Already on Linux.
Life is good 👍
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I have been happy as a Linux user for more than ten years now. Never looked back. I use Trisquel.
What is the big difference always thought about it switching but I am a Windows user since 95. I don’t want to have something where it requires effort. I play on the computer and relax and thats it. How many programs feature the linux option? Is there like a video I can learn about the difference? I just like my point and double click.
Even Windows has its moments, bad updates fuck you over a bit.
Most distros just install and work. If you take a 1-2+ year-old system and let Linux wipe it, most of them will just kinda work. Brand new hardware is always dicey, it’s better to buy last years model. Steam and web browsers do what you’ll expect. Updates just work. Steam games are generally doable; you just have to flip a switch in Steam to use emulation. The big exception on games is stuff with kernel-level anti-cheat. Valorant, Fortnite, PUBG, Genshin Impact.
Now, if you start using hardware that needs custom apps, RBG controllers, custom webcam controls, If you used nvidia broadcasting suite, outlook, photoshop, Then, you’ll find the effort. You need to find alternatives or try to run stuff in wine, and learning new apps is work and feels bad everything will feel like a downgrade.
Replacing hardware can also be dicey. Solutions are generally not all that bad, but definintely can turn into work.
If you just need some steam and a web browser, you almost can’t go wrong, if you want to emulate every inch of what you were doing in windows outside of that, you’re likely to have to work for it.
Most Linux distributions nowadays are all “point and click” (as in you don’t have to use the command line if you don’t want.) and they do pretty much everything Windows does. With some minor exceptions like some games that don’t run on Linux.
Try a live USB, lets you boot into a linux flavour without needing to install it (plus has handy buttons to start a real install if you desire).
I procrastinated moving to linux for pretty much the same reason. I hated windows more and more with each passing day but wasn’t excited about the part of the learning curve where I was even less effective using linux than I was at using windows.
But I was pleasantly surprised to find I didn’t have to go through that stage at all. The same “discover settings” works for customizing (but it’s better because linux devs don’t have any metrics pushed on them by marketing or MBAs who think user goodwill and patience is infinite when they are “captured”, leading to hidden or buried settings so most users just go with what MS wants).
Setup was easier, though deceptively so because I wasn’t expecting the answer to “gpu drivers?” to be “already installed” and was skeptical until I had a game running. I did do a bunch of reading during the process but could have just used the defaults for most things and kinda regret some where I didn’t (like snapshots are probably worth the disk space they use).
But the best part is that I haven’t had to go on little “ok why the fuck is this <back to the default setting/behaving differently/addressing me without my prompting or a reason worthy of my PC interrupting me>?” adventures and wade through outdated MS help forum posts where if the problem was solved, it wasn’t by the useless MS rep that seems to be struggling just to understand the words being used (indicated by copy/pasting anything that is vaguely related as a response, rather than actually addressing the question) to either figure out how to force it or give up until the next time it annoys me enough to search again.
I haven’t had a single imaginary “it’s my fucking computer, not yours” argument since switching and wish I had just tried sooner because it was way less friction than expected.
If you’re interested in Linux, you can boot from it without installing to try it out. Nearly every distribution has a live boot option.
As for differences, the entire OS is different, but with something like KDE, it’s still very much “point and click”. You don’t need to be a programmer to use it. This is especially true if you run most things through a browser.
The biggest disadvantage is program compatibility. Windows applications need translation layers for Windows apps to run on Linux and they don’t always work. Many application makers, including people like Steam for gaming, have full Linux support (all of Valve’s hardware like the Steam deck runs Linux).
If you want to try it out in a non-live way with a “safety net”, you can run a dual boot with both Windows and Linux and choose between them at boot. Or you can install Windows in a VM and run your Windows-specific programs until you find Linux alternatives.
It’s a bit of work, but it truly frees your PC. I made the switch from Windows to Linux first with a dual boot…then only Windows for VR, and now I’ve got everything on Linux. I haven’t booted into Windows on any of my PCs in 4+ years at this point and I couldn’t be happier.
That said, use what works for you. If that’s Windows or MacOS, that’s fine. Just know the advantages and disadvantages.
Until it is not should be the motto
The PC Gamer article’s title also says “upgrade or”. That’s a heck of a detail to editorialize out of the title.
From the Mozilla post it cites:
After this, no security updates will be provided and you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to a supported Microsoft Windows version.
Or, if your current hardware can’t handle Windows 10 or higher for some reason, you can switch to a Linux-based operating system. The vast majority of Linux distributions come with Firefox as the default browser.
I agree switching to Linux is the better option. I want to try Bazzite.
Bazzite is amazing, nearly bulletproof even?
I had a few times where it booted to the grub emergency shell, but it literally just fixed itself. Just reboot and it uses the other A/B slot. And the next update attempt just fixes whatever the problem was. That’s only happened twice in the last 5 months since I switched. Most longtime Linux users should be very familiar with the grub emergency shell, but I’ve never been on a distro where it just fixes itself. I don’t ever have to think or worry about updates, it’s just a reliable daily driver. It’s sick.
As people have said, Bazzite is immutable. You can install system packages/libraries if you absolutely need to, but you really should run your custom stuff in a Distrobox instead. Distrobox is preinstalled, supports graphical apps automatically, and most of the time you won’t even notice it’s not your real OS.
I think Bazzite is more stable and usable than Windows now. I’m tempted to switch my parents to it, it’s been much more fault tolerant than Windows 11.
Yeah, Linux is an afterthought, but I’m glad that they brought it up at all. They could’ve mentioned how Linux is more privacy-conscious than Windows, but that might’ve opened them up to a lawsuit.
Since most of Lemmy users are Linux fans, this headline sounds nice but is a bit misleading if you read the original post from Mozilla:
How can I get the newest features of Firefox?
If you want to keep your Firefox up to date, with all the latest features and security updates, you need to upgrade your operating system to Windows 10 or higher. In some cases, Microsoft may require newer hardware in order to support the newer operating system. After upgrading, you can easily reinstall Firefox and keep all of your settings.
Or, if your current hardware can’t handle Windows 10 or higher for some reason, you can switch to a Linux-based operating system. The vast majority of Linux distributions come with Firefox as the default browser. Please see the support websites for the version of Linux that you’re interested in.
sounds nice but is a bit misleading
To me it even sounds kind of scary. If they are telling users you need to switch your OS to continue using our app, that is going to isolate users and further decrease user base and market share. And apps that no one uses usually die. So for people who like Firefox, it doesn’t sound so nice. I’m also a Linux user, but I’m not sure if this is a positive way to drive users to Linux. (Thought it does mention windows 10 upgrade hardware requirement limitations, which might be a positive way to drive users to Linux, thanks Microsoft.)
Those versions of windows haven’t had support for years. They shouldn’t even be connected to the internet.
They shouldn’t even be connected to the internet.
Yes. What’s also true is that sometimes they must be. You will disagree until you find the exception.
There’s nothing great about companies dropping support and also keeping the code in-house so we can’t contract out improvements and fixes, but unless we change that we’re stuck in a world where ridiculously expensive hardware either needs an old OS or becomes astoundingly expensive e-waste. And yes, it needs to connect sometimes. And yes, that’s a scary as shit.
Half od my customers still use Win 7, a few on XP, some on8 for some reason, most on 10.
Then there’s maybe 10% on linux.Most industries are adverse to change and if you can just patch and continue then fine, especially if you don’t need internet like with a POS.
Market share for Win 7-8.1 is, no joke, 0.69% (nice). And how many of those users are running FireFox?
that is going to isolate users and further decrease user base and market share.
Seems in line with what Mozilla’s board of <insert pun that rhymes with directors here 'cos i’m tired> has been doing for ages, so yeah.
But windoze 10 or 11 are different operating systems then windows 7 or 8.
Pretty sure Mozilla has the numbers on how many installations each OS has, so it’s probably a legitimate decision. HOWEVER, if they want to maintain their position on Linux, I highly recommend changing the default behavior of Ctrl+Shift+C to match how it works in Helium, where it simply copies the selected content instead of opening Developer Mode, which cannot be closed again using the same keystroke.
You can change that in about:keyboard in the new Firefox versions
Absolutely, all behavior can be changed somehow. But the default defines the product :)
Ah the classic Linux community response to any complaint.
- The default either actively ignores what every other software does or purposely uses something other than everything else for no apparent reason.
- Someone brings up the fact that it makes no sense why it’s different and how it makes the user experience worse.
- Someone else recommends a half baked solution that still doesn’t really solve the problem and doesn’t address the fact that the specific weirdness being default is the issue. So it ignores the actual complaint and only provides a half solution.
- Nothing is ever done to address the issue and it remains for decades constantly annoying new users and being one of thousands of small issues that turn potential curious new users away as they accumulate.
Proposing a fix is better than no fix? I didn’t know it was possible, and now I’m looking into it.
Changing the default is a social issue, so of course it’s more difficult than changing one’s current setting.
Why is that persons response considered the community response?
Ive been using Linux for 20 years so… Can we change that shortcut please?
The fuck you want us to do about it? We don’t have commit access to firefox’s codebase.
Interesting. And yet it’s still incomplete. F6 and Alt+D both do the same thing (focus the address bar), so there’s at least one line missing and definitely at least one column.
I doubt they’ll change that, since Ctrl+Shift+C also opens the dev console on chromium based browsers on Windows (just tried it with Chrome and Edge). Not sure if that’s the behavior on Linux, since I only use Firefox there.
Also, I really doubt that Ctrl+Shift+C behavior is going to factor into people’s decision anyway. That’s a very niche problem to have.
Can confirm ctrl-shift-c opens dev console
I keep mixing up the shortcuts because ctrl-shift-c is copy in the KDE terminal
This behavior isn’t unique to KDE’s Konsole; many others share it. Since
Ctrl + Cperforms an entirely different function in most Linux terminals/shells, Firefox’s default behavior feels out of place. It’s admittedly a niche problem, but to me, it looks like an ‘alien’ in the Linux world.EDIT: Thinking about it, this is actually exactly how GNU software usually works: set a weird default behavior so that people are incentivized to figure out how the software actually works just to change it.
Unless Google’s search AI lied to me (and surely it would never do that) this is all Apple’s fault anyway. They are the one’s that highjacked Ctrl+c for the copy function.
Unfortunately, that has become ingrained now everywhere other than the Linux terminal. And as Gui interfaces have improved over the years, average users are spending less time there, and Ctrl+shift+c has become the option that feels out of place.
But copy is Command+C on macOS and iOS, not Ctrl+C. Maybe in the Classic Mac OS days, but I doubt they would’ve made such a significant change moving to OS X.
Yeah potentially it would be easier/more concise if I’d adjust my terminal/shell to remap the
crtl+c , crtl +shift +cbehavior instead of demanding the whole world revert a decision made in the last century.
Also incentivizes people to not use it.
Ctrl-Shift-C directly opens the element inspector. CTRL-SHIFT-I opens the dev tools with the inspector turned off.
What’s wrong with Ctrl+C to copy? Its the default shortcut on pretty much everything except terminals.
Whats wrong with using the metric system to represent quantities? Its the default on pretty much everything except fueling planes or operating satellites. /s
The conflict arises from having two different defaults for the same action. Since users frequently switch between these environments, the lack of a universal shortcut causes constant friction.
The key issue is that the request is to change behavior in one place (browser) to match that of a rare case (terminal), causing a mismatch with the frequent case (office suites, mail programs, …). The terminal is the odd one out, not the browser, and ought be the one to change the default for the reason you provide.
In practice, a terminal is a special case and not just a text input window, and current convention is that Ctrl + C aborts / cancels.
(You could of course have a duplicate hotkey, but now you are inconsistent w.r.t. other browsers, and there will be someone else who will be annoyed by the difference)
Yeah the person who put Developer Mode on that shortcut… Must have never used linux.
Why?
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If you’re still hanging on to old hardware. Linux is the way to go baby
At this point, if you have hardware, Linux is a good choice. New or old. The older it is might change which distro, but still a good choice.
I’m not very techie, so when I took my brand new Lenovo (cheap) laptop from w11 to Linux mint, it really felt like an achievement. I haven’t used a command terminal since college, and I straight up made a bootable usb and wiped w11
Nice, that’s sick. I’m soft modding my Wii atm and it also feels good.
Hell yeah brother
Nice!!! But I feel those entry distros could do a lot more to be more user friendly, there are many edge cases where you still need to use a terminal and have some understanding of the OS. We need a truly GUI only distro with more wizards, and automatic repair so more people flee to Gnu/Linux
TBH i really like that i had to get a bit techie again to make the switch. learning to use the terminal a little bit has ignited something in me, and the fact that linux doesnt track my shit has made me way more privacy conscious
Edge cases are well, on the edge and sometimes you just need to let them go. You can’t always be everything to everyone.
One of the main places windows is used, like it or not, are organizations and companies. Especially small ones. Specially ones that are not in wealthy countries. And the only thing that keeps them from switching to linux is microsoft office. (Most importantly Word, excel).
My company has ~20 people and I would switch them over to linux if it wasn’t for word and excel.
While libreoffice is great on it’s own, companies send eachother xlsx and docx files. And libreoffice isnt great at reading or writing them. Specially complex ones. I don’t think it’s much of libre office’s fault, but more the shitty incompatible, unstandardized microsoft formats.
Currently I’m the only Linux user in the team, and I constantly advocate Linux, but I know if anybody switches, compatibility with microsoft office is going to be a problem. I can take the risk with the tech team but not the office section (hr, sales, secretary accounting etc.) really.
Try onlyoffice and slowly try to shift to libreoffice with open document formats. Or just skip that part and move everyone to the web versions of office. Also if you guys are on office 2010, the last time I ran it via wine, it worked completely fine.
No you cannot shift to open document formats because you can’t send an odt file to another company. They will not know what it is. In the enterprise world you have to “send them the word” or “the excel”.
Man I feel you and I know it’s just how things are. But I often ask myself the following question: Why are lots of office workers so bad with computers? It’s the tool they use for 1/3 of working day in their life. Just like a craftsman should learn to use their tools. No, instead they always act like it’s something only tech guys should know about.
This might be a bit harsh, but to be honest, you can’t expect them to be smarter. Otherwise they would also be engineers.
I’m most case you provably want to just send the document as PDF, don’t you? For which use case do you want to send an editable document to another company?
Many companies will send you docx files out of sheer idiocity. And tell you to “send the word” to them.
And excel is always transferred as xlsx
It’s called collaboration. When I worked as a toolmaker, I needed to use SolidWorks, despite not being a big fan, because our customers used SW and they were often literally on the other side of the planet.
Did you try OnlyOffice? I heard it has good compatibility with Microsoft Office’s files, it’s available on almost every OS, and looks easy to use. However, I’m not sure if you can create very complex documents like with Office.
It’s good but not great. The documents will still get messed up and look wierd sometimes.
That’s the rub isn’t it. It’s good, but not quite good enough all the time, every time.
There is stuff Office 360 or whatever is called to that online Microsoft Office can do just fine from Firefox or Chrome based browsers. But if things get overcomplicated, it’s as good or even worse than Libreoffice at handling xlsx, docx documents.
Even current Office struggles with early Office documents.
Microsoft dominance in businesses is part of what’s making me think all businesses are in cahoots with each other to make sure the only businesses that are successful are ones that take power away from the public.
This is the same thing that keeps my parents on windows. I do agree it’s not libre offices fault
Windows 7 users are switching to forks that still support the OS, like r3dfox, Pale Moon, Mypal, and Supermium. Home users stuck with 7 and 8 probably won’t upgrade or try Linux, they didn’t even update to 10 for some reason (and it was free!) .
I mean… if they’re still on Windows 7, they’ll likely keep using Firefox anyway?
thats so weird. if someone is forced to be on win7, no way they gonna change to linux. there has to be some compatibility issue in the background.
I’m still afraid to switch to Linux because I’ve used Windows since i was a kid with Windows 95. It’s gotten progressively worse, and I’m still reluctantly camped out on Windows 10, but the thought of firing up a new operating system and going back to being a confused adolescent who doesn’t know how to get around (with or without accidentally making an older woman crouching in red lingerie the desktop wallpaper on my family computer and then denying any knowledge of it) makes me really uneasy.
Please, Linux whisperers. Calm my woes. 😓
Most distro’s have a live bootable install. You download a .iso and burn it to a flash drive. Plug it in and boot from it, doesn’t touch or change anything with your current Windows install.
This lets you try out the OS before fully installing it. Give it a whirl.
I personally recommend Fedora KDE. https://fedoraproject.org/kde/
Instead of burning the ISO to the flash drive, I recommend burning Ventoy to your flashdrive. Then you can drag and drop ISOs for every distro you want to try without having to burn them every time.
Ventoy is so freaking cool!
Before Windows 11, I told people to switch to Linux because open source software is better for the soul. Now, I tell people because the user experience is just better. I used XP/Vista/7 throughout my childhood, and modern Linux desktop environments really do feel closer to that experience than Windows 11. I use Win11 for work, and I can confidently say that it has the worst settings menu I’ve ever used.
If you know the basics of using a desktop computer, most things won’t feel that weird or foreign to you. The hardest part will probably be learning Linux-compatible alternatives for apps that only work on Windows. What kind of programs do you typically use on your Windows system?
You could do what I did: Install a second drive in your computer and install Linux (e.g. Linux Mint) on it. That way you can always go back to Windows should you come to the conclusion that Linux isn’t for you . But I have to say, being a recent switcher from Windows to Linux myself, the transition was really easier than I initially thought.
I’ve used Windows since i was a kid
substitute “Windows” with “computer”. If you have any history of resolving “this doesn’t work for me” on your own (as opposed to waiting for someone else do to it for you), you will be fine. Just be sure not to jump into unknown when you have urgent important things to do :)
I did what Lawnman23 mentioned, downloaded the latest Mint release and flashed it on an usb stick. booted into Linux Mint, and all my hardware did function right away from the start. Including my old printer, all my usb devices, bluetooth devices and no problems with my Nvidia graphics card. After that i installed linux mint next to my windows as a dual boot. I installed it on different SSD drive tho. Linux Mint is now the OS i always use, i got all my programs and games working on Linux, and now am deleting Windows from my pc.
You’ve got a very relatable situation. Switching to Linux can be a gradual thing. -Keep your windows main, and get a flash drive boot
- make a folder on you C:/ or D:/ to store your Linux user files (like downloads and documents). This keeps your windows files more separate from your Linux files. It also let’s you keep files across boots. You can delete the Linux folder if you don’t want to keep it around.
- Open up Firefox, and have a browse of your favourite sites. See about logging in and getting your account logged in.
- what’s it like? Is it different to windows? Is the vibe different?
- try installing your favourite app or game.
- get curious!
- too much? Your windows is still right there.
Baby steps! And remember, you don’t need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step :)
Win10 isn’t all bad, in fact many folks treat that as a decent os. The real issues is having win11 taking hours (from 8pm to 3 am real funny) to upgrade just to find out that copilot has the whole filesystem now. No privacy or sandbox mode. No nothing. A thousands different copilot buttons.
I keep my win10 machine as is because i have a lot of my stuff there, a lot really. But in the end, I have no issue in having a mini laptop with linux. It’s the most low end device i can think of and i freed some space. But, if you’re used to windows that much, 10 is still valid.
I don’t think the women dancing on lingerie phenomenon is ongoing. They make more money selling your data on free videos than they’d make after the money they’d spend programming it
“Most browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, have already ended support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.”
To me Millions of flies can’t be wrong: eat shit. is a crappy argument but at least they’re
“If your current hardware can’t handle Windows 10 or higher for some reason, you can switch to a Linux-based operating system. The vast majority of Linux distributions come with Firefox as the default browser.”
I mean, it’s a lot of work to make security updates for a browser on an operating system that doesn’t get security updates anymore. Why spend money fixing the weapons on a sinking ship?
If you’re still using those old and bugged versions then you probably don’t care about unpatched software. Big security issues. Hope no one is using them.
Honestly surprised to learn that they were still supporting 7-8.1 until now.
Microsoft did as well - 8.1 still had ESU support, and as Server 2008 R2 had paid extended support and as it shared a kernel with Vista & 7 you could use those to keep your system updated as well. IIRC both ended January this year.
NGL, I have Win 7 on a Mac that I play old as hell PC games with and FF has been a disaster on it for a long time - to the point where I get most of the downloads of games and the various drivers they need with the macOS install…
Windows is so shit. Glad I switched, everything works so much better (and faster) on Linux.
Probably hard to support old platforms if the entire toolchain, predominantly owned by Microsoft isn’t supporting them either.
Get on Linux anyway. You have no privacy whatsoever on Windows.
However, if you (like me) have to dual-boot, remember that O&O ShutUp can help you easily turn off Windows’ insidious tracking measures and delete Copilot off your system.
I don’t recommend dual-boot on the same disk. Windows likes to fuck up the bootmanager with updates every so often so you can’t boot into linux anymore.
Yeah, I like OS installed on separate drives and selecting the one I want to boot off of in BIOS. Gets trickier on laptop though that doesn’t have multiple drives.
True but it’s an easy fix. If you can set up a dual boot you can fix the boot order.
