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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Nothing Microsoft does is good. Nothing google does is good.
Choose an alternative that values you.
I don’t even value me, no corporation gives a crap. They want you and your recurrent income.
meirl
So don’t go with a mainstream option.
This “solution” completely ignores the volumes of software that is still only compatible with Windows. This is exactly the belief that Microsoft wants you to have: the illusion that you have a choice between Windows and other, equal alternatives. And before someone starts spouting off about WINE: it truly is a wonderful piece of software, and I don’t mean to disparage any of its talented contributors, but it will likely never even approach feature parity with Windows. I mean, it still can’t run the industry standard 3D modeling program.
This is always brought up but it isn’t actually that relevant. The 3D modeling profession is very small, hundreds of millions of general purpose computer users have no need for Microsoft.
I was confused as well because the industry standard (Maya) natively supports Linux. Until I looked up Solidworks and realized we're talking about 2 different 3d modeling/design fields.
I think that compared to video games, productive softwares, especially "industry standard" ones, rely more on Windows APIs at much more accuracy (and since Wine and its forks such as Proton have to rely on black-box reverse engineering to avoid copyright infringement), the API calls may not have the exact values 100% of the time which is more tolerable to videos games but much less on productive softwares.
Another reason is that most of these softwares unlike most video games are likely using many Windows' quirks or bugs and are likely less using standard (such as WinUI, DirectX,...) or cross platform toolkit (Qt, GTK,...), making reimplementing the environments and libraries to run the softwares much harder.
Oh, and not even counting that many of those softwares may also use kernel-level DRMs which Wine/Proton/Crossover/... are only userspace level to prevent pirates. This was actually a problem in video games too when many video games, mostly multiplayer ones implement kernel level anticheats or DRMs, until Valve contacted the anticheat/DRM developer as well as the release and popular of the Steam Deck make developers care more about Wine/Proton compatibility, but even then there are some developers still don't implement Wine/Proton compatibility or even worse ban Linux users for circumvent the artificial incompatibility.
I’m aware of the pitfalls.
I want you and your recurrent income.
Linux and Firefox with uBlock Origin.
I'll settle for one that has a vague indifference to me.
Slackware
The problem is that Linux's user experience is simply not good enough for normal users.
It's absolutely correct to blame Microsoft and Google. But Linux also needs to do more to appeal to non-tech people.
Hi, average user here, I've been daily driving Linux (primarily Ubuntu) for a decade or more. Most of my life in a computer is spent in a web browser, word document, or maybe a spreadsheet. Even at my office job it's the same, except for some proprietary time tracking and billing software. I'd imagine 90 percent of consumers spend the vast majority of their time on computers in the web browser. Most people don't mess around with much beyond that.
I just don't understand what is lacking in the Linux user experience. It's not any different from a Windows user learning to use a Mac computer. Figure out how to connect to wifi, figure out how to mess with the volume, open a browser and that's it.
I'm sorry, but I kind of doubt you are what I consider a "normal user", seeing as you're in a technology community on Lemmy. Just the fact that you are here indicates a higher than average tech literacy.
Look at us, all sophisticated over here.
Normal in terms of what they use their computer for
That’s probably not going to happen
I'm holding onto hope actually. I recently started dual-bootung into Mint and the installation process was a breeze. The only thing I could imagine a "typical" user finding difficult is setting up the flash drive for booting/installation. The UI is nice and familiar too. As a Linux newbie I hear that Mint is basically Ubuntu, and that (modern) Ubuntu is hot garbage, but even if it caused my computer to take an actual shit on the floor, it still beats Windows by a country mile.
I think (perhaps too optimistically) that with some more awareness we could see a fairly sizeable migration.
Why do you think it’s hot garbage?
I didn't mean to make it seem like I had any opinion either way, just that it has received some hate over the years. I did some research - admittedly it was cursory - and it looks like the issues are somewhat exaggerated.
Canonical, it seems, has made a number of poor decisions but apparently they pay attention to user complaints and revert / make adjustments accordingly. Some of the controversial things I saw were related to the Snap package manager, possible telemetry, bloatware, and some partnership with Amazon.
Some of those things were either nothingburgers or simply overblown (one person said the only thing they could see as bloatware was... a few board games), so I would take their anecdotes with a grain of salt.
Again, I'm a relative idiot when it comes to Linux, but my takeaway is that Ubuntu suffers from the typical growing pains / compromises that a relatively popular OS will inevitably encounter. Especially when most of the Linux userbase consists of power users who prefer having complete control (which is perfectly fair too!)
Use whatever distro fits your needs; as long as you ditch Microsoft, you're making a good choice :)
I too am curious. I see this often here on Lemmy, that Ubuntu is shitty. I’m wondering why.
I will say they keep fucking up the window manager, and I personally always have to go and manually install unity. Which is annoying.
But other than that, I don’t see it as shitty. What am I missing?
Well, there is a transition away from X because it’s old, but wayland is still new. People are having issues. So, just use X, I say?
Other than that, it’s the most popular distro (or a forked version of it).
Buuuuut yes, a lot of “preference” comes down to the interface.
Mint is good I hear. I’d be more interested in Pop, myself.
Which is why we're still stuck with Windows...
There’s always macOS.
Apple also doesn't care about you. It's also overpriced.
What part of the $1299 MacBook Pro and iMac, the $999 MacBook Air, or the $599 Mac Mini is over priced?
You would struggle to find the power of those for lower prices, especially with the quality and support Apple provides. And it’s nearly impossible to find hardware like that with full Linux support.
With the way the average person uses a computer, the Linux user experience would probably melt their brains. No offense to the average computer user, but we have seen time and time again that they are not the brightest when it comes to tech literacy or just don't care and refuse to care since it goes against the grain, so to speak.
Meh gamepass is cool for now. It will probably go up in price and become shitty when they get enough market share but until then it is super cool. And honestly I think bing/edge is now the better choice as a search engine/browser compared to Google/chrome. But no way I will give up my Firefox.
Edge (and that joke Brave) is chromium and that supports google’s control of the web. Firefox, or Safari on a Mac, don’t use google’s tech.
Firefox is the best for me. I thought chromium was open source though and not necessarily owned by Google.
Google controls it and allows people to use it so their own browser technology has the market share and can shape the web.
Denying google, a for-profit and evil company to shape a valuable public resource is dangerous.