In summary: the only customers that matter --corporations paying site licenses-- declared this to be an unacceptable business risk.
Anyone who is still using windows in 2024 and isnt a multinational business or llc gets what they deserve.
Anyone who is still using windows in 2024 and isnt a multinational business or llc gets what they deserve.
Speaking for myself, I dual boot mint and windows because I really like playing games and making music. Both of those are absolutely subpar on Linux.
Outside of our nerd bubble, most normal people don't really want to run desktop Linux. Macs are great, but I can't really game on them.
1. Become technically literate enough to install Linux. Distros like Fedora are very easy to set up imo.
2. Ask someone else (relatives, local computer store, etc.) to set it up for you.
3. Continue using Windows.
What happens when something weird happens and you have to manually change the kernel or your hardware just isn't supported.
I still wouldn't recommend Linux to most normal people. So your stuck with 3 realistic options.
Mac. Chromebook. Windows.
Chromebooks are actually really capable, but forget gaming or serious music creation.
I've been using desktop Linux for over 15 years. It's still much more work than normal people want to do.
If you mean something else, you never need to do that as a normal user.
Hardware just not working happens on other operating systems too, it just sucks. But normal people aren't swapping out important parts so at most some USB thingy doesn't work.
Then I think you're making things hard on yourself. I'm a NixOS user, I know I cannot get everyone to install my specific system with all the bells and whistles. But you could walk a middle-schooler through installing Ubuntu or Fedora; it's easier than setting up an email account.
Both Windows and MacOS are slowly rolling down a hill of bloat, surveillance and unusability that will eventually push people onto something else. Modern GNOME is basically just an iPad with more obvious on-screen controls. With distros supporting Flatpak, it doesn't even matter if you misconfigure your base system since all your apps are sandboxed anyways. I think the success of the Steam Deck kinda proves that people don't care what your desktop is as long as you have recent Chrome/Firefox and let them sideload stuff.
It's not just the initial install. Eventually for almost every distro I've installed things get rough and you need to use the command line.
Want to play Fortnight, well you can't. How about Roblox , might be possible but it's a full comp sci project.
The only thing that will ever change this is if Valve comes out with a full laptop. The Steam Deck is the closest thing we have to a mainstream adoption of Desktop Linux.
In my personal life, Linux is where I go to when I really just need to focus and get things done. Less weird background crap going. It's much easier to enter a flow state with Linux.
God forbid they want to entertain themselves without using spyware.
Those two games put a code that will intentionally stop them from working if it detects them running on Linux. Justified because (at least in Fortnite case ) they can't install kernel level anticheat.
> The only thing that will ever change this is if Valve comes out with a full laptop.
Unfortunately Valve Laptop won't solve this either, unless if Valve goes against the spirit of Linux and lock it down
admittedly I did the installing part, but day to day use is not an issue any more. Ubuntu is hands down much more user friendly than Windows 11
I look forward to see where developments can go from here, but Zorin is pretty good for a solid amount of games... Maybe not most.
I will never stop being annoyed at conversations around distros. Ever.
Yeah, let's imagine how they react to their entire system being broken and some rumblings of "well maybe if you change time". Yeah, sure, okay, I'm sure a user that can't install a package will be able to handle that. /s
Maybe it's simply because I AM a distro maintainer, that I just roll my eyes at all of this. What's pre-installed is so trivial it's almost nothing to me when I think about why I chose my distro. How fast can they react to security reports? Are they abreast of developments in the Linux ecosystem and adjusting and experimenting with defaults? Really truly? Because even in (my distro) where I can tell you the names of owners of specific areas, there's still some gaps we could cover better.
The curse of knowing too much. Or maybe my empathy meter is way off tonight. Idk.
Fuck. No.
I'm sorry but if the way we handle accessibility of Linux to non-Lijux-aware folks is to just push them to the latest flavor that has the most shit crammed in, well, I'm not sure what we expect the outcome to be.
This is a perfect example of a frustrating problem with Linux on the desktop. There is always a perfect distro that my aunt can just use and that never breaks. The problem is that once it was Mandrake, then Ubuntu, then Manjaro, then Pop_OS!, and many others. Most of them fade into obscurity after a couple of years, to be replaced by $shiny_distro that this time will be perfect for non-technical users, I promise! And a year later, there will be another one and everyone will start raving about it and dismiss $shiny_distro for being broken.
This does not work. To work with a general audience, a distro needs to look nice, behave well, be good at marketing, and last long enough to establish a presence. Maybe ZorinOS is good, I have no clue. But I never heard of it (and I am following what’s happening in tech in general), and i have no clue whether it will be around next year. So I’ll stay on Tumbleweed, and I still don’t have a really good solution for normal people who might want to use Linux.
Like you, I find the "hopping" nature of Linux enthusiasts to be exhausting. it's almost always nearly the same fucking bits at the end of the day. Great, you know how to use the package manager? Everything you like about NewShinyDistro's defaults can probably be hadon the distro you're on already.
Christ maybe the better approach is my other idea - customnixos.org. You always get nixos, but you get to pre-pick the desktop environment, theme, background, etc, and then it slips you an iso with those options set.
Frustration, mostly. I really like Linux and I think it should be more accessible, but the community keep shooting themselves in their metaphorical feet.
> Lol maybe even do it for every major distribution. Nvubuntu, fedoria, etc. And then we can be done with this? Idk.
That would help. NVidia drivers are a major pain point even for more experienced users, and yet are critical for something that can be used for gaming.
> Great, you know how to use the package manager? Everything you like about NewShinyDistro's defaults can probably be hadon the distro you're on already.
I know that, and I am very happy with Tumbleweed, but that’s not really something we can say to the general public.
> Christ maybe the better approach is my other idea - customnixos.org. You always get nixos, but you get to pre-pick the desktop environment, theme, background, etc, and then it slips you an iso with those options set.
A huge part would still be missing: the integration of all these pieces and setup so that they look like something that works and not a Rube Goldberg OS. Something that at least Ubuntu is doing, for all their faults.
Look at game controllers for example. That’s another major pain point for gaming on Linux. You can use all of them (the various generations of xBox and PlayStation gamepads that work over Bluetooth, not sure about the Switch ones) with quite a bit of fiddling. OTOH, on a Mac, iPhone or iPad you just pair them and they work, and can then be used with whatever game you want. No fiddling with the package manager, no config file wrangling. This integration work is important for an OS we want everyone to use.
Most people playing games or on a desktop, not a laptop.
Dell G15
Tossed in a 4TB SSD and I'm very happy with my purchase. I have Mint installed along with Windows.
Price out a 4TB Mac, you'll be spending an unholy amount of money. Plus in a few years when the 8TB SSDs are cheaper it's an easy upgrade.
Contrary to what both people who don't really play games and people who make their gaming rigs their entire identity tend to think, the vast majority of games on the market run just fine on half-decent hardware with a concession here and there as far as resolution, particle systems, etc go. At $700+ you can get plenty of bang for your buck; even more so if you buy secondhand.
Problem: Uber is expensive, and you don't know how to drive, so getting around is a challenge.
Solution: Learn how to drive.
Honestly, buy an iPad. You can get a new iPad for as cheap as $300 and it will adequately serve all of your basic needs. If you're not tech-literate enough to install Ubuntu (which is extremely easy and straightforward in my experience) then I don't think you will need the extra bells & whistles of owning a laptop.
- Reaper
- Tracktion Waveform
- Bitwig
- Fairlight
- Zrythm
- Ardour
As for games, I've been 100% Linux for several years now, and haven't had much trouble. I'm only aware of issues with aggressive anticheat these days, but I refuse to give money to companies that push ring0-spyware anyway.
You can make music on anything, I'd imagine a skilled producer could do anything I can do in Maschine in Zrythm. But it's a matter of difficulty.
Maschine has a series of custom midi instruments which are simply amazing.
As for gaming, you could probably play the next Call of Duty with browser based cloud gaming when it hits gamepass.
I definitely understand the benefits of Linux though. I think dual booting is the way to go.
I only know these things from doing light audio work, mostly relating to video editing. In that world, DaVinci Resolve studio seems to be winning, and is thankfully cross-platform. Blackmagic is truly a wonderful company.
I think it comes down to wait ultimately matters to you.
Windows hasn't gotten so bad I want to avoid it entirely yet.
I've used Maschine for like a decade, I don't really want to have to learn a new tool just to spite Microsoft.
Plus if you have a job that requires Windows, it gets familiar... The devil you know
[1] http://www.literaturepage.com/read/thusspakezarathustra-107....
Now, we can't say for sure how many of these users primarily use their PC for gaming. But it's probably a lot of them. PC gaming is huge, and it's one of the few areas where a general consumer actually needs a PC, and can't use a phone or tablet.
[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/
[2]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Now they also want to attract the "masses" so in the end on Windows you'll get a lot of crappy "user-friendly" stuff. There is the ad situation also, but is really not as bad as I keep hearing about, I'm not even sure what it refers to exactly. The only times I see ads is when I mistype something in the start menu, and I start getting irrelevant web search results from bing or whatever, with ads, just like when googling. I guess that's what I "deserve"? It didn't bother me enough to try disabling it anyway.
And finally, obviously if I'm using Windows it means I accepted that I implicitly trust Microsoft, just like anyone with an iPhone/Android implicitly trusts Apple/Google. I try to minimize the number of actors which I trust. Actually Microsoft doesn't scare me too much because they are always under the spot lights, with lots of harsh criticism, so they have much more to loose than smaller/more "reputable" players. So, anyway, I don't really see why I should care that some new crappy feature could help them spy on me, as they could spy on me anytime anyway.
I think it's more narrow than that. Yesterday, Brad Smith (president of Microsoft) went in front of the House committee for Homeland security and they were making the case that Microsoft is a national security risk.
Corporate customers may react based off of that testimony, but given the timing, it feels like the US government is the motivating factor for this announcement today.
Yeah, enjoy your just desserts of games that work, HDR that works, variable refresh rates that work, sleep and wake that works, the ability to run the software you need to use, one of the best IDEs available, fantastic backwards compatibility, etc
That’s not Windows.
Before putting me in crazy fanboy fandom, I’ve used all three systems each for at least a decade now (and counting), and windows wins workstation pc award by simply being alone in the league of what works out of box with no additional expenses or headaches.
Edit: don’t get me wrong I hate ms, but I hate stupid bugs and restrictions much more.