[barrotes]

My parents (both over 80) daily use Linux Mint for a decade now. They don't know it, simply last time we bought them a PC I put it there, explained how to open the web browser, play solitaire/FreeCell/whatever other game they like, how to shut it down etc. I live in another city and I almost never had to adjust anything there in all these years, differently on what happened when they had windows (they unknowingly installed a lot of spyware and bloatware, I had to clean it up periodically).

Still, for me this is one of the few experiments that went well, probably because the only "complex" need they have is a web browser. Now if a friend (not a technical one) needs a new computer advice I tell him to buy a second-hand MacBook and enjoy. No one ever complained (in fact all compliment me for the choice). The vast majority of users is not like my parents, has some specific needs, like they need Microsoft Office, or Photoshop, or they play on PC and still don't want to face the challenges you need to overcome if you want to do everything with Linux. I would never use MacOS on my PC (not because it's not good, just because I'm a FOSS maniac), but it's the perfect operating system for casual users and even for many power users. The only rule I adopt for OS advice is "avoid Windows unless you are actually forced to use it (gaming, specific legacy programs etc)".

[monsieurbanana]

Agree on all points, except regarding games. Via Steam and Proton, gaming on Linux is now better than Mac.

[gryn]

The gaming part is still windows. With all these kernel level access rootkit anti-cheat games, online games are a pain

[scheeseman486]

That's the only major roadblock left, rip out the anti-cheat stuff and the games generally work. I'm not sure how Valve could address this without people getting angry. They could eventually leverage their immutable rootfs setup to enable attestation of the system stack and run the games in security hardened containers?

[keyringlight]

My feeling is that Valve's approach via using wine/proton is pragmatic in terms of getting something that works for them and reduces how much they're held hostage to windows, but it's a missed opportunity to go further and decouple PC gaming from windows. As it stands they are downstream of whatever MS does to the 'reference' platform and how developers use it (because that's where the majority of users are).

I'd love to see what would happen if a consortium was formed to take responsibility for gaming on the PC platform, and I wouldn't be surprised if MS wouldn't mind abdicating maintenance especially if their xbox fortunes have waned and there's less mutual benefit for them.

[bonton89]

Valve basically tried the later approach with the initial Steam for linux push which included steam machines and the steam controller. It did have some level of initial success but clearly had lost momentum and the developer support it had seemed to fade after a few years. There were quite a few direct ports during that time though. I think they would have preferred that approach but ultimately decided it was a bridge to far.

[account42]

They didn't put a fraction of the effort into Steam Machines that they have put in the Linux ecosystem since then.

[doubled112]

Wouldn’t this hypothetical consortium need to be made up of fairly large players?

As in Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, and friends?

I’d imagine they’re pretty happy with the status quo.

[Arch-TK]

If linux gaming requires you use a blessed immutable OS where everything you run is either unprivileged or signed by a central entity, it's not much better than just using Windows at that point.

Kernel level anti cheat is a failure. You need to control the hardware to do it properly. The only hope is to wait for less locally intrusive and more robust anti cheat solutions.

Basically the only possible solutions at this point lie in the AI space.

[scheeseman486]

> If linux gaming requires you use a blessed immutable OS where everything you run is either unprivileged or signed by a central entity, it's not much better than just using Windows at that point.

Yes it is, given that unlike Windows you still ultimately know what code being executed on your computer and have some degree of control over it.

Should add, this isn't necessarily something I want, lucky for me I don't really play the games that require anti-cheat. But it is something that Valve could conceivably do.

[Arch-TK]

You have as much control over it as you do over windows in this state: i.e. uninstalling the OS.

Just because you know what the base is doing, doesn't mean you get to see what the proprietary kernel level drivers, loaded at runtime, are doing.

Really it's effectively as good as having windows and running an open source web browser, or an open source kernel driver. It doesn't change the fact that your computer is being fundamentally controlled by components you can't change, some/many of which are also proprietary.

[advael]

Jokes

I think there are three fundamental categories of cheating threat models that actually matter: State poisoning, Information leakage, and Input automation

State poisoning means your game was poorly written, period. Either that's a vuln within the code itself or badly implemented netcode. A 2-player game can have total asynchronous client separation and still be peer-to-peer. A more-than-two-player game is almost always run on a server that serves as the single source of truth. In either case, a game that doesn't make the fundamental guarantee that the inputs available to a player and maybe some initial random seeds are the sole determinant of the gamestate have no hope, and rootkitting your computer because they wrote their game's statemachine or interfaces like shit is not the correct solution. If your answer to this is that big game studios shouldn't have to learn how to write more solid code, this means that the sanctity of their game isn't that important to them, not that they should get to root your computer

Information leakage may be somewhat harder. Often you want the simulation to be running client-side, so a naive model of netplay would have the full state available to all clients from a technical perspective... but this doesn't have to be true. In most cases, you can do partial state with rollbacks to make it much harder to cheat from a technical perspective, even making no guarantees about the clients themselves. I think even when this is hard, the correct path here isn't rootkits, it's approaches that start to approximate zero-knowledge proofs. This also means there's a rich literature of zero-knowledge proofs to draw on

Input automation, to be honest, is basically hopeless to prevent upfront regardless of what you do. If you can plug external hardware into your device at all, you can rig up something that automates your inputs. This can be hard to even verify in person, let alone through even a rootkit. I don't personally think it's worth worrying about that much, but if you care about macros and the like, it's really difficult to prevent. However, if there's money on the line or something, there are good analytic forensic techniques to detect this kind of cheating after the fact. Maybe this is where "AI" could actually help, as some kind of sequence-based anomaly detection that can run in real time might be able to detect unusual input clusters, but I worry that the false positive rate is going to be super high. Honestly seems like a lost cause. But crucially, not a lost cause that you get around via compromising the OS at a kernel level

Anti-cheat that "needs to own your kernel" is more user-hostile corporate bullshit. Most games work fine on linux, but frankly no game is worth a rootkit, and no game needs one. The fact that some companies demand it should be viewed as those companies trying to scam you. That's not how the security of anything on the internet works. It's only how security of a bunch of mobile stuff works because Microsoft has trained generations of otherwise smart people to believe their total lies about security, and Google and Apple have taken advantage of this to secure a massive amount of control and surveillance over everyone who owns a smartphone (Which is increasingly required because they've also convinced people that fake 2FA that's just your phone as a single source of identity that can in fact often effectively be 1FA because it can override other authentication methods in most cases is somehow secure. The fact that everyone has a device with a bunch of proprietary backdoors that they don't have root on and that serves as a single lynchpin through which their life can be ruined is the most fundamental destruction of personal computer and identity security that's ever been realized - to say nothing of privacy, and that's a huge accomplishment given all that Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon have done and still do to compete for the title)

Giving a corp a backdoor to your computer doesn't secure anything except that corp's ability to fuck with you. Don't believe Microsoft, Apple, Epic Games, The NSA, or anyone else who tells you that the best way to secure something is to give them a backdoor. Fuck all those people. They have not only gotten their slimy tendrils in a ton of people's stuff through these lies, but have propagated bad information about how to do security to a ton of organizations. If someone who works at one of these scummy companies or agencies responds to this with some condescending corp-speak at me, I've got a bunch of work to do so I'll probably not get to you immediately, but I pre-emptively say that making this argument at all fundamentally undermines your credibility, and also I hate you on a personal level. You've been a spook too long and it's rotted your brain, hypothetical internet stranger who might not even exist, quit your job and fix your heart

Basically, don't believe any of this "We have to own your computer for your own good" nonsense. That's a scam. Every time. Also, proprietary software should be assumed inherently insecure by default, not the other way around. A better world is possible

[Arch-TK]

The reason companies seem to bother at this point is that, by implementing increasingly intrusive anti-cheat, they force cheaters to be increasingly subtle. With sufficiently intrusive anti-cheat you end up with gamers believing that the game they're playing has no cheaters.

This currently happens in at least some of the games which utilise kernel level anti cheat, as demonstrated by numerous videos on the topic which also shed light on massive communities of cheaters who just end up buying or making their own hardware based cheats.

[RandomGuy45678]

I bit of anger or at least disappointment in your post. However, "The fact that everyone has a device with a bunch of proprietary backdoors that they don't have root on and that serves as a single lynchpin through which their life can be ruined is the most fundamental destruction of personal computer and identity security that's ever been realized" is completely true.

Biggest scam ever!!!

[DEADMINCE]

> Basically, don't believe any of this "We have to own your computer for your own good" nonsense. That's a scam. Every time.

Not really. It's all they can do to stop PC gamers cheating without having control of the hardware.

[gryn]

my problem with them is that they open room to a lot of risk when the dev fuckup and they don't even work. plenty of motivated cheaters bypass them you can even find tutorial on youtube for that. that mean they only make the experience worse for linux user.

They shouldn't exist, yet here we are.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

The solution to that is dedicated/community servers not stronger cheat prevention.

[HeckFeck]

The Anti cheat stuff along with some graphical glitches on some games (namely the original Deus Ex, ancient I know but I love it) meant I couldn't fully commit to Steam on Linux. But booting up the Master Chief Collection and signing into Xbox live to play Halo 3 on Linux at better framerates than Windows really tickled my sense of irony, what a feat they've managed!

And I also miss community maintained dedicated servers, with some opinionated admin who boots off cheaters. I don't like installing the kernel-level anti cheat stuff even on Windows, it is no better than that Sony BMG rootkit that kicked up a storm years ago, now we just accept it in the rear for some reason. Centralisation ruins everything.

[DEADMINCE]

Community servers can't offer strong cheat protection. If you can modify the client then you can cheat most of the time, and the server can't necessarily do anything.

[DEADMINCE]

> rip out the anti-cheat stuff and the games generally work

Yeah, that's called piracy. The ant-cheat stuff isn't going anywhere, and even without it plenty of games require DirectX which has no Linux equivalent.

[scheeseman486]

It isn't piracy, anti-cheat technically isn't DRM. Many games let you disable it for the purpose of running mods. Even Halo: Master Chief Collection, a Microsoft game, has concessions made by the developer so that it works properly on Linux given anti-cheat is disabled (they've mentioned it in patch updates).

Judging by the second bit in your post there I guess you haven't been paying much attention to gaming in the Linux space in the last 6 years or so, lol.

[DEADMINCE]

Ripping out the DRM absolutely is piracy, and it's the only way to do it since the companies themselves are not doing it.

Anti-cheat absolutely is DRM, a lot of the time. It explicitly uses DRM tech from companies that make DRM technologies. At the very least I guess if we want to be precise we could say DRM is often a component of anti-cheat technologies even if anti-cheat isn't explicitly DRM.

I've been paying attention to the gaming space, and I know it still sucks unless you use Steam and Proton (which can't be used without Steam). Valve even pretty much gave up on their console because the developer support just isn't there.

And like I said, DirectX is still a big deal.

[barrotes]

I'm not up on gaming on Linux because I'm not a gamer (in last 12 months I played no more than 10 hours for that Stellantis game I found on Steam because it's natively compatible with Linux, and never tried emulation/whatever in last decade), so I guess you're right. But usually the need for advanced games is one of the (few) reasons that I consider enough to "allow" a friend to install Windows instead of going for MacOS. Anyway I'll try to catch up a bit about the state of the art of Linux gaming, just to give an alternative to anyone that seeks for any kind of help in that.

[lynguist]

Same, same. My sister uses the same Ubuntu LTS laptop with Google Chrome since 2013. Has only issues with Word documents and printing, and she also found she can’t backup her iPhone to the computer. Besides that nothing.

She still uses it, does the dist upgrade and never changed anything or broke anything for the past 11 years.

And I also disagree with the article. I bought a new laptop in 2011, installed Windows 8 on it and used it semi-regularly until 2019, I also never upgraded from Windows 8. I also had no issues at all. I only have computer issues if for example corporate manages my laptop.

[DEADMINCE]

I think it's weird/lucky that you had such luck recommending macs - most of my non-technical friends just find them confusing and unintuitive, and it's not because they were only used to windows or something.

As for Linux just working untouched...doesn't mean it doesn't have problems or is secure. I've seen plenty of older people use their browser fine after not running updates for years.

[graemep]

Linux is more of a nuisance to set up, although that can be mitigated by buying hardware with Linux pre-installed. I just did (although I ended up reinstalling because I changed my mind about what distro I wanted).

Once installed it is a lot less troublesome.

I think there are a lot of users like your parents than you think. I think you are right about artists using Photoshop, and gamers wanting the full range of games, but I know Windows small business users who use LibreOffice. A lot of my clients use MS Office, Teams and other MS stuff and I have no problems working with them.

[barrotes]

I think that for the "casual user" distros (like Mint) the set up problem is not an issue if you can choose the PC before. For eventual friends that want Linux I always tell them to find a second-hand T-series ThinkPad. They have a fairly large second-hand market where you can buy one for even 200/300€, they are solid laptops (at least the old generations...), they fully support Linux. Sometimes someone arrives with an old entry level laptop that "doesn't work anymore" (translated: it suffers with Windows) and in those case it might happen that you need to to some tricks to make everything work, but these are usually just post-installation procedures, nothing to worry about after everything is set up.

[Mo3]

I mean... nuisance... maybe 10 years ago or if you try to install Arch from source, but nowadays the big distros all have very nice and beginner friendly installers. Totally on par with Windows, if not even more user friendly because you don't have to deal with forced logins and navigating dark patterns.

[ozzcer]

Yea Linux distros are beating out windows now. I trying popOS at the moment and the install process was a couple of clicks. No assistant screaming up me, no internet connection required. Beautiful.

[seba_dos1]

At first glance "10 years ago" seemed right, but then I did the math and it's more like 20 years ago. 10 years ago there was Steam, Plasma 5, Dell sold Linux laptops and Unity has been the default in Ubuntu for a few years already. Time flies.

[rldjbpin]

I had similar luck with another flavor of the distro. but things get complicated with handling files, like opening word files.

I had to switch out due to display drivers, anti-cheat and specific professional applications. we need more work on desktop use in linux just like there is attention to detail on linux for servers and windows/macos for desktop use.

[cykros]

Been on Slackware for over a decade, other linuxen for decades since 2000. Did end up getting a Windows laptop for power usage of Excel, which it's the only thing that'll run, but otherwise don't know why anyone puts up with all the BS that comes with it as a primary system. I'm far too lazy for all that.

[bmitc]

> The only rule I adopt for OS advices is "avoid Windows

Why?

[aniviacat]

Windows is a lot slower than linux, and poses significant hardware requirements. Many people will have to / already have replaced their system in order to be able to run Windows 11. (Windows 11 doesn't even support first gen Ryzen CPUs.)

Linux usually supports hardware for a very long time.

Since (for whatever reason) Microsoft hasn't figured out how to make its store actually useable, Windows users have to download (most of) their apps via the browser. That's not just a lot of effort, it also vastly increases the amount of adware/malware non-technical people download and install.

On linux, installing apps is a breeze; the stores are actually good.

Disk encryption hasn't been an option on (non-pro) Windows until very recently. This means someone who steals your laptop has access to all the data stored on the device.

Linux supported disk encryption since forever.

I could go on. Windows is lacking in various ways.

The only benefit Windows enjoys is being the most used operating system. It is therefore more likely that you're already familiar with Windows and that that specific app you want to use or your employer wants you to use runs only on Windows. (Most notably: Adobe Software, MS Office Software, Video Games.)

The core benefit of using Windows is not even a part of Windows.

[danmur]

Heres a few:

* The UI is slow (compared to linux/gnome and osx).

* There are ads in it.

* There is a lot of unnecessary telemetry.

* Viruses, malware.

* No good first-party packaging solution.

* Real linux > WSL.

* I could go on.

[rob74]

Newest item to add to your list:

* Recall

[Aerroon]

* (some?) LLMs run better on Linux than Windows - some people report a 50% improvement in tokens/sec.

[DEADMINCE]

A lot of that is nonsense. Only the ads and telemetry are issues, recent issues at that.

- The UI is emphatically not slow and is faster than the most popular DEs,

- Viruses and malware have not really been an issue in a decade and Windows has significantly better security than Linux at the moment,

- The Microsoft store is a first party packaging solution frequently used

- Real Windows > WINE

There are problems and issues to be sure, but technically it's actually very sound.

[timw4mail]

The Windows 11 UI is slow. The Settings app in particular is stupid slow.

[barrotes]

I use it on my "corporate job" PC because our architecture is based on .NET and we are still forced to adopt it (at least until we'll definitely pass to .NET Core becoming a bit more agnostic). All I can say is that it's... overwhemingly slow... and it gets progressively slower while times goes on. Every time I install something new that I need it occupies more RAM and I'm forced to control it periodically opening the task manager and killing tray bar processes. People can say "well you could be more careful while installing stuff" but the point is that I am. Moreover the majority of times I need stuff I let the corporate sysadmins to install it on my machine. Options to avoid programs being invasive are hidden, you need to search everywhere to understand how to, let's say, avoid Microsoft Teams to load on OS boot. Someone should explain to me how it's possible that my forklift notebook is a T450 with a 9 years old 15W TDP i5 CPU with Arch Linux installed, and Firefox opens in 2 seconds, and my corporate PC is a fucking stove with a 45W i7 recent CPU and Firefox needs at least 10 seconds to open. And if I, a self-considered kind-of-technical dude, have issues in keeping a work computer clean (so without any game or "casual" program installed), imagine what happens to my less-skilled friend who likes games and needs cracked Photoshop: he will inexorably seek for help from me after things go progressively bad. It happened few months ago with a friend. I took his old T450 (another one) I made him buy to have a PC (now it's my second debian server). Now he has a second-hand MacBook and he's never been so happy. Can't be sure that MacOS actually works better because I avoid it too, but at least people are happy and (I assume) tries to solve their eventual problems alone.

[neonsunset]

Why can’t you use Rider? Are you on .NET Framework?

[barrotes]

Yes our platform is developed on .NET Framework, adopts Microsoft SQL-server and it's deployed on IIS servers. These are old company choices related to legacy support for some customers that we (the "new" generation developers) are slowly pushing away with the help of system administrators. But till then I need to have a copy of the architecture on my laptop for debug/test. Of course things could be improved i.e. with a Windows Server VM into a linux PC, but with colleagues we try to keep stuff on our machines as much similar as possible to avoid conflicts.

[neonsunset]

That's unfortunate for 2024, doubly so as you can have .NET 8 ASP.NET Core application that would launch for local dev loop using Kestrel, but then get deployed and plug into IIS with ANCM, I did run at some point into the fact that as the time goes on, the ecosystem diverges further and more packages that used to target .NET FW become unmaintained requiring more rewrite work.

[thriftwy]

VFAT patent enforcement was sufficient to declare a permanent personal vendetta against MS.

Needless to say MS did half dozen such things during the 00s.

[bmitc]

So basically irrelevant reasons in 2024.

[the_third_wave]

Yes, that dog there did bite your brother and sister and cousin and neighbour but that is months ago so basically irrelevant reasons in 2024. Go on, give it a hug.

[bmitc]

Right. Becuase Apple has never, gasp, done anything anti-competitive or shot down open standards.

[the_third_wave]

What does Apple have to do with this? Also why not mention Google, or Samsung, or Huawei or any other supplier of something which resembles an operating environment?

The article is about Linux so it's assumed the alternative to whatever Microsoft tries to push is found there, not at the Fruit Factory or the Googleplex or the CCP.

[yownie]

What your point here exactly?

They are both shit companies who peddle shit and anyone with half a brain would be wise to steer clear.

[kstenerud]

Oh god, Windows is a maintenance nightmare!

Every time I'd speak to some relative, the conversation would invariably turn to "Can you do something about my computer? It's so slow!"

And then I'd go take a look and find it riddled with spyware and bloatware and a thousand million processes running in the background that actively try to undermine uninstalling this garbage. I mean, why the hell does a MOUSE DRIVER require 2GB of space??? And the virus scanners - these are the worst offenders of all!

Linux is a smaller market with fewer threat actors. It's not being pushed into an advertising platform. It runs everything that 90% of computer users want. I can trust most distributions to keep things light and snappy.

It's just no contest when it comes to non-tech-savvy people. Linux makes it all so much better once you get it going. I wouldn't install it on someone's laptop, though (unless the laptop was specifically designed for it). If they want a laptop, macbook.