It’s beyond me how anyone remotely tech savvy would willingly use Microsoft products. They have shown that they are actively against their users engaging any actions that are against their company...
It’s beyond me how anyone remotely tech savvy would willingly use Microsoft products. They have shown that they are actively against their users engaging any actions that are against their company objectives. What little autonomy you have over your machine is continually being chipped away at.
If it weren’t for the chokehold that MSFT has on enterprises, I don’t understand how they’re putting themselves in a positive light for your average consumer. They’ve become my most actively disliked company, even over Xfinity, EA, etc.
Well, you kind of answered the question. I hate Microsoft but I'm familiar with it, have to use it for work, and every single thing I use my computer for was built with Windows in mind. Linux is...
Well, you kind of answered the question. I hate Microsoft but I'm familiar with it, have to use it for work, and every single thing I use my computer for was built with Windows in mind. Linux is getting better but it's not there yet. Too much fiddling required, the "best" distro changes constantly, and a fair amount of software just won't work on it at all.
To be honest I don't think any possible current problems with Linux is something solvable by Linux. Installation is frankly easier than Windows but Windows comes preinstalled. Third party support...
To be honest I don't think any possible current problems with Linux is something solvable by Linux.
Installation is frankly easier than Windows but Windows comes preinstalled.
Third party support is spotty but a lot that is not deliberately broken by the developer can still be run in compatibility layer.
There are recommended are well supported beginner distros.
It is generally not as easy as other options but that is consequence of not sticking the user inside a walled garden(in the case of Windows an attempt of, but they are getting there) where it is impossible to solve any problems without an order of magnitude more knowledge and settings are largely superficial.
In my opinion as the world currently stands the user simply has to choose. It is possible and it would be nice if that was not the case, but no one with the resources to do so is interested. There is either possibility of choice and a control over the sw or a convenience with the so far high likelihood of erosion.
I agree with this. The biggest problem desktop Linux has is not usability insomuch as that the environment it is in is largely conquered by Microsoft. If you have software or a hardware device...
I agree with this. The biggest problem desktop Linux has is not usability insomuch as that the environment it is in is largely conquered by Microsoft. If you have software or a hardware device that isn't supported on Linux, it's generally not because there's no developers willing to work on it, but that the people who make it want it to be a black box and aren't willing to invest their development time to make it work on Linux, regardless of weather it would be difficult or not. As much as people love to complain about how a Windows program won't work on Linux, they don't tend to realize that they should be thankful to the developers of Wine and Proton that any Windows programs work on Linux at all because they were never intended to do so in the first place by the people who make them. In fact, there are developers out there who are actively hostile to attempts to get their software working on Linux with the additions of DRM and anti-cheat software. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I want the Steam Deck to get as big as possible - to discourage that form of hostility, at least among video game companies.
In recent times I have started to strongly consider giving up on Windows too. It’s a scary idea, as I don’t even know how many workflows I would have to change or reinvent, but perhaps the time is...
In recent times I have started to strongly consider giving up on Windows too. It’s a scary idea, as I don’t even know how many workflows I would have to change or reinvent, but perhaps the time is coming soon (i.e. on my next device). I would probably have to keep a windows install around anyway though, as I need OneNote for work (I’m a teacher and some of our classes are organized through it – it’s also incidentally my whiteboard software of choice). But keeping two completely different systems running and working together (at least for syncing files) sounds like a pain...
Didn't Microsoft completely phase out the old and good native version in favor of the new, shitty and slow version? If so, that one works on linux iirc, though I have no idea how well.
I need OneNote for work (I’m a teacher and some of our classes are organized through it – it’s also incidentally my whiteboard software of choice)
Didn't Microsoft completely phase out the old and good native version in favor of the new, shitty and slow version? If so, that one works on linux iirc, though I have no idea how well.
Okay, something must have changed then, that's great. When the old one (which was amazing) was replaced by I think the 365 version (or what eventually became the 365 version), it was slow as hell...
Okay, something must have changed then, that's great. When the old one (which was amazing) was replaced by I think the 365 version (or what eventually became the 365 version), it was slow as hell and had a fraction of the original features, but it worked on Linux because it was iirc Electron based - if what you're using is the same thing, just significantly improved since the time I used it, it could still work.
I have two separate versions installed on my pc, I assume one came with my windows install and the other with my office installation. One is notably better than the other but i frankly have no...
I have two separate versions installed on my pc, I assume one came with my windows install and the other with my office installation. One is notably better than the other but i frankly have no real idea where they came from or which is which.
I'll use WIn10 til the wheels fall off at this point and I until actually have no choice but to switch to Linux - I refuse to use Win11. I flirted with a few Linux distros at the start of the year...
I'll use WIn10 til the wheels fall off at this point and I until actually have no choice but to switch to Linux - I refuse to use Win11.
I flirted with a few Linux distros at the start of the year but my main complaint is that no matter what distro I wound up trying, getting VSTs to work flawlessly as they do on Windows was hit and miss by a long shot even when I used community made tools that were supposed to convert them.
Gaming on Steam was mostly fine, minus some older games just outright crashing here and there during online co-op sessions. It wasn't the worst thing ever, but also wasn't the best experience in total.
I mostly game and make music on my Win10 PC and that's about it, so having those two features come with issues kinda sucked. Maybe things are further along than they were earlier this year now. I know Bitwig is a Linux native DAW which I already use on Windows, so I think I'll continue to use that once I do switch.
My only Windows computer is just there to play video games, read Tildes, and watch Twitch/YouTube. Why should I care about MS doing MS things? For anything work related I absolutely will not and...
My only Windows computer is just there to play video games, read Tildes, and watch Twitch/YouTube. Why should I care about MS doing MS things? For anything work related I absolutely will not and do not use Microsoft. We don't even use Azure (it's just terrible compared to the alternatives).
Yeah, I am almost fully-Linux at this point. Windows and Microsoft really continually moved down a path to a point where I hated using them and even just supporting MS in general as they continue...
Yeah, I am almost fully-Linux at this point. Windows and Microsoft really continually moved down a path to a point where I hated using them and even just supporting MS in general as they continue to erode things further. When I do have to use Windows, I use third party things (like StartAllBack and various de-crapifying tools) to customize/force it to work how I like and disable things I don't want.
While it depends on what games one plays, an overwhelming majority of my games run fine on Linux (hundreds of them) without a problem. Proton/Heroic/Lutris/etc has made things so easy that I am 100% satisfied with it as my daily-driver for my main PC (which is also a gaming PC). I use Linux on tons of devices (home server, opnsense router, home theater PC, print server, laptop).
The only exceptions currently being:
Music production PC on W10. Not that I couldn't switch, but I don't want the friction/pain of switching, given that some of the plugins I have are Mac/Win only, and I don't want to deal with switching DAWs, using bridging or something else for the plugins, etc. I've already got it in a good "working" state- and it won't easily go to W11 (thankfully), so it's kinda "stuck in time" in a good way where everything works.
My main Linux gaming PC has a Win10 VM that I use strictly for Affinity Photo/Designer (Photoshop/Illustrator competitor) because it's far more powerful, and closer to PS, than anything available on Linux, and Affinity does not work through WINE/etc yet. I keep it disconnected from the internet generally. Surprisingly good performance through the free VMWare Workstation Pro for Linux
That said- I totally understand that there are plenty of situations where there is just too much friction for people to switch to Linux. Especially non-techies, but even tech-inclined people too. To a lot of people that really don't care about their OS- they just want things to work (even as eroded of an experience as that becomes) and don't want to think about how much they'll need to do differently (or what they'd miss) when switching. I get it- it's a tough hurdle to overcome. Familiarity is huge and the friction of switching is not a tradeoff worth it to many people.
I feel you on the music production aspect. Even with community tools, I found that converting VSTs to .so files to be pretty hit or miss to get Bitwig to recognize them, even though the DAW itself...
I feel you on the music production aspect. Even with community tools, I found that converting VSTs to .so files to be pretty hit or miss to get Bitwig to recognize them, even though the DAW itself is native to Linux when I tried it out earlier this year.
It was a struggle, and I really don't wanna mess with things as they stand on Win10 because I've got everything working perfectly fine as it is.
It is a pain to switch to Linux if you have a LOT of plugins (I do) and there's really no guarantee your favorite plugin(s) will work on Linux. You just gotta hope it does after converting it over or bridging it.
Not a fun position to be in when you just wanna boot up your DAW and get something down.
Yeah, for sure, and historically VST/Plugin developers don't really bother looking at Linux much, and the Linux tools for making them work just aren't there yet. Also plugin devs are typically...
Yeah, for sure, and historically VST/Plugin developers don't really bother looking at Linux much, and the Linux tools for making them work just aren't there yet. Also plugin devs are typically slow to update to support different architectures and OS's and so on (like when the new Mac M1/etc chips came out), so I don't expect plugin devs to do much to help in the way of compatibility.
When it comes to making music and being able to use a wide array of plugins I've invested money into- it's just too costly and painful to switch to something else. I'm already bought-in to an existing ecosystem and one that doesn't really exist on Linux yet.
Music prod PCs are just one of those things where I (and many others I suspect, like you're saying too) want the least amount of friction possible in the process / use of those machines. Just need everything to work- and I can deal with Windows as a tradeoff for that specific use case.
Of course, I am slightly in a privileged position of having a PC dedicated to that use only- and having separate machines for things like that, makes this an easier argument to keep it. If I only had my one PC and had to do everything on it (gaming AND music prod AND etc...) then it gets way more complicated.
Yea, I pretty much only do music production and gaming on my PC with some light Discord and medium to heavy Youtube use. So nothing too crazy, but for my main hobbies/interests (music, and gaming)...
Yea, I pretty much only do music production and gaming on my PC with some light Discord and medium to heavy Youtube use. So nothing too crazy, but for my main hobbies/interests (music, and gaming) I really do just want my stuff to work.
I wish more plugin companies and other music related companies paid more attention to Linux too, cause if I had a sort of guarantee of a plugin or suite of plugins (LABS, Crow Hill, really any paid plugin, etc looking at you!) working on Linux out of the box I'd be a LOT more inclined to switch ASAP.
work, sadly. I work in games, the two most popular game engines have dreadful (but "official") linux support. in addition, 97% or something of the PC market is on Windows, so at the very best I...
It’s beyond me how anyone remotely tech savvy would willingly use Microsoft products
work, sadly. I work in games, the two most popular game engines have dreadful (but "official") linux support. in addition, 97% or something of the PC market is on Windows, so at the very best I still need some windows setup to test with. It'd be a very costly move in many ways to try and set all that up just to minimize my chokehold on Windows.
The best compromise I can make is to at least try and make Linux a first class citizen for any games I have proper control over one day. just to give one tiny reason to jump for me and others one day.
I don’t understand how they’re putting themselves in a positive light for your average consumer
that's the thing, they don't need to be in a positive light anymore. Market capture has been achieved and they'd need to eat babies or something equally drastic to even start to break that hold.
Richard Stallman was right and has always been right! Surveillance capitalism hath no ethics or morals, it will always seek to intrude as much as possible when allowed a free reign.
Richard Stallman was right and has always been right! Surveillance capitalism hath no ethics or morals, it will always seek to intrude as much as possible when allowed a free reign.
It’s beyond me how anyone remotely tech savvy would willingly use Microsoft products. They have shown that they are actively against their users engaging any actions that are against their company objectives. What little autonomy you have over your machine is continually being chipped away at.
If it weren’t for the chokehold that MSFT has on enterprises, I don’t understand how they’re putting themselves in a positive light for your average consumer. They’ve become my most actively disliked company, even over Xfinity, EA, etc.
Well, you kind of answered the question. I hate Microsoft but I'm familiar with it, have to use it for work, and every single thing I use my computer for was built with Windows in mind. Linux is getting better but it's not there yet. Too much fiddling required, the "best" distro changes constantly, and a fair amount of software just won't work on it at all.
To be honest I don't think any possible current problems with Linux is something solvable by Linux.
Installation is frankly easier than Windows but Windows comes preinstalled.
Third party support is spotty but a lot that is not deliberately broken by the developer can still be run in compatibility layer.
There are recommended are well supported beginner distros.
It is generally not as easy as other options but that is consequence of not sticking the user inside a walled garden(in the case of Windows an attempt of, but they are getting there) where it is impossible to solve any problems without an order of magnitude more knowledge and settings are largely superficial.
In my opinion as the world currently stands the user simply has to choose. It is possible and it would be nice if that was not the case, but no one with the resources to do so is interested. There is either possibility of choice and a control over the sw or a convenience with the so far high likelihood of erosion.
I agree with this. The biggest problem desktop Linux has is not usability insomuch as that the environment it is in is largely conquered by Microsoft. If you have software or a hardware device that isn't supported on Linux, it's generally not because there's no developers willing to work on it, but that the people who make it want it to be a black box and aren't willing to invest their development time to make it work on Linux, regardless of weather it would be difficult or not. As much as people love to complain about how a Windows program won't work on Linux, they don't tend to realize that they should be thankful to the developers of Wine and Proton that any Windows programs work on Linux at all because they were never intended to do so in the first place by the people who make them. In fact, there are developers out there who are actively hostile to attempts to get their software working on Linux with the additions of DRM and anti-cheat software. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I want the Steam Deck to get as big as possible - to discourage that form of hostility, at least among video game companies.
In recent times I have started to strongly consider giving up on Windows too. It’s a scary idea, as I don’t even know how many workflows I would have to change or reinvent, but perhaps the time is coming soon (i.e. on my next device). I would probably have to keep a windows install around anyway though, as I need OneNote for work (I’m a teacher and some of our classes are organized through it – it’s also incidentally my whiteboard software of choice). But keeping two completely different systems running and working together (at least for syncing files) sounds like a pain...
Didn't Microsoft completely phase out the old and good native version in favor of the new, shitty and slow version? If so, that one works on linux iirc, though I have no idea how well.
The new one is definitely different, but it is very fast and pretty good. I consider it one of Microsoft's best products, actually.
Okay, something must have changed then, that's great. When the old one (which was amazing) was replaced by I think the 365 version (or what eventually became the 365 version), it was slow as hell and had a fraction of the original features, but it worked on Linux because it was iirc Electron based - if what you're using is the same thing, just significantly improved since the time I used it, it could still work.
I have two separate versions installed on my pc, I assume one came with my windows install and the other with my office installation. One is notably better than the other but i frankly have no real idea where they came from or which is which.
It would probably be best for you to make a dedicated forum post for this.
I'll use WIn10 til the wheels fall off at this point and I until actually have no choice but to switch to Linux - I refuse to use Win11.
I flirted with a few Linux distros at the start of the year but my main complaint is that no matter what distro I wound up trying, getting VSTs to work flawlessly as they do on Windows was hit and miss by a long shot even when I used community made tools that were supposed to convert them.
Gaming on Steam was mostly fine, minus some older games just outright crashing here and there during online co-op sessions. It wasn't the worst thing ever, but also wasn't the best experience in total.
I mostly game and make music on my Win10 PC and that's about it, so having those two features come with issues kinda sucked. Maybe things are further along than they were earlier this year now. I know Bitwig is a Linux native DAW which I already use on Windows, so I think I'll continue to use that once I do switch.
My only Windows computer is just there to play video games, read Tildes, and watch Twitch/YouTube. Why should I care about MS doing MS things? For anything work related I absolutely will not and do not use Microsoft. We don't even use Azure (it's just terrible compared to the alternatives).
Yeah, I am almost fully-Linux at this point. Windows and Microsoft really continually moved down a path to a point where I hated using them and even just supporting MS in general as they continue to erode things further. When I do have to use Windows, I use third party things (like StartAllBack and various de-crapifying tools) to customize/force it to work how I like and disable things I don't want.
While it depends on what games one plays, an overwhelming majority of my games run fine on Linux (hundreds of them) without a problem. Proton/Heroic/Lutris/etc has made things so easy that I am 100% satisfied with it as my daily-driver for my main PC (which is also a gaming PC). I use Linux on tons of devices (home server, opnsense router, home theater PC, print server, laptop).
The only exceptions currently being:
Music production PC on W10. Not that I couldn't switch, but I don't want the friction/pain of switching, given that some of the plugins I have are Mac/Win only, and I don't want to deal with switching DAWs, using bridging or something else for the plugins, etc. I've already got it in a good "working" state- and it won't easily go to W11 (thankfully), so it's kinda "stuck in time" in a good way where everything works.
My main Linux gaming PC has a Win10 VM that I use strictly for Affinity Photo/Designer (Photoshop/Illustrator competitor) because it's far more powerful, and closer to PS, than anything available on Linux, and Affinity does not work through WINE/etc yet. I keep it disconnected from the internet generally. Surprisingly good performance through the free VMWare Workstation Pro for Linux
That said- I totally understand that there are plenty of situations where there is just too much friction for people to switch to Linux. Especially non-techies, but even tech-inclined people too. To a lot of people that really don't care about their OS- they just want things to work (even as eroded of an experience as that becomes) and don't want to think about how much they'll need to do differently (or what they'd miss) when switching. I get it- it's a tough hurdle to overcome. Familiarity is huge and the friction of switching is not a tradeoff worth it to many people.
I feel you on the music production aspect. Even with community tools, I found that converting VSTs to .so files to be pretty hit or miss to get Bitwig to recognize them, even though the DAW itself is native to Linux when I tried it out earlier this year.
It was a struggle, and I really don't wanna mess with things as they stand on Win10 because I've got everything working perfectly fine as it is.
It is a pain to switch to Linux if you have a LOT of plugins (I do) and there's really no guarantee your favorite plugin(s) will work on Linux. You just gotta hope it does after converting it over or bridging it.
Not a fun position to be in when you just wanna boot up your DAW and get something down.
Yeah, for sure, and historically VST/Plugin developers don't really bother looking at Linux much, and the Linux tools for making them work just aren't there yet. Also plugin devs are typically slow to update to support different architectures and OS's and so on (like when the new Mac M1/etc chips came out), so I don't expect plugin devs to do much to help in the way of compatibility.
When it comes to making music and being able to use a wide array of plugins I've invested money into- it's just too costly and painful to switch to something else. I'm already bought-in to an existing ecosystem and one that doesn't really exist on Linux yet.
Music prod PCs are just one of those things where I (and many others I suspect, like you're saying too) want the least amount of friction possible in the process / use of those machines. Just need everything to work- and I can deal with Windows as a tradeoff for that specific use case.
Of course, I am slightly in a privileged position of having a PC dedicated to that use only- and having separate machines for things like that, makes this an easier argument to keep it. If I only had my one PC and had to do everything on it (gaming AND music prod AND etc...) then it gets way more complicated.
Yea, I pretty much only do music production and gaming on my PC with some light Discord and medium to heavy Youtube use. So nothing too crazy, but for my main hobbies/interests (music, and gaming) I really do just want my stuff to work.
I wish more plugin companies and other music related companies paid more attention to Linux too, cause if I had a sort of guarantee of a plugin or suite of plugins (LABS, Crow Hill, really any paid plugin, etc looking at you!) working on Linux out of the box I'd be a LOT more inclined to switch ASAP.
work, sadly. I work in games, the two most popular game engines have dreadful (but "official") linux support. in addition, 97% or something of the PC market is on Windows, so at the very best I still need some windows setup to test with. It'd be a very costly move in many ways to try and set all that up just to minimize my chokehold on Windows.
The best compromise I can make is to at least try and make Linux a first class citizen for any games I have proper control over one day. just to give one tiny reason to jump for me and others one day.
that's the thing, they don't need to be in a positive light anymore. Market capture has been achieved and they'd need to eat babies or something equally drastic to even start to break that hold.
Richard Stallman was right and has always been right! Surveillance capitalism hath no ethics or morals, it will always seek to intrude as much as possible when allowed a free reign.