The ELI5 version is that developers can make a lot of assumptions about what a Windows pc means and what features are available. A while ago if you had videos as part of a game (for example a cutscene) it was actually played through Windows Media Player, which was virtually guaranteed to be present on the user’s computer. Sure you can play that video with other tools like VLC or Quicktime, but you couldn’t guarantee they were installed, so Windows Media Player was a safe bet. Nowadays that’s not how video is handled but the point remains for a few other things. For example if I need to load an image, maybe a background, I would look it up using the windows filesystem, so probably something like C:\Program Files\Steam\common\mygame\images\background.png. That’s not the same in the Linux or another os. Also the piece of software that handles loading images might be different, which means how we execute that load operation is probably different, and so our Windows-focused version of our game just doesn’t work.

Fortunately nowadays that’s a mostly solved problem with Steam investing a lot of time into Proton, what they call a “compatibility layer” that basically translates all of the windows-specific stuff to work in Linux. That’s a very simplified explanation but you get the idea. The games that still won’t run have kernel-level anticheat (Valorant, Helldivers 2) or are so dependent on things only available on Windows that even Proton can’t fix it. Some anti-cheat software doesn’t run properly so then you can’t go online, like Warhammer: Vermintide 2. That’s mostly a commercial decision rather than technical, they could make it work they just choose not to.

The issue for me as a potential advocate to my immediate circle of friends and family is that I don’t want to become the only source of tech support. Now realistically they’ll probably have fewer issues, but as soon as they want to fix something they’ll have to come to me. No they won’t Google things, and if they do they won’t understand it.

Well after looking further it’s actually the processor isn’t supported in general so Linux it is! It’s going to be a hard sell to my partner who doesn’t like using office 365 on the browser because “it screws up templates”. If even Microsoft’s tools screw up I can’t imagine libre office would do any better so that’s an even harder sell… Sigh.

I think my limiting factor is TPM 2.0 which I believe isn’t supported by the device but is required by windows 11

In my case my partner has a Windows 10 surface laptop. It’s perfectly functional and does what she needs it to do, but Windows 10 is dying next year, so I need to find some solution that is user friendly (meaning GUI-based in this case) to maintain her access to her OneDrive, or we throw away a perfectly good laptop to buy a slightly newer one. Besides the e-waste it’s just a waste of money. It makes some business sense, why make it easy to move away from windows? Except it also sucks on anything that isn’t a windows desktop, so they just expect people to put up with a subpar service essentially because their business users don’t have much choice. Dropbox was better 10 years ago than OneDrive is now, in terms of platform availability and usability.

Note: I’m aware we can access OneDrive and office via a browser, however it’s not the same as native and feels clunky. Throwing Linux on it and using a browser is probably going to be our solution if I can’t get rclone to work in a way she’ll be happy with.

Honestly I think it would play into the “Trump is fighting the elites” narrative far too well, and would probably be celebrated. “America is so great we don’t even need those other countries, how dare they insult our President for life?”

I think you’re always going to have issues installing an OS yourself versus using a laptop (or other device) with an OS installed already. The hardware issues should be resolved for you which gets rid of some of the issues others have raised like missing wireless card drivers. Having said that, the issues you hit are pretty common to anyone moving to a new OS like “how do I install software?”. I remember using macOS for the first time and finding the “mount a DMG file and drag it to the applications folder” completely unintuitive and someone had to tell me that was how it was done. There’s always a barrier to entry and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that Linux requires more from the user than other OSes. However I think we’re seeing some solid efforts from companies like System76 and Tuxedo to make Linux more accessible. Hell the Steam Deck is fantastic and the fact it’s Linux is almost completely hidden from you (until of course you come across a game you can’t play, thanks Warhammer Vermintide 2).

In short I disagree with some of the other comments that imply some failing on your part or on tech illiterate people. Every OS has problems, and Linux’s biggest problem is getting people past the painful stages of adoption which you just power through if you’ve bought a new device. I will agree with others saying their windows experiences are worse than modern Linux but then we’re probably a bit biased!

The self-contained electron app works better for most people I think.

Ah yes, the Keir Starmer school of winning elections.

I believe it’s 1% for access to the “entire post-open ecosystem”, rather than 1% per project which would be unreasonable. So you could use one or thousands of projects under the Post-open banner, but still pay 1%.

It will take years to develop the post-open ecosystem to be something worth spending that much on.

Also chromosome tests aren’t a foolproof indication of sex anyway. People can have one set or another while still having the properties associated with the other sex, so it doesn’t really work as a definitive measure. The question is reasonable until you examine it and it’s motives.

The question subtly suggests that if she had a Y chromosome then she has some biological advantage and therefore doesn’t deserve the medal she earned. Does she actually have an advantage from the Y chromosome? Are we going to ensure through DNA testing that all competitors are going to be exactly equal by genetics? If so, we’re going to have 8 clones of Usain Bolt competing for the 100m sprint. Michael Phelps arguably had a biological advantage by having hyper flexible shoulders, are we disqualifying those biological advantages? Of course not, so what do they actually mean when asking those questions about the chromosome? They don’t have meaningful answers to the questions I raise, they just want to add fuel to the fires of the culture war for their own political means.

This really got me, thank you!

I for one am frequently so close to my very good friends that my nose is pressed against theirs, my eyes only able to see theirs, the world not existing around us, while discussing in a platonic way how their day is going.

Yes I should have said “employed full-time” probably. This also doesn’t account for the self-employed who have to manage it themselves too rather than having their employer do it.

If you’re British and employed your employer is legally required to provide a private pension I believe. You also get a state pension if you’ve been paying national insurance (most people will get this taken out of pay cheques before you ever see the money, same as income tax). Some employers offer “matching contributions” up to a certain amount. For example if you decide you want to send £100 per month into your private pension, your employer will also do the same, so your pension gets £200. These contributions are tax free so it’s a tax-efficient way to save money when compared to privately investing where you’d have to invest from your income, which has already been taxed and then potentially have to pay capital gains tax on profits.

That works until all* games come with root level anti cheat. It was the same with micro transactions which people still defend despite being utter shit.

• Realistically this will never be 100% but it will be enough of the mass market AAA games like CoD etc to mean that if you functionally want to play a game made in the last X number of years you will need to accept this or stop playing games altogether. I think most people will continue to play games. Most people will continue to install root level anti cheat, knowingly or otherwise, and all of them will get fucked by an exploit of that software. They may never even know about it.

Helldivers 2 does the same thing. If this continues it will be extremely advisable to move any non-gaming use-cases to a different computer as you have no idea what the “anti-cheat” is doing with that level of authority over your computer.

Coming from a country that doesn’t have this sort of thing it’s really weird as an outside observer. Students have to swear allegiance to the flag every morning too which is the sort of thing I would imagine happens in north Korea or dictator states.

Literally just bought what I believe to be last generation’s X13 on ebay for half the price of the new one. It’s been great so far, especially with the power efficiency of Ryzen CPUs. My one complaint is the soldered RAM, which judging by the new lineup is getting phased out, thankfully.

My specific point here was about how this friend doesn’t trust the results AND still goes to Google/others to verify, so he’s effectively doubled his workload for every search.