It's a shame that toothless regulators can't do anything about it. Microsoft should received such a large fine, they should end up on the brink of bankruptcy.
> It's a shame that toothless regulators can't do anything about it
There's no law or regulation that requires computer makers to always allow operation and set-up while offline.
...I think having a law to require MS to allow offline set-up by all users would be an overreach, but a reasonable alternative would be to require Microsoft to sell Windows LTSC to anyone who asks for it, not just Software Assurance and MSDN Subscribers.
I agree with the principle of overreach being wrong. I'm just asking why you'd think it would be an overreach in this case, when the entire world basically has 3 real choices for OS: Windows, MacOS and Linux, and a lot of the business world is bound by legacy reasons to Windows.
I understand that there are downsides to over-regulating, but there are also downsides to under-regulating.
No specific law, but competition laws are quite generic in their requirements so it is possible that they do need to allow users that much control over their machines.
>having a law to require MS to allow offline set-up by all users would be an overreach
HOW? Until now we haven't needed a law because OS developers haven't been this brazen. In any case there are likely actually a few laws that can be used to litigate the you shouldn't need to be online to install and setup a computer. I'll bet that if they don't fix it themselves a class action will be incoming n citing privacy or child safety or maybe some other laws.
Why would there be a law covering such a specific and legally unimportant detail? And do you really want to live under a government that regulates everything in such specific detail?
Microsoft can choose to support or not support offline accounts. Users can decide if they care and if they'd rather use something other than Windows. What's the problem exactly?
The problem could be abuse of a dominant position. Maybe Mac has now a market share good enough so that MS can pretend they are not in a dominant position in this sector, although if all it takes for an industry to abuse their users is that they all commit it together, each with their still high market share, that would also be an issue for citizens. Esp. in duopoly cases.
But again, why should the government regulate this? We don't have a fundamental right to own and use computers, or to offline accounts for our computers.
What legal line could be drawn to allow the government to regulate this without regulating all kinds of product and business decisions? Would it be reasonable for them to regulate what colors of crayons must be included in ever box of Crayola crayons? And if not, what is the legal boundry allowing them to say what features an OS has without allowing the crayon regulation?
Yeah, I used to be a libertarian too, and heavily invested, and the thing is that someone will do a bad thing with the law eventually, so you may as well do good things with the law instead of cucking out because bad things will be done wheter you do good things or not.
I don't actually consider myself a libertarian, I just generally haven't found big governments to be the best solution long term and would rather see them treated as a last resort.
Its not about doing good or bad things, and I don't see myself as having cucked out either. Someone will do what I consider a bad thing whether or not there are laws saying they shouldn't. And ultimately, who am I to say what they can't do as long as it isn't stepping on anyone else's rights?
In this more specific topic, I don't like how Microsoft has been setting any semblance of privacy on fire but I also don't see why I would need the government to fix that. Consumers have other choices, and if people care enough it will hit Microsoft's bottom dollar. With regards to Teams, I have actually been on teams where that tool was so broadly hated that they wouldn't use it whether free or not. If Microsoft was somehow blocking other chat apps on Windows that'd be a whole other ball game.
Why does something need to be a "fundamental right" to be worth protecting? Huge swathes of the population have been using operating systems on personal computers mostly the same for thirty years. How does it benefit society for one or two companies to build a moat then go to the casino and bet the entire industry on black?
Microsoft isn't Uber. Their moat is decades of work on kernels, drivers and backwards compatibility that can't be replicated overnight by a competitor. If they self-immolate to chase some idiotic AI/cloud fad, that does a large amount of real economic damage.
I don't even know if I want any regulations in the tech industry, especially after all the e2e encryption bullshit everyone (especially my country's government) is trying to pull. But if I did, this would be right at the top of the list for risk/reward. If cloud sync and AI are so good then sell cloud sync and AI, don't risk established markets to try and flog it off on people that don't want it with dark patterns.
It doesn't have to be a fundamental right, that's just roughly where I have found the line to be for me. There are always exceptions and I'm sure there are things I think are worth protecting, but I do keep a pretty high bar.
I don't see something like an operating system nearly on the level of worth protecting for a couple reasons. Humans can live just fine without operating systems and computers, and we can certainly live with or without support for local accounts. Additionally, there are other operating systems to choose so even if that's a red line for someone consumers still have options.
I can say I'd have less opposition to such specific laws if they came with an expiration date. At least in the US we don't do that and we end up with an ever growing list of laws that are either irrelevant or out of touch with future generations' morales or ethics.
"we don't have a fundamental right to own and use computers." - 15 years ago, I would probably have agreed with this statement. But in the modern technological world, without access to computers you are unable to engage with a large number of services, both private and public services.
So as a citizen, it is your right to access publicly funded services, right? So then by extension, the tools to access those services should be a fundamental right in a modern technological society. And moreso, you should have the right to own those tools outright without molestation by large corporate entities... Fuck, Microsoft isn't even a large corporation... It is a behemoth, 3.3 Trillion market cap! I think they, and their competitors, could stand to be saddled with some more regulation to insure a baseline OS for the citizenry of this county, and other countries. It's not like it's going to hurt their profit margins that much to comply!
> Fuck, Microsoft isn't even a large corporation... It is a behemoth, 3.3 Trillion market cap
Hah, well I'm definitely on the same page with this part! Companies shouldn't be given such massive legal cover that they can accumulate this level of wealth and power.
That said, I'm still not so sure I agree with computers being a fundamental right. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and for something fundamental it really should be something that can't be taken from you, aka inalienable rights in my opinion. Life in the US is certainly harder without a computer today, but is it really a right that needs to be legally enshrined?
Would this logic extend similarly to cars, phones, or air conditioning? They're all in the category of items I think everyone ought to have access to, but I don't think they're so fundamental to human life that governments must enforce that access.
I'm big on small governments in general though. I may just be seeing slippery slope here when that isn't warranted.
You can have a regulation requiring that devices are not dependent on internet services and that people can manage them themselves. This is consumer protection 101 where people are protected from predatory business practices.
The number of auto opt in updates clearly violates privacy law. The ease of accidentally agreeing and the inability to view contracts before purchase violates consumer law.
> I think having a law to require MS to allow offline set-up by all users would be an overreach
Honestly, no - it wouldn't be considering that for many decades we could use Windows without being connected to Microsoft cloud services.
At the moment MS is "only" enforcing an online account during OOBE.* The next step will be an unavoidable Windows-as-as-service product with "subscribe to remove ads and unlock xyz feature" - that's the goal they're heading for years.
They could do as simple as having two versions of OS: Windows Free with ads, telemetry, mandatory online account and a paid Windows Pro with all these limitations gone, with an offline account and more control for the end-user. And that's what the regulators, govt's agencies should really make happen. Sadly they prefer working over content scanning and damaging encryption, violating our privacy while pleasing entertainment industry with wild goose-chasing pirates.
[*] - last time I check in W10, singing out right after OOBE and reverting to a local account still puts residual traces all around the profile to the point that you never are truly signed out.
As someone who has used Windows only minimally in the last 20 years (mainly for CAD and 3D) I do not understand why people need Governments to "protect" them against abuse while they continue using the abusing system.
In the past it took a lot of work to use alternatives. Today it is so easy.
Easy, as long as you are not forced to use this spyware on the job. Or some specific proprietary file format or specific things that alternative tools do not yet have.
Easy, as long as you are a technical user, who is willing to invest time in learning alternative tools and also willing to sometimes sacrifice some time to get appropriate results using alternative software than the mainstream Windows tools.
A lot is possible using other OS and alternative tooling, but it takes commitment and possibly time to learn. Many people are not willing to relearn tools of their professions or even for their hobbies. It really takes an open minded and willing person to listen to their engineering friend and give other tools chances and time and potentially even make a jump to a command line mindset.
Most people, compared to software developers and engineers, are almost computer illiterates. They are happy, when the thing turns on and looks as it always looks and they see some familiar icon for a web browser. Probably never before has the need for educating people about computers and what they can do with them been so huge. The resulting incentives from not educating people about such have terrible results for our whole industry/profession.
Linux tends to cause strange issues if you get unlucky.
Within the last year I've had to just try a different distro since Ubuntu didn't support my hardware. On a different PC I'm on Mint now.
Years upon years ago I gave someone a PC with Ubuntu installed. A week later he just asked how do I install League of Legends. The simple answer is install Windows.
90% of people don't want you to "educate" them about why struggling with the Linux CLI is a better use of their time than whatever else they had planned.
I, and most on this site, are like in the top 0.001% of people technically. And I would not immediately know how to install Linux. I'd assume it'd involve researching an appropriate distro, download an image of said distro, find some software to 'burn' that image onto a USB, and then get into the bios, boot from the USB and everything else from there should be relatively smooth sailing, but to call this "so easy" for the other 99.999% of people is ridiculous. Even more so when Microsoft has been pushing hard for boot locking hardware stuff which I have no idea the implications of, besides I expect it will coincidentally make moving away from Windows even more tedious.
Back in the day when we still had a government that enforced anti-compete laws against mega corporations, Microsoft was found guilty, and nearly broken up, over simply including Internet Explorer by default. If we still had any government willing to crack down on anti-competitive behavior, I think the entire tech world would be in a far better place. The EU is ostensibly trying, but I suspect even that will largely just come down to companies accepting moderate sized fines every once in a while as business expense in the EU.
Geez, the more I read about it the more I think about migrating my gaming machine to something like Pop_OS. I heard people are having great experience, and Steam through Steam Deck has considerably improved gaming on Linux experience.
I think I get it - there are plenty of people using Windows as their primary OS and they want bells and whistles while not caring about telemetry. But just.. let people disable things.
IMO fact, that Microsoft is pushing spyware on their users and make it harder and harder to disable it is much more important topic than EU focusing on Apple (which is monopoly inside their ecosystem, but not a provider of "default" software used in offices etc.)
I've done that. I kept a windows install on the side for the few games that don't have a permissive enough anticheat, but I basically never use it anymore since The Finals has allowed Proton. It's going great.
Yeah I’m looking at building a new machine because mine is getting very long in the tooth (although I don’t play very demanding games anyway), I’ve been waffling about using linux and proton for it even though my gaming PC has been windows since forever, I think at this point it’s petty much a done deal.
You can also dual boot and/or swap out hard drives. It took me a goodly while to get immersed and comfortable with Linux, so I'd definitely plan a discovery and/or transition phase before hard switching over.
There is GPU passthrough these days, where you can have a Windows VM with dedicated graphics and native performance running under Linux. No dual boot required. It does take a bit of work to get it right but I consider my current setup near perfect.
Everybody cries about Microsoft but Android's level of spying is unmatched and MS is just catching up. Yet for some reason Google is a darling of folks here. Just try to turn off WiFi on your Android phone and see how much longer your battery lasts... All of that power goes to spying on you.
So literally just now I opened the Google photos app and it came up with a nag screen to turn on auto-backup which I had already explicitly turned off. The message was worded to make it sound like they were doing me a favour and it was difficult to close the banner (I just exited the app because what I needed to do was possible with a less invasive version).
I would not go so far as GP as to say that this dark pattern is better or worse than what Microsoft is doing, but I think it is a fair point that a Google/Microsoft account is needed on the biggest mobile/desktop platforms respectively and their attitude to privacy and user agency is somewhere between laissez-faire and contemptuous.
With Android there does at least feel like with F-Droid, different OEMs, alternative apps, the web and even Other android spins that these aren't quite the lockdown that Windows is, although it's fair to say that in either case you shouldn't really be constantly on your guard for the next way that your operating system is going to try to trick you into giving away more of your stuff to them.
Sure, it's not convenient for normies but you can just download the apk from somewhere and then install it, just like you can do with an .exe or installer on windows.
I agree, the dialogs are getting increasingly frequent and harder to "click" away.
I'm open for suggestions for an open-source Android image gallery app.
Turning off the WiFi doesn't do anything, Android phones stockpile location-based telemetry while in airplane mode and upload it once you reconnect to the internet[1].
I can't speak for everyone here, but not all of us use stock ROMs and Google Play Services. I personally use GrapheneOS, which let's you significantly neuter Google's spyware capabilities.
> Just try to turn off WiFi on your Android phone and see how much longer your battery lasts... All of that power goes to spying on you.
Having WiFi turned on will drain your battery faster by virtue of connecting to WiFi. Even worse, if it's on but not connected, it will periodically look for networks to connect to. The same is true for cellular service.
I don't care about the spying stuff, but Windows is just so god damned ANNOYING all the time. It always wants me to drop everything and update Windows right then and there or get the latest 0.0.1 version of Office when I'm trying to make a presentation, or sync all my Google Docs to Onedrive, or make me see a dozen ads just to open the start menu, or have three different control panels and two registry strings and four group policies for the same one setting.
It's just an incredibly user hostile operating system that only a broken bureaucracy like Microsoft's feudal dynasties can build.
In contrast, I love Android, even more than any desktop Linux, macos, ios, etc. It just works and the notifications are super customizable and Pixel blocks 90% of my spam and texts and the adblock is system wide (via VPN) and it auto updates overnight and just never gets in my way. For every Windows annoyance I've had, there are entire months or years where Android just keeps on working, even across new phones and new major versions.
Google may be the spiest of them all, but at least they can deliver a great user experience and operating system. It's not perfect (I still miss my old style notification shade system controls), but it's a lot less noisy than Windows. A good operating system should stay out of the way, not make itself the center of attention at every possible opportunity.
I see a lot of negative comments about Google here. They are just more competent than MS.
Google is also an ad company, the bar for their behavior is lower. MS used to be an OS company. Many of the users here remember the time when there was a supplier/customer relationship with MS.
It is probably hard to imagine if you are, like, under 25, but MS actually used to be this kind of interesting company that enabled people doing new, fun things on their computers. Of course they are just another garbage factory now, but it’s hard to update your priors sometimes.
Also, Pop OS (and linux in general) will soon get a new desktop environment called Cosmic. Clearly, it will take one or two years to get it to a level where it's stable, but it's fantastic. It's the first desktop environment that combines the best of KDE, Gnome and i3.
I'm not closely informed here, especially about Orca, but my understanding is that Cosmic uses or will use AccessKit by way of using the iced crate, and that some of the same developers are contributing to both projects. So it's not totally off their radar.
Yep, I think I'm okay with not being able to play some games and I'll probably just keep a dedicated machine if I really feel the need to play those games.
I'm going to build an all AMD system, install Linux Mint, then slowly migrate everything over and completely switch. It was bad enough when they started the spyware / bloatware train with Windows 8 / 10 but this is the final nail in the coffin.
I have been running an AMD system on Linux Mint for several years, and it has been fantastic. The only things that don't work in general are games with invasive anti cheat.
> The only things that don't work in general are games with invasive anti cheat.
That sounds like a feature, I’ve got plenty enough games to play that I don’t need to have my machine rootkitted. I swore off of all EA-published games on those grounds 15 years ago so having the information upfront would be a strict improvement.
I made the switch. It’s fantastic. Pop with the pre-packaged Nvidia drivers.
Other than Warzone and Tarkov (for which I keep a separate drive with Win10), the only things I haven’t quite managed to get sorted yet are (i) a convenient system-wide replacement for the frame limiter in RTSS, and (ii) relatedly, proper frame-pacing when streaming using Sunshine.
Also, Steam seems to have a weird and widespread bug where if you use Big Screen, exit to the desktop mode, then launch BS again, you get like 5fps in the BS front-end itself (after launching a game, it’s fine). The workaround is to just kill the client when you exit Big Screen (usually when your gaming is done anyway).
Really happy I made the switch and fully expect those niggles to get sorted (or my aptitude to improve) in due course. Windows has been shit for a while but recently it’s really crossed over into unbelievably shit.
Yes I use MangoHUD and it’s pretty good! It’s not quite as seamless as RTSS, though. MH is a bit fussy about which graphics API you’re using, and can’t be applied system-wide (afaik) without going through that 3rd party (open-source) UI. Plus, even when it’s applied and working, it doesn’t seem to solve my Sunshine frame-pacing issues, which for me is the main use case (the physically attached monitor is VRR so I don’t need limiting locally). Great project though!
I think I’m also a bit spoiled by the Steam Deck, where it’s so easy to set and change custom limits. I kind of just want that, for Pop, ha.
I've applied it system wide by setting `MANGOHUD=1` inside `/etc/environment`, which might be a little bit excessive but it works for me. You can also set hotkeys to toggle the Hud and the frame rate limits within ~/.config/MangoHud/MangoHud.conf, but I think there is a GUI tool that does it for you.
As for the frame pacing, try with the beta NVidia drivers (v555) and Wayland, though I don't use Sunshine so I'm not sure if it'll help.
Thanks for the tips! I’ve had one eye on Wayland, but with all the reports of trouble with Nvidia, and the upcoming (imminent?) transition to Cosmic for Pop, I figured I’d hold off - especially since I’m streaming less than I used to and playing more 90hz indies on the Steam Deck OLED.
The latest driver makes Wayland usable on NVidia, as long as you use an up to date shell and the latest xwayland version, I've been using it since it came out and it's been great, games are much more smooth and the constant microstutter I'd been having with X is gone.
Check out if these updates are all available on Pop, if they are give them a try!
That’s excellent - thanks! I will check that out this weekend for sure. I might even spend some time getting to the bottom of when and how Cosmic is going to be rolled out, and whether it matters if you’re coming from X or Wayland. If it looks like it’s going to be pretty seamless, I’ll give Wayland a try in the interim too!
Huh, I didn't even realize MangoHUD can do frame limiting. I've always just used gamescope[0] for that. The latter is probably overkill if all you want to do is limit framerate though.
Gamescope is great but the fact that you can set multiple limits and switch between them makes me prefer MangoHUD, even though I also sometimes use gamescope (with Nvidia my experience with it has been a little bit hit or miss).
> a convenient system-wide replacement for the frame limiter in RTSS
My budget gaming PC is still on Windows and RTSS is a lifesaver: I couldn't stream or record some games with my Intel Arc A580 otherwise, since titles that use DX11 or older rendering technologies typically have worse performance than the more recent ones, ergo I have to stream/record at 30 and cap the framerate anywhere between 30-60 depending on the title, otherwise things get unstable.
Of course, it's not ideal, but is at least workable. A bit odd that the card struggles with games like Ghost Recon Wildlands (DX11, 2017), but not Ghost Recon Breakpoint (Vulkan, 2019) or ones that use DX12 etc. Either that, or when there's a title that's badly coded and doesn't lock framerate properly to the screen refresh rate.
Aside from that, around 90% of the 500ish Steam games I have would actually run on Linux (various indie titles, mostly), at least according to ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com which is pretty nice to see, except for the fact that last I checked something like GOG doesn't run on Linux natively, though thankfully something like Lutris exists.
Different strokes, I guess. One of the main draws of buying games from GOG instead of Steam, for me, is the fact that I don't need an extra bit of superfluous software just to purchase and launch my games. I have a perfectly good application launcher already, which relies on standard .desktop files.
Yeah it’s so good isn’t it. Just painless and seamless. Some people seem to use the limiter in NVCP as an alternative, but that option isn’t exposed in the Pop Nvidia control panel, which is pretty basic.
I’ve had a really mixed experience with GoG on Lutris and Heroic - both on Pop and the Steam Deck. I often struggle to get things running. It requires just that little bit more knowledge of what’s happening under the hood than Steam/Proton does, and I often just give up. My library is mostly in Steam anyway. Honestly, EmuDeck has been easier for me to get uo and running than either Heroic or Lutris.
Yeah, I think I’d describe it as “workable” too. Occasionally you will have a game that’s rated “platinum” still have bugs like a non-working controller.
And both Nvidia and AMD have native control software (GeForce Experience and Adrenalin) that bundles a bunch of nice stuff like underclocking, recording, noise suppression, per-game profiles, frame limiter, etc;
On Linux you have GreenWithEnvy and CoreCTRL, but neither are as nice or have even half the features.
I recently bought a Lenovo Legion with RTX4070 I still haven't managed to get Nvidia it working under Linux (the moment I open a browser or anything that uses the GPU extensively things go bad)
Disclaimer I am not very familiar with Linux for Desktop - but to me this is an indication that we are not yet in the
"just works" state for desktop linux.
Yeah choice of distro and your particular hardware combo are still a factor, unfortunately. Not super difficult to boot it up and have a poke around though, see if it sticks. Maybe try another distro?
I tried Ubuntu and then Pop_OS which seemed more promising but ended up not working either. I'm open to any other suggestions, prefer Debian based distros which I have more experience with from server side.
Yeah I came from an Ubuntu background too. Mint, perhaps? Honestly though if I were going to try anything else at this point it would be Fedora I think. So many good reports. But I’m far from knowledgeable on this stuff - I’m sure others will have better answers, or advice on how to debug your current install.
I would open another TTY to run the nvidia-bug-report.sh when you experience the GPU intensive issues. I recently had a very minute hard to spot problem on why I couldn't get my GPU working and the Generix on the Nvidia Forums help me (and so many others) solve their issues almost immediately. Could be worth a shot.
It's really strange that it didn't work for you, especially with pop OS which really should just work. I think we're in this strange sort of limbo where for like 80% of people it just works, and then there's 20% of people where it simply breaks in bizarre completely unpredictable and incomprehensible ways that aren't even reproducible for anyone else. That's better than it not just working for anyone I guess, but it's still not ideal and honestly I'd be interested to hear a discussion about why this is.
> Disclaimer I am not very familiar with Linux for Desktop - but to me this is an indication that we are not yet in the "just works" state for desktop linux.
Or it does just mean that while the Windows recurrent problems (how to create local accounts, disable telemetry, install 3rd party programs, etc.) are just seen as life as normal while Linux problems are seen as such.
The fact that the laptop is unusable under Linux feels more important, at least to me, than enforced Microsoft account login which is just an inconvenience. Of course your priorities may be different.
First attested in 1599. Origin uncertain, but likely borrowed from dialectal Norwegian nigla (“to be stingy, to busy oneself with trifles”), ultimately from Old Norse hnøggr (“stingy; miserly”), related to Old English hnēaw (“stingy; niggardly”). More at niggard.
"""
Niggard is unrelated to the racial slur we're thinking of but in fairness I can understand how it would raise eyebrows.
That is what I assumed at first, but reading the thread @ctoth linked to and the Wikipedia article with many examples, changed my mind. It’s a good reminder that history has often come to a different conclusion than logic.
Maybe you can also consider where this sort of thinking might lead:
When the news began circulating on social media, many couldn’t believe it was true––that the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California would remove a longtime professor from a class because a Mandarin word he used correctly in a lesson sounded sort of like a racial slur.
There was nearly unanimous agreement that the students crying wolf in that case were sincere but wrong and prof Patton was justified. After investigation, he was cleared. The article’s word “removed” is ambiguous, but Patton was not fired or even suspended, they just used a sub for a couple weeks. He was sorry it happened, but was not punished.
The USC story is quite different from the current thread. The historical use of the word “niggard” has been intentionally used in a racist way (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word...), and if you read the WP article, it has quotes speculating that subtle “sophomoric” usage of the word might increase for racial reasons.
So I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, and it seems like the USC story is actually demonstrating that people can be reasonable about where the line is. It might have caused a stir once, but now there is precedent for settling cases of Mandarin confusion more quickly.
That's great that sanity eventually prevailed, but it's not a compelling example of reasonableness that it was only after "Patton was removed from the class, investigated, and excoriated in a mass email." Now that we have set this important precedent that someone teaching Mandarin in a way that "confused" his students (who are learning Mandarin?) into thinking he was insulting black people, are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?
It's hyperbole to call this a slippery slope when the exact same thinking that finds niggardly offensive leads to the absurd outcome at USC. Instead of pruning the language of any words that a racist might use as a dog whistle, maybe expect, if not everyone, at least college students to have some notion of context.
Oh, sorry, how would you summarize your argument? I thought “consider where this sort of thinking might lead” was called slippery slope, but I’m happy to refer to it some other way.
> it’s not a compelling example of reasonableness
Why not? The outcome was positive, Patton suffered no serious consequences, and the ability to say foreign words without worrying was affirmed publicly. It could have been much worse, but it wasn’t. There was a temporary misunderstanding followed by some conversation that got it sorted out, no need to worry about that further. Again, the precedent that was set is that using Mandarin is not insensitive or racist. Precedent refers to the outcome, not the temporary misunderstanding. The outcome at USC was not absurd, the outcome was reasonable. The accusation might have been out of line, or just a mistake, but that was the cause, not the outcome.
> are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?
Why would there be? (…especially given the outcome of the USC story) If you read the USC response, you’ll even find it addresses that question directly. It affirms that incidental phonetic similarities across all different languages are pure coincidence and should not result in claims of wrongdoing. It even says the same thing you did, and takes responsibility too, it says college students should have some notion of global context, and it’s college’s job to give them that context.
The case that started this thread is not a cross-language mistake, and it came with evidence of historically racist usage, so it’s different by definition. It’s not the exact same thinking, and I posted some evidence of that. There’s no reason to believe the Mandarin incident will lead to more accusations, and due to being publicized and decided in Patton’s favor, there is reason to believe it won’t happen again, or if it does it will be settled quicker and with less publicity.
We can call it a slippery slope, if you like, but that generally suggests an imagined, often absurd end result. Not a demonstrated consequence of the exact facts causing a bad outcome.
I think it is easier, in hindsight, for you to say that Patton didn't suffer serious consequences. If I were in his shoes, being prohibited from teaching his class, disciplined for an absurd accusation and investigated, I would be pretty upset and wondering what the outcome would be.
If these were second graders learning a foreign language, maybe it is understandable that they might titter about a word in that language that is similar to one in English. I think it takes quite a bit of mental contortion to believe that students in a college foreign language class would think that a Mandarin word was insulting to black people because it sounds like an English word.
The reason this story is publicized is not because it's the valuable precedent you assert. It's that it is symptomatic of the ridicule deserved by the reasoning that people should be offended by words with similar sounds and different meanings.
So your argument is that we should ignore the actual positive “sanity prevailed” outcome, and instead only focus on imagining what it felt like to be incorrectly accused of racism, before being cleared? I’m sure that totally sucked for a minute, which is why he apologized, though he did have a pretty massive wave of support, both locally and nationally, before the investigation finished. Anyway… why does ignoring the outcome make any sense now?
I did read the whole article (btw please re-read HN guidelines), which was designed to stir and highlight drama, as newspapers are wont to do. You’re right, the Atlantic story you’re linking to is downplaying the precedent and focusing on the controversy. Even though there’s not that much controversy.
I also read some followup too, obviously, since I wrote some details above about the story that your source doesn’t mention, for example that Patton was not disciplined and was cleared and apologized to, and that the dean who “excoriated” Patten also had to publicly apologize for his hasty & presumptuous email, and admitted he reacted too quickly.
You seem to be insisting on incredulity and outrage, when feelings got out of hand but nothing serious actually happened. That’s kinda the same mistake Patton’s students made.
The school is required to take accusations seriously and investigate. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. The dean handled it poorly at first, but people sometimes make mistakes. And it’s also good thing prof Patton was cleared. Almost everything worked like it should have. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone thinks about the validity of the student’s accusation, and the fact that the accusation happened is not somehow going to make anything worse.
Hey, it’s a free country, say whatever words you want, as far as I’m concerned, the consequences are yours to enjoy. You’re right that this shouldn’t have happened, and you’re right that the words we’re discussing did not originate from a racial epithet. But then history happened, replete with a lot of actual racism and words, and in reality new negative associations were formed between unrelated words. Bummer. But complaining about not being able to use one totally anachronistic word now that clearly sounds like a racial slur, and has been used as a racial slur, might seem a bit tone deaf. Arguing that choosing not to say one particular word is going to lead to many more and cause problems is an imagined and absurd end result.
OK. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Which is not what you're doing when you reduce the question to saying one particular word is the issue rather than only an example of blindly ignoring context. (Which is not even the case here since we're now offended by niggle, niggardly, niggard and 那个 and who knows what else). The issue is making the language less expressive at the instigation of 1) people who can't understand context and 2) sophomoric racists who take advantage of the people who can't understand context. Neither group should be rewarded by ceding the use of completely harmless and expressive words.
> who knows what else […] making the language less expressive
There’s that slippery slope again. English isn’t getting less expressive, that will never happen. That right there is the “imagined, absurd end result”. The number of English words that have become politically incorrect over our lifetimes is completely dwarfed by 1) the better, more expressive synonyms and alternatives available and 2) the number of new words introduced into English over the same period.
I hear you, and I agree that it’s stupid that a couple of previously unrelated words have become tainted, and they shouldn’t have been. But it’s too late, it happened… in this case, over a hundred years ago.
Nobody is being rewarded. Racist word usage doesn’t seek to remove words from our lexicon. The words don’t actually go away, the choice to use or not use certain words is yours to make. Whether we offer other cultures any respect by choosing to avoid any innocuous words that happen to have a higher probability of being taken the wrong way is purely a personal decision. Which is why arguing about it might not be the best look, even if you’re right, right?
When the end result has actually happened (advocacy for the avoidance of sound-alike words), it is no longer a slippery slope.
Anyway, there is value in trying to get people to understand that people who innocently use a sound-alike don't intend to offend them. Which is pretty much what John McWhorter has written about many times. The failure to understand context seems to be a big part of many issues of the day.
The “end result” you just referred to is only for the 3 specific words we’ve been discussing and no others. It actually is a slippery slope argument when you’re talking about any other words and not the 3 specific ones in this thread.
I totally agree there’s value in sharing context, and helping people not be offended. USC agrees as well now. Good!
I have a gaming PC running arch, and the experience has improved immensely since I last tried it 4 years ago. Legitimately incredible what valve has done for the platform, and my suspicion is that AI/ML investment will continue to have secondary effects that make gaming on Linux even better.
Do it. I recently built a beefy machine, the first time in years that I have something I can play on, it's Linux only and it's great. Deepening on the games you play, check protondb first.
> much more important topic than EU focusing on Apple
The EU is not a single threaded application. They can, and should, be focusing on multiple areas where there is wrongdoing. Both are being egregious and abusive, and need attention. And the EU has shown that it can!
> (which is monopoly inside their ecosystem, but not a provider of "default" software used in offices etc.)
A good phrase to use here would be 'platform abuse'. Focusing on the 'default' is an attempt to justify what they are doing, and I notice it gets used to defend Apple rather than call them out. In the sense that "Oh well, it's their platform, they can do what they want"
+1 to recently making the switch and to PopOS. There are still small experience pains coming from 2 decades of almost exclusively using Windows, but gaming has been pretty smooth, especially for recent titles. Valve has done an exceptional job with the SteamDeck. I hate monopoly like companies as much as the next person, but honestly it is hard to fault their platform. I still get games on GoG and Itch.io occasionally, but man is Steam miles ahead of the rest of the options, especially for Linux gaming.
Before switching to Linux for gaming, I recommend checking compatibility of your favorite games using https://www.protondb.com/, an unofficial site for Proton compatibility.
The main issue with Linux as a desktop OS is hardware support (still, sadly). If you get a gaming rig with newer equipment stuff is likely not to work, or require a LOT of hacking to make functional, to the point that it's easier just to install windows and use WSL for everything. I say this as someone who got his start with Linux using Slackware 96.
I just built a rig with new, top of the line, hardware and installed fedora on it without an issue. What components are you talking about specifically?
I had the opposite experience actually. Windows didn't include network drivers for my custom PC mobo+chipset, while linux had them included. Actually had to download the windows drivers on linux then boot into windows and install them...
This is outdated, with the exception of perhaps webcams I've had hardly any issues with hardware on Linux in years, and that includes a couple of Intel MBPs. Just got a latest model laptop with a RTX 4080 and everything worked out of the box. I had to install Windows recently for someone and I had way more issues there.
It's still quite true at times for stuff integrated into the motherboard, sadly. You really should do due diligence on your hardware before you buy it if you intend to use Linux. You can still buy laptops that will not work well with Linux, and as of about a year and a half ago at least there were still new motherboards being released with components that have spotty Linux support.
Things have changed a lot here. I now regularly buy windows laptops, toss windows and they just work. When there is a hardware problem, it usually takes a few minutes to resolve.
The hard part is realizing that you have to do the EFEI setup and not just try to boot in insecure mode.
I have been gaming in Pop_OS, the only issue I had was in RDR2, then, when I switched to Proton Experimental it solved.
I am right now using the Xbox Wireless Dongle with a custom driver (xone), that driver says that it supports audio through audio jack. No audio though. Probally because I am not very experienced in Linux on Desktop.
This is what I did. No regrets, the only one is my usual one for Linux. I want a "nearly bleeding edge" distro. AppImages and Flatpacks are nearly what I want, and do use them, but for development I want to be able to install development tier packages with the confidence that it wont break. I guess I want Debian, bleeding edge but assurances on how reasonably stable it should be. VanillaOS 2 looks promising to me.
I am NEVER going back to Windows unless I get a modern version:
* Targeted for professionals / gamers (why call it pro if its just Home without dumb restrictions?)
* Offline-first accounts only
* Zero ads for Microsoft products (I'll literally pay $50 a year to stop them, and stop the update nagware).
* Stop pestering me to update
* And this is more important, decouple your OS so you can update while I use it, requiring a restart only under kernel tier changes.
endeavour OS is a rolling-release Arch-based distro with a convenient installer and full desktop. i installed endeavour when my AMD GPU was still brand-new because i needed to be at the bleeding edge for driver support. i figured i'd switch to a more stable distro eventually but i never made the switch because i'm pretty happy with endeavour.
I'm currently undecided between endeavour and Fedora. Fedora updates every 6 months, which is recent enough for me, vs years old major versions of things on Debian / Ubuntu.
Nobara is a nice flavor of Fedora optimized especially for desktop and gaming.
I’ve started recommending it to others, while personally I’m happier with Arch’s more transparent and simplified architecture and development, plus rolling release to avoid mass breakage on full upgrades.
i suggest endeavour if you already know & like arch but would prefer more convenience (and are willing to accept a slightly opinionated setup as a starting point). or if you need to be at the bleeding edge but aren't thrilled at the thought of configuring every little piece yourself.
but rolling-release distros does mean one day you might update and reboot and something is broken. it's more maintenance than fedora.
I recommend NixOS, if you want both a bleeding edge and stable (as in, your system doesn't break) distribution. These two are the reasons this guy chose NixOS[1]:
Why does NixOS work for me?
I got attracted to Nix because of the possibility of being on the bleeding edge. According to repology Nix related package repositories are far up and to the right, their own cluster. In fact, only Arch is getting close by, but not being as good in terms of freshness, as can be seen from the position of AUR below [2].
1. How friendly is the installer? I can get a second hand machine in which I can afford to nuke the disk and let Nix take it all but what if I need to install it side-by-side with my existing Windows install on my main laptop where I have a custom partitioning scheme? Ubuntu's installer provides sufficient flexibility to able to re-use partitions without overwriting them, allocate whatever mount point I want, resize things etc. I have been using Linux for close to 20 years but fdisk still spooks me.
2. How easy is multi-monitor setup and switching between setups? I have a main monitor that I usually use but occasionally I also use the laptop screen as a second display and sometimes I just use the laptop screen.
3. The 1st link alludes to be able to rollback changes from grub? How? What are my recovery options if I mess up the system?
1. It uses Calamares, which is the GUI used by many distros. It was no different from installing any other distro with a GUI, including partitioning.
2. I'm using a laptop with AMD/NVIDIA on Wayland with KDE, this is no problem. This question is in the domain of your display server and compositor, not the base distro.
I choose the previous build from grub, and then rollback my config files from git and rebuild. Every build creates an entry on the boot menu so I can go back to any previous iteration of my setup (I do have it set to only keep the last 15 builds)
This is funny. I am at the very moment side-by-side installing NixOS with Windows. And I am using two monitors.
1. The installer is Calamares. It's fantastic and fully user-friendly, no need to worry about it.
2. I'll speak for KDE6 which I personally find superior to GNOME. You can have either with NixOS. I don't think there's anything specific to NixOS on multi-monitor functionality. There's a menu accessed either through a keyboard shortcut or system tray that allows any of the 5 permutations laptop/monitor. And it pops up as an OSD menu whenever you connect a monitor. I'd say the functionality is 'done'.
3. I suggest you read up on how Nix works, once you understand it you can understand NixOS better. To summarize, all programs in your system are stored in /nix/store and accessed through symlinks. You don't access /bin/bash, you access the bash executable stored in /nix/store through its symlink in your PATH. And all the symlinks are stored in a single directory. This directory is called a profile. There are multiple profiles. With NixOS, not only just executables but the system configuration data (users, passwords, mounted disks, desktop environment settings, traditionally in /etc) is also stored in profiles. This way you can have multiple 'whole system configuration's all containing different system configurations, arbitrary versions of arbitrary programs, and they don't conflict. During the boot, you can choose between different profiles. It's not limited to grub, systemd-boot also works.
Fedora is what you want in my experience. The atomic versions like Kinoite may be a change in that you install via Flatpak or Toolbox/Distrobox, but once you try those it's a really neat change. And Fedora Workstation is still there as the normal install.
Actually! This might be what I move to next, I am otherwise able to play any games on Steam on POP_OS! through proton, but someone did recommend Fedora since it updates every 6 months, which is actually really decent, and not too far behind.
Edit:
I did not know about Kinoite. I am definitely checking it out, sounds similar to what made me interested in Vanilla OS 2
If you want a combination of a base operating system that is rock solid stable and reliable, and a development environment that is bleeding edge, I really highly recommend checking out Fedora Atomic combined with Distrobox[2]. I think it's honestly basically the ideal setup:
1. with Fedora Atomic you get an operating system with the reliability and resistance to entropy and ability to power wash of Chrome OS, but also the ability to be changed via building your own custom image (its easy, check out BlueBuild) or with easily reversable overlays, plus an update cadence that offers an excellent middle ground between rolling release and point release — you get all non major version updates to your image's software basically immediately, but major versions wait for every 6 months so they can be integration tested and stuff.
2. And then with Distrobox you get the ability to trivially create a containerized environment with your Linux distribution of choice inside (can be different from the host), that nevertheless integrates almost seamlessly with the host (including having access to all of your hardware devices and your home directory and being able to trivially export applications, as well as easily open a shell inside the container with a simple terminal command), so you can have your cake and eat it too: a fully bleeding edge rolling release distro like Fedora Rawhide or Arch Linux inside your distro box to get the most up to date developer tools, but a more stable system as your host. And if something goes wrong in the container you can easily just blow it away and regenerate it since Distrobox has a declarative container spec (distrobox assemble). For GUI management of Distroboxes check out Pytaxis and BoxBuddy-rs.
There are some things you should know if you go this route though that will save you a lot of pain and frustration:
1. Fedora Atomic is really barebones by default, and since layering is kind of painful it can be really annoying to do the system administration necessary to get it set up; especially if you have an Nvidia card and you have to do all the typical annoying shit you have to do on Linux to set that up. So instead of using vanilla Fedora Atomic, I highly recommend checking out Universal Blue[0], which offers pre-built Fedora Atomic images with all of that annoying setup and system administration done for you already. Their headline images (Bazzite and Bluefin) are really opinionated, but don't worry about that, their base images[1] are perfectly usable too! That's what I use :)
2. Layering packages via rpm-ostree should not be used for just random system utilities or applications. That's not how it is intended to be used, and that way lies only pain. The whole point is that the applications you use as a user, including terminal ones, should be separate from the core system, and not dependent on it, so they can be updated separately and not break each other. Layers, since they are updated by the system package manager, must be versioned in lockstep with the rest of the system, and the system image will fail to build if it can't update the layers you have, so really only use it for things you consider part of your essential OS. People who forget this tend to come away really hating Atomic distros. For your development environment or any build environments you need, create distroboxes and install applications inside them; for GUI applications, just use Flatpak, or install the application inside a distrobox and use distrobox-export to integrate the app into the host. If distrobox feels too heavyweight, or you just want various sundry utilities installed on your host system, then I recommend using something like Homebrew or Nix or Guix or Pkgsrc, that is, any package manager that installs things to your home directory in a way that is cleanly separated from your host system and independently updated. Universal Blue images come with a script to get Homebrew all set up for you. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but its very convenient.
Maybe because I used nix, gentoo, exherbo, slackware etc.
Also drawbacks for me when using nix:
- I needed to greatly increase boot partiton, because nix stores there linux kernels. Whith dual-booting Windows, I created 2GB partiton at the end of disk. Thankfulluly Windows reused it.
btw. nice remark about nix beeing declarative but beneath is Linux not-declarative. It is like functional programming, but you still have some internal state of components that can clash with your functional top-down approach.
> btw. nice remark about nix beeing declarative but beneath is Linux not-declarative. It is like functional programming, but you still have some internal state of components that can clash with your functional top-down approach.
Yeah. That's what always made me loathe to try it out. I'm glad there's someone else that feels that way.
I am actually considering Fedora, so this is a good suggestion! I havent tried distrobox. Seems interesting. I really need to get more comfortable with Docker and related solutions.
I went with Pop Os, had a little stability and audio issues, and went with Arch. Everything works really well now. YMMV. I took the opposite extreme; the only things running are the things that I enabled. It took a little more work, and it was worth the afternoon it took.
I've been a Windows user since 3.1. I'm a professional Microsoft stack developer (.NET, SQL Server, Power Platform, M365). I first tried Linux in the late 90s, never stuck with me.
But 2 weeks ago I installed Linux on my home setup to run 24/7.
There's some seriously dumb issues with it: Ubuntu snaps are terrible with no local fonts in FF and other snap-based software has surprising bugs and crashes you don't realise are the fault of snaps until you waste hours researching it, everybody pushes AppImages but you can't get launcher shortcuts without doing it all manually in a friggin .desktop file* (you could do this 30 years ago in Win3.1 without having to search around for an icon!!!), you can't consistently pin stuff to a taskbar, etc.
But I think I'll be sticking with it all the same. Microsoft could ban my Microsoft account and then what, I can't use my PC anymore?!
* Yes I know there's some software you can download to do it but seriously it's not been updated for ages and this should be core OS GUI functionality. I switched to Debian and KDE which at least has more flexibility.
Agreed, Mint is the better Ubuntu. And if you squint hard enough, you can find people like me who'll claim NixOS is more beginner-friendly than any other distro.
I recommend Debian + Cinnamon right now over KDE for people who want that Windows + searchable start menu now get out of my way. Right now for me KDE is a bit much.
This is where I am landing as well after a long time with XFCE on Debian. You have to take some time to set panels and applets up and get some Spice applets and you are all set.
Yeah, I was a LXDE user for the longest time but with hidpi displays it started falling apart. Cinnamon ended up being the right amount of utility as a baseline and it has felt like a stable place to be since I swapped.
It's unfortunate, and I mean this genuinely here, in a sympathetic way, that you felt afoul of the common error that people who checked in with Linux 6 or more years ago make: assuming that Ubuntu is still the best and easiest to use distribution. Unfortunately, it really isn't anymore — the way they are pushing snaps (including forcing you to install snaps instead of regular packages even if you use the regular package manager) is really unfortunate because of how fucked snaps are to use, not to mention the fact that snaps are hardcoded to only be able to install from the proprietary closed source snap repository Canonical runs, and that store is full of crypto scams. Plus, in general, desktop PC Ubuntu has been getting buggier and more unreliable over time as Canonical switches their focus to the server. Honestly, if there was one misconception about Linux that I could erase with a snap of my fingers from all potential users minds, it would be that they should start with Ubuntu.
IMO Debian is a pretty good choice if you have hardware that's about 2 to 4 years old or more and don't really care about getting the latest driver updates or advances in the Linux ecosystem, so you should have a better experience there, but if it starts to frustrate you that it takes years for huge fixes and advancements to make their way to you, I really enjoy Fedora. :-)
Also, you mentioned two of the major alternative application packaging formats, snap and appimage, but have you heard of our Lord and savior Flatpak? :p It has all of the benefits of snaps (namely sandboxing, consistent environments and packaging dependencies along with applications, updates directly from upstream, distribution agnostic packaging, and automatic integration with your desktop environment) but none of the downsides (namely far better desktop environment integration thanks to portals and much much faster startup times and no perf impact during runtime unlike snaps). A lot of people talk down about them but I think that's mostly FUD.
Strongly agree about Debian. I'm a longtime Arch user, but it causes headaches when you let a machine get too far out of date, and I wanted something I could put on the stack of old laptops in my closet. One by one, I'm migrating those to Debian Stable. It doesn't matter that everything is a major version behind; these laptops are now single-purpose machines that I rarely boot. They will always be behind regardless, and they might as well be behind on Debian Stable. It works flawlessly, and it's quite simple to set up at this point.
(Also, having ancient single-purpose laptops is fantastic. I have one for recreational programming, and that's all I use it for. I have another for curating my music collection, and one for games. They don't need to be fast, or up to date, or power efficient, because I don't use them all the time. But when I do use them, it's nice to have them set up just so for the thing I want to use them for.)
You can also use Docker or Podman for containerized apps under Debian Stable that run libraries and versions ahead of your OS. I'm definitely a big fan of containerized apps.
There used to need to be more of a delay on hardware and drivers with Debian but not so much anymore. I've been very happy over the last year with Debian 12.x on my Gen 10 Carbon X1 and leveraging
> There's some seriously dumb issues with it: Ubuntu snaps are terrible...
It's so upsetting that Ubuntu went so hard in on Snaps. I just end up with issues caused by their sandboxing with hardware and config access and you end up having to fight to find a normal .deb install for FF instead of that damn default Snap.
I hope the journey isn't too rough for you though - best of luck!
I understand your frustration with snaps, but I consider it a very good distribution channel for commercial applications on Linux systems. Something that Appimage or Flatpak could not easily provide without a commercial entity backing it like Canonical.
Snap is a dead-end; but as usual, it takes some time until Canonical realizes that.
If you want to easily distribute commercial applications, use flatpak. You could even have your own flatpak repo for your own products, if you wanted (it is really just static http).
Snap apparently has a few advantages, like supporting non-gui apps (for servers) which isn't a good fit for AppImage or Flatpak. That said, I generally stick to Docker for server apps.
I agree that the flatpak/appimage/snap options for apps, and in particular commercial apps is a decent idea. I think integration and permissions should probably move to something similar to the UX for phone apps though... it feels weird having to try to configure permissions that should be in the box.
I am also not a fan of the pivot to Snap. However, it is worth mentioning, that it has only been two years (I think, at least 22.04 LTS was the first release I had to wrestle with them on my machine), and the experience has become a lot better during this time.
Agreed with the sibling posts. Ubuntu isn't a great experience - it feels seamless until it breaks, and then it's just a world of pain.
Debian/Mint/etc. are all good distros, but if you're willing to step up the learning curve just a bit, I'd definitely suggest Gentoo. I've been using it as my daily driver for several years now and it's made me feel like I'm actually in control of my machine (compiling all your code with debug flags so you can attach gdb when it's behaving weird so you can write a patch?! And then submit it to get sucked into upstream!? Yes please!). There's definitely a little work up front, but it's without a doubt the best experience I've had with Linux and I'd recommend it if you're up for it.
And in general, desktop Linux is just as buggy and maybe even more half-baked than it was when I started using it in 2007.
But, I own my machines. I don't need to ask permission from a company to be able to log in to my machine. I can install or uninstall whatever the hell I want.
I'm sorry, but today I don't recommend Ubuntu to event people who are very familiar with Linux Distros. I'm personally using Debian Testing on my daily driver, and Debian Stable on my home server.
I started with Linux Mint, then Ubuntu. I don't remember which Ubuntu it was, but it had Gnome 2 and then later had fun with the Unity Desktop versions. When they started being the bully, I started distro hopping and then finally settled with Debian (because of my personal values as well). I can't trust a for-profit company to care about its users. Today I try to use as many FOSS alternatives and projects supported by community.
Ubuntu is no better than Windows 11 at this point. It's just lesser evil of two. Try something else, Pop_OS!, Linux Mint, Manjaro Linux, Fedora, etc. Plenty of good options out there. Debian too, if you don't want a solid stable long term OS.
The reason I hate Linux is that every time there is a problem I need to Google third-party tutorials that tell me to run arcane programs I don't understand and just trust random sources of software.
And nowadays that's the same thing you need to do in order to de-bloat Windows.
Don't want to create Microsoft account? Google how to do it, read about pressing a random keyboard shortcut during install, and running a random command in the terminal. This is literally the Linux experience. It's the same thing, now on Windows!
Your tablet doesn't work on Linux? Install OpenTabletDriver from who knows who to fix it! Your Windows doesn't work? Install power tools from who knows who to fix it! Want to bring back the old context menu? Install this. Want to bring back "my" computer? Install that. Want to get rid of OneDrive? Run this .bat file!
If things continue like this one day Microsoft will get rid of backwards compatibility altogether and people will migrate to Linux to run old Windows programs in WINE.
Distributions provide trusted open source software. That's opposite from Windows where basic system tools are not included, found in Web as shareware, could contain viruses.
I was uneasy about Ubuntu PPA, that's binaries from unknown source. I prefer AUR, it provides packaging instructions but source trusted by user.
Linux issues possible to investigate, search brings grounded instructions. Windows is closed source, "solutions" is guesswork.
Linux distributions build experiences, maybe there is already group of people like you, issues solved.
Windows had gotten so bad that even as a lifelong PC gamer who grew up on MS DOS and built my own machines for decades, I gave up a couple years ago and switched to Mac.
Now I do my gaming on GeForce Now as much as possible (soooo much nicer than fighting Windows updates, UAC, game bar, drivers, etc. all the time). And Crossover/Whisky sometimes, Parallels almost never. I wish Proton worked on macos :(
Together this means I can only play maybe 50% of the games I used to be able to (specifically anti cheat can be a problem, if the game doesn't support GFN). But otherwise the small performance penalties are totally worth not having to deal with Windows anymore.
Why would you need to migrate a gaming machine? I would imagine that said gaming machine also relies on cloud gaming services even if the games run local. Just keep it exclusively a gaming machine.
>and Steam through Steam Deck has considerably improved gaming on Linux experience.
My mind went here too. I know a lot of people questioned the first iteration of "Steam Machine" PCs. Created by independent hardware vendors, with a Steam-flavored Linux distro, a lot of people asked what was the point.
But increasingly, every month that goes by Windows seems to add a new task bar thing you need to disable, something new on the login screen, and now, apparently, changes to something as fundamental as user management. It seems inconceivable that Valve would want to willingly tie their fate to the unpredictable twists and turns that Windows may have in store.
Switching to a Mac was one of the best decisions I ever made because of crap like this. The only thing that will ever make me use windows again is GTA 6!
I think Linux is used extensively for the hyper-professional stuff, but those programs cost $10,000+ and really aren't meant for consumers.
I haven't done video editing on Linux for awhile, Lightworks is generally pretty ok, but I don't really know of any equivalent to After Effects or Apple Motion available on Linux, at least in the consumer space. I don't really do enough interesting stuff with video for that to bother me but I suspect that could be a blocker for a lot of people.
> I for one run an old win10 just for gaming and some legacy software. Will keep until EOL of win10 and then check alternatives
Same story here, I think the usability of Windows 10 LTSC IoT is pretty much unmatched.
It'll get security updates until 2032, doesn't have preinstalled bloat like crandy crush or the Microsoft store, lets you reschedule updates freely, and has the expanded features of Pro/Enterprise editions (group policies, RDP, Bitlocker, etc)
I don't think so. Apple is the one who really has the power to push that, and they haven't, preferring to let people port iOS games over to Mac OS. And while that is gaming, it's basically an entirely different market to the gaming we're discussing here and not a real substitute for it. While Candy Crush has a billion players, nobody is going "Oh, I can't play Cyberpunk, guess I'll just play Candy Crush". And for that traditional gaming market, Apple has thrown up roadblocks rather than assistance - their frequent tech migrations backs the back catalogue sales that help companies a lot, stuff like deprecating OpenGL for Metal means they need to write bespoke code for apple platforms when even the consoles are pretty onboard with standardisation these days.
I disagree. I have a bet they will kill the console market dead by 2029. Most of the games run on off the shelf tech now which has Metal back ends. The hardware is rapidly evolving in capability since 2020. The Pro devices now are quite powerful. Enough grunt to do a half decent job of being a console. When that is commoditised in the mid-range, the existing market looks rather attractive to game developers. There's also an existing marketplace (app store) and the end users, from those who I know are fucked off with Sony and Microsoft.
Yeah you're not going to run top end games at 4k on them but most people don't do that either. And the market for optimising them towards the large market scope makes sense.
Just this year at WWDC they announced a new tool that can port Unreal engine directly to Metal. It will only get better and better for gaming on MacOS.
You can use an Apple ID but it’s optional and it’s not tied to the user account unlike windows. A Mac OS user is basically like creating a user account on a Linux machine!
User hostile abuses like this is what has finally pushed me off the Windows spyware/admil after 25+ years of using Windows as my primary Desktop.
There's still some rough edges but overall Fedora 40 is an amazing Desktop OS which was easy to recreate all my dev tools including: .NET 8, VSCode, JB Toolbox/Rider/DataGrip/etc, GH CLI/Desktop, Docker/lazydocker, Ollama, AWS CLI, Discord, Obsidian, with PostgreSQL/MySQL/SQL Server/Redis running in Docker, effortlessly installed node/bun/go/python with mise, even all my major titled Windows games are working under Steam/Proton which was a pleasant surprise.
With Windows 10 nearing EOL I believe Linux Desktop is at the turning point for market share now that Microsoft is turning the crank with Windows 11 and turning it into an ad/spyware marketing channel for their Apps and cloud services.
Installed Fedora 40 on a new Ryzen 8740u machine, I cannot believe it that everything working by default, video, audio, even sleeping working like a charm.
Fedora 40/Wayland worked beautifully out-of-the-box with buttery smooth DE animations which unfortunately started flickering after installing NVidia's proprietary drivers which should be fixed with explicit sync [1] in NVidia's latest 560 drivers which is now available in KDE Plasma 6.1 update, hopefully it'll be available for Gnome in a system update soon - looking forward to running Wayland again.
Did you consider Pop_OS? What made you choose Fedora? I went with Pop but I’ve always been curious about Fedora and really impressed that Wayland is working so well for you on Nvidia.
I initially started with Ubuntu to run the curated Desktop tools in DHH's new omakub.org but Wayland was broken in Ubuntu, Network Manager would frequently hit 100% CPU freezing the OS and it didn't wake from suspend.
Considered Pop!_OS but they're running an older version of Ubuntu and are in the middle of transitioning to their new Rust Cosmic Desktop which I figured would be immature at launch.
I ended up going with Fedora as IMO it was the more bleeding edge with new software, e.g. Wayland by default and their new Atomic Desktops look like they could be the future.
Excellent, thanks. This will be front of mind if the Cosmic transition goes tits-up. For now I’ll just keep mumbling the mantra to myself: trust in System76!
I started using Fedora from more or less 2 decades ago. There was tones of different issue though. But it got much better since 18 or 19. I have upgraded it all the way to 40. There was one issue around Intel display driver which I had to enter console and uninstall the update. But other than that, I hardly had anything to complain about. Did not switch mainly because of VisualStudio and games. Windows 11 put the last straw onto the camel's back. Haven't tried Pop_OS yet, probably will try it someday if I got time.
Right. I think I experienced similar issues on a Lenovo Legion 5 pro on Fedora 39. What I uninstalled Wayland and installed Xorg instead. Not sure if it's going to work for you.
I installed it on my ThinkPad T520 and the Bluetooth is unreliable and restart doesn't work. When I try to restart the laptop it looks like it powers down but then it displays an error message and hangs before it reboots.
Previously the laptop had Windows 10 on it and there were no Bluetooth or reboot issues. Unfortunately, Windows 11 doesn't work on it and 10 is rapidly approaching EoL.
Haven't tried BT on my machine. It looks the drives were loaded correctly and there were no errors or warnings. But that shouldn't be really a big issue as the WIFI/BT on my machine is a Intel AX210, which is easy to obtain. I guess you can simply get one if your machine has a slot for it. I don't really have a T520, so cannot really tell if there were any other issues. To be sure what was the problem, you will need to read the error msg. Sometimes the error msg you see might not be the root cause. And also, you did not have hardware issue before does not mean you don't have a hardware issue now...
I've bounced back and forth between Fedora and Windows a few times in the past month. Windows has no reboot or BT problems.
The machine has previously had Ubuntu on it, but that was a few years ago. Ubuntu didn't have any problems so either it's Fedora-specific or kernel or driver changes since then are the root cause.
It's most likely a driver issue. It depends on the nature of the issue. It can be as easy as turning some optional/3rd part repos on or as hard as debugging and fix in source code. I've done enough the later, and thus would simply steer away from that route. Intel cards seems to be supported pretty well. But it depends on the distribution. Last week I actually bounced between 3 distributions: Open Suse Leap, Debian and Fedora. OpenSuse failed to boot after installation, Debian lost all network config after finished installation and rebooted.
Fedora's Gnome Desktop Environment ran great (e.g. animations were super smooth) in Wayland using Fedora's default drivers, but I installed NVidia drivers because I thought I needed them for games but that caused flickering in Wayland which made it unusable. Apparently this is fixed with Explicit Sync in NVidia's next 560 drivers so I've switched to X in the meantime.
I ditched at Windows 10, and installed Fedora and KDE. Never had a single problem, and that was onto really old hardware, and then onto a brand new AMD mobo. Admittedly, I didn't go the nvidia route for graphics cards.
Booted into Windows once a year, maybe twice. Deleted Windows altogether in January.
Works perfectly for me. Gaming, development especially, and so on.
Interestingly, my company is considering ditching Windows altogether since we're on 10, and know what 11 is like, and going full Linux desktops since that's all we develop on anyway.
I've been running Fedora since v20, its been an excellent and well polished OS for my development work and gaming with it has exceeded expectations.
I only keep a Windows 11 partition around for SteamVR as my Quest 2 headset is a bit awkward to get working well under Linux. This problem will be rectified when Valve release a successor to the Index headset. All of my other games run just fine on Fedora.
Linux on the desktop is a calm and sane respite compared to the ever more shrill and needy interruptions from Windows wanting its ass wiped.
> User hostile abuses like this is what has finally pushed me off the Windows spyware/admil after 25+ years of using Windows as my primary Desktop.
Security issues with the XP/IE/ActiveX axis of evil made using Windows feel like taking a shot to the groin on a daily basis. Then they brought out Vista. If you survived that, you must have been dedicated.
"User hostile abuses like this" made me a full time Linux user, when Windows 10 came out. I doubt, though, that people will migrate in masses to Linux, even though I think the user experience is better. Installing a new OS is still a daunting task for most users.
I wish Microsoft didn't make local account creation so hard. One big reason I want a local account is so that my user profile in `C:\Users` is my full first name with a Capital first character, i.e. `C:\Users\Username`. Signing in with an online account in the out-of-box experience means the user profile is truncated to 5 characters and begins with a lowercase character, i.e. `C:\Users\usern`[1]. This has been the behaviour since Windows 8.
Additionally, Microsoft's decision to plague Windows with advertisements and Copilot was terrible. Windows is otherwise a damn good OS, and I wish the engineers had a say over the marketing and Copilot departments at MS. I also wish the UI/UX department didn't suddenly decide that macOS was a shining bastion of good desktop UX, i.e. favouring icons over text.
After setting up I log in to OneDrive and Microsoft anyway; I have an Office 365 subscription (the competition here absolutely sucks) and I'd like my game achievements in XBox Live.
I still use Windows, and I probably will continue to use it despite all this. Unlike the rest of the commenters here, I actually like using and writing for Windows.
Desktop-on-Linux is broken if you have any reasonable multi-monitor HiDPI set-up with an NVIDIA GPU. I personally don't care which company/entity is responsible; as an end-user, it is broken, full stop. I'm also not fond of the OS-as-an-IDE mentality; I like a right proper IDE with a green play button and red circles. I was never comfortable with the command-line, and I remain so, having been entirely raised on Windows. Proton is nice, but what's nicer is never having to bother about compatibility because one is running the platform the game was written on and for.
I faffed around with macOS and I use it at work, but writing programs for Macs is ridiculously painful (and dare I say, expensive) after Apple introduced the requirement to sign + notarise stuff. I'm also not a big fan of the post-OS X Lion workflow when the 'Save As' button was removed.
"One big reason I want a local account is so that my user profile..." Yes! This sounds like a minor thing, but this is my number one reason why I always create a local account before adding any cloud features. If I sign in with a Microsoft account during setup my user profile is in "C:\Users\stuar" which drives me nuts.
The easiest way around this whole issue is to just sign in with a Microsoft account during set up, but once logged in, create yourself a local admin account and log in with that, and then delete the first account that was created. I find this easier rather than trying to work around the initial set up process.
I’ve got a dedicated windows sffpc for games running Windows 11. IMO, it’s a terrible OS for a dedicated gaming box or htpc. I constantly have to switch from controller to a keyboard and touchpad because of new settings, random pop-up notifications, etc. after updates I’ll find disabled things that were re-enabled or new “features” that require me to disable because everything is auto opt-in… I had auto login enabled for a long time before it randomly stopped working and somehow the host had switched from local to Microsoft account login. Attempts to switch back resulted in a weird semi-broken state. I just left it as Microsoft login and found a way to re-enable auto-login with the Microsoft account.
Windows 10 was pretty easy to convert to a htpc or arcade box. Windows 11 not so much, feels like I’m running a rolling release run by someone who doesn’t care about user experience
> Macs, iPhones, and iPads will all let you complete the setup process without signing in, though you do have to know which buttons to click
IME it's very difficult, and for intents and purposes here from a user perspective, it is the exact same thing. Further we've found it's also impossible to create an account without handing over credit card details. Please call it what it is instead of wringing your hands - dark patterns.
Thank you, the amount of people that defend this sort of stuff is insane. Quacks like a dark pattern to me.
I just got done setting up my 3rd work Macbook in about 8 years and every single time the credit card thing gets me. Back and forth through the app store setup 4-5 times, about to finally cave and add a personal credit card into a work laptop because I can't figure out how the fuck to install something and my team is waiting for me to get setup, then on the 5th go round I finally figure out that the credit card ribbon has a "none" icon.
They know full fucking well that every single person on the planet reads a ribbon of credit card icons as "visa, mastercard, blah blah blah blah". If that's not intentional I'll eat my fucking desk.
I wonder why they have to do it this way? Why not make having an account so useful that people want it? The fact that so many people go to extraordinary lengths to not have an account indicates a problem with their approach.
If you're not going to buy their cloud services Microsoft doesn't want you as a customer anyway.
My 9 year old Windows PC keeps nagging for me to "finish setting up", because there is no way not using onedrive is your actual intention right?
I don’t see where that comment was giving Apple a pass. They are indeed really egregious in upselling iCloud, in my opinion. The fact they sell devices with undersized, non-user-upgradable base model storage and default to storing lots of stuff in iCloud so it winds up filling up is pretty blatant. I’ve had to help a number of friends and family who kept getting iCloud storage full messages on their iPhones because they didn’t realize that their Desktop folder on their Mac had been slurped up into iCloud by some update, and was full of large files they didn’t care about accessing on their phone.
because thats the way the whole industry acts now and suddenly microsoft aligns with it and its bad. I need an apple account to activate an iphone, and it bugs me about cloud photos and backups no matter what. I need a google account to activate a pixel phone, and it bundles google photos and tries to sell me cloud storage too.
everybody is doing it. Its the norm now. Either make it so nobody can do it or criticize everyone.
In the enterprise, I'm convinced the effort to move people away from Active Directory Domain Services to Azure Active Directory is also a backwards step. For an enterprise without extensive working from home, the new model seems to create at least as many problems as it solves.
They also have dark mechanisms to restore certain settings. Like default browser and also security settings. I am a person who likes to disable everything. No ms anti virus, no ms security, no uac. Nothing. I want everything to be disabled. Absolutely required when you work on cracks and hacks. Annoying stupid Microsoft keeps enabling their realtime protection crippleware. Despite settings, registry changes. Very annoying.
The most amazing part of this is Windows doesn't care if it can't detect any network devices.
You're just stuck in a loop. Luckily I was able to bridge my phones internet connection. Then in Windows it was able to start installing device drivers.
The normal release of Minecraft is Java, so it'll run anywhere.
The C++ rewrite depends on Windows APIs, and it is much less flexible/moddable than the Java version. It does support playing with consoles and mobile, though.
They do these things slowly and hoping no one notices. More and more intrusive, the dimmer the frog of losing your privacy and slowly add ads. It might take 10 years but you better believe AI will train on your data for their benefit and profit
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 243 ms ] threadIt's a shame that toothless regulators can't do anything about it. Microsoft should received such a large fine, they should end up on the brink of bankruptcy.
There's no law or regulation that requires computer makers to always allow operation and set-up while offline.
...I think having a law to require MS to allow offline set-up by all users would be an overreach, but a reasonable alternative would be to require Microsoft to sell Windows LTSC to anyone who asks for it, not just Software Assurance and MSDN Subscribers.
Why? Do you think it would lead to a better or worse world?
Your options are to simply not use microsoft windows. it is a cost that is borne by you (ala the switching cost).
There can be no such an option where you get to keep what you have, but also legislate exactly what you desire, without paying any of the costs.
I understand that there are downsides to over-regulating, but there are also downsides to under-regulating.
HOW? Until now we haven't needed a law because OS developers haven't been this brazen. In any case there are likely actually a few laws that can be used to litigate the you shouldn't need to be online to install and setup a computer. I'll bet that if they don't fix it themselves a class action will be incoming n citing privacy or child safety or maybe some other laws.
Microsoft can choose to support or not support offline accounts. Users can decide if they care and if they'd rather use something other than Windows. What's the problem exactly?
What legal line could be drawn to allow the government to regulate this without regulating all kinds of product and business decisions? Would it be reasonable for them to regulate what colors of crayons must be included in ever box of Crayola crayons? And if not, what is the legal boundry allowing them to say what features an OS has without allowing the crayon regulation?
Its not about doing good or bad things, and I don't see myself as having cucked out either. Someone will do what I consider a bad thing whether or not there are laws saying they shouldn't. And ultimately, who am I to say what they can't do as long as it isn't stepping on anyone else's rights?
In this more specific topic, I don't like how Microsoft has been setting any semblance of privacy on fire but I also don't see why I would need the government to fix that. Consumers have other choices, and if people care enough it will hit Microsoft's bottom dollar. With regards to Teams, I have actually been on teams where that tool was so broadly hated that they wouldn't use it whether free or not. If Microsoft was somehow blocking other chat apps on Windows that'd be a whole other ball game.
Microsoft isn't Uber. Their moat is decades of work on kernels, drivers and backwards compatibility that can't be replicated overnight by a competitor. If they self-immolate to chase some idiotic AI/cloud fad, that does a large amount of real economic damage.
I don't even know if I want any regulations in the tech industry, especially after all the e2e encryption bullshit everyone (especially my country's government) is trying to pull. But if I did, this would be right at the top of the list for risk/reward. If cloud sync and AI are so good then sell cloud sync and AI, don't risk established markets to try and flog it off on people that don't want it with dark patterns.
I don't see something like an operating system nearly on the level of worth protecting for a couple reasons. Humans can live just fine without operating systems and computers, and we can certainly live with or without support for local accounts. Additionally, there are other operating systems to choose so even if that's a red line for someone consumers still have options.
I can say I'd have less opposition to such specific laws if they came with an expiration date. At least in the US we don't do that and we end up with an ever growing list of laws that are either irrelevant or out of touch with future generations' morales or ethics.
So as a citizen, it is your right to access publicly funded services, right? So then by extension, the tools to access those services should be a fundamental right in a modern technological society. And moreso, you should have the right to own those tools outright without molestation by large corporate entities... Fuck, Microsoft isn't even a large corporation... It is a behemoth, 3.3 Trillion market cap! I think they, and their competitors, could stand to be saddled with some more regulation to insure a baseline OS for the citizenry of this county, and other countries. It's not like it's going to hurt their profit margins that much to comply!
Hah, well I'm definitely on the same page with this part! Companies shouldn't be given such massive legal cover that they can accumulate this level of wealth and power.
That said, I'm still not so sure I agree with computers being a fundamental right. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and for something fundamental it really should be something that can't be taken from you, aka inalienable rights in my opinion. Life in the US is certainly harder without a computer today, but is it really a right that needs to be legally enshrined?
Would this logic extend similarly to cars, phones, or air conditioning? They're all in the category of items I think everyone ought to have access to, but I don't think they're so fundamental to human life that governments must enforce that access.
I'm big on small governments in general though. I may just be seeing slippery slope here when that isn't warranted.
Honestly, no - it wouldn't be considering that for many decades we could use Windows without being connected to Microsoft cloud services.
At the moment MS is "only" enforcing an online account during OOBE.* The next step will be an unavoidable Windows-as-as-service product with "subscribe to remove ads and unlock xyz feature" - that's the goal they're heading for years.
They could do as simple as having two versions of OS: Windows Free with ads, telemetry, mandatory online account and a paid Windows Pro with all these limitations gone, with an offline account and more control for the end-user. And that's what the regulators, govt's agencies should really make happen. Sadly they prefer working over content scanning and damaging encryption, violating our privacy while pleasing entertainment industry with wild goose-chasing pirates.
[*] - last time I check in W10, singing out right after OOBE and reverting to a local account still puts residual traces all around the profile to the point that you never are truly signed out.
In the past it took a lot of work to use alternatives. Today it is so easy.
In a large domain of things windows is still a monopoly.
Easy, as long as you are a technical user, who is willing to invest time in learning alternative tools and also willing to sometimes sacrifice some time to get appropriate results using alternative software than the mainstream Windows tools.
A lot is possible using other OS and alternative tooling, but it takes commitment and possibly time to learn. Many people are not willing to relearn tools of their professions or even for their hobbies. It really takes an open minded and willing person to listen to their engineering friend and give other tools chances and time and potentially even make a jump to a command line mindset.
Most people, compared to software developers and engineers, are almost computer illiterates. They are happy, when the thing turns on and looks as it always looks and they see some familiar icon for a web browser. Probably never before has the need for educating people about computers and what they can do with them been so huge. The resulting incentives from not educating people about such have terrible results for our whole industry/profession.
Linux tends to cause strange issues if you get unlucky.
Within the last year I've had to just try a different distro since Ubuntu didn't support my hardware. On a different PC I'm on Mint now.
Years upon years ago I gave someone a PC with Ubuntu installed. A week later he just asked how do I install League of Legends. The simple answer is install Windows.
90% of people don't want you to "educate" them about why struggling with the Linux CLI is a better use of their time than whatever else they had planned.
Back in the day when we still had a government that enforced anti-compete laws against mega corporations, Microsoft was found guilty, and nearly broken up, over simply including Internet Explorer by default. If we still had any government willing to crack down on anti-competitive behavior, I think the entire tech world would be in a far better place. The EU is ostensibly trying, but I suspect even that will largely just come down to companies accepting moderate sized fines every once in a while as business expense in the EU.
I think I get it - there are plenty of people using Windows as their primary OS and they want bells and whistles while not caring about telemetry. But just.. let people disable things.
IMO fact, that Microsoft is pushing spyware on their users and make it harder and harder to disable it is much more important topic than EU focusing on Apple (which is monopoly inside their ecosystem, but not a provider of "default" software used in offices etc.)
Still trying to delay the upgrade to 11 as long as I can though.
Dual booting would rather defeat the point / message of leaving windows behind for Microsoft’s shenanigans.
I would not go so far as GP as to say that this dark pattern is better or worse than what Microsoft is doing, but I think it is a fair point that a Google/Microsoft account is needed on the biggest mobile/desktop platforms respectively and their attitude to privacy and user agency is somewhere between laissez-faire and contemptuous.
With Android there does at least feel like with F-Droid, different OEMs, alternative apps, the web and even Other android spins that these aren't quite the lockdown that Windows is, although it's fair to say that in either case you shouldn't really be constantly on your guard for the next way that your operating system is going to try to trick you into giving away more of your stuff to them.
It's actually the developers of the app doing that. I make sure to minimize such dependencies.
I can't speak for everyone here, but not all of us use stock ROMs and Google Play Services. I personally use GrapheneOS, which let's you significantly neuter Google's spyware capabilities.
[1] https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...
We must be browsing different HNs!
Having WiFi turned on will drain your battery faster by virtue of connecting to WiFi. Even worse, if it's on but not connected, it will periodically look for networks to connect to. The same is true for cellular service.
It's just an incredibly user hostile operating system that only a broken bureaucracy like Microsoft's feudal dynasties can build.
In contrast, I love Android, even more than any desktop Linux, macos, ios, etc. It just works and the notifications are super customizable and Pixel blocks 90% of my spam and texts and the adblock is system wide (via VPN) and it auto updates overnight and just never gets in my way. For every Windows annoyance I've had, there are entire months or years where Android just keeps on working, even across new phones and new major versions.
Google may be the spiest of them all, but at least they can deliver a great user experience and operating system. It's not perfect (I still miss my old style notification shade system controls), but it's a lot less noisy than Windows. A good operating system should stay out of the way, not make itself the center of attention at every possible opportunity.
Google is also an ad company, the bar for their behavior is lower. MS used to be an OS company. Many of the users here remember the time when there was a supplier/customer relationship with MS.
It is probably hard to imagine if you are, like, under 25, but MS actually used to be this kind of interesting company that enabled people doing new, fun things on their computers. Of course they are just another garbage factory now, but it’s hard to update your priors sometimes.
https://blog.system76.com/post/may-flowers-spring-cosmic-sho...
They were already getting to be too much but this is getting crazy.
That sounds like a feature, I’ve got plenty enough games to play that I don’t need to have my machine rootkitted. I swore off of all EA-published games on those grounds 15 years ago so having the information upfront would be a strict improvement.
Other than Warzone and Tarkov (for which I keep a separate drive with Win10), the only things I haven’t quite managed to get sorted yet are (i) a convenient system-wide replacement for the frame limiter in RTSS, and (ii) relatedly, proper frame-pacing when streaming using Sunshine.
Also, Steam seems to have a weird and widespread bug where if you use Big Screen, exit to the desktop mode, then launch BS again, you get like 5fps in the BS front-end itself (after launching a game, it’s fine). The workaround is to just kill the client when you exit Big Screen (usually when your gaming is done anyway).
Really happy I made the switch and fully expect those niggles to get sorted (or my aptitude to improve) in due course. Windows has been shit for a while but recently it’s really crossed over into unbelievably shit.
I think I’m also a bit spoiled by the Steam Deck, where it’s so easy to set and change custom limits. I kind of just want that, for Pop, ha.
As for the frame pacing, try with the beta NVidia drivers (v555) and Wayland, though I don't use Sunshine so I'm not sure if it'll help.
Check out if these updates are all available on Pop, if they are give them a try!
[0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope
This is what I have in my MangoHud.conf:
fps_limit_method=late
toggle_fps_limit=Shift_R+slash
show_fps_limit
fps_limit=0,45,60,90,120,240
My budget gaming PC is still on Windows and RTSS is a lifesaver: I couldn't stream or record some games with my Intel Arc A580 otherwise, since titles that use DX11 or older rendering technologies typically have worse performance than the more recent ones, ergo I have to stream/record at 30 and cap the framerate anywhere between 30-60 depending on the title, otherwise things get unstable.
Of course, it's not ideal, but is at least workable. A bit odd that the card struggles with games like Ghost Recon Wildlands (DX11, 2017), but not Ghost Recon Breakpoint (Vulkan, 2019) or ones that use DX12 etc. Either that, or when there's a title that's badly coded and doesn't lock framerate properly to the screen refresh rate.
Aside from that, around 90% of the 500ish Steam games I have would actually run on Linux (various indie titles, mostly), at least according to ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com which is pretty nice to see, except for the fact that last I checked something like GOG doesn't run on Linux natively, though thankfully something like Lutris exists.
GOG absolutely does offer native Linux games.
That’s why people seem to recommend Lutris or some other alternatives to access the actual library.
https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
I’ve had a really mixed experience with GoG on Lutris and Heroic - both on Pop and the Steam Deck. I often struggle to get things running. It requires just that little bit more knowledge of what’s happening under the hood than Steam/Proton does, and I often just give up. My library is mostly in Steam anyway. Honestly, EmuDeck has been easier for me to get uo and running than either Heroic or Lutris.
And both Nvidia and AMD have native control software (GeForce Experience and Adrenalin) that bundles a bunch of nice stuff like underclocking, recording, noise suppression, per-game profiles, frame limiter, etc;
On Linux you have GreenWithEnvy and CoreCTRL, but neither are as nice or have even half the features.
Every time I’ve tried it, it has just seemed slow, even on reasonably powerful PCs.
Disclaimer I am not very familiar with Linux for Desktop - but to me this is an indication that we are not yet in the "just works" state for desktop linux.
Or it does just mean that while the Windows recurrent problems (how to create local accounts, disable telemetry, install 3rd party programs, etc.) are just seen as life as normal while Linux problems are seen as such.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggle
""" Etymology
First attested in 1599. Origin uncertain, but likely borrowed from dialectal Norwegian nigla (“to be stingy, to busy oneself with trifles”), ultimately from Old Norse hnøggr (“stingy; miserly”), related to Old English hnēaw (“stingy; niggardly”). More at niggard. """
Niggard is unrelated to the racial slur we're thinking of but in fairness I can understand how it would raise eyebrows.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1557349
History certainly loves to rhyme.
Would it be fair to say that a history of raising eyebrows establishes some relationship between otherwise previously unrelated words?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...
When the news began circulating on social media, many couldn’t believe it was true––that the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California would remove a longtime professor from a class because a Mandarin word he used correctly in a lesson sounded sort of like a racial slur.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/fight-agai...
The USC story is quite different from the current thread. The historical use of the word “niggard” has been intentionally used in a racist way (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word...), and if you read the WP article, it has quotes speculating that subtle “sophomoric” usage of the word might increase for racial reasons.
So I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, and it seems like the USC story is actually demonstrating that people can be reasonable about where the line is. It might have caused a stir once, but now there is precedent for settling cases of Mandarin confusion more quickly.
It's hyperbole to call this a slippery slope when the exact same thinking that finds niggardly offensive leads to the absurd outcome at USC. Instead of pruning the language of any words that a racist might use as a dog whistle, maybe expect, if not everyone, at least college students to have some notion of context.
> it’s not a compelling example of reasonableness
Why not? The outcome was positive, Patton suffered no serious consequences, and the ability to say foreign words without worrying was affirmed publicly. It could have been much worse, but it wasn’t. There was a temporary misunderstanding followed by some conversation that got it sorted out, no need to worry about that further. Again, the precedent that was set is that using Mandarin is not insensitive or racist. Precedent refers to the outcome, not the temporary misunderstanding. The outcome at USC was not absurd, the outcome was reasonable. The accusation might have been out of line, or just a mistake, but that was the cause, not the outcome.
> are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?
Why would there be? (…especially given the outcome of the USC story) If you read the USC response, you’ll even find it addresses that question directly. It affirms that incidental phonetic similarities across all different languages are pure coincidence and should not result in claims of wrongdoing. It even says the same thing you did, and takes responsibility too, it says college students should have some notion of global context, and it’s college’s job to give them that context.
The case that started this thread is not a cross-language mistake, and it came with evidence of historically racist usage, so it’s different by definition. It’s not the exact same thinking, and I posted some evidence of that. There’s no reason to believe the Mandarin incident will lead to more accusations, and due to being publicized and decided in Patton’s favor, there is reason to believe it won’t happen again, or if it does it will be settled quicker and with less publicity.
I think it is easier, in hindsight, for you to say that Patton didn't suffer serious consequences. If I were in his shoes, being prohibited from teaching his class, disciplined for an absurd accusation and investigated, I would be pretty upset and wondering what the outcome would be.
If these were second graders learning a foreign language, maybe it is understandable that they might titter about a word in that language that is similar to one in English. I think it takes quite a bit of mental contortion to believe that students in a college foreign language class would think that a Mandarin word was insulting to black people because it sounds like an English word.
The reason this story is publicized is not because it's the valuable precedent you assert. It's that it is symptomatic of the ridicule deserved by the reasoning that people should be offended by words with similar sounds and different meanings.
Maybe it would be clearer if you read the whole thing: https://web.archive.org/web/20200922014834/https://www.theat...
I did read the whole article (btw please re-read HN guidelines), which was designed to stir and highlight drama, as newspapers are wont to do. You’re right, the Atlantic story you’re linking to is downplaying the precedent and focusing on the controversy. Even though there’s not that much controversy.
I also read some followup too, obviously, since I wrote some details above about the story that your source doesn’t mention, for example that Patton was not disciplined and was cleared and apologized to, and that the dean who “excoriated” Patten also had to publicly apologize for his hasty & presumptuous email, and admitted he reacted too quickly.
You seem to be insisting on incredulity and outrage, when feelings got out of hand but nothing serious actually happened. That’s kinda the same mistake Patton’s students made.
The school is required to take accusations seriously and investigate. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. The dean handled it poorly at first, but people sometimes make mistakes. And it’s also good thing prof Patton was cleared. Almost everything worked like it should have. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone thinks about the validity of the student’s accusation, and the fact that the accusation happened is not somehow going to make anything worse.
Hey, it’s a free country, say whatever words you want, as far as I’m concerned, the consequences are yours to enjoy. You’re right that this shouldn’t have happened, and you’re right that the words we’re discussing did not originate from a racial epithet. But then history happened, replete with a lot of actual racism and words, and in reality new negative associations were formed between unrelated words. Bummer. But complaining about not being able to use one totally anachronistic word now that clearly sounds like a racial slur, and has been used as a racial slur, might seem a bit tone deaf. Arguing that choosing not to say one particular word is going to lead to many more and cause problems is an imagined and absurd end result.
OK. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Which is not what you're doing when you reduce the question to saying one particular word is the issue rather than only an example of blindly ignoring context. (Which is not even the case here since we're now offended by niggle, niggardly, niggard and 那个 and who knows what else). The issue is making the language less expressive at the instigation of 1) people who can't understand context and 2) sophomoric racists who take advantage of the people who can't understand context. Neither group should be rewarded by ceding the use of completely harmless and expressive words.
There’s that slippery slope again. English isn’t getting less expressive, that will never happen. That right there is the “imagined, absurd end result”. The number of English words that have become politically incorrect over our lifetimes is completely dwarfed by 1) the better, more expressive synonyms and alternatives available and 2) the number of new words introduced into English over the same period.
I hear you, and I agree that it’s stupid that a couple of previously unrelated words have become tainted, and they shouldn’t have been. But it’s too late, it happened… in this case, over a hundred years ago.
Nobody is being rewarded. Racist word usage doesn’t seek to remove words from our lexicon. The words don’t actually go away, the choice to use or not use certain words is yours to make. Whether we offer other cultures any respect by choosing to avoid any innocuous words that happen to have a higher probability of being taken the wrong way is purely a personal decision. Which is why arguing about it might not be the best look, even if you’re right, right?
Anyway, there is value in trying to get people to understand that people who innocently use a sound-alike don't intend to offend them. Which is pretty much what John McWhorter has written about many times. The failure to understand context seems to be a big part of many issues of the day.
I totally agree there’s value in sharing context, and helping people not be offended. USC agrees as well now. Good!
The EU is not a single threaded application. They can, and should, be focusing on multiple areas where there is wrongdoing. Both are being egregious and abusive, and need attention. And the EU has shown that it can!
> (which is monopoly inside their ecosystem, but not a provider of "default" software used in offices etc.)
A good phrase to use here would be 'platform abuse'. Focusing on the 'default' is an attempt to justify what they are doing, and I notice it gets used to defend Apple rather than call them out. In the sense that "Oh well, it's their platform, they can do what they want"
Things have changed a lot here. I now regularly buy windows laptops, toss windows and they just work. When there is a hardware problem, it usually takes a few minutes to resolve.
The hard part is realizing that you have to do the EFEI setup and not just try to boot in insecure mode.
I am right now using the Xbox Wireless Dongle with a custom driver (xone), that driver says that it supports audio through audio jack. No audio though. Probally because I am not very experienced in Linux on Desktop.
I am NEVER going back to Windows unless I get a modern version:
* Targeted for professionals / gamers (why call it pro if its just Home without dumb restrictions?) * Offline-first accounts only * Zero ads for Microsoft products (I'll literally pay $50 a year to stop them, and stop the update nagware). * Stop pestering me to update * And this is more important, decouple your OS so you can update while I use it, requiring a restart only under kernel tier changes.
I’ve started recommending it to others, while personally I’m happier with Arch’s more transparent and simplified architecture and development, plus rolling release to avoid mass breakage on full upgrades.
but rolling-release distros does mean one day you might update and reboot and something is broken. it's more maintenance than fedora.
Why does NixOS work for me?
I got attracted to Nix because of the possibility of being on the bleeding edge. According to repology Nix related package repositories are far up and to the right, their own cluster. In fact, only Arch is getting close by, but not being as good in terms of freshness, as can be seen from the position of AUR below [2].
1: https://mihai.page/nixos-and-me/
2: https://repology.org/graph/map_repo_size_fresh.svg - even nixpkgs 24.05 stable is so far ahead of every other repo it's not funny.
1. How friendly is the installer? I can get a second hand machine in which I can afford to nuke the disk and let Nix take it all but what if I need to install it side-by-side with my existing Windows install on my main laptop where I have a custom partitioning scheme? Ubuntu's installer provides sufficient flexibility to able to re-use partitions without overwriting them, allocate whatever mount point I want, resize things etc. I have been using Linux for close to 20 years but fdisk still spooks me.
2. How easy is multi-monitor setup and switching between setups? I have a main monitor that I usually use but occasionally I also use the laptop screen as a second display and sometimes I just use the laptop screen.
3. The 1st link alludes to be able to rollback changes from grub? How? What are my recovery options if I mess up the system?
2. I'm using a laptop with AMD/NVIDIA on Wayland with KDE, this is no problem. This question is in the domain of your display server and compositor, not the base distro.
I choose the previous build from grub, and then rollback my config files from git and rebuild. Every build creates an entry on the boot menu so I can go back to any previous iteration of my setup (I do have it set to only keep the last 15 builds)
1. The installer is Calamares. It's fantastic and fully user-friendly, no need to worry about it.
2. I'll speak for KDE6 which I personally find superior to GNOME. You can have either with NixOS. I don't think there's anything specific to NixOS on multi-monitor functionality. There's a menu accessed either through a keyboard shortcut or system tray that allows any of the 5 permutations laptop/monitor. And it pops up as an OSD menu whenever you connect a monitor. I'd say the functionality is 'done'.
3. I suggest you read up on how Nix works, once you understand it you can understand NixOS better. To summarize, all programs in your system are stored in /nix/store and accessed through symlinks. You don't access /bin/bash, you access the bash executable stored in /nix/store through its symlink in your PATH. And all the symlinks are stored in a single directory. This directory is called a profile. There are multiple profiles. With NixOS, not only just executables but the system configuration data (users, passwords, mounted disks, desktop environment settings, traditionally in /etc) is also stored in profiles. This way you can have multiple 'whole system configuration's all containing different system configurations, arbitrary versions of arbitrary programs, and they don't conflict. During the boot, you can choose between different profiles. It's not limited to grub, systemd-boot also works.
Edit:
I did not know about Kinoite. I am definitely checking it out, sounds similar to what made me interested in Vanilla OS 2
1. with Fedora Atomic you get an operating system with the reliability and resistance to entropy and ability to power wash of Chrome OS, but also the ability to be changed via building your own custom image (its easy, check out BlueBuild) or with easily reversable overlays, plus an update cadence that offers an excellent middle ground between rolling release and point release — you get all non major version updates to your image's software basically immediately, but major versions wait for every 6 months so they can be integration tested and stuff.
2. And then with Distrobox you get the ability to trivially create a containerized environment with your Linux distribution of choice inside (can be different from the host), that nevertheless integrates almost seamlessly with the host (including having access to all of your hardware devices and your home directory and being able to trivially export applications, as well as easily open a shell inside the container with a simple terminal command), so you can have your cake and eat it too: a fully bleeding edge rolling release distro like Fedora Rawhide or Arch Linux inside your distro box to get the most up to date developer tools, but a more stable system as your host. And if something goes wrong in the container you can easily just blow it away and regenerate it since Distrobox has a declarative container spec (distrobox assemble). For GUI management of Distroboxes check out Pytaxis and BoxBuddy-rs.
There are some things you should know if you go this route though that will save you a lot of pain and frustration:
1. Fedora Atomic is really barebones by default, and since layering is kind of painful it can be really annoying to do the system administration necessary to get it set up; especially if you have an Nvidia card and you have to do all the typical annoying shit you have to do on Linux to set that up. So instead of using vanilla Fedora Atomic, I highly recommend checking out Universal Blue[0], which offers pre-built Fedora Atomic images with all of that annoying setup and system administration done for you already. Their headline images (Bazzite and Bluefin) are really opinionated, but don't worry about that, their base images[1] are perfectly usable too! That's what I use :)
2. Layering packages via rpm-ostree should not be used for just random system utilities or applications. That's not how it is intended to be used, and that way lies only pain. The whole point is that the applications you use as a user, including terminal ones, should be separate from the core system, and not dependent on it, so they can be updated separately and not break each other. Layers, since they are updated by the system package manager, must be versioned in lockstep with the rest of the system, and the system image will fail to build if it can't update the layers you have, so really only use it for things you consider part of your essential OS. People who forget this tend to come away really hating Atomic distros. For your development environment or any build environments you need, create distroboxes and install applications inside them; for GUI applications, just use Flatpak, or install the application inside a distrobox and use distrobox-export to integrate the app into the host. If distrobox feels too heavyweight, or you just want various sundry utilities installed on your host system, then I recommend using something like Homebrew or Nix or Guix or Pkgsrc, that is, any package manager that installs things to your home directory in a way that is cleanly separated from your host system and independently updated. Universal Blue images come with a script to get Homebrew all set up for you. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but its very convenient.
For more on ...
Also drawbacks for me when using nix:
- I needed to greatly increase boot partiton, because nix stores there linux kernels. Whith dual-booting Windows, I created 2GB partiton at the end of disk. Thankfulluly Windows reused it.
- vscode was having strange laggines on nix.
- nix language is quite strange but also imo taught poorly. This was my attempt to demistify it https://github.com/rofrol/nix-for-javascript-developers.
btw. nice remark about nix beeing declarative but beneath is Linux not-declarative. It is like functional programming, but you still have some internal state of components that can clash with your functional top-down approach.
Yeah. That's what always made me loathe to try it out. I'm glad there's someone else that feels that way.
But 2 weeks ago I installed Linux on my home setup to run 24/7.
There's some seriously dumb issues with it: Ubuntu snaps are terrible with no local fonts in FF and other snap-based software has surprising bugs and crashes you don't realise are the fault of snaps until you waste hours researching it, everybody pushes AppImages but you can't get launcher shortcuts without doing it all manually in a friggin .desktop file* (you could do this 30 years ago in Win3.1 without having to search around for an icon!!!), you can't consistently pin stuff to a taskbar, etc.
But I think I'll be sticking with it all the same. Microsoft could ban my Microsoft account and then what, I can't use my PC anymore?!
* Yes I know there's some software you can download to do it but seriously it's not been updated for ages and this should be core OS GUI functionality. I switched to Debian and KDE which at least has more flexibility.
There's your problem ;)
Mint has been much more user friendly for a long time. I've been on Manjaro for some time now, and I'm quite happy with it.
Basically nothing you’ll want to do is googleable.
I’d recommend arch to a newbie before nix.
Once you get a handle on things, nix is pretty nice.
It's not your computer anymore, it's this computer.
IMO Debian is a pretty good choice if you have hardware that's about 2 to 4 years old or more and don't really care about getting the latest driver updates or advances in the Linux ecosystem, so you should have a better experience there, but if it starts to frustrate you that it takes years for huge fixes and advancements to make their way to you, I really enjoy Fedora. :-)
Also, you mentioned two of the major alternative application packaging formats, snap and appimage, but have you heard of our Lord and savior Flatpak? :p It has all of the benefits of snaps (namely sandboxing, consistent environments and packaging dependencies along with applications, updates directly from upstream, distribution agnostic packaging, and automatic integration with your desktop environment) but none of the downsides (namely far better desktop environment integration thanks to portals and much much faster startup times and no perf impact during runtime unlike snaps). A lot of people talk down about them but I think that's mostly FUD.
(Also, having ancient single-purpose laptops is fantastic. I have one for recreational programming, and that's all I use it for. I have another for curating my music collection, and one for games. They don't need to be fast, or up to date, or power efficient, because I don't use them all the time. But when I do use them, it's nice to have them set up just so for the thing I want to use them for.)
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...
Been great.
Be careful. This is how distros start.
It's so upsetting that Ubuntu went so hard in on Snaps. I just end up with issues caused by their sandboxing with hardware and config access and you end up having to fight to find a normal .deb install for FF instead of that damn default Snap.
I hope the journey isn't too rough for you though - best of luck!
If you want to easily distribute commercial applications, use flatpak. You could even have your own flatpak repo for your own products, if you wanted (it is really just static http).
I agree that the flatpak/appimage/snap options for apps, and in particular commercial apps is a decent idea. I think integration and permissions should probably move to something similar to the UX for phone apps though... it feels weird having to try to configure permissions that should be in the box.
Debian/Mint/etc. are all good distros, but if you're willing to step up the learning curve just a bit, I'd definitely suggest Gentoo. I've been using it as my daily driver for several years now and it's made me feel like I'm actually in control of my machine (compiling all your code with debug flags so you can attach gdb when it's behaving weird so you can write a patch?! And then submit it to get sucked into upstream!? Yes please!). There's definitely a little work up front, but it's without a doubt the best experience I've had with Linux and I'd recommend it if you're up for it.
And in general, desktop Linux is just as buggy and maybe even more half-baked than it was when I started using it in 2007.
But, I own my machines. I don't need to ask permission from a company to be able to log in to my machine. I can install or uninstall whatever the hell I want.
[0] https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher
I started with Linux Mint, then Ubuntu. I don't remember which Ubuntu it was, but it had Gnome 2 and then later had fun with the Unity Desktop versions. When they started being the bully, I started distro hopping and then finally settled with Debian (because of my personal values as well). I can't trust a for-profit company to care about its users. Today I try to use as many FOSS alternatives and projects supported by community.
Ubuntu is no better than Windows 11 at this point. It's just lesser evil of two. Try something else, Pop_OS!, Linux Mint, Manjaro Linux, Fedora, etc. Plenty of good options out there. Debian too, if you don't want a solid stable long term OS.
And nowadays that's the same thing you need to do in order to de-bloat Windows.
Don't want to create Microsoft account? Google how to do it, read about pressing a random keyboard shortcut during install, and running a random command in the terminal. This is literally the Linux experience. It's the same thing, now on Windows!
Your tablet doesn't work on Linux? Install OpenTabletDriver from who knows who to fix it! Your Windows doesn't work? Install power tools from who knows who to fix it! Want to bring back the old context menu? Install this. Want to bring back "my" computer? Install that. Want to get rid of OneDrive? Run this .bat file!
If things continue like this one day Microsoft will get rid of backwards compatibility altogether and people will migrate to Linux to run old Windows programs in WINE.
I was uneasy about Ubuntu PPA, that's binaries from unknown source. I prefer AUR, it provides packaging instructions but source trusted by user.
Linux issues possible to investigate, search brings grounded instructions. Windows is closed source, "solutions" is guesswork.
Linux distributions build experiences, maybe there is already group of people like you, issues solved.
Now I do my gaming on GeForce Now as much as possible (soooo much nicer than fighting Windows updates, UAC, game bar, drivers, etc. all the time). And Crossover/Whisky sometimes, Parallels almost never. I wish Proton worked on macos :(
Together this means I can only play maybe 50% of the games I used to be able to (specifically anti cheat can be a problem, if the game doesn't support GFN). But otherwise the small performance penalties are totally worth not having to deal with Windows anymore.
I have separate machines for separate purposes.
I do all my gaming using linux. I haven't used Microsoft's shit since windows 7
I’ve done this around 4 year ago and I’ve literally never felt compelled to move back.
My mind went here too. I know a lot of people questioned the first iteration of "Steam Machine" PCs. Created by independent hardware vendors, with a Steam-flavored Linux distro, a lot of people asked what was the point.
But increasingly, every month that goes by Windows seems to add a new task bar thing you need to disable, something new on the login screen, and now, apparently, changes to something as fundamental as user management. It seems inconceivable that Valve would want to willingly tie their fate to the unpredictable twists and turns that Windows may have in store.
I for one run an old win10 just for gaming and some legacy software. Will keep until EOL of win10 and then check alternatives
Just like an Linux is horrible for doing video editing, not sure that comparison makes sense. Pick the right system for your workload.
Doesn't Davinci Resolve run well on Linux? I've heard most VFX and Animation work is done on Linux workstations and render farms.
Really it's just the absence of Adobe and a few beginner-friendly tools, I'd say.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/VFX-Animation-Linux-Recommends
I haven't done video editing on Linux for awhile, Lightworks is generally pretty ok, but I don't really know of any equivalent to After Effects or Apple Motion available on Linux, at least in the consumer space. I don't really do enough interesting stuff with video for that to bother me but I suspect that could be a blocker for a lot of people.
Same story here, I think the usability of Windows 10 LTSC IoT is pretty much unmatched.
It'll get security updates until 2032, doesn't have preinstalled bloat like crandy crush or the Microsoft store, lets you reschedule updates freely, and has the expanded features of Pro/Enterprise editions (group policies, RDP, Bitlocker, etc)
In a couple of years I bet that has changed.
Yeah you're not going to run top end games at 4k on them but most people don't do that either. And the market for optimising them towards the large market scope makes sense.
Example of what is already on the market and in people's pockets. You can connect a controller and 4k display to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRAOBEtQ_MY
https://mobilegamer.biz/those-assassins-creed-resident-evil-...
I think it really depends on which games you want to play. I basically only play 2... and they both seem to run quite well.
I realize that that is an atypical experience, though.
To be fair, this is HN
There's some iCloud integration, but I don't think your login is an iCloud account, it's just a local account.
There's still some rough edges but overall Fedora 40 is an amazing Desktop OS which was easy to recreate all my dev tools including: .NET 8, VSCode, JB Toolbox/Rider/DataGrip/etc, GH CLI/Desktop, Docker/lazydocker, Ollama, AWS CLI, Discord, Obsidian, with PostgreSQL/MySQL/SQL Server/Redis running in Docker, effortlessly installed node/bun/go/python with mise, even all my major titled Windows games are working under Steam/Proton which was a pleasant surprise.
With Windows 10 nearing EOL I believe Linux Desktop is at the turning point for market share now that Microsoft is turning the crank with Windows 11 and turning it into an ad/spyware marketing channel for their Apps and cloud services.
Fedora 40/Wayland worked beautifully out-of-the-box with buttery smooth DE animations which unfortunately started flickering after installing NVidia's proprietary drivers which should be fixed with explicit sync [1] in NVidia's latest 560 drivers which is now available in KDE Plasma 6.1 update, hopefully it'll be available for Gnome in a system update soon - looking forward to running Wayland again.
[1] https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2024/04/05/explicit-sync...
Considered Pop!_OS but they're running an older version of Ubuntu and are in the middle of transitioning to their new Rust Cosmic Desktop which I figured would be immature at launch.
I ended up going with Fedora as IMO it was the more bleeding edge with new software, e.g. Wayland by default and their new Atomic Desktops look like they could be the future.
Previously the laptop had Windows 10 on it and there were no Bluetooth or reboot issues. Unfortunately, Windows 11 doesn't work on it and 10 is rapidly approaching EoL.
The machine has previously had Ubuntu on it, but that was a few years ago. Ubuntu didn't have any problems so either it's Fedora-specific or kernel or driver changes since then are the root cause.
It's actually the Wayland compositor itself on the Steam Deck.
Booted into Windows once a year, maybe twice. Deleted Windows altogether in January.
Works perfectly for me. Gaming, development especially, and so on.
Interestingly, my company is considering ditching Windows altogether since we're on 10, and know what 11 is like, and going full Linux desktops since that's all we develop on anyway.
I only keep a Windows 11 partition around for SteamVR as my Quest 2 headset is a bit awkward to get working well under Linux. This problem will be rectified when Valve release a successor to the Index headset. All of my other games run just fine on Fedora.
Linux on the desktop is a calm and sane respite compared to the ever more shrill and needy interruptions from Windows wanting its ass wiped.
And yes, it was seeing Microsoft get worse and worse until a lead weight broke too many camels backs.
Security issues with the XP/IE/ActiveX axis of evil made using Windows feel like taking a shot to the groin on a daily basis. Then they brought out Vista. If you survived that, you must have been dedicated.
You have engaged in wrong-think, so we have disabled your windows account and deleted all your docs in the cloud.
Regards,
Microsoft."
Additionally, Microsoft's decision to plague Windows with advertisements and Copilot was terrible. Windows is otherwise a damn good OS, and I wish the engineers had a say over the marketing and Copilot departments at MS. I also wish the UI/UX department didn't suddenly decide that macOS was a shining bastion of good desktop UX, i.e. favouring icons over text.
I'm going to link another comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40541721
After setting up I log in to OneDrive and Microsoft anyway; I have an Office 365 subscription (the competition here absolutely sucks) and I'd like my game achievements in XBox Live.
I still use Windows, and I probably will continue to use it despite all this. Unlike the rest of the commenters here, I actually like using and writing for Windows.
Desktop-on-Linux is broken if you have any reasonable multi-monitor HiDPI set-up with an NVIDIA GPU. I personally don't care which company/entity is responsible; as an end-user, it is broken, full stop. I'm also not fond of the OS-as-an-IDE mentality; I like a right proper IDE with a green play button and red circles. I was never comfortable with the command-line, and I remain so, having been entirely raised on Windows. Proton is nice, but what's nicer is never having to bother about compatibility because one is running the platform the game was written on and for.
I faffed around with macOS and I use it at work, but writing programs for Macs is ridiculously painful (and dare I say, expensive) after Apple introduced the requirement to sign + notarise stuff. I'm also not a big fan of the post-OS X Lion workflow when the 'Save As' button was removed.
[1]: https://superuser.com/questions/1148991/why-does-windows-10-...
The easiest way around this whole issue is to just sign in with a Microsoft account during set up, but once logged in, create yourself a local admin account and log in with that, and then delete the first account that was created. I find this easier rather than trying to work around the initial set up process.
And, instead of speaking to law enforcement we move into the abuser’s bedroom and stop wearing underwear.
Makes perfect sense.
Windows 10 was pretty easy to convert to a htpc or arcade box. Windows 11 not so much, feels like I’m running a rolling release run by someone who doesn’t care about user experience
IME it's very difficult, and for intents and purposes here from a user perspective, it is the exact same thing. Further we've found it's also impossible to create an account without handing over credit card details. Please call it what it is instead of wringing your hands - dark patterns.
I just got done setting up my 3rd work Macbook in about 8 years and every single time the credit card thing gets me. Back and forth through the app store setup 4-5 times, about to finally cave and add a personal credit card into a work laptop because I can't figure out how the fuck to install something and my team is waiting for me to get setup, then on the 5th go round I finally figure out that the credit card ribbon has a "none" icon.
They know full fucking well that every single person on the planet reads a ribbon of credit card icons as "visa, mastercard, blah blah blah blah". If that's not intentional I'll eat my fucking desk.
everybody is doing it. Its the norm now. Either make it so nobody can do it or criticize everyone.
...For an account has been open for 23 years.
You can create an win 11 iso with some custom settings (e.g. "remove requirement for an online Microsoft account)
edit: ok, its already mentioned in the article, sorry :o
You're just stuck in a loop. Luckily I was able to bridge my phones internet connection. Then in Windows it was able to start installing device drivers.
(but you don't really get stuff like shaders)
The C++ rewrite depends on Windows APIs, and it is much less flexible/moddable than the Java version. It does support playing with consoles and mobile, though.
At some point OS vendors were forced to point to alternative browsers. Should the setup not also point to competitors like rsync.net?