About a year here, same. No windows for me, except work…
I feel the same. Its been 20 years though.
There’s so much good advice here.
On the other hand, sometimes problems solve themselves if you wait. I wanted to find a way to add text extraction to the screenshot utility in KDE Plasma — a feature I missed from other operating systems. The solution was to wait a week until Cachy updated to Plasma 6.6, which added that feature.
Preach.
“Wait a week until its fixed” has saved me from screwing up my own CachyOS install, even if I identify the issue well enough.
But if my browser in Linux can’t find my webcam mic because I installed EasyEffects without bothering to read the docs, brother, that’s on me.
YES.
Distros like this are pretty great out-of-the-box. If you start installing stuff from the AUR and things break, that is your fault, as now you are the system maintainer.
Imagine you’re having a conversation with a stranger. He seems cool, you guys share some interests, even some controversial opinions. You two are on track to becoming friends! …But then right before the convo ends, he starts talking about how the earth is flat, and flouride in the water supply is a CIA conspiracy to make frogs gay.
That is the same visceral reaction I get when I read a sentence like this:
When I last wrote about my experience with CachyOS, I bemoaned the absence of the Arc browser.
I don’t get it. What even is Arc browser, is that the conspiracy equivalent?
Media coverage of Linux today is wildly different than the 2010s. It used to be vitriol to entertain the idea of using Linux. It was hoping that complaining about Windows enshittification and Apple pricing while still buying them would produce any results. More and more people will learn that they don’t need the software they grew up with for their hobbies or indie projects. Don’t need o365 to write your novel
The only thing windows has for it is compatibility with certain software. Fortunately this gets better and better all the time, being able to run windows software under Linux has been great. Steam with it’s proton has done wonders for gaming under Linux.
After three months on Linux, I don’t miss Windows at all
Me. 2004.
How come he didn’t install Arch? I blame Linux community and it’s suggestions about Arch.
Took me a week to say “welp, never coming back”
I’ll never go back to windows. The only problem I had with Linux was mint didn’t like two monitors on hdmi and one on the other kind of cord. Once I figured that out, games ran no problem. I can live with only two monitors.
I need to look to see if nobara has something similar. I mostly use 2 displayports for my monitors, but occasionally also want to use an hdmi for my tv, at which point it wigs the fuck out
Look, if a guy at the Verge can use Linux then that means almost anyone can.
Remember when they had their guide ofnhow to build a PC? It was wrong on so many things, but apparently they edited the guide. I have not read the current version so it could perhaps be good now or at least now misleading.
“He not fighting static, he fighting cancer!” -lyle
Random blokes at The Verge do not have the same use cases as anyone else. “Works for me” is never the same thing as “works for you”. Linux doesn’t even have a good vector graphics editor. (No, Inkscape is not good.)
No, Inkscape is not good.
What are some areas that you think Inkscape can improve? (Other than “be more like what I’m used to”.)
I use Inkscape all the time, and have created amazing things with it.
Indeed! This is why I always call to explore live images or a VM before making the jump. It won’t be indicative of the system’s performance (a regular install should run smooth as butter), but it will indicate what you might be lacking, what problems you may face, etc.
Affinity can be installed on Linux via WINE just fine. There’s even a repo for it. Fusion360, of all things, also works the same way. WINE is not just for gaming
Or just use an OS that natively supports Affinity…
Or just use an OS that natively supports Affinity…
Can you link what you are talking about for Fusion360 by chance? I’ve tried repeatedly and it always seems to be broken at the part where it wants to open a web browser so you can log in… I ended up running Fusion in WinBoat, but it just isn’t as performant so I would love a Wine solution instead.
Ahh, you have the new install. Yes that is a known issue. I was installing it before they did the switcheroo with their custom distribution QT6 webview (the root cause of the issue). If you have the old install it still works just fine
@Crozekiel @bitfucker Maybe we should all just switch to FreeCAD (easier said than done).
Hey, I heard they addressed the topological naming problem in the 1.0 release. I’m gonna follow Digikey’s FreeCAD tutorial and see if it’s as good as they say.
Go make one then?
Sure thing, because that’s exactly a one-person job.
Seriously, please try to not be that person on the internet.
The only thing I hate about Linux is not the fault of Linux. It’s Microsoft and Akami’s fault.
Blocking of random sites by Edgesuite when I’m using Linux.
I ran into this recently lol. You can avoid it by changing your user agent. You can do this is dev tools but there’s probably an extension that makes it easy
I tried that. I tried setting it to Chrome and Edge on Windows but it didn’t help. I cleared the cache and restarted too.
I checked my IP and it wasn’t marked as a threat so I have no idea why it happens.
Thanks for trying to help! I appreciate you!
There’s ridiculously little difference between Windows, OS X and GNOME nowadays. Once you realise that most of your Steam library works and you’ve hated Office for at least ten years anyway, that leaves browsers, which are exactly the same. Most users don’t want to fiddle with settings, installers and drivers, they’ll just accept what the machine comes out of the box with.
There is more to it though. The one feature i miss from windows is casting.
I dont mean chromecast, i got that working. I mean wireless casting to a tv or projector. The windows + k feature.
Ive yet to get that working in linux…
Besides that, im a happy linux personEveryone’s got something they’d miss. For me it’s Affinity (though that’s on the way, it sounds like) and Microsoft Flight Simulator. It’s insane, but MSFS is the 800-pound gorilla; it’s not just visuals, but almost all the new stuff (like Beyond ATC) is targeting MSFS.
Affinity works using WINE. I think there also exists a repo where they packaged it into .appimage
In theory yes. Not in practice though; unstable and slow.
I imagine if you play MSFS you have a beefy PC to handle Affinity through WINE
When my college classes went online because of the pandemic, I’d sit in my parents basement and cast my homework to their TV. Those were the days.
that leaves browsers,
That leaves audio production (with a bunch of Windows-only plugins), video production, photo editing, CAD…
Sure, you can re-learn your entire stack and get by, but that’s a far shot from “ridiculously little difference”. Dropping familiar complex piece of software like Ableton is a hard sell for folks (and it’s OK).
I think once you’re into concepts like a “stack”, you’re working with very niche specific software that most users will never touch. And absolutely, use what fulfills your needs. The vast majority of people I know that ever use a computer, just use it as google chrome. Web browsers work great in Linux. Depending on your needs, a lot of creative software works great on Linux too.
Your situation is legit, and I honestly wish these things were better because I wish all things were better, but I do feel like these are specialized programs that “most people” never touch in their entire lives.
But yes, for people who have a technical or creative career based on a proprietary tech stack, the story is more complicated.
Most likely your software will work via bottles or wine. If you have a desktop PC from the last decade and it cost more than $1k, you can also run a VM (or Winboat) specifically for your software with nearly 1:1 performance to bare metal (if you get the passthrough right.)
Which isn’t a permanent solution, mind you, but if it’s just one piece of software holding you back and you don’t care to play with alternatives, then the solution isn’t to keep Windows despite its terrible performance in 99% of things, it’s to switch to windows and emulate or compatibility layer the 1% of software you might use that requires windows.
Most likely your software will work via bottles or wine
No, for the examples above it will not. Quite a lot of professional software will not run under wine (and a lot of hobbyists use professional software) - games work particularly well because they mostly do their own thing and depend less on Windows-specific APIs. And if you use a VM via Winboat then you’re just using Windows in the background, which is a workaround, but kinda defeats OP’s argument that there’s “no difference”.
To be clear: I’m daily driving Linux and I’ve not booted into Windows for more than a year. But it’s just wrong to say that they are on par with each other for a lot of usecases.
If you need an emulator (yeah, “Wine Is Not an Emulator” yadda yadda, it still makes your software think you run a different OS) to run much of your most important software, you chose the wrong operating system.
If it works completely fine with Wine - in many cases, better than under Windows - why do you care if there’s a translation layer? Seems like a weird hill to die on. Do you also feel like running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit architecture means you chose the wrong architecture?
If you use a Windows “translation layer” for your software anyway, why would you choose Linux as the host platform in the first place?
There are so many reasons. Here’s just a few off the top of my head:
- Windows isn’t free, Linux is.
- Windows isn’t an open platform, Linux is.
- Linux doesn’t track your activity. Windows does.
- Linux doesn’t come bundled with a bunch of shovelware crap. Windows does.
- Linux doesn’t push cloud products onto you. Windows does.
- Linux doesn’t use your hardware to force-feed ads to you. Windows does.
- Linux is infinitely more customizable than Windows.
- Linux lets you choose when, how, and if you download/install updates. Windows does not.
- Windows constantly pushes/forces AI slop products onto users. Linux does not.
All of that is true for most other operating systems, some of which are even more customizable than some of today’s Linux distributions. My question was “why Linux?”, not “why not Windows?”.
There are converters that do wonders for a lot of VST plugins but some critical ones (Kontakt for example) are unfortunately stubborn. If I made music that didn’t use sample libraries I’d uninstall Windows today. I have got it on a very minimal partition at least.
Life is more than browsers you know…
Most software can effectively run in a browser at this point, and the bit that can’t can be self hosted on a server and then cast to your browser.
Really not how most of the software works. I install ton of apps locally like games, Libre office, ect. Running all in browser is a pipe dream. Also extremely memory and CPU inefficient
It really is. WebASM is miles beyond what you’re probably thinking of in terms of browser based performance, and most companies these days do not have local applications installed for their office workers. Office 365 is by far the most popular version of office, and it’s entirely browser based. Most in-house corporate IT work from the last decade is electron wrappers of internal company websites acting as simple interfaces for actual heavy lifting.
While there’s definitely some apps that are a bit too heavy for WebASM (or just javascript/.net for the above examples) this list is vanishingly short these days. I’d say blender and other 3d rendering would be inefficient just because WebASM has weird interactions with anything other than OpenGL and Vulkan, But even Unreal 5 can export to WebASM and do it fairly well (as well as OpenGL can perform, that poor outdated thing).
Heck just go to itch.io or any website that has ported over games to WebGL/WebASM. You can run Half-life directly on your browser these days. Half Life of all games. That’s more demanding than anything not 3d that you’d run in an office.
I know what web assembly is. It’s not a golden one-for-all solution you try to paint it to be. There’s a reason why you won’t see any modern AAA games in Wasm except ancient stuff like half life or Quake 3. It’s just not fast enough and not memory efficient enough.
While there’s definitely some apps that are a bit too heavy for WebASM (or just javascript/.net for the above examples) this list is vanishingly short these days.
Jesus no. It’s obvious you don’t play games. Unreal engine can export to Wasm but noone does this. Everyone develops games natively with DirectX 12 api in mind (and very rarely Vulkan like in case of Doom or Red dead redemption 2) You’re just blatantly wrong with this.
What’s web assembly is good for is what’s in the God damn name: Web apps. You can squeeze in office into it, because office is ultra lightweight use case, that back in the day ran on 486dx4 with 16Megs of ram. It now runs on 3ghz CPU and requires hundreds of megs of ram, this is insanely wasteful. We can afford these resources, but it’s still wasteful as hell.
Office 365 also refers to the desktop apps as well as the web versions, has done for many years now. Though I suppose it’s all copilot 365 now.
Source: Am office worker where we use office 365, and we all use the native system software, with the browser versions as for quick editing when elsewhere.
Counter-example: secure encryption. You can’t do that in a browser.
You’re all over this thread posting bad takes. Of course you can do secure encryption in a browser. There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from using any encryption algorithms within a browser whatsoever. I don’t even understand what you could possibly mean. There are so many ways to achieve it.
There are numerous ways to place decryption backdoors into a website’s JavaScript. How would you make sure that there is no MITM when trying to safely encrypt (e.g.) an e-mail in your browser?
Of course you can do secure encryption in a browser.
Talking about “bad takes”, aren’t we? There is no way to ensure that your end-to-end encryption is not decrypted on the fly when done by a website (= a potential attacker).
Who said anything about a website? You said browser. You can run fully-local resources in a browser, such as browser extensions, locally hosted tools, even just running in a .html file on your local disk somewhere. Javascript also isn’t the only option available to solve this problem.
Not sure if you’re just trolling at this point.
You said:
Of course you can do secure encryption in a browser.
No, you can’t. I explained why.
Counter-point: Cubeless and platforms like it are close enough to a browser and handle that. Also by the very loose definition of secure encryption, https.
That’s a very loose definition indeed.
“Close enough to a browser” isn’t a browser. GnuPG in a browser just won’t work and most other encryption facilities aren’t quite as secure (and transparent).
and various Linux distros have gotten so good at this now. You can install something like Bazzite, PikaOS, hell even CachyOS with their recent update of switching from Octopi to Shelly and you can be up and running within a matter of minutes without having to worry about drivers or fiddling around with settings. PikaOS for example is probably one of the smoothest linux installs I’ve ever tried. easily within 15minutes I can have steam open and downloading games. within 30 I can be playing. and that’s without downloading drivers or playing around with settings.
The only downside of switching is systemd is a mess, and getting kinda creepy with captain TechBro running things, think I’ll be headed to a ditro hop for OpenRC or an older init based setup.
I don’t think “most users” care about systemd’s design philosophy. Feels a little xkcd 2501
I hope they care about how it’s pushing age verification, at least. It’s not just the departure from core principles, anymore.
I’ve been using Linux since like October and I barely have a grasp on what systemd even is. I only know that my WSL Ubuntu at work doesn’t have it as some sort of security measure. Security against what, I can’t say. But somehow it makes it so that I have to say “service docker start” instead of “systemctl start docker”
Yup, basically. Systemd is “the first program” that runs, and then its job is to start all the other programs that make up a modern computer, most of which run in the background and a user will never see. It’s not the only such “init program”, though, and some people are grumpy that it does too much itself, rather than simply starting other programs to do those things.
But unless you’re involved in starting and stopping background processes, you can’t really tell which one you’ve got. Users aren’t “meant” to care which process was the one that started the power management daemon, or whatever.
There’s a dangerous bet going on right now that doesn’t make the most sense.
It’s Microsoft.
I just don’t really understand their game right now. They’re still playing like every card in the game is in their hand and they have nothing to lose, so I wonder, Linux friends, fellow enjoyers of hardware sold to the public, what do they know that we don’t know?
It’s almost as if Microsoft and every other hardware and mainstream software developer is secretly betting on the loss of private home computing. It’s almost as if in the longrun, they aren’t worried about our choices.
These Linux wins all over the place are cool and all, but the lack of any sweat whatsoever from these bozos has me on edge. Wtf is their game? From AAA gaming to your email client, it’s all getting worse and they know it, they just keep doubling down.
As someone else here already said, the desktop market isn’t where they make their money. Licenses for enterprise computing is where they make their money, and until we see most major businesses ditching windows entirely, we won’t see them worried.
It’s called incumbency.
I remember a time when IBM had 95% market share of the PC market.
Then Apple and Microsoft innovated them out of the market, in software.
Blackberry had 80%+ market share of the smartphone segment they popularized. In 4 years it was almost entirely gone.
It happens when the engineers are sidelined and the finance and marketing people take over.
They are blind to any trends that they do not control. They are unable to innovate and unwilling to take risks. It kills gigantic companies slowly at first and then very quickly.
They now earn much more with cloud and ai, getting it all packaged to companies as saas, and are just switching markets. The desktop isn’t their target anymore.
so I wonder, Linux friends, fellow enjoyers of hardware sold to the public, what do they know that we don’t know?
Oh, you know it, you just don’t want it to be true. Every business out there knows it too. The age of consumerism driven growth is gone, killed by the ever growing financial gaps between the layers of society in all western world. There is no point in playing nice to attract customers if they can’t pay, so businesses are stealing from the poor (mostly data in the case of MS) and selling only to the rich (higher valuation). The products that are marketed are not the products that are needed for the companies to make money off of.
This shift might not be as visible with IT companies, but look at more obvious examples: even fucking McDonald’s has stopped going after customers needing affordable meals and is going after fewer but richer customers. So do hotels. So do airlines. And yes, so do IT companies.
In the case of Microsoft, they have a lot of experience with fucking over low end consumers and then bouncing back too. They were the most hated company in the 2000s and pivoted to one of the good guys by the end of 2010s. They know they can afford to alienate customers for long periods of time with no lasting issues
There is no point in playing nice to attract customers if they can’t pay, so businesses are stealing from the poor (mostly data in the case of MS) and selling only to the rich (higher valuation).
Do you remember when CEOs would make announcements at conferences they’d be trying to convince consumers about how good their product is? Pretty frequently they were lying, but now they’re not even talking to us, when they speak they’re addressing stock holders and other companies.
They were the most hated company in the 2000s and pivoted to one of the good guys by the end of 2010s.
I want an apology letter from all the “stop hating on Microsoft, its not 1999 anymore and they have a new CEO :) :) :)” people.
ya got me! I knew
My prediction is that by 2040, Windows and your entire online existence as a… “normie” will be encapsulated within walled gardens via client access almost entirely.
Those of us still able to host anything will be doing it with ebay finds and crowsourced parts.
…but this is but one of my many branching possible timelines, maybe we get the “America goes KEN mode” timeline, “Mother nature rolls her sleeves up” or the “Humanity finally stands up for itself and realizes a leftist/socialist utopia” timelines. There’s always the “China sics robot dogs with machineguns on everyone” timeline.
Hell, maybe a blend, idk.
@Butterphinger @RidcullyTheBrown I deeply feel that you are right… but if you say such things, like “walled gardens via client access”, I think you have a brain problem.
Wtf is a “walled gardens via client access”?
Walled gardens are places like Facebook/Twitter/X where one company controls everything you see and do while on the platform.
Client access just means you have to login to see anything. (Again, like Facebook.) Some platforms let you view content without loggon in, but forcing you to create a login gives them a way to start tracking your behaviors and interests.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s. The only blend I know of is the coffee. (J)
What if that’s they don’t care, as they’re the evil empire.
It reminded me that scene in Andor (2022) in the first season, episode 9, ‘nobody’s listening’ the protagonist says they’re not listening to prisoners as they don’t care, so much they don’t believe they can lose their domination. You have to be in the context of the show (which I highly recommend, if you like the Star Wars universe) to get the reference. But I think that could be the case here.
Microsoft may not care, not because they know something, but rather the opposite. Them being pedo oligarchs not really caring much. Perhaps they’re still into the illusion Linux is some very niche thing for dorks.
I have an interesting story about it (I’d write it in my blog, it’s somewhat long). If in a few words, at my kid’s school, they (a few teachers) have a very old PC that struggles with Windows (also, It’s HDD there), so I reinstalled Linux there. Prior, I asked what they use. ‘Not much really’ was the reply, and so I explored, and diagnosed it’s just browser (which was obsolete and couldn’t be updated), Word, and Explorer (files manager). Not much else.
Sure thing, Linux can do all of them many times better!
I picked Fedora Silverblue (that’s the atomic version with Gnome) thinking it’s so much better than the KDE version, as it’s simpler. It’s not more complex than Chrome OS. My mistake, even advertising it as a macOS (good, right?) clone did not help, they were terrified. The very next day I rebased it to KDE, and applied some Windows 11 theme. It was very similar in its looks. They said ‘OK, we’d try to use it’ but the very next day they asked me to bring their system back. (I never erased it, just swapped their HDD with my SSD.)
I gave up, perhaps quite quickly, but I have no resources to push them at the moment. For you to understand, their computer switched from being very noisy to being so silent I was asking (every day while it was with Linux, like 3 or 4 days in total) whether it’s on or not. Back to Windows, and it’s super noisy back again. The difference was night and day. Right now, the machine boots within like 5 minutes. A couple of minutes to desktop, and a few minutes for it to become usable. With the SSD and Linux, half a minute tops. And when it’s booted, it’s pretty much instant.
- browser is the same, but updated
- Word is Libre Office Writer, which is simpler. They don’t use it heavily, so it should work for them. I set it to save the files as docx. The icon is from MS Word.
- file manager is many times simpler visually, yet million times more advanced. A Linux user would surely know the difference, especially given Microslop did theirs in Electron, lol.
Yet, they were afraid of Linux. Perhaps, my mistake was stressing that. Maybe I should have Only Office installed (is it more alike? Haven’t used it for many years), and invest some time into tuning the theme to be identical, it had some minor difference. And tell them that’s Windows 11, and I just updated their system. I don’t know. Their concern was they didn’t know how to work with it, not even trying. I explicitly offered to babysit them for a few days, to help them adapt, but they refused.
Perhaps, I should have tried Zorin, if it’s more similar visually. But I have no experience of it, so I’m not sure.
Apart from that, I believe Linux is more than ready to be a desktop OS, it has everything needed, or almost everything. Only some software is lacking, I’d say.
Your mistake was telling them something scary and leaving, the very first pixel out of place and they gave up. People don’t want you to give them projects, they want you to fix their problems.
If it’s a system you’re sure of the use case then set it up to be a Windows clone like you planned and tell them you found a (locked down and lightweight) long service life distro based on Windows 8 or something. Yes, it’s a lie. Nobody will care as long as it works generally like they’re used to, I promise. But if you have to explain caveats to their normal workflow like you’re giving a tutorial then you might as well not bother.
Thanks, I do agree, I should have not told them that. And if I’d invest more time into theming, the attempt could be more successful.
Also, I partially replied to you both in this sibling comment of mine. But I’d partially repeat: I am able and willing to invest inadequate time into helping them adapt, but they react as ‘thanks, we’ll try it on our own and ask questions’ but the questions never followed. The only request was to return to their previous system.
I did it as I did it, only because I did it before the Christmas, but decided that there are holidays coming, and I’d swap the disks right after the holidays. And I did it after the Easter, which was a few weeks ago. If I’m to explore theming and KDE in more depths, it’s quite realistic I’d update their system by the next Christmas, if not later.
At the moment, I think of trying Windows 11 IoT LTSC with them, and see how it goes. And then attempt to swap it for something like Zorin or highly modified KDE. To my brief search, it looks like it’s just easier to find more modern themes than something old, like Windows 10 or 7. I found a nice clone of Windows 7, by the way, but it was unrealistic, they look a bit younger than the people who’d heavily use Windows 7 (as I did, before moving to
macOSMac OS X and Linux). I believe most folks don’t remember Windows 7, so if you theming, you’d rather theme for something more modern.Sorry, I don’t mean to accuse you of anything. I should’ve made it more clear that most people just won’t try new things no matter how easy you make it for them. They will literally turn their brain off if it’s outside of their comfort zone no matter if it’s just the tiniest of steps.
No worries! I’m happy I’ve got some feedback, as I’m not sure what to do. After I completely switched to Linux (from macOS, fwiw), I am pretty sure Linux can replace a home system for most people. Except some having very unique very niche software. Some of which can be easily run either with Wine or even a VM, if it’s needed occasionally and the hardware allows. Or dual-boot, if the hardware doesn’t allow a VM. I know it’s not really useful to dual boot, as that’s how I tried to migrate to Linux 20 years ago. Back then, though, I had pretty long periods of not booting Windows.
Today, one of the teachers asked me about Krita being installed, whether that’s some default Linux app. I told him I downloaded it. (Pretty randomly, they don’t need it there at the school.) He does some photo editing after hours, so he knows Photoshop. He was impressed it’s very similar in its interface and functionality too.
I mean, I’m very sure most of the workflows are good with Linux, and it’s just superior, aesthetically wise too, which wasn’t the case for many years, unless you’d want to theme it heavily. But it looks like either there’s a more efficient strategy, or each case must be targeted individually. Say, if I’d hire people to do some office-type job with the computers, they’d have no say in their OS. It would either be Linux, or macOS if they’d need any special software unavailable with Linux. Eg graphic design, I’m not sure Linux is good enough here. However, I’m doing my best to try doing it with Linux. Not as bad as I expected it to be, by the way. If there’s a workflow with Windows, like 3D something or CAD, I’m not sure. I’d try to force Linux, but theoretically, I’d allow that person to have Windows for that. I remember I worked at one advertising agency almost two decades ago, and everyone had Macs, and only one 3D guy had a beefy PC with 3Ds Max. He was mostly chilling while waiting for his renders.
Saying that, not every situation is alike, and I see no proper way of people switching to Linux, unless they are interested themselves. Or they are forced and have no say in this.
@wltr @canthangmightstain Main obstacle before Linux was the stupidity, 30 years ago exactly like today.
Also, it doesn’t try to be friendly. There are cases when it’s fucking broken in so many ways, I just hate the devs sometimes. Perhaps, that’s the reason I prefer the tools to be as minimal as possible. I use Arch with Sway wm and most of my apps are TUI or very minimal. I tried KDE, it’s great, but there are some idiosyncrasies in the very Fedora Kinoite. That’s their flagship distro, and some things are straight broken with the Discover app. I won’t provide a proper bug report here right now (it’s unnecessary anyway), but I remember me thinking ‘the fuck? Didn’t you test the app with the atomic distro you advertise? How would a normie who knows nothing of Linux would even understand how to make it work?’
For some weird reason, there are countless of things like that. I tolerate them mostly, but a normie would easily panic upon facing a thing like that. I was like that myself once. That’s why I’d prefer these interfaces to become better. They’re mostly bad in many cases. Maybe the reason is some lonely developer in Nebraska, who made some tiny tool for fun, and a corporation has no resources of making it better, right?
Gnome 3, despite being simple by design and relatively easy for us techy folk to adapt to, is likely still quite a radical departure for someone who understands absolutely nothing about computers besides what they had to learn to do their jobs.
Explaining Computers did a good video on Zorin, where he shows it can be more Windows-like. Linux Mint is another good option, but it wouldn’t be too different from the Windows themed KDE you tried, IMO.
I think with people such as you described, where change is feared so much, it probably is best to stick with the most familiar possible layout, and to not share more information about the differences than absolutely needed. Perhaps the initial Gnome 3 shock made them shut down even when KDE was introduced instead? Hard to say. Good on ya for trying, though.
Thanks, I think I may try again some other time, when I’d explore theming. I have never tried (and needed) my system to look like Windows, as even when I used Windows itself, I was making it a mix of the best things from macOS and Linux. Here, I surely made a mistake of not hiding the attempt and showing them the modern Gnome, which is pretty simple for a newcomer. A non-techie friend installed Fedora Workstation (to be precise, Silverblue) once, and in general was very positive about his impressions.
Also, an interesting thing about tech support: I’m much more qualified with Linux than they are with Windows. And I’m able to help them adapt, by investing inadequate time (like an hour or two a day, if needed), asking nothing in return. Yet, people are not willing to try, perhaps they are afraid, or have some stereotypes of Linux maybe.
Microsoft has pretty much lost most of their experienced employees, they’re sitting on a mountain of spaghetti code with tech debt that goes back to windows 3.11 to maintain compatibility, they’ve fired their QA team, and their absolutely out-of-touch leadership is trying to force the surviving employees to use AI anywhere they can for developing the OS to pump up the numbers of AI users to prop up their insanely huge AI gamble so shareholders don’t lose faith.
They’re acting confident because they haven’t had to respond to a credible threat to their monopoly for 30 years, and that arrogance combined with everything mentioned above will most likely be their ultimate demise. The corporate system they have created and perpetuated is no longer capable of righting the ship, both technologically and organizationally.
They made a statement years ago now about how they were going to respond to the success of the steamdeck by creating a handheld mode for windows, but they never did, and Valve ate their lunch and allowed Linux to gain a foothold among gamers. They probably couldn’t manage building that handheld mode (it’s been so many years now, but I read a post from a Microsoft employee detailing how it could take something crazy like a week of work just to add a new menu entry to a drop-down without it introducing major breakages elsewhere).
They haven’t been able to develop a killer app or feature for Windows in over a decade, and I don’t think there’s anything else under their sleeve. I believe we are actively witnessing the downfall of an ossified giant, just as the once great Commodore fell due to incompetence and extreme corporate greed.
They already use Linux for their server division (azure). Eventually, if Linux is able dominate on the desktop in the next decade, they may shift to selling their own Linux distro with a 100% windows compatible container/VM instead, an inversion of their current model of selling Windows with their optional WSL (windows subsystem for Linux).
It’s almost as if Microsoft and every other hardware and mainstream software developer is secretly betting on the loss of private home computing.
You nailed it. This is what EVERY hardware and software company is hoping for, subscription based everything. Hell HP is already rolling it out on their laptops. If you don’t outright OWN the hardware and you’re using it on a sub then you don’t have any choice but to use Windows. RAM Shortages? who cares. if you and I can’t build our own PCs anymore than we have to sub a machine from Microsoft or HP or Dell or whomever. Those companies will ALWAYS get first dibs on RAM. And of course there’s going to be tiers to this shit. Pay more than the base sub price and you get access to the gaming tier meaning your machine will have a dedicated GPU for gaming. so on and so forth. this is the future these companies want and thanks to stuff like Netflix and Spotify we’ve now been conditioned to accept it.
“Hell HP is already rolling it out on their laptops.”
Holy fuck, you weren’t kidding: https://hplaptopsubscription.hp.com/
For the price of a laptop, you can rent that laptop for a year (1 year commitment required) and after the year is over, you will have no laptop.
Microsoft is betting on technofascism. On an economy where labor - and most importantly military-industrial labor - has been automated to such an extent that consumption is irrelevant. Consumers won’t have money to buy their shitty software anyway and governments and private military organisations will be running their increasingly automated mass murder programs on Azure servers. As they already did for the Palestinian genocide.
Microsoft isn’t exactly doing anything new. It’s the same strategy that’s worked for them forever ago:
Get kids used to Microsoft products by vendor locking K-12 schools with cheap contracts.
Monetize those kids when they graduate (they never had privacy to begin with, so there is little pushback) and hope they don’t switch to Apple’s subsidized MacBooks in college.
When all else fails, lean heavily on corporate contracts, since corporations can’t change their ecosystem set up 40 years ago.
Linux wins factor very little in the equation… and anyone switching to Linux is quickly replaced by the next kid who has had a Microsoft Windows keyboarding class every year since age 9.
That’s why Linux in schools is so important.
Business. The End.
Doesn’t matter how many people switch at home, MS has the business segment captured, and until one Linux distro decides to target this, it won’t change.
And then there’s everything that’s built around Office, especially Excel. No OSS comes close to Excel at the business level, and attempting to make an OSS app work there costs so much in time that it’s simply not worth it.
Now running servers and services - what do you think VMware ESXi is but a Linux Kernel with a management layer on top?
Proxmox - Probably best competitor to ESXi is just Linux KVM with a lot of great capability added to it, just like XCPNG.
But for a desktop, there’s simply no comparison. Plus you have a workforce that’s well experienced with windows. If you lose 1 hour a week per person due to switching, that’s a metric shitload of lost productivity.
Maybe they’re interested in finding exactly what the public’s critical breaking point is. Without gauging exactly what the demand (for distraction-free, private use) is, they cannot optimize their sales. They sure lost big with France, but we’ll see who else follows suit…
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a couple weeks ago, i have seen for the first time laptops with linux (ubuntu) preinstalled for sale in a store
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It’s already happening. Google’s device attestation means that apps can insist you run a signed OS (signed by Google, or an authorized partner) or refuse to work. I use GrapheneOS and because of this, I can’t tap to pay or use my phone as a car key. No chance they’ll ever allow GrapheneOS to join that program because it undermines their data collection and control.
My take isn’t that they’re dumb, it’s that a larger and more malicious bet is being made, that people won’t be able to choose.
They may indeed be dumb, but they’ll do anything they can to chain us to them forever.
What are you going to do? Not use Microsoft Excel? It’s got Copilot now. I don’t see Libreoffice coming with AI. AI costs money!
I imagine that they don’t care for the small segment of users that can install another OS. Even if they stay at Windows we probably hamper and sabotage the telemetry/adware parts of the OS and become less profitable.
When looking at their Q4 earnings the Windows and Devices and Advertisement revenue should be high enough to warrant some effort. That effort is probably to increase the Advertisement revenue though.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2025-q4/segment-revenues
Sunk cost?
