There is no "us" or "them". If Microsoft will maintain its streak of spoiling everything they touch, everyone will switch to Linux sooner or later đ
Now, for an actual sane take, unless we do the actual marketing work in order to gather interest from people, no, not even close to everyone will switch to Linux, specially considering Microsoft has literal millions of dollars to spend in marketing and will likely spin this in a way that non-techy people specially will buy in due to not knowing any choice.
This is a PSA begging people to contribute to their favorite distros not (only) with code but with marketing. Social media posts, videos, word of mouth recommendations, advocacy, events, etc. If your distro doesn't have a marketing team, create one, as most projects should already have done two decades ago. If your distro has one (like we do in Fedora), join it. There'll likely be something you can help with.
This is extreme copium, sorry to say. You have no idea how much shit the average person will eat to prevent having to learn something new. For someone who has never manually installed an OS before, even Windows, the idea of doing that with something like Linux and potentially deleting their existing OS is genuinely frightening. Never underestimate the fact that people will pay through the nose to ensure they don't have to contend with the unknown.
As it turns out, the rumours discussed by some outlets are based on the âIoT Enterprise Subscriptionâ of Windows 11, not Windows vNext. For those unaware, Windows 24H2 or Windows vNext is what Windows 12 is being called publicly.
As you can see in the above screenshots, the âsubscriptionâ code strings found in the preview builds are associated with a new Enterprise version of Windows 11 loT and have nothing to do with Windows 12 or future versions of the OS.
Iâm not saying to use it or to not switch to linux, but maybe this isnât that much of a concern.
Iâd be more concerned about
the next version of Windows will be heavily integrated with AI and cloud capabilities.
Windows accounts for 12% of their profits, and I'm willing to bet that the consumer versions are a very small part of that. Most businesses are not buying OEM licenses. They are already using a subscription model for M365 which includes Windows licenses or a standard EA or SA agreement.
They learned after the Windows Phone that they don't need to win the client OS battle as long as they can get their other products on the devices. Since then Windows has really focused more on keeping you locked into the Microsoft ecosystem versus keeping locked into Windows itself. Hence why the upgrades have all been free where in the past you would have to repurchase each new edition of Windows.
Of course I could be completely wrong. They have done some bonkers stuff in the past.
Agreed. Also why they're more and more fucking annoying about OneDrive and O365 subs. I would be extremely surprised at seeing anyone at MS thinking the best way to monetize Windows is to get consumers, who are notoriously more and more tired of subs in general, is to get them to pay a sub fee on the computer they bought. Let's face it, virtually no one is buying a Windows license, it comes with the machine they buy. If you told people that they have to now pay a fee every month/year to keep using it.
I'm an early adopter of Linux (early as in 96-97) but I also run MacOS and Windows so I'm I tell you this from an unbiased point of view. Linux has never been easier to run. My daily driver is a ThinkPad running Pop!_OS Linux and I never have to think about it. I just installed and everything ran.
I don't game on my daily driver, I use MacOS for music. At this point Windows is relegated to Adobe Creative Suite, GeForce Now, and the occasional game I can't run on Linux or GeForce Now.
It's very gradual and fun because it's new. A lot of you being lazy is also just your safety mechanism kicking in so you don't dive into every single urge all the time.
Once you dip your toe, you'll be at it for a long and good time.
Just start by dual booting one of the "easy" distros and doing stuff that doesn't require Windows. Eventually you'll start spending more and more time on it out of comfort, then one day you may realise that you haven't needed your Windows partition in months, and can skip out on it entirely.
Another alternative is to use FOSS software this is available on Linux and Windows. Get used to the software before the desktop itself. For me, dual booting was a lot of work and wasn't fun. Maybe live booting for a session or two could be a way to go? I never tried that.
I made the switch about a two months ago. I'm using my windows side of my dual boot a hell of a lot less than I thought I would, mostly thanks to steam's proton.
Started with zorin, but eventually landed on mint.
The file explorer has some pretty limited options, and not many features. Or at least, it doesn't have some of the features I like by default.
It does have zorin connect, which is really nice, but I later found it it is a re-skinned version of KDE connect, so not much is lost by moving to another distro on that front.
It also seemed to not have as good windows support for certain things. BG3 kept on crashing on me for some unknown reason, with zero error messages to troubleshoot. On mint it worked first try, like it ought to.
At the end of the day, zorin just isn't as customizable as I want, whereas mint is.
Thank you! All the advertised built-in compatibility layers seemed too promising, so Iâve been wondering how often it breaks or doesnât work as well as another distro. Also good to know the connect stuff can be added just by installing KDE. And Dolphin probably a better file manager.
Whatâs your preferred file manager, if you donât mind?
Yeah, I was a bit disappointed with the compatability as well. But luckily it hasn't effected me too much on mint. So far only two programs I use haven't been compatible, and even then they aren't programs I use often.
Whatâs your preferred file manager, if you donât mind?
Nemo, which is the default for mint.
Also another reason I switched to mint now that i remember, I wanted to switch to a non-Ubuntu system. The whole point of switching to Linux is to get away from all the corpos getting their hands on your system/data. Unfortunately I only learned how shitty canonical is about it after I unstalled zorin.
So I currently have mint debian edition installed.
Oh thatâs great, youâre exactly the one I need to talk to then, because Iâve been debating why even go with an Ubuntu-based distro at all when itâs based on Debian, and whether or not the Debian version would be a better choice. Iâve been running multiple VMs trying to work out the differences.
Before I found Debian Mint, I wrote a script for base Debian 12.2 to auto-install wine, steam, and everything else I could think of based on whatâs in Linux Mint and Garuda⌠then discovered Debian Mint and have been wondering if thatâs my best choice, because I have no idea what I could be missing in the background on my Debian install, or didnât set up correctly because I donât know about it.
I also noticed that Debian Mint currently uses a newer kernel than Ubuntu Mint⌠6.1.0-13 vs 5.15.0. For a newer kernel than that you have to go with the Ubuntu Mint EDGE version (6.2.0) or Arch (6.1.57-lts or 6.5.7-zen).
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Has there been any particular thing you had to do to Debian Mint to make it work better for you?
I will say right off the bat, it sounds like you know a bit more about me, so whatever you decide will probably already be a pretty informed choice.
With that said, having used ubuntu occasionally in the past, it doesn't feel all that different from Debian. They are roughly equally functional, performant, etc.
Before I found Debian Mint, I wrote a script for base Debian 12.2 to auto-install
I probably should do something similar, because down the line who knows, I might need a full re-install.
because I have no idea what I could be missing in the background on my Debian install, or didnât set up correctly because I donât know about it.
Very anecdotally, like I said there has only been two programs that I haven't been able to get running that I really want. That's fusion360 and dungeon draft. Both of which I could pretty easily get running in a VM.
Actually now that I think about it, there is a 3d program, and that's fortnite. But that's because their management doesn't give a flying fuck about linux, and so their anti-cheat breaks the game. So no distro will be safe from that.
I also noticed that Debian Mint currently uses a newer kernel than Ubuntu Mint
Again, it sounds like you are much more informed about it than me. But personally, it hasn't made a difference for me. I can run my games, the basic internet browsing apps that I like, etc.
Has there been any particular thing you had to do to Debian Mint to make it work better for you?
The most complex thing that needed set up was getting my drives auto mounted on startup. But debian mint has a pretty straightforward way of setting it up, so it took maybe 5 seconds.
Beyond that, it's just been a small bit of effort setting up the programs I use. Steam, freetube, the prism minecraft launcher, my nvidia drivers, cura, KDE connect, gitkracken, vscode, vlc, etc. It is really low effort honestly, basically the same effort as windows. The software manager/library on debian has been pretty decent to me.
Again, it sounds like you are much more informed about it than me.
It only sounds like I know what I'm doing because I've just been doing base installs in VMs, letting them update, and then checking things like kernel options installed, etc, and comparing what apps are installed in some distros and left out of others from the main applications menu, then putting it in a spreadsheet so I can see what's going on. You have way more practical experience than I do. I haven't even tried any of these on actual hardware yet.
And as I was figuring that out at the Debian command line, I was just adding it all to a text file so I wouldn't have to track down that exact info again, and then saved it as a script for automation.
If you want to see that install script, I put it here:
Has a commented summary of what it does at the beginning. Probably contains a lot of things you don't care about, some are only in there for science. (I was adding most of the Ubuntu Studio package, for instance.) You mentioned a number of things you have installed that aren't in there yet. I haven't even tried nVidia drivers yet since it's all been in VMs, that's in a separate file for later. But you should be able to load Debian 12.2 in a VM and run this script, and it should install almost everything listed in there without a hitch. (There's an occasional thing that requires downloading a certain version, and I don't think it can be selected automatically. Like having to manually get the exact version of VirtualBox to download the right version toolset for it. I mention in the summary and comments where it happens.)
If you (or anyone) wants to contribute changes to that install script, feel free, I'm just working it out.
If you're making scripts like this, you should have no problem with LMDE.
If you (or anyone) wants to contribute changes to that install script, feel free, Iâm just working it out.
I might do so down the line. I'm not the most experienced with shell scripts, but I am knowledgable enough to fumble my way through a server maintenance script for my self hosted minecraft server.
Iâve already made changes to the script for it to work on LMDE. When I first tried it, it broke Wine and a number of other things because LMDE returns âfayeâ as the distro name, which doesnât exist on any usual repository for Debian. So I had to make sure âbookwormâ was used as a fallback, and reordered some things to consolidate user confirmations at the beginning so you can sit back afterward until it reboots.
Also figured out how to get and use the version number programmatically for VirtualBox toolset installs, so only one place needs editing when a new version of VBox is released.
And some other small things like installing GIMP and the plugin that gives it a Photoshop UI.
Still needs a Bluetooth handler and Firewall (for Debian), etc, still a WIP.
edit: just realized Debian already has a bluetooth handler, I missed it because i accidentally disabled sharing bluetooth devices with that VM!
Setting up a functional Linux environment can be accomplished within a comparable timeframe to that required for a Windows installation. When opting for user-friendly distributions such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu, the installation process becomes equally accessible for users, presenting no significant challenges when compared to Windows, so while you are entitled to hold this opinion, its factually incorrect.
To be clear, it may be a linux meme, but itâs a post about a possible future with Windows, that may lead some to switch to linux. Windows users being in here, commenting and asking questions, isnât weird.