The registry trick came with caveats, though. Third-party SSD management tools like Samsung Magician and Western Digital Dashboard were not compatible with the new driver, and BitLocker could trigger recovery prompts after the driver swap.
Such a long history of driver BS on windows. Going all the way back.
$150 plus ads and all your data and they still won’t give you access to a driver
Man…I don’t even like linux. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have difficulty understanding what I’m even doing wrong. I have issues installing software unless it’s a flatpak.
And yet for the past 2 years I’ve been exclusively running linux. Not so much against my will, but against my wants.
What I want is WindowsXP 2.0. Just WindowsXP but able to run modern hardware, in a 64 bit software version.
Instead, we get Windows 11. I will not stand for buying hardware, paying for software to run an OS, only to be told I own nothing, my privacy is not respected, my screen real estate is theirs to sell, and the software spies on me.
So I want you to know, as a lifelong windows user, dating back to Windows 3.1, and going all the way to Windows 8.1, I want you to know I say this as a Windows user who feels held hostage on linux…
That being said…FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!!! FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF WITH YOUR BULLSHIT! FUCK COPILOT! FUCK TILES! WINDOWS 10! FUCK WINDOWS 11! FUCK AI PUSHED DOWN OUR THROATS! FUCK YOUR ARTIFICIAL TECH LIMITS TO RUN WINDOWS 11! FUCK YOUR WHOLE MINDSET THESE PAST 15 YEARS!!! I HAVE BEEN UNHAPPILY USING LINUX FOR 2 YEARS EXCLUSIVELY AFTER TRYING IT OFF AND ON FOR 20 YEARS. NEVER UNDERSTOOD TERMINAL, MAY NEVER UNDERSTAND TERMINAL, BUT FUCK YOU MICROSOFT! I REFUSE YOUR BULLSHIT!
ReactOS is windows. Here’s their front page blurb:
“Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust. That’s the mission of ReactOS!”
It’s not Linux, specifically. Its not Linux under the hood, it’s written to be windows without microsoft.
Haven’t tried it myself, but its definitely worth a try if you’ve been using Linux that long and its just not for you.
I tried installing it a year ago. It wouldn’t install for some reason.
Maybe I’ll try again. Maybe their newest version has bug fixes.
It’s also targeting the Windows XP era, Server 2003 specifically.
Which distro are you on?
I’m sure you could easily get some help with how to install things and the basics of using the terminal (though you really shouldn’t need to use the terminal much anyway).
ZorinOS. I’m still on 17, because 2 years ago on my TwisterOS (raspberry pi) I used sudo update all, and that broke some shit.
So when I installed ZorinOS on my PC, I immediately disabled all updates, and it sits exactly as it was when I installed it. Never updated in 2 years. I haven’t broken anything.
I want to install this thing called docker, but it’s been so long that now I forget what it even was I wanted to install. I just remember docker was a prerequisit.
But I tried for 2 weeks, and it gives errors. And the thing is, if I understood linux, I’m sure it’s a simple fix. It’s like wandering into a house you’ve never been in before, and your friend is saying “turn the lights on!!!” and you know you need to turn the lights on, but you have no idea how. And you don’t feel the light switch on the wall. What you don’t know is it’s actually a clapper light switch. So you don’t even know what you’re doing wrong.
Thats how linux feels to me.
But for browsing the web, and playing games, it seems to work decent enough.
Although recently my bluetooth has been wonky. Very recent behavior. Used to just be rock solid. Now sometimes my devices won’t connect. Gotta turn off bluetooth, and then turn it back on. Then turn the device back on, and it’ll connect like normal.
In windows, I’d say uninstall and reinstall the bluetooth driver. In linux I have zero clue how I would even start that process.
Again, in a dark room not sure what to do.
Mad rant props!
For real though, flatpak exists partially for exactly your use case. Simple to use, won’t break shit, and pretty much available everywhere.
You’re kinda lucky in a way. Linux in all its flavors have steadily improved over the years. Even when win10 came out and I jumped ship for all but a few niche uses, it was a higher learning curve, and came with much disappointment in what I couldn’t do that I had been able to on win 7 (which was my favorite version of Windows overall).
Now, while I still have my win 7 drive for the two things I can’t get working on linux reliably, I can do everything else. I also have a win10 partition on my laptop for one single piece of software because it’s easier to just keep it for the rare usage than try to figure out how to get it working (is Amazon’s shitty kindle author program, and since I only crank out a book every three years or so [and only one that I’ve felt like selling there], it just isn’t worth fucking with for that tiny amount of extra space.
Linux, right now, is the best it’s ever been. It’s also on par with windows. Enough so that I can’t see myself ever going back. At some point, win7 won’t work on new hardware, and I’ll have to jank a musicbee install on linux, and tackle the character sheet generator that I use formy absurdly over crunchy home brew TTRPG that I’ve yet to find a replacement for that isn’t a compromise.
Anyway, I suspect that in a year or two, you’ll be in a similar space. You’ll have figured out the bullshit, abandoned windows habits, and actually be satisfied with your distro of choice.
Truth? If I had spent as much time on linux back in the nineties, I would likely have has equal difficulty adapting to windows if things had been in reverse.
Have you considered a virtual machine for that super rare use-case?
Debian + KDE and then install synaptic and your basically there man. https://itsfoss.com/synaptic-package-manager/ You could go with Ubuntu but it has telemitry bullshit (if you don’t care then its fine). Ubuntu is just the commercialized linux that is based on Debian, basically the same thing but with the Ubuntu store and settings on top of Debian. Launch Synaptic once a month and refresh and apply updates or add the software from the repositry from there. Debian is all about being stable so it wont have all the latest versions of software but if you want a Windows XP version of Linux that just fucking works, Debian is the way to go. Everything has a .deb installer if it is trying to be available to the wider Linux user market.
