Today marks 6 years since Valve decided to change everything, especially for Linux fans, with the announcement of Steam Play Proton. Thanks to it, the Steam Deck and Desktop Linux gaming have continued to thrive.
I was honestly surprised by win11. The last time I’ve daily driven a windows machine was the dark ages of 8.1. My expectations were pretty low thanks to the hate people spewed about it online.
What I got was a preinstalled SSH client, easy to install SSH server, customizable terminal app with tabs and nice features related to WSL, The WSL itself! Easy to install and switch between different distros, notepad remembers unsaved work, and it finally has tabs! Explorer? Tabs! Media playback? Windows finally got the media control widget, like a normal OS! A lot of small quality of life bits I was used to on my linux desktop. They’re even working on finally deprecating that mess of a control panel!
The only thing that botheres me, is that the UI is clearly being designed by someone with a football field sized monitor. Luckily scaling it back down is still possible. The same thing plagues gnome as well as some commercial prodiucts I use.
I haven’t used win11 yet and my work laptop uses win10 so although I can’t claim any of the benefits you listed aren’t accurate, my issues with windows go a little deeper than “win10 and earlier lack features 11 has”.
On the WSL front, sure it’s kinda cool and a way better programming experience, but it’s still just linux under windows, so I find myself asking why I wouldn’t just use linux, hardly a dub for windows.
The elephant in the room for me is the invasive software, of course. Win11 looks to be even more guilty of this with the likes of copilot and recall, but I can hard copium, bury my head in the sand and ignore these for the sake of work (with a smile on my face I guess).
Equally though, I simply don’t find win10 enjoyable to use, and I’m not confident win11 is the solution. I use a tiling window manager on my home desktop so Windows’ floating window manager isn’t going to appeal to me. Installing and updating software is okay for some programs but annoying for others, never great. Sure, windows finally realised package managers were a thing, but winget leaves a lot to be desired for me.
Also, why does an operating system need ads? Genuine question.
At least in corporate they can disable the annoying features easily with AD. And the rest doesn’t really matter because you don’t own those PCs anyway.
WSL2 and windows terminal are ok. I switched to Linux in my previous job back when WSL1 or VMs were the the available choices for doing Linux stuff, but later when people asked if I’d recommend using Linux for their work computer there I’d just say no. IME Linux and Windows were pretty 50/50 on how often things broke down, e.g. updates breaking the shitty fucking VPN app, but with windows you had IT solving that shit for you, with Linux you had to rely on yourself and other Linux desktop users in the company.
Literally the only reason I dual booted was for gaming. Thanks to Proton, I never touch Windows ever. It’s great.
I started a corporate job, back in hell with fucking windows.
I try to justify that windows is okay for corporate, but that’s requiring some hardcore copium.
I just do the zombieland wiping tears with money gif.
I was honestly surprised by win11. The last time I’ve daily driven a windows machine was the dark ages of 8.1. My expectations were pretty low thanks to the hate people spewed about it online.
What I got was a preinstalled SSH client, easy to install SSH server, customizable terminal app with tabs and nice features related to WSL, The WSL itself! Easy to install and switch between different distros, notepad remembers unsaved work, and it finally has tabs! Explorer? Tabs! Media playback? Windows finally got the media control widget, like a normal OS! A lot of small quality of life bits I was used to on my linux desktop. They’re even working on finally deprecating that mess of a control panel!
The only thing that botheres me, is that the UI is clearly being designed by someone with a football field sized monitor. Luckily scaling it back down is still possible. The same thing plagues gnome as well as some commercial prodiucts I use.
I haven’t used win11 yet and my work laptop uses win10 so although I can’t claim any of the benefits you listed aren’t accurate, my issues with windows go a little deeper than “win10 and earlier lack features 11 has”.
On the WSL front, sure it’s kinda cool and a way better programming experience, but it’s still just linux under windows, so I find myself asking why I wouldn’t just use linux, hardly a dub for windows.
The elephant in the room for me is the invasive software, of course. Win11 looks to be even more guilty of this with the likes of copilot and recall, but I can hard copium, bury my head in the sand and ignore these for the sake of work (with a smile on my face I guess).
Equally though, I simply don’t find win10 enjoyable to use, and I’m not confident win11 is the solution. I use a tiling window manager on my home desktop so Windows’ floating window manager isn’t going to appeal to me. Installing and updating software is okay for some programs but annoying for others, never great. Sure, windows finally realised package managers were a thing, but winget leaves a lot to be desired for me.
Also, why does an operating system need ads? Genuine question.
At least in corporate they can disable the annoying features easily with AD. And the rest doesn’t really matter because you don’t own those PCs anyway.
WSL2 and windows terminal are ok. I switched to Linux in my previous job back when WSL1 or VMs were the the available choices for doing Linux stuff, but later when people asked if I’d recommend using Linux for their work computer there I’d just say no. IME Linux and Windows were pretty 50/50 on how often things broke down, e.g. updates breaking the shitty fucking VPN app, but with windows you had IT solving that shit for you, with Linux you had to rely on yourself and other Linux desktop users in the company.
They had Ubuntu available at Amazon while I worked there, when Windows got native ssh there wasn’t a reason to use it anymore.