… as explained here.
Basically Microsoft presents this “incredible” product, and then says in the same breath: “Oops, not for your current setup. Maybe you should consider buying a new PC?”
Really!? 😠
If only Linux were ready for mainstream use…
What are you trying to do that you don’t think you can do on Linux? Also there’s ways to install Windows 11 on unsupported systems.
Tbf, I work with Linux regularly and it’s great for me. But for the average user who wants basically zero learning curve like your average Android provides? Linux is a hard sell. To repeat what has been said so many times here:
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Games. It’s better than it used to be, but Windows just does it better. The same goes for general software compatibility. Windows Store apps, for example, generally don’t run at all.
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My surrounding never wants to open or see a command line. Ever.
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Driver & hardware support. Windows still beats Linux here. And this is an important one.
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Easy compatibility between distros. What works on one may not work on another. That’s a problem.
Like that.
Really, for someone willing to learn how their PC works, Linux is a good choice, maybe even a great choice. I love my Linux PCs. Am on OpenSuse at the moment and its been a fantastic experience. Couldn’t avoid some of the problems above, of course. But this isn’t about me.
For someone who just wants to click and install games, plug in random hardware and start using it a few seconds later, never touch an update interface and basically wants a system that just works intuitively because that’s what they’ve known for years… Windows is a better choice. And I say this with a sad heart, because I really wish that Linux was the competitor that Microsoft fears.
Edit: thanks for the reminder; I will likely install Windows 11 (the unsupported version as it were) for my immediate surrounding, apart from some techies. 😄
I hear ya. I bought a AMD CPU+GPU laptop to run Linux on, but a month later I’m back to Windows.
While the default graphics driver worked most of the time, I had random graphic card crashes on a 20 year old Wine-ran game. Even the official amdgpu driver had issues (PITA to install as its not being maintained). No issues with newer games through Steam (Proton is amazeballs) fortunately. I also had random issues with a second monitor not being detected that were probably graphics driver related. Some random UI focus issues were likely a window manager issue (KDE).
Sleep/hibernate doesn’t work ‘out of the box’ and I couldn’t get it working reliably after screwing with grub. It was a gamble if it would actually power down or just go back to the lock screen. I don’t know why its so difficult for a basic thing that’s been around for decades.
So now I’m back on Windows, everything works as expected. Honestly I love Linux and its leaps and bounds better from what it was, but Windows is a still better choice for hardware support reasons. I’ll give it another try if AMD gets it together with their driver support.
I’ll give it another try if AMD gets it together with their driver support.
As an AMD GPU linux user this is confusing. There is no driver needed. There is nothing to do with AMD. Must be the laptop? A unusual variant, or early adopter?
I want Linux to succeed, and be the competition to Windows, so I deal with these “downsides” honestly, the limits in my theory, cause me to only purchase good hardware and software.
Is the mainstream even what should be targeted? I’m reading comments on how people are actually getting worse at using computers.
To answer your question, I think Linux absolutely should target the mainstream, as it already does in some ways.
For example, by making Linux more accessible to the average user, the community grows, which will probably lead to more support, more software development, and so on.
It is true that not all users have the same level of computer skills. Especially for that reason Linux should become even easier and even more intuitive to use.
In short: the more people use it, the more support it will get.
What is it specifically about Linux that doesn’t work for you?
I’m asking because I’ve been using it for almost a quarter of a century as my main desktop.
The only reason I don’t use Linux all the time are video games - which are getting better, and streaming because DRM doesn’t support it and I can tell the difference between 720p and 4k. Otherwise it’s my main OS.
Tried setting it up once on an old pc to have it as a kinda streaming thingy behind the tv. Never finished the project. First I was overloaded with options. Which Linux version, picked Ubuntu because why not? Did the download and could not find a USB stick at home that’s bigger than 2gb. Tried installing on a hard drive in my pc didn’t work. Gave up after that.
I answered a bit further down a bit lengthier. Hope that’s OK. 🙂
To be clear, I enjoy my Linux environment. But could I leave Linux on my parents’ devices who recently bought a new printer and use a facial recognition camera? I’d be worried…
It’s funny how well linux works with printers, no stupid hp app, no configuration. Just hit print and done.
Not OP, but just to serve as another data point: mostly just exhaustion. I am a full-time software developer, so I just really don’t want to deal with configurations and set up complex systems at home. That’s why I haven’t gotten into any smart-home stuff, either - I just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the issues that come along with the space.
Not sure how long ago you tried installing linux, but it has come a long way such that there are distros out there that are basically plug-and-play installable now. I installed Linux Mint on an old laptop and just went through the gui installer like you would on a Windows installation, and it was up and running. Didn’t need to open the terminal even once.
Wild, I’m not a developer but I do some very basic coding. Linux out of the box has it all pretty much lol. If it doesn’t, the package manager has it easily. Windows is such a hassle with environment variables and downloading different tools like compilers and IDEs and shit.
Not OP, but it’s still lack of hardware support for me. I tried to daily Linux on my laptop and gave up in frustration after several months because a few key pieces of hardware are not supported and seemingly never will be.
Okay i been this with a lot Linux does not work if you are trying to use it at even likely advance stage
- I can’t find where exe is
- I can’t put that exe in start-up of system (tried it on zorin and pop os )
- Wine won’t open lot of programs
- Libre office has came long way but make a doc in libre office and tried to open in word later it’s a mess and can’t work that for CV
- Excel is THE tool to be used in many cases, can’t be used powerfully in Linux.
- There is need to use terminal multiple times for lot of things Linux is NOT useful, windows might be forcing but it’s a ripe operating system. Across all Linux distors even the shell is not same.
I’m going to answer your points below. Not because I want to tell you to move to Linux, but because the information you state is incorrect. Linux is not for everybody. It works for millions of people and it works for me, but that doesn’t mean it will be what you’re looking for.
In order:
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There are no .exe files. Neither are there any on MacOS, iOS, Android, or anything else that isn’t Windows/DOS. To start software requires that it’s on the search path in exactly the same way that Windows requires. You can see what that is with the command:
echo $PATH. Most Linux distributions have a graphical user interface which features icons and menus, but if you don’t want that, you don’t need to install it. -
You absolutely can, but it doesn’t work the same way as Windows, because it’s not Windows. You can for example login to Linux because the login manager started at system startup. You see a desktop after logging in because there’s a startup system for your account. The printer works because the software driving the print queue is started.
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Wine is a tool. It’s not a replacement for Windows. It’s not intended to be. It’s intended to help users and developers make Windows software work better on Linux.
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LibreOffice is one of many office suites. I have been using it as my productivity software for 25 years in my company and I’m not at all disappointed to have escaped the Microsoft Clippy, Ribbons, Office365 abominations.
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I have used Libre Calc for most of my numerical analysis processes. I used real tools like R and gnuplot when I was analyzing terabytes of data.
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The terminal is a tool. I use it daily. At any time there’s a dozen of them open. Not everyone needs a terminal, but there are plenty of things that you can only do in a terminal. A random example, list all the files in your account, group them by extension, then add up how much space each extension takes. In case you’re wondering:
find ~ -type f | egrep -o "\.[a-zA-Z0-9]+$" | sort -u | LC_ALL=C xargs -I '%' find . -type f -name "*%" -exec du -ch {} + -exec echo % \; | egrep "^\.[a-zA-Z0-9]+$|total$" | uniq | paste - -
Source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/457241
Linux is not Windows. It never was and it never will be, neither is any other operating system. The community around Linux is helpful, the ecosystem is vibrant and it’s free. If you want to pay for support, you can. If you don’t, there’s plenty of opportunity to do your own thing.
If you want it to be like Windows, you’re going to be very disappointed.
You answered all of them , but they are tangent to what point ibam trying to make.
As a SIMPLE TON OR A NEWBIE YSING LINUX ,this is all I can’t and won’t be doing , using windows is not disappointing because SIMPLY it works , like number 6 first part is easy no . The second part WHY WOULD I DO IT ? FOR 5th you have to use R and gnu plot because libre office is well SHIT at at those , where as excel can do it natively. Wine does not make it better except for few program to be used in Linux, the tool intended to it’s work is HALF baked. Please try to do 1 and 2 in zorin and Pop is and see how far it takes to complete the process , If you want I can put I stopwatche and tell you time it took to do it in windows. Not to mention use of HDD , in windows i attach it and VOILA! Its the one I use it ACROSS ANY AND ALL APPS not a single mount -a-B–ë stuff I have to do .
I hate how hard they try to force you to use a Microsoft account with it. And yes, the hardware requirements are too stringent. Microsoft works hard at taking away agency from users and empowering the users’ corporate bosses and data miners instead.
On top of all that, it’s 2024, Microsoft…a lot of people are struggling to buy groceries or pay rent/mortgage. They don’t want to be forced to buy a new PC.
As for “just use Linux” crowd…you know what? I agree! And some people will migrate. But it’s going to be sort of like the reddit > Lemmy migration. Don’t get overly excited about it.
We don’t need everyone to migrate, just enough that companies and developers feel obligated to support Linux. We’re slowly getting there. Valve throwing their weight behind Linux for gaming was a massive win for Linux. Another important factor is the rise of the mobile first generations and the fact that at its core Android is Linux based. It’s not completely trivial to port an Android app to Linux but it’s at least no worse than porting it to Windows.
Microsoft may still have a stranglehold on corporate desktops, but they’ve long since lost the battle for servers and their hold on the home desktop is slipping a little more each day. Losing a significant chunk of gamers to Linux would be a massive blow to MS because it has been one of the few really unassailable markets for them historically.
Nah, Linux still only accounts for about 2% of all users on Steam (active per month) so it has a long way to go still, but at least it’s heading in the right direction. If you count only English speaking Steam users that number climbs to over 5%. If Linux can get to and reliably maintain 10% that’s probably good enough to make it a first class target for even AAA releases, but it’s not there yet. The fact that so many games run fine under Linux these days is almost entirely down to the effort Valve has sunk into Proton making it relatively easy for devs to check Steamdeck support off without needing to really put much work in at all.
I really do hope to see more and more people migrate away from Windows to Linux. I truly despise Microsoft these days. But it’s not easy for everyone, or even possible in all cases, and for multiple reasons. (And, real talk, a lot of home users won’t care enough to bother).
This gentleman in the video link I’m pasting explains 3 reasons why he’s stuck with Windows. Some of these apply to me as well. And there are other reasons I’m still stuck, too. At least for now. So it’s frustrating when I see some of the knee jerk “just migrate, bro!” comments because 1. I agree with them and 2. some of us can’t. Not yet, anyway.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/c6YDQobJbLc?si=rwoH3wHanzyf_E0U
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yep and that’s fair, but it’s still really critical that those of us that can migrate do so. It’s a chicken and egg problem. Developers won’t feel pressured to support Linux if there’s no sizable user base, but the user base won’t grow until developers provide support for Linux. He even mentions that in that video. There’s a reason I’m only this year planning on switching my primary desktop from Windows to Linux and it’s because of how good Proton has gotten. I’ve already checked every game in my Steam library and while it’s not 100% of the library that runs, everything that doesn’t is something I don’t care about.
I switched to fedora on memorial day weekend, installed it along side windows. I would definitely say Linux is now ready for mainstream use based on my experience with an atomic desktop. I haven’t had a reason to boot back into windows yet.
I bought Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 … a one-time non-subscription purchase. Today I found this:
I was able to figure out how to “re-activate” without signing up to 365. But damn sure seems like a dark pattern to me
