Sir, do you have a minute to talk about Linux? 👉👈
Removed by mod
Wat
Do we have to report him… ?
“YOU KNOW WHY I CLICK LATER? BECAUSE THERE’S NO OPTION TO CLICK NEVER! I’D LIKE TO CLICK NEVER! I NEVER WANT TO DOWNLOAD THESE STUPID BULLSHIT FUCKING UPDATES EVER AGAIN!”
Then click that you aren’t interested.
That setting may not scream in your face, but it is far from hidden.
Even though Windows is very user-friendly. I think Windows 11 might be my last. The amount of anti-privacy that’s implemented and what I have to do just so it doesn’t constantly phone back home is kind of ridiculous.
Off to pick my flavor of Linux.
I find it strange that people call it user-friendly, despite it doing a lot of things hostile to the user.
Just more in the neighborhood of being used or understanding something because it has been given to them from a very young age on. So getting familiar and used to it very young age on makes it “friendly” even though it is more “familiarity”.
Linux is always going to be really awkward at first but over the course of time you learn and shy away and develop your own kinda workflow and that’s the beauty of it in my opinion.
Because user-friendly means that even a tech-noob can easily set it up and use it right away without much researching.
-
If an OS requires ANY AMOUNT of command line, you have lost about half the population.
-
If an OS asks any remotely difficult question with techno lingo, you have lost an other quarter.
-
If an OS doesn’t work out of the box the way it should (like all their hardware functioning including audio), you have lost all the other not technology inclined people.
Windows is setup that it requires none of that. It may do something that you find horrific, but most people do not care as long as it works.
Windows devices are set up like that.
If you give someone a blank hard drive and Windows install media, they need to to all of those things.
Have you installed Windows 10 or 11 lately?
The most difficult part are the partitions, but even that is done mostly automatically and doesn’t allow you to continue if your setup wouldn’t work.
And it most definitely does not require a single command line.
Maybe some technical jargon, but even that you can just skip by pressing next.
Linux works exactly like that too, unless you start tinkering with it
Yes, it required a command line to perform disk partitioning and even a basic pre-erase.
It also asked about 20 more questions than necessary, and I had to answer “no” to each and every one of them.
Where Linux asks for a username, Windows insisted multiple time that I had to create an account. The only workaround was to physically unplug the Ethernet cable.
There’s also a step where you need to lie about your regional settings to avoid getting plastered with preinstalled trash.
If you blindly click “next” through a Windows install, you will get the most bloated, horrible, invasive experience possible.
There Windows installer is an absolute fucking minefield.
If an OS requires ANY AMOUNT of command line, you have lost about half the population.
Half? It’s way more than half.
90% and I feel that’s generous to the supposed 10%
-
“user friendly” doesn’t mean “in the users’ best interests”, it means “easy to use”.
newbie or somewhat experienced user?
I would say I know the basics of Linux due to owning a Pi and messing around with it time-to-time but no where near experienced.
TL; DR: From personal experience as a Raspberry Pi tinkerer and Windows evacuee, I recommend Linux Mint.
Raspberry Pi OS is essentially Debian compiled for ARM with the LXDE desktop. They used to use LXDE, and it is my understanding they forked LXDE to make their “Pixel” desktop. Being Debian, it uses the APT package manager with .deb packages.
Linux Mint is a fork of Ubuntu, which itself is a fork of Debian. It uses the APT package manager and .deb packages. The exact same commands to install, say, LibreOffice on a Raspberry Pi can be used to install it on Linux Mint.
Cinnamon is the flagship desktop, and I think is a reasonable answer to “What if Microsoft had kept developing the Windows 7 desktop instead of trying to make a tablet OS?” I chose Cinnamon pretty immediately because it felt more like the Windows I had grown up with than Windows 8.1 did.
Isn’t there a Debian version of Mint too?
There is: Linux Mint Debian Edition. There are a few things you’re missing in LMDE than in the standard Ubuntu-based version though, such as the driver manager and support for PPAs. The latter of which has declined in usefulness with the rise of Flatpaks, I haven’t installed from a PPA in years now.
I think Fedora and Ubuntu are easy recommendations!
and Ubuntu
No. It’s way too complicated to circumvent Canonical’s attempts at vendor lock-in. One might just as well pick a more distribution from the beginning.
most users simply do not care. if it works, it works
That’s a good justification for them to stick with Windows.
Fedora is nice. You might also like PopOS or Majaro.
How easy is it to move user data and software to another distro if I decide to change it up?
Not too hard, especially if you plan on running the same software on your new distro. Basically, all of the settings are in your home directory (/home/[username]/), so you could just copy everything from your home directory and that’s that.
Not only that, but you could also set up your home dir to be on another partition or drive. Basically, you don’t have to copy anything if you set up your distro like this. You just point the new distro to your former home directory, this is home now, and it’ll just use all of the settings from there. Sure, some settings and files are distro specific, but you can manually delete those if you want to free up a few MB of space.
deleted by creator
Up to date… on Debian… lol 🤣
/s (somewhat)
If only the Xbox controller wouldn’t randomly disconnect on Linux. No, i bought it because i read it works well here.
This is my biggest downfall with Linux, lack of integration with gaming but I’ll learn to leave without it, I guess.
Sounds like bait but I’ll bite.
Most singleplayer titles work perfectly fine under Linux. Majority of my steam library runs with compatibility toggled in steam.
I’ve got a Switch Pro controller, no issues via Bluetooth or Cable connection. Gives me battery readouts via Dunst
Running Wayland with an NVIDIA GPU in both my systems.
I heard some recent steam thing made it pretty great now? Or was that just marketing talking?
It’s been for a few years, the only problem is with some multiplayers games (and it’s quite a easy and complex question)
RPGMaker games are hit or miss
Overall, if its on steam and it’s not a MP game chances are it will work out of the box
When was the last time you tried? Steam Deck has allowed Valve to dedicate lots of time to fine-tuning Proton and it works with virtually every game now, save the ones with specific kinds of online anti-cheat systems.
You can also just add your Epic and GoG games to Steam Launcher and then they’ll be launched with Proton as well.
I have a feeling people here like Linux…
on lemmy are you shure ?
I use a Mac!
But you’ve installed Linux on it, right?
No. But I pay for apps that offer me the built in features I get on Linux. Like… Setting per app audio output.
So I don’t use Mac so I gotta ask, are you joking or do you legit need to pay for that that feature that I’m pretty sure was something you could control in windows 98
Yes, you do. It’s not cheap, either.
I’ve tried the open source version but unfortunately they don’t work as well. SoundSource, though expensive, works well because of their sound engine called ACE, other open source solutions had other ways of redirecting audio. Though… RogueAmoeba(the devs), through the power of ACE offer other audio apps I use such as Audio highjack and Loopback, and I can really easily process the sound, recording it and add effects, even the built in ones from apple, like the sound isolation I apply on my mic, I can apply to the audio output or application outputs as well so when I record a meeting, if the user didn’t have a great mic and good noise cancelation I can apply the effect that comes built in by Apple which works really really well. I know, it sucks I have to pay but at least the apps are really really well done and nice.
I also pay for Setapp because a lot of really good apps are included that I use so I can make my Mac experience better, because honestly it misses a lot of features. Yet again, the silver lining is that the apps are built really well. Without all of these custom apps I don’t know how I could use a Mac. You even need software like Rectangle because macos doesn’t have built in window snapping.
I used to be a Linux user, I have been using it for quite a while(more than 5 years), but unfortunately I’m not just a developer anymore so I need to office stuff and develop… And it’s been the best experience by far on Mac (I also have to test some apps I make on iOS so I need XCode). Developing on Linux is amazing, but unfortunately I need to do a lot of different things and it’s been the best experience on MacOS with apps that add the features I am missing. I prefer Unix like systems and stuff to just work so you won’t catch me on windows, but I did have to install windows on my Linux machine because some things I have to do only work on Windows so I gotta have that. It’s just my usecase and this is what works best for me. I tried to linuxize my Mac to have the GNU utilities but unfortunately stuff started to break because they adapted it for the way the Mac utilities work… Ugh, I so wish I could have the GNU utils.
I was actually going to put it on an older laptop the other week, but Ubuntu wouldn’t run on it.
This was after spending an hour trying to get into the BIOS, only to find that the keyboard doesn’t actually work before the Windows splash screen comes up… I mean who the fuck designs it like that?
Also the drive bay doesn’t fit the SSD properly, so it just boot loops if you use the little caddy. Refuses to even Post.
Now I hate computers again.
What laptop was it so the rest of us can avoid this tomfoolery in the future?
Acer 5742. It’s old (and more importantly, free), but with a first gen i5 and 6GB RAM I thought it would still be able to run basic Ubuntu.
On the plus side, you could access the drive and RAM through a detachable panel, without needing to pull the whole machine to pieces, or be prevented from upgrading it entirely. Which is another thing that’s becoming depressingly rare.
Acer seems like a bit of a grabbag when it comes to quality.
Hold shift when you click restart in windows, you can access the firmware through windows recovery.
Only with UEFI. This wasn’t that. I initially thought it was Windows 10 fucking with Fastboot and causing it to skip.
This was after spending an hour trying to get into the BIOS, only to find that the keyboard doesn’t actually work before the Windows splash screen comes up… I mean who the fuck designs it like that?
Does your laptop have multiple usb ports? And did you try them all?
I had this issue even on my PC until I tried a bunch of different USB ports and found one that worked.
Uhh I just realized that since it’s a laptop the keyboard is part of the laptop… Well I’ll still leave this in case it helps anyone
Yeah, I had to plug in a USB keyboard in the end.
New convert here, it’s mostly dope. Edit: here as in on linux
I have Arch btw
We don’t have a choice.
Please do not let Linux find out I said this, I have kids.
This grinds my gears. Apple does the same: my work MBP nags me daily to enable iCloud backups but I have no way of doing it because Apple login is disabled by my administrator. Consequently, I cannot reach the settings page to tell Mac to fuck off.
You can’t ask IT to disable it for you?
I should, you’re right.
I see this is your first day with a Windows computer. Welcome.
Only good thing about windows being so bad is that amazing feeling when I finish my homework in Solidworks (🤬) and boot back to my Linux desktop.
Can’t you just virtualize it?
Virtualizing applications that use 3d graphics can be a pain
You just need to pass though a GPU
yeah but that needs a second gpu :/
Ugh, I just found this out and had to bail on the idea.
I mean, you can do it with a single gpu, it’s just that the host won’t have it anymore
Wouldn’t the iGPU be enough for the host system? I’m assuming you can reload the standalone GPU on the host system when you’re done with the task on the hosted system.
Would that be possible without restarting the system?
(I’m not as knowledgeable on Linux, so I’m curious if Linux can support such a use case)
hm yeah but hen you would need to have an i gpu in my case i don’t have one but that would work especially since if you have an i gpu the big gpu is mostly used for offloading
Not really. You just enable 3d acceleration for the VM
My laptop barely runs windows unvirtualized and I don’t have a PC :(
Is there a newbie way to install it? It looks pretty convoluted…
It’s easier than installing Windows. The problem is that someone hasn’t already done it for you.
Yes. Did you know that you cannot partition disks in a GUI while installing Windows? You can only select partition to install to or format the entire disk, all advanced actions must be done with
diskpartcommands in Command Prompt (Shift+F10).Also OOBE is shit, luckily you can do it offline thanks to
C:\Windows\System32\OOBE\bypassnro.bat. And the additional setup like debloating is also time-consuming.BypassNRO is actually an NT command script, not a DOS batch file. It’s actually a .cmd, which actually sets a registry value and reboots the system (probably the only bit of the Windows core I am aware of that is open source).
Also the Panther (the codename for the boot.wim installer) Setup has some really basic partitioning tools. You can create a smaller partition, delete, format, and that’s it. You have to use DiskPart or Disk Management to do more.
(accidentally deleted this)
Thanks. Your earlier comment is still visible to me, please try deleting it again.
Anyway, I installed both Windows 10 and 11 last month on clean drives and I remember not being able to create multiple partitions in the GUI. Is there a difference between editions perhaps?
BypassNRO is actually an NT command script, not a DOS batch file. It’s actually a .cmd, which actually sets a registry value and reboots the system (probably the only bit of Windows I am aware of that is open source).
Also the Panther (the codename for the boot.wim installer) Setup has some really basic partitioning tools. You can create a smaller partition, delete, format, and that’s it. You have to use DiskPart or Disk Management to do more.
Or just wait until you are booted into Windows and use the Diskmanager.
Honestly, these complains from you Linuxians are always just so dumb and uninformed.
You are right that there is a way to do this post-installation but I have been down this rabbit hole 4 times and all I can say is:
Nope nope nope. This is actually more pain.
Why? Shrinking the
C:drive is difficult or damn near impossible when Windows is installed on it, which is why I always install Windows to a smaller partition (120 GiB as I don’t play modern games) and move user folders toD:, and then leave some space forE:or Linux.Disk Management will only let you shrink the disk by a very small amount. This is because Windows has a lot of “unmoveable files”. You need to disable recovery, virtual memory and hibernation to get a chance at shrinking that partition, and you may need to run all kinds of defrag commands. I did this on 4 PCs and the first 3 times, this was enough.
In the 4th case, just this week, I became sick and got stuck at my grandma’s place far from home. I needed a Linux installation badly, but there was only a laptop with 40 out of 220 GiB free after cleanup, and just a single partition (with Windows preinstalled, of course). It did not want to budge and reported 0 MB shrinkable space. I tried every trick mentioned online before resorting to buying Aomei Partition Assistant. It queued the action of shrinking the drive by 20 GiB (alleged minimum for Mint) and estimated 18 minutes to complete the operation. It told me it cannot do that while Windows was running so it gave me the option to use WinPE or PreOS mode. WinPE did not work so I retried with PreOS. The computer booted into VGA text mode and this appeared on the screen:
============== AOMEI Partition Assistant PreOS Mode ============== The program is executing, please wait... Operation 1 of 1 Resizing Partition Hard Disk: 1 Drive Letter: C: File System: NTFS Partition Label: OS Size: 220.46GB => 200.45GB Total:0 %, Current:0 %This was on the screen for about an hour, and the PC was apparently under load with fans spinning. The program might be stuck but could how could I tell? I eventually forced the computer to shut down. I hadn’t made a backup because I did not have a large external drive (would have installed Linux on part of that, instead). Was my grandma’s only computer ruined? Would I be stuck for 2 weeks without a computer?
Luckily, the PreOS program ultimately had no effect on the drive, and I managed to negotiate a refund from Aomei. Then I realized I could boot into Recovery Mode and try
diskpartfrom Command Prompt there, which miraculously worked. Also pretty tense because it did not give any indication of progress, just threw control back to me when it finished. I was relieved when I successfully booted into Windows on that shrunk partition. Other than having to enter Windows Safe Mode to disable RAID storage in BIOS, the Linux installation went fine.
So this is why you install Windows on a reasonably small partition or resize it before using a preinstalled copy. This is not useful just for Linux but when you want to upgrade to an SSD (as I did with my parents’ and the other grandparents’ computer), you only want the system partition there so you don’t need to buy a bigger drive; also wear leveling will work better if the drive is not close to full, and HDDs are easierbto recover if they fail. With separate OS and data partitions, you just use Clonezilla or something to clone the Windows (
C:) partition to the SSD bit-by-bit, then disconnect the old drive and fix boot using a Windows recovery medium (necessary because of Microsoft’s shenanigans, make changes to the boot table and now you’re booting from an SSD with a fallback copy on the HDD!To be clear, I also prefer GUI utilities (except when automation is needed of course). But
diskpartis pretty easy - it’s essentially a state machine with built-in help so it’s very noob-friendly for a CLI program. And you just saw that it can save hours of hassle.Or you just don’t partition at all.
Never had a problem with it in the last 15 years on Windows. You can usually fix the OS with some command lines. And if you can’t, you just reinstall and Windows will move all your files into a Windows.old folder.
That’s not good use of space, storage is still expensive where I live (partly because of piracy tax). A simple copy to “Windows.old” will not save the bootloader so it won’t really work as a backup – it’s dead space now. Your OS partition (and the EFI one) must be copied bitwise if you need to back them up (but as you correctly mentioned, you probably don’t).
It makes a lot of sense to separate installation and data, especially when the PC will get used by old people (who are more likely to screw up something badly) or power users. And making backups of data is as easy as
robocopy D: F:\Backup /mir. Yes, I also have lots of experience using and managing Windows PCs in my family and work.
- get your perferred iso
- do a checksum if available (basecally check the signature of the original file with yours, the checksum often is available on the website)
- get beleana etcher or i think rufus can also do linux isos but i’n not shure
- get an usb stick with min 4gb
- flash iso onto usb stick
- stick usb stick into perferred pc
- boot onot that usb stick (for my motherboard it’s F10 but that can be different for you)
- boot into the live iso and the installer should pop up
- read the instructions of the installer carefully
- you are done enjoy your new os
although i would recommend playing around with different distros in a vm to see waht you like and if all your needed software is available
Check out ubuntu if you want something thats easy to install. It’s very popular, it’s based on Debian and it has corporate backing but no spyware
deleted by creator
Why buy a new system when you can just run Linux on the existing system
Because the majority of people don’t want to expend the time nor effort installing Linux.
It already starts with choosing your distro …
Frankly, I think that’s a Linux community problem. We really just need to push one big distro and I think we are nowadays collectively pushing Linux mint a lot better. That really needs to be the default.
I suppose the point is that Surely Linux is a better option than buying a $1,300 MacBook.
The point is to transition to a subscription based OS. You subscribe, pay a monthly fee for services like Teams, Outlook, etc.
The LTSC editions probably won’t ship with that bullshit, so it’s probably safe to say that they can still be usable even after completely transitioning to a subscription based OS.
Bully for them, but I don’t use Teams, Outlook, Office365, Onedrive, or Skype anyway. So the only way Microsoft is going to make a dime off of people like me is to charge a subscription for the base OS, which I ain’t paying.
I know what you mean. Likewise, I’ve never paid MS for any of their products (or any other company for that matter, lol 😂). So, if pushing comes to shoving and LTSC still comes with this bullshit, bye bye dual boot 👋 😉.
Microsoft isn’t looking to make money off of you.
They get the gross of their income from businesses.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
Uuum, no.
To be perfectly honest, building software for a fixed set of hardware products is a piece of cake. Doing it for every bit of hardware on this earth, yeah, that is PITA. So, even though I don’t like MS at all, I have to hand it to them in the conpatibility department. Not as backwards compatible as Linux, but they sure are a close second.
Buidling software for an already stable as fuck platform (*BSD) is a lot easier, plus you already know what hardware it’s gonna run on, lol. You cherry pick security/bug fixes and everything else regarding optimizations gets thrown under the carpet… and of course you charge your customers for the security/bug fixes, that’s always a plus 👍.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
MS realized that the way into the future is making the OS a subscription, like Apple did. Yes Apple were first, MS copied. You see something that’s good, you adjust to implement it on your terf.
Regarding the charging for updates part, I don’t actually own a Mac, so it’s just what I’ve read over the years online. I’m sorry if I made a mistake on that part.
You do have a point though about MS passing the ball to the manufacturers regarding the drivers. Still, even with just the native drivers, Windows supports a lot more hardware than MacOS does.
Regarding the NT kernel vs the *BSD one, I just don’t agree. Sure, the team behind it might be top notch, but in my experience the *BSD kernel is more stable. Sure, lack of drivers, smaller user base, but if you manage to get everything running, any of the BSD flavors is rock solid. Sorry, but can’t say the same about the NT kernel.
Is supporting every bit of hardware on earth why Linux shows ads everywhere?
I run Linux daily, I’ve never seen an ad (unless it was in a browser).
Exactly. Saying windows is problematic has nothing to do with supporting multiple hardware configurations and everything to do with Microsoft having no empathy for the user experience.
If I had known it was possible to make a local account instead of having to use my outlook for my desktop, I totally would have gone that route a couple years ago. Only plus side I can think of for not doing it is that I have immediate access to my outlook.
If I use Windows I use a fully patched IoT LTSC 2019, with O&O ShutUp at somewhat recommended settings.
psst… I hear you’re looking to ditch Microsoft. You might like what you see over at c/linux
uuu, nice, smooth 😏 👍
Is there even a single benefit of this? I don’t want anything to do with one drive.
The benefits are:
Data that can be analyzed and form basis of ad profile
Can track you when you are on the move.
Vendor lock-in as you may find that most features are tied to the microsoft account (onedrive, office, outlook)
Hey, wait a minute…
Nobody specified whose benefit…
-
Syncing settings between devices
-
Bought Windows Store Apps transfer
-
Syncing Cortana related things
And of course OneDrive, but you already said you don’t care.
Honestly, if you don’t care about those, it is perfectly fine to just use Windows with a local account. But there definitely are benefits if you are looking for a more Apple-like “everything is connected” vibe.
This is all accurate. However, there’s one other thing, which is essentially SSO.
Basically if you sign in with a Microsoft account, you can sign into your PC with your Microsoft account username and password, which can be easier to reset from another device than going through the password recovery process for Windows.
Apart from that, your bitlocker keys are stored on your Microsoft account if you have that enabled on your main drive.
As an aside: if you have bitlocker enabled on your PC, be sure to back up the recovery key. Print it off, or save it to a USB drive and email it to yourself (the system won’t let you save it on the encrypted drive for obvious reasons), or something. Bitlocker isn’t bad, I just feel like Microsoft doesn’t do a very good job at making people aware of the pitfalls of it when things go sideways. Basically, if you need to pull the drive for any reason as part of a recovery operation, then you’ll need the recovery key to decrypt the data and gain access to it for the purpose of recovery.
Fair warning: anyone who purchased a prebuilt PC in the past 3-5 years should check on it (longer realistically), and make sure they have that recovery key. Most prebuilt PC companies (like HP/Lenovo/Dell) generally have bitlocker on by default and Windows does a wretched job of telling you any of this.
Bitlocker isn’t bad, it’s full drive encryption. That’s a good thing for the most part and you should use it, especially with mobile systems, but please make sure you have that recovery key. I work in IT support and it’s starting to happen that drives fail, and the client doesn’t have the recovery key, so I can’t even try to recover the data for them. It used to be trivial, just load the drive into a working system and grab what you need, but with bitlocker, even if you get a corrupted file that’s required for Windows to start, but the disk is otherwise fine, your data goes away and will not come back without that key.
-
Highly rexommed Mint Cinammon or Pop!_os
Honestly I’d say OpenSUSE tumbleweed. Good distro, very up to date/bleeding edge, has YAST which can help newbies who are not familiar with terminal, has btrfs snapshots which saved my arse a couple of times. I don’t wanna trigger Arch users, but I find it way more stable than Arch. It gives me almost 0 headaches. Sometimes when I get home I want my PC to just work and I don’t want to spend my time troubleshooting it. It’s not as customizable as Arch though. If you still find it a bit much for a starter distro, you won’t go wrong with Pop_OS, it’s a good distro imo, but atm it’s too old. No clue when they’re gonna release their next update with CosmicDE, but when they release it, it’s probably gonna be in a beta state for a while.
I suggest Kubuntu, great ui, solid base, niche problems can be googled away
I suggest Manjaro. Arch made easy.
Use EndeavourOS if you want easy Arch, Manjaro is kinda bad.
But really if you want an easy system, go with Mint or Fedora. Arch isn’t designed for ease nor first-timers.
I have enjoyed manjaro. My sons first laptop ran manjaro with WINE for his gaming. It never gave him too many problems
Why don’t you just turn those notifications off?
