The original crackdown, the only movable object that was completely indestructible were the big yellow skips (don’t know what Americans call them).
Would play in coop with one character fixed in a spot to stop them despawning and see how many I could gather from around the map and bring back. You could only carry them in your arms preventing you from driving and climbing the taller buildings, forcing you into unconventional routes through the city, often while being shot. Think I got about 20 as my record before having to sign off.
This is such a bizarre thing to say. Why does your mind go to Americans, especially if you aren’t one? How do you know we don’t call them that too? (We don’t, but how did you know that?)
Because most of the people you interact with online, in English, tend to be Americans, so it often helps to clarify your point in terms that are more familiar with Americans to save confusion. I’ve been completely misinterpreted in the past by talking about pants (meaning underpants) where my audience thought I was talking about pants (meaning trousers).
And as if to prove my point, there is in fact a different word, though it seems a more generic term than the rather specific British English skip, that is dumpster.
were the big yellow skips (don’t know what Americans call them)
American here! I was reading your first comment, and I was mildly curious what a “skip” is. I guessed “school bus” and oh wow was I wrong. But hey, still a (probably?) public-funded vehicle that’s bigger than a normal car and thus something my 5-year old self thought would be fun to drive.
Differences in uses of the English language in primarily English-speaking countries are always fun, I 100% agree with your point about clarifying. Thanks for explaining nicely to the person above :) I’ve seen a glut of people just being nasty on Lemmy recently so I’m especially happy to see people interacting civilly when some would have gone on an insult spree.
I think I’ve seen a video showcasing this tactic. Dude with a Syringe just running around, picking up his teammates as soon as they downed. It was great :D
Red Dead Online is almost always my go to Fishing Game with friends. It just does the fishing aspect really well. Bonus points when the camp is setup near a river or pond
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.
Right now i’m mainly sticking to B41 for multiplayer. Once B42 gets multiplayer though me and my usual friend i play Zomboid with fully intend to make the switch though
Got a new laptop about a month ago. Put Fedora Bluefin on it immediately. Couple other computers/server have been running Debian flavors for year or two.
My main desktop is still Windows, but I literally never use it, especially since getting the laptop. I’ll switch it over when I get time.
I’m still tied to windows for three apps. I’ve found a Linux replacement for one, I just haven’t done the work to convert the database.
Another one I’m trying to run it’s Android version in a waydroid docker, but I’m hitting walls, no time to dig deeper.
And the last one has no replacement, and it’s too delicate to try emulating, I don’t want to nuke the shared database it’s attached to, it’s not worth the headache. So I keep a Windows VM around for the once a month I need to use that program for 🤷♂️
I’m purposely being vague about the programs, they are very identifying, but trust me there’s no alternatives.
Even with all that, I’m not looking back, win11 sucks.
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).
100% worth it. I’ve had a few issues early on but I’m rocking oldish hardware (6700k, 2080 ti). It’s been rock solid for the last 6 months though. A lot of games that ran semi poorly in Windows run great now (Control and Arkham Knight def come to mind) and some cpu heavy bullet hell style games slow to a crawl now much earlier on (I can get sub 20 fps real quick in Rogue Genesia).
The basics (getting the OS installed, some initial settings to your liking etc) is quick. Managed to go from “completely untouched build” to “we gaming on Linux now boys” in a couple hours and most of that was waiting for BG3 to download on my 100Mbit connection. Pretty much everything I needed worked right on the first boot. Then again, I didn’t have much data to transfer over.
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.
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.
I can't afford a new computer right now and tariffs meaning higher prices means I can't anticipate affording one in the near future. My plan is to see where everything's at when they stop doing updates. Unfortunately.
I'm somewhat open to the idea, but the thought of messing up and not having any computer other than my phone until i figure it out is tough to get over.
If you can install another driver onto the computer, you can put Linux on that and kept the windows OS still, in case you need it. This is dual booting. You chose which OS you want when booting up.
Is this something that's relatively fool proof to do? I'm very good at imagining disasters. That's the big mental block I got when I thought about dual booting before.
note that you should absolutely make a backup of all your important files before you muck about with installing different operating systems, it will wipe your drive, so, yeah.
if you do that and have both on a ventoy usb it is pretty much impossible to fuck something up
As long as you go with a mainstream distro you can’t really mess it up if you play games try bazzite it’s a atomic distro so it’s hard to break since the system files are read only and if an update breaks it has a duplicate file system to fall back on from before the update and is just as easy if not easier then windows to install
bin.pol.social
Aktywne