2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He’s running Windows 7 right now, so I’ll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
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it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam and not because Microsoft stopped patching it several years ago
Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
I don’t think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore
People don’t care about security until they get hit. Source: working in IT for 10 years.
And then suddenly they care a lot and do all the wrong things for wrong reasons because they know shit
“I don’t worry about missing security patches. I just have 5 anti-virus tools running simultaneously, they keep me safe.”
Or those people who actively avoid patches in general, because “they make my device slow”
I mean, they do make your device slow. That why tools like InSpectre exists. For some old cpu’s like my notebooks one it can be up to 20% performance impact, so if you not planning to use it with internet (or at least as main access point via browser) ever again, why not get yourself free performance?
Even IT people don’t give a shit about security until it’s way too late. Source: getting out of a job where the median age of a server is around 3-4 years old with no updates and runtimes hard installed outside repositories.
I think this is just kind of a side effect of capitalism.
If it’s costing them in the short term, and the results aren’t evident or won’t be seen until the long term, they almost always won’t do it.
No, it’s education.
Definitely. You see it across all aspects of life: basic misunderstanding of risk everywhere.
Nvidia gpu drivers wont even install on win 7 anymore. That by itself causes huge performance issues on new games that have driver optimizations.
Probably the same story for amd drivers
it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam
There’s this certain subsection of Win7/8 diehards that absolutely confuse me. It’s one thing to keep using them on old systems, but I’ve seen a few people posting about their brand-new PC, equipped with RTX 4090s and 13th gen I9 processors, who are adamant on running those outdated operating systems as their only OS. Such a waste of money.
Nah I think it’s just that windows 7 and 8 was and still is quite literally one of those ones where it hit the sweet spot between good UI and UX and actually having huge range and compatibility straight off the bat. Plus everything was pretty smooth back then, but hell, nobody ever says how many viruses and dumb apps were floating around for Windows 7x32 and x64
Isn’t SteamOS based on Arch? Did I miss something?
the way SteamOS works is extremely different to how a regular Arch Linux runs so I wouldn’t really conclude anything from that
it just shows how little the underlying distro mattersIt’s based on Debian.
2.0 is debian based. 3.0 (the version on steamdeck) is arch based
I don’t think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore
I think they do by proxy since they only distribute it via .deb (and with Steam of course) and all games in the store that have a native Linux version mention some kind of Ubuntu version in their requirements as well. Which is funny since the Steam Deck doesn’t even run Ubuntu.
Valve releases Steam as Flatpak too
I’m pretty sure that this is because steam uses chromium as its backend and chromium new version doesn’t run on windows 7. It’s still not good because there are some games that won’t run on newer systems and therefore 7 is required for preservation.
As many of you pointed out, yes I agree proton is the answer if possible. YMMV
This is the actual reason. Steam officially said that: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A
This change is required as core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.
Lol 0.06% usage in November 2023
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
There are more linux users than windows7 users.
Why are some Linux distros in scare quotes?
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0.69% (nice) on windows 7 64bit. That’s 0.75% total or 0.91% including windows 8 which is also dying. This is slightly under half of the linux user base according to these statistics
I think the 1.91 also includes the stream deck, but for some reason it isn’t included in the list (it is included if you select only Linux). It is about 5.5x Arch so around 0.8% of the total installs.
So the discontinue versions are around the same number as Linux desktop installs.
All these people saying “use this or use that distro instead” is why Windows users don’t go into Linux. Ubuntu is a solid choice for beginners because that’s a distro with a lot of tutorials online if not the most.
To be fair, steam reports less than 1% of users using windows 7. It’s not as big as we think.
There’s a bit of controversy regarding Ubuntu that I don’t need to get into but Fedora and Pop!_OS are also really good for Proton support. Ubuntu will work fine but I just prefer not to use it. Maybe you could let him try out the live environment for a couple distros to see what he might like in terms of UI.
All of those are still ancient systems. Arch or opensuse tumbleweed are the only systems that are reasonable for a desktop because they’re rolling releases
Fedora is still pretty frequently and recently up to date with respect to packages and kernel, not sure you’d be losing much over arch.
But the debate to me is also not that important, I’ve been running fedora and have at some few occasions gotten some instabilities due to updates (mostly Nvidia with Wayland) so I can totally understand someone wanting stability and reliability over bleeding edge).
I don’t know about vanilla Arch, but on Manjaro each update breaks at least one thing. I never had issues with Mint. I wonder if I’d still get more stability from Mint if I installed Plasma on it. Anyway, I already got used to AUR and not having to deal with version upgrades. But I still wouldn’t recommend Arch-based distros when stability is needed.
This hasn’t really been true with arch for years. As long as you update reasonably frequently. I haven’t had a breaking issue in ages.
What were the issues you had that broke things?
Usually LibreOffice has issues. That could be because I use libreoffice-still as opposed to fresh. Then there’s often file and dependency conflicts requiring manual intervention. The latter is usually documented here, I think, if it’s expected. Oh, and protonvpn is absolutely broken every single time.
A little unrelated, but how come we’re successfully federating with yiffit.net? We currently have broken outgoing federation. I checked sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemmy.dbzer0.com and none of those show content from us anymore.
my boyfriend. He’s running Windows 7
You saint.
Kubuntu for that win7 similarity. (It’s still official ubuntu)
Why not Linux mint? It is way more use friendly.
Also why on earth is anyone using windows 7 in 2023. I stopped using it to move to Linux back in 2016
I do, in VirtualBox. I have a 20 year old printer, and the drivers don’t work in newer Windows versions. I mean, at all. The installer crashes, and automatic driver installer only gets the scanner working.
Anyway, I don’t use Windows. It works on Linux. Kinda. In Linux Mint, I just can’t use high DPI, but I can scan, print, and see “remaining ink” just fine.
Manjaro is another story. Only “Normal Grayscale” works, hp-toolbox doesn’t even show the color cartridge. So I just use Windows 7 with the drivers as the heaviest printer driver ever.But when I have to use Windows (e.g.: at school), I prefer Windows 7. Windows 10/11 have really weird control, and they are SLOW. Also, when installing Windows 10 onto school computers, nobody bothered to install drivers.
I like the ThinkPad T440s laptops that are in one class. But after upgrade to Windows 10 they have some battery charging issues, and some of them just fail to boot from time-to-time. I use the last one with Windows 7 because it just works.You really should not be using Windows 7. If you need to for old software make sure it is isolated and doesn’t have network access. It is very insecure at this point.
Windows 12 may end up being my transition to Linux, especially if they go for a subscription model. If you told me just a decade ago that Linux was a viable OS for gaming, I would have laughed at you.
Valve have outdone themselves with Proton. So have those who worked on DXVK and VKD3D.
Proton works on any Linux distro, it comes with steam. As long as you can install steam, you should be golden.
I would recommend creating a Ventoy USB drive and download some live ISOs of your choice. Then boot them and let your BF try them. Because then he can choose a distro by his liking to the overall experience.
I strongly reccomend Zorin OS. I was in his exact shoes when I decided to switch to Linux and for very similar reasons. It feels pretty similar to Windows 7 IMHO, and I like its default dynamic background that changes throughout the day. Steam games run great on it btw.
The other reason I reccomend Zorin is that it is aimed at windows users and Mac users. There’s an “app store” that is in fact a software manager, most windows apps run pretty well (although I reccomend using Bottles for that) and the layout is designed to feel similar to Windows. All the fun Linux stuff is still right there for you to use, it’s just slightly out of sight so it doesn’t overwhelm you at the beginning.
RIP Windows 7, long live Linux Mint Xfce
To be fair, he could simply pay 5 bucks for a key and switch to Windows 10 or 11. Linux should be something people choose to try firsthand for a while before moving on.
