Is Linux fighting back?

[DukeComposed]

What 99.9% of die hard windows users don't realize is that it is a simple matter to use Rufus to install windows 11

Scot Hacker outlined this issue in his 2001 essay "He Who Controls the Bootloader":

It is statistically unlikely that a person purchasing a new computer is ever going to change its operating system -- the OS that comes with the computer you buy at the local computer mega-store is probably going to be the OS you use for years, if not forever.

It is unrealistic to expect most Windows users to ever mess with the bootloader, let alone fetch a special utility, download an ISO, write it to a USB drive, and run it. Users almost entirely use what comes on the machine when they buy it and never manually change it.

[Mauser]

I am a Boomer. Have always loved PC's / Laptops. Have always loved building a home PC, modifying PC / Laptop components, improving perofrmance. Guess I am a " Geek by nature, Linux by choice " type of person. I do hate using smartphones for anything except making / receiving calls, sending / receiving SMS, listening to music or taking pics. I don't feel the need to buy a new cell phone each year. I don't feel the need to be on my smartphone every minute of the day either.
When I worked in healthcare, part of my job was doing lung testing, which required use of MS Win based PC. Nothing like coming in to work in the morning and seeing displayed on your PC screen that you have been automatically updated to the latest MS Win OS, which in turn, crashes the lung testing software ( as in, it's not friggin working at all ). All attempts by Tech Support people could not reset MS Win back to previous version. I have not used any MS Win device in the last 5 years. Whenever anyone has a problem with their Windows device and they ask for help, I say, " Sorry, I don't do Windows ". Then I jump into showing them Linux OS. But, most Windows users don't really care and they will pay the slave tax and buy a new PC with the latest version of Win OS. So sad. Although Linux OS is great, don't like the " End of Life " situation most distros have, which forces you to re-install Linux OS. Maybe if all Linux distributions went to a " rolling release " model, you wouldn't have to keep re-installing ( which most users won't want to do ). Just wondering.

It seems like you are close to the way I am. I am what is considered a Boomer which I am at the later part near the end of the Boomer scale. I hate SmartPhones which I call it a StupidPhone. I have trouble seeing and resizing the screen makes it even more annoying. I have one brother that's a boomer and he can't understand why I don't like SmartPhones and Texting while I have a younger brother who is not a Boomer so I don't know what he would be considered and believes these names of Boomer or what ever is just stupid but we understand each other and agree when it comes to phones. My younger brother was born in 1970 which I don't know which silly term he would be called. I found the StupidPhone works best when I don't activate anything or install any apps and found Motorola with a Stylus works best for me while my younger brother agrees with me while my older brother can't understand. My younger brother came up with the term of Apphole. An Apphole is someone that loves to install a lot of apps ignoring all the issue that can possibly come with them. Both of my folks consider my older brother to be the smart one in the family which is laughable ludicrous. As for computers my oldest brother uses an Apple Laptop computer and has an iPhone and wears an Apple Stool-Pigeon device on his wrist but he can't understand why his health insurance premiums have increased after wearing and registering Apple Stool-Pigeon device on his wrist. And he is suppose to be the smart one of the family. My younger brother said it the best when it comes to our older brother. "He is the stupidest smart person he ever met." I concur with my younger brothers description of our older brother. My younger brother has a similar phone to what I have an have set it up the same way. He uses a Laptop computer with Windows 7 on it and doesn't care about security since he doesn't use the Laptop computer for anything important that would require security. His words are he doesn't have time or wants to go through switching to LINUX since he is still working. As for myself, I have a SmartPhone AKA (StupidPhone) which I only have it because an old style flip phone causes the head unit to hard freeze in my Subaru when ever the phone call is ended. I only use the StupidPhone as a phone and rarely text because I hate texting so much but works with the head-unit in my Subaru Forester Limited which it can read texts sent to me and I can talk and receive on calls using the hands free function over the speakers in the car when and if it can due to phones worked fine without issue until they went with wireless. I have an Acer Laptop low end specs but with the larger 17.3 inch screen and I didn't even give Windows a chance to boot up to installed and upgrade to MX LINUX and later upgraded to a 1 Tb SSD and to 8 GB Ram which I use when I travel. My desktop computer I built myself from scratch. Here are it's specs as I use two of the drives to back up to which I need to do and the computer could use a good internal cleaning even though it has case filters that I clean regularly.

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 6.1.0-37-amd64 [6.1.140-1] arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.2.0
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-6.1.0-37-amd64 root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash
    resume=UUID=<filter> resume_offset=29446144
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.20.0 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.38 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm v: 4.20.0 vt: 7
    dm: LightDM v: 1.32.0 Distro: MX-23.6_x64 Libretto October 15  2023 base: Debian GNU/Linux 12
    (bookworm)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: B450 AORUS ELITE serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American
    Megatrends LLC. v: F64a date: 02/17/2022
CPU:
  Info: model: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen+ gen: 2 level: v3 note: check
    built: 2018-21 process: GF 12nm family: 0x17 (23) model-id: 8 stepping: 2 microcode: 0x800820D
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 8 tpc: 2 threads: 16 smt: enabled cache: L1: 768 KiB
    desc: d-8x32 KiB; i-8x64 KiB L2: 4 MiB desc: 8x512 KiB L3: 16 MiB desc: 2x8 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2181 high: 2200 min/max: 2200/3700 boost: enabled scaling:
    driver: acpi-cpufreq governor: ondemand cores: 1: 2193 2: 2200 3: 2163 4: 2200 5: 2200 6: 2195
    7: 2190 8: 2200 9: 2194 10: 2158 11: 2200 12: 2191 13: 2176 14: 2061 15: 2187 16: 2200
    bogomips: 118177
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: indirect_target_selection status: Not affected
  Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected
  Type: mds status: Not affected
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected
  Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
  Type: reg_file_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: retbleed mitigation: untrained return thunk; SMT vulnerable
  Type: spec_rstack_overflow mitigation: safe RET
  Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Retpolines; IBPB: conditional; STIBP: disabled; RSB filling;
    PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected; BHI: Not affected
  Type: srbds status: Not affected
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / 560/560X] vendor: XFX Pine driver: amdgpu v: kernel
    arch: GCN-4 code: Arctic Islands process: GF 14nm built: 2016-20 pcie: gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s
    lanes: 8 ports: active: DVI-D-1 empty: DP-1,HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 07:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:67ff
    class-ID: 0300 temp: 48.0 C
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 compositor: xfwm v: 4.20.0 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
    dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1536x864 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 407x229mm (16.02x9.02") s-diag: 467mm (18.39")
  Monitor-1: DVI-D-1 mapped: DVI-D-0 model: Acer S271HL serial: <filter> built: 2019
    res: 1536x864 hz: 60 dpi: 65 gamma: 1.2 size: 598x336mm (23.54x13.23") diag: 686mm (27")
    ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 1920x1080 min: 720x400
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 24.2.8-1mx23ahs renderer: AMD Radeon RX 550 Series (radeonsi polaris11
    LLVM 15.0.6 DRM 3.49 6.1.0-37-amd64) direct-render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / 560/560X] vendor: XFX Pine
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 8 bus-ID: 07:00.1
    chip-ID: 1002:aae0 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 3
    speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 09:00.3 chip-ID: 1022:1457 class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.1.0-37-amd64 status: kernel-api tools: alsamixer,alsamixergui,amixer
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.0 status: off with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: off 2: wireplumber
    status: off 3: pw-jack type: plugin tools: pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
  Server-2: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: active tools: pacat,pactl,pavucontrol
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Gigabyte
    driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: f000 bus-ID: 03:00.0
    chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
  IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: wg0-mullvad state: unknown speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 22.3 TiB used: 6.07 TiB (27.2%)
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 model: PCIe SSD size: 476.94 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B
    logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: ECFM22.9 temp: 27.9 C
    scheme: GPT
  ID-2: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 QVO 8TB size: 7.28 TiB block-size:
    physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 2B6Q scheme: GPT
  ID-3: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 vendor: HGST (Hitachi) model: HUS728T8TALE6L4 size: 7.28 TiB
    block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: HDD rpm: 7200 serial: <filter>
    rev: W414 scheme: GPT
  ID-4: /dev/sdc maj-min: 8:32 vendor: SanDisk model: ST8000DM004-2CX188 size: 7.28 TiB
    block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: HDD rpm: 5425 serial: <filter>
    rev: 0001 scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 475.68 GiB size: 467.14 GiB (98.21%) used: 47.55 GiB (10.2%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/dm-0 maj-min: 253:0 mapped: luks-<filter>
  ID-2: /boot raw-size: 1024 MiB size: 973.4 MiB (95.06%) used: 199.2 MiB (20.5%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2
  ID-3: /boot/efi raw-size: 250 MiB size: 246.1 MiB (98.46%) used: 415 KiB (0.2%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 maj-min: 259:1
  ID-4: /home raw-size: 7.28 TiB size: 7.22 TiB (99.20%) used: 6.02 TiB (83.4%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/dm-1 maj-min: 253:1 mapped: luks-<filter>
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 10 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 28.39 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swap/swap
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 42.5 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 48.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 284
Repos:
  Packages: 2600 pm: dpkg pkgs: 2582 libs: 1294
    tools: apt,apt-get,aptitude,gnome-software,nala,synaptic pm: rpm pkgs: 0 pm: flatpak pkgs: 18
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
    1: deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
    1: deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
    2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64] https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-earth-pro.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list
    1: deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/mxlinux/mx/repo/ bookworm main non-free
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/extrepo_librewolf.sources
    1: deb [arch=amd64 arm64] https://repo.librewolf.net librewolf main
Info:
  Processes: 389 Uptime: 3h 39m wakeups: 1 Memory: 23.39 GiB used: 4.55 GiB (19.5%) Init: SysVinit
  v: 3.06 runlevel: 5 default: graphical tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 12.2.0 alt: 12
  Client: shell wrapper v: 5.2.15-release inxi: 3.3.26
Boot Mode: UEFI

The only thing that is holding LINUX back in my opinion is the Developers of WINE have yet to figure out how to get WINE to make "all Windows Programs work on LINUX."

[AVLinux]

@Mauser

If your brother was born in 1970 he is a 'silly' Generation X , the cutoff point between postwar Boomers and GenX is 1965 (I believe)..

[DukeComposed]

@Mauser

If your brother was born in 1970 he is a 'silly' Generation X :p , the cutoff point between postwar Boomers and GenX is 1965 (I believe)..

The Baby Boom largely ended in 1954 and Generation Jones is considered to run from 1954 to 1965. Many people consider Boomers to fall anywhere between early 1940s and 1966 or so, but one argument against such a late date is that kids born in 1966 were just graduating high school in 1983 and the free love movement was long gone by that time.

[Mauser]

Thanks, now I know. I am 1963 and will let my younger brother know.

[asqwerth]

.... Maybe if all Linux distributions went to a " rolling release " model, you wouldn't have to keep re-installing ( which most users won't want to do ). Just wondering.

As a multibooter, I can tell you that rolling releases have their own problems.

If they are very aggressively rolling, the users need to learn a lot more about how to handle and maintain their systems. Updates generally need more attention than in Debian Stable. Supporting the uninitiated (or those more used to Debian /Ubuntu fixed releases) can be very tiring and tiresome. Go check out the Manjaro forum.. Sometimes users mess up their system so badly (or think they did) that they give up and do what they thought they wouldn't have to do, ie reinstall.

And it means you'll get the latest versions of software before they are fully ready or stable, or before you are ready for the change because stuff from upstream just gets thrown into the mix (simplistic explanation/description , I know) . Eg. The move to plasma 6 in Arch and thus Manjaro when maybe your favourite plasma 5 widgets have not been upgraded for plasma 6. Or maybe you still prefer Gimp2 but you're forced to move to gimp3.. Packages roll inexorably forward in these distros whether you like it or not. You can try pinning a particular version only for so long before it conflicts with everything else on your system.

If the distro is a more gradual, managed rolling release that enables users to be less hands on, it means the devs have to spend lots of time managing and testing packages behind the scenes, holding back some upgrades until they seem fully ready, etc. You'll either need lots of devs, or you limit the number of applications in your repo so you have less to deal with (eg Solus and PClinuxOS).

So then these distros may not have the apps you want.

No distro suits every single user.

[user101]

See

1) https://kde.org/for/w10-exiles/
2) https://endof10.org/

I doubt those campaigns will do anything for anyone but preach to the choir. Linux had a chance on netbooks and the market overwhelmingly wanted their Windows back, and get it back they did. They wanted their familiar apps and games. The masses weren't ready for what was on offer. As long as Linux has so many flavours and therefore remains challenging to support, I doubt it will do big numbers. The biggest thing going for it is Microsoft and Apple's spyware making it look like a great alternative. As long as Microsoft and Apple continue on their spyware trajectory, I expect an uptick in market share, but again nothing big because the masses are still sleeping (and Linux is far from consistent).

Of course I am not counting mobile operating systems here, where you can argue that a version of Linux is being used extensively, albeit filled to the brim with spyware.

[FullScale4Me]

The end of Windows 10 'support' is VASTLY overrated. Mostly marketing hype to get you on their advertisement spamoragophic eyball torturing thingie they call Windows 11. There still will be high and medium severity security hotfixes issued as they have done before, many times. Even still, an occasional HotFix shows up for Internet Exploder.

Don't believe me? Ask that group of oldsters trading Windows XP merch, laughing at the other group of zealots wearing Windows 7 rollout merch. (I still have my Windows 2003 Server merch)

In a distro (that sounds like a bad breath curative) forum, not a day goes by where a long-time PC user asks about dual-booting Windows 7 and their distro. They're pretty adamant about it. They'd vote for the opposite political party before embracing that new-fangled UEFI....

[user101]

The end of Windows 10 'support' is VASTLY overrated. Mostly marketing hype to get you on their advertisement spamoragophic eyball torturing thingie they call Windows 11. There still will be high and medium severity security hotfixes issued as they have done before, many times. Even still, an occasional HotFix shows up for Internet Exploder.

LOL, that's exactly right. I consider it a blessing if there were actually no updates from companies pretending to care about security while extensively spying on us, introducing new backdoors. At the end of the day it's the "no security updates!!! Woe is me" fear agenda they always use to push the New Thing on us.

[Eadwine Rose]

Silly gen Xer huh....

wait till I get silly with my fish.. see if you'll still mock me then