Nice
I cannot recommend switching to Linux enough! Linux mint is a solid, stable OS with a thriving community and ample support for newcomers.
There are alternatives to nearly everything, yes YOU CAN absolutely live without microsoft or google tracking your every move, stealing your data, selling it and using that profit to fund unethical bullshit. Take back control, you will never regret it.
Mint for general use.
Nobara or PopOS for gaming.
I installed pop os yesterday after repeatedly saying I hate Microsoft all week. Bye windows 11!
How hard is it to distro hop on your daily driver without losing your userdata/homefolder
syncthing is pretty great
Ventoy is entirely unrelated to preserving user data. It’s just a tool that lets you drag-and-drop multiple ISOs onto a flash drive without having to image it every time.
Put it on a separate partition and you can easily keep it for each new install. I did that for quite a while.
I used to be an avid Linux user a couple of years back – but had to move to macos due to work. I however soon have the freedom to move back soon. Just out of cursiosity, do you know why people are recommending Mint over Ubuntu now?
I have no horse in the race, i’m just curious what changed as when i used Linux last time you would be recommended Ubuntu 95% of the time.
Mint is Ubuntu with the icky proprietary Canonical stuff removed and with an extra layer of polish.
Mint Cinnamon even has a windows-like desktop/taskbar-like setup out of the box. I don’t know of any reason I might recommend somebody replace windows with Ubuntu rather than Mint.
Ubuntu is run by Canonical and people have mixed opinions about them. It mostly stems from their insistence on using snaps to run apps when other versions are supposedly faster (flatpack).
I think that’s the biggest issue otherwise Ubuntu is fine and I use it on all my VMs.
Ah okay, thanks for the answer.
There’s more. When you get away from Windows, you want to get away from ads. But Ubuntu is a commercial package that will remind you gently on occasion of this and include an ad for its own paid plan.
Someone broke into my house on Tuesday and installed Linux Mint on my previously windows ThinkPad so I’m setting that up with all my productivity software today.
Fun fact I thought that my sound card was just gradually dying because I lost onboard speaker output 5 years ago, and lost any BT audio output last week, but it all came back after Mint was installed so I guess it was just windows being windows this whole time. I honestly just accepted that she would never speak again from her onboard speakers.
Someone broke into my house on Tuesday and installed Linux Mint on my previously windows ThinkPad
Now that’s my kind of mischief.
what else do you expect :D it’s always about the money, if not helping jews would be more profitable they would do that.
You’re a war profiteer Mustafa!
I feel good about cancelling my 365 subscription, and I will continue to feel good about switching to Linux when windows 10 hits end of life. Not giving this company another dime.
I recommend you to do the switch now. Linux is more accessible than ever and there is no reason to give them any more of your data. Also it helps you to transition step by step where it might take a bit longer to get used to a different way of doing things.
I’ve been considering Linux for a while now, but I play games between 4 and 8 hours pr day. Is Linux and gaming still a problem or?
Depends on the game and your hardware. Most games runs just fine under proton. Valve have done a great job there.
Hardware has never been an issue for me but I read here somewhere that they had 10-15% less performance on Linux. ymmw.
ngl, sometimes it is. it depends on the game. usually the problem is anti-cheat, but Valve has been working on improving that with many games working out of the box today. i’d say if you’re playing single player games, once you get Proton installed it’s virtually the same experience.
check out https://www.protondb.com/
if your games are gold or above on there, i’d go ahead and pull the trigger.
Nope, look into Bazzite for an easy Linux distro to set up
Most Indie games work fine. It is just the AAA crap that somehow can’t be bothered to make their stuff work on anything but Windows.
It depends on the game, although the overall situation has improved recently. Multiplayer games tend to have more issues due to their anti cheat software, which often doesn’t support Linux.
I recommend you check these pages for compatibility in your preferred games in case you want to try:
honestly, most of the games i wanna play are totally fine and might run even better on linux. what is something to keep in mind is anti linux anti cheat: https://areweanticheatyet.com/ besides, you can check https://www.protondb.com/ to get a rough overview of what you can play. out of all the games i’m playing only one isn’t working rn, cuz the screen ratio is messed up (it’s a small rather unknown game) but really many games are fine. i use steam and heroic games launcher, and they’re great. f nvidia tho. they can be a true pain in the butt (on windows too though…)
Depends on the game really but sometimes you have to spend a lot of time & research on things to figure it out. Great that it is open source but companies like Microsoft also work to sabotage efforts at times. If it has multiplayer with anticheat, you’ll prob find a lot more instances where things don’t work or require more effort.
Use SteamOS. Your use case requires it.
Does steam os have a regular desktop mode? I saw ETA prime install steamos on a mini gaming pc yesterday, but never mentioned using it with a mouse and keyboard.
Do not get steamos lol.
Any regular desktop distribution is fine (fedora, mint…), if you have new hardware you’ll want a recent kernel. Nvidia gpus can be problematic. You can always try the distro before installing.
I know this is unsolicited advice, so feel free to ignore me, but I am an expert on these things so here’s my take:
Before you switch to Linux, start switching your apps to ones that you know will work on Linux. It’ll make the process much easier for ya! :-)
I’ve been on Linux as my primary OS for around a year now. I’m still looking for a replacement for Lightroom and camera raw that doesn’t absolutely crush any image I’m working on.
Have you tried raw therapee? At least for what I do I find it to be an excellent Lightroom replacement.
I have, but with terrible results. Can you recommend some tutorials? The behavior of various tools always surprises me, coming from Adobe raw and Lightroom.
For example, reducing contrast in Adobe tones down highlights and shadows while doing that in dark table and rawtherapee turns everything washed out and grey.
Hmm, unfortunately I don’t have any good recommendations. I’ve just tinkered with it until stuff I like happens, and it’s been so long since I used Lightroom I can’t speak to specific differences.
With the contrast example it sounds like maybe the RT/DT tools are more literal, and Lightroom is more “smart” perhaps? I usually use the curves panel for this sort of thing, like if I want to bring down some highlights, I’ll find whereabouts they are on the histogram and target that area specifically. If I want a lower-contrast image in general I may compensate for some dullness with the local contrast and saturation tools, or if it’s the common scenario of a washed out sky, I’ll probably use a graduated filter to darken the sky without messing with the foreground.
I’m just guessing though, so I don’t know if this is helpful at all.
I’m just guessing though, so I don’t know if this is helpful at all.
Any information is helpful and I truly appreciate you taking the time to summarize your workflow. I’ve actually never monitored the histogram outside of snapping the photo, so that alone is a great suggestion. I generally edit by eye and kinda feel my way through, but using a metric sounds like a great idea! It also makes a lot more sense if you’re right about RT/DT being more “literal.”
I know I haven’t given enough time to either piece of software, but I’ve been so shocked by how little of my process carried over, that I kinda ran away in fear almost immediately.
ART, a fork of RawTherapee, is also very good.
Terrible name for SEO but sounds cool! 🤪
It sounds like it might be closer to a 1:1 replacement for Lightroom than Raw therapee. (I haven’t installed it, I’m just reading the description. https://art.pixls.us/)
I’ve seen people on the internet suggesting Darktable as a solid Lightroom replacement… I don’t know anything about photo editing, but am curious - how bad is it?
From darktable’s FAQ:
Is darktable a free Lightroom alternative?
No. Other than both being raw editors with DAM features, and looking somewhat similar, they have very little in common. Darktable is a powerful and flexible raw processing toolbox, that leaves the user in charge of their workflow and provides a level of power and control that few others can match. This also means that the initial learning curve can be steep, since very little workflow and tool knowledge can be transferred from other programs.
https://www.darktable.org/about/faq/
In my personal experience it’s pretty good, but I’ve never used lightroom nor do I have nearly any idea what I’m doing with RAW processing, or photography in general, but I’ve been happy with the few photos I’ve put through it!
Best of luck in that case!
Since 2003 here.
For sure. Linux has a lot of great apps but there are times where it’ll become incredibly frustrating. For example, file explorers can be basic & frustrating… The best you’ll prob get is Dolphin.
Isn’t Windows File Explorer considered basic? It only just got tabs in 11 right? That and clicking on a disconnected network share would cause it to hang for a good few minutes.
It isn’t perfect by any means, but compared to Nautilus & many others, it still has a lot of benefits that make things quicker overall.
Linux has the best file manager I’ve found on any platform: Krusader. It has twin panels, and a lot of the functionality is bound to FKeys: F2 Rename, F3 View, F4 Edit, F5 Copy, etc. F9 will open a terminal in the current directory. You can edit text files and uncompress zipped files from within Krusader. I’ve even done it on a remote filesystem over SSH.
I’m have to give this a look!
I tried this, it’s nice indeed. The layout will require some getting used to for me, but I like how it lets me add my remote server as sftp bookmark and open files from there pretty seamlessly, even videos.
I still contend that the best file browser ever made is the macOS Finder. When someone makes something that good for Linux, I’ll be very happy
What. What?? Finder is the fucking worst. It doesn’t have a sensible tree view, does it?
seems sensible to me? its not amazing but i dont mind it … what doesnt work for you?
Sidebar defaults are bad. There’s no home directory. How do you get to your home directory? Cmd+shift+H, but can you get there without that special shortcut? You can’t see the file system’s structure in Finder. The GUI doesn’t have a way to go “up” in the directory structure. I don’t think you can do it in the GUI alone.
It won’t let you see stuff in like \tmp\ without a fight, too. I don’t know how to open stuff in places like that without
cd
’ing to the location in the terminal, and doingopen .
in the desired directory.The list view is the least bad, but it gets unwieldy if your directories are deeply nested. It’s also bad if you started in the middle of the tree and want to go up. Gallery and column view are really bad for anything non trivial.
I often want to see the entire file path, and it really doesn’t want to cooperate. If I do find the file I’m looking for, and want the full path, it doesn’t want to give it. I don’t even know if there is a way to get it. Other than like cmd+clicking -> “new iterm2 tab here” ->
pwd
, which is not really that helpful of Finder.Contrast with windows’ default explorer. It’s not perfect and I think windows11 made it worse, but still. Open it up, there’s the “my pc”, click through to my user directory, music, some album, then i can click the top thing and get the path. I can also see the whole tree on the left.
Whatever I was using in Mint was similar to windows’ Explorer. Had no complaints about it.
You really don’t know how to use macOS, lol
Genuine question, is this trolling or do you seriously believe this?
Is it that outlandish that someone can appreciate a piece of closed-source software?
Appreciate isn’t the claim tho
Well, Windows Explorer is terrible, Dolphin is better but still not really that great, Nautilus is stripped back and barebones, Thunar is ancient and barely competes with what Windows XP had, and vifm is unreasonable unless you exclusively work in terminals. Did I miss any that are even remotely popular?
Textbook retaliatory, I hope they have a nice retirement
Sue the company and bring the details in to a the court of law.
Washington is an at-will employment state. Businesses may fire any employee at any time, for any or no reason, as long as they are not violating any employee protection laws. Speech is not protected.
Retaliatory firing can still be sued, problem is proving it of course.
According to the state of WA dept of labor and industries these constitute retaliation:
Retaliation An employer cannot take adverse actions against an employee who exercises a protected right, files or intends to file a complaint, or who has discussed potential violations of their rights. Prohibited adverse actions may include:
- Terminating, suspending, demoting, or denying a promotion.
- Reducing hours or altering the employee’s work schedule.
- Reducing the employee’s rate of pay.
- Threatening to take, or taking action, based upon the immigration status of an employee or an employee’s family member.
- Subjecting the employee to discipline, including write-ups, verbal warnings, points, etc.
We have reviewed our internal policies and found our employees do not share the same values as us.
Yep, you are 💯 correct that this is what they did. Regardless of industry, is why unions are so very important. “At Will” employment is too easily abused, and even if this could somehow be considered a wrongful termination (ANAL, but protesting a company’s social-political viewpoints is not protected like gender, age, race, etc are) it can be costly and time-consuming to fight it in courts by yourself.
Unions, unions, unions… In Steve Ballmer’s voice.
https://www.theverge.com/news/644769/microsoft-fires-employee-protestor-war-profiteer
" It is also concerning that you have not apologized to the company, and in fact you have shown no remorse for the effect that your actions have had and will have."
SAY YOU’RE SORRY OR THE COMPANY WILL BE SAD
Soy Microsoft, tbh
you are Microsoft?
No, sorry there’s a meme going around online where the English term “soy” (as in soybeans; this term was likely derived from veganism where many vegans drink soy milk instead of cow milk) is being prefixed to nouns or people to denote weakness or just to snark at people, kinda like how people would use snowflake in the past.
I was calling Microsoft “soy” in this way
Do you know the origins of that meme? Are you sure you’re okay with repeating it yourself, even if it’s just meant as a joke?
Do you know the origins of that meme?
I thought I had already explained my idea of its origination, but according to Know Your Meme, the “soy” reference started around 2017 when information was hitting the mainstream about how soy contains phytoestrogens (isoflavones) [likely due to the rise in veganism at the time and people pushing for soy-based milk alternatives to cow milk and protein alternatives to meat] and people started to speculate (ignorantly) that consuming more soy makes people more feminine (but particularly less masculine). This may be true, but current it’s plausible due to a lack of sufficient evidence.
Know Your Meme then go on to explain how the term “soy” gets ascribed to a meme, “Soyjack”, and how his effeminate male persona gets compared to the ultimate masculine male persona “Chad”.
I take this meme to mostly refer to how some people in the world are changing their worldviews and behaviors to disform with the traditional patriarchy and order. People are upgrading their morality, whether that means abstaining or advocating for not consuming animals for food, or championing equity and minority rights like women’s, or touting the reality of the climate crisis and how we need to abandon fossil fuels in favor of clean energy.
This is in comparison to an older, narrower point of view that aims to regress worldviews and behaviors to a time when humanity dominated all other species on Earth (since we’re obviously better), neither women nor minorities had societal or individual powers or rights, or coal, natural gas, and oil are the best forms of energy because of how much they’ve contributed to humanity’s advancement.
People who subscribe to a worldview like the latter routinely would call people with the former worldview “soy”.
Are you sure you’re okay with repeating it yourself, even if it’s just meant as a joke?
I am fine using that term myself only towards regressives that abandon their worldviews or fail to practice their beliefs out of cowardice or a lack of conviction specifically because those people claim superiority over progressives. I’d use the term on people who would call others out for being more feminine (i.e. showing compassion, talking things out before forcing people to do things, etc.) but then show those same characteristics themselves, often without them recognizing their hypocrisy.
So, I called Microsoft soy in this case not because they enjoyed relatively progressive policies on human rights for example, but because they regressed on those beliefs by foresaking them and firing one of their employees who acted fully within the policy framework Microsoft themselves had created.
We should not settle with only one side of the societal spectrum name-calling and bullying the other for how they live. All ways of life are acceptable, so long as they don’t impede other’s. Tolerance is not a paradox. It is earned, in trust, as a social contract. If people prove to (routinely) breach that contract, then they deserve no respect in my eyes.
I have no issue with calling people or groups or companies or countries soy in that way.
remorse for the effect that your actions have had
I think they were expressing remorse. Just, you know, remorse about the killing. Not the loss of face to the C-levels.
That is the real crime here …
Embarassing rich people or losing profits. Their lives are what really matter, wouldn’t want them to be inconvenienced in any way.
Have they said thank you once?
They want him to apologize for calling out Microsoft helping Israel murder children.
yelling and finger-pointing at the CEO before a live audience of thousands of attendees
oh nooo not finger pointing, thats so outrageous, unlike killing thousands of children
and making hostile, unprovoked, and highly inappropriate accusations against the CEO, the Company and Microsoft generally
the truth cant be hostile or inappropriate and the accusations were certainly not unprovoked
It’s comically ironic that the author of that note thought the whistle-blower should apologize to the dirtbag for saying something.
If you don’t want people to be upset about your supporting genocide, then please consider not supporting genocide
It’s fucking wild how many people simply won’t consider not supporting genocide.
Look it isn’t that I won’t consider not supporting genocide, it is that your tone and the manner that you bring up the fact that I support the genocide makes me feel bad so out of spite I will continue to support the genocide, and now how do you feel?
This is all your fault.
/s
Microsoft will feel the wrat of Europe. Many people are switching to Linux. Even (local) governments with thousants of employees. This all together will have hudge implications in the next few years.
IBM had a role in the holocaust. Those numbers tattooed on everyone in the concentration camp? Those were IBM ID numbers for the punch cards.
If IBM staff protested about their role, it’s been lost to history. But it’s repeating today with Gaza and the staff who speak out are being demonized. Israel’s Lavender AI is being used to kill civilians. History will prove this woman and the other employees right in the end.
Ironic because Thinkpad T- and P-series laptops are some of the most robust machines you can get for a reasonable price these days.
Of course, the IBM that launched the Thinkpad line is a completely different company than the IBM that helped commit WWII atrocities… But it doesn’t matter anyway because they sold the entire PC division to Lenovo 20 years ago.
Ironic
Is it though?
IDK, we should ask Alanis Morisette
No
History will, but these people have made a stand, achieved nothing, lost their jobs and won’t be remembered.
I guess most everyone else that works at microsoft is cool with this.
Saint Luigi guide us.
I mean this person apparently was cool with it for years up until this point so…
Linux time, nerds, who aren’t already using it.
Hopefully they will find better jobs with better employers.
For everyone who uses Windows, try Linux. You don’t know what you’re missing out on until you try it. See the ranking on the right hand side here: https://distrowatch.com/ You can pick something from there on the top of the list.
Watch YouTube to learn more about each Linux distro that you find interesting.
I personally would recommend Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based distros, as they have the widest support.
You don’t have to wipe your Windows-installation completely, instead dual-boot. If you feel comfortable switching entirely, you can wipe out Windows and keep Linux exclusively.
Do evil.
Everyone needs to learn about Open-Source, Community-Made stuff, & more useful terms to know