Windows 11 is getting out of hand with its push for advertisments, frankly - remember the recent full-screen pop-up to persuade users to install Edge or other Microsoft services? Then another advertisment was placed in the Start menu, and now Microsoft has finally worn my temper thin - with a new Game Pass ad coming to the Settings app.
This will likely arrive in the July update for Windows 11, or at least it’s almost certain to do so. It was present in the latest preview update Microsoft just released for the OS (and quickly paused due to a bug, but that’s another story). It’s also worth noting that the ad has been present in earlier test versions of Windows 11.
Imma make the jump once they force me to 11. I’ve been saying this for years but they finally got something cooking i truly can’t abide. That screenshot of what you’re up to every ten seconds is fucking terrifying to me and that’s not even considering govt snooping. I ain’t about to leave a record of my porn consumption for my wife to see lol! Linux is finally juuuust about idiot proof and game friendly enough for me. Can’t wait to be one of those smug guys that says ‘just use linux lol’
I didn’t wait. I did it earlier this year and haven’t booted from my Windows 10 drive since then. My entry drug was Linux Mint. But I quickly switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed after because I wanted something that ran the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment (I prefer how it looks and handles multiple displays). It isn’t that hard to learn the basics you need to use Linux, as long as you use a decently stable distro that you won’t need to troubleshoot at every update. In my limited experience, you only need more in depth knowledge when you try messing around with more “cutting edge” and less “stable” distros and are installing experimental features.
I can’t believe that Microsoft is expecting everyone to get rid of their computer to switch to 11 once the support for 10 expires next year. I even revived an 15 year old laptop that only had 4Gb or RAM by installing Mint on it (and switching its HDD with an SSD I had kicking around). It’s fast and perfectly usable for everything but modern games now
Not knocking your choice, OpenSUSE is a grand daddy OS, but if others are looking for a good KDE experience I find Fedora KDE Spin, which is not anweird fork yoi can get it from Red Hat themselves, is very good and come out of the box with all the latest and greatest like Wayland and Pipewire by default.
I tried Fedora KDE spin first but it didn’t work out for me. IDK if it was my hardware configuration it didn’t like but the first time I booted it, it spammed me with crash reports. I poked around it for a few minutes, not being able to go far without things crashing again and again. I installed the updates and rebooted it hoping it would fix it but it got much worse after that. I couldn’t do anything else as it immediately crashed at startup. I couldn’t be bothered to look any further into it and switched to OpenSUSE which has been rock solid for months and still going. I’m running Plasma 6.1 with Wayland on it with no issues as well and I know Plasma 6.2 is coming soon. It uses pipewire as default as well. To be honest, IDK what Fedora would do better for my uses, except maybe for a faster package manager.
I’m certain that my Fedora experience isn’t typical but for me at least it was a disaster.
Yeah that doesn’t sound typical, but you’re right if you’ve got those going on OpenSUSE then I don’t think you’re missing anything major. If Fedora ever gives me trouble I might give that a try. I just wasn’t interested in PopOS or Mint as a lot of other people were because I want those latest core components and don’t really like GNOME.
Microsoft has made the choice very easy for me. I still have an i7-7700k that works just fine. But that’s “too old”, so when Windows 10 hits end of life, I’ll be switching over to Linux.
Why wait?
I recommend Linux Mint. It’s very beginner friendly and you don’t need to use the console too much if that kind of thing bothers you. The GUI even looks very similar to a Windows 10 environment.
I second Linux Mint
I installed it on my Grandma’s PCs not too long ago and even she enjoys it. She’s almost 80.
We are having issues with her printer but it’s one that has known issues with Linux in general (it’s a fancy Epson laser printer, scanner, fax machine combo with bad Windows support) but I’m hoping to rectify that soon.
I would say the GUI reminds me more of Windows 7 than 10 which I really dig
Edit: spleling
I third Mint. Very easy setup (just check your system is compatible before you try).
Also it’s ‘laser’ (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).
Funnily enough my phone corrected it to Lazer when I typed laser the first time
Just another fun quirk of the Google keyboard on Android lately, autocorrecting words to the incorrect spelling
No worries. Thought it was a typo. Bizarre correction for it to make.
Oh yeah it was a typo but it was autocorrected weird, the keyboard on my phone has definitely been making some odd choices for corrections lately.
At least it’s better than search results via Google, those have gone to shit lately