Games and mods are really the only reason I still put up with the BS, but that straw is gonna break eventually. I don’t want to dual boot, but once SteamOS can play D2 that will probably be the day.
The only thing I’m really not sure on is mods. I tend to mod the fuck out of any game that supports it, and since mods are all written independtly, I’m worried many won’t be written well enough to be functional outside of the environment they were MacGyvered in.
How I predict my migration will go:
- Take a week off work so I can focus.
- Load Ubuntu and get Proton / Steam up and running.
- Spend remainder of the work troubleshooting audio & video issues.
- Either get everything working by the end of the week, or live my ass up and install Windows 11.
Keep hoping.
Most users don’t care that their OS is outdated or unsafe.
I spent 4 hours today trying to remove previous employers’ emails from the setup window for OneDrive - the one where you choose which email to sign in with and configure OneDrive.
I deleted credentials, erased mentions in the registry, updated my Outlook from classic to new, uninstalled the app about 10 times, enabled/disabled the hidden administrator account, moved the cache folders out from their normal locations, deleted my Outlook accounts, unlinked my PC, deleted OneDrive folders, tried completely resetting OneDrive only to get an error saying that I couldn’t - even after using a command that should have forced the program to reset. Nothing worked.
This is legitimately breaking my brain.
In contrast, I recently set up KeePass and Syncthing. How fucking easy that was, both on my Windows PC and phone.
If Linux promises a better modern OS experience than Windows 11, then I will ADORE switching to Ubuntu or Mint when I order my new Framework.
Ahh, but what OS does Joi use?
I didn’t realize that was how her name was spelled! That is fucking hilarious 😂
I’ve tried installing Linux on two computers four times last month, but I haven’t been able to for one reason or another. I’ve already spent an hour debugging simply because I cancelled the installation once at the wrong time (ie. any time after hitting start) and had to go in there and rename shit (???). If the community really wants us to switch, it needs to iron out all this garbage at the front door. I can only imagine the frustration of getting everything else up and running. Fuck these headaches. I’ve had a better UX installing Windows, which I did about 10 times last year without a hitch.
it sounds like you better stick to windows. installing something like Ubuntu or KDE Neon is a no-brainer usually, i never had issues installing the os before (those come later admittedly)
I have to agree. I love Linux. I’m using it for all of my servers and it works great. I recently tried to switch my daily use computer from Windows 10 to Linux, and it’s not gone well. I’m on my 5th install and third disto. I’ve been told it’s a hardware compatibility issue, but if I need to buy a new computer to run Linux, I’m in the same boat as switching to Windows 11.
Funny you say that because it does feel like the problem is the hardware, but I can’t confirm. That would suck because I do want to give it another go. I was thinking of buying another monitor but I guess I’ll have to settle for a new board if push comes to shove, and hopefully it’ll be compatible with both.
Bit of an odd question, but did you try booting it from a USB on that machine and see if it worked alright for a few days with what you wanted it to do? Typically if it works fine from the bootable usb, it shouldn’t really have any issues installing unless your drive is copy protected or something, especially if it’s Mint like you mentioned below, also I’d recommend poking their forums if you haven’t yet, somebody might be able to shed more light on what’s wrong with specific errors and behaviours
I don’t know what distro you’re installing or what the hell you’re doing, but most of the time it’s trivial. From my experience, the Linux installation is much simpler and easier than Windows.
It is different though, so if you bash your head against it expecting Windows then you’re obviously going to have a bad time. You need to start with the understanding that it’s a different thing and you’ll have to learn it, just like you did Windows when you first started with that. You weren’t instantly an expert. You just forgot what it was like to be a noob who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Well, I’ve worked with Linux before, and it wasn’t a generally smooth experience, so I went in with “it’s a different environment” in mind. But the series of events that unfolded was absurd. I was so ready and hyped to install some software that I remember from back in the day and try to emulate at least one game, but no luck. If I want to do it, I’m gonna need to dedicate some time and more effort than expected to setting up. I’ve been procrastinating because I don’t want to deal with these bugs.
For games, just use your package manager to install Steam, then install Proton from there. (IIRC it’s automatic for just the standard release version.) Steam games should mostly just work without you needing to do anything. Other games, you want to use something like Heroic or Lutris (I recommend the former) to manage them and launch them with Proton without manually doing it all every time.
If you expand on what your issues were, I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to help. Again, it should be pretty trivial, so I’m not sure what went wrong.
I can understand being frustrated, but you have to understand that your particular experience is not the norm. I’d be pretty confident saying that less than 1% of people will back out of an install half way through it or have that much of an issue installing (unless it’s Arch). So it’s not something that really needs to be fixed before people can start using Linux.
I didn’t even have that many problems setting up a dual boot with Windows in 2006 when I was a total newbie to Linux, and I had to figure out how partitioning and swap files worked.
Just ask for help in a respectful manner on your distros forum and someone will very likely be happy to assist you.
If you don’t understand or want to learn, then linux isn’t for you. You may ask a computer savvy friend to teach you.
It’s a non-trivial thing and it requires some skills that many people aren’t really trained for.
Let’s not reach for the “this guy doesn’t want to learn” excuse because that’s you shifting the blame on me, and instead focus on the “this experience has been more frustrating than it needs to be as a first step in adopting an OS and growing the user base”. If I didn’t want to learn, I wouldn’t have bothered to look how to fix the USB after simply cancelling the installation. In what world is that normal? That bug has been around for ages. Also, your installer fatally errors out without a clear cause. Not only was it frustrating, but my time and effort were also wasted. So please, at least take the time to understand what I mean…
Why would you cancel the install half way through, is that something you normally do?
If you don’t have the time to install it properly, don’t start the process. If you do have the time see it through.
If you think you have made a mistake and can’t simply back up to the step you think you messed up, just continue. Most things can be fixed after install. Worst case scenario, you will just have to reinstall.
If you backed out because you were afraid of messing up your windows partition, I highly recommend backing up all your data before you install in the first place.
In what world is that normal?
The world where the vast majority of people don’t cancel installing an OS halfway through the process.
You do realize that there is more than one reason why a person would need to cancel an installation that doesn’t necessarily have to do with not having allotted enough time, right? I had the whole afternoon. And that if the button exists on the UI, it’s reasonable to conclude that the feature is in working condition and would not do the one thing antithetical to what we’re trying to achieve.
I don’t know why you’re talking down to me, but I’d rather not engage further if that’ll be the case.
I do realize that yes, that’s why I offered a couple of solutions to things that had nothing to do with that. Like thinking you had made a mistake or being afraid of messing up another OS on your machine.
I’m not trying to talk down to you, I’m trying to understand what your issue is, that’s why I’m asking questions.
So why was it that you needed to cancel the installation?
Ive never tried installing Mint, but it’s based on Ubuntu which have installed many times. Unless the installer is radically different it asks you a bunch of questions first, keyboard layout, timezone, whether or not it will be a dual boot or clean install etc. It typically doesn’t actually make any changes to the system until all that is set up and you select install.
The only exception to that I can think of is if you got to the point where you can configure your partitions in a dual boot scenario. If you made a mistake during that process, I can see it messing up your install if you then back out.
Other than that the only way I can think of that might bork you system is if you actually started installing the OS, and then attempted to cancel, at which point it makes perfect sense to me that would mess things up.
The only thing I really take issue with is acting as if cancelling an install of an OS halfway through the process is like such a common thing that enough people would run into the same issue that it would turn people off from installing Linux.
What flavor of Linux were you trying to install? My experience on endeavoros has been pretty plug and play. I imagine it would be similar on mint, Ubuntu, fedora, Debian. If it was Linux from scratch, yeah that’s likely going to be frustrating.
It was Mint, which is why I found it odd. I’ve also used Ubuntu years ago, but that wasn’t plug-n-play either from what I remember. I spent too much time getting my sound and video cards running, and then spent twice that time getting Compiz to work so I could have all the cool effects. 😅
Honestly, just try something else. If you’re trying to do gaming, I’d recommend Garuda Dragonized from personal experience. It’s Arch based, but comes packaged with everything you’d need for gaming, and a utility to install a bunch of extra stuff you might want, like launchers, controller drivers, etc. I think it even comes with the Nvidia drivers that you’ll need to install manually for most other distros.
I my opinion it’s really ugly out of the box sadly, with a horrible “gamer” look. It’s KDE though, so it’s really easy to customize.
That’s an interesting suggestion, thank you!
tbf mint had a few rough edges last i tried it.
Truth is windows has plenty of bugs too, the main difference is that it comes pre installed so you don’t have to deal with the install bugs, and you’re already acclimated to all its quirks so you don’t notice them as much.
As for Mint, it gets recommended a lot because it’s stable and looks a lot like windows, but it’s old and slow to update to modern standards, you can always go for a more bleeding edge distribution like fedora.
The way I see it…
If you order pieces from people who are mostly doing carpentry as a passion and make furniture. Sure it’s frustrating and you have to put in work. But you can’t compare it to buying stuff from IKEA and telling everyone those carpenters need to do more of that.
Right, and I accept that from any other part of the OS that isn’t the very first step when trying to use it.
SteamOS proves that Linux doesn’t need technical expertise to operate.
All Linux OSs need to aim for SteamOS’s UX, imo, if they want to see greater adoption.
Unless the point is to keep normies from migrating to it, which is just bass ackwards.
SteamOS is just there to run one single application: Steam. Users see absolutely nothing of Linux. It could be running MacOS or BeOS or TempleOS and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to them.
Not that it’s a bad thing, it confirms that Linux is stable and mature and that you can use it for an appliance, but that’s pretty much it. And yes, you can bypass the Steam interface and run a KDE desktop (is that the UX you think of? it’s available on any Linux and pretty much any Unix-like desktop), which is nice of Valve to have included. But except for the .1% who will toy with it, there isn’t really much point (and yes, I did toy with it end enabled ssh, and added a few gadgets). I still wouldn’t install SteamOS as a desktop system though. That’s not what it’s made for.
I still use VirtualBox with Windows 10 to launch all the Affinity products because GIMP is so bad. And for browser fingerprint protection, e.g. chrome (ungoogled) on windows, because no browser fakes it. Not mullvad, Tor or Brave.
You might like winapps for your usecase. It makes things feel more fluid if you have a PC capable of running a Windows VM at the same time.
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I think GIMP is great. It does everything most people need it to do. You just have to take time to learn how to use it, just like with everything else.
If Adobe would put its products on Linux I wouldn’t need Windows (or Mac) anymore. Unfortunately a lot of my work still requires being able to open things in Indesign and XD.
Can you run a virtual machine on Linux just for Adobe?
It probably never will
I mean, I can imagine CreativeCloudOS becoming a required install eventually in addition to the monthly fee and your firstborn for creative cloud. It may not be super likely but Adobe cutting out Microsoft from its money pipeline doesn’t sound impossible
How are things with compatibility layers?
In the same boat. Been practicing GIMP but 25 years of PS is difficult to break away from =/ plus god forbid colleagues put in an ounce of effort in meeting to understand that PS isnt the only way to crop a damn image
I would preach about Affinity, but it doesn’t work on Linux either. Productivity apps in general are a lot more problematic than games.
Yeah. I am forced to keep one windows computer around for MasterCAM. I likely won’t be able to pay to reup that license, though so I might be forced to try to make FreeCAD or similar work.
EAC is the only thing holding me back, and I don’t trust it on a VM since it does some deep hardware voodoo.
It’ll probably live on its own machine I only use for that purpose.
Before I read the further comments I was going to say Easy Anti-cheat does work fine. Lol. You may want to write out the full name first to avoid confusion in the future.
Whats EAC again? I’m always eager to learn what possible show stoppers exist for people.
Exact Audio Copy
I own a lot of CDs.
Oh interesting! What do you use for that and what is the result? Flac or other?
Yeah, FLAC. EAC has numerous checks to make sure the rip was flawless. I then either listen from my computer on speakers attached to a stereo, or I stream via Plex/Jellyfin. I have wired and wireless headphones and earbuds I use depending on what I’m doing when listening.
I already had lots of CDs before streaming was a thing, but still (more often than I’d expect) I come across albums that aren’t on any streaming platform.
EasyAntiCheat. Not sure why it’d stop them, because Proton has an EAC runtime.
Why don’t we have an open source anti-cheat protocol that is a demon-level service. Everyone hates kernel anti-cheat, but only because they’re close source, so why don’t we have one that’s open source. Seems like a simple solution.
I don’t think it can work if it’s open source probably. There’s always ways around anti-cheat. It’s only a matter of finding it. Making it open source makes it trivial.
With that said, kernel level anti-cheat doesn’t really seem to slow anyone down much. I’ve heard that the games with them still have plenty of hackers. Why try to solve a problem with such a big weapon if it isn’t going to work anyway? Best case, it potentially adds some really deep vulnerabilities to your system, and maybe slightly slows down hackers.
honestly doing it server-side should be the norm.
Valve will figure it out for us and then offer it for any game published on Steam.
Dunno what state their own services are in currently for games like TF2, CS2 and Deadlock.
