Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news

I finally made the switch to Ubuntu Mate on Friday and WOW, color me impressed!

The only reason I stuck with Windows on my desktop machine for so long was gaming, and the last time I tried switching over was 10 years ago. Spoiler: it was a shitshow.

This time, things are MUCH better! The Mate desktop environment is simple, stable, clean, does the job and gets out of your way (kinda reminds me of Windows 2000). Steam's Proton makes running games a breeze. All of my favorites just work. I could even run battle.net as a non-steam game, USING Steam's Proton!

And the kicker? Blizzard's recently opened beta of Diablo 4 just worked. As in, I clicked install, clicked play, and it just worked. Perfectly. As if I were still running under Windows. I've never before seen such sorcery.

So bye bye Windows, except when I'm running one as a VM.

Windows can be good, when its in vm-jello, frozzen in time, with no real network connection except for shared folders and the updaterapeware removed. Honestly, has anyone ever looked at these updates and though to themselves - "Yes, i need that!".

Gaming on linux has really taken off. Very few games, even with anti cheat for multiplayer, don’t work. It’s nice that running Linux is no worse than missing out on console exclusives

This will surely be the year of the Linux desktop.

has been the case for me for more than 5 years.

Sadly there's still a few very heavy hitters that make Linux a no-go for some.

Genshin Impact and Fortnite are unusable.

Unreal Editor requires Windows too.

And I don't know how usable VR is on Windows.

Plus the random assortment of windows programs for which there could be a Linux equivalent but you really need that one that only works on Windows for some reason.

But at this point it's just a matter of time, I guess.

20 years here, going fine :) But I guess the joke never ends

Once Infrastructure Week is finished ... just a little bit longer

No, 20 years is the fusion power joke, not the year of the linux desktop joke

Wait until you give up on mate (kinda stuck approach to copy windows 95, just like modern windows or Mac mostly does) and try actual modern desktops like Gnome, KDE or if you want to go ultra productive something tiling like 3wm

Nah, tried all of those and settled on Mate.

IMO the most important aspect of a desktop environment is that you never notice it. That's what I loved so much about Windows 2000 (and why I lamented every UI change they made since then).

I'd like to believe that, but can't shake the feeling there is a chance of performance impact or a need for special magic dance to make something work.

The teenager me would have no problem, he had a (fairly) working Enlightenment config and tried an array of distros, and it was fun to tinker. But he had way, way more time, and didn't spend his own money on the gaming hardware.

MATE is a fork of Gnome 2. Not everyone likes Gnome 3 and newer versions.

There are warts, like it got confused into thinking that my second SSD was a removable device until I forced it in the fstab. But the level of annoyance nowadays is pretty much on par with Windows warts and annoyances (especially Windows printer drivers OMG).

But I've been using Linux desktops for years on my laptops and virtual desktops, so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect before changing my PC over.

But for games I'm completely intolerant of annoyances, which is why I took so long with this step.

It definitely has a performance impact, and sometimes there are crash/other glitches in proton not present on windows.

I also have much, much less time than I did as a teenager, so I can only stomach console gaming at this point. Games need to Just Work.

For me personally performance with Linux gaming is much less of a problem than it was with teenage me's Windows gaming. Back in the day I didn't have much money, but today I can just buy a slightly beefier GPU to compensate any possible performance loss from compatibility layers.

With my 7 year old GTX 1080 and Ubuntu/Steam Proton I can still play most games at very high settings (except raytracing stuff).

That's the exact reason I am stuck with Gnome. First it might be a bit strange, but then you realize it's there, everything is one tab away yet you never actually see it.

Giving maximal screen estate to whatever I focus on while being as distraction less as a WM just can be.

However anyway, glad you found something that works for you! That's what choice is for

Gnome 2 is just a windows 95 clone with Gimmics. Only from gnome shell on to gnome 3 the whole concept was brought to a new level.

However I understand if people don't like that, it's new and maybe won't last it sure is easier to stick to a taskbar, etc when you are used to it.

I thought that fusion is 40 years away, and has been every year for the past 50 years? :)

The "Year Of The Linux Desktop" has been a thing since at least the heyday of Slashdot, which would put it at 20-ish years.

Unless that was intended as a humorous joke? Your post, I mean - not the Year Of the Linux Desktop, :)

> Plus the random assortment of windows programs for which there could be a Linux equivalent but you really need that one that only works on Windows for some reason.

This!

What keeps me working on Windows (besides the fact that I somehow have completely missed the in-OS ads) is the time it would take me to replace all the random little quality of life apps that I've gotten used to. I'm sure there's a great Linux clipboard manager that does everything Ditto does on Windows but I don't have to go and find it, get used to it, figure out all the quirks (and the things it lacks that Ditto provides, and all the things that it provides that Ditto lacks, etc, etc).

As a long-time Linux user, I have to wonder how much better my life would be if I had access to all of these. My naive guess is about 0%.

Then we have different priorities, if I spend a lot of money on a gaming machine beefy GPU I want 100% of its performance at all times and no risk of problems cutting into my limited gaming time. If there is a problem on Windows you can be sure the game devs will give it a priority over a problem on Linux.

Been a Linux user for over 20 years, still use it for work, and yes Proton does look great, but I don't see using it for gaming anytime soon.

You can even install PowerShell for your command line and you'll feel right at home!

You need[0] a slow migration. Like any major change really.

Get a cheap small box that can run Linux and slowly start to build the tool familiarity alongside your defaults.

That's pretty much how I did it. Went back to Windows less and less until it was only ever for Windows-only android flashing tools (which is about once every 6 months). Still annoys me how much space Windows takes up to dual-boot just for this use-case. Bloated PoS.

[0]: If you're going to do it. I'm not saying you need to do it, I'm not that guy.

I think the Unreal Engine editor supports Linux now? This page seems to claim so: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/download

Not that this takes away from your overall point.

That's exactly what I like about it. Windows 3.x was terrible. Win95 looked pretty but was a garbage os. But windows NT with the win95 UI on it finally convinced me to ditch my Amiga (although I was VERY tempted by NeXT). And honestly, I haven't seen any UI enhancements since then that are useful to me.

Most of the games now are always online and some of them opt for home-grown, Microsoft Windows-only kernel anti-cheat detection rather than working with the bigger engines that Valve worked with to get said anti-cheat systems running on Linux.

Others refuse to support Linux thinking it’ll bring more bug reports, but there was an interview in recent years where the game company realized the Linux community knew they could submit bug reports, they submitted good bug reports (that affected all platforms too), and didn’t see software as a black box for consumption but a community effort. They ended up praising the Linux community for their bug reports even if the number of reports were higher.

Huh, what the hell?

Apparently it happened in July 2022.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/07/unreal-engine-5-editor...

These last few years have been moving way too fast, whew.

Thanks for telling me.

Oh yes for sure, the fact that Genshin Impact and Fortnite don't work on Linux is actually a point in favor of Linux lol. Many don't see it that way though, sadly.

I know it's not the same, but both of these games can be played on cloud gaming (Geforce Now).

I have a subscription to GFN, not to play games not supported on Linux but to play on max specs without needing an expensive rig, and both Genshin Impact and Fortnite are supported there.

Anyway, it's never going to be a full drop-in replacement. Like you can't just replace your XBOX with a Playstation and play the same games. But still, Linux is a very valid option even for gaming.

Funny thing is that there are lots of reports for games of linux outperforming Windows. So considering that you might want to checking first, you might need to run Linux to really get 100% out of your GPU.

Wait for a couple of major version updates before praising prematurely.

Usually desktop Linux works great until it suddenly doesn't, and then the real fun of figuring out what's wrong begins ;)

So, people complain about Windows spyware and antifeatures, then they install Ubuntu and Steam client. What did that solve? Move your profiling data to someone else?

> Still annoys me how much space Windows takes up to dual-boot just for this use-case. Bloated PoS

Made me chuckle, can 100% relate. I mostly reboot to Windows for some games and to one-off buy some soundtrack from iTunes.

Is it though? When you run apt upgrade you are nagged to go subscribe to UBUNTU PRO. There was a problem with amazon tracking Ubuntu store purchases. (https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-s...) You can't exactly escape telemetry and unwanted ads. Seems like it on a slippery slope to another version of Windows 10 to me.

The unity dash thing is ancient and not a thing anymore.

I can run pretty much any game out of the box, even random games that nobody would ever have optimised for linux.

The time of the desktop has come.

But does that mean they will be stuck forever to an ancient GTK version ?

It sometimes does a better job than Windows at running Windows games.

Serious question: Did you play the Diablo IV open beta weekend? (It's live for 4 more hours).

I did, on my Windows 10 box. The issue isn't random games that no one would ever have optimized, the issue is bleeding edge games that most people want to play, and play right now.

If you didn't, can you? If (the royal) you can't, get started in the time remaining, download speeds allowing, the year of the Linux desktop isn't here.

I'm sure that's never been said before

It has supported GTK3+ for years now. I'm not familiar with the specifics, but GTK3/4 applications run fine.

I would definitely recommend Linux Mint over vanilla Ubuntu. Canonical has made some really dumb moves over the last decade. Thankfully, it's trivial to avoid vanilla Ubuntu.

I would sincerely recommend you give it another shot. If proton works well for the game, performance is most likely to be very close to windows, if not even exceed it.

The best part is that it's trivially easy. Most games with decent proton support will install just like a native game. No frills. No mess.

When the Linux experience is smooth, it's smooth. None of the fake Fullscreen BS. No memory paging quirks or other background processes causing stuttering. No automatically putting your game process in sleep mode. Freesync works. You get to keep your favorite window manager/desktop environment. If you are lucky, you can totally ditch windows today.

The beauty is that they can do that on their own time. Possibly even never.

I use i3wm and a split ergonomic keyboard. I use a shell instead of a file manager. I am fine with 99% of people never doing that, so long as I can.

Steam wants to sell me video games that are similar to other video games I like and keep me on top of new releases. recommendations based on purchase history are kinda okay in my opinion.

Microsoft wants to sell me the british royalty and reasons why millions of people are excited about german hearing aids. I don't really get this at all. What is their snoopware even good for if this is the best they can come up with?

From the great grandparent - they did play the Diablo 4 beta on Ubuntu.

>And the kicker? Blizzard's recently opened beta of Diablo 4 just worked. As in, I clicked install, clicked play, and it just worked. Perfectly. As if I were still running under Windows. I've never before seen such sorcery.

A massively multiplayer combat-waifu simulator with the typical f2p monetization traps doesn't appeal to everyone? (OTOH, I'd say Fortnite is actually pretty fun since they added a no-building mode.)

My post was less of a joke than Windows 11 is. But probably funnier.

Sure you can but what about cmdlets? Do we have an open source "coreutil" that offers reasonable compatibility with the standard powershell environment?