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I have been using Linux since Redhat 6.2 back in 1998. I have had my share of xconfig edits, bash scripts, etc explorations. I am now reaching 36, I just like

I have been using Linux since Redhat 6.2 back in 1998. I have had my share of xconfig edits, bash scripts, etc explorations. I am now reaching 36, I just like 'things that work' - like Windows. Windows works with all my hardware, with all my 7 laptops, with all my 2 towers, I can install Visual Studio 2022 on it, I can install Ubuntu in WSL2 and I can play Dota2/Civ/Baldur's Gate/Warhammer 40k Insquisitor Martyr/listen to Spotify/debugging/deploying to Azure/writing an email/writing a Presentation in Power Point. And then go back to my family - because not worrying about Wayland, that new driver or that new update or "that new thing "- suprsingly leaves a lot of time that you can spend with your family :) And of course I am using the .NET stack with Angular- all smooth, all good, no hassle, just smooth sailing :)

square_usual 5y ago
It's not 1998 any more. Nobody worries about their linux setup unless they want to. My pop os tower has been set up and forget for years now.
- SantiagoElf 5y ago
  - kelnos 5y ago
    > That's the issue with Linux desktop users - they are fanatics and obsessed with their 'freedom of choice'... taking 2-3 hours per week to perfect their desktop with the perfect background and then post it on some Linux community site. Oh please, that's absurd. I probably spend 2-3 hours per year cumulatively on system maintenance tasks, and the rest of the time I get my work and play done. > Spending more time on forums defending their 'right choice' that doing actual work Pretty sure that's what you're doing right now. I don't think Linux is right for everyone, but your criticisms don't make sense. You're not even criticizing the platform itself, you're making up weird things about the people who use it, which kinda says a lot about you right there. > Let's move on. Been there, done that, moved on from Windows, never looking back.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > they are fanatics and obsessed with their 'freedom of choice', by using desktop environments that mimic the same thing they migrated from :) Have you ever met a Linux user in person? I ask you because most Linux users I know just run whatever came with their distro and, when unhappy, change distro. I'm running both Fedora and Ubuntu and I'm quite happy with both. The biggest change was to use the Gnome wallpaper because I didn't really like the Ubuntu one. My Fedora laptop is mostly vanilla. > Spending more time on forums defending their 'right choice' that doing actual work ;) We just like to correct people who write some baseless criticism and attacks on our professional attitudes, because, you know, these kind of comment is not really nice. Or professional. Or even correct. > Been there done that. Windows just works. Let's move on. Been there, done that, Linux just works better, and keeps working. Let's move on.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    > Been there done that. As a Linux user, I've never done that. Any kinds of obsessions are useless. I'm concentrated on performance and efficiency, and I find Linux environment perfect for my needs, extremely rich and flexible. Someone might say the same about their Windows box - and that's perfectly fine, fortunately everybody is free to use what they want - let's leave OS wars to people who enjoy having this kind of argument.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      One of the points of Gnome is that it has sensible defaults and you just live with them. Like, you know, a Mac. BTW, there's something to be said about how sensible Windows defaults are. I'm not really liking the start menu moving to the middle of the dock.
      - jeltz 5y ago
        Mac has terrible defaults though. The DE with the best defaults I have used so far has been Xfce. Xfce is a bot rough in some areas since it is a small volunteer driven project bit the defaults are excellent.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    > That's the issue with Linux desktop users - they are fanatics and obsessed with their 'freedom of choice', by using desktop environments that mimic the same thing they migrated from :) Microsoft and Apple have invested millions into design so it's not unreasonable that users of FOSS might like some of the design decisions made by those companies. That doesn't make FOSS users "fanatics", that makes them "pragmatic". > Spending more time on forums defending their 'right choice' that doing actual work Isn't that literally what you're doing right now? > and then taking 2-3 hours per week to perfect their desktop with the perfect background and then post it on some Linux community site. Now you're just being argumentative for the sake of it > Been there done that. Windows just works. Let's move on. As posted elsewhere, "just works" will differ depending on the individual and their requirements. Assuming what works for you is universal for everyone is the kind of delusional take that will get you pegged as a fanboy.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I have five Linux boxes in regular service (not counting the dozens of RPi-likes and VMs), with multiple configurations (mostly different filesystems - BtrFS, ZFS, XFS, LVM or bare metal, depending on requirements) and the only machines that give me surprises are the two Windows boxes, which, really, never do anything "weird".
  - square_usual 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, what are you using so many machines for? I can imagine collecting a few, but getting regular service out of them without having a business workload of some kind seems unusual to me.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Not the GP, but: - a desktop on Arch - an arm-based NAS on Debian - a router running OpenWRT - a backup target on Debian - a media player (x86) with Kodi/Wine/Dosbox/Mame/other emulators All are in regular use, but only the NAS and router run 24/7.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      - One server that runs ad-hoc VMs for various reasons and also does heavy lifting when the laptops aren't quite well suited for it. It has a monitor, but it's almost never used like that. - One very light (and slow by today's standards) Fedora laptop I use mostly from the couch and used to go with me to conferences. - One reasonably sized (also old, but still snappy) Ubuntu laptop I use tethered to a desk with a keyboard and monitor. - One that's mostly a file server that all computers on the network can see. - One that's a "write-only" file server for backups.
ra423 5y ago
> And then go back to my family - because not worrying about Wayland, that new driver or that new update or "that new thing "- suprsingly leaves a lot of time that you can spend with your family :) What about the times when windows take forever to "getting things ready". I once spent around two hours updating windows. And just after the reboot there were ten new updates.
- SantiagoElf 5y ago
  Have been Windows 10 insider since 2016ish maybe, before that installing whatever WzoR iso put out. This PC I am writing from - had Windows 10 installed on it 2018 with Windows Insiders builds, upgraded to Windows 11 around August, joinned the beta/canary channel, right now I am on: https://changewindows.org/platforms/pc/releases/windows-11-copper https://changewindows.org/platforms/pc/releases/windows-11-c... [Version 10.0.22538.1010] I had ZERO (0) issues with upgrades or downtime.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > I had ZERO (0) issues with upgrades or downtime. I too could make coffee or read a book while apt or dnf do their magic, but the truth is I can continue working while they do it, probably because, unlike Windows, they can delete and replace open files while they install, making the update-on-reboot issue on Windows a non-issue on Linux machines. It's been a while since I had a BSOD on Windows, but I have been forced to restart it quite a few times when something didn't work or stopped working, or the VPN went crazy or some other malfunction. Unscheduled downtime is still very much an issue on workstations and I wouldn't want to look into Windows Server and how it handles this issue.
    - vetinari 5y ago
      Every single half-year release of Windows 10 took more than one hour on both of my windows computers (using upgrade assistant; windows update never offered an update). They are no slouchs either, one is i7 and the other is Threadripper, both with ample ram and disk space. They also break Intel ANS on every single release - i.e. VLANs and LACP will stop working until Intel releases a new version. For Windows 11, Intel gave up and there will be no ANS anymore[1]. And the last, january 2022 update? It casually killed L2TP... [1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000087483/ethernet-products.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...
kelnos 5y ago
I'm 40, and I've found current-day Linux to "just work" as well as Windows or macOS ever has for me in the past. I run Xfce on X11, as I've been doing since 2004, on Debian, as I've been doing for the past decade or so. I see no need to switch to Wayland or constantly chase "that new thing". I don't game all that much; most of what I play that doesn't have a Linux-native build runs fine through Proton on my laptop. If I did do any serious gaming, I'd probably reluctantly have a separate Windows gaming rig that I'd use solely for gaming, but otherwise avoid it like the plague. Life is too short to deal with user-hostile OSes.
entropyie 5y ago
I am just a couple of years older than you, also using Windows since 3.0 (and MS-DOS for years before that) and Redhat Linux since the 90's. I've moved all my family over to Fedora, and support calls have dropped enormously. Windows 8 was the straw the broke the camel's back for most of them. They actually found Linux (sometimes with skinned XFCE) more familiar coming from Windows 7. I will accept that if you buy new low end hardware you may occasionally have driver issues, but the last few Lenovo AIO and Thinkpads I've bought all work flawlessly first time around. I will add that I've tried many vanilla Windows installs over the years, and without the special vendor drivers built in, found it to be even worse than Linux for compatibility. The hostility of modern Windows is just hard to accept to be honest. I get that my use-case doesn't apply to everyone, but I want people to know that if you do mostly web stuff etc... even as a non technical person, Linux can "just work".
- tremon 5y ago
  Same here, I gave my mother a dual-boot system (Windows+Debian) somewhere around 2008 (or so, given that it was Windows XP), and told her to switch to Linux for online banking (my father's online account was blocked twice due to suspicious activity). I also configured her Thunderbird mail client to use the Windows' data folder, so she could access her e-mail on both. A year later she told me she never started Windows any more, she used Linux all the time. Then my father's printer and sound card stopped working after upgrading to Windows 8, and I moved him to Linux as well. In all this time there's only one thing I couldn't fix for them: the library's audiobooks had some form of Adobe DRM on them, and of course it didn't support Linux. I told them to take up the issue with their library, but of course they didn't have a satisfactory resolution to the problem.
hnlmorg 5y ago
I'm a similiar age (few years older but nothing too signficant) and have used nearly every version of Windows. Inc pre 3.x versions, pre-NT4 versions, and most of the CE and embedded versions too. And like yourself, used Linux since the 90s too (Redhat, SuSE, and Slackware were my favourites up until I discovered Arch). Ironically I switched away from Windows and onto Linux precisely because I was sick of things not working on Windows. Sure, it has the best desktop application support of any operating system but to use it for anything more than just a desktop machine requires hours of configuration because everything is tailored to supporting technologically illeterate people (eg file extensions being hidden). Very little of any of this config can be automated -- or at least not in any easy way. And then Microsoft will pull some bullshit move that undoes half your config and you need to start all over again (much like the author of this submission has experienced). Or every few years you need to upgrade to a new release of Windows and you have to find where to change all those settings again plus learn a stack of new settings you need to change too. Eventually I realised I was spending as much time maintaining the OS as I was actually writing software on it. So I stopped using Windows. Or rather decided to keep Windows around for emergencies but use Linux as my primary desktop (instead of keeping Linux around for emergencies and using Windows as my primary desktop). My experience with Linux has been that you have the same install running for 10+ years (this is especially true for Arch because you have fewer risky distribution upgrades), but you can keep your config in Git so it's sync'ed across multiple machines or kept safe if you do need to reinstall your OS. Everything is automated and just works. Plus these days more and more software is browser based so you don't run into nearly as many "Linux not supported" issues as you did when I first gave up on Windows (back when XP was new). I'm not saying your experiences are wrong but just offering the counterpoint that "thing that work" might differ for different people.
- cesarb 5y ago
  > Plus these days more and more software is browser based so you don't run into nearly as many "Linux not supported" issues as you did when I first gave up on Windows (back when XP was new). Instead, you run into "Firefox not supported" issues.
- dTal 5y ago
  >My experience with Linux has been that you have the same install running for 10+ years (this is especially true for Arch because you have fewer risky distribution upgrades), Arch is needy; it commits seppuku if you abandon it for too long. Every update on Arch is a "risky distribution upgrade", and it insists that you update every day. On the other hand, I have kept Debian installs going for a great many years, with dist-upgrades never failing, and I know that some people have maintained the same Debian install since they first installed it in the 90s.
prima-facie 5y ago
> I can install Ubuntu in WSL2 Funny how the best thing to have happened to Windows in the last 10-ish years is gaining the ability to install Linux on top ;) Also making Python and Angular first class citizens in their dev stacks. Both of which are prominent open-source projects.
medo-bear 5y ago
without games windows would crumble. what has been changing in the past few years is the ammount of support given to gaming on linux as well as nvidia actively developing drivers for linux due to the machine learning community. it will be interesting to see how this develops also, as someone who has to keep a windows machine for availability of certain applications that have no linux versions yet, the statement that "windows just works" is bs in my experience
- rbanffy 5y ago
  That's why Linux is a workstation OS. If you need a Playstation OS, the choice of hardware is obvious ;-) > also, as someone who has to keep a windows machine for availability of certain applications that have no linux versions yet, the statement that "windows just works" is bs in my experience For a very limited set of values of "works". ;-)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > without games windows would crumble Eh, pretty sure it is mostly Office, specifically Outlook, that keep Windows alive. Glorious PC Gaming Master Race is relatively small, although they do spend a lot of money.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
> Windows just works. I use Windows for audio recording, mixing, mastering and gaming, here are my examples of Windows not "just work"ing: My Windows bluescreens immediately after booting on my Threadripper build with an MSI MEG x399 if I don't have the wifi driver installed. On a new install I have to deactivate it in UEFI settings, then boot/install windows, then install the driver before reactivating it. Windows Update tries to install certain useless crapware (nahimic) that I can't reject or properly uninstall without a few obscure hacks to trick it. I use an external audio interface, if Windows goes to standby I have to unplug it and plug it back in, otherwise it won't detect it anymore (this does not happen on Fedora 35). Also windows will occasionally just switch my default input device after reboots or going to standby. This behaviour is not consistent, so I have to check everytime before I use it for calls. This problem does not occur on Fedora 35. I currently have 13 .NET redistributables and Windows runtimes installed that all required manual downloading and installing for various games and software to work.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jmrm 5y ago
  A friend decided to have a Mac to use Pro Tools, FL Studio, Cubase, and other DAWs because of those problems. It's sad that those software isn't available in Linux.
  - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
    > It's sad that those software isn't available in Linux. It truly is, the only part on music production that is keeping me is not even the DAWs themselves (I mainly use Cubase and Reaper, and Reaper already offers a Linux build, which works well), it's the VST plugins, which rarely if ever offer Linux versions. Other music software I make heavy use of: Transcribe!, which offers a linux build and Musescore, which is open source and runs on Linux as well.
TriNetra 5y ago
Unrelated question – being a .NET developer, would you be interested to try out ASPSecurityKit specifically it's activity data authorization [1] feature? Pl share your email if yes. Mine is varun at ASPSecurityKit looking for some beta users, to get feedback as we're thinking a cross-platform component on similar lines. 1: https://aspsecuritykit.net/guides/aspnet-policy-authorization-vs-aspsecuritykit-ada/ https://aspsecuritykit.net/guides/aspnet-policy-authorizatio...
anthk 5y ago
In my case I began with DOS and later, Windows 98. I loved Windows 98SE/XP and Linux looked cool, "industrial" server graded OS but unusable for the desktop. As my Debian skills skyrocketed by a 20 euro bargain sale of Debian Sarge (4 DVD's, 3 for sw and 1 for the sources), I never went back to Windows. Today I use Slackware 14.2 on a netbook and -current (almost 15 nowadays) as my desktop OS. No driver issues, every emulated game works. I use either text mode via framebuffer (I can even watch videos and run SDL2 based cool stuff like mednafen) or fluxbox. I don't care on modern gaming, Slashem and IF killed modern graphical-intensive games but with a childish and boring script. Kinda like the current decade trend of Marvel superhero movies. I had more fun reading classical sci-fi comics from the 50's. BG was cool... at 18. Today I have no time to follow a 20000 pages long script based not on sequential reading, but on choices. Slashem has better and more inmersive RPG elements (Nethack was the king of emergent gameplay) and I can play it anywhere on any machine from a 486 or a Classic Mac. Mednafen does magic for my gf, two player 8-16 bits classics with a gamepad while I use the keyboard. It works even without X. No DLC's, no always online. Oh, and Jap nerds translated loads of games into English. I am not an English native, but for sure I can read English better than Kanji. On media, I don't care on Spotify, I have curseradio-improved, yt-dlp, Jamendo and Radio Paradise, and MPV plays HD content from Youtube and may other sites perfectly. My offline music collection (streamripper to Radio Paradise) does it better with the "shuffle" function on mocp. Fire and forget. Time for my family? No social media, no "always connected" bullshit. I don't have to follow 2000 notifications on the framebuffer as in a GUI or a smarthone. https://68k.news https://68k.news, https://lite.cnn.io https://lite.cnn.io, https://efe.com https://efe.com for my country's news and Slashdot/HN/Lobste.rs has anything I want to read. Even in text mode. I also have some good times with Gopher and magical.fish/sdf.org and the tildeverse. Condensed geekeery thanks to few members, code sharing and a low volume of posts. Heaven. And, maybe, bbs@uncensored.citadel.org via SSH from time to time. Ah, a lot of people posted personal blogs on Gopher, so I can read posts back to ~2007 with the Gopher revival, and I can read it on a slow pace. The protocol is fast enough and there's no lag to load the sites, OFC. Visual Studio? Heh. Nowadays almost everything I do it's cloud containered bullshit so there's very little to code, I almost do (jim)tcl and a bit of C for fun. At home, everything else it's scripted over with a script called "do_the_internet.sh" pulling and fetching rss, mail, usenet news and podcasts. Once a week. No info overload. Ironically thanks to that I spend much less time with the computer than you thanks to scripting ;), so I can focus on different stuff such as reading long books and biking. And, yes, I geek sometimes, OFC, but with a fast as hell Fluxbox netbook, I can chat everywhere thanks to SSH (mosh) and Bitlbee (IRC gateway to Telegram/Jabber and whatever Pidgin supports), and hack and slash with Slashem on top of a mountain by using the phone's wifi sharing. No ads. No unwanted updates. No pop-ups. No crapware. Batteries last hours. If you are on Windows, get a Gopher client and head to gopher://magical.fish and gopher://sdf.org. Your brain will thank you.
lnxg33k1 5y ago
Depends what works means for you, for me its being able to have a desktop running with a an ide and being able to choose reliably my defaults with the os getting out of my way. Linux does it for me 100%, windows is a bunch of GUI with no portable config and always tries to sell you something, including unclear errors and sudden crashes
pfundstein 5y ago
You clearly need to be introduced to Apple's ecosystem :)

square_usual 5y ago

It's not 1998 any more. Nobody worries about their linux setup unless they want to. My pop os tower has been set up and forget for years now.

SantiagoElf 5y ago
- kelnos 5y ago
  > That's the issue with Linux desktop users - they are fanatics and obsessed with their 'freedom of choice'... taking 2-3 hours per week to perfect their desktop with the perfect background and then post it on some Linux community site. Oh please, that's absurd. I probably spend 2-3 hours per year cumulatively on system maintenance tasks, and the rest of the time I get my work and play done. > Spending more time on forums defending their 'right choice' that doing actual work Pretty sure that's what you're doing right now. I don't think Linux is right for everyone, but your criticisms don't make sense. You're not even criticizing the platform itself, you're making up weird things about the people who use it, which kinda says a lot about you right there. > Let's move on. Been there, done that, moved on from Windows, never looking back.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > they are fanatics and obsessed with their 'freedom of choice', by using desktop environments that mimic the same thing they migrated from :) Have you ever met a Linux user in person? I ask you because most Linux users I know just run whatever came with their distro and, when unhappy, change distro. I'm running both Fedora and Ubuntu and I'm quite happy with both. The biggest change was to use the Gnome wallpaper because I didn't really like the Ubuntu one. My Fedora laptop is mostly vanilla. > Spending more time on forums defending their 'right choice' that doing actual work ;) We just like to correct people who write some baseless criticism and attacks on our professional attitudes, because, you know, these kind of comment is not really nice. Or professional. Or even correct. > Been there done that. Windows just works. Let's move on. Been there, done that, Linux just works better, and keeps working. Let's move on.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > Been there done that. As a Linux user, I've never done that. Any kinds of obsessions are useless. I'm concentrated on performance and efficiency, and I find Linux environment perfect for my needs, extremely rich and flexible. Someone might say the same about their Windows box - and that's perfectly fine, fortunately everybody is free to use what they want - let's leave OS wars to people who enjoy having this kind of argument.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    One of the points of Gnome is that it has sensible defaults and you just live with them. Like, you know, a Mac. BTW, there's something to be said about how sensible Windows defaults are. I'm not really liking the start menu moving to the middle of the dock.
    - jeltz 5y ago
      Mac has terrible defaults though. The DE with the best defaults I have used so far has been Xfce. Xfce is a bot rough in some areas since it is a small volunteer driven project bit the defaults are excellent.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  > That's the issue with Linux desktop users - they are fanatics and obsessed with their 'freedom of choice', by using desktop environments that mimic the same thing they migrated from :) Microsoft and Apple have invested millions into design so it's not unreasonable that users of FOSS might like some of the design decisions made by those companies. That doesn't make FOSS users "fanatics", that makes them "pragmatic". > Spending more time on forums defending their 'right choice' that doing actual work Isn't that literally what you're doing right now? > and then taking 2-3 hours per week to perfect their desktop with the perfect background and then post it on some Linux community site. Now you're just being argumentative for the sake of it > Been there done that. Windows just works. Let's move on. As posted elsewhere, "just works" will differ depending on the individual and their requirements. Assuming what works for you is universal for everyone is the kind of delusional take that will get you pegged as a fanboy.
rbanffy 5y ago
I have five Linux boxes in regular service (not counting the dozens of RPi-likes and VMs), with multiple configurations (mostly different filesystems - BtrFS, ZFS, XFS, LVM or bare metal, depending on requirements) and the only machines that give me surprises are the two Windows boxes, which, really, never do anything "weird".
- square_usual 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what are you using so many machines for? I can imagine collecting a few, but getting regular service out of them without having a business workload of some kind seems unusual to me.
  - tremon 5y ago
    Not the GP, but: - a desktop on Arch - an arm-based NAS on Debian - a router running OpenWRT - a backup target on Debian - a media player (x86) with Kodi/Wine/Dosbox/Mame/other emulators All are in regular use, but only the NAS and router run 24/7.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    - One server that runs ad-hoc VMs for various reasons and also does heavy lifting when the laptops aren't quite well suited for it. It has a monitor, but it's almost never used like that. - One very light (and slow by today's standards) Fedora laptop I use mostly from the couch and used to go with me to conferences. - One reasonably sized (also old, but still snappy) Ubuntu laptop I use tethered to a desk with a keyboard and monitor. - One that's mostly a file server that all computers on the network can see. - One that's a "write-only" file server for backups.

ra423 5y ago

> And then go back to my family - because not worrying about Wayland, that new driver or that new update or "that new thing "- suprsingly leaves a lot of time that you can spend with your family :) What about the times when windows take forever to "getting things ready". I once spent around two hours updating windows. And just after the reboot there were ten new updates.

SantiagoElf 5y ago
Have been Windows 10 insider since 2016ish maybe, before that installing whatever WzoR iso put out. This PC I am writing from - had Windows 10 installed on it 2018 with Windows Insiders builds, upgraded to Windows 11 around August, joinned the beta/canary channel, right now I am on: https://changewindows.org/platforms/pc/releases/windows-11-copper https://changewindows.org/platforms/pc/releases/windows-11-c... [Version 10.0.22538.1010] I had ZERO (0) issues with upgrades or downtime.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > I had ZERO (0) issues with upgrades or downtime. I too could make coffee or read a book while apt or dnf do their magic, but the truth is I can continue working while they do it, probably because, unlike Windows, they can delete and replace open files while they install, making the update-on-reboot issue on Windows a non-issue on Linux machines. It's been a while since I had a BSOD on Windows, but I have been forced to restart it quite a few times when something didn't work or stopped working, or the VPN went crazy or some other malfunction. Unscheduled downtime is still very much an issue on workstations and I wouldn't want to look into Windows Server and how it handles this issue.
  - vetinari 5y ago
    Every single half-year release of Windows 10 took more than one hour on both of my windows computers (using upgrade assistant; windows update never offered an update). They are no slouchs either, one is i7 and the other is Threadripper, both with ample ram and disk space. They also break Intel ANS on every single release - i.e. VLANs and LACP will stop working until Intel releases a new version. For Windows 11, Intel gave up and there will be no ANS anymore[1]. And the last, january 2022 update? It casually killed L2TP... [1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000087483/ethernet-products.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...

kelnos 5y ago

I'm 40, and I've found current-day Linux to "just work" as well as Windows or macOS ever has for me in the past. I run Xfce on X11, as I've been doing since 2004, on Debian, as I've been doing for the past decade or so. I see no need to switch to Wayland or constantly chase "that new thing". I don't game all that much; most of what I play that doesn't have a Linux-native build runs fine through Proton on my laptop. If I did do any serious gaming, I'd probably reluctantly have a separate Windows gaming rig that I'd use solely for gaming, but otherwise avoid it like the plague. Life is too short to deal with user-hostile OSes.

entropyie 5y ago

I am just a couple of years older than you, also using Windows since 3.0 (and MS-DOS for years before that) and Redhat Linux since the 90's. I've moved all my family over to Fedora, and support calls have dropped enormously. Windows 8 was the straw the broke the camel's back for most of them. They actually found Linux (sometimes with skinned XFCE) more familiar coming from Windows 7. I will accept that if you buy new low end hardware you may occasionally have driver issues, but the last few Lenovo AIO and Thinkpads I've bought all work flawlessly first time around. I will add that I've tried many vanilla Windows installs over the years, and without the special vendor drivers built in, found it to be even worse than Linux for compatibility. The hostility of modern Windows is just hard to accept to be honest. I get that my use-case doesn't apply to everyone, but I want people to know that if you do mostly web stuff etc... even as a non technical person, Linux can "just work".

tremon 5y ago
Same here, I gave my mother a dual-boot system (Windows+Debian) somewhere around 2008 (or so, given that it was Windows XP), and told her to switch to Linux for online banking (my father's online account was blocked twice due to suspicious activity). I also configured her Thunderbird mail client to use the Windows' data folder, so she could access her e-mail on both. A year later she told me she never started Windows any more, she used Linux all the time. Then my father's printer and sound card stopped working after upgrading to Windows 8, and I moved him to Linux as well. In all this time there's only one thing I couldn't fix for them: the library's audiobooks had some form of Adobe DRM on them, and of course it didn't support Linux. I told them to take up the issue with their library, but of course they didn't have a satisfactory resolution to the problem.

hnlmorg 5y ago

I'm a similiar age (few years older but nothing too signficant) and have used nearly every version of Windows. Inc pre 3.x versions, pre-NT4 versions, and most of the CE and embedded versions too. And like yourself, used Linux since the 90s too (Redhat, SuSE, and Slackware were my favourites up until I discovered Arch). Ironically I switched away from Windows and onto Linux precisely because I was sick of things not working on Windows. Sure, it has the best desktop application support of any operating system but to use it for anything more than just a desktop machine requires hours of configuration because everything is tailored to supporting technologically illeterate people (eg file extensions being hidden). Very little of any of this config can be automated -- or at least not in any easy way. And then Microsoft will pull some bullshit move that undoes half your config and you need to start all over again (much like the author of this submission has experienced). Or every few years you need to upgrade to a new release of Windows and you have to find where to change all those settings again plus learn a stack of new settings you need to change too. Eventually I realised I was spending as much time maintaining the OS as I was actually writing software on it. So I stopped using Windows. Or rather decided to keep Windows around for emergencies but use Linux as my primary desktop (instead of keeping Linux around for emergencies and using Windows as my primary desktop). My experience with Linux has been that you have the same install running for 10+ years (this is especially true for Arch because you have fewer risky distribution upgrades), but you can keep your config in Git so it's sync'ed across multiple machines or kept safe if you do need to reinstall your OS. Everything is automated and just works. Plus these days more and more software is browser based so you don't run into nearly as many "Linux not supported" issues as you did when I first gave up on Windows (back when XP was new). I'm not saying your experiences are wrong but just offering the counterpoint that "thing that work" might differ for different people.

cesarb 5y ago
> Plus these days more and more software is browser based so you don't run into nearly as many "Linux not supported" issues as you did when I first gave up on Windows (back when XP was new). Instead, you run into "Firefox not supported" issues.
dTal 5y ago
>My experience with Linux has been that you have the same install running for 10+ years (this is especially true for Arch because you have fewer risky distribution upgrades), Arch is needy; it commits seppuku if you abandon it for too long. Every update on Arch is a "risky distribution upgrade", and it insists that you update every day. On the other hand, I have kept Debian installs going for a great many years, with dist-upgrades never failing, and I know that some people have maintained the same Debian install since they first installed it in the 90s.

prima-facie 5y ago

> I can install Ubuntu in WSL2 Funny how the best thing to have happened to Windows in the last 10-ish years is gaining the ability to install Linux on top ;) Also making Python and Angular first class citizens in their dev stacks. Both of which are prominent open-source projects.

medo-bear 5y ago

without games windows would crumble. what has been changing in the past few years is the ammount of support given to gaming on linux as well as nvidia actively developing drivers for linux due to the machine learning community. it will be interesting to see how this develops also, as someone who has to keep a windows machine for availability of certain applications that have no linux versions yet, the statement that "windows just works" is bs in my experience

rbanffy 5y ago
That's why Linux is a workstation OS. If you need a Playstation OS, the choice of hardware is obvious ;-) > also, as someone who has to keep a windows machine for availability of certain applications that have no linux versions yet, the statement that "windows just works" is bs in my experience For a very limited set of values of "works". ;-)
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> without games windows would crumble Eh, pretty sure it is mostly Office, specifically Outlook, that keep Windows alive. Glorious PC Gaming Master Race is relatively small, although they do spend a lot of money.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago

> Windows just works. I use Windows for audio recording, mixing, mastering and gaming, here are my examples of Windows not "just work"ing: My Windows bluescreens immediately after booting on my Threadripper build with an MSI MEG x399 if I don't have the wifi driver installed. On a new install I have to deactivate it in UEFI settings, then boot/install windows, then install the driver before reactivating it. Windows Update tries to install certain useless crapware (nahimic) that I can't reject or properly uninstall without a few obscure hacks to trick it. I use an external audio interface, if Windows goes to standby I have to unplug it and plug it back in, otherwise it won't detect it anymore (this does not happen on Fedora 35). Also windows will occasionally just switch my default input device after reboots or going to standby. This behaviour is not consistent, so I have to check everytime before I use it for calls. This problem does not occur on Fedora 35. I currently have 13 .NET redistributables and Windows runtimes installed that all required manual downloading and installing for various games and software to work.

deleted 5y ago
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jmrm 5y ago
A friend decided to have a Mac to use Pro Tools, FL Studio, Cubase, and other DAWs because of those problems. It's sad that those software isn't available in Linux.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  > It's sad that those software isn't available in Linux. It truly is, the only part on music production that is keeping me is not even the DAWs themselves (I mainly use Cubase and Reaper, and Reaper already offers a Linux build, which works well), it's the VST plugins, which rarely if ever offer Linux versions. Other music software I make heavy use of: Transcribe!, which offers a linux build and Musescore, which is open source and runs on Linux as well.

TriNetra 5y ago

Unrelated question – being a .NET developer, would you be interested to try out ASPSecurityKit specifically it's activity data authorization [1] feature? Pl share your email if yes. Mine is varun at ASPSecurityKit looking for some beta users, to get feedback as we're thinking a cross-platform component on similar lines. 1: https://aspsecuritykit.net/guides/aspnet-policy-authorization-vs-aspsecuritykit-ada/ https://aspsecuritykit.net/guides/aspnet-policy-authorizatio...

anthk 5y ago

In my case I began with DOS and later, Windows 98. I loved Windows 98SE/XP and Linux looked cool, "industrial" server graded OS but unusable for the desktop. As my Debian skills skyrocketed by a 20 euro bargain sale of Debian Sarge (4 DVD's, 3 for sw and 1 for the sources), I never went back to Windows. Today I use Slackware 14.2 on a netbook and -current (almost 15 nowadays) as my desktop OS. No driver issues, every emulated game works. I use either text mode via framebuffer (I can even watch videos and run SDL2 based cool stuff like mednafen) or fluxbox. I don't care on modern gaming, Slashem and IF killed modern graphical-intensive games but with a childish and boring script. Kinda like the current decade trend of Marvel superhero movies. I had more fun reading classical sci-fi comics from the 50's. BG was cool... at 18. Today I have no time to follow a 20000 pages long script based not on sequential reading, but on choices. Slashem has better and more inmersive RPG elements (Nethack was the king of emergent gameplay) and I can play it anywhere on any machine from a 486 or a Classic Mac. Mednafen does magic for my gf, two player 8-16 bits classics with a gamepad while I use the keyboard. It works even without X. No DLC's, no always online. Oh, and Jap nerds translated loads of games into English. I am not an English native, but for sure I can read English better than Kanji. On media, I don't care on Spotify, I have curseradio-improved, yt-dlp, Jamendo and Radio Paradise, and MPV plays HD content from Youtube and may other sites perfectly. My offline music collection (streamripper to Radio Paradise) does it better with the "shuffle" function on mocp. Fire and forget. Time for my family? No social media, no "always connected" bullshit. I don't have to follow 2000 notifications on the framebuffer as in a GUI or a smarthone. https://68k.news https://68k.news, https://lite.cnn.io https://lite.cnn.io, https://efe.com https://efe.com for my country's news and Slashdot/HN/Lobste.rs has anything I want to read. Even in text mode. I also have some good times with Gopher and magical.fish/sdf.org and the tildeverse. Condensed geekeery thanks to few members, code sharing and a low volume of posts. Heaven. And, maybe, bbs@uncensored.citadel.org via SSH from time to time. Ah, a lot of people posted personal blogs on Gopher, so I can read posts back to ~2007 with the Gopher revival, and I can read it on a slow pace. The protocol is fast enough and there's no lag to load the sites, OFC. Visual Studio? Heh. Nowadays almost everything I do it's cloud containered bullshit so there's very little to code, I almost do (jim)tcl and a bit of C for fun. At home, everything else it's scripted over with a script called "do_the_internet.sh" pulling and fetching rss, mail, usenet news and podcasts. Once a week. No info overload. Ironically thanks to that I spend much less time with the computer than you thanks to scripting ;), so I can focus on different stuff such as reading long books and biking. And, yes, I geek sometimes, OFC, but with a fast as hell Fluxbox netbook, I can chat everywhere thanks to SSH (mosh) and Bitlbee (IRC gateway to Telegram/Jabber and whatever Pidgin supports), and hack and slash with Slashem on top of a mountain by using the phone's wifi sharing. No ads. No unwanted updates. No pop-ups. No crapware. Batteries last hours. If you are on Windows, get a Gopher client and head to gopher://magical.fish and gopher://sdf.org. Your brain will thank you.

lnxg33k1 5y ago

Depends what works means for you, for me its being able to have a desktop running with a an ide and being able to choose reliably my defaults with the os getting out of my way. Linux does it for me 100%, windows is a bunch of GUI with no portable config and always tries to sell you something, including unclear errors and sudden crashes

pfundstein 5y ago

You clearly need to be introduced to Apple's ecosystem :)