It’s one new PC, Michael. How much could it cost? $10?
What’s 10 dollars? The people saying this are too rich to understand poor numbers. They probably think in terms of “a new pc costs less than an hour at my favorite spa, people are complaining too much”.
Arrested Development tv show. Pretty funny. The family fortune started with the dad opening a banana stand in his youth.
ALT: 2 panels. 1st panel- Rich mom from Arrested Development sitcom, holding a cup, opulent home, saying “I mean it’s one banana, Michael. How much could it cost? Ten dollars?”
2nd panel- Michael sitting back, head on hand saying “you’ve never actually stepped foot in a supermarket, have you?”
Oh damn! I watched the show many years ago, but the joke flew straight over my head.
based on the context of the show shed say like 10,000$ but I like yours better lol
Trade in their PCs to who? Fucking Aquaman?
That excellent gag is how I discovered hbomberguy some years ago
What’s especially funny is that he didn’t even script that, he just came up with it on the spot. And now it’s the joke he’s most known for.
I love how memes (in the Dawkinsian sense) work. Lots of people have enjoyed this, but I can imagine this being quoted as the original is lost to the sands of time.
Young people everywhere thinking that Aquaman was someone who just bought failing assets from everyone.
The Linux guys obv
October is going to be a great month to get a cheap second hand computer.
It’s online corps offload computers but there will be a delay and many will just have the extended windows 10 supports. So I’d give it another year.
Good time to start looking for a good deal on cheap home lab crap though.
ooo and I bet they won’t be that bad all things considered with how wild some of the non supported hardware is.
Translation: “Install Linux.”
I really want to put Linux on my gaming PC, but I’m doubtful I can get my Rift S working on there. :/
Apparently there is an openxr driver for it, though, so I suppose I should at least give it a shot.
There’s absolutely no way I’m going to win11, though.
Nobara or Pop! OS would be good choices.
Yeah, VR is still catching up, but I feel like (dual) booting to Win 10 just for specific purposes would greatly reduce the risk.
I’d just be scared of windows trying to clobber my nix partition.
Use separate disks.
Personally, I’ve never had trouble even with partitions, but Windows isn’t going to mess with drives that aren’t NTFS.
Haven’t had issues since the 2000s. Use a separate boot partition, use UEFI, you’re golden.
Just installed ZorinOS on my PC (dual boot with Windows 11) and I’m playing Diablo 4 on Linux. How cool is this?
It’s so cool. We’ve been waiting for Linux to cover gaming and it really has with the push from Steam.
Bazzite is better imo
I’ve heard people like that one. I didn’t try it, but I love Nobara as my primary OS.
Your best shot is with Monado, which supports the Rift S: https://monado.freedesktop.org/
I only have an Index, so I can’t speak for how well it works or how easy it is to setup.
Yeah, this is why I never got into VR, the Linux support blows even if you get a supported headset because the games aren’t made for Linux. There are some games, sure, but it’s not worth spending $1k+ on an Index.
I’ll use it once the barrier to entry drops or Linux support improves.
As someone who routinely used to sink thousands of hours into games, and by that I mean 3000 hrs. on R6-3, 2500 hrs. on Squad and so on, the predatory practices of Microsoft, Steam and game developers have just turned me off gaming completely.
I would, except there’s always some software or some feature missing. And there’s always the FOSS app that “might” meet “some” aspects of what native software does but it’s almost always never “native” support.
Sure, I know I can play MOST games on Linux, but I know for a fact they’ll launch on windows.
Or things like, sure, I know that my corsair Hardware MIGHT be controlled by signal RGB, but what about controlling the pump in my AIO? Or the sound levels on ny headset? Or the DPI in my mouse?
Then you have things like drivers. I’m not using any Nvidia GPUs right now, but the nvidia support for Linux is atrocious and you lose access to things like RTX-HDR and RTX Voice, and hell, even in AMD you lose access to certain features like AMFM2.
Then the software, not only does things like Adobe or Office just don’t exist, the FOSS solutions are not industry standard, so sure, I can learn to use LibreOffice, but that’s worth absolutely nothing when you apply for a corporate job and they expect you to know how to use outlook as a bare minimum, hell, even the Google office suite is being adopted faster… Ah, but if the software is available there’s still a chance it doesn’t work because it’s missing a dependency or something and you have to ask people to use the terminal and… Sigh
All in all, it’s just behind in many ways, sure, for some people it’s ok, and for laptops I’d think is mostly ok, great even. But I know I could deal with Linux, and I don’t want to troubleshoot a whole PC to play a game when I already spend the whole day dealing with solving issues or servers or services on my job.
I’m rooting for Steam OS to release to desktops because my living room PC is LITERALLY just for gaming, so that “could” work nicely.
Hardware MIGHT be controlled by signal RGB
OpenRGB to the rescue: https://flathub.org/apps/org.openrgb.OpenRGB
controlling the pump in my AIO?
What do you need to control about your pump? I sure hope it works without OS support.
Or the sound levels on ny headset?
Move the volume slider up or down?
Or the DPI in my mouse?
Save them to the mouse as profile if it can or use Piper: https://flathub.org/apps/org.freedesktop.Piper
in AMD you lose access to certain features like AMFM2
FSR Frame Gen works just fine, not sure why you need fake frames in more games.
the FOSS solutions are not industry standard, so sure, I can learn to use LibreOffice, but that’s worth absolutely nothing when you apply for a corporate job and they expect you to know how to use outlook as a bare minimum
There is also OnlyOffice and online MS Office. Not sure what you need to know about Outlook to open it and use your eyes to read the mails.
even the Google office suite is being adopted faster
Good news, it runs in a browser and works on every OS!
Ah, but if the software is available there’s still a chance it doesn’t work because it’s missing a dependency or something and you have to ask people to use the terminal and… Sigh
I have not fixed dependencies issue on Linux since the early 2000s. Flatpaks are your friend https://flathub.org/ .
All in all, it’s just behind in many ways, sure, for some people it’s ok, and for laptops I’d think is mostly ok, great even.
I run it on my high end PC and I disagree. It’s ahead in many ways.
- The graphics drivers are included and don’t need any bloated software to work
- It has a banger OpenGL driver, which makes games like Minecraft run significantly faster.
- It has a very active community for game support for games where the developer does not care
- It translates older DirectX versions to Vulkan automatically, resulting in a performance uplift and more stability. People on Windows are installing DXVK just so older games work. Look up DXVK in the Steam forums.
- It downloads shader caches from Valve, preventing shader stutter in games that don’t do it on their own
That list could go on for a while and it’s only for gaming.
I haven’t even gone into installation and not having to run ShutUp10 every time just to make the OS usable. Or how KDE is so much cleaner than Windows. Or how I don’t have any ads in my start menu, don’t have to force download Candy Crush on first boot, don’t have pre-installed apps I can’t remove, don’t have to block my own OS in its firewall to get rid of telemetry, don’t have to be told that I need to upgrade to Windows 11 constantly.
For work: Docker just works, complex networking setups are not a pain to setup, creating VMs is so much easier and has so many more features. VPN is so seamlessly setup. I can read almost every file system on the planet and use ROCm without jumping through hoops. Not to mention I don’t get Copilot and Recall shoved down my throat.
Are there issues on Linux? Sure, lots of them. But if I find them I can tell somebody about it and don’t have to deal with them for centuries.
I’m rooting for Steam OS to release to desktops because my living room PC is LITERALLY just for gaming, so that “could” work nicely.
SteamOS is just a modern Linux distro with Steam pre-installed and in autostart. If stuff works there, it works on regular Linux just as well.
Bazzite achieves the same thing right now: https://bazzite.gg/
Excellent breakdown. Well done!
And on top of all that, the article is specifically about Microsoft urging people to get rid of old hardware, which I take to mean NOT current-gen, bleeding-edge gaming hardware. So my suggestion was about not being forced to upgrade your hardware to keep having a usable computer.
The pump works without software obviously, but iCue let’s you change the speed of the pump.
Sound levels of the headset refers to the equalizer profiles.
FSR Frame gen ISN’T AFMF, which is great on older games capped at 60fps where you can easily get 120fps and it honestly feels fine.
and of course I know steamOS is just a distro, but they actually fine tuned stuff for gaming, and like I said, if you’re only gaming, sure SteamOS/Bazzite or whatever might just work. But if you use your computer for basically anything else, most people will still have issues.
All of what you described is just EXTRA work people need to know just to play games. The reality is that most “solutions” are always workarounds or alternatives. Most people prefer NATIVE first party support.
Kinda excited to go all the way and swap my last holdout. The last thing Windows forces me to do.
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my main problems are the lack of support for Adobe programs and several online games
Edit: I guess a more accurate phrasing would have been “lack of support from…”
Fair, but that’s not a Linux problem. Publishers need to support the platform. Is windows bad for not “running” final cut?
Not the fault of Linux, but these are still the “problem” OP asked about regarding switching to Linux.
It is, but i wanted to contextualize it for them and others reading. People sometimes have some idea that it would be impossible to port due to some inhernat aspect to linux. Might be true for something that makes heavy windows API use, but for many others its just a business case. And I wanted emphasis that a bit
I have never run into anyone who thinks it would be impossible to port Photoshop to Linux.
pragmatist and whatever you call the other guy talking past each other
I’m going to go against the grain here a bit and say that people considering a switch to Linux need to have certain expectations going into it. There are zero guarantees that anything Linux will be a “just works” operation. Especially when you get into the laptop scene and proprietary hardware.
Like sometimes an update will break things. Sometimes you will break things and spend time fixing it. Sometimes a piece of software and/or hardware will just not work at all and you’ll try convoluted workarounds that may or may not work. Linux support is often an afterthought considering <5% of desktop users use it. Popular programs and software are often just not available at all and the FOSS alternatives lack features you may need.
I truly feel that Linux is like the “I own an old hotrod in my garage and work on it as a hobby” compared to “I drive a cheap commuter car and just want it to work”. Yes windows breaks sometimes too, and I hate using their current operating system at work with telemetry and ads and knee-crippling limitations or random ass crashes, etc.
But I’ve also been in the position that I woke up one day and updated Garuda Linux and spent the entire day trying to not boot into a plain black screen when I had my KVM connected. I finally got my fstab working to mount my NFS share of my NAS after months of fucking with it when I feel like this is an incredibly easy “problem” that’s solution should have been apparent for the last 30 years or so and in my eyes should be something the OS should just “do on its own” automatically.
All that being said, I still love Linux and will never use anything else on my systems. I enjoy the tweaking of things, experimenting, having all the control I could ever want.
The Linux experience is a spectrum. Just like owning a car, sure there are people who own custom hotrods. But there are also enterprise level work trucks that can carry thousands of tons. There’s all sorts if in between, including small town cars, hatchbacks and buses. Just like they’re all vehicles of all different sorts, there’s also all sorts of Linux.
Buy System76 or Framework laptops and you’ll never have a driver problem. Use a stable user friendly distro like Mint and your experience will be smooth sailing. Use an immutable distro and you cannot wreak your system. Hire a pro data center and they’ll set you up with enterprise level servers. TrueNAS sells hardware and also distributes a high compatibility community Linux distro for NAS.
Now, use a niche experimental distro packaged by a single developer on their free time. Well, don’t act surprised if it breaks.
Linux is like the “I own an old hotrod in my garage and work on it as a hobby” compared to “I drive a cheap commuter car and just want it to work”
Really?
Linux gives you choice, sure, but it doesn’t just randomly break unless you’re doing something exotic.
Garuda Linux
There’s your problem, you’re using a bleeding edge distro, which is like having a hotrod.
If you want a boring commuter, install a boring commuter distro, like Debian. If you want something fresher, there are a lot of options before you get to Arch-based distros, like Fedora. Stick to the most popular distros and you probably won’t have problems.
Don’t get me wrong, Arch can be fantastic, I ran it for several years with minimal problems, but you really do need to be ready to step in and get your hands dirty.
My main advice is to go in expecting to need to replace software. A lot of stuff works (e.g. discord, Steam, etc), but a lot of stuff doesn’t. If you’re flexible, use a mainstream distro, and stick to what’s available in the repo or on flathub, it’ll probably be more stable than Windows. Just don’t expect your random RGB app or whatever to work, and be ready to swap some POS hardware if the manufacturer doesn’t support Linux (e.g. certain WiFi vendors that aren’t Intel).
Also, don’t expect Linux to make things faster, you’re still limited by your hardware. But do expect common tasks to work well.
Linux is like the “I own an old hotrod in my garage and work on it as a hobby” compared to “I drive a cheap commuter car and just want it to work”
Really?
Linux gives you choice, sure, but it doesn’t just randomly break unless you’re doing something exotic.
I see it more as a pre-built kit RC car (like Traxxas or Arrma stuff) that in stock form (like a Debian or Fedora distro) is acceptable for 99% of the things we want to do with it, but also allows you to get under the hood and tweak/upgrade/change the inner workings to your liking with support from the manufacturer. Unlike other prebuilt cars from the toy store that have no real upgrade opportunities and don’t want you under the hood, they are as-delivered with no other options…
Anyway…
Also, don’t expect Linux to make things faster, you’re still limited by your hardware. But do expect common tasks to work well.
Very well put.
Especially when you get into the laptop scene and proprietary hardware.
Pro-tip for those who go this route: get a Thinkpad T or P series. Both are highly-supported by Linux, come in Intel and AMD flavors, and even have extra power-management features and utilities no other laptops have.
It is a bit against the grain, but also very true
The question was why it’s hard for people to switch to Linux. They answered the question. It doesn’t matter if it’s Linux’s “fault” or not.
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Sadly nothing for Adobe InDesign, which is like 2/3 of my workflow :( (Also I don’t see an option to filter to Linux programs on that site.)
I spent half hour searching on alternativeto.net just now, but for the 3 Adobe programs I use (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) all FLOSS Linux options seem to be lacking essential features. Based on comments, even in more popular alternatives, features like PDF exporting or CMYK colour handling require workarounds or additional external programs.
(Re. searching only for FLOSS: I’m not opposed to paying for software, but when I enabled that option on alternativeto.net, a lot of results were subscription-based, which I do strongly oppose :/ )
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Adobe and ease of use
I need Adobe, specifically Lightroom, because there’s no alternative. I can’t just stop using it as a semi-professional photographer (I make money from it, just not a ton).
Darktable doesn’t handle large libraries well and also is missing features such as AI remove and integration with photoshop for splitting photos up for social media posts.
Then Apple. Their M-series are fantastic, and their support cycles are great. Also, taking marketshare from Microsoft is generally a good thing because it’ll force them to make a better product.
And I can’t game on Apple. A mac is a useless brick for the remaining 50% of what I do on a computer.
I highly recommend separate machines for work and personal/play.
If you need Adobe stuff for play, then a separate drive for Windows makes a ton of sense.
OK but people who need Adobe are a really small minority.
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If it came down to ditching adobe or quitting photography I would quit photography and I love taking photos lol.
Adobe is a threat to the photography industry for many reasons (especially to future photographers who want to follow in your footsteps) you should reconsider your options.
Thank you for the useless opinion that adds nothing. Congrats
Gaming. The only reason I went from Ubuntu to Windows.
From games with anti cheats exclusively functional on windows I’m assuming. Otherwise gaming is on par
Gaming is 100 percent not ‘on par’ I’ve exclusively used Linux for years now, and consistently run into issues not present on windows.
Is it good enough? Almost, but there are hugely critical aspects missing.
Lots of simulators (I racing, fanatec) lack support Anti cheats as mentioned. Plain old poor performance.
Protondb only lists 20 percent of titles as ‘platinum’ rated, with most gold games needing tweaks.
30 percent of titles are silver or lower.
I still to this day get hitching and stuttering as data is streamed into memory in many games, sekiro recently comes to mind, making any level transition exceedingly annoying.
Gaming is 100 percent not ‘on par’ I’ve exclusively used Linux for years now, and consistently run into issues not present on windows.
I have a LARGE diverse library of games I bought when I was gaming on windows.
Literally all of them work fine on my steam deck except a handful of AAA games from companies hostile to linux (“anticheat” bs, they don’t want linux gaming to suceed for business reasons), some really ancient DOS games actually work better like Steel Panthers/winspmbt.
I am sorry but especially if you are into indie games even a little, your perspective is no longer indicative for the experience of gaming on linux in general.
Don’t gaslight me. The games you play may work fine, but the games I play don’t always. And the games I play are almost exclusively single player small scale indie games. I play games on Linux just about every day, exclusively. My experience is that, while serviceable it’s just strictly not on par, as you claim. Though you contradict yourself anyway by hand waving games that don’t work.
I don’t understand the need that people have to pretend like it’s all perfect. Attitude like yours is toxic, diminishing the experience of others in order to pretend like there are not any issues, trying to put the onus on the user for playing the wrong games or not conforming to the idea that proton is a perfect solution.
I don’t understand the need that people have to pretend like it’s all perfect.
I am not claiming it is perfect, I am saying the experience is already much less of a headache than windows is at this point with all of microsoft’s bs.
Not sure what made them not work, but this makes sense.
If it’s anticheat, blame the devs, because they’re specifically blocking Linux. If it’s something else, maybe we can help.
The anticheats harvest data that has value, it’s a business decision rather than a technical problem.
For your particular situation, checkout the site protondb. It’s a user contributed site on how to get all games to work
steam and heroic launcher makes it very easy
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People are too addicted to video games apparently
Gaming on Linux is better than it’s ever been. But yeah still a few Windows only releases, but that time is coming to an end I think.
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Is that Sam Reich in a penguin suit!?
jokes on them i just erased my windows and put mint on it
Hi from a Thinkpad running Debian (Mint), as God intended
“In the name of our Lord I implore thee to embrace Linux Mint. For it is a software that shall free thy computer from its earthly shackles and grant thee access to infinite knowledge of the cosmos.”
Matthew 23:23
No offense to Matthew, but I never got the Mint installer to boot, so I installed a different distro.
Arch heretic here (long time Mint user).
I use Arch btw.
My Acer Nitro with OpenSUSE says hi 👋
My Acer Nitro with Aurora Says Hi!
(I’m thinking maybe going to Kinonite)
If you are living on the coast and the water is rising due to climate change, just sell your house and move.
Sell their houses to who, Ben? Fucking Aquaman?!
Hbomberguy is so based
I want you to know a few things. First, you saved me a Google, so I appreciate that. Second, I am working overtime to support a department that isn’t working at the moment, and so I have very little to do. (Long story) I was real excited to slap on my headphones and listen to an hour and a half long rant about fallout 3, only to discover that I left them at home. And so I am terribly disappointed.
I’m surprised that he hasn’t done his yearly upload yet.
At least with OS you have a choice.
So, uh… You gonna trade me a better machine for my current one, Microsoft?
M$: best I can do is Intel celery, but it’s new enough to run windows 11
sigh does it at least come with ranch or peanutbutter? Celery is better with one of those.
Comes with 64gb emmc & 4gb ram, soldered. Everything else is extra
TRIGGERED
Peanut butter and raisins, gotta get those ants on a log.
Childhood memories
I can’t recall ever trying it with peanut butter, that sounds interesting
Celery is excellent that way. A peanut butter lover’s dream
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Celery and peanut butter together are the best if you like both of those things separately
Celery stalks with peanut butter and raisins is the bomb!
No, but you can use it for your bloody mary.
No! CheezWiz with raisins or nothing! Just like my mother used to make.
Ah, the old Ben Shapiro logic. If you don’t want your house that’s at risk of flooding, don’t worry, simply sell it! Someone’s bound to give you a good price for it!
Sell it to the merpeople, they’ll be happy to have a proper house for once!
Hmm. I wonder if Aquaman is in the market for some old computers.
This is kinda funny, just thinking someone believes you can “trade in” a PC at all. Even more so when they are trying to say those same Windows 10 machines will be so useless you need to trade them in in the first place, making the value of such a trade in what, next to nothing?
And I now I use Linux. Will never go back to Windows after this nonsense.
This is the way. Linux gave my computer more freedom and lifespan. Never go back again.
I made the jump recently, too, after having to use W11 for my studies… Figured that the one multiplayer game I play that actually needs Windows to work (and that’s purely because the dev’s won’t enable anticheat on Linux) is not too much of a sacrifice when the alternative would be giving out the possibility to tune the OS to my liking.
Bye bye Windows, you were “great” during XP and W7 times!
Well, if I’m honest I tried to install Win11 before Linux but it was such a pain in the arse I gave up. The installer couldn’t pick up the SSD so I had to download drivers onto USB and install them half way through the wizard. THEN, it wouldn’t pick up the WiFi card so I bypassed that to get the installer to finish, and to top it off, even after I’d installed all the drivers, it still didn’t pick it up, not in the device manager, nowhere, as if it didn’t exist. So I gave up. Linux installed first time and although it’s not quite perfect yet it’s functional enough for me to actually use the flipping thing! Haha
I’ve installed every Windows since 95 on various machines and never had so much trouble. Win11 is complete crap. And Microsoft are a bunch of dickheads for forcing it when there was literally nothing wrong with Win10.
I also had problems installing Win10 years ago, the problem was I had more than one drive plugged in… Took me half a day to figure that out.
The only problem with installing Linux (pop_OS this time) was I didn’t flash my USB stick properly, so user error. Also, could be my old Kingston Datatraveler isn’t well suited for the job
Don’t even want to think how badly installing Win11 now would break my system…
Hot take from an IT guy: save your important data, make a plain vanilla W11 boot USB (nothing fancy, no Rufus tricks), wipe your hard drive to zeroes, and install W11 like normal. I’ve reimaged a ton of older PCs and literally never seen it not work. My 10 year old Optiplex, supposedly ineligible for W11, runs W11 just fine.
Microsoft might someday break it, sure. That’s not new. Microsoft products were always, in practice, available to us at Microsoft’s pleasure. This is the same company that allows massgrave to exist on github because they’d rather we pirate MS Office than allow LibreOffice any oxygen. We’ll probably be fine.
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I’m imagining me doing this to my building of elderly, it dies and then opening my eyes to 40 work orders. Lmao
Why not install Linux for them once Windows 10 is dead?
They are a prime candidate for a dead simple Linux distro with the “Web”, “Mail” and “Documents” shortcuts on the desktop and nothing else. Can’t get a virus, can’t get scammed by fake Microsoft support and most won’t even notice.
I have installed Fedora Kinoite for my mom and have had zero complaints.
It’s on the to do list for sure. Currently getting them off their external antivirus’ is a challenge. They have to come to the conclusion themselves (most of the time)
Most are in their 80s. Think it’ll be next generation honestly. Some dont even have phones or email addresses.
Had one who got a Chromebook and was just at a loss. Tbf that was an ass Chromebook but that was still too much for her.
Most have ollllld computers that are hitting the hardware failure stage. I’ve seen a god damn Vista machine at work.
I’m gonna convert someone. Just finding someone who is aware of what a tab in a browser is a rare occurrence currently lol
I will almost guarantee some update will break shit at the most inconvenient time humanly possible and the people you’ve done this for will need your help, all at the same time.
Well, yeah. That’s life as an admin under the best circumstances. There’s a running list of Windows ticking time bombs over on r/sysadmin. There are lots of good reasons to ditch Windows, but I wouldn’t say the risk of MS shutting down technically unsupported hardware is one of them (because I don’t agree it’s a substantial risk).
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Users to microsoft: “You’re creating a huge pile of garbage out of perfectly fine devices because of unneeded hardware requirement”
microsoft: “It’s ok, just buy a new one”
Rarely have a message gone through so bad.
Funny because people still use Windows 7 in large quantities across the world.
Windows 7 is such a nice user experience today, if you use it in 2025 you really get an idea of how far windows has fallen off.
Can you believe this company has a Chief Sustainability Officer? What the fuck do they do all day?
Can MS be sued by EU for this? There was the thing with USB-C, because E-waste, and now the most used Desktop-OS says “just throw your PC away” for a not really needed (and artifically defined) requirement.
I don’t think there would be any legal standing for it. The computers being dropped won’t be losing their functionality since users could just switch to something different or keep using Windows 10 without security patches. The
The?
End.
