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Microsoft to test “new features and more” for aging, stubbornly popular Windows 10
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
526 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
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If you are willing to learn how to hack Windows to work the way you want it to, the better solution is to switch to Linux. The person I replied to is knowledgeable enough to disable his computer's ability to update. They are not an average user. Any user who can manage what they did will have a trivial time switching to Linux.
No shit. It holds your hand more than what this user did, and it holds your hand more than installing Windows, which you'll need to do for 11 to switch. It being pre-installed is exactly the same as someone installing it for their parents, or whatever you said in your other comment with a negative connotation.
I don't know why people always need to boil things down to what the absolute dumbest least technical user who doesn't have help can do when they weren't what's being discussed. This was a user on Lemmy who has modified Windows to not update. They are spending more effort to stay on Windows than it'd take to switch to Linux, like I implied with my first comment.
I am the user above, and the writing is on the wall - I am aware that I will need to switch to Linux when I can no longer make w10 work for me, or when it is no longer supported by the games and programs I use.
The reasons why I don't switch now are more complicated. I use a Lenovo Legion Slim 5 as my daily driver, as I was in an accident and can no longer sit at my desk with the pc I built. This laptop is on a rolling desk over my bed.
Anyway, while some Lenovo laptops support Linux, this one does not, and my reading tells me that I may have difficulty with certain things. I may have trouble with drivers for the graphics card, I may have trouble with adjusting the monitor brightness or the second monitor, I may have trouble with sound. or even the keyboard.
There are github pages devoted to helping with utilities to fix many of these problems, but they definitely require troubleshooting, thinking, and planning.
I have also had a friend who recently switched to Linux, who tried to stream a game for me. Before he switched his streams were flawless, this time we spent a while figuring out how to get his game audio, then the stream quality was abysmal, freezing, and in the wrong resolution, so he played while I googled solutions he could try on the fly.
Streaming games through discord on Linux is apparently a whole thing. That more than anything keeps me on win10, because I cannot play most of the games I used to play, they require too much movement, so my husband or friends will stream for me.
I am hoping things become easier as more users join Linux before me.
This is all a long winded explanation that I am sure you didn't ask for, but I just wanted to let you know that sometimes even people with a somewhat good grasp of tech have reasons keeping them from switching.
I'm sorry to hear about your situation. It sucks the some systems aren't supported. It's very rare, but I guess you may be in that small group. I'd bet some people could help you make it work, but it may require extra effort. The great thing about Linux is you can make almost anything work if you put in the effort, but if the tools aren't already made that'd mean doing it yourself, which probably isn't an option.
I'm not trying to say Linux is right for you, but Windows does not care about you either. They are leaving everyone behind if they don't follow along. I wish you good luck and good health!
I know, just today on my lemmy home page was a w10 user who had their desktop background image changed and the stupid search bar added to their task bar again after an update. This is why I don't allow my machine to update. It's rediculous!
Linux will be so much better, but it will require some effort and time, and probably some help. I will have to get there, and once I do I know it will be a relief to have an OS that only does what I tell it to!
Thank you for the kind wishes stranger. I wish you health and happiness as well. I am sure you will see me again after I have made the leap, with some silly question or another. :)
Then why does most of the world use manuals? Automatics are mainly a thing in the land of bald eagles and school shootings. Across the rest of the world the manual is still more popular. The fact that so many people can only drive automatic tells me that maybe some of those people shouldn't be on the road, and that maybe Americans are too dumb to drive real cars.
We live in a reality where Linux is more popular, just not on the desktop. Most smartphones run Linux, and do most smart appliances, servers, and embedded devices. So no Linux isn't harder to use, desktop distributions not run by giant corporations are harder to use for some ineffable reason. Really Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian and so on all need to take a page out of Linux Mint, Chrome OS, and so on and become more user friendly.
Personal experience and those that I've heard and seen, sure. As are all of our opinions. I saw the other day someone using Debian (I think, maybe it was another distro) while avoiding the terminal. You can't even do that with Windows.
That is not an accurate statement. The vast majority haven't even considered that there's another option, besides Mac maybe if they're aware of that. It's like saying 99% of people aren't billionaires because they don't want to be. They didn't make a choice.
For your car analogy, I agree with it. It's pretty accurate. The issue is this person was doing fairly serious maintenance of his automatic car. He wasn't just driving it around because it's easier. They spent time gaining knowledge and experience because they're automatic was breaking down in a way the manual wouldn't have had issue with. They wouldn't have much trouble making the switch.
All of that has nothing to do with standard operation of Linux. I also switched from Windows, and I haven't reformatted two of my drives. They work perfectly fine. They are NTFS. I have used them on Ubuntu, Fedora, and now Garuda. I didn't have to install any other packages or anything for them to work. Debian probably just doesn't include it by default, but every distro I've tried does. Linux doesn't natively support many things, which is why distros include a lot.
The average Windows user switching their computer will probably choose a desktop focused distro that will include this support by default. It won't be an issue, and if it is then it's only a time-sink, not difficulty, as you move files to storage temporarily while you reformat.
Yeah, some things are annoying, but some things suck on Windows too. Have you ever edited your registries on Windows (I'm sure the answer is yes.) It's not a fun process, and you can fuck things up easily. There's no need to do things like that on Linux.
As for G-Hub, yeah it sucks it doesn't work, but there's Solaar that does most of it, just in a harder to use package. That's a choice by Logitech to not support Linux though, not a difficulty intrinsic to Linux. They will support it if more people change over.
Where did I say Linux doesn't have flaws. You're just here arguing that it can't be useful to a person who is already clearly technically savvy because you have some issue with it or something. You needed to come here and argue with me that it isn't perfect for literally every person because I brought it up as an alternative for someone who is clearly capable of learning it.
Everything has flaws, and that's especially true for large projects, like Linux, Windows, or Mac. The difference is that with Linux you don't need to fight it with things like the OP had to do where they disabled updates, presumably through registry edits.
Some people talk about people recommending Linux are loud (it's FOSS and we're on a FOSS platform, so it's appropriate), but the fact some people just have to come and say "it isn't perfect, so you can't recommend it" is insane.
I am sorry but you aren't good at tech stuff if you are having these issues. It's common knowledge that macOS and Windows don't use the same file system, why would you assume Linux is any different? macOS meanwhile can't write to Windows partitions at all by default. Windows can't even read Linux ones. Linux is actually the good guy here, it can read and write to Windows partitions, and even read macOS ones I believe.
Backing up all your stuff before formatting or reinstalling is common practice. You tried to get away from that by using multiple drives without actually thinking through the consequences.
Also using Fat32 is a terrible idea. Use ExFAT, or better yet just use a real Linux file system and be done with it. Honestly you could have stuck with NTFS and it would work better than trying to use FAT32.
This is like amateur hour for running servers.
Up until this point your arguments sort of made sense. You do tend to run into more issues on Linux than Windows, primarily because of the lack of support from third parties but sometimes because of Linux distro shenanigans too, and the community is kind of toxic. But my god this last couple comments reframe it all. Your trying to do things beyond your understanding then blaming Linux when they go wrong. By the sounds of it you aren't even running RAID or have any kind of data integrity/bit rot protection.
Is anything I have said actually wrong? Do you actually have any idea what you are doing?