Only semi-related: Why do they always show pictures of Gates when he hasn’t been involved in MS in a long time? Why never Satya Nadella?
Personally, I think this picture of Steve Balmer is so much more iconic and should be used for every single article about Microsoft or Windows:
It’s weird how MS’s putting developers first became a joke. Back in the 80’s, companies like HP and IBM had open warehouses with coders at desks lined up like factory workers. MS was the first big company to give a private office to every programmer.
The approach isn’t what became a joke, it was the absolutely unhinged way in which it was presented in that famous Ballmer stage appearance.
Oh sure, it was crazy. But the sentiment behind it was good. It’s like how Howard Dean got dunked on for his scream.
I’d take that any day over the unhinged AI focus from all these companies now or Google’s awful documentation from the past few years.
I was thinking the same thing. He will just forever be known as the guy. Maybe it will change once he dies?
Maybe, he is indeed looking hella rough in this photo.
Seems he’s using the same orange tan as the other orange guy haha
Didn’t work for Steve Jobs.
I don’t think so. Gate’s shoes are big ones.
You’re right, it’s really hard to fill the shoes of someone who abuses their power and position to try to hook up with women.
Well, I guess that Gates can’t fill their own shoes too
I couldn’t name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate’s mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids
Steve Ballmer! Developers developers developers! That’s the other one I know
I’m somewhat in the same boat but I remember Mister “Developers Developers Developers” Steve Ballmer who was also immortalized by the “Ballmer Peak” XKCD. https://xkcd.com/323/
Gabe Newell?
He would be also be a reasonable person to include on an article citing Steam data.
Holy shit I remember that article too!
I could but that’s because a friend of mine works on the legacy rendering code in Excel. He has some traumatic war stories to share.
Because he set the general, evil directions for MS. Like keeping users uninformed and locked in, smearing the competition, sabotaging open standards, taking your control over your hardware and data away from users, etc. All happened during evil Bill’s reign.
Not to mention the many deals with hardware manufacturers in order to avoid competing OSs to have any chance. They managed to kill BeOS and dominate the Japanese market in the 90s
I was wondering why Bill Gates would be talking about Steam users.
I’m here, so I’m more likely to know who that is or what he looks like. But I don’t. I do now because you mentioned him and I looked up how he looks like. Your average Joe is gonna be even less likely to know who that is or what he looks like. So I’m guessing that’s why. Some CEOs just avoid the spotlight. Or maybe I’ve just been avoiding MS news, dunno
It’s maybe some kind of circular logic, but my brain doesn’t recognize a picture of Satya Nadella = “Microsoft’s CEO” for some reason.
Maybe your brain would, if it had a chance to connect the two if they posted more pictures of Satya and Microsoft in the same context…
Yeah, its maybe some kind of circular logic that their brain doesn’t make that link
Already did and it’s glorious! Steam works beautifully and the only final thing that I’m missing is Adobe products.
Outside of Steam, how have you found gaming compatibility? I know Xbox Gamepass doesn’t work as that’s very specifically a Windows app, but how about other standalone games/platforms?
for newcomers, maybe this is the best combo. Debian stable with KDE Plasma.
Unless you’re using NVIDIA. Didn’t work out of the box for me and required a couple hours of fiddling. Mint worked seamlessly.
Debian is not a good choice for beginners. It’s extremely bare bones compared to Ubuntu or Mint.
Drivers on Debian stable are also heavily outdated
I completely disagree. Debian is not beginner-friendly. Go with Bazzite if your focus is gaming.
It is a gaming-focused distribution. It’s also an “atomic” distribution, which basically means it’s really hard to break it. It’s more like Android or IOS where the OS and base system are managed by someone else. They’re read-only so you can’t accidentally break them.
For example, instead of trying to manage your own video card drivers, they come packaged with the base system image, and they’re tested to make sure they work with all the other base components.
I’ve been using Linux since the 1990s, so I’ve run my share of distributions: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Even for someone experienced, atomic distributions are great. But, for a newcomer they’re so much better.
and the only final thing that I’m missing is Adobe products.
I miss Affinity Designer! Bought a license and I like it but no linux port 🙄
I can’t get used Inkscape, it’s so different and confusing for me
As long as you’re running KDE, it will feel familiar to a Windows user. I started with Kubuntu which was great until I had a system update, and it completely shat itself. Wanted to try Bazzite next, but the installer wouldn’t work properly, so I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I’ve seen no reason to switch since.
If you’re into primarily gaming, try PikaOS. It’s Debian based and uses the same tooling, but it’s on an optimized kernel. Is generally geared toward gaming.
There are other gaming specific distros of course, this is just the “Debian”-related one. I would not recommend the real debian if you’re mainly into gaming. It’ll need manual intervention and/or optimization to get games running, or at least get them running well. It’s not impossible (it even hard if you’ve got but is Linux experience), but just harder than necessary.
I went with Mint but I’m thinking about KDE (or maybe KDE flavored Arch? Idk I’m new) on my second computer. Pretty painless?
maybe give debian testing a go for a little more up to date software :)
Not having access to Adobe products is a feature not a bug.
The more people hop onto Linux the faster and better funded support for Linux development becomes. If you’re a single player gamer or play Valve multiplayer games primarily, make the jump to Linux. Get on Mint, get on Fedora, Ubuntu, etc and get off Microsoft’s shitboat. You already took off from Reddit. Wean off all these other money/data leeches
Most people won’t budge. It doesn’t matter if Win10 is unsupported or isn’t getting a security update, I reckon a solid 40 of 43% will just stay on it until programs they use stop working.
Windows 10 ltsc massgrave.dev
Basically my plan until I can scrounge enough money up for a new computer. My current one literally won’t let me upgrade due to some component/driver it lacks.
It’ll let you upgrade to Linux. It doesn’t play those stupid games with you like MS does.
You can pay to keep getting windows security updates and prolong the upgrade even further.
“you can pay us, and we won’t break your legs for a while longer” -ms
W10 IoT is a thing, and will get updates for a few more years, no mafia shakedown required.
Definitely you should look into Linux, it’s really gotten quite good. Especially if you don’t need games with anti cheat.
But if you just want to use Windows 11, it’s super duper easy. Just Google “download Windows 11 iso” and grab the iso file from Microsoft website.
Then download Rufus.
Then pop in a thumb drive that’s at least 8gb. Open Rufus, select your thumb drive and the iso, then choose the option to remove windows requirements, then click start.
Backup your files on Windows 10, save them somewhere. Then pop in the thumb drive and install windows 11 fresh.
The requirements aren’t actually required. Win 11 runs fine on all sorts of hardware. Support stops at 8th Gen Intel, but I’ve installed it on 5th Gen. My work laptop is 2nd or 3rd Gen. It’s fine 🤷♂️
Technically less secure? Yeah, in some ways. But it’s miles ahead of running unpatched windows 10 after September.
Oh shit this is actually really helpful, I might end up doing the Rufus USB route when I get my stuff back up and running (apartment flooded and I have to wait until the finish fixing my ceiling before I can plug everything back up.)
Thanks for the in-depth info!
Yep, I feel like people overestimate how much anyone cares about official support or security patches or whatever. People will assume it’s fine until they’re either forced out or something goes horribly wrong.
Regular folks will most likely let it be if possible, until it’s time for a new PC anyway.
My brother in law was still using windows 7 and it had never occurred to him that this might be a security risk. Normal people don’t care.
I predict Valve will stop supporting Windows 10 in probably another 3 - 4 years at most.
Yep. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but valve dropping support for windows 7 was what made me switch to linux. Until the computer stops working for the average user, they won’t change.
It’s not like Windows 10 will magically stop booting or something…
Switch to Linux. As a big-time gamer, I did it last year and it’s been fantastic. Only issue is if you main games with root kit anticheat…but with enough momentum in Linux direction, game studios will be forced to abandon those dubious detection methods anyway.
Why Gates in the picture tough?
He stepped down as a chairman over 10 years ago and didint he leave the microsoft board like 5 years ago?
I play only on Linux, and it works great. Come on over!
Starting to plan my next build and will likely go full Linux
Same. I just gotta figure out what distro I want to run. Nobara, Bazzite, Mint, Zorin, Kubuntu, idk. I get analysis paralysis. I’ve run Ubuntu, Fedora, and even tried Arch once, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been full Linux. I’m definitely done with Windows tho (at least outside of work, but I can’t control that).
I’m using Garuda and it has a setup specifically for gaming. The gamer look it comes with out of the box is ugly in my opinion, but that’s easy to change.I highly recommend it. It’s Arch based, so the AUR and Arch wiki work great with it. It’s really great and (in my opinion) user friendly.
Awesome, thank you for the recommendation! I’ve been wanting to try out Arch on my laptop but I don’t have as much time on my hands as I used to. Have been reading that POP OS is good for gaming but I will definitely do some reading on Garuda.
Garuda is great because it comes with a tool where you can select a bunch of packages you may need (but also most won’t, so it’s not built in), then it’ll install them for you. You don’t need to search for what you’ll need because they’re listed with a description for you right on the first boot. It makes it very quick and easy to get set up, while still being Arch underneath.
I switched to linux full time almost a year ago.
I have been thus far entirely unsuccessful in convincing anyone else to make the jump. Normal people do not give a fuck, will not lift a finger to improve their digital lives. I’ve been telling friends and family about adblockers for YEARS, and not a single one ever bothered to do it of their own volition. If I don’t do it for them, then they just sit through ads like complacent sheep. None of them are going to change operating systems if they can’t even install a browser extension.
Can’t upgrade because my 4 years old mobo is apparently too old (haven’t checked out the workarounds yet). Installed Linux Mint to give it a try and I am positively surprised so far.
Linux is fine. Ive been using it since before ubuntu was invented. But Windows has the most goddamn computer games.
I am going to attempt to switch to Linux, I’m definitely not going to willingly use windows platforms again.
Already moved all my PC stuff to Linux. Laptop, desktop, media server. Been wanting to do this for years. Thanks, Valve and Proton, and to all those Linux developers who made this transition possible. Fuck M$
I’m using 10+ years old hardware, Microsoft has already told me I can’t upgrade, followed by several messages asking me to upgrade…
In other news, Linux Mint works nice and I just need to check Protondb to get Warframe running at frames per second and not seconds per frame
