When my elderly, and tech illiterate family ask how to switch from Windows; I’m sorry but I’m not telling them to use Linux because they’re going to harass me nonstop for tech support.
At best this will be the year of macOS, because there’s a store I can send them to for all their questions.
This is going to be my Year of Linux, finally taking the plunge. Nothing special, just a used laptop running Mint to replace a Chromebook (who’s hardware has finally failed). Gonna try to replace my gaming PC next year once I’ve got more of a handle on the different distros and have played around with them (and more money).
Remember folks, it doesn’t have to be the year, it only has to be your year.
Mine was about 19 years ago. I’m no genius, and I haven’t regretted it once. Linux has come a long way since then, while windows is deep in the enshittification trenches now, and has been for years. Your YOTLD can start today if you want it to. Tired of being actively abused by your OS? We’ve been here all along.
And if you are happy where you are, that’s fine too.
Nah, this is the year of Linux on desktop for everyone. The old Mayans foretold so.
They thought it was a great idea to remove the feature to unlock the taskbar and move it to the top or side of your screen in windows 11. I don’t care if it was a design choice, it was a fucking stupid one.
I can’t believe this is still impossible. Surely engineers at Microsoft are suffering from this too? But I guess they really want to push the search bar and ai features that don’t fit on a vertical taskbar.
This right here drove me to dual boot Manjaro. I can’t be the only person who has stacked monitors instead of side-by-side monitors. The UI is an abomination and the telemetry even moreso.
Linux is not turn key, and as a significantly PC gaming user it has limitations. I still have not set up modding yet, and whether Vortex mod manager will work or not is still unclear. I can’t get more than 60Hz out of my monitor on HDMI, which is required if I want 175Hz and 10bit color due to DisplayPort 1.4 limitations. Sleep causes my motherboard to permanently display a “CPU unknown” QLED Code. Instructions on simple tasks like creating a permanent drive mount at boot are confusing because there are steps that seem to be just assumed by everyone writing them. Etc.
I am working my way through these, but still find myself in Windows 11 most of the time because unfortunately it just works. Software is natively written for it, there is no searching for how to get peripherals or programs to work. I say this as a lifelong tech nerd who started on Windows 3.1 and DOS, and who’s job involves working with Linux based equipment. This shouldn’t be as hard as it has been to transition, but it is.
Honestly your situation is kind of a worst case scenario.
At this point Linux works really well if all you want to do is browse the web and play (single player) games.
It also works pretty well if you’re an expert who understands the system in and out and can comfortably edit any config file on their drive to achieve what they want.
But if you’re a Windows power user whose used to being able to set up all kinds of niche functionality its a rough experience when all of your knowledge is now suddenly useless and there’s a different set of things that are easy or hard to do.
Its actually kind of a similar experience going the other way. For example there are some things that Linux users are used to being able to script that can’t really be accomplished on Windows except via autohotkey, which from a Linux user’s perspective just seems incredibly dumb.
You’re absolutely right, I feel almost as bad attempting to use Mac as I do Linux but it is a less powerful OS and I just accept there are things I can’t do. Plus it IS designed to be idiot proof.
For Linux, I run into the problem that there is a floor of knowledge assumed in every tutorial. Auto mount my secondary NTFS drive at boot? Just do XYZ in fstab. Don’t know where fstab is and where to make that entry? You’re SOL. I am comfortable in command line to an extent, but it’s been a long time since I dailied DOS, honestly don’t spend a lot of time in PowerShell, and networking equipment is a completely different beast.
Microsoft may suck, but I can usually find my way through a script or formula or something with their knowledgebase. My skill set doesn’t translate well, and I am finding it harder to learn than I probably should. I probably need to take an introductory Linux course.
Who uses Windows like that? The UI gets all screwed up anyway
These threads are always hilarious. People are not switching to any kind of desktop. They are moving away from PCs entirely. There is an entire population who only use a phone as their computer.
Android is Linux. Still a win LOL
I truly yearn for the day i can just plug in a phone into a dock and use it as a PC honestly.
They arent the strongest phone out there, but the PinePhone (and Pro) can do exactly that. I am heavily considering one for a second phone to play with
You don’t seem to understand
But I’m an honest man.
I have mint running on my laptop now.
Pro tip for anyone who wants to try Linux and maybe attempt to set up dual boot with Windows:
TURN OFF BITLOCKER ENCRYPTION IN WINDOWS FIRST.
IF you don’t, here’s what happened to me:
Mint live USB instance booted easily at first. I started the install process and selected dual boot. Mint setup then proceeded to prompt me to enroll a MACHINE OWNER KEY… And then realized that bitlocker encryption would prevent it from setting up dual boot.
It said, to paraphrase, “exit mint setup, log back into Windows, disable bitlocker, then you can come back and install”
Well that was a fucking lie because YOU CANNOT GET BACK INTO MINT!
WHY? Because mint FORGOT the MOK!
When you try to get back into mint from the boot selection menu, it says
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Foundthe upshot is that you computer will never let mint live USB session ever boot again UNLESS you disable secure boot in BIOS and rename grub to mmx64.efi in the ISO image.
And if you DO those things chances are mint will never present you with the option to detect and set up dual boot with you extant windows instance ever again.
I went ahead and nuked my windows 11 instance on my laptop because it was being a bitch and clearly was never going to be a good neighbor to mint. I have no major regrets because mint is nice and I like it. It just didn’t turn out how I would’ve ideally intended. But one way or another Windows 11 HAD TO GO. So, in the broad sense, I wanted to switch to mint… And I have! All good.
Can we stop with this? It was an over hyped slogan and we can give it a rest. People are slowly switching to Linux and that’s good enough
The slogan is a complete meme at this point. A meme that indicates it’s the year of the linux desktop!
Yeah, it just comes off sarcastic to me, which apparently means people think Linux is not popular enough to talk about or something. I don’t know, it just rubs me the wrong way.
You can like something and still make fun of it, you know?
I’ll have you know I’m completely serious and not poking fun at myself when I mention I use Arch, BTW!
I think the year of Linux memes are fun. :D
You can, but Linux needs good press, and many would see this “joke” as another reason to avoid the whole ecosystem.
I guess the hope is that a large amount of people will suddenly switch to Linux, maybe because of social media popularity, a breaking windows change, or maybe a popular computer manufacturer shipping only Linux by default.
But even if that does happen, I would think it would result in an increased adoption rate, not everyone switching to Linux over the course of a year.
I’m mostly of that opinion also :D
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I see Lain, I upvote. Because, no matter where they are, people are connected.
As the old Mayans foretold.
20 years and counting its been Linux desktop for me. There really hasn’t been a good alternative yet.
If only the Linux desktop stopped getting offended when it’s not treated like a server and has to shut down. “Wait, you had audio settings that I was supposed to remember? Cool story bro…”
What distro 😳
I find people complaining about every distro. The thing is, every operating system sucks. The good thing about Linux is how that becomes your fault.
I mean I was asking about your complaint. Never heard of a Linux desktop that needs to be treated like a server before
I mean, not necessarily your fault but at least you know someone could care to fix it, and you didn’t spend $100 for the privilege.
I would love to be able to pay $100 for more great Linux distros.
You absolutely can. Most open source projects accept donations.
Not the same thing as purchasing an OS. Which you can do already, but there aren’t many options.
Sorry, only spyware laden with ads is available currently at that price.
True. Even in the case of windows, it wasn’t like that some years ago.
Lain is what prompted me to switch to Linux! Watching a character who doesn’t yet understand computers fuck around with a computer really inspired me to fuck around with my computer
Honest question, how would my life improve if more people switched to Linux? God bless all the maintainers that have made it simple enough for an idiot like me to understand it
Most things work right out of the box and those that don’t I could do less with anyway, Linux is perfect
Less corporate shitfuckery all around. Right now Windows pretty much has a monopoly on the desktop, which is why they have completely stopped caring about users. Once Linux gets above ten percent market share or so, they’ll take notice. And then whine about “communism” or some bullshit.
Cool, they’ll take notice but I’m not going back and neither are a lot of people I’m sure. Not going back
2025 lets gooooooo (the year needs at least one win)
