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I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

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Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#311
post #181

I have... I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best thing to ever happen to Linux. I get all the ease of use of something like macOS but pre-built with tools for development like distrobox, and then I can just build my dev environments and get shit done in no time, without having to worry about breaking updates or nuking the who…

As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback. Been 90 days with zero issues.

When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad for a long time, and more recently an iPhone.

Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers (colour/scanner, b&w) worked with zero hassle after simply plugging them in.

Now he loves the ability to FaceTime anyone in the family (kids, grandkids, etc.) at the click of a button using the webcam plugged into the Mini, and really enjoys the sync of photos, emails, notes, etc.

I think he would have really struggled with Windows 11 so I was tempted by an older-person friendly Linux distro if macOS wasn't an option.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#312
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe a "war" is brewing. If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case. Maybe a few politicians will go on X/twitter and complain but every country in the EU knows that they are no match for the US military and I am saying that as someone who lives in the EU. I suppose the EU could go after big US tech companies but since most of Europe's needs are c…

>No match The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered and found some alternative in Asia. Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes. On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's libre for the whole world, not just the US. Software it's easily replaceable except for die hard industrial DOS (whe…

I love you guys, and I wish you were right, but I don't think you are.

Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML, etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the EU. Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling costs to significantly disengage from the US, and no one has the vision or fortitude to make that happen.

You also wouldn't have any security. If you disengage from the US militarily (whatever's left of "NATO"), we'll all see how far Russia can project power. Not as far as they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in a half-dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts pressure on their neighbors of course. This would be a shooting war in the east, which would require central and western European countries to decide whether they want to spend blood and treasure to respond. "No" kicks the can down the road a few years, "Yes" is economically devastating.

China could step in! It's a long way from China to the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, and their naval power is ... thin, currently. But you don't want China to step in. They could send money, but then they'd own you worse than the US even fever dreams about owning you.

The US seizing Greenland would be a terrible thing for the world, but I think the most likely outcome is that there would be complaints from the EU countries at highest level and volume, and a handful of countries would get legislation through to make the US suffer, but it would fail at the EU level, maybe even split the EU into two factions of American-bully-reluctantly-aligned countries vs American-bully-righteously-andor-selfservingly-opposed countries. The instability would last a few years, maybe a decade, and then we'd be back to where we are now, with "Greenland (US)" replacing "Greenland (DK)" on maps, but otherwise no one would spend much time thinking about it.

And the stomach-turning irony is that all of this is completely unnecessary. The US has a compact of free operation in Greenland already, including military operations. This is just an exercise in establishing dominance (i.e. The End of Politeness). There are some administrative details like mineral rights and redrawing international exclusivity zones (watch out Canada), but those are not very important when the global economic machine is working properly.

The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are waiting to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we don't, they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a shred of truth to that -- it sounds like absolute manufactured BS to me (RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance), but I have a strong anti-trusting bias against liars who lie, and those are the people dominating the conversation on this side.

The next ten months in the US will decide the next fifty years of the world. On a personal level, that's the rest of my life, and I'm worried about it.

I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#314
I don't know about the "you should too" part. I use Arch, it works fine for me but I am patient and want to use it. Realistically, I would expect the largest migration should be devs switching from mac to Linux. I don't see any reason at all to use a mac for development anymore.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#315

I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now. I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.

> I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now.

Ditto. I can't stand other OSs; they are constantly in my way for just the basic tasks.

> I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.

Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents. They're capable enough to maintain their own Windows computers, and switching them to Linux would mean that I'd have to take over all of those tasks -- because they've got other, more important things to do than to learn a new OS.

I'd agree with you if you could buy rando PC with Linux installed and working with no stupid hardware issues. People who can live in Google Docs/Office 365 web and don't have industry specific use cases will almost always be fine. But once you break out of that subset of people, tossing them a Linux machine can be kind of mean.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#316
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reaper is just as good as FL Studio or Logic Pro. VSTs are really your biggest hurdle. Depending on how they are compiled, they may rely on platform specific code. Most big plugin makers have VSTs for all platforms though and your license works on all. The pathway is there should you choose, one day. Linux is quite good now. That being said, I know a lot of niche plugins that some guy wrote that only works on windows…

> VSTs are really your biggest hurdle. And that is unfortunately the place where I spent my big bucks. I do however use Linux for my work, and have for more than a decade. If all the plugins (plus FL Studio, I've tried Reaper but it might be not for me) worked, I'd switch my personal desktop in a heartbeat. It's honestly the only thing locking me to Win10. Maybe I'll try a Mac through work (we get to keep the machine…

I still remember the first time I stumbled across Logic Pro X. For the price of $200 I got a complete package that contains about 200 plugins and instruments. The DAW itself was maybe 7% of the full contents of that package.

That is unbeatable value for money in the DAW market and that was before Logic Pro 11 came out and added a ton of new plugins.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#317

I don't know about the "you should too" part. I use Arch, it works fine for me but I am patient and want to use it. Realistically, I would expect the largest migration should be devs switching from mac to Linux. I don't see any reason at all to use a mac for development anymore.

Unfortunately Mac hardware is a huge leap ahead of anything else.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#318

I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now. I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.

Do you use a laptop? It seems that doing the right then when opening / closing the lid only happened in the past 5 years or so.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#319
post #284

I am pretty sure that my previous attempts at a Linux desktop have failed because I would tweak my setup by installing packages and updates until I broke it and needed to reinstall. But I want my machine to be indestructible and "just work". Waiting day(s) to diagnose and fix an issue just isn't worth it. I have been contemplating a switch to Linux again. This time, I will embrace a LTS distribution and virtualizatio…

There is no meaningful support subscription for end users, only enterprise. If you want to donate pick specific small projects you like. I don’t understand how someone breaks a system but look into immutable options like Fedora Silverblue.

It has been a few years, but for example breaking the display, bluetooth, power states/sleep, or wifi. Or subtly messing up dependencies of various other packages that I was trying. I just don't want the overhead of system administration. These days I mostly use VMs or WSL. But I am thinking that I want my host OS to be Linux.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#320
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such is the cost of freedom, unfortunately. There is no free lunch. Historically, people abandoned comfort and made sacrifices for a greater social good.

It’s a computer. Stop acting like a martyr. Your “suffering” is meaningless.

My computer is my work environment and often an entertainment device. As such it affects my quality of life. It affects my mental health as well as my eye health.

Suffering can be real with a bad screen, an overheating laptop or difficult to use software.

My mental health definitely suffers if I'm forced to use software that enriches companies I dislike for good reason.

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