16 ms·

How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

158 points by se7entime 8y ago

jotm 8y ago
If you have Windows-only software, you can always just be a "pirate", flip Microsoft off and block all updates, telemetry and whatnot. Use what you want, give nothing back heh
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > If you have Windows-only software, you can always just be a "pirate", flip Microsoft off and block all updates, telemetry and whatnot It's an awful lot of work to maintain this, and of dubious value with the end result being running a second-rate OS.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Windows is a first rate OS saddled with some stupid bullshit that's been piled on top of it. And be fair, maintaining a Linux configuration just the way you like it is a lot of work too. If it weren't, there wouldn't be hundreds of slightly-different distros.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      > Windows is a first rate OS saddled with some stupid bullshit that's been piled on top of it. I'm sure there are good bits of Windows - Microsoft has a lot of very smart people working for them. But I've never experienced Windows as a first rate OS - it's always had bullshit on top (and beneath) it. > And be fair, maintaining a Linux configuration just the way you like it is a lot of work too. If it weren't, there wouldn't be hundreds of slightly-different distros. Maybe "just the way you like it", but "functional and not sending your private information off to a dubious corporation" is pretty easy. When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. Windows? Opaque all the way down. Ask for help online? They say "check your anti-virus; if that doesn't work, reinstall your OS". In what world is that sane?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        > Maybe "just the way you like it", but "functional and not sending your private information off to a dubious corporation" is pretty easy. Sure, and that's great if that's all you want out of a personal computer. > When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. Bull. I've been using Linux for decades and it's always the same story. You have a problem with X, you do a search for your problem with X, you find a dozen solutions that don't apply to you because you're on a different distro or they're from 2013 when half the software stack was different. Of course the error reporting is vague and the documentation is out of date, referring you to the source for details. If you dare go somewhere to ask about your problem, you most likely get told you're using the wrong distro. It really isn't all that different from the situation on Windows.
        MisterOctober 8y ago
        ^ I'm a confirmed Linux user these days, but this is accurate. Half the time when I break something in a serious way, the above situation obtains and I just scowl and do a clean reinstall.
        _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        Of course you can always choose to resolve problems in that fashion. But I've never had to on Linux if I didn't want to.
        _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        > > When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. > Bull. I've been using Linux for decades and it's always the same story. You have a problem with X, you do a search for your problem with X, you find a dozen solutions that don't apply to you because you're on a different distro or they're from 2013 when half the software stack was different. Ok, so in some cases there can be complications. But once you've found (a/the) solution, it makes a sort of sense. In contrast, in the cases I've successfully found a solution to a problem on Windows, the reasons usually remain opaque. This, surely, is a side-effect of running a proprietary OS, and one I no longer have patience for. For example, when I was dual-booting Windows 10 on two desktops a couple of years ago, I ran into major problems just getting Windows installed (taking far longer to ultimately install than it ever took me to install any Linux distro, from Ubuntu to Arch to Void to GuixSD). I had downloaded the official Windows 10 image from Microsoft onto a usb thumbdrive and went to install. During the installing process, it failed with an obscure message about missing drivers. I try on the other differntly-configured desktop (different motherboard etc). It's the same thing. I think perhaps it's an chicken-and-egg issue with trying to install via a usb3 port (i.e. maybe it's missing usb3 drivers or something). Seems unlikely, but I try booting from a usb2 port. No luck. For good measure, even from different usb ports. But it doesn't matter, it's always the same error message during install. Seems like something which would be easy to debug, since there are in fact lots of Windows users, but I can't find anything similar described. I finally find a post on some obscure forum which describes a similar problem. The suggested solution: wait until you get the 'drivers missing' error, and then unplug the installation usb thumb and plug it into a different usb port. (So it doesn't matter which usb port you start with, it will always 'miss' the drivers until you unplug it and plug it into another usb port.) I thought: what a stupid solution, surely it won't work, but what the hell, let's try it for shits and giggles. Of course, that was the solution. That's completely opaque. The solution might as well have been sprinkling the machine with chicken blood while playing the Beatles' White Album. I don't know how many hours were wasted trying to resolve that. After a year or so, I ended up wiping all of the Windows partitions. Too much headache. It sounds like you have better experiences with Window. Perhaps you have the right magic touch that's needed.
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joe_the_user 8y ago
I switched to Linux about ten years. I basically got tired of having an OS I paid for (in buying a computer) not really be "mine". Lately, I have had few problems installing and running Linux on the various cheap laptops I've bought. Ubuntu with a Mate GUI "just works", has all the software I need and lacks BS like the Windows 10 interface. I don't really think there's any objective barrier to using Linux for a significant percentage of people - people who don't need Adobe Creative Suite or similar monopolies. But this is the same population who probably won't both doing something unusual given they have no strong motivation.
- nine_k 8y ago
  The big reason people run windows at home is gaming. Valve for linux very much exists, but definitely not everything is ported.
  - nyolfen 8y ago
    i run win steam with wine and the games work surprisingly well most of the time
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      Steam for Linux now runs some games under their own Wine btw there's a good number of them they support now.
      - ikfmpwdsoz 8y ago
        Yes, for anyine who wants to do further research it's called Proton. Valve has tried several times in the past to make gaming on Linux more attractive, but this has by far been their most successful attempt.
        Something1234 8y ago
        A lot of games don't even start on my Antergos setup. I refuse to run ubuntu, because I don't like it (mostly package naming, and a lot of the time I feel like it's poorly configured at least when I was starting out). I personally have had a negative experience whenever I use a Debian derivative.
shmerl 8y ago
> If you’re a serious gamer, Linux won’t satisfy you (yet). That's moot. Linux gaming today is a lot better than ever before, considering advances in graphics APIs (Vulkan), increasing amount of native Linux games and rapidly improving support for Windows games through Wine, dxvk, vkd3d, including projects like Proton integrated into Steam client and etc. Many former Windows gamers find it acceptable to switch. So at the very least, give Linux gaming a try and see for yourself.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  While the work Valve has done improving the Linux gaming situation is actually quite impressive, 'serious' PC gamers already do enough configuration tweaking and working around problems already, it doesn't strike me that they'll really want to deal with even more of that.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    My point is, that Linux is already well usable for gaming, including for very demanding games. "Serious gamer" is too much of a generalization, to assume what people are willing or not willing to do to configure their systems. Many gamers are actually very much into tweaking things as you say, from custom PC builds to game mods and other customizations. They see configurability as a benefit, not as a downside. So Linux is a natural fit. Besides, Linux gaming is quite accessible today without any extensive manual tweaking (while you can always do that if you want to, a lot more than on Windows).
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Let me put it this way. What's the best damn GPU on the market right now? I'm actually not sure, but I'd bet good money the top 3 slots are nVidia. Even if you use the nVidia proprietary drivers, the data says you're suffering a performance hit for it. God help if you're using nouveau, because you just wasted hundreds of dollars. The kinds of people I think of when you say "serious gamers" are not going to be very happy with the idea that they're locked out of the best kit. These are people for whom their computer's primary purpose is probably playing games. Why would they sacrifice needlessly? > So Linux is a natural fit. If it were a natural fit, they'd be interested in using it. Data suggests they aren't.
CaliforniaKarl 8y ago
>1. Pick a distro. >2. Put the distro on a thumb drive or DVD so you can boot to it from there. >3. Create a partition big enough for the Linux distro. >4. Install the Linux distro in the partition. >5. Configure Linux so you can use it on a daily basis. I think there's a critical step missing from this list, which applies to the 'non-techies' reading the post. (At first I wasn't going to post this, thinking that the article was only for technically-minded people, but the author calls out notes for non-techies at various points.) The critical step is: Tell your support person, and your other users! Many people have a support person. At work, this is your IT person. At home, this may often be a family member. For example, I am the support person for my father. If you have a support person, let them know what you would like to do. Point them to the article, and to the other pages that you're looking at. Be respectful of your support person's time. It will take at least an hour to go through all of the above steps; longer if something doesn't go exactly right. If you do this out of the blue, run into a problem, and have to lean on your support person unexpectedly, understand that you will be taking them away from something else unexpectedly. Be prepared for your support person to say "If you do this, I won't be able to help you." If they say that, then accept it. If you need to go back to them for help, don't be surprised if they say "You're going to have to wipe everything and reinstall". Back up your stuff! Do this before making Step 3. Make sure those backups are good. You may also have other users. If your family shares a machine, then your family members are other users. Talk to those people. Let them know what is going to happen. Even if you are just adding Ubuntu as a new partition, you must assume there will be a time when you have to leave the computer unexpectedly, another user will come in, and be presented with a weird lock screen or login screen. Walk people through at least the Ubuntu login and lock screens. Let your other users know, if the machine is locked, restarting into Windows may mean that anything still open under Linux may lose data. Again, be respectful of everyone's time. If you're the parent, then you can certainly say "I'm doing this tomorrow at 3 PM; come to me first before you try to use the computer after that time.", but if your child then comes back with "I had planned on working on $PROJECT at 4 PM tomorrow", responding with "Well, you should've planned your time better." is BS. If you're interested in running Linux on your desktop, then you can definitely do it! But please, recognize that (most of) you have people in your life who fulfill either the 'supporter' or 'co-user' role, and they deserve to be brought into the loop. (Source of rant: I once had my Dad upgrade several versions of macOS in one single jump, on some random weekday. Of course the upgrade took longer than expected, and also the jump of several versions caused lots of UI things to change. That led to multiple unplanned hour-plus-long phone calls in the middle of my workday, as this was my parents' only computer.)
rotskoff 8y ago
I have been using Ubuntu on and off since about 2005. Last year I switched from OSX on a dated macbook to Ubuntu on a newer Dell XPS. On the whole I am happy with the switch: with many of the apps that I use based on electron (slack, atom, mailspring) or directly in the browser (google docs), it is hard to notice the difference. I do most of my work related writing in latex, so this has also not been very noticeable. I don't like latex slides and I give presentations frequently for work. The only thing that has proved consistently annoying is that LibreOffice Impress is nowhere near as good as keynote.
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sys_64738 8y ago
Nothing he says Is dependent on the Linux kernel so he could have run WSL under Windows 10. For Linux builds of GUI apps he could use a free X server. I wonder if this can be applied to the majority of people. If the app is available for Windows then use the Windows version (e.g. Chrome at least until Edge uses Chrome engine) otherwise use the app under WSL. Microsoft has made it easy to run GNU tools under Windows such that you don’t need to be constrained to Linux installs for that.
- shmerl 8y ago
  No need for WSL, if you can use Linux proper. In reverse, if you ever need to run Windows programs, you can use Wine.
- tyingq 8y ago
  WSL can be pretty slow for some tasks. It's REALLY slow for me when creating lots of files, like a git clone might do. See, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18948601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18948601
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  But who has the patience for Windows with its opacity and maintenance overhead? Most people don't know any better, of course, and aren't necessarily to be faulted for that. I certainly don't have the time anymore to sysadmin any Windows machines.
- lsanger 8y ago
  Oy, you really did not understand why I moved, even though I explained it quite clearly.
CaliforniaKarl 8y ago
Tangentially-related rant (since the author is pushing Ubuntu): I wish Canonical would offer an 'End-User Desktop Support' offering. Right now Ubuntu Advantage is available for $150 per year, but that's only for enterprise (you have to order at least 50 units). I think it would be interesting if Canonical offered an equivalent product for home users, understanding that the $/year would be higher. That would give all the people moving to Ubuntu an option to support the people making the OS. I do see that donations are accepted (the prompt is on the _Your download will begin shortly…_ page), so at least there's that!
- cwyers 8y ago
  You'll never get end users to pay more per seat than an enterprise product. You just need to find a way to make the end user product sufficiently worse that enterprises won't care about the price difference, they'll just buy what they need.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    When you have a minimum of 50 seats, it's not really $150 per seat. It's $7,500 + $150 per seat over 50 $150 for a single seat would be significantly less.
    - cwyers 8y ago
      What value prop are you going to offer to get a consumer to pay $150 a year for Linux support? Enterprises will pay it because they have a value prop and because Windows seats aren't free. From a consumer's point of view, Windows _is_ free.
- hsivonen 8y ago
  Single-seat support used to be available for Ubuntu. I paid for that in roughly the 2010-2012 time frame. It was useless, and I don't really blame Canonical: Consider how much of a competent person's time the annual price back then, 190 euros, could buy. Not much. If you want to support them monetarily, the donation thing covers that. If you want to pay for them to provide support for you, what do you expect "support" to mean and at what cost? The trope that if you pay for Open Source support, you get to affect bug fixing priorities doesn't work at the money levels that individuals (except maybe ones who have the kind of money Shuttleworth has) are willing to pay. But even for just advice on how to perform a task or resolve a problem, if you can't get the answer right away using a Web search engine, chances are that the solution needs a competent person to pay attention for a longer period of time than your expected annual per-seat price pays for.
simplecomplex 8y ago
The author says he switched because of “Then came 2018, with its stunning revelations and outrages by Facebook, Apple, Google, and others. With privacy and free speech—in short, digital autonomy—deeply under threat” Comparing Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple is apples to oranges. What did Apple do that threatens customer privacy and free speech? You don’t need to switch to Linux to stop using Facebook and Twitter...
- shmerl 8y ago
  > What did Apple do that threatens customer privacy and free speech Apple affects many things negatively by being extremely pro lock-in and patent aggressive. So I'd say it's a good thing when someone stops using Apple's products and switches to Linux instead.
  - simplecomplex 8y ago
    It’s not a good thing if you like seeing software devs get paid :)
    - shmerl 8y ago
      The company doesn't need to be a nasty anti-competitive jerk to pay developers.
      - briandear 8y ago
        What’s anti competitive?
        shmerl 8y ago
        It's when instead of competing on merit, companies focus on controlling the market through monopolization techniques. I.e. simply banning competition. Lock-in (i.e. refusal to support interoperability), patent aggression, forbidding competing technologies in their store and so on and so forth.
doxavore 8y ago
Is there a pleasant way to run a Linux laptop today with decent drawing/touchscreen support, HiDPI, and working dock/undock multi-monitor support? I have used various distros on and off over the years, but today I can run Windows 10 on a Surface Book 2, and the non-development portions of my experience are spectacular, for the low, low price of selling my soul: lazy file syncing with OneDrive, pen support combined with OneNote is spectacular. Unfortunately, WSL only gets me so far when I want to use more than vim. For better or worse, I don't get to spend all of my time coding, so I'd like Linux with a real, modern notebook experience that can let me get my work done without praying to the gods that my external monitors come back on when I plug in.
- davidscolgan 8y ago
  My strategy has for a long time been to run Windows 10 for all of my browsers and games and paint programs and then run a virtual machine of linux with VirtualBox. I just use terminal Vim, so I run the virtual machine headless and ssh into it with a cygwin terminal. It's a bit janky but no more janky than actually running Linux on a laptop. No worries about my HDMI projector connection working, no fighting with wifi, games on Steam work, and I get a full Linux for development. The magic comes from proxying my development servers (like Django's) through the guest machine into Windows. I've got it set up so that if I type `localhost:8000` into any Windows browser, it hits my virtual machine's localhost. So yeah, complicated, but from what I can see it gives me the best setup I know of with the least amount of fighting with the operating system.
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  - SomeHacker44 8y ago
    I love this. Thanks for sharing. I wonder if there is a way to make a true dual system on Windows, with full graphical support (even if it is the Linux console), where you can flip between Windows desktop, Linux Desktop (if desired), and Linux console with a "switch desktop" hotkey. I think I will try this on one of my windows computers. I can't switch from Mac to Linux because I use too much non Linux software, but most of it is on Windows. Adobe suite, Ableton, Native Instruments, etc. Does anyone know a way to virtualize Linux like the thought above please?
Theodores 8y ago
I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. I was guilty of hanging on to the dual boot for a few years but never ended up using the Windows side or any of those programs that I thought were so fundamentally important to my life. I am not sure why people can't just give Ubuntu a go on a brand new machine rather than maybe run it on Virtualbox. It is like cars and bicycles, people will spend all their money on a car but want or insist on some second hand stolen junk when it comes to buying a bicycle. In so doing they never get into cycling and spend even more money on their car. Then one day they hear about climate change and maybe decide to get the bike out the shed. I feel this is the same story here, since when has there been any information privacy with these commercial operating systems? DOS 6.22 with a locked floppy drive was probably the last time. So to suddenly wake up to the 'scandal' of Facebook et al. selling your every mouse click is a bit special. These are just observations, obviously Ubuntu linux is the best operating system there is and I would not change for a paid for OS if you paid me.
- tomc1985 8y ago
  I ran Mint for years as my daily driver at work. It was great and took me from being a linux intermediate to something of an expert, and I wouldn't mind doing it again. But for home use, there are simply too many cool programs on Windows to give it up. The Mint partition on my home dual boot sits largely unused. Emulation does an acceptable job for some things but it's often a sub-par experience. It's also quite tiring to have to constantly futz around with services and configurations just to get programs working, only to have that configuration break because of software updates. In the end I find a Win10 PC with some of the guts rips out (via something like Blackbird) seems to produce the least amount of headaches and generally stays out of my way. I hate Microsoft's Windows-as-a-Service model but most of the things about it can be ignored or switched off. (And yes, one shouldn't have to but I find it better than the alternatives)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. Well it doesn't help that Linux desktop is backed by one of the most condescending cultures that ever stalked the internet. Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the way Linux works just doesn't jive with a lot of people? Like, everything has a middleman involved. Drivers for your hardware? Have to be merged into the kernel. Applications? Should go through (all of) the distro package repo(s) unless you want it to be a pain in the ass. We get it, you find value in the way these things work, some of us don't.
bigiain 8y ago
So 2019 is _finally_ gonna be the year of Linux on the Desktop? (Pardon me if I seem a little skeptical, I've heard this song before...)
- agumonkey 8y ago
  blender is getting fun; inkscape reaches 1.0, gimp might evolve methinks if libreoffice gets a bit leaner and featured it might be
  - ikfmpwdsoz 8y ago
    Krita has been much nicer than Gimp in my experience, although they fulfil slightly different niches.
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      Yeah forgot Krita (sorry Krita) but I from the few I gathered, I agree.
  - wyattpeak 8y ago
    I thought Libreoffice was fine enough until I started working in an office with people on Windows. I ran into so many compatibility problems I could barely believe it. Couldn't edit each other's headers, no maths support worked between the two, images and other objects would get randomly shuffled in the documents (one image showing up where another used to be). To say nothing of the minor niggling display differences reminiscent of the old IE6 box model problems. I had to start sending documents in PDF, but then they couldn't edit them. That alone was enough to move me back to Windows. For better or worse, I don't think Libreoffice can move forward until interoperability can be presumed.
    - pmontra 8y ago
      No different than what would have happened if you had Windows and all of them were working with Macs and its office suite. You would have had to buy a Mac. It's not an OS issue.
scarejunba 8y ago
What's really funny is that I use Linux desktops at home and work, a Macbook with OS X at work, and dual boot the home desktop to play games and barely notice anything.
gst 8y ago
I've used Linux since the early 1.x kernel versions, but for my next laptop I'm thinking about switching to a MacBook. Not because of the software (I prefer Linux to macOS), but because of the hardware. Apple seems to be the only manufacturer that so far escaped the race to the bottom and which still produces somewhat premium hardware. I want: a hidpi screen with lots of nits and a good contrast, a trackpoint or a huge touchpad, good battery life and somewhat light weight. In the past Thinkpads worked really well for that, but recently I had multiple issues with Lenovo hardware. I'm currently using a X1C3 and originally considered upgrading to a X1C6 or T480s, but given there are known issues such as the throttling bug (https://github.com/erpalma/throttled https://github.com/erpalma/throttled) that Lenovo hasn't fixed in over half a year I'm very close to giving up on Thinkpads.
- ryebreadistasty 8y ago
  >premium hardware >apple if I can't get proper i/o it's not premium at all. beyond that things shouldn't be bent from having them in your pocket. iToddlers BTFO https://i.ibb.co/XZhdMn2/smuglaugh.gif https://i.ibb.co/XZhdMn2/smuglaugh.gif
  - chess_buster 8y ago
    Bend... a MacBook? My colleague ran his car over one and it has just a few scratches...
- tchaffee 8y ago
  My wife gets Apple products because her work pays for it. She has been to the repair shop multiple times. My last couple of Dells meanwhile feel rock solid like a Mac but have never needed repairs. It's anecdotal on my part, but I think worth looking into more.
- doublepg23 8y ago
  I've heard good things about the XPS line, but I'm surprised you'd move to a Macbook over throttling. My understanding is Macbooks are notorious for throttling, the last MB Pro bug being the worst in recent memory. If anything I'd blame Intel.
mherrmann 8y ago
I had similar experiences switching from macOS to Ubuntu. I wrote an article about this, where I compare the two OSs as "Home and Hotel" [1]. 1: https://fman.io/blog/home-and-hotel/ https://fman.io/blog/home-and-hotel/
ryebreadistasty 8y ago
Linux is fucking trash and lemme tell you why: First is SMP. Multi-core on Linux is absolute trash and Linus is fuckin' dumb for thinking that multi-core isn't useful and is overrated. A way better setup is having a master/slave setup, all applications run on core 0, and when they want multi-core they make a slave task on another core directly. Linus said that the only thing parallel is good for is graphics but that's because he uses a GPU, if you had a master/slave setup in the OS you could just run graphics on the CPU and it'd be way better than it is now. Linux will proudly run two applications faster, but how about we start running one application faster? Another thing is it's trying to replicated a 1970s mainframe, like yeah that works great for corporate servers and universities but simple put - desktop users don't need that shit at all, multi-user systems are outdated and single user systems are fine for desktop users. There's no reason to run anything at any security level other than ring 0 on the desktop, obviously it's bad if one process can crash a server, but on the desktop having one process being able to crash the system isn't a bad thing. Just write better software. As for infected software - don't run anything you didn't compile yourself - on any system. The project has also become bloated, there's an estimated 15 million lines of code in the kernel not to mention the binary blobs and that's simply extremely difficult to maintain, not to mention it's a terrible starting point for any new operating system or for anyone wanting to know how an operating system actually functions, in this respect Minix does a much better job; in fact it was the starting point Linus himself used to write Linux in the first place. Linux is simply not readable by a single human, and that ends up completely defeating the purpose of it being a free software project; you simply cannot check every single line of code for malicious intent. systemd - what do I even need to say that's not already been said about this steaming pile of atrocious, malicious, stupid, bloated piece of garbage. have fun with your pseudo-svchost.exe. all in all that's my two cents on desktop linux, I think there's way better systems to use and that linux isn't all that.
- leowoo91 8y ago
  - Linux kernel has SMP and good multi-core support, just for you to know. - Linux kernel is not just for desktop, and being used in near real-time systems as well as mobile. It is the 'distribution' that makes the difference to their audience. - Multi-user environments are very real in workplaces. At least one additional employee account is needed for using a system without modifying it. - There is no obligation to understand car design to drive them. But, what if one day you wanted to check the engine? That is at least you can't do with proprietary systems.
Animats 8y ago
I've used Linux on the desktop for over a decade. Currently, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on x64. It still sucks for the average user. The GUI is lipstick on a pig. As soon as anything goes wrong, it's back to the command line. You look up the problem, and there will be a dozen articles about it, all contradicting each other. Look up what it takes to create a desktop icon for something. (Hint: the top result in Google won't work.) I'm currently restoring a Ubuntu system after a hard drive replacement. I've been at this for a day now. Typical little stuff: - OpenGL frame rate is terrible. The default install turns out to be running OpenGL in the Mesa emulator. Time to install a driver. There's lots of advice on that. Get it from the NVidia site? From Ubuntu? From a driver-aggregation site? (Scary). Want the open source version or the closed source binary? Need CUDA support? Five choices of driver. Finally pick the latest open source version and it works. - File restoration isn't working properly. I used iDrive for backup, and now it's time to restore. I've restored one or two files from iDrive before, but now I have to restore a lot of them. The interface is a bunch of Perl scripts, with a command line menu system from the 1970s. After much struggling ("Restore From" means the name of the machine that was backed up), I get the restore running. It runs, but about 8,000 files don't restore out of a few hundred thousand. The message is just "FAILED". Files with "&" in the name don't restore. Files with "__" in the name sometimes don't restore. Working on that. Looks like most of what I lost was part of old builds of a big program, but there are a few files I'd like back.
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- TACIXAT 8y ago
  I feel it's come a really long way. Maybe I'm just buying machines with supported graphics cards now, but I have not had any catastrophic failures since getting on 18.04.
  - elteto 8y ago
    That’s only 10 months...
    - 8y ago
dgzl 8y ago
I started using Ubuntu Linux about 8 years ago, about the same time I started my CS degree at school. Over the years, my interest in Windows shrunk to essentially just PC gaming. When school got serious I stopped gaming as much, and all my needs from both school and personal computing were met with open source tools. Every once in a while I would try a new distro as live CD, just for kicks, and to see how things are different. I learned how to use my own window manager and terminal program. I found that the necessary elements needed for working Linux are actually quite small, and most everything beyond that is for convenience. When you learn to use the terminal, your entire perspective on how to use a computer changes. No longer are you wasting time swishing your mouse around, clicking on folders and icons. Instead, you live on the keyboard, using hotkeys, personal aliases, tab completion, STDIO piping, dot files, terminal based text editors... There's a lot to master. But don't feel put off by this, we actually have a lot of fun in the terminal. We can play music with MPD/Ncmpcpp, play Tetris, retrieve HN articles and view comments, retrieve 3-day local weather with animations, we can even browse webpages. It's actually a fun world in the terminal, and we can eliminate the need for otherwise fatty software. If you're looking for something that Just Werks as a Windows replacement, any Ubuntu derivative will be fine. If you're looking for something that requires more work but might spur interest (i.e. hobby), you might try Arch or Gentoo. And if you're looking for rice examples, check out Reddit/unixporn.
- Krasnol 8y ago
  > But don't feel put off by this, we actually have a lot of fun in the terminal. I believe you. I grew up on a C64 and later DOS and really, I don't miss it. It's nice to have the console just in case but I don't want it to become something I have to use again. It always was that "waste of time" you're describing there and I've never seen it the other way around. I can do that swishing with one hand. One finger even or my nose if I have to. A double click does it. A GUI where I can see all the options, select them, apply and run. So...human. Every time I use my Linux laptop I find myself googling up commands or god knows what weird solutions to problems that should be easy and are in their equivalent on Win. It's such a waste of time and I feel lost if I can't go online to do it. There is a long way for Linux to get there and I see a solution where you can have both. It does not contradict itself. But the biggest problem out there I see is the aversion (or even hate) in relevant parts of the Linux community towards everything GUI.
II2II 8y ago
If you are thinking about Linux, this is pretty much the worse approach possible. My advice would be to switch to open source applications first, to ensure that you will have a suite of software that meets your needs and that you will be able to transition your data. If the switch looks viable, spend some time using your chosen distro on live media, to ensure that it will work with your hardware. If the live media does not work, either try a different distro or set the transition aside. Then make the jump if, and only if, it looks like you will be able to make a total transition. Backing up your data and telling the distro's installer to use the entire drive vastly simplies everything from installation and support to everyday usage. Linus itself is an excellent operating system that makes life for end users a lot easier, but I suggest the applications first approach since it is not for everyone. Even using this approach and testing it on live media first is bound to have a few hiccups, yet it is a lot better than starting out by learning everything from scratch or by troubleshooting major issues.
- lsanger 8y ago
  Did I suggest that people follow my precise route? I'm not sure I did. I was just reporting how I did it.
zzo38computer 8y ago
I have used Linux for some time (I do not remember how many years), and it works very well. I uninstalled the desktop environment (I don't use it (but I do use X, with a window manager, which is not the same as the desktop environment); I use the command shell to start programs and for almost all other purposes too). It is much better than Windows! Someone mentions restoring a Ubuntu system after a hard drive replacement. I used a live CD, to run tar with --numeric-owner and other options I do not commonly use, and gzip, to make backups onto three DVDs, and then to set up the partitioning and boot loader on the new hard drive, and then to restore all of the files. And then the new system just worked fine when booted, with no problem (actually the first time I misconfigured the boot loader, but after I corrected that, it booted fine). Some people are disheartened to see how much you still need the command line to do some very basic things. I rather see, is good that such thing can be done by command line programs; you don't need the GUI to do so many thing like Windows needs. But if you don't like Linux, you do not need to use it; there are other systems. But I find Linux is good.
- jayalpha 8y ago
  "Some people are disheartened to see how much you still need the command line to do some very basic things." I am more surprised how someone can do serious IT work with windows. A nightmare for me.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    At my internship for a large logistics company I shadowed the system administrators a couple of days. There was so much clicking involved that It made my left index finger start hurting. Adding a MIME type to IIS seemed like a chore.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  I was a person who said I was disheartened to see how much the command line was required. I like the option to use the command line, I just don't want it to be the only option, especially for what I consider basic stuff.
kdamica 8y ago
I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about a year now, and while I agree that Linux has come a long way, it's definitely not ready for prime time just yet. Here's why: - GUI performance is bad. I have a reasonably high end system, but switching between desktops is choppy unless I turn my resolution down to 1600x900. - Trackpad support is bad. It works but feels clunky. You really feel the difference when you use a Macbook for the first time in a while. - Hibernate doesn't work. I've tried and tried to get this to work but haven't succeeded. So now I either need to keep my laptop plugged in all the time or shut it down (which is annoying, because I encrypt my hard drive so I have to enter two passwords to start). - Bluetooth doesn't work well. I have to run a command to restart my bluetooth service every time I connect, and still sometimes have to re-pair my headphones. I use a wired connection now to avoid dealing with it. I bought a Linux-native laptop (System76 Galago) thinking things would work out of the box, but this hasn't been the case. (Also, the Galago's battery is awful so I wouldn't recommend it even if everything worked well.) The next time I'm ready to drop $1500+ on a laptop, I'll probably just get a Macbook.
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  > GUI performance is bad. This depends heavily on the GPU drivers used, which in itself is probably a problem, but is far from universal. I didn't have any issues with Bluetooth & hibernate for years now, I am surprised you'd have hibernate problems on a System76 laptop as I don't even have a 'Linux-friendly' laptop per se and hibernate works. > The next time I'm ready to drop $1500+ on a laptop, I'll probably just get a Macbook. I use MacBooks sometimes at work and I'd say that past 2015 they've not been on the right track. The keyboard and cooling especially. Software-wise, macOS is indeed more 'uniform' in terms of hardware, so it's easier to make sure everything 'works', (which is not really a fair comparison to Linux, which works well on a much wider range of hardware, including the 2015 MBP). As for macOS itself, you don't really have much in terms of customization options, which you may prefer, but that also means if you don't like something you're stuck. Be however prepared to pay $20-30 for every little utility from a decent file manager to window snapping, (that's right, macOS doesn't ship with a proper file manager and doesn't really support window snapping the way you'd expect out of the box).
iamgopal 8y ago
I am using Ubuntu since version 6, inkscape gimp web programming been handled really well till date. Only complain is engineering drawing, for which AutoCAD level replacement yet to find.
squirrelicus 8y ago
It's funny. I recently switched from Linux after 10 years back to Windows. I ran Arch Linux for about 7 years. After systemd I spent years justifying why I used it even though it would constantly break and require a reformat more often than Win7 did. I went to Ubuntu, and it was marginally more stable. But even there, I was bitten too many times. Libicu upgrades breaking everything, updating packages breaks the package manager or ruins systemctl settings. Really, the whole problem that pushed me back to Windows is a combination of constant systemd nightmares and bad package maintenance. I've... Kind of been loving Win10. Sure, it's marginally more evil than Linux, (but less so than Google and Apple products these days), but at least I don't have to constantly wipe my machine or keep it out of date to keep using it. Weird how the tables have turned.
- rgomez 8y ago
  Very sad. I jumped into the Gentoo wagon for similar reasons. And it's been working flawlessly for me since then.
  - squirrelicus 8y ago
    I love Gentoo. I'm just not willing to wait for my packages for compile.
- andrepd 8y ago
  If that's your problem why didn't you switch to a "just works" disto like Linux Mint, instead of windows?
  - squirrelicus 8y ago
    (1)I cannot stand the standard UIs and DEs from Linux. I use openbox with no DE because it provides me with the best experience. I only ran Ubuntu Minimal when I used it. (2) all the complaints I have with Ubuntu apply equally to Mint.
- chess_buster 8y ago
  Huh? What's wrong with Apple now?
fxj 8y ago
Yawn! Really this discussion all over again? Just use the right tool for the right job. I wonder whether carpenters also discuss their hammers and screwdrivers like that. </rant>
rv-de 8y ago
That guide is way too long and convoluted to successfully win over any regular Joe or average Amanda. For example the recommendation to learn about partitioning and stuff is "funny". Just install Linux Mint 19, accept the suggested partitions and be done already.
- lsanger 8y ago
  It's not meant to win over an average Joe. It's meant to maybe win over the sort of people who read my blog--technical or semi-technical, intelligent in any case, capable of thinking outside the box...
Havoc 8y ago
The fact that he gets the name of MS's office suite wrong tells me perhaps he isn't all that bound to MS turf in the first place...
- lsanger 8y ago
  I'm not, really. Before they moved to the crowd (I refused to follow them there), I used to be an Office expert. I knew the software inside and out. I still use Word 2007. But no, I never did install Office 365 (I see my mistake now!).
  - Havoc 8y ago
    haha maybe I shouldn't have judged based on a typo
sirwitti 8y ago
I switched to Ubuntu in 2006 and ~3years ago my girlfriend wanted to switch too (I did not talk her into it). Yes there are problems, but for me the reasons to use linux (and firefox instead of chrome) are trust and politics. Maybe it's just me, but I really dislike software preventing or forcing random functionality because google, apple, ms or even canonical want me to. In this respect linux is in my opinion the best option. As for the "things should just work" argument some people use - part of it is probably still valid, but I think linux is in some respects (handling of updates, security, installation process,...) way ahead of windows for example. Some anecdata on that: It takes ~5min when I need to do something on a windows or mac machine for me to get frustrated due to me not knowing UI details or the OS simply getting in my way (forcing updates on reboot for example). Maybe it's me, but then I'm working in web development for a while, so I suspect I'm of average intelligence. The availability of professional software is a limiting factor in some areas (design and gaming come to my mind). But for development work I can't complain. The trend for web-based software helps too. Think what you want about linux, all software has flaws - maybe we can get rid of some of them :)
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > Some anecdata on that: It takes ~5min when I need to do something on a windows or mac machine for me to get frustrated due to me not knowing UI details of these OSes. Honestly, these things do take a lot of time. People think using Windows effectively is a trivial thing they already know, apparently because it's a GUI and it looks like it should be easy. It very much is not. I think the most important thing is, regardless of what OS you choose for your tasks, it should be based on your knowledge of how to use them properly, not lack thereof. Because whatever you end up preferring (I prefer Windows), there really are tasks in which your life is easier in one OS compared to another (I have Linuxes handy for this reason), and if you aren't aware of where each one shines, you're going to miss out and make your own life harder than it needs to be.
deleted 8y ago
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gnunez 8y ago
I prefer to use macOS as my main desktop environment; where I can easily drop into a bash shell if the need arises. Mac also gives me access to standard iOS development tools. I keep Linux vms running for server-side development and experimenting. Sometimes I wish I also had a Windows machine so I can stay abreast of the .Net ecosystem, but nowadays I don’t really have the need. Each environment/OS is a tool with its own strengths and weaknesses. Don’t limit yourself to just one environment. Learn how to secure yourself in each environment. Use Tor, encryption and other tools to stay as safe and secure as possible. Your privacy can be invaded on Linux, Windows, or any other OS, so unfurtanely the burden of keep your system and date secure still remains.
aembleton 8y ago
Talks a lot about privacy, but adds Google Analytics to his website.
- lsanger 8y ago
  I didn't even know that was running. I'm going to remove it.
denniskane 8y ago
My Linux Distro of choice is a random <$300 Chromebook in developer mode with crouton installed... it always works like a charm for my CLI-centric use cases. Edit: Whenever Linus talks about the possibility of "the year of the Linux desktop" nowadays, it seems like he always brings up ChromeOS as the most likely contender.
lsanger 8y ago
Author of the article here. I just noticed that it had been posted on Hacker News. Thanks to se7entime!

158 points by se7entime 8y ago

jotm 8y ago

If you have Windows-only software, you can always just be a "pirate", flip Microsoft off and block all updates, telemetry and whatnot. Use what you want, give nothing back heh

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
> If you have Windows-only software, you can always just be a "pirate", flip Microsoft off and block all updates, telemetry and whatnot It's an awful lot of work to maintain this, and of dubious value with the end result being running a second-rate OS.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Windows is a first rate OS saddled with some stupid bullshit that's been piled on top of it. And be fair, maintaining a Linux configuration just the way you like it is a lot of work too. If it weren't, there wouldn't be hundreds of slightly-different distros.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    > Windows is a first rate OS saddled with some stupid bullshit that's been piled on top of it. I'm sure there are good bits of Windows - Microsoft has a lot of very smart people working for them. But I've never experienced Windows as a first rate OS - it's always had bullshit on top (and beneath) it. > And be fair, maintaining a Linux configuration just the way you like it is a lot of work too. If it weren't, there wouldn't be hundreds of slightly-different distros. Maybe "just the way you like it", but "functional and not sending your private information off to a dubious corporation" is pretty easy. When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. Windows? Opaque all the way down. Ask for help online? They say "check your anti-virus; if that doesn't work, reinstall your OS". In what world is that sane?
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      > Maybe "just the way you like it", but "functional and not sending your private information off to a dubious corporation" is pretty easy. Sure, and that's great if that's all you want out of a personal computer. > When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. Bull. I've been using Linux for decades and it's always the same story. You have a problem with X, you do a search for your problem with X, you find a dozen solutions that don't apply to you because you're on a different distro or they're from 2013 when half the software stack was different. Of course the error reporting is vague and the documentation is out of date, referring you to the source for details. If you dare go somewhere to ask about your problem, you most likely get told you're using the wrong distro. It really isn't all that different from the situation on Windows.
      - MisterOctober 8y ago
        ^ I'm a confirmed Linux user these days, but this is accurate. Half the time when I break something in a serious way, the above situation obtains and I just scowl and do a clean reinstall.
        _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        Of course you can always choose to resolve problems in that fashion. But I've never had to on Linux if I didn't want to.
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        > > When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. > Bull. I've been using Linux for decades and it's always the same story. You have a problem with X, you do a search for your problem with X, you find a dozen solutions that don't apply to you because you're on a different distro or they're from 2013 when half the software stack was different. Ok, so in some cases there can be complications. But once you've found (a/the) solution, it makes a sort of sense. In contrast, in the cases I've successfully found a solution to a problem on Windows, the reasons usually remain opaque. This, surely, is a side-effect of running a proprietary OS, and one I no longer have patience for. For example, when I was dual-booting Windows 10 on two desktops a couple of years ago, I ran into major problems just getting Windows installed (taking far longer to ultimately install than it ever took me to install any Linux distro, from Ubuntu to Arch to Void to GuixSD). I had downloaded the official Windows 10 image from Microsoft onto a usb thumbdrive and went to install. During the installing process, it failed with an obscure message about missing drivers. I try on the other differntly-configured desktop (different motherboard etc). It's the same thing. I think perhaps it's an chicken-and-egg issue with trying to install via a usb3 port (i.e. maybe it's missing usb3 drivers or something). Seems unlikely, but I try booting from a usb2 port. No luck. For good measure, even from different usb ports. But it doesn't matter, it's always the same error message during install. Seems like something which would be easy to debug, since there are in fact lots of Windows users, but I can't find anything similar described. I finally find a post on some obscure forum which describes a similar problem. The suggested solution: wait until you get the 'drivers missing' error, and then unplug the installation usb thumb and plug it into a different usb port. (So it doesn't matter which usb port you start with, it will always 'miss' the drivers until you unplug it and plug it into another usb port.) I thought: what a stupid solution, surely it won't work, but what the hell, let's try it for shits and giggles. Of course, that was the solution. That's completely opaque. The solution might as well have been sprinkling the machine with chicken blood while playing the Beatles' White Album. I don't know how many hours were wasted trying to resolve that. After a year or so, I ended up wiping all of the Windows partitions. Too much headache. It sounds like you have better experiences with Window. Perhaps you have the right magic touch that's needed.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

joe_the_user 8y ago

I switched to Linux about ten years. I basically got tired of having an OS I paid for (in buying a computer) not really be "mine". Lately, I have had few problems installing and running Linux on the various cheap laptops I've bought. Ubuntu with a Mate GUI "just works", has all the software I need and lacks BS like the Windows 10 interface. I don't really think there's any objective barrier to using Linux for a significant percentage of people - people who don't need Adobe Creative Suite or similar monopolies. But this is the same population who probably won't both doing something unusual given they have no strong motivation.

nine_k 8y ago
The big reason people run windows at home is gaming. Valve for linux very much exists, but definitely not everything is ported.
- nyolfen 8y ago
  i run win steam with wine and the games work surprisingly well most of the time
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Steam for Linux now runs some games under their own Wine btw there's a good number of them they support now.
    - ikfmpwdsoz 8y ago
      Yes, for anyine who wants to do further research it's called Proton. Valve has tried several times in the past to make gaming on Linux more attractive, but this has by far been their most successful attempt.
      - Something1234 8y ago
        A lot of games don't even start on my Antergos setup. I refuse to run ubuntu, because I don't like it (mostly package naming, and a lot of the time I feel like it's poorly configured at least when I was starting out). I personally have had a negative experience whenever I use a Debian derivative.

shmerl 8y ago

> If you’re a serious gamer, Linux won’t satisfy you (yet). That's moot. Linux gaming today is a lot better than ever before, considering advances in graphics APIs (Vulkan), increasing amount of native Linux games and rapidly improving support for Windows games through Wine, dxvk, vkd3d, including projects like Proton integrated into Steam client and etc. Many former Windows gamers find it acceptable to switch. So at the very least, give Linux gaming a try and see for yourself.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
While the work Valve has done improving the Linux gaming situation is actually quite impressive, 'serious' PC gamers already do enough configuration tweaking and working around problems already, it doesn't strike me that they'll really want to deal with even more of that.
- shmerl 8y ago
  My point is, that Linux is already well usable for gaming, including for very demanding games. "Serious gamer" is too much of a generalization, to assume what people are willing or not willing to do to configure their systems. Many gamers are actually very much into tweaking things as you say, from custom PC builds to game mods and other customizations. They see configurability as a benefit, not as a downside. So Linux is a natural fit. Besides, Linux gaming is quite accessible today without any extensive manual tweaking (while you can always do that if you want to, a lot more than on Windows).
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Let me put it this way. What's the best damn GPU on the market right now? I'm actually not sure, but I'd bet good money the top 3 slots are nVidia. Even if you use the nVidia proprietary drivers, the data says you're suffering a performance hit for it. God help if you're using nouveau, because you just wasted hundreds of dollars. The kinds of people I think of when you say "serious gamers" are not going to be very happy with the idea that they're locked out of the best kit. These are people for whom their computer's primary purpose is probably playing games. Why would they sacrifice needlessly? > So Linux is a natural fit. If it were a natural fit, they'd be interested in using it. Data suggests they aren't.

CaliforniaKarl 8y ago

>1. Pick a distro. >2. Put the distro on a thumb drive or DVD so you can boot to it from there. >3. Create a partition big enough for the Linux distro. >4. Install the Linux distro in the partition. >5. Configure Linux so you can use it on a daily basis. I think there's a critical step missing from this list, which applies to the 'non-techies' reading the post. (At first I wasn't going to post this, thinking that the article was only for technically-minded people, but the author calls out notes for non-techies at various points.) The critical step is: Tell your support person, and your other users! Many people have a support person. At work, this is your IT person. At home, this may often be a family member. For example, I am the support person for my father. If you have a support person, let them know what you would like to do. Point them to the article, and to the other pages that you're looking at. Be respectful of your support person's time. It will take at least an hour to go through all of the above steps; longer if something doesn't go exactly right. If you do this out of the blue, run into a problem, and have to lean on your support person unexpectedly, understand that you will be taking them away from something else unexpectedly. Be prepared for your support person to say "If you do this, I won't be able to help you." If they say that, then accept it. If you need to go back to them for help, don't be surprised if they say "You're going to have to wipe everything and reinstall". Back up your stuff! Do this before making Step 3. Make sure those backups are good. You may also have other users. If your family shares a machine, then your family members are other users. Talk to those people. Let them know what is going to happen. Even if you are just adding Ubuntu as a new partition, you must assume there will be a time when you have to leave the computer unexpectedly, another user will come in, and be presented with a weird lock screen or login screen. Walk people through at least the Ubuntu login and lock screens. Let your other users know, if the machine is locked, restarting into Windows may mean that anything still open under Linux may lose data. Again, be respectful of everyone's time. If you're the parent, then you can certainly say "I'm doing this tomorrow at 3 PM; come to me first before you try to use the computer after that time.", but if your child then comes back with "I had planned on working on $PROJECT at 4 PM tomorrow", responding with "Well, you should've planned your time better." is BS. If you're interested in running Linux on your desktop, then you can definitely do it! But please, recognize that (most of) you have people in your life who fulfill either the 'supporter' or 'co-user' role, and they deserve to be brought into the loop. (Source of rant: I once had my Dad upgrade several versions of macOS in one single jump, on some random weekday. Of course the upgrade took longer than expected, and also the jump of several versions caused lots of UI things to change. That led to multiple unplanned hour-plus-long phone calls in the middle of my workday, as this was my parents' only computer.)

rotskoff 8y ago

I have been using Ubuntu on and off since about 2005. Last year I switched from OSX on a dated macbook to Ubuntu on a newer Dell XPS. On the whole I am happy with the switch: with many of the apps that I use based on electron (slack, atom, mailspring) or directly in the browser (google docs), it is hard to notice the difference. I do most of my work related writing in latex, so this has also not been very noticeable. I don't like latex slides and I give presentations frequently for work. The only thing that has proved consistently annoying is that LibreOffice Impress is nowhere near as good as keynote.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

sys_64738 8y ago

Nothing he says Is dependent on the Linux kernel so he could have run WSL under Windows 10. For Linux builds of GUI apps he could use a free X server. I wonder if this can be applied to the majority of people. If the app is available for Windows then use the Windows version (e.g. Chrome at least until Edge uses Chrome engine) otherwise use the app under WSL. Microsoft has made it easy to run GNU tools under Windows such that you don’t need to be constrained to Linux installs for that.

shmerl 8y ago
No need for WSL, if you can use Linux proper. In reverse, if you ever need to run Windows programs, you can use Wine.
tyingq 8y ago
WSL can be pretty slow for some tasks. It's REALLY slow for me when creating lots of files, like a git clone might do. See, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18948601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18948601
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
But who has the patience for Windows with its opacity and maintenance overhead? Most people don't know any better, of course, and aren't necessarily to be faulted for that. I certainly don't have the time anymore to sysadmin any Windows machines.
lsanger 8y ago
Oy, you really did not understand why I moved, even though I explained it quite clearly.

CaliforniaKarl 8y ago

Tangentially-related rant (since the author is pushing Ubuntu): I wish Canonical would offer an 'End-User Desktop Support' offering. Right now Ubuntu Advantage is available for $150 per year, but that's only for enterprise (you have to order at least 50 units). I think it would be interesting if Canonical offered an equivalent product for home users, understanding that the $/year would be higher. That would give all the people moving to Ubuntu an option to support the people making the OS. I do see that donations are accepted (the prompt is on the _Your download will begin shortly…_ page), so at least there's that!

cwyers 8y ago
You'll never get end users to pay more per seat than an enterprise product. You just need to find a way to make the end user product sufficiently worse that enterprises won't care about the price difference, they'll just buy what they need.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  When you have a minimum of 50 seats, it's not really $150 per seat. It's $7,500 + $150 per seat over 50 $150 for a single seat would be significantly less.
  - cwyers 8y ago
    What value prop are you going to offer to get a consumer to pay $150 a year for Linux support? Enterprises will pay it because they have a value prop and because Windows seats aren't free. From a consumer's point of view, Windows _is_ free.
hsivonen 8y ago
Single-seat support used to be available for Ubuntu. I paid for that in roughly the 2010-2012 time frame. It was useless, and I don't really blame Canonical: Consider how much of a competent person's time the annual price back then, 190 euros, could buy. Not much. If you want to support them monetarily, the donation thing covers that. If you want to pay for them to provide support for you, what do you expect "support" to mean and at what cost? The trope that if you pay for Open Source support, you get to affect bug fixing priorities doesn't work at the money levels that individuals (except maybe ones who have the kind of money Shuttleworth has) are willing to pay. But even for just advice on how to perform a task or resolve a problem, if you can't get the answer right away using a Web search engine, chances are that the solution needs a competent person to pay attention for a longer period of time than your expected annual per-seat price pays for.

simplecomplex 8y ago

The author says he switched because of “Then came 2018, with its stunning revelations and outrages by Facebook, Apple, Google, and others. With privacy and free speech—in short, digital autonomy—deeply under threat” Comparing Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple is apples to oranges. What did Apple do that threatens customer privacy and free speech? You don’t need to switch to Linux to stop using Facebook and Twitter...

shmerl 8y ago
> What did Apple do that threatens customer privacy and free speech Apple affects many things negatively by being extremely pro lock-in and patent aggressive. So I'd say it's a good thing when someone stops using Apple's products and switches to Linux instead.
- simplecomplex 8y ago
  It’s not a good thing if you like seeing software devs get paid :)
  - shmerl 8y ago
    The company doesn't need to be a nasty anti-competitive jerk to pay developers.
    - briandear 8y ago
      What’s anti competitive?
      - shmerl 8y ago
        It's when instead of competing on merit, companies focus on controlling the market through monopolization techniques. I.e. simply banning competition. Lock-in (i.e. refusal to support interoperability), patent aggression, forbidding competing technologies in their store and so on and so forth.

doxavore 8y ago

Is there a pleasant way to run a Linux laptop today with decent drawing/touchscreen support, HiDPI, and working dock/undock multi-monitor support? I have used various distros on and off over the years, but today I can run Windows 10 on a Surface Book 2, and the non-development portions of my experience are spectacular, for the low, low price of selling my soul: lazy file syncing with OneDrive, pen support combined with OneNote is spectacular. Unfortunately, WSL only gets me so far when I want to use more than vim. For better or worse, I don't get to spend all of my time coding, so I'd like Linux with a real, modern notebook experience that can let me get my work done without praying to the gods that my external monitors come back on when I plug in.

davidscolgan 8y ago
My strategy has for a long time been to run Windows 10 for all of my browsers and games and paint programs and then run a virtual machine of linux with VirtualBox. I just use terminal Vim, so I run the virtual machine headless and ssh into it with a cygwin terminal. It's a bit janky but no more janky than actually running Linux on a laptop. No worries about my HDMI projector connection working, no fighting with wifi, games on Steam work, and I get a full Linux for development. The magic comes from proxying my development servers (like Django's) through the guest machine into Windows. I've got it set up so that if I type `localhost:8000` into any Windows browser, it hits my virtual machine's localhost. So yeah, complicated, but from what I can see it gives me the best setup I know of with the least amount of fighting with the operating system.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SomeHacker44 8y ago
  I love this. Thanks for sharing. I wonder if there is a way to make a true dual system on Windows, with full graphical support (even if it is the Linux console), where you can flip between Windows desktop, Linux Desktop (if desired), and Linux console with a "switch desktop" hotkey. I think I will try this on one of my windows computers. I can't switch from Mac to Linux because I use too much non Linux software, but most of it is on Windows. Adobe suite, Ableton, Native Instruments, etc. Does anyone know a way to virtualize Linux like the thought above please?

Theodores 8y ago

I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. I was guilty of hanging on to the dual boot for a few years but never ended up using the Windows side or any of those programs that I thought were so fundamentally important to my life. I am not sure why people can't just give Ubuntu a go on a brand new machine rather than maybe run it on Virtualbox. It is like cars and bicycles, people will spend all their money on a car but want or insist on some second hand stolen junk when it comes to buying a bicycle. In so doing they never get into cycling and spend even more money on their car. Then one day they hear about climate change and maybe decide to get the bike out the shed. I feel this is the same story here, since when has there been any information privacy with these commercial operating systems? DOS 6.22 with a locked floppy drive was probably the last time. So to suddenly wake up to the 'scandal' of Facebook et al. selling your every mouse click is a bit special. These are just observations, obviously Ubuntu linux is the best operating system there is and I would not change for a paid for OS if you paid me.

tomc1985 8y ago
I ran Mint for years as my daily driver at work. It was great and took me from being a linux intermediate to something of an expert, and I wouldn't mind doing it again. But for home use, there are simply too many cool programs on Windows to give it up. The Mint partition on my home dual boot sits largely unused. Emulation does an acceptable job for some things but it's often a sub-par experience. It's also quite tiring to have to constantly futz around with services and configurations just to get programs working, only to have that configuration break because of software updates. In the end I find a Win10 PC with some of the guts rips out (via something like Blackbird) seems to produce the least amount of headaches and generally stays out of my way. I hate Microsoft's Windows-as-a-Service model but most of the things about it can be ignored or switched off. (And yes, one shouldn't have to but I find it better than the alternatives)
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. Well it doesn't help that Linux desktop is backed by one of the most condescending cultures that ever stalked the internet. Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the way Linux works just doesn't jive with a lot of people? Like, everything has a middleman involved. Drivers for your hardware? Have to be merged into the kernel. Applications? Should go through (all of) the distro package repo(s) unless you want it to be a pain in the ass. We get it, you find value in the way these things work, some of us don't.

bigiain 8y ago

So 2019 is _finally_ gonna be the year of Linux on the Desktop? (Pardon me if I seem a little skeptical, I've heard this song before...)

agumonkey 8y ago
blender is getting fun; inkscape reaches 1.0, gimp might evolve methinks if libreoffice gets a bit leaner and featured it might be
- ikfmpwdsoz 8y ago
  Krita has been much nicer than Gimp in my experience, although they fulfil slightly different niches.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Yeah forgot Krita (sorry Krita) but I from the few I gathered, I agree.
- wyattpeak 8y ago
  I thought Libreoffice was fine enough until I started working in an office with people on Windows. I ran into so many compatibility problems I could barely believe it. Couldn't edit each other's headers, no maths support worked between the two, images and other objects would get randomly shuffled in the documents (one image showing up where another used to be). To say nothing of the minor niggling display differences reminiscent of the old IE6 box model problems. I had to start sending documents in PDF, but then they couldn't edit them. That alone was enough to move me back to Windows. For better or worse, I don't think Libreoffice can move forward until interoperability can be presumed.
  - pmontra 8y ago
    No different than what would have happened if you had Windows and all of them were working with Macs and its office suite. You would have had to buy a Mac. It's not an OS issue.

scarejunba 8y ago

What's really funny is that I use Linux desktops at home and work, a Macbook with OS X at work, and dual boot the home desktop to play games and barely notice anything.

gst 8y ago

I've used Linux since the early 1.x kernel versions, but for my next laptop I'm thinking about switching to a MacBook. Not because of the software (I prefer Linux to macOS), but because of the hardware. Apple seems to be the only manufacturer that so far escaped the race to the bottom and which still produces somewhat premium hardware. I want: a hidpi screen with lots of nits and a good contrast, a trackpoint or a huge touchpad, good battery life and somewhat light weight. In the past Thinkpads worked really well for that, but recently I had multiple issues with Lenovo hardware. I'm currently using a X1C3 and originally considered upgrading to a X1C6 or T480s, but given there are known issues such as the throttling bug (https://github.com/erpalma/throttled https://github.com/erpalma/throttled) that Lenovo hasn't fixed in over half a year I'm very close to giving up on Thinkpads.

ryebreadistasty 8y ago
>premium hardware >apple if I can't get proper i/o it's not premium at all. beyond that things shouldn't be bent from having them in your pocket. iToddlers BTFO https://i.ibb.co/XZhdMn2/smuglaugh.gif https://i.ibb.co/XZhdMn2/smuglaugh.gif
- chess_buster 8y ago
  Bend... a MacBook? My colleague ran his car over one and it has just a few scratches...
tchaffee 8y ago
My wife gets Apple products because her work pays for it. She has been to the repair shop multiple times. My last couple of Dells meanwhile feel rock solid like a Mac but have never needed repairs. It's anecdotal on my part, but I think worth looking into more.
doublepg23 8y ago
I've heard good things about the XPS line, but I'm surprised you'd move to a Macbook over throttling. My understanding is Macbooks are notorious for throttling, the last MB Pro bug being the worst in recent memory. If anything I'd blame Intel.

mherrmann 8y ago

I had similar experiences switching from macOS to Ubuntu. I wrote an article about this, where I compare the two OSs as "Home and Hotel" [1]. 1: https://fman.io/blog/home-and-hotel/ https://fman.io/blog/home-and-hotel/

ryebreadistasty 8y ago

Linux is fucking trash and lemme tell you why: First is SMP. Multi-core on Linux is absolute trash and Linus is fuckin' dumb for thinking that multi-core isn't useful and is overrated. A way better setup is having a master/slave setup, all applications run on core 0, and when they want multi-core they make a slave task on another core directly. Linus said that the only thing parallel is good for is graphics but that's because he uses a GPU, if you had a master/slave setup in the OS you could just run graphics on the CPU and it'd be way better than it is now. Linux will proudly run two applications faster, but how about we start running one application faster? Another thing is it's trying to replicated a 1970s mainframe, like yeah that works great for corporate servers and universities but simple put - desktop users don't need that shit at all, multi-user systems are outdated and single user systems are fine for desktop users. There's no reason to run anything at any security level other than ring 0 on the desktop, obviously it's bad if one process can crash a server, but on the desktop having one process being able to crash the system isn't a bad thing. Just write better software. As for infected software - don't run anything you didn't compile yourself - on any system. The project has also become bloated, there's an estimated 15 million lines of code in the kernel not to mention the binary blobs and that's simply extremely difficult to maintain, not to mention it's a terrible starting point for any new operating system or for anyone wanting to know how an operating system actually functions, in this respect Minix does a much better job; in fact it was the starting point Linus himself used to write Linux in the first place. Linux is simply not readable by a single human, and that ends up completely defeating the purpose of it being a free software project; you simply cannot check every single line of code for malicious intent. systemd - what do I even need to say that's not already been said about this steaming pile of atrocious, malicious, stupid, bloated piece of garbage. have fun with your pseudo-svchost.exe. all in all that's my two cents on desktop linux, I think there's way better systems to use and that linux isn't all that.

leowoo91 8y ago
- Linux kernel has SMP and good multi-core support, just for you to know. - Linux kernel is not just for desktop, and being used in near real-time systems as well as mobile. It is the 'distribution' that makes the difference to their audience. - Multi-user environments are very real in workplaces. At least one additional employee account is needed for using a system without modifying it. - There is no obligation to understand car design to drive them. But, what if one day you wanted to check the engine? That is at least you can't do with proprietary systems.

Animats 8y ago

I've used Linux on the desktop for over a decade. Currently, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on x64. It still sucks for the average user. The GUI is lipstick on a pig. As soon as anything goes wrong, it's back to the command line. You look up the problem, and there will be a dozen articles about it, all contradicting each other. Look up what it takes to create a desktop icon for something. (Hint: the top result in Google won't work.) I'm currently restoring a Ubuntu system after a hard drive replacement. I've been at this for a day now. Typical little stuff: - OpenGL frame rate is terrible. The default install turns out to be running OpenGL in the Mesa emulator. Time to install a driver. There's lots of advice on that. Get it from the NVidia site? From Ubuntu? From a driver-aggregation site? (Scary). Want the open source version or the closed source binary? Need CUDA support? Five choices of driver. Finally pick the latest open source version and it works. - File restoration isn't working properly. I used iDrive for backup, and now it's time to restore. I've restored one or two files from iDrive before, but now I have to restore a lot of them. The interface is a bunch of Perl scripts, with a command line menu system from the 1970s. After much struggling ("Restore From" means the name of the machine that was backed up), I get the restore running. It runs, but about 8,000 files don't restore out of a few hundred thousand. The message is just "FAILED". Files with "&" in the name don't restore. Files with "__" in the name sometimes don't restore. Working on that. Looks like most of what I lost was part of old builds of a big program, but there are a few files I'd like back.

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TACIXAT 8y ago
I feel it's come a really long way. Maybe I'm just buying machines with supported graphics cards now, but I have not had any catastrophic failures since getting on 18.04.
- elteto 8y ago
  That’s only 10 months...
  - 8y ago

dgzl 8y ago

I started using Ubuntu Linux about 8 years ago, about the same time I started my CS degree at school. Over the years, my interest in Windows shrunk to essentially just PC gaming. When school got serious I stopped gaming as much, and all my needs from both school and personal computing were met with open source tools. Every once in a while I would try a new distro as live CD, just for kicks, and to see how things are different. I learned how to use my own window manager and terminal program. I found that the necessary elements needed for working Linux are actually quite small, and most everything beyond that is for convenience. When you learn to use the terminal, your entire perspective on how to use a computer changes. No longer are you wasting time swishing your mouse around, clicking on folders and icons. Instead, you live on the keyboard, using hotkeys, personal aliases, tab completion, STDIO piping, dot files, terminal based text editors... There's a lot to master. But don't feel put off by this, we actually have a lot of fun in the terminal. We can play music with MPD/Ncmpcpp, play Tetris, retrieve HN articles and view comments, retrieve 3-day local weather with animations, we can even browse webpages. It's actually a fun world in the terminal, and we can eliminate the need for otherwise fatty software. If you're looking for something that Just Werks as a Windows replacement, any Ubuntu derivative will be fine. If you're looking for something that requires more work but might spur interest (i.e. hobby), you might try Arch or Gentoo. And if you're looking for rice examples, check out Reddit/unixporn.

Krasnol 8y ago
> But don't feel put off by this, we actually have a lot of fun in the terminal. I believe you. I grew up on a C64 and later DOS and really, I don't miss it. It's nice to have the console just in case but I don't want it to become something I have to use again. It always was that "waste of time" you're describing there and I've never seen it the other way around. I can do that swishing with one hand. One finger even or my nose if I have to. A double click does it. A GUI where I can see all the options, select them, apply and run. So...human. Every time I use my Linux laptop I find myself googling up commands or god knows what weird solutions to problems that should be easy and are in their equivalent on Win. It's such a waste of time and I feel lost if I can't go online to do it. There is a long way for Linux to get there and I see a solution where you can have both. It does not contradict itself. But the biggest problem out there I see is the aversion (or even hate) in relevant parts of the Linux community towards everything GUI.

II2II 8y ago

If you are thinking about Linux, this is pretty much the worse approach possible. My advice would be to switch to open source applications first, to ensure that you will have a suite of software that meets your needs and that you will be able to transition your data. If the switch looks viable, spend some time using your chosen distro on live media, to ensure that it will work with your hardware. If the live media does not work, either try a different distro or set the transition aside. Then make the jump if, and only if, it looks like you will be able to make a total transition. Backing up your data and telling the distro's installer to use the entire drive vastly simplies everything from installation and support to everyday usage. Linus itself is an excellent operating system that makes life for end users a lot easier, but I suggest the applications first approach since it is not for everyone. Even using this approach and testing it on live media first is bound to have a few hiccups, yet it is a lot better than starting out by learning everything from scratch or by troubleshooting major issues.

lsanger 8y ago
Did I suggest that people follow my precise route? I'm not sure I did. I was just reporting how I did it.

zzo38computer 8y ago

I have used Linux for some time (I do not remember how many years), and it works very well. I uninstalled the desktop environment (I don't use it (but I do use X, with a window manager, which is not the same as the desktop environment); I use the command shell to start programs and for almost all other purposes too). It is much better than Windows! Someone mentions restoring a Ubuntu system after a hard drive replacement. I used a live CD, to run tar with --numeric-owner and other options I do not commonly use, and gzip, to make backups onto three DVDs, and then to set up the partitioning and boot loader on the new hard drive, and then to restore all of the files. And then the new system just worked fine when booted, with no problem (actually the first time I misconfigured the boot loader, but after I corrected that, it booted fine). Some people are disheartened to see how much you still need the command line to do some very basic things. I rather see, is good that such thing can be done by command line programs; you don't need the GUI to do so many thing like Windows needs. But if you don't like Linux, you do not need to use it; there are other systems. But I find Linux is good.

jayalpha 8y ago
"Some people are disheartened to see how much you still need the command line to do some very basic things." I am more surprised how someone can do serious IT work with windows. A nightmare for me.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  At my internship for a large logistics company I shadowed the system administrators a couple of days. There was so much clicking involved that It made my left index finger start hurting. Adding a MIME type to IIS seemed like a chore.
bootlooped 8y ago
I was a person who said I was disheartened to see how much the command line was required. I like the option to use the command line, I just don't want it to be the only option, especially for what I consider basic stuff.

kdamica 8y ago

I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about a year now, and while I agree that Linux has come a long way, it's definitely not ready for prime time just yet. Here's why: - GUI performance is bad. I have a reasonably high end system, but switching between desktops is choppy unless I turn my resolution down to 1600x900. - Trackpad support is bad. It works but feels clunky. You really feel the difference when you use a Macbook for the first time in a while. - Hibernate doesn't work. I've tried and tried to get this to work but haven't succeeded. So now I either need to keep my laptop plugged in all the time or shut it down (which is annoying, because I encrypt my hard drive so I have to enter two passwords to start). - Bluetooth doesn't work well. I have to run a command to restart my bluetooth service every time I connect, and still sometimes have to re-pair my headphones. I use a wired connection now to avoid dealing with it. I bought a Linux-native laptop (System76 Galago) thinking things would work out of the box, but this hasn't been the case. (Also, the Galago's battery is awful so I wouldn't recommend it even if everything worked well.) The next time I'm ready to drop $1500+ on a laptop, I'll probably just get a Macbook.

AsyncAwait 8y ago
> GUI performance is bad. This depends heavily on the GPU drivers used, which in itself is probably a problem, but is far from universal. I didn't have any issues with Bluetooth & hibernate for years now, I am surprised you'd have hibernate problems on a System76 laptop as I don't even have a 'Linux-friendly' laptop per se and hibernate works. > The next time I'm ready to drop $1500+ on a laptop, I'll probably just get a Macbook. I use MacBooks sometimes at work and I'd say that past 2015 they've not been on the right track. The keyboard and cooling especially. Software-wise, macOS is indeed more 'uniform' in terms of hardware, so it's easier to make sure everything 'works', (which is not really a fair comparison to Linux, which works well on a much wider range of hardware, including the 2015 MBP). As for macOS itself, you don't really have much in terms of customization options, which you may prefer, but that also means if you don't like something you're stuck. Be however prepared to pay $20-30 for every little utility from a decent file manager to window snapping, (that's right, macOS doesn't ship with a proper file manager and doesn't really support window snapping the way you'd expect out of the box).

iamgopal 8y ago

I am using Ubuntu since version 6, inkscape gimp web programming been handled really well till date. Only complain is engineering drawing, for which AutoCAD level replacement yet to find.

squirrelicus 8y ago

It's funny. I recently switched from Linux after 10 years back to Windows. I ran Arch Linux for about 7 years. After systemd I spent years justifying why I used it even though it would constantly break and require a reformat more often than Win7 did. I went to Ubuntu, and it was marginally more stable. But even there, I was bitten too many times. Libicu upgrades breaking everything, updating packages breaks the package manager or ruins systemctl settings. Really, the whole problem that pushed me back to Windows is a combination of constant systemd nightmares and bad package maintenance. I've... Kind of been loving Win10. Sure, it's marginally more evil than Linux, (but less so than Google and Apple products these days), but at least I don't have to constantly wipe my machine or keep it out of date to keep using it. Weird how the tables have turned.

rgomez 8y ago
Very sad. I jumped into the Gentoo wagon for similar reasons. And it's been working flawlessly for me since then.
- squirrelicus 8y ago
  I love Gentoo. I'm just not willing to wait for my packages for compile.
andrepd 8y ago
If that's your problem why didn't you switch to a "just works" disto like Linux Mint, instead of windows?
- squirrelicus 8y ago
  (1)I cannot stand the standard UIs and DEs from Linux. I use openbox with no DE because it provides me with the best experience. I only ran Ubuntu Minimal when I used it. (2) all the complaints I have with Ubuntu apply equally to Mint.
chess_buster 8y ago
Huh? What's wrong with Apple now?

fxj 8y ago

Yawn! Really this discussion all over again? Just use the right tool for the right job. I wonder whether carpenters also discuss their hammers and screwdrivers like that. </rant>

rv-de 8y ago

That guide is way too long and convoluted to successfully win over any regular Joe or average Amanda. For example the recommendation to learn about partitioning and stuff is "funny". Just install Linux Mint 19, accept the suggested partitions and be done already.

lsanger 8y ago
It's not meant to win over an average Joe. It's meant to maybe win over the sort of people who read my blog--technical or semi-technical, intelligent in any case, capable of thinking outside the box...

Havoc 8y ago

The fact that he gets the name of MS's office suite wrong tells me perhaps he isn't all that bound to MS turf in the first place...

lsanger 8y ago
I'm not, really. Before they moved to the crowd (I refused to follow them there), I used to be an Office expert. I knew the software inside and out. I still use Word 2007. But no, I never did install Office 365 (I see my mistake now!).
- Havoc 8y ago
  haha maybe I shouldn't have judged based on a typo

sirwitti 8y ago

I switched to Ubuntu in 2006 and ~3years ago my girlfriend wanted to switch too (I did not talk her into it). Yes there are problems, but for me the reasons to use linux (and firefox instead of chrome) are trust and politics. Maybe it's just me, but I really dislike software preventing or forcing random functionality because google, apple, ms or even canonical want me to. In this respect linux is in my opinion the best option. As for the "things should just work" argument some people use - part of it is probably still valid, but I think linux is in some respects (handling of updates, security, installation process,...) way ahead of windows for example. Some anecdata on that: It takes ~5min when I need to do something on a windows or mac machine for me to get frustrated due to me not knowing UI details or the OS simply getting in my way (forcing updates on reboot for example). Maybe it's me, but then I'm working in web development for a while, so I suspect I'm of average intelligence. The availability of professional software is a limiting factor in some areas (design and gaming come to my mind). But for development work I can't complain. The trend for web-based software helps too. Think what you want about linux, all software has flaws - maybe we can get rid of some of them :)

mehrdadn 8y ago
> Some anecdata on that: It takes ~5min when I need to do something on a windows or mac machine for me to get frustrated due to me not knowing UI details of these OSes. Honestly, these things do take a lot of time. People think using Windows effectively is a trivial thing they already know, apparently because it's a GUI and it looks like it should be easy. It very much is not. I think the most important thing is, regardless of what OS you choose for your tasks, it should be based on your knowledge of how to use them properly, not lack thereof. Because whatever you end up preferring (I prefer Windows), there really are tasks in which your life is easier in one OS compared to another (I have Linuxes handy for this reason), and if you aren't aware of where each one shines, you're going to miss out and make your own life harder than it needs to be.

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gnunez 8y ago

I prefer to use macOS as my main desktop environment; where I can easily drop into a bash shell if the need arises. Mac also gives me access to standard iOS development tools. I keep Linux vms running for server-side development and experimenting. Sometimes I wish I also had a Windows machine so I can stay abreast of the .Net ecosystem, but nowadays I don’t really have the need. Each environment/OS is a tool with its own strengths and weaknesses. Don’t limit yourself to just one environment. Learn how to secure yourself in each environment. Use Tor, encryption and other tools to stay as safe and secure as possible. Your privacy can be invaded on Linux, Windows, or any other OS, so unfurtanely the burden of keep your system and date secure still remains.

aembleton 8y ago

Talks a lot about privacy, but adds Google Analytics to his website.

lsanger 8y ago
I didn't even know that was running. I'm going to remove it.

denniskane 8y ago

My Linux Distro of choice is a random <$300 Chromebook in developer mode with crouton installed... it always works like a charm for my CLI-centric use cases. Edit: Whenever Linus talks about the possibility of "the year of the Linux desktop" nowadays, it seems like he always brings up ChromeOS as the most likely contender.

lsanger 8y ago

Author of the article here. I just noticed that it had been posted on Hacker News. Thanks to se7entime!