I tried the Official Windows 11 start menu. I had disabled showing "recommended apps" in the settings. This hid the icons, but not the section. So, whenever I opened the start menu, the entire bottom half was a section that said "enable recommended apps to show them here."
That's when I installed Start11 (I also bought StartAllBack, but I preferred Start11) and never looked back.
I'll switch once HDR support becomes mainstream in Linux. That and a Linux equivalent of AutoHDR (which is a Windows 11 feature that converts SDR videos and games to HDR). This is literally the only thing keeping me on Windows.
"you" are the one keeping you on windows.
You decide that those features are more important than any disadvantages.
Which I think is absolutely OK - that's your choice. Many many people took this choice for a myriad of reasons and are the sum of "windows majority" - and no "I would change if" will perpetuate either feature development on Linux programs nor pressure on Microsoft.
Yes I'm aware of this. I'm not telling other people to stay away from Linux over HDR. If you don't care about it, then by all means feel free to use whatever OS you want. Just sharing my personal opinion.
HDR has been working great for me in KDE. I've been using mpv for HDR videos, and games with HDR work great. KDE has an SDR vibrancy setting when HDR is enabled that lets you decide how bright and colorful you want SDR content (turn it up enough and it looks like HDR to me), I'm not sure if that's how auto HDR works.
im curious what version of kde plasma you're on, i thought they were still working on it and plasma 6 just released.
My computer with the hdr monitor is still on plasma 5.
edit: should've looked it up first of course. looks like support is expiremental on Wayland plasma 6. I'll see what happens when kubuntu catches up.
Nobara comes with Plasma 6 and a pile of proton/wine/gpu upgrades to improve gaming, and put on a Fedora base that's impressively stable. It's done by GloriousEggroll so it's all cutting edge Wine improvements.
Yeah, I'm on plasma 6, and interesting that they call it experimental. The setting is available by default in the display settings with no warning or anything. Either way, it works perfectly- hopefully kubuntu updates to 6 soon because it's so much better than 5 :)
The SDR option is actually called "SDR brightness" and it seems to increase both the colour intensity and brightness as you slide it up. I have it set to 150 out of 500 and it's about as intense as I'd want it.
Ended up installing Garuda instead since it does most of the work for me when it comes to building an Arch-based OS for gaming. It mostly works except for some minor issues, a major one, and a show stopping one.
For one, the kernel completely stops responding to even Alt+SysRq+R-E-I-S-U-B when validating my Wallpaper Engine install in Steam and I don't know why. I found a plug in that allows it to work in KDE but I can't even get that far if I can't even install the app. I just ended up not installing it, but I'm still looking for a Linux-native app for animated wallpapers.
Secondly, I have this weird flickery-ghosting effect when playing games in fullscreen (Well, actually just Helldivers 2 cause it's the only game I've tested so far). Borderless windowed is fine but then there's a distracting thin white border around the window.
Thirdly, I can't even begin to comprehend how OpenRGB is supposed to work. It's like trying to understand a foreign language, especially given how intuitive and easy to use SignalRGB is (Windows exclusive). I can't even figure out how to use OpenRGB to simply disable the damn lights so I don't have to deal with it.
Fourthly, the Nvidia X Server app is missing almost every single feature that Nvidia Control Panel has. Where are the 3D settings for games? Where's the AI stuff? Where's RTX Video Super Resolution? I didn't spend $1800 on a GPU, only to not be able to use it to its fullest.
And most importantly: HDR is completely broken, which is a show-stopper for me. I'm too used to HDR to go back to SDR, especially in movies or games. Turning it on makes the desktop and all SDR content look dull and washed-out on an LG C1 OLED, like a faded photo from the 1970s. It's obvious that KDE isn't properly mapping SDR colors to an HDR space. The SDR color intensity slider does nothing, either. HDR works perfectly in Windows 11, even when showing SDR content.
tl;dr: I don't actually expect any help; just wanted to vent. I'll figure this shit out eventually, but until then, I'm dual booting Windows 11. From what I understand, HDR support is still in its early stages for KDE. So I'll check back again in a few months to see how things have improved. Anyway thanks for listening.
For one, the kernel completely stops responding to even Alt+SysRq+R-E-I-S-U-B when validating my Wallpaper Engine install in Steam and I don’t know why. I found a plug in that allows it to work in KDE but I can’t even get that far if I can’t even install the app. I just ended up not installing it, but I’m still looking for a Linux-native app for animated wallpapers.
This one could be any number of things- one trick for figuring out what the issue could be is to see what your system log looked like right before the hang. You might have to scroll up a bit and there's going to be a bunch of noise from random stuff reporting their status that you'll need to ignore. Look especially for lines with red text and the word "Error". To get the log from the current boot (not the one you're looking for) run journalctl -b, similarly, to get the one from the previous boot (the one that would have crashed) run journalctl -b-1 - you can also look at the logs from boots before that with journalctl -b-2 and so on (assuming your haven't limited the size to the point where those no longer exist).
Secondly, I have this weird flickery-ghosting effect when playing games in fullscreen (Well, actually just Helldivers 2 cause it’s the only game I’ve tested so far). Borderless windowed is fine but then there’s a distracting thin white border around the window.
Just a hunch, but I ran into something similar and realized it was g-sync/freesync (which only runs when an app is fullscreen). The refresh of the game changes the refresh of the monitor, and on my TV it only gets flickery when the framerate is slow (like in menus), while on my desktop it gets flickery in a bunch of situations, so I assume it's just a bad implementation there. Interestingly, I don't seem to get tearing even with it disabled, so I just turned it off.
Thirdly, I can’t even begin to comprehend how OpenRGB is supposed to work. It’s like trying to understand a foreign language, especially given how intuitive and easy to use SignalRGB is (Windows exclusive). I can’t even figure out how to use OpenRGB to simply disable the damn lights so I don’t have to deal with it.
Haha, oh man, yeah, I personally just wanted to turn off the lights on my RAM, and iirc deleting items was pretty easy though I'd have to check to see what I did to remember exactly how it's done (let me know if you want me to take a look). Trying to configure stuff to light up a certain way is an adventure I haven't attempted to tackle yet.
Fourthly, the Nvidia X Server app is missing almost every single feature that Nvidia Control Panel has. Where are the 3D settings for games? Where’s the AI stuff? Where’s RTX Video Super Resolution? I didn’t spend $1800 on a GPU, only to not be able to use it to its fullest.
A lot of the fancier consumer features end up lagging behind in terms of support on linux. I personally hate how AI makes videos look and I use AMD which doesn't have those fancy features in the first place :), but I can see how you'd be annoyed not at least having the option. I think all of the nvidia features games utilize are supported, but a lot of the stuff you'd normally need to open up the graphics card configuration tool on windows to access and configure is likely going to be missing. At the same time, there are quite a few CUDA-based AI tools out there that you can use on linux that would be a pain to set up on windows, so you lose some things and gain some others. The ollama-cuda package on archlinux is a fun place to start.
And most importantly: HDR is completely broken, which is a show-stopper for me. I’m too used to HDR to go back to SDR, especially in movies or games. Turning it on makes the desktop and all SDR content look dull and washed-out on an LG C1 OLED, like a faded photo from the 1970s. It’s obvious that KDE isn’t properly mapping SDR colors to an HDR space. The SDR color intensity slider does nothing, either. HDR works perfectly in Windows 11, even when showing SDR content.
That's really odd- I'd seen examples of that being the case before KDE 6 was released, but when I first tried it on with my LG G3 (so pretty similar to you) I found a good slider brightness position and everything looked great from there. I wonder if it's an issue of nvidia vs amd or something else?
tl;dr: I don’t actually expect any help; just wanted to vent. I’ll figure this shit out eventually, but until then, I’m dual booting Windows 11. From what I understand, HDR support is still in its early stages for KDE. So I’ll check back again in a few months to see how things have improved. Anyway thanks for listening.
Haha, well I did my best anyway :) After your experience I can't really blame you for dual booting (and probably mostly sticking to) windows 11 for now. If nothing else, you can keep your linux install around to occasionally check and see if the caveats have dwindled enough to start using it more regularly eh?
At this point I've just abandoned the start menu all together. PowerToys Run has effectively become how I launch anything that isn't on the taskbar, tied to one of the buttons on my mouse or a keyboard shortcut. Everything search on a different shortcut replaces the built-in search.
Of course that's just how I cope on my mandatory-Windows 11 work laptop. At home (and I know this is almost a meme at this point), I'm slowly getting myself accustomed to Linux alongside Windows 10 until that's no longer feasible.
Am I misunderstanding something or are you saying you dig into the program files every time you launch a program? I thought the OP was talking about programs not files and folder.
I don't install to program files typically, but yes. I navigate the tree and launch either my bat files or exe files directly. A program is just launched by a 'file' or executable in this case.
Out of curiosity: How do you start programs? If a program is clearly associated with a file by opening the file from explorer I assume, but there are programs which are not file based (web browser, games, ...). Do you maintain a folder with shortcuts or do you navigate the start menu folder using the explorer?
I've been a Linux Mint guy for the last ten years.
By default, the Menu is able to explore the file system. I turn that off. I want that for launching applications. I use Nemo, the file manager, for browsing and opening files.
Some work surprisingly well. Elden ring for example. The funny thing is when I close Elden ring in windows, the anti cheat splash page stays and I need to close it from task manager. In Linux it just closes by itself as it should.
Microsoft owns github. I wonder if there's going to be a purge of this kind of software from the platform coming down the pike.
I'm sure if they did that it would spark a mass exodus and the development of a viable alternative, but I've never seen those kinds of inevitable consequences stop a corporation from enshittifying.
It's impossible to imagine that they haven't talked about nixxing something like Microsoft Activation Scripts though.
The idea that a multinational corporation will be able to resist enshittification forever is pretty cute. These things happen over the course of many years. They haven't turned it to shit yet, but it's basically inevitable isn't it?
"good faith" is a human concept. Corporations aren't people, they don't act in any faith. They haven't yet fucked it up, but that means literally nothing. Trust is an irrelevant concept here.
All it takes is a bad quarter, a new exec wants to prove their worth, a news article makes Microsoft look bad for hosting piracy software. Anything could trigger the change. Whatever or whoever is stopping them from making this mistake isn't going to be around forever.
Sure, they don't rely on consumer sales, but that creates a contradiction. They have an anti-piracy system, so they nominally care about it. That creates tension that will never be resolved in favour of piracy. They will eventually crack down against their own interests.
I don't even know why you'd argue about this. Maybe lightning will strike on this issue and it won't get removed, but if it makes a difference to you you're better off assuming it will happen.
I'm sure this is intended to block software thst could do things like remove Copilot and all the OS level advertising they keep populating windows with.
