2025 the year of Linux

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by moonbat » 2025-02-20, 01:01

frostknight wrote:
2025-02-20, 00:37
Microsoft and their allies just are too arrogant and greedy to make it easy for people to switch to linux.
It's nothing to do with arrogant and greedy (which they are and which is a separate topic). An OS exists to help people get their work done, not as an end in itself. In that regard as others have said above, Windows is self discoverable for the average non nerdy user in a way that Linux is yet to reach. Of course with the continual dumbing down and outright user hostility being slowly frog boiled into Windows now, eventually both OSes may meet halfway and then things will get interesting.
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by back2themoon » 2025-02-20, 08:31

Is dual boot an easy, realistic option? I seem to remember later versions of Windows made it difficult?

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Night Wing » 2025-02-20, 12:02

@ back2themoon

Dual booting a Windows 10 operating system and a linux distro on the same hard drive can lead to problems. When I was dual booting Windows 7 and Mint, since I use my two desktop tower computers mostly, at that time I had two hard drives in each tower computer.

One hard drive was installed with Windows 7 and the second hard drive was installed with Mint. So if something went wrong with Windows 7, say a crappy update from Microsoft and I could not repair the damage like a BSOD (blue screen of death on a reboot), it never affected the other hard drive with Mint.

All I had to do was re-install Windows 7 which was the proverbial PITA.
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Massacre » 2025-02-20, 20:16

Most safe way is to install them on different physical drives and don't use UEFI.

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Moonchild » 2025-02-21, 00:37

Massacre wrote:
2025-02-20, 20:16
Most safe way is to install them on different physical drives and don't use UEFI.
UEFI is required if you want to fully utilize all features of current motherboards and modern GPUs (Resizable BAR generally requires it, for example)
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by frostknight » 2025-02-21, 00:47

moonbat wrote:
2025-02-20, 01:01
An OS exists to help people get their work done, not as an end in itself. In that regard as others have said above, Windows is self discoverable for the average non nerdy user in a way that Linux is yet to reach.
Which is true, but if you have to be concerned about your OS turning off at some random time due to an update and losing all your info, I think some people experiencing that, will be like, "SCREW THIS!"

Just sayin... I am glad I jumped ship before windows 10. Forced upgrades are pure evil in this way.
moonbat wrote:
2025-02-20, 01:01
Of course with the continual dumbing down and outright user hostility being slowly frog boiled into Windows now, eventually both OSes may meet halfway and then things will get interesting.
Linux slowly gets better at certain things it seems but windows isn't really doing anything they haven't been doing well for a long time, in fact it might be going backwards in how good it is for some people.

Then again, I very much wonder regardless what will happen if the linux world catches up to the halfway mark not including the below:

Not that this is relevant, but technically there is a lot of hardware with linux already. Servers, Super Computers, and pretty much anything with android. Yes its not the same type of linux, but it does have the kernel of linux.

Semantics? Very true, but it does depend on how you look at it.

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Massacre » 2025-02-21, 00:56

Moonchild wrote:
2025-02-21, 00:37
Massacre wrote:
2025-02-20, 20:16
Most safe way is to install them on different physical drives and don't use UEFI.
UEFI is required if you want to fully utilize all features of current motherboards and modern GPUs (Resizable BAR generally requires it, for example)
Is that really tied to disabling of CSM boot and mandatory GPT partitioning?

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by moonbat » 2025-02-21, 00:56

Off-topic:
frostknight wrote:
2025-02-21, 00:47
"SCREW THIS!"
..and let me switch to an utterly unknown OS which may or may not support my hardware (including printers, as mentioned by Night Wing)? Don't forget we are talking about the vast majority of normies here, don't use this forum as a sample of the sort of people who would switch OSes. In fact many people here themselves would need plenty of hand holding to do so. (Also consider the fans of Roytam and Fyodor's unauthorized Windows XP builds - they are still sticking with an abandoned for a decade and counting OS that's easily hacked on the open internet of today)
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by frostknight » 2025-02-22, 00:07

moonbat wrote:
2025-02-21, 00:56
..and let me switch to an utterly unknown OS which may or may not support my hardware (including printers, as mentioned by Night Wing)? Don't forget we are talking about the vast majority of normies here
Maybe some is an exaggeration then. I didnt really specify, did I? I meant like doubling linux usershare at most.

But you do pose a point, some hardware isn't supported by linux (stupid vendor discrimination!)
moonbat wrote:
2025-02-21, 00:56
In fact many people here themselves would need plenty of hand holding to do so. (Also consider the fans of Roytam and Fyodor's unauthorized Windows XP builds - they are still sticking with an abandoned for a decade and counting OS that's easily hacked on the open internet of today)
That is... another fair point. I guess to be honest, it depends on how pissed off people get at windows and what they are willing to give up to tell Bill Gates and Microsoft to go eff themselves so to speak.

I heard recently that Microsoft deprecated hardware for windows 11 if its 10th gen intel or older. Like WTF are they trying to do? Destroy the friggin environment with pollution?
Off-topic:
That's yet another reason this whole market share of windows annoys me. Old hardware or fairly old hardware in the case of gen 10 gets tossed into a landfill rather than it be used for something meaningful like linux. I wish people weren't so damn stupid and that so many rich people weren't so damn atrocious and malevolent.

I say damn stupid because this hurts the environment tossing hardware that looks perfectly usable and has only been around for maybe 15 years or less it causes pollution just rotting in a landfill. I wonder if this is how some diseases are spread to be honest. If that's how they start, pollution.
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by mr tribute » 2025-02-23, 20:16

After almost 20 years with Linux and 30 years with Windows I think it’s a matter of taste. I like them both.

Windows is polished with all the functionality you expect out of the box. There are two big problems. Privacy and Windows Update. These are two major problems, but if you can live with those Windows is probably everything you need unless Microsoft drops support for your hardware.

In Linux updates are transparent. You know which package(s) will be updated and you can read the changelogs. In Windows you get massive black-box updates and you don’t know what to expect. Will your drivers be touched? You can generally roll-back these updates, but troubleshooting is harder. Android works the same way. It’s just that Android has tailor-made (and tested) images for each phone.

Some of the Windows advantages over Linux are:

1. No repos and repo management, because the “repos” are tied to specific applications and the application updaters generally use high-quality repos.

2. No dependencies and dependency hell. Applications are packaged with dependencies included.

3. No permission problems. People use the Windows Admin account. It’s a security vulnerability, but so is having an active Internet connection. There is UAC and you still have to grant access to be able to access certain parts of the system so an Admin account on Windows has security protections that the Root account on Linux doesn’t have. The Root account on Linux (if it exists) isn’t meant to be used. The answer is generally sudo (terminal) or pkexec (GUI applications), but this elevation can cause problems by changing file permissions making them inaccessible to regular users. For general desktop use the Admin account in Windows is the easiest solution.

4. No problems obtaining the software you want to use.

5. Linux (no matter which distro) comes with small flaws that the user should take care of manually for an optimal experience. In Windows it’s enough to install third party software to handle similar things.

6. Windows has made service management harder and opaque. Linux has systemd, which tends to work well these days. However systemd is complicated with “dependency chains” of services. I don’t know a lot about systemd, but my fear is that blocking one service you don’t want might prevent another service (that you do want) from starting.

7. Scaling works well in Windows. In Linux-land many desktop environments and applications are stuck on the gtk3 toolkit which doesn’t support fractional scaling without blurry workarounds.

8. Linux applications are stored in several different locations and their assets are spread all over the file system. There is no all-inclusive Programs folder except for /opt/.

9. Linux config files are hierarchical meaning they can be overridden in several different places. And despite Linux being “free”, some config settings have been hardcoded by distros for “security” reasons for no reason at all. You can’t set umask 000 for new users in Debian Bookworm for example. This would be useful for a test account. But you are stuck with umask 022 (or higher) for new accounts which means you can’t have write access to that account from another regular account. You can change permissions after account creation, but yeah there are pointless limitations put in place even in free software. Now comes Wayland with enforced opinionated security measures. And these aren’t compile time options.

I guess Windows is better at usability and productivity (core OS tasks) and Linux is better at everything else.

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Moonchild » 2025-02-23, 20:51

Off-topic:
Massacre wrote:
2025-02-21, 00:56
Moonchild wrote:
2025-02-21, 00:37
UEFI is required if you want to fully utilize all features of current motherboards and modern GPUs (Resizable BAR generally requires it, for example)
Is that really tied to disabling of CSM boot and mandatory GPT partitioning?
Yes, it is. At the very least on my current motherboard (MSI Tomahawk) using CSM hard-disables ReBAR with a message stating as much. And from what I understood running in "legacy" mode, i.e. CSM imposes more drawbacks and performance hits.
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Massacre » 2025-02-23, 23:44

mr tribute wrote:
2025-02-23, 20:16
I guess Windows is better at usability and productivity (core OS tasks) and Linux is better at everything else.
Well, Linux is a good server and development platform for Linux-based opensource, and Windows is better at everything else.

It is possible to package applications with all the dependencies included, for example, as appimage, but for most software you forced to build it from source if your distro does not have the required version (usually, distros contain very outdated versions of software).

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Moonchild » 2025-02-24, 01:00

Massacre wrote:
2025-02-23, 23:44
(usually, distros contain very outdated versions of software).
or arbitrarily remove software from their packages because of age/philosophy/nerdrage
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by moonbat » 2025-02-24, 01:13

Massacre wrote:
2025-02-23, 23:44
but for most software you forced to build it from source if your distro does not have the required version
Never had to do that, most apps have their own separate PPAs or repositories for Debian/Ubuntu derived distros so adding them to the apt sources is sufficient. Of course if you're using some purist distro that doesn't use repositories like this it will be a problem.
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Massacre » 2025-02-24, 02:14

moonbat wrote:
2025-02-24, 01:13
Massacre wrote:
2025-02-23, 23:44
but for most software you forced to build it from source if your distro does not have the required version
Never had to do that, most apps have their own separate PPAs or repositories for Debian/Ubuntu derived distros so adding them to the apt sources is sufficient. Of course if you're using some purist distro that doesn't use repositories like this it will be a problem.
And if you will add a repository from another distro, you could get dependency conflict...

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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by moonbat » 2025-02-24, 02:18

Been on Mint and now KDE Neon. No conflicts. Just have to make sure the base Ubuntu version is correct in case the software doesn't provide a repository for the exact distro.
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Night Wing » 2025-02-24, 14:46

Massacre wrote:
2025-02-23, 23:44
It is possible to package applications with all the dependencies included, for example, as appimage, but for most software you forced to build it from source if your distro does not have the required version (usually, distros contain very outdated versions of software).
Many distros use what you call old software, but it is not outdated because it has a track record which means it is very stable. Stable does not break things. This is why the Mint distro has a very good reputation for ease of use that does not break things software wise.

As for newer software, if someone likes "newer" software or even "bleeding edge" software, then two linux distros come to my mind. The first distro is Arch. Purist power users in linux who love doing things with the command line and not using gui windows by choice, most of them use Arch. Arch is known for the newest or bleeding edge software. If it breaks in Arch, the power users can fix it using the Terminal. Basically the Terminal in Arch is the power users domain.

The second linux distro is Cachy OS which offers new and bleeding edge software also. This distro can appeal to the power user who is very comfortable using the command line Terminal because this person is well versed in all the commands, but it also has gui windows so one does not have to strictly rely on the Terminal.

One thing about Cachy. It has it's "own" browser based on Firefox and it is called the Cachy browser. I've heard through the rumor mill it never has a problem with Cloudflare. Probably because one of the big sponsors of Cachy, money wise, is Cloudflare. Once on the Cachy site, if one scrolls on down the page, Cloudflare is predominately mentioned as a sponsor.

There are YouTube videos of Cachy too if you want to check them out. One last item. Most distros offer a "live" version in their iso's so people can play around with them without having to install the distro, but I am not sure if Arch and Cachy offer that. They might not. If you would like to check out these two distros, their links are below.

https://archlinux.org/

https://cachyos.org/
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by frostknight » 2025-02-25, 01:30

mr tribute wrote:
2025-02-23, 20:16
There is UAC and you still have to grant access to be able to access certain parts of the system so an Admin account on Windows has security protections that the Root account on Linux doesn’t have
Gotta stop you there, linux has way better sandboxing protections for security than windows. Maybe stability issues are easier to cause, but security issues and privacy issues are a windows thing 1000x more at minimum

Windows also has problems with any website you go to, has temporary files left over after you visit a website, linux might do this also... the problem?

windows marks everything it downloads as executables unless this has changed in windows since 8 or something. I tend to doubt it though.

The other problem, forced upgrades for those who can't buy the enterprise version. Many on the internet have complained about how they were doing something and microsoft forced their windows 10 to update and reboot anyways. That is so stupid and evil.



This all being said, a legit reason to use windows, is that you need windows only compatible applications. Especially 2020ish triple A games. (Which I think suck! But w/e)
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by moonbat » 2025-02-25, 02:43

frostknight wrote:
2025-02-25, 01:30
Windows also has problems with any website you go to, has temporary files left over after you visit a website, linux might do this also... the problem?
That's browser caching, not an OS feature. You don't 'go to' a website using Windows or Linux, you use a browser on either of those platforms.
frostknight wrote:
2025-02-25, 01:30
windows marks everything it downloads as executables
Eh? There's nothing to 'mark' as executable on Windows, file extensions determine whether a file can be executed. Those are restricted to .COM, .EXE .BAT, .CMD and a couple of other more recent ones. And for the longest time, files downloaded from the internet are blocked from opening without a prompt about how they might be risky.
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Re: 2025 the year of Linux

Unread post by Moonchild » 2025-02-25, 09:02

In addition to what Moonbat said...
frostknight wrote:
2025-02-25, 01:30
Gotta stop you there, linux has way better sandboxing protections for security than windows.
Sandboxing and account access are two different things. What was said was that even an administrator level account still gets UAC prompts for some actions. Not so on Linux - when you are root (either through sudo or natively) all protections are off, period. Filesystem protections don't exist and/or are ignored. Windows actually has more protections in place there. That was what that was about.
frostknight wrote:
2025-02-25, 01:30
Many on the internet have complained about how they were doing something and microsoft forced their windows 10 to update and reboot anyways.
"Many on the internet" didn't take the time to set up their Windows Updates the way they wanted it to behave then. Windows has never forced an upgrade on me in the time I have used it (decades...). Especially across major versions.
Conversely, Linux cron jobs can run in the background and update system software or libraries in the background and you won't know stuff has broken until you reboot the system (an unknown time later); that has bitten me more than once on Linux servers I've administered. Want to talk about forced upgrades? look in your own back yard first. "Roling releases" have you entirely at the whim of often daily updates, without regard to what you have running on it (which is why things like CentOS and RHEL exist(ed) - to have a stable platform). Something breaks because a dependency got upgraded/changed/removed by choice of the distro managers? It is then your responsibility as a user to fix it. Good luck.
On the other hand most Linux distros simply can't be upgraded across major versions. Run into an EoL issue? Your only option is to start from scratch.
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