Microsoft's latest lie is primed to created the largest single E-waste event in human history, argues Timothy Allen, Principal Engineer at the Wharton School, in an article for Technical.ly. The article gives practical suggestions, and argues the migration from Windows 10 to Linux Mint is easier than Windows 10 to Windows 11.
> and argues the migration from Windows 10 to Linux Mint is easier than Windows 10 to Windows 11.
This message needs to stop. I use both heavily, because 1. I need to work and 2. I believe it's my duty to attempt to escape the prison MS/Apple/et al have built around us. But running Linux is fucking hard, unless all you need is available in a browser, and even then...
If someone is going in expecting an easy replacement, they're going to leave the second it's not. If they go in believing it's a fight for our collective souls, they might be willing to join the rebellion.
People are also struggling with Windows (any version). Especially installing programs (clicking through wizards, answering lots of questions they don't understand) and installing device drivers (how to even know what to do, to the get a device working? where to find drivers?) are often too much for non-technical users on Windows. Both of these are much easier (or unnecessary) on most Linux distros. No matter which OS they use, they will sometimes have to ask someone more knowledgable to solve some problems.
The situation is very hit or miss, I assume the downvoters don't have many problems because they're probably smart about the machines they try to put linux on.
Just this month, I put Linux Mint on an old dell laptop, and a custom built PC with a 1080 ti in it.
The laptop worked perfect, wifi worked out of the box, and it ran much smoother than it did with Windows 10.
The desktop was a pain because none of the 3 usb wifi devices I already had, worked out of the box. I started down the path of following some guides that got 2 of them "working" with the same steps, but they both behaved horribly. I gave up and ordered a device known to work with Linux for $50 because it just wasn't worth my time. It's connection speed is even faster than it runs on my windows machine, but there are frequent "blips" in the connection. Gah! Nothing is more demotivating than having trouble loading the web page trying to show you how to fix your networking issues.
The video card seems to work fine but none of the games I want to play via steam work nearly as smooth as I hoped, and they're old games, the newest one just turned 10 yo. I love what Steam is doing, and I'm sure I could get a lot of the games working pretty good with some more effort, but it's not the cakewalk it's often hyped up to be. I decided to just use it for old emulators, and stick to my Windows machine for other games.
On top of all that, it feels just about as "slow" as it did with Windows for basic operations. Again, I'm sure I could do some optimizing and get it blazing fast, but I don't have the time for that when I've already got things generally working fine on other machines.
> But running Linux is fucking hard, unless all you need is available in a browser, and even then...
For some it is, for others it isn‘t. It really heavily depends on what you want to do with it. I have migrated multiple family members to Ubuntu with KDE and they don‘t have any complaints at all. Many people fail to realize how basic the computing needs for many people are, especially individual consumers
Changing your habits is hard. But that's also true for Windows > Mac.
Linux (Mint) in itself isn't hard. You need to understand what's different. If you have no hardware issue, the biggest different lies in "how do I install [software]" ? But now most distros (incl. Linux Mint) are hidding the package managers (including flatpack which provides a lot of software) behind nice "App Store" like GUIs.
How do I know that ? After years on Linux & Mac, I had to work on Windows in my previous job. Guess what ? It was hard. Especially Windows 10 & 11. It's complex, it's a mess, nothing is coherent. I started my journey into computing with Windows 95. It used to be somehow simple, with coherent ergonomics. It's long gone. Any big Linx DE is more coherent than recent Windows nowadays.
I have decades of experience with both Windows and Linux (many machines, distros, package managers(or lack of), DEs, terminals), but only 2 years with Mac. Getting a hang of the Mac was hard, especially since I also had to still switch between all OSes regularly. New environments and habits are hard, yeah, but Linux is objectively much harsher than most, it's not because I'm used to some particular DE.
Yup, macOS is still a mixed bag for me. Both really clever egonomics most of the time but also incredibly frustrating when you want to do something Apple didnt thought about. And it's not going in the right direction tbh.
I think my personal macbook (Air M2) is my last. And it's a shame because hardware-wise it's just perfect.
Relase after release of macOS, I don't feel like i'm their target anymore. Like Windows, I can't even remember when was the last time I was excited about a new macOS feature.
The bigger issue is probably less "how do I install software" and more "how do I not install malware". I'm not saying that Linux is more prone to malware, but that the steps we teach people to avoid issues on Windows don't translate over.
The situation is roughly similar though: only install software from trusted sources. The only real difference is that Linux distros come with a built in trusted source of programs that likely covers almost all of your needs.
Running Linux is easy. Literally everything is easier from installation to installing drivers (they're all in the kernel except Nvidia, which you don't have to worry about if you're on Ubuntu as it installs it for you), installing software, updates, upgrades...
The only difficult part is all the shit advice on the internet and the idea that you *need* certain software.
> But running Linux is fucking hard, unless all you need is available in a browser, and even then...
Has this actually been a valid complaint for the past 15 years?
I'll concede that installing it (merely downloading, burning to a thumb drive, disabling secure boot, following the install wizard) already puts it beyond the scope of 99% of users, which will use the pre-installed OS no matter what.
But using it? Linux Mint is orders of magnitude more user friendly than Windows. It's fast, clear, there's no ads and no mandatory logins. Things work out of the box with no need to manually install drivers. There's an easy to use "app store". Most Windows programs even run with Wine/Proton.
What I have learned is that in the last 30 years of being told that I should switch to Linux on the desktop is that I should stop listening to these people’s ideological perspective and just get on with creating and doing shit. Because that’s far more important. I’ll take Excel and Adobe over any of the alternatives.
I am not even sure I’m happy with it on the server these days. FreeBSD is far less nasty.
I'm kind of there too, but I haven't entirely given up. 5 years ago, I wouldn't have installed Windows on any of my personal machines, but Windows 10 is on my primary PC right now.
I guess my point was that we're going to lose more potential users by over promising instead of just being honest.
It's built on an ideology.
It's pretty good but, when you struggle, we're here to help.
Things will be different, sometimes in very stupid ways, but there are multiple choices, with tradeoffs, YOU get to decided on.
The big corporations aren't really interested in you as a target demographic, but do you really want them to be?
All that sounds way more inspiring than "It'S tHe SaME thING, bUTT FReEEEEEdOm" which gets proven factually incorrect within the first 5 minutes of attempted productive use.
If you have the code to modify then its open source, thats all that open source is it has nothing to do with the license unless you are talking about an OSI license in which case its just an OSI license and nothing to do with the source code or its openness.
I've used WordPress for years. It's great for a simple blog, but not any kind of complex CMS, IMHO. After adding a few plugins, maintaining it is a nightmare; and I won't get into the database design underneath.
Another vote for Wagtail: my team has moved to it and have found it to be wonderful. It is the first time our tech, content, UX and marketing teams all agree on a CMS being wonderful. Streamfield is an absolutely killer feature. Our writers love the editor interface, which was clearly designed by and for content creators, and not by a bored developer like me.
Check out Wagtail. It takes a little bit more planning to get started, but wow, does it pay off in the long run.
It is truly free and open-source, released under the BSD license.
