- Microsoft removes guide on converting Microsoft accounts to Local, pushing for Microsoft sign-ins.
- Instructions once available, now missing - likely due to company’s preference for Microsoft accounts.
- People may resist switching to Microsoft accounts for privacy reasons, despite company’s stance.
Anyone who wants to switch to Linux we welcome you with open arms. Ask as many questions as you need. There are no stupid questions just bad answers. (You probably know the type)
If you can’t switch, that’s ok. Alot of us know what it’s like, especially us gamers, Nvidia card owners, and recovering adobe-holics. Life is tougher but a whole lot more rewarding. I moved from windows/Macos and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.
I’m actually gaming on nvidia! Didn’t take any tinkering either. I got the Nvidia version of Nobara, which many steam games “just work” on.
That’s not to say I didn’t start tinkering anyway, but new games I install and just run work fine.
It’s amazing how fast we got here though isn’t it. There were a ton of talented people, most of them working without pay just to make it happen.
I love the sense of community from something like that even if all I could do is be a beta tester, request potential improvements, and donate to my favorite projects.
This is the nicest way someone’s put it. I’ve tried to switch to Linux three or four times but until there is a distro that makes it plug and play like Windows or mac its going to be a tough sell. I consider myself tech savvy enough (I can google things, and for goodness sake at the bare minimum I can cut and paste into the terminal) but the barrier for getting Linux to work is too high right now for a very large part of the population.
I have W10 computer running the arrs and my plex server that I’m going to have to figure out as I can’t get W11 on it.
I want to do it so bad!.. but I think I’ll probably just end up getting a new, used computer that can run W11
My elderly (late 80s) parents have Windows on their laptops and it would be impossible for them to use it without my regular intervention. I might as well take the plunge and set them up with Linux.
My mother asked me to switch her over and she loves it. I love it too because she isn’t always asking me for help all the time. I was playing around with windows games on Linux and while I was testing her game because it was fast to download, she was impressed and she wanted to switch right there.
I don’t remember when it started but every other update to windows home popped up an advertisement for the Microsoft account (she had a local account) and an advertisement for office 365. She would literally call me every time it popped up saying it looked important so she didn’t touch it. Libre office is close enough to excel that all the time I spent teaching her Excel didn’t go to waist and I could finally cancel my office 365 subscription.
I’m thinking of recommending it to my aunt because her PC is slow and won’t be supported by windows 11. If she’s interested I’ll let her play with it on an old laptop for a while before verifying she wants to switch over. The same thing I did with my mother.
Even if something like proxmox or a Debian install with docker is more customizable. It’s a steep learning curve.
But isn’t something like truenas scale a option? I run Emby(as my media Server) and the arr’s on it. All the apps are already in the “software store” including plex. And setup of the arr’s is just the same as normal. All installs are basically automatic.
I easy passthrough my intel gpu in the config page on the webportaal, but don’t how easy it is for Nvidia or amd. Especially with Nvidia due to drivers. But maybe someone here knows?
Definitely give Linux Mint a shot!
Also stuck on Windows but for specific software (Adobe & Revit). Zorin has looked like a promising distro for a little while now, at least coming from Windows.
Have you tried Linux Mint yet?
I recently installed it on a Dell laptop (work) to dual boot, and it seemed pretty much as simple as installing windows.
I’m a daily Linux user and had been using other distros in VMs, but I still wanted to try it.
Isn‘t it very easy to spin up a Debian with Docker installed and just pull those Docker container yml files straight from freedesktop.org using docker compose? (Portainer would be a webGUI for the containers)
Good luck! 😉 I think there is nearly no server task where windows is more easy than Linux 🤔 well, except proprietary ActiveDirectory/EntraID, of course.
I need a PC that runs with no monitor and gets interfaced with through remote desktop only. I just installed Linux on that machine. It currently must have a keyboard and monitor because if it gets rebooted, it comes to the login screen. The login screen cannot be brought up via remote desktop (RDP through Remmina). I also have so far been unable to find a way to force it to automatically sign in “passwordless” like it used to do with Windows.
This box runs Plex as well as whatever game server I want to run for friends and I at the moment. (Currently Minecraft, which is having trouble since th switchover with server lag, but that is far less important than being able to reboot the screenless server box and have it work with no further input )
Configuring automatic login shouldn’t be difficult. Here are instructions on Ubuntu (should work on any GNOME system), and here’s how to do it with pretty much any KDE system. This is a feature of desktop managers (like gdm or sddm), not desktop environments (like GNOME or KDE), so if neither works for you, you’re probably using a different one. If that’s the case, reply with your distro and as much info as you can provide.
That said, what exactly is the problem you’re trying to solve? It’s usually a lot easier to login remotely using SSH instead of remote desktop, and then use console commands to do whatever you need. To login with SSH:
So if your username is tux and your IP is 1.2.3.4:
And then if you want to reboot:
And if you want to shutdown:
I use an app on my phone to login, so I can get it done while sitting on the toilet in like 10s (I use it to unlock my computer so my kids can use it). If you’re accessing from your computer and just need to run a single command, provide it after the command in quotes (note, sudo commands won’t prompt for a password and will just fail).
Adding to this if you rub Plex from Docker, and you tell systemd to start docker on machine start you can also have the Plex container start automatically.
Then you dont even have to worry about logging in.
Or if you don’t use Docker, you can run it through systemd. That’s what I do with minidlna to stream movies to my TV.
I have three ideas: First, you could switch the desktop environment to one of the ones that has a GUI settings tool to set passwordless automatic sign in. I think Gnome 3 on Ubuntu, and Mate Desktop on Linux Mint have that feature. There are probably others.
Second, you could switch your display manager to “nodm”. The display manager is the thing that runs the X server or Wayland, and it starts the greeter (the greeter is the program that shows the login screen). nodm is a special display manager that doesn’t use a greeter or ask for a password. It immediately starts the session using the username and desktop environment specified in its configuration file.
I use nodm for my HTPC and it works very well. The only downside is that you have to edit its configuration file, /etc/default/nodm , using a text editor. I’m not aware of any GUI configuration tool for it. However, it’s pretty easy to configure.
Third, you could abandon all display managers, and start the session manually, either from a shell script, or over SSH. This is a little more complex. You will probably want to get comfortable with SSH before trying this (SSH is the command-line analog of remote desktop).
Fantastic information. Thank you for all of it.
I think the first thing is actually recommend is enabling a daemon that launches Plex at boot without login.
sudo systemctl enable plexmediaserverFor something like a Minecraft server I’d recommend reading up on the setup process. (It’s a fair bit to summarize)If the application doesn’t come with a systemd service I’d recommend making a cron. They’re scary looking but actually pretty easy to use, I use it for automating maintenance on my server.
It may feel counter intuitive but Linux servers don’t really need a desktop to manage them so most the tools don’t really come with graphical apps. If you want an interface to check on things I’d recommend installing and using cockpit web based graphical interface.
If you want to do it proper on a systemd system make a systemd.service it’s not as easy to learn but you get extra tools to manage it.
I’ve heard there’s a lot of work that has been done in kde and gnome to get rdp (remote desktop protocol) with remote login.
I hope this helps! If not, almost everything can be done through the terminal and ssh(secure shell) makes that process really easy. I installed and setup my Linux laptop and my server that way.
If you just want to transfer files there is sshfs(secure shell file system) and the ability to go to your file browser and type in an sftp(secure file transfer protocol) address. In kde dolphin for example you select network and type in the bar sftp://(IP address or hostname)@(user):(working directory). Make sure you have sshfs installed on both machines and sshd enabled on at least the system you want to access.
What about SSHing into it?
I’m just not sure how comfortable I am with no gui yet.
I have a pi5 at work (upgraded this year) that I use to administer my work network from home. I use ubutnu mate with xrdp for the desktop. Works great, even the sound works. No monitor and even if you hooked one up it would just show a login prompt.
Yeah I also haven’t found a good alternative for a windows management host for RDP. I use my last remaining windows box as an “admin host” and the Linux alternative to this would be vnc or xrdp, both of which have their issues (no dynamic resize, clipboard issues, session restore issues)… I’ve also tried x2go recently which is closer but still not as slick/simple as a windows RDP session.
I haven’t tried it myself but Ubuntu desktop 24 has remote desktop built in. You could try it out on a VM?
Yeah I might have to try Ubuntu. I heard there are some improvements to KDE in 6.1 allowing RDP by default too.
Get a virtual hdmi dummy plug. A very cheap and easy fix. Because the machine now thinks a screen is attached it will create a desktop environment you can remote in to.
That is not the issue. Thank you for the suggestion, though.
I literally just went through an entire mental exercise of what do I “need” to run, and got stuck hard with my audio interface and DAW software. Cubase (by Steinberg) and IK Multimedia just do not provide support at all.
I use ardour as DAW, but only for recording on Linux. It’s also available for macOS and windows. So you can check if it fits your work flow.
I mostly only use Linux, but sometimes you just need a program with out support. In my case it’s sometimes qlab, Linux show player is great(and I have used it for many shows). But it’s not feature compatibel with qlab
Reaper is Linux friendly and free for 60 days, I would give it a try. It’s free after the 60 days but will prompt you to pay. The audio interface, I’m not to sure about, I personally do not run Linux.
People will switch once developers do. So far no luck on the music industry
It sucks man, I feel you. There are a lot of free options out there you might want to check out!
I’m not experienced in this field but prosonus is working on a Linux version of their studio one app. I think they are trying to make VST extensions work at least on their software.
I’m probably not the best person to answer that question but maybe it helps. Most proprietary stuff is typically designed for Ubuntu or redhat so Ubuntu based or fedora is probably your best bet.
This is the first comment about switching to Linux that makes me feel positively about the idea
I think a lot of people get caught in non existing platforms wars. I’ve always believed in using the right tools for the job and always encouraged people to try everything. If you don’t keep using this software or that os, your very likely to learn what you like and bring it with you.
And to be honest I’m just tired of companies being shitty towards their customers and it’s honestly fun to see people discover Linux.
Hey, I’ve been a Linux gamer for many, many years, and before Steam Deck it was exclusively on nVidia hardware (mostly because I also wanted CUDA cores for Blender).
I’m a recovering Adobe-holic because their software is good at processing my drone photo DNG files
ArchWiki makes it so much easier these days.
It definitely helps you become a lot more independent as a Linux user. The tools you learn when you troubleshoot things are incredibly universal. Tools on Linux are intentionally designed to be intuitive and informative which is quite refreshing to obtuse tools like regedit.
I asked a legit Linux question in Rizon - Linux and got banned.
I don’t know what rizon - Linux is is but I guess that’s just the internet. I don’t know what to say other than I hope you have better luck next time.
It’s a game.
edit: no, that’s Ryzom.
It always amazes me to see an actively supported native Linux game. I’ve only tried native AAA games and the support for Linux is typically abysmal. I think hollow knight is the only one that worked flawlessly out of the box, I didn’t even realize proton wasn’t enabled.
It’s IRC
As opposed to gitter.im? I found the gitter communities to be very helpful.
Yeah, that’s what I found when I looked it up. It was a typo according to him.
I’m surprised that’s still around. Is the average age still 14 on these networks?
Add like 30 years
Both my PCs have nvidia cards, a 3080ti and a 970, and not run just fine with games and Linux. I dont quite understand the hate for nvidia cards. AMD cards must poop glitter or something too.
NVIDIA spent many many years doing a very very poor job of providing drivers for Linux.
Many people have not forgiven them for that.
That’s understandable but its still inaccurate to say that those with Nvidia cards will have trouble with Linux. I understand people have biases but that’s not a helpful one.
Maybe I wasn’t clear, I’m an Nvidia user too. I got on at the ground floor of Nvidia just beginning to support Wayland and it was rough. To be honest my desktop would straight up refuse to boot most distro installers, hints why my first real experience with Linux was archlinux.
I understand X11 is perfectly usable but I just didn’t want to use a system with constant screen tearing, I also just ran into weird issues with x11 when it came to running anything more than basic apps. It’s always fun when your screen locks but can’t capture inputs because you had a game running.
Probably the biggest reason I champion Wayland and I’m very excited for the upcoming explicit sync driver update. When wayland reaches maturity we’ll have a smooth experience on par with windows or Macos and more secure/private than both.
You will have terrible with nvidia, if you choose a the wrong distro and you are not knowing about vulcan and mesa drivers and that there are lib32 versions of those needed for steam if steam is not installed as flatpak (I not recommend that, because you have to give it access to mounted iso/disks and maybe other stuff using flatseal) , I guess.
So don’t choose the wrong distro? All the most recommended for first time users are no problem.
So, it is no Problem with arch? /s,btw
There needs to be a yearly execution of the worst distros or something I swear! Start with arch!
😂hey! That is not fair! I love installing everything with just one command without having to add new sources 😁
It still happens more than it should. It took me 4 tries to get the nVidia driver to take on my “gaming” laptop with Fedora 40, (it wouldn’t accept the public keys for some reason). And I had to wait for some updates that took 2 weeks to show up. But, the onboard Intel chipset ran Nouveau just fine with no waiting and tinkering. I think people are still having some issues with nVidea and Wayland yet. I know I still have some minor ghosting issues with a couple of AppImages I really need to use that would prefer straight X11 over X-Wayland.
Now that didn’t bother me because I’ve been using various distros since buying my first boxed set CDs with RedHat 5 from Walmart of all places for $25US. (I still suffer from PTSD thanks to rpm hell). But I can see how a stumbling block like that can turn newcomers to Linux distros off.
I prefer saying:
There’s no stupid questions, just stupid answers once in awhile.
I do like that saying a little better. Most people are just trying to help and yeah, any amount of help is appreciated.
Some people could try a little harder to understand that we all started out knowing nothing and we all need a little help from time to time. It’s awesome to see so many people trying to be understanding here though.
The thing is, not all answers are satisfactory, or easy without further information. That said, learning is a journey, and if you don’t get stupid answers once in awhile, you’re not asking enough questions.