this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
882 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
60052 readers
2832 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Don't connect to the internet.
Open a cmd window with F10 (maybe it's shift-F10?) and type the following:
OOBE\\BYPASSNROYou can thank me later.
Why... Why does anyone have to do this bullshit? Leave windows l, everyone for the love of everything good, leave windows!
Lol, right. Linux ain't even close to replacing windows - just look at the gaming issues that persist, or other compatibility issues.
It's great for specific use-case scenarios, but I'm not dealing with supporting friends and family when stuff doesn't work because I told them to install a Linux distro.
Besides, business doesn't have this issue - it's only on home (not Pro) installs, because for business we do all sorts of system management that would preclude this, even is MS tried to push it.
This just reflects how MS sees home users - there's no profit there (never has been, it's always been about getting people used to Windows at home, to capture the audience).
No one in my family is allowed to use Windows Home versions. They either buy pro when they get a new computer, or I get it for them.
My standard response to "just go Linux" :
I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it's still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.
As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).
I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won't even boot. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery (even then, to really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero).
There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.
There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying "you should manage data in a proper database app". No, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.
Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?
Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.
Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won't even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of windows since 2000, at the least, and would probably work on Win95.
Someone else said it better than me:
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
Linux doesn't even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it's own way), and that's a massive barrier for users.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).
My Logitech G503 Lightspeed wireless mouse works instantly on my computer. Plug and play. Running Pop!_OS.
Gaming works great in Steam and Lutris.
Can't speak for battery and power management, but I do have a laptop with Pop installed on it as well. Haven't had any troubles, but it's out of commission right now due to an unrelated hard drive cable issue.
Spot on about Excel, I suppose. I've never much liked libreoffice or Google sheets for tables.
Are you kidding? Windows does this all the time. There have been countless times when I've left work with a fully charged laptop, then bring it back the next day to literal zero charge without having used it. I no longer trust sleep or hibernate mode at all for anything longer than an hour. And I'm not the only one with this problem. My partner (with a different laptop) has had the same thing happen, and so have my colleges.
I've got some ideas about why and how it might happen; but kind of beside the point. The point is that it is not true that Windows would never let your battery drain to zero while the computer is not in use. It does do it. Often.
That's partly a manufacturer issue, a lot more difficult problem to solve than it may seem.
In my specific case the manufacturer is Microsoft. (It's a Surface Pro.) There isn't anything wrong with the battery. The gist of the issue is that there are milllion-and-one different things that can wake the computer from sleep, and then a couple of reasons why it might not automatically sleep again when ideal. If it was up to me, I'd have it so that the power button was literally the only thing that could wake it. But alas, I cannot even find a way to stop it from waking when opening the case (which I would like to do to check if it has woken up from some other reason).
In any case, I'm just saying that power management can be a problem in Windows (as well as in Linux).
Had this issue for years over 2 machines.
One had some shit in the background the prevented standby.
Other was so simple it pissed me off.... .. the damn mouse jostling around in the laptop bag was walking it up.
I'm still going to point the finger at windows because 1) there should be a better tool for identifying what is keeping a system awake and 2) should be default for a mouse to not wake a portable machine who's lid is shut.
I agree with.
Is terrible as there are many times you want to be able to use a machine with its lid closed. Layering more and more “id10t” prevention into a system isn’t great, and windows is already bitched about for the levels it has now.
2 is fine.
I know where you're coming from, I use a closed notebook with external display sometimes.
I might need to be more specific. If the notebook is used as a typical notebook, and one closes it with the intent of putting it to sleep, once sleep has been reached an external mouse should not wake it.
However if you do toggle the power settings to allow the machine to function with the lid closed and/or machine docked then you do want to mouse to wake it keep awake the machine.
I agree with you. I'm a fairly new Linux User and I start to run into these issues too. I think Linux just lends itself to projects that require you to google. It's the endless fallacy of "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"
However if we apply the average user use case: (A laptop to do light surfing, consuming media, and writing Emails) Linux can run (mostly) perfectly fine. (If you choose a reasonable Distro, not Arch). Personally I run Fedora with Gnome.(Realistically Ubuntu is a better choice for average users) Most major apps work via flatpacks and update centrally from the app store. They work out of the box. Firefox, Thunderbird, Only Office, Spotify what more does a Luser need?
Now granted one thing that does not work is legal streaming. No DRM Protection means no HD, High bit rate streaming. So you need to fall back to sailing the high seas. Power management works out of the box for example under Fedora. Never charges over 80% notifies me at 20% Sure having a better looking login screen, would be nice, but do I really care? Sure emulating a 20 year old Windows game would be cool but I can't expect to run that as is on Linux. Sure a better weather app in the notification bar would be great but I know that my local weather is never accurate anyway.
I'd say for most Luser cases Linux will work out, just don't make the mistake of thinking it's a proper workstation.
I personally think the key issues still holding Linux back are
I don't agree that there are no problems on Windows. There are different types of problems but users are so accustomed to them, they will go through more hoops to solve them, when it's trivial on Linux. We have to introduce Linux much early to users to create familiarity.
Is that actually a thing? Firefox has a drm button toggle and prime worked fine last time I used it.
I tried two weeks ago. Netflix and Disney+ resort to 720p. Amazon Prime was worse. The sound was soo bad. edit: grammar
Weird that they'd actively block higher resolutions on linux, it certainly doesn't stop their shit from getting pirated in windows.
I tried Netflix in Firefox on Windows 10 and I could only stream in 720p. Maybe it's an incentive to install their dedicated apps or something.
Holy shit I feel seen by this comment. I run Linux on multiple hosts and VMs, but using Linux on the desktop for more than a month always tends to devolve into me getting pissed off at having to basically do work like troubleshooting at home.
I fix computers(servers) all goddamned day, I want to enjoy my free time, not have to perform a regular investigation into why shots not working when all I want is to work on my scripts....
Linux has a lot of hardware problems, so the safest choice is always to do like the time I had a Hackintosh: buy hardware you already know it’s compatible.
But regarding making Linux easy for the average consumer, I don’t think it will ever be. The incentive just isn’t there. Even though some distros try to simplify things, there’s too many layers and different configs where problems can happen and not enough resources to handhold users through all the steps. Apple can only polish their operating system because they sell very expensive computers, so they actually make a profit from the average consumer.
In the end, it’s all about money and incentives, Linux philosophy was never to make things easy for the non computer savvy person. It could change, absolutely, with enough money, research, hardwork (most likely voluntary, which is scarce) and collaboration with other areas, such as good designers and UX people.
I came in to say bravo, Since day 1 on Lemmy i been hounded by Linux dude bros , whenever I say Linux is not possible I been down voted to hell.
Even as simple thing as putting a program in start-up is hassle and varies depending upon distribution, and I went on rabbit hole just like you said.
Even the friendlier(?) versions like pop os and zorin in 2024 and no where near to use ability as windows 95 is.
The worst thing is use of command/terminal , I simple just don't want to use it at all, but not possible to do that STILL in Linux and dude bros keep telling me this is essential and their grandparents are using mint. This is believable only if they surf Internet and not do anything extra at all, that too since flash is dead , cause I have first hand experienced that I had to play with multiple command lines and what nots just to get YouTube working on Linux .
Linux is not ready to be used in home setting not unless it simplifies further as much as windows does AND has lot ofnsoftwarws availability. Think of something and thwr is software for it on windows , hardly the case for Linux ANY DISTRO.
now we await on Lemmy , for Linux dude bros to come out and defend Linux with 4% usage and down votes.
To be fair IDK how to tell a Windows program how to start up automatically if it didn't have an option for that in it's own settings... I'd have to search for a Windows guide
"shell: startup" or "shell: common startup" in an explorer window take you to the startup folder for your user or all users. Drop a shortcut in there and you're done. Been that way for decades.
The upshot of your comment with the current situation is: Windows users want someone to wipe their a*** for them and are increasingly OK with the wiping hand doing other things it feels like at the same time.
At least with Linux's rough paper, it's my own damn hand.
If you want to start program on login(like on windows), then you need to use you DE's settngs GUI. If you want to start program on boot, then you need to enable startup script in your init.
So problems like in Windows are solved like in Windows.
My grandparents(and parents. and me.) are using Gentoo, but I recommend to people OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
Since steam has come out with proton I've moved completely and haven't looked back. I'm very happy with my choice. I've also had a lot less problems running Linux in both a professional and personal setting for the last 15 years. My comment was directed at someone smart enough to know a work around with this windows bullshit. And my response stands. If you know how to do tech support and still run windows then I guess have fun with this nonsense. In my opinion windows has just gotten shittier and shittier and continues to take it out on the user's. I'm glad to be completely done with them.
Because Windows is still effectively a monopoly in many industries with proprietary software solutions not found on Linux.
It's not rocket science to figure this out.
I run some windows-only proprietary software. Realistically what's the performance like with Wine or whatever it is that emulates windows?
I run a lot of GPU accelerated CAD
Some apps actually run faster on Wine than on native Windows, but it's a bit a hit and miss. You should try them yourself.
Also, dual boot is usually the best solution to begin.
Near 100% since Wine isn't a hardware emulator. But it depends on how well the software is supported, and CAD has historically been a sore point (but it may be better these days).
Apparently anything running on top of .NET is also harder than it should be.
Apps that use Vulkan or OpenGL should work as usual, apps that use d3d9 are supported with GalliumNine and dxvk, d3d10 with d3d10um and dxvk and d3d11 with dxvk only.
I rum Creo under wine, and while the performance is great, the stability is not. Creo loves crashing even on windows, and it's much worse on Wine. It's the one program that I kinda wish I had kept dual boot around for.
I develop software that has a Windows version, I need a Windows installation to test it.
I thought we couldn't use Linux because people don't want to use a command prompt.
Funny thing is, I find myself forced to use the command prompt more in Windows than I do the terminal in Linux. And don't get me started on the absolute nightmare that the windows registry is.
5 days too late; was setting up a new PC for a 10 year old, and we had to jump through all the hoops in the world in the terrible microS. family thing just so a kid can play minecraft bedrock edition.
Yeah that Minecraft setup is ridiculous now, then you get ads.
You need a Microsoft account to play Minecraft anyway, so you still would have had set one up.
And if you do connect to the Internet type ipconfig /release
Why?
Guck you. I’ll thank you NOW.
This is the way.