With how aggressive Microsoft is becoming with ads, services, and data collection they could at least make Windows itself free.
But no, you still have to pay £100+ per license to have the pleasure of putting up with this crap.
Piracy is not a real solution to the problem. Microsoft allows these sorts of things to exist in the background because they would rather lose out on some sales than lose market share.
Kinda the same thing as winrar. They rather have consumers get used to it so the companies they work at have a higher chance of buying licenses. That’s where the real money is.
Ding ding ding!
Like how Adobe puts minimal effort into protecting from cracks for their software.
They’d much rather have little Jimmy and a million others pirate PS at home and get used to the workflow, so that businesses pay out big recurring fees for Adobe’s tools, which they will if that’s what everybody knows how to use.
Piracy is their weapon. If not for piracy, ex-USSR countries wouldn’t transition to Windows till around 2009, and I’d expect that in such an alternative reality they wouldn’t then too.
aka spyware
Piracy is the solution when what you think you’re buying is not what you’re getting and the company that you’re buying changes the product without your consent.
Every generation has this moment, where they learn to hate Microsoft (or Micro$oft). Then, 4% install Linux, 6% buy a Mac with half the RAM for twice the price; and everyone else to keeps complaining.
With me it was when they killed off my favorite browser. I’m now using the reanimated bushy red corpse of it.
Netscape?
MS has done shady things but Netscape’s own top employees have written about how Netscape destroyed itself with the version 4 rewrite. Joel Spolsky has also written about how complete rewrites are always a mistake.
Their corporate side failed too. If you weren’t fortune 500, Netscape wouldn’t talk to you. I was spending $50k a year with Netscape and they wouldn’t fix a bug unless I paid for an additional $75k a year support tier. ( The bug was Netscape 4 didn’t support dialing with area codes! )
Meanwhile during the late 90’s Microsoft devs put their personal emails in the readme.txts and would quickly patch any bugs or add features if you emailed them.
All the small isp’s (which were over 50% of the market) gave up on Netscape because of this.
What was your favorite browser?
This is the way
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I feel like you’re describing Windows here lol
Windows does manage it quite well with the OOBE to be fully functional with regular hardware. Only special stuff like (d)GPUs and external stuff might require special drivers.
Basic sound, networking, (multi-monitor) video and peripheral support works very good.As does practically every Linux distro. I install it, it just works. Don’t even need to hunt for GPU or printer drivers like I do for windows.
That was the status quo when I tried Linux ~5 years ago. Nowadays, Linux is much more plug and play (and I’m specifically referring to Pop OS).
Cool, but didn’t everyone tell me I should use Mint, for a bunch of reasons including “it’s arguably the most beginner-friendly”?
From what I read, Mint is better for lower-end PC specs, but otherwise, I’d strongly recommend PopOS.
I see. I’ll look into it, thanks.
Desktop Linux requires buying a USB / DVD, inserting it into your machine, and hitting OK several times. If you can’t do that, you also can’t install Windows.
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Verification is optional, but recommended. This is true for all OSs. Don’t do it if you can’t.
Note that I said to buy a USB or DVD with Linux. Burning your own is easy on Linux, but Windows puts up a lot of roadblocks. (One wonders why.)
GRUB works fine, but again, you only have to deal with it if you want to dual-boot.
Some sound cards used to not have first-party Linux drivers, so you’d have to find some third-party workaround. This is the only real problem among the ones you listed, but even this is pretty rare nowadays.
That’s all fair advice. It doesn’t change that installation instructions should have been a lot more thorough though. Once I get a third (or bigger primary) SSD, I’ll dual-boot Mint. I still want to try it. Regardless of my issues with it, I do know Linux is getting better. And we can see how ready I am for it now (and that’s partially up to the software).
Fair. I guess asking users to verify the ISO is just to avoid lawsuits. Buying USBs is more beginner-friendly than burning your own, but it would be very difficult to maintain an up to date list of sellers. They definitely need to explain GRUB and dual-booting better, as well as make it easier to repair / avoid the Windows overwriting GRUB issue.
Burning an iso with stuff like rufus is so stupid easy it should be illegal.
Linux mint user here.
Sound works even better then windows, Printers needed terminal work to install, but forums were very helpful. https://safereddit.com/r/linux/comments/rpgn28/my_grandma_called_and_thanked_me_for_installing/
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Thanks for trying linux!
I don’t use pop os or gnome personally and I’m not part of any cult or whatever.
I found a accessibility setting that changes stuff to be white but I don’t think I got what you wanted 🥀I know kde plasma has a white general look, and can be themed much more than gnome in pop os seems to be.
it also has 3 finger click in its setting under the touchpad option
Also, try Fedora 39 kde spin https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/ I mention this because fedora has the new linux tech in it so your laptop might behave better with this os.
Oh, thank god. Plasma looks good for me. Easy to look at and professional. Assuming I understand how it works, which popular distros can use Plasma? Update: After some quick research, I think I want to use Kubuntu? Does that sound like a good idea?
Sounds good to me, never used kubuntu myself though.
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My dad is 60 and uses Mint for years now. That enough “grandma” for you?
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Linux and Nvidia really need to sort out their shit so I can fully dump windows.
Luckily the AI hype is good for something in this regard, since running gpus on Linux servers is suddenly much more important.
Its mainly Nvidia’s shit. The only reason Nvidia is caring about Linux now, is that is the platform AI models use.
The only thing keeping me on windows is the Nvidia GPU in my laptop. If Linux got actual dynamic GPU switching support I would delete windows and never look back.
it has that? You can use the nvidia utility to enable that on most any distro, or just use Pop_OS! 24.04 when it releases.
I’ve tried what popOS had around 6 months ago, and it wasn’t what I wanted. I needed to manually launch apps with the GPU. I want it to work like it does in windows where when the igpu gets too much load it dynamically switches to the dgpu.
i specified Pop_OS! 24.04 because in the new version with the cosmic dekstop, theyre going to add a seamless synamic gpu in the new version (thatll be out in a month or 2)
also, you CAN get that behavior on linux now.
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx3d4QH_43Ekei3-cNuecZpCaaaPzFFXbI?si=oha_xORoHC0oZvtr
this part of a linux experiment video shows how to do it, i cant confirm if it works as i do now have a laprtrop with an nvidia gpu tho
Oh wow, thats incredible! Looks like I have my Sunday project now.
I can help you with that if you want, you can message me on discord or matrix, just dm me your username of the chosen platform
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/clip/Ugkx3d4QH_43Ekei3-cNuecZpCaaaPzFFXbI?si=oha_xORoHC0oZvtr
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Bazzite has an image that includes integrated chip swapping on my nitro 5
Is it dynamic, or does it use the existing Nvidia Optimus utilities?
I’ve been running NVIDIA under Linux for about six years now, with no more issues than one would encounter running hardware/drivers from a number of manufacturers under a number of platforms.
In all honesty, I’ve encountered far more issues regarding HP printer drivers under Windows.
I’ve been using Nvidia under Linux for the last 3 years and it has been massive pita.
Getting CUDA to work consistently is a feat, and one that must be repeated for most driver updates.
Wayland support is still shoddy.
Hardware acceleration on the web (at least with Firefox) is very inconsistent.
It is very much a second-class experience compared to Windows, and it shouldn’t be.
CUDA works fine here, in all honesty it’s never given me any problems. NVENC works fine, DLSS1, DLSS2, and DLSS3 all work fine, RTX runs at acceptable FPS compared to AMD under Linux - and NVIDIA Reflex is supported as of VKD3D-Proton 2.12 and DXVK-NVAPI 0.7.
On top of that, FSR is also fully supported - as is HDMI 2.1.
I only use Firefox, and hardware web rendering works fine. Hardware video acceleration isn’t working yet, but running back to back tests at 1080p with hardware video decoding under VLC, the difference between hardware video decoding and CPU rendering is about 5% CPU usage on average running a desktop PC with adequate power supply/cooling capacity as opposed to a laptop with limited power supply/cooling capacity.
The only problem with Wayland under KDE 6 is the lack of any form of sync, but explicit sync has ‘finally’ been merged, and should be supported under the 555 branch of drivers. Once explicit sync is supported, I really have few Wayland issues left to complain about.
Overall, I really don’t experience any showstopper issues that have me wanting for Windows in the slightest.
My old HP printer won’t even install on Win10 anymore. The have also removed the driver from the HP website. I’m sure you can still find it on some sketchy website, but I’d rather just use Mint on a laptop for printing all the 3 documents I print each year. Not to mention that windows updates take FOREVER on this low powered dual core laptop. On Mint it’s seconds.
since running gpus on Linux servers is suddenly much more important.
It’s always been important. Nvidia will never have actual open source drivers. They do this thing where they intentionally hobble your GPU unless you pay them even more money for a more expensive GPU.
Check out NVK and Nova.
how long is having a GPU you can’t use without an OS going to he worth staying off Linux?
The only reason I have windows is to play games and not all games will work on linux
the only thing Linux can’t play is drm’d shit, and rootkit anti cheats. find a pirated version; bet it’ll run.
Which everyone should be avoiding anyway, regardless if they use windows or not. . so it shouldnt be a problem for any gamer.
Most people, even people on Reddit/Lemmy who are presumably tech-savvy, are completely fine with installing rootkits on their PC and handing full control over to random game devs.
Yeah, there will always be mouth breathing imbeciles.
You just ignore them, not enable them. Let them wallow in their own self made filth. Anything more runs the risk of them getting elected president.
I’m not going to pirate software. Developers deserve a paycheck
Buy the game through whichever means you like supporting the developer on, pirate the game to run it without the DRM bulshit
you don’t own it til you pirate it.
if they wanted money, they wouldn’t have added DRM.
Until we are in a post job society, I see nothing wrong with wanting to support those who make your life happier, even if that requires giving some to those who make your life worse. Nuance exists, and its on each if us to draw our own lines on where we wont budge. I was merely giving an option to someone they might not have thought of. For instance, I’m done giving Nintendo money. Unicorn Overlord is an awesome game however, so even though I dont have modern xbox, and even though I’m playing Unicorn Overlord on a yuzu emulator. Eventually I’m going to by the Series S version of the game if it doesnt get ported to steam, even though Microsoft can go fuck itself (It can just fuck itself less than Nintendo or Sony)
How do you play helldiver’s 2 with my friends?
Helldivers 2 works almost perfectly on Linux. I had to nest it in a gamescope session to fix some weird mouse issues, but that was it. I dual-boot Windows and I’ve never even launched it there.
I mean, yeah, you can find exceptions to any rule if you look for them
photoshop. AutoCAD.
PopOS has a good nvidia card support, try it out! It made me dump windows last October.
Pop OS has great Nvidia support out of the gate. Latest mint seems to handle Nvidia well also.
As much as I like Linux, and use it almost exclusively on desktop/laptop, every time I see something like this I am reminded how much I hate the fact that Apple of all companies is about the last bastion of commercial and consumer operating systems who isn’t trying to derive the bulk of their revenue from advertising.
Even Apple is falling. Their ad business (yes, they have one) makes billions and is the fastest growing part of the company. The app store is already quite ad-riddled, and the other parts of iOS are geared to get you to subscribe to all the Apple services.
Yes they just derive it by keeping the Windows/MacOS duopoly in place and monopolizing communication channels.
In some sense yes, but advertising for its own stuff is advertising too. It nudges you to use their whole ecosystem.
The most annoying thing for me is that you can’t remove the iTunes component in mission control (the settings deck).
It does nudge you…but it’s not full screen ads that take multiple clicks to get through every week. I was a Windows zealot through W7…W10 got bad…W11 got me to start using Apple and Linux.
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Linux ain’t as mainstream as MacOS and Windows are.
…and this here, folks, is the problem.
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This is what happens when they know you won’t leave.
“But muh games…and Linux is too difficult and weird”
I say to those: well then you’ve made your choice, didn’t you? It’s going to keep happening, like it’s been since the 90s.
Why is the target of your comment towards people that use Windows?
I am not sure why People on Lemmy feel like if they point something out to people who can’t see the comment is going to get them to change their mind.
I have and use both Linux and Windows. I prefer both for different reasons.
I know I’m talking into the void. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. I’m too tired of trying to do that. Just trying to get people to realize they made the choices they have to live with.
I may be spoiled in that I don’t play AAA multiplayer games, but I do play AAA single player and indie single/multiplayer (usually the type where one of the players is also the server, e.g. Terraria).
Been running Linux on my systems for more than a decade, and - especially since Proton/SteamDeck enchantments made their way upstream - I haven’t had any major ssues (except having to wait a while to play RDR2-PC in Ubuntu because of a weird game-specific graphics card driver issue, but even that was fixed in due course).
Fuck Windows, and fuck the assertion that it’s the only way to run games.
Proton really did marvelous shit.
Made it so easy that even an idiot (like me) could get games running on linux without much headache. Especially nowadays, even big game titles working almost flawlessly on release day.
Again it might be that I pretty much don’t play competitive online games because if there’s anything that ruins gaming it’s random strangers, but I have had practically no problem playing games over the last ten years.
What about people who needs NURBS tools and Affinity/Adobe class art softwares? Where do they go that corporations decided Windows and Mac are only to be supported? And believe me, plenty of them hates Windoze and I’m one of them.
Dual boot if you’re up for it.
Dual booting kinda sucks. It fragments your workflow and it is pretty disruptive compared to just being able to move to whatever you need to move to.
Run windows on a VM.
That’s better but assuming they have a system that can run windows in a VM at native resolution it’s still a broken workflow that won’t attract people to Linux.
Look Linux is my daily driver, my entire lab is Linux. We use a combination of Debian, fedora, and rhel. I’m not opposed to using other distros. It’s okay for working with my peers who are on windows but not the best. Easy enough to work around.
However if an important part of your workflow requires Windows, Adobe, Autodesk, the murky shit of office products, etc., then arguing for dual booting, using a VM , or a different computer isn’t going to win people to Linux. It makes proponents seem silly
Why does it have to be one tool though? More of a complaint to business in that they don’t let you use other tools.
Sure and that sucks but that’s reality
Those will not run under/with emulation?
Autodesk seems to be inconsistent with emulation. I can make fusion 360 run but not other tools.
My issue is more Rhino and Solidworks. If Blender actually can render NURBS and retesselate from NURBS to polygon, I can pretty much ditch Autodesk Maya as that’s the only reason I use Autodesk Maya.
Solidworks/Rhino probably can work under VM, but I don’t know.
Develop own software or support indepndent sw development however you can.
If you really need something, think about your personal dependencies and try to build some resilience / backups , one way or another.
Whatever your craft, a pathway towards ownership and control of tools and maintenance should be a traditional part of mastering the craft.
So that you can eventually do things like extend the toolset, or adapt tools to niche circumstances and advance things along.If you don’t have that pathway, then you might end up trapped as an apprentice or journeyperson and will continue to be exploited by those who control the things you depend on.
If there’s no freedom and no way to develop competition in the supply chain, then you probably would benefit from - collective organisations such as trades-guilds, or professional associations or trade-unions to counter the power imbalance, and represent your needs - but they can also get captured/bribed so those probably need a bit of effective democracy / transparency/accountability or something. I’m not going to suggest govt regulation, becasuse that’s super easy to capture and national-election democracy is a weak control, but you might get some progressive govts like some European ones that’d think about doing something suppoting foss projects, maybe.It might not be easy, but you have to look for and support those types of features for the good of your industry.
Corps will eat their industry for a quick $, it’s the workers, tradespeople and masters of the craft and some small businesses who care about the long term. And maybe any enlightened customers if you’re lucky enough to have them.As an example, for physical 3d cad, personally I don’t like freecad much it’s complex and not very intuitive; but it lets me do all the maths I want in python, with my own made up data structures / object model. So i’ll use and support freecad 100% over all the other more user friendly CAD that i’ve seen - it really is the freedom, and not being so dependant.
Yep,dual boot.
There has to be a point of diminishing returns for them with this kind of behavior. This is just so aggravating.
I’d wager they are hoping to entrap as many people as they can on the platform, with their TPM restrictions, and store restrictions, and account restrictions, that sunk cost fallacy will keep the overwhelming bulk of people stuck in their web.
I’d also wager that enterprise probably doesnt have any of this bullshit
Can confirm, I run enterprise at home and have yet to see some of these shenanigans I’ve seen posted.
But there’s still enough I hate about Windows 11 that I’m slowly transitioning to Linux and then just running windows in a VM for things there aren’t good alternatives for.
So same strategy as Apple?
Ads have evolved into a cancer that is just growing and growing, making everything around them worse.
Ads have always been a cancer.
Not exactly. When the webmaster you knew put a banner in the corner of their site with ads from one and the same source, in one and the same place, not popping up and not bothering you, it really felt fine. I even felt the urge to click that and see where it leads.
Remember also Opera free version with that ad banner.
Yeah. I used to run a website back in the very early 2000s that a local bicycle seller/repair shop used to pay me to have a little static banner for. It was just an image, that’s it. No tracking, no malware, no silly animations or covering content, etc. It was unobtrusive.
Did I get a huge amount of money? No. But it paid for maintenance, and a bit to spare. It made me feel like the effort I was putting into the site wasn’t wasted. It was relevant to the site content (cycling club in my town) and so was probably an effective advertisement.
Ads aren’t automatically evil, but the way they exist now definitely is. I wouldn’t dream of browsing the web without Firefox+Ublock origin.
The unbridled greed of companies has made me go out of the way to remove them all from my life. If they had been more restrained, I’d have happily accepted some ads as being the price I pay for using the web.
The way they exist now is similar to taxi drivers in airports. You simply know that if something is being advertised this way, it’s likely not what you need and probably a scam. So anything you don’t find intentionally and not via ads becomes useless, so ads become useless.
I used adblockers back then too. Else some sites would cause infinite pop-up windows to open (I assume to get pay-per-click revenue). Even plain banners would significantly increase loading times on 56k connections.
🤮
The best part is when spammers and ad generators realized how easy it is to use GPT to automate and increased the number of spam bots and ads.
Another day, another piece of enshittification by MS, another reason to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds, if you can spare a few minutes.
At this point I’m convinced that the new windows feature announcements are just ads for linux
*Ads for MacOS/chromeos
I don’t see any enshitiffication features and ads in Windows 11 that Lemmy and tech news are reporting. I wonder if it’s because I’m in the EU.
They may have not implemented it yet. I see a lot of things reported that they are still testing.
Yeah, the start menu ads were / are ‘only’ in the beta build.
New features get released into the developer preview. It’s basically beta test windows. It’s what the tech sites watch to see what new features/etc have been added/removed/changed. Usually they end up making it into the release builds, but sometimes they end up not doing it, or the change doesn’t apply to certain regions.
Now that Linux can run pretty much all the games I play on the PC I don’t think I’m going to have much use for windows at home anymore
May I suggest getting a mini PC if the home PC is going to be used by everyone else at home?
I want my power button to cut off the power instantly. I want my log off button to be instant. Add any delay and I start pulling cables!!!
I got to go, lock this computer, so I can do a thing! Oh shit, its not locking… fuck… Security says I can’t leave a unlocked console… POWER!
Adding needless friction is terrible! Don’t do it.
At work, when I did desktop support, the number of people who would just hit their power bar when they left every day…
Alpha move right there
Is that bad for the computer? Because I didn’t even think about this in a corporate environment until your comment. All our employees would be pulling cords or batteries, they all march out at exactly 430.
any unwritten data would be lost, perhaps some file system updates get out of sync, but it shouldn’t be a big problem.
It is very easy to corrupt files doing this.
A proper journaling filesystem should handle this, but I hardly trust NTFS as it is.
Journaling should make sure that the file system itself doesn’t corrupt, but journaling doesn’t magically make all writes atomic. If a program is halfway through writing a file and the power is cut, that file will be corrupt.
As a user. When I want the computer to shut down. I’ve got my programs already closed. I really don’t care if there’s a half open log file or some telemetry isn’t properly recorded. It needs to shut down now.
By default, Linux can take up to 15 seconds to write a file to disk, this is for power saving reasons. You could corrupt the last document/photo you saved, your browser profile, or your nextcloud sync.
Linux usually shuts down immediately if you don’t have any unsaved files and nothing glitches out during shut down. But yeah, windows sucks, corrupt files is probably the least of your problems using Windows.
I guess on Linux, if you run
syncto write all cached files to disk, and then pull the cord, you’re probably fine.
Win+L to immediately lock a windows machine. You can get the logout dialogue with alt+F4
KDE Plasma uses largely all the same shortcuts as windows. The most important ones in my opinion being super+arrow keys to move and tile windows.
What I love the most about Windows is just how easy it is to find all the user settings I need to change. And I super appreciate how they configure things that work so perfect for me. It’s like I never need to make decisions of my own, they can read my mind. /S
theyre turning the deskop into a mobile platform which is inherently difficult to mod. this is so they can provide it as a service to any device.
You got me on the first half
I always laugh when someone says Linux has fragmented settings. Windows has that buddy. the fucking MOUSE SENSITIVITY setting is in a windows 7 UI.
I’ve held off on saying it until now (I haven’t), but now I’m going to call it (again):
This is the year of the Linux Desktop.
(It feels like someone influential at Microsoft is trying to protect my reputation and force my prediction to come true.)
I finally switched my gaming rig two weeks ago. Been great so far, except VR and I’ll admit, the Xbox Game Pass missing…I wish gog or someone would come up with something like it, because there have been a lot of games I started and didn’t finish because they just haven’t been my cup of tea…
Now if Autodesk would get their shit together as well, things could be happening at work as well.
I think subscription would go against gog and its DRM policy (how would they enforce a subscription period without DRM), specially because gog is like the last place where we can have something that resembles owning a game nowadays.
That’s why I said “someone” and “something”, because I’ll be the first to admit I have absolutely no clue on how that would look like. Humble Bundle Choice is something I do like, but it’s steam only…while that’s cool in terms of proton, steam deck and so on, Steam is still a service that has to work, because without I can’t use the products. With gog I can just save those files and use them whenever and wherever I need to… Windows, Linux…doesn’t matter much.
i had gamepass working via browser on my computer.
my controller, on the other hand, never worked in the browser, so it kinda made it pointless thatn gamepass worked
Different Game Pass - talking about the one where you run the games locally…
I setup my ROG Ally to dual boot Linux about a week ago and have had plugged into a monitor and I have not had any issues using it in desktop mode. If not for Easy Anti-cheat I’d being a thing I wouldn’t have much reason to keep windows on my main pc.
If not for Easy Anti-cheat
Linux, through Steam, has EAC.
Just search the Steam store (it’s free).
Still depends on the specific game dev enabling the linux support option, which many seem to not want to do.
Aware, but it’s worked for the games that’s required it so far for me. Worth a try.
What does that mean. What does “the year of the Linux desktop” mean, really? And why is it different than last year?
It means that this year, Linux on desktop will make big strides (again)!
And why is it different than last year?
When I declared it last year, I was a year early, because this year will be bigger.
Microsoft got to much time on their hands. Can they please work on the more important stuff like completing the transition from controlpanel to settings?
If anything, they need to revert back to control panel.
By the time they do that, they’ll have introduced a third settings app, and only four options from the current Win8/8.1/10/11 one will have been ported to it.
Or make Teams a not piece of shit. Even worse they had teams on Linux in the past. Now have new teams and new outlook, which are just electron…give it back to Linux please.
After Apple creates an iPad calculator probably…
They’re researching how to make a calculator great andndo it the apple way…
Nah, it’s because the technology hasn’t reached that level of advancement.
Calculator: Now available for iPad (M10 with FP1 floating point coprocessor)
/s
No
