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Linux is now the better OS, after the other one got significantly worse than it used to be, and even that is close call depending on what you need Linux to do.

• jbstack 1y ago
  Very subjective. I made the switch to Linux from Windows 7 over 10 years ago and even at that time I found Linux to be orders of magnitude better in almost every aspect, and those few areas where it was worse (which, aside from games, I'm struggling to even think of any now) were well worth the trade-off.
• wiseowise 1y ago
  Linux distros became much better than Windows during Win 10 times.
  • koiueo 1y ago
    I love how people confidently claim something like this. FWIW, for me Linux became better in the times of Windows XP.
    • rkomorn 1y ago
      I also love how people confidently claim something like this. FWIW, for me Linux stopped being better than Windows around Windows 7 and still isn't back.
      • mixmastamyk 1y ago
        Windows wasn’t fully usable until the terminal and WSL shipped. And now isn’t due to adverts and loss of local accounts, and other hostile anti-features.
        • rkomorn 1y ago
          Windows 7 was the first version that gave me stability that made Linux feel like less of a must-have / only option. Windows 11 largely gives me no problems and has worked perfectly fine with the hardware I've thrown at it, with no effort on my part. WSL is definitely a bonus. The same just has not been true of Linux for me during the same time period with the same pieces of hardware. I still happen to run NixOS on my laptop (the most recent of 6 distros, and Windows, I've tried over the past couple of years). It's not been entirely trouble-free but (thanks to the Arch wiki, mostly), it's in a decent state now. And you are right about the hostile anti-features, though, and that promises to only get worse. My windows PC has been relegated to games and will likely get whatever first stable, headache free SteamOS+NVIDIA incarnation turns up. I've got no more affection for Windows than for Linux. There are just cases where the former has given me fewer headaches than the latter.
          • mixmastamyk 1y ago
            Sounds like a hardware issue on the Linux side. Been using Dell developers for decades and recently Frameworks and had only temporary issues with brand-new chipsets. Star labs tablet is great as well. On the Windows side NT 3.5 was rock solid with limited software selection, 4 was decent, XP was fine for me behind a firewall but not everyone was so lucky on the security angle. No one liked Vista but I don't remember it being due to crashing.
            • rkomorn 1y ago
              The 2017 Dell developer edition XPS 13 with Ubuntu is actually one of the systems that gave me the most trouble, quite ironically. Bluetooth loved to disappear for no reason and would only return with a reboot. No amount of unloading/reloading modules could bring it back. Didn't have any issues with Windows on that laptop. Current laptop is a Lenovo X1 Nano and it's behaving reasonably.
              • mixmastamyk 1y ago
                Sounds like the wireless card issue of a few years back. Believe it was fixed by replacing the cheaper module with an Intel wireless card. Never affected me.
      • koiueo 1y ago
        Just in case, that was exactly my point. For different people better is defined differently.
        • rkomorn 1y ago
          Ah, that wasn't how I read it. We agree, then!
    • surgical_fire 1y ago
      Both can be true, depending on a few factors. My first attempt at Linux was installing Mandrake sometime circa 2002. I was only a kid that liked computers back then, not really an advanced user. I could not make the mouse work, and gave up. Probably for a more advanced user that was not an issue, and Linux was better already. Many years later, around 2015, I had the option to work from a Linux environment at my workplace, and went for it. Ubuntu this time around, during Windows 7 days. Many consider Windows 7 to be peak Windows, and I found Ubuntu to be much, much better. At least for regular use and Dev work. The only thing that kept me from using it on my own PC was that running my game library was not possible back then. I did keep it on dual boot for a few years though. What allowed me to move for good was Proton. In some ways, that is the point where I can say, without any caveats or asterisks, that Linux is definitely better.
      • d3Xt3r 1y ago
        My experience is kinsa similar to yours, started around 98/99 with Red Hat and Mandrake. Linux was just so clunky at the time. I could never take it seriously, having to compile the kernel for getting something basic going was not very fun. Although it was pretty fun trying out all the various distros that would come on free CDs bundled with computer magazines (remember those?!). I was in fact playing around with several alternate OSes at the time, and the ones which really impressed me the most were QNX and BeOS. I absolutely loved QNX for being so performant - especially at multitasking, was smooth as butter my humble 450MHz PIII. QNX solved the desktop interactivity problem more than two *decades* before Linux did, and I think that's pretty damn impressive. And BeOS blew me away with its multimedia performance. It wasn't until Windows 7 came out, that I decided to switch to Linux full time (started with SuSE, then Fedora and switched to Arch a few years later). Basically my reason for switching was because I wasn't eligible for Microsoft's student discount and I couldn't afford to pay the full price for 7, and I was actually really looking forward to it and really wanted to buy it instead of pirating it, thinking I could get the student discount... but no. I got really ticked off at Microsoft and decided to just format my PC and switch to Linux for good.
    • cess11 1y ago
      I agree, but that's possibly because my experience with Linux in the age of 95 and 98 was Dragon Linux, which was adapted to sitting next to a Windows installation on a FAT partition and had some limitations and instabilities. Once I got my first consumer high end PC that was really my own and payed for with my own money, with one of the early hyperthreading CPU:s, it didn't take long until I made the move from Windows to Slackware and never looked back. I've used later Windows versions quite a lot, but spent more time in Putty sessions against Linux and BSD boxes than anything else on them.
• jolmg 1y ago
  IMO, it was definitely the better OS even going back to 15 years ago. People use Windows only because of the network effect of people being school-taught how to use computers on Windows, which leads to a positive feedback loop of more software being made for it which locks-in people further. I remember after learning Linux, how much of a toy Windows felt, with my needing to grab windows by the bar to move them around (instead of grabbing from anywhere), and trying to resize them by the thin corner (instead of resizing from anywhere), having no concept of workspaces, having no choice of window manager while Linux could engulf windows in flames and render them in a cube, only being able to backspace single characters at a time, no choice of file manager, files having weird limitations on their names, having nothing like bash (pre-powershell) while Linux had multiple shells, no block devices (this could be expanded into a lot of points), no simple way to work the partition tables, not being able to mount things wherever, not being able to treat a regular file like a disk, no real choices of filesystems, poor network utilities, ping only pings an arbitrary 3 times by default instead of just going on indefinitely, no package managers and repos, etc. I could go on a lot more probably, but this is enough. Windows XP was a toy compared to Linux.
  • mlvljr 1y ago
    [dead]
  • happymellon 1y ago
    > not being able to mount things wherever Just to clarify, this was actually like most of Windows. You could (in XP at least via Disk Manager), but they made it harder than it needed to be. Multiple workspaces was a thing as well that came with XP Power Toys and was a feature in later versions, but not simple to access, and mostly broken because they never test it. I made my final transition during Vista. Touching 7, 10 and 11 for work purposes means I can see that I don't miss any of it.
    • dijit 1y ago
      I’m not sure any of what you wrote is an endorsement of the grandparents comment about Windows being a superior OS 15 years ago.
• exe34 1y ago
  it was the better os for me in 2005 because it allowed me to do everything I needed for class on the only laptop I could afford at the time. windows mistake edition just didn't work at all beyond booting and running a browser and even that caused it to crash several times per hour. Linux has remained the best operating system for me since that time despite multiple upgrades to more powerful machines. everything I needed was available in the package manager. when I turned it on to work, it turned on and I worked. when I turned it off, it turned off. it didn't start upgrading and then hang, like my friends computers. In fact I kept supporting friends on windows for a few more years, but after that I just told them I didn't know how it worked, because windows was just such mess to support.
• dspillett 1y ago
  Linux is now the better OS on the desktop for many more people after the other one got significantly¹ worse than it used to be. It has been the better OS server-side and for appliance applications (routers, media players, …) for a long time, Windows may be drawing equal but does that count if some of it is due to WSL? It has been the better OS, or often just the equal OS for a lot of desktop users for a fair while also, particularly non-gamers who don't need other specific tools that don't have a sufficiently compatible Linux offering/alternative. Many use it because the cost is hidden and might use something else given a properly informed choice. I wouldn't put it in front of my Dad, even though pretty much all he does is no different on Windows than Linux and has been for years, because of compatibility concerns with printers/scanners and because there are others in the family able+willing to support Windows so he isn't stuck waiting for me if he ever has trouble while I'm difficult to contact. I don't run Linux on my main desktop due to inertia (games are largely what kept me with Windows long enough to have to make the 8->10 transition) but that is not enough any more, partly because it just isn't really there (lack of things keeping me on Windows because they don't work well easily elsewhere, and irritations with Win11 applying a noticeable retrograde force) and partly because my use patterns have changed (modern games are not a thing in my life ATM, my hobbies have changed considerably in the last decade). That machine will be switching over to Linux when I get around to it, or it might just be shut off (almost all data is on Linux on the little house server, and off-site copies, already anyway) in which case the laptop will just gain a dock so it can better use the big screens & whatnot. -------- [1] I might also take issue with significantly, as that might imply the change is sudden and due specifically to the Win10 EOL. Windows, both 11 & 10 and 8 before them, has been going downhill slowly enough that each extra irritation has faded into something that people put up with before the next one comes along. Recent changes (more ads etc) are generally small² but are the final straw. [2] Recall (and the justified consternation it creates) is the one recent change that I would call significant in its own right. As irritating as the other AI stuff nagging us to give it something to do is to those of use that don't want it, in many places it just feels like an evolution of Cortana's presence from a UX PoV more than a revolution in its own right, and doesn't feel nearly as invasive overall as the Recall subset does on its own.
• array_key_first 1y ago
  Linux has been better for a long, long time now. People use Windows because of the software, not because of the operating system itself. The best thing windows can do is not assert itself and hide as much as possible. As soon as you have to start interacting with any windows systems, it becomes clear how hacky and poorly conceptualized the OS is. The best versions of Windows were the least annoying.