5 ms·

ESET recommends Linux if your unsupported Windows 11 PC can't update from 10

53 points by marcodiego 2y ago

whalesalad 2y ago
We are 100% truly in the time of "desktop linux". It has never been better. Unless you have a video game that 100% must run on Windows, or a specific application, there is really no reason to be there. If you want a desktop environment that looks and feels like Windows, I would suggest KDE. Out of the box it is pretty close, but it is one of the most customizable DE's out there and can truly be made to look and feel just like Windows.
- _ink_ 2y ago
  I wish that was true. But the corporate world runs on MS Office. The alternatives to that just cannot keep up :(
  - beanjuiceII 2y ago
    what does this matter anymore with office 365?
    - _mlbt 2y ago
      The browser version is lacking several features compared to the Windows and Mac versions.
    - ToniCipriani 2y ago
      The web version of Office apps still is not the same as the full-featured fat desktop version, which only runs on Windows and Mac OS. You can't use the web version offline, they are not a PWA, for instance.
      - fphhotchips 2y ago
        The full featured version doesn't even run on Mac OS. Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Mac are all pale imitations of their Windows counterparts.
        chuckadams 2y ago
        The irony is that Excel started out as a Mac app.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Office 365's web version is pretty dreadful.
    - kayodelycaon 2y ago
      The web version of Word is a bad joke. I couldn’t even use it for editing a story the last time I tried it because it either didn’t have change tracking or it didn’t work correctly. At least the iOS app is useable. Don’t get me started on Excel.
      - bigstrat2003 2y ago
        Web apps in general are a bad joke. They never, ever work as well as a real desktop app. At best they are a port in a storm because you can't use the real version of the application for whatever reason, but they aren't viable as a replacement and likely never will be.
    - okanat 2y ago
      No COM integration, no VBA and no Active Directory support. Business and engineering software uses Windows APIs to integrate with MS Office and Active Directory. The APIs are not portable and hard to replicate on emulation layers. The software is old so expect a huge pile of examples of Hyrum's law. So you need bug-for-bug API layer implementation to run those software elsewhere. Migrating companies off from that software is actually harder than creating a clone of Windows.
  - justahuman74 2y ago
    perhaps at some point Proton will fill that use-case
  - downrightmike 2y ago
    Office is a webapp at this point, businesses use msft for AD
    - smackeyacky 2y ago
      Not for everything. Microsoft still don't have a working set of Rules for the web version of Outlook, so if you have anybody who uses rules to organise their inbox into different folders they are stuck with the desktop version of Outlook.
      - jasomill 2y ago
        You can create server-side rules via “Settings → Mail → Rules” in Outlook Web. While more limited than Outlook for Windows client-side rules, they're fine for simple "move emails from x to folder y"-type rules, and are particularly useful for people like me who rarely use Outlook at all. You can also create server-side rules in the Exchange admin center if you have access.
    - nineteen999 2y ago
      I've never seen anybody using the Web version of Office 365, outside the Outlook web client. All the companies I've worked at in the last 10 years are still using the installable versions of Word/Excel/PowerPoint etc. The web versions are not even comparable.
      - downrightmike 2y ago
        Lucky you, I got forced upgraded last year
  - whalesalad 2y ago
    I get by great in the corp world with Libreoffice. It even handles some really antique VBA-based spreadsheets.
- zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
  WRT gaming its mostly just some anti cheat that is standing in the way, like Ars [1] so gently put it: > As detailed in the r/macgaming subreddit and at r/SteamDeck, many players who successfully got Marvel Rivals working would receive a "Penalty Issued" notice, with a violation "detected" and bans issued until 2124. Should such a ban stand, players risked entirely missing the much-prophesied Year of the Linux Desktop or Mainstream Mac Gaming, almost certain to happen at some point in that span. For non-gaming, things are not moving fast enough. Microsoft Office and Adobe CS is still complicated to get running, if possible at all with recent versions. 1: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/marvel-rivals-lifts-100-year-cheating-bans-on-mac-and-steam-deck-players/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/marvel-rivals-lifts-1...
  - trinsic2 2y ago
    For me, when I switched to Linux, I had to start thinking out of the box. Microsoft's OS and Adobe's Cloud are hostile environments that are designed to lock you into a ecosystem that isn't in your best interest. As people start figuring this out, and have had enough, like I finally did one day, more and more people are going to look to alternatives. I dropped Adobe and Windows[0] because of this. I can do this because I am tech savvy, but as more technically inclined people do this, it creates incentives to make it easier for the rest. [0]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transition-windows-to-linux/ https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transi...
    - trinsic2 2y ago
      Also I had to finally come to the conclusion that if I wanted control over my own house, I'm going to have to make sacrifices. Like Games with anti-cheat that don't work on Linux right now. More and more games with anti-cheat are starting to see the benefits of Linux. So I started letting go of products that don't let me use them the way I want to. It took some discipline, but my life is more stress free now. Now some of the games that require anti-cheat that were not playable on Linux 2 years ago have migrated their anti-cheat to steam's implementation.
    - zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
- okanat 2y ago
  Unless we get a stable ecosystem for closed source apps and drivers it is not going to happen. Android is the very example of that. A closed source software friendly OS with the backing of a tech giant. It also has to provide an almost complete translation layer. Wine is fine for simpler programs using contained APIs like games. It is far behind for any business app. The polishing required for the masses requires people with huge talent and years of experience to work on the software. That talent doesn't want to work for scraps. So unless a tech giant decides to hedge tens of billions against Apple and Microsoft and give it away for free like Google did with Android, we are not going to get an OS that has good OOTB experience and a thriving business grade software.
- ClassyJacket 2y ago
  I don't think so. Linux still hasn't figured out how to install programs smoothly. In fact, installing a Windows program on Linux is easier than installing a Linux native program. Anything released in AppImage format requires you to write your own config file to get a shortcut and icon? Seriously? Until they figure that out the average person is going to quickly give up on it.
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    Who's still distributing with AppImage? Most desktop distros these days are based on flatpak or snap, which are as one-click-easy as any other app store, and certainly don't require writing any config files. When you do need to configure the packaging, e.g. to access different directories, there's a standard GUI for that purpose (buried deep in settings, but most people won't be using it).
  - starky 2y ago
    While this is an issue for some smaller programs, for the vast majority of stuff installing and updating programs is just so much easier on Linux than Windows. I don't have to go searching for a download link, I just open up my distro's package manager and search for what I want. One of the major things that has helped Linux is that a lot more things are just web apps now. What I really think is the unacceptable thing that will hold people from using Linux permanently is the abysmal power management for laptops. I cannot get my Framework 13 to reliably last more than 24 hours with the lid closed when Windows easily lasts multiple days.
  - whalesalad 2y ago
    I just have a folder in my home dir called "applications" and I put manual app images there. Double click them to launch. As for other stuff, the flatpak store is quite good and integrates well with KDE. On my deb 12 machine running kde, I can do system updates and app installs from a single area. (KDE Discover app)
nubinetwork 2y ago
I love what Valve has done to make gaming a better experience, but I can't see everyone just dropping everything to install Linux on their computers. They bought a Windows laptop, for Windows things... People would rather go to Best Buy and get a new laptop than try something different.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  If the old laptop runs the 'windows things' just fine under Linux and word goes around about that old pile of chips suddenly being much faster and less intrusive 'people' might just go around and install Linux or have other people do that for them. It is not Windows people want, it is the software running on the things they want.
  - tcmart14 2y ago
    Yes and no. I think at the base, everyone just wants their software to run. The challenge is, people don't want to have to learn anything new to do that. What are most people comfortable with? Windows. Why? It was on their school computers, probably on their parents' computers and most likely on their work computers. I think if schools had their computer labs (if that's still a thing), running Ubuntu 24.04 and taught computer basics on Libreoffice, that is what people would want on their home computers, if they could go to Best Buy and buy a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed. Maybe over the next 5-10 years we see this change as some schools issue Chromebooks?
    - hagbard_c 2y ago
      The people who are 'used to Windows' will often be none the wiser if they're confronted with a Linux installation which is configured to look like Windows. Windows has many faces going back all the way to Windows 3.1 and many of those faces can show up when clicking around on a 'current' Windows version. This rather inconsistent look and feel means it is fairly easy to create something which more or less looks and acts like Windows in the eyes of those 'used to Windows' since they're used to things sometimes looking out of place. I think Windows is close to the end of being ubiquitous. The more Microsoft forces online features onto its users, the more those users will see Windows as that thing which launches the browser and with that the easier it will be to get people used to alternatives, especially if those alternatives offer many advantages over whatever Microsoft is peddling under the Windows moniker.
BMc2020 2y ago
I had a brief (one week) love affair with Wubuntu because it tried as much as possible to have everything with the same name in the same menu in the same location etc. etc. as Windows 11. People spend years building up their muscle memory and hate having to throw it away...then I found out it was basically a malware distro. Pity. I'm always looking for the perfect distro I would reccommend to Grandma. I'm still a distro hopper. Pop_OS! and Cinnamon Mint until something better comes along. Rank Distribution HPD 1 Mint 2509> 2 MX Linux 2187< 3 EndeavourOS 1603< 4 Debian 1268> 5 CachyOS 1177> 6 Manjaro 1141= 7 Pop!_OS 1107> 8 Ubuntu 1072= 9 Fedora 957> 10 openSUSE 705
- throawayonthe 2y ago
  i don't think any of the distros in that list come with KDE Plasma as their default/flagship offering; it's not the same as windows but i think it will be a lot more familiar to a windows user than the more macos-like offerings like Gnome specific distro recommendations with plasma ig are Fedora KDE Spin[1] and uBlue Aurora[2] [1] https://fedoraproject.org/spins/ https://fedoraproject.org/spins/ [2] https://getaurora.dev/ https://getaurora.dev/ [2]
  - gggmaster 2y ago
    openSUSE does.
- causality0 2y ago
  I bounce off Linux every few years because I always run into a "that's just broken and if you don't like it go eff yourself" situation. Maybe sleep doesn't work right, or battery health charge limiting doesn't work, or I can't change the order of the window control buttons without throwing the whole WM out, or my 1% lows go absolutely in the trash, or some other obscure things just doesn't work. Also the whole "Wayland was supposed to replace X twenty years ago but a third of software doesn't work on Wayland" thing is just super embarrassing and makes me feel like the entire Linux ecosystem doesn't know what it's doing.
  - 2y ago
xnx 2y ago
ChromeOS Flex is a great option for older hardware. Easy to install. Secure. Easy. Regular updates.
throwuxiytayq 2y ago
Posting YT links here feels a bit lame, but this amazingly-produced animation by James Lee actually got my hopes up that people are finally starting to break up with proprietary programs and operating systems: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lm51xZHZI6g https://youtube.com/watch?v=lm51xZHZI6g
balderm 2y ago
My laptop has been running Pop OS for the past 5 years and its been a delight to use for dev stuff and random gaming, really wish i could move my desktop to Linux too but i mostly use that for gaming and don’t really want to reboot my PC and switch OS when i need to play a game with anticheat.
verzali 2y ago
Linux Mint is very usable these days. I switched a few months ago because I couldn't stand how bloated Windows 11 was. I haven't regretted it: it's actually refreshing how Mint just does want an OS should do and doesn't try to shove extra features down my throat.
- trod1234 2y ago
  Outcomes on Linux depend greatly upon the hardware it is running on.
  - pmlnr 2y ago
    Not really. Few years old hardware rarely had issues for the past decade.
    - louthy 2y ago
      Yes really. You’re just giving anecdotal evidence, which is fine, but the GP is still correct. Here’s some counter anecdotal evidence: my high end sound card doesn’t work with Linux Mint. Half my motherboard’s USB ports are not recognised by Linux Mint. And my brand new Apple Studio Display only partially works with Linux Mint. All works 100% on Windows. I’d still recommend moving away from Windows, but you must be honest that Linux OS’s still have more problems with hardware (in general). And for novice users/tech-unsavvy peeps, the amount of terminal time is still far too high. Personally, I was only holding on to Windows for music production. But the other day I logged into Windows 11 after not having used it for a while and - whatever update had installed - it started causing audio dropouts on my 64 core machine, 128gb ram, with nvme drives and pro sound card! That was the last straw for me. I ordered the new M4 Mac Mini Pro, which I’ll use just for music production. And continue with Linux Mint on my PC for everything else. I’ve used Windows in one form or another since 3.1, but the amount of crap they keep loading on my machine without my permission and the generally hostile approach to users: “Let’s keep setting up your machine. Yes | Maybe Later”, let’s not. Let’s never use Windows again.
- this_weekend 2y ago
  LMDE
saomcomrad56 2y ago
I've installed debian along with browsers and base programs for a couple non-techy relatives and they said they like it better than windows 10/11.
- YPPH 2y ago
  Which desktop environment did you select? I run Debian 12 bookworm with the Gnome desktop environment. But I suspect KDE or MATE may be more appealing to Windows converts.
  - whalesalad 2y ago
    KDE is leaps and bounds better than gnome. It can be customized to be minimal. Gnome is just minimal and painful for the sake of trying to mimic macOS but in a terrible manner.
  - saomcomrad56 2y ago
    I showed them different options. One liked xfce, the other liked MATE. These were for old computers by the way.
okasaki 2y ago
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2032 and is trivial to obtain and activate.
- leeoniya 2y ago
  > trivial to obtain and activate i have never seen "trivial to obtain" and "LTSC" in the same sentance before. please, do elaborate
  - simondanerd 2y ago
    It took a couple seconds on DuckDuckGo: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-10-enterprise https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-...
    - leeoniya 2y ago
      okay, i should have been more specific. how would one activate an LTSC installation? last time i looked into it, you could not actually purchase a single LTSC license as an individual user.
      - haunter 2y ago
        https://massgrave.dev/ https://massgrave.dev/ MS doesn't care about piracy at all. They'd rather let you pirate it than losing you by switching to Linux or Mac
    - okanat 2y ago
      Those are trial versions. You cannot fully activate them without doing the equivalent of a full OS install. You need to find a corporate partner and buy a whole bunch of regular Win 10/11 Pro licenses and you're eligible to get LTSC which costs a fair bit of money.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  Can you give me the link I should forward to my parents? They're still on Windows 10 home and I don't think they're even aware that they'll need to either pay up or figure something else out this year.
tedunangst 2y ago
What's the actual attack surface for an outdated home PC? My understanding is the threat to win PCs is 50% you clicked the wrong link (outdated browser problem, not OS) and 50% lateral move (probably not meaningful in a home environment?). Like if I plugged my Windows 7 laptop, last updated 2018 into my network, what would happen? What I'm getting at is "instead of throwing out your old PC you can install Linux" is just a long winded way of saying "throw out your old PC" for many people. I think "here's how to keep running an old PC safely" would be more useful advice.
- skobes 2y ago
  Browsers eventually stop supporting old OS'es, so the "outdated browser problem" is not exactly decoupled from the OS situation. Chrome for example is unsupported on Windows 7 past version 109 (Jan 2023).
crotho 2y ago
[dead]
zruc 2y ago
I'm with several opinions around. I keep a windows box with office just because of the intrincated format of a long frequently updated bunch of related docs (about 15 years now, time flies...). Used windows 8 until the hdd "expired" recently, now 10 in an inexpensive little cube. For all the rest, mint and cinamom are a perfect fit. Simple as that. I had enough of complex machinery in my (professionally active) time...
Hilift 2y ago
> However, the costs are high and double with each year of use. Brandon, how high are they? For consumers: $30 per year. For education: $1 per year. Then $2 per year. The third year is $4.

53 points by marcodiego 2y ago

We are 100% truly in the time of "desktop linux". It has never been better. Unless you have a video game that 100% must run on Windows, or a specific application, there is really no reason to be there. If you want a desktop environment that looks and feels like Windows, I would suggest KDE. Out of the box it is pretty close, but it is one of the most customizable DE's out there and can truly be made to look and feel just like Windows.

_ink_ 2y ago
I wish that was true. But the corporate world runs on MS Office. The alternatives to that just cannot keep up :(
- beanjuiceII 2y ago
  what does this matter anymore with office 365?
  - _mlbt 2y ago
    The browser version is lacking several features compared to the Windows and Mac versions.
  - ToniCipriani 2y ago
    The web version of Office apps still is not the same as the full-featured fat desktop version, which only runs on Windows and Mac OS. You can't use the web version offline, they are not a PWA, for instance.
    - fphhotchips 2y ago
      The full featured version doesn't even run on Mac OS. Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Mac are all pale imitations of their Windows counterparts.
      - chuckadams 2y ago
        The irony is that Excel started out as a Mac app.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Office 365's web version is pretty dreadful.
  - kayodelycaon 2y ago
    The web version of Word is a bad joke. I couldn’t even use it for editing a story the last time I tried it because it either didn’t have change tracking or it didn’t work correctly. At least the iOS app is useable. Don’t get me started on Excel.
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      Web apps in general are a bad joke. They never, ever work as well as a real desktop app. At best they are a port in a storm because you can't use the real version of the application for whatever reason, but they aren't viable as a replacement and likely never will be.
  - okanat 2y ago
    No COM integration, no VBA and no Active Directory support. Business and engineering software uses Windows APIs to integrate with MS Office and Active Directory. The APIs are not portable and hard to replicate on emulation layers. The software is old so expect a huge pile of examples of Hyrum's law. So you need bug-for-bug API layer implementation to run those software elsewhere. Migrating companies off from that software is actually harder than creating a clone of Windows.
- justahuman74 2y ago
  perhaps at some point Proton will fill that use-case
- downrightmike 2y ago
  Office is a webapp at this point, businesses use msft for AD
  - smackeyacky 2y ago
    Not for everything. Microsoft still don't have a working set of Rules for the web version of Outlook, so if you have anybody who uses rules to organise their inbox into different folders they are stuck with the desktop version of Outlook.
    - jasomill 2y ago
      You can create server-side rules via “Settings → Mail → Rules” in Outlook Web. While more limited than Outlook for Windows client-side rules, they're fine for simple "move emails from x to folder y"-type rules, and are particularly useful for people like me who rarely use Outlook at all. You can also create server-side rules in the Exchange admin center if you have access.
  - nineteen999 2y ago
    I've never seen anybody using the Web version of Office 365, outside the Outlook web client. All the companies I've worked at in the last 10 years are still using the installable versions of Word/Excel/PowerPoint etc. The web versions are not even comparable.
    - downrightmike 2y ago
      Lucky you, I got forced upgraded last year
- whalesalad 2y ago
  I get by great in the corp world with Libreoffice. It even handles some really antique VBA-based spreadsheets.
zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
WRT gaming its mostly just some anti cheat that is standing in the way, like Ars [1] so gently put it: > As detailed in the r/macgaming subreddit and at r/SteamDeck, many players who successfully got Marvel Rivals working would receive a "Penalty Issued" notice, with a violation "detected" and bans issued until 2124. Should such a ban stand, players risked entirely missing the much-prophesied Year of the Linux Desktop or Mainstream Mac Gaming, almost certain to happen at some point in that span. For non-gaming, things are not moving fast enough. Microsoft Office and Adobe CS is still complicated to get running, if possible at all with recent versions. 1: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/marvel-rivals-lifts-100-year-cheating-bans-on-mac-and-steam-deck-players/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/marvel-rivals-lifts-1...
- trinsic2 2y ago
  For me, when I switched to Linux, I had to start thinking out of the box. Microsoft's OS and Adobe's Cloud are hostile environments that are designed to lock you into a ecosystem that isn't in your best interest. As people start figuring this out, and have had enough, like I finally did one day, more and more people are going to look to alternatives. I dropped Adobe and Windows[0] because of this. I can do this because I am tech savvy, but as more technically inclined people do this, it creates incentives to make it easier for the rest. [0]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transition-windows-to-linux/ https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transi...
  - trinsic2 2y ago
    Also I had to finally come to the conclusion that if I wanted control over my own house, I'm going to have to make sacrifices. Like Games with anti-cheat that don't work on Linux right now. More and more games with anti-cheat are starting to see the benefits of Linux. So I started letting go of products that don't let me use them the way I want to. It took some discipline, but my life is more stress free now. Now some of the games that require anti-cheat that were not playable on Linux 2 years ago have migrated their anti-cheat to steam's implementation.
  - zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
okanat 2y ago
Unless we get a stable ecosystem for closed source apps and drivers it is not going to happen. Android is the very example of that. A closed source software friendly OS with the backing of a tech giant. It also has to provide an almost complete translation layer. Wine is fine for simpler programs using contained APIs like games. It is far behind for any business app. The polishing required for the masses requires people with huge talent and years of experience to work on the software. That talent doesn't want to work for scraps. So unless a tech giant decides to hedge tens of billions against Apple and Microsoft and give it away for free like Google did with Android, we are not going to get an OS that has good OOTB experience and a thriving business grade software.
ClassyJacket 2y ago
I don't think so. Linux still hasn't figured out how to install programs smoothly. In fact, installing a Windows program on Linux is easier than installing a Linux native program. Anything released in AppImage format requires you to write your own config file to get a shortcut and icon? Seriously? Until they figure that out the average person is going to quickly give up on it.
- chuckadams 2y ago
  Who's still distributing with AppImage? Most desktop distros these days are based on flatpak or snap, which are as one-click-easy as any other app store, and certainly don't require writing any config files. When you do need to configure the packaging, e.g. to access different directories, there's a standard GUI for that purpose (buried deep in settings, but most people won't be using it).
- starky 2y ago
  While this is an issue for some smaller programs, for the vast majority of stuff installing and updating programs is just so much easier on Linux than Windows. I don't have to go searching for a download link, I just open up my distro's package manager and search for what I want. One of the major things that has helped Linux is that a lot more things are just web apps now. What I really think is the unacceptable thing that will hold people from using Linux permanently is the abysmal power management for laptops. I cannot get my Framework 13 to reliably last more than 24 hours with the lid closed when Windows easily lasts multiple days.
- whalesalad 2y ago
  I just have a folder in my home dir called "applications" and I put manual app images there. Double click them to launch. As for other stuff, the flatpak store is quite good and integrates well with KDE. On my deb 12 machine running kde, I can do system updates and app installs from a single area. (KDE Discover app)

nubinetwork 2y ago

I love what Valve has done to make gaming a better experience, but I can't see everyone just dropping everything to install Linux on their computers. They bought a Windows laptop, for Windows things... People would rather go to Best Buy and get a new laptop than try something different.

hagbard_c 2y ago
If the old laptop runs the 'windows things' just fine under Linux and word goes around about that old pile of chips suddenly being much faster and less intrusive 'people' might just go around and install Linux or have other people do that for them. It is not Windows people want, it is the software running on the things they want.
- tcmart14 2y ago
  Yes and no. I think at the base, everyone just wants their software to run. The challenge is, people don't want to have to learn anything new to do that. What are most people comfortable with? Windows. Why? It was on their school computers, probably on their parents' computers and most likely on their work computers. I think if schools had their computer labs (if that's still a thing), running Ubuntu 24.04 and taught computer basics on Libreoffice, that is what people would want on their home computers, if they could go to Best Buy and buy a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed. Maybe over the next 5-10 years we see this change as some schools issue Chromebooks?
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    The people who are 'used to Windows' will often be none the wiser if they're confronted with a Linux installation which is configured to look like Windows. Windows has many faces going back all the way to Windows 3.1 and many of those faces can show up when clicking around on a 'current' Windows version. This rather inconsistent look and feel means it is fairly easy to create something which more or less looks and acts like Windows in the eyes of those 'used to Windows' since they're used to things sometimes looking out of place. I think Windows is close to the end of being ubiquitous. The more Microsoft forces online features onto its users, the more those users will see Windows as that thing which launches the browser and with that the easier it will be to get people used to alternatives, especially if those alternatives offer many advantages over whatever Microsoft is peddling under the Windows moniker.

BMc2020 2y ago

I had a brief (one week) love affair with Wubuntu because it tried as much as possible to have everything with the same name in the same menu in the same location etc. etc. as Windows 11. People spend years building up their muscle memory and hate having to throw it away...then I found out it was basically a malware distro. Pity. I'm always looking for the perfect distro I would reccommend to Grandma. I'm still a distro hopper. Pop_OS! and Cinnamon Mint until something better comes along. Rank Distribution HPD 1 Mint 2509> 2 MX Linux 2187< 3 EndeavourOS 1603< 4 Debian 1268> 5 CachyOS 1177> 6 Manjaro 1141= 7 Pop!_OS 1107> 8 Ubuntu 1072= 9 Fedora 957> 10 openSUSE 705

throawayonthe 2y ago
i don't think any of the distros in that list come with KDE Plasma as their default/flagship offering; it's not the same as windows but i think it will be a lot more familiar to a windows user than the more macos-like offerings like Gnome specific distro recommendations with plasma ig are Fedora KDE Spin[1] and uBlue Aurora[2] [1] https://fedoraproject.org/spins/ https://fedoraproject.org/spins/ [2] https://getaurora.dev/ https://getaurora.dev/ [2]
- gggmaster 2y ago
  openSUSE does.
causality0 2y ago
I bounce off Linux every few years because I always run into a "that's just broken and if you don't like it go eff yourself" situation. Maybe sleep doesn't work right, or battery health charge limiting doesn't work, or I can't change the order of the window control buttons without throwing the whole WM out, or my 1% lows go absolutely in the trash, or some other obscure things just doesn't work. Also the whole "Wayland was supposed to replace X twenty years ago but a third of software doesn't work on Wayland" thing is just super embarrassing and makes me feel like the entire Linux ecosystem doesn't know what it's doing.
- 2y ago

xnx 2y ago

ChromeOS Flex is a great option for older hardware. Easy to install. Secure. Easy. Regular updates.

throwuxiytayq 2y ago

Posting YT links here feels a bit lame, but this amazingly-produced animation by James Lee actually got my hopes up that people are finally starting to break up with proprietary programs and operating systems: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lm51xZHZI6g https://youtube.com/watch?v=lm51xZHZI6g

balderm 2y ago

My laptop has been running Pop OS for the past 5 years and its been a delight to use for dev stuff and random gaming, really wish i could move my desktop to Linux too but i mostly use that for gaming and don’t really want to reboot my PC and switch OS when i need to play a game with anticheat.

verzali 2y ago

Linux Mint is very usable these days. I switched a few months ago because I couldn't stand how bloated Windows 11 was. I haven't regretted it: it's actually refreshing how Mint just does want an OS should do and doesn't try to shove extra features down my throat.

trod1234 2y ago
Outcomes on Linux depend greatly upon the hardware it is running on.
- pmlnr 2y ago
  Not really. Few years old hardware rarely had issues for the past decade.
  - louthy 2y ago
    Yes really. You’re just giving anecdotal evidence, which is fine, but the GP is still correct. Here’s some counter anecdotal evidence: my high end sound card doesn’t work with Linux Mint. Half my motherboard’s USB ports are not recognised by Linux Mint. And my brand new Apple Studio Display only partially works with Linux Mint. All works 100% on Windows. I’d still recommend moving away from Windows, but you must be honest that Linux OS’s still have more problems with hardware (in general). And for novice users/tech-unsavvy peeps, the amount of terminal time is still far too high. Personally, I was only holding on to Windows for music production. But the other day I logged into Windows 11 after not having used it for a while and - whatever update had installed - it started causing audio dropouts on my 64 core machine, 128gb ram, with nvme drives and pro sound card! That was the last straw for me. I ordered the new M4 Mac Mini Pro, which I’ll use just for music production. And continue with Linux Mint on my PC for everything else. I’ve used Windows in one form or another since 3.1, but the amount of crap they keep loading on my machine without my permission and the generally hostile approach to users: “Let’s keep setting up your machine. Yes | Maybe Later”, let’s not. Let’s never use Windows again.
this_weekend 2y ago
LMDE

saomcomrad56 2y ago

I've installed debian along with browsers and base programs for a couple non-techy relatives and they said they like it better than windows 10/11.

YPPH 2y ago
Which desktop environment did you select? I run Debian 12 bookworm with the Gnome desktop environment. But I suspect KDE or MATE may be more appealing to Windows converts.
- whalesalad 2y ago
  KDE is leaps and bounds better than gnome. It can be customized to be minimal. Gnome is just minimal and painful for the sake of trying to mimic macOS but in a terrible manner.
- saomcomrad56 2y ago
  I showed them different options. One liked xfce, the other liked MATE. These were for old computers by the way.

okasaki 2y ago

Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2032 and is trivial to obtain and activate.

leeoniya 2y ago
> trivial to obtain and activate i have never seen "trivial to obtain" and "LTSC" in the same sentance before. please, do elaborate
- simondanerd 2y ago
  It took a couple seconds on DuckDuckGo: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-10-enterprise https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-...
  - leeoniya 2y ago
    okay, i should have been more specific. how would one activate an LTSC installation? last time i looked into it, you could not actually purchase a single LTSC license as an individual user.
    - haunter 2y ago
      https://massgrave.dev/ https://massgrave.dev/ MS doesn't care about piracy at all. They'd rather let you pirate it than losing you by switching to Linux or Mac
  - okanat 2y ago
    Those are trial versions. You cannot fully activate them without doing the equivalent of a full OS install. You need to find a corporate partner and buy a whole bunch of regular Win 10/11 Pro licenses and you're eligible to get LTSC which costs a fair bit of money.
jeroenhd 2y ago
Can you give me the link I should forward to my parents? They're still on Windows 10 home and I don't think they're even aware that they'll need to either pay up or figure something else out this year.

tedunangst 2y ago

What's the actual attack surface for an outdated home PC? My understanding is the threat to win PCs is 50% you clicked the wrong link (outdated browser problem, not OS) and 50% lateral move (probably not meaningful in a home environment?). Like if I plugged my Windows 7 laptop, last updated 2018 into my network, what would happen? What I'm getting at is "instead of throwing out your old PC you can install Linux" is just a long winded way of saying "throw out your old PC" for many people. I think "here's how to keep running an old PC safely" would be more useful advice.

skobes 2y ago
Browsers eventually stop supporting old OS'es, so the "outdated browser problem" is not exactly decoupled from the OS situation. Chrome for example is unsupported on Windows 7 past version 109 (Jan 2023).

crotho 2y ago

[dead]

zruc 2y ago

I'm with several opinions around. I keep a windows box with office just because of the intrincated format of a long frequently updated bunch of related docs (about 15 years now, time flies...). Used windows 8 until the hdd "expired" recently, now 10 in an inexpensive little cube. For all the rest, mint and cinamom are a perfect fit. Simple as that. I had enough of complex machinery in my (professionally active) time...

Hilift 2y ago

> However, the costs are high and double with each year of use. Brandon, how high are they? For consumers: $30 per year. For education: $1 per year. Then $2 per year. The third year is $4.