I made the switch around this time last year and haven't looked back. A few things have taken a bit of effort to figure out, but largely it has been a breeze. I should've done this many years earlier.

I feel this as well. I use arch, btw.

As much as I like seeing people making the jump, I'm seriously surprised how many people are still putting up with microsoft. Like yes, I get it, your grandma won't care, but I know people who are absolutely capable of installing another OS but still stick with windows, even tho there's not a lot of software that just won't run on linux. Some games like fortnite or league, yeah, but other than that ... it's just weird. Especially because they keep yapping about something breaking or not working all the time.

Context for the photo?

I’m seriously surprised how many people are still putting up with microsoft

Last Friday I showed a colleague that the computer he had been using to control a robot arm with a CNC mill that day, is running Linux (Ubuntu). I opened a terminal, listened to the obligatory "wow, are you hacking?!", and typed uname.

"THAT'S Linux?!"... And he is a clever nerd.

Jumped to Bazzite a few weeks ago and already feeling pretty good about it. Not sure that I could have done it earlier (or at least would have kept Windows for dual boot), since I primarily use my PC for games and the improvements to gaming on Linux the last few years had been astonishing.

There are entire business models built around customer complacency. Most people don't want to make a change unless their hand is forced, even with a steady decline in quality.

Only if you're into lowest common denominator multiplayer slop.

No idea where it originated from. I've just seen it as a meme template.

This! I didn't even realize how bad things were until I stepped outside. Using a sensible OS took a big load off my shoulders.

That's not strictly true. Most Steam games work just fine on Linux. Even a lot of live service games. Just from the ones I personally play - Overwatch, Elder Scrolls Online, Arknights and Arknights: Endfield have no issues running via Proton even though they all clearly have some degree of anti-cheat.

The real issue is kernel level anti-cheat that some publishers stick to, like Riot.

If you have to use Windows and Office at work, you're kind of stuck. At home I finally ditched Win10 and found LibreOffice perfectly fine to use. Not everyone can make that choice or would want to have one type at home and one at work.

But it's okay, Microsoft seems to want to shoot themselves in the foot every chance they get. Even making the mistakes they are, they can't even easily topple the monopoly dependence they built up.

I really like nixos, which will not even tell you to reboot if the kernel is unchanged. Plus it will restart my services correctly when I update or pull new container images on my server.

It’s very very nice.

I got my good bud to finally swap to Linux months ago. We have to occasionally boot windows for some games. He laments it every time, even despite having plenty of issues on Linux. Windows just feels worse in every way. He said "At least the problems on linux are fun and I can fix most of them." - and he's no linux expert.

Maybe it's finally almost the year of the linux desktop :')

And here folks is the perfect example of why a huge number of people have absolutely zero interest in playing games like league or fortnight.

Also the bitlocker issues:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3163280/junes-windows-10-patch-has-a-bitlocker-lockout-problem-again.html

Again skill issues. Thats a terrible game as well way too team oriented so you can get held hostage for 20 minutes.

I get it. Problems in Linux feel like they're mine. I prefer it.

Most new multiplayer games

If you're a Riot fanboy, maybe. Haven't heard a lot of other new multiplayer games that have issues with Linux.

Maybe because you’re a trash player

Ah yes, really mature and thought out argument

Your social skills have a skill issue

Yeah. When I can't do something on Linux, or something breaks, I may have to figure out how to fix it, but most of the time it's less painful to fix than just trying to do basic stuff on windows and getting paywalled/adspammed/stuck in some kind of error hell you can't fix even if you know what's wrong.

My windows dual boot rig gets progressively less use on the W11 boot over the last year. I may move it to an even smaller SSD... It only exists to run a few programs.

I

I've been watching this shitshow for two and a half and oh boy am I glad I bailed when I did. The last Windows I truly loved was 7 (I'd still use it if I could, but Mint can get close enough for me in terms of look and feel without too much ricing, and, like Win7, things just... work), everything Microsoft has done since has just been a slowly degrading dumpster fire.

you’re lucky if you can get a game that works with linux

I guess I'm very lucky because I haven't found a game I play that doesn't work yet. Even gacha games, notorious for their anti-cheats and always online requirement, can be run on Linux. I'm afraid the skill issue is on your side.

I'm a mint guy myself. Never disappoints

Clever, but obviously not too curious 😉

A lot of nerds would be perfectly capable of installing a different OS. But i atleast often forget that screwing around with the computer itself isnt the focus for a lot of them. They just use the computer to get shit done in their field of special interests. Like for me the whole administrative overhead of switching to Linux was only bound by the resource of time. But i really looked forward to it and had a blast when i finally secured enough time to do it. In the end i just learned a new aspect for my hobby. For others that would just take time away for the things they want to do. Interest in open source, privacy, beeing in control of your digital shit etc also isnt as common as one would hope even for computer nerds.

With that said in the last two years i still saw a big shift. Atleast in the other online spaces i frequent and even in my private life tons of people picked up Linux. Just because the strain of windows became so insuffereable.

I don't even understand your argument. Are you arguing for Linux, or against it? You've been spouting blatant bullshit like "gamers can't use Linux" and then doubling down when told otherwise. What exactly am I ignorant of? Your inability to form sentences?

kernel level anti-cheat isnt even the issue by itself. most of them work on linux just fine but you can configure them in a way to specifically block linux.

I moved from Proxmox on my trio of home servers to NixOS a year ago and loved it so much i switched my 2019 intel MacBook as well a few weeks ago. Headless on the servers and Hyprland/Quickshell on the laptop. It's just so fucking good

Ohh I have an old i9 intel MacBook I could migrate to do this…

Only had 512gb though, it’s an old dev machine.

How’s the Linux support on it? Since it’s all thunderbolt ports I’m wondering how well it works.

I have windows installed for some work-related stuff still, but I can't use it because windows decided it doesn't want to connect by wifi and I'm not gonna buy more hardware to just maybe get windows to be functional. Linux just works with it without having to mess with drivers, install software, etc. Also my work laptop won't connect to my bluetooth headset anymore after an update, so I have to connect it to my phone and then use AudioRelay to have wireless audio on my laptop. If just one

Meanwhile linux problems are mostly just companies not wanting to support linux, so finding workaround to get their software to run or finding alternative software that works. The core functionality just seems so much more reliable, so I'm not constantly just trying to find ways to deal with all of the new problems that come out of nowhere.

Get away from the mirror.

I think the funniest implication here is that he seems to think he is somehow superior to us mere Linux simpletons for playing fucking Fortnite. Or League.

and let's not forget, he also gets the privilege of having Valorant's anticheat looking through everything he does on his computer. You know, just in case.

Let's let that marinate for a moment, because I truly do think that invasive kernel anticheat is something that people will be really kicking themselves over accepting somewhere down the road in this, the modern digital panopticon, the dying days of privacy. This individual seems to wholeheartedly and truly believe, that it is somehow the superior, intelligent choice to use an OS that will allow random software companies (that are not your hardware or OS vendor) to take complete control of your computer with the pinky swear they won't do anything untoward with that access. For a fucking video game. (Sometimes, one you paid actual money for!) Especially now, in the days of forced arbitration clauses and constant corporate data breaches. "no no, guys, you see, you have to let our malware anti-cheat have kernel access because we can't be fucked to actually employ humans to moderate the game nor hire another anti-cheat vendor that actually knows how to detect cheats without getting all up in your OS's guts (they do exist, you know), I sweeeeaaaarrrrrr nothing bad will happen!"

Oh yeah, he's a genius alright. I shudder in the presence of such brilliance. (no one tell him, it'll be funnier)

Mine's a t2 so my choices were t2linux or nothing, not sure about yours. As far as support, the only thing not working is bluetooth but that's because i put zero effort into fixing it since i don't use it. The install was a PITA but well worth it in the end

EDIT: forgot to mention that all ports are working too. I switch between using just the laptop and 2 external monitors no prob

Going to linux from windows was eye opening. No more 'oh you don't want this well we'll remind you again in a few days' or microsoft trying to upsell their services on my own machine or fighting with the operating system in order to do something simple. It is so nice to feel like I own my own machine.

Maybe it's finally almost the year of the linux desktop :')

If you guys could just stop fucking jinxing it!

;D

A spectator enjoys the cricket being played in Lahore's Iqbal Park.

nixos is one I hear people talking about positively but don't know much on. What's so great about it? And is it a niche distro for certain users (the subset who like to tinker with their machines?) or is it good for general use?

I face some issues with updates on linux breaking things (Arch btw) but it's usually an hour debugging and then a "hey, someone already made a fix for this as a pull request that you could install now if you compile from git".

That's a hassle, but it's better than spending an hour debugging, realizing the only real solution is to wait for a hotfix from the powers that be, then several more hours trying to get a workaround, then the five stages of grief ending in admitting defeat and waiting for the hotfix that'll break something else.

On Linux, there's always a way to do what you want to do, with all the risk and reward that comes with that.

I've tried to switch to Linux a handful of times on my secondary machine, from Vista era up to Windows 11. My primary use case at the beginning was DVR. Couldn't beat Windows Media Center for that in the Vista/Win7 era. Then WMC got the axe so my use case shifted to Plex with other content sources. Tried Linux for that changeover. As an unseasoned Linux toe-dipper, that process was just a bunch of blindly running commands from a setup guide to install everything, usually without an explanation of what each command does. Some stuff wasn't working and I didn't have an idea of how to fix it where to start looking, so I aborted Linux and ran Windows 10. As a largely headless machine (accessible via KVM, but I usually just used remote desktop to manage), Windows 10 updates were a frequent hassle with the full-screen nags for OneDrive and whatnot that interrupted the boot to desktop (and thus prevented my background services from starting), but I lived with it for years, and remoted in when I had to fix something.

This past year, I finally did a fresh start with TrueNAS running all the same apps I was using on Windows. It took a while to figure out permissions, and the process of getting there was messy, but everything is working.

In anticipation of the Valheim 1.0 release, I wanted to setup a dedicated server. I initially tried setting up a spare laptop to run it in Mint, but I ended up reallocating that laptop to my wife so she could dip her toes in Linux. I then shifted to trying to set up a Docker container for it, but had a misunderstanding of where to paste the Docker compose, so I gave up and installed a Mint VM and setup the server inside that VM. Then a couple months passed, and I'd forgotten what installation type I used and also what commands to update/configure, which motivated me to delete the VM and figure out what I was doing wrong with Docker. Got it set up after a little struggle with file paths to a separate storage pool, but it's now working perfectly. Now I have an easy update button in the GUI so I don't have to remember or document any commands. I'd go so far as to say the vanilla dedicated server running as a Docker app inside TrueNAS is a cleaner, easier experience than the default method in Windows. Now I have a friend asking for a server-side mod, so we'll see how that goes...

As for my wife, her main use case is simple Libre Office and web browsing, so there's basically no struggle there. There was one hiccup with her touchpad not working, but she resolved that. She did try to run Clone Hero and ran into an issue with button mapping with her Xbox 360 guitar but didn't have the will to look into it at the time. She'll get around to it.

As for me, I'm a gamer and an engineer. Until all my games and SolidWorks run on Linux, I won't be switching my primary PC off of Windows.

I've been pretty happy with being downstream of Debian stable. I've only been burned by outdated packages a couple of times, which hasn't been that bad. I'm much more of a "set and forget" type of user.

I can't even remember the last time I logged in to Windows.

I‘m old(er), need my PC for work since my livelyhood depends on it, and unfortunately only have a limited amount of fucks to give per day. That made it quite the daunting task to switch OS since I‘m stuck with Windows for over 20 years now.

Got new hardware recently and will take my time to set up Zorin OS while keeping the old Windows machine running in parallel for a while. It is the softest of switches I could think of all in all, and I‘m looking forward to it. Sometimes things take time, especially when people have essentially been indoctrinated with Windows since their early school days.