lol they also (in 10 at least; I have no intention of touching 11) have like 20 years of incoherent and unconnected menus for different settings, and you just have to know where they are to get to them.

I’ve been trying to switch back to Linux desktop for a couple of years. I’ve been very successful lately with “Pop! OS (nvidia)”, I think this one might finally stick.

What about with NVIDIA hardware?

Just make a Live USB, boot off it, and play around. If you like it you can install it permanently, if you don’t, just reboot without the USB.

What’s the solution to malware and virus?

There are anti-malware packages for Linux. I generally haven’t felt the need to use one on a desktop. You’re the biggest security risk to your PC; don’t go to shady websites, don’t download anything suspicious, etc. Your email provider will run a virus scan on email attachments for you (if they don’t, get a new email provider).

On basically all Linux systems, software is installed from central repositories, basically the app store model. Packages are cryptologically signed to verify their source, it’s a lot safer than the Windows model of “just download and run a .exe from the vendor’s website.”

The old argument of “no one runs Linux so no one writes Linux viruses” doesn’t completely hold up to scrutiny, but on the other hand a lot of attacks that would be meaningful to desktop users are indeed written with Windows in mind; malware you’d run on Linux tends to target server applications that you probably won’t run.

All the options and sub-options for installing and managing things feels so daunting!

This will become less of a problem with time as you become accustomed to the Linux ecosystem and discover the native ways to do things. On a system like Linux Mint, there’s a thing called the Software Manager which provides an App Store like interface for finding software from both the standard repository and from Flatpak/Flathub. You may find that there are options from both, what I tend to do is just try them both and keep the one that is more functional for me. Give it a try in a virtual machine or from a liveUSB to see what I mean.

Microsoft does things like have Windows fuck up the bootloader on purpose so they scare you into not trying to take ownership of the computer you bought so they can keep abusing you. If you’re too scared to break your main computer that you rely on, maybe go to Goodwill or eBay and pick up a cheap old used computer to experiment with. Grab an old laptop or something. I learned a lot about Linux using Raspberry Pis, which I didn’t rely on for anything so it might have been inconvenient if I broke anything but not mission critical, I could just re-flash the OS and be on my way, though these days it’s probably easier to just pick up an old used machine and maybe stick a cheap SSD in it. That freedom of “this isn’t a precious machine to me, if I kill the OS I can just reinstall it” makes you more willing to try learning things.

There aren’t many issues honestly and troubleshooting them isn’t that bad. Malware/virus isn’t really an issue on Linux, your main protection and all you really need is the forethought to not run random bullshit with root privilege. Most mainstream distros have graphical package managers, too. Your best bet is to boot a live USB and play around, check ProtonDB for your favorite games, and then install directly over your windows drive. Or I mean like a virtual machine would also be cool.

I migrated my whole family to Linux Mint, my grandma even, they all love it. I don’t spend much time supporting them either which is nice, Mint is just really headache-free.

Every couple of years for the last 20 years I would download the most popular Linux distro of the day, install it, and play around with it. And it’s mind-blowing to me how far Linux has come with UIs, usability, troubleshooting and customizing stuff.

Back in the day I spent many hours compiling obscure and dependent code bases just to get my sound card working. Now it’s pretty rare for me to need to do even a fraction of that.

Also, if you want to play around with Linux you can just download a VM solution like VirtualBox on Windows and then spin up as many virtual machines as you like and install a different iso on each one. Not to mention tinkering with Docker containers via the Docker app.

In short, it’s a great time to play with and possibly adopt Linux.

but all the talk about having to troubleshoot every minor thing makes me nervous.

Ah, no, that’s more of a “you can break stuff to learn how it works” thing. And some distros are more hacky/barebones. Just don’t go with Arch, Gentoo or Void as beginner.

Hue hue hue

So they run locally? That surely means that no data is send to MS, right? Right?!

So MS is upping the required amount of RAM so now there is even less for my browser to hog. Here O was getting by with 32 gigs, guess it’s time to go for broke and get 128.

Seriously? The old core i7 870 (not a typo) I have in my closet meets the requirements? Adding the watermark for CPUs older than that just seems mean-spirited.

Core 2, that takes me back.

That Tux version does have a bit of a Lenny face. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

For a moment when you look at the chest it seems like there’s a six pack.

Boomerang not gonna return this time ain’t it?

holy shit TIL Lindows is still a thing that exists.

Linux doesn’t support as much software as Windows. The big line for me is that it can’t run Destiny 2.

Nope. There are literally no other operating systems with fruits, penguins, demons, blowfish, or other mascots to pick from, you can literally only use Windows.

This is probably the best approach. You could pass thru relative USB ports and even a GPU to do things on the Windows VM that you can’t do in Wine.

But how does that work? Isn’t windows rigged to discover if you’re running it in a VM to go “sowwy :( but this is an enterprise feature. Money please~!”

Apple isn’t much better. Microsoft screws you on the software, and Apple screws you on the hardware (and a little on the software too).

Apple products are pretty much unrepairable at this point, and Apple seems to be doubling down when they can. From cryptographic parts pairing to banning manufacturers from selling chips to moving core components to the SOC (e.g. SSD controller), it’s usually cheaper to replace than repair, which is just bonkers when the part needed would only cost $20 but Apple will only fix it with a $1k+ board replacement.

And there’s little software things where they try to lock you in to their ecosystem.

That said, I’m not sure which is worse here. Pick the tradeoffs that work best for you. I’m just glad that Linux works well enough for my use case that I don’t need to choose between them.

You know, it probably is the time to ask myself: who is the bigger evil? Microsoft or Apple?

I’ve boycotted Apple products for so long that I can barely remember my white clamshell MacBook… my special little boy T_T I miss it.

But anyways, maybe if I can’t find a way to make Windows stop being a little bitch I might have to consider moving to a Mac :(

Unless Ableton ports live and max to Linux, in which case Fedora Atomic go brrrr.

A bit more involved indeed. It’s not like I didn’t try. The goal was to get it as good or as close to the performance you get in Windows.

Again, if you’re just using a mouse and keyboard to compose music, that’s okay, but you’ll put pressure on the Live engine buffer and most likely suffer dropouts - or buffer overruns - as soon as you add a little bit of processing. Juxtaposed to windows, that well runeth dry real quick.

Realtime MIDI and audio is even harder, because getting midi signals from several USB devices cleanly into wine is not as cut and dry as you’d think. There’d need to be some kind of pass thru on the kernel level to really get some of these MIDI devices working. Perhaps even pass thru of USB audio interfaces might be the ticket. But as is? NGL, kind of limited… and useless for me :/

Sadness.

EDIT: I was using the TKG version of wine, but this seems slightly better… might have to give it a retry. Good thing I left 200GB empty at the end of my SSD :P