Your Windows 10 PC will soon be 'junk' - users told to resist Microsoft deadline
express.co.uk
Your Windows 10 PC will soon be 'junk' - users told to resist Microsoft deadline::If you're still using Windows 10 and don't want to upgrade to Windows 11 any time soon you might want to sign a new online petition
Or just try linux. It's pretty great
I love Linux. I have it installed on 3 machines, have been using it for over 3 years, and would install it right away if I ever got a new computer.
A couple weeks ago, I was feeling pretty exhausted and just wanted to play a game thru Proton on my laptop. I got it running, but it was unplayable because it was using my integrated GPU instead of my discrete one. I spent the night switching compositors, cables, and drivers, but none of it fixed the issue.
The next day, feeling exhausted from fruitless debugging, I tried to launch another game via Proton that I knew had worked in the past, but it crashed on launch. I spent the whole day going thru the same steps I did the day before, but also consulting ProtonDB and trying software that would force usage of the dgpu.
The next day, I installed Windows 10 to an external hard drive and spent the day debloating it. Drivers got installed automatically, I downloaded both games on Steam, and they just worked. So I guess I now dual-boot Windows just for the games that don't work thru Proton. Loading game worlds and booting up take ~75% longer, but that's to be expected because it's running on a 4 year old HDD connected over a USB cable.
As mentioned earlier, I love Linux a lot, and if all games had native binaries or Proton worked 100% I'd format that god-forsaken hard drive. But when real life has got me down, I don't need Linux to get me down further. I don't like Windows, and I feel incredibly dirty whenever I press F7 on boot to get to Windows. But when my choices are "spend 8 hours on fruitless quest to get >2fps" and "press play button", I'm going to take the path of least resistance.
That's the thing. I love to use Linux for work, but when I don't want to tinker it sometimes sucks for gaming.
Yep. And then there’s gamepass. I vastly vastly prefer working and using Linux day to day, but games, man. Man’s gotta be able to game after a long day at work and I wasted literally a week of after work hours trying and failing to get Starfield to run on Proton.
iGPU+dGPU, esp with Nvidia is pretty bad on Linux. It's pretty flawless these days if you're using only one vendor and it isn't Nvidia.
Don't know what you are talking about. I use an Nvidia GPU with a Wayland compositor/Window manager (Hyprland to be exact) and I've never experienced any issues whatsoever.
I have an external monitor that runs at 144Hz, but a while ago I realized because it was connected over HDMI, it was limited to 60Hz (for some weird reason). So I bought a DisplayPort cable, and after plugging it in the screen was flickering/artifacting in some weird way that I haven't seen it do on X11 or Windows with the same cable. So as a result I've had to reluctantly switched back to i3 for daily use
I would probably rather get a gaming console for the TV to game.
Why not a steam deck?
I love my steam deck but there's enough games from my library that won't run at all or only run after some manual trickery in desktop mode.
Tbf that really depends on the kind of games you like playing.
What game was it?
The first game mentioned was Bille Bust Up. I liked the demo that was off of Steam (and it ran fine using the proton-call command), so I subscribed to the developer's Patreon (which gives a Steam key) and it wouldn't use my dgpu.
The second game was A Hat in Time.
Nvidia laptop by the sounds of it?
Anything with an AMD GPU is going to have a better time (or even just a dedicated Nvidia GPU in a desktop).
Thanks for sharing. I'm sorry to hear you had trouble. Both games are rated as gold on ProtonDB. So, I am surprised you had trouble with them.
My experience has been the opposite. Everything has worked surprisingly well. Do you by chance use an Nvidia gpu?
Yep, Nvidia gpu. At the time I bought it I wasn't aware of their reputation for Linux support, and I bought my laptop from System76 (with Pop!_OS, because Nvidia drivers are more "just works" on it). I've had a fairly good experience with all of it, but the next computer I buy will definitely have an AMD GPU.
I think this is the first time I've been fully unable to get the dgpu working. Every other time it's just worked or worked with tweaking
I work in a linux shop.
You couldn't pay me to use Windows for development, sysadmin, backend services, etc.
But on the desktop? Hell no. We maintain a modern debian desktop environment for our users, and it's a pain in the ass. Mediocre UX, mediocre integration of mixed-bag third-party apps, and too many workarounds and gotchas you need to Just Know About. I just don't have the energy.
I use windows at home, and for my underlying work environment - and I just SSH into linux boxes for the actual tappy-tappy stuff.
You're talking about my Windows 10 experience? The european, less spying/advertising version, mind you.
I mean, it won't let me. Windows Update inists my PC doesn't meet the minimum spec, and I'm not inclined to argue with it.
#GleefulCompliance
You can use Rufus to install windows 11 and bypass the requirements. It does everything for you -- downloads the latest win 11 service pack, removes the blocking requirements, and you can even tell it to automatically disable all of the telemetry and phoning home. You'll still need a license key when you install, or run it on a machine that was running a valid win 10 install previously. But I'm running win 11 on an 8 year old PC with zero issues.
Here is a good guide that explains in detail.
True, or I could just not.
I would like to point out that this is exactly the same difficulty of just installing linux, without freeing you from microserfdom.
The problem for me is that I basically only use my PC for gaming and YouTube.
I know SOME games work, but I don't want to add to the list of games I can't play because they're console/windows only. :/
We've long since transitioned into the "most" games work territory. Basically apart from anything with rootkit-like anti cheat, you shouldn't have any trouble playing games at all.
I have the exact same use case for my PC and have no issues gaming on Linux for the vast majority of games. The caveat, however, is that anti-cheat can be problematic, so if you exclusively play games with anti-cheat that could be a problem for you. The only titles I have issues with are competitive shooters.
Comparing the level of effort to run windows vs Linux is a whole other thing I'm definitely not getting into. I use Linux for work and run it on two machines at home, but I also use my Windows box for games. You can use and enjoy both, it doesn't have to be a religious war.
I highly recommend you attempt to run your games on a Linux box, as the experience has improved vastly. I also keep a Windows install around for the odd game that doesn't work in Linux (basically just a couple competitive shooters that I enjoy), but the number of times I need to boot into my Windows partition are diminishing day by day. Definitely did not mean to be a zealot about it, but going through the effort outlined above just so you can get Windows updates from a company that clearly doesn't care if they trash your machine forcing your upgrade seems foolish to me.
Mine doesn't, either. Go go gadget 12 year old processor! Who knew being a cheapskate could be so beneficial?
Just follow this guide and all of your problems will be gone
But refusing to upgrade me to 11 is an anti-problem...
Is it the UEFI security thing?
TPM. Probably switched off in the BIOS or something.
Don't care, don't like what I've seen of 11, happy to wait until I'm forced to change.
Nah fuck you, I'm staying with 10 as long as I can, then I'm switching to linux
My PC doesn't hit the requirements for windows 11. Yet it kept asking me to update. Been running Ubuntu ever since
Same here, but I moved to Arch because I wanted the latest drivers, at the beggining with GNOME, but then moved to KDE to get the newest Wayland stuff related to Gaming.
How difficult would you say is getting in to arch?
Try it on an external drive. I did that a couple years ago just to fool around and see if I liked it, within a week it was my main OS and I've barely used Windows since.
Fun fact: Linux is so customizable that you can run a modern GUI and software on 46mb of ram and a CPU from 1989. Don't let Microshit tell you to throw out your old PC, it's truly surprising what's possible.
Yeah but can it run signed drm in a way that the owner of the computer can't read the keys? Checkmate atheists.
I've switch my home computers to Linux. Unfortunately, at work, I have to maintain a Windows environment...
Did your job give you a work Laptop? If you personally own it then you could just run Windows in a VM.
I do IT support at my company. We are a small business, but we work on many government contracts. I'm personally not experienced enough on Linux to support it at a businesses level. Part of working on government contracts is that we have to be CMMC certified in the relatively near future, probably first or second quarter next year. I'd love to get off of Windows, but like I mentioned I don't have the knowledge to get us there, and we're pretty entrenched in Windows until at least after the audit. Maybe someday, but the Microsoft m365 business GCC High is built with that specific certification in mind. It would require changing everything about our business to switch, and I don't care enough about the company to go through that.
But can I be fucked waiting 5 minutes for a VM to boot every time I need to use a Windows-only tool?
Don't shutdown the VM. Instead, use shutdown -> save button in the virt-manager. Now your VM will launch in seconds next time you want to use it because it'll be resumed from the saved state.
Cries in HDD
Sounds like a great excuse for a bit of a hardware upgrade, SSDs have gotten pretty cheap. You can change your whole computing life for $30-50.
You could just use the earliest version of Windows that the software works (Windows 7 usually) and then keep the VM air gapped (aka no Internet connection)
Let me introduce you to Adobe. Single-handedly keeping Linux adoption in check.
Nah, fuck it, I'm switching to Linux.
Next computer of mine will definitely be running Linux. Only thing I'd ever need windows for is some oddly specific software that won't work on Linux because I'm too dumb to get working properly.
Lmao. This article is junk. Yew I'm sure millions of people are going to suddenly dump their PC's because they don't get security updates. Most people don't follow this at all and don't care.
And no, they're not going to magically jump to Linux as much as the Lemmy circlejerk loves to believe. If they know enough about security they probably already have looked into Linux and decided against it.
The article is typical clickbait from the Express, that's bottom of the barrel trash.
Companies are a tad different and this could be a big problem with adhering to security and patches. It's a big problem with companies doing this engineered obsolescence (stares at Apple) and making products that work trash.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about banks during my time as a developer, it’s that they’re on the oldest version of windows they can get to run.
This, many businesses will consider Linux for various devices.
It'll likely start as "Oh we can use it to deploy for, this this and this, and avoid putting Windows here and here, to save X dollars" as certain applications in business are not available on Linux, but others will be. It will be a slow transition in the business world. But they will do it.
As I Linux user I can't wait for the flood of cheap perfectly good hardware from these idiots
Bonus points is that they'll probably be the last gasp of hardware consistently supporting S3 sleep too
Hey, can you elaborate? I switched my couple year old Windows 11 laptop to Linux a few months back, and no matter what I can't get sleep to work. After doing research, apparently this is a common issue with Linux on laptops.
I eventually got hibernate to work, so I have it do that instead, but regular sleep would be nice...
Yep! So I can't say necessarily what your specific problem is but it's probably related to the big push towards "S0 Low Power Idle", or "Modern Standby/Sleep".
In a nutshell, MS and related peeps wanted to go after the always-connected, updated info, instant-on nature of the iPads and other mobile devices. I would guess Apple's "Power Nap" functionality on their Mac was on their mind too. The effort resulted in the Windows 8-era Connected Standby as it was known then.
They have been pushing hard on S0 as the next version of sleep since. Who "they" is I am not entirely sure - it could be upstream at MS, Intel, most likely but the end result regardless is that OEM's have been switching to Modern Standby.
But fortunately, some machines have a choice. My ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 has a BIOS toggle to switch between S0 and ol reliable S3 sleep (labeled Linux sleep) - no Windows re-installation needed despite the warning on it. Other machines might not like the XPS 9510 and Latitude 7210 2-in-1 I had previously. (I got rid of the former due to warranty issues and suspect build quality, the latter because I needed more oomph and less portability)
I was losing 8% battery an hour in the 7210 and I wasted hours troubleshooting only to find out that the M.2 drive I installed was somehow "not compatible" with Modern Standby, after that was sorted it was the only Modern Standby experience I had that was mostly acceptable.
My new work laptop is a ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 and there is no option to enable S3 so I am on that Modern Standby train involuntarily for this one. Anyways, after the battery reliably drained several times in a few hours of sleep, with the power light pulsing indicating it was sleeping - I was able to get the company service desk to enable my hibernate setting and I use that exclusively so I don't have to keep it plugged in while traveling to save my state.
Sometimes that toggle is removed in a BIOS update so you'll have to research that too, and what version to install if it occurs.
So yea, S3 is going out of fashion and taking reliable sleep with it. Lot of complaining out there about battery drain, overheating in bags, OEM's recommend just using hibernate, Linus Tech Tips had a video ranting about switching to Macs over it and supposedly heard from an MS engineer but I don't think Microsoft will be able to truly fix it, it's been years.
If my laptop dies, I'll probably get another like it or maybe take the opportunity to jump to a Steam Deck and maybe an ARM Mac. Not sure yet. When the time to jump to Linux comes in a couple years, maybe I'll just get a desktop.
Oh wow, thanks for the in depth reply. Am I incorrect in assuming that they want the "Modern Standby" to be standard, because that mode means the device is always "connected" despite being asleep?
There must be a reason that a corporation would push for a seemingly inferior technology, and it's basically 100% of the time about money.
I'm just speculating but I would say that's "not wrong".
The network connected part of Modern Standby can actually be disabled reasonably easily in command prompt and it does come up as a possible band-aid to battery drain issues. (In my applications it didn't help a noticeable amount but at least it's there.)
When Modern Standby works, it works... okay. I mentioned getting it working on my 7210 2-in-1 after swapping for a proper SSD (eyeroll) and while it still used more power than S3, I could live with 1-2% of battery loss in an hour a lot more easily than 7-10% and I leaned on hibernate more as well since so many of us have been burned by Modern Standby when it doesn't work.
I'm sure that while having the user computer being connected more is a net positive for telemetry and data collection but I think the drive towards it is more of a semi-misguided effort to compete with the sheer instant-on, always-updated nature of smartphones, iPads, Android tablets, etc. much in the vein of how Windows has been pivoting left-and-right to fit onto tablets the past decade but not completely recognizing that people often use desktops and laptops differently.
So on paper it's not inferior at all. Instant on, instant off, minimal power use increase, the computer can ring when calls are received, it can keep email up-to-date, sound alerts for reminders all while sleeping whereas it's completely dead in S3 save for RAM being powered.
Sounds cool, it's high-tech, I thought it was neat when I first heard about it especially since Apple's Power Nap feature was around for years already and did nice housekeeping functions while the machine was sleeping - albeit within power use and thermal limits.
Microsoft and OEM's just can't seem to make it reliable enough to be the slam-dunk it theoretically can be nor do it's benefits really shine in my use case since I sit down to use my Windows machines and nothing I use really can take advantage of Modern Standby. And since S3 is increasingly being pulled out, Linux has to deal with their shenanigans too.
Edit: Also I would expect ARM Windows machines to sleep better or at least be efficient enough to not worry, but I can't say for sure.
Amen brother
People will just keep trucking on Windows 10.
There is no way they don’t offer extended support for Windows 10. Many PCs can’t get to windows 11. Imagine all the malware infected machines that will be out there.
I worked for a large computer company in the late 90s, early 2000s. When XP came out, they said there would be no site licensing. This meant we had to keep track of license keys for thousands upon thousands of systems, costing millions. This was before KMS or anything.
"Nothing we can do," Microsoft said. "We have no gate key."
Our server farms at the time were 40% Windows NT 4, 55% Sun systems, and 5% Linux. So we said, "okay," and called Red Hat. In a year, our back end was 60% Sun, 35% Linux, and 5% Windows NT. We were already in talks to start switching to Linux workstations for desktops.
"Oh, you mean this gate key," said Microsoft.
Asshats. They lost our server business, but let us use XP with a site license.
I assume eventually they'll drop the UEFI security requirement, which is why 90% of the "can't" cases occur.
Uefi isn't the push, the push is tpm 2.0, which I think is a much much larger percentage of "incompatibilities". tpm allows for drm that is much harder to bypass, since the random number generator operates securely in hardware. It's for their benefit not yours.
Precisely why I'm in no rush to "upgrade".
My Windows install is still in compatibility mode. It's the sole reason I can't upgrade to 11, not that I want to. I can't be bothered to reinstall Windows on UEFI when there's no point anyway. I'll happily stick to 10.
Dude what ad ridden hellscape is that site, ublock pinged 45 ads on that page just on load lol
The day i had ads on my start page i immidiately uninstalled windows. I installed some linux distro its been like three years and ive finally settled on arch. it was hard but fuck ads on the start page and i feel smarter for it
When you swap distros, how do you manage all your files and settings? Do you just save your files externally and start from scratch every time you change a distro?
Typically your personal files and app settings are stored somewhere in your user home folder, eg under
/home/bob/. Ideally you've set up your system in a way so that the entire/home/folder is stored on its own disk or partition at least. That let's you boot up a different distro while using the same home directory. But even if you haven't set it up separately from the rest of the system, you can still manually copy all those files.Not every single application setting is transferable between distros as they sometimes use different versions but generally it works well. Many apps also let you manually export profiles or settings and reimport them elsewhere later. Or they have online synchronization baked in.
So in my previous experience I never get prompted to create separate partition, but I have seen others use this method in the past, however this should probably be a step in any Linux install wizard.
It should be offered as an option really.
One caveat is that you need to think ahead about how much space you want to assign to each partition. You could end up with your
/home/partition being full while the system partition still has plenty. Or vice versa. You can manually readjust the boundaries but it requires some understanding and can't be done on the fly by a non-technical user. By contrast if everything's stored on the same partition you never have to worry about this.You can, by the way, manually recreate this set up even after the initial set up although it will require lots of free space to shuffle around files (or some external storage to temporarily hold them). Basically what you do is create a new empty partition, copy all your
/home/stuff there and then configure your system to always mount that partition as the/home/directory when it boots. Files are just files after all and the operating system doesn't really care where they come from as long as the content is correct. Once you got it working you can delete the originals and free up the space to be used otherwise.You can have a separate partition for your files so that you change only your OS. Even with windows. This way you'll always keep your files and just need to customize your distro and reinstall your apps when you change between distros
Yeah i kept my files on a seperate drive and just wiped the one with the os. for settings i was trying a different distro and desktop enviroment so those where always a bit different and i started from scratch
I was already using Linux a lot of the time when Windows 7 was out, and seeing Microsoft push ads in the start menu, as well as all the other trash and pointless changes that they included with Windows 8+ just confirmed my decision to leave the Windows ecosystem.
Once ALVR becomes even remotly usable on Linux im wiping my windows partition and going full Linux (I'm already using it for everything exept VR)
The next Steam OS device is supposedly aimed at VR. I can't imagine it launching without ALVR.
It sounds like they have beta support for Linux, so it seems like it's getting there.
A bit clickbait'y. Windows 10 will still work just fine for another decade at least, even without support.
In the Enterprise we ran 10+ year old PC's with XP still on them because the CNC program only runs on XP. No issues but of course you wouldn't use the internet on that machine.
Does having support really make a massive difference, especially if you're running AV anyway? A good AV suite will still be updated for years to come.
The government sector like hospitals etc will pay for extended support so not to worry.
It's only Enterprise that might have an issue because they want patched systems but may not be able to afford Win 10 Enterprise. Especially small to medium business.
As for the home user, it's not a massive issue.
Personally I don't care because I run Linux exclusively. I only gave win 10 running in a VM for printing. Canon said on the box that the printer supports Linux, then after I bought it, officially stopped all Linux support on their site. The original Ubuntu driver only support black and white. So I'm forced to use Windows in a VM for printing. But it's not connected to the net so it will fulfill this role forever.
If you're a regular home user and don't use any special proprietary software like Photoshop, I highly recommend you try Linux Mint. It will also breathe new life into your machine
Not having security patches on a system you do things like go to your banking website on is actually a pretty big deal, and I don't think it should be dismissed lightly. Also AV is mostly snake oil, and is in no way an adequate substitute for a properly patched OS.
Hi, someone that worked on banking stuff in the past.
You are not safe, nothing is even half as secure as it should be and you are most likely just using a web based front end puppeteering a much much older system. The browser you are on is normally the second weak point after your own dumb self and I have not even heard of one case (not saying there are none) of a OS related vulnerability with online personal banking.
The daily express isn't exactly known for it's accurate insightful reporting. The headline is mostly about scaring people, mostly elderly (their main readership) that their computer is about to stop working.
Last winter I ripped my DVD collection to my NAS. Problem: Neither my current daily driver laptop or desktop have optical drives. So I hauled out my father's OLD Dell XPS. This thing has a Core i7 with three digits in the part number, I think it was built in 2008 or so. Felt like absolute sluggish crap running Windows 10. It feels perfectly modern running Linux Mint. And I have the old box a pretty hot supper ripping and transcoding all those DVDs all winter, but it did it.
Computers don't slow down, Windows does.
I'm running windows 10 on a first Gen i7-930. I've upgraded my ram and video card over the years but still on a crappy hdd. Windows isnt lightning fast by any means. But it's not unbearable. Perhaps my mind will blow when I finally upgrade.
My pc isn't eligible for upgrade to eleven. Guess I'm sol then.
Have you tried installing CUPS ? And setting up your printer using the web UI ? Worked for me perfectly for every printer I threw at it.
I could not get CUPS working in a docker container for the life of me. So now I have a stupid little CUPS server.
It does work great, even though it feels like they finished dev in 2003 and never revisited it.
AV cannot fix it all, unfortunately. But Linux is the way.
My machine running Win10 LTSC is getting updates until 2029. I also have machines running Debian. There is no way I am installing the regular version of Win11. Its trash made to pander to greedy shareholders. If they take the garbage out for LTSC, I might run it.
As an individual, how do you get the LTSC version legally, and how much does it cost?
Can you ping me if they tell you? I would also like to know
I guess there is no legal option for individuals because Microsoft only provides LTSC option for orgs. Most guides I saw in the internet just tell you to download some iso from google drive link. You might be able to download it from Microsoft here but I haven't actually tested it because it asks you to register your info before proceeding. Then you'll activate it using activator scripts such as MAS or buy some grey market keys on some keys site.
Just in case you don’t want to go to the tabloid hell that is the Express Petition Link pirg.org
It’s such an awful site, and always surprises me when I see it being used/shared. Surely when it comes to tech there are better resources than a tabloid for it.
Your PC will soon be be junk if you do not want to try out Linux.
In line with many folks' suggestions here, I'm ALL for switching to Linux full time after playing around with a few distros... BUT, I use dxo Photolab for photo editing which doesn't run on Linux, yes, even through wine etc.
Also yes, I know the are a bunch of great Foss alternatives. I've tried them all. Nothing touches the results from my current program unfortunately.
I would be stoked if anyone could enlighten me as to how I could get that working.
I can highly recommend either using windows as a VM in virtualbox, or simply dual boot. I'm using Linux 99% of the time, but I still boot into windows occasionally for some firmware updates or software that does not work with Linux.
Have looked at dual boot before but it seemed like a ( admittedly fairly minor) pita. File sharing/ access across both systems is my main concern. Thanks for your response.
File access across systems is no problem.
It just has to be a separate partition either in the form of a whole SSD/HDD or as a partition on your main drive. Just make it NTFS (a file system that all those OSes know) it works with both windows and linux. I still have 3 NTFS partitions from my dual-boot days.
Like others have said, file sharing works pretty well with NTFS. I've had some issues playing games on steam that are on NTFS drives, but most work well. Also some issues accessing files from Cura for some reason. Other than that I have had no issues sharing files between w11 and Linux.
If you can, I recommend getting a dedicated SSD to install Linux on, and I'd recommend getting PopOS or Linux Mint as your distro. Both are Debian/Ubuntu derivatives, but are even easier and just overall better distros than Ubuntu imo, and most hardware and software will be compatible ootb without any tinkering.
Yeah, just make a drive/partition NTFS, and it will be usable by both systems. Please note that some Linux software doesn't work well with NTFS, for example Timeshift (backup utility) and Steam Proton, so it's best to have an ext4/btrfs drive for things you do exclusively on Linux and NTFS for common files of both systems (like documents, music, films, whatever)
FWIW, I only needed to install one package to be able to read the drive that my Windows install is located on/a shared drive between my two installs. It has been very easy to access the Windows partition from my linux install, but I have not needed to access my linux partition from the Windows install yet, so can't speak to the ease of doing this.
I personally had much better experience with QEMU than Virtualbox (although all my VMs are Linux, so might be specifics here).
Your best bet is virtualization. I use that for my CAD software, games that dont run under linux and Microsoft office
This allows me to only use Windows that 10% of the time I need my software and be using linux for all other stuff.
Only issue is that it requires some effort to get it going and some additional hardware if you want to run both at the same time.
Nice, i will take a look at this. With virtualization are both OS able to share files/ access the same files?
Kind of... You usually can mount a directory or similar from the Host machines (Linux in this case) on the Guest (windows in this case). It uses a virtual fs so it doesn't matter the filesystem used on the host or similar. That said due this is slower than direct use of files.
Alternative even if that wasn't a thing you could always do a network share in SMB or similar and as long as they have access to network it would work too.
Not by default, but can be set up without much PITA.
You have a W10 license, so just run up a VM, and install your software in that. Whilst it will be marginally slower, it will be 100% compatible and run on your host OS (this is not good for gaming in general, but if the VM software you use supports passthrough, mainly for GPU, then its pretty negligible).
Keep the Win10 VM off the WAN, and who cares how out of date it is and lacking in security updates.
Lots of people suggesting VM, but you can also consider dual boot.
I use Linux for everything except for the very few things were I can't (specific games for example). That way you have the best of both worlds.
I even have it set up in different drives and use the MOBO boot menu to choose, so no worries about Windows breaking stuff
I often play old games that have compatibility issues with windows 10. Most recently FEAR required a .dll from a site for a stable framerate.
People keep saying "gaming works" on Linux but are they talking about modern games? Do old games "just work?" I have very little free time to fart about with fixing too many issues with an old game. How well does this stuff work?
Old games are likely to work better, as new games are likely to use new features or behaviour which aren't yet handled properly by Wine/Proton.
Check protondb for reports on whether a specific (steam) game runs.
In my experience, pretty much everything that doesn't have anticheat works. I can't remember the last time a game didn't work fine, from stuff so old it stopped working in Windows Vista to day 1 AAA titles. Even DOS stuff is playable with DOSBox.
Just be aware, Linux is not windows. If you try to use it like windows, you will only experience pain. It's not hard, especially with mainstream distros like Ubuntu or Mint, but you really should invest at least a bit of effort into learning how the system works and how to use it properly.
As a funny aside, the reverse is also true. My first IT job that involved system administration I kept trying to treat the windows servers like I would Linux servers and that just doesn't work so well. Especially if you're making heavy use of powershell sessions and the administrative capabilities of powershell it can be really jarring when it works like Linux until it doesn't
Proton is amazing. There are several games I've played on my Linux laptop that have Linux versions, and they don't run as well as playing it with Proton.
Check out protondb
As long as the game isn't a title thats using something bleeding edge, it will work day one. And as long as the game isn't using an non proton compatible anti-cheat, it should work. Unless said devs arbitrarily decided not to tick the "proton compatible" box cause of some hard-headed bullshit.
I would say old games work better also get Steamtinkerlaunch which makes fucking around easy
If the game isnt steam just add as non steam game and bang steam will handle the rest
I had great experiences with old games on Linux. Mostly they work better than on a modern Windows system. For Example Neverwinter Nights 2. Under Windows movement is jittery on fast CPUs. There is a community patch for that thankfully. Under Linux it just works with WINE (the patch is advisable for other reasons there too). Also loading times are blazingly fast under WINE and Linux. On my HDD PC 1 second vs 50 on Windows. Now with a NVME SSD, Windows also only takes 2 seconds.
Of course Wine/Proton is not perfect, I still have a dualboot system for that. But I boot to Windows very rarely these days. When I do I am hit with so many slow updates, that I don't get to my game. Maybe I should stop doing them and cut of its network access.
Really old games tend to be more difficult. For a relative I set up a VM with Win98 as the performance impact won't hurt the games, some even benefit. (I believe the games where Safecracker and Theme Park) Even older than that DosBox and ScummVM work perfectly.
The real problem is when Steam drops support on W10...
Runs great in Linux Mint
The problems is the games under it. Most notably game with anti-cheat and Oculus Rift desktop games. Does the Oculus client, revive and games work under linux?
A surprising amount of games support linux anti-cheat now: https://areweanticheatyet.com
Oculus does not work, but that's expected for a Facebook product... Valve Index and HTC Vive work pretty good. I've personally played 5-10 VR games on linux with an Index I borrowed from a friend
Oh fuck Facebook. I haven't given them a cent. But there is no denying the amazing game studios they bought out for exclusives. Such as Ready at Dawn's Lone Echo. One of the best VR games period. I think I'll try to virtualize that specific use case and use linux for more gaming.
I will never buy a Quest. I am currently running first gen HTC Vive and my only savoir is the Valve Decard. Hang on gotta hit the copium.
That petition and a nickel is worth about 5 cents. Go get a better OS.
That just means more cheap, used hardware available for us Linux users in a couple years.
Wait I have a Windows 8 computer which stills works fine?
It does, but it's no longer receiving security updates and therefore if there's any vulnerabilities, especially critical ones, they will not be patched.
If it remains offline you shouldn't really have much of a problem but it's advised that you move to a more modern OS sooner rather than later if that's online.
At this point I'm mainly still on Windows because it is the easiest thing to do - I know how to use it and it is already installed on all my PCs. At least 3 of my PCs are eligible to upgrade to Win11 (2 are not), but I have no plans to ever upgrade. So, when security updates stop, that will be my motivation to give Linux another try.
Unfortunately most users will just keep using 10 even after security patches are no longer released. Eventually they'll just get new hardware. Eventually.
Give me back my custom taskbar location and then we'll talk.
You can customize your taskbar as much as you want on Linux
Yeah there's so much missing in Win11 that they straight up haven't delivered yet, it's infuriating. Feels like a beta version. It's incomplete.
Does windows 11 still require secure boot?
well, I guess I am staying with windows 10
These people... "please, let me continue being a Microsoft slave!".
Free yourselves and install Linux.
I'm so sick of hearing this and I use Linux on a daily basis
Installing Linux for us nerds is just something we know how to do. Asking a computer "normie" (which is, basically everyone else) to change their operating system is just not happening.
I couldn't imagine trying to step my mum through installing Linux if I stood next to her, and I wouldn't class her as stupid.
I maintain that for Linux to obtain mass adoption it either needs to be preinstalled or make it no different to install than a regular Windows program (which is damn near impossible).
I'd consider myself a nerd but still prefer Windows.
Some years ago I was in a Vocational college for IT and I had to deal with Ubuntu, Debian and Opensuse. I hated every second of it. I also had to deal with iMacs but that's another story.
I'm a computer nerd. I do tech support for everyone in the family. I keep trying Linux intermittently and end up uninstalling it and find I can't use it as a daily driver. Although the day I will be able to use it is getting closer. The Steam Deck is helping with this. Also Chat GPT is great for finding solutions for things that either require trawling though tons of online forums or getting shamed for asking.
I use Linux frequently but mostly to run network services and automation- stuff that doesn’t require day to day interaction or has its own web gui.
As far as my desktop go to it’s windows because I can boot it up, install a bunch of shit I know will work out of the box, and start working. I could do that with Linux too but it would take quite a bit of effort to maintain.
I currently run Linux on a secondary computer that I mainly use for streaming media while I work from home. Anything in the web browser is great in Linux, especially because I don't feel the age of my several almost 10 year old computers on Linux the way I do on Windows.
For example, I've got an old laptop with a third gen mobile i5, back when 2 cores/4 threads was common on those. It was running Ubuntu for the longest time and it was pretty jarring how slow it was when I tossed windows on there because i thought the laptop was still fine performance-wise
Just follow the handy dandy Microsoft guide to installing Linux https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linux/install
But seriously. Yes, it's true that installing a new OS is a level of effort the average person is unlikely to want to put in. But they're going to have to start because I believe the situation this Windows monopoly is causing is far worse than it appears on the surface.
It's estimated that around half of PCs in the world won't be able to run Windows 11 https://www.computerworld.com/article/3657628/more-than-half-of-pcs-cant-upgrade-to-windows-11-report.html
Sure, a good chunk of those machines probably can't even run Windows 10. They'll still be on earlier versions of Windows, even going back as far as XP in some cases.
Because of the "latest Windows" benchmark PCs depreciate only slightly slower than bananas. Part of the reason I got into Linux as a young and poor nerd was because it could run on much older and significantly cheaper hardware. But most people and organisations aren't going to bother trying to resell their computers for the measly sum they'd get when they bite the bullet and upgrade, adding millions of still perfectly usable machines to the ever building toxic soup of e-waste and using more resources than necessary when creating new Windows compatible devices.
On top of that those who are unable or unwilling to upgrade end up with an OS full of more holes than swiss cheese that diminishes cyber security for everyone.
At this point, not switching to Linux (which is really the only viable Windows alternative) and getting the longest lifespan possible out of your hardware in a safe way is frankly irresponsible.
I think this is ultimately Microsoft being irresponsible, because most people will either stick with the then insecure Windows 10, or just buy a new device that can take Windows 11. Most would rather do either of those than install Linux, if they even know about Linux at all.
It's just wild to me how BSD has basically entirely fallen off the map. Back when I first was farting around with Linux the server marketshare was pretty evenly distributed between Linux, BSD and Windows Server, then it was half Linux, and now Linux simply dominates the server space
Yea I haven't heard of companies using BSD at all these days and it isn't really suitable for desktop use. But I'm interested to see if Haiku progresses to be a good desktop Linux alternative https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/
I'm really excited to see where Serenity OS goes
https://serenityos.org/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/not-a-linux-distro-review-serenityos-is-a-unix-y-love-letter-to-the-90s/
Fascinating stuff. Think I'd prefer using this over most of the "alternative" OS that are about. But after reading more about this and Haiku I'm starting to think things like a modern web browser and video/ audio editing tools are probably going to keep me off them both for a long time at least.
The installation has always been easy enough for me, but what I struggle with is updating drivers and installing new software. Granted, I'm not the brightest bulb in the box, so there's that. I did really like the insane variety of distros and all the needs they cater to. Like if there's something specific you need your OS to specialize in, there's probably a Linux distro for it.
Nah fam, mint's a gamechanger
I switched from Win 10 to Ubuntu this year. The Ubuntu installer was easy as hell. I'd argue easier than windows.
It got tricky when I needed the non-latest CUDA drivers for pytorch fun, but most folks won't be doing development.
Also, most folks don't install windows. They'll give it to their nerd nephew or their local Compu-Hut.
My biggest gripe is Snaps can make for confusing permission bullshit when saving files or using the clipboard, but this isnt a debate about snaps... the installer is great
Most people don't install windows or ask a family member or friend to do it for them, they buy a device that has windows already on it. The number of people who put windows on a device themselves is a miniscule fraction of windows users
You're right. Over the years, I've installed various kinds of Windows for relatives, and various Linux distros for myself and my wife. I've found, particularly in recent years, Linux is easier to install and more straightforward. Yeah, I'm an experienced user, so it's fairly easy for me and not intimidating, but I can't see a Linux installation as more difficult to install compared to Windows.
Most users, as you say, don't install an OS themselves, which applies to both Windows, Mac and Linux.
I disagree with this because for 20 years both the Ubuntu and Debian GUI installer ran like a practical joke from hell. Even Linus himself said he couldn't get it to work. Only Debian really improved while Ubuntu continues to somehow explode every time I try it
Every other distro besides hardcore ones like Gentoo and Arch have pretty basic installers that greatly outshine the crappy windows 8/10/11 setup screen.
Fedora has an auto installer tool so all you really need is a USB and not some magic funky thing called rufus.
There's even entire DE setups dedicated to looking and functioning exactly like windows to the point that the average person wouldn't even recognize nor care to know the difference.
Yes actually getting someone to replace an OS is hard no matter how easy you make it because it involves doing something unknown or new. But by the same token, we used to run DOS and install windows from floppy disks like it was no big deal back before windows owned the desktop market. Talk to anyone who was a college student in the 90s and they'll probably recognize the word UNIX, even in unrelated non CS fields.
Installing Linux has been painless for over a decade, its as easy as clicking next. You're telling me Windows users can handle all the stupid bullshit Microsoft throws at them, but a couple different icons and a different name is really gonna stop them from understanding the basic desktop metaphor that has been in use since the 90s?
They weren't talking about using linux, they meant installing it. They were referring to downloading a disk image, writing it to a flashdrive such that it's bootable, making sure your bios is set to let you boot from removable media, pressing the right key for your device to select the boot media, picking the flash drive, and then navigating the installation interface.
There are definitely places where I see folks getting stuck in that process if they're not a technical user and/or familiar with linux
It's actually not a big lift for "normies", and I'm considering switching my parents to Linux after Win10 support ends. They don't really know how to use Windows, so I just have to pre-install a Linux that looks similar (probably Mint) and then put Firefox, Libre Office and VLC shortcuts in the same place they expect. As long as Firefox still can get them to youtube and facebook, it doesn't really matter what the rest of the OS can do. I'll have to find an alternative remote support solution though.
Yeah, you install it for them. He's talking about people installing it themselves.
RustDesk works on linux, at least they have a release for it have not tried it myself.
That's a shitty response.
Dude I still have a windows 7 up and running.
i hope it's not connected to the Internet
Its gonna be exciting to see penguins outside windows.
Wait windows 10 was not junk before? Since when?
I think you're probably in the minority on this one. It was generally accepted that Win10 was pretty good.
It was regarded as good in the beginning, at least in comparison to Windows 8. In the beginning it ran leaner than Win7
Then update after update it got more and more bloated and unstable, more crammed with ads, etc. Windows 10 aged very poorly imo.
MS, over the course of the life of Windows 10, transitioned from a software company to a data brokerage, and Windows 10 has reflected that. But it's nothing compared to W11 that is full-on spyware.
Windows 10 LTSC for the win
I know I'm the weird one but I liked 8 and Vista more than 7.
I still had plenty of frustrations with it. I ended up switching to Linux finally last year when it became clear Microsoft was going to force my pc to update to 11.
I mean, when you compare it to Windows 11...
God damn it, my dads computer is very old actually and he is running windows 10. There is one program which is not available for Linux which he uses to access his CCTV cameras so moving him to Linux might be difficult because of that.
Have you tried running the CCTV software in Wine? It doesn't sound like it's likely to be a particularly complicated bit of software, so hopefully Wine will have it running with a couple of clicks.
(I’m EXTREMELY green with Linux)
Could it be run inside of a windows VM?
My dad lives in Germany and I do in Korea. The really good thing about Linux is that it's easy to remotely administrate it. The bad part is that we live in very different time zones so if something doesn't work it would take a lot of time before we both have time at the same time so I can show him how to do things.
Yeah, you can basically run anything in a Windows VM. I even use a Windows VM with GPU and storage passthrough for gaming, works surprisingly well.
I really wish I could just switch to Linux but certain programs I have for school don't have a Linux version, as well as my art program that I laid for the license.
VM/WINE?
Why the fuck does that petition site even have a "Zip/Postal Code" box when it doesn't seem to allow postal codes?
If you are in Canada, you can use the digits in your Postal Code followed by two zeros. A0C1A0 = 01000 I tried it and it works.
90210 beverly hills
Haha! Of course, ol' reliable.
I miss vista