When my elderly, and tech illiterate family ask how to switch from Windows; I’m sorry but I’m not telling them to use Linux because they’re going to harass me nonstop for tech support.
At best this will be the year of macOS, because there’s a store I can send them to for all their questions.
This is going to be my Year of Linux, finally taking the plunge. Nothing special, just a used laptop running Mint to replace a Chromebook (who’s hardware has finally failed). Gonna try to replace my gaming PC next year once I’ve got more of a handle on the different distros and have played around with them (and more money).
These threads are always hilarious. People are not switching to any kind of desktop. They are moving away from PCs entirely. There is an entire population who only use a phone as their computer.
Android is Linux. Still a win LOL
I truly yearn for the day i can just plug in a phone into a dock and use it as a PC honestly.
Samsung Dex?
nah you don’t need dex get termux and x11 and hook it up to a monitor mouse and keyboard. Dex is way too limited for what i wanna do with a phone PC, and phones aren’t really there yet.
If it wasn’t for the non-uninstallable crapware, that would indeed be a consideration.
They arent the strongest phone out there, but the PinePhone (and Pro) can do exactly that. I am heavily considering one for a second phone to play with
Remember folks, it doesn’t have to be the year, it only has to be your year.
Mine was about 19 years ago. I’m no genius, and I haven’t regretted it once. Linux has come a long way since then, while windows is deep in the enshittification trenches now, and has been for years. Your YOTLD can start today if you want it to. Tired of being actively abused by your OS? We’ve been here all along.
And if you are happy where you are, that’s fine too.
Modern installers definitely make it easier than ever before. WiFi even tends to work immediately.
Nah, this is the year of Linux on desktop for everyone. The old Mayans foretold so.
They thought it was a great idea to remove the feature to unlock the taskbar and move it to the top or side of your screen in windows 11. I don’t care if it was a design choice, it was a fucking stupid one.
You can’t unlock and move the taskbar anymore!?!?
No, its insane, and I felt the same way you do now when I found out.
I can’t believe this is still impossible. Surely engineers at Microsoft are suffering from this too? But I guess they really want to push the search bar and ai features that don’t fit on a vertical taskbar.
Edge really said “There can be only one!”
Adwaita is the one and only!
I don’t even want it vertical. I just want it up top. 🤣
This right here drove me to dual boot Manjaro. I can’t be the only person who has stacked monitors instead of side-by-side monitors. The UI is an abomination and the telemetry even moreso.
Linux is not turn key, and as a significantly PC gaming user it has limitations. I still have not set up modding yet, and whether Vortex mod manager will work or not is still unclear. I can’t get more than 60Hz out of my monitor on HDMI, which is required if I want 175Hz and 10bit color due to DisplayPort 1.4 limitations. Sleep causes my motherboard to permanently display a “CPU unknown” QLED Code. Instructions on simple tasks like creating a permanent drive mount at boot are confusing because there are steps that seem to be just assumed by everyone writing them. Etc.
I am working my way through these, but still find myself in Windows 11 most of the time because unfortunately it just works. Software is natively written for it, there is no searching for how to get peripherals or programs to work. I say this as a lifelong tech nerd who started on Windows 3.1 and DOS, and who’s job involves working with Linux based equipment. This shouldn’t be as hard as it has been to transition, but it is.
there is a new in dev version of the vortex mod manager that does work under linux available under https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMods.App … it’s not complete yet, but it works for cyberpunk for me, check it out!
That is super exciting, I’ll give it a try. Thanks for pointing that out, I thought it was still in the rumours and supported speculation phase. If this trend continues then Linux will be more and more viable going forward. SteamDeck pushing the gaming scene has been huge, I hope the momentum just keeps increasing.
Honestly your situation is kind of a worst case scenario.
At this point Linux works really well if all you want to do is browse the web and play (single player) games.
It also works pretty well if you’re an expert who understands the system in and out and can comfortably edit any config file on their drive to achieve what they want.
But if you’re a Windows power user whose used to being able to set up all kinds of niche functionality its a rough experience when all of your knowledge is now suddenly useless and there’s a different set of things that are easy or hard to do.
Its actually kind of a similar experience going the other way. For example there are some things that Linux users are used to being able to script that can’t really be accomplished on Windows except via autohotkey, which from a Linux user’s perspective just seems incredibly dumb.
You’re absolutely right, I feel almost as bad attempting to use Mac as I do Linux but it is a less powerful OS and I just accept there are things I can’t do. Plus it IS designed to be idiot proof.
For Linux, I run into the problem that there is a floor of knowledge assumed in every tutorial. Auto mount my secondary NTFS drive at boot? Just do XYZ in fstab. Don’t know where fstab is and where to make that entry? You’re SOL. I am comfortable in command line to an extent, but it’s been a long time since I dailied DOS, honestly don’t spend a lot of time in PowerShell, and networking equipment is a completely different beast.
Microsoft may suck, but I can usually find my way through a script or formula or something with their knowledgebase. My skill set doesn’t translate well, and I am finding it harder to learn than I probably should. I probably need to take an introductory Linux course.
This shit drives me bonkers lol. I have to use windows for work but use CachyOS outside of work on all my PCs minus my mac mini.
Aka every other fucking PC in my life I have the bar up top lol
Who uses Windows like that? The UI gets all screwed up anyway
I see Lain, I upvote. Because, no matter where they are, people are connected.
I have mint running on my laptop now.
Pro tip for anyone who wants to try Linux and maybe attempt to set up dual boot with Windows:
TURN OFF BITLOCKER ENCRYPTION IN WINDOWS FIRST.
IF you don’t, here’s what happened to me:
Mint live USB instance booted easily at first. I started the install process and selected dual boot. Mint setup then proceeded to prompt me to enroll a MACHINE OWNER KEY… And then realized that bitlocker encryption would prevent it from setting up dual boot.
It said, to paraphrase, “exit mint setup, log back into Windows, disable bitlocker, then you can come back and install”
Well that was a fucking lie because YOU CANNOT GET BACK INTO MINT!
WHY? Because mint FORGOT the MOK!
When you try to get back into mint from the boot selection menu, it says
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Foundthe upshot is that you computer will never let mint live USB session ever boot again UNLESS you disable secure boot in BIOS and rename grub to mmx64.efi in the ISO image.
And if you DO those things chances are mint will never present you with the option to detect and set up dual boot with you extant windows instance ever again.
I went ahead and nuked my windows 11 instance on my laptop because it was being a bitch and clearly was never going to be a good neighbor to mint. I have no major regrets because mint is nice and I like it. It just didn’t turn out how I would’ve ideally intended. But one way or another Windows 11 HAD TO GO. So, in the broad sense, I wanted to switch to mint… And I have! All good.
That is a blessing in disguise. Congratulations on cleansing your laptop of that horrible operating system. I did so last month and my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.
Lain is what prompted me to switch to Linux! Watching a character who doesn’t yet understand computers fuck around with a computer really inspired me to fuck around with my computer
Let’s all love Linux
20 years and counting its been Linux desktop for me. There really hasn’t been a good alternative yet.
Honest question, how would my life improve if more people switched to Linux? God bless all the maintainers that have made it simple enough for an idiot like me to understand it
Most things work right out of the box and those that don’t I could do less with anyway, Linux is perfect
Less corporate shitfuckery all around. Right now Windows pretty much has a monopoly on the desktop, which is why they have completely stopped caring about users. Once Linux gets above ten percent market share or so, they’ll take notice. And then whine about “communism” or some bullshit.
Cool, they’ll take notice but I’m not going back and neither are a lot of people I’m sure. Not going back
linux would gain more support, more developers, and more market share, making it more universal. All of these are going to be beneficial to everybody.
Already got lots of support and universality hat more do you need? X4 is native on Linux
Beyond games, hardware support would still be a pretty big one. If Linux is widely adopted enough, it makes more and more sense for hardware companies to make sure their new devices will be supported on launch day. Not having to worry about my network card being too new from a brand that has poor/no Linux support would be a pretty big factor in influencing my purchases the next time I’m looking for a laptop. Pretty sure I’ve also encountered people complaining about being unable to use all the features that their new GPU offers under Windows, because the company hasn’t released a Windows driver and devs working on Linux are still in the process of reverse-engineering things to write an open driver that is feature complete.
Another big one would be configuration of peripherals, as there are a fair number that assume you have Windows to run their proprietary configuration tool. I’ve come across mice like that, as well as mechanical keyboards that require some proprietary Windows program if you want to flash the firmware and customize your layout.
More Linux users also makes it a more attractive target for devs in general. That could mean you get a cool, new hobby project that someone is working on and decides to make a FOSS Linux version, could mean companies at least offer a Linux version of their proprietary software that doesn’t have a comparable Linux alternative. There’s a lot of software out there that people need for work or school, especially in more niche fields, where there’s not a viable Linux alternative and your job/school isn’t going to change their entire workflow just for you.
I’m sure others can come up with further examples that wouldn’t occur to me.
Just about the only points I’d accept, would be nice to remap the mouse buttons and not have to rip my teeth out for drivers
why doesn’t everybody understand that it’s ALWAYS the year of the linux desktop, you just haven’t been invited yet, that’s the only problem.
Can we stop with this? It was an over hyped slogan and we can give it a rest. People are slowly switching to Linux and that’s good enough
The slogan is a complete meme at this point. A meme that indicates it’s the year of the linux desktop!
Yeah, it just comes off sarcastic to me, which apparently means people think Linux is not popular enough to talk about or something. I don’t know, it just rubs me the wrong way.
You can like something and still make fun of it, you know?
I’ll have you know I’m completely serious and not poking fun at myself when I mention I use Arch, BTW!
I think the year of Linux memes are fun. :D
You can, but Linux needs good press, and many would see this “joke” as another reason to avoid the whole ecosystem.
If someone sees it that way, that’s not something any of us can do anything about.
That’s not true. Attitudes can slowly change over time. Reminding people “it’s not there yet” doesn’t serve that.
I guess the hope is that a large amount of people will suddenly switch to Linux, maybe because of social media popularity, a breaking windows change, or maybe a popular computer manufacturer shipping only Linux by default.
But even if that does happen, I would think it would result in an increased adoption rate, not everyone switching to Linux over the course of a year.
It is sarcastic.
Wanna know the first time I heard “This is the Year of the Linux Desktop!”? 1999.
Yes, nineteen ninety-nine. Twenty-five years ago.
Linux as a desktop is still a laugh. It still doesn’t come close to Windows of twenty-five years ago.
But it’s killer as a server, or a purpose-built system. My NAS/VM server kicks ass under Linux, way better than running windows. Even VMware recently switched their desktop virtualization to using Linux. This is where Linux shines.
You could make a Windows killer desktop, except which distro? Which shell? Which set of base tools/utilities? Define “killer desktop” in the Linux community.
Windows is the general purpose OS, with a common shell. That’s what MS did, settle on one UI (mostly), so it’s a common experience everywhere.
I’ve been on Linux for 20 years. Gamer, so dual-booted for the first 10. Ubuntu -> Linux Mint -> Debian -> Mint Debian -> EndeavourOS. I think. Messed with Knoppix and Mandrake before those, THAT was definitely before the “YotLD” 😅
Ads in the OS make me kick that shit out in an instant. Yes, I know there are third-party utils but I’ve seen settings reverted on update, and if I’m fighting my own PC it’s going to be by choice and I’m going to learn to improve it along the way, which is not easy in closed-source land. If ads didn’t do it, “AI” “stealing” my data would. Somehow piracy bad but I have to agree to let Microsoft copy my data for profit in order for me to use my computer? Fuck that.
You could make a Windows killer desktop, except which distro?
Mint Debian for computer-illiterate. The built-in software manager has tens of thousands of safe Debian packages available rather than installing adware infestations from random websites. Two clicks and a password OR set automatic for getting all software up-to-date.
EndeavourOS for tech-inclined. More cutting-edge software packages from Arch (and the AUR, but adds a bit of risk/required knowledge). Still no installing random shit from websites.
Which shell/tools/utilities?
The defaults, or whatever you want or need from a wide selection. Choice is bad now?
Steam, duh. Lutris has scripts to install the older/more picky/fiddly Windows games that aren’t on Steam. For students/office work, OnlyOffice has better compatibility with MS formats if necessary. List goes on…
Linux as a desktop is still a laugh. It still doesn’t come close to Windows of twenty-five years ago.
Pfft, several Linux distros are an excellent desktop OS and I think people who argue against that aren’t worth my time.
Naive take imo. No distro is an excellent desktop. They all have flaws and issues that are not present in windows to an “average user”. Regular users barely know how to install apps on their phones. To be excellent all intelligence groups should be able to easily use it
When people say shit like this, they seem to forget the vast amounts of issues that windows also has. How long has it been since the last time an update bricked millions of machines? Even when you only talk about things MS is directly responsible for, that timespan rarely exceeds a year. And this is even with their enormous budget and army of vendors essentially beta testing and partnering with them to keep shit like that from happening.
Naive take imo. No distro is an excellent desktop.
Wow. Not a single one, huh? I’m sure manufacturers assuming Windows and lazily building hardware that does 90% of the work in giant closed-source drivers have nothing to do with the “flaws and issues” that ALL distros apparently have some of.
No Linux distro I’ve run has had a necessary parent process like “explorer.exe” crash causing the PC to mysteriously stop working with no indication of what’s happening, an issue I’m still encountering in others’ Windows PCs 25 years later… or having the main (Start) menu responding to clicks/taps (changing color like it’s activated) but not opening the menu, seen that on multiple Windows machines with perfectly fine hardware. Maybe it was too busy loading unwanted, unsolicited ads into the Start menu to do its job.
The “average user” will either pay a not-insignificant amount of money to fix issues or throw away still-good hardware and buy new every 3-5 years, at which point they will still need help backing up and restoring their data unless they are sending it all to Microsoft cloud who is training “AI” with it for profit. Environmentally and financially taxing but I guess I can’t complain; more free/dirt-cheap Linux boxes for my friends and family!
Edit: My wife and son are gaming on up-to-date OSes on PCs that are old enough to drive a car. Truth be told, my son has a slightly newer video card than that, though. Energy use is becoming a concern although it’s not really wasted when we need to heat the house six or seven months out of the year where we are.
I have that happen constantly in KDE lol.
I’m mostly of that opinion also :D
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You don’t seem to understand
But I’m an honest man.
2025 lets gooooooo (the year needs at least one win)
