Linux is a great option nowadays especially if you go for one of the more mainstream distros. Otherwise Windows 11 IoT LTSC is the best of a bad lot.
Why not Windows 10 IoT LTSC?
Huge numbers of Windows users are refusing to upgrade to Windows 11 – and many of them are citing its AI features as the reason why.
Spoiler: They’re not. They’re postponing. Eventually, they’ll almost all give in to the bullying :(
There’s nothing I do with my home computer that warrants that AI is integrated to the OS. I browse the web. Play games. Occasionally I work on some personal projects.
I can never see myself say ” Hey Cortana! I want to play Megabonk!”. I see much less a reason for the OS to constantly record everything I do to do this.
Please don’t shove AI down my throat.
Same, just got a new framework 13 laptop, it’s not running Windows, sleep, fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, gpu drivers it all works. Linux now. All the games I currently play just work out of the box, steam just adds proton to the download. I don’t use Microsoft Office apps though, more than happy with the alternatives.
I’m not only refusing to downgrade to Windows 11, my home system got switched to Linux (with the support of my SO) despite me thinking Linux is probably the single least user-friendly system I’ve ever had the misfortune to use.
That’s how bad Windows 11 looks to me.
I’m curious, which distro and DE did you pick?
This question is proof enough that Linux isn’t exactly a user friendly system. You need to be aware of many things you otherwise wouldn’t need to care about in other operating systems.
Personally I like this freedom, but many people prefer to get something that just works without worrying about differences between distros and DEs.
“Upgrade” lmao
All these articles mention 10 being dead, but free extended support is offered by Microsoft with a couple of clicks until next year so really it’s not. Massgrave gives you 3 I believe, and IOT is even longer.
I’m one of them, and currently looking into Linux, if I can migrate my Photoshop tools/brushes/gradients/etc successfully over to another program that is compatible.
My only hang up after that is gaming, and I feel that can be resolved with dual boot to win10.
honestly, if there would be a 100% office compatibility, photoshop on linux, and proper anticheat support, we would have 40% linux usage
Gaming on Linux either works on Linux or the game requires a rootkit malware to run.
I refuse to call it “kernel-level anti-cheat.” That’s like calling a sucking chest wound “alternative breathing”
Games can be made to work with some tinkering, but not every game has a build supporting Linux and that can be daunting to people who don’t use Linux as their main daily driver.
In my experience the linux native bulids run worse than the windows + proton on linux.
I’ve been gaming on Linux for ten years now, and it has gotten to the point where you get a game on Steam, press Play and it runs, unless it requires rootkit malware, and even some of those work.
Gaming on Linux works now. I play every game I care for.
Gaming on Linux is superior, on a lot of games! I dual booted and ran benchmarks on Windows 11 and Fedora, same hardware. Ran nothing but the OS and Steam in the background, (gaming mode on and off), oddly found better performance with gaming mode off, then tried the same thing with Fedora. 5-10% higher framerates in Fedora running Proton.
Tried the same thing with synched Firefox tabs, half a dozen open tabs, telegram and discord running. Fedora sometimes hit 15% higher framerates.
Are you on an AMD card?
The only problem is some anticheats and older games. Whenever the boys and I wanna play Battlefield I gotta switch to Windows, but besides that it’s basically fine.
Why not just play games on linux?
It works so well nowadays
Does it now? I have an Arc B580 and Linux drivers are lackluster at best.
While going for another program, ideally non proprietary, with a native Linux version would be ideal, I would not be surprised if running Photoshop on Linux with wine was a viable option these days. Or will be in a not-too-distant future.
As for games, what the others have said. Unless you’re into a specific multiplier game with a kernel level “anticheat”, then it should be fine.
In fact, I suspect Photoshop, rather than gaming, is much more likely to be the reason you’d have to dual boot.
In my understanding, still no, especially not the more advanced filters stuff. PS6 (or whatever the last one you could actually buy was) on the other hand is 95+% functional if you can go back. Not an expert, GIMP is fine for my needs, there’s even a spin with PS-like menu layout if that’s your jam, but happy to be told I’m wrong about new PS.
Adobe shit and AutoCAD stuff are the the last major sticking points these days, Office is in the cloud now. Shame these last two won’t let their cash cows be rented in the cloud (instead of subscribed, you know, a long term rental agreement using your own computer) to my knowledge. There’s always VMs.
Ah, that’s good to know. I wonder why that is. I don’t use these programs beyond the odd very simple image manipulation that could be done just as easily in paint, so I have no idea what people want from Photoshop alternative. However, I seem to keep hearing no single open source program does everything from people who are PS power users.
Don’t get me started on AutoCAD, and just CAD tools in general… Being more involved on that side, from a dev rather than user perspective, I can’t say I think very highly of Autodesk, or the idea of having all these geometry kernels be proprietary, and Autodesk acquiring as many of them as it can. Maths is public, maths research belongs to the public, you can fuck off with gating it.
As for VMs, we are talking about apps that need a relatively good GPU and therefore one would need to do some GPU pass through on their VM to use it properly I believe. Assuming I’m right, that may be more trouble than it’s worth compared to a dual boot (also assuming this hasn’t gotten much simpler than my somewhat distant memory now)
I’m still using Windows 11 just from inertia, but I’ve been putting my kids on Linux Mint and Bazzite depending.
I don’t think I can get away from Windows, as a professional .NET developer, but I won’t likely have more than the one Windows laptop at this point. My entire home lab and home infra is Linux of one variety or another. If we count VMs, then I overwhelmingly using Debian.
I don’t think I can get away from Windows, as a professional .NET developer
Because you have to use VS Code instead of VS? You can always deploy to a Windows VM if you need to be sure IIS works. Though everything will just run on dotnet and nginx through a reverse proxy if you want to stay within Linux.
For most cases you can use Rider, which has a native Linux version. It doesn’t do database projects so if you use MSSQL without an OEM you’re gonna want at least VS Code, but other than that it works fine.
Of course if you’re a .NET developer in a corporate environment you probably don’t have a choice as you’re already using a Windows VM through Azure Virtual Desktop just so that your company can chain itself harder to daddy Microsoft.
I’m going to drop this here. Both Affinity 2 if you bought it or the Free Affinity 3 works well on Linux.
I upgraded my partners computer to windows 10 IOT.
Windows 11 itself+AI were factors, but the hardware restrictions were too.
Instead of going to Win11, I went Linux on Mac hardware.
I hating the thought of the day I’d have to “upgrade” to Win11 on my mobile device. Even if I went Linux it would mean there would be a good chunk of commercial applications that simply wouldn’t be compatible and proprietary solutions would be out-of-reach without a mainstream supported commercial OS . It would also mean potentially having to have some kind of Windows for doing certain firmware updates.
I’m now 1 day in on using a Macbook Air M2 dual booting with Asahi Linux. I still have OSX to fall back to if I run into a proprietary application or solution I need to use or do firmware updates.
MacOS is just boujie Linux tho
Well, boujie BSD, but the important point is that OSX is commercially supported. Meaning commerical companies make and support applications and hardware for it. With desktop Linux its a “best effort” from manufactures at best. If I’m stuck somewhere and absolutely have to use a commercial application/piece of hardware I can feel pretty safe that it will be supported under OSX which is only a reboot away from the primary Linux install I’ll be using full time.
I already have to use Windows 11 at work so I know the problems it comes with and I absolutely refuse to upgrade at home. I’d sooner go to exclusively Linux than upgrade at this point. I’ve already been duel booting Linux and Windows at home just in case I gotta bail completely. And as someone that has tried Linux back in 2015 it is leaps and bounds better than it used to be. Besides certain proprietary software you can basically do 80% of what you can on Windows at this point.
