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Windows 10 support quietly extended until Oct 2027, as users reject Windows 11 (www.windowslatest.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 220 points 1 month ago (2 children)

As someone who is lazy, I find running Linux to be less work than fighting with Windows.

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  • [–] 47 points 1 month ago* (4 children)

    There's no struggle free OS, every OS has operations and processes that will need more detailed investigation, and hence read as "fighting with the operating system".

    No design is intuitive to everyone, all the time, and in all situations. I'm sure Linux is fine, but let's be real, you know what I mean.

    I'm glad that Linux is more intuitive to you than Windows. Good job finding it, and setting it all up 👍

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  • [–] 32 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Honestly, a lot of desktop environments are designed to feel very similar to Windows. I tried Mint on a laptop and started liking it right away. The setup was put it on a flash drive, and run the installer. It took 20 minutes to nuke Windows.

    My OS struggles come from trying to get windows-specific DAWs and CAD Software to work, which will hopefully come around as more people switch to Linux. I have some alternatives that I'm playing with right now.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    Fyi, Reaper and Bitwig both have excellent, native Linux support. If you're willing to re-learn a DAW, both of those are great choices. Reaper is by far the best mixing & mastering DAW out there, IMHO. Bitwig is great for composition and has awesome, intuitive modulation features, as well as great stock plugins and MPE support.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    The part that takes energy and effort is making the switch.

    I'm really familiar with Linux. I've been using it on and off since the days of Slackware. My work computer was Linux-only for several years.

    But, even with that, it took weird driver issues with my GPU, combined with the impending death of Windows 10, combined with the ridiculous heavy handed Copilot BS on Windows to finally convince me to switch my main desktop PC to Linux.

    It was just the momentum that was so hard to overcome. I knew what worked in Windows, and I knew what didn't. I had already found and installed all the programs I needed. My settings were all how I liked them. I knew the keyboard shortcuts. With Linux I didn't know what would work or what wouldn't. With Linux, there were a lot of things I'd need to install and set up, and I knew that was going to take some effort. But, worst were the unknown unknowns. I didn't know what was going to cause me problems, and didn't know if they were things I could resolve in a couple of hours or if they'd take weeks.

    I'm glad I made the switch, and the overall maintenance load is much lower than it was in Windows. The frustration factor is 10x better. But, I did have to make a real effort to make the switch. There were a few weeks where it was pretty frustrating.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I hear you on the unknowns. I just picked up a new direct drive racing wheel, and I spent half the night trying to get it to work. The manufacturer doesn't support Linux, so I have to use Boxflat. The wheel seems to work in there, but it doesn't show up in my device list under Game Controllers and Steam doesn't show it as a controller. However, after more research, it seems like that's all normal and it's probably the game itself not detecting the wheel due to it being plugged into a USB hub (which isn't a Linux issue). Sometimes ime learning the OS is fine, and it's the software that's the issue. With Windows, it was easy to assume things were fine on the OS side, and it just comes from that familiarity.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    I'm really hopeful that Steam Boxes and Steam Decks etc. mean that peripheral manufacturers start making sure their stuff works well on Linux.

    Honestly, a lot of the time all they'd need to do is document the protocol and publish it and probably someone else would build and maintain a driver for them. I think it could undo a whole chicken and egg situation. Right now, manufacturers don't build their stuff with Linux support because not enough gamers run Linux. As a result, not many gamers run Linux, which means it's reasonable for manufacturers not to build in Linux support.

    As for the unknowns, there are unknowns in Windows too. I've had to go into the registry many times to tweak something so it worked the way I wanted. The only difference is that my Windows install was the result of months or years worth of tweaking and customizing. Well, not the only difference. Linux is much more tweakable, and it's something where you go in expecting to have to spend more time adjusting things. But, Windows didn't have its unknowns too. It's just that most of them were already behind me. With Linux, I knew I'd have to start from nearly square one. I'm glad I did in the end, but it was still frustrating at times.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    How tough was the DAW to get working? FL is basically the thing keeping me on Windows at this point

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I haven't made any recent attempts to get FL Studio working again, but from what I understand, Bottles can set up an install pretty easily. Reinstalling your VSTs can be done through Bottles as well, so it's one folder containing everything.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago

    Yeah exactly. I set up Zorin OS for my family who are not tech savvy at all. It was a bit different at first but they said they felt much "calmer" using Linux. Modern Windows feels like trying to read an article online or watch a YouTube video without an ad blocker.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago

    that's not really true there's no struggles normally with an OS like Linux Mint.

    Selecting a username and password is within most peoples grasp. Click an icon on the dock and you're away

    The struggle is the apps for most people, where's Chrome? (when FF is right there on the dock), where's Photoshop etc etc

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  • [–] 41 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Linux you fight a bit when setting it up and then its like clockwork. With windows it's easy to setup, but then it starts doing weird shit you never asked for and and undoes your changes making more work forever.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Linux isn't hard to set up anymore

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  • [–] 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    Basic install yes, getting all your favourite apps and network connectivity...well, it's much better than before, but still a short term pain.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    I dunno, maybe I've just had good luck when it comes to hardware compatibility, but networking has always just worked for me. Along with audio and pretty much everything else.

    Getting the apps you want installed is the same thing you'd have to go through with a fresh Windows install too. And I think Linux package management is way easier once you do the initial install. So I would argue that Linux is actually better in that regard.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    No. Network connectivity just works unless you have some really esoteric hardware. I just installed a USB wifi ax 5400, total overkill for my telco router. CachyOS just took it in stride. Most apps, including many Window apps install painlessly. The moment Linux sees an .exe, it launches wine and installs the app.

    Right now it's mostly "just works" most people use office and internet apps anyway.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    I had to plug in ethernet to the wifi drivers updated. Map a nas drive with the correct invocation in /etc/fstab. Getting camilladsp to work in multichannel 5.1 setup, getting my fricken nvidia drivers working, getting star citizen to work (still doesn't), getting roon to work in bottles, adding the right repos even for various software.

    Linux has come a long way. It is mostly consumer grade now, but still has some refinement.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    This is part of why I like Mint ... it's like 5 clicks to install

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Mint is wonderful though I am considering switching back to a system with GNOME instead of Cinnamon because the screen reader works better under GNOME.

    I am thinking about giving NixOS another shot or at least going with an immutable system, but Mint is a great place to start your Linux journey, and hell, it's a great place to end your Linux journey if you don't give a shit about computers and just want the damn thing to work reliably.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I spent about 2 months on mint with cinnamon, switched to cachy with plasma on my main desktop a few weeks ago and honestly it's been working a lot better. Still have to poke a few things but overall I've got everything I'm regularly using going fine now.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Yeah, that's the thing - I remember installing Slackware 1.0 from floppies back in the day.

    These days, I've had my enthusiasm for technology crushed out if me, and I just want to get stuff done with as little "computer" in the way as possible

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    That hasn't happened for me, but it has shifted from desktop to mobile for me, because, for me, desktop Linux is just about fucking perfect, and I see no need to change it. But, I do very much enjoy playing around with different things like lineage OS, and possibly post-market OS on phones.

    I'd say my phone is my primary computing device so it's what I like to mess with and the laptop is just a system that I need to work whenever I pick it up and therefore it gets Linux installed on it and doesn't get many changes.

    I would say my laptop is more like an appliance similar to my toaster. When I turn on my toaster, I expect it to work. And it's the same thing with my laptop for the little bit that I need it. And my phone is the device that I mess with, primarily.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Meanwhile, I wouldn't mess with my phone because I need it for stupid things like banking :-/

    Last year I did give Haiku a crack, so I'm not completely out of enthusiasm for OS fiddling ... but it's the exception not the rule

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I do my banking on my web browser, and when my previous bank tried to force me to use their app, that's why they are my previous bank and not my current bank, because I told them they could go fuck themselves.

    I refuse to put their proprietary spyware app on my device.

    I refuse to even have a proprietary app store on my device. More or less install your proprietary app.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I like Mint. Got two boxes. 1 bazzite, one Debian and one Arch for shitz and giggles.

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  • [+] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Do you not have a need to update it?

    It literally does this for you.

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  • [+] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago*

    I meant that any update can bring issues, it's not "I installed and it works forever"

    I use Bazzite at the moment, and it actually is that. No exaggeration.

    And if an update doesn't work (hasn't happened to me in the 2 or 3 years I've been on Bazzite), ostree means rollbacks are instant and failsafe.

    Bazzite also uses topgrade as the backend for its system update utility (just a "ujust" command), and it updates everything including flatpaks and firmware.

    So it really is just one click to update everything and it never breaks.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    As someone who just installed bazzite today and fucked around with Mint a couple months ago this is very much true. Kinda reminds me of bashing Windows 98 into doing what I wanted.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    I installed Bazzite, and I had a bit of trouble!

    ... Because I pulled out the USB halfway through the install! Like the world's biggest dumbass! Couldn't boot the computer at all! Oh no!

    Then I stared at what I'd done for a while, sighed, rebooted and started again.

    And it was easy as piss. Bazzite 10/10 for me.

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