4 ms·

It is great and it will certainly be very useful to a lot of people, but I cannot help it but to remain sceptical about the whole "reborn Microsoft" public imag

It is great and it will certainly be very useful to a lot of people, but I cannot help it but to remain sceptical about the whole "reborn Microsoft" public image. Microsoft is a monopoly (or very close to one) which has been doing whatever is needed to thwart competition. My concern is centered around this slowing down the progress and development of the desktop linux experience in general

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
The desktop linux experience has been piss poor for well over a decade now. I've been using it off and on since Ubuntu Breezy. It's still so bad that I've removed it from all of my machines except for my home server. WSL is now the only way that I actively interact with Linux. None of this thwarts Linux at all- quite the contrary. This enables more users and possibly allows more people to develop and improve Linux who do not wish to dedicate a full machine to the task.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  >desktop linux experience has been piss poor for well over a decade now You can say the same about Windows with a pretty straight face, too (OK maybe not quite 10 years - Windows 8 was 2012)
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    I had no quarrel with Windows 8, you could click one tile to get the the desktop. That was the depth of my headache. Not really a big deal. Small cost for being able to play and run anything I've ever wanted without issue.
    - ubercow13 6y ago
      So really it just comes down to application compatibility. Of course that's always been a big issue, and I still run a Windows VM for various things.
      - Answerawake 6y ago
        Not even close. Take any typical distro and you find that none of the components are really designed to work with each other and so they all have the risk of failing in different ways. What that means in reality is that you are now mentally managing all these components instead of just the OS as a whole. For example, a window manager in Ubuntu crashing due to an NVIDIA driver, at the same time the USB drive containing a potential fix cannot be mounted due to some random problem with the USB stack. Once you figure this out and get your GUI back, attempts to adjust settings cause more headaches when your specific Ubuntu variant has renamed all the tools for no real reason and you are left hunting for the specific toggle only to eventually discover it is not exposed so you are relegated to editing some random config file. All of this just leads you to lose confidence that your system is ever really stable. You start to get an underlying worry that at any moment, a wrong button click or the wrong app will break something in your system. You wonder how after 10 years they still cannot understand how to QA this thing. Releases do not get linearly or exponentially better but are a checkerboard of random issues being fixed whole other new issues are created. Contrast that with Windows 8: Take Windows 7, enhance performance + add a easily skippable start screen. You still have the comfort and confidence of a solid OS (Win7) but with a different background. I can live with that.
        ubercow13 6y ago
        I agree that stuff sounds annoying but I don't think Windows is much fundamentally better like you are implying it is. Almost every point you make can basically also apply to Windows. > USB drive containing a potential fix cannot be mounted due to some random problem with the USB stack Driver stuff also breaks on Windows, for example I did have a new laptop where the Intel Wifi card would always stop working after an hour or so with no way to diagnose the problem, due to bad drivers presumably. > your specific Ubuntu variant has renamed all the tools Have you not noticed how all the new settings dialogs since they started trying to deprecate Control Panel have piled up different interfaces for accessing the same settings, some of which don't have all the settings meaning you have to dig back in the old interfaces. Plenty of stuff on Windows you might want to change requires editing the registry. One difference on Windows is that Microsoft will probably overwrite that setting change randomly on a subsequent OS update. > after 10 years they still cannot understand how to QA this thing Do you not see the frequent articles about Windows 10 QA issues, there was one just the other day on HN front page for a while [1] > checkerboard of random issues being fixed whole other new issues are created Sounds like every OS. See [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2020/05/18/new-windows-10-update-deletes-files-causing-serious-problems-for-millions/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2020/05/18/new-wi...
- 4gotunameagain 6y ago
  I have been using almost exclusively a linux desktop for almost a decade, so our opinions vary a lot. It is probably easier to create a more polished final outcome with billions in budget and close ties/leverage on hardware manufacturers, but the past few years the situation in linux is nothing like a decade ago. The value of the freedom added by Linux in the computing exosystem is immeasurable imo. Sometimes in windows you cannot even shut your computer down if you want. And again, I have no real argument as to why this WSL update could be a bad thing, but I'm still sceptical
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    >The value of the freedom added by Linux in the computing exosystem is immeasurable imo. I agree. I still love Linux and use it daily...just in a terminal. My complaints were toward the desktop experience.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

The desktop linux experience has been piss poor for well over a decade now. I've been using it off and on since Ubuntu Breezy. It's still so bad that I've removed it from all of my machines except for my home server. WSL is now the only way that I actively interact with Linux. None of this thwarts Linux at all- quite the contrary. This enables more users and possibly allows more people to develop and improve Linux who do not wish to dedicate a full machine to the task.

ubercow13 6y ago
>desktop linux experience has been piss poor for well over a decade now You can say the same about Windows with a pretty straight face, too (OK maybe not quite 10 years - Windows 8 was 2012)
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  I had no quarrel with Windows 8, you could click one tile to get the the desktop. That was the depth of my headache. Not really a big deal. Small cost for being able to play and run anything I've ever wanted without issue.
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    So really it just comes down to application compatibility. Of course that's always been a big issue, and I still run a Windows VM for various things.
    - Answerawake 6y ago
      Not even close. Take any typical distro and you find that none of the components are really designed to work with each other and so they all have the risk of failing in different ways. What that means in reality is that you are now mentally managing all these components instead of just the OS as a whole. For example, a window manager in Ubuntu crashing due to an NVIDIA driver, at the same time the USB drive containing a potential fix cannot be mounted due to some random problem with the USB stack. Once you figure this out and get your GUI back, attempts to adjust settings cause more headaches when your specific Ubuntu variant has renamed all the tools for no real reason and you are left hunting for the specific toggle only to eventually discover it is not exposed so you are relegated to editing some random config file. All of this just leads you to lose confidence that your system is ever really stable. You start to get an underlying worry that at any moment, a wrong button click or the wrong app will break something in your system. You wonder how after 10 years they still cannot understand how to QA this thing. Releases do not get linearly or exponentially better but are a checkerboard of random issues being fixed whole other new issues are created. Contrast that with Windows 8: Take Windows 7, enhance performance + add a easily skippable start screen. You still have the comfort and confidence of a solid OS (Win7) but with a different background. I can live with that.
      - ubercow13 6y ago
        I agree that stuff sounds annoying but I don't think Windows is much fundamentally better like you are implying it is. Almost every point you make can basically also apply to Windows. > USB drive containing a potential fix cannot be mounted due to some random problem with the USB stack Driver stuff also breaks on Windows, for example I did have a new laptop where the Intel Wifi card would always stop working after an hour or so with no way to diagnose the problem, due to bad drivers presumably. > your specific Ubuntu variant has renamed all the tools Have you not noticed how all the new settings dialogs since they started trying to deprecate Control Panel have piled up different interfaces for accessing the same settings, some of which don't have all the settings meaning you have to dig back in the old interfaces. Plenty of stuff on Windows you might want to change requires editing the registry. One difference on Windows is that Microsoft will probably overwrite that setting change randomly on a subsequent OS update. > after 10 years they still cannot understand how to QA this thing Do you not see the frequent articles about Windows 10 QA issues, there was one just the other day on HN front page for a while [1] > checkerboard of random issues being fixed whole other new issues are created Sounds like every OS. See [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2020/05/18/new-windows-10-update-deletes-files-causing-serious-problems-for-millions/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2020/05/18/new-wi...
4gotunameagain 6y ago
I have been using almost exclusively a linux desktop for almost a decade, so our opinions vary a lot. It is probably easier to create a more polished final outcome with billions in budget and close ties/leverage on hardware manufacturers, but the past few years the situation in linux is nothing like a decade ago. The value of the freedom added by Linux in the computing exosystem is immeasurable imo. Sometimes in windows you cannot even shut your computer down if you want. And again, I have no real argument as to why this WSL update could be a bad thing, but I'm still sceptical
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  >The value of the freedom added by Linux in the computing exosystem is immeasurable imo. I agree. I still love Linux and use it daily...just in a terminal. My complaints were toward the desktop experience.