Many games are still not functional on Linux. Here is a link showing which ones aren’t just due to their anti-cheat features. That doesn’t include games that aren’t compatible for other reasons.
It’s pretty rare to find a game that doesn’t work for a reason that isn’t anticheat. I would say the few that are incompatible definitely classify as the exception and not the rule.
I’m not playing any games with anticheat and I’m working so much I only play single player. Linux won for me
game companies are entrenched, tools, libraries, think hardware emulation layers like DirectX. and installed os monopoly. linux exists because of diy types unwilling to pay someone else to do it. if you know how, make lusers pay you to do it for them. they can’t understand the details. wasting your breath
What in the fake news is this source ??
I feel like if you made a Venn diagram between Lemmy users and Linux users, it would just be a circle. I say this as also a Linux enjoyer.
I don’t see what relevance that comment has to mine. Why did you write this?
I’m a lemmy user, I don’t currently use linux. So your point is not correct.
More importantly, I wasn’t saying anything about linux users, I’m pointing out the the source that was posted is a blogspam non-reputable source.
Why the hell is Gates on that image?? The guy stepped down as a CEO 26 years ago, and left the board of directors six years ago.
The enshittification is all Nadela’s baby.
You somehow made me aware Gates had to use either an UNIX derivative (iPhone) or a Linux derivative (Android) daily.
I’d assume that for the majority of his career he was using something like Series 20 OS (Nokia’s proprietary OS) or the BlackBerry OS (before it was rewritten to be based on UNIX-like QNX).
But since then, yeah. There are literally no other options since MS killed Windows Mobile with prejudice.
Did you ever use windows before XP?
Friend, I used computers before DOS.
The right never lets go of anything. Ever
Gotta admit a lol for that comment.
i switched over to Bazzite about a week ago, and it has been super frustrating. though it’s not in where you think. the game my group is playing (Arc Raiders) worked without a hitch.
- but my speaker system, and microphone forced me to learn a whole lot about USB hand shakes,
- ghost usb profiles,
- usb cable choice,
- what a flatpac is and why people hate it,
- nano eccentricities (including how to save and quit, just labeling ctrl-o as save and not overwrite would stop so much bs),
- sink states,
- device name resolution,
- pipewire,
- pipe plumber,
- pipe wire holding devices hostage,
- usb power flapping because i plugged my speakers and my mic to close to each other causing the os to just give up on the both of them.
- the timing of when the os asks for usb identifiers, verses when the usb devices are given power
- out dated guides relying on depreciated methods and acceptable code used in modifiers to os procedure.
my experience and days of trouble shooting the “easy” replacement os for gaming has frightened my friend group far away from linux.
what a flatpac is and why people hate it,
Huh, most people actually like Flatpak, and for good reasons too.
Most people do like flatpaks, I use them because I use Kinonite and Atomic Budgie, but there are those people that don’t like them or any other 3rd party universal packaging format. it’s kind of a Luddite attitude if you ask me.
If you know what flatseal is and how to set permissions, it gets a lot better.
Flatseal, flat sweep, and warehouse will manage all your flatpaks as you see fit. And Gear Lever for managing all your appImages.
i could not get them to play nice with the hardware, pipewire, or each other. and they don’t like being messed with
Exact opposite experience here, coming from using Linux as toy desktops for the past few years. My main PC is EndeavourOS, and my gaming laptop is Bazzite. Bazzite has been a really good hands off “just works” distro that I don’t have to think about.
i think the real issue is my computer has been silently suffering for all these years as windows just didn’t tell me my hardware is borked and old. and just has a shot gun full of code that fixes whatever it can stick to. and Bazzite either does not have that, or i fell into an exception in use due to hatred and old hardware.
but getting into the weeds was very difficult, and my desk is not as flat as it once was
nano is the Fishcer Price’s My First Text Editor and you’re expected to quickly graduate to something that sucks way more
I know I’m supposed to go that way, but I went the other 🙃. I’ve been using micro and it has been awesome working with my mouse when I want. What is more basic than Fisher Price? A teething set of plastic keys?
A blankie.
I tried to like vim. But nano just works.
Nano is good for quick things and I rather like it. And I’ve been using VIM for years.
i can only imagine the horrors of what button combination i need to save and close and get my terminal back on the next one…
This is actually an ancient UNIX trope.
q :q :q! ^Z # kill -9 $!from what i gather that means you reach for the 9mm when you don’t know how to say please?
Kill all 9 lives
Literally every time im gonna go play a game with friends my computer decides to bw stupid, and it puts them all off linux even more lol.
Another data point to add. I’ve started using Bazzite and introduced it to my brother. The only hitch I’ve noticed is not being able to play stuff like the new Battlefield.
It is by far the easiest operating system to install, keep updated, and run basic apps and play games on. Flatpaks are great. Brew is good for CLI tools. AppImages are another alternative to Flatpaks that work well. Steam comes pre-installed, and most games run well.
There are no ads, no AI, no dark patterns. It’s just a simple operating system that keeps itself updated.
Where it starts to get complicated is if you want to do anything off the beaten path. In fact, Bazzite is much more complicated than something like Fedora or Debian if you need to do anything like this. Because you need to worry about either layering with
rpm-ostree, or creating your own base image with a Containerfile (FROM bazzite). But my examples of these are installing GhosTTY (non AppImage), Paretto Security, and 1Password SSH Daemon/op. Most people will never need to do these.I’m a software engineer, and I’ve found that for the most part, Bazzite is good enough to run on my gaming pc and work pcs.
I’m sorry you had such a bad first experience with it.
i think i learned that there was a lot wrong with my set up that windows just shoved under the rug. and maybe windows is right to do so, figuring i was willing to dig in deep this time, but my friends… not so much, and i don’t think i have the capability to help them if they run into issues like i did.
the reason ‘I’ learned to dislike flat packs is that it puts the software in its own little isolation bubble from what i understand. and i get where people are coming from. but they REALLY don’t like connecting to hardware, or sharing nice with other apps.
keep in mind i am a fairly adroit user of windows, diving in head first, so a lot of this is learning the hard way (nano anyone?) and i learned a lot. but yea bumpy.
i think i learned that there was a lot wrong with my set up that windows just shoved under the rug. and maybe windows is right to do so, figuring i was willing to dig in deep this time, but my friends… not so much, and i don’t think i have the capability to help them if they run into issues like i did.
When I was trying to use discord, my friends were confused why I was having issues getting my mic to work and were sorta teasing me for using linux. When they found out what I was trying to do (something I couldn’t figure out how to do in Windows despite looking into it multiple times over the last decade or so), they were more just confused why I’d even be doing what I was and they would have never even considered trying to do that. But I finally have my audio pathing set up the way I’ve always wanted to and I love qpwgraph.
very same with me, yea. though i was having so many problems with easyeffects i was gun shy using another program to manage the speakers when i just wanted the one change. so i baked in a rule for that named speaker only into the os
Sometimes, I just want to be able to easy switch some things to one playing from one speaker or another. Being able to do left/right separately is wonderful. Or use a virtual mic and feed a soundboard into it along with my actual mic. And easily being able to do monitoring each of the individual parts is wonderful. _
Agreed with having issues with EasyEffects in my limited experimenting with it. Was hoping it would be more intuitive to be to be able to add into my workflow to modify specific sounds (ie: modify my actual mic before it feeds into the virtual mic and leave the soundboard uneffected).
“Where it starts to get complicated is if you want to do anything off the beaten path. In fact, Bazzite is much more complicated than something like Fedora or Debian if you need to do anything like this. Because you need to worry about either layering with rpm-ostree, or creating your own base image with a Containerfile (FROM bazzite).”
I’ve had a similar complaint about bazzite. Some obscure things are just harder to install because of it being immutable. But I also haven’t managed to accidentally break it, like I have with other OS’s. Also, sometimes my problem has simply been looking up instructions for fedora and assuming they’d apply to bazzite instead of just looking up the bazzite instructions (which actually existed and were fairly distinct and didn’t involve rpm-ostree stuff).
I just installed cachyos after using mint for a year. Overall, was smooth until i tried to use VLC. Video played fine, but an hour of settings later and i could finally hear the movie. I was an inch from saying fuck it and going back to mint. I debug software for a living, last thing i want to deal with is debugging my personal computer when I just want to watch a movie.
May go back at some point, mint really is so easy and just worked, but the performance and aur are pretty great.
My sound doesnt work on cachy either.
That sucks! At least for me, mint just worked.
Interesting. I’ve been using Linux for nearly 6 years now, and I can definitely relate to pipewire and audio related issues (I’m a musician so I’ve suffered much in that area), but I can’t say I’ve struggled so much with devices. I wonder if those are Bazzite specific issues or if our setups are just different.
i’m my case i am using apparently old hardware, i ran into the following issues with my set up:
- my usb cable for the mic was crap. and because the signal was flaky, Bazzite put the port on low priority mode where it only checks in when asked
- the usb cable was insufficient to push the data, i swear it came with the mic. still thing this was a dubious conclusion, but a new cable was 5$
- Bazzite would ask my USB speaker and mic within milliseconds of receiving power what their designation was, and the controllers in the devices responded so slowly that Bazzite gave them new names and put them in passive mode. i had to bake in the command to treat that like legacy equipment (ouch) to sit and listen for a reply however long it takes.
- the speakers are flipped in meat space, due to outlets and the length of available cable, i can not change this, so i had to flip it in software, i was recommended easyeffects, but pipewire hated its guts, and i was better off learning to bake it in via the terminal after i was able to find the devices actual name once i got them out of passive jail above.
- i had to bin the flat pack versions of discord and my web browser Vivaldi. don’t want to get into a browser war i have had enough trying to siphon through redacted reddit posts about that
won’t lie i had to use AI to RTFM though chat GPT bricked my stuff more then i should have let it. gemini was better at this
You say older hardware so just curious if you happen to have an Asus mobo? If we are talking AM4 era, heads up that Asus mobos saw a lot of firmware revisions in 2025 including patches for usb-related issues. I have a b550 board that has been troublesome but seems a bit more stable with the latest firmware.
i have a TUFF gaming motherboard. so yes i do have an asus motherboard. i may have to flash the bios, but that’s a bit of a yikes. i may want to replace my battery back up first
Wow you certainly learned a lot trouble shooting that.
I haven’t had something that annoying happen, usually it’s been install and use.
BUT putting Linux on an ancient dell box was a learning experience. I installed the system on the HDD. After shutdowns the aystem would wake back up. The solution was adding kernel quirks line to grub boot with a numeric code, which told the hardware to ignore the self wake up event from the USB bus.
Then when I wanted speed the bios didn’t support NVME boot. So I had to add a small ssd for boot partition , but have rest of system on the NVME drive. I didn’t want to reinstall and resetup so I was learning a lot about gparted and copy pasting partitions and editting fstab to cobble together a replicated set of partitions. It was a great way to understand how formatting, partitioning and mounts all worked.
Switched when the OG Steam Machines came out. It wasn’t great then. It wasn’t really good until Proton Steam integration. Became great after the fast iteration with the Steam Deck
I know the hot thing is Bazzite but if you want to use it as a desktop as well, please at least use Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue. Personally I use the latest Kubuntu release so now I’m on Kubuntu 25.10, will upgrade to 26.04 when prompted, do the same with 26.10. Update cycle not so different than the larger windows updates each year. Just that every now and then a new Windows software ports to Linux, it’ll almost always be a deb installer is reason enough to me to prefer Debian based distributions than Fedora or Arch especially for new users. Don’t need to get people to install distrobox and boxbuddy. Kubuntu should just be enabling flatpaks and flathub by default rather than it being a option in the software center settings
I know the hot thing is Bazzite but if you want to use it as a desktop as well, please at least use Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue.
why? other than not being a “main branch” os I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, it seems quite white glove.
It’s atomic and fedora, which are also the same issues with silverblue and kinoite.
Yeah didn’t have problems with it as a desktop.
Linux is at a point where we really shouldn’t be using distro specific installers.
Linux was at that point two decades ago. The dogmatic infighting between Linux developers users is ultimately what prevents Linux from being actually useful as a desktop OS.
Lots of duplicated effort happens across the system. Nowadays we have more desktop environments than ever, while the application side still has major gaps.
That is what freedom is about. Anyone can choose to walk their own path to hell as they see fit. Otherwise you just end up with Windows all over again.
That isn’t going to help the average user though. They need hand holding.
Unless you don’t want mass adoption of Linux.
shouldn’t be using distro specific installers.
We have Flatpak and AppImage, and space isn’t as expensive as it once was. The problem I have is the sandboxing and isolation can make plugins problematic.
I mean, obviously I’m not advocating that you install pipewire or pipewire plugins as appimages.
My last flatpack fight was with OBS. It refused to load external plugins, and also made v4l unsolvable at the time.
Yeah we should just choose a winner and go with their system.
This should be easy!
[Insert XKCD about adding a standard that will replace all the other standards]
You mean like we did with MSDOS?
(Quietly leaves the room)
I liked it back in the day, but I don’t mess with that stuff no more. That’s how you get another GlaDOS.
I think they were getting at Flatpaks, Snaps or AppImages (my personal favourite)
Why do you prefer them to flatpaks? Genuinely curious. I’ve only used appimages once or twice.
They’re portable and don’t require that I install anything. If I’m looking for an odd tool, it’s usually the easiest way to download and test something out. It’s just nice to have a standalone executable.
Flatpaks are fine, I really have no problem with them in theory but I spend twice as long configuring them as I do with a native program, and I have to trust that the maintainer is affiliated with the project, which isn’t always the case.
Yeah, I was referring to AppImages. But flat packs are cool too, they serve a purpose.
Did this last May & haven’t missed much. I don’t play AAA slop though.
I’m thinking about going dual boot mode soon, as Manjaro is a godsend so far on my ThinkPad.
Just remember to have your installs on independant hard drives, not just partitions.
If you have set your mind to Manjaro I don’t want to dissuade you, but if you are not yet strongly convinced of the distro I always like to point out that there were some issues with the distribution in the past (someone collected them here).
If you’re just after an Arch-like distribution I think EndeavourOS is a very friendly distro without adding their own repositories on top of Arch. But again - if you’re happy with Manjaro by all means also stay with it.
EndeavourOS, CachyOS, and Bazzite are back-up options in case I need to distro hop.
I have been over 1 year in EndeavourOS and I can’t complain, no issues at all except when I screw up.
What does screwing up mean in this context?
Edited some files and had trouble login in, had to go live iso and edit them back.
I’ve only been using it for a few weeks now, but I’m having a great time with EndeavourOS. I’ve tried Linux every now and then for over 20 years now, but always bounced off for one reason or another. This time, I’ve never felt any desire to go back.
For me, my use case, and my hardware, EOS has been significantly less of a headache than Windows 11 was.
I am a Debian user, most of my homelab is on Debian but my desktop is on EndeavourOs, neither has any bullshit.
Which distro did you end up going with? Wanted to change my tower over from Windows. Guessing bazzite is appropriate?
I’d suggest trying a couple through live ISOs to see what works best out of the box with your hardware. I settled on CachyOS and definitely recommend it. Bazzite is ok, very stable, but keep in mind it is immutable which may hamper its abilities as a full desktop.
Oh it’s immutable? Damn.
That explains some shit.
How do I go about switching to CachyOS? Just wipe the NVME and run an installer?
Yeah I’d wipe it if you’re going to switch, always less headaches that way. CachyOS has a lot of options so I’ll throw my 2 cents out there, I set it up with btrfs file system and the limine bootloader because it automatically sets up snapshots so you can roll back if something gets borked. It’s also easier to get secure boot working with limine if you’re trying to dual boot.
Arch was described as hard mode but I installed EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma about a month and a half ago and it’s been smooth sailing. Given all the programs I use have native linux clients and I don’t play kernel level anti-cheat games at all.
The ArchWiki is the best hand-holding that you’re going to get on Linux, it’s the finest system administration documentation that the OS has available. But Arch doesn’t “do things for you automatically”, that’s not their ethos. So it’s hard mode until you’ve developed enough sysadmin skills to understand what the docs are telling you, and then it’s easy mode because it all works great together and you’ve a phenomenal reference source.
We run SUSE at work; and when SUSE is working, it’s a damn fine Linux - secure by default, up-to-date, efficient. But if it stops working, man alive, I wish we were using Arch instead. (Admittedly, we just redeploy anything on SUSE that stops working, which takes moments, whereas fixing Arch takes a while but at least you can fix it.)
Not OP. Around same timeline. Went with bazzite for gaming. Have been using bazzite daily since. Stuff just works super easy to install. Also tried and have mint still installed on another partition but haven’t used it much besides the initial installation. And installed dual boot bazzite and mint on my old gaming laptop. Use mint on there daily for internet browsing and such, no gaming. But I’m certain it would work just fine as it’s all pretty much the same besides Debian (mint) Vs Fedora (bazzite).
I don’t play AAA slop either, and a few older easy anti cheat games don’t work. Such as Fawkes revival of Defiance.
Everything else works pre installed with Steam+ proton, Or Ludis + wine, Or the Heroic launcher for GoG, Amazon and EGS.
I do get higher FPS and better temps and less hardware usage than I ever did on Win11 for the same exact games.
Kubuntu on my main workstation & Linux Mint on everything else.
I made the move to Linux about a month ago, and it’s been super smooth (and yes I have an NVIDIA 3080). I went with CachyOS though. The ONLY thing keeping me dual-booting windows though is Cubase (DAW), which is unfortunate but whatever. I don’t really play any games that use EAC / kernel-level anti-cheat so it doesn’t affect me, but is a bummer.
Have you looked into using Wine or Proton to install Cubase on CachyOS? I see the wine page for it has a few garbage rating for the app, but I imagine that some of the work being done to get the steam games working might carry over to other desktop apps that didn’t work well on Wine in the past.
I’ve attempted to install Cubase using Bottles with no luck. I think the difficulty revolves around audio drivers and such.
Yeah, Linux audio is great when it does work, but a real pain when it doesn’t. Looks like there is some work being done to bridge the DAW gap like https://github.com/microfortnight/yabridge-bottles-wineloader, but I image getting it working will be a bit of a rabbit hole.
Sweet. Well hopefully in the future I’ll be able to get Cubase running and ditch windows entirely.
Nice 👌
Cubase works great for example in Hatari
88 comments and nobody has noted that the article itself looks like AI slop?
Lots of signals here: the writing style, bland and wishy-washy use of statistics, bullets and formatting that arbitrarily organize without adding value, the rule-of-threes clauses, and redundant details, the intro summary list, the lack of sourcing links, and “written” by an author whose bio specifically mentions AI.
I specifically looked for backup to the assertion about higher FPS and it’s just a random unsourced percentage. Maybe it’s true but this article has no value as a source.
Bold to assume that anyone is reading more than the title haha
but it confirms my preconceived biases…
God damn slop fuckin everywhere. Tnx man.
I’ve noticed that AI slop articles tend to have a a TLDR right before the table of contents. I’m an aquarist and they’ve made it damn near impossible to get good info on fish, taking the first few pages of results before I get a forum post with useful info.
I moved to Linux entirely because of how shit Windows is, but I do not, in general, get higher fps. It’s very case-by-case, but in general, my performance seems to be ever so slightly worse.
I probably hate Microsoft roughly as much as most people here but in a lot of ways Windows is way more polished than Linux. The second you try something “unconventional” in Linux the shit is going to hit the fan. Fractional scale DPI - half the apps crap their pants. On screen keyboard - and don’t get me started with OSK over Firefox in kiosk mode (for example in touch screen settings). Also try to make a custom shortcut on your gnome desktop to run some application with some arguments without writing config files in random directories you have to Google and reloading some configs via a terminal.
Microsoft really went downhill fast and certainly adds a lot of crap to windows lately, but sadly in the Linux world we don’t have 1-3 well polished distros, we have hundreds of them. All good at one or two things, but suck at everything else. There a so many options the choice alone is probably the biggest reason everyday people will not switch to Linux if there device doesn’t already come with Linux. Even people thinking about switching end up with analysis paralysis because everybody tells them stuff like, try it - if you don’t like it try something else. As if they have nothing better to do than trying Linux distros all day long.
This is exactly the type of shit I’ve been trying to explain to the Linux fanboys for years and all of them dismiss outright.
Until simple shit like this is easy for the average person, Linux will never replace Windows as a default OS option for regular users. 99% of people are scared of config files and the terminal, and they’re still just too commonly needed in every distro.
A LOT of work has been done to minimize it, but there’s always still basic functionality that just isn’t in the GUI. That’s not an issue for most of us here… But it is for most people. Fediverse users are a small minority.
It’s funny, i use both. Work is Windows, Linux at home.
90% of troubles literally come down to what you are used to and expect. I have had hundreds of problems assisting with company IT that I never would have had on Linux. People just ignore it or write it off as “expected”, but when something they doesn’t work on linux, they go crazy and say that Linux just doesn’t work. Windows has just as many basic functionality things that don’t work, if not more.
Linux isn’t perfect, but work is being done to fix it, where in windows, the support tells you to fuck off, try the only 2 GUI tools they have, then enter random command line commands and if that doesn’t fix it, fuck off.
Examples:
-
Searching in the start menu literally won’t return the program if the program doesn’t start with what you are searching instead of simply “contains” like every other search on earth
-
File search in fundamentally garbage on windows compared to Linux (both GUI). Not to mention that until last year there was no option to find where the fuck the file was in windows without ending the search and having to start the search over (hell on network shares). Luckily it has gotten better
-
One drive forcing itself as default, sync problems, losing files, etc… That often has to be fixed through powershell. Not to mention lying to you that files are synced when they are not.
-
Teams silently installing a random DLL that causes teams to bootloop endlessly, no resources online about it until last year late where you had to manually console command your way out of it via powershell
-
Microphone completely just not working at all. No possible way to re-enable it via settings, control panel, manual controls, registry, etc… It wasn’t broken. Microsoft secretly disabled it in the background and you had to install the old version of the audio troubleshooter because their new one is AI slop and it would say “oh it was disabled, I will re-enable it” when literally every single other tool in windows said it was enabled and working fine. This was a problem with >10% of people. Again, the GUI wouldn’t fix it until you downloaded a sketchy old version of a troubleshooter.
-
installing windows without internet working. They are making it almost impossible, actively. Literally the single most basic thing
-
Microsoft office being layered on top of each other all in one gigantic pile because one font was installed from a path that it didn’t like this brought PowerPoint in my old company to a halt for days
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Font blurring when moving windows between monitors (especially PDFs). Linux doesn’t have this problem that I have seen. Windows fonts look like smeared shit after dragging them from screens of different sizes
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If one single file has an issue in one single office project e.g. a warning dialog open or a frozen excel window, all office programs are no longer able to be closed, and often even interacted with. That is like the basic of the basic of having multiple program instances open. I have seen unorganized people with 10 excel instances open literally have to restart their computer because no office windows will respond enough to even find the problem instance
-
Update hangs and failures are a daily occurance in windows. I haven’t had an update fail for years in Linux and when it did, it said “this is why” where windows just says “try again” and keeps failing. Basic basic functionality.
-
pathing are the worst thing ever in windows. You have import library after library to get windows paths to work in different codebases where in Linux it just works.
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windows and printers… You know how everyone has problems with printers? Yeah, a lot of that is from windows shit printer drivers. With Linux, I haven’t had a print job fail in years. In windows, sometimes it will serially send a PDF to the printer, corrupt itself, and balloon the 10MB PDF size to 10GB and overload the printer until you have to hard reset it.
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windows constantly resets your printer settings in word, even after you manually set printer settings in the OS. How many times people have printed double sided because auto-switches back after you change it. That is so basic.
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SVChost or “system interrupts” eating 60-90% CPU for minuten on end where there are no programs running, making everything work extremely slowly and lag all over the place with no way to fix it.
I could go on for an hour, literally.
These are very basic functionality that is critically broken or hot garbage and just works on Linux. Again. There are tons of things wrong in Linux, it comes down to the problems the individual user is used to having and living with.
-
Yup. Hi. I’m one of those people. Everytime I’ve tried to use Linux in the past has come with a massive headache and constant googling to figure out the bare minimums. Windows? Literally holds your hand and just works. Any issues I’ve had with windows I can solve in a single google. I’ve got to delve into obscure forums and try to piece shit together on my own for Linux and I am not about to make my home PC a fuckin homework problem just to use.
You would have to run OpenSUSE tumbleweed to get the GUI equivalent of windows configuration.
Yast has a GUI app for everything from Samba setup to Bootloader config.
The trouble is: initially there is a learning curve to SUSE that is different than something like Mint
What do you use the terminal and config files for? I mainly use bazzite now but after a fresh install the most I do is login to steam and change some settings in Firefox. I copy paste my directory settings for imports on darktable to point to my nas but thats probably the most advanced thing I do
What do you use the terminal and config files for?
Excuses for staying on windows, primarily.
they’re still just too commonly needed in every distro.
there’s always still basic functionality that just isn’t in the GUI.
Can you give a concrete example?
Some time ago I wanted to get my xbox controller to work with Linux Mint. There were no working drivers installed, the drivers from the ‘app store’ (whatever it’s real name may be) didn’t work, the drivers I installed from some github page via the command line did work.
Config files and terminals? Huh? Why would you need any of that
This is a big reason why most won’t switch. Linux can be difficult to get started with and Windows really makes things a lot easier for the average person.
I tried to switch over to Linux this weekend, I gave up and switched back to Windows last night. I’m not completely computer illiterate, I know how to fix things enough that my colleagues often ask me (the administrative assistant) about simple stuff before going to IT.
I really like the Linux environment and I found alternatives to my frequently used programs, but the one thing I really use my computer most is to play World of Warcraft. I spent hours trying to get it working and I couldn’t. I don’t understand the terminal stuff, GitHub is confusing, and there are so many obscure forums with info I don’t understand. With Windows, the install is incredibly simple and I had my previous setup running within 2 hours.
I WANT to switch to Linux, but until I can run wow a lot easier, it looks like I won’t be. I’m not fully giving up on Linux, it just won’t be on my main machine.
It’s really similar to a conversation I had with a classmate on Android vs iPhone. He just didn’t get why I have an iPhone; “Android is more open”, “you have more options”, etc. I had to explain that it just works; I get a new phone when my old one is no longer supported, then all I have to do is sign in and my phone is back to where it was. Yes, it’s a walled garden, yes there are things Apple does that I don’t like, but the phone itself is simple and easy to upgrade. It just works.
WoW was one of the first things that was working on Linux with wine. It takes 2 seconds to setup bnet with something like Lutris and only requires the user to follow basic on screen prompts. No terminal, no configuration files.
In fact, I just googled “setup wow on Linux” and the first 10 results were tutorials for installing Lutris and just letting it do it for you. Hell even my mom figured out how to do this on PopOS and she’s not that technical.
I feel like this is the kind of condescending comment mentioned above because you assume that I didn’t try those instructions. Maybe I’m more of an average PC user than I thought and just more experienced in Windows than my colleagues, so I know how to fix Windows specific problems 🤷♀️
I don’t know what to tell you. I spent 6 hours following all of those instructions trying to get it working and it didn’t work. I reinstalled Windows, downloaded an exe, and had wow running as soon as it updated. That’s the kind of simplicity Windows provides to an average user, a quick install vs 10 different sets of instructions.
Like I said, I’m not giving up on Linux, but my game machine is Windows for now.
The majority of people probably can’t even get over the hump of imaging a USB drive.
I like to think of the average person as my mom. Can my mom plug in a flash drive in a computer? Yeah. Does she know what Linux is? Nope. Can she google about Linux? Yeah. Will she get confused and inundated with the hundreds of “linux” versions? Uh yeah.
And then if she does somehow download a .iso, she’d probably copy and paste the .iso onto the flash drive and have no idea what Rufus or Balena Etcher is.
And to be honest, most people don’t even need a computer nowadays. Their smart phones does everything. There is no need to have a computer anymore.
You say Linux, but I think you’re talking about Gnome specifically. I’d recommend trying KDE and seeing how it handles your problems. You can install multiple DEs and see what works best for you.
I was going to reply with this:
Gnome
Ahh.
I get what you are saying and maybe I’ll find some time to do that, but I hope you also see the irony in an answer like that, because the typical user couldn’t care less about Gnome vs KDE.
God forbid you should have options.
The typical user couldn’t care less about Windows VS Linux, but it makes it difference. I don’t know that it fixes the issues, but it might. It’s also an option you have because you’re on Linux, not Windows. You get a choice, and can figure out what works for you. It isn’t ironic, because that why you choose Linux. If you don’t want a choice and just want the garbage MS puts out, you don’t need to make any more choices. If you want options then you need to actually make choices too (though most aren’t permanent, like DEs, and you can swap between them).
I was about to comment the same - shitting itself when trying to do something nonstandard is a Gnome thing, not a Linux thing :^)
I also fully understand that new users are not aware of what the different components are and “what they do” (how they influence the UX) but they very much do make or break their “Linux experience”. Personally I dislike Gnome because it exposes barely any settings, and it’s “simple” to the point where it feels almost like a toy to me - kinda like macOS feels. Some people might be looking for that, and I don’t judge them, but I think it’s important to make an informed decision on simplicity and “guardrails” vs flexibility and customization. The same goes for immutable vs “traditional”, rolling vs releases, etc.
You don’t need to care about or understand the details, but the choice that the “Linux ecosystem” offers is one of its best parts, and understanding the implications of the ones you make is very important. It also helps avoid getting frustrated in “Linux can’t do this” situations by knowing that maybe it’s just your environment - believe me, unless it’s about running some proprietary code that the vendor is uncooperative about, “Linux” can do it. It might require some lines of code to glue together some pieces, but the “computing” things that “Linux can’t do” are very close to 0.
Gnome works completely fine. It’s probably the most bug-free DE I’ve ever used. And yes I use fractional scaling.
Try using the on screen keyboard with Firefox. On so many extensions the keyboard just doesn’t work (concrete example: tampermonkey code editor). And it’s not like it doesn’t work at all - you can insert new characters but backspace and new line is broken.
Now try OSK on Windows - never had a single issue that it doesn’t work where a real keyboard would have worked.
When I mentioned that there are too many/ummecessarily many different distros, i got downvoted sadly. But I think we would have soo much better of a user experience if there would be only 3 big distros or something.
I think the problem with that is that the distros are each essentially personal projects. Some individual or team has their vision of what they think Linux should be and make their own effort to make it. There isn’t just 3 big distros because there’s more than 3 teams that want to make their own. And since no one has control over what distro anyone else can make, each person’s only options are to start their own distro, work on someone else’s, both (and more, since there’s no limit on how many distros you can contribute to), or neither.
Though personally, I think more options is good. Just like with the lemmyverse, if admins for one distro make choices you don’t like, you’re not stuck with them because you can either switch distros or start your own fork if you think it was on the right path before that bad choice.
All I can say for sure is that, from my experience, Fedora is ready for the masses (at least the technically competent who are willing to learn, the others are just as lost on windows, outside of their usual activities).
The downvotes might be because it’s not something anyone can do.
Well put. So if you understand the whole situation like that, it seems that I want to forbid those indie devs producing their own distro. Which is not at all what I want.
I think it would be better, if most of the indie devs would join a bigger movement like debian, kde (or one of the many more), which try to produce solid bases or a distro for the masses, instead of making their own niche product which is only supported for how long they are interested in it.
Also try to make a custom shortcut on your gnome desktop to run some application with some arguments without writing config files in random directories you have to Google and reloading some configs via a terminal.
Dafuck. I will have to google it in Windows too. And no, I doubt Win experience is going to be any better, unless there is a “download some .exe from random site and run it to install GUI program” shortcut, which itself is a questionable thing to do (ok-ok, Microslop taught too many people that it should be OK)
Buut
everyday people will not switch to Linux if their device doesn’t already come with Linux
Been thinking/saying this all along. Terminal and different way of doing things is not an obstacle, just walk into nearest computer store and see what OS they come with. Then ask a question whether some, say, doctor is going to even ask if <whatever OS is pre-installed> is the best choice for them. Lots of people have lots of more important things to do :)
To make a shortcut on your desktop on windows. Right click element -> shortcut on desktop. To change arguments: right click shortcut -> Properties. Done. Now try to explain how gnome does it in a comment 🤣
Spoiler 1: I don’t use gnome
Clown
That linked thread is about keyboard shortcuts btw, not at all what this conversation is about. Which would be creating a link (called shortcut on windows) on the desktop that executes a program with some custom parameters.
And which got removed from GNOME. Plus one point for not using it
Linux-bad-because-my-windows-ways-do-not-work is still laughable
In a well-optimized case, Linux will consume fewer resources and is more effective at task prioritization, so it will be better. If Windows outperforms Linux, it is due to the game optimizing around Windows. Granted, across the entire suite of games, the two tend to cancel each other out rather equally.
It tends to be AMD GPUs that have the greatest differences in favour of Linux (except for ray tracing but that is improving in recent driver releases).
I think Intel too - in other words, the Nvidia Linux driver sucks as we’ve always known. And as long as they refuse to either put effort into it or let the community see and fix their code it’s unlikely to change
Yeah. Generally Indie games run better while AAA do not.
Then again there is the whole overhead with wine and game companies benchmark windows exclusively while optimizing currently.
WINE has very little overhead because WINE Is Not and Emulator. It’s just a translation layer. The performance difference in games will typically come from it being faster if run with Vulkan or not.
I experience no worse fps than I would on windows. I have star citizen running better on linux then I did on the same windows machine. To each their own I guess.
I just reinstalled COD WWII recently and it really does run like shit. Framerate problems that need restarts, poor performance, the sound cuts off if it’s through HDMI for some reason.
Did they ever fix the RCE exploit in WW2?
What’s that?
Remote Code Execution
Ah! I had no clue. So no, I don’t know if it’s fixed.
I haven’t personally compared Linux performance to WIndows in 10 years. The last vesrion of Windows I used was 8.1. The games I want to play run very well on my Ryzen 7700X, 7900GRE system running Fedora. Subnautica and Satisfactory run great. I don’t care if Windows gets a few fps more, because my computer actually works and doesn’t show me ads in the taksbar or sends everything I paste in a word processing document to the cloud. I get 144 FPS with raytracing in Unreal 5 games. What’s your problem?
Gaming in particular seems to be the same, with few games having noticeable differences either way.
Productivity wise, it’s night and day. On Linux I can run simulations while doing other stuff, on windows I had to have a freshly rebooted session with nothing else opened and leave it alone for hours to, maybe, run without crashing.
In my experience, windows made gaming almost impossible. Stuttering and crashes and sometimes even ARTIFACTS were a constant. But Linux just works OOTB
Hot and miss for sure. I have had games run better than on windows, and also worse. But there are too many other pros to running Linux to make me happy I’m not running windows.
Do you have a Nvidia GPU btw?
Linux has two major offerings for display servers: X11 and Wayland.
X11 is old asf and uses TCP/IP to send your data from the GPU/CPU to the monitor.
Wayland doesn’t do this I don’t think… But I believe it’s been known to have issues with Nvidia graphics cards.
Hope Wayland development picks up because last time I checked it still has a lot of bugs that X11 just doesn’t.
Most things seem to run fine for me on linux, but sadly Elden Ring runs a good 10 fps slower than it ran on windows for me.
Title implies a big move, pretty far from the steady growth their sources say and that they explain throughout the article. But I guess a more honest title like “Linux among gamers sees new record after continuous steady growth” isn’t as click-worthy.
PC Gamers keep Abandoning Windows 11 for Linux with Higher FPS & Fewer Interruptions
I installed Bazzite on my gaming pc this weekend. It runs Cyberpunk 2077 just fine.
This immutable Fedora + Gnome 49 is a bit weird coming from Xubuntu; seems to work though.
I honestly hated W11 so much that I jumped onto Linux whether I’d be gaming on it or not.
It runs great, but even if it didn’t I wouldn’t go back.
i’ve just installed cachy, yesterday. been working fine so far. I can even double click to install .exe files, but… it didn’t handle installing battle.net that well, so… i had to do it manually, but that worked fine.
So far no issues. Fast, and easy. even more customizable out of the box, than windows.
if you haven’t tried it, i highly recommend you give it a go. it’s free.
I’ve been using CachyOS for a few months now and it’s mostly been great, and so so much better than Windows.
I should probably just try to run .exe installers more. That might solve some of the challenges I’ve had with the transition, particularly since getting devices working correctly in my Windows virtual machine while still keeping full functionality in Linux has been challenging (webcam, sound, microphone, mouse4/5 and dpi buttons).
Docker has solved my biggest other challenges, for apps that have a Docker image anyway. They just work.
I saw in a recent Youtube video that between web services and AI, Windows licencing is only about 10% of Microslop’s business.
IDK if that number is true, but it sure would explain how much they’ve put into user experience. Does anyone use Windows because they like it?
I saw in a recent Youtube video that between web services and AI, Windows licencing is only about 10% of Microslop’s business.
That’s correct. Here’s some data on Microsoft’s revenue:
40% Server Products and Cloud Services 22% Office Products and Cloud Services 10% Windows 9% Gaming 7% LinkedIn 5% Search and News AdvertisingIDK if that number is true, but it sure would explain how much they’ve put into user experience.
It does but it’s really short-sighted from MS’s part. Sure, Windows might be only 10% of its business, but the other 90% heavily rely on it. Or rather on Windows being a monopoly on desktop OSes; without that people Windows servers, Office and MS “cloud services” (basically: we shit on your computer so much you need to use ours) wouldn’t see the light of the day.
Also: even if they are not directly connected, the fact that one monopoly crumbles might result in the next one falling apart too. Someone who successfully got out of Windows might try to ditch their MS365 subscription too.
I don’t think companies are going to ditch their MS365 subscriptions. That would mean getting rid of Outlook and Teams, and that ain’t happening anytime soon.
I don’t think companies are going to ditch their MS365 subscriptions. That would mean getting rid of Outlook and Teams, and that ain’t happening anytime soon.
Can someone more technical than me tell me why Outlook is so awesome for work? I use Outlook 365 for work, and the search function is ass. G-suite worked better on the front end, so I’m wondering about the back end.
Brand recognition. Offices and businesses have been using a version of Outlook for decades.
It’s just a recognizable brand, and it’s often bundled with the other things businesses are already buying in the Office suite. (think: Teams, Word/PowerPoint/Excel/etc)
The interesting bit is that these businesses are almost always using their custom domain for emails… which means if they wanted to switch from Outlook to another provider, and they linked their domain to that new provider, there is then zero switching cost outside the time to sign everyone up for accounts on the new provider and transfer old emails over, since all the emails directed at their domain would just go to the new provider.
Emails also come in standardized formats that can be downloaded and transferred to a new provider, too.
I genuinely have faith that businesses will begin switching away as the cost becomes harder and harder to justify.
there is then zero switching cost outside
Tell me again how you’ve never supported an email service migration. I’m delighted that you haven’t, but it’s obvious.
Also, I love when people pull a “draw the rest of the owl” with tech they’ve never been up in the guts of.
Emails also come in standardized formats that can be downloaded and transferred to a new provider, too.
Oh, you sweet sweet thing. I remember when I believed that technical specs were reliable and things were interoperable because documentation said they were.
I can still see their tears.
Maybe it truly is that easy with other providers to switch from one to another, but Outlook, and especially the Exchange backend underneath (both the effectively discontinued self-hosted server version and the Azure-managed Exchange Online) are a special kind of jank.
There isn’t a special layer or kind of hell for whoever designed it. There isn’t even a specific hell in and of itself.
Whatever exists after death for the designers of Outlook and Exchange is something so much worse than hell that it’s categorically different from anything able to be conceptualized by humans. We don’t have words to even begin to describe the gulf between comprehendable human thought and what awaits for them.
Just that calendar and email are all in one. I know Thunderbird and Evolution mail have the same features too, its just MS office often came with the systems. And yeah outlook search is the absolute worst. I have literally has the email visible in the mail history and search for it won’t find it, not by title or content.
In the hypothetical situation Windows desktop monopoly is over, there’ll be at least some internal pressure to do so. Cost of switch (in money = work hours) might be a pain, but if they believe they’ll profit more by using some competitor that is not Windows exclusive, they’ll eventually do it.
There are a lot of companies that have migrated to Google and only kept a few Office licenses for cases that MSWord is imperative in order to do properly their job (eg. exchange documents with third parties that only accept docx and the compatibility with GDocs is not perfect).
It depends on the cost and other factors used to sweeten the deal.
And w.r.t. Teams, I never had a good experience with it (regarding virtual meetings), meanwhile I never had an issue with Google Meet.
Unfortunately Google is also slop
Imagine having to babysit Windows servers
Azure has support for Linux servers. They’ve even made an effort to port Dotnet to Linux. A majority of their cloud infrastructure is Linux it seems.
That 40% isn’t for Windows Server, is it?
I had to dig through their annual report to find it:
Server products and cloud services revenue growth
Revenue from Server products and cloud services, including Azure and other cloud services; SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”); and Nuance and GitHub
So it includes Windows Server, but it’s way more than just that.
i like windows 7
I did back in the XP days. Long, loooong ago…
XP was alright, but I’m mostly just nostalgic for the aesthetic of 95/98/2000
Vista was the reason I switched to Linux
I’m mostly just nostalgic for the aesthetic of 95/98/2000
Boy, have I got some KDE themes for you!
The worse part of vista wasn’t even that it looked awful or ran awful. Personal perfence not with standing.
It was just 3 years too early and hardware fucking sucked. Drivers went standardized and everything was too weak.
Going back to vista years after the fact show it was actually really solid.
Probably the last time Microsoft was ever ahead of the curve in terms of design. Vista then 7 were great design wise, then it was only down hill since.
Hardware was definitely the issue. What got me to first install Linux was my wireless card just randomly stopped working. People were recommending that I do a full reinstall of Vista to get internet working again. I installed Ubuntu instead and never looked back.
Changing the graphics driver model at the same time as making the desktop graphically demanding was probably a bad idea
This was the same era when I tried to switch, due to the shittiness of Vista. I wanna say it was Mandrake Linux was what I was trying to use, but I couldn’t get it running correctly on my hardware.
Came back some time later and discovered Mepis Linux. After that, I never went back.
I started with Ubuntu, switched to Mint and finally settled on Arch.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Desktop revenue has been a pretty small slice for their revenue long before AI was a thing. Their main drivers were server products and O365, and now AI and Azure are also pushing a lot of revenue.
Direct revenue through Windows sales might be low, but I suspect Windows is still important to drive people to buy One Cloud, office 365 etc subscriptions. So when people move away to Linux, the other services should become less profitable with some time delay
Most likely. The majority of MS products and services are interconnected in some way.
I don’t think the number is indicative of quality. The office suite is their bread and butter (alongside Azure) and Teams is a steaming pile of shit.
none of the other popular desktop operating systems cost money at all. I don’t know why Microsoft is doing half of the things that it does
