How can anyone upgrade to a new PC when there is no Ram or hard disks available? This is a crazy time to try to push that.
I’ll take this as a sign to continue converting as many of my friends and family to whichever Linux distro fits them best.
I should get an AMD gpu at some point. Fuck MicroSlop.
Honest question. As someone who has used and loved MacOS for many years, what would be the best Linux distro for me?
For a new user, the most important things are usually a familiar feeling desktop environment, comprehensive default hardware support, and plenty of documentation in case you need it. The most important anti-things are needing to learn a bunch of new concepts right away, needing to use the command line, and experimental things that are known to break regularly.
Since you’re a Mac user, I would suggest KDE over Gnome for a desktop environment. Even though the default Gnome application bar looks very Mac-like and the default bar on KDE looks very windows-like, the rest of the KDE desktop feels much more Mac-like.
For the rest, you will want to use a common distro with a wide user base and a long history targeted at desktop users.
For those reasons, I would suggest either Kubuntu, or Fedora KDE.
Edit: When picking between those two, choose Kubuntu is you want to install the OS, and then not worry about major updates for several years. Pick Fedora if you want to have new features more often.
If you are ok with a more Windows-like desktop environment, Linux Mint is the go to option for an easy intro to Linux.
elementary os.
Stick with MacOS, Apple isn’t shitting the bed nearly as hard as MS(lop). If you really want to switch, Mint is nice as a starter, and Bazzite, while intended for gaming, is mich, much more solid than I expected and is totally usable as a daily driver.
Have you used the latest macOS 26? The UI is terrible and constant bugs and glitches with the new liquid glass look.
Been using bazzite nearly a year now. I also have mint installed thinking bazzite wouldn’t be a great daily. I was proven wrong. Bazzite is great.
If you’re used to the UI and UX of Mac OS and not Windows then almost any distro will be rough. There’s Elementary OS that at surface level looks like Mac OS, but then you use the actual Linux programs and they’re just Linux programs.
I would sugest debian, it has the same “just works”-feel to it, and the gnome desktop environment shares some design philosophy with macos. The main downside is that it is often a couple of years behind on software updates. Is this is a dealbreaker, I recommend mint for all, fedora when you need redhat-only software and debian-sid if you feel adventurous.
All that said, if you have a good mac currently, it has the same UNIX-benefits as linux. Using “homebrew” as a package manager and “better touch tool” for the desktop tweaks solves most problems, this is what I do. You may of course want to run linux only software, if this is you then double check if you also need an x86-64 cpu (as opposed to arm) before reinstalling.
I think the most popular one is similar- Ubuntu
Sloperating System
Petition to call Microsoft employees Sloppy Joes
They haven’t even gotten everyone into 11 yet. They are tossing out another OS? Seems, dare I say, sloppy.
They’ve always done this. People are still using XP two decades post release, and a decade past it’s EOL.
@oh_ @commander it was the same with me, vista, 8… until now was version ok, version shit, version ok again… I suspect it will become version shit from now on… with games working on linux good luck getting the ones that are lefting going back
Linux.
Well thats a stupid plan. Microsoft has lost their minds with Windows
For consumer grade yes, I look forward to seeing more people choose anything else (even Apple). For enterprise, lol, they have every Dell or HP house in the world by the balls. Atleast they ensured system admins have more job security (not lime that was in short supply anyway)
The funny thing about this is that the biggest customers can’t usually just switch. If a system is set, it is set for decades, generations or the entire company lifetime.
So microslop may start feeling part of the impact way further along the line, and wouldn’t be able to do shit about it
Kind of, same assholes trying to replace us with AI.
Not you entirely- they’d just like to replace your currently functioning mind with one that can only regurgitate factual inaccuracies while continuing your subscription.
If it is AI based I guarantee it will be subscription based. That could push me over the edge to some Linux variant.
Never correct your enemy while they are making an error. :D
To shreds you say?
One of my 2 PCs already switched to linux because of mandatory TPM 2.0 for windows.
It’s like they want us to leave their ecosystem. Requiring hardware changes in the middle of a major component crisis, one that they are in no small part responsible for, is certainly a choice.
when one understands the unified and singular nature of existence, its easier to see how the greed driving the actions of those in power is also the necessary call for others to respond. with the call getting louder and more extreme, many are waking up to the truth of their reality. anyone hoping life will go back to normal will not survive the transformation, only those who embrace change as a necessary growth opportunity to overcome darker elements of our collective culture and experience. for example, we all understand the sickness if an individual pedo, but we have yet to fully expose and understand the breadth of the affliction. It will continue to reveal itself like an infected wound that can no longer be ignored and must be treated. so yes, they do want us to leave their platform only they don’t know it and they will only inspire a better one to be built with a purpose beyond individual gain. The enshitification is a blessing.
I think I’m too sober for this shit.
Brother, I hope so.
I feel like this is something the autistic brain notices a lot, and may regular folks not so much.
Linux
I still have clients refusing to buy Office 365 subscriptions and insist on sticking with their old copies of Office 2016. I’d love to see how Microsoft is gonna convince those cheap fucks that this is the correct path forward. This OS is dead.
It may not even be them being cheap, just that most people/organisations not directly tech-focused simply aren’t inclined to update software. Like wearing clothing until it starts to fall apart. That trend is another nail in the coffin
To be honest offline Office 2016 is a solid product and the desktop software is still more snappy and capable than the online counterparts. If you don’t need collaboration and online integration there’s little reason to go subscription based. I can understand that small companies make that decision. After all it is just a tool and not a goal in itself.
2016 is like the last good version of office imo
IIRC, it had already started taking too much RAM.
I had to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB just to be able to open more than 4 documents at once,
You can still buy Office 2024 outright. I guess they got rid of professional, but who really wants to use Access?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products
There’s also the github scripts which you can use to activate office
Those folks get left behind. That’s how it works
I’d love to see how Microsoft is gonna convince those cheap fucks that this is the correct path forward
I suspect we’re going to see some kind of sweeping compatibility issues in the next few years. Possibly a really ugly virus rips through the business community to scare people into switching.
I hope one OEM finally buckles and starts selling laptops preconfigured to install and run older versions of Office and such in Wine.
OEMs are in a tough spot. crossing Microsoft risks serious blowback or even being cut out of the ecosystem entirely
Absolutely, but this whole Windows 365 thing puts their place in the ecosystem in complete jeopardy. Why would MS need them anymore, they have Azure, the OS, and the AI bullshit. I truly do hope one of the more desperate OEMs takes a chance and tries, though I know it is unlikely.
remember when windows 10 was supposed to be the last os they ever made
Dude, they’re still struggling with Windows 11 adoption because of the unreasonable requirements of a TPM 2.0 capable motherboard/CPU… and they are asking people to upgrade their CPUs again?
They only started seeing real growth in Windows 11 numbers as of January of this year. Windows 11 finally hit 73% last month while Windows 10 is down to 27%. Linux continues to gain marketshare, and there’s no telling if the reason that Win 11 is finally gaining marketshare is from people dumping Windows entirely for other options. Mac and Chromebook shares have been growing as well! It took Microsoft four and a half years from release to break 50% Win 11 adoption and they want to release Win 12 on year five while forcing more upgrades when half the people who got in just upgraded?
This on top of trade wars, actual wars, and an AI arms race that is making buying PC parts obscenely overpriced… and they think people will fucking go for this?
The suits at Microsoft are out of their fucking minds. Even businesses won’t want to upgrade this soon after many only just making upgrades to meet Windows 11 requirements just recently… because businesses are also facing the same increased costs due to the above issues!
god i hope they fuck this up
They’re already fucking this up with vibe-coding Windows 11, so if they seriously go all-in on this, Windows 12 will be a bigger disaster than fucking Windows Vista and Windows Millennium Edition combined.
…and frankly, I think they will. They’ve bet the farm on this AI shit, and they need to force it into everything to justify it’s fucking existence even though Copilot is the most dogshit out of all these dogshit generative AI systems.
vista was great on compliant hardware. w11 is very much not.
Right, but that’s just it, they’re basically pulling another Vista if they release Windows 12 later this year.
It’s not clear whether Windows 12 will welcome any non-NPU processors. More likely, PCs that don’t meet its system requirements will lose some functionality.
As the article reasonably posits, it’s way more likely that they’ll just degrade the experience for people without NPUs, which in other words means decreased performance on older hardware, a la Vista on non-compliant hardware. Yes, Vista fucked up rollout by claiming that some hardware was Vista ready when it wasn’t, but basically the same could happen here regarding lack of NPUs.
whoof. i still don’t understand what makes an npu different from a vector coprocessor (except the proprietary api) so if they’re smart about it they’ll fall back to gpu use. they will not be smart about it.
The suits at Microsoft are out of their fucking minds.
Yes. They are stupid and don’t deserve their huge paychecks.
They could’ve done basically nothing. Maybe security updates. And they would’ve had a decent brand that kept bringing in money. Their leadership is worse than doing nothing. A dog would make a better ceo.
Wish granted ~wiggles nose~
The OS desktop environment has stagnated over the past 15 years.
Many businesses have transitioned from a 3-4 year rotation on desktops/laptops to every 5-6 years today. Hell my work laptop is 6 years old and I don’t forsee replacing it for another 3-4 years. For work functions there is no significant improvement to upgrading more frequently today.
So if they launched W12 next year, widespread adoption will likely not occur until 2032-2033 or at the Win11 EOL whichever comes first.
The developers today are working on a system that will not become mainstream for 8+ years. They want to launch in the next 2 years knowing it will not be adopted for years.
They ignoring the reality of today’s market and building to meet the latest fads. It’s Windows 8 all over again.
Yeah, most peoples needs have largely plateaued IMO.
I think it is why AI (Mostly just LLMs) have gotten so much hype. It’s something different. Desktop environments aren’t going to get much better. Mobile phones have been black rectangles for a decade with very little improvement. AI is something new, and feels like an advancement, even if 99% of the proposed use-cases have failed to actually work.
Chromebook sales are up
So we’re not out of the woods yet
Windows 7 was arguably the last OS they ever made.
This line of thought goes all the way back to NT, and even then IBM would have some comments.
DOS was the last one they built, and they made a really decent GUI for it before they switched to NT.
And they still haven’t even finished making PowerShell anywhere near as functional as Bash or any other Linux shell environment. First version of PowerShell came out exactly 10 years after the first version of NT.
I don’t outright hate PowerShell but it’s clearly a hacky afterthought after realizing Linux was eating their lunch in the server space via quick rollouts to thousands of computers at once through Bash scripting.
I find PS pretty great. Probably the best improvement to Windows since going 32-bit.
For sure, it’s a vast improvement, but there’s still so much you can’t do with it.
Mostly because unlike Bash and DOS, which are CLIs that get GUIs slapped on top, PowerShell is a CLI slapped on top of a GUI.
I disagree, you can do almost anything with powershell. There isn’t always an exact command for it, but like 95% of Windows configuration lives in the registry. If you know what to change, you can make powershell manage any setting. Which is similar to the way that Bash controls Linux, through modifying config files.
I do wish they had more/better tools for configuring the OS, but it works pretty well if you know the arcane magic of Windows.
And when it comes to being a functional script, I’d take powershell over bash any day. That’s preference, obviously, but objects instead of strings makes it way easier to move data from one process to another.
Wasn’t 7 just an visually updated NT.
everything after w2k is NT. by kernel version, its
- NT4: 4.0
- 2000: 5.0
- XP: 5.1
- Vista: 6.0
- 7: 6.1
- 8: 6.2
- 8.1: 6.3
- 10: 10.0
haven’t checked 11 but i bet you they bumped the major again.
You skipped vista, XP, and 2000.
Windows 10 arguably became passable for stability about 3 years after release… but you still had to cut out the advertising bloat, spyware, and all which undermined any gains of stability because that shit was just fucking annoying.
wasn’t advertised as such though
No, because that was a shitty headline that mischaracterized an employee’s one-off statement and was then held up as gospel truth by the internet.
it was from a press conference where they said they were done with version numbers and that windows 10 would basically be supported forever. that’s not mischaracterisation
It was from a low-level spokesperson’s statement at a press junket that the (then-current) internal versioning system was being abandoned.
It’s absolutely a mischaracterization.
i linked the junket in question.
It was certainly the last one that I voluntarily used.
Yes, like Arch but for windows
No, that is not what they said. Stop spreading this propaganda.
Absolutely, it was at the height of the “software as a service” phase and they were doing rolling updates for the Windows Insider program. For a hot minute they absolutely planned on it just being “Windows” from then on.
Hopefully, SteamOS Desktop will be in the wild and shaked off any teething issues. I want to switch to an OS that is suitable for a power-casual. If it looks like a 2nd American Civil War or WW3 is on, I might switch early to Cachy.
Good, keep killing your own OS and forcing people to alternatives.
I love how short sighted they are.
the thing is, alternatives need to be able to cater also the tech illiterate. Otherwise we will have growing number of people that will just accept all this bullshit and eventually start to view more free systems with suspicion(after some propaganda from corporations), which might lead to pressure to limit/restrict those free systems in personal usage.
We really need a distro that we can recommend to some grandma who can barely open their pc by themselves and which they can use easily and safely. Since most people use pc for mostly browsing and maybe printing,text editing, i think it shouldnt be too hard to make something that is easy to use since you can leave majority of functions off and mostly have to think of ease of use/automation.
Windows is not a simple OS to use. The matter isn’t to make a distro simple enough for the tech-illiterate to use, but one familiar enough for their habits to still work. And given it took two years for my mother to understand the floppy icon on libreoffice save the same way as the one in Works 3.0, it’s not exactly a simple problem to solve.
Agree, Windows 11 is now harder to use now than Linux distro like Mint. Just to setup, you have to create a Microsoft account and if you want to skip that, then you have to put commands in powershell or use rufus to disable all that.
And don’t get me started on forced restarts for updates, the abysmal S0 modern sleep implementation, and so many more. I have to use gpedit.msc just to fix these issues. I think the only reason why Windows still has such a high market is because of enterprise agreements and that it’s pre-installed on every PC laptop.
I love how short sighted they are.
That might not be the case.
Ever since Windows 8, MS seems to be shifting the bar for what users will keep using Windows each version. This should get all but the most compliant ones out of their system.
Next, they might have multiple time bombs in the Linux ecosystem.
xzmight have just been a POC.So what we might have here:
- Keep all easily surveillable people on the system and tighten the leashes.
- Use the multi-point security compromisations all over the Linux ecosystem at opportune moments before they are caught, robbing the users of their systems in some shape or form.
- I feel like they might have had to speed up their plans due to the reduced control they would have from RISC V proliferation.
- – a. Use the opportunities from step 2 to neutralise HVTs and do whatever they want from those who become powerless (jobless/moneyless).
