This guy fucks!

That’s right. Even if you have to use a windows app that Linux compatibility layers don’t support, you can banish Windows 11 to a virtual machine.

Oh, weird, even in a virtual machine it wants an account. Anyone know where I can find a bypass method? :-)

Linux is so difficult you guys, no one could possibly learn the command line.

In the vast VAST majority of "normal" use cases, which I'd argue for most people it's :

• Web browsing
• watching videos or listening to music
• editing text documents, spreadsheets, presentations
• playing video games
• managing files, e.g. moving them in directories, compressing them, etc
• keeping the system up to date
• using a printer

there are reliable ways to use a GUI. So... even though IMHO the command line is absolutely worth learning, one can perfectly use Linux my "just" clicking their way around.

I've swapped back and forth between Linux and Windows a half dozen times now, and I can honestly say, both are a bitch to set up from a clean install.

Even with guides and autoloading scripts and whatnot, it's still going to be a few days of pain while you try to figure out what else needs to be installed to use the computer the way you want to use it.

Or that's how it works for me.

I mostly just wish more games were linux native.

The just install Linux crowd gets really old. How’s that gonna help on a work machine where I HAVE to use Office to collaborate? Oh right, it’s not! Totally unhelpful.

I agree. Lemmy is like. "Use Linux..."

"Oh you still want to use Windows? Why do you still drown puppies and club baby seals?"

It's not even viable for me. I simply cannot use Linux daily because all my jobs require software that doesn't have a Linux version, or it does but it's lacking necessary features, or there's an alternative but I have to burn extra hours making it work with their systems/setup - hours I don't have.

Or I have to use internally configured Remote Desktop profiles over a VPN (not to be confused with RDP), and you can't do that specific use case on Linux because it requires using the company's internal Windows Store with specific Remote Desktop installation.

Or I have to use a specific Outlook instance, locally installed, because somehow they've blocked web access (I still haven't figured out exactly how they set this up).

After a 12 hour day, sure, I can switch back to my dual boot Linux instance and spend 1-2 hours for personal use. But the ratio is still Windows-leaning no matter how you slice it.

By far most people want to use windows.

Do they though? I'd bet a significant share do not "want" to, but they are stuck there, convinced there are no viable alternatives.

If installing something like Linux Mint is not intuitive enough for someone, they probably don't even know what they're doing on Windows either.

But more intuitive than constantly working against Windows.

They have been suffering for years and never thought once about alternatives like Ubuntu

The average user is pretty unaffected by windows' enshitification. And if it doesn't fuck over their daily life, most people are more than happy to keep using the thing they're familiar with. Especially when switching would require not only learning one new thing, but a large number of new things. For example, do you use paint.net? Sucks to suck, time to find a Linux alternative and learn how to use it and hope it can do everything you need it for.

Linux fanatics like to pretend its as simple as installing a different OS and that's it, everything else in your workflow will work immediately with no research needed. But that's simply not true.

I can relate. It is like those tool bars that were installed automatically if you weren't attentive while installing software when Windows XP still was around.

They like to suffer, I let them.

Me too. I always suggest to them to install UBlock origin (or any ad blocker compatible to their browser), along with add ons that get rid of cookie consent banners. If they follow my advice, I will invest my time into helping them to make their OS a little bit less annoying (e.g. switching off telemetry data and uninstalling Copilot). If they can't be bothered with at least installing an ad blocker, I will not waste my time on them. They clearly want to suffer.

Edit: The screenshot displays a Windows Vista UI. These Toolbars must have been aorund also while Windows Vista was around. I didn't know that, because Vista made me settle into the other walled garden.

My parents are almost completely technological-illiterate (i.e. due to old age my father doesn't even have a cellphone nor knows how to use it, and my mother barely can know how to do calls in her phone - both of them don't know how to use a computer) but they know they don't know about stuff - so hearing stories like that kind of make me be thankful they're like that and that they will hear me when needing some advice or need to do something involving something tech-y

Just turned a Win10 machine into Ubuntu not too long ago. It took all day, broke several times, and still has issues booting remotely. It is getting easier, but a 30 minute Windows install with a few button presses is still easier, unfortunately

You are right. From what I saw Linux-based OSs have come a long way. The issue with Linux is when it comes to professional environments, that are not IT-related: There are niche programs that are used in certain professions that were written to work on Windows computers exclusively. They are not availiable for other OSs, because they are not wide spread or popular with non-professionals. Also, Microsoft Office (especially Outlook and Excel) is very dominant within the professional field - up to a point that it can't be changed easily. All this does not apply to users who use Linux computers outside a professional enviroment, as there are alternatives for popular programs and services already.

But that's only 5 steps!

(Just checking if this federates. Edit: it did immediately.)