How it started

How it's going

TBH I'm very happy with the state of Linux desktop as it has been for the past 3-5 years or so. If things enshittify I'm just gradually freezing the versions that I like for most things, except stuff that directly interfaces with the internet (kernel, nftables, browser, nix, git, ssh, rclone). My main hope is that LibreWolf keeps updating and doesn't let in too much AI slop from firefox, and I'm reasonably sure everything else on that list is quite difficult to enshittify.

I have literally never seen this occur outside of:

• it attempting to reset the default PDF viewer multiple times
• twice when the entire group of settings related to cortana/internet search from the taskbar changed and they didn't attempt to map previous choices to the new settings

That was over the course of a literal decade, most of it with a day job working IT and sysadmin in a Windows environment.

If you've got more hard evidence of MS doing this I'd love to see it, but as far as I can tell this comes from the same place that has resulted in every support thread saying you need to run "SFC /scannow".

If some idiot don't automatically add AI slop and the developer have the actual time to check the new code before adding it to the distro release, then sure. Is not like they are forced to run pushing new updates full of slop just to make the investors happy and having the whole sistem flooded with bugs.

...I mean, who would be so stupid to do that? 😁

Step 1: install Linux Mint

Step 2: everything works

Step 3: profit

The ??? step is only for Window's nonsense

until the age verification brick hits you in the head

I'm still salty that they killed Cortana. For the short period between being released full-featured and MS gimping it hard in my region, it was the best assistant out of the bunch, by far.

All they had to do was add the option to add the capabilities of Copilot to the existing system and they'd have an actually killer feature.

So you have to know 4+ workarounds before you've even got an OS installed. Sounds "easy."

I will not use those services. I think im willing to give up any service except email. And if Im forced, I guess I will identify for email since its critical to have. But its all ridiculous and part of building dystopia.

What's crazy is all this can be disabled in Windows by a power user or enthusiast, but they don't want to, so they want to move to linex, an operating system designed for power users

But wouldnt you always need to check, that those settings keep the way you want them? I heard that windows sometimes resets some of those settings.

My PC used to turn itself on occasionally after I put it to sleep at night and went to bed. Over a span of weeks, I'd track down the latest reason for starting up and disable it until it would only wake on keyboard or by hitting the power button.

Except I'd have to reapply them because it would just randomly be enabled again.

Yes. I hate it. If anyone has a good CAD/CAM package for Linux I'll jump ship in a heartbeat.

Should probably also add that the amount of time I've spent rifling through the event viewer, task scheduler, and registry editor has skyrocketed in the past few years.

LOL telling the people who created the Darknet that you're going to control what they do with their computers

What's crazy is that everything a power user does to disable these things gets UNDONE with the next windows update.

A real power user wouldn't waste their time with that added maintenance of re-disabling things.

Just made the jump. No regrats

I haven't had a problem with everything staying off, except one drive turning back on which was annoying but took 5 secs to turn it off again.

Yes I've had one drive turn itself back on before. Annoying.

Proving the point, it's a never ending battle with windblowz

I haven't had this problem except for when I did.

Have a great day

Yeah that overly reductive version of his response is mega cope.

I don't know whether it counts as good, but FreeCAD and OpenSCAD are going concerns

How to use HDR in Mint?

Linux users just watching the chaos like it’s a movie 🍿

Question. Does it even matter, because a LOT of people (majority of humans, even babies) have their name and picture all over the internet that the AI has scraped and knows everything about you. Why would an age verify even matter? If you buy anything with credit card they have you got already.

I'm all for privacy but let's be honest, unless you lived under a rock for the last 25 years, they know who and where you are and everything you like and dont.

That being said, the hard one for me will be when fb pushes it because I love marketplace, and also every one of my friends and family only use fb. If I quit it I'll basically have no one.

You won’t regret it. When I switched, I realised just how much it felt like I was just renting my OS from Windows.

It's the implementation (such as in UK) requiring government ID, making it sound more like blatant data collection.

I'm honestly not the best person to talk about this. But also not every user in a website/social media has to buy something, hence not everyone has ever given their payment info.

But from tiny bit reading on recent essay on the lobbyist of the OS-level age verification law, being Facebook behind it, they kind of want to offload this work to OS so that they themselvs (social media services) don't be the one who does this, apparently because that may violate some regulation. I don't remember the details sorry.

As for the motives, why's everyone suddenly obssessed with verifying everyone's age since 2025, who knows. But I do have concern that prosecuting critics on the internet will be easier if everyone is well profiled.

Today i had a segfault that basically froze my entire machine. I was just running some downloads and browsing and all of a sudden i couldn't open, minimize, raise, or close anything.

If this is a deal breaker, then no OS will satisfy you

If that is a problem for you, just wait till you try Linux

Welcome to the fediverse new user. Since you appear to be lost, you should know that we are overwhelmingly linux users on the fediverse, and that !linuxmemes@lemmy.world is unsurprisingly a linux-centric community.

None of us are inexperienced with Windows or Linux and many of us are Linux users because of Windows.

https://tenor.com/view/eating-the-chip-chips-chip-eating-chip-man-eating-three-chips-gif-18885184

Mainstream linux distros are currently easier to use than it is to debloat a windows install. Quite a few of my "normie" friends swapped to Linux because it was easier to use than Windows when all you do is play games and browse the web.

Back when the most hated thing about Windows was the forced updates, I likewise didn't have that problem because I would update my system often.

For me, as somebody who never had issues and never lost work from it, the update process of every Linux distro I have ever used is still 10x better than Windows ever was.

And honestly that's a microcosm of the overall Windows vs Linux comparison for me. Ask yourself who the stakeholders are in the design, and of them whose desires get priority. With Linux you generally have the users and the devs (who are themselves users), sprinkled with some commercial interests that contribute for various reasons. With Windows you have users and devs seemingly at the bottom, followed by numerous different priorities inside Microsoft that range from "make the company better" to "keep this department relevant for one more quarter", you have they who are on the most high -- the shareholders -- and I guess now you have a pretty strong presence of the US government.

So the purpose of the update process in Linux, whether command line or a friendly graphical interface, is to update the selected items. That's it. As always, do it quickly, efficiently, and with as little disruption as possible.

The purpose of the update process in Windows includes updating the selected items, sure. But it obviously also includes turning One Drive back on. And history suggests that Windows Update's true to-do list has waaaaay more than 2 items on it, lol.

Thanks for letting us know

Yea we get it you are terrible at running windows. WINDOWS!

It's not a problem for me, because I use Linux.

You clearly haven't touched Debian or an immutable distro. I've been happily using Bazzite for 2 years on my laptop on the same install without any settings resetting themselves. It simply is not a thing outside of windows and some other poorly optimised operating systems. You should try them before posting your opinions as fact.

Edit: I see now I'm not talking to a serious person - rather someone who intentionally says dumb shit to get into flame wars. Have the day you deserve. Now, and forever!

Back in the olden internet days rom sites would tell you to delete your roms withon 24 hours to stay legal

Indeed, it was just a cope on the rom owner websites anyway to skirt legalities