Only semi-related: Why do they always show pictures of Gates when he hasn’t been involved in MS in a long time? Why never Satya Nadella?
EDIT: Also, yes, related to the actual question already living Linux full time and when October rolls around probably gonna back up everything from the Windows side of my dual-boot and wipe the 1TB NVMe Windows is on to use as storage.
It’s weird how MS’s putting developers first became a joke. Back in the 80’s, companies like HP and IBM had open warehouses with coders at desks lined up like factory workers. MS was the first big company to give a private office to every programmer.
I couldn’t name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate’s mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids
I’m somewhat in the same boat but I remember Mister “Developers Developers Developers” Steve Ballmer who was also immortalized by the “Ballmer Peak” XKCD. https://xkcd.com/323/
I’m here, so I’m more likely to know who that is or what he looks like. But I don’t. I do now because you mentioned him and I looked up how he looks like. Your average Joe is gonna be even less likely to know who that is or what he looks like. So I’m guessing that’s why. Some CEOs just avoid the spotlight. Or maybe I’ve just been avoiding MS news, dunno
I keep recommending BazziteOS but Jorge Castro over at the universal Blue project has a really good point “Most people don’t install their operating systems” and that plain fact is what stops people from moving to Linux.
Valve has momentum because they are selling you a system with the OS already on it. Sell more gaming PCs with pre installed Linux on it and the support will follow. Valve’s first attempt at getting Linux based gaming hardware out there failed but that didn’t stop them and the real push is coming this time.
If you do install your OS (most people here have once or twice), try Bazzite out. I’m running it on the minisforum Bd790i with a radeon 7800xt and it works great!
if you’re on Linux mint, check to see if mint itself is out of date. When I installed mint, the only install media I could find was 2 versions behind. Getting to the current version fixed my warframe problems.
Yeah I remember thr same thing. Everything else was suppose to be a package update.
But back-end technology and usage expectations change, and there’s a limit to what front-end changes an existing user tolerates. That was never a promise they could keep.
It has lasted a really long time, though. I don’t decry 11 existing. I’m upset they’re sunsetting 10 without giving us a chance to wait for 11 to get better, let alone for ‘oops we fixed the fuckups’ W12.
Can’t upgrade because my 4 years old mobo is apparently too old (haven’t checked out the workarounds yet). Installed Linux Mint to give it a try and I am positively surprised so far.
I won’t be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don’t really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it’ll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.
However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.
I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.
I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they’re changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10’s user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don’t know why they thought any of it was a good idea.
I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won’t get started on that right now.
For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn’t been any meaningful progress in the OS that’s mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don’t think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the “new look” or whatever the fuck.
Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.
Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.
If it only was just moving things around. The control panel has been further castrated while the settings app is just bad. Something about their CPU scheduler changes straight up broke VMware, and obviously MS is in no hurry to fix it resp. cooperate with VMware, being a competitor.
Rounded corners? I couldn’t care less. It’s a functional downgrade, though.
Install size has gone up, its sluggish on my surface pro 7, its constantly wanting to grab my attention to put towards their other products, windows 10 was bad as it seemed to be ms’s first iteration of their now billboard, but at least I could offline install, make a local account and mostly be left alone. And windows 11 is aweful for its kiddy gloves.
While I get why they want to do all online accounts, no. Just no.
Ironically, for business users, online accounts are basically the way the industry is moving. Some integration with Azure active directory (now known as “Entra ID” - a useless rebranding of the exact same product), you can connect systems using someone’s email, and it can tightly integrate with your work email account on Microsoft 365, and everything just kind of fits together.
This prevents admins from having to go and do prep/setup on each system and/or maintain a library of system images with all the standard settings for the organization, since connecting with AAD/Entra can also enroll the device into Intune and those policies are just as powerful, if not more powerful than what you can do with images and prep; just now is entirely automatic.
For home users, it’s less about the convenience of system management and more data harvesting of their clients. The irony is that a lot of the business versions still have an option to bypass the online account (usually by selecting an option that you will be joining a classic domain).
So business has the option and largely, business is moving away from it, and home users don’t, but that’s something that a large number of home users want.
The only thought I have on it is that: bitlocker is enabled by default on many newer versions of Windows, by signing in with your M$ account to the PC, those bitlocker keys are backed up. If you don’t use an online account, it’s up to you to back then up, and users either don’t do that, or do it in such a way that it’s ineffective, like saving the recovery key to the very drive that needs that key to unlock it in the event of a problem.
I’ve seen more than one person fall victim to their own lack of knowledge and understanding when bitlocker is enabled, and Windows update screws their boot sequence to the point where they need to do a recovery, which requires the recovery key, which they do not have. It basically makes all of their data inaccessible, and gigabytes of data, just from the people I’ve known affected by this, has already been lost as a result.
I hear what you’re saying, but, there have been some pretty significant improvements to Windows, generation after generation.
Windows 10 finally seemed like they were on the right (and hopefully final) track with the direction of the operating system. Probably the last big improvement was to bring basically everyone to 64 bit.
XP moved us from the 9x kernel to the NT kernel that’s used in Windows today. Vista introduced security features and driver updates that help to keep systems free from many common root kits. 7 brought in a very standard UI, that would be the basis for things going forward, 8/8.1 existed… Then 10 basically uplifted everyone to 64 bit as a default.
Of course this is far from a complete list.
What did W11 add that we didn’t have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?
You’re not wrong, and I agree in that it feels like W10 is where MS finally got it right.
However, hindsight is 20/20, and those sentiments were definitely not felt in the first few years after W10 was released. Once all the big issues were worked out and people figured out how to remove the bloat/spyware shit though, it was a solid OS. I still run it on my gaming PC (for now - tested some crucial programs last night on my laptop running LMDE6, great success)
What did W11 add that we didn’t have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?
W11 right now is essentially a shitty skin on top of W10, with all that extra shit. The kernel is still version 10.x.whatever FFS 😅. But SHINY INTERFACE and ONEDRIVE
Most problems people have with Linux, I think, come from trying to be Linux power users from the start by performing very advanced techniques beyond their time and patience: dual booting multiple operating systems (so they don’t have to buy Linux-dedicated hardware), using any graphics card (the latest and greatest GPUs are all closed source and developers who work on Linux do so because they despise closed source), using the least expensive hardware (which are typically closed source and buggy with anything except Windows), and emulating Windows apps so they don’t have to learn new workflows or abandon their favorite games (technically, Proton with Steam allows Windows games like FFXIV to be played, but it’s a neverending journey to get it working and keeping it working.
If you switch to Linux, accept that for a smooth experience you’ll have to pay more than you would for a Windows machine (e.g. System76, Framework)
And if you want graphics card support for your emulated Windows games on Steam, you’re going to have to use the specific flavor of Linux the manufacturer supports.
That said, if you value free/libre open source software, then making the switch from Windows is totally worth it.
Can you elaborate on the incompatibility of the newest GPUs? It looks like Nvidia publishes a Linux driver for the Blackwell series and there are a number of AI applications (like supporting Triton and pysam-based methods) which seem harder to get working on Windows than on Linux.
I’m considering switching over but I hear mixed things about Nvidia support. Some people seem to say it’s a pain to get the drivers working and others seem to think that’s an issue that’s been resolved. Not sure what to think in terms of how difficult the switch would be.
I’m not sure about the specific AI apps you mention, but from my personal experience the “AMD works way better than Nvidia on Linux” mindset is no longer a thing.
When I upgraded to a new gpu a few years ago, I first got an AMD gpu because of that mindset that was all over the internet (I believed them), but for the life of me I couldn’t get games to run properly with it. A week later I traded it for an Nvidia card and it just works.
I do suffer from system wake from sleep issues that I think are the nvidia drivers fault, but atleast I can play games if I decide to.
but from my personal experience the “AMD works way better than Nvidia on Linux” mindset is no longer a thing.
Oh my god it absolutely is, and until NVK becomes the standard everywhere it will most likely stay that way. That shit breaks so often on a laptop I gonna sell soon, on my families’ computers and apparently also in computers from people in my local hackerspace. Some distros just managed to work around those drivers’ problems really well, sometimes by including them from the start of creating their own well-working packages (like Arch’s nvidia-dkms).
Can I ask what distro you’re running? Some of the gaming-focused ones like Bazzite still seem to gather some comments about working better with AMD, though it seems like there are some workarounds. I am resolved to leave Microsoft behind completely at the W11 switch so I’m trying to get my bearings!
I think this may be out of date now, dual booting is relatively simple to set up and there are a wealth of tutorials online for it, setting up a graphics card (nvidia) was a breeze, and for the wide majority of games in my library (I play both indie and AAA), I’ve had very few issues running native, and most that haven’t ran out of the box have guides posted on protondb.com, most are up and running in 5 mins.
You are right about trying to be power users. I switched to Linux recently and definitely struggled with my sudden reduction is understanding. I got everything I needed for gaming setup up in a few hours. Then I tried to set up some productivity workflows and slammed into a brick wall of my own ignorance. I definitely considered just going back to Windows.
It’s already really good to hear you got gaming set up so quickly. A lot of people struggle with that as well either because team green (Nvidia) is involved since their drivers are utter garbage, or due to trying Linux on an older machine that doesn’t support Vulkan (which is a necessity if you want Proton to just work).
The value of getting a perfectly supported machine from a Linux vendor like System76, Tuxedo, Slimbook, StarLabs, NovaCustom etc. can’t be understated. Even more so since you also buy their customer support with it. We must not forget that, even though Linux runs on basically anything, most consumer devices are first-and-foremost Windows machines.
Yea just set up a windows 11 pc for the first time and the experience was basically:
It forces you into making a Microsoft account or log in with one, then it told me mine was locked even though I was able to log in fine elsewhere. I had to use the alternate log in method to get in (I know you can make a local account but I already had one set up for this).
Then it tries to force you to “back up from your old pc” which this was an entirely different system so I’m not even sure why I would want that.
Then it tries to convince you to send them a bunch of telemetry while reminding you that you’ll still get ads if you don’t, they just won’t be targeted towards you.
Then it tries to push microsoft office on you.
Then it needs to do updates which took like 45 minutes.
Then you’re finally at the desktop where you get probably half a dozen othe pop ups between windows and the vendor.
Then it’s “usable”
By comparison Bazzite took like 20 minutes to get to a usable desktop and isn’t nagging me about ads at all. I have a laundry list of things still to figure out but so far way less annoying.
There is a workaround for installing win 11 with local account, it’s still horseshit
the fact that they think that just because they still show ads it’s ok in any way shape or form to collect any personal information is insane
don’t forget they are also trying to screen record 24/7 and then store it in the cloud (yes they store it “locally” in you appdata, that they then decided to sync with OneDrive)
Yea, I had a throwaway account already to use for the login so I didn’t bother trying it. They still managed to make it annoying even when I did it their way and agreed it is horseshit.
Agreed.
I DID forget about that. Thanks for reminding me I need to figure out how to opt out (assuming it’s even possible).
I finally committed to Linux at the end of last year. Enough is working to make it preferable to Windows now. I’m still having a lot of bugs, and it’s costing quite some time. But at least my computer is mine again. No more telemetry, ads, and UIs that treat me like a toddler. No more updates forced onto me instead of being done whenever I want it.
Me too. Most things just work for me BTW. Laptop battery went from 4 hours to 10+, with better performance too. But most important for me is privacy, which is way better/easier to manage in Linux.
Ironically my laptop, which has been Linux-only since 2015 or something, has finally stopped working properly. The dedicated GPU (NVIDIA Quadro K1100M) no longer has working drivers with the kernel from Ubuntu 24.04. Then again, it wouldn’t run windows 11 either probably.
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Only semi-related: Why do they always show pictures of Gates when he hasn’t been involved in MS in a long time? Why never Satya Nadella?
EDIT: Also, yes, related to the actual question already living Linux full time and when October rolls around probably gonna back up everything from the Windows side of my dual-boot and wipe the 1TB NVMe Windows is on to use as storage.
I was thinking the same thing. He will just forever be known as the guy. Maybe it will change once he dies?
Didn’t work for Steve Jobs.
Maybe, he is indeed looking hella rough in this photo.
Seems he’s using the same orange tan as the other orange guy haha
I don’t think so. Gates’ shoes are big ones.
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-harassment-inappropriate-conduct-women-microsoft-jeffrey-epstein-2021-5
You’re right, it’s really hard to fill the shoes of someone who abuses their power and position to try to hook up with women.
Well, I guess that Gates can’t fill their own shoes too
Not that hard unfortunately. I’m sure someone up to the task can fill his shoes no problem
Personally, I think this picture of Steve Balmer is so much more iconic and should be used for every single article about Microsoft or Windows:
It’s weird how MS’s putting developers first became a joke. Back in the 80’s, companies like HP and IBM had open warehouses with coders at desks lined up like factory workers. MS was the first big company to give a private office to every programmer.
The approach isn’t what became a joke, it was the absolutely unhinged way in which it was presented in that famous Ballmer stage appearance.
Oh sure, it was crazy. But the sentiment behind it was good. It’s like how Howard Dean got dunked on for his scream.
I’d take that any day over the unhinged AI focus from all these companies now or Google’s awful documentation from the past few years.
I couldn’t name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate’s mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids
I’m somewhat in the same boat but I remember Mister “Developers Developers Developers” Steve Ballmer who was also immortalized by the “Ballmer Peak” XKCD. https://xkcd.com/323/
Steve Ballmer! Developers developers developers! That’s the other one I know
Gabe Newell?
I could but that’s because a friend of mine works on the legacy rendering code in Excel. He has some traumatic war stories to share.
Holy shit I remember that article too!
I was wondering why Bill Gates would be talking about Steam users.
I’m here, so I’m more likely to know who that is or what he looks like. But I don’t. I do now because you mentioned him and I looked up how he looks like. Your average Joe is gonna be even less likely to know who that is or what he looks like. So I’m guessing that’s why. Some CEOs just avoid the spotlight. Or maybe I’ve just been avoiding MS news, dunno
It’s a vicious cycle. The media don’t use Satya Nadella’s name or picture much, so people don’t know who he is or how he looks like.
It’s maybe some kind of circular logic, but my brain doesn’t recognize a picture of Satya Nadella = “Microsoft’s CEO” for some reason.
Maybe your brain would, if it had a chance to connect the two if they posted more pictures of Satya and Microsoft in the same context…
Optics or marketing, it’s the same reason LLMs are all called AI.
Under his watch they did form the anti-opensource and EEE mantra
I am on Linux and won’t change to W11 for sure.
I too choose your path of not being tempted away from Linux by the lure of an ad-riddled Microsoft-account-locked expensive “upgrade” to Windows 11.
I switched to Mint a year ago. Don’t miss a thing.
I’ve seen a lot of people praising Mint in here. It sounds like that’s the distro for me to try first.
Good. The one issue I’ve had installing it is needing to choose Grub2 instead of Grub for the bootloader. No idea why or what the difference is.
Being a deck owner not over obsessed in the latest tripe A games.
I keep recommending BazziteOS but Jorge Castro over at the universal Blue project has a really good point “Most people don’t install their operating systems” and that plain fact is what stops people from moving to Linux.
Valve has momentum because they are selling you a system with the OS already on it. Sell more gaming PCs with pre installed Linux on it and the support will follow. Valve’s first attempt at getting Linux based gaming hardware out there failed but that didn’t stop them and the real push is coming this time.
If you do install your OS (most people here have once or twice), try Bazzite out. I’m running it on the minisforum Bd790i with a radeon 7800xt and it works great!
Bazzite ftw Bazzite
I got ahead of the game a little bit by switching to Linux in 2008.
Ah yes, back when Windows Vista and KDE 3 were the hot shit… laggy shit, but still hot…
I’m using 10+ years old hardware, Microsoft has already told me I can’t upgrade, followed by several messages asking me to upgrade…
In other news, Linux Mint works nice and I just need to check Protondb to get Warframe running at frames per second and not seconds per frame
if you’re on Linux mint, check to see if mint itself is out of date. When I installed mint, the only install media I could find was 2 versions behind. Getting to the current version fixed my warframe problems.
I thought I read some time ago that Windoze 10 would be the last version of Windoze ever…
i remember it as “the last version of windows you’ll ever need” and they were absolutely correct.
Well, it can be the last version of Windows for you. 🙂
Ubuntu is nice. I use it daily. Others in my family too. And there are other options too. I hear Mint is nice though I haven’t used it much.
Give it some thought. 🙂
Yeah I remember thr same thing. Everything else was suppose to be a package update.
But back-end technology and usage expectations change, and there’s a limit to what front-end changes an existing user tolerates. That was never a promise they could keep.
It has lasted a really long time, though. I don’t decry 11 existing. I’m upset they’re sunsetting 10 without giving us a chance to wait for 11 to get better, let alone for ‘oops we fixed the fuckups’ W12.
Can’t upgrade because my 4 years old mobo is apparently too old (haven’t checked out the workarounds yet). Installed Linux Mint to give it a try and I am positively surprised so far.
I won’t be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don’t really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it’ll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.
However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.
I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.
I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they’re changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10’s user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don’t know why they thought any of it was a good idea. I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won’t get started on that right now.
For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn’t been any meaningful progress in the OS that’s mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don’t think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the “new look” or whatever the fuck.
Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.
Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.
If it only was just moving things around. The control panel has been further castrated while the settings app is just bad. Something about their CPU scheduler changes straight up broke VMware, and obviously MS is in no hurry to fix it resp. cooperate with VMware, being a competitor.
Rounded corners? I couldn’t care less. It’s a functional downgrade, though.
You can pivot to W11 LTSC if you want
… But why?
I would pivot to W10 LTSC to avoid Windows 11… So why would I move to the LTSC version of the OS I’m trying to avoid?
Makes zero sense.
Install size has gone up, its sluggish on my surface pro 7, its constantly wanting to grab my attention to put towards their other products, windows 10 was bad as it seemed to be ms’s first iteration of their now billboard, but at least I could offline install, make a local account and mostly be left alone. And windows 11 is aweful for its kiddy gloves.
While I get why they want to do all online accounts, no. Just no.
Ironically, for business users, online accounts are basically the way the industry is moving. Some integration with Azure active directory (now known as “Entra ID” - a useless rebranding of the exact same product), you can connect systems using someone’s email, and it can tightly integrate with your work email account on Microsoft 365, and everything just kind of fits together.
This prevents admins from having to go and do prep/setup on each system and/or maintain a library of system images with all the standard settings for the organization, since connecting with AAD/Entra can also enroll the device into Intune and those policies are just as powerful, if not more powerful than what you can do with images and prep; just now is entirely automatic.
For home users, it’s less about the convenience of system management and more data harvesting of their clients. The irony is that a lot of the business versions still have an option to bypass the online account (usually by selecting an option that you will be joining a classic domain).
So business has the option and largely, business is moving away from it, and home users don’t, but that’s something that a large number of home users want.
The only thought I have on it is that: bitlocker is enabled by default on many newer versions of Windows, by signing in with your M$ account to the PC, those bitlocker keys are backed up. If you don’t use an online account, it’s up to you to back then up, and users either don’t do that, or do it in such a way that it’s ineffective, like saving the recovery key to the very drive that needs that key to unlock it in the event of a problem.
I’ve seen more than one person fall victim to their own lack of knowledge and understanding when bitlocker is enabled, and Windows update screws their boot sequence to the point where they need to do a recovery, which requires the recovery key, which they do not have. It basically makes all of their data inaccessible, and gigabytes of data, just from the people I’ve known affected by this, has already been lost as a result.
Ftfy.
That said, there is something to be said for how popular Windows is, and the modifications and QoL improvements offered by 3rd party devs.
I hear what you’re saying, but, there have been some pretty significant improvements to Windows, generation after generation.
Windows 10 finally seemed like they were on the right (and hopefully final) track with the direction of the operating system. Probably the last big improvement was to bring basically everyone to 64 bit.
XP moved us from the 9x kernel to the NT kernel that’s used in Windows today. Vista introduced security features and driver updates that help to keep systems free from many common root kits. 7 brought in a very standard UI, that would be the basis for things going forward, 8/8.1 existed… Then 10 basically uplifted everyone to 64 bit as a default.
Of course this is far from a complete list.
What did W11 add that we didn’t have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?
You’re not wrong, and I agree in that it feels like W10 is where MS finally got it right.
However, hindsight is 20/20, and those sentiments were definitely not felt in the first few years after W10 was released. Once all the big issues were worked out and people figured out how to remove the bloat/spyware shit though, it was a solid OS. I still run it on my gaming PC (for now - tested some crucial programs last night on my laptop running LMDE6, great success)
W11 right now is essentially a shitty skin on top of W10, with all that extra shit. The kernel is still version 10.x.whatever FFS 😅. But SHINY INTERFACE and ONEDRIVE
Most problems people have with Linux, I think, come from trying to be Linux power users from the start by performing very advanced techniques beyond their time and patience: dual booting multiple operating systems (so they don’t have to buy Linux-dedicated hardware), using any graphics card (the latest and greatest GPUs are all closed source and developers who work on Linux do so because they despise closed source), using the least expensive hardware (which are typically closed source and buggy with anything except Windows), and emulating Windows apps so they don’t have to learn new workflows or abandon their favorite games (technically, Proton with Steam allows Windows games like FFXIV to be played, but it’s a neverending journey to get it working and keeping it working.
If you switch to Linux, accept that for a smooth experience you’ll have to pay more than you would for a Windows machine (e.g. System76, Framework) And if you want graphics card support for your emulated Windows games on Steam, you’re going to have to use the specific flavor of Linux the manufacturer supports.
That said, if you value free/libre open source software, then making the switch from Windows is totally worth it.
New GPUs don’t work on Linux? Where did you get that idea from?
I had the same question, my 6750xt works just fine and it’s fairly new.
Got a 7900xtx a few days ago and worked out of the box. Had to update the drivers after install but that took 5 minutes.
Can you elaborate on the incompatibility of the newest GPUs? It looks like Nvidia publishes a Linux driver for the Blackwell series and there are a number of AI applications (like supporting Triton and pysam-based methods) which seem harder to get working on Windows than on Linux.
I’m considering switching over but I hear mixed things about Nvidia support. Some people seem to say it’s a pain to get the drivers working and others seem to think that’s an issue that’s been resolved. Not sure what to think in terms of how difficult the switch would be.
I’m not sure about the specific AI apps you mention, but from my personal experience the “AMD works way better than Nvidia on Linux” mindset is no longer a thing.
When I upgraded to a new gpu a few years ago, I first got an AMD gpu because of that mindset that was all over the internet (I believed them), but for the life of me I couldn’t get games to run properly with it. A week later I traded it for an Nvidia card and it just works.
I do suffer from system wake from sleep issues that I think are the nvidia drivers fault, but atleast I can play games if I decide to.
Oh my god it absolutely is, and until NVK becomes the standard everywhere it will most likely stay that way. That shit breaks so often on a laptop I gonna sell soon, on my families’ computers and apparently also in computers from people in my local hackerspace. Some distros just managed to work around those drivers’ problems really well, sometimes by including them from the start of creating their own well-working packages (like Arch’s nvidia-dkms).
Can I ask what distro you’re running? Some of the gaming-focused ones like Bazzite still seem to gather some comments about working better with AMD, though it seems like there are some workarounds. I am resolved to leave Microsoft behind completely at the W11 switch so I’m trying to get my bearings!
Of course, I run EndeavourOS. My guess is that nowadays it doesn’t matter if you run amd or nvidia (likely won’t run into problems with either).
I think this may be out of date now, dual booting is relatively simple to set up and there are a wealth of tutorials online for it, setting up a graphics card (nvidia) was a breeze, and for the wide majority of games in my library (I play both indie and AAA), I’ve had very few issues running native, and most that haven’t ran out of the box have guides posted on protondb.com, most are up and running in 5 mins.
You are right about trying to be power users. I switched to Linux recently and definitely struggled with my sudden reduction is understanding. I got everything I needed for gaming setup up in a few hours. Then I tried to set up some productivity workflows and slammed into a brick wall of my own ignorance. I definitely considered just going back to Windows.
It’s already really good to hear you got gaming set up so quickly. A lot of people struggle with that as well either because team green (Nvidia) is involved since their drivers are utter garbage, or due to trying Linux on an older machine that doesn’t support Vulkan (which is a necessity if you want Proton to just work).
The value of getting a perfectly supported machine from a Linux vendor like System76, Tuxedo, Slimbook, StarLabs, NovaCustom etc. can’t be understated. Even more so since you also buy their customer support with it. We must not forget that, even though Linux runs on basically anything, most consumer devices are first-and-foremost Windows machines.
Very accurate comment!
Already on Linux. And proud.
And 25% of users in Asia still use Windows 7. People are going to stay on the OS for as long as possible.
If only we had a reason to upgrade.
Instead, we have many reasons not to.
Yea just set up a windows 11 pc for the first time and the experience was basically:
It forces you into making a Microsoft account or log in with one, then it told me mine was locked even though I was able to log in fine elsewhere. I had to use the alternate log in method to get in (I know you can make a local account but I already had one set up for this).
Then it tries to force you to “back up from your old pc” which this was an entirely different system so I’m not even sure why I would want that.
Then it tries to convince you to send them a bunch of telemetry while reminding you that you’ll still get ads if you don’t, they just won’t be targeted towards you.
Then it tries to push microsoft office on you.
Then it needs to do updates which took like 45 minutes.
Then you’re finally at the desktop where you get probably half a dozen othe pop ups between windows and the vendor.
Then it’s “usable”
By comparison Bazzite took like 20 minutes to get to a usable desktop and isn’t nagging me about ads at all. I have a laundry list of things still to figure out but so far way less annoying.
Yea, I had a throwaway account already to use for the login so I didn’t bother trying it. They still managed to make it annoying even when I did it their way and agreed it is horseshit.
Agreed.
I DID forget about that. Thanks for reminding me I need to figure out how to opt out (assuming it’s even possible).
I finally committed to Linux at the end of last year. Enough is working to make it preferable to Windows now. I’m still having a lot of bugs, and it’s costing quite some time. But at least my computer is mine again. No more telemetry, ads, and UIs that treat me like a toddler. No more updates forced onto me instead of being done whenever I want it.
Me too. Most things just work for me BTW. Laptop battery went from 4 hours to 10+, with better performance too. But most important for me is privacy, which is way better/easier to manage in Linux.
Ironically my laptop, which has been Linux-only since 2015 or something, has finally stopped working properly. The dedicated GPU (NVIDIA Quadro K1100M) no longer has working drivers with the kernel from Ubuntu 24.04. Then again, it wouldn’t run windows 11 either probably.
too late already did switch to linux :3