I jumped in to the Win11 beta and really liked it, they finally got most of the control panel into the new settings architecture and I never once had to dig deep into things to adjust something small, a lot of stuff that took finagling just worked.
And now I fucking hate it. The release version is jammed so full of bullshit features and useless AI junk that it is an active hindrance to whatever I’m trying to do. And more and more stupid fucking bugs bubble up in to the desktop and never get addressed, all while I get pop up after pop up urging me to try some bullshit new feature.
I already had one foot into Linux with my desktop but kept this because it was a Surface and nice at some point, but my next buy has to be a Linux 2-in-1, I can’t deal with Microsoft’s horseshit any longer.
I do want to emphasize that for the moments that it was unadulterated by rent-seeking, the new Win11 actually was kinda great.
In case you weren’t aware there’s an ongoing project adding Surface hardware support to Linux kernel. It’s in a pretty mature state, with most of the features already implemented and working (here is a full breakdown per device). I’ve been using it on my SP6 for a few years with zero issues.
It might be worth a look until you get to buying new hardware.
Kde is working really well on linux-surface. Had to change the OSK to maliit(?) but everything I need works. I haven’t tried to install the camera driver because I never needed it. Stylus works really well ootb. Use it with Krita. Screen rotation works great and I use it as an e-reader. I choose an easy arch distro because disk encryption works with the native keyboard although it has been some time since i tried a non rolling distro and other distros could have addressed the startup keyboard issues by now. 10/10 would recommend.
Posting from a Surface Go 2 running Debian Trixie with Gnome+Phosh. Everything except the webcam just works on the stock kernel (for webcam support you need the patched Surface kernel). Vanilla Gnome is fine, too, if you use a hardware keyboard. I run Phosh because the onsceen keyboard is much better than Gnome’s.
I finally committed to the switch last weekend. My desktop PC was the last holdout still on Windows in my fleet, because of Adobe Lightroom. I decided to just force myself to learn Darktable, and nuked the Win 11 install and replaced it with Fedora 43.
Fun side note, some of my games run way better than they did on Windows, despite not having native Linux builds. lol.
This worked immediately for me. I did have to change the install path because it still thought I had a Z drive for some reason… I do want it to work not on steam but if I can play WoW on Linux in the interim I’m happy lol
everyone goes through that phase. logs often help a lot, and you will start to get a feel for what may be wrong like you did on windows. once some things become second nature you will stop needing windows altogether. meanwhile, friction means you are learning.
i usually favor lutris for gaming anyway, it’s better at keeping everything together and updated ime. bottles tends to lag behind a bit by default which is not ideal for games atm.
I tried Lutris before and it would constantly stop installing and freeze up… and when I let it set up in the default directory it will install and then when I launch bnet it doesn’t show any games at all… anddd when it inevitably decides to force quit out of bnet and I click stop on lutris I get “sequence item 0: expected str instance, int found” … also constantly slowing the fuck out of my mouse/computer… I think I fucked my install up when I initially set up mint… might just wipe and start over again…
Flatpak, I’m pretty sure that’s what the software manager installs right? I tried again today and it gave me the same shit. I do want to keep trying to get it to work though if you have any ideas!
i don’t know how well versed in linux you are so ill try to be thorough:
overall it seems lutris is just running another instance of bnet than you set up in bottles, and might be running on system wine instead of proton.
see, these programs each have a “prefix” which is fancy for the folder the emulated windows C: drive is, the games aren’t showing because you are probably running it in another prefix, would be my guess. you can simply try pointing lutris to the bottles prefix, or set up bnet anew in lutris.
as for the crash, check the lutris config and ensure it’s running on proton-latest or the latest proton-ge (right now it’s v10). you can do that in lutris settings>runners>wine>cog icon. you might be missing runtimes in the lutris prefix.
temporarily lagging your mouse/pc while games load on wayland is an issue i had in a much older version, which is why i asked you about it. you are probably already running latest if you got the flatpak, though. running it from the terminal with flatpak run net.lutris.Lutris then trying it again might output useful information pertaining to this issue on the terminal.
more generally, you can use lutris’ log feature (up arrow by the play button > show logs) and see if it tells you more about the error you are experiencing when you run it. this is great for general troubleshooting. also, protondb.com is where people post fixes for the few games that might be stubborn, even if you are not using steam to launch it. known problems usually have known solutions so searching around before stressing about will usually help you a lot.
it’s hard to make an often straightforward diagnostic from far away, but these are the things i’d try first. let me know if i can help you further and i will try.
I left Windows for Linux in the early 2010s. Windows was shit then, but this is a new level of shit. I don’t know how anyone does it. After discovering the freedom Linux can provide I could never go back to Microsoft.
I jumped in to the Win11 beta and really liked it, they finally got most of the control panel into the new settings architecture and I never once had to dig deep into things to adjust something small, a lot of stuff that took finagling just worked.
And now I fucking hate it. The release version is jammed so full of bullshit features and useless AI junk that it is an active hindrance to whatever I’m trying to do. And more and more stupid fucking bugs bubble up in to the desktop and never get addressed, all while I get pop up after pop up urging me to try some bullshit new feature.
I already had one foot into Linux with my desktop but kept this because it was a Surface and nice at some point, but my next buy has to be a Linux 2-in-1, I can’t deal with Microsoft’s horseshit any longer.
I do want to emphasize that for the moments that it was unadulterated by rent-seeking, the new Win11 actually was kinda great.
In case you weren’t aware there’s an ongoing project adding Surface hardware support to Linux kernel. It’s in a pretty mature state, with most of the features already implemented and working (here is a full breakdown per device). I’ve been using it on my SP6 for a few years with zero issues.
It might be worth a look until you get to buying new hardware.
Thank you for this. I haven’t figured out what to do with my Surface yet, but this sounds promising.
Kde is working really well on linux-surface. Had to change the OSK to maliit(?) but everything I need works. I haven’t tried to install the camera driver because I never needed it. Stylus works really well ootb. Use it with Krita. Screen rotation works great and I use it as an e-reader. I choose an easy arch distro because disk encryption works with the native keyboard although it has been some time since i tried a non rolling distro and other distros could have addressed the startup keyboard issues by now. 10/10 would recommend.
Posting from a Surface Go 2 running Debian Trixie with Gnome+Phosh. Everything except the webcam just works on the stock kernel (for webcam support you need the patched Surface kernel). Vanilla Gnome is fine, too, if you use a hardware keyboard. I run Phosh because the onsceen keyboard is much better than Gnome’s.
I finally committed to the switch last weekend. My desktop PC was the last holdout still on Windows in my fleet, because of Adobe Lightroom. I decided to just force myself to learn Darktable, and nuked the Win 11 install and replaced it with Fedora 43.
Fun side note, some of my games run way better than they did on Windows, despite not having native Linux builds. lol.
My bottles borked my battle.net install somehow so instead of tackling the issue I’ll put it off for months/years and continue dual booting
you can just run battlenet through steam:
a tiny bit of effort, but only required once. everything afterwards just works!
This worked immediately for me. I did have to change the install path because it still thought I had a Z drive for some reason… I do want it to work not on steam but if I can play WoW on Linux in the interim I’m happy lol
My condolences
everyone goes through that phase. logs often help a lot, and you will start to get a feel for what may be wrong like you did on windows. once some things become second nature you will stop needing windows altogether. meanwhile, friction means you are learning.
i usually favor lutris for gaming anyway, it’s better at keeping everything together and updated ime. bottles tends to lag behind a bit by default which is not ideal for games atm.
I tried Lutris before and it would constantly stop installing and freeze up… and when I let it set up in the default directory it will install and then when I launch bnet it doesn’t show any games at all… anddd when it inevitably decides to force quit out of bnet and I click stop on lutris I get “sequence item 0: expected str instance, int found” … also constantly slowing the fuck out of my mouse/computer… I think I fucked my install up when I initially set up mint… might just wipe and start over again…
huh. i don’t think you did anything wrong with mint.
did you try the flatpak or deb version of lutris? was it recent? old versions were hit and miss for me too.
Flatpak, I’m pretty sure that’s what the software manager installs right? I tried again today and it gave me the same shit. I do want to keep trying to get it to work though if you have any ideas!
i don’t know how well versed in linux you are so ill try to be thorough:
overall it seems lutris is just running another instance of bnet than you set up in bottles, and might be running on system wine instead of proton.
see, these programs each have a “prefix” which is fancy for the folder the emulated windows C: drive is, the games aren’t showing because you are probably running it in another prefix, would be my guess. you can simply try pointing lutris to the bottles prefix, or set up bnet anew in lutris.
as for the crash, check the lutris config and ensure it’s running on proton-latest or the latest proton-ge (right now it’s v10). you can do that in lutris settings>runners>wine>cog icon. you might be missing runtimes in the lutris prefix.
temporarily lagging your mouse/pc while games load on wayland is an issue i had in a much older version, which is why i asked you about it. you are probably already running latest if you got the flatpak, though. running it from the terminal with
flatpak run net.lutris.Lutristhen trying it again might output useful information pertaining to this issue on the terminal.more generally, you can use lutris’ log feature (up arrow by the play button > show logs) and see if it tells you more about the error you are experiencing when you run it. this is great for general troubleshooting. also, protondb.com is where people post fixes for the few games that might be stubborn, even if you are not using steam to launch it. known problems usually have known solutions so searching around before stressing about will usually help you a lot.
it’s hard to make an often straightforward diagnostic from far away, but these are the things i’d try first. let me know if i can help you further and i will try.
I left Windows for Linux in the early 2010s. Windows was shit then, but this is a new level of shit. I don’t know how anyone does it. After discovering the freedom Linux can provide I could never go back to Microsoft.
did you try the ltsc version? i heard it comes without all these unnecessary “features” and feature updates.