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My dilemma: choosing between Windows that has too many ads and is increasingly buggy, a Linux desktop environment that requires lots of time to configure and al

by d3w4s9 3y ago

My dilemma: choosing between Windows that has too many ads and is increasingly buggy, a Linux desktop environment that requires lots of time to configure and always has something not working, or a Mac computer that has atrocious RAM and SSD markup. (A mac mini that matches my current $500 pc with 32GB/1TB would cost $1,899.) I decide to live with Windows and find ways to turn off the ads or ignore them.

pjmlp 3y ago
Same here, and I subscribed to most Linux Journal issues since the early days.
askiiart 3y ago
I'll be the first to admit that I'm definitely a Linux fanboy, and am totally biased, but while yes, some distros require a lot of configuration, but others, like Mint and Fedora, just work. The only major issue I've ever had with those was, on rare occasions with niche WiFi cards or very new ones, missing WiFi drivers, which are available separately and can be installed pretty easily with just a quick Google search. In my opinion, it's much less time to configure and get Linux working than Windows. For example, just last week I was on Debian, but then I decided I wanted to switch back to Fedora (just some minor preferences, nothing major), and I was able to reinstall and get back up and running within an hour or two–including reinstalling programs. And I had a separate /home partition, so I had all my data separate and just switched out the OS.
haunter 3y ago
Summed up perfectly, exactly my situation too
- disparate_dan 3y ago
  I’d been off Windows since the early XP days, first Mac then Gentoo then running a hackintosh for several years, and got fed up with the maintenance. Since in the end I was mostly using it for gaming I just thought, WTH, I’ll use Windows 10, how bad can it be!? I lasted a month and then in a figure of pique and frustration I downloaded and installed Linux Mint 20.3. What a breath of fresh air! And the silver lining is Steam Play which makes it as good a gaming machine as ever and far better than it was as a hackintosh
dizhn 3y ago
There's always something not working on Windows. Especially as cruft accumulates over time. We have a tendency to bail at the first sign of trouble and return to where we're comfortable. This doesn't mean there were no issues there. It just means we know how to handle them. It is in my opinion a much more useful skill to know how to handle Linux than Windows. Especially if one is into or adjacent to IT things.

by d3w4s9 3y ago

pjmlp 3y ago

Same here, and I subscribed to most Linux Journal issues since the early days.

askiiart 3y ago

I'll be the first to admit that I'm definitely a Linux fanboy, and am totally biased, but while yes, some distros require a lot of configuration, but others, like Mint and Fedora, just work. The only major issue I've ever had with those was, on rare occasions with niche WiFi cards or very new ones, missing WiFi drivers, which are available separately and can be installed pretty easily with just a quick Google search. In my opinion, it's much less time to configure and get Linux working than Windows. For example, just last week I was on Debian, but then I decided I wanted to switch back to Fedora (just some minor preferences, nothing major), and I was able to reinstall and get back up and running within an hour or two–including reinstalling programs. And I had a separate /home partition, so I had all my data separate and just switched out the OS.

haunter 3y ago

Summed up perfectly, exactly my situation too

disparate_dan 3y ago
I’d been off Windows since the early XP days, first Mac then Gentoo then running a hackintosh for several years, and got fed up with the maintenance. Since in the end I was mostly using it for gaming I just thought, WTH, I’ll use Windows 10, how bad can it be!? I lasted a month and then in a figure of pique and frustration I downloaded and installed Linux Mint 20.3. What a breath of fresh air! And the silver lining is Steam Play which makes it as good a gaming machine as ever and far better than it was as a hackintosh

dizhn 3y ago

There's always something not working on Windows. Especially as cruft accumulates over time. We have a tendency to bail at the first sign of trouble and return to where we're comfortable. This doesn't mean there were no issues there. It just means we know how to handle them. It is in my opinion a much more useful skill to know how to handle Linux than Windows. Especially if one is into or adjacent to IT things.