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I disagree. I've been using desktop Linux for 15+ years. I spent a lot of time a solo dev and yeah I was blown away at all the b.s. I had to deal with as far as

I disagree. I've been using desktop Linux for 15+ years. I spent a lot of time a solo dev and yeah I was blown away at all the b.s. I had to deal with as far as making it run well. Then I got a job working for a larger company full of Macs and Windows. Man the problems those people were having? No freakin' way. I'll stick with Linux and its quirks. It's way less hassle than Windows or OSX. Near as I can tell the high quality features that come from commercial applications center around: * Telemetry and ads embedded in the apps and the operating system * Upgrade costs * Abandonware * Lack of older hardware support * Lack of configurability * Not owning the software you run

oblio 5y ago
> * Telemetry and ads embedded in the apps and the operating system I imagine you're talking about Windows. It's annoying but for an experienced Windows user it's a 10 minute set up to get rid of them when you install the OS and at most another 5-10 minutes when you upgrade the OS. > * Upgrade costs Windows 10 upgrades are free :-) > * Abandonware Not sure what this is supposed to mean. Apple tends to ditch stuff but Microsoft's support for legacy stuff is legendary. That's why many things in the design of Windows are obiectively crap, because they really want to support old stuff. > * Lack of older hardware support I heard that Windows 11 bumped up the spec requirements so you're probably right. Windows 10, though, runs well on hardware from 7+ years ago. > * Lack of configurability Meh, after a while you just want something stable. And I say this as someone who was patching Conky and configuring FVWM for hours on end. > * Not owning the software you run This is primarily philosophical. In practice it doesn't matter much. Especially since Linux distros are frequently self-serving too, see the many projects started and abandoned by Ubuntu. A lot of your comment in practice is anti-proprietary FUD straight from Eric S. Raymond's book from 1998. Everything has drawbacks in practice and not even Open Source devs are saints. See Gnome devs, Poettering, the glibc maintainer from a while ago, etc.
- troyvit 5y ago
  First, if you read what I said carefully I'm not just talking about operating systems but mainly "high quality commercial applications." But to your point about Windows, why does it need to take an "experienced" Windows user to turn off ads at the OS level? In the U.S. at least all of our privacy laws center around a "reasonable expectation of privacy."[1] A private company adding telemetry and ads to an operating system erodes that expectation. If people accept that Microsoft can do it then it becomes easier to justify it state actors (for instance) do it. The same goes for what happens in software apps. Upgrade costs: I'm talking about software here, not operating systems. Abandonware: Cool for Microsoft. Lack of older hardware support: Cool good for Windows. I still game on an even older laptop running Linux. Configurability vs stability. You can have both, as I think you know. Owning your own software: You've never run Adobe's Creative Cloud then. The SaaS model here isn't just a philosophical difference, it's a trap for anybody who can't afford spending > $120/year[2] Yeah Linux distros (and their software) can definitely be self-serving, and that's awesome because anybody who doesn't like the direction of an open source project can fork it and go their own way. Yeah it leads to fragmentation, but with 7 billion people in the world there's plenty of room for that. FUD: FUD implies disinformation. What did I say that isn't true? And yeah I agree that everything has its own drawbacks. I'm just saying that there's plenty of high quality software in the non-commercial world, from operating systems all the way down to text editors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(United... [2] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

oblio 5y ago

> * Telemetry and ads embedded in the apps and the operating system I imagine you're talking about Windows. It's annoying but for an experienced Windows user it's a 10 minute set up to get rid of them when you install the OS and at most another 5-10 minutes when you upgrade the OS. > * Upgrade costs Windows 10 upgrades are free :-) > * Abandonware Not sure what this is supposed to mean. Apple tends to ditch stuff but Microsoft's support for legacy stuff is legendary. That's why many things in the design of Windows are obiectively crap, because they really want to support old stuff. > * Lack of older hardware support I heard that Windows 11 bumped up the spec requirements so you're probably right. Windows 10, though, runs well on hardware from 7+ years ago. > * Lack of configurability Meh, after a while you just want something stable. And I say this as someone who was patching Conky and configuring FVWM for hours on end. > * Not owning the software you run This is primarily philosophical. In practice it doesn't matter much. Especially since Linux distros are frequently self-serving too, see the many projects started and abandoned by Ubuntu. A lot of your comment in practice is anti-proprietary FUD straight from Eric S. Raymond's book from 1998. Everything has drawbacks in practice and not even Open Source devs are saints. See Gnome devs, Poettering, the glibc maintainer from a while ago, etc.

troyvit 5y ago
First, if you read what I said carefully I'm not just talking about operating systems but mainly "high quality commercial applications." But to your point about Windows, why does it need to take an "experienced" Windows user to turn off ads at the OS level? In the U.S. at least all of our privacy laws center around a "reasonable expectation of privacy."[1] A private company adding telemetry and ads to an operating system erodes that expectation. If people accept that Microsoft can do it then it becomes easier to justify it state actors (for instance) do it. The same goes for what happens in software apps. Upgrade costs: I'm talking about software here, not operating systems. Abandonware: Cool for Microsoft. Lack of older hardware support: Cool good for Windows. I still game on an even older laptop running Linux. Configurability vs stability. You can have both, as I think you know. Owning your own software: You've never run Adobe's Creative Cloud then. The SaaS model here isn't just a philosophical difference, it's a trap for anybody who can't afford spending > $120/year[2] Yeah Linux distros (and their software) can definitely be self-serving, and that's awesome because anybody who doesn't like the direction of an open source project can fork it and go their own way. Yeah it leads to fragmentation, but with 7 billion people in the world there's plenty of room for that. FUD: FUD implies disinformation. What did I say that isn't true? And yeah I agree that everything has its own drawbacks. I'm just saying that there's plenty of high quality software in the non-commercial world, from operating systems all the way down to text editors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(United... [2] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html