@megane_kun
@lemmy.dbzer0.comI've switched to Linux as my daily driver sometime late 2019, and initially went with Manjaro (with XFCE, because I was using an ancient laptop back then) after it was recommended to me. The installation and set-up process was pretty quick and painless.
When I got my current desktop, I stayed with Manjaro. However, I got some problems with my NVIDIA video card's drivers. Proprietary support for it was dropped shortly after I got my system. Nouveau was decent. I can use my system at the very least, but gaming was a lot iffy. I didn't mind since I don't really do gaming, however. Since then, I've moved on to Arch, btw. Also since then, I've got an AMD card. Neither of them gave me much problems. A lot of my problems with Arch deal with the changes I've made to my configuration.
This is basically my Linux experience: when it works, which is 90% of the time, it's excellent. When I do have some problems, 90% of the time (9% overall), I can get by with a few internet searches. That remaining 10% of the time (so, 1% overall), I feel that I'm just too smooth-brained to resolve it, and even attempting to resolve it seems to be a foolish errand.
While lot of help is out there online, I don't appreciate the elitist tone of some of the more Arch-specific fora—they're helpful, but I'll never want to put myself to the position of asking those people for help, not with how newbs are treated. That is basically why I said earlier that I have no confidence that Linux will soon be able to shed its "for advanced users" image. Newbs to Linux don't have the knowledge to "properly ask questions" required by a lot of those online fora. IMO, they only resort to asking questions online when they're knee-deep in shit and are desperate for an answer. Being faced with an "elitist RTFM attitude" when one's already desperate for help doesn't alleviate that "Linux is too hard for me" image.
So, yeah, there's that.
90% of the time, Linux works swimmingly fine. 9% of the time, some problems might arise, but an online search (Arch Wiki is very helpful in this regard) and digging around some fora would resolve it. 1% of the time is where you'd find yourself wondering if you're smart enough for Linux. Unfortunately, it only takes a handful of (second-hand) bad interactions (thread closed with no answers, being told to RTFM, being told that the query is too vague without any helpful nudge towards a refinement of the query, etc.) to sour a user's impression of Linux as a whole.
I must admit that newbs not knowing how to ask questions isn't a problem exclusive to Linux alone. However, Windows and even Mac have the luxury of larger user numbers, and more importantly, paid staff to address user queries. With Linux, as a rule, the ones answering user questions are but other users volunteering their time and effort to answer questions. It's understandable that facing the same malformed question again and again is infuriating. However, I think it takes time and effort to be rude. IMO, it's just better to walk away from a possible unpleasant interaction. Of course, this wouldn't help the user at all, but I'd rather see a thread with no replies than someone telling me to shut up and read the fucking manual. Perhaps there'd be someone more helpful who'd step in before the thread inevitably gets locked due to inactivity.
I don't want to be negative about Linux, but if the "year of the Linux desktop" is to happen, this is one crucial thing that we (and I count myself in being a Linux user myself) must address. Every Linux user is, whether we like it or not, an ambassador, and how we deal with newbs/noobs asking questions will shape their impression of not just us, but Linux as a whole. I think there are a lot of people who are still on the fence, not because of Linux's capabilities, but because of a pre-concieved notion of what a Linux user must be: tech-savvy and above all, willing to devote the time to learning about their machine and OS. A lot of people aren't like that. Moreover, I think there are some people using Linux (even Arch, btw) who aren't like that, but ... yeah.
At any rate, I agree with you that a lot more people will be able to get by with a pre-installed Linux system. I think Linux is ready for being a mainstream daily driver.
Oh, yeah, I don't think not having native MS Office apps isn't that much of a deal-breaker. I personally use Libre Office, and despite some hiccups (their documentation do have a lot of problems IMO), it's got a decent amount of feature-parity with MS Office. For almost all of what I want to use an office suite, Libre Office would suffice. For the exceptions, I can usually find a workaround.
Overall, I'm happy with my Linux system—to the point I barely even touch Windows anymore (my SO installed Win10 on a separate SSD for me so that I can dual-boot), but I've got no reason to log on Windows. I might have had some problems (mostly of my own making), but with that small exception of times that made me wonder if I'm smart enough for Linux (or yeah, basically Arch), I'm more than content a huge majority of the time.
I'm sorry for the rambling wall of text, and I hope I've put my message across clearly.
This is just based on my personal experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.
Rather than gaining ground from the wider population, I see the recent rise in Linux usage as coming from a pool of "interested users" who have in one way or the other, had some prior exposure and thus interest in Linux. These people have already been interested in making the jump, but have been held back in one way or the other.
This shouldn't be taken as discounting the recent advances amongst Linux distributions, however. Personally, the reason why I've made the jump is two-fold: dissatisfaction with Windows, and the advances in Linux itself that have made the jump far less intimidating than ever before. Not being a gamer, however, advances in Proton was only seen as a bonus, though a very welcome one.
Only one other person in my current friend group daily-drive Linux, and like me, they already have had experience with it beforehand. There are some other people I know of who have used Linux, but still, they all have had prior experience from school or work. For everyone else I know of, if they've even heard of Linux, they think of it as "for advanced users" and as one contact put it "way above my pay grade". Unfortunately, in so far as personal experience goes, I don't have confidence Linux will be shedding that image anytime soon.
As for the Steam Deck, I am guessing it'd be similar (with a lot of caveats) to how people see Android. It'd be seen as a separate thing, and not occupy the same mental space as "desktop Linux". For one, it being a hand-held system will reinforce that difference, and people aren't as willing to tinker about with their handhelds as people are with their desktop systems. Steam Deck's OS might as well be BSD or even Temple OS as far as the ordinary user is concerned. I am hoping I am wrong here, however, as interoperability might make a difference here: if people can install and use their desktop programs to their Steam Decks in as much the same ease as installing an Android app in their phones, then perhaps the choice of OS here will make an impression on the users and not just the tinkerers.
Despite saying all that, however, I still think Linux is undergoing a renaissance. There's quite a lot of improvements going on even as we speak. Usability, in a very general sense, like being able to daily-drive Linux without being hampered by a lot of issues, is way better than it was when I first used a Linux machine in a school computer laboratory close to twenty years ago. Advances like this is starting to pull people who are curious, interested, and already leaning towards making the jump—and if this trend continues, will lead more people into using Linux, leading to more people contributing towards advances, and so on.
Back when I tried it, I only had it in one device--which is great, since I dunno if I can do it on more than one device, let alone worry how a hardened Firefox mobile would even look like.
I actually don't remember if the settings change with updates. But I suppose they don't (as they don't either with Librewolf). What I meant with "hard to maintain" is basically keeping note that the hardened Firefox config doesn't behave like vanilla Firefox (and isn't expected to). Making some temporary changes to accommodate a "necessary evil" website, you'd have to make note what setting you "temporarily" have to change it to, what the hardened config should be for that setting, and most importantly: remembering to change it back to the hardened config.
So, I guess it's not really a matter of maintaining the config than being aware of all those config changes (from default). With LibreWolf, I'm just brushing it off as "yeah, that's how LibreWolf works."
More importantly, using Firefox (or any of its forks) would mean less people are dependent on Google's Chromium. With less people depending on Google's Chromium, the less Google can swing its weight around, imposing its dictum on unsuspecting users.
I tried using hardened Firefox before moving on to use LibreWolf. Manually hardening Firefox is arguably more powerful than what you'd have with LibreWolf out of the box, but the effort involved in making those changes in the settings and remembering what they are (what they were by default, and what they were changed to) makes it hard to maintain.
I looked it up and it looks great. Currently downloading it to give it a try. I wonder how it compares to LibreWolf though.
Yeah, I remember the IT department at work back then (circa 2006) recommending Opera to me. It had features that are more or less mainstream now, like tab reloading on a timer, and all that while running smoothly than any other browser I've used at that time.
Since then, I've tried a lot of browsers like Vivaldi and Maxthon, but for some reason or the other, like being bloated, or being taken over by entities I don't trust, had found a reason to move to a different browser. Currently using LibreWolf, and I hope I won't have any reason to switch browsers anytime soon.
My first computer was a hand-me-down Toshiba T3100. I was around ten years old at the time, in the late 90's. The portable computer, was way far different from any computer I've seen thus far. It also came with a printer, but I don't think I managed to make it work. The portable computer only had a 20MiB hard drive, and memory that can be measured in kibibytes. Its hard drive has already been reformatted, and had MS-DOS 6.21, Windows 3.11, as well as some DOS games installed in it.
I didn't really bother with the DOS games, but I've had a lot of fun playing Chips Challenge on Windows. However, a huge chunk of time went into me just messing around with QBasic. Later on, when I had programming classes, I installed Turbo Basic, Turbo Pascal, and Turbo C in there for homework and projects.
It could have lasted far longer but I couldn't resist myself opening it up. I didn't have a lot of trouble opening it up, but had a bit of trouble putting it back together. It didn't survive my prying though, and it got shoved into the storage.
Just recently, a few years ago, I found out that it's a bit of a collector's item, and was even expensive back when it was new. I couldn't have known it at that time, nor would I have cared, but I still regret not taking care of it a bit more.
Thanks for the explanation. Prior to our exchange, I didn't even know such a thing is possible. It's wonderful, though to be honest, being as technologically klutzy as I am, I might find it easier to just buy a different set of hardware for my win10 to use, if ever, and disable any networking capabilities (because if it's no longer supported, it needs to be taken offline).
Again, thanks!
I swear, I can read the first part of your first sentence just fine, but I don't understand what it means, lol!
I tried to look it up, and as far as I understood it, it's a technique that allows a virtual machine to access a physical GPU directly. I guess that means that even if your VM is elsewhere (a server or wherever) it can still use the GPU you have. But the more relevant part is that since your Win10 install is on a VM, it can't do shit on the rest of your system, and the GPU access is just there so that it won't run as slow as shit when gaming, right?