So you’re a user that tinkers with your system, breaks it, can’t get it working correctly again…and that’s Linux’ fault?

And you consider yourself an example of a “regular user?”

?..It’s a great tool that provides all the security of VPN access without having to struggle with the more technical aspects of spinning up your own VPN, and it’s zero cost for personal use.

You could also use Netbird if you wanted, but I have been using Tailscale extensively and it’s awesome.

IP white lists and firewall exceptions will help, but exposing ports on your home router is almost always a bad idea, especially for something as trivial as a game server.

I would highly recommend Tailscale. It’s free for up to 3 users, and if you have more friends than that, I would have them all sign up with free accounts and then share your laptop device with their tailnets.

It’s very easy to setup and use, costs nothing, and will be far more secure than opening ports and trying to set up IP white lists, protocol limitations, etc.

Tailscale creates something called an “overlay network” it’s basically a virtual LAN that exists on top of your real network and can be extended to other people and devices over the internet. It’s fully encrypted, fast, and like I said, very easy to set up.

Really sad about this, because Rust Desk has been the absolute best remote access tool I’ve ever used in the IT world, and that includes many different professional tools like Ninja& Teamviewer.

It’s so clean, easy to install and run, fast and low latency, handles multi-monitors great, runs on mobile, Linux, Windows, etc.

Such a shame that it is mired in controversy.

It’s pretty incredible how well it works. I installed Arch with Plasma 6 on a 2015 T450 thinkpad and it was so crazy how fast everything was.

Felt like a brand new machine, almost a decade old, and bottom of the line specs for that model, but it still ran cutting edge Linux like it was meant to.

My other desktops are even older, but it’s the same with Debian 12 and Plasma, they are super responsive and stable. It’s pretty wild to see a desktop that’s over 10 years old feel smoother and snappier than Windows 11 on a 3 year old, enterprise grade laptop.

It’s important to acknowledge that desktop Linux was much jankier even 5 years ago. I don’t think Windows 7 & Windows 10 would have been worse experiences on average than desktop Linux back in their heyday.

But times have changed pretty drastically. Desktop Linux has improved massively across the board. With so many applications going into the cloud and becoming web-based in recent years, Linux is more viable than ever.

Combine that with the fact that Windows 11 has become so bloated, so clunky, and just straight up unpleasant to use and maintain.

Historical precedent makes a big difference too. When an OS is dominant for so long, the ecosystem around it morphs to fit.

People are raised using Windows, go through school and college using Windows, get a job where their apps are all on Windows. Companies write software for their largest install base…which is Windows. And because the vast majority of companies and orgs use Windows, the IT ecosystem is based around managing Windows systems.

I worked at an MSP a few years back where almost every sysadmin there was far more experienced than me, I was the greenhorn. But when one of the sysadmins had their client’s Xen hypervisor go down, they called me because, “We heard you’re a Linux guy.” At that point, I had less than 3 years of Linux experience at all, and had almost zero actual Linux admin experience, I only used it personally and as a hobby. But I fixed their issue in less than an hour, got their client’s Xen hypervisor running which their entire ERP system ran on, all because I knew enough Linux basics to figure out what was going on.

Point is, people tend to become experts in what they use all the time. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Microsoft experts and admins are a dime-a-dozen where I live, but Linux/Unix admins, I rarely see a job posting that isn’t offering 20-40k more for people with those skills.

At my current company, roughly 50% of folks could be switched over to Linux without any issue. Their jobs all require basic document editing, email, Teams, and web browsing. All tasks that desktop Linux can handle now with zero issues.

As an IT guy who has worked at a bunch of companies with exclusively Windows environments, Windows absolutely doesn’t “just work.”

I can’t begin to list all the random problems I have with Windows in my day-to-day job.

Driver problems, hardware compatibility problems, software crashes, OS freezes, random configuration resets, networking issues, performance issues, boot issues, etc etc etc…

New hardware causes problems, old hardware causes problems.

Almost everything is harder to troubleshoot on Windows than Linux.

I have several test servers set up at my current workplace, they are old decommissioned desktops that are 10+ years old. I use them for messing around with Docker, Ansible, Tailscale, and random internal company resources like Bookstack and OpenProject.

All run Linux, all are a head and shoulders more stable and functional than the majority of much newer and more powerful Windows machines at our company.

Debian, Mint, CatchyOS, they all are far more dependable than most of the Windows machines. They install fast, on any hardware I use, decade+ old Quadro cards and Intel CPUs, doesn’t matter, they all run nearly perfect. And the rare times I have an issue, it’s so much faster to figure out and fix in Linux.

I switched over one of the computers in our department to Linux Mint. Threw it on a random laptop I had laying around. I did it just as an experiment, told the guy who was working on it to let me know if he had any issues using it. I planned on only having it out there for a week or two… It’s been 4 months and he loves it.

He says it’s super fast and easy to use, he doesn’t have any problems with it. Uses Libre office for documents, Firefox for our cloud-based ERP system, Teams and Outlook as PWAs installed on Mint.

I use Ansible to push updates to it once a week, Timeshift in case something ever breaks. It’s great. About a month ago I told him I would probably need to take it back because technically, it wasn’t an official deployment and the experiment I was doing had long since passed. He put up such a fuss that I decided to just let it stay. I’ll probably clone the drive, put it on his old tower, and take the laptop back, and let him keep using it indefinitely.

Linux absolutely isn’t perfect, no technology is. But in my years of experience with both, Linux on the whole is far less finicky, and far easier to fix when it breaks.

well, that didn’t last long lol

I try to make everything Pascal case. It’s easy to read in a terminal and pretty easy to type.

Truly humble beginnings.

Been 100% Linux on all my personal devices for about 4 years.

I just got tired of being treated like I was either an idiot or a criminal by Microsoft. Plus the way they kept forcing their bloatware and trash ads on the OS that I already paid for!

I decided I didn’t care what I had to give up, it was worth it to be rid of Microsoft’s clutches forever. Switched to Linux and I’ve never looked back.

Turns out, I actually didn’t have to sacrifice much at all, and the few things I don’t have anymore are nothing compared to the benefits of using Linux and FOSS software.

Everything works better for me too, more stable, updates are rarer and wayyyyy faster when I push them. No more fighting with AMD driver hell in Windows, no more weird lockups or crashes, a million times more customization options, and zero bloat or spyware installed by default on my system.

I think you have to manually install the Nvidia drivers. If you search “drivers” in the Cinnamon launcher, they have a system app to download and install them.

Such a great game!

Unless you are a power user who is confident in your ability to troubleshoot weird/esoteric issues and bugs, just go AMD.

If there aren’t any specific features you need from Nvidia, like CUDA for CAD/Render workloads, AMD is going to have a higher chance of #JustWorking and will give you awesome gaming performance.

I’ve got a 6700XT paired with a 5800X3D running Nobara Linux for my main gaming rig. Love it to death, runs everything butter smooth.

For instance, Deep Rock Galactic maxed settings at 1080p, I don’t ever see it dip below about 160FPS, and most of the time it’s between 180-210, which feels amazing on my 240Hz monitor.

In defense of Nvidia, things are wayyy better than they were even 2-3 years ago, and the majority of folks, especially with older Nvidia GPUs, seem to have a pretty decent experience on Linux.

That being said, I would estimate that roughly 75% of the posts I see from users who are having really odd/random issues with Linux have an Nvidia GPU.

Flatpaks aren’t perfect, but they are really solid in almost all cases.

For the general user that just wants a simple way to download apps on Linux, it just works.

For power users, they will know already the upsides and downsides.

You fell for the meme lol.

Arch is great if you want very high levels of customization without having to get into compiling and coding, like with Gentoo or NixOS.

I think of it as the distro equivalent to custom keyboard kit, you get all the parts and can swap them out as much as you want. But you’re not designing and fabricating your own circuit board and microcontroller, writing your own custom firmware, getting a custom case modeled and fabricated, etc.

There’s a reason “I use Arch, BTW” Is a meme.

Welcome to the club, it’s so much better over here :)

As much as I can get it, and more every year.

All my computers run Linux exclusively. Gaming desktop, personal laptop, Steam Deck, work laptop, and all my servers in my home lab.

Hypervisor is XCP-ng, VMs are a mix of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and some random other Linux distros for testing and experimenting.

My NAS is a TrueNAS Core box.

I’m in the process of switching my router to PFSense.

Phone is a Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS.

Email, VPN, and cloud storage is Proton.

Password manager is Bit Warden.

Office docs are all Libre Office & Only Office.

The only non-FOSS software I use constantly is Discord and Steam, and of course, most of the games I play. On my phone I have majority FOSS apps for everyday stuff, but some things are still proprietary.

I’ve been thinking of using Linkwarden for a while now. As my computer usage spreads across more and more devices, having a single place to go for all my bookmarks would be fantastic.

Tubular and NewPipe both barely working all day for me. Maybe 1 out of 10 vids loads. Downloading fails too.