22 ms·

Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

143 points by jlpcsl 5y ago

trinovantes 5y ago
Every Linux desktop environment I've tried all have unnatural mouse acceleration compared to Windows. Their support for non-uniform sized multi-monitor setups is also pretty awful. With WSL, I don't think I'll ever be using Linux on my PC
Kenji 5y ago
Is that website hosted on a Windows computer?
mad2021 5y ago
...and the intrusive frequent updates as well. Honestly, one of the biggest pain points for me.
bouncycastle 5y ago
Wait a minute... You need a Microsoft account to log into Windows these days? Laughs in Linux
- peakaboo 5y ago
  You also need to give up all your privacy and relax while Microsoft takes care of you....
- chrjxnandns 5y ago
  No you don’t.
- Vindicis 5y ago
  You don't. You can still run local accounts.
  - moreira 5y ago
    Not on Windows 11 Home, from what I understand.
    - thepete2 5y ago
      I believe the option is only shown if you are offline, so you need to disconnect from the internet.
    - chrisandchris 5y ago
      As said in the thread it (currently) works if you do not setup internet until after the installation completes. If you set up internet before, you end up doong a full re-install.
  - peakaboo 5y ago
    Yeah if you disable WiFi which is a very dark pattern and user hostile.
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      last time I installed windows 10 this wasn't required - you just had to figure out which button took you past it. Maybe its changed since
      - pstrateman 5y ago
        It has, you need to disable internet access to have a local account.
        stronglikedan 5y ago
        I'm currently using two laptops, both running Win 10 with local-only accounts, and I've never had to disable internet access to do so.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  You do not have to. But they sure make it a pain to not have that linked.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- petecooper 5y ago
  If you're installing Windows 10 fresh, you can bypass the account login thing more easily if you defer network configuration during setup.
Bostonian 5y ago
I can now run Linux GUIs on Windows under WSL, so with Windows I get access to Windows and Linux software. What is the case for pure Linux?
- thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
  Performance No telemetry No forced upgrades No intrusive ads
  - davrosthedalek 5y ago
    WSL performance is close to bare metal. Telemetry is a problem, yes. Should be at least opt-in. I believe that forced upgrades are a necessity if you have the end-user market penetration of Windows. It's a different thing for servers, and one could argue about the implementation details. I don't see ads on Windows (and I'm on the 11 beta channel).
  - jnsie 5y ago
    I'm out of the loop - are there intrusive ads in the Windows OS? If so, what kind of ads and when/where?
    - thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
      >> are there intrusive ads in the Windows OS? If so, what kind of ads and when/where? https://www.windowslatest.com/2021/05/30/microsoft-edge-nagging-users-with-recommended-browser-settings-alert/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2021/05/30/microsoft-edge-nagg...
    - breakfastduck 5y ago
      Windows 10 has adverts in your start menu by default
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      running windows 11 - no intrusive ads in the windows OS. Not sure what malware these people have on their computer.
anormaluser 5y ago
A lot of software are only developed for Windows though, for example, SolidWorks. But running it in a brower via cloud is another story.
CJefferson 5y ago
I don't disagree with switching to linux, but this isn't a great list. Points 1 & 2 are the same (don't buy a new PC), and quite a few of the rest are fixed as you can run all Linux software in the Linux subsystem for Windows.
- criddell 5y ago
  I always wonder who these people are who pick the OS first and applications second? If you need to run GarageBand, Visual Studio, or Returnal, Linux is not an option.
- jrm4 5y ago
  The fact that those clowns insist on calling it the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" because marketing tells you everything you need to know about whether or not you should invest your time in it.
CaioAlonso 5y ago
As a counterpoint: Reasons to consider NOT switching to Linux https://corn.codeberg.page/notlinux.html https://corn.codeberg.page/notlinux.html
- superasn 5y ago
  My only two reasons would be no Photoshop and fewer games, though it's definitely catching up on both.
  - Synaesthesia 5y ago
    Music making software is really lacking on Linux compared to Windows and Mac.
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    Unfortunately it is not catching up by the way of 1st party support. The compatibility layers are getting pretty good, don't get me wrong. But if to you a computer is just a tool that runs specific programs you need, then you should probably stick with what the software developer recommends you run their software on.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Well he is right. Linux is not for everyone. It's for people who can learn how to double click an icon that looks different from the one in Windows. That excludes probably 50% of Windows users right there.
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    This kind of attitude from linux users is significantly responsible for its lack of wider adoption. Who wants to learn something new when the people you need help from are going to treat you like a moron? We both know its more involved than clicking a different icon.
    - r_c_a_d 5y ago
jimwalsh 5y ago
Until the minute I want to play a video game, or start using some non standard device with my PC. Then it turns into a 3 hour session like I'm back in college again.
fortyseven 5y ago
This "list" is awful. I think we're heading into another Vista/8 cycle. Feels like MS really fucked up with Win11, but the writing has been on the wall for Windows for a while. Unless someone splashes them with cold water and they wake up, I'm staying with Windows 10 until they (artificially) force it. Meanwhile I'll be setting myself up a new future on another drive with a decent Linux distro.
rangerdan 5y ago
I love how #2 is, Linux will "Fight Toxic Waste" because presumably you don't have to buy a "new" computer. It's always hilarious to see individuals trying to make a stand against "bad" environment policies by acting as atomized parts of a whole.
itsbits 5y ago
Aren't these reasons (even if they are convincing) apply to Mac systems as well?
- thepete2 5y ago
  many, but not all of them
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Good point, there are some specific places where Linux really excels over MacOS: - 32-bit app support - Nvidia GPU/CUDA support - Encryption without a question mark at the end - I can hide my topbar (or ostensibly move it wherever I want) - I don't get a popup asking me to try Safari every week
  - davrosthedalek 5y ago
    For some of these, Windows wins against MacOS as well. And I have the impression, every Mac OS release, I have to debug the C++ dev environment of my students. 3 years ago I was praying that a new student had a MAC, because I could get them going easily. Now I'm praying they are on Windows, because WSL+Ubuntu just works. (I'm not praying they have Linux, because that realistically never happens. Would be great though.)
    - wsc981 5y ago
      Everytime Apple upgrades Xcode I am worried something in my development workflow breaks (as has happened many times in the past). Same is true for every major macOS release the last 5 years or so. I’m getting to the point that I consider switching to Linux, but the biggest show stopper for me is my work as iOS dev. Hopefully can move to some other tech in a couple of years so I don’t have to rely on the Apple platform for my income.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        That sounds pretty painful, I've always felt bad for the people who are forced to use xCode as part of their job. I really hope Apple is forced to make cross-platform tooling, because while it's great for lock-in, it makes it really difficult for outsiders to publish cross-platform apps.
jdlyga 5y ago
The real reasons I use Linux are mostly out of convenience. For example, updating all my software and OS using one command rather than clicking on 50 updaters.
- mariusmg 5y ago
  winget upgrade --all
- schmorptron 5y ago
  This is it for me too. On my desktop where I play some windows-only games it makes sense to go with windows because it's less hassle. On my laptop, it's just easier to use ubuntu or fedora than to manage another windows installation and keep it up to date & click through another set of installers for each piece of software.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Linux has its conveniences but I think I definitely spend more times on updates. Some break things and some like Nvidia's drivers can take me ages to actually apply (though with that one the usual trick seems to be to remove --purge nvidia-* first).
  - OneTimePetes 5y ago
    Which is honestly what i never understood, why its not shared on a more "systematic" level beyond stack overflow. A hardware and software config + the goal (print)- and a dialog pops up, offering your solution as a line by line shell script. All this stored in a trustworthy DB and even complex problems could be plug and play on windows. Add a "support" button to finance the whole thing. Voila. Year of the linux desktop.
  - tmalsburg2 5y ago
    > Linux has its conveniences but I think I definitely spend more times on updates. That depends on which distro and hardware you're using. I use laptops that are known to work well with Linux and Ubuntu LTS releases. This way, I spend perhaps 3-5h a year on admin tasks and it's mostly easy stuff. It's actually amazing how GNU/Linux allowed me to gradually transition from configuring everything (when I was a student: XFree86, custom kernels, ...) to using GNU/Linux productively with almost zero housekeeping effort.
consumer451 5y ago
I just went back after 3 years of Ubuntu. Admittedly I am a dilettante but I never did anything very "hacky" and still ended up with a broken upgrade path, twice. I can't have this in a work desktop machine. My employer gives zero f's about my privacy concerns.
- vinceguidry 5y ago
  This is why I moved to Arch. Debian rolling release is a good way to go as well.
  - jeremyjh 5y ago
    After using Arch for years every other package manager enrages me because it is so hard to rollback/undo bad changes or to pin versions. I use MacOS for reasons but I still miss pacman :(
    - ryukafalz 5y ago
      You might like Nix or Guix. It's even easier to roll back bad changes there!
    - vinceguidry 5y ago
      My employer foists MacOS on me, I'm undeterred. VMware is worth the hassle.
  - throwawayninja 5y ago
    I love Arch, and have always considered Debian + debian derivatives to be subpar because of packages + community issues. I need to go check out Debian rolling, never knew that existed. Could be a useful hybrid for coworkers who believe rolling releases break things often.
- moritonal 5y ago
  For what it's worth, I found Kubuntu to be a much simpler and cleaner alternative to Ubuntu.
- 5y ago
DeathArrow 5y ago
And 2022 will be the year of the Linux desktop™.
- jjice 5y ago
  And <?php echo date("Y") + 1 ?> will be the year of the Linux desktop™.
bregma 5y ago
I never switched from Linux to Windows. Why would I want to?
- jjice 5y ago
  Games would've been the big one, but that reason is disappearing pretty quickly. Proton is pretty incredible, and I believe there's been a recent development to allow games that use anti-cheat to work in the near future. More people on Linux for games means more attention to the Linux desktop, which hopefully means faster improvement to it. We'll see what actually happens of course, but Valve taking an interest really gives me hope (big company with lots of resources to throw at problems).
- Minor49er 5y ago
  You can run Adobe software on it for cheaper than the cost of getting a Mac. And you can run an enormous number of games which aren't available on Linux or Mac at all. At least that's why I do it.
shp0ngle 5y ago
You will learn a lot about kernel when your wifi, graphic card and hibernation does not work!
- bouncycastle 5y ago
  Never had problems with any. Ok, hibernation was a tough nut to crack, but you just have to make sure that your swap size matches your memory size... then it's just $ sudo systemctl hibernate
- jrm4 5y ago
  Which, long term, is better that just being SOL when it doesn't in Windows.
- wayneftw 5y ago
  Why would I want to optimize for working on planes, trains and in meetings? That's not a good work environment. I run desktop computers and since I don't need to play video games on them, I just use the CPU graphics. However, even when I did use a discrete GPU - every Linux distro I've used just prompts me to install the drivers and things just work.
ramanujank 5y ago
My main reason for running Linux is the Terminal. I'm 35. Began with computers ~10. Spent my first 10 years using Windows, followed by 10 years of the Mac. I'm (hopefully) in my 10-year Linux run?!
- ridaj 5y ago
  Doesn't Windows have a decent terminal nowadays?
  - ramanujank 5y ago
    Probably does. I'm also guilty of not having given Windows a chance recently.
  - apocalyptic0n3 5y ago
    And iTerm2 on macOS is a better terminal than any I've come across on Linux. The lack of iTerm2 is actually the reason I daily drive macOS at work instead of Linux in the first place.
  - throwawayninja 5y ago
    No, it never even had a resizable terminal until early win 10. Unix terminals are an economic powerhouse in themselves and binutils like sed/awk/grep (which windows never had and you need to modify windows to have these tools).
    - criddell 5y ago
      Are you saying that installing or building software on your machine is modifying Windows? There have always been plenty of terminal options on Windows.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    They have 2 built in ones. powershell and cmd. CMD has been there forever and works mostly like MSDOS (mostly). powershell is pretty neat and is in many ways better than bash once you understand it. They have also in the past 2-3 years actually fixed up some very long standing issues with the shells. There is also an experimental shell manager in the windows store which is kind of nice. You can also install other unix shells if you want. But being different systems they can get a bit quirky.
earthtolazlo 5y ago
As someone with RSI who uses speech recognition to control most software on my desktop, X11 -> Wayland has been a massive roadblock. Ad-infested Windows isn’t great, but at least it doesn’t feel like I’m fighting any devs just to be able to use my computer in an accessible manner.
- tmalsburg2 5y ago
  What speech recognition system did you use on Linux? I'm interested in using speech recognition more after getting used to it on iOS devices (where it works amazingly well).
  - earthtolazlo 5y ago
    I had the most success using Dragonfly with the Kaldi engine, which handles the heavy lifting of speech recognition and provides a nice API on top of xdotool for desktop interaction. You can also check out Talon, although I think its Linux support is still somewhat experimental.
    - tmalsburg2 5y ago
      Thank you. These keywords (Kaldi, Dragonfly) put me on the right track and I found nerd-dictation [1] which is easy to use and hackable. Perhaps not useful for your programming purposes, but I need something for writing prose and it's a decent start for that. [1] https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation
- nivenkos 5y ago
  How is OS X for that sort of accessibility? It seems to be the best for accessibility in general.
  - earthtolazlo 5y ago
    I’ve only ever used Windows and Linux so I couldn’t say for sure, but my impression is that it’s pretty good. Talon or Dragonfly with the Kaldi backend handle speech recognition and provide nice Python APIs for controlling the keyboard, mouse, windows etc.
WalterSobchak 5y ago
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4IpD_VbBd6EJ:https://www.lpi.org/blog/2021/10/05/eleven-reasons-switch-windows-linux+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4IpD_V...
mgreenleaf 5y ago
I triple boot; there are things I can only really do on Windows with full support (commercial art programs, Unreal Engine), but for software development and general usage Linux wins hands down; even the ability to switch out a wm and have it customized for my workflow is a major win, and the command line utilities and environment aren't even comparable. My third is OpenBSD, since I run that on my servers. Use the best tool for the job.
cpach 5y ago
I personally have very strong opinions on what OS I want to use, on my own computer. (Not Linux, and not Windows either.) However, I recognize that this is a matter of opinion. I don’t really care what OS other people choose. There will probably never be an OS that everyone will love. So my stance is this: Just let people use whatever OS they’re happy and productive with. And where they can find applications they like. IMHO, having a nice selection of applications is just as important as the OS itself. For me, that is a compelling argument in favour of macOS. But if people can find applications they enjoy on Windows and Linux, then bully for them. And when it comes to regular users who just want something that works – then it might be wise to not even use a traditional desktop OS. iOS/iPadOS and Android/Chrome OS are much more user-friendly than Windows/Mac/Linux will ever be.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Off topic: since I've never developed apps for Linux, what is the popular language/API that people use for Linux (or better, cross platform) development these days? (Ha ha, I'm already feeling like the is hardly a question that there is a simple answer for.)
- iso1210 5y ago
  electron
- GnarfGnarf 5y ago
  Qt/C++ allows you to develop software for Linux, macOS and Windows.
blakesterz 5y ago
I thought to myself, reminds me of the ol' "This is the year of Linux on the desktop"! But then I wondered, how long have I been reading THIS is the year? Found this old headline on Slashdot: "Linus Says 2004 is the Year for Desktop Linux" For me, at least, 2015 was the year of Linux on the desktop. I could get the sound and fans to work (Finally!) all the time without much work. The graphics card was finally stable. I could do nearly everything I needed to do on Linux and it more or less "just worked" most of the time. That's all I really want in an OS. Windows is probably required for most work and no small number of people get along just fine on MacOS. Linux gets the job done now, and it's stable and things tend to work really well without any major problems. Or so I've found, I know not everyone agrees and depending on what your work is like, things will be different. I've written before about how I find Linux to be a better OS on a home build desktop than my nearly new M1 Macmini. Just yesterday this damn thing gave me a greenscreen kernel panic for no apparent reason in the middle of an important meeting.
streamofdigits 5y ago
in a world that had its mental faculties intact even one of those reasons would have been enough: e.g. windows 11 requiring a front-facing camera.[0] but we don't live in such a world. we have entered the downward spiral of unaccountable tech oligarchies and it is not clear where the bottom lies. [0] I pressume if you cover the camera you will get automatically blacklisted as someone having "something to hide" and you are tortured with daily updates
- Comevius 5y ago
  To clarify Microsoft will require OEMs to include a front-facing camera in new portable devices starting in 2023 if they want to be certified as Windows 11 compatible. Windows 11 itself won't require a front-facing camera.
skywal_l 5y ago
The first point I think is one of the main arguments. I've been using Ubuntu on a computer I bought in 2007. Worked like a charm (until the PSU blew up a few months back). Linux is a system that outlast its hardware! One can also turn the argument around. What would be the reason to use Windows instead of Linux (if, like most of the people on HN I assume, you are computer literate) ? Games I guess.
- krylon 5y ago
  A lot of people apparently run into hardware support issues with Linux. Personally, I have not had any issues in about fifteen years, but I cannot blame people for expecting their hardware to Just Work (tm). Back in the day, I enjoyed spending a weekend getting sound or wifi to work, but these days not so much. At the same time, hardware support has gotten so much better over the twenty one years I have been using Linux, so it is much less of a hassle today.
- walls 5y ago
  Not having to worry that upgrading one app will break things for other apps. Safe screen locking. Not having to spend hours getting hardware working properly but unreliably. Not having to deal with audio issues when you want sound from multiple apps. A responsive interface that doesn't feel like a clunky children's toy from the early 2000s.
  - anthk 5y ago
    >Not having to worry that upgrading one app will break things for other apps. That's subjective. >Safe screen locking. Slock. >Not having to spend hours getting hardware working properly but unreliably. No issue with Void. Good luck with Windows and old harware. You don't have your wifi drivers on your laptop reinstall? You are fucked. Yes, SDI Tool Origin, but you need an extra USB drive about 16GB to do so. >Not having to deal with audio issues when you want sound from multiple apps. That's bullshit, I solved that in 2004. >A responsive interface that doesn't feel like a clunky children's toy from the early 2000s. You mean, Windows 10 with UI latency and everything being felt as if it was ran over a layer of tar? Because, in comparison, MATE flies. And I don't even use a DE.
imwillofficial 5y ago
Windows Terminal + WSL 2 has been a game changer in usability and convenience.
- hotsauceror 5y ago
  Absolutely. Our company issued us Windows laptops but all of our devops/SRE/cloud services and workflows were developed and built by and for MacBook users, with no thought as to the other half of the company that would need to work with them. It took me twenty minutes to get WSL installed and running, and now I can actually support the things I’m paid to support! I have inadvertently also become the SME and one-stop WSL support shop, for everyone else in the same boat. Which, as it turns out, is a great many people….
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
I was planning to switch but Windows is still restarting after an update. The screen has instructed me to not turn off or unplug my laptop. I'm compliant but it's getting more difficult as the years go by.
mkl95 5y ago
I have been dual booting for a while with no issues whatsoever. I develop software on Ubuntu because the tools I use work out of the box. I play games on Windows because the games I play work out of the box.
- lostgame 5y ago
  I'm a MacOS person (iOS dev for a living, no choice), but how is WSL; from a development perspective?
  - mkl95 5y ago
    I've heard good things about WSL from other developers. My current setup (two OS, two SSD) predates modern WSL though.
pjmlp 5y ago
Yet another one of thoses guides. When XP came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to Toy'R us interface. When Vista came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to DX 10 drivers and hardware requirements. When 8.x came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to tablet UI. When 10 came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to telemetry. Now Windows 11 came out, naturally everyone is going to go GNU/Linux yet again.
- progforlyfe 5y ago
  And indeed these are points when many switch or at least try to, which is good. And some of those stick for good, some go back.
- iso1210 5y ago
  I went to linux around the time ME was on the shelf, not sure why I'd want to move to windows, I want something that just works.
  - metalliqaz 5y ago
    Funny, that's why I still use Windows on my desktop.
    - vetinari 5y ago
      To add to the funny story, I have Ryzen 1900X on my desk (literally, the cpu in a small plastic box). Nowadays, those 8 Zen cores clocked at 3.8 GHz are not enough to run Windows, apparently.
      - chirau 5y ago
        This is obviously not true. Which Windows can't you run on that?
        zdragnar 5y ago
        Does it meet 11's hardware requirements? I thought I had heard older Ryzens wouldn't- not from performance, but other chip features.
swayvil 5y ago
Linux is free. Did he list that? Installing Windows is like inviting a really pushy bum to live in your house. Always asking for money. "You want to open that Zip file? Oh well here's a link to where you can rent the appropriate application for the low low price of..." After using Windows I feel the need for a shower. What a dumpster fire that OS is.
jjice 5y ago
So we all know that the Linux desktop is lacking in a few ways, and we all know there are a few reasons for that, but I really do think the experience is getting better. Having more people use it and more development has been great. Valve, System76, and a few others have been pouring resources into making the experience better, and it's working. As much as people aren't going to like me saying this, Electron has been good for the Linux desktop. I'm with everyone that Electron applications can be pretty bloated, but I'd imagine that I'd get late and/or sub-par access to plenty of programs if they weren't written in Electron. The fact that discord is 95% as good as Windows on Linux, despite having a tiny fraction of users is great. If it was written in GTK, I'd imagine that would be a good bit lower. The fact we have multiple DEs that are of relatively similar popularity is great for choice, but affects development. MacOS and Windows have the advantage of the complete control over GUIs, while Linux has quite a few layers with different options at each layer. Not saying it's bad, but it explains slower development (as well as being FOSS without MS or Apple level of cash behind them). Linux isn't for everyone, but god damn is the Linux desktop getting better. I won't indulge on the year of the Linux desktop meme, because it might be a while, but I'm happy at the current momentum.
- AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
  Linux is not for everyone. Consult your Sys Admin before trying Linux.
professor_v 5y ago
I'm a heavy touchpad user and the sole reason I will not use Linux for the foreseeable future is because touchpad usage is absolutely terrible on Linux. Depending if you use the libinput or synaptics drivers it's either completely inconsistent between applications or all-around terrible. I use Windows + WSL even though I practically never do anything Windows related.
DeathArrow 5y ago
I really like the Unix philosophy. And even if Linux it is not exactly Unix, it kind of shares the same philosophy. I tried very much to like Linux and to use it on the desktop. In the last 20 years I've tried countless times to use it as a desktop. But it always failed. It always reqyired lots of time for configuration as opposed to "it just works". After some time, it always broke something, which required again time to fix. And it doesn't run all the software I want to run. And even if an alternative might exists to some of the software I need, it is always sub-par. It doesn't do what I need, it doesn't do it well and it will run poorly and/or has a poor user experience. And I am not even convinced someone should relearn how to do things with another software just to give Linux a chance. Sure, if you are 14 and idealistic it might work. But after 30 your time will worth much more. Software and drivers written some time ago won't work because there's no stable ABI. The software landscape is very fragmented. From my long experience with trying to use Linux on the desktop I can give a very long lecture of why it sucks from both user and technical perspectives alike. On the other hand it is perfect as an server OS, and I make my daily living writing software that ultimately runs on Linux. But please do not force me to use it as a desktop because I've tried to like it but I couldn't. I pretty much doubt that Linux will be a decent desktop OS unless some company will release an OS based on Linux, pretty much how Google did with Android on mobile. For desktop community development simply doesn't cut it. Fragmentation, lack of direction and the reinventing of the wheel kills it. To have a decent server OS you need a single architect and a dictator which will be the only one to take decisions. This is why macOS, primarily an amalgamation of BSD software with a Next skin succeeded.
- yepthatsreality 5y ago
  Alot of what you wrote is true for MacOS and Windows and other major operating systems. Linux doesn't want you either.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > But after 30 your time will worth much more. Once you know how to start an application and how to find the ones that are installed, the learning curve is within the app. > Software and drivers written some time ago won't work because there's no stable ABI. Not sure what you are doing here. Are you trying to load binary drivers written for an old Linux version on a new kernel? Isn't there a mainlined driver that works? Do you think it's a common use-case? > The software landscape is very fragmented. If I need to install something, I either get it from the distro's repos of its "app store". Not sure what "fragmented" means here. > From my long experience with trying to use Linux on the desktop I can give a very long lecture of why it sucks from both user and technical perspectives alike. It may be worth writing a more detail article or blog post. User perspective is always valuable.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
analog31 5y ago
Out of curiosity, how are battery life and touchscreen support coming along? Those are the things that killed Linux for me last time.
atraac 5y ago
I honestly tried multiple times, I really wanted it to work for me. I have XPS 9570 and I simply could not get basic stuff to work, like fingerprint reader, trouble with proprietary gpu drivers etc. There was always something not working, something throwing an exception, something that requires this one simple bash command to get to work. I just gave up. I tried few most popular distros on multiple laptops over last 8 years and there was always a problem with something. When I was younger I had no problem with that, but now... I simply don't care enough to go through it, I just install Windows and continue with my mediocre life.
wiz21c 5y ago
28 years of Linux at home and about 20 of them with full linux (ie, no windows at all). I feel sooooo great. - I update when I want to (but admitedly, I have to understand what each lib is about; not for the end user) - I don't feel constantly baby-sitted - Nobody pushes his "latest new version that I must try unless I tell I don't want to" - the window manager just does the job - when I want to understand what happens, I can definitely look in the code, on the web, etc. - there's a community of people like me :-) but that's true, now and then, there's this tricky config stuff I want. Nothing fancy, but certainly out of reach for regular users, such as : making the sound mono; fixing grub 'cos debian's update screwed it; installing stuff which is not in the repo, fixing KDE's theme install gone wrong,... But now, to me it's more of a choice : either you get advertisment and a real feeling of being screwed versus sometimes there's something tricky to fix... (and 28 years ago, that choice didn't exist. It was either an almost working Windows versus 3 months of ./configure;make install until the go*amn sound card could play something... such a long way)
omarhaneef 5y ago
I'm just impressed that this hasn't devolved into Fedora vs Debian/Ubuntu yet via "yes, but which flavor?" arguments.
DeathArrow 5y ago
If someone asked me 20 years ago, I would have predicted that in the next 20 years we will have another OS paradigm. One that will actively help you accomplish your tasks. Not only the OS should not stand in your way, but it should help you find information in an instant, it should help you at tedious tasks, it should provide a framework for programs to exchange and process information. And by that framework I don't mean an Unix pipe or a Unix socket. I want a simple visual way to connect software which should do a lot of complex transformations. Of course I've failed with predictions. We got a bit more polished UX and UI and that's it. No change of philosophy, no major breakthrough in the way we interact with computers.
DeathArrow 5y ago
It's kind of funny, but Eric S. Raymond seems to be reincarnating in multiple dudes even if he's alive and well. I doubt even he has still faith in desktop Linux.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  So I wasn't the only one who got a huge ESR vibe from that article.
ddek 5y ago
I've really given up on the operating system debates. I don't think it's a very interesting subject, because I think the individual constraints are more important than general 'UX' concerns. My personal computer usage is about 60% web browsing, 10% coding, and 30% AoE2. The game really doesn't run well through proton, at least not enough to play competitively, so I'm kinda locked onto Windows. I think it's stupid to talk about which OS to use firefox from. I'm slightly biased against MacOS here, because for some reason I can't get the extra buttons on my mouse to be forward/back... It's a stupid reason, but it's my stupid reason. That leaves 10% coding. Most of my programming right now is JS/TS (it's really grown on me), so again the OS doesn't really matter.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  FWIW, AoE2 appears to have Gold compatibility[0] with Proton, meaning you can expect a Windows-like experience when launching it with Steam. Maybe it's time to give it another look? [0] https://www.protondb.com/app/221380 https://www.protondb.com/app/221380
  - ddek 5y ago
    It runs well enough to play SP, but the framer are is much lower and the MP laggier.
rsendv 5y ago
1) OK 2) OK 3) OK ... 7) OK 8) Hm, OK.. 9-11) Nope, you should’ve saved yourself some time and stopped at seven reasons.
seltzered_ 5y ago
I switched to Linux recently. It isn't perfect, and had to be picky about what computer I'm using it with, but it doesn't suck as much as it used to. You have to have a bit of chaos tolerance but there's something interesting about being in a more collaborative relationship with software packages. I may go back to a Mac or Windows if they make something I really want. For those considering a switch and just want to see workflows across OSes rather than the motivational essays or distro lists, I keep a humble spreadsheet on that here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=115795755008503287756 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3... . I spent about a year sketching out this list before committing to switch to linux.
deleted 5y ago
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bam365 5y ago
As a person who has been using Linux as my main desktop OS since 2003, unfortunately there are almost as many impediments to the average user switching to Linux now as there was back then. 1. Although game support has gotten better, most AAA titles still don't work on Linux, even with proton. 2. There are still a lot of devices that either don't talk to Linux at all or require the kind of tinkering that the average user is not capable/willing to do to set up: iPhones, any VR headseat that isn't the Index, etc. 3. There are still a lot of highly popular industrial-strength applications that don't work on Linux, even with WINE. The entire Adobe suite, AutoCAD, etc. For these reasons (and other smaller ones), I have always needed to have a Windows dual-boot setup, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
DeathArrow 5y ago
We have three choices for the desktop: -one that seems to treat anyone as an idiot and it's an walled garden -one that is broken -one that kind of works but is boring and it is kind of a new skin on a very old paradigma interested most in keeping backwards compatibility 20 years ago as an OS enthusiast, I was in Heaven. Apart from Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, we had a lot of new operating systems, each trying to work on a new paradigm: BeOS, Syllable, SkyOS, and some more which I forgot. People were enthusiastic about the the OS landscape and we thought some new breakthroughs will be just around the corner. But what happened is everything is aligned to money and if the money don't follow enthusiasm and ideas, then we end up with a boring landscape. I think innovation in the OS landscape is at its worst but that it is because it is not rentable.
- spamizbad 5y ago
  20 years ago there were a bunch of half-baked OSes that had very narrow hardware support, little to no security models, and horrible developer ergonomics that made doing native GUI Linux apps seem easy by comparison. It's actually good that these died out.
  - anthk 5y ago
    Are you sure about BeOS? Half baked? If any, the half-baked OS in that era was Linux. Until the 2.4 kernel it sucked having several sound daemons. BSD's got it right at least. Haiku OS didn't die, and the day it gets hardware accelerated GL/Vulkan support (now it's done thru MESA/Lavapipe/LLVMpipe), we'll talk about which os is thruly half-baked. On security, your sensitive data belongs to an unprivileged user, do unless you set your perms to ugo+r/ chattr +i to your sensitive files, you are screwed in the same way. Yes, OpenBSD has unveil/pledge, but it's still dangerous. You can set another user account for that, sure, but the most correct to handle that is to set that data in external media and access it on demand. Disk storage is dirt cheap today.
Kafkish 5y ago
> But for sheer feature richness, you've got to experience the two desktops associated with Linux, KDE and GNOME. Are there only 2 desktops associated with Linux? Granted those 2 are from the early days, but there's a lot more. I'm writing this from a Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop, haven switched from a KDE distro because configuring a dual monitor setup on KDE doesn't work very well.
aquir 5y ago
I've tried but so many software that I am using is only available on Windows. Also, some minor annoyances like my Bluetooth headset identifies my laptop running Linux (tried w/ Ubuntu based distros) as a mobile so I can't connect to my mobile and laptop in the same time!
filmgirlcw 5y ago
Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate at Microsoft with a focus on Linux, I am typing this on a laptop running Windows 11 (it also has another SSD that runs Linux), and I'm a diehard Mac user. I hate this sort of SEO-driven clickbait that is trying to inflame wars that frankly, were settled two decades ago. Use Linux. Use Windows. Use macOS. Use Chrome OS. Use OpenBSD. Use Haiku. If you're a complete masochist, use GNN Hurd. Use whatever works. It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that. Plus, the article is wrong. There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) and talking points against TPMs and secure boot are so completely 2010, I had really hoped we had moved past that by now. Again, use whatever you want. But this is such lazy writing, I'm disheartened to see it rank so highly on HN, just because people want to get territorial about what computing platform other people use.
- msla 5y ago
  > There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) Trying to "Both Sides" telemetry and spyware fails because you can use Linux without either, whereas macOS and Windows are inherently married to it and you can't use them without submitting to their respective surveillance regimes. Oddities like Deepin barely matter and can't be used to honestly say Linux is just as bad as a closed-source OS.
  - walls 5y ago
    That's weird because I ran a tool to disable it in Windows the day I installed it. I'd wager it was even easier than disabling it on those Linux distros.
    - chayleaf 5y ago
      the tools don't disable all telemetry, besides, most linux distros have no telemetry to disable
    - roman-holovin 5y ago
DeathArrow 5y ago
After the preachers of the Linux desktop, I expect a flow of "Linux is GNU/Linux" folks and some followers of the "GNU operating system" cult, followed by the "the only free software license is GPL" congregation, so I will run to take cover.
- pgcj_poster 5y ago
  > the "the only free software license is GPL" congregation That's not the position of the FSF, or anyone I've ever encountered.
29athrowaway 5y ago
If you use Wine or Proton, try running your stuff using Gamemode and a kernel that supports Esync, like xanmod.
dabedee 5y ago
I use Linux and the fact that this poorly-written article ended up on the front-page of HN makes me wish for a downvote feature.
cesarvarela 5y ago
One reason not to: mixed dpi
kevinventullo 5y ago
Just bought a new computer, and I recently got a warning notification from Windows Defender. Clicking through, I discovered that the urgent message was that I should really consider backing up my files on OneDrive. So I go to ignore the message, but the “dismiss” button was bugged; I couldn’t make the notification go away. After Googling around, I found the fix was to uninstall OneDrive, which had been preloaded, and restart the machine. This is the type of thing that will get me to switch or simply stop using desktop computers outside of work at all.
Mikeb85 5y ago
These articles are lame. If I were to give a reason to switch to Linux, I'd say it's because it's a full featured, nice OS and you can do nearly anything on it. But nowadays the browser is 90% of anyone's use case, games as well, and between browser standards, Steam making strides towards platform agnosticism, there's not really any major reason to use any OS over another unless you have a pretty specific use case (for Windows users that usually means Office or specific games, for Linux users usually something to do with dev environments). They all do mostly the same things.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
georgewsinger 5y ago
They forgot reason #12: the ability to work in VR with a high resolution standalone/portable VR office headset: https://simulavr.com/ https://simulavr.com/ :]
ghoward 5y ago
I have been a Linux-only user on the desktop since 2011. I've been thinking of jumping ship to FreeBSD for better ZFS support and a more cohesive experience, but I'm still on Linux for now. But I do try to make my software portable across all major OS's, so I have a hard drive specifically for Windows in my machine, and I do boot it. I hate it when I have to. Even though the only thing I do when I boot it is work on open source software, I get nervous about how much data is being mined on me because I can't tell. Hence why I only work on open source software. (And before anyone tells me that Linux is spying on me too, I run Gentoo with everything, including my ungoogled browser, built from source. And I watch my network traffic.)
taylodl 5y ago
Here's my reality: I know a lot of older people - people in their 50's, 60's, 70's, and even 80's - who can barely run Windows adequately. Do I think they'll ever run Linux as their daily driver? Nope. Okay, perhaps you think that's unfair, maybe you think it's the younger generation that's going to abandon Windows for Linux. You might want to re-think that. There was an article here on HN just a couple of weeks ago where a CIS professor was lamenting that their incoming students didn't even know how to use a computer! Most shocking to the professor was the fact they couldn't comprehend the file system! They were used to using tablets and phones. And those are the CIS students - imagine what the other students are like? They're not even running Windows, do you really think they're going to abandon their mobile experience for Linux? I wouldn't make that bet. Where does that leave us? People over 50 aren't running Linux and they most likely never will. People under 20 aren't running Linux and most likely never will. That leaves those aged 20-50, and frankly most of them aren't running Linux either and most likely never will. The future for Linux on the desktop isn't looking too bright. Meanwhile Linux on the server? It's pretty much foolish to run anything else.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Okay let's go through this list. 1) Avoid costly hardware upgrades - valid, Microsoft loves to make you upgrade, and it sucks 2) Fight toxic waste - Eh, it helps, but most users don't want to use a 10-year-old PC anyway, so there's a limit to how much waste you can really fight. Plus mobile devices greatly outweigh PCs pound for pound. 3) Keep the right to run the programs you want - Total nonsense. The article says "what if the government forces Microsoft to block some programs". Won't that apply to Linux also? Won't they see what you downloaded from your ISP? There's a weird belief in the tech world that if you can just avoid the law technically, the government will just give up. "Oh snap, you got us, you're good man. Next time!" hearty handshakes all around 4) Run your computer without surveillance - Again, nonsense. This speculates that because Windows 11 requires a camera (which is technically a lie anyway), Windows 11 will stream a live feed of you back to Microsoft. Think of the bandwidth usage! Ugly photos of you will be in Redmond servers! This is another Linux user problem: assuming that if a company does A, they'll be able to take the next step without outcry. Oh, they required a camera? Well then they can just stream a feed of your video back home and no one will complain! They got us! Those tricksters! No. In reality if Microsoft sent a feed of video back home, they would be lambasted. They would be discovered by security researchers and they'd never live it down. It would be the end of Microsoft. 5) Avoid conveniences that lock you in - So because Teams is installed by default, you'll he "locked in"? In reality, no one uses Teams unless they're made to. By work, school, etc. and those decisions are made at an institutional level above you. So good luck avoiding Teams in 2021. Using Linux won't help you with that. 6) Run your computer without a Microsoft account - Valid. If this bothers you, you should use Linux! 7) Customize your desktop - valid, this one is obvious 8) Enjoy the most recent and stable versions of free software - valid 9) Increase computing diversity - valid, although diversity is also a synonym for "fragmentation" 10) Launch your skills as a programmer - This one is old as the hills, but it's kind of nonsense. Mac and WSL have equally good developer environments. "Use Linux become programmer" is just post hoc ergo proctor hoc. 11) Choose computing freedom - Valid. However, software freedom is a slight myth. You're "free" to modify Chromium and remove Google. But it's really difficult. You can run Ubuntu without systemd, but you're in for a world of hurt.
XCSme 5y ago
Why is this allowed on HN? This is a spam, really poor quality article for SEO purposes.

143 points by jlpcsl 5y ago

Every Linux desktop environment I've tried all have unnatural mouse acceleration compared to Windows. Their support for non-uniform sized multi-monitor setups is also pretty awful. With WSL, I don't think I'll ever be using Linux on my PC

Kenji 5y ago

Is that website hosted on a Windows computer?

mad2021 5y ago

...and the intrusive frequent updates as well. Honestly, one of the biggest pain points for me.

bouncycastle 5y ago

Wait a minute... You need a Microsoft account to log into Windows these days? Laughs in Linux

peakaboo 5y ago
You also need to give up all your privacy and relax while Microsoft takes care of you....
chrjxnandns 5y ago
No you don’t.
Vindicis 5y ago
You don't. You can still run local accounts.
- moreira 5y ago
  Not on Windows 11 Home, from what I understand.
  - thepete2 5y ago
    I believe the option is only shown if you are offline, so you need to disconnect from the internet.
  - chrisandchris 5y ago
    As said in the thread it (currently) works if you do not setup internet until after the installation completes. If you set up internet before, you end up doong a full re-install.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Yeah if you disable WiFi which is a very dark pattern and user hostile.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    last time I installed windows 10 this wasn't required - you just had to figure out which button took you past it. Maybe its changed since
    - pstrateman 5y ago
      It has, you need to disable internet access to have a local account.
      - stronglikedan 5y ago
        I'm currently using two laptops, both running Win 10 with local-only accounts, and I've never had to disable internet access to do so.
sumtechguy 5y ago
You do not have to. But they sure make it a pain to not have that linked.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
petecooper 5y ago
If you're installing Windows 10 fresh, you can bypass the account login thing more easily if you defer network configuration during setup.

Bostonian 5y ago

I can now run Linux GUIs on Windows under WSL, so with Windows I get access to Windows and Linux software. What is the case for pure Linux?

thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
Performance No telemetry No forced upgrades No intrusive ads
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
  WSL performance is close to bare metal. Telemetry is a problem, yes. Should be at least opt-in. I believe that forced upgrades are a necessity if you have the end-user market penetration of Windows. It's a different thing for servers, and one could argue about the implementation details. I don't see ads on Windows (and I'm on the 11 beta channel).
- jnsie 5y ago
  I'm out of the loop - are there intrusive ads in the Windows OS? If so, what kind of ads and when/where?
  - thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
    >> are there intrusive ads in the Windows OS? If so, what kind of ads and when/where? https://www.windowslatest.com/2021/05/30/microsoft-edge-nagging-users-with-recommended-browser-settings-alert/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2021/05/30/microsoft-edge-nagg...
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    Windows 10 has adverts in your start menu by default
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    running windows 11 - no intrusive ads in the windows OS. Not sure what malware these people have on their computer.

anormaluser 5y ago

A lot of software are only developed for Windows though, for example, SolidWorks. But running it in a brower via cloud is another story.

CJefferson 5y ago

I don't disagree with switching to linux, but this isn't a great list. Points 1 & 2 are the same (don't buy a new PC), and quite a few of the rest are fixed as you can run all Linux software in the Linux subsystem for Windows.

criddell 5y ago
I always wonder who these people are who pick the OS first and applications second? If you need to run GarageBand, Visual Studio, or Returnal, Linux is not an option.
jrm4 5y ago
The fact that those clowns insist on calling it the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" because marketing tells you everything you need to know about whether or not you should invest your time in it.

CaioAlonso 5y ago

As a counterpoint: Reasons to consider NOT switching to Linux https://corn.codeberg.page/notlinux.html https://corn.codeberg.page/notlinux.html

superasn 5y ago
My only two reasons would be no Photoshop and fewer games, though it's definitely catching up on both.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  Music making software is really lacking on Linux compared to Windows and Mac.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  Unfortunately it is not catching up by the way of 1st party support. The compatibility layers are getting pretty good, don't get me wrong. But if to you a computer is just a tool that runs specific programs you need, then you should probably stick with what the software developer recommends you run their software on.
peakaboo 5y ago
Well he is right. Linux is not for everyone. It's for people who can learn how to double click an icon that looks different from the one in Windows. That excludes probably 50% of Windows users right there.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  This kind of attitude from linux users is significantly responsible for its lack of wider adoption. Who wants to learn something new when the people you need help from are going to treat you like a moron? We both know its more involved than clicking a different icon.
  - r_c_a_d 5y ago

jimwalsh 5y ago

Until the minute I want to play a video game, or start using some non standard device with my PC. Then it turns into a 3 hour session like I'm back in college again.

fortyseven 5y ago

This "list" is awful. I think we're heading into another Vista/8 cycle. Feels like MS really fucked up with Win11, but the writing has been on the wall for Windows for a while. Unless someone splashes them with cold water and they wake up, I'm staying with Windows 10 until they (artificially) force it. Meanwhile I'll be setting myself up a new future on another drive with a decent Linux distro.

rangerdan 5y ago

I love how #2 is, Linux will "Fight Toxic Waste" because presumably you don't have to buy a "new" computer. It's always hilarious to see individuals trying to make a stand against "bad" environment policies by acting as atomized parts of a whole.

itsbits 5y ago

Aren't these reasons (even if they are convincing) apply to Mac systems as well?

thepete2 5y ago
many, but not all of them
smoldesu 5y ago
Good point, there are some specific places where Linux really excels over MacOS: - 32-bit app support - Nvidia GPU/CUDA support - Encryption without a question mark at the end - I can hide my topbar (or ostensibly move it wherever I want) - I don't get a popup asking me to try Safari every week
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
  For some of these, Windows wins against MacOS as well. And I have the impression, every Mac OS release, I have to debug the C++ dev environment of my students. 3 years ago I was praying that a new student had a MAC, because I could get them going easily. Now I'm praying they are on Windows, because WSL+Ubuntu just works. (I'm not praying they have Linux, because that realistically never happens. Would be great though.)
  - wsc981 5y ago
    Everytime Apple upgrades Xcode I am worried something in my development workflow breaks (as has happened many times in the past). Same is true for every major macOS release the last 5 years or so. I’m getting to the point that I consider switching to Linux, but the biggest show stopper for me is my work as iOS dev. Hopefully can move to some other tech in a couple of years so I don’t have to rely on the Apple platform for my income.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      That sounds pretty painful, I've always felt bad for the people who are forced to use xCode as part of their job. I really hope Apple is forced to make cross-platform tooling, because while it's great for lock-in, it makes it really difficult for outsiders to publish cross-platform apps.

jdlyga 5y ago

The real reasons I use Linux are mostly out of convenience. For example, updating all my software and OS using one command rather than clicking on 50 updaters.

mariusmg 5y ago
winget upgrade --all
schmorptron 5y ago
This is it for me too. On my desktop where I play some windows-only games it makes sense to go with windows because it's less hassle. On my laptop, it's just easier to use ubuntu or fedora than to manage another windows installation and keep it up to date & click through another set of installers for each piece of software.
Tenoke 5y ago
Linux has its conveniences but I think I definitely spend more times on updates. Some break things and some like Nvidia's drivers can take me ages to actually apply (though with that one the usual trick seems to be to remove --purge nvidia-* first).
- OneTimePetes 5y ago
  Which is honestly what i never understood, why its not shared on a more "systematic" level beyond stack overflow. A hardware and software config + the goal (print)- and a dialog pops up, offering your solution as a line by line shell script. All this stored in a trustworthy DB and even complex problems could be plug and play on windows. Add a "support" button to finance the whole thing. Voila. Year of the linux desktop.
- tmalsburg2 5y ago
  > Linux has its conveniences but I think I definitely spend more times on updates. That depends on which distro and hardware you're using. I use laptops that are known to work well with Linux and Ubuntu LTS releases. This way, I spend perhaps 3-5h a year on admin tasks and it's mostly easy stuff. It's actually amazing how GNU/Linux allowed me to gradually transition from configuring everything (when I was a student: XFree86, custom kernels, ...) to using GNU/Linux productively with almost zero housekeeping effort.

consumer451 5y ago

I just went back after 3 years of Ubuntu. Admittedly I am a dilettante but I never did anything very "hacky" and still ended up with a broken upgrade path, twice. I can't have this in a work desktop machine. My employer gives zero f's about my privacy concerns.

vinceguidry 5y ago
This is why I moved to Arch. Debian rolling release is a good way to go as well.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  After using Arch for years every other package manager enrages me because it is so hard to rollback/undo bad changes or to pin versions. I use MacOS for reasons but I still miss pacman :(
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    You might like Nix or Guix. It's even easier to roll back bad changes there!
  - vinceguidry 5y ago
    My employer foists MacOS on me, I'm undeterred. VMware is worth the hassle.
- throwawayninja 5y ago
  I love Arch, and have always considered Debian + debian derivatives to be subpar because of packages + community issues. I need to go check out Debian rolling, never knew that existed. Could be a useful hybrid for coworkers who believe rolling releases break things often.
moritonal 5y ago
For what it's worth, I found Kubuntu to be a much simpler and cleaner alternative to Ubuntu.
5y ago

DeathArrow 5y ago

And 2022 will be the year of the Linux desktop™.

jjice 5y ago
And <?php echo date("Y") + 1 ?> will be the year of the Linux desktop™.

bregma 5y ago

I never switched from Linux to Windows. Why would I want to?

jjice 5y ago
Games would've been the big one, but that reason is disappearing pretty quickly. Proton is pretty incredible, and I believe there's been a recent development to allow games that use anti-cheat to work in the near future. More people on Linux for games means more attention to the Linux desktop, which hopefully means faster improvement to it. We'll see what actually happens of course, but Valve taking an interest really gives me hope (big company with lots of resources to throw at problems).
Minor49er 5y ago
You can run Adobe software on it for cheaper than the cost of getting a Mac. And you can run an enormous number of games which aren't available on Linux or Mac at all. At least that's why I do it.

shp0ngle 5y ago

You will learn a lot about kernel when your wifi, graphic card and hibernation does not work!

bouncycastle 5y ago
Never had problems with any. Ok, hibernation was a tough nut to crack, but you just have to make sure that your swap size matches your memory size... then it's just $ sudo systemctl hibernate
jrm4 5y ago
Which, long term, is better that just being SOL when it doesn't in Windows.
wayneftw 5y ago
Why would I want to optimize for working on planes, trains and in meetings? That's not a good work environment. I run desktop computers and since I don't need to play video games on them, I just use the CPU graphics. However, even when I did use a discrete GPU - every Linux distro I've used just prompts me to install the drivers and things just work.

ramanujank 5y ago

My main reason for running Linux is the Terminal. I'm 35. Began with computers ~10. Spent my first 10 years using Windows, followed by 10 years of the Mac. I'm (hopefully) in my 10-year Linux run?!

ridaj 5y ago
Doesn't Windows have a decent terminal nowadays?
- ramanujank 5y ago
  Probably does. I'm also guilty of not having given Windows a chance recently.
- apocalyptic0n3 5y ago
  And iTerm2 on macOS is a better terminal than any I've come across on Linux. The lack of iTerm2 is actually the reason I daily drive macOS at work instead of Linux in the first place.
- throwawayninja 5y ago
  No, it never even had a resizable terminal until early win 10. Unix terminals are an economic powerhouse in themselves and binutils like sed/awk/grep (which windows never had and you need to modify windows to have these tools).
  - criddell 5y ago
    Are you saying that installing or building software on your machine is modifying Windows? There have always been plenty of terminal options on Windows.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  They have 2 built in ones. powershell and cmd. CMD has been there forever and works mostly like MSDOS (mostly). powershell is pretty neat and is in many ways better than bash once you understand it. They have also in the past 2-3 years actually fixed up some very long standing issues with the shells. There is also an experimental shell manager in the windows store which is kind of nice. You can also install other unix shells if you want. But being different systems they can get a bit quirky.

earthtolazlo 5y ago

As someone with RSI who uses speech recognition to control most software on my desktop, X11 -> Wayland has been a massive roadblock. Ad-infested Windows isn’t great, but at least it doesn’t feel like I’m fighting any devs just to be able to use my computer in an accessible manner.

tmalsburg2 5y ago
What speech recognition system did you use on Linux? I'm interested in using speech recognition more after getting used to it on iOS devices (where it works amazingly well).
- earthtolazlo 5y ago
  I had the most success using Dragonfly with the Kaldi engine, which handles the heavy lifting of speech recognition and provides a nice API on top of xdotool for desktop interaction. You can also check out Talon, although I think its Linux support is still somewhat experimental.
  - tmalsburg2 5y ago
    Thank you. These keywords (Kaldi, Dragonfly) put me on the right track and I found nerd-dictation [1] which is easy to use and hackable. Perhaps not useful for your programming purposes, but I need something for writing prose and it's a decent start for that. [1] https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation
nivenkos 5y ago
How is OS X for that sort of accessibility? It seems to be the best for accessibility in general.
- earthtolazlo 5y ago
  I’ve only ever used Windows and Linux so I couldn’t say for sure, but my impression is that it’s pretty good. Talon or Dragonfly with the Kaldi backend handle speech recognition and provide nice Python APIs for controlling the keyboard, mouse, windows etc.

WalterSobchak 5y ago

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4IpD_VbBd6EJ:https://www.lpi.org/blog/2021/10/05/eleven-reasons-switch-windows-linux+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4IpD_V...

mgreenleaf 5y ago

I triple boot; there are things I can only really do on Windows with full support (commercial art programs, Unreal Engine), but for software development and general usage Linux wins hands down; even the ability to switch out a wm and have it customized for my workflow is a major win, and the command line utilities and environment aren't even comparable. My third is OpenBSD, since I run that on my servers. Use the best tool for the job.

cpach 5y ago

I personally have very strong opinions on what OS I want to use, on my own computer. (Not Linux, and not Windows either.) However, I recognize that this is a matter of opinion. I don’t really care what OS other people choose. There will probably never be an OS that everyone will love. So my stance is this: Just let people use whatever OS they’re happy and productive with. And where they can find applications they like. IMHO, having a nice selection of applications is just as important as the OS itself. For me, that is a compelling argument in favour of macOS. But if people can find applications they enjoy on Windows and Linux, then bully for them. And when it comes to regular users who just want something that works – then it might be wise to not even use a traditional desktop OS. iOS/iPadOS and Android/Chrome OS are much more user-friendly than Windows/Mac/Linux will ever be.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

Off topic: since I've never developed apps for Linux, what is the popular language/API that people use for Linux (or better, cross platform) development these days? (Ha ha, I'm already feeling like the is hardly a question that there is a simple answer for.)

iso1210 5y ago
electron
GnarfGnarf 5y ago
Qt/C++ allows you to develop software for Linux, macOS and Windows.

blakesterz 5y ago

I thought to myself, reminds me of the ol' "This is the year of Linux on the desktop"! But then I wondered, how long have I been reading THIS is the year? Found this old headline on Slashdot: "Linus Says 2004 is the Year for Desktop Linux" For me, at least, 2015 was the year of Linux on the desktop. I could get the sound and fans to work (Finally!) all the time without much work. The graphics card was finally stable. I could do nearly everything I needed to do on Linux and it more or less "just worked" most of the time. That's all I really want in an OS. Windows is probably required for most work and no small number of people get along just fine on MacOS. Linux gets the job done now, and it's stable and things tend to work really well without any major problems. Or so I've found, I know not everyone agrees and depending on what your work is like, things will be different. I've written before about how I find Linux to be a better OS on a home build desktop than my nearly new M1 Macmini. Just yesterday this damn thing gave me a greenscreen kernel panic for no apparent reason in the middle of an important meeting.

streamofdigits 5y ago

in a world that had its mental faculties intact even one of those reasons would have been enough: e.g. windows 11 requiring a front-facing camera.[0] but we don't live in such a world. we have entered the downward spiral of unaccountable tech oligarchies and it is not clear where the bottom lies. [0] I pressume if you cover the camera you will get automatically blacklisted as someone having "something to hide" and you are tortured with daily updates

Comevius 5y ago
To clarify Microsoft will require OEMs to include a front-facing camera in new portable devices starting in 2023 if they want to be certified as Windows 11 compatible. Windows 11 itself won't require a front-facing camera.

skywal_l 5y ago

The first point I think is one of the main arguments. I've been using Ubuntu on a computer I bought in 2007. Worked like a charm (until the PSU blew up a few months back). Linux is a system that outlast its hardware! One can also turn the argument around. What would be the reason to use Windows instead of Linux (if, like most of the people on HN I assume, you are computer literate) ? Games I guess.

krylon 5y ago
A lot of people apparently run into hardware support issues with Linux. Personally, I have not had any issues in about fifteen years, but I cannot blame people for expecting their hardware to Just Work (tm). Back in the day, I enjoyed spending a weekend getting sound or wifi to work, but these days not so much. At the same time, hardware support has gotten so much better over the twenty one years I have been using Linux, so it is much less of a hassle today.
walls 5y ago
Not having to worry that upgrading one app will break things for other apps. Safe screen locking. Not having to spend hours getting hardware working properly but unreliably. Not having to deal with audio issues when you want sound from multiple apps. A responsive interface that doesn't feel like a clunky children's toy from the early 2000s.
- anthk 5y ago
  >Not having to worry that upgrading one app will break things for other apps. That's subjective. >Safe screen locking. Slock. >Not having to spend hours getting hardware working properly but unreliably. No issue with Void. Good luck with Windows and old harware. You don't have your wifi drivers on your laptop reinstall? You are fucked. Yes, SDI Tool Origin, but you need an extra USB drive about 16GB to do so. >Not having to deal with audio issues when you want sound from multiple apps. That's bullshit, I solved that in 2004. >A responsive interface that doesn't feel like a clunky children's toy from the early 2000s. You mean, Windows 10 with UI latency and everything being felt as if it was ran over a layer of tar? Because, in comparison, MATE flies. And I don't even use a DE.

imwillofficial 5y ago

Windows Terminal + WSL 2 has been a game changer in usability and convenience.

hotsauceror 5y ago
Absolutely. Our company issued us Windows laptops but all of our devops/SRE/cloud services and workflows were developed and built by and for MacBook users, with no thought as to the other half of the company that would need to work with them. It took me twenty minutes to get WSL installed and running, and now I can actually support the things I’m paid to support! I have inadvertently also become the SME and one-stop WSL support shop, for everyone else in the same boat. Which, as it turns out, is a great many people….

LurkingPenguin 5y ago

I was planning to switch but Windows is still restarting after an update. The screen has instructed me to not turn off or unplug my laptop. I'm compliant but it's getting more difficult as the years go by.

mkl95 5y ago

I have been dual booting for a while with no issues whatsoever. I develop software on Ubuntu because the tools I use work out of the box. I play games on Windows because the games I play work out of the box.

lostgame 5y ago
I'm a MacOS person (iOS dev for a living, no choice), but how is WSL; from a development perspective?
- mkl95 5y ago
  I've heard good things about WSL from other developers. My current setup (two OS, two SSD) predates modern WSL though.

pjmlp 5y ago

Yet another one of thoses guides. When XP came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to Toy'R us interface. When Vista came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to DX 10 drivers and hardware requirements. When 8.x came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to tablet UI. When 10 came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to telemetry. Now Windows 11 came out, naturally everyone is going to go GNU/Linux yet again.

progforlyfe 5y ago
And indeed these are points when many switch or at least try to, which is good. And some of those stick for good, some go back.
iso1210 5y ago
I went to linux around the time ME was on the shelf, not sure why I'd want to move to windows, I want something that just works.
- metalliqaz 5y ago
  Funny, that's why I still use Windows on my desktop.
  - vetinari 5y ago
    To add to the funny story, I have Ryzen 1900X on my desk (literally, the cpu in a small plastic box). Nowadays, those 8 Zen cores clocked at 3.8 GHz are not enough to run Windows, apparently.
    - chirau 5y ago
      This is obviously not true. Which Windows can't you run on that?
      - zdragnar 5y ago
        Does it meet 11's hardware requirements? I thought I had heard older Ryzens wouldn't- not from performance, but other chip features.

swayvil 5y ago

Linux is free. Did he list that? Installing Windows is like inviting a really pushy bum to live in your house. Always asking for money. "You want to open that Zip file? Oh well here's a link to where you can rent the appropriate application for the low low price of..." After using Windows I feel the need for a shower. What a dumpster fire that OS is.

jjice 5y ago

So we all know that the Linux desktop is lacking in a few ways, and we all know there are a few reasons for that, but I really do think the experience is getting better. Having more people use it and more development has been great. Valve, System76, and a few others have been pouring resources into making the experience better, and it's working. As much as people aren't going to like me saying this, Electron has been good for the Linux desktop. I'm with everyone that Electron applications can be pretty bloated, but I'd imagine that I'd get late and/or sub-par access to plenty of programs if they weren't written in Electron. The fact that discord is 95% as good as Windows on Linux, despite having a tiny fraction of users is great. If it was written in GTK, I'd imagine that would be a good bit lower. The fact we have multiple DEs that are of relatively similar popularity is great for choice, but affects development. MacOS and Windows have the advantage of the complete control over GUIs, while Linux has quite a few layers with different options at each layer. Not saying it's bad, but it explains slower development (as well as being FOSS without MS or Apple level of cash behind them). Linux isn't for everyone, but god damn is the Linux desktop getting better. I won't indulge on the year of the Linux desktop meme, because it might be a while, but I'm happy at the current momentum.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
Linux is not for everyone. Consult your Sys Admin before trying Linux.

professor_v 5y ago

I'm a heavy touchpad user and the sole reason I will not use Linux for the foreseeable future is because touchpad usage is absolutely terrible on Linux. Depending if you use the libinput or synaptics drivers it's either completely inconsistent between applications or all-around terrible. I use Windows + WSL even though I practically never do anything Windows related.

DeathArrow 5y ago

I really like the Unix philosophy. And even if Linux it is not exactly Unix, it kind of shares the same philosophy. I tried very much to like Linux and to use it on the desktop. In the last 20 years I've tried countless times to use it as a desktop. But it always failed. It always reqyired lots of time for configuration as opposed to "it just works". After some time, it always broke something, which required again time to fix. And it doesn't run all the software I want to run. And even if an alternative might exists to some of the software I need, it is always sub-par. It doesn't do what I need, it doesn't do it well and it will run poorly and/or has a poor user experience. And I am not even convinced someone should relearn how to do things with another software just to give Linux a chance. Sure, if you are 14 and idealistic it might work. But after 30 your time will worth much more. Software and drivers written some time ago won't work because there's no stable ABI. The software landscape is very fragmented. From my long experience with trying to use Linux on the desktop I can give a very long lecture of why it sucks from both user and technical perspectives alike. On the other hand it is perfect as an server OS, and I make my daily living writing software that ultimately runs on Linux. But please do not force me to use it as a desktop because I've tried to like it but I couldn't. I pretty much doubt that Linux will be a decent desktop OS unless some company will release an OS based on Linux, pretty much how Google did with Android on mobile. For desktop community development simply doesn't cut it. Fragmentation, lack of direction and the reinventing of the wheel kills it. To have a decent server OS you need a single architect and a dictator which will be the only one to take decisions. This is why macOS, primarily an amalgamation of BSD software with a Next skin succeeded.

yepthatsreality 5y ago
Alot of what you wrote is true for MacOS and Windows and other major operating systems. Linux doesn't want you either.
rbanffy 5y ago
> But after 30 your time will worth much more. Once you know how to start an application and how to find the ones that are installed, the learning curve is within the app. > Software and drivers written some time ago won't work because there's no stable ABI. Not sure what you are doing here. Are you trying to load binary drivers written for an old Linux version on a new kernel? Isn't there a mainlined driver that works? Do you think it's a common use-case? > The software landscape is very fragmented. If I need to install something, I either get it from the distro's repos of its "app store". Not sure what "fragmented" means here. > From my long experience with trying to use Linux on the desktop I can give a very long lecture of why it sucks from both user and technical perspectives alike. It may be worth writing a more detail article or blog post. User perspective is always valuable.

deleted 5y ago

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analog31 5y ago

Out of curiosity, how are battery life and touchscreen support coming along? Those are the things that killed Linux for me last time.

atraac 5y ago

I honestly tried multiple times, I really wanted it to work for me. I have XPS 9570 and I simply could not get basic stuff to work, like fingerprint reader, trouble with proprietary gpu drivers etc. There was always something not working, something throwing an exception, something that requires this one simple bash command to get to work. I just gave up. I tried few most popular distros on multiple laptops over last 8 years and there was always a problem with something. When I was younger I had no problem with that, but now... I simply don't care enough to go through it, I just install Windows and continue with my mediocre life.

wiz21c 5y ago

28 years of Linux at home and about 20 of them with full linux (ie, no windows at all). I feel sooooo great. - I update when I want to (but admitedly, I have to understand what each lib is about; not for the end user) - I don't feel constantly baby-sitted - Nobody pushes his "latest new version that I must try unless I tell I don't want to" - the window manager just does the job - when I want to understand what happens, I can definitely look in the code, on the web, etc. - there's a community of people like me :-) but that's true, now and then, there's this tricky config stuff I want. Nothing fancy, but certainly out of reach for regular users, such as : making the sound mono; fixing grub 'cos debian's update screwed it; installing stuff which is not in the repo, fixing KDE's theme install gone wrong,... But now, to me it's more of a choice : either you get advertisment and a real feeling of being screwed versus sometimes there's something tricky to fix... (and 28 years ago, that choice didn't exist. It was either an almost working Windows versus 3 months of ./configure;make install until the go*amn sound card could play something... such a long way)

omarhaneef 5y ago

I'm just impressed that this hasn't devolved into Fedora vs Debian/Ubuntu yet via "yes, but which flavor?" arguments.

DeathArrow 5y ago

If someone asked me 20 years ago, I would have predicted that in the next 20 years we will have another OS paradigm. One that will actively help you accomplish your tasks. Not only the OS should not stand in your way, but it should help you find information in an instant, it should help you at tedious tasks, it should provide a framework for programs to exchange and process information. And by that framework I don't mean an Unix pipe or a Unix socket. I want a simple visual way to connect software which should do a lot of complex transformations. Of course I've failed with predictions. We got a bit more polished UX and UI and that's it. No change of philosophy, no major breakthrough in the way we interact with computers.

DeathArrow 5y ago

It's kind of funny, but Eric S. Raymond seems to be reincarnating in multiple dudes even if he's alive and well. I doubt even he has still faith in desktop Linux.

pixelgeek 5y ago
So I wasn't the only one who got a huge ESR vibe from that article.

ddek 5y ago

I've really given up on the operating system debates. I don't think it's a very interesting subject, because I think the individual constraints are more important than general 'UX' concerns. My personal computer usage is about 60% web browsing, 10% coding, and 30% AoE2. The game really doesn't run well through proton, at least not enough to play competitively, so I'm kinda locked onto Windows. I think it's stupid to talk about which OS to use firefox from. I'm slightly biased against MacOS here, because for some reason I can't get the extra buttons on my mouse to be forward/back... It's a stupid reason, but it's my stupid reason. That leaves 10% coding. Most of my programming right now is JS/TS (it's really grown on me), so again the OS doesn't really matter.

smoldesu 5y ago
FWIW, AoE2 appears to have Gold compatibility[0] with Proton, meaning you can expect a Windows-like experience when launching it with Steam. Maybe it's time to give it another look? [0] https://www.protondb.com/app/221380 https://www.protondb.com/app/221380
- ddek 5y ago
  It runs well enough to play SP, but the framer are is much lower and the MP laggier.

rsendv 5y ago

1) OK 2) OK 3) OK ... 7) OK 8) Hm, OK.. 9-11) Nope, you should’ve saved yourself some time and stopped at seven reasons.

seltzered_ 5y ago

I switched to Linux recently. It isn't perfect, and had to be picky about what computer I'm using it with, but it doesn't suck as much as it used to. You have to have a bit of chaos tolerance but there's something interesting about being in a more collaborative relationship with software packages. I may go back to a Mac or Windows if they make something I really want. For those considering a switch and just want to see workflows across OSes rather than the motivational essays or distro lists, I keep a humble spreadsheet on that here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=115795755008503287756 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3... . I spent about a year sketching out this list before committing to switch to linux.

deleted 5y ago

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bam365 5y ago

As a person who has been using Linux as my main desktop OS since 2003, unfortunately there are almost as many impediments to the average user switching to Linux now as there was back then. 1. Although game support has gotten better, most AAA titles still don't work on Linux, even with proton. 2. There are still a lot of devices that either don't talk to Linux at all or require the kind of tinkering that the average user is not capable/willing to do to set up: iPhones, any VR headseat that isn't the Index, etc. 3. There are still a lot of highly popular industrial-strength applications that don't work on Linux, even with WINE. The entire Adobe suite, AutoCAD, etc. For these reasons (and other smaller ones), I have always needed to have a Windows dual-boot setup, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

DeathArrow 5y ago

We have three choices for the desktop: -one that seems to treat anyone as an idiot and it's an walled garden -one that is broken -one that kind of works but is boring and it is kind of a new skin on a very old paradigma interested most in keeping backwards compatibility 20 years ago as an OS enthusiast, I was in Heaven. Apart from Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, we had a lot of new operating systems, each trying to work on a new paradigm: BeOS, Syllable, SkyOS, and some more which I forgot. People were enthusiastic about the the OS landscape and we thought some new breakthroughs will be just around the corner. But what happened is everything is aligned to money and if the money don't follow enthusiasm and ideas, then we end up with a boring landscape. I think innovation in the OS landscape is at its worst but that it is because it is not rentable.

spamizbad 5y ago
20 years ago there were a bunch of half-baked OSes that had very narrow hardware support, little to no security models, and horrible developer ergonomics that made doing native GUI Linux apps seem easy by comparison. It's actually good that these died out.
- anthk 5y ago
  Are you sure about BeOS? Half baked? If any, the half-baked OS in that era was Linux. Until the 2.4 kernel it sucked having several sound daemons. BSD's got it right at least. Haiku OS didn't die, and the day it gets hardware accelerated GL/Vulkan support (now it's done thru MESA/Lavapipe/LLVMpipe), we'll talk about which os is thruly half-baked. On security, your sensitive data belongs to an unprivileged user, do unless you set your perms to ugo+r/ chattr +i to your sensitive files, you are screwed in the same way. Yes, OpenBSD has unveil/pledge, but it's still dangerous. You can set another user account for that, sure, but the most correct to handle that is to set that data in external media and access it on demand. Disk storage is dirt cheap today.

Kafkish 5y ago

> But for sheer feature richness, you've got to experience the two desktops associated with Linux, KDE and GNOME. Are there only 2 desktops associated with Linux? Granted those 2 are from the early days, but there's a lot more. I'm writing this from a Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop, haven switched from a KDE distro because configuring a dual monitor setup on KDE doesn't work very well.

aquir 5y ago

I've tried but so many software that I am using is only available on Windows. Also, some minor annoyances like my Bluetooth headset identifies my laptop running Linux (tried w/ Ubuntu based distros) as a mobile so I can't connect to my mobile and laptop in the same time!

filmgirlcw 5y ago

Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate at Microsoft with a focus on Linux, I am typing this on a laptop running Windows 11 (it also has another SSD that runs Linux), and I'm a diehard Mac user. I hate this sort of SEO-driven clickbait that is trying to inflame wars that frankly, were settled two decades ago. Use Linux. Use Windows. Use macOS. Use Chrome OS. Use OpenBSD. Use Haiku. If you're a complete masochist, use GNN Hurd. Use whatever works. It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that. Plus, the article is wrong. There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) and talking points against TPMs and secure boot are so completely 2010, I had really hoped we had moved past that by now. Again, use whatever you want. But this is such lazy writing, I'm disheartened to see it rank so highly on HN, just because people want to get territorial about what computing platform other people use.

msla 5y ago
> There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) Trying to "Both Sides" telemetry and spyware fails because you can use Linux without either, whereas macOS and Windows are inherently married to it and you can't use them without submitting to their respective surveillance regimes. Oddities like Deepin barely matter and can't be used to honestly say Linux is just as bad as a closed-source OS.
- walls 5y ago
  That's weird because I ran a tool to disable it in Windows the day I installed it. I'd wager it was even easier than disabling it on those Linux distros.
  - chayleaf 5y ago
    the tools don't disable all telemetry, besides, most linux distros have no telemetry to disable
  - roman-holovin 5y ago

DeathArrow 5y ago

After the preachers of the Linux desktop, I expect a flow of "Linux is GNU/Linux" folks and some followers of the "GNU operating system" cult, followed by the "the only free software license is GPL" congregation, so I will run to take cover.

pgcj_poster 5y ago
> the "the only free software license is GPL" congregation That's not the position of the FSF, or anyone I've ever encountered.

29athrowaway 5y ago

If you use Wine or Proton, try running your stuff using Gamemode and a kernel that supports Esync, like xanmod.

dabedee 5y ago

I use Linux and the fact that this poorly-written article ended up on the front-page of HN makes me wish for a downvote feature.

cesarvarela 5y ago

One reason not to: mixed dpi

kevinventullo 5y ago

Just bought a new computer, and I recently got a warning notification from Windows Defender. Clicking through, I discovered that the urgent message was that I should really consider backing up my files on OneDrive. So I go to ignore the message, but the “dismiss” button was bugged; I couldn’t make the notification go away. After Googling around, I found the fix was to uninstall OneDrive, which had been preloaded, and restart the machine. This is the type of thing that will get me to switch or simply stop using desktop computers outside of work at all.

Mikeb85 5y ago

These articles are lame. If I were to give a reason to switch to Linux, I'd say it's because it's a full featured, nice OS and you can do nearly anything on it. But nowadays the browser is 90% of anyone's use case, games as well, and between browser standards, Steam making strides towards platform agnosticism, there's not really any major reason to use any OS over another unless you have a pretty specific use case (for Windows users that usually means Office or specific games, for Linux users usually something to do with dev environments). They all do mostly the same things.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

georgewsinger 5y ago

They forgot reason #12: the ability to work in VR with a high resolution standalone/portable VR office headset: https://simulavr.com/ https://simulavr.com/ :]

ghoward 5y ago

I have been a Linux-only user on the desktop since 2011. I've been thinking of jumping ship to FreeBSD for better ZFS support and a more cohesive experience, but I'm still on Linux for now. But I do try to make my software portable across all major OS's, so I have a hard drive specifically for Windows in my machine, and I do boot it. I hate it when I have to. Even though the only thing I do when I boot it is work on open source software, I get nervous about how much data is being mined on me because I can't tell. Hence why I only work on open source software. (And before anyone tells me that Linux is spying on me too, I run Gentoo with everything, including my ungoogled browser, built from source. And I watch my network traffic.)

taylodl 5y ago

Here's my reality: I know a lot of older people - people in their 50's, 60's, 70's, and even 80's - who can barely run Windows adequately. Do I think they'll ever run Linux as their daily driver? Nope. Okay, perhaps you think that's unfair, maybe you think it's the younger generation that's going to abandon Windows for Linux. You might want to re-think that. There was an article here on HN just a couple of weeks ago where a CIS professor was lamenting that their incoming students didn't even know how to use a computer! Most shocking to the professor was the fact they couldn't comprehend the file system! They were used to using tablets and phones. And those are the CIS students - imagine what the other students are like? They're not even running Windows, do you really think they're going to abandon their mobile experience for Linux? I wouldn't make that bet. Where does that leave us? People over 50 aren't running Linux and they most likely never will. People under 20 aren't running Linux and most likely never will. That leaves those aged 20-50, and frankly most of them aren't running Linux either and most likely never will. The future for Linux on the desktop isn't looking too bright. Meanwhile Linux on the server? It's pretty much foolish to run anything else.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Okay let's go through this list. 1) Avoid costly hardware upgrades - valid, Microsoft loves to make you upgrade, and it sucks 2) Fight toxic waste - Eh, it helps, but most users don't want to use a 10-year-old PC anyway, so there's a limit to how much waste you can really fight. Plus mobile devices greatly outweigh PCs pound for pound. 3) Keep the right to run the programs you want - Total nonsense. The article says "what if the government forces Microsoft to block some programs". Won't that apply to Linux also? Won't they see what you downloaded from your ISP? There's a weird belief in the tech world that if you can just avoid the law technically, the government will just give up. "Oh snap, you got us, you're good man. Next time!" hearty handshakes all around 4) Run your computer without surveillance - Again, nonsense. This speculates that because Windows 11 requires a camera (which is technically a lie anyway), Windows 11 will stream a live feed of you back to Microsoft. Think of the bandwidth usage! Ugly photos of you will be in Redmond servers! This is another Linux user problem: assuming that if a company does A, they'll be able to take the next step without outcry. Oh, they required a camera? Well then they can just stream a feed of your video back home and no one will complain! They got us! Those tricksters! No. In reality if Microsoft sent a feed of video back home, they would be lambasted. They would be discovered by security researchers and they'd never live it down. It would be the end of Microsoft. 5) Avoid conveniences that lock you in - So because Teams is installed by default, you'll he "locked in"? In reality, no one uses Teams unless they're made to. By work, school, etc. and those decisions are made at an institutional level above you. So good luck avoiding Teams in 2021. Using Linux won't help you with that. 6) Run your computer without a Microsoft account - Valid. If this bothers you, you should use Linux! 7) Customize your desktop - valid, this one is obvious 8) Enjoy the most recent and stable versions of free software - valid 9) Increase computing diversity - valid, although diversity is also a synonym for "fragmentation" 10) Launch your skills as a programmer - This one is old as the hills, but it's kind of nonsense. Mac and WSL have equally good developer environments. "Use Linux become programmer" is just post hoc ergo proctor hoc. 11) Choose computing freedom - Valid. However, software freedom is a slight myth. You're "free" to modify Chromium and remove Google. But it's really difficult. You can run Ubuntu without systemd, but you're in for a world of hurt.

XCSme 5y ago

Why is this allowed on HN? This is a spam, really poor quality article for SEO purposes.