Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 192
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
In honor of @WhiningCoil's epic rant about Microsoft products, can we talk about "personal stacks"?
I'm about ready to jump multiple ships. Right now, we have one Windows 10 desktop chugging along, some chromebooks for just hanging out and browsing (or bringing up recipes for cooking or whatever), and android phones.1 I'm still okay with the phones. Like WhiningCoil said, Windows has gotten worse and worse, and our current desktop hardware is in the "will they, won't they?" land of whether Microsoft will even allow it to upgrade to Win11, not to mention whether I even want it. It seems like every week, I'm learning about yet another "feature" they've added that I just have to go turn off (and then put on my long list of stuff to turn off for the next time I have to bring to life a new windows machine... or reset this one (yes, I just had to reset it not long ago, because it went utterly bonkers with forgetting to let me have proper privileges)). Sunsetting of security updates (as insane as they've become) might push me over the edge.
As for the chromebooks, anyone else looking to jump ship because of Manifest V3? Maybe I need to suck it up and just try out uBlock Origin Lite for a while, see how it goes. But we've been having other issues, too. Since getting the chromebooks, we've done a lot of simple coordination stuff with google sheets, but they've been really glitchy lately; about half the time, when I navigate to an open sheets tab, the entire display is all scrambled. I have to switch tabs and switch back, and then most of the time it'll work. I don't recall seeing this behavior when I go to sheets in Chrome on my non-ChromeOS devices. On top of that, there's an issue with internet connectivity randomly dropping (still can't figure out if it's fundamentally a hardware limitation/problem or something going on in ChromeOS). For several years, these have been amazing, cheap devices that just worked for a lot of our poking around day to day, but the annoyances are building up.
I have been seriously considering just tossing both Windows and ChromeOS. Apple is too expensive; I genuinely like having super cheap chromebooks that are small (even the smallest MacBook Air is pretty big for just throwing around), have real keyboards, can be abused, and just thrown away and cheaply replaced if I break one (I could blow through at least five cheap chromebooks for the cost of one MacBook Air). Soooo... I'm thinking maybe just Linux everywhere?! Probably the biggest barrier I have to that is the Wife Approval Factor. I'm definitely her "Tech Department", and it would basically be on me to retrain her and work through her annoyance at having to learn new tech things.
Any thoughts? Has anyone else taken a similar plunge, especially with a less-techy wife involved? What are y'all currently running?
1 - Of course, we also have work computers, which will always be Windows for the rest of time. Nothing we can do about it, but there's not really any problem with the extremely small number of things that we need to have cross the work/personal barrier.
I think I need to sack up and just switch to Linux. I have a spare machine that would probably be good for it. A 6th generation Intel I think with a Geforce 970.
It's kind of a cart before the horse problem for me though. I love my daily driver, and I actually really enjoy all the bonkers RTX features I can get in games now. Sadly it seems like these are mostly Windows only. And frankly, if I want my games to "just work", I have to keep Windows.
So, much as I have grown to hate Windows and Microsoft, if I want to say goodbye to them, I need to say goodbye to a lot of the features my fancy pants graphics card has. But maybe when I go to actually try it I'll be surprised! You never know.
Of course the other hole I've dug myself is I purchase most of my games on GOG first, then Epic, and lastly Steam. Because my top priority is how easy it is to check out without saving my credit card number, and Steam is by far the most odious, wanting my full address and phone number, and always attempting to greedily save it all by default. But Steam also has the best Linux compatibility, so fuck me I guess.
I should probably take the plunge soon, before support for Windows 10 runs out next year.
I highly recommend taking the plunge. I did it 2 or 3 years ago, once Microsoft started to put ads in Windows 10. I do have an easier time than you will because I'm a heavy Steam user, but I think you'll find that it's still plenty doable. If you want a piece of software which can help to grease the wheels for you a bit, look into Lutris. It is a launcher/installer much like Steam, with scripts to install games provided by the community. It works pretty well, in my experience.
I saw in another comment that you're thinking you'll go with Ubuntu. Just be aware that Canonical has been taking some user-hostile steps themselves, such as hijacking where packages get installed from or having the package manager spit out "news" which is really just an ad for their paid services. It's nowhere near Microsoft level yet, but as a Windows refugee that stuff makes me kind of nervous. So I personally have been avoiding Ubuntu. But you will certainly have some of the easiest on-ramp to Linux with Ubuntu, as a lot of guides people write will be written with that audience in mind.
You son of a bitch... I'm in.
Ordered another 1 TB M.2 drive, got Mint Linux ready to go on a flash drive. We'll see how this goes. Steam on Linux and that Heroic program above sound promising.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link