I'm getting tired of Linus Tech Tips here...

[dreamer]

What I like in Cinnamon [which is the DE for my Void install] that XFCE doesn't have is the windows overview activated by a hot corner.

I don't use hot corners even if they are present. If I want mouse access to Overview I place a button on the panel. It can be a button that activates xfdashboard, skippy-xd or native Overview functionality. If I do that it almost feels like I have done too much because Show Desktop is basically all I need.

[Stevo]

What I like in Cinnamon [which is the DE for my Void install] that XFCE doesn't have is the windows overview activated by a hot corner.

I don't use hot corners even if they are present. If I want mouse access to Overview I place a button on the panel. It can be a button that activates xfdashboard, skippy-xd or native Overview functionality. If I do that it almost feels like I have done too much because Show Desktop is basically all I need.

Compiz should be able to do that in XFCE. If dolphin_oracle is bored, maybe he could write some MXPI action to make its installation just one click and done.

[Arnox]

Playing the devil's advocate for a bit though, once you get past the annoying "SEGue to a MESsage! From our SPONsor!" ads smack-bang at some random-ish point in the video, LTT is actually not that bad for info about hardware and such. His advice on building PCs is decent, and given LTT are essentially in the business of reviewing esoteric hardware and such it is no surprise their focus is primarily on Windows, and comments his comments about Linux in that context (especially regarding the faff-about) aren't entirely unjustified.

Sometimes even Mint needs a bit of faffing about to work well on some hardware, and MX and others need it too. Hell, even as devs we're faffing about a lot trying to cater for inadequacies in Debian's default settings and packages to get hardware and other such things working correctly.
So while I do agree that the situation has improved considerably since 2005, we do have to remember the target audience are not Linux geeks like us, but Windows users (who just want their PCs to work), noobs (who understandably don't know where to start), and average users.

Being in denial is not going to help anyone either, it does no good to respond to a user who is unable to get a game working under Linux/Wine with "oh you shouldn't be playing that game in the first place". Like saying "you shouldn't play chess, try backgammon instead." But what if I want to play chess? Is it illegal to play chess?

I will agree with the OP on one thing though: I am noticing Windows breaking a hell of a lot more than previously especially with the likes of Windows 11. I don't see it being enough for a Year-of-the-Linux-desktop* but more people are considering Linux now. And, including Android and embedded devices or highly custom OSes in the Linux usage stats is a very disingenuous way to argue the market share game, we're talking desktops, gaming rigs and workstations here.

* North Korea is the only place I know of that has actually reached the year of the Linux desktop.

Even hardware wise, Linus has played devil's advocate one too many times for Asus (I think, could be wrong), Apple, and Nvidia now. I'm sure if I ask him about those companies, he'll say, "Yeah, they're pretty bad." But at the same time, it just kinda makes things worse because he KNOWS, perhaps more than I, the xxxxxxx that they do, and especially Apple, but he'll still cover and use and show support for buying Apple products and he'll still defend this asinine push for forced ray-tracing in games. And then he'll take an Amazon sponsorship.

As to Linux faffing about, hey, I get it. I just wrote two threads talking about how rough around the edges Debian 12 KDE is. (Though that's probably just KDE being KDE.) But I also think it's unfair to point at Linux issues and then just ignore all the terrible issues Windows has. People say that others aren't Linux nerds like us, but it also takes a Windows nerd to fix many Windows issues. Either way, you'll need to level up to fix issues. Might as well do it on an OS that actually respects you.

For games, it really does come down to anti-cheat breaking Proton. Everything else just runs pretty much. El Dewrito (Halo 3 Online) even runs perfectly. Linux can't do anything about ridiculous decisions made by the utterly out-of-touch management of these game publishers. No, it's not against the law to play GTAV Online, but it's like asking if it's illegal to give all your money to the meth-addicted hobo down the street.

[AK-47]

Even hardware wise, Linus has played devil's advocate one too many times for Asus (I think, could be wrong), Apple, and Nvidia now. I'm sure if I ask him about those companies, he'll say, "Yeah, they're pretty bad." But at the same time, it just kinda makes things worse because he KNOWS, perhaps more than I, the xxxxxxx that they do, and especially Apple, but he'll still cover and use and show support for buying Apple products and he'll still defend this asinine push for forced ray-tracing in games. And then he'll take an Amazon sponsorship.

Hard to disagree with that one. Sure it's business, but by now you would think he's big enough to reject these sponsorships. But since I don't know his business dynamics well I won't be too judgemental, I'm no purist myself. And neither are you likely to be yourself.

As to Linux faffing about, hey, I get it. I just wrote two threads talking about how rough around the edges Debian 12 KDE is. (Though that's probably just KDE being KDE.) But I also think it's unfair to point at Linux issues and then just ignore all the terrible issues Windows has. People say that others aren't Linux nerds like us, but it also takes a Windows nerd to fix many Windows issues. Either way, you'll need to level up to fix issues. Might as well do it on an OS that actually respects you.

Most people don't have Windows issues out of the box though, while most Linux issues pop up either during install or out of the box. That said, once you fix them, my experience has been there are far fewer issues. But Linus [Sebastian] is still right in the sense that there is a lot of faff to get it to work out of the box in many cases.
I kind of get it though, in the sense that Windows just delays the inevitible. In a rather intriguing psychological phenomenon, it would seem delaying the inevitable makes a problem of the same magnitude more tolerable. I can keep a Linux system going without changing anything for years, hard to do with a Windows install.
This could be a reason many embedded systems I see are moving away from Windows to Linux (and I don't mean Android or ChromeOS). Old products from the same manufacturer that were using embedded Windows are now using custom Linux images.

For games, it really does come down to anti-cheat breaking Proton. Everything else just runs pretty much. El Dewrito (Halo 3 Online) even runs perfectly. Linux can't do anything about ridiculous decisions made by the utterly out-of-touch management of these game publishers. No, it's not against the law to play GTAV Online, but it's like asking if it's illegal to give all your money to the meth-addicted hobo down the street.

Right, but in the perspective of the person wanting to run the game, he/she doesn't care. The game doesn't work on Linux, but it does work on Windows.

[rambo919]

Lol I didn't even have ventoy installed, can't remember if I ever tried it. First I can remember noticing it was recently a thread about it leaving USB drives empty and then a headline somewhere about new features. So installed it from the test repo (only place it shows up in MXPI) and.... underwhelmed. Rufus is much better in all respects but suffers slightly from being targeted at windows host installs.... THAT is why everyone keeps recommending Rufus it simply is the best even with it's drawbacks.

Regarding hardware support it's much better than it used to be but you still have trouble now and then..... such as NOT A SINGLE MONITOR seemingly having Linux compatible software.... where you have to boot into windows or if you are lucky a windows VM to change the settings unless you actually like faffing around with the physical buttons/joystick.... also pretty much all software features that cannot be changed physically you are obviously locked out of. Then there is stuff like ereader software that is problematic because believe it or not.... calibre cannot ACTUALLY do everything. etc

As for being able to only stick to the GUI for everything.... I cannot remember a single year of using Linux that I did not HAVE to use the cli to do something. This includes update randomly falling over, dunno if that is because Debian seems to always stick to a buggy version of KDE because they view stability as a security issue instead of you know... a being able to not fall down issue. One even popped up this morning (have had it a few times before, someone is probably migrating something server side) that hopefully I just have to wait out with bookworm and bookworm-security being angry at each other or something.

It's all fine and dandy if YOU are a normie that never strays from the beaten track but even if you are it does not take all that much to be in a spot of trouble... so even THAT advice does not hold.

And then gaming.... mate... sure if you ONLY play the most popular current games that have been around a while yes it pretty much always works IF anti-cheat does not get angry at you. But for older games and the newest games you are almost guaranteed to have trouble. Sometimes only wine works, sometimes only ge-proton works, sometimes only proton experimental works, sometimes only some obscure version of something works along with a set of mystifying environment settings, etc.

Funny thing I recently found a bug where ALL linux native ports of Quake 2 are fundamentally incompatible with mods that alter assets.... but running one through wine or ge-proton almost fixes all the problems but wine works better than ge-proton the majority of the time. That said often some older games work better on Linux than on Windows. The thing that changed recently not that Linux got better (and the improvement user side has been spectacular) it's that windows got worse. It's now a toss up between if you personally hate windows problems or linux problems more. And for a lot of windows problems there is now revios but that even with it's major improvements still requires faffing about that is beyond non-technical people.

[vel178]

Oh boy, either windows or linux are for x86 with a million possible hardware combinations. Making it 100% work out of the box is not possible, optimistic 70% of hardware that present a 10/10. And yes it takes a certain person to daily linux, normies aside. See upcoming win 10 eol, nobody will flock to linux even when microsoft outright told them "Haha you are too poor for win 11" with this outrageous hardware requirement. Nah they will cave and rush out to buy new hardware instead giving linux a try. Lets be honest here, if there is no interest in linux there won't be any progress being made specific for said people. Linux will always be more or less nerds toy, while its gotten much easier and friendly over the years. And it's will always require people to use the pink brain mush between their ears. Seems too much for some to do, being lazy works too.

Thank the steamdeck for using linux, may or may not incentive more games titles being brought over native. Personaly I dont care, I dont game. Wont be spending 1000 on a gaming pc. I'm not that rich to fork that up either way.

[Artim]

Most gamers don't game on PCs anymore anyway. We're on PlayStation, X-Box, or phones. The people who "need" to try Linux are people who still use PCs for stuff rather than consoles, phones, and/or tablets.

The funny thing is that those consoles, phones, and tablets are Linux-based in a lot of cases (my PlayStation is BSD-based). Where we find Linux most often is servers and appliances rather than dektop (or laptop) computers.

[Adrian]

I think non-technical people, including Linus, should go with preloaded Linux, like SteamOS machines or Chromebooks.

[Arnox]

Lol I didn't even have ventoy installed, can't remember if I ever tried it. First I can remember noticing it was recently a thread about it leaving USB drives empty and then a headline somewhere about new features. So installed it from the test repo (only place it shows up in MXPI) and.... underwhelmed. Rufus is much better in all respects but suffers slightly from being targeted at windows host installs.... THAT is why everyone keeps recommending Rufus it simply is the best even with it's drawbacks.

Regarding hardware support it's much better than it used to be but you still have trouble now and then..... such as NOT A SINGLE MONITOR seemingly having Linux compatible software.... where you have to boot into windows or if you are lucky a windows VM to change the settings unless you actually like faffing around with the physical buttons/joystick.... also pretty much all software features that cannot be changed physically you are obviously locked out of. Then there is stuff like ereader software that is problematic because believe it or not.... calibre cannot ACTUALLY do everything. etc

As for being able to only stick to the GUI for everything.... I cannot remember a single year of using Linux that I did not HAVE to use the cli to do something. This includes update randomly falling over, dunno if that is because Debian seems to always stick to a buggy version of KDE because they view stability as a security issue instead of you know... a being able to not fall down issue. One even popped up this morning (have had it a few times before, someone is probably migrating something server side) that hopefully I just have to wait out with bookworm and bookworm-security being angry at each other or something.

It's all fine and dandy if YOU are a normie that never strays from the beaten track but even if you are it does not take all that much to be in a spot of trouble... so even THAT advice does not hold.

And then gaming.... mate... sure if you ONLY play the most popular current games that have been around a while yes it pretty much always works IF anti-cheat does not get angry at you. But for older games and the newest games you are almost guaranteed to have trouble. Sometimes only wine works, sometimes only ge-proton works, sometimes only proton experimental works, sometimes only some obscure version of something works along with a set of mystifying environment settings, etc.

Funny thing I recently found a bug where ALL linux native ports of Quake 2 are fundamentally incompatible with mods that alter assets.... but running one through wine or ge-proton almost fixes all the problems but wine works better than ge-proton the majority of the time. That said often some older games work better on Linux than on Windows. The thing that changed recently not that Linux got better (and the improvement user side has been spectacular) it's that windows got worse. It's now a toss up between if you personally hate windows problems or linux problems more. And for a lot of windows problems there is now revios but that even with it's major improvements still requires faffing about that is beyond non-technical people.

Sorry, totally forgot to respond to this.

Lol I didn't even have ventoy installed, can't remember if I ever tried it. First I can remember noticing it was recently a thread about it leaving USB drives empty and then a headline somewhere about new features. So installed it from the test repo (only place it shows up in MXPI) and.... underwhelmed.

Underwhelmed... ? What does that mean? Did it work or not?

Regarding hardware support it's much better than it used to be but you still have trouble now and then..... such as NOT A SINGLE MONITOR seemingly having Linux compatible software.... where you have to boot into windows or if you are lucky a windows VM to change the settings unless you actually like faffing around with the physical buttons/joystick.... also pretty much all software features that cannot be changed physically you are obviously locked out of.

This is not always the case, and I didn't know people were installing monitor software now.

Then there is stuff like ereader software that is problematic because believe it or not.... calibre cannot ACTUALLY do everything. etc

What's the problem with Calibre? It opens every eBook format that I know of. It has basic features and then some. But no, Linux programs are not always going to have every single feature known to man that is in their Windows equivalents. But this isn't actually an issue save for deep photo editing, CAD work, and maybe DAWs, though I've heard Linux DAWs have come a long way. Putting those aside though, pretending that Linux is 'OMG literally unplayable' because it doesn't have every single little thing from Windows is just dumb. Linux has many features of its own too that Windows doesn't have, but nobody ever talks about that. It's always about every small little thing that Linux is lacking. Now, if you need Windows for work, hey, that's totally fine. I get it. But let's not pretend that Linux is in this totally unusable inaccessible state. This isn't the 2000s anymore.

As for being able to only stick to the GUI for everything.... I cannot remember a single year of using Linux that I did not HAVE to use the cli to do something. This includes update randomly falling over, dunno if that is because Debian seems to always stick to a buggy version of KDE because they view stability as a security issue instead of you know... a being able to not fall down issue.

If you're using Discover for updates, don't. It's really buggy. Use the MXPI. You'll have a much smoother time of it. One thing I will absolutely give you though is that Debian 12 KDE has its own bugs and quirks that require patience to work out. I still use KDE though because it offers a lot of benefits and convenience for power users like me and I'm an advanced user anyway.

Putting KDE aside though, for the Linux terminal, at least Linux HAS a good terminal. With Windows? "There was an error." No explanation, no nothing. The Linux terminal is a feature and a superpower, not a weakness.

It's all fine and dandy if YOU are a normie that never strays from the beaten track but even if you are it does not take all that much to be in a spot of trouble... so even THAT advice does not hold.

Something tells me you have a frankendebian install. https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian ... nkenDebian

But for older games and the newest games you are almost guaranteed to have trouble. Sometimes only wine works, sometimes only ge-proton works, sometimes only proton experimental works, sometimes only some obscure version of something works along with a set of mystifying environment settings, etc.

Bro, I have played everything from Halo 3 (El Dewrito) to Doom 95 to Crysis 3 to Star Wars: Dark Forces 2 to Guild Wars 2 without any issue. As you say, anti-cheat can be a xxxx, and maybe the very newest games may have some problems at first, but that's about it. Also, have you tried using different versions of Proton within Steam?

And for a lot of windows problems there is now revios but that even with it's major improvements still requires faffing about that is beyond non-technical people.

Even if you debloat Windows 11 or even 10, you are still going to have to put up with terrible performance, all the bugs in the OS, and updates from Microsoft that straight up brick functionality, unintentionally or otherwise. There was actually a very recent update here to Windows 11 that completely broke Windows Explorer.

[j2mcgreg]

This thread has run its course and is now locked.