2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He’s running Windows 7 right now, so I’ll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.

  • EddyBot@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam and not because Microsoft stopped patching it several years ago

    Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.

    I don’t think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore

    • Takios@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      People don’t care about security until they get hit. Source: working in IT for 10 years.

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        And then suddenly they care a lot and do all the wrong things for wrong reasons because they know shit

        • Madlaine@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          “I don’t worry about missing security patches. I just have 5 anti-virus tools running simultaneously, they keep me safe.”

            • De Lancre@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              I mean, they do make your device slow. That why tools like InSpectre exists. For some old cpu’s like my notebooks one it can be up to 20% performance impact, so if you not planning to use it with internet (or at least as main access point via browser) ever again, why not get yourself free performance?

      • FalseDiamond@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Even IT people don’t give a shit about security until it’s way too late. Source: getting out of a job where the median age of a server is around 3-4 years old with no updates and runtimes hard installed outside repositories.

        • prole@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          I think this is just kind of a side effect of capitalism.

          If it’s costing them in the short term, and the results aren’t evident or won’t be seen until the long term, they almost always won’t do it.

    • Lem453@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Nvidia gpu drivers wont even install on win 7 anymore. That by itself causes huge performance issues on new games that have driver optimizations.

      Probably the same story for amd drivers

    • Nilz@sopuli.xyz
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      9 months ago

      I don’t think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore

      I think they do by proxy since they only distribute it via .deb (and with Steam of course) and all games in the store that have a native Linux version mention some kind of Ubuntu version in their requirements as well. Which is funny since the Steam Deck doesn’t even run Ubuntu.

    • NekuSoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de
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      9 months ago

      it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam

      There’s this certain subsection of Win7/8 diehards that absolutely confuse me. It’s one thing to keep using them on old systems, but I’ve seen a few people posting about their brand-new PC, equipped with RTX 4090s and 13th gen I9 processors, who are adamant on running those outdated operating systems as their only OS. Such a waste of money.

      • cannache@slrpnk.net
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        9 months ago

        Nah I think it’s just that windows 7 and 8 was and still is quite literally one of those ones where it hit the sweet spot between good UI and UX and actually having huge range and compatibility straight off the bat. Plus everything was pretty smooth back then, but hell, nobody ever says how many viruses and dumb apps were floating around for Windows 7x32 and x64

    • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      0.69% (nice) on windows 7 64bit. That’s 0.75% total or 0.91% including windows 8 which is also dying. This is slightly under half of the linux user base according to these statistics

      • labsin@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        I think the 1.91 also includes the stream deck, but for some reason it isn’t included in the list (it is included if you select only Linux). It is about 5.5x Arch so around 0.8% of the total installs.

        So the discontinue versions are around the same number as Linux desktop installs.

  • randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    I’m pretty sure that this is because steam uses chromium as its backend and chromium new version doesn’t run on windows 7. It’s still not good because there are some games that won’t run on newer systems and therefore 7 is required for preservation.

    As many of you pointed out, yes I agree proton is the answer if possible. YMMV

    • TJA!@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      But steam has > 100 million active users. Even if it is less than 1%, it still is a huge number

  • Arthur_Leywin@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    All these people saying “use this or use that distro instead” is why Windows users don’t go into Linux. Ubuntu is a solid choice for beginners because that’s a distro with a lot of tutorials online if not the most.

  • Krafty Kactus@sopuli.xyz
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    9 months ago

    There’s a bit of controversy regarding Ubuntu that I don’t need to get into but Fedora and Pop!_OS are also really good for Proton support. Ubuntu will work fine but I just prefer not to use it. Maybe you could let him try out the live environment for a couple distros to see what he might like in terms of UI.

    • Fal@yiffit.net
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      9 months ago

      All of those are still ancient systems. Arch or opensuse tumbleweed are the only systems that are reasonable for a desktop because they’re rolling releases

      • The Hobbyist@lemmy.zip
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        9 months ago

        Fedora is still pretty frequently and recently up to date with respect to packages and kernel, not sure you’d be losing much over arch.

        But the debate to me is also not that important, I’ve been running fedora and have at some few occasions gotten some instabilities due to updates (mostly Nvidia with Wayland) so I can totally understand someone wanting stability and reliability over bleeding edge).

      • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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        9 months ago

        I don’t know about vanilla Arch, but on Manjaro each update breaks at least one thing. I never had issues with Mint. I wonder if I’d still get more stability from Mint if I installed Plasma on it. Anyway, I already got used to AUR and not having to deal with version upgrades. But I still wouldn’t recommend Arch-based distros when stability is needed.

        • Fal@yiffit.net
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          9 months ago

          This hasn’t really been true with arch for years. As long as you update reasonably frequently. I haven’t had a breaking issue in ages.

          What were the issues you had that broke things?

          • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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            9 months ago

            Usually LibreOffice has issues. That could be because I use libreoffice-still as opposed to fresh. Then there’s often file and dependency conflicts requiring manual intervention. The latter is usually documented here, I think, if it’s expected. Oh, and protonvpn is absolutely broken every single time.

            A little unrelated, but how come we’re successfully federating with yiffit.net? We currently have broken outgoing federation. I checked sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemmy.dbzer0.com and none of those show content from us anymore.

    • Sparking@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      That also helps linux. Tried watching something on someone else’s peacock account logged into Linux, and got an error. Checked Google to see if it was available. A free site had it, in better quality streaming too! We ended up using her computer, but I was kind of amazed.

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Windows 12 may end up being my transition to Linux, especially if they go for a subscription model. If you told me just a decade ago that Linux was a viable OS for gaming, I would have laughed at you.

    Valve have outdone themselves with Proton. So have those who worked on DXVK and VKD3D.

  • ekZepp@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    To be fair, he could simply pay 5 bucks for a key and switch to Windows 10 or 11. Linux should be something people choose to try firsthand for a while before moving on.

  • vexikron@lemmy.zip
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    9 months ago

    Aha, just popping in here to suggest taking a look at PopOS!

    Proton works extremely well on it, its compatible out of the box with everything Debian based (this includes Ubuntu) so it has a huge selection of free software, has great documentation for the PopOS! specific stuff and for all the debian/ubuntu stuff you can nearly always use older wikis on the internet if you run into a snag, and its got a custom DE that I personally find better than KDE and Ubuntu’s latest rendition if GNOME.

    Also, while Ubuntu is going hard into Snaps, which I hate, PopOS! is going into flatpaks, which are less bad than snaps, but still stupid imo.

    If you care, its fairly easy to disable and/or remove flatpaks from PopOS. It doesnt come with any preloaded afaik, so all you have to do is go into the PopShop (the app store) settings and just remove the flatpak source.

    Ive run Proton on Steam via debian sources on PopOS! for years, works fine.

    Oh right! I am fairly sure that PopOS! nowadays just comes by default with graphics drivers pre-installed and preset to automatically update with the rest of your software when you run sudo apt update. All you have to do is pick the Nvidia ISO if youve got Nvidia, or the standard one if youve got AMD.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    9 months ago

    Why not Linux mint? It is way more use friendly.

    Also why on earth is anyone using windows 7 in 2023. I stopped using it to move to Linux back in 2016

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 months ago

      I do, in VirtualBox. I have a 20 year old printer, and the drivers don’t work in newer Windows versions. I mean, at all. The installer crashes, and automatic driver installer only gets the scanner working.

      Anyway, I don’t use Windows. It works on Linux. Kinda. In Linux Mint, I just can’t use high DPI, but I can scan, print, and see “remaining ink” just fine.
      Manjaro is another story. Only “Normal Grayscale” works, hp-toolbox doesn’t even show the color cartridge. So I just use Windows 7 with the drivers as the heaviest printer driver ever.

      But when I have to use Windows (e.g.: at school), I prefer Windows 7. Windows 10/11 have really weird control, and they are SLOW. Also, when installing Windows 10 onto school computers, nobody bothered to install drivers.
      I like the ThinkPad T440s laptops that are in one class. But after upgrade to Windows 10 they have some battery charging issues, and some of them just fail to boot from time-to-time. I use the last one with Windows 7 because it just works.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        9 months ago

        You really should not be using Windows 7. If you need to for old software make sure it is isolated and doesn’t have network access. It is very insecure at this point.