8 ms·

At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS, all the news about Windows is how they are making it worse for everyone. And using it now and then i

At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS, all the news about Windows is how they are making it worse for everyone. And using it now and then it feels like that too. Windows 10 Mail app had integration with system calendar, you would get itsycal built into the OS. Windows 11 removed that and made the OS Mail app spam infested shit, and they expect me to pay a subscription for something that comes bundled with the OS I paid for. Linux desktop is getting better but I still wouldn't daily drive it, so MacOS it is until Linux desktop gets to a more reliable state. I wouldn't be shocked it gets there - I believe Valve made relatively low investments and got a lot out of it, GPU vendors have an incentive to support it - for compute workloads and the gaming on Linux is becoming a thing. Also for office stuff the EU-US hostility could force EU to look for alternative software providers and move away from Microsoft. Actually thinking about this just made me donate some $ to Gnome project.

ashoeafoot 1y ago
Gaming is the beginning of the end. It gets new users accustomed to a modifyable system and a downgrade from that to windows will become ever harder.
smackay 1y ago
Microsoft at least sees the writing on the wall... Microsoft announces new European digital commitments https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/european-digital-commitments/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/europea...
- fakedang 1y ago
  Idk, seems stupid, given that Europeans are very aware now of the Cloud Act and other similar shenanigans the USG wants to pull. That being said, European bureaucrats are even stupider and will largely take these commitments at face value, allowing them to have a tighter leash on the market.
- mrkramer 1y ago
  "We will continue to protect the privacy of European data." Our data is up for grabs since at least 2018[0]. There is no privacy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
- mrweasel 1y ago
  > 3. We will continue to protect the privacy of European data Then stop fucking collecting shit tons of data that you do not need.
- stodor89 1y ago
  "We will continue to protect the privacy of European data." Bröther, you're literally the thing we need protection from!
- henry_springs 1y ago
  "Microsoft has a demonstrated history of pursuing litigation when that has been needed to protect the rights of our customers and other stakeholders. (...) When necessary, we’re prepared to go to court." This is convincing. Or would be, if the present challenges wouldn't extend to the court system itself.
worldsayshi 1y ago
What is really missing for Linux desktop nowadays? Still drivers? And I guess office software and gui configurability.
- graemep 1y ago
  Mostly games and photoshop. Libre Office is more than sufficient for most people. > gui configurability A bit confused by that. Linux desktop environments tend to be more configurable, and you can configure most things end users want to configure in a GUI with the major DEs. Do you mean the sysadmins cannot configure as much in a GUI? I think that probably is a major barrier as it means a lot of retraining. Also, when you do something different from everyone else, every problem will be blamed on you for doing that.
  - marcusb 1y ago
    Games? A good portion of the Steam catalog runs just fine on Linux.
    - graemep 1y ago
      But not all of it, so if you want to play a particular game you might be out of luck.
      - sgarland 1y ago
        Codeweavers Crossover does an admirable job at filling the gap (shoutout for making AoE II run like it’s native), but yeah, there are some that you can’t get around using Windows for.
      - atrus 1y ago
        Single player is pretty much fine, it's multiplayer that really gets you. No Apex, Valo, LoL.
  - resource_waste 1y ago
    >Libre Office is more than sufficient for most people. Buddy, I love Fedora, but this is nonsense. The UI for Libre Powerpoint(or whatever its called) doesnt have text size on the main screen. The reddit mods on the subreddit literally ban people for complaining about it. Libre Office isnt the future. I just use Google sheets.
fnordsensei 1y ago
I was disappointed that I had to upgrade to Steam Launcher 11, since it provided no benefits in launching Steam over Steam Launcher 10, or 7.
- amiga386 1y ago
  Windows: What is my purpose? Rick: You launch Steam Windows: OH. MY. GOD. Rick: Yeah, welcome to the club, pal.
  - danielktdoranie 1y ago
    Best comment on here.
- sgarland 1y ago
  How dare you – Steam Launcher 11 makes a pleasant sound upon login, harkening back to its forebears, CD-ROM Launcher 95 and 98.
PuppetSoup 1y ago
> Linux desktop is getting better but I still wouldn't daily drive it, I'm genuinely interested what Linux is missing for you? I've been daily driving it for years and do all my work and gaming on it. Is it specific software or?
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  It's just general polish. Like I was daily driving fedora last year and : - fractional scaling did not work in Gnome with Wayland for X11 Apps - I still cannot use my LG C4 as a monitor in full capacity because AMD on Linux does not support HDMI 2.1 - Screen sharing was very buggy - in Slack especially - it would constantly crash the slack app during calls, ditto for camera, but even in Google meet and Chrome I've had desktop crashes - When I switched to KDE/Plasma 5 to get fractional scaling it was extremely unstable - Right now I upgraded my GPU to 9070XT - I'm still not sure if that would work on Linux yet because of driver support delay - Guitar Amp simulator software I use does not support Linux, neither does Ableton (which supposedly can run on proton but with many glitches) - The audio DAW situation was way too complicated and buggy - I spent days to get the distro functional and usable with Ardour and it would still crash constantly - I just wanted to run some amp sims :( It's just the little things and rough edges, but for example the fractional scaling stuff already improved because more apps that I use added Wayland support. And the emulation is getting better, with more users I could see larger DAWs supporting Linux as well. Not sure about the audio progress - JACK was a complete mess.
  - promiseofbeans 1y ago
    If you're happy to dip your toes into another DAW, Reaper has excellent first-class Linux support, works with all your plugins, and has a 60 day trial* for you to get used to it. * The free trial is enforced as heavily as WinRAR's, and it's pretty cheap (~$60) to buy a licence if the nag screen makes you feel bad enough
    - richrichardsson 1y ago
      Alternatively Bitwig has Linux support and wouldn't be such a big jump.
bgro 1y ago
Linux is working great for me. AMD supposedly works better but my nvidia driver doesn’t crash for videos like windows does and games seem to be working fine. Possibly except kernel anti cheat games. I have dual boot available as a backup.
- bnolsen 1y ago
  I had a 3060 12g in my daughters computer. It would freeze every couple of weeks for who knows what reason. Swapped out her mobo/CPU/ram with mine and it still froze. Put in an rx5709xt and it's all good now. The 3060 is now in a server. I would have gotten the card if someone at work hasn't sold it to me for 100$. What originally made me leave Nvidia was because of how quickly Nvidia dropped driver support for not very old cards but I can't remember what card I had at the time.
danielktdoranie 1y ago
Microsoft is never gonna give up on Windows NT "technology" no matter how bad it is and continues to be. They will continue to kick that dead horse until the company no longer exists. They genuinely port their UI (not the Windows 11 UI, it's horrible) and their apps to Linux. Release a Linux based OS, call it some shit like Windows Ultra not-shit edition. Accept Windows lost to Linux. God I hate Microsoft.
- sa-code 1y ago
  It would be really interesting for enterprise or gamedev software to start supporting steam OS, I know a fair amount of people planning on switching from Windows to Steam OS when 10 is EOL'd
- int_19h 1y ago
  The under-the-hood NT stuff is the best thing about Windows.
- p_ing 1y ago
  The NT kernel/executive are the best parts of the OS, better than Linux in various places. I wouldn't give those up -- I'd give the userland up with a 100% bug compatible Win32 shim.
bigfatkitten 1y ago
I really want to like GNOME, but GNOME's developers have almost as much arrogance and contempt for their users as Microsoft. As an example, the power button can no longer be configured to power off the machine, because this is "too destructive". I'm not talking about defaults -- they removed the ability for me to make this choice for myself. Not even Microsoft has done that. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755953 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755953 On my machine, the power button is recessed and requires quite a bit of force to press. It is impossible to press accidentally, but the GNOME developers apparently know best.
- BarryMilo 1y ago
  As much as I'm a diehard Linux defender, Gnome can get bent. XFCE does everything I want, which is to say, almost nothing.
  - frainfreeze 1y ago
    XFCE is wonderful. I wish it got more dev time
    - dingdingdang 1y ago
      XFCE is the Win 2000 UI of the Linux ecosystem, perfectly functional and fine; tweaks are possible if needed.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
        So is https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ While it may seem overblown, it's absolutely RIDICULOUS how fast it flies on contemporary systems, and even older ones. One can also omit most of their other apps, with the exception of KWIN, drawing the desktop and its window decorations, and konqueror, the filemanager, and the things managing the menu(bar(s)), applauncher. Using modern apps for the rest, like anywhere else. And have them styled, themed however you like. With a few mouseclicks.
  - 1y ago
kettleballroll 1y ago
> outside from very specialist professional software (AutoCAD and Photoshop come toind), I think this is mostly about getting over the hump of inertia. Both myself (software Dec and ai) and even my parents (browser machine) use Linux for ages without hickups.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  I don't know - it's way more unstable in day to day use than say MacOS. The amount of times I had Slack crash on me or Chrome lock up in windows during calls is too frequent for daily use IMO. You could say that's a Slack or Chrome problem, but I don't have those issues on MacOS.
sensanaty 1y ago
I just installed Pop!_OS about 4 days ago since I had some money to spend and managed to get a new SSD on the cheap, dual booting with Win10 (I would rather get beheaded than ever use W11 again, I don't care if I get ransomwared every day for the rest of my W10 life once support ends). Honestly, there's literally nothing missing from the experience for me. Dev tooling works way better (obviously), it feels much faster than both W10 and especially W11, I can still play Factorio and most other games in my 900-game Steam library (minus MP games with rootki- err, "advanced" anticheats), GPU and CPU drivers were a non-issue and bundled with the install, speakers work, bluetooth works, Wifi works (I'm on LAN but still). The only thing is that it's kinda ugly (personal taste, I actually like W10 aesthetics :p), but one GNOME Tweaks install later and I got it looking more like how I like it, plus they're (System76) working on Cosmos or whatever they're calling it and it's looking promising. Also text is a bit blurry/hard to read for me, but it could also just be my shitty monitors (and me being used to the excellent Macbook screens) Now, if you have some software you rely on like the Adobe suite, understandable, but I think for most people it's honestly the superior OS compared to Windows. I'm sure the experience on other friendly distros like Mint are similar, too.
resource_waste 1y ago
>At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS I literally thought about that yesterday as my Windows computer I was using for a legacy application froze/slowdown to the point of unusability. Not the first time this has happened. And nearly every day I have a UI issue with some programs not maximizing and staying behind old windows. I've had embarrassing moments when my OS/MS teams crashes during a meeting. Not to mention the literal ads scattered in multiple screens that sometimes are impossible to turn off(the bottom left button) My Fedora computer... Every year I have to upgrade it. That sucks. But its way better than anything I deal with on Windows. FYI, Fedora is so solid that I don't even lump it in with Linux. Linux has baggage from the Debian/Ubuntu fanboys who use a literally outdated OS and have either: No idea its outdated. Or confuse the word "Stable" with bug free, when it means version locked. If you havent used Fedora, you don't know where the current OS market is at. Fedora stands alone and separate from the rest of the Linux Distros. Its literally better than Windows. It just works.
- acka 1y ago
  The bottom left button can be turned off by going into the taskbar settings (by right-clicking on the taskbar) and disabling taskbar widgets. Too bad if you have widgets that you do want to use.
- prmoustache 1y ago
  > My Fedora computer... Every year I have to upgrade it. That sucks. But its way better than anything I deal with on Windows. It is just really one long reboot followed by a short one. The first one can be done while you are asleep. That is how I upgraded my daughters fedora from release 40 to 42. If you really don't like 6 months or yearly upgrades, there are rolling release distros with more incremental updates or super long term releases like Almalinux/Rocky, ubuntu LTS or ... wait for it ... Slackware! With flatpak and appimage, running a distro with an older kernel, desktop, libc and base libraries version is not that big of a deal as you can still use apps in their latest release
- TheAmazingRace 1y ago
  I can't agree more. Fedora is such an excellent piece of kit, and with the now edition-tier KDE variant, you have the most premium Linux desktop out there that has a fresh-enough update schedule and is rock-solid stable. I even migrated from Arch to Fedora, just because I was getting tired of the occasional rolling update bricking my system.
drooopy 1y ago
At this point you would have to pay me to use Windows or Microsoft Office... which is exactly what is happening at work.
- wltr 1y ago
  Haha, I’m gonna steal this phrase!
xattt 1y ago
The toolkit inconsistency between apps drives me crazy more than it should. Loading up a GTK app and switching to a Qt app is jarring, especially with basic things like a file picker. Daily driving desktop Linux feels like you are living in a lower-middle income family. Yes, you have some nice things, but you can usually tell they are cost-cut versions that have filler plates or missing features present on higher-end versions of the product (i.e. macOS).
- LtWorf 1y ago
  But there's plenty of GTK and QT applications running in windows. How do you cope? Also osx the styling is all over the place, way worse than the occasional outlier in linux.
  - xattt 1y ago
    I’ve gone to some extent to avoid them.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  Yeah but on the flip side if your usecase is not blessed by daddy Apple - or you're not a fan of their hardware design - there is zero variety in the ecosystem and full lockdown. Like iPad is great hardware - but they will never let you run unlocked OS on it because it cuts into their profit source. In fact I suspect they will try to push MacOS into that direction more. So I'm hoping to be able to transition out of the ecosystem because I hate their model and like choice. But at the same time I have work to do and last time I tried it wasn't there yet. It was better than it was 3 years ago, and that was better than 5 years ago, etc. I would say not a lot left and the momentum is building, I just don't have the 20 year old energy to be the early adopter anymore :)
- tristan957 1y ago
  Assuming your apps are using the XDG desktop portal, they all use the same file picker.
wodenokoto 1y ago
Explorer in windows 11 is truly death by a thousand needles. Today I was manually sorting a bunch of files into folders that I had opened as tabs. Drag file over tab, tab move and I now activate wrong tab. Second try: drag file to where tab isn’t, such that the tab moves to where my mouse is. I now activate correct tab and can move the file to the designated folder. Single click the file and select a different file because file ends up at bottom of list when released, and then gets sorted after a second or two. Click F2 to start renaming the file, click left to deselect and move cursor to the beginning of file name. Start adding text, only for the entire string to get selected and everything overwritten. What a shit show. /rant
- ptk 1y ago
  These issues have been the bane of my existence lately, especially your F2 renaming example.
dmos62 1y ago
My view is the opposite. Windows has always been a technical laggard, but it's getting better. I wouldn't have used it as my daily driver 10 years ago, but I do now. Though, I don't want to overstate this, it's still archaic, it's just that programming ecosystems brought better support for Windows, UI got better, and general QoL improvements smoothed out some of the roughest edges.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
longtimelistnr 1y ago
Wow yeah you just made me remember the Windows 10 mail app, which sure wasn't perfect but was ad-free and relatively snappy if I remember correctly. Then absolutely destroyed it and now I have to see Outlook 2016 and Outlook (new) as the results when I search "mail" from the taskbar
anal_reactor 1y ago
What Linux distribution can be recommended to someone who wants to try out a desktop OS with experience as close to Windows as possible?
- tristan957 1y ago
  A distribution that uses the Cinnamon desktop by default can be a good starting point. Linux Mint, Fedora Cinnamon Spin, etc. Actually, a KDE Plasma desktop would also work well. I recommend the Fedora KDE Edition.
ozgrakkurt 1y ago
Installing linux is multiple times easier and faster than installing windows now too. You don’t need to install drivers one by one. Don’t need to download that huge iso and write it to a usb for a long time etc. Linux just works on both my laptop and desktop just by installing it with the gui

ashoeafoot 1y ago

Gaming is the beginning of the end. It gets new users accustomed to a modifyable system and a downgrade from that to windows will become ever harder.

smackay 1y ago

Microsoft at least sees the writing on the wall... Microsoft announces new European digital commitments https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/european-digital-commitments/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/europea...

fakedang 1y ago
Idk, seems stupid, given that Europeans are very aware now of the Cloud Act and other similar shenanigans the USG wants to pull. That being said, European bureaucrats are even stupider and will largely take these commitments at face value, allowing them to have a tighter leash on the market.
mrkramer 1y ago
"We will continue to protect the privacy of European data." Our data is up for grabs since at least 2018[0]. There is no privacy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
mrweasel 1y ago
> 3. We will continue to protect the privacy of European data Then stop fucking collecting shit tons of data that you do not need.
stodor89 1y ago
"We will continue to protect the privacy of European data." Bröther, you're literally the thing we need protection from!
henry_springs 1y ago
"Microsoft has a demonstrated history of pursuing litigation when that has been needed to protect the rights of our customers and other stakeholders. (...) When necessary, we’re prepared to go to court." This is convincing. Or would be, if the present challenges wouldn't extend to the court system itself.

worldsayshi 1y ago

What is really missing for Linux desktop nowadays? Still drivers? And I guess office software and gui configurability.

graemep 1y ago
Mostly games and photoshop. Libre Office is more than sufficient for most people. > gui configurability A bit confused by that. Linux desktop environments tend to be more configurable, and you can configure most things end users want to configure in a GUI with the major DEs. Do you mean the sysadmins cannot configure as much in a GUI? I think that probably is a major barrier as it means a lot of retraining. Also, when you do something different from everyone else, every problem will be blamed on you for doing that.
- marcusb 1y ago
  Games? A good portion of the Steam catalog runs just fine on Linux.
  - graemep 1y ago
    But not all of it, so if you want to play a particular game you might be out of luck.
    - sgarland 1y ago
      Codeweavers Crossover does an admirable job at filling the gap (shoutout for making AoE II run like it’s native), but yeah, there are some that you can’t get around using Windows for.
    - atrus 1y ago
      Single player is pretty much fine, it's multiplayer that really gets you. No Apex, Valo, LoL.
- resource_waste 1y ago
  >Libre Office is more than sufficient for most people. Buddy, I love Fedora, but this is nonsense. The UI for Libre Powerpoint(or whatever its called) doesnt have text size on the main screen. The reddit mods on the subreddit literally ban people for complaining about it. Libre Office isnt the future. I just use Google sheets.

fnordsensei 1y ago

I was disappointed that I had to upgrade to Steam Launcher 11, since it provided no benefits in launching Steam over Steam Launcher 10, or 7.

amiga386 1y ago
Windows: What is my purpose? Rick: You launch Steam Windows: OH. MY. GOD. Rick: Yeah, welcome to the club, pal.
- danielktdoranie 1y ago
  Best comment on here.
sgarland 1y ago
How dare you – Steam Launcher 11 makes a pleasant sound upon login, harkening back to its forebears, CD-ROM Launcher 95 and 98.

PuppetSoup 1y ago

> Linux desktop is getting better but I still wouldn't daily drive it, I'm genuinely interested what Linux is missing for you? I've been daily driving it for years and do all my work and gaming on it. Is it specific software or?

rafaelmn 1y ago
It's just general polish. Like I was daily driving fedora last year and : - fractional scaling did not work in Gnome with Wayland for X11 Apps - I still cannot use my LG C4 as a monitor in full capacity because AMD on Linux does not support HDMI 2.1 - Screen sharing was very buggy - in Slack especially - it would constantly crash the slack app during calls, ditto for camera, but even in Google meet and Chrome I've had desktop crashes - When I switched to KDE/Plasma 5 to get fractional scaling it was extremely unstable - Right now I upgraded my GPU to 9070XT - I'm still not sure if that would work on Linux yet because of driver support delay - Guitar Amp simulator software I use does not support Linux, neither does Ableton (which supposedly can run on proton but with many glitches) - The audio DAW situation was way too complicated and buggy - I spent days to get the distro functional and usable with Ardour and it would still crash constantly - I just wanted to run some amp sims :( It's just the little things and rough edges, but for example the fractional scaling stuff already improved because more apps that I use added Wayland support. And the emulation is getting better, with more users I could see larger DAWs supporting Linux as well. Not sure about the audio progress - JACK was a complete mess.
- promiseofbeans 1y ago
  If you're happy to dip your toes into another DAW, Reaper has excellent first-class Linux support, works with all your plugins, and has a 60 day trial* for you to get used to it. * The free trial is enforced as heavily as WinRAR's, and it's pretty cheap (~$60) to buy a licence if the nag screen makes you feel bad enough
  - richrichardsson 1y ago
    Alternatively Bitwig has Linux support and wouldn't be such a big jump.

bgro 1y ago

Linux is working great for me. AMD supposedly works better but my nvidia driver doesn’t crash for videos like windows does and games seem to be working fine. Possibly except kernel anti cheat games. I have dual boot available as a backup.

bnolsen 1y ago
I had a 3060 12g in my daughters computer. It would freeze every couple of weeks for who knows what reason. Swapped out her mobo/CPU/ram with mine and it still froze. Put in an rx5709xt and it's all good now. The 3060 is now in a server. I would have gotten the card if someone at work hasn't sold it to me for 100$. What originally made me leave Nvidia was because of how quickly Nvidia dropped driver support for not very old cards but I can't remember what card I had at the time.

danielktdoranie 1y ago

Microsoft is never gonna give up on Windows NT "technology" no matter how bad it is and continues to be. They will continue to kick that dead horse until the company no longer exists. They genuinely port their UI (not the Windows 11 UI, it's horrible) and their apps to Linux. Release a Linux based OS, call it some shit like Windows Ultra not-shit edition. Accept Windows lost to Linux. God I hate Microsoft.

sa-code 1y ago
It would be really interesting for enterprise or gamedev software to start supporting steam OS, I know a fair amount of people planning on switching from Windows to Steam OS when 10 is EOL'd
int_19h 1y ago
The under-the-hood NT stuff is the best thing about Windows.
p_ing 1y ago
The NT kernel/executive are the best parts of the OS, better than Linux in various places. I wouldn't give those up -- I'd give the userland up with a 100% bug compatible Win32 shim.

bigfatkitten 1y ago

I really want to like GNOME, but GNOME's developers have almost as much arrogance and contempt for their users as Microsoft. As an example, the power button can no longer be configured to power off the machine, because this is "too destructive". I'm not talking about defaults -- they removed the ability for me to make this choice for myself. Not even Microsoft has done that. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755953 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755953 On my machine, the power button is recessed and requires quite a bit of force to press. It is impossible to press accidentally, but the GNOME developers apparently know best.

BarryMilo 1y ago
As much as I'm a diehard Linux defender, Gnome can get bent. XFCE does everything I want, which is to say, almost nothing.
- frainfreeze 1y ago
  XFCE is wonderful. I wish it got more dev time
  - dingdingdang 1y ago
    XFCE is the Win 2000 UI of the Linux ecosystem, perfectly functional and fine; tweaks are possible if needed.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
      So is https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ While it may seem overblown, it's absolutely RIDICULOUS how fast it flies on contemporary systems, and even older ones. One can also omit most of their other apps, with the exception of KWIN, drawing the desktop and its window decorations, and konqueror, the filemanager, and the things managing the menu(bar(s)), applauncher. Using modern apps for the rest, like anywhere else. And have them styled, themed however you like. With a few mouseclicks.
- 1y ago

kettleballroll 1y ago

> outside from very specialist professional software (AutoCAD and Photoshop come toind), I think this is mostly about getting over the hump of inertia. Both myself (software Dec and ai) and even my parents (browser machine) use Linux for ages without hickups.

rafaelmn 1y ago
I don't know - it's way more unstable in day to day use than say MacOS. The amount of times I had Slack crash on me or Chrome lock up in windows during calls is too frequent for daily use IMO. You could say that's a Slack or Chrome problem, but I don't have those issues on MacOS.

sensanaty 1y ago

I just installed Pop!_OS about 4 days ago since I had some money to spend and managed to get a new SSD on the cheap, dual booting with Win10 (I would rather get beheaded than ever use W11 again, I don't care if I get ransomwared every day for the rest of my W10 life once support ends). Honestly, there's literally nothing missing from the experience for me. Dev tooling works way better (obviously), it feels much faster than both W10 and especially W11, I can still play Factorio and most other games in my 900-game Steam library (minus MP games with rootki- err, "advanced" anticheats), GPU and CPU drivers were a non-issue and bundled with the install, speakers work, bluetooth works, Wifi works (I'm on LAN but still). The only thing is that it's kinda ugly (personal taste, I actually like W10 aesthetics :p), but one GNOME Tweaks install later and I got it looking more like how I like it, plus they're (System76) working on Cosmos or whatever they're calling it and it's looking promising. Also text is a bit blurry/hard to read for me, but it could also just be my shitty monitors (and me being used to the excellent Macbook screens) Now, if you have some software you rely on like the Adobe suite, understandable, but I think for most people it's honestly the superior OS compared to Windows. I'm sure the experience on other friendly distros like Mint are similar, too.

resource_waste 1y ago

>At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS I literally thought about that yesterday as my Windows computer I was using for a legacy application froze/slowdown to the point of unusability. Not the first time this has happened. And nearly every day I have a UI issue with some programs not maximizing and staying behind old windows. I've had embarrassing moments when my OS/MS teams crashes during a meeting. Not to mention the literal ads scattered in multiple screens that sometimes are impossible to turn off(the bottom left button) My Fedora computer... Every year I have to upgrade it. That sucks. But its way better than anything I deal with on Windows. FYI, Fedora is so solid that I don't even lump it in with Linux. Linux has baggage from the Debian/Ubuntu fanboys who use a literally outdated OS and have either: No idea its outdated. Or confuse the word "Stable" with bug free, when it means version locked. If you havent used Fedora, you don't know where the current OS market is at. Fedora stands alone and separate from the rest of the Linux Distros. Its literally better than Windows. It just works.

acka 1y ago
The bottom left button can be turned off by going into the taskbar settings (by right-clicking on the taskbar) and disabling taskbar widgets. Too bad if you have widgets that you do want to use.
prmoustache 1y ago
> My Fedora computer... Every year I have to upgrade it. That sucks. But its way better than anything I deal with on Windows. It is just really one long reboot followed by a short one. The first one can be done while you are asleep. That is how I upgraded my daughters fedora from release 40 to 42. If you really don't like 6 months or yearly upgrades, there are rolling release distros with more incremental updates or super long term releases like Almalinux/Rocky, ubuntu LTS or ... wait for it ... Slackware! With flatpak and appimage, running a distro with an older kernel, desktop, libc and base libraries version is not that big of a deal as you can still use apps in their latest release
TheAmazingRace 1y ago
I can't agree more. Fedora is such an excellent piece of kit, and with the now edition-tier KDE variant, you have the most premium Linux desktop out there that has a fresh-enough update schedule and is rock-solid stable. I even migrated from Arch to Fedora, just because I was getting tired of the occasional rolling update bricking my system.

drooopy 1y ago

At this point you would have to pay me to use Windows or Microsoft Office... which is exactly what is happening at work.

wltr 1y ago
Haha, I’m gonna steal this phrase!

xattt 1y ago

The toolkit inconsistency between apps drives me crazy more than it should. Loading up a GTK app and switching to a Qt app is jarring, especially with basic things like a file picker. Daily driving desktop Linux feels like you are living in a lower-middle income family. Yes, you have some nice things, but you can usually tell they are cost-cut versions that have filler plates or missing features present on higher-end versions of the product (i.e. macOS).

LtWorf 1y ago
But there's plenty of GTK and QT applications running in windows. How do you cope? Also osx the styling is all over the place, way worse than the occasional outlier in linux.
- xattt 1y ago
  I’ve gone to some extent to avoid them.
rafaelmn 1y ago
Yeah but on the flip side if your usecase is not blessed by daddy Apple - or you're not a fan of their hardware design - there is zero variety in the ecosystem and full lockdown. Like iPad is great hardware - but they will never let you run unlocked OS on it because it cuts into their profit source. In fact I suspect they will try to push MacOS into that direction more. So I'm hoping to be able to transition out of the ecosystem because I hate their model and like choice. But at the same time I have work to do and last time I tried it wasn't there yet. It was better than it was 3 years ago, and that was better than 5 years ago, etc. I would say not a lot left and the momentum is building, I just don't have the 20 year old energy to be the early adopter anymore :)
tristan957 1y ago
Assuming your apps are using the XDG desktop portal, they all use the same file picker.

wodenokoto 1y ago

Explorer in windows 11 is truly death by a thousand needles. Today I was manually sorting a bunch of files into folders that I had opened as tabs. Drag file over tab, tab move and I now activate wrong tab. Second try: drag file to where tab isn’t, such that the tab moves to where my mouse is. I now activate correct tab and can move the file to the designated folder. Single click the file and select a different file because file ends up at bottom of list when released, and then gets sorted after a second or two. Click F2 to start renaming the file, click left to deselect and move cursor to the beginning of file name. Start adding text, only for the entire string to get selected and everything overwritten. What a shit show. /rant

ptk 1y ago
These issues have been the bane of my existence lately, especially your F2 renaming example.

dmos62 1y ago

My view is the opposite. Windows has always been a technical laggard, but it's getting better. I wouldn't have used it as my daily driver 10 years ago, but I do now. Though, I don't want to overstate this, it's still archaic, it's just that programming ecosystems brought better support for Windows, UI got better, and general QoL improvements smoothed out some of the roughest edges.

deleted 1y ago

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longtimelistnr 1y ago

Wow yeah you just made me remember the Windows 10 mail app, which sure wasn't perfect but was ad-free and relatively snappy if I remember correctly. Then absolutely destroyed it and now I have to see Outlook 2016 and Outlook (new) as the results when I search "mail" from the taskbar

anal_reactor 1y ago

What Linux distribution can be recommended to someone who wants to try out a desktop OS with experience as close to Windows as possible?

tristan957 1y ago
A distribution that uses the Cinnamon desktop by default can be a good starting point. Linux Mint, Fedora Cinnamon Spin, etc. Actually, a KDE Plasma desktop would also work well. I recommend the Fedora KDE Edition.

ozgrakkurt 1y ago

Installing linux is multiple times easier and faster than installing windows now too. You don’t need to install drivers one by one. Don’t need to download that huge iso and write it to a usb for a long time etc. Linux just works on both my laptop and desktop just by installing it with the gui