2023 was the year of the Linux laptop for me. 2024 is shaping up to be the year of the Linux desktop for myself as well.

As much as I like to see this sentiment, I think now as ever the people who actually follow through with moving to Linux will be few in number.

Most users who get fed up and decide the hell with it are likely to just buy a Mac instead, as revolting a development as that may be.

Personally I love that Microsoft did this. Please keep making windows more and more shit and annoying to use so people will switch to something else

Man I have to take this tone with every LLM I talk to.

For a second I was wondering how the money management app that intuit just killed stopped this for you. Forgot that’s also a distro, I’m a dumbass.

Lemmy users generally subscribe to the philosophy of "if everyone just thought exactly like me then the world would be utopia"

The actual solution is to pirate Windows 10 LTSC IOT from 1337x.to (microsoft's debloated version of W10 for sysadmins, it tends to get leaked) for a usable everyday system. The only Linux setups that are possible to daily drive (aren't unstable) are Linux Mint and an Arch setup with Hyprland if you know what you're doing - anything else has serious issues in my experience. Even if you got Adobe and Office apps running (which is possible in some cases), both the most used desktop environments on Linux (GNOME and KDE) are incredibly buggy messes. Literally half of all 'distros' are just trying to make sure those two desktop envs aren't launching nuclear bombs on your machine

I primarily run Linux but absolutely understand the need for things that only work with windows so I dual boot. That being said I use AtlasOS which cleans up W10 pretty good. I don't have any of the crappiness that is currently hitting users.

https://atlasos.net/

Also here's another site that has some information on AtlasOS as well as some other tools.

https://www.xbitlabs.com/best-custom-windows-10-iso-for-gaming/

I know it says for gaming but I use solidworks as well as some other software and my idle resource usage has went way down and it runs so much better.

Agreed.

I tried Solus once back in 2019-ish when I first learned Bash at work because I found it cool. Then came the games that were incompatible with Proton / Wine, and the many painful hours of trying to debug why Mass Effect Andromeda kept crashing after 30 mins of runtime (no solution found). In the end I just swapped back to Windows because I didn't want to do what I already did at work during the weekends.

I like Linux, but until a majority of game developers prioritize development for Linux I'll stick to Windows. I could dual boot Linux and Windows, but I suspect I'll just do everything on Windows in the end lol

The irritating thing about all this is, at least if Raymond Chen is to be believed, the OS letting you do what you want without getting in your way was actually a/the core design philosophy of Windows up until probably the end of the XP era. It seems with Vista they started losing the plot, and by the time of Windows 8 Microsoft had fully committed to going completely off the rails.

If you're referencing the bypass used on new windows 11 machines they patched it.

The point is not to help you control your own machine, the point is trying to force people to subscribe to their own machines.

I made it through until Win11 announced (Had to because of work). Once 11 was announced I just said fuck it, and have been Linux since.

I no longer have any computers in my house running windows except a 10 year old Laptop that is available for the really weird and off windows requirements (like ESPHome programming)

I personally have Linux because it doesn't have this in the first place.

While I wholeheartedly agree with the notion of "switch to Linux if you can", sometimes people can't do this due to obscure work software, specific hardware they can't afford to change, or something else.

I know that being on Linux all those Windows enshittification news appear very distant, but some people literally can't escape Windows for now - it's not only those who are reluctant - and those news are bad news.

For those who consider Linux, though - by all means go for it. You can install Linux alongside Windows (preferably on another physical drive, but same drive will do), and just tinker with it and see how it feels. Don't just toy with it, actually try to use it. As with any system, it might seem a bit weird for your first few hours, but when (if) you'll be ready to make a switch, you really won't look back.

Linux is not just an "ideological" choice. It is faster (you may not notice this on Windows, but even on greatest of computers Windows is lagging a bit, and you'll feel the difference); it doesn't bombard you with anything, it doesn't shill you anything, it doesn't do what you didn't ask, it just gets the job done exactly the way you want it to.

And it's insanely satisfying. Silence and control. For once, you actually are a master of your system.

Choose some distribution that supports KDE Plasma desktop - be it Fedora KDE, Manjaro KDE, KDE Neon or anything else - they will all do. KDE will make your experience way more Windows-like, and it will be easier to switch. In fact, KDE is what Windows desktop wish it could be.

Or, if you feel nostalgic for Windows 7 era, choose Cinnamon-based distros, especially Linux Mint.

And just run it. The time is now.