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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.
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.
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.
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 have to use Windows at work. Once, apropos of nothing at all, a system pop-up asked me if I wanted to buy an XBox controller. When I lock the screen and come back, sometimes Edge will have opened all by itself, presenting me with the Bing homepage. Nice try, Microsoft!
Honestly, not being able to run Dolphin as root made me feel like my PC wasn’t mine more than anything windows did up until recently.
Your computer is yours… As long as you’re comfortable doing it via terminal… Yay…
That’s been fixed for nearly 2 years now.
Install
kio-adminThen in the location bar type:
admin:It’ll prompt you for your password and then:
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 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.
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.
Steam OS is getting us closer as far as gaming goes.
Probably KDE settings can deal with this. At least that worked on mine. Hyprland also has stuff for remapping extra mouse buttons.
they require Logitech software on Windows
This seems more like a logitech issue than a linus issue.
Compatibility problems caused by third parties only targeting Windows are still Linux issues for the end user if they become a problem when they use Linux. It isn’t fair but that is the practical reality.
The issue isn’t that they didn’t work, as I said I wasn’t expecting them to when I bought the mouse.
The issue is their behavior has started changing with updates. I don’t mind, but I’m a tinkerer. My wife, my MiL, most of my friends, absolutely do not want to deal with an inconsistent computer experience.
Different definitions of ‘ready’ I guess. Been using primarily Linux for years, so it was ‘ready’ for me back then - but nothing has changed in the mean time that would change my recommendation for people who just want a boring stable computer.
Was the logitech mouse not supported by libratbag (backend of Piper)?
This sentence alone is why Linux is a hard sell for the average person.
What distro are you on? I’ve been out of Linux for like 3 months now but never had issues with my mouse randomly changing behavior in the year or so prior to that. Whether they work or not is up in the air, but random behavior changes seems like a weird practice
Sounds more like your hardware isn’t ready for Linux.
Same. I have a Kensington trackball with a decent config and button mapping software in Windows that I will NOT give up. I tried Mint for a few weeks, but it just became too stupidly cumbersome to Google every single thing. Like I wanted to implement the Windows PIN thing for startup on my PC… Yeah no.
Linux has come a long way but it’s not ready for the commoners like me. And a free open source OS probably cannot be developed for the masses without some major funding with a dedicated team.
So back to Win 10, Enterprised with massgrave.
I tried switching to linux like 10 years ago, but then, all the games i played didn’t work. I tried switching again a month ago, but my cpu (i honestly don’t remember) wasn’t compatible. I watched youtube videos for a workaround, and that was way above my paygrade, because i’m worried i’m gonna skullfuck my computer by changing random ini files because a youtuber said so. I tried it on the laptop and i kinda just didn’t work either for a diffrent reason. I don’t care as much about my laptop, so i’ll try again. As much as i hate windows, and i really really do, you hit a button and it’s installed.
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.
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 tried installing Linux (dual-boot alongside Windows) on my dad’s computer two weeks ago and it didn’t work (something to do with the TPM chip i think). I gave up after 15 minutes. It was supposed to be a demonstration how “quick and easy” it is to install Linux nowadays. On top of that, it broke the Windows install. Bad first impression IMO.
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.
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.
It was.
It’s sadly far easier to gut windows than it is to get Linux working for everything I need. I’d love for this meme to be true because I’m gonna end up fighting the good fight come EoL win10 but don’t kid yourself.
Last time I tried was last autumn. It didn’t go well (again). I try regularly because computer OS is pretty much the last thing I have to switch to get rid of spytech. I suppose I’m not skilled enough, but it’s not fair to suppose that people don’t switch to linux on pc because they’re lazy, or ignorant, or bad or things like that.
What are you having trouble with? Which distros have you tried?
I think once Valve polishes SteamOS for desktop environments there will be actual largescale migration.
I thought the holdup was the graphics drivers (Nvidia mostly) not the de. Normal desktop mode with KDE works fine on my steamdeck.
Fair point. But even so I think SteamOS has the most viable potential to achieve something like a 5-10% adoption rate that could get entities like nVidia to pay more attention.
Lol can’t disagree with you there, they just need to release it already!
Will ValveOS be useful for anything besides playing games?
Games are pretty demanding, there will probably be widespread support just coincidentally. Also companies build software for where the market is, a big Linux population will command more development time for drivers etc.
If it is useful at only playing games I think it will be a popular option nonetheless.
Sure, lots of people mainly use their computers for games, but I would think even they would demand at least a web browser and/or social media apps.
Only a small fraction of people use Steam so I don’t see that happening.
Steam apparently has about 130 million monthly active users and about 70 million daily active users. About half the planet has a computer at home. So, Steam users are somewhere between say 2% and 10% of the world’s active PC users.
If someone is a daily active steam user, they spend a lot of time on the computer. If they have to make sure their drivers are up to date and their frame rate is high enough to support their games, they’ve probably developed a bit of knowledge about the system. My guess is that people who play Steam games tend to be the tech support people for their friends and family more often than not.
So, it’s a small group, but it’s an influential group. If enough of that group becomes comfortable with SteamOS, they may be comfortable setting it up (or a variant of it) for a friend or family member, even if that friend or family member only uses their computer to watch videos, check emails, etc. In a world where Windows was free and just worked, that might not happen. But, in this world Windows 10 is about to lose support, and Microsoft is suggesting that if your computer can’t run Windows 11 you should just throw it away and upgrade. In that world, more people might end up switching to Linux.
Why would you set up Steam OS for a family member. That is problematic in many ways.
I could care less if Linux explodes in market share or not. It serves my needs fine and that’s all that matters for me.
Maybe. I just mean once(if) there becomes an OS that reliably runs Steam and the games on Steam, there will be a viable alternative to Windows for a significant population of users.
