• Mio@feddit.nu
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    5 months ago

    I have been dual booting for some time now. Come back to windows 10 for gaming. But then I suddenly realize that the blizzard games that I play can run on Linux, and even from the same folder with the NTFS partition. I was stunned. No notable performance difference either.

    I recently shows my mum that have an old Core 2 Duo that it can run Linux Mint. She said it works, and the computer shutdowns directly when I tell it to do. No more updating windows to wait for before unplugging the power cable. Still have to dual boot Windows 10 for Microsoft Office Word document compatibility and Google Picasa.

    She also just have bought a new computer with Windows 11, could barely make it through the installation. So many questions and configuration needed to get rid of ads and popups in Edge. Need to evaluation Mint more before I try to dual boot it on this machine as well.

      • Mio@feddit.nu
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        5 months ago

        There is a learning curve for old people. It takes time. So dual boot is a must until then.

        • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          This. It feels to me like driving a stick shift when you’ve been using an automatic transmission for years. You have to do a little more fiddling but I honestly don’t mind learning a new OS that isn’t actively working against me.

          With Windows . . . on the other hand . . . every time I’ve had to go “under the hood” (tweak Registry settings, Config files, etc) it’s been to prevent Microsoft from doing something crappy to me.

          • Mio@feddit.nu
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            5 months ago

            He is just afraid of learning new things. Best way here is to show him how it works. Learning.

            • LordPassionFruit@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Oh I’ve been trying. He’s tech adverse in general, so the concept of open source software scares him because it means trusting others with regards to tech.

    • Treachery4524@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      If you want you can try OnlyOffice, it works really well as a replacement for Office. That is if you only use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I even convinced some Windows people to use it as its free, open source, cross platform and perhaps even easier to use at this point.

      For Picasa maybe digikam? It maybe isn’t a perfect replacement though. You could always try to run Picasa in a VM (or maybe even wine?)

      • Mio@feddit.nu
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        5 months ago

        Microsoft does not follow its own standard for doc and docx. Any other software tries to follow the standard, thus you can get different view of the document depending on what editor you use.

        Picasa I think is easier to replace. Just need to relearn. Leaning towards Gwenview. VM is not an option, too complicated and slow for her. Picasa has been depricated for a long time now so it is time to move on.

    • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      Picasa? That’s been google-bandoned for a while now. What does she use it for? Plenty of photo management tools in Linux. Darktable, Digikam…

      If the office alternatives in linux don’t cut it, and she uses Office 365, you can run it in Linux as a PWA

    • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      You might want to check out Libre Office. It’s document compatible with MS-Office and I think it comes pre-installed on Linux Mint.

      • M500@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        My work laptop is windows and I hardly use it for anything personal. I just unplug the usb-c dock from it and plug it into my steam deck and use it as my desktop. I’ve done everything with it you can do on a computer.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
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      5 months ago

      I had a discussion about this 1 months ago: https://beehaw.org/post/14768525 And decided not to bring it up again. :D

      My argument is, from the eyes of the website you visit, the Steam Deck user would be identified as a desktop user. That’s because the browser you are using (most likely Firefox) and the desktop environment (most likely KDE) in the Desktop mode would be seen as a desktop. In short, yes, I think Steam Deck would be counted, but only if people visit the pages in Desktop mode. So not all Steam Deck users are counted here.

      • Sparking@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Game mode doesn’t have a browser. I would be interested to find out of the steamdeck sales almost directly correlate to this increase. Not that I am complaining, it’s a great way to use a linux desktop experience. I didn’t really read how these numbers were measured.

        The other explanation I could think of is that linux desktop is being adopted widely in India. I don’t think that government’s adopting linux desktop accounts for a significant portion of the machines.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        on Reddit I think it makes sense but on Lemmy it’s usually obnoxious in my experience, because it’s not so populated and busy, the default browsing experience already gives you posts from all over… so unless you strictly browse followed communities (which i don’t know if most people even do this) you end up seeing the same thing over and over.

  • secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m so happy.

    But also liked when linux felt like a secret.

    Microsoft finally did something right: they made their shitty product shitty enough for people to realize it.

    • andrewth09@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      But also liked when linux felt like a secret.

      Don’t worry. You can still tap into that sweet sweet Linux elitism by running an Arch based system or a tiling window manager.

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
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          5 months ago

          Instead of having your windows float around, they perfectly snap and fill the space of the monitor depending on how many windows you have open. A new DE in alpha right now called Cosmic has both floating windows and tiling, you can change with just a toggle.

          Cosmic is great so far, I run it on Fedora.

            • andrewth09@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              The big common ones are i3, Hyprland, or Awesome. However, there are tons out there and there is no right answers.

          • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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            5 months ago

            I want my windows anywhere I want them, and in Cinnamon I can snap windows to corners, o top, or bottom… Being forced to work tiled is backwards.

            If as someone mentioned in Cosmic you can toggle it off and on ( and the toggle is esasily accesible, not buried in settings) I’m fine with that

            • coldy@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              “Being forced to work tiled” that’s the main feature of a tiling wm though…

              If you tried it for a while, you’d realize just how annoying floating windows really are. All that manual positioning, focus issues, getting them stuck or hidden behind other windows, etc. For big monitors, I would say tiling is just flat superior to floating windows managers.

      • secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’m sorry, can you clarify what you wrote? I read it but then got distracted by my cursor moving on its own while I was reading an article about xzutils. Perhaps I should read it again since it made no sense the first time.

    • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
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      5 months ago

      If only MS Office worked well on Linux, due to her muscle memory, my wife would’ve switched to Fedora for her laptop. Aside from light gaming (Sims 4, mostly), she’s not a tech-person at all, so that’s saying something in my book!

      • rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com
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        5 months ago

        She might adjust to LibreOffice, it borrows heavily from the MS Office UI. I think it’s also available on Windows if she wants to try it before switching. Sims 4 works great on Linux too.

    • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      This is what I was thinking when it happened. Businesses lose a shit ton of productivity and money due to Microsoft and Windows being a clusterfuck in multiple ways and they decide it’s time to switch to something more stable.

      • Doods@infosec.pub
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        5 months ago

        Actually, crowdstrike has a very bad record regarding this, their services even managed to break Debian servers one time.

        Source: some article.

    • flux@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      I highly doubt businesses would have been this fast in making the switch.

  • Beaver@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Time to speak to our representatives to switch to Linux Systems as Switzerland did for cyber security and for fiscal responsibility.

    We must not fall behind that smart country once again.

    • imsodin@infosec.pub
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      5 months ago

      What?! All that noise about Switzerland mandating usage of open sourced software in gov (there was a great step, but it’s far from mandating anything) was already weird, now we are switching to linux? And caring about security and fiscal responsibility? There has to be another country called Switzerland than the one I live in.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        You’re right, I believe the only thing Switzerland mandated (or wants to mandate?) is for projects built FOR the government to be open sourced - and even then, there are exemptions.

        Of course, unlike you, I don’t live in Switzerland, so I’m probably not as informed.

  • xavier666@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Sorry but Linux is becoming too mainstream for me now. Time to hop on to BSD

    • Aermis@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Call me naive, I know I am. But how can Linux be a moderated product to sell for desktop? I know phones run Linux, and many other products like streaming pucks run Linux (or is called unix?), but what would it take for an operating linux system to be centralized into a package to toss into a lenova laptop you’re staring at in best buy?

      • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It’s a tough sell because there is no monetary incentive to get Linux on laptops and desktops. Dell has a few computers that ship with Ubuntu, and Lenovo with Fedora, and there’s System76. The problem is that the big manufacturers (namely Dell) get push-back from Microsoft if they start to sell other OSes with their products, so they no longer have 100% domination. Microsoft will say “Oh you’re selling a few products that come with Linux? Well, we won’t offer you the ability to sell Windows anymore…” which would obviously be a huge impact to their business. They have gotten around this, but their offerings are still really slim. The market just isn’t there compared to Windows based computers. Shelf space is expensive so they go with what sells: Windows based products.

        • Aermis@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Is it because Microsoft is the big dog with money and Linux is no dog because there is no company backing Linux? Windows sells solely because Windows can push the product?

          Would it be benificial (albeit this will be extremely frowned upon by this community I believe) for a Linux distro to be backed and monetized via a corporation with a legal team to help push a Linux product on the shelves? In the short run it’s a bad idea, but in the long run it’ll familiarize the public, and push software developers for compatability. The incentive being that there’s money now involved and it won’t be a project for people.

          Because right now to use Linux for the majority of user case operations you’d need at least computer science 101 to start installing a distro, partitions, manual software installation, to get running. Or am I wrong on this part?

          • Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            There are a couple of OEMs like System76 and Starlabs that sell laptops with Linux on them, provide tech support for customers and so on.

            And no, installing most distros aren’t hard. You just click the buttons to proceed and fill out the username and password box, select your time zone and select your wi-fi network if you’re using wifi.

            You can do manual partitioning but why would you if you don’t know what you’re doing?

            Installing software in the GUI is as easy as installing software from the Microsoft Store. Just search or look around and when you see something you want, just click the Install button.

      • Zer0_F0x@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        One way to do it is for each company to develop their own flavor to ship with their laptop, in much the same way phone manufacturers just modify Android and ship it.

        As an example, check out System76 and their laptops featuring their Pop!_OS distro, which is very user friendly and stable in my experience.

      • rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio
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        5 months ago

        how can Linux be a moderated product to sell for desktop

        It kinda depends on each individuals’ use case; there’s lots of different Linux distributions that are better (or worse) for specific workloads.

        Any given laptop I’m staring at in a store will probably work perfectly fine as a general-use machine with Linux Mint installed. This is my go-to distro when repurposing a machine because it works great out of the box. If I were running a computer store and wanted to sell consumer laptops with Linux on them, I’d default to Mint.

        If someone is looking to turn their PC into something more specialized for gaming, they can look at something like Bazzite or Batocera. These will generally require some tinkering.

        If an individual or company is looking to build an office with many workstations and user accounts, they might consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux so they can benefit from official support channels if something needs troubleshooting. Many computer labs at NCSU used RHEL when I attended many years ago.

        Want a stable server environment? Debian is a standard pick.

        Want a barebones system with no bells and whistles (but great battery life)? Alpine oughta work.

        So Linux has many options for end users to pick from, which can be seen as a good thing (more options is generally good), but also a bad thing (many end users might consider the plethora of options to be overwhelming if they’ve never used Linux before).

        Linux (or is called unix?)

        Linux (Or GNU/Linux) operating systems are a modern implementation of an old research OS that was called “Unix”. Spiritual successors to Unix like Linux and BSD try to bring a lot of the design philosophies of Unix into modern OSes (I believe this is generally called the “POSIX” standard. e.g.: macOS is a POSIX compliant OS, iirc).

        If I’ve gotten any of this information incorrect, please don’t tell Richard Stallman.

        • Chris L@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          This is the greatness of Linux. Instead of having to change your workflow to be compatible with your OS, you can change your OS to be compatible with your workflow.

        • Aermis@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          So if you did open a computer shop and are selling this plethora of Linux options, doesn’t that leave you liable if there are issues with the operating system?

          If I buy a laptop and my windows is running poorly don’t I have windows support taking care of my windows problems?

          If I buy a laptop from you with mint installed and am having problems I can’t contact Linux for support, I’ll have to contact you the shop owner.

          Won’t this liability discourage shop owners from selling laptops/desktops with Linux?

          • rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio
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            5 months ago

            I’m no legal expert; I assume support can be either offered or completely avoided depending on the shop owner’s preference. Most Linux distributions come with a “this software is free (as in freedom) and comes with no warranty or guaranteed functionality” disclaimer.

            If I wanted to engage more with my clients and build more trust, I might offer some degree of troubleshooting/support for the Linux machines I sold. But I don’t think I’d be under any legal obligation to offer that service just for selling the laptops.

            Whether or not the computer shop offers support might affect whether or not a customer wants to shop at my store. Maybe I can sell my laptops cheaper if I don’t offer support, or maybe my laptops cost a bit more because I do offer aftermarket support.

      • Celnert@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Some laptop manufacturers (and at least one of the larger ones) already offer Linux (Ubuntu) as a pre-installed OS. I suspect this will become more common if/when Linux becomes more popular as a mainstream desktop OS. Most likely it will still be 1 or 2 pre-selected distros though even then.

        • Aermis@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          That’s really cool I didn’t know that was an option already. How does Ubuntu and windows compare for operating system support if I have a problem with the laptop? Is the manufacturer liable for the smooth running of the operating system? Or is the owner of the operating system liable?