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My Journey to Finally Ditching Windows for Good

64 points by podiki 6y ago

p1necone 6y ago
I've almost switched over to Linux full time too (also using Arch like TFA). The one thing keeping my Windows partition around now is World of Warships, everything else I play runs pretty much flawlessly either natively or via proton. It's amazing having actual choice and configuration for my dev workflow again.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- princevegeta89 6y ago
  If that is the only reason, you can boot your Windows off a USB drive for playing your game. https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/ https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    This appears to be a Windows executable. How to do this without an existing Windows installation.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - p1necone 6y ago
      You probably can't, although perhaps it would work through wine?
- G4E 6y ago
  Good news : World of warship works (almost) flawlessly on proton (Valve own Wine version): https://www.protondb.com/app/552990 https://www.protondb.com/app/552990 Nothing garantees that an update won't break the compatibility though.
Animats 6y ago
I've been all on Linux for years now. What's the big deal? You can even run Steam on Linux now, if you want to run games.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  Your school or work requires you to use Windows and you sometimes need to be in a windows environment to do the thing the "real world" does. And I'm not dealing with wine. It's okay at best, tediously frustrating at it's worst. For a personal machine however, Linux has been more than acceptable for the last decade.
  - kgwxd 6y ago
    It can actually be better at best. But yes, tediously frustrating at it's worst.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    My kids all require Chromebooks for school!
- airstrike 6y ago
  Microsoft Excel
  - meowster 6y ago
    Crossover (Wine)
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > You can even run Steam on Linux now, To be fair Steam got massively useful on Linux the day they released Proton. It made the number of games you could play go from a few thousands to something like half of the Steam catalog.
  - webdog 6y ago
    Is there a Linux friendly GPU you recommend? I have a NUC with Ubuntu and 32gb of RAM that I wouldn't mind plugging an eGPU into if it meant I could play my Steam library (I haven't touched Windows for home/gaming about in 4 years)
podiki 6y ago
Author here, happy to answer any questions! Life is good on Linux :-)
Traubenfuchs 6y ago
With WSL2 there was never before LESS reason to switch away from Windows. Some people are happy with the windows ui/ux, believe it or not.
- nickjj 6y ago
  > With WSL2 there was never before LESS reason to switch away from Windows. Yes and no. WSL 2 provides a decent development environment (I've been using WSL 1 and now 2 since it's been available), but there's still much to be desired. Such as not having horrendous file mount performance on Windows mounted drives, not having to worry about WSL 2's VM eating up and not reclaiming your disk space and memory. But let's ignore those things because IMO they will be fixed in due time. Windows is way behind the curve with tiled window managers vs native Linux and while technically you can run VcXsrv and run a tiled window manager through WSL 2, it totally fails on multiple monitors and also requires installing everything within WSL's file system. It just feels like you're battling 2 operating systems. Also from a "just let me use my own computer as I wish" perspective, Windows is still spying on you with telemetry even with basic mode and using Windows Pro and it forces updates on you. This likely will never change and if you lived in a world where you could run everything you wanted on either Windows or Linux, I think most people would probably opt to have the OS that doesn't spy on you and reboot on its own right? IMO native Linux is more than just features vs lack of features. It's a whole mindset shift on how everything works and how you can mold your dev environment to do exactly what you want instead of being forced on what to do by some company. I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware (a video editing tool that runs on Linux). Video editing is the only use case stopping me from switching.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware (a video editing tool that runs on Linux) On what kind of hardware are you right now?
    - nickjj 6y ago
TimTheTinker 6y ago
I, for one, am hoping Microsoft inverts WSL and releases their own Linux distro based on Debian, maybe with a proprietary Windows compatibility layer called "LSW" with a virtualized NT kernel hosted in KVM. How about call it "Windows X"? If something like that were available on ARM (even without the baked-in NT support), I'd probably switch from macOS, or at least buy another computer to use MS Linux for my development work. MacOS is less and less appealing for web development these days, but I'm not switching to any NT-based Windows.
- depressedpanda 6y ago
  What is it that makes web dev less appealing on MacOS?
  - TimTheTinker 6y ago
    A few things: - Docker on macOS is an absolute performance dog when you get above about 8 containers running simultaneously. I finally gave up and set up a Linux VM via Parallels. Now my battery lasts at least twice as long during local development. - Cloud deployment targets (including serverless) are almost always running Linux, so running/debugging on the Mac is less accurate (unless you're using Docker, but performance is bad). - Homebrew is great and all, but Ubuntu is a more important compile/release target for most open-source packages. Now for front-end development, I still prefer the Mac for a few reasons, especially the quality of the screen, trackpad, and the Quartz display-PDF window manager. If design work is necessary, some of the best tools are on the Mac. Maybe a Linux VM in Parallels on macOS is the best solution for now, but you can see why I'd prefer a Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) Linux OS if I could have that with a great screen, trackpad, display-PDF window manager, and graphics/design software.
    - depressedpanda 6y ago
      Thanks for the summary. I do web dev on Linux on a Thinkpad X1 but it seems I'm clearly in a minority there -- which I think is a bit weird since Apple is so obviously anti-web. For me, it's a great experience; maybe you should try it? ;)
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
For a long time I kept 1 windows machine around for video games. Proton had been out but I didnt need to change. Then I started getting BSODs far too often. Reinstalling windows didnt fix the bsods. Didnt seem to be hardware. I decided screw it and go linux. Never had any crashing after that. I had to give up a couple games that still didnt work with proton. Then I had a daughter and LOL time for gaming? LOL

64 points by podiki 6y ago

I've almost switched over to Linux full time too (also using Arch like TFA). The one thing keeping my Windows partition around now is World of Warships, everything else I play runs pretty much flawlessly either natively or via proton. It's amazing having actual choice and configuration for my dev workflow again.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
princevegeta89 6y ago
If that is the only reason, you can boot your Windows off a USB drive for playing your game. https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/ https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  This appears to be a Windows executable. How to do this without an existing Windows installation.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - p1necone 6y ago
    You probably can't, although perhaps it would work through wine?
G4E 6y ago
Good news : World of warship works (almost) flawlessly on proton (Valve own Wine version): https://www.protondb.com/app/552990 https://www.protondb.com/app/552990 Nothing garantees that an update won't break the compatibility though.

Animats 6y ago

I've been all on Linux for years now. What's the big deal? You can even run Steam on Linux now, if you want to run games.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Your school or work requires you to use Windows and you sometimes need to be in a windows environment to do the thing the "real world" does. And I'm not dealing with wine. It's okay at best, tediously frustrating at it's worst. For a personal machine however, Linux has been more than acceptable for the last decade.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  It can actually be better at best. But yes, tediously frustrating at it's worst.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  My kids all require Chromebooks for school!
airstrike 6y ago
Microsoft Excel
- meowster 6y ago
  Crossover (Wine)
ekianjo 6y ago
> You can even run Steam on Linux now, To be fair Steam got massively useful on Linux the day they released Proton. It made the number of games you could play go from a few thousands to something like half of the Steam catalog.
- webdog 6y ago
  Is there a Linux friendly GPU you recommend? I have a NUC with Ubuntu and 32gb of RAM that I wouldn't mind plugging an eGPU into if it meant I could play my Steam library (I haven't touched Windows for home/gaming about in 4 years)

podiki 6y ago

Author here, happy to answer any questions! Life is good on Linux :-)

Traubenfuchs 6y ago

With WSL2 there was never before LESS reason to switch away from Windows. Some people are happy with the windows ui/ux, believe it or not.

nickjj 6y ago
> With WSL2 there was never before LESS reason to switch away from Windows. Yes and no. WSL 2 provides a decent development environment (I've been using WSL 1 and now 2 since it's been available), but there's still much to be desired. Such as not having horrendous file mount performance on Windows mounted drives, not having to worry about WSL 2's VM eating up and not reclaiming your disk space and memory. But let's ignore those things because IMO they will be fixed in due time. Windows is way behind the curve with tiled window managers vs native Linux and while technically you can run VcXsrv and run a tiled window manager through WSL 2, it totally fails on multiple monitors and also requires installing everything within WSL's file system. It just feels like you're battling 2 operating systems. Also from a "just let me use my own computer as I wish" perspective, Windows is still spying on you with telemetry even with basic mode and using Windows Pro and it forces updates on you. This likely will never change and if you lived in a world where you could run everything you wanted on either Windows or Linux, I think most people would probably opt to have the OS that doesn't spy on you and reboot on its own right? IMO native Linux is more than just features vs lack of features. It's a whole mindset shift on how everything works and how you can mold your dev environment to do exactly what you want instead of being forced on what to do by some company. I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware (a video editing tool that runs on Linux). Video editing is the only use case stopping me from switching.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware (a video editing tool that runs on Linux) On what kind of hardware are you right now?
  - nickjj 6y ago

TimTheTinker 6y ago

I, for one, am hoping Microsoft inverts WSL and releases their own Linux distro based on Debian, maybe with a proprietary Windows compatibility layer called "LSW" with a virtualized NT kernel hosted in KVM. How about call it "Windows X"? If something like that were available on ARM (even without the baked-in NT support), I'd probably switch from macOS, or at least buy another computer to use MS Linux for my development work. MacOS is less and less appealing for web development these days, but I'm not switching to any NT-based Windows.

depressedpanda 6y ago
What is it that makes web dev less appealing on MacOS?
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  A few things: - Docker on macOS is an absolute performance dog when you get above about 8 containers running simultaneously. I finally gave up and set up a Linux VM via Parallels. Now my battery lasts at least twice as long during local development. - Cloud deployment targets (including serverless) are almost always running Linux, so running/debugging on the Mac is less accurate (unless you're using Docker, but performance is bad). - Homebrew is great and all, but Ubuntu is a more important compile/release target for most open-source packages. Now for front-end development, I still prefer the Mac for a few reasons, especially the quality of the screen, trackpad, and the Quartz display-PDF window manager. If design work is necessary, some of the best tools are on the Mac. Maybe a Linux VM in Parallels on macOS is the best solution for now, but you can see why I'd prefer a Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) Linux OS if I could have that with a great screen, trackpad, display-PDF window manager, and graphics/design software.
  - depressedpanda 6y ago
    Thanks for the summary. I do web dev on Linux on a Thinkpad X1 but it seems I'm clearly in a minority there -- which I think is a bit weird since Apple is so obviously anti-web. For me, it's a great experience; maybe you should try it? ;)

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

For a long time I kept 1 windows machine around for video games. Proton had been out but I didnt need to change. Then I started getting BSODs far too often. Reinstalling windows didnt fix the bsods. Didnt seem to be hardware. I decided screw it and go linux. Never had any crashing after that. I had to give up a couple games that still didnt work with proton. Then I had a daughter and LOL time for gaming? LOL