I don’t get it.

thinking that the year 2000 was 10 years ago.

This is patently absurd, 10 years ago was 1994.

And I don’t think GitHub existed in 2000. Probably even git.

NDISWrapper used to be the worst.

Giving you, if you were lucky, VESA graphics and maybe a mouse pointer because XFree86 somehow insisted on being told whether you have a PS/2 or USB mouse. 3d acceleration only with nvidia and that required manual installation because nvidia never provided anything but blobs. IIRC ATI drivers were simply non-existent (didn’t have an ATI card back then), that only changed when AMD bought them. Whippensnappers won’t believe it but once upon the time, nvidia was actually the company to go with when running linux. And Epic didn’t hate Linux yet, UT2004 came with linux binaries on the dvd.

Yeah, all my Linux installs after about 2003 were liveCDs. I used to carry my Gentoo CD around as my diagnostic tools for a while helping people fix their windows machines (or just backing up everything off it before reformatting).

I think Knoppix was the first live CD I used. It was mind blowing. Now you can just carry around a whole personally configured system on a USB stick. Pretty cool.

20 years ago was still xorg.conf times

I once tried to install Linux around then, not long after ISA cards with Plug n Play became a thing.

Linux: So now to even pretend to get the card to work you have to download and run a tool to generate a config file to feed to another tool so you can then install the driver and get basic functionality from the card (which is all that’s available on Linux). Except the first tool doesn’t generate a working config file - it generates a file containing every possible configuration your hardware supports hypothetically having and requires you to find and uncomment the one you want to actually use. Requiring you to manually configure the card and thus kinda defeating the point of Plug n Play (though I guess that configuration was in software, not by setting jumpers).

Same card in Windows at the time: Install card, boot Windows. Card is automatically identified and given a valid configuration, built in drivers provide basic functionality. Can download software from manufacturer for more advanced functionality.

That soured me on Linux for a long time. Might try it again sometime soon just to see what it’s like if nothing else. ProtonDB doesn’t have the most positive things to say about my Steam collection, and I imagine odds are worse for stuff not available on Steam.

In my experience, many business applications now run on the Web or are being upgraded to be. Where I work Windows pcs endure only for those who have to do technical drawing, most terminals are Ubuntu updated by ansible scripts and connected to an active directory domain running on Samba. The few PCs with Windows are slowly disappearing as hardware is upgraded ( medium-sized company with about sixty PCs ). There are also a couple of Mac’s used by in-house developers/IT.

Don’t need to compete when users don’t have a choice.

It breeds complacency.

What’s your recommended Linux distro for a Windows gamer to try?

You’re not gonna get anything requiring Ring 0 access (like Vanguard) running on Linux anytime soon.

Good. Kernel mode anticheat is fucking malware. Anticheat for a game should never have the same power over the system as a driver, which needs those privileges to communicate with hardware.

Currently school holidays here and we have multiple machines running Steam on Linux all day playing a good variety of games. None of them are competitive online games that require a rootkit so we are just fortunate I guess that the household prefers co-op lan games, sims etc. I suspect these rootkits are about as effective as anti-doping in sports. Determined cheats still cheat so anyone installing malware to play those sorts of games is probably fooling themselves.

If Back to the Future was made today, Marty would have traveled back to 1994.

2004 was twenty years ago :|

I was breaking redhat and fedora trying to install wifi drivers for pcmcia wifi cards. So much modprobe. That’s why I switched to Ubuntu.

I’ve been shoving a ton of .exe files into steam

I wasn’t aware that was an option. Do you have a link on how to do that?

i like using bottles or lutris for that, you can change wine versions and parameters easier in case something doesn’t work.

*Enough paying users

Yes, I’ve been trying hard to squeeze some linux into my life, currently trying to turn an old laptop into a little music machine for jamming with on me midi keyboard. I’ve run across quite a few issues just trying to get specific software working. I did cave at one point and try to use windows 10 but their installation media tool would fail every time I tried and the hardware is too old for windows 11 lol. It also triggered my gag reflex just thinking of all the ads it would feed me and all the bullshit I’d have to disable to make it respect my privacy. A number of different distros just worked flawlessly, though, and if all I needed to do was simple computer things and web I’d be laughing.

I create tables every day for run-of-the-mill stuff that simply doesn’t need a database. No one has time for that.

It seems that your issue isn’t the lack of tables in sheets but no easy way to create a simple db.

If we want to break Microsoft’s monopoly than we can’t do that by reimplementing Microsoft’s monopolistic ecosystem. And that creates the opportunity to correct questionable and arbitrary Microsoft decisions.

People are used to MS Office now but so were they used to typewriters a few decades ago. And if we’re changing OSes we don’t have to stick to one office suite.

Needing to use command line for some things that should be a right click

Right click where? All major DE’s/WM’s implement stuff in their own way. The problem here is we don’t (and won’t) have a unified GUI that everyone uses, unlike the other two main OS’s. (Note: I don’t see this as a problem, more as a result of the FLOSS ecosystem being such a rich soil to build stuff on.)

I think Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning was the Command Line has some valid points even today.

Yeah, there’s still some other little things, but it’s surprising just how good the out of the box experience is, especially considering how little support the project has had from hardware and software vendors.

I understand the face value of it, but I really hate the argument of (basically) “Linux isnt going to take off until it just becomes Windows (or emulates it perfectly click for click)”

People always act like Linux is less buttery smooth two click accessible as a style choice, but cranking out a system like that and keeping it up costs money. If Linux dedicated to supporting every dongle on the planet themselves and all this other shiz, they’d have to monetize too.

So much less now needs the terminal. Personally, I don’t get why people don’t mind doing a search to find where windows hid some particular setting 3 submenus deep, but lose their fucking mind over the thought of doing a search to double check which command they need.

Linux doesn’t need to change, people’s priorities need to shift. This obsession with free services and not having to know shit about how shit works is how we got here, and shaking that is the only way out. For example, People will recognize that google is bad but if you point out you can get a domain and basic email hosting for $20/yr or whatever, its always “sucks teeth yeaaaaa but i dont have $20 for something like that and idk how stuff works” conveniently, you dont need to “yeaaaaa, but nooooooo”

Like, I hate cars, but I can’t imagine not knowing how to change a tire or my oil, etc basic stuff, but there are people who call AAA when they get a flat. Its nuts to me.

there’s problems like Libre Office

A very simple problem that I absolutely hate in LibreOffice that I can’t find a solution for. When typing in a formula in a spreadsheet and then trying to autocomplete it, you cannot use ‘Tab’. If you want to do a vlookup and start typing “=vloo” and then hit ‘Tab’ it just changes to the next column. Working in Excel at work and then switching to Calc at home is jarring and terrible. That option can’t be changed as far as I know. It’s a complete dealbreaker for me between the two. Luckily I don’t need to do much in my personal life on spreadsheets anymore or need to use my home PC for work like I used to.

Needing to use command line for some things that should be a right click, not supporting right click, ambiguities galore when looking at a package repository, odd defaults in packages that one really wouldn’t expect to have to check (e.g. Selecting RDP connection in a Remote app, but it defaults the security to something other than RDP?)

Sounds like you’re using a GNOME Desktop. You should give KDE Plasma a try instead. KDE Plasma basically gives you a Windows-esq experience without trying to install something like GNOME extensions.

For a regular user there’s not much point into going into the command-line anymore.

there’s problems like Libre Office devs …

Sure but there’s also alternatives. LibreOffice doesn’t try to emulate Microsoft Office and they never really have. They won’t even try to be compatible with MS Office but rather they do with OOXML which Microsoft created for other Office suites to be compatible with it but then just never supported it very well. Some alternatives do however. WPS Office is perhaps the most popular alternative for this that does try to be compatible with MS Office and emulate its feel and features but ONLYOFFICE is also a contender.

I’m sorry, your standard 2000 era Logitech mouse doesn’t work? I find that hard to believe. I’ve been using Linux as my only desktop Os and Logitech mice both since 2000, and if there is one thing that always has worked, its the mice.

I recently got back into the homelab hobby. Fucking around with installer drivers has been eye opening. I had to fight to get drives recognized and the same with NICs. Funny, Proxmox worked without any issues (virt-io was leveraged, but the internet made that obvious before I even downloaded the ISO for it).

A Linux user with a relationship?? Impossible! (/s)

Actually, after a grueling 7 hours installation journey, i removed those peasky things by tossing an LUKS LVM filesystem over it and using that drive as a secondary drive on my desktop. Fuxk windows

Also horses in Gentoo

Yeah, same for me with NixOS

For me, one of the other annoyances is that both Windows and Mac OS push their services. Windows it’s gotten ridiculous and on Mac. I just don’t have the compatibility with all the stuff I want to use. Like I’m not in the ecosystem so it just doesn’t work for me as an operating system

May I recommend a versioning or snapshot capable filesystem like BTRFS? It lets me tweak and make mistakes with little fear.

With that said, always keep proper backups of data you care about.

I went through that phase too! The tweak times are so much fun and breaking things is a good way to learn.

Now I am in a sane defaults mode. Where I just want everything to work well. Pop on so far has been rock solid. I actually have been trying to not touch the terminal to see how that feels as a user. In been 4 months and so far it hasn’t been a problem.

As a part-time sysadmin at my small company. We use Altium and Solidworks, so we need windows.

I have 10x more windows problems than Linux problems like a bug for around 5 or so people where a windows update would disable the microphone, but every single microphone menu and setting would say it is enabled and working properly. You HAD to use their troubleshooter (which they are now phasing out, wtf) in order for it to be auto fixed. So soon it will probably be replaced by something else that won’t fix the issue.

0 information online about it, 501 different way to fix audio issues, none of which work.

Nowadays the only problems that I have with Linux are slight bugs or user errors, honestly.

When the BSOD code has nothing to do with your actual problem

It may be due in part to age. Partly why I’m replacing my laptop is that gaming hardware stayed pretty accessible for three years, but this year has leapt forward significantly and my laptop isn’t keeping up as well as it used to.

It’ll be a perfect PC for non-gaming though. :)

I waited to install Linux until I put in another drive to dual-boot, and proceeded to never go back to my windows install.
I was surprised at how easy it was to get things running, and any difficulties I had were mostly the result of me assuming things were more complicated than they are and not looking for simple solutions.

Word.

I ran a dual boot setup for about six weeks, but the performance issues and bugs just got too annoying over time.

I’m planning to get a new PC later this year for gaming. Just gonna wipe windows off this one and make it my “all other stuff” system when that time comes. :)