Slashdot was founded 26 years ago. I’m almost 40, so when I say this, I mean it-
Don’t condescend to young people about being children. You’re just old now. Embrace it. Explain things nicely or be one of those old people we hated when we were young.
Hey, my weekly reminder to tell you that I, a Windows 11 user on five computers without any special tweaks, have never seen a single one of those ads people keep talking about on Lemmy.
I just installed Win11 on a work computer last week, and there were at least 3 screens of the installer trying to push o365 or one drive.
Then you have the start menu where if you look for a software, 90% of the menu is an ad trying to push you a software. At the bottom, you have your search results.
And then there is the pop ups on the bottom right of the screen trying to sell you Candy Crush or another bullshit software.
When I press the winkey and search (which is the most efficient way to search the start menu) I get web search shit in the results. This is not desirable.
I don’t have the pc with me anymore, but I will try to find a screenshot that was circulating around with a ton of ads, which was my experience as well.
right? the clickbait is just absurd. and i say this as someone who lived through the whole slashdot “m$” phase where you couldn’t blink without seeing an anti microsoft piece on there
Replying from Ubuntu (distro of the month for me) though, so I know other. I wouldn’t say better, just different
Windows is perfectly fine for day to day use. 80% of my PC use (and probably 99% for like most people I know) is in a browser. The remaining 20% is in video games. My browser works 100% the same in Linux as it does in Windows. Video games overall are easier to use in Windows. (I use Steam (90% fine with Linux) and Gamepass, which does not play well with Linux).
But feel free to continue to complain about windows :)
Windows at this point is barely an OS anymore, it's freemium, it exists solely to push ads and their other products. You say it yourself, most people just use the browser, but hey today windows wants you to use edge, onedrive, outlook, the office suite... and they're taking every step to make sure you do. Their unique goal is to lock you into their ecosystem and make more money off you.
They can't be too heavy handed, otherwise they'll end up with another IE lawsuit that fucked them over. Instead what you have is windows slowly creeping up the enshittification, slowly pushing the boundaries of what they're allowed to do, and doing so regionally too, with the EU getting less shit shoveled in.
I don’t even see downvotes or the downvote button on mine. Which is fine. If I disagree with someone I’ll do it via a comment. Downvoting is just lazy.
aye, but do you have a way of managing a physical (noy virtual machine) windows computer so it can be used through the linux system without being aware of it?
Like RDP? Or are we talking like, some sort of ssh GUI, where you just wanna access the files on the Windows machine? Most file explorers on Linux do that natively. Or are you talking about compatibility with .exe files? If so, there’s Wine and Proton, but those could need some configuration.
Unfortunately, if you’re managing one computer from another computer, you’re going to be aware of it regardless of which OS you decide to use.
Microsoft always treated linux and foss with such disdain while under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Their current CEO is an outlier, openly embracing and extending foss and linux. After years of abuses from Gates and Ballmer, many people in the linux community won’t be so quick to trust them.
So you’re saying you, a windows 11 user on five computers running Microsoft’s default preferred configuration don’t receive any nagware notifications for deviating from Microsoft’s preferred configuration? Fascinating
Damn I’m somewhat indifferent to windows as my main PC os, mostly because I’ve got all my weird music hardware and a couple of decades worth of plugins working nicely. But this shit is getting annoying, so…
I have extensive experience with Linux on servers and I keep umming and ahhing about switching to it as my main desktop OS—let’s see if anyone here is in the venn diagram that can answer this:
I’m a software engineer, all of that is cool, but I’m also pretty into music production
I would need to run Ableton with a Push 3 and Maschine with my M+. I’ve got simpler controllers like a beatstep pro, but I’m expecting those to be fine. And then would I be able to use my expert sleepers modular interfaces properly? Obviously I want this all with low latency.
After hardware I’ve got all sorts of vsts across tens of companies, some need my ilok key, I’ve got my Steinberg stuff too, but they’ve moved to online licensing finally.
Alternatives to the software are great (I know I can use bitwig natively, for example), but it’s a non starter unless I can run it all, I’ve got years of projects that I would want to be able to open and start messing with the music, rather than spending most of my time messing with the software and losing what inspiration made me open the software in the first place
From someone with experience in this area, how viable is this?
I’d say keep that machine as is, and whenever you build a new one, just put whichever distro you like. If possible I’d roll back to win10 and after support ends, keep that machine VLAN’d off the internet. This way you turn it into a music production appliance without disrupting your workflow
Steinberg plugins are not working at all for me. I have Absolute 4 and Cubase Artist 12.
The licensing app installs fine. However, the download center cannot be installed. If you download the installers directly from Steinberg, those don’t install.
I did have some luck with downloading Steinberg installers on a windows pc with download assistant, and then opening THOSE installers on Linux. They installed correctly this way and Yabridge (vst bridge for Linux) even identified them correctly. But the vsts would crash on start.
Yabridge is essential to using VSTs on Linux. Works great from my experience, IF the vst actually can start at all. But that is never a Yabridge problem, always a VST specific Wine problem.
Arturia stuff can be installed without any problems (through wine)
Spitfire’s recent update broke things.
From what I’ve seen, Ableton is pretty nicely supported by the Wine community. But any Ableton or Wine update can break things, so you’ll need to have Wine and Ableton updates freezed if you want a hasslefree life.
Hardware stuff I had no problems with for now, but I have mostly simple midi controllers. I have an external soundcard (UR22 mk2), so my latency is as low on Windows. I use Pipewire, because PulseAudio seems to sometimes give problems being detected by VSTs.
For now I cannot recommend anyone that has extensive VST libraries to fully commit to Linux. The support is simply not there yet. Wine is not reliable enough, and I would hate to be stopped by a Wine error when inspiration hits. You’ll be troubleshooting for days to hopefully get your favourite VSTs working, and pray they don’t break when they update.
I dual boot for now. Music and VR on Windows, all other tasks on Linux. I’m considering making stems for all my projects so I could switch to a different DAW with only Arturia plugins in the future. But I’m not ready yet.
I’m not a super expert, but I did try very hard to get my steinberg stuff and Spitfire Labs working. Feel free to ask any followup questions.
It’s promising to hear that Ableton has a lot of support from the community. I suppose given the versioning issues something like nix could be used to manage the wine versioning more deliberately.
I’ve got a focusrite interface, so if your latency is low, I imagine I’d probably get the same experience. I know I’ll probably lose the iPad remote control features too as I think that’s baked into the windows driver.
Given I do have a pretty extensive VST collection, it’s a shame, but you’re probably right. Do you know how heavily developed Yabridge is? Do you think the industry moving slowly to CLAP plugins might improve this situation?
Maybe dual-boot is a better option to start with, I guess that way if I feel like trying to get it working I can give it a go.
Do you have any plugins that use iLok? Either software or a hardware key
-Yabridge is still actively being developped. The developer responds to issues on it’s Github frequently.
-Ableton 11.x currently has gold status on WineDB. other versions have varying ratings bronze to platinum.
-I don’t use iLok plugins a lot, but I just tried installing one. iLok gave an error for me. Some searching gave me a thread about a user that got a specific iLok version to work though, so you may need to experiment with this yourself: This thread
I don’t know much about CLAP since I always used VSTs (Cubase user after all :P ). I hope more developers will implement it as an alternative, but I don’t have high hopes. .Au could only become a standard because of Apple’s willingness to not support VSTs in Logic. I’m not sure if a third-party format can shift that much weight. All DAWS either support VST, AU or AAX and I don’t think developers want ANOTHER format to maintain.
I am in a very similar position. Ableton and some other, smaller stuff is the only program that keeps me from switching to Linux fulltime. Bitwig did not click for me yet, I have to give it a try again soon. But the problem of unopenable projects persist. There are roumors, that the push 3 standalone runs a Linux port of ableton. So maaaybe there will be a Linux version in the future? That would be wild! Until then I just dualboot. I will soon reinstall my windows partition for ableton only… I am pretty shure if bigger companies would start supporting Linux, it would take off like crazy
I use a mixture of Linux and Windows 10 LTSC on my PCs/servers/VMs. I will be the first to admit that Windows does sometimes make sense to use. My desktop PC and my dev environment are both Windows 10.
That being said, what is the advantage in using Windows 11 over 10? As far as I can tell, it’s worse in every way. Built-in ads, a crappier UI, forced obsolescence with TPM requirements, and “feature” bloat that nobody asked for.
10 was a clear improvement over 8, but 11 just seems all-around worse.
what is the advantage in using Windows 11 over 10?
Many years ago, I was at a Windows XP launch event and the Microsoft Rep had a really honest line:
“Why should you start using Windows XP? Because we’re going to stop supporting Windows 98!”
And ya, that’s pretty much been the cattle prod Microsoft uses to push new versions, eventually you stop getting security updates for the older OS and at some point there are enough security vulnerabilities which make it no longer safe for daily use. That said, with Windows becoming more and more user hostile, other options start to make more sense.
I’d like to hope that by the time Win10 is no longer supported, we have Win12 that doesn’t suck. The way things are going, though, I doubt it. I’m expecting that Win10 will be the last version of Windows I use.
I still prefer Windows over Linux for gaming and software development, but everyone has their limit. I am strongly opposed to advertisements, and when I can no longer block ads from my operating system, it’s dead to me.
I never upgraded software-wise. Moreso my tech got so outdated that new hardware I’d get (I only use Windows for gaming) would have the latest Windows installed - exactly what Microsoft wants.
I think Proton/Linux in the past year is going to really disrupt that strategy.
Imagine you have a computer that’s been compromised by malware. What do you think the search engine will be set to? Not Google, not Bing, probably some third party one that has ads and malware. Changing that to Bing would technically qualify as a repair.
They could easily improve this by just adding a list of common reputable search engines, and adding those to an allow list.
Glad you had something useful and helpful to add to the discussion. Have you ever in your life heard of “playing devils advocate”? Read a book some time.
As a Linux aficionado, I appreciate you trying to bring an argument for Windows in good faith and a potential way for Microsoft to improve it. This is even if steering people to Bing is Microsoft’s intention with this move so they are unlikely to improve it in the way you suggested.
Since forever, Microsoft-affiliated products are often the only things that get the “trusted” label within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Nah that’s obvious. There was a supercomputer company that split up their hardware and software soon after software wasn’t strictly for one machine anymore.
“[…] switching the default search engine back to Bing […] from Google Search (or whatever other browser is set as default).”
Google is a Browser now, neat. And somehow it’s relevant in a post about search engines.
“Microsoft Edge, the default browser pre-installed on Windows machines, and Bing Search aren’t bad products by any means - they are solid alternatives to Google’s own Chrome and Search.”
They may be good compared to Chrome and now also Google. But even rotten eggs are better than literal shit, at least for most people.
I dualboot to accommodate a handful of apps. Linux loads up fast and awaits my command once logged in. Meanwhile my pretty much fresh windows build sets my cooling fans on full before I’ve even touch the mouse.
I admit it was a bit of a learning curve getting things set up as I like, but man Linux is such a better experience.
I was thinking about desktops, where the fan would be physically plugged into a fan controller instead of into the motherboard. Not sure what that would look like with a laptop.
I was mainly asking because some of those fan controllers default to full on when the usb connection is absent, and Windows doesn’t enable all usb connections until after the user logs into the system.
I didn’t spend tons of time experimenting, but found the VM wasn’t performing as smoothly as a second install.
Should I be worried about the boot loader thing? My OS picking experience is pretty wack. I have to slam esc while booting then f9 then pick my Linux boot up. It defaults to windows which I kind of like because it puts my actual OS on stealth mode lol.
If you’re booting without GRUB then you don’t need to be concerned about your bootloader breaking. Windows just sometimes overwrites GRUB, which is a pain
I finally did this last week, nuked out my Win 11 laptop install and switched to Ubuntu. I have yet to find anything I would need to go back to Windows for.
Don’t hold your breath, 10 already broke the pattern IMO and all I hear about 12 is that they will cram “AI” into everything. Windows the operating system is dead, replaced by Windows the sales platform.