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Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, PopOS, Manjaro/Arch. Spend the time to get acquainted, soon you will see you can do almost everything you need on linux (and more) that y

Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, PopOS, Manjaro/Arch. Spend the time to get acquainted, soon you will see you can do almost everything you need on linux (and more) that you can on Windows/macOS, but with less mental overhead (after you are used to linux, it really is simpler).

SamuelAdams 5y ago
I feel like comments like this gloss over the many UX issues many Linux distros have. For example the file picker. When you open a new file from the web browser (Firefox usually) you navigate to your file and pick it. Now if you open up another file, it forgot your last opened directory and takes you back to your home or default. On windows and Mac I believe it remembers your last directory. Also saving files in Debian is a bit of a pain. I think it keeps searching instead of actually typing the file name when you save a new word doc from libre office or another application. Plus other services, like Netflix and Hulu, may not work out of the box. You’ll have to find a workaround but I think their official stance is still “Linux is not a supported platform”. Don’t get me wrong Linux is great and it’s in a wonderful spot compared to 10 years ago. But it still does not have the polish or UX that users from windows and Mac expect in an operating system.
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  Right but your comment glosses over the many UX issues windows has. For example, virtual desktops are associated with all your screens, not with individual screens. Never had this issue in any linux distro. (I'm all ears on how to solve that file picker problem though, that is mildly annoying).
  - forgotpwd16 5y ago
    >I'm all ears on how to solve that file picker problem though Use the for long time available patch for GTK file chooser, use an XDG portal to open KDE file chooser instead of the GTK one, or use a Qt-based (KDE or Deepin) rather a GTK-based environment. And for any interested programmers, a maintainer recently has outlined some steps[0] to introduce that functionality in a way that probably GNOME devs will accept. [0]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233#note_1106706 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233#note_1106706
    - LAC-Tech 5y ago
      GTK! I should have known that was the culprit. Remember gtk2 when there was a bunch of great apps that just worked? I remember :( Next time I'm on a graphical linux system I'll muck around with XDG to get PCManFM or whatever as default. Thanks.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  I find that compared to the the UX issues of Windows it is fantastic. Obviously this varies from person to person but I have verified already a more than a decade ago that it worked very well with ordinary users as long as they didn't need MS Office or anything like it. And true: Netflix doesn't work but for that I use my phone/tablet that I cast to my TV. You may say: not everyone has a PC and a phone but as far as I can see the overwhelming majority who has a PC also seems to have a smartphone.
  - advael 5y ago
    The netflix complaint is a pretty confusing one. The last time I used windows was back when Netflix was a DVD rental service, and while there was a time when you had to go get Google Chrome to stream via Netflix on linux, even that hasn't been the case for quite a long time. I swear half the people in these threads tried like one distro ten years ago, ran into one issue, and sees this as a knockdown argument that normal computer users can't tolerate a single learning curve. Meanwhile, any time some acquaintance tries to do a simple task they've never done before on the OS they claim is easy to use (whether this be windows or macOS), it ends up being a huge hassle anyway, and sometimes there is simply no solution to the problem they want to solve Like, yes, most things have a learning curve. I have yet to encounter any evidence that Windows having a particularly easy one for anything is more than propaganda
  - leppr 5y ago
    Netflix works fine on Linux. Either enable DRM on Firefox, or install Google Chrome, then use your browser of choice to access https://netflix.com https://netflix.com.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      Netflix works fine in Firefox. Nothing to install. I've got rid of my Netflix account; between Sky, Youtube and Freesat, there's more stuff to watch than I have time in the day.
      - leppr 5y ago
- chme 5y ago
  Regarding file-picker dialogs. I always found the most annoying dialog was actually with Windows: The folder chooser. You only have a directory file tree, that is often not in the right directory, where the application was launched from. No really way to directly jump to a directory via a path, that you copied from a open Explorer, which you might have open next to it, because you started the .exe from there. So you have to click your way through.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    The default Windows file-picker has let you paste in a path for decades. The address bar at the top can let you paste in a path and the "File name:" prompt at the bottom supports several different kinds of paths.
    - chme 5y ago
      I don't mean the file-picker, but the folder-picker (FolderBrowserDialog). That one: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/desktop/sidebar/images/reference/choosefolder.png https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/d...
mkr-hn 5y ago
None of the tools I use run in any of the Windows compatibility gadgets for Linux. The open source options are probably great if you can't access the good proprietary tools, but they're not remotely close. Some of them I used extensively before switching, so I speak from experience.
xtracto 5y ago
I use Linux in my main PC, both to work on programming and to play games. I've been familiar with Linux and using it on an off for more th as n 15 years. Nevertheless, my days of advocating for others to use it are over (I even used to frequent comp.linux.advocacy!). People that are used to Windows will have a very hard time moving away of it. No matter how easy the migration path, there will always be something painful. The path of least resistance will always be running Windows. And in addition even the most polished Linux versions have issues. I've run them all. They are nice, but once you get into an obscure singular case, the console dance start. Wifi, sound, bluethoot, video, media-keyboard or mouse, fingerprint reader. There's always something. We People who have been using linux for years are already used to it: google for a couple of minutes, open the terminal and copy/paste a bunch of commands. Sometimes it works, other times we compromise by not using that feature that doesn't work. For people used to Windows this is very painful.
- xtracto 5y ago
  Just as an example of something that happened to me just today: I wanted to connect 2 monitors to my linux Home PC: 1 in the Nvidia GPU HDMI and another one in the integrated Intel HDMI. It doesn't work out of the box, and it is apparently not possible, at least not without thinkering with the BIOS and some config files (and the main response returned by google https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=265946 https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=265946 doesn't work). So yeah, I can imagine how people coming from windows might be frustrated with that.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    Meanwhile on Windows, the setup for that is: * Plug in monitor 1 * Plug in monitor 2
vel0city 5y ago
I use a Microsoft account so I can use the same account across my multiple desktops, my laptop, my wife's surface, and several different friend's PC's as well. We do our file permissions on our network storage based on our Microsoft accounts so it's super easy to grant/revoke permissions to things and have that work globally for us. On Windows, this is all free (not a single second of additional setup) with a Microsoft account. What instant thing would do the same for me in Linux?

SamuelAdams 5y ago

I feel like comments like this gloss over the many UX issues many Linux distros have. For example the file picker. When you open a new file from the web browser (Firefox usually) you navigate to your file and pick it. Now if you open up another file, it forgot your last opened directory and takes you back to your home or default. On windows and Mac I believe it remembers your last directory. Also saving files in Debian is a bit of a pain. I think it keeps searching instead of actually typing the file name when you save a new word doc from libre office or another application. Plus other services, like Netflix and Hulu, may not work out of the box. You’ll have to find a workaround but I think their official stance is still “Linux is not a supported platform”. Don’t get me wrong Linux is great and it’s in a wonderful spot compared to 10 years ago. But it still does not have the polish or UX that users from windows and Mac expect in an operating system.

LAC-Tech 5y ago
Right but your comment glosses over the many UX issues windows has. For example, virtual desktops are associated with all your screens, not with individual screens. Never had this issue in any linux distro. (I'm all ears on how to solve that file picker problem though, that is mildly annoying).
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  >I'm all ears on how to solve that file picker problem though Use the for long time available patch for GTK file chooser, use an XDG portal to open KDE file chooser instead of the GTK one, or use a Qt-based (KDE or Deepin) rather a GTK-based environment. And for any interested programmers, a maintainer recently has outlined some steps[0] to introduce that functionality in a way that probably GNOME devs will accept. [0]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233#note_1106706 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233#note_1106706
  - LAC-Tech 5y ago
    GTK! I should have known that was the culprit. Remember gtk2 when there was a bunch of great apps that just worked? I remember :( Next time I'm on a graphical linux system I'll muck around with XDG to get PCManFM or whatever as default. Thanks.
skinkestek 5y ago
I find that compared to the the UX issues of Windows it is fantastic. Obviously this varies from person to person but I have verified already a more than a decade ago that it worked very well with ordinary users as long as they didn't need MS Office or anything like it. And true: Netflix doesn't work but for that I use my phone/tablet that I cast to my TV. You may say: not everyone has a PC and a phone but as far as I can see the overwhelming majority who has a PC also seems to have a smartphone.
- advael 5y ago
  The netflix complaint is a pretty confusing one. The last time I used windows was back when Netflix was a DVD rental service, and while there was a time when you had to go get Google Chrome to stream via Netflix on linux, even that hasn't been the case for quite a long time. I swear half the people in these threads tried like one distro ten years ago, ran into one issue, and sees this as a knockdown argument that normal computer users can't tolerate a single learning curve. Meanwhile, any time some acquaintance tries to do a simple task they've never done before on the OS they claim is easy to use (whether this be windows or macOS), it ends up being a huge hassle anyway, and sometimes there is simply no solution to the problem they want to solve Like, yes, most things have a learning curve. I have yet to encounter any evidence that Windows having a particularly easy one for anything is more than propaganda
- leppr 5y ago
  Netflix works fine on Linux. Either enable DRM on Firefox, or install Google Chrome, then use your browser of choice to access https://netflix.com https://netflix.com.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Netflix works fine in Firefox. Nothing to install. I've got rid of my Netflix account; between Sky, Youtube and Freesat, there's more stuff to watch than I have time in the day.
    - leppr 5y ago
chme 5y ago
Regarding file-picker dialogs. I always found the most annoying dialog was actually with Windows: The folder chooser. You only have a directory file tree, that is often not in the right directory, where the application was launched from. No really way to directly jump to a directory via a path, that you copied from a open Explorer, which you might have open next to it, because you started the .exe from there. So you have to click your way through.
- vel0city 5y ago
  The default Windows file-picker has let you paste in a path for decades. The address bar at the top can let you paste in a path and the "File name:" prompt at the bottom supports several different kinds of paths.
  - chme 5y ago
    I don't mean the file-picker, but the folder-picker (FolderBrowserDialog). That one: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/desktop/sidebar/images/reference/choosefolder.png https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/d...

mkr-hn 5y ago

None of the tools I use run in any of the Windows compatibility gadgets for Linux. The open source options are probably great if you can't access the good proprietary tools, but they're not remotely close. Some of them I used extensively before switching, so I speak from experience.

xtracto 5y ago

I use Linux in my main PC, both to work on programming and to play games. I've been familiar with Linux and using it on an off for more th as n 15 years. Nevertheless, my days of advocating for others to use it are over (I even used to frequent comp.linux.advocacy!). People that are used to Windows will have a very hard time moving away of it. No matter how easy the migration path, there will always be something painful. The path of least resistance will always be running Windows. And in addition even the most polished Linux versions have issues. I've run them all. They are nice, but once you get into an obscure singular case, the console dance start. Wifi, sound, bluethoot, video, media-keyboard or mouse, fingerprint reader. There's always something. We People who have been using linux for years are already used to it: google for a couple of minutes, open the terminal and copy/paste a bunch of commands. Sometimes it works, other times we compromise by not using that feature that doesn't work. For people used to Windows this is very painful.

xtracto 5y ago
Just as an example of something that happened to me just today: I wanted to connect 2 monitors to my linux Home PC: 1 in the Nvidia GPU HDMI and another one in the integrated Intel HDMI. It doesn't work out of the box, and it is apparently not possible, at least not without thinkering with the BIOS and some config files (and the main response returned by google https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=265946 https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=265946 doesn't work). So yeah, I can imagine how people coming from windows might be frustrated with that.
- vel0city 5y ago
  Meanwhile on Windows, the setup for that is: * Plug in monitor 1 * Plug in monitor 2

vel0city 5y ago

I use a Microsoft account so I can use the same account across my multiple desktops, my laptop, my wife's surface, and several different friend's PC's as well. We do our file permissions on our network storage based on our Microsoft accounts so it's super easy to grant/revoke permissions to things and have that work globally for us. On Windows, this is all free (not a single second of additional setup) with a Microsoft account. What instant thing would do the same for me in Linux?