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I finally made the switch to Ubuntu Mate on Friday and WOW, color me impressed! The only reason I stuck with Windows on my desktop machine for so long was gami
by kstenerud 4y ago
I finally made the switch to Ubuntu Mate on Friday and WOW, color me impressed!
The only reason I stuck with Windows on my desktop machine for so long was gaming, and the last time I tried switching over was 10 years ago. Spoiler: it was a shitshow.
This time, things are MUCH better! The Mate desktop environment is simple, stable, clean, does the job and gets out of your way (kinda reminds me of Windows 2000). Steam's Proton makes running games a breeze. All of my favorites just work. I could even run battle.net as a non-steam game, USING Steam's Proton!
And the kicker? Blizzard's recently opened beta of Diablo 4 just worked. As in, I clicked install, clicked play, and it just worked. Perfectly. As if I were still running under Windows. I've never before seen such sorcery.
So bye bye Windows, except when I'm running one as a VM.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoWindows can be good, when its in vm-jello, frozzen in time, with no real network connection except for shared folders and the updaterapeware removed. Honestly, has anyone ever looked at these updates and though to themselves - "Yes, i need that!".
- tapland 4y agoGaming on linux has really taken off. Very few games, even with anti cheat for multiplayer, don’t work. It’s nice that running Linux is no worse than missing out on console exclusives
- lexandstuff 4y agoThis will surely be the year of the Linux desktop.
- gryn 4y agohas been the case for me for more than 5 years.
- nunodonato 4y ago20 years here, going fine :) But I guess the joke never ends
- labster 4y agoNo, 20 years is the fusion power joke, not the year of the linux desktop joke
- MikeTheGreat 4y agoI thought that fusion is 40 years away, and has been every year for the past 50 years? :) The "Year Of The Linux Desktop" has been a thing since at least the heyday of Slashdot, which would put it at 20-ish years. Unless that was intended as a humorous joke? Your post, I mean - not the Year Of the Linux Desktop, :)
- labster 4y agoMy post was less of a joke than Windows 11 is. But probably funnier.
- AdamN 4y agoOnce Infrastructure Week is finished ... just a little bit longer
- HeckFeck 4y agoYou can even install PowerShell for your command line and you'll feel right at home!
- Zuiii 4y agoSure you can but what about cmdlets? Do we have an open source "coreutil" that offers reasonable compatibility with the standard powershell environment?
- MagicMoonlight 4y agoI can run pretty much any game out of the box, even random games that nobody would ever have optimised for linux. The time of the desktop has come.
- zamalek 4y agoIt sometimes does a better job than Windows at running Windows games.
- ChickenNugger 4y agoSerious question: Did you play the Diablo IV open beta weekend? (It's live for 4 more hours). I did, on my Windows 10 box. The issue isn't random games that no one would ever have optimized, the issue is bleeding edge games that most people want to play, and play right now. If you didn't, can you? If (the royal) you can't, get started in the time remaining, download speeds allowing, the year of the Linux desktop isn't here.
- COGlory 4y agoFrom the great grandparent - they did play the Diablo 4 beta on Ubuntu. >And the kicker? Blizzard's recently opened beta of Diablo 4 just worked. As in, I clicked install, clicked play, and it just worked. Perfectly. As if I were still running under Windows. I've never before seen such sorcery.
- permo-w 4y agoI'm sure that's never been said before
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- birracerveza 4y agoSadly there's still a few very heavy hitters that make Linux a no-go for some. Genshin Impact and Fortnite are unusable. Unreal Editor requires Windows too. And I don't know how usable VR is on Windows. Plus the random assortment of windows programs for which there could be a Linux equivalent but you really need that one that only works on Windows for some reason. But at this point it's just a matter of time, I guess.
- MikeTheGreat 4y ago> Plus the random assortment of windows programs for which there could be a Linux equivalent but you really need that one that only works on Windows for some reason. This! What keeps me working on Windows (besides the fact that I somehow have completely missed the in-OS ads) is the time it would take me to replace all the random little quality of life apps that I've gotten used to. I'm sure there's a great Linux clipboard manager that does everything Ditto does on Windows but I don't have to go and find it, get used to it, figure out all the quirks (and the things it lacks that Ditto provides, and all the things that it provides that Ditto lacks, etc, etc).
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoYou need[0] a slow migration. Like any major change really. Get a cheap small box that can run Linux and slowly start to build the tool familiarity alongside your defaults. That's pretty much how I did it. Went back to Windows less and less until it was only ever for Windows-only android flashing tools (which is about once every 6 months). Still annoys me how much space Windows takes up to dual-boot just for this use-case. Bloated PoS. [0]: If you're going to do it. I'm not saying you need to do it, I'm not that guy.
- shaan7 4y ago> Still annoys me how much space Windows takes up to dual-boot just for this use-case. Bloated PoS Made me chuckle, can 100% relate. I mostly reboot to Windows for some games and to one-off buy some soundtrack from iTunes.
- 4y ago
- herbst 4y agoWait until you give up on mate (kinda stuck approach to copy windows 95, just like modern windows or Mac mostly does) and try actual modern desktops like Gnome, KDE or if you want to go ultra productive something tiling like 3wm
- kstenerud 4y agoNah, tried all of those and settled on Mate. IMO the most important aspect of a desktop environment is that you never notice it. That's what I loved so much about Windows 2000 (and why I lamented every UI change they made since then).
- herbst 4y agoThat's the exact reason I am stuck with Gnome. First it might be a bit strange, but then you realize it's there, everything is one tab away yet you never actually see it. Giving maximal screen estate to whatever I focus on while being as distraction less as a WM just can be. However anyway, glad you found something that works for you! That's what choice is for
- kioshix 4y agoMATE is a fork of Gnome 2. Not everyone likes Gnome 3 and newer versions.
- herbst 4y agoGnome 2 is just a windows 95 clone with Gimmics. Only from gnome shell on to gnome 3 the whole concept was brought to a new level. However I understand if people don't like that, it's new and maybe won't last it sure is easier to stick to a taskbar, etc when you are used to it.
- kstenerud 4y agoThat's exactly what I like about it. Windows 3.x was terrible. Win95 looked pretty but was a garbage os. But windows NT with the win95 UI on it finally convinced me to ditch my Amiga (although I was VERY tempted by NeXT). And honestly, I haven't seen any UI enhancements since then that are useful to me.
- dreen 4y agoI'd like to believe that, but can't shake the feeling there is a chance of performance impact or a need for special magic dance to make something work. The teenager me would have no problem, he had a (fairly) working Enlightenment config and tried an array of distros, and it was fun to tinker. But he had way, way more time, and didn't spend his own money on the gaming hardware.
- kstenerud 4y agoThere are warts, like it got confused into thinking that my second SSD was a removable device until I forced it in the fstab. But the level of annoyance nowadays is pretty much on par with Windows warts and annoyances (especially Windows printer drivers OMG). But I've been using Linux desktops for years on my laptops and virtual desktops, so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect before changing my PC over. But for games I'm completely intolerant of annoyances, which is why I took so long with this step.
- geraldwhen 4y agoIt definitely has a performance impact, and sometimes there are crash/other glitches in proton not present on windows. I also have much, much less time than I did as a teenager, so I can only stomach console gaming at this point. Games need to Just Work.
- elaus 4y agoFor me personally performance with Linux gaming is much less of a problem than it was with teenage me's Windows gaming. Back in the day I didn't have much money, but today I can just buy a slightly beefier GPU to compensate any possible performance loss from compatibility layers. With my 7 year old GTX 1080 and Ubuntu/Steam Proton I can still play most games at very high settings (except raytracing stuff).
- dreen 4y agoThen we have different priorities, if I spend a lot of money on a gaming machine beefy GPU I want 100% of its performance at all times and no risk of problems cutting into my limited gaming time. If there is a problem on Windows you can be sure the game devs will give it a priority over a problem on Linux. Been a Linux user for over 20 years, still use it for work, and yes Proton does look great, but I don't see using it for gaming anytime soon.
- flohofwoe 4y agoWait for a couple of major version updates before praising prematurely. Usually desktop Linux works great until it suddenly doesn't, and then the real fun of figuring out what's wrong begins ;)
- M95D 4y agoSo, people complain about Windows spyware and antifeatures, then they install Ubuntu and Steam client. What did that solve? Move your profiling data to someone else?
- jabroni_salad 4y agoSteam wants to sell me video games that are similar to other video games I like and keep me on top of new releases. recommendations based on purchase history are kinda okay in my opinion. Microsoft wants to sell me the british royalty and reasons why millions of people are excited about german hearing aids. I don't really get this at all. What is their snoopware even good for if this is the best they can come up with?
- floor_ 4y agoIs it though? When you run apt upgrade you are nagged to go subscribe to UBUNTU PRO. There was a problem with amazon tracking Ubuntu store purchases. (https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-search-ads-in-ubuntus-unity-dash/ https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-s...) You can't exactly escape telemetry and unwanted ads. Seems like it on a slippery slope to another version of Windows 10 to me.
- Spivak 4y agoThe unity dash thing is ancient and not a thing anymore.
- thomastjeffery 4y agoI would definitely recommend Linux Mint over vanilla Ubuntu. Canonical has made some really dumb moves over the last decade. Thankfully, it's trivial to avoid vanilla Ubuntu.