I have 11, so not directly affected. But with “no more security updates” being the only real reason one needs to change, the obvious question here is if there is 3rd party software that can protect a Windows 10 system?
I remember when anti-virus software was in common use.
I tried out going 100% Linux a year ago. Unfortunately I was playing one of the very few games that has Linux issues. 100% CPU all the time was bugging me. It’s not the fault of Linux. Anyway, that’s how it played out. I may be tempted to try again soon.
People might get a little emotional about it but I bounce between Linux Mint, windows 10, and windows 11 and honestly I totally agree that windows 11 is trash. When my windows 10 computer reaches it’s limit, I might try to figure out how to run games on Linux/proton or whatever that is.
My plan is to use my Linux box as my main PC with Steam installed so that I can remote play from my Windows gaming PC since not all titles natively work on Linux for me. That way, the only activity being performed on my Windows machine is gaming and everything else will live in Linux Mint
Since you wanna Game using network anyway did you ever thought of Cloud Gaming (aka Geforce Now) ? That way you don't have a "unsecure" device in your network. From a security standpoint even an device only used for gaming is a security risk ;)
I have used nvidia on my private PC on linux for more than a decade now. They provided a stable usable 3D acceleration in KDE1 when no other company did give a fuck about linux and voodoo had only their glide interface on the console.
As a customer i am very sad about the current state on linux and as a customer my next graphics card might be an AMD. The reasons are not only the driver but also that amd provides just more memory for the same money and i think that nvidia currently is cheating their way throu the consumer market (for real imaginary AI Pictures is a performance improvment ???).
But and thats why i disagree hardly with the "fuck nvidia" ... they deserve the respect for the support much longer than any brand out there and therefor they deserve a respectfull way to express where they imho do wrong.
They deserve respect? For the criminal methods they used back then? FCK nvidia! That’s like paying respect to MS or Intel + Nvidia to destroy the market in the long term in monopoly positions.
( First of all, this is not a criticism of the users. I used to use Intel and Nvidia myself. It’s towards Nvidia and their dirty company policy. )
That would require me to abandon half of my Steam library and pay an additional cost for games I already can play. My device is on Windows 11 so I am not worried about security updates, more so the Recall “feature” and AI training.
Upgrade tool says my hardware isn’t supported, seems like I can enable TPM on my motherboard but it doesn’t work right for some reason I think I managed to install Windows 10 without secure boot or something, not sure if those two are even related. I was thinking maybe I’d have to reinstall windows 10 with those modules enabled in order to upgrade to windows 11… Has anyone else encountered something similar?
Yeah, said I had to buy a tpm module for my mobo to upgrade to win11. My steam deck works so well running arch based Linux I searched “gaming arch Linux” in DuckDuckGo and installed CachyOS. Easier and cleaner than installing windows 10 when I built my PC and the constant updates are awesome (they also offer long term support LTS builds). Highly recommend, I have an Nvidia 2070 Super and CachyOS has been a great upgrade from Windows 10.
Those two are related. Windows 11 requires both UEFI (secure boot) and TPM. Microsoft has a tool for converting a legacy install to UEFI. (backup your data beforehand as always)
Considering I’m unemployed and job hunting, and Windows says I can’t upgrade my current (old) PC, and I regularly play Warzone with friends? No, probably not any time soon.
Maybe if I get a job with a six digit salary in a city with a reasonable cost of living (or remote) so I can jump out of debt before 6 months? But I’m not holding my breath.
Get a 256GB SSD and install it on your computer alongside the existing drives.
Install a gaming-oriented Linux distro such as Pop!OS, Bazzite, SteamOS or similar, on that drive (don’t let it touch any other drive - those things generally have an install mode were you just tell it “install in this drive” which will ignore all other drives)
Unless your machine is 10 years old or older, during boot you can press a key (generally F8) and the BIOS will pop-up a boot menu that lets you choose which OS you want start booting (do it again at a later date if you want to change it back). If your machine is old you might actually have to go into the BIOS and change the boot EFI (or if even older, boot drive) it boots from in the boot section of the BIOS.
Use launchers such as Steam and a Lutris since they come with per-game install scripts that make sure Proton/Wine is properly configured, so that for most game you don’t have to do any tweaking at all for them to run - it’s just install and launch. In my experience you still have to tweak about 1 game in every 10.
If it all works fine and you’re satisfied with it, get a bigger SSD and install it alongside the rest. Make one big partition in it and mount you home directory there (at this point you will have to go down to the CLI to copy over your home directory). You’ll need this drive because of all the space you’ll be using for games, especially modern ones and launchers like Steam and Lutris will install the games in your home directory so having that in it’s own partition is the easiest way to add storage space for games.
As long as you give a dedicated drive to Linux and (if on an old machine before EFI) do not let it install a boot sector anywhere else but that drive, the risk exposure is limited to having spent 20 or 30 bucks on a 256GB SSD and then it turns out Linux is still not good enough for you.
When NOT to do it:
If you don’t know what a BIOS is or that you can press a key at the start of boot to get into it.
If you don’t know how to install a new drive on your machine (or even what kind of drive format it takes) and don’t have somebody who can do it for you.
If you don’t actually have the free slot for the new drive (for example, notebooks generally only have 2 slots, sometimes only 1).
Windows is a weapons contractor that is entangled in the domestic markets. Linux is not. Windows is spyware and anti consumer. It is time to at least be familar with Linux. Try it on a old laptop or something. Linux is free.
It’s been going great! Everything works as I expected. I now have full confidence that I will never switch back to Windows. It really does feel liberating having an OS that doesn’t track me.
How do I even get started? Do I just install Mint and figure it out from there? Linux seems so complicated but it’s been a decade since I last tried. Nowadays, I feel old and this seems like it needs too much research
Honestly, one of the great uses for gen ai is “write me a script to diagnose this problem” and then pass the output back with “write me a script to fix it”
I don’t have the bandwidth in my life to diagnose and tinker for fun, and it’s really made a bunch of big annoying things easy.
I found KDE way more intuitive than gnome, even though I was last on a Mac before the switch. Perhaps pick a KDE distro.
Also maybe list here if you have any deal-breaker apps or workflows to the folks can say if it’s worth your effort.
I would recommend to try linux first by dualbooting. Try Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux MINT and KDE Neon (i really like it because it has a Windowsy feel). You can see how those distros look here: distrosea.com
I personally dont like the stock ubuntu, was really suprised by fedora.
Whatever you do. Don’t dualboot. It gives a wrong impression of what Linux is, and complexity is not inherently a part of it. Try Mint as a live USB OS first. That means the OS runs from a USB thumb drive. This will allow you to dip your toes before you dive in. Just like dipping toes, it’s a no-compromise way of testing, but if you choose to install you already have 90% of what you need.
Also it’s soooo easy for someone not very knowledgeable to misconfigure the boot loader. Don’t touch boot loaders unless you’re okay with potentially losing access to both your original OS and the new Linux install. You’d then have to either learn on the go and repair it yourself, or beg/pay someone else to repair it.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows. Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on. Have been using it for years. The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup. Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.
I have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows.
So is KDE, that’s why I recommend it over cinnamon and not gnome.
Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on.
That has (mostly) nothing to do with your desktop environment!
Have been using it for years. The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup.
Just because you’re familiar with it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for beginners. People want HDR, mixed refresh rates, and mixed DPI displays to work properly, they do on KDE, they possibly never will on cinnamon. Just as an example, look at the rate of development on KDE based distros vs cinnamon… cinnamon is entirely outclassed. The KDE team is massive, the cinnamon team is a few people with no real funding. ( if you don’t believe me, here are the stats for the last month cinnamon side: github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly vs github.com/KDE/plasma-desktop/pulse although you’ll note kde isn’t developed on github and that’s just a mirror. It’s not even close, cinnamon has less monthly than 1/10th of the weekly for kde. The KDE text editor alone outpaces all of cinnamon dramatically, github.com/KDE/kate/pulse ) The rate of code output and refinement is not even close. The level of customization you can do with KDE vs cinnamon isn’t even comparable. If you run into an issue with cinnamon, you’re SOL, whereas KDE can actually worry about your bugs, because they have so many more developers.
That’s not even going into the massive disparity in security between the two, KDE uses wayland by default, and as a result is SIGNIFICANTLY more secure, just off the top of my head, here’s some problems with cinnamon that will not be resolved anytime soon, that have all already been resolved by this transition KDE-side:
Every single app can read your keyboard input without asking
Every single app can see what every single other app is doing without asking
Apps can fullscreen themselves and go over everything else, because they can control their own window placement to any degree they want, again, without asking.
Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.
Windows does have it… actually, it only has it. UAC already prevents you from modifying system files. There’s no way to turn it off without mucking about in the console. And it’s not a personal preference thing at all, it’s objectively superior for a beginner, and anything you can do with a normal distro can still be done with an immutable one assuming you have root access.
Reminder that just because something works for you, doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for a beginner. Try all the options extensively before you make a suggestion, you might not have made the right choice for everyone just because you have made the right choice for yourself. I make these suggestions after YEARS of extensive testing with many people as my guinea pigs.
I have tried giving people cinnamon, it has gone disasterously, usually due to DPI problems. But I don’t think it’s a safe recommendation at all, just given the security issues.
In short, i think the only reasonable recommendations for beginners in terms of desktop environments, are KDE or Gnome (if they’re mac users and are willing to learn something different), unless their hardware is TERRIBLE and old, in which case they might want lxqt or xfce, maybe.
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