I find this mildly infuriating, I only use Windows for work, I even personally purchased Windows 11. Local account and disabled as much as I could. I personally do not like Windows or Windows in general.
Well, now I do an update and they throw this up like I need to walk thru these steps (again). Not even a “Skip”/“Don’t remind me again”. Windows is not what it used to be and after disabling half the Microsoft stuff I’d expect not to be bothered again. It’s really a built in ad more then anything.
2023-08 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5029351)
I’m really considering switching back to Linux. I don’t really play PC games any more - I don’t have time for many games and just use my Xbox now. I do often use Visual Studio (could be replaced with Rider and VS Code), and occasionally use LaunchBox’s “BigBox” on my TV, but I could always just dual-boot. Most of the other things I do are available on Linux.
The last time I used Linux on desktop was around 2007-2008, when I dual-booted Windows XP and Ubuntu 6.06. It’d be interesting to see how much it’s improved since then. I’ve been using Debian on servers for over 20 years though, so I’m familiar with Linux administration.
Vast majority of games work just fine on linux, can’t say for launchbox (looks like just a game launcher, if so, you can use Steam Big Picture mode, even for non-steam games, emulators etc.)
Visual Studio does not work, but if you’re a C# developer, there are cross-platform alternatives like VSCode and Rider.
Note: probably don’t use Ubuntu if you’re trying to escape a corproation dictacting how to use your computer though
Honestly I’d probably just run Debian. All the hardware on my desktop PC is a few years old now so I’m not too worried about compatibility issues. I’ve heard that Linux Mint is good too?
I’m considering trying Rider. I really like ReSharper and know that a lot of its refactorings are included in Rider too.
VS Code is great too. For personal projects, I actually use VS Code and Visual Studio at the same time - VS Code for frontend JS, and Visual Studio for backend C#.
I have a bunch of games in it, for example the whole library of NES, SNES, Sega Mega Drive, etc. games. It’s a nice interface for launching them. Maybe there’s an equivalent that runs on Linux, otherwise I could add just the emulators to Steam.
There’s also RetroArch, though can be a little pain to setup.
Oh dear lord! You have no idea how much things have improved. I think you’ll be in for a nice surprise.
Also, games work fine on Linux now. The only games that don’t work are ones with invasive anticheat. Or if a developer is stubborn, like FacePunch. I can’t play on official Rust servers, but connecting to a friend’s who has EAC disabled (it’s a private server), it works 100%.
Hopefully I don’t have to manually tweak ALSA configs for hours to get sound working any more :)
Any distros you’d recommend? I was just going to try Debian, but I’ve heard that Linux Mint is good too?
I hope you’re just kidding. Because we’ve moved past ALSA to PulseAudio and then again over to Pipewire. Pulse was a bit rough, but Pipewire is fantastic.
I guess it depends on what you’ve been using server side. It would be helpful to say in the same family of distros. If you’ve been using Debian/Ubuntu based, then Mint is a good choice. Pop!_OS is a good choice too.
My very strong recommendation for DE would be KDE Plasma. It’s not like it used to be. Plasma is one of the fastest desktops now and even competes with the lightest DEs for memory usage.
I am! It’s one of my last memories of trying to use Linux on my PC. PulseAudio was still a new thing that wasn’t widespread yet.
I’ve been using Debian on servers since around the year 2000, so I’ll probably stick to Debian or something Debian-based.
Wow! KDE used to be the slow, bloated desktop environment. I never used it because of how bloated it was. I used to run Xfce. Thanks for the update - I’ll definitely try it again.
Congrats on the consideration pal.
I use Ubuntu for my personal desktop and work desktop, and it works smoothly without “Microsoft surprises” like this post. I also don’t game in PC.
Want to make an easier move? If your Windows is EUFI boot, shrink your Windows partition in half, and on the other half install Ubuntu.
Then you can slowly, in your own pase, start doing more things in the Ubuntu partition, until you’ll find yourself not using the Windows partition anymore.
Not happy? Just remove the Ubuntu partition afterwards, and go back to Windows.