5 ms·

I went in the other direction. I used to use Linux (Ubuntu) but I got tired of essential things breaking after updates, like Nautilus, and the constant battle w

by eloff 11y ago

I went in the other direction. I used to use Linux (Ubuntu) but I got tired of essential things breaking after updates, like Nautilus, and the constant battle with getting the printer to work. Eventually I just got too frustrated, went out and bought Windows for $300 and considered it cheap. Now I need Linux for work (software dev) again, so I gave dual-boot a try. I installed OpenSuse, Ubuntu, and Debian a total of 7 times since Christmas, each time ending up with something unbootable within days. And I spent a couple thousand dollars of my time getting them to work, fixing the horrible fonts on OpenSuse, etc. Eventually I gave up and bought VMWare where Ubuntu now sits happily isolated from real hardware, a configuration that it's somehow more stable in. And at least I have automatic snapshots on every reboot, so when something goes wrong I just roll back. Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time. I really like Windows, not because it's a pleasure to use (Windows 8 with that metro crap was terrible!) but because it just works. If I can't get desktop Linux to work nicely as software engineer, what chance does your average person have? Unless some company does to Linux what Apple did to BSD (SteamOS?), I don't see any hope for it ever being anything but a niche desktop OS.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
I wonder if you used hardware than is actually supported by the distributions you tried? If you need/want Linux I would highly recommend buying something pre-installed. You don't have to use the pre-installed OS but at least you can reasonably assume that drivers will be available.
- eloff 11y ago
  Nothing exotic: NVIDIA 970 graphics card, Gigabyte motherboard with Intel NIC, Haswell CPU, Samsung SSD and a couple HDDs.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    I seriously don't recommend checking Linux compatibility on laptops this way (component by component). What about the wifi? How about your system's screen brightness controls? Trackpad? Etc. Getting something that is OK is takes work and getting something really good is a lot of work. For comparison. Try installing Windows on a Chromebook. It'll suck. Install Linux on a made for windows laptop and it'll sort of work if your lucky and suck if you're not. If you want to use Linux just buy laptops that are certified -- it's easy and there are several options these days (I'm not going to name any but google for them).
    - eloff 11y ago
      I use a desktop.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        You are either unlucky or doing something very weird then.
- jarcane 11y ago
  It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. I have routinely had hardware that was perfectly supported by one distro or another immediately break on the next update. Kernel versions are particularly picky. With Debian, I have historically regularly had to jump around between stable, testing, and unstable because one thing or another wouldn't work or the machine wouldn't even boot, because of the version of the kernel used. The amount of hardware regressions I've run into honestly stagger me. Video is another one that's notoriously bad. I've had to abandon Linux installs on multiple distros because after some update or another, suddenly some or all of video functionality just ceased to work. Debian broke my OpenGL. Fedora developed a system freeze when upgrading to 23. Ubuntu routinely fails to recognize common hardware or even existing hardware that ran previous versions, defaulting back to ugly VGA resolutions and software-only rendering. I frankly would take any pre-installed Linux laptop's claims of compatibility with a generous grain of salt, and basically expect that it too would eventually fail on some future version.
- click170 11y ago
  I wonder if part of the problem is people going outside of the OS's curated repositories. With Debian at least the curation of the repositories is one of the biggest attractions for me. Everything in there is tested at length and is known to work well together. I've never had problems staying within the repos. Friends on the other hand always want to install the latest version of whatever package and install tens of external PPAs to achieve that, without consideration for what that means for the stability of their system. They still carry their windows experiences and think that to install software you have to go find the software authors website and read their instructions - which much of the time apply to other distros and not the one you are using. I have to keep teaching people the Linux way to install software, use your local repos.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    It turns out the OP borked one of his attempts at Linux by trying to install Spotify in OpenSuse... I.e. exactly what you are saying.
unclebucknasty 11y ago
I stopped using Linux in the early-mid 2000s, when applying a security patch to sendmail required (at least then) that I learn its arcane compiler/build process. Burned at least a half day with no success. That was the last straw in a series of straws. I was trying to build a business and was losing too much time. Went back to Windows, installed a free version of mailenable via point and click, then configured it through an intuitive GUI within minutes. I'm sure I lost some tech cred on that transaction and it offended my sensibilities around MS at the time. But, man it just worked and that was priority one. I was already the CEO, developer, and customer support rep. There was just no value in adding Linux SA to the list. Have never regretted it nor looked back. EDIT: Interestingly, downvotes don't make any of my experience less true.
- scriptproof 11y ago
  Maybe downvoted because things changes on the space of 10 or more years...
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    Perhaps. But, then, here I am replying to someone who is sharing essentially the same experience in the modern Linux era.
sangnoir 11y ago
> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time I had the opposite experience. I do tech support for my extended family and I grew tired of cleaning up viruses and chasing up drivers from questionable sites. 3 years ago, I started pushing everyone to Linux (Mint). I must say, I have saved myself a lot of time (yes, I do value my time)
cLeEOGPw 11y ago
> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time. Can't agree with this more. All the "control" and "freedom" you have over PC fades quickly in the shadow of man hours needed to make things work on linux.
Vivtek 11y ago
Oddly enough, I've had exactly the opposite experience. I'm locked into Windows due to industry standards (translation tools are all Windows-only, and the vast, vast majority of business documentation runs on Microsoft Office), but with my last machine, I installed Ubuntu as the host OS and run Windows 7 in a virtual machine - and love it. I even have the opposite of your unbootability experience - towards the end of 2014 I rendered my Windows machine unbootable, without hope of recovery. I did manage to boot Linux from a USB drive and rescue my files. Late last year I did a similarly stupid thing with Linux - but I was able to reinstall the kernel without needing to reinstall everything, as Windows had required. Although you're right about the average-person thing. I shudder to think about walking my mom through a kernel reinstall.
ploxiln 11y ago
Unbootable within days? As in, you install a linux distro and it can boot, you switch between using it and using windows for a few days, and then after a few days linux can't boot? That's very strange; I've never seen that in over a decade of using various linux distros and dual-booting. My guess is that some "security" related mechanism in the firmware or windows is checking on and reverting the uefi boot setup somehow. Since virtually no one buys a laptop designed for linux, but rather hopes that linux has adapted (with all the driver "quirks" necessary) for that hardware, it's really just that linux gives you the tools and the freedom to figure things out and set them up how you want. It can't do it for you. Sometimes it's just an impractical amount of work. But depending on what you do, it's often worth it.
- eloff 11y ago
  On OpenSuse it was a software install that went bad. The much vaunted snapshot feature didn't work out of the box! It actually could not boot snapshots in that nice little grub menu. I had to reinstall after spending hours trying to rollback to a snapshot. On Ubuntu it updated the kernel, which made it unbootable. I could still boot the old kernel, but after taking out a ticket and being asked to upgrade my BIOS, that became unbootable as well. On Debian it was just too much work to get to a point where it supported the real resolution of my displays and my multi-monitor setup. I eventually just threw in the towel and went and installed Ubuntu in a VM, which at least got me up and running quickly. I'm leaving out a variety of colorful failure stories, but the bottom line is very little worked out of the box, it was insanely time consuming and difficult to get things into a decent state, and then it didn't stay in that state for long.
dTal 11y ago
>Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time. Counterpoint: I also value my freedom, privacy, mental health, and the longevity of my hardware. Freedom: I can install it whenever I want on whatever I want. I groan whenever I have to deal with "activation" headaches. It also works just the same on ARM - and anything else! All the programs I use are open source so they come right along too. Privacy: Even setting aside the Windows 10 debacle, Windows is incredibly noisy on the wire. Linux doesn't make a peep unless I ask it to. Mental health: System updates happen when I say. It doesn't strong-arm me into restarting when I'm busy doing something else, or hold my system hostage while it does god-knows-what on boot. As for application updates, I have a package manager, so I'm not bugged by a dozen different things like flash updater, java updater, etc. In fact, stuff doesn't spontaneously "happen" in general. If a system service starts chewing up resources or otherwise behaving badly (a rare occurrence) I can a) notice, because it's not lost in the noise of normal system chatter and b) actually find out what it is instead of it being hidden behind "svchost.exe". The primary interface (command line) is comparatively stable - I don't have to keep relearning where things are (it's not perfect in this respect, but it's better than Windows). Longevity of hardware: I'm writing this on my 2007 EeePC 901. It has 1 gig of ram and runs Debian flawlessly. I never need to restart it and my load average is somewhere around 0.2. Can any Windows do that? Look, I don't mean to come across as belligerent. You're entitled to choose whatever system makes you comfortable and allows you get work done. But I find Windows wastes far more of my time than Linux.
- eloff 11y ago
  I'm actually somewhat surprised at the number of people writing that Linux saves them time. Clearly not everyone has had the horrible experiences I have. I'm curious what distro you people use and on what hardware. I tried Ubuntu, OpenSuse, and Debian. All of them, excpting Ubuntu, needed so much work out of the box just to get to parity with a fresh windows install as to cost me more than a Windows license. Ubuntu was the least stable after install. Updates would frequently break it. I didn't even make it a week this time, and my past experience with it (LTS version) has been that every few months something new would break after updates.
  - 11y ago
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time. I think these words are actually on the cover of the 2004 edition of the Microsoft Anti-Linux Talking Points Guide. It's not that it isn't credible that you had a bad experience, it's that people have bad experiences with Windows too, and often. And the Windows problems are harder because the solutions are typically some kind of hideous workaround to the fact that the real problem can't be fixed, instead of the much-maligned Linux solutions that involve typing things into a terminal but, if you type the things into the terminal, it actually fixes the problem.
- eloff 11y ago
  Yes, I remember the talk about total cost of ownership. But it's entirely valid in my experience. I wouldn't ever use desktop Linux again outside of a VM. The bottom line is that my experience with Windows is rock solid. It looks good out of the box (metro asside), works out of the box, even supports SLI, gaming, multiple monitors without any fight. Even "dist upgrades" work. I've never had an issue with malware because I know what to do and what not to. And it's so nice that third-party software runs and runs well on Windows. Many companies don't support Linux or only offer a stripped-down product that barely works.
- gelasio 11y ago
  > I think these words are actually on the cover of the 2004 edition of... So what? The words that you're saying are on the tips of every Microsoft-hating Linux fanboy's tongue. > ...the Windows problems are harder because... Oh please. The Linux problems are harder because most of the time the solution doesn't exist at all ~ (e.g. Does a driver even exist for a particular device? Does it actually work though? Can I get a particular piece of industry-standard software? Probably not (but oh - here's an actually hideous emulation (WINE) of a much better GUI system (Windows) that you can TRY and run it on... ). > ...if you type the things into the terminal, it actually fixes the problem. Good one - please tell me what to type to be able to run Linux on a touch screen tablet, so I can run Linux in the same places I can run Windows. Also, what do I type to get a decent desktop GUI experience?

by eloff 11y ago

JupiterMoon 11y ago

I wonder if you used hardware than is actually supported by the distributions you tried? If you need/want Linux I would highly recommend buying something pre-installed. You don't have to use the pre-installed OS but at least you can reasonably assume that drivers will be available.

eloff 11y ago
Nothing exotic: NVIDIA 970 graphics card, Gigabyte motherboard with Intel NIC, Haswell CPU, Samsung SSD and a couple HDDs.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I seriously don't recommend checking Linux compatibility on laptops this way (component by component). What about the wifi? How about your system's screen brightness controls? Trackpad? Etc. Getting something that is OK is takes work and getting something really good is a lot of work. For comparison. Try installing Windows on a Chromebook. It'll suck. Install Linux on a made for windows laptop and it'll sort of work if your lucky and suck if you're not. If you want to use Linux just buy laptops that are certified -- it's easy and there are several options these days (I'm not going to name any but google for them).
  - eloff 11y ago
    I use a desktop.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      You are either unlucky or doing something very weird then.
jarcane 11y ago
It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. I have routinely had hardware that was perfectly supported by one distro or another immediately break on the next update. Kernel versions are particularly picky. With Debian, I have historically regularly had to jump around between stable, testing, and unstable because one thing or another wouldn't work or the machine wouldn't even boot, because of the version of the kernel used. The amount of hardware regressions I've run into honestly stagger me. Video is another one that's notoriously bad. I've had to abandon Linux installs on multiple distros because after some update or another, suddenly some or all of video functionality just ceased to work. Debian broke my OpenGL. Fedora developed a system freeze when upgrading to 23. Ubuntu routinely fails to recognize common hardware or even existing hardware that ran previous versions, defaulting back to ugly VGA resolutions and software-only rendering. I frankly would take any pre-installed Linux laptop's claims of compatibility with a generous grain of salt, and basically expect that it too would eventually fail on some future version.
click170 11y ago
I wonder if part of the problem is people going outside of the OS's curated repositories. With Debian at least the curation of the repositories is one of the biggest attractions for me. Everything in there is tested at length and is known to work well together. I've never had problems staying within the repos. Friends on the other hand always want to install the latest version of whatever package and install tens of external PPAs to achieve that, without consideration for what that means for the stability of their system. They still carry their windows experiences and think that to install software you have to go find the software authors website and read their instructions - which much of the time apply to other distros and not the one you are using. I have to keep teaching people the Linux way to install software, use your local repos.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  It turns out the OP borked one of his attempts at Linux by trying to install Spotify in OpenSuse... I.e. exactly what you are saying.

unclebucknasty 11y ago

I stopped using Linux in the early-mid 2000s, when applying a security patch to sendmail required (at least then) that I learn its arcane compiler/build process. Burned at least a half day with no success. That was the last straw in a series of straws. I was trying to build a business and was losing too much time. Went back to Windows, installed a free version of mailenable via point and click, then configured it through an intuitive GUI within minutes. I'm sure I lost some tech cred on that transaction and it offended my sensibilities around MS at the time. But, man it just worked and that was priority one. I was already the CEO, developer, and customer support rep. There was just no value in adding Linux SA to the list. Have never regretted it nor looked back. EDIT: Interestingly, downvotes don't make any of my experience less true.

scriptproof 11y ago
Maybe downvoted because things changes on the space of 10 or more years...
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  Perhaps. But, then, here I am replying to someone who is sharing essentially the same experience in the modern Linux era.

sangnoir 11y ago

> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time I had the opposite experience. I do tech support for my extended family and I grew tired of cleaning up viruses and chasing up drivers from questionable sites. 3 years ago, I started pushing everyone to Linux (Mint). I must say, I have saved myself a lot of time (yes, I do value my time)

cLeEOGPw 11y ago

> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time. Can't agree with this more. All the "control" and "freedom" you have over PC fades quickly in the shadow of man hours needed to make things work on linux.

Vivtek 11y ago

Oddly enough, I've had exactly the opposite experience. I'm locked into Windows due to industry standards (translation tools are all Windows-only, and the vast, vast majority of business documentation runs on Microsoft Office), but with my last machine, I installed Ubuntu as the host OS and run Windows 7 in a virtual machine - and love it. I even have the opposite of your unbootability experience - towards the end of 2014 I rendered my Windows machine unbootable, without hope of recovery. I did manage to boot Linux from a USB drive and rescue my files. Late last year I did a similarly stupid thing with Linux - but I was able to reinstall the kernel without needing to reinstall everything, as Windows had required. Although you're right about the average-person thing. I shudder to think about walking my mom through a kernel reinstall.

ploxiln 11y ago

Unbootable within days? As in, you install a linux distro and it can boot, you switch between using it and using windows for a few days, and then after a few days linux can't boot? That's very strange; I've never seen that in over a decade of using various linux distros and dual-booting. My guess is that some "security" related mechanism in the firmware or windows is checking on and reverting the uefi boot setup somehow. Since virtually no one buys a laptop designed for linux, but rather hopes that linux has adapted (with all the driver "quirks" necessary) for that hardware, it's really just that linux gives you the tools and the freedom to figure things out and set them up how you want. It can't do it for you. Sometimes it's just an impractical amount of work. But depending on what you do, it's often worth it.

eloff 11y ago
On OpenSuse it was a software install that went bad. The much vaunted snapshot feature didn't work out of the box! It actually could not boot snapshots in that nice little grub menu. I had to reinstall after spending hours trying to rollback to a snapshot. On Ubuntu it updated the kernel, which made it unbootable. I could still boot the old kernel, but after taking out a ticket and being asked to upgrade my BIOS, that became unbootable as well. On Debian it was just too much work to get to a point where it supported the real resolution of my displays and my multi-monitor setup. I eventually just threw in the towel and went and installed Ubuntu in a VM, which at least got me up and running quickly. I'm leaving out a variety of colorful failure stories, but the bottom line is very little worked out of the box, it was insanely time consuming and difficult to get things into a decent state, and then it didn't stay in that state for long.

dTal 11y ago

>Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time. Counterpoint: I also value my freedom, privacy, mental health, and the longevity of my hardware. Freedom: I can install it whenever I want on whatever I want. I groan whenever I have to deal with "activation" headaches. It also works just the same on ARM - and anything else! All the programs I use are open source so they come right along too. Privacy: Even setting aside the Windows 10 debacle, Windows is incredibly noisy on the wire. Linux doesn't make a peep unless I ask it to. Mental health: System updates happen when I say. It doesn't strong-arm me into restarting when I'm busy doing something else, or hold my system hostage while it does god-knows-what on boot. As for application updates, I have a package manager, so I'm not bugged by a dozen different things like flash updater, java updater, etc. In fact, stuff doesn't spontaneously "happen" in general. If a system service starts chewing up resources or otherwise behaving badly (a rare occurrence) I can a) notice, because it's not lost in the noise of normal system chatter and b) actually find out what it is instead of it being hidden behind "svchost.exe". The primary interface (command line) is comparatively stable - I don't have to keep relearning where things are (it's not perfect in this respect, but it's better than Windows). Longevity of hardware: I'm writing this on my 2007 EeePC 901. It has 1 gig of ram and runs Debian flawlessly. I never need to restart it and my load average is somewhere around 0.2. Can any Windows do that? Look, I don't mean to come across as belligerent. You're entitled to choose whatever system makes you comfortable and allows you get work done. But I find Windows wastes far more of my time than Linux.

eloff 11y ago
I'm actually somewhat surprised at the number of people writing that Linux saves them time. Clearly not everyone has had the horrible experiences I have. I'm curious what distro you people use and on what hardware. I tried Ubuntu, OpenSuse, and Debian. All of them, excpting Ubuntu, needed so much work out of the box just to get to parity with a fresh windows install as to cost me more than a Windows license. Ubuntu was the least stable after install. Updates would frequently break it. I didn't even make it a week this time, and my past experience with it (LTS version) has been that every few months something new would break after updates.
- 11y ago

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time. I think these words are actually on the cover of the 2004 edition of the Microsoft Anti-Linux Talking Points Guide. It's not that it isn't credible that you had a bad experience, it's that people have bad experiences with Windows too, and often. And the Windows problems are harder because the solutions are typically some kind of hideous workaround to the fact that the real problem can't be fixed, instead of the much-maligned Linux solutions that involve typing things into a terminal but, if you type the things into the terminal, it actually fixes the problem.

eloff 11y ago
Yes, I remember the talk about total cost of ownership. But it's entirely valid in my experience. I wouldn't ever use desktop Linux again outside of a VM. The bottom line is that my experience with Windows is rock solid. It looks good out of the box (metro asside), works out of the box, even supports SLI, gaming, multiple monitors without any fight. Even "dist upgrades" work. I've never had an issue with malware because I know what to do and what not to. And it's so nice that third-party software runs and runs well on Windows. Many companies don't support Linux or only offer a stripped-down product that barely works.
gelasio 11y ago
> I think these words are actually on the cover of the 2004 edition of... So what? The words that you're saying are on the tips of every Microsoft-hating Linux fanboy's tongue. > ...the Windows problems are harder because... Oh please. The Linux problems are harder because most of the time the solution doesn't exist at all ~ (e.g. Does a driver even exist for a particular device? Does it actually work though? Can I get a particular piece of industry-standard software? Probably not (but oh - here's an actually hideous emulation (WINE) of a much better GUI system (Windows) that you can TRY and run it on... ). > ...if you type the things into the terminal, it actually fixes the problem. Good one - please tell me what to type to be able to run Linux on a touch screen tablet, so I can run Linux in the same places I can run Windows. Also, what do I type to get a decent desktop GUI experience?