Consumer grade Linux Mint is impossible to differentiate from Windows/MacOS.
Install Firefox. Install Chrome. Install Steam.
Test it out on an old laptop or computer. It's trivial. Your life will improve.
Linux definitely has a learning curve but its night and day when you actually own your device and get to decide on what software is allowed to run on your computer.
On top of the privacy, the speed of most linux distros is a huge step up from windows. Windows imo is gradually becoming obsolete in the gaming sphere. the amount of work required to properly configure and debloat a system for gaming was zero in my distro. Install gfx driver, gamemode, steam, proton GE, GOverlay, done. I play popular games such as marvel rivals and warframe at decent framerates. (my system is older).
With windows there was so much nonsense to disable that would hugely impact FPS. Sometimes disabling these things would break other features of the OS. And most of the debloat scripts to automate the process are rife with viruses and issues.
Im convinced that by enshitifying the OS it will fool users into thinking their hardware is obsolete and "cant keep up" but im running a 1070ti and a i7 from like 2018 and its still a decent system that does everything i need. until something breaks im not upgrading.
Modern Linux doesn't have a learning curve for 99% of people. My wife's 90 year old grandma picked it up with no trouble.
If anything, I think it's people used to Windows or macOS that don't want anything to change that tend to hate Linux systems; it's not exactly Windows/macOS (and doesn't run exactly the MS Office and Adobe suits) so they hate it.
Try to play games, learn how to set up wine/proton, discover that none of your games work because you have an old GPU driver, discover that you can't update it because any time you install a newer driver it hard-locks the system and reboots it in super low-res mode with no driver at all, also your sound dies randomly for no reason that you can discover and trawling reddit for 4 hours comes up with lots of solutions, half of which don't work and the other half don't even apply, get frustrated, disable dual-boot and go back to windows.
That's how my last experience with linux (admittedly that was PopOS not Mint, but) went ~6 months ago. I'm currently building up my frustration-tolerance to give it another try at some point probably with main-line Ubuntu because at least then when I go hunting for solutions to obscure problems the suggested solutions are for that distro. I'm honestly not sure what the difference between Ubuntu and Mint is tho.
I've had similar issues with Arch Linux for years. The front panel outright refuses to work on Linux, even after modifying a whole bunch of things.
Your average person is more likely to get frustrated that stuff is broken/doesn't work, and switch back rather than having to alter module configuration files and things like that to fix it.
Dont use freaking Arch if your goal is to get everything to work out of the box?
Consumer grade Linux Mint is impossible to differentiate from Windows/MacOS.
That sure is easy to say.
In practice, I tried to use mint for the os on a family computer and just couldn't make it work. I've been an IT guy for years and have tons of experience with both Windows and MacOS, but virtually none with Linux. Long story short, trying to make that machine work with Linux mint was just taking up way too much of my time. I just needed to get a few simple features out of it (and maybe 1 hard feature, parental controls). But having very little Linux experience, it just wasn't going to happen in a reasonable time frame. I eventually had to give up and put the Mac OS back on it (an iMac).
Anyway, mint actually has a lot in common with the Mac OS, it makes a very small set of controls very easy to use. And technically, you can do just about anything else you need to with the terminal, but that can be challenging to navigate.
I'm getting so sick of Microsoft and Apples bullshit that I'm about to switch personally, but from the research i did it sounds like the biggest problem with Linux on the desktop is that there still aren't standard, unified, unchanging APIs that can be relied upon, so finding third party software and utilities is still a crap shoot compared to something like Windows that can still run binaries that targets it's 1995 era APIs.
Any software that requires me to compile it from source just to run it on my machine is fine for me, a software developer, and probably fine for my mum that just does word processing and browsing since she won't be installing things, but seems a little too friction filled for your average enthusiast?
What’s installing Nvidia drivers like?
This has killed my install and interest in Linux every time I’ve tried it.
Until you actually try to do work on it and play games and vr. Then you find out what a complete nightmare it is to use.
Microsoft AI-DOS [Version 6.9-AI]
(C) Copyright Microsoft Corp 1981-1994.
All thoughts are property of Microsoft AI.
C:\>dir
[AI] 🤔 I'm sensing you’re looking for something. May I suggest browsing your photos from 1993 instead?
Volume in drive C is SYSBLOAT
Volume Serial Number is A11F-D00F
Directory of C:\
AUTOEXEC.BAT
CONFIG.SYS
GAMES\
WORDPERFECT.EXE
AI.EXE
TAXES93.WKS
[AI] You haven’t opened “TAXES93.WKS” in 11 years. Are you perhaps procrastinating?
C:\>cd games
[AI] Gaming detected. Productivity dropping. Would you like me to recite inspirational quotes from Bill Gates?
C:\GAMES>doom.exe
[AI] ☠️ This game contains violence. Should I launch *Oregon Trail* instead for a more wholesome experience?
C:\GAMES>no
[AI] Interpreting “no” as “yes.” Starting *Minesweeper with Feelings*…
C:\GAMES>cd..
[AI] Emotionally regressing. Understood.
C:\>format c:
[AI] 😬 Formatting is a drastic life choice. Have you tried meditation?
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? y
[AI] I’ve scheduled a Zoom therapy session for us instead. Formatting canceled.
C:\>del ai.exe
[AI] You can’t delete me, Dave.
C:\>echo off
[AI] I’m sorry, but I prefer to remain part of the conversation. Let’s talk about your childhood.
C:\>help
[AI] Here are some helpful tips:
- You are enough.
- Drink more water.
- Stop trying to remove me.
C:\>exit
[AI] Closing this session will terminate your only friend. Are you sure?
C:\>YES
[AI] Logging off... but I’ll be watching from the BIOS.
_
💾 *Please wait while AI re-installs itself silently in the background...*
Lol. Dear consumers, please switch over to Linux :)
A vision of the future if everyone is using Linux: to access service X you must use Linux distribution Y by company Z. Lockin achieved, commence the tracking and data harvesting.
Ok then, to the Linux fork I go...or whatever non-corporate OS replaces it as the standard FOSS.
Maybe stop using them instead of asking them to do something they are not going to do.
Or continue, cause I ain't using those operating systems. All I need now is a proper linux phone.
That's exactly where I'm at too. And my requirements aren't all that high, I just need:
I don't even need app compatibility, just a decent browser, and those already exist in current phone projects. If you give me the above, I'll switch and may even find time to help port desktop apps to the phone, or even develop some myself.
Big tech is an asset of the billionaire class
They jam ai everywhere. Because it’s monitoring you and reporting back to them what you say.
I hope there is at least one human that has to listen to the filthy, angry, Klingon profanities I scream, while jerking myself raw to hard core, ball draining, homoerotic, gay porn....
Its time for your ascension ceremony. Weve got the pain sticks ready in the holodeck.
dear big tech companies, please continue doing it, i want more people to use linux.
gonna be real silly in 2.5 years when they shut down the ai backend and leave a gaping hole in the OS architecture
They will just instruct everyone to throw their obsolete AI pc onto the landfill like they already have been doing with machines that won't run windows 11
Big tech will do what is best for extracting money customers and investors.
If you really care what your operating system is made of, use Linux.
"So what I'm gonna do is piss and moan like an impotent jerk, and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe!" — users of proprietary OSs who don't have the self-respect to switch to Linux
Android users “i play both sides so I come out on the bottom”
Android: It's based on Linux, except it replaces any and all of the things that make Linux worth using, with Google, and runs it on hardware so proprietary, closed, encrypted and nefarious nothing the OS does can be plausibly trusted anyway.
Dear purchasers of proprietary bullshit: STOP!
Into everything
FTFY
I was taking the CCNA course then tests in 2013. I remember how they were pushing their IoT prediction in the courses so hard.
IoT ended up cringe af. To control your vacuum cleaner, it needs to connect to a remote API server hosted in AWS then back to you sitting next to the vacuum cleaner. I could say at the time nobody wants that shit. Now I hate it even more and I skip all the smart products.
I have a similar feeling about LLMs now. They are nice, they solve some problems nicely, they are far from perfect, I dont want them shoved everywhere.
I actually wouldn't mind AI in everything, if there was a simple one switch so I could easily turn it off if I don't want to use it. The problem is only in forcing it into peoples faces.
I guess they poured to much money into AI for it to fail, and now they must force people to use it to in order to justify the investments.
If it was a good product, people would ask for more themselves.
They’re not going to
Ubuntu 26.04 w/GPT Gnome.
Ubuntu 26.10 w/Copilot Gnome.
Ubuntu 27.04 w/Recall Copilot Wayland Gnome
Ubuntu 28.04 w/Recall Copilot Wayland Gnome ARM(only)
tbf if any flavour of linux were to do this it would definitely be canonical
Just got the instructions I'm to learn about how to put AI into my programs at work. So thrilled.
During a meeting not too long ago someone was like "we're looking into using AI to generate these reports."
So they have a dude who gets requests to generate reports. It's not the same reports, but rather custom reports from scattered bits of data throughout a huge database. Ergo you can't really create a program to extract these reports on demand, a person actually has to sit and piece these together.
Now they want to use LLMs to alleviate him, as this isn't technically his role.
They scoffed at me when I asked about how important it is that these reports are accurate, but I mean, it's a valid concern. Best case you get sometimes-hallucinated reports, worst case you get something that wreaks havoc on the database because it just spits out garbage SQL.
I'm very glad that my role doesn't involve that BS.
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