Microsoft in their infinite wisdom has replaced the Hide Desktop icon with Copilot.

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 1411 points –

Switch to Linux!

From Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1as1yjk/microsoft_in_their_infinite_wisdom_has_replaced/

701

You are viewing a single comment
View all commentsShow the parent comment

As a hyper simplistic explanation :
Window Managers (WMs) are essentially keyboard centric highly stripped down and highly customizable Desktop Environments in a way. This isn't completely correct, but for the sake of simplicity it'll do.

I can give you a much more technical explanation if you want.

I'm not in the mood to read something super technical right now- But actually y'know what, I will be tomorrow. Hit me with that shit or if it's as much as you seem to be implying, make a post and link me in.

It's not overly technical, just has more nuance :

A Window Manager is a type of compositor or X client (depending on if it's based on Wayland or Xorg respectively) that manages the placement and appearance of windows on the screen.
It is responsible for the appearance and behavior of windows, determining the border, title bar, size, and ability to resize windows, and often providing other functionality such as reserved areas for sticking dock-apps or the ability to tab windows.
It can be part of a Desktop Environment(DE) or be used standalone.
Often times when WMs are referenced it's in reference to standalone WMs which are often keyboard centric and come in various different forms. For example tabbed, tiling, dynamic, stacking, dynamic tiling, etc.

Some popular Xorg based WM in Linux include i3, BSPWM, DWM, Awesome, Fluxbox, Openbox, WMii, Xmonad, etc.
Some popular Wayland based WM including Sway, Hyprland, River, DWL, NeWM, etc.
Then there's WMs built-in to Desktop Environments like Kwin(KDE Plasma) and Mutter(Gnome).

If you're interested there's an Arch Wiki with even more info.

I'mma come back to this, but for now, I'm definitely ready to make the switch to linux. Fuck microsoft.

I've used ubuntu in the past on and off back in high school, but it never really stuck. Didn't get the point, couldn't play games, disk space overhead that I could use for ut2004 instead, that kinda thing. Now I get the point and I almost don't play games anymore (though I hear linux is much a more mature gaming system now, figures) and I'd like to try again, but I doubt the least common denominator ubuntu is the right choice. Which instances/communities are going to be the best for a beginner? I'm going to need help with a lot of stuff, I remember trying to install network drivers was a pain in my ass, using the command line and remembering commands and operators and that sort of thing, the filesystem and filetypes were unfamiliar and confusing for that reason, just a lot of things. Where do I start?

Kinda figured you wouldn't want to be hit with a wall of text... lol 🫣

couldn’t play games... I almost don’t play games anymore...

We have Valve Proton now, that while not-perfect works most of the time. Wikipedia has an excerpt on it. You can use this guide to enable it in steam.

...but I doubt the least common denominator ubuntu is the right choice...

It could be, but often something like Linux Mint or ZorinOS can be a better fit. It depends on you're use-case.

Which instances/communities are going to be the best for a beginner? I’m going to need help with a lot of stuff...

I'm not too sure, I'm not really a beginner anymore... but !linux@lemmy.ml is open to questions, I've personally been answering questions there too. There's also !linuxquestions@lemmy.world & !linux@lemmy.world.
You can always hmu.

I remember trying to install network drivers was a pain in my ass

Generally there already included in the kernel. If not, it can be a pain.
A clever work around I came up with is to use USB tethering with your phone to share WiFi which works 99% of the time, then from there you can add the drivers more easily.

using the command line

Not too hard to learn, unless you're writing scripts you don't need to know that much.
You can use man command, command -h or tealdeer for help pages.
You can watch this 100s video for a real quick overview of bash, and this 20m video for a full quick and easy Terminal/Bash beginner tutorial.
The vast majority of this is transferable to other shells like Zsh.

operators

Ampersand Operator (&): Runs a Linux command in the background.
Semi-Colon Operator (;): Runs multiple commands.
AND Operator (&&): Runs the second command only if the first command succeeds.
OR Operator (||): Conditionally executes the second command.
Cheatsheet for more.

the filesystem and filetypes were unfamiliar and confusing for that reason

man file-hierarchy 😜
There's not much different for filetypes, I mean Linux uses a combo of mimetype/magic numbers and file extensions e.g. image".example" for identifying filetype.
I guess maybe you're confused about shell scripts.sh, binary.bin filetypes? those are executables like .exe.
If you have a specific question, that'd be easier to answer.

Where do I start?

Probably Ventoy to make distro hopping easier. Here's a good video on it from a great YT'r. Just use use the live environment to mess around and see which one you like/works best for you.

What confused me at the time was that my files weren't necessarily compatible between systems. Something about fat32 or something? I dont remember too well. It was over a decade ago.

I think I understand, you mean like mounting an external hard drive in a different filesystem format not working?
In any case just hmu if you have any trouble.