Windows 11 is complete garbage

[paddler4]

AI needs to be banned.

A tad overstated, no? AI does a lot of things that are pernicious, granted. But would you ban the AI used in drug discovery? The AI that improves and speeds up interpretation of medical images?

Even in photography--since that's the subject of this forum--AI provides a lot of useful functions despite the damage that generative AI is doing. For example, Adobe's AI-based selection tools in both Lightroom and Photoshop allow me to make clean selections almost instantly that used to take me a lot of time and that often weren't as clean as what the software does automatically. That's one factor that is keeping me from switching to Linux.

 

[dpastern]

A tad overstated, no? AI does a lot of things that are pernicious, granted. But would you ban the AI used in drug discovery? The AI that improves and speeds up interpretation of medical images?

Even in photography--since that's the subject of this forum--AI provides a lot of useful functions despite the damage that generative AI is doing. For example, Adobe's AI-based selection tools in both Lightroom and Photoshop allow me to make clean selections almost instantly that used to take me a lot of time and that often weren't as clean as what the software does automatically. That's one factor that is keeping me from switching to Linux.

Yes, I should quantify things a bit better. AI in the OS. AI created artwork. AI that is self aware. Nothing good will come of the last thing and it will spell out destruction. OpenAI did a research paper around 8 months ago and it had 2 endings - 1 good and 1 well, not so good, with the extinction of the human species by 2031. Their previous predictions paper in 2023 was also eerily accurate on AI trends etc. No reason to believe that their 2025 paper won't be as accurate.

As Stephen Hawking said, AI will spell the end of humanity and our destruction. I trust in Stephen. After Einstein and Newton, probably the smartest man humanity has seen.

 

[dpastern]

BTW, Installed Debian 13 "Trixie" tonight. All done in 15 minutes, and this included waiting to download the packages from the net. Not a single issue, all went smooth. Spent 5 minutes customising Gnome 48. Looks beautiful, runs smoothly. Still more customisation to come, and more packages to install, but nothing particular untoward or difficult. Now if only Adobe would get with the times and port their products to Linux. Dell is already moving away from Windows 11 to Linux. General consensus from everything that I have seen is that Windows 11 is indeed garbage. It is not stable, runs poorly, mandates SecureBoot and TPM 2.0, has very high hardware requirements and is a memory hog, as well as disk hog. From what I have been able to see, Microsoft has lost ~12% market share since 2018 (mostly to Apple I will admit).

 

[dpastern]

Just an update on the Linux install - installed a bunch of apps last night to try out, some old, and familiar with, some new. Had a few issues, but that's more cos I'm using Debian than anything else. A more "user friendly" Linux distro like CachyOS or Linux Mint or Ubuntu would have meant many of the issues wouldn't have been a thing at all for me. Some not so highlights and frustrations:

Installing brew was a mongrel. The instructions were unclear, so of course, I tried installing it via SU and sudo, with errors. Took me a few goes to try installing it as a normal user and it worked. Really should be in the default Debian packages, but Debian is pretty strict on non-free sources, so...

I've never used sudoer before (well, I have with Ubuntu, but it was pre-configured). First time trying to configure it, since I'm old school and usually prefer switching to root via the SU command. I tried using:

sudo usermod -aG sudo david

and nothing happened. Checked the sudo config file and not in there. After a bunch of tries and some frustration, I checked "groups" and it showed my user account as a member of sudo. So, i tried sudo and it worked. Weird, not sure what was happening here.

I wanted to install the photogimp script for GIMP but had a few issues. cp command didn't behave like I remembered (cp -r /path/to/directory/* /path/to/destination". Ended up using the file manager to do it instead (all good, since it's in my ~ account anyways). It's another thing that should be in Debian's package repository but isn't. Using another distribution wouldn't see this issue.

I installed flatpak and then configured it (was pretty easy). Had to do some research on flatpak as I've never used it before either. Turns out you can install a package from the Debian repositories and also via flatpak and they don't conflict. Nice.

Installed the proprietary nvidia drivers, was a bit antsy about this since I haven't played with a kernel since ~2007 but was pretty easy in the end. Installed some dev tools and nvidia-detect and the linux headers for my kernel and et voila. A reboot after install and done.

1 thing that's a big issue is that Gnome (and Debian) use Wayland rather than X11 now. Wayland doesn't really have any colour management functionality it seems (at least according to the Argyll dev) and they're rather hostile about it all too. That doesn't surprise me about open source devs. I've had my dealings in the past with nasty devs and it's been a big issue with GNU/Linux adoption, along with the more experienced users "RTFM" attitudes. I'm not really a fan of new systems like Wayland or SystemD. SYS V and X11 weren't broken, but it seems Redhat and IBM are pushing this new stuff hard.

Wifi (via Intel AX200), sound and printing all worked out of the box. Very impressed, since these were flaky when I last used Linux as a Desktop in mid 2007. I switched back to Windows then for Photoshop. I used Debian at work for a good bunch of years (lvl 3 sysadmin for a small ISP), but it was obviously a server, not a workstation, so a very different experience.

All in all, I went with Gnome 48 this time around, despite being a long time KDE fan. Gnome just looks so sexy. Gnome tweaks and Gnome-extention-manager got it looking and working like I wanted. KDE just looks ugly and over-complicated to my eyes these days. I also like XFCE. LDM (with Wayland) caught my eye too looking at some screenshots, so I installed that too.

I liked the idea of CachyOS, but Arch system. I don't feel like learning a new package management system at my age. I like apt and dpkg.

 

[dpastern]

Forgot to install yt-dlp, was pretty easy. Installed via pipx and the Debian package is so old and won't work since Google are well, words I can't say on a public forum. Updated via pipx too, dead easy, although I'll have to remember the pipx commands and the installed path for yt-dlp in my ~ directory.

Also installed "ding" via gnome-extensions-manager, since I like having icons on my desktop.



I do wish that Gnome installed gnome-extension-manager by default as part of the Gnome desktop.

 

[dpastern]

Had a lot of problems getting the original Diablo to run. Tried Lutrix, failed saying it couldn't find wine, despite being installed. Some research suggested Heroic Games Launcher. Installed that, logged into my GOG account, and it downloaded the game without issue. On launch, Black screen and then an error at not being able to find the .mpq file. Enabled experimental Wayland support and got a garbled screen on the new version (not classic) but it was unplayable. Downloaded & installed DevilutionX and it worked, but the share version of the game (limited to the first 4 levels). Copied the .mpq file over from the heroic install path to the devilution file path and bingo! Mounted my secondary drive and copied my backup .sv files (save files) and re-tested and bingo, working. Now I can play my favourite game of all time on Linux. A happy boy is Dave.

 

[paddler4]

As a former Linux user, I have to say that your last several posts show one of the main reasons many people don't move to Linux in response to Windows' bloat and intrusiveness. Admittedly, Mint or Zorin would be much easier to set up, but it's still a lot of work compared to Windows. I just had to set up two new computers, both with Windows 11. My main computer is now a Lenovo P3 Tiny running Windows 11. It took a long time for me to set it up, but that was mostly because of my personal tweaks--e.g., installing a plugin to go directly from Lightroom to Zerene, and figuring out how to get Word to find my personal templates. The basic installations were simple: download the newest executable, double click, then give the software my license information if needed. Wireless? Right out of the box, needing no configuration. Printers? Just double click the vendor's installation executables to get the full deal, including installation of ICC profiles. I have a LOT of software on the machine and have done a great deal of personalization, but I could do pretty much everything with no use of the terminal.

Zorin, Mint, and others are trying hard to replicate this simplicity, but I doubt they are quite there, and they are certainly not there if you need to run Wine or some other Windows emulation. I have a new Mint ISO on a thumb drive, but I suspect I won't install it. As one person titled a recent article, "I need an OS, not a hobby".

Since this is a photography forum, two of the key questions IMHO are these: which OS makes it easier to do photography, and which offers the most power and flexibility for doing photography? For all its faults, Windows and MacOS win hands down over Linux if those are your key questions.

But to each their own.

 

[dpastern]

Since this is a photography forum, two of the key questions IMHO are these: which OS makes it easier to do photography, and which offers the most power and flexibility for doing photography? For all its faults, Windows and MacOS win hands down over Linux if those are your key questions.

Yes, I do get your point. But Adobe products not being available on the Linux platform is entirely Adobe's fault.

If I'm not a gamer, and a standard non-photography user, then Linux easily meets people's demands. Most people use their computer for reading emails, Facebook, YouTube and general web browsing. Even on Debian, it worked OOTB and would easily suffice for the average user without them even having to lift a finger post install.

I've still spent less time on my Debian install than I did on the recent Windows 11 install abomination. 2 days for that...vs 15 minutes to install, about an hour last night researching apps to install and installing them (probably not even an hour, and most of that was time spend researching - troubleshooting and installing/configuring brew, sudo and flatpak and the nvidia drivers), about 15 minutes installing and researching a few more packages today. About 20 minutes trying to get Diablo running. So, about 2 hours in total for the Linux install. VS 2 days with Windows 11. I knew what gave me much more angst and anxiety too.

As soon as Adobe ports Photoshop and Lightroom to Linux, there'll be a mass exodus of Windows users. These big companies only respond to consumers when we hurt their bottom dollar.

I could make darktable and GIMP work if I really had to, but I rely on a lot on masking and neither darktable or GIMP are there in that respect. Not even close. GIMP was badly limited 20 years ago and hasn't improved.

RapidRAW shows a LOT of promise. Given that it's only been in development for ~6 months, developed by an 18 year old in his spare time and has limited funding for development, it's an amazing effort. If Redhat or IBM got behind him and another 20 or so devs hopped onboard to help, it would be a Lightroom Classic open source killer. It shows that much promise.

 

[paddler4]

But Adobe products not being available on the Linux platform is entirely Adobe's fault.

yes, but that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is what setup allows me to do what I want most easily and best.

These big companies only respond to consumers when we hurt their bottom dollar.

Well, yes. They are in business to make money, and even apart from stockholders, they have to pay their employees. Adobe's employees are paid in part by our subscription fees. If there were enough users clamoring for Adobe licenses on Linux, they would have reason to put people to work porting it. Personally, I hope that happens, but in the meantime, I have photos to edit.

 

[Capn Jack]

Windows works fine in the enterprise. I don't get all the defaults to whatever micro$oft wants, such as their browser. Office 365 (or Copilot now?) works great in collaboration. I finished a 250 page word document with illustrations in collaboration with people in Europe, USA, and China. We all worked on the same document and I could monitor and accept or change edits by my colleagues. We didn't have version conflicts because we were working on the same file and I could, if needed, revert or open an previous version. I worked on a powerpoint presentation at the same time as a colleague as we had different sections assigned to us. We could have the same file open at the same time and we didn't need to coordinate when we would work on it. Excel works the same way, but I didn't need to share files in the same fashion. For enterprise work, it does very well.

 

[paddler4]

Ironically, earlier this evening I read a review panning Libre Office, the Microsoft Office alternative I used on Linux, for lacking precisely those sorts of collaboration tools.

 

[Capn Jack]

Ironically, earlier this evening I read a review panning Libre Office, the Microsoft Office alternative I used on Linux, for lacking precisely those sorts of collaboration tools.

Most of us don't need those tools at home. but in an office environment, those of us that used them could get a lot done with a lot less effort than we could just a short time ago.