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Can’t run Windows 11? Don’t want to? There are surprisingly legal options
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I recently switched to PopOS! And it’s been great. Not being pressured into Microsoft applications and using your Microsoft account is great
I thought what the public health sector gonna do if they don’t allow W11 in old PCs, and later I remember that in Mexico they use W7 with IE, lol. BTW I think they could use Linux, my mum was a nurse there and she only used OpenOffice and a web browser
Switch to Linux
I would but my DJ gear is over a decade old and none of it is compatible with Linux. It won’t even run on a modern CPU without crashing Serato, so I use an old laptop with a 4th gen i5 running LTSC to power my turntables and mixer; it all runs smooth as butter on period-correct hardware.
Eventually I will get new gear and try to get it working in Linux, but I don’t have thousands to drop right now on updated hardware, so I make do with what I have.
Why not encapsulate Windows 10 in a VM? You can run it indefinitely as long as you don’t give it Internet.
Because I don’t want to run hardware that needs to operate in realtime over a USB 2.0 connection through a VM. I have digital turntables with high-resolution platters. These are precision instruments that require the absolute lowest DPC latency obtainable; I need to eliminate as much overhead as I can, and have my equipment running as close to the bare metal as I can get from a modern OS.
My company has decided to dedicate me and another coworker to go computer-2-computer and check if they have TPM 2.0 support.
I’m doing my best to push a Linux switch in our workplace!
It’s not just tpm 2.0 support, but simply Intel 8th gen or higher or Ryzen
Intel 6th gen CPUs could totally support tpm 2.0 but they decided to cut them off because $$$
There is no real technical reason, management wanted the line to go up so they had meetings and meetings with the engineering teams in order to find a somewhat reasonable excuse to send to the landfill millions and millions of perfectly usable computers
i hate you guys so much. once in their lifetime, theregister writers actually manage to recommend something useful, and you guys start to shit all over the comment section.
for the microsoft forum admins: no, ltsc is fine. you can install a store, but since its running on an early feature version with fresh security updates, xbox gamepass wont like it much. same goes with the cod launcher.
for the neckbeard freedomfighters: linux cannot solve every problem.
ive been using 10 ltsc for 5 year now. still not as great as win7, but nothing ever gonna beat that os. less telemetry, less services, no ms store (but can be installed with 3rd party softwares). runs a ton more smoother on laptops as well. main problem will be getting updates from certain softwares: programs only check for the main build version, and ltsc is going to look like its outdated, your programs might deny your updates (i would say 3 years from now). keep in mind, 11 also has an ltsc version: no bloat in the start menu, no store, less telemetry…but still looks like arse. i would recommend getting an oem key for cheap, or yohoho on the massgrave site, dont support ms with a full price.
A sensible response. Windows has its pros, and Linux has its cons. I personally don’t care for Windows anymore, but that’s because I grew up with Linux in the home alongside Windows, ultimately chose Linux despite the cons.
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so end of LTSC is the year of the Linux desktop?
Any day now
Yeah, LTSC IoT 21H2 should last even longer, but I’d still avoid getting attached to any PC that has it installed.
The lengths people will go to to avoid upgrading
Avoid downgrading. Unless you mean switching to linux.
Linux
LTSC is supported, yes, but it’s an edge case not intended for desktop (or most server) applications.
If you don’t want to move to 11, install a flavour of Linux. Don’t run LTSC.
There it is. Top post is always someone casually telling you to “Just install Linux.”
I see your point but the correct answer is to install current branch. If you want pain and suffering, skip the appetizer and go straight to Linux.
Only shit thing is a couple online games I like playing are dicks about their anti cheat and not wanting to be Linux compatible.
Small price to pay
Not really. I pretty much exclusively use my desktop pc for gaming. I have a laptop for doing work on.
Even smaller then
I don’t know how to install Linux in my MacBook Pro 2014 without fucking up macOS, I do have Win10 installed already with Bootcamp, so this LTSC version already looks more interesting to me than any of the Linux flavors.
Did you attempt to look it up?
Once several years ago, I needed to use 3rd party tools and I wasn’t too confident to mess up with the MacBook, which is considerably more locked than previous laptops I have ever used, that is why I wanted to stay in the Boot Camp field.
I’ve been using 10 LTSC for a few months now, it works great with the few Windows-only apps I still use. I mainly use it to organize my media library, but it’s not had any problems with the few games I’ve installed with Kernel-level anti-cheat (Destiny 2, Delta Force)
I had to download the Xbox Accessories app to control my Elite controller, but that’s really it.
You might likely run into issues with GPU (and other) windows drivers, which might stop supporting old windows 10 versions. At least that happened already with LTSC/LTSB. I expect this to happen especially when ordinary windows 10 EOL is reached.
Is that much of a big deal though? Running old GPU drivers is fine, other than maybe if you like playing the latest AAA games down the road.
I mean eventually it will be an issue, but for a long time I imagine they will work just fine.
I’ve certainly had games stop working with older drivers. Older games, even.
But maybe.
Personally I just moved to Linux with Proton, but is not for everyone.
Well, it just depends on your use-case. Sometimes new games or applications require newer drivers or directly a newer Windows version. This is something you just have to be aware of.
At least that was a reason I switched LTSC Windows over to Enterprise for some people.
What is this disclaimer warning about? I have used LTSC exclusively as a desktop OS since 2019 and everything works. I have not had an instance of something not working that would have otherwise worked on Enterprise or Home, etc. I game in 4k, edit videos, run a jellyfin server, mine monero. I’m confused about what you mean
I even upgraded the system without a clean installation and everything worked perfectly and I have huge customization in my pc.
I am curious as to why you think so that it’s not intended for desktop applications. I don’t really have a say in server applications as I don’t use any such software. What I use W10 LTSC is mainly for my engineering softwares which won’t work properly with WINE. All normal software that you expect to work in home version also seems to be working minus all the bloat and more control over configuration. I feel like it’s the most clean version of windows that one can use now.
Simply, because Microsoft says so. The amount of “omg micro$oft is such garbage” more professional versions of that that can be attributed to not RTFM is fairly significant. It’s interesting how much effort people will put in to making a OSS project work, and give up fairly quickly in Windows land. Merely an observation; all respect to those who daily drive on Linux (and to be fair it’s been quite a few years since I tried).
More specifically, you can run into driver and software issues both inside and outside of the Microsoft space. The “Feature Updates” that are put out do include a fair bit under the hood sometimes and you miss that. Less likely in the personal use space, but quite significant in the business space. When the IT curmudgeon deploys LTSC across 1500 devices and 2 years later needs to implement a newer capability, it’s a hell of a lot of work.
Your use case is realistically the intended use case, outside of industrial equipment/embedded systems. You’re using WINE for most stuff and poke your head into Windows occasionally.
Specifically on what they say:
They intend it for stuff that really is specialty systems or single apps, like ATMs or stuff that drive CAT scans. Not geberal-purpose systems.
Doesn’t mean it won’t work for a whole lot of other people, though.
Why even bother at this point? Linux has become so good it’s actually easier and more familiar to use than the clusterfuck that is windows 11.
Linux user here, I really hate this kind of bullshit. Just stick with the facts there are loads of reasons to use Windows. And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.
Another twenty plus years Linux server and devices admin and user that found last year that Linux is finally mature and stable enough to replace my desktop too without having the fiddle with it every once in a random update. It was a decision that I can accept making workarounds for legacy windows software and l can live without other eco system. Yeah, there are plenty of reasons that people are still running Windows and keep doing so.
Don’t make being user of an operating system your identity, people. It’s just as annoying and unnecessary as those Apple fanboys we all know and dislike.
Exactly. I’ve been Linux exclusive for something like 15 years, and I’m usually the first to tell people to stick with Windows if there’s even one piece of software they say they’ll miss. If they really want to use Linux, they’ll ignore me. If they would’ve bailed when something didn’t work perfectly, they would likely write it off and never try it again, so it’s better to leave that door open IMO.
And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.
Eh, only if someone needs it.
For instance my 75 year old father is happily using Linux Mint on his laptop. Why? Because all he’s doing with it is web surfing, watching youtube, and checking his email. At home that’s all most people are doing, especially older people. I set his up so that it backs up his stuff and auto-updates. It just works and if it does get broken I can recover it with minimal effort.
It’s the same for me at home. My main PC is Linux Mint where I do almost everything. For the occasions I need Windows I have an Intel NUC attached to my KVM. For work I’ve got LM installed on my work laptop and when I need Win11 I have a VM setup in QEMU/KVM with it.
Are there people who have workloads, or gameloads, that only run on Windows? Sure there. We all know that.
But there are a lot of people, especially home users, who could easily run Linux and don’t.
This… It’s not so much that I’d never advocate a windows install, it’s that linux should be the first port of call and Windows be the specialist fallback for when Linux doesn’t handle the use case well.
Exactly. These type of comments only come from an immature POV that how they use Linux is how everyone would use Linux.
How well does Linux run Solidworks?
Oh right, it doesn’t…at all.
Linux is useful for many things but just doesn’t cut it for the majority of people reliant on single deal breaker items.
You’re also SOL if you have a couple of decades of music projects in various DAWs (though predominantly Ableton, plus a decent number of Maschine & Reason projects, for me) using all sorts of VSTs from over the years. I keep several versions of some VSTs installed so I can open older projects, and those older versions are never getting patched to fix broken Linux support by the developer, even if a more modern version does get fixed. It’s all got to come from wine devs, which frankly probably have more important issues to focus on.
I’ve tried a few times to get Ableton working with all my plugins and MIDI hardware and it’s always been an exercise in madness ultimately resulting in failure and usually a lost weekend. It particularly doesn’t like anything with my iLok key involved, last I tried a couple of years ago.
I happily run Linux elsewhere, but my main desktop is going to mainly run Windows for the foreseeable future unless something drastically changes. At least my projects aren’t all in Logic!
There’s also some software I use for my photography that didn’t properly work on Linux when I last tried (e.g. GPU features in PureRAW are the main thing I remember), but I think there’re some alternatives there I’d look at if I could get the audio production stuff working perfectly.
I’ve been working on getting set up for music production on Linux, it is possible, but it has a lot more challenges. Manjaro Linux running the 6.13 RT kernel has worked well for stability with Bitwig Studio and Ardour, but the amount if plugins that are impossible or very difficult to install makes it feel limited.
Heard of dual boot?
Been doing it for the better part of 20 years now.
Can’t say I would recommend dual booting both OSes off the same drive. Windows causes too many problems. Put Windows on an entirely separate drive instead and boot to it by changing the boot device in the BIOS.
I run a dual boot system with no issues at all. Just need a second drive for Linux and let GRUB chain load the Windows disk.
That’s effectively the same as what I described, is it not? The only difference is you’re using GRUB to choose what to boot into. It’s still a two disk setup with Windows separate from the Linux disk.
When’s the last time you tried? I had a hell of a time dual booting in ~2016, but as of the last five years or so I’ve set up half a dozen dual boots without issue, and Windows (LTSC) hasn’t messed up any of the partitions.
I have one, it still isn’t great. Windows update routinely fucks with it. Currently using windows as my daily driver because I can’t be arsed to fix my Linux partition again
This is basically what killed my Linux laptop. Some windows update borked the partitions (and not just grub) so that Linux wouldn’t boot anymore. I would never recommend using both on the same disk.
I don’t really use that laptop for much anymore though.
Yeah I wanted to use my new pcie 5.0 nvme for both Linux and windows but it’s not even being recognized as nvme in windows apparently, so I think I’m gonna reset all this shit and put windows on my old nvme and Linux on the new one but it’s a hassle.
Windows only applications mostly. The ones I use are Fusion 360, Photoshop, Lightroom, and NI Labview. Unfortunately CAD/Graphic design software also often really struggles to run in WINE, especially with updates happening fairly often.
I’ve thought of a windows VM, but that’s just not worth the extra effort of dealing with hardware passthrough to get proper GPU acceleration.
I really like Linux, all my servers and VMs run Debian or Alpine. But it’s just a lot of work for desktop use in my experience (yes I know some of you have never had a single thing break), stuff just randomly breaks for no reason, I’ll do a system update and just get a black screen from botched GPU drivers, or back when I ran GNOME my extensions would randomly break after an update and never work again, sometimes installing a simple application like steam would nuke my package manager.
As much as people complain about windows and some do have poor experiences, for me it’s pretty much set and forget, I installed W11 on my desktop maybe 4 years ago shortly after release and it’s just… there. It works fine, it doesn’t break, all my apps, games, and drivers still work after updates.
The number of times I have read people say the “need” Photoshop and the works is crazy high. I am really curious what important work all of you are doing with all that proprietary software you list as necessary.
Also that is why you should only learn open source software from the start. I’m learning Blender atm and I absolutely refuse to touch anything like Maya. I don’t want to be locked into an operating system by some software.Fusion 360 is a big sticking point for me too. I tried FREECAD but it ran like ass on every system I’ve tried it on. I’m currently dual booting but windows already wiped the secure boot key once which rendered the Linux os unbootable somehow even after I turned off secure boot. That was like a week after setting it up. I hadn’t even got started on the laundry list of other shot I needed to get working on Linux.
- To use Windows only and legacy software.
- Some laptops don’t support Linux due to missing drivers.
- Some very old people hate change and would want to use windows 10 till the end of times, matter of fact I had seen a full office with about 5 desktops that is still running windows xp. (Spoiler alert:they got a ransomware 2 years ago.)
- finally, Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations. In comparison, a bad Linux update could fuck your boot loader beyond repair (it happened to me twice in fact, once on openSUSE tumbleweed and the other on Clear Linux).
Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations.
Are you new? Windows will barf all over itself and all your files doing regular updates. Happened to my wife’s computer just recently. She has almost nothing installed on it aside from Steam and Chrome. Windows update turned itself into a hot mess, and it’s a known issue. The only option was to do a completely fresh install of Windows.
Idiot proof my ass.
I have to disagree about the idiot proof. KDE Plasma and Mate Desktop are more idiot proof and easy for newbies than Windows 10-11, yet have more features in their simple control panels.
I’ve had no bootloader problems in the last 10 years of Debian, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu (15-20 installs, plus another 20-30 if you count VMs.) However, my work computer’s bootloader was semi-bricked twice in 2019 (Windows 7).
- To use Windows only and legacy software.
This is a fair point. If you’re a creator and need adobe software then Linux is pretty much a no go. However, a lot of windows software have Linux equivalents (and those
- Some laptops don’t support Linux due to missing drivers. are generally free as well), so its a matter of doing research.
If you pick the right distribution it may include all the drivers you need. So far I tested 5 distributions and they all worked straight out of the box. I’ll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I’m optimistic it will just work also.
Some very old people hate change and would want to use windows 10 till the end of times, matter of fact I had seen a full office with about 5 desktops that is still running windows xp. (Spoiler alert:they got a ransomware 2 years ago.)
Fine. These people who refuse to adapt to the world can just keep using windows. No skin off my nose either way.
finally, Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations. In comparison, a bad Linux update could fuck your boot loader beyond repair (it happened to me twice in fact, once on openSUSE tumbleweed and the other on Clear Linux).
Now this “idiot proof” take is really funny. You see, I’ve been using Mint for about a month now, never having to log into Windows. Yesterday I needed to log into windows and was immediately met with an update (against my consent), followed by a blue screen of death and when I restarted my laptop my profile couldn’t be acceded and I was instead logged into a safe Environment.
I ended up having to troubleshoot using the Registry to get my account back. If this is idiot proof I have no idea what you consider a system that just works (which is what Linux does in my experience). You’d feel like Heaven is on Earth. On another note, WiFi never autoconnected on login in on windows in my laptop, but it does on Linux.
As for the issues you had, I understand. Rolling releases aren’t for everyone and if you’re not particularly into tinkering or just use your laptop to browse the web, an immutable distro is pretty much unbreakable.
Otherwise, Linux Mint is very conservative so it won’t break with updates (and in the rare instance that does, you can just use Timeshift to rollback the updates anyway).
I’ll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I’m optimistic it will just work also.
I have Mint running on 2011 and 2014 Mac minis. It’s basically flawless. The only trouble you might have is finding the wifi driver, depending on which model you’re using. Iirc, the minis were fine, but the 2011 MacBook Pro I put it on was a little more difficult to track down. But ethernet worked right out of the box, so it wasn’t a huge deal.
Linux on Apple Silicon is a trickier proposition, but getting less tricky all the time.
Sounds lovely, thank you for that feedback. I’m very excited to try. I’m gonna try to install Aurora OS (immutable) and boot from a pendrive on my wife’s Mac (it has an Intel processor still, so it should be fine). If everything works well, I’m sure shell be very happy.
Windows is idiot proof
Could we at least add more idiot support to system crashes?
Windows has a QR code for you to scan, you can make a personalized recovery drive so that it restores your computer, ctrl alt delete gives you options to click on.
Biggest one is going to remain gaming. If anything, I’m beginning to feel like Steam Proton is starting to harm Linux gaming efforts more than helping them. I’ve known games that have dropped native Linux support because “It works on Proton!” only for the game to not actually work on Proton.
If we could get to a world where every game could actually be run on Linux with minimal hassle, maybe then you can beat the drum that there’s no point using Windows. Until then, it’s going to remain the OS for gaming.
I’ve been trying out several Linux distributions over the past couple of weeks to figure out where to go after Windows 10.
I’m very open to switching. but if I have to be honest, there are still plenty of UX problems in my experience. It’s frustrating enough that I keep going back to Windows.Which distribution did you try?
Mint Cinnamon and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop.
I ran into various issues, one of them being (for example) incorrect behaviour of dead keys for accented characters. That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.
That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.
What desired behaviour are you talking about exactly?
Because I have used those exact two distros, also with deadkeys since I type in Portuguese and Spanish alongside English, and deadkeys works just fine for me.
So the keyboard I’m using is US International (with deadkeys), which is the standard keyboard for the Netherlands.
Certain key combinations should create an accented character, but certain other key combinations should simply print the accent followed by the character. Typing this way is essentially muscle memory for me, so if it deviates from what I’m used to it really trips me up badly.
Example:
', followed byeshould typeé(which Linux did correctly)
', followed bymshould type'm(where Linux typed an accentedḿ)
', followed bycshould typeç(where Linux typed an accentedć)
', followed by'should type''(where Linux typed')
', followed by[]should type'(which Linux did correctly)I checked several forums, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to change this behaviour in Linux. Dead key behaviour is seemingly consistent between keyboard layouts, and it can only either be on or off?
Edit: It shouldn’t even be that complex of an improvement to the OS.
If they were to add a defintion as to how deadkeys are supposed to work as part of the keyboard layout file, this wouldn’t be an issue. I could just make my own “US Intl. with Dead Keys (NL)” layout and it would be fine.Hey, so I just tested this and you’re right, it doesn’t work as you described.
I suppose I unconsciously found workarounds and just ran with it.
For the examples you mentioned:
I’m is achieved by typing ’ and then space.
ç you can get with AltGr+<
The other two, I have no idea what they are, but I trust your judgment.
I also went around some forums and yeah it appears other people report it doesn’t work as it should. A bummer.
Maybe there already are some custom keyboard layouts out there you can download?
To get
Wow! Thank you for going through the effort of figuring out whether there was a solution for me. I really appreciate it!
And yeah… I could probably type all the characters I need to type through workarounds. But my problem is that I don’t think I should have to relearn how to type in order to switch to Linux. It’s a relatively niche issue I ran into, but I’m clearly not the only one running into it.
Which is a shame because I do want Linux to be more widely used than it is currently, and I think small annoyances like this are part of what is holding it back. It makes it more of a hassle to overcome the hurdle of switching OS.
How long did you try each one? Usually when trying anything new it takes a little while to get used to the things that you readily accept as “just how things are” with something you have been using for a while. I am a long-term Linux user and I can tell you that Windows has plenty of major UX problems when I occasionally have to use it on someone else’s PC.
When the keyboard doesn’t work correctly, that is not “just how it is” though…
I’m not going to relearn how to type accents for the sake of switching to Linux. The OS should just work correctly out of the box, or at the very least give me the option to fix the behaviour without having to go 20 internet forums deep and delving into the depths of the system files.
I tried Mint for four days before getting fed up with things not working as they should, went back to Windows for a week and then tried Fedora for two days again running into very similar issues.
You might need to switch to a keyboard layout with or without dead keys depending on your preference. Not quite sure how Windows does it these days other than some vague nightmares about the layout switcher thing in the task bar from a few years ago that kept switching back semi-randomly when switching applications. Some of the changes in how accents are typed are actually related to using accented characters less than the characters on their own (e.g. backticks) but others might also be related to making things easier for people with disabilities that prevent them from pressing certain key combinations.
The issue I’m talking about is unrelated to keyboard layouts. It’s how deadkeys are implemented.
The deadkeys are seemingly defined separately from keyboard layout, and there is no way that I could find to redefine them other than either turning dead key behaviour on or off in the keyboard layouts
Jesus Christ this community never fucking misses a chance change a discussion to Linux. It’s tiresome.
Sorry for trying to improve everyone’s lives. How selfish of us to share superior technology.
I guess we’ll just hoard all the good stuff and not let you guys have any of it from now on.
Yes well done, thanks for spreading the good news, I’ve been saved.
Torvalds be with you. Go in peace.
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I wish I could use Linux for everything, but there are still things you need Windows to run. It would be amazing to be able to run Nuke, Houdini, Ableton Live and the Native Instruments manager on Linux, but it’s not remotely possible now.
… because I have a Samsung Odyssey+ VR headsets, which needs “Windows Mixed Reality” (Windows VR) and was gutted/removed from Windows 11 (and doesn’t work on Linux).
I hear you, but me get this straight:
Windows fleeced you out of a technology they were supposed to support for the years to come, but you’re still gonna snide Linux and stay with Windows? Lol.
Well, unless this is an offer to buy me a replacement Quest or Pico (all of which, work on Linux) “yes, I’m going to stay with Windows 10” (and/or maybe dual boot).
Developers decide what platforms they want to support based on what resources they have available and the kinds of users they wish to target. They create versions of software where they expect to garner enough market share or based on what gives them the most return on investment. Even at a 4% market share, Linux is still pretty much an edge case for many companies, though I agree that a corporation like Samsung can absolutely afford to make their software available on Linux
I don’t know man, I’ve been trying to mount my network share on Ubuntu for a few days already.
I don’t have experience with setting up networks on Linux, but Ubuntu should have some guides available, no?
In any case, I was speaking from the perspective of someone who used Linux Mint and Fedora. Both work pretty much out of the box with little tinkering.
CIFS or NFS?
That’s a weird way to spell Linux Mint
until you wanna play games on it, at which point you start running into driver issues…
No, I don’t.
Pre-installed Nvidia drivers will likely be fixed in the next two years, but:
- You’ll have zero driver issues if you use an Nvidia compatible distro like PopOS or Nobara
B. The 25% of gamers not using Nvidia GPUs do not have driver issues on Linux
III. Windows has tons of driver issues, so I’m not sure why Linux Nvidia drivers are a significant detail here. We don’t expect little Jimmy to know to install drivers, and know what to do when windows update fucks your drivers randomly. Linux actually soves those issues for you.
III. Little Jimmy doesn’t really need to, because the amount of times that windows update completely bricks your drivers is pretty low. You’re clearly overestimating the driver issues that people experience with Nvidia or otherwise on Windows. Neither myself nor any of the people I know have ever experienced any significant driver-based issues while playing on Windows, and the truth is that the vast majority of Windows users do not even need to know what a graphics driver is to be able to easily play games on Windows.
Yeah it’s great that AMD support seems to be great and I agree that Nvidia sucks as a company, but I’m not the one claiming Linux is the greatest gaming system.
Ok fair, last time I used windows you had to install gpu drivers manually. I think you still are recommended to do so, since the windows ones are really old.
But yeah manual driver installation/specialized distros for Nvidia is a problem that’s in the process of getting fixed with NVK, Nova, and the official drivers. Intel and AMD are there already.
I would rather have one extra manual step like that than dealing with/paying for Windows 11
If it was just one extra manual step, it’d be fine. In my experience working with Nvidia drivers on Mint and later Ubuntu, it’s more like 15 extra steps and some things still don’t work. Sure, it’s better than dealing with Windows 11, but from my experience it has not felt like less hassle than getting games running on Windows 10. Maybe that’s just an Nvidia issue, and I certainly would love to upgrade to an AMD system for better Vulkan support, but that’s not happening anytime soon.
Is mint windows-like out of the box? I’ve already forgotten what Linux is like outside of i3/sway
Yeah, cinnamon has a windows-like taskbar, startmenu and icon tray.
People fixate on those things. I don’t think those are the key things.
If I had to define what makes something Windows-like I’d point at the software and drivers being self-contained, self-installable executables and the old DOS-style disk handling and directory structure.
I mean, I don’t think that’s necessarily a great thing, but it’s been a long time since Windows took the “press key, type what you want to run, press enter” thing from… I’m gonna say MacOS. That start menu, taskbar and icon tray thing was a differentiator with Windows 95, but probably not since Windows 8.
Linux mint has an app store like Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
I think it supports flathub, which has every app you could need, but I haven’t checked since I run a very customized NixOS.
People don’t really download .exes anymore, it’s just people who are used to windows 7 and earlier who still do that.
Citation gonna be extremely needed there. I have no idea what the penetration of the MS store is these days, but I’d be surprised to find most people punch in “VLC” in their app store before doing it in Chrome. Never mind that growing up with Windows 7 puts you in your mid 20s, who in their right mind bought into the Windows 8-era iteration of UWP? If you had said Windows 10 I would have rolled with it, but… yeah, gonna need so much citation.
But in any case, as I said above, the MS Store app is not the same as the multiple Linux package managers. You’re not going to write VLC and find three different identical-looking results with only fine print revealing which is which type of installer (none of which you can tell apart if you come from Windows anyway).
The assumption was that nobody used win8 lol
But again I think people who grew up with 10/11 are more likely to use the windows store than you think. They used an iPad before they got a chromebook before they got a windows computer. My little cousins don’t play minecraft Java, they play minecraft bedrock. I don’t think they know what VLC is.
I mean, it may be higher than I think, because the amount I think is pretty low.
But I don’t think it’s the default. I am not THAT detached from younger people. iPads and Chromebooks are very region-specific options.
If you have numbers to any of that feel free to share them, because this is very far from a binary thing. There are literal billions of Windows PCs out there and that split isn’t going to be 90/10 (which would still leave you with hundreds of millions in the small bit anyway).
I don’t understand this comment.
So you think Linux users have to use a command line to launch applications?
Also, there are appImages for Linux that run exactly like .exe files if that’s how people want to run software, but there are also like 3 other ways to install software, it’s up to the user.
I guess the file structure is different if that’s really a big deal to anyone.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding?
No, what? I’m saying all current desktop OSs (and mobile OSs, for that matter) will default to an app search interface when you press their respective Windows/Meta/whatever key or shortcut, so there being a “start” menu and a taskbar instead of a search bar and a dock ribbon makes no difference and is intuitive when going from Windows to Linux no matter what distro or DE you choose.
And that there being “like 3 other ways” to install applications is the issue. Windows users go to a place, click on a the “download” button, then click on the file they download and go. In Linux you could try to approximate that, but it’s the least convenient option. Instead you have an app manager that sort of looks like an app store from the other OSs, but sometimes not everything is in there and you have to manually add repositories and sometimes a thing IS there but it shows up like four times because there are multiple ways for apps to be packaged and it’s not obvious at a glance whether you’re downloading a containerized instance, a bundle of loose file dependencies or straight up code you’re about to autocompile. And when you ask online people will (correctly) tell you it’s actually easier to just use the command line package manager, except those are all distro-dependent and they all use subtly different syntax depending on what flavor of Linux you’re using.
So yeah, that’s a bigger difference and barrier to entry than “the start menu”.
The file structure you should need less often if you’re not a power user, since the user home directories are pretty much the same across the board. But hey, still, it’s very different on Windows compared to other systems, what with devices and volumes being automounted at the root level with a consistent drive name as opposed to a /mnt location and most of the pieces and dependencies of an app being kept in a consolidated folder. So yeah, it’s still a bit of a moment when you eventually have to edit a config file or manually navigate to a removable drive or something and it’s not immediately obvious where that would have gone by default.
That, and to this day it still trips me up that Linux GUI file managers mount network locations and Samba shares in arbitrary real paths you can’t easily navigate to in CLI but mounting them in CLI makes them appear in the file manager in a way that is visually indisinguishable, despite being mounted in a completely different place. That is not awkward because it’s different from Windows, that’s just weird and bad in absolute terms and I don’t get why it’s that way at all.
Thanks for clarifying.
Yeah what you say about launching I agree with, it’s not a big deal anymore.
There are several ways to install on Windows as well. Either installers, a standalone exe, or via the Windows Store. That’s not really any different than what I’m talking about with the exception of there being more than one “type” of exe (deb, rpm, etc).
On Linux, most people just use the store front that comes with their distro while more advanced users can build from source or whatever b/c they need bleeding edge releases or b/c it’s “fun”.
Adding repos is the Devil & my last resort because that shit will break a system, so I’m w you there.
So yeah, if your main argument is the hurdle to changing systems goes beyond the Start Menu, I agree. That said, it’s not that hard & most people just use a browser anyways, tbh.
I’m not a fan of the “most stuff just goes in the browser” argument, because then your OS is just Chrome and it doesn’t matter what you use underneath it. If anybody genuinely believed that people wouldn’t get so militant about the stuff you use to boostrap your PC and launch your real OS.
I also don’t agree that things are comparable just because MS keeps a vestigial proprietary app store (and a vestigial but quite competent CLI app manager, while we’re at it). Standalone installers are the default for Windows and there are very few times you’re forced to deviate from that, including for driver installations. That is a fundamental change, even before you get to the absolute mess that is the variety of repos, package formats and package managers across the Linux ecosystem. Even if you choose to use the Windows Store for some reason it has a single possible setup and more in common with a mobile store than with Linux package management.
Maybe it’s having recently switched to Fedora with GNOME and being frustrated by how patchy and unreliable their GUI software app is, but even after installing additional repos most of the stuff I want to use isn’t there and I’ve started defaulting to CLI because it’s just more reliable. It is by far the biggest hurdle I’d foresee for a newcomer, and if I had to recommend a distro/DE combo to a Windows user I’d focus on what package manager works best and most straightforwardly out of the box before anything else.
And yes, I did break something badly during that whole process and had to do some serious patching up at one point, so I do appreciate the empathy.
KDE2/3 like?
I haven’t used those. But KDE Plasma is also similar, so I guess, yes.
Linux mint is more windows-like than windows itself. I know that sounds odd but watch some videos if you’re curious and you’ll see what i mean.
No, it’s not “Windows-like” in anything but some basic appearance (and that would be Windows from the previous decade). It’s not similar in anything else, and from my experience the similarity in appearance only confuses users.
I really wish people stopped recommending Mint as if it was some proper Windows replacement because it’s overall a very mediocre distro that’s IMO more likely to detract users from using Linux than anything else.
I personally use Fedora (starting yesterday actually), but Mint is definitely a serviceable distro that works for a wide variety of people.
I simply don’t like how it stays so behind on updates (I see that as a big security and privacy risk), but if you don’t need windows-only proprietary software, or all you do is browse the web, then Linux Mint is a familiar and usable enough distro.
If you’re going to criticize Mint for being behind in packages, then you also need to criticize Debian, because that’s where the philosophy comes from.
Yeah I think in the future, we’ll figure out how to make NixOS configuration modular enough to be viable for laymen, but Linux Mint works well enough for Windows refugees.
People still recommend libreoffice… I just tried onlyoffice and it is much more similar to the modern office suite. I find libreoffice excel hard to use - it’s stuck in 97 without modern features and placement I expect. The word processor is fine though
I threw it on an old PC a few weeks ago and am pleasantly surprised at how polished it is.
Mint under the hood is still Linux, but for basic tasks like webbrowsing, it’s very similar to or easier than Windows.
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https://massgrave.dev/ works just fine with ltsc as well and https://www.pcrf.net/ can always use more money
People keep treating Win10 EoL as if the software is going to catch on fire. Every time they phase out a Windows version people just happily keep it installed indefinitely until they just naturally buy a new PC, at least.
I predict the big replacement for supported Windows 10 will be unsupported Windows 10. I expect that’s a pretty safe bet.
I predict the big replacement for supported Windows 10 will be unsupported Windows 10. I expect that’s a pretty safe bet
Famous last words before getting a keylogger that leads to all your bank accounts being drained due to lack of security patches.
Also, this is pretty much not possible (if not illegal) for business operations since those generally require having a secure OS to work on.
Famous last words before getting a keylogger that leads to all your bank accounts being drained due to lack of security patches.
Well, yeah. What kind of security do you think normies are running? They won’t even get hijacked by an unpatched Windows 10 exploit, they’ll just try to download The Last of Us by opening “WatchOnlineMoviesFree.exe” when a pop up tells them to.
Business operations will go with whatever is cheapest to maintain, which is the entire point of LTSC and the article in the link.
Well, yeah. What kind of security do you think normies are running? They won’t even get hijacked by an unpatched Windows 10 exploit, they’ll just try to download The Last of Us by opening “WatchOnlineMoviesFree.exe” when a pop up tells them to.
Well exactly, although let’s be honest: “normies” will
downgradeupgrade to windows 11 because they always want the latest greatest thing.Business operations will go with whatever is cheapest to maintain, which is the entire point of LTSC and the article in the link.
This might be true wherever you’re from (I’m assuming US?) but it’s in no way reality where I live. Here you must use a secure OS for businesses, you can’t just use whatever.
Not in the US.
The point of LTSC builds of Win10 is they will keep getting security updates, in some cases until the 2030s. That’s what the actual article we’re all supposed to be talking about is explaining.
So yes, there is a planned solution to keep a secure build of Win10 for businesses for at least a few more years. For that reason. That’s what this conversation is about. Normally I’d chastise people for not reading through to the body of the linked article, but this time it’s right in the headline. You literally could not have reached this post without reading it at least once.
That’s what this conversation is about. Normally I’d chastise people for not reading through to the body of the linked article, but this time it’s right in the headline. You literally could not have reached this post without reading it at least once.
It’s called having a conversation and typically in those people move past the starting point on to other related topics. There’s no need to read malice into it.
You’re welcome to not answer further, too.
Hey, no, no malice read into it and I’m all for having a conversation about the subject. But it’s also true that if we have to litigate the basic facts we’re talking about (specifically, that Windows 10 WILL in fact have purchaseable security upgrades for several more years) over multiple posts it’s just not a very productive conversation, you know? Ideally the chat starts from the actual information being shared in the link, or at the very least in the headline.
In any case, yes, businesses will need to keep getting security updates and they will get security updates for the foreseeable, be it by moving to Win11 where they can or by moving to the long term support tracks for Win10 where the hardware doesn’t support it or it’s cheaper.
They’re still supporting regular Win 10 but will start charging $30 a year for patches.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates
How long do you expect that to last?
Microsoft is in it for the money. I think they’d rather get $30 a year every year than get $30 one time from a PC manufacturer who bundled Windows.
I suppose. We would have to know if it’s worth their while to work on security flaws (which I imagine they will put zero effort into and pretty much just answer to bounty hunter reports) for $30 a year.
But because I know Microsoft and am used to their shenanigans, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that lasting for too long.
I only “upgraded” to Windows 10 (from 7) last year due to software I needed for work. Windows 10 is bad enough, I’m definitely not “upgrading” to 11 until I have to.
In my experience, 10 runs much slower than 7 with so many updates that just kill performance as they’re running. And I’ve had pop-up adverts recently and programs that open on startup despite being disabled
I mean… you go, grandpa.
But hey, that is a fair point. A lot of people talk about moving to Win11 like it’s something normies will want to avoid like the plague, as if all the things they point at as dealbreaking enshittification haven’t been rolling back to Win10 pretty much in real time. Hardware incompatibilities aside (and those are probably overstated, too) the leap will probably be very smooth unless the person in question is simultaneously extremely activist about hating modern Windows and extremely reluctant to use anything else.
extremely activist about hating modern Windows and extremely reluctant to use anything else.
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it. I have Linux on my laptop but I cba dealing with bootloaders on my desktop and can’t lose Windows altogether.
(Last time I tried dualbooting was with XP I think, so probably it’s a lot easier now than it used to be but still…)
Honestly, dual booting is mostly fine now, I’m just annoyed by how awkward and inconvenient it still is to share a local hard drive across both systems and it feels weird to be cut off from physically mounted hard drives that are right there in your system just because there is no universally accepted OS-agnostic modern filesystem.
These days I have one computer with Windows and one with Linux. My solution ended up being sharing files over a local network and using GNOME so I can easily remote desktop from my Windows machine if I have to. It’s less annoying than the performative “run Windows in a virtual machine” thing people like to brag about and I wanted to keep a machine constantly running as a little home server anyway.
Just today I installed 2 pc in a store with windows 7.
Hopefully they don’t ever connect to the Internet…
