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I think it's important to note here that the reason a lot of people switch from macOS/OS X to Linux is because they can. There's been a tremendous amount of wo

I think it's important to note here that the reason a lot of people switch from macOS/OS X to Linux is because they can. There's been a tremendous amount of work over the last ten years to make the Linux desktop environment habitable. At first it was usable for very narrow use cases, like living within an Office-compatible application, but over time that space has grown. What was once done out of spite can now be done for the sake of convenience. Instead of being all negative about Apple not living up to our expectations I think we should appreciate how much Linux has exceeded them.

soperj 10y ago
I haven't felt restricted by linux in a very long time, and I've been using it for over a decade.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  I have been using Linux for a long time, and it seems like every time I try to watch a DVD, it's a fresh round of hacking for 30 minutes before I can get it to work.
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    How? VLC + every distro has drivers...
  - gribbly 10y ago
    What distro are you on ? As I recall, installing libdvdcss, libdvdnav, libdvdread from the official repos solved that problem and allowed me to painlessly watch dvd's through players like VLC and MPlayer.
  - devoply 10y ago
    You still watching DVDs grandpa? I wanna watch Netflix on the stupid thing. I use my android tablet for that instead.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      Netflix works without issue on Chrome in Linux.
      - greenknight 10y ago
        And firefox if you switch your useragent -- https://linuxconfig.org/play-netflix-on-linux-with-firefox https://linuxconfig.org/play-netflix-on-linux-with-firefox
        ekianjo 10y ago
        Yes, it also works. And you need to enable DRM support in Firefox as well.
        bigger_cheese 10y ago
        Wow thank you for that link. I've had two browsers installed with chrome being used purely for Netflix. Now I can finally give the damn thing the boot.
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      I slowed down for a while when I first got Netflix. Then I sped up again when some of the shows I was watching disappeared when I was mid-season. Netflix is great, but when I want to actually be sure that I'll be able to watch something, I buy it.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    You just need to install one package at the most for dvd decryption, or use VLC... hardly a problem these days...
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      "Hardly a problem" Several hundred AskUbuntu posts disagree with you. (And that's for Ubuntu...one of the friendly distros.) http://askubuntu.com/search?q=play+dvd http://askubuntu.com/search?q=play+dvd
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    I use linux as well, but wifi drivers are always an issue, as well as sound. Sure, things are much better, but I think most criticisms of linux not being "out of the box" ready are valid.
    - harry8 10y ago
      Not as a comparison to apple. You want osx you buy the hardware they specify. Buy a laptop known to work out of the box with linux and it works out of the box with linux. Try it on any random laptop, ymmv. Not many of them work as badly as non-apple blessed machines with osx. It's pretty rare I can't get something useful out of any old laptop with a linux install. Is hackintosh still even a thing?
      - seanp2k2 10y ago
        Hackintosh is still very much a thing. I had a great 10.5 desktop with Kalyway years ago. I recently tried to get Yosemite or something working with a Core-i5 Sandy Bridge PC and it did not go well due to graphics drivers.
      - NegativeLatency 10y ago
        I have a hackintosh as my main computer. It works ok. Graphics drivers are sometimes a pain/ buggy. iMessages doesn't work unless you want to do a lot of work. However it is faster/more expandable than most macs available today.
    - voidlogic 10y ago
      >but wifi drivers are always an issue This is not true if you have Intel wifi hardware, which is a lot (a majority?) of laptops.
      - herbst 10y ago
        Its not true these days anyway as you can just use the windows drivers if everything else fails. Which works perfectly except the initial 10 minute setup.
  - jlgaddis 10y ago
    I just recently built a new workstation, including a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD burner. After seeing the recent announcement here about Handbrake, I grabbed the closest DVD, fired up VLC, watched the first few minutes of it, and shortly afterwards I had ripped and encoded one of the episodes to a file I can watch on my Roku. The only hacking I did was to install libdvd-pkg or something like that.
    - swiley 10y ago
      Last time I checked, some early blueray DVDs will work on Linux but newer ones will brick your blueray reader.
      - jlgaddis 10y ago
        Wow, that's crazy. I haven't really used the drive other than what I mentioned. I just grabbed the nearest DVD (disc 2 of 3 of season 7 of "The Big Bang Theory"), popped it in, and it just worked. That was just a quick "test" to see how difficult it was nowadays to rip/encode DVDs (I haven't done that for probably eight years or so and it was a major PITA back then). I was planning on doing the same to most of our "media collection" so I'm hoping it continues to go well. Thanks for the heads up. I'll be looking more into this.
      - khedoros1 10y ago
        The AACS key file is updated every now and then. I get it from here: http://www.labdv.com/aacs/ http://www.labdv.com/aacs/ I've run into some recent disks that I can't play, but never one that actually damaged my blu-ray drive.
      - Hydraulix989 10y ago
        "but newer ones will brick your blueray reader" Source? I don't even see how this could be possible.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        Say hello to DRM. Best i recall they introduced a updated DRM system for BR some years after launch, and to play those discs one need to either firmware update or replace the player. Never mind that the BR spec has all kinds of weirdness, including things like bundled Java applets(?!). All in all, its problems like these that keeps us torrenting.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    I usually use VLC without a problem. Some distros won't include something like libdvdcss, and you have to download, compile, and install it. It's annoying, but better than when DVD support first appeared, and you'd end up compiling something like 5 libraries and a custom version of Xine.
  - 208Gi 10y ago
    I cannot remember having any trouble playing DVDs on a Linux based system within the last decade. Through this time, I've used: Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Slackware, Arch and, Suse. If your distro doesn't come with DVD playing capabilities out of the box, there are plenty of instructions regarding this on the the web. I have a hard time seeing how you could possibly be being honest about this.
    - danieldk 10y ago
      I have a hard time seeing how you could possibly be being honest about this. Isn't distributing libdvdcss illegal in the US and therefore most distributions don't include it? So, most distributions don't come with full DVD playing capabilities out of the box.
      - dTal 10y ago
        This. This is the reason for parent's complaint - it's legal, not technical. I have exactly the same experience of "30 mins hacking to make a new system play DVDs" - sure, it's a single package install usually, but which package? libdvdread? libdvdcss? Does the package include the library, or does it contain a script that downloads the library because of the legal issue? I know the answers to these questions on Debian because I use it so much (and it has a well updated wiki), but plonk me in front of a distro I've not used before, or with poor documentation for their particular idiosyncratic way of end-running the law, and suddenly it's a minefield.
      - NoGravitas 10y ago
        True for Fedora, probably Debian, probably not Ubuntu. For Fedora, it's a matter of adding the RPMFusion-nonfree repository, and installing a couple of packages.
      - 208Gi 10y ago
        I should have been clearer, I guess. Yes, there's some legal issue but - a google search is not illegal. The poster was saying he/she has to go through some lengthy process every time he/she wants to watch a DVD? That's the dishonesty I'm talking about. Getting dvd playback working in a distro is a do it once and forget about it until EOL type thing.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    Another feature I'm yet to have any confidence in is that I can just close a Linux laptop, and have it do a pretty much perfect suspend that will come back to life in 2-3 seconds even if it's been closed for days.
    - josteink 10y ago
      As a counter example, I've yet had this to be a problem on any laptop I've owned. It works 100% reliably 100% of the time.
      - jeena 10y ago
        Same here, both on ThinkPad and on my Tuxedo laptop with Ubuntu, Debian and Arch. I had issues with OS X sometimes that I put the MacBook into a bag and it would get hotter and hotter because it didn't sleep and the air couldn't move, untill it panicked and shut itself down to not start burning.
      - pareidolia 10y ago
        I started owning laptops in 2007. There's a real difference between ACPI DSDTs compiled with the Microsoft compiler versus the Intel compiler (surprise surprise) Acer/Wistron laptop with MSFT DSDT would reset spontaneously instead of waking up from sleep.
      - dTal 10y ago
        I have no complaints about suspend itself, but I do find lidswitch detection to be faintly unreliable on various laptops. I often find my laptop fully powered up and hot in my backpack. I suspect poor debounce.
- randlet 10y ago
  Out of curiosity what do you (or anyone else who wants to chime in) use for filling PDF forms? Adobe is about the only reason I still dual boot Windows alongside Linux :/
  - lamlam 10y ago
    Google Chrome added that feature at some point recently. You can fill in forms you open through it. And it's a very good experience. Chromium possibly does it do, have not tested tho.
    - Insanity 10y ago
      I can confirm that it works on Chromium with this test file: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/feature-details/acrobat/axi/pdfs/create-forms-sample.pdf http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/feature-deta...
  - benjaminjackman 10y ago
    I honestly can't remember the last time I have had to do that. One idea would be to try installing Adobe via wine if you can't find a native program.
  - crazy2be 10y ago
    You can install adobe reader on Linux. On Ubuntu it's acroread from package adobereader-enu. Although sometimes you can use Chrome (or evince, or okular), occasionally Adobe Reader is the only one that can fill forms properly.
    - kleiba 10y ago
      But Adobe does not officially support Linux any more so you won't get updates. I've had some success with running current Adobe Reader in wine but trying to print makes the program crash, so there you have it.
  - LarryMade2 10y ago
    I fill in tax forms with adobe 9, if no that I think the new acrobat compatibles for Linux are getting better at forms now
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Honestly i feel more restricted now than i did back when i first started...
  - rconti 10y ago
    Concur; switched to Linux full-time in '95 and to OS X in 2002 and haven't really looked back. I still use Linux daily in my job, but I can't say I miss it as a desktop OS.
- b3lvedere 10y ago
  I've seen almost everything from Sinclair ZX Spectrum to Microsoft Azure. Linux has another learning curve for me than products like Windows server, but i'm slowly getting used to it again. These days i have very limited money to experiment with computer systems. So i turned an old desktop into an esx. Using linux for my vm's has been very rewarding. There is a ton of resources. Most of the stuff is free. The communities usually love to help you reach your goal.
microcolonel 10y ago
For what it's worth; the main problem I've run into when getting work done on Linux (and I'm really grasping at straws here) is lack of compatibility with applications which run on both OS X and Windows. But when I look at my coworkers' screens (they're on macs) I realize that the native OS X versions of these applications tend to run about as well as the Windows versions do in a VM on my machine. The only one I've ever needed a VM for is Excel. If I were starting up a 2D media company I might have some concern moving new hires from probably-familiar Adobe applications to the (excellent) Linux alternatives; but still probably not enough to dissuade me completely. For a new 3D studio the industry is so diverse anyway that it would be worth going with Blender to start with, or Maya if the heart desires it. For software, I don't think there's a worthwhile platform which you can not develop for from Linux (aside apple nonsense, but even all-apple shops end up using OS X VMs for iOS builds since XCode build is highly stateful(!)).
- woah 10y ago
  Are you joking? You would not be dissuaded from forcing your employees to switch from the many world-class graphics tools on Mac to the terrible Inkscape and Gimp? I wish there were better graphics tools on Linux, but it's just not the reality right now.
  - santaclaus 10y ago
    Let alone video editing software! If I'm missing something let me know, but last time I checked people were recommending editing within Blender, of all solutions.
    - jeena 10y ago
      I've heard about https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ but never used it for real myself.
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        Using Kdenlive regularly and it does simple jobs very well and is really stable nowadays. It's certainly nothing like Adobe Premiere but it works.
crdoconnor 10y ago
There have been a multitude of high quality desktops for at least 10 years. The main reason people don't switch is just lack of familiarity, driver issues and unsupported software - all driven by network effects. There's very little about the OS itself which is preventing adoption. It's entirely about the ecosystem. That pretty much requires a fuck up on the part of Windows or Mac to drive people to use Linux.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  My "fuck up" was a Finding Dory ad on my lock screen. In OS advertising is a non-starter. I let the start menu ad's slide in 8, but that was the last straw for me. That and it bugging me "Edge is faster, Edge is better, use Edge!". I feel like paid $199 just so Microsoft can sell me to advertisers. Bill never would of stood for this shit.
  - cpayne 10y ago
    A "Finding Dory ad" doesn't sound right. Did that really happen without installing something dodgy??
    - jocro 10y ago
      Sounds like the Windows Spotlight "feature" at work: http://www.howtogeek.com/243263/how-to-disable-ads-on-your-windows-10-lock-screen/ http://www.howtogeek.com/243263/how-to-disable-ads-on-your-w...
    - tajen 10y ago
      With OEM Windows, everything can be expected, from bloatware "drivers" slowing down your machine by half to obligatory root certificates (thanks Lenovo! thanks DELL!) that are necessary to serve you in-browser ads. And you're not theoretically allowed to remove them or it voids you warranty. So an ad at startup doesn't surprise me, it's not really Microsoft's fault, but that's what you get with a Windows OS. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/218437-dell-laptops-may-have-a-lenovo-superfish-size-security-problem https://www.extremetech.com/computing/218437-dell-laptops-ma...
developer2 10y ago
I don't intend to scoff at the work done on Linux distros; however, many of us looking to make the switch are doing so only because Apple has gone too far with their latest pricing schemes, and/or due to hardware changes. Personally, I don't care about USB-C replacing USB 3.0, or the introduction of the new Touch Bar. The problem is the pricing (that Touch Bar is costing me $700-800 on top of the equivalent 2013 MacBook Pro model). The removal of the physical escape key and the inexplicable removal of the 3.5 mm jack on iPhones does not help to relieve fears that Apple has completely lost control of basic sense as to what their professional users want and need. The MacBook Pro line has fallen into the same category as the MacBook Air. It's supposed to be a professional machine, but it's now being specced to the lowest common denominator, meant for any average consumer. For some of us, Linux is not being transitioned to with enthusiasm. We do not consider it a drop-in replacement for OS X, and already pre-emptively regret the inferior keyboard and trackpad we'll get on the OEM PC laptop manufacturers offer. Honestly, what the hell is with PC manufacturers that still include the TrackPoint™ Style Point, Nub, Nipple Mouse, Clit Mouse[1]?! tldr; Apple is alienating its professional users. Windows is flat out unusable as a Linux-based developer platform for us. Linux is simply the only remaining alternative. Frankly, it's not "good enough" - it's simply the only remaining alternative when you can't reason spending $4,000+ on a laptop you actually do still want to buy. [1] https://xkcd.com/243/ https://xkcd.com/243/
- soperj 10y ago
  They include it because people use it. I actually disable my trackpad on my thinkpad, and only use the trackpoint. (So does Randall according to that link). Thinkpad keyboard is in my opinion better than the apple keyboard.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    Agreed. I just joined a company where Macs are mandatory, and so I'm reluctantly making the transition from Linux/Thinkpad to MacOS/Macbook. I'm experiencing substantially more carpal tunnel issues because of the Mac's trackpad-only setup. The trackpoint means I never have to take my hands off the keyboard, which I love. Two months in I'm used to Apple's keyboard, but I don't think it's as good; my error rate is still much better on Thinkpads because the more sculpted keys make it easier for my fingers to know where they are. And I should say that here I mean the older Thinkpad keyboard, not the newer one that looks much more Apple-ish.
wheelerwj 10y ago
I don't really care about apple's influence or ragging on the new mac book pro. But I will say that linux has come miles and miles. My transition from Windows to full time linux by way of Ubuntu was incredibly seamless. The only thing I really miss is Excel.
- TAForObvReasons 10y ago
  > The only thing I really miss is Excel. Sadly Excel for Mac is the main thing keeping me from switching to Linux. OpenOffice/LO are ok for very basic documents but I routinely deal with files that they can't handle.
  - csdreamer7 10y ago
    Can you give some examples? (Or even better, some example files to test.)
    - ColanR 10y ago
      I remember working in an office environment with some very large powerpoint files (50-100 slides with large images), and the rule of thumb was that 'openoffice is free, but MS can handle the big stuff'. Don't know if that's still true, haven't tried OO in a while.
      - saghm 10y ago
        OpenOffice is basically dead in terms of development nowadays. If you're looking for a desktop office suite on Linux, LibreOffice (a fork of OpenOffice) is still actively maintained.
      - willtim 10y ago
        I tried Libreoffice writer briefly recently. I imported some large pictures onto a single page and it became unusably slow. It seemed to be redoing an expensive computation (likely the pictures) with every character I typed. So yes, clearly not as optimised as Word. I had to reluctantly ask to borrow my wife's computer with MS Office for this particular task.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
Online package management has made Linux usable for desktop and even today's rapid development environments. Prior to the introduction of these solutions like Apt and Yum there were manual builds required of source code to meet the dependency needs of software you wanted to install. I recall spending a day trying to satisfy all the requirements of Gedit on an old version of red hat. Now with today's high speed internet and package management that's like a 10 second command.
- fulafel 10y ago
  This change happened a long time ago though. Debian stable releases included APT starting Debian 2.1 in 1999, RH resisted for long and finally included yum in late 2003. But agreed, it was a big improvement for workstation use.
greenspot 10y ago
There's another reason too. While Linux got more 'desktop-friendly' with all the GUI apps and Windows-like WMs we faced a shift to web-base apps which I think is the real reason. I run Arch + i3 as a WM, so a very bare-bone setup, and use just terminals and a browser. No other GUI app. I don't need anything else and I am not a power user, rather a non-tech guy who wants to get stuff done.
- Diederich 10y ago
  I've been using evilwm on my desktops and laptops since the last century. What a time to be alive!
  - hedora 10y ago
    I was beginning to think I was the only one left!! I have a mac trackpad at work, which finally forced me to learn the window move/resize shortcut keys. I should have done that sooner. About ten years ago, I read all the evilwm source and fixed some quirk in an afternoon. That's usability!
danieldk 10y ago
There's been a tremendous amount of work over the last ten years to make the Linux desktop environment habitable. I thing that this is a misrepresentation of the history of desktop Linux. There was a period at the beginning of the century where Linux was arguably far better positioned to take significant market share. At the time, consumer Windows (98/ME) was dramatically bad. Both in terms of stability and security. OS X just came into existence, but was slow and required expensive hardware. At the time, Linux was far less fragmented. There were only a few distributions and KDE and GNOME ruled the desktop. There was a very serious push some companies to make Linux easy to install (graphical installers popped up in Red Hat, Corel Linux, Caldera, etc.). You could run Microsoft Office using CrossOver Office with virtually no glitches (I used Office like that for years). Corel released Wordperfect for Linux (which still had significance at the time). Loki was pumping out Linux ports of games like crazy. There was a genuine feeling that Linux was taking off on the desktop and many non-tech family/friends installed Linux. The problem at the time was that web apps basically didn't exist. So a lot of interested people eventually abandoned the idea to switch to Linux, because they had some win32 application that they needed to run. In 2017, the Linux distribution landscape is more fragmented than ever and the Linux desktop landscape is more fragmented than ever (heck, even GNOME has three popular forks). Moreover, problems are far harder to debug than they were around 2000, because there are multiple layers of stuff piled on each other (D-Bus, systemd, Debian alternatives, *.d, et al. have blessings and curses). I think there is some movement from OS X to Linux (though it is hard too tell whether it's not just some vocal minority) for four reasons: 1. people rely less than ever on native applications, so it's much easier to move now; 2. OS X is also Unix, so for OS X users it is quite simple to move OS X to Linux and vice versa; and 3. there are serious worries among OS X users about the future of OS X and Apple's lack of focus; 4. Macs are becoming so expensive that it is hard to justify getting relatively bad specs for 1.5 times the price.
- jmiserez 10y ago
  I remember both that Windows 95/98/ME had it's issues and that at some point you could even buy Linux distros in a box next to the Windows boxes. But how do you see the push Canonical did with Ubuntu? As I remember, the sentiment was that they were going to make Linux usable and easy for the average user, instead of going after advanced users. And IMHO they really succeeded in doing that, surely you're not saying that was all there before? A user with absolutely no Linux or terminal experience can use an Ubuntu system for writing letters/emails/browsing and doesn't need to ever touch the terminal (provided all hardware is supported).

soperj 10y ago

I haven't felt restricted by linux in a very long time, and I've been using it for over a decade.

paulddraper 10y ago
I have been using Linux for a long time, and it seems like every time I try to watch a DVD, it's a fresh round of hacking for 30 minutes before I can get it to work.
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  How? VLC + every distro has drivers...
- gribbly 10y ago
  What distro are you on ? As I recall, installing libdvdcss, libdvdnav, libdvdread from the official repos solved that problem and allowed me to painlessly watch dvd's through players like VLC and MPlayer.
- devoply 10y ago
  You still watching DVDs grandpa? I wanna watch Netflix on the stupid thing. I use my android tablet for that instead.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Netflix works without issue on Chrome in Linux.
    - greenknight 10y ago
      And firefox if you switch your useragent -- https://linuxconfig.org/play-netflix-on-linux-with-firefox https://linuxconfig.org/play-netflix-on-linux-with-firefox
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        Yes, it also works. And you need to enable DRM support in Firefox as well.
      - bigger_cheese 10y ago
        Wow thank you for that link. I've had two browsers installed with chrome being used purely for Netflix. Now I can finally give the damn thing the boot.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    I slowed down for a while when I first got Netflix. Then I sped up again when some of the shows I was watching disappeared when I was mid-season. Netflix is great, but when I want to actually be sure that I'll be able to watch something, I buy it.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  You just need to install one package at the most for dvd decryption, or use VLC... hardly a problem these days...
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    "Hardly a problem" Several hundred AskUbuntu posts disagree with you. (And that's for Ubuntu...one of the friendly distros.) http://askubuntu.com/search?q=play+dvd http://askubuntu.com/search?q=play+dvd
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I use linux as well, but wifi drivers are always an issue, as well as sound. Sure, things are much better, but I think most criticisms of linux not being "out of the box" ready are valid.
  - harry8 10y ago
    Not as a comparison to apple. You want osx you buy the hardware they specify. Buy a laptop known to work out of the box with linux and it works out of the box with linux. Try it on any random laptop, ymmv. Not many of them work as badly as non-apple blessed machines with osx. It's pretty rare I can't get something useful out of any old laptop with a linux install. Is hackintosh still even a thing?
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Hackintosh is still very much a thing. I had a great 10.5 desktop with Kalyway years ago. I recently tried to get Yosemite or something working with a Core-i5 Sandy Bridge PC and it did not go well due to graphics drivers.
    - NegativeLatency 10y ago
      I have a hackintosh as my main computer. It works ok. Graphics drivers are sometimes a pain/ buggy. iMessages doesn't work unless you want to do a lot of work. However it is faster/more expandable than most macs available today.
  - voidlogic 10y ago
    >but wifi drivers are always an issue This is not true if you have Intel wifi hardware, which is a lot (a majority?) of laptops.
    - herbst 10y ago
      Its not true these days anyway as you can just use the windows drivers if everything else fails. Which works perfectly except the initial 10 minute setup.
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  I just recently built a new workstation, including a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD burner. After seeing the recent announcement here about Handbrake, I grabbed the closest DVD, fired up VLC, watched the first few minutes of it, and shortly afterwards I had ripped and encoded one of the episodes to a file I can watch on my Roku. The only hacking I did was to install libdvd-pkg or something like that.
  - swiley 10y ago
    Last time I checked, some early blueray DVDs will work on Linux but newer ones will brick your blueray reader.
    - jlgaddis 10y ago
      Wow, that's crazy. I haven't really used the drive other than what I mentioned. I just grabbed the nearest DVD (disc 2 of 3 of season 7 of "The Big Bang Theory"), popped it in, and it just worked. That was just a quick "test" to see how difficult it was nowadays to rip/encode DVDs (I haven't done that for probably eight years or so and it was a major PITA back then). I was planning on doing the same to most of our "media collection" so I'm hoping it continues to go well. Thanks for the heads up. I'll be looking more into this.
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      The AACS key file is updated every now and then. I get it from here: http://www.labdv.com/aacs/ http://www.labdv.com/aacs/ I've run into some recent disks that I can't play, but never one that actually damaged my blu-ray drive.
    - Hydraulix989 10y ago
      "but newer ones will brick your blueray reader" Source? I don't even see how this could be possible.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Say hello to DRM. Best i recall they introduced a updated DRM system for BR some years after launch, and to play those discs one need to either firmware update or replace the player. Never mind that the BR spec has all kinds of weirdness, including things like bundled Java applets(?!). All in all, its problems like these that keeps us torrenting.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  I usually use VLC without a problem. Some distros won't include something like libdvdcss, and you have to download, compile, and install it. It's annoying, but better than when DVD support first appeared, and you'd end up compiling something like 5 libraries and a custom version of Xine.
- 208Gi 10y ago
  I cannot remember having any trouble playing DVDs on a Linux based system within the last decade. Through this time, I've used: Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Slackware, Arch and, Suse. If your distro doesn't come with DVD playing capabilities out of the box, there are plenty of instructions regarding this on the the web. I have a hard time seeing how you could possibly be being honest about this.
  - danieldk 10y ago
    I have a hard time seeing how you could possibly be being honest about this. Isn't distributing libdvdcss illegal in the US and therefore most distributions don't include it? So, most distributions don't come with full DVD playing capabilities out of the box.
    - dTal 10y ago
      This. This is the reason for parent's complaint - it's legal, not technical. I have exactly the same experience of "30 mins hacking to make a new system play DVDs" - sure, it's a single package install usually, but which package? libdvdread? libdvdcss? Does the package include the library, or does it contain a script that downloads the library because of the legal issue? I know the answers to these questions on Debian because I use it so much (and it has a well updated wiki), but plonk me in front of a distro I've not used before, or with poor documentation for their particular idiosyncratic way of end-running the law, and suddenly it's a minefield.
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      True for Fedora, probably Debian, probably not Ubuntu. For Fedora, it's a matter of adding the RPMFusion-nonfree repository, and installing a couple of packages.
    - 208Gi 10y ago
      I should have been clearer, I guess. Yes, there's some legal issue but - a google search is not illegal. The poster was saying he/she has to go through some lengthy process every time he/she wants to watch a DVD? That's the dishonesty I'm talking about. Getting dvd playback working in a distro is a do it once and forget about it until EOL type thing.
- peteretep 10y ago
  Another feature I'm yet to have any confidence in is that I can just close a Linux laptop, and have it do a pretty much perfect suspend that will come back to life in 2-3 seconds even if it's been closed for days.
  - josteink 10y ago
    As a counter example, I've yet had this to be a problem on any laptop I've owned. It works 100% reliably 100% of the time.
    - jeena 10y ago
      Same here, both on ThinkPad and on my Tuxedo laptop with Ubuntu, Debian and Arch. I had issues with OS X sometimes that I put the MacBook into a bag and it would get hotter and hotter because it didn't sleep and the air couldn't move, untill it panicked and shut itself down to not start burning.
    - pareidolia 10y ago
      I started owning laptops in 2007. There's a real difference between ACPI DSDTs compiled with the Microsoft compiler versus the Intel compiler (surprise surprise) Acer/Wistron laptop with MSFT DSDT would reset spontaneously instead of waking up from sleep.
    - dTal 10y ago
      I have no complaints about suspend itself, but I do find lidswitch detection to be faintly unreliable on various laptops. I often find my laptop fully powered up and hot in my backpack. I suspect poor debounce.
randlet 10y ago
Out of curiosity what do you (or anyone else who wants to chime in) use for filling PDF forms? Adobe is about the only reason I still dual boot Windows alongside Linux :/
- lamlam 10y ago
  Google Chrome added that feature at some point recently. You can fill in forms you open through it. And it's a very good experience. Chromium possibly does it do, have not tested tho.
  - Insanity 10y ago
    I can confirm that it works on Chromium with this test file: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/feature-details/acrobat/axi/pdfs/create-forms-sample.pdf http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/feature-deta...
- benjaminjackman 10y ago
  I honestly can't remember the last time I have had to do that. One idea would be to try installing Adobe via wine if you can't find a native program.
- crazy2be 10y ago
  You can install adobe reader on Linux. On Ubuntu it's acroread from package adobereader-enu. Although sometimes you can use Chrome (or evince, or okular), occasionally Adobe Reader is the only one that can fill forms properly.
  - kleiba 10y ago
    But Adobe does not officially support Linux any more so you won't get updates. I've had some success with running current Adobe Reader in wine but trying to print makes the program crash, so there you have it.
- LarryMade2 10y ago
  I fill in tax forms with adobe 9, if no that I think the new acrobat compatibles for Linux are getting better at forms now
digi_owl 10y ago
Honestly i feel more restricted now than i did back when i first started...
- rconti 10y ago
  Concur; switched to Linux full-time in '95 and to OS X in 2002 and haven't really looked back. I still use Linux daily in my job, but I can't say I miss it as a desktop OS.
b3lvedere 10y ago
I've seen almost everything from Sinclair ZX Spectrum to Microsoft Azure. Linux has another learning curve for me than products like Windows server, but i'm slowly getting used to it again. These days i have very limited money to experiment with computer systems. So i turned an old desktop into an esx. Using linux for my vm's has been very rewarding. There is a ton of resources. Most of the stuff is free. The communities usually love to help you reach your goal.

microcolonel 10y ago

For what it's worth; the main problem I've run into when getting work done on Linux (and I'm really grasping at straws here) is lack of compatibility with applications which run on both OS X and Windows. But when I look at my coworkers' screens (they're on macs) I realize that the native OS X versions of these applications tend to run about as well as the Windows versions do in a VM on my machine. The only one I've ever needed a VM for is Excel. If I were starting up a 2D media company I might have some concern moving new hires from probably-familiar Adobe applications to the (excellent) Linux alternatives; but still probably not enough to dissuade me completely. For a new 3D studio the industry is so diverse anyway that it would be worth going with Blender to start with, or Maya if the heart desires it. For software, I don't think there's a worthwhile platform which you can not develop for from Linux (aside apple nonsense, but even all-apple shops end up using OS X VMs for iOS builds since XCode build is highly stateful(!)).

woah 10y ago
Are you joking? You would not be dissuaded from forcing your employees to switch from the many world-class graphics tools on Mac to the terrible Inkscape and Gimp? I wish there were better graphics tools on Linux, but it's just not the reality right now.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  Let alone video editing software! If I'm missing something let me know, but last time I checked people were recommending editing within Blender, of all solutions.
  - jeena 10y ago
    I've heard about https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ but never used it for real myself.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      Using Kdenlive regularly and it does simple jobs very well and is really stable nowadays. It's certainly nothing like Adobe Premiere but it works.

crdoconnor 10y ago

There have been a multitude of high quality desktops for at least 10 years. The main reason people don't switch is just lack of familiarity, driver issues and unsupported software - all driven by network effects. There's very little about the OS itself which is preventing adoption. It's entirely about the ecosystem. That pretty much requires a fuck up on the part of Windows or Mac to drive people to use Linux.

cmdrfred 10y ago
My "fuck up" was a Finding Dory ad on my lock screen. In OS advertising is a non-starter. I let the start menu ad's slide in 8, but that was the last straw for me. That and it bugging me "Edge is faster, Edge is better, use Edge!". I feel like paid $199 just so Microsoft can sell me to advertisers. Bill never would of stood for this shit.
- cpayne 10y ago
  A "Finding Dory ad" doesn't sound right. Did that really happen without installing something dodgy??
  - jocro 10y ago
    Sounds like the Windows Spotlight "feature" at work: http://www.howtogeek.com/243263/how-to-disable-ads-on-your-windows-10-lock-screen/ http://www.howtogeek.com/243263/how-to-disable-ads-on-your-w...
  - tajen 10y ago
    With OEM Windows, everything can be expected, from bloatware "drivers" slowing down your machine by half to obligatory root certificates (thanks Lenovo! thanks DELL!) that are necessary to serve you in-browser ads. And you're not theoretically allowed to remove them or it voids you warranty. So an ad at startup doesn't surprise me, it's not really Microsoft's fault, but that's what you get with a Windows OS. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/218437-dell-laptops-may-have-a-lenovo-superfish-size-security-problem https://www.extremetech.com/computing/218437-dell-laptops-ma...

developer2 10y ago

I don't intend to scoff at the work done on Linux distros; however, many of us looking to make the switch are doing so only because Apple has gone too far with their latest pricing schemes, and/or due to hardware changes. Personally, I don't care about USB-C replacing USB 3.0, or the introduction of the new Touch Bar. The problem is the pricing (that Touch Bar is costing me $700-800 on top of the equivalent 2013 MacBook Pro model). The removal of the physical escape key and the inexplicable removal of the 3.5 mm jack on iPhones does not help to relieve fears that Apple has completely lost control of basic sense as to what their professional users want and need. The MacBook Pro line has fallen into the same category as the MacBook Air. It's supposed to be a professional machine, but it's now being specced to the lowest common denominator, meant for any average consumer. For some of us, Linux is not being transitioned to with enthusiasm. We do not consider it a drop-in replacement for OS X, and already pre-emptively regret the inferior keyboard and trackpad we'll get on the OEM PC laptop manufacturers offer. Honestly, what the hell is with PC manufacturers that still include the TrackPoint™ Style Point, Nub, Nipple Mouse, Clit Mouse[1]?! tldr; Apple is alienating its professional users. Windows is flat out unusable as a Linux-based developer platform for us. Linux is simply the only remaining alternative. Frankly, it's not "good enough" - it's simply the only remaining alternative when you can't reason spending $4,000+ on a laptop you actually do still want to buy. [1] https://xkcd.com/243/ https://xkcd.com/243/

soperj 10y ago
They include it because people use it. I actually disable my trackpad on my thinkpad, and only use the trackpoint. (So does Randall according to that link). Thinkpad keyboard is in my opinion better than the apple keyboard.
- wpietri 10y ago
  Agreed. I just joined a company where Macs are mandatory, and so I'm reluctantly making the transition from Linux/Thinkpad to MacOS/Macbook. I'm experiencing substantially more carpal tunnel issues because of the Mac's trackpad-only setup. The trackpoint means I never have to take my hands off the keyboard, which I love. Two months in I'm used to Apple's keyboard, but I don't think it's as good; my error rate is still much better on Thinkpads because the more sculpted keys make it easier for my fingers to know where they are. And I should say that here I mean the older Thinkpad keyboard, not the newer one that looks much more Apple-ish.

wheelerwj 10y ago

I don't really care about apple's influence or ragging on the new mac book pro. But I will say that linux has come miles and miles. My transition from Windows to full time linux by way of Ubuntu was incredibly seamless. The only thing I really miss is Excel.

TAForObvReasons 10y ago
> The only thing I really miss is Excel. Sadly Excel for Mac is the main thing keeping me from switching to Linux. OpenOffice/LO are ok for very basic documents but I routinely deal with files that they can't handle.
- csdreamer7 10y ago
  Can you give some examples? (Or even better, some example files to test.)
  - ColanR 10y ago
    I remember working in an office environment with some very large powerpoint files (50-100 slides with large images), and the rule of thumb was that 'openoffice is free, but MS can handle the big stuff'. Don't know if that's still true, haven't tried OO in a while.
    - saghm 10y ago
      OpenOffice is basically dead in terms of development nowadays. If you're looking for a desktop office suite on Linux, LibreOffice (a fork of OpenOffice) is still actively maintained.
    - willtim 10y ago
      I tried Libreoffice writer briefly recently. I imported some large pictures onto a single page and it became unusably slow. It seemed to be redoing an expensive computation (likely the pictures) with every character I typed. So yes, clearly not as optimised as Word. I had to reluctantly ask to borrow my wife's computer with MS Office for this particular task.

godzillabrennus 10y ago

Online package management has made Linux usable for desktop and even today's rapid development environments. Prior to the introduction of these solutions like Apt and Yum there were manual builds required of source code to meet the dependency needs of software you wanted to install. I recall spending a day trying to satisfy all the requirements of Gedit on an old version of red hat. Now with today's high speed internet and package management that's like a 10 second command.

fulafel 10y ago
This change happened a long time ago though. Debian stable releases included APT starting Debian 2.1 in 1999, RH resisted for long and finally included yum in late 2003. But agreed, it was a big improvement for workstation use.

greenspot 10y ago

There's another reason too. While Linux got more 'desktop-friendly' with all the GUI apps and Windows-like WMs we faced a shift to web-base apps which I think is the real reason. I run Arch + i3 as a WM, so a very bare-bone setup, and use just terminals and a browser. No other GUI app. I don't need anything else and I am not a power user, rather a non-tech guy who wants to get stuff done.

Diederich 10y ago
I've been using evilwm on my desktops and laptops since the last century. What a time to be alive!
- hedora 10y ago
  I was beginning to think I was the only one left!! I have a mac trackpad at work, which finally forced me to learn the window move/resize shortcut keys. I should have done that sooner. About ten years ago, I read all the evilwm source and fixed some quirk in an afternoon. That's usability!

danieldk 10y ago

There's been a tremendous amount of work over the last ten years to make the Linux desktop environment habitable. I thing that this is a misrepresentation of the history of desktop Linux. There was a period at the beginning of the century where Linux was arguably far better positioned to take significant market share. At the time, consumer Windows (98/ME) was dramatically bad. Both in terms of stability and security. OS X just came into existence, but was slow and required expensive hardware. At the time, Linux was far less fragmented. There were only a few distributions and KDE and GNOME ruled the desktop. There was a very serious push some companies to make Linux easy to install (graphical installers popped up in Red Hat, Corel Linux, Caldera, etc.). You could run Microsoft Office using CrossOver Office with virtually no glitches (I used Office like that for years). Corel released Wordperfect for Linux (which still had significance at the time). Loki was pumping out Linux ports of games like crazy. There was a genuine feeling that Linux was taking off on the desktop and many non-tech family/friends installed Linux. The problem at the time was that web apps basically didn't exist. So a lot of interested people eventually abandoned the idea to switch to Linux, because they had some win32 application that they needed to run. In 2017, the Linux distribution landscape is more fragmented than ever and the Linux desktop landscape is more fragmented than ever (heck, even GNOME has three popular forks). Moreover, problems are far harder to debug than they were around 2000, because there are multiple layers of stuff piled on each other (D-Bus, systemd, Debian alternatives, *.d, et al. have blessings and curses). I think there is some movement from OS X to Linux (though it is hard too tell whether it's not just some vocal minority) for four reasons: 1. people rely less than ever on native applications, so it's much easier to move now; 2. OS X is also Unix, so for OS X users it is quite simple to move OS X to Linux and vice versa; and 3. there are serious worries among OS X users about the future of OS X and Apple's lack of focus; 4. Macs are becoming so expensive that it is hard to justify getting relatively bad specs for 1.5 times the price.

jmiserez 10y ago
I remember both that Windows 95/98/ME had it's issues and that at some point you could even buy Linux distros in a box next to the Windows boxes. But how do you see the push Canonical did with Ubuntu? As I remember, the sentiment was that they were going to make Linux usable and easy for the average user, instead of going after advanced users. And IMHO they really succeeded in doing that, surely you're not saying that was all there before? A user with absolutely no Linux or terminal experience can use an Ubuntu system for writing letters/emails/browsing and doesn't need to ever touch the terminal (provided all hardware is supported).