19 ms·

I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

• djfergus 9mo ago
  https://archive.is/CEsFK https://archive.is/CEsFK
• jmclnx 9mo ago
  Congratulations and welcome to the club! But please, do not push to make Linux into a Windows Clone :)
  • RankingMember 9mo ago
    I can't say I understand the prevalence of Windows-esque UI theming/refits beyond short-lived novelty- are people out there actually trying to make their UIs look like Windows XP and then using them like that on a daily basis?
    • jmclnx 9mo ago
      To me it is adding things that windows love to do. Examples: binary log files, binary configuration, .ini files, hidden options.
    • mrintegrity 9mo ago
      I configured gnome to look like win 95/98, tried to use it for a while but the novelty wore off quite fast. Weirdly the mouse pointer still looks like win95 randomly in certain applications, guess I didn't clean up thoroughly!
  • gitaarik 9mo ago
    Many people have already done and still do and will keep doing it. But yeah it's doesn't add much value.
• ktallett 9mo ago
  I have been using Fedora comfortably as my main os on a framework for the last 18 months and I have had no issues. I do just think for all that I do, lab work, coding, and gaming. I also run debian on mnt pocket reform and tbh I think it is OSes' like Linux that allow devices like that to exist. Windows and Mac just aren't options.
• jna_sh 9mo ago
  Moved my Framework laptop to Bluefin and my gaming desktop to Bazzite early last year. Zero regrets, zero issues. I'm not new to Linux by any means, I've been dabbling since a kid. But in adulthood, I had given up on having Linux as my daily driver because I just wanted my main computers to work, I didn't want maintaining them to be a hobby. That's not been an issue with Bluefin or Bazzite. I'm sure it's not for a lot of modern Linuxes, but these ones I can vouch for at least!
  • bikelang 9mo ago
    Bazzite is my first immutable distro. Idk that I would want this for my dev machine - but for a gaming/general desktop usage it’s pretty amazing. If they exposed more of the maintenance tooling and stuff like adding RPM layers via the UI then I think they’d have a really compelling OS for non-technical users.
    • freedomben 9mo ago
      I agree, if you have a specific dev flow that is compatible with the immutable OS approach, then these can be wonderful dev machines, but personally I don't want to change my workflow to fit the OS, I prefer the OS to fit my workflow. At some point I I'm pretty confident that I will switch to an immutable version of Fedora and relearn my workflow in a distro box like world as I do see some real benefits to doing so, but I'm not in a hurry
      • jna_sh 9mo ago
        I expected it to be an issue but I’ve had surprisingly few problems so far. If you’re working in docker-land or can use devcontainers, it just works. If you’re not but your stack is well supported by homebrew, also not a problem. Anything else you can handle via a distrobox container, where you can install from package managers to your heart’s content, and they have good integration with the base OS, but I’ve had to reach for distrobox a lot less than I expected.
        • freedomben 9mo ago
• IgorPartola 9mo ago
  Back in the days of Unity I decided to make a full switch to Linux and it just worked. The UX was unfamiliar but it had a cohesiveness that made sense. I use macOS for the past 10 years as my main system (work stuff needs Mac-specific things) but switching to a decent Linux distro would honestly feel like an upgrade. Windows continues being a shitshow and I want nothing to do with it. What I think could really push Linux desktop forward is if various PC gaming influencers started doing content on how to game on Linux. Given that it is not just viable now but actively sometimes better than on Windows it would make for good content AND show people an alternative. And soon as AAA games start being created for Linux first and run on Windows in some sort of compatibility or emulation mode that will really start turning the tides.
  • freedomben 9mo ago
    I think this is both the blessing and the curse of the incredible work that wine and steam has done. Unless and until we get the Linux packaging stuff figured out in a way that developers can target Linux instead of having to target each individual distro, I think the clear incentive for the vast majority of gaming companies will be to target windows even if they ultimately care more about Linux, because wine and proton are so good and so much easier to support than each individual distro natively. Don't get me wrong, I rejoice when I get a native Linux game. I buy nearly every native Linux game I can find that is reasonably priced and sounds remotely interesting. I have a couple dozen games in my GOG backlog that I haven't even tried to run yet, but I bought on a sale or something because they were relatively cheap and supported Linux natively. So I would love a world where it was Linux first and Windows second.
    • IgorPartola 9mo ago
      Steam runs plenty well on Linux and has for a while but I guess developers might want more than one option for distribution. But to me it seems like in the long run emulating Linux on Windows is easier than the other way around.
      • 0xabe 9mo ago
• peanut-walrus 9mo ago
  I've been a Linux admin for 25 years but up until a few months ago my personal computer has been windows (gaming desktop) or Mac (laptop). I decided to give desktop Linux another shot and I'm glad I did. I was prepared for a lot of jankiness but figured I have enough experience to fix whatever needs fixing. Surprisingly, this has not been the case at all, the PC has been not only as stable as Windows or Mac but also performs better and is much more comfortable and intuitive to use. I never really want to "work on" my personal computer, I want it to just be there for me reliably. I've always had a soft spot for free software, but I just couldn't justify the effort until now. So I guess this is my love letter to all the devs that have made the modern Linux desktop possible. Even compared to just a few years ago, the difference is immense. Keep up the good work.
  • rsyring 9mo ago
    I've been running a Linux desktop for about 13 years. There are still "moments" where you have to work on it and it can be more opaque than Windows/Mac. But you have the control to do what you need to do, which is one huge factor for me in Linux's favor. I moved my immediate and mostly non-tech family to all run Linux including an aging relative who needed a locked-down Firefox install to keep her from falling victim to predatory sites and extensions. Pretty easy to script the entirety of the OS install and lockdown so that it was documented and repeatable. Can't do that without techie roots but I love that it's possible and mostly straightforward from a scripting perspective. It's almost exclusively get the right file with the right config in the right place and restart a service. The only major day-to-day downside IMO is battery life on Linux laptops. Can't compare to current generation of Macs but that's true for Windows too.
    • arcfour 9mo ago
      I have been using desktop Linux for about the same amount of time and the way I see it now, even on the occasion where I have to troubleshoot something weird (which has maybe been one or two times in the past few years), it doesn't sound any different from the issues people are having with Windows and Mac these days—and at least I can fix it!
• SirFatty 9mo ago
  Proof that this is the year of Linux on the Desktop!
  • yoldshaddup 9mo ago
    [dead]
• toddmorey 9mo ago
  Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent transition the way they did with mobile. Linux is SUCH a breath of fresh air. No one wants it to be anything other than what you want it to be. Modern desktop Linux has a much improved out of the box experience with good support for all the hardware I've thrown at it. And Claude Code makes it very fast and trivial to personalize, adapt, automate, etc.
  • raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    Come back when I can run Linux on a laptop that has 12+ hours battery life, runs fast, that’s lightweight, quiet and doesn’t cause infertility from the heat when I put it on my lap…. Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. Of course if you are a gamer, ignore everything I just wrote.
    • mecsred 9mo ago
      You mean the framework Ive been running for the past 4 years or so?
      • raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        You mean the same ones that consistently get bad reviews for being hot, with poor battery life, heavy and sub par screens? https://community.frame.work/t/fw-16-review-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/56831 https://community.frame.work/t/fw-16-review-the-good-the-bad...
        • smj-edison 9mo ago
          It's important to distinguish between the Framework 13 and the Framework 16. The Framework 16 is by far the most ambitious of the two, and so it has had a lot more issues. I use a Framework 13, and I've loved it. It's light, has a solid frame, and runs Linux great. The battery life isn't great, and the speakers aren't either, but I've been able to mitigate the latter with EasyEffects.
• curious_riddler 9mo ago
  I would gladly move to Linux from macOS if only I could get the same energy efficiency on the arm MacBooks.
  • cromka 9mo ago
    You can, current Intel lineup does 20h on battery: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-empire-strikes-back-with-21-hrs-of-battery-life-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-Gen-6-laptop-review.1008078.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-empire-strikes-back-with... Their upcoming CPUs are even better. Also Qualcomm might actually finally offer good support on Linux and their new X2 is amazing.
• p4coder 9mo ago
  How do you do taxes in Linux? Install a windows VM? I don't want to use the web version. With Google docs being good enough, I don't really need windows for anything else. Last time I checked, the tax software didn't run under wine.
  • bikelang 9mo ago
    In years that my taxes are simple - I open up my browser and go to FreeTaxUSA. In years that my taxes are complex - I pay a CPA. What do you use?
  • Majestic121 9mo ago
    Where do you need windows to do your taxes? Is this a US thing?
    • jethro_tell 9mo ago
      I hope not because I’ve been doing my US taxes on Linux for 15 years. It’s probably a specific windows desktop app, probably TurboTax by intuit, the company that lobbies to make filing your taxes hard and to destroy any free simple government app to file taxes. So, not sure why they’d complain about not being able to help shoot their foot off but we all have preferences. :shrug:
      • sylens 9mo ago
        TurboTax has had a great browser-based version for over a decade now
        • p4coder 9mo ago
          Unfortunately it is not browser based (as in being local HTML+CSS+js). It is web based, where they get all your data.
    • p4coder 9mo ago
      Yes, it is the unfortunate reality of the US. You either fork over all your data to tax preparation companies on the web or pay them to use windows/MacOS software. There is still paper filing by doing taxes by hand, but that's a bit too inconvenient. Free online filing is restricted to $89k annual income.
• pjmlp 9mo ago
  Since it is paid, how is he going with hardware accelerated video decoding on YouTube, Netflix or Amazon Prime? Which I never got to work properly on the laptop/netbook I owned until 2024.
  • bigyabai 9mo ago
    Who knows, it's 2026 now.
    • pjmlp 9mo ago
      Yeah, and still it isn't the Year of Linux Desktop for 90% of the world, unless it is hosted on a VM. Being generous with Steam hardware survey numbers for GNU/Linux.
  • osamagirl69 9mo ago
    There have been leaps and bounds of progress in the last few years. Youtube hardware acceleration works perfectly in chrome/firefox now (assuming you have working video drivers). As far as I know netflix still limits you to 720p under most browsers (although their support page shows that opera of all things supports 1080p)
  • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
    I watch Freetube and Netflix on my Starlite tablet and it works well. Works on the laptop too, though I don't watch there. libva is usually installed these days but you can install it manually. For Netflix you'll need to install widevine.
  • bubblethink 9mo ago
    Current gen intel and amd gpus support vaapi out of the box on fedora in both chromium and firefox. DRM nonsense is orthogonal and unrelated to linux.
  • heavyset_go 9mo ago
    What issue did you have? This should work if you follow the happy paths on video and browser hardware acceleration guides for your distro. At least for Intel and AMD graphics, the Arch wiki's guide should work.
• antennafirepla 9mo ago
  For not much prior research, he sure has done a lot of prior research to even know about desktop environments or bootloaders compared to your average windows user. This article read like every other promising Linux is user friendly and easy, then proceeding with the author fixing issues the average user wouldn’t be able to even diagnose. I think anyone technically savvy enough to follow the article is already aware Linux is a viable primary OS, the question is can you manage it without having to become a Linux nerd? I want to be able to tell normal people they can use Linux.
  • freedomben 9mo ago
    If you get someone to help you with the installation, or buy a pre-installed Linux, then yes I believe this to be true. I only have anecdotal evidence, but I have my dad who is very non-tech savvy who after about a day with gnome actually said it's the first desktop environment that he liked more than Windows 95. There has been one time in 5 years that he had to reach out for technical assistance. It turned out that he had been misled by a prompt to buy Ubuntu pro and had gotten into a weird state. I blame that one solely on canonical, not on Linux in general. After that I switched him to Fedora, and he's been running that now for a few years and didn't even realize I had changed his underlying OS. He is able to install anything he wants from the graphical storefront, and same with updates. In the early days we did have some trouble getting his printer to work, though once we switched him to Fedora everything on that printer worked out of the box. When my sister came over to his house with her MacBook, she had to mess with the Mac to get the printer working for over an hour, and it was still pretty hit or miss. It would lose half the jobs she tried to send to it. It truly is remarkable how usable Linux is for the average person now. For people that have to run software that only runs on Windows or Linux, excluding games of course since steam and other game managers handle those wonderfully now, there is definitely still a bit of pain. But for people who can get by with cloud-based or Linux friendly software, it's really quite good.
    • jethro_tell 9mo ago
      My sister was the same, she brought her machine over, I booted a Ubuntu disk and did the disk config in the install and then she set the rest of the stuff up and I haven’t heard from her about it for 5 years, other than that I check if she’s still using it now and again.
• rubymamis 9mo ago
  There's no soul in major OSes these days - Windows is a big bloatware and macOS's aesthetics is the result of design for the sake of the design instead of any practical use. No wonder we're seeing this sentiment for an alternative growing.
• Kapura 9mo ago
  I installed a dual boot on my gaming machine last year when the Win10 support ended, and I have also had basically no issues. Something something HDR in certain video games is the biggest complaint I have, which is not all that important and will be higher priority for developers in future as more gamers leave the sinking Windows ship. Microsoft has really, really fucked up windows 11, and ultimately abandoning it is the only recourse the consumers have.
• greenavocado 9mo ago
  If you need Windows these days just install virt-manager and load the version of Windows you need. It's really fast and lightweight (my laptop stays cold at idle while running the Windows VMs) with all the HV enlightenments for good computational efficiency. Installing and using the virtio drivers is key for many useful features such as memory ballooning, fast networking with low computational overhead, and virtiofs which is used to mount a virtual drive in the Windows guest in a way that it's not a "network" drive.
  • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
    How does this work compared to VirtualBox?
    • greenavocado 9mo ago
      Seems to be just as fast or faster and doesn't require proprietary software.
    • AviationAtom 9mo ago
      KVM/QEMU is the only logical and sane choice on Linux, unless some tooling you're using requires VirtualBox. The key is to optimize and tweak all your host and guest settings, installing the guest tools too. Once you have it optimized it purrs.
      • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
        Been using VB twenty years and mostly happy, but ready to try something new.
• iwanttocomment 9mo ago
  I hadn't run desktop Linux in several years now. (I've run it server-side for decades.) Out of the increasingly loud outpouring of support for desktop Linux over the past year, I went ahead and installed some distros to get back in on the action. I came to four conclusions: 1) You can play games on desktop Linux now other than Tux Racer. Cool! 2) There's less weird X11-wrangling. Thank god. 3) It's otherwise still pretty much the desktop Linux I've always known and felt mildly annoyed by. 4) The current versions of Windows and macOS have gotten to be so unbelievably annoying for no good reason that a mildly improved desktop Linux now actually seems far less annoying than the mainstream options do. Good job, Microsoft and Apple, for giving us the year of retreating in disgust to the Linux desktop.
  • einpoklum 9mo ago
    ... and considering the GTK file picker we still have to live with, that's saying something.
    • bigyabai 9mo ago
      File pickers are an XDG standard, you can replace it whenever you want: https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser.html#description https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.fr...
      • einpoklum 9mo ago
        Unfortunately, you can only replace it with whatever is readily available... which AFAICR is not much, or just nothing. And even for that you have to be aware of it being replaceable and how to perform that replacement :-(
• fpauser 9mo ago
  I switched from Windows to Linux ~20 years ago because and never came back to Windows. First years I used Ubuntu and experimented with Xubuntu, Lubuntu etc. Later went to Fedora Linux with Gnome Desktop which is still my preferred Linux Distribution. Nice to see so many people thinking about free and open alternatives to big tech!
  • kbrkbr 9mo ago
    I switched 25 years ago. Still, every computer I buy comes with Microsoft tax and their OS preinstalled. In all these years I always left a small Windows partition, in case I need it. Never booted it.
• 0xperke 9mo ago
  For all who switched to Linux: which distro did you choose and why? Fedora: wanted to have the newest kernel and updates due to new hardware - so far i am really satisfied; the only issue i have is that the printer does not work everytime… as a workaround i print with my iphone instead.
  • while_true_ 9mo ago
    Debian stable with KDE Plasma. Plasma is similar in feel to Win 10, but far more customizable. It's the first Linux desktop I've used that feels professional and polished. Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ6bojRSIw0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ6bojRSIw0
    • AviationAtom 9mo ago
      100%. I run this combo on my 12 year old Chromebook and it's a very solid web browsing and thin client system. Audio works, Wi-Fi works, Bluetooth works, everything just works, and works well.
  • karussell 9mo ago
    The printer also was my reason I picked Ubuntu over Arch / Endeavour OS :) I don't want to tweak hours and Ubuntu was so far always a no brainer. At some point, probably 5 years ago after they switched to GNOME Shell, I even stopped switching the desktop manager and kept using the default one.
  • vlod 9mo ago
    PopOS is what I've picked (using it ~6 years). Their new distribution is called Cosmic (Wayland). They've moved away from Gnome to a rust based Iced.
  • undyingtrillion 9mo ago
    I also use Fedora only because it seems like Debian's nvidia driver installation is a big pain, Fedora made it as easy as Ubuntu.
  • davemo 9mo ago
• wnevets 9mo ago
  WSL and Windows Terminal has done a fantastic job at delaying my move to Linux as my primary desktop but Microsoft seems hellbent on ruining Windows.
  • nchmy 9mo ago
    This was my stance for the past couple years, but I moved to Linux (PopOS) 3 months ago because wsl2 kept crashing from OOM (even though I had allocated excess ram). I kept having to manually manage my memory usage by choosing which apps, containers etc to run. There's nuisances in popos, but I am generally thrilled.
    • Joel_Mckay 9mo ago
      Even Microsoft often doesn't use its own servers for critical infrastructure. It is a fools errand. =3
• lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
  I replaced Windows with Linux about 6 months ago. Then I ran into a game I really wanted to play but it didn’t run well with Proton (not kernel anti-cheat, just bad performance) after all the tweaks so I just reserved to dual booting with Windows 10. After not using Windows for so long, I came to realize that Windows is just as much a mess as Linux just in different ways. You get used to the quirks so you don’t notice them after a while but they are definitely there. Most of my games work just fine or even better on Linux. Some of my older games don’t even work on Windows that work perfectly under Wine/Proton which is truely miraculous. The Wine team and Valve have made some incredible contributions to the preservation of games on PC, it can’t be understated. So I daily drive Linux and play those handful of games on Windows, and I’ll probably stay this way for now and try the proton situation again in a few years.
  • surgical_fire 9mo ago
    > Then I ran into a game I really wanted to play but it didn’t run well with Proton Out of curiosity, which game? I promise I am not asking as a gotcha. Just genuinely curious. I don't play many new games on PC (normally I play recent games on consoles). What I play on PC is older/niche games. I have a couple of oddballs that I could not make work on Proton. Others had weird issues that got fixed over time. Sometimes there is a fix, such as fiddling with different Proton versions, etc. Lutris makes this somewhat straightforward.
    • lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
      The game is called HROT it’s an indie “boomer shooter”. The game was first locked to 30fps which is horrible for an FPS. Then I got that figured out, but FPS was all over the place and it felt basically unplayable to me even though I was often getting 100+ FPS. Frame pacing was absolutey FUBAR’d no matter which version of Proton or Wine, so even though frames were high it still felt terrible to play. So I just decided to create a Windows dual-boot just for the odd game. Now I can get a locked framerate to my monitor refresh and the game feels great to play. It’s basically “Soviet Quake”. Very moody atmosphere with just weird random details in the game. Amazing level design. On the flip side. The original Max Payne does not play on Windows but it works perfectly on Linux for me.
• nikanj 9mo ago
  Do any of the main-stream Linux installers make any attempt at bringing over your files? I have seen so many ”anyone can switch to Linux” articles, and none of them seem to mention ”all of your files are going to be utterly lost”
  • hackyhacky 9mo ago
    This is a non-issue if your files are stored in a partition separate from your OS, and is infeasible otherwise. * If you have a separate partition, you can replace your OS and your file remain untouched. * If you don't have a separate partition, your OS and your files will be replaced by the Linux installation. The only way to preserve your files is to copy to some external media before installation. Even if the Linux installer could retain files while reformatting a partition (which might be technically feasible), it would have no way of knowing which files to retain: the user could easily keep important files in arbitrary directories, not just in their designated C:\User\Patrick directory, and they would be understandably irate if the installer promised to keep files but didn't. To say nothing of adding complications of copying files that Windows has pushed to OneDrive.
    • nikanj 9mo ago
      > This is a non-issue if your files are stored in a partition separate from your OS, and is infeasible otherwise. That is one of the biggest ifs of 2026. I don't think any major PC laptop vendor has ever sold consumer laptops with anything but one-big-partition layout. For the average user, their files are not stored in any partition, they are stored "right there on my desktop, with a separate folder for photos and bills"
      • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
        EFI/ESP and a restore partition have been standard or at least common for a decade. Restore partition might be big enough to install to… my Linux system partition is only 30GB. But yes, been using a /data partition since it was called D:\ under DOS.
  • 9mo ago
• GeoAtreides 9mo ago
  >I picked CachyOS rather than a better-known distro like Ubuntu because it’s optimized for modern hardware, >First challenge: My mouse buttons don’t work. I can move the cursor, but can’t click on anything. Maybe should've picked Ubuntu? I suspect this is the Linus (tech tips, not Torvalds) strategy of picking up an obscure distro for content purposes. Can't really have an article if everything just works, right
  • fumeux_fume 9mo ago
    Yeah, if the goal of the article was to convince Windows users to switch to Linux then Ubuntu would provide as frictionless an install as Windows. Since the author chooses CachyOS, of course there's going to be some important steps during installation that need to be handled with some forethought and extra software to handle all hardware issues. After all, CachyOS is based on Arch Linux and inherits it's minimal mindset. But the article about switching from Windows to Ubuntu has been already written a thousand times.
  • MarsIronPI 9mo ago
    I don't think PopOS could be called "obscure". At the time that the LTT video came out, PopOS and Manjaro (IIRC) were the distros to game on, if you wanted up-to-date OOTB working drivers.
    • esskay 9mo ago
      Even so, it was hard to take LTT's attempt at using linux seriously when part of it included Linus bitching about how right clicking a list of files on github and clicking "save link as..." didnt give him a copy of the file. It just highlighted how utterly clueless he was and made it clear he couldn't be trusted for the rest of the video either.
  • mkozlows 9mo ago
    I suspect they sincerely picked CachyOS because they read people advocating for it, and were convinced by the advocacy. People advocate all kinds of distros, and all of them except the one I advocate are bad choices.
• karussell 9mo ago
  If only I could use recent Apple hardware with Linux :) A year ago I was about to switch from Linux to Mac for that reason after 25 years using Linux (although I really don't like MacOS). But then Apple released their Glassy OS and so I just bought a used Lenovo for 300€ with 1 year warranty ...
• neko_ranger 9mo ago
  this is the tech equivalent of "I'm a strong, independent nerd and I don't need no windows"
• 1970-01-01 9mo ago
  My Linux evenings usually appear 6 months down the road. It's the big updates that cause system breakdowns. This is like saying I got married in November and everything is going great. Far too early to know how far your patience will be tested before you leave.
  • timbit42 9mo ago
    In my experience, it's not so much the updates as the upgrades but even upgrades are smooth with Linux Mint.
• loehnsberg 9mo ago
  Why Bedrock? Get the kids a Steam Deck, Prism Launcher, open a local server and boom :) It‘s not iOS convenience but they‘ll sure love to tinker with all the mods you can install.
  • exploraz 9mo ago
    Alternatively one could spin up a local Java Edition server and install GeyserMC translation layer plugin[0] into it. That way, both iOS and Linux PC could cross-play to each other without the need of another new device. [0]: https://geysermc.org/ https://geysermc.org/
• browningstreet 9mo ago
  I was watching the Lenovo CES keynote and couldn’t believe how hard they were selling Qira on Lenovo computers and Motorola phones. All the major players have platform specific Windows features that can’t possibly meet their success criteria in terms of ROI. Lenovo isn’t Apple or Google or Microsoft, and even the latter two have trouble selling fully integrated platform services on hardware. All this time, money, dev energy, and marketing to keep trying to find a magical bean in their stalk and they still just won’t support open hardware and open source OSes with vigor. Apple people tend to buy Apple products generation over generation, and none of the Windows hardware manufacturers are even close to having that rep. Even in this thread people are recommending Gen 1 Thinkpads, but Lenovo’s heart really isn’t in it across the board. Dell went simple with the revived XPS but the release versions don’t offer Linux in the BYO order flow. And no, I don’t think Framework is good enough.
  • ethersteeds 9mo ago
    Gotta be doing something, elsewise it's layoffs for your business unit
    • browningstreet 9mo ago
      The "do something" is support open hardware, sell more machines, provision fewer product variations. I get that these are the immovable objects and sacred cows of the management ranks ..new executives need to try, try, try again. All these features just sit in the "update" queue advertising their uselessness, and eventually highlight their abandonment.
• modeless 9mo ago
  > My goal here is to see how far I can get using Linux as my main OS without spending a ton of time futzing with it > First challenge: My mouse buttons don’t work. [...] Not a major issue; I can get around fine with just the keyboard. > Then I remember that my root partition is only 100GB. I reboot back into the Cachy live image and use the Parted utility to increase it to 1TB, then make a second btrfs partition in the remaining space. I don't think the goal was achieved here. For most people it still takes some dedication and a lot of computer knowledge to switch successfully. But I expect things to continue to improve now that Valve has solved the single major blocker for a large chunk of people, that being running their back catalog of games. It's an amazing gift to the community that we should all be very thankful for.
• blipvert 9mo ago
  Not a desktop thing (digital out-of-home signage) but we’re dropping Windows like it’s flaming dogshit. Minimal Linux install with X, Blackbox and player software (and management/monitoring stuff obvs) on all new assets and the thousands of extant ones will get replaced as soon as feasible.
• rrgok 9mo ago
  I came back to Windows when Windows 10 came out and everything is going great too. Everything just works. Snappy. Professional awesome native tools (Office, Affinity series, Directory Opus, Visual Studio, AutoHotkey,...)
• mongrelion 9mo ago
  I ran Archlinux as my main driver on both PC and Laptop for more than a decade but after having the opportunity to use a Windows machine with WSL and eventually WSL2, I felt like I had access to the best of both worlds: a Linux terminal for development (bash + tmux + vim, now bash + zellij + neovim) without the hassle of updates breaking things every few months and a out-of-the-box native gaming experience. But with the enshitification of Windows (first all the spam and ads on the Start menu, then Microsoft forcing you to have an account to be able to use the machine and the expensive license for Windows Professional if you want access to Hyper-V, which I did), I did some research, tried a few new distros (Manjaro, Bazzite and CachyOS) and settled for CachyOS (gaming support was the main driver, based on Archlinux was secondary). I do everything I did on Windows and some more: all the terminal stuff plus browsing, CAD modeling, 3D printing / slicing, Office stuff... I miss nothing. No more double partition to boot into Windows when I want to game. My RX 9070 XT runs smoothly with no driver issues whatsoever. I even have tested the waters running some LLMs with LM Studio and that also worked out of the box. The only thing that has been a bit meh are Teams and Slack and I believe that has to do with the fact that I ran them in Firefox. Once I ran Slack on Chromium, noise canceling was again available. 2009 was the year of Linux on desktop for me. 17 years later, after going back and forth between macOS and Windows, it feels good to be back home. One last note in my random ramble is that I do not have as much spare time as before, and I had heard this from other people back in the day whenever I'd say I ran Archlinux on my machines, so I am going to repeat what others have said to me: it's really nice to not have to worry about much, be able to sit down and get productive right away. To me, CachyOS and KDE have made that idea my actual experience and for that I am grateful.
  • timbit42 9mo ago
    > without the hassle of updates breaking things every few months That's not so much a Linux issue as an Arch issue.
• ant6n 9mo ago
  We use OneDrive/Teams/Office365 at work. I think this will be difficult with Linux. Doable with Mac. In think MacBook Air + Microsoft365 may be the cheapest startup IT setup that doesn’t require windows itself.
  • gwbas1c 9mo ago
    I'm mostly happy with OneDrive on Mac. I lead a major competitor to OneDrive back in the day, so that's saying a lot. I still have to restart it from time to time, though.
  • BoredPositron 9mo ago
    You use your private hardware at work?
• tobadzistsini 9mo ago
  Article reads like an anti-Linux post because the author goes on about, "muh mouse buttons" and "how many desktop environments?" Screw that, do something simple like Ubuntu that just works without decision paralysis. The whole piece reads like, "Linux is good if you're smart so git gud" esp. since he makes a point of crowing how it's Arch-based.
• beegeezuz 9mo ago
  [dead]
• Neil44 9mo ago
  I switched my main everyday machine to Ubuntu last May, no regrets, it's a superior experience day to day.
• 0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
  > I picked CachyOS rather than a better-known distro like Ubuntu because it’s optimized for modern hardware So this isn't a usual comparison, as the vast majority of users will choose Ubuntu, Fedora, or Mint. CachyOS is also a new distro, meaning it won't last long (most distributions, like small businesses, only last a few years). It's also Arch-based, meaning the user is going to get constant updates, which leads to problems. Finally, Cachy is optimized for speed and security, not hardware. > First challenge: My mouse buttons don’t work. I can move the cursor, but can’t click on anything. I try plugging in a mouse (without unplugging the first one), same deal. Not a major issue; I can get around fine with just the keyboard And this is where I stop reading
  • osamagirl69 9mo ago
    If you hold out for a few more paragraphs until he gets past the installer there is closure: The issue is that he was using an obscure gaming mouse, and the solution was to use a different mouse.
    • foresto 9mo ago
      > and the solution was to use a different mouse. Or make a small edit to a config file, to work around that nonstandard mouse vendor's mistake.
• secondcoming 9mo ago
  It's kind of concerning to me that Ubuntu has started paywalling some package updates behind Ubuntu Pro. Thinking of switching to Debian.
  • rpigab 9mo ago
    Ubuntu pro and snap sure are obnoxious. On servers I prefer Debian, but my experience on Debian hasn't been as smooth as Ubuntu for gaming, even when activating Debian nonfree repositories with proprietary NVIDIA drivers. I've had some trouble with the Wayland transition, but now everything works fine. Also, the Steam client is officially supported only on Ubuntu. Probably SteamOS too, implicitly.
• Dwedit 9mo ago
  I can't switch to Linux because I am so dependent on Visual Studio.
• jama211 9mo ago
  “Linux is so easy and great, my mouse didn’t even work and I have it unplugged to this day, and I can’t even play minecraft!” - I use every OS and have arch on my gaming pc (dual booted I’ll admit), but this is both one of the worst articles advocating for desktop Linux and one of the best at the same time, because it shows the harsh truth a lot of people experience and us Linux users don’t even want to admit exists.
  • IshKebab 9mo ago
    I agree. Yet another "Linux is great! The only issues I had were A, B, C, D, E...". I also use every OS and Windows 11 is still the most hassle free and reliable (at least if you install the IoT version using Rufus). I still have to use X because Wayland has a couple of remaining issues. Also most distros inexplicably use Gnome despite KDE being significantly better. Why?
    • lunar_rover 9mo ago
      KDE 5 wasn't much better than GNOME 3, it's the main reason behind GNOME default I think. It's only til KDE 6 they got back up on their feet and solved the most egregious design issues, many more still linger. GNOME/Red Hat for a long time is the only one even trying to figure out a solution for some of the longstanding issues like application distribution and sandboxing. Those rant articles about GNOME unfortunately went nowhere since the other desktops were all stuck. KDE Discover eventually supported Flatpak which was advocated by GNOME for years, SteamOS using Flatpak ended up being the decisive push. GNOME having better enterprise support can be another factor.
      • cromka 9mo ago
        I find Gnome way more visually appealing as well. Saying this as a KDE developer, too.
    • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
      "Windows is great… you only need to… install the IoT version using Rufus" Oh and tweak 24 settings with these powershell scripts, and better run them after every update to ensure they weren't changed back on purpose. Otherwise, totally hassle free.
• christkv 9mo ago
  Im pretty happy with bazzite after getting used to the atomic fedora underpinning and how it changes the way I have to organize and install some stuff
• 999900000999 9mo ago
  It's a catch 22. The way to make Linux easy to use is basically just to pre-install it and ensure the hardware is compatible. System 76 does this, and charges 3x as much as other OEMs. At this point if I'm a consumer ohh Linux is 3x the price. If you install Linux on a refurbished Thinkpad, most of the time you can get something very nice for 500$ or less. I often dream, if I had money, of buying and refurbishing hundreds of laptops per year. Installing Linux and giving them out. Would be better than cities handing out Chromebooks.
  • lpcvoid 9mo ago
    If I buy a laptop from Lenovo today, buying it without an OS or with Linux is cheaper than Windows.
    • 999900000999 9mo ago
      Depends on the model. The vast vast majority of Thinkpads on the US Lenovo website don't even offer Linux.
• einpoklum 9mo ago
  I noticed the blog post said nothing about working with documents, i.e. the office suite the poster was using. Or - maybe he wasn't at all? I wonder. Same goes for email, although perhaps he was just using webmail.
  • saltmate 9mo ago
    Have you ever heard of Thunderbird? There's to my knowledge no other mail client besides maybe mutt that offers more features and flexibility. For office, LibreOffice doesn't feel very modern but is capable of a lot of things.
    • einpoklum 9mo ago
      I am a Thunderbird extension developer, my friend...
  • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
    LibreOffice local, or onlyoffice browser. If tied to MS, Office online is an option, if you must.
• DetectDefect 9mo ago
  On the desktop. Laptop/mobile devices still significantly suffer under Linux compared to proprietary operating systems. The author even admits: "Tried getting Linux on my laptop over Christmas. Didn’t work." We have a lot more work remaining to claim any sort of victory.
  • amatecha 9mo ago
    Been running Linux Mint on this ThinkPad A485 for 1.5 yrs, problem-free. There is no feature that doesn't work. Even the media keys and stuff like the wifi-toggle function key work. Still, yeah, there are some things that are perennial problems for open source OSes, particularly wifi. Nice presentation on the topic: "All types of wireless in Linux are terrible and why the vendors should feel bad" @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwIFz9na2lE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwIFz9na2lE
    • DetectDefect 9mo ago
      May I ask how long the battery lasts under lid suspension? And how quickly does wifi connect after wake? These two issues alone drove me begrudgingly to macOS.
      • amatecha 9mo ago
        Ooh, actually it's almost always plugged in so I couldn't tell you how long it will last asleep with the lid closed :\ Wifi reconnecting after wake is indiscernible to me because by the time I type in my password to unlock the machine, I'm online. I'm totally guessing but I imagine a big factor is simply the wifi card itself and its respective level of support in Linux. I would also say that wifi management has improved a lot in the past handful of years. I often forget I'm even using Linux because it's so easy to use and problem-free for me -- but again there's always that caveat that some machines have better-supported components than others lol
  • directevolve 9mo ago
    I had no trouble running Ubuntu on my ASUS Vivobook 4 years ago.
• duxup 9mo ago
  My experience: I came from windows to MacOS so despite what folks bemoan about MacOS ... I still love it and it is problem free enough that I don't feel the need to do the lifting to go to Linux. I think that's a common thing for those of who maybe haven't ridden MacOS for so long. Windows for me is on a whole several levels of worse when I have to dive back into it. Windows feels like an OS POINTED AT ME rather than for me.
  • bigyabai 9mo ago
    > it is problem free enough The money's paw curls. I used to love macOS, back in the Mojave days. You could run almost anything you wanted, and still get work done on a decently made machine. Those were the days when the grass truly felt greener to me, macOS for creative work simply annihilated any other option on the table. Then Catalina stripped out 32-bit compatibility, ruining my Ableton Live project folder and Steam library. And Big Sur removed the sleek, professional-looking UI that I loved. Apparently Tahoe is infecting it with the glass disease, but I've long since migrated to Bitwig and Steam on Linux. macOS taught me, ultimately, that any feature you take for granted can be removed to fulfill someone's OKR.
    • duxup 9mo ago
      Yeah I mean that's the software life right? You use the platform you use ... until it doesn't work for you. I did that for Windows and now I'm on MacOS. Maybe one day Linux, maybe I pick a flavor there that doesn't work for me eventually.
    • Capricorn2481 9mo ago
      Ableton supports 64 bit. How did that ruin your projects?
      • clait 9mo ago
        32 bit plugins probably.
      • amatecha 9mo ago
• arbuge 9mo ago
  Is there a secure and good replacement for OneDrive on Linux?
  • lern_too_spel 9mo ago
    rclone
  • Joel_Mckay 9mo ago
    In general, people just use noIP home router VPN, ssh/sftp host on LAN, and a sshfs client on their iOS/Android device or MacOS/Windows/Linux. It will look like any other network shared drive in the native OS. For paid services, there are also native Dropbox client support in MATE, Ubuntu, or Mint desktop file managers etc. iOS sftp: https://www.photosync-app.com/home https://www.photosync-app.com/home Android sftp: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.bukacek.filestocomputer&hl=en_CA https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.bukacek.fil... Practically speaking, I often recommend dual booting from 2 ssd drives for windows and Linux. There are just some commercial software/games that can't run properly within a linux environment (programs like Wine do allow running some Windows native programs, but YMMV.) https://www.linuxmint.com/ https://www.linuxmint.com/ or https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop is a great starter OS. If you already use a posix system like MacOS, than the workflow will seem more familiar. =3
  • timbit42 9mo ago
    NextCloud?
    • lpcvoid 9mo ago
      Throwing in opencloud here. I ran nextcloud self hosted for many years. If you need only file sharing on a webui with users, then opencloud is faster, more stable and less resource hungry.
• bhattisatish 9mo ago
  In case of small enterprises, what are the options for migrating to Ubuntu for all remote users? How does one have an MDM solution? Most of the solutions out there are poor on Ubuntu or need lots of work to get things right. Can anyone provide a reference architecture/solution that allows them to be SOC2 compliant? But also not have high friction for developers and more importantly not have bigger overheads on process or investment?
  • bitwize 9mo ago
    The industry standard endpoint security solutions all run on either Windows or Mac. Endpoint security is an absolute MUST for a corporate environment.
    • bigyabai 9mo ago
      What is RHEL, chopped liver?
      • cindyllm 9mo ago
        [dead]
      • hxugufjfjf 9mo ago
        EDR products are really quite bad on Linux, even RHEL in my experience.
      • bitwize 9mo ago
        It's been years since I've seen RHEL on the desktop at work. Any company that tolerated Linux desktops has either been large and geeky enough to go all-in on Linux and roll their own custom management solutions (Google), or else was still operating in "startup mode" with an attitude of "we trust our software devs, let's just give them a laptop and let them go nuts with root" which means they would flunk any serious security audit. And most of those used Ubuntu or similar. The only place I've actually seen RHEL on the desktop, also the only large instutition besides Google I've seen Linux desktop rollout, was in government labs; and for those the government can commission arbitrarily bespoke security systems. In the real world, the CISO of your organization is going to go with one of the industry standards, like Cisco Secure Endpoint, which—again—only exist on Windows and Mac. In the real world, you might be issued a Mac if you're a developer, otherwise a Windows machine, and that's what you'll use, end of story.
• shevy-java 9mo ago
  "Continue reading with a Verge subscription" Well ...
• Jigsy 9mo ago
  I've really been enjoying Linux since I started using it back in mid 2024. Although I was trying to shift to Linux slowly at the time, I honestly wish I'd switched sooner.
• jeffreygoesto 9mo ago
  Did this in 91 as well. Going well ever since.
• Lvl999Noob 9mo ago
  I recently switched to linux from windows. The only reason I was sticking with windows was because hoyoverse refuses to support linux. I finally decided I need some break from them anyways and took the plunge. First, I tried to install fedora atomic cosmic. It kind of worked but I could not get it to work with my dock + external monitors at all. Now that I am used to that setup, I can't go back. Not wanting to spend time figuring it out, I just installed Ubuntu instead. Thankfully, that worked out though it's not perfect. Everytime I turn on my laptop, I need to spend 10-15 minutes turning the monitors on and off until ubuntu recognises them correctly and also sends dp output (it shows the monitor in settings and I can open windows on it but the monitor doesn't actually show anything; other times, it reads the monitor as something nvidia with the lowest resolution). I tried to install genshin anyways on ubuntu. I couldn't get it to work via wine/lutris. Virtualbox doesn't support gpu passthrough so I tried using virt-manager. The setup was too hard and it didn't work anyways. I gave up on hoyo at this point and install steam instead. Honestly, ubuntu is rough and Linux as a whole is very rough. But on the whole, I would still pick this over dealing with windows any longer.
  • imer15 9mo ago
    check out the launchers here for hoyo stuff, i haven't tried the genshin one but zzz worked nearly out of the box (had to change the wine version it was using iirc) https://github.com/an-anime-team https://github.com/an-anime-team
  • whatevaa 9mo ago
    GPU passtrough on a laptop? If GPU is not in a separate IOMMU group I wouldn't even try.
  • meatjuice 9mo ago
    Not only you could escape from Windows, you are now free from Genshin dark patterns.
  • bubblethink 9mo ago
    The trick with linux is being selective when you buy hardware. Getting things to work the first time is hit or miss, but once they work, they tend to continue to work without too many surprises. For laptops, that means thinkpads.
• articsputnik 9mo ago
  I moved from 15 years of macOS to Linux (Omarchy in my case). I was mostly using the terminal and am therefore super happy with my choice now. I wrote more at https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/ https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/, in case of interest.
• johnhamlin 9mo ago
  I’m getting closer with every update Apple pushes
• edem 9mo ago
  My gaming PC now runs Zorin, my dev box rund Omarchy. It is time. Commercial OSes are dead.
• nh2 9mo ago
  I'm using Linux on the desktop for 15 years and I still sometimes cannot connect to Wifi. This is because the list of network refreshes (and disappears) before I can find and click the correct Wifi: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/issues/160 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/issu... This completely breaks the Linux experience for anybody living in a reasonably populous area. The issue has 3 upvotes. I also put a 400 $ bounty on it, if anybody wants to give it a shot. (Given that AI is supposed to replace 90% of programmers last year, making the Wifi list stay visible should be easy, right?) This worked fine 10 years ago. Most of my gripes are around some UI garbage behaviour like that. I have a file manager on one PC (I think it's the Ubuntu one where some "GUI in Snap" stuff breaks the GUI) breaks the file picker dialogue, so that when pasting a directory path in to navigate there, at the exact instant you press Enter, it autocompletes the first file so that that gets selected, leading you to upload a file you didn't want to upload. That said, all of that feels like really high quality compared to when once per year I click the Wifi menu on some Windows and it take 20 seconds to appear at all.
  • forgotaccount22 9mo ago
    PR on the way
    • forgotaccount22 9mo ago
      PR created https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/merge_requests/169 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/merg...
      • nh2 9mo ago
        Excellent, I will try it straight away. I'll pay out 75% if it works (as it fixes my immediate problem), and the remaining 25% if it gets merged. I'll email you after my test. I think one possible complaint you might get in the review is that when refreshing is fully disabled in the menu, people won't see new networks come up (e.g. when they had just enabled Wifi, or unsuspended). Maybe a good solution would be to to have one unclickable menu entry pop up labelled e.g. "Networks changed, re-open this menu" to solve that. Probably in nm-applet's main context menu of which the list is a child, instead of in the list itself, so that its appearance doesn't move around the networks on which the user is currently intending to click.
• rickcarlino 9mo ago
  Linux is one of the last strong defenses for the idea that people should control the computers they own. On desktops and servers, root access is normal, and attempts to take it away do not work because software freedom is well established. On phones, that never happened. There is no real, mainstream “Linux for mobile,” and the result is a world of locked-down platforms where things like “sideloading” are treated as scary security risks instead of basic user rights. This makes it much easier for lawmakers to argue for removing root access on mobile devices, even though the same idea would be unrealistic on desktop systems. A great deal of gratitude is owed to all the people who volunteer their free time to create the stable desktop environment we have free access to on Linux in 2026.
  • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
    If you're interested in this aspect of user agency, you might like the "trustworthy technology" site a few friends and I are working on: https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/ https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/
  • ReptileMan 9mo ago
    >Linux is one of the last strong defenses for the idea that people should control the computers they own. Please run Kate/Kwrite as root and then we will talk on the topic. Or pipe password to ssh
    • jamblewamble 9mo ago
      You dont have to use that software. Who even would? You're an adult, presumably, so use vim.
      • messe 9mo ago
        ed is the standard text editor.
    • zufallsheld 9mo ago
      That's the good thing with open source. You can theoretically fork it and remove what prevents you from using Kate as root.
• austin-cheney 9mo ago
  I have old computers. Windows 10 is dead and Windows 11 will not install on old hardware. I put Debian 13 on my wife’s computer. At first she found it really frustrating, but then reality set in: she didn’t really know Windows either. On Linux there is pretty broad capability to solve your own problem if you can get over fear of a terminal. Her favorite game runs faster on Debian so that helps.
• anon291 9mo ago
  I have used Linux my entire adult life. Honestly never really had any issue with setup. Everything just works without having to do anything. Much easier than windows usually.
• TacticalCoder 9mo ago
  It's quite interesting to see all these people switching to Linux on the desktop and realizing it works. Some of us are using Linux on the desktop since more than ... a quarter of a century. Everytime I read such an article I'm thinking "duh, of course it works" but apparently people still think it's not the case. I do really, really, really wonder what's going to happen once battery usage is more efficient on Linux than on Windows. For in every thread about Linux on the desktop, there seems to be an endless flow of comments saying "I can get 11 hours of battery time on Windows, but I only get 10h40 minutes on Linux". Linux powers billions, if not tens of billions of devices by now: trust me, it can power your desktop/laptop just fine.
  • dummydummy1234 9mo ago
    It is a bit of a pain to set up though, especially for a laptop - I just switched to fedora+ gnome, and going through configuring the power settings to allow for suspend-then-hibernate was annoying. Figuring out the luks + page file + hibernate resume configuration is non intuitive, and is only viable for me to figure out due to my Linux based day job. Probably could have gone bazzite and had things just work, but I need a Linux dev box locally and was not sure about dev on bazzite.
    • AviationAtom 9mo ago
      Try KDE Plasma on Debian 13
• jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
  It's great that we are already in such a strong spot! I'm also excited for how LLM's can help folks administer & setup systems. There's still a lot of folks who bounce of setting up this or that thing that requires editing some config file. We're really good now about making most things pretty well UI'ee up, but Linux is such a malleable platform (complementary): LLM's decondtrain what users can do from what UI has been built. That's super exciting. Step 1 of folks being able to use Linux as a desktop is going pretty well these days. With some AI hope, I hope folks get more and more enticed into setting up some devices. Once you're up with TailScale and have a service or two deployed, it can be very addictive to keep going. LLM's can make setting up & customizing the desktop easier, & they can help operate & admin services too. Strong hopes users will have much more agency, with where we are going.
• fleroviumna 9mo ago
  [dead]
• 20after4 9mo ago
  I've been using nothing but Linux on my desktop since 2013. Converted my parents around 2015. Rarely a complaint from them and I haven't even once considered switching back to Windows. My shiny new Macbook Air is collecting dust. Almost all of my gaming is done on a SteamDeck or a Linux desktop. The only applications that I can think of where Windows or Mac are still relevant would be CAD and Audio/Video production. And even those are use-cases where Linux has viable options. Actually, Video probably doesn't even belong here since one of the most popular video packages (DaVinci Resolve) has Linux support and there are multiple open source options like Kdenlive. For music, it's really hard to beat Apple's ecosystem: Mac and iOS have an incredible variety of affordable and really high quality audio applications, however, the gap is narrowing with lots of great music software on Linux as well. There are free software options for CAD and 3d Modeling (Blender, Freecad) but most of the popular CAD software is either Windows only or Windows/Mac. Some of this may be possible to get working under Wine but I haven't tried.
  • ryukoposting 9mo ago
    This mirrors my experience. Most stuff you do on Windows "just works" on Linux nowadays, and when it doesn't, there are low-friction alternatives. The one pain point for me is film and book scanning. AFAICT there are exactly zero Linux software packages that will play nice with my Epson V800 or my Fujitsu SV600. I keep a Windows laptop around (second-gen ThinkPad X1 since you asked) and its only job is to talk to those devices. Firewall doesn't let it get on the internet, its only network access is to move scans onto my NAS.
    • 20after4 9mo ago
      For film scanning (which I do only very rarely) I've resorted to just using my digital camera with a light box to illuminate the film and a nice macro lens to focus on the frame.
• s0a 9mo ago
  can we just boot to a browser sandbox and call it a day? ditch all the old bloatware. we do not need native apps.
  • joseda-hg 9mo ago
    That's just ChromeOS
• desireco42 9mo ago
  I installed Omarchy last year when it come out (Arch distro for devs) on laptop and December I installed it on desktop machine, the powerful one. Now I can play and work on a same machine for the first time in like 15+ years since I switched to Mac so I can work. It isn't smooth sailing, I have bluetooth speakers and headphones, switching is not easy experience. Vibe coding, audio dictation works on Thinkpad which is underpowered compared to desktop, but it isn't working there. In fact this is more troublesome issue then headphones. But for most part I could live with those issues and hopefully they get resolved. Macs are just annoying, updates are for things I don't care and everything is about pushing me towards some subscription or other. I don't see future there for myself
• cramcgrab 9mo ago
  When you think about it, lots of Linux and Unix devices.
• nottorp 9mo ago
  I replaced windows with linux 30 years ago. Then i replaced linux with mac os. Cook, keep in mind that if you keep dumbing down Mac OS I can switch back to linux in 24 hours.
• bstar77 9mo ago
  I have been primarily in the tiling window manager space for the past 5 years… that said I’ve been driving Cosmic on my NixOS workstation and I’m really impressed… it looks great, is simple, performs well and does tiling quite well. It’s not going to take me away from Niri, but it’s my goto suggestion now for any one getting into Linux.
• grog454 9mo ago
  > I reboot, log into Epic and GOG, and start downloading The Outer Worlds, a game from 2019 I’ve been playing a bit lately. It runs fine with Proton, and I can even sync my saves from the cloud. I play it for a few minutes with my trackball, remember I hate gaming on a trackball, and plug my gaming mouse back in. It works fine as long as I’m in the game, but outside the game, mouse clicks stop working again. It makes sense — the bug is on the desktop, not in games — but it’s very funny to have a gaming mouse that only works for gaming. What is it with mice and OSes? Windows is the only OS I can seem to configure to get low latency, high accuracy, linear movement with, and it's not for lack of effort. I struggled for several years to do SWE work on a Mac and no 3rd party program could get it working the way it does on Windows. I tried Linear Mouse and many others. I eventually gave up, went against the prevailing (90%) culture where I work, and exchanged my mac for a windows laptop. I haven't measured it, but I feel more productive simply because I can click what I want to click marginally faster. Is something in Mac drivers performing non-linear mapping? Why? Based on the quote above it seems like Linux hasn't even gotten up to par with Mac for mice. The best litmus test for an OS for me is whether I could play an RTS or FPS competitively with it, even though I haven't played either for years.
• pipes 9mo ago
  I've done the same, though I've used Linux in work and home for 22 years (I think 2004 was my first install). At home I consistently gave up on Linux due to hardware and game compatibility issues. A combination of buying a steam deck plus windows 11 pushed me back to Linux. It is oddly peaceful using mint Linux. No adverts. No "like what you see" wall paper click bait. No news site click bait. No register with an online Microsoft account that doesn't have a no button. Just my computer. The one annoying thing is, some games just don't play nice with wine / proton (for some reason I want to play soldier of fortune, even though I know it's not great). Others are a pain to set up. But mainly it is good enough. (I'm a gog.com junkie). So I may end up installing windows 11 lts. Though I did that with windows 10 and it was lacking some DLLs that some old games needed and was pretty much unfixable.
• haunter 9mo ago
  What's the best backup software on Linux? Something that works like Time Machine on macOS or Veeam on Windows. So one full backup then incremental ones at any given X hours/days and also browsable on file level for individual file restoring.
  • bubblethink 9mo ago
    They tend to be server focused. borg, restic, etc. I don't know how practical they are on a laptop in a start/stop/suspend/internet-loss environment.
• easyx 9mo ago
  What's the better choice among mint and Ubuntu for a software engineering students? Any advice?
  • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
    Mint is much better unless you need the very newest versions of packages. In which case I'd recommend to augment with flatpak or use Debian testing over Ubuntu. Basically Ubuntu is over for me since snap and they went back to Gnome3.
• coolThingsFirst 9mo ago
  And you cant gamr so now your gpu is useless
• robbiex88 9mo ago
  I recently rebuilt my home rig with some hardware upgrades, including a motherboard and cpu upgrade. I use a MacBook and spend a majority of my workday in Ubuntu Linux. The absolute only reason I installed windows on the home machine is because gaming is still essentially nonexistent in the Linux sphere. If a flavor of Linux can catch up and run everything that can be run on windows I’d happily switch. I imagine a good chunk of the windows market would as well.
  • mixmastamyk 9mo ago
    Huh? This wave of "Linux is good now" articles are driven largely from the fall of Window's lock on games. i.e. Steam by Valve, and more.
  • amatecha 9mo ago
    Gaming on Linux is so good now I know multiple people who switched their gaming PC to Linux and have no intention of going back. Then there's Steam Deck, which has 3million+ users alone. 3.6% of Steam users are playing on Linux[0], which is kind of insane if you ask me, especially when only 2.2% are playing on MacOS. Install Steam in Linux and notice you can play the vast majority of your library. There are some online multiplayer games that won't work due to anticheat[1] though that seems to be improving over time as well. [0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ [1] https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/
• shmerl 9mo ago
  Very good. Some advice for Linux newcomers - use AMD, avoid Nvidia. Use something like KDE Plasma for best experience.
• easyx 9mo ago
  What's a better choice among mint and Ubuntu for software engineering students?
• jcurbo 9mo ago
  People interested in similar experiences should check out this podcast/series of videos where two Windows/Mac users try desktop Linux and report out on their experiences. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2888221/check-out-pcworlds-new-linux-podcast.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2888221/check-out-pcworlds-n...
• blackcatsec 9mo ago
  This is a thread that's certainly going to go over well. There are some valid criticisms of Microsoft, and a great many criticisms that are unfounded or are often misdirected. Or in some cases, the vast majority of folks don't use enough of their operating environments to encounter the same types of problems. After all, it's not like Linux operating systems are "perfect". Especially when you begin to push the platforms beyond the most basic functions, problems quickly become apparent. Microsoft's largest challenge in the Wintel environment is the diversity of hardware, software, and skill levels involved in making it all work together. And quite frankly, most often people trying to cut corners in places they shouldn't or don't know they shouldn't. On the hardware front, there's a lot of cheap nonsense out there. And lots of folks clamor for cheaper hardware. For example, my $500 Asus motherboard has a checks Device Manager Mediatek Wifi 7 card in it. Now, the reality is that Intel, widely seen as an incredible network chip manufacturer (both ethernet and wlan), doesn't have a Wifi 7 chip available for 3rd parties (i.e. AMD boards). So in order for Asus to get Wifi 7, they have to look elsewhere. Mediatek's website appears that they focus on supporting new standards first, often before they're stable or solidified, but simultaneously does not provide a robust driver environment that supports multiple platforms. At any rate, this is just one example. There are many thousands more. Much of this is driven by consumers either wanting features faster, platform vendors aiming for differentiation, or both clamoring for some middle ground between cost and margin. And Microsoft is stuck in the middle. Maybe the current driver that Mediatek has released through IHVs doesn't have fixes for certain bugs. Perhaps the IHV (motherboard makers, etc.) doesn't have a robust enough team to want to package and release regular driver updates released by the vendor. As it stands, Mediatek doesn't offer a driver for this card for Linux, either: https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/issues/927 https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/issues/927 But again, Microsoft often gets the blame for problems with this type of hardware (vendors that barely support it, etc.) whereas on Linux it's totally acceptable to say "yeah just ditch that and go buy an Intel Wifi NIC" or something and people just accept that as being a totally okay answer. And then suddenly the hardware problem just 'disappears'. As far as things that are a bit more in Microsoft's control, for example, requiring cloud accounts to log in and use the computer. I still stand by that this is far less important than the shriekers on the internet make it out to be. But it's most often one of the most primary arguments (because there are actually very few to really make). Google and Apple require you to login with a cloud account on any of their devices and platforms. In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of you reading this page right now have Google Chrome signed in with a Google Account that's syncing your history, favorites, passwords, autofill, and tabs right now. You effectively can't use an iPhone without signing in with an iCloud account, and Google is just about ready to force that direction as well by disabling the ability to sideload applications in Android. They already long effectively killed rooting devices (although it is possible in specific circumstances). In fact, every time you visit a Google property using any other browser than Chrome, Google makes sure to tell you that you really should be using Chrome. And any time you visit a Google property using Chrome, they insist you sign in using Chrome (to your Google account, no less.) So I really don't get the abject hatred for Microsoft on this front. After all, once you light up Windows Hello on a modern system with TPM2.0 and Windows 11 24H2 or newer, you effectively get free software passkey support (pending the web application properly supports it and isn't using an ancient FIDO2 library that insists on hardware tokens). For the aforementioned Google account: I'm using a Microsoft Account sign-in to my desktop with Windows Hello, with a TPM-protected passkey to sign into the aforementioned Google account. I get SSO to all Microsoft properties, and "soft" passkey support for all of my Google accounts as-needed, with unlimited passkey storage. No USB dongles required (although I have those, too). About the only other end user facing problem that is well within Microsoft's control is the amount of Copilot and AI nonsense. I contend that Satya Nadella is well beyond what his tenure should be at Microsoft, but can you blame them for having FOMO? I mean after all, the mobile phone and tablet markets were hundreds of billions of dollars that they missed out on. They also missed the mark on cloud platforms where Amazon raked in hundreds of billions. If they flood the zone with their AI products, and AI happens to catch on somewhere eventually, they're well-positioned to take advantage of it. Microsoft also lost out on being the primary development environment, when they stopped innovating in the computer browser and software development space, effectively handing the keys to the kingdom over to Google. They only partially regained that with VSCode (which was the perfect blend between their full-fledged commercial IDE and the text-driven IDEs used prior to VSCode's dominance such as Textmate). As far as "ads" on the platform, I don't really have any. But I turn a lot of stuff like the widgets off. At least the widget bar is isolated and isn't annoyingly embedded into the software like you'll find the ample ad-based notifications being spammed at you via mobile phone notifications. And unable to disable them because you also need those same notifications to actually get time critical information (here's looking at you, Doordash). This is ultimately a long conversation and has many layers to it. But what I've found in reality is that software of all sorts and all platforms isn't as rosy as the people pitching them as solutions tend to tell you. I think it's silly, for example, on Linux that you have to split your engineering between multiple software development stacks to accomplish typical systems administrator goals (Ansible/Python, Bash, perhaps some Go thrown in there if someone on your team wants to mess around, tons of YAML and JSON). Whereas on Windows it's pretty well unified behind PowerShell and .NET. To be fair, I often encounter situations where available Powershell tooling doesn't exist and I need to call .NET APIs anyway, or if I really want to secure the environment I need to drop the ability to use Add-Type and end up having to create proper powershell modules anyway. But at least the paradigm and language used is mostly the same.
• compounding_it 9mo ago
  My personal experience with using macOS (m1 2020-) Windows 10 (2018-2020) and Linux (for the last 16-17 years on off) - If you want to do basic stuff like browsing streaming learning video calls etc, get a non Linux computer with decent specs with some headroom. These operating systems are for people who just want to use that ecosystem and not need to manage anything themselves. Battery life is exceptional. Most people I know need a one or two step process to do things (like backup photos contacts documents etc) and Apple google Microsoft offer you that. It’s not perfect but it’s easy to manage. People really have gotten used to someone managing it for them and these things do fine in that regard. It’s better than people having 5 hard drives with photos and misplacing them imo. I’ve had people in 2000s connect drives to my computers and find private pictures and contacts and files etc I need not be having access to. iCloud and Google Photos offer you that peace of mind. With 2FA you’d rather lose it all than fall into the wrong hands. People have all kinds of stuff on their phones and computers that should not leave their computers and accounts. Imagine having your kids classmates find your intimate pictures on some drive they used to copy something your kid gave them. All this has reduced with cloud managed services with activation locks and 2FA and password mangers built into them. Yes they can lock you out one day, but it’s better than people having access to it. If you are serious about your personal computer, switch to Linux before you start hating those companies. You are not the target audience anymore and you shouldn’t be disappointed about it. I use Linux for most things, macOS for streaming and surfing the web (private relay and 4k native works great on M1) and windows when I have to deal with others having windows only accounting software sometime.
• IAmGraydon 9mo ago
  Wish I could. Until Ableton and Creative Cloud are native, I'm stuck with WinBlows.
• randrus 9mo ago
  My mother in law asked for help with her computer. I went in dreading the whole windows mess - only to find somebody had set her up with Linux Mint - I was actually able to help her with her internet issue, and am so happy for that unsung hero.
• tianqi 9mo ago
  Throughout my university years, I used Ubuntu daily on both my laptop and desktop. Even when I had to play World of Warcraft with classmates, I used a virtual machine on Ubuntu. Around 2009, I switched to Mac OS, and I was perfectly happy with it until recently. What I find most annoying is that I have several very old iMacs. Apple disallows their OS upgrading, even though their hardware is still perfectly fine. I've been using them, which means I've been stuck working on Mac OS 10.15, and now I can't install many applications, including some basic libraries, because they're no longer compatible with 10.15. I don't want to just throw away my perfectly good computers, and considering I do most of my work in the terminal, and I'm shocked by Apple's recent UI updates on iPhones(They've got to be kidding), so after 17 years away from Ubuntu as my daily OS, I'm now considering seriously going back to it.
  • amatecha 9mo ago
    Yeah, Linux should run very well on them, and of course you'll be able to have all the up-to-the-minute latest software, as sad as it is to lose out on the nice OS that worked so well on those machines.
• neoyagami 9mo ago
  Sadly. For streaming (pcpanel, streamdeck, avermedia cards) is bad :/ is the only reason I kept a win11 partition arround
• exploraz 9mo ago
  > The biggest issue I’ve had so far is Minecraft: Bedrock Edition. For some reason, Microsoft hasn’t prioritized making a Linux version of Bedrock. Java Edition works fine in Linux, but I play Minecraft with my kids, and they’re on Bedrock Edition on their iPads. There’s supposed to be a way to run the Android app with MCPE Launcher, but I couldn’t get it to work. The launcher was somewhat pretty stable all along, until Microsoft enabled Google's Integrity Protection "DRM" into it. [0] Fortunately, they have found a way to run it even with that added in after a couple of weeks later since they added that at Q3/4 last year. > but I couldn’t get it to work. From what I've seen, the game will crash when vibrant visuals (a built-in alternative rendering option with shaders-like experience in Minecraft Bedrock) volumetric fog is enabled. [1] [0]: https://github.com/minecraft-linux/mcpelauncher-manifest/issues/1511 https://github.com/minecraft-linux/mcpelauncher-manifest/iss... [1]: https://github.com/minecraft-linux/mcpelauncher-manifest/issues/1584 https://github.com/minecraft-linux/mcpelauncher-manifest/iss...
• eboy 9mo ago
  [dead]
• romperstomper 9mo ago
  The big challenge in linux (at least for me) is to connect and work with devices like printers or scanners. It is weird but when I connected my (now old) printer a decade ago its setup was easier and more stable. After several years and ubuntu upgrades at some point I wasn't managed to make it work at all.. And I had no luck with my scanner at all.. Luckily I don't need to use neither printer neither scanner these days but I still keep a laptop (also old) with win7 and all original drivers for such devices.
• psyclobe 9mo ago
  > I picked CachyOS rather than a better-known distro like Ubuntu because it’s optimized for modern hardware, and I had heard that it’s easy to install and set up for gaming, Uh what?? I can’t think of a more easy to use Linux one that’s most supported for everything then… Ubuntu..
• cantalopes 9mo ago
  Same! High five! I picked manjaro because rolling updates + being more noob friendly than arch sounded good and gnome because i wanted something completely fresh than a windows layout i'm used to. Now i'm eyeing after hyprland as the next step but couldn't fimd guts to disrupt my workflow in order to get used to it
• xolve 9mo ago
  Some of the key milestones for desktop Linux which I can remember: * Office and PIM apps moved to web, no longer its a requirement. * You can game on Linux out of the box, same performance or even better. * Installation and hardware compatibility - it has improved a lot! Even Nvidia and Broadcom chips run easily with no tweaking of config editors. * Old hardware still runs at same performance (mostly). If I need to upgrade its because I am doing something more like watching 4K movies, running LLMs locally or running MS teams! Not because my file browser or basic text editor is suddenly slow. There are two major hurdles I see: * Enterprise IT still prefers Windows or Mac because of MDM (managed devices). * Niche tools like photo/video editing, CAD software are still Windows only (with Mac ports for some).
• Gud 9mo ago
  Welcome to the club! I hope we can standardize on Linux on the desktop and FreeBSD on the server.
• RedNifre 9mo ago
  Regarding the Minecraft issue: If a Minecraft Java server has the special Geyser plugin ( https://geysermc.org/ https://geysermc.org/ ), Minecraft Bedrock clients can connect to it, so you can stick to Minecraft Java on Linux and still play together with your kids who are on Minecraft Bedrock on their iPads.
• wedesoft 9mo ago
  My Windows gaming graphics performance dropped by 40% after some update. I already was using Linux for everything else except gaming for many years. So I tried out Steam on Linux and I was quite amazed how many games run on Linux via Proton. Just check out protondb.com for compatibility reports.
• scubadude 9mo ago
  Linux is insanely easy to use these days. So mature. Even for gaming, I haven't encountered a single game that hasn't run, and most of the time I don't even have to think of setting any compatibility stuff like wine version, it just runs like it was native.
• BuddyPickett 9mo ago
  I replaced Linux with Windows and everything is going great for me too.
• nedt 9mo ago
  Is this still news? I did the same thing with Windows 98, so it has been some time. Also had dual boot with Windows 95. That was on my 486. But after a while I switched back to Windows 2000 on my notebook, because of hardware support. So it would be interesting if they do the same after a while. Since over 20 years I‘m now on mac, which has great hardware and a Unix underneath. Don’t let that stop you from going Linux desktop.