Mint guy here, since 6 months ago, best choice I have done. If you make some research, in few time you realiese you do not need Microsoft to live in the majority of the cases.
Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
When I bought a new gaming PC a few weeks ago (where I live the pre-builts that were assembled before rampocalypse are still at a reasonable price until the stock runs out), I asked if I could get it cheaper without the Windows 11 license. The sales guy said, "well, it's already installed." I told him, "I'm literally going to take it home and wipe it for Bazzite." He said, "good call, but seriously, they're practically giving these licenses away, so even if we could it would only take like $20 off the purchase price."
Kind of a bummer to waste that $20, but honestly the satisfaction of hitting "reformat" on a brand new, slop-infused, bloatware-infested, data-harvesting-ready SSD and watching it all vanish before I even used it was almost worth the money.
EDIT: Not to mention, I got back a significant amount of space. 15+ GB.
Same. When bought a new laptop recently, I didn't give a single chance for Windows to run. The first time I launched it was with Arch installation flash drive plugged in.
Linux storeage system just works better. I use CachyOS. In Windows, I could only play like 2 games, until my ssd would get full. But Linux is so unimaginably light-weight that I can play a lot of games, and still have a few GB space left. Linux is just plain better.
I have an idea. Linux should start automatically everytime you boot you PC.
IDK that seems pretty invasive
Perhaps just GRUB and waiting for my input one extra time to confirm I actually want to use my PC at that time
I just have one kernel and one Distro with secure boot. So I directly use UEFI.
Stone senior VP obviously has his annual performance bonus tied to increasing Edge market share, and is pulling shit like this to artificially inflate the numbers.
Ditto for Bing, Copilot, etc.
Inb4 it runs in the bg putting up randoms websites in the background without any UI "agentically"
Oh wait...
Is this…is this just an even worse active desktop?
I honestly might switch to Linux. I know people say that a lot, but gaming has been the only thing keeping me on Windows.
But I've also come to realize I just don't have that much free time to game any more. Most of my computer use is putting YouTube on in the background or web browsing. I still occasionally game, but Linux support keeps improving and even if I only pick Linux supported games... I still won't have enough time to play them all.
I recommend installing Ventoy on a USB stick, then putting some ISOs on there of various distros to try. Like CachyOS, Bazzite, or perhaps Kubuntu.
You can boot into them straight from the Ventoy USB stick without having to format the USB between new tests.
And if you end up liking one over the others you can install straight from the stick.
You can do it, I believe in you random internet stranger!
Flash a distro onto a usb and boot from that to test drive it and ensure your hardware is compatible - zero risk.
I'll be that guy, use bazzite. Unless your doing advanced shit or VR it's basically everything you need in a simple package. Shit I didn't even have to install drivers for my... well everything.
Only annoying thing I'm finding is my Firefox audio goes wonky sometimes while using the built in audio booster (FF extensions that boost audio were even worse) but rebooting Firefox fixes it.
Gaming works great on Linux now and often better. The only scenarios I can think of where things are majorly behind are competitive games with anti cheat that doesn't work on Linux and anything requiring peripherals with custom software, for example SIM racing. This means that the vast majority of games work great!
Sim racing works great for me. Anything from Moza, Logitech, and even my PXN wheel "just worked" out of the box on cachyOS. Bazzite is now getting wheel support. I did have to add USB descriptors for udev rules on my simmsonn pedals, and also learn to always disable steam input and use glorious eggroll proton. JacKeTus did a fantastic job with the ffb driver and I see him on matrix ALL THE TIME helping newbies and getting stuff working.
I switched to Linux a year or two ago. Pretty much every game I've played has worked fine. (Elden ring, guild wars 2, nioh2, pillars of eternity...)
Even non-steam stuff was basically click and go with Heroic launcher
As long as you don't jump on AAA title games on launch day, you'll be fine gaming on Linux.
That, or if you are a fortnite, LoL addict... Those don't work for reasons totally up to the devs.
I game often, and 100% on Linux. Unless you're doing competitive multiplayer games with kernel level anti-cheat (read: rootkit malware), games run perfectly fine.
People are annoyed with this I was already annoyed back in windows xp when I originally switched to Linux.
Why would my browser Downloader need to start again after I download other browsers?
No means no, Microsoft.
Why does everything microslop does feel forced?
They cosy up to the Donny, …which tracks.
Because it is. The question is why a good product needs to be forced on users.
This bullshit again?
Between this and Lemmy, I'm ready for a switch to Linux now even though I don't know how it works.