I had a 3-4 year old gaming laptop, and a mandatory windows update would corrupt the hard drive forcing a fresh install. I say mandatory because it installed no matter what I tried. Disabling updates in settings and registry never would prevent this update from wrecking my computer. I could get a few days to a week of use and then it would crash and require a fresh install.
I installed Ubuntu to see if it was a hardware issue, and it ran great. Years later when I finally got another computer I tried windows again, but quickly realized how many things I hated about windows. I deleted my windows partition and have never looked back since.
Proprietary software just feels gross, low quality, and opaque. I want to feel like I’ve actually got some kind of control over the computers I own. Windows was feeling more out of touch with software developers. Installing a compiler in Linux is super easy compared to Windows.
Spending thousands every couple of years because a marketing department tells you your old device is suddenly shit just doesn’t sit well with me.
I’ve used the same $400 dollar phone for three years now, keeping it updated with lineageOS. And I’ve kept my trusty 6 year old editing desktop relatively capable with routine part upgrades and Linux.
Our entire economic system is based on making people buy new shit as often as possible, and that’s so ridiculously unsustainable it’s insane most people just put up with it so long as they can keep their nose down watching tiktok.
While I agree that marketing trying to sell you upgrades you don’t need is dumb and annoying, it’s a pretty poor argument unless you have absolutely no willpower or something and can’t stop yourself from buying new things just because it been advertised to you.
I switched because Windows 2000 was total garbage, and because Linux gave me actual programming tools. I was like a kid in a candy store. Suddenly I had all these amazing professional software packages, and scripting languages that weren’t fucking garbage. I’m still WAY too good at DOS scripts. The number of years I wasted learning DOS. Fuck microsoft. I’m still a little mad.
I actually like Windows. Not because its a good OS (it isn’t) but because my software works with it, and it works with my hardware.
Only problem Windows 11 has decided thaty hardware isn’t compatible anymore thanks to no security chip and because it requires a mandatory account to use.
The security chip is me being stubborn, but the mandatory account is an issue because I know people who live off the grid, and not entirely by choice.
So I wanted to find an alternative and Valve is showing that Linux is good enough that they can ship thei Steam Deck to mass market, without Windows.
I’ve jumped 4 distros since starting this. POP_OS, Manjaro, EndeavorOS and Fedora. What I’ve learned is 3 things
Linux has become stable, no matter what OS I used the experience was the same software was the same. And most if not all of it just worked. Its not Windows with exe installs (unless you’re using Wine/lutris) but its similar to android/iOS that I was able to get into it easily enough
which distro you want depends on the software you need and how up-to-date the packages need to be. Ubuntu (and any is based on it) has packages that are too out of date for me.
find a desktop environment that you like, since it really narrows down which distro you use. I like KDE plasma and if the distro doesn’t game with it pre-installed or an installable option I won’t use it.
The end result was some productivity software shuffling fusion to freecad, Vegas to resolve etc. But almost everything I needed was installed out of the box, or installable without extra packages. With flatpak and community repos filling in the blanks.
Currently on Fedora, and it’s the closest distro to user friendly Linux I’ve used. Manjaro is a close second, but how the manage aur and their own packages caused me to destroy my install with no hope in recovery. Thankfully I was able to save my files.
@theViscusOne Take a look at LC_TIME in your /etc/locale.conf. If you don't have one, make one and set all the things you want to be a specific locale.
The manpage might be helpful, it also references the locale one which may also help.
I use Manjaro ARM on my Orange PI because I couldn’t get Arch ARM to work on it, while Manjaro has support of my devices out of the box. Since I installed a minimal possible version (without any DE), it doesn’t feel bloated or something. It feels like I’m using Arch but with slower updates. Overall, it’s good and I don’t notice much difference from Arch. But anyway, I haven’t tried it for a desktop station.
I switched because I really hated windows 11. When it first launched it was such a broken, buggy, unusable mess I just decided it was easier to learn linux
It’s probably better now but I still haven’t had a need to go back
Look into X11 forwarding if the guest uses X11 (xwayland will happily play along if you use waykand on the host) or try something like way pipe if you want a full Wayland solution. Both will display an app over network as if it was running locally, but they do require a bit of setup with ssh.
You may also be able to trick RDP into displaying one app remotely like winapps does if you don’t want to deal with ssh.
Private, Secure, FOSS. I want something that I know is my own and not a $200 license to a proprietary POS operating system that spies on me. Run a packet tracker on any Windows system and watch that guy ping to Windows with every bit of telemetry you can offer.
I was on windows and just got tired of the larger amount of spyware in my os. The last windows I used was 8, but I did hold out on that for a long time.
Well I hate to disagree with all the doomers here, but I don't think flatpaks are the devil. Flatpaks are as good as the person shipping them, there are not many flatpaks that actually have official dev support so a lot of these programs are packaged by volunteers in their spare time. So no, they may not have the best default settings.
That said, I run flatpaks almost exclusively on Kinoite I've never had an issue with flatpak theming or my cursor changing. Some applications are very obviously made for GNOME or KDE explicitly but flatpak doesn't have anything to do with that. Of course if you are running a WM rice or something with very specific theming then that's another story. You can customize a Linux desktop in countless ways, you can't really expect these applications to keep up with that by default (flatpak or not). It's the same concept as something like Discord or Steam, it will look the same for everybody but you can theme it if you put some effort in.
IDEs are another issue, the whole concept of an IDE is antithetical to a sandbox in the first place so it's simply not a very good use case of flatpak. Flatpak isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, that's why even the Fedora immutable desktops give you additional options like rpm-ostree, podman, buildah and toolbox.
The problem occurred on Brave browser using standard KDE.
Anyway this explains it nicely. I guess flatpak itself is ok but a lot of things are in the hands of package maintainers and if they don’t set things up correctly then there will be issues. Makes sense
I honestly wish more programs did the app by app theming thing. I don’t need my desktop theme applied to every program I open. I would much rather the program to have a consistent design language that works, rather than slapping themed buttons all over the place that don’t fit with other aspects of the program.
I wanted an operating system, not a marketing platform. I’m not a Linux expert, and I don’t really care about most of the things other Linux users seem to be passionate about. I just want it to work and leave me alone while it does.
I’ve been on Pop_OS! at home and Tumbleweed at work for almost two years, and I haven’t missed Windows. I moved my family over not long ago and they don’t seem to notice a difference.
My best advice is to go all in if you decide to switch. For me, it was hard to learn while I was dipping my toe in while still using Windows. Once I went all Linux, it became second nature rather quickly.
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