A BBC investigation reveals that Microsoft is permanently banning Palestinians in the U.S. and other countries who use Skype to call relatives in Gaza.
Reportedly, Microsoft has been banning and wiping the accounts of users who have leveraged Skype to contact relatives in Gaza. In some cases, email accounts over a decade old have been locked, destroying access to banking accounts, OneDrive storage, and beyond.
United States resident Salah Elsadi lost his account of over 15 years in the dragnet. “I’ve had this Hotmail for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I have violated their terms — what terms? Tell me. I’ve filled out about 50 forms and called them many many times.” Eiad Hametto from Saudi Arabia echoed the report, “We are civilians with no political background who just wanted to check on our families. They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years. It was connected to all my work. They killed my life online.”
Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas
Your current PC can become a Linux machine by lunchtime. What are you waiting for?
The last time I used a Linux PC was around 2012 with something called “Egyptian Hax” that my sister set up because she wanted me to play NetHack, so a guide would be a great start. I’m aware that WINE has gone through some vast improvements, but beyond that I don’t really know where to start, what distro would be good for me, or anything else.
Edit: not getting mocked for admitting my ignorance would be a huge encouragement as well, tbh. It’s hard not to be resentful when a community is hostile to new members. Calling someone a slur for not already being a part of the in group is a great way to keep people from joining. 👍
I’m also going to recommend Linux Mint, its a really friendly beginner distro. I’ll presonally recommend you do Linux Mint Debian instead of normal linux mint
since regular linux mint is Ubuntu based and really loves snaps.The default user env is cinnimon which is going to look a lot like Windows 10 making the transition easier. If you want to install steam its literally a command line away from installing and then its ready to go. That and Steam personally pushing for Linux as a viable gaming platform there are a lot more games now that work out of the box now on steam.
I’m saving this to note down that the flavor I’m most likely to want is “Cinnamon”. I didn’t really understand the rest, but thank you!
Mint doesn’t use snaps at all by default. It has a regular .deb repository supplemented by Flatpaks.
Really? I swore I’ve been told that the regular mint uses snaps since ubuntu loves them. I haven’t used mint since snaps were a thing eitherway.
Don’t listen to people who mock you for asking a question. They are never the people whose advice is worth listening too. Start small. Get 8gb or bigger thumb drive. You can even use an external SSD. USB C would be the best. Follow the guide below or find a guide of your own. Start with Ubuntu. It isn’t perfect but it is the most popular distro out there. Be aware this installation is going to be laggy due to it being on a slower thumb drive. This will allow you to see that it just works. Games might be slower loading due to the thumb drive. I use steam daily and only have seen a few games I couldn’t play. Everyone was due to the ham-fisted drm the games had implemented.
https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-persistent-live-usb/
Alternatively you can install a second hard drive in a PC and use both safely without fear of problems. I’ve been running linux as my daily driver for over ten years. I still have a windows installation that I can boot into if needed. Usually for firmware updates that only can be performed in windows. Currently I haven’t needed it in over a year.
I may look into Ubuntu if I have time this weekend. How does it differ from mint?
I’ve heard about it, but nothing of substance.
Write down a list of the software you use (e.g. web browser, office suite, notepad, image viewer, video player, … ). Download Linux Mint from here and use Balena Etcher to write it into a pen drive. Switch off your computer, plug in the pen drive and switch on. DON’T INSTALL YET. Run Linux ‘live’ for a couple of hours, see if everything (speaker, printer, webcam, all the software you listed above) is working correctly.
Once you have confirmed that all is well, copy your files into an external hard drive, confirm that everything important has been backed up, and then install Linux from the pen drive. (You can have both Windows and Linux on the same computer, but then Windows should not be given internet access or it will ‘update’ and mess up everything. This can be repaired using, for example, this software, but why bother?)
Saved. I’ll look at this Sunday if I have time (I’m making that PCM developed by NightHawkInLight to use for a few planned events).
Ty very much!
Start with Linux Mint. It should be a very pleasant and straightforward experience right out of the box, and is just in general very beginner friendly. I recommend to create a live USB (basically, download the ISO from the Mint website, then use something like Balena Etcher to put it on a USB stick). You can then boot off that stick, and try Mint out to your heart’s content, without risking your Windows install or data at all.
Can I ask, what are the programs you wager you’ll have to emulate through wine?
I’m saving this so I can look at it again this weekend.
I’m not one for making bets unless I know something that I suspect someone else doesn’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the games I have on steam need wine to run on Linux. My understanding is that wine is a compatibility layer, hence the name, correct?
Ah, good news in regards to gaming, esp. Steam gaming!
Steam invested quite a bit of energy into “Proton”, essentially a new kind of compatibility layer. If you remember tinkering around with wine and winetricks from years ago, that’s basically gone nowadays.
For most games, just go into the Steam settings for that game, and under “Compatibility”, check the box.
Then click download, and play. That’s it for most games 🎉
Also check out protondb.com - it’s basically a community-sourced database cataloging how well Steam games work on Linux.
Good luck on your Linux journey, and feel free to ask questions if something comes up! :)
And if you’ve been letting Steam store your save data, you should find that your save files for most games will still be available in Linux! Mileage will vary per game of course, but jumping between OSes has been pretty seamless for me!
I got a steam deck last fall and so far the only game I’ve run into that doesn’t work with my windows cloud save is Dark Souls 2
Don’t let the gatekeepers put you off. The Linux community is quite helpful if you can get past their garbage. Every guru was once a noob 👍
Installed? Sure, you can do that by lunchtime.
Getting it set up? Making sure all your drivers are working right? Troubleshooting issues? Finding alternatives to programs you need that don’t work on Linux? Especially for someone who has never used Linux before? That will take much longer.
By lunchtime? Yes, yes, yes, no, no are your answers.
If only I could install it on the Surface Pro X…
Damn, they worked so hard to gain goodwill in the last few years and it seems they’ve set out to destroy it in record time.
WSL and WSL2, Android Apps, working with Qualcomm to get their ARM computers to a credible state, the new Powershell and the push to open source so many things…
And in the past 12-18 months they’ve been crashing and burning, either backtracking on those things or by starting new initiatives to become scummier and scummier. TPM, Copilot, the ad situation, abusing their position of power with office/teams, the giant safety holes in the Recall feature… But it seems every day there’s something new in the news. It’s never ending.
If only I could install it on the Surface Pro X…
I’m not surprised that you can’t, but I’m still disappointed.
That’s a nice project, but the last update was from 2 years ago and it needs way too much work to be close to usable. Windows 11 might be getting ads but at least audio works…
To be Done:
Support for Audio Subsystem #21 Support for LTE/Modem #22 Support for Webcams #23 Support for External Display Ports #27 Support for Suspend #29 Support for TrEE Services #37 Support for Sensors #38 Support for GNSS/GPS #39 UEFI ResetSystem() crashes #41Various other issues can be expected, see the issue tracker for details.
Yeah I kinda figured that, just did a quick Google search and found that.
I’ve got a dell xps15, awesome Linux experience no issues with any hardware. Also think pads are great as well.
The problem I have is that this covers a very niche use case for me. I want it to be a tablet - lightweight etc, but not be constrained by mobile apps. I don’t want iOS’ version of lightroom, I want to have Darktable and Rawtherapee and a full fledged Visual Studio code, and well, you get the picture.
I don’t need a laptop because I also have a MacBook Pro - I went this way because Apple’s processors are too far ahead to ignore. So I can take AMD but my opinion is that intel’s offerings are just not competitive and I’m not buying any of them.
This leaves me with very few options - I’d be keen on buying an AMD-powered Ubuntu tablet but they don’t seem to exist.
And also my surface works perfectly fine, so spending a non-trivial amount of money and ewaste just to change OS seems rather silly. I’m sticking to that one for now.
they worked so hard to gain goodwill in the last few years
I have no recollection of this.
