Yeah, I really should switch to Mint or something
I switched to Kubuntu (KDE Plasma with Wayland turned on) and it’s absolutely wonderful.
Mint with Cinnamon is great if you like the start menu style of Windows 7/10. Generally speaking Linux distros are mostly the same under the hood.
I’m attempting to normalize calling it CinnaMint. I get a few up votes Everytime I mention it, but I haven’t seen anyone else use it yet.
It does sound pretty marketable. Hope it gains traction.
mint or something with kde.
There are a ton of options. Plenty of people (me included) wouldn’t recommend Mint, but some will. Everyone has their preferences and tolerance for certain things. The most important step is to just switch. You can always move distros.
Personally, for a new user, I’d say Fedora with KDE is a good choice. I use the gaming version of Garuda, which just comes with some extra stuff for gaming you’ll probably need anyway, which you can do manually or just grab this. Regardless, KDE is probably what you want coming from Windows. It behaves similarly to Windows, but is very customizable. Other DEs have other benefits though, so there will always be other recommendations.
I’m curious why you wouldn’t recommend mint. Is it due to some kind of problem, or is it just a personal taste thing?
I use mint daily so if there are potential issues I just want to know!
Yeah, I just don’t like it. I don’t feel strongly, just not what I’d recommend.
Fair enough. Thanks!
Fortunately with Linux, choice is the name of the game!
Aaand … it’s ads. What a surprise.
Article says (but don’t believe them):
But it’s not all ads. In fact, Microsoft does make useful changes from time to time
Oh boy! Not all ads! Oh yippee! I have been blessed on this fine day! 🥰
Sure, you had fewer ads before, but now you got slightly fewer ads than the amount known to induce seizures. Blessed be the fruit!
That’s not an ad
There’s no apparent way to disable the Microsoft 365 account manager in the Start menu, and there’s no option to deactivate the constant nagging to upgrade to a paid Microsoft 365 subscription.
Sounds like an ad to me.
It’s a button to manage your Microsoft account that you signed into windows with. It’s not shocking that it has an option to upgrade said account
Edit:
- I don’t use windows, stop assuming things about me
- Everything you don’t like or don’t use isn’t an ad. This is no different than Gmail and Google chrome having Google drive integration.
- Microsoft has been forcing people to use online accounts for windows login, so it’s only natural for the account button to let you manage it as well.
- This isn’t an endorsement or a value judgement.
Sounds like they are advertising a paid option.
I haven’t signed in with the Microsoft account in the first place.
Bruh you’re in so deep you don’t even see ads anymore 😱
I don’t use windows, stop assuming things about me
Seems a bit silly to comment confidently on changes happening within Windows that you don’t experience then, no?
It’s not Microsofts account for starters, its also not their computer. Its a user account on the customers computer.
Linux mint doesn’t try and steal your content to train an AI. It’s also a much nicer experience in a lot of ways
^ This
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. <–
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not Microsoft’s fault.
And if it was, they didn’t mean it.
And if they did, you deserved it.
Screenshots here: https://www.windowslatest.com/2024/09/12/windows-10s-start-menu-design-is-changing-to-make-room-for-microsoft-365/
TL:DR: There is barely any difference at all. They added some account manager, but in general the start menu looks how it looked before.
Apparently it nags you if you don’t have a 365 account. So it’s just more enshittification.
Yeah, fuck MS and everyone should try to run away as fast as possible, but this isn’t the big thing people should be worried about. I literally didn’t notice what was different in those screenshots until I read more. Maybe this is done to add things in the future that’ll be bad, but it itself isn’t. I’d be much more concerned about Recall.
Switch to Linux, get it over with, get rid of the Microsoft bullshit
Why do these articles never have a screenshot of the change. So annoying.
Because if they embed an image to the article, it would distract you from all the ads that are between paragraphs.
There’s always some post in here saying for people to use Linux. I find an admonishment to be pretty hollow, so I’ll share my recent experience installing a Linux distribution rather than simply saying it’s something people should do.
I installed one of the many Debian variants. Getting the installation media is certainly going to be a challenge for casual users. Otherwise, it was easy. It walked through the steps. It was different from installing windows, but I felt it was no more difficult. I am well versed in this stuff, but I feel like nothing in the installation process would be a problem for a casual computer user.
It offered several desktops programs at the login screen. This could likely throw off a lot of people. However, if you just logged in and ignored that you might never even know there were different options. The default was KDE. Everything worked. Nothing needed to be tweaked. This is in starck contrast to Windows, where once you get past installation, you need to get rid of a ton of crap it throws at you. The Windows 10 start menu is an unbelievable collection of weird boxes and shit and the task bar is similarly full of junk. The KDE start menu is just a menu. The task bar has your tasks. There’s nothing to do.
I did try Cinnamon too. I prefer the simplicity. I don’t think casual users are going to care.
Overall, I think for casual users, it’s actually easier to set up and use than Windows. Getting installation media prepared is not something most people are going to readily do, but I think it’s the same with Windows. They have the advantage there of having manufacturors install it. Otherwise, whatever issues there have been installing Linux distributions in the past aren’t there now. Conversely, installing and especially the configuration after installation is much harder on Windows than it used to be. If you’re slightly tech savvy, give Linux a try.
You’re right to point out the difficulty of preparing installation media.
Also, for the average person, friction will probably happen during installation - possibly having to circumvent safe boot to install and run a new OS (knowing how to enter the bios, feeling comfortable playing around in the bios, knowing how to even disable safe boot once you’re there, not exposing your device to security vulnerabilities by having safe boot disabled), the need for an existing understanding of how partitions work and how the partitions are structured on your specific device in order to test the waters with a dual boot setup on a drive that has data/functionality you want to preserve. Needing to know the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of swap, /home, and /root partitions. These points all came up on a recent installation, and I’m sure they would scare some people off.
Installation will be easy if you have the time, motivation, existing knowledge and/or bandwidth for a learning curve. But not everybody has that.
And that’s just installation, to say nothing of the actual use of the desktop environment, which is not as intuitive as its often claimed to be.
I’m not convinced most somewhat tech savvy people are put off by the install of linux. As you describe it’s dead easy in most cases. I think most of their push back is getting their specific programs or peripherals to run. In their mind, Windows “just works” when they want to play a new game, use a specific business software that is required by their employer, or plug in a crafting peripheral like a cricut. That said, linux is an awesome alternative for regular folks that mostly use web based stuff in their daily lives.
What did you do with your file system? I haven’t tried to dual boot Linux yet but I think bothering with partitioning and file systems is keeping me from taking the plunge.
(BTW it reminds me of why I didn’t go to law school, I hated filling out the paperwork for even doing the LSAT and realized the whole job is that. Dealing with partitioning and file systems and shit seems miserable and it’s just the start.)
If you have the port and money for it, I’d recommend a separate drive for the second OS. Windows is kinda notorious for stomping over GRUB if you rely on partitions for your dual boot.
If you’re worried about installing to the wrong drive on accident, you can always physically disconnect the existing drive until install is complete, then plug it back in and set the boot order in the mobo config.
As other people have said, you have to be carful with dual booting on the same drive with Windows. It doesn’t play nice with others. To add on though, Linux can access your NTFS (or whatever) systems fine*. You can leave them as they are and access the same data on both systems, though Windows is not capable of reading most other filesystems.
*May require installing a package, but every distro I’ve tried could out of the box.
wait what?? downloading rufus and putting the installation media on it is too much for casual users (by this i mean fresh-off-of-windows)???
It depends on who you’re referring to as a casual user. My mother for example would certainly have a hard time with it, then figuring out the key to bring up the boot menu (and being faced with a scary dialog that they’ve never seen), then selecting the right device, then likely being faced with GRUB which would also look scary to her, and by then she’d be overwhelmed before even getting to the install portion.
Yeah it is. Most computers come with windows pre-installed so most people never do this kind of thing.
And there’s also things people need to be careful of. Like wiping all out all of their cherished photos by formatting the entire drive. Considering that casual users probably shouldn’t attempt to do this. Not trying to gatekeep or anything, but there is potential for data loss for a user that doesn’t back up their data properly, which is common for casual users.
Not to mention changing BIOS settings to allow booting from external media. I’ve yet to see 2 machines that were the same in that regard, so good luck writing instructions that a casual user could follow.
Yeah I just hold shift and ctrl and start mashing function keys until I figure it out LOL.
I really enjoy there being a natural filter through this process. I’d rather people who lack the willpower or cognitive capacity to complete an install be kept within the confines of Windows.
I can’t imagine wasting my time and energy caring about things that don’t affect me. Good luck with that buddy.
Elitism and gatekeeping from a linux user? Nah, never, I must have misread
I no longer view gatekeeping necessarily as a bad thing. In fact, it can be sometimes be necessary to preserve communities.
I’ve also learned over the years that the only people who succeed in migrating to linux are those who both considerably desire to do so while also having a level of technical competency somewhere north of average. Anyone else is just being strung along by a “helpful” linux evangelist in their family or friends group, and will ultimately drop the solution at the first sign of trouble and frustration.
Disabled Windows Update and have never been happier.
At that point please just use another OS. You should be keeping your OS up to date.
Number of times I’ve been hacked: 0
Number of hours I’ve wasted reinstalling everything because Microsoft bricked my Windows install with a faulty update: 6.022140857×1023
Yeah, we live in wild times. Remember when the largest computer outage was caused by that software attack?
Oh wait that was the program meant to protect from attacks.
Upvote for Avagadros number
Again, why use Windows at that point?
I don’t have the level of schizophrenia required for the GIMP ui to make sense.
There’s a way to revert it in w11?
At work i need to constantly switch users and even if it’s a domain account, the placeholder for the m365 ads is still there. I need a extra click every time i need to logout
Microsoft 365 is fucking garbage. I tried using it one time on my work computer and couldn’t even export an Excel sheet into any other format besides a PDF and an Excel file. The only two things I never need to export an Excel sheet as. I couldn’t even export it as a god damn text file. And the fact that I need an Internet connection makes it so much more finicky. I guess on the plus side when the Internet is down I don’t have to do my job until it comes back.
Don’t get me started on OneDrive
Were you on a free plan? Because csv export normally works fine.
If I remembered I’d have an answer. All I know is that I was specifically looking to export a csv and couldn’t find it. It was a new computer and they were like “just use 365” instead of installing Microsoft Office like every other computer. I ended up just installing LibreOffice until they got mad at me and installed Microsoft Office.
The new shortcut for screenshots:
Alt - Ctrl - drill to the eye 👁️. Yeah you can use the same eye socket multiple times for now. It’s a known 🐛 bug, but they are going to fix it.
Will it also be coming to windows 10 enterprise version and if so how to revert back?
Got to get that ad revenue.
I’m running Windows 10 LTSC with a custom start menu (StartIsBack). So far I have avoided all of Microsoft’s nonsense.
As long as I’m not ready to switch to Linux 100%, this is probably the best possible solution.
I also like the LTSC version for my workstation, less nonsense.
Outside of junk pre-installed, isn’t it also just a longer extended windows update? Meaning you’d eventually get the updates regardless?
No, LTSC only receives security updates, not feature updates.
Interesting, thank you for the detail.
I went 10 years ago to Linux. To avoid all Windows non sense…
Good luck with all those vulnerabilities
Don’t need luck, I’m using Common Sense 2024™️ edition AV/EDR with an integrated SIEM.
Start menu is totally superfluous. Everything in the system can be accessed via a simple rightclick on the start button, skipping the menu altogether
And or it’s search function for applications when you don’t want a permanent search bar clogging up your taskbar because you like text labels in the taskbar ;)
