4 ms·

One thing that Windows and macOS users will never understand about Linux, because they’ve never truly experienced it, is just how viscerally different the Linux

by jchw 6y ago

One thing that Windows and macOS users will never understand about Linux, because they’ve never truly experienced it, is just how viscerally different the Linux experience is depending on your hardware. You don’t really need to go with a vendor like System76, and going with a fan favorite like Lenovo does not guarantee a good experience, but seriously, Linux on a machine that runs it well is just not comparable to a machine that runs it poorly. The only good news is the count of machines that run Linux well increases over time. My Lenovo P51 used to be pretty piss poor, not so much anymore. Anyway, that’s just one point, but still worth noting.

celrod 6y ago
I've been using Linux almost exclusively for many years, and I had to google what screen tearing is after all the comments about it in this thread. I do get people's resistance to switch. I bought a M1 Mac Mini because I wanted to be able to test and optimize code for it, but found the difference in experience jarring enough that I enabled remote desktop and now mostly run code on it through ssh. I'm sure I could configure it to behave more like I'm used to, but, why bother? If things were flipped, and I was that comfortable with the Mac experience while Linux felt alien, I'd probably feel the same way.
- jchw 6y ago
  Screen tearing is typically very difficult to avoid with proprietary NVIDIA, but I have no issues with my AMD setups running Linux. I suspect that is usually the main difference.
  - celrod 6y ago
    Ah. I have AMD GPUs on desktop, and integrated graphics on laptops.
nikanj 6y ago
In my experience, Linux PDF readers suck, and so do email clients. OpenOffice is not as good as Excel / Word. Not sure how changing the hardware would fix this. Most of the Linux complaints that I see are focused on the quality of the applications, not a driver support
- redshirtrob 6y ago
  I've mentioned something similar elsewhere in this thread, but I really don't see why someone would choose Linux if their daily work revolved around marking up PDFs, editing Office documents and sending email. I do these things on occasion (maybe once a quarter). When the time comes I drop the file on a suitable machine, do the work there, and get back to my real job (writing software that runs on Linux). Conversely, if I was still developing iOS software, I would not insist on using a Linux or Microsoft machine. It's just not practical. I get that people think the PDF/Office/Email should be on-par with Apple/Microsoft on Linux...but they're just not. I wish they were too, but I'm not going to spend my time making a Preview quality Linux app. These are objectively hard things to do. Most folks developing for Linux have other priorities.

by jchw 6y ago

celrod 6y ago

I've been using Linux almost exclusively for many years, and I had to google what screen tearing is after all the comments about it in this thread. I do get people's resistance to switch. I bought a M1 Mac Mini because I wanted to be able to test and optimize code for it, but found the difference in experience jarring enough that I enabled remote desktop and now mostly run code on it through ssh. I'm sure I could configure it to behave more like I'm used to, but, why bother? If things were flipped, and I was that comfortable with the Mac experience while Linux felt alien, I'd probably feel the same way.

jchw 6y ago
Screen tearing is typically very difficult to avoid with proprietary NVIDIA, but I have no issues with my AMD setups running Linux. I suspect that is usually the main difference.
- celrod 6y ago
  Ah. I have AMD GPUs on desktop, and integrated graphics on laptops.

nikanj 6y ago

In my experience, Linux PDF readers suck, and so do email clients. OpenOffice is not as good as Excel / Word. Not sure how changing the hardware would fix this. Most of the Linux complaints that I see are focused on the quality of the applications, not a driver support

redshirtrob 6y ago
I've mentioned something similar elsewhere in this thread, but I really don't see why someone would choose Linux if their daily work revolved around marking up PDFs, editing Office documents and sending email. I do these things on occasion (maybe once a quarter). When the time comes I drop the file on a suitable machine, do the work there, and get back to my real job (writing software that runs on Linux). Conversely, if I was still developing iOS software, I would not insist on using a Linux or Microsoft machine. It's just not practical. I get that people think the PDF/Office/Email should be on-par with Apple/Microsoft on Linux...but they're just not. I wish they were too, but I'm not going to spend my time making a Preview quality Linux app. These are objectively hard things to do. Most folks developing for Linux have other priorities.