If by “complicates… basic PC ownership” they mean “infringes on your property rights as a computer owner,” then they’re finally catching on to what I’ve been saying for damn near a decade.
You should not accept having an abusive relationship with your operating system, and that’s what Windows has been since at least 8 (when they started infecting it with “telemetry”), if not earlier. Have some goddamn self-respect, people! Kick Microsoft to the curb!
Also win8: Hey, would you like NOT having a desktop? We’ve got tiles now!
Google onboarding on Android…
The key difference is that there are credible alternatives in the PC OS space. If I could ditch Android/iOS without major pain, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
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Root and use custom roms.
alas, most models of android phones don’t have support from the custom roms that currently exist
If, the roms exist, there’s clearly hardware for them…
And what should you suggest we should do with the ones that don’t? Bury them all at some landfill?
Well, they were born e-waste, so yea. If the consumer is in middle of the lake of information, but refuses to drink anything but bottled corpo propaganda and dies from dehydration…
I’m in the process of getting my kids their first PC this Christmas. They’ll both get a mini-PC, with severely restricted Internet access. I’m actually thinking about just letting them connect to the home server where I’d mock the Web sites I pick for them. For this reason, Win11 with its online account requirement is automatically excluded from consideration. I wated to give them Mint anyway, but this was the argument that convinced my wife.
Whoa. Parents…. Parenting??
In all seriousness, if more parents were proactive like you, we wouldn’t have all this under 16 social media ban and shit.
Smart move, with the brain rot cancer that internet has become these days, it’s best to keep your kids away from it until their brains finish developing a bit
My kids’ devices are blocked from internet access in my OpenWRT firewall and I run a Squid proxy on my server with an allowlist of domains they can access.
I still have an unused, boxed WRT-54G. Granted, it’s only 802.11b/g, but good enough for casual browsing, and I have experience setting up OpenWRT there. Thanks for helping me remember; I’ll use that for the kids.
Mocking up whole websites seems like a pain. With a Pihole, you can create different service groups for computers and apply a whitelist to just their machines. Plus you get adblocking too!
I tried pi-hole, but it turned in a real pain, trying to set it up for normal use, plus two WFH offices. I may give it another try, when I feel more patient.
The idea of mocking websites came from talking to other parents from my kids’ school. I was thinking about some form of a local “internet” for our neighbourhood for all the kids. Heavily curated, a mix of mock sites (like the full download of Wikipedia), news through RSS, moderated message boards, etc. I don’t think it’s an original idea given the current state of the Internet, so at this stage I’m just reading up on design best practices.
In the past, I’ve used Adguard Home, and I liked it. When I tried to my Adguard server as the DNS for my router, though, my WFH corporate VPN wouldn’t connect, so there’s that. Granted, I was using it to remove ads, but people seem to like it for parental controls too.
I saw a deal for a pair of mini PCs with decent specs on eBay right after I got my annual bonus, so I jumped on it because I want to do the same thing for my kids. May be jumping the gun a bit…my son just learned the alphabet (uppercase only) and my daughter just learned how to flop off the couch head-first.
My kids are a little older - just learned to read without sounding off the words - so I need to introduce parental controls. But you may see your purchase as an investment: a year from now, the hardware may be worth twice as much.
That’s the main reason I jumped on them. I’ve seen an increasing trend of people selling old computers with the RAM and HDDs taken out
Since all of the “Linux is easy” folk are here I’ll ask a question even though I’m not near my PC:
I’m dual booting W11 and ZorinOS, I have 3 drives and only the OS drive mounts at boot. The other 2, games SSD and a storage HDD, have to mounted manually. An online search yielded that this was “expected behaviour” and “how it’s designed to work” but unfortunately it confuses Steam each time I boot because as far as Steam is concerned the drive ceases to exist.
Has anyone else had the same issue? I think I could use crontab to mount the drives at boot but it seems like something that shouldn’t be happening at all.
I had to figure this out the hard way because everywhere I asked the question I’d get told how I was wrong and it’s good actually. So good luck finding anything helpful for your specific install. I will share with you some links that kinda got me there. I had to figure out most of the steps individually and piece them together from multiple sources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eoq_cgAWMmQ
https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/auto-mounting-secondary-drives/970
I’m not sure sure how relevant those links will be as I was trying to do the same on bazzite and not zorin but hopefully they help. If you are able to install gnome disks (if you haven’t already) there is a checkbox to do it for you but I forget where it is. I have a little document typed up on my PC at home that I can share with you as well when I get there later on the off chance that it is helpful. If you have questions, ask away I’m not sure I will be helpful but I’ll do what I can.
FYI, linux seems to hate NTFS partitions and that may be a contributing factor here.
You can mount your drives on boot in fstab (/etc/fstab). This is only a low-key pain in the ass, and it’s probably a good thing your internally installed drives won’t change very often.
If whatever method you use to mount them outright requires using the full
mountcommand, possibly with a shitload of parameters attached, you can also do it on boot as a cron job that fires on boot (crontab -e) by prefacing the command with@rebootrather than the usual set of time parameters. This is how I handle e.g. mounting complicated network shares on my servers. This will fire before you even get to your login screen, so the drives ought to be accessible by the time Steam has to do whatever it does.
Everyone is thinking about this wrong. MIcroslop will only do their enterprise customers dirty at the very end, when they are dropping the Windows product altogether. How do SysAdmins do Windows 11 installs at their workplace? How are we expected to provision PCs without a MS account. Select add to domain and use your router as a ‘fake’ DC and then set the settings back to normal after the install. They can not remove that method, it is absolutely required for using DCs and MS makes a shit load of money licensing DCs. You have to pay per user.
I think enterprise is the least affected.
Win11 installs are done with Autopilot. Users log in with their company MS accounts and if admins need access they log in with the LAPS account.
Enterprise moved away from local accounts even before COVID.
This is the case where I work.
For now I’m happy with Windows 10 LTSC on my main rig. I use Debian on my laptop and Ubuntu on my server. I don’t know what I’ll do in 2032 when LTSC support ends. I’d like to go to Debian on my main rig but some software simply won’t work without hassle (if at all). I hope that changes until then, I love Debian with KDE Plasma.
Out of curiosity, what software? It won’t run with Wine? Maybe there’s a decent enough alternative?
The Adobe stuff, Vst’s, etc.
Tons of VST’s work using yabridge.
Not Native Instruments though (their VST’s should work but I can’t get Native Access to run). And I don’t run any VST’s that need iLok.
Yabridge has a bug with wine versions later than (I think) 9.22, where the VST thinks the mouse is in another place than it really is.
Solutions are : make sure the VST window is at 0,0, or use an older version of wine, or there is a patch for yabridge that works in most cases, but hasn’t been merged in yet. I’m running that.
I know tons of vst’s work on Linux, just not the one I use. The problem is people need specific software not that just any software in that class.
Sorry but this is what irks me when people say not everything will work on Linux. There’s always someone saying “but you have alternative on Linux” like every program is the same.
You can’t expect someone that uses Photoshop professionally to just start using Gimp in an industry where Photoshop is the standard that everyone uses. Gimp, while impressive, is not Photoshop and requires a totally different workflow. And it’s simply not doable when you’re working with people using and expecting Photoshop. You also can’t expect someone to have to tinker with their PC every time, just to work. People that use their PC to work need it to be reliable. People that use computers as a tool, not to make a political statement.
In my case, I know there are vst’s on Linux. They just don’t have the quality that Amplitube has. And you can’t tell people to “just switch, bro” when they already paid for Amplitube. For these people, at least for now, Windows is pretty much the only option.
Sorry for the rant, I’m done.
Like someone said here, by 2032 wine will run all that. That’s where my hopes are. When that happens more people will use Linux (I know I will) and with more users more companies will start making native Linux versions. Things have already improved tremendously in the last 15 years. I truly believe there will be a critical point soon that will make explode Linux adoption.
But, for now, you have to understand Linux is not yet an option for some specific needs.
Well, I’ve tried it, and Amplitube runs just fine in linux. Here’s a screenshot running amplitube 5 in Bitwig 6
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2032 and free to activate.
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It gives you 6 years to transition to a better OS. Or to become CEO of Microslop and improve things.
It’s honestly great, even for me who only boot into windows once every few months.
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But who needs 6 years of transition?
I’m hoping someone manages to make surface pro’s fully compatible with linux in that time… (or that something that’s compatible and serves SPs purpose becomes available)
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Great in the sense I don’t have to bother for 6 years for a partition I will use less than 24 hours over that period of time haha.
So far I’ve used it to scan once (for some reason that day skan decided to not work) and to make a windows install USB for my SO.
I tried Expedition 33 thinking performance issues were a Linux thing by no, it’s just like that.
So it’s a long term unlikely to be used OS, and for that long support is great.
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Actually, one more use case is my SO. Can’t/won’t use Linux, and I’m not fighting. But needs an up to date OS on the ancient lappet laptop, so 10 IOT it is.
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Gives 6 more years for Adobe and my online games to start supporting Linux D: (or the Adobe alternatives to become more suitable for professional use)
I can’t help you with the games. You could vote with your wallet and just not play those specific ones. Start hitting that backlog of games you got on sale and never opened.
Regarding Adobe suite in a professional manner, I’m pretty sure they work on MacOS.
You always have choices. They may not be perfect but they do exist nonetheless. These companies will never stop being invasive if users keep giving in. Until “number go down” in board meetings, nothing changes.
You could vote with your wallet and just not play those specific ones.
Oh I’m not paying for them, but still one of my main daily drivers is Genshin, and I haven’t found such an enjoyable open world exploration in any other game I’ve tried. (I’m PC-only so haven’t tried Breath of the Wild.)
Regarding Adobe suite in a professional manner, I’m pretty sure they work on MacOS.
I would never touch a Mac, it’s way more of a walled garden than Windows.
Also I was talking about Adobe alternatives like Inkscape for Illustrator or Scribus for InDesign. From what I’ve read they are really not there yet. (Tried Inkscape a few times, but the UI is so unintuitive for my brain used to Adobe’s UI/workflow 😭)
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Thanks, I’ll check out Where Winds Meet! :)
(Edit: according to their Steam page they use genAI dialogue and art, so that’s a pass :/ )
Dunno about current adobes, but don’t they also run fine via wine? Have only one single tool so far that makes a bit trouble (mediamonkey).
From the reports I see on WineHQ, they are all various levels of broken, though the last versions tested were from 2024.
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I play heavily modded games and it’s a hassle to make some of them work in Linux. Ltsc helps me give some time until modding in Linux gets better support.
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It delays the problem for six more years, and it also gives me the satisfaction of
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It gives us 6 years to grow the Linux user base so that software devs, game devs, etc. make their products with Linux specifically in mind instead of creating poor ports or excluding the OS entirely.
Linux adoption is only going up.
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In capitalist USA the computer own you… Or something like this?
