- cross-posted to:
- Technology@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- Technology@programming.dev
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37265606
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I sidestepped to Mint. Sorry, Microsoft, your shit’s untenable and disappointing.
That is what I am planning on doing as well. I am not going to install their ad-, bloat- and surveillance-ware.
Me too? I just switched a few days ago and I’m shocked how easy things have been.
Aside from some generic brand hardware I’ve got, most stuff just works. Main issue is not being able to use my Xbox controller wirelessly at the moment.
Get a 8bitdo wireless adapter, it’s better then native Windows support as well.
Bluetooth connect it then steam will automatically use steam input I believe.
Yeah my Bluetooth chipset isn’t supported by the drivers. It connects but isn’t detected properly. I’ll grab a dongle in future
I did the same and using Windows at work is slowly becoming unbearable.
Same! Even converted a couple of Surface tablets over as well. Id like to try Pop Linux on one of them just to see, but can’t get em to boot from USB.
I did too on my laptop but on pc I’ll probably just stick with windows 10, I’d rather deal with security vulnerabilities then ai in my OS
Proton’s good, by the way. If gaming is holding you back, at least.
so good that i actually get more fps than i did so on windows
I tried but I should probably figure out how proton works and try that
Proton is integrated with the Steam app in Linux, so usually you just install the game and then run it from Steam and it just works in Linux even though it’s a Windows game, without you having to know anything about Proton.
Similarly you can use something like Lutris or Heroic which does the same for Wine and game stores like GOG (it’s even integrated with the store and downloads the game for you, same as the Steam app does for the Steam store).
For some games you might have to learn enough to tweak settings, though for Steam and Proton that’s often just changing the Proton version you’re using for a game in its game launch settings in Steam, which is hardly complicated.
The need to really understand what’s under the hood is generally only when leaving these standard paths: for example if you’re trying to run a pirated version of a game (which might even be for perfectly legit reasons: for example one of my Steam games won’t run in Linux no matter what I do, but the pirated version works fine, probably because of the DRM in the official version) or some old obscure game CD you have around, as the scripts in Steam, Lutris or Heroic that silently configure Proton/Wine correctly for a game might not at all exist for those unofficial or older installers.
Yeah that last paragraph really hit the nail as to why I struggle with Linux gaming, especially playing games I downloaded off itchio too
Thanks for your advice though it is appreciated
If you’re willing to learn to use an atomic distro (meaning you can’t install stuff the normal way and the OS filesystem is read only), Bazzite is fantastic, has steam and proton pre installed and has been working amazing for me for a few months so far.
Yeah the thing is alot of the games I want to play arnt on steam so sadly that wouldn’t work out well for me, thanks for the suggestion though
You can normally add it to steam to see if proton will work, or if not, you could use heroic, lutris, or bottles, although normally if it doesnt work under proton and there isn’t a premade wine prefix in lutris or heroic, it will take some tinkering.
Which games are you worried about?
Pirated games or games downloaded off itchio mostly
If you must use windows, and might want to upgrade to 11, lets say, for certain games, this project Flyoobe will help create a windows 11 install without all that bloat and ai
I would recommend for people not to install W11 just for a tiny handful of games. Most work on Linux. If they want to specifically add things to make it only work on Windows you shouldn’t reward them by following along. Find better games to play.
The longer people play along with their game the longer they try to force people onto Windows. Until they are forced to support Linux you shouldn’t support them.
Yeah, well… When the kids want to play Valorant with their friends, it is hard to tell them that thats too bad, because they dont support Linux.
What if they had an Xbox and their friends were playing a PS exclusive game? Would you buy them the new console just so they can play that one game, or would you tell them that sucks but they can try to convince their friends to play a game that supports their system?
Wat? They already have a PC, Im not buying them anything, Im just not cutting away the thing that enables them to play certain games with their friends.
Sure, if it doesn’t cost anything and you aren’t giving anything up, fine. Keep doing what you’re doing. I don’t care. If you’re buying a game, reconsider. If you’re buying an OS, reconsider. If you are tired of having an OS that is literally malware that you don’t control and that is constantly advertising and spying on you, reconsider.
My point of the console example was that no, you won’t just put up with anything just to keep up. Have some boundaries. Stop just letting them push you around. The more you allow it the more they’ll do it. Once people actually start advocating for what’s best for them rather than what a corporation allows them to do then things will improve.
Thats a noble principle but it doesn’t really work when the game is an older or somewhat obscure one without much developer support left. Especially online games that have some fuckery preventing them from running via proton/wine.
I know it’s more of an edge case, but theres dozens of us holding onto some shitty 20-year old MMOs
Most older games work fine. It’s usually the newer ones that are the issue, with kernel level AC. For games to not work requires an active choice most of the time now. Of course, there are some exceptions.
Thank you the link is much appreciated :D
But admit one of my major grips with windows 11 is it’s extremely ugly looking, and I don’t really think there is any way to remedy that
You can replace the default windows UI with an alternative shell like Open Shell (here’s a list). Not sure how reliable this works.
Mhmhmmmh I might try this thank you :}
Look into https://0patch.com/
Keeps you secure without having to pay Microsoft another red cent
Thank you for this
Take their ESU extension to get one last year of W10 update. At least it gets you time to see if you can migrate on linux maybe.
I’m planning on moving to the IoT edition of windows 10 when support ends. It’s supported till 2032. Hopefully by then the professional apps I need will be sorted out on Linux.
Hmhm for sure
My elderly parents got the “your computer cannot be upgraded” and my somewhat tech-litterate mom asked me to move them to Linux.
Microsoft should’ve realised at some point that the only thing most people need today is a computer that can run a web browser and connect to a printer.
(They’re now moved over)
I swear to Torvalds, if the amount of old ladies using Linux because their Fedi relatives installed it on their laptops is accurate we are in the middle of an major demographic crisis.
For every one, there’s the younger relatively who installed it for them, so things are in perfect balance in the end.
the only thing most people need today is a computer that can run a web browser and connect to a printer.
I cannot the life of me get my Linux laptop to use my fucking Canon WiFi printer. It detects the printer, says it’s connected, but it simply will not send a print job to it. Windows, iOS and android all use it just fine…but this fucking Linux machine just won’t, I’ve spent hours fiddling with drivers and nothing works, it’s infuriating!
Yeah that sounds bad :/ All Brother here with no issues. Esp. Linux Mint just autodetects and sets everything up directly.
Mint detected my Brother but nothing could print until I downloaded a driver from Brother’s website. Buttery smooth since.
Needed to install drivers to get full features like double sided printing. However they are easy enough to install
Eh, my in-laws have the same problem… but on windows
It wasn’t canon in my case, but I found with other network printers on Linux that not bothering with “auto finding” and just putting the IP address in manually (give fixed devices fixed IPs on your router to make this kind of thing easier). Most desktop environments have a printer tool that should allow manually adding a printer.
I have to say with the work provided HP PoS I last had, it was equally as difficult to get windows to talk to it, to be fair.
Yeah I’ve tried the route of manually inputting a static IP, it will connect to the printer but it still fails to send jobs to the printer. I’ve resigned to just accepting that it’s incapable of WiFi printing with the HW I have, so I send documents to other devices for printing.
What’s the print make/model?
What flavor of Linux?
Try printer firmware update?
I had that same issue, what worked for me was manually removing the device which had been set up automatically because it had had been setup to only send jobs using the printer’s hostname rather than its IP which my home router did not support.
Can u tell ur model of printer maybe I can help I had fight a bit with canon printer too a bit but in the end it started working
I’d have to look at it when I get home, I have no clue off the top of my head.
We use a Canon at work, behind a print server called UniPrint, or some shit. I figured out how to use it to print from a USB drive long before I finally caved and mailed the guy who maintains it to ask how to get my KDE Neom machine to successfully send a print job. I figured out how to see it, I could check the toner levels, but I could not send a print.
Works now, because he changed a setting.
Bastard printers.
I can get mine to speak to my shitberg printer, but I went and bought bootleg ink cartridges and I have a half-day printer battle on my to do list to reset the ink levels and force the printer to accept non-HP ink into its heart.
Let me tell you:
I’ve been using Linux exclusively since ~2010 and moved my mum over back when XP got canned. Printers always have been and still are the bane of my existence. From what I know from other people working in IT printers are always bad, however of course the driver support situation in Linux is so much worse. My mum used to have a Samsung mfp that would print in Linux (most of the time) but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get it to scan reliably. In the end I’ve set her up with a dual boot with a simple “click here to switch to Windows” button so she could scan in there (saving the scans to a NAS)
From my experience printers mostly either work or don’t work in Linux. If you are looking for a new printer I’ve only had food experiences with Brother. If you already have a printer and it’s not working right I can recommend sxouring through forums for that one wisdom of the ancients that can help (and possibly sacrificing a goat)
I bow also have a Canon printer (it was a gift) and with the official Linux drivers it worked for years. Recently it just wouldn’t print from Linux anymore till I switched the drivers to the generic “Guteprint” now it’s printing fine again …
Tl;dr: printers are evil and Linux drivers are sometimes making them worse
Ironically my fedora computer connected out of the box, but my wife’s windows laptop breaks the printer each time it tries to connect.
If there’s a firmware update available I have to manually update the printer firmware after her computer tries to print.
Mac and Linux work fine 100% of the time.
I’ve been trying to get my MIL’s printer working forever.
Check if you selected the correct driver
My old printer got better support on linux than modern windows. HP has long since took the driver off their website.
It boggles my mind that tablets didn’t take over already as peoples “At home” devices
I moved my MIL to Mint. It runs faster and she hasn’t had any issues accessing Internet and email.
I’m upgrading to Debian 13 instead, since 13 is bigger number than 11 so obviously it’s better
My first pc had windows 95 and it was indeed vastly better then todays corporate shite
Remember how much people HATED Win95? They still moved to it to escape DOS, but still. Loads of hate.
Not really, the prospect of getting my own computer at all brought immense excitement and i didn’t know what words like “operating system” and “software” even meant.
I can imagine it though since i got comfortable with using the terminal, a gui feels more and more like bloat.
I do, but that’s because windows 95 was a lot less stable than 3.1(1). It deserved the hate it got and wasn’t really ready until Windows 98 came out.
A good chunk of people went from 3.1(1) to 98.
Idk my Win98 crashed almost every day. It only stopped when I switched to WinXP.
The kernel change in WinXP really helped stability. It was certainly easy to have a bad install with any of them though.
Win98 SE was my personal “best experience” with Windows, with WinXP a close second. (Though this likely has to do with the hardware and tasks I was experiencing at the time.)
Way ahead of you on Mint 22 or something like that
Fedora 41 is like being decades in the future.
Arch’s version number is so large, it cannot be shown.
This is why I upgraded my Windows 10 laptop to a Fedora 42 one. 42 is obviously the biggest. And thusly better than Debian.
Just wait until you learn about Windows 2000
Jokin’ aside, I am thinking to upgrading to forky (14), if it gets newer Nvidia drivers, because of a single issue I have with Wayland on Plasma (that is X applications flickering like crazy). Alternatively upgrading just kernel and nvidia drivers (to testing or sid) if it is possible without breaking whole system.
You’ll likely need to purge your Nvidia drivers after upgrading to 13, I had two machines fail to start NvidiaPersistence.d.service (or something like that) which caused the machines to fail on boot-up.
Reinstalled the drivers with
sudo apt install nvidia-driver nvidia-cuda-dev nvidia-cuda-toolkitif you’re looking for raytracing don’t forget to installlibnvoptix1.
The risk for both general and corporate business users far outweighs any minor inconveniences of moving to a new OS version.
Minor inconveniences like HAVING TO BUY A WHOLE NEW FUCKING COMPUTER.
These people live in a fantasy world.
Other minor inconveniences may include:
- AI spyware on systems (a very real issue with corporate and government machines)
- Legacy software not working in the new OS
- A drastic decrease in OS productivity
- Damage to hardware (potential as reported)
Left out being nagged to death about other products and services microsoft thinks you should buy.
Oh but that is a feature!
What? Don’t you guys have money?
Just stop being poor, duh!
They’re not trying to get me to upgrade my OS, they’re trying to get me to buy a whole new fucking system for no good reason. Every last one of them can die in a fire.
And that’s before we consider that Windows 11 is actually a downgrade.
Makes me miss windows 7.
Windows 7 was peak. I still miss it.
It’s simply the best Windows. Like, it’s still not as good as Linux for anything a bit complex, but at least it’s actually usable, fast, doesn’t feature ads in the start menu, doesn’t have built-in AI shitware, and has a decent customization capability.
Aero was the prettiest UI, I held onto Win7 because of it until EOL 😢
I ran vista from release, never had any probmems with it. Admittedly it did help that I ran it on a brand new pc. Does show that the problem wasn’t the os but rather their aggressive push to get it on PCs that weren’t suitable
Looking at it from a perspective other than “Windows shit, use Linux”, MS’ biggest issue here is that the vast majority have no compelling reason to upgrade. Currently.
To the average punter, W11 offers nothing that W10 doesn’t already have. There’s no new technologies that they care about, no new tentpole software that they’re dying to try. Nothing. It has copilot running rampant through it, but most people don’t know what that is or don’t give a shit.
Give Apple their due, when they announce an OS update, they focus hard on the ways it improves over the current offering. Ways it can interact with your other devices, for example. Or even just a whole new design.
But MS advertise nothing beyond “This is new, come get it!”, then wonder why no one cares.
The biggest problem Microsoft has is that the biggest selling feature of Windows is its ability to be backwards compatible and run on older hardware. The fact that a good number of PCs that aren’t even 10 years old can’t even run it is the issue. Also, MacOS names for each update are unique and interesting. Windows 11 is a very uncreative name which has always been a problem with Microsoft; example: Xbox One…
Maybe it is worth saying that it isn’t that it can’t run on it, it is that Microsoft is trying to stop it from running on it. Two registry keys and 11 replaces 10 on anything 10 works on. But they don’t want to tell anyone that.
But the premise is sound: to the end consumer they hear “buy a new computer” while the old one works fine, and the new ones price is starting to climb…
I genuinely couldn’t tell you what the current gen Xbox is named, though to be fair I don’t really pay that much attention these days.
But yeah, Windows can’t really have much of a default theme update when there are a good four different window styles throughout the various settings panels.
The biggest problem Microsoft has is that the biggest selling feature of Windows is its ability to be backwards compatible and run on older hardware.
Absolutely, a gazillion percent this. My main desktop doesn’t have TPM. I bought a cheap micro form factor Lenovo that I thought would run Win 11, but it didn’t. It had a 6-year old CPU and that wasn’t supported by Windows 11. 6 years old. I realized then that this eliminated one major reason to get a Windows PC over a Mac. I think that both Mac and Linux are going to make huge gains in market-share in the next months and years.
A lot of people are also questioning why they even have a home PC now. Their Win 10 machine is “out of date” and they need to replace it or else, but their cell phone now does much of what their PC did. Instead of installing Linux and learning a whole new OS, they just cut out their PC and just use their phone.
There’s an entire generation that has never owned or used a “PC”.
They use a phone at home. Maybe a tablet for “big screen things” and that’s it.
A lot of them even work off of mobile devices these days.
the biggest selling feature of Windows is its ability to be backwards compatible and run on older hardware
Really? I thought it was supposed to run older software, I don’t think hardware comes into it.
Great point. Their strategy at this point is holding a gun up to your hard drive and saying “upgrade now or your data gets it.”
I thought it was “we are upgrading now and your data gets it”
We’ve moved all of your data into OneDrive for your convenience, however you have exceeded your free OneDrive storage limit, please submit a payment immediately or the data will be deleted
They want us to upgrade to 11 so they can do that when they release Windows 12.
Given the Tick-Tock pattern of Windows OS and 11 being the
bad coptockThat honestly would probably get higher adoption numbers if for other reason than historical expectations.
Windows 3, 95, 98, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11…
The weird thing is that Windows 10 broke that model. It always used to be that the even-numbered Windows versions were worse (after, let’s say, Windows 2000): ME (#4)? Bad. XP (#5)? Good! Vista (#6)? Bad. 7? Good! 8? Bad. 8.1 (#9)? Good! But then Windows 10 came out and threw the whole rhythm off.
You could pretty reasonably argue that 8.1 wasn’t a true version, and thus Windows 10 was the 9th version of Windows, but that just means that 8 was the combo breaker by becoming good eventually. In either case, Windows 11 being bad restores the bad version/good version rhythm.
As a non windows user, I don’t get to interact with Microsoft systems an awful lot, but to me windows 10 felt like a complete system while windows 11 always feels like an early beta for some reason. It has some kind of unfinished, wet paint quality to it.
Ironically, Windows users have generally felt that way with every new Windows version after 7. Vista was painful for a lot of people and 7 was basically Vista but with the problems finally fixed, and every version since then people have complained that the newest version feels unfinished.
And in a lot of ways they have been. In 10, there are at least 2 different UIs for navigating the system and settings. Some options have been migrated over to the newer one, some only exist there, and some still only exist in the old version of the settings. And then 11 made it even worse by moving a number of frequently used options in the right-click menu into a second menu that you have to open after you right click.
People hated 10 at first, too, but by now they’ve gotten used to it and Microsoft has ironed off most of the rough edges people hated. But it’s been building for years and this pattern has seemingly hit some kind of breaking point with the present-day circumstances.
I don’t really use Windows these days. Mostly in a VM to make sure something I’m fiddling with is compatible for the poor folks at work who have to use it. So I can’t say I have any real opinions on 11 one way or the other. I couldn’t really point to one thing that’s vastly different or improved.
I guess, from that point of view, 11 feels mostly like it’s MS adjusting the OS to better suit their revenue stream, rather than improving workflows for the consumer. Which it is, I suppose.
And also, please correct me if I’m wrong, but whenever Apple releases a new MacOS version they don’t put fullscreen nag messages on your machine…
They do not. Yet.
How much of this is people not wanting to upgrade vs not being able to upgrade because their PC isn’t supported?
I’m a sys admin in the public sector and the hardware requirements of W11 are a great blessing. I couldn’t have convinced thousands of workers to switch to Linux and get used to another GUI but this forces it on us because there simply is no money to replace all that hardware. Rolling out Mint clients and between this and mobile operating systems Microsoft is finally losing its monopoly on the OS market.
I have been called by friends, family friends, and their friends to help with this and so many have hardware that is not supported, and some are not able to afford a new PC right now. That’s my limited and personal experience about this.
I have reservations about installing Linux Mint/other for these people because I don’t have time to help right now and you do need sometimes help if you are slightly tech aware but not enough to be able to troubleshoot yourself or search for right info. For folks who barely touch any settings and just use it for docs + web it’s easy, but for others not always.
Microsoft is such an ass for doing this.
This was a really dumb idea to do just before tariffs
You can just bypass those hardware requirements fairly easily. There are a bunch of guides out there.
Here’s one from Tom’s Hardware. https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/bypass-windows-11-tpm-requirement
It even shows how to make a install media that doesn’t require the checks so you can just install it no issue.
Though fair warning that some of those requirements they have are good for security purposes so your installs may not be as secure without them.
Win 11 is still pretty ass though and bloated to hell. I instead got myself a LTSC version of Win10 instead which will get updates until 2032 or something like that. That gives me enough time to figure out if I want to install Linux or IDK I’ll just die before that, either one is fine.
Thanks for the links. I recall reading that installing windows 11 with bypasses might break after some future update? I just didn’t want to offer a solution that might cause issues as well.
For some linux was a good option, but for some I said you can either get a new computer or pay for the LTSC. Thankfully I was able to find some affordable win11 compatible laptops for their usecases.
Go visit massgraves.dev and run the ESU patch; that’ll get them another 3 years of security patching in W10.
Thank you, I was already familiar with massgrave.dev, but didn’t realise they offered this patch! Very handy!
You’re welcome!
That’s useful, thanks for the recommendation! I’ll have to check this out. Especially nice for those who can’t afford new PC’s atm.
You can just bypass those hardware requirements fairly easily.
Microsoft specifically warns people not to bypass Windows 11 requirements:
Installing Windows 11 on a device that doesn’t meet Windows 11 minimum system requirements isn’t recommended. If Windows 11 is installed on ineligible hardware, your device won’t receive support from Microsoft, and you should be comfortable assuming the risk of running into compatibility issues.
Devices that don’t meet these system requirements might malfunction due to compatibility or other issues. Additionally, these devices aren’t guaranteed to receive updates, including but not limited to security updates.
Have they tried not being spyware?
Microsoft was successful in convincing me to upgrade to Mint however.
Me too. Had been wanting to switch to linux for some time and Windows 11 gave me the final push and it went a lot smoother than expected.
I successfully upgraded from Windows 10 to Linux Mint.
The official support for Windows 10 ends on Oct 14, 2025. Give new life to your old computer. Save money and install Linux: https://endof10.org/
Help! Our unsustainable behavior of screwing over customers in the name of quarterly profits has finally caught up to us! Turns out there are long term consequences of our behavior, and now Linux can truly go toe-to-toe with Windows on a home desktop!
Stop forcing shit no one wants on your users then!
Every fucking update… Hey let’s backup your stuff. Hey wanna backup your stuff? Let’s backup your stuff! We totally won’t hold it hostage if you stop paying us lol!
🤬
- Worse drivers.
- More bloat.
- More “telemetry” (spyware and adware).
- It breaks a ton of the systems I’ve had to implement by sheer force.
Why the FUCK would I do that? Just to give microsoft more money? Go and FUCK yourself.
