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> Can't understand why people stick with Windows when they have other options. Gaming, support, decades of technical debt, and familiar user interfaces/workflo

> Can't understand why people stick with Windows when they have other options. Gaming, support, decades of technical debt, and familiar user interfaces/workflows for non-technical users.

craftinator 7y ago
Gaming: getting a lot better on Linux, at an increasing rate. Steam has put a lot of work into making games available cross platform and for me, everything has "just worked" for the last two years or so. Support: I've never had Windows support be successful. The helpers, wizzards, and online support has misdiagnosed or been unable to fix every issue I've had. For Linux, there are massive, friendly, knowledgeable communities, thorough documentation, and if all else fails, Stack Overflow. Technical debt: I can't think of a Windows application I needed that hasn't had a similar FOSS application (if that was what you meant) User interfaces: other than the Windows Start Menu, vanilla Ubuntu seems pretty familiar and intuitive coming from Windows, from what I remember when I switched. Of course this is mostly subjective! But I think that Linux had so many years of clunkiness that it has a technical stigma to the average windows user. I've had friends and relatives switch recently after getting fed up by "Windows is now updating your PC at a very inconvenient time, for 3 hours", and overall have been happy with the switch.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  Gaming "just works" on windows and has for a lot longer with much better performance. Valve has done great things but they aren't fixing my NVidia driver issues on Ubuntu. For support/tech debt I'm talking about enterprise. There is some out there but it's not so much for your daily users. FOSS exists for stuff like word, but excel (not your casual spreadsheets, I mean full on enterprise applications hacked together in excel), a business's ERP or CRM interface of choice (although this is mostly in the browser afaiui), the tons of legacy apps that need IE to function... yea. It's changing, but it's not great. And no one cares about mailing lists and online communities for support. In terms of UI, most graphical shells don't pass the grandma test. The default icons are horrible, the workflow is completely alien to people used to one way of doing things, and that's bad for casual users. Yes they can get over it, but they can also just use windows like they do at school and work. Basically it comes down to the fact the things average folks use windows for work great and they're familiar with it and need to use it at work or wherever. With linux they have no idea what distros to install, or how to do it on their machines that came with windows and don't have easy ways of moving their existing files to their new Linux box. There's just no incentives to use Linux for the average person. I say this as an ardent Linux user at home and work. I know how great it is, but I don't pretend that it makes sense for my dad who's been on Windows forever or my mom who's been on Mac forever.
  - craftinator 7y ago
    Agreed. I tend to play games with lower graphical needs, so I feel the effects of lacking Nvidia support less. Ah, yeah, enterprise level applications are another beast. I'm currently dealing with maintenance and upgrade of legacy VB6 motion control systems at work, and there's just no way any of it can be ported out of Windows (2000). I somewhat disagree about the Grandma test (at least for going from Windows to Linux; macOS has a very different feel). What do most causal users do with a PC? What I've observed is maybe 60% web browsing, 20% documentation, 20% media. Ubuntu comes with a drop in browser, drop in spreadsheet/text editor, and automatically launched media players. Discoverability is an issue, because none of these applications have exactly the same names, but Ubuntu's Window Key search function is smart enough to find these drop-ins with even vague search terms. With that ability, I'm arguing that the workflow for casual users is very similar, with a minor learning curve for new names and icons. Windows works great for casual users until: Windows update kicks in, Windows encounters a vague error, Windows unified search stops working (or fails to find files they know are there), or some application won't work for some unknown reason. Any technology you are familiar with will seem more familiar than any that you aren't; I get that argument. But at the same time, people are capable of learning new things, and they already learned Windows from scratch. It took effort for me to learn how to use Windows, same as other OS's. And with Linux laptops starting to become more of a thing, we're going to see fewer people who's first OS is either Mac or Windows (unfortunately it seems like it's becoming more and more Android or iOS)

> Can't understand why people stick with Windows when they have other options. Gaming, support, decades of technical debt, and familiar user interfaces/workflows for non-technical users.

craftinator 7y ago

Gaming: getting a lot better on Linux, at an increasing rate. Steam has put a lot of work into making games available cross platform and for me, everything has "just worked" for the last two years or so. Support: I've never had Windows support be successful. The helpers, wizzards, and online support has misdiagnosed or been unable to fix every issue I've had. For Linux, there are massive, friendly, knowledgeable communities, thorough documentation, and if all else fails, Stack Overflow. Technical debt: I can't think of a Windows application I needed that hasn't had a similar FOSS application (if that was what you meant) User interfaces: other than the Windows Start Menu, vanilla Ubuntu seems pretty familiar and intuitive coming from Windows, from what I remember when I switched. Of course this is mostly subjective! But I think that Linux had so many years of clunkiness that it has a technical stigma to the average windows user. I've had friends and relatives switch recently after getting fed up by "Windows is now updating your PC at a very inconvenient time, for 3 hours", and overall have been happy with the switch.

unlinked_dll 7y ago
Gaming "just works" on windows and has for a lot longer with much better performance. Valve has done great things but they aren't fixing my NVidia driver issues on Ubuntu. For support/tech debt I'm talking about enterprise. There is some out there but it's not so much for your daily users. FOSS exists for stuff like word, but excel (not your casual spreadsheets, I mean full on enterprise applications hacked together in excel), a business's ERP or CRM interface of choice (although this is mostly in the browser afaiui), the tons of legacy apps that need IE to function... yea. It's changing, but it's not great. And no one cares about mailing lists and online communities for support. In terms of UI, most graphical shells don't pass the grandma test. The default icons are horrible, the workflow is completely alien to people used to one way of doing things, and that's bad for casual users. Yes they can get over it, but they can also just use windows like they do at school and work. Basically it comes down to the fact the things average folks use windows for work great and they're familiar with it and need to use it at work or wherever. With linux they have no idea what distros to install, or how to do it on their machines that came with windows and don't have easy ways of moving their existing files to their new Linux box. There's just no incentives to use Linux for the average person. I say this as an ardent Linux user at home and work. I know how great it is, but I don't pretend that it makes sense for my dad who's been on Windows forever or my mom who's been on Mac forever.
- craftinator 7y ago
  Agreed. I tend to play games with lower graphical needs, so I feel the effects of lacking Nvidia support less. Ah, yeah, enterprise level applications are another beast. I'm currently dealing with maintenance and upgrade of legacy VB6 motion control systems at work, and there's just no way any of it can be ported out of Windows (2000). I somewhat disagree about the Grandma test (at least for going from Windows to Linux; macOS has a very different feel). What do most causal users do with a PC? What I've observed is maybe 60% web browsing, 20% documentation, 20% media. Ubuntu comes with a drop in browser, drop in spreadsheet/text editor, and automatically launched media players. Discoverability is an issue, because none of these applications have exactly the same names, but Ubuntu's Window Key search function is smart enough to find these drop-ins with even vague search terms. With that ability, I'm arguing that the workflow for casual users is very similar, with a minor learning curve for new names and icons. Windows works great for casual users until: Windows update kicks in, Windows encounters a vague error, Windows unified search stops working (or fails to find files they know are there), or some application won't work for some unknown reason. Any technology you are familiar with will seem more familiar than any that you aren't; I get that argument. But at the same time, people are capable of learning new things, and they already learned Windows from scratch. It took effort for me to learn how to use Windows, same as other OS's. And with Linux laptops starting to become more of a thing, we're going to see fewer people who's first OS is either Mac or Windows (unfortunately it seems like it's becoming more and more Android or iOS)