Linux

Delightful cover

lol. I was on windows 11 for all of about 2 days. Holy shit that shit is fucked. Installed Fedora, and all is well again.

This could mean that it's the year of thy Linux desktop 🤔

It's in the best interest of these publications to promote the Linux operating system. Windows and Mac OS X is hostile to the user, to the very idea of computing and freedom. They are unapologetically monopolistic in nature. They need to be stopped.

For reference on how this is different (and how it's not) to previous instances, here's mainstream-AF PC World magazine in February 2020:

Windows 7 was understandable before; now it’s a liability. With no security updates and a still-vast market share, Microsoft’s operating system will be a big, juicy target for hackers.

We recommend migrating to Windows 10 if you’re able to, and have a guide explaining your Windows 10 upgrade options (go.pcworld.com/10up) . If you perform only basic tasks on your PC—email, web surfing, and documents—then Linux is a viable, user-friendly option these days. We’ve got a Linux beginner’s guide (go. pcworld.com/lnxg), too, and better yet you can try it for free with no risk to your main Windows 7 installation.

You can probably still upgrade to Windows 10 for free (see page 103), too.

I don't have APC's issue on hand, but if anybody wants to share how that compares, do go ahead.

For some additional reference: https://vivaldi.com/blog/replace-windows-7-with-linux/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/01/14/windows-7-support-ends-today-here-are-your-options/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-and-how-to-replace-windows-7-with-linux-mint/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHBBN0CqXk

Short term history is so fun and so weird.

Windows 7 was a beautifully simple yet versatile OS capable of running on some really weak hardware with little overhead. Windows 11 by comparison is a bloated monster that demands too many resources for mandatory background processes and wants to get its tentacles into every facet of your privacy.

Gaming, simple office tasks, and web browsing work really well in Linux for the common layman. The next big hurdle is to offer some more niche programs that are easy to work with.

I spent my whole weekend trying and failing to set up ZoneMinder, Motion, Shinobi, then finally ContaCam through WINE in an effort to make a simple air gapped security camera system in Linux Mint installed on a 13 year old laptop. I struggled through countless command lines trying very hard to understand what each one does, Time shifted a dozen times through installation failures, and I still couldn't get it done. The best I could do was unintentionally turn on my webcam after somehow managing to install Motion without then being able to access its functionality through a solely console based interface.

I wanted to gift this laptop to my tech illiterate mom and give her peace of mind that no one was sneaking around in front of her house. Linux failed me on this if I couldn't even set up the software on my own, let alone my mom if she'd have to learn how to use a terminal to make it work. I wanted it to work so bad but the learning curve and difficulty to figure out why a PPA command failed after following an old and likely out of date guide had no workaround since support is so scarce. Old YouTube video guides with a couple hundred views offered no hints when a line I followed verbatim didn't work in my setup. As midnight was fast approaching I finally threw in the towel and set up Windows 7 with ContaCam running in less than 2 hours.

Devs for Linux need to do better. If they want their OS of choice to get more mainstream then they need to develop for more mainstream users. A lot of these nittty gritty setup configurations need to be moved to the background with greater reliability and cross distro functionality. I get that there are things like Software Center that offer flatpaks have at least some ease of use when it comes to installing software, but the point is lost when some of that software doesn't actually run or even appear anywhere after installing, like ZoneMinder.