361–370 of 753 posts
If you need Windows these days just install virt-manager and load the version of Windows you need. It's really fast and lightweight (my laptop stays cold at idle while running the Windows VMs) with all the HV enlightenments for good computational efficiency. Installing and using the virtio drivers is key for many useful features such as memory ballooning, fast networking with low computational overhead, and virtiofs…
Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent tran…
Windows has evolved into the world's highest security risk. MacOS feels like Eye Candy due to its increasingly inaccessible price for people with low resources. So, price and security are the reasons why I switched to Linux.
What measures do you take to insulate yourself from desktop Linux's really bad security?
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Linux is also realistically American since the largest contributors are American corporations and the dictator for life lives on Portland oregon. America has a monopoly on software essentially.
assumign this is arguing in good faith.. the issue is not about it being american as it is america being in control of it. you don't get access to windows or mac os source code. You can however take the linux source code, fork it and make it yours. that "dictator for life" in portland can't stop you. nor can anyone else in the us government for that matter.
So in the end, they're still dependent on the decisions made in the US. That doesn't need to be a problem, but I don't think "you can get the source code" really changes that.
Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent tran…
Windows is strangely less direct, but will regularly automatically try to save something to onedrive and force a subscription. Plus, it is just full of ads and nonsense.
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The thing is, Unity was great as a UI even on desktop. The main issue was poor performance early on.
I found it was horrible. It is similar to GNOME here - a design for tablets and smartphones. It simply does not work on the desktop computer.
I don't run Gnome now (since I have more fun hacking on Sway), but I really don't think that the characterization of it being a "tablet desktop" is actually very fair. I found Gnome to be very productive, and actually extremely keyboard focused. Outside of a tiling window manager like Sway or i3, I actually have found it more keyboard-centric than any other desktop I've used.
The reason I am harping on keyboard is because to me the keyboard is the signature differentiator between "desktop" and "tablet".
I feel like everyone hated on Gnome because it was different. They tried it for ten minutes, didn't bother trying to actually learn how to use it, declared it as "shit", and moved on. I was one of those people.
It wasn't until I decided to stick with Gnome for a few weeks (using the Antergos distro of Arch) that I came around, and now I find it to be the most productive of the "normie" desktops on Linux.
Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent tran…
Come back when I can run Linux on a laptop that has 12+ hours battery life, runs fast, that’s lightweight, quiet and doesn’t cause infertility from the heat when I put it on my lap…. Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. Of course if you are a gamer, ignore everything I just wrote.
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If you are sensitive to these issues, unfortunately you need to go with a mainstream linux distribution and use near-default settings. It's great that you can customize everything and use your own window manager, compositor, etc ... but these issues are the price you pay. It is unfair to compare this to Windows, where you don't even have these customization options. Specifically for the network manager applet, it is…
I use ubuntu and the default remote desktop just stopped working since 24: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/rdp-stopped-working-after-upg... With Linux, you just have to be prepared to hit a bug and find no help coming anytime.
I'd argue it's the opposite. Windows stuff randomly breaking on forced unattended updates is a common trope by now. If you try to search for solutions, you will find "Trusted Microsoft Computing Expert Gold Level Diamond Star" people on MS forums giving you advice ranging from "reinstall drivers, uninstall drivers, update bios, run virus scan, and defrag your ssd".
If you search for problems on linux, you will get much higher quality answers.
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Last time I tried Linux I was so done with Windows I installed Arch. Couldn't connect to Wifi. I figured it was Arch, so I installed Ubuntu. Literally the same problem. So I got a new USB wifi adaptor that said it supported Linux...same problem. I gave up and have been using a MacBook ever since lol.
Perhaps you could have checked if the firmware was installed? Most distros have non free firmware in their packages, it just needs to be installed.
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assumign this is arguing in good faith.. the issue is not about it being american as it is america being in control of it. you don't get access to windows or mac os source code. You can however take the linux source code, fork it and make it yours. that "dictator for life" in portland can't stop you. nor can anyone else in the us government for that matter.
But technically you can also do that with chromium and gecko, but it's a lot of work, so very few do. And those that do don't cut the line, they'll almost all still follow upstream and just apply their changes. So in the end, they're still dependent on the decisions made in the US. That doesn't need to be a problem, but I don't think "you can get the source code" really changes that.
sure but a nation state that takes digital sovereignty seriously could easily devote some resources towards maintaining their own fork. Thats the point. Hell, north korea has their own special linux distro
I'm using Linux on the desktop for 15 years and I still sometimes cannot connect to Wifi. This is because the list of network refreshes (and disappears) before I can find and click the correct Wifi: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/issu... This completely breaks the Linux experience for anybody living in a reasonably populous area. The issue has 3 upvotes. I also put a 400 $ bounty on it, if an…
I've been recommending Mint/Cinnamon over Ubuntu for years now. Its wifi widget does not do this, nor does it use snap.
I somewhat randomly chose Mint, and a few oddities aside; it’s been a pretty good experience.