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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

#81

What about computer games such as age of empires ? Can we play regular computer games ?

Yes. Valve (Steam) spent more than a decade building and refining a translation layer called Proton. Nearly 80% of the vast Steam library is now compatible with Linux to the point they are releasing actual Linux consoles (Steam Deck and Steam Machine). For your regular PC, you can install a gaming-focused distribution like Bazzite to get everything sorted out automatically.

80% is really impressive, but another way to state it is that 20% of the games you try won't work. I don't think I'd put up with that if I was a gamer. I guess maybe it's not evenly distributed. Do a higher percentage of the most popular games work?

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

#82

What about computer games such as age of empires ? Can we play regular computer games ?

Yes. Valve (Steam) spent more than a decade building and refining a translation layer called Proton. Nearly 80% of the vast Steam library is now compatible with Linux to the point they are releasing actual Linux consoles (Steam Deck and Steam Machine). For your regular PC, you can install a gaming-focused distribution like Bazzite to get everything sorted out automatically.

Building, no. Refining Wine, yes.

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

#83

Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I…

I really like my HP Omnibook 14 with the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip.. it's sleek, well built (so far, at least).. insane battery life.. the standby time on Linux is in weeks and the battery life when light browsing/YouTube viewing is easily 9+ hours. Even the finger print sensor finally just works. The touchpad gestures with kwin input actions are as smooth as, if not better than os x.

The only thing my work 16" MBP does better is the speakers.

edit: Updated the battery life to 9+ hours from 7+ hours based on what the battery monitor says.. I remember binge watching a couple of long movies/tv shows without ever having to plug in the laptop that day...

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

#84

Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I…

> weird keyboard layout Classic lenovo. Some models have FN as the most bottom left key, instead of ctrl. Gotta be the worst design decision ive ever seen. Everyone copy+pastes and finds, whoever thought that was a good idea really needs relieved of decision making power.

Apple also puts fn/globe in the bottom left corner and control to its right.

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

#85
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weird keyboard layout Classic lenovo. Some models have FN as the most bottom left key, instead of ctrl. Gotta be the worst design decision ive ever seen. Everyone copy+pastes and finds, whoever thought that was a good idea really needs relieved of decision making power.

You can swap those in BIOS for most models.

Yes. I use my Lenovo that way. Bottom left key is labeled "Fn" and act as Ctrl because I swapped them in BIOS.

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

#86
These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11.

But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to make a living? Inevitably yes.

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

#87

How to run PowerPoint and Excel? I'm stuck with these for work?

Maybe in a VM. Or try running via Wine. You could also try LibreOffice or OnlyOffice and see if the documents are readable / writable. Failing all that the web versions might work just fine.

> Failing all that the web versions might work just fine.

I use ~~Office 365~~ the Microsoft 365 Copilot App online all the time on Debian at work.

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

#88

Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I…

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

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

#90

Try CachyOS, it's based on Arch but with additional optimizations, better defaults, and is user friendly. The problems the author of the article had would not have happened if he spent some time using an user friendly distro before trying a hard distro.

CachyOS? That distro asking you to pick one out of 5 bootloaders and one out of 13 desktop environments? That is rolling and so comes with the implicit contract that you would have your eyeballs liking every package's release notes for any one of them that you ever update?

Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against CachyOS (I really couldn't care less), but if this is where we collectively set the bar for what is "user friendly", we are doing it wrong.

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