5 ms·

Seems like every 48-72 hours now Microsoft announces yet another extremely compelling reason to abandon their platform for Linux.

noodleman 2y ago
They've been at it for years. I'd genuinely be surprised if this cracked the top 10 worst things Microsoft have done to Windows users. I think there would need to be a concerted effort at a grass-roots level, say from r/buildapc, to get new PC gamers onto an alternative for there to be a considerable shift away from Windows.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  > ...to get new PC gamers onto an alternative for there to be a considerable shift away from Windows. Have you tried Steam on Linux? It works amazingly well, either with native Linux support in games or through Proton support (their Windows emulation layer). Quite a few people I know have gone that route and are shocked at just how well it works in practice.
  - Zardoz84 2y ago
    It simply works. It's amazing what does now Wine/Proton
    - whalesalad 2y ago
      I was pretty blown away by how simple and straightforward the experience was for me recently on Debian 12. * Go to app store (flatpak) and install Steam * Launch and login to Steam * Install Helldivers 2 * Launch the game. Done! Everything "just works"
      - dpkirchner 2y ago
        Even games with EAC and Battleye ("anti cheats") work well. That was pretty surprising.
        jsheard 2y ago
        YMMV there depending on the specific game, both of those anti-cheats can work on Linux but the developer of the game has to opt-in to allow it since their Linux implementations are much easier to bypass than their Windows ones. There's games like Rust which use EAC but have refused to enable its Linux support for that reason.
  - animalsgiraffes 2y ago
    Proton has been huge for Linux gaming, especially since the Steam Deck launched. Apple’s Game Port Toolkit is also quite promising on Mac side. Unix based OSs are seeing something of a vg renaissance.
  - janice1999 2y ago
    I recently purchased a Steam Deck and I've been blown away by how games just work. I used to use Wine a lot for applications in the early 2010s and it was always hit and miss (and Codeweaver for Office support). Proton is amazing.
    - mananaysiempre 2y ago
      > I used to use Wine a lot for applications in the early 2010s and it was always hit and miss IME Wine is still hit and miss for applications in general, even old ones. Games are just a particularly good fit here—they rarely care how well your COM marshalling or shell namespace or transactional NTFS or weird SQL-like inside Windows Installer is implemented. Not to imply that getting games to work is a simple task, just that the API surface is much less spread out, and any emulation improvements for a single game are more likely to improve support for a wider range of other games.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      I think the discussion is tainted actually by technical people who used Wine in the bad old days, haha. I fought Wine a decade ago and it was pretty bad. If anyone had asked, I’d probably give the “dual boot, may as well keep Windows around as a glorified console” spiel. A non-technical friend got a steam deck, when I asked what OS he’d used I got a response along the lines of “oh, I guess it must be Linux.” It the thought about what OS hadn’t even occurred. The future is cool.
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      I just wish Proton supported macOS. It being Linux-only always felt like their goal was never actually cross-platform gaming, but specifically SteamOS being able to run everything.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    The Nvidia experience on the beta channel is shockingly good now, too. The big sore spot for gaming on Linux was trying to convince Nvidia users the experience was worth their time. Using 555-series drivers on GNOME Wayland right now is pretty much flawless.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - noodleman 2y ago
    I'm all in on Linux at this point - it's been usable for a long time. My comments not really about whether it works, as we know it does, it's about how we go about getting the word out there.
    - hparadiz 2y ago
      I just switched to Wayland with KDE Plasma 6.1 from KDE 5.x on X11. VR works now. Screensharing and everything you expect with other operating systems works perfectly as well.
    - squarefoot 2y ago
      Offer to install it to people who experience difficulties with Windows, and never lie about it being much simpler or N times faster; don't forget to ask first if they use any special software/hardware that requires Windows or has only Windows drivers. Offer alternatives, but always be clear that they're not the same thing. 99.9% of non professional Office users wouldn't even notice the differences with LibreOffice, but that's not a good reason to tell them that the two products are identical: they're not, but one is open and free, both in price and in how it respect the user, which for many people could count a lot more than the extra features MS Office has over LibreOffice. One thing that worked for me many times is that I always offered full support for any problems the user would encounter, and to install Windows back and for free if after a given period of time they didn't find Linux usable for them. One has to understand that the common non tech user trying Linux can't easily phone their friends, coworkers, kids, nephews, etc. not even the PC repair shop down the street and magically find a Linux expert, so they must be given something that works and is well supported. Word of mouth will do the rest: most users don't care about pervasive advertising or spyware, Closed vs Open Source etc, but others do, and they're the ones telling about Linux and bringing other users in.
  - metalspoon 2y ago
    Mandatory Google [your games] + proton first
dan-robertson 2y ago
Which do you think is the bigger risk to ordinary users? - someone hacks into Microsoft and accesses their files from onedrive (for passwords/blackmail-info I guess?) - Microsoft looks at their files in onedrive and does something bad (not sure what) - someone hacks into their computer and accesses their files. Or someone does so by causing the user to download something bad - the user’s ssd fails or is corrupted because they have consumer grade hardware that is not treated particularly well, taking all their documents with it. - the user accidentally deletes some important document (or eg drag-and-drops the contents of their document somewhere else and autosaves the now blank document, or they lose it some other way) I think the benefits outweigh the risks for a lot of users for this change. I don’t know how onedrive works but one could imagine it working in a reasonably secure way by encrypting data at rest (secure keys on device would be nice but bad UX; key-derivation function probably better). IMO the real problem with the feature is typical big-company lack of coordination (the amount of free storage isn’t enough for how much people typically need, even right away) and lack of incentives to fix it (the increase in paying customers is probably worth a lot more to whoever caused this change than the increase in annoyed users due to drive-full warnings) and the idea that that people might pay Microsoft for more storage (that you can’t easily pay for remote reliable automatic backup storage when you set the OS up does not feel like a particularly big advantage of free software to me). I think there are things not to like about this but it doesn’t seem to me to be the obviously terrible thing your comment suggests. Certainly it seems less bad than lots of other recent windows changes.
- smolder 2y ago
  There's no justification here for turning the feature on for users who have already explicitly chosen not to use it, or for not presenting them with the choice.
  - dan-robertson 2y ago
    I mean, the person who caused windows to behave this way surely had some justification, even if it was self-serving. I think a choice would be better but I also think that being on is a reasonable default for users. I don’t understand the point about users explicitly opting out (and that being switched?). I would chalk such a thing down to the kind of big company systematic nefariousness you get (no one needs to say ‘make it ignore the opt out’, they just implement a default wrong and don’t notice/fix/investigate the bug because KPIs increase)
jokoon 2y ago
I agree. Although US intelligence is probably happy about this. Not saying it's a good or bad thing, but it's certainly an easy way to gather it. I can understand them doing it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

noodleman 2y ago

They've been at it for years. I'd genuinely be surprised if this cracked the top 10 worst things Microsoft have done to Windows users. I think there would need to be a concerted effort at a grass-roots level, say from r/buildapc, to get new PC gamers onto an alternative for there to be a considerable shift away from Windows.

Syonyk 2y ago
> ...to get new PC gamers onto an alternative for there to be a considerable shift away from Windows. Have you tried Steam on Linux? It works amazingly well, either with native Linux support in games or through Proton support (their Windows emulation layer). Quite a few people I know have gone that route and are shocked at just how well it works in practice.
- Zardoz84 2y ago
  It simply works. It's amazing what does now Wine/Proton
  - whalesalad 2y ago
    I was pretty blown away by how simple and straightforward the experience was for me recently on Debian 12. * Go to app store (flatpak) and install Steam * Launch and login to Steam * Install Helldivers 2 * Launch the game. Done! Everything "just works"
    - dpkirchner 2y ago
      Even games with EAC and Battleye ("anti cheats") work well. That was pretty surprising.
      - jsheard 2y ago
        YMMV there depending on the specific game, both of those anti-cheats can work on Linux but the developer of the game has to opt-in to allow it since their Linux implementations are much easier to bypass than their Windows ones. There's games like Rust which use EAC but have refused to enable its Linux support for that reason.
- animalsgiraffes 2y ago
  Proton has been huge for Linux gaming, especially since the Steam Deck launched. Apple’s Game Port Toolkit is also quite promising on Mac side. Unix based OSs are seeing something of a vg renaissance.
- janice1999 2y ago
  I recently purchased a Steam Deck and I've been blown away by how games just work. I used to use Wine a lot for applications in the early 2010s and it was always hit and miss (and Codeweaver for Office support). Proton is amazing.
  - mananaysiempre 2y ago
    > I used to use Wine a lot for applications in the early 2010s and it was always hit and miss IME Wine is still hit and miss for applications in general, even old ones. Games are just a particularly good fit here—they rarely care how well your COM marshalling or shell namespace or transactional NTFS or weird SQL-like inside Windows Installer is implemented. Not to imply that getting games to work is a simple task, just that the API surface is much less spread out, and any emulation improvements for a single game are more likely to improve support for a wider range of other games.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I think the discussion is tainted actually by technical people who used Wine in the bad old days, haha. I fought Wine a decade ago and it was pretty bad. If anyone had asked, I’d probably give the “dual boot, may as well keep Windows around as a glorified console” spiel. A non-technical friend got a steam deck, when I asked what OS he’d used I got a response along the lines of “oh, I guess it must be Linux.” It the thought about what OS hadn’t even occurred. The future is cool.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    I just wish Proton supported macOS. It being Linux-only always felt like their goal was never actually cross-platform gaming, but specifically SteamOS being able to run everything.
- talldayo 2y ago
  The Nvidia experience on the beta channel is shockingly good now, too. The big sore spot for gaming on Linux was trying to convince Nvidia users the experience was worth their time. Using 555-series drivers on GNOME Wayland right now is pretty much flawless.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- noodleman 2y ago
  I'm all in on Linux at this point - it's been usable for a long time. My comments not really about whether it works, as we know it does, it's about how we go about getting the word out there.
  - hparadiz 2y ago
    I just switched to Wayland with KDE Plasma 6.1 from KDE 5.x on X11. VR works now. Screensharing and everything you expect with other operating systems works perfectly as well.
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    Offer to install it to people who experience difficulties with Windows, and never lie about it being much simpler or N times faster; don't forget to ask first if they use any special software/hardware that requires Windows or has only Windows drivers. Offer alternatives, but always be clear that they're not the same thing. 99.9% of non professional Office users wouldn't even notice the differences with LibreOffice, but that's not a good reason to tell them that the two products are identical: they're not, but one is open and free, both in price and in how it respect the user, which for many people could count a lot more than the extra features MS Office has over LibreOffice. One thing that worked for me many times is that I always offered full support for any problems the user would encounter, and to install Windows back and for free if after a given period of time they didn't find Linux usable for them. One has to understand that the common non tech user trying Linux can't easily phone their friends, coworkers, kids, nephews, etc. not even the PC repair shop down the street and magically find a Linux expert, so they must be given something that works and is well supported. Word of mouth will do the rest: most users don't care about pervasive advertising or spyware, Closed vs Open Source etc, but others do, and they're the ones telling about Linux and bringing other users in.
- metalspoon 2y ago
  Mandatory Google [your games] + proton first

dan-robertson 2y ago

Which do you think is the bigger risk to ordinary users? - someone hacks into Microsoft and accesses their files from onedrive (for passwords/blackmail-info I guess?) - Microsoft looks at their files in onedrive and does something bad (not sure what) - someone hacks into their computer and accesses their files. Or someone does so by causing the user to download something bad - the user’s ssd fails or is corrupted because they have consumer grade hardware that is not treated particularly well, taking all their documents with it. - the user accidentally deletes some important document (or eg drag-and-drops the contents of their document somewhere else and autosaves the now blank document, or they lose it some other way) I think the benefits outweigh the risks for a lot of users for this change. I don’t know how onedrive works but one could imagine it working in a reasonably secure way by encrypting data at rest (secure keys on device would be nice but bad UX; key-derivation function probably better). IMO the real problem with the feature is typical big-company lack of coordination (the amount of free storage isn’t enough for how much people typically need, even right away) and lack of incentives to fix it (the increase in paying customers is probably worth a lot more to whoever caused this change than the increase in annoyed users due to drive-full warnings) and the idea that that people might pay Microsoft for more storage (that you can’t easily pay for remote reliable automatic backup storage when you set the OS up does not feel like a particularly big advantage of free software to me). I think there are things not to like about this but it doesn’t seem to me to be the obviously terrible thing your comment suggests. Certainly it seems less bad than lots of other recent windows changes.

smolder 2y ago
There's no justification here for turning the feature on for users who have already explicitly chosen not to use it, or for not presenting them with the choice.
- dan-robertson 2y ago
  I mean, the person who caused windows to behave this way surely had some justification, even if it was self-serving. I think a choice would be better but I also think that being on is a reasonable default for users. I don’t understand the point about users explicitly opting out (and that being switched?). I would chalk such a thing down to the kind of big company systematic nefariousness you get (no one needs to say ‘make it ignore the opt out’, they just implement a default wrong and don’t notice/fix/investigate the bug because KPIs increase)

jokoon 2y ago

I agree. Although US intelligence is probably happy about this. Not saying it's a good or bad thing, but it's certainly an easy way to gather it. I can understand them doing it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]