TLDR:
Windows 11 v24H2 and beyond will have Recall installed on every system. Attempting to remove Recall will now break some file explorer features such as tabs.

YT Video (5min)

Invidious Link

Original Github Issue

290 points
*

This is absolutely insane
My condolences to all Windows 11 users.

It’s becoming common knowledge that:

  • It’s not a matter of if but when will xyz service/application be breached and what are the potential damages it could do to me and others?

"I assume every online service is not if; it’s when is it going to be breached? Right? So I operate under that assumption, that everything is going to be breached at some point. And so that’s why Recall was so scary to me where it’s like, I don’t care how secure they say it is, like you look at Spectre and Meltdown no one thought these things were going to affect millions of CPUs and here we are, right?

  • Steve from Gamers Nexus

[Level1Techs] Microsoft Is KILLING Windows | ft. Steve @GamersNexus

permalink
report
reply
74 points

I guess I just have to keep Windows 10 with a custom group policy that disables all updates either forever or until I learn Linux.

Linux gaming is getting to the point that I could consider the switch, but I hear scary stories about Nvidia drivers.

permalink
report
parent
reply
58 points

I had no issues with Nvidia. PopOs has support for Nvidia on install…I used it and it worked

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

I had minor issues when I first installed, but I worked them all out.

Install and give it a week. Seven days. If you can’t get it all figured out by then head back to windows. If you can figure it out, you probably won’t go back.

permalink
report
parent
reply
30 points

I have a GTX 1080 and I’ve been gaming on Linux for over a year now. No issues. Only thing that you cant do is some of the new generation window managers (wayland) but even that is working well in the nvidia drivers that arent on stable yet. In any case, the previous generations window managers work great and if wayland doesnt work properly for you, you can just as easily do without it.

Point is, its worth it to make the switch. I set my partner up with Linux Mint when their machine didnt qualify for windows updates anymore and they’ve had no problems, games and all. And they would never touch the command line.

Would recommend

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Yep same with PoPOS. Great little distro. It’s been my daily driver for years now.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

hey GTX1080 user! Have you been able to get any games running with RTX? I picked mine up used a while back, and I kinda stopped PC gaming ages ago, but it’d be nice to use these features if I could. I haven’t been able to get RTX Portal or RTX Quake 2 to work right via Steam, so i figured the card/drivers just can’t handle it and I should just play vanilla DOOM instead.

permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points

Nvidia drivers are mostly OK now.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

EndeavourOS (Arch-based) works fantastic with latest Nvidia drivers, for me

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Including for sleep and hibernate? Those are what I’ve run into issues with with EndeavourOS and Garuda with my NVIDIA gpu

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points
*

If you have a new NVIDIA GPU (Turing+), you can use the new open kernel module. If you have older ones, I guess you’re stuck with the proprietary or bad unofficial open source ones. The open kernel module works good and gets the job done. No need to be afraid of it. I get over 1000fps in (optimized) minecraft with shaders. I couldn’t do that in windows.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Which GPU do you have? I’m looking for an upgrade and those framerates make me drool.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Turing +, not tuner +

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

I use Garuda and NVIDIA gives me no troubles

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

Running EndeavourOS with Nvidia on Wayland for some months now. Prior to 555 it was a bit janky at times. Since then, and now with 560, the only issue I’m having is related to sleep/hibernation mode. Game wise everything runs fine.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

I made the switch with my old 1080ti the newer GPUs work even better and mine has given me almost 0 issues with Linux mint. It’s worth the dive. Mint also “just works” so it’s super easy to get into from Windows.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

It may have been the case in the past but Ive used both the GTX 680 and RTX 3060 on Fedora with no issue whatsoever. I have veen using the nvidia peoprietary drivers and they work well.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points
*

You can run Windows in virtual machine, you know.

It would be the best if you could have dedicated GPU for it, to be able to run games with nearly 100% performance.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Try a Live USB and find out for yourself if your distro of choice plays nice with your rig. You could have your answer in an hour or so of following YouTube tutorials.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

I guess it depends on what you do, but as an awerage user - not really much to learn in terms of Linux. No special knowledge needed to use it like a normal person. I had to reformat some drives so Linux can use them and learning about Heroic games launcher, Lutris and Bottles to run non-steam games and windows software amd learn about compatibility layer built into Steam.

Otherwise it just works. Using Linux Mint. Didn’t boot to Windows pretty much since I installed it - there was no need.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

I’ve had no significant driver issues with Mint and a 2080, myself. I switched back in February, and most things – games included – just work. The few that didn’t, were easy to fix with some searching on stackoverflow and reddit (about the only thing that site is good for now).

if an idiot like me can do it, so can you.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

As others have already pointed out Nvidia drivers aren’t that bad. The only game I’ve had issues with is Star Wars Outlaws, but I think that has more to do with the game itself than Nvidia drivers (It’s not exactly a stable experience on Windows either).

The only big thing holding Linux gaming back is anti-cheat, but that’s mostly because AAA developers don’t want to allow anti-cheat on Linux. It’s worth checking out if your favorite online game can be played on Linux.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Worst thing is you may have to learn downgrade commands on PopOS if a game breaks with driver updates.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I moved to Linux Mint after a brief stint with Manjaro. I don’t prefer the Cinnamon interface, but gaming has been perfect. Bottles, allows me to install GOG Galaxy and the games run. I even modded Skyrim using a manual process and a ton of animation mods, that worked alright a lot of times with Vortex ( for the most part).

Linux can handle NTFS partitions, and just take a small line to fix if they are open during a crash. Flatpak software is really stable to install and keep installed.

I haven’t yet had a problem with steam games.

The only problem I have is with streaming services forcing Windows usage, so I got a VPN and raised the Jolly Roger to watch streaming services.

My 3080 plays games fine, and the few times it got a little slow I rebooted and it all worked fine. Discord calls and Twitch work fine. I even take my VA Online appointments with no issues.

It’s closer to going back to Windows 7 or XP, with a decent free office software.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

Nvidia drivers are the reason I end up going back to windows every time. Once installed they work fine, but installation and updating were always fraught with issues, and would inevitably break and piss me off to the point I gave up and went back to windows.

Haven’t tried since I got my amd card, but maybe Nvidia Linux drivers are less terrible than they had been.

permalink
report
parent
reply
265 points

Microsoft has been the single most effective marketing asset for GNU/Linux distributions in recent years.

permalink
report
reply
69 points

Well Valve was doing too well with the steam deck in that area so they had to trump them, second place is just the first loser.

permalink
report
parent
reply
68 points

Valve is holding the carrot, Microsoft the stick.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points
*

Tbf in recent decades.

Even tho googled-android should have been even more so, but the hardware licence fuckshittery is a huge obstacle.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

So true. I got fed up with all this Recall and AI BS and recently replaced Win 11 (which I upgraded to by accident) with PopOS. No issues so far and PopOS is much faster than Windows.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

PC gamer for a lot of my life. My old Win8.1 system is slowly dieing and I can play less and less games…win 11 has made me decide to leave the hobby. I may grab a Steamdeck, but I think I am done with PC gaming (and consoles are just shit PCs now). I have a Linux work PC, but I am not bothering with making a gaming Linux rig when I can just go the Steamdeck route.

permalink
report
parent
reply
25 points

Steam Deck is great, 10/10, would recommend, but you could also just load Linux on your old system and keep using it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

I can better justify taking the out presented and using the Steamdeck for my fix. It will be cathartic lol

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Just want to add that most games just work on Linux now. Valve has done some amazing work on this front. The Steam deck, or really any gaming PC with Steam, are perfectly good gaming boxes. Check out Proton DB if you want game-specific info.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

absolutely. I had tried Linux on various machines long ago but was one of the people that was put off by older distro’s learning curves - I’m now daily driving Linux on both my laptop and desktop and the main push for the switch is microsoft fucking around with settings, installing candy crush after updates (on a paid OS), adding more and more dumb, unsolicited, privacy invading AI bullshit with every feature update, and running like shit on a perfectly adequate machine.

Modern Linux, with flatpak support? I haven’t looked back once - had to help a friend fix something on a win11 desktop recently and was reminded of every reason I made the switch. Even if I had to jump in the terminal every day like long ago, it would still be worth it to not have bing, copilot, and edge rammed down my throat, whether I want them or not.

Windows is getting so shitty that completely non-technical users are tired of it… as soon as somewhat open minded users start to experiment and realise that Linux feature and UX parity has been achieved - I hope microsoft fucking collapses and we can all finally walk into the sunlight that open source OSes and software represent.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

I’m so fucking glad I switched to Linux this year.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Not effective enough, it seems.

permalink
report
parent
reply
195 points

Okay, this might be a non-issue: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/issues/2697#issuecomment-2403792309

To those that arrive here from any Youtube or Twitter posts, please know that disabling Recall via DISM works fine, and preserves the modern File Explorer (though some might consider this an anti-feature). CBS correctly disables it, and the disablement is preserved through reboots, just like with any other feature.

Edit: of course, the big problem here is that it’s still present (even disabled) and hence malware could turn it back on without you realising. Ugh.

permalink
report
reply
86 points

A lot of unpopular “features” and behaviors used to have DISM, policy, or registry workarounds. And MS seems to love to kill those workarounds during later updates.

If MS isn’t letting people uninstall it, there’s a reason for it, and I’d be willing to bet that users will one day find that it has been magically re-enabled by an update.

permalink
report
parent
reply
39 points
*

There will 100% be a policy to disable it. Microsoft may shit on their retail users, but there’s no way they’d force it on their enterprise clients. It’s a security and compliance nightmare and they know it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
27 points

Problem is disabling it will likely be locked behind the Enterprise edition.

Kind of like the “Recommended” section in the Start menu. There is actually a way to disable that entirely…if you have an Enterprise license. There is no way to do it on any other version.

I said it was back when they took Group Policy out of the Home edition: the long term goal is to make truly controlling Windows a premium feature that only corporations can afford, and you see that with the slow elimination of many of those settings.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

If MS isn’t letting people uninstall it, there’s a reason for it,

🤑 and control

permalink
report
parent
reply
51 points

Malware could also reinstall it to be fair, or just create screenshots on its own.

Still smells fishy that Explorer has it as a dependency, “disabled” or not.

permalink
report
parent
reply
32 points

Recall is malware, at least according to Malwarebytes!

Malware, or “malicious software,” is an umbrella term that refers to any malicious program or code that is harmful to systems.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

(though some might consider this an anti-feature)

To be fair, not everyone would say that, and the only reason you would call it an “anti-feature” is if you had an accurate understanding of the issues.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

Its odd to call Windows Update “Malware”.

permalink
report
parent
reply
56 points

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

Yeah, you are already running Windows.

If you still consider Windows Update malware then you completely missed the other 90% of your hostile environment.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Windows Update is 100% malware by definition. Remember when Windows 7 had a free upgrade to Windows 10? It would force itself into the update queue with regular updates regardless of the user’s permission, and even after x days after the user explicitly said they didn’t want Windows 10. I worked in a computer repair shop in that time. The Windows 10 upgrade that people didn’t want or agree to often failed, breaking the machine. Sometimes we could recover the installation. Sometimes the OS had to be reinstalled. It was intentionally pushing software in deceiving ways to unconsenting users that broke their machine.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

All of Windows is malware. By default you have adverts in your start menu, you have pop ups (which is not the same thing as Windows Update, pop ups are a service provided by Explorer) which maliciously install unwanted web browsers.

You can’t support Trump and then claim that only a small part of his following is due to racist bigots.

You can’t support AI and claim that only a small part of it damages the atmosphere.

You can’t support Windows and claim that only part of it is malware.

Windows 100% enables and supports this nefarious behaviour. It’s the abusive spouse trapping you before beating the shit out of you for your own good.

permalink
report
parent
reply
192 points

Thank goodness for Linux.

permalink
report
reply
68 points
*

After all the fud and opposition they’ve pushed against it over the years. It’s nice to see them finally do things to help it.

Quick edit to add that it couldn’t come at a better time now that there are companies like system 76 out there. Making Linux compatible systems that ship with Linux that you can actually recommend to someone who is a novice to pick up. They may be on a more expensive side. But what’s your privacy worth?

permalink
report
parent
reply
40 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

A few cents per gigabyte ackshually.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Owned a system 76 unit years ago. Was lacking in the QC area.

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points
*

Their laptops are built on third party chassis. I have their keyboard and that thing is SOLID. I expect their desktops (that are custom made) are also quite solid.

Laptops… I’d lean frame.work if you know your way around a Linux installer. That said, there are rumors that system76 is working on a custom laptop chassis (still, framework is hard to beat for modularity).

Edit: while not specifically QC related… I suspect the things that aren’t really custom built for them might not get the same level of care/might be more on their supplier depending on the issue.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

I switched to a Framework 13 after having a system76 Darter Pro, and it’s a whole other league. Incredibly well-built, feels great, runs great, flashy as hell, even the fingerprint reader works out of the box with Fedora KDE.

I’m sudoing in the terminal with my fingers! It’s magic! And it just works!

Also, I managed to drop it in the most stupid way so it bent the whole case, and I could get it fixed for 200 EUR, one day shipping and 20 minutes of work by myself, and that was a full casing swap, so bottom assembly plus keyboard assembly, whole case but the mobo and the stuff on it.

This is what having a laptop should work like. That’s what they took from you.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

After all the fud and opposition they’ve pushed against it over the years.

what did they do?? i havent heard of this before damn

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

They did PR campaigns against Linux and OpenOffice for quite some time – until cloud computing took off and it turned out they could earn more money by supporting Linux than by fighting it.

In fact, Microsoft weren’t happy about FOSS in general. I can still remember when they tried to make “shared source” a thing: They made their own ersatz OSI with its own set of licenses, some of which didn’t grant proper reuse rights – like only allowing you to use the source code to write Windows applications.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Privacy, security, intellectual property

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Switched a few months ago and glad I did

permalink
report
parent
reply
176 points

Linux is here to welcome you

permalink
report
reply
75 points

Man, I cling to Windows like nobody else, as I didn’t have any advertising issues and such, but this will be the final straw.

It’s already enough of a spying system but I refuse to have it as a spy on crack.

Time to read into distros.

permalink
report
parent
reply
49 points
*

As far as Linux distros are concerned, really, any distro is just a package manager with repos and a set of default utilities. Essentially, a distro is an opinion on how you should use your system, not a law. Now prepare for my ADHD-fuelled stream of consciousness (which I wrote instead of getting any work done, yay):

Stay away from Arch and Gentoo for your first distro. These are basically meme distros, especially Gentoo. They allow for a lot of flexibility and building a really minimal install, but come with install-time complexity you really don’t need. Try them later on if you’re interested. Stay away from nixOS for now too, although it’s also awesome.

Package managers

Essentially, you have two main packaging types: RPM (used by Fedora/RedHat’s dnf, previously yum and (Open)SuSE’s zypper) and deb (used by apt mostly, dunno if others).

Either one is fine, but I think you’ll probably find more software available as debs. But the difference barely exists and with GUI apps you can usually install a flatpak anyway (more on this later).

Deb

Everything deb/apt comes from the Debian lineage.

You have Debian, the granddaddy of stability, releases come every few years and are tested thoroughly. After package freeze, only bugfixes and security updates usually get added. Then you have Ubuntu, a fork of Debian with more frequent releases as well as Long-Term Support releases every 2 years. Ubuntu used to be the most recommended beginner distro, but it’s no longer the case - not just because it has ads in it, but also because it pushes Snaps over Flatpaks AND occasionally tries to force Snaps over regular packages (again, more on this later).

Then, much like Ubuntu has forked Debian, others have forked Ubuntu. There’s Linux Mint - used to have the same release cadence as Ubuntu, but now they only base their releases off Ubuntu LTS versions. Really, it’s Ubuntu without all the commercial stuff Ubuntu’s been pushing. And they maintain their own desktop environment(s), but you can get those elsewhere too. There’s also Pop!_OS which is developed by System76, a laptop manufacturer. It used to come with its’ own customizations on top of Gnome, but now they’re creating their own desktop environment altogether, which is currently in Alpha 2. And then there’s KDE Neon, which is also based on Ubuntu LTS, but it ships the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop environment, rather than whatever version is in the latest Ubuntu LTS.

Rpm

On the rpm side, you mostly have two families for non-enterprise users: Fedora, which has a similar release cadence to Ubuntu, but apparently keeps packages more up to date between releases and OpenSuSE, which has Leap (new versions every year, with critical bugfixes and security updates in the meantime) and Tumbleweed, which is rolling release, so you just get the latest version of every package that has been tested, rather than having to wait for a new release. Tumbleweed gets updated just about every day. There’s also Slowroll, which gets big updates monthly, but can still get bugfixes between those.

Desktop Environments

For just about any distro, you can get just about any desktop environment. Ubuntu and Fedora default to Gnome. KDE Neon is pretty much just meant to be used with KDE Plasma. Pop!_OS defaults to customized Gnome unless you get the alpha version of the new COSMIC desktop. OpenSUSE defaults to KDE Plasma.

For Ubuntu you get variants like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc, for whatever desktop you want, or you can switch alter (apt install kubuntu-desktop for an example). For Fedora, you can get a Fedora Spin, like Fedora KDE Spin for an example. Or you can similarly switch: dnf install @kde-desktop-environment. Same goes for all of them, really.

Desktop environments: The two big ones are KDE Plasma (close to Windows in default appearance, but a lot more customizable, and more functional straight out of the box) and Gnome, which as of Gnome 3 is just… unique, I guess. It’s different. Then on the “Help I’m running this on a computer from 2004” side you have things like XFCE and LXQT. (Xubuntu, Lubuntu get their names from these). Those work just fine too, just a bit less eye candy. There are a lot more of less mainstream ones like Budgie or Enlightenment, but you can worry about those later.

Sandboxed applications - Flatpak, Snap

Now, why did I mention Flatpaks and Snaps earlier? Those are sandboxed package managers. A package comes with a sandbox of its’ own, and Flatpak or Snap keeps a copy of all the libraries it depends on, instead of using system libraries. This means that 1) There’s never a version conflict between what’s installed on your system and what the application uses and 2) You have multiple copies of some libraries (Flatpak and Snap both I think do try to deduplicate though so if two applications use the same version of a dependency, it keeps one copy stored). 3) You can install applications your distro doesn’t even have a package for.

Both also keep system resources out of reach of the applications, so they’re more secure to some degree if you don’t trust an application. This comes with limitations, too - sometimes you NEED your application to have access to something that’s limited in Flatpak or Snap. You can sorta fix this with flatseal for Flatpak, but it’s not perfect.

The real problem with Snap, besides having a proprietary backend vs Flatpak where you can use either Flathub or another application store with it, is that Ubuntu is starting to force it upon you - including for applications you may not want to run in a sandbox at all. You’ll run apt install firefox and it’ll play a trick on you and install the Snap instead of the deb. You lose some control over your system and how you use it. You can override this, but it’s possibly more work than you’d want to take on as a brand new Linux user.

At the end of the day, I recommend using either OpenSuSE Tumbleweed (if you want latest and greatest always), Fedora, Linux Mint, or Pop!_OS. If you really want the latest and greatest KDE Plasma and don’t want Tumbleweed, then KDE Neon might make sense for you.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

A distro is way more than just package managers, it’s also the level of testing before deployment, and a shitload of configuration and design decisions.

That said, everything from one distro can generally be configured to work like it does in another distro, but it’s not always easy.

If you want to try Linux, jump right into it, if there’s something you don’t like, maybe another Distro or DE has fixed that exact thing, and it’s easy to swap.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Calling Arch a meme distro is unnecessarily insulting. I imagine the same applies to Gentoo, but I haven’t used it myself. It’s an enthusiast distro, for people who want to have control over how their system is set up while accepting the responsibility of having to set everything up.

I absolutely agree with recommending against it for somebody’s first experience - but if you’re willing to read through the guides and troubleshoot issues, you can learn a lot about how things work on Linux. It’s the kind of distro where you will have issues, and they will usually be due to your own mistakes.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

OpenSuSE

As an openSUSE user, I want to also point out that you can upgrade from Leap -> Tumbleweed really easily, so I highly recommend starting with Leap and upgrading to Tumbleweed later once you get a feel for the system and want something a little more exciting and up-to-date.

That said, I don’t recommend openSUSE for a new user unless you’re in Europe, because there just isn’t a huge userbase or single community I can point at. Support is high quality, when you can find it, but quite a bit less plentiful vs Fedora. That said, SUSE is huge in Europe, so you could probably find a lot more non-English language support.

So if you’re sold on an RPM distro, I recommend Fedora, not because openSUSE is bad, but purely based on community support. That said, my primary recommendation is Linux Mint due to community size and proximity to Debian (which also has a huge community).

OpenSUSE defaults to KDE Plasma.

That’s not really true, it asks you in the installer which one you want. However, most openSUSE users seem to recommend KDE, so you’ll probably get the best help with that desktop (and it’s what I use, now that Wayland support is pretty good).

At the end of the day, I recommend

I differ a bit. Here’s what I recommend:

  1. Linux Mint
  2. Fedora
  3. Debian
  4. openSUSE Leap -> Tumbleweed (start w/ Leap, upgrade to Tumbleweed later)
  5. Pop!_OS

I use openSUSE, but put it lower due to limited community support. It’s the perfect distro for me, and I love the different spins it has. I currently use Leap for servers and Tumbleweed for desktop/laptop, and I plan to transition to microOS for servers.

Arch

I don’t see Arch as a meme, I think it’s a fine distro and I used it for several years. However, I don’t think it should be anyone’s first distro, or even second, not because it’s hard or complicated (it’s remarkably simple), but because it doesn’t really have any guardrails, so whether you have a good or bad experience with it depends more on you than the distro itself.

That said, don’t use Manjaro, it’s not “easier Arch” or “safer Arch,” in fact I think it has way more problems than Arch does. If you want an easy install option, I recommend using something else first. If you are familiar with Arch, then use something like EndeavorOS so you don’t need to do all the setup, but as a first time user, I recommend using Arch’s official install process instead.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-15 points
*

Don’t tell people to stay away from Arch. It is not a god damned meme OS, hell even the Steam Deck production OS is built on Arch.

It’s installer is as easy to use as the other shit you recommended if you can fucking read and follow directions, but skips the unnecessary installer UIs that hand-hold (which requires just as much reading and direction following, difference is the others have a toddler-appealing colorful UI).

If old MAGA Boomers can handle text terminal DOS installs with floppy disks, a contepmorary dumbfuck Windows user will be fine too.

permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points

I’m in the exact same boat as you.

After ten hours of research you will have learned that Linux Mint with Cinnamon is the one you’re looking for, for an intro. Widely used, familiar, stable.

Feel free to read a bunch to confirm.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

Seconded. Linux Mint is really comfy and intuitive coming off of lifetime of Windows

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

It’s a great intro AND a great one to stick with. It is basically Ubuntu, the most popular distro(which is built on Debian), minus the controversial Canonical stuff, plus some additional conveniences and polish.

If I switched from Mint to Arch it wouldn’t really affect how I use my PC unless it broke functionality. 95% of usage is in terminal, Firefox, or vscode. And that includes browser-based M365 work apps.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

Linux Mint seems to be one of the most recommended for newcomers.

“Burn” the ISO on an USB drive, boot live from it and give it a try.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

I personally recommend Linux Mint. It feels just close enough to Windows to be fairly comfortable to use. Customizing the task bar on Cinnamon still feels weirdly awkward and confusing though.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

There’s plenty to read up on but I think starting with any is a good place. You’ll find stuff you dislike. I’d recommend setting up ventoy on a USB (it will let you have several linux images on one thumb drive) and testing out most importantly the desktop environment (DE).

Main ones being KDE, GNOME, and cinnamon that comes with Mint (which is a great first distro to test).

If you end up having questions feel free to DM me

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points
*

The transition is really not difficult. A distribution like Xubuntu (XFCE+Ubuntu) is very easy. Everything should work out of the box.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

xubuntu is fine if your box is a potato or if you’re coming from windows vista

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

I try to jump on Linux for years, it breaks so often for me I really lost all faith…

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Try Debian

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Ironically, a few months ago I wanted to setup Debian 12 on a ThinkPad X13, which feels like the most boring and stable thing one can possibly say. It installed just fine - but would fail to boot once installed. I absolutely require a cellular modem to work (I’m assuming this was the booting issue, but it’s a snapdragon X55, it’s been out… 4 years now?) and I tried 10+ other distros, which basically didn’t work/support the modem, so I ended up sighing and having to go with kubuntu.

I’m mostly happy with it (it ‘works’ and hasn’t broken yet) but I shouldn’t have to distrohop, read guides and get lost in a sea of dead links to (not, except *ubu) get WWAN working. It should work ootb, no fuss. So I expected Debian would have no issue, no bullshit. Bah.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points
*

Check out Aeon and Fedora Silverblue. I’m installing Aeon on Desktops and MicroOS on Servers. My computer needs to be a reliable tool. Immutable distros make it exactly that.

The last thing I want to do in my free time or during my work day is be forced to fiddle with some poorly documented and/or implemented idiocy on my personal computer because I forgot to cast the correct incantation prior to updating something. I’m not a masochist.

EDIT To the hesitant but hopeful Windows+Nvidia user: give Fedora Kinoite a try. Check my reply to @independantiste@sh.itjust.works below for details.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

I wouldn’t recommend aeon, a beta Linux distro that doesn’t work for Nvidia GPUs at the moment as someone looking for something stable. Silver Blue is great though

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
*

Things seem to have improved in the last 5 years, so maybe give it another shot. I’m on Fedora 40 with gnome and lots of extensions, and I’m constantly tinkering with it to make it look just right (for fun, not that I feel like I have to). Nothing catastrophic has happened yet!🤞

permalink
report
parent
reply
-18 points

unfortunately it isn’t. I cannot imagine a less welcoming and beginner friendly community. the reason no one uses Linux is because your communities are indecipherable and you all act like everyone is or should be an engineer in computing.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

I spent much of yesterday getting Debian to work on my old MacBook.

In theory it’s relatively straightforward, but there are so many little niggles and roadblocks that it really sours the experience.

I set up a user account upon install, as it asked me to, but when I tried to do something with sudo it just kept telling me that I wasn’t in the Sudoers group. Mine is the only account on the machine, why isn’t that set up by default? So I searched for a solution, which appears to have a bunch of different ways to do it, but none of them quite worked, or worked first time. The first few solutions involved using the terminal, but in the end it was easier to open the document in the file manager and edit it as a root user. Linux users are hard for using a terminal when they could just open a document in a text editor.

In the end I got everything set up how I wanted, but it probably shouldn’t have taken a whole day of irritation.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Linux users are hard for using a terminal when they could just open a document in a text editor.

This remains my #1 gripe with an annoyingly large bit of the Linux community, though there slowly becoming a smaller and smaller group

CLI is great for some things, but holy shit it’s terrible for all of the uses you people try to shove down it’s fucking throat. A text editor works better when you can scroll through and click around if it’s any bigger than a few lines, my audio mixer is a lot easier to use with click and drag sliders than it was as ASCII text in a terminal, and in what fucking world is “MV file/path/could/be/long/as/shit another/long/as/shit/path” faster than click-drag between the 2 windows I opened to copy the path names in the first place?

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Linux users are hard for using a terminal when they could just open a document in a text editor.

The command line is always there and always has the same basic tools, assuming the system is bootable at all. You can’t guarantee that a given system has a working GUI—it may be broken, inaccessable, or never installed. Having some kind of TUI editor installed is usual on non-embedded systems, but you can’t guarantee which one or that it’s fit for purpose (coaching a newbie through a vi session isn’t something anyone wants to do). That means that the generic instructions that get passed around because they’re fit for most systems (regardless of distro or purpose) use the command line tools.

So there is method to the madness, but if you’re coming from a “GUI or bust!” OS it can take a while to get used to.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

There was a checkmark for adding the user to that group, IIRC.

Searching for a solution using Google is problematic, yes.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points
*

No, we don’t. When people use words you don’t understand to ask and answer their own questions, the solution is simple - say that you are a newbie and ask your question in your words. Just ask additional questions when you don’t understand something. Politely, and not like “you nerds, nothing works, help me asap”.

EDIT: Who downvoted this? People really expect others to specifically limit their speech to what a random lurker can understand? And think that using words they don’t understand for interactions not involving them makes a community toxic?

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

Dear Troll, if that were the case askubuntu wouldn’t be a thing.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

I cannot imagine a less welcoming and beginner friendly community

You have very little imagination, then.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Linux people are honestly extremely aggressive here on Lemmy. Downvote away, I’m used to it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Have you tried Linux Mint Cinnamon? It’s about as beginner-friendly as it gets, has help forums, a dedicated chat built-in for getting help, a welcome screen that walks you through how to do updates/backups/firewall/etc, and works out of the box. I’m an ex-Windows user and I’ve been using Mint for almost a year now with practically no issue.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

thank you

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

That’s a horribly wrong idea of us that everyone seems to have.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Technology

!technology@lemmy.world

Create post

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


Community stats

  • 15K

    Monthly active users

  • 13K

    Posts

  • 571K

    Comments