TLDR:
Windows 11 v24H2 and beyond will have Recall installed on every system. Attempting to remove Recall will now break some file explorer features such as tabs.
YT Video (5min)
Just like systemd became a dependency for stuff that never needed it in the first place…
Comparing systemd to recall is like comparing apples to gauges of guitar strings.
I was comparing the approach, not the products.
The context matters, doesn’t it? Like it or not, systemd is essential for moderns Linux systems by design, it’s necessary for them to work. You can’t say the same about recall. Comparing the approach without comparing the products is unfair.
systemd is essential for moderns Linux systems
And yet moderm linux systems existed prior to systemd, as modern windows exited without recall… Yes i can say the same. You can run linux without systemd (ask Gentoo, Devuan, Slackware and others) and you can run windows without recall. The dependency is forced and artificial.
It’s almost as if standardization under Systemd can be beneficial. Still, I’m not a fan of the monolithic approach.
I guess you were downvoted because Recall is a closed-source privacy nightmare, and systemd, for all its flaws, is open source.
Does it relate to your statement? No. But people will take pitchforks if you compare the two, I fancy.
I fancy
I’m not saying you aren’t fancy, but grab a pitchfork and start fencing with it!!
(But yes, I was a bit confused by downvotes too but your explanation makes sense - which is weird bcs now that I understand it as such I’m def in the pitchfork crowd, even if I think we should be either way more lenient or give waaay more funding for the open sauce peeps providing us the rescue we don’t deserve)
I remember them doing this with Internet Explorer back in the 90s.
“We can’t remove this thing we don’t want to remove! Look! It’s hastily integrated with the OS! We can’t remove it ever!”
it was vastly easier to install linux mint than it is to figure out registry editing or whatever the fuck i’d need to avoid this
The difference between Linux and Windows is on Linux you’re working with the operating system to make modifications and taking advantage of its vast resources (extensive wikis on major distos, terminal auto completion with fish and zsh, preconfigured defaults when installing through the package manager, etc). Meanwhile on Windows you’re actively working against the system in order to disable unwanted features like AI and telemetry.
(Also I would recommend looking into Debian, the software may be a tad bit old but its the most stable distribution)
Happy Debian daily driver here. I would never ever recommend raw Debian to a garden variety would-be Linux convert.
If you think something like Debian is something a Linux illiterate can just pick up and start using proficiently, you’re severely out of touch with how most computer users actually think about their machines. If you even so much as know the name of your file explorer program, you’re in a completely different league.
Debian prides itself on being a lean, no bloat, and stable environment made only of truly free software (with the ability to opt-in to nonfree software). To people like us, that’s a clean, blank canvas on a rock-solid, reliable foundation that won’t enshittify. But to most people, it’s an austere, outdated, and unfashionable wasteland full of flaky, ugly tooling.
Debian can be polished to any standard one likes, but you’re expected to do it yourself. Most people just aren’t in the game to play it like that. Debian saddles questions of choice almost no one is asking, or frankly, even knew was a question that was ask*-able*. Mandatory customizeability is a flaw, not a feature.
I am absolutely team “just steer them to Mint”. All the goodness of Debian snuck into their OS like medicine in a kid’s dessert, wrapped up in something they might actually find palatable. Debian itself can be saved for when, or shall I say if, the user eventually goes poking under the hood to discover how the machine actually ticks.
Debian is probably one of the worst choices for someone looking to try Linux, especially for gaming.
Nothing better than setting everything up only to find you can’t install some new thing because you’re xyz is too old
I was on Debian Sid for a year or 2 and gaming was working perfectly until I did an update that uninstalled my GUI and WiFi drivers. I’m on Mint now and it’s been smooth sailing so far
Debian is always my first choice, but I’m not playing the newest stuff (Far Cry 5/7D2D/Ark/etc), while it hasn’t been ‘smooth sailing’, I haven’t found anything that just refuses to play.
Welcome to Linux Mint mate!
Maybe Cinnamon mate!
I thought Cinnamon and Mate were different things… /s
For the people who doesn’t get it (I notice your /s, so you do get it): It’s has a hidden joke. Mate can also mean “friend”. So “Welcome to Linux Mint mate!” can mean two things at the same time. Hence my reply: “Maybe Cinnamon mate!”, where “Cinnamon” refers to “Linux Mint Cinnamon”, but mate just refers to friend/buddy. But Mate can also mean MATE, a classic desktop environment for Linux Mint.
Oh haha, didn’t realise that pun was intended… But yeah thats right :)
yes thank you!
And some Windows update would “accidentally” undo that anyways.
Nah, mate, Linux is hard, you need to know what a Wayland is. In comparison, Windows is very simple and lightweight, you only have to run a dozen Powershell scripts and edit the registry weekly to get rid of ads.
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie… “Windows is very simple and lightweight” 😂
“Do I look like I know what a Wayland is?”
I just want a picture of a goddamn hotdog
You sonova… Have an upvote
I absolutely love Linux mint. I use it daily for dev work, but I’d also install it on my mother’s old laptop so she could keep using Facebook on it or whatever.
I’ve been very impressed by the out-of-the-box experience with Pop!_OS. My Steam games work, and I have Elder Scrolls Online running through Lutris.
So far, everything just works.
I have to admit that one does look really good too.
I have a couple of old windows machines at home, so eventually (maybe as a winter project) I’ll need to decide if I want to try some other distros long term.
Same. First distro that was actually painless 10 years ago, and I haven’t looked back.
This is where some Windows shill says “you only need to fix it once!” as if this is your only computer ever, and the only problem you need to fix. And then Windows changes it back to their default in next year’s update.
And as if it’s entirely reasonable for the maker of your OS to intentionally work against your ability to control your own hardware and what runs on it.
I’m thinking of changing my life (to require less of rot-affected computing) and moving to FreeBSD. Even Linux is hard in small ways, even if worlds easier than Windows. Would be OpenBSD if not for games.
Mate you think BSD is better than Linux for ease-of-configuration – in what fucking universe?!
I dunno
in what fucking universe
“BSD” is one thing, so can’t answer your question.
If you meant that Linux has a lot of graphical configurators to do things - GUI is not necessarily easier than editing config files, because config files can be clean and compact and examples well-commented, and documentation can actually describe how to use the bloody thing. It’s just that in Linux this is not the case. While GUI configurators can be hardly usable nonsense and yes, in Linux they mostly are.
And this difference in wide strokes is indeed common for all 4 BSDs against Linux for things that differ between operating systems.
The rest sucks just as badly.
What happens if you copy explorer.exe from a prior release of Windows and replace the recall-infested version?
Incompatible DLLs most likely.
At that point why bother? Either accept it and move on, or axe the partition and start browsing forums full of furry pfp gentleanimals advising you on how to fix your latest issue with your new linux installation.
I know you’re mixing in joking with your response, but can I point out the irony that a Linux advocate is telling me essentially “don’t try to hack a solution, just give it up entirely and adopt a completely different product”. That is the opposite of the Linux mindset I’m familiar with.
It’s because Linux isn’t actually trying to work against you, even if it may feel that way to a noobie at first. Guaranteed this requirement exists to make Recall impossible to uninstall, and for no other reason.
The question isn’t “why take the time to hack windows” it’s “why keep supporting a company that requires you to undo so much of the product just to maintain control and privacy with your own hardware, and which actively seeks to sabotage attempts to do so.”
It’s because Linux isn’t actually trying to work against you, even if it may feel that way to a noobie at first.
Your statement suggest that if Windows is “trying to work against you” then Linux is “trying to work for you”. I don’t believe that is the case either. Linux works for itself, and if what you want can be done with Linux, great! If you have the skills to alter Linux to do what you want, also great! If you have neither of those, then you’ll be left without a specific solution. Linux is great, but trying to pitch it as purely altruistic and supportive isn’t accurate and could lead those trying it to abandon it early because their own experience doesn’t meet this implicit expectation.
The question isn’t “why take the time to hack windows” it’s “why keep supporting a company that requires you to undo so much of the product just to maintain control and privacy with your own hardware, and which actively seeks to sabotage attempts to do so.”
You don’t escape that problem entirely in Linux, it just takes different forms. Proprietary vendor Linux hardware drivers would be a perfect example.
So why hack Windows to make it do what you want? Because that was one of the basic tenets underlying Linux. There is no perfect operating system, just different tradeoffs. If one OS meets most of your needs for a specific task, and you have a way to hack it to fix the rest, thats the better solution rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. Departing from this idea moves the definition of computing from a tool to a religion/social movement. That’s fine for some, but not my calling.
Your statement suggest that if Windows is “trying to work against you” then Linux is “trying to work for you”.
That’s literally not what I said, nor what I implied. If you want to interpret it that way it’s your choice, but I’m not going to defend a statement I didn’t make and didn’t try to make.
You don’t escape that problem entirely in Linux, it just takes different forms. Proprietary vendor Linux hardware drivers would be a perfect example.
I feel like you aren’t distinguishing between “problem exists” and “problem exists because the makers of my OS want it to exist.”
So why hack Windows to make it do what you want?
I literally said this was NOT the question.
I’m not trying to strawman you here, so lets revisit these to make sure we understand what each other is saying.
Your statement suggest that if Windows is “trying to work against you” then Linux is “trying to work for you”.
That’s literally not what I said, nor what I implied. If you want to interpret it that way it’s your choice, but I’m not going to defend a statement I didn’t make and didn’t try to make.
I don’t understand why you’d bring up “trying to work against you” if you weren’t implying that Linux was the opposite. I suggested you were implying it was the opposite, and you’re communicating now that is not what you mean. I don’t think you’re suggesting that Linux “is trying to work against you”. So if its not a positive, and not a negative, you’re suggesting what…neutral? As in, “Linux is neither trying to work against you nor is trying to help you”. I suppose I can agree with that, but I’m not sure how that supports your argument.
What am I missing you are trying to communicate with your statement?
You don’t escape that problem entirely in Linux, it just takes different forms. Proprietary vendor Linux hardware drivers would be a perfect example.
I feel like you aren’t distinguishing between “problem exists” and “problem exists because the makers of my OS want it to exist.”
You’re right, I’m not distinguishing between them because as an end user the reason is irrelevant. I’m left with the same result, with the same choices about how to solve it for myself. I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to get my computing done.
So why hack Windows to make it do what you want? I literally said this was NOT the question.
My apologies for the paraprhasing of your position of my position.
Lets look at your exact question:
“why keep supporting a company that requires you to undo so much of the product just to maintain control and privacy with your own hardware, and which actively seeks to sabotage attempts to do so.”
My answer: Because I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to get my computing done. If a hack to the existing product can do that faster than changing the world, then the hack is the better choice FOR ME. If its a social/religious movement for you, feel free to spread the “good word”. I won’t stop you, but I’m not interested in joining your evangelistic endeavor.
Man, if “Microsoft is actively trying to take control of my hardware and prevent me from deciding how it is used” and “Linux has a learning curve and lacks market dominance to get hardware manufacturers to play with them sometimes” seem like equivalent circumstances to you, there is no number of iterations to this back and forth that are going to arrive at any common ground between you and I. I can only say good day to you.
Guaranteed this requirement exists to make Recall impossible to uninstall, and for no other reason.
Or maybe it’s so you can use it in search box in explorer.exe
how the fuck do you even begin making recall a dependency for explorer?
screw Microsoft…i hope people will consider to switch to Linux
THIS IS WHY I AM STILL ON WINDOWS 10 AND DUALBOOTING LINUX
Good thing I don’t use Tabs.
Linux is here to welcome you
Man, I cling to Windows like nobody else, as I didn’t have any advertising issues and such, but this will be the final straw.
It’s already enough of a spying system but I refuse to have it as a spy on crack.
Time to read into distros.
As far as Linux distros are concerned, really, any distro is just a package manager with repos and a set of default utilities. Essentially, a distro is an opinion on how you should use your system, not a law.
Stay away from Arch and Gentoo for your first distro. These are basically meme distros, especially Gentoo. They allow for a lot of flexibility and building a really minimal install, but come with install-time complexity you really don’t need. Try them later on if you’re interested. Stay away from nixOS for now too, although it’s also awesome.
Package managers
Essentially, you have two main packaging types: RPM (used by Fedora/RedHat’s dnf, previously yum and (Open)SuSE’s zypper) and deb (used by apt mostly, dunno if others).
Either one is fine, but I think you’ll probably find more software available as debs. But the difference barely exists and with GUI apps you can usually install a flatpak anyway (more on this later).
Deb
Everything deb/apt comes from the Debian lineage.
You have Debian, the granddaddy of stability, releases come every few years and are tested thoroughly. After package freeze, only bugfixes and security updates usually get added. Then you have Ubuntu, a fork of Debian with more frequent releases as well as Long-Term Support releases every 2 years. Ubuntu used to be the most recommended beginner distro, but it’s no longer the case - not just because it has ads in it, but also because it pushes Snaps over Flatpaks AND occasionally tries to force Snaps over regular packages (again, more on this later).
Then, much like Ubuntu has forked Debian, others have forked Ubuntu. There’s Linux Mint - used to have the same release cadence as Ubuntu, but now they only base their releases off Ubuntu LTS versions. Really, it’s Ubuntu without all the commercial stuff Ubuntu’s been pushing. And they maintain their own desktop environment(s), but you can get those elsewhere too. There’s also Pop!_OS which is developed by System76, a laptop manufacturer. It used to come with its’ own customizations on top of Gnome, but now they’re creating their own desktop environment altogether, which is currently in Alpha 2. And then there’s KDE Neon, which is also based on Ubuntu LTS, but it ships the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop environment, rather than whatever version is in the latest Ubuntu LTS.
Rpm
On the rpm side, you mostly have two families for non-enterprise users: Fedora, which has a similar release cadence to Ubuntu, but apparently keeps packages more up to date between releases and OpenSuSE, which has Leap (new versions every year, with critical bugfixes and security updates in the meantime) and Tumbleweed, which is rolling release, so you just get the latest version of every package that has been tested, rather than having to wait for a new release. Tumbleweed gets updated just about every day. There’s also Slowroll, which gets big updates monthly, but can still get bugfixes between those.
Desktop Environments
For just about any distro, you can get just about any desktop environment. Ubuntu and Fedora default to Gnome. KDE Neon is pretty much just meant to be used with KDE Plasma. Pop!_OS defaults to customized Gnome unless you get the alpha version of the new COSMIC desktop. OpenSUSE defaults to KDE Plasma.
For Ubuntu you get variants like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc, for whatever desktop you want, or you can switch alter (
apt install kubuntu-desktopfor an example). For Fedora, you can get a Fedora Spin, like Fedora KDE Spin for an example. Or you can similarly switch:dnf install @kde-desktop-environment. Same goes for all of them, really.Desktop environments: The two big ones are KDE Plasma (close to Windows in default appearance, but a lot more customizable, and more functional straight out of the box) and Gnome, which as of Gnome 3 is just… unique, I guess. It’s different. Then on the “Help I’m running this on a computer from 2004” side you have things like XFCE and LXQT. (Xubuntu, Lubuntu get their names from these). Those work just fine too, just a bit less eye candy. There are a lot more of less mainstream ones like Budgie or Enlightenment, but you can worry about those later.
Sandboxed applications - Flatpak, Snap
Now, why did I mention Flatpaks and Snaps earlier? Those are sandboxed package managers. A package comes with a sandbox of its’ own, and Flatpak or Snap keeps a copy of all the libraries it depends on, instead of using system libraries. This means that 1) There’s never a version conflict between what’s installed on your system and what the application uses and 2) You have multiple copies of some libraries (Flatpak and Snap both I think do try to deduplicate though so if two applications use the same version of a dependency, it keeps one copy stored). 3) You can install applications your distro doesn’t even have a package for.
Both also keep system resources out of reach of the applications, so they’re more secure to some degree if you don’t trust an application. This comes with limitations, too - sometimes you NEED your application to have access to something that’s limited in Flatpak or Snap. You can sorta fix this with flatseal for Flatpak, but it’s not perfect.
The real problem with Snap, besides having a proprietary backend vs Flatpak where you can use either Flathub or another application store with it, is that Ubuntu is starting to force it upon you - including for applications you may not want to run in a sandbox at all. You’ll run
apt install firefoxand it’ll play a trick on you and install the Snap instead of the deb. You lose some control over your system and how you use it. You can override this, but it’s possibly more work than you’d want to take on as a brand new Linux user.At the end of the day, I recommend using either OpenSuSE Tumbleweed (if you want latest and greatest always), Fedora, Linux Mint, or Pop!_OS. If you really want the latest and greatest KDE Plasma and don’t want Tumbleweed, then KDE Neon might make sense for you.
A distro is way more than just package managers, it’s also the level of testing before deployment, and a shitload of configuration and design decisions.
That said, everything from one distro can generally be configured to work like it does in another distro, but it’s not always easy.
If you want to try Linux, jump right into it, if there’s something you don’t like, maybe another Distro or DE has fixed that exact thing, and it’s easy to swap.
Ya, also you can just check them out on a “live” thumbdrive, say put Linux mint or whatever distro on a thumbdrive, boot from it and see if you like it. If you don’t, just remove the thumbdrive and reboot, no harm done.
Calling Arch a meme distro is unnecessarily insulting. I imagine the same applies to Gentoo, but I haven’t used it myself. It’s an enthusiast distro, for people who want to have control over how their system is set up while accepting the responsibility of having to set everything up.
I absolutely agree with recommending against it for somebody’s first experience - but if you’re willing to read through the guides and troubleshoot issues, you can learn a lot about how things work on Linux. It’s the kind of distro where you will have issues, and they will usually be due to your own mistakes.
I categorized them as meme distros because you’re going to spend more time getting things just right than actually using your computer, at least for a while. In fact you could say my favourite games to play on Gentoo were the Portage package manager and nano. Yes, I used it on my gaming PC.
The only thing that makes Arch harder to install than Debian is that you have to type “arch install” and hit enter instead of clicking on “install” using a mouse cursor.
It ain’t 2012 anymore.
For a while, maybe… But the two distinctions I’d want to make is that, one, that’s also mostly the time you’ll spend learning what you need to set up as part of your system, and two, things that might be out of your control on many distros. I’d also say that by calling it a “meme distro” you’re lumping it together with Hannah Montana Linux and similar.
I will certainly say, however, that I’m rather annoyed by all the people saying “Bro you can set up arch in a few minutes just run archinstal it’s easy”… Not only do I not believe it’s that easy when you don’t know what you’re doing and need to actually use the system, but that also seems to run counter to the point of arch. I think there’s at least two popular arch derivatives meant to remove the enthusiast aspect and provide a streamlined experience, so why recommend arch to new people if not as a learning experience?
OpenSuSE
As an openSUSE user, I want to also point out that you can upgrade from Leap -> Tumbleweed really easily, so I highly recommend starting with Leap and upgrading to Tumbleweed later once you get a feel for the system and want something a little more exciting and up-to-date.
That said, I don’t recommend openSUSE for a new user unless you’re in Europe, because there just isn’t a huge userbase or single community I can point at. Support is high quality, when you can find it, but quite a bit less plentiful vs Fedora. That said, SUSE is huge in Europe, so you could probably find a lot more non-English language support.
So if you’re sold on an RPM distro, I recommend Fedora, not because openSUSE is bad, but purely based on community support. That said, my primary recommendation is Linux Mint due to community size and proximity to Debian (which also has a huge community).
OpenSUSE defaults to KDE Plasma.
That’s not really true, it asks you in the installer which one you want. However, most openSUSE users seem to recommend KDE, so you’ll probably get the best help with that desktop (and it’s what I use, now that Wayland support is pretty good).
At the end of the day, I recommend
I differ a bit. Here’s what I recommend:
- Linux Mint
- Fedora
- Debian
- openSUSE Leap -> Tumbleweed (start w/ Leap, upgrade to Tumbleweed later)
- Pop!_OS
I use openSUSE, but put it lower due to limited community support. It’s the perfect distro for me, and I love the different spins it has. I currently use Leap for servers and Tumbleweed for desktop/laptop, and I plan to transition to microOS for servers.
Arch
I don’t see Arch as a meme, I think it’s a fine distro and I used it for several years. However, I don’t think it should be anyone’s first distro, or even second, not because it’s hard or complicated (it’s remarkably simple), but because it doesn’t really have any guardrails, so whether you have a good or bad experience with it depends more on you than the distro itself.
That said, don’t use Manjaro, it’s not “easier Arch” or “safer Arch,” in fact I think it has way more problems than Arch does. If you want an easy install option, I recommend using something else first. If you are familiar with Arch, then use something like EndeavorOS so you don’t need to do all the setup, but as a first time user, I recommend using Arch’s official install process instead.
Don’t tell people to stay away from Arch. It is not a god damned meme OS, hell even the Steam Deck production OS is built on Arch.
It’s installer is as easy to use as the other shit you recommended if you can fucking read and follow directions, but skips the unnecessary installer UIs that hand-hold (which requires just as much reading and direction following, difference is it has a toddler-appealing colorful UI).
If old MAGA Boomers can handle text terminal DOS installs with floppy disks, a contepmorary dumbfuck Windows user will be fine too.
I used Gentoo for gaming for 2 straight years. I’m not a complete newbie. I’m still not going to recommend Arch or Gentoo for anyone’s first distro.
There’s a reason most distros come with a set of reasonable defaults. It’s so that you’re not left wondering “how the fuck do I get wifi working from the command line?” before you’re ready to tackle this issue.
Most people also want their computers to just work. They don’t want to fiddle around with it to get it just right.
the Steam Deck production OS is built on Arch.
The problem with Arch is that it’s too minimal for someone who comes with an expectation that everything “just works”.
It’s installer is as easy to use as the other shit you recommended if you can fucking read and follow directions, but skips the unnecessary installer UIs that hand-hold (which requires just as much reading and direction following, difference is the others have a toddler-appealing colorful UI).
Most people who use computers today started using GUI software as their first contact with computer tech in general. Hand-holding is customer service, some people need to be guided through the process, and having something that looks like it should work even if you don’t know what you’re doing helps.
If old MAGA Boomers can handle text terminal DOS installs with floppy disks, a contepmorary dumbfuck Windows user will be fine too.
On the one hand, take 10 randos who have never seen anything but Windows, and give half an Arch installer, the other half eg. Fedora. Take a guess which half will fare better.
On the other hand, Linux and OSS in general is about choice. Not just your choice, but the choice of “dumbfuck Windows users” as well. If you like Arch, go for it, but most people find it hard to cope with after coming over from commercial interfaces. You do Arch, they do Linux Mint if they feel like it.
That’s great, I agree with everything you said.
My problem is with the dude earlier telling people to arbitrarily stay away from specific OSes for no valid reason and state it as an absolute authority of fact.
You make a compelling argument why not to use arch in calling windows users dumbfucks and swearing every 3 words in your reply lol
What’s wrong with swearing?
And full disclosure, I’m a member of the dumbfuck Windows user group to play my PC games in Steam.
Profanity is meant for very strong negative emotion. Using it casually robs it of most of its value.
Profanity is meant for very strong negative emotion.
No it’s exclusively not; this has to be one of the dumbest takes I’ve read here.
And you have no authority to tell other people how to think or speak. Go away. Fuck off to your own echo chamber where reading a specific word doesn’t hurt your feelings.
Nothing wrong with swearing in general, but you’re using it in a needlessly hostile way
My point is that the arch community in general is very hostile to new and non technical users, I don’t think many would disagree
Also, why still use a windows PC? Unless you play valorant, Fortnite etc proton is 99% there imo, haven’t had a windows machine in a year or so and I very rarely have any issues
I’m a member of the dumbfuck Windows user group
Emphasis mine
Linux Mint seems to be one of the most recommended for newcomers.
“Burn” the ISO on an USB drive, boot live from it and give it a try.
I personally recommend Linux Mint. It feels just close enough to Windows to be fairly comfortable to use. Customizing the task bar on Cinnamon still feels weirdly awkward and confusing though.
I don’t use it, but I recommend it to every newcomer and I’ve had great feedback that it’s easy to get started with. There’s a lot of help available online, and almost anything Debian or Ubuntu-related should apply, most of the time.
Once you get a feel for Linux Mint, you can decide where to go from there. But the most important part is to get a usable system first, and Mint makes that really easy, without some of the drawbacks of Ubuntu.
I recommend the Debian edition, but honestly, any of their spins are fine, pick one that looks cool and have at it.
There’s plenty to read up on but I think starting with any is a good place. You’ll find stuff you dislike. I’d recommend setting up ventoy on a USB (it will let you have several linux images on one thumb drive) and testing out most importantly the desktop environment (DE).
Main ones being KDE, GNOME, and cinnamon that comes with Mint (which is a great first distro to test).
If you end up having questions feel free to DM me
The transition is really not difficult. A distribution like Xubuntu (XFCE+U ubunru) is very easy. Everything should work out of the box.
xubuntu is fine if your box is a potato or if you’re coming from windows vista
Low on resources? My old hardware is interested. Which others would you recommend?
how low we’re talking
Tecra R840, Thinkpad T410…
You might be semi-comfortably running linux mint cinnamon on these (assuming 4gb ram) with xfce you’re trading clunkiness and ancient looks for lower memory usage
no idea about the usual suspects, wifi, bt, graphics probably will require tinkering as is tradition
I’m in the exact same boat as you.
After ten hours of research you will have learned that Linux Mint with Cinnamon is the one you’re looking for, for an intro. Widely used, familiar, stable.
Feel free to read a bunch to confirm.
Seconded. Linux Mint is really comfy and intuitive coming off of lifetime of Windows
Yep, same experience for me.
I try to jump on Linux for years, it breaks so often for me I really lost all faith…
Try Debian
Ironically, a few months ago I wanted to setup Debian 12 on a ThinkPad X13, which feels like the most boring and stable thing one can possibly say. It installed just fine - but would fail to boot once installed. I absolutely require a cellular modem to work (I’m assuming this was the booting issue, but it’s a snapdragon X55, it’s been out… 4 years now?) and I tried 10+ other distros, which basically didn’t work/support the modem, so I ended up sighing and having to go with kubuntu.
I’m mostly happy with it (it ‘works’ and hasn’t broken yet) but I shouldn’t have to distrohop, read guides and get lost in a sea of dead links to (not, except *ubu) get WWAN working. It should work ootb, no fuss. So I expected Debian would have no issue, no bullshit. Bah.
Snapdragon is famously awful on laptops, they claim to support Linux but the support is shaky. The primary reason why you’re suffering from those issues is because snapdragon on Linux is absolutely not stable (its also generally not stable even on Windows), had you chosen any AMD64 laptop you would be fine. Personally I recommend installing Armbians x13s branch but I can also recommend Arch Linux arm. Keep in mind if you want the most amount of features working you will need to use Arch Linux Arm, I know its ironic that you need to use Arch for stability but keep in mind most Linux distros have ignored snapdragon until the X Elite. That means Arch Linux Arm will have the most stability updates in addition newer kernels have improved support.
It’s the X13, not the X13s variant. Intel chip, generation two. The snapdragon is the 5G WWAN modem, not the cpu.
Check out Aeon and Fedora Silverblue. I’m installing Aeon on Desktops and MicroOS on Servers. My computer needs to be a reliable tool. Immutable distros make it exactly that.
The last thing I want to do in my free time or during my work day is be forced to fiddle with some poorly documented and/or implemented idiocy on my personal computer because I forgot to cast the correct incantation prior to updating something. I’m not a masochist.
I wouldn’t recommend aeon, a beta Linux distro that doesn’t work for Nvidia GPUs at the moment as someone looking for something stable. Silver Blue is great though
That’s a fair take. Silver Blue is great and, in the spirit of the thread, if I were helping an interested but hesitant lifelong Windows/Intel/Nvidia user migrate to Linux today I would:
- Buy them a new SSD or m.2 (a decent 1tb is ~$50 & a good one only ~$100).
- Have them write down what applications, tools, games, sites, etc they use most often.
- Swap their current Windows OS drive with the new drive and, if needed, show them how and why that works or provide an illustrated how-to (so this choice is not a one-way street paved with anxiety. If they want to swap back, or transfer files, or whatever else; they can. Easily). Storage drives are just diaries for computers. The user should know there’s nothing scary or mystical about them.
- Install Fedora Kinoite on that new drive.
- Swap them from Fedora’s custom Flatpak repository to Flathub proper. A decision that should be given to the user on install IMO but I digress.
- Install their catalogue of goodies from step 2 so they’re not starting from scratch.
- Install pika and configure a sane home directory backup cadence.
- Ask them to kick the tires and test drive that Linux install for at least a month.
Kinoite is going to feel the most like Windows and, once configured, stay out of the way while being a safe, familiar, transparent gateway to the things the user wants to use.
My personal OS choices are driven by ideals, familiarity, design preferences, and a bank of good will / public trust.
I disagree with some of Red Hat’s business model. I fully support the approach SUSE takes. I’m also used to the OpenSUSE ecosystem, agree with most of their project’s design philosophies, and trust their intentions. I’m not a “fan” though and will happily recommend and install Silver Blue or any other FOSS system on someone’s computer if that’s what they want and it makes sense for them! Opinionated discussion can be productive and healthy. Zealotry facilitates neither.
That said: Aeon has been out of beta for a while. The latest release is Release Candidate 3 and they’re closing in on the first full release. Nvidia drivers work after a bit of fiddling. 🙂
I’m going to edit my previous post to add the Kinoite suggestion for posterity’s sake.
unfortunately it isn’t. I cannot imagine a less welcoming and beginner friendly community. the reason no one uses Linux is because your communities are indecipherable and you all act like everyone is or should be an engineer in computing.
Have you tried Linux Mint Cinnamon? It’s about as beginner-friendly as it gets, has help forums, a dedicated chat built-in for getting help, a welcome screen that walks you through how to do updates/backups/firewall/etc, and works out of the box. I’m an ex-Windows user and I’ve been using Mint for almost a year now with practically no issue.
thank you
No, we don’t. When people use words you don’t understand to ask and answer their own questions, the solution is simple - say that you are a newbie and ask your question in your words. Just ask additional questions when you don’t understand something. Politely, and not like “you nerds, nothing works, help me asap”.
I spent much of yesterday getting Debian to work on my old MacBook.
In theory it’s relatively straightforward, but there are so many little niggles and roadblocks that it really sours the experience.
I set up a user account upon install, as it asked me to, but when I tried to do something with sudo it just kept telling me that I wasn’t in the Sudoers group. Mine is the only account on the machine, why isn’t that set up by default? So I searched for a solution, which appears to have a bunch of different ways to do it, but none of them quite worked, or worked first time. The first few solutions involved using the terminal, but in the end it was easier to open the document in the file manager and edit it as a root user. Linux users are hard for using a terminal when they could just open a document in a text editor.
In the end I got everything set up how I wanted, but it probably shouldn’t have taken a whole day of irritation.
Linux users are hard for using a terminal when they could just open a document in a text editor.
This remains my #1 gripe with an annoyingly large bit of the Linux community, though there slowly becoming a smaller and smaller group
CLI is great for some things, but holy shit it’s terrible for all of the uses you people try to shove down it’s fucking throat. A text editor works better when you can scroll through and click around if it’s any bigger than a few lines, my audio mixer is a lot easier to use with click and drag sliders than it was as ASCII text in a terminal, and in what fucking world is “MV file/path/could/be/long/as/shit another/long/as/shit/path” faster than click-drag between the 2 windows I opened to copy the path names in the first place?
There was a checkmark for adding the user to that group, IIRC.
Searching for a solution using Google is problematic, yes.
Dear Troll, if that were the case askubuntu wouldn’t be a thing.
That’s a horribly wrong idea of us that everyone seems to have.
Explorer has had so many dependencies attached to it that if even one of them sneezes, the entire desktop environment crashes and has to restart.
Actually insane when you think about it. Why the hell is a file explorer the root process of the desktop???
I’ve only ever forced stopped thunar once and it was because I was messing with some thumbnail settings. Naturally the rest of my system worked as normal, as well as the other thunar windows open lol.
how the fuck could they have possibly done things in a way that makes explorer tabs depend on recall?
if they can’t even separate out recall from the rest of the operating system then i have absolutely no faith it will be secure.
how the fuck could they have possibly done things in a way that makes explorer tabs depend on recall?
It’s very clearly an intentional move to keep it installed.
It’s so you can’t rip Recall out without ruining Explorer, and possibly other things
Internet explorer did similar things, try to remove it and the OS would just crash.
A browser, which is like the prime attack vector for malware and other nasty stuff, having direct memory access is so hilarious in hindsight
These days you try to sandbox everything as much as possible in the browser since the internet is like the least trusted environment there is
Except the OS in this case lol
it also had direct memory access to make it faster
WHAT?!! That’s a special level of wbject disregard for security.
Might be a stupid question but this requires a NPU right? I told some fellas about it and there response was something like does not matter because they have older hardware so it can’t run anyway. So what happens to win 11 PCs with no NPU?
AFAIK Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0, which in and of itself limits hardware ('cos who cares about ewaste, right?), but am unaware of anything hardware-specific for “AI”.
Your PC needs the following minimum system requirements for Recall:
- A Copilot+ PC
That links to https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/copilot-plus-pcs#faq1
Copilot+ PCs are a new class of Windows 11 AI PCs that are powered by a turbocharged neural processing unit (NPU) – a specialised computer chip for AI-intensive processes like real-time translations and image generation – that can perform more than 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS).
turbocharged
I wonder where the exhaust fumes come from for the turbocharger. How many cylinders do you think the engine of an average Copilot+ PC have? How much extra torque can they get out of it?
Fuck idiotic marketing, words have meaning.
So what happens when a win 11 PC with no NPU gets updated to the version of windows with recall and recall is installed? Does it just sit dormant like it’s deactivated because there are tons of win 11 PC that have no NPU.
I assume that’s what happens, but you know what happens when you do that!
So just the Surface thingies?
There’s Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung laptops too: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/copilot-plus-pcs
So they’re expanding… still seems to be not all that much hardware support, weird that they’re pushing it so soon.
Recall was the headline feature for Copilot+ PCs.
When a wave of ARM powered Windows laptops, and now a few desktops launched, they were all Copilot+ for whatever reason. They all marketed the NPU, but struggled to really say what the NPU unlocked that you couldn’t do with a CPU or GPU. Other marketing gimmicks were a better background blur and an AI drawing assistant in I think paint. I think you could also do “AI stuff” in photos, but don’t think that was local.
Honestly, I think everyone missed the punchline on ARM. The promise is lower heat and greater battery life. There was no need to bundle that with AI gimmicks. But clearly a PM thought so and now they’re trying to save face. Really taking advantage of ARM and pushing for battery life, by optimizing the kernal and changing what happens in standby, would probably be a bigger engineering lift.
/Thoughts from a rando who bought an ARM powered Windows laptop and generally likes it but has never touched the NPU enabled stuff
The promise is lower heat and greater battery life. There was no need to bundle that with AI gimmicks.
But how else are you gonna bring down battery life to be on par with x86?
/s
Recall does not utilize NPU, people got it running on pre X Elite Arm PCs.
MIT license:
Explore a beautiful Windows-first design. Manage all your files with increased productivity. Work across multiple folders with tabs. And so much more.
It looks nice, and has extra features like tabs, tagging 7zip/archive management, cloud drives, git integration, comparing file hashes, etc.
The only issue I had was performance, it took a long time to start each time. I’m planning on trying it again sometime later
Whoa. I wonder if explorer can be ripped out entirely and replace with this
explorer.exeis still used for desktop and probably other stuff as well, so it might not be possible without using 3rd party shell replacement and not many exist.
Thank goodness for Linux.
After all the fud and opposition they’ve pushed against it over the years. It’s nice to see them finally do good things to help it.
Quick edit to add that it couldn’t come at a better time now that there are companies like system 76 out there. Making Linux compatible systems that ship with Linux that you can actually recommend to someone who is a novice to pick up. They may be on a more expensive side. But what’s your privacy worth?
Owned a system 76 unit years ago. Was lacking in the QC area.
I switched to a Framework 13 after having a system76 Darter Pro, and it’s a whole other league. Incredibly well-built, feels great, runs great, flashy as hell, even the fingerprint reader works out of the box with Fedora KDE.
I’m sudoing in the terminal with my fingers! It’s magic! And it just works!
Also, I managed to drop it in the most stupid way so it bent the whole case, and I could get it fixed for 200 EUR, one day shipping and 20 minutes of work by myself, and that was a full casing swap, so bottom assembly plus keyboard assembly, whole case but the mobo and the stuff on it.
This is what having a laptop should work like. That’s what they took from you.
Their laptops are built on third party chassis. I have their keyboard and that thing is SOLID. I expect their desktops (that are custom made) are also quite solid.
Laptops… I’d lean frame.work if you know your way around a Linux installer. That said, there are rumors that system76 is working on a custom laptop chassis (still, framework is hard to beat for modularity).
Edit: while not specifically QC related… I suspect the things that aren’t really custom built for them might not get the same level of care/might be more on their supplier depending on the issue.
Also have their keyboard and its amazing. I’ll be doing the same, System76 Desktop and Framework Laptop for my next upgrades.
I build my own desktops, but they do sell their case individually. I’ll definitely be considering that for my next upgrade.
I have a Gazelle12 from 2018 and it’s chassis is dogshit, but when I did my research before purchasing I saw a lot of reviews. They all pointed out that the case was made of flimsy plastic, so I was aware ahead of time of that potential problem. The Oryx Pro was the next Model up for several hundreds more, though. Ultimately, I am happy with my laptop even if I have to disassemble it just to repair the chassis with epoxy periodically. It’s 6 years later and the specs are still more than adequate for 99% of my needs, except for my specific intel processor which isn’t supported by Win11. I consider that a feature as oppose to a problem. The software bloat and planned obsolessence through slowdowns of software on Windows based computers are things I do not miss one bit.
IIRC Framework can preinstall fedora for you since it’s officially supported. I use Fedora on an AMD Framework 13 and its been very smooth. Even the fingerprint sensor works.
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A few cents per gigabyte ackshually.
After all the fud and opposition they’ve pushed against it over the years.
what did they do?? i havent heard of this before damn
They did PR campaigns against Linux and OpenOffice for quite some time – until cloud computing took off and it turned out they could earn more money by supporting Linux than by fighting it.
In fact, Microsoft weren’t happy about FOSS in general. I can still remember when they tried to make “shared source” a thing: They made their own ersatz OSI with its own set of licenses, some of which didn’t grant proper reuse rights – like only allowing you to use the source code to write Windows applications.
Switched a few months ago and glad I did
Microsoft has been the single most effective marketing asset for GNU/Linux distributions in recent years.
Tbf in recent decades.
Even tho googled-android should have been even more so, but the hardware licence fuchshittery is a huge obstacle.
So true. I got fed up with all this Recall and AI BS and recently replaced Win 11 (which I upgraded to by accident) with PopOS. No issues so far and PopOS is much faster than Windows.
Not effective enough, it seems.
PC gamer for a lot of my life. My old Win8.1 system is slowly dieing and I can play less and less games…win 11 has made me decide to leave the hobby. I may grab a Steamdeck, but I think I am done with PC gaming (and consoles are just shit PCs now). I have a Linux work PC, but I am not bothering with making a gaming Linux rig when I can just go the Steamdeck route.
Just popping in to mention that Bazzite can be put on your win8 machine and it will prob run games better than win does. in case you don’t know, Bazzite is installable on PC’s where steamOS isn’t yet and it’s as close to SteamOS as they can get.
I have a SD docked and plugged into a TV with a controller at home. It works great, I swore off Win PC’s about when win8 came out, so I haven’t used it in a long time except for work, and every day I’m glad I upgraded to Linux.
Steam Deck is great, 10/10, would recommend, but you could also just load Linux on your old system and keep using it.
I can better justify taking the out presented and using the Steamdeck for my fix. It will be cathartic lol
Well Valve was doing too well with the steam deck in that area so they had to trump them, second place is just the first loser.
Valve is holding the carrot, Microsoft the stick.
I’m so fucking glad I switched to Linux this year.
absolutely. I had tried Linux on various machines long ago but was one of the people that was put off by older distro’s learning curves - I’m now daily driving Linux on both my laptop and desktop and the main push for the switch is microsoft fucking around with settings, installing candy crush after updates (on a paid OS), adding more and more dumb, unsolicited, privacy invading AI bullshit with every feature update, and running like shit on a perfectly adequate machine.
Modern Linux, with flatpak support? I haven’t looked back once - had to help a friend fix something on a win11 desktop recently and was reminded of every reason I made the switch. Even if I had to jump in the terminal every day like long ago, it would still be worth it to not have bing, copilot, and edge rammed down my throat, whether I want them or not.
Windows is getting so shitty that completely non-technical users are tired of it… as soon as somewhat open minded users start to experiment and realise that Linux feature and UX parity has been achieved - I hope microsoft fucking collapses and we can all finally walk into the sunlight that open source OSes and software represent.
