What if Linux ran Windows… and meant it? Meet Loss32

What if, rather than make a Linux distro that can run Windows apps, you built the whole distro around Windows binaries instead? Loss32 is the most gleefully deranged idea for how to put together a Linux OS that we think we have ever read about in three and a half decades… but it's not impossible. Not only could it be done, …

[The BigYin]

KILL IT!

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

AAAaaaAaAaAarrrrrggghhhhh!

[MeYou]

Re: KILL IT!

nuke it from orbit, it is the only way to be sure.

[Doctor Syntax]

How ironic that this comes along as Windows applications are increasingly licensed by subscription and/or dependent on somebody else's computer. You still wouldn't own your system.

[Gordon 10]

The app subscription model is by no means limited to or constrainted to the Windows OS. Stop spouting nonsense and conflating 2 different things.

"Owning your own system" is an irrelevant goal for 99% of users - even in this time of the US going mad. They just want to get shit done.

Owning your own systems is for the beard and sandals brigade only. AKA those out of touch with the real world and with petty minor use cases no-one cares about.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

What a load of absolute bullshit.

[ttlanhil]

Owning your own system is irrelevant for 99% of users. Sure.

Being allowed and able to do the things you want/need to do, without being blocked by MS (or Apple, or Google, or...) policy, adverts, LLM interjections, etc...

That's for everyone

A slight reframe, and it shows your conclusion is misguided

[FIA]

After a full day of work (using Windows) I can't think where I've once been 'blocked' by MS? What do you mean? Do you have examples?

A slight reframe, and it shows your conclusion is misguided

No, they just hold a different viewpoint to yours. Both are valid.

[Just Enough]

You may be right that the average user doesn't care about "owning their own system".

But if you asked the average user; "Do you want to pay for this now and keep it forever? Or would you prefer to be paying for it for the rest of your life, every year, until we decide to take it off you, whether you like it or not?" I'm pretty sure how most would answer.

[Caspian Prince]

That's a really nice...

[digital library of private things | application you've used for years | community you've built up over 2 decades] (delete as applicable) you got there... it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

[G Watty What?]

Netflix asked that question and we answered in droves.

[shinean]

I don't agree with you on that. Linux got all those subscribers by creating exclusive content that couldn't be accessed any other way. A large portion of their subscribers would probably drop the subscription and buy only the DVDs of the shows they want if that option were available.

[doublelayer]

I assume "Linux" in your first line is a typo for "Netflix"? I don't think I agree with you. A lot of people rented video content before streaming took off and for the same reason that they use streaming now. You can buy DVDs for many shows but at a higher price than it costs to rent access to them. For something you like so much that you're planning to watch it over and over, that can make sense. A lot of entertainment that I or people I know watch is not in that camp. It would be a lot more expensive to buy permanent copies for everything someone views once than to rent access while watching then stop. I'm sure there are people who want to buy DVDs for something and aren't allowed to, but I don't think that's the limiting factor because a lot of the content that streamers have is easily available on DVD and people still subscribe to watch it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, Linux's trademark Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy....

[Just Enough]

Films and TV shows are not software

Films and TV shows are not the same as software.

Most films and TV are watched once, maybe a couple of other times if you really liked it. Finding that it has become unavailable 5 years later is not a disaster. In most cases you have the option of buying the DVD.

Most software you will use repeatedly. Your 1000th use of it five years after you first purchased it could be just as vital as its first use. It can become integral to your business or personal life. Discovering that it has become unlicenced and therefore unusable could well be a disaster. You may have no other option.

[doublelayer]

You are entirely correct about the answer to that question, but that's not the set of options users generally get. Here are more likely questions, each of which users face individually for different programs or services:

1. Would you like to pay $x for a permanent license to this program or $x/4 per year? Users decide based on an assumption of how long they'll need this thing.

2. Would you like to pay $x/year for this software or nothing for a version that doesn't have all of the features but maybe it has enough to do what you want? The user decides based on their willingness to experiment rather than to buy the thing they know will work. As someone who always starts with the open option because it's free to see how well it works, I find those who choose the other option a little confusing, but I've seen plenty of them.

3. Would you like to pay $x/year for a service or set up your own server and configure and host it with some required system and network admin? The user chooses based on their knowledge of or willingness to learn terms like "firewall rules", "NAT circumvention", "log-based banning of malicious attempts", "sizing your VM for performance requirements", and things we underestimate the complexity of because they're the bread and butter of our jobs.

[FIA]

As someone who always starts with the open option because it's free to see how well it works, I find those who choose the other option a little confusing, but I've seen plenty of them.

You're confused that people are rewarded for their work? The people who pay for the full version are subsidizing your free version.

3. Would you like to pay $x/year for a service or set up your own server and configure and host it with some required system and network admin? The user chooses based on their knowledge of or willingness to learn terms like "firewall rules", "NAT circumvention", "log-based banning of malicious attempts", "sizing your VM for performance requirements", and things we underestimate the complexity of because they're the bread and butter of our jobs.

That last sentence is the key there, people here like PCs and pissing around with them, most users just want a thing that works. PCs are now akin to kit cars... most people just want to lease a Ford Fiesta and drive to work.

There is option number 4 though.... "Would you like to pay for a version of this software, then after a year we'll give you a fallback license to the year old version for perpetuity." That seems a fair balance between being funded for ongoing development and bug fixes, but providing something to people who stick around for at least a year.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

> lease a Ford Fiesta and drive to work.

Ford Festiva, featured on Pimp My Ride. At 2:14 and the "Festiva" is a sticker...

[Anonymous Coward]

Either I'm being wooshed or you don't realize that Ford Fiesta is/was a thing, as was Ford Festiva. Me, I'd get the equivalent of "work remotely, get company to pay for my intarwebs, and save money".

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

OK a clearup: Ford Fiesta is the cheap-Ford line. Since it got mentioned I had to inset the even-cheaper-Festiva line. So cheap, that "Festiva" is just a sticker and not the usual glued on chrome-coated plastic.

[doublelayer]

"You're confused that people are rewarded for their work? The people who pay for the full version are subsidizing your free version."

You have misunderstood. The decision was between a commercial piece of software which definitely has a feature or an open source and thus free* alternative that might, but it takes experimentation to find out what features it has and whether they work. I do start with the open option because it's free to check whether it can do what I want, though I'm fine going to a commercial option if it turns out the answer is no. If the open option does work and I use it a lot, I may donate to its authors because I believe writers of software, whether proprietary or open source, do deserve compensation for the value they create. The decision is almost never between two options created by the same people.

What I find confusing is people who hear that there is software that is probably able to do what they want and comes without the need for payment, data collection, etc, but nonetheless choose not to try it to see if it can work. For example, I've known people who were annoyed that the version of Microsoft Office they bought is no longer working and ask me to help find them a cheap replacement license. I suggest LibreOffice might be worth a try. If they tried it and it didn't do something they want or they found it hard to learn, fair enough, but when they don't bother and tell me to buy Microsoft Office, I don't understand why they couldn't give it a go. I still find them what they asked for, though.

* Theoretically there can be open source software that requests payment, but because of the license conditions, they can't stop people from removing that part so it's rare and easily ignored.

[FIA]

I apologize, I had indeed misunderstood.

[Eric 9001]

It isn't merely theoretical, there are plenty of commercial free software programs that respect the users freedom - a few of such even require payment before you can have a copy from the company (but paying for copies is now mostly nonsensical and redundant - as anyone with a computer can copy software - the money now is in support, warranty and modifications and many companies are making good profits from free software that you can have a copy of gratis (it costs next to $0 to send a copy and free software mirrors will even cover the small cost of sending copies for you)).

The development of some free software programs are also funded by donations, although how it is inconvenient to send money without running restrictive proprietary software, unless the project accepts cryptocurrency (which governments have intentionally made hard to get without the former), means that such programs need to be very popular to get many donations.

>I may donate to its authors because I believe writers of software, whether proprietary or open source, do deserve compensation for the value they create. The decision is almost never between two options created by the same people.

"Compensation" implies that there were damages caused by writing the software, which must be repaid - but that is not what occurs in reality.

Proprietary software programmers do not create value - they rather destroy value by first writing a program that may be valuable and then proceed to destroy all the value by restricting the software with a proprietary license.

If a free software programmer deserves to be rewarded for publishing a useful program, by the same lieu, a proprietary software programmer deserves to be punished if they publish a harmful program.

>I don't understand why they couldn't give it a go. I still find them what they asked for, though.

You answered your own question - people always go out of their way to take the difficult route of giving microsoft more money for them, rather than insisting that they try LibreOffice first, or saying no even once to an act that goes against the human race.

The cure to such disease is giving people GNU/Linux and telling them that they can have windows or whatever - they just need to install it themselves and they're on their own with such proprietary programs and suddenly the disease is cured?

[doublelayer]

Compensation doesn't mean what you think it means. It can mean payment for a harm, but it can also mean payment for a service. I used it in the second sense. Read as many dictionaries as you like until you recognize this is a legitimate use, because playing the dictionary game has never and will never work for your arguments. People understood me, and even if I had to change the word until you couldn't make your spurious argument, the statement would be the same and, if you wanted to argue against it, you would have to on its meaning rather than its phrasing.

[Eric 9001]

It means payment for a harm, but it also sometimes used in the sense that a delivering a service caused harm that should be compensated.

It's true that delivering many services can require physical or mental toil, but the typical proprietary software development process, now consists of copy-pasting a bunch of weak licensed software (or if the software is functionally good, often straight up intentional copyright infringement of strong licensed software) and adding some glue or a Qt GUI with a few buttons to produce proprietary binaries, often isn't very a mentally strenuously task and clearly isn't useful (the software was free, but now it isn't anymore) and therefore such process shouldn't be rewarded, even if it took mental toil to achieve it.

>if you wanted to argue against it, you would have to on its meaning rather than its phrasing.

I argued against what you meant, rather than what you phrased - as that was a single sentence out of many.

[doublelayer]

You're still making up more and more tortured arguments for why your dictionary game move was correct, which it still isn't. Compensation can and does mean payment in exchange for something, harm or not.

Similarly, you've made up on no evidence at all the claim that proprietary software consists primarily of others' code, which we both know applies to some things and very much doesn't apply to others. Surprisingly enough, the less work someone has put into their proprietary software, the less interested I am in buying it.

[Solviva]

Microchip's MPLab compiler requories a paid license to enable *GCC's* optimisations (-On). Of course one is free to edit out the check should one not wish to offer any shekels to Microchip.

GPL FTW.

[John Brown (no body)]

"most people just want to lease a Ford Fiesta and drive to work."

Really? Have we already reached the stage where more people lease a car instead of buying one?

[bill 27]

The last 2 cars I bought were both returned lease cars. Fairly low mileage, seemingly well maintained, and at a fraction of the MSRP.

[Col_Panek]

Driving an ex-lease Mazda now, plus a 2015 Focus that we bought from Hertz.highly recommend the concept vs. new cars.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the smart ways, let someone else take the hit of initial depreciation.

[t0m5k1]

Sorry can you take this blatant rage bait back to xitter please?

[Doctor Syntax]

"Owning your own system" is an irrelevant goal for 99% of users - even in this time of the US going mad. They just want to get shit done.

That's correct. It's irrelevant for them. Right up to the point when not having really had ownership bites them.

I suppose you must have missed the story a few weeks ago about the Apple guy who fell victim to some sort of Apple gift card scam and Apple punished him for it. "His" system included a mass of stuff stored by Apple and he could no longer access it. He just wanted to get shit done as well but now he couldn't. He was a t least lucky in being well enough known in the Apple world that he could make an audible fuss about it.

[StewartWhite]

Ok right up until it's not

...and that's the problem in a nutshell. There are still way too many Apple fanbois and Windows corporate types that are smugly content with the current state of affairs and they will remain so until the day it affects them personally (I hate Apple and Microsoft equally but for different reasons and have to manage the latter in my work persona). After which they'll turn vehemently against "Big Tech" but until Apple and M$ inflict sufficient pain on their respective constituencies ain't nothing going to meaningfully change.

On the plus side, they are both equally stupid behemoths so this event horizon may not be as far off as Cupertino and Redmond think it will be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

I can use my MacBook without an Apple account, without sending usage data back to Apple, and without advertising integrated right into my desktop environment.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

>without sending usage data back to Apple

It might not send back a specific kind of usage data maybe, but it's cute you think everything else isn't going to apple; https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html

Last time I checked, every time a program is run on a macbook that is online, apple is notified that you ran such program; https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/16/checks-on-executable-code-in-catalina-and-big-sur-a-first-draft/

The only OS's that have been checked and found to not spy on the user and that never had advertising are GNU/Linux-libre distro's (for example, Trisquel doesn't even connect to the internet to check updates unless you confirm).

[FIA]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

On the plus side, they are both equally stupid behemoths so this event horizon may not be as far off as Cupertino and Redmond think it will be.

Yeah, sure, any day now Microsoft (established April 4th 1975) and Apple (April 1, 1976) will get their comeuppance!

Because they're... stupid?

Microsoft's revenue was $281,000,000,000 last year, Apple's was $416,000,000,000.

I wish I was stupid.

In reality, both are massively successful companies with a large trench of mainly satisfied users.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

> both are massively successful companies with a large trench of mainly satisfied users.

The "satisfied" part is currently changing downwards. For MS more than Apple. And MS could be a lot more successful, 'cause "Windows X Pro" users have no problem paying if the TCO matches. Currently it does not match as good as it once did - he better would not have given Windows away practically free and instead listen closer to what customers wants - and I don't mean telemetry, that data is always skewed since PRO (and corporate) means turning telemetry off.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

Windows has always been nonfree software (or proprietary software is another way to write that) that has never been gratis.

It's cute you think the pro and LTSC versions turn the surveillance off.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

"Yeah, sure, any day now Microsoft (established April 4th 1975) and Apple (April 1, 1976) will get their comeuppance!"

Too big to fail? Even huge businesses go under every year. Household names. Although in the case of the likes of MS or Apple, I'd expect it more likely by a division rather than the whole company. Some big names are left as shadows of there former selves too. Lycos? AskJeeves? Yahoo? AOL? Others get subsumed by bigger fish and slowly, quietly vanish. SCO? MGM? Warner Bros? Brand names may continue for a while, so long as there's value in the name, even if the owners are different and the products, thanks to debt loading, are pared back to the bone for rapid ROI.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

Microsoft currently has a huge debt (https://companiesmarketcap.com/microsoft/total-debt/), but they do have a huge number of suckers in their net that keep paying, thus it's currently easy for them to pay down the interest payments.

It's mostly governments and businesses that are keeping the sinking ship afloat - less and less individuals are enough of a sucker to keep paying them (too bad most of such individuals go to another master instead).

Apple has even more debt (https://companiesmarketcap.com/apple/total-debt/), but apple has a ludicrous amount of sucker individuals that keep paying, to keep them afloat and seems they are less dependent on businesses and governments.

It would been a great boon for humanity for both of them to go bankrupt, but too bad that is not going to happen unless most of the suckers refuse to keep paying and escape to at least GNU/Linux without microsoft software (although microsoft with windows 11 is doing their absolute best to force even those who don't want to, to install GNU/Linux).

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

I've used M$ in various forms since 1986. Now I'm a fat, lazy old man. And, M$ no longer serves my needs. I need an OS that is mine*, just works^ and doesn't suck my computer dry to feed my data to Redmond. MY data! <slap!> Bad Nadella!

*Yes, yes, I know, but we all also know what is meant by own (permanent license) vs a stupid sub.

^M$ always had problems with this part, but at least then it was due to something breaking and not my computer being force booted whether I wanted it or not. Don't care that I have a day or three to schedule, or that updates can be shut off for a week. If I say no updates, then I don't want the computer to ever update again until the end of time, or I say update now, whichever comes first.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

>I need an OS that is mine >we all also know what is meant by own (permanent license) vs a stupid sub.

If any part of the OS is under a proprietary license, it's not yours.

Even a perpetual proprietary license for software isn't useful, as computers aren't perpetual - OS's and CPU architectures change all the time, meaning the only way software continues to be usable in an ongoing manner is if you have the complete corresponding source code under a free license that allows you and/or someone else to change it and/or share it.

You may not be an expert programmer, but if you have the actual source code under a free license, you'll always be able to get someone to change it for you (often if the free software is publicly available, someone has made the needed change already and you can just download it).

>just works^ and doesn't suck my computer dry to feed my data to Redmond >If I say no updates, then I don't want the computer to ever update again until the end of time, or I say update now, whichever comes first.

The only OS that meets all of those requirements is a GNU/Linux-libre distro.

Trisquel is fine, as well as Guix, Hyperbola, Parabola and PureOS.

Never updating works fine on Trisquel, but years later if you decide to update, it takes quite a bit of work to work out how to update.

There may be issues if you have defective hardware (note that the latest proprietary intel with wired networking works fine with Trisquel) - what current hardware do you have?

Do you have a nvidia or AMD GPU and do you use Wi-Fi?

[Solviva]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

I guess you never really own that loaf of bread you bought as it doesn't come with the recipe to make and/or modify it. Hmmm.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

A loaf of bread is required to list the ingredients and there is consequences for putting poison in the bread, or heavy-metal contamination that is too high.

Yes, the bread is proprietary, as it doesn't come with the recipe, but that case doesn't matter, as it's just food that doesn't have any control over your life, as you can freely purchase or acquire any other food.

It's also trivial to make your own compatible free bread instead (you'll end up with a better bread too), as the bread company hasn't conspired with the government to attempt to force you to repeat purchase their particular breads, that don't list the ingredients, as there's poison in them all.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Ok right up until it's not

"On the plus side, they are both equally stupid behemoths so this event horizon may not be as far off as Cupertino and Redmond think it will be."

I'm seeing a number of no-techy youtubers posting about switching to Linux recently. I sometime click on one to see what they are saying about it. One started off by apologising that this was not his usual stuff then went off on a rant about wanting to watch a DVD and Windows, after installing the drivers/software had to be rebooted and went to the bitlocker recovery screen. From his explanation of it being "bricked", I'm guessing he never recorded the recovery key as he said he got the key from his MS account via another PC but it didn't work (I assume he was just entering the "PIN"). Basically a non-techy person, so didn't know he needed to save the recovery key somewhere safe on paper, didn't know there was an option to turn off bitlocker (it's on by default these days) railed against having to have an MS account that took ages to log in because he had to keep saying "no" to MS sales pitches for OneDrive etc every time and about adverts on his paid for OS. In other words, exactly the sort of issues we increasingly deal with for our non-techy friends all the time. So he installed Linux Mint. And he's shouting about this to an audience of non-techy Windows users.

[Bill Gray]

I am altering the terms; pray I don't alter them further

I suppose you must have missed the story a few weeks ago about the Apple guy who fell victim to some sort of Apple gift card scam and Apple punished him for it.

I read about it in an article on this very site about four weeks back. Your post reminded me of it and caused me to me to wonder if he ever got things sorted? Turns out he's regained access to his account after truly Kafkaesque shenanigans.

The image at the top of his post, with Tim Cook saying "I am altering the terms; pray I don't alter them further", sums things up nicely.

[JessicaRabbit]

Re: I am altering the terms; pray I don't alter them further

The more interesting question is, is he making good on his claims? i.e. "I will leave as fast as I can even if this is fixed," "I do mean that literally."

[S C]

They're waiting for you, Gordon.

In the Test Chamber....

[t0m5k1]

Right, Come on then. I'll walk you down.

[JoeCool]

You would own your computer. What you would not own is the cloud services (Office 365).

But at least you have obliterated the integration between the two, which is a victory.

[Nintendo1889]

There is nothing close to notepad++ on Linux. You have to learn a new editor when you come over.

[Boris the Cockroach]

If you

can install office 365 on a linux box with no glitches, nerfs, bugs, kernel panics, or m$ even realising whats going on, I suspect the mass market could have a winner..........................

Or at least businesses would be able to get away from the clusterfuck windows is becoming.

[OhForF']

Re: If you

Can you install office 365 on a windows box with no glitches, nerfs, bugs, ....?

[hedgie]

Re: If you

You're giving me flashbacks. Okay, wasn't a Windows box but a Mac, but getting Orifice installed and running was an auto da fé level of an ordeal when helping out an older person I know.

1) Finding a non-subscription version was worse than digging up the free versions of stuff like VMWare Fusion or Nessus.

2) I get it installed, all the registration squared away make sure it's all working, I leave

3) Get a call next day. Apparently, it has become unregistered.

4) Go back over, trash all the ~/Library and prefs, reinstall, reregister. Open it up and close it out a few times just to "be sure", and trash leave again.

5) Next day, another call, same thing. This time, uninstall, trash ~/Library stuff and prefs. Reregister Restart the computer a few times for good measure.

It stopped losing the registration, but it's not like I really know *why* it was behaving like that, nor were any of the various kbase articles or Reddit threads I Googled and skimmed seemed to have any information as to why that was happening, and it's not like I really did all that much different. Or at least nothing that would point to why it was failing, other than Microsoft. I was at the point where if it didn't work I'd have had to call them.

[original_rwg]

Re: If you

Not quite he same thing but bear with me. I can remember years back when our students would bring on their own laptops for use with the EDUROAM network. Typically this was with Windows 7, 8.x and 10. Now of course, if they hadn't done their Windows updates then often they didn't have the right driver for their WiFi card so they were never going to get a connection. We'd advise them to go home, do all the updates, paying particular attention to drivers for Intel, Atheros, Realtek etc and retry the instruction when next they're back. Of course some still experienced difficulty so we would have them have a paste-able ID in a text file so all they had to manually enter at the credentials demand was their password. Many were not quick at typing and Windows only allowed something like 30 seconds to get everything entered.

Well we would go through setting up the configuration of their WiFi network and quite often it still wouldn't make that first connection. So delete the network, set it all up again, retry and still no connection. Delete the network, restart the device, set it all up again and it would still fail to connect. Delete the network, configure all the settings again and hey presto! Connected! What was done differently? Nothing. Not a thing. Why wouldn't it connect earlier? Because Windows. Because Microsoft. Because I hadn't sacrificed a goat while standing on one leg under a full moon(!)

When we read about the latest screw-up from Micros~1 that's only affecting some installs on the advanced, insider secret-circle it's probably because not enough people at Micros~1 know how it works. Me? I don't give two hoots how it works any more, or when it doesn't. I've been using Linux for more than 20 years and it's been my daily driver at home since they let Windows 10 out.

[hedgie]

Re: If you

Yes. Dealing with Microsoft stuff makes me glad I only have to deal with it on other people's systems, since it seems like there's just randomness involved. I'm glad I left them behind 25 years ago. And I've been enjoying at least playing with Linux ever since I threw Yellow Dog on an old G4 and watching it progress.

Still primarily a Mac user, and likely will be for the foreseeable future. Hard for me to really boast about being M$-free. I'd even put up with the frustrations of WINE than dealing with Windows though.

[1] Okay, I'm sure a number would go away if I stopped running rolling distros.

[0laf]

Re: If you

Cripes, Yellow Dog. That's giving me some flashbacks

[hedgie]

Re: If you

I had already moved on to using a G5 as my primary machine, and wanted to do something with the old one. And really, even though I had a full KDE3 desktop[1] and a lot of the software running on the G5 (via Macports), it really wasn't the same as actually working with Linux. So I just grabbed the PPC distro I had heard most about and threw it on the old hardware. It was also just nice to have a spare box to tinker and play with without possibly bringing down the computer I needed to run daily if whisky + root introduced weird problems.

[1] Sadly, these days there *aren't* many X desktops that will install/run on Mac. I've got an ancient version of Enlightenment[2] running if I ever *need* an X desktop on there, and I think I could go GNUStep if I wanted but the repos don't have others these days.

[2] When I told the devs on IRC what version, because they were curious, they actually did point and laugh it was so far gone.

[trev101]

Re: If you

Your post brought back memories as I had similar experience with students personal laptops & EDUROAM. Like you I am using Linux for the past 2 decades.

[Martin an gof]

Re: If you

When sprog went to university he took an Android phone without Play, and an OpenSuse laptop. EDUROAM setup instructions were detailed and full of "run this script" but basically boiled down to "import these keys". Once that was done, seemed to work fine.

He had more trouble in later years where his student digs used Wifinity and nowhere in the setup instructions did it say that his phone had to be set to static IP. The laptop still doesn't like wireless but according to him is "much faster" using the room's wired connection anyway and he has a long wire and a small room, so he's happy.

M.

[MrBanana]

Re: If you

As the tech adviser to my lecturer partner, I've had to fight with Eduroam at a number of international conference gigs. It's not pretty, can be difficult to troubleshoot, and nigh on impossible to fix as an end user. A lot of implementations rely on very specific, old, Windows and hardware set ups. Easier to workaround with my own Linux laptop, but a nightmare for more than 75% of the Windows users.

[Ossi]

Re: If you

Do exactly the same thing and getting different results with Windows? We've all been there. What would Einstein say? (Yes, I know he didn't actually say it.)

[Eric 9001]

Re: If you

Indeed - people who complain about Wi-Fi support on GNU/Linux, have clearly never experienced Wi-Fi on windows.

When I plug in a usb AR9271 in GNU/Linux-libre the Wi-Fi connection always just works, but when I tried plugging in a usb AR9271 into a WC, the Wi-Fi didn't work, as it didn't have the driver installed and windows relies on an internet connection to fetch Wi-Fi drivers.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: If you

Yeah great, the USB network components which come without USB stick or CD with the driver. I love them the most. And that is not a price issue. Some vendors simply make the stick dual-capable: It is a read-only USB drive and WLAN adapter, and after the driver is installed the USB drive disappears since the WLAN stick is active. That should be the default by todays standard.

[Havin_it]

Re: If you

What a silly dance. Crafting a thumbdrive that behaves in that way took some effort (and presumably cost) over just whacking it on the smallest commodity whitebox drives you can scape up off Aliexpress. Why?

This may be controversial but I don't think in today's world it's a grave sin for an OEM to say: "We don't wanna generate more [practically] single-use e-waste, just go download $driver from $link on another machine before installing." How often, really, is that not feasible?

[Havin_it]

Re: If you

Ugh, sorry, ignore. Very clumsy speed-read - I thought the USB drive was a separate item.

[zcomputerwiz]

Re: If you

Do you mean to suggest that installing and using software in Wine ( or Linux in general ) is comparable to one of the most polished experiences in the Microsoft ecosystem?

Nothing is perfect, but generally Office 365 in Windows "just works" as long as the underlying hardware and software installation is in good working order.

Anyways, they were stating that it could truly be the "Year of Linux" if apps like Office 365 could install and run without major showstoppers. It isn't Linux developers responsibility to make Microsoft's proprietary products work on their platform, but if those ( and by extension most other ) apps did work it would remove one of the largest remaining psychological and operational barriers to individual users adoption.

[hedgie]

Re: If you

Certainly. "I need $SOFTWARE to run painlessly" is one of the biggest barriers to people even considering embracing the penguin. Ultimately, it'd take something like Steamplay, since companies aren't going to bother to port major software until there's already a large enough market for it. That's one of the biggest reasons I'm looking at what resources I can commit to getting another Mac[1] instead of building my own and using Linux as a primary OS. Then again, despite resenting being dependent on a single vendor, I'm relatively content where I am.[2] M$ seems to be doing its best though to make its users annoyed enough that leaving looks better and better with each passing day. They're just using their inertia and the "well, what are you going to do, leave?!" mentality when leaving becomes more and more viable.

[1] 2019 Intel iMac 27", finally entering the "security updates only" realm. Still, 6 years is a pretty good run for a primary machine.

[2] I'm almost surprised that Apple isn't using this Win11 and all the forced Copilot crap as an opportunity for a big marketing blitz. An average Mini or Air is more than enough for most users and the price ain't bad for long-lasting kit.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: If you

"[2] I'm almost surprised that Apple isn't using this Win11 and all the forced Copilot crap as an opportunity for a big marketing blitz. An average Mini or Air is more than enough for most users and the price ain't bad for long-lasting kit."

Apple may be less obnoxious in pushing to an Apple account and the Apple Store, but they'd still very much prefer it if people went that route. So I doubt they'd want to shout it from the roof tops that they don't force their accounts on you like MS do.

[hedgie]

Re: If you

Wasn't talking about the account stuff, but Copilot everything and everywhere. Considering how universal the complaining about Win11 and everything about it, disgruntled users are a good potential market. Too bad the Linux Mint folks don't have a huge marketing arm to go after those disgruntled Windows users, and I'm just surprised that Apple's *hasn't*.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: If you

"...since companies aren't going to bother to port major software until there's already a large enough market for it. "

This is one of those "if you build it, they will come" things, and a huge missed opportunity for programmers everywhere.

[hedgie]

Re: If you

Or even someone coming along and doing for everything else what Valve did for gaming on Linux. Then again, it was in their self-interest to build their own gaming boxen/steamdecks and there was a solid free OS just sitting there for them to use.

[nijam]

Re: If you

> ... Office 365 in Windows "just works" as long as the underlying hardware and software installation is in good working order.

You said "in Windows", implying that "the underlying hardware and software installation" is pretty much guaranteed to not be "in good working order."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If you

Funny you should say that. The install on my home desktop started life as Windows 7 Ultimate, over a decade ago. It's stable (as in "I only reboot it when Windows updates require it"), on third platform. Sure I've had some issues in the past but I fixed them or rolled back and everything's fine again. And it's not like the install is clean either, there's cruft I have no idea what it's from because as I said, it's a decade old, and not all uninstallers actually remove everything. Which also means that not every W11 "feature" even works because there's ancient drivers around and some separation thing won't activate if those are around, and the silly bugger only tells the file name, not complete path...

[MyffyW]

Re: If you

I run Teams and the Office 365 web apps OK* on my Linux desktop without worrying about WINE or Windows licensing.

Whilst there might have been a use case 20 or 30 years ago for Windows native apps on Linux, the Linux application estate is so extensive I have not felt any need to reach for WINE or other imperial entanglements.

[* "OK" being about as much credit as I'll give to anything from our friends from Redmond).]

[Eric 9001]

Re: If you

Linux application estate?

Can you name any of those Linux applications you use? I'm curious.

[nijam]

Re: If you

> If you can install office 365 on a linux box with no glitches, nerfs, bugs, ...

You can't install office 365 anywhere without those things.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: If you

...and why would you anyway, especially on Linux? The point of Office 365, or M365 I think they now call it, is that it's a cloud based subscription service.

[FIA]

Re: If you

Problem you'll get there is then the IT department will want in... and you'll end up with Linux security software... probably with it's own custom kernel so they can really mess things up.

It amazes me how much different my home Windows install is to my works one in performance and issues.... a lot of that is down to the 'security software' that stops me doing my job.

Security software: "Oh, all those SSL connections to localhost look sus, I'll just kill the process to be sure..."

Me: "Thanks... I was running the test suite as I'm a fking developer.. but who needs to know things work..."

[tiggity]

Re: If you

I feel your pain.

And even when it's not directly breaking stuff, not allowing you to run useful tools etc., the work security / auditing software manages to use prodigious amounts of RAM & CPU so the things you are allowed to do take far longer than they should due to resource contention.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: If you

>can install office 365 on a linux box with no glitches

Does anybody use a local Office anymore ?

We now have full corporate blessing for Linux and all our O360.5 / Teams / Outlook / Sharepoint works perfectly.

Microsoft even ship Linux versions of their management / security enforcement portal

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: If you

> Does anybody use a local Office anymore ?

Web-Office is limited and slower. This applies to LO-Collabora as well as the MS-stuff. This includes general usability too.

If it works well enough for your case: Great. For me: Nope.

[Kurgan]

Re: If you

True, but this whole thing is basically windows on a Linux kernel plus an emulator layer. So you end up with all the crap that's in windows (copilot, onedrive, ms account, spyware, etc) and an emulation layer to a linux kernel?

It's absolutely insanely useless.

You are throwing away a functional kernel (the windows one) for another one (Linux) and you inherit the shitshow that is Windows 11 userspace? WHY? WHY?

What you want is to run a single windows program (that you need) on a crapless windows (that's Linux and Wine). Not to import all the crap from Windows and then run the program you need.

[Eric 9001]

Re: If you

Installing additional free software such as Libreoffice onto a GNU system with Linux will never cause a kernel panic - kernel panics are usually caused by proprietary Linux drivers and hardware failure.

Libreoffice is a functionally superior replacement to microsoft office in 99% of cases - there's just the 1% that needs work and libreoffice keeps improving.

>office 365 >no glitches, nerfs, bugs

These do not belong in the same sentence - O365 is insanely buggy on windows.

The reason why the O365 installer and executables don't work in WINE, is because Microsoft has intentionally sabotaged such (many old office versions happen to run with workarounds; https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?iId=31&sClass=application), to stop people from running office on non-approved OS's.

But, if a businesses really wanted, the business could make the mistake of paying codeweavers the quite large sum for all the work required to mitigate all the sabotage to make running O365 in WINE practically reasonable (but microsoft is on the lookout for just that and would sabotage the installer and the executables again and push out the update and require codeweavers to repeat the same work).

Such small amount of increased popularity due to O365 support would in fact be a loser, as what should be a free OS now would now be soiled by even more proprietary software (Linux alone is far too much proprietary software - it should and must all be free software).

Any business, on a purely financial basis, would be much better off migrating to LibreOffice on GNU/Linux - although that may require paying LibreOffice's programmers to implement something that is missing (which would turn out to far cheaper than the office rent on a medium term basis).

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: If you

> These do not belong in the same sentence - O365 is insanely buggy on windows.

This is true. You know what is worse? Office 2024, which is not the "front line mega beta alpha tester version", which works with KMS and volume license key, is better in usability, stability, everything... I am lucky to be able to compare both, since some customers are on the "No frigging way any none-self-made-and-hosted cloud here!" due to their sovereign work.

[Nate Amsden]

kernel has a stable ABI?

Does it now? can you load drivers from different kernel versions and have them work? I do recall somewhat recently upgrading my kernel and having vmware workstation prompt me to compile new drivers for it. I know at least before 2010 I spent what felt like endless hours making custom boot disks for CentOS/Fedora for installing on bare metal as the drivers for things like the NICs had to be injected into the boot image(the image included drivers but did not support that particular revision(s) of NIC), and if you tried to load (or force load) a driver from a slightly different kernel rev you'd get a nice ugly error.

Last time I recall specifically dealing with hardware that had drivers which required a special kernel version was in 2016 when I got a Lenovo P50 laptop (running Mint 17). I assumed the wifi worked but since I am wired in at home I never tested it. Till I went on a long trip months later, and that first night at a hotel I realized the wifi driver did not work. Intel's website for the drivers specifically cited a requirement of some newer kernel version, which Mint had, though it was not the default. I had to do some trickery downloading the debs and anything else I needed on my phone, then transfer over USB to my computer to get it working.

Unlike most windows at least where the same drivers can be used across a wide range of kernels and in some cases even major versions of windows.

It's this problem IMO that has made the Android ecosystem such a mess from a hardware compatibility standpoint, as the manufacturers have to expend far more effort to support newer android on older hardware due to the fact they can't just plop their older drivers on the newer kernel(I assume at least, no personal experience).

Or maybe it just has a stable ABI in some other part of the kernel. But this driver thing has been an annoyance for me for over 25 years now. I have long since given up any hope(maybe as of 2002) that it will ever get fixed as the developers long ago said they don't really care.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: kernel has a stable ABI?

I think you are talking about a different kernel interface. The interface between the user land and the kernel is stable or else Linus hacks off your head with a Rusty knife and shits down your throat, but the interface between the kernel and drivers has never been stable. (There's a school of thought that it shouldn't be, to "encourage" people to make driver code public and avoid tainting the kernel.)

[SVD_NL]

Re: kernel has a stable ABI?

For anyone interested, here's a snippet of his opinion on the matter. (that whole repo is gold)

[Liam Proven]

Re: kernel has a stable ABI?

> (that whole repo is gold)

[Oracle voice]

Confirmed.

[/Oracle voice]

(Oracle the TV SF computer, not the software company.)

[Martin an gof]

Re: kernel has a stable ABI?

[Oracle voice]

I think you mean Orac?

M.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: kernel has a stable ABI?

No, he means Zen, including the (bump) before and after the speech (bump). Orac would never give an answer as polite as that.

[milliemoo83]

Re: kernel has a stable ABI?

Orac would blow out the RIFA caps before giving such a polite answer.

[PM.]

Re: kernel has a stable ABI?

pure gold LOL ". ... Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F*CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"

[Richard Tobin]

The last thing we want

... is for it to be easier to run Windows applications. We need it to be hard and unpleasant to run Windows applications, so that the whole system withers away.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: The last thing we want

Attitudes like this are the Achilles' Heel of the OSS world. Right now, there is a lot of software that either only exists on Windows or has better Windows versions. Every time someone mentions this fact, Linux fanboys will pop up out of the woodwork to say, "Oh yeah? Well whatabout this <inferior alternative>? Or whatabout this <tedious/inconvenient workaround>?" And then, inevitably, more Linux fanboys will pop up to start arguing about systemd, at which point the whole conversation can be safely ignored. Perhaps if OSS fanatics took a moment to understand what works well on Windows (and no, it's not just a question of inertia, habit, or lock-in), Linux could be made into a more appealing alternative to Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The last thing we want

So much this.

To most, Windows is either (a) what they're used to, which isn't Mac, or (b) a platform to run some application they depend on.

Group (a) is gettable if the interface is intuitive, it doesn't require a geek living in the house, and it costs less than the Mac they've already avoided buying.

Group (b) is gettable if they have a functional, realistic choice in platforms and their killer app doesn't "run way better on one than the other."

[jvf]

Re: The last thing we want

I'm in group b). Yes, the Windoze OS now is crapware but there are programs that run on it that are very good. Everytime I look at the supported windows programs in WINE, etc. mine aren't in the list and there are no direct Linux alternatives. I haven't had time to experiment if they would run or learn a different Linux version of what I use so I hold my nose, soldier on with my locked down (no updates) Windows 10 and wait.

[martinusher]

Re: The last thing we want

So what you're suggesting (assuming I've read it right) is that you need a "Windows application in a container".

[TotallyInfo]

Re: The last thing we want

The whole point here is that most of us don't have the time or energy to fight Linux when it incomprehensively refuses to do something that seems obvious but clearly isn't to some OSS devs.

For Windows apps specifically, my baseline app is Lumina Neo. A local AI powered image editor. If that will work reliably and at decent performance on Linux, I'll be swapping. Most everything else I need either already has a Linux version or I know will run OK under Wine.

[LionelB]

Re: The last thing we want

> To most, Windows is either (a) what they're used to, which isn't Mac, or (b) a platform to run some application they depend on.

For home users, I'd say (a) and (b) – but for (b) the applications in question are a browser and an office suite (which of course are both available on Linux).

Sure there are Windows applications which are no doubt superior to their Linux equivalents – but those tend to be in specialised areas such as CAD, graphic design and audio production, which does not encompass "most" users.

In a corporate scenario the situation is different, since many businesses are for all intents and purposes inextricably locked in to the MS ecosystem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The last thing we want

> Sure there are Windows applications which are no doubt superior to their Linux equivalents – but those tend to be in specialised areas such as CAD, graphic design and audio production, which does not encompass "most" users.

The Linux world's difficulty is convincing users (and admins) who don't know that that change won't be difficult or scary, especially when that hasn't been the case for most of desktop Linux's existence.

Many of those specialized applications also run on Mac now, yet the Windows lock-in remains. Even in companies which do rely on Windows for something, most admins are unwilling to question whether it all needs to be Windows. In fairness, there can be legit concerns with supporting two platforms in an office environment, but we really have come to the point where it's really easy to deploy an image which runs Firefox and LibreOffice and mounts a network share in an easily-clicked folder on the desktop.

[TotallyInfo]

Re: The last thing we want

> The Linux world's difficulty is convincing users (and admins) who don't know that that change won't be difficult or scary, especially when that hasn't been the case for most of desktop Linux's existence.

The point here is that the change ABSOLUTELY WILL be difficult and scary. Why, because there are differences, many of them utterly fundamental. Even if you are lucky enough to get hardware that "just works" with a vanilla Linux install, just the UI alone can be confusing enough. Yes, I'm aware there are Linux versions "close" to the look of Windows but many of us have been using what started life as IBM's Common User Access (CUA) now for many decades.

Trying to tell people that a swap from Windows to Linux wont involve difficulties is foolish indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The last thing we want

> The point here is that the change ABSOLUTELY WILL be difficult and scary. Why, because there are differences, many of them utterly fundamental. Even if you are lucky enough to get hardware that "just works" with a vanilla Linux install, just the UI alone can be confusing enough. Yes, I'm aware there are Linux versions "close" to the look of Windows but many of us have been using what started life as IBM's Common User Access (CUA) now for many decades.

Getting hardware which works is now easy, even on laptops. It's really easy when using SBCs in a desktop role that were designed with Linux in mind. Reduced hardware expenditure can be just as big an incentive as eliminating Windows lock-in. That can add up fast when a significant portion of the userbase needs only a web browser and common office apps. The latter may not even be necessary if the org is running its own private cloud and doing things like word processing and spreadsheets in-browser.

What's confusing about a graphical login screen which takes the user to a desktop with all the icons they need?

Chromebooks are simple enough for schools to hand out to young students. They run Linux, btw.

> Trying to tell people that a swap from Windows to Linux wont involve difficulties is foolish indeed.

The admin might have to spend a bit of time deploying something new. The simplest of users won't see the difficulties, just the big icons they're used to conveniently placed on the desktop.

[LionelB]

Re: The last thing we want

> The Linux world's difficulty is convincing users (and admins) who don't know that that change won't be difficult or scary, especially when that hasn't been the case for most of desktop Linux's existence.

Well, I've said this many times, but Linux's main difficulty is that—unlike Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, and the OS running your fridge—Linux is generally not preinstalled on the hardware (the exception being ChromeOS, and, tellingly, Chromebooks have been something of a success story).

Your average Windows user probably doesn't even know that they have an option to install an alternative OS, and if they did the experience would likely be daunting, as it's simply outside of their ken (even though installation of a modern Linux like Mint is in reality probably significantly simpler than installing Windows from scratch).

Your average Windows user doesn't know (or care) zilch about OSes – and why should they? Admins, on the other hand, have no such excuse.

> Many of those specialized applications…

Don't disagree there.

[FIA]

Re: The last thing we want

> Sure there are Windows applications which are no doubt superior to their Linux equivalents – but those tend to be in specialised areas such as CAD, graphic design and audio production, which does not encompass "most" users.

Excel.

[LionelB]

Re: The last thing we want

As an average home (as opposed to business) user, why would I need Excel – or at any rate its facilities that may be lacking in Linux equivalents, such as VBA or integration with corporate systems?

The only time I've ever had cause to use a spreadsheet in anger as a home user¹ has been to do tax returns, and the Linux equivalents are fine for that. I can understand that some of Excel's "advanced" features might have a place in an enterprise environment, but I really can't see it as essential for the average home user.

¹_{As it happens, in a past life I have been obliged to use Excel in a corporate scenario, and wouldn't wish the experience on anyone I liked. In my current incarnation as a research scientist, for serious stats, data analysis and number-crunching there are far more powerful tools available on Windows, Mac, and certainly on Linux, which is ubiquitous in scientific computing.}

[FIA]

Re: The last thing we want

As an average home (as opposed to business) user, why would I need Excel

Most home users won't, but most computers are used in businesses. Where Excel is probably the main killer app on Windows.

It's the tool non programmers use to work stuff out.

for serious stats, data analysis and number-crunching there are far more powerful tools available on Windows,

Oh yes, absolutely 100% there are. It's almost never the 'correct software for the job', but it almost always 'works', and that to most people is more important.

People aren't using it for serious statistical calculations, they're using it to create some frankenspreadsheet that runs their business.

It's insane, and they should probably be hiring a developer or two, but they don't.

This was true 20 years ago, and seems to not be any less true now. We tend not to see it from the IT world, but Excel runs many many small and large businesses.

If you could reliably replicate that on macOS or GNU/Linux (without the install pain around WINE) I suspect you'd get a good few people to move.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The last thing we want

That os quite possibly the worst possible example you could have picked.

[FIA]

Re: The last thing we want

Why?

The bubble around computers in the home has largely passed. (People with computers at home tend to have them because they're into computers, whereas most people now use their phones or tablets for the kind of tasks they would've had a PC for in the early 2000s).

Most PCs these days are in offices, and the one piece of software in the MS office suite that hasn't been suitably replicated yet is Excel.

I don't mean Excel that you or I would use it for, I mean Excel when it's used by someone who can't program but has a complex idea they need to realize.

We often see stories of people running weird shit in Excel on these pages. They're the crazy spreadsheets you see because they're interesting, but there's many many equally as complicated ones running businesses out there.

For a lot of businesses if you can say with 100% confidence that their spreadsheets will continue to work I think you'd find more uptake.

[Eric 9001]

Re: The last thing we want

LibreOffice Calc has suitable replicated excel spreadsheets - it's even compatible with all its broken formats.

It doesn't support excel plugins, but in my experience, LibreOffice has all of the features plugins implement by default - you just need to work out how to use them.

Provided the spreadsheet doesn't use scripting, it will continue to work in LibreOffice with a few tweaks (generally at most a few cell sizes and fonts will need to be adjusted).

The only compatibility issues left seems to be support for ODBC and scripting (libreoffice does support OBDC, scripting and excel forms, but the scripting support isn't 1:1 yet and therefore any nontrivial forms and button actions needs to be ported to work).

[Roland6]

Re: The last thing we want

>” Perhaps if OSS fanatics took a moment to understand what works well on Windows (and no, it's not just a question of inertia, habit, or lock-in), Linux could be made into a more appealing alternative to Windows.”

Unlikely to happen, too many fanatics prefer talking the talk rather than walking the talk, as that requires them to actually contribute rather than just spectate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The last thing we want

And those fanatics need to stop trying to "reeducate" the users to do things their own holy, righteous way. If desktop Linux wants to take off it has to meet users where they are and respond to their needs.

Almost as bad as the people who push their favorite style of mouse, IPv6, or The One True Editor™.

[RAMChYLD]

Re: The last thing we want

This.

Cinelerra has the UI issues plaguing Gimp taken up to 11.

I strongly want Sony/Magix Vegas on Linux. But I can't have it, Magix GmbH has time and time again said no.

DaVinci Resolve sucks, no MPEG-4+AAC support which rules out recordings made using my cellphones and my workhorse Sony camcorder. It only exists to sell Blackmagic Designs' uber expensive RAW cameras. The only other camera it works with are the Chinese yamcha-brand MJPEG+MP2 toy cameras that capture at 8fps.

KDenlive is broken (apparently there are bugs in it's VAAPI support) and the last time I used it, it was more like Windows Movie Maker- dumbed down and only allows you to use two video and audio tracks.

The only thing PiTiVi is giving me are segfaults.

Also, the ever changing driver interface is ridiculous. It only exists to piss off people who somehow bought hardware with closed source drivers (like Nvidia GPUs) and now have to live with it. My GeForce 650 TI Boost that I'm still hanging on to as last ditch backup (if I have to send a GPU off for RMA, I have at least something to fall back on) are not going to work with Kernel 6.18 because the last drivers put out for it won't compile against the everchanging API. And every time a new kernel comes out I am guaranteed to be locked out of my home directory because my home volume is a ZFS array (BCacheFS? HAH! That thing doesn't even exist in tree anymore. And just 6 versions of the kernel ago it was touted as the filesystem that will make ZFS irrelevant).

Don't get me wrong. I love Linux and I advocate it strongly. However eve I have to admit that it sucks because the ever changing driver API ties in nicely to Nvidia's forced obsolescence tactics and also gives users of any drivers the Linux devs do not like (including superior filesystems like ZFS) the finger.

[Solviva]

Re: The last thing we want

Nvidia are free to offer binary blobs that compile (within reason) with any kernel, alternatively they can provide a pre-built module that works with a very limited set of kernels. I expect they do the first, in which case you need somebody who can update the Nvidia sources which support later kernels to add back in the necessary support for older cards - caveat being they haven't also pulled support from the blob (which they probably did) in which case you're at a dead end.

You're also free to buy AMD cards which have better in-kernel support, but assuming you already shelled out your cash to Nvidia then the Nouveau driver provides support for cards Nvidia has disowned.

[doublelayer]

Re: The last thing we want

You need to decide what group of Linux or open source supporters you are in, with the general options being group 1, you use this and don't care if others do, or group 2, you use this and think it would be better if the general public did too.

If you are in group 1, then you can ignore this. Whether or not this gets developed is not something that you can stop, and if you refuse to use it, then your stuff won't change. There's plenty of Linux software right now, and they're not going to recompile it for Windows only because this would take a long time to build even if they had a bunch of people wanting to and they currently don't.

If you're group 2, however, then you need to understand that you're losing already and no intentional ignoring of Windows is going to change that. Not running some piece of Windows software isn't going to kill Windows, it's going to keep the people who want to run it away from stuff that isn't Windows. If you want them to stop using Windows, then you will have to figure out how to make it possible for them to switch without as much pain, whether that's this or some other type of emulation so their software can still work, finding a workable alternative which already works on Linux, or convincing the people who wrote that software to build it for Linux. I assume you're not doing any of those. I'm happy to be proven wrong.

This attitude is why I'm closer to group 1 these days. I give people Linux machines sometimes, and some of them can and have used those to good effect, but I'm not trying to force people not to use Windows because there are too many problems I can't fix single-handedly and too few people doing anything to try to fix them. There are advantages that we Linux users would get if others started using it, and that's not going to happen as long as we ignore, deny, or as you have chosen in your post, embrace those problems.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The last thing we want

In fact your last paragraph defines group 3 which many of us are in. We use Linux but sometimes Windows users want us to sort out their problems when their requirements could be met on the stable platform which we know Linux to be.

[doublelayer]

Re: The last thing we want

That's orthogonal to groups 1 and 2 and therefore isn't part of this. The question to answer to determine which of those two you're in is whether you would want them to move to Linux because, assuming you are correct, it would be easy for them to do so or whether you don't care that they're not. Your response suggests group 2 is more likely, but there's insufficient information to tell. The fact that you get asked for support has no effect on whether you want to and are trying to increase Linux's user base among the nontechnical.

[werdsmith]

Re: The last thing we want

Group Linux: Maximum sanctimony and patronising sneer and zero self awareness which does much to put normal humans off Linux. Who would want to be associated with these people?

Especially when they justify their superciliousness with false preconceptions (or just plain lies).

You know who you are. Cry all you like Jeffery Albertson.

[Eric 9001]

Re: The last thing we want

>group of Linux or open source supporters

Correct usage of "or" here, very good.

>Not running some piece of Windows software isn't going to kill Windows, it's going to keep the people who want to run it away from stuff that isn't Windows

You got it backwards - every time a piece of windows software is run, its network effect is strengthened and people don't see any reason to not continue to run windows more.

If you refuse to run windows software and many others do the same thing, the network effect is weakened - if enough people refused to be abused, that would be the end of windows.

>whether that's this or some other type of emulation so their software can still work

If you can't run it natively on GNU and you need emulation, it's not yours.

You clearly should stop being used by software that is not yours and use software that is yours instead.

>If you want them to stop using Windows, then you will have to figure out how to make it possible for them to switch without as much pain

For most users, it seems that all they use is a web browser, so it doesn't really matter what OS they use.

>finding a workable alternative which already works on Linux

The idea is that there should be free software replacements on GNU, not proprietary alternatives.

>convincing the people who wrote that software to build it for Linux

If it's free software, it's often not too hard to get it to compile for GNU - although a major dependency may need to be replaced.

If it's proprietary software, it not soiling GNU is a good thing.

[DS999]

That's the same mindset

That has people saying that until some new technology like solar/wind, EVs, whatever is perfect and covers every possible use case it isn't acceptable.

If you get people off Windows, but still running Windows stuff, you're still closer to the goal of seeing Windows go away. Big changes work best in a series of small steps, not one giant leap of faith.

[frankvw]

Re: The last thing we want

The last thing I want is to keep having to struggle in order to get Windows apps to work with WINE. I make do, but it can be a pain. Take Adobe Photoshop CS6, for example. With a lot of hacking, fiddling and geekish stuff that the average user will not be able (or willing) to pull off it can be made to work... mostly. There are still many focus and screen update issues (leading to artefacts or to your image window suddenly disappearing) and the occasional crash. I only need it occasionally, but when I do I need it badly, so I live with the pain. It's still not as atrocious as having to run Windows in a VM (which is still plan B if all else fails and I've had to do that a number of times over the past year) because the performance penalty is, well, non-trivial.

Another thing is USB drivers. WINE has no proper support for it, which means that if I want to program, say, a GSM unit that comes with a proprietary Windows driver, I'm stuck because that doesn't even work properly in VirtualBox.

Steam is great, but focuses on games. I'm not a gamer. Nor are many of us. If we could run things like the Adobe Creative Suite, Autocad or even the full blown MS Office suite (yes, some of us do need to connect to corporate a back-end that lives in an MS-only eco system) that would be so much better. Linux equivalents (GIMP, Libre Office etc.) don't always quite cut it.

Will that ever work? I don't know. It's been a holy grail for decades, and after all that time we're... closer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: "....to restore compatibility with 16-bit Windows binaries..."

WINE 10.20 will run a Windows 3.1 application like a champ (Multimedia Viewer, mviewer2.exe dated 1/10/93).

What part of "restore" don't I understand?????

[farnz]

Windows 11, however, will not run Win16 apps originally written for Windows 3.1.

The BoxedWine project runs WINE on Windows to fix this.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

No 64 Bit Windows will run 16 bit applications. None of them. Since Server 2003 64 Bit / Windows XP 64 bit (there never was an official 64 bit Win2k). However, there are some alternative emulation layers around, like https://github.com/otya128/winevdm. But most simply run a 32 bit Windows in a VM, like last Windows 10 32 bit build, and run the old stuff from there, or similar other VM approaches.

Side note: True Windows NT (3.5x and higher) applications often work since they are "win32", but how well depends on a lot of things. Sometimes the installer is 16 bit, even though the installed program is fully 32 bit...

[Liam Proven]

> there are some alternative emulation layers around

You might find this useful...

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_running_dos/

[Liam Proven]

> What part of "restore" don't I understand?????

Restore the ability TO WINDOWS.

[vogon00]

The art of the journalist...

"Loss32 is the most gleefully deranged idea for how to put together a Linux OS that we think we have ever read about in three and a half decades…

Now I've recovered from the fit induced by the idea of breeding as OS like that......I'd like to award @Liam my award for 'Best journalistic sentence of the year (so far)'. That's extremely well crafted, sir.

[Liam Proven]

Re: The art of the journalist...

We aren't very far into the year, mind you. :-D

But thank you very much indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The art of the journalist...

Finally! Someone for whom fiscal years are meaningless, just like they're supposed to be.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

The only important question is...

...it faster than Windows 11?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The only important question is...

I'm assuming its acceleration is 0 while the competing Windows 11 box clocks in at -9.81 m/s^2.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: The only important question is...

That says nothing about the end speed before crashing though...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The only important question is...

African or European Windows 11?

[milliemoo83]

Re: The only important question is...

Blue... .no yellow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The only important question is...

Mandarin.

[JLV]

I am a bit confused here, having been out of the Windows world so long. The Loss32 is only a pun, right?

The intent is to, within possibilities, run all/as many as possible of the current Windows (64 bit) binaries unmodified via WINE shims?

Sounds appealing enough, if it avoids what seems to be a fairly epic mess with Windows 11 and if it brings the quality of use I see when running Windows-only AAA games on Steam/Proton. That works a lot more often than it doesn't. Games are fairly demanding so if they work that bodes well for a lot of system-level capability, although games have a vested interest in smoothing down hard edges in where they can run, whereas corporate software tends to be big on certification and interop with other apps (which themselves may not work).

p.s. What I would do though, if I were packaging the distro, is to leave open a WSL-on-Windows-on-Linux mechanism to serve as a gateway drug to trying out Linux proper.

[Uplink]

Loss32 subsystem for Linux (L32SL) would be just a (possibly chrooted or containerised) GNU-like userland, wouldn't it?

Say, if Loss32 were based on the most minimal Ubuntu, to get L32SL, one would just apt install the "ubuntu-minimal" package, and run a bash in a terminal (which itself could be a Win32 program, to keep with the theme). Then one could just apt install other stuff, like perl and gcc as needed.

[Liam Proven]

> Loss32 is only a pun, right?

Well, it _could_ be a jab at the way 64-bit Windows still uses a folder called `SYSTEM32` because some unknown pillock hardcoded the bit width of NT into a permanent pathname...

So the API is still sometimes known as Win32, even on 64-bit systems.

[ttlanhil]

Shirley it would have made more sense to be System32_86 so you can also offend the WinNT/Alpha folks (or more recently, Windows on ARM)

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Well, I'd say that it's about time for a "AntiSquishyOS" to be released by someone somewhere... though it's worth noting that the whole Proton architecture identifies itself as "Windows 10" which is why Microsoft is really forcing everyone onto Windows 11 - they can no longer guarantee their partners that their products won't be running on a system without Microsoft DRM installed and enabled, and Thou Shalt Not Run Without Thine American DRM!!!

This above all else: Thou Art Interfering In Our Grotesquely One-Sided Profiteering Model!!!!

Steam in the meantime will work on a Windows 11 identifying version of Proton, and Microsoft will disable that when it gets too good and too capable and mandate Windows 12.

Lather rinse repeat ad nauseum...

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

It strikes me that the EU and the rest of the world that "requires" Microsoft as an OS could well decide "enough is enough" and stick a foot in the ground with the Proton 10 API set for Wine and tell Microsoft to take a huge flipping hike with their AI-infested, insecure-by-design-and-being-made-worse-by-AI-authored-"code"-injections core Windows 11 OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some combination of Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and NextCloud+Collabora is good enough for at least 80% of desk workers in most environments. That happily runs on Linux SBCs which are so easy to set up, lock down, and swap out at the first sign of trouble. The savings on PC hardware and licensing can be well spent on good monitors and keyboards, which outlast the computers themselves and do so much to enhance actual productivity. As for specs? They're generally fine and sometimes even work out better when hardware can be on a more frequent refresh cycle.

Perhaps the first thing EU governments could do is ask themselves if half of their desk users might not require Windows as an OS...but that would require them getting unbiased advice from external vendors/consultants or their own Microsoft-certified jobsworths.

[keithpeter]

Most of the systems that current $EMPLOYER uses are accessible via Chromium from Linux.

Only the client for the finance/wages portal is a native Windows program, and that has to be run from a box on the organisation's network so one of their computers inside one of their buildings. Which seems sensible for money stuff.

[NetMage]

At least 80% of desk workers run at least one Windows only application required for their job.

See, I can make up statistics too.

[frankvw]

The EU and the rest of the world

> ...could well decide "enough is enough"...

Oh come on. The EU can't even decide how to respond to the geopolitical threats running around unchecked in the world right now. None of the EU countries dares to say anything about anything. And with IT and everything else being weaponized to that end, such a decision won't be forthcoming anytime soon. Or ever.

(Let's see how many downvotes I can clock up with this one!)

[keithpeter]

Re: The EU and the rest of the world

No downvotes here.

The lack of solidarity is a concern, but it does underline the fact that the EU isn't a country or block. It is an association of states that reserve their sovereignty subject to treaties. So the kitten herding continues.

[Liam Proven]

> which is why Microsoft is really forcing everyone onto Windows 11

Nah, I don't buy it. Interesting idea, but no.

New management at MS, even _less_ scrupulous, even _less_ constrained by morals or ethics, decided:

1. Let's kill off the old one and punt out a new version to milk those poor suckers.

2. We bump the system requirements so they all need new kit. That'll keep our hardware ~victims~ /partners/ on-side: they make money from new PCs that are no faster.

[Feeble objection from the greybeard directors: "But the money! We promised! What about the broken promises to enterprise customers?"]

3. OK, so, we do a special enterprise version and keep it alive, but it costs a bomb.

4. We repay the minimal R&D by throwing in every bit of extra revenue extraction in the book: mandatory cloud sync (so they have to pay for more cloud storage), adverts (they can't turn off), nag screens (they can't turn off), mandatory SaaS app integration they can't remove.

5. We fight off the companies actually using Linux by embedding a Linux VM in the thing. So the poor saps get to run Linux _and_ pay for a Windows licence at the same time!

[Some MBA gets an award and buys another holiday home.]

6. We'll enforce it the old way: make it subtly incompatible with the old one (cf. Office 95 -> 97, Office 2003 -> Office 2007, etc.) and then we kill off the old version.

And they laugh all the way to the bank. "They said 'Windows is obsolete,' and we make more money off this than any Linux vendor except RH, and they all hate the Hat now anyway!"

F/x: *Fading fatcat footsteps and mingled mirth*

[keithpeter]

Bonkers thought of the day: what is to stop Microsoft implementing the idea behind loss32?

Cut out all that huge legacy support. Just spaff some wage money to Wine or buy Canonical and Crossover?

Icon: I'm off out

[Eric 9001]

Microsoft will never do that, as if microsoft was to replace the NT kernel with Linux, there would be no practical reason to run windows anymore - as then GNU/Linux with WINE would have better compatibility with windows software (WINE on GNU/Linux runs many ancient windows programs that do not run on windows 11).

[trindflo]

I figure it is mostly to maintain market leadership.

If you stop changing things, eventually you need to add something your competitor invents.

If Microsoft keeps changing their software, competitors are kept busy adding the latest Microsoft good idea and they don't invent things for Microsoft to worry out.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

A good idea? Microsoft??!?!?!?!? *BWAHAHAHAHA*

[Anonymous Coward]

7. Microsoft cloud account now required for setup (non-enterprise versions).

8. Data harvesting / telemetry required.

9. Client-side advertising required.

"Force" does seem like the right choice of words now that Microsoft has realized just how much revenue they were losing not pushing every non-enterprise user into this funnel.

25 years ago, the battle was keeping adware and spyware off a Windows system. Now it is the Windows system.

[Eric 9001]

>5. We fight off the companies actually using Linux by embedding a Linux VM in the thing. So the poor saps get to run Linux _and_ pay for a Windows licence at the same time!

Originally "WSL1" didn't even have Linux in it - it was versions of GNU distros with a program that replaced Linux with a program that translated Linux SYSCALLs into windows calls, so GNU/Linux binaries could be run without recompiling them (Cygwin and MSYS2 existed long before, allowing the user to run GNU without Linux on windows, but with the drawback of needing to compile everything into .exe's for windows) - of course as planned, despite running GNU and experiencing the feel of GNU and GNU bash and programs that work with the GNU OS without Linux, people believed and still believe they're "running Linux on windows".

It was only with "WSL2" that Linux was included in "WSL" and full GNU/Linux VM's were introduced (it seems the primary reason Linux was finally included with such GNU distributions, was how filesystems that only have a good driver available in Linux can only be accessed with Linux actually included and running).

>[Some MBA gets an award and buys another holiday home.]

The ability to run GNU software from windows is rather part of microsoft's multi-pronged scheme to prevent people from escaping from windows to GNU/Linux and if that is not possible, there's also other schemes to ensure that as many suckers as possible fall for primarily running microsoft's proprietary software on GNU/Linux (as you would expect, mostly the same consequences as running windows result).

One future goal of the "WSL2" scheme is to ensure that pesky anti-trust regulators can't get in the way to making restricted boot eventually forbid booting the GNU GRUB OS on all of microsoft's computers "for your security" (already done by default) and then all other free bootloaders and therefore forbid booting GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd.

Microsoft will of course be glad to point out to any anti-trust regulators that they certainly didn't prevent the usage of "Linux" with restricted boot, as; "See, Linux can still be run with WSL2".

[FIA]

though it's worth noting that the whole Proton architecture identifies itself as "Windows 10" which is why Microsoft is really forcing everyone onto Windows 11

Because that's internally what version it is.

Open a command window and Windows 11 reports (as of this writing): "Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.26200.7462]"

Version 10 is the major version number, it was changed from 6 to 10 with the release of Windows 10. (I suspect the issues this caused is why it hasn't been bumped to 11.. that or they don't like Spinal Tap).

Many software uses this to check for compatibility so this change broke a lot of stuff, they've since left it at 10. (Unless you run an app in compatibility mode when it may get an olver version reported). See here.

It's not a conspiricy theory, it's not deceptive business practices, it's to stop support issues caused by software that would work checking the version and assuming it won't.

That is all.

[Tron]

Why crawl from A to B when you can take a taxi.

We don't need Windows compatibility anymore. We just need file format and PC hardware compatibility. Oh, and burn the OS on to firmware so it cannot be hacked. Then produce a simple works package, browser and development suite. The market will do the rest. The Pi is almost there. As far as I know, it just lacks the marketing, ROM based OS and an official expansion unit/PCalike mobo. I love the Pi in a keyboard style but an HDD and an optical drive remain essential for many retail consumers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why crawl from A to B when you can take a taxi.

ROM based OS you say? *cough*AmigaOS*cough* GUI and pre-emptive multitasking in ROM, in mid-80s. Incidentally, if you had a CPU with an MMU, you could just copy the OS to Fast RAM and patch what you needed. Having the OS in ROM doesn't make it unhacakble.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Home, Pro, Enterprise ad naus.

I suppose the comparable commercial offering might be Complete, Total and Tax-deductible Loss^® ?

The idea of a cutdown kernel with just enough to support the hardware (or virtual environment) and the application(s) isn't particularly novel. I vaguely recall a cutdown Linux(?) kernel: Rump kernel (?) I think might have done the same.

With the same goal — running Windows binaries on an alternative platform — I might have started with a microkernel but I imagine in practice Linux is second not even to Windows for the breadth of the hardware that it supports.

Fundamentally the question going forward is whether anyone would want to run Microsoft slop ? If not how far would ISVs as fellow travellers, go on that road to slopdom ? I suspect if a mostly compatible, stable but slopfree platform were (freely) available ISVs might use that as their primary target abandoning Microsoft to perish in their own sloppy quagmire.

If Loss32 were basically freeware, large ISVs might license a runtime version to include with their tat: Abōdé Quaint now with free Loss support !

A the dawn of the age, early Windows (2.0) applications did ship with a Windows runtime (eg Whitewater group's Actor †) but I vaguely recall Microsoft took Windows runtimes around the back of the barn well before Win 3.0 but did offer a discounted upgrade to retail Windows.

_{† A really interesting system that actually worked but with the limitations of Windows (partly due to Microsoft skulduggery) it was difficult to build competitive applications. I know. I tried. Fool me once MS…}

[streaky]

Back in the day..

.. When Wine wasn't that complete.. we'd replace big chunks of it with real parts of windows to make it work right, particularly the libraries.

[Anonymous Coward]

LinuxOS On The Desktop??

When I discovered (last month) that two well known Linux boosters/commentators use a Mac as their daily driver.....................

...............then I knew..........LinuxOS on the desktop is a lost cause!!!

No names......no pack drill!!!!

[Liam Proven]

Re: LinuxOS On The Desktop??

> use a Mac as their daily driver.

Guilty as charged. On the desktop. Laptops run Linux. Mainly Ubuntu Unity or Alpine with Xfce, but there is a worrying tendency towards Pop OS visible.

;-)

And you know what... when Apple turns off Intel macOS, I think it may be time to leave. The Arm boxes are lovely, but don't do what I want or need.

[Eric 9001]

Re: LinuxOS On The Desktop??

>use a Mac as their daily driver.

Well there it is - that's why Liam pushes proprietary software so hard.

[TheOldFellow]

Why on earths would you want to do that?

Why run any Wonkydoos programs at all? None of them are safe, none of them are useful. They all report to Adolph Strump's MerryCan Misgovernment too.

[Dagg]

Re: Why on earths would you want to do that?

Ahh, because they work and there is NO non-toy linux alternative...

[Baggypants]

"Loss32 is the most gleefully deranged idea for how to put together a Linux OS that we think we have ever read about in three and a half decades…"

I'm still hoping for the marriage of the renown stability of the win9x kernel supporting the unarguable usability of the GNOME desktop.

[LBJsPNS]

Welcome to Hell. Enjoy your stay.

[Havin_it]

10/10, no notes. No Joke icon, no /s tag, yet not one downvote. That's good work. Chapeau!

[Anonymous Coward]

The great unwashed aren't going to move to Linux no matter how crap MS products become.

They don't know what Linux is, most don't know the difference between the OS and the hardware.

Linux doesn't advertise, it's not sold as a product, it's not a 'thing' in their minds.

It doesn't matter how easy you make it to move away from Windows the concept of 'moving' OS is a step too far from their ken.

They don't 'know' anything about how a computer works and further they don't want to know.

They might get pissed off enough with MS to quit Windows but they'll move to Apple or Google. They'd probably move to paper before they'd got to Linux.

Which sad, I like Linux I really do. I'm leaving MS (slowly) for Linux based systems. But it is a PITA when it doesn't work and the Linux 'community' hardly has the reputation of being friendly to noobs.

[Liam Proven]

> They don't know what Linux is, most don't know the difference between the OS and the hardware.

You're right.

But for a lot of them, Chromebooks are enough.

And their ignorance means they won't know or care if it's Gentoo underneath or Android.

[Eric 9001]

Even the so-called washed don't even realize that Linux is only a kernel and will never be an OS and that such systems are in fact GNU-based systems with Linux added (despite all the OS's I've looked at, I've never found an OS where Linux is the base).

The "Linux" buzzword is in of itself a massive advertisement of the "open source development model" (although ironically, despite being the poster child of "open source", Linux isn't even 60% source-available and therefore is not "open source") - which was started as an attack against free software and has the goal of getting business money to develop functionally better software, faster, but that almost always fails, as while companies are often happy to accept gratis work, most of them won't proceed to hire the developers, nor submit any changes to upstream (most companies actually forbid their employees from voluntarily doing so).

Yes, Linux is an example of the rare case where the "open source development model" partially succeeded - but if you've ever actually looked at Linux development - you'll realize it's a massive disaster, for example, many, many businesses are relentlessly distributing proprietary versions of Linux and also refuse to provide any of the source code.

Yes, it sounds insane, but it's the insane reality.

[graemep]

If you want Windows, why not just use Windows?

Is even Windows 11 annoying enough to use something that is essentially Windows with extra bugs?

[Liam Proven]

> Is even Windows 11 annoying enough to use something that is essentially Windows with extra bugs?

Good hypothetical deities, YES, it is! Haven't you tried it?

Windows 8.0 was better than this. Vista was much better. Windows *ME* was more pleasant to use.

[Anonymous Coward]

W95 had bugs but was was still more user centred than W11.

W11 has a deeply integrated design and functions with overt malicous intent towards users.

I don't think any other Microsoft OS up till Win7 saw users as prey. That started to change with 10 and with 11 they've gone all out to feed off users.

W11 should come with a warning sticker telling users how it intends to abuse their data.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 11 warning label should also read: Microsoft cloud account required.

The new builds have cut off a user's ability to even finish setting up their computer until they've already been identified and signed up for personalized tracking and advertising.

Microsoft had been maliciously funneling low-information users towards the signup. Power users did have work arounds. Not anymore.

[Lee D]

Because "Windows applications", we're fine with.

It's "Windows the OS" that we all hate because it's an atrocious mess nowadays.

I don't care what Windows, the OS, wants me to do. I just want it to load up my .exe file and run it.

On Linux, you can do that.

On Windows, just something that simple can be an absolute mess.

I have no problem with closed-source programs (some of my favourite freeware is closed-source, Windows-only binaries!). I have no problem with running the Windows version of a programme. What I have a problem with is... Windows, the OS, including the start menu, the horrendous updates, moving all the settings every version, the horrendous "search for everything" mentality (it means I need to know the exact name of what I'm searching FOR, for a start), not being able to move the taskbar, forcing Edge and Copilot onto my machine against my will (even intercepting my searches to do so!) etc. etc.

Every problem I have with Windows is nothing to do with the apps (in fact, I insist that Copilot should be NOTHING MORE than an app you install from the store, just like Edge), it's to do with the way the OS makes you work. I have no more time for Windows (the OS). Not one second.

But if I want to run an old Win32 game or a piece of Windows freeware or even just a game on my Steam account... then the OS is irrelevant.

[Aladdin Sane]

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.

But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

― Terry Pratchett, Mort

[Liam Proven]

> But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

Yes, that was indeed the reference I had in mind. I am glad someone got it.

To be painstakingly precise...

Sergeant Colon looked wretched. "We-e-ell, what if it's not a million-to-one chance?" he said.

Nobby stared at him.

"What d'you mean?" he said.

"Well, all right, last desperate million-to-one chances always work, right, no problem, but...well, it's pretty wossname, specific. I mean, isn't it?"

"You tell me," said Nobby.

"What if it's just a thousand-to-one chance?" said Colon agonizedly.

"What?"

"Anyone ever heard of a thousand-to-one shot coming up?"

Carrot looked up. "Don't be daft, Sergeant," he said. "No one ever saw a thousand-to-one chance come up. The odds against it are—" his lips moved—"millions to one."

"Yeah. Millions," agreed Nobby.

"So it'd only work if it's your actual million-to-one chance," said the sergeant.

"I suppose that's right," said Nobby.

"So 999,943-to-one, for example—" Colon began.

Carrot shook his head. "Wouldn't have a hope. No one ever said, 'It's a 999,943-to-one chance but it just might work.'"

—Guards! Guards!

[Aladdin Sane]

I was surprised nobody had commented it before me, considering how often Pratchett references are made in the forums.

[Blackjack]

Amazing, Microsoft has made using modern Windows such a pain in the behind people are willing to try almost anything else.

[Anonymous Coward]

Build It

If it can crawl, it can brawl.

But I bet it dies.

[bluejam]

At last, the year of Linux on the desktop is upon us.

[Lee D]

Linux

Bought myself a Framework laptop for Christmas. Went for the one with an nVidia graphics card in it.

Technically, it's perfectly capable of running Windows 11, etc.

I installed Ubuntu on it.

I installed Steam on it.

I installed my games on it.

And, I have to say.... it's so BORING. Things just work. Double-click and the games just play. At ludicrous speed (it wants to run everything at 2K @ 165fps and you know what? It just does. And barely even ramps up the fans to do so).

One irony: Wanted to transfer some files from the old Windows 10 laptop I was using. Which had been offline for precisely 2 days at that point. I had to wait 50+ minutes while it applied updates repeatedly (5 reboots) before I could use it.

While it was doing that, I realised that I'd made a mistake installing Ubuntu 24 LTS (the Framework needs a slightly newer kernel and they DO tell you this, I just didn't read it properly), and did an in-place upgrade to 25 instead. This took - no exaggeration - about 5 minutes, during which I just carried on using the machine entirely as normal. Then it prompted me once to reboot to complete the upgrade... entirely at my discretion when, or indeed if, I ever did. Rebooted. It just worked. And then I was still waiting over 45+ minutes for the Windows machine to apply whatever updates it deemed necessary after 2 days of being off.

Boot from fresh? Seconds.

Resume from standby? Instant.

Login from the login dialog? SO INSTANT IT'S JUST NOT FUNNY.

Honestly, it's good to be back. I once spent 10 years with Slackware as my primary desktop and, yes, I miss it. Forced Windows 11 junk made me turn back to that path, and then you realise quite how much you've been "tolerating" on Windows all that time.

And one of the first things I did was run my games via Steam/Proton, and run some favourite freeware via Wine/Winetricks. It just worked.

I don't claim it's perfect. I'm sure there are problems out there waiting for me to find them. But, you know what, I will actually look forward to solving them because at the moment the expensive shiny new machine is just... boring. It just works.

(Hint for future adventurers: ABSOLUTELY ignore anything to do with snap packages, they are inherently out-of-date, buggy and can't be upgraded. Don't install Steam from the Ubuntu store. Install it as Steam tell you to - download the file from their site and just install it from there. Same for everything. Every "snap"-installed package was buggy and out-of-date and I had problems with. I went back to "traditional" .deb etc. packages and never had a problem again.)

[Anonymous Coward]

THE BULL MONTH EVERY MONTH

Enough of these dweeby month names and calendar wars.

Every month the BULL MONTH. BSD was always better than LINUX, just where are the games in KANSAS that's where.

They may EVEN FINISH A GAME OF C&C before I bring in the NAVY :)

And what is a HERTFORDSHIRE PONT - 2 VERSE PONT of ARDINGLY :)

[Anonymous Coward]

NO GAME NO LIFE U+221E ...

Should be a MANGA modified into a novel.

[Anonymous IV]

Reduced notability

> A notable website aimed at this market, PCGamer.com...

You mean that 'notable' website which last week proclaimed confidently that Microsoft was rebranding Office as the "Microsoft 365 Copilot app"?!

</chortle>

[joeldillon]

Calling out the transition to glibc seems a bit much, given that the Windows world was transitioning from Win16 to Win32 not long before; a rather more drastic change!

(And the later (at consumer level at least) transition from Win95-derived OSes to Windows NT, for that matter, had its own pain points)

[Eric 9001]

Every major or minor change to windows breaks software and as the users usually don't have the source code under a free license, getting such breakages fixed is entirely dependent on the vendor (which means old software does not get fixed), but it seems windows users are just used to everything being broken and just accept it.

I checked the facts and determined that; "Even the lowest-level components: in the late 1990s, the transition from libc version 5 to libc 6, known as glibc, was a thorny issue and led to compatibility problems between distros that took about a decade and a half to subside." is completely false and conflates completely separate things.

- The "thorny issue" link is about someone asking whether he needs Linux libc 5 or glibc 6 to compile Linux 2.1.129 with GNU and the answer is that it doesn't matter, as the libc is not a direct Linux dependency (whatever version that GCC and GNU autools and the rest of the system is compiled against will do).

In 1994, the Linux developers decided to fork glibc 1.01+ into Linux libc to make some minor changes, as they felt the FSF wasn't working fast enough and weren't following their orders and the library name became libc.so.X and it appears they changed the ABI multiple times, with the last version being libc.so.5.

The FSF continued maintaining glibc versions 1.90-1.102 (without major changes, therefore with no official major release) and developed what would be glibc 2.0, which took till January or February 1997 to do a proper job (unlike Linux libc, glibc 2.0 had optional POSIX compliance, internationalisation support, multithreaded support, IPv6, and 64-bit data access, and library version migration support) and the Linux developers dropped their fork (in a typical Linux developer fashion, they failed to keep adequate records of the copyright information, including the authors or the copyright holders, meaning almost all of the changes from Linux libc had to be discarded and could not be included in glibc).

I don't get where almost 15 years came from (was it a wrong LLM answer?), as different GNU distros used Linux libc 5, or glibc version 1+ or glibc version 2+ (libc.so.6) for around 3 years then all current distros changed to glibc 2.0+ from 1997-1998 (some had Linux libc 5 & glibc 2.0+ installed at the same time to resolve any compatibility problems during the transition).

http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/history_of_glibc_and_linux_libc/

https://linuxgazette.net/issue32/tag_libc5.html

The "subside" links to something about eglibc, which is something completely unrelated and wasn't even a glibc fork - it was some patches to glibc to suit embedded systems while trying to retain binary compatibility; https://web.archive.org/web/20120317051907if_/http://www.eglibc.org/faq

Debian switched to eglibc in 2009 (and as a consequence, distros based on Debian did too), but most other distros did not and eventually eglibc development ended and Debian switched back to glibc in 2014 (which was ~5 years).

My best guess is that if it wasn't a wrong answer from a LLM, the "about 15 years" a result of somehow getting 15 from 3+5 (was + and * confused on the calculator?).

[FIA]

My question is.. why would you replace the best bit of Windows (A more modern kernel, with built in security primititves, a well defined and stable driver layer) with a Kernel based on an older architecture without those advantages?

[Eric 9001]

The NT kernel isn't the best bit of windows - it's a real shocker - it isn't even the least worst part.

Window's kernel is mostly monolithic - although a few drivers like graphics drivers are in separate modules, so crappy proprietary graphics drivers crashing usually don't bring down the whole kernel.

It appears that scrollbars are still built into the monolithic part.

I hope you were joking with "with built in security primititves", and windows ACL's are a disaster and Window's kernel has no security in practice (meanwhile, Linux does have built-in primitives for the filesystem driver code needed for handling users and groups and access bits and even optional ACL's).

The windows driver ABI seems to be mostly undocumented and therefore not well defined, but I guess the ABI is stable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead end

This is a dead end. If through some miracle this distro were to become popular Microsoft would fight it tooth and nail...and win.

Please don't go this way. It's a complete waste of time and effort.

WINE is/was a complete waste of time (even though many say it was useful in bringing games to Linux) which could've been better spend developing Linux API's or even a brand new operating system.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Dead end

It's a dead end for the users freedom, thus microsoft might not even bother to try to prevent its usage if it became popular - after all, people are using theirs only mostly their terms.

ReactOS is very popular with ancient windows software and microsoft hasn't fought that.

Loss32 is GNU/Linux with WINE and the reactOS userspace bundled up - the only legal avenue of attack microsoft would have is the proprietary software in Linux (microsoft is a minor copyright holder of Linux), but they won't do that.

There really isn't a need for more Linux SYSCALLs.

There exists plenty of libraries and API's for the GNU OS - but really only API you certainly need is glibc's API and that's API & ABI stable.

It wouldn't make any sense to replace GNU with an inferior OS.

I agree that the development of a free kernel under AGPLv3-or-later that could will end up technically superior to Linux and therefore replace Linux would be a much better use of time.

[Eric 9001]

It's really incredible how many times Linux is mentioned

, with software that has nothing to do with Linux being referred to as "Linux" and of course the icing in the proprietary cake is the "Linux OS" oxymoron.

It's a GNU distro that runs .exe's via WINE.

As you can see, Linux is mostly irrelevant - WINE doesn't really care what kernel you use - it also runs on BSDs and macos and it could probably be ported to windows as a joke.

Although, WINE does care about its GNU dependencies and also many other non-Linux ones - for example GNU libc, which the article covers while trying to avoid naming the GNU as much as possible - there is just "glibc" written and the first link about the glibc5 to glibc6 issue of course only mentions "Linux" (searching up "libc5 to libc6", I can see several better answers which unfortunately name the GNU).

[Alistair]

System lock-in, subscriptions and where does Wall Street Take This in the future.

Currently, all of our commercially developed software and operating systems are being turned into *Cloud Based* *Subscription* services, based on the wall street rule #1 of subscribers being more valuable than sales. This issue is why we're seeing the apple cloud/windows storage first solution in current end user desktop or laptop installs.

This is effectively locking users into subscription models. At least the vast majority of users, who are not sufficiently knowledgeable to disconnect from said services. I'm personally quite convinced that this subscription model is only the beginning. I recall (vaguely) in the mid 80's a couple ( I think three or four actually, but not certain) movies being made in Hollywood with some highly specialized post processing work, done by a specific company, where that company ended up suing one or more studios after the fact with the "You used our IP to create *your* IP so you owe us part of your profit" gambit. As I recall the overall result was spectacularly bad for that company, *but* the initial legal result was that they had a leg to stand on, it was just poorly argued.

Adobe took a similar run at things in the late 90's or early 00's but lost overall. Considering the state of the US judicial system at this moment, and where it could head in the near future, I'd be pretty damn careful about

a) where I was storing my work, no matter *WHAT* that work was

b) what tools I used to create said work

c) what systems I left said work on, unprotected.

I can honestly see that there is a ledge where say, MS, owning a subscription based code storage base, and providing subscription based *"AI"* assistance to coders on said code storage base, decides that the next big thing in say, game design and graphics was built

a) on their code storage base

b) using their *"AI"* code creation tool

c) used their intellectual property directly

and is therefore *THEIR CODE NOT YOURS*

Hey, they will have the actual numbers. How many lines users actually wrote, how many lines the *"AI"* wrote, how many compiles were manual, how many compiles were run but the *"AI"*

Good luck out there folks.

*" : Plesase note that the advertised tool(s) covered by this term are in no way shape or form intelligent. They are statistical analysis tools trained on enormous amounts of general garbage.

[beek]

Wake me when it runs Photoshop...

[Eric 9001]

Running photoshop is a terrible idea and should never be done by anyone, as it's proprietary software, but WINE already runs many versions of photoshop; https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17

You need to wake up and consider why you would ever want to run such software (read sections 4.4 and 14 of the EULA https://www.adobe.com/products/eula/tools/captivate.html and think about what that means), when perfectly adequate free replacements exist that do not contain malware and do not contain spyware (clearly this point is unrelated to Adobe's software), such as Inkscape, Krita and GIMP (let me guess, someone is going to complain that software that actually respects the users freedom and is gratis, isn't exactly the same and doesn't offer all of the features as software from a double digit billion dollar company?).

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

> Running photoshop is a terrible idea

> You need to wake up and consider why you would ever want to run such software

You have never done serious work with picture or photos. I am still at Photoshop CS6 (last non cloud version), and the gap between that now-old version and its "replacements" is still big. Funny you did not mention Affinity Photo which comes quite close, and is used by me too. Inkscape and Krita are niche program, and do their job very good, but cannot replace photoshop. Gimp is still a nightmare of usability unlogic, even though they improved a bit.

An example? Gimp still has no macro recorder (issue opened in year 2001), you are expected to script-fu. Oh, they moved to gitlab, and I was forced to use a Google-Chrome-based browser for "search bugs" functionality? Anyhow still no macro recorder (issue number 8) or anything similar easy to use for a repeated job. If anyone asks for such a thing and "not photoshop" I direct them to XnViewMP or various others - and those which need command line are first directed to Imagemagick or xnconvert.

From my p(o)int of view: You need to wake up in your ivory tower from your preaching of religious belief, and enter the desert of the real, where you have a target to reach with efficient methods, else you die. You could use your knowledge and programming capabilities to add something good to gimp, like that old bug (rather feature request).

[Eric 9001]

>You have never done serious work with picture or photos.

Yes I have - GIMP does all my image manipulation needs.

>the gap between that now-old version and its "replacements" is still big

I do not care if it's actually harder to use, it at least respects my freedom (usually it's easier to use).

>Funny you did not mention Affinity Photo

Why would I recommend proprietary software?

>no macro recorder (issue opened in year 2001), you are expected to script-fu

How inconvenient - but you just posted the solution that is honestly better.

>Oh, they moved to gitlab, and I was forced to use a Google-Chrome-based browser for "search bugs" functionality?

Yes, Gitlab is totally unacceptable, but you do not have to use gitlab to look at bugs; https://lab.vern.cc/gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/ but inconveniently you can only see the initial question and there is no search - something that is inconvenient, but not something that will make me use chrome.

>Anyhow still no macro recorder (issue number 8) or anything similar easy to use for a repeated job.

GUI's are a real pain in the neck to use to macro things, rather than just being able to script the repeated job.

I use imagemagick and ffmpeg for repeatable tasks that need to be done many times - one program doesn't need to do absolutely everything after all.

> direct them to XnViewMP xnconvert

It's odd to direct from proprietary software to proprietary software.

>those which need command line are first directed to Imagemagick

I don't see how another free software program being recommended instead of GIMP for a specific task is a problem.

>You need to wake up in your ivory tower from your preaching of religious belief, and enter the desert of the real, where you have a target to reach with efficient methods, else you die

Sorry, I'm not dead or dying.

>You could use your knowledge and programming capabilities to add something good to gimp, like that old bug (rather feature request).

I don't feel like implementing something I'll never use and I avoid contributing to projects that use gitlab or github - at most I might email a minor patch if I can find an email in the git repo.

I'll implement something else that I'll actually use.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

> >You need to wake up in your ivory tower from your preaching of religious belief, and enter the desert of the real, where you have a target to reach with efficient methods, else you die

> Sorry, I'm not dead or dying.

I did not imply you dying or having left the tower. Trying less to be a missioner, i.e. less imposing your belief onto other, would be nice though.

[Eric 9001]

Imposing my beliefs onto others like a missioner? What? That would clearly require leaving floating island to go on a mission wouldn't it?

I aren't going around nailing tongues like a missionary - I'm merely posting a few comments that people can choose to read and consider (or not even read them).

[J.G.Harston]

Photoshop can be used to make images of nekkid people, report yourself for punishment beating immediately.

[xyz123]

Microsoft has announced Copilot is being FORCED inside Windows Explorer.

it can't be disabled or ignored. It will popup suggestions both when opening explorer windows to check files, when RUNNING applications or when selecting/accessing documents.

So this "update" is basically Windows 11 now effectively has Recall turned on 24/7 except with ZERO benfit to the user, Microsoft gets ALL your documents, one screenshot every 0.5 seconds and your state-of-the-art 64GB 9950XCD with a GTX5090 is now slower than a system from 2010.

Oh did we mention it reduces your NVME/SSD lifespan to a handful of months by constantly writing to it 24/7? Bonus!!!!!!!

[Eric 9001]

Even Windows 10 constantly wrote to the drive, which of course put substantial wear on a SSD (but a decent SSD lasts a few years even under those conditions) - of course many will report a SMART failure after a few months of windows 11.