• passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Honest question, how would my life improve if more people switched to Linux? God bless all the maintainers that have made it simple enough for an idiot like me to understand it

    Most things work right out of the box and those that don’t I could do less with anyway, Linux is perfect

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 days ago

      Less corporate shitfuckery all around. Right now Windows pretty much has a monopoly on the desktop, which is why they have completely stopped caring about users. Once Linux gets above ten percent market share or so, they’ll take notice. And then whine about “communism” or some bullshit.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 days ago

      linux would gain more support, more developers, and more market share, making it more universal. All of these are going to be beneficial to everybody.

        • shikitohno@lemm.ee
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          10 days ago

          Beyond games, hardware support would still be a pretty big one. If Linux is widely adopted enough, it makes more and more sense for hardware companies to make sure their new devices will be supported on launch day. Not having to worry about my network card being too new from a brand that has poor/no Linux support would be a pretty big factor in influencing my purchases the next time I’m looking for a laptop. Pretty sure I’ve also encountered people complaining about being unable to use all the features that their new GPU offers under Windows, because the company hasn’t released a Windows driver and devs working on Linux are still in the process of reverse-engineering things to write an open driver that is feature complete.

          Another big one would be configuration of peripherals, as there are a fair number that assume you have Windows to run their proprietary configuration tool. I’ve come across mice like that, as well as mechanical keyboards that require some proprietary Windows program if you want to flash the firmware and customize your layout.

          More Linux users also makes it a more attractive target for devs in general. That could mean you get a cool, new hobby project that someone is working on and decides to make a FOSS Linux version, could mean companies at least offer a Linux version of their proprietary software that doesn’t have a comparable Linux alternative. There’s a lot of software out there that people need for work or school, especially in more niche fields, where there’s not a viable Linux alternative and your job/school isn’t going to change their entire workflow just for you.

          I’m sure others can come up with further examples that wouldn’t occur to me.

  • rickdg@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    If only the Linux desktop stopped getting offended when it’s not treated like a server and has to shut down. “Wait, you had audio settings that I was supposed to remember? Cool story bro…”

    • 7eter@feddit.org
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      11 days ago

      I had this TV box that came with windows on it. After booting I had to turn up the volume and click away a noise warning.

      With Linux no more trouble 🐧

      • rickdg@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        I find people complaining about every distro. The thing is, every operating system sucks. The good thing about Linux is how that becomes your fault.

        • Bezier@suppo.fi
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          11 days ago

          It can be your fault, but if the distro is supposed to be easy and you haven’t messed with its internals, it’s probably the distro’s fault.

          My #1 priority when choosing a distro was that it’s widely used and easy, because I don’t want to deal with that exact kind of shit.

          • rickdg@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            Ultimately it’s all open source, you can make your own distro. If something doesn’t work, fork it and fix it yourself. That’s the beauty of Linux, with all that’s good and bad about it.

        • Baggins [he/him]@lemmy.ca
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          11 days ago

          I mean I was asking about your complaint. Never heard of a Linux desktop that needs to be treated like a server before

          • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
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            11 days ago

            Good to note this example is from 2022-08-30. Despite its “reputation” among some, Arch doesn’t break that often by itself.

            • danakongur@lemmy.spronkus.xyz
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              11 days ago

              yeah, i’ve been running arch for a couple of years now and the only time something broke was when the computer died in the middle of updating

      • SpikesOtherDog@ani.social
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        11 days ago

        If you would like to address an audio issue, I’ll gladly hijack the thread.

        Linux mint, occasionally my audio starts crackling. Only fix is to open terminal and run pulseaudio -k.

        Happens maybe twice a day with my system.

        • moody@lemmings.world
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          11 days ago

          That can happen when there’s a mismatch between the sample rate your audio device expects and what it receives. One way to fix this is to force the system to only allow one sample rate. I forget which files need to be edited for this, perhaps someone else will know, but you have a list of accepted and fallback sample rates, and you need to delete all except one.

          I can’t say that it will solve your specific issue, but it solved mine and I had the same symptoms.

  • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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    11 days ago

    Remember folks, it doesn’t have to be the year, it only has to be your year.

    Mine was about 19 years ago. I’m no genius, and I haven’t regretted it once. Linux has come a long way since then, while windows is deep in the enshittification trenches now, and has been for years. Your YOTLD can start today if you want it to. Tired of being actively abused by your OS? We’ve been here all along.

    And if you are happy where you are, that’s fine too.

  • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    It won’t happen until the Windows UI becomes more troublesome than the Linux UI. We still have a ways to go.

    I’ve yet to see a Linux version that can prevent the boot partition from clogging up with old kernel files. Grandma ain’t cleaning that shit up.

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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      11 days ago

      I mean, Grandma ain’t cleaning up the myriad of shit windows leaves clogging drives either… I see the real problem is going to be the average $12/hr geek squad agent isn’t going to be able to fix it for Grandma no matter how eager she is to pay $199.

    • rapchee@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      what’s “ate”? edit: oh it’s just a type for “are” isn’t it

      i would recommend getting an extra ssd, installing a beginner friendly distro (mint or pop for instance) and just boot it up occasionally, see what works, what doesn’t. i got into linux like this, gradually, over years

      • Hazel『They/Them』@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        10 days ago

        Oh I didn’t even see that typo.

        But yeah I’ve tried this and I just found my self booting less and less into Linux, to me it made more sense to just keep my PC on once I’m done playing, or alt tab out and work on other stuff with the game running in the background.

        However this old MMO is getting a unreal update sometime in the next few years so I’ll probably give it a try again and see if it’s able to run once that comes around.

        • rapchee@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          idk which mmo it is but i would assume an older engine runs more reliably on linux than a new one

          actually, for me, trying and failing to run star wars republic commando a few years ago on win 10 was what pushed me to really look into gaming on linux, and after installing it via steam, enabling steam play, i just clicked play and it ran great, i was shocked
          and you can add any windows executable to steam (although it’s a bit janky), enable compatibility, and most of the times, stuff just runs
          heroic launcher also is great, but a bit more complicated

    • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Chicken and egg. Can’t have the gamers without games and games without the gamers. Valve and the steam deck might have changed that. Even if small, if that portion of 0.0x percent of the market buy games and it is enough to offset the developing costs to port the game, companies will do it since it will make business sense.

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    11 days ago

    I have mint running on my laptop now.

    Pro tip for anyone who wants to try Linux and maybe attempt to set up dual boot with Windows:

    TURN OFF BITLOCKER ENCRYPTION IN WINDOWS FIRST.

    IF you don’t, here’s what happened to me:

    Mint live USB instance booted easily at first. I started the install process and selected dual boot. Mint setup then proceeded to prompt me to enroll a MACHINE OWNER KEY… And then realized that bitlocker encryption would prevent it from setting up dual boot.

    It said, to paraphrase, “exit mint setup, log back into Windows, disable bitlocker, then you can come back and install”

    Well that was a fucking lie because YOU CANNOT GET BACK INTO MINT!

    WHY? Because mint FORGOT the MOK!

    When you try to get back into mint from the boot selection menu, it says

    Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Found

    the upshot is that you computer will never let mint live USB session ever boot again UNLESS you disable secure boot in BIOS and rename grub to mmx64.efi in the ISO image.

    And if you DO those things chances are mint will never present you with the option to detect and set up dual boot with you extant windows instance ever again.

    I went ahead and nuked my windows 11 instance on my laptop because it was being a bitch and clearly was never going to be a good neighbor to mint. I have no major regrets because mint is nice and I like it. It just didn’t turn out how I would’ve ideally intended. But one way or another Windows 11 HAD TO GO. So, in the broad sense, I wanted to switch to mint… And I have! All good.

    • Secluded_Serenity@leminal.space
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      10 days ago

      That is a blessing in disguise. Congratulations on cleansing your laptop of that horrible operating system. I did so last month and my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

  • tempest@lemmy.ca
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    10 days ago

    These threads are always hilarious. People are not switching to any kind of desktop. They are moving away from PCs entirely. There is an entire population who only use a phone as their computer.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Can we stop with this? It was an over hyped slogan and we can give it a rest. People are slowly switching to Linux and that’s good enough

    • Spidey@lemm.ee
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      11 days ago

      While we’re at it, can we stop with “enshittification?” It’s Reddit and Lemmy’s favorite word. Such a dumb term.

    • yonder@sh.itjust.works
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      11 days ago

      The slogan is a complete meme at this point. A meme that indicates it’s the year of the linux desktop!

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        Yeah, it just comes off sarcastic to me, which apparently means people think Linux is not popular enough to talk about or something. I don’t know, it just rubs me the wrong way.

        • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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          11 days ago

          It is sarcastic.

          Wanna know the first time I heard “This is the Year of the Linux Desktop!”? 1999.

          Yes, nineteen ninety-nine. Twenty-five years ago.

          Linux as a desktop is still a laugh. It still doesn’t come close to Windows of twenty-five years ago.

          But it’s killer as a server, or a purpose-built system. My NAS/VM server kicks ass under Linux, way better than running windows. Even VMware recently switched their desktop virtualization to using Linux. This is where Linux shines.

          You could make a Windows killer desktop, except which distro? Which shell? Which set of base tools/utilities? Define “killer desktop” in the Linux community.

          Windows is the general purpose OS, with a common shell. That’s what MS did, settle on one UI (mostly), so it’s a common experience everywhere.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            Linux as a desktop is still a laugh. It still doesn’t come close to Windows of twenty-five years ago.

            Pfft, several Linux distros are an excellent desktop OS and I think people who argue against that aren’t worth my time.

            • SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              11 days ago

              Naive take imo. No distro is an excellent desktop. They all have flaws and issues that are not present in windows to an “average user”. Regular users barely know how to install apps on their phones. To be excellent all intelligence groups should be able to easily use it

              • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz
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                10 days ago

                Naive take imo. No distro is an excellent desktop.

                Wow. Not a single one, huh? I’m sure manufacturers assuming Windows and lazily building hardware that does 90% of the work in giant closed-source drivers have nothing to do with the “flaws and issues” that ALL distros apparently have some of.

                No Linux distro I’ve run has had a necessary parent process like “explorer.exe” crash causing the PC to mysteriously stop working with no indication of what’s happening, an issue I’m still encountering in others’ Windows PCs 25 years later… or having the main (Start) menu responding to clicks/taps (changing color like it’s activated) but not opening the menu, seen that on multiple Windows machines with perfectly fine hardware. Maybe it was too busy loading unwanted, unsolicited ads into the Start menu to do its job.

                The “average user” will either pay a not-insignificant amount of money to fix issues or throw away still-good hardware and buy new every 3-5 years, at which point they will still need help backing up and restoring their data unless they are sending it all to Microsoft cloud who is training “AI” with it for profit. Environmentally and financially taxing but I guess I can’t complain; more free/dirt-cheap Linux boxes for my friends and family!

                Edit: My wife and son are gaming on up-to-date OSes on PCs that are old enough to drive a car. Truth be told, my son has a slightly newer video card than that, though. Energy use is becoming a concern although it’s not really wasted when we need to heat the house six or seven months out of the year where we are.

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                11 days ago

                When people say shit like this, they seem to forget the vast amounts of issues that windows also has. How long has it been since the last time an update bricked millions of machines? Even when you only talk about things MS is directly responsible for, that timespan rarely exceeds a year. And this is even with their enormous budget and army of vendors essentially beta testing and partnering with them to keep shit like that from happening.

        • yonder@sh.itjust.works
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          11 days ago

          I guess the hope is that a large amount of people will suddenly switch to Linux, maybe because of social media popularity, a breaking windows change, or maybe a popular computer manufacturer shipping only Linux by default.

          But even if that does happen, I would think it would result in an increased adoption rate, not everyone switching to Linux over the course of a year.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            You can, but Linux needs good press, and many would see this “joke” as another reason to avoid the whole ecosystem.

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                11 days ago

                That’s not true. Attitudes can slowly change over time. Reminding people “it’s not there yet” doesn’t serve that.

          • wazoobi@lemm.ee
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            11 days ago

            I’ll have you know I’m completely serious and not poking fun at myself when I mention I use Arch, BTW!

            I think the year of Linux memes are fun. :D

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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    10 days ago

    Lain is what prompted me to switch to Linux! Watching a character who doesn’t yet understand computers fuck around with a computer really inspired me to fuck around with my computer

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 days ago

    why doesn’t everybody understand that it’s ALWAYS the year of the linux desktop, you just haven’t been invited yet, that’s the only problem.

  • Narauko@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    I am mid switch, but it’s not been smooth or easy. I chose Manjaro and maybe I chose poorly. I am a lifelong techie, and have used Ubuntu and Mint in short stints in the past, but the transition is rough.

    I didn’t attempt the switch before because I primarily played Destiny 2 and Bungie hates Linux. The enshittification of Destiny drove me away, and in theory the games I am playing now should work. I have had mixed results however.

    I play Darktide and Vermintide 2 and heavily use their modding scenes to make them fully playable. Vortex mod manager is a huge bonus for this, and I still haven’t been able to set this up.

    My Elgato equipment has community support, but has a bunch of steps to get working that I haven’t spent the time to fully research or attempt.

    I still haven’t set up an automatic mount point for my shared NTFS drive to load on boot, both because I don’t have a good grasp on the fstab and because Windows does a chkdisk every time I mount it in Linux. Dual access storage still seems iffy as of 2025.

    I am going to keep trying, because I hate Microsoft right now more than I dislike the learning curve and limitations. Not sure if that is enough to make this the year of the Linux desktop though.

      • Narauko@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        There’s the rub. Every distro has vocal supporters and detractors, and appears simultaneously good or “dog shit”. Determining who is accurate is a crapshoot, and there apparently is no right answer. Manjaro was attractive because of built-in automatic snapshots for recovery when I inevitably break my installation. There was also previously a well reviewed gaming focused Manjaro fork, though I stuck with the main fork.

        Mint had just as vocal of detractors saying it was unstable. Same with Ubuntu and I dislike the company focus anyway. Arch is Arch, and Manjaro is an Arch fork anyway. It’s the same problem someone looking at starting One Piece or Bleach or Naruto have: there is too much and even the fans appear to hate it more than anyone else, lol.

        I don’t want to distro hop, that doesn’t interest me at my current stage. I want long term (at least a year) in between reinstallations. More self hosting is lined up for the future, so desktop is dipping my toes in the water as my server is piecemealed together.

        • Diplomjodler@lemmy.worldOP
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          10 days ago

          Anyone who says Mint is unstable doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Mint is great if you just want to install and forget. Any rolling release distro will always require more effort to keep it running. Mint updates are largely painless.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 days ago

      I still haven’t set up an automatic mount point for my shared NTFS drive to load on boot, both because I don’t have a good grasp on the fstab and because Windows does a chkdisk every time I mount it in Linux. Dual access storage still seems iffy as of 2025.

      i’ve been fine mounting my C drive under linux using ntfs3g under arch linux (similar enough to manjaro) though this was prior to ntfs being natively supported in the kernel, so that may have different consequences, realistically i would advise you to use a network storage for inter device compat since you can run samba or something, which is well integrated into linux and windows (though it’s a little fucky in linux, it does work, and it works reliably) It makes life so much easier. Either that or use an external drive that you intend to be intercompat, not running NTFS, but using ext4 or something. That’s another decent option.

      My best advice to you going forward is be thoughtful about the devices and software you spend time and money on, it’s really easy when you’re in the windows environment to just use whatever exists, but on linux you do have to spend a bit more time thinking about it, but that’s just the nature of the beast.

  • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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    11 days ago

    20 years and counting its been Linux desktop for me. There really hasn’t been a good alternative yet.

  • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    This is going to be my Year of Linux, finally taking the plunge. Nothing special, just a used laptop running Mint to replace a Chromebook (who’s hardware has finally failed). Gonna try to replace my gaming PC next year once I’ve got more of a handle on the different distros and have played around with them (and more money).