As someone who recently (~2yrs ago now) quit running windows as a daily driver and moved everything to linux, I was tired of being jerked around with all this control being taken away from me, and...
Exemplary
As someone who recently (~2yrs ago now) quit running windows as a daily driver and moved everything to linux, I was tired of being jerked around with all this control being taken away from me, and getting zero benefits in return. having to constantly put in work to guard against my operating system spying on what I'm doing and selling it to marketing firms. And what finally ticked me off to pull the lever was my system becoming unbootable with zero way to easily fix without a wipe/reinstall, and my primary job at the time was recovering and restoring windows installs without data loss, so it was something I was very familiar with.
I switched to linux expecting to get as frustrated or worse than I was with windows and begrudgingly switch back like I had done in years past. (I was familiar with linux for servers and various fun side projects, but I always fell off it quickly as a daily driver) I especially was expecting gaming to be lacking, as I own several hundred steam games, and enjoy just spinning up and starting some game, or buying a game on a whim, mostly singleplayer titles.
Cut to me being pleasantly surprised where gaming was at when I switched, which wasn't even as good as it is now. I had about a 70% success rate with booting titles, but the ones that didn't boot I could normally find some user-made kludge to get it working, and then the ones with no kludge, I had the fun experience of reporting the issue, and working with valve employees on the proton github collecting info, patching proton bleeding edge, me testing and reporting back. when Valve started testing CEG DRM support in proton, I found I owned almost all of the CEG DRM-enabled games, so I was able to test and report back how proton was working with those titles. It was extremely exciting, and for the first time in personal computing, I felt the platform improving, instead of features and freedoms being taken away from me.
Then finally here recently, my system became unbootable in a similar way to what first killed my windows install. However I was back up and running in under 3 minutes due to BTRFS's built in snapshotting, I just rolled back to the last snapshot and set it as the new boot point. It was almost a complete non-issue.
One thing that always bugged me about Windows (and proprietary software in general) was how often you were encouraged to go with the nuclear option - uninstalling and reinstalling. I used to go...
One thing that always bugged me about Windows (and proprietary software in general) was how often you were encouraged to go with the nuclear option - uninstalling and reinstalling. I used to go distro-hopping, and yet I have still spent far more time installing Windows than every other Linux distro combined.
In one particularly egregious instance, I was having a hard time installing a POS application on a work computer because it was having issues installing the MS SQL Server components that it needed in order to run. The installer would give me a very cryptic code that no amount of searching ever managed to pull any information on; it seems that only the developers at the Microsoft HQ knew what this one meant. It took me over a week to get it working. It wasn't enough to uninstall and reinstall SQL server, or to try a different version of the software in case there was a problem with the version bundled with the POS software. Running SFC to fix broken system files didn't help, either. Nope, I had to completely reinstall the entire operating system to get it to work.
People make a big deal about the small fixes you might need to do on Linux, but at least with Linux you don't have to start from zero and you're much more likely to be able to understand what the actual problem is.
This is my own biased opinion, but I think this is due to the abundance of poor documentation. With open source software, at least the code is available and people can spread tribal knowledge...
it seems that only the developers at the Microsoft HQ knew what this one meant.
This is my own biased opinion, but I think this is due to the abundance of poor documentation. With open source software, at least the code is available and people can spread tribal knowledge publicly. But with proprietary code, that tribal knowledge never makes it out to the users. And without proper documentation of error codes, you end up having to nuke the system if blind debugging doesn't work.
I made an attempt to migrate to Linux a while ago. My work related attempts to collaborate with Microsoft Word users using Libre Office failed at that time either through user error or problems...
I made an attempt to migrate to Linux a while ago. My work related attempts to collaborate with Microsoft Word users using Libre Office failed at that time either through user error or problems with the program. I am not a techie and need technical support a few times per year, but I have done white collar work since the mid 1990's so I know how to work with programs and file management systems and use, (but not program) databases.
I am disgusted with the direction that Microsoft has gone and will probably try again at some point. I'm happy to hear that it is getting easier.
Libre Office is quite good at this point. I use it pretty much exclusively at work, where everyone uses Microsoft, and I haven't experienced issues yet. One pain point might be excel-specific code...
Libre Office is quite good at this point. I use it pretty much exclusively at work, where everyone uses Microsoft, and I haven't experienced issues yet.
One pain point might be excel-specific code - libreoffice calc doesn't have the new lambda, map, filter stuff.
Also, I don't think libreoffice doc has the json import tool -- there's probably something open-source that can munge the data for you though.
What's the context behind this? I haven't had this happen in ages. Just wondering so I can avoid having it happen to me. I used to use Linux of various types on laptops many years ago, but I've...
my system becoming unbootable with zero way to easily fix without a wipe/reinstall
What's the context behind this? I haven't had this happen in ages. Just wondering so I can avoid having it happen to me.
I used to use Linux of various types on laptops many years ago, but I've been using Windows pretty much exclusively for over a decade now, with a short stint on MacOS. I recently installed Ubuntu on a laptop, and found it pretty good, but still kind of lacking. There isn't as much touchpad customization, and even installing a Gnome extension didn't give me all the functionality that's available by default in Windows. Changing the scroll speed might be something like installing a package, creating a settings file, adjusting the text file according to your preferences, and adding it to startup. Someone could come in and say there's some easier way, but that doesn't matter, because it needs to be easy to find the best way to do things. Ultimately, it can be done, but that's pretty far from "just works." I also had some issues where I couldn't get my development environment (nothing complicated) set up without some terminal commands. This wasn't difficult for me, but I noticed that the process was easier in Windows where I didn't have to open the command prompt at any point.
If one has very basic needs or needs some certain benefits Linux offers, then Linux seems pretty good, but even after all this time it just doesn't feel like an easy experience. I'm just no longer at a point where fiddling around with the OS is interesting to me.
In case you ever feel like trying again, the easier way is to not use GNOME. GNOME has a long history of thinking that the mere presence of configuration is confusing and overwhelming for users,...
In case you ever feel like trying again, the easier way is to not use GNOME. GNOME has a long history of thinking that the mere presence of configuration is confusing and overwhelming for users, doing a bunch of research, and declaring that they found the scientifically perfect scroll speed and nobody could possibly ever want to change it from that. I'm sure it's an amazing experience if your preferences happen to agree with the Scientifically Perfect Settings in all cases, but for everyone else, I'm convinced they're actively hurting adoption of Linux as a desktop OS in exactly the way you describe here.
The other major one is KDE Plasma, which is a lot better about this sort of thing.
I still maintain a bank of ~100 windows machines at work, so I see similar issues occasionally. Windows just seems to be in a constant state of self-corruption, and if you don't stay on top of it,...
What's the context behind this? I haven't had this happen in ages. Just wondering so I can avoid having it happen to me.
I still maintain a bank of ~100 windows machines at work, so I see similar issues occasionally. Windows just seems to be in a constant state of self-corruption, and if you don't stay on top of it, or if something tries to write at exactly the wrong time, you could be boned. chances are if you run the command sfc /scannow it'll find corrupted files, and if you haven't run it in years, or the restoration image on the machine itself has corrupted, chances are it won't be able to fix them, luckily windows has so much bloat most this corruption goes unnoticed. Basically mine had become unbootable due to a corrupted file or files in such a way that no automated scan or routine recovery was fixing it, even system restore points, and barring spending dozens of hours without a computer manually rebuilding the entire boot stack trying to determine what made it unbootable, a wipe/reinstall was the only option.
Similar experience here. I left Windows at probably around the same time. While there are a couple of non-gaming things I miss and thus have secondary machines for- I expected to eventually run...
Similar experience here.
I left Windows at probably around the same time. While there are a couple of non-gaming things I miss and thus have secondary machines for- I expected to eventually run back to Windows and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I'm much happier with Linux as my daily-driver and gaming PC. Games that still don't work on Proton I just don't care about. I have hundreds of games that do work and a backlog so large that any games that don't work will never matter to me at this point. Gaming on Linux is in such a better place these days than it ever has been before.
It feels so good to have control over my system, updates, and to have it mostly respect me as a user (no ads or forced anything). I never leave the house and come back to my PC being randomly restarted due to a forced update. It's also super nice that it seems the networking stack is much better than Windows, in terms of managing multiple downloads/sources at once and balancing them without them cutting each other off (like downloading software in one tab while watching video in another). Also, RAM usage is much more reasonable and overall the system, as Linux always has, feels so much snappier than Windows, even on a very powerful machine.
Also being someone that works with Linux for my day-job, my home use of Linux and my work use of Linux have both helped each other when it comes to sharpening my skills, so that has been a nice benefit of using it more.
That was my experience as well - 8 years ago or so. I still use Windows for games, but the LTSC version - which is completely free from bloat. It has a browser and a calculator on board and that's...
That was my experience as well - 8 years ago or so.
I still use Windows for games, but the LTSC version - which is completely free from bloat. It has a browser and a calculator on board and that's basically already it. If you open the task manager, you have around 35 processes running which feels great. But you can only get it by cracking it. :D
As a daily driver I use arch and I don't regret it. Best decision I have made in that regard. I've fried my system a few times and repairing was super simple. Create a new bootable disk, chroot into the OS, fix mistakes, done.
Repairing Windows was always a pain, especially when the steps on blogs/guides don't work once you're halfway through. Unfortunately, I need my Nvidia GPU for Blender and Nvidia drivers on Linux are still disappointing, so I don't bother with gaming on Linux for now. Kernel Anti Cheats that complain about Linux also don't really help in that regard.
This is what I love about the open source world. It actually feels like a community! Whether you're contributing just by testing and providing (good quality) bug reports, or actually writing the...
Cut to me being pleasantly surprised where gaming was at when I switched, which wasn't even as good as it is now. I had about a 70% success rate with booting titles, but the ones that didn't boot I could normally find some user-made kludge to get it working, and then the ones with no kludge, I had the fun experience of reporting the issue, and working with valve employees on the proton github collecting info, patching proton bleeding edge, me testing and reporting back. when Valve started testing CEG DRM support in proton, I found I owned almost all of the CEG DRM-enabled games, so I was able to test and report back how proton was working with those titles. It was extremely exciting, and for the first time in personal computing, I felt the platform improving, instead of features and freedoms being taken away from me.
This is what I love about the open source world. It actually feels like a community! Whether you're contributing just by testing and providing (good quality) bug reports, or actually writing the code that gets pushed out. The fact that you are able to notify problems directly to Valve and not only have those notifications seen and acted upon, but a dialogue opened with someone in control, asking for your input. It's a very gratifying experience, particularly when you realise just how many people may benefit from the short amount of time you spent reporting a bug and testing a fix.
Stupid headline. The article answers this. "Unknown" goes up and down exactly opposite of Windows. Windows fell because the tracking system got worse at identifying OSes. Not because Windows...
Exemplary
Stupid headline. The article answers this. "Unknown" goes up and down exactly opposite of Windows. Windows fell because the tracking system got worse at identifying OSes. Not because Windows actually lost significant market share. What a waste of an article. This is why I don't support making everyone read the article before commenting.
It felt like a parody article between the sub-header (Numbers that say more about their readers — ), Simpsons image, and asking GPT for a linear interpolation that suggests Linux will reign...
It felt like a parody article between the sub-header (Numbers that say more about their readers — ), Simpsons image, and asking GPT for a linear interpolation that suggests Linux will reign supreme by 3033.
Exactly. As /u/raze2012 says, the article felt almost like a parody of the usual "This is it! Linux mainstream desktop!!!!"-chanting. But yeah there's really nothing to talk about here except that...
Exactly. As /u/raze2012 says, the article felt almost like a parody of the usual "This is it! Linux mainstream desktop!!!!"-chanting.
But yeah there's really nothing to talk about here except that they seems to have had some issues tracking Windows users at some point and put them into Unknown.
If that is the source, I suspect linux is under-represented and windows is over-represented. Privacy add-ons for browsers can modify the browser header to look generic. I use Firefox and Linux,...
As Statcounter explains, its numbers come from tracking code installed on more than 1.5 million websites across the globe,
If that is the source, I suspect linux is under-represented and windows is over-represented. Privacy add-ons for browsers can modify the browser header to look generic. I use Firefox and Linux, but it might look like I use Chrome on Windows.
Firefox in particular includes that out-of-the-box as a fingerprinting prevention tool. I use it all the time, so although I too am using Firefox on Linux, every website I visit thinks I’m using...
Firefox in particular includes that out-of-the-box as a fingerprinting prevention tool. I use it all the time, so although I too am using Firefox on Linux, every website I visit thinks I’m using Windows due to my generic user-agent.
For me personally, the switch was less philosophical than it was practical. Microsoft's market is shifting from the "default" OS, able to run on any hardware you throw at it, to something closer...
For me personally, the switch was less philosophical than it was practical. Microsoft's market is shifting from the "default" OS, able to run on any hardware you throw at it, to something closer to Mac OS, where Microsoft tells you what hardware you need to own in order to run its increasingly walled-garden OS.
I'm the typical former Windows demographic - a "prosumer" who built his own computer, no programming or dev experience, and wants to be able to play games, word process, and dabble in audiovisual editing. Been using Windows since 95 (and MS-DOS before then). Never loved Windows, but it met my needs, worked with my hardware and was compatible with the widest array of consumer software and games.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me though is this new push by Microsoft to restrict what types of computers are "hardware compatible" with Windows 11 1. I built my last desktop 4 years ago with state-of-the-art specs at a cost well over $2k. Performance wise, it still runs everything I want, including games (although it can't do things like ray-tracing, but I'm fine doing without that). There is no reason for me to trash this computer. Except that Microsoft tells me that the CPU isn't compatible with Win 11. Whelp, given the choice between scrapping my tower or scrapping Windows, I didn't hesitate. I put KDE Neon on my desktop, which runs it flawlessly. KDE is close enough in design to classic Windows, that it actually feels closer to Win 95-through-7 than Windows 10 does. The transition was smooth enough that I actually installed KDE Neon on my old Lenovo T430 as well.
If Microsoft wants to be in the hardware business, that's fine. But it will lose customers like me because I'm not looking to buy-in to their hardware. When my desktop and laptop die and I'm forced into a hardware upgrade, I'll probably reevaluate going back to Windows, but it's not guaranteed. And more importantly, Microsoft has lost me as a customer for however many years I can extract life out of my perfectly good hardware because of some stupid "security" justification to try to force me to prematurely upgrade my system.
1 First of all, I remember when Microsoft claimed that "Windows 10 is the last Windows", so I feel some bitterness toward them for introducing Windows 11 after so much fanfare about how 10 was going to see rolling iterative updates indefinitely.
Just a heads up, you can cut on or off TPM compatibility (if your CPU supports it) in your BIOS to make Windows 10 stop nagging you about upgrading to 11 in the first place, all it'll do is just...
Just a heads up, you can cut on or off TPM compatibility (if your CPU supports it) in your BIOS to make Windows 10 stop nagging you about upgrading to 11 in the first place, all it'll do is just tell you that your hardware isn't compatible for Windows 11.
Or, it may have just been off in your BIOS by default hence you getting nagged about it.
I am trying to ride out Windows 10 til 2025 so I can see where Linux is when it comes to specific audio driver related stuff.
Music is a big hobby of mine so I'm sticking with Windows on my desktop and Linux on my laptop for now, and cross comparing which gear of mine works with Windows 10/Linux. Hoping to see some stuff get a bit better support on the Linux side so I can make the full switch in a couple years.
I'm kinda unsure of which distro I'd daily drive because audio production, music making and gaming are my big three hobbies. As long as something can reliably cover all of that, I'd be happy. Maybe Zorin OS, that seems fairly promising at least on my laptop so far.
I think technically you can often just plug in a TPM chip and upgrade to win11 normally. Like, usually that is how it works. Now of course if we're gonna get into why they're mandating those chips...
I think technically you can often just plug in a TPM chip and upgrade to win11 normally. Like, usually that is how it works.
Now of course if we're gonna get into why they're mandating those chips to begin with..... (btw it's drm it's always drm)
Unfortunately, my mobo doesn't support the CPU requirements for Win 11. Which is ridiculous, but also the reason I switched to linux. I'm not paying for a new mobo and processor, even if I can...
Unfortunately, my mobo doesn't support the CPU requirements for Win 11. Which is ridiculous, but also the reason I switched to linux. I'm not paying for a new mobo and processor, even if I can keep the other components.
DRM
Absolutely. This is all about control and nothing more. It's infuriating to deal with.
@tuftedcheek Since you're a prosumer, you'll get the gist of this more than others... Be mildly cautious about using KDE Neon as a daily driver (ensure you have proper backups, etc.)...Because...
@tuftedcheek Since you're a prosumer, you'll get the gist of this more than others...
Be mildly cautious about using KDE Neon as a daily driver (ensure you have proper backups, etc.)...Because while it is a great linux distribution, the intent of KDE Neon is more for the KDE Plasma developers to test KDE Plasma out on Ubuntu-centric distributions. Its solid, but it is a test bed. (I say this as a rabid, yes, rabid fan of KDE Plasma including all the linux distros that run Plasma!) Often - but not always - if you desire to use KDE Plasma within the Ubuntu distro ecosystem, the recommended distrobution is Kubuntu. Nowadays, things are way better than they used to be, but back in the day, KDE Neon would have many more small annoying issues that wouild manifest, because the KDE foolks would (rightly!) try to slightly push the envelope to see how things perform in an unbuntu-esque distro. Again, these cuts are almost intended because Neoen is the test bed for stuff to make itsa way into future other linux distros lioke Kubuntu, etc.
I say this with tons of love to KDE Neone users and devs/supporters! :-) But, if you begin encounerting little thingds here and there, and they seem to be relkated to KDE, then i would highly suggest you consider trying Kubuntu....With the excepotoion of a few missing advanced KDE features, you likely won't notice the difference between Neon and Kubuntu. None of course this is NOT the end of the world by any means, jyust little things that normies might not notice, but someone more tech-savvy like yoursdelf might. Good luck!
Linux is not for you or something you are interested in and that's okay. That said, hours of troubleshooting for common peripherals and not being able to play video games without a hassle are...
Linux is not for you or something you are interested in and that's okay. That said, hours of troubleshooting for common peripherals and not being able to play video games without a hassle are things that haven't been true for at least 5 years if not longer so I hope Linux-curious folk reading this don't get discouraged!
Yeah it took ages to set up my printer on Windows and it was literally zero setup on my Linux machine. Printer support is like... weirdly good on Linux. Gaming is honestly pretty easy these days...
Yeah it took ages to set up my printer on Windows and it was literally zero setup on my Linux machine. Printer support is like... weirdly good on Linux.
Gaming is honestly pretty easy these days (hooray for the Steam Deck) but there are still troubles with peripherals. I still haven't been able to get my xbox one controller to work wirelessly bc the bluetooth dongle I bought is acting up with the open-source package someone wrote that everyone uses.
I wouldn't say that printer support is better on Linux insofar as Windows has always had the absolute worst printing system. I remember having less problems with LPD in the 90s than I did with...
I wouldn't say that printer support is better on Linux insofar as Windows has always had the absolute worst printing system.
I remember having less problems with LPD in the 90s than I did with modern Windows.
Sorry to hear that! I had the same issue and just ended up buying an adapter that was linux-compatible and just plug and play. Also, funny you say that about printing on Linux, because I commented...
Sorry to hear that! I had the same issue and just ended up buying an adapter that was linux-compatible and just plug and play.
More and more people are opting not to replace PCs as they rely more and more on phones and tablets. As the general audience that's almost entirely Mac or Windows decreases in size, the outliers...
More and more people are opting not to replace PCs as they rely more and more on phones and tablets. As the general audience that's almost entirely Mac or Windows decreases in size, the outliers who use Linux are becoming a larger portion of the userbase.
This is a really good take on the numbers. You're also finding people keeping older hardware around for longer, handing it on to other family members, and we all know how to renew old kit... Just...
This is a really good take on the numbers.
You're also finding people keeping older hardware around for longer, handing it on to other family members, and we all know how to renew old kit... Just reach for that trusty Linux boot USB.
There were two, specific things that drove my decision to convert my stuff, one that's kinda immediate and one that's kinda long term. In the immediate, I watched as they rolled out Bing with...
There were two, specific things that drove my decision to convert my stuff, one that's kinda immediate and one that's kinda long term.
In the immediate, I watched as they rolled out Bing with chatgpt. I used it a bit because I was curious. And that thing was such a slipshod, inconsistent, crappy thing to use that I decided MS isn't worth paying attention to for that sort of stuff. That it can be helpful doesn't make up for the innumerable times it just fails to respond or generates confident nonsense. I don't care if they make it better, I don't want the thing as part of my computer's operating system. If I'm gonna have an LLM do stuff for me I want control over it, and I sure as shit don't trust Microsoft to make and maintain a good tool.
The other, more long term concern was the idea of Windows becoming primarily cloud-based. They already have a way of treating users as second-class citizens - there are versions of windows stripped of things like ads, telemetry, etc, but you gotta be a big business or a government entity (or sail the high seas, yarr). I'm not about to end up stuck in some arrangement where those entities get to enjoy "normal" access while I deal with MS figuring out reasons to limit me or fuck with what I wanna do.
I installed linux mint on two machines and though it did take a little troubleshooting, I'm at the point where I can run all the stuff I like to do and am learning how to work around some of the limitations. A big thing for me was always game modding, which means using all sorts of weird, one-off tools people made. Getting stuff like that working is a continuous challenge, but I can do it for the most part, so screw it, no more windows lol.
I'm currently testing Mint on my home network because of the same reasons. I am using an older computer (5 years old) to run Jellyfin and Silverjuke with a touchscreen for trial and error...
The other, more long term concern was the idea of Windows becoming primarily cloud-based. They already have a way of treating users as second-class citizens - there are versions of windows stripped of things like ads, telemetry, etc, but you gotta be a big business or a government entity (or sail the high seas, yarr). I'm not about to end up stuck in some arrangement where those entities get to enjoy "normal" access while I deal with MS figuring out reasons to limit me or fuck with what I wanna do.
I'm currently testing Mint on my home network because of the same reasons. I am using an older computer (5 years old) to run Jellyfin and Silverjuke with a touchscreen for trial and error learning. My plan is to dual boot my daily driver next and phase Windows out eventually. I have no date set in stone but would like to switch, if possible for my use cases, by the end of the year. Once that is done I will slowly do the same on my kids' computers if it makes sense for them and it doesn't impact their uses too much.
I've dabbled with Linux since the days you could order burned CD bundles of distros from some place online pre Y2K. I would install a distro, poke around until the drivers worked and then tried another version a few weeks later. I did this off and on for the next 2 decades but gaming mainly held me back from anything more than hobbyist tinkering. With Steam that last barrier seems to have fallen. The final barrier for my kids would be easily installing modded minecraft to play with each other.
Gaming was a significant thing for me too. Id used mostly Ubuntu to do stuff like recovery/repair on folks' machines but kept my use mostly restricted to that. Through booting it live I came to...
Gaming was a significant thing for me too. Id used mostly Ubuntu to do stuff like recovery/repair on folks' machines but kept my use mostly restricted to that. Through booting it live I came to see a bit how much troubleshooting id have to do to convert and that barrier always felt too high. Plus I would be left without stuff I very much enjoy.
The steam deck really sealed the deal. Seeing how much I was capable of doing on that, with what id come to understand as a "more difficult" distro (arch), I figured well shit, if it works in hard mode let's give Mint a shot. At least so far, I'm able to play everything, and worst case scenario I just have to kill some first time setup processes to get the game to boot.
Modding is still a challenge though. I mostly like to make stuff for 90's Doom and Morrowind, and being in Linux severely limits some of that. I can't use a lot of the odd tools folks came up with, but am slowly figuring that out. I did keep a small windows partition, cleared of really all info/data, just in case, and so far I haven't felt a need to switch to it.
For Morrowind, OpenMW has a Linux version, and for the rest of the Bethesda collection there's someone who makes something called SteamTinkerLaunch It's a bit of a pain to get set up on some...
For Morrowind, OpenMW has a Linux version, and for the rest of the Bethesda collection there's someone who makes something called SteamTinkerLaunch It's a bit of a pain to get set up on some distros (though it's pretty easy on gaming-oriented ones like nobara) Works well, but if you run into issues, I'll warn the person who maintains it is kind of a jerk when you try to troubleshoot with them.
As far as doom, other than running custom WADs like the recent MyHouse.WAD (which is pretty straightforward with any Doom sourceport like GZDoom), I haven't done much modding, so don't know how doable that is.
The things I've been having trouble with are little applets like Ordenador (you can do some asset optimization with this, I play on my phone so this is an important piece) and MWEdit/the Enchanted...
The things I've been having trouble with are little applets like Ordenador (you can do some asset optimization with this, I play on my phone so this is an important piece) and MWEdit/the Enchanted Editor. I think I can overcome with wine prefixes but I'm still putting stuff together/figuring things out. With Doom I primarily used Ultimate Doom Builder, I just haven't gotten around to messing with that one yet.
I recently decided to install Linux mint on my old laptop. I found a Minecraft launcher that actually makes modding incredibly easy, it's called prism launcher. It has been incredibly useful for...
I recently decided to install Linux mint on my old laptop. I found a Minecraft launcher that actually makes modding incredibly easy, it's called prism launcher. It has been incredibly useful for me and my partner to be able to play minecraft together easily. I'm not super knowledgeable on it, but i do know that they make modding really easy since it has a dedicated section where you can download curse forge and/or modrinth mods. It might end up working for you and your kids.
Interestingly enough, I actually switched the other way from Linux and macOS to Windows 11. With WSL2, Windows became a development powerhouse with a stable DE (the main reason I switched from...
Interestingly enough, I actually switched the other way from Linux and macOS to Windows 11.
With WSL2, Windows became a development powerhouse with a stable DE (the main reason I switched from Linux) over NixOS running in WSL2.
The only thing I was missing was a tiling window manager, so I created my own which of course I now prefer over both yabai and bspwm.
I had the "free" win 11 update sprung on me via automatic updates... I had to reroll within a day because they turned a poor UI into an even shittier one and I wasn't about to go installing 3...
I had the "free" win 11 update sprung on me via automatic updates... I had to reroll within a day because they turned a poor UI into an even shittier one and I wasn't about to go installing 3 different programs just to get stuff usable.
This thread has made me look into possibly converting to Linux in the future, but I'll have to run a deep dive and check if all the programs I use will run...
I have a 3D printer and a laser cutter, so the programs (and drivers) used for those. And the software to prepare the stuff for printing/cutting - I'm 99% sure GIMP and Inkscape have Linux...
I have a 3D printer and a laser cutter, so the programs (and drivers) used for those. And the software to prepare the stuff for printing/cutting - I'm 99% sure GIMP and Inkscape have Linux versions, but I don't know about Lightburn or the various slicers
Edit: The 3DPrinting and Lasercutting environment seems to favour open source and programs very much, so I'm expecting it all to run just fine on Linux, I just haven't actually checked
Ah, gotcha! I don't know anything about laser cutters or 3D printing unfortunately, but if it helps any I did find these two StackExchange answers regarding Linux software for it; Lightburn seems...
Ah, gotcha! I don't know anything about laser cutters or 3D printing unfortunately, but if it helps any I did find these two StackExchange answers regarding Linux software for it; Lightburn seems to have a native Linux version as well.
As for GIMP and Inkscape, I actually have them both installed on my Linux Mint install right now as it happens and they've worked flawlessly. If I recall correctly, both of them are even included in the default selection of software to install, at that.
The two biggest slicers for 3D printers are Cura and PrusaSlicer, both of which are open-source and have officially-released native Linux binaries available. Normally I recommend SuperSlicer, but...
The two biggest slicers for 3D printers are Cura and PrusaSlicer, both of which are open-source and have officially-released native Linux binaries available.
Normally I recommend SuperSlicer, but the dev has fallen behind the curve and PrusaSlicer (which SuperSlicer is based on) now has some features that make it preferable.
Lasercutter software is a bit outside of my wheelhouse but the last time I checked it looked like most of the tools around them were open-source as well.
I've tried using Cura for printing several times, messing with the settings and everything... nothing works. My printer is an older model that I had to hunt through the Cura forums for settings...
I've tried using Cura for printing several times, messing with the settings and everything... nothing works. My printer is an older model that I had to hunt through the Cura forums for settings for, so maybe that's why (it did have native support, but it was dropped when newer versions of the printer came out).
My issue with PrusaSlicer is that it only slices, it doesn't actually print, and the printer software chokes on the Pruse G-code...
These problems are generally very easy to fix. What printer do you have? I’d be happy to do a bit of research to help you out. Ah, it’s a very old printer indeed if it doesn’t have the ability to...
These problems are generally very easy to fix. What printer do you have? I’d be happy to do a bit of research to help you out.
My issue with PrusaSlicer is that it only slices, it doesn't actually print, and the printer software chokes on the Pruse G-code...
Ah, it’s a very old printer indeed if it doesn’t have the ability to print independently. That’s the point at which I personally would consider upgrading the board to something more full featured. That’s a bit of a project though. You don’t need to upgrade it, but instead you will need a piece of software that will stream the gcode to the printer such as Octoprint or Repetier-host.
Sorry, I should have clarified - the printer can print off a USB stick (it's a Snapmaker Original), or via PC connection, I just dislike having extra steps. Rather than upgrading this printer I'll...
Sorry, I should have clarified - the printer can print off a USB stick (it's a Snapmaker Original), or via PC connection, I just dislike having extra steps.
Rather than upgrading this printer I'll probably get a bigger one, but it's serving me needs quite well so far
No need to go to a lot of effort, it's unlikely I'll made the Linux switch soon. I'll probably try it on a laptop first, to see if I can get my head around it or if there are any deal breaker things (the only thing that drove me away from Win11 was the inability to expand the taskbar so you could see the names of opened windows. It legit made me furious in ways I've rarely experienced)
It sounds like Octoprint is what will serve you the best. I would actually recommend getting an SBC to run it with, that way you have a dedicated server that you can just zap your gcode at any...
It sounds like Octoprint is what will serve you the best. I would actually recommend getting an SBC to run it with, that way you have a dedicated server that you can just zap your gcode at any time and it will print without needing your computer attached to it.
I'm actually less interested in getting you to switch to Linux than making sure you have a good slicer. Most of the time custom slicers are notably worse than mainline Cura or Prusaslicer, even when they are based on it. But just so you know, it looks like Snapmaker's slicer, Luban, works on Linux. There's an official release on their github.
Yeah, those Cura profiles are both visited links, it's what I got :D Possibly there were some defaults somewhere that didn't fit right, because the same item, with the same settings (as far as I...
Yeah, those Cura profiles are both visited links, it's what I got :D Possibly there were some defaults somewhere that didn't fit right, because the same item, with the same settings (as far as I could tell) would print just fine using Luban, but fail using Cura
I'll have a look at Octoprint, for some reason I had it in my head it needed dedicated hardware.
SBC is a far too common abbreviation, it took me a while to figure out what it was :p That still has the issue of extra steps which I don't want. I like changing settings, slicing and printing without having to copy stuff over or switching programs or anything of the sort.
That's what makes octoprint on an SBC so handy, though; both Cura and PrusaSlicer can be set up to upload your gcode and start printing! It will actually take away steps!
That's what makes octoprint on an SBC so handy, though; both Cura and PrusaSlicer can be set up to upload your gcode and start printing! It will actually take away steps!
I don't see there ever being a "Year of the Linux desktop", but it's more of a gradual increase over time, with Linux getting better at gaming and being a Windows alternative. Definitely not a...
I don't see there ever being a "Year of the Linux desktop", but it's more of a gradual increase over time, with Linux getting better at gaming and being a Windows alternative. Definitely not a year but "Decade of the Linux desktop" could be a thing instead though.
Honestly the discussion here reminds me of discussions I've seen on reddit about americans adopting use of the bidet at home. There is inertia around not doing it, but there does seem to be a...
Honestly the discussion here reminds me of discussions I've seen on reddit about americans adopting use of the bidet at home. There is inertia around not doing it, but there does seem to be a trend in that direction.
Clearly, the bidet is the superior tech because one can run a slim-on-resources window manager like i3 or xmonad or sway, etc. on it...unlike the old school toilet that so often gets clogged by a...
Clearly, the bidet is the superior tech because one can run a slim-on-resources window manager like i3 or xmonad or sway, etc. on it...unlike the old school toilet that so often gets clogged by a blue screen of death... lol :-D
(Sorry, couild not resist ;-)
As someone who recently (~2yrs ago now) quit running windows as a daily driver and moved everything to linux, I was tired of being jerked around with all this control being taken away from me, and getting zero benefits in return. having to constantly put in work to guard against my operating system spying on what I'm doing and selling it to marketing firms. And what finally ticked me off to pull the lever was my system becoming unbootable with zero way to easily fix without a wipe/reinstall, and my primary job at the time was recovering and restoring windows installs without data loss, so it was something I was very familiar with.
I switched to linux expecting to get as frustrated or worse than I was with windows and begrudgingly switch back like I had done in years past. (I was familiar with linux for servers and various fun side projects, but I always fell off it quickly as a daily driver) I especially was expecting gaming to be lacking, as I own several hundred steam games, and enjoy just spinning up and starting some game, or buying a game on a whim, mostly singleplayer titles.
Cut to me being pleasantly surprised where gaming was at when I switched, which wasn't even as good as it is now. I had about a 70% success rate with booting titles, but the ones that didn't boot I could normally find some user-made kludge to get it working, and then the ones with no kludge, I had the fun experience of reporting the issue, and working with valve employees on the proton github collecting info, patching proton bleeding edge, me testing and reporting back. when Valve started testing CEG DRM support in proton, I found I owned almost all of the CEG DRM-enabled games, so I was able to test and report back how proton was working with those titles. It was extremely exciting, and for the first time in personal computing, I felt the platform improving, instead of features and freedoms being taken away from me.
Then finally here recently, my system became unbootable in a similar way to what first killed my windows install. However I was back up and running in under 3 minutes due to BTRFS's built in snapshotting, I just rolled back to the last snapshot and set it as the new boot point. It was almost a complete non-issue.
One thing that always bugged me about Windows (and proprietary software in general) was how often you were encouraged to go with the nuclear option - uninstalling and reinstalling. I used to go distro-hopping, and yet I have still spent far more time installing Windows than every other Linux distro combined.
In one particularly egregious instance, I was having a hard time installing a POS application on a work computer because it was having issues installing the MS SQL Server components that it needed in order to run. The installer would give me a very cryptic code that no amount of searching ever managed to pull any information on; it seems that only the developers at the Microsoft HQ knew what this one meant. It took me over a week to get it working. It wasn't enough to uninstall and reinstall SQL server, or to try a different version of the software in case there was a problem with the version bundled with the POS software. Running SFC to fix broken system files didn't help, either. Nope, I had to completely reinstall the entire operating system to get it to work.
People make a big deal about the small fixes you might need to do on Linux, but at least with Linux you don't have to start from zero and you're much more likely to be able to understand what the actual problem is.
This is my own biased opinion, but I think this is due to the abundance of poor documentation. With open source software, at least the code is available and people can spread tribal knowledge publicly. But with proprietary code, that tribal knowledge never makes it out to the users. And without proper documentation of error codes, you end up having to nuke the system if blind debugging doesn't work.
I made an attempt to migrate to Linux a while ago. My work related attempts to collaborate with Microsoft Word users using Libre Office failed at that time either through user error or problems with the program. I am not a techie and need technical support a few times per year, but I have done white collar work since the mid 1990's so I know how to work with programs and file management systems and use, (but not program) databases.
I am disgusted with the direction that Microsoft has gone and will probably try again at some point. I'm happy to hear that it is getting easier.
Libre Office is quite good at this point. I use it pretty much exclusively at work, where everyone uses Microsoft, and I haven't experienced issues yet.
One pain point might be excel-specific code - libreoffice calc doesn't have the new lambda, map, filter stuff.
Also, I don't think libreoffice doc has the json import tool -- there's probably something open-source that can munge the data for you though.
What's the context behind this? I haven't had this happen in ages. Just wondering so I can avoid having it happen to me.
I used to use Linux of various types on laptops many years ago, but I've been using Windows pretty much exclusively for over a decade now, with a short stint on MacOS. I recently installed Ubuntu on a laptop, and found it pretty good, but still kind of lacking. There isn't as much touchpad customization, and even installing a Gnome extension didn't give me all the functionality that's available by default in Windows. Changing the scroll speed might be something like installing a package, creating a settings file, adjusting the text file according to your preferences, and adding it to startup. Someone could come in and say there's some easier way, but that doesn't matter, because it needs to be easy to find the best way to do things. Ultimately, it can be done, but that's pretty far from "just works." I also had some issues where I couldn't get my development environment (nothing complicated) set up without some terminal commands. This wasn't difficult for me, but I noticed that the process was easier in Windows where I didn't have to open the command prompt at any point.
If one has very basic needs or needs some certain benefits Linux offers, then Linux seems pretty good, but even after all this time it just doesn't feel like an easy experience. I'm just no longer at a point where fiddling around with the OS is interesting to me.
In case you ever feel like trying again, the easier way is to not use GNOME. GNOME has a long history of thinking that the mere presence of configuration is confusing and overwhelming for users, doing a bunch of research, and declaring that they found the scientifically perfect scroll speed and nobody could possibly ever want to change it from that. I'm sure it's an amazing experience if your preferences happen to agree with the Scientifically Perfect Settings in all cases, but for everyone else, I'm convinced they're actively hurting adoption of Linux as a desktop OS in exactly the way you describe here.
The other major one is KDE Plasma, which is a lot better about this sort of thing.
I still maintain a bank of ~100 windows machines at work, so I see similar issues occasionally. Windows just seems to be in a constant state of self-corruption, and if you don't stay on top of it, or if something tries to write at exactly the wrong time, you could be boned. chances are if you run the command
sfc /scannowit'll find corrupted files, and if you haven't run it in years, or the restoration image on the machine itself has corrupted, chances are it won't be able to fix them, luckily windows has so much bloat most this corruption goes unnoticed. Basically mine had become unbootable due to a corrupted file or files in such a way that no automated scan or routine recovery was fixing it, even system restore points, and barring spending dozens of hours without a computer manually rebuilding the entire boot stack trying to determine what made it unbootable, a wipe/reinstall was the only option.Similar experience here.
I left Windows at probably around the same time. While there are a couple of non-gaming things I miss and thus have secondary machines for- I expected to eventually run back to Windows and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I'm much happier with Linux as my daily-driver and gaming PC. Games that still don't work on Proton I just don't care about. I have hundreds of games that do work and a backlog so large that any games that don't work will never matter to me at this point. Gaming on Linux is in such a better place these days than it ever has been before.
It feels so good to have control over my system, updates, and to have it mostly respect me as a user (no ads or forced anything). I never leave the house and come back to my PC being randomly restarted due to a forced update. It's also super nice that it seems the networking stack is much better than Windows, in terms of managing multiple downloads/sources at once and balancing them without them cutting each other off (like downloading software in one tab while watching video in another). Also, RAM usage is much more reasonable and overall the system, as Linux always has, feels so much snappier than Windows, even on a very powerful machine.
Also being someone that works with Linux for my day-job, my home use of Linux and my work use of Linux have both helped each other when it comes to sharpening my skills, so that has been a nice benefit of using it more.
That was my experience as well - 8 years ago or so.
I still use Windows for games, but the LTSC version - which is completely free from bloat. It has a browser and a calculator on board and that's basically already it. If you open the task manager, you have around 35 processes running which feels great. But you can only get it by cracking it. :D
As a daily driver I use arch and I don't regret it. Best decision I have made in that regard. I've fried my system a few times and repairing was super simple. Create a new bootable disk, chroot into the OS, fix mistakes, done.
Repairing Windows was always a pain, especially when the steps on blogs/guides don't work once you're halfway through. Unfortunately, I need my Nvidia GPU for Blender and Nvidia drivers on Linux are still disappointing, so I don't bother with gaming on Linux for now. Kernel Anti Cheats that complain about Linux also don't really help in that regard.
This is what I love about the open source world. It actually feels like a community! Whether you're contributing just by testing and providing (good quality) bug reports, or actually writing the code that gets pushed out. The fact that you are able to notify problems directly to Valve and not only have those notifications seen and acted upon, but a dialogue opened with someone in control, asking for your input. It's a very gratifying experience, particularly when you realise just how many people may benefit from the short amount of time you spent reporting a bug and testing a fix.
Stupid headline. The article answers this. "Unknown" goes up and down exactly opposite of Windows. Windows fell because the tracking system got worse at identifying OSes. Not because Windows actually lost significant market share. What a waste of an article. This is why I don't support making everyone read the article before commenting.
It felt like a parody article between the sub-header (Numbers that say more about their readers — ), Simpsons image, and asking GPT for a linear interpolation that suggests Linux will reign supreme by 3033.
There goes my rival Updawg again with their impeccable grammar, thinking they can make me look bad with cohesion and examplary comments!
Darn you, underdog! I'll get you someday!
Don't worry, you'll be rooted for.
Exactly. As /u/raze2012 says, the article felt almost like a parody of the usual "This is it! Linux mainstream desktop!!!!"-chanting.
But yeah there's really nothing to talk about here except that they seems to have had some issues tracking Windows users at some point and put them into Unknown.
If that is the source, I suspect linux is under-represented and windows is over-represented. Privacy add-ons for browsers can modify the browser header to look generic. I use Firefox and Linux, but it might look like I use Chrome on Windows.
Firefox in particular includes that out-of-the-box as a fingerprinting prevention tool. I use it all the time, so although I too am using Firefox on Linux, every website I visit thinks I’m using Windows due to my generic user-agent.
For me personally, the switch was less philosophical than it was practical. Microsoft's market is shifting from the "default" OS, able to run on any hardware you throw at it, to something closer to Mac OS, where Microsoft tells you what hardware you need to own in order to run its increasingly walled-garden OS.
I'm the typical former Windows demographic - a "prosumer" who built his own computer, no programming or dev experience, and wants to be able to play games, word process, and dabble in audiovisual editing. Been using Windows since 95 (and MS-DOS before then). Never loved Windows, but it met my needs, worked with my hardware and was compatible with the widest array of consumer software and games.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me though is this new push by Microsoft to restrict what types of computers are "hardware compatible" with Windows 11 1. I built my last desktop 4 years ago with state-of-the-art specs at a cost well over $2k. Performance wise, it still runs everything I want, including games (although it can't do things like ray-tracing, but I'm fine doing without that). There is no reason for me to trash this computer. Except that Microsoft tells me that the CPU isn't compatible with Win 11. Whelp, given the choice between scrapping my tower or scrapping Windows, I didn't hesitate. I put KDE Neon on my desktop, which runs it flawlessly. KDE is close enough in design to classic Windows, that it actually feels closer to Win 95-through-7 than Windows 10 does. The transition was smooth enough that I actually installed KDE Neon on my old Lenovo T430 as well.
If Microsoft wants to be in the hardware business, that's fine. But it will lose customers like me because I'm not looking to buy-in to their hardware. When my desktop and laptop die and I'm forced into a hardware upgrade, I'll probably reevaluate going back to Windows, but it's not guaranteed. And more importantly, Microsoft has lost me as a customer for however many years I can extract life out of my perfectly good hardware because of some stupid "security" justification to try to force me to prematurely upgrade my system.
1 First of all, I remember when Microsoft claimed that "Windows 10 is the last Windows", so I feel some bitterness toward them for introducing Windows 11 after so much fanfare about how 10 was going to see rolling iterative updates indefinitely.
Just a heads up, you can cut on or off TPM compatibility (if your CPU supports it) in your BIOS to make Windows 10 stop nagging you about upgrading to 11 in the first place, all it'll do is just tell you that your hardware isn't compatible for Windows 11.
Or, it may have just been off in your BIOS by default hence you getting nagged about it.
I am trying to ride out Windows 10 til 2025 so I can see where Linux is when it comes to specific audio driver related stuff.
Music is a big hobby of mine so I'm sticking with Windows on my desktop and Linux on my laptop for now, and cross comparing which gear of mine works with Windows 10/Linux. Hoping to see some stuff get a bit better support on the Linux side so I can make the full switch in a couple years.
I'm kinda unsure of which distro I'd daily drive because audio production, music making and gaming are my big three hobbies. As long as something can reliably cover all of that, I'd be happy. Maybe Zorin OS, that seems fairly promising at least on my laptop so far.
I think technically you can often just plug in a TPM chip and upgrade to win11 normally. Like, usually that is how it works.
Now of course if we're gonna get into why they're mandating those chips to begin with..... (btw it's drm it's always drm)
Unfortunately, my mobo doesn't support the CPU requirements for Win 11. Which is ridiculous, but also the reason I switched to linux. I'm not paying for a new mobo and processor, even if I can keep the other components.
Absolutely. This is all about control and nothing more. It's infuriating to deal with.
@tuftedcheek Since you're a prosumer, you'll get the gist of this more than others...
Be mildly cautious about using KDE Neon as a daily driver (ensure you have proper backups, etc.)...Because while it is a great linux distribution, the intent of KDE Neon is more for the KDE Plasma developers to test KDE Plasma out on Ubuntu-centric distributions. Its solid, but it is a test bed. (I say this as a rabid, yes, rabid fan of KDE Plasma including all the linux distros that run Plasma!) Often - but not always - if you desire to use KDE Plasma within the Ubuntu distro ecosystem, the recommended distrobution is Kubuntu. Nowadays, things are way better than they used to be, but back in the day, KDE Neon would have many more small annoying issues that wouild manifest, because the KDE foolks would (rightly!) try to slightly push the envelope to see how things perform in an unbuntu-esque distro. Again, these cuts are almost intended because Neoen is the test bed for stuff to make itsa way into future other linux distros lioke Kubuntu, etc.
I say this with tons of love to KDE Neone users and devs/supporters! :-) But, if you begin encounerting little thingds here and there, and they seem to be relkated to KDE, then i would highly suggest you consider trying Kubuntu....With the excepotoion of a few missing advanced KDE features, you likely won't notice the difference between Neon and Kubuntu. None of course this is NOT the end of the world by any means, jyust little things that normies might not notice, but someone more tech-savvy like yoursdelf might. Good luck!
Linux is not for you or something you are interested in and that's okay. That said, hours of troubleshooting for common peripherals and not being able to play video games without a hassle are things that haven't been true for at least 5 years if not longer so I hope Linux-curious folk reading this don't get discouraged!
Yeah it took ages to set up my printer on Windows and it was literally zero setup on my Linux machine. Printer support is like... weirdly good on Linux.
Gaming is honestly pretty easy these days (hooray for the Steam Deck) but there are still troubles with peripherals. I still haven't been able to get my xbox one controller to work wirelessly bc the bluetooth dongle I bought is acting up with the open-source package someone wrote that everyone uses.
I wouldn't say that printer support is better on Linux insofar as Windows has always had the absolute worst printing system.
I remember having less problems with LPD in the 90s than I did with modern Windows.
Oh it's a low bar to clear for sure. I was born in the 90s, so my experiences with Windows printer support have never been good lol
Sorry to hear that! I had the same issue and just ended up buying an adapter that was linux-compatible and just plug and play.
Also, funny you say that about printing on Linux, because I commented something similar in another post: https://tildes.net/~tech/186w/we_must_end_the_tyranny_of_printers_in_american_life#comment-9m1i
More and more people are opting not to replace PCs as they rely more and more on phones and tablets. As the general audience that's almost entirely Mac or Windows decreases in size, the outliers who use Linux are becoming a larger portion of the userbase.
This is a really good take on the numbers.
You're also finding people keeping older hardware around for longer, handing it on to other family members, and we all know how to renew old kit... Just reach for that trusty Linux boot USB.
Yes, I don't think the explanation is "People are switching to Linux", it's more "People are switching to smartphones/tablets".
That's effectively moving away from windows in most cases.
There were two, specific things that drove my decision to convert my stuff, one that's kinda immediate and one that's kinda long term.
In the immediate, I watched as they rolled out Bing with chatgpt. I used it a bit because I was curious. And that thing was such a slipshod, inconsistent, crappy thing to use that I decided MS isn't worth paying attention to for that sort of stuff. That it can be helpful doesn't make up for the innumerable times it just fails to respond or generates confident nonsense. I don't care if they make it better, I don't want the thing as part of my computer's operating system. If I'm gonna have an LLM do stuff for me I want control over it, and I sure as shit don't trust Microsoft to make and maintain a good tool.
The other, more long term concern was the idea of Windows becoming primarily cloud-based. They already have a way of treating users as second-class citizens - there are versions of windows stripped of things like ads, telemetry, etc, but you gotta be a big business or a government entity (or sail the high seas, yarr). I'm not about to end up stuck in some arrangement where those entities get to enjoy "normal" access while I deal with MS figuring out reasons to limit me or fuck with what I wanna do.
I installed linux mint on two machines and though it did take a little troubleshooting, I'm at the point where I can run all the stuff I like to do and am learning how to work around some of the limitations. A big thing for me was always game modding, which means using all sorts of weird, one-off tools people made. Getting stuff like that working is a continuous challenge, but I can do it for the most part, so screw it, no more windows lol.
I'm currently testing Mint on my home network because of the same reasons. I am using an older computer (5 years old) to run Jellyfin and Silverjuke with a touchscreen for trial and error learning. My plan is to dual boot my daily driver next and phase Windows out eventually. I have no date set in stone but would like to switch, if possible for my use cases, by the end of the year. Once that is done I will slowly do the same on my kids' computers if it makes sense for them and it doesn't impact their uses too much.
I've dabbled with Linux since the days you could order burned CD bundles of distros from some place online pre Y2K. I would install a distro, poke around until the drivers worked and then tried another version a few weeks later. I did this off and on for the next 2 decades but gaming mainly held me back from anything more than hobbyist tinkering. With Steam that last barrier seems to have fallen. The final barrier for my kids would be easily installing modded minecraft to play with each other.
Gaming was a significant thing for me too. Id used mostly Ubuntu to do stuff like recovery/repair on folks' machines but kept my use mostly restricted to that. Through booting it live I came to see a bit how much troubleshooting id have to do to convert and that barrier always felt too high. Plus I would be left without stuff I very much enjoy.
The steam deck really sealed the deal. Seeing how much I was capable of doing on that, with what id come to understand as a "more difficult" distro (arch), I figured well shit, if it works in hard mode let's give Mint a shot. At least so far, I'm able to play everything, and worst case scenario I just have to kill some first time setup processes to get the game to boot.
Modding is still a challenge though. I mostly like to make stuff for 90's Doom and Morrowind, and being in Linux severely limits some of that. I can't use a lot of the odd tools folks came up with, but am slowly figuring that out. I did keep a small windows partition, cleared of really all info/data, just in case, and so far I haven't felt a need to switch to it.
For Morrowind, OpenMW has a Linux version, and for the rest of the Bethesda collection there's someone who makes something called SteamTinkerLaunch It's a bit of a pain to get set up on some distros (though it's pretty easy on gaming-oriented ones like nobara) Works well, but if you run into issues, I'll warn the person who maintains it is kind of a jerk when you try to troubleshoot with them.
As far as doom, other than running custom WADs like the recent MyHouse.WAD (which is pretty straightforward with any Doom sourceport like GZDoom), I haven't done much modding, so don't know how doable that is.
The things I've been having trouble with are little applets like Ordenador (you can do some asset optimization with this, I play on my phone so this is an important piece) and MWEdit/the Enchanted Editor. I think I can overcome with wine prefixes but I'm still putting stuff together/figuring things out. With Doom I primarily used Ultimate Doom Builder, I just haven't gotten around to messing with that one yet.
I recently decided to install Linux mint on my old laptop. I found a Minecraft launcher that actually makes modding incredibly easy, it's called prism launcher. It has been incredibly useful for me and my partner to be able to play minecraft together easily. I'm not super knowledgeable on it, but i do know that they make modding really easy since it has a dedicated section where you can download curse forge and/or modrinth mods. It might end up working for you and your kids.
Thank you for that information! I'll try and poke around it this weekend for sure.
Interestingly enough, I actually switched the other way from Linux and macOS to Windows 11.
With WSL2, Windows became a development powerhouse with a stable DE (the main reason I switched from Linux) over NixOS running in WSL2.
The only thing I was missing was a tiling window manager, so I created my own which of course I now prefer over both
yabaiandbspwm.I had the "free" win 11 update sprung on me via automatic updates... I had to reroll within a day because they turned a poor UI into an even shittier one and I wasn't about to go installing 3 different programs just to get stuff usable.
This thread has made me look into possibly converting to Linux in the future, but I'll have to run a deep dive and check if all the programs I use will run...
Out of curiosity, what programs are you wondering about?
I have a 3D printer and a laser cutter, so the programs (and drivers) used for those. And the software to prepare the stuff for printing/cutting - I'm 99% sure GIMP and Inkscape have Linux versions, but I don't know about Lightburn or the various slicers
Edit: The 3DPrinting and Lasercutting environment seems to favour open source and programs very much, so I'm expecting it all to run just fine on Linux, I just haven't actually checked
Ah, gotcha! I don't know anything about laser cutters or 3D printing unfortunately, but if it helps any I did find these two StackExchange answers regarding Linux software for it; Lightburn seems to have a native Linux version as well.
As for GIMP and Inkscape, I actually have them both installed on my Linux Mint install right now as it happens and they've worked flawlessly. If I recall correctly, both of them are even included in the default selection of software to install, at that.
The two biggest slicers for 3D printers are Cura and PrusaSlicer, both of which are open-source and have officially-released native Linux binaries available.
Normally I recommend SuperSlicer, but the dev has fallen behind the curve and PrusaSlicer (which SuperSlicer is based on) now has some features that make it preferable.
Lasercutter software is a bit outside of my wheelhouse but the last time I checked it looked like most of the tools around them were open-source as well.
I've tried using Cura for printing several times, messing with the settings and everything... nothing works. My printer is an older model that I had to hunt through the Cura forums for settings for, so maybe that's why (it did have native support, but it was dropped when newer versions of the printer came out).
My issue with PrusaSlicer is that it only slices, it doesn't actually print, and the printer software chokes on the Pruse G-code...
All of this is solvable, of course :D
These problems are generally very easy to fix. What printer do you have? I’d be happy to do a bit of research to help you out.
Ah, it’s a very old printer indeed if it doesn’t have the ability to print independently. That’s the point at which I personally would consider upgrading the board to something more full featured. That’s a bit of a project though. You don’t need to upgrade it, but instead you will need a piece of software that will stream the gcode to the printer such as Octoprint or Repetier-host.
Sorry, I should have clarified - the printer can print off a USB stick (it's a Snapmaker Original), or via PC connection, I just dislike having extra steps.
Rather than upgrading this printer I'll probably get a bigger one, but it's serving me needs quite well so far
No need to go to a lot of effort, it's unlikely I'll made the Linux switch soon. I'll probably try it on a laptop first, to see if I can get my head around it or if there are any deal breaker things (the only thing that drove me away from Win11 was the inability to expand the taskbar so you could see the names of opened windows. It legit made me furious in ways I've rarely experienced)
It sounds like Octoprint is what will serve you the best. I would actually recommend getting an SBC to run it with, that way you have a dedicated server that you can just zap your gcode at any time and it will print without needing your computer attached to it.
I'm actually less interested in getting you to switch to Linux than making sure you have a good slicer. Most of the time custom slicers are notably worse than mainline Cura or Prusaslicer, even when they are based on it. But just so you know, it looks like Snapmaker's slicer, Luban, works on Linux. There's an official release on their github.
I managed to find a profile for Cura submitted by a user to their forum, and another that appears to be officially sanctioned. You can use these same settings on PrusaSlicer, which I would prefer, but you'll probably like Cura better.
Yeah, those Cura profiles are both visited links, it's what I got :D Possibly there were some defaults somewhere that didn't fit right, because the same item, with the same settings (as far as I could tell) would print just fine using Luban, but fail using Cura
I'll have a look at Octoprint, for some reason I had it in my head it needed dedicated hardware.
SBC is a far too common abbreviation, it took me a while to figure out what it was :p That still has the issue of extra steps which I don't want. I like changing settings, slicing and printing without having to copy stuff over or switching programs or anything of the sort.
That's what makes octoprint on an SBC so handy, though; both Cura and PrusaSlicer can be set up to upload your gcode and start printing! It will actually take away steps!
I don't see there ever being a "Year of the Linux desktop", but it's more of a gradual increase over time, with Linux getting better at gaming and being a Windows alternative. Definitely not a year but "Decade of the Linux desktop" could be a thing instead though.
Honestly the discussion here reminds me of discussions I've seen on reddit about americans adopting use of the bidet at home. There is inertia around not doing it, but there does seem to be a trend in that direction.
Clearly, the bidet is the superior tech because one can run a slim-on-resources window manager like i3 or xmonad or sway, etc. on it...unlike the old school toilet that so often gets clogged by a blue screen of death... lol :-D
(Sorry, couild not resist ;-)