Screw it, I'm installing Linux

Community forums/support from big companies like Microsoft and Adobe tend to be completely useless. In most cases, all threads follow the same flow:

* Question with reasonable amount of detail.

* A reply from some "Community Helper" (Rank: Gold): "did you try reading the help files?"

* Another person with a "Staff" badge: "this isn't our department"

[Thread closed.]

> either Microsoft or Adobe issues

Please run sfc /scannow closes topic

Both MS and Adobe's forums are a complete joke, LLMs give better support than their respective "communities."

For sure. Despite its reputation, troubleshooting is much easier on Linux than on commercial OSes. It's not even close.

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I'm one of those weird people that has been on Linux so long (wow, like over 2 decades now) I quite literally don't remember how to use Windows - even though I cut my teeth on it in the 90's. I dabble on the Mac to a moderate degree, but I'm just mostly comfortable on Linux, despite more BS than one would prefer. The benefits certainly outweigh the downsides (for most purposes), especially if you're technical enough to be self-sufficient.

When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable?

If I wasn't super tech savvy, I can see why people would pay the absurd Mac tax - just throw money at the problem enough to make it go away.

Very curious what kept you on 8.1.

Windows 8.1 in 2024? Why? You have Win10 which is miles better if you needed Windows.

Is it bad? SteamOS is an Arch based and extremely user friendly gaming-focused distro.

Agreed. I'm surprised by the amount of Linux newcomers being directed toward these weird, specialized derivatives that have existed >2 years.

After some uni class at a conference room, back in 2006, there was a Linux hackathon/demo-y thingy outside where there were people showing off Compiz, the cube and that kind of stuff. Of course my noob ass was impressed with that - you can switch windows a 3d cube? That's amazing! That's the future! I want to try that!

So they were kind enough to give each one of us a Ubuntu 5.10 CD, one of those from back then when Canonical shipped free Ubuntu CDs to people around the world completely for free.

I can recall poking around that brown-y Gnome 2.x and feeling cozyness, like feeling at home. Everything felt transparent and humble and honest, from the desktop wallpaper, the icons and the typography to the tone the help pages were written. You could feel the ubuntu on it. It really felt like it was made for human beings.

The computer no longer felt like a dark box that only let you do things your license let you to do and if you dared to look at other direction, ever so slightly, things could go insanely wrong.

Granted, I didn't had internet at home back then (and wouldn't have it until late 2008 via a crappy 3G modem) so after nuking the Windows XP install and tried install it, also nuked the partition where I had all my uni docs and stuff and, defeated, had to go back to Windows via a pirate copy - until I had enough spare time to go learn what I did wrong and try again. Never went back ever since.

Things have changed a bit - Ubuntu is not what it what it used to be, I am not who I used to be (ended being a graphic designer) and not even the internet itself is not what it what it used to be - but I'm glad human creations like Linux still exist.

Nvidia's Linux software is first rate -- actually a large amount of the software that would merit buying an Nvidia graphics card is Linux-only anyway. I actually briefly had an AMD card but ended up giving it away since it didn't support ~any of the projects I needed to work on. But YMMV, my anecdata is from a ML engineering perspective.