With how aggressive Microsoft is becoming with ads, services, and data collection they could at least make Windows itself free.
But no, you still have to pay £100+ per license to have the pleasure of putting up with this crap.
Piracy is not a real solution to the problem. Microsoft allows these sorts of things to exist in the background because they would rather lose out on some sales than lose market share.
Ding ding ding!
Like how Adobe puts minimal effort into protecting from cracks for their software.
They’d much rather have little Jimmy and a million others pirate PS at home and get used to the workflow, so that businesses pay out big recurring fees for Adobe’s tools, which they will if that’s what everybody knows how to use.
Kinda the same thing as winrar. They rather have consumers get used to it so the companies they work at have a higher chance of buying licenses. That’s where the real money is.
aka spyware
Piracy is their weapon. If not for piracy, ex-USSR countries wouldn’t transition to Windows till around 2009, and I’d expect that in such an alternative reality they wouldn’t then too.
Piracy is the solution when what you think you’re buying is not what you’re getting and the company that you’re buying changes the product without your consent.
Every generation has this moment, where they learn to hate Microsoft (or Micro$oft). Then, 4% install Linux, 6% buy a Mac with half the RAM for twice the price; and everyone else to keeps complaining.
With me it was when they killed off my favorite browser. I’m now using the reanimated bushy red corpse of it.
Netscape?
MS has done shady things but Netscape’s own top employees have written about how Netscape destroyed itself with the version 4 rewrite. Joel Spolsky has also written about how complete rewrites are always a mistake.
Their corporate side failed too. If you weren’t fortune 500, Netscape wouldn’t talk to you. I was spending $50k a year with Netscape and they wouldn’t fix a bug unless I paid for an additional $75k a year support tier. ( The bug was Netscape 4 didn’t support dialing with area codes! )
Meanwhile during the late 90’s Microsoft devs put their personal emails in the readme.txts and would quickly patch any bugs or add features if you emailed them.
All the small isp’s (which were over 50% of the market) gave up on Netscape because of this.
What was your favorite browser?
This is the way
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I feel like you’re describing Windows here lol
Windows does manage it quite well with the OOBE to be fully functional with regular hardware. Only special stuff like (d)GPUs and external stuff might require special drivers.
Basic sound, networking, (multi-monitor) video and peripheral support works very good.As does practically every Linux distro. I install it, it just works. Don’t even need to hunt for GPU or printer drivers like I do for windows.
My dad is 60 and uses Mint for years now. That enough “grandma” for you?
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Desktop Linux requires buying a USB / DVD, inserting it into your machine, and hitting OK several times. If you can’t do that, you also can’t install Windows.
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Verification is optional, but recommended. This is true for all OSs. Don’t do it if you can’t.
Note that I said to buy a USB or DVD with Linux. Burning your own is easy on Linux, but Windows puts up a lot of roadblocks. (One wonders why.)
GRUB works fine, but again, you only have to deal with it if you want to dual-boot.
Some sound cards used to not have first-party Linux drivers, so you’d have to find some third-party workaround. This is the only real problem among the ones you listed, but even this is pretty rare nowadays.
Burning an iso with stuff like rufus is so stupid easy it should be illegal.
That’s all fair advice. It doesn’t change that installation instructions should have been a lot more thorough though. Once I get a third (or bigger primary) SSD, I’ll dual-boot Mint. I still want to try it. Regardless of my issues with it, I do know Linux is getting better. And we can see how ready I am for it now (and that’s partially up to the software).
Fair. I guess asking users to verify the ISO is just to avoid lawsuits. Buying USBs is more beginner-friendly than burning your own, but it would be very difficult to maintain an up to date list of sellers. They definitely need to explain GRUB and dual-booting better, as well as make it easier to repair / avoid the Windows overwriting GRUB issue.
That was the status quo when I tried Linux ~5 years ago. Nowadays, Linux is much more plug and play (and I’m specifically referring to Pop OS).
Cool, but didn’t everyone tell me I should use Mint, for a bunch of reasons including “it’s arguably the most beginner-friendly”?
From what I read, Mint is better for lower-end PC specs, but otherwise, I’d strongly recommend PopOS.
I see. I’ll look into it, thanks.
Linux mint user here.
Sound works even better then windows, Printers needed terminal work to install, but forums were very helpful. https://safereddit.com/r/linux/comments/rpgn28/my_grandma_called_and_thanked_me_for_installing/
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Thanks for trying linux!
I don’t use pop os or gnome personally and I’m not part of any cult or whatever.
I found a accessibility setting that changes stuff to be white but I don’t think I got what you wanted 🥀I know kde plasma has a white general look, and can be themed much more than gnome in pop os seems to be.
it also has 3 finger click in its setting under the touchpad option
Also, try Fedora 39 kde spin https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/ I mention this because fedora has the new linux tech in it so your laptop might behave better with this os.
Oh, thank god. Plasma looks good for me. Easy to look at and professional. Assuming I understand how it works, which popular distros can use Plasma? Update: After some quick research, I think I want to use Kubuntu? Does that sound like a good idea?
Sounds good to me, never used kubuntu myself though.
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At this point I’m convinced that the new windows feature announcements are just ads for linux
*Ads for MacOS/chromeos
As much as I like Linux, and use it almost exclusively on desktop/laptop, every time I see something like this I am reminded how much I hate the fact that Apple of all companies is about the last bastion of commercial and consumer operating systems who isn’t trying to derive the bulk of their revenue from advertising.
In some sense yes, but advertising for its own stuff is advertising too. It nudges you to use their whole ecosystem.
The most annoying thing for me is that you can’t remove the iTunes component in mission control (the settings deck).
It does nudge you…but it’s not full screen ads that take multiple clicks to get through every week. I was a Windows zealot through W7…W10 got bad…W11 got me to start using Apple and Linux.
Even Apple is falling. Their ad business (yes, they have one) makes billions and is the fastest growing part of the company. The app store is already quite ad-riddled, and the other parts of iOS are geared to get you to subscribe to all the Apple services.
Yes they just derive it by keeping the Windows/MacOS duopoly in place and monopolizing communication channels.
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Linux ain’t as mainstream as MacOS and Windows are.
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…and this here, folks, is the problem.
All that AI can’t pay for itself, I guess.
What I love the most about Windows is just how easy it is to find all the user settings I need to change. And I super appreciate how they configure things that work so perfect for me. It’s like I never need to make decisions of my own, they can read my mind. /S
theyre turning the deskop into a mobile platform which is inherently difficult to mod. this is so they can provide it as a service to any device.
I always laugh when someone says Linux has fragmented settings. Windows has that buddy. the fucking MOUSE SENSITIVITY setting is in a windows 7 UI.
You got me on the first half
Autodesk! All the others! Can you now, goddammit, for the sake of the mental health of your customers, start building your tools on platforms other than this crap? PLEASE? I mean I’m seriously considering building a parallel system running Linux for all my other office needs and just touch my Win-pc to run my CAD. I hope MS will continue in this way and ai-mercialize their OS more and more so hopefully the software providers will have enough at one point.
I’ve used FreeCAD for hobby 3d printing and plywood CNC projects. It seemed buggy, and the workflow seemed strange, but I’ve never used anything else, so it’s fine, I guess, lol.
FreeCAD is of course the tool of choice for my hobby projects. All of our workgroup’s students get an introduction. But while its a great tool, you’ll notice the lack of … management (?) in the background. I’m not bashing or even judging. I very much appreciate all the work put into it. But it’s simply … not there yet to be considered a serious alternative to one of the big players.
At that point you might as well just use a windows VM for CAD. With desktop integration you hardly have to notice you’re using windows.
I’ve certainly considered that, but have a hard time imagining a comparable performance with large assemblies. Any hands-on experiences?
I have used a windows vm at a previous job for a closed source IDE we were required to use. I’ve never used AutoCAD, so I’m afraid I can’t help you there.
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I want my power button to cut off the power instantly. I want my log off button to be instant. Add any delay and I start pulling cables!!!
I got to go, lock this computer, so I can do a thing! Oh shit, its not locking… fuck… Security says I can’t leave a unlocked console… POWER!
Adding needless friction is terrible! Don’t do it.
Is that bad for the computer? Because I didn’t even think about this in a corporate environment until your comment. All our employees would be pulling cords or batteries, they all march out at exactly 430.
any unwritten data would be lost, perhaps some file system updates get out of sync, but it shouldn’t be a big problem.
It is very easy to corrupt files doing this.
A proper journaling filesystem should handle this, but I hardly trust NTFS as it is.
Journaling should make sure that the file system itself doesn’t corrupt, but journaling doesn’t magically make all writes atomic. If a program is halfway through writing a file and the power is cut, that file will be corrupt.
As a user. When I want the computer to shut down. I’ve got my programs already closed. I really don’t care if there’s a half open log file or some telemetry isn’t properly recorded. It needs to shut down now.
By default, Linux can take up to 15 seconds to write a file to disk, this is for power saving reasons. You could corrupt the last document/photo you saved, your browser profile, or your nextcloud sync.
Linux usually shuts down immediately if you don’t have any unsaved files and nothing glitches out during shut down. But yeah, windows sucks, corrupt files is probably the least of your problems using Windows.
I guess on Linux, if you run
syncto write all cached files to disk, and then pull the cord, you’re probably fine.
At work, when I did desktop support, the number of people who would just hit their power bar when they left every day…
Alpha move right there
Win+L to immediately lock a windows machine. You can get the logout dialogue with alt+F4
KDE Plasma uses largely all the same shortcuts as windows. The most important ones in my opinion being super+arrow keys to move and tile windows.
There has to be a point of diminishing returns for them with this kind of behavior. This is just so aggravating.
I’d wager they are hoping to entrap as many people as they can on the platform, with their TPM restrictions, and store restrictions, and account restrictions, that sunk cost fallacy will keep the overwhelming bulk of people stuck in their web.
I’d also wager that enterprise probably doesnt have any of this bullshit
Can confirm, I run enterprise at home and have yet to see some of these shenanigans I’ve seen posted.
But there’s still enough I hate about Windows 11 that I’m slowly transitioning to Linux and then just running windows in a VM for things there aren’t good alternatives for.
So same strategy as Apple?
So they want people to pull the plug instead of signing out properly. If they don’t can this before it leaves the Beta Channel, they’re going to need to beef up their tech support, because the many office workers who use Windows mostly as a launcher for Excel won’t have a clue.
Bruh
WTF happened to Microsoft? What a fall. Is this a leadership thing?
Turns out you can make more money by reducing usability and user choice in an entrenched product because hardly anyone will baulk and jump ship to a different product.
They were always about screwing over consumers to make money. The only thing that changed is that they’ve become increasingly unsubtle about it.
Their way to screw customers with W2K was very persuasive. Such a clean UI, everything looking so relaxed and, eh, not commercialized. That startup sound. Those wallpapers.
Later I learned that that’s also when they released those Unix services for Windows (may have swapped words), with which you really could have something practical with an X server and POSIX-compatible applications and so on.
And compared to W9x it was very stable.
I feel like they go through cycles of “hey, we just remembered we have de-facto monopolistic power, what are we doing with that? Let’s do stuff with that” And “everyone got mad at us for anticompetitive practices again… Let’s lay low and play nice until governments stop threatening to break us up”
Linux and Nvidia really need to sort out their shit so I can fully dump windows.
Luckily the AI hype is good for something in this regard, since running gpus on Linux servers is suddenly much more important.
The only thing keeping me on windows is the Nvidia GPU in my laptop. If Linux got actual dynamic GPU switching support I would delete windows and never look back.
it has that? You can use the nvidia utility to enable that on most any distro, or just use Pop_OS! 24.04 when it releases.
I’ve tried what popOS had around 6 months ago, and it wasn’t what I wanted. I needed to manually launch apps with the GPU. I want it to work like it does in windows where when the igpu gets too much load it dynamically switches to the dgpu.
i specified Pop_OS! 24.04 because in the new version with the cosmic dekstop, theyre going to add a seamless synamic gpu in the new version (thatll be out in a month or 2)
also, you CAN get that behavior on linux now.
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx3d4QH_43Ekei3-cNuecZpCaaaPzFFXbI?si=oha_xORoHC0oZvtr
this part of a linux experiment video shows how to do it, i cant confirm if it works as i do now have a laprtrop with an nvidia gpu tho
Oh wow, thats incredible! Looks like I have my Sunday project now.
I can help you with that if you want, you can message me on discord or matrix, just dm me your username of the chosen platform
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/clip/Ugkx3d4QH_43Ekei3-cNuecZpCaaaPzFFXbI?si=oha_xORoHC0oZvtr
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Bazzite has an image that includes integrated chip swapping on my nitro 5
Is it dynamic, or does it use the existing Nvidia Optimus utilities?
Its mainly Nvidia’s shit. The only reason Nvidia is caring about Linux now, is that is the platform AI models use.
how long is having a GPU you can’t use without an OS going to he worth staying off Linux?
The only reason I have windows is to play games and not all games will work on linux
the only thing Linux can’t play is drm’d shit, and rootkit anti cheats. find a pirated version; bet it’ll run.
I’m not going to pirate software. Developers deserve a paycheck
Buy the game through whichever means you like supporting the developer on, pirate the game to run it without the DRM bulshit
you don’t own it til you pirate it.
if they wanted money, they wouldn’t have added DRM.
Until we are in a post job society, I see nothing wrong with wanting to support those who make your life happier, even if that requires giving some to those who make your life worse. Nuance exists, and its on each if us to draw our own lines on where we wont budge. I was merely giving an option to someone they might not have thought of. For instance, I’m done giving Nintendo money. Unicorn Overlord is an awesome game however, so even though I dont have modern xbox, and even though I’m playing Unicorn Overlord on a yuzu emulator. Eventually I’m going to by the Series S version of the game if it doesnt get ported to steam, even though Microsoft can go fuck itself (It can just fuck itself less than Nintendo or Sony)
How do you play helldiver’s 2 with my friends?
I mean, yeah, you can find exceptions to any rule if you look for them
Helldivers 2 works almost perfectly on Linux. I had to nest it in a gamescope session to fix some weird mouse issues, but that was it. I dual-boot Windows and I’ve never even launched it there.
photoshop. AutoCAD.
Which everyone should be avoiding anyway, regardless if they use windows or not. . so it shouldnt be a problem for any gamer.
Most people, even people on Reddit/Lemmy who are presumably tech-savvy, are completely fine with installing rootkits on their PC and handing full control over to random game devs.
Yeah, there will always be mouth breathing imbeciles.
You just ignore them, not enable them. Let them wallow in their own self made filth. Anything more runs the risk of them getting elected president.
since running gpus on Linux servers is suddenly much more important.
It’s always been important. Nvidia will never have actual open source drivers. They do this thing where they intentionally hobble your GPU unless you pay them even more money for a more expensive GPU.
Check out NVK and Nova.
PopOS has a good nvidia card support, try it out! It made me dump windows last October.
Pop OS has great Nvidia support out of the gate. Latest mint seems to handle Nvidia well also.
I’ve been running NVIDIA under Linux for about six years now, with no more issues than one would encounter running hardware/drivers from a number of manufacturers under a number of platforms.
In all honesty, I’ve encountered far more issues regarding HP printer drivers under Windows.
My old HP printer won’t even install on Win10 anymore. The have also removed the driver from the HP website. I’m sure you can still find it on some sketchy website, but I’d rather just use Mint on a laptop for printing all the 3 documents I print each year. Not to mention that windows updates take FOREVER on this low powered dual core laptop. On Mint it’s seconds.
I’ve been using Nvidia under Linux for the last 3 years and it has been massive pita.
Getting CUDA to work consistently is a feat, and one that must be repeated for most driver updates.
Wayland support is still shoddy.
Hardware acceleration on the web (at least with Firefox) is very inconsistent.
It is very much a second-class experience compared to Windows, and it shouldn’t be.
CUDA works fine here, in all honesty it’s never given me any problems. NVENC works fine, DLSS1, DLSS2, and DLSS3 all work fine, RTX runs at acceptable FPS compared to AMD under Linux - and NVIDIA Reflex is supported as of VKD3D-Proton 2.12 and DXVK-NVAPI 0.7.
On top of that, FSR is also fully supported - as is HDMI 2.1.
I only use Firefox, and hardware web rendering works fine. Hardware video acceleration isn’t working yet, but running back to back tests at 1080p with hardware video decoding under VLC, the difference between hardware video decoding and CPU rendering is about 5% CPU usage on average running a desktop PC with adequate power supply/cooling capacity as opposed to a laptop with limited power supply/cooling capacity.
The only problem with Wayland under KDE 6 is the lack of any form of sync, but explicit sync has ‘finally’ been merged, and should be supported under the 555 branch of drivers. Once explicit sync is supported, I really have few Wayland issues left to complain about.
Overall, I really don’t experience any showstopper issues that have me wanting for Windows in the slightest.
I guess the family computer will be entirely useless to everyone else in the house but me.
