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Comment by advael | Hacker News Reader

I will once again register my hope that this causes at least a significant portion of windows subscribers to consider non-proprietary alternatives. Linux distros are fundamentally more useful computer systems, open source communities have done dizzying amounts of work to produce mostly-working interop with windows-exclusive software, as well as numerous FOSS alternatives to popular products. I'm not going to lie and say there's no switching cost at all (After all, a multi-billion dollar industry works tirelessly to ensure that it's as high as possible), but some linux distro or other has served as a good daily driver for a myriad of non-technical users across the globe, and technical support is readily available on the internet and in most cities. Good for your wallet, good for your freedom, good for the planet.

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And even if you do happen to need Windows for the odd application every now and then, it generally runs just fine as a virtual machine guest under QEMU+KVM. Interestingly, for Windows 11 Microsoft even seems to have explicitly removed all these awkward hardware requirements when the system detects that it is running as a virtual machine guest [0], making such a setup (Windows as VM guest only) even more worthy of consideration here.

[0] Section 5 from https://download.microsoft.com/download/7/8/8/788bf5ab-0751-...

It said that they won't check for VMs, but still follow the same minimum hardware requirements. I can't find any hypervisor supports DX12 without hardware acceleration. I wonder is DX12 really requirement.

> Linux distros are fundamentally more useful computer systems

Last I checked I can’t play 1080p Netflix on them so I’d say the above is questionable for the average user.

Big fan too but the year of the Linux desktop is still a way off

I'm pretty sure that is because of DRM, right? It's not that you _cant_ do it, but they _wont_ allow you. Ofc, there are otherr ways to achieve your goal.

>I'm pretty sure that is because of DRM, right?

It is yes. Doesn't matter for the average user though - it either works or it is broken.

Technical users might give it a pass on freedom & principles grounding, but not average users.

Are you serious? My debian and ubuntu computers can play 4k streaming without problems! (youtube, twitch, etc). I don't see a reason why linux can't play 4K. Could you please elaborate?

You can't with netflix content because of DRM.

huh?

I've been using Netflix without a care in the world on Firefox for ages. DRM allowance is up to the user.

Take a look: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444

4K Ultra HD on a computer

Netflix is available in Ultra HD on Windows and Mac computers with:

    Microsoft Edge for Windows

    Windows 10 App

    Safari for MacOS 11.0 or later

These computers require a 60Hz monitor to play Ultra HD content.

The average user won't notice the difference in a laptop screen unless told. What's more, they won't be using a laptop (let alone desktops) on the first place, they'll use a smart TV or TV stick.

For whatever it's worth, they don't support it on Windows for most of the users who do watch it there, since you need to use Edge or the Windows Store App on a 7th gen Intel CPU on an HDCP 2.2 compliant setup, and I'm pretty sure most people watching Netflix on the desktop don't check all of those boxes.

I for one bought a Fire TV Cube as solution. But I've also managed to watch Netflix 4k content on my Linux laptop with less effort than it takes an average user to determine if their computer can run Netflix 4k on Windows, don't ask me how.

You don't need HDCP 2.2 / specific CPU for 1080p but Edge is the only requirement.

Not the person you’re responding to but there def was a HDCP of some sort - might be for 4K

PC Gaming is still windows main advantage. There is wine, but how does it compare for performance? Plus Nvidia's drivers are still a mixed bag?

Nvidia drivers have never been a mixed bag when it comes to performance or stability, they only lag in feature support for things such as Wayland compared to upstream drivers like AMD's or Intel's. Being an out-of-tree driver also means that your distro must give special support to it.

Performance will depend on the title, there will be some 5-10% average loss in performance for titles running in DXVK (DirectX to Vulkan translation layer). Vulkan titles should see no difference, and Doom famously runs better under Wine than natively.

Here are a few comparisons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE5WyObAFtk

The biggest problem with Linux gaming with Wine nowadays is just lack of support for games that depend on rootkits or other such malware to run, like some forms of client-side anticheat that run in-kernel, but there's been a lot of progress in that front. You might've seen the Roblox news that hit front page a couple of days ago IIRC; and some people have been able to temporarily get anti-cheats like EAC to run, until an update changes something and the pile of hacks fall apart.

Plus anti-cheat will remain a impediment.

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