Arguably it’s not wet if it’s cold enough

Yes, they called themselves the “most open operating system”. Which in fairness doesn’t imply all the “free” FSF freedoms, but at least being unable to work around restrictions or reverse-engineer to me definitely contravenes “open”.

That said, this is just beating a dead horse; literally anyone with a brain who knows what Linux is knows that Windows is less open.

https://www.threads.net/@pureinfotech/post/DCzbB-jJvfD/thoughts-anyone-is-windows-the-most-open-operating-system-is-there-any-linux-use

It is if you don’t pay for a license but at this point I don’t even want to use it for free.

Using libre office instead of word was a bit of a shift

Btw, you can change the look under Appearance > uh, “Benutzeroberfläche” in german.

I’d been using Google docs so much

Just so you know, Google owns your documents, not you.

I followed instructions to install Debian on a spare drive and gave it a go and do you know what, it was fine. It made me realise 90% of what I do is in a browser anyway, so why did I have a hang up about having the exact same browser experience in a slightly different operating system?

That’s how it’s done people. Alright let’s go 2025 Year of the Linux Desktop (Again)! Chop chop! Let’s move out!

Linux based windows emulator

Wine is not an emulator. It’s in the name.

I’m really just joking, but it’s a translation layer which has much less overhead compared to an actual emulator. That’s why you can get performance that is so close to Windows, and sometimes even better since the OS itself takes up fewer resources as well.

I was all worried about gaming then I had a revelation.

I almost never game.

I’ve been running Pop OS strictly for a few months now, but in terms of gaming, it just doesn’t quite feel like it’s quite there for me.

Take Half-Life 2 for instance. Valve is one of the few devs/publishers actually making an effort with Linux, and it shows, but it still manages to be inferior.

By default, it uses OpenGL, which is… a mess. Just plain a mess. It’s bad. Busted lighting, models look off, effects don’t draw right. This has no business being the default.

So, command line options, turn on Vulkan. 1 billion times better. Looks right, feels right… crashes on boot occasionally… and the workshop uploader crashes too…

Well, there’s always Proton, except… yeah, performance is decreased a bit. That’s nothing major here, but since I don’t have the best hardware, it becomes more of an issue with newer games. In regards to HL2, though, it also introduces microstuttering, which is absolutely a big deal.

For what it’s worth, if you want an office suite that’s perhaps not as feature-rich as Libre Office, but has an appearance and UX like MS Office, as well as better compatibility with MS Office out of the box, there’s always OnlyOffice.

It’s especially good if you’re putting it on a parent’s PC who’s only used MS Office before.

what was the conference about

I found that switching to Linux made me able to understand both OSes better, and computers in general. Half of my computer science knowledge comes from screwing around with Linux.

You can still dual boot to keep self-teaching yourself latest Windows concepts so you don’t fall behind there, while experimenting and learning on Linux in your free time.

You won’t. Just install Windows in a VM once every few years and you’re good to go.

You mean GNU/Linus?

I’ve had far more problems on Windows than Linux. For example:

• SOs computer marked the GPU driver as disabled?? WTF? I thought her monitor died…
• SO’s computer audio was messed up, and it took me an hour of fiddling to get it working (probably more AMD’s fault than anything)
• had to manually download drivers for a variety of stuff…

And this is just since I upgraded my SO’s PC a couple years ago.

Here’s a similar process for my Linux PC:

• all HW recognized OOTB - I ended up swapping my WiFi card to something better, and it worked OOTB

That’s it, everything just works. I sometimes need to fiddle w/ audio settings, but that’s because I have three audio outputs (headphones, and both monitors), and it understandably gets confused, but switching takes like 10s. That’s it. Oh, and I run openSUSE Tumbleweed, a rolling-release OS, and I’ve had fewer problems in the 5-ish years I’ve used it (and upgraded HW in between) than my SO has w/ Windows.

So yeah, don’t know what to tell ya, Linux has pissed me off way less than Windows.

Yeah, like the constant driver issues. I had to reinstall the OS and it wouldn’t even recognize my hard drive, just told me there’s no drive.

Or when it refused to use my dedicated Nvidia GPU and only used the integrated one.

Or when my sound stopped working all of a sudden.

Oh, right, those were all Windows!

People always say this as if you don’t spend time doing stuff on Windows.

Okay, anyone who’s saying this either tinkers way the hell too much without the know-how to back it up, has never used Linux for more than a week, or should probably be using this as their daily driver.

• Software is, in the vast majority of cases, obtainable through a GUI package manager, versus going out onto the Internet and finding whatever you trust to give you a valid version of the software. Software is updated all at once and without even being forced to reboot (save for some niche cases). With two (2) clicks and one (1) password, every single piece of software on the OS is up-to-date. It’s like a half-step up from an app store in difficulty.
• I have never once in two(?) years using Linux had to fuck around with software drivers. Whereas trying to connect game controllers to Windows was a fucking nightmare, and it feels like I would have to go mucking around with audio drivers every time Windows decided my headset didn’t want to work anymore.
• Windows 10 has, at least once, completely shit the bed to a point where I spent most of my day trying to get my desktop working again. Zero catastrophic issues with Linux.
• Windows 10 placed itself into a state where it couldn’t update at all because Microsoft fucked up and pushed an update that enlarges the recovery partition without regard to the users whose recovery partition is bordered on the right and can’t be enlarged.
• Linux’s install is extremely fast and trivial, whereas Windows’ is full of dark patterns, makes you sign up for a worthless account just to use your desktop (lol), and can be completely fucked if you replace too much hardware in your own PC.
• The shell experience if you actually do need to get some kind of even light power user work done is way less intuitive than Linux.
• Customizing Windows is the biggest pain in the ass imaginable. I had to go into the registry on Windows 11 just to give me the basic tools present on Windows 10’s context menu. Go try to uninstall Internet Explorer. Go ahead, I dare you.
• Whereas Linux has extensive, crystal clear, and highly specific guides for basically any problem you’ll ever fall into (see: the Arch Wiki), Windows has support forums where you pray someone has the same issue as you, and if you find it, 90% of the time it’s a canned response with fuck-all to do with the issue, terminating the thread. So then you go searching your issue appended with the term “reddit”.

I use Manjaro KDE with Wayland on an Nvidia GPU, and it works right out the box. I then have maybe half an hour’s worth of personal customizations which are not at all necessary to use. Something like Linux Mint is what I would recommend to my grandparents any day of the week over Windows.

Controversial opinion, if you enjoy Windows and want your software to work like Windows just use Windows (shocking)