The simple fact is there will always be that one little thing that stops windows users fron switching. If 99.999999% of all windows software worked on Linux windows users would say “well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works”. The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that. I would take that one step forward and say that when Windows 10 goes EOL half of people wont care and the other half will get new computers, the amount of people who switch to Linux will be statistically insignificant.
“well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works”.
I am well past the point in my personal life where if it doesn’t work on Linux, or in many cases isn’t FOSS itself, it just doesn’t exist to me. I can be motivated to learn new programs when it feels like there’s a good purpose behind it.
I’m in my 40s so maybe it’s combination of “I’m too old for Windows’ shit” and “I’m not too old to learn a few new tricks.”
The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that.
Linux Mint Cinnamon may not be that, but it is very close.
My parents mentioned the windows end of life message to me a few weeks ago, and I think I’m going to try mint for them. As far as I know they basically need a file explorer to copy photos from SD cards, and of course a web browser.
Statistically insignificant is one way to put it, but I would argue it is somewhat significant. Just perhaps not to the extent we’d like to see. What I’ll be watching for is the major uptick in viruses, malware and ransomware infecting that one half of users that will stay on win10 without a care in the world.
I think there will be a big jump in Europeans switching to Linux because of America going to hell at least.
I was in a meeting today with a few people where we were discussing what direction we want a part of a European government to go in for tech. Getting rid of USA companies and on-boarding open-source solutions. The main issue, as usual, are the users. They’re so used to the M365 suite they won’t accept anything else.
Apart from the fact that most open-source solutions don’t cover the stack Microsoft delivers, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
We need more guidance from the EU to start producing viable alternatives.
Honestly I don’t really see why some Linux users are pushing so hard for everyone to move to Linux. Use whatever floats your boat.
One of us, one of us! Hahaha. I think at the core of it we care about other people and don’t want to see them be stuck in a privacy nightmare with no way to escape… and they paid for that experience. But yes, I also support people doing what they like, I sincerely mean that.
Personally I think the opposite is better, we need more people telling Windows users “hey if you’re going to Linux expecting Windows just use Windows”. The simple fact is Linux is not a Windows replacement because Linux is fundamentally not Windows. For Linux users like me thats absolutely incredible (we dont want Windows but OSS), but for people who love Windows less so. Linux desktops look different (especially Gnome), Linux software works differently, the terminal is completely different on Linux (its not needed to use Linux but its so powerful that learning it is reccomend), there are installation files (DEB and RPM) but on Linux most people use software repos, and fundamentally the mindset behind Linux is vastly different from Windows.
Switching from Windows to Linux on an older computer is like when you finally get around to clearing the bathtub drain after years of hair and crud building up. Who knew a bath could drain that fast!? And now there’s no pool of water building up when I shower. Anyway, I highly recommend both Linux and clearing the drains.
I’d switch in a heartbeat if Linux can play all my games including non-steam ones
You can. Now it’s mostly games with kernel anti-cheat that don’t work.
For epic and gog you can use the heroic launcher. For ther stuff with an installer, you can use wine to install it and manually add the exe to steam.
Ugh I have ONE game that’s 20 years old and does not work on Linux whatsoever. It’s an extremely important game to me because my best friends and I play together. We’re the only people who play it anymore. I can’t live without it, so I’m stuck on Windows for my main game machines.
My other machines? Linux lawl
Conversely, I’m coming to the conclusion that I could probably live with just a steam deck, instead of a laptop etc. A portable screen, or my projector, my nice Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and I reckon it’ll do everything I really need day-to-day.
I know just enough about Linux to know I should have been getting into it when I graduated over a decade ago.
I also know just enough to know it can do pretty much everything I need, as long as I’m willing to switch to a Linux alternative with similar capabilities.
However, I am Linux-dumb and deeply set into my windows, to the point where I’m not sure I have the technical savvy to switch.
From my understanding, Linux works very well, as long as you know what you’re doing.
I’m sure I’m overestimating the learning curve but it’s still intimidating.
I felt the exact same way, still do, but I bought a new drive and installed Linux Mint on it (it’s the most Windows like experience I’ve found). I kept my old windows drive just in case, but I haven’t needed it so far.
The only time I ever used something that wasn’t Windows was DOS when I was very little.
It’s definitely overwhelming when trying to get certain things working that aren’t natively supported, but thankfully those are few and far between. There’s also a lot of people in the Linux community that are passionate about it, and tend to be very helpful.
You can always download what I think is called a live distro, and run it off a thumb drive just to test the waters. Nothing you change will be kept though, and it will be sluggish comparatively.
The os itself doesn’t require a whole lot of learning, if you stick to something user friendly like mint cinnamon. Key differences are how you install programs and drivers. File structure is very different. After two years of daily driving mint cinnamon, I find it more difficult to do basic stuff in windows, especially 11. If it feels intimidating, the recommended approach is to try it out on another pc, dualboot, or use it in a virtual machine.
Go for it. You don’t need to install Linux in order to start getting your feet wet. Get a USB 3.0+ flash drive and put a “live” (CD/USB, whatever the distro wants to call it) distro on there. There are plenty of directions out there on how to make one from Windows. Most live distros nowadays are persistent, so any programs you install will be there next time you load it up. It will definitely be slower than a normal install, but it’ll let you get a feel for how things work.
Go ham wild on there, break stuff, see if you can fix it, don’t, then remake it again. Try different desktop environments (DEs) and see what you like. Your distro of choice is less important if you’re just starting, but any of the big ones will be fine. I’d recommend trying a few different DEs from the same distro, see what you like the feel of, then try a different distro with what you liked best. They’ll usually all have gnome, kde, and a third lightweight option, but in my experience if Wayland (the other choice is X11) works well, kde and gnome will feel pretty light. I use kde Wayland on this guy and trust me, this review is giving it a lot of grace. Windows 10 was completely unacceptable on it, so if your specs are any better then this, you’ll be fine with whatever you choose. Beware that Nvidia cards have driver issues, they’re fixable but if you do have an Nvidia card, I’d just use the built in graphics chip for trying out Linux at first.
Don’t start with arch, btw.
Beware that Nvidia cards have driver issues, they’re fixable but if you do have an Nvidia card, I’d just use the built in graphics chip for trying out Linux at first.
Well, shit. Extra work for me. I knew I should have waited for the AMD series to be in stock…
Check here: protondb.com
There are a few multiplayer games that don’t work, but most do. Basically every singleplayer game does. It doesn’t matter where you download it. Steam makes it slightly more convenient, but Heroic Games Launcher, or others, make it pretty easy to add any executable from anywhere to it and runs it.
Honestly, dont install Linux. There is absolutely no reason for you to do so. The fact is Linux will NEVER run all Windows games, it is simply impossible. Furthermore Linux will never run exactly like Windows or look exactly like Windows. So as a Linux user, just install Windows 11.
This is gonna be an unpopular opinion here but telling people who have used Windows their entire lives to just switch to Linux as if it’s that easy is entirely unhelpful and makes the Linux community look elitist and out of touch.
I mean… they are out of touch. I’m sure its possible to have a pain free switch over but when I had trouble the advice was interspersed with quite a few caveats. In essence Linux is ‘easy to setup but…’ Still gonna try again though, also guys that laptop you all said was dying because linux made it crash is still working fine on windows with no sign of trouble.
I think I understand your broader point as saying that a switch to Linux being as simple as switching from Coors to Miller is underselling the fact that Linux is a fairly different environment/ecosystem. You’re right on that. But as someone who’s made a switch to Linux (Ubuntu) after a lifetime of other OS use, I have to say that I think it’s worth it, even with the learning curve.
I have been exclusively a Mac user and Apple cultist for at least twenty years now and only knew Windows (3.0-ME) prior to that. I have a few 2011 Intel Macs that I use for work and home exclusively (two of which were hand-me-downs) and have not been receiving updates for awhile now. I’m not in the financial position to buy a new computer and I randomly read that Ubuntu runs great on these old Macs. So I decided to give it a try. It was a bit of work that was bolstered by the fact that I do have a bit more computer know-how than the average person (but nowhere near most of the people I see on the Fediverse). But I’ve come to love it and am now working my way over to this being a permanent change.
I’m only sharing this as an example that even deeply entrenched people can learn to use this stuff. And I was a Mac guy! Apple holds your hands and does so much thinking for you! I’d think with Windows, the switch over to something like Mint would be fairly easy, given the GUI (I specifically chose Ubuntu over Mint because Mint’s GUI is described as “Windows-like” and I personally hate all things Microsoft—which is definitely a “me problem” lol—but I’m probably going to load it onto an older ThinkPad of my wife’s that we want to set up for our son).
Life is a long learning experience. Installing (or asking that nerdy relative to install) a Linux distro is no biggie anymore and when picking a good all-around distro like Mint, for example, pretty much anyone who has some basic experience on computers can do it.
I do agree that life is a learning experience, but I might say that you’re overestimating what “basic experience on computers” means, and I tend to find that this is fairly typical of people who have more advanced skills because this stuff is basic to us. But we can sometimes lack perspective in that regard.
Basic experience on computers for most people means “can use Office apps, can send emails, can more or less use the internet”. Essentially, they can use the computer for their work or for some light entertainment. It certainly doesn’t mean that they know how to or that they even can configure the BIOS to boot from a USB, or for that matter what the BIOS is or that it exists. It doesn’t mean that they can use the terminal, or use WINE to run their favourite Windows applications or troubleshoot an operating system that is entirely alien to them. I’d even go as far as to say that most people don’t even know what an operating system is - to them, Windows is the computer and they don’t know or care about anything different. This is the kind of person I’m talking about. Everything you said might as well be Ancient Greek to that person.
I get it. That’s why I included the part about “the family tech guy”. And I think some sparkle of interest must be had in order to learn about that stuff. Or any stuff, like learning Ancient Greek. One has to be able to use a web search (or write a prompt to an LLM) for “beginner install linux” or some such. If the spark isn’t there, maybe buying a new Windows/Mac is the correct way to go.
I can read the manual that comes with a camera and it will teach me how to set it up and take some pictures. Most (at least all that I’ve used) linux distros have something similar. Unless there’s some sort of incompatibility with your system it should not be an issue. If you do have problems you get to choose whether or not to troubleshoot them but in my experience doing so on Linux is a lot easier.
When I first set up Ubuntu I was astonished by the fact that I could just download a windows executable and double-click to start it. But I loved how simple it was to download stuff using the package manager.
I had a bit of experience with the Windows terminal and had been coding for two years at that point so I was able to almost fully switch over within two weeks and found it significantly easier.
More like the “Tech Wizards” like Linus from LTT have the elitist attitude of being good with Windows means they should automagically be “Tech Wizards” with every other OS. Or the elitist attitude of just expecting the hardware you bought that’s Windows compatible should be Linux compatible or it’s a failure of Linux. No body does that when switching from Windows to Mac or Mac to Windows. When upgrading to the latest version of Windows and suddenly your hardware is not compatible anymore, nobody says, OMG all of Windows is a failure. It’s Microsoft’s vendor lock-in strategy that has forced companies to spend their engineering dollars primarily on Windows.
I think people are pretty lucky today, that there is a high probability that their hardware will be supported out of the box with Linux. It never used to be that way. You just bought Linux compatible hardware, just like people bought Windows compatible hardware and Mac compatible hardware. If it wasn’t for the BSOD situation in Windows caused by crappy Windows drivers that forced Microsoft to develop and enforce WHQL certification. OEM manufacturers wouldn’t have all unified around the same IP’s for the components in their machines. This allowed the IP vendor to do the Windows and Linux driver support. With out that, all these Windows users would be stuck with Windows10.
So how about a these “tech wizards” take a bite of humble pie, learn the Linux way of doing things and go to their local LUG and get help, so it is “that easy”. So they spend 20 minutes getting setup and learning the ropes instead of assuming they know everything and expecting everything to be done the Windows way. That’s what we did, twenty and thirty years ago.
It’s easier to use than Windows
Just give GUI troubleshooting instead of CLI
It’s easier to use than Windows
LOL, good one!
I especially loved the user friendliness of my distro randomly disconnecting my BT mouse and refusing to reconnect. Had to edit grub to get it back to working order.
Or how I changed the lock screen image through settings. Now I can see it - in Settings. Only. Because if I lock my device, I still see the old one.
Or how on Kubuntu, my previous distro, the applications’ menu (the one with “File”, “View”, “Help”, etc.) just disappeared from all apps. Spent two days trying to sort it out and ended up switching to Tuxedo OS.
Such an easy to use OS, especially for those who’ve never done one bit of troubleshooting themselves!
Lots of comments about gaming from people assuming that companies will continue supporting their kernel anticheat on Windows 10 after it hits eol.
Windows 11 is much more convenient for identity tracking, so they’ll probably push for people to upgrade because Windows is too “insecure” for their games.
