The end of windows 10 support is approaching. Windows 10 will go on for a while yet.
Yeah but my W10 shoved a giant full screen ad telling me to get rid of my PC and get a new one with W11 twice. Support might be ending but if it constantly nags you to upgrade, that’s just BS.
Don’t and done. No problems, highly recommend it
Bruh…I’m still running windows 7 in one of my VMs hosted by Debian 😏😏😏
OK, really good article and I like Libreoffice (although I prefer Only office). I browse on it, game, watch videos, do pretty much everything. I am also a technical person, who can create a VM in 10 mins, add a required boot parameter, etc.
Now. I want to send this article to my colleague/friend who’s not technical at all. In the blog post I read
Start by testing Linux and LibreOffice on a second partition of your PC (for individuals)
“Second partition” literally means nothing to most people. I know: just learn, just read. But most people will not bother, or they will simply not understand the tutorials. That’s the unfortunate reality.
I think Linux and Libreoffice can become mainstream if a regular Joe/Jane can buy a laptop from Walmart with a distro and office apps pre-installed and use them like Microsoft Office. Before that time all this Linux and FLOSS stuff is limited to technical, or at least curious people willing to put some effort.
P.S. My relatives are on Linux and Onlyoffice, because I installed it for them. And it’s so much easier and more rare for me to manage and troubleshoot than Windows. But I cannot see them installing it be themselves.
Yeah I’ve been considering switching to Linux but I’m not a tech person. I know enough to play some games and install some Minecraft mods and that’s it. Since I was thinking about getting a new lightweight laptop I was gonna get one with Linux instead of windows to give it a try but every time I found one that said Linux I’d look at the specs and it says the operating system is actually windows. I’d be willing to learn how to get Linux myself but I’m worried about ruining my computer because I don’t understand even half of the technical stuff. If anyone has any up to date very beginner friendly guides, I’d appreciate the recommendation
If you are willing to learn, then you can check Linux laptops from Framework, Tuxedo and Entroware. Linux preinstalled, and hardware is compatible.
Can’t wait for the “The end of Windows 11 is approaching…” article in a few years. Keep me posted.
Windows 12, with AI even moreso integrated.
Nah, there’ll be a new boogeyman by then.
The only time I use Windows is for Fusion 360
I wish I could make parts in FreeCAD anywhere close to as good as I can in Fusion 360… I REALLY miss it since the move to Linux. I’m not anywhere near as excited about my 3D printer anymore since designing parts is a slog and the end result I am generally un-proud of. :( I feel like my only option (which sucks) is buy a second GPU for pass through and install windows 10 in a VM that only touches the internet once every 2 weeks to keep Fusion happy.
It’s possible to pass thru a single GPU. I followed this guide on my Fedora desktop
Im seeing these posts twice a day at this point. So someone like myself who is totally ignorant on Linux, I have some questions if anyone can lend advice?
I’ve been on PC windows for over twenty years now. And I use it mostly for video software like davinci resolve. Adobe software workflow. Unreal engine. I use clients harddrives and often times my own for working off of. And often times will send those harddrives to other people and their computers to finish the work. I also occasional play games on steam and Xbox App.
With that said, is it even possible for me to switch over to Linux and keep using all the same software and workflow I have for high end video production workflow?
- Davinci? Yup
- Adobe? Not even remotely.
- Unreal…yes? I’m pretty sure th development tools still run on Linux at least.
- Crossplatform work? As long as it’s in the same format from the same application, you should be fine. Just format the drive in something Windows can understand.
- Steam? Works flawlessly as do most games now. You will need to change one option in settings, because Steam will by default only show games that are verified by valve to work (most games do though). Your biggest hurdle will be the developers that specifically block Linux.
- Non-Steam games? You’ll need to do some work, but you can get them running just as well as steam games
- Xbox App/Xbox GamePass? Nope.
Davinci, yes but it can be frustrating to set up.
Unreal, I’m pretty sure yes. I don’t see why not. I think it takes effort to setup though.
Adobe, No.
You might unironically want to go for Mac. Either the laptop or desktop XD
Haha ya I assumed those things. I have a Mac that I use as well. But typically prefer a PC when worki by from home :/
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can do most of your work in linux and boot windows as a ‘secondary’ OS for stuff like adobe? I do this, and share NTFS SSDs/hard drives between them.
You are hitting weak points of linux though. I do all media work on linux (a lot through vapoursynth or ‘lower level’ frameworks than resolve I suppose), but TBH do most of my gaming on Windows, not just for convenience but for performance reasons too.
wishful thinking. i mean i get where the sentiment is coming from, but normal users are going to have a lot of problems if they make that switch. especially if they need particular types of software.
OnlyOffice is way better than LibreOffice.
Call me when Libre doesn’t suck/feel like it’s stuck in 2003.
I won’t hold my breath.
Look like you’re already stuck in 2003
Baby duck syndrome.
If you don’t like it, try OnlyOffice.
Call me when Windows doesn’t suck and it’s not getting worse year by year. I will laugh every time they add more ads and more tracking.
The big thing to consider is what software do you really NEED, what can change, and what can you do without. Then the change is easier.
Then there’s the learning curve of new software. Wheee
For a lot of people that say of thinking doesn’t work, they explicitly don’t want to/wont go without, people enjoy luxury and convenience and aren’t going to skate by on only things they strictly need
If you find yourself not wanting to switch, there are third party options for patching. I’m going to try zero patch, but I have no experience with them to date.
these articles offer ms office alternatives acting like most people write their shopping lists in excel or something. i remember my friend asking for a cheap key for office, and i asked him when was the last time he opened a file in office. after a few seconds of waiting he told me that he opened up an rtf manual for an ancient tomb raider game…told him that almost anything can open an rtf. he lives an officeless life since.
It’s not all quite as rosy.
Yes, Linux is much more capable now than it was 10 years ago and it’s much more capable of being used as a main system. I myself have been using Linux as my main system for a few years now.
But it’s also a fact that a lot of stuff might not work (even if it works for someone else) and that some things are still more difficult than they should be.
For example, on my laptop cannot wake from sleep since kernel 6.11. I have manually sourced a 6.10 from an older version of my distro and keep holding it back, so that I can use my laptop as a laptop. For someone without technical skill, this would mean that their laptop just can’t sleep any more. Hibernate also doesn’t work.
Another example is that LibreOffice still makes a lot of formatting mistakes when it has to open word documents. And sure, everyone could just switch to odf, but it’s not quite as easy to make everyone else switch to odf. It makes it really hard to use LibreOffice in any kind of professional environment. Wouldn’t want to make a powerpoint presentation that then looks like shit when it’s played on a different PC.
Lastly, Nvidia sucks, but it’s also close to the only option for laptops with dGPUs. When I look for laptops with dGPUs available in my area on a price comparison platform, I find 760 laptops with Nvidia GPUs and only 3 with AMD, all of which are priced at least €500 more than comparable Nvidia devices. So if you want to go for a gaming laptop, Nvidia is pretty much the only option, and under Linux it really sucks. Steam games generally work ok for me, but trying to use Heroic Launcher to play anything from my gigantic library of free Epic/Amazon/GoG games, about 10% of the games I tried actually work. And even with those that work, my laptop sometimes just decides that a slide show with 3 FPS is good enough. That stays even after reboots and resets, and after a few days it returns to normal. Only to go back to slideshow mode a few days later.
If you just use your laptop to run a browser, I can recommend Linux 100%.
If you want to do anything else and don’t have any technical skills and/or don’t want to spend hours fixing things that should just work, I can’t fully recommend it.
I read posts just like yours ten years ago.
I guess you aren’t wrong. There are a lot of advances but stability and small but really annoying bugs remain a huge pain point.
I am a developer and Linux is my native environment in production systems. I wanted to use Linux on my laptop but sleeping / waking up never worked well enough. It could not switch from integrated video card to a discrete one ending up always using the discrete one which drained the battery in 30 minutes. All in all, it was usable but the details didn’t work so I gave up. That was years ago and eversince no customer really allows Linux…
Sleep/hibernate has been a pretty big problem for a while. As for the gpu, have you checked out NixOS? There’s ways to enforce your integrated card to handle everything and change states for certain apps to the discreet card.
It takes a bit to learn, but nixlang is pretty simple. I’ve heard it referred to as “JSON with functions”. It also has the largest package repository of any OS and is atomic, so its hard as hell to break. You can even make separate, containerized dev environments with flakes.
