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Can't run Windows 11? Don't want to? There are surprisingly legal options

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[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 56 points 3 weeks ago

Why even bother at this point? Linux has become so good it's actually easier and more familiar to use than the clusterfuck that is windows 11.

[-] HC4L@lemmy.world 173 points 3 weeks ago

Linux user here, I really hate this kind of bullshit. Just stick with the facts there are loads of reasons to use Windows. And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.

[-] whaleross@lemmy.world 68 points 3 weeks ago

Another twenty plus years Linux server and devices admin and user that found last year that Linux is finally mature and stable enough to replace my desktop too without having the fiddle with it every once in a random update. It was a decision that I can accept making workarounds for legacy windows software and l can live without other eco system. Yeah, there are plenty of reasons that people are still running Windows and keep doing so.

Don't make being user of an operating system your identity, people. It's just as annoying and unnecessary as those Apple fanboys we all know and dislike.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 weeks ago

Exactly. I've been Linux exclusive for something like 15 years, and I'm usually the first to tell people to stick with Windows if there's even one piece of software they say they'll miss. If they really want to use Linux, they'll ignore me. If they would've bailed when something didn't work perfectly, they would likely write it off and never try it again, so it's better to leave that door open IMO.

[-] pocker_machine@lemmy.world 27 points 3 weeks ago

Exactly. These type of comments only come from an immature POV that how they use Linux is how everyone would use Linux.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 19 points 3 weeks ago

And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.

Eh, only if someone needs it.

For instance my 75 year old father is happily using Linux Mint on his laptop. Why? Because all he's doing with it is web surfing, watching youtube, and checking his email. At home that's all most people are doing, especially older people. I set his up so that it backs up his stuff and auto-updates. It just works and if it does get broken I can recover it with minimal effort.

It's the same for me at home. My main PC is Linux Mint where I do almost everything. For the occasions I need Windows I have an Intel NUC attached to my KVM. For work I've got LM installed on my work laptop and when I need Win11 I have a VM setup in QEMU/KVM with it.

Are there people who have workloads, or gameloads, that only run on Windows? Sure there. We all know that.

But there are a lot of people, especially home users, who could easily run Linux and don't.

[-] Mondez@lemdro.id 10 points 3 weeks ago

This... It's not so much that I'd never advocate a windows install, it's that linux should be the first port of call and Windows be the specialist fallback for when Linux doesn't handle the use case well.

[-] PagPag@lemmy.world 48 points 3 weeks ago

How well does Linux run Solidworks?

Oh right, it doesn’t…at all.

Linux is useful for many things but just doesn’t cut it for the majority of people reliant on single deal breaker items.

[-] 9point6@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago

You're also SOL if you have a couple of decades of music projects in various DAWs (though predominantly Ableton, plus a decent number of Maschine & Reason projects, for me) using all sorts of VSTs from over the years. I keep several versions of some VSTs installed so I can open older projects, and those older versions are never getting patched to fix broken Linux support by the developer, even if a more modern version does get fixed. It's all got to come from wine devs, which frankly probably have more important issues to focus on.

I've tried a few times to get Ableton working with all my plugins and MIDI hardware and it's always been an exercise in madness ultimately resulting in failure and usually a lost weekend. It particularly doesn't like anything with my iLok key involved, last I tried a couple of years ago.

I happily run Linux elsewhere, but my main desktop is going to mainly run Windows for the foreseeable future unless something drastically changes. At least my projects aren't all in Logic!

There's also some software I use for my photography that didn't properly work on Linux when I last tried (e.g. GPU features in PureRAW are the main thing I remember), but I think there're some alternatives there I'd look at if I could get the audio production stuff working perfectly.

[-] Aphelion@lemm.ee 8 points 3 weeks ago

I've been working on getting set up for music production on Linux, it is possible, but it has a lot more challenges. Manjaro Linux running the 6.13 RT kernel has worked well for stability with Bitwig Studio and Ardour, but the amount if plugins that are impossible or very difficult to install makes it feel limited.

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[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago

I've been trying out several Linux distributions over the past couple of weeks to figure out where to go after Windows 10.
I'm very open to switching. but if I have to be honest, there are still plenty of UX problems in my experience. It's frustrating enough that I keep going back to Windows.

[-] taladar@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago

How long did you try each one? Usually when trying anything new it takes a little while to get used to the things that you readily accept as "just how things are" with something you have been using for a while. I am a long-term Linux user and I can tell you that Windows has plenty of major UX problems when I occasionally have to use it on someone else's PC.

[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

When the keyboard doesn't work correctly, that is not "just how it is" though..

I'm not going to relearn how to type accents for the sake of switching to Linux. The OS should just work correctly out of the box, or at the very least give me the option to fix the behaviour without having to go 20 internet forums deep and delving into the depths of the system files.

I tried Mint for four days before getting fed up with things not working as they should, went back to Windows for a week and then tried Fedora for two days again running into very similar issues.

[-] taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago

You might need to switch to a keyboard layout with or without dead keys depending on your preference. Not quite sure how Windows does it these days other than some vague nightmares about the layout switcher thing in the task bar from a few years ago that kept switching back semi-randomly when switching applications. Some of the changes in how accents are typed are actually related to using accented characters less than the characters on their own (e.g. backticks) but others might also be related to making things easier for people with disabilities that prevent them from pressing certain key combinations.

[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The issue I'm talking about is unrelated to keyboard layouts. It's how deadkeys are implemented.

The deadkeys are seemingly defined separately from keyboard layout, and there is no way that I could find to redefine them other than either turning dead key behaviour on or off in the keyboard layouts

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 3 points 3 weeks ago

Which distribution did you try?

[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Mint Cinnamon and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop.

I ran into various issues, one of them being (for example) incorrect behaviour of dead keys for accented characters. That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 8 points 3 weeks ago

That problem was present in both distros, and I even went so far as to unsuccessfully edit system files to get the desired behaviour.

What desired behaviour are you talking about exactly?

Because I have used those exact two distros, also with deadkeys since I type in Portuguese and Spanish alongside English, and deadkeys works just fine for me.

[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

So the keyboard I'm using is US International (with deadkeys), which is the standard keyboard for the Netherlands.

Certain key combinations should create an accented character, but certain other key combinations should simply print the accent followed by the character. Typing this way is essentially muscle memory for me, so if it deviates from what I'm used to it really trips me up badly.

Example:

', followed by e should type é (which Linux did correctly)
', followed by m should type 'm (where Linux typed an accented ḿ)
', followed by c should type ç (where Linux typed an accented ć)
', followed by ' should type '' (where Linux typed ')
', followed by [space] should type ' (which Linux did correctly)

I checked several forums, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to change this behaviour in Linux. Dead key behaviour is seemingly consistent between keyboard layouts, and it can only either be on or off?

Edit: It shouldn't even be that complex of an improvement to the OS.
If they were to add a defintion as to how deadkeys are supposed to work as part of the keyboard layout file, this wouldn't be an issue. I could just make my own "US Intl. with Dead Keys (NL)" layout and it would be fine.

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 4 points 3 weeks ago

Hey, so I just tested this and you're right, it doesn't work as you described.

I suppose I unconsciously found workarounds and just ran with it.

For the examples you mentioned:

I'm is achieved by typing ' and then space.

ç you can get with AltGr+<

The other two, I have no idea what they are, but I trust your judgment.

I also went around some forums and yeah it appears other people report it doesn't work as it should. A bummer.

Maybe there already are some custom keyboard layouts out there you can download?

To get

[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Wow! Thank you for going through the effort of figuring out whether there was a solution for me. I really appreciate it!

And yeah.. I could probably type all the characters I need to type through workarounds. But my problem is that I don't think I should have to relearn how to type in order to switch to Linux. It's a relatively niche issue I ran into, but I'm clearly not the only one running into it.

Which is a shame because I do want Linux to be more widely used than it is currently, and I think small annoyances like this are part of what is holding it back. It makes it more of a hassle to overcome the hurdle of switching OS.

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago

Wow! Thank you for going through the effort of figuring out whether there was a solution for me. I really appreciate it!

You're most welcome!

Which a shame because I do want Linux to be more widely used than it is currently, and I think small annoyances like this are part of what is holding it back.

And yes, I completely 100% agree. Hopefully there will soon be a fix for this, because like you said, it really sounds like something that should be able to be fixed relatively easily, lol.

Anyways, best of luck to you in the future!

[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Hopefully there will soon be a fix for this, because like you said, it really sounds like something that should be able to be fixed relatively easily, lol.

I have one final question, which you might know perhaps.. Where would one go to make feature requests for Linux itself? If I quickly Google this I find places to make feature requests for specific distros, but not for Linux as a whole.

I ask because I suspect this issue is more fundamental to Linux itself, rather than the individual distros I tried.

Edit: Or maybe I am misunderstanding, and this is something that does need to be brought up with the distros

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I suspect that's something that would need to be brought up either with the developers of the specific program that handles keyboard inputs or languages, if it cannot be changed in general. Or with the individual Desktop Environment projects that create the GUIs to change the underlying settings, if that setting just is not exposed graphically. Unfortunately I don't know what those would be, but maybe it can help point into a more precise direction for further research. I doubt that it is an issue that goes as deep as the Linux kernel being involved. (Take it with a grain of salt though, I'm mostly speculating.)

Edit: in a quick search I found this thread with a possible solution: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/trying-to-change-dead-key-behaviour-im-stumped/85029

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Windows only applications mostly. The ones I use are Fusion 360, Photoshop, Lightroom, and NI Labview. Unfortunately CAD/Graphic design software also often really struggles to run in WINE, especially with updates happening fairly often.

I've thought of a windows VM, but that's just not worth the extra effort of dealing with hardware passthrough to get proper GPU acceleration.

I really like Linux, all my servers and VMs run Debian or Alpine. But it's just a lot of work for desktop use in my experience (yes I know some of you have never had a single thing break), stuff just randomly breaks for no reason, I'll do a system update and just get a black screen from botched GPU drivers, or back when I ran GNOME my extensions would randomly break after an update and never work again, sometimes installing a simple application like steam would nuke my package manager.

As much as people complain about windows and some do have poor experiences, for me it's pretty much set and forget, I installed W11 on my desktop maybe 4 years ago shortly after release and it's just.. there. It works fine, it doesn't break, all my apps, games, and drivers still work after updates.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

Fusion 360 is a big sticking point for me too. I tried FREECAD but it ran like ass on every system I've tried it on. I'm currently dual booting but windows already wiped the secure boot key once which rendered the Linux os unbootable somehow even after I turned off secure boot. That was like a week after setting it up. I hadn't even got started on the laundry list of other shot I needed to get working on Linux.

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[-] LedgeDrop@lemm.ee 5 points 3 weeks ago

... because I have a Samsung Odyssey+ VR headsets, which needs "Windows Mixed Reality" (Windows VR) and was gutted/removed from Windows 11 (and doesn't work on Linux).

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I hear you, but me get this straight:

Windows fleeced you out of a technology they were supposed to support for the years to come, but you're still gonna snide Linux and stay with Windows? Lol.

[-] LedgeDrop@lemm.ee 5 points 3 weeks ago

Well, unless this is an offer to buy me a replacement Quest or Pico (all of which, work on Linux) "yes, I'm going to stay with Windows 10" (and/or maybe dual boot).

[-] ___@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 weeks ago

Developers decide what platforms they want to support based on what resources they have available and the kinds of users they wish to target. They create versions of software where they expect to garner enough market share or based on what gives them the most return on investment. Even at a 4% market share, Linux is still pretty much an edge case for many companies, though I agree that a corporation like Samsung can absolutely afford to make their software available on Linux

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[-] Aphelion@lemm.ee 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I wish I could use Linux for everything, but there are still things you need Windows to run. It would be amazing to be able to run Nuke, Houdini, Ableton Live and the Native Instruments manager on Linux, but it's not remotely possible now.

[-] some_dude@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago

I don't know man, I've been trying to mount my network share on Ubuntu for a few days already.

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 4 points 3 weeks ago

I don't have experience with setting up networks on Linux, but Ubuntu should have some guides available, no?

In any case, I was speaking from the perspective of someone who used Linux Mint and Fedora. Both work pretty much out of the box with little tinkering.

[-] eleitl@lemm.ee 1 points 3 weeks ago
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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
491 points (93.6% liked)

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