Can’t run Windows 11? Don’t want to? There are surprisingly legal options
LTSC is supported, yes, but it’s an edge case not intended for desktop (or most server) applications.
If you don’t want to move to 11, install a flavour of Linux. Don’t run LTSC.
Why even bother at this point? Linux has become so good it’s actually easier and more familiar to use than the clusterfuck that is windows 11.
Linux user here, I really hate this kind of bullshit. Just stick with the facts there are loads of reasons to use Windows. And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.
Exactly. These type of comments only come from an immature POV that how they use Linux is how everyone would use Linux.
Another twenty plus years Linux server and devices admin and user that found last year that Linux is finally mature and stable enough to replace my desktop too without having the fiddle with it every once in a random update. It was a decision that I can accept making workarounds for legacy windows software and l can live without other eco system. Yeah, there are plenty of reasons that people are still running Windows and keep doing so.
Don’t make being user of an operating system your identity, people. It’s just as annoying and unnecessary as those Apple fanboys we all know and dislike.
… because I have a Samsung Odyssey+ VR headsets, which needs “Windows Mixed Reality” (Windows VR) and was gutted/removed from Windows 11 (and doesn’t work on Linux).
How well does Linux run Solidworks?
Oh right, it doesn’t…at all.
Linux is useful for many things but just doesn’t cut it for the majority of people reliant on single deal breaker items.
You’re also SOL if you have a couple of decades of music projects in various DAWs (though predominantly Ableton, plus a decent number of Maschine & Reason projects, for me) using all sorts of VSTs from over the years. I keep several versions of some VSTs installed so I can open older projects, and those older versions are never getting patched to fix broken Linux support by the developer, even if a more modern version does get fixed. It’s all got to come from wine devs, which frankly probably have more important issues to focus on.
I’ve tried a few times to get Ableton working with all my plugins and MIDI hardware and it’s always been an exercise in madness ultimately resulting in failure and usually a lost weekend. It particularly doesn’t like anything with my iLok key involved, last I tried a couple of years ago.
I happily run Linux elsewhere, but my main desktop is going to mainly run Windows for the foreseeable future unless something drastically changes. At least my projects aren’t all in Logic!
There’s also some software I use for my photography that didn’t properly work on Linux when I last tried (e.g. GPU features in PureRAW are the main thing I remember), but I think there’re some alternatives there I’d look at if I could get the audio production stuff working perfectly.
Heard of dual boot?
I have one, it still isn’t great. Windows update routinely fucks with it. Currently using windows as my daily driver because I can’t be arsed to fix my Linux partition again
- To use Windows only and legacy software.
- Some laptops don’t support Linux due to missing drivers.
- Some very old people hate change and would want to use windows 10 till the end of times, matter of fact I had seen a full office with about 5 desktops that is still running windows xp. (Spoiler alert:they got a ransomware 2 years ago.)
- finally, Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations. In comparison, a bad Linux update could fuck your boot loader beyond repair (it happened to me twice in fact, once on openSUSE tumbleweed and the other on Clear Linux).
I have to disagree about the idiot proof. KDE Plasma and Mate Desktop are more idiot proof and easy for newbies than Windows 10-11, yet have more features in their simple control panels.
I’ve had no bootloader problems in the last 10 years of Debian, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu (15-20 installs, plus another 20-30 if you count VMs.) However, my work computer’s bootloader was semi-bricked twice in 2019 (Windows 7).
- To use Windows only and legacy software.
This is a fair point. If you’re a creator and need adobe software then Linux is pretty much a no go. However, a lot of windows software have Linux equivalents (and those
- Some laptops don’t support Linux due to missing drivers. are generally free as well), so its a matter of doing research.
If you pick the right distribution it may include all the drivers you need. So far I tested 5 distributions and they all worked straight out of the box. I’ll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I’m optimistic it will just work also.
Some very old people hate change and would want to use windows 10 till the end of times, matter of fact I had seen a full office with about 5 desktops that is still running windows xp. (Spoiler alert:they got a ransomware 2 years ago.)
Fine. These people who refuse to adapt to the world can just keep using windows. No skin off my nose either way.
finally, Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it’s kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations. In comparison, a bad Linux update could fuck your boot loader beyond repair (it happened to me twice in fact, once on openSUSE tumbleweed and the other on Clear Linux).
Now this “idiot proof” take is really funny. You see, I’ve been using Mint for about a month now, never having to log into Windows. Yesterday I needed to log into windows and was immediately met with an update (against my consent), followed by a blue screen of death and when I restarted my laptop my profile couldn’t be acceded and I was instead logged into a safe Environment.
I ended up having to troubleshoot using the Registry to get my account back. If this is idiot proof I have no idea what you consider a system that just works (which is what Linux does in my experience). You’d feel like Heaven is on Earth. On another note, WiFi never autoconnected on login in on windows in my laptop, but it does on Linux.
As for the issues you had, I understand. Rolling releases aren’t for everyone and if you’re not particularly into tinkering or just use your laptop to browse the web, an immutable distro is pretty much unbreakable.
Otherwise, Linux Mint is very conservative so it won’t break with updates (and in the rare instance that does, you can just use Timeshift to rollback the updates anyway).
I’ll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I’m optimistic it will just work also.
I have Mint running on 2011 and 2014 Mac minis. It’s basically flawless. The only trouble you might have is finding the wifi driver, depending on which model you’re using. Iirc, the minis were fine, but the 2011 MacBook Pro I put it on was a little more difficult to track down. But ethernet worked right out of the box, so it wasn’t a huge deal.
Linux on Apple Silicon is a trickier proposition, but getting less tricky all the time.
Sounds lovely, thank you for that feedback. I’m very excited to try. I’m gonna try to install Aurora OS (immutable) and boot from a pendrive on my wife’s Mac (it has an Intel processor still, so it should be fine). If everything works well, I’m sure shell be very happy.
Windows is idiot proof
Could we at least add more idiot support to system crashes?
Windows has a QR code for you to scan, you can make a personalized recovery drive so that it restores your computer, ctrl alt delete gives you options to click on.
I’ve been trying out several Linux distributions over the past couple of weeks to figure out where to go after Windows 10.
I’m very open to switching. but if I have to be honest, there are still plenty of UX problems in my experience. It’s frustrating enough that I keep going back to Windows.Which distribution did you try?
Mint Cinnamon and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop.
I ran into various issues, one of them being (for example) incorrect behaviour of dead keys for accented characters. That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.
That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.
What desired behaviour are you talking about exactly?
Because I have used those exact two distros, also with deadkeys since I type in Portuguese and Spanish alongside English, and deadkeys works just fine for me.
So the keyboard I’m using is US International (with deadkeys), which is the standard keyboard for the Netherlands.
Certain key combinations should create an accented character, but certain other key combinations should simply print the accent followed by the character. Typing this way is essentially muscle memory for me, so if it deviates from what I’m used to it really trips me up badly.
Example:
', followed byeshould typeé(which Linux did correctly)
', followed bymshould type'm(where Linux typed an accentedḿ)
', followed bycshould typeç(where Linux typed an accentedć)
', followed by'should type''(where Linux typed')
', followed by[]should type'(which Linux did correctly)I checked several forums, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to change this behaviour in Linux. Dead key behaviour is seemingly consistent between keyboard layouts, and it can only either be on or off?
Edit: It shouldn’t even be that complex of an improvement to the OS.
If they were to add a defintion as to how deadkeys are supposed to work as part of the keyboard layout file, this wouldn’t be an issue. I could just make my own “US Intl. with Dead Keys (NL)” layout and it would be fine.
How long did you try each one? Usually when trying anything new it takes a little while to get used to the things that you readily accept as “just how things are” with something you have been using for a while. I am a long-term Linux user and I can tell you that Windows has plenty of major UX problems when I occasionally have to use it on someone else’s PC.
When the keyboard doesn’t work correctly, that is not “just how it is” though…
I’m not going to relearn how to type accents for the sake of switching to Linux. The OS should just work correctly out of the box, or at the very least give me the option to fix the behaviour without having to go 20 internet forums deep and delving into the depths of the system files.
I tried Mint for four days before getting fed up with things not working as they should, went back to Windows for a week and then tried Fedora for two days again running into very similar issues.
You might need to switch to a keyboard layout with or without dead keys depending on your preference. Not quite sure how Windows does it these days other than some vague nightmares about the layout switcher thing in the task bar from a few years ago that kept switching back semi-randomly when switching applications. Some of the changes in how accents are typed are actually related to using accented characters less than the characters on their own (e.g. backticks) but others might also be related to making things easier for people with disabilities that prevent them from pressing certain key combinations.
The issue I’m talking about is unrelated to keyboard layouts. It’s how deadkeys are implemented.
The deadkeys are seemingly defined separately from keyboard layout, and there is no way that I could find to redefine them other than either turning dead key behaviour on or off in the keyboard layouts
I don’t know man, I’ve been trying to mount my network share on Ubuntu for a few days already.
CIFS or NFS?
I don’t have experience with setting up networks on Linux, but Ubuntu should have some guides available, no?
In any case, I was speaking from the perspective of someone who used Linux Mint and Fedora. Both work pretty much out of the box with little tinkering.
https://massgrave.dev/ works just fine with ltsc as well and https://www.pcrf.net/ can always use more money
That’s a weird way to spell Linux Mint
Is mint windows-like out of the box? I’ve already forgotten what Linux is like outside of i3/sway
Yeah, cinnamon has a windows-like taskbar, startmenu and icon tray.
People fixate on those things. I don’t think those are the key things.
If I had to define what makes something Windows-like I’d point at the software and drivers being self-contained, self-installable executables and the old DOS-style disk handling and directory structure.
I mean, I don’t think that’s necessarily a great thing, but it’s been a long time since Windows took the “press key, type what you want to run, press enter” thing from… I’m gonna say MacOS. That start menu, taskbar and icon tray thing was a differentiator with Windows 95, but probably not since Windows 8.
I don’t understand this comment.
So you think Linux users have to use a command line to launch applications?
Also, there are appImages for Linux that run exactly like .exe files if that’s how people want to run software, but there are also like 3 other ways to install software, it’s up to the user.
I guess the file structure is different if that’s really a big deal to anyone.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding?
No, what? I’m saying all current desktop OSs (and mobile OSs, for that matter) will default to an app search interface when you press their respective Windows/Meta/whatever key or shortcut, so there being a “start” menu and a taskbar instead of a search bar and a dock ribbon makes no difference and is intuitive when going from Windows to Linux no matter what distro or DE you choose.
And that there being “like 3 other ways” to install applications is the issue. Windows users go to a place, click on a the “download” button, then click on the file they download and go. In Linux you could try to approximate that, but it’s the least convenient option. Instead you have an app manager that sort of looks like an app store from the other OSs, but sometimes not everything is in there and you have to manually add repositories and sometimes a thing IS there but it shows up like four times because there are multiple ways for apps to be packaged and it’s not obvious at a glance whether you’re downloading a containerized instance, a bundle of loose file dependencies or straight up code you’re about to autocompile. And when you ask online people will (correctly) tell you it’s actually easier to just use the command line package manager, except those are all distro-dependent and they all use subtly different syntax depending on what flavor of Linux you’re using.
So yeah, that’s a bigger difference and barrier to entry than “the start menu”.
The file structure you should need less often if you’re not a power user, since the user home directories are pretty much the same across the board. But hey, still, it’s very different on Windows compared to other systems, what with devices and volumes being automounted at the root level with a consistent drive name as opposed to a /mnt location and most of the pieces and dependencies of an app being kept in a consolidated folder. So yeah, it’s still a bit of a moment when you eventually have to edit a config file or manually navigate to a removable drive or something and it’s not immediately obvious where that would have gone by default.
That, and to this day it still trips me up that Linux GUI file managers mount network locations and Samba shares in arbitrary real paths you can’t easily navigate to in CLI but mounting them in CLI makes them appear in the file manager in a way that is visually indisinguishable, despite being mounted in a completely different place. That is not awkward because it’s different from Windows, that’s just weird and bad in absolute terms and I don’t get why it’s that way at all.
Thanks for clarifying.
Yeah what you say about launching I agree with, it’s not a big deal anymore.
There are several ways to install on Windows as well. Either installers, a standalone exe, or via the Windows Store. That’s not really any different than what I’m talking about with the exception of there being more than one “type” of exe (deb, rpm, etc).
On Linux, most people just use the store front that comes with their distro while more advanced users can build from source or whatever b/c they need bleeding edge releases or b/c it’s “fun”.
Adding repos is the Devil & my last resort because that shit will break a system, so I’m w you there.
So yeah, if your main argument is the hurdle to changing systems goes beyond the Start Menu, I agree. That said, it’s not that hard & most people just use a browser anyways, tbh.
KDE2/3 like?
I haven’t used those. But KDE Plasma is also similar, so I guess, yes.
No, it’s not “Windows-like” in anything but some basic appearance (and that would be Windows from the previous decade). It’s not similar in anything else, and from my experience the similarity in appearance only confuses users.
I really wish people stopped recommending Mint as if it was some proper Windows replacement because it’s overall a very mediocre distro that’s IMO more likely to detract users from using Linux than anything else.
People still recommend libreoffice… I just tried onlyoffice and it is much more similar to the modern office suite. I find libreoffice excel hard to use - it’s stuck in 97 without modern features and placement I expect. The word processor is fine though
Linux mint is more windows-like than windows itself. I know that sounds odd but watch some videos if you’re curious and you’ll see what i mean.
Mint under the hood is still Linux, but for basic tasks like webbrowsing, it’s very similar to or easier than Windows.
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People keep treating Win10 EoL as if the software is going to catch on fire. Every time they phase out a Windows version people just happily keep it installed indefinitely until they just naturally buy a new PC, at least.
I predict the big replacement for supported Windows 10 will be unsupported Windows 10. I expect that’s a pretty safe bet.
Just today I installed 2 pc in a store with windows 7.
I predict the big replacement for supported Windows 10 will be unsupported Windows 10. I expect that’s a pretty safe bet
Famous last words before getting a keylogger that leads to all your bank accounts being drained due to lack of security patches.
Also, this is pretty much not possible (if not illegal) for business operations since those generally require having a secure OS to work on.
Famous last words before getting a keylogger that leads to all your bank accounts being drained due to lack of security patches.
Well, yeah. What kind of security do you think normies are running? They won’t even get hijacked by an unpatched Windows 10 exploit, they’ll just try to download The Last of Us by opening “WatchOnlineMoviesFree.exe” when a pop up tells them to.
Business operations will go with whatever is cheapest to maintain, which is the entire point of LTSC and the article in the link.
They’re still supporting regular Win 10 but will start charging $30 a year for patches.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates
How long do you expect that to last?
I only “upgraded” to Windows 10 (from 7) last year due to software I needed for work. Windows 10 is bad enough, I’m definitely not “upgrading” to 11 until I have to.
In my experience, 10 runs much slower than 7 with so many updates that just kill performance as they’re running. And I’ve had pop-up adverts recently and programs that open on startup despite being disabled
I mean… you go, grandpa.
But hey, that is a fair point. A lot of people talk about moving to Win11 like it’s something normies will want to avoid like the plague, as if all the things they point at as dealbreaking enshittification haven’t been rolling back to Win10 pretty much in real time. Hardware incompatibilities aside (and those are probably overstated, too) the leap will probably be very smooth unless the person in question is simultaneously extremely activist about hating modern Windows and extremely reluctant to use anything else.
extremely activist about hating modern Windows and extremely reluctant to use anything else.
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it. I have Linux on my laptop but I cba dealing with bootloaders on my desktop and can’t lose Windows altogether.
(Last time I tried dualbooting was with XP I think, so probably it’s a lot easier now than it used to be but still…)
Honestly, dual booting is mostly fine now, I’m just annoyed by how awkward and inconvenient it still is to share a local hard drive across both systems and it feels weird to be cut off from physically mounted hard drives that are right there in your system just because there is no universally accepted OS-agnostic modern filesystem.
These days I have one computer with Windows and one with Linux. My solution ended up being sharing files over a local network and using GNOME so I can easily remote desktop from my Windows machine if I have to. It’s less annoying than the performative “run Windows in a virtual machine” thing people like to brag about and I wanted to keep a machine constantly running as a little home server anyway.
