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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• FpUser 6y ago
  I find this whole Linux vs Windows thing pointless. I use both and have no real problems with either for as long as I do not try to choose only one. Each has strength and weaknesses and not necessarily technical. I use computers to make living and those non technical reasons are just important for me.
• new_realist 6y ago
  Where is the corresponding document listing objective reasons to prefer Windows over Linux? Without that, this effort cannot be taken seriously.
  • qz2 6y ago
    True. From a regular Fedora and occasional windows user Office runs on it, games work on it, Thinkpad touchpad drivers aren't shit, Microsoft To Do is still better than anything anyone else has come up with, fractional scaling that works properly, power management that works properly, half decent recovery options, best corporate SSO and device management on the market, smoothest full disk encryption.
    • Kwpolska 6y ago
      > Microsoft To Do is still better than anything anyone else has come up with Not really. It started as Wunderlist minus half the features plus a useless “My Day” system. When did they add the “All Tasks” smart list? (It’s at least 2 years by my count, I don’t know the exact numbers.) How did they launch without it (it was in Wunderlist)? > smoothest full disk encryption macOS’ FileVault 2 is the smoothest, and it’s available to everyone. BitLocker works best with hardware not every computer has, and you need Windows 10 Pro or better. (I agree with the rest of your points.)
    • ryukafalz 6y ago
      >smoothest full disk encryption It may be smooth, but it also sends the disk encryption key to Microsoft unless you pay extra for Pro and above, so y'know... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/finding-your-bitlocker-recovery-key-in-windows-10-6b71ad27-0b89-ea08-f143-056f5ab347d6 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/finding-your-bit...
      • secondcoming 6y ago
        Hmmm, I just bought a Dell Precision laptop that had Bitlocker enabled by default (presumably by Dell) and at no point was I asked to record a backup key. I don't have a Microsoft account either. I'm probably screwed?
        • peteri 6y ago
          You can export the key to something else (and it's worth doing) personally I've gone for passing it to Microsoft (I'm not sure I could find whatever USB key I've stored it on otherwise). The option is under "Manage bitlocker" "backup your recovery key". I've had bitlocker fail to find the key after doing a BIOS update where the TPM has been messed up (although usually it's just been disabled and needs re-enabling). If Microsoft has the backup key you can login on another PC or phone and get the key again (from memory it's around 25 random characters). My threat model is theft of a PC not Microsoft one drive being hacked. Just means whoever steals the PC now has to either: a) Hack the TPM b) Hack my Microsoft account c) Give up and reformat the PC before resale While a & b are not impossible they seem unlikely for a random thief, while option c seems like the most likely response to a PC stolen with bitlocker enabled. Bitlocker makes me less likely to be a victim of identity theft after having my PC stolen.
          • qz2 6y ago
            Exactly this.
      • qz2 6y ago
        Mine came with pro. It was printed out. Not that it matters as it has Fedora on it now :)
    • michaelmrose 6y ago
      The best recovery option is the ability to snapshot a system and restore a computer or another computer to that exact state which has always been a thing even if implemented via rsync instead of zfs rollback/send. Gui installers offered a full disk encryption option when I started using Fedora 1.0. If you want a pretty gui Timeshift seems to be a thing. Power management in addition seems to work fine if the machine is properly supported. At least it seems to be as good on a thinkpad as on windows with more options via tlpui. Task management solutions are a dime a dozen.
  • Jimmc414 6y ago
    Without a counterpoint providing an opposing view, how are we supposed to take your comment seriously?
  • TedShiller 6y ago
    Logically that’s not true. However it would be easier to write the list of why Windows is better because it would be a much shorter list
  • userbinator 6y ago
    The GUI. Linux and other Unices have much better CLI, but the GUI of Windows is far more consistent and complete than the dozen or more variances in UI frameworks/libraries/etc. of the Unix world... that is, until recently, when Electron and other non-native monstrosities took over with their superficially pretty but otherwise horribly unusable dumbed-down mobile-ish UIs. I say this as a long-time Win32 programmer who actually started writing software for DOS and briefly for Win16 --- the CLI in DOS and Windows is so much less consistent and powerful than the *nixes (and PowersHell is a real abomination of syntax, as powerful as it may be...)
• geocrasher 6y ago
  Reasons to prefer Windows 10 over Linux: https://miscdotgeek.com/why-windows-10-is-my-desktop-os-of-choice/ https://miscdotgeek.com/why-windows-10-is-my-desktop-os-of-c...
  • fctorial 6y ago
    Heresy
• agustif 6y ago
  No telemetry. No overriding auto-update settings. No license to pay.
  • delfinom 6y ago
    As long as it's not ubuntu for the first two points
    • josephcsible 6y ago
      Saying Ubuntu has telemetry like Windows is shaky at best. Ubuntu asks you whether you want it, doesn't mandate it for people who don't buy enterprise licenses, and doesn't sneak in new kinds of telemetry when you already disabled what's there. Saying Ubuntu overrides auto-update settings is just false. If you turn off automatic updates, nothing will automatically update.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • fgonzag 6y ago
        Mind telling us how to disable auto updating in snaps (or for a specific snap)? You've just solved a huge issue for the ubuntu community
        • josephcsible 6y ago
          I acknowledge that they don't make this easy, but at least there is a way to do it: by downloading a snap manually and then sideloading it from the local file, it won't ever automatically update: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707/269 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...
        • michaelmrose 6y ago
          The solution is just not to use snaps. Snap is trash. Consider PPAs if you need the most recent version of a particular piece of software.
• jleahy 6y ago
  Does it have to be better, or even preferable? Is "it's sufficiently good for my needs but it's free" not enough? Whole industries have died because a free product has emerged that's "good enough" for 90+% of people. When was the last time anybody bought the electronic Encyclopedia Brittanica now we have Wikipedia?
  • irrational 6y ago
    Strangely I stumbled across an article today on the online Encyclopedia Brittanica which didn’t have an equivalent on Wikipedia. I wonder if anyone has ever done a comparison to find all the article on one but not the other.
    • nsriv 6y ago
      This sounds like a cool project, git diff for encyclopedic knowledge
    • young_unixer 6y ago
      Just out of curiosity, what was the article?
  • mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Perhaps, but there are lock-in effects preventing the encyclopedia situation from occurring. When tax dollars are still being shuttled to the deep pockets of MS and Oracle, a more proactive stance is needed.
  • snazz 6y ago
    Linux would have to be extremely good for most people to take the effort to switch. Switching to Wikipedia doesn't require reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system—a completely foreign concept for 98% of the computer-using population.
    • kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
      Reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system is just the beginning of it. Such a drastic change of OS basically disrupts your whole workflow while you get used to the new one. Everything from where to find things to keyboard shortcuts to UX paradigms.
• fctorial 6y ago
  It lists file system case sensitivity as a pro, which it isn't. Case sensitivity is the default you get when you don't think about the users, and windows chose the opposite because it's better.
  • hansvm 6y ago
    Ignoring the issue of which is better, windows isn't even uniform across the OS in its filesystem case-sensitivity. You can insert identical-other-than-case files with some kernel calls and break everything when you try to modify them later with the more common file interfaces.
    • gruez 6y ago
      >You can insert identical-other-than-case files with some kernel calls and break everything when you try to modify them later with the more common file interfaces. that doesn't seem like a realistic scenario, nor is it comparable to explaining to granny that "Cookie recipe.txt" and "cookie recipe.txt" are two separate files.
      • hansvm 6y ago
        You just need to modify a directory with two different programs using different windows files apis (and create case-insensitive duplicates while doing so). How common that is will depend on how often an end user accidentally tries to create duplicate files (if that's infrequent then a completely case-sensitive system would also only cause issues infrequently), and in the proportion of programs using the different windows file apis. I think you're right that we would expect that to happen only rarely, but it seems implausible to expect that there's an entire windows file api with zero usage. Side-note: I don't think explaining "Cookie recipe.txt" and "cookie recipe.txt" being different would be thaat hard -- if they look different then they are different. As long as granny doesn't have to worry about zero-width whitespace or other garbage in her file names then that's a good enough rule of thumb.
  • catach 6y ago
    I can agree that system case sensitivity is the wrong choice for probably the vast majority of users, but at the same time it's the right choice for me.
• bitwize 6y ago
  Objective reasons to prefer anything else over Linux: Security. Linux is now the least secure desktop OS available, with limited sandboxing and no provision for checking binary signatures. It's 2020, the net is a dangerous place, and if you want to avoid malware, signature checks must be done on everything from the bootloader up through the user application code.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • josephcsible 6y ago
    > Linux is now the least secure desktop OS available [citation needed] > limited sandboxing seccomp? Namespaces? What exactly do you want Linux to be able to sandbox that it can't? > no provision for checking binary signatures Bootloaders already enforce this for the kernel, and the kernel can enforce it for its own modules. Userlands are free to enforce it for userspace programs (e.g., how Android requires APKs to be signed).
    • bitwize 6y ago
      Those are toolkits to sandbox processes, but I'm talking in terms of complete solutions. Linux has Snaps and Flatpak, but the modern distros lack in solutions to enforce sandboxing policies systemwide against arbitrary binaries.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • cryptoquick 6y ago
    While Apple's Gatekeeper and Windows Defender may improve security, their privacy drawbacks are substantial, and as we discovered recently with Apple's Gatekeeper fiasco, yet another thing that could fail and prevent legitimate programs on the computer from opening. Furthermore, Windows Defender will occasionally quarantine binaries and DLLs that are harmless. For a non-power user, fixing these problems is non-trivial. Privacy vs Security is one argument, but the fact that the systems can occasionally break through no fault of the user is a major concern in its own right.
• ajkjk 6y ago
  None of these reasons have anything to do with user experience -- no wonder none of these reasons have earned Linux any market share outside of picky developers.
  • StavrosK 6y ago
    * Astronomically lower probability of catching a virus. * No bullshit forced updates when the OS feels like it. * No phoning home with you being unable to launch an app when your manufacturer's server is slow. * No shuffling about trying to install drivers for a thousand components before your computer is usable. How's that?
    • throwaways885 6y ago
      > Astronomically lower probability of catching a virus. Yes because nobody uses consumer desktop Linux. With higher market share the malware will come. > No bullshit forced updates when the OS feels like it. True, but that also means you're going to end up with a lot more botnet nodes out there because people will never update. Or they'll never update and still complain things are not working. > No phoning home with you being unable to launch an app when your manufacturer's server is slow. I hear you, but this doesn't happen enough for anybody to care. People would be more fet up by Facebook downtime. > No shuffling about trying to install drivers for a thousand components before your computer is usable. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Linux drivers still can require endless faffing about. The biggie is that distros won't distribute nonfree drivers by default, for ideological reasons. The average person doesn't understand that they need to go enable some repo in their package manager, only that their machine isn't working.
      • josephcsible 6y ago
        > > Astronomically lower probability of catching a virus. > Yes because nobody uses consumer desktop Linux. With higher market share the malware will come. Linux has a higher server market share already, and its virus problem there is still not as bad as Windows'. > > No bullshit forced updates when the OS feels like it. > True, but that also means you're going to end up with a lot more botnet nodes out there because people will never update. Or they'll never update and still complain things are not working. Today, Windows has forced updates and Linux doesn't, and Windows hosts are more likely to be part of a botnet than Linux hosts. > distros won't distribute nonfree drivers by default, for ideological reasons. True but misleading. For example, Ubuntu doesn't install nonfree drivers by default, but all you have to do to install them is check the checkbox when the installer asks you. Way easier than dealing with drivers on Windows.
• jaimex2 6y ago
  Linux updates dont force themselves on my machine and brick it once it reboots.
  • shepherdjerred 6y ago
    clearly not an arch user
    • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      Arch doesn't force auto-updates, so ... try again?
      • p_l 6y ago
        but it does brick Been there, done that, didn't get a T-shirt but a lot of scorn from IRC
        • josephcsible 6y ago
          The point is that it won't brick unless the sysadmin does something. Windows will occasionally brick itself with no user interaction.
        • foxrider 6y ago
          Yeah, but then it is supposed to - you are expected to have knowledge to fix it as a user. And unlike proprietary OSes it gives you legible errors and great logging/debugging tools and a path to downgrade. Last time I had to help my friend troubleshoot his Windows setup all we would get would be an extremely cryptic error code and we solved it by finding a thread on an Italian forum and had to google translate a solution that consisted of creating an arbitrary entry in Windows registry. This is not comparable.
          • est31 6y ago
            I think the difference is not between legible errors vs none, but how many people who deeply understand computers are in the community. So a community difference instead of a technical one. In Windows land, most folks don't understand it, so most you'll find on the internet is "I reinstalled windows, the problem is gone" and "try Pro Cleaner ^TM 2000, the trial version has some ads but it removed the problem for me. requires E-Mail signup though".
• 1986 6y ago
  I know quite a lot of folks here are fed up with moves away from native apps and towards Electron-wrapped web apps (and often for totally valid reasons) but it's been a godsend for making Linux a usable daily driver OS. IMO if you're doing eg web dev work in a GSuite / Slack / Figma / etc organization, it's never been a better time to try desktop Linux!
  • kylebenzle 6y ago
    Can anyone say why browser based IDEs like Jupyter Notebook are taking over desktop programs? I'm finding I keep getting pushed to Jupyter and just am not crazy about it.
    • oivey 6y ago
      People want something like a persistent REPL, and for whatever reason most IDEs have either not supported this or supported it badly.
  • StavrosK 6y ago
    Why do you need web apps wrapped in their own window, though? Just open a browser. Relatedly, Electron is a problem because desktop apps nowadays require a huge browser just to display a window, not because web apps are packaged in a browser to get slightly better desktop integration.
    • ben-schaaf 6y ago
      Unfortunately you have things like Discord that require access to native APIs in order to properly function (eg. Push to talk).
    • fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      I like Slack and similar having their own icon and entry in the alt-tab switcher. Absent ubiquitous PWA support, electron is sort of the least bad alternative.
      • 6y ago
• NuSkooler 6y ago
  Disclaimer: I love Linux. I also like Windows (it's extremely solid). RE path limitations. I actively -- and have for many years -- use paths much longer that 25x characters. Including in Windows Explorer. I can't recall the last time I had a issue, though IIRC there is some sort of operation (that I guess I never use?) via Explorer where one can run into issues. The main issue, and it exists on Linux as well is this in code: char path[MAX_PATH]; // or equiv In Linux this generally gives you a 4k buffer so you're MUCH less likely to hit the issue of course.
• ChrisSD 6y ago
  The title doesn't appear to match the text. It seems to be mostly a list of things that might trip up Linux developers when moving to Windows. Which is fair enough but not why I clicked this link. But to address the list's content, it would be interesting to update it to take into account developments made in more recent versions of Windows 10.
• young_unixer 6y ago
  They both suck. They just suck in different ways. Choose your poison. Or don't choose and use both.
  • phendrenad2 6y ago
    This is the real answer. I'm tired of people comparing Linux and Windows, they're based on completely different philosophies and design styles, it's truly apples vs oranges.
    • trotFunky 6y ago
      I would tend to agree. Linux has been my main OS for the past few years in part because I agree with the principles behind it, but also simply because I _feel_ better using it than using Windows. I'm not at ease with the user experience and the behaviour of Windows. So I'm using Linux and I don't really run into any meaningful issues day-to-day. The biggest issues I had to solve lately were on my VPS, not even my desktop. But as the GP said : you can always use both, and there are a lot of ways to do so. A few games and softwares I use can't run on Linux so I keep a windows on dual-boot. WLS 2 is a great experience for a lot of folks, etc.
• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  I really hated the intro. There are less confrontational ways of making that point across. Then the points being made did not resonate with my own reasons for using Linux. Microsoft loves Linux and Open source, in paper, but the reason you are not using Linux right now is mostly due to Microsoft. MS Office, the defacto Office suite, runs only on macOS and Windows, and the OOXML standard was created with obfuscation in mind. Microsoft bought Corel, and shortly after Corel Office dropped its Linux release. Microsoft lobbies governments so that they adopt MS Office. Some of those goverments are starving impoverished countries that could rather use that money for humanitarian reasons. OpenGL was the target of a FUD campaign that scared game developers forcing them to adopt DirectX.
• TedShiller 6y ago
  No more blue screens Not having to reinstall Windows every 6 months just to keep it running fast
  • eznzt 6y ago
    2005 was over 15 years ago.
    • krebs_liebhaber 6y ago
      I encountered the same problems when I had a Windows 10 machine in 2016 - every couple of months the thing would shit itself for no apparent reason. The only thing I could do was copy all my personal files to an external disk and reinstall the OS. My next computer was a bit more stable - but I still had a few nasty scares. Installed Mint and never looked back ;)
    • TedShiller 6y ago
      True. But 2020 is right now.
• sysrpl 6y ago
  Linux runs better on both new and older hardware. Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier. Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure. Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates. Linux distros have a better app store experience than Windows, plus most of whatever there is free without much if any risk. Linux doesn't have any phone home telemetry type "features" built into the OS. Linux user experience is much more customizable. There are a much greater variety of tools at your disposal to customize how you want your desktop to look and operate. Linux is free.
  • tester756 6y ago
    >Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure. In my opinion it's flawed logic _if_ you wanted to say that "Linux is more secure because windows has more malware" >Linux user experience is much more customizable. In what way? desktop? kernel tweaks?
    • at-fates-hands 6y ago
      > In what way? desktop? kernel tweaks? How deep do you want the Rabbit hole to go Alice? On one end you have Arch Linux: Arch is largely based on binary packages. Packages target x86-64 microprocessors to assist performance on modern hardware. A ports/ebuild-like system is also provided for automated source compilation, known as the Arch Build System.[28] Arch Linux focuses on simplicity of design, meaning that the main focus involves creating an environment that is straightforward and relatively easy for the user to understand directly, rather than providing polished point-and-click style management tools — the package manager, for example, does not have an official graphical front-end. This is largely achieved by encouraging the use of succinctly commented, clean configuration files that are arranged for quick access and editing.[29] This has earned it a reputation as a distribution for "advanced users" who are willing to use the command line.[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux And then on the other end you have Distro's like Mint, or Ubuntu: Mint is designed for ease of use and a ready-to-roll out-of-box experience, including multimedia support on desktops. The operating system is easier to install than most Linux distributions. Mint includes software required for e-mail and online functionality as well as support for multimedia content, whether online or from a user's own files and physical media There are several different desktop editions of Mint, including Cinnamon, GNOME, XFCE and KDE, to best support various hardware. The operating system is also provided in an alternate Linux Mint Debian Edition for those that are more familiar with Linux. That edition is said to be less intuitive and user-friendly but also faster and more responsive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint I started with KDE, then went to Mint, Ubuntu, and some other distros like Manjaro that I've been tinkering with lately. You can see a good list of all the distro's here (current and upcoming): https://distrowatch.com/ https://distrowatch.com/
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  I have been running Linux on all my personal machines for the last 8 years and I have to say that one thing windows has going for it is it’s graphics system. I have super sensitive eyes and I have to say that even wayland does not cut it when compared to windows. Everywhere else Linux on desktop is either far better or a bit behind but workable
  • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    I'm not following; what are your eyes sensitive to / what problem to you perceive in the *nix GUI stack?
    • AzzieElbab 6y ago
      Flickering and font rendering
      • gitweb 6y ago
        Sounds more like a mis-configuration on desktop environment specific, rather than a problem with Linux or Wayland. I'm using Sway with Wayland and don't experience any of the issues you mention. In fact, I find that it is easier to read than Windows and definitely a lot snappier.
        • AzzieElbab 6y ago
          See that is the problem. Sure everything is fine if all I use is sway + alacritty and terminal based apps on a single screen but as soon as I mix in multiple terminals, x11 apps, glitchy hdpi, experience starts to deteriorate quickly
          • gitweb 6y ago
            There is a current bug with Chromium that I'm aware of that causes issues if you have windows open on multiple desktops. Other than that I don't have these problems. May I suggest you check out the Arch Wiki for Sway and Wayland for suggestions for configuration.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• tester756 6y ago
  >Finally, because Linux is a ubiquitous server operating system, its security is under constant attack, and Linux desktop users benefit from fixes to the vulnerabilities. I think this kind of argument works both ways Attacking servers is harder and probably may give you better "reward" (stolen data), but... Attacking normal people is easier (I think its fair to assume normal user is worse at computers than e.g trained admin), so you can do it at bigger scale and normal user may not want to sue/find you/call cops meanwhile if you're hacking companies then things are more likely to be very serious. Thus, both are under constant attacks.
  • hydrox24 6y ago
    > > Finally, because Linux is a ubiquitous server operating system, its security is under constant attack, and Linux desktop users benefit from fixes to the vulnerabilities. > Attacking servers is harder and probably may give you better "reward" (stolen data), but Attacking normal people is easier so you can do it at bigger scale... I think that attacking normal people is easier. I disagree that it scales though. Normal people have huge variances in their systems and the version they run, their network connectivity, their IT savvy, etc. and therefore the kinds of exploits required to break into their home systems will vary a lot. The variance in commercial systems is probably as high, but who cares since you only need to take down one or two, rather than hundreds or thousands, for equivalent payoff. The pick-pocket will make a million dollars more slowly than the bank robber.
  • pitterpatter 6y ago
    Also, with the proliferation of Clouds (and thus Azure), fixes for attacks targeting Windows (Server) also benefit Windows (Client).
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• GuB-42 6y ago
  Here is a website with opposite arguments (against Linux on the desktop specifically) https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t... In the end you have strong arguments both ways. I personally use both on a daily basis. Generally that's Linux for work (coding, mostly) and Windows for fun (games and media).
  • chabad360 6y ago
    Interestingly, for me it's exactly the opposite, I use Windows at work and linux for not at work.
  • dblohm7 6y ago
    Lost me at Windows being harder to debug.
  • npteljes 6y ago
    He also has an article on Win 10, both are quite a good read in my opinion. https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html
• alserio 6y ago
  I used to be on windows. I uninstalled candy crush, bloatware but what can you do. Windows reinstalled it some time later with an update. I have no use for an operating system that doesn't serve my needs but the needs of someone else.
• p0nce 6y ago
  Linux is great BUT it has a lot of UX design problems every time I have to use it.
• zamalek 6y ago
  I finally decided to try Linux "for real" (no dual booting) on my laptop. I have used it in the past, but for the first time it truly can be said: The Linux (Gnome) UX is miles ahead of Windows. I genuinely wish I could have Gnome on Windows.
  • aaomidi 6y ago
    It....really isn't though? I'm one of those people who never turns their computer off. I've done no changes to gnome other than installing tweaks to bring back minimize buttons. Still though, every 1-2 days I need to do Alt + F2 and `r` to restart gnome.
    • derekp7 6y ago
      It is strange to me how different people have different experiences. I wonder how much is hardware / driver related? In my case I have an AMD video card, and my system runs for weeks at a time (I reboot when applying kernel updates is all). Also had very good stability on my Thinkpad X2 Yoga (Gen 2) -- this one with the integrated Intel graphics.
      • aaomidi 6y ago
        Odd, I'm using PopOS so it might be honestly something Pop is doing to cause that behaviour. I also just generally have a major issue with the Linux process scheduler (CFS). It definitely doesn't feel like its suited for desktop use.
        • derekp7 6y ago
          I run Fedora, and update to the latest release about a month or two after it is released. Mostly because my job is with RHEL / CentOS, and Fedora keeps me up to date with what will be in the next RHEL major version. However I should correct my previous statement, that I have weird stuff happen with Wayland, and I give it a shot periodically but switch back to X11. (In my case, "weird stuff" is things like desktop screen sharing not working with MS Teams, or having HiDPI scaling interacting badly with older style X apps such as OpenSCAD -- in that case with Wayland the cursor has a hard time grabbing window edges).
• pabs3 6y ago
  Linux being open source is reason enough to prefer it over Windows.
• aaomidi 6y ago
  I've been exclusively using Linux (PopOS specifically) with xanmod for the past 2 months. I do my work (programming), game, etc, etc on this one PC. It's been honestly great. I've had to change some things I do normally, but for me they weren't a big deal. Games I play that work well on Linux: - Overwatch - League of Legends (not so much anymore because URF is gone) - Hades - Frostpunk (highly recommend) I use an Xbox controller for Hades, and I use it in wired mode (one of the things I needed to change about how I use my computer). Bluetooth has some issues I didn't want to bother fixing. I am using Xanmod because the regular Linux scheduler is just trash in my opinion for desktop use. It doesn't prioritize UI threads which just makes the linux experience so much worse for me.
• amanzi 6y ago
  This may seem silly to a bunch of people in this thread, but MS Office and OneDrive is what is keeping me on Windows. I rely on the core MS Office apps enough that I wasn't able to switch to Linux full time. Also, I rely on OneDrive and the "download files as you need them" feature which isn't available with any of the open source apps. That said, Windows 10 is solid and with the combination of WSL2 and Hyper-V, I can do everything on Windows that I can do on a Linux desktop.
  • thekyle 6y ago
    I believe Dropbox also supports Smart sync and has Linux support.
• noxer 6y ago
  Totally outdated and overall pretty useless. Objective in the sense it proclaims to be is not possible. Almost all of the points are completely irrelevant for the average potential user.
  • mixmastamyk 6y ago
    It's on github not disney.com, and mostly still accurate.
• polote 6y ago
  I don't want more people using Linux. Linux is great the way it is today. More users will make everything worse. Guys please stay on Windows.
• k__ 6y ago
  From a usability perspective I don't really care anymore which OS I have to use. All software I use for work runs in the browser (gdocs, gsheets, gmail, cloud9, slack, discord, asana, zoom, meet) Only some games and ableton live are missing from some platforms.
• alphachloride 6y ago
  I am a sample size of 1. For me, the inconveniences of using linux are far greater than the inconveniences of using windows. This article is targeted at the developer community mostly. As a programmer, I cannot recall being hindered by file name conventions, un-resizeable dialog boxes, bug trackers etc., as much I have been inconvenienced on linux by poor driver support, and regularly dropping to command line for configuring my system. As a gamer, well, there is no competition for me, really. As your average user, I find the user interface on windows nicer and see more compatible programs. If there is anything I absolutely have to have linux for, I can just use a raspberry pi, a cloud server etc.
  • antonzabirko 6y ago
    Yup, exactly my experience. Linux kernel is less equipped.
  • gerdesj 6y ago
    "poor driver support" Please expand on this gem. Bear in mind that all drivers in Linux are delivered by the kernel. I'll grant you that not everything is golden in Linux land but the sheer pain of finding and updating drivers in Windows is an order of magnitude worse than in Linux. You get them out of the box in Linux, in Windows you don't. What sort of Window Manager are you having problems with? Why not try another one?
  • tcbawo 6y ago
    I recently spent 30 minutes figuring out why the Bluetooth pairing process wasn't giving me the pin number I needed to pair my new wireless keyboard. Ugh. Eventually, after searching through forums, I updated the right modules to get it working. I want to use Linux as my daily driver, but I am frustrated by little things that don't work or go wrong.
    • AlanSE 6y ago
      I find myself using my Android phone a lot more when on Linux... just because I have to practically work around some things, because I don't have all day to debug non-essential tasks. For instance, I upgraded Fedora from 32 to 33, and Spotify stopped working. Can this be fixed? I'm absolutely sure it can be fixed. Do I have time? No. I have watched way too many coworkers bomb meetings because of trying to use bluetooth headsets on Linux. Am I trying to cause suffering? No, I will use a headset with the good old headphone jack, because I have something else that I need to do with my actual day.
• what-the-grump 6y ago
  Microsoft is doing what Linux claims to be faster and more aggressively than ever before. If you couldn't beat windows 7, the OS that ran for decade with no major upgrades to functionality, at the desktop game how are you going to beat an OS that changes faster than we can keep up as admins? We all cried in 2016, 17, 18 when ms was patching too fast, releasing too fast, now they are steady pushing a semi-annual build with little problems. There will no windows 11 and because Linux is OOS, with no central model for support, Microsoft will continue to dominate the desktop space. It's just Windows now, not ubuntu, arch, mint, red hat, deb, gnu. 3 main gripes: Cost - sure? MS doesn't really make money here it wouldn't cost much to ship windows to the planet for free. Forced updates - again 3 years ago yes big problem, last year still killing my nic drivers, future 3-5 years? Unlikely that we will even notice them, we are down to a monthly reboot. Telemetry - not going away.
  • sergeykish 6y ago
    > Microsoft’s “More Personal Computing” Division, which includes Windows, Xbox, Surface and related businesses, rose in the holiday quarter to $13.2 billion in revenue, up from just under $13 billion a year ago, reclaiming the title of the company’s largest division, at least for the moment. https://threatpost.com/google-yanks-106-malicious-chrome-extensions/156731/ https://threatpost.com/google-yanks-106-malicious-chrome-ext...
• kbumsik 6y ago
  These kinds of post very often confuse people. We need to divide the debate into two perspectives: Development and Desktop environment. As a dev, I always use Linux. I love to use shell all the time. However, I use Windows as a desktop environment because I fed up with the whole Xorg vs Wayland situation and inferior VNC experiences to Windows RDP.
• maple3142 6y ago
  I use linux for my personal server, but I still use Windows in my desktop (with WSL). I have Nvidia GPU, multiple monitor, so Wayland don't seem to be ready for my use case. I aware of proton too, but needing tweaks to run games doesn't seem to be ready to me. I expect games to be "just work". Also, there are also non-steam games and anti-cheat. Currently, WSL perfectly fit my needs for development environment. I had used KDE, which gave me a good experience, but the general Linux desktop ecosystem doesn't feel ready for me. Maybe years later, the situation will be good enough to switch, but it is not now.
  • snicker7 6y ago
    Its not that "Wayland is not ready" and more "NVidia does not care". Wayland works on all Free drivers.
    • maple3142 6y ago
      I know, but it doesn't matter for me, I care about "work" or "not work". Also, I heard that Wayland still have problems with Remote Desktop, screenshot, screen recording...
      • other_herbert 6y ago
        Sharing your screen through slack... Zoom works though.. The screenshot thing just depends on the tool...
    • musicale 6y ago
      For people with Nvidia GPUs, not working === not ready
• wrp 6y ago
  I spent roughly 1999-2015 trying mightily to get off Windows and become Linux only. I finally decided that the Linux desktop was never going to solve its feature and compatibility shortcomings to make that possible. I much prefer Linux as a development environment, but for anything related to office productivity, compatibility issues force me to be on Windows so much that it's not worth the effort to switch to Linux for the few things that I could do there. I could rant about lost opportunities, but that's already been done many times by others.
  • mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Office productivity is now in the cloud.
  • 1_player 6y ago
    I found my peak of productivity with WSL2 and an Arch Linux VM. Truly the best of both worlds.
  • neurostimulant 6y ago
    I think switching to linux will become easier going forward simply because developers are embracing web technologies and developing their apps as a webapp and/or electron apps. Sure it's not ideal but makes switching os trivial because most of your "apps" are available via a web browser or as an electron app. Many orgs are migrating to google apps or office 365 online and do their document editing online these days. Can't have office version compatibility issue if all your docs are in google apps.
• ImaCake 6y ago
  For work I use Mac. It is where native MS office apps intersect with a unix terminal. I really think your choice of OS is down to usecase. But linux often requires much more patience than windows or mac to get started. Windows update is still terrible though!
• itvision 6y ago
  The list is so convoluted while it doesn't touch on real Windows issues at all. Wow. And it often talks about issues which have been resolved, or haven't been relevant in ages, or are not a concern for most people out there. https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html And some things from it are outright cringe-worthy, e.g. "Ineffectual read-only permissions semantics". Windows ACL for files/directories is 100 more powerful than what Linux offers. Some Windows advantages are shown as shortcomings, e.g. case-insensitive filenames vs. case-sensitivity in Linux which in absolute most times just leads to confusion. In my 20+ years of using Linux I haven't found a single usecase for case sensitivity.
• lmm 6y ago
  File extensions are a much better way of determining filetype than "magic"; they mean that the user can actually see what type a file is. It would actually be easier to dupe Linux users into running malware than Windows users if it weren't for the execute bit.
• trilinearnz 6y ago
  Whilst the OP is after ostensibly practical examples, I would add something I haven't yet seen mentioned and that is education. If you are wanting to learn more about computing and how operating systems work, Linux is excellent at giving you this opportunity. It actually takes one of it's weaknesses and turns it into one of it's biggest strengths. Because you often need to tinker a bit with scripts and problem-solving in order to get certain things working the way you want, you learn a lot. For example, when I was into gaming in my younger years I was lucky to have access to a family computer rather than a gaming console. Because of this, I gained experience tinkering with config.sys and autoexec.bat in order to make my games run on limited memory, and later, learning how to add hardware like 3D accelerators for faster performance. If I had been stuck with a static console without any room for modification, I may have taken a less interesting career path as a result. I feel a similar lamentation when seeing kids with iPads, but feel hope when I see them tinkering with Minecraft :)
• jbirer 6y ago
  I started my journey with linux at the age of 12 when Canonical was sending out free CD's of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04. After nearly 13 years of usage I am a happy user of Windows 10 now. My reasons are: * Horrible font rendering that makes me not even want to code * Terrible application support * Audio and touchpad support is noticeably superior on Windows * Small things that you have to tinker with in order to get everything set up But the most important thing is that I am just tired of tinkering. Nowadays I just want to open my computer and get on my programming job and have everything just work. MacOS seems to be a good compromise though (Application support and UNIX subsystem for programming)
  • fb03 6y ago
    And now we have WSL2 which is quite good in that regard too. I love being on Linux but I am sick of tinkering too. I make music and game on Windows and Dev on WSL2 with X11 forwarding to desktop, which is flawless.
    • thebigspacefuck 6y ago
      WSL, even WSL2, has always been much slower in my experience.
  • fartcannon 6y ago
    I don't tinker. I just run Linux. On Windows, I find the tinkering insufferable. No, windows, I don't want you to track me. New update? Do it all over again. Advertisements in the start menu? Ever update I have to disable that. Every time I try and fix something broken, Windows forces me to redo it again and again.
    • rbanffy 6y ago
      On Windows 3 I had a custom-built VGA.DRV with my own bitmaps in the widgets. These days I don't bother to change Ubuntu's background. I use the computer to get my work (and my hobbies) done. As Stephen Fry would say, I don't use a computer in order to use a computer.
  • 6y ago
• mraza007 6y ago
  My experience with linux has been great so far I started out with ubuntu and then switched to manjaro with i3 Overall I loved i3 window manager as it made things much easier and keyboard centric But after using macbook for a while I am leaning towards it as it works like a charm and I can do everything what I did on my linux. Linux is great and one thing I like about it is that it’s highly customizable but sometimes you don’t wanna be spending countless hours customizing your environment you just want something that just works that’s just my opinion Overall my experience has been great with linux but sadly i can’t run adobe suite on it :( So I decided to get a MacBook Would love to hear everyone else’s experiences
• BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
  There is no "Linux" operating system. There is Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and 1001 others. This is the primary reason GUI interface is lacking. So you must resort to command line, 50 years after computer mouse was invented.
• renewiltord 6y ago
  My reasons were that I had a better CLI and dev tools for the things I'm working on. I don't think I care about telemetry etc. I still use Windows for games and stuff, but Windows terminal emulators mostly seem to suck and I spend a lot of time in there. Either way the platform wars are over. Electron + WSL made them irrelevant. On Linux I have access to every modern app I want. This has been fantastic. All the guys who championed web standards and the web as an application platform should feel proud of being visionaries. Well done.
• rubyn00bie 6y ago
  I just moved to Linux as my primary OS; been fucking great. 11/10 Overall, everything seems to "just work" at least as well as on MacOS and is not quite (for me) as endlessly frustrating as Windows. Gaming has also been effortless and honestly just the most delightful surprise about the whole thing. I can write code AND play games... on the same machine... and it's running Linux?! I would've lost that bet ten years ago. I was/am totally prepared to use GPU pass-through to a Windows VM to get native gaming performance or work around bugs-- but I haven't needed to. I'm using PopOS but am pretty indifferent toward the distro I use. I honestly got it confused for different distro, but it was still Debian/Ubuntu based so I'm chill (ha). Really, most modern Linux distros are pretty god damn nice. It's a little weird to even think about dialing in the aesthetic more to my liking coming from the world of MacOS. But I've found themes like Nord (https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1267246/ https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1267246/) provide some visual familiarity while maintaining their own unique aesthetic qualities. Making apps, or interacting with the OS, is absurdly easy using GTK and Python vs anything Microsoft or Apple have to offer. I have the same effective level of support which is to say none-at-all or via the community of volunteers. I can't ever imagine calling Microsoft or Apple for meaningful help (roflcoptr and we say we pay for support). Linux is rocking the desktop hard, if you haven't tried it in a few years or just maintain a Windows installation to play games-- seriously give it a try. It's wonderful.
  • Osiris 6y ago
    I'm using PopOS (with i3 instead of Gnome) on a System76 laptop. I have some serious issues with resume from sleep. All browsers and electron apps have significant rendering issues after I resume and I have to close them down and restart them. I was able to fix Chrome and Firefox by enabling Vulkan, but Slack still requires a restart after every resume. My external monitors periodically stop working due to an NVIDIA driver bug. Have you had any similar issues?
    • edgyquant 6y ago
      Yeah outside of Lubuntu I’ve had bad luck with resuming sleep on laptops. My desktop doesn’t ever go to sleep (Nvidia 1660x) but that’s because over the years I’ve just had so much trouble. I’d still take Fedora or Ubuntu over Windows any day as that’s my only complaint. Then again I’ve been a Linux users since 2006 so to I’m amazed at how great driver support is now even compared to a few years ago.
• Osiris 6y ago
  I use Linux, Windows, and macOS basically every day. All three have pros and cons. I use Linux at work because I love i3 and am willing to put up with other quirks to have it. I use Windows for games, Lightroom, etc. I use macOS for compiling iOS apps (work) and in bed/on the couch at home for browsing (because I have an extra Macbook leftover from a consulting gig). I use whatever tool works best for the job I'm doing. No one OS is better at everything than another. They all have their strengths and their weakness.
• Overdr0ne 6y ago
  I've never experienced anything close to the stability and performance of a lean Arch build personally. It does a very good job of teaching you up front how your OS works, and how to configure it without dumbing things down for your grandma. Once I understood that, bugs just kinda disappeared, because I wasn't naively misconfiguring things anymore. I find linux pretty well organized and reasonable for most dev tasks. Your OS can be spectacularly powerful for automating things if you just understand it's basic components. It updates when I want it to, it looks the way I want it to, and darn near any operation I can put a name to I've writtent a script/elisp function/systemd service for. I feel limited really only by my own imagination at this point. Maybe the problem is Ubuntu or other such imitation distros, that rob people of that deeper understanding in exchange for a shallow illusion
• ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Most uses of linux are in server or embedded space, and so are most of the contributions. By contrast most of Windows development is focused on it being a consumer OS. It's unrealistic to expect Linux to ever catch up to windows as long as this is true, especially when we spread effort too thing creating 15 different distributions.
• redvenom 6y ago
  For me the greatest thing about Linux is that I am not at the whims of Microsoft or Apple about when they decide to change the UI. I have been using XFCE for years and it is basically the same as fifteen years ago. If I want to change something, I can do it fairly easily, like add a dock or even change Window managers. I don't have to do things the Microsoft way or the Apple way...if I don't like something I can just change it.
• slmjkdbtl 6y ago
  I hope I can move to linux right now, but I just bought Ableton Live, and have to occasionally use stuff like Affinity Designer, or Adobe. Open source GUI software that runs on Linux generally does not have good UI/UX (for good ones I can only think of Blender), and big commercial softwares generally does not support Linux, being trapped between sucks.. But still, I'm looking for a decent distro that has minimal setup, very customizable, in active dev, and have decent graphics / audio driver for game dev, for a possible future shift. I haven't done much research yet but am currently looking at KISS and Arch, if you know more please let me know thanks!
  • RMPR 6y ago
    You can try pop!_os
• spoonyvoid 6y ago
  This is such a circle jerk. Of course everyone's going to be shooting down everyone who likes Windows on this thread.
• magicalhippo 6y ago
  I've been running KDE Neon on a NUC for several years now, and has been quite happy with that as a secondary PC. However, as much as I like it, I've not even tried to run it on my primary desktop due to the lack of a viable RDP alternative. The irony here is that with Microsoft implementing RDP support in WSL2, the thing that might finally remove the key obstacle might render the entire point moot.
  • somedude11 6y ago
    Lack of proper RDP-like experience is also a dealbreaker for me.
  • dsp_person 6y ago
    NoMachine works great here. Enable screen blanking setting or not depending on needs.
    • magicalhippo 6y ago
      Does it technically work? Yes. Does it work as well as RDP? Not even close. With RDP I get a near-local experience. With NoMachine, VLC, whatever else it's very, very obvious I'm working remotely. Maybe it's my setup, but I've tried many times over many years with different hardware on both ends and internet connections.
      • dsp_person 6y ago
        Hmm, fwiw I think all my boxes with NoMachine have GPUs as well, that may make a difference in the quality for encoding/decoding. If I go full screen it's hard for me to distinguish local vs remote, even watching videos, other than occasionally can see video compression artifacts per the connection quality. Do like that I can blank screen on login, lock screen on logout, similar to RDP, unlike xrdp and others where it's a new session when you connect, you can't resume a session locally (e.g. work half in office, half at home, same session).
        • 6y ago
• marcan_42 6y ago
  It's worth noting that these days you can move Windows installs across hardware/VMs and fix issues from a live image. I'm a longtime Linux user and every time I have to do this on Windows I find the documentation poor, but it is possible to do things like load kernel modules (drivers), partition a drive, format a new NTFS filesystem, copy all the files over preserving special filesystem features, reinstall the bootloader, add required additional drivers, ensure the drive assignments are correct, etc. all from a command line prompt which you can pull up from the Windows 10 installer image. The process ends up being very similar to doing the same thing on Linux at a high level, just with different tools. What Windows needs in this regard is something like the Arch Linux wiki. Just in case it's useful to someone, here are some pointers: To add critical (e.g. storage) drivers to a mounted Windows install (or image file within installers): dism To modprobe a driver within the live environment: drvload To rsync files over to a new filesystem preserving (almost?) all critical metadata: robocopy (use the latest Windows 10, older versions had trouble with stuff like directory junctions and symlinks; read the manual carefully to figure out what options to use) To fix drive assignments (i.e. fstab): you actually just pull up regedit and edit the registry directly; you copy the (binary) drive ID info from the live instance, mount the registry hive of the target, and paste it there (this isn't really morally different from running blkid and then editing fstab by hand to paste a UUID). Search terms: MountedDevices and DosDevices. Fix the bootloader: bootrec is the top level "fix stuff automatically" tool, kind of like grub-install and grub-mkconfig. However, you may have to delete your BCD (grub.conf) first so bootrec can make it fresh, as it often won't fix existing bootloader entries with a problem. bcdboot and bcdedit are the lower level tools.
  • hashhar 6y ago
    I'm not sure I'll ever need this but this is really useful for the times I get stuck in a situation. Thanks for writing this. I bet we couldn't find this information consolidated in a single place anywhere on the internet. This would also be useful as a blog post (if you have one and have the time). Thanks again!
  • zvrba 6y ago
    Hah, indeed. I had to build a custom Windows install image, so I had to learn about DISM and other stuff. Everything is documented, but rather badly organized.
• trevorishere 6y ago
  The article is obviously old and out of date (i.e. MAX_PATH, given you don't mention Office...) and at times incorrect (i.e. NT kernel performance where async I/O has historically been better than the various Linux implementations -- io_uring excluded as I haven't seen any comparisons). I'll give my highly subjective experience. I used Fedora 3x on a X1 Carbon gen 7 and it was not awesome. While I had a highly customizable UI via KDE Plasma, the font always felt off. I had issues directly attributed to Wayland (screen sharing in apps), though I could have gone back to X11. Eventually I switched to Gnome and the UI was just frustrating from a UX standpoint. The UI lacked so many options to make it more flexible, though some frustrations were taken care of by extensions. For either DE, if I didn't want to use Firefox, many types of media were unavailable, including certain videos in YouTube due to lack of included libraries. Some of those libraries were available in 3rd party builds, but given the security sensitive nature of browsers, that felt risky. Performance was fine and the apps I needed were available. Overall, application in each DE felt more crash-prone. This was true of the updater for the Gnome app store, too. More than a couple of times I would have odd graphical issues occur in both KDE Plasma and Gnome. A couple examples were font-related issues (incorrect font despite being set correctly in settings) and window-color issues. The Gnome app store window was in dark mode while the rest of the DE wasn't. Oh and lack of DE-wide mouse scrolling on windows was a bit frustrating. I had to get a plugin for Chromium but never found a DE-wide solution. I was tired of Windows on a laptop, so I did end up buying a MBP, which was my first Mac since my PowerBook G4. MBP does everything I need for personal use and as a development playground, plus generally stable apps. I still use Win 10 on a P1 for work and of course have a desktop for gaming, primarily. What I'd like to see from a DE is to be highly integrated into the system. We've seen successful implementations via Windows and Mac (classic and OS X/11), and perhaps the not-so-commercial success, BeOS. Many of the Linux DEs "feel" tacked-on. With that said, I run unbound and haproxy on a handful of Linux VMs where they work wonders and I've had zero issues with stability, etc. All-in-all my Fedora 3x experience was just OK. It felt rough around many, though not all edges. App crash was more than I'd see using the same apps on Windows (and now macOS). There were other things that irritated me; lack of fingerprint reader support and lack of a Bitlocker-style solution (no password on boot) available. Again, my experiences, my impressions. They could all be wrong.
• dyeje 6y ago
  Trying to convince someone to use an OS seems so pointless. People who care about it already have strong opinions on the topic and everybody else just uses whatever comes with the machine they decided to buy.
  • notriddle 6y ago
    For Linux users, it’s all about vendor support. More Linux users means that it actually becomes worth it for manufacturers to provide Linux support for their hardware.
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  Some people want a Nespresso. Some people want a bean to cup espresso machine with built in grinder. Others want something similar, but insist on a separate grinder and brewer. Some people want to hand grind their beans then put them through an Aeropress, possibly while sitting in a field. A handful of organizations will brew by the ton, freeze dry the results, and sell it on as a kind of brewing as a service product. It’s worse and better at the same time. The fact that these are all called coffee is a simplification that makes most comparisons more complicated.
• ur-whale 6y ago
  Last Windows-based system I used professionally was Win2K and it was bearable after some heavy-duty configuration. Switched to MacOS around 2002. It was not user-hostile back then and a decent Unix env. and Apple seemed to be headed down the right path, promising to support FOSS. Switched from MacOS to Linux circa 2008 when it became abundantly clear that Apple's "backing" of OpenSource was a complete hoax designed to attract FOSS hackers to the platform and lock them in (the only parts of the OS that were FOSS were the lower layers, the entire stack above it was closed source - a tiger simply can't change its stripes). Never had to look back, and when I look at the locked-in walled garden privacy hell that OSX has become, boy am I glad I switched.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Thorrez 6y ago
  The article says determining filetype via heuristics is better than via extension. I don't agree with that, heuristics are confusing. File extensions lead to behavior that a human can predict.
  • pmontra 6y ago
    mv image.png program.exe mv program.exe sound.mp3 mv sound.mp3 text.pdf Same file, always a PNG despite the extensions I can attach to it.
    • Thorrez 6y ago
      Sure. But I think of the file extension as a way to tell the OS which program I want a file to open with. In Windows when I see a .mp3 file I know which program will open when I double click on it. In Linux it's a mystery. I like my computer to behave in a predictable manner. In Windows extensions have a meaning. In Linux, why even bother having extensions? In neither OS does the extension tell you about the content of the file. But on Windows the extension does tell you something useful about how the OS interacts with the file.
      • IceWreck 6y ago
        > In Linux, why even bother having extensions While the file extension can be lying maliciously or can be just plain incorrect in 1% cases, its informative for the user in the other 99% cases
        • Thorrez 6y ago
          I agree with you. But pmontra seems to operate differently than that, and have files with mismatching extensions. In that case the extensions tell you something on Windows but not on Linux.
          • pmontra 6y ago
            I don't mismatch extensions because I don't want to play tricks to me in the future :-) Sometimes I don't add extensions, usually on plain text files.
• shmerl 6y ago
  Gaming on Linux really got very good in the last few years. And that contributed to a bigger influx of Linux users.
• billyjobob 6y ago
  Linux on desktop used to be great, but does anyone get the sense that it is going downhill? I don't even touch proprietary Nvidia drivers, all my machines are Radeon or Intel GPU and they used to work fine. But currently on Radeon I have to revert back to kernel 4.19 to get sleep to work. On Intel anything newer than 5.6 won't even boot. I don't get it. Maybe kernel devs mostly care about servers and VMs and are letting the desktop stuff bitrot?
  • blockmeifyoucan 6y ago
    I have 5.9 kernels running fine on two laptops with intel graphics. Have you investigated what exactly stopped your systems from booting?
    • billyjobob 6y ago
      It hangs when trying to load the i915 module. CPU goes up to 100% and display goes black. Obviously it works with some, probably most intel GPUs but seems they aren’t bothering to test it with the older ones anymore. There’s a bunch of bug reports about it, so it’s not just me. usually they get closed with some list of voodoo kernel parameters that supposedly fix the problem but none of them fix it for me.
      • blockmeifyoucan 6y ago
        Damn, that sounds frustrating :/
  • RMPR 6y ago
    Which distro? That's very weird because most of my drivers problems are usually solved by updating the Kernel.
    • billyjobob 6y ago
      I’ve tried several distros and every updated kernel up to 5.9. No distro works if it has a kernel newer than 5.6.
• craftinator 6y ago
  About ten years ago, I thought to myself, "Man, if I just reallocated all the time I spend fighting against Windows towards learning and customizing a Linux install, I'd have both a functioning OS, and an OS that I actually like!". I haven't looked back. It used to take work and knowledge to use Linux as a daily driver, like you would Windows. But Linux has matured, and now all of the things you expect to work just do work. And, aside from doing any .NET projects, EVERY programming endeavor I've worked on in Linux has been an absolute breeze. 98% of the time, everything I need is just an "apt install" away, configures correctly, and runs correctly. There is no reason for Windows to exist anymore.
• LeCow 6y ago
  Bash is more intuitive than powershell, not saying powershell is bad. It's just a might beast. But nix has vi, native package managers and doesn't need a GUI most of the time. Saying that, I don't mind hyper-v and it's VBS technology. If you need to run a business use Windows, if you need to host infrastructure or run an app...use nix.
• quyleanh 6y ago
  Windows as primary OS with WSL is perfect fit for my work. I hope WSL will be better in the future. May be someday people will not compare Windows and Linux when they have WSL on Windows machine.
• GekkePrutser 6y ago
  > "Linux is more flexible and customizable." > "Linux gives you more control over your computer." > Stop it. I think the above reasons explain this better rather than the deep dive the article tries to accomplish. We're talking about preferences here. If I prefer Linux I don't need an explanation. Personally I like the lesser restrictions (Both Windows and Mac are locking down more and more) and the higher customisation it offers. But the thing about preferences is that they are largely a feeling. Therefore reasons don't have to be concise or defined scientifically. One example: I hate the way Windows 10 forces me to update whenever it wants, and doesn't allow me to turn off telemetry. Neither of those things will actually affect me very much: I would usually update within the required timeframe anyway and the telemetry is minimal. However it is the feeling of increased corporate control over my machine, in a time where corporate surveillance is already rampant that makes me hate this. So objectively these arguments are hardly valid but still I feel better moving to Linux (or rather: FreeBSD) as a daily driver. That's ok as it is my preference :) PS: I use pretty much all platforms every day for various reasons
• homerhomer 6y ago
  I use both and prefer Linux. In order for me to stand Windows I have to run these two programs to remove all the crap. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://gist.github.com/telamon/85fbfb0caa482786483bd2b8d3fc838e https://gist.github.com/telamon/85fbfb0caa482786483bd2b8d3fc...
• mherrmann 6y ago
  20y on Windows, 2y on Mac, 2y on Linux: Linux is sometimes painful, but beats the alternatives. Pros: Customizability, speed, MS/Apple can't dictate what's on my PC. Cons: Wifi issues, screen tearing, time spent configuring.
  • joelthelion 6y ago
    Screen tearing is a thing of the past with Wayland. Granted, not everyone can use it yet.
• Nginx487 6y ago
  "Most people use Windows on the desktop because it's the default" That's just a stereotype, and that's not true. I keep using Windows (hardened and almost isolated Parallels instance of Windows 7), because Linux has serious lack of software I need. I need fully functional MS Office, including API bindings for data import to Excel, and no, Libre Office Calc does not have even 20% of features I need. Of course, I need 3rd party addons, like Grammarly for MS Office. I need Enterprise Architect, modeling software of that class simply does not exist on Linux. I need Photoshop (I have one since old good times when Adobe offered lifetime license), I use it occasionally and not 100% effective, but nope, there are no functional open-source alternatives for Linux with the same comfort of use. People don't use Linux not because it is not pre-installed, they don't use it because it's a totally foreign ecosystem. Doing a fully functional ports of software people use under Windows would've probably moved 1% share of Linux on desktops, but it does not happen, partly because open-sourse software designers do not recognize the problem, partly because it's an immense amount of work, impossible without huge financial and human investments with unclear outcome. I don't even say about technical issues, like total lack of backward compatibility, it's mostly a headache for techies like us.
  • keutoi 6y ago
    It is a stereotype, but the statement itself is not an exaggeration. An average user has most of the software he needs even in linux. It is not foreign to the user if it is the first one (if it is default) he/she encounters.
    • Nginx487 6y ago
      "Average" user must have used very limited amount of software. I agree, not everyone need software for modeling or design, but again, looking at Grammarly, which is pretty useful addon, and it's only available for MS Office. "Average user" may start from Libre Office, but end up disappointed, why addon developers don't care about him. And they don't care (well, maybe just deeply concerned), because investing 20-30% of the whole development time for supporting 1% of user base is financially pointless idea.
• aldanor 6y ago
  For some user categories, Linux is simply not a choice, whether you like it or not. E.g., for musicians. There's Reaper/Bitwig, but you no longer have Live/Cubase/Logic/etc. Your multi-$k audio interface no longer works because its proprietary drivers only work on macos/win too. None of the hundreds of plugins you have work on Linux either. So it's between win/macos most of the time and the choice there is obvious.
  • singingfish 6y ago
    I have a couple of linux workstations, and currently a Carbon X1 laptop (switched from a macbook air a few weeks ago). On linux reaper works fine with zero config with my steinberg audio interface, and a 2 input behringer mini audio interface as well. The only thing stopping me from installing debian on my thinkpad is the difficulty with connecting MIDI devices in Reaper, and maybe that the VST setup needs messing with WINE. Other than that, the linux experience is vastly superior and lower friction for me. WST makes using windows at all viable for me. It's much nicer than when I looked at running windows last which was admittedly > 15 years ago.
• TsomArp 6y ago
  Interesting article. I personally think that some of the advantages are easily solvable, like the remote thing. From my point of view, case sensitivity in filenames is not an advantage but a disadvantage. Why would I want to have "presentation to management.ppt" and "Presentation to management.ppt"? Same for some of the restrictions in file names. I never found any problem. Maybe it is because I write in english and spanish.
• trinovantes 6y ago
  Ever since I've installed WSL a few months ago, I've stopped booting into my Linux partition out of laziness. Last week I booted into Linux to access an old project and the UX felt like an uncanny valley. I suspect it might be due to Windows/Linux having different mouse acceleration formulas which is pretty noticeable when I try moving across 3x 1440p monitors. Now that Windows dev experience (for me) is almost comparable to Linux and will continue to improve, I don't see much reason to switch back to Linux. Of course that's not to say I don't have any complaints for Windows. For example file names are not case sensitive and it drives me crazy when I need to change a file name's casing.
• GrumpyNl 6y ago
  Linux, it just doesnt work straight from the box. To even install the most basic thing like wifi is a long search through Google and trial and error. Still doesnt work properly by the way. By any advice you find online, oh doesnt it work, try sudo in front of the command.
• lta 6y ago
  > Unless you're obsessed with downloading software illegally, it's not an issue in Windows either. I don't remember the last time I had to deal with malware for my +20 of friends using it. I can't remember the last time I touched one of my friend's computer without seeing any kind of suspicious search bar or fishy "helper" installed. I'm pretty sure this counts as malware.
• majkinetor 6y ago
  There are many factual errors in the text (config files, chocolatey not having moderation or that its worse then linux repos (its much better and more up to date then majority, even Arch), etc.). Most others are not a benefit, just preference. Many are simply omitted where Windows is better (such as MUCH more software, easy of use - for example no automatic mounting on many linux distros of usb drives by default in 2020 is simply insane, much better support all around from vendors, just to mention some). Some basic and most important stuff are not there, such as difference between Windows and Linux process or difference between PowerShell and Bash. Some thing are not very comparable but still involve performance differences (for example Windows role based security vs very limited linux default g/u/o security) TLDR, another linux-is-better-then-windows article that is poorly done, although it pretends its not, by giving tones of references mostly for irrelevant stuff and talking about technological decisions that have almost 0 relevance for most of the people (importance of having API calls in unicode 16 vs 8 to end user is less then 0) Lets be honest - there is 0 technical benefit regarding what OS you use today, the only difference is: 1. Windows costs money 2. Community Unless you use thousands of containers point 1 is negliable for most services especially on Windows 10 which you can run perpetually in trial mode. Point 2. is not however, on linux open source mindeset and hacking culture is favored which is something that is for me personally much better (although I still use Windows as my main OS). Windows community just started to go along in that direction, but it will probalby take another decade to come to the level where Linux is now (if ever).
  • Nkuna 6y ago
    Lets be honest - there is 0 technical benefit regarding what OS you use today Then you're being dishonest. There are many technical reasons to choose Linux over Windows. On mobile so will keep it short. My desktop lacks Hyper-V. I went years thinking I can't run Docker because of this fact. Turns out the PC has no such limitation when running Linux. Years ago, tried using Meteor. It was practically unusable as I kept getting error after error. Multiple roundtrips searching and a ton of Windows-specific GitHub issues later, I gave up on the framework. There are plenty of frameworks and dev tools that are an afterthought for Windows. This, of course, is due to Windows requiring often heavy extras to be compatible whereas Unix systems simply just work. Plenty devs just don't Care that much whether their software runs on Windows. Those that do only consider it months, years even, after releasing for Mac and Linux. Also relevant: MS have released new software or updates to macOS first. That is a testament to how poor their OS is when a vendor fails to release software primarily targeting its OS.
• C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Interesting and detailed, I did notice the similarity's between RT-11 and CPM in my first Job. And I do still vaguely recall RADIX 50
• Havoc 6y ago
  Let me know when I can watch Netflix on it in reasonable resolution. Until then it’ll be mainly a server OS for me
• anonymou2 6y ago
  My home computers have been GNU/Linux exclusively since 2003. Recently I had to install Windows 10 on a computer at work, and was horrified that the thing has advertisements!! Not only that, the level of manipulation to avoid you from just using a local user account (and get an online one instead) is terrible. You get two choices: 1. Get an online Microsoft Account, 2. Miss on all the great user experience! Who wants to be a loser and miss all the great stuff? Hence if I ever needed more reasons to prefer Linux over Windows now I have "to prevent the creators of the software from manipulating me".
• ho_schi 6y ago
  What makes GNOME3 good is it keyboard usability. GNOME is comfortable and fast to be used with the keyboard. For professionals as well as normal people. It is incredible how underestimated the success of GNOME-Shell is outside of ther user base. GNOME made mistakes with GNOME3 and the removed beloved features and many required options. But getting rid of the flawed Desktop-Metaphor and concentrate on usability improved GNOME a lot. And yes, GNOME is also usable with a pointing device. Aside from GNOME. For professional users CLI and TUI usage on the terminal is bless and necessity. What is needed are more developers, testers and companies investing into it. The decline of Nokia and their withdraw from Gtk was a huge setback. Then the lost of Sun. And least Canonical helps now again but - years where lost. Canonicals current improvements are significant. Aside from that. Free software seems to strive always to improve existing solutions when necessary, people see actual problems and want improve them. Within closed-ecosystems this is impossible and you're required to stay within boundaries to survive.
• megous 6y ago
  Ability to read through all of the code that's running on my computer, and understand it all at some level, is what I like a lot. Arguably my desktop is not that complicated (i3wm), so there's not a ton of processes running around. When I find a bug, I can try to fix it myself. When I want an extra feature, I can add it. I did this so many times already, it's ridiculous. From adding support for new HW to the kernel, to patching my postgresql to support my language better, to adding zstd support to qemu qcow2, and hundreds of other small things over the last 15 years or so. This is what's great on GNU/Linux.
• pongo1231 6y ago
  Linux works pretty fine now for me, but I did (and still have to) put up a fight with it to actually work properly. Just recently kwin started freezing occasionally when starting up KDE with the logs mentioning absolutely nothing related to that. I've tried several solutions I found through research but the issue still remains. Even restarting kwin won't solve the problem and I have to resort to rebooting to hope it fixes itself. Quite annoying. Also occasionally my nvidia dGPU (with power management enabled) just doesn't power itself off even if its not being used by any process. I've once again played around with all kinds of parameters and configs without any luck. I'm aware it's an experimental feature but it's still a major issue for me since its the difference between 6 and 3 hours of battery life. On top of that for some reason all of my games randomly decide to drop down to very low framerates while barely utilizing my CPU and GPU. It's nothing to do with my temps or either CPU or GPU throttling down (they're still at their max clock speeds), there's nothing in the background using any kind of significant amount of system resources and the niceness / ioprio of my game's process is set high enough so some random process going rogue shouldn't affect game performance too much. These are just some examples of random problems I'm facing regularily and it's just frustrating having to tinker around (sometimes for days) to (hopefully) fix them. Which is a shame since I'm really enjoying my Linux install.
• IanSanders 6y ago
  I don't get why it's either one or the other; nothing will tick all the boxes. Just run both side-by-side
• lmilcin 6y ago
  I have been using both Linux and Windows for the past 25 years having both Linux and Windows machine as my primary machine for varying lengths of time and for various reasons. I currently use Linux as my primary machine on both my PC where I do remote work and on my Thinkpad which is serving as backup and mobile workspace. The Windows is on a company-issued laptop that I do not use at all and in a VM which is dedicated solely for carrying the invasive stuff that monitors my every keystroke and executed application that my company thinks is good idea to have on my private machine to protect company interests. Hopefully, they never learn to figure out they are running this in a VM. When I use Windows as my desktop I feel powerless. If something breaks, there is no recourse other than trying stuff I read on the Internet. On Linux I can automate pretty much everything and pretty much everything is open to me and the only thing that limits me is how much time I am comfortable spending on solving my issue. I hate that Windows does things on my own machine that I am not able to stop or audit. Should I resign myself to giving away my privacy to another company? I think not. I hate that I am absolutely unable to create an environment on Windows that will still work, without maintenance, in months or years. I do electronics design and embedded development in my free time and I just can't be spending time figuring out what changed in my environment every time I go back to modify code for some gadget I did a year or five ago. On Linux, I just create a VM for every single project, set up my toolchain, turn off any automated updates and then back up the entire image to unfreeze it when I need it. I find it funny, that Linux had an app store with huge selection of free, powerful application, ready for immediate installation and use, and Microsoft required decades and Apple and Google to finally figure it out and still fail to make it usable. I like the fact that I can bring in seconds a piece of software to be immediately available to me without having to find the installation package, worry about custody of the source of the package or that it might be doing some malicious thing to my PC, worry about how it will pollute and slow down my machine even if it is installed, and so on. I do work on my PC, maintaining it is not my full time job. I still work on Debian Unstable that I installed ca 2001 which I successfully maintained over the years. The first PC that it worked on had Duron 600 on it (does anybody still remember it?) and 20GB of disk space which was quite a lot at the time. If everything goes well it will see another AMD CPU next year when it becames available next year. I just can't imagine doing the same with Windows. All Windows desktops I had required full re-install after couple of years of use. It was true in the past that you had to use Windows to use any serious tools. That is no longer the case, most of the time. You can even play games (Steam works though not all games are designed to play on Linux). The tools that don't work on Linux are no longer enough to force me to misery of working on a Windows desktop as my primary one. Granted, Linux is not fun either. The Gnome is buggy as hell, has trouble with 2 4k monitors. The Nvidia drivers aren't nearly as stable as on Windows and Chrome experiences issues every time I wake up my machine from suspend. The machine sometimes locks and I did not have time to debug it and I just need to press reboot button. Still, beats Windows.
• deleted 6y ago
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• torgian 6y ago
  I actually have Linux as my main work OS ( Linux mint ) and have been enjoying it. It’s user friendly enough to get started and if you can read instructions, not that difficult to install software ( even when some may be more difficult than others... Docker on Mint, for example ). I actually prefer it to Mac, but there are some programs that I just can’t use on Linux. And I now use Windows as my gaming OS. So while I wish I could do everything on Linux, I’m happy to switch as needed. Linux is my home work station, Mac for the cafe and some other things, and Windows for everything else.
• cgtyoder 6y ago
  I had to LOL a tiny bit when I opened up the webpage and found the actual name of the article is Objective reasons to prefer Linux to Windows. I wonder why that word got left out of the HN title submission... :^)
• minton 6y ago
  I think part of the issue with Linux for a casual user can be perfectly illustrated in this HN thread. The comments are filled with endless recommendations for different packages that do the same thing. Choice is great and part of the Linux charm, but for the average user keeping up with it all is overwhelming and simply not worth it.
• MrDresden 6y ago
  Who cares which is better. If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better. Also can we just stop this endless bickering over irrelevant things like this. I say this as a Linux user for a little over a decade, and someone who can not tolerate using Windows with its extreme need for bad system gui to be able to achieve anything, and lack of the software suites I have gotten used to. You do you, and I will do me. /edit: I am mostly talking to the comments here, not the document as I find it refreshingly non judgmental in its analysis of pros and cons.
  • sgtnasty 6y ago
    I get what you are saying and agree. However the reason these types of articles appear in the internet is because the linux desktop needs more market share. More means the ability to get better support from other organizations OR to get open source replacements of apps and drivers. Linux needs better market share to get better, so you get stuff like this posted.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      > However the reason these types of articles appear in the internet is because the linux desktop needs more market share Then Linux Desktop people should actually try to address the reasons people say they are staying on Windows/MacOS. I have been watching this show now for 20 years and very little has changed. Linux Desktop evangelists keep telling people they should use Linux Desktop, and keep get told by potential users why they aren't using Linux Desktop, then they ignore it. Linux Desktop evangelists have tied Linux to their identity in such a way that they interpret any criticism as a personal attack and defend themselves with the same tired old stock arguments. These types of articles appeal to the Linux Desktop evangelist because they soothe them.
  • craftinator 6y ago
    > If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better. On a personal level, I completely agree with this sentiment. If grandma wants to use windows, macOS, or whatever, she should do so! When a Windows update fails halfway through and can't boot to Windows, or when macOS can't connect to it's all powerful binary validation server and her system becomes unusable, she's going to call me. Okay, fine, I'll play tech support for my relatives because they've chosen to use an unstable system. Same as if my junker car broke down, I'd call my uncle, because he's a mechanic, and he'd berate me for not having a reliable car, then fix it. What's family for. However, my workplace is Windows only. I've wasted literally hundreds of hours fighting against Windows to make firewall and server settings correct (and fixed them again when it updates and borks the settings) for network applications that I've wrote. Something that would take about an hour to write a bash script for, push it to all the computers if they were Linux, and they'd never ever fail after that. It's just mind boggling that people accept this kind of behavior, and it's very damaging in the workplace. So I'm gonna keep pushing for Linux as standard at the workplace, and run whatever you want at home.
• Fumtumi 6y ago
  Impressive that this whole list doesn't matter really on a day to day basis. My chrome, lightroom and games (a lot) work very well on my windows desktop. On my nas, freebsd is doing a great job. My servers? Ubuntu doing what it does best. MacOS on my work laptop; Also not bad.
• GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  The article is too pedantic to the point of impracticality. Objective reason to live 200m underwater: there is no polluted air there.
• jjice 6y ago
  I've been full time Linux for about a year now, and prior to that I relied heavily on WSL. I'm very happy. I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows on my main machine (Windows for games), but I haven't booted into Windows for over three months (busy semester is mostly the reason). My laptop is full time Linux and I wouldn't have it any other way. As a developer, Linux is everything I could want, and I really want desktop Linux to continue to gain traction. While DEs like GNOME (which I use) and KDE look and feel modern and come with some great software out of the box, I still run into issues on occasion. The desktop environment is where Linux begins to fall short in my experience. Windows and MacOS have the advantage of having a single "DE" to worry about, where as Linux offers a variety which are independently developed. That's awesome, but when I run into a bug once a week, it really sucks. I can fix the problem no issue, but it makes me hesitant to recommend GNOME to a friend to relative. Granted, this can be because I'm using a 4K display with a new version of GNOME. I haven't used KDE or XFCE recently, so maybe they take care of these a lot better. If they are significantly better, please, let me know. I'd love a good out of the box desktop experience on Linux.
• delvincasper 6y ago
  I also switched to Linux after using Windows for 10 years https://medium.com/swlh/why-i-switched-to-linux-after-using-windows-for-10-years-247de78058ef https://medium.com/swlh/why-i-switched-to-linux-after-using-...
• bariumbitmap 6y ago
  Hi everyone, original author of the document here. I was confused about why there were so many new Github issues filed, and sure enough I did a search on Hacker News and found it posted here. This was inspired by my annoyance with the prevailing tenor of Windows vs. Linux comparisons at the time, which consisted largely of unsupported generalizations like "Linux is about choice" or undecidable debates like whether the GIMP was an acceptable replacement for Adobe Photoshop, or if LibreOffice was a good enough Microsoft Office. I wanted to go in a different direction and examine how technical design decisions in the kernels affected everyday use, which is why there's so much time spent on filenames. Ultimately, though, it's just a highly selective overview of the operating systems at the time, with a few historical asides. (I'm particularly proud of digging up the part about case-insensitive filenames using less RAM in the DEC SIXBIT encoding.) I haven't updated it significantly since 2014, so it is probably out of date in spots. However, much of it is still holds true today. I continue to use both Linux and Windows on a daily basis, and I still occasionally run into the same old problems with path lengths, filename restrictions, and file locking semantics.
• skee0083 6y ago
  0
• qualterz 6y ago
  At least because Linux and GNU software is open source. Using GNU/Linux, you own your device, but using Windows, Microsoft own your device. So if you value your freedom, then this reason is enough for you
• sitzkrieg 6y ago
  its very amusing to me to see people say "its great it just works!" and in the same breath explain in detail all of the intricacies they had to go through to get basic stuff to work. i use linux on a desktop every day but cannot even after trying for many years, develop blinders for all of the shitty parts
• deleted 6y ago
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• hvasilev 6y ago
  It is one of these discussions that simple don't matter. Firstly Linux can be an optimal answer to certain problems and also curiosity can give you different perspective. However the issue is that smart people in certain parts of this in industry constantly fall for these ideological traps that imply paths to glory, while actually they propose tradeoffs, at best. In reality these are just choices that have marginal impact for the vast majority of people and projects. These types of discussions really crumble on themselves when you ask the correct questions like: "Is it the best way to spend my time as a developer in order to improve myself" or the blatant "Will using Linux on its own bring me closer to becoming a tech billioire"? Spend your time well, people. Solve real issues, have real impact.
• account42 6y ago
  > In principle, UTF-16 would have the advantage of constant time addressing of single characters, but in practice most programming languages do not provide data types for this, with the exception of Go and rust. No it wouldn't - UTF-16 is a variable-length encoding of Unicode codepoints just like UTF-8. Not to mention that what most normal people think of as "characters", i.e. grapheme clusters, are variable length even with UTF-32.
• lionkor 6y ago
  To me personally, the biggest benefit is that I own the system and everything on it. If MS decides to end support for whatever you're using, you're fucked. If Apple decides your hardware isnt supported any longer, or that you cant use your system without an update that makes your old apps incompatible, you're fucked. If you're using a product, you rely on it not having its end of life before you stop using it, but you can't actually trust that, and we all know that. You know that, once you're in the MS ecosystem, you are at the mercy at whatever business decision they make for their products. If they decide to force you to pay for something that was free before, or decide that they are going to lock a feature behind paywall, the only reasonable thing is to comply. Now, you might not care, and, hell, you might think the concept of owning your tools is idiotic anyways. To get back to my point though - Linux gives hardware I own a system that I control. The OS I use helps me get done what I want to get done, it doesnt get in my way, it doesnt try to persuade me, trick me, sell me something, or anything like it. I like to pick what file browser I use, which browser I use, which keybinds do what - without the system acting like i'm an idiot with messages like "oh, you must have misclicked, im sure you want to use edge, not this 'firefox' garbage". Do I have to pick which file browser I use? No, and I didn't, I just use the default, because it's good. If the developer of it decides to change it, I dont have to update it, I can use the old one, or use a different one altogether, or change it myself if I have the time. I like Linux because it doesnt treat me like i'm an idiot, it doesnt treat me like i'm a customer, it doesnt actually treat me in any way at all, because unless i interact with it, it doesnt do anything. When I need to write a patch, I open my laptop, and its immediately there. I open my messages, open my editor, pull, write the patch, commit, push, and close it. I didn't get a "didnt do AV scan in the last 2 seconds", i didn't get random programs autostarting, I didn't get news on my login screen, I didn't get programs notifying me that "its now up to date", it doesnt force me to update before i shut it down, and I dont have to look at a bunch of "welcome back" and "we hope your day is going great" and "did you know this random fact about a mountain in asia?" on my login screen. Yet, all of these things happen regularly when I launch my windows machine at work. Yes, they're all small things, but once you're used to your system not nagging you for random shit, you can't help but notice. Yeah
• dusted 6y ago
  I've been using Linux as my daily driver for about 22 years now. It's been great for me all the time, though, I do miss GTK and Gnome before they made it suck. I ran mate for a while, but now I've just given up and run i3. That said, Linux is almost for everyone now, at least if they get someone else to set it up for them. The single biggest problem is that there is still not one document format to rule them all, and most people use PDF (can't be edited) or Microsoft (can't be rendered correctly and have limited support in other programs) formats. For most things, openoffice or libreoffice can get the job done, but for things that need to actually look the same, or where one needs to fill out the "formula" it often falls short, and then we have to resort to a VM with Windows inside it.. Then there's battery life, at least for EVERY laptop I've ever owned, or serviced, Linux requires a fair amount of tweaking, and then it (or some software running on it) still results in a worse-off battery life than a stock install of Windows. That said, there are so many good things about Linux and the tools on it, that it's definitely worth the shortcomings, it's still the best OS for me.
• hi41 6y ago
  Superbly written by OP!