3 ms·

Not being able to customise my environment is a dealbreaker for me. I will be converting my day to day machine to Linux rather than being nagged into a user hos

Not being able to customise my environment is a dealbreaker for me. I will be converting my day to day machine to Linux rather than being nagged into a user hostile OS upgrade. Clearly Microsoft has given up on powerusers, the people who notice and sometimes fix flaws in their monolith. Seems shortsighted.

wepple 3y ago
What kept you on their platform this long if you don’t mind my asking?
- ryanjshaw 3y ago
  Not OP, but in my case it's Visual Studio. It's just the best IDE for me, and I have literally decades of muscle memory using it. I first tried Linux sometime in the late 90s, and this might finally be the year I switch over. I do everything else in a Linux VM now, may as well run Linux as host and Windows as a VM.
  - cinntaile 3y ago
    You can use Visual Studio on Linux, I would assume you can configure it to use the same hotkeys as on Windows but I'm not sure.
    - iforgotpassword 3y ago
      Isn't that just vscode, that ugly abomination that I've given up trying to configure in a reasonable fashion after like 5 minutes every time I tried it out again? Anyways, I'm on jetbrains these days and never looked back.
      - ryanjshaw 3y ago
        Yes, you're right, it's VS Code they're referring to and it's not the same thing. I tried JetBrains Rider and stopped using it after the console window didn't auto scroll as I logged stuff into it - I don't know how something so basic doesn't work properly. I should probably try again, as so many people recommend it that I can only assume I did something wrong to mess up the console. (Edited, I originally misunderstood your comment)
        KronisLV 3y ago
        > I tried JetBrains Rider and stopped using it after the console window didn't auto scroll as I logged stuff into it - I don't know how something so basic doesn't work properly. I use JetBrains IDEs as my daily drivers, nowadays they're pretty good and feel more responsive than the previous versions (you can even choose between the older type of UI and something more minimalist). As for the console, is it possible that you weren't scrolled all the way to the bottom? For example, if you scoll up a bit and want to look at specific lines, the console will append the text to the bottom but won't move your viewport, whereas if you scroll back down to the bottom (or use the button for that), it'll start scrolling automatically again.
    - ryanjshaw 3y ago
      Are you maybe thinking of VS Code? I'm talking about its parent: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
      - cinntaile 2y ago
        Yes, my bad.
  - cm2187 3y ago
    In my case not just visual studio but the work it would require to figure out all I figured out on windows. Creating VMs, websites, interacting with system features, lots of trivial and not so trivial things to learn. I have tons of home scripts in C#, would probably need to rewrite most of them, likely using different libraries, I am still stuck on .net 4.8 because of that. I would love to switch though. I just don't have the bandwidth.
- tehbeard 3y ago
  Not OP, but compatibility, familiarity and inertia. also my initial choice for a Linux os that I daily drove back in uni, became infested with snap packages which I've had numerous issues with. (This is not an invite for anyone to tell me about Arch or "$x distro is clearly best", I've settled with pop_os for trials)
- pipes 3y ago
  For me it's the hardware support in windows. I've been using Linux on and off for 15 years, but every time I've tried to switch my home desktop I've always run in to issues. I used mint Linux for quite a while and it makes a very good stab at competing with windows. Recently I got a steam deck and I'm surprised how good it is in desktop mode, and also at running windows games in proton. I'm actually considering getting a dock and ditching my desktop atx tower. The tracking and telemetry in windows has really put me off it.
  - iforgotpassword 3y ago
    It's been fine for me over the last decade, but I took the easy route and ran it on thinkpad T series mostly. I've cobbled together a random ryzen system with an A380 half a year ago and didn't even check for Linux compat before buying, and steam with proton works pretty well on debian 13. Deal breakers are usually those games that bundle the EA or Epic launcher, those two are fucking dumpster fires when it comes to proton. Like, you fiddle for an hour to get a stupid fucking launcher going that wants an additional account signup and then the whole AAA Windows game runs perfectly fine. Makes you appreciate Steam/Proton/Valve even more every time.
  - wseqyrku 3y ago
    Why doesn't someone make a paid distro that doesn't have these problems? The market is absolutely there. Oh wait, that's mac, sort of.
    - theodric 3y ago
      "Sort of" is doing Atlas levels of heavy lifting here given the atrocious performance of x86 PC games on ARM Macs
- HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  Design software, games and lazyness. I have a linux running as my home server, so I have tried out various distros, currently using Mint Xfce.
- szszrk 3y ago
  It's not always you who picks the platform. In an enterprise usually choices are limited or it's not worth your time invested.
- poisonborz 3y ago
  Judging by replies here should really be a "why are you still on windows" askHN. Besides other reasons here, when you have decades of experience on how things work, hundreds of little utils and tools... and you want to finally concentrate more on productive work in your life and not start the whole hurdle anew. Maybe if a perfect, seamless VM environment would exist, but that still leaves the HW problems.
  - cm2187 3y ago
    I think I would miss how seamless is RDP too. I have a lots of VMs at home (simplifies backups, or allows to have a machine behind a VPN without affecting connectivity of the main machines).
    - theodric 3y ago
      RDP is excellent, but xrdp[1] works pretty well (although most of the time I stick to SSH sessions and don't bother with remote GUI) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xrdp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xrdp
- niuzeta 3y ago
  For me it's the games. Granted, I've been glancing more and more at the compatibility chart lately...
Symbiote 3y ago
Choose KDE if you want the most options to customise the user interface, while retaining something fairly similar to Windows.
- blooalien 3y ago
  Indeed. I moved to Linux back in the WinXP/Win7 days, and KDE's been my pretty much "go-to" desktop environment of choice since pretty much day one. I've tried and used many others for various purposes over the years, but always end up back on KDE for the most overall "familiar" (most like the Windows I had spent many years on), "integrated" (KDE apps tend to "play nice" together), and customizable interface.
mmerlin 3y ago
Annoying how previous abilities are also being removed e.g. docking the windows start bar vertically on the side of the screen is no longer allowed in Windows 11, but is possible on Windows Server and Windows 10
ykonstant 3y ago
How good is running Windows in a VM with a Linux host nowadays? Does it work well for office users who want to run Office? How about people who want to run Adobe or Autodesk software? These use cases seem to be causing the most friction for the transition in my circles (apart from gaming, which is a different story).
- danparsonson 3y ago
  VMWare works really well for me, as do Proton and Lutris for Linux gaming. That said, I'm a software developer so not a typical user.
- jicka 3y ago
  If you have the hardware for it, VFIO setups can be amazing. I've been running graphics accelerated Windows inside a VM for a few months now, and apart for some random crashes, it's perfect. I've been using Capture One (lightroom alternative) and Affinity Photo 2 inside the VM and it's been great. Haven't really tried video editing, but it might not be as great.
  - duckmysick 3y ago
    How exactly does graphic acceleration work when you run a VM? Do you need two graphic cards (one for the host, another for the guest)? Edit: to contribute a little to the grandparent question - I have Windows on QEMU for the Office suite and it works pretty smoothly. I had to make some config changes, most of them outlined in these reddit threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/qemu_kvm/comments/18z8609/qemu_windows_10_and_cpu_topology/ https://www.reddit.com/r/qemu_kvm/comments/18z8609/qemu_wind... https://www.reddit.com/r/ChromeOSFlex/comments/ucno4b/qemukvm_virtmanager_windows_vm_very_slow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChromeOSFlex/comments/ucno4b/qemukv... I also disabled animations in Windows settings because everything felt clunky. No crashes, clipboard and shared folders work fine after installing guest tools.
    - ykonstant 3y ago
      Very good info, I am also planning to set something up over QEMU.
pjmlp 3y ago
Given the hard time I am having installing Linux on a Gigabyte NUC that was given to me, due to UEFI issues, I am quite close to either get rid of it, or install Windows 11, make use of WSL if needed, and call it a day.
riedel 3y ago
I am not sure if the apps mentioned here really target power users. It seems that they are actually blocking apps by name (!) that reached some popularity in bringing back the old windows style interface. Those apps are bypassing Microsofts efforts to place ads all over the place and monetize the start menu. Those new featured content and AI stuff seems all very hacked into the interface and breaks easily. My taskbar even gets stuck from time to time (missed meetings because of the stuck clock). So this seems all just collateral damage in using windows to sell cloud stuff.
MikusR 3y ago
Congratulations! You baited the rage in the headline.
TranquilMarmot 3y ago
I've been considering this more and more lately. The Steam Deck is actually what's pushed me closer to adopting Linux on my desktop. I usually run Windows just because it's the easiest OS to run games on, but the Steam Deck has really shown that with Proton you can run... basically anything! Every tool that I use is cross-platform these days, anyway. VS Code, Blender, Inkscape, Godot, etc.
- slenk 3y ago
  There is 1 game stopping me from making the switch and its battlefield 2042. Every other game I play has a linux equivalent. Even some games with EAC. EA just simply will not allow it

wepple 3y ago

What kept you on their platform this long if you don’t mind my asking?

ryanjshaw 3y ago
Not OP, but in my case it's Visual Studio. It's just the best IDE for me, and I have literally decades of muscle memory using it. I first tried Linux sometime in the late 90s, and this might finally be the year I switch over. I do everything else in a Linux VM now, may as well run Linux as host and Windows as a VM.
- cinntaile 3y ago
  You can use Visual Studio on Linux, I would assume you can configure it to use the same hotkeys as on Windows but I'm not sure.
  - iforgotpassword 3y ago
    Isn't that just vscode, that ugly abomination that I've given up trying to configure in a reasonable fashion after like 5 minutes every time I tried it out again? Anyways, I'm on jetbrains these days and never looked back.
    - ryanjshaw 3y ago
      Yes, you're right, it's VS Code they're referring to and it's not the same thing. I tried JetBrains Rider and stopped using it after the console window didn't auto scroll as I logged stuff into it - I don't know how something so basic doesn't work properly. I should probably try again, as so many people recommend it that I can only assume I did something wrong to mess up the console. (Edited, I originally misunderstood your comment)
      - KronisLV 3y ago
        > I tried JetBrains Rider and stopped using it after the console window didn't auto scroll as I logged stuff into it - I don't know how something so basic doesn't work properly. I use JetBrains IDEs as my daily drivers, nowadays they're pretty good and feel more responsive than the previous versions (you can even choose between the older type of UI and something more minimalist). As for the console, is it possible that you weren't scrolled all the way to the bottom? For example, if you scoll up a bit and want to look at specific lines, the console will append the text to the bottom but won't move your viewport, whereas if you scroll back down to the bottom (or use the button for that), it'll start scrolling automatically again.
  - ryanjshaw 3y ago
    Are you maybe thinking of VS Code? I'm talking about its parent: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
    - cinntaile 2y ago
      Yes, my bad.
- cm2187 3y ago
  In my case not just visual studio but the work it would require to figure out all I figured out on windows. Creating VMs, websites, interacting with system features, lots of trivial and not so trivial things to learn. I have tons of home scripts in C#, would probably need to rewrite most of them, likely using different libraries, I am still stuck on .net 4.8 because of that. I would love to switch though. I just don't have the bandwidth.
tehbeard 3y ago
Not OP, but compatibility, familiarity and inertia. also my initial choice for a Linux os that I daily drove back in uni, became infested with snap packages which I've had numerous issues with. (This is not an invite for anyone to tell me about Arch or "$x distro is clearly best", I've settled with pop_os for trials)
pipes 3y ago
For me it's the hardware support in windows. I've been using Linux on and off for 15 years, but every time I've tried to switch my home desktop I've always run in to issues. I used mint Linux for quite a while and it makes a very good stab at competing with windows. Recently I got a steam deck and I'm surprised how good it is in desktop mode, and also at running windows games in proton. I'm actually considering getting a dock and ditching my desktop atx tower. The tracking and telemetry in windows has really put me off it.
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  It's been fine for me over the last decade, but I took the easy route and ran it on thinkpad T series mostly. I've cobbled together a random ryzen system with an A380 half a year ago and didn't even check for Linux compat before buying, and steam with proton works pretty well on debian 13. Deal breakers are usually those games that bundle the EA or Epic launcher, those two are fucking dumpster fires when it comes to proton. Like, you fiddle for an hour to get a stupid fucking launcher going that wants an additional account signup and then the whole AAA Windows game runs perfectly fine. Makes you appreciate Steam/Proton/Valve even more every time.
- wseqyrku 3y ago
  Why doesn't someone make a paid distro that doesn't have these problems? The market is absolutely there. Oh wait, that's mac, sort of.
  - theodric 3y ago
    "Sort of" is doing Atlas levels of heavy lifting here given the atrocious performance of x86 PC games on ARM Macs
HlessClaudesman 3y ago
Design software, games and lazyness. I have a linux running as my home server, so I have tried out various distros, currently using Mint Xfce.
szszrk 3y ago
It's not always you who picks the platform. In an enterprise usually choices are limited or it's not worth your time invested.
poisonborz 3y ago
Judging by replies here should really be a "why are you still on windows" askHN. Besides other reasons here, when you have decades of experience on how things work, hundreds of little utils and tools... and you want to finally concentrate more on productive work in your life and not start the whole hurdle anew. Maybe if a perfect, seamless VM environment would exist, but that still leaves the HW problems.
- cm2187 3y ago
  I think I would miss how seamless is RDP too. I have a lots of VMs at home (simplifies backups, or allows to have a machine behind a VPN without affecting connectivity of the main machines).
  - theodric 3y ago
    RDP is excellent, but xrdp[1] works pretty well (although most of the time I stick to SSH sessions and don't bother with remote GUI) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xrdp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xrdp
niuzeta 3y ago
For me it's the games. Granted, I've been glancing more and more at the compatibility chart lately...

Symbiote 3y ago

Choose KDE if you want the most options to customise the user interface, while retaining something fairly similar to Windows.

blooalien 3y ago
Indeed. I moved to Linux back in the WinXP/Win7 days, and KDE's been my pretty much "go-to" desktop environment of choice since pretty much day one. I've tried and used many others for various purposes over the years, but always end up back on KDE for the most overall "familiar" (most like the Windows I had spent many years on), "integrated" (KDE apps tend to "play nice" together), and customizable interface.

mmerlin 3y ago

Annoying how previous abilities are also being removed e.g. docking the windows start bar vertically on the side of the screen is no longer allowed in Windows 11, but is possible on Windows Server and Windows 10

ykonstant 3y ago

How good is running Windows in a VM with a Linux host nowadays? Does it work well for office users who want to run Office? How about people who want to run Adobe or Autodesk software? These use cases seem to be causing the most friction for the transition in my circles (apart from gaming, which is a different story).

danparsonson 3y ago
VMWare works really well for me, as do Proton and Lutris for Linux gaming. That said, I'm a software developer so not a typical user.
jicka 3y ago
If you have the hardware for it, VFIO setups can be amazing. I've been running graphics accelerated Windows inside a VM for a few months now, and apart for some random crashes, it's perfect. I've been using Capture One (lightroom alternative) and Affinity Photo 2 inside the VM and it's been great. Haven't really tried video editing, but it might not be as great.
- duckmysick 3y ago
  How exactly does graphic acceleration work when you run a VM? Do you need two graphic cards (one for the host, another for the guest)? Edit: to contribute a little to the grandparent question - I have Windows on QEMU for the Office suite and it works pretty smoothly. I had to make some config changes, most of them outlined in these reddit threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/qemu_kvm/comments/18z8609/qemu_windows_10_and_cpu_topology/ https://www.reddit.com/r/qemu_kvm/comments/18z8609/qemu_wind... https://www.reddit.com/r/ChromeOSFlex/comments/ucno4b/qemukvm_virtmanager_windows_vm_very_slow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChromeOSFlex/comments/ucno4b/qemukv... I also disabled animations in Windows settings because everything felt clunky. No crashes, clipboard and shared folders work fine after installing guest tools.
  - ykonstant 3y ago
    Very good info, I am also planning to set something up over QEMU.

pjmlp 3y ago

Given the hard time I am having installing Linux on a Gigabyte NUC that was given to me, due to UEFI issues, I am quite close to either get rid of it, or install Windows 11, make use of WSL if needed, and call it a day.

riedel 3y ago

I am not sure if the apps mentioned here really target power users. It seems that they are actually blocking apps by name (!) that reached some popularity in bringing back the old windows style interface. Those apps are bypassing Microsofts efforts to place ads all over the place and monetize the start menu. Those new featured content and AI stuff seems all very hacked into the interface and breaks easily. My taskbar even gets stuck from time to time (missed meetings because of the stuck clock). So this seems all just collateral damage in using windows to sell cloud stuff.

MikusR 3y ago

Congratulations! You baited the rage in the headline.

TranquilMarmot 3y ago

I've been considering this more and more lately. The Steam Deck is actually what's pushed me closer to adopting Linux on my desktop. I usually run Windows just because it's the easiest OS to run games on, but the Steam Deck has really shown that with Proton you can run... basically anything! Every tool that I use is cross-platform these days, anyway. VS Code, Blender, Inkscape, Godot, etc.

slenk 3y ago
There is 1 game stopping me from making the switch and its battlefield 2042. Every other game I play has a linux equivalent. Even some games with EAC. EA just simply will not allow it