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I switched to Linux after using Windows for 10 years
- lonk 6y agoI will read article when author switches from medium to something that not blocking within ten years probably
- KarimDaghari 6y agofor whatever it's worth, I find dev.to as the better alternative to medium (at least for technical subjects)
- gambiting 6y ago>>Windows 10 needs at least 8GB physical memory to run the operating system properly Define "properly" - I'm running Win 10 2004 on 1GB of ram and it's absolutely fine. Maybe the author is confusing "need" with "will use all available ram to prefetch".
- ghoshbishakh 6y agoWindows 10 in 1 GB? Can you tell me your experience on browsing the web on that?
- leeoniya 6y agoworks great via telnet 80 /s
- gambiting 6y agoYeah, of course - it works fine in Edge as long as you keep to 1-2 tabs max. Running in idle uses about 700MB ram so 300MB is enough to work with. The other things I do with this are running the Netflix app to watch movies and run the Windows 10 Minecraft client - both run smoothly.
- epr 6y ago1-2 tabs max? I'm not sure many would consider that very usable
- gambiting 6y agoWell you can have as many tabs open as you want, just that beyond 2 or so tabs Edge will vacate the contents from memory and the page will reload when you go back to it. Like, it's a very basic, very cheap machine, and it works fine as long as you are reasonable.
- ffpip 6y agoWhat's the catch? have you disabled everything? There is no way a few apps run on Windows 10 with 1 GB of ram.
- gambiting 6y agoNo, just stock normal 32bit windows 10. Can browse web using edge, watch movies, play some games. Yeah you're not going to run visual studio on that but I've got a different machine for work.
- ffpip 6y agoHacker news open on 3 tabs takes 350 MB of ram for me.
- gambiting 6y agoIn what browser? I specifically said Edge because I find it uses a lot less ram than Chrome. I can easily use Edge and browse smoothly on that little PC, but with Chrome it's dead after opening facebook.
- ffpip 6y agoFirefox. Edge and Chrome use much more RAM compared to Firefox, atleast on my machine.
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoYou are either modifying Windows 10, using nothing inside of it post boot, or you are missing a zero after the one.
- gambiting 6y agoNo, regular x86 Windows 10. 32 bit version minimum requirement is exactly 1GB of ram and all functionality is there. It only uses about 700MB when running, leaving enough memory to use it like a normal computer.
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoChrome uses 1GB of ram with a couple of plugins and Gmail open.
- gambiting 6y agoThat's specifically why I said Edge in few other comments - chrome is unusable, but you can smoothly browse any website with Edge on that system.
- eznzt 6y ago>I'm running Win 10 2004 on 1GB of ram and it's absolutely fine. Maybe if all you do is stare at the desktop all day (or use your computer as a dumb terminal).
- stabbles 6y agomaybe the author is one of the last people to switch from Windows to Linux as Microsoft embraces Linux
- gilber_godrey 6y agoapparently microsoft isn't actually switching to linux
- RealStickman_ 6y agoI read it as Microsoft incorporating more and more features from Linux.
- nendroid 6y agoWSL 2 is making windows one of the best operating systems to run linux applications on.
- RutZap 6y ago_My first computer was a Pentium II one and it had Windows 98 installed when I purchased it in 2008_ I think this must be a typo. 2008 seems quite a late time to buy a Pentium II, I had my Pentium II in 1998ish.
- ogre_codes 6y agoAuthor claims the computer had Windows 98 on it so I would assume it is second hand since you couldn't buy a new computer with W98 on it in 2008 either. Or as you say a typo or mistake.
- ashleyn 6y agoIt's about right if you grew up poor in that time period, and bought something secondhand. I was part of a small club out in the (impoverished) country where we were learning on DOS computers using Qbasic in like the early-mid 00s.
- _Microft 6y agoPRINT "Hello!" If I had to give an introduction to programming to someone with absolutely no prior knowledge, I might still use QBasic (or rather something like QB64 or an online interpreter) for it. The simplicity of the syntax and no required boilerplate for getting started really lends itself to it.
- alexmorenodev 6y agoUntil 2012 I was using an old laptop, Celeron with 760mb RAM, running Lubuntu and Windows XP. It was very crappy, but allowed me to do some web freelancing (thanks Sublime Text, I miss you) and browse web in general (sure, one thing at a time. Sometimes I couldn't listen to music on Banshee and have a heavy RAM tab opened). That's what I could afford at the time. Today I got a powerful Dell laptop, don't care anymore about these micro optimizations. I feel like I'm betraying my old self, hah.
- david422 6y agoI switched to Ubuntu on my main machine a few years ago. This is my second attempt. There are still some annoyances I run into, the biggest being that the dock regularly disappears after sleep. How would I ever set my parents up on something where even the most basic features require fixes like this https://leimao.github.io/blog/Ubuntu-Dock-Disappear/ https://leimao.github.io/blog/Ubuntu-Dock-Disappear/?
- heavyset_go 6y agoI've had my parents set up with MATE and Plasma Desktop for about two years now without a problem. Both just work. I haven't used GNOME in years because it was too unstable when I used it myself.
- LoSboccacc 6y agoyeah the first period after switching to Linux is almost always ok-ish, sometimes even pleasant, depending on one's specific use case. then you live trough your first pulse audio upgrade. or maybe you have to bring a laptop in two wireless location with slightly different network configs. or it's just a distro upgrade where the default filesystem changed and they dropped the older fs kernel module. or you have a second monitor, or a multitouch pad, and at every update there's a chance for some package change breaking their config.
- olyjohn 6y agoYeah and consistently there seems to be a bad Windows Update that breaks a whole bunch of stuff... Not sure if people are just used to Windows being a piece of shit, or if we are holding the Linux desktop to a higher standard.
- Smithalicious 6y agoAll of these were legitimate issues 10-20 years ago. None of them have been since.
- readme 6y agoProblem is Ubuntu’s desktop. Try with a recent Fedora with Gnome, will prob work fine no tweak required.
- pisteoff 6y ago2001 called, it wants its shitty "Windows Sucks!" article back.
- jpm_sd 6y agoYes, this is pretty funny to read! I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has been using Windows since 3.1 and Linux since 2.0.x (early Debian). Nothing in this article is exactly "news" at this point in history.
- rconti 6y agoyup, switched from Windows 3.1 to Slackware (1.2.8 kernel) in August 1995 because my machine was too slow to run Win95. (and I've been using OS X on the desktop longer than both of those combined, at this point)
- deathwarmedover 6y agoI notice the author is using the wallpaper from Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), released in April 2008.
- lproven 6y agoWhen I read this piece, apart from the generally terrible writing, the poor spelling and grammar, I initially wondered if it was a spoof from GPT-3 or some other bot. When I decided it wasn't, I checked the dateline, as it seemed likely to have been written a decade or so ago.
- nxc18 6y agoLots of inaccurate info in here but also some valid points. UWP sucks really bad and it does reduce the reliability of the system, especially when UWP-type things end up in the shell (e.g. start menu and action center). I will point out that File Explorer includes a shortcut for opening PowerShell at the current directory, which can be triggered through the File menu or alt-f-r. Its worth highlighting that Linux isn't an option for everyone. I personally prefer the design to Windows 10 and hate Microsoft's anti-consumer stance. I'd love to confine it to a VM that I only run when I need something specific. Unfortunately, Ubuntu at least cannot handle using Intel graphics with Nvidia graphics in a mixed-DPI setup (one monitor 1080P, one monitor 4K). I think this is a reasonably common setup. Running a kernel update is also troublingly likely to render the system unbootable (it has happened multiple times on Ubuntu, zero times on Windows; I've done many orders of magnitude more Windows work than Ubuntu work). I feel slightly jealous of the folks who are feasibly able to run Linux on the desktop without compromising on hardware.
- 131012 6y agoAnecdotal, but I never had a single issue with kernel update and I manage many ubuntu machines. Got a link/proof/more info on that?
- nxc18 6y agoI'm running Windows now after trying to switch my primary device to Ubuntu periodically for the last 5 years... I've been experimenting with Ubuntu since 2007 and none of my devices have been able to run it well. If you've got a basic setup or don't want a graphical environment, things are fine, but I think I tend to push the limit a bit too much In my case I also need KVM etc. On Windows I just use Hyper-V when I need a VM (many years ago I'd use Virtual PC). Hyper-V has never rendered my device unusable, even when pushing the limits with things like GPU pass through. I think my 2018 attempt failed when trying to update Ubuntu kernel after setting up KVM for a Windows VM; I had restarted between getting KVM set up and doing the Ubuntu update. I haven't documented anything - I wanted to but I never really found the solutions I was looking for. I'm not making this up; I'd really love to be typing this from Ubuntu right now. edit: I reviewed and made changes for a more constructive tone.
- kar1181 6y agoSlight opposite take on the state of linux vs windows is here - https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-year-of-dissatisfaction.html https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-year-of-dissatisfa.... I unfortunately agree with a lot of what he says (this after using linux either a primary or secondary desktop OS for over 23 years) have kind of the same fatigue. It really saddens, this current state of the linux desktop.
- asciimov 6y agoThe problem that I see with this review is he keeps jumping distros (and sticking to ubuntu based distros). Instead of sticking to one and documenting his issues/fixes. It seems like he would be better served by having more spartan install and customizing it from there.
- nendroid 6y agoOne thing (out of many) I always hated about linux is the upgrades. I have to reinstall the entire operating system just to upgrade. I'm using manjaro now, I want see what happens when there's a big version change.
- butz 6y agoSorry for ruining the surprise, but Manjaro uses a Rolling Release Development Model, so big version change probably won't happen.
- lerptime 6y agoAh I know. I figured there would be a big roll out of a huge feature someday though.
- jayp1418 6y agoI think ElementaryOS provides upgrades via their software center also same for Fedora+gnome/kde
- everybodyknows 6y agoI started feeling better about it after considering that system install for upgrade is my only test for recovery from drive loss under non-emergency conditions. Two root partitions; install to the spare, them populate it from backups (admittedly very fresh). If anything is missing, copy it on from old root, figure out why backups omitted it, and fix the scripts. Non-essential data e.g. read-only git tree clones goes on a third, large "cache" partition.
- andrewshadura 6y agoI never reinstall my Debian.
- unnouinceput 6y agoQuote1: "For example, just compare the file manager application on both Ubuntu and Windows." Both defaults are crap. I use Total Commander / Double Commander on Win/Lin. Quote2: "Linux still has a few (~2%) market share in the general-purpose users' segment compared to Windows. Therefore, there are not so many malicious programs that target Linux users" Ah yeah, the famous security through obscurity. I think I prefer a battle hardened OS instead of one kept in an ivory tower. But that's not actually true. As a freelancer I use them all, and I know Linux is actually more battle hardened due to majority of cloud infrastructure running it. Which means Linux nowadays is way more under attack than Windows. Except the article's author is looking with horse blinders at the situation. Conclusion - crappy article, not worth of a place atop of HN.
- wdqwfdqwfqwf 6y agoIndeed, Desktop-Linux doesn't offer much in terms of security. APIs to restrict applications accessing your user data? Sandboxing for GUI applications? A secure GUI path, i.e., something where you can trust that this kind of window is not malicious software but your OS? Biometrics? (making non-techies into using some authentication at all)
- 29athrowaway 6y agoTry AppArmor profiles. May not cover everything on your list but offers pretty decent security.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoGnome 3.38 AFAIK has biometrics support.
- ozim 6y agoI am just annoyed by people saying Linux or Windows is more secure. It such a non argument. If someone is just plain stupid, clicks all links and downloads all kind of crap no amount of OS hardening will help him. I agree that article is crapy and I wasted my time reading it.
- 6y ago
- pgib 6y ago2020 is finally the year of Linux on the desktop!
- dhimes 6y agoLOL this comment now feels like something of a RickRoll— I'm scrolling through the comments, happily consuming, and then BOOM! I've posted it here several times myself :)
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoI love Linux, but it's still got a long ways to go before becoming an reliable desktop OS. For most people they could easily use it. However the moment they gotta hop in terminal kills it for them. Linux is great if you know how to fix your problem or look in the right direction. My main beef with it is driver support. It's far better than it was 10 years ago but nobody wants to be dealing with that. It's annoying. I can deal with program crashes or some minor feature not working right. I can't deal with being hindered due to no drivers. Linux will always just be a tool to me and nothing more. It's a great fleshed out fully customizable tool. But it is hardly what it needs to be before widespread adoption will occur.
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoI love Windows, but it's still got a long ways to go before becoming an reliable desktop OS. For most people they could easily use it. However the moment updates don't install correctly kills it for them. Windows is great if you never shut down your computer during an update or always give them the time to apply. My main beef with it is the telemetry and inconsistent UI. It's far better than it was 10 years ago but nobody wants to be dealing with that. It's annoying. I can deal with program crashes or some minor feature not working right. I can't deal with random UI changes, random resetting of settings, and uploading usage data behind my back. Windows will always just be a tool (slowly becoming an integrated Azure client) to me and nothing more. It's a great fleshed out customizable-as-Microsoft-allows tool. But it is hardly what it needs to be to quit non-creatives from migrating to iPads and smartphones.
- lostmsu 6y agoHuh, when was the last time Windows Update did not work correctly for you?
- Smithalicious 6y agoThe rate has slowed down from "half the time" to "once or twice per year" for me personally.
- 6y ago
- whateveracct 6y agoI've started using NixOS as my primary OS. Lots of rough edges - both due to Linux and then NixOS on top. But the immutable nature of it has made it so easy for me to fearlessly hack around. And once I solve something, I immortalize it in code that I check into git. Upgrades (both NixOS and kernel) are also fearless and trivial to roll back. It's really nice to declaratively manage stuff like NVIDIA drivers (w/Prime), udev, printer drivers, etc. Much nicer than running commands and getting my computer in a stable state that I hopefully never mess up.
- kvz 6y agoI switched from macOS to Linux and documented my experience as objectively as I could https://kvz.io/tobuntu.html https://kvz.io/tobuntu.html
- lproven 6y agoJeez, that's quite a list. There are other, simpler ways of doing a lot of that stuff. If you want accented characters, enable the Compose key. E.g. https://www.setphaserstostun.org/posts/setting-the-compose-key-on-xfce/ https://www.setphaserstostun.org/posts/setting-the-compose-k... If you want Mac-style keystrokes, try Kinto: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto But there are other ways: https://medium.com/@petrstepanov/a-macos-like-keyboard-remap-on-ubuntu-linux-cae1d108a97 https://medium.com/@petrstepanov/a-macos-like-keyboard-remap... Me, I use old Apple mechanical keyboards on my Macs, and IBM mechanical keyboards on my PCs. The different feel engages different muscle memory, and I use Cmd-C etc on macOS and Ctrl-C on Linux without thinking about it. For terminal emulators, use Ctrl+Shift+C etc. I personally find this a much simpler solution, but YMMV. If you want an easier life, dump GNOME. I've tried every blasted desktop out there and XFCE makes my life easier and happier than any of them.
- kvz 6y agoThanks! Will check it all out!
- rbreaves 6y agoYou will definitely want to backup your existing hotkeys on your DE and then try out Kinto.sh. Otherwise Kinto will assume that you are using default keymaps of the DE/distro. I will admit.. at some point adding in the logic to pull in the currently mapped keys into Kinto's config directly would be the preferred method and is doable.. that just isn't how Kinto works today. It assumes you are using your DE's or distro's hotkey defaults.
- rbreaves 6y agoThanks for the referral! I am the author of Kinto and just made a major update to it a few days ago. It now has a system tray, gui and a simple setup wizard for Linux users as of v1.2. The system tray only works for DEs that support Appindicators however. And at one time I was like you in that I would just know what keys to press by OS or keyboard feel, but as I've spent more and more time in the terminal I've discovered I just like the mac way of doing things more and it really is more comfortable for long coding sessions, especially on a laptop.
- xaduha 6y agoMore people should use uwf (Universal Write Filter), especially if you're already sailing high seas for enterprise editions like LTSC.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoBetween Windows, macOS and Linux, I prefer Linux. Packaging systems make things easier. You can install software in less than a minute, and keep things updated pretty easily. Linux is not the frequent target of malware, specifically ransomware. There will be always that one non-compliant person in an org that clicks every link and believes in every email and having that person use Windows is a bad idea. Office suites used to suck on Linux... not anymore. SoftMaker Office is on par with Microsoft Office for the most essential use cases. Gaming is getting better on Linux with many native games, as well as Wine, Proton and DXVK... Many games run pretty well on Linux, you can check ProtonDB for details. Perhaps not every game or the newest games, but you can have a decent gaming experience on Linux. And for development, Linux is king. Everything is observable, everything can be measured, most things have debugging symbols and source code. On Windows, get used to read assembly code and become a reverse engineer if you want to understand what's going on.
- grandtheft6uto 6y agoI love Ubuntu and I can't switch back to Windows 10. Windows 10 looks and feels like an entire commercial. Although, I'd imagine this wouldn't be the case for the professional edition. Of course, there are plenty of (high quality) apps that I miss on Ubuntu that do exist on Windows. I guess having a MacOS, you get the best out of both worlds... But I'd hate being stuck to Apple's ecosystem.
- beagle3 6y agoMy non-apple desktops and laptops have been running linux exclusively since 2004 or so (though I also have a Mac running MacOS in the last few years). I installed Win10 for a relative who needed Win10 a couple of years ago, and ran Tr0nscript at the time. Somehow, that machine is usable and doesn't feel like a commercial. All other Win10 machines I've encountered do.
- kwargs 6y agoThe article explains basically nothing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- g42gregory 6y agoI switched to Ubuntu after many years on Windows. Lasted about 3 years, - the UI was just not the same. Then I went to MacOS. The MacOS UI is great, but the runtime for C++, various software packages is cumbersome. Not to mention the absence of a CUDA environment in MacOS (MacBook pro)! Now, I have a hybrid setup: all UI is done on MacOS, all runtime is done on Ubuntu desktop. PyCharm remote server (Ubuntu desktop in my case) works like a charm.
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoI use Linux since 1994 for servers (more now than then). It works great. I try about every day to use Linux on a desktop for day to day work. It is dreadful when you install it, and then a pain if you want to use office files to a greater extend, connect to Exchange etc. I constantly have problems with my cursor. So I give up and I go back to Windows 10. They work consistently for me, are fast enough and I have all the software I need. The choice is simple, but still I diligently try on Linux. As for servers, I never use Windows because I do not feel they ate made for servers But others do it successfully so why not. The only thing I really miss from the MS world on Linux is their Active Directory that manages users, computers etc. and is so tighly bound with the OS.
- Yetanfou 6y agoI've been using Linux on more or less everything since the late 90's, before that I used OS/2. Have there been hiccups? Sure there have, sometimes I needed to go hunt for some odd driver or even go so far as to use ndiswrapper to use Windows drivers because the native drivers either sucked or did not exist. This is a long time ago though, nowadays Linux tends to have an edge over Windows when it comes to supporting a wide range of hardware out of the box. This might also be related to my tendency to use older hardware - I'm typing this on a Thinkpad T42p from 2004 - which would be close to useless with current Windows versions. The odd thing is that my ancient T42p is a more agile desktop machine than my wife's 1yo Dell running Windows 10. The reason for this is... the Linux desktop. Let's rephrase that, the reason for this is that Linux is very malleable when it comes to 'the desktop', you can mix and match parts from left and right to end up with something that works for you. In my case that turns out to be no desktop at all, relying on a keyboard-driven window manager (Xmonad) with a few utilities (dzen2, dmenu, conky and trayer), for others it might be Gnome-with-all-the-bells or some glitzy KDE incarnation or whatever Ubuntu pushes this year. The Linux desktop is what you make it. The tools are there to make it work, choose wisely. If it doesn't work for you, try something else.