Switch to Linux, today. It’s always been the better option, but for the last decade it’s been the easier option as well. Installing Linux is a walk in the park whereas windows is a Hilarious clown show from hell with no end.
That reminds me that now in the office we’re dealing with windows machines where the network card just stops working, drivers are suddenly gone. Don’t ask, it’s windows, it’s Microsoft abd this is just considered normal. If a Linux machine has a bug it’s “oh my god Linux sucks sooo hard, it’s impossible to get it to work!” but this Microsoft bullshit just gets handwaved away with “well computers are complicated, let’s just reinstall this”
Yes, there is still a limited set of specialty hardware that may not have drivers available for Linux, but the vast majority of people can easily run Linux and have a much MUCH better experience than windows, and that is ignoring the spyware, the adware, the ads, the plain security nightmare of having a windows machine…
Switch to Linux, it’s easy, it’s beautiful, it’s fun. Come to Linux, come to the dark side, we have cookies
That reminds me that now in the office we’re dealing with windows machines where the network card just stops working, drivers are suddenly gone. Don’t ask, it’s windows, it’s Microsoft abd this is just considered normal. If a Linux machine has a bug it’s “oh my god Linux sucks sooo hard, it’s impossible to get it to work!” but this Microsoft bullshit just gets handwaved away with “well computers are complicated, let’s just reinstall this”
Ah, yes, that. I switched in 2011 and the first impressions were about how flawless everything is compared to Windows.
the plain security nightmare of having a windows machine…
Eh, about that - Linux really isn’t immune to that. Just right now Windows is still by far the more profitable target.
Linux security is not perfect, nothing is. But compared to windows security? Come on, seriously? Is .exe still the extension that’ll automatically execute a program?
I’m not sure this is anywhere near what a security comparison would look like.
And the fact that the traditional Unix security model is being augmented with ACLs and selinux and what not hints, that it’s not sufficient. And what these things are being used for is, well, similar to Windows security model.
It’s better now but twenty years ago some Linux distros were so insecure out of the box that you could be fully owned if you logged into the wrong network.
Even still, I don’t see most distros leverage the security capabilities that running Linux enables. Linux runs the server side of the internet, being a niche os isn’t the security silver bullet it once was.
Pretty sure this guy didn’t use Linux twenty years ago. Outside of very basic computing, Linux wasn’t very useful.
I’ve been running Linux exclusively since 2001 or so. It was rough around the edges back then, but it was useful enough for what I needed.
You had to choose a good distro on that note; redhat, mandrake, etc broke on me so many times, and I was only able to fully switch after finding slackware, which was rock solid.
I remember suse and Debian where ahead of the curve back then. Package managers really changed the game when they started showing up around then. I will admit I’m probably a little too cynical. But I had to run windows through college for various software, and until recently playing most games on Linux was quite the challenge. Steam has truly cracked the code. So I’m dipping my toes back into Linux for daily use. I’ve been running my truenas server for a few years now and run several Linux VM’s so I’m not starting from scratch.
I was pretty lucky in university as most of my profs were either using cross platform stuff or Linux exclusive software. I had a single class that wanted me using windows stuff and I just dropped that one.
Awesome that you’re getting back into it, it’s definitely the best it’s ever been (and you’re right that Steam cracked the code). It sounds like you probably know what you’re doing if you’re running Linux VMs and stuff, but feel free to shoot me a PM if you run into any questions or issues I might be able to point you in the right direction for.
Pretty sure this guy built a 5 user machine with 5 monitors, keyboards, audio, all on a single 2gig Celeron machine. Built the software for all of it in 3 months. That is not 1 user on a desktop but 5 at the same time. 1 user was even back then better, bect I remember all the Regex.exe posts that is sooooo much easier than typing a command somewhere
That was 17 years ago.
Seriously. If you’re used to fiddling with Windows and especially if you have installed Windows recently, go try something like Linux Mint. Just the install process will blow your mind. And then wait until you get a system update and it doesn’t affect what you’re doing!
And you can say no if you want to!
Yeah I guess I left that part out! It’s funny because like so many things in Linux, you have all the power but you often don’t need to use it because the same problems just aren’t there.
You get to decide when to apply the updates, but they are so quick and unobtrusive that I choose to apply them immediately!
No cookies!
Punch and pie!
But what if we already use Linux? Can we still have some cookies? Or is this new users only?
You can have them, just click accept all on the cookie pop up.
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I’ve converted a ton of my older family to Linux, it does everything they need as far as web browsing and some basic office applications, and it offers a polished enough UI these days that most barely tell it apart from windows, some even prefer the UI more. Even 2/3 of our home systems have gone full Linux now too (no more dual booting) and handle all my own gaming, audio and programming needs. I really hope this message keeps getting out there and we can cut back on ewaste and forced obselence.
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I have a custom built PC running on Windows 10, which has no TPM and therefore cannot update to Win11. I might consider Linux as an alternative on some regular laptop, but I’m afraid that my games might no longer be running if I switch the OS from Windows to Linux.
Proton has come a long way.
The only game I can’t play is fortnight, and that’s because Epic won’t enable the anti cheat to run on Linux, not because the game doesn’t work.
What is “Proton” in this context?
Adding to what the others were saying, proton has an unaffiliated website for reporting purposes, protondb.com. It tallies user reports of the games working or not. The data is associated mostly with steam libraries.
I don’t have a lot of games in my steam library, relatively speaking, barely over 100. But there are zero games that would not work on Linux for me:
In this context Platinum means it works out of the box, Gold means some users experienced minor issues (mostly older reports by nvidia users) that required some tinkering with launch options, such as setting an environment variable. Silver and Bronze mean gradually more tinkering required but still works. This excludes native apps (which do not use wine/proton) and borked apps (of which I own zero).
Note, that this is a translation layer, not emulation, and often games can have better performance under Linux thanks to the system not getting bogged down by the OS itself.
Also note, that 99% borked games are due to kernel level anticheat and DRM being implemented improperly by the game developer, which proton can’t handle. You can still make it work under Linux, but you’d actually require emulation for that, instead of proton.
Edit:
Another screenshot of the top50 played saturation to show you what to expect.
OK, thanks for the information, that sounds really interesting. I was playing Doom Eternal and Metro Exodus some time ago, but I made a bread and didn‘t pick it up anymore due to a lack of time. Many years ago I was also trying a bit of Linux on a Netbook (small notebook). By then it was really a different world than Windows.
However, I am not sure how easy that is to manage with getting the right Linux distribution, then Wine, then Proton and then getting all tricks and tweaks right… - I am not a tech expert, so leaving a system that works out of the box is a bit of a hurdle for me.
What would be the best Linux „Distro“ (I guess that‘s how it is called) to start with? I would prefer if I would not have to deal with command line stuff… ;-)
Luckily, Steam handles all of that for you.
People keep saying Bazzite now for distro. But as a relatively new linux user (since last summer) I’ve managed to make things work with Linux Mint, arch and Fedora no hassle.
Heroic launcher (GOG, Epic) or Steam will handle proton&wine for you. Just need to check a check-box in the game’s config on whether you want to run native or proton.
Which Distro would you recommend for a relative newcomer? My PC was once “high-end” but is already a bit older (2016/17?). Still quite powerful, I guess.
As another person mentioned Proton is Linux’s compatibility layer for Windows applications, from my understanding it installs necessary .NET frameworks and other dependencies into a fake C:\ drive an then utilizes that fake C:\ to trick the game into thinking it’s running Windows.
Every windows applications I put through Proton has not once failed to open. Now the claims that Anti-Cheat for games isn’t supported is purely false, most popular anti cheat’s do support Linux however, it’s entirely up to the publisher to tick the checkbox to allow Linux users to play.
Battle eye, Punk Buster, Easy Anti-Cheat all support Linux natively.
What games? Even games with EasyAntiCheat work in Linux nowadays, but it depends on the devs.
Almost every single modern game runs on Linux, i always thought it was an issue but in reality it just works out of the box most of the time.
Linux is fantastic for gaming. You’ll even see performance improvements. The only games that have problems are those that intentionally block linux, like Destiny 2, but they’re not worth playing.
The places you are likely to run into problems is with certain desktop apps. For example, the Affinity suite or software designed to support specific devices or peripherals. But if gaming is your focus, Linux is genuinely a better choice than Windows all around.
If it’s not “any game of a list of 200 and it must run without effort”, then most games can be made to work either with a certain version of Wine and winetricks settings, or with a certain version of Proton, and there are many things to consider trying.
I once couldn’t play X-Wing Alliance under FreeBSD because of joystick not being visible, so I went as far as patching Wine’s winmm (I think) to make it work, and carrying that patch around when upgrading Wine or installing someplace new. Glad to report that now one doesn’t need it.
That’s more than most things require, and some can’t be made work with just one simple patch, but the point is - a lot of games work.
And once you’ve made it work, no additional effort is needed. Just having, maybe, a script setting the right environment variables and launching the game.
A lot of games will just run.
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I had a Windows 10 laptop that has a CPU not supported by Windows 11. It’s not e-waste, though. It just runs Ubuntu now.
Where’s Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer on this one? Too busy looking the other way on Copilot’s massive energy usage?
Fucking Christ, you have choices people. If windows won’t meet your needs anymore, USE SOMETHING ELSE! Why do these people pretend there are no alternatives to windows?!
There are no alternatives to Windows. You will join us. Embrace ☀️. Extend 🌈.Ȩ̷͙͙̺̰̦͊̏͜x̷̱̹̃t̶̡͉̍̋̌̿͗̈́͘í̴̡̼̱̫͚̺͙̉ň̶̛̮͠ģ̴̛̹̮͎̏̓u̷̢̢̜͊̆̈̉͐̑i̸̛̪͔̤̰͚̾͌̈̍͜ͅs̶̳̜͎͓͚̣̼̖͌̇̈́͊̌͋h̷͉̹̄͐̋̐͛🌚.
Think about all the people with computers that don’t know about Linux.
Microsoft: BUT WE’RE THE MOST ECO CONSCIOUS COMPANY WE KNOW!!!
DON’T TURN ON DISPLAYING SECONDS IN THE TASKBAR BECAUSE THAT’LL USE MORE ENERGY!
You can’t say they’re not. The even have a Chief Sustainability Officer! /s
OK I’m sold…they are officially the most eco efficient and conscious company in the WORLD and bill gates is not about to garrote me agent 47 sty-
Debian user here. All people have a doorkey. Some people have an alarm system as well. Infosec is about ’ what do you have and what do you know '. So in principle TPM is a defencible argument. You should absolutely bail from MS products for different reasons. Like privacy. Your PC isn’t yours anymore. Your NPU will reduce THEIR costs. Etc.
Don’t enter Linux thinking its a drop in replacement. Go slow and do ‘ships in the night’. Move data over to the new ship. Start embracing OSS on windows, it’ll be familiar when you finally bail. G luck.
TPM is the wedge to put a cryptoprocessor in your computer so program can finally operate under the tyrannical scrutiny of users and the pirates using ghidra !
It’s not really a TPM problem, my Dell has TPM2.0 which is perfectly compatible with win11. My problem is the CPU (i5 6th gen) missing some stuff for modern device drivers or something, that is preventing me from upgrading win10 to win11.
Yes I dual boot MX Linux on it :)
The writer clearly understands that something isn’t adding up with Microsoft’s claims about TPM, but nowhere do they address the accusations that Microsoft plans to use it as DRM (and potentially spying).
Similarly, only supporting certain CPU’s is suspect as hell. Between all this and Recall, it really feels like the driving design focus behind Windows 11 was to build the best spying machine they could.
ROFL no. I once knew someone who got offered an upgrade from whatever to Windows 10, only for it to fail half way through because their CPU was some weird corner case that the OS thought it supported but when it was time to boot… didn’t.
Also if you want to talk e-waste, look no further than Chromebooks.
Windows 11 has problems, this is hardly one of them.
Chromebooks and Apple products hitting EoL for sure.
Chromebooks sound good in theory but fall short because kids are great at breaking them and there is a lack of repairability.
There is also chromeos being kinda ass
Little Brother is a novel about a future dystopia where copyright laws have been allowed free rein to destroy people’s lives.
It’s legislated that only “secure” hardware is allowed, but hardware is by definition fixed, which means that every time a vulnerability is found - which is inevitable - there is a hardware recall. So the black market is full of hardware which is proven to have jailbreaking vulnerabilities.
Just a glimpse of where all this “trusted”, “secure” computing might lead.
As a short video I saw many years ago explained on the concept: “trust always depends on mutuality, and they already decided not to trust you, so why should you trust them?”
Edit: holy shit, it’s 15 years old, and “anti rrusted computing video dutch voice over” (turns out the guy is German actually) was enough to find it:
It may be a bold of me to say, but I hold the controversial opinion that I don’t really give a shit which computer OS you use. If you can use a mouse and keyboard to navigate a desktop environment then 🤙 you are ahead of the curve at this point.
Because it’s so hard to use Rufus and make a win 11 install that bypasses the tpm requirements.
having to use hacks to get an operating system installed shouldn’t be needed.
requiring a Microsoft account to use Windows also shouldn’t even have been considered.
That and having to manually upgrade CUs. It just doesn’t scale. It’s easier for most people to buy a new machine.
It’s easier for most people to just continue using their current PC past the end of support.
Cause your use case is the only one that exists, of course.
Companies are reluctant to use this method as theres no telling what will break due to TPM being disabled. Some will still use it as they have no other choice though.
