Instead of a privacy-raping telemetry-ridden piece of crap that constantly gets in the way between you and what you want to do...

Or keep with making a privacy-raping piece of crap but let someone else get on with making an OS.

> Only 10 months left until Windows 10 end of support and people still seem to prefer it

And I'll prefer it even more when it drops out of support and MS stop pushing unwanted and intrusive updates up its... internet port.

Anybody know if there is some way to prevent those Win11 ads from appearing ?

I'm sick of Redmond's endless push to make me change my working environment for no good reason.

Yes, [1]this .

[1] https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

I bought a new laptop last week with Windows 11 Pro on it. I tried to create a local admin account on it, but it looks as though you have to create an MS account to access the laptop. I could be wrong there, but honestly didn't feel like doing the research so I flattened the drive and install openSUSE on it. I guess I'm one of the reasons there's been a drop in their numbers.

https://pureinfotech.com/bypass-internet-connection-install-windows-11/

Thanks, but I'm sticking with Linux.

"prevent those Win11 ads" - Thanks, that's a good point, I'll add that as a feature to the sale of my original Windows-XP computers (fully functional and so easy to use) on Ebay.

So I guess in 10 months time I will be switching to Linux.

What's the El Reg recommendation for a gaming PC, mainly using Steam? Which Distro has the best game support, needless fap, and is the easiest to get used to after Windows...?

Suggestions on a Postcard? (Or in the comments below, whatever takes your fancy...)

SteamOS?

I've had good luck with "Pop_OS!".

I think ExampleOne means well but plain vanilla SteamOS is not packaged for broad hardware support, easy installation or sustained desktop usage.

If you use the machine only or mostly for gaming, Bazzite should do it. It's a preconfigured SteamOS that installs anywhere except if you have an Nvidia GPU. You could also try ChimeraOS but I feel at the moment Bazzite is more polished. If you're stuck with Nvidia, waiting for PlaytronOS might be the only way forward.

If you also want to use it for desktop work and are a beginner on Linux, try any of the Ubuntus or Fedora, they're pretty much equally easy these days. On Ubuntu you'll have to contend with Snap packages for many basic components like web browsers, though, which are nasty, sad, stupid and evil (in some users' opinion) or the next messiah (in Canonical's opinion only). If that leaves a bad aftertaste for you, Fedora it is.

You'll find a lot of opinions in every direction so maybe head to gamingonlinux.com and join the forum, IRC channel or Discord.

For saying that 'Snap' is nasty.

Well done.

Others have already mentioned some Steam OS's but you don't need to limit yourself to just one OS. It is easy to make your machine multi-boot and more than one OS. You could pick one that works best for games and another such as Mint for browsing the web, writing documents, Zoom, email etc. Mint is quite like Windows 7 and gives you a clean uncluttered desktop without bloat.

Not an imaginative or original option, but one that works just fine for me: Mint.

Especially given that my new rig has an AMD video card - it worked, literally, out of the box. Install Mint, install Steam, install my games, done. *

* Unless you love online games with anti-cheat bullshit built in, which tend to only work on Windows. But you can always check what works on protondb.

Not so much a distro recommendation as a trial recommendation. Try out some distros on VMWare Workstation Pro, it's free now (get it from techspot though, the Broadcom website is impossible) and lets you install as many VMs as you like.

People can recommend distros all day long but we don't know how you like to use your computer. Do you want to be always, or mostly on the bleeding edge (with the potential instabilities that might cause) or are you OK with scheduled releases that might not have the absolute latest hardware supported on day-1 but will in a few months? Then there's desktop environments. If you've only used Windows then some of the options on Linux might be completely alien to you, like Hyperland and Sway. You have 10 months, so it's worth trying them out to see if you like them.

My 12 month old Win10 build was upgraded to 11 and now needs to be rebooted every 3 days (best practice anyhow). as it slows down so much that an ADUC search windows takes 9 seconds to load.

if only it had some AI to sort the problrem.

Rebooted every 3 days? Why not save electricity by switching it off when you're not using it? Or maybe you're running a server on it?

There is a difference between hibernate and power off.

If you hibernate every night for a week Windows 11 has a paddy, the more resumes it does the longer it appears to take to figure out that the various pieces of hardware it started with still exist.

You're on [1]the wrong forum!

[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/12/02/windows_xp_sweater_competition/

I recently had to rebuild my main home rig. It was on W11 previously, but with the rebuild I took the opportunity to take it back down to W10. How much more of a pleasant environment it is to be in.

I won't mind if MS suddenly decides to fund my upgrade to the latest and greatest win11 compatible hardware... I guess that's why I don't get hammered with upgrade ads that much, or at all.

Meanwhile, win10 it is.

I use Win 10 IoT LTSC so haven't yet really seen these (thankfully). I will NOT be upgrading to W11 though, I see pretty much no benefit from the sound of it, and don't want some AI on my machine "trying" to be "helpful".

...until I replace my PC with a new one and if that means no updates then so be it. I have looked at all the Linux flavours I can be bothered to check and there is still very little gaming support unless you are willing to fiddle and tweak and sacrifice your firstborn to the Great God Linus. Yes, despite YEARS of faffing about and hundreds of variants Linux is still a PITA to setup if you want to play games and I just can't be arsed. Maybe I'll take another look in a few years when they have sorted out the mess and have a straight forward install that just works, or maybe the games companies will release Linux variants of the games I want to play.

> very little gaming support unless you are willing to fiddle and tweak and sacrifice your firstborn to the Great God Linus. Yes, despite YEARS of faffing about and hundreds of variants Linux is still a PITA to setup if you want to play games and I just can't be arsed

Er, what?

apt install steam (*)

steam -> Settings -> "Enable SteamPlay for all titles"

...

That's it.

* obviously ensure that non-free sources are enabled, and you also may need to enable i386 packages, turning them on is simple: dpkg --add-architecture i386; apt update

Even VR works out of the box. Yes, even with Windows VR games

The Microsoft recent history of turning all its users into beta testers to avoid paying for real testing comes back to bite it. Hardware requirements & loss of compatibility doesn't help.

The worst are the updates that brick computers, delete user documents, games stop working, peripherals stop working (or looses features)...

or similar fatal errors.

More advertising isn't needed to polish the thurds. They should instead spend that on tech/devs that can improve the products more than they break them.

Just in case it's helpful to anyone, I recently installed Ubuntu 24.10 on my Surface Pro 3, which Microsoft have deemed unworthy of Win 11. Everything awkward (touch screen, low power standby, etc.) works out of the box. Didn't even need that custom Surface Kernel that can be found on Github. Admittedly, I don't have any AAAA batteries so cannot check the pen.

I don't think device has felt so responsive since its original Win 8.

If MS want to provide me, at their expense, with new PCs that meet their hardware requirements then I might consider swapping out the W10 machines here. Most of what I have runs Linux, some of it is 10 years old (I finally replaced a Core 2 Duo machine last month, ironically with someone else's cast-off as they upgraded to W11 hardware) and runs the latest distros just fine. So no, not going to switch to W11 any time soon.