similarly, I’ve removed Microsoft from my system.
Probably a good move on your part. When they try to force windows 11 on me, that’s when I will be moving to Linux.
Why wait, do it now.
I jumped ship to Linux when Win 7 died, cause I’d rather be fucked by a rusty fencepost than be forced to use 10, and 11 is right out.
Looking to move an older Windows 7 laptop to Linux this week, any suggestions? Feels like there’s so much.
I’ve been doing the same thing, trying out distros on an old laptop in anticipation of moving all my machines over to Linux.
Linux Mint is by far the most popular for noobs on older hardware, has a clean if simple interface, and will run on tiny amounts of RAM, so if you have no other suggestions and don’t know much about Linux, I’d say start there.
Linux Mint is not Ubuntu, but based on it, so there’s a lot of support. As a Windows and Mac user I found the Linux Mint “Cinnamon” desktop environment easy enough to navigate, it’s solid in terms of broad hardware support, and there are a LOT of resources if you have questions, want to watch a tutorial, or need a helping hand, all pluses for a noob. (And I don’t think I had to touch the command line once, when I had it installed: bonus.)
But the cool thing is that most Linux distros have a “LiveUSB” install, meaning that you can load the .iso of your choice onto a 4GB USB drive, boot off the USB, and take the hardware for a spin without installing anything. LiveUSB means you can try as many distros as you like until you get tired of making USB drives, and all for free.
Somebody else here suggested “Ubuntu” to you without saying another word about it, but there’s a lot more to it than that. You still have to pick a desktop environment, for example, and while there’s nothing wrong with plain Ubuntu, I honestly don’t think that’s the most user-friendly distro you could start with.
Try it, see if you like it. Most distros are completely free, including Ubuntu. But if you’re just looking at finding ONE to start with, again, try Linux Mint: it’s popular for Linux noobs for a reason, it’s stable, and even if you find you don’t like it, it’s a great place to dip your toe in and see how Linux works for you personally.
I agree with every point you make except for the desktop environment front end.
While it is nice to install a distro with a given desktop environment OOTB, you can always change it, and even have multiple ones installed at the same time. This is typically a better approach to testing out desktop environments because you don’t have to reinstall every time.
I am testing both, so for me a mix of both is best.
While it is nice to install a distro with a given desktop environment OOTB, you can always change it, and even have multiple ones installed at the same time.
This is true for Debian, but not for many others. Even Fedora ships with preloaded DE “spins” now. And changing it post-install requires more than beginner level knowledge, specific to that OS. For someone coming over to Linux directly from Windows/Mac, that’s not really feasible upfront.
If you just need a general purpose desktop and it’s your your first time, I would suggest just picking a popular and stable one with lots of documentation like Debian, Mint or Ubuntu.
I’m leaning towards Debian myself. I don’t like the direction Ubuntu (mint is essentially Ubuntu too) is going. Ubuntu is ran by a for profit company, and it is only going to get worse after snaps.
From what I’ve read Debian is about as new user friendly as Ubuntu is.
Yeah I would definitely choose Debian in that case. Enjoy :)
Fedora saved my old Windows laptop and it was a pretty smooth switch from Windows for me (though I had a bit of Linux experience). That thing became quicker than when I first bought it haha.
Ignore all the “this distro is the best”
Just use Ubuntu to start until you know what you wish was different
I agree with the first part but Ubuntu is pretty much the worst distro you can recommend.
It’s what proprietary software tends to target, so for someone just coming from Windows, it’s a decent first choice.
OpenSUSE/Fedora don’t support media codecs without knowing you need to add Packman/RPMFusion
Debian just released Bookworm, so it might be an okay recommendation for now, but as a general rule it’s probably not the best first distro
For someone used to Windows staying the same for years, jumping straight to a rolling release like Arch or its derivatives is a massive change
NixOS is too much configuration for a first time user
Linux Mint is maybe a better first recommendation, but it’s still downstream of Ubuntu (I wouldn’t recommend LMDE for a first time Linux user)
Your response is exactly why people find it so difficult to pick a distro to start. Ubuntu may not be the perfect distro for you or I, but there’s a decent reason it’s one of the biggest, and it has conservative defaults
Until that user knows what things bother them about it or what more they need, we’d just go back and forth all day about upsides and downsides of each distro
Why wait, do it now.
Because Linux is a giant pain in the ass for anyone who is not a software engineer.
In what way?
In the way that you will be expected to memorize a plethora of commands that you then type into a text-based interface the same way you would have with Windows DOS in 1998.
Linux does have desktop environments.
No shit. It doesn’t matter because any type of troubleshooting and most installations require you to dive into the CLI or download an appimage, open the properties and select an executable. This is not remotely intuitive. I mean I could go on and on and on with this but anyone who uses Linux knows it already. I just don’t understand why they can’t see how incredibly unintuitive the entire system is, with seemingly no plans to make it easier.
Mainstream distros are just as easy to use as windows or MacOS.
Let me tell you a little story about yesterday:
My Signal app on Linux keeps crashing. I write to them for support. They suggest I install the Beta version. Why would they suggest I install a version that openly state is “for users who do not mind discontinuity in service and are willing to work with us to understand and test issues.” to fix an issue, I haven’t the slightest, but I take a look regardless.
“To install on MacOS, download and install this file”
“To install on Windows, download and install the file”
“To install on Linux open a terminal and copy and paste these commands”.
So I open the terminal and copy and paste the commands and I get some generic error message I don’t understand and now I…fuck off because I’m not a software engineer and don’t know how to fix this shit. That’s before even getting into the 2 other commands I’m supposed to run that I don’t understand what they are or what they do.
My ProtonVPN client on Linux is incredibly basic and unstable, and has been for many years while the Windows client is beautiful and functions perfectly in the background with zero interaction.
People who think Linux is fine for the general public are, frankly, delusional. I don’t have another word to explain how you can be under that impression.
You make a fair point. ProtonVPN was a nightmare for me to set up and get working too but I think that’s Proton’s fault more than Linux’s. I have many other applications that I simply installed with one click from the Software application and then have never needed to touch again. It seems not all app developers are equally motivated to make their stuff easy to run.
I think that’s Proton’s fault more than Linux
To the end user, it doesn’t matter.
It seems not all app developers are equally motivated to make their stuff easy to run.
Yes, that is the point. Many developers don’t care to rewrite their software for the 1% of people that daily drive Linux .
As a Linux user I mostly agree…
… until you try to play any competitive multiplayer game and wonder why any anticheat doesn’t work or flags your system and account.
Nowadays I use my Windows 10 mostly for games and video editing.
EAC depending on the title works out of the box from what I’ve seen, I don’t have much time these days to play many competitive shooters or games in general but Battlebit and PlanetSide look to work fine through proton.
My new hardware is literally incompatible with Windows 11. They’re doing me a kindness I don’t want all this AI shit on my PC
That’s the real trojan.
Me too !! Been loving Ubuntu the last couple of months. Had very few issues other than one time my Gui stopped working and it would only boot into terminal, if anyone knows how to fix that it would be great incase it happens again . Last time I just did a fresh install.
I recently went to Kubuntu and it’s been good.
At this point, Microsoft Windows itself can basically be classified as malware
Windows updates are literally harder to stop than actual viruses.
When Windows 95 was in beta I would install it and next day it was dead. We finally realized that the BIOS was killing it.
Wat?
it is - by everyone with half a brain cell or more. Unfortunately, that’s not the majority of users by a long shot.
Incredible the downvotes you get. It’s true. Windows literally spies on you
It forces software on your system you don’t want and when you try remove it it reinstall itself just like a virus. Windows 11 especially is trash.
Try edge. Are you sure? It’s better. Why are you going to google? Did you know bing is better?
And so on and so on. It’s gross.
You can even earn reward points and real cash bribes to use Bing.
oh noes, my karma! Oh wait - there’s no such thing on lemmy :) In all honesty, I think most people downvoting did not fully understand my comment in relation to the one I was replying to. I think they misread it as “people with half a brain cell or more don’t use windows” and pushed the arrow down.
This is probably it haha
Classic Microsoft
A little context, one of the larger exit nodes was compromised and would send malware to your computer. The behavior shield probably caught this and correctly marked the program as a trojan, since, by definition, that’s literally what it was acting as when connected to that node. More advanced AVs (like malwarebytes) will instead block the malicious connection rather than blanket-banning the entire program.
A sane response in a sea of bullshit.
This only happens in the latest version btw.
You can still download previous version and replace tor.exe and it works.
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Windows Defender sucks compared to the original Williams version.
How dare they use a non-Edge browser for this!
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/microsoft-defender-will-finally-stop-claiming-tor-is-malware
Microsoft Defender will finally stop claiming Tor is malware.
Hot take, I see no issue with this. If you’re savvy enough to know about Tor and its purpose, you’re also savvy enough to know how to add a security exclusion in Defender. People who don’t know how to whitelist a program in Defender probably did not install Tor themselves and won’t be safe using a program with the capability to access the dark web.
It’s extra frustration for those trying to legitimately use Tor, but it’s also a safety check in the case of an unintended install.
People who actually want to use Tor are probably also on Linux. Using it on Windows pretty much nullifies any privacy it gives you.
False positives happen and it seems like they already resolved it.
It’s unfortunate that MS makes it so hard to take them at their word when they’re so aggressive with forcing Edge down everyone’s throat. That makes even obvious bugs seem nefarious.
Bruh wtf.
This is why I rolled back my version of Tor? So I guess I have to add the folder as an exception. Fuck Microsoft.
Oh no, how will I get my hands on hitmen and cp now?!
