this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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Tbh I don't think Linux users should recommend Linux to Windows users. Linux fundamentally cannot replace Windows, it will never fully replicate its software support or quality. If someone tells me that they need Adobe products or other professional photo/video editors I would genuinely tell them to reinstall Windows.
Linux can absolutely replace windows for the average user.
I still don't believe Linux needs to be pushed on people and it's simply not for everyone.
It shouldn't be pushed on people, but it should be talked about to give people more choice and agency in their home computing.
The problem is that people dont want freedom and privacy, they want ease of use and software compatibility.
Ease of use has been getting worse. And with the way enshittification has been hitting, the need for compatible software is likely to shift into a need for software that does what it says on the tin without 2 linked accounts and AI integration.
Those weren't any of the points that I brought up. And are poor arguments against telling people their options.
That’s right, you know what’s best for everyone and if you just don’t tell the poor children that the option is even a thing, they’ll grow up happy Windows users and have lots of grandchildren for you.
I got fed up with Windows and recently tried Linux Mint. In regards to ease of use it was like a breath of fresh air. Things just work inherently, and I didn't have to fight with it to remove bullshit I didn't want.
As for software compatibility I've mostly already had alternatives readily available. For other things the tools exist to make them compatible and don't take long to learn.
There is no reason not to recommend it to people who are getting annoyed with the enshittification of Windows.
I dont argue with people about this, because i sleep well knowing that windows days are numbered (simply due to its parent companies structure) while linux/bsd will undoubtedly continue to thrive for decades if not centuries. A little bit of healthy superiority complex is great.
What are you talking about? If Arch is too hard just use Endeavor. /s
I know this thread is 10 years old, but still the steps “My laptop is a bit too warm” – “Scanning for temperature sensors broke my monitor” – “
sudo i2cget -y 6 0x4f 176[WTF?!] fixed it.” are really not unlikely to happen again today. I shot xOrg trying to get control over my fans just this year.Valid, but ultimately no average user is gonna try anything like that on their own.
I think it’s very common, particularly for gamers, to want to take control of their cooling.
Yes, but that's why I keep saying average user. Your average user mostly just browses the internet, casually plays games, and uses common software like word, with increasingly many apps/services being available online. Gamers who mess with drivers, the hardware, and bios settings and such are not really the norm. How many people in your life are afraid to touch the windows settings, if they even know where to find them?
Honestly most of the popularity of windows at home these days I'm willing to bet is because it's what's installed by default, and of course because of familiarity.
You're right of course that professionally you can't always replace windows, and while proton let's you play almost anything there are certain games that aren't available (usually because of anti-cheat). Most pc users however won't notice as they aren't gamers. I do also find that the settings and gui package managers on most distros are way more user-friendly than what you have on windows, which I think is another point in favour of using linux casually.
EDIT: Also most users don't have high-end machines, and linux pc's are nicer on the hardware and are less performance intensive which means their computers will be relevant for longer.
I think you assume a lower proficiency level for “average user” than I do. Now that I’ve come to think about it, you’re probably right.
Bazzite kinda solves most of these issues though honestly. It's immutable, so it protects you from doing things that might severely impact other systems. It also already has hardware support for things like fan control for a bunch of systems (Nvidia, Steam Deck, ASUS RoG handhelds).
Can confirm. One of my housemates gave another a laptop last month. She asked me to set it up for them, since it came with windows 11, and I have warned her about that virus. I really tried to install windows 10 on the thing, the chip set supports it, but I couldn't get past a step that needed to connect to Microsoft during the installation and initial setup. There are two more tricks I could pull to get the thing running Win 10, which are install Windows 7 and upgrade from there, or pop out the HDD and put it in my working Win 10 machine, and continue the setup using that box, but both of those seem like work.
I ended up slapping Mint on the thing, installed Firefox and Ublock Origin, and gave them the machine. Told them to ask me if they have any issues whatsoever, and they have been using it ever since. Apparently no issues, cause I have asked, and they said nothing they needed help with.
I mean, dual booting is an option. I can do everything I was doing in windows on Linux now. Rest of my family is on Linux now as well. Seems to be working just fine.
dual booting is a horrible experience and makes Linux look bad even though it's windows messing it up
Why? I have zero issues with dual boot.
Nah it's fine. I am finally learning and using linux through dualbooting. It's great for noobs like me. All the online gaming goodness and the clean lighweight linux experience for casual browsing and office suite tasks.
I’ve had a few issues every time Windows updated around 2–3 years ago. Since then, neither OS cares that the other exists (thankfully).
VMs, too. You can use a bare Windows VM with just the 1 or 2 programs that don't work under Wine, unless they are major ones like Microsoft Office (still, LibreOffice is good enough or you can use older Office under Wine). This will minimize what the closed-source operating system gets access to.
This was my solution. If I need windows for anything, I’ve got a Win10 VM. And with QEMU/KVM, it gets near native hardware performance. Thankfully the only thing I need it for currently is checking my work email once a day for a part time thing I do - their particular setup for the Citrix Workspace environment I’m required to use won’t work on Linux.
Citrix Workspace is shitty but they do support Linux. I don't think it would be too much work for the IT team to figure out how to get it working on a Linux VM, then they can just send you the disk image.
I know there’s a Citrix Workspace app for Linux, but this particular company’s environment won’t work in it for whatever reason. I tried making it work - got all the way through authenticating my credentials and then would throw an error (I forget what) as soon as it tried loading the dashboard.
And this is just a part time gig I’m doing for supplemental income, so it’s not a huge concern for me. Not really an important enough employee for them to spend time making a custom image for, particularly when they said up front I’d need Mac or Windows to use the Citrix environment, so I knew going in I’d probably need a VM if I couldn’t get their stuff working in Linux.
I think it may have something to do with the workspace protection they require for guarding against screenshots.
I'd guess you've tried your best but in a small company, you might be able to get the IT guys aboard and perhaps persuade them to change some settings. They know you can record a VM's screen without it noticing.
My only current issue is that I have a Pimax VR headset, and nobody to my knowledge has ever got their proprietary software working in wine. I could try it in a VM but I don't love the idea of wrestling with the likely performance hit. I guess I could always keep windows 10 as a second OS.
Yeah, VR headsets still seem to have a ways to go on Linux from what I read. I’d agree for something like that, dual boot would be a better option than a VM.
Dual booting causes issues, it often causes frustration and is definitely not great for people who don't know how to reinstall grub.
The real problem is the lack of official support from companies like Adobe, Nvidia, and others that refuse to support Linux. Sure there are workarounds, but not without getting into the console which is already too much for people who are used to the drivers just downloading. Many Linux users tend to overlook how much Windows just does everything for them, for better or worse.
Yeah it’s the hardware support thing that gets me the most
As Adobe gets increasingly shitty, more and more people realize they can go without Illustrator or Photoshop, often even After Effects. Lots of users got used to them with licences they didn't pay for (at school or work) and often only use them for basic functionality, not wanting to invest the time to learn Inkscape, Krita, Blender etc. that would be adequate for their use case. However, the AI training fiasco might be the push they need.
Just use GIMP, lol
[My eyes roll so far back in my head that they fall out of my skull]
Darktable and krita.
Most of the time you don't even need to leave darktable. Great support for raws.
Anything video, kdenlive is ok for quick stuff but davinvi resolve is a cut above.
Honestly Adobe products are not great anymore. Their usability has gone down the toilet imo. xd was the last bit of interest for me, and that went to garbage a long while ago when it went paid only.
I managed to break my addiction to Adobe by switching to the Affinity Suite. Those have been great but unfortunately they don't have a Linux port either. I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to do it with WINE but haven't been successful so far.
Yeah, I agree but also stop using Adobe garbage. Too few people are even trying to break free from having their stuff used to train AI, from 24/7 surveillance by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.
Oh, windows quality? I know you are trolling.
Don't you know that you should take everything you see on the Internet seriously :3
What do you mean specifically by "quality?"
The fact that Microsoft can afford to invest money into the GUI while DEs like Plasma and Gnome often receive limited funding.
I was asking more specifically about the word "quality" itself than the whole sentence. Are you referring to stability? Security? User-friendliness? Integration with whatever? Hardware support? 'Cuz the word "quality" is way too broad a term to just use and not expect to piss off a lot of people. Lol.
That said, I can't disagree with you about, for instance, Plasma. (I haven't used Gnome enough to comment, but my last experience with Plasma back like 10 years ago wasn't great.)
I strongly prefer relatively minimal solutions. Rather than Plasma or Gnome, I use Sway, for instance. And it's solid as a rock. More so than either Plasma or Windows' graphical system in my experience.
Plasma, in my book, is way over-engineered. Windows too. And that's why they suck. And, admittedly, Plasma perhaps more so than Windows.
If I can find any common ground with you here, this is it: Microsoft has leverage on its employees to "fix" bugs in its over-engineered crap while KDE's over-engineered crap doesn't get fixed until volunteers can get to it.
But neither the Microsoft approach nor the KDE approach (nor, I'd guess, the Gnome approach) is a solution. You can't fix fundamental design flaws by heaping fixes on top. Sometimes you have to step back and decide it's best to finally rebuild the foundation. And Windows has a problem with almost never doing that. The Linux ecosystem is much better at that, I'd say. (And the argument could probably be made that that's the result of engineers just wanting to build something new and shiny rather than keep working on the boring old stuff. The result is working, though. Certainly in my estimation.) Look at Wayland, for instance. The only "innovations" I've seen from Windows is how they redesign their start menu and piss everyone off every couple of Windows versions.
And in the Linux ecosystem, I can throw away what I don't want and replace it with something I do want. I can't really replace any pieces of Windows.
I can't measure any of the above in dollars that went into Linux ecosystem vs dollars that went into Windows.
Who are we supposed to recommend it to then?
I don't think it should be recommended tbh, at least not as a replacement to another operating system. Many individuals within the Linux community overstate its benefits while downplaying the downsides causing people to have incorrect expectations of Linux.