16 ms·

Upgrade to Linux

132 points by pabs3 4y ago

Schnitz 4y ago
This is the year of Linux on the desktop!
boomskats 4y ago
> Desktop Linux is an alternative to Mac or Windows. It’s free, more secure, and runs on almost PC The content here is neat! Running into a typo in the first sentence I read was a little off-putting though.
- rcoveson 4y ago
  As somebody who ran desktop Linux on a caseless machine with the CPU cooler screwed into a bulk Top Ramen box, I can confirm it runs just fine on almost PC.
- Ruq 4y ago
  Based off one of the sponser links I followed, methinks the writer's first language might not be english? Not to deride the site, or any writer.
1970-01-01 4y ago
Sorry, I've already installed GNU/Linux and simply don't have time to try and get both working! https://www.getgnulinux.org/en/ https://www.getgnulinux.org/en/
- wanderingmind 4y ago
  Strange they recommend Fedora and not Arch for learning Linux internals
  - jagger27 4y ago
    I find that suggestion odd as well. I can't think of a single reason why Ubuntu should be favoured over Fedora as a quote "easy way to try and step into GNU/Linux" either. All three of their distro suggestions ship GNOME by default. Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment.
    - jabbany 4y ago
      As a Fedora user I can see one almost-reason. IIRC Fedora by default only ships with the FOSS repos enabled. Most average users probably want to enable the rpmfusion repos to get things like media codecs, drivers, and various other nonfree stuff. It's not hard to do this, but it makes it more of a "turn key twice" solution compared to Ubuntu.
      - pabs3 4y ago
        Fedora ships proprietary firmware in their "FOSS" repos, so your first statement isn't entirely accurate. Debian will now install firmware by default too. I think the only distros that now don't are Guix and other FSF affiliated distros.
    - spijdar 4y ago
      > Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment. I think you've gotten unintentionally close to answering GP's question, and your own. By virtue of Fedora being the literal upstream of RHEL and getting lots of attention from the RedHat guys, it is (IMO, YMMV) both a big testing ground for new RedHat software, and also pushes new software versions and features probably more aggressively than any distro except rolling release ones. Keep in mind, software like SystemD, NetworkManager, D-Bus, the PAM implementation most distros use (Wikipedia claims some use the BSD openPAM implementation, can't find those though), PolKit, and others seem to have pretty big financial or engineering support from RedHat. Fedora ends up effectively being "the lowest common denominator" in the sense that most other distros end up being "like Fedora but with <x> replaced with <y>". The sometimes bleeding edge feature set and use of new functionality (like Wayland, systemd-resolved, pipewire off the top of my head) can make it a bit less "beginner friendly", potentially, than a more conservative distro. It also makes it very appealing if you want to understand the "technical side of Linux", since anything you learn on Fedora will probably transfer more easily to other distros than vice versa, even if Fedora is more convoluted and full of cruft. That's my takeaway, at least. Compared to Arch, a given release of Fedora will have about as up-to-date versions of major software, with the benefit of release engineering. Rolling release is a drug not everyone is strong enough to take... edit thoughts: I want to be clear, the projects that RedHat either started or is heavily involved with usually have a lot of community involvement too. I don't want to minimize the importance of other contributors, just pointing out RedHat does a decent amount of work in several low level components of "GNU/Linux"
Cyberdog 4y ago
Is it just me or is the Ubuntu font really hard to read for long-form text? It doesn't help that it's larger than normal body text too. Sites like this remind me that custom fonts in CSS were a mistake. On topic… calling switching to Linux an "upgrade" is pretty presumptuous. It's not an upgrade for someone whose business relies on programs or technologies which are still only available on Windows - for many of those people, that's probably why they're on Windows in the first place.
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  It's not just you, it's a shit font.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  I find the font very visually appealing at larger (heading, not enlarged paragraph) sizes, but agree even then it’s harder to read than more common choices. The part I think most makes it difficult is the very high x-height to cap-height ratio, then the very low descender to everything ratio. That already makes different letters harder to distinguish, even they didn’t all have very similar curves and understated distinguishing features. It works really well for 1-3 branding words, and it’s very visually striking. But I wouldn’t consider it for much beyond that.
pjmlp 4y ago
I keep seeing these upgrade advertisement since Windows XP days....
ekianjo 4y ago
Again Linux users trying to convert Windows users at every OS change. It wont work well. Windows users expect Windows, not having to relearn everything from scratch
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  Also the small issue that despite how much Windows sucks Linux continues to be worse.
  - petra 4y ago
    It start and ends with applications. As long as linux doesn't provide unique high-value software that doesn't exist on windows, why should anybody bother ?
    - tmtvl 4y ago
      It depends from person to person. My mother runs GNU/Linux because it runs faster on her potato laptop, I run GNU/Linux because I believe in the fundamental software freedoms and MS refuses to relicense Windows under the (A)GPL.
      - petra 4y ago
        For your mother, chromeOS with it's support for android apps and very low maintenance is probably better. One interesting use case for linux is if you want to run early stage stuff developers wrote. Thats easier with linux. Maybe there's some practical value in that for non-developers. Not sure.
    - meowfly 4y ago
      It's also that there are no guarantees your hardware is supported -- so when you do bother, you might find yourself in config hell trying to get your wifi to work.
      - cowtools 4y ago
least 4y ago
This website is terrible. Its "resources" are almost entirely just links to articles and youtube videos. The information is poorly presented and poorly written. Why is the front page entirely taken up by a picture of a penguin?
- sylens 4y ago
  I rolled my eyes when I saw the first resource linked under "Why" was a video titled "Microsoft Can Kiss My A*"
- glonq 4y ago
  If it was still the year 2012 then this would be a _great_ website. But yeah. Terrible.
  - tetraca 4y ago
    If it was still the year N-10 then this would be a great X more or less sums up my entire desktop linux experience.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      Ever use a 'window manager', particularly tiling, rather than a full 'desktop' or 'display manager'? I've had the opposite experience, i3 and now sway have made macOS & Windows clunky and unusable nightmares to me - even talking strictly just about interface/windowing/interaction.
      - cpsns 4y ago
        I have and I’ve never been able to understand tiling WMs. After using nontiling ( I don’t know the term) window managers since Windows 95 my mind is just trained for that sort of window management, anything else feels wrong and frustrating. It’s not for a lack of trying either, I really have tried to like tiling wms.
      - tetraca 4y ago
        I've used tiling window managers before, but I don't really find them to be that big of a productivity boost. I have two monitors and I prefer to have all my windows maximized. The only splitting that I need is in my text editor. The one thing I do like is the command line - I find that to be a much better experience than power shell or cmd. But that is it. If I want to do anything creative that isn't text based it feels flatly inferior. But your mileage may vary based on what you like to do. I love it in a server, I just don't like linux on the desktop.
boplop 4y ago
keithnz 4y ago
For me, Linux would be a downgrade. Suddenly there's a bunch of software I can't run anymore. I actually really like windows 11, plus I can install and run any linux software as if it is a native windows program, and while I can do this, actually, there really isn't many gui apps in the linux world that aren't already on windows and worth running. However, being able to open a linux shell on windows is really useful. Reading through all the "why", I can't find a practical day to day advantage.
- marcodiego 4y ago
  This kind of comment is exactly what I feared first time I heard about wsl.
- tssva 4y ago
  I also really like Windows 11 and find it to be a nice upgrade from Windows 10. The 1st Linux distro I used was TAMU back in 1992. I have tried countless desktop distros over the last 30 years. I still try the major desktop distros when they have a new release but leave disappointed each time. Poor battery life, poor trackpad gesture support, and awfulness of both flatpaks and snaps are just a few of the issues.
  - seltzered_ 4y ago
    Trackpad support has substantially improved in the past couple years, https://linuxtouchpad.org/ https://linuxtouchpad.org/ has more info.
    - tssva 4y ago
      I have used trackpad support recently. It is indeed better than it was a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it was so awful that substantially improved doesn't mean good. I still find it to be mostly unusable. When testing recent distros with recent desktop environment running either atop X11 or wayland I have had to repeatedly perform gestures because they aren't recognized and frequently gestures just stop working period. Trackpad gestures work without issue on the same hardware when running Windows.
smcleod 4y ago
Truly dreadful website design, I don't know what they were thinking but that's not going to win anyone over.
- mirekrusin 4y ago
  It feels like it was created by Microsoft(r) PR department.
yeahsure 4y ago
Resources page: "even Mac users can upgrade!" - Link to a 1 minute tik tok video on how to boot Kali off of a thumb drive??
titoCA321 4y ago
So many shills in the "opensource" and "freedom" Linux community. Harp all day long about how "freedom" yet cry and troll when developers don't support a Linux distro and troll all day about getting others to convert to Linux or specific Linux distro. If you're for "freedom" software then live and let live what others use for operating systems.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deadbunny 4y ago
  It's almost like they're not the same people in the same group.
xwowsersx 4y ago
This site is comically bad. I clicked on "Why" and got "It’s free, more secure, and runs on almost PC." What is an "almost PC"? Is that what you call a Linux desktop machine? (Yes, I know it's a typo)
rzhikharevich 4y ago
My work PC & laptop are running Linux due to development reasons and the first thing I had to do on them is setting up basic functionality such as trackpad scrolling and mitigating weird window behavior and wallpaper resetting on monitor sleep, and it is still a subpar desktop experience compared to macOS or even Windows.
peanut_worm 4y ago
This website seems like it was made by someone who doesn’t know very much about computers
rodolphoarruda 4y ago
The website refers to Office 365 as "Office 360". That's not a typo, of course.
xupybd 4y ago
Having worked in Linux for years, I'm sorry Windows is more productive for me. MS office still dominates and our company and customers work in Excel. Without support for office Linux is harder than Windows for me. With WSL2 almost everything I can do in Linux I can now do in Windows. Don't get me wrong there are things that I hate about working in Windows. Especially Windows shared folders and mapped drives. Compared to Linux network shares it's horrible. I get random slow downs when my computer is doing something in the background and explorer becomes non responsive. I get updates that require a restart all the time. I can't customize the UI as I would like. I miss i3 WM.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Forced upgrades in the middle of something, invasive "telemetry" and aggressive ads. Plus a Frankenstein UI and Pluto, the system that makes "your" computer no longer yours. What a dream.
  - xupybd 4y ago
    My work computer need not be mine for me to get my work done.
    - browningstreet 4y ago
      On the one hand, you’re right. I fight this battle in my mind all the time. When I’m happy with MacOS I’m not terribly tempted to go back to Linux and live with the quirks. But the way Microsoft abuses me every day with its constant invasions that can’t be disabled, and worse: Windows Storage Sense deleted my personal files from my computer. It’s right there in the logs. So yeah, Windows is out for me. macOS survives a while longer, certainly while my machine feels like mine. But I really do think something like FOSS operating systems have to survive for people. It’s great that the cloud is run on it, but it’s far too controlled by corporations, and more than a decade ago.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  Today I had to dual boot on windows and literally every operation & interaction felt five times as slow as on Linux on the same hardware. I had a ton of bugs on software that works just fine on Linux. Explorer crashed at some point and I had to add a fucking registry key to enable long paths. I'm 30 and I never had to use MS Office once in my life, LibreOffice works fine with everything I had to do with it
_joel 4y ago
I know my eyes are not what they used to be but that font size is silly.
teilo 4y ago
On the cutting edge of 1990's Linux marketing. Just pathetic.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gandalfff 4y ago
It would be great to have an in-place upgrade tool to install Linux from Windows without removing any files.
Wazako 4y ago
Isn't there an unbreakable linux that updates itself, and where you can create VMs to add linux or win applications? This is what I like about Windows / mac, I don't have to maintain anything and risk breaking my PC.
hayst4ck 4y ago
Direct marketing doesn't seem like a very good method to attract people. Linux needs to do one thing to make it a viable option: Make steam and all windows based steam games work out of the box. Linux needs to do one thing to win the consumer market: Make all steam games work better than on windows out of the box. If linux can do that, they can win a market that is not the server market. If Linux cannot do that, then people are trapped on Windows for the foreseeable future. That is the "did we solve your problem. y/n?" of the desktop environment. It is the only question that matters. I don't see the purpose in marketing Linux for non server purposes until that hurdle has been jumped.
- headsoup 4y ago
  To be honest, it's closer than you'd think. I find very few games now that I can't run through Steam+Proton, to the point I forget I'm not on the 'Native' OS for them. And what I've also found is that issues that affect my games on Linux Steam are usually also reported for Windows (i.e. black screen on loading, certain freezes).
  - acomjean 4y ago
    Steam is remarkably good at running games on linux. I've been using "heroic games launcher" with GOG.com and epic gamesto good effect. I have a steam deck and it occasionally asks me how well the game I just left ran, cloud sourcing. The steam deck is great, highly recommended (my first unit had a bad battery, but valve handled it quite well and after trying some mitigations, just replaced it).
  - hayst4ck 4y ago
    Pretty interesting. I took a look through: https://www.protondb.com/explore https://www.protondb.com/explore and I was fairly surprised. I definitely expect the 20% tail to be 80% of the effort. I've also found that often there would be a lag time between the windows release (for total war warhammer for example) and the non windows releases. I've also found OSX versions of things to be a bit buggier (guild wars 2 for example), I assume that is no different for Linux. Reactive solutions to games not running (as opposed to games working by default) seems like the type of behavior that would continue to prevent Linux from being a standard choice over windows. The small frictions build up until you don't want to deal with it anymore. You are right though, closer than I thought.
kiwih 4y ago
I love Linux systems. My daily driver, an MSI GS-66, runs Ubuntu as the primary OS. But despite the fact that it's 2022, I still have to spend at least a few hours every month fixing things. The latest issue is that after updating the kernel and graphics drivers, I can't suspend the PC anymore. It dumps a bunch of crap to dmesg, then returns to the login screen. This is a known issue on the forums, and it's still broken. I also have to deal with broken wifi semi-regularly, most recently last year, when an update took out the wifi drivers until I could roll it back (at home, since I don't have ethernet at work). I love Linux, but it's a love-hate relationship. I still don't think it's ready for mass adoption until it can be as reliable as windows or MacOS for consumer PCs.
- phi-y 4y ago
  You should consider more linux friendly hardware next time if you still want to run linux. I have mostly owned thinkpads and desktops set up with ubuntu/mint, and my issues have been few and far between. The GS-66 is a gaming laptop with an NVidia card. The nouveau driver does pretty good, but I find trying to upgrade to the latest version or installing Nvidia's official driver causes more problems than it solves. For the wifi, the Intel Killer AX from only a quick google search looks like it has known issues. There are a lot of hardware companies that are actively hostile to linux users. MSI is definitely one. Lenovo's Thinkpad and Dell's XPS lines have a big audience to test and fix issues. MSI can make extra money off of window's users after sale, but HW companies only profit off linux users from selling the hardware.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    I did, it is an Asus netbook, with Linux pre-installed, it is the only device that has issues connecting to my router, GL support is GL 3.3 while Asus Windows drivers support DirectX 11 and GL 4.1, occasionally instead of shuting down goes into a sleep state only recoverable by taking out the battery.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  Strange, I have a GS65 which is pretty close and with archlinux it works smoothly with the Nvidia driver. All the bugs I had on Linux also manifested in some ways on windows so I think it just has shitty firmware.
flkiwi 4y ago
Most of my day to day work is on a Thinkpad running Fedora. I also have a work laptop running Windows, and a personal macbook pro. Two quick points: 1. The emphasis in this website of "you can change what you want" targets a pretty small population. Anecdata of the worst sort, but the vast majority of people in my orbit absolutely do not want to manage their computer. They want it to largely disappear so they can work and watch cat videos. Most of them think customizing their computer means changing their wallpaper. And that's fine! I never lead with "I can customize this machine to do what I want." I lead with "Eh, I got tired of forced reboots and disruptive updates and privacy issues so I switched to Fedora and it doesn't do any of that. If I want to fiddle with something I can [and I very, very much do tinker], but I don't have to." 2. I laughed at the notion of using linux to bring an ancient 5-year-old computer in the closet back to life. I mean, yes, that is one of the great things about linux, but the macbook pro I'm typing on right now is 5 years old and it runs like it's new. The hardest thing to convey about Apple equipment is that the TCO is lower because you can easily upgrade on a 5-7-year cycle, pretty much as long as Apple gives security updates. Expensive at the front end (though competitive with similar Windows machines), but not as expensive over the lifespan. (And, emphatically, I'm not saying you can't experience long ownership cycles with PCs, but, from experience, it's harder.) On the other hand, when this MPB runs out of gas, I'm probably going to replace it with a thinkpad, or possibly with an ARM Mac running linux.
- m10k 4y ago
  Let's be honest, "you can change what you want" should really be "you will have to change certain things". Which is fine for developery people and people with a lot of time and patience on their hands. But for the overwhelming majority, even fiddling with the contents of /etc or $HOME/.whatever is too much of a hurdle. People don't choose Windows or Mac despite not being able to change things, they choose it so they don't have to change things. And let's not forget that, eventually, "you can change what you want" becomes "you have to change what you want" because the developers of your distro / desktop environment / window manager / UI toolkit decide to change the default behavior (if they don't change the entire thing).
  - vanviegen 4y ago
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
2023, the year of the Linux desktop!
CompleteWalker 4y ago
Wonder if they were at LinuxCon 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsDk8wjRPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsDk8wjRPs
free652 4y ago
Upgrade to ChromeOs. why bother with Linux. I converted an old windows laptop with a touchscreen to a chromeos using now google acquired neverware. love it.
- acomjean 4y ago
  ChromeOS is oddly a good choice for older machines, though someone tried to use it for a programing class I took quickly gave up. chromeos flex had been tested on a lot of older machines. https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?hl=en#acer&advantech&aopen&apple&asus&dell&elo&hp&intel&ioxo&justice&lenovo&lg&microsoft&minisforum&panasonic&toshiba&zotac& https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?hl=e...
adwf 4y ago
This almost feels like some sort of anti-linux trolling. Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments in the first couple of hours, all focused on the sub-par website, not the OS.
- sedatk 4y ago
  > Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments It's by far the most popular desktop OS, and most people are happy with it.
seltzered_ 4y ago
I give the makers of this credit they avoid leading a reader into a burden of disto-choices. My dream is that someone makes a website (single page app) derived more around workflows between oses, I've kept a rough personal spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcp...
robomc 4y ago
This website is kind of perfect as a preparation for using desktop linux.
upheaval7276 4y ago
"And if you are concerned about privacy...consider a real upgrade … to Linux" [Opens Network tab] GET https://www.googletagmanager.com https://www.googletagmanager.com
- rany_ 4y ago
  I really don't get why Google doesn't have the option to serve these requests from the website's domain (maybe even using a random subdomain each time). Considering Google has their own CA or could use Let's Encrypt, it should be more than feasible.
  - artogahr 4y ago
    Shh, don't give them ideas!
  - sedatk 4y ago
    They're doing that with the new version of the analytics I think.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
The most successful commercial desktop linux distribution is probably chrome OS. I use Manjaro and it's great but it's not for everyone. I've gotten my parents to use Ubuntu for a while on some old laptop. But people like that have a high chance of encountering issues that will require fiddling with configuration files or doing stuff on the command line. And it's deal breaker. People like my parents are simply incapable of doing either of those things. So, my father now has a mac and my mother uses an ipad. Zero IT support needed from me. Chrome OS is probably the only thing that works well enough that I could recommend it to people like that. And with Chrome Os Flex, that's now an option. But it would be a bit of a downgrade.
naikrovek 4y ago
so I see Linux advocacy hasn't advanced a measurable amount in 20 years. that makes me a bit sad, but as a former Linux desktop user, I would not inflict that experience on anyone.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  What I was trying to say here is that Linux advocacy is still very much in its infancy, and of zero complexity. Linux, as an entire operating system, and not just as a kernel, really needs a strong steward with a vision if it is ever going to be beaten into something that is a cohesive single thing, and not a loose aggregation of software packages. Unfortunately, by the time most people learn and know enough to become this person, they are at retirement age, and no longer have the energy or the desire to be that person. The younger people who attempt this are simply swatted away by the more toxic members of the Linux fanbase. The only person I know of who could have possibly have filled this role when they had energy for it is the person behind the Linux Hater's blog of old. That person understood what was wrong with Linux very well, and was vocal about it. That's who we need, again, someone like that. Someone to point out all the silliness and absurdity and expose it all as the silliness and absurdity that it really is. Because it is all very much incoherent and broken in so many ways. It all functions, it all works, but is it really competitive with MacOS or Windows? Those two both have their flaws, and plenty of them, but I don't think that Linux can hold a candle to either of them, really, for anyone but the most technical of users. And maybe everyone has just agreed that only the technical users are the users who are important for this operating system. I don't know what the thought is about that, but I'll tell you, technical users are not the only users you need to care about as a Linux application developer. a blog entry describing the linux Hater's Blog: https://www.mschaef.com/linux-haters-blog https://www.mschaef.com/linux-haters-blog an archive of the blog entries: https://github.com/atoponce/linuxhaters https://github.com/atoponce/linuxhaters
javajosh 4y ago
I'm running Ubuntu on a Framework laptop. I installed Linux because I was too cheap to buy Windows, and wanted to try it out (why not, it's free) but now I've found it's very good. Good enough I won't be installing Windows. This surprised me. So, yeah, give it a shot!
CoolCold 4y ago
No, thanks, my old 4 year laptop is upgraded to Windows 11 already.
beej71 4y ago
I have an old Lenovo laptop that was just getting to be laggy with Windows. I put Arch on it and it's perfectly responsive again. There's something to be said for breathing new life into these machines.

132 points by pabs3 4y ago

This is the year of Linux on the desktop!

> Desktop Linux is an alternative to Mac or Windows. It’s free, more secure, and runs on almost PC The content here is neat! Running into a typo in the first sentence I read was a little off-putting though.

rcoveson 4y ago
As somebody who ran desktop Linux on a caseless machine with the CPU cooler screwed into a bulk Top Ramen box, I can confirm it runs just fine on almost PC.
Ruq 4y ago
Based off one of the sponser links I followed, methinks the writer's first language might not be english? Not to deride the site, or any writer.

1970-01-01 4y ago

Sorry, I've already installed GNU/Linux and simply don't have time to try and get both working! https://www.getgnulinux.org/en/ https://www.getgnulinux.org/en/

wanderingmind 4y ago
Strange they recommend Fedora and not Arch for learning Linux internals
- jagger27 4y ago
  I find that suggestion odd as well. I can't think of a single reason why Ubuntu should be favoured over Fedora as a quote "easy way to try and step into GNU/Linux" either. All three of their distro suggestions ship GNOME by default. Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment.
  - jabbany 4y ago
    As a Fedora user I can see one almost-reason. IIRC Fedora by default only ships with the FOSS repos enabled. Most average users probably want to enable the rpmfusion repos to get things like media codecs, drivers, and various other nonfree stuff. It's not hard to do this, but it makes it more of a "turn key twice" solution compared to Ubuntu.
    - pabs3 4y ago
      Fedora ships proprietary firmware in their "FOSS" repos, so your first statement isn't entirely accurate. Debian will now install firmware by default too. I think the only distros that now don't are Guix and other FSF affiliated distros.
  - spijdar 4y ago
    > Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment. I think you've gotten unintentionally close to answering GP's question, and your own. By virtue of Fedora being the literal upstream of RHEL and getting lots of attention from the RedHat guys, it is (IMO, YMMV) both a big testing ground for new RedHat software, and also pushes new software versions and features probably more aggressively than any distro except rolling release ones. Keep in mind, software like SystemD, NetworkManager, D-Bus, the PAM implementation most distros use (Wikipedia claims some use the BSD openPAM implementation, can't find those though), PolKit, and others seem to have pretty big financial or engineering support from RedHat. Fedora ends up effectively being "the lowest common denominator" in the sense that most other distros end up being "like Fedora but with <x> replaced with <y>". The sometimes bleeding edge feature set and use of new functionality (like Wayland, systemd-resolved, pipewire off the top of my head) can make it a bit less "beginner friendly", potentially, than a more conservative distro. It also makes it very appealing if you want to understand the "technical side of Linux", since anything you learn on Fedora will probably transfer more easily to other distros than vice versa, even if Fedora is more convoluted and full of cruft. That's my takeaway, at least. Compared to Arch, a given release of Fedora will have about as up-to-date versions of major software, with the benefit of release engineering. Rolling release is a drug not everyone is strong enough to take... edit thoughts: I want to be clear, the projects that RedHat either started or is heavily involved with usually have a lot of community involvement too. I don't want to minimize the importance of other contributors, just pointing out RedHat does a decent amount of work in several low level components of "GNU/Linux"

Cyberdog 4y ago

Is it just me or is the Ubuntu font really hard to read for long-form text? It doesn't help that it's larger than normal body text too. Sites like this remind me that custom fonts in CSS were a mistake. On topic… calling switching to Linux an "upgrade" is pretty presumptuous. It's not an upgrade for someone whose business relies on programs or technologies which are still only available on Windows - for many of those people, that's probably why they're on Windows in the first place.

ghostly_s 4y ago
It's not just you, it's a shit font.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
I find the font very visually appealing at larger (heading, not enlarged paragraph) sizes, but agree even then it’s harder to read than more common choices. The part I think most makes it difficult is the very high x-height to cap-height ratio, then the very low descender to everything ratio. That already makes different letters harder to distinguish, even they didn’t all have very similar curves and understated distinguishing features. It works really well for 1-3 branding words, and it’s very visually striking. But I wouldn’t consider it for much beyond that.

pjmlp 4y ago

I keep seeing these upgrade advertisement since Windows XP days....

ekianjo 4y ago

Again Linux users trying to convert Windows users at every OS change. It wont work well. Windows users expect Windows, not having to relearn everything from scratch

ghostly_s 4y ago
Also the small issue that despite how much Windows sucks Linux continues to be worse.
- petra 4y ago
  It start and ends with applications. As long as linux doesn't provide unique high-value software that doesn't exist on windows, why should anybody bother ?
  - tmtvl 4y ago
    It depends from person to person. My mother runs GNU/Linux because it runs faster on her potato laptop, I run GNU/Linux because I believe in the fundamental software freedoms and MS refuses to relicense Windows under the (A)GPL.
    - petra 4y ago
      For your mother, chromeOS with it's support for android apps and very low maintenance is probably better. One interesting use case for linux is if you want to run early stage stuff developers wrote. Thats easier with linux. Maybe there's some practical value in that for non-developers. Not sure.
  - meowfly 4y ago
    It's also that there are no guarantees your hardware is supported -- so when you do bother, you might find yourself in config hell trying to get your wifi to work.
    - cowtools 4y ago

least 4y ago

This website is terrible. Its "resources" are almost entirely just links to articles and youtube videos. The information is poorly presented and poorly written. Why is the front page entirely taken up by a picture of a penguin?

sylens 4y ago
I rolled my eyes when I saw the first resource linked under "Why" was a video titled "Microsoft Can Kiss My A*"
glonq 4y ago
If it was still the year 2012 then this would be a _great_ website. But yeah. Terrible.
- tetraca 4y ago
  If it was still the year N-10 then this would be a great X more or less sums up my entire desktop linux experience.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Ever use a 'window manager', particularly tiling, rather than a full 'desktop' or 'display manager'? I've had the opposite experience, i3 and now sway have made macOS & Windows clunky and unusable nightmares to me - even talking strictly just about interface/windowing/interaction.
    - cpsns 4y ago
      I have and I’ve never been able to understand tiling WMs. After using nontiling ( I don’t know the term) window managers since Windows 95 my mind is just trained for that sort of window management, anything else feels wrong and frustrating. It’s not for a lack of trying either, I really have tried to like tiling wms.
    - tetraca 4y ago
      I've used tiling window managers before, but I don't really find them to be that big of a productivity boost. I have two monitors and I prefer to have all my windows maximized. The only splitting that I need is in my text editor. The one thing I do like is the command line - I find that to be a much better experience than power shell or cmd. But that is it. If I want to do anything creative that isn't text based it feels flatly inferior. But your mileage may vary based on what you like to do. I love it in a server, I just don't like linux on the desktop.

boplop 4y ago

keithnz 4y ago

For me, Linux would be a downgrade. Suddenly there's a bunch of software I can't run anymore. I actually really like windows 11, plus I can install and run any linux software as if it is a native windows program, and while I can do this, actually, there really isn't many gui apps in the linux world that aren't already on windows and worth running. However, being able to open a linux shell on windows is really useful. Reading through all the "why", I can't find a practical day to day advantage.

marcodiego 4y ago
This kind of comment is exactly what I feared first time I heard about wsl.
tssva 4y ago
I also really like Windows 11 and find it to be a nice upgrade from Windows 10. The 1st Linux distro I used was TAMU back in 1992. I have tried countless desktop distros over the last 30 years. I still try the major desktop distros when they have a new release but leave disappointed each time. Poor battery life, poor trackpad gesture support, and awfulness of both flatpaks and snaps are just a few of the issues.
- seltzered_ 4y ago
  Trackpad support has substantially improved in the past couple years, https://linuxtouchpad.org/ https://linuxtouchpad.org/ has more info.
  - tssva 4y ago
    I have used trackpad support recently. It is indeed better than it was a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it was so awful that substantially improved doesn't mean good. I still find it to be mostly unusable. When testing recent distros with recent desktop environment running either atop X11 or wayland I have had to repeatedly perform gestures because they aren't recognized and frequently gestures just stop working period. Trackpad gestures work without issue on the same hardware when running Windows.

smcleod 4y ago

Truly dreadful website design, I don't know what they were thinking but that's not going to win anyone over.

mirekrusin 4y ago
It feels like it was created by Microsoft(r) PR department.

yeahsure 4y ago

Resources page: "even Mac users can upgrade!" - Link to a 1 minute tik tok video on how to boot Kali off of a thumb drive??

titoCA321 4y ago

So many shills in the "opensource" and "freedom" Linux community. Harp all day long about how "freedom" yet cry and troll when developers don't support a Linux distro and troll all day about getting others to convert to Linux or specific Linux distro. If you're for "freedom" software then live and let live what others use for operating systems.

deleted 4y ago
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deadbunny 4y ago
It's almost like they're not the same people in the same group.

xwowsersx 4y ago

This site is comically bad. I clicked on "Why" and got "It’s free, more secure, and runs on almost PC." What is an "almost PC"? Is that what you call a Linux desktop machine? (Yes, I know it's a typo)

rzhikharevich 4y ago

My work PC & laptop are running Linux due to development reasons and the first thing I had to do on them is setting up basic functionality such as trackpad scrolling and mitigating weird window behavior and wallpaper resetting on monitor sleep, and it is still a subpar desktop experience compared to macOS or even Windows.

peanut_worm 4y ago

This website seems like it was made by someone who doesn’t know very much about computers

rodolphoarruda 4y ago

The website refers to Office 365 as "Office 360". That's not a typo, of course.

xupybd 4y ago

Having worked in Linux for years, I'm sorry Windows is more productive for me. MS office still dominates and our company and customers work in Excel. Without support for office Linux is harder than Windows for me. With WSL2 almost everything I can do in Linux I can now do in Windows. Don't get me wrong there are things that I hate about working in Windows. Especially Windows shared folders and mapped drives. Compared to Linux network shares it's horrible. I get random slow downs when my computer is doing something in the background and explorer becomes non responsive. I get updates that require a restart all the time. I can't customize the UI as I would like. I miss i3 WM.

29athrowaway 4y ago
Forced upgrades in the middle of something, invasive "telemetry" and aggressive ads. Plus a Frankenstein UI and Pluto, the system that makes "your" computer no longer yours. What a dream.
- xupybd 4y ago
  My work computer need not be mine for me to get my work done.
  - browningstreet 4y ago
    On the one hand, you’re right. I fight this battle in my mind all the time. When I’m happy with MacOS I’m not terribly tempted to go back to Linux and live with the quirks. But the way Microsoft abuses me every day with its constant invasions that can’t be disabled, and worse: Windows Storage Sense deleted my personal files from my computer. It’s right there in the logs. So yeah, Windows is out for me. macOS survives a while longer, certainly while my machine feels like mine. But I really do think something like FOSS operating systems have to survive for people. It’s great that the cloud is run on it, but it’s far too controlled by corporations, and more than a decade ago.
jcelerier 4y ago
Today I had to dual boot on windows and literally every operation & interaction felt five times as slow as on Linux on the same hardware. I had a ton of bugs on software that works just fine on Linux. Explorer crashed at some point and I had to add a fucking registry key to enable long paths. I'm 30 and I never had to use MS Office once in my life, LibreOffice works fine with everything I had to do with it

_joel 4y ago

I know my eyes are not what they used to be but that font size is silly.

teilo 4y ago

On the cutting edge of 1990's Linux marketing. Just pathetic.

deleted 4y ago

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gandalfff 4y ago

It would be great to have an in-place upgrade tool to install Linux from Windows without removing any files.

Wazako 4y ago

Isn't there an unbreakable linux that updates itself, and where you can create VMs to add linux or win applications? This is what I like about Windows / mac, I don't have to maintain anything and risk breaking my PC.

hayst4ck 4y ago

Direct marketing doesn't seem like a very good method to attract people. Linux needs to do one thing to make it a viable option: Make steam and all windows based steam games work out of the box. Linux needs to do one thing to win the consumer market: Make all steam games work better than on windows out of the box. If linux can do that, they can win a market that is not the server market. If Linux cannot do that, then people are trapped on Windows for the foreseeable future. That is the "did we solve your problem. y/n?" of the desktop environment. It is the only question that matters. I don't see the purpose in marketing Linux for non server purposes until that hurdle has been jumped.

headsoup 4y ago
To be honest, it's closer than you'd think. I find very few games now that I can't run through Steam+Proton, to the point I forget I'm not on the 'Native' OS for them. And what I've also found is that issues that affect my games on Linux Steam are usually also reported for Windows (i.e. black screen on loading, certain freezes).
- acomjean 4y ago
  Steam is remarkably good at running games on linux. I've been using "heroic games launcher" with GOG.com and epic gamesto good effect. I have a steam deck and it occasionally asks me how well the game I just left ran, cloud sourcing. The steam deck is great, highly recommended (my first unit had a bad battery, but valve handled it quite well and after trying some mitigations, just replaced it).
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  Pretty interesting. I took a look through: https://www.protondb.com/explore https://www.protondb.com/explore and I was fairly surprised. I definitely expect the 20% tail to be 80% of the effort. I've also found that often there would be a lag time between the windows release (for total war warhammer for example) and the non windows releases. I've also found OSX versions of things to be a bit buggier (guild wars 2 for example), I assume that is no different for Linux. Reactive solutions to games not running (as opposed to games working by default) seems like the type of behavior that would continue to prevent Linux from being a standard choice over windows. The small frictions build up until you don't want to deal with it anymore. You are right though, closer than I thought.

kiwih 4y ago

I love Linux systems. My daily driver, an MSI GS-66, runs Ubuntu as the primary OS. But despite the fact that it's 2022, I still have to spend at least a few hours every month fixing things. The latest issue is that after updating the kernel and graphics drivers, I can't suspend the PC anymore. It dumps a bunch of crap to dmesg, then returns to the login screen. This is a known issue on the forums, and it's still broken. I also have to deal with broken wifi semi-regularly, most recently last year, when an update took out the wifi drivers until I could roll it back (at home, since I don't have ethernet at work). I love Linux, but it's a love-hate relationship. I still don't think it's ready for mass adoption until it can be as reliable as windows or MacOS for consumer PCs.

phi-y 4y ago
You should consider more linux friendly hardware next time if you still want to run linux. I have mostly owned thinkpads and desktops set up with ubuntu/mint, and my issues have been few and far between. The GS-66 is a gaming laptop with an NVidia card. The nouveau driver does pretty good, but I find trying to upgrade to the latest version or installing Nvidia's official driver causes more problems than it solves. For the wifi, the Intel Killer AX from only a quick google search looks like it has known issues. There are a lot of hardware companies that are actively hostile to linux users. MSI is definitely one. Lenovo's Thinkpad and Dell's XPS lines have a big audience to test and fix issues. MSI can make extra money off of window's users after sale, but HW companies only profit off linux users from selling the hardware.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  I did, it is an Asus netbook, with Linux pre-installed, it is the only device that has issues connecting to my router, GL support is GL 3.3 while Asus Windows drivers support DirectX 11 and GL 4.1, occasionally instead of shuting down goes into a sleep state only recoverable by taking out the battery.
jcelerier 4y ago
Strange, I have a GS65 which is pretty close and with archlinux it works smoothly with the Nvidia driver. All the bugs I had on Linux also manifested in some ways on windows so I think it just has shitty firmware.

flkiwi 4y ago

Most of my day to day work is on a Thinkpad running Fedora. I also have a work laptop running Windows, and a personal macbook pro. Two quick points: 1. The emphasis in this website of "you can change what you want" targets a pretty small population. Anecdata of the worst sort, but the vast majority of people in my orbit absolutely do not want to manage their computer. They want it to largely disappear so they can work and watch cat videos. Most of them think customizing their computer means changing their wallpaper. And that's fine! I never lead with "I can customize this machine to do what I want." I lead with "Eh, I got tired of forced reboots and disruptive updates and privacy issues so I switched to Fedora and it doesn't do any of that. If I want to fiddle with something I can [and I very, very much do tinker], but I don't have to." 2. I laughed at the notion of using linux to bring an ancient 5-year-old computer in the closet back to life. I mean, yes, that is one of the great things about linux, but the macbook pro I'm typing on right now is 5 years old and it runs like it's new. The hardest thing to convey about Apple equipment is that the TCO is lower because you can easily upgrade on a 5-7-year cycle, pretty much as long as Apple gives security updates. Expensive at the front end (though competitive with similar Windows machines), but not as expensive over the lifespan. (And, emphatically, I'm not saying you can't experience long ownership cycles with PCs, but, from experience, it's harder.) On the other hand, when this MPB runs out of gas, I'm probably going to replace it with a thinkpad, or possibly with an ARM Mac running linux.

m10k 4y ago
Let's be honest, "you can change what you want" should really be "you will have to change certain things". Which is fine for developery people and people with a lot of time and patience on their hands. But for the overwhelming majority, even fiddling with the contents of /etc or $HOME/.whatever is too much of a hurdle. People don't choose Windows or Mac despite not being able to change things, they choose it so they don't have to change things. And let's not forget that, eventually, "you can change what you want" becomes "you have to change what you want" because the developers of your distro / desktop environment / window manager / UI toolkit decide to change the default behavior (if they don't change the entire thing).
- vanviegen 4y ago

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

2023, the year of the Linux desktop!

CompleteWalker 4y ago

Wonder if they were at LinuxCon 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsDk8wjRPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsDk8wjRPs

free652 4y ago

Upgrade to ChromeOs. why bother with Linux. I converted an old windows laptop with a touchscreen to a chromeos using now google acquired neverware. love it.

acomjean 4y ago
ChromeOS is oddly a good choice for older machines, though someone tried to use it for a programing class I took quickly gave up. chromeos flex had been tested on a lot of older machines. https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?hl=en#acer&advantech&aopen&apple&asus&dell&elo&hp&intel&ioxo&justice&lenovo&lg&microsoft&minisforum&panasonic&toshiba&zotac& https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?hl=e...

adwf 4y ago

This almost feels like some sort of anti-linux trolling. Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments in the first couple of hours, all focused on the sub-par website, not the OS.

sedatk 4y ago
> Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments It's by far the most popular desktop OS, and most people are happy with it.

seltzered_ 4y ago

I give the makers of this credit they avoid leading a reader into a burden of disto-choices. My dream is that someone makes a website (single page app) derived more around workflows between oses, I've kept a rough personal spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcp...

robomc 4y ago

This website is kind of perfect as a preparation for using desktop linux.

upheaval7276 4y ago

"And if you are concerned about privacy...consider a real upgrade … to Linux" [Opens Network tab] GET https://www.googletagmanager.com https://www.googletagmanager.com

rany_ 4y ago
I really don't get why Google doesn't have the option to serve these requests from the website's domain (maybe even using a random subdomain each time). Considering Google has their own CA or could use Let's Encrypt, it should be more than feasible.
- artogahr 4y ago
  Shh, don't give them ideas!
- sedatk 4y ago
  They're doing that with the new version of the analytics I think.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

The most successful commercial desktop linux distribution is probably chrome OS. I use Manjaro and it's great but it's not for everyone. I've gotten my parents to use Ubuntu for a while on some old laptop. But people like that have a high chance of encountering issues that will require fiddling with configuration files or doing stuff on the command line. And it's deal breaker. People like my parents are simply incapable of doing either of those things. So, my father now has a mac and my mother uses an ipad. Zero IT support needed from me. Chrome OS is probably the only thing that works well enough that I could recommend it to people like that. And with Chrome Os Flex, that's now an option. But it would be a bit of a downgrade.

naikrovek 4y ago

so I see Linux advocacy hasn't advanced a measurable amount in 20 years. that makes me a bit sad, but as a former Linux desktop user, I would not inflict that experience on anyone.

naikrovek 4y ago
What I was trying to say here is that Linux advocacy is still very much in its infancy, and of zero complexity. Linux, as an entire operating system, and not just as a kernel, really needs a strong steward with a vision if it is ever going to be beaten into something that is a cohesive single thing, and not a loose aggregation of software packages. Unfortunately, by the time most people learn and know enough to become this person, they are at retirement age, and no longer have the energy or the desire to be that person. The younger people who attempt this are simply swatted away by the more toxic members of the Linux fanbase. The only person I know of who could have possibly have filled this role when they had energy for it is the person behind the Linux Hater's blog of old. That person understood what was wrong with Linux very well, and was vocal about it. That's who we need, again, someone like that. Someone to point out all the silliness and absurdity and expose it all as the silliness and absurdity that it really is. Because it is all very much incoherent and broken in so many ways. It all functions, it all works, but is it really competitive with MacOS or Windows? Those two both have their flaws, and plenty of them, but I don't think that Linux can hold a candle to either of them, really, for anyone but the most technical of users. And maybe everyone has just agreed that only the technical users are the users who are important for this operating system. I don't know what the thought is about that, but I'll tell you, technical users are not the only users you need to care about as a Linux application developer. a blog entry describing the linux Hater's Blog: https://www.mschaef.com/linux-haters-blog https://www.mschaef.com/linux-haters-blog an archive of the blog entries: https://github.com/atoponce/linuxhaters https://github.com/atoponce/linuxhaters

javajosh 4y ago

I'm running Ubuntu on a Framework laptop. I installed Linux because I was too cheap to buy Windows, and wanted to try it out (why not, it's free) but now I've found it's very good. Good enough I won't be installing Windows. This surprised me. So, yeah, give it a shot!

CoolCold 4y ago

No, thanks, my old 4 year laptop is upgraded to Windows 11 already.

beej71 4y ago

I have an old Lenovo laptop that was just getting to be laggy with Windows. I put Arch on it and it's perfectly responsive again. There's something to be said for breathing new life into these machines.