Switched to macOS. Best decision ever for companies that still force you to use office products.
Can anyone give recommendations on what to do if you have to run Autodesk products (Revit. Autocad) for work? No, I can’t swap them for open source alternatives such as FreeCAD as Im working with large international projects. Should I dual boot? Virtual machine inside Linux?
Don’t downgrade to Windows 11, update to Linux
What is this AI everywhere concept actually supposed to accomplish for the end user? Maybe I’m just behind on the vision but I can’t grasp the point. I have a feeling it’s not really about what the users want but I’d love to here a genuinely good use case.
The logic behind the voice controls sounds pretty questionable, but it’s supposedly backed by data showing that users spend billions of minutes talking in Microsoft Team meetings, according to Mehdi — so they’re already used to talking on the computer, right?
Do they really reason like this? Oh my. That’s stupid. And here I was thinking Microsoft employs clever people.
I will continue to enjoy my incredibly straightforward and to the point Linux desktop that’s somehow gained a new AI-free feature by doing nothing.
Don’t you want a bunch of pop-ups nagging you to use their AI gimmicks, though?
Damn it! I’m in.
Would you be able to point me toward a good thread about “beginner-friendly” distros that works well with games?
I honestly have no idea what to trust when it comes to this
That’s a bit like asking, “Can you point me toward a beginner friendly car that has air conditioning and a radio?” You’re going to get 100 different answers because there are a hundred different distros that do all the things. The differences between them are small and not really of interest to a new user.
So I’ll give you a general rundown of the names you’ll probably see:
- Ubuntu: The classic recommended option and the most used worldwide. Though they’re corporate run and occasionally makes weird decisions that piss off the linux community, so you won’t see it mentioned as much as it was 10 years ago.
- Kubuntu: An Ubuntu flavor with a very customizable Windows-like desktop that should feel very comfortable for new users.
- Linux Mint: Essentially decorporatized Ubuntu with their own custom Windows-like desktop. It’s often the go-to recommendation to new users now, though I’ve personally never tried it.
- Pop!_OS: Basically Ubuntu with NVIDIA drivers enabled by default, so it positions itself as a gaming distro.
- Zorin: Another Ubuntu clone that tries to look as much like Windows as possible for new users.
- Fedora: A more frequently updated distro, which is appealing to those with newer hardware. A little less straightforward for new users but still not super challenging.
- Nobara: Pop!_OS except for Fedora.
- Bazzite: An immutable Fedora distro (meaning you can’t edit the underlying filesystem,) making it behave more like a consoles. Honestly, immutable distros are a niche in linux so you should probably avoid it as a new user, but you’ll see it listed as it has some diehard fans.
- Arch: A DIY distro for enthusiasts and tinkerers with very frequent updates, so good for newer hardware.
But again, they’re all like 95% the same as each other. I’d just pick between Kubuntu or Mint, maybe Pop!_OS if you don’t feel like going into a menu and enabling NVIDIA drivers.
Bazzite is specifically for PC gaming and is a very friendly starter distro.
Bazzite, definitely.
Pop!_os worked fine for me out of the box. The UI is a little mac-like (dock on bottom, spotlight like search when you hit the super key) by default.
Steam just works. Heroic launcher just works. It’s simple.
I’ve also used mint, but had slightly less luck with its install working out of the box. All issues fixed eventually but there was some head scratching.
Linux nerds tend to have opinions and it’s easy to lose sight of what it’s like as a beginner.
But ultimately it’s pretty easy to switch distributions. They’re all free.
Don’t go onto specialized distro. Just use the main ones like Mint (which is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian). I would say that Debian is the best one, but it needs to read some docs if you have a Nvidia Graphic card (but if not, it should be easy and super stable). Bazzite, Nobara, etc, are based on distro that are quickly changing (Fedora or Arch), which are really nice in their own way, but as a beginner, you need stability first!
Try this : https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=325 It is Linux Mint, but directly based on Debian instead of Ubuntu!
I don’t agree that Debian is a good choice for a gamer - it sacrifices performance and features for stability, which is not ideal for gamers, who probably want to run the newest drivers and featuresets. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Debian, but as an server os, not for a gaming machine. Something based on Arch or Fedora is a lot better for the rapidly changing environment we are talking about, they can adapt much quicker than Debian.
I’d say especially for beginners it’s important that Nvidia GPUs work out of the box. Someone coming from Windows would likely not think highly of an OS that needs extra steps for something that just works on Windows, and there are enough Linux distros offering just that.
Linux Mint has been able to run games for me. Look up the steam proton virtual windows tool
Winboat
I installed Mint a week ago and it has played all of the 13 games I tried without any effort from me, except one which ProtonDB told me to change the compatibility mode in the steam properties then it worked great.
I would say see the ProtonDB entries for some games you like to set your expectations.
Like others said, bazzite and pop os, though I’ve never used either. I use mint and never had a problem.
Though it should be pointed out that some MP games that use a kernel level anti cheat can’t be played (battlefield 6 for instance).
But I also wanted to mention, you can run Linux from a USB flash drive. So of you want to try out one of them without actually installing it, you easily can. If you don’t like it you don’t install. If you do, then you go for the full install. Easy non committal trial so to speak.
If you have an Nvidia GPU, i can warmly recommend Nobara (a Fedora spinoff) to you. https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/
I Will get down votes but none works well, most work fine given you spend enough time tinkering. Pirated games are a waste of time to get running and there will be some distros that already come with stuff set up to be " plug and play ", but it never is.
Would you recommend an alternative?
Dual boot windows unfortunately it’s the best option for games until things change.
That said my daily driver at work is Arch at home is Ubuntu and I have a Ubuntu server for my NAS.
Pop_OS! and Bazzite were the first two I tried when I made the switch. They were advertised as working right out of the box, which they did not for me.
When I was trying Nobara, I learned I had to run something in the command line to get gamemode to work properly with Steam. Ever since then, Nobara has worked for my gaming needs.
A few tweaks are needed here and there, but it’s literally copy and paste from protondb.
Distribution are basically a bunch of presets, nobara is just fedora with a few gaming defaults, bazzite is immutable fedora, popos is ubuntu… If you can pinpoint the problem you probably could’ve fixed it in both bazzite and popos without moving around; there’s thousands of different pc configurations so ymmv across distros.
I haven’t done much gaming but Steam seems fine on my old laptop running Mint.
yeah, I updated one machine that was running Win10, it’s now running LinuxMint
I hate this world. Linux it is then.
I moved to pop!_os on the 14th and I am not looking back
Have Win 10 and was a Windows die hard since I was a kid.
Been running Linux on another drive as my default boot for a year and a half in anticipation of this horseshit and was only hesitant to delete Win because my Fanatec sim racing hardware wasn’t supported on Linux.
Welp, turns out hid-fanatecff is a thing. Installed the kernel driver and boom, working Fanatec peripherals. Even my Moza shifter is plug-and-play.
Bye bye Microsoft.
Is there any use for a HP Reverb G2 on linux?
Fully supported by Monado looks like.
Idk how recent that Monado support is, but I couldn’t get the reverb G2 to work on Linux at all a couple years ago.
A couple years IRL is like 100 years in Linux time
Linux is the only viable solution to this mess. And no it is not as scary as it seema
Ok, guys. I’m reading some of these replies which are saying the amount of outrage is out of proportion. I have to disagree with that. I don’t want an AI running on my PC that is monitoring and learning about my shit. I didn’t want that data saved even locally, let alone the monetization of that data. I don’t want to be paying for power of a device that is turning me into someone else’s paycheck.
Can you turn it off? I believe you can. But I also believe that doing it manually would be incredibly annoying since that does go with a lot of past practice. I also get it would reactivate itself after major updates, like how Edge keeps reinstalling.
Are there other solutions to my Microsoft issues, yes. Chris Titus Tech comes to mind.
But overall, the Windows ecosystem does not feel right to me anymore. Could other people still use it, yes. Am I going to stop them, not intentionally. But my Arch gaming PC runs games better than the same machine running Windows. I’ve always entertained the idea of a full switch, still have a Windows 11 dual boot and haven’t officially done it yet, but with this the moment feels right. At least for me, hopefully you can understand that.
I had dual boot with win10 for a while, but when they had that ‘bug’ that was wiping peoples linux partition I dropped Windows completely. As dar as I’m concerned Linux and other FOSS in general has reached a point where it meets the majority of my needs. Same goes for local storage vs needing anything through the cloud or streeaming.
Every hang up I had eventually got solved. Except with modding games, I sorely miss Vortex or Mod Organizer and there’s no alternatives I know of besides doing it all manually.
That wasn’t a showstopper for me though. VR, HDR, Video Games were. These three are solved well enough for my tastes this year to drop my dual boot.
Fortunately on the modding front, the community’s already been cooking:
I‘m using it for Stardew Valley and it works pretty well. Still early days and a bit clunky to use though. Not any power user features to speak of but I guess that isn’t their target userbase for a mod manager.
Vortex works on linux though, This is the guide I used.
Is it just Bethesda games with these post-deploy scripts? I assume this:
https://github.com/pikdum/steam-deck/
Is forcing the Windows version to work somehow, but is it every game on Nexus or just Bethesda titles?
I have no idea, I only tested it with skyrim, and it worked well.
Nexus Mod Manager is working fine under Linux. It’s still under development, but i’ve been modding Cyberpunk 2077 to hell and back with it.
You’re stretching it to say that when the Linux version has extremely limited game support.
It’s literally just CP2077 and Stardew Valley.
https://nexus-mods.github.io/NexusMods.App/users/games/
Researching more, I found LIMO:
https://github.com/limo-app/limo
And some more ideas here:
Hopefully LIMO works because the other ideas look like a brittle PITA.
well, next up is bethesda games support, and development of the app is pretty fast, so i would expect a release supporting skyrim this year. You’re right that it’s pretty barebones now, but i wanted to say that we linux users will finally have a mod manager on par with the windows side of things, which is pretty awesome!
I think we have a bit of a degree of “Yep, that’s Microsoft alright” mood as a whole because it’s accepted that things are going to get worse for their users perpetually, so I personally stopped giving a shit because I already left before win10 EOL anyway. I’m guessing there’s a similar mood among others who already saw the writing on the wall.
Do yrself the favor and cut the cord.
It’s off by default.
Edge keeps reinstalling because it powers lots of other things in the OS. Removing it breaks other things, which is why so many people on here think that Windows 11 is “broken” or “buggy” - they run random “debloat” programs and completely fuck up their OS.
The cool part is that 100% of the “AI features” they’re advertising are either not running locally or not AI at all
If you don’t need to do 3D work, you can still use a virtual machine with kvm, it is really fast! (then ditch Windows :) )
If you mean CAD, I found that FreeCAD works nicely as a parametric 3D modeler with some nice macros and addons, with the perk of also running on Linux
E: added info
I’m not too into 3d modelling stuff myself, but I understand Blender is pretty good, too.
I’d agree that blender is very good. I find that it would be more suited to static stuff and renderings, as well as animations. FreeCAD is more like the commercial CAD software you’d find (Fusion 360, Solidworks).
On the topic of blender, It has some amazing features, and I am amazed at what people do with it (I also find it a bit tricky, but I probably just need to put a few more hours into learning)
Yeah, to clarify I didn’t mean Blender as an alternative but that there are decent options for another kind of 3d work in addition to CAD stuff. FreeCAD for design stuff, Blender for making pretty things (or ugly things if that’s what you’re into), Vulkan/gcc for real time 3d stuff if you like working close to the metal, Godot for real time 3d stuff if you want to do it from a higher level.
yay! hi mint!
I am also newly minty fresh.
Although up graded anyway because the games I play aren’t an Linux.
The only downside is gaming.
I made a portable flashdrive for Linux for anything I want to keep privet and left windows for exclusively gaming.
Depending on the games you play, thanks to Valve with Proton and Steam Deck, most games are actually already playable on Linux. The only exception is newer multi-player online games with kernel-level anticheat. I haven’t done any gaming on Windows in years pretty much.
While there is quite the push thanks to Valve, they built upon the work of others, mostly Wine (which I think they fund nowadays) and DXVK (they hired the dev after a short while). So they’re definitely not freeloading, but the main lifting has been done by Codeweavers and Wine contributors through their massive work over the years, plus the quantum leap that was DXVK.
I’m not trying to shame Valve here, they definitely go beyond what they’d be required to by license, but I feel it’s also not fair to call them the reason most games work under Linux when others have poured literal years of work into making it possible.
I assumed you knew I was talking about the DXVK dev given that he’s literally an employee of Valve, as you mentioned. Either way, I’ll now be more detailed with my comment.
Of course all the contributors to Wine deserve credit too, and I do have an active Crossover license, but Valve are the ones who explicitly made a push for gaming on Linux and focused specifically on the gaming aspect. Wine covers everything, not just gaming, Proton is specifically for gaming. It’s doubly true given that they want to sell more units of the Steam Deck so they can get more people into the Linux and Valve ecosystem. Not that you don’t know that, but it’s worth pointing out regardless.
I’ve been daily driving Linux since before Proton was even a thing, and the difference between gaming then versus now is not even comparable, it is infinitely better now and keeps improving. I no longer have to hope that a new game will work or that I can somehow manage to get the right set of libraries and flags to get it to run, if a new game comes out and it doesn’t have a kernel-level anti-cheat, I can expect that it will work out of the box just fine without any tweaking because I have seen this happen multiple times now. I’ve even started getting into Mac gaming to get some of that tweaking and configuring thrill back that I used to get from Linux gaming, having to tweak and configure things to get them to work properly or to work even better.
Games work great in Linux!
And that’s not like “oh, about 3/4 of my favorite old games work without too much trouble.” It’s more like opening steam and “holy crap, half of my old favorites have native Linux versions and everything else just works using proton.”
Remember, the Steam Deck and the general shittiness of Microsoft has directed a lot of Valve’s resources towards gaming on Linux.
If you want to play some brand new AAA multiplayer thing with rootkit type anti cheat, then maybe you’d be stuck dual booting into windows.
I’d argue that those games could be abandoned, because there is SO much choice out there that I am certain I already own copies of dozens of games that I will never play. But if it’s a matter of playing what your friends are into, then yeah make the computer adapt to the human needs and not the other way around.
Can’t wait to see the day when every game, or as close to 100% as possible, are made for Linux Native and Linux Compatible. We are getting there day by day
If someone, totally not me, were in possession of exe-files of games outside a platform like Steam, Epic or whatever, would it be possible to run them on a Linux distribution? Say something like a Steam rip or a GOG rip. Said someone has tried researching but didn’t find any conclusive answers
Yes. It’s very easy. There’s really two ways to do it. You can actually open Steam and add non-steam games to steam if you want it all in the same place. Otherwise you can use something like Lutris, which is what I do. That gives you a nice place for everything also and you can even load your Steam games on. But yes you can absolutely use GOG stuff and exe files.
What would adding the games to Steam accomplish? I assume I can’t just log on to my account and have the required files to download and install the games since they’re not originally from Steam. Or is it just a matter of being able to launch them once they’re added to the client? Or a convenience thing?
All of the above. Steam automatically downloads and installs proton if you go into the settings and enable compatibility mode. It will run the most recent proton and just play the game. You also allow it to be in your group of games on Steam so it’s convenient. And yes you can launch them from the client. The only thing you can’t do is download the exe yourself you would have to get that from Gog or whatever.
So, I don’t know off the top of my head, but I need to figure it out as well because I have plenty of game installers that I’ll want to use eventually. Lots in my GOG account, others from 20 years ago with sources lost to time, lol.
I would expect that Steam could be used as a launcher, but I know there is also an app called Lutris for managing games and compatibility layers and such.
I’m thinking about it, and yeah I may have not yet installed a windows version of a game outside of Steam at all. Honestly I have most often installed Linux native versions via steam.
Lutris and one other program is used for that, I seem to remember. I’ll probably have to do some research. What’s the current go-to distro for gaming?
I’m not sure there is a go-to, which is good. There are some gaming-focused ones to be sure, but i’m using Mint which is super mainstream focused and user friendly (and based on ubuntu and debian) and I’ve had a great experience.
Heroic Launcher.
If it’s a new release sometimes it takes a minor fiddle but zero issues more than not.
Even some Windows rootkits work well with proton. For example Helldiver 2 with nProtect work perfectly since release.
Absolute truth. I haven’t run into a single game that doesn’t run on my second-from-top-of-the-line gaming PC I built last year under Linux. I know they exist because I see articles about a developer removing Proton support for odd reasons, but it hasn’t impacted me yet.
MS has largely made their own OS irrelevant by putting the Office Suite in the cloud. If you need Excel but don’t want Copilot throwing all your screengrabs to Redmond a box running Ubuntu or Mint or Bazzite or MacOS (a legit option for some people with niche applications that cater to the Apple crowd). MS is following the same playbook with the Xbox brand. If everything is an Xbox then why would you harness yourself to a crappy MS branded one?
It’s funny you mention the office side of things in addition to gaming, because I have remarked about the same thing.
Using Librewolf(firefox) on Linux, all of the M365 applications work fine in the browser. Probably even better, since I can actually close them when I want to. I use Teams the most, which is obviously a very connected thing. But for a word processor, which seems like the most local thing ever, the web app lets me share in MS format and accept comments and all that.
I could absolutely see Microsoft’s execs planning out the most efficient way to grind every bit of value out of the windows brand on their path to subscription everything.
Gaming is not the issue for me. All my games work fine. The problem is using some cheats that I did for some games like cyberpunk 2077. I cannot get PINCE or cheat engine to work on it.
Steam has a native Linux client and every game I bought on Windows runs just fine on Linux.
All my older, non-steam games, like “Deus Ex” or “Giants: Citizen Kabuto” run great under Wine, using the default settings. Also, there are Linux versions of DOSBox, for older games.
There is also the Lutris project. I play Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online with no issue. AND they have install scripts for many games on their site.
basically my current setup too. it took me just a couple of months on Win11 to straight up give up on Windows because it’s just not very good
It’s insane how much extra time, effort and sanity you can retain simply by switching to Linux. I initially switched a few years ago, then fully shortly after. Using my PCs has never been better and I had no issues with gaming. The only games that don’t work are some of the live service ones I’ll never be interested in.
One of the best decisions in my life, right up there with deleting all social media. Life keeps getting better, relatively speaking, but of course rich pedophiles just can’t tolerate us having a good time.
Switched everything to Bazzite as a start. Easiest switch after figuring out Windows sabotages boot drives.
I may have pirated all my Windows but man it feels good to be off that ride. Spoofing corporate licenses for the authenticator was such a hassle.
They do what to boot drives?
If you’re dual booting, Windows may at any time eat the other partition or, more often just its GRUB, leaving you unable to boot into Linux.
Even if you’re using separate drives, the Windows bootloader may still affect your other drives. On one of my old laptops, I had Pop!_OS and Windows on two separate SSDs. After installing Windows on the second drive, it put itself as the first boot device and broke the option to change boot order inside the BIOS. It worked, but only sometimes, and Windows would keep setting itself to the top upon every boot. Might not have been intrinsically a Windows issue, but never happened with other configurations.
I’m trying to move to Linux so that’s terrifying.
Windows can automount USB drives, so a flash drive can get inadvertently formatted, (or something to do with the bootloader, i don’t know the technical details that well.) Point is the automounting can break a flash drive that isn’t formatted for windows.
I’m trying out Bazzite, and although it does take a little tweaking sometimes, I haven’t encountered a game I can’t run yet, including features like HDR and DLSS.
