Microsoft really needs an antitrust smackdown with their repeated behavior.
So does Google though if we’re being honest.
Microsoft saying “stop using Google” is actually totally fine with me.
But only if they’re saying “go get Firefox.”
Shouldn’t Apple be the focus of efforts?
Yes they do!
That didn’t work in the 90s.
Or in:
- 2000
- 2002
- 2003
- 2005
- 2008
- 2011
- (2022)
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation
Kuduos to you doing your HW. :)
Yes
In retrospect, DoJ didn’t go far enough back then and ignored Microsoft’s anti-competitive behavior with BeOS.
Part of it was Reagan massively weakened antitrust law after Ma Bell was broken up.
This is why we can’t have good things.
Ma Bell, the ill communication
Which sucked because BeOS was really good for its time.
I was so excited to try BeOS back then. I don’t think I ever got my hands on a copy, but it just looked so good.
I got to play with a BeBox for a few hours at a friend’s store and it was pure joy to play with compared to what Apple and Microsoft had to offer.
For anyone curious about BeOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzosnPSETzk
Also there’s apparently an open source version of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-zgv0CZfco
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=MzosnPSETzk
https://piped.video/watch?v=6-zgv0CZfco
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Don’t tell the other bots but you are my favorite 🤫
Looking at the lobbying with the MS-Activision mess, and how broken the government here is. I’m sure they would of gave in.
It might work if the fine was a couple hundred billion, we can give them a payment plan.
If you need more ammunition they recently also changed it so all links in Outlook opens in Edge even if it’s not the default browser. You have to go to settings and find an entirely separate default browser setting to stop it.
I switched to Thunderbird because of that bullshit. It’s getting worse. I’ll be looking for a good Linux distro for my next laptop.
I didn’t think that sort of thing happened anymore
Just a reminder that if you’re using Windows, it’s not your property but Microsoft’s one
Right but licenses for pro are £200 RRP.
Don’t then beg me to use your services, just fuck off and let me use Windows how I want
No different than Chrome.
They’re talking windows in general
This goes for both chrome and bing: If a service is free, you are the product.
Nothing Microsoft does is good. Nothing google does is good.
Choose an alternative that values you.
I don’t even value me, no corporation gives a crap. They want you and your recurrent income.
I want you and your recurrent income.
So don’t go with a mainstream option.
This “solution” completely ignores the volumes of software that is still only compatible with Windows. This is exactly the belief that Microsoft wants you to have: the illusion that you have a choice between Windows and other, equal alternatives. And before someone starts spouting off about WINE: it truly is a wonderful piece of software, and I don’t mean to disparage any of its talented contributors, but it will likely never even approach feature parity with Windows. I mean, it still can’t run the industry standard 3D modeling program.
This is always brought up but it isn’t actually that relevant. The 3D modeling profession is very small, hundreds of millions of general purpose computer users have no need for Microsoft.
I was confused as well because the industry standard (Maya) natively supports Linux. Until I looked up Solidworks and realized we’re talking about 2 different 3d modeling/design fields.
I’m aware of the pitfalls.
Linux and Firefox with uBlock Origin.
I’ll settle for one that has a vague indifference to me.
Slackware
The problem is that Linux’s user experience is simply not good enough for normal users.
It’s absolutely correct to blame Microsoft and Google. But Linux also needs to do more to appeal to non-tech people.
Hi, average user here, I’ve been daily driving Linux (primarily Ubuntu) for a decade or more. Most of my life in a computer is spent in a web browser, word document, or maybe a spreadsheet. Even at my office job it’s the same, except for some proprietary time tracking and billing software. I’d imagine 90 percent of consumers spend the vast majority of their time on computers in the web browser. Most people don’t mess around with much beyond that.
I just don’t understand what is lacking in the Linux user experience. It’s not any different from a Windows user learning to use a Mac computer. Figure out how to connect to wifi, figure out how to mess with the volume, open a browser and that’s it.
I’m sorry, but I kind of doubt you are what I consider a “normal user”, seeing as you’re in a technology community on Lemmy. Just the fact that you are here indicates a higher than average tech literacy.
Normal in terms of what they use their computer for
With the way the average person uses a computer, the Linux user experience would probably melt their brains. No offense to the average computer user, but we have seen time and time again that they are not the brightest when it comes to tech literacy or just don’t care and refuse to care since it goes against the grain, so to speak.
That’s probably not going to happen
Which is why we’re still stuck with Windows…
There’s always macOS.
Apple also doesn’t care about you. It’s also overpriced.
What part of the $1299 MacBook Pro and iMac, the $999 MacBook Air, or the $599 Mac Mini is over priced?
You would struggle to find the power of those for lower prices, especially with the quality and support Apple provides. And it’s nearly impossible to find hardware like that with full Linux support.
deleted by creator
Meh gamepass is cool for now. It will probably go up in price and become shitty when they get enough market share but until then it is super cool. And honestly I think bing/edge is now the better choice as a search engine/browser compared to Google/chrome. But no way I will give up my Firefox.
Edge (and that joke Brave) is chromium and that supports google’s control of the web. Firefox, or Safari on a Mac, don’t use google’s tech.
Firefox is the best for me. I thought chromium was open source though and not necessarily owned by Google.
Google controls it and allows people to use it so their own browser technology has the market share and can shape the web.
Denying google, a for-profit and evil company to shape a valuable public resource is dangerous.
There needs to be a legally mandated option to turn off all recommendations and tracking, and to require consent to enable it in the first place.
So pretty much just an extension of GDPR. Sounds good.
Or the courts should force MS to split off into an os company, an online services company, an office productivity software company, and a gaming company.
If we had an actual anti-monopoly/umbrella corporation law that would be badass.
Hell Amazon would tank instantly, since they just operate on pumping AWS profits into their loss leader (Amazon delivery) constantly.
So would Google to some extent. This actually sounds like a good plan. We should go back to the 90’s antitrust law. Before we made it toothless and basically unenforceable.
Fuck yeah! Lets do some trust bustin!
I’ve been using windows for nearly as long as it has existed and I used to always be happy with updates. Even windows vista, despite all its problem, still felt like an upgrade compared to xp.
Then windows 8 started changing things in a direction I was not happy with, but at the same time it also had improvements over win7. Windows 10 repeated that with plenty of bad things but still overshadowed by massive improvements in many areas.
At this point windows was at its peak in some areas, like stability (when was the last time you saw a BSOD without actual faulty hardware?) and usability. Multiple Desktops, WSL2, the new Terminal…so many great things added in win10 updates.
And then comes win11 and shits at everything. Removed a ton of core features that didn’t need removing, broke a lot of compatibility with older stuff (something that Microsoft used to care deeply about) and adds… Nothing. It’s been quite a while since win11 released and there’s still nothing I can point at and say it does better than win10.
If you’re going to do all sorts of stuff with my data you should at least try to make me happy with your product in exchange, not make me dread using it every time.
I’m sorry, but I just have to mention that I find funny that the features you chose to illustrate “peak” Windows are all prime Linux features. Including installing Linux itself as a sub-system. At that point might as well cut-out the middle man.
I do use Linux every day as well. It has its own set of problems, but not the subject here.
Which core functions did they remove and which did they break?
I can’t say that I miss anything from Windows 10 or before that. I disliked the new settings they introduced at first but I think it has seen some improvments (or maybe I am better at navigating it?) but it has really grown on me.
Being backwards compatible can be important (I really appreciated it when I wanted to install a game for Windows 95 on Windows XP) but you have to cut support at some point in order to implement features otherwise not possible, or to just save time and money doing it. It is like trying to develop for the web and you still see people talking about support IE6 (or IE in general).
Win 10 and 11 are nowhere close to a fully transitioned unified settings menu, they somehow made dialouge box hell worse. its easier to list what doesnt.
- Android
- most Linux systems
- IOS
- TVs
- IOT
- non IOT things like Microwaves
- Chromeos
- off-brand feature phone OS’es
Microsoft Windows
Control Panel will propably remain for another 20 years, just like everything else in Windows, but I still like more. Combined with winget-cli, installing and uninstall is almost as good as on Linux.
As usual, it’s only Big Tech that’s able to compete with Big Tech. They all love to throw their weight around when they can, and join forces when it’s convenient.
Neither corporation should be defended or trusted with your data.
The only thing that’s kinda funny here is the irony of Microsoft tryna poach Chrome users into their own… wait for it… Chromium-based browser.
Sometimes Microsoft is such a turd… I’ve seen this thing posted several times, however I didn’t see the fix in this thread, so I’ll post it here. Sorry, I couldn’t find the Lemmy post that had the information on how to remove it, but I found one on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/computerviruses/comments/149x25h/bgaupsell_what_is_this_bing_popup/jp896s0
It’s basically a combination registry changes, and also directory modifications to prevent writing to the directory where
BGAUpsell.exeresides.It’s pretty shitty we have to do this. Please, hold all your “switch to Linux” comments, because they are stupid, and superfluous; I see that dumb shit all the time since I came to Lemmy.
Finally, a person with an actual voice. I feel like the, “Switch to Linux,” don’t realize they sound like, “Just get an iPhone people.” To me it all sounds like, “well if you don’t like being in this country then just leave.”
Linux is not the answer for all people the same as switching to an iPhone should never just be the answer.
What else would be the answer, then? Windows is a commercial product by Microsoft. They will never get better unless forced to. They will keep getting worse for profit because, well, that’s what they do.
The whole point about an open-source operating system is that you can make it yours, and nobody can take that away from you. And the more people use linux, the better it gets. Commercial closed sources products can never have the same qualities.
I don’t get it. If a product sucks, why wouldn’t you switch away from it?
“Don’t suggest I leave my abusive husband, instead I’ll complain about him to my friends until he magically gets better.”
Christ, you guys sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.
AutoCAD, Revit, Photoshop, InDesign, SteamVR.
Pretty much sums it up.
If the alternatives are not there or lacking then people can’t switch. If people don’t use it and contribute (e.g. reports, donations) then it is difficult to justify creating alternatives.
This is not a stalemate however. It is a slow transition of pioneers frustrated with the status quo.
More importantly, the reason why all of those apps don’t have Linux versions is not because of some anti-Linux conspiracy, but because Linux userspace has for most of its existence prioritized distro-packaged-and-provided software, at the expense and sometimes even exclusion of binary software distribution.
This is not just a technical limitation, but I’d also argue a cultural one, driven by folks who consider proprietary/nonfree software irrelevant and not worth supporting in a first-class way. Unfortunately, the companies who make both the software that entire industries are built around and the games that you play when you get off work disagree. Valve was probably the company in the best position to make native Linux games a trend, and the fact that they’re more focused on Proton these days is pretty telling.
The only developers in the Linux ecosystem who I feel are taking the problem seriously are the Flatpak developers. They do amazing work, with great tooling that builds against a chrooted runtime by default. But it needs more widespread usage and acceptance, as well as better outreach to developers from other ecosystems who might’ve had horrendous experience making Linux builds in the past.
There is a future out there with native Linux builds of industry-standard tooling and even games. But it’s a future the Linux community has to willing to actually work towards.
Is it not “serious” to work towards a better future because that’s more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom. The games industry has changed over the years and it is my hope people will not tolerate it forever. Even if I achive no impact with my games I can look back and see I tried for what I thought was the better moral outcome.
Is it not “serious” to work towards a better future because that’s more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom.
I do not believe that distros ignoring the problem of binary software distribution is actually accomplishing anything productive on that front. All it does is put a gigantic KEEP OUT sign for most outside developers who might have briefly considered porting their software. Package maintainers are also incredibly overburdened, and are often slow to update their packages even on rolling release distros.
Worse, it also inconveniences their userbase, pushing them to solutions their that bypass the distro completely such as third-party repos, Steam, Wine, Flatpak, Docker, or even running Linux in WSL. All of them function as non-free escape hatches, but all of them are inferior to distros getting their act together and deciding that binary software distribution is a problem worth collaborating on and solving together.
I tried to get wine to work on my RX580, and the card could t even support it. It’s only the last few AMD video card generations that do.
Yep, definitely have to pick the right tool for the job. If you use these things, you’re stuck with Windows. Would be nice if you could install needed software on whichever OS you choose.
I’ll add Visual Studio.
And, no, VS Code is not a comparable replacement no matter how many extensions you add. I say that as someone who uses VS Code for almost everything…except C#.
I’ve been running Linux on all the machines I own for years, but I still have to run Windows for work. Not everyone can just switch and I doubt there are many reading this who are unaware they could switch to Linux (or Mac, BSD, etc.).
Oh I also have one MacBook running MacOS because Apple decided to only allow iOS development and parental controls, of all things, on Apple devices running Apple software.
Yes MS and Apple suck but it’s not as simple as “just switch.”
Agreed. You’re making compromises no matter what you choose as an OS.
The overwhelming majority of people who work on a computer are stuck with windows.
Another mass majority of people will buy a computer and use whatever is on it. They aren’t tech savvy enough to switch OS’s and they know how to use it because they use it for work.
You want more people on Linux? Get more companies to switch to Linux and get more box stores like Walmart and Best Buy to stock Linux OS’s on PC’s at sale.
Linux growth right now will be slow. It will still happen, but it’s not going to be fast. Steam released the steam deck which runs Linux and the OS saw a MAJOR spike in users. That’s because a device is being sold with Linux stock on it. Now do the same with laptops. Some will say desktops, but desktops aren’t as popular as laptops. It won’t hurt to package with desktops but laptops are key to that.
Honestly, I would like more people using it as support from companies would improve and my experience would get better, and competition breeds innovation. But I’m not going to push for it. I’m happy with what it does for me and I don’t really care if other people use it or not. I just get annoyed when people complain without wanting to hear about solutions or alternatives. I know people who complain because they are chronic complainers and they are not interested in actually fixing any of their problems.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Penguin sighing noises.
Please, hold all your “switch to Linux” comments
Linux is not as great a replacement as every one makes out to be. The community is hella toxic. Frequently leads to them shooting them selves in the foot. Right now they’re trying to pick a fight with Nvidia because they dared to call Linux’s sacred GPL syscalls
The Linux community is full of elitist assholes who think they’re special because they have the ability to install an OS. However, there are also amazing people making amazing tools, completely free of charge. You can’t paint everyone with the same brush.
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems so that we’re not all bound to one OS under the complete control of one company.
My understanding of the Nvidia situation is that they are not respecting the kernel’s GPL license, which isn’t right. Nvidia has always done awful, selfish things, which makes sense as they are a market dominant company. It doesn’t mean the Linux developers have to allow them to break the license agreement. Intel and AMD seem to be doing just fine, it’s always Nvidia…
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems
They do. The US NSA being of note with SE Linux.
It doesn’t mean the Linux developers have to allow them to break the license agreement
Yes. Completely agree. The problem is, from my reading, is that Nvidia violated GPL by calling GPL functions as opposed to code stealing. The problem with GPL is that it forces everything to be GPL or you’re in violation of the license. Link a GPL library, your code now has to be GPL. Called a GPL function, congratulations, your code has to be GPL. This critical fault in GPL has been brought up time and time again. Thankfully this issue is infrequently enforced. But that just means it becomes a ticking time bomb.
Let me be clear, I’m not defending Nvidia’s actions. Just that in the blame game, GNU’s toxic attitude should be called out
Interesting, I kinda figured that there was some funding by governments but not nearly enough. SE Linux I always assumed was maintained by Redhat, like many other Linux components.
That makes the Nvidia situation a little more interesting. I’d imagine other proprietary software uses GPL’d libraries, like Steam? Doesn’t seem fair if only certain software is being targeted for violating the license. At the same time I’m annoyed how little Nvidia contributes back. It feels like AMD is creating open standards like Freesync while Nvidia won’t let others play with their toys in the sandbox, like G-Sync.
The Linux community is full of elitist assholes who think they’re special because they have the ability to install an OS.
I personally was elitist because of having a different taste which made me wish to use something open, more personal and more customizable. Do not mix us, please.
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems so that we’re not all bound to one OS under the complete control of one company.
Corruption likes one or few big private companies to supply stuff. So it’s maybe better that governments don’t finance these things at all.
Intel and AMD seem to be doing just fine, it’s always Nvidia…
Well, on the other side of things - Nvidia has an official proprietary driver for FreeBSD.
Yeah well said.
I see it here on Lemmy all the time, and you can just see it in this whole comment thread too.
I’ve been a software engineer for decades. I know my way around Windows, OSX, and Linux systems. I’m not a casual computer user. I AM a gamer though, and jumping through hoops to play games on Linux is not worth my time. Unless there is a native Linux distribution of the game, you’re jumping through hoops trying to get it to run through Proton, or whatever other means. Driver support is another thing… Yeah it’s gotten better, but sometimes it just like forcing a square peg through a circle hole.
No thanks, I’m very happy with my native gaming experience.
And sure, for dev systems, or servers, Linux is great. All of my professional work is interacting with Linux based systems, containers, etc. I also work on a MacBook Pro, so I understand the tooling for Unix systems is great for that work.
My personal life though, I’m not fighting Linux just to game.
BTW Starfield is great… Check it out lol. I just did a quick search for “Starfield on Linux”. First results are something like “Runs on Proton after some tweaks”. I’m good.
Linux people like security, it’s a security concern to give Nvidia’s proprietary drivers such low level access
If their calls violate GPL then I don’t even know why you’re being sarcastic. Not acceptable. Copyleft licenses HAVE to be respected legally. Silly to pretend like the license shouldn’t have to apply to Nvidia. If a user wants to install proprietary Nvidia drivers, they still can. But Linux isn’t picking a fight, GPL is what makes Linux Linux.
But I like being superfluous…
What if I suggest switching to BSD?
BeOS is best OS ^^
I did try out Haiku a long time ago. I wonder how that’s doing.
Only HardenedBSD.
I did this with the registry edits on my personal computer. However. This does nothing at all to help with those of us still seeing this stuff on work computers or places where we are not the administrator.
Well Windows 11 got me to use arch, for which I use btw
Hahahaha perfect
Know how to tell which Lemmy users are running Linux? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
I got that popup the other day. I’m this close to switching to Linux
This is the epitome of what the Linux community loves to read on the internet. Got any distros in mind?
Kubuntu should be solid. Not to hard to install and yeah.
Ah mate, 2 months in going full endeavour OS, not looked back. Not perfect, but very close to now and all my devices run it, its amazing.
I switched to EndeavourOS a few months ago after using Kubuntu exclusively for almost a decade. I’m never going back to Ubuntu.
Out of interest do you feel that Kubuntu and whatnot feels very much corporation run now - like its coming close to Microsoft version of Linux?
Kde neon user here, so kubuntu with latest kde apps.
No not even close. I can turn off any reporting and tracking. Yes cononical is moving more and more towards snaps but i can always just download and use the deb or flatpack
Remind me, snap uses that partition for the application right?
Sorry I’m sort of catching up on a few years out.
But then you lose the benefit of the package manager, which is like 99% of the convenience.
I did 2 months ago. The OS is truly awsome but many many software are just inferior to the windows version. For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page. You have to do it in two separate software or with a CLI application. I’m a daily anydesk user, I have license as well, their console is broken on ubuntu (or just gnome, not sure). I had to weed out certain things from gnome from a javascript file so I can use my PC while anydesk running. So depending on what you want to do it can be a very good experience or a borderline hell trying to replace your basic software with something worse. I will not give up at this point and I stand by it it is not linux’s fault, however you are not just using an OS but many software on that said OS and many of those software will suck. Fortunately things like Photoshop no longer an issue as you have Photopea in the web browser. Web3 is really helping linux out.
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Xournal++ should be a proper PDF reader that can sign a PDF and add and remove pages. Haven’t tried doing the latter personally though. It looks a bit old and might be hard to find, but it’s always worked suspiciously fine for me and is still in active development.
The “Adobe Acrobat” brand apparently also has a web app for signing PDFs. This is like, the first web search result for “PDF signing”.
I’ve also tried Inkscape import as vector and then reexport, which works fine for visually signing single pages. Just make sure you render the text to paths on import, instead of converting them to SVG text— And don’t actually do this, because it’s kinda dumb, so just use Xournal++ or the Adobe website instead, but there are options.
Granted, depending on how your experience with Xournal goes, these options are indeed not as convenient or easy as they should be.
Web3 is really helping linux out.
No! This term refers to, like, three three different things already, all of which have largely been either practical failures or grifts. Prescriptivism is usually just pedantry, but HTML5 web apps aren’t even on that inauspicious list.
There are already solutions to sign a pdf or reorganize the sheets or make comments. My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. Like if you want to use paint and the fill bucket is in a separate application. Just makes no sense. I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. […] Just makes no sense.
Ah, well, “UNIX Philosophy”, maybe. Each tool does one thing, and does it well, and it’s up to the user to figure out what they want to accomplish by using multiple tools together— Though it probably made more sense in CLI than in the GUI realm. I think it works for 95% of cases. I don’t want to need an entire office suite just to be able to make a mark on a page. But when you’re working a lot on one particular document (be it a PDF, video edit, source code, digital illustration, or whatever), then yeah, having a “complete solution” with an efficient workflow can be hugely important as well.
I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
You could check if CodeWeavers Crossover, the money behind the WINE project, can run your preferred Windows applications but do it on Linux:
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility
Or maybe WINE will do it for free:
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Unfortunately, pdf signing is problematic still on Linux, I use it as a daily driver and found a compromise with existing functionality. You can try okular, which is able to sign PDFs without altering them, but has a huge signature block and doesn’t permit adding a scan of a signature. My workaround: I created a stamp in the PDF reviewing tools with my signature, I can place that on the document and then sign it afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for pre-signed PDFs as it will alter the signed version.
Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw can sign PDFs, but also can’t insert signature scans (yet, there’s an open feature request) and is sometimes not understanding when PDFs change to landscape, in general it’s not nice to render a many-pages document in LO Draw and hope that it won’t mess up the document upon signing.
For adding / removing pages, I agree - it’s a pity there’s no GUI application, but I have gotten used to qpdf / pdftk and they are quite powerful and more efficient 90% of the time. Still doesn’t excuse no GUI application, but it keeps me able to work.
Xournal++ is old, but it can directly write on PDFs with both pen tablet and scanned image insertion, and can probably add/remove/reorder pages too— Technically I think its file format links to/embeds the whole PDF file, and then probably exports a new one with stuff added on top, or something like that, but the end result is usually that you can directly edit the PDF.
Or do you mean some kind of cryptographic signing? Well, it looks like Adobe offers a webtool too?
I meant tamper-proof cryptographic signatures, yes. A webtool is absolutely out of the question if you consider that it means uploading your potentially confidential document to an enterprise like Adobe.
You can sign and remove pages using LibreOffice Draw
you can but it has many other issues as it is not a PDF reader. It has no bookmarks, every PDF is opened editable so if there are shapes or text you can accidentally move them, there is no continuous scrolling through a document it is divided into individual pages. PDF is simply not solved on linux at the moment.
Does your PDF Reader and PDF Editor have to be the same application?
No. I rarely edit PDFs. I sign them, bind them, reorganize pages, comment on them. I was an adobe x user then a foxit reader guy on windows, there you can do it all. There is a foxit reader for linux with fraction of the features and have crashed for me constantly (back to my original point that multi OS developments have inferior linux version) Ideally I would prefer a single software to manage my PDFs just like for example I prefer a single software to play my different format of videos.
I use Journal++ to sign pdfs. Works with hand written as well as scanned signatures.
I use AnyDesk regularly myself and haven’t run into an issue aside from the dark theming of my desktop making some text a bit hard to read.
What’s the issue you’re having?
gnome has those little icon on the top bar and anydesk also creates one while running. That little icon created a big unclickable are in the corner of the screen and i could not close my full screen windows. I had to delete a javascript file from gnome that places those icons in the topbar to solve this issue as anydesk has no setting to hide it.
That’s actually an Ubuntu specific problem then, since vanilla gnome doesn’t come with tray icons
Lots of linux communities on lemmy.
Or there’s ReactOS: https://reactos.org/gallery/
deleted by creator
Is it actually something usable? I don’t know of many active users of it.
Depends on what you want to use it for. Run age-old hardware requiring age-old NT-only drivers? Sure. Run modern games? Forget it. And for the age-old hardware stuff (think control board for an electron microscope or something) people usually use FreeDOS, the number of devices that specifically need 32-bit NT is comparatively small. And that’s if they even upgrade at all often it’s just easier to slap an RPi in front of ancient hardware to isolate it from and adapt it to modern surroundings (but yes mainboards with ISA slots are still getting produced, electron microscopes are expensive).
I remember feeling like this, then I made the switch and I haven’t thought about it again
I installed Pop OS on my laptop since it’s pretty gaming friendly. Between that and the Steam Deck, Windows 10 might be my last version of Windows for personal use.
It’s in Windows 10 now too
Peachy. Thanks for the heads up. I haven’t noticed anything intrusive yet.
Pretty impressed at just how many notifications, popups and systems MS creates to continually try and funnel you into bing. At some point it moves past being annoying and now I’m just surprised at their tenacity / endurance
You’re not going to make me feel bad for Google
Last weekend I talked my wife into trying Linux on her desktop on an extra SSD I had, she loves it. Loves that she can customize everything, says it’s faster (especially boot time), we put it on her laptop last night
What distro did you go with? My friend is showing intrest in trying Linux but I’m not sure what to recommend him. I use more advanced distros myself but I want it to work well for him OOtB while also not requiring any tinkering. I’m think of either some ubuntu-flavour or fork, like Kubuntu or maybe Mint.
Mint is for sure a good place to start. I personally run EndeavourOS with Cinnamon desktop and it’s been more trouble-free than anything Ubuntu based I’ve used (shocking, I know).
Interesting! I used arch for about 2 years on my gaming rig and it worked fine but I was worried if he went with something based on Arch that he would eventually run into issues due to not properly maintaining it (avoiding partial upgrades for example). But I’m probably overthinking it. If he sticks to a GUI for installing and updating packages and avoid messing with the terminal initially it should be fine.
I will add EndeavourOS to a small list of recommendations (rolling vs point release) so he can decide for himself.
Can’t go wrong with mint, I’ve been using it for years.
Mint and PopOS! are the ones I’ve heard thrown about for “Users First Distro” ever since Canonical decided to do… whatever the fuck it is they’re doing to Ubuntu proper.
I’m using Mint now, and have exactly one complaint: I don’t like the default Cinnamon Firefox icon so I changed it, but every time there’s an update to Firefox it changes back. All things considered, that’s nothing to worry about.
This is literally your OS’s creator adding a backdoor, it could be anything bit they dont seem to care to do anything other than adware.
That’s why win 10 was free, and still is. So is 11. You can still install and activate win 11 pro for free with a 7 pro key, today.
Its a freaking vector for selling you other crap.
You don’t even have to activate it at all. It’s fully functional forever unactivated. Just a watermark.
