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Frustrated Windows users are switching to Linux because of Microsoft’s Windows 11 shenanigans (www.theverge.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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[+] 53 points 9 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)
[deleted]
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  • [–] 31 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    There's still a persistent myth that Linux is complicated and only for people who know a lot about computers. But it's only like that if you want it to be. It can be very simple and user friendly.

    Windows on the other hand is more complicated now than it has ever been.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    There's still a persistent myth that Linux is complicated and only for people who know a lot about computers.

    As long as.it installs well, it's sweet for most people. It did for me 2 years ago and here we are.

    But it can be insufferable to install with some instances on some hardware and as sweet as Flat pack is, there's still lots of stuff not there eg Signal which my 82 yr old mother uses to messge me. "Yes mom, ooen ternail then worite this command". Open what now ?

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago

    I did that well over 10 years ago for my mother in law and she loved it. She did basic browsing and a few games here and there, windows always fucked up and had to be reinstalled every few months.

    I installed Linux, Kubuntu I believe, and it was the end of it. Never heard a peep again.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I plan to do that. But my grandpa goes into ragemode when something doesn't work as it used to, and my grandma fully relies on buttons being where they always are and where, as she's nearly blind. It's gonna take a lot of theming to support that.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago

    Very true, though with windows automatically updating to new versions and forcing upgrades, IMO the time to do it is when they would otherwise be forced to make a full version change anyway, as the differences between 10 and 11, are probably more than a windows 10 themed linux.

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    • [–] 35 points 9 months ago

    Windows - the best ad for linux

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    [–] 21 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    shenanigans

    That's a really weak word for the tracking, logging, capturing my screen, spying, high-jacking my data to Onedrive, resetting my basic settings (default browser, file association choices).

    "Shenanigans". Sure.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Not to mention outright sabotage when you're not in their ecosystem.

    Use Linux? Your browser default user agent says you're on Linux? Word 365 will now randomly stop saving which just quietly deleted some of the text you wrote previously

    I can write up a whole list of more sabotage, but just read this as a much, much bigger example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes

    Microsoft execs should have been jailed but in the US it's all fine as long as you're rich.

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    • [–] 17 points 9 months ago

    I did it (mostly). You can too!

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    [–] 15 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    The purpose of windows on a new machine is so you can access the Internet to download Linux.

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    • [+] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
    [deleted]
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    [–] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    So fun story, I recently set up Mint to dual boot with windows 10, then shortly later decided it was working just fine and reformatted my whole windows drive. Which included the boot partition that pointed to Mint.

    The problem was that I updated my MOBO bios after using a USB to install Mint, and now my USB installer (needed to run Boot Repair) opened to a command line instead of the installer. While trying to find the settings to fix that I restored factory defaults in my BIOS which triggered Secure Boot, which wouldn’t let me turn it off without disconnecting all of my hard drives first (and that is a whole thing with my m.2’s).

    Anyway it turns out my USB had gone bad so I made a new one and fixed it, but man I never thought I could break my computer so many different ways at once. Don’t delete your boot loader, guys.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, that's my biggest hesitation with recommending Linux to absolutely everyone. It's super easy to install most of the time. But most people are not equipped to work around issues that may come up, and then the computer is as good as bricked until they find help.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    @binarytobis @cm0002

    So, fun fact;
    If you plug a USB drive into a Microsoft computer (or in whatever that has Windows OS running at the time), here's a thing that _can_ happen:

    Microsoft checks the content of the USB drive, and in the process attempts to RUN the files. Thus changing the checksum of files.
    When attempting to install Linux from one of these files, it _can_ fail the checksum.

    This happened to me with Fedora specifically, and I randomly had issues with other distros that I suspect was caused by the same.

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