- cross-posted to:
- donoperinfo@infosec.pub
- cross-posted to:
- donoperinfo@infosec.pub
Installing OS, 10 years ago:
Windows: click a couple of buttons enter username and password
Linux: Terminal hacking, downloading shell scripts from github
Installing OS today:
Linux: click a couple of buttons, enter username and password
Windows: Terminal hacking, downloading shell scripts from github.
Link to video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qKRmYW1D0S0
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You don’t download shell scripts from github for windows. You download batch scripts and exes from random file hosting sites, and they don’t even fix your problem.
You’ll be lucky if it’s even hosted on random hosting sites and not some discord channel.
iTs iN tHe PiNnEd cOmMeNtS bRo
Oh how I hate Discord.
CMD is a shell, homes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)
tldr: batch is a scripting language, which interacts with the windows shell, so in that way it is a shell script.
sorry for being pedantic, hope this info is interesting for somebody anyway
They probably talk about the unlocker script.
The post is describing the scripts to disable telemetry, OneDrive, ads, etc.
But the thread not.
some random .exe from mediafire to install drivers
or one of those shady ones with tons of ads and slow ass downloads.
Talking here about regular x64 OS install not ARM though, have not played with that myself.
Not really, it is usually PowerShell scripts from trusted blogs or in case of local account creation, you run a batch file that is built in installer (oobe\bypassnro) that adds a single registry value. Not sure I would call this hacking. Then again I don’t think Linux 10 years again had problems with account creation as well.
Would be nicer if you could create local account out of the box? Sure. Do some prefer MS account? Also true.
Idk, installing Linux was pretty easy 10 years ago too. Can’t comment about anything earlier than that though.
They are probably like me, thinking that the year 2000 was 10 years ago.
thinking that the year 2000 was 10 years ago.
This is patently absurd, 10 years ago was 1994.
Hi everyone, I’m not even a year old!
Stop, I can feel my bones crumbling to dust!
And I don’t think GitHub existed in 2000. Probably even git.
Yeah, it was SourceForge and SVN.
Around that time I moved from a company that was using perforce to one using cvs.
Git was released in ‘05, GitHub ‘08.
Even 20 years ago Linux was easier to install then Windows.
Last time I recall Linux being tricky was like late 90s.
Giving you, if you were lucky, VESA graphics and maybe a mouse pointer because XFree86 somehow insisted on being told whether you have a PS/2 or USB mouse. 3d acceleration only with nvidia and that required manual installation because nvidia never provided anything but blobs. IIRC ATI drivers were simply non-existent (didn’t have an ATI card back then), that only changed when AMD bought them. Whippensnappers won’t believe it but once upon the time, nvidia was actually the company to go with when running linux. And Epic didn’t hate Linux yet, UT2004 came with linux binaries on the dvd.
I once tried to install Linux around then, not long after ISA cards with Plug n Play became a thing.
Linux: So now to even pretend to get the card to work you have to download and run a tool to generate a config file to feed to another tool so you can then install the driver and get basic functionality from the card (which is all that’s available on Linux). Except the first tool doesn’t generate a working config file - it generates a file containing every possible configuration your hardware supports hypothetically having and requires you to find and uncomment the one you want to actually use. Requiring you to manually configure the card and thus kinda defeating the point of Plug n Play (though I guess that configuration was in software, not by setting jumpers).
Same card in Windows at the time: Install card, boot Windows. Card is automatically identified and given a valid configuration, built in drivers provide basic functionality. Can download software from manufacturer for more advanced functionality.
That soured me on Linux for a long time. Might try it again sometime soon just to see what it’s like if nothing else. ProtonDB doesn’t have the most positive things to say about my Steam collection, and I imagine odds are worse for stuff not available on Steam.
Get yourself an old lenovo laptop t440p/t480. You’re missing out.
ProtonDB doesn’t have the most positive things to say about my Steam collection, and I imagine odds are worse for stuff not available on Steam.
If you ask around or search, you can get answers easily. You can install games from Epic, Ubisoft etc. using other Linux applications.
You can install games from Epic, Ubisoft etc. using other Linux applications.
Like Heroic for GOG And Epic, Lutris for everything else.
Yeah, all my Linux installs after about 2003 were liveCDs. I used to carry my Gentoo CD around as my diagnostic tools for a while helping people fix their windows machines (or just backing up everything off it before reformatting).
I think Knoppix was the first live CD I used. It was mind blowing. Now you can just carry around a whole personally configured system on a USB stick. Pretty cool.
And then you find ventoy…
I was going to say “but ventoy only mounts the filesystem as readonly. Great for testing new distros, but not great for rolling installs you carry with you to use on different computers”
Then I quickly found https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html, so TIL!
Solid.
good
20 years ago was still xorg.conf times
Have you met Anaconda?
But no, you’re right…
That was the case even 19 years back. Ubuntu nailed it back then. You could install it without knowing anything about your computer. Before that, there were text based UIs which required deep understanding and lots of decisions.
It hasn’t change since mid-2000s if you only talk about the installation process itself. Usually you would have at least some piece of hardware that wouldn’t work out of box and it used to be a lot of work until getting everything in place
NDISWrapper used to be the worst.
Nvidia was also more painful than now.
Nvidia has become pretty painless in the last few years. A year ago a guy told me to try wayland so I did and surprisingly I’ve been on wayland ever since on my desktop. The last time I don’t think I was even able to see my desktop. Now the 555 drivers made things even better.
Winmodems
Modems in general were either entirely PnP or a total goddamn nightmare in my experience. There was no in between. I remember setting up Slackware in the late 90s and my serial modem just worked. Even after I changed it, it worked. Even after I installed an internal modem, it worked. A few years later I set up Debian or one of its kids (probably knoppix, but I won’t testify to it) and couldn’t get a modem to work to save my life. It was so bad that I just didn’t use any Linux until I got DSL.
Edit: a couple of letters
I had forgotten about that and now I am sad that I’ve been reminded.
I remember the Slackware dozens of floppies install, things have gotten stupidly easy with time
I installed redhat on my machine in the beginning of 2000’s when I was 13 or so and it was pretty easy. English is not even my first language.
I had a pretty trivial time of it almost 20 years ago.
Fuck I’m old.
Linux is honestly great, literally the only things holding it back is programs supporting it. I’m painfully tied to a select few windows programs for work and hobbies, Wine tries its best but programs need to start supporting linux before proper adoption can kick off.
And the reason those few programs don’t support Linux is because they don’t think we have enough users. So don’t hold up on using linux for that reason, it’s just a circle.
Yes, I’ve been trying hard to squeeze some linux into my life, currently trying to turn an old laptop into a little music machine for jamming with on me midi keyboard. I’ve run across quite a few issues just trying to get specific software working. I did cave at one point and try to use windows 10 but their installation media tool would fail every time I tried and the hardware is too old for windows 11 lol. It also triggered my gag reflex just thinking of all the ads it would feed me and all the bullshit I’d have to disable to make it respect my privacy. A number of different distros just worked flawlessly, though, and if all I needed to do was simple computer things and web I’d be laughing.
Some software is always going to have problems. Specially if the developer never had to work with linux.
In my case I think of it like my choice of Linux like how people may choose other lifestyle. It’s not about having superior experience in everything, but about general good experience and self satisfaction.
Just think of it this way, people in the 90s were happy with the softwares they had, so if some subset of software is not available to me it’s not end of the world. On the flip side many softwares are only available to me because of linux, my favorite is poppler-tools that allow me to merge PDFs and other pdf related tasks that in windows you’d need to pay Adobe for. If you compare and want things that you can’t have it’ll always make you unhappy. Everytime you search for a tool, search in linux websites or search source codes and you’ll be happy to ignore any tools that have a lot of licensing complications and windows only support. Not saying that’s the way to do it, but that’s how I do it.
This is where I’m trying to get to. Any new software I try to make sure is foss and linux where possible. It’s just a bit of a pain with music because there’s a lot of tools I’ve bought over the years and would like to continue using.
*Enough paying users
I have found that steam proton is a powerful wine machine. I’m not sure if it would help with any of the programs you are trying to run as it does have limits, but I’ve been shoving a ton of .exe files into steam and they usually work flawlessly.
i like using bottles or lutris for that, you can change wine versions and parameters easier in case something doesn’t work.
Lutris with wine-ge has made some things work for me that didn’t work with plain wine. So definitely worth it to try.
I’ve been shoving a ton of .exe files into steam
I wasn’t aware that was an option. Do you have a link on how to do that?
Steam can’t tell if something is a “game” or not, so you do it the same way as playing a non-steam game through the launcher
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-add-non-steam-games-to-your-steam-library
Thank you very much.
Oh I had no idea that was possible, thanks :D
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I think the biggest shift in the last 20 years is troubleshooting in Linux and windows.
20 years ago and I had to troubleshoot issues and Linux. It genuinely required a good bit of computer knowledge to get it done. Sometimes hours of work to figure out how to get a webcam to work Or how to fix grub?
Windows back then used to be so easy. And there was usually something that would do a quick fix.
However, now and I run across a windows issue. It’s a nightmare. I can put hours of work into trying to fix a driver issue or an issue with updates and get nowhere. Then go to reinstall the operating system and have to spend more hours just to get it installed.
Now in Linux, not only do I rarely have issues but also fixing those issues are pretty straightforward. And if I can’t fix it a reinstall takes minutes and I’m back up and running in no time.
Windows tries to obfuscate any useful information while Linux tries to give logs and man entries to walk the user through what went wrong.
When the BSOD code has nothing to do with your actual problem
Well OBVIOUSLY you need to set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session\Windows\Microsoft\Win10\MSWindows\CockNBalls\BSODWord to 0 then restart your computer.
Sorry, that was before KB1103995. The new method requires you to check a box in your OneDrive account first before the entry is respected.
Except you already have that update installed, the box is not checked and the entry is still respected, nobody could possibly tell you why because that’s not how it’s supposed to work and everyone else works as stated! And now you have to live with the knowledge that your system is in some unobserved quantum superposition with a critical fix in place which may stop working at any moment for any reason and nobody can tell you how you even managed to get into this situation…
You forgot that you also need to create a new 32bit word entry with the value of the amount of system RAM in gigabytes times 2 divided by the square root of your age times 10.
Otherwise BSODWord won’t be picked up.
Edit: also you need to redo that every time your system updates because Windows update will reset all those values
NOOOOOO please you’re reawakening 20+ years of accumulated Windows trauma 😭 😭 😭
That was so confusing and stressful I don’t know how I --or anyone-- survived the mental strain of regularly troubleshooting Windows
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I went through that phase too! The tweak times are so much fun and breaking things is a good way to learn.
Now I am in a sane defaults mode. Where I just want everything to work well. Pop on so far has been rock solid. I actually have been trying to not touch the terminal to see how that feels as a user. In been 4 months and so far it hasn’t been a problem.
May I recommend a versioning or snapshot capable filesystem like BTRFS? It lets me tweak and make mistakes with little fear.
With that said, always keep proper backups of data you care about.
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I wanted to dual boot Windows 10 for a few games after I switched off. I can’t get the damn drivers for my hard drives to work. I just gave up on Windows entirely.
Sometimes hours of work to figure out how to get a webcam to work Or how to fix grub?
The easiest solution was just “eh, I probably don’t need that anyways”
Honestly was my solution for years I never use my webcam 😂
I feel like Linux respects me as the user. Like, I don’t know why this broke, but you get to keep both pieces. We believe in you. Good luck!
For me, one of the other annoyances is that both Windows and Mac OS push their services. Windows it’s gotten ridiculous and on Mac. I just don’t have the compatibility with all the stuff I want to use. Like I’m not in the ecosystem so it just doesn’t work for me as an operating system
However, now and I run across a windows issue. It’s a nightmare. I can put hours of work into trying to fix a driver issue or an issue with updates and get nowhere. Then go to reinstall the operating system and have to spend more hours just to get it installed.
Now in Linux, not only do I rarely have issues but also fixing those issues are pretty straightforward. And if I can’t fix it a reinstall takes minutes and I’m back up and running in no time.
THANK YOU. I’m sick of this rhetoric about Linux being hard and user-unfriendly because of the command-line.
Windows is such a pain to use for a while now. You need a ton of post install scripts and hacks to make it even remotely usable and when something goes wrong good luck figuring out what. The event viewer is usually just a bunch of vague COM errors with an ID. Then when you look up that ID it’s barely more useful than “something went wrong”.
I remember 2014 being pretty easy to install Linux. Windows 7 and 10 were also pretty easy then.
Haha, you’re so silly! The meme says 10 years ago and not— …
My god, it really has been ten years since 2014, hasn’t it?
If Back to the Future was made today, Marty would have traveled back to 1994.
Wow that… Stings a little
I think you mean “Great Scot!”
It was “Great Scott!” but the DeLorean smashed through the second “t” in the past. 🌲🌲
2004 was twenty years ago :|
2004 is when we got Ubuntu, and if I recall correctly Mandrake was also rather easy to install.
Tbh I would rather use Debian, I use Debian today and if I knew about Debian back then I would be using it
I remember breaking my Ubuntu install a bunch of times when trying to install nvidia drivers and flash player to watch YouTube.
I was breaking redhat and fedora trying to install wifi drivers for pcmcia wifi cards. So much modprobe. That’s why I switched to Ubuntu.
Maybe Linux is 10 years ahead. Let’s give our windows users some insight about their future:
Don’t remove the French language pack with sudo!
If you have a 64 bit computer, you gotta delete system32.
This took me a minute to figure out 😝
I don’t get it.
sudo rm -fr /Add
—no-preserve-rootif you really want to make sure it’s gone! /j--no-preserve-rootis only required if you try to remove/. For/*I don’t think it’s needed.Ah oops, I didn’t even catch that. Forgot that
/*only matches to glob and thus wouldn’t try to remove/
I know just enough about Linux to know that’s problematic. I don’t know anything about language packs to know why someone try to remove one this way though. Just seems wrong from the get go.
It’s an old joke:
sudo = admin rights
rm = remove
fr = force recursive (the more popular syntax is
“rf” but for the joke its “fr” which looks like a short form for French)
/ * = C:\
It doesn’t remove the French language pack, it removes the entire harddrive.
Tbf it does remove the french language pack.
And then some more.I understood the joke after seeing the command. It was getting the command from the joke that lost me. Cause I’d never have tried removing a language pack like that to begin with.
rm -fr /
But what if I hate the fr*nch?
Last week I installed Windows 11 on a new laptop that came with FreeDOS installed. It was a really dreadful experience, I never thought it was this bad.
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The windows 11 installer couldn’t find any hhd partitions or hard drive, while FreeDOS could. After googling for a while I had to download an Intel Rapid Something driver from the manufacturer’s website and load it up when installing windows 11.
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After installing Windows it required an internet connection to proceed but I assume the wi-fi drivers were not installed. USB tethering didn’t seem to be working either so I had to continue the setup elsewhere, where I had physical access to the router.
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I had to skip a lot of things throughout the installer, which kinda shocked me. Office 365 and even games, before I even booted the actual OS.
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Fully updating Windows took 2 hours. Fresh ISO, gigabit Ethernet connection, nvme HDD. Damn.
Pretty miserable experience and completely impossible to an unexperienced user.
The windows 11 installer couldn’t find any hhd partitions or hard drive, while FreeDOS could. After googling for a while I had to download an Intel Rapid Something driver from the manufacturer’s website and load it up when installing windows 11.
SATA drivers flashbacks
I recently got back into the homelab hobby. Fucking around with installer drivers has been eye opening. I had to fight to get drives recognized and the same with NICs. Funny, Proxmox worked without any issues (virt-io was leveraged, but the internet made that obvious before I even downloaded the ISO for it).
Even after finally booting the OS you still have to remove mcafee and cortana with revo uninstaller.
Actually, after a grueling 7 hours installation journey, i removed those peasky things by tossing an LUKS LVM filesystem over it and using that drive as a secondary drive on my desktop. Fuxk windows
My last windows 11 installation took over 7 hours divided over 3 or 4 days, I dont even remember, I’m trying to forget. It was an absolute horror show and indont get why anyone accepts this. If I want to pay and get fucked I’ll find an escort, but I have Linux AND a wife.
A Linux user with a relationship?? Impossible! (/s)
There are dozens of us!
For point 1 you need to toggle a setting in UEFI that switches between RAID (Rapid Storage) and AHCI. It sounds like you are in RAID mode and in this mode Linux will be unable to probe the disk. If you toggle the setting then the current Windows install will break but both Windows (clean install) and Linux will be able to see the disk. Point 3, yeah I heard that in reddit too. Enshittification in full swing. Points 2 & 4 no comment lol
Thanks a lot for pointing it out, next time I’ll just look for that toggle and save myself th trouble!
Idk man, I regularly reinstall Windows (cca. every 6 months) to get rid of bloatware and random stuff I installed and don’t need anymore. It’s a pretty smooth experience, though it would be a major pain if your circumstances ever occured.
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Windows 9x was extremely time consuming to install with multiple reboots and before that it was all config files. Out of the box 95 couldn’t play media, connect to the internet (thanks trumpet), even access a cd. Normies bought machines pre-installed and got help when the system shit itself. Before there were scripted alternatives large scale Windows deployments were all imaged because of the hours it took to set up a single machine swapping floppies and writing to spinning rust. You had to reboot numerous times and use third party drivers and apps for everything. I recently installed a disposable Win 10 to do a firmware upgrade and Microsoft have come a long way though having to disconnect the Internet to get a local login is very dark.
Before there were scripted alternatives large scale Windows deployments were all imaged because of the hours it took to set up a single machine swapping floppies and writing to spinning rust.
My first internship was patching a ton of Win 98 systems and it involved walking up and down rows of cubicles waiting for the next step of the installation to get done and hit a couple keys
Yep I don’t remember ever windows install being fast or smooth. And even Slackware was straightforward 20 year ago
And even Slackware was straightforward 20 year ago
Still is.
Windows 7 was if you ignore updates. Win10 was even more so in the early builds.
Before there were scripted alternatives large scale Windows deployments were all imaged because of the hours it took to set up a single machine swapping floppies and writing to spinning rust.
With Windows 7 I was making golden images to simplify deployments.
Even now for the one Windows 10 VM I need for a very specific thing, I couldn’t use it without installing AtlasOS (an extensive powershell script to cut out as much of the bloat as possible). Otherwise the system would consistently slow down and stop responding. It was basically unusable (it’s running on Proxmox on a considerably old server).
Oh how the turn tables
It’s a topsy-turvy world.
it’s a world-turvy topsy!
I tried to help my brother, who is a computer scientist to install windows 11 on his new am5 motherboard build. Am5 was really new and even with our combined knowledge it took all day of fucking with it to find a way to get windows 11 to recognize the m2 ssd. We had to load it with an older driver from the manufactures website and we had to do some kind of shenanigans to get the installer to actually recognize the files. Iirc this was a gigabyte motherboard, a reputable brand.
This was when am5 was newer so it’s kind of understandable I guess, but I also installed arch for troubleshooting purposes that day and it only took 30 minutes 🤷
And when I switched mobos from Intel to AMD, it just booted (Arch then). Couldn’t believe it, just went.
To be fair, I find that people with a Computer Science degree are pretty much just like most other users except that they need more privileged access somewhere because they are usually software developers or somewhere in that orbit. A Computer Science degree does not prepare someone to be a sysadmin. That doesn’t mean they can’t be an excellent one but it certainly isn’t because of their degree path.
Usually got problems with Windows not recognizing drives during install only on Gigabyte mobos. Turning off all forms of Fast Boot in BIOS fixed it for me, but it was an older motherboard (one for AMD FX series, IIRC).
It took me two hours from the moment I started popping my laptop case open to add a new SSD to first boot on Linux. And figuring out how to disable secure boot on Acer’s fancy ass BIOS was what took most of the time.
Windows is only for games; macOS and Linux are for work. Once they catch up, it will be bye-bye Windows.
been playin games on linux for a long ass time now, with minimal issue.
with almost no issue in the past 3-4 years.
Its caught up.
Pretty much any game short of ones that have invasive kernal DRM run without much issue.
What’s your recommended Linux distro for a Windows gamer to try?
Nobara 39.
Its easy and quick to set up, easy to use, and has a lot of ancillary tools and stuff preinstalled to make getting into the gaming easier.
I’m not gonna say its the second coming of christ, or all sunshine and rainbows, so to be upfront and honest… Dualboot at first, if you can. Its, presumably, your first time using linux, so you will run into more roadblocks to start simply due to lack of knowledge and experience on how to navigate things, but you’ll get your baselines down quick and start getting into the windows-like usability and flow.
This is why I ask around! Haven’t heard that suggestion yet
An extra suggestion is to put the /home mountpoint on a separate volume ( if you’re comfortable doing so). This will make reinstalls easy, should you have need
Yeah I do this currently for my Windows installs. But Windows would freak out on OS updates and reinstalls.
I plan to redirect home on my next build
But Windows would freak out on OS updates and reinstalls
Sheesh! I’m glad I’ve been on Linux so long to have forgotten that. It just doesn’t care, as long as you have it in fstab.
My /home partition is the same one I setup almost 12 years ago. It’s been through multiple versions of Ubuntu, multiple Ubuntu reinstalls, a switch over to EndeavourOS, a reinstall of EndeavourOS, cloned to multiple drives as each one failed or was upgraded to a larger sized drive. But it’s the same exact /home data.
Nobaras kinda a new distro, but its based on Fedora (the 39 indicates its based on Fedora 39) which is well established.
I’ve been using it, and the previous version of 38, and I’ve had a great experience with it. It also has a very active discord full of kind people willing to help.
Definitely Nobara, it’s a distro optimized for making games actually work. On other distros I always had some games that wouldn’t run, but never on Nobara. Zero hassle.
Linux mint is my favorite os been running it many years now no issues with running games. Its a bulletproof OS esecially with timeshift snapshots SteamOS is specifically a gaming os developed by valve for the steam deck but you can installed it on any system . The key is proton which is a windows emulator comparability layer fine tuned by valves Dev team to get most games running on Linux.
far as I’ve heard, Mint can be iffy fhen it comes to games, mostly because they use an outdated kernel. I can also recommend something like Endeavor if the gamer in question has any knack for tech, or Nobara, which is made specifically for gaming by GloriousEgg, maintainer of ProtonGE
Thanks, havent heard of nobara before but it being made by the dude who maintains protob GE is interesting and I will check it out.
Yep, Nobara should be the default choice for a gaming focused distro due to GE, since he knows exactly what hes doing and whats needed.
I hear you about the kernel. You can install newer ones or follow the HWE line (as I do) which gives you 6.5 last time I checked.
Bazzite made for gaming, and isos tailored to hardware
Games is mostly (say 90+95%) there. Windows won’t go bye bye though, MS ensured customers by making government’s and companies sign contracts that will be a bitch to get out of. Expect windows to be around for a long time.
Microsoft has shit developers, but they have great marketing people and lawyers, so many lawyers…
Don’t need to compete when users don’t have a choice.
It breeds complacency.
I play games on Linux
Currently school holidays here and we have multiple machines running Steam on Linux all day playing a good variety of games. None of them are competitive online games that require a rootkit so we are just fortunate I guess that the household prefers co-op lan games, sims etc. I suspect these rootkits are about as effective as anti-doping in sports. Determined cheats still cheat so anyone installing malware to play those sorts of games is probably fooling themselves.
Me too, but I just emulate consoles.
macOS should also go bye bye especially with the shitty hardware that require you to sign your soul and next born over to apple. Fuck their tactics.
Games have largely caught up. Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t run anything other than shitty FOSS games or the occasional Platinum AppDB rated game like World of Warcraft on Linux, and even for the latter the install instructions were convoluted. With WoW, you had to manually copy the files from each CD, save them locally and then run the installer because otherwise the installer would shit the bed and fail halfway through Discs 2 or 3.
The final hurdle for gaming on Linux is anti-cheat and that’s going to be a mountain to overcome. Only two solutions (to my knowledge) currently have native Linux support and those are Easy Anti Cheat (EAC) and Valve Anti Cheat (VAC.) You’re not gonna get anything requiring Ring 0 access (like Vanguard) running on Linux anytime soon.
You’re not gonna get anything requiring Ring 0 access (like Vanguard) running on Linux anytime soon.
Good. Kernel mode anticheat is fucking malware. Anticheat for a game should never have the same power over the system as a driver, which needs those privileges to communicate with hardware.
Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t run anything other than shitty FOSS games or the occasional Platinum AppDB rated game like World of Warcraft on Linux, and even for the latter the install instructions were convoluted.
Hey! I was playing LOTRO just fine on Linux back then. It actually worked better on Linux than Windows back then too.
Maybe for home users. Working at an MSP, I can’t see small to medium sized businesses making any changes here anytime soon, especially those that use specialized software built only for Windows.
In my experience, many business applications now run on the Web or are being upgraded to be. Where I work Windows pcs endure only for those who have to do technical drawing, most terminals are Ubuntu updated by ansible scripts and connected to an active directory domain running on Samba. The few PCs with Windows are slowly disappearing as hardware is upgraded ( medium-sized company with about sixty PCs ). There are also a couple of Mac’s used by in-house developers/IT.
Back in 1997 I was like “Ooh, Debian is mildly easy to install (compared to Slackware). Just need to engage my brain a few times maybe.”
(The first Slackware guide I read in 1996 had an ominous warning about getting the ModeLines right in XFree86 or the monitor will catch fire. This, fortunately, was a little bit of exaggeration. Over/under refresh frequency protection was already a thing.)
Now? “Oh no I fucked up my password shit and can’t login. I’ll need 5 more minutes to completely reinstall this Raspberry Pi image. I should have engaged my brain!”
Shit, we’ve gotten to the point that your average desk jockey can probably install freaking FreeBSD on the first try. If that’s not a good sign I don’t know what is.
Recently I decided I no longer wanted LUKS encryption on my laptop because I don’t travel anymore. So I followed the steps to do an in-place drive decryption. It worked, but I had missed a step to update the bootloader. So I fired up a live distro, chrooted to the installed system and 2 minutes later I had a working system.
Windows was never that easy. You forgot, waiting for a hour and retrying steps
2012’s debian (I think it was 6, which was my first one) was pretty straight forward to install even for a newbie
Yeah this is more like what Linux was like to install in the 90s or very early 2000s.
Installers haven’t really changed in the past 10 years
