the switch to linux felt like getting out of an abusive relationship
It is sad to see Windows get torn apart by Microsoft.
You don’t have to like it but most people know how to use it
No, they don’t, never have, and never will.
I would be surprised if ‘most people’ nowadays even knew what the ‘Internet icon’ does, since it’s not a logo of Facebook/Instagram/TikTok…
Even before phones, people could open a browser and perhaps browse pictures.
The Office Suite is next level, attained by relatively very few.
I switched to Linux so I could spend $200 more on actual hardware for my build.
Not arguing with your choice (props actually, I respect the switch) but it is possible to get a legit grey market key for w11 Pro for a lot less. I think I got mine for $20-30 in early 2024?
Edit: I should have noticed I was in the Linux group before I posted that, I thought I was still in the gaming one I guess! Not advocating windows to anyone, it’s a terrible OS. But some people might need it for some things so I figured I’d share information that might help someone save a bit of money if they did. (Yes, there are other ways around that.)
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I don’t doubt it, but do you happen to have a source?
The only plus side I guess is I only use that computer for a bit of gaming and not for anything else, and i did manage to turn of automatic updates before they AI-ified everything. If I had more time and energy in my day I’d dual boot it, maybe some day.
So you’ve decided unpatched security flaws is better than learning a superior OS? I’m not much for gambling.
No, I just haven’t had the time and energy to do something better. Happens when you’re approaching middle age and have health problems.
Sorry to hear that.
Just so you’re aware, it’s super easy. You can even leave your Windows drive(s) the same if you want too if you’re up for buying a new drive. Linux can access the data fine —though probably not the other way around, depending on the format of your Linux drive(s). I have a drive that’s mostly media from back when I used Windows that just works like any other, but a worse format but that hardly matters.
If you’re a gamer, Garuda, CachyOS, or Bezzite are good and take minutes to set up, and come with everything you need out of the box. Bezzite is immutable, so it’s harder to mess up, but it also limits what you can do (which probably doesn’t matter for you). If you do need help, which you probably won’t because it’s easier than installing Windows, you can ask and plenty of people will volunteer.
Thanks! I’ve actually done it before back in the days when Mint was quite new,and I’m a programmer by trade (although mostly on Mac) so I’m not too worried about it, but I don’t have a second drive (and don’t really want one given a 2TB NVME drive) so I’d want to do all the backups first, at least for important stuff like my friend and I’s Minecraft server. For a computer I barely use it hasn’t felt worth it. Most of my computer time (outside of work) is on my Mac laptop.
And then you have to continously fight it because it switches your default browser to edge or starts showing you ads out of the blue or record your screen every second or whatever the fuck those greedy bastards think of doing next…
Noooo fucking thanks, I switched to Pop for a year now and I’m not going back ever.
Even with Windows Enterprise, I don’t trust Microsoft to not spy on me and fuck with my control over the machine. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be planning on switching over to Arch SteamOS Desktop when it releases.
Just switch. SteamOS is specifically designed for the Deck, and other handhelds. It doesn’t do anything special outside of defaulting to a handheld friendly view that you can’t get in another distro. I would say it’s probably going to be worse than one designed for desktop, if you’re putting it on a desktop. Bezzite is pretty much the same as what SteamOS will be (with the option of desktop or handheld mode at install I think). Garuda and CachyOS are great for gaming if you want a distro that isn’t immutable. They come with everything you’ll need for gaming.
It’s trivial to set up. Just switch. Stop creating an excuse to wait. SteamOS isn’t special, unless you are putting it on a handheld potentially.
SteamOS is special in that it has the direct support and maintenance from Valve, but I agree with the spirit of your response
Yeah, but it doesn’t do anything special. Sure, it’s pretty much guaranteed to work for the Deck, but other than that you don’t get anything out of it that you can’t get elsewhere. There’s no special sauce that Valve puts in. The only thing they put in that’s special is Proton, except the contributions are open source and freely available everywhere.
All distros are supported by some group. Valve isn’t particularly special in that, except it isn’t their specialty like other distro maintainers.
If you’re switching to Linux to avoid a huge corporation then you should do that —and Valve is a pretty damn large corporation. Sure, they’re doing good things now, but people would have said the same thing about MS at some point in time. Don’t build them up into something else. Use the best option, not just following some brand loyalty for no good reason.
Sure, but Valve specifically have a focus on a gaming experience, so if your focus is gaming, there’s a good chance steamOS will provide timely fixes and updates.
Again, I don’t disagree with the general sentiment of your reply, and I wouldn’t personally bother waiting for steamOS, but there are valid reasons to want to specifically choose steamOS
You can get it for tree from them directly. They don’t care about that upfront cost. They make money off your data.
I’d rather buy a high end noctua fan for my CPU then spend $30 on a windows license. Although I have bought those in the past.
I’ve never needed to activate windows on any of my computers since I just prefer Linux. But the gray market seems scary to me with the possibility of the key coming from a stolen card victim’s wallet.
Is there any reason a non-dirty key would be available on the market? Does Microsoft do promotions or deals like that?
Microsoft doesn’t give a shit to stop it, because they profit off your data. They give it away for free themselves. They don’t care how you get it if you are on their system, and then they do everything they can to trap you. They don’t make their profit from key sales.
Those are good questions that I don’t have the answers to. Although from the research I did at the time it seems most likely they were purchased with regional pricing in a lower price region.
You aren’t taking anything from anyone. It’s just an algorithmically generated activation.
This is so easy it’s kinda nuts, and there are multiple methods to activate. All you should need for Windows these days.
Fuck microsoft. Fuck the Idea that everything needs to make a profit. Essential stuff should be publicly owned.
I want to nationalize seashores. It’s unfair rich people privatized entire coastline.
Same with natural resources. WTF are they owned by corpos? Anything mined and drilled should be owned by all citizens
In Oregon, at least, everything below the high water mark is public land.
We have the same “loop hole” around here.
People started doing protests by sun bathing in front of the rich folks gardens.
That’s crumbs. I want everything withng 500yards of high water line to be public lands.
I want to nationalize seashores. It’s unfair rich people privatized entire coastline.
Make them rentable. I want a private piece of seashore for vacation. But nobody should be able to own it for life.
Same with natural resources. WTF are they owned by corpos? Anything mined and drilled should be owned by all citizens
as sad as it is, that failed miserably in the soviet union. The soviets initially had way better computer but because all industry was publicly owned noone competed and noone bought computers which is why they fell behind the US.
There is a sensible middle ground that allows for the pressure-driven innovation of capitalism without its extreme and unfair exploitation. We just have to find it.
I disagree. Soviets were busy recovering from WW2 for decades while funding own allies. They were not in the position to splurge on non necessities.
But even with that - they supplied entire population with oil, gas, electric no problems. Utilities barely cost anything even in modern russia
In the USSR, private plots owned by collective farm families, averaging 0.25 hectares in area, provided 30% of meat, vegetables and milk, 33% of eggs, and 59% of potatoes in 1979.
Bet the land was taken better care of when its a family that owns it compared to some minimum wage workers hired by a mega farm.
Yes, although I was referring to the fact that every experiment in collectivized agriculture in the 20th century boils down to: A minuscule percentage of the plots were left to private initiative and those plots account for the majority of the total output.
The change is even more dramatic if you consider only those users who use English as their language in Steam. Also, Linux adoption rate has sped up this year. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ collects various data about Steam usage. One of the charts (screenshot below) show Linux market share among Linux/English users and overall Linux market share. I added the red line to demonstrate how I see the growth. There’s only few data points this side of the year, so my drawing is most likely wrong, but the growth starts around March. The green line is at 4.8% in January and February and 6.31% in July, so a nice 30% increase within about 6 months among Linux/English users.
EDIT: The post is now more in line with reality. Couple more data points:
- Linux market share among all Steam Linux users has gone from 2.06% in January to 2.89% in July. That’s a 40% increase within the first seven months only. And as another commenter said, the growth rate might increase towards the end of the year as more people starts abandoning Windows 10.
- The same numbers for last year are 1.95% in Jan '24 and 2.08% in Jul '24, which is only a 6% increase.
- But because the data is a bit jumpy, if I use approximate values of 1.75% for Jan '24 and 2.05 for Dec '24, the Linux market share increased by 17% in the entire last year.
- I’ll stop now.
Could it be that Steam overcounts the users? I mean if you have a Steam Deck, do you now count as a Linux user, thus diluting the Windows share, even though you’re still (also) using Windows?
It’s based on devices. But, I wouldn’t consider it as diluting the Windows share. A user might have any combination of devices. Maybe they have PS5 as their home gaming device and Deck as their handheld device. They could also have Windows PC and Nintendo Switch. Or maybe they have Mac laptop and Linux desktop. I for one belong to the Linux desktop and Steam Deck camp. Steam Survey only tells how many Windows, Linux and Mac devices Steam users use, but, for example, not how many hours each type of device is used.
I’m really not far off. Once my Tiny11 install breaks, it’s on to Bazzite.
Would recommend CachyOS, especially if you have a nvidia card
Good looking out, I’ll check it out.
Had thought of Fedora with Plasma, have been.using Linux Mint for the last 18 months. any thoughts?
I’ve been using CachyOS for about a month now with no problems. Very fast and easy distro based on Arch, so it’s “bleeding edge.” I haven’t needed to, but be prepared to tinker if an update goes south. I came from Bazzite and liked that well enough too, but I wanted better access to some softwares.
Let us know how it goes! Never tried Bazzite!
I installed it on my SteamDeck and have its non-gaming sister on my laptop and I love it.
Are we going to make a big deal out of every 0.3% shift in steams stats towards Linux?
Wake me up when we’re dealing in whole percentages… That’s when I’ll be excited about it, until then this could just be a sampling bias. A rounding error.
author has never used desktop linux and doesn’t really grasp what it is 😜
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I’m currently configuring my new linux dev/gaming machine. Thanks for giving me the push I needed, Microsoft!
If the survey hit for me 1 week from now I’d be on Linux, I’m literally setting my system up properly next Saturday
The year of the Linux desktop, babeyyyyyy!!!
I don’t plan on moving to spyware11. just too lazy to reformat and start from scratch on everything so haven’t made the jump yet.
You can always dual boot. That’s how I started because, like you, I was too lazy to fully commit to wiping everything.
If you don’t know what dual boot means. It means you can install Linux alongside Windows. So when you turn on your computer it asks which OS do you want to boot into (you can have a default if you turn it on and walk away too).
So essentially it’s like having 2 computers in 1.
It’s a good stepping stone into Linux without having to go to the full effort of starting from scratch with everything.
What I found amazing afterwards was how loud my fans run and how much my CPU is constantly working when booted into Windows. And then how quiet and fast everything was on Linux. It was nice being able to compare performance on the exact same hardware.
What’s spyware 11?
microsoft makes it
also called windows
The vibe I’ve been getting lately looking at Steam’s push for Steam OS compatibility is that it might actually be worth trying a dual boot again next time I can bestir myself to mess with it. I’ve got W11 but managed to disable auto updates so I haven’t received all the AI crap, but also means my OS is increasingly behind on security updates, which I’m not pleased about.
I don’t care about the latest and greatest either, generally, so maybe even more worth it…although most of my new game purchases are indie titles and most of those only release for windows. So we’ll see. I already have a strong preference for Mac support so I can play stuff on my laptop too.
Using valves proton means most windows games will run flawlessly (usually better) on Linux, so it’s really a non issue if the games you want to play are “windows only” (unless they use some kernel level anti-cheat).
Also worth mentioning that if you did want the latest and greatest, that would be more of an incentive to switch to Linux.
Good to know!
Generally speaking, as long as the game doesn’t have kernel-level anticheat, it’ll work on Linux. Basically, you miss out on some competitive multiplayer games, but not all. Everything else works fine, you might have to check protondb.com for some specific fixes, but usually Steam handles all that stuff in the background. For GOG/Epic/itch.io etc. Heroic Games Launcher is your best option, though sometimes I have to use Bottles for certain games. Some people like Lutris, I haven’t had any luck with it. But, for the most part, games “just work” on Linux now.
That’s great news. A lot better than last time I tried to make it work.
switched to arch 7 or so months ago because of the recall spyware breaking the camels back. havent looked back since, i shouldve switched sooner i actually like using my computer now!
Roughly the same for me. I couldn’t use Windows 11 on my old one and certainly wasn’t going to put it in my new one. Gaming has been a breeze too, much easier than I was led to believe.
Only thing not working properly right now for me is Trackmania 2020, i get massive lagspikes due to it.using 100% Cpu for some reason.
I mean its ubisoft so thats probably why its shit but i like.the game and would love it if it would work properly
Funnily, my performance in trackmania is fine… But I have an entirely different issue - if at any point I open the Ubisoft overlay, from that point on, if I tab out of the game and back in, I’m unable to control the car until I open and close the overlay again. The UI accepts inputs normally, it’s just the car that doesn’t.
Previously I had an issue where the game would refuse to accept controllers being connected while the game was running - the button prompts would actually switch to controller style, but the game would refuse to accept controller inputs, and the controller wouldn’t show up in settings.
But yeah, those are issues very specifically with that game, I don’t even know how they managed that.
Glad to have made the jump! not even dual booting
