Technology

Linux definitely has a learning curve but its night and day when you actually own your device and get to decide on what software is allowed to run on your computer.

On top of the privacy, the speed of most linux distros is a huge step up from windows. Windows imo is gradually becoming obsolete in the gaming sphere. the amount of work required to properly configure and debloat a system for gaming was zero in my distro. Install gfx driver, gamemode, steam, proton GE, GOverlay, done. I play popular games such as marvel rivals and warframe at decent framerates. (my system is older).

With windows there was so much nonsense to disable that would hugely impact FPS. Sometimes disabling these things would break other features of the OS. And most of the debloat scripts to automate the process are rife with viruses and issues.

Im convinced that by enshitifying the OS it will fool users into thinking their hardware is obsolete and "cant keep up" but im running a 1070ti and a i7 from like 2018 and its still a decent system that does everything i need. until something breaks im not upgrading.

Consumer grade Linux Mint is impossible to differentiate from Windows/MacOS.

That sure is easy to say.

In practice, I tried to use mint for the os on a family computer and just couldn't make it work. I've been an IT guy for years and have tons of experience with both Windows and MacOS, but virtually none with Linux. Long story short, trying to make that machine work with Linux mint was just taking up way too much of my time. I just needed to get a few simple features out of it (and maybe 1 hard feature, parental controls). But having very little Linux experience, it just wasn't going to happen in a reasonable time frame. I eventually had to give up and put the Mac OS back on it (an iMac).

Anyway, mint actually has a lot in common with the Mac OS, it makes a very small set of controls very easy to use. And technically, you can do just about anything else you need to with the terminal, but that can be challenging to navigate.

Try to play games, learn how to set up wine/proton, discover that none of your games work because you have an old GPU driver, discover that you can't update it because any time you install a newer driver it hard-locks the system and reboots it in super low-res mode with no driver at all, also your sound dies randomly for no reason that you can discover and trawling reddit for 4 hours comes up with lots of solutions, half of which don't work and the other half don't even apply, get frustrated, disable dual-boot and go back to windows.

That's how my last experience with linux (admittedly that was PopOS not Mint, but) went ~6 months ago. I'm currently building up my frustration-tolerance to give it another try at some point probably with main-line Ubuntu because at least then when I go hunting for solutions to obscure problems the suggested solutions are for that distro. I'm honestly not sure what the difference between Ubuntu and Mint is tho.

What’s installing Nvidia drivers like?

This has killed my install and interest in Linux every time I’ve tried it.

Install Steam

Also enable Proton for everything. I thought that was the default, but I recently reinstalled Linux on my laptop (wanted to try out openSUSE Aeon) and was surprised that at least on the flatpak, Proton isn't enabled by default.

That covers like 90% of Steam games, and 95% of what a typical SP-only gamer would need. However, MP games w/ anti-cheat are still an issue, but the more people that switch to Linux, the more likely devs are to support anti-cheat games on Linux.

I made a new computer in November, and while I didn't try Mint (I don't think) I installed 3 or 4 different versions if Linux. In them, I installed steam and Nvidia drivers, but most of my game library said they weren't playable. If I didn't have kids I could have spent more time and gotten it working, but is Mint different? Would they have been playable on it?

Needs more "Yes/ Ask again later" pseudo-choices.

I hope there is at least one human that has to listen to the filthy, angry, Klingon profanities I scream, while jerking myself raw to hard core, ball draining, homoerotic, gay porn....

That's exactly where I'm at too. And my requirements aren't all that high, I just need:

• all day battery life
• reliable SMS and MMS
• decent quality speakers and mic

I don't even need app compatibility, just a decent browser, and those already exist in current phone projects. If you give me the above, I'll switch and may even find time to help port desktop apps to the phone, or even develop some myself.

They will just instruct everyone to throw their obsolete AI pc onto the landfill like they already have been doing with machines that won't run windows 11

Yeah, I've seen the same song and dance for the last 20 years. At this point I just shrug whenever I hear Windows users complain about their shitty OS.

Android users “i play both sides so I come out on the bottom”