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Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

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Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#61
post #4

I'm one of these people. Although it was a several years long plan for me, which involved learning new software (especially 3DS Max to Blender). I finally decided to bite the bullet around 8 weeks ago. Backed up everything, wiped Windows, installed Ubuntu. I wouldn't says it's been smooth sailing. I've had a ton of technical issues which are not all resolved (I still can't get my laptop to wake from sleep, I have to…

In my experience the linux way is finding things that don't work and, after not being able to fix them, deciding that you don't need really them after all.

Personally I focused on reducing the boot time when the suspend never worked properly.

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if you want to make them tech capable, another possibility is to give them a cheap Mac (apparently Apple is going to release a MacBook with an A-series SoC soon). You can open a terminal and show how it works, they can explore the filesystem with Finder, but when they need to do school work, they also have access to good DTP applications (Swift Publisher is really affordable and nice for kids), Affinity Designer/P…

My kid used an ancient HP laptop that found new life as a Hackintosh. Was rock solid for his early HS needs. Side bonus was the peer admiration he got around it.

That’s so awesome! I started using Macs after my brother and I were dabbling with Hackintosh in 2007 (mostly just trying it for fun). Unfortunately, it didn’t work on my laptop, but after seeing Hackintosh on his, I decided to get a Mac Mini.

So cool that your kid was able to use a Hackintosh in high school!

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice and I should have done that. However, most of the issues I had only showed up after some time of using it. For example, a big one was wifi and it was very intermittent and hard to debug. I think it was going into low power mode in some circumstances and my wifi speed would randomly drop to 100kbs or less. Sometimes turning wifi off and on would fix it, sometimes a restart was required. Thankfully…

Ah, the issues you mentioned are the top 3 nvidia issues :P - wake from suspend - laptop power consumption - poor wayland support - sudden desktop restarts - hidpi, external monitors, virtualization Nvidia's proprietary crap has always worked badly, the re-implement everything and put all their development effort into NIH syndrome instead of playing along with the already existing open source stack.

> - wake from suspend - laptop power consumption - poor wayland support - sudden desktop restarts - hidpi, external monitors, virtualization

Now I'm a desktop user, so the first two don't really impact me, and the rest has been working fine for the ~2 years I've been in Wayland+Arch+Gnome across 3 different NVIDIA GPUs. Not sure why virtualization is there, but it also seems to work, although via WSL2 is slightly buggy, but I blame that on Microsoft rather than Linux/NVIDIA.

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#64

Unfortunately the Linux desktop is in its worst state it has been since two decades with containerized apps/frameworks/browsers updating when they feel like it all the time and the related unsolvable permission and layering problems on top of the usual WLAN, touchpad, and power management issues unsolved for nearly 30 years as a growing number of second system effect frameworks bring new issues with ungooglable solut…

> Unfortunately the Linux desktop is in its worst state it has been since two decades

I primarily used Linux in various ways since Ubuntu 6.06, and every year it gets a little bit better, useful and stable, from my point of view at least. But I also moved to Arch some years ago, and CachyOS this year, so that might cloud my view on how well things work, and I also stopped using laptops, which makes Linux life a lot easier.

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#65
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is even more important now as younger generations are just given iPads and other locked down devices, to the point where they have to learn how to navigate a file system in their introductory university courses.

> to the point where they have to learn how to navigate a file system in their introductory university courses. What happened to IT lessons at school? I had IT starting at the age of 13 onwards, and that was in the early 2000s. By the time you graduated from school, you were guaranteed to have at least basic IT skills.

I think those classes/lessons were added when the availability of computers were kind of so and so, not every kid had a computer at home but most adults at the time understood that computers will be used in the kids future one way or another, so they figured everyone should know it.

At one point it shifted to "everyone has a computer at home" to "everyone has a computer in their pocket, and learns typing by themselves" and the classes seems to have disappeared.

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no. WSL2 is kind of bad compared to a proper Linux environment, you'll encounter so many tiny cuts that eventually you'll yearn for a proper environment where stuff just works instead of having to fight against the built-in "interoperability" stuff Microsoft has added that just gets in the way and introduces new issues. Saying this as someone who've used both Linux and Windows as a main OS for decades, and would…

My trick is to use git bash as my primary shell on windows and Podman for Windows (not desktop / just the cli app). It's still not nearly as nice as using Arch but a reasonable approximation in a pinch.

Well, sounds worse as everything has to be a container then? I'll just continue with the slightly borked Arch-inside-WSL2 setup I have for that instead, as it kind of works, and continue to mostly run Arch bare metal when I can.

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually they get recycled. I wouldn't stress about it.

Where is this dream-land? They got dumped along other mixed trash and lay for decades. Same with old, perfectly fine iPads with retina displays.

Still, I wouldn't stress about throwing things out. Stress about initial purchases instead.

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My trick is to use git bash as my primary shell on windows and Podman for Windows (not desktop / just the cli app). It's still not nearly as nice as using Arch but a reasonable approximation in a pinch.

Well, sounds worse as everything has to be a container then? I'll just continue with the slightly borked Arch-inside-WSL2 setup I have for that instead, as it kind of works, and continue to mostly run Arch bare metal when I can.

No, only containerized things need to be in a container. For everything else you are just using Windows except it feels more Linux like with git bash and has most basic Linux tools. If you need to run a container it is a lot more like it is on Linux podman container run ... right in your Windows shell (git bash in my case). This does things behind the scenes with a podman WSL image but it is mostly seamless.

I do actually start up Arch / Ubuntu / whatever in WSL for some things but mostly just use the above setup which is most Linux like without having to shell into WSL all the time. That being said, I use actual Linux / Arch whenever I can - yeah, I use Arch btw.

Re: Windows 10 refugees flock to Linux in what devs call their "biggest launch"

#70
I have a 7 year old mini 'NUC' PC that ran Windows 10. I installed Windows 11 and used a popular Debloat program [1] - this produced a very nice operating system that suits me well and performed well.

I also tried to install various Linux distros on a partition but all of the installations failed towards the end of the process, causing various boot loader and other problems that required a lot of uncomfortable fixing in terminals and BIOS.

I would have liked to be using Linux but as it turned out a de-bloated Windows 11 experience is very good for me.

[1] https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat?utm_source=perplexit...

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