The shift to SaaS and Windows 11 updates means you no longer own your software. Here is how free software tools can help you reclaim control.
The death of the PC market will greatly affect the next 50 years of computing worldwide. Corporations have successfully been pushing for a computer market where we rent computing power online and never own anything.
I don’t think the personal market will completely die out, but it will definitely shrink by a significant percentage over the next ten years or so.
We’ll see a considerable volume of gamers move to thin clients, ditto for businesses, casual use (email, browsing, consuming media etc.) will continue to switch to mobile devices.
PCs will still exist as a hobby for enthusiasts, but we’ve definitely seen peak-component sales.
The PC market has shrunk 80-90% in one year.
Even before that the GPU market was overvalued thanks to unusually high demand from COVID and unusually high demand from crypto mining the decade before.
Even consoles are reaching the $1000 mark soon.
C’mon, microsoft. What are you DOING with your life???
I’m no linux apologist. I BARELY understand what I’m doing. If ANY task needs terminal, then that task just isn’t going to happen for me.
All that said, it’s time to switch to linux. And for anyone asking where they should start with all these distros…Mint. If you’ve never used linux before, start with Mint.
Now I’m a bit of a hypocrite for saying that, because I’m on Zorin. There’s nothing wrong with Zorin. It is perfectly fine as a starter distro if you’re coming from Windows. It’s almost equal to Zorin in usability. Mint has one edge that cannot be overlooked for newbies.
Userbase.
EVERYONE uses Mint, which means there’s going to be a broader range of support. There are times I wish I had started with Mint. But I chose Zorin when I was new, and now my heels are dug in.
That being said, YOU should use Mint.
Ugh…I can’t believe this is where we are in this world. Where I have to reccomend linux, while still not knowing what the hell I’m doing.
Anyways…use linux. Fuck microsoft. It’s the only way to take back OUR hardware. They want to go full greed mode? I’m now using software which they don’t make a dime on, and never can. As much as I hate the structure, I can’t say anything negative involving bloat, or spyware, or anything else that I classify as “modern day bullshit”.
sigh Just use linux.
And while at that, I recomend regular Mint (which is based on Ubuntu).
There is Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), but I have found it harder to use (while I can manage, I’m not that experienced with Linux to bother to troubleshoot and solve it [at least at the time], but I think it was dependency, incompatibility, or driver issues).
Plus, the main Mint version is still the Ubuntu based one, LMDE is kinda a side project and usually isn’t as up-to-date, as far as I know.
LMDE would indeed be a bad recommendation for a newbie. Regular Mint benefits from Ubuntus better hardware support, GUIs for drivers/updates, PPA support and if you have AMD graphics it’s not a newbie nightmare to get the most up to date Mesa.
I’ve been recommending Endeavour because its “Arch with a nice installer” and it seems to go down well with modestly technical people.
Especially since they can then pick their DE.
Please do not recommend Arch-based distros to newcomers. At some point, something minor or major is going to break, and they’re not going to be able to fix it. Give them something Debian-based to learn the ropes (or not). It’s not going to break down on them as easily.
I dunno man, less shits broken here than on Ubuntu.
I’m out of the loop, Ubuntu has been broken/unstable?
Debían based except Ubuntu, Even Ubuntu flavours like kubuntu are fine just not Ubuntu.
*yet
How old is your system?
I’ve put endeavour on a bunch of desktops and various thinkpads of a variety of vintages, including very modern.
I dunno man, it just works. I buy conservative technology choices and vendors and shit just works.
The hardest thing in my life is getting WWAN to work reliably OOTB on thinkpads with cellular.
Edit: No, the hardest thing in my life is asking people “Is wayland in the room with us right now?” because I’ve yet to have a machine running wayland.
You misunderstood my question. How old are those installs? Chances are they’re not very old.
Arch-based systems like EndeavourOS are rolling releases with minimal testing. They’ll work fine at the start, but errors will accumulate over time. Breakage is not a question of if, but when, and when that happens, Arch assumes you’re a savvy user who knows what youre doing and able to fix your stuff. If you aren’t (and newcomers to Linux normally fall into that category), you’re going to have a bad time.
Whatever the hype around Endeavour or CachyOS is: I wouldn’t recommend any of them to Linux newcomers for this very reason. Instead, it’s wise to give them a stable Debian-based OS to make themselves comfortable with Linux. Once they have arrived, they may or may not experiment with other flavours of Linux.
I mean with every day passing there’s less and less desktop users anyway. Most teenagers know significantly less about windows than you know about Linux. They’re on iOS and android.
As an admin i see it as an opportunity to switch to Linux but the boomers are refusing to let go of microslop office so it’s a bit of a fight still.
Eh, I’m a sufficiently advanced Linux user (been using it on and off since the mid to late 90s) and I use zorin. It just works and it also looks pretty good too
Do more people use Mint than Ubuntu these days? I’ve been on Arch for a decade now so I don’t know the popularity of distros as well as I used to.
I don’t know but it seems that Mint is pretty popular: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
Anyway, Mint is the closest to Windows 3.1/98/2000 by its simplicity. It shows windows, you can move your files and run applications, it’s all I need.
Arch at around #15 btw. I would have expected it to be a little bit more popular than some of the other ones on this list but I guess I don’t know what the metric is based on here. Downloads?
Sounds good enough for average people. 👌
I switched from popos to manjaro and later mainline arch about a year ago for the AUR. It’s a lot more streamlined then all the terminal stuff needed to install third party software on Ubuntu
Mullvadvpn is my vpn of choice. Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora are the recommended distros if using Mullvad.
Mint isn’t for everyone. A lot of picking a distro, at least for me, is will it work with the services I want to use.
To use mullvad on mint, download the .deb file. Double click on it. Click ok to installing it.
Done.
Edit (Download it off mullvad website if not clear)
It’s just wire guard. You can download the config file and import into the native vpn settings
True. But the app makes it easier for noobs to configure. Anyone with basic CLI skills wouldnt be trying to infer Mullvad doesnt work on Mint anyway.
You don’t actually need the official Mullvad program either, although there’s nothing wrong with it.
I prefer to just load the wireguard config directly with network manager (or whatever your distro uses).
You, maybe.
Subscribe to a privacy community and let the good times roll blocking all tracking of you online.
Degoogle your life. Leave meta platforms wherever possible.
Starve them of the data they want.
Just get rid of as much American software as you can. The US is a mess and the cloud act will always be abused.
