Yes, I have less issues that needs to be fixed, or tweaked on Linux than on Winslop. Less popups that appear out of nowhere, and no forced upgrades while being on the toilet
Yeah, I just have a tough time believing you guys, from my limited experience with Linux, but also from many others here who seem to be Linux users, but can appreciate why others don’t use it. Folks talking about updates bricking peripherals and whatnot. It’s something that has literally never happened to me in the last 30+ years I’ve been Windowsing.
If Linux users could stop being so hyperbolic in their superiority, it might entice me to try it out. Windows isn’t some unusable shit and everyone knows it. It’s had its issues since day one. And to suggest Linux is just this set it and forget it OS is preposterous. Let’s all be real.
There’s so many options for Linux though. Mint is super beginner friendly and doesn’t focus on the terminal. You don’t have to set up Arch your first time around.
I think a lot of Linux people really do more harm than good when they try to sell people on Linux. Some of it is because they wildly overestimate how much the average person knows about computers, and some of it is just over sharing.
I’ve been using Linux for about half a year now. I’m a slightly above-average computer user, but not some kind of programming prodigy. I’ve had one significant hiccup when I was first installing it, which you probably won’t have because that was a weird quirk of my specific 10+ year old motherboard.
After that everything has pretty much been smooth sailing. 99% of my general computer use is exactly the same as on Windows (though to be fair, I’ve been big on free software for a long time so I was using stuff like libre office and gimp instead of Microsoft office and Photoshop already)
I haven’t yet run into a steam game that won’t run for me. One or two of them I had to add a launch option or choose a different proton version, and I figured that out by basically just googling “steam Linux game name” and a couple keywords about the problem I was having like “audio stuttering,” and the first search result had the fix.
Some games even run better for me now (mostly they’re about the same, some are very slightly worse)
If you use a lot of mods, they can be a bit of a pain in the ass to figure out how to get them running, but it’s usually doable, and once you do it’s done and you don’t have to do it again.
If you rely on specific windows-only software, usually you can get it running with WINE. That does take some figuring-out. But again, once it’s done, it’s done.
And overall my computer runs better and boots up faster without all the windows bloat.
It also breathed new life into my parents computer, and they’re tech-illiterate, retired, old people. They’ve had no issues with it so far.
–
In case that convinced anyone to give it a try, here’s my recommendations.
Think about what software on your computer you use. See if there’s a Linux compatible alternative. Try that out, see if you can live with it. Do this before you ever even think about making a Linux USB.
Pick a Distro - here’s where a lot of guides fall apart I think. I’ll make it easy. If you’re primarily a gamer, go ahead and choose bazzite. If you’re looking for a general computer to browse the web, do your homework, etc. choose whichever flavor of Ubuntu (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc.) or Linux Mint (which is ubuntu-based) looks prettiest to you. Don’t think too hard about it, don’t do too much research about the pros and cons of different desktop environments, don’t listen to the people who have some moral and philosophical bones to pick about Ubuntu. Just go by vibes. It’s stable, it works, it’s about as well-supported and documented as it gets, and if you do have a problem, you’ll find the answers in the Ubuntu forums without too much searching.
Put that on a flash drive, and just run off of that for a week or two. See if you can live with it. Bear in mind it will probably be a bit slower running off the flash drive than it will be once it’s actually installed. Play around with it, you can’t really break anything unless you purposely go rooting around in your windows hard drive and start deleting shit willi-nilly. If you absolutely hate it, just pull the flash drive out and forget about it.
If you decide you like it, take a deep breath and go ahead and install it.
My brother you’re in like the 99th percentile of computer users. The vast, vast majority of people can’t understand what a browser tab is, much less a motherboard.
A good reason why I don’t want to “get” Linux is this guy posted in this thread with Linux as his example, and it’s the most replied to thread with each user trying to justify their distro.
This is like me going into a bible belt small town, expressing my spiritual beliefs, and watching as each of the individual churches try to try and “save” me.
Until Linux users “get” why Windows is the marketshare leader and not demonize it like the spawn of Satan when it’s literally just an OS on a completely optional piece of hardware, I don’t think I’ll ever “get” Linux.
Though I do care very much for Android if that counts. 😉
You don’t have to tell people you use Linux or talk to them about it. I know that because I use Zorin OS, which is a really modern feeling Linux distro with a slick user interface, that’s perfect for people like you and I, who don’t want to be bombarded with opinions on the “right” operating system and just want to use their computers in peace. You should totally switch!
Preach. Any thread remotely about operating systems turning into a “Fuck windows” Linux cicrclejerk is just annoying as fuck. I’m almost refusing to use Linux just to spite Lemmy.
And I’m well aware I’m a spiteful person, it’s how I’ve survived 38 years, and I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, it’s worked out just fine!
Learning how to use a Linux distribution like Mint doesn’t require any special degree or knowledge. I’d say you can do that in a weekend or so. Especially since you can ask the AI about everything and it’s surprisingly good at Linux questions and terminal commands, although you don’t really need those for Mint.
If you’ve never been into Microslop Windows, navigating their piece of shit os can be equally as daunting since you are not free to do what you want, you can only do what MS want you to do which is completely counterintuitive to what Linux is.
Just because something is the market leader, doesn’t make it good or better than the alternative.
I get that you don’t care for Linux, and that’s fine but if you are the slightest interested in IT, you’re doing yourself a disservice not learning it.
I don’t think you know at all where I’m coming from. You don’t seem to understand how great AI are at documentation. I’d rather ask an AI than browse the mint forums reading decades old threads that won’t lead to anything anyways. That’s just wasting time. What’s your argument?
That’s fine. If people want to work in an inefficient manner and waste time, I’m not gonna stop them. I will take advantage of AI and I’m happy to do so. It makes my job within IT easier and that’s nice!
Do you ever click in to see more details? We used to have memes about stack overflow always having the answer to tech questions. Now we have ai summarizing stack overflow for us, but stack overflow no longer gets the activity to generate new answers, or even stay open.
You seem to think that stack overflow conatins all the answers to everything.
The AI can search and look through the web faster than any human on the planet, yes that includes stack overflow, but also forums and other open websites, anything that can be indexed basically.
Often times when you have an issue, it’s very rare that you are the first one to have it, so I’d say all the info you need to solve it is already out there and AI do a fantastic job to help you find an answer to your problem quicker than your could ever do yourself. Why not take advantage?
Why not remove the search function from stack overflow, you could just read all the questions and articles yourself to find the most sutible one for your question. It’s quite nice to have a server that can look though all questions available and suggest to you which ones are the best for you based on your search term. It’s exacly that, but way borader. How is that not a good thing?
Stack overflow still had an amazing percentage of answers to tech question but of course it’s not the only source.
Realistically I used to use a search engine for answers and it was pretty good about discovering relevant answers. Usually I clicked a handful off links from the first page of results, evaluated them, and selected the answer
Now the search engine returns an ai summary of the top results. It’s a bit slower but sometimes I can just use that. Other times I may need to click into sources for more information or to evaluate what it’s telling me. The big difference is who does the first evaluation/summary. Originally the ai was slower and less accurate but it rapidly improved
But here’s the problem. The older approach meant I clicked into the source. If they relied on ads or tracking, they received their income to support themselves. If it’s a gamified community source, responders got their karma. It was sustainable. Now with the ai, no one visits the original site and no one has incentive to contribute more answers. The ai is rapidly improving at the cost of its own sources
Linux. I don’t want “using the computer” to turn into a hobby that I need a computer science degree for.
That’s one of the reasons I switched from Windows to Linux.
Every single patch and every single version upgrade made using worse as all the settings changed weirder and weirder and hidden or missing.
Yes, I have less issues that needs to be fixed, or tweaked on Linux than on Winslop. Less popups that appear out of nowhere, and no forced upgrades while being on the toilet
Yeah, I just have a tough time believing you guys, from my limited experience with Linux, but also from many others here who seem to be Linux users, but can appreciate why others don’t use it. Folks talking about updates bricking peripherals and whatnot. It’s something that has literally never happened to me in the last 30+ years I’ve been Windowsing.
If Linux users could stop being so hyperbolic in their superiority, it might entice me to try it out. Windows isn’t some unusable shit and everyone knows it. It’s had its issues since day one. And to suggest Linux is just this set it and forget it OS is preposterous. Let’s all be real.
There’s so many options for Linux though. Mint is super beginner friendly and doesn’t focus on the terminal. You don’t have to set up Arch your first time around.
Thank you for confirming that, yes, we are on lemmy.
Which one is “literally just legally distinct windows 10”?
I think a lot of Linux people really do more harm than good when they try to sell people on Linux. Some of it is because they wildly overestimate how much the average person knows about computers, and some of it is just over sharing.
I’ve been using Linux for about half a year now. I’m a slightly above-average computer user, but not some kind of programming prodigy. I’ve had one significant hiccup when I was first installing it, which you probably won’t have because that was a weird quirk of my specific 10+ year old motherboard.
After that everything has pretty much been smooth sailing. 99% of my general computer use is exactly the same as on Windows (though to be fair, I’ve been big on free software for a long time so I was using stuff like libre office and gimp instead of Microsoft office and Photoshop already)
I haven’t yet run into a steam game that won’t run for me. One or two of them I had to add a launch option or choose a different proton version, and I figured that out by basically just googling “steam Linux game name” and a couple keywords about the problem I was having like “audio stuttering,” and the first search result had the fix.
Some games even run better for me now (mostly they’re about the same, some are very slightly worse)
If you use a lot of mods, they can be a bit of a pain in the ass to figure out how to get them running, but it’s usually doable, and once you do it’s done and you don’t have to do it again.
If you rely on specific windows-only software, usually you can get it running with WINE. That does take some figuring-out. But again, once it’s done, it’s done.
And overall my computer runs better and boots up faster without all the windows bloat.
It also breathed new life into my parents computer, and they’re tech-illiterate, retired, old people. They’ve had no issues with it so far.
–
In case that convinced anyone to give it a try, here’s my recommendations.
Think about what software on your computer you use. See if there’s a Linux compatible alternative. Try that out, see if you can live with it. Do this before you ever even think about making a Linux USB.
Pick a Distro - here’s where a lot of guides fall apart I think. I’ll make it easy. If you’re primarily a gamer, go ahead and choose bazzite. If you’re looking for a general computer to browse the web, do your homework, etc. choose whichever flavor of Ubuntu (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc.) or Linux Mint (which is ubuntu-based) looks prettiest to you. Don’t think too hard about it, don’t do too much research about the pros and cons of different desktop environments, don’t listen to the people who have some moral and philosophical bones to pick about Ubuntu. Just go by vibes. It’s stable, it works, it’s about as well-supported and documented as it gets, and if you do have a problem, you’ll find the answers in the Ubuntu forums without too much searching.
Put that on a flash drive, and just run off of that for a week or two. See if you can live with it. Bear in mind it will probably be a bit slower running off the flash drive than it will be once it’s actually installed. Play around with it, you can’t really break anything unless you purposely go rooting around in your windows hard drive and start deleting shit willi-nilly. If you absolutely hate it, just pull the flash drive out and forget about it.
If you decide you like it, take a deep breath and go ahead and install it.
My brother you’re in like the 99th percentile of computer users. The vast, vast majority of people can’t understand what a browser tab is, much less a motherboard.
A good reason why I don’t want to “get” Linux is this guy posted in this thread with Linux as his example, and it’s the most replied to thread with each user trying to justify their distro.
This is like me going into a bible belt small town, expressing my spiritual beliefs, and watching as each of the individual churches try to try and “save” me.
Until Linux users “get” why Windows is the marketshare leader and not demonize it like the spawn of Satan when it’s literally just an OS on a completely optional piece of hardware, I don’t think I’ll ever “get” Linux.
Though I do care very much for Android if that counts. 😉
You don’t have to tell people you use Linux or talk to them about it. I know that because I use Zorin OS, which is a really modern feeling Linux distro with a slick user interface, that’s perfect for people like you and I, who don’t want to be bombarded with opinions on the “right” operating system and just want to use their computers in peace. You should totally switch!
Preach. Any thread remotely about operating systems turning into a “Fuck windows” Linux cicrclejerk is just annoying as fuck. I’m almost refusing to use Linux just to spite Lemmy.
And I’m well aware I’m a spiteful person, it’s how I’ve survived 38 years, and I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, it’s worked out just fine!
Learning how to use a Linux distribution like Mint doesn’t require any special degree or knowledge. I’d say you can do that in a weekend or so. Especially since you can ask the AI about everything and it’s surprisingly good at Linux questions and terminal commands, although you don’t really need those for Mint.
If you’ve never been into Microslop Windows, navigating their piece of shit os can be equally as daunting since you are not free to do what you want, you can only do what MS want you to do which is completely counterintuitive to what Linux is.
Just because something is the market leader, doesn’t make it good or better than the alternative.
I get that you don’t care for Linux, and that’s fine but if you are the slightest interested in IT, you’re doing yourself a disservice not learning it.
I hear where you are coming from, but you just said “Use AI” on Lemmy. This should be fun 😁
I don’t think you know at all where I’m coming from. You don’t seem to understand how great AI are at documentation. I’d rather ask an AI than browse the mint forums reading decades old threads that won’t lead to anything anyways. That’s just wasting time. What’s your argument?
I didn’t have one. I was asserting the idea that people were going to attack your post for saying “Use AI.”
That’s fine. If people want to work in an inefficient manner and waste time, I’m not gonna stop them. I will take advantage of AI and I’m happy to do so. It makes my job within IT easier and that’s nice!
Do you ever click in to see more details? We used to have memes about stack overflow always having the answer to tech questions. Now we have ai summarizing stack overflow for us, but stack overflow no longer gets the activity to generate new answers, or even stay open.
You seem to think that stack overflow conatins all the answers to everything. The AI can search and look through the web faster than any human on the planet, yes that includes stack overflow, but also forums and other open websites, anything that can be indexed basically.
Often times when you have an issue, it’s very rare that you are the first one to have it, so I’d say all the info you need to solve it is already out there and AI do a fantastic job to help you find an answer to your problem quicker than your could ever do yourself. Why not take advantage?
Why not remove the search function from stack overflow, you could just read all the questions and articles yourself to find the most sutible one for your question. It’s quite nice to have a server that can look though all questions available and suggest to you which ones are the best for you based on your search term. It’s exacly that, but way borader. How is that not a good thing?
Stack overflow still had an amazing percentage of answers to tech question but of course it’s not the only source.
Realistically I used to use a search engine for answers and it was pretty good about discovering relevant answers. Usually I clicked a handful off links from the first page of results, evaluated them, and selected the answer
Now the search engine returns an ai summary of the top results. It’s a bit slower but sometimes I can just use that. Other times I may need to click into sources for more information or to evaluate what it’s telling me. The big difference is who does the first evaluation/summary. Originally the ai was slower and less accurate but it rapidly improved
But here’s the problem. The older approach meant I clicked into the source. If they relied on ads or tracking, they received their income to support themselves. If it’s a gamified community source, responders got their karma. It was sustainable. Now with the ai, no one visits the original site and no one has incentive to contribute more answers. The ai is rapidly improving at the cost of its own sources