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I wish I could use Linux at work but the software used does not have any alternative (that I can use) and I can't be bothered with debloating and all that jazz. I try to keep work and private seperate instead.
My work has a process for requesting software. Over the last five years, I've been slowly getting open source alterntives approved, using them, and telling coworkers they're approved. It's just one super specialized software left.
Teams.
I fucking hate teams.
Why are we using teams.
Why did they change outlook, it used to actually be good.
There used to be a linux repo for installing teams but they recently removed it. Now you're forced to use the shitty excuse of a PWA.
Either way I’m stuck on W11 at work. No way am I installing teams on my machine at home.
To me the funniest part is that telemetry is usually for ads to convince people to buy stuff, and secondly for nation states to track you, but the debloat crowd usually never leaves home (a registered address) or buys anything, and surprisingly apt at credit card points with the money they do spend (the og trackers).
Just make them install Arch, I did just fine...
Same, but normies wont bother to RTFM
The wiki is great for those, who have some experience in Linux, not so for beginners.
It isnt that hard, moved from wondows 10 to mint, and a few months later to arch, and it took me less than 2 hours to install arch, and thats with slow internet.
And i learned a lot whole doing it, like Dekstop environments, disk partitoning(root, swap, and boot), filesystems, and a lot more.
I wouldnt recommend it to everyone, but it is great if you want to learn more about computers.
The wiki is actually good for beginners, too. As you are often forced to reallylly read through subpages and cross-referenced topics until you somewhat understand why you are doing something instead of just how. Doesn't make it easy ofc but a beginner can totally handle the wiki, it just takes more time.
This won’t be popular but I haven’t had a stability problem on my home Windows 11 pro (server) machine. I disabled online login during first boot setup so maybe that’s why … my network handles telemetry shenanigans so I’m not worried about that. Never bothered to put a Linux on it, which was the plan, since it’s not failed once, it’s been a few years since it was spooled up. 🤷🏼♂️
My experience is the opposite.
Took an hour just to get a mouse to work on Mint
Where did the 'windows resets all settings after an update' thing start?
Somehow I've never seen this over using windows 10 for years...
My home firewall blocks ads and telemetry, no matter device/OS.
Maybe M$ one day decided make Windows unbootable because it cannot connect to somesussymicrosoftprivacyviolater.com
It still would have to get past my firewall to try to make it so.
So your firewall is going to prevent OS updates?
It already does. I like to review the updates and wait a while to see if they cause any issues. When I'm confident with the updates, I temporarily remove the block from the firewall.
I would rather use gentoo on my gaming rig than fuck around with DLLs for even a second
My standard response to "just go Linux" :
I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it's still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.
As some background - I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).
I had my first UNIX class in about 1990.
I run a Mint laptop (for the hell of it, and I do mean hell) . Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won't even POST.
Windows would never do this, no, Windows can never do this. It is incapable of running a battery to zero, it'll shutoff before then to protect the battery. To really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero.
There no way even possible via the Mint GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions. None, nada, zip, not at all. Command line only, in the twenty-furst century, something Windows has had since I don't recall, 95 I think (I was carrying a laptop then, and I believe it had hibernate, sorry, it's been what, almost thirty years now).
There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying "you should manage data in a proper database app". While I don't disagree with the sentiment, no, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.
Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? Again, in the 21st century?
Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. In the 21st century?
Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won't even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a third-party download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of Windows since Win2k (at the least) and would probably work on Win95.
Someone else said it better than me:
Every time I've installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it's gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn't look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works.... only it doesn't save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically.. but that doesn't work, so now I can't boot.. so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that... then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution... wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it's been four hours, it's 3:00am and I'm like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren't supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can't wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can't do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I've loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
Linux doesn't even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it's own way), and that's a massive barrier for users.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).
Arch is driving down the middle, flipping off both sides while having the time of your life.
(Caution: May be best or worst. Commenter may be heavily biased as he uses Arch btw.)
Unfortunately I have to do both ;n;
... or at least I will have to when I try to get my homemade game engine working on Windowsintoyourbrowsinghistory 11
I'd just rather use Windows and not have to deal with my games not being supported, explaining to people how to print a word document or have to mess with wifi drivers.
A lot of those stereotypical problems have been non-issues for a long time. Last time I had to fuck around with wifi drivers was somewhere around 2012.
Left thing is the right thing
Really?
Because nothing I use works in Linux or at least doesn't easily.
My 10 year old Logjtech mouse doesn't work, at all, until I Google how to make it work.
Then there's OneNote, which syncs directly with every machine, no server required.
Or excel - got Tables in Libre office yet? You know, what 97% of people use Excel for?
I could go on for days. At every turn, Linux is inferior to Windows as a desktop.
And I use Linux every day as a server: Truenas, Proxmox, Freedombox, Rpi, etc. It's briliant for purpose-built systems.
Actually Windows is much more convenient to use, if you just log-in everywhere and use it as a "normal human". The thing is we don't like companies taking our lifes, we demand freedom, thats why windows is a hell for us, but for most its convenient.
But a huge part is conditioning because people are forced to use Windows early and get used to it.
I have made the exact same "oh, this just works and is quite intuitive and convenient"-experience with Linux installs... for people lacking that prior forced contact with Windows (say older relatives with their first PC for example...).
