Nevertheless, Valve’s work with proton has pretty much crushed the argument that Windows is needed for games. That use to be a major sticking point, preventing people from leaving Windows - but now not so much.

Well, if your GPU is NVIDIA, you will also need a bleeding edge rolling release distro for now. Other than that, anything that ships recent version of KDE Plasma or GNOME (the first one handles Xwayland with DPI scaling a bit better imo and is generally more functional)

I keep hearing people say this. But I’ve got an nvidia card, and I just went with the default Mint Cinnamon install and I’ve had no problems whatsoever. I guess maybe my card isn’t new enough to run into whatever problems other people are talking about.

… Actually, there is one minor annoyance. I get lots of nvidia flatpak updates; and they are large downloads. I’d prefer not to be downloading gigabytes of graphics card updates every week. But other flatpaks demand that I have the latest nvidia stuff, so … I guess that is an nvidia annoyance that I experience. I don’t expect that to be fixed by a bleeding edge distro though!

But we’re talking about proportions of Desktop operating systems. People using the desktop less might decrease (or slow the increase) of total desktop usage; but there would need to be more reason that just that for it to impact Windows disproportionately.

Yeah. It makes no sense. A totally crazy mental block. Irrational and nonsensical. No sane person would ever write like that. No chance anyone would ever want to express themselves in that way unless that had some kind of twisted sinister motive. We shouldn’t allow that kind of thing here. We need to make sure everyone on lemmy knows that it is not what we want in this community. Lets keep this discussion going to make sure this wisdom is heard.

Oh my god! You’re right! I see now! Thanks for clarifying that. It was totally absurdly juvenile and silly of them to write like that. Should we really even tolerate that kind of behaviour here on lemmy? I didn’t understand how bad it was until you explained it to me - but I’m sure glad you did, because now it is so crystal clear that the way that they expressed themselves was ridiculous and possibly even harmful to the community.

You think it’s juvenile to self-censor? Have you never heard and adult use swear-adjacent words when talking? This happens for all sorts of reasons. If you think this is a childish thing to do, then I can only assume social norms are very different where you. I can’t think of any child I know ever self-censoring in this way. They’d either swear, or not swear. But I do know of adults who do it.

Obviously the semi-censored version isn’t the same - otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about it. And the author has told you that it was a stylistic choice to use that different version. That’s enough, isn’t it? And judging by the reactions here, apparently the semi-censored version is even more hard-hitting than the full word!

Swearing is used for emphasis and to invoke a reaction. The attention it has brought here seems to show that it has invoked a reaction and captured people’s attention. Maybe that drawing of attention means it was fit for purpose - or maybe not. In any case, it was the choice of the author to do it like that.

Over the years, Microsoft has been quietly taking away control from the users.

There’s been a transition from normal settings that you can do whatever you want with, to “yes / remind me later” settings that Microsoft uses to badger you until you submit, to finally just no setting at all - just quiet compulsory data collection and surveillance; with various bits of mysterious software that you can’t uninstall or disable or halt - because you’re not the admin - Microsoft is.

It wasn’t always this way.

Yeah, it’s a minor annoyance… another minor annoyance on top of all the others. And another personal data leak (or siphon) to go with all the others.

This on its own is not worth switching OSs for - but as a piece of a larger picture it’s yet another reason to consider it. And for some people this may be what tips the scales in their evaluation.

And that’s why many people don’t pay attention; they don’t like to feel angry all the time.

Nar nar. You’ve misunderstood. It’s every other car is a person with life goals. It’s nothing to do with drivers.

To be fair, ungoverned mind control gas sounds irresponsible…

I first tried Linux around two decades ago, and it felt clunky to me - so I didn’t stick with it. I tried again around one decade ago; and it was a lot better, but I still didn’t quite have enough reason to keep using it yet. … But now, finally, I tried again several months ago - and I’m definitely sticking with it. I’m currently using Mint.

There are still some thing that I think are worse in Mint compared to Windows. But there is a lot of stuff that’s much better. It’s more than enough that I don’t expect to ever switch back to Windows again. The main thing is avoiding all the anti-features of Windows, such as the constant nagging to switch to Edge or activate their search bar; and the ads & other cruft in the start menu; and the constant little popups and ‘reminders’ about new stuff; and the lack of control in when updates are installed; and the ubiquitous harvesting of personal information, including ‘telemetry’ of which apps you run and when.

For me, one of the last straws was when I clicked on a help link from Windows settings, and it automatically opened in Edge, and Edge then automatically imported my browsing history and bookmarks from Firefox and automatically uploaded it to my Microsoft account. I was horrified that it would do something like that without any interaction whatsoever. I didn’t even think Edge had access to my Microsoft account until then, because I deliberately avoid using one to sign in, or for any other reason - the only reason it exists is because I used OneNote. I wanted the account to be isolated to just the app I used it for; not to automatically be grabbed by the whole OS and then used to collect my browsing history.

So yeah. I’d spent years of maintaining an ever-growing list of little system tweaks that I used to keep as junk off Windows as possible. But I’ve had enough. It’s too much. It’s not even close to being worth it. Linux has some minor problems, and some things take a bit of getting use to. But at least it isn’t systematically hostile.

I just went there to test it, and I did not see that popup.

My 1070 is doing fine, thank you very much. I haven’t felt any need to replace it.

You’re unlikely to be in conversation with hundreds of millions of people at a time; or even thousands of people. Conversations happen with just a handful of people. So those platforms with billions of people perhaps allow for some ultra-niche subgroups, but otherwise are just providing a lot of low-value noise with the additional people.

Too real. I booted up windows last week because I wanted to test something quickly before going to bed… starting it and testing my thing took about 5 mins; but then shutting down took more than half an hour.

Yeah. Timeshift is good. Fortunately, it is part of the default Mint install, and the Mint ‘getting started’ instructions say to set it up.

I personally needed Timeshift on my second week of using Mint. What happened was that I was that I saw some setting somewhere for linking a google calendar to the calendar app or something like that; and I thought “I don’t really want to see any mention of Google anywhere in the OS, even in a setting that I can just not use”; so I uninstalled the thing that lets you link those accounts… what I didn’t realise is that uninstalling that also uninstalled a heap of critical parts of the Gnome desktop. So after restarting, I had no desktop or anything.

Fortunately, Timeshift is super easy to use, and I fixed it in a few minutes. Easy to break, easy to fix.

I agree that this is an easy way to try out Linux; but I wouldn’t advice doing it like this if you have intentions to eventually make Linux your main OS. If you’re using Linux in a virtual machine, then it will always feel like it’s another layer of work, another layer of abstraction, another few clicks to get started… it just adds a bit of friction. So although the virtual machine can show you what the OS looks like and how it works etc. The experience of possibly using it as a main OS will be skewed in a negative way by having to set up and run a the virtual machine.

So I’d say virtual machine is ok if you just want to look around for curiosity; but if you have intentions to make it your primary OS, then I reckon go straight to dual boot, and make Linux the default boot option so that the friction is in switching back to Windows rather than in trying the new and unfamiliar OS.

It’s true. I installed Mint on this computer to dual boot with Windows, expecting a gradual experimental transition away from Windows. But it has been months now, and I haven’t used Windows on this computer at all, other than to just test a couple of things for a minute or so.

Switching to Linux wasn’t perfectly smooth. I’ve definitely run into some problems. But the functionality is there, and the problems are mostly about my lack of experience. I doubt I’ll install Windows on any computer ever again. Windows is getting more and more annoying with nags and ads and bloatware, while Linux continues to slowly but steadily improve.