similarly, I’ve removed Microsoft from my system.
Probably a good move on your part. When they try to force windows 11 on me, that’s when I will be moving to Linux.
My new hardware is literally incompatible with Windows 11. They’re doing me a kindness I don’t want all this AI shit on my PC
Why wait, do it now.
I jumped ship to Linux when Win 7 died, cause I’d rather be fucked by a rusty fencepost than be forced to use 10, and 11 is right out.
Looking to move an older Windows 7 laptop to Linux this week, any suggestions? Feels like there’s so much.
I’ve been doing the same thing, trying out distros on an old laptop in anticipation of moving all my machines over to Linux.
Linux Mint is by far the most popular for noobs on older hardware, has a clean if simple interface, and will run on tiny amounts of RAM, so if you have no other suggestions and don’t know much about Linux, I’d say start there.
Linux Mint is not Ubuntu, but based on it, so there’s a lot of support. As a Windows and Mac user I found the Linux Mint “Cinnamon” desktop environment easy enough to navigate, it’s solid in terms of broad hardware support, and there are a LOT of resources if you have questions, want to watch a tutorial, or need a helping hand, all pluses for a noob. (And I don’t think I had to touch the command line once, when I had it installed: bonus.)
But the cool thing is that most Linux distros have a “LiveUSB” install, meaning that you can load the .iso of your choice onto a 4GB USB drive, boot off the USB, and take the hardware for a spin without installing anything. LiveUSB means you can try as many distros as you like until you get tired of making USB drives, and all for free.
Somebody else here suggested “Ubuntu” to you without saying another word about it, but there’s a lot more to it than that. You still have to pick a desktop environment, for example, and while there’s nothing wrong with plain Ubuntu, I honestly don’t think that’s the most user-friendly distro you could start with.
Try it, see if you like it. Most distros are completely free, including Ubuntu. But if you’re just looking at finding ONE to start with, again, try Linux Mint: it’s popular for Linux noobs for a reason, it’s stable, and even if you find you don’t like it, it’s a great place to dip your toe in and see how Linux works for you personally.
I agree with every point you make except for the desktop environment front end.
While it is nice to install a distro with a given desktop environment OOTB, you can always change it, and even have multiple ones installed at the same time. This is typically a better approach to testing out desktop environments because you don’t have to reinstall every time.
I am testing both, so for me a mix of both is best.
While it is nice to install a distro with a given desktop environment OOTB, you can always change it, and even have multiple ones installed at the same time.
This is true for Debian, but not for many others. Even Fedora ships with preloaded DE “spins” now. And changing it post-install requires more than beginner level knowledge, specific to that OS. For someone coming over to Linux directly from Windows/Mac, that’s not really feasible upfront.
Excuses.
Haha, I had a partition on my pc for the longest time to put Linux on it. But I do a lot of game dev stuff, so I’ve been reluctant to switch from windows.
Switch to Linux! If nothing else, run stuff with wine and most things will work seamlessly
Real question. Is gaming (not game dev) significantly better than it was 5 years ago on Linux? I really want to switch, but I also really don’t want to give up everything “just working” and doing it smoothly when gaming on windows.
I’ve even considered having 2 PC’s for my 4 monitors, and having the middle monitor run windows and the other 3 on a Linux box. I used to use a program that could simulate my mouse moving from one pc to an entirely different one even across windows and Linux, and also share the clipboard. I could try that again.
But if the gaming experience is sufficient and convenient on Linux I might switch entirely.
It’s vastly better than it was 5 years ago. You can get an idea by going to protondb.com and looking at games. Basically, most games work out of the box with minimal to no issues. Even most new games work on release without major issues.
The biggest issue is anti-cheat and DRM. That can be a show stopped for some users, but for me it hasn’t been an issue.
That’s what a lot of Linux people miss. They’ve been dealing with it for a while already so a lot of them are like “it’s so easy!” and then they have to start explaing repos and containers to people and the person just sticks to Windows.
If you play a lot of competitive multiplayer games, it would be better to keep a windows partition for them (overwatch is the only game that I had a good experience on Linux).
I used to play some competitive Apex, I was overjoyed when I heard anti cheat support is available on Linux, and quickly installed it. I tried it a couple of times since then, the most recent being last month - The game is playable but not on a competitive level imho. The smoothness is just not there. Then again this might be because of my low spec hardware.
Games like Valorant just won’t work because of their kernel level anticheat. (But hey we have Conter-Strike 2 now)
AAA games run just fine for the most part, its playable and I usually get performance similar to windows.
The steam deck uses a custom Linux distro made by valve specifically for it. So it’s at least good enough for gaming that valve trusted it for their mainstream handled gaming PC.
I’ve got one and tbh it’s pretty good. As long as you stick to games that are rated as either verified or playable on steamdeck you’ll probably have a good time.
Oh cool, I didn’t realize that was a thing. If I can run Unreal Engine on Linux, that’s pretty much the only thing stopping me from switching.
Yep! Quick search turns this up, looks like you don’t even need wine for it which is even better.
(Unreal engine also has a specific Linux page, but I don’t have an epic games account so I can’t view it - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/linux )
Wine basically let’s you run windows-only software on Linux by making a directory that emulates windows, installs needed dependencies, etc. Most windows programs can be run smoothly using wine in my experience, the main ones that can’t are games with kernal-level anticheat. If you’ve heard of Proton, that’s valves fork of wine that they’ve built up specifically for games
I have heard of Proton. Just didn’t realize it was for gaming. Thanks for the info! I’m seriously thinking about switching now. Just gotta figure out what to do with all my current game repository on windows.
You’ve made me remember that quite not long ago I wanted to play on Linux (precisely on Mint, but I’ve also tried pop os), and I had three results:
1 - Game not even trying to launch/wine error (usually related to graphics) (did happen once or twice, tested few games): Factorio, without magic wine parameters and magic overall
2 - Game runs, but graphical glitches makes it unplayable: Factorio after tweaks
3 - Game running fine, fps lower or equal than on windows: Minecraft, Kerbal space program
(Yes, now I know Factorio also had Linux version, but it’s too late for that)
So while it may be playable for some 9999 IQ rice master couch-looking moderator after just touching the demon named Wine, I don’t have the brains, patience or time tweaking every little parameter/environmental vars/wine prefixes on top of each other to make a game play at 2 fps. It also didn’t help that when trying to resolve apt conflicts, Mint just killed itself (looking at you
aptitude). My overall experience of Linux isn’t bad, it may be good for customization masters, but for me, which would like having things “just working”, and maybe after that some trial and error tweaks, Windows is closer to that wish. Although when MS forces W11 onto me, I’m jumpshipping to Linux, no matter how shitty my UX is (at least I hope so)Edit: forgot that there is markdown, formating fix
Edit2: bad brain, missing word fix
Proton is incredibly simple to use, and gaming on Linux is pretty seamless for like 3/4+ of games now. Including Factorio.
But I do a lot of game dev stuff
Nono, please do hurry to switch to Linux.
That’s the real trojan.
Dude ms defender used to delete my “Hello World” executables built using visual studio just because they were made by an unknown publisher.
Well maybe you should have become a known publisher before writing any programs.
/s
It flagged your program for being dissident propaganda.
Microsoft Defender moment
Removed by mod
Wow, do you need to have your apps signed by Microsoft now, like macOS’s Gatekeeper makes you do?
A little context, one of the larger exit nodes was compromised and would send malware to your computer. The behavior shield probably caught this and correctly marked the program as a trojan, since, by definition, that’s literally what it was acting as when connected to that node. More advanced AVs (like malwarebytes) will instead block the malicious connection rather than blanket-banning the entire program.
A sane response in a sea of bullshit.
I’m not sure about the browser, but a lot of malware used to ship with the tor binary and used it to connect to the CNC. I can totally see it ending up in the indicator list.
I love bashing MS as much as the next guy, but this is not completely indefensible behavior given typical user use cases and needs. As long as it’s easy to add an exception of you installed it on purpose.
Oh god I hate that spelling of C2 lol
I have other associations too 😈
Same here. Totally talking about Computer Numerical Control of course, absolutely no other association. Nope, definitely not. 😇
I’ve run into antiviruses blocking code I’ve written just because I pulled in certain cryptographic libs. Literally pulling in some Microsoft cryptography libraries in c# made it think I was writing a crypto locker.
It blocked my lousy dll injector that was made for debugging.
At this point, Microsoft Windows itself can basically be classified as malware
If we define malware as something having functions to harm the user and not only things build soley for this purpose, then of course Windows is malware.
Windows updates are literally harder to stop than actual viruses.
When Windows 95 was in beta I would install it and next day it was dead. We finally realized that the BIOS was killing it.
Wat?
95 is kill
Classic Microsoft
Fucking microsoft doing microsoft things.
It blows my mind that Windows can be and is so incompetent. If they did not hold the level of market share that they do, that would be out of business.
People are literally locked in because the software is not made for Linux. But Linux keeps marching and getting better.
We have the games, now all we need are a few professional applications and then Windows can easily be replaced.
deleted by creator
But it’s just defender. It’s free and you don’t have to use it.
It’s not just defender, Window has so many problem. Like constant ads to try to get me to use Bing and Edge. It is bundling a bunch of random software and games during install. It is forcing users to create a Microsoft account when setting up the computer.
On top of all of this, it is the only operating system to crashes on on me during use. Even though it is on my most powerful hardware, it is the computer that runs sluggishly all the time.
You don’t have to create a Microsoft account to use Windoows. In corporate environments most issues are usually mitigated by administrators via group policy. Crashing and bad performance are not typical. Windows is very reliable,
How dare they use a non-Edge browser for this!
Experts believe that the false malware alert is due to the new heuristic detection method used in Microsoft Defender
Fortune tellers are not a replacement for good security!
Any don’t use windows for anything private or personal as its under the control of Microsoft. You are just giving it suggestions
Removed by mod
I was joking sorry I didn’t mark it as such
you’ll first need to make a joke
If you have to use Tor you shouldn’t be using Windows.
This is a bad response to this news. There are many reasons why you might want to run tor on Windows and gatekeeping people out of tor because they are not on a chosen OS is a terribly way to get more people into thinking about privacy and security practices. Yes if you have the highest threat model you might want to avoid Windows as well, but not everyone needs absolute privacy/security for what they do. But why should you not have access to a tool that can help improve things even if you are not able to switch everything to a more private/secure alternative?
Really you should want everyone and anyone to run on tor, even if they don’t need it, even if they are on windows. The more people using it the more secure it is for those that do require it.
Yeah I agree. To be clear, if you take the reverse of my statement, i.e. if you’re on Windows, you shouldn’t use Tor, then I would be gatekeeping.
But I’m not implying that, but rather the reverse. I’m saying if you have use Tor for whatever reasons to bypass censorship, do illegal stuff and avoid being tracked, you should at least be aware that at the kernel level, how you’re accessing the internet has already been compromised by Microsoft, and consider alternatives OSes
Of course I’d still want people running Windows to be able to use Tor, and also I’d say leaving Windows isn’t something you would only do at the “highest threat model”.
Privacy will almost always be a trade-off with convenience, I’m pushing the awareness to get people to act, should they choose to. That’s all.
You might not have intended to imply that, but your original words can be taken in many different ways. Such as a dismissive well this news does not matter because you should not be using TOR if you are on windows. You did not say that exactly, but either interpenetration needs some reading between the lines as you did not really say all that much. So it could be taken that way just as much as the way you actually intended. And on the internet if things can be interpreted multiple ways they will be.
Taking “If P then not Q” as equivalent to “If not Q then not P” is just straight up broken thinking. We shouldn’t have to preface each comment with a primer on the basics of how to think.
I’m not saying you’re wrong (frankly, I’m on your side), but the majority of the general population, i.e. windows users, would take it as such. This is more to do with the failure of the various education systems more so than anything else.
deleted by creator
Sometimes people use Tor just to get around ‘This site is blocked in your country’
But hey, I hear ya! I’ve been running Linux as my daily driver since 2015, and the more they enshittify Windows, the more I recommend others make the switch.
Agreed. I thought of ISP restrictions too, but I would say if where you live places a level of censorship due to political reasons or otherwise and you need to access it for whatever reasons so you need Tor then by all means Microsoft is not your friend since they’re a privacy nightmare.
There are also VPNs for banned media, I typically wouldn’t want to use Tor for anything more than textual content as it puts too much load on the Tor network.
I typically wouldn’t want to use Tor for anything more than textual content as it puts too much load on the Tor network.
While I agree that the Tor network is slow, it also depends on excess traffic to “bury” the more sensitive stuff. Part of why Tor works is because the actual sensitive stuff gets buried under all of the noise of regular users. Without all of that excess traffic, it’d be much easier to track what is happening.
As an extreme example, imagine how insecure the Tor network would be if there were only two users. It’d be blatantly obvious that those two users are communicating. By adding more users and more traffic, those two users can more easily hide in the sea of traffic. In short, more use does slow things down, but it’s also better for privacy overall.
I really need to bite the bullet and wipe windows off my new laptop. I’ve had an arch based distro downloaded and ready to go since mid August. Just don’t want to have to download my steam library again. My shitty Internet is painful sometimes.
Can’t you just move it?
Can confirm you can just move the game files to your Linux steam library to avoid redownloading
That might help. Sadly I don’t have enough raw space worth of thumb drives. And I’d do a full install of Linux, no dual booting.
Buy a second drive, they are cheap these days. Then you can keep the OEM Windows around, for a just in case.
Oof, I hear ya there. At least in my case I pretty much only play older games from GOG, usually in a virtual machine, so no Steam for me.
I did however go out of my way to download and compile the source code for Descent 1 and 2 directly on Linux, that was fun figuring out how to compile LOL!
Good luck with your Steam library though. If it was me, I’d test Linux out in a virtual machine first so you can test out copying your games over without outright wiping Windows first.
Is there no way to save your stream library to an external hard drive?
Removed by mod
I’ve got a bunch of large games. And not as much space worth of thumb drives.
The other concerns, I have two programs that would be a pain to get running with wine.
Me too. I noped out of Win10 after fighting with Win7 too much. Most people tell me I’m just unusual however I think more people than will admit just browse the web and can’t handle Win95 levels of customization and lack of making decisions for you. People are generally overwhelmed with the mere idea that they could customize their computer to work in different ways… Heck, on Windows it’s varied if you can even reasonably change to a different default browser without being “techie” (stupid low bar considered techie by many)…
I’d love to switch, but my laptop makes that quite hard and the computer still has years in it before I probably need to think about replacing it.
I’ve got an asus rog and sometimes need the backlight on the keyboard. As far as I could tell, no one had figured out how to do it without the windows only asus made software.
I keep a small partition set aside in case I need it for settings, but I leave the keyboard on one setting all the time.
Fedora by far has the best bootloader setup for modern bleeding edge hardware. Their Anaconda system (not related to Python’s “conda”) uses a shim key that is signed by Microsoft’s 3rd party UEFI key signing arrangement. Outside of the questionable philosophical implications around this arrangement and system, overall the setup is ideal for the end user. Fedora can on coexist with a windows partition easily, encrypt the entire thing and Windows can’t mess with anything on the Linux side. Personally, I haven’t ever actually used Windows since W8. My workstation router runs on a whitelist firewall so W11 is in a post internet age where it rightfully belongs. It might as well be a tab in the UEFI bootloader settings for all I care.
Fedora also has a system that builds the Nvidia kernel module from scratch every time the Linux kernel is updated. Around half of the updates still require me to do a quick restart after initial boot to enable the Nvidia kernel module. It falls back to the open source alt driver and still works fine, but I do AI stuff and need the CUDA API, so I have to reboot to get that working once a week or two. Fedora really is quite easy now. I would use something like NIX, but the Anaconda system is unmatched and too good to give up. You will have secure boot locked all the time even if you can not register custom keys or do not care to set them up manually.
Oh, I don’t need the keyboard to be pretty. Just lit up at all which seems to be effective locked by asus.
When I tried, I had put Ubuntu on it. That process seemed to go pretty good except the keyboard. Even got the WiFi working just fine. I may give fedora a try, but I’m way too lazy to switch back and forth between os’s depending on how dark the room I’m in is.
Does it not stay set at a default or have some amount of functionality? Like my Gigabyte Aorus has the full settings nonsense app in Windows, but if I set it to one thing, the change is persistent. I just always keep it on low and green. The function keys will let me alter the brightness between medium, bright, and alien abduction; which is super annoying because I can’t get back to low, but there is something.
You may find some info searching too, some people occasionally make their own kernel modules or app for individual machines. I would take a look at Linux Hardware Probe (https://linux-hardware.org/) to see what shows up with your model, although the peripheral accessories are not usually the focus, they may be mentioned.
The main thing I was worried about with the proprietary settings like RGB was actually the thermal management settings that are also in that app. I have the 3080Ti, aka the 16GBV monster GPU. I can’t say any details about how the thermal performance will work with gaming or whatnot, but I do some AI training loads that hold the GPU at absolute max load for hours and it has never gotten above 80C. It throttles as expected, and each laptop’s thermal design will vary, but I can put the laptop with its vent inlet ports directly in front of a window AC and the GPU will hold max load at 70C for as long as I have ever pushed it (3-5hours straight). I’m playing with buggy code, much of it written by myself, and I never attempt to override the Nvidia settings, but with daily use since the beginning of July, I’ve had no complaints. This was the big thing weighing on me in the back of my mind. Just thought I might mention it if you change your mind and want to make the switch.
Have you considered learning how to type? (I know, kind of snarky) I don’t need to look at my keyboard or see my hands, there’s little bumps on the home keys and then you just type based on location.
It’s not regular typing. It’s primarily using the f-keys and numbers. Particularly for functions in my IDE.
Most of the time I’m using an external monitor and keyboard, so get very little practice on the built in one except when it’s in less than ideal situations like flying.
When I get my next laptop, I’ll be keeping Linux capabilities in mind. But that’s years away. I’m not even sure where to start with reverse engineering the hardware, and also don’t see myself spending months of my free time to make it work. I don’t have that much free time and there are too many other things I’d like to be using that time for.
Let’s not blame the victims of Microsoft’s fuckery here.
Yeah, but linux breaks heavily modded Skyrim. Something about ubuntu or something breaks skse, and honestly I don’t care enough.
The true reason for Microsoft’s continued monopoly, and the reason behind its strategic acquisition of Starfield
I have to say, my computing life changed A LOT for the better when I stopped playing games on the PC back when the PS3 was out. I got so tired of Windows getting screwed up by various games and their anti-cheat crap. I think in 2023, it might make sense to separate out functions a little - used computers run Linux just fine and are cheeeap. So if you want a yar har, web browsing, e-mail processing, programming etc computer, do that on the more private / (to be better) OS and then have your game only computer for gaming.
Arch users are never shaking those allegations. Are are aware that people use Tor for other things, right?
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/microsoft-defender-will-finally-stop-claiming-tor-is-malware
Microsoft Defender will finally stop claiming Tor is malware.
deleted by creator
Idk man I’ve had the tor browser on my PC for years now and it was never deleted. Might just be because I haven’t updated it in like ever but still.
It’s funny that recently NetworkChuck uploaded video about darkweb where he installed tor on windows and now apparently many folks did the same.
