10 ms·

after using linux (even those with GUIs) for over 13 years, I would personally still buy laptop with windows installed as primary OS. The ease of day-to-day ap

after using linux (even those with GUIs) for over 13 years, I would personally still buy laptop with windows installed as primary OS. The ease of day-to-day apps such as Microsoft Office, especially Word and Excel is unparalleled. If you are into DB and work in place that has MS SQL, MS SQL combined with SQL Studio is a very powerful feature. IDE selection is somewhat better because you have more options available -- things like Visual Studio (even for non Microsoft programming languages) are available. If you go down Linux route and you need GUI, a portion of your time would be consumed by hunting for and finding analyzing options available for you on Linux -- for GUI stuff, Windows seem to be default. In my opinion, if I am buying a non-Apple laptop, unless Microsoft rolls out a Linux distro with emphasis on GUI and which they will support and develop, I won't bother with Linux as my default OS on my machine.

reustle 7y ago
It seems like most of those are a non-issue if you aren't working on a Microsoft stack.
- sl1ck731 7y ago
  Word and Excel are probably worth running Windows/Mac over Linux GUI alone if you have to spend any time in them, which I do in a non-Microsoft stack for business-related things. I'd imagine most people have to spend some non-negligible time in these. O365/open source office products come nowhere close.
  - ACS_Solver 7y ago
    I read often on HN how Excel is used a lot, but I don't really understand the use cases. If you're a software developer, what would you use Excel for? Maybe it's because I work for small companies, but I've almost never had Excel come up at work, and in the few cases where it did, LibreOffice was sufficient because those were very small and simple sheets. 95% of my work has always been in the source tree (so git), some kind of ticket or project software (Jira, redmine, etc), and a wiki-like documentation system (Confluence, mediawiki). And of the remaining 5% most would be some kind of stuff with a Web interface on the network. I'm pretty sure I haven't edited a Word doc for 5 years. Is this really the exception I get to encounter because of avoiding "corporate" companies?
    - sl1ck731 7y ago
      I've seen anything and everything passed around in Excel. Project timelines, infrastructure descriptions/allocations, working on systems that allow users to deposit parts of their workflows via spreadsheets (financial related), some RFPs come and are returned in Excel form. I can't speak to any exceptions but I personally use Word and Excel semi-daily. I also believe there are a variety of people on HN beyond traditional strictly software devs. DevOps, Cloud-related (myself), Product Managers, Project Managers and the like.
  - Nullabillity 7y ago
    > Word 99% of uses can be trivially replaced by plain text, Markdown, or Org. For the others you probably want a real typesetting system anyway, so Word would still not be appropriate. > Excel If you're at a point where it feels appropriate to use vendor-specific spreadsheet features then you have already outgrown by far spreadsheets. It's probably both simpler and more maintainable to decouple your data from your code by using a database (even SQLite, if you still want to pass files around) and/or a scripting language instead.
    - sl1ck731 7y ago
      My main use cases for MS Word is RFP responses, architecture descriptions, requirement definitions. Neither of those options would satisfy that an an inter-operable way with the rest of the relevant people. I guess if you're purely writing code all day then I could understand never needing productivity suites, but I assume most roles have either customer-facing or organizational interactions beyond consuming Jira tickets. Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them.
      - Nullabillity 7y ago
        > RFP responses This might as well just be a PDF. The source format shouldn't matter if the recipient is just going to read it. > architecture descriptions, requirement definitions A hierarchical plain text document (biasing towards Org if you want internal links) would satisfy the same use case and play much better with source control. > Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them. It's not a binary. I don't particularly like Python or SQLite, but I'd take a couple of quick and dirty Python+SQLite scripts over a bunch of unstructured spreadsheets any day.
        sl1ck731 7y ago
        All of those things are collaborative. Project managers aren't going to learn how to edit those documents. Sales guys aren't going to start including their bits with markdown and the marketing team isn't going to fiddle with images in markdown. Its a solved problem, I don't see why you would want to engineer so much around such simple tasks for the only reason seemingly to be not using Microsoft.
kenforthewin 7y ago
Especially with the recently released WSL2, Windows is becoming a viable general-purpose development platform.
cies 7y ago
As a Linux on the desktop user for 15+ years (who has had some OSX boxes for some time and also has to run Windows from time to time), here's what I love about running Linux as my daily desktop driver: * all software I need can be installed with some CLI commands * similar to the server envs I tend to * no hassle with anti-virus/malware/trojans/etc (I merely install clam-av for some compliance thingy, that's all) * basic tools are top quality (I hate the default terminal apps on both OSX and windows) * I can use decade old scripts to do all kinds of helpful tasks for me (backups, music mgmt, etc.) * no need to look for some pirated software because I created some file with some software that I now do not have the license for at hand * I know really well how to fix problems and that knowledge stays relevant (the OS is not moving stuff around all the time) * Less resource hungry (apart from the browser) There are some things I'm not too happy with as well: * Having to read reviews before I can buy some hardware * Touchpad not as good as Apple's * Not sure if some USB-C docking station actually will work for me (no review from Linux users found at this point) * The Hi-PDI screen story is far from perfect (yet slowly progressing)
- Kipters 7y ago
  Here at my job we have some devs using Linux (mostly Ubuntu 18.04) on recent Dell XPS 15 (Kaby Lake and up) with Dell's Thunderbolt 3 docks
  - cies 7y ago
    Cheers. I'm looking for info on a USB-C dock with a Thinkpad T480.
    - Kipters 7y ago
      Turns out some are using plain USB-C dongles to connect to external monitors and USB-A peripherals
      - cies 7y ago
        that while also being able to charge the machine through usb-c, that's what i'm looking for :)
ubermonkey 7y ago
I say this as a long-term Mac user, but I do sometimes wonder how much more polished & supported desktop/laptop Linux would be if Apple hadn't shipped a BSD-based OS on fantastic hardware with access to Office & etc. I'm sure I would've gone that route in 2001, when I needed a platform to support freelance LAMP work, if my Mac hadn't literally already had most everything installed already. Even emacs. ;)
LouisContant 7y ago
For DB stuff, I'd suggest DBeaver which is great. For code stuff, I migrated over to the JetBrains suite of things. For the rest of the stuff like video games, I still stick with windows. I know about proton but it still not there yet for me because it turns out some of my most played games have denuvo.
zzzcpan 7y ago
What kind of GUI do you actually __need__ on Linux? Word's and Excel's ease of day-to-day use comes not from UX, but purely from purposely made compatibility issues, literally designed to make it harder for you to work with other people using Microsoft's Word and Excel. IDEs are just preference and MS SQL is available for Linux these days.
ubercow13 7y ago
If I was doing any development, I think I'd use Linux over Windows purely for the filesystem performance

reustle 7y ago

It seems like most of those are a non-issue if you aren't working on a Microsoft stack.

sl1ck731 7y ago
Word and Excel are probably worth running Windows/Mac over Linux GUI alone if you have to spend any time in them, which I do in a non-Microsoft stack for business-related things. I'd imagine most people have to spend some non-negligible time in these. O365/open source office products come nowhere close.
- ACS_Solver 7y ago
  I read often on HN how Excel is used a lot, but I don't really understand the use cases. If you're a software developer, what would you use Excel for? Maybe it's because I work for small companies, but I've almost never had Excel come up at work, and in the few cases where it did, LibreOffice was sufficient because those were very small and simple sheets. 95% of my work has always been in the source tree (so git), some kind of ticket or project software (Jira, redmine, etc), and a wiki-like documentation system (Confluence, mediawiki). And of the remaining 5% most would be some kind of stuff with a Web interface on the network. I'm pretty sure I haven't edited a Word doc for 5 years. Is this really the exception I get to encounter because of avoiding "corporate" companies?
  - sl1ck731 7y ago
    I've seen anything and everything passed around in Excel. Project timelines, infrastructure descriptions/allocations, working on systems that allow users to deposit parts of their workflows via spreadsheets (financial related), some RFPs come and are returned in Excel form. I can't speak to any exceptions but I personally use Word and Excel semi-daily. I also believe there are a variety of people on HN beyond traditional strictly software devs. DevOps, Cloud-related (myself), Product Managers, Project Managers and the like.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  > Word 99% of uses can be trivially replaced by plain text, Markdown, or Org. For the others you probably want a real typesetting system anyway, so Word would still not be appropriate. > Excel If you're at a point where it feels appropriate to use vendor-specific spreadsheet features then you have already outgrown by far spreadsheets. It's probably both simpler and more maintainable to decouple your data from your code by using a database (even SQLite, if you still want to pass files around) and/or a scripting language instead.
  - sl1ck731 7y ago
    My main use cases for MS Word is RFP responses, architecture descriptions, requirement definitions. Neither of those options would satisfy that an an inter-operable way with the rest of the relevant people. I guess if you're purely writing code all day then I could understand never needing productivity suites, but I assume most roles have either customer-facing or organizational interactions beyond consuming Jira tickets. Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them.
    - Nullabillity 7y ago
      > RFP responses This might as well just be a PDF. The source format shouldn't matter if the recipient is just going to read it. > architecture descriptions, requirement definitions A hierarchical plain text document (biasing towards Org if you want internal links) would satisfy the same use case and play much better with source control. > Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them. It's not a binary. I don't particularly like Python or SQLite, but I'd take a couple of quick and dirty Python+SQLite scripts over a bunch of unstructured spreadsheets any day.
      - sl1ck731 7y ago
        All of those things are collaborative. Project managers aren't going to learn how to edit those documents. Sales guys aren't going to start including their bits with markdown and the marketing team isn't going to fiddle with images in markdown. Its a solved problem, I don't see why you would want to engineer so much around such simple tasks for the only reason seemingly to be not using Microsoft.

kenforthewin 7y ago

Especially with the recently released WSL2, Windows is becoming a viable general-purpose development platform.

cies 7y ago

As a Linux on the desktop user for 15+ years (who has had some OSX boxes for some time and also has to run Windows from time to time), here's what I love about running Linux as my daily desktop driver: * all software I need can be installed with some CLI commands * similar to the server envs I tend to * no hassle with anti-virus/malware/trojans/etc (I merely install clam-av for some compliance thingy, that's all) * basic tools are top quality (I hate the default terminal apps on both OSX and windows) * I can use decade old scripts to do all kinds of helpful tasks for me (backups, music mgmt, etc.) * no need to look for some pirated software because I created some file with some software that I now do not have the license for at hand * I know really well how to fix problems and that knowledge stays relevant (the OS is not moving stuff around all the time) * Less resource hungry (apart from the browser) There are some things I'm not too happy with as well: * Having to read reviews before I can buy some hardware * Touchpad not as good as Apple's * Not sure if some USB-C docking station actually will work for me (no review from Linux users found at this point) * The Hi-PDI screen story is far from perfect (yet slowly progressing)

Kipters 7y ago
Here at my job we have some devs using Linux (mostly Ubuntu 18.04) on recent Dell XPS 15 (Kaby Lake and up) with Dell's Thunderbolt 3 docks
- cies 7y ago
  Cheers. I'm looking for info on a USB-C dock with a Thinkpad T480.
  - Kipters 7y ago
    Turns out some are using plain USB-C dongles to connect to external monitors and USB-A peripherals
    - cies 7y ago
      that while also being able to charge the machine through usb-c, that's what i'm looking for :)

ubermonkey 7y ago

I say this as a long-term Mac user, but I do sometimes wonder how much more polished & supported desktop/laptop Linux would be if Apple hadn't shipped a BSD-based OS on fantastic hardware with access to Office & etc. I'm sure I would've gone that route in 2001, when I needed a platform to support freelance LAMP work, if my Mac hadn't literally already had most everything installed already. Even emacs. ;)

LouisContant 7y ago

For DB stuff, I'd suggest DBeaver which is great. For code stuff, I migrated over to the JetBrains suite of things. For the rest of the stuff like video games, I still stick with windows. I know about proton but it still not there yet for me because it turns out some of my most played games have denuvo.

zzzcpan 7y ago

What kind of GUI do you actually __need__ on Linux? Word's and Excel's ease of day-to-day use comes not from UX, but purely from purposely made compatibility issues, literally designed to make it harder for you to work with other people using Microsoft's Word and Excel. IDEs are just preference and MS SQL is available for Linux these days.

ubercow13 7y ago

If I was doing any development, I think I'd use Linux over Windows purely for the filesystem performance