99% of people just use their OS as a browser frontend. They don’t care about freedom, privacy, security, etc. They will just use whatever OS comes pre-installed. Thats why Linux’s greatest success on the desktop/laptop market as been ChromeOS. Not because it’s any better than Pop_OS!, Debian, etc. It’s literally just that ChromeOS comes preinstalled.
When my ex’s grandparents needed a new computer I got them a chrome OS all in 1.
When I started dating her in 2013 her parents were paying for AOL like $25 a month. They also had cable Internet. Saved them like $1500 on paying for AOL because they thought they needed to pay to access the email.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Still, I’ve had so many “last straw” moments with Windows that would make me consider Linux even if I was not familiar with it at all. It baffles me that there are relatively few people who give it a shot.
I suppose a lot of people just don’t want to or don’t have time to learn something new.
I’ve hit my last straw moment today trying to remove the setting forcing my password to change on a laptop that I fucking own. Windows 11 has disabled pretty much all user management features of local accounts now unless you’re signed into Microsoft and link your accounts.
Fucking bullshit.
I just need a spare weekend or two to make the swap now and throw wine on it for the games I play that refuse to run on Linux.
Don’t use Wine directly, just use launcher UIs, such as Steam for Steam store games and Heroic Launcher or Lutris for games not from the Steam store.
You do need Wine installed, but if you use launchers you don’t actually need to figure Wine out or manage it to install and run the vast majority of games unless you’re doing unusual stuff like running pirated games.
No need to figure out WINE. Steam will figure it out for you. Just click the Play button.
Linux today is VERY different from Linux 10 years ago. The switch won’t take a whole weekend like it did for me when I first tried Linux many years ago. Just install something like Linux Mint (the most user friendly and stable Linux distro) and the set up will be as easy as something like windows or macos. You never have to touch the terminal if you don’t want to.
I just need a spare weekend or two to make the swap now and throw wine on it for the games I play that refuse to run on Linux.
if your primary storefront is via steam, you likely won’t even need to manage wine, steam will do that for you as part of the install process. You can use something like protonup or something to get GE editions of proton but, honestly it mostly works right off the gate.
Just be aware that proton can have conflicts if you try to use it on NTFS drives, you’ll need to manually specify UID and GID for the drive (via fstab or however you manage mounting drives) or you’ll get permission errors that won’t actually say what they are unless you ran steam via the terminal.
Try Lutris or Heroic Launcher as those two wrap around Wine (and everything else needed to run Windows games in Linux, such as DXVK) and manage the whole process for you, with only a few games which might need tweaking the config to run (and the fraction of games like that is no worse there than it is in Steam).
I use both Steam and Lutris and in my experience Steam is not at all a good launcher for anything other than games from the Steam store, mainly because it is less configurable and because it doesn’t directly expose the tools you need to use to fix those few games that won’t just run and limits the launch options you can tweak, whilst Lutris follows the Unofficial Open Source Credo of pretty much making it possible to configure everything (though Lutris specifically defaults to the best configuration for each game, but it definitelly gives you more than enough rope to hang yourself with)
Steam is very popular because of the Steam Store market dominance so tons of people swear by it (never having used anything else), but it’s not actually the greatest option for anything but steam games and even for those, sometimes it’s worse that getting the same game from GoG and using Lutris or Heroic, mainly because the DRM in the non-GoG version of some games interferes with running them in Linux.
I want to add onto this that if you’re choosing between Lutris and Heroic, you should probably go heroic. I personally use Lutris myself, Mostly because I prefer the UI design of it. However, heroic does have a faster update cycle, while having built in support of Amazon gaming, epic games(including experimental cloud support) and gog, and doesn’t have the bugs that Lutris has. Especially when it comes to trying to run GE layers through it.
Trying to get those first party storefronts to work on Lutris is, for lack of better words, a pain in the ass. I’m only still using it out of pure stubbornness because, like I said, I much prefer the overall layout.
There’s a high probability that it will work if you simply run the launcher through steam. Honestly it’s impressive what you can throw at it and it just works ™.
Only thing to look out for is the installation path when you run installers that way, with all the virtual filesystems and stuff. Haven’t encountered a single game that didn’t run since the switch, be it pirated, gog or steam
It’s true that most people just want instant on functionality with no need for major changes beyond colors and backgrounds. Totally fine too, for many that’s all they need. But as a “power user”, which would mean anyone that needs more than a portable browser, I was very disappointed to find that’s all that ChromeOS is (twas a used one in the family). And then when I researched putting actual Linux on it so it could do more… good god they locked that shit down hard. Not even worth that rabbit hole. And that was the intent of Google.
The casual user uses ChromeOS (shitty Linux). Or preferably something like Pop_OS!, but I’m being unrealistic with this.
I see no problem here. You could replace pretty much everyone’s pre-installed OS with ChromeOS or Linux (or macOS I guess if they like MacBooks) and I don’t think most people would mind.
I have only ever seen someone use windows because they HAD to, not because they want to. Either they game, they use a software only on windows, it came pre-installed on their laptop and they don’t know or can’t bother to learn how to flash an ISO on a USB stick, etc.
I am completely fine with, and in fact am grateful for, the enshitification of windows 11. It will push more and more people to Linux. The enshitification of windows 8 is what made Steam shift from windows to SteamOS. I’m sure future enshitification will do just that: make people question why they are using windows in the first place.
The early ones were easier. The one I had needed to do some mess with a grounding screw and some other stuff that I forgot (there are websites dedicated to the procedure guidelines and which requires what), and like you say, it’s not going to be able to do much anyway. Such a contrast with throwing Kubuntu on an old MacBook, and 10 minutes later it was better than new.
99% of people just use their OS as a browser frontend. They don’t care about freedom, privacy, security, etc. They will just use whatever OS comes pre-installed. Thats why Linux’s greatest success on the desktop/laptop market as been ChromeOS. Not because it’s any better than Pop_OS!, Debian, etc. It’s literally just that ChromeOS comes preinstalled.
When my ex’s grandparents needed a new computer I got them a chrome OS all in 1.
When I started dating her in 2013 her parents were paying for AOL like $25 a month. They also had cable Internet. Saved them like $1500 on paying for AOL because they thought they needed to pay to access the email.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Still, I’ve had so many “last straw” moments with Windows that would make me consider Linux even if I was not familiar with it at all. It baffles me that there are relatively few people who give it a shot.
I suppose a lot of people just don’t want to or don’t have time to learn something new.
I’ve hit my last straw moment today trying to remove the setting forcing my password to change on a laptop that I fucking own. Windows 11 has disabled pretty much all user management features of local accounts now unless you’re signed into Microsoft and link your accounts.
Fucking bullshit.
I just need a spare weekend or two to make the swap now and throw wine on it for the games I play that refuse to run on Linux.
Don’t use Wine directly, just use launcher UIs, such as Steam for Steam store games and Heroic Launcher or Lutris for games not from the Steam store.
You do need Wine installed, but if you use launchers you don’t actually need to figure Wine out or manage it to install and run the vast majority of games unless you’re doing unusual stuff like running pirated games.
No need to figure out WINE. Steam will figure it out for you. Just click the Play button.
Linux today is VERY different from Linux 10 years ago. The switch won’t take a whole weekend like it did for me when I first tried Linux many years ago. Just install something like Linux Mint (the most user friendly and stable Linux distro) and the set up will be as easy as something like windows or macos. You never have to touch the terminal if you don’t want to.
if your primary storefront is via steam, you likely won’t even need to manage wine, steam will do that for you as part of the install process. You can use something like protonup or something to get GE editions of proton but, honestly it mostly works right off the gate.
Just be aware that proton can have conflicts if you try to use it on NTFS drives, you’ll need to manually specify UID and GID for the drive (via fstab or however you manage mounting drives) or you’ll get permission errors that won’t actually say what they are unless you ran steam via the terminal.
Unfortunately the games I’d need wine for don’t run through steam and have their own launchers ☹️
But good to know for my steam library at least.
Try Lutris or Heroic Launcher as those two wrap around Wine (and everything else needed to run Windows games in Linux, such as DXVK) and manage the whole process for you, with only a few games which might need tweaking the config to run (and the fraction of games like that is no worse there than it is in Steam).
I use both Steam and Lutris and in my experience Steam is not at all a good launcher for anything other than games from the Steam store, mainly because it is less configurable and because it doesn’t directly expose the tools you need to use to fix those few games that won’t just run and limits the launch options you can tweak, whilst Lutris follows the Unofficial Open Source Credo of pretty much making it possible to configure everything (though Lutris specifically defaults to the best configuration for each game, but it definitelly gives you more than enough rope to hang yourself with)
Steam is very popular because of the Steam Store market dominance so tons of people swear by it (never having used anything else), but it’s not actually the greatest option for anything but steam games and even for those, sometimes it’s worse that getting the same game from GoG and using Lutris or Heroic, mainly because the DRM in the non-GoG version of some games interferes with running them in Linux.
I want to add onto this that if you’re choosing between Lutris and Heroic, you should probably go heroic. I personally use Lutris myself, Mostly because I prefer the UI design of it. However, heroic does have a faster update cycle, while having built in support of Amazon gaming, epic games(including experimental cloud support) and gog, and doesn’t have the bugs that Lutris has. Especially when it comes to trying to run GE layers through it.
Trying to get those first party storefronts to work on Lutris is, for lack of better words, a pain in the ass. I’m only still using it out of pure stubbornness because, like I said, I much prefer the overall layout.
There’s a high probability that it will work if you simply run the launcher through steam. Honestly it’s impressive what you can throw at it and it just works ™.
Only thing to look out for is the installation path when you run installers that way, with all the virtual filesystems and stuff. Haven’t encountered a single game that didn’t run since the switch, be it pirated, gog or steam
Good to know, thanks. I’ll give it a try as soon as I have some downtime 🙂
It’s true that most people just want instant on functionality with no need for major changes beyond colors and backgrounds. Totally fine too, for many that’s all they need. But as a “power user”, which would mean anyone that needs more than a portable browser, I was very disappointed to find that’s all that ChromeOS is (twas a used one in the family). And then when I researched putting actual Linux on it so it could do more… good god they locked that shit down hard. Not even worth that rabbit hole. And that was the intent of Google.
So the power user uses Linux.
The casual user uses ChromeOS (shitty Linux). Or preferably something like Pop_OS!, but I’m being unrealistic with this.
I see no problem here. You could replace pretty much everyone’s pre-installed OS with ChromeOS or Linux (or macOS I guess if they like MacBooks) and I don’t think most people would mind.
I have only ever seen someone use windows because they HAD to, not because they want to. Either they game, they use a software only on windows, it came pre-installed on their laptop and they don’t know or can’t bother to learn how to flash an ISO on a USB stick, etc.
I am completely fine with, and in fact am grateful for, the enshitification of windows 11. It will push more and more people to Linux. The enshitification of windows 8 is what made Steam shift from windows to SteamOS. I’m sure future enshitification will do just that: make people question why they are using windows in the first place.
Most chromebooks can be put into a dev mode(which requires factory reset…) in order to install a new OS on it. I have done it a few times.
being said, with how low power they are, they can’t really do much but what chromeos can do.
there are some gems though that are more capable. some are worth installing linux onto
The early ones were easier. The one I had needed to do some mess with a grounding screw and some other stuff that I forgot (there are websites dedicated to the procedure guidelines and which requires what), and like you say, it’s not going to be able to do much anyway. Such a contrast with throwing Kubuntu on an old MacBook, and 10 minutes later it was better than new.
Unfortunately, very true.