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I’m so tired of hearing this ‘just switch to Linux’ bullshit. If you are privileged enough to be in the extreme minority who can do that - you probably already

I’m so tired of hearing this ‘just switch to Linux’ bullshit. If you are privileged enough to be in the extreme minority who can do that - you probably already have. I know you know this - but people need proprietary software, and they need to not guess if it might possibly work through some interpretative layer like WINE. May I remind you a lot of people pay for software they need to use, and sometimes need support or updates that they certainly won’t be guaranteed if they are trying to run software on unsupported systems. If you are somehow privileged enough to not be in that group, you are an extreme - extreme - outlier, and good for you, but don’t bury your head in the sand and forget that for 99% of people, that’s obviously not a possibility - whatsoever - including at least 90% of the workforce who gets handed a laptop and use whatever they have to use. It’s just so irritating to constantly hear this ‘just go to Linux’ bullshit when it’s not like Linux users aren’t aware that it can’t work for the majority of people. If I switch to Linux, I lose Photoshop, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, Unity, as well as a handful of plug-ins. That’s $1k plus of software I have paid for and rely on, that I instantly lose access to?! The value loss upon switching to Linux - alone - for most people, who have invested into software ecosystems that can’t be replicated in Linux alone would be astounding. It’s not even the money spent on software, either - it’s the time invested in learning it. I know people who run Linux know this - I wonder why they seem to have forgotten.

Zababa 5y ago
People in the workforce that get handed over a laptop with Windows usually don't have any control on it due to company policies, so this is a non-argument. For the rest, I doubt 99% of people actually "need" Windows. 50%? Probably, possibly. Also, proprietary software has nothing to do with Linux or not Linux, there is proprietary software that's not Windows only. I also don't think any of this is about privilge, it's about control. If you want control, you have to work for it. That's how everything works in life. People will always try to take away from you control. Switching to Linux may take work, but it will give you control. Learning a bit more Windows (like the operations mentionned earlier, the registery) will probably be easier and give you less. Everyone can then adjust things depending on how much control they want and time/energy they have.
- lostgame 5y ago
  I don’t get how losing access to the software I need to do the things I need to do - have spent quite a bit of money on - and a lot of time learning - gives me ‘control’. Actually - it doesn’t. Plain and simple. I actually laughed out loud a little at the comment, ngl. It’s actually that Linux is controlling me and what I can do. :/ Specifically, what I can’t do. I’d lose thousands of dollars and years of investment into learning and using these tools I rely on. It would cripple me completely, professionally - overnight. For real. I’d also lose access to a decade and a half of project files from Logic, etc. It’s completely privilege if you happen to be in the minority that can find the time and value loss that switching to an OS that doesn’t allow you to run any previous software you’ve used (except Firefox, maybe :P) somehow works for you. It’s funny - I have complete control over my ability to do everything I want to do on my Mac. Switching to Linux immediately takes my entire command deck (Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro X, various plug ins, Photoshop, Animator, Maya, Unity3D…I could go on…) away from me. And what’s funny is - I have the ability to run most of the software I’d run on Linux on my Mac anyway, due to its underpinnings. Then I’ve still got WINE… So, the fact is - there are almost only disadvantages for a vast number of, especially average users - to switch to Linux - and most of that is the time and headache involved in unnecessarily learning a new system. Most people don’t want to even deal with computers to start. And this leads to the biggest reason we will never have the ‘year of Linux’, and the biggest reason I laugh off Linux evangelists as totally ignorant of the ‘real world’. Us nerds really get stuck in our tiny little corner of a perspective sometimes. Very little demonstrates that more than Linux switcher evangelists. The average person literally knows the like 4-5 tasks they need to do on their computer and they don’t want to know or learn anything else! Like, people are not like we are, and any serious Linux evangelist forgot that a long time ago.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > I don’t get how losing access to the software I need to do the things I need to do - have spent quite a bit of money on - and a lot of time learning - gives me ‘control’. We're in a discussion about how you can get Windows to do the things you want because of user hostile decisions made by Microsoft. > It’s actually that Linux is controlling me and what I can do. :/ I don't think it's called "control" when it's due to an unconscious agent. Life is not "controlling" you because you will die one day. It's how things are. You can influence it, like living longer by not smoking, or porting over software to linux, or trying stuff out with wine or sharing how it works. > It’s completely privilege if you happen to be in the minority that can find the time and value loss that switching to an OS that doesn’t allow you to run any previous software you’ve used somehow works for you. You're making the fallacy of thinking that switching OS means you'll loss all software, which is absolutely wrong. Unless you happen to only use desktop apps that only work on windows, which puts you in the minority. A good part of Excel works online for example, same with most of Microsoft Office. Alternative also exists. And again, considering the post we're in, people are frustrated at windows, they're already spending quite some time and energy in trying to fix things or being frustrated at things. You and everyone else are free to invest their time however you want. That doesn't mean it's the correct or best decision. There's nothing about that that's privilege. Some people work with Excel all their life yet refuse to learn more of it, even when they are offered formations at work. That's not lacking privilege. And again, it's perfectly fine if they don't want to do it. But the people that instead learn more Excel are not privileged in any way. Edit following yours: > The average person literally knows the like 4-5 tasks they need to do on their computer and they don’t want to know or learn anything else! I'm glad we agree that it's in their power to do it and that they actually refuse to do anything about it. If you consider windows to be becoming too anoying (which is what this whole thread is about) and keep complaining and not doing anything, this is not because of a lack of privilege. This is on you. If windows is working fine for you, great! I'm happy to hear it! Same for MacOS. However, people are having issues frequently with closed source OSes. This one about windows, a recent one about MacOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30864613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30864613. For them, switching might be a solution. I'll add that I don't really see the point of editing your comment to be even more snarky and less based on facts that it was before. Maybe reading the guidelines again would help you?
forgotpwd16 5y ago
You're underestimating the number of people that could switch to Linux but won't because they think it's some thing only running in servers.
can16358p 5y ago
Yup. I'm stuck at using Visual Studio (not Vscode) for a legacy codebase for work and it's the only reason that I still have to use Windows (though thankfully, in a VM) that doesn't work properly on Mono-rebranded-as-Visual-Studio-which-isnt-the-same-thing. I'm a Mac user and can't even consider switching to Linux (eventhough I like it) as I use Photoshop, After Effects, Sketch, Logic Pro which anyone would probably agree that they are unmatched. Anyone who can completely be on Linux are probably people who don't need ANYTHING other than open source software/terminals/code editors etc. which is much less in percentage (but overlapping with the demographics of here a lot).
- wilsonnb3 5y ago
  Not sure of the details of your legacy code base but Jetbrains Rider is an excellent .NET IDE that runs on MacOS and Linux.
mattlondon 5y ago
I would also add that even in 2022 (last time I had a Dell Linux machine) lots of stuff simply fails. E.g. wake from sleep often doesn't, webcams often just stop between exiting one video call and starting another, Bluetooth often stops, CPU throttling often doesn't do anything so you have battery life of 1hr max, external USB keyboards often "disappear" etc. This sort of shit never happens on my personal Windows machine, Chromebooks, or work MacBook Pro (that replaced the Linux dell). I trust the tech people at my place of work to not screw things up in terms of distro, and it has been something that I have observed time and time again over the years with Linux on different hardware, different distros and different corporate environments. The answer if often "turn it off and on again" (much like windows 95) otherwise you are on an tedious trip down remote support sessions with dmesg/lsusb/blueman/pulseaudio command line messing about. I am sure someone will reply "ah you need to make sure you use foo instead of bar!" or "that version of Bar is not compatible with Foo" or " your distro needs to back port patch Quux" ... that is part of the problem and why "just use Linux" doesn't work (yet).
goosedragons 5y ago
You're also in the extreme minority. Most users don't have close to thousands of dollars in paid software and often what they do have is something like Microsoft Office that has alternatives or easy options to get working like the proprietary paid software Crossover (that's right! Linux has proprietary paid software!). It's just as tiring to hear "Linux is unusable, it can't run X". For you maybe it can't work but it can work for a lot more than just coders. Honestly I feel like desktop Linux market share would be a whole lot larger if the defacto office suite wasn't owned by the biggest OS maker...
blindmute 5y ago
Then what is the point of these threads? > Product I use is bad > Use other product > No >:( These threads are pretty pointless as it is, but if we avoid mentioning the only solution that exists and how to do that, switching to Linux, then the thread is literally just a bunch of complaining
- lostgame 5y ago
  Switching to Linux is obviously not the only solution - and somehow trying to argue that it’s the case is not only ignorant - but straight-up what my core issue is with Linux evangelism. There is such a lack of consideration for the average end-user - who would never deal with the layers that come with a Linux distro in the evangelical Linux community - it seriously drives me crazy sometimes. Like - the only solution? … There is an entire other OS and ecosystem called MacOS, that doesn’t have these issues like built-in advertising - allows for natively running the proprietary software most people need without some weird translation layer in between - and if you don’t like that - there are ways to tweak Windows into being semi-sorta-not-really-but-whatever level acceptable. It even runs most Linux software, to boot. Almost like it’s the best of all worlds, or something. And if you want to bitch about the proprietary hardware ‘needed’ for MacOS - to be frank - in about 15 years or so of playing with both Hackintoshes and various Linux distributions…I honestly found them to be about equal in terms of hardware support and annoyance of configuration. In the last 4-5 years I’ve actually had better luck with plug and play hardware support on Hackintoshes. (It’s amazing how fantastic that community is! Most of my computers are totally plug and play. My 80-year-old grandma did it last year, first try - after trying and failing several times with Ubuntu, on her bog-standard Dell tower…) So, point in case - is the average person supposed to go fishing around for drivers or go out to purchase specific hardware so it works with their Linux distribution? Do they want to dig through package managers to find whatever alternatives exist to the software they need and already know how to use? Obviously not, and; no. :P So is Linux even a ‘solution’ at all for at least 80% of people who don’t even get what a ‘driver’ is? Of course not! So it certainly can’t be the ‘only’ solution. Even convincing the average Windows user to go over to MacOS - even if you hand them a Mac - is pretty tough, honestly. (Speaking from experience…) I’d never, nor have I ever - recommend(ed) any Linux distribution to anyone who wasn’t a serious techie. Heck, I don’t recommend it in general, unless you’re lucky enough to be a programmer who doesn’t have to work on proprietary systems, and are dual-booting alongside an OS that can natively run the proprietary software 90% of people rely on and already know how to use. If you’re curious and tech-savvy - of course - go for it! I’ve recommended dual-booting to a few techie friends, and I have nothing against Linux - honesty except for the people who are blindly evangelical about it and forget about the real people in the world who aren’t techies. For the average person - Linux is a perfect case of ‘free isn’t free’. An aside: You know what is likeliest to replace Windows, which sucks balls? Android. Because honestly, other than the built-in ads, on a default installation, with telemetry enabled, it would be tough to tell which OS is worse for your privacy. I’d be curious to see a highly technical comparison on that!

Zababa 5y ago

People in the workforce that get handed over a laptop with Windows usually don't have any control on it due to company policies, so this is a non-argument. For the rest, I doubt 99% of people actually "need" Windows. 50%? Probably, possibly. Also, proprietary software has nothing to do with Linux or not Linux, there is proprietary software that's not Windows only. I also don't think any of this is about privilge, it's about control. If you want control, you have to work for it. That's how everything works in life. People will always try to take away from you control. Switching to Linux may take work, but it will give you control. Learning a bit more Windows (like the operations mentionned earlier, the registery) will probably be easier and give you less. Everyone can then adjust things depending on how much control they want and time/energy they have.

lostgame 5y ago
I don’t get how losing access to the software I need to do the things I need to do - have spent quite a bit of money on - and a lot of time learning - gives me ‘control’. Actually - it doesn’t. Plain and simple. I actually laughed out loud a little at the comment, ngl. It’s actually that Linux is controlling me and what I can do. :/ Specifically, what I can’t do. I’d lose thousands of dollars and years of investment into learning and using these tools I rely on. It would cripple me completely, professionally - overnight. For real. I’d also lose access to a decade and a half of project files from Logic, etc. It’s completely privilege if you happen to be in the minority that can find the time and value loss that switching to an OS that doesn’t allow you to run any previous software you’ve used (except Firefox, maybe :P) somehow works for you. It’s funny - I have complete control over my ability to do everything I want to do on my Mac. Switching to Linux immediately takes my entire command deck (Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro X, various plug ins, Photoshop, Animator, Maya, Unity3D…I could go on…) away from me. And what’s funny is - I have the ability to run most of the software I’d run on Linux on my Mac anyway, due to its underpinnings. Then I’ve still got WINE… So, the fact is - there are almost only disadvantages for a vast number of, especially average users - to switch to Linux - and most of that is the time and headache involved in unnecessarily learning a new system. Most people don’t want to even deal with computers to start. And this leads to the biggest reason we will never have the ‘year of Linux’, and the biggest reason I laugh off Linux evangelists as totally ignorant of the ‘real world’. Us nerds really get stuck in our tiny little corner of a perspective sometimes. Very little demonstrates that more than Linux switcher evangelists. The average person literally knows the like 4-5 tasks they need to do on their computer and they don’t want to know or learn anything else! Like, people are not like we are, and any serious Linux evangelist forgot that a long time ago.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > I don’t get how losing access to the software I need to do the things I need to do - have spent quite a bit of money on - and a lot of time learning - gives me ‘control’. We're in a discussion about how you can get Windows to do the things you want because of user hostile decisions made by Microsoft. > It’s actually that Linux is controlling me and what I can do. :/ I don't think it's called "control" when it's due to an unconscious agent. Life is not "controlling" you because you will die one day. It's how things are. You can influence it, like living longer by not smoking, or porting over software to linux, or trying stuff out with wine or sharing how it works. > It’s completely privilege if you happen to be in the minority that can find the time and value loss that switching to an OS that doesn’t allow you to run any previous software you’ve used somehow works for you. You're making the fallacy of thinking that switching OS means you'll loss all software, which is absolutely wrong. Unless you happen to only use desktop apps that only work on windows, which puts you in the minority. A good part of Excel works online for example, same with most of Microsoft Office. Alternative also exists. And again, considering the post we're in, people are frustrated at windows, they're already spending quite some time and energy in trying to fix things or being frustrated at things. You and everyone else are free to invest their time however you want. That doesn't mean it's the correct or best decision. There's nothing about that that's privilege. Some people work with Excel all their life yet refuse to learn more of it, even when they are offered formations at work. That's not lacking privilege. And again, it's perfectly fine if they don't want to do it. But the people that instead learn more Excel are not privileged in any way. Edit following yours: > The average person literally knows the like 4-5 tasks they need to do on their computer and they don’t want to know or learn anything else! I'm glad we agree that it's in their power to do it and that they actually refuse to do anything about it. If you consider windows to be becoming too anoying (which is what this whole thread is about) and keep complaining and not doing anything, this is not because of a lack of privilege. This is on you. If windows is working fine for you, great! I'm happy to hear it! Same for MacOS. However, people are having issues frequently with closed source OSes. This one about windows, a recent one about MacOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30864613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30864613. For them, switching might be a solution. I'll add that I don't really see the point of editing your comment to be even more snarky and less based on facts that it was before. Maybe reading the guidelines again would help you?

forgotpwd16 5y ago

You're underestimating the number of people that could switch to Linux but won't because they think it's some thing only running in servers.

can16358p 5y ago

Yup. I'm stuck at using Visual Studio (not Vscode) for a legacy codebase for work and it's the only reason that I still have to use Windows (though thankfully, in a VM) that doesn't work properly on Mono-rebranded-as-Visual-Studio-which-isnt-the-same-thing. I'm a Mac user and can't even consider switching to Linux (eventhough I like it) as I use Photoshop, After Effects, Sketch, Logic Pro which anyone would probably agree that they are unmatched. Anyone who can completely be on Linux are probably people who don't need ANYTHING other than open source software/terminals/code editors etc. which is much less in percentage (but overlapping with the demographics of here a lot).

wilsonnb3 5y ago
Not sure of the details of your legacy code base but Jetbrains Rider is an excellent .NET IDE that runs on MacOS and Linux.

mattlondon 5y ago

I would also add that even in 2022 (last time I had a Dell Linux machine) lots of stuff simply fails. E.g. wake from sleep often doesn't, webcams often just stop between exiting one video call and starting another, Bluetooth often stops, CPU throttling often doesn't do anything so you have battery life of 1hr max, external USB keyboards often "disappear" etc. This sort of shit never happens on my personal Windows machine, Chromebooks, or work MacBook Pro (that replaced the Linux dell). I trust the tech people at my place of work to not screw things up in terms of distro, and it has been something that I have observed time and time again over the years with Linux on different hardware, different distros and different corporate environments. The answer if often "turn it off and on again" (much like windows 95) otherwise you are on an tedious trip down remote support sessions with dmesg/lsusb/blueman/pulseaudio command line messing about. I am sure someone will reply "ah you need to make sure you use foo instead of bar!" or "that version of Bar is not compatible with Foo" or " your distro needs to back port patch Quux" ... that is part of the problem and why "just use Linux" doesn't work (yet).

goosedragons 5y ago

You're also in the extreme minority. Most users don't have close to thousands of dollars in paid software and often what they do have is something like Microsoft Office that has alternatives or easy options to get working like the proprietary paid software Crossover (that's right! Linux has proprietary paid software!). It's just as tiring to hear "Linux is unusable, it can't run X". For you maybe it can't work but it can work for a lot more than just coders. Honestly I feel like desktop Linux market share would be a whole lot larger if the defacto office suite wasn't owned by the biggest OS maker...

blindmute 5y ago

Then what is the point of these threads? > Product I use is bad > Use other product > No >:( These threads are pretty pointless as it is, but if we avoid mentioning the only solution that exists and how to do that, switching to Linux, then the thread is literally just a bunch of complaining

lostgame 5y ago
Switching to Linux is obviously not the only solution - and somehow trying to argue that it’s the case is not only ignorant - but straight-up what my core issue is with Linux evangelism. There is such a lack of consideration for the average end-user - who would never deal with the layers that come with a Linux distro in the evangelical Linux community - it seriously drives me crazy sometimes. Like - the only solution? … There is an entire other OS and ecosystem called MacOS, that doesn’t have these issues like built-in advertising - allows for natively running the proprietary software most people need without some weird translation layer in between - and if you don’t like that - there are ways to tweak Windows into being semi-sorta-not-really-but-whatever level acceptable. It even runs most Linux software, to boot. Almost like it’s the best of all worlds, or something. And if you want to bitch about the proprietary hardware ‘needed’ for MacOS - to be frank - in about 15 years or so of playing with both Hackintoshes and various Linux distributions…I honestly found them to be about equal in terms of hardware support and annoyance of configuration. In the last 4-5 years I’ve actually had better luck with plug and play hardware support on Hackintoshes. (It’s amazing how fantastic that community is! Most of my computers are totally plug and play. My 80-year-old grandma did it last year, first try - after trying and failing several times with Ubuntu, on her bog-standard Dell tower…) So, point in case - is the average person supposed to go fishing around for drivers or go out to purchase specific hardware so it works with their Linux distribution? Do they want to dig through package managers to find whatever alternatives exist to the software they need and already know how to use? Obviously not, and; no. :P So is Linux even a ‘solution’ at all for at least 80% of people who don’t even get what a ‘driver’ is? Of course not! So it certainly can’t be the ‘only’ solution. Even convincing the average Windows user to go over to MacOS - even if you hand them a Mac - is pretty tough, honestly. (Speaking from experience…) I’d never, nor have I ever - recommend(ed) any Linux distribution to anyone who wasn’t a serious techie. Heck, I don’t recommend it in general, unless you’re lucky enough to be a programmer who doesn’t have to work on proprietary systems, and are dual-booting alongside an OS that can natively run the proprietary software 90% of people rely on and already know how to use. If you’re curious and tech-savvy - of course - go for it! I’ve recommended dual-booting to a few techie friends, and I have nothing against Linux - honesty except for the people who are blindly evangelical about it and forget about the real people in the world who aren’t techies. For the average person - Linux is a perfect case of ‘free isn’t free’. An aside: You know what is likeliest to replace Windows, which sucks balls? Android. Because honestly, other than the built-in ads, on a default installation, with telemetry enabled, it would be tough to tell which OS is worse for your privacy. I’d be curious to see a highly technical comparison on that!