I will continue to enjoy my incredibly straightforward and to the point Linux desktop that’s somehow gained a new AI-free feature by doing nothing.
Don’t you want a bunch of pop-ups nagging you to use their AI gimmicks, though?
Would you be able to point me toward a good thread about “beginner-friendly” distros that works well with games?
I honestly have no idea what to trust when it comes to this
Pop!_os worked fine for me out of the box. The UI is a little mac-like (dock on bottom, spotlight like search when you hit the super key) by default.
Steam just works. Heroic launcher just works. It’s simple.
I’ve also used mint, but had slightly less luck with its install working out of the box. All issues fixed eventually but there was some head scratching.
Linux nerds tend to have opinions and it’s easy to lose sight of what it’s like as a beginner.
But ultimately it’s pretty easy to switch distributions. They’re all free.
Bazzite, definitely.
Bazzite is specifically for PC gaming and is a very friendly starter distro.
Pop_OS! and Bazzite were the first two I tried when I made the switch. They were advertised as working right out of the box, which they did not for me.
When I was trying Nobara, I learned I had to run something in the command line to get gamemode to work properly with Steam. Ever since then, Nobara has worked for my gaming needs.
A few tweaks are needed here and there, but it’s literally copy and paste from protondb.
Like others said, bazzite and pop os, though I’ve never used either. I use mint and never had a problem.
Though it should be pointed out that some MP games that use a kernel level anti cheat can’t be played (battlefield 6 for instance).
But I also wanted to mention, you can run Linux from a USB flash drive. So of you want to try out one of them without actually installing it, you easily can. If you don’t like it you don’t install. If you do, then you go for the full install. Easy non committal trial so to speak.
I Will get down votes but none works well, most work fine given you spend enough time tinkering. Pirated games are a waste of time to get running and there will be some distros that already come with stuff set up to be " plug and play ", but it never is.
Would you recommend an alternative?
Dual boot windows unfortunately it’s the best option for games until things change.
That said my daily driver at work is Arch at home is Ubuntu and I have a Ubuntu server for my NAS.
I haven’t done much gaming but Steam seems fine on my old laptop running Mint.
That’s a bit like asking, “Can you point me toward a beginner friendly car that has air conditioning and a radio?” You’re going to get 100 different answers because there are a hundred different distros that do all the things. The differences between them are small and not really of interest to a new user.
So I’ll give you a general rundown of the names you’ll probably see:
- Ubuntu: The classic recommended option and the most used worldwide. Though they’re corporate run and occasionally makes weird decisions that piss off the linux community, so you won’t see it mentioned as much as it was 10 years ago.
- Kubuntu: An Ubuntu flavor with a very customizable Windows-like desktop that should feel very comfortable for new users.
- Linux Mint: Essentially decorporatized Ubuntu with their own custom Windows-like desktop. It’s often the go-to recommendation to new users now, though I’ve personally never tried it.
- Pop!_OS: Basically Ubuntu with NVIDIA drivers enabled by default, so it positions itself as a gaming distro.
- Zorin: Another Ubuntu clone that tries to look as much like Windows as possible for new users.
- Fedora: A more frequently updated distro, which is appealing to those with newer hardware. A little less straightforward for new users but still not super challenging.
- Nobara: Pop!_OS except for Fedora.
- Bazzite: An immutable Fedora distro (meaning you can’t edit the underlying filesystem,) making it behave more like a consoles. Honestly, immutable distros are a niche in linux so you should probably avoid it as a new user, but you’ll see it listed as it has some diehard fans.
- Arch: A DIY distro for enthusiasts and tinkerers with very frequent updates, so good for newer hardware.
But again, they’re all like 95% the same as each other. I’d just pick between Kubuntu or Mint, maybe Pop!_OS if you don’t feel like going into a menu and enabling NVIDIA drivers.
Then you install Docker because may Linux apps come distributed only as Docker images and find out that Docker has its own AI built in called Gordon.
Then Lemmy dogpiles me for, “What do you expect for running corporate software.”
I use it and I have not encountered this. You’re referring to the desktop GUI maybe?
Yes, Docker Desktop which if you follow the guide for Network Proxy Manager and other docker apps you end up installing. You’d have to already know that Docker Desktop has AI to avoid it and find a work around install.
If the default is getting Docker AI when you install popular apps in Linux, at that point it’s not different from knowing that the default is getting Copilot in Windows and then following online guides to remove it.
I assume you mean Nginx Proxy Manager? I’m surprised that you would even run that on a desktop with a GUI, seems far more fit for a headless system. Of course, nothing stops you - it’s your system.
As a general note I’d recommend docker CLI / compose, most applications will assume you’re using that and have instructions tailored for it (which is helpful if you’re new to docker).
To be honest I didn’t even know docker had a desktop app for Linux, I’ve only seen folks use it on Windows and macOS.
I’m surprised that you would even run that on a desktop with a GUI,
???
The install guide says you need docker compose and links to the docker compose install guide. The link provided for docker compose installs docker desktop. Docker Desktop is a program that shows your running Dockers and allows you to start and stop them.
But fuck me for being a simple man that Read the Fucking Manual and followed the directions provided.
No need to be so hostile.
Installing docker desktop is fine but if you are on Linux and in any way comfortable using the command line I’d definitely run without the desktop part. Just docker and the composer addon is enough.
That nginx proxy manager recommends desktop for Linux environments which most of the time don’t even have a GUI is a bit bizar tbh.
No need to be so hostile.
It’s frustratingly hypocritical that Linux users rightfully dunk on Microsoft for it’s AI yet defend Linux platforms despite the AI.
When it’s the default in Windows, Microsoft is evil. When it’s the default in Docker, you should know better and figure out how to install it despite the official online documentation telling you to install Docker Desktop to get Docker compose installed.
Have Win 10 and was a Windows die hard since I was a kid.
Been running Linux on another drive as my default boot for a year and a half in anticipation of this horseshit and was only hesitant to delete Win because my Fanatec sim racing hardware wasn’t supported on Linux.
Welp, turns out hid-fanatecff is a thing. Installed the kernel driver and boom, working Fanatec peripherals. Even my Moza shifter is plug-and-play.
Bye bye Microsoft.
Yeah, peripherals lol. All my sim stuff is working brilliantly in Linux, however I still have some audio production stuff I need Windows for. Unfortunately, due to the need for minimal hardware latency and all that, Wine and VMs aren’t an option. Also a lack of drivers for some midi devices sucks.
Really? I run my home studio in Nobara Linux without any latency issues. I use Reaper as my DAW. Are you using
yabridge?Yeah I have tried it, but didn’t have luck unless I was driverless and that meant losing velocity. Maybe I configured wrong, it was kind of confusing but the internet said it was facing the same issues as me. Mainly this was for Roland stuff.
I was going to just get a laptop for Windows to record onto next to instruments and then transfer, but I’d rather just be able to plug into the DAW.
That’s really strange. I have an M-Audio 60ish key and a smaller Novation Nocturn MIDI keyboard as well as a Roland electric drum kit and have no issues doing anything over MIDI with them on Linux.
Maybe its worth another try? I don’t need drivers for any of that stuff.
Huh, weird.
Okay, I’m definitely trying again.
Some of my older gear is fine, but an example of something that wasn’t working was my TD-27 V2 on a kit. What module is on yours?
Ok, guys. I’m reading some of these replies which are saying the amount of outrage is out of proportion. I have to disagree with that. I don’t want an AI running on my PC that is monitoring and learning about my shit. I didn’t want that data saved even locally, let alone the monetization of that data. I don’t want to be paying for power of a device that is turning me into someone else’s paycheck.
Can you turn it off? I believe you can. But I also believe that doing it manually would be incredibly annoying since that does go with a lot of past practice. I also get it would reactivate itself after major updates, like how Edge keeps reinstalling.
Are there other solutions to my Microsoft issues, yes. Chris Titus Tech comes to mind.
But overall, the Windows ecosystem does not feel right to me anymore. Could other people still use it, yes. Am I going to stop them, not intentionally. But my Arch gaming PC runs games better than the same machine running Windows. I’ve always entertained the idea of a full switch, still have a Windows 11 dual boot and haven’t officially done it yet, but with this the moment feels right. At least for me, hopefully you can understand that.
Do yrself the favor and cut the cord.
The cool part is that 100% of the “AI features” they’re advertising are either not running locally or not AI at all
I think that if someone (even ai) is analyzing my documents, then they are bypassing my permissions and looking despite the fact that it is supposed to be private. Basically if ai is looking at my files, I don’t care if it isn’t running locally, it is bypassing my permissions to my automated stock trading algorithms. I know security isn’t exactly Windows strength anyways, but accessing my files without my consent or knowledge is a nail in the coffin for me. Granted, you can disable it, I might point you in the direction of winutil by Chris Titus, but I would bet money that a Windows update will re enable it without consent or permission.
It’s off by default.
Edge keeps reinstalling because it powers lots of other things in the OS. Removing it breaks other things, which is why so many people on here think that Windows 11 is “broken” or “buggy” - they run random “debloat” programs and completely fuck up their OS.
For now.
Also fuck edge for so many reasons, like ring zero access. It’s "used by (not “powers”) other things in the os by design so that they "can’t " comply with EU rules(and more).
Finally got my last PC switched off Windows. It feels good.
Four Horsemen of Apocalypse
- The country where a lot of tech countries are headquartered in, elects a wanna-be dictator
- Android restricts “sideloading” (aka: non-approved install)
- Windows has mandatory AI
- Mandatory ID Verification
Don’t downgrade to Windows 11, update to Linux
It’s insane how much extra time, effort and sanity you can retain simply by switching to Linux. I initially switched a few years ago, then fully shortly after. Using my PCs has never been better and I had no issues with gaming. The only games that don’t work are some of the live service ones I’ll never be interested in.
One of the best decisions in my life, right up there with deleting all social media. Life keeps getting better, relatively speaking, but of course rich pedophiles just can’t tolerate us having a good time.
yay! hi mint!
I am also newly minty fresh.
Although up graded anyway because the games I play aren’t an Linux.
The only downside is gaming.
I made a portable flashdrive for Linux for anything I want to keep privet and left windows for exclusively gaming.
Depending on the games you play, thanks to Valve with Proton and Steam Deck, most games are actually already playable on Linux. The only exception is newer multi-player online games with kernel-level anticheat. I haven’t done any gaming on Windows in years pretty much.
basically my current setup too. it took me just a couple of months on Win11 to straight up give up on Windows because it’s just not very good
Gaming is not the issue for me. All my games work fine. The problem is using some cheats that I did for some games like cyberpunk 2077. I cannot get PINCE or cheat engine to work on it.
Crazy to me that windows is finally worse than MacOS
Oh wow, you’re right.
Windows is becoming so trash that a bunch of my not-that-tech-savvy friends have been hitting me up asking about gaming on various Linux distros. (Just a few years ago it was all “Linux? Haha nerd”.) And the non gamers are switching to Mac at a remarkable rate.
And things have progressed so well that even for the non-technical crew, after installing Mint and showing them how to use ProtonPlus to install and select Proton-GE, they’re pretty much off to the races without much further hand holding.
Linux is the only viable solution to this mess. And no it is not as scary as it seema
Does Lemmy have a “Stallman was right” community? Or is that just all of Lemmy.
Most of it, yes.
i was thinking the same thing
See ya on Windows 7 with 0patch micropatches :D
FreeBSD has been on a bit of a glowup arc too though, at least for general desktop use. No, but really, there needs to be a viable third option other than Windows and Linux in the desktop PC space.
I’m so glad that they’re clinging on! FreeBSD is great and they’ve made some serious moves these past years.
NetBSD even explicitly banned AI from their codebase to boot, as quoted from their Commit Guidelines:
Code generated by a large language model or similar technology, such as GitHub/Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Facebook/Meta’s Code Llama, is presumed to be tainted code, and must not be committed without prior written approval by core.
Unlike Linux, whose recent embrace of AI in the codebase is worrying to say the least, you flat-out cannot submit AI-generated code to NetBSD unless it’s approved in writing*.
*originally in another reply, but deleted that and moved it here.
deleted by creator
Still waiting for nvidia to pull their heads out of their asses and fix gaming performance on their GPUs under Linux before I make the jump myself. And no, I don’t want an AMD GPU.
I’m just shocked Fedora is playing well with a quadro series card, and I’m not looking back. If there’s some bottleneck, it’s no larger than the one on my general experience with windows. Though I would very much like to be runnung a non-tainted kernel.
Yeah I understand that things have improved a lot. But it’s the 10-30% performance hit in DX12 games that keeps me from wanting to dive into Linux as my primary OS on my gaming machine. If they can get that closer to parity with Windows, I’m all-in on Linux for life.
I use NVIDIA on Linux and nothing no issues or performance hits
What is this AI everywhere concept actually supposed to accomplish for the end user? Maybe I’m just behind on the vision but I can’t grasp the point. I have a feeling it’s not really about what the users want but I’d love to here a genuinely good use case.
it’s like having 10 walmarts in one town. they are selling their investors infinite growth by showing a huge uptick in users through unavoidable systems being piled on. like how retail used to sell their investors on square footage going up every year by X amount. it gooses the stock and it doesn’t matter than your losing money or destroying your business doing it, because the stocks going up RIGHT NOW is the only goal.
It’s to make it easier for the end user to do what they want to. People are best at communicating by talking and writing, so having the ability to get things done using natural language is kinda the holy grail.
Being able to summarise/edit/create documents/images/videos, automate tasks, change settings, etc by a simple conversation is an end user dream.
yeah, I updated one machine that was running Win10, it’s now running LinuxMint
Just made the switch and it feels good
My friend finally pulled the linux trigger after being a windows user and they love it! The excitement is amazing I love it.
Same here. I actually had windows 11 for a bit… but not any more. I went linux and never looked back.
I upgraded to Windows 11 last week after my laptop initially came with it 2 years ago, but was so bloated and slow I installed Windows 10 from USB.
With the EoL I reluctantly upgraded due to company policy, and it was running surprisingly smooth. Really thought they’d fixed it. Only that two days later when I booted the system, I had a blue screen - the first one I have seen since Windows XP.
Page fault in non-page area 0x50 - google suggests reboots, or if they don’t bring any progress, boot into safe mode and update all drivers. Only that I couldn’t boot into safe mode, the BSOD locked me out.
Second suggestion was faulty RAM. Did a memtest from boot stick, no fault.
Third suggestion was to run checkdisk and scm or whatever it was called (some system file integrity check). All good.
Fourth suggestion was to boot into recovery mode, roll back into the system image the Windows 11 installer created, and redo the upgrade. Only to find out that the system restore point had not been created, despite the info box during the installation that this was happening.
Last suggestion was to reinstall Windows 11 from the repair mode, and select the “keep files” option. The offline installer crashed at 25% repeatedly, the online installer moved to 92% and stopped there. Repeatedly, again (tried 3x, and it takes about 1h to get there).
After all that frustration I had enough of that shit and installed Windows 10 IoT LTSC with updates until 2032. When the time comes I’ll either have a new job where I can use Xubuntu, or Microsoft installed on a chip in my brain. Let’s see.
Not to speak for Windows or against Xubuntu, but didn’t Xubuntu just recently have some secrity exploit that was pushed as an update to devices?
Nah their website got hijacked and instead of an ISO they spread malware. The system itself was never at risk, if you ran it.
10% chance of BS when I plug in my docking station. Has been working for years before the upgrade.
VMware is straight up broken on some of our laptops. Hyper-V is noticeably slower, too. Why would I recommend Server 2025 to anyone?
New job provides hardware and allows me to install Linux. Hell yeah.
Once I finish college I’m nuking my Windows partition. Won’t even boot into it on any future laptop, will just nuke it fully. I’m just waiting now cause I don’t wanna have to fight with teachers over online test software and shit, I like being able to do easy at home exams.
But I will relish the day I walk across the stage. It’ll be gone that night.
