Technology

In general:

W11: fire up office, oops wait, it wants to set itself as default and for some reason needs you to buy a one drive subscription for that. How about some copilot? Are you sure? How about we wrap it in edge? Oh, but you can install Libreoffice by all means, but it’s not going to be the default app right? RIGHT?!!!

Oh you want to save the file to your harddrive? Look, how do I put this,… there is no more harddrive.

Linux: type one line in the terminal and there you go. Write a novel if you want.

Me after using the KDE: how the fuck Linux is better Windows than Windows?

They were supposed to focus on window managing, ITS IN THEIR FUCKING NAME. Instead you need extra things like Powertoys for basic functions that KDE has integrated.

"Tech journalists" installing linux in 2025 like it's this hot new tech is not exactly the early adoptership I'd expect from them :)

🤞pleasejustpickbazzite pleasejustpickbazzite pleasejustpickbazzite🤞

I’m going to install CachyOS, an Arch-based distro

oh god dammit

Yeah, really do it ok? Not only are you helping yourself, you're helping everyone by shoving it up the clueless execs at microsoft who still have no idea why people dislike their stupid spy AI thingy.

Gaming on Linux has gotten way better than what is was a few years ago.

Best desktop in the world, no joke.

Just be forewarned:

Nvidia requires a bit of work.

SeLinux….it is a giant bag of gotcha.

That all said I’m not regretting my conversion.

“It came out of the box this way. I hate it but I paid good money for the device I own to tell me what to do!”

Installed Mint last week. I already ported most of my personal stuff there ; as a user of FOSS software, it was a breeze. Still dual booting Windows because of work, but I'll start trying to see if I can get the required tools to work on there too.

For now, my biggest issue was that connecting my Bluetooth headphones to both Linux and Windows was fucky but, lo and behold, there was a guide online that told me exactly how to make sure both OS had the same device ID.

It's not a painless experience yet, but it's way less painful than what it was running Win95 back then. And it feels so good to finally flip Microsoft the bird.

The most successful Linux distros are ones that normal people are not aware they use at all. Most people dont install operating systems, they just use whatever comes with the device. To them its an appliance.

Android is a flavor of Linux and is widely successful. Ive seen libraries use Linux and a browser and the machines worked for decades. And there are quite a few Amazon tablets, ebook readers, etc... all using linux.

Theres a never ending number of examples out there.

Nothing wrong with Arch as a distro base. The meme stuff is all bullshit. It is a peer of Debian and Fedora. These foundational community distros are not a good starting point for a beginner or for a painless consumerist experience but they are solid for experienced users and have the best support and documentation.

If you are approaching Linux from the PoV of someone who wants to learn rather than someone who wants a reliable consumer computing platform the big community distros are still absolutely the right way to go IMO.

People go on about Mint being friendly for users but under the surface it is Ubuntu which itself is pulling from Debian. People laud Bazzite despite it being Fedora based. ChromeOS is shipping Gentoo to school children. If you package Arch well and ship it to people like Valve has its an extremely pleasant consumer platform. CachyOS improves the arch installation and micro-optimises FPS but you can screw it up as easily as any other mutable Linux system so fundamentally it is not much better or worse than Mint or Ubuntu or Fedora for a consumer experience.

SteamOS, Bazzite and ChromeOS all recognise that immutability is the key to a reliable experience for consumers - an experience that surpasses Windows. Updates are the most likely way to break a system and the hardest thing for non expert users to troubleshoot and rectify. Immutable distros with good support for new hardware have to be the S tier choice for Windows refugees. I have never tried Bazzite and likely never will (I use arch btw, with one system being a cachyos hybrid) but on paper it seems like the most sane choice barring a general release of StreamOS. A distro like Mint might be user friendly but it is bringing nothing new to the table when it comes to a reliable experience for consumers.

The real solution for the majority of WIndows refuges is going to be pre-installs with the supplier guaranteeing all the hardware is supported like Steam Machine. That way you get rid of all the cursed Nvidia systems. I think something like PopOS is the wrong way to do it for normies as the old LTT videos demonstrated, it is still a fragile system for naive users underneath the friendly skin.