Man…I don’t even like linux. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have difficulty understanding what I’m even doing wrong. I have issues installing software unless it’s a flatpak.
And yet for the past 2 years I’ve been exclusively running linux. Not so much against my will, but against my wants.
What I want is WindowsXP 2.0. Just WindowsXP but able to run modern hardware, in a 64 bit software version.
Instead, we get Windows 11. I will not stand for buying hardware, paying for software to run an OS, only to be told I own nothing, my privacy is not respected, my screen real estate is theirs to sell, and the software spies on me.
So I want you to know, as a lifelong windows user, dating back to Windows 3.1, and going all the way to Windows 8.1, I want you to know I say this as a Windows user who feels held hostage on linux…
That being said…FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!!! FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF WITH YOUR BULLSHIT! FUCK COPILOT! FUCK TILES! WINDOWS 10! FUCK WINDOWS 11! FUCK AI PUSHED DOWN OUR THROATS! FUCK YOUR ARTIFICIAL TECH LIMITS TO RUN WINDOWS 11! FUCK YOUR WHOLE MINDSET THESE PAST 15 YEARS!!! I HAVE BEEN UNHAPPILY USING LINUX FOR 2 YEARS EXCLUSIVELY AFTER TRYING IT OFF AND ON FOR 20 YEARS. NEVER UNDERSTOOD TERMINAL, MAY NEVER UNDERSTAND TERMINAL, BUT FUCK YOU MICROSOFT! I REFUSE YOUR BULLSHIT!
I use Teams flatpak to communicate with family and like a week ago got a prompt “would you recommend this to others?”.
I clicked no, and for the reason “Sloppity slop slop slopitty slop” and 3 days later M$ announced they were rolling back Copilot integration in trivial apps. I felt listened to :P
GUYS!!! WE FOUND THE ONE!!! HE’S THE ONE WHO ENDS AI!!!
Praise be!
teams? with family? why?
Some members are too old to want to switch to something else and I need to save my energy for far more important battles.
Mad rant props!
For real though, flatpak exists partially for exactly your use case. Simple to use, won’t break shit, and pretty much available everywhere.
You’re kinda lucky in a way. Linux in all its flavors have steadily improved over the years. Even when win10 came out and I jumped ship for all but a few niche uses, it was a higher learning curve, and came with much disappointment in what I couldn’t do that I had been able to on win 7 (which was my favorite version of Windows overall).
Now, while I still have my win 7 drive for the two things I can’t get working on linux reliably, I can do everything else. I also have a win10 partition on my laptop for one single piece of software because it’s easier to just keep it for the rare usage than try to figure out how to get it working (is Amazon’s shitty kindle author program, and since I only crank out a book every three years or so [and only one that I’ve felt like selling there], it just isn’t worth fucking with for that tiny amount of extra space.
Linux, right now, is the best it’s ever been. It’s also on par with windows. Enough so that I can’t see myself ever going back. At some point, win7 won’t work on new hardware, and I’ll have to jank a musicbee install on linux, and tackle the character sheet generator that I use formy absurdly over crunchy home brew TTRPG that I’ve yet to find a replacement for that isn’t a compromise.
Anyway, I suspect that in a year or two, you’ll be in a similar space. You’ll have figured out the bullshit, abandoned windows habits, and actually be satisfied with your distro of choice.
Truth? If I had spent as much time on linux back in the nineties, I would likely have has equal difficulty adapting to windows if things had been in reverse.
For real. I floated around with Ubuntu like 15 or so years ago. Everything was learning and researching and getting things to work. Plopped Mint on my laptop a few months ago and didn’t hardly have to do a thing to figure it out. But of troubleshooting to get my VPN to run correctly on it.
Js, i love reading anything fiction. If you want to either just to share your work, or constructive criticism, let me know. Ive been wanting a writingprompts community here, but i dont want to start one because of personal issues.
!writingprompts@literature.cafe :)
Have you considered a virtual machine for that super rare use-case?
Yeah, I suspect that’s what I’ll end up doing. But for now, dual boot ftw?
It’s one of those things where screwing around with an otherwise stable system just seems pointless unless I don’t have a choice.
Well, if you have that laptop just lying around otherwise, why not. I have a similar situation at my in-laws. They have an ink printer that needs cleaning periodically, which is triggered via software. I know how to do that from a built-in Windows app, so I have no idea hope to use Wine for that. That laptop has been lying around mostly unused, so not a big deal. Just grab it, wait till it boots, could take five minutes.
But I thought of first installing Linux on that laptop, so it would be useful. And then, I could clean the printer heads from any laptop I have, which is much more useful too. I keep Windows around only because of that.
Your use-case seems different, yet I thought we have some similarities here. I haven’t tried the VM way yet. But I just hope a lot it would solve my problem.
I hate to break it to you but XP-7 only existed the way it did because Microsoft was under an injunction preventing them from bundling services with the OS. They actually intended to have Microsoft accounts (then called .Net Passports) tied to activation in XP.
Man…I don’t even like linux. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have difficulty understanding what I’m even doing wrong. I have issues installing software unless it’s a flatpak.
Use decent distro like Fedora KDE. A lot of issues are because new people pick Debian, Ubuntu or Arch
Heh. Mass.gravel as the github repo always makes me do a double take.
ReactOS is windows. Here’s their front page blurb:
“Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust. That’s the mission of ReactOS!”
It’s not Linux, specifically. Its not Linux under the hood, it’s written to be windows without microsoft.
Haven’t tried it myself, but its definitely worth a try if you’ve been using Linux that long and its just not for you.
It’s also targeting the Windows XP era, Server 2003 specifically.
I tried installing it a year ago. It wouldn’t install for some reason.
Maybe I’ll try again. Maybe their newest version has bug fixes.
Its alpha for a reason
The scream of an era!
Windows 10 was ok-ish until they announced
Windows 11 and ramped up it’s enshitification… They improved the tiles idea a lot over windows 8
Windows phone 7 was great too…
I use Linux now though too, I’ve found flatpak isn’t a silver bullet though: depending on what distro you’re using and what distro whoever made the flatpak was using sometimes strange issues happen such as not loading in dark mode or losing settings on close/shutdown…
Yeah I gave up on flatpak when I wanted to use it with Steam + gamescope + gamemode + MangoHUD. It just wasn’t worth the hassle of configuring all the permissions, especially for someone who doesn’t mind updating the native install.
Oh I forgot about the windows phone os, the one with the tiles. Yeah that was pretty decent, shame it didn’t get the support it needed.
Debian + KDE and then install synaptic and your basically there man. itsfoss.com/synaptic-package-manager/ You could go with Ubuntu but it has telemitry bullshit (if you don’t care then its fine). Launch Synaptic once a month and refresh and apply updates or add the software from the repositry from there. Debian is all about being stable so it wont have all the latest versions of software but if you want a Windows XP version of Linux that just fucking works, Debian is the way to go. Everything has a .deb installer if it is trying to be available to the wider Linux user market.
install synaptic and your basically there man
What’s my basically there man? (Or should I say who is my basically there man?) I don’t think I’ve installed this. Is it like the Linux version of Bonzi Buddy?
</ smart arse little shit >
Which distro are you on?
I’m sure you could easily get some help with how to install things and the basics of using the terminal (though you really shouldn’t need to use the terminal much anyway).
ZorinOS. I’m still on 17, because 2 years ago on my TwisterOS (raspberry pi) I used sudo update all, and that broke some shit.
So when I installed ZorinOS on my PC, I immediately disabled all updates, and it sits exactly as it was when I installed it. Never updated in 2 years. I haven’t broken anything.
I want to install this thing called docker, but it’s been so long that now I forget what it even was I wanted to install. I just remember docker was a prerequisit.
But I tried for 2 weeks, and it gives errors. And the thing is, if I understood linux, I’m sure it’s a simple fix. It’s like wandering into a house you’ve never been in before, and your friend is saying “turn the lights on!!!” and you know you need to turn the lights on, but you have no idea how. And you don’t feel the light switch on the wall. What you don’t know is it’s actually a clapper light switch. So you don’t even know what you’re doing wrong.
Thats how linux feels to me.
But for browsing the web, and playing games, it seems to work decent enough.
Although recently my bluetooth has been wonky. Very recent behavior. Used to just be rock solid. Now sometimes my devices won’t connect. Gotta turn off bluetooth, and then turn it back on. Then turn the device back on, and it’ll connect like normal.
In windows, I’d say uninstall and reinstall the bluetooth driver. In linux I have zero clue how I would even start that process.
Again, in a dark room not sure what to do.
How could the bluetooth performance deteriorate if you are really not updating anything?
I have no idea.
Ah … I’m not too familiar with Zorin (or bluetooth) myself, but hopefully you’ll get some answers!
If you ever decide to set aside time to tackle a re-install, you should consider setting up a file system that supports snapshots, or since you’re used to only using flatpaks, an immutable distro. Then you won’t fear updates because you can easily roll back as if they didn’t happen.
There’s a x64 version of XP iirc, running it would be a hacky and security nightmare though (but think about that sweet zune theme!)
x00z@lemmy.world 37 minutes ago
C’mon beb Linux gon be guuuuud.