471–480 of 1001 posts
Why is _anyone_ still using Windows?
And server-side: specific software I need to run for my team, like Autodesk Vault. For the rest, 95% of our servers run Linux.
Had to edit a .docx today to refresh my CV today...and realised oh...I don't have any more windows machines on hand anymore. Interesting how smoothly that faded away psychologically after 20+ years of windows use without me even overtly noticing. Think MS is in for a rough ride on Windows. Short of corporate world - Excel/Sharpoint/AD - there is just no moat. Browsers work fine on all platforms, dev work is better on…
They've been saying this for years now. The problem is there's no real alternative. Your grandma is not going to use Linux. So the choice is between windows and mac.. and the truth is a lot of apps people use are windows only. I don't see windows losing desktop share anytime soon.
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These days I find Linux and windows have a roughly equal amount of issues to deal with, and because I have decades of experience learning how to work through those issues, they are equally painful so I can happily choose Linux over windows. What makes Linux especially painful to windows users is they basically need to relearn how to solve the same sort of problems they’ve forgotten they’ve been solving all the time i…
That's what I have been hearing. My biggest issue is, unlike most of you guys, I'm self taught and only program when I need to (so mostly c#, python, ruby on rails). C# isn't going to be much use to me on Linux. But as long as I can continue my local hosted llm and playing around with that, and my son can play his games, I'll probably bite the bullet in a few weeks.
Here’s some projects you may find useful
For playing around with dev projects, “Distrobox” is an easy way to manage mostly isolated environments, to keep your main system clean: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox
I use Nobara as my Desktop OS, which is a fedora/KDE based distribution by GloriousEggroll that’s a desktop first and foremost (unlike a console UI oriented distro like Bazzite). It includes a bunch of nice things and cutting edge (https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom) stuff out of the box so there’s less for me to set up with. Steam, and the few games I play on it just work like normal.
For games from places Like GOG, Lutris works far more often than not. If I recall correctly, it’s literally just a matter of running the .exe
Most of my other programs are installed as flatpacks, which I would recommend.
Note that Nobara is not currently an immutable distro (like Bazzite). Like windows, you’ll likely want to reinstall it in a few years (or after some failed project) to start “fresh”.
For my NAS boxes, I use Proxmox, which I guess is mostly Debian with a Ubuntu kernel and select packages kept more up to date and a built in web UI. Proxmox is nice because its kernel (even the opt in newer kernels that can be offered on the forums) is kept in sync with ZFS which I use for my archives. I disable High Availability, among other things. Useful links:
https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/
Biggest gotcha with proxmox is if it seems to have lost internet access (like the webUI suddenly not working), your network device got changed/renamed due to a kernel update. You’ll need physical/KVM access to update the entry in /etc/network/interfaces with the new active network device name. Also if you install on a ZFS root, proxmox uses system-boot and silently ignores classic grub settings.
I do remember to have read a couple of years ago that the Windows Ui team got replaced and now only consists of Mac users, never having used Windows themselves. If that is true, it's now wonder that they do not understand all the value that Windows NT has brought, why having a standard on menu structure, a standard for all UI controls etc made sense. And to understand that while Apple's mission is to provide a walled…
> having a standard on menu structure, a standard for all UI controls etc You mean all the stuff apple brought to personal computers?
By the way, you can use a Mac (and iPhone) without an Apple ID and there's no sign that this is changing.
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Are there any limitations with this to be aware of? Are Hypervisor/Docker/WSL2 all supported? I'm trying to decide if I want to transition my work computer to Linux or Windows 10 LTSC. Most of my day is spent working inside of WSL2. So, it kind of seems like I should just get on with using Linux native, but several decades of sunken cost have kept me on Windows. I don't think I have a desire to 'upgrade' to Windows 1…
Yes, LTSC is literally missing parts that are standard on a Windows install - it's an operating system designed for ATMs and kiosks that run exactly one tested application, it is not a general-purpose operating system. If you happen to not need those pieces, and you don't care about running super out-of-date software? Sure it might work. But it's not a Good Idea in general.
Name a single missing part that destroys the "generalpurposeness" of the OS?
Had to edit a .docx today to refresh my CV today...and realised oh...I don't have any more windows machines on hand anymore. Interesting how smoothly that faded away psychologically after 20+ years of windows use without me even overtly noticing. Think MS is in for a rough ride on Windows. Short of corporate world - Excel/Sharpoint/AD - there is just no moat. Browsers work fine on all platforms, dev work is better on…
Time to get a LaTeX/Typst resume ;)
The saddest part is, Windows 11's MS account lock-in feels like the logical next step for an OS designed by committees and PMs playing metrics games. The user-hostile design isn't isolated––it's just another symptom of a company where stock price and engagement numbers trump every other concern. What I miss is the era when engineers seemed to have more say, and features existed because they were actually useful. At t…
Apple: free as in speech, not free as in Porsche.
Question out of curiosity: On todays hardware, it should be possible to run Windows in a VirtualBox on a Linux System, or am I wrong? Thinking about this to be my next setup for the next machine (in 1 or 2 years) Im mainly using corp & office software and MS dev tools - those should be useable in a virtualized Windows? Any experience?
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I'm not convinced Microsoft cares about the Windows market share in consumer PCs or the small amount of money they make from selling Windows licenses to regular consumers. If they did, Windows wouldn't be so usable unactivated and the MassGravel activation stuff would have been patched already. They built up their almost-monopoly when it mattered in the 90s and the 2000s, and now their market position is basically se…
The reason they don't meaningfully enforce their copyright on consumer PCs is precisely because they do care about their market share. If you buy a computer with Windows (or get it installed) in what I suspect is the overwhelming majority of the world, it's an 'illegitimate' copy and it works 100% fine, including operating with Microsoft's servers. As you mentioned, they could trivially stop this if they wanted to, b…
The way of framing it which works for me is that there doesn't seem to be much reason to move to windows, if you were starting computing with a blank slate and could pick anything, why would someone want to pick windows? Most people need a mobile anyway which serves a lot of consumer needs. Gaming is a big one if you're not happy with mobile/console, but there's the wine/proton on linux route although there's a subset that won't work or has compatibility issues (from minor paper-cuts to major). And then there's those that need specific windows-only software with no alternative elsewhere.
The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is Windows 11, with perfect timing too as modern Linux has been a joy to use as a daily driver. Normally I'd be unhappy when a sleazy corp forces me to give up on 25 years of muscle memory of using my preferred OS, but I'm thankful they gave me the push I needed to rip off the ad/spyware laced Windows Band-Aid that I only need to do once in my life. It's been over a year sinc…