yourself, you can’t trust businesses and governments to do these things for you in the long run.
Hell, it’s starting to feel a lot less like freedom and more about the ability to hide, even if you’re doing nothing wrong, because someone may eventually decide that what you’re doing was wrong.
Encrypting your chats to keep them from being sold/mined for government oversight? ILLEGAL!
I think you’re 100% correct.
With all my Apple stuff I thought we were headed for a Star Trek federation. Instead we’re getting a starship troopers federation 😞
Linux is American by that definition
I’ll bite. How? It’s open source software championed by a Finnish academic professor.
He’s now American.
Outside of that a lot of Linux is supported by US companies. If boycotting the US was the goal it is going to be very hard.
Yeah that makes zero sense to me
Lots of the money comes from the US and US companies. But as you said, it is open source.
US corporations donate to the Linux Foundation, and in fact all the Platinum members of the Linux Foundation (donors of $500k or more/year) are corporations - although I don’t think they’re all American. But the Linux Foundation has no control over the code, it merely promotes use of Linux. Did you mean something else by, “Lots of money comes from…”?
That was pretty much what I meant.
I think by America they pretty clearly meant corporate America and its corporate-owned government, neither of which controls how Linux works.
I hate to break it to you but Linux is maintained by corporate America. Everything from the Linux foundation to Linux focused companies like Red Hat, Amazon and Microsoft.
Sure it is probably better than anything else available but I think it is silly to focus on the region a company is based in when we are talking about international corporations.
I don’t know what argument you’re having, but what I said was that the Linux Foundation doesn’t have any control over the code.
I love Linux, but it isn’t ready.
Two weeks ago my side mouse buttons started working (they require Logitech software on Windows, wasn’t expecting them to work). Last week they stopped. This week they work again.
Is this major? Not at all. Would it drive my mother-in-law into a rage rivaling that of Cocaine Bear? Absolutely. Spare me from the bear, keep Linux for the tinkerers.
I just tried using Linux as my main Gaming OS desktop probably about a month and half ago after using it for college for 5 years.
I love Linux but for NVIDIA drivers and gaming it still very much isn’t there.
Linux was awesome 15 years ago. They probably just had driver problems. Those used to be much worse.
In the command-line-only world of the 80s I thought Unix was awesome already!
I mean, the core utilities are all from then and there.
TBH as a developer on an old system called VMS I’ve never loved Linux. VMS syntax was a beautiful thing. Commands and command options were all real words, which made it all very intuitive. For example, the command to print 3 copies of a file in landscape orientation would be PRINT /COPIES=3 /ORIENTATION=LANDSCAPE <filename>. You could also abbreviate any way you wanted, as long as the result was unambiguous. PR /C=3 /O=L would probably work. But the natural words were always in your head. By comparison I’ve always found Unix/Linux syntax much harder to remember.
According to the Wiki the latest release is 3 months old. It is still in use, but doesn’t look to be for the average consumer.
Wow, the last time I actually used VMS was when Digital Equipment Corp still existed. It was written for their VAX systems, not PCs but a “minicomputer” of the 80s, successor to the PDP-xx of the 70s (which the original Advent and Zork were written on). When DEC went out of business or got sold or whatever VMS became OpenVMS. There’s an x86 version now but I’ve never tried it.
It was.
Month and a half into using Mint Cinnamon… frankly it’s hard to feel like I’m not still using Win10. What comes to mind immediately is that file management dialogs in apps are less consistent with how the file manager itself works, whereas in Windows it’s all more uniform. But IMO that’s very minor. Overall UX feels the same to me.
Note: I am not a computer gamer so can’t comment on how games work on Linux, and also I’ve used Ubuntu and BSD in the past. Just had Windows at home to be consistent with work. I retired several years ago and it still took me this long to switch over.