AAAA

Isn't a process happening gradually over years "slowly"?

Would that not be slowly? What would you call slowly in this context?

Decades.

I don’t recall such issues with Win98 or XP

Just more in the neighborhood of being used or understanding something because it has been given to them from a very young age on. So getting familiar and used to it very young age on makes it "friendly" even though it is more "familiarity".

Linux is always going to be really awkward at first but over the course of time you learn and shy away and develop your own kinda workflow and that's the beauty of it in my opinion.

Because user-friendly means that even a tech-noob can easily set it up and use it right away without much researching.

• If an OS requires ANY AMOUNT of command line, you have lost about half the population.

• If an OS asks any remotely difficult question with techno lingo, you have lost an other quarter.

• If an OS doesn't work out of the box the way it should (like all their hardware functioning including audio), you have lost all the other not technology inclined people.

Windows is setup that it requires none of that. It may do something that you find horrific, but most people do not care as long as it works.

I would say I know the basics of Linux due to owning a Pi and messing around with it time-to-time but no where near experienced.

This is my biggest downfall with Linux, lack of integration with gaming but I’ll learn to leave without it, I guess.

I use a Mac!

What laptop was it so the rest of us can avoid this tomfoolery in the future?

This was after spending an hour trying to get into the BIOS, only to find that the keyboard doesn’t actually work before the Windows splash screen comes up… I mean who the fuck designs it like that?

Does your laptop have multiple usb ports? And did you try them all?

I had this issue even on my PC until I tried a bunch of different USB ports and found one that worked.

Uhh I just realized that since it's a laptop the keyboard is part of the laptop... Well I'll still leave this in case it helps anyone

Hold shift when you click restart in windows, you can access the firmware through windows recovery.

Also the memey "xxxx the year of Linux". Because that's been going on for 40+ years now. 😅 You use it, or you don't. Your OS is a tool, not a belief system.

But you should be using Arch instead ot Mint.

(I use Arch BTW)

I mean, if you like knowing what your machine is doing, Arch is one of the best options.

Honestly, I've been thinking about switching to Linux with my next system since about a month after I built my current system, over 4 years ago. That's how long it took for me to be sick of Microsoft's bullshit in Windows 10.

That said, I'm not looking forward to figuring out how to get into Linux. It's probably easier than I think, but having done 0 research (as I don't need a new system yet), the impression I have is that there's a ton of stuff I'm going to have to figure out before getting started.

Don't use Mint or Arch, use Void!

I should, you're right.

The best way to install is to use a LIVE edition. This is useful beacuse you have a nice installer intergrated and you can try it before you have to install the OS on the computer.

For download of this edition, see www.debian.org/CD/live

From there, if you come from Windows, I would raccomend KDE, as it is stable and customizable. Search "KDE screenshot" to see what it looks like, and if you like it.

If you want this, here the direct URL to download: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.2.0-amd64-kde.iso

Debian should also be lite enough for older machines, and it is the most stable distro I've tried. With this OS, there are already web browser, media player, office suite,... but you can also download Steam, emulators and lots of software

For help you can DM me.

It's easier than installing Windows. The problem is that someone hasn't already done it for you.

1. get your perferred iso
2. do a checksum if available (basecally check the signature of the original file with yours, the checksum often is available on the website)
3. get beleana etcher or i think rufus can also do linux isos but i'n not shure
4. get an usb stick with min 4gb
5. flash iso onto usb stick
6. stick usb stick into perferred pc
7. boot onot that usb stick (for my motherboard it's F10 but that can be different for you)
8. boot into the live iso and the installer should pop up
9. read the instructions of the installer carefully
10. you are done enjoy your new os

although i would recommend playing around with different distros in a vm to see waht you like and if all your needed software is available

Check out ubuntu if you want something thats easy to install. It's very popular, it's based on Debian and it has corporate backing but no spyware

It is Linux, so no

Virtualizing applications that use 3d graphics can be a pain

My laptop barely runs windows unvirtualized and I don't have a PC :(

Only if you use it.

I doubt I would have even logged into my outlook if I didn't set up my Microsoft account, so it helped me there at least.

Use EndeavourOS if you want easy Arch, Manjaro is kinda bad.

But really if you want an easy system, go with Mint or Fedora. Arch isn't designed for ease nor first-timers.

I have enjoyed manjaro. My sons first laptop ran manjaro with WINE for his gaming. It never gave him too many problems

Hey, wait a minute...

This is all accurate. However, there's one other thing, which is essentially SSO.

Basically if you sign in with a Microsoft account, you can sign into your PC with your Microsoft account username and password, which can be easier to reset from another device than going through the password recovery process for Windows.

Apart from that, your bitlocker keys are stored on your Microsoft account if you have that enabled on your main drive.

As an aside: if you have bitlocker enabled on your PC, be sure to back up the recovery key. Print it off, or save it to a USB drive and email it to yourself (the system won't let you save it on the encrypted drive for obvious reasons), or something. Bitlocker isn't bad, I just feel like Microsoft doesn't do a very good job at making people aware of the pitfalls of it when things go sideways. Basically, if you need to pull the drive for any reason as part of a recovery operation, then you'll need the recovery key to decrypt the data and gain access to it for the purpose of recovery.

Fair warning: anyone who purchased a prebuilt PC in the past 3-5 years should check on it (longer realistically), and make sure they have that recovery key. Most prebuilt PC companies (like HP/Lenovo/Dell) generally have bitlocker on by default and Windows does a wretched job of telling you any of this.

Bitlocker isn't bad, it's full drive encryption. That's a good thing for the most part and you should use it, especially with mobile systems, but please make sure you have that recovery key. I work in IT support and it's starting to happen that drives fail, and the client doesn't have the recovery key, so I can't even try to recover the data for them. It used to be trivial, just load the drive into a working system and grab what you need, but with bitlocker, even if you get a corrupted file that's required for Windows to start, but the disk is otherwise fine, your data goes away and will not come back without that key.

I guess so. I don't really think about that. As long as stuff works on my end I don't worry about updating it. I'd be happy if I could just install the security updates because updating the OS generally just breaks stuff and slows things down.

I personally landed on mint in its cinnamon flavor. It loosk great, is customizable l, click of a button to get nvidia card working and works just the way I want

I started at Elementary OS which I just thought looked cool. Then I lived in Manjaro but had some issues. So I finally jumped to EndeavourOS, It has been smooth and a great experience. Yeah for me I have to use Windows for my Elgato Capture card which is annoying.

I started 2 weeks ago with Arch (bad first choice, but i learned a lot), moved to Ubuntu (seemed way too bloated and hard to customize), then PopOS (worse than Ubuntu), and now I’m moving from Manjaro back to Arch.

Sincerely, check out Fedora/KDE. It just works, and it's backed well.

I'm not suavevillain, but I recently switched to PopOS after a love hate relationship with Windows. I would leave Windows, then come crawling back for one reason or another, this stint is the longest I've had staying away from it.

I personally like PopOS. But for a less bloated environment and easy to spin up system, you could look at Linux Mint (https://linuxmint.com/).

Hahahaha, if only pro was anything more than home with some added features. If you want the version without ads you need enterprise + a domain or intune.

They probably just turned off suggested links, and tips.

Consider yourself *European with actual privacy rights ftfy

Just make a throwaway outlook account to cost them server cost and sign it up for every spam you can find.

May be you dont know how to use it? I've used it, my friends use it and we never had any issue

Not a single problem with o&o shut up for me. What exactly becomes bugged & unstable?

Proton works great for gaming because the narrow set of gaming-related API allows Valve and CodeWeaver to focus their effort to make sure most games run well. Windows has a lot more API though and a good percentage of them is still doesn't work that well in wine, which means many apps still have issues or outright unusable in wine. For example, I think iTunes for Windows still doesn't work in wine.

You can hate one FOSS implementation without hating the concept.

Honestly, the worst thing about Linux is the community of entitled elitists snobs that whine about anything that isn't Linux.

At one point I was tempted to install a distro on my home machine to expand my technological knowledge. But if it turns me into one of those fuckers, then I rather keep my social life. Doesn't matter if Linux is a divinely perfect OS or not.