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Windows is dead, there's no good reason for most people to use it as their primary OS anymore. Desktop Linux has proper fractional scaling support (or KDE plas
by Narrow2890 3y ago
Windows is dead, there's no good reason for most people to use it as their primary OS anymore.
Desktop Linux has proper fractional scaling support (or KDE plasma does anyway) AND doesn't catch fire every five minutes now, now's the time to make the switch.
- wbkang 3y agoThis is the first time I hear Linux has better fractional scaling than Windows. Is this because of Wayland or something? Windows always had reasonably good fractional scaling story. Wanted to hear why you think Windoes fractional scaling is broken.
- Narrow2890 3y agoI don't, windows fractional scaling is very good, until very recently there was no good solution on Linux, but Plasma implemented a proper solution a while ago and it works about as well as Window's. This was one of the main things keeping me from making the permanent switch.
- spartanatreyu 3y agoThe only issue is the shitty support for nvidia cards courtesy of nvidia. At least AMD cards themselves are really good now, I just wish there were more of them.
- jwells89 3y agoThere are still some kinks in KDE fractional scaling on Wayland unfortunately, like Aurora window decoration themes not drawing elements correctly. If you want to use something other than Breeze your only choices are a handful of C++ window decoration themes (usually forked from Breeze).
- oooyay 3y agoI think they were remarking that fractional scaling on Linux is no longer a dumpster fire so you can ditch Windows for the reasons that make it a dumpster fire.
- Narrow2890 3y agoYeah this is what I meant, Linux on desktop is now stable enough and sufficiently usable to be an actual viable replacement for windows. Linux is slowly getting better with time, Windows is rapidly getting worse.
- Rapzid 3y agoMint Cinnamon had the best support I've seen in Linux. Maybe KDE is better, but I know for sure Windows is way better haha.
- jseutter 3y agoI think you misunderstand. I don't think the parent is saying fractional scaling is better than Windows, just that it sucks less than it used to and is almost usable now. X and Wayland has had fractional scaling for a long time, but getting apps updated to pay attention to it is moving at the speed of Open Source.
- Rapzid 3y agoI prefer Windows as my host OS and I've primarily worked in Linux professionally for 13 years. Prefer it to OSX and every Linux desktop environment. IMHO it's just a superior windowed desktop experience.. I prefer to develop in Linux since my background is Linux systems engineering.. So, hard disagree.
- worksonmine 3y agoInteresting, what about the windows experience do you find better? I don't use a desktop environment and haven't used Windows since version 7 but I'm curious.
- Rapzid 3y ago> what about the windows experience do you find better? Everything outside the terminal(though Powershell is pretty cool tech). Wifi, bluetooth, HDR, fractional scaling, tiling/snapping, virtual desktops, general device compatibility.
- zdragnar 3y agoI use Linux professionally and personally. Out of all of my peers, at work and my personal circles, osx or Windows is preferred. Our senior-most devops guy even claims that Windows is the best Linux, because of wsl2 (he knows windows itself isn't a Linux, but he likes to get a rise out of people). Windows is still the best average-user OS after Chrome OS (not exactly Linux, IMHO) and maybe osx.
- jwells89 3y agoI think this boils down to the state of DEs. GNOME and KDE have come a long way but aren’t quite there yet for different reasons. The former goes too far with minimalism (outstripping even Apple in some ways) and KDE has just enough idiosyncrasies and lingering rough edges to be offputting to users who are uninterested in desktop tinkering. To help address this at some point I’d like to build a DE that’s a near-clone of the XP/7 desktop as well as one that clones macOS (both classic and modern). These would make switching more painless and would eventually become very stable due to targeting fixed feature sets with development being focused solely on optimization and bug fixing once feature-completeness is achieved.
- skydhash 3y agoI think it would be more impactful if you contribute to Linux Mint and Elementary. The former reminds me of Windows 7 and the latter is a MacOS lookalike.
- jwells89 3y agoElementary is a non-starter because even if it resembles macOS aesthetically, it’s more like GNOME or iPadOS in how it eschews a proper menubar in favor of hamburger menus or removing functions that don’t fit in the toolbar altogether. It’s also missing number of other power user oriented features like a GUI for modifier key and per-app key shortcut remapping. Mint/Cinnamon are nice but I think its ties to GTK+ and various GNOME components are a liability.
- 3y ago
- cmoski 3y agoPlenty of good reasons. Best reason world be because you need to use software that only runs on Windows to do your job.
- worksonmine 3y agoI don't have that problem but using wine or even spinning up a VM is always an option. My advice is to choose something more open though, almost everything has an alternative and even when the user experience is worse the freedom is worth it. I'll never understand people who put up with an OS (at this point spyware) they don't like because they "have to", like being stuck in a abusive relationship.
- 3minus1 3y agoWindows has 68% desktop market share vs. 3% Linux[1] Hackernews User: Windows is dead [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-has-over-3-of-the-desktop-market-its-more-complicated-than-that/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-has-over-3-of-the-deskto...
- kibwen 3y agoWindows is certainly dead to me. Grew up using Windows, bounced off of desktop Linux a decade or more ago, then eventually got fed up with the increasing ad infestation as Windows enshittified and realized the desktop Linux is lovely and usable nowadays (and the Steam Deck exists for any games I want to play). I'd sooner give up on computers entirely than go back to Windows, unless they drastically change course and remove all ads from the product, permanently.
- 20after4 3y agoI haven't used windows since 2013 and I haven't ever looked back. Don't miss it one bit. I used MacOS for a while and then went fully Linux by 2015. The world is getting worse every day but at least my desktop OS isn't.
- DanHulton 3y agoParent is not talking about market share, they're talking about utility. The utility in using Windows over the alternatives is none, they're saying. And you could argue that, if you wanted. But pretending they were talking about market share and then using it as a "lol HN" generalization is disingenuous, at best.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI saw an article on stable diffusion for Linux and how to set it up with some extra. It went reasonable for a moment, git this, pip that… Then as predicable as ever, the Linux pseudo-child sacrifice routines began, some sudo JRE incantation to move JRE version up or down, then some absolute voodoo with piping something or another to some what’s it, then some command line apt deal with a very specific package name and version that you are just supposed to know is the exact one that is quantum linked to the code you want to run. … I WANT to get away from windows, but learning and remembering all that nonsense that doesn’t make me money is exactly the issue with Linux and I assume the massively autistic crowd that likes that process.
- aquir 3y agoBut still unable to do this simple task: use the external screen when I close the laptop lid! I've tried everything on multiple distros but the external screen reduces to 1 FPS as soon I close the lid. My laptop has multiple GPUs but still!
- courseofaction 3y agoMac laptops are also superior in every way (excluding gaming).