[HN Gopher] Screw it, I'm installing Linux
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Screw it, I'm installing Linux
Author : throwaway270925
Score : 99 points
Date : 2025-11-19 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| pinewurst wrote:
| https://archive.ph/DNFkL
| xedrac wrote:
| Welcome to the world of computing freedom.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Never before has a successful software company worked so hard to
| reject the wants of their user base. Ai continues to be a
| solution seeking a problem.
| baal80spam wrote:
| C'mon. Microsoft is one of the top 3 companies in the world.
| officeplant wrote:
| All three of the top three could vanish overnight, and a
| think a lot of us could just go on living without much issue
| from the "loss".
| agumonkey wrote:
| but the windows brand is taking a serious beating
|
| win10 was a great restart somehow but 11 transition was (and
| is) alienating many people
| SirFatty wrote:
| That couldn't have anything to do with being a near
| monopoly.. no sir.
| recursive wrote:
| Two names for the same thing.
| officeplant wrote:
| In the 2000's I used to fear that not having windows at home
| would lead me to a lack of troubleshooting prowess when it comes
| to problems with windows at work.
|
| Now I'm just glad I only have to suffer windows at work.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| After some uni class at a conference room, back in 2006, there
| was a Linux hackathon/demo-y thingy outside where there were
| people showing off Compiz, the cube and that kind of stuff. Of
| course my noob ass was impressed with that - you can switch
| windows a 3d cube? That's amazing! That's the future! I want to
| try that!
|
| So they were kind enough to give each one of us a Ubuntu 5.10
| CD, one of those from back then when Canonical shipped free
| Ubuntu CDs to people around the world completely for free.
|
| I can recall poking around that brown-y Gnome 2.x and feeling
| cozyness, like feeling at home. Everything felt transparent and
| humble and honest, from the desktop wallpaper, the icons and
| the typography to the tone the help pages were written. You
| could feel the _ubuntu_ on it. It really felt like it was made
| for human beings.
|
| The computer no longer felt like a dark box that only let you
| do things your license let you to do and if you dared to look
| at other direction, ever so slightly, things could go insanely
| wrong.
|
| Granted, I didn't had internet at home back then (and wouldn't
| have it until late 2008 via a crappy 3G modem) so after nuking
| the Windows XP install and tried install it, also nuked the
| partition where I had all my uni docs and stuff and, defeated,
| had to go back to Windows via a pirate copy - until I had
| enough spare time to go learn what I did wrong and try again.
| Never went back ever since.
|
| Things have changed a bit - Ubuntu is not what it what it used
| to be, I am not who I used to be (ended being a graphic
| designer) and not even the internet itself is not what it what
| it used to be - but I'm glad human creations like Linux still
| exist.
| seemaze wrote:
| >So if anything goes wrong in my install, it'll be a lot of
| forum-hopping and Discord searching to figure it all out
|
| This is not _inaccurate_ , however every time I've had to
| interface with either Microsoft or Adobe issues, both the
| professional and community support have been abysmal. Both
| community forums seem to incentivize engagement to the point
| where every response is 3+ hyperlinks deep to someone else's
| vaguely related post.
|
| Maybe the linux forums self select for independent problem
| solvers..
| ronsor wrote:
| Community forums/support from big companies like Microsoft and
| Adobe tend to be completely useless. In most cases, all threads
| follow the same flow:
|
| * Question with reasonable amount of detail.
|
| * A reply from some "Community Helper" (Rank: Gold): "did you
| try reading the help files?"
|
| * Another person with a "Staff" badge: "this isn't our
| department"
|
| [Thread closed.]
| ACCount37 wrote:
| At least it's not Qualcomm support forums.
|
| "Talk to the sales about this functionality. [Thread closed]"
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I have some respect for the Oracle's honesty in putting
| stuff like "this bug can't be solved in the cheapest
| version of the software, buy the upgrade package X if you
| need it fixed" right on the forum.
| xmprt wrote:
| Or
|
| * Helper: This is a great suggestion which I'll flag for the
| team to add support (5 years ago)
| Jigsy wrote:
| Or "Did you try rebooting?"
| esafak wrote:
| The Microsoft Way (tm)
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Many OpenSource forums and software are like this. None of
| the help is there to help you use the system. It's there for
| you to gain some deep knowledge that you don't care about.
|
| But I've said it before and I'll say it again. some Linux
| distro needs to adopt some hardware line and partner with
| them to release a known good line of computers and polish the
| hell out of it. Like System 76 but nicer.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > either Microsoft or Adobe issues
|
| Please run sfc /scannow _closes topic_
|
| Both MS and Adobe's forums are a complete joke, LLMs give
| better support than their respective "communities."
| gerdesj wrote:
| ... and reinstall Windows is offered as the next step after
| sfc /scannow.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| For sure. Despite its reputation, troubleshooting is much
| easier on Linux than on commercial OSes. It's not even close.
| tonymet wrote:
| Any technical minds care to explain how the "agentic Windows"
| actually functions?
|
| Based on the marketing it seems to run a sandboxed copilot
| instance that can impersonate the user to take actions, with
| their permission?
|
| Something like "hey copilot install Putty"? and it does it?
|
| I can relate to the reluctance to adopt AI features into the OS
| -- but I would also like to understand how they work and any
| utility they might provide.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| That's what I understand. It basically spins up a windows VM,
| you grant it access to specific files or folders, and it runs
| the actions in the VM.
|
| From the MS support doc:
|
| > "An agent workspace is a separate, contained space in Windows
| where you can grant agents access to your apps and files so
| they can complete tasks for you in the background while you
| continue to use your device. Each agent operates using its own
| account, distinct from your personal user account. This
| dedicated agent account establishes clear boundaries between
| agent activity and your own, enabling scoped authorization and
| runtime isolation. As a result, you can delegate tasks to
| agents while retaining full control, visibility into agent
| actions, and the ability to manage access at any time."
|
| MS showed a little bit of something like it at Ignite
| yesterday, but for enterprise automations, the AI spun up a
| Windows 365 instance, did some stuff on the web, then disposed
| of it when it was done.
| tonymet wrote:
| thanks for explaining that. I could see some value and also
| tremendous risk.
|
| My concern is that the Windows Credential itself doesn't have
| a ton of value (opening windows apps) but the browser cookie
| jar (e..g Edge or Chrome) , which the Credential unlocks, has
| tremendous value -- and threats.
|
| The core problem is lack of granularity in permissions. If
| you allow the agent to do browser activities as your user,
| you can't control which cookie / scope it will take action
| on.
|
| You might say "buy me chips" and it instead logs into your
| Fidelity account and buys $100k worth of stock.
|
| Let's see how they figure out the authorization model.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| "How it actually functions" is too much of a moving target. The
| book of "best practices for building AI agent functionality
| into your OS" is still being written. But "sandboxed envs for
| AI to do things in" is one approach MS is currently trying for.
|
| I agree that a "good" implementation of agentic AI can have a
| lot of benefits, to casual users and power users both. But do I
| have any trust in Microsoft being the company to ship a "good"
| implementation? Hell no.
|
| Windows has been getting more and more user hostile for years
| now, to casual users and power users both. If there's anyone at
| Microsoft who still cares about good UX, they sure don't have
| any decision-making power. And getting AI integration right is
| as much a UX issue as it is a foundation model issue or an
| integration hook issue.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Anyone have experience with CachyOS or Bazzite here? I'm using
| Fedora KDE standard, never toyed with Arch distros, and don't
| know much about Bazzite/Kinoite. Regular Fedora seems pretty
| usable to me.
|
| In any case, it's really great to see Linux overcoming its final
| major hurdle for a lot of technical people to dump Windows:
| Gaming compatibility.
| chazfg wrote:
| I use cachyos. It's good as long as you're fine with some knob
| turning. I haven't had an issue granted I haven't played many
| things. Cities skylines 2 works for me so I can't complain
| about it
| cwbriscoe wrote:
| I've only played with CachyOS in a VM but I plan on installing
| it on my next computer build.
| quasigod wrote:
| Both are great options, but if you're happy with Fedora,
| there's probably not a big reason to switch. Arch is a full
| rolling release, which requires you to be aware and ready to
| deal with any breaking changes each time you update your
| packages. On Fedora, you'll mostly only have to be ready for
| this on a new version release. If you want to always have the
| newest packages for everything and don't want to wait, then
| CachyOS is great. If you want to turn on auto updates and only
| think about changes when a major release drops, Fedora is a
| better pick.
|
| Bazzite, being an atomic distro, is kind of hard to compare to.
| For basic use-cases like running just software available in
| Flathub, it is incredibly solid and easy to use. If I were
| choosing a Linux distro for a non-technical family member, I
| would go with an atomic Fedora distro and be completely
| confident they could get things done without breaking anything.
| However, if your needs are more advanced, you're going to need
| to be ready to relearn a lot (e.g. using containers for
| development), since atomic distros are a big paradigm shift
| from standard ones. This isn't a bad thing, just something to
| be ready for.
| ge96 wrote:
| I couldn't afford new computers in the past, would get some POS
| but putting Linux on it and a tiling manager gave me more bang
| for my buck
|
| Started with Linux Mint then Debian/Ubuntu, tried some others too
| but ultimately just stuck with Ubuntu
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Over here we've been saying for years that gaming on Linux is a
| far better experience, with better framerates and better
| stability.
|
| Just you're kind of SOL if you want to play anything that isn't
| based on some flavour of Quake or Unreal engine.
|
| Well, that's different now. See? Told you. Faster, smoother, less
| crashy.
|
| Oh, you want Microsoft Office? Yeah well you're probably using
| Office 365 these days anyway. Everything's in a browser. No, it
| looks just the same. Edge? It's less crashy in Linux, weirdly.
|
| AutoCAD? Nah. Still SOL.
| Jigsy wrote:
| I was still using Windows 8.1 at the start of 2024 and was trying
| to slowly shift away to Linux at the time, but circumstances
| beyond my control ended up throwing me into the deep end a lot
| quicker than I expected.
|
| I'm really enjoying Linux. It's one of those things that makes me
| somewhat passionate about computing for the first time in a long
| time.
| switchbak wrote:
| I'm one of those weird people that has been on Linux so long
| (wow, like over 2 decades now) I quite literally don't remember
| how to use Windows - even though I cut my teeth on it in the
| 90's. I dabble on the Mac to a moderate degree, but I'm just
| mostly comfortable on Linux, despite more BS than one would
| prefer. The benefits certainly outweigh the downsides (for most
| purposes), especially if you're technical enough to be self-
| sufficient.
|
| When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have
| turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks
| using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat
| codes to make it usable?
|
| If I wasn't super tech savvy, I can see why people would pay
| the absurd Mac tax - just throw money at the problem enough to
| make it go away.
| Jigsy wrote:
| > When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to
| have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp
| folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they
| have cheat codes to make it usable?
|
| I think the sad reality is a lot of people simply don't care.
|
| I specifically avoided Windows 10 because of the telemetry
| and the whole forced reboots for updates seem pretty
| annoying, and I didn't see it getting any better which is why
| I decided to try and move to Linux.
|
| The only thing that held be back at the time was I was too
| ensconsed in my eight-year-old setup, so I needed to be able
| to do the same things on Linux; and I needed gaming to be
| viable. Which it thankfully is now to Proton.
|
| And it's even more disgusting how Windows 11 has become
| considering it has the "we'll take screenshots of what you're
| doing every five seconds" stuff now. Sure, Microsoft claim
| they'll never see what people are doing, but what's stopping
| them from doing that in a future update?
|
| At least people are slowly wising up to this; though a
| believe a good majority of new Linux users are because they
| don't want to create e-wase and replace a perfectly good
| computer just because Microsoft says "No."
|
| Personally, I wish I'd swapped sooner.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Windows 8.1 in 2024? Why? You have Win10 which is miles better
| if you needed Windows.
| 1bpp wrote:
| Very curious what kept you on 8.1.
| andai wrote:
| >I don't want to talk to my computer
|
| I recently vibe coded a voice typing software (using Parakeet --
| your best bet is probably Handy though).
|
| It works in my terminal. (I just changed my paste shortcut to
| Ctrl+V
|
| I can now literally speak software into existence!
|
| I made a thin wrapper around my llm() function I can pipe text
| into from Bash.
|
| This allows me to make many other thin LLM wrappers, such as one
| that summarizes then contents of entire directories.
|
| I have a thing called Jarvis inspired by a Twitter post, where I
| ask it to do anything in bash, and it just does that.
|
| I wouldn't exactly say it's useful (I am unemployed) but I am
| kind of having my mind blown a little bit.
|
| The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Please, really, I am sure we all get it. Who is even the
| audience for this kind of comment at this point? Can't we have
| one comment section that's about how Linux is cool and good and
| Windows sucks? Like when we were all still real nerds instead
| of product hypers?
| multjoy wrote:
| What lunatic thinks that voice is the best way to interface
| with a computer?
| AuthAuth wrote:
| This is bad. New user going onto an arch distro with a ton of
| tweaks is worst case scenario for a smooth experience.
|
| I'm sure cachyOS will work a treat out of the box, but i'm also
| sure that one day things will stop working and cascade into a
| distro hop or reinstall leaving a sour taste in the users mouth.
|
| You do not need a "gaming" distro, all distros use the same
| software and you will be fine on ubuntu, fedora etc.
| kevinfiol wrote:
| Agreed. I'm surprised by the amount of Linux newcomers being
| directed toward these weird, specialized derivatives that have
| existed >2 years.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Is it bad? SteamOS is an Arch based and extremely user friendly
| gaming-focused distro.
| pshirshov wrote:
| It should be NixOS of course.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I started using NixOS a month ago.
|
| Knowing nothing about how to configure it, I installed it with
| the graphical installer, booted into a tty, installed claude-
| code, checked the config files into git, and proceeded to vibe-
| code a basic sway (now niri) environment to see what it would
| feel like.
|
| A month later, my NixOS environment is so much better than my
| heavily optimized macOS environment that I sheepishly use it
| inside a VM on macOS (UTM) or VNC to my desktop machine so I
| can use it from my bed.
|
| LLMs really open the doors of desktop Linux since you can git
| clone all of your deps locally (your window manager, keepassxc,
| waybar, your apps, nixpkgs, home-manager, even the linux
| kernel, etc., etc.) and the LLM can dig into source code and
| web search to do things for you or debug issues. And NixOS adds
| a level of observability into what's going on since any changes
| show up in git-diffed config files.
|
| If anyone is like me and used macOS because you used to use
| Linux but couldn't be bothered anymore when you'd run into a
| rough edge, you might find it fun to use NixOS + claude-code
| (or equivalent) running in ~/nix-config.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| As much as I like NixOS (I use it btw) I would absolutely not
| recommend it to a new user. I'd probably recommend trying
| Debian Testing.
| more_corn wrote:
| My buddy gave me a computer because it wouldn't run 11. I put
| Zorin Linux on it. I'm quite pleased.
|
| Not once in initial setup or first week of use did it use dark
| patterns to try to trick or force me into something I don't want
| to do.
| arcfour wrote:
| I have been waiting for this time to come. Microsoft clearly
| doesn't care about Windows very much, and Linux has never been
| more ready to break out in market share. Quite exciting to see!
| andrewmutz wrote:
| I use bazzite linux for gaming full time and can't say enough
| good things about it. You don't need to do anything at all to
| maintain it. Every Windows game I've ever tried just works
| perfectly out of the box. Sometimes I will see a warning telling
| me that a certain game is not certified for a good experience by
| Steam, and it all just works perfect anyway.
|
| When I was running Windows on the same machine I was constantly
| trying to diagnose why things stopped working, and downloading
| drivers.
|
| Perhaps my experience with Windows was worse than average, I
| don't know. But from my perspective there is zero reason not to
| run Linux full time for gaming.
| djhworld wrote:
| My gaming PC sits next to the TV in my living room and I use it
| like a console, I have one of those cheap blutooth wireless
| keyboards with trackpad for the really basic iteractions and then
| I just use a game controller for playing games.
|
| Windows 11 has been fine for me, I don't interact with it much
| other than seeing it for a bit when launching games.
|
| I honestly wouldn't mind giving Linux a go, the only downside is
| I made the mistake of buying an nvidia graphics card, I'm not
| sure how much of a pain it is these days but last time I tried it
| was a bit of a nightmare - the general wisdom at the time was to
| go with an AMD card.
| sbrother wrote:
| Nvidia's Linux software is first rate -- actually a large
| amount of the software that would merit buying an Nvidia
| graphics card is Linux-only anyway. I actually briefly had an
| AMD card but ended up giving it away since it didn't support
| ~any of the projects I needed to work on. But YMMV, my anecdata
| is from a ML engineering perspective.
| molave wrote:
| Changed from Windows 10 to an Ubuntu with beefy specs. When I saw
| firsthand the improvement of the user experience, I felt the year
| of the Linux desktop is nigh.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| I had to briefly go back to Windows and I just couldn't
| understand how anyone serious can run an OS that just decides to
| reboot itself in the middle of the night.
| ruined wrote:
| >I'm going to install CachyOS, an Arch-based distro optimized for
| gaming on modern hardware, with support for cutting-edge CPUs and
| GPUs and an allegedly easy setup.
|
| oh no
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