Very easy. The licence keys of W8.1 and W10 are embedded into the BIOS. Once you go online, MS servers will see that key and if it's from another motherboard/machine, will deactivate it.
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What's Next Power Users? Linux or Hackintosh?
- Thread starter jblagden
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Not much. Linux is still not ready for the desktop. Stick with macOS and Windows.
But what about h4ckz0rs?!
I tend to agree though unless your work depends on it (sysadmin) or just want a free OS might be better off sticking with MacOS or Windows. I basically said the same thing to play devils advocate.
It's can be fun for the hobby of it though. Overall I think it can also strengthen basic computer knowledge which may serve you in the future, setting up partitions, understanding the file system and structure, basic terminal commands which can be useful in MacOS, etc.
I rely too heavily on Apples eco system and proprietary software to ever go strictly Linux. Not saying that's a good thing but the level of convenience offered is very useful.
I enjoy "playing" with computers but Linux creates a additional layer of hassle I don't like when I'm trying to just get something done.
Not much. Linux is still not ready for the desktop. Stick with macOS and Windows.
In what way is it "not ready"? It works fine for me on my laptop. (Fedora)
- If you have a graphics adapter from what must be the world's largest provider, your Fedora 25 installation will regularly fail to boot into a GUI after kernel updates (my track record is about one failed update in three successful ones), necessitating a manual uninstall + install of the relevant kernel modules/drivers via TTY.
- If you have a graphics adapter from the same provider and want to run your monitor at anything other than 60 Hz, it's still slightly hit-or-miss whether the setting is saved between sessions. In the worst case you may need to manually create a text file mapping the output port to the vendor ID+model ID of your monitor, and manually assigning a resolution + refresh rate to it. This is documented in a single forum post you won't ever find again, by someone whose name you'll never remember (and nowadays on my blog).
- The release notes for the latest stable Ubuntu desktop explicitly states failing to boot into a GUI when using a graphics adapter from said provider is a known issue.
- If you have gaming controls that present the system with joystick axis with no buttons - for example car- or flight sim pedals - you have to create a text file that manually orders udevadm to set the necessary permissions on the device(s). Again, this is described in another single forum post you won't ever find again, by someone whose name you'll never remember (and nowadays on my blog).
- If you want to run head tracking hardware you need to know quite a bit about computers to get it going, and it'll still be hit-and-miss in some use-cases. The procedure consists of trying to backwards-engineer a list of library requirements and obscure compiler tools built for a legacy version of the one Linux distribution you aren't currently running and then finding out you need the 32-bit libs too, along with that other piece of software the author forgot to mention in this version of the documentation.
- If you run updates via the GUI on Fedora 25, it doesn't look as if they get installed (but running DNF manually from a terminal does the trick).
- Up until lately, the recommended way of upgrading between Mint releases was to nuke your system volume and reinstall.
So no, only a geek with no understanding of regular people could honestly say that Linux is ready for the desktop unless you have enrolled administrators to actually keep it desktop ready.
What can be said is that Linux might be ready for some desktops, provided you run it on a computer where all components are on the HCL, and provided you don't have any special use cases outside of the common ones where there are GUI-enabled procedures for how to perform them. I don't think I needed to step out of the GUI when I set up Mint and a mail account on a bone-stock ThinkPad T60 with Intel graphics for my mother-in-law, but that was a complete happy-path case.
So you're saying it's not ready for you on the desktop..
OK, you and the other guy that's two
What I'm saying is that if you're the owner of an nVidia graphics card and want to run Linux with proper performance, you'd better be a power user. If you run any kind of non-stock settings or hardware, you'd better be a power user. I gave examples of where the GUI way to accomplish common tasks either was flaky or broken in ways that require you to be a power user to get around the issues.
I am running a Linux desktop, but that's because I'm a power user who'd rather live with some quirks of Linux than some other quirks in the more polished operating systems released by Microsoft. I have set up linux desktops for relatives, who can live with them because when/if they get an issue, they can contact me and I'll fix it for them.
I'd say that for the absolute majority of people who have been using Windows or OS X/macOS after about 2001, Linux is not a viable alternative unless they know someone who knows Linux and is willing to hand-hold them through the process of setting up a working computer. After that, Linux may be a viable alternative unless their workflow gets screwed up by the lack of some key commercial software suites.
If you are referencing me as the "other guy" I was fairly specific I was talking about myself.
I wasn't I was talking about Fancuku
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This entire thread is supposed to be about "power users" and because you have problems doesn't mean we all do, heck if I had the problems that you do I'd run far, far, away and never come back but I don't.
Well, I have specific needs: I want to be able to play FPS games at nice detail levels and moderately high refresh rates, and I want to be able to use my beloved cross-platform flight simulator, X-Plane. That's what I use a Linux desktop for - the rest I can do from my MacBook Pro.
The former is a fairly common wish among PC users, the latter is slightly more obscure. The former may require some manual tweaking if you're unlucky (it definitely did in both Fedora and Ubuntu slightly more than a year ago - it got better in due time), and the latter does require quite a bit of system understanding and manual tweaking.
Anyone wanting to play FPS games at decent refresh rates and being silly enough to choose a distro that updates the kernel as often as Fedora does will occasionally have issues with their nVidia card. If they choose Ubuntu, it'll almost always "just work" (at least it has the last year or so), but you almost have to be a power user to know about this difference. I haven't yet tried AMD, so I can't say anything about that, but AMD does give worse frame rates compared to equivalent nVidia cards in Linux.
So yeah, Linux is definitely ready for the desktop for (many) power users, but then again it has been that since the early nineties. By that definition all of the Open and Free BSDs and their derivatives are ready for the desktop too.
Well, I have specific needs: I want to be able to play FPS games at nice detail levels and moderately high refresh rates, and I want to be able to use my beloved cross-platform flight simulator, X-Plane. That's what I use a Linux desktop for - the rest I can do from my MacBook Pro.
The former is a fairly common wish among PC users, the latter is slightly more obscure. The former may require some manual tweaking if you're unlucky (it definitely did in both Fedora and Ubuntu slightly more than a year ago - it got better in due time), and the latter does require quite a bit of system understanding and manual tweaking.
Anyone wanting to play FPS games at decent refresh rates and being silly enough to choose a distro that updates the kernel as often as Fedora does will occasionally have issues with their nVidia card. If they choose Ubuntu, it'll almost always "just work" (at least it has the last year or so), but you almost have to be a power user to know about this difference. I haven't yet tried AMD, so I can't say anything about that, but AMD does give worse frame rates compared to equivalent nVidia cards in Linux.
So yeah, Linux is definitely ready for the desktop for (many) power users, but then again it has been that since the early nineties. By that definition all of the Open and Free BSDs and their derivatives are ready for the desktop too.
Like I said if I had the problems that you do I wouldn't use it. The last time I had issues with kernel updates and the nvidia driver was 2012 but then I don't use Fedora as I'm allergic to rpm distros and funky repo management.
It's funny when people say this. I haven't had any issues with RPMs or apt-get since they were introduced.
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It's funny when people say this. I haven't had any issues with RPMs or apt-get since they were introduced.
you can finally get rid of -get part after years and years.
A few years back I was looking for something stable to put on a server and started down RHEL derivatives path and they worked great on that server so I was like ohhh let me put this on my desktop too that is where I failed HARD. The day Steve Jobs announced that they were going Intel was the day that I decided I'd use Linux and never buy another Mac. I first tried Ubuntu and and to get various things working I was compliling all kinds of stuff and I was frustrated. A buddy of mine said, well if you're going to compile you might as well compile the entire thing and Gentoo was born on my computers. In 2011 my hardware wasn't getting any newer and I had a 6 year old at home so I switched to binary and Arch and it saved me a ton of time. That's the end reason why I can't figure out repos and the way Red Hat organizes them and prioritizes them. I could have leaned but I didn't care enough and the frustration with getting CENTOS working on the desktop swore me off. I do have an old Latitude around that does run it but it's only a minecraft server for when my daughter is at my work apartment. I'm sure Fedora is fine just like Open SuSE tumbleweed is fine but I'm not going to try again I'll stick to what "just works" for me.
Really? It still works on 16.10, but not sure if it's there for legacy.
Yeah, to each their own. Just because I never had an issue doesn't mean it doesn't exist for others. I tried Gentoo and Arch, but it was too much work for (my perceived) little benefit.
I had an issue trying to get various newer R packages for CentOS/RHEL. It seems the scientific community has settled on Ubuntu, while enterprise applications settle on RHEL. It's a convoluted mess.
I think it was asked why would moving to Intel force you to switch from Mac to anything else.
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It's for legacy..
Remeber my community doesn't equal all communities. CERN which is scientific runs scientific Linux which is RHEL and a long as you have source how it's packaged doesn't mean much.
Good question.
I liked Motorola's Orthogonal approach, but they'd been messing up speed-wise for Years.
Might as well say going to PCI made it not a Mac. It sounds like you were looking for a reason.
