So I dual booted my pc with Ubuntu a few weeks back. And I came to a conclusion today.

Um, windows needs to go.

But surely you'll miss out on the free* offers to store all your shit in onedrive?

*The offer is free not the product.

And what about all those great tile suggestions about what apps you could buy? And the sponsored offers to subscribe to those same apps!?

@jamescodesthing it's tough man, but I think I could live without candy crush pre installed on my PC. Gonna be hard to move on without it though.

@Wozza365 @jamescodesthing the free* services, the bloatware, those random softwares that keep running in the bg... It will all be missed. It's just so tough to move to a clean os which does WHATS ITS FUCKING ASKED TO AND DOES NOT ACT LIKE A SMARTASS, ya know?

@-PsP- but can you live without games?

@elonmusk just play Linux games? Maybe if we all switched publishers would release more games for Linux.

have set up an old (10years+) secondary pc and changed its windows to linux mint ...
my experience so far: 😌
(except the fact that everything is daaaaamn slow😅) I can say that I miss the simplicity of installing downloaded programs, like on windows.
I mean don't get me wrong, I don't give up that quick when I have a problem (e.g. install downloaded program, configure smth.) to solve on linux, but having to go to a tutorial every time for -x-, with dozens of commands to type in console ... it gets frustrating

@elonmusk yep... I think it's about time I get serious and stop procrastinating xD

@-PsP- damn!

@cb219 yea I understand.... For me the main reason I get to tinker/mess around with computer networks a lot...so having Linux helps a ton!

@luper The gaming industry actually chooses to develop on Windows not just cause it’s got a bigger market, but also cause of stuff like Direct3D. Good news is that OpenGL is slowly becoming better.

@Jop- That can be true today, but it still sounds like a lot of prejudice. As much as I’d hate to actually use this as a source, read the top, and long, comment from the Software Engineering SO
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/...

I don’t like Windows and M$, but I still have respect for certain game devs, and will not put my own opinion over giving respect to the right people.

@cb219 What? The 'simplicity' of downloading programs?

I think you're doing something wrong, because

1. What's easier than clicking one single button in a package store?

and

2. Downloading and installing by double clicking works on Linux as well.

The terminal is usually not even required.

Steam works just fine in Linux, and lots of great, well-known games run natively. Wine adds zillions more titles, and cloudy gaming covers the rest. No complaints here.

@Wozza365 ahhh shit, you mean you want to have to go to the Windows Store to install your suggested bloatware right!?

Because like, you need that bloat to keep the malware out right?

@theCalcaholic gotta correct myself:
it was meant for the installing part of third party programs via console.
I've already used the software center several times so ur first point is right.
To ur second point, I recently discovered a downloaded-package-installer thingy, which helps much with installation.
it was just frustrating every time i had to use the console (i'm more of a GUI guy than console guy🙃)

@cb219 You're not much of a console GUI, are ya? 😋

It doesn't happen often though, that there is no installation candidate available for Linux (at least if you're using one of the more popular distributions). Even if you have to download for example a .deb file (on Debian/Ubuntu based distros) you can just install it by double clicking.

@theCalcaholic yep, got me there😅
i generally prefer GUI over console, as long as the GUI is not total rubbish...
I'm quite new to Linux (Mint) in general so first steps for me are quite hard😓
didn't know it was possible to install by double-clicking (my experience before was dobule-clicking: didn't do what i was expecting), so i ended up like: "... well, what do i do now?" and many times i ended up in tutorials using the console 😕

@cb219 It was just a silly play on words. ;)

There are different ways to deliver a program in Linux (similar to Windows). Since you're using Mint I'll focus on Debian compatible formats:

1) Simple archive: You have these in Windows too, usually in the form of .zip files. On Linux a bigger number of formats is supported by default, therefore the files could end in .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .zip and many more extensions. You should be able to open these archives by double clicking from within your file manager and an archive utility should open which allows you to extract it. Inside the extracted folder there should be some kind of executable (more about that later).

2) .deb files: These are comparable to the .msi files on windows (I believe). .deb files are packages which already contain every information about how it should be installed and where the files should go. You should have an gui tool available (called GDebi) which installs these on double click.

@cb219 3) Executables: These come in many different flavours but are the minority for Linux (in contrast to Windows). You can execute them by double clicking, but there's a twist. Linux‘s permission system doesn't just allow any downloaded file to be executed. You have to set the permission for it. This should be possible by opening some dialog from the context menu in your file manager.

4) Source code: While many programs on Linux are available as source code, you shouldn't be forced to install it from source very often. Usually there is a packaged version available that can be installed right away. Installing from source can be totally different depending on the program and the technology used to develop it. Therefore I can't give you any definite instructions for this, however, they usually come with the source.

@theCalcaholic my attempt to use keepass2
needed the onedrive client for the kdbx file😅
little pain in the ass to be honest...
no "official" client by microsoft.
none in the package manager, just "onedrive freeclient", had to use several commands in the console to get it and wasn't even able to launch it because of some stupid login URL i couldn't provide somehow
on the other hand ... using the URL option in keepass2 to access the file?
.... anyways thanks for your effort of explaining the different installation ways, learnt smth. new again😊😁

Doesn't OneDrive make everything available via https webdav?

@cb219 Yeah you might have bad luck with some Microsoft products, because Microsoft tries its best to tie you into their echo system. Many Microsoft products have protocols and interfaces which are difficult to make compatible with other products.

But in most cases there is a way. It might just be more complicated than with other companies.

If you don't have a choice, WSL2 is pretty nice too.