• DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago
    • On Reddit: “Windows is being enshitified. How can we cope with it?”
    • On Lemmy: “Windows is being enshitified. Good thing we’ve moved to Linux”

    I think I see a pattern here.

    • lemmyreader@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago
      On Reddit: “Windows is being enshitified. How can we cope with it?”
      On Lemmy: “Windows is being enshitified. Good thing we’ve moved to Linux”
      

      I think I see a pattern here.

      Interesting. I guess it has to do with what you are used to and what feels comfortable.

      Linus Torvalds once made this remark :

      When you say ‘I wrote a program that crashed Windows,’ people just stare at you blankly and say ‘Hey, I got those with the system, for free.’

      If I think back of the days that I was using Linux and I saw friends and family using Windows95 that had just launched (with a massive hype, and using a Rolling Stones song to promote it) the Blue Screen of Death was fairly normal for folks. And they lived with it, and they continued to live with it because they thought that they had no choice, and they were incredibly happy to not having to use DOS anymore. Later some of the folks I knew after having their Windows computer flocked with Windows viruses they bought a Mac, and as a matter of saying, lived happily ever after. Not everyone can afford Macs though.And not every “normie” is ready to use Linux.

      • The_v@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Mac did have a better OS than Win 95 -Win98 It was smoother and crashed less.

        The difference was that Windows still ran DOS programs, 5.25" floppy disks etc… They made the decision to maintain backwards compatibility.

        Mac decided to drop support regularly for what they considered “outdated software and technology.” For example: when USB drives came out they canceled support for 3.5" floppies in their OS. Machines that had a 3.5" drive installed could no longer use it. Put a floppy drive in and nothing happened.

        Although Mac was a smoother more stable OS, windows had more functionality and greater compatability. Windows was a far superior product because of it. Even with the regular apearance of the blue screen of death.

        Linux at the time also suffered from being a terminal based OS. Too much like DOS for way too long. I used it for specific tasks where it excelled at.

        • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          last paragraph, “at the time”

          (long, super recent story/rant)

          I just switched to Kubuntu for my ThinkPad (not my first choice but hardware incompatabilities) over the last few days, and it still very much is a terminal-based system. It took me ~4 days to set everything up, and nearly every step aside from “change things in the settings UI” was “in a terminal, type…”

          I dipped my toes into Linux… 19 years ago? As someone who likes windows up until 10, and heard all of the ‘it’s so amazing’ gospel from Linux users, two decades later I’m like: “it’s still not ready”

          Shit, I wanted to install Debian 12(.5) with KDE on this TP. It has a snapdragon X55, that I need working, and previous attempts at getting it working (year+ ago) failed. I read docs, did more research, I was ready. Made a live USB, install it in the live environment, restart, and… it hangs during boot. Research, ‘use the option presented at the boot menu’. Okay. “no network” errors, that’s fine, it’s not a net installer. Done, restart. Hangs. Research. “use rufus, it solved my problem”. Rinse, repeat, hang. Isn’t Debian supposed to be super reliable? And Kubuntu booted fine, like what the hell?

          Then cue the 4 days of setup. This machine is a very light use box, mostly to be a hotspot. Browser, email, password manager. Btrfs for snapshots (WHY IS THERE NO SNAPSHOT UI IN ANY DISTRO I TRIED?!). I’m far from a novice, been trying to switch for two decades. This will be easy.

          deep breath

          WHY IS GRUB NOT TAKING MY UPDATED SETTINGS (it’s a known bug in Ubuntu since 20.04?!)? WHY CAN’T I GET HOWDY TO INSTALL? WHY AM I GETTING APT ERRORS ON A FRESH INSTALL? WHY IS BITWARDEN FAILING TO SYNC? WHAT IS THE NEW-NEW-NEW METHOD OF SETTING UP NEXTDNS? WHY CAN’T I RESIZE A PARTITION (/) LIVE? WHY DOESN’T MY HOTSPOT WORK WHEN I USE WPA3 (still broken, actually, and WPA2 isn’t an acceptable solution imo)? WHY DON’T I GET ANY ERROR MESSAGES WHEN THIS HAPPENS (a recurring theme)? WHY DO I HAVE TO SIFT THROUGH 3 DIFFERENT LOGS? WHY IS SEVERAL HUGELY-POPULAR PROGRAMS NOT IN THE DEFAULT REPO (omfg - Librewolf, Telegram, Element, Signal, Discord, Bitwarden…)? WHY DO THESE ALL TAKE DIFFERENT STEPS TO INSTALL ON MY SYSTEM WHAT THE FUCK WE HAVE A SYSTEM FOR THIS SCREAMS

          E: WHY DOES KDE CONNECT JUST DECIDE THAT IT’S NOT GOING TO CONNECT TODAY UNTIL I TROUBLESHOOT FOR 3 HOURS, CHANGE NOTHING, THEN WORK?

          And then, the 5G modem. Why in the shit doesn’t the fcc unlock tool just fucking detect, and unlock, automatically. Why. WHY. This is simple, the installer is already detecting hardware. It’s right there. This could be easy. Instead I had to dig through pages of solutions that didn’t work, until I landed on a page for my laptop (but seemingly a different architecture?) for Debian 13 (unstable) talking about needing to edit the installer with commands (omfg what) or the screen will just show nothing on boot, that you need to change wifi and bt stuff or they don’t work, etc etc… But in this heap of “I should just revert”, there was one line, the line I needed, to run this stupid fucking fcc unlock tool - and how to find the hardware address. Enter both, nothing (a ‘success’ message would be nice…). No further instructions in the doc. Luckily, I am persistent and went into the networkmanager anyway, tell it to connect to mobile broadband. Fill in my apn. Save. It works.

          There’s a ton of stuff I glossed over, but it should not take FOUR DAYS with the terminal essentially living on my screen, with my browser having a dozen tabs at any given time for troubleshooting, for someone who has done all this shit before (minus the modem) many times in the past. It’s done, I’m setup, but there isn’t a soul alive who would switch their generic Dell machine running windows, spend several hours a day for several days, just to get their base system running. And the second they see “open the terminal”, which is still very much a necessity, they’ll be running to the hills.

          I have a friend asking me questions about Linux since I’ve been harping on this the last few days, and I’m like… it’s not the easy path everyone says it is. I don’t want to push them away, but fuck they use many of the same programs that aren’t one-click installs, and I haven’t even touched gaming, multiple sound cards, gpu drivers; they use their machine for gaming, and mine is on W10 for a reason. It would be a nightmare guiding them through the minefield I just emerged from. Not to mention games that aren’t handled by steam/proton and don’t have guides, old games like Midtown Madness/2, Midnight Club 2, Insane/2…

          It’s still not ready, not anywhere near close.

          • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            I always viewed the think pad line as more of a business line of products. I know it isn’t owned by IBM anymore, but considering how much involvement they had with Redhat, you might have better luck trying a fedora based distro. I’m running fedora Fedora 40 beta plasma and it was basically install and start working.

            • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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              At the time (a couple of years ago), I tried a Dell… Precision? laptop, but it had a different cell modem in it (I was just starting my interest in cellular computers) and my provider AT&T locked it to an utter shit plan where I could pay like $45 for 15gb of data with overage fees per month, fuuuuuck that. I was searching for one that would be bound to their ‘tablet’ plans, as they got unlimited data for $20 (this is a business account, not consumer). AT&T offered the TP X13 Gen 2 Intel from them, that was guaranteed tied to the unlimited plan, with 0% financing, so I jumped. It is my first TP, but an ex has an older TP and had mostly positive things to say about it. And the modem (and antenna?) gets blazing fast speeds, like 400-500Mb/s. But that’s why I have the TP, it’s a “business” line for my (families) business.

              I tried Fedora last year but again couldn’t get the X55 modem to work, which was frustrating. Information about it in the X13 is scarce since it wasn’t offered with Linux officially afaik, and you either got it early and Ubu or something ‘just worked’ with it out of the box, or you had to compile the driver from source for some reason (I don’t remember but they yanked the driver from newer releases I think). I guess at some point it was re-added but again nobody talks about this machine and it’s WWAN card so I got super lucky to find that one Debian 13 info page.

              While I’ve played with Fedora briefly when I was distros hopping to see what worked last year (and before that), and the ex had it on his TP, I don’t actually know what the difference is vs Debian-based systems, since I try to stick with that as it’s what I started on and know/am comfortable with. All I know is its based (?) on RHEL. Care to give me a tl;dr major differences?

          • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            Haha I just spent this weekend getting my ThinkPad set up with Arch and KDE Plasma. Two weeks ago was my final straw with W11, and I used this weekend for the plunge.

            Now, I know I have an unusual setup; ThinkPad X1 laptop, eGPU w/ Nvidia 4070 (BIG mistake, I bought it to play games and do 3D rendering since the onboard graphics on my laptop are non-existent, didn’t do my homework and should’ve bought an AMD), and two external monitors. It’s has been an adventure to say the least, and my wife popped in every now and again asking if I’m having fun playing with my computer (she has Mac everything and not an absolute clue lol) while pulling my hair troubleshooting shit I haven’t even thought about in a long time.

            It’s been probably 4-5 years since I’ve worked with a Linux desktop, and I forgot what it takes to get a system set up from more or less scratch. Of course I could have gone with a more complete, out-of-the-box distro, but where’s the fun in that? My home server runs Debian and I almost never have to touch it outside biweekly logins to make sure everything is kosher and up to date, otherwise it just chugs along and it’s been going strong for probably 5-6 years at this point. But I still had fun doing it, and I also have more confidence that my current setup isn’t doing nefarious shit while I’m not paying attention. My W11 install liked to wake up from sleep and I’d walk in to hear the fans on my eGPU case cranking, so I’m a bit suspect. I’m near positive I don’t have an malware or viruses on my machine, but I dunno what the deal is, and I may have let my paranoia get the best of me.

            But to your point, it will probably be a while before Linux is ready for the mainstream. Especially until we get a native port of the MS Office suite. Like it or not, MS Office is the gold standard in business, and while different FOSS suites are pretty good, they still lack full compatibility which won’t fly in the business world. That, and you can’t expect your average Joe to spend and hour or two scraping forums to fix a printer issue.

            • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Second big paragraph: I usually have ethernet ports that just decide to wake the system up, almost all my machines in the last 15 years do this. Disabling the ability to wake from sleep (from the ethernet port) has always resolved this. Just something to look at.

              Third: yeah, and it’s fine to not be ready - I’d rather it not be and everyone accept that. Problem is (and what I was alluding to) is that many don’t. I’ve got attacked here, reddit, and elsewhere because “er mah gerd I found the perfect build guide and didn’t care about the distros so I followed everything to a T and you too should have no creativity or desire for exploration so that you can be as much of a sheep as I am” and it’s like… I like the hardware I selected, I like the distro and want to see it improve because of [feature], etc but god damn some people if you step out of their mental line, they lose their shit. Tell them that X doesn’t work because of Y and they want to rip you to shreds for breaking their perfect bubble they’ve built. Spend any time in a Linux-heavy gaming community and their holy penguin can do no harm.

              I dunno if my venting above comes off as it, but I want this project to succeed. It’s just, every time it’s been a wall of issues, every time “oh it’s better now” but ‘better’ is ‘we fixed the old issues’ and doesn’t touch on ‘and we added some new ones, too’. That’s the catch. Two steps forward, one step back - but it’s progress.

              • The_v@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.

                If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.

                I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there… Fuck that.

                I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.

              • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                It was happening on wifi. I’ll admit I didn’t really do much troubleshooting on it outside of basic poking around. Ethernet is only available through the dock, but I didn’t have it plugged in until I started my Linux install.

                Dude I feel ya. I think what everyone forgets is that anyone that has any form of Linux knowledge is already somewhat tech savvy. Hell, anyone on Lemmy is usually pretty tech savvy, if not to have the basics just to wrap their heads around the concept of federation. Most people would have no clue where to start to even install a fresh copy of windows, because they see the hardware and OS as a singular monolithic unit.

                I think the only way Linux would get into the mainstream is to have a dedicated hardware company built desktops and laptops that ship with a barney-basic distro preinstalled, and have a dedicated support staff. I don’t think most see computers as a separation of hardware, OS, and software, but as a screenbox that runs their favorite apps.

                If love to see popular adoption of Linux as well, especially since it will further accelerate improvements in its development. But I think it’s a pipedream that the majority of people will jump ship. I do think that many just want to see MS’s demise, but that isn’t going to happen, anytime soon anyway.

      • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Nobody who enjoys freedom or has principles uses apple products, and nobody building a decent computer and knowing what they’re talking about then installs iOs. Know what you’re paying for lol, don’t buy marked up fascist crap, and stop masturbating in public about it. It’s disgusting to glorify them in that way, like eating a shit pie and telling everyone it’s delicious.

  • HorreC@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    I just dont get it, you pay for the OS, they monitor you like a hawk and sell that shit. Now they are like we need to make sure they get all these ads too, also we are going to ruin any app that you use, like search or notepad. We will milk this mother dry then claim users dont understand how much it costs to run the company.

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      8 months ago

      If you have a monopoly and need to maximize profits then the question becomes: Why not?! You could extract more money this way, and it’s not like your users would go anywhere else at this point.

      That is why it’s so important to fight and break up monopolies, and to limit what these companies can do. Because they have no reason not to squeeze every penny they can get out of you!

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Issue is, I don’t think even the current competition is helping them to get better, if they became smaller for some reason they’d just go back to their active sabotage days.

        What I’d think would help to actually wither Microsoft’s monopoly in addition of breaking it up is forcing them to open source Windows, thus taking their main leverage on the market. Windows would be a good (not great) OS if it wasn’t for MS and its shareholders trying to monetize it as much as possible, and trying to make all computers like what the Junkman had in the Superhero Team vs. Genocidal Purple Guy Part 3.

      • jkrtn@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        I wish our indolent government would do its job breaking this shit up.

      • someacnt_@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Sad that Windows basically have stronghold in OS market. It’s a hurdle for linux to even hit 5%, and there is no alternatives for generic hardware…

    • DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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      This is the norm of what shareholder-driven companies in a situation of monopoly will tend to do. They try to see how much they can abuse their position of dominance on the market to maximize their profits. Microsoft’s primary goal isn’t to make a good user experience, or even a good OS. Their main goal is to milk as much money as possible from its assets for its shareholders. They’ve been playing that game for decades, only backtracking when the consumer backlash is strong enough to threaten their sales or when the government threatens to break them up.

      On top of that, Microsoft has a long history of letting arrogant elements of top management take control of projects who will then force their “vision” down the throats of their customers who don’t want any of it. They will only backtrack once the sales numbers become disastrous enough. Then usually the control returns to more competent people and a decent product tends to result from it. Think how Windows Vista lead to Windows 7. And how Windows 8 lead to Windows 10. Or even how the XBox One was originally designed and marketed as some sort of stupid way to watch NFL games on your TV with Kinect controls until they realized they were losing the console war and then started treating it like a gaming console again.

    • jkrtn@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago
      1. Pay for the hardware

      2. Pay for the software

      3. Subscribe to your own machine

      Get your wallet out, serf. The landlords renting your computer to you need another yacht.

        • CaptainEffort@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          In Windows 11 it saves every text file you open as a new tab, so every time you open a text file you’ll have tabs upon tabs of every previous text file you’ve ever opened.

          Here’s a Reddit post with some people talking about how to disable it, how frustrating it is, and even how it’s causing problems by straight up opening the wrong file if it’s named the same as a text file you’ve opened in the past.

          • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            Wow finally. I remember when I moved to Notepad++ a decade ago when I still used Windows, to get that behaviour. Being able to close it without losing all the open tabs was a game changer.

            • saltesc@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Yeah, I noticed it in the new Notepad. Nifty feature. Notepad++ is still my go to for everything. Especially dumping “temporary code” in unsaved tabs, then like 6 months later trying to figure out if any of its still relevant or safe to finally close.

              • Player2@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                Textadept is also pretty cool, it’s portable and FOSS unlike Notepad++

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            8 months ago

            Here’s a Reddit post with some people talking about how to disable it, how frustrating it is

            Virgin Windows users on Reddit: *Crying in a corner instead of looking in settings on their own and make 3(!) mouse clicks*

            Chad Linux users on Lemmy: *Editing .conf files in vim*

            • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              So what’s the deal with vim? I spooled up a vps recently and decided to forgo the gui options, like a real Linux server admin. I have been using nano and it seems to do all I need from a basic text editor in the terminal. I get that vim/emacs meme-bantering but actually why. It accepts texts and stores them in files. What is the actual point/difference?

          • Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de
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            8 months ago

            Not only that. Opening the same file again, opens it in a new tab ffs. I noticed this, when my ssh-config file (which has no file extension and is thus not linked to a program) had like 10 tabs open… Why would someone do that?

            I mean tabs are fine, I guess, but this shit?

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Notepad++ was gaining some traction so Microsoft figured they nip that in the bud with a half-hearted attempt?

          Microsoft’s competitor to Notepad++ is VS Code.

          • plofi@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Notepad++ is a text editor while VS Code is an IDE. They are intended for different use cases.

              • cygon@lemmy.world
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                What would be missing from VS Code or VS Codium that an IDE needs?

                I’m an ex Visual Studio user, now writing all my code in VS Codium. I organize my project tree in VS Codium, I build from it and, like a Visual Studio user, I press F5 to debug, set breakpoints and inspect variables.

                And that’s just the default install using the vanilla C/C++ extension it ships with, not some complicated setup that takes any time to get working.

      • lazynooblet@lazysoci.al
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        8 months ago

        It can be reverted in settings. I just did this it was driving me mad. Why have the option for tabs without a close all option.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I walked my 83 year old dad through a Linux Mint install on his laptop over the phone a few weeks ago when the Windows install shit the bed. All he needs is a browser, he’s good now.

        Get out of here with that “software engineering degree” BS.

          • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            It is easier more than ever to install linux today.

            The issue boils down to the fact that the number of people that never installed an OS is pretty high.

            Most people buy their laptop and roll with the OS installed. Microsoft paid a lot to be the default choice and we have the market we have today.

            But if you check your email and browse internet, any OS will work.

            The strength and weakness of Linux, is that there is many ways to skin a cat. But it can get confusing really fast, even if you are tech savvy.

            Habits die hard and Microsoft and Apple were pretty good at capturing the market.

              • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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                8 months ago

                The process to install Ubuntu vs Windows is pretty much the same.

                Create a user, choose a timezone, connect to Wi-Fi or LAN and wait for setup to finish. It is not complicated by any mean.

                As I mentioned, most people never install an OS in their life, so they don’t know how to create a boot drive and install an OS.

                So the issue isn’t that installing Linux is complicated, it’s that installing an OS on an empty drive is not a thing that the vast majority of pc users has done or will ever do.

        • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Lmfao guess he doesn’t need you to help him setup his email port settings or have any issues with audio drivers or any of the other common issues we see with Linux installs.

          • _tezz@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Why would a random 83 year old set up his own email port configs? He signs into gmail.com like everyone else, let’s be realistic if we’re gonna talk shit

            • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
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              I worked for an ISP residential tech support for 3 years. Don’t tell me what’s realistic lmfao. I experienced it very, very often. And they sure as fuck couldn’t do it in windows.

              • _tezz@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                We can compare anecdotes if you want, I’ve been in tech twice as long as you were and I can count on one hand the number of people doing their own IMAP setup. That remains the same if you go back to me being a child.

                There’s no need to be a dick man, this is a nerd forum for awarding fake internet points. Chill out.

                • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
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                  8 months ago

                  Still in tech, 9 years now lol. Again. People do and they run into issue with it. Denying my perspective and acting like it’s invalid is obnoxious.

          • ikidd@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            No, because like 99% of people on this planet, he uses webmail, and I haven’t seen audio fail out of the box on a Linux install in 15 years.

            Roflmao lol omg bbq

            • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
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              99% of the planet don’t use webmail. Fair that you haven’t seen one. I’ve read it recently and often though so :shrug:

      • Rusty Shackleford@programming.dev
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        8 months ago

        Pay thousands for a Mac computer that may not have the features you want, and never be able to upgrade or repair it, or

        M1 Air costs USD $750 where I live.

        Get a software engineering degree so you can figure out how to install, use and regularly debug Linux. Because even techy people you know that might want to help you don’t know anything about Linux.

        Hyperbole to sell an easily disprovable false narrative. For what?

        Calm down and eat your lunch, Helen.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Cost to run the company? They will proudly milk as much money as they can to maximize profits. Having a bigger margin is a point of pride for them. Watch any shareholder meeting. They will publicly brag about it.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      8 months ago

      “Monitor you like a hawk” is a pretty extreme exaggeration of the easily disabled telemetry data. Unless you were referring to Edge browser?

    • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
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      Because you could replace the text of this mene with Nvidia drivers or any number of pain in the ass sub systems. Fuck even anti cheat for many games as well. Windows for the most part just works. Search works just fine and 98% of users couldn’t give two fucks about notepad.

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      I get the point you’re trying to make but they made a free version of windows a while ago. The price for it is the ads.

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    8 months ago

    The Linux infiltration of PC gaming communities has been one of the most successful covert operations in the history of espionage. So successful that the agents don’t even need to hide their identities.

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    8 months ago

    Wait a bit Ubuntu is next. They already added terminal ads, embedded affiliate links for amazon, and sold user data to amazon.

    • lemmyreader@lemmy.ml
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      The Amazon story is really old and Ubuntu did hear the critical voices and reverted the change. The terminal ads can be annoying on servers but you can turn them off.

      https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Disable_dynamic_motd_and_motd_news_spam_on_Ubuntu_18.04.html

      If you want to throw dirt on Ubuntu, let’s talk about Snaps and the messy Snap Store and how the current Ubuntu site looks like (not desktop user friendly really), and what they did to LXD

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        but you can turn them off.

        Isn’t that line of thinking the same as this post is making fun of?

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        If being able to turn off ads make them ok then i guess we can’t complain about windows ads yet either.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        Not to mention all the bugs in a so called LTS. They really should delay a release if it isn’t stable

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        what they did to LXD

        I still don’t understand what LXD does that LXC doesn’t do. LXC is significantly more popular. All the major control panels (like Proxmox, SolusVM, Virtualizor, etc) support OpenVZ or LXC but not LXD.

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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      AFAIK the “terminal ads” were suggesting Ubuntu Pro when using the package management. It’s very far away from actual ads. Just the free version suggesting the paid one. Not ad space sold to third parties.

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        Just the free version suggesting the paid one. Not ad space sold to third parties.

        You’ve read it here, folks. Microsoft just needs to promote Xbox deals and such, then it’s not an ad space sold to third parties. (Either that or you’re holding Canonical to a different standard than Microsoft.)

        • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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          It would be more like MS selling extended support, which is fair and relevant to something being on the update page.

          Would it be bad if a community driven distro had a donations link once a year in the package manager? Not really. A bit annoying, but we still live in a world where they need money too.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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            which is fair and relevant to something being on the update page.

            The Ubuntu paid ad doesn’t show just in the updater either. Seems like double standard allowing Canonical advertising their paid product every time the terminal is opened and Microsoft would be only fine to be allowed to advertise paid updates in the updater.

            Would it be bad if a community driven distro had a donations link once a year in the package manager? Not really.

            I’m a packager of a small but public repository. Over the years some of the packages were actually picked up by the upstream distribution (minor stuff to scratch my own itch, nothing noteworthy, IMO, but still). I was never offered a few cents of whatever donations came in. Such money goes to the distribution leaders, not the actual community and even less so to the actual upstream software developers. If anything, the upstream software developers should get the money, not a downstream distribution where most of the work is automated anyway and yet replacing bookmarks in the default browser to customized ones for the distribution is common practice. Back when people still bought MP3 music, Canonical replaced the affiliate IDs for MP3 music stores to funnel money off upstream developers into their own pockets.

            A bit annoying, but we still live in a world where they need money too.

            Windows 10 started out as a free upgrade to Win7 and Win8 users (at least the Home variant, not sure about Pro and higher). Since then Win11 has also been a free upgrade. Do we live in a world where Windows developers need to make money from their product then?

            • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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              So how are people going to know who you are and how to support you? First time I’m hearing from you. Leave a note somewhere. Your altruism is appreciated, but you do need to eat too! Don’t passively let capitalism take advantage of you. You don’t need to extend your values to corporate.

              Money still runs the world. Windows or FOSS devs. I wish things were different, but you are wasting your political support on something that is not a big deal.

              Ubuntu Pro is hardly an ad and not comparable to candy crush. Letting people know of a service to get more support is within scope (which is a target for enterprise anyway). To be clear there are better things to criticize about Canonical.

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                So how are people going to know who you are and how to support you? First time I’m hearing from you. Leave a note somewhere. Your altruism is appreciated, but you do need to eat too! Don’t passively let capitalism take advantage of you.

                I do have a regular job. I’m doing fine. I don’t want or need money donated to Linux distributions. Updating a few packages is hardly any work at all because the majority of tasks is automated (as I said: my repo is small and for my own use. I don’t advertise its existence but I also don’t hide it either). Actually developing software is. I don’t want distributors nagging users for money to then put in their pockets. Distributors can promote pledge drives to fund hosting on their website.

                Ubuntu Pro is hardly an ad

                Yes, it is.

                Letting people know of a service to get more support is within scope

                Cool, so Microsoft’s “Back up to OneDrive” once per month and “Get more OneDrive storage” don’t count then…

                • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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                  Look my you ran an update and the update program is letting you know how you can get extended support if you needed. It is with in the scope of the activity in a way that Candy Crush and One Drive are not. If Kden live was more explicit about being part of the KDE universe I don’t think there is harm to that either. Ubuntu pro is not malicious or vendor locking (in its current state). What is the big deal that you spend so much energy here? Letting people know how to get 12 years of support instead of just the standard 5? There is a cost to doing that and ensuring quality. The discussion on the distribution paying upstream is important, but kind of a separate matter (and yes they could be doing more).

                  This is supposed to be for a company that has multiple machines and needs security back ported. Any regular desktop user can just opt out. Real question, what changes do you want to see to make things better? Like we do need to improve communication on how to support FOSS in general. I am not a particularly good programmer, so don’t commit bug fixes. I live in the shit hole US South and 50% below median for the state, so my money contributions are never that high. If we are allergic to Ubuntu Pro or x packages are looking for funding. in npm, how do we really address anything? I get that ads are very invasive, but i think you are picking the least impressive hill to die on here.

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            Yeah, I don’t get extreme criticism against any monetization. Isn’t Ubuntu Pro basically paid version of ubuntu?

      • lengau@midwest.social
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        And for most people, Ubuntu Pro is free in practice (since most folks are unlikely to have more than 5 machines that need the features Pro provides).

    • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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      Now that I think about it, the decline of ubuntu began when they inserted amazon affiliate links in their ui a long time ago. The final straw for me is forcing snaps when attempting to install some apps via apt. I replaced all my ubuntu machines with debian without any issue.

    • Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world
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      Wait that was real? I thought that was a joke someone made cuz I believe I saw an image of it on one of the meme communities.

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      8 months ago

      Fucking with display drivers to get your shit to boot is several magnitudes harder than ignoring an ad.

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        Fucking with display drivers to get your shit to boot is several magnitudes harder than ignoring an ad.

        Found the Nvidia user.

        • nexussapphire@lemm.ee
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          Nah, the last time this user tried Linux was probably 2005. You can get to a desktop and install proprietary drivers from the app store relatively painlessly on most distros.

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            Nope, last Christmas I struggled to get Linux Mint to play a Steam game using Proton. Booting would lead to a crash, adding some flags would lead to the game being incredibly laggy. Mint had an option for proprietary drivers, but the game would crash regardless of the flags. In the end, turns out Mint was downloading the wrong drivers, and I had to manually download the correct ones from Nvidia’a website to finally get the game to work with average performance.

            It took multiple hours of troubleshooting during my one Christmas vacation of the year. Meanwhile my brother, who had an identical laptop playing the same game on Windows, ran it flawlessly with great performance.

            • nexussapphire@lemm.ee
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              8 months ago

              I’m sorry to hear that, dual graphics can be a pain. If you feel like trying it again I’d love to recommend pop os, it should handle dual graphics out of the box. It’s just something that isn’t well supported thanks to Nvidia’s proprietary graphics.

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            8 months ago

            It is interesting how many people reports that distros does not work out-of-the-box. While for me, most things work. It’s hard to partition things correctly but that’s that…

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            Commits to tf, open tofu, CNCF, Apache. You’ve used my code today in all probabilty. You ain’t got shit for an answer to the constant support questions for Linux desktop so you back to baseless claims.l on my resume.

            Now, send me the copy pasta with do you know who I am as if you weren’t the one making up crap for karma points.

            • nexussapphire@lemm.ee
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              What ever makes you feel like the bigger man. The most annoying thing I run into are distros not supporting proprietary codecs and formats out of the box.

              If that’s where we’re at right now I’m pretty happy with the state of Linux, especially since it’s only a couple of distros that intentionally do that.

              • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                What ever makes you feel like the bigger man.

                But that person claims to have contributed some code to server software, so he’s clearly super qualified to comment about 2005 desktop stuff!!11!1

                The most annoying thing I run into are distros not supporting proprietary codecs and formats out of the box.

                It’s not like Windows supports all the codecs out of the box either. Downloading something like VLC (or insert your competing favorite playback thingie here) is pretty much required when dealing with offline media files.

                • nexussapphire@lemm.ee
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                  Your post is confusing friend. Also if you can figure out how to get heic image formats working on fedora I’d love to know. I fixed it by SSHDing into my mother’s desktop and converting everything heic into jpeg from my arch instance.

                  I wanted her to have a good experience with Linux so I avoided Ubuntu.

        • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
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          And? Oh look at me I bought the best product in it’s price class, I’m a niche user or something.

          Year of the Linux desktop 2024.

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              Valve invests billions of dollars and loses money on 4M decks and everyone is screaming success 🤷‍♂️

              EA resold more copies of Skyrim on switch.

              • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                Valve invests billions of dollars and loses money on 4M decks and everyone is screaming success 🤷‍♂️

                You’re the one who bought the wrong tool (NVidia GPU) for the job. Blame nobody but yourself. Intel and AMD is fine since at least 15 years.

                • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
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                  No, I didn’t. I have a faster GPU at a lower price with my timing and I can play every single one of my games. It’s easy and I don’t have to do shit. I don’t have to make sure drm doesn’t work and I don’t have to find some utility it script to get DPI resolution scaling working. You’re just pouty because Linux isn’t a good solution for a large chunk of users.

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            If it weren’t Nvidia’s fault, like, as in they don’t support linux on purpose “because fuck you, you do not matter, you’ll use the OS we choose and like it,” maybe you’d have a point. They could do it, easily, but they don’t because they do not care about their users.

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                Doesn’t change the fact that those hurdles are caused by nvidia on purpose and they could fix it tomorrow if they wanted, either. Don’t be mad at linux about falling victim to it, be mad at nvidia for doing it. That matters to the users, even if they falsely blame linux about it.

        • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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          Yep. I have a PC that was given to me by a friend, we aren’t all able to afford the most FOSS hardware and software…

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          I don’t even know what my display drivers are.

          They’re handled and updated by the operating system.

          Once a week I check for updates, and click a button to install anything I want updated.

          I literally have no clue what you’re talking about.

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        At this point I’m not sure if this is a meme or what…

        Last time I switched distro a few years ago I tried a dozen of them (dropped the ISOs on a Ventoy drive). None of them had trouble getting a usable desktop of correct resolution.

        Now sure, if you want an optimal, accelerated driver, on some of them you may have to figure out that distro’s preferred way of doing it. But that’s also true on Windows. And on Windows the vast majority of people don’t bother beyond the install, because it makes no difference to them.

        Optimal drivers are essential only to a small subset of users like gamers and I expect a PC gamer to be able to figure out how to install a driver.

        But I repeat it’s not even an issue on most modern distros. (I have an Nvidia card too.)

        • ture@lemmy.ml
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          Exactly this.

          I’ve seen “computer illiterate” folk using windows computers without properly working graphic drivers causing scrolling to look horrific or being limited to something like 1280x800 while owning a FullHD screen that I’m 100% convinced something like this doesn’t matter for most “normal” users.

          The main issue for them is getting it installed in the first place. They buy a computer, turn it on, windows with all its bloatware is there and they use it. Would it boot to any kind of Linux desktop they would use this and most probably wouldn’t even consciously recognise that they aren’t using windows anymore.

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            The main issue is ms office. The way people use MS word is so ingrained that even Microsoft has problems when they moved to the ribbon menus.

            There was a straight up user revolt.

            That’s why MS will make sql server work on Linux but NEVER office.

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              To a certain extent this is correct, especially if this person works or used to work an office job in the last let’s say 15 years. But even then what are the use cases of office suites at home, mainly writing letters and maybe for the slightly more tech literate something like logging personal finances in a spreadsheet. In case of writing a letter those files are usually printed and the spreadsheet are usually considered confidential data. These people rarely, if ever, share those files with anyone, so interoperability is likely not an issue.

              I’m therefore convinced if you just guide those persons to e.g. libre office writer and just say that’s “The word” on this machine, they’re going to be fine with it. Also almost all of these people use webmail instead of mail clients so the absence of Outlook is usually also not a problem.

              Imho this includes 90% of the 50+ years computer user that can be migrated to Linux this way. The “problematic” ones are the ones who know some stuff, like how to click by click import my mail account into Outlook 2016 and want their new computer to behave exactly the same way and will go bananas otherwise. If I encounter one of those in my circle of relatives who need help with their computer I usually just leave them with their windows 7 machines or whatever they’re using cause it’s not a battle worth fighting.

        • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
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          Absolutely not. Just the other day I saw a post about one of the desktops getting something close to working DPI scaling out of the box. And no, you don’t need to figure out shit on Windows. You download the driver, double click and it’s done. The only thing even moderately annoying is HDR calibration which is a mess in itself on Linux. I understand Linux is getting closer, but it’s not on par with ease of use.

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            And no, you don’t need to figure out shit on Windows. You download the driver, double click and it’s done.

            Manually downloading drivers? How savage.🧐 *AMD and Intel master race has things working out of the box since many years*

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              Jesus Christ, of course Nvidia has the base drivers. Y’all are just pouty over the reality check. Until Linux desktop is easier and better supported Windows will continue strong.

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      It’s SUPER hard to use. I had to download an .iso from my distro’s website, make a bootable USB drive, plug that into my computer and boot into it, answer a few questions and wait a few minutes, A FEW MINUTES… can you believe that??
      And then It had the audacity to give me a super easy, working, private OS! Like what the fuck!
      How bloody dare you make my life difficult. I was expecting to be TRACKED and EXPLOITED and BOMBARDED with ads all day.
      Instead I get all this calm and happiness??
      FFS!

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      As a Linux main, I don’t think it’s hard, but it’s also still not as good as Windows in some ways I find important. Fractional scaling for instance. I had a different resolutions multimonitor setup, and I definitely had more issues than on Windows. Also, now with two same reso monitors, I still have to switch to Windows to RDP into my work Win machine, because on Linux it’s so blurry due to difference in scaling, it hurts my eyes. Of course, I’m most likely in minority of a minority, but it’s still a thing.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      The biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. Linux just has so many different ways to configure it

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    Man, securing the privacy of a Windows PC can really wear you down. Remember all those times I spent tweaking the Group Policy Settings? Turning off each and every one of them was a chore, but the real kicker was having to do it all over again after every update.

    And don’t even get me started on that spyware.exe in the task manager. It seemed like it was everywhere, hiding in plain sight and multiplying with each passing day. Finding and closing all those instances was a real headache.

    But the icing on the cake was the constant need to check the privacy settings after every update. I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off the ball, and the fear of something breaking or getting compromised was always present.

    The whole experience left me feeling drained and frustrated. I mean, who needs that kind of stress in their life? That’s why I made the switch to Linux – it was a welcome relief and a breath of fresh air.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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      Yes, but like 10 years ago. That was probably the last time I ripped out chunks of hair and snapped off teeth trying to configure a half supported broadcom wireless card.

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      I rarely have WiFi issues on Linux. At least not with internal WiFi cards. USB ones can sometimes be a problem, but not often.

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      it’s the never ending cycle, we struggle getting wifi to work and then laugh at windows users trying to get windows to work

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      I just add this to my system config:

      networking.wireless = {
        enable = true;
        networks = import ./networks.nix;
      };
      

      Then I define my networks in a gitignored file and I’m good to go.

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      Every kernel update on Ubuntu kills my wifi driver. So I automatically recompile and add my new driver…same driver each gaddam time. But it’s not an ad 😂 lol.

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        Get the maintainer to PR it to the linux-firmware team if its unique.

  • Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    Ubuntu advertises their paid cloud hosting service every time you install server manually.

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      I have it too, but I didn’t duel boot with Linux Mint. I use the Mint more. I liked 10. But the graphics on Mint just looks better to me. Maybe because it doesn’t hog resources like Windows.

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          Mint. But 10 is still there because I’m pragmatic. And I have some blender renders I haven’t transferred over yet.

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            You see, the joke is that “dual boot” means you have two drives/partitions you boot from.

            “Duel boot” would imply your boot drives will take 10 paces apart from one another, turn, and shoot each other, one dying and the other emerging victorious.