The Chat/Spam Thread

**anon** · 29.11.24, 16:21

Originally Posted by Sazzy

a backup is always safer.

Indeed. I'm still traumatized from the days of upgrading from 9x to XP, and the process can also fail in reverse

**tomted** · 30.11.24, 04:01

I haven't found any reason to upgrade to W11 yet. Once I see one, I'll jump in with the rest.

**snow_white** · 30.11.24, 10:28

I do not need a reason to try something new.
especially if the rollback progress is so easy.
a fresh win install has never hurt.

Do a Backup beforehand, and u are on the safe side

**anon** · 30.11.24, 18:37

At some point Microsoft will decree that the previous iteration of their OS is end of life and try to push 11 on you just as they did with 10. Might as well see what the fuss is about now... with a virtual machine, it can be done at zero risk and little inconvenience to you.

Although they could also decide your hardware isn't good enough to upgrade, so this may be a moot point.

**snow_white** · 30.11.24, 20:33

But recently, Microsoft has been doing almost everything to encourage people to switch to Windows 11. Many restrictions have already been lifted.

**anon** · 01.12.24, 17:18

I'm talking about this processor instruction set requirements in the kernel, everything else is not essential or was already bypassable with a registry value.

Although it's likely that those can be reasonably taken for granted and I'm ~~still PTSDed about not having a SSE2 processor when 8 came out~~ making a big deal out of nothing.

**buttnudge** · 02.12.24, 15:28

I'm actually amazed at how much Windows users endure. Entire Linux distributions have been forked for things which don't even affect the end user. I swear, half of the current Windows users would be perfectly fine with some chatGPT-ed post-install script and Bottles ( wine ). Even then it would be cheaper to QEMU something that doesn't work in wine than to go through this cycle every X years.

**anon** · 05.12.24, 21:58

A usable version of ReactOS would give us the best of both worlds...

**buttnudge** · 06.12.24, 11:30

Originally Posted by anon

A usable version of ReactOS would give us the best of both worlds...

It doesn't have enough push. The actual best thing would be a steam stripped future SteamOS with proton available nicely to the whole of userland instead of just steam.

**Sazzy** · 06.12.24, 16:43

Originally Posted by buttnudge

I'm actually amazed at how much Windows users endure. Entire Linux distributions have been forked for things which don't even affect the end user. I swear, half of the current Windows users would be perfectly fine with some chatGPT-ed post-install script and Bottles ( wine ). Even then it would be cheaper to QEMU something that doesn't work in wine than to go through this cycle every X years.

I remember spending hours back in the day to get my printer to work in Linux. ( And then imagine explaining this whole process to your mom. ) Pick your poison, I guess.
It really depends on what you're zooming into and focusing on to determine what is best and what you have to endure. There's plenty of use cases where Linux outshines Windows by a long shot. But the same thing goes for the reverse.

That being said, I do agree that Microsoft has been making some questionable choices in Windows lately but I've been PTSD'd more by Linux so far keeping me away still.
It's amazing when things work, but when they don't, sheesh. I'm not even a dummy user, but I really dislike copy pasting random commands I don't understand into console to get stuff working after googling for ages.

**buttnudge** · 06.12.24, 20:48

I remember spending hours back in the day to get my printer to work in Linux. ( And then imagine explaining this whole process to your mom. ) Pick your poison, I guess.

Oof. But that shit sucks on any operating system, maybe less on Windows because a lot of people have to deal with that, and if you've been blessed by one of "those" printers then it's hell.

It's amazing when things work, but when they don't, sheesh. I'm not even a dummy user, but I really dislike copy pasting random commands I don't understand into console to get stuff working after googling for ages.

I do believe this is the wrong approach. If you start having problems with your distribution you should be switching distributions. Everything should be handled by the package manager. I never touch anything outside /tmp and /home. Maybe /usr in special cases. If it's in /home I can do whatever I want I never break my system. I'm sorry if I sound patronizing, may I interest in your our Lord and Saviour Arch Linux / Gentoo / NixOS ?

**anon** · 07.12.24, 03:50

Originally Posted by buttnudge

If you start having problems with your distribution you should be switching distributions. ... may I interest in your our Lord and Saviour... Gentoo

Ah, I almost took this post seriously

Also, printers are a nightmare by design. Not Torvalds' fault.

https://theoatmeal.com/static/printers.html

**buttnudge** · 07.12.24, 10:44

Originally Posted by anon

Ah, I almost took this post seriously

Also, printers are a nightmare by design. Not Torvalds' fault.

https://theoatmeal.com/static/printers.html

I'm being half serious. Once you bread the butter of one of those you tend to have less problems in general.
Like take Ubuntu for example. You need software that's not in the main repositories. Your alternative are PPAs. These are split per Ubuntu version, sometimes dependent packages of different versions than those in the main repositories. So apt / dpkg gives you problems. You search on Google. Make symlinks, try to have different versions of the same thing, manually install, etc. With Arch, which I have the most experience with, you just download from the AUR and you're done. I've been like what, an Arch user for 10+ years and every time I broke my system was me doing something stupid with full knowledge of what I was doing. It's not even hard to install anymore, you can get to a full desktop in minutes:

**anon** · 07.12.24, 22:20

Arch is a very solid choice, and has the best documentation I've seen. However, I don't think I'd recommend Gentoo to someone criticizing Linux for being frustrating to troubleshoot... but maybe there's no substitute for personal experience.

Originally Posted by buttnudge

It's not even hard to install anymore

Indeed. The first time I tried it you had to install the installer from a file system root distributed as a 7-Zip archive!

**buttnudge** · Yesterday, 00:05

Originally Posted by anon

Arch is a very solid choice, and has the best documentation I've seen. However, I don't think I'd recommend Gentoo to someone criticizing Linux for being frustrating to troubleshoot... but maybe there's no substitute for personal experience.

Heck, I do honest to God believe it's better to just suffer through the basics of a somewhat approachable system of complexity than to find yourself at the mercy of n initially easy one that has eventually non approachable problems. Gentoo even has binary packages these days and a very active forum and community plus probably the best wiki after Arch.

Maybe NixOS is a bit too far but I think it respects my vision, I've only played around with the base install a little. Since the entire system is built declaratively you just have to suffer it and version change those configs, but it will never actually break.

I ,myself, this year, broke CentOS, Ubuntu ( first two at work, one was a server and the other was my main laptop ) and OpenSuse Tumbleweed instances because of quirks in their packaging like ungodly dependency trees, having to link against the right C libraries and generally no way of approaching some issues except finding some forum post from 7 years ago.

Indeed. The first time I tried it you had to install the installer from a file system root distributed as a 7-Zip archive!

anon, the OG Arch user. I'm jelly, you probably got into Arch before me.