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Im assuming MS will always have one secret good version of windows for enterprise? Eg. I have Win 10 LTSC 2021 which runs out in 2032.. I assume when that runs out there will be some replacement good version of windows?

I also installed Linux Mint which I am trying to do as much as possible on. Its really fantastic, its crazy how it "just works".. The most intuitive and user friendly OS ive ever used.. I just do a lot of weird game and game-dev stuff that I still need Windows for.. If I didnt do that stuff I would 100% be on Mint.. And that is changing with Steam, Wine, Bottles, Proton, Lutris, the amount of stuff u cant do keeps shrinking and it keeps getting easier and easier. Most people on earth should be using Linux, it would be objectively better and easier to do everything they want to do on their computer compared to all the other popular OSes.

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The new 'good' (more like less worst) version of Windows is Windows 11 iot ltsc. It's as clean as windows 11 gets (https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links#differences-between...).

Still, I've been using computers for 30 years and I'm starting to feel the itch to look for Linux alternatives and I'm pretty old. Change does do not comes easily to old people. This is bad for ms.

If you want to switch to linux but not feeling overwhelmed at first, you can stay on windows and work with something like Virtualbox running your linux distribution of choice alongside.

You keep on testing/experimenting daily, slowly getting the hang of it one software at a time. And once you found how to do everything you have to on linux, you're just ready to switch.

Thanks for your insight, I might go and try something like that.

The same. I used Linux a lot a decade ago, and all this MS mumbo jumbo with Win11 is totally disappointing and irritating, to the point that next OS will definitely be Mint. I envisioned that this might happen eventually, so I never locked in to any Windows tools, I use exclusively cross-platform tools. I live most of my OS time in powershell, vscode and firefox, so no problems there.

Constantly fighting MS irresponsible decisions makes no sense any more.

> Most people on earth should be using Linux

I don't think the current state of the Linux desktop is ready for that. Linux desktop still loves to show its sharp edges from time to time. Sure, I do also think most of Windows stuff now "just works" on Linux; Proton & Wine already cover a lot of "Windows-only" app I need and I only boot to Windows when I need to change some proprietary driver config.

However, I think "just works" here is different from the general population definition of "just works". HN folks probably don't even mind writing their own patches or compiling stuff for themself. But for the general population, people don't even change the default settings, let alone follow a tutorial or type in some commands on their terminal. People delegate this stuff to more "techie" people around them or dial customer support.

I don't think there will be a mass adoption of Linux desktop until this part gets ironed out or somehow everyone is forced to install Linux by their employer/school.

What would a normal person need to open terminal for though? In my recent experience with Mint I never needed it for anything normal.. eg wifi and bluetooth on laptop all just worked perfectly after install.. for installing software there is a gUI app store type thing.. for games u just install steam and it works exactly like on windows.

Installing stuff with your package manager?

In my experience, it's still quite annoying and fragmented in Linux desktop to install stuff here. GUIs like KDE Discover exist, but sometimes it doesn't do the things I expect them to do. For example Wine. Last week I tried to install it from Discover but it doesn't work like expected for apps I need. After figuring things out, it was some kind of regression bug, and I had to open a terminal to install the version I needed.

Games, sure. I think Steam + Proton does a very good job making things seamless; you don't even need to do anything other than press the install button on your library. This is what I expect if you try to sell Linux to the general population.

Drivers, it's kind of a mixed bag. I've had some bad experiences with Nvidia drivers lately, and it just got fixed in the latest patch. Proprietary drivers also rarely support Linux distros. It might be useless, but some people might find their RGB mouse and peripherals not working anymore to be a dealbreaker.

Work issued me a Windows 11 laptop and even clicking on a window in the task bar does not reliably bring it to the front. There's sharp edges and there's wtf

Windows 11 can't even reliably work out how big a maximised window should be, forcing me to have to restart explorer multiple times a day.

Yeah, sure, I have a fair share of complaints on Windows too. Since Win XP, I think there has always been some kind of jank around Windows auto-hide taskbar, and it still persists on Win 11 which irritates me quite a lot.

Closed-source doesn't help for a poweruser; I'm fine with fiddling around with the code or config, just give me the code and manpages.

But again, my argument is that all of this is not applicable for the general population. Excluding loud internet forums, people seem fine sacrificing this kind of jank behavior as long as it doesn't interfere with their task that much.

I think Apple's recent Liquid Glass is a kind of stupid attempt to try to copy Win Vista-7 Aero style with terrible execution. But as long as it still allows Apple users do their things, I don't think they're going to switch to Linux just for customization.

Recently it's got really bad though. The taskbar is badly broken.

* If you use auto-hide, it won't show when some applications are open. Edge in particular is bad.

* Some applications simply don't show on the taskbar at all. Teams is one. It's in the alt-tab list.

* Sometimes it stops working entirely.

The testing and QA of this stuff appears to be largely absent.

I've said this once because we've already had discussions "Windows bad", but I jumped ship too. My experience is different though. I installed Linux Mint - it doesn't work and it won't work. Quick search shows that Fedora KDE is the only distribution that actually supports graphics stack from current century, and doesn't have community drama around it (Ubuntu). I installed it. I keep running into weird issues like graphical glitches, devices randomly not working, shit needing fixing with complicated terminal commands, programs not behaving in expected ways, update regressions, and all the good stuff that Linux on desktop is known for. But we're definitely way closer to Linux being a working desktop system than we've ever been, and it gives me an impression that a dedicated tech-savvy person could potentially actually use it. I haven't booted into Windows for two weeks, and I think there's a decent chance I won't need in the foreseeable future.

Your experience with Mint is definitely discouraging.

My screen expects HDR signal and when it receives SDR signal, it caps maximum brightness at "you can't see shit during the day". And that's what I had on Mint.

Ironically the more "user friendly" a distro is, the more issues I seem to have with it. I'm running Arch with a window manager, the only issue I ever had was a kernel regression, after which I switched to LTS.

Meanwhile whenever I had to deal with Ubuntu or other such distros, I keep getting issues in the most basic functionality even on fresh installs. Can't launch firefox, random non descriptive errors from package updates, poor device support...

Yeah the Windows 11 IoT LTSC version is excellent. Better than Windows 10.

The UI and reliability is still generally better than Linux, although KDE is getting pretty close.

Mint is in a good place right now. I enjoy it immensely on most of my daily devices. Still stuck with MacOS for work which I lament.

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