this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023

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Year of Linux on the Desktop (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by Limonene to c/linuxmemes

361 comments fedilink hide all child comments

2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7 right now, so I'll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.

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[–] [email protected] 276 points 11 months ago (18 children)

it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam and not because Microsoft stopped patching it several years ago

Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.

I don't think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore

[–] [email protected] 200 points 11 months ago (5 children)

People don't care about security until they get hit. Source: working in IT for 10 years.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 11 months ago (2 children)

And then suddenly they care a lot and do all the wrong things for wrong reasons because they know shit

[–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"I don't worry about missing security patches. I just have 5 anti-virus tools running simultaneously, they keep me safe."

[–] meekah 39 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or those people who actively avoid patches in general, because "they make my device slow"

[–] de_lancre 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean, they do make your device slow. That why tools like InSpectre exists. For some old cpu's like my notebooks one it can be up to 20% performance impact, so if you not planning to use it with internet (or at least as main access point via browser) ever again, why not get yourself free performance?

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[–] moonburster 25 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I see it more in: people won't switch for security reasons if it means giving up usability

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I would support a law that requires software companies to open source software that they discontinue support on.

That way, companies that disappear don't have their customers at risk.

And software companies will support software for longer.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think the problem with this is that the corpos will just keep pushing out updates that barely change anything and call the device "supported"

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Even IT people don't give a shit about security until it's way too late. Source: getting out of a job where the median age of a server is around 3-4 years old with no updates and runtimes hard installed outside repositories.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nvidia gpu drivers wont even install on win 7 anymore. That by itself causes huge performance issues on new games that have driver optimizations.

Probably the same story for amd drivers

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[–] joneskind 17 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Isn't SteamOS based on Arch? Did I miss something?

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[–] Arthur_Leywin 157 points 11 months ago (11 children)

All these people saying "use this or use that distro instead" is why Windows users don't go into Linux. Ubuntu is a solid choice for beginners because that's a distro with a lot of tutorials online if not the most.

[–] linearchaos 35 points 11 months ago (12 children)

There's a lot of people out there that hate to hear this, but ubuntu is probably the best gateway to Linux we have at the moment. Go ahead, let them come in on the distro that's pretty well supported, preconfigured with everything on and newbie friendly, then once they've cut their teeth, let they have the option to move to something that's a little more tweaked.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I don't get what the fuck is the problem with Ubuntu anyway.

Edit: I mean I heard the reasons many times but they are completely non-issues for me.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's about Ubuntu behaving lightly like Microsoft with a closed source backend for the store, having had ads in the apps drawer, putting ads on the motd in cli with apt... It's small things like these

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[–] mlg 106 points 11 months ago (1 children)

[–] olafurp 49 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Don't hate on Ubuntu. It's a great starter distro for people who only know Win or Mac

[–] [email protected] 82 points 11 months ago (4 children)

It used to be, Snap ootb is remarkably horrible, I had a not-good internet plan and Snap drove me crazy with its updates, I could've settled fine if auto updates could be switched off, but nope, they're shoved down my throat, I'd say Mint is a better starter distro

[–] olafurp 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Snap has really bad performance and licensing. I like that it's cross-platform and gives devs easier time to release software on Linux. (Flatpak is better, ofc)

I personally would recommend Kubuntu and Pop!OS if asked. However, think that people that think "I should probably install Ubuntu" should install it. There are a billion guides on how to do X on Ubuntu for non-tech people and people starting out on line might not know that everything Ubuntu based behaves more or less the same except for the KDE/Gnome/xfce. It's also supremely stable on top of that.

I think as a community we shouldn't judge people based on their choice of distro.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

False. KDE will feel much more familiar. And using a system with a modern kde version is way better than the ancient versions Ubuntu and all of its cousins use

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[–] Clbull 102 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (32 children)

Windows 12 may end up being my transition to Linux, especially if they go for a subscription model. If you told me just a decade ago that Linux was a viable OS for gaming, I would have laughed at you.

Valve have outdone themselves with Proton. So have those who worked on DXVK and VKD3D.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'll be the first to hope for the demise of Windows....but I thought the "subscription model" rumours were all discredited. Obviously anything could happen in the future I guess.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (24 children)

There's a bit of controversy regarding Ubuntu that I don't need to get into but Fedora and Pop!_OS are also really good for Proton support. Ubuntu will work fine but I just prefer not to use it. Maybe you could let him try out the live environment for a couple distros to see what he might like in terms of UI.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And Mint as well

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure that this is because steam uses chromium as its backend and chromium new version doesn't run on windows 7. It's still not good because there are some games that won't run on newer systems and therefore 7 is required for preservation.

As many of you pointed out, yes I agree proton is the answer if possible. YMMV

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago

This is the actual reason. Steam officially said that: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A

This change is required as core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago (1 children)

my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7

You saint.

[–] Tangent5280 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That man must be packing a monster dong

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Lol 0.06% usage in November 2023

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

There are more linux users than windows7 users.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

0.69% (nice) on windows 7 64bit. That's 0.75% total or 0.91% including windows 8 which is also dying. This is slightly under half of the linux user base according to these statistics

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Like others already mentioned, I would suggest Linux Mint as well. It's better Ubuntu than Ubuntu and similarity to Windows UI would make his transition much better.

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[–] Shady_Shiroe 32 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If he wants something similar to windows, get Linux mint, it's the best parts of Debian/Ubuntu but made modern. If you can do it on Ubuntu, you can do it in mint (like online guides cuz mint is based on ubuntu if you couldn't tell).

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (13 children)

To be fair, steam reports less than 1% of users using windows 7. It's not as big as we think.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (21 children)

Why not Linux mint? It is way more use friendly.

Also why on earth is anyone using windows 7 in 2023. I stopped using it to move to Linux back in 2016

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (10 children)

Nah. It's more, year of the piracy comeback

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[–] iopq 25 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I suggest an Ubuntu fork workout snaps, they are a headache to remove now

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[–] Aux 23 points 11 months ago (6 children)

The year of Linux was supposed to be somewhere in mid 1990-s...

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin 19 points 11 months ago

Lots of choices but I'd probably use Kubuntu if your boyfriend is new to Linux and you want this "official" Proton support (not sure that actually means much; Proton works very well on most distros). The plasma interface can be set fairly similar to windows for a newbie to feel comfortable.

It's all just personal preference of course; I just find the Ubuntu interface annoying as someone who uses Linux and windows a lot. Personally I use Mint; very nice distro, good and stable, nice for newbies, and the default cinnamon interface is very windows like too.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

Proton works on any Linux distro, it comes with steam. As long as you can install steam, you should be golden.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Aha, just popping in here to suggest taking a look at PopOS!

Proton works extremely well on it, its compatible out of the box with everything Debian based (this includes Ubuntu) so it has a huge selection of free software, has great documentation for the PopOS! specific stuff and for all the debian/ubuntu stuff you can nearly always use older wikis on the internet if you run into a snag, and its got a custom DE that I personally find better than KDE and Ubuntu's latest rendition if GNOME.

Also, while Ubuntu is going hard into Snaps, which I hate, PopOS! is going into flatpaks, which are less bad than snaps, but still stupid imo.

If you care, its fairly easy to disable and/or remove flatpaks from PopOS. It doesnt come with any preloaded afaik, so all you have to do is go into the PopShop (the app store) settings and just remove the flatpak source.

Ive run Proton on Steam via debian sources on PopOS! for years, works fine.

Oh right! I am fairly sure that PopOS! nowadays just comes by default with graphics drivers pre-installed and preset to automatically update with the rest of your software when you run sudo apt update. All you have to do is pick the Nvidia ISO if youve got Nvidia, or the standard one if youve got AMD.

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