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As a contractor I spend considerable amount of effort and money to have my work tools in good shape. I buy top-notch hardware and am not afraid to buy software

As a contractor I spend considerable amount of effort and money to have my work tools in good shape. I buy top-notch hardware and am not afraid to buy software if it helps my life just a little bit. I can't understand how Microsoft thinks it is okay to force updates on me and then not even bother to make sure those updates work. After having couple of high-cost delays due to my laptop deciding reboot while doing important analysis or deciding not to boot at all due to Windows update failures I was forced to drop Windows and a dozen Windows-only tools I have used along with it. Macbooks are non-starters. The laptops are barely usable. I am heavy keyboard user and touch-typist and I can't envision using a laptop without physical function keys. A laptop that can die due to dust speck? Apple, please make a laptop for people that actually work and need reliability and usability more than shedding another half millimeter of thickness. I don't want to say Linux is perfect. It is extremely irritating to spend hours trying to get basically anything working. I just want a machine that works and that I can rely to work next day when I open it to start my work day. Why is it so hard in 2019?

CharlesColeman 8y ago
> Why is it so hard in 2019? To be honest: mass-market software developers realized that they can abuse their users with few repercussions, so they've changed their practices to suit themselves rather than their users. The attitude started with web apps, and now it's completed its dominance by spreading to operating systems. Stability takes a lot of work. Users love it, but developers hate back-porting patches.
diffeomorphism 8y ago
> I don't want to say Linux is perfect. It is extremely irritating to spend hours trying to get basically anything working. If this is a machine for work, why are you not buying one with linux preinstalled? For instance the dell precision models: https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop_us https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lap...
- gtm1260 8y ago
  Sure that helps you with the initial cruft of drivers and stuff, but later on down the road there will be many obscure things that don't work right on your specific distro w/ some weird specific fix/workaround that can only be found after googling for hours.
m_fayer 8y ago
I spent the last few years grinding my teeth with both Windows PCs and increasingly dysfunctional Macs until I finally switched to Linux. Found a machine known to play well with Linux (Thinkpad), and with stock Ubuntu 18, I'm delighted to have had a dumb-easy transition, still happy with my choice a year in. Yes there's UX glitches, ugliness, and minor missing features all over the place, and it's random dot-file and random config-file heaven, but it's also refreshingly solid and predictable. The stock experience really just works, if I have to deal with complexity it's only because I go looking for it. Maybe your machine doesn't have a Linux-friendly configuration?

CharlesColeman 8y ago

> Why is it so hard in 2019? To be honest: mass-market software developers realized that they can abuse their users with few repercussions, so they've changed their practices to suit themselves rather than their users. The attitude started with web apps, and now it's completed its dominance by spreading to operating systems. Stability takes a lot of work. Users love it, but developers hate back-porting patches.

diffeomorphism 8y ago

> I don't want to say Linux is perfect. It is extremely irritating to spend hours trying to get basically anything working. If this is a machine for work, why are you not buying one with linux preinstalled? For instance the dell precision models: https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop_us https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lap...

gtm1260 8y ago
Sure that helps you with the initial cruft of drivers and stuff, but later on down the road there will be many obscure things that don't work right on your specific distro w/ some weird specific fix/workaround that can only be found after googling for hours.

m_fayer 8y ago

I spent the last few years grinding my teeth with both Windows PCs and increasingly dysfunctional Macs until I finally switched to Linux. Found a machine known to play well with Linux (Thinkpad), and with stock Ubuntu 18, I'm delighted to have had a dumb-easy transition, still happy with my choice a year in. Yes there's UX glitches, ugliness, and minor missing features all over the place, and it's random dot-file and random config-file heaven, but it's also refreshingly solid and predictable. The stock experience really just works, if I have to deal with complexity it's only because I go looking for it. Maybe your machine doesn't have a Linux-friendly configuration?