I‘m currently considering Softmaker office suite. It supposedly runs well with Windows formats, which I’m hoping is true, as I have to use DOCX and the like heavily in my work.

Thats my exact thing on Linux. It has "issues" but theyre fricken fixable. And they won't happen again, likely. With windows its way harder to fix anything if it won't work beyond the "close and reopen again" technique and then if you do fix it a damn update breaks it again!!! Plus the bloat and spyware, ick.

That's the thing. The whole Windows ecosytem is a massive Pluto's Cave.

If it wasn't for work, if never log into windows. At home, pure Linux.

The short version is it makes your whole system deterministic and auditable, and that does some automatic stuff that is very nice.

Basically you write a configuration for your computer, then it generates atomic images from your config and manages your system for you. You update by generating then switching to the new snapshot. If anything goes wrong, you roll back, and your system is exactly as it was.

The whole system lives as code, it’s tied to git, and up to hardware specific things, I can checkout the exact same system across machines.

This is really great for people like me who dislike having to manage long term state like a grub config change or managing firewall rules or fiddling with committing systemd changes and managing them directly.

The packages are very well thought out.

For example if you add a systemd service it has rules for starting and stopping and the system is smart enough to know when to use them. That makes things like updating a server really nice, it’s just one command and everything is done for you, anything not affected by an update doesn’t restart, so services run smoothly (I have one config that manages all my services, their URL, firewall rules and healthcheck, and automatically adds them to a system monitoring dashboard for example).

As another example I can manage accounts on my system very easily, and I can clean them up by just removing that user from the nix files, and the system will do all the Linux user management stuff for me. This is great on a server where you want limited permissions users running specific applications — I just define what they should have and it works.

That has costs. Everything has to be thought of as either a system package or a user package, updating system packages is always a snapshot change with lock file update. You’re also locked into using nix packages which can lag releases (though this is most package managers).

Your average Arch Linux user probably doesn’t care or like this, they like the full control and flexibility Arch provides (which is just different tastes/philosophies).

You can install user local applications too outside of your main nix configuration (with something like homebrew, which works great on nix), or you can use home-manager to add more nix and manage your apps and generate user account dot files files.

You can also use nix-env to create reproducible software builds without containers, but I find it a little heavy to manage and haven’t learned it.

And they won't happen again, likely.

Until the next update

The agency of just being able to fix something yourself is amazing.

Most of my open source contributions are bug fixes and reports. Can’t do that with closed source!

Finally managed to get most games working on Mint . The only thing I still need Windows for is VR desktop for gaming. Once someone makes a decent Linux version then I'm pretty much done.

As someone who had been doing lots of Excel work with macros, this looks interesting. Don't need it now, and I've adapted to using LibreCalc's Basic which is very similar to VBA, but still, good to see some true competition now. Looks like they're mainly aiming for the Europe crowd with the FreeOffice comparisons.

that is the beauty of Linux distributions. there is something for everyone

Nope. Missed the point completely. A little introspection will be required, but I'm not holding my breath.

I only boot it to play wardogs or to debase myself by playing league of legends or rainbow 6 (rarely thankfully). otherwise proton works for literally every other game I play. i never would have envisioned this ever being the case 10 years ago.

Windows is a bloated corpse and I wait for the moment I can reclaim its SSD space with bated breath

That's my holdout too! But then Windows forcibly removed support for WMR to paperweight those anyway, so...

What headset do you use? They just ported the Oasis driver to Linux for WMR devices (I have a Sumsung Odyssey+) and I can't wait to try that!

There's also the "Envision" project that streamlines getting all the drivers and builds and stuff going for various headset software on Linux. Some have better results than others. :)

Some really good guides here, and there's also a (hrk 🤢) Discord called "Linux Vr Adventures"

https://vronlinux.org/

Windows? just get some blinds smh

For real, I have little to no patience with the myriad of Windows bitching posts these days. I'd say "skill issue", but Linux is easier to set up and maintain than Windows. The only work I've had to put in was when I decide to fuck with perfectly functional defaults just because I can.

then if you do fix it a damn update breaks it again!

Just fixed a fairly common issue with Windows Update on my wife's W11 machine. Stuck at 99% forever. All you need to do is terminate the Windows Update process and try it again, or delete a cache somewhere.

Want Windows' "official" advice if you're "having trouble"?

Try reinstalling Windows . 😂 ROFL

Plus the bloat and spyware, ick.

I was also quite unnerved when the "location data" task item came up on startup, and listed Windows Explorer as using it for a second. Sorry what? Wtf does Explorer need location data for?

So happy to go back to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I want to convert some family members' computers too when I finally get a chance for it.

"Microsoft Windows: Why wait? We broke it for you."

Are there partial vision headsets where I can still see what's going on around me while I can look up and see my apps? Linux only.

I sometimes have to, but it kind of makes me feel I have to wash my hands afterwards.

This is the way

Haha, yes. Same.

How has nobody developed a distro called Blinds or Curtains yet?

I've converted a few people to Linux who have no interest in the technical side just because Windows is that bad a few hours installing an OS has become far preferable to continuing to use windows. Something like Mint or Bazzite works much the same from their perspective, just without all the bloat slowing them down.

Same, Windows 7 was the last one I used too, but I was already dual-booting with Linux before then. Once Microslop rolled out the Windows 8/10/11 idiot parade, I jumped to Linux entirely.

You can say "skill issue" anyway, even if the skill is flashing an image to a USB stick

Got to know a 66yo woman recently. She is not great with tech but curious and wants to try things.

So, she got herself a new laptop for work. Old one was "old" and couldn't do things. Someone gave her a tip to install Linux on it. She did. She claims Linux Mint made her laptop work again.

Today I gave her access to my Jellyfin instance. She couldn't run a movie off her windows laptop but Linux one worked straight away. Same Browser and all. Weird, right?

Same here. I sometimes have issues with updating even Fedora. Point of fact, just yesterday I logged in and noticed Firefox acting like a slideshow when scrolling. Videos would also lag (I could tell it was lagging because I was watching a video about recompilation projects and the onscreen game was Dusklight running at 60 yet my screen was lagging) and games even would too.

I got frustrated and updated everything again through Discover and it was back to normal.

I do NOT like to update my Linux or Windows computers because I have shit luck and there is always something going wrong on either. :'-]

At first I didn't understand this because the bottom text was scrolled out of view. Then I scrolled down and was like "OMG YES!" I just love this. I'd totally buy you a beer to celebrate. Virtual cheers 🍻

Desktop linux has never been better.

This was me until roughly a year ago, because I was still under the assumption that it would be a difficult transition, and I just never heard much news about progress even in techie spaces.

I already had a negative view of Microsoft and was constantly frustrated with Windows.
It still didn't even occur to me to consider jumping ship until the end of security updates was announced for Win 10.
Once I looked into it a little and it became obvious that I wouldn't be making nearly as big of a sacrifice as I had thought, I just did it immediately and haven't looked back lol

My point I guess is that changing a fundamental part of machines most people interact with every day (and probably already have a mixed relationship with, both b/c computers are complex tools and because windows is windows) is a hurdle that takes a lot of momentum to clear, especially when it's "common knowledge" that switching to Linux is hard. I'd like to hope that the public perception will change quite a bit over the next few years though

100% relatable. There is a huge difference between, "It broke and I can fix it or that's annoying but not worth me spending time to learn how to change it (but I could if I was really really bothered by it)" and "It broke again and Windows forced another update and it's broke and now I have to fix it or that's annoying and it bothers the shit out of me and and there is nothing I can do to change it."

Things just feel way better, even when it's all going wrong, when the problems are within your control. I left Windows a long as time ago because of this very thing.

Eh, not curious about operating systems at least. I know a few hardware people who don't give a shit about the software side of things. I'm a software guy, and I'm largely that way about hardware too. I have my logitech whatever-the-fuck mouse and keyboard, and who-the-hell-cares headset, and I'm good. Same with graphics cards/cpus/etc. I will be making the effort to switch to AMD when I next upgrade because fuck nvidia at this point, but historically, I didn't care. I stuck with nvidia because I understand the versioning system. Dumb reason, I know, but also wtf AMD, why do I need a calculator to figure your shit out?

One of my mates got himself a steam deck and was so frustrated with Linux, he desecrated it and installed windows. Mental. It was all because he could wrap his head around a slightly different way of using an OS.

Hey, me too! I ditched W10 for Linux Mint in Sept last year, so much to learn but it's been a blast. I've never experienced having such a smooth working PC.

10 years in and its hard to believe people even use Windows. Everytime I have to use it I feel dirty

Switched before Windows 7 came out on my personal computer. Vista was a disaster.

Switched fully to Linux at work too much more recently. Feels good.

It's been very entertaining to watch the microslop shitshow unfold watching from the sideline as someone who isn't using Windows at all. 10/10 can recommend. Back when I switched to Linux it's because I thought it was cooler, not because it was better. But now Linux is so much better. It's not even a contest. If it's a race windows showed up drunk, ran into the wrong direction and then straight into a wall.

Thanks for the thought out reply!

I get the impression that, just like it did on the server-side, Linux has also taken over most of the embedded computing space (except for the smaller microcontrollers that don't even have an OS).

So that just leaves the Desktop and Mobile Devices.

That would be super rad but I don't think something like that exists yet. (Would be COOL to be wrong though!) The best I would think would be how many headsets let you look through the infrared cams.

I'd guess Steam Frame might be the best bet right now just because it's Linux-first and open, and I think it offers an upgrade for color passthrough cameras.

The worst part about windows problems is search engines return pure unadulterated garbage. You can search 100 different windows issues and get 7 sets of results.

All Android devices are Linux, it just happens to be the worst kind of Linux possible: one that entirely depends on proprietary drivers and is controlled by a company hellbent on closing it down through total dependence on their services.

I'm closing on my six months anniversary of not booting into windows. I wish I had converted earlier as well.

Not having to deal with the whack a mole of problems that was windows is so very lovely.

A few ongoing bothersome problems that honestly amuse me, and I'm far less stressed when something does go wrong that I can't fix.

Haven't had a game (so far) that I couldn't get running, and really only miss one program that I could probably run under Linux if I really wanted to get dirty.

One ongoing problem for some of my games and it's so random that after spending an hour trying to fix it I decided I didn't care enough, because I wasn't having the crashes I used to under windows. (The game freezes, and will stay stuck until having tabbed out to Steam (and only Stream), tabbing to anything else the game stays hung. Then some process comes along that I don't see, frees everything and I'm back to playing happily.)

The kernel in Android is Linux but the rest of the OS is not.

In my previous post I meant Linux as the whole OS rather merelly the kernel.

Even in the embedded space Linux is not just the kernel but also at minimum the common libraries and utilities (for example ARMbian is a distro for ARM-based SBCs).

I also have one game that behaves weirdly until I either tab back and forth, or (more consistently) move it to another workspace and back with super+shift+up.

It seems like a windows manager/focus issue.

I'd gotten so used to crashes that started with a lockup under windows, leading to my poor char's death, or save corruption...

The freeze and then resume feels like winning the lottery. :D

Shout-out to that guy who argued with me that onedrive doesn't randomly reinstall itself for no reason.