Windows is cancer
For those brave enough, this year I finally took the plunge and went with Linux on my desktop.
I went with Pop OS, and after a few days decided to try the cinnamon desktop env. since it’s a little more familiar. Some things took about a week to get figured out, but now I don’t ever want to go back.
Gnome, even with Pop’s perinstalled extensions, is not the most familiar DE for those coming from Windowd. KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, XFCE are much closer and at least a few of those you can make to look like Windows (if you for whatever reason want to)
Familiar is bad imo, just switch to something different. It is different, embrace it. I use Fedora gnome btw
This is an odd take. There is no inherent advantage to using an unfamiliar ui on linux, there is nothing under the hood that “works better” for any specific desktop environment
I love cinnamon. I guess that makes me a classic guy. It’s nice without being too flashy.
Linux desktop main for about a year, and I mostly use it for gaming. Thank you Valve and Wine developers!
Yeah Cinnamon reminds me of the old Gnome 2 days, before it started trying to get all flashy and stuff.
TBF that is literally the exact motivation behind Cinnamon. Mint was like “yo, GNOME 3 sucks for what were trying to do” and forked. I think that’s also why you see such string MATE support with Mint, too. Those developers fucking loved GNOME 2 (with good reason, GNOME 2 was genuinely excellent).
Back in the day I thought GNOME 3 would eventually stabilize into something suitable for daily use, but their constant breaking of APIs frustrates me to no end and makes me view the GNOME project as just being… Out of touch with the reality of the kinds of people who use computers. They’re so hyper focused on their usage patterns they don’t recognize they’ve made themselves irrelevant to most of us.
I genuinely mean it when I say KDE and LXDE-Qt (these days just LXDE, but I want to make sure its clear what I’m talking about) are the future. Its not so much because I think their platforms are intrinsically superior, but instead their philosophy to how developing for the desktop works. And for those who think KDE is too heavy and LXDE is too idiosyncratic, running a desktop without any desktop environment has become downright easy as of late. I’m running MX Linux with fluxbox and Antix with IceWM and I rarely miss features of the big DEs and I’m just running what those two ship with.
I loved GNOME 2. It got so much right and really did a lot to get out of your way. GNOME 3 meanwhile has some truly stellar core ideas for how humans computer interactions can be performed but everything surrounding those core ideas (the ecosystem) sucks because GNOME doesn’t value stability anymore. That’s probably somewhat fine on a rolling release distro, but… I don’t… Think the average person looking to GNOME’s ease of use are going to trend toward rolling releases and are going to prefer pointal releases. Probably the best place to run GNOME on a pointal releases these days is Fedora since that’s where so much GNOME development happens anyway, but Fedora has issues I frankly don’t want to deal with because fedora doesn’t offer me (emphasized because if fedora is offering you special value, that’s fine abd valid) value thanks to being a somewhat unstable pointal release distro (be stable or be rolling release. Ideally be both. Don’t be neither)
And all of this is kind of a shame, too. There’s a whole ecosystem of GTK apps that are effectively decaying because no one trusts GNOME to provide a stable platform and for people who’ve come to rely on those apps, there’s gonna come a time they’re gonna have to migrate to unfamiliar Qt apps. They’ll be able to handle it of course, but most people just want their shit to work how they know it works and to not deal with their system being different from how they’re used to.
Gnome 3 was a regression of what I still believe is a perfect UX metaphor for computing. Gnome 2 was perfect in every way. I’ve since gone to Xfce, but it feels like Gnome 3 and beyond is trying to make using Unix fool-proof for a touchscreen paradigm, and you really can’t.
You should give people the keys without difficulty, but give them everything they need to not need them. And you’re never going to run Gnome on a tablet. There’s no point in making everything pronounced, you’ll have an input device that’s not a finger on a screen. Emulating something else like Windows or macOS doesn’t make you seem unique, it makes you seem similar and if the paradigms aren’t the same, its confusing. Have some audacity to be different.
It’s important to remember Gnome exists because KDE was in a license fiasco of its own making. And we’re in a new fiasco with GTK over mismanagement.
I switched to Mint from windows 10 about three months ago (when I upgraded my video card). Everything is so much smoother and just works. Except Remote Desktop… can’t figure that one out.
I am slightly ashamed to admit the reason I’m not going to consider pop os is the stupid way they write it: Pop!_OS.
I’m already running 11 Linux VMs (and 3 bare metal Linux OS’s) in my homelab so I think I’ve got plenty of Linux here anyway.
I had similar thoughts when I first discovered Pop!_OS. Just the name alone gave me vibes of some Fisher-Price toy operating system like it was meant for children, all cringe happy-smiley.
But I honestly suggest you get over your aversion to the name, and give it a try. It’s actually one of the most pleasant desktop experiences I’ve had with Linux, and it’s especially a treat on bare metal. Looks great, runs great and everything just works, including steam gaming.
I did the same transition a couple of months ago (the Windows to Pop! OS one, not the desktop environment one) and even though I’m a gamer (something which has stopped me from moving to Linux on the main usage of my home desktop since the late 90s - were I’ve usually had it on dual boot but not used it that much) am very happy with it.
I’ve actually been familiar with Linux since way back in the Slackware times, but only now have I started using as my main desktop.
I do think it’s getting to be the Year Of Linux On The Desktop for a lot more people than ever before thanks to the aligned forces of Windows “all your computerz belongz to us” 11, software as a system with general enshittification and just how much easier it is to game on Linux thanks mainly to Valve and the steady, unrelentless, stream of improvements being done by the Wine devs.
100% agree. I was getting tired of the start menu notification to sign in to windows, and how the updates would reenable telemetry.
I shouldn’t have to constantly run a debloat script. I should be able to disable “create a windows account” notifications.
The steam deck showed me that Linux can run games, the only thing left for me is a decently running adobe suite, but I can live with the occasional dual boot for that.
Not trying to get you back into Windows, and I hate to be the ass saying “skill issue”… but I legitimately have not had any issues with updates reverting my Windows settings in over half a decade. Besides the default PDF reader setting. I haven’t signed in with a Microsoft account and have never been prompted to make one after the initial install process.
Install the Pro version of Windows, use Group Policy to turn off the bloat the way Microsoft intends for it to be disabled by enterprise admins, and you’re golden. Maybe run a debloat tool or two right after your initial setup, but that’s it. No need for repeatedly running debloat scripts, and no settings reverting themselves.
It’s 100% easier to use an OS where none of that shit is needed, but I just get frustrated seeing people point at entirely avoidable things as why Windows sucks. There’s plenty of other reasons too!
That’s because it isn’t. You may get a few more FPS out of it than the Steam Deck in some games but overall it’s a much worse experience.
In what games do you get 120 FPS?
I stay under 60 fps the vast majority of the time and while the games i play are fairly demanding I personally think going over 60 or even 40 is a waste. I would rather increase the quality and/or reduce the power consumption.
Windows/Xbox needs a handheld specific OS for these devices.
But my guess is if it they ever do have one, it’s first going to be on their own handheld.
After that other companies can pay a steep price to have it on their handhelds, I bet.
other companies can pay a steep price to have it on their handhelds, I bet.
Probably not, they still need market share. More likely it would be just locked down, filled with ads, and generally unusable.
It’s not going to be great, they can’t refrain them selfs to put some kind of ads into it. But it’s still windows, so easier to play those few games that can only be played or is easier on windows.
But I’ve no experience with Windows handhelds, they’ll need to pry my steam deck out of my cold dead hands
They optimized Windows for touch/portable devices last year. The need for a handheld OS is no longer an issue for Microsoft’s most popular virus.
How do I know? I’m not just (an) owner of a Windows-running handheld, I’m a victim!
I run Linux on my server and Windows on my Legion Go. If it were easier to tackle switching from an AMD iGPU to an AMD eGPU on Linux, I’d probably abandon Windows completely.
Ah oke, didn’t know that to be honest. So you don’t boot up on desktop environment anymore? I saw some videos that showed it was a regular windows 11 installation and barely usable with the touchscreen.
Is it something like steam now? That start at nice clean interface.
No, it’s still the desktop version. Have you noticed how ugly Windows 11 got recently? It’s because of these optimizations.
Menus have become more touch-friendly and window controls become comparatively more robust as your screen size decreases. I’m surprised how much more frequently I interact with my touch screen than my keyboard and mouse sometimes.
I bought my Legion Go for portable photo and video editing and get a free Adobe license through my work, which is why I went with Windows. I’ve heard that you can install Creative Cloud on Linux, but I’ve been told by our technologists that the Enterprise login might not work when it detects the operating system.
At this point, most of my reasons for sticking with Windows boil down to laziness. If I really felt like taking the time to test Adobe, my eGPU, StarCitizen, and the various Legion Go hardware features, I could probably deliver more informed explanations. But alas… I’m too lazy right now and spend my non-lazy time working on other projects.
I was in a computer shop a couple of weeks ago and it seems the windows handheld makers are doing the same shit they have on their laptops - it was filled with pre-installed bloat, including some shit Norton antivirus 1 year subscription.
Something you never see reviews mention, which is crazy.
Antivirus doubly doesn’t make much sense on handheld. Today’s malware is more stealthy and focused on stealing your data, but what sensitive data are you storing on a gaming-specific handheld?
I guess there’s your Steam account, but the risk profile just isn’t the same, and it comes at the cost of performance which is already much more limited in this form factor.
From a theft perspective, being able to hijack someones steam account is likely to be more lucrative than most. There’s a window where they might be able to resell the account to someone who doesn’t know how easily valve can verify true ownership and fix it.
You’ve still got a lot of botnets and cryptocurrency miners flying around. Ransomware is the big one that targets people with important data that a gaming device is immune to.
There’s still ransomware. Pay X bitcoin or say adyeu to your encrypted savegames.
That’s not how most malware works though. It’s pretty rare that it’s targeted rather than something just looking to take advantage of whatever security hole is present.
Like, I highly doubt anyone is making Steam OS specific malware, but if there’s some security hole in the kernel, a piece of malware targeting that isn’t going to check if it’s a handheld gaming device and stop.
Anything with an IP address can be vulnerable to malware running miners, botnets, and all that good stuff for bad people to continually use your toys to do in the background. The convenient jumping off point into your home network and other inward-facing stuff there you might not want accessible from outside is also worth considering.
Isn’t it interesting how operating systems have a culture? From my early days of working with windows, it was completely normal for every other program to want to run itself at startup, no matter how useless it was to do so. And people just accepted it. They thought that computers literally get slower over time or something. Oftentimes I’d glance at someone’s system tray and see 15 icons or so.
On Mac and Linux though, this behavior is far less acceptable. Today on Mac it is by far worse than ever but still probably better than it was, say, on windows 98. On Linux I could literally install 50 apps in a row without any asking me (or doing it without asking) to run on startup.
It’s just up to what users will put up with. So windows consistently getting shittier shouldn’t really surprise us. People have put up with that from the beginning. Both in terms of the app ecosystem and the os itself.
Like we went through at least a decade on windows where most free apps people used would literally attempt to, or force malware on your machine, in the form of toolbars or other useless shit running in the background. People were so complacent they wouldn’t even uncheck those boxes when offered a choice in the installer. We really need better education in this world.
Yeah on my Linux machine I’ve had like 2 apps want to run on startup, and both of them had little checkboxes in their tray menus to disable that behaviour. If anything the bigger struggle has been that every time I change machines or distros I have to manually get yakuake to start on login again.
If anything the bigger struggle has been that every time I change machines or distros I have to manually get yakuake to start on login again.
On the off chance that you use KDE Plasma, it’s just here FYI:
