Moved 5 home PCs from Win10 to either Mint or Bazzite this year. No complaints from the family; we’ll not be going back to M$.
Linux is a great option nowadays especially if you go for one of the more mainstream distros. Otherwise Windows 11 IoT LTSC is the best of a bad lot.
Why not Windows 10 IoT LTSC?
because it constantly forces more bullshit “upgrades” that take away more and more of your freedom and human rights.
I mean instead of Win 11 obviously… Also, an LTSC version in extended support is unlikely to “force more upgrades”.
I’m not only refusing to downgrade to Windows 11, my home system got switched to Linux (with the support of my SO) despite me thinking Linux is probably the single least user-friendly system I’ve ever had the misfortune to use.
That’s how bad Windows 11 looks to me.
I’m curious, which distro and DE did you pick?
Mint. No idea what a DE is.
DE (desktop environment) is all the visual interfaces (settings app, taskbars, start menu, widgets etc) and default applications you get. If you aren’t in the terminal, then it’s the DE that you are using to control your PC.
Ah. I have no idea then.
Then you are using the default DE (Desktop environment) for mint which is Cinnamon.
You probably don’t ever need to know but very simplified it’s the DE that makes mint look like it does, not mint itself.
This question is proof enough that Linux isn’t exactly a user friendly system. You need to be aware of many things you otherwise wouldn’t need to care about in other operating systems.
Personally I like this freedom, but many people prefer to get something that just works without worrying about differences between distros and DEs.
Does the existence of Windows server affect the usability of Windows pro?
Ofc not. So why apply the same logic that one distro (eg arch, nix, gentoo) detracts from the usability of others (eg ubuntu, fedora)?
Going by this logic, linux would never become user friendly as long as one advanced choice exist.
So this is why I asked, I want to contexualize the situation.
Saying that linux is not user friendly is a broad generalization. Some distros are and some will never be by design.
The choice of distro is a real hurdle for new users, I agree.
But this is a meta problem of the open ecosystem, not of any one software distribution’s.
From personal experience, it can be overwhelming even for a seasoned Linux user.
Knowing the difference of Debian, Fedora and Arch based distros. Should I go for Linux Mint, Bazzite or Endeavor? Should I go for a immutable system or not? What package manager is used? What’s a flatpak?
One real example I encountered was that I was trying to install Pop OS on my new PC. Turns out after some trial and error that Pop OS uses an old Linux kernel that doesn’t support my new AMD graphics card. I ended up installing Endeavor instead, despite my not so good experience with using Arch before. Luckily Endeavor has been a great experience so far.
With Windows there’s really only one choice for the typical home consumer.
Windows Home, Windows Pro, Windows Pro for workstations, Windows Education, Windows Pro Education, Windows Enterprise, Windows Enterprise LTSC, Windows S mode, Windows IoT
And there are some other variations for different regions and support levels.
Do you know which one does what? Because I only vaguely do.
Windows isn’t a single thing either. It just comes preinstalled. Most people have never installed an OS, not windows nor linux.
Are you a home user? Choose the home edition. Easy.
“What do you mean home user? I’m a computer user.”
Aren’t all these versions just the same product with different features locked behind payment options? It’s very different from Linux, where every layer has multiple alternatives written by different authors that can behave very differently.
All machines come with windows pre-installed, no one ever needs to worry about different flavours unless you work in IT and manage windows devices.
I haven’t had to worry about which windows to get since windows 98.
Fyi, I’m on Linux mint now.
Isn’t that what I’m saying? Windows isn’t prevalent because there is one edition of it, but because it’s the default.
Apparently this is downvote worthy information?
All machines come with windows pre-installed
I was curious, so I checked the laptop offers in our local shop aggregator (arukereso.hu)
Operating system Number Windows 10 Home 8 Windows 11 Home 677 Windows 10 Pro 23 Windows 11 Pro 1661 Windows 11 S 21 Linux 74 macOS 141 Chrome OS 5 FreeDOS 506 Without OS 6792390 / 3795 = 62% windows
Most users wouldn’t know how to install Windows, or which edition to install. Does that make Windows not use friendly too?
Plenty of Linux flavors that just works available for the body average PC.
If you ask 10 different Linux users which distro to install, you’ll get 10 different answers. I don’t think this freedom is a bad thing, but it can be quite overwhelming for the user.
New linux users: check out this [new hyped distro they currently use]
Long time linux users: just pick anything mainstream
The boring reality is that if the project’s been around for 10-20 years it will likely be around for another long while and have good community support.
With small projects, the two guys behind are busy fixing bugs, patching packages or writing the docs.
Nonsense, its the same like 3 distros get recommended every time. Mint, PopOS, and bazzite.
It’s not that hard. “What Linux distro should I use? For what uses, you say? Eh, browse the web, mostly. Mint? Ok, thanks!”
At first I read SO as “shared object” I am depressed now.
C’mon, man, is this anti-Linux propaganda in disguise? Many Linux distributions just work out of the box.
Unless you’re a very specific kind of user, most users will have absolutely no problem using Linux to browse the web, or install and use applications.
Yes. Linux is dirt simple. Which is why 2025 is the Year of the Linux Desktop. For about the 30th year running.
Linux “just works” if you view the computer before you as a toy or a game or an end unto itself. If you view it as a tool that is supposed to let you do your real work while staying out of the way, it falls down flat on its face.
For example, I have a nice Bluetooth speaker that worked flawlessly under Windows. Still works flawlessly with my phone. My SO, despite hours of reading things and trying things out while, toward the end letting out a never-ending stream of quiet profanity, could not get it to work reliably. He can get it working. And then it will just randomly cut out and he has to do it all over again (albeit not for hours anymore).
This is not the only such problem. We can’t get it to hibernate either. I have to leave my computer running all the time so I don’t lose my place with my work. When I was running Windows it was “press the power button and walk away” after about three minutes of changing some settings when I first got it.
This is a never-ending stream that a techno-nerd would probably have no problems dealing with on a daily basis, but I’m not that, and I don’t want to be. (My SO is, but he has his own work; I don’t want to treat him like my personal IT department. I’d rather just have my computer work without these little, never-ending irritations.)
But … it’s still better than Windows 11. It will be what I use until the HarmonyOS PCs stabilize and breaks free into the wider ecosystem, after which my next phone and computer both will be using HarmonyOS.
If you view it as a tool that is supposed to let you do your real work while staying out of the way, it falls down flat on its face.
What an overgeneralization. Many servers run on Linux. Many developers code on Linux.
But I understand your point.
This is a bit of a self reinforcing problem. It’s not magic that makes hardware work on windows. It works better on windows because people put time into making it work on windows. They didn’t do the same for Linux because there’s fewer users there.
I’m sure you can imagine the scene that’s like
Eng: “I don’t know if it’ll work on Linux. I want some more time to test it”
Boss: “how many users we have on Linux?”
Eng: “a few hundred”
Boss: “yeah no, just ship it as is”
But the good news is as more people use Linux, that conversation changes.
Yeah, this is a huge issue with Linux. It works out of the box, and usually in a much much better way than Windows. However, if you come across a small annoying issue, it can be either a breeze to fix with a simple command or a complete nightmare due to incompatibility issues.
I’m a professional software developer and IT technician, and have been for many years. And I still couldn’t get my grandma’s fucking printer to work on Ubuntu after 3 hours of debugging.
The good news is that the more people switch to Linux, use it, come across annoying issues and complain about them, the faster they get fixed and manufacturers develop their products with Linux in mind.
Well, “out of the box” I hit that Bluetooth speaker problem so I didn’t have it working flawlessly such. But that and the hibernation aside, a few of the problems I’m having are more “this is different; I have to learn”. Fortunately things I do most of my work in are programs I already use: Zen for the browser, LibreOffice for office suite, etc. so I’m only getting little bits of culture shock here and there.
I’m annoyed, however, that I have to plug my speakers into the computer by old-fashioned wires. They’re fugly and in the way of other things since the plugs are in the front of the computer, right above the USB port I stick my thumb dries, etc. into.
Bluetooth is one of those things that is a crapshoot in linux. A big part of that is because the bluetooth protocol itself is a giant train wreck. It requires a stupid level of integration into the OS to do basic stuff (It should have just been effectively what Wifi Direct is). It also doesn’t help that the linux audio stack is kinda fucked.
Sleep/hibernate is also somewhat of a crapshoot because it’s a very weird protocol.
For some linux hardware these things work pretty well, but for others it can be a nightmare to make work properly.
FTR, I’m currently using KDE plasma + pipewire and that works pretty well for me with my bluetooth devices. But I realize that’s probably also somewhat due to me having good hardware for linux in the first place.
Huge numbers of Windows users are refusing to upgrade to Windows 11 – and many of them are citing its AI features as the reason why.
Spoiler: They’re not. They’re postponing. Eventually, they’ll almost all give in to the bullying :(
True. The only reason my PC doesn’t run W11 is because I can’t be arsed to mess with the drive for that secure boot bollocks.
What’s the reasons not to try a Linux live boot though (Mint seems popular for first timers), and see if you like the look & feel? No need to install anything, but yes you need to disable secure boot possibly (temporarily to boot from USB)
Oh I’ve got a mini PC for Linux, and a Legion Go S for gaming, but I need my main one for work.
Much easier to use Windows than convince thousands of customers to swap and rewrite 20 years of code in something else.
Ah, work. Understood. I migrated my work tasks away from stuff needing windows to avoid that dependency :)
I did advocate for Linux at one point, but any issues quickly became my issues for recommending it, so I stopped.
I can see that happening… People somehow refuse to learn, yet at the same time they run to computer-savy family / friends whenever their windows breaks. I put a dead stop to Windows support for my parents ages ago - I told them “if you won’t let me teach you how to help yourself, then I can’t help you anymore”
Most of my family finally got Android tablets. Most of them never really needed a PC to start with. Email and browsing was about it.
Yup, lots of people are going to take the extra year of Windows 10 updates Microsoft is offering and put off upgrading until next year, but so many writers want to find meaning in people not upgrading as soon as 10 was technically EOL.
it’s really the stereotypical frog in boiling water. Had they shifted from Win 7 to Win 12 directly, people would have pushed back much harder for all the bloat and slop…
All my remaining W10 machines in the house are just in a holding pattern because I haven’t bothered to move them over to Linux yet. For me (and hopefully many others), its just lack of free time and procrastination. There is zero chance they’ll go to W11 for me personally.
Good luck with migrating over - my personal recommendation for advanced beginners: debian-based with XFCE (if you like lightweight desktop environments similar to Windows 2000)
Oh, I already have several Linux PCs/servers, I just haven’t migrated over kids’ PCs or the HTPCs yet and they keep getting the ever more desperate and annoying full screen BS about moving to W11, getting a MS account, using One Drive, etc.
Good that games run better on Linux nowadays, at least in general :)
Yeah, the kids only play Stardew Valley and other games that I know are 100% fine on Linux. I was mostly worried about school related things, but apparently they are all web-based tools now, so I think that will have no issues.
Spoiler: They’re not. They’re postponing. Eventually, they’ll almost all give in to the bullying :(
My primary laptop was Windows 10. Since Win11 was so different in interface, and sucked so much with MS AI+Onedrive force feeding, it was no different effort to switch to a different OS.
I went with a Mac M2 system with OSX as my secondary OS, and Asahi Linux as my primary dual booting. So far I’ve only been in OSX for the initial user account creation and launch of the Asahi installer, but OSX is there to boot back to if I run into something commercially proprietary that simply doesn’t run on Linux.
I’m a couple of weeks into this config so far and am quite enjoying Linux OS on Mac hardware.
I’d argue Mac hardware is a tad too expensive for a true Linux, but hey - main thing is that you enjoy it ;)
M2 is from 2022, its used hardware. I’m also pretty sure the OS does really care about the cost of the hardware. :)
I meant to say you have enough performance gain by using Linux that you can run it on cheaper Hardware, that’s all :)
I get that. I never wanted to have to go back to Windows for proprietary things. Having a Mac meant I would have OSX to fall back to if needed instead.
I switched to a Mac at work for a while to avoid Win10. So I get that, too. Had to abandon it when IT gained enough proficiency over the Mac to lock it down and make it essentially useless for power users :(
I feel bad about the people who have no choice but to make a Microsoft account and then not being able to change the default browser app due to Family Safety™
Family safety, with your browsing data straightaway handed to the ICE Gestapo for deportations…
Windows 10 IoT LTSC is supported until 2032. That’s a problem for future me…
Hopefully by then I’ve switched to an employer that allows me to run Xubuntu in the office. Right now my hands are tied.
Switching employers indeed seems to be the easiest solution to escape - I did it for that reason and do not regret it.
Narrator: He didn’t switch employers and was forced to run Windows 11.
Not until the company goes public, or I’d forfeit my stock options. But I’m positive that’s gonna happen in the next 7 years…
I’m one of them, and currently looking into Linux, if I can migrate my Photoshop tools/brushes/gradients/etc successfully over to another program that is compatible.
My only hang up after that is gaming, and I feel that can be resolved with dual boot to win10.
I’m still using Windows 11 just from inertia, but I’ve been putting my kids on Linux Mint and Bazzite depending.
I don’t think I can get away from Windows, as a professional .NET developer, but I won’t likely have more than the one Windows laptop at this point. My entire home lab and home infra is Linux of one variety or another. If we count VMs, then I overwhelmingly using Debian.
I don’t think I can get away from Windows, as a professional .NET developer
Because you have to use VS Code instead of VS? You can always deploy to a Windows VM if you need to be sure IIS works. Though everything will just run on dotnet and nginx through a reverse proxy if you want to stay within Linux.
For most cases you can use Rider, which has a native Linux version. It doesn’t do database projects so if you use MSSQL without an OEM you’re gonna want at least VS Code, but other than that it works fine.
Of course if you’re a .NET developer in a corporate environment you probably don’t have a choice as you’re already using a Windows VM through Azure Virtual Desktop just so that your company can chain itself harder to daddy Microsoft.
honestly, if there would be a 100% office compatibility, photoshop on linux, and proper anticheat support, we would have 40% linux usage
I know it isn’t an exact solution, but people have created a Photoshop-like UI layout and keybindings for Gimp. That could help, should you choose to go with Gimp as the image editor.
Gaming on Linux works now. I play every game I care for.
The only problem is some anticheats and older games. Whenever the boys and I wanna play Battlefield I gotta switch to Windows, but besides that it’s basically fine.
A lot of older games run better on Linux. Lots of older games that don’t even work on Windows anymore
Huh. I would have thought that older games would run better than newer ones.
To an extent, yes. The oldest Windows game that I’d still probably want to play legitimately is probably Thief: The Dark Project, from 1998. It was made for DirectX version 6. Naturally, it will just not run on modern systems, Windows or Linux.
There are patches that bring it to DX9. It has an internal frame rate limiter to something weird, 90 fps or something. The weakest machine I have available can push that about at 4K while apparently still in full energy saving mode.
Proton’s DX9 emulation is apparently a bit rough, but most of the DX9 games you’d want to emulate are just fine with ‘brute force’. There’s a couple of problematic games - CS:GO, for instance - where the efficiency matters.
Nah, I’ve been trying to get the Sims 2 ultimate collection to run on mint for a while now, to no avail. I know it’s possible, but all the necessary links etc. have died, and the internet archive hasn’t been helpful yet. Once the people making running older games possible stop doing it, it just… becomes impossible, unless you can make those things yourself.
Gaming on Linux is superior, on a lot of games! I dual booted and ran benchmarks on Windows 11 and Fedora, same hardware. Ran nothing but the OS and Steam in the background, (gaming mode on and off), oddly found better performance with gaming mode off, then tried the same thing with Fedora. 5-10% higher framerates in Fedora running Proton.
Tried the same thing with synched Firefox tabs, half a dozen open tabs, telegram and discord running. Fedora sometimes hit 15% higher framerates.
Are you on an AMD card?
I have a Ryzen CPU with onboard graphics and then an Nvidia 3060ti mobile. Rpmfusion drivers in Linux and Nvidia experience in Windows.
Interesting!
Theoretically, that (Nvidia graphics + IGP display out) is the worst case scenario for Linux.
I used to get worse performance on my 3090, but it’s been awhile. I will have to try again.
I’ve been gaming almost exclusively in Linux since roughly start of COVID. It’s come a long way. I am this close to VR on Fedora, but it’s still not quite working.
Out of curiosity, what games do you see any gains in, and at approximately what settings?
And if I come across as skeptical, that’s not my intent at all. I’m interested!
I have a 3080ti and it runs better on popos/cachyos vs windows 10. Never tried windows 11 on it though.
Yeah I’ve been playing Elden Ring with no crashes since switching to Mint.
While going for another program, ideally non proprietary, with a native Linux version would be ideal, I would not be surprised if running Photoshop on Linux with wine was a viable option these days. Or will be in a not-too-distant future.
As for games, what the others have said. Unless you’re into a specific multiplier game with a kernel level “anticheat”, then it should be fine.
In fact, I suspect Photoshop, rather than gaming, is much more likely to be the reason you’d have to dual boot.
In my understanding, still no, especially not the more advanced filters stuff. PS6 (or whatever the last one you could actually buy was) on the other hand is 95+% functional if you can go back. Not an expert, GIMP is fine for my needs, there’s even a spin with PS-like menu layout if that’s your jam, but happy to be told I’m wrong about new PS.
Adobe shit and AutoCAD stuff are the the last major sticking points these days, Office is in the cloud now. Shame these last two won’t let their cash cows be rented in the cloud (instead of subscribed, you know, a long term rental agreement using your own computer) to my knowledge. There’s always VMs.
Ah, that’s good to know. I wonder why that is. I don’t use these programs beyond the odd very simple image manipulation that could be done just as easily in paint, so I have no idea what people want from Photoshop alternative. However, I seem to keep hearing no single open source program does everything from people who are PS power users.
Don’t get me started on AutoCAD, and just CAD tools in general… Being more involved on that side, from a dev rather than user perspective, I can’t say I think very highly of Autodesk, or the idea of having all these geometry kernels be proprietary, and Autodesk acquiring as many of them as it can. Maths is public, maths research belongs to the public, you can fuck off with gating it.
As for VMs, we are talking about apps that need a relatively good GPU and therefore one would need to do some GPU pass through on their VM to use it properly I believe. Assuming I’m right, that may be more trouble than it’s worth compared to a dual boot (also assuming this hasn’t gotten much simpler than my somewhat distant memory now)
Modern versions of Photoshop are deeply integrated with another software called Adobe Cloud. As in, you can’t even install Photoshop by itself, it needs to be installed and managed via Adobe cloud, which has to constantly be running in the background for Photoshop to work (and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s some kernel level BS, knowing Adobe). They are also reliant on other Adobe online services for some tools and services, and not just the generative AI ones.
That’s usually what causes a lot of hangups I believe. For example, if you need to connect your Photoshop to your client’s Adobe cloud or share files through it, or maybe connect Photoshop to other Adobe products like Indesign or After Effects, that may not work properly. This even applies to pirated versions of Photoshops on windows, where a lot of the patching comes from blocking Adobe’s constant interference with the program as it’s running, but as a result several tools may end up not working.
As for stuff people want from Photoshop, this is anectodical from me but I primary use Photoshop to letter things and literally no other program that runs on Linux even comes close to the simplicity and versatility Photoshop gives me for lettering with its type tool. It is just so simple to configure text the way I want to and there are so many ways to modify it. Clip Studio Paint is the second best contender (makes sense since it used to be primarily a comic creation software) but, shocker, it doesn’t run on Linux either.
Every open source tool I tried, Gimp and Krita included, is so many miles behind in this department that I thought I had returned to the stone age when I tried using them for this purpose earlier this year. Krita didn’t even have a live preview of the text I was writing. It was completely unusable for my more advanced needs.
I have to use illustrator for work sometimes. I used to dual boot, now I use winboat. It’s a bit of a pain to set up initially but it works well once you’ve done that
Thank you so much for the detailed answer. I was not aware of that level of BS on the Photoshop front, though that does not surprise me. I guess I’m showing my age a bit by remembering Photoshop to just be a standalone program without any of that “not that long ago”.
Don’t know if this is particularly relevant as a comparison to your Photoshop idea, but I have successfully run things like windows version of Cascadeur and Blender through Proton; in the case of Blender, it was for running an older Kenshi modding import export plugin, which only supports the Windows version of Blender.
Literally just set it up through Steam, Proton Experimental.
UI scaling / fonts can be a bit wonky, but for just doing the import/export steps, its totally workable, as… a .blend file is a .blend file, so you can do the other edits in a linux version of Blender.
Or, I could probably use ProtonTricks to add some fonts and font subpixel AA dependencies to get it to work ‘more right’, I remember that being what I ended up doing back when I was still using MO2.
Or, or, you could try Bottles, that would probably be a more sane way to try and set up a more… fully featured, editor type of Windows program, within Linux, it tends to handle those kinds of esoteric dependencies a bit better, has more of them as just part of the default preset.
Holy shit, doing all that for an old Kenshi plugin is just fantastic, you genuinely got a laugh out of me. I did think people who played Kenshi seemed like masochists (or very zen and meditative people) but thanks for the confirmation.
I initially thought something like that, but another comment mentions a bunch of potential Adobe cloud + DRM bullshit that may or may not make the wine/proton approach range from impossible to quite a bit broken.
TL;DR Adobe is probably evil incarnate.
I would not describe setting that up as masochistic, it was actually quite easy, easier than figuring out how to install Windows on the hardware I have, without blowing up everything else.
Dual booting linux and windows?
That’s masochism.
… I actually was a karateka for a decade +, so, perhaps i am some combination of meditative and masochistic, by some people’s standards.
I very much appreciate the extent to which Kenshi is not a power fantasy, the extent to which … it allows you to become OP as fuck and do many incredible things… but you have to actually earn it.
Anyway, yes, the DRM is probably your main problem there with Adobe, … I dunno, find a crack or use Krita or Gimp or other alternatives?
At least personally, I find that those two do everything I need, there are basically only super niche scenarios where linux does not have an at least comparably featured alternative to some windows software.
I recently got a local LLM spun up… on my Steam Deck. Running Bazzite.
Literally so easy I did it without a mouse or keyboard.
… Can you do that on Windows?
heheheheh
Ah it seems you have me confused, I’m not the guy who needs Photoshop.
Interestingly, I have been dual booting Linux and windows for a while in the past. That was way, way back though, around 2010 I’d say. Back then, gaming on Linux was still very much hit and miss (but mostly miss, for me) and I had nothing better to do than gaming after uni so I did not have much of a choice.
I’ll say, maybe it was dumb luck, more likely it’s Windows getting shitter, but dual booting used to be much less of a faff from what I can gather. For instance I never had a windows update torch my boot record to force itself instead of grubby grub. I understand that can be a common occurrence these days.
After that and getting a real job TM, I had much less time for it so I wiped that sad excuse for an OS from my system with a grin and never looked back. Which also means, there’s been a decent chunk of time I only did with whatever was available in Linux as I could not be bothered with wine. So I don’t know how easy things have become, my only exposure is now the odd bit of gaming again but, as you know, Steam just makes it work for me.
+1 for Krita, I don’t need much but it more than fits the bill for me. There are other threads in there though that do mention some stuff is just a lot harder when compared to PS for peeps who are actually good at the stuff.
LLMs (ok ok,not local) now come by default on Windows, without keyboard or mouse, just the mandatory connection to the mothership. So, yay windows?
maybe I should try Kenshi sometime…
Oh.
Perhaps I am confused, though you did say:
I would not be surprised if running Photoshop on Linux with wine was a viable option these days. Or will be in a not-too-distant future.
Thats basically what I was trying to respond to initially.
I’m use lemmy on mobile, and sometimes the sort of thread branches become a confusing rainbow of … wait who am I talking to?
But anyway yeah, I used to be able to dual boot linux and windows fairly easily, but then, MSFT decided that their idea of Secure Boot involves rewriting your GRUB or whatever, and breaking your bootloader / boot sector.
And it would do this via Windows updates.
So thats a rootkit, as far as I’m concerned, fuck em, get off my PC.
IRT local LLMs, that aren’t spyware, that are containerized, that don’t burn down an acre of forest for every 15 minutes their datacenter runs?
Alpaca. Its a flatpak, makes setting up a local LLM about as easy at it could possibly be.
IRT to Kenshi…
Seek not the “wisdom” of Okran, for he is a false god, a cruel god, his “Holy Nation” is an abominable pox, a viscious hypocrisy manifest in blood stained sand and broken souls.
Instead, seek the meek, foster them, and your rewards shall be numerous and unexpected.
… ahem …
Uh yeah Kenshi has as almost much lore and worldbuilding as something like a Bethesda game, but it does have a very unorthodox sort of control scheme.
Its… kind of like playing on old school, SWG/MxO era MMO, but its… singleplayer, and … basically a simulation of a world, more so than a ‘game’ with a coherent main plot.
You just have to go find the plotlines, the people with backstories, the factions with conflicts.
You can be a fighter, a thief, a caravaneer, you can build a town, you can raise an army, and lead them all into battle.
Its unorthodox, if you need a game to handhold you and direct you, you probably won’t like Kenshi.
But if you want a confusing and brutal world that is entirely capable of existing and functioning without you… you might like it.
Ah I did say that, but as an answer to the post above who wondered whether a dual boot would be needed for PS.
So what I heard is true. Yep, shitty practice from MS. In other news, water makes you wet.
No no obviously windows would not support that. It provides some value, and respects the user.
You do make it sound good, I just think I am sadly no longer at a point in my life where I can reasonably dedicate the chunk of time that would be needed to get into it. Maybe I’ll change my mind. Thank you for the enthusiastic write up!
I’m going to drop this here. Both Affinity 2 if you bought it or the Free Affinity 3 works well on Linux.
Nice! Do you know if the Mac License works with the Affinity 2 Windows version as well?
I’ve started working with affinity and I’m pretty impressed so far. It does have some hiccups importing Photoshop brushes where the brush settings are wiped but I figure I have to look further into that to see if that can be remedied.
I have heard that running Photoshop in Winboat works. Winboat is a Windows container where you can install a whole windows system in to it. I ma not sure if it works with the latest Photoshop but I would assume it does.
Why not just play games on linux?
It works so well nowadays
Does it now? I have an Arc B580 and Linux drivers are lackluster at best.
my god linux and intel graphics drivers were so easy for me to setup. Even got HDR running first attempt which is apparently hard. No idea why, may have just been the distro made it easy.
Pretty sure everyone warned that Intel drivers would be iffy regardless of OS and to only buy if you’re okay being a beta tester for Intel.
The linux AMD GPU driver is superior to their windows driver
I figure that at least a few games I like to play are not compatible with Linux. I haven’t yet gotten the full list of games that won’t run on it but I’d hedge a bet that there’s more than one. One of them which I play a lot, Warframe, is apparently a bit buggy on it. I’m a sucker for multiplayer games and if there is kernel level anti cheat on them it might cause things to break.
Check them here: https://www.protondb.com/
Proton has a constantly updating list of games and how well they work on Linux and the Steam Deck
Thanks for the link! Saving this so I can check it out later.
Gaming on Linux either works on Linux or the game requires a rootkit malware to run.
I refuse to call it “kernel-level anti-cheat.” That’s like calling a sucking chest wound “alternative breathing”
Eh could do with a Linux version of MO2 or Vortex. Manual modding is tedious and plenty of mods use the mod managers for settings.
When I first swapped the linux I was able to get MO2 working with Wine. Had a Wabbajack mod list running. It was a bit of a pain, though.
It exists and is called Limo.
https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.limo_app.limo
It’s basically linux native MO2.
I’ve been using it for New Vegas, and Cyberpunk 77, for almost two years now.
Works pretty good!
Don’t have to do some kind of wacky wine/proton set up for each instance of MO2.
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In my experience the linux native bulids run worse than the windows + proton on linux.
I’ve been gaming on Linux for ten years now, and it has gotten to the point where you get a game on Steam, press Play and it runs, unless it requires rootkit malware, and even some of those work.
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You’re talking about Proton.
Proton, while spearheaded and massively contributed to by Valve, is totally open source, any linux user can use it anyway they want to, and there are others like GloriousEggroll, with his own significant tweaks and optimizations, there’s a whole dedicated branch specifically for running Titanfall 2…
The only games that are not compatible either are so by choice of intentionally refusing to make their anti cheat work on linux, or they are brand spanking new and use some newfangled DX12/Nvidia specific thing, which then has to be reverse emgineered so that it works with Proton.
On average, that happens in 3 to 6 months after the game is released.
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And runs even better on Arch thanks to CachyOS.
You are completely wrong, it can be made to work on nearly any modern distro.
Like, the only one that even comes to mind where it would probably have problems, would be like the muscl variant of Void linux, because… its based on an entirely different C/C++ library.
You would genuinely be hard pressed to find a linux distro that came out in the last 5 years that would have problems with Proton, I legitimately have no idea why you think its only officially supported on Ubuntu, I am baffled as to how you can be this misinformed.
A Steam Deck, for example, is … impossible without Proton.
The Steak Deck native OS is SteamOS, which is Arch-based.
PopOS! is a pretty decent, arguably superior, Ubuntu alternative… Debian-based, runs Proton just fine.
Bazzite, an alternate OS for Steam Decks and also just a decent general use anywhere distro… Fedora based, runs Proton just fine.
And, beyond that, Steam can easily run on each of those OS’s, and basically their entire sort of family lineage that derives from their basal OS, including said base OS.
Can you tell me how/why you came to think Proton only works properly on Ubuntu?
I am genuienly curious as to how you came to be so misinformed.
Games work better on Linux than you might expect. Check out protondb for specific titles you’re thinking of. Most things I’ve just hit “play” on steam or heroic and they work n
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll definitely check it out.
Check out winboat
You might be surprised by how capable linux gaming has gotten. The only thing really missing is AAA FPS type games. That doesn’t matter at all to me, but its something to consider. Just about everything else plays right out of the box.
While I don’t generally recommend it, NVDIA has streaming options for games on Windows. You can even run this from a browser if you wanted, all within Linux. I would be surprised if you couldn’t use this for Photoshop or an alternative existed.
It’s just important to keep in mind this isn’t your computer, its a subscription to someone else’s computer. I just thought I’d mention this because it’s not commonly suggested and it’s nice to know avaliable options.
You can also just get a separate computer with MacOS for Photoshop and ditch the kernal games or maybe play them on Mac if they’re low end, and use Linux for everything else.
Maybe rootkits will be gone soon. 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop.
I already have to use Windows 11 at work so I know the problems it comes with and I absolutely refuse to upgrade at home. I’d sooner go to exclusively Linux than upgrade at this point. I’ve already been duel booting Linux and Windows at home just in case I gotta bail completely. And as someone that has tried Linux back in 2015 it is leaps and bounds better than it used to be. Besides certain proprietary software you can basically do 80% of what you can on Windows at this point.
I still have a dual-boot desktop that I keep a copy of Windows 10 on for one or two bits of software that I can’t get 100% working in Wine, and yeah I’m definitely not upgrading. For one thing I can’t because it’s an older CPU that doesn’t have TPM on it, but also because of the AI thing.
The idea that Microsoft is expecting me to purchase new hardware (which is now ludicrously expensive because of companies like Microsoft going all-in on AI slop) so that I can ‘upgrade’ and make it easier for them to use their AI slop spyware to harvest my info is so preposterously arrogant and evil that I actually find it super funny.
It’s like if someone was going to rob you and they expected you to go purchase and supply the gun they use to stick you up with lol.
I have used MS for years and also interacting with linux based server systems daily. I do stick with windows, but I also disable most of AI related features (I used auto captioning in some cases). While I use AI daily it is a local sandboxed instance. I think they should focus on other areas, but every tech company is FOMO on AI.
Finally converted the last computer in my house from Windows to Linux. My wife was the last holdout and she’s been loving her Linux machine.
It really is a perfect storm against Windows/Microsoft:
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AI Sloppifying their everything
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Linux is now very easy to get into
TL;DR: Short Microsoft or no balls
It really isn’t for most people though.
You’re expecting that people will seek out alternatives. I expect the more likely reality. People will just stop using PCs completely outside of work.
It’s not a matter of how easy something is. It’s a matter of human perspective. Right now they think of PCs as being “Windows”. In much the same way some of our moms would say “I bought you a Nintendo game for your xbox!”
And instead of buying non-compliant software, she actually DID buy an XBox game. And called it Nintendo.
Same way down in the south you might overhear someone order a coke. To which the waitress asks “what kind?” And the reply is “Sprite”.
Kleenex/Tissues.
You get the idea. To them PCs are made by Windows and thats all they know. They just know they don’t like the AI they gwt forced to use at work. So instead of using it at home, or using an alternative, they figure they can just watch youtube on their phone.
YOU use a PC as a PC. Most other people use PCs as a browser to go to facebook, and youtube, and instagram. All the things that make you cringe, thats what a PC is to them.
So when you say “You can customize everything in linux!”, their response, from someone who used WindowsXP for 15 years and never once changed the wallpaper, will be “but why?”.
Hopefully that can help you see the difference between “it’s easy” and “it’s a thought that runs through their brain at all”
yep. attention is all you need with the manufactured consent of the free marketplace. behavioralist by design!
When it comes to whether people will switch I think sentiment is more towards diy PC gamers who are used to putting together and upgrading their systems and doing a fresh install.
When it comes to the general consumer i expect them to have the tech literacy of boomers when it comes to a PC.
Others will do whatever gamers do because only PC builders can build PCs.
Not all gamers can even do something as simple as installing Windows off a usb stick. The tech illiteracy of PC users can’t be overestimated. There’s PC users who buy high refesh rate monitors then use them at 60 hz. Anyone can buy a prebuilt.
you say that, but i’m telling you, every year linux getting more and more popular, if not stopped, will create a tipping point. It just takes a few more waves of youtube videos to get younger people into it, and young people grow into older people with strong opinions
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I‘ve switched to Linux mint. 95% of my time I am using it instead of Windows and this is just because of that stupid kernel anti cheat software…
My Linux mint partition broke almost immediately :(
The windows boot loader has a tendency to erase the GRUB for booting Linux, borking it as soon as you load into windows. It’s probably because windows is still in dual boot.
So that explains my Zorin install disappearing several times. I just gave up and got a Mac.
Yeah I would assume so too but I can’t drop windows and if I can’t rely on dual booting to work it’s not worth messing with. I have a laptop with bazzite on it but that only gets so far.
Dualboot might work better with ltsc iot version of windows, which even if you only use Windows you should be opting for anyways over the copilot and account requirement forcing consumer version of Windows that pushes out unstable new features people don’t want to try to boost their stock by showing increased use of AI.
Don’t dualboot with a partition and you’ll be fine. Give Linux it’s own drive and Windows stops messing with it.
And vast majority would rather become ransomware targets than try Windows alternatives.
Breaking the preview pane in the final update for windows 10 was a nice touch.
All these articles mention 10 being dead, but free extended support is offered by Microsoft with a couple of clicks until next year so really it’s not. Massgrave gives you 3 I believe, and IOT is even longer.
Sure, but that’s just postponing the inevitable. And Microsoft is a company not to be trusted at this point. You’re one update away, yes, even on Windows 10, from being forced bullshit down your throat.
Good
