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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#221

Post by Macha »

ukuina wrote: post #182
Zambyte wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them. So much this. People like to moan about "oh game XYZ doesn't run so it's not reasonable for gaming". More games run on GNU / Linux than any gaming console. There are simply too many games that do run to give a second thought about the ones that don't, and it's been that way for years.

Do the top sellers from the past year work on Linux? I've been meaning to set up Bazzite on an older desktop.

From Steam’s 2025 top X charts (https://store.steampowered.com/charts/bestofyear/2025?tab=3)

11/12 top selling new releases (the exception is battlefield 6, because the anticheat blocks Linux)

9/12 top selling (COD, BF6 and Apex block Linux)

11/12 most played (Apex blocks Linux)

So if you’re into competitive ranked games (especially fps), you might face problems due to anti cheat blocks, but practically everything else works

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#222

Post by khat »

Microsoft has always been crap. It's success is contributed to hostile business practices and familiarity not quality of product. IBM and Gates partnered to have an OS installed on its computers to gain customers. With no actual OS Gates bought 86-DOS from Tim Patterson and partnered with IBM. This created a direct competitor to Apple. Then Gates partnered with all other PC manufacturers to do the same. This paved way for Microsoft to dominate Apple because they weren't tied to any specific hardware. Then came Active Directory to solidify business use. The businesses rolled with it and users learned Windows which deepened home PC use. Every app "just worked" BECAUSE of the popularity and developers directly targeted it since most people used it, not because it was a good product. Their file system NTFS is crap. Their registry is a mess. Everything about Windows is just awful.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#223

Post by coffeebeqn »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #63
snarfy wrote: post #13

It's not going to get any better. Microsoft's problem is tech debt. Copilot doesn't pay tech debt it creates it. It will only get worse faster.

Microsoft probably has a problem with tech debt, yes. That is however not the problem. Instead, the product strategy is. And it was bad even before LLMs.

Windows is under 10% of their revenue these days. It’s simply not important to leadership. Just like Xbox - just let it slowly die as you squeeze any last remaining cents out

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#224

Post by mock-possum »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

You spent $2000 on a new machine but wouldn’t shell out another $20-30 for a windows pro key? You’re willing to burn a bunch of time fiddling with getting a completely new operating system setup, but you’re not willing to spend a few minutes fiddling with setting up an offline windows account?

I get that maybe that was the final straw or something, but come on, “I switched to Linux because I didn’t want to take an hour to set up Windows” really sounds like you never really wanted Windows in the first place, you were just looking for an excuse.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#225

Post by radicalethics »

I just have to figure out how to play a few of my games on Steam and I can move over. Unfortunately, a few titles are still PC only so I can't make the switch. I very much would love to, but I basically need a $600 PC at all times to play a few select titles that will never come to Linux due to anti-cheat.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#226

Post by 0x1ch »

pksebben wrote: post #162
Zambyte wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them. So much this. People like to moan about "oh game XYZ doesn't run so it's not reasonable for gaming". More games run on GNU / Linux than any gaming console. There are simply too many games that do run to give a second thought about the ones that don't, and it's been that way for years.

The only pain point I've found is VR. I've bounced off trying to get it working multiple times with the best results getting about 10% functional (video working on one or two games, input broken on all). That said, I haven't tried getting the same kit working on windows so I can't say if it's any better.

Hardware for flight sim games is also in a similar boat. It's hard to configure most of the newer hardware, but a lot of the old low quality joysticks work alright out of the box.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#227

Post by vladvasiliu »

muthuh wrote: post #209
Levitating wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro Simplicity, among other reasons. Installers force the users hand and need maintenance. Having no installer but rather a detailed installation guide offers unlimited freedom to users. Installation isn't difficult either, you just pacstrap a root filesystem and configure the bootloader, mounts and locale. ArchLinux does now have an installer ca…

There is though the TUI installer, not like it used to be where the commands were typed in following the wiki. Not that there was anything wrong with the 'manual' mode, it gave you insight into the basic building blocks/configurations right from the start.

It's been a very long time since I moved to Arch, but I swear that something like 12 years ago it did have some form of menu-driven installer.

Nowadays, there are so many ways to partition the drive (lvm, luks, either one on top of the other; zfs with native encryption or through dm-crypt), having the efi boot directly a unified kernel image or fiddle with some bootloader (among a plethora of options)...

One of the principal reasons why I love Arch is being able to have a say in some of these base matters, and would hate to have to fight the installer to attain my goals. I remember when Ubuntu supported root on zfs but the installer didn't it was rather involved to get the install going. All it takes with Arch is to spend a few minutes reading the wiki and you're off to the races. The actual installation part is trivial.

But then again, if you have no idea what you want to do, staring at the freshly-booted install disk prompt can be daunting. Bonus points for it requiring internet for installation. I would have to look up the correct incantation to get the wifi connected on a newer PC with no wired ethernet, and I've been using the thing for a very long time.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#228

Post by tracker1 »

I came to rely pretty heavily on Docker and WSL(2) in Windows. I was an insiders user for a bit over a decade, and worked with .Net and C# since it was "ASP+" ...

I had setup a dual boot when I swapped my old GTX 1080 for an RX 5700XT, figuring the "open source" drivers would give me a good Linux experience... it didn't. Every other update was a blank/black screen and me without a good remote config to try to recover it. After about 6 months it was actually stable, but I'd since gone ahead and paid too much for an RTX 3080, and gone back to my windows drive...

I still used WSL almost all day, relying mostly on VS Code and a Browser open, terminal commands through WSL remoting in Code and results etc. on the browser.

Then, one day, I clicked the trusty super/win menu and started typing in the name of he installed program I wanted to run... a freaking ad. In the start menu search results. I mean, it was a beta channel of windows, but the fact that anyone thought this was a good idea and it got implemented, I was out.

I rebooted my personal desktop back to Linux... ran all the updates and it's run smoothly since. My current RX 9070XT better still, couldn't be happier. And it does everything I want it to do, and there's enough games in Steam through Proton that I can play what I want, when I want. Even the last half year on Pop Coxmic pre-release versions was overall less painful than a lot of my Windows experiences the past few years. Still not perfect, but at least it's fast and doesn't fail in ways that Windows now seems to regularly.

Whoever is steering Windows development at Microsoft is clearly drunk at the wheel over something that should be the most "done" and polished product on the planet and it just keeps getting worse.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#229

Post by byronic »

kuerbel wrote: post #165
giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

I installed fedora yesterday. Instead of steam i am hoping that GOG with heroic games launcher will work nicely. Idk, I want to support drm free software so if it's on gog, I buy it there.

[obviously YMMV, take me with a grain of salt etc]

I actually tried Fedora first (thinking dev-first workflows) but ended up switching to Ubuntu w/x11 for gaming. A lot of that had to do with Fedora's release schedule (rather than Ubuntu's 2-year LTS) breaking working GOG/steam/wine-based apps on a rotating basis. Since switching to a defaults lifestyle / Ubuntu with x11 I deal with NVIDIA driver compatibility issues every 6 months or so instead of once/month. The 22 -> 24 upgrade was better than I expected and I didn't lose more than a couple of hours of life to appease the shell gods.

In any case Fedora and a once/month problem would still beat the Windows update nonsense, which I am still supporting since my spouse hasn't switched yet :/

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#230

Post by Levitating »

Levitating wrote: post #157
giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

> idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro Simplicity, among other reasons. Installers force the users hand and need maintenance. Having no installer but rather a detailed installation guide offers unlimited freedom to users. Installation isn't difficult either, you just pacstrap a root filesystem and configure the bootloader, mounts and locale. ArchLinux does now have an installer ca…

Just to paint an example, if I am installing Arch I like to have:

* A user configured through systemd-homed with luks encryption

* The limine bootloader

* snapperd from OpenSUSE with pacman hooks

* systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved

* sway with my custom ruby based bar

* A root filesystem in a btrfs subvolume, often shared across multiple disks in raid0

If you were to follow the installation guide it will tell you to consider these networking/bootloader/encryption options just fine. But trying to create an installer which supports all these bleeding edge features is futile.

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