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Was already considering running Linux on my next machine. That just made it a definite. Is Mintos still the best choice for an everyday desktop?
This sort of question is very much a matter of opinion, but Linux Mint is a very friendly desktop choice. It’s become my go-to for all of my desktop installs.
you mean linux mint? it’s pretty good and user-friendly, also has a nice community from my experience. would definitely recommend.
Mint is a great choice, especially if you’re looking for something that resembles the classic Windows (2k to 7) desktop paradigm.
Cool, I’ve been looking for an excuse to move to Linux again. I tried ubuntu years ago but it was too limited in features and capabilities to fully replace windows for my productivity needs. Time for me to dual-boot so I can start getting more practice with Linux (Probably going to go for Linux Mint this time around)
I agree, I think if this is how windows goes forward a lot of tech people will leave their ecosystem entirely. The one thing stopping them is the convenience of windows (mostly free if you know what you are doing and most processes don’t need to be thought about). A subscription based OS throws everything out the door. This gives them an unbelievable amount of control over what you see/do/store. Want to view a website for linux installation? “Nope that goes against our T&Cs, you’ve been banned from your OS with all your information on it”.
The upside I see will be linux will start becoming easier on everyday users because the tech people switched and want the convenience
The tech people switched long ago.
Agreed. I’ve been lazy because I’m a gamer, but at this point it’s time. I hope the other game companies can figure out something like Proton to play on Mint.
You can play nearly anything through proton by adding the game’s .exe as a non steam game. ProtonDB is a valuable resource.. You can install Mint alongside windows anyway and just boot winders for the games that don’t run on Linux.
Can you dualboot with bitlocker? Are there any halfway decent full drive encryption methods with recovery keys that won’t regularily corrupt the system? I’m mainly hesitant to make the switch based on those requirements. Plus, I have been in the MS ecosystem for such a long time. All I know and I worked on it as a sysadmin as well for many, many years. Big comfort zone.
Since you can wipe a computer without a bitlocker key, I would assume you could encrypt the windows half with it, but I can’t say I’ve tried.
It’s actually hilarious that consoles might become the new must-have gaming equipment because of this.
Kill two birds with one stone, get a Steam Deck?
You get a distro (arch) wrapped up into an excellent gaming device, and can drop into desktop mode for productivity needs. For 400 bucks, it’s a pretty sweet setup, imo.
Or, if you have the machine already, certainly take advantage of the enhancements Steam has contributed to proton, and game on.
I bought one for this reason but have been meaning to dual boot it. Partially because Im not wild about its desktop but also I want to seperate my gaming and nongaming more.
Yeah I had a catastrophic lighting strike and ended up having to buy a nice gaming pc during the pandemic. I love everything I’ve heard about steam deck but will be pc bound until I get my money’s worth xD
Yeah - fortunately I gave up gaming long ago (got too addicted and had to step away to maintain a productive healthy lifestyle). I need it for Office productivity apps, CAD and 3D slicing software, and photoshop. All of my needs are available as open-source programs, or Photopea does almost everything I need from photoshop these days lol.
So my only excuse lately has just been that I’m too lazy to make the switch since I have everything mostly setup in windows how I like it. But it wouldn’t be hard to export some profiles and import them into the Linux versions of the same applications.
But windows actions lately have really pushed me towards linux - I hear they’re trying to put ads into the windows 11 start menu. Its ridiculous that I now need to install third party menus and file explorers if I want to still use my operating system ad-free.
Also check out lutris, which is a game launcher and a website full of working install scripts.
I like that name, I gotta say.
You could try distrosea before committing to an install.
It gives you a VM online to play around in for almost any distro you can think of.
Don’t forget that desktop environment (DE) and distro are decoupled in Linux, so if you didn’t like the feel of Ubuntu (GNOME DE) you can go with Kubuntu (KDE Plasma DE). Both are on DistroSea.
I highly recommend KDE these days, on Ubuntu or other. It’s just so damn usable and flexible.
Yeah? I tried Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on a friend’s computer and the Gnome they’re running seemed sufficient for my needs. Is KDE really that much better “out of the box” without the need to customize?
Ask 3 Linux users and you’ll get 5 dissenting opinions. Mine is that KDE Plasma is very simple out of the box and more familiar to Windows users. A previous Windows user can use it without any kind of deep learning. Gnome is a bit more alien, borrows a bit more from OSX, and does force its workflow on the user more.
KDE also offers an insane amount of easy customization for those of us with a desire to tweak or enjoy a different aesthetic or workflow. The built-in shop for widgets, wallpapers, themes, cursors, etc makes that very accessible to anyone. Gnome customization requires a lot more command line and editing of configs.
Linux distros like Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint and Pop! have been fully capable of replacing Windows for typical work and home uses for several years.
Even gaming is very close to being on-par now.
There are still niches dependent on Windows, like specialized engineering software or anyone that simply refuses to use anything other than Adobe products.
Yup, I totally have been making the switch to Open-Source software or browser-based software (like Photopea) for the past few years to ensure I’d be able to easily make the switch when windows finally pisses me off enough. But I think I’m already at that stage - every major windows-10 update seems to break more and more features on my computer lol
Okay, but like, are you SURE you wouldn’t prefer to open PDFs with Microsoft Edge? I’ll ask you again next time, just in case you change your mind!
I’m pretty sure you meant to actually select Edge, so I’ll go ahead and switch that to your default so we don’t need to bother you again next time. You’re welcome!
I’ve dabbled in Linux for decades, but fully switched to Linux as my daily driver about 5 years ago. I still have a Windows partition set up for dual boot, but only boot into it once every couple months now to run very specific software. I can honestly say I miss nothing about Windows. Linux has matured leaps and bounds even in the past 5 years. Gaming, productivity, programming, hobby. It can do it all. I will admit there is still a technical barrier to entry. You will need to get used to the command line and searching the web frequently for how to do something. But if you have those skills I don’t think it’s a contest anymore. Linux is the better OS.
I’ve been on Fedora for about a year and I’m very particularly making a point of never opening the terminal to prove it’s no longer necessary.
So far, haven’t needed it.
I don’t have a problem doing things by the command line… it’s certainly sometimes easier that way. This is just a response to the people that complain about having to use it. Turns out, they really don’t.
Lots of people missing the point here.
What if you had a tablet device that could go weeks without charging? It could handle basic tasks on its own, or more intensive tasks when connected to the internet?
Office 365 is a good example. Basic tasks of word can be handled by a cached web client, but if you need to do something more advanced and need the full version of word to run, the ARM architecture can’t run it so spin up a virtual instance and stream it to your arm device.
Windows 11 will have this baked in. It’s not a forced replacement of a local OS.
But you don’t need to host your local OS in the cloud to run an application in the cloud.
Edit: clarification.
If your hardware is ARM and you need to work in x86 then yes you do.
That’s going to be interesting.
Here in Germany, we are forced to use Windows in schools because “it’s what the kids need in the real world”.
By forcing Windows to work cloud-only, they are literally making it illegal to use in schools here, because we can’t force children to use anything doing data-harvesting in order to pursue their education.
Fun times ahead!
Sounds like the beginning of the Linux revolution starting with kids!
based microsoft accelerating linux growth by making windows shit 🙏
in the US, all the kids use chrome books, data harvesting is rampant
At this rate if Germany becomes a leader in exporting non data harvesting devices/vehicles I can assure you I’ll be buying all my electronics from Germany soon enough.
No thank you.
Also I bet instead of a one-time license you can have the privilege of paying $9.99 a month forever or lose access to all your files. And possibly requiring an internet connection to use your desktop computer?
Microsoft has recently announced Windows Copilot, an AI-powered assistant for Windows 11. Windows Copilot sits at the side of Windows 11, and can summarize content you’re viewing in apps, rewrite it, or even explain it. Microsoft is currently testing this internally and promised to release it to testers in June before rolling it out more broadly to Windows 11 users.
Assuming this will use OpenAI API like other Microsoft’s AI products, this is going to be expensive to operate. Subsidizing it indefinitely is surely not an option. How would Microsoft monetize it? By charging subscription like GitHub Copilot, or monetizing it somehow using users data they collected? I assume it would be the latter.
There’s talk about Microsoft SoCs on their own products, much like Apple does the M1 SoCs.
These Microsoft SoCs would be used in Surface devices and likely have dedicated AI hardware. Again, much like Apple.
If we’re talking about specialized models, not one generic LLM for everything a la GPT4, they might not have to be THAT big and could run on reasonably powerful devices.
I really doubt that, at least for the next few years. “AI Assistant” usually means LLMs, and even M2 struggles to run them mostly due to large compute and RAM requirements. If Microsoft could somehow release a truly local AI assistant feature that can run on average windows users’ hardware, that would be shake the whole ML industry.
True, but they could get the base requirements of a task using OpenAI and then use specialized models locally to do subtasks.
Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI, they don’t need to pay nearly as much per request as we do and the cost will likely decrease over time too.
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What a terrible fucking idea
Doesn’t Microsoft have the worst availability around for their cloud stuff? Or is IBM still giving them a run for their money?
This seems odd to me, I’ve dabbled with Linux before but I’m generally a macos guy where the os is the free bit. Charging for an os is outdated surely?
The only difference historically is that with Mac you always pay for the OS when you pay for the computer, whereas this is usually but not always the case with Windows for home users. But all software companies are realizing that subscription models effectively hold people’s files to ransom and force them to pay way more than they would for a permanent licence, and Microsoft is getting in on that.
With desktop Linux improving all the time, anyone who doesn’t need Windows-specific software is better off with that.
Yeah good point about the hardware. It’s been well over a decade since I played with Ubuntu and a few others so the support has probably improved a lot by now.
Moving “Windows 11 increasingly to the cloud” is identified as a long-term opportunity in Microsoft’s “Modern Life” consumer space, including using “the power of the cloud and client to enable improved AI-powered services and full roaming of people’s digital experience.”
Intel and Microsoft have even hinted at Windows 12 in recent months, and Windows chief Panos Panay claimed at CES earlier this year that “AI is going to reinvent how you do everything on Windows.” All of this is part of Microsoft’s broad Windows ambition, detailed in its internal presentation, “to enable improved AI-powered services” in Windows.
Words cannot express how much I do not want to participate in this version of the future.
Microsoft has recently announced Windows Copilot, an AI-powered assistant for Windows 11. Windows Copilot sits at the side of Windows 11, and can summarize content you’re viewing in apps, rewrite it, or even explain it. Microsoft is currently testing this internally and promised to release it to testers in June before rolling it out more broadly to Windows 11 users.
Omg… The return of Clippy
I switched to Linux a long time ago, it’s only getting better and better. After valve started making serious investments in the ecosystem it has only gotten better for desktop usage and it simply ‘works’ in ways that even windows struggles with, ie: ps4 controllers/switch controllers work ootb, gamescope allows significantly more control over how games are rendered and offers a true console-like experience combined with big picture UI.
Cool so not only do you need to power your local device you also need to power servers and eat up loads of internet bandwidth. Super efficient.
All so they can force you to pay a monthly subscription… Thank Gaben Valve is investing so much in Linux gaming.
I’m kind of confused…if the plan is to move Windows fully to the cloud, why are they talking to chipmakers about enabling more Windows features in future chip releases? Why would you need processing power for the OS if the OS is fully on the cloud?
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