I still miss 7, but Windows 10 LTSC will have to do until 2032, at which point I suspect Microsoft will have fumbled hard enough to allow Apple and Linux to start chipping away at their desktop monopoly. I really hope Linux can stop being a miserable piece of incompatible shit, but the last twenty years didn't get them there, so another eight won't do much either I fear.
I suspect Microsoft will have fumbled hard enough to allow Apple and Linux to start chipping away at their desktop monopoly.
It looks like they're trying to ease up on the enshitification just enough to prevent that from happening, and they just might succeed. They've been at this since Windows 8 which was almost 14 years ago. Normies have an insane tolerance for anti-user crapware.
I really hope Linux can stop being a miserable piece of incompatible shit, but the last twenty years didn't get them there, so another eight won't do much either I fear.
It sounds like they've made great strides over the past couple years even in gaming which was always their Achilles heel. The only insurmountable obstacle is anti-cheat spyware in AAA slop and Linux shutting that shit down is a feature, not a bug. I suspect the best bet is to get a beginner friendly distro and bite the bullet on the learning curve. It will probably never be normie friendly since you have to install the OS yourself and completely eliminating the need for command line stuff is a long way away. I'd be more intimidated by the command line stuff if I didn't already have to do it in Windows after they removed GUI options post Windows 7. At least Linux would have community support for that kind of thing instead of forcing me to go around digging up old Reddit/forum comments to solve the problem.
Debian just got subverted by "electing" a poojeeta who was the only candidate who submitted her candidacy 2 minutes prior to the deadline and the electoral devs only had a 33% turnout with barely over 50% of thr voting pool.
I'd say their Achilles heel isn't gaming. Gaming is a symptom of their fatal flaw, which is that absolutely nothing can ever be expected to work out of the box. There's always some driver issue or some obscure configuration that's set up a weird way, or the compatibility layer doesn't translate that bit of functionality, or a lack of alternative software with actual functional parity...
They may have gotten better, but they're still orders of magnitude behind where they need to be in order to get any sort of adoption outside of the enthusiastic autist sphere.
I really hope Linux can stop being a miserable piece of incompatible shit
I swapped my desktop to Linux Mint about a year ago and it has been surprisingly great. My windows exclusive financial software runs via "Bottles" with no tweaking, and the games I actually play all worked with minimal effort except for Civ3, which was a giant pain in the ass and ended up going in a VM instead.
The installation was painless. Windows 11 required I supply a driver to see the SSD, Mint did not. It was literally easier than installing windows. All my hardware was identified, including NVidia, bluetooth, and wifi adapter. After install I loaded steam, heroic (for GoG and Epic), bottles, installed my financial software in a bottle, and was back to using my computer in a few hours. Mint looks very much like Windows and provides a GUI for most things you will want. It has a "software center" that kind of acts like the Microsoft store, except that everything is free. This is where I grabbed media players, torrent client, etc from.
Mint is very customizable, and unless you bolt on something weird it can be done with the GUI. My workflow is much less of a pain now; specifically the 'workspaces' feature lets me rapidly flip between multiple different desktop sets with a keystroke, and each is configured for a different part of that workflow, so I no longer have to juggle windows like I used to.
If you use adobe or certain games with anti-cheat it won't work for you, but if not it might well be worth a day on a weekend to try installing it on a clean SSD. Worst case you can format the SSD and use it as a backup target for your windows install.
I tried putting it on a VM a couple weeks back and immediately ran into driver issues followed by Wine shitting the bed while trying to install an older game. I want Linux to be as painless as you make it sound, but even your description belies the troubles it has just underneath its surface. An operating system is supposed to get the hell out of my way, but Linux's default position is to obstruct the user's path. It might be better, but it's still a shitshow.
I never tried it in a VM, no idea about issues there. Mint's installer is also a live USB, so you can just boot it on your real hardware and see if it recognizes it all without actually committing to anything. Would probably not be suitable to test any games out but would at least definitively answer the drivers question.
Saar, do the needful and send your data. We let you do the taskbar customize.
They're not offering anything that wasn't present in Windows 95, which was actually functional. If Microslop really wanted to earn goodwill from end users they would dig up the code for Windows 7 and update it with security patches and driver support and most importantly leave the rest of it alone.
If it requires the TMP secure boot module I wont be using it, simple as. Doesnt matter how "almost as fast as Win10" or "nearly as good for gaming as SteamOS" you make it lmao
I actually haven't had any issues with Windows 11. I should switch to Linux though but I just don't want to do the work. I was supposed to buy a new computer this year which is when I'd have done it but then RAM prices did their thing and I was like fuck that.
I've figured out how to remove the worst of the slop (pro tip: pirate the pro version) but at the end of the day you're fighting against the OS and you shouldn't have to do that. I've been putting off the switch for the same reason you have but I think it's necessary because this shit is only going to get worse.
I’ll just keep my W10. I am perfectly fine with the resulting OS without any of their “new features”.
I still miss 7, but Windows 10 LTSC will have to do until 2032, at which point I suspect Microsoft will have fumbled hard enough to allow Apple and Linux to start chipping away at their desktop monopoly. I really hope Linux can stop being a miserable piece of incompatible shit, but the last twenty years didn't get them there, so another eight won't do much either I fear.
It looks like they're trying to ease up on the enshitification just enough to prevent that from happening, and they just might succeed. They've been at this since Windows 8 which was almost 14 years ago. Normies have an insane tolerance for anti-user crapware.
It sounds like they've made great strides over the past couple years even in gaming which was always their Achilles heel. The only insurmountable obstacle is anti-cheat spyware in AAA slop and Linux shutting that shit down is a feature, not a bug. I suspect the best bet is to get a beginner friendly distro and bite the bullet on the learning curve. It will probably never be normie friendly since you have to install the OS yourself and completely eliminating the need for command line stuff is a long way away. I'd be more intimidated by the command line stuff if I didn't already have to do it in Windows after they removed GUI options post Windows 7. At least Linux would have community support for that kind of thing instead of forcing me to go around digging up old Reddit/forum comments to solve the problem.
its easier than ever to use linux now ai can turn human requests into lines of code
Debian just got subverted by "electing" a poojeeta who was the only candidate who submitted her candidacy 2 minutes prior to the deadline and the electoral devs only had a 33% turnout with barely over 50% of thr voting pool.
Yes, she "won" with 17% of eligible voters.
I'd say their Achilles heel isn't gaming. Gaming is a symptom of their fatal flaw, which is that absolutely nothing can ever be expected to work out of the box. There's always some driver issue or some obscure configuration that's set up a weird way, or the compatibility layer doesn't translate that bit of functionality, or a lack of alternative software with actual functional parity...
They may have gotten better, but they're still orders of magnitude behind where they need to be in order to get any sort of adoption outside of the enthusiastic autist sphere.
I swapped my desktop to Linux Mint about a year ago and it has been surprisingly great. My windows exclusive financial software runs via "Bottles" with no tweaking, and the games I actually play all worked with minimal effort except for Civ3, which was a giant pain in the ass and ended up going in a VM instead.
The installation was painless. Windows 11 required I supply a driver to see the SSD, Mint did not. It was literally easier than installing windows. All my hardware was identified, including NVidia, bluetooth, and wifi adapter. After install I loaded steam, heroic (for GoG and Epic), bottles, installed my financial software in a bottle, and was back to using my computer in a few hours. Mint looks very much like Windows and provides a GUI for most things you will want. It has a "software center" that kind of acts like the Microsoft store, except that everything is free. This is where I grabbed media players, torrent client, etc from.
Mint is very customizable, and unless you bolt on something weird it can be done with the GUI. My workflow is much less of a pain now; specifically the 'workspaces' feature lets me rapidly flip between multiple different desktop sets with a keystroke, and each is configured for a different part of that workflow, so I no longer have to juggle windows like I used to.
If you use adobe or certain games with anti-cheat it won't work for you, but if not it might well be worth a day on a weekend to try installing it on a clean SSD. Worst case you can format the SSD and use it as a backup target for your windows install.
I tried putting it on a VM a couple weeks back and immediately ran into driver issues followed by Wine shitting the bed while trying to install an older game. I want Linux to be as painless as you make it sound, but even your description belies the troubles it has just underneath its surface. An operating system is supposed to get the hell out of my way, but Linux's default position is to obstruct the user's path. It might be better, but it's still a shitshow.
I never tried it in a VM, no idea about issues there. Mint's installer is also a live USB, so you can just boot it on your real hardware and see if it recognizes it all without actually committing to anything. Would probably not be suitable to test any games out but would at least definitively answer the drivers question.
They're not offering anything that wasn't present in Windows 95, which was actually functional. If Microslop really wanted to earn goodwill from end users they would dig up the code for Windows 7 and update it with security patches and driver support and most importantly leave the rest of it alone.
If it requires the TMP secure boot module I wont be using it, simple as. Doesnt matter how "almost as fast as Win10" or "nearly as good for gaming as SteamOS" you make it lmao
Win 11 is for gays. Stuck to win 10 then switch to steamOS in 7 more years.
I actually haven't had any issues with Windows 11. I should switch to Linux though but I just don't want to do the work. I was supposed to buy a new computer this year which is when I'd have done it but then RAM prices did their thing and I was like fuck that.
I've figured out how to remove the worst of the slop (pro tip: pirate the pro version) but at the end of the day you're fighting against the OS and you shouldn't have to do that. I've been putting off the switch for the same reason you have but I think it's necessary because this shit is only going to get worse.