I've faced many fewer hiccups on CachyOS/Arch in the past few months than on Windows. In the first month of owning this hardware, I had an unexplained BSOD that actually bricked my whole Win11 install. And this is pretty recent/funky 2-in-1 hardware, not an old ThinkPad I've cherry-picked for good Linux support. This is an important moment for free software; the big platforms are finally cinching down on users hard enough that we have a shot at convincing regular people to join us. Please don't blow it with vague complaints.
Yep, I dual boot Linux Mint & Windows 11 and only bother with the latter when I need MS Teams, or some other proprietary software that tends to be more reliable on Windows. In terms of performance and user experience Mint wins easily.
I only rarely need to use Microsoft Office or Paint.NET and a Windows VM on Linux has solved the problem entirely for me. I don't know if videoconferencing would work as well, but I'd really recommend giving it a try! I've already gone without a proper Windows install for almost 2 years.
Since MS is making the office UX web based, I'd suggest people try just loading 365 in a browser like edge (It's generally flawless for MS products). Especially apps like Teams.
Once you realize that the dedicated app is basically just a browser shell, using a real browser becomes somewhat of a no brainer.
Edge even supports PWAs on linux which can give you the "app" experience without the app.
But the browser versions of Office products royally suck. I still actively use the 'open in app' option over the default action of opening a document / spreadsheet in a browser window. I wholly disagree with It's generally flawless for MS products
The Office-in-browser experience is laggy and slow and long-learnt familiarities are gone.
Additional old-man whinge: Outlook keeps wanting to open in a browser window now. I have enough things open in a browser that are difficult enough to manage that I don't need Outlook getting lost in that forest as well. It's convenient having a separate Taskbar icon that will definitely open my Calendar or Email.
When everything's a browser tab, what's the point of the taskbar?
When everything's a browser tab then the browser is the Operating System.
Every day I'm forced to use Microsoft at work, I'm increasingly glad I ditched it at home.
I've tried this many times and my conclusion is that it still lacks many features available in the native apps (by the way, these are absolutely not webviews). Using office online also requires signing in which many people, including myself will avoid.
I don't know how it is today, but about 3 years ago I worked in a shop that used MS Teams. I was sneaky enough to get myself a Kubuntu install when everybody else was on Windows, but I had no problems using Teams on Kubuntu back then.
I use Windows 11 exclusively for games. When will we get steamOS with nvidia support!!
Just want out of the box 4k hdr 120hz vrr and 5.1 surround sound over hdmi on nvidia gpu, it can boot straight into steam for all I care. Performance should not be worse than windows.
Is this possible? Install and it just works out of the box; of course games will have to be compiled for this... but if this becomes a major market.... then games will support it.
I would LOVE this.
Would be drop in OS replacement for my dedicated windows gaming PC on LG OLED tv. ps: These things are amazing for gaming due to fast pixel response times. Great for couch co-op!
The Open Source ecosystem is a bit weird in that your system can be as reliable or not as you want, depending on what projects you follow. It really truly is a mixed bag in the sense that you can actually have a solid setup if you are happy with it being boring.
I’m not sure what the good kind of boring is, if we could define it, it might be tautologically true that that’s the thing people want.
> Look at how popular Ubuntu VMs are with research chemists.
Are they? I actually have no idea.
> And successful chemists tend to be highly technical.
But not necessarily in any IT sense. STEM skills are very specific.
Sorry, it looks like I’m just being petulant and saying “I’m not sure” about your every sentence, haha, that wasn’t my intent but it is what I ended up doing I guess.
> The Open Source ecosystem is a bit weird in that your system can be as reliable or not as you want
I'm going to dig into this a little. This feels like shifting responsibility onto the user when things don't go well. E.g. comparing the platonic ideal of Linux when analyzing practical options. I make lots of mistakes in all aspects of my life. I know historically, and projecting into the future that I will get into trouble with Linux, so I don't daily-drive it. Yes, there are always ways to fix things when a system gets in a bad state, but there is a time and effort cost to this.
Saying it's my fault for breaking it doesn't help restore the system. e.g. "Should have used the LTS release", "Should have only installed software from the package manager", "Shouldn't have used sudo", "Shouldn't have edited a system file without knowing what you're doing". If I was doing those things, it probably seemed like the best of available options, e.g. the only way to make a certain piece of hardware or software work.
I think it is an accurate description of the situation. I agree that responsibility is accumulating at the user’s feet in an unfortunate manner.
But somebody must be responsible for making your computer work, who should it be?
The companies that sell operating systems don’t seem to be fulfilling the obligation to make a bug free and user-friendly OS. The Open Source community never really had accepting that responsibility as a “business model” because they aren’t businesses.
But that's how it works with every other tool you own? Nobody is complaining about the pencil manufacturer when you choose to draw an image, which you later don't like. Same with using software to modify the state of the hard disk, which you don't like later.
In Windows or Darwin you are not responsible, because you can't tell the computer what you want to do, but in a free OS, you can and do order what the computer is doing and that's why you also need to deal with the consequences.
I agree! My thought is this: The mechanical pencil is drawing that image because there are a combination of settings on it don't work well for a given use case. When adjusting the settings, I get poor results, or something breaks. The schematics are available and parts are available for the repair, but the job still takes a while, and I don't know how to do it. My friend has fixed something like it before, but his pencil's controls were different, and some of the tools are no longer available for the way he did it. I would prefer if the pencil worked out of the box, because I'm an artist; not a pencil engineer.
I instead buy a pencil from a different brand. It doesn't come in the color I want, but it's good enough, and lets me focus on the drawing. The pencil engineers and enthusiasts keep telling me the customizable mechanical pencil is much better. They love it, have learned its intricacies, and take pride in this.
MacOS and Windows might break[1] less often than Linux, but when it does I stand less of a chance of fixing it. Linux is usually more fiddly, but if does something I don't want its usually only a few minutes to find the config file or a plugin for the Desktop Environment to alter the behavior.
[1]: "Break" here meaning "behaves in a way I don't want"
He's saying its not very good if thats the case. Which is not the case. I am satisfied with GNU+Linux. It doesn't work against me. It would be great if there were FOSS alternatives to the remaining proprietary software on my computers. Making it sound like linux is almost just as bad, does sound weird. Also nothing about what's actually that bad about "linux".
(Agree that Liquid Glass is miserable, though.)