16 ms·

This post was interesting in a morbid way but you can count the Linux nerds that want leave the open world of Linux for Microsoft very easily. They all work at

This post was interesting in a morbid way but you can count the Linux nerds that want leave the open world of Linux for Microsoft very easily. They all work at Microsoft. Microsoft is losing on mobile, desktop, servers, and IoT. Their entire ecosystem is a technological deadend. If you're a Linux Nerd, you should probably keep using Linux if you care about having a good career going forward.

santoshalper 9y ago
Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop. I try it every year, and every year it sucks very slightly less. It goes beyond drivers and application compatibility, Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. The Desktop/Laptop market is not nearly as important as it used to be, but within that space, Microsoft's dominance is about as strong as ever. Apple might have been able to take a dent out of it if they were committed, but they decided the obscene margins on iPhones were more important (and I can't entirely blame them). Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs. Every year that passes convinces me more of this. We are going on the 20th "Year of Linux on the Desktop". If they were going to do it, they'd have done it by now.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  > Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop Shrug I've been using it on my main machine (a laptop) for 8+ years now. Works well for me. > Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs While I'm ever so slightly afraid you might be a little right, I'm super thankful that Canonical keeps putting out excellent new releases.
  - gsich 9y ago
    That's one of the three (?) answers you get when someone says they have a problem with Linux. I can relate to the quote and I use Linux.
- newman8r 9y ago
  Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ I think the linux desktop user experience has improved exponentially over the last few years, you should give it another shot.
  - seiferteric 9y ago
    I am legitimately excited for Ubuntu 17.10, the GNOME theme looks great.
  - domenukk 9y ago
    Looks have improved a fair amount. The normal user still wouldn't know how to install any software they know on it, however. And I'm not talking about an open-source alternative from apt. Also, touch screens <3
    - MilnerRoute 9y ago
      For what it's worth, for software installation there's now "snaps," the new "universal Linux package" format that Canonical has been pushing.
      - gsich 9y ago
        Yet another package format...
      - renaudg 9y ago
        Obligatory XKCD : https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
    - newman8r 9y ago
      for some users, half the fun of switching to linux is realizing there's open source versions of all the software they used to pay for.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Why bother, when in most countries they can just pirate it?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tootie 9y ago
  The best Linux desktop by far is ChromeOS.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Which is just basically a mix of Chrome and Android, with zero value regarding what kernel is actually being used. Tomorrow Google could release ChromeOS using another kernel and no one would notice. The only restriction is that the kernel needs to support the official set of NDK APIs for Android apps.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Sounds like you have not used LInux for a long time. Try Solus next time to get a fresh look at things.
- tpeo 9y ago
  >Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. Of all possible complaints about Linux, you've picked this one? Come on.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  My sister, who majored in philosophy and is in absolutely no way technologically adept, has been a fulltime linux user for 12 years now (including 4 years in university). My partner, who is a grade school teacher and is in no way interested in learning about technology, has been using it full time for 2 years now. My dad, a 6 year user (4 years fulltime), same story about level of tech competence... There are others. I suspect that you are expecting to not have to learn anything new and are looking for a visually identical Windows clone.
  - mwcampbell 9y ago
    Am I correct in guessing that they all use Linux at your recommendation and ask you for help from time to time? Regardless, I'm glad it works for them. But if they do benefit from your help, keep in mind that not everyone is so lucky. And for individual users who aren't using their computers in a corporate/institutional environment with a sysadmin, the best software is software that just works without any help from a techie.
    - mod 9y ago
      My father is 74 and he uses ubuntu. I installed it for him and he doesn't know the difference, really. Most people are just using browsers and I don't know, maybe a spreadsheet once in a while? Primarily browsers. My dad casts videos to his chromecast and reads a few forums, checks his email. Ubuntu just works for "normal" users. I installed it because I have to help him far, far less than I did when he had windows.
      - rbanffy 9y ago
        Same with my 81 year-old mom. She has been using Ubuntu for the past 10 years. She even updates it herself (after asking me what she needed to do once).
  - sremani 9y ago
    Having dabbled in enough Linux over years and still preferring Windows for most of my work, even though I make sure there is a Linux box up and running in the corner, I would say this Linux excels at extremes, i.e. powerusers and novice users who need "restricted" usage. For the rest of the people who fall into the range of not poweruser but want enough autonomy to install and uninstall various software applications, but who do not care to summon script-jutsu Windows still beats out in that experience. I not want to disparage non-poweruser Linux users but they are who they are.
- stevenjohns 9y ago
  Elementary OS[0] is visually very nice, especially after a slight theme change[1], but the core team behind it makes quite radical changes and decisions about what the OS should be (mostly about how it should be an unmodifiable, unchangeable "OS for dummies") that is starting to push me away. Especially when basic things like taking a screenshot with your keyboard, as well as setting up hot keys, has been broken for a year[2]. The eOS team appears to be more focused on forcing Windows 10-style OS updates that download in the background - even over metered connections - and force you to restart[3]. [0] https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/ [1] https://wefunkster.deviantart.com/art/OSe-Light-Xtrlght-GTK-themes-for-elementary-OS-694065854 https://wefunkster.deviantart.com/art/OSe-Light-Xtrlght-GTK-... [2] https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/7703/unable-to-screenshot-using-keyboard-shortcut-on-elementary-os-0-4-loki https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/7703/unable... [3] https://www.bountysource.com/issues/43123447-automatic-security-updates https://www.bountysource.com/issues/43123447-automatic-secur...
- hpcjoe 9y ago
  Been using Linux as my primary desktop for 17 years now. From ancient Redhat, through Mandrake, SuSE, Ubuntu, now linux mint. Linux mint on my 7 year old laptop (very high end for its day, still no slouch: 16GB ram, updated to SSD, and NVidia mobile graphics) is a more pleasant user experience for me than the corporate Macbook pro. Everything I need works. My windows environment is an old installation of windows 7 on VirtualBox that I boot up about once every 2 months to get updates, then shut down again. That VM has cygwin, which I'd been using on Windows for a long time when I used it. Everyone will have their own preferences, and I accept that. Claiming that "linux desktop sucks" and has for a long time, doesn't quite meet the reality of my daily (corporate) life. I am one data point, but certainly not the only one. If I were, then distros like linux mint wouldn't exist. Nor any of the other desktop/user centric ones for that matter. But they do exist, and appear to be thriving. As I said, preferences are personal. Linux desktop is quite productive for me.
- gerdesj 9y ago
  "Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop. I try it every year," No, I don't think you do try it (Linux) - you simply shout stuff ... because ... reasons ... I suspect that you ... read your history ... are a clever person but slightly biased against FOSS. If you really have snags about Linux then that is fine. Your employer should always come first.
- jwmullally 9y ago
  Yeah, I still find GUI applications crashing on modern distro's all the time :( ... but this works amazingly well :) $ flatpak install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam
- Eridrus 9y ago
  I have a corp-maintained Linux laptop; Chrome does not get along with the graphics drivers and will freak out and start flashing white every hour or so. My (corp-maintained) Linux desktop locks up under heavy load for every few days, usually recovers though. The person who sits next to me has it worse though. And this is with standardized corp-bought hardware. Any year now though.
  - flukus 9y ago
    Skype doesn't get along with my graphics drivers, On my corp maintained windows desktop it will sometimes peg the CPU/GPU and display garbage on screen until it overheats and hard resets. I guess Windows just isn't ready for the desktop.
  - aleksei 9y ago
    Not an issue with Linux though, you just have incompetent tech maintenance.
    - cturner 9y ago
      That is a major on-the-desktop constituency, though: company standard builds. If companies struggle to do it, that reflects badly on the system as a solution. There is a difference between something being technically feasible, vs a realised outcome. I have had a shot at building a standard desktop on top of ubuntu. My situation was easier than most in that we only had two desktops to support (a thinkpad and a dell laptop). still, making driver setup work seamlessly is hard. Imagine a company with twenty variations and an audit directive to not give root to users. WSL has huge potential to this market. You get a linux ui and kernel api, and it complements your existing standard build strategy.
      - aleksei 9y ago
        Well yes, it probably isn't such a piece of cake. I was too harsh.
    - Eridrus 9y ago
      Windows seems to run fine even with incompetent maintenance.
- KingMachiavelli 9y ago
  > Linux distros are ugly... Have you looked an a modern linux DE in the past 5 years? It's within subjective opinion as to which looks better. And a lot of time that opinion is "what the user has used before". And Windows is far from a smooth experience given how disrupted the Windows 10 UI changes were in Enterprise and Educational environments
- flukus 9y ago
  > Linux distros are ugly Compared to the dominant desktop OS linux distros are beautiful and consistent. Windows doesn't even have a standard look and feel anymore. And if you don't like it you can tweak the whole desktop + apps in one place.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  > Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop... Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. Linux is hard to beat for a fully customizable programming environment. You can easily customize the look of a Linux desktop, but can't with Windows or Mac. Windows and Mac have both taken UI ideas that have been around on Linux for far longer.
  - watwut 9y ago
    Yeah, but that is the thing ... I never wanted to customize the look and have zero willingness to spend more then a second on it. I want it to look acceptable out of box, but dont care about details. I suspect most people are like that. I thought I dont care how things look until I installed linux distro at home years ago and seen how it looks without tweaking. And I was unable to make it nicer, not because configuration would be hard, but because I am not artist and dont know how to make nice. It does matter how the whole looks to the user and linux was never really good at.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      >I am not artist and dont know how to make nice... It does matter how the whole looks to the user and linux was never really good at. It sometimes takes a little bit of work, but it isn't that complicated. Linux is great at it, but you might have to do a little research. An example of how to find that information: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+linux+look+good https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+linux+look+good Example desktops: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-looking-Linux-desktop-youve-seen https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-looking-Linux-desktop-y...
      - watwut 9y ago
        I haven't said it is complicated. I complained that it takes time (aka "takes a little bit of work"). And most of that work is "try color after color and width size after width size and it still looks ugly while I don't know really why". Specifically, if I knew how to make things look nice, I would likely do different job then tech. And I don't really care about researching tons of schemes and about futuristic artistic whatever either. What windows and mac do is that you open new laptop and everything looks alright. After few weeks, I change the wallpaper and I am happy. That is zero "make it nice" work.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  I disagree. Just my personal bias but I don't care for Windows on the desktop at all. It's just... annoying. The slashes face the wrong way, can't resize a terminal. Weird file system. WTF is this registry thing? What's wrong with config files? Too much junk in the interface. It's just not... clean. I like clean. I suppose it comes down to what one knows and is used to, but for my part I don't see myself ever working regularly with Windows again I dis-enjoy using it that much. So all this talk about how bad Linux desktop is nonsense from my perspective. I like KDE. I like Mate. I like i3. I like Gnome. Doesn't really matter, a terminal and web browser and a small handful of tools is most of what I need. Especially if I can set it up as I'm used to. Which if windows were kept simple would probably be ok as long as Bash or like is around somewhere. But no. It has to be all gooped up and just... controlled. Not what I'm looking for in computing at all and not what I enjoy.
  - msoucy 9y ago
    Oh, the registry isn't that bad. It's just a hierarchical config file that's very well hidden, requires using either a separate tool (sort of like dconf-editor) or weird tricks like cd'ing into it like it's a directory (thanks Powershell), and that has several versions that get overlaid to give the actual contents you're looking for. Totally normal and sane. /s WAY more fun is getting file associations working, on corp systems where they fail to persist. I can't double-click a Python script and have it run, despite having the exact same registry settings that I have at home for .py, Python.File, etc.
- partycoder 9y ago
  Not exactly sure what desktop environment/theme or applicaition combination you were trying but I disagree. Aesthetics is very subjective topic. But we can all agree that since Windows' Vista the focus hasn't been on eyecandy but rather functionality. Expensive visual effects are now removed and the UX is very plain, with not a lot of room for customization. I personally use this theme: https://snwh.org/paper https://snwh.org/paper https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013706/ https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013706/ Contains a GTK 3 theme, icons and cursors. Looks way better than Windows.
- ageofwant 9y ago
  The only place where Windows still somewhat matters is on corporate desktops. And this is for content consumers, or producers in very narrow silos, those generating Word documents or Excel spreadsheets. In every other aspect Linux is the superior tool. Personally I use Arch and i3, my desktop is riced to the point that is comfortable for me. I can stand up a new desktop in 10m after a clean arch install. I can replicate my full dev environment on any linode, droplet or aws machine in less than 5m at no cost. It amazes me that people can call themselves 'productive' using microsoft systems. Every time I land on a windows box I feel like I'm in some ancient broken world.
- koffiezet 9y ago
  Have to agree. As a mostly linux sysadmin I absolutely can't stand Linux desktops. It seems that Linux desktop users never even look at "the other sides". Sorry, but usability is laughable. There is no consistency over time. New version? Oh boy, hang on to your helmets - there goes all your customization you had to do to make your environment tolerable for you. I've used pre-1.0 KDE (and compiled it myself), seen Gnome pop up, tried a ton of WM's, and I try out some WM's and GUI-distro's at least once a year. Every time it comes down to: usable, but not great, and requires quite a bit of customization which I could redo for newer versions. When all you need is a terminal and a browser, it's probably fine, but I need a bit more than that to feel comfy.
cwyers 9y ago
Losing on desktop. Yeah, any decade now. There is of course a constituency of Linux Nerds primed to move to Windows: people who want to develop software for Linux servers but don't want to run Linux on the desktop. Many of those people are using OS X, which is POSIX enough to run some Linux software unmodified. WSL is a way to target those people, who may be being left behind by Apple's changing strategy in laptops (and the continued neglect of the Mac Pro and Mac Mini).
- taylodl 9y ago
  How healthy is the desktop market outside of the corporate environment? Consumers seem largely content with phones and tablets.
  - seiferteric 9y ago
    Pretty much, even as a developer, I feel the desktop paradigm is less and less important each year since I mostly only use a web browser and a terminal.
    - arvinsim 9y ago
      I assume that is because you can SSH into the machine of your choice? Most of the developers who don't live in a country with fast internet connection will still continue using a desktop for the foreseeable future.
      - seiferteric 9y ago
        Nope, just vim, and a browser mostly. I use sublimetext sometimes. That's the bulk of my desktop app usage.
    - Stratoscope 9y ago
      You're one particular kind of developer. There are others. For example, my usual "working set" right now includes: Araxis Merge, Calculator (the Windows 10 version with the new programmer features), Dynalist, Evernote, FlashDevelop (don't laugh), IntelliJ IDEA, TraceView Plus, Notepad++, Office 365, Process Hacker, SecureCRT, Slack, SmartGit, Visual Studio, VMware Workstation, VS Code, XVI32. And less frequently: API Monitor, Dependency Walker, Spy++, Hexinator, PaintShop Pro, IDA Pro. Also utilities like 3DxWare, 7-Zip, AquaSnap, AutoHotkey, Brother scanner utility, Eye-One Match (so my monitors are calibrated the same), Everything (the search utility), GraphicsMagick, JKLmouse (keyboard mouse control), Macrium Reflect, FolderSizes, Pandoc, ZoomIn/Zoom+, and the usual browsers and stuff. WSL too. Along with more personal tools like Foobar2000, Google Earth, Moneydance, Musicnotes (sheet music player), Total Recorder, Transcribe! (music transcription and pitch shifting), TurboTax, VLC. I'm not saying my set of tools is typical either, of course! Just that for some of us the desktop is alive and well, both for business and personal use. I have no idea how I would replace most of these tools with a terminal and a web browser, other than the ones like Dynalist and Slack.
rodgerd 9y ago
> you should probably keep using Linux if you care about having a good career going forward. I will happily bet beer that not only is Jess's career already better than 99% of everyone here, it will stay that way for decades.
21 9y ago
I guess you didn't get the memo on Azure being highly successful. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/27/microsoft-azure-growing-faster-than-aws-google-cloud-behind.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/27/microsoft-azure-growing-fast...
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Azure is also superior product then AWS in any way. I wish I would use Azure instead of AWS at my job.
mwcampbell 9y ago
I think better advice would be this: You should probably not be a platform zealot of any stripe if you care about having a good career going forward.
Arzh 9y ago
I don't work at Microsoft, I just like that the Windows works more than I do Linux. I use Linux because that is what we release on so I guess I don't fall under "Linux Nerd"

santoshalper 9y ago

Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop. I try it every year, and every year it sucks very slightly less. It goes beyond drivers and application compatibility, Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. The Desktop/Laptop market is not nearly as important as it used to be, but within that space, Microsoft's dominance is about as strong as ever. Apple might have been able to take a dent out of it if they were committed, but they decided the obscene margins on iPhones were more important (and I can't entirely blame them). Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs. Every year that passes convinces me more of this. We are going on the 20th "Year of Linux on the Desktop". If they were going to do it, they'd have done it by now.

wyldfire 9y ago
> Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop Shrug I've been using it on my main machine (a laptop) for 8+ years now. Works well for me. > Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs While I'm ever so slightly afraid you might be a little right, I'm super thankful that Canonical keeps putting out excellent new releases.
- gsich 9y ago
  That's one of the three (?) answers you get when someone says they have a problem with Linux. I can relate to the quote and I use Linux.
newman8r 9y ago
Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ I think the linux desktop user experience has improved exponentially over the last few years, you should give it another shot.
- seiferteric 9y ago
  I am legitimately excited for Ubuntu 17.10, the GNOME theme looks great.
- domenukk 9y ago
  Looks have improved a fair amount. The normal user still wouldn't know how to install any software they know on it, however. And I'm not talking about an open-source alternative from apt. Also, touch screens <3
  - MilnerRoute 9y ago
    For what it's worth, for software installation there's now "snaps," the new "universal Linux package" format that Canonical has been pushing.
    - gsich 9y ago
      Yet another package format...
    - renaudg 9y ago
      Obligatory XKCD : https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
  - newman8r 9y ago
    for some users, half the fun of switching to linux is realizing there's open source versions of all the software they used to pay for.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Why bother, when in most countries they can just pirate it?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tootie 9y ago
The best Linux desktop by far is ChromeOS.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Which is just basically a mix of Chrome and Android, with zero value regarding what kernel is actually being used. Tomorrow Google could release ChromeOS using another kernel and no one would notice. The only restriction is that the kernel needs to support the official set of NDK APIs for Android apps.
ekianjo 9y ago
Sounds like you have not used LInux for a long time. Try Solus next time to get a fresh look at things.
tpeo 9y ago
>Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. Of all possible complaints about Linux, you've picked this one? Come on.
craftyguy 9y ago
My sister, who majored in philosophy and is in absolutely no way technologically adept, has been a fulltime linux user for 12 years now (including 4 years in university). My partner, who is a grade school teacher and is in no way interested in learning about technology, has been using it full time for 2 years now. My dad, a 6 year user (4 years fulltime), same story about level of tech competence... There are others. I suspect that you are expecting to not have to learn anything new and are looking for a visually identical Windows clone.
- mwcampbell 9y ago
  Am I correct in guessing that they all use Linux at your recommendation and ask you for help from time to time? Regardless, I'm glad it works for them. But if they do benefit from your help, keep in mind that not everyone is so lucky. And for individual users who aren't using their computers in a corporate/institutional environment with a sysadmin, the best software is software that just works without any help from a techie.
  - mod 9y ago
    My father is 74 and he uses ubuntu. I installed it for him and he doesn't know the difference, really. Most people are just using browsers and I don't know, maybe a spreadsheet once in a while? Primarily browsers. My dad casts videos to his chromecast and reads a few forums, checks his email. Ubuntu just works for "normal" users. I installed it because I have to help him far, far less than I did when he had windows.
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      Same with my 81 year-old mom. She has been using Ubuntu for the past 10 years. She even updates it herself (after asking me what she needed to do once).
- sremani 9y ago
  Having dabbled in enough Linux over years and still preferring Windows for most of my work, even though I make sure there is a Linux box up and running in the corner, I would say this Linux excels at extremes, i.e. powerusers and novice users who need "restricted" usage. For the rest of the people who fall into the range of not poweruser but want enough autonomy to install and uninstall various software applications, but who do not care to summon script-jutsu Windows still beats out in that experience. I not want to disparage non-poweruser Linux users but they are who they are.
stevenjohns 9y ago
Elementary OS[0] is visually very nice, especially after a slight theme change[1], but the core team behind it makes quite radical changes and decisions about what the OS should be (mostly about how it should be an unmodifiable, unchangeable "OS for dummies") that is starting to push me away. Especially when basic things like taking a screenshot with your keyboard, as well as setting up hot keys, has been broken for a year[2]. The eOS team appears to be more focused on forcing Windows 10-style OS updates that download in the background - even over metered connections - and force you to restart[3]. [0] https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/ [1] https://wefunkster.deviantart.com/art/OSe-Light-Xtrlght-GTK-themes-for-elementary-OS-694065854 https://wefunkster.deviantart.com/art/OSe-Light-Xtrlght-GTK-... [2] https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/7703/unable-to-screenshot-using-keyboard-shortcut-on-elementary-os-0-4-loki https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/7703/unable... [3] https://www.bountysource.com/issues/43123447-automatic-security-updates https://www.bountysource.com/issues/43123447-automatic-secur...
hpcjoe 9y ago
Been using Linux as my primary desktop for 17 years now. From ancient Redhat, through Mandrake, SuSE, Ubuntu, now linux mint. Linux mint on my 7 year old laptop (very high end for its day, still no slouch: 16GB ram, updated to SSD, and NVidia mobile graphics) is a more pleasant user experience for me than the corporate Macbook pro. Everything I need works. My windows environment is an old installation of windows 7 on VirtualBox that I boot up about once every 2 months to get updates, then shut down again. That VM has cygwin, which I'd been using on Windows for a long time when I used it. Everyone will have their own preferences, and I accept that. Claiming that "linux desktop sucks" and has for a long time, doesn't quite meet the reality of my daily (corporate) life. I am one data point, but certainly not the only one. If I were, then distros like linux mint wouldn't exist. Nor any of the other desktop/user centric ones for that matter. But they do exist, and appear to be thriving. As I said, preferences are personal. Linux desktop is quite productive for me.
gerdesj 9y ago
"Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop. I try it every year," No, I don't think you do try it (Linux) - you simply shout stuff ... because ... reasons ... I suspect that you ... read your history ... are a clever person but slightly biased against FOSS. If you really have snags about Linux then that is fine. Your employer should always come first.
jwmullally 9y ago
Yeah, I still find GUI applications crashing on modern distro's all the time :( ... but this works amazingly well :) $ flatpak install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam
Eridrus 9y ago
I have a corp-maintained Linux laptop; Chrome does not get along with the graphics drivers and will freak out and start flashing white every hour or so. My (corp-maintained) Linux desktop locks up under heavy load for every few days, usually recovers though. The person who sits next to me has it worse though. And this is with standardized corp-bought hardware. Any year now though.
- flukus 9y ago
  Skype doesn't get along with my graphics drivers, On my corp maintained windows desktop it will sometimes peg the CPU/GPU and display garbage on screen until it overheats and hard resets. I guess Windows just isn't ready for the desktop.
- aleksei 9y ago
  Not an issue with Linux though, you just have incompetent tech maintenance.
  - cturner 9y ago
    That is a major on-the-desktop constituency, though: company standard builds. If companies struggle to do it, that reflects badly on the system as a solution. There is a difference between something being technically feasible, vs a realised outcome. I have had a shot at building a standard desktop on top of ubuntu. My situation was easier than most in that we only had two desktops to support (a thinkpad and a dell laptop). still, making driver setup work seamlessly is hard. Imagine a company with twenty variations and an audit directive to not give root to users. WSL has huge potential to this market. You get a linux ui and kernel api, and it complements your existing standard build strategy.
    - aleksei 9y ago
      Well yes, it probably isn't such a piece of cake. I was too harsh.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    Windows seems to run fine even with incompetent maintenance.
KingMachiavelli 9y ago
> Linux distros are ugly... Have you looked an a modern linux DE in the past 5 years? It's within subjective opinion as to which looks better. And a lot of time that opinion is "what the user has used before". And Windows is far from a smooth experience given how disrupted the Windows 10 UI changes were in Enterprise and Educational environments
flukus 9y ago
> Linux distros are ugly Compared to the dominant desktop OS linux distros are beautiful and consistent. Windows doesn't even have a standard look and feel anymore. And if you don't like it you can tweak the whole desktop + apps in one place.
JoshMnem 9y ago
> Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop... Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. Linux is hard to beat for a fully customizable programming environment. You can easily customize the look of a Linux desktop, but can't with Windows or Mac. Windows and Mac have both taken UI ideas that have been around on Linux for far longer.
- watwut 9y ago
  Yeah, but that is the thing ... I never wanted to customize the look and have zero willingness to spend more then a second on it. I want it to look acceptable out of box, but dont care about details. I suspect most people are like that. I thought I dont care how things look until I installed linux distro at home years ago and seen how it looks without tweaking. And I was unable to make it nicer, not because configuration would be hard, but because I am not artist and dont know how to make nice. It does matter how the whole looks to the user and linux was never really good at.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    >I am not artist and dont know how to make nice... It does matter how the whole looks to the user and linux was never really good at. It sometimes takes a little bit of work, but it isn't that complicated. Linux is great at it, but you might have to do a little research. An example of how to find that information: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+linux+look+good https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+linux+look+good Example desktops: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-looking-Linux-desktop-youve-seen https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-looking-Linux-desktop-y...
    - watwut 9y ago
      I haven't said it is complicated. I complained that it takes time (aka "takes a little bit of work"). And most of that work is "try color after color and width size after width size and it still looks ugly while I don't know really why". Specifically, if I knew how to make things look nice, I would likely do different job then tech. And I don't really care about researching tons of schemes and about futuristic artistic whatever either. What windows and mac do is that you open new laptop and everything looks alright. After few weeks, I change the wallpaper and I am happy. That is zero "make it nice" work.
mythrwy 9y ago
I disagree. Just my personal bias but I don't care for Windows on the desktop at all. It's just... annoying. The slashes face the wrong way, can't resize a terminal. Weird file system. WTF is this registry thing? What's wrong with config files? Too much junk in the interface. It's just not... clean. I like clean. I suppose it comes down to what one knows and is used to, but for my part I don't see myself ever working regularly with Windows again I dis-enjoy using it that much. So all this talk about how bad Linux desktop is nonsense from my perspective. I like KDE. I like Mate. I like i3. I like Gnome. Doesn't really matter, a terminal and web browser and a small handful of tools is most of what I need. Especially if I can set it up as I'm used to. Which if windows were kept simple would probably be ok as long as Bash or like is around somewhere. But no. It has to be all gooped up and just... controlled. Not what I'm looking for in computing at all and not what I enjoy.
- msoucy 9y ago
  Oh, the registry isn't that bad. It's just a hierarchical config file that's very well hidden, requires using either a separate tool (sort of like dconf-editor) or weird tricks like cd'ing into it like it's a directory (thanks Powershell), and that has several versions that get overlaid to give the actual contents you're looking for. Totally normal and sane. /s WAY more fun is getting file associations working, on corp systems where they fail to persist. I can't double-click a Python script and have it run, despite having the exact same registry settings that I have at home for .py, Python.File, etc.
partycoder 9y ago
Not exactly sure what desktop environment/theme or applicaition combination you were trying but I disagree. Aesthetics is very subjective topic. But we can all agree that since Windows' Vista the focus hasn't been on eyecandy but rather functionality. Expensive visual effects are now removed and the UX is very plain, with not a lot of room for customization. I personally use this theme: https://snwh.org/paper https://snwh.org/paper https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013706/ https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013706/ Contains a GTK 3 theme, icons and cursors. Looks way better than Windows.
ageofwant 9y ago
The only place where Windows still somewhat matters is on corporate desktops. And this is for content consumers, or producers in very narrow silos, those generating Word documents or Excel spreadsheets. In every other aspect Linux is the superior tool. Personally I use Arch and i3, my desktop is riced to the point that is comfortable for me. I can stand up a new desktop in 10m after a clean arch install. I can replicate my full dev environment on any linode, droplet or aws machine in less than 5m at no cost. It amazes me that people can call themselves 'productive' using microsoft systems. Every time I land on a windows box I feel like I'm in some ancient broken world.
koffiezet 9y ago
Have to agree. As a mostly linux sysadmin I absolutely can't stand Linux desktops. It seems that Linux desktop users never even look at "the other sides". Sorry, but usability is laughable. There is no consistency over time. New version? Oh boy, hang on to your helmets - there goes all your customization you had to do to make your environment tolerable for you. I've used pre-1.0 KDE (and compiled it myself), seen Gnome pop up, tried a ton of WM's, and I try out some WM's and GUI-distro's at least once a year. Every time it comes down to: usable, but not great, and requires quite a bit of customization which I could redo for newer versions. When all you need is a terminal and a browser, it's probably fine, but I need a bit more than that to feel comfy.

cwyers 9y ago

Losing on desktop. Yeah, any decade now. There is of course a constituency of Linux Nerds primed to move to Windows: people who want to develop software for Linux servers but don't want to run Linux on the desktop. Many of those people are using OS X, which is POSIX enough to run some Linux software unmodified. WSL is a way to target those people, who may be being left behind by Apple's changing strategy in laptops (and the continued neglect of the Mac Pro and Mac Mini).

taylodl 9y ago
How healthy is the desktop market outside of the corporate environment? Consumers seem largely content with phones and tablets.
- seiferteric 9y ago
  Pretty much, even as a developer, I feel the desktop paradigm is less and less important each year since I mostly only use a web browser and a terminal.
  - arvinsim 9y ago
    I assume that is because you can SSH into the machine of your choice? Most of the developers who don't live in a country with fast internet connection will still continue using a desktop for the foreseeable future.
    - seiferteric 9y ago
      Nope, just vim, and a browser mostly. I use sublimetext sometimes. That's the bulk of my desktop app usage.
  - Stratoscope 9y ago
    You're one particular kind of developer. There are others. For example, my usual "working set" right now includes: Araxis Merge, Calculator (the Windows 10 version with the new programmer features), Dynalist, Evernote, FlashDevelop (don't laugh), IntelliJ IDEA, TraceView Plus, Notepad++, Office 365, Process Hacker, SecureCRT, Slack, SmartGit, Visual Studio, VMware Workstation, VS Code, XVI32. And less frequently: API Monitor, Dependency Walker, Spy++, Hexinator, PaintShop Pro, IDA Pro. Also utilities like 3DxWare, 7-Zip, AquaSnap, AutoHotkey, Brother scanner utility, Eye-One Match (so my monitors are calibrated the same), Everything (the search utility), GraphicsMagick, JKLmouse (keyboard mouse control), Macrium Reflect, FolderSizes, Pandoc, ZoomIn/Zoom+, and the usual browsers and stuff. WSL too. Along with more personal tools like Foobar2000, Google Earth, Moneydance, Musicnotes (sheet music player), Total Recorder, Transcribe! (music transcription and pitch shifting), TurboTax, VLC. I'm not saying my set of tools is typical either, of course! Just that for some of us the desktop is alive and well, both for business and personal use. I have no idea how I would replace most of these tools with a terminal and a web browser, other than the ones like Dynalist and Slack.

rodgerd 9y ago

> you should probably keep using Linux if you care about having a good career going forward. I will happily bet beer that not only is Jess's career already better than 99% of everyone here, it will stay that way for decades.

21 9y ago

I guess you didn't get the memo on Azure being highly successful. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/27/microsoft-azure-growing-faster-than-aws-google-cloud-behind.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/27/microsoft-azure-growing-fast...

romanovcode 9y ago
Azure is also superior product then AWS in any way. I wish I would use Azure instead of AWS at my job.

mwcampbell 9y ago

I think better advice would be this: You should probably not be a platform zealot of any stripe if you care about having a good career going forward.

Arzh 9y ago

I don't work at Microsoft, I just like that the Windows works more than I do Linux. I use Linux because that is what we release on so I guess I don't fall under "Linux Nerd"