- cross-posted to:
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
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If you’re too lazy to switch to Linux like me, Windows 10 Enterprise IoT LTSC is supported until 2032 and free to download and permanently license.
As someone who is lazy, I find running Linux to be less work than fighting with Windows.
Linux you fight a bit when setting it up and then its like clockwork. With windows it’s easy to setup, but then it starts doing weird shit you never asked for and and undoes your changes making more work forever.
Linux isn’t hard to set up anymore
Basic install yes, getting all your favourite apps and network connectivity…well, it’s much better than before, but still a short term pain.
I dunno, maybe I’ve just had good luck when it comes to hardware compatibility, but networking has always just worked for me. Along with audio and pretty much everything else.
Getting the apps you want installed is the same thing you’d have to go through with a fresh Windows install too. And I think Linux package management is way easier once you do the initial install. So I would argue that Linux is actually better in that regard.
No. Network connectivity just works unless you have some really esoteric hardware. I just installed a USB wifi ax 5400, total overkill for my telco router. CachyOS just took it in stride. Most apps, including many Window apps install painlessly. The moment Linux sees an .exe, it launches wine and installs the app.
Right now it’s mostly “just works” most people use office and internet apps anyway.
I had to plug in ethernet to the wifi drivers updated. Map a nas drive with the correct invocation in /etc/fstab. Getting camilladsp to work in multichannel 5.1 setup, getting my fricken nvidia drivers working, getting star citizen to work (still doesn’t), getting roon to work in bottles, adding the right repos even for various software.
Linux has come a long way. It is mostly consumer grade now, but still has some refinement.
What flavor of Linux?
Yeah, it was way less friction than I was expecting. It went smoother than some windows updates do (specifically the ones where they just reset settings to their shitty defaults).
This is part of why I like Mint … it’s like 5 clicks to install
I like Mint. Got two boxes. 1 bazzite, one Debian and one Arch for shitz and giggles.
Mint comes in debian, arch and bazzite?
Uh. No. I have 2 mint boxes. 1 bazzite one debian and one arch… heh.
It comes in Debian … not the others
Mint is wonderful though I am considering switching back to a system with GNOME instead of Cinnamon because the screen reader works better under GNOME.
I am thinking about giving NixOS another shot or at least going with an immutable system, but Mint is a great place to start your Linux journey, and hell, it’s a great place to end your Linux journey if you don’t give a shit about computers and just want the damn thing to work reliably.
I spent about 2 months on mint with cinnamon, switched to cachy with plasma on my main desktop a few weeks ago and honestly it’s been working a lot better. Still have to poke a few things but overall I’ve got everything I’m regularly using going fine now.
Yeah, that’s the thing - I remember installing Slackware 1.0 from floppies back in the day.
These days, I’ve had my enthusiasm for technology crushed out if me, and I just want to get stuff done with as little “computer” in the way as possible
That hasn’t happened for me, but it has shifted from desktop to mobile for me, because, for me, desktop Linux is just about fucking perfect, and I see no need to change it. But, I do very much enjoy playing around with different things like lineage OS, and possibly post-market OS on phones.
I’d say my phone is my primary computing device so it’s what I like to mess with and the laptop is just a system that I need to work whenever I pick it up and therefore it gets Linux installed on it and doesn’t get many changes.
I would say my laptop is more like an appliance similar to my toaster. When I turn on my toaster, I expect it to work. And it’s the same thing with my laptop for the little bit that I need it. And my phone is the device that I mess with, primarily.
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t mess with my phone because I need it for stupid things like banking :-/
Last year I did give Haiku a crack, so I’m not completely out of enthusiasm for OS fiddling … but it’s the exception not the rule
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Not my experience.
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Do you not have a need to update it?
It literally does this for you.
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I meant that any update can bring issues, it’s not “I installed and it works forever”
I use Bazzite at the moment, and it actually is that. No exaggeration.
And if an update doesn’t work (hasn’t happened to me in the 2 or 3 years I’ve been on Bazzite), ostree means rollbacks are instant and failsafe.
Bazzite also uses topgrade as the backend for its system update utility (just a “ujust” command), and it updates everything including flatpaks and firmware.
So it really is just one click to update everything and it never breaks.
As someone who just installed bazzite today and fucked around with Mint a couple months ago this is very much true. Kinda reminds me of bashing Windows 98 into doing what I wanted.
I installed Bazzite, and I had a bit of trouble!
… Because I pulled out the USB halfway through the install! Like the world’s biggest dumbass! Couldn’t boot the computer at all! Oh no!
Then I stared at what I’d done for a while, sighed, rebooted and started again.
And it was easy as piss. Bazzite 10/10 for me.
Might not be a bad idea to start learning on a separate device though, so you’ll be ready when 2032 hits.
(That’s my current setup)
This is my plan. Going to do my first Linux install on my old laptop to learn and then go full Linux once I feel I’ve got a good idea of what I’m doing.
Can’t risk screwing it up as I’m self employed and need everything to work
Just dual boot. No need for a separate device.
You won’t do this on corporate machines, but converting a Win install into an IoT release and generating a key for it is like a couple of clicks and a reboot.
But, but - the way massgrave is still accessible and not fought against makes you think Microsoft wants the fluctuating users to keep on using their products and ecosystem even if they don’t pay the initial sticker price.
So if it’s at least slightly feasible for your workflow, it’s always better to switch and leave M$ behind.
P.S. I can be wrong, but IoT right now doesn’t shield oneself from installing copilot and other garbage, making this edition not better than others, you still need to debloat it.
P.S. I can be wrong, but IoT right now doesn’t shield oneself from installing copilot and other garbage, making this edition not better than others, you still need to debloat it.
a full year in here, with regular security updates. 11iot is still unmolested by microsoft shenanigans. nothing installed on it i didn’t put on myself, or didn’t come with the stripped-down windows, which isn’t much at all. there’s no store, so all the store-delivered shit is absent.
Probably leftovers since I switched to IoT from other ISOs.
11 iot is also available, and is void of nearly everything people hate about 11. it’s good to 2035.
I have no intentions of going back to Ravenholm anytime soon.
Regular Windows, with Chris Titus’ decrapifier after install will leave you with a pretty streamlined Windows without the bullshit.
massgrave can activate 3 years ESU on regular Enterprise for people who want things IoT LTSC is missing, like WMR. I’ve got Enterprise alongside Bazzite and when the updates run out I’ll either switch to IoT LTSC or nuke Windows altogether.
Same, I’ve got a headset on WMR and it’s basically trash if I have to update to Win 11.
you guys might be interested in this, then:
Oasis is a Windows 11 driver for SteamVR for VR headsets of the Windows Mixed Reality family, such as the HP Reverb, Samsung Odyssey, Lenovo Explorer, or Dell Visor. This driver does not require the Mixed Reality Portal application and is therefore compatible with the latest versions of Windows 11 (24H2 and future).
https://github.com/mbucchia/Oasis-Driver-for-Windows-Mixed-Reality/wiki
Wow! I was figuring someone would make this eventually. I’d still prefer to go to Linux but this might be the easiest option. Thanks.
Chiming in to say oasis not only made my WMR kit work without Mixed Reality Portal Garbage, but it’s more responsive and tracks better with it. It’s incredible. I’m on 10 LTSC IoT which Oasis’s doesn’t technically support and it works flawlessly. Amazing.
I love you, Oasis dev.
This is false. The latter is, anyway. I am running 11 IoT LTSC on my main gaming rig and WMR is still supported. The key is, you cannot install a version any newer than 23H2. There are third party tools available that will block Windows from attempting to “upgrade” you to a new feature release which breaks WMR. My Reverb G2 is still working fine.
…For now. WMR support on a fresh install is still reliant on a Windows Store download which Microsoft will probably cease providing at some point if they haven’t already.
You are the champ for pointing people this direction but eventually like Adobe they will close the holes.
Yes, but it is pointless like whack a mole.
Doing the Lord’s work!
i dunno, going linux feels pretty lazy. just watching you all sweat and panic with your workarounds and here i am like …not.
I wonder how many “users rejecting Windows 11” are people who refuse to replace perfectly good hardware just because it doesn’t meet Windows 11’s arbitrary requirements.
Especially now in the NANDpocalypse, like no way I’m upgrading my hardware.
Yeah my 8yr old comp was built to be top of the line at the time and it still rips on non-current AAA games. Any upgrade aside from gpu at this point would mean a new mobo and essentially a wholesale. Fuck that
Listen, if someone broke into your house they could get into your computer and hack it and see your browsing history and gta6 progress because you dont have TPM 2.0. You dont want that, do you?
Veracrypt/LUKS encryption:
It might also be people who want to log in to their computer with a local account, given the problems with letting a US company decide who can use your computer and who can access your files.
I have a ten-year-old desktop that still works perfectly, and runs all the games I need. Why on earth would I put an arm and a leg into a new one? Not that I would voluntarily put Copilot 11 on anything I own, either way.
that’s probably most the holdouts left. the absolute brutal persistence of ‘upgrade’ offers and win10 doomsday warnings on eligible hardware got most users to do it, even if they didn’t really want to.
*half of it
I’m just broke and not going to be upgrading anything anytime soon. Got an i5 and a 1080. Whenever windows 10 support actually ends, I’ll probably then finally go to Linux, but until then, I’m lazy.
Will upgrade from windows 10 to Linux.
I did it last year after postponing it countless times. And I will recommend you do it. I know it feels like a huge step, but it is much easier than you fear and once you have done it it is such a big relief to be completely free of all of Microslops nonsense forever.
Install alongside. Dual boot. Happily play and try Linux without anxiety.
fuck it man, with the state of desktop linux these days, just put your files on a seperate hard drive and go full hog. Even vanilla ass debian is ok as long as you go for Gnome or KDE.
I haven’t figured out an efficient way to run widows programs on Linux. I know wine exists and the vm’s. Maybe it’s cause I didn’t stick with Linux for more than 2 months.
I was super into Ubuntu when it first came out but I got bored of it really quick. Tried it again a couple years ago and it was still hard to navigate.
Honestly most stuff runs fine on wine, if not wine then proton, if not that then bottles/winboat and some messing around. I’m still going through stuff but everything that hasn’t worked at all has been thanks to external issues such as anticheat. I even got zbrush mostly working the other day.
i think in the past year they must have made ubuntu changes a lot cuz its now really easy like its almost like a smart phone. even upgrades and updates with an interface now. i could see a techphobe who only ever uses iphones use it with ease.
the only hesitation is there is no tech support for linux. like you cant just walk into best buy and expect the geek squad to fix your problems(they could still look into hardware problems)
that said once you learn linux things come pretty easy with a rollback feature(est month maybe 2 to get familiar with the linux tricks on how to fix stuff yourself)
i still work by a cheat sheet. and thankfully the comminity for linux user help is pretty vast for searches
I think it’s time to update your knowledge… Especially regarding Ubuntu. Do yourself a favor and look into other distros.
Also curious what Windows programs. It’s very rare, but on Bazzite if I open an exe, it automatically runs it in wine.
For games, just load the exe through Steam or use a launcher like Faugus with Proton.
For those of you who need a longer offramp to Linux like me and maybe haven’t seen this posted before:
https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol
You can activate any copy with support at least through 2028.
Came to say this, I’ll add that its is a completely safe and free option.
Benefits over official methods:
- zero cost (don’t pay MS $10)
- no need to format to install LTSC
- no need for a Microsoft account (keep your privacy if you have local only account)
Its FOSS so the entire script can be downloaded and read before you run it if you feel uncomfortable fetching some random script from the web and running it via terminal, as I did.
if you feel uncomfortable fetching some random script from the web and running it via terminal
If you can run some random script in a terminal, you already know everything you need to in order to use Linux.
I love Linux and use it myself, but not everyone is ready to move.
For them, an extended Windows 10 EOL is a nice bridge to give them some more time to plan a main OS install (backup all their data, test replacement apps, etc) as OP said. It’s not about knowledge or capabilities it’s about options, time and many people waiting until they can afford a new PC build to move to linux.
and many people waiting until they can afford a new PC build to move to linux
???
Why would you need a new PC for that?
Did i say they needed it?
This may surprise you, but to your average person (or even your technical person who is time-poor for whatever reason), moving to a new OS is a frustrating or time consuming process, so they delay the move until they get (or build) a new PC.
Your average person stays on the same OS for the lifetime of the computer.
no need to format to install LTSC
you can modify a text file on an ent/iot installer to allow system and data preserving upgrades on pretty much anything, even ‘home’ or ‘home premium’ editions. i have one here that went 8 pro to 11iot–runs great, and have tested 7hp to 11iot as well. that was the test done before i did the one that ‘mattered’… still using it the test system, too. haven’t bothered to redo it or reload anything else on it yet.
That’s great to hear. I’ve had mixed results with migrating Windows editions in the past, and I believe it’s still an officially unrecommended process due to hiccups that can occur during, and difficulties in diagnosing issues afterwards (can be a bit of a frankenstein as far as libraries WinSXS content, system logs, etc).
normally i’d be against ‘upgrades’, too, especially that different.
but this was a special case and i did have three decades of wading through this shit to pay the rent to work from. a fair bit of reading and a lot of prep ahead of time made the actual upgrade process itself almost completely uneventful. i did find one odd thing after it ran awhile, but it hasn’t resurfaced since.
I booted an old win 10 laptop the other day to see if it still worked. It has a GPU so I thought it might be nice for a few light games while I travel. Immediately started screaming about updates and all the normal windows stuff.
I booted to Bazzite from a flash drive and had it installed in like 20 minutes. Runs like a dream now. It’s amazing to see what that old hardware can do without Windows choking it.
It’s so easy now to run an option that doesn’t suck.
Obligatory, here’s your sign to switch to Linux. For people who do nearly everything or everything online it’s a pretty easy switch.
I have absolutely no experience in coding, programming, or anything to do with how Linux works and operates - I was easily able to install CachyOS onto my laptop removing windows completely. Reading comprehension is difficult if one isn’t used to reading wikis, however it’s pretty self explanatory; if a monkey like me can do it, anyone can.
Good shit. Hopefully you backed up anything important before the switch. Generally good to have backups anyway and use the 321 rule to never lose anything. That’s three copies, two different media (hdd & DVD / cloud), and one copy off sight. Although that may be a little excessive for everyone but it will ensure you never lose anything important.
I usually suggest people shop around / distro hop a little. Get a USB, install ventoy, download a few iso’s and try a few different distros on their live boot. There are a lot of different paradigms for a distro, different user interfaces, different kernel compilations, proprietary driver options, audio driver options, package management options and so on.
That said for someone new it is literally just easier to use a more widely used or common distro, usually there’s better wikis and active forums and it’s more likely someone has already had whatever issue you’re having when trying to fix something. I usually suggest Fedora or Linux mint (lmde). Although with flatpaks and immutable OS’s things are getting easier, more copy paste if you will.
I think it’s more that users can’t afford new hardware, even though win11 seems like a step backwards.
There’s also the point that game quality has gone down significantly. If I were to build a new rig which would cost me an arm and a leg, I would still just play games that my current PC can already run anyway. I don’t wanna play the newest CoD-slop or some tech-demo with MTX-shop disguised as a game. The newest games I really enjoyed were Monster Sanctuary (Unity-based monster collector metroidvania-like) and Balatro (no introduction necessary). A toaster can run these.
Don’t forget that not everyone uses their Pc for gaming. Most programs really don’t need Windows and since all of the office package can be used through the browser with no real difference in user xp there is no need to upgrade older hardeware that can just stay on Windows 10 or become a Linux system easily.
and Balatro (no introduction necessary)
What’s Balatro?
Slay the Spire but with poker hands instead of medieval-fantasy-combat
Uh oh… Careful, you might lose entire days of your life.
Still using Windows 10, but after testing out Linux on the side last year I’ve come to the conclusion it’s ready. Other than anti-cheat being in the shitter once Win 10 is officially dropped for good by games I’m moving over to Arch.
and with steam one can play even non-steam games that are “windows only” by adding non-steam game. Proton works for those too.
not for the ones with the stupider anti cheats
i gave up on R 6 long ago. but basically all other games are playable on linux. i become comfortable living by the moral code of ‘if the game doesnt play on linux it doesnt exist’
yea, though those games are not worth playing anyway. who knows what they do in the background, with root access they can hide it too.
I’ve been playing The Sims 2 that way lol
Some anti-cheat software can be run through Steam e.g. Easy anti-cheat.
I’m aware. Just not the majority of them. Either way doesn’t personally matter to me as I mostly play single player games, to which Proton is incredible with that.
Windows decided to delete all my documents and files 2 weeks ago. Even though I removed them from one drive, windows put them all back in. So when their one drive failed. I lost everything. Like every icon on my desktop too. Thank god i had just backed up a couple weeks before so I didn’t lose much.
I was so pissed though that I immediately installed Linux Mint. Haven’t looked back.
It’s all fun and games until you find that one specific thing you can’t live without that requires Windows lol. Hence why I typically have a low profile Windows 10 LTSC virtual machine set up on my Linux machines.
Same but Windows 7.
It seems fastest, most stable windows was 2000 but lacked good 64bit support. Much defaulted to 32bit :(
I’m sure I’ll find something lol. Currently its still on that hard drive. But I pulled it out for now. I was angry and didn’t wanna look at windows anymore but knew I’d probably need it again lol.
Linux only needs to hit a “small but not insignificant size market” for the large publishers to start supporting it. They won’t support it if they lose money doing so, but if it continues to grow eventually they will lose money by not supporting it.
Steam machine should provide another bump, just like steam deck.
And issue is it needs to be a specific platform.
From a game developer’s perspective (who isn’t a pro linux dev or anything), they can support a platform. They support Windows 10. Or Windows 11. They can support stock Ubuntu. They can support a SteamOS image.
They cannot specifically support your personalized Arch config.
Linux’s fragmentation has always been an issue in this regard, as they can’t legally support thousands of different possible system configurations.
HOWEVER,
I think supporting Proton + SteamOS would be very reasonable for a dev. That is a specific platform, its codebase and infrastructure can stay unified with the Windows version, and support for that would practically mean support in other Linux distros.
And SteamOS by itself is getting big.
Agreed. And truly developers don’t need to actually “support” Linux; mostly they just need to not intentionally block games from working.
Well, it would be massively, massively better if they did some basic validation and tuning in a Proton environment.
Thousands of open-source-dev man-hours patching in hacky workarounds for Windows games not ideal; it’d be far easier for the game dev to fix things (or raise issues) from their end. And those Proton devs have better things they could be doing.
I hope that steamOS causes this, I really hate booting into windows to play battlefield but it’s my only option if i want to play it
Windows11 sucks so bad. I was so excited to learn that Explorer and Notepad were getting tabs & Paint was getting layers. Only to find out that these core features weren’t being updated for users, but in the process of adding slop to the OS. Explorer was the worst, my address bar became an ad. And everything was buggy and broken.
And I know this isn’t just the Linux fanboy line because Microslop themselves had to apologize and walk-back some of the Copilot obnoxiousness.
Still waiting for vertical taskbar support on my work box. They only acknowledged the deficit earlier this year…
Nah, I’m good. Switched to Linux, and there’s no need for me to go back
By 2027 I have transitioned to fedora or another variant of Linux. I am on Linux mint now.
if you’re on LMDE you’re set forever.
Good way to go! And if you’re really technically ept and have no friends, don’t use arch but rather the average systemd-free glibc-free and ofc bloatless distro. That’ll get you occupied for a while.
Install Linux, Problem Solved.
Gat dayum Microslop fucked up.
They fucked up so hard, they still don’t know how bad they fucked up. The done goofed. Done screwed the pooch.
This desperation ain’t nothing. Give it time. It’ll just get tastier.
I recently upgraded to Windows 11. I’ve been putting it off, but there are a few apps I need that simply do not work under 10 anymore. Bleah.
I’ve been using it on a work machine for several years, but I am still surprised at just how much it sucked to switch from 10. My personal setup has been heavily customized over many years to suit my particular needs and wants. More than half of that customization is no possible under 11. There are workarounds for a few pieces of it, but even those are unlikely to remain stable and functional for very long. Microsoft is constantly changing things that cause unsupported features to break.
So I now have a slower, less reliable, less versatile, and less configurable software environment. It also conducts far more surveillance and sends even more information about me to Microsoft. There is not one single way in which this could be considered an upgrade, except by Microsoft’s shareholders.
I’m going to set up dual boot with Zorin. That will allow me to boot into Windows 11 for the few things I need that will only run in that environment. The remaining 99.9% of the time I will just run Linux. (I already know Linux pretty well, I just haven’t run it as my primary desktop.)
I suspect my next project will be replacing my Android phone’s OS with something less invasive.
I don’t know if it’s possible, but have you considered trying to install Windows in a virtual machine and just use Linux as your primary system? I started out this way too, where I had a dual-boot Linux and Windows system, and eventually I realized that I was booting into Windows so little that I just installed Windows in a virtual machine for the, like, very few times I ever needed it. And then, eventually I found out I didn’t need it at all anymore, and just killed the VM, and I haven’t used Windows for years.
I’ve tried that in the past, but I don’t think it will currently work. I’ll look into it, though.
You can set up a VM that accesses the raw disk partition of windows, instead of an image, so you can either dualboot or boot normally, in order to have windows alongside Linux.
Used to work this way about 10 years ago.
Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know you could have Windows and Linux on the same disk in separate partitions, and then boot Linux and have the virtual machine access the raw disk image of Windows.
https://github.com/ravendevteam/talon
This is how I tolerate w11
Thank you! I will check that out.
I jumped ship over to Linux just in time then. 10 was bad, but serviceable and it got more stable in EOL. They’re going to ruin it even more with slop
