I wish I could use Linux at work but the software used does not have any alternative (that I can use) and I can’t be bothered with debloating and all that jazz. I try to keep work and private seperate instead.
My work has a process for requesting software. Over the last five years, I’ve been slowly getting open source alterntives approved, using them, and telling coworkers they’re approved. It’s just one super specialized software left.
Nice!
I work at a very small company, so there is no policy for which software to use and I would replace the one software that is Windows only if I could, even if I had to remain on Windows. The problem I have in this case is that we rely external tools that only work with this software, only on Windows. :-(
Teams.
I fucking hate teams.
Why are we using teams.
Why did they change outlook, it used to actually be good.
There used to be a linux repo for installing teams but they recently removed it. Now you’re forced to use the shitty excuse of a PWA.
Either way I’m stuck on W11 at work. No way am I installing teams on my machine at home.
The browser-based versions of the M365 apps work great* for me in Firefox tabs on Linux. I prefer them being just apps/sites that I use as needed and not deeply integrated with the OS just because the same company made the two.
- I mean they work as intended for the same stuff I’ve used the Windows versions for, not that they are great apps on their own, lol
Teams doesn’t work well for me on Linux w/Firefox (it doesn’t detect my headset properly) but it works great in Edge.
Teams can go fuck itself with a rock. We’ve taken licensing now that doesn’t include it.
Still holding on to classic outlook as long as possible. The new version/skin/glow-up can go share the aforementioned rock with teams. Where’s my VBA, where’s my ribbon customisations, and why must it be dumbed down to Fisher-Price levels of ‘user friendliness’?
A lot of my answers to user questions these days are ‘Because Microsoft ™️’.
You used to be able to paste any number of emails into a group in outlook. Now you have to add one email at a time.
Got 100 email addresses to add to a group? Fuck you.
No “upgrade” has impeded my productivity as much as W11 and the new office.
To me the funniest part is that telemetry is usually for ads to convince people to buy stuff, and secondly for nation states to track you, but the debloat crowd usually never leaves home (a registered address) or buys anything, and surprisingly apt at credit card points with the money they do spend (the og trackers).
I get your point. I would asume that those who chose to remove adware and remove telemetry would also be the same group that use ad blockers.
Tried get my dad to use Linux for his work but had problems with his clients not being able to open the files he sent using the Linux word and Excell programs. So that’s clear for him not to use Linux.
My brother-in-law installed Linux Mint for his parents and they are very happy with it. The only problem was downloading epubs with Adobe DRM, so I taught her how to use knock1 in the terminal and then import the book into Calibre to upload them to her ereader.
[1] The original repo is either private or has been removed, but all code and binaries can be found here https://web.archive.org/web/20221010074634/https://github.com/BentonEdmondson/knock/releases
How modern, I can’t believe your computers support Windows 11.
Why should my computer not be able to supprot Windows 11?
Because of the requirements like TPM2 and a bunch of of others.
Most places I know need to replace all their devices to support Windows 11. For the workload they are expected to run that hardware was fine.
Computer is new, win11 pre-installed. Would still prefer pop os.
Understandable, I don’t really see how it’s related to this thread though.
Because you talked about my computer not supporting Windows 11?? So I clarified that it does support it and came pre-installed, and I would still prefer pop_OS (i.e. not relevant, as you said).
I can’t believe your computers support Windows 11.
I don’t understand why that would have to do with anything to being with, though.
If it takes you hours to debloat Windows, you better stick with an OS you do know.
Every time I see a Linux user’s criticism of a problem with Windows, it’s the kind of thing your grandma asks you to fix for her and takes ten seconds 😂
Calling Windows unstable in this day and age is fucking laughable too. If your installation is unstable, it’s either you or your hardware
Yeach windows has problems but stability is definietly not one of them. Likewise linux has problems but in fact it is not harder to use ( in fact it is so easy to use that it is reasonably popular to put some easy distro in some forsaken by time laptop instead of windows for pepole who use browser and literaly nothing else ). Frankly speaking most pepole just dont give enough f about their system. The best i can say about it is that pop os specificaly just looks better ( i am in the apparent minority of pepole that very much likes the looks of gnome ). The best way to populrize linux is to have it by deafult instead of windows on laptops and prebuilds but that will never really happen ( they make insane amount of money on Markup by having windows installed despite the fact that they get it for really really cheap. Its really apparent when you compare some laptops that can be bought without the os preinstalled )
Tell me you don’t work in IT, without telling me you don’t work in IT.
Crowdstrike: “hello”
Just make them install Arch, I did just fine…
Same, but normies wont bother to RTFM
The wiki is great for those, who have some experience in Linux, not so for beginners.
It isnt that hard, moved from wondows 10 to mint, and a few months later to arch, and it took me less than 2 hours to install arch, and thats with slow internet.
And i learned a lot whole doing it, like Dekstop environments, disk partitoning(root, swap, and boot), filesystems, and a lot more.
I wouldnt recommend it to everyone, but it is great if you want to learn more about computers.
The wiki is actually good for beginners, too. As you are often forced to reallylly read through subpages and cross-referenced topics until you somewhat understand why you are doing something instead of just how. Doesn’t make it easy ofc but a beginner can totally handle the wiki, it just takes more time.
Yeah, this has more or less sold me on giving arch a shot in the near future. I really need to get some fundamental Linux knowledge under my belt, and the arch wiki is legendary for being pretty comprehensive.
I may get stabbed for this but, go for Endeavour, unless a (probably needlessly) tedious install process is important to you.
I had vanilla Arch up and running for a bit but kept having issues with Steam, so switched to Endeavour and haven’t had any issues since. Its still a pretty basic version of Arch, with a few minor QoL improvements like having yay and a DE already installed.
Why not Gentoo?
I installed black arch once, even my right click was weird
Beginner friendly??? Not sure how to explain this to Linux users that post on Lemmy but we’re not the regular pc user and have a very different view on beginner friendly lol
I tried explaining to some of my non-technical friends what a “Linux distribution” is. Most don’t quite understand what I mean by “operating system”. I think we’re in a bit of a bubble here.
Heck yeah. I usually have to explain what an OS is in the first place too. I usually use android versus iOS as an example. I feel kinda fortunate sometimes that my wife’s hobbies don’t line up with my own most of the time because it does keep my brain in check from falling into those bubbles. She appreciates having free tech support on hand of course lol
You need to KISS your explanation. Don’t talk about OS’s or even distros. Avoid the technical stuff, save that for later as they ask about it. Instead just tell them it looks different, but in the end works the same. And it does it without the hassle, bloat or cost of Microsoft.
I recently swapped to Linux Mint and it really was not harder than Windows, and I know functionally nothing on how anything Linux related actually works.
And there is little to nothing to fear. The big bad terminal and command line isn’t needed for day to day use anymore. It’s been years since the last time I needed to compile anything. And if I ever do need to do that again, something is definitely wrong.
Well, that’s my concern. There are plenty of settings that are only accessible via command line.
For daily use, you don’t need the command line. Only in fairly rare instances do you need to resort to it when things go wrong. And those commands are a mere google away. So don’t let the that big bad scary terminal stand in your way. It’s not the stumbling block you think it is.
Oh, I live in the terminal, even on Windows. I like having that capability. Not everybody does though.
Then it’s a habit not a fear. I also am comfortable with the cli since I started with Linux back at RedHat 5 and Mandrake 6. It was learn it or die in those days. But as time has passed, I find myself using it less and less because I don’t really need it everyday. But while I might need to google a specific command because I forgot it, I still remember it’s possible and handy.
Oh I’m not saying that it’s hard for us here. Most people don’t know that Mac and Windows are different if they aren’t in a tech position let alone know that Linux exists at all. I’m talking about the general person on the street, it’s hard to remember that we don’t always fit into that group.
Yeah, one of the biggest reasons people won’t try Linux isn’t necessarily because it is difficult, but because it would require learning anything at all. Never underestimate how much effort a person is willing to make to avoid making an effort.
This entire thread talking about how a distro is better than the next because you “only” have to update keyrings to update so even basic users should get it.
Ehhh…as a Linux beginner on Ubuntu I disagree… I spent a couple hours trying to get an AppImage application as a desktop icon.
Spent an additional hour or two to mount NAS drives. Fstab?? Wtf.
My secondary monitor flickers to black randomly for a just couple minutes after startup and there’s no way I’m going to dig through Wayland to figure out why. Monitor orientation is incorrect on startup and I again don’t want to dig through Wayland or whatever cfg file I need to open…yet.
Still needed to browse at least 5 different sources for answers.
I’m glad Firefox doesn’t crash at 500 tabs or w/e but Linux still has issues with some primitive tasks that windows has well figured out.
It’s funny because as somebody that’s been using Linux full-time for over 10 years I actually really really really really hate that Ubuntu is considered beginner friendly because I often find very very simple tasks incredibly frustrating on it.
I know that everybody disagrees with me but I genuinely think that something based on arch like Endeavor OS is genuinely more beginner friendly. You don’t have to fight with repositories to get up to date drivers, virtually any piece of software you could ever want is either already in the extra/community repo or available through the Aur. And while yes it is possible that an update could end up causing an issue on your system Pac-Man is just way way better about not completely destroying the system and it is pretty easy to roll back. Even in a really really bad worst case scenario booting from a live USB and rolling back with chroot is easy enough I’ve actually walked people through it before.
Meanwhile the amount of times on both Debian and Ubuntu that I have had apt completely eviscerate a system just trying to do basic updates and then just bail out Midway leaving the system so broken that the terminal barely functions anymore is frustrating. And there’s no particularly easy path to fixing that because dpkg is a fucking nightmare. Yes in the majority of those cases the system was multiple years out of date but that’s no excuse I have updated art systems that were upwards of almost 10 years out of date and other than me having to manually update the key ring and reinitialize the signatures it was able to Simply jump right to the latest just fine.
True, even user-friendly Linux distros have their pain points. The real difference between Linux and corporate OS products is that you don’t periodically need a new version because of a product churn schedule.
Do you have to use Wayland? If something’s buggy in Wayland, I always switch back to x11. Wayland’s finally gotten to a point where I can use it without bugs, but that’s taken many years.
🤔not sure if it is true frustration or just a great meme
Android and iOS already replaced Windows for normies.
It’s mind boggling to me how many people don’t even use desktops anymore. Or do “serious” things like buy plane tickets on their phone. The younger generation is almost entirely phone-only.
Big purchase. Big screen.
True - remember Windows phones? Me neither.
Look man. I use my computer primarily for gaming, with a little web browsing. The second Linux can support all games without me having to wrangle and worry about compatibility, plus whatever else config shit I have to go through that I’m sure I’m unaware of, I’ll jump ship headfirst. I’m fucking sick of Microsoft’s bullshit.
Linux supports most games nowadays. It will never support “all” games. Just like windows doesn’t support all games. At this point in time, saying Linux is not good enough with gaming is weird…
At this point games that doesn’t support Linux are games that use anti-cheat
Right, BattleEye is hit or miss depending on the game developer.
Another significant drawback I have is OBS compatibility. It technically works, but just having it open drops my framerate by ~30%, and having it record drops it by ~50%. I haven’t found a fix for it yet, so I’m effectively unable to stream or record gameplay on Linux. The same settings used in Windows hardly impacts my framerate.
I’ll continue using Linux, but I haven’t deleted my Windows partition yet.
The part that most don’t talk about is that installing and getting games up and going in Linux that can run in Linux, often takes allot of configuration and trying, but on the plus side it can run many games from older versions of Windows with some configuration.
It is the configuration that one has to learn how to do which most casual users aren’t skilled enough to do. It is after you learn how to do it that between the Linux Native Games and most other games from Windows.
Depending on what games you play it’s anywhere from unusable (games with incompatible anticheat) to flat out better than windows even ignoring all the surrounding bullshit. But many of these gsmes with anticheat are among the most popular games in the world, so there’s plenty of reason not to change just bc of those for a lot of people.
In my experience, Linux supports a handful, maybe even a large handful, but we’re far away from “most.”
This won’t be popular but I haven’t had a stability problem on my home Windows 11 pro (server) machine. I disabled online login during first boot setup so maybe that’s why … my network handles telemetry shenanigans so I’m not worried about that. Never bothered to put a Linux on it, which was the plan, since it’s not failed once, it’s been a few years since it was spooled up. 🤷🏼♂️
This is where I am too. Just built a new gaming pc and was planning to do dual boot.
Installed windows 11 LTSC and honestly, it’s everything I want in a gaming pc so I guess no need to install Linux.
Having said that, I bought a pc that came with windows; can’t wait to kill it with fire!
I found it impossible to set up 11 pro without a Microsoft account. Did you put one in for install and disable it after?
On 10 if you cut network access during install it’d let you set up offline accounts. On 11 it refuses to finish the installation until you connect to the internet somehow. I had to put my linux laptop in AP mode and connect a patch cable to the windows PC because i hadnt loaded the wifi drivers on the USB i had.
Some command line shenanigans if I remember. Not sure that still works on newer patches.
How is your network handling telemetry shenanigans?
Eero Secure does a pretty decent job by itself but addresses can be blacklisted as well (hi Roku). If I had more money, time, and could figure out my double NAT, I’d probably switch from Secure to a Firewalla device, probably a Purple. Overall the eero’s have been a great, I don’t have to think about it, mesh system. Of course you have to be okay with Amazon owning them.
My experience is the opposite.
Took an hour just to get a mouse to work on Mint
Took hours to get wifi working on Mint after wasting a day trying to get my GPU working on Bazzite (all AMD setup before someone asks)
Meanwhile I install windows with English UK as my language and don’t get any of the bullshit people complain about AND everything works.
I’ll play Fallen Order on Linux (shader issue on Windows causes stutter while they’re loading while the game is running) and will probably uninstall it and just continue using Windows.
That’s wild. Mice are a generic driver just like on Windows. It should be plug and play on either OS.
Why did it take an hour? Any idea what was happening?
Still have an absolute mess on Linux Mint with my projector, wrong aspect ratios everywhere, sometimes only one screen is selected. Maybe it has something to do with how and when I connected/booted/powered each device…
I’m a programmer at a tech company. Last month, I tried setting up two different distros on my personal computer, in anticipation of Windows 10 EOL.
I experienced:
- Total failure of wifi drivers
- Graphical corruption returning from sleep mode
- Inability to load levels in Deck-certified games
- Critical input delays in a reflex-based online game
- Inability to install a particular Linux-native app on my particular distro; not only unavailable by main package manager, but also by its alternative container-based strategy.
- Right-click menus that hid the options I’m used to finding on Windows, with no visible way to turn them on.
- Repeated overriding of my customization of keyboard shortcuts
- Inability to assign Ctrl+Tab as a keyboard shortcut for a terminal app (Tab was unrecognized)
- UI forms altering my selection when I was attempting to scroll past them
- No discernible methods to pin frequently used folders to the sidebar of the file explorer
- No discernible way to remove/edit Application entries (leading to games that I created an entry though off Steam’s install dialog being stuck there even after the game was deleted)
So no, don’t keep telling me I’m staying on Windows out of idiocy. If someone replies to this with a doctoral on why every single issue is actually somehow my fault, it completes the trifecta.
Linux distros need to take a step back for a long, lengthy discussion on good user experience before they rush back to making memes like these.
This. I need to get work done, not work on my os.
I tried setting up two different distros
Would you mind telling what were the two distros you were trying to setup just for reference?
I installed Distro A, and Distro B, and you’re about to reply:
“Oh, well there’s your problem! A and B aren’t great for beginners (even though you read they were from someone else). I’d strongly recommend, C, D, E, or F.”
Whether it’s installing a new distro off new recommendations or spending time tinkering to get one of them working right, it’s still the same annoyance, and it’s unlikely to change. That said, if you have read that and will restrain from jabbing back about it or are just genuinely curious:
Distros
Linux Mint 21, then Linux Mint 22, then Bazzite
Thank you for the full disclosure, I think it adds weight to your post and no don’t worry I wasn’t going to argue with you about your distro choices, not at all.
I’m a very average Joe which also when into heaps of trouble when I tried to setup a Linux distro (mainly tried Pop_OS and Fedora KDE) so I feel the same as you 👌
Oh, they have lengthy discussion on good user experience. Have you seen gnome argue with the entire planet about whether the shutdown menu should let you shut down?
(I may be misremembering, maybe they wouldn’t let you log out or put the computer to sleep or something stupid because their only concept of design is deleting features and creating backlogged tickets to reimplement the same function in a new “better” way)
Personally I have experienced most of that too on desktop. I use Linux for my home servers (oops I used zfs cause everyone says it’s good and better than btrfs and now the one dude who runs the arch zfs gitlab went awol so I haven’t updated my arch computer in 5 months).
Another day another cope post
This one makes a lot more sense.
It should be flipped, tho. In my opinion, any “beginner distro” consumes more time in the long run run, compared to the “lightweight” ones (I bet my Arch is way fatter than many beginner distros, lol)
My standard response to “just go Linux” :
I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it’s still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.
As some background - I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I’d stuck with Cobol).
I had my first UNIX class in about 1990.
I run a Mint laptop (for the hell of it, and I do mean hell) . Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won’t even POST.
Windows would never do this, no, Windows can never do this. It is incapable of running a battery to zero, it’ll shutoff before then to protect the battery. To really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero.
There no way even possible via the Mint GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions. None, nada, zip, not at all. Command line only, in the twenty-furst century, something Windows has had since I don’t recall, 95 I think (I was carrying a laptop then, and I believe it had hibernate, sorry, it’s been what, almost thirty years now).
There are many reasons why Linux doesn’t compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying “you should manage data in a proper database app”. While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, no, I’m not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That’s just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn’t realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.
Now there’s that print monitor that’s on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? Again, in the 21st century?
Networking… Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn’t say “save creds”? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. In the 21st century?
Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won’t even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a third-party download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of Windows since Win2k (at the least) and would probably work on Win95.
Someone else said it better than me:
Every time I’ve installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it’s gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn’t look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works… only it doesn’t save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically… but that doesn’t work, so now I can’t boot… so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that… then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution… wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it’s been four hours, it’s 3:00am and I’m like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren’t supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can’t wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can’t do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I’ve loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM’s on Linux (Proxmox) because that’s better than running Linux VM’s of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
Linux doesn’t even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it’s own way), and that’s a massive barrier for users.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would’ve had a chance to beat MS, even then it would’ve required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980’s to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).
Haha at the Logitech mice, here’s me swapping side plates on my Razer naga trinity all the functions work great, even the RGB (couldn’t care less really) has a configurator available in the distro repos - but it works out the box.
i’ve seen someone installed Ubuntu LTS on his gaming pc. he said he has been spending hours to use it, in the end he decided to reinstall windows 11.
As a Linux user for a few years now I have to disagree. My friends who still rely on Windows only software for either school or their jobs use Revision OS and installs it with a tool called playbooks which takes only a few minutes and automatically disables feature updates; only allowing security updates to go through. This makes it so all “system updates” are through the playbook app which is pretty cool, it pretty much makes it a Windows fork and won’t revert or break anything when updating
1, Revision OS is awesome, and good on you for sharing it!
2, I don’t think that’s you disagreeing really, just offering a “third path”.
