I love this page that has been put together by the KDE community.
Ive already seen a number of people jump ship to linux in recent months, win11 definitely has some impact on this.
I also see plasma 6.4 has been released which has many new features and extra refinements made.
27-06-2025, 02:42 PM (This post was last modified: 27-06-2025, 02:42 PM by nzoomed.)
KDE has largely kept the look and feel of windows, but at the same time can be customized heavily.
There are plasma themes available that make it look the same as a mac, and also windows 11 themed ones that are near identical.
Quite a good option for those that use a computer for little more than using Chrome, they would not even notice any difference hardly.
What I find amusing is that it's mainly when Microsoft decides to do something that the Linux Crowd suddenly jumps on the bandwagon and tries to push it.
Had several people try Linux Mint or Fedora. All decided no way -- Missing drivers, some have programs with no Linux version or as one put it --"When they make a compatible program that I can import over 20 years of records, then maybe I'll think about it."
It really depends on what people are using their computers for. For browsing the web and email, linux will be just fine, it really comes down to any other individual apps such as photoshop, outlook etc where you run into issues.
The thing is there are a ton of free alternatives to such software, but either requires extra training, along with people locked into a particular ecosystem or product and many dont like adapting to change.
That being said, linux has come a long way in the last 20 years, I remember having a friend at the time saying linux was the next best thing, and yet literally nothing ever worked properly out of the box, poor driver support and a community that expected you to be a total geek to use it and at the same time complain that you are the problem for not learning a whole bunch of stuff in the command line.
I still use windows, but im at the point of changing over with the way windows11 is going with microsoft accounts, etc.
I recently had a client who had his computer reset and wipe all the apps after asking him to sign into microsoft, I initially thought it was a case of PEBKAC, but speaking to others, they tell me they have heard of similar stories where the computer prompts the user to sign into microsoft after a windows update and then proceed to perform some kind of system reset, which is what I had assumed had happened here, but he was adamant that all he did was sign into a microsoft account when prompted and then it restarted spinning around with the dont turn off your PC message.
27-06-2025, 06:45 PM (This post was last modified: 27-06-2025, 06:47 PM by king1.)
(27-06-2025, 04:47 PM)nzoomed Wrote: I recently had a client who had his computer reset and wipe all the apps after asking him to sign into microsoft, I initially thought it was a case of PEBKAC, but speaking to others, they tell me they have heard of similar stories where the computer prompts the user to sign into microsoft after a windows update and then proceed to perform some kind of system reset, which is what I had assumed had happened here, but he was adamant that all he did was sign into a microsoft account when prompted and then it restarted spinning around with the dont turn off your PC message.
Seen a similar thing happen before as well, although I was able to find all the old data in a different user profile, and it didn't wipe or remove apps...
The user had unwittingly signed in with an account in use on another PC which had a completely different role and data...
It was kind of like the MS account sign in process decided that the local account profile data was too different to the data in the existing MS account and rather than merge all the data it setup a new profile for the signed in data...
27-06-2025, 07:32 PM (This post was last modified: 27-06-2025, 07:55 PM by Wainuitech.)
Regarding having to sign into a Microsoft account. There is ALWAYS ways around it, never yet had an update that the "sign in" can't be bypassed or canceled. Same with all the new computers I'm building at the moment, not one has a MS Account, all local. The only things to do with a MS account are Office 365 or utilise OneDrive.
One thing MANY people do or not do as the case may be is actually LOOK at what they are clicking, Office 365 for example many people simply follow the recommended settings, With Office you select "MS Apps Only" Other wise it changes the whole computer.
Another that's common is downloading software -- Many use the defaults. One that comes to mind is Adobe Reader -- Use defaults and you will install McAfee, as its pre ticked.
BACK ON TOPIC:
Had a good friend send me this video. Youtube He hits the nail on the Head at 18.40 #6
One thing he is incorrect about the use of AI. Google it and you'll see Linux is highly used.
Could link a site BUT Eset is going nuts blocking ads and addresses from it
(27-06-2025, 04:47 PM)nzoomed Wrote: I recently had a client who had his computer reset and wipe all the apps after asking him to sign into microsoft, I initially thought it was a case of PEBKAC, but speaking to others, they tell me they have heard of similar stories where the computer prompts the user to sign into microsoft after a windows update and then proceed to perform some kind of system reset, which is what I had assumed had happened here, but he was adamant that all he did was sign into a microsoft account when prompted and then it restarted spinning around with the dont turn off your PC message.
Seen a similar thing happen before as well, although I was able to find all the old data in a different user profile, and it didn't wipe or remove apps...
The user had unwittingly signed in with an account in use on another PC which had a completely different role and data...
It was kind of like the MS account sign in process decided that the local account profile data was too different to the data in the existing MS account and rather than merge all the data it setup a new profile for the signed in data...
I found a windows.old folder in the C drive dated the day he claims everything went pear shaped.
All the documents were there, but no apps present, his son had set him up with firefox and thunderbird, and all these were missing, it appeared similar to what I had seen with a windows factory reset.
(27-06-2025, 07:32 PM)Wainuitech Wrote: Regarding having to sign into a Microsoft account. There is ALWAYS ways around it, never yet had an update that the "sign in" can't be bypassed or canceled. Same with all the new computers I'm building at the moment, not one has a MS Account, all local. The only things to do with a MS account are Office 365 or utilise OneDrive.
One thing MANY people do or not do as the case may be is actually LOOK at what they are clicking, Office 365 for example many people simply follow the recommended settings, With Office you select "MS Apps Only" Other wise it changes the whole computer.
Another that's common is downloading software -- Many use the defaults. One that comes to mind is Adobe Reader -- Use defaults and you will install McAfee, as its pre ticked.
BACK ON TOPIC:
Had a good friend send me this video. Youtube He hits the nail on the Head at 18.40 #6
One thing he is incorrect about the use of AI. Google it and you'll see Linux is highly used.
Could link a site BUT Eset is going nuts blocking ads and addresses from it
Yes there are always ways around it, but they seem to make it quite un-obvious how to bypass for the average user, so most click next, instead of cancel or skip.
I see a number of people who have signed into a microsoft account despite the computer never being set up with one to begin with, I will never ever set up a windows PC with a microsoft account ever, I feel its only a matter of time before Microsoft end up mandating it, but there will probably always be some sort of workaround. I feel this will happen once microsoft change windows to a subscription business model much like office 365.
Yesterday, 07:14 PM (This post was last modified: Yesterday, 07:16 PM by Wainuitech.)
(Yesterday, 05:42 PM)Agent_24 Wrote: No idea how Fedora handles package management but I've always found Ubuntu and Co. (Debian based) to be very fast with updates compared to Windows.
5GB of updates sounds like what you get when your install image is severely out of date.
Yeah that's what I thought as well- out of date ISO, but unless the site has screwed up.
See Pictures. Latest Fedora. Yes I selected the correct ISO, the Server versions generally don't have a GUI unless you add one after install.
kubuntu seems more stable.
Well I've never used Fedora so can't comment on it. But it says that latest version was released in April so you'd think it'd be pretty up to date. Maybe the newer KDE is just heavy like that. I stopped using it after version 3.
Today, 11:26 AM (This post was last modified: 5 hours ago by nzoomed.)
Never had any issues with updates on Debian, in its early days, it required more user input to perform updates and was more problematic.
I remember when the system completley broke for me (Debian 6 from memory) at the time that most distros were changing over fromxfree86 to xorg.
The system performed a complete upgrade, but never did the part to switch over to xorg, despite installing the packages, required a ton of messing around in the CLI to get things working, but I got there in the end.
Nowdays I see updates on almost a daily basis and so far everything appears to work OK, Debians package management seems to be pretty robust, I had been using kubuntu for a while because it addressed a few issues that i encountered with updates breaking the system with debian, mostly surrounding non-free drivers such as nvidia. I also had issues with GTK apps not displaying right in KDE, but this seems to be addressed now, so ive been messing around with Debian again, and so far ive got nothing to complain about.
This is a good video to watch about the failure with commercial linux distros and why community driven development pays off in the end, it certainly has worked out well for Debian.
As far as KDE goes, i too kind of miss the KDE3 era, but I still prefer it over GNOME, XFCE looks a good contender though.
There were a lot of radical changed when KDE4 was introduced and caused a split in the community, (trinity desktop environment is essentially a fork of KDE3.5) lots of themes etc were not compatible and never got migrated over, I still feel there is still a gap here to fill.
That being said, the plasma desktop has alot more potential for customization. I agree it was a bit more resource intensive in the early days, but now its performance has improved significantly.
If the news surrounding KDE Plasma 6.5 is anything to go by, its going to be significant. https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1k...a_big_one/
Edit:
More developments/dramas happening.
XLibre is now released.
