KDE creates a safe haven for Windows 10 exiles.
In the context of the @Endof10 campaign, we have created a new “for” page, this time “for Windows 10 exiles”:
https://kde.org/for/w10-exiles/
In it we explain how Linux with Plasma can help users escape the deranged cycle of having to buy a new computer every time Microsoft force-upgrades their operating system.
Exactly how can Windows break my computer. My wife has a computer still running Windows XP and it still works. She never connects it to the internet, think that’s the way.
Will I be able to run my steam and Epic games with this? What about another PC games I own? And my hundreds of mp3 books and thousands of music files. I have them on internal harddrives. If I upgrade my main hard drive to this will I be able to access the files and docs on the two another drives?
Possibly yes, and incressingly possible over time. Check out ProtonDB. Proton is built into Steam. I don’t know anything about Epic.
Absolutely yes.
Yep, there’s support for multiple hard drives, and Linux can read NTFS-formatted drives. But what’s more, Linux installers have long supported “guided partitioning,” which helps you install the OS alongside an existing one like Windows, and then choose between the two when you boot. Of course, when you’re installing any new OS, even Windows, you should make sure you have backups of all your stuff, just in case.
I still recommend getting a new SSD to install Linux on if you want to keep the ability to run your old Windows on that same machine. It is cheap, safe for both your Windows and Linux installs, usually allows you to take advantage of advancements in SSD speeds, lets you have access to your old files so you can transfer them over and makes the whole process far less terrifying.
At some point you’ll realize you haven’t used your Windows drive in a year and it will be a lot easier to make the decision to finally erase it all and repurpose the drive for something else.
It hasn’t been a year yet but so far it’s been the other way around for me (except for the VM I run my piracy stuff on and my media server, that’s going great). I have been running into constant issues and annoyances trying to use Linux as my daily driver. Maybe if all I cared about was streaming content and gaming it would be fine but I couldn’t even get through my taxes without having to switch back.
Do you have any use cases in particular that have been pain points? I’m a 20+ year user who helps folks make the switch as a hobby, I may have some advice for you.
@ArsonButCute @lightnsfw at this point the only thing stopping me from moving ahead of October is a 20 year photo collection which is all indexed and star rated in Photoshop elements organiser. Any hints how I would move this to Linux? I’m happy to buy software if required but don’t want to use SAS.
Whe I’m not personally familiar with adobe’s elements organizer, I believe you may want a metadata editor to maintain your sorting and ratings. I use Tiny Media Manager for managing my metadata but it looks like it can’t handle photos, I’ve looked into it a tiny bit and “ExifTool” (exiftool.org) seems to be the same but for image metadata.
I’d recommend copying some of those files already sorted by the adobe suite and check in the windows version of exiftool if it can edit or modify your tags and ratings you’ve applied. If so, the tool is also available Linux and MacOS.
@ArsonButCute thanks, I’ll give it a shot. Last time I tried the hard part was getting the tags out of Adobe, especially if you don’t want the modified metadata date changed.
@ArsonButCute @lightnsfw can’t speak for him but most of the people I’ve helped their major pain points were literally that they never understood what they were doing, just which icons to click, to them IE WAS the internet and firefox was a “different” thing so they’d get frustrated no matter how many times they were told to click on firefox for the internet they’d claim the internet was missing.
Literally installing a windows icon pack/skin fixes 99% of the issues for many people.
You, you seem like good people.
I do my best! 🩷🌸🌷
At the moment the issues I’m dealing with are CAD No Fusion 360 on Linux and FreeCAD has ran like shit on every system I’ve tried and getting my peripherals working, mainly my Logitech stuff, mainly my g602 mouse but I also have a headset from them that doesn’t work properly and from what I understand can’t work properly on Linux. Another problem I had a few weeks ago was something killed the secure boot enrollment on my Linux os and it refused to boot at all or even get into repair mode even after I disabled secure boot. I had to completely reinstall it and start over which is not sustainable if that reoccurs with any sort of frequency.
Re: fusion 360
https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux
This might interest you
Re Logitech G602
Sonaar allows for registration of devices to your Logitech Unifying reciever
Re Logitech Headset
Depending on your headset, this may help
https://github.com/Sapd/HeadsetControl
Re Secure Boot
I’m not sure if this is for an enterprise environment but if it is I would consider an LTS distribution. Otherwise I’m not personally sure what Secureboot would gain you from even being enabled other than preventing other operating systems from being booted. Your reasons for enabling it of course may be valid, but depending whether anyone else has physical access to that machine and what potential risks involved with another OS booting are, consider disabling it entirely.
@lightnsfw @DaddleDew what tax program? All the major ones I know of (at least in the US) not only run just fine but are fully supported by the company that makes them to run on linux (honestly mostly because they’re all either just web or electron apps now anyways)
It wasn’t the website. The pdf app wouldn’t open files off my file server because it didn’t know how to handle the smb prefix in the file path.
@lightnsfw which distro? all major linux distros support the smb:// prefix out of the box. (the app shouldn’t matter, as it’s just a filesystem handle)
Bazzite. It was that specific app that couldn’t open the file. I can’t remember the name of the app Ocu-something I think. Dolphin was able to browse my server just fine. Honestly never had an issue like that on Linux before. I found a fix for it by going in and changing a config file for how the app handles files from SMB but expecting people to have to do that just for opening shit from a network share is just the kind of things that make using Linux annoying. I’m still going to work at it because Windows is bad too but they’re not in competition because of how great Linux is. It’s because windows is getting worse.
Edit: This was the specific issue: https://gist.github.com/NonLogicalDev/f518e93aa19d3fc620bae15d388cba58
games some but not all. music and video files no problem. I don’t know of a disk format linux cannot use its only with windows that it does not natively read the unix ones. ntfs and fat should be no issue.
@Fredselfish @kde yes, most of them, if not all. I recommend using heroic games launcher, it has a direct portal to get and install your epic and gog games. Don’t hesitate to ask me if you need help 🙂
Thank you saving this for when I make that jump.