6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?

Only semi-related: Why do they always show pictures of Gates when he hasn't been involved in MS in a long time? Why never Satya Nadella?

EDIT: Also, yes, related to the actual question already living Linux full time and when October rolls around probably gonna back up everything from the Windows side of my dual-boot and wipe the 1TB NVMe Windows is on to use as storage.

I was thinking the same thing. He will just forever be known as the guy. Maybe it will change once he dies?
- Maybe, he is indeed looking hella rough in this photo.
- Didn't work for Steve Jobs.
- I don't think so. Gates' shoes are big ones.
Personally, I think this picture of Steve Balmer is so much more iconic and should be used for every single article about Microsoft or Windows:
- It's weird how MS's putting developers first became a joke. Back in the 80's, companies like HP and IBM had open warehouses with coders at desks lined up like factory workers. MS was the first big company to give a private office to every programmer.
I couldn't name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate's mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids
- Steve Ballmer! Developers developers developers! That's the other one I know
- Gabe Newell?
- I'm somewhat in the same boat but I remember Mister "Developers Developers Developers" Steve Ballmer who was also immortalized by the "Ballmer Peak" XKCD. https://xkcd.com/323/
- Holy shit I remember that article too!
- I could but that’s because a friend of mine works on the legacy rendering code in Excel. He has some traumatic war stories to share.
Because he set the general, evil directions for MS. Like keeping users uninformed and locked in, smearing the competition, sabotaging open standards, taking your control over your hardware and data away from users, etc. All happened during evil Bill's reign.
- Not to mention the many deals with hardware manufacturers in order to avoid competing OSs to have any chance. They managed to kill BeOS and dominate the Japanese market in the 90s
I was wondering why Bill Gates would be talking about Steam users.
I'm here, so I'm more likely to know who that is or what he looks like. But I don't. I do now because you mentioned him and I looked up how he looks like. Your average Joe is gonna be even less likely to know who that is or what he looks like. So I'm guessing that's why. Some CEOs just avoid the spotlight. Or maybe I've just been avoiding MS news, dunno
- It's a vicious cycle. The media don't use Satya Nadella's name or picture much, so people don't know who he is or how he looks like.
Under his watch they did form the anti-opensource and EEE mantra
Optics or marketing, it's the same reason LLMs are all called AI.

Already did and it's glorious! Steam works beautifully and the only final thing that I'm missing is Adobe products.

I recommend, if you want to try Linux, that you try out the 'Debian' distribution, and use the 'KDE Plasma' desktop environment. It makes for a very Windows-like experience and really assisted me with the transition between OSs.

for newcomers, maybe this is the best combo. Debian stable with KDE Plasma.
- Unless you're using NVIDIA. Didn't work out of the box for me and required a couple hours of fiddling. Mint worked seamlessly.
- Debian is not a good choice for beginners. It's extremely bare bones compared to Ubuntu or Mint.
  Drivers on Debian stable are also heavily outdated
I completely disagree. Debian is not beginner-friendly. Go with Bazzite if your focus is gaming.
It is a gaming-focused distribution. It's also an "atomic" distribution, which basically means it's really hard to break it. It's more like Android or IOS where the OS and base system are managed by someone else. They're read-only so you can't accidentally break them.
For example, instead of trying to manage your own video card drivers, they come packaged with the base system image, and they're tested to make sure they work with all the other base components.
I've been using Linux since the 1990s, so I've run my share of distributions: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Even for someone experienced, atomic distributions are great. But, for a newcomer they're so much better.
- How does Bazzite fare when I want to do something a bit different. Install docker, Python, PHP, sqlite, etc. I'd normally just install them, but does this work for Bazzite and other atomic/immutable distros?
- I find this interesting as I'm a beginner with only about 3 months of Linux use under my belt, whereas Ive used Windows since I was like 5 years old, and I found Debian to be a really good introduction to Linux. I was originally recommended Mint, like many are, and I found the experience to be a negative one as opposed to my later experience with Debian. (Note I have no experience with Bazzite or any other distros).
  The additional 'bloat' in Mint obfuscated from me various aspects of Linux. It insulated me from learning how Linux is different from Windows, and that actually hindered me from understanding the OS. By starting with Debian I got a feel for using the CLI, setting up my drivers, package installer, and desktop environment. And, while those aspects can be complicated for new users, i think its somewhat necessary that they get a feel for them if Linux is going to be recommended as their OS.
- In what world is a Debian base not beginner friendly my fiancé that could barely use windows is using it just fine
As long as you're running KDE, it will feel familiar to a Windows user. I started with Kubuntu which was great until I had a system update, and it completely shat itself. Wanted to try Bazzite next, but the installer wouldn't work properly, so I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I've seen no reason to switch since.
Not having access to Adobe products is a feature not a bug.
I went with Mint but I'm thinking about KDE (or maybe KDE flavored Arch? Idk I'm new) on my second computer. Pretty painless?
- So Mint is the 'distro', which is actually based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. In simple terms, a distro is a bundle of programs and configurations assembled for you. Basically, Debian is a stripped down version of Mint.
  A 'desktop environment' is a separate program(?) that changes what your desktop looks like, and they can be downloaded on any distro. So you can try out KDE Plasma on your Mint installation! The one that you're likely using right now is called 'Cinnamon', which I personally didn't like and turned me off of Linux my first time trying to switch over years ago.
  Something cool about KDE Plasma is that you can download themes and make your desktop environments look really cool. For instance, sometimes I like to rock this Windows 7 theme: https://www.pling.com/p/2142957/
- I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
  I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
  The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
  How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
  Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
  Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
  I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
- Eh Arch can be quite stable if you're careful, but it could also be a frustrating experience, there's lots of manual configuration
maybe give debian testing a go for a little more up to date software :)
Outside of Steam, how have you found gaming compatibility? I know Xbox Gamepass doesn't work as that's very specifically a Windows app, but how about other standalone games/platforms?
- Outside of steam will be a case by case basis. I wouldn't expect a lot of luck, and it may require that you use a compatibility layer like Wine.
If you're into primarily gaming, try PikaOS. It's Debian based and uses the same tooling, but it's on an optimized kernel. Is generally geared toward gaming.
There are other gaming specific distros of course, this is just the "Debian"-related one. I would not recommend the real debian if you're mainly into gaming. It'll need manual intervention and/or optimization to get games running, or at least get them running well. It's not impossible (it even hard if you've got but is Linux experience), but just harder than necessary.
and the only final thing that I'm missing is Adobe products.
I miss Affinity Designer! Bought a license and I like it but no linux port 🙄
I can't get used Inkscape, it's so different and confusing for me
- Have you ever seen how to draw a circle in GIMP?

The more people hop onto Linux the faster and better funded support for Linux development becomes. If you're a single player gamer or play Valve multiplayer games primarily, make the jump to Linux. Get on Mint, get on Fedora, Ubuntu, etc and get off Microsoft's shitboat. You already took off from Reddit. Wean off all these other money/data leeches

It's not like Windows 10 will magically stop booting or something..

Running an EoL operating system is surely what you want to do with your personal dat-
Aaaaaaand it's been compromised
- Isn't that exactly what's happening as soon as you install win11?
- It’s windows users were talking about here, data security is not exactly top of mind. But maybe many of them are about to find out it should be…
- I'm pretty sure all personal data leaks to me and my friends and family have nothing to do with personal EOL OS on personal PCs/laptops.
  My Dad, ran Windows 7 (yes, 7) until he passed last year, almost 80. We had his credit locked down, we had antivirus running, we kept the browsers up to date, and he was very good about not clicking weird links or calling fake support numbers.
  His biggest data breach (and ours too)? Was from myChart a couple years ago, he got a letter that his data was part of the big hack, yada yada yada free credit reporting - so sorry. If you don't know, myChart is like The Main medical everything portal in the US at least for most doctors and hospital systems. So all your test results, making appointments, sending messages, requesting Rx refills, all through myChart's website. The hospitals and doctors using MyChart can see pretty much everything in your myChart health record (some exceptions)
  So using super secure OS on your personal computer means nothing when you are part of a hundreds of millions data dump from someone hacking into that. Not having an account just means you don't have access to your own records, they are still part of the system.
  But Yes, I was in the process of getting Dad an upgrade to a flavor of Linux that would be the closest to what he was used to. And the only reason was because browser support was coming to EOL for Windows 7. He really didn't want to change or lose his solitaire games and he deserved a stress-free life to play his damn games like he wanted.
  THAT SAID - if businesses are using EOL OS and getting hacked - they definitely need to do whatever they need to do and protect their customer data. But EOL OS for an average person checking email, making doctor's appointments, checking headlines, and playing solitaire while streaming music certainly doesn't call for a need to panic.
  IF you are a power user doing sometimes sketch things (according to Apple/MS anyway) probably switch to Linux sooner than later.
  We have computers running Linux, Windows 10 (one of which was on 8.1 until a year ago), and Windows 11 in our house. The one on 11 is being tested basically, and will probably be reinstalled with Linux. But we are trying to give it a shot.
Right?
I never understand why people are so obsessed with not getting updates. They usually just break everything and bloat the OS.
"But my security!" OS updates are going to protect you from 99% of the bad actors out there. They do nothing against social engineering. They don't make you use strong passwords. Most of the security flaws OS updates are addressing are the kinda of attacks that only state actors or organized crime rings have the resources and abilities to exploit.
Governments? Heck yeah they need to be concerned. Large enterprises? Definitely. Small businesses? Eh it's probably for the best to protect your livelihood even if you aren't the juiciest target. But for an individual using their PC for gaming, social media, streaming content, online shopping, etc... The cost-benefit analysis is different.
It's not different from physical security. Theres a reason you don't need to go through TSA to get on a bus.
- For now yes but when a zero day is found 1 guy could literally take down every single 10 install and Microsoft won’t be bothered to fix it
- While I agree, I have seen TSA working at the bus station.
I would not be surprised if some vulnerability is kept until Microsoft does not provide any patches as it is worth more then.

Switch to Linux. As a big-time gamer, I did it last year and it’s been fantastic. Only issue is if you main games with root kit anticheat…but with enough momentum in Linux direction, game studios will be forced to abandon those dubious detection methods anyway.

Starting to plan my next build and will likely go full Linux

Same. I just gotta figure out what distro I want to run. Nobara, Bazzite, Mint, Zorin, Kubuntu, idk. I get analysis paralysis. I’ve run Ubuntu, Fedora, and even tried Arch once, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been full Linux. I’m definitely done with Windows tho (at least outside of work, but I can’t control that).
- I'm using Garuda and it has a setup specifically for gaming. The gamer look it comes with out of the box is ugly in my opinion, but that's easy to change.I highly recommend it. It's Arch based, so the AUR and Arch wiki work great with it. It's really great and (in my opinion) user friendly.

I play only on Linux, and it works great. Come on over!

Why Gates in the picture tough?

He stepped down as a chairman over 10 years ago and didint he leave the microsoft board like 5 years ago?

I switched to linux full time almost a year ago.

I have been thus far entirely unsuccessful in convincing anyone else to make the jump. Normal people do not give a fuck, will not lift a finger to improve their digital lives. I've been telling friends and family about adblockers for YEARS, and not a single one ever bothered to do it of their own volition. If I don't do it for them, then they just sit through ads like complacent sheep. None of them are going to change operating systems if they can't even install a browser extension.

Sticking with 10 for a bit, moving to Linux

I am going to attempt to switch to Linux, I'm definitely not going to willingly use windows platforms again.

Linux is fine. Ive been using it since before ubuntu was invented. But Windows has the most goddamn computer games.

It's going to be purchase a new hard drive and then jump to Linux Mint this August.

It's not an experience I am looking forward to (5080S, I do a lot of modding, and enjoy fangames/indie games which do not always play nice with linux) but needs must - the Linux community in general is very friendly, so we'll get through it, even if the first 6 months are rough. I'll keep the dual boot and push the windows partition to 11 if needed by work, that way I can put off rewriting my elderly access database for another few years.

Honestly, Microsoft are committing suicide when it comes to home users. It won't be sudden, but the wheels are turning, all the IT savvy folks are switching people over (already did my aunt's potato, mum's demi-tato is next week). Eventually, a tipping point will be reached and offices will start switching - I hope that day comes before I die of old age!

Can’t upgrade because my 4 years old mobo is apparently too old (haven’t checked out the workarounds yet). Installed Linux Mint to give it a try and I am positively surprised so far.

IIRC W11 share is barely near W10 and they are already forcing it out and crapton of perfectly usable hardware, if it is not planned obsolescence i don't know what it is!? Fuck microsoft!

Made my jump to Arch (btw) a couple of years ago and haven't really looked back. I have Win10 as a second boot option, but that's reserved specifically for Game Pass and VR, but it's very rare I boot it. Don't care to upgrade even after EOL, and I'd never recommend Arch to anyone but the most comfortable with Linux, but it's been a great option for me.

Yep, fuck M$

This year will be the year of the Linux desktop for shure. I believe in it like the years before.

I spent a couple hours trying to get Baldur's Gate 3 running on Linux. It was rough but I got it to run at 1440 but the latency made it sort of unplayable. It runs great in Windows 10 at 4k with the default settings. I have some other windows-only software so I guess I'm going to "upgrade" all my computers that are able to do so but I don't feel good about it. All my computers dual boot windows/linux, I would love to be linux-only.

Edit: lots of people are saying theirs runs smoothly, I'm going to have to do further testing. Thanks for the input!

I just gave up on windows gaming. If the game cant be played on my steamdeck, I just find something else. Otherwise its macos and linux for anything non-professional that requires windows. And even then I fucking hate it. Oh look at that... all my documents say "Auto-recover (version 1)" because it forcibly rebooted on me.

Nope, will probably avoid 11 as long as I can though. I have an Mvidia card (drivers are notoriously troublesome on Linux). And I need professional design software for work (as in, industry standard: Adobe or Affinity).

But I put 11 on my laptop to try it and I hate it. So many terrible UI changes, UX noticeably worse. Like they changed stuff just to say they changed stuff.

I considered going Linux for personal use and development, and then using another machine or dual boot for Mac for design software. But i learned about the Nvidia issues after I upgraded my card :/ and swapping to Mac's walled garden after avoiding it for decades is.... a sign of how bad W11 feels to use.

I got ahead of the game a little bit by switching to Linux in 2008.

Why need upgrade at all? I've never needed "support" before

https://massgrave.dev/

too late already did switch to linux :3

I already switched to Bazzite Desktop and it's been so good. I had some pains configuring somethings to my liking, but that was more due to me not being familiar with Linux. I'm never going back.

I'm using 10+ years old hardware, Microsoft has already told me I can't upgrade, followed by several messages asking me to upgrade...

In other news, Linux Mint works nice and I just need to check Protondb to get Warframe running at frames per second and not seconds per frame

Switched to Linux (mint) recently.

All my games run (almost) perfect and (almost) everything has been working perfectly. Overall it is much nicer than Windows and isn't that hard getting used to.

Would much recommend!

Already prepared everything for the jump. Switched MS Office for LibreOffice, and Outlook for Betterbird. Tested install, configuration and access to backups in a VM. Next vacation I take I'll go for it. Mint is my choice of Distro, because of Steam/Gaming reasons. With the US being antagonistic, if not outright hostile, right now, and Microsoft having their disgusting Copilot AI Analysis Fingers in everything, it's the rational choice I think.

Already switched the laptop over to Mint. Desktop to follow.

Man, I really tried today to get Linux on my Framework laptop.

I can't believe how goddamn frustrating the experience has been, and I've dabbled in Linux for decades.

I try Mint. Install as a dual boot... Installation done. Reboot. Straight into Windows. Check partitions and nothing has changed.

Try again. All seems fine. Boot. Some error screen that won't let me get into Mint.

Do this like four more times with no luck.

Tried Ubuntu. No easy way to install as a dual boot unless I want to mess around with custom paritions. Also, GNOME sucks ass, but Ubuntu seems way more polished than Mint.

I did get mint on a mini PC I have running through my TV. But audio wasn't working, so that took a while to sort out. And the onscreen keyboard does nothing on the lock screen. So unpolished, and I have no idea why it's recommended "for beginners" when it feels unfinished.

With windows, there's no messing around. Everything just works. And I fucking hate that I feel forced to choose a miserable, hacky, terminal-based experience with countless hours of installing shit through commands... Or a smooth, reliable, easy one with bloatware and spying on the backend. Goddammit!

Unfortunately not. Even as an IT person I can say I just wanna come home and boot up my games without hassle. Sure alot of things have been done with proton etc but still a massive amount of games don't work without Soo much dang tweaking. I don't have time for that especially with a job/being a single parent. I am highly interested in steamos though.

Been on linux for years :3

I keep recommending BazziteOS but Jorge Castro over at the universal Blue project has a really good point "Most people don't install their operating systems" and that plain fact is what stops people from moving to Linux.

Valve has momentum because they are selling you a system with the OS already on it. Sell more gaming PCs with pre installed Linux on it and the support will follow. Valve's first attempt at getting Linux based gaming hardware out there failed but that didn't stop them and the real push is coming this time.

If you do install your OS (most people here have once or twice), try Bazzite out. I'm running it on the minisforum Bd790i with a radeon 7800xt and it works great!

Obviously Linux is the correct choice but I fear most will simply continue to suck it up and update to W11.

Made the switch over a year ago. No regrets, everything works as I would want it to.

So many perfectly working older computers are going to be headed to the landfill as e-waste. That's the horrible part.

What a waste tech dollars just to play some stupid game.

I won't be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don't really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it'll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.

However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.

I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.

I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they're changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10's user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don't know why they thought any of it was a good idea. I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won't get started on that right now.

For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn't been any meaningful progress in the OS that's mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don't think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the "new look" or whatever the fuck.

Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.

Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.

I upgraded last year, have lost no functionality

Been using Linux for years and the only issue with it is the incompetence of big studios. And them going out of their way to make sure stuff doesn't work on Linux.

I switched a year ago and I love it. All my old games run better on linux than windows at this point. Proton is fucking amazing.

I'll upgrade to 11 Enterprise via massgrave.

Sadly with Adobe and some of my online games not supporting Linux, I have to stick with Windows :/ I'll just try to disable all the telemetry and AI crap via O&O and group policies.

I run Linux on a small mini pc for some casual browsing.

I run windows on my main pc.

As long as some kernel anticheat (fortnite, cod, etc...) doesn't run on Linux, I won't be swapping.

30+y of windows use also makes me infinitely more comfortable with windows. All the complaints I always read about are totally moot for me (I understand the issue of privacy in windows. It's the price I pay to have an OS that "just works" for me) .

While I enjoy tinkering, Linux is a royal PITA to use if you're not used to it. I spend hours trying to figure out how to fix something that takes me 5m max in windows. I understand it's a more a me than a Linux problem. But I'm certain many people struggle with the same things.

It has been already 2 years for me, I have no intention of looking back. It even works better than Windows at times.

I left Windows ~2-3 years ago since I got tired of having to keep up with ways to disable the MS account requirements or disable the ads every time there is a major version upgrade on a platform I use every day.

I'll stick with 10 until steam itself stops supporting it I think

The only thing stopping me from really considering Linux is because I'm a Destiny player

Linux Baby, Linux 🐧😘

I'm gonna switch to Linux. My laptop still works fine, no need to upgrade yet.

Full Linux, I'm not installing that anti-privacy, ad-ridden Windows 11 OS. It's dangerous to use an unsupported system, so I'm going to be deleting my Windows partition. I know I'll run into some issues on Linux, but I'm forcing myself to learn more and work through them!

I'm a lifelong Windows user and tried Linux many many times but could never wrap my head around it. Recently I installed Nobara and it's exactly the noob-friendly experience I need. All of my games run flawlessly, even the VR game I play. And everything is just FASTER. I never realized how bloated Windows was until now. I can't imagine going back to Windows at this point.

And 25% of users in Asia still use Windows 7. People are going to stay on the OS for as long as possible.

Already moved all my PC stuff to Linux. Laptop, desktop, media server. Been wanting to do this for years. Thanks, Valve and Proton, and to all those Linux developers who made this transition possible. Fuck M$

I thought I read some time ago that Windoze 10 would be the last version of Windoze ever...

I'd consider switching if somebody spoonfed me into being able to use/know it's basics.

I am currently way too overstimulated with switching to privacy-focused and less (US-)corpo-reigned alternatives (like lemmy instead of reddit)

I'm in Windows 11. I have regret it, but after so many tweaks of the system, removing telemetries, changing menus, and other Windows shit, i had not the energy to move back to Windows 10.

Only OS change i am willing to make is to move to Linux, but gaming is not there yet, and am now trying to move from big proprietary companies to FOSS, so time is needed.

What does Bill Gates have to do with this, he hasn't been directly involved in Microsoft in 17 years? He hasn't even been on the board for 5 years.

Jumped to linux for a test on an old laptop, currently on windows on my main PC but got parts on the way for a new build that's going to be Linux.

I am on Linux and won't change to W11 for sure.

My gaming pc has just switched over to bazzite (as I use it like a console/htpc). Been wanting to do it for ages but needed to get an amd card beforehand for the best experience. Windows really started to grind my gears in the last few months too.

Windows 10 IoT LTSC has support until 2032. Just saying...

I've heard about this, but can anybody who's gone through it describe how much effort it was? Do you have to do a from-scratch Windows install? Did you lose any of your stuff? What level of computer expertise would you say is enough to handle installing LTSC, e.g. could your parents do it?
- It's super easy, particularly if you follow a guide your first time. Your parents could absolutely do the install if you set up the USB for them. The hardest part is finding a safe download for the OS (they are .iso files) and setting it up on a USB stick (I recommend using a program called 'Ventoy' to do this).
  I know that it's a fediverse sin to post reddit links here, but there's a genuinely superb megathread for Windows 10 LTSC IoT available that I recommend:
  https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsLTSC/comments/15rfdjo/windows_ltsc_megathread/
  In terms of actually installing you can initiate it by plugging the USB stick in and going through the start menu settings; or, when you boot up the computer you press F2/F12 to enter the BIOS screen, and you select the plugged in USB stick as your "boot drive". This makes the computer open the USB stick instead of your already-installed OS.

I gave Linux Mint a try last week when I received the news about the obligatory MS account for W11. Not that I'll "upgrade" to W11 but anyway.

Very smooth installation experience. The OS and software like Steam, Brave, Nvidia drivers and some audio & video stuff installed through the package control in no time. I could actually work with it.

Half of my game library is made only for W though. Or the small blocker things like GTA V that works well in Mint in story mode, the Battleye thing won't start of course, so expect no GTA Online in Mint either.

I think I'll keep Linux Mint and Windows under dual boot and use Windows only when necessary. Or run W10 in a virtual box in Mint 😎.

Thing is, before battleye, gta online worked perfectly. I played it for years on every remotely popular linux distro, from debian, to ubuntu, linux mint, fedora etc. It's just the fucking anticheat.
Dual boot is the way for right now. Proton is huge, but there are still a good number of games with compatibility issues or rootkit anticheats. Personally I advise steering clear of the latter, but that's neither here nor there.
I use CachyOS as my daily driver and booted up the Windows partition maybe 3 times since setting this up back in February (and most of those times were just to play REPO because Elgato hardware with dual input and output has serious issues with Linux, but I've sorted that out now with a workaround)
I was able to run SimTower on Linux. I haven't tried SimCoopter, but there are so many bugs in that game it likely won't work lol

Going to migrate to Bazzite. Just need a free weekend to do it.

No way I'm switching to Linux yet, multi monitors support with mixed resolutions and vrr on nvidia still kinda sucks. As soon as someone makes that work I'll try it out on a separate partition. Buy last time I tried my other monitors had all kinds of issues when I had games open with gysnc

Already switched to linux

Most problems people have with Linux, I think, come from trying to be Linux power users from the start by performing very advanced techniques beyond their time and patience: dual booting multiple operating systems (so they don't have to buy Linux-dedicated hardware), using any graphics card (the latest and greatest GPUs are all closed source and developers who work on Linux do so because they despise closed source), using the least expensive hardware (which are typically closed source and buggy with anything except Windows), and emulating Windows apps so they don't have to learn new workflows or abandon their favorite games (technically, Proton with Steam allows Windows games like FFXIV to be played, but it's a neverending journey to get it working and keeping it working.

If you switch to Linux, accept that for a smooth experience you'll have to pay more than you would for a Windows machine (e.g. System76, Framework) And if you want graphics card support for your emulated Windows games on Steam, you're going to have to use the specific flavor of Linux the manufacturer supports.

That said, if you value free/libre open source software, then making the switch from Windows is totally worth it.

Unfortunately, I use some software that's Windows-only, and can't be bothered to set up a VM or anything

can't be bothered
That sure is unfortunate 🙃
- It's easier to install it than reconfiguring default Windows.
Yeah I've been Linux only since like 2012 but lately booting into windows 10 for sim racing, that's just not a thing on Linux it seems :(
- Plenty of sim racing on Linux. Just not iracing or (I think) rfactor.
  But Automobilista 2, AC, ACC, ACEvo, Raceroom, Dirt Rally 2.0, Beam. Ng drive, and others all run fine on my gaurda machine

I finally committed to Linux at the end of last year. Enough is working to make it preferable to Windows now. I'm still having a lot of bugs, and it's costing quite some time. But at least my computer is mine again. No more telemetry, ads, and UIs that treat me like a toddler. No more updates forced onto me instead of being done whenever I want it.

I don't know. I might build a new PC, and make this one a steambox. SteamOS does sound VERY exciting, and I haven't ever been excited for an OS.

Jumping to Linux for sure. The hardest part is going to be finding time to learn it first...

Already done. I dual boot at work (translated: I have a dormant win10 partition just in case, but I’m more likely to use my win10 VM in Linux) and at home I’m Linux only, having wiped my windows partition to reclaim the space within weeks of installing Linux.

I use Mint Cinnamon in both places. It’s a very polished, all in one, install and go OS. But it’s still Linux so I have the terminal available and I can find out how to fiddle with and change whatever I want.

For all manner of 2D desktop use, I find it superior to windows. Even being a very full-featured distro, when the software is made to serve the user and not 50 competing corporate priorities, you can tell. It’s so much more responsive and nice to use. (It is not flawless of course)

For gaming, I don’t play the newest stuff or multiplayer games with crazy anti-cheat, but I have not had any regrets so far. Many games have native Linux versions, probably thanks to valve and the Steam deck, but windows games running in proton have been smooth sailing for me.

I think I’ve just dealt with enough computer crap in my life that I prefer using not just Linux apps but FOSS software for as much as I can. If some game or some photo editing suite will absolutely not work in Linux or work acceptably in a VM, I am fine with it not existing in my world. I used to not find that acceptable, but now I’m over it. In a chill way though, not an angry anti-Microsoft way.

Bought a new PC and switched from dual boot Win10/Linux to Linux only. All of the games I'm playing work well, so no need for Windows 11

Already switched to Nobara. Only have Windows dual boot because Space Engineers Multiplayer doesn't seem to work on Linux.

Upgrade? How is 11 an upgrade?

I'm going to Linux because I have an older i5 (I think 5th or 7th gen?) which isn't compatible.

I only really kept Windows for gaming but Valve has put a lot of effort into making Linux gaming more accessible and I'm willing to try it out now

I have personally been using Linux for a few years now and I absolutely love it, however a lot of people will switch to Linux and be extremely disappointed. If you're going into Linux expecting an open source Windows clone you'll be solely mistaken. If you want an operating system that looks and works exactly like W11 youll be better off installing W11 and using something like classic shell. However if you're willing to accept that its a completely different OS (so it naturally will work differently and have different software) then go ahead.

My gaming PC is on Win 11 because it's recent and I'm lazy and it's convenient. My laptop runs Win 10 so it'll be Linux I guess. Not really looking forward to finding a distro and reinstalling and whatnot but what can you do. It's been a good few years since I last had a Linux box so I'm pretty rusty and not up to date on the recent best distros.

For gaming, people often recommend Pop!_OS, Bazzite, or Zorin, but you can use whatever you want if you are a tinkerer. I use Debian and have a great time gaming.
Outside of gaming and if Windows software compatibility isn't really something you're worried about, you can use any distro you want.
You can try some of them out using a web browser with DistroSea if you feel like it, though they don't have every distro because that would be nuts.
- I've been on Kubuntu for a while, but snaps are starting to bug me. When I build a new PC, I'm in the market for a new distro. Do you have a solid recommendation for a KDE-based distro that doesn't have a Windows-esque update step during shutdown and restart?
What distro did you use before?
- I used to use UbuntuStudio back when I was playing around with music recording and production ages ago because it ran the real-time kernel which was important for JACK I think. Last time though was just Mint.

I literally just swapped my key for my win10 pc's to win10 ltsc iot with mass and now dont have to worry for wayy longer. I suggest everyone without the option to switch to do the same.

I'm already on Linux, gaming isn't as good but I only play old games anyway so it doesn't matter.

I might get downvoted or whatever but Windows 11 is fine. I get it if your PC straight up can’t run it, that’s a tough spot. But as an OS it’s fine, even has a few handy features (besides all the AI crap shoehorned in). I actually like the File Explorer changes and the window snap stuff can work in the right setting.

No it isnt, the bloat is actually insane.

Been on Linux for like 15 years now

My gaming 'puter is running win 10, and the plan is to replace it with one running Manjaro. Will have to see when that happens, not upgrading to win 11.

I upgraded as soon as I had the chance, to Windows 11. But I never boot into it because my games run absolutely fine on Arch using Steam and the Proton compatibility layer. 👍 No reason to boot Windows whatsoever. I can't remember the last time I did. Every time I boot into it, the last system update finishes and a new one is available. 💀

I moved back to Linux and it works wonderfully. Except for HDR. That require a bit of tinkering. And there is no good way of getting it to work in any Linux browser, except for some very clunky workarounds. Hopefully that will be fixed.

Just moved my Win10 machine to Pop OS. No issues at all. Haven’t tried Steam VR on it yet.

Me too a couple months ago, Pop OS has been awesome for me
As long as your not streaming to a quest vr is great cause at least last time I tried it didn’t work that was a year or 2 back now though

I already moved to linux (In my case Linux Mint) two weeks ago ^^

I'm probably gonna go full Linux, I already run it on my laptop and my closet computer lol

I wonder if Steam OS will be ready for desktops before this

If they are ready by then, it would be perfect timing to grab a TON of users.

yeah i need star citizen, ableton, fl studio, premier, photoshop and more before i can dedicate a jump to linux

Unpopular opinion but I'm just using 11. I deal with enough problems with Linux at work and as hard as it is to believe, Windows just work and fits my workflow too well. Linux works great on my Steam Deck but the occasional weird quirks it has with certain games/launchers means I can't use it as my main gaming platform, it's only fine on the Deck because it has advantages for the form factor.

Made the upgrade last week to Linux mint and I’m loving it. Got my Arr stacks and stuff setup as dockers and it’s never worked so well. All the connection issues I’ve had on windows is now gone.

The interface is nice and not bloated. And I’m not being tracked which feels liberating.

No, I do not plan to jump to Linux, which doesn't play many games still without a lot of headaches. Any other questions?

Already on Linux. And proud.

I'll keep using linux on my main pcs and I'll still keep using windows 10 on my secondary laptop

Not gonna upgrade.

Have already had Linux for decades.

Linux still can’t handle anticheats for the games I play, so primarily on Windows I stay.

Linux doesn't support VR.

My plan is to use my Linux box as my main PC with Steam installed so that I can remote play from my Windows gaming PC since not all titles natively work on Linux for me. That way, the only activity being performed on my Windows machine is gaming and everything else will live in Linux Mint

Already upgraded to Linux Mint - https://lemmy.world/post/24365609

It’s been going great! Everything works as I expected. I now have full confidence that I will never switch back to Windows. It really does feel liberating having an OS that doesn’t track me.

Linux for gaming and most other use cases, Windows for the one proprietary application I use. Although I suppose I might go IoT LTSC.

I would love some advice, personally. How big of an issue is this really? Like....do I really have to care if there aren't system updates anymore? How big of a security risk is it actually?

Been Linux exclusively for 20 years. Win 11 sure isn't going to change that

How do I even get started? Do I just install Mint and figure it out from there? Linux seems so complicated but it's been a decade since I last tried. Nowadays, I feel old and this seems like it needs too much research

I am on Fedora. But i still have Windows dual boot left. But I dont use Windows 10 that often - I don't see the need. I just have it as a backup OS. I have free enough diskspace on my SSD so currently not doing anything.

Upgrade tool says my hardware isn't supported, seems like I can enable TPM on my motherboard but it doesn't work right for some reason I think I managed to install Windows 10 without secure boot or something, not sure if those two are even related. I was thinking maybe I'd have to reinstall windows 10 with those modules enabled in order to upgrade to windows 11... Has anyone else encountered something similar?

I have 11, so not directly affected. But with "no more security updates" being the only real reason one needs to change, the obvious question here is if there is 3rd party software that can protect a Windows 10 system?

I remember when anti-virus software was in common use.

Installed bazzite today. Was easier than installing windows.

Made the jump to Linux. No issues so far, very happy with the switch

My (perfectly good) PC isn't Win 11 compatible, so I can't upgrade from 10. I've got Linux running on an old laptop so I'm thinking of installing it on my PC. Buuut a few years back I moved from Google Drive to OneDrive and so now I'm looking at Proton Drive instead. It's all a big time soak, sigh. But worth it? I guess... The timing isn't great either - I've got an exam in October that I need to study hard for and do practical prep as well, plus I have travel plans. It's all a bit much. I'm too old to be this busy!

Can anyone recommend a distro (and desktop environment?) that's going to be almost the same as desktop mode on the Steam deck? I'm getting more comfortable in that than I expected to be in any Linux, and to my surprise and delight I haven't had to delve into the command line at all yet.

I'm planning on it.

I tried a rest run with Kubuntu on an old laptop I had, and it runs 95% flawlessly. My biggest issue is my new Brother printer that I'm trying to install connected to Wi-Fi. The system sems to know it's there, but then doesn't seem to install the drivers. My Android phone prints there just fine.

I upgraded to Windows 11.

I tried Linux but but so much stuff isn't supported so I got rid of it.

Already transitioning. Been half doing it for ages. This'll just be the last bit.

Linux is the way

Just waiting for daddy gabon to release steamos. If not I swear I'm going to just use the most windowsxp distro available. I thought I was being simple by going with mint and KDE. Dare me.

Went to Linux a couple months ago, its freaking awesome, you'll never look back. And it is way easier to use than people make it out to be. Also my PC has never been faster thanks to having zero bloat.

i jumped 🫡

I was running mint, but had to go back to windows because of a hardware bug I'm still trying to fix where my PC will randomly not wake up from sleep and that results in corrupted drives, which windows can fix with it's automated repair at boot, but Linux has done commands that I need to run and if I fuck it up it would fuck my computer up even more, so until I can fix the hardware bug I'm stuck on windows, but by fuck do I hate it. I prefer Linux so much more over windows, so much more convenient, efficient, personalizable and it actually works in many places where windows simply doesn't even with a lot of fiddling around in settings and shit

Considering I'm unemployed and job hunting, and Windows says I can't upgrade my current (old) PC, and I regularly play Warzone with friends? No, probably not any time soon.

Maybe if I get a job with a six digit salary in a city with a reasonable cost of living (or remote) so I can jump out of debt before 6 months? But I'm not holding my breath.

I think I will switch to Linux, possibly dual boot with Win 11 just in case there are games I can't play on Linux.

Windows is a weapons contractor that is entangled in the domestic markets. Linux is not. Windows is spyware and anti consumer. It is time to at least be familar with Linux. Try it on a old laptop or something. Linux is free.

No, I use windows 11 and it works great.

I can't afford a new computer right now and tariffs meaning higher prices means I can't anticipate affording one in the near future. My plan is to see where everything's at when they stop doing updates. Unfortunately.

- I'm somewhat open to the idea, but the thought of messing up and not having any computer other than my phone until i figure it out is tough to get over.

linux, either endeavor or nobara

How to give it a go:

Get a 256GB SSD and install it on your computer alongside the existing drives.
Install a gaming-oriented Linux distro such as Pop!OS, Bazzite, SteamOS or similar, on that drive (don't let it touch any other drive - those things generally have an install mode were you just tell it "install in this drive" which will ignore all other drives)
Unless your machine is 10 years old or older, during boot you can press a key (generally F8) and the BIOS will pop-up a boot menu that lets you choose which OS you want start booting (do it again at a later date if you want to change it back). If your machine is old you might actually have to go into the BIOS and change the boot EFI (or if even older, boot drive) it boots from in the boot section of the BIOS.
Use launchers such as Steam and a Lutris since they come with per-game install scripts that make sure Proton/Wine is properly configured, so that for most game you don't have to do any tweaking at all for them to run - it's just install and launch. In my experience you still have to tweak about 1 game in every 10.
If it all works fine and you're satisfied with it, get a bigger SSD and install it alongside the rest. Make one big partition in it and mount you home directory there (at this point you will have to go down to the CLI to copy over your home directory). You'll need this drive because of all the space you'll be using for games, especially modern ones and launchers like Steam and Lutris will install the games in your home directory so having that in it's own partition is the easiest way to add storage space for games.

As long as you give a dedicated drive to Linux and (if on an old machine before EFI) do not let it install a boot sector anywhere else but that drive, the risk exposure is limited to having spent 20 or 30 bucks on a 256GB SSD and then it turns out Linux is still not good enough for you.

When NOT to do it:

If you don't know what a BIOS is or that you can press a key at the start of boot to get into it.
If you don't know how to install a new drive on your machine (or even what kind of drive format it takes) and don't have somebody who can do it for you.
If you don't actually have the free slot for the new drive (for example, notebooks generally only have 2 slots, sometimes only 1).

I had read that Steam on WINE is pretty stable. Is it not?

20 years for me (even thought I used Windows for a year in there). There's no point in using Windows at all, unless you're forced at work, or stuck because you don't want to learn an alternative tool.

I want to move to Linux, but I need to be able to use the VPN service my work uses and I'm just not sure how to get it working on Linux. I should just dual boot.

Upgrade

to Linux

Well my PC can't do windows 11, and upgrading is now impossible thanks to a certain someone. So yeah...

I'm a Linux user who had Windows 10 on one computer for VR but once I saw Microsoft's CEO at Trump's inauguration I removed that last install, deleted my Meta accounts, and put my Quest 3 in a box.

I've been trying to get a good domain authed nix set up for a while. Alternately, if I could set up a gaming server using sunshine/moonlight.

Moonlight is still alive? I used to use it constantly and was really disappointed when support for it discontinued.
- Well I see it I repos and app stores, not real sure of the development, last update on the Google store was Feb 2024. Still seems to work when I've played with it
- Sunshine is still very much in active development for the server side of things, and the client app is also still active. Both seem to still work flawlessly in Windows and Linux on Nvidia cards for me, and as far as I know there's very solid support for AMD cards as well.

Bought my wife a framework laptop, slapped fedora on it and have been helping her make the switch. So far so good other than Obsidian not working the same as OneNote.

I have no plans to either update to win11 or change back to chanting magic spells at my computer to get it to work (Ubuntu, many years ago).

My computer works and does everything I want it to. Basic internet security and reasonable precautions are sufficient for a low level user like me to stay safe.

When that time comes I'll probably either remove networking from, or just wipe win10 entirely.

Been using mint as my daily for a while now and I hate booting into windows 😂

I dual boot but I'm on Windows 11 for my windows partition because the fucking thing just upgraded itself one day.

linux primary with dual boot for a windows install just because of the games that won't work.

I’ll be switching fully to Linux this summer, but will also “upgrade” windows 10 to 11 on the last week of support. I’ll only use it then if I have to, on a separate drive.

Come to Linux, it's all I've used since Windows 7 and it works great.

I've been on Windows 11 since it was released. The only problem I had were NVIDIA drivers sometimes causing a bluescreen (mainly my fault).

Linux doesn't work for me currently, since I use RDP to connect to systems for work, and RDP clients on Linux are ass.

RDP clients on Linux are ass.
Remmina is better than windows native remote desktop shit imo
- Used it, it was probably the best, but still bad. If not for work, it would have been good enough though.
  Most of the RDP implementations are also just based on FreeRDP, so they're basically the same. I had terrible picture quality on all of them, even over local network, and the USB passthrough barely worked.
  Tbh since I need the system for work, I wasn't able to test stuff super long. Maybe I should install Linux on a secondary system, so I can just play around and try stuff.

Why is Bill Gates in the picture? lol

Build new computer. Old computer to be a home server running Linux or something fancy.

I run Fedora KDE now, but I’m going to keep my Windows 10 install on Windows 10.

I will dualboot to keep a windows 10 for software that only runs on it, but I really hope I will be able to be gaming on linux only.

Just imagine 43 % market share in the next hardware survey.

Ill bet right before the deadline, they will magically make TPM optional, even though they said they wouldn't.

If ya want to not be plugged into the internet, or use new external media, ya can probably run it safely forever.

Linux has some problems that I just can never find answers for.

#1. Can’t do 4k 340hz on my display port 1.4 cable. Even though I can on windows and Mac. In Linux the option is there with the nvidia driver, but the screen goes black anytime I try to use it. No solution.

#2. Ubiconnect won’t work with Ann 1800 even though it’s good on proton.db and others are reporting it works great, I was never ever able to get it working or find reliable steps to get it working.

It’s a needle in a haystack trying to find fixes for things like this. Linux offers a lot, but still doesn’t offer the most important thing ease of fixing problems quickly so you can just do what you want to do.

Run a game and work at the native resolution.

What happens if still use win 10?

I would like to switch to Linux on my gaming machine but me and my girlfriend play Valorant together so I can't switch just yet.

My server and laptop already run NixOS, I'm just looking forward to the day my gaming/main machine join them too

I got a new PC recently so unfortunately I am now on Windows 11. I’ve been wanting to make the swap to Linux but I can’t really make a clean break because at least some of the games I play a lot won’t work on Linux. I do think I’m gonna try to set up another hard drive with Linux on it to try to slowly start learning it and ideally move over anything that I can over there eventually and just keep the windows drive for those few games.

Does anyone have any recommendations related to that? Distro for gaming/ease of use? What’s the best option for setting up the dual boot? Anything I wouldn’t have thought of that’s relevant?

Didn't they get rid of some 11 requirements? Won't most regular people just do the upgrade to 11?

Linux. I've been putting if off because of hardware reasons that would be annoying to explain beyond the solution is upgrading the motherboard, which is bottlenecking me anyways.

If you use Windows as mere game launcher, you better have a application firewall set to whitelist Steam only anyway.

I have Windows only for League, no Steam installed. Ergo I don't count

I technically have a Win10+Linux dual boot setup right now, but I haven't used the Linux install in forever, and I think it's broken. So I'll probably fix this and then use Linux when possible and continue using the unsupported win10 for everything that needs windows.

I remember people mentioning the win10 LTCS version with 10 years support, but I'm not going to buy anything from them. Maybe I'll use it unactived if needed.

Is there an easy way to port all my stuff to Linux? I would not have made the switch in the past, but all the good will I attributed to Microsoft is pretty much gone. I’ve heard Mint is petty easy to hop onto?

Swapped to Linux last week. Currently dual booting. Over the coming months, I'm going to slowly transfer all my stuff over as well

Plan on, if possible, cloning my account to a new account on a new internal drive (preferably a 2TB+ drive) to save all my stuff that I want and don't feel like moving over due to laziness. Then on another partition, I plan on having the rest of the space being used for Linux. All I gotta do is make sure the win10 partition doesn't receive an ounce of Internet connectivity at all and pray I don't end up with a virus or something similar somehow (because even the safest internet practices aren't safe enough anymore).

Hopefully I can turn that partition into a cold partition where I can keep the current games I have that aren't downloaded through Steam installed to ensure I can still play them. Then I can slowly debloat it by uninstalling everything I don't need on there and get rid of a ton of files/unnecessary programs so that way I can still have roughly 500-600GB for win10 just in case I ever need it for anything, like a program I genuinely cannot figure out how to get working on Linux.

I use Opensuse MicroOS on half a dozen PCs but I keep one on Windows until I can run Fortnite on Linux.

I've gotten to a point where the quality of a PS2 game is higher to me than most AAA releases. I mostly play retro games, more open multiplayer games that don't block users like TF2(and TF2) and indies... so, no. I don't really need Windows for anything.

I tried it a few months ago but had issues with various games and lowered performance in almost all of them. I still don't know if I will just cave in and upgrade to win11 or try linux again, i've got a free partition waiting but the issue is lack of time and motivation to dive into troubleshooting the OS on a daily basis

I have an older pc that I use as a a Plex server so as soon as I get some time I will fully switch to Ubuntu.

Jumping to Linux just picking a distro

Been a Linux user for ages, I do have Windows 11 installed on another partition but I rarely - if ever - boot into it.

I mention the above spiel because I don't understand what additional points people have against windows 11? It seems very similar to windows 10 for me - what're the reasons for people hating it?

Genuinely not trying to be obtuse, here - I'm just wondering what the primary pain points are of win 11?

Is it the requirement for using a Microsoft account to log in vs. a normal local account? Or the one drive stuff? (upon install it did move most of my personal folders into a weird OneDrive directory, and I had to use the registry to wipe out OneDrive and move them back. Very annoying.)

Make the jump to Linux and loose 90% of the games you play as well. If all you play is steam games and don't care about many that can't be played then sure. I get the appeal. But windows 11 is the same thing as 10.

90%?
Do you only play games with kernel level anti-cheat? Because those are literally the only games i haven't been able to play, and fortunately for me I don't want to play those games.
- I play many kinds of games. Using a Windows emulator in Linux doesn't count as "running on Linux"
loose 90% of the games you play as well
It's 2025, not 2007. This is a huge exaggeration. Maybe try it again sometime.
- I might when the DAWs I use will work natively.
- I use DAWs, havent had luck with wine not crashing games. So yes. You MUST be right, haven't used Linux at all actually. Just saw a word document about it. God you people are the worst
Pretty much, 1% of games don't work on Linux and its the top 1% most popular games
- My problem is 100% of the DAWs I use don't work on Linux

My Windows 10 PC's only function at this point is to play FFXIV in my living room, so I'm not super worried about viruses or anything.

But maybe eventually I'll switch to Linux on that box and do that weird set-up to get FFXIV running there.

I've been on 11 since before it was officially released. Honestly never had any issues with it, but I'm interested in hearing what sort of issues anyone else might have had? Are we talking about privacy concerns, bugs or performance issues?

Why? Nothing requires Windows 11. It doesn't even have a new directx which is why most had to upgrade from 7. Browsers and malware software will work for years. Hell malwarbytes still updates for Window 7.

I still use steam on Windows 7. I don't see the problem.

The only real reason I'm still on Win 10 is because of Escape from Tarkov and Photoshop. I need to get a new m.2 and just start sorting through my crap I guess but I haven't gotten the motivation yet lol

Just bought a laptop and put bazzite on it to try it out and figure out if I can do all the things I want to do on it. If that all works out I'll be switching my desktop over.

I switched to Linux mate and been using heroic games launcher for the windows games I want to play

Got a new laptop about a month ago. Put Fedora Bluefin on it immediately. Couple other computers/server have been running Debian flavors for year or two.

My main desktop is still Windows, but I literally never use it, especially since getting the laptop. I'll switch it over when I get time.

I'm still tied to windows for three apps. I've found a Linux replacement for one, I just haven't done the work to convert the database.

Another one I'm trying to run it's Android version in a waydroid docker, but I'm hitting walls, no time to dig deeper.

And the last one has no replacement, and it's too delicate to try emulating, I don't want to nuke the shared database it's attached to, it's not worth the headache. So I keep a Windows VM around for the once a month I need to use that program for 🤷‍♂️

I'm purposely being vague about the programs, they are very identifying, but trust me there's no alternatives.

Even with all that, I'm not looking back, win11 sucks.

I moved from Win 10 to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 2 months ago. Going very well so far, even for music production and gaming. I also got a friend of mine to dual-boot Tumbleweed/Win11, coming from Win11.

I'll have to use some sort of windows for VR, I need to investigate the various debloat options

Never again, bye Microsoft Windows 😁 Hi GNU/Linux my new friend.

Installed kubuntu on the laptop so I can get used to it. Still trying to find a AV and firewall app I like

ClamAV, if you want more than just common sense. Firewall is built-in to kubu.

My old as hell PC died I'm getting a steam deck as a replacement with a dock and ...so I'll just be dual booting into windows 11 and obviously steam OS when I decide to play hand held.

Gonna have to.

I don't mind it, just using w10 for simplicity's sake.

A couple weeks ago I attempted to switch over to Linux. Tried installing both Cachyos and Nobara. It was kind of a shit show, nothing worked correctly, stuff was erroring out and crashing left and right, and after a couple days I gave up.

Today I went ahead and installed windows 11. There were some issues... It wouldn't recognize my CD key, and I accidentally wiped a partition from the wrong drive. But as for the os itself, I spent a few hours getting things set up, and it's not as horrible as I thought it would be. I was able to simply turn off most of the shit like copilot and recall, and all the advertisements, and I pretty much have it working as I want it to.

Linux

Jumped to linux with a new laptop, but not gaming on it. It's fine for what I need. My old machine will be for gaming only.

I've got a few computers - my daily driver is Win10, there's a media player still on 8.1 (only accesses music streams and it's not spotify, it's URLs like https://das-edge15-live365-dal02.cdnstream.com/a98345), the main pihole machine runs vanilla Debian, the backup pihole on a Raspberry Pi also running Debian, and a couple of older laptops also running Debian.

So no, I don't plan to upgrade.

I don't plan on doing anything until I have no choice but to buy a new computer.

I've enjoyed Linux since Windows MEllennium Edition convinced me that I didn't like paying a lot, in money and time, to be an unpaid product testing guinea pig. A work friend put Windows 2000 on that laptop when ME went bad. I used it until a got a blue screen of death one day, and switched to Linux. The 1st was a $230 ePC that could be had with Windows XP or XanderOS (a flavor of Linux). I chose the latter, and had a great time of it. I've since used Mint and Ubuntu.

I don't like the rootkit. I do everything I possibly can on Linux aside from the one game that requires it. That said, since they started using the rootkit, there has been a steep drop-off in bots in the game. As in I don't see any anymore. So, annoying and a huge security risk? Absolutely. Dubious? Maybe? Depends on what you mean.

Made the jump already since I built a new computer and there were lots of missing windows 10 drivers for the new hardware and there was no way in hell I was going to main on windows 11.

I switched to Mint a year ago. Don't miss a thing.

I’m on 12, and will be upgrading to 13 when Trixie hits stable.

I'm going to move over to Mint on my laptop, it's older but still working great after I swapped an SSD drive in. Biggest issue is backing up the laptop before installing Linux. I have another computer I plan on duel boot with Windows 10 so I have access if I need windows for certain programs. I have no control over my work computer so Windows 11 there.

And unless one of my brothers steps up and buys our Dad a Windows 11 computer (I bought the Windows 10 computer, which is why it was so cheap it can't take 11. 😆 ) since I'm his tech support if my brothers don't step up he is going to Linux. No matter what I'm going to have to listen to him complain about how it is different so it will be a good time to move to Linux. Probably a version that tries to mimic Windows.

I've been daily-driving Linux Mint (LMDE 6) on my Thinkpad T14 G1 for almost a year now. At this point, that laptop is easily the most dependable machine I've ever had. My gaming PC is the last remaining Windows machine in my house. Recently I've been making sure everything is backed up (Syncthing is great for this) and finding alternatives for programs that don't have a Linux version.

My plan is to create images of both my SSDs (500GB & 2TB, both NTFS 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️) onto a 4TB hard drive. Then start from scratch, migrating data from the images (Steam games, config files, personal documents I may have missed, etc) when/if I need it.

I don't care to much about steam at the moment so no real problem. But I will make the switch to linux on the machine used for gaming. No Win 11 there probably, some Arch-related, EndeavourOS is my actual choice.

Neither.

I'm running Linux everywhere incuding the machine I am writing on right now. I have one single dual boot machine with Windows 10 as the mainly used OS for the simple reason that I need to run one specific software (and some of the "ecosystem" around it) that is not available for Linux. The only alternative is Apple which is even worse in my opinion. So I think I'll be forced to update. All the rest of my daily computing stuff has been moved to Linux for a long time.

Swapped to Arch Linux! I wouldn't say it's been a bug free swap but it's been extremely doable and everything I needed to work worked like a charm. Gaming was uninterrupted and nothing hasn't worked yet.

I need to figure out how to connect my stupid printer but I couldn't do that on windows either, which is sad cause I thought printers were gonna be easier on Linux but I guess this brother model is a pain in the ass or something. Oh and connecting to network drives while on a VPN. That's my list of pending problems and I've been on Linux for two months. Not bad really.

I don't know. If more devs start to support Linux, I probably will.

Been using Linux since 2005. Really don't understand why so many people put up with Microsoft planned obsolescence, spyware, ads, etc. Linux is easier now than it's ever been. Most things work out of the box if you pick a reasonable distro. If you're going to be pushed to learn a new paradigm, do it once more by learning Linux and stop being pushed.

Steam OS time

I have procrastinated the switch this far, I'll be damned if my laziness gives in now! Lol

Being a deck owner not over obsessed in the latest tripe A games.

I think I'm going to get the $30 1-year ESU and kick that can down the road. I need to run windows-only software and I can't upgrade because of my processor. Maybe in a year's time I'll be ready for a new build.

Neither

I have an ad hoc media server on 10. If it's super working, you can bet I will replace it with something other than Microsoft. Unless work requires it, everything I use is Linux, Android, or Apple based. I don't hate Windows, I just like everything else more.

Anybody tried a steam deck with dock? Gaming and casual desktop should be doable with that.

My system isn't even that old (maybe 4 years) and the first few times I got that very annoying popup that I should try to upgrade it told me in vague terms that I couldn't. So be it, everything runs fine now. I have backups of everything, so if WIn10 doesn't continue to work as simply unsupported one day I'll look for ways to "fix" it like someone mentioned with a 3rd party, or go to Linux and adapt to it. Anyone who has ever had a drive failure knows that the solution is to use a recovery USB which will be a portable Linux, so it will be just another version of that.

Check out Bazzite Linux. It has been very stable for me and all the games I tested just works.

My home (gaming) pc is going back to linux for sure., on the very day they drop support for 10.

Thought maybe steam is for next desktop. That or run win10

43% of Steam is still on Windows

10 with support...

Seems not so many.
And if they are ending in 7 month why bother.

Just put the lin
e break right, the
n it's understanda
ble.

I just deleted windows and installed Bazzite Linux. Everything just works

So 43% of Steam users are the kind of stickler that refuse to update their Windows to an objectively better version because it's something new and different and breaks their habits. What would make you think these people would possibly just switch to a different OS altogether if a simple update was too much to ask for the past years?