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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ColinWright 9mo agoStill reading the article, but early on it says: "Also, is it weird that I still remember the specs of my first computer, 22 years later?" My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1, 1.78 Mz Z80 with 16 KB RAM. That was 48 years ago. Is it weird that I remember that?
- bobsterlobster 9mo agoNah, I think it's awesome. Great computer by the way. With all that raw power I bet you were doing tons of computering.
- xxs 9mo ago22 years back is still this century, nothing weird about. As for remembering stuff 6502/48KB RAM (along with call -151) seems boring, I guess.
- iso1631 9mo agoInterestingly I can't remember any specs since about 22 years ago. First modern PC (dos/win3.1) I had a 12mhz 286, 1 meg of ram, AT keyboard, 40MB hard drive. This progressed via a 486/sx33/4m/170mb and at one point a pentium2 600 with (eventually) 96mb of ram, 2g hard drive, then a p3 of some sort, but after that it's just "whatever".
- 1123581321 9mo agoThey stick with you. I remember our first family computer well (an Acer 486 with 40MB drive and 32MB RAM.) Same for my first computer I built myself out of a TigerDirect order. Made a few mistakes there (K6 generation.) Having these computers was such a change in our lives that they should be somewhat indelible memories.
- xxs 9mo ago>an Acer 486 with 40MB drive and 32MB RAM. 32MB ram <-- no way. 4 and 8MB were the standard (8MB being grand), you could find 16MB on some Pentiums. So 40MB drive and 32MB RAM is an exceptionally unlikely combo. 32MB become norm around Pentium MMX and K6(-2).
- Kye 9mo agoIt could have been bought old and upgraded. Not everyone had the luxury of a brand new first computer.
- xxs 9mo agoPossibly, but even mother boards supporting 32MB would be rare. Perhaps on "DX3"? As for a new computer and price - it was like $1000 to get AMD 486DX2-80 with 4MB RAM in '95...
- pixl97 9mo agoSo this depends if it was a 72 pin DIMM board. I don't think you could get there (easily?) on a 30 pin board, but 72 may have had native support for 64 out of the box.
- snerbles 9mo agoI upgraded a ~1992 Dell 486 DX2 to 36MB (original 4MB + 32MB...or was it a pair of 16MB sticks? hard to remember) around 1997 or so.
- 1123581321 9mo agoHaha, I wondered if someone would complain about 32MB. We had the board maxed out. My grandfather’s computer before ours. A few months after taking possession, I upgraded the disk to a luxurious 400MB.
- Kye 9mo agoThe classic NAND-me-down. My first personal computer was a "broken" 486 system I got for $25 at a yard sale. All it needed was a hard drive.
- rglullis 9mo agoMine was an Intel 386 DX 40MHZ with 2MB RAM and 80MB HD, bought in late 1993.
- heywire 9mo agoIBM PC XT 5150 4.77MHz, 640KB, no, not weird at all :)
- drivers99 9mo agoThe 5150 was just an "IBM PC" not an XT, but still... I think we're talking about the same thing. I still have mine! 4.77 MHz 8088, 8087 math coprocessor, CGA graphics card, 5.25" floppy (360K, double-sided, double-density), 20 MB Seagate hard drive (I believe the motherboard has newer ROM chips to support that), AST SixPakPlus expansion card to bring it up to 640 KB RAM and a Parallel Port, a Serial Port, a Game Port, and a Real Time Clock (so you don't have to type in the date and time every bootup.) At one point I had a Sound Blaster as well, which was nice. The floppy drive and the hard drive each have their own controller cards so there's almost no more room for expansion! The motherboard also has the keyboard and cassette (!!!) port. I get an error code about the cassette port so I doubt it would work but I never had the equipment to try it out anyway.
- justin66 9mo agoThere is no reason you would have forgotten.
- SanjayMehta 9mo agoZX-81 with 1Kb RAM
- WillAdams 9mo agoRadio Shack PC-1 w/ the printer and cassette tape player --- really should have waited until the Model 100 was available....
- godzillabrennus 9mo agoI documented all of my early computers throughout early college, and I'm glad I did. I remember the first computers well, but without those notes, I wouldn't remember the first ten in so much detail. My first computer that was not a family computer was: UMAX 233mhz Pentium 2, 64Mb Ram, 8Gb HDD (was crushed when sat on by sibling)
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- zabzonk 9mo agoMy Dad had one of them. The first machine I actually purchased myself was a Dragon 32 (6809 processor, 32k RAM) sometime around 1981 - i can remember everything about it, including all the terrible cassette games I bought for it and the money I spent on ROM cartridges (word processor, assembler/debugger). These days I can't even remember what's in my Steam library.
- aidenn0 9mo ago36 years ago: A Wyse branded AT clone 12.5MHz 286 with 1MB of ram, a 10MB hard drive and a Hercules graphics card (it was a decommissioned CAD machine from my dad's work).
- consp 9mo agoFirst PC: 8088 with 640K, then a 286 with 2MB! The memory! First own "PC": Atari ST 1040e, 1MB, with supercharger to run DOS and a 30MB hard disk the size of a regular PC. Donation from a family member.
- tracker1 9mo agoFirst family PC was a used IBM PC XT, 8088 w/ 640kb ram and a cga card with an amber monochrome monitor attached. I remember getting a 14.4 modem on it, and it would freeze, had to force it to 9600bps. Then managed to wranle a 486sx w/ 4mb ram and an EGA card and display. First decent computer I built was an AMD 5x86 133mhz with the larger cache module and a whopping 64mb ram that I'd traded for some ANSi work. The irony is for some things it ran circles around the Pentiums that friends had, for others it just slogged. Ran OS/2 warp like a beast though. Ever since then, I've mostly maxed out the ram in my systems... I wend from 128gb down to 96GB for my AM5 build though since the most I've ever used is around 75gb, and I wanted to stick to a single pair at a higher speed.
- ikidd 9mo agoI was late to the party with an Apple IIe. I've never managed to catch up since.
- arkensaw 9mo agoAmstrad 2286 PC, 4Mb RAM, 40Mb hard drive, 3.5" floppy. 40 Megabytes. I have photos that size these days.
- doodlebugging 9mo agoI still have my Mac 128k with external disk drive and printer. Bought new in Jan 1985 or late Dec 1984. I paid the exorbitant price to upgrade it to 512k during the first year I owned it. I think the RAM needed to be desoldered and new chips soldered in place so it needed to be returned to the store where I bought it. Shout out to the author of the blog for writing an engaging post that accurately the MS experience. For me, switching is still a work in progress since I am the family troubleshooter and there are lots of things to mess with. It will happen because so far, the ones I have switched have no complaints.
- Aldipower 9mo ago"Like digital herpes, I just couldn't get rid of it." Made my day! :-D
- reconnecting 9mo agoApple forced me to switch to Linux! Linux should consider paying Microsoft and Apple for new customers. Perhaps the customer acquisition funnel is quite long, at least it took 20 years of using Apple in my case before switching to Debian (Xfce), but it was worth it!
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- stuartjohnson12 9mo agoIt's only fair that Linux should pay 10% of the license fee for their software to Microsoft in exchange
- jasoneckert 9mo agoIf Linux had a revenue stream and model, this would make sense. But the style of open-source is to make good software, and let others gravitate to you as a result.
- jhickok 9mo agoI am good laptop hardware away from making the move.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- SomeHacker44 9mo agoHP Zbook Ultra G1a, 128GB RAM. Add SSD to taste. HP supported (Canonical OEM) Ubuntu with KDE. Works great as a daily driver with a UGreen GAN charger.
- jhickok 9mo agoInteresting, I had never even heard of this laptop! Thanks for the tip!
- aljgz 9mo ago
- progforlyfe 9mo agoEvery month more and more people switch to Linux and I just love it. I'm tired of one company controlling the core operating system of 85% of desktop computers and users being at their whim. You want proprietary programs? Alright, fine, one can argue for that. But the central, core operating system of general purpose computers should be free and fully controllable by the users that own them!
- petcat 9mo ago> Every month more and more people switch to Linux We've been hearing this for decades and yet the home Linux userbase is microscopic and somehow even smaller than ever. Unless we're going to count Google's Android and Chrome OS. Those are the only Linux-based distributions that have ever gained market share over desktop Windows.
- dralley 9mo agoI mean, this is literally false? Desktop Linux userbase is growing, it's bigger than it has ever been even without including ChromeOS, and more OEMs are shipping devices with desktop linux than ever before (Valve's suite of devices, multiple laptop vendors including major ones like Lenovo, a few SteamDeck competitors)
- vikramkr 9mo agoI mean - steam deck was a pretty significant inflection point quite recently. Making gaming viable on linux via a popular consumer product is a huge deal and starts to kill one of desktop linux's single biggest barriers to adoption.
- bobsterlobster 9mo agoCalling 4-5% marketshare microscopic is not fair. I get it if it was still stuck at 1%, but it's growing, and the rate of growth has been increasing too.
- rudhdb773b 9mo agoIs the desktop/laptop linux market share really over 4%? What is that based on?
- nusl 9mo agoI'd switch if it weren't for anticheat breaking the games I play. I really, really hate Windows, and Windows 11 even more than normal levels of Windows hate. I had to do some really weird shit to get it to a place that feels sane. "The only real limitation is that some games with anti-cheat like Valorant, Call of Duty or League of Legends won't run. But honestly I think not being able to launch League of Legends is actually a feature - one final reason to install Linux." Fair point though :P
- nazgulsenpai 9mo agoI made the decision to just play a different game when I switched back in 2022 or so. Thankfully, the game in question supported Linux shortly after the switch even though I got used to not playing it and just don't anymore :) I still try any anti-cheat games I come across to see if they work and it's surprising how many actually do. Nothing wrong with staying on Windows if compatibility is an issue, though.
- b1temy 9mo agoA few years ago, I would have said that any game that uses such a level of anticheat that makes wine/proton unable to play it (ie: kernel level anticheat) is basically malware and you _shouldn't_ play it anyway, out of both principle, and also because if they had a bug in their code, you're just opening up your device to an unnecessary privilege escalation vector that other malware can abuse to escalate their privileges. (This is not theoretical, this has happened before, eg: with Genshin. Though I believe just the mere existence of a signed driver was enough, since malware can just "Bring your own Driver" (BYOD) and download the driver, at least before it was revoked) Now, I still hold this belief in most regards. But I do see the appeal, especially if your friends and peers are gamers and actively play these sorts of games, and you feel that you're missing out on socialising or making new friends in that aspect. But there are plenty of other games and consoles, if you could just convince them to switch...
- nusl 9mo agoThis sort of anticheat exists because cheat developers ruin the experience for players, and for games that intend to be competitive in a real sense, the integrity of the game. Cheat developers keep getting smarter, so anticheat developers need to do the same. I guess the kernel is sorta as deep as you can go, at least with software. I don't like it personally but I do understand why they do it. It just means I can't play those games on Linux, and some studios just don't care. It's a shame that they don't care, though supporting such a minuscule percentage of the gaming market doesn't make a lot of sense unless out of principle/just do to it.
- throwforfeds 9mo agoGentoo forced me to switch to Apple. jk, I wanted to install Ableton and now it's been 15 years.
- cies 9mo agoAnd you got Bitwig :)
- drumttocs8 9mo agoYep, Ableton is why I have a Mac Mini on my KVM.
- bigyabai 9mo agoAbleton Live works fine on Wine, at least for me. Every once in a while I boot it up to bounce stems from an older project to Bitwig.
- fibers 9mo agoMicrosoft forced me to switch to Apple AND Linux.
- bobsmooth 9mo agoMaybe it's stockholm syndrome but I still have no interest in Linux. Are nvidia drivers still bad?
- marginalia_nu 9mo agoHaven't really ever had much issues with nvidia drivers on Linux tbh, and I've been using it since the early 2000s.
- nusl 9mo agoDrivers are generally fine, but there's more to it than just switching. If you're not bothered by the Win11 stuff, switching is probably not for you. Perhaps you can look into Linux for your current use cases and see if it's at all attractive.
- jabroni_salad 9mo agoDepends on why they are bad. If they're bad because they are proprietary, it is what it is. If they're bad because their dx12 performance is worse on linux than windows, supposedly the fixes for the vulkan descriptor boogeyman problem are just around the corner.
- forbiddenlake 9mo agoWhat do you mean by bad? Is this an ideological question? They are still primarily closed source. Is this an install difficulty question? If you can read you can install them. Is this a performance question? If you're a normie they're good. If you're demanding the top fps at the top resolution in dx12 games then there is still a noticeable difference but it should be fixed this year.
- bee_rider 9mo agoYeah the main reason to dislike Nvidia drivers on Linux these days from a regular user point of view (I am not a Wayland developer so I don’t have to deal with whatever technical annoyance there is there) is just the philosophical/potential-privacy annoyance of running closed source code on my open source system. This doesn’t give the entirely closed source OS any points.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoWow gun to head and everything. Glad he survived the transition. More seriously, editing is either a lost art or click bait headlines are more important than ever. The title is very immature.
- bobsterlobster 9mo agolol! Sorry about the clickbait. Everyone's doing it nowadays, and I wanted to follow. Gonna think of a better title next time
- NobodyNada 9mo agoFor what it's worth, personally I thought your writing style and sense of humor was excellent, and my favorite part of the post. I also appreciate you giving me an updated copy of the "Microsoft is a corporation" meme, as the one I have downloaded seems to become outdated each time a new Windows update comes out.
- bobsterlobster 9mo agoThank you! Sadly, the one I posted is outdated too. I tried looking around for the newest one because I had seen it before, but couldn't find it anymore. The list was ~30% longer.
- snarfy 9mo agoIt's not going to get any better. Microsoft's problem is tech debt. Copilot doesn't pay tech debt it creates it. It will only get worse faster.
- fuzzy2 9mo agoMicrosoft probably has a problem with tech debt, yes. That is however not the problem. Instead, the product strategy is. And it was bad even before LLMs.
- coffeebeqn 9mo agoWindows is under 10% of their revenue these days. It’s simply not important to leadership. Just like Xbox - just let it slowly die as you squeeze any last remaining cents out
- ric2b 9mo agoWindows is a small part of their revenue on purpose, because the OS monopoly enables them to sell and push a lot of their other revenue streams. Windows has always been easy to pirate for the same reason. But make no mistake, it is very important for Microsoft and leadership, or they wouldn't keep updating it so much and talking about it so much on their keynotes and marketing.
- somenameforme 9mo agoNah, they have a good strategy. In fact, they have all the strategies.
- snarfy 9mo agoThis is true. The constantly changing strategy is what left the wave of debt behind it.
- bdbdbdb 9mo agoI've never heard of CachyOS. I'm amazed at how many Linux versions there are and how good they seem and it makes me wish I could try them all.
- bittumenEntity 9mo agoLike the author says: > Linux is the preferred platform for development Honestly I'm surprised he was using a non unix system this long, I guess it kinda proves his point that switching costs can seem huge
- troupo 9mo agoBoth MacOS and Windows with wsl are perfectly fine for development. Especially MacOS. There's literally nothing special about Linux when it comes to development. And there are quite a few downsides especially when it comes to some specialized tooling because many vendors often only have Windows tools for their devices.
- pluralmonad 9mo agoThis depends entirely on your stack and preferred workflow. MacOS is increasingly hostile to powerusers. If you don't mind following their golden path, all is fine, otherwise... I wonder how long before you have to enable a scary "developer mode" to install software outside the app store.
- troupo 9mo agoWhile that's true, I still don't have any issues running any stack on Mac (I've had Java, Python, C++, some Rust, Erlang/Elixir; previously I also had PHP and Ruby)
- morshu9001 9mo agoHow is it hostile? Nothing seems to get in the way.
- yndoendo 9mo agoI find a Linux host with a development guest OS the best to work in. It allows for snapshots, backups, and sharing development environments. Solution A might need a different environment than Solution B. Funny enough, the bluetooth stack works better on a bare metal Linux box than a Windows one. Audio starts being played sooner.
- barelysapient 9mo agoI think Linux adoption will rapidly grow with the adoption of LLMs. Esoteric errors are now resolvable with a simple query. Often with just a few cut and paste commands. This improves the rough edges to a point that Linux is now a reasonable option for a larger cohort of previously unfeasible users.
- koe123 9mo agoI also think LLMs are well suited to find niche strange bugs way quicker. User posts esoteric error on the issues page. LLM with proper context may converge quickly, allowing the programmer to implement a fix.
- RIMR 9mo ago1. This is not a likely effect of LLM adoption. 2. Linux is already to the point of giving you about as many esoteric errors as Windows or macOS will. People don't switch either because they are comfortable where they are and don't want to put forth the effort of changing their OS, or they are afraid of outdated criticism of Linux Desktops being error-filled nightmares.
- robinei 9mo agoMy feeling is that I consistently find on-point solutions for my Linux problems with a quick search. However if my Windows install gets in trouble my search will yield some DISM.exe invocation which doesn't help at all. A bit anecdotal, but this is my experience. I've always been able to fix my Linux installs.
- deaux 9mo ago1. It is. It makes me more likely to use Linux, and I'm not that far from the average. On Reddit r/gaming I've seen people who literally made the step and say exactly this "I installed Linux and when I can't figure something out I ask an LLM and it has done a great job so far". It's happening right now. Maybe you're so opposed to the concept that you hate to imagine it, but it's the reality. > or they are afraid of outdated criticism of Linux Desktops being error-filled nightmares Your concept of people installing Linux is behind because even just over the last 12 months things have changed a lot.
- jfyi 9mo agoThe one thing holding me to M$ Windows is visual studio. Yes, I am aware there are alternatives that others think are as good or better. No, I have not personally found that to be true.
- nailer 9mo agoWindows 11 was bad before AI. Press the Start menu? Wait. That much latency was never acceptable and Windows should die like desktop Java did.
- 72deluxe 9mo agoI don't understand how it got so bad. On Windows 95 or 98, you knew that pressing Windows > P > across right > N would open Notepad in about 22 milliseconds of interaction. Things just worked and responded. Today it's utter garbage.
- marginalia_nu 9mo agoAs a long-time Linux user who fairly recently dropped the Windows partition entirely, I do think the remaining chafing points are these: * UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess. And now you don't just have different versions of GTK vs QT to keep track off, but also X vs Wayland, and their various compatibility layers. * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of the previous point. Wayland has fractional scaling as a sort-of workaround if you can tolerate the entire screen being blurry. Every other major OS can deal with this. * Anything to do with configuring webcams feels like you're suddenly in thrown back 20 years into the past. It'll probably work fine out of the box, but if it doesn't. Hoo boy. * Audio filtering is a pain to set up.
- amelius 9mo ago> UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess. At least things look more or less the same over time. With commercial offerings one day you open your laptop and suddenly everything looks different and all the functions are in a different submenu because some designer thought it was cool or some manager needed a raise. > It'll probably work fine out of the box, but if it doesn't. Hoo boy. LLMs are actually very useful for Linux configuration problems. They might even be the reason so many users made the switch recently.
- tracker1 9mo agoThey're pretty good for most things, yes... but man was it rough figuring out getting my IP allocation routing right on my Proxmox server. The system is issued a primary IP, and need to route my subnet through that to my VMs... wasn't too bad once I got it working... I'd also wanted a dnat for "internal" services, and that's where it got tricky. I need to refresh myself as I'm wanting to move from a /29 to a /28 ... mostly been lazy about not getting it done, but actually mqking progress oo some hobby stuff with Claude Code... definitely a force multiplier, but I'm not quite at a "vibe code" level of trust, so it's still a bit of a slog.
- pdntspa 9mo ago
- senko 9mo agoArch is great. However, I would never recommend Arch (or an Arch derivative) to a first-comer to Linux. Ease in gently, with Ubuntu or Fedora. Get familiar. Then go crazy.
- levkk 9mo agoOk so Arch apparently has an install script that does everything[0]. I tried it the other day and it's pretty flawless, albeit terminal-based so not for everyone I guess. Pacman is _amazing_. Apt broke dependencies for me every few months & a major version Ubuntu upgrade was always a reformat. Plus, obviously, the Arch wiki is something else. I would go as far as to say you'll have an overall better Linux experience on Arch than Ubuntu and friends, even as a beginner. [0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall
- senko 9mo agoPossibly. If the installer happy path fails (which has happened to me), Arch is "here's root shell, figure it out", Ubuntu is slightly more user-friendly :) I will say Arch wiki is amazing, even if you're not using it. I'm on Debian nowadays and still often refer it for random obscure hardware setup details.
- khat 9mo agoEveryone says this but I have only ever used arch. Wiped windows and started with Manjaro. No VM to test straight to bare metal. I learned how Linux worked and then installed the base arch distro. If you can read a wiki, you can use arch. It's not rocket science. All the available arch flavored distros make it even easier today. I tried debian once and found it even more cumbersome. Is it apt or apt-get? is it install or update? Never stuck around to find out.
- cozzyd 9mo agoOr ... like me, switch to Fedora full time 20 years ago and still use it (ok, I use AlmaLinux on my workstation and servers)...
- megous 9mo ago
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoThe author tried everything except switching graphics drivers?! That's like listening to the top 10 hits on broken speakers and declaring all new music is terrible.
- bobsterlobster 9mo agoUninstalled with DDU, switched to multiple versions back. But it wasn't the nvidia driver, and I proved that when I switched to an insider build and the flickers were gone :D
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoYou didn't use a non Nvidia driver then. Sounds exactly like you were always using beta drivers.
- chad_strategic 9mo agoUbuntu since 2012
- fnoef 9mo agoI'd be happy to switch to Linux, but my Macbook with M processor is a real work horse. First of all, everything works (bluetooth, headphones, camera, etc). Second of all, ARM based processor is a beast. Until someone release an ARM based laptop, I don't see myself switching to Linux.
- zteppenwolf 9mo agoThis post is so 2001
- raincole 9mo agoEvery year is the year of linux desktop.
- chad_strategic 9mo agoUbuntu since 2011 Now if only "Linux" would make a good phone.
- AHTERIX5000 9mo agoMy Windows 11 installation broke down after one of the updates. Now I get "Please reinstall Windows" warning in Windows Update settings. And some error hex code which doesn't really help. I've installed like 5 different apps on this machine and never ran any "tweaking" scripts or apps. I don't think I ever had to reinstall Windows 2000 but here we are.
- VirgilShelton 9mo agoYeah Windows 2000 had countless software test engineers, I was one of them and on my team there were 5000 of us. I stared in tech support in 97 and moved into QA and always filed bugs on behalf of the customer, sadly everyone must code and customers must test. It's just not working out but Microsoft really only cares about Corporate America and Windows running on all the main languages. It's great to have alternatives and I've moved to MacOS after using Windows since 1.0.
- duffyjp 9mo agoThank you for your service. :D Windows 2000 will always be my favorite version. I got a free copy as a university student and it was just awesome. XP was the era where things changed for the sake of change. In Windows 2000 you could learn where absolutely everything was and it was always there for you. I still have my install CD, though it has suffered from bit-rot and can't be read properly. :(
- VirgilShelton 9mo agoHa! You're very welcome! Ah the good ol' days of CD install media, CD Keys and install times that took hours! RIP to your install CD!
- 72deluxe 9mo agoI think the UI was reasonable and easily understood in 2000. After that it seems links and buttons became interchangeable, and now we end up in the mess where scrollbars may or may not be visible until you try fiddling with the UI etc.
- _fat_santa 9mo agoI've been running Ubuntu Linux for a long time now (over a decade, started with 8.04). Linux still has it's fair share of bugs but I'll take having to deal with those over running Windows or MacOS any day. For me the biggest thing is control, with Windows there are some things like updates that you have zero control over. It's the same issue with MacOS, you have more control than Windows but you're still at the whims of Apple's design choices every year when they decide to release a new OS update. Linux, for all it's issues, give you absolute control over your system and as a developer I've found this one feature outweighs pretty much all the issues and negatives about the OS. Updates don't run unless I tell them to run, OS doesn't upgrade unless I tell it to. Even when it comes to bugs at least you have the power to fix them instead of waiting on an update hoping it will resolve that issue. Granted in reality I wait for updates to fix various small issues but for bigger ones that impact my workflow I will go through the trouble of fixing it. I don't see regular users adopting Linux anytime soon but I'm quickly seeing adoption pickup among the more technical community. Previously only a subset of technical folks actually ran Linux because Windows/MacOS just worked but I see more and more of them jumping ship with how awful Windows and MacOS have become.
- sovietmudkipz 9mo agoI remember when Ubuntu decided to reroute apt installations into SNAP installs. So you install a package via apt and there was logic to see if they should disregard your command and install a SNAP instead. Do they still do that? It annoyed me so much that I switched to mint.
- newsoftheday 9mo agoI agree with the sentiment but I keep Snap disabled because I like Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE) for its rock solid stability.
- kevinrineer 9mo ago> Do they still do that? Yes. I know its more than firefox, but I don't have the full list. On 24.04: me@comp:~$ apt info firefox | head -n 5 WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts. Package: firefox Version: 1:1snap1-0ubuntu7 Priority: optional Section: web Origin: Ubuntu me@comp:~$
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoThis was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed Linux finally. I was on POP_OS! for a good year, but been on Arch Linux for one year plus now. I know its a "meme" to talk about how great Arch is, but when you want the latest of something, Arch has it. I use EndeavourOS since it had a nicer simpler installer (idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro) and if you just use "yay" you don't run into Pacman woes. Alternatively, I'm only buying Macs as well, but for my gaming rigs, straight to Arch. Steam and Proton work perfectly, if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them.
- dgritsko 9mo agoWhat made you switch from Pop OS? I just installed it on a couple of old PCs I had lying around for my kids to play around with/learn from.
- condensedcrab 9mo agoProbably same reason most folks who are capable of running Linux don't stay on Ubuntu, etc.
- dgritsko 9mo agoI'm genuinely curious as to what the key differences are (especially those that would cause someone to switch), as someone who is pretty tech savvy but whose use of Linux as a daily driver is admittedly pretty weak.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoI would say EndeavourOS is the "Ubuntu" to "Arch" if you will. The installer is easy, and it comes with "yay" out of the box which is a frontend to Pacman which holds your hand in just the right ways. If I want to update my OS I type "yay" into a terminal, hit enter and confirm the packages needing updating (or select which ones I want) and type my password, and that's it. In the past with Manjaro I did a system update with Pacman, and problems ensued.
- mring33621 9mo agoWorth clicking for the "Microslop" logo alone! Shortcut: https://www.himthe.dev/img/blog/microslop/4.png https://www.himthe.dev/img/blog/microslop/4.png
- scalemaxx 9mo agoCurious to see how the Favicon will change too!
- andyferris 9mo agoApparently it moved (at least for me): https://m0u9gezmt0.ufs.sh/f/5F1wx5BYZG1wbDc8WftgL2Nrvz9BolE3kji176PUGVXYm4de https://m0u9gezmt0.ufs.sh/f/5F1wx5BYZG1wbDc8WftgL2Nrvz9BolE3...
- sylware 9mo agoDon't worry, microsoft is putting its rust all over open source.
- teekert 9mo agoI have always used Linux personally, only work made me use Windows and Mac (controlled endpoints) for the past 20 years. For 4 years I have my own company, 100% Linux. I know that some things are not as nice on Linux (ie you need to do MS365 in a browser for example, and MS365 files from a NAS in OnlyOffice is not great, etc). But other than that, I just love living in Gnome. What more do you need that just a clean desktop with some tiling, some virtual desktops, a clock, battery indicator and windows with your stuff? I don't even know. I like that I can set up Linux in 10 min. I recently set up a Windows 11 machine for a neighbor, it took so long! And it offered dozens of things I didn't want, to the point that I began feeling a bit nervous towards my neighbor (no you don't need that, no not that, no that's just tracking, no why would you want your desktop in the cloud?). Then when finished... it wasn't finished, I need printer drivers, an HP package with drivers and stuff for the BIOS etc etc etc. So much time.
- coffeebeqn 9mo agoEvery company I’ve worked at has used Google Docs anyway so the experience for me is the same on Linux. What’s so appealing about the classic Office suite?
- teekert 9mo agoWell, it's mostly annoying if people store office docs on some samba share instead of in SharePoint/Teams. Also Teams has issues on Firefox, and sometimes also in Chromium. But overall works well enough (even with my AirPods on Linux). Things like drawing in PowerPoint in the Browser have become significantly better over the last year, before that I avoided it like the plaque. Whats missing in MS365 online is numbered captions for figures (unforgivable!), or reference management. That just really annoying if people use those features. Also, I worked in an org still on Office 2019 but mixed it with MS365, that also lead to lot of pain. It's papercuts mostly, nothing fatal.
- mrbluecoat 9mo ago> my first computer was a Windows 98 machine The moment your Commodore 64 made you old.
- jmarcher 9mo agoThe most puzzling part is why someone would run Windows 98 on a machine built around 2002/2003 (according to the specs).
- bhewes 9mo agoAh 3d is fine with Maya and all the real VFX running on Linux. And we haven't had problems with game dev for years on Linux. Agree otherwise good to see another join.
- bobsterlobster 9mo agoAwesome, good to know that, and glad to be here
- bhewes 9mo agoHoudini,3dcoat,Nuke are the three things we pay for, will use Maya when we work with Maya artists, but dcc is mostly 3dcoat-blender-houndini workflow.
- coffeebeqn 9mo agoUnity works fine for example. I used it for a bit over a year on a project we did for multiple platforms
- a_e_k 9mo agoI spent over a decade developing rendering software used in VFX, and ran CentOS Linux as my development platform at work. We tried to follow the VFX reference platform once that became a thing back in 2014. https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/
- bilekas 9mo agoIv'e switched all but my work laptop because of well work, but the push came after they seemed to 'dumb' down the OS. The disjointed WebView mixed with old winforms for navigating simple things is infuriating alone. I've had a problem where the webview wouldn't render any of the display settings so my machine was stuck at a certain resolution and scale. Simple things like accessing Environment Variables now is atrocious and hidden in the most obscure unintuitive way. That's to say nothing to the crashing. Linux desktop environments have come such a long way it's really any wonder anyone would put up with Windows anymore. But then again, Microslop don't seem to care about the customer market much anymore anyway.
- mixedbit 9mo agoI've been using Linux as my main system for ~25 years, but always kept Windows installed for games. On my latest computer I've build 3 years ago, thanks to Steam with Proton, I no longer have Windows and have been happily playing Windows-only games without major issues.
- sporedro 9mo agoIt’s sort of crazy how much changed in the past few years. The only things that don’t run well under wine/proton now I feel like are online games with kernel anticheat and products like Autodesk or Adobe.
- Joel_Mckay 9mo agoThere are some commercial Applications that just won't work on wine. But virt-manager makes Qemu/kvm backing images for windows 10 or 11 easy. Freezing Windows in time is an absolute must if you do builds with vendors badly maintained development software. Dual booting off 2 SSD is good now, and the deciding factor on most of our laptop purchases. Windows is still necessary if you do serious heavy GPU CGI rendering, CAD/CAM work, or Games. I like Linux when everything is working well, as getting work done with the shell CLI is important for handling "Big" problems. Cloning identical Linux environments across all team workstations also greatly simplifies project support. =3
- consp 9mo agoAh, the Microsoft "updates". After the last "update" the setting for turning windows "game optimization" on and off doesn't work anymore and made factorio unplayable (it MUST be off, otherwise it optimized lag and stuttering and it automatically turns on after every larger update). Since games was the only reason I still had a pc with windows it was time to move. For funzies it tried installing some updates on the last shutdown (it got wiped afterwards). The only pc I now have with windows on it is a early 00's pc with 98SE on it.
- Markoff 9mo agoMy experience is more like: "I'll switch when Linux supports X." Linux still doesn't supports X. "Okay, but how about my X?" Linux still doesn't supports X. "Well, X is still missing..." Trados Studio, good luck finding equivalent, I tried, and the alternatives are horrendous and I'm not gonna run it in VM. Also I tried at least for son on his old computer live distro Mint from USB drive, everything works fine (unlike Zorin, which had problem with sound I think), but when I try to install it of course it doesn't detect Windows, same with wife's laptop. So I have 3 computers: son's old laptop where I could install Mint - Linux Mint doesn't detect Windows wife's old laptop where I could install Mint - Linux Mint doesn't detect Windows my daily driver where my work SW requires Windows and there is no point installing Mint - Linux Mint detects Windows I will have look at it during CNY holidays, if I will be able to install it alongside Windows (I need there Windows in case something would happen with my daily driver laptop). I also plan to switch my father's old desktop to Linux Mint, but somehow I already know what will be most likely Windows detection status over there as well after son's and wife's laptop experiences. It works where it's not needed and it doesn't work, where I could actually install it.
- eYrKEC2 9mo agoIf the activities are distinct, dual boot. I do all my dev in linux and boot into windows for gaming. Dev in linux is so much nicer for me than dev in Windows.
- iotapi322 9mo agoYou know what's funny about this article.... Back in 2012 I had the same problems with Windows Update and that is what forced me to go to a mac. I've never looked back.
- pier25 9mo ago> You had unsaved work? Too bad, it's gone, get bent. This has happened to me a couple of times. I put the PC to sleep and the next morning I discover it has decided to close everything to install an update. Not using Windows ever again to do any work. Say what you will about Apple but at least they don't do crap like this.
- causalscience 9mo agoThe fact that you leave unsaved work overnight is the actual crazy part.
- HendrikHensen 9mo agoWhy though? On Mac, I have tons of unsaved work: many TextEdit windows which keep their state for many months, even through reboots. And it has been working like for at least 10 years. It's such a simple, little quality-of-life thing. And Microsoft just doesn't care. This is what a computer should be doing: helping the user to get their work done, without the user having to worry about insignificant details about saving files. E.g. does Google Docs ever ask where to save a file before closing the browser or shutting down the computer? No you just get an untitled document that is automatically saved. If I want to rename it or save it in a different location, I am free to do so. But as long as I don't, it doesn't get in the way and just persists stuff automatically.
- layer8 9mo agoI don't disagree, but you have to know which applications reliably keep their state across restarts. You can't blindly rely on it on any desktop system. The Microsoft Office applications actually do auto-save documents since a couple of years ago, even though the recovery UX can be a bit awkward. What Microsoft doesn't care about is that you may have applications running that don't do that, when Windows reboots for updates.
- wpm 9mo agoOn macOS the feature is baked into the OS's APIs, the app developer just opts into using them. If they don't, quitting with unsaved work will prompt the user modally, and block the restart to the point where the OS will timeout the reboot process and give up. The only way to purposefully lose unsaved work in almsot every app I've ever used on macOS is to yank the power cable or hold the power button down. Window locations and app state are written to plist files, again, using OS libraries and APIs for app resume. I can reboot my Mac and not even realize it happened sometimes it all comes back the way it was.
- schlch 9mo agoI have been using Linux as a desktop operating system for what I believe is almost two decades. Recently(?) I see distro named like CashyOS and Bazzite being thrown around. Am I missing out on something?
- 3abiton 9mo agoIf you don't want the "hassle" of flag optimization when compiling binaries, CachyOS is basically Arch but with optimized binaries. Otherwise, Gentoo all the way, you just need a good machine.
- coffeebeqn 9mo agoThere are many really good ones these days that will have a much better experience than windows. I’ve used Ubuntu, Pop, Mint and Fedora workstation in the last 5 years and all worked great. Personally Mint Cinnamon had the least issues so I tend to run that on my machines now. Once SteamOS becomes generally available I’ll switch to that. It’s incredibly polished on Steam Deck
- mythz 9mo agoEOL of Windows 10 forced me to, but I'm not mad - Desktop Linux is Great! It's definitely the superior OS for modern development and general system admin, WSL/Docker always felt like an uncanny valley kludge.
- jojohack 9mo agoTiming of your post is spot on. I just emptied a drive to prep for a Linux switch this morning ( for the same reasons ) :D
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- breezykoi 9mo agoAudio latency on Linux was already very low long before PipeWire, thanks to JACK.
- scalemaxx 9mo agoLove that the Favicon for the blog is the Internet Explorer logo. Will that change?
- stuff4ben 9mo agoI haven't driven a Windows box since 2010 (and even then it was just a few months at work) and I'm perfectly happy! Except I'm on a Mac and have been at every job since 2006 when they came out with the Intel-based ones. I of course run Linux on VMs at work, but my daily driver has been and likely will forever be a Mac. I don't miss installing/tweaking video drivers or registry settings. Things just work 99.99% of the time for me. No one is perfect and Apple has made mistakes, but for me, I'm 100% satisfied.
- 72deluxe 9mo agoHow do you find macOS Tahoe? I have deliberately avoided installing it on my M3 MacBook Air that I use for work mainly due to the lack of attention to detail they seem to have dumped on the UI. I have used a Mac at work on/off since the Snow Leopard days and I think Snow Leopard made the most sense from a UI point of view, without wedging in iCloud file nonsense. I have a Windows 10 machine at home for gaming / development but my daily driver at home is a Linux M910 Lenovo (small enough and powerful enough for C++ dev), along with a Windows 11 mini Lenovo machine for GeForce Now usage on a TV in the house, but do I hate using Windows 11.
- PunchyHamster 9mo ago> Actually, scratch that, I think it really started with the non-consensual updates MS in general have idea of consent of an average rapist. Yes/Remind me later is basically norm in their dark UI patterns, it bothered me for months to add copilot button to teams
- fainpul 9mo agoSame on macOS — pestering me with the Tahoe update notification and the buttons are basically "now" or "later".
- chris_wot 9mo agoI’ve been working at a school that uses a mix of Surfacebooks, HP Elitebooks and MacBook Air M2s (now migrating everyone to M4s!). I used to prefer Windows for work. After the absolutely abysmal performance using a SurfaceBook Pro, never again. I’ve never had to deal with such slow performance in my life. I literally cannot get work done. Staff with Windows have constant problems, updates take forever, reboots aren’t very fast, programs crash, and (not OS related) but the new Outlook is universally despised. I’ve never seen a company shoot themselves in the foot so badly as I’ve seen Microsoft do this of late. More and more staff want MacBooks , and are even ok with using a remote session (ugh) to access the one app that relies on Windows.
- kavalg 9mo agoIt was a very entertaining read. I am just wondering if this one may be actionable: "And worst of all, you're like a pit bull that has lock-jawed onto OpenAI's ballsack, and you're not letting go, not matter how much we tell you to."
- burningChrome 9mo agoKind of interesting after using Manjaro recently, I had stayed away from Ubuntu for a while and started researching to see if it had gotten any better. I found a bunch of blog and reddit posts about how Linux sucks so bad and how much superior Windows and MacOS are. Only to see this article today. lol I guess at this point, whatever works for you and your situation is what you should use and ignore all the static. I use Linux for the majority of my dev work, but have the inability to move off Adobe products for the photo and video processing work I do. Something I've found that Linux doesn't compete very well with MS and Apple. I would love to finally get off of one or the other, but I have one foot in each because they both excel in different areas.
- Eric_WVGG 9mo agoI’m kind of curious why Adobe hasn’t gone all-in on Linux by now. IIRC Adobe apps were built on cross-platform tooling like Java (InDesign) and AIR (all the CS UI, and then the underpinnings in C++). I guess Adobe doesn't exactly have much to win by Windows failing, but their inaction does mean the open source alternatives will continue to get better, and that will hurt them.
- burningChrome 9mo agoEvery few years someone posts the same thing in the Adobe forums which then piss off the moderators and Adobe "experts". They continue to say the same thing which makes zero sense. I'm paraphrasing here but its something along the lines of: "Linux users are open source people and expect everything for free. They'll never pay for our products, so we see no need to port them for Linux users because so few of them would be willing to pay for our products." A lot of other comments are cheeky ones like, "Adobe is already on a Linux OS, its called MacOS." - rolls eyes- And you are correct, the OSS alternatives are getting better and closing the gap, but they're just not there yet - but I hold out hope they will be one day.
- gortok 9mo agoI want to switch to Linux for my EOL Windows 10 originally-built-for-gaming rig. It was “new” in 2016, so I hold out hope that there will be few compatibility issues. My biggest concerns are being able to play my library of steam games on it. Overall the problems I have are that last time I tried to put Linux on that machine I tried a dual boot system, and at the time UEFI did not play well with dual booting. I don’t know if it’s gotten better, but as of now I wouldn’t be dual booting anyway so conceivably it wouldn’t be an issue.
- Toutouxc 9mo agoMy desktop is a gaming-only machine, it’s still on Windows 10 and it will probably stay on Windows 10 until Steam stops working.
- al_borland 9mo ago> I wouldn’t be dual booting anyway This tends to be better overall anyway, if you are really looking to switch. Dual booting is enough of a hassle that I've always ended up staying in whatever OS I felt required me to think I needed to dual boot, and the other aspirational OS gets forgotten. Going all-in requires that you figure out new workflows, find new software, or in some cases change what you use the computer for and accept it. I tried building a gaming PC, but I hated PC gaming. It felt like it was half sys admin work, half gaming... if the sys admin work went well that day. I dual booted it for a while, then ran straight Linux on it, and eventually sold it. I liked the idea of one box that did everything, but the reality of it wasn't so great. I now have computers I don't care about gaming on, and have consoles that require 0 effort and let me play games when I feel like playing games.
- thewebguyd 9mo agoI doubt the dual boot issue was due to UEFI. It's more likely, Windows was clobbering over GRUB and overwriting your bootloader, as it likes to do. Windows really wants to be the only OS on your drive. Most reliable way I've ran dual boot systems is to have each OS on it's own separate drive, and then choose with the UEFI boot menu which one to boot instead of choosing in GRUB off a single drive. As for games, plug them into protondb (https://www.protondb.com https://www.protondb.com) to see compatibility & read through the comments
- Cyph0n 9mo agoSimilar journey, different distro! I wanted a Linux gaming machine, but given my recent admission into the cult of NixOS, I went with Jovian. Jovian is a NixOS module that sets up a SteamOS-like experience on top of your existing NixOS config. I was able to build & tweak the config before even building my PC. It booted first try and has since been working without hiccups. Now I am setting up emulators, which is relatively straightforward with nixpkgs :)
- jimbo808 9mo agoForced? It's been a delight. I'd say if anything, I've only ever felt forced to use MacOS or Windows, never forced to use Linux.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- domo__knows 9mo agoJust saw a video on YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDwt9AiItqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDwt9AiItqU - starts at 3:25) that talked about the windows experience in the present day and I totally forgot about booting up and magically having software appear I never asked for due to some partnerships Microsoft made. I've been on Mac for 16 years/iPhone for 10 years and have never looked back. The most annoying thing about Apple is when the OS updates and suddenly you have a different experience like liquid glass. But like all things I usually get used to it after about a week and most of the times I see the benefits (in this case, even more screen real estate).
- LorenDB 9mo agoI'll copy my comment on another article here: 2025 has had some of the biggest Linux hype in recent times: - Windows 10 went EOL and triggered a wave of people moving to Linux to escape Windows 11 - DHH's adventures in Linux inspired a lot of people (including some popular coding streamers/YouTubers) to try Linux - Pewdiepie made multiple videos about switching to Linux and selfhosting - Bazzite reported serving 1 PB of downloads in one month - Zorin reported 1M downloads of ZorinOS 18 in one month and crossed the 2M threshold in under 3 months - I personally recall seeing a number of articles from various media outlets of writers trying Linux and being pretty impressed with how good it was - And don't forget Valve announced the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, which will both run Linux and have a ton of hype around them In fact, I think that we will look back in 5 or 10 years and point at 2025 as the turning point for Linux on the desktop.
- habitable5 9mo ago> Windows 10 went EOL Kinda. But LTSC IoT is still on until 2032. Another very important feature which does not get mentioned enough is Ubuntu launching Ubuntu Pro in 2022 which has an ordinary-user-affordable support option where $150 a year gets you what they call "full support" with a four hour ticket response time on weekdays. My time is way too valuable to deal with the driver problems Linux always has, community support is often best described as "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" -- I once had a problem with a peripheral and people directed me to the Arch Wiki page that I wrote. I stopped using Linux as my main eight years ago and have been on W10/WSL since. I am considering Linux main in May when I get my new laptop if there's commercial support backing me up. I reached out to them with my list of current hardware and they didn't reply yet :( which doesn't bode well. Example: Thunderbolt networking. Is there a kernel module for it? Yes. Is there experience with it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- dmix 9mo agoMy parents paying for One Drive when they didn't need it is why I finally moved them off Windows as well. I saw the amount of ads they were getting on their laptops and One Drive was even advertising to them on Samsung Android phones.
- jajuuka 9mo agoAnother day another "hey guys I switched Linux" post gets pushed to the top of the heap. These add nothing except create an echo chamber about great Linux is and Windows is the worst.
- hereme888 9mo agoIt's worth noting that if someone has the skill to install and run Linux with games, they probably have the skill to use massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts and ask AI to help bypass to install a local Windows account. And that probable takes less time.
- alexambarch 9mo agoAs an Ableton user myself, I’m pretty surprised that this musician could just… switch from Ableton to Bitwig. Goes to show how dire the situation was I guess. I still have yet to hear any non-technical person I know encounter issues on Windows and seriously consider switching away. The learned helplessness instilled by Microsoft is very difficult to get people to shake off.
- morserer 9mo agoBitwig was developed by ex-Ableton devs, and the layout is incredibly similar. It's a very easy transition compared to coming from a DAW like FL or Logic. It's also a really attractive offering once you hear about it. It's intuitive, cross-platform, half the price of Ableton for a 3-device lifetime license without geofencing, and the software contains a modular software synth atop which most of the preset instruments are built that is so versatile that its value alone exceeds the price tag of the entire daw. Big fan. Share your thoughts if you give it a whirl.
- bichiliad 9mo agoI came in here looking for this thread specifically (I can't imagine moving off of Ableton). Thanks for taking a sec to write this up! I might give it a try, just for the synth alone.
- morserer 9mo agoYou're so welcome! The soft modular synth is called The Grid, fyi. Little square button on the lower left corner of any instrument lets you see it in Grid form. Oh, man, and just wait until you find out that you can modulate literally every control in the UI... Have fun :)
- SomeHacker44 9mo agoMy problem (having moved Win to Lin, Ableton to Bitwig too) is with sound. Latency is one and bad. Getting any sound at all on Bluetooth is also hard, where the latency is even worse. Wish there was a simple "apt install make-audio-work-well-for-daw" I could run on my KDE Ubuntu 24.04...
- publicdebates 9mo agoHow likely is a future where Microsoft (a) gives us back 2000/XP/7/11 options for UI, (b) gives us a desktop-first experience when we have keyboard/mouse plugged in, (c) stops turning every OS feature into an ad, and makes it utilitarian again, (d) and focuses 100% on making a stable OS and high quality dev/office apps? It would be so nice if they just forked a commit from ~2005 and started from there. (Maybe Copilot will mess up & erase commits so they have to? One can only dream.)
- spikej 9mo agoI'd be super happy if they left Windows alone and did just this for years to come. Use the other products to make money, and just maintain this Win 2000/7/10 type OS without new features, and stop trying to hide everything behind fancy UI. I still revert back to old control panels to do the necessary tweaks.
- bootsmann 9mo ago> (c) stops turning every OS feature into an ad, and makes it utilitarian again Microsoft and OpenAI have the same problem in that they have a massive userbase that costs them money but doesn’t generate any revenue. The only known ways of sustaining such a structure is ads or becoming a marketplace and they failed at the second so I doubt your wish will ever come true.
- drillsteps5 9mo agoGive me back the proper search which last worked Windows 7-ish (or XP?). And traditional Office interface (not stupid "context-specific" tiles).
- accrual 9mo agoI still find myself doing "dir /s *myfile*" on modern Windows sometimes because it's less unpredictable than searching Explorer.
- drillsteps5 9mo ago
- nalekberov 9mo agoMicrosoft is its own worst enemy. Microsoft had a chance make even better OS than XP and 7 and convince millions of users to use Windows. Okay maybe with Office products the ocean was already red, but still, instead of disgusting its millions of users, they could make them happy. I am not a firm believer that GNU/Linux distributions are a drop-in replacement for Windows. One can work around compatibility issues, but for non–tech-savvy people, it's just not feasible. I switched to MacOS since the release of Windows 10 and never looked back, of course I did miss some apps, though using laggy windows was much more painful.
- QuadrupleA 9mo agoI always like to chime in on these things that I've been a delighted Arch user for about a year now, for similar reasons. Took a lot of setup, but it's dialed now and just works. My computer belongs to me again for the first time in years. I should really do more to evangelize. It's not ok to use an OS monopoly to degrade and squeeze your users' often primary career and creative tool to your own short term ends, making their lives worse and worse. And it's such a delight to get out from under. Not sure the situation for normies currently, but for power users, definitely dual boot and give it a try.
- stdbrouw 9mo agoOne of the things I like most about CachyOS is that the configuration is all just in text files, one of the things I like least is that I am never quite sure whether to modify the systemd unit settings that are usually in /usr/lib somewhere, the app settings in /etc or the personal configs in ~/.config. For packages that I am unfamiliar with, I usually end up trying all three locations until I notice that my changes seem to stick. The installer also completely broke the Windows partition that came with the workstation even though I was planning on dual booting, but oh well, no great loss there. Other than that, there are some small conveniences and apps that I miss from MacOS (the mac calendar and mail apps are just so nice!) but the Niri window manager is just so amazing that at this point I don't think there's anything that could make me switch back.
- smohare 9mo ago[dead]
- fguerraz 9mo agoThey lost me at Vista lol In all honesty, it was easy for me to switch to Linux because I was always more interested in the computer itself rather than what useful things I could do with it, so I actually never missed a particular application. I also was more interested in making a game run in Wine with maximum effort rather than actually playing it (I did play countless hours of World of Warcraft though...)
- khat 9mo agoMicrosoft has always been crap. It's success is contributed to hostile business practices and familiarity not quality of product. IBM and Gates partnered to have an OS installed on its computers to gain customers. With no actual OS Gates bought 86-DOS from Tim Patterson and partnered with IBM. This created a direct competitor to Apple. Then Gates partnered with all other PC manufacturers to do the same. This paved way for Microsoft to dominate Apple because they weren't tied to any specific hardware. Then came Active Directory to solidify business use. The businesses rolled with it and users learned Windows which deepened home PC use. Every app "just worked" BECAUSE of the popularity and developers directly targeted it since most people used it, not because it was a good product. Their file system NTFS is crap. Their registry is a mess. Everything about Windows is just awful.
- Aperocky 9mo agomacOS has been quite popular in the United States for a long time now (and I suspect it's not so popular in other region not due to product, but price), showing that things can exist without those "features". I'm not even sure what macOS have for its own since I basically open either the browser or the terminal. I am vaguely aware that Finder exist when I accidentally open it maybe twice a month.
- radicalethics 9mo agoI just have to figure out how to play a few of my games on Steam and I can move over. Unfortunately, a few titles are still PC only so I can't make the switch. I very much would love to, but I basically need a $600 PC at all times to play a few select titles that will never come to Linux due to anti-cheat.
- tracker1 9mo agoI came to rely pretty heavily on Docker and WSL(2) in Windows. I was an insiders user for a bit over a decade, and worked with .Net and C# since it was "ASP+" ... I had setup a dual boot when I swapped my old GTX 1080 for an RX 5700XT, figuring the "open source" drivers would give me a good Linux experience... it didn't. Every other update was a blank/black screen and me without a good remote config to try to recover it. After about 6 months it was actually stable, but I'd since gone ahead and paid too much for an RTX 3080, and gone back to my windows drive... I still used WSL almost all day, relying mostly on VS Code and a Browser open, terminal commands through WSL remoting in Code and results etc. on the browser. Then, one day, I clicked the trusty super/win menu and started typing in the name of he installed program I wanted to run... a freaking ad. In the start menu search results. I mean, it was a beta channel of windows, but the fact that anyone thought this was a good idea and it got implemented, I was out. I rebooted my personal desktop back to Linux... ran all the updates and it's run smoothly since. My current RX 9070XT better still, couldn't be happier. And it does everything I want it to do, and there's enough games in Steam through Proton that I can play what I want, when I want. Even the last half year on Pop Coxmic pre-release versions was overall less painful than a lot of my Windows experiences the past few years. Still not perfect, but at least it's fast and doesn't fail in ways that Windows now seems to regularly. Whoever is steering Windows development at Microsoft is clearly drunk at the wheel over something that should be the most "done" and polished product on the planet and it just keeps getting worse.
- otikik 9mo agoYeah. The ads in he start menu are a sign that you are no longer the customer, you are the product. Windows has other similar “features”.
- blackcatsec 9mo agoI do not have ads in my start menu, and no, I didn't "debloat" my PC. This is a base install where I flipped a couple of settings in the start menu options.
- 9mo ago
- ajross 9mo ago> I installed CachyOS, a performance-focused Arch-based distribution Ooph. It's frustrating to see the community starting (again) to get purchase in public mind share at exactly the moment when it's least prepared to accept new users. The Linux desktop right now is a wreck. EVERYONE has their own distro, EVERYONE has their own opinions and customizations, and so everyone is being pulled in like 72 different directions when they show up with search terms for "How do I install Linux?" For a while, 15-ish years ago, the answer was "Just Install Ubuntu". And that was great! No one was shocked. Those of us with nerd proclivities and strong opinions knew how to install what we wanted instead. But everyone else just pulled from Canonical, a reasonably big and reasonably funded organization with the bandwidth to handle that kind of support. Now? CachyOS. Yikes.
- coffeebeqn 9mo agoThere are at least a dozen very stable and reliable distros with decades of history and support in addition to the cool new “hey guys I made a OS!” types.
- ajross 9mo ago> There are at least a dozen very stable and reliable distros Exactly. "WTF?! There are a dozen distributions?!" Users love customization and choice when they understand it. No one wants to be confused. The Linux desktop world is a confusing mess right now. Also note that the distinction between "very stable and reliable" and "hey guys I made a OS!" is only obvious to people who know how the distro is put together.
- theYipster 9mo agoBut that's the point. Choice and customization. It's the natural result of FOSS and the as-designed modularity of the Linux ecosystem. Exploring popular options and finding what works for you is easier than it has ever been, and fun too. The difference between Linux today and the Linux of old is that for most setups, all the pieces you choose can fit together nicely and "just work." Despite all the different flavors and variations and distributions and desktop environments and window managers and the like, pretty much every popular distro uses a recent or near recent version of the monolithic Linux kernel + system-d, so all the important stuff is more or less the same (with tweaks here or there.)
- throw7 9mo agoI switched my parents to linux during the gnome 2 days and have given them a consistent environment ever since (kept them on mate). It is true, they could not do this themselves and sometimes my mom can test my patience, but this is the way if you can do it. (Hint: get a remote desktop with shared view working first :). Really, the stronghold for windows is their office suite (other family require Word/Excel for work), enterprise domain integration (work to home pc familiarity), and, to a weaker extent, gaming. Gaming is why I still keep an install of windows on my pc.
- blackcatsec 9mo agoI honestly don't understand the hatred that Microsoft gets for most of the work they're doing in Windows. As I've stated before, most 'problems' people ultimately have are either configuration issues or hardware issues. And I still stand by this even as I've had issues over the years here or there. I think the most recent 'production' Windows issue I've had was OneDrive failing to recognize it was syncing my data even though it was syncing. The status symbols for the files and folders wasn't showing up. But that's about it. My gaming desktop is stable, my PC is rock solid, I run VMs on it (game servers, dev/test environments), and overall just absolutely 0 problems with Windows or my OS at all. I do, however, have hardware issues semi often. One of my monitors doesn't turn off its backlight, for example. I've had Razer devices just flat out quit on me over the years (multiple Razer mice, at least a couple of Nagas, etc.). I contend that most people would do better with Windows if they just didn't mess with it (don't run any of those tools proclaiming to "debloat" your OS), and make sure you read the hardware compatibility list of your systems REALLY hard. Incompatible RAM can cause significant problems, a lot of which is completely avoidable if you just read the RAM QVL. The only thing that I wish vendors would do more is work closer with Microsoft to provide BIOS updates over Windows Update. But, most of these motherboard IHVs are absolutely terrible about doing BIOS updates anyway and require specific mechanisms to keep going correctly. This is in contrast to the Enterprise/Business devices released by HP or Dell which have a usually solid BIOS update track. And again, the only issue I've ever had there was incompatible RAM.
- phkahler 9mo ago>> I honestly don't understand the hatred that Microsoft gets for most of the work they're doing in Windows. As I've stated before, most 'problems' people ultimately have are either configuration issues or hardware issues. And then you go on to describe your own hardware problems with windows. That's called "projection" - attributing your experience to everyone else. It's like you don't read the other complaints or somehow dismiss them. Have you not seen the ads yourself? Maybe you take the suggestions to use other Microsoft products as helpful suggestions rather than ads. Is that it? OneDrive failing? Try saying NO to using OneDrive - that's what some people would like to do and it'll keep advertising and trying to enable itself. Then when we do use it... well you've got issues with it not working right too.
- brockers 9mo agoIt seems to be, for most users who switch, that the driver is if they are primarily a consumer or creator. Unix systems have always been a preferred platform for some creators, but this effect seems to be multiplying as the focus for Windows become less and less creator friendly. Yeah, if you are a gamer and watch YouTube videos, then your path to least resistance is Windows; but if you are a software developer, web developer, music editor, video editor, et al... the ability to control, easily automate, and flexibility of your environment (not to mention the reduced system resources) become a huge advantage. There are reasons why MOST creators are moving away from Windows... and most consumers are becoming more and more comfortable with tablets and Chromebooks.
- Archelaos 9mo agoIf you were primarily targeting a Windows market for a desktop application, but want to develop under Linux, what tech stack would you choose?
- dz0ny 9mo agoI just want to mention that most apps that would be laggy on Wine just work via https://flathub.org/en/apps/ru.linux_gaming.PortProton https://flathub.org/en/apps/ru.linux_gaming.PortProton. Install PortProton double click .exe install app and off you go. - xTool Studio - for laser engraver - ProppFrexx ONAIR - professional radio station
- ryukoposting 9mo agoI just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitting Print Screen by accident. Half the time I can smack Esc and Snipping Tool will go away. The other half of the time, I have to mouse over and click the X to close it. There is no pattern to when Esc does/doesn't work. If my computer goes to sleep, WSL becomes unresponsive. I have to save all my stuff and reboot to continue working. If Windows 11 struggles this badly on a brand new laptop that I'm certain would retail for $4000+, I can only imagine how miserable it is for everyone else. All my colleagues who have been here for a bit longer got last-generation laptops. oof. Edit... and besides, what does Windows 11 even do that KDE Plasma 5 wasn't doing a decade ago? How did it take this long to get a tabbed file browser?
- willk 9mo agoYour first gripe kind of sounds like DLP software is installed on the system and it is scanning files you're "accessing".
- AnonC 9mo agoOn my company provided laptop with Windows 11 (previously Windows 10), the top three CPU usage was and is usually from Antimalware Executable, Microsoft Defender and MS Teams (or Crowdstrike). I don’t download files or get files from other sources often, yet these things keep doing busywork and slowing things down. Despite virus and threat protection running quick scans often and forcing a full disk scan every couple of weeks or so. It’s almost as if these programs are people who ought to show that they’re doing something even though they’re just heating the room and running the fan.
- rahkiin 9mo agoSame here. ng install takes 2000x as long as on my similairly priced mac. Installing a package for any language locks up the laptop for indexing
- mattdeboard 9mo agoMy work-issued dev device is a Surface Pro 10. I can't use WSL2 for various regulatory reasons. I will never, ever work on software like this again. Worst development experience of my life because of what a miserable dev env windows is. I know that's been a meme since forever, but my first hand experience supports it to the extreme.
- karteum 9mo ago> All major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave) have native Linux builds. Full support. No compromises. Full support ? I thought that the DRM were not the same (e.g. Disney+ and Amazon Prime limited to 480p on Linux which is a scam... At least, I remember having to hack something to use the Windows version of Chrome with WINE in order to get a decent image with Amazon Prime when I got a 6-month offered subscription a few years ago)
- jsheard 9mo agoThat's correct, proper open source Linux is always limited to the weakest tiers of streaming DRM (i.e. fully software based) which usually means you only get low resolution streams. Locked-down Linux derivatives like ChromeOS and Android can support the stronger DRM tiers of course but that's not the same thing.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoWidevine on Linux now is 720p. I usually don’t notice, only once in a while that show is not full HD.
- karteum 9mo ago720p is OK for me and I also almost don't notice. 480p is really noticeable (and totally unacceptable when you pay for a subscription...).
- bradley13 9mo agoJust do it. I bounced back and forth for a few years. Now? Not even dual boot, not even a VM. Maybe Linux did not get better than Windows, opinions differ. However, Windows certainly has gotten worse than Linux.
- a-dub 9mo agoit's really bad these days. even the teams web client doesn't work properly and when it does it is missing the most basic features like "test my audio." i don't understand what it is about how that company is organized that the software keeps coming out with interfaces and user experiences that look like they were created by 2023 era generative ai.
- Eric_WVGG 9mo ago> If 3 years ago you would have told me that Microsoft would singlehandedly sabotage their own OS, doing more Linux marketing than the most neckbearded Linux fanboy (or the most femboy Thinkpad enjoyer), I'd have laughed in your face I have no idea what that Thinkpad burn is supposed to mean.
- tokai 9mo agoIts not a burn. Just acknowledging the memes about cross dressing and programming/computer science that has been going around certain online circles for years. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks
- Eric_WVGG 9mo agoo_O wow, okay. Appreciate it.
- jimbokun 9mo ago> Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote a blog post asking people to stop calling AI-generated content "slop" and to think of AI as "bicycles for the mind." I can't believe Nadella stole Jobs "bicycles for the mind" metaphor without attribution.
- poolnoodle 9mo agoI really want to like Linux but every time I try it (and I tried a lot of distros and DEs) it is death by a thousand UX paper cuts.
- larrik 9mo agoI went from Linux to Mac to Windows and every single one is death by a thousand UX paper cuts.
- tambourine_man 9mo ago> Adobe Suite: Runs via Winboat. Far from perfect (no video acceleration, laggy at times), but functional That’s not acceptable to most professionals and one of the things holding me back on a Mac. Adobe has so many different cross-platform layers that a solution like Proton may never be viable, practically speaking. For Photoshop alone I remember reading that they still have some custom MacApp Pascal UI code, along with HTML/CSS/JS rendered by WebKit. And there used to be a flavor of Flash as well in mix, to name a few. Lightroom had its own custom Lua UI binding. The only hope for fast and reliable Adobe-apps-on-Linux IMO is through a Windows VM with GPU pass-through and a focus on making that as easily and seamless as possible.
- Andrex 9mo ago> The only hope for fast and reliable Adobe-apps-on-Linux IMO is through a Windows VM with GPU pass-through and a focus on making that as easily and seamless as possible. I've heard of people doing this, do they? I'm so desperate for Premiere, even 6+ years after switching OSes. Resolve won't install on Fedora (???), our all-Flatpak future cannot get here soon enough...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tambourine_man 9mo agoIt’s possible but I’ve never used it as a daily driver. One thing that scares me is that Adobe apps are already buggy on their own officially supported platforms. If I encountered a glitch, I’d always have in the back of my mind “is it because of my crazy set up or is it their fault?”
- kaydub 9mo agoI haven't even touched a Windows PC in years at this point. Don't know why you'd do that to yourself. I was hanging on to a gaming PC, but it broke during a move over 2 years ago now. I decided that was the last windows box I'd own at that point.
- antonyh 9mo agoThe only tools pinning me to Windows were photo editing apps (Capture One, Adobe), and some music apps (Reason, a whole bunch of other apps) that I barely used. Cut over to Debian about 4 years ago when my laptop started having thermal issues and Covid encouraged me to buy a tower desktop machine. Haven't looked back, it's been so much more productive. The strange and toxic-to-me design choices in the Win11 UI helped motivate the rapid transition. The only thing that's caused any issue is power management, I'm fairly sure it's not optimal, but it's still better than Win11. That's purely down to lack of effort on my part, and basically setting it for max performance because it's not important to me for a desktop machine. Everything (and I mean everything - sound, video, wifi, bluetooth) else is 100% out of the box working on mid-range commodity hardware, albeit with excessive RAM for my needs. Some of it is a bit clumsy looking in places, but it did look weird on Windows too with some of the apps. When I did have trouble, it was not like I could get support from Microsoft as the community forum is a joke, but with Linux at least I stand a fighting chance of working around any potential problems. Is there anything on Windows I miss? No. Is there anything on Mac that I miss? Yes, there's a few things that I like about MacOS (pre-glass) but I have a MacBook Air for those which is good for occasional use but not as a daily driver.
- nisegami 9mo agoFYI: latest Photoshop should work on Wine as of this week, but of course that situation may be too subject to change for someone's main source of income.
- Zolt 9mo agoI think I might be the only developer left on this forum, and maybe on the planet, who still uses Microsoft OS daily (for over 30 years). I rarely have issues with it, find it incredibly stable, and have made a lot of money using it. Not sure why, I just felt the need to post this. Oh, and just to make myself look even worse, Copilot in VS Code has been an amazing asset in my development.
- jms703 9mo agoYes, did the same thing for similar reasons. Everything works well. When with Arch Linux.
- drillsteps5 9mo agoI think Linux is not quite there as gaming system. Simply due to games' compatibility (and I don't play latest and hottest titles, more like Cities-Skylines/Transport Fever/Anno/Satisfactory etc). Plus to my knowledge NVidia drivers are still an issue. But for literally anything else I think it's ready. Just browsing? Office work (writing/spreadsheets/presentations/email)? Development? Media production? You're good. For Linux-curious I'd advise to get a dedicated hardware, like 5/7 year old business machine (Thinkpad or even smth like Dell Latitude), they'll be under $300. Don't do Arch (unless you do that for the sake of being able to install Arch). Instead, get Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Debian, Zorin (the last one specifically for Windows users), or one of many other beginner-friendly distros, and drive it for a bit. Get the software you want, see if it works for you, and if you don't like it, it's all good. If you do, you can gradually move all your stuff to the new machine, or install Linux on your main machine. That's what I did (quite a) few years ago when I got fed up with Windows 8, took me about a year, but I've been on Mint Mate ever since. My gaming rig is still Windows 11 but all it has is my Steam collection.
- Nihilartikel 9mo agoMy quick rebuttal is that gaming is pretty close to 'there' if you pick a distro that prioritizes it. I run bazzite-DX (nvidia rtx4070) for dev and pleasure and gaming there is ON POINT. I don't play any anti-cheat games, but Cities Skylines, Doom Eternal, Cyberpunk (with full raytracing and HDR), GTA5-Remaster, etc, all run like champs. As of last month, full HDR10 mode started working in chrome and video players too, so hdr videos get those popping brights.
- mrks_hy 9mo agoThat's not my experience at all. The majority of games, especially on Steam, work out of the box. I would advise the opposite: Don't get an old box. Take your new box, take a new hard disk, and just install Bazzite (and pretend you don't know anything about Linux, just stick with the defaults).
- drillsteps5 9mo agoThat didn't work for me. I had my email, documents, some software I used on Windows and files it created (think Photoshop and PSDs). I needed time to find out if I could find similar/equivalent software on Linux, set up new workflows for my work and stuff like that. So I had my primary machine still on Windows and used the secondary to see how all this would work. And then gradually moved all the software, data, and workflows to Linux, until I didn't have anything left that could only work on Windows (well, except games I guess). As for games, I think a lot of them DO work on Linux but it's easier for me to have dedicates gaming rig on Windows instead of guessing if this new game that I like will work on Linux.
- TheRealPomax 9mo agoIt's still disappointing how few folks know about gpedit and how much you can reclaim your own machine just by running through the local policies and setting them to "no, I call the shots".
- globalnode 9mo agoneed to pay for a pro license for gpedit - normies still get forced updates
- TheRealPomax 9mo agoAnd for those we tell them the truth: if all this bothers you, and it should, pay for the version of Windows that you can control, instead of paying nothing and having your computer (and data) be controlled by someone else. Or, of course, pay nothing and use Linux. But as much as we want to pretend that's a solution that works for everyone, that's not a solution that works for everyone. Especially as, just like Windows, you're not done once it's installed, you still need to do that one time configure-all-the-things pass on Linux, too.
- zkmon 9mo agoI was away from Windows for the past 12 years. Recently we bought a desktop and had to install Wondows on it. I was just shocked by the level of shittification that happened. I can't even find a Solitaire game that is not littered with ads. I was a big fan of Satya. I thought he had new vision that aligns with the emerging world. I saw some successes he had with cloud, office 365 etc. But when offered to take Altman in, I knew Satya is no longer maintaining the stature of the grand company built by Gates.
- perks_12 9mo agoI've been using Linux on my devices for quite some time now. I was pleasantly surprised when I had to start 4k video editing work and could just use Davinci Resolve. 2026 might not be the year of the Linux desktop, but it's getting better day by day.
- 0xbadcafebee 9mo agoLinux has plenty of video card driver issues too. Windows may suck, but Linux sucks in different ways. Windows suckage is solved by "buy a different machine and reinstall". Linux suckage is solved by weeks googling and trying technical fixes in consoles, installing different distributions and trying the same, then eventually buying a different machine. Apple, for all its flaws, tends to not have the suckage of either. I don't like using Apple, but it does break a lot less. (One of the reasons is encompassed in this story... while Microsoft and Nvidia yell at each other, Apple makes both the OS and the graphics card, so they just solve the problem internally) Apple with VMs gives you everything without the hardware hassles.
- 29athrowaway 9mo agoMicrosoft Windows is an entitled tenant that thinks it owns the property (your computer).
- cerved 9mo agoIf only the streaming giants would let us stream in decent quality..
- 72deluxe 9mo agoI don't understand why he thinks all users will use WSL in Windows. I have never ever touched it, and I've developed on Windows for decades (C++/C#/JS/web). It seems like trying to make Windows non-native or some semi-Linux. I also have never touched Docker on Linux, despite having used that from RedHat 6.0 days (Fedora, Ubuntu LTS now). Also, he missed out Shotcut as a decent video editor. It recently enabled a 10bit workflow (plus the Frei0r plugins are easy enough to write for it, if you so desire).
- thetwentyone 9mo agoFWIW for similar reasons I nuked my Windows install and installed CauchyOS. My main reason for not doing it earlier was concerns about game compatibility but so far the games I want to play either are working without any issue or work after enabling Steam's proton compatibility layer.
- arthurjj 9mo agoHad a similar experience in around ~2017 and switched over to Linux. At the time I didn't have the time to build my own and bought a mid-range System76 laptop. Best computer decision I've ever made. I'm not a heavy gamer so the machine is still running fine. I've only had one time in the last 9 years where I had to drop everything and fix my computer vs Windows where it felt like once a year
- bobsterlobster 9mo agoHonestly that's what it feels like when something breaks. Linux - you see what's wrong, you fix it, it's done Windows - you pull your hair out trying to figure out what caused the issue, you fix it, it's back with the next update
- alphax314 9mo agoThere was a post here a while back saying that Microsoft will eventually switch to Linux instead of maintaining Windows. Given all the negativity around Windows this seems more and more likely (I haven’t used Windows myself for over 20 years so I have no idea what its like now. Last time I used it, it was XP)
- robby_w_g 9mo agoIf Microsoft vibe codes a Linux distro and calls it Windows 360 Copilot, I’m on board with the conspiracy theory that the Hadron Collider broke reality
- morserer 9mo agoThis is a simultaneously insane yet deeply delightful concept. Does anyone have the link to that discussion?
- alphax314 9mo agoThis is the discussion I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673264
- tracker1 9mo agoExcept the problem is their UX more than the kernel itself. I don't see them keeping Gnome or KDE as a desktop UI even if they did fully adopt Linux for desktop usage. MS should really just buckle down, finish simplifying the UI and make it consistent again... the last time it was mostly consistent was Windows 7, and even then. I'm willing to bet that System76 gets COSMIC to the level that Win7 reached faster than MS can turn anything around in terms of Windows at this point.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoUnlikely but growing as profit dwindles. Previously it was unfathomable that Apple would offer RISC/Unix Workstations, or MS would jettison IE.
- rawgabbit 9mo ago> I'm gonna go full conspiracy nut here, but I bet it's because the LLM understands JavaScript better, and Microsoft can't be asked to pay actual humans to write proper native code. Do LLMs like Claude really excel at JavaScript than other programming languages? Similarly does OpenAI prefers Python over other languages?
- shevy-java 9mo agoMy main operating system is Linux since 2005 or so, or actually late 2004. I still use Win10 on my laptop, for various reasons; in part to test java code and ruby code on windows, in part due to elderly relatives. Win11 really annoyed many users though. That's actually interesting, since Microsoft committed to it yet it gets harder for Microsoft to retain the people. Linux is unfortunately way too complex to really break the desktop system (and no, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, are not going to change any of that either), but if it were, Microsoft would probably have lost its de-facto monopoly already. Either way it is interesting how much people hate Win11. Microsoft really committed to driving down the cliff here.
- tracker1 9mo agoIt's funny, but I had my grandmother on Linux for about a long while before she passed... Wine managed to run the 3 Windows 9x era games games she was still playing into the 2010's (where real Windows wouldn't) and her browser/email. I wasn't even able to do that for myself. All I had to do was run updates for her every few months (because she didn't) and the one time she had a hardware failure, I'm the one who fixed it. In the end, I'd say for most people, who aren't their own computer admins/repair anyway... Linux is probably fine. Since most people don't use more than the browser for the most part. My other grandmother was on a docked Chromebook after the 5th time I had to clean malware off her computer, and she didn't need any windows apps anymore... she couldn't help but click on the "you might have a virus" ads.
- juujian 9mo ago> Windows is now also too much work. Most people overlook that. I only ever see comments complaining about time spent to set up Linux. It's not the only variable, and for Windows it's the constant maintenance that's the issue. You are never just done setting up Windows.
- incubo4u 9mo agohaha cool post btw RN not always runs on chromium/v8
- morshu9001 9mo ago"Video playback works flawlessly, with hardware acceleration even" not really, especially on Netflix
- geophile 9mo agoFWIW, On Reddit, I am seeing more and more discussions on the Linux subreddits or people getting fed up with Windows and switching to Linux. Usually, it's the Windows 11 upgrade that finally did it.
- AJ007 9mo agoThere is a good parallel here with Myspace and Facebook. Myspace added an ad network & was hammered by spammers around the same time Facebook was opening up user registration to everyone. Facebook had no ads. Myspace was dead. This time Linux has very good game support to the point where some games have a higher FPS on Linux. It will be so expensive for Microsoft to attempt to turn this ship around, and it will likely still fail. This is happening at the same time AI agents have gotten really good, so users will just use local AI agents to configure and troubleshoot the rough stuff about Linux. And then they will customize it so much they will never be able to go back to Windows. Ubuntu is just fine for 99% of non tech users. Windows has so many anti-patterns, tricks, and OneDrive rugpulls now that Ubuntu is actually much safer and simpler for non-techies to use (I can also make the case it beats iOS in that department too.)
- pdntspa 9mo agoI really wish linux had a decent answer for DRM-protected VST plugins. Yes you can run stuff in WINE but I need to be able to use iLok and the bullshit DRM systems for about a dozen other publishers. I am so glad that gaming on linux is viable. I wish my music production workflows were too.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoPut that on a dedicated machine and move everything else, especially your personal files, over for privacy reasons.
- pdntspa 9mo agoI know, but I really like gaming on the music production speakers! Having one computer that does both is too much fun
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoGaming doesn’t sound like it needs to be on the more private computer.
- synalx 9mo agoFor 3D modeling (assuming you want to do CAD), Onshape is a fantastic alternative to native applications.
- tipsyrobot 9mo agoCame here to say this too - after 10+ years with SolidWorks I switched to OnShape. A small learning curve but now I enjoy it just as much.
- sedatk 9mo agoMy story is simpler. Microsoft dropped the support for Windows 10 and gave me no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently. So I installed Fedora on that machine, I learned the process, I went through the hurdles. It wasn’t seamless. But, Fedora never said “I can’t”. When it was over, it was fine. Only if Microsoft had just let me install Windows 11 and suffer whatever the perf problem my CPU would bring. Then I could consider a hardware upgrade then, maybe. But, “you can’t install unless you upgrade your CPU” forced me to adopt Linux. More importantly, it gave me a story to tell. There is a marketing lesson there somewhere, like Torvalds’ famous “you don’t break userspace”, something along the lines of “you don’t break the upgrade path”.
- stackghost 9mo ago>no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently. Let's be real. It's because new systems support DRM and Microsoft has been captured by the media company lobby.
- realusername 9mo agoOf course it is, there's no real requirement to have a TPM, plenty of people made a version with that requirement patched out and the system works fine.
- badc0ffee 9mo agoIf they didn't, people might start capturing copyrighted streaming content and sharing torrents of it. We cannot allow that to happen.
- stackghost 9mo agoThe scary part of HN these days is that I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic
- donmcronald 9mo agoIt’s way worse than that. It’s for verified identity and attestation.
- wsve 9mo agoI tried to make this shift, but managed to somehow brick Linux Mint, so now I'm back on Windows for now... I was already not very impressed when I attempted to okay a video file, and VLC told me I didn't have the right codec installed, and I had to run a shell command to get the codec... I have to open a shell to watch a common video file? But then while attempting to install some packages to install Steam (which I also needed shell commands for...), I updated some kernel package, as instructed, rebooted my machine, and now Mint just sits there doing nothing right after I get through the bootloader. Can't seem to run any commands to recover either. Bricking Mint is annoying, but I was much more astonished that I saw so many people hold up Mint as this beacon of user friendly Linux distros, but to do even the most basic things, I had to start running commands on the shell. That is NOT user friendly. I'll probably try again soon, but I'm pretty disappointed in my first experience.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoNo such thing as brick when you have a “live drive” available. Reinstall and be up again in a half hour. The codec issues are caused by the companies that make them, not a free operating system. Next time download an open codec movie or install from the “store” GUI.
- wsve 9mo agoYou're slightly missing the point. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to me, the end user, whose fault it is that my OS doesn't have codecs. The problem is that when doing an extremely basic operation that works on every system I've used before, it doesn't work, and the most readily available advice on how to resolve the issue tells me to run commands. Regardless of the reasons why it is that way, it just simply isn't user friendly.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoThere are tradeoffs in life, not perfection. Bondage vs. convenience, your choice. Having to install codecs once every few years is a tiny inconvenience compared to the dystopia offered elsewhere. I also run commands on Win and Mac all the time to fix things. For example Windows wastes tens of gigabytes of space unless you run a couple of inscrutable commands to free it.
- ColinWright 9mo ago"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -- Napoleon.
- Aldipower 9mo agoLinux since 1996! In chronological order: Slackware, SuSE, DLD, LSF, Gentoo, Ubuntu (starting with 04.10!), eventually Debian 12, now 13. Back in the days I compiled the kernel myself! :-D Sure, occasionally I used Windows 3.11, 95, 98se, XP, Vista, 7 and 10, but never as my main system. I am a software developer, but also do gaming, video production and audio producing. I never got the discussion, Linux works for me for almost 30 years now. One day, I applied for a new job and was already on the company tour. When they told me that I could only use a Windows computer provided by them, I quickly said, ‘No, thank you,’ and left. The faces they made were truly priceless. Another day, I applied for another job again and, after some hesitation, unfortunately said yes when they tried to foist a Windows computer on me, because the actual project was really cool. That was the worst year of my career, thanks to restricted Windows 10.
- simgoh 9mo agoOut of curiosity, back when you were compiling the kernel yourself was it because you wanted to learn it or because you wanted to add more modules to the kernel that didnt exist there by default?
- Aldipower 9mo agoThe kernel compilation had a configuration UI where you could select all the drivers you wanted to literally build in. So I selected just what I needed, to save memory, recompiled, waited an hour et voila. Kernel modules came later.
- acuozzo 9mo agoMemory and storage were far more expensive and limited in 1996 than they are today. Go a few years earlier and you find that Microsoft introduced a boot-time menuconfig system mostly to enable people to select which *drivers* to load because, if you weren't careful, you could wind up leaving too little memory for the game you were trying to run.
- simgoh 9mo agoThat makes sense! I was a kid in the early 90s so I enjoyed "default" Win95/98 without having to have needed to do any sort of fiddling. I was too young to have used earlier versions of that outside of once or twice.
- jermberj 9mo ago> You might be thinking "just disable updates, man" or "just install LTSC", or "just run some random debloat script off of GitHub". Why? Why would I jump through all these hoops? I'd rather put in the effort for an OS that knows what consent is and respects me as a user. The absolute choice quote here. Tattoo it on your forehead.
- nenadg 9mo agoI did exactly the same some 16-17 years ago, when they forced windows 8 square design bullshit and announced that they'll ditch 7. Never looked back. Windows servers are still pretty good imho.
- exterior4052 9mo agoFor a creative, why not macOS?
- kstrauser 9mo agoI’ve asked before but the answer keeps changing before I get around to implementing it: My kid wants to upgrade their PC from Windows 11 to Linux. They have a recent-ish Nvidia card. I’m very technical: I don’t mind doing whatever arcane thing needs done. They are not, yet. I haven’t run Linux on my desktop in a decade and I’m completely out of date here. What should I steer my kid toward to run recent games?
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoRecommend making a live drive with Ventoy. Copy over latest .iso’s of Mint, Fedora, Bazzite? for gaming. Give them all a test drive, see what you like before committing. After install try new things in VMs.
- 3form 9mo agoDepends on the games. If your kid wants to play anything with kernel level anticheat, it will not work on Linux, period - these anticheats don't support Linux, and either prevent the game from running altogether or disable certain online modes. Otherwise, CachyOS is extremely popular these days, and I suppose a valid choice.
- 4k93n2 9mo agoif theyre not that technical i would say just stick with something simple like zorinOS, which is ubuntu based so there is a bigger community behind it if they run into issues. zorin has an option to install nvidia drivers during the initial setup. popOS would be another option along the same lines
- Todd 9mo agoThe two things I find unacceptable are no local accounts and non consensual reboots. The latter may need legislation. They don’t even notify you that it happened. They try to restart apps and put things back the way they were but you can still tell that your house was broken into by the missing data that wasn’t saved.
- elias1233 9mo agoYou could say they broke the window(s)
- pronik 9mo agoFor literally decades we've hoped that Linux will get like Windows in some crucial areas like sleep and hibernations support for laptops, supported first-party drivers, correct and reliable multi-monitor setups, games, etc. Never ever could I imagine that Linux parity, which I'd like to argue is closer than ever before, would be reached by Windows getting worse in exactly those areas we, the Linux freaks, got told to get Windows for -- sleep not working, graphics drivers bringing whole systems down, incoherent configuration etc. Only games got better and we have to thank Valve for that.
- 3form 9mo agoOn a modern laptop without S3 sleep, it works better for me on Linux than on Windows currently. So at least there's that.
- chang1 9mo agoI think shortly we may see "Apple forced me to switch to Linux" because of Tahoe and subsequent releases.
- havblue 9mo agoI know we keep hearing about how their share holders are forcing this change of focus in order to monetize ai. I just fail to see how alienating developers and the gaming community in the process will ever help achieve that.
- pyrophane 9mo agoI can't believe how many times I have to click "decline" now to install Windows 11. Office 365? no thanks. How about a cheaper version? No thanks. Did you know you could use it for free. Okay. How about XBox. No! Am I forgetting one? All that before I can even use the computer. Ridiculous.
- wowczarek 9mo agoLinux user since about 1998, leaning towards BSDs today. Network engineer + R&D + software dev. Daily driver (desktop) about 2002-2010 - work made it too difficult later. Very occasional gamer. Corporate world will give you a Windows VDI or web cloudy things if need be. Win10 on my laptop out of habit, mostly using terminals + WSL and a browser. Lightroom user, but flexible. None of the other gear I own runs Windows, and the numbers are significant (racks). I run my laptops until they die - the current one is 10y and hasn't died yet but won't run Win11 without going through hoops. Next laptop will not be running Windows outside of a VM. Win7 was a workhorse, moving to win10 felt unnecessary - and I still remember how the laptop vendor had a system performance tuning app for win7 that you could use to put it into limp mode and have it run on battery for a full day and most of the night. No such thing on win10 on the same hardware. Everything has its time, and hopefully I'll never even get to experience the joy that apparently is win11. The times for software freedom of choice are as good as they have ever been.
- kalap_ur 9mo agoWell, Linux reached ~5% market share in 2025. Imagine the incremental market share they have. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1lpepvq/linux_breaks_through_5_share_in_usa_desktop_os/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1lpepvq/linux_breaks... My only issue is that i am not a developer, I am heavily reliant on Excel, i know it inside and out and just not sure whether OpenOffice supports excel files. In the past it barely did.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoLibreOffice does fine, though you’ll probably be unhappy. What is more important to you? Freedom, privacy, consent, or spreadsheet features? VMs are an option to partition your life as well.
- _dain_ 9mo agoThere are many features of Excel that LibreOffice Calc doesn't support. Most importantly: structured references, VBA, PowerQuery. Not to mention its UI is very laggy even on powerful machines. For real financial/business work, Calc is just not a serious player.
- mshroyer 9mo agoI even had to switch my reading list spreadsheet over from LibreOffice to Excel when the former started seriously lagging with about 250 rows total
- drillsteps5 9mo agoI have a spreadsheet I've been using since 2017 to track all my spending and savings accounts on a weekly basis, plus some trend analytics, plus some simple graphs on multiple sheets. A few hundred rows and columns, both entered and calculated values (simple formulas, nothing fancy). Haven't noticed any slowness. When I have some data to look at (like .csv or even .xlsx), I always use Calc. I work with Excel at work all the time, it might be faster on larger data sets, but Libre's Calc is more than enough for many use cases.
- curtisblaine 9mo agoHe's a musician, he's switched to Bitwig. Ok, but what about VSTs? I have a collection of instruments I can't leave behind, many are NI, so I'm currently forced to use Windows or Mac.
- Aldipower 9mo agoNI recently filed for bankruptcy! This means that the licence server will probably be shut down at some point. Take the opportunity now. :-P I've been using Bitwig for two years now. And already produced a complete album with success. Next album is already following. :-) Many of Bitwig's own plugins are very good, and there are now top-notch native VSTs for Linux! Alternatively, there is yabridge for running Win VSTs. Great Linux VST manufacturers: U-he, DDMF, Toneboosters, TAL, Bluelabs, etc. And more, more, more native plugins: https://linuxmusic.rocks/ https://linuxmusic.rocks/
- curtisblaine 9mo agoIf the license server goes down I'll just pirate them, I guess. The point is that I can't really throw aways years of investment because Windows sucks. The other important lesson is: if they have a licensing server, it's OK to pirate them from the start.
- Aldipower 9mo agoI understand, but probably at some point the pain may be higher then your investment...
- cmxch 9mo agoBetween all the telemetry and them separating workstation and server duties, Windows is a no go aside from a generic gaming console here.
- rwyinuse 9mo agoIronically for me Linux has become the obvious default for casual use - web browsing, entertainment, paying my bills etc. I only boot Windows when I need to do some weird nerdy stuff, like checking updating SSD firmware with some proprietary software available only for Windows.
- random_duck 9mo agoJust run arch. (+1 for terrible advice)
- reddalo 9mo agoSpeaking of "Content Creation", I'd also like to add the Affinity Suite. I don't particularly like it after being bought by Canva, but it works almost flawlessly on Linux. You can even download a ready-to-run AppImage (no need to tinker with Wine settings) from here: https://github.com/ryzendew/Linux-Affinity-Installer/releases https://github.com/ryzendew/Linux-Affinity-Installer/release... I just wish Affinity would release a native port, but in the meantime, this works really good.
- speedylight 9mo agoI’ve been using a Mac for a about three years now, but every once in a while I use my old gaming laptop to play some games and every time I am reminded of how insufferable windows has become, using it feels I’m dumpster diving and the dumpster is asking me to sign into my Microsoft account. Apple gets a lot of shit for how they do things, but no one can deny that once you’re properly established in their ecosystem, it’s a phenomenal experience.
- magicbuzz 9mo agoI love the poem at the end
- ChicagoDave 9mo agoI’m getting closer and closer to making the same decision. I have a Surface Laptop 5 that won’t enable the AI cruft so I got somewhat lucky there. But the copilot business is AAF. And now that I use Claude Code in WSL or my Ubuntu server, I’m pretty much done with visual studio development. Not sure what’s left. Satya Nadala will have single-handedly destroyed the Windows ecosystem.
- 0dayz 9mo agoI am thankful that so far Microsoft hasn't removed local admin capabilities of Windows, but I dread the day that happens (mainly because it remains the most consistent ways one can deny windows updates). Because forcing updates down people's throat creates this, and boy do I hate Microsoft's insistence on doing this for drivers, where you get such fun things like Microsoft installing a different AMD GPU driver than the one that AMD gives out (this to be fair is partially to be blamed on AMD for not having just 1 versioning system) so then you have to go into safe mode, DDU, disconnect the internet, install the drivers, turn off automatic driver update in an obscure setting. Meanwhile on Linux it's literally 1 version that exists in the kernel. Ever since Wayland added support for changing mouse scroll speed & changing/customizing middle click behavior that is a lot more consistent, I've used Linux to daily drive, especially with immutable distros ensuring even IF an update breaks my system I can rollback.
- DonThomasitos 9mo agoSince most application run in the browser nowadays, the OS becomes less meaningful and more of a layer between browser and hardware. If you see your PC as a tool, not a gimmick to consume, Linux is the only choice. Even MacOS crappifies over time and becomes a Windows copy over time.
- hilbert42 9mo agoMarvellous, spot on. 10+ fucking points.
- whompyjaw 9mo agoKeep these posts coming! More the merrier! :))
- OhMeadhbh 9mo agoSort of funny that Nadella quotes Steve Jobs from 35 years ago with the "bicycles for the mind" quip. Given enough time, MSFT's marketing will eventually catch up with NeXT's marketing. https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle-for-the-mind-1990/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle...
- OhMeadhbh 9mo agoFwiw... I've been doing Leenucks since '92. Back when you had to install BSD first, compile the kernel and reverse engineer how to boot into the new kernel you just built with gcc. But it was cheaper than SunOS, and the developers mailing list was more active than the BSD lists. I still miss my 3B1. Anyway... welcome to the party. We saved you a beer. Doesn't matter you came later than other people. It just matters you made it here eventually.
- mythrwy 9mo agoI'm in the opposite position. Been a Linux user exclusively for 16+ years. But I wanted to build some desktop apps and look at arcGIS so I finally installed Windows 11 on a laptop my first Windows in nearly 2 decades. This was a month ago and I haven't opened the laptop since. But I'm going to soon maybe!
- thenoblesunfish 9mo agoHe doesn't get into why he didn't switch to Apple. Kind of a middle ground - it's still got the maddening things about being from a corporate behemoth, but it's closer to Unix and you can run your audio software there. (I would be using Linux instead of Apple yesterday if it weren't for a single music program I can't live without).
- bigyabai 9mo ago> But honestly I think not being able to launch League of Legends is actually a feature - one final reason to install Linux. For all of macOS' gaming advantages, it still can't keep an SBF-tier addict off The Rift.
- carodgers 9mo agoI take tremendous umbrage at "femboy Thinkpad enjoyer." A wonderful writeup.
- jama211 9mo agoThere’s a lot of odd things said in this article. Like “no more file explorer hanging”, “no more waiting for the start menu to open” - is this something that actually happens to people? Perhaps on very old hardware I could see it, but it’s not my experience at all. Lots of weird emotional and very biased parts to this article. But it’s just gonna take off here anyway because it’s a switching to Linux article which is like offering HN users free coke.
- MattRix 9mo agoOf course those are things that happen to people, why would they make them up?! If anything, your reaction seems like an emotional and biased one, refusing to acknowledge the experiences of others when they conflict with your beliefs. (and I say all this as a happy Windows user with no plans to move to Linux).
- jama211 9mo agoI take your criticism on board. Just because I haven’t experienced them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I only took issue with the way it was worded, like it was a universal experience rather than just one that happens to some people.
- xboxnolifes 9mo agoThese are real things and they happen on very good hardware. They are even acknowledge by Microsoft. The explorer issue is from waiting on for a response from network drives that the explorer thinks exists or tries to find. The start menu I'm not sure, but I get the issue from time to time and I think its because of some background process hanging the UI or something.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoWaiting to download ads to improve your experience.
- jama211 9mo agoOk cool
- shams93 9mo agoFor me I made the switch in 1998 when Windows Me was so terrible it was unusble. I went to CompUSA and found this cool box of cd roms with a lizard logo - suse linux and I was done with MS forever (except at work).
- drivers99 9mo agoBetween using macOS at work and macOS at home, I really only had my Windows 10 PC for running games in Steam (and I don't even really game very much. I had originally built it with all new parts for Flight Simulator 2020) so its behavior was already becoming annoying whenever I went to use Windows such as the nagging and lack of consent implied with the "finish setting up your PC" window having "continue" (in a bold button) or whatever and "maybe later" (in a tiny link) as options, for example. (The linked article also pointed this out.) So after making sure I had everything I wanted to keep copied off that computer, I was going to try out Bazzite, but something made me try out the plain old SteamOS steam deck installer first. To my surprise, it actually worked, but only because I had the exact type of system it expected: 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU. (I have AMD.) AMD Radeon graphics. NVMe SSD primary boot drive. UEFI BIOS support Even the wifi worked. Well, it didn't work the first time, so I thought it wasn't supported. So I hard wired it with Ethernet, but then I saw the Wifi was working. It's possible it updated something or maybe it just needed a reboot. If it hadn't worked then Bazzite or something similar would have since it's designed to run Steam but with more driver support. So my complete Windows history is: 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP (set to the classic GUI mode), 7, and finally 11, skipping all the others. Windows 7 was peak.
- shmeeed 9mo agoWhat's your experience with MSFS2020 under SteamOS?
- k__ 9mo agoI switched to Arch last Summer and I'm quite happy. Even Steam games work, I was quite impressed.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- YesThatTom2 9mo agoShhh! Don’t tell anyone. Years ago MS depended on Windows. It was the profit center. Everything MS did was a moat to sell more seats. Even MS-Exchange was just a ploy to force enterprises to stop deploying any other operating system. That all changed with Azure. MS realized they could make billions in Windows or trillions with Azure. They changed the org structure. Now Azure is at the top and everything else is a moat or a way to draw people to Azure. They changed the sales commission (your multiplier doesn’t kick in unless you’ve sold enough cloud services). Windows is no longer a profit center. It’s a cost center. Anything that scares people away from using Windows is a benefit. Let those other suckers spend money developing operating systems. As long as it runs on a VM in Azure, Microsoft will profit. Windows being worse and worse isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
- sambf 9mo agoI agree, at this point it seems clear that Windows is not their priority anymore and they're trying to scare its users away. But Windows is so penetrated into everyone's office, industry and home that they shouldn't be allowed by law to just leave it like this.
- chungusman 9mo agoYou've sold me. Does anyone have a lightweight guide or something of a no-nonsense tutorial on how to do this without causing an even bigger headache than using windows?
- FlossyBean 9mo agoUbuntu with the Gnome Desktop works well as a family PC. Very easy installer with a GUI that walks you through everything. https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop Linux Mint is nice, but it's been a few years since I installed it. Back in 2018ish we had a lot of machines with old dual cores and 2-4GB of RAM that chugged on Windows. But after installing Linux Mint, they were given new life and ran very well. https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/lates... I have been daily driving Ubuntu Cinnamon at work for ~3 years and it works pretty well. Some minor bugs here and there, but I can't imagine going back to Windows for a work machine. https://ubuntucinnamon.org https://ubuntucinnamon.org There is a bit of a learning curve for Linux, so might be worth dipping your toes in to start before you go 100%.
- chungusman 9mo agoI use linux all the time for work - i just haven't acutally ever installed it myself haha. Thanks for the links.
- elric 9mo agoWelcome to the club. I started my Linux and BSD journey in ~1998 and I haven't really touched Windows since ~2001 except for the occasional brief interaction. I've never missed it. Like at all. There have been instances where some piece of software didn't have a Linux alternative, that's mostly been a mild inconvenience. There have been cases where it's been a serious problem too, such as when my ever-so-wonderful government decided to start using e-ID which only worked on Windows (thanks, Wouter from grep.be for fixing that). Mostly I enjoy how I'm in control of my machine, instead of having to rely on a bunch of untrustworthy moneygrabbers who seem hell-bent on making the worst possible decisions at every turn.
- kaiokendev 9mo agoI never advocated for Windows, but I always used it because it "just worked". At a certain point, I realized - as OP had - that I was spending just as much time configuring Windows as I would be spending configuring Linux. I've moved to Kubuntu and haven't looked back. Proton support is amazing, and Claude Code fixes the doc-diving problem that used to plague Linux. In fact, with Claude, I was able to get such a buttery smooth setup on Kubuntu - Wezterm auto-saving and restorable sessions (even with multiple windows), a working fading background switcher with history, automounting drives and vhdx images on startup - and these are all relatively simple things, but they were near-frictionless to set up and they don't break on a random Tuesday. I love it and would recommend anyone who is on Windows to reconsider.
- Nekorosu 9mo agoRegarding high-quality commercial Linux software: SideFX Houdini offers a relatively affordable Indie license and is fantastic for most kinds of 3D work, compositing, and post-processing tasks. It’s also fully procedural and scriptable, which really makes my brain buzz.
- anon291 9mo agoOnce again, I don't really understand people who say Windows is easier. Take printer drivers. In windows you have a 'simple' wizard to install a printer driver. Except in my experience... it never works the first time and you have to fiddle. On Linux... I just bought a new printer, and it worked out of the box. My experience with most hardware today on Linux is out-of-the-box support while windows requires endless 'driver' installs. Even driver installs on linux are easier. Usually just drop a binary blob somewhere if you really need it and modprobe... Again it's 2026... why is this so hard. Usually paid software is actually better and more feature-ful, but Windows is just not useful at all. The best use of Windows is WSL2
- roba6 9mo agoI have a ricoh postscript printer that just won't work on Linux, I also have a Canon 6020 that works well in Linux. The Ricoh works well on Windows. So my experience with CUPS is mixed.
- moron4hire 9mo agoAnyone have a recommendation on a decent cloud-based file sync tool ala OneDrive? I use OneDrive extensively but there is no official client for Linux and the unofficial one has some major stability issues. I'm willing to change providers but not willing to put in the effort to roll-my-own.
- duffyjp 9mo agoI would also love to hear any success stories here. I converted my wife's Macbook over to Linux Mint somewhat recently and the best I could do was setup a shortcut to the Web version of her iCloud.
- moron4hire 9mo agoGoogle Drive also does not have a Linux client, which is a little surprising. It looks like maybe Box.com supports WebDAV and Dropbox has a first-party Linux client. I haven't tried either and I haven't found anything else yet.
- senfiaj 9mo agoI'm not against someone's preferences, but this looks like an anecdotal story. Windows, as much as it's hated here, still works fine for the vast majority of people. What's more, you have higher risk of having problems when running Linux.
- manuelabeledo 9mo agoI have to disagree here. There's an aphorism that I like to use every time someone tells me that Windows is the easy choice: Windows makes accomplishing easy tasks easy, and hard tasks impossible. To this day and for the past 20 years, every time I go back to my parents' house, it's Windows tech support time. Every time, I have to go through the same routine of cleaning up all sorts of crap that make their computer slow to a crawl, even when I purposely created non privileged accounts for them. Every time, the same ritual: diagnose why the printer stopped working, why apps look pixelated, why some sites stopped working. So, it works for my parents, and possibly works for the vast majority of people, because it has created this ecosystem where these users either depend on folks like me, or have to pay up at the repair shop. And somehow, something as simple as not breaking a critical component during an update, or prevent users from installing harmful stuff, has not been addressed properly. And that's without mentioning what Microsoft does that's very much anti-consumer, like stuffing the consumer versions of the OS with ads.
- pregnenolone 9mo agoMy main machines have been running Linux for years now, but there are still some things that are really bothering me. For one, I think dealing with virtual machines are still somewhat painful on Linux. VM managers continue to be clunky (I believe KDE is working on a new one), and GPU acceleration, let alone partitioning, isn’t really a thing for Windows guests which is something that works out of the box on WSL. Another frustrating part is the lack of a proper alternative to Windows Hello that allows you to set up passkeys using TPMs.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- artingent 9mo agoWindows UI has also gotten progressively more ugly, buggy and laggy. From a cursory glance, Win 11 looks a lot cleaner than Win 10/8/7, but just opening the Start Menu is a chore. Rather than fix the underlying issue, Microsoft started pre-rendering the File Explorer in memory to improve launch times. It might've started with letting go of their QA team, but the engineering culture there seems completely broken and clueless. I'm currently running Fedora on my gaming laptop, and while I do suffer some loss in FPS, it is relatively close to Windows and seems to be getting better.
- andai 9mo ago>No more waiting for the Start menu to decide it wants to open. No more File Explorer hanging when you need it the most. I ran XP in a VM on Windows 10. The start menu opens instantly. After one video frame. Windows explorer opens instantly. One video frame. If they had literally done nothing for 20 years, it would be like 50x faster now.
- mcswell 9mo agoI switched from Windows (11) to Linux (Xubuntu) back in November, mostly because of all the AI stuff I didn't trust. While Linux is working ok for me, I can see why people complain about its not being user-friendly, particularly if you're not a Real Programmer. I've had to go to forums too many times to figure out why this or that doesn't work. The latest is the fact that 'apt update' has stopped working today for Vivaldi--it worked ok yesterday, but I have not been able to get it working after spending an hour or more. (If you're interested, there's a thread here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/115133/public-key-is-not-available https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/115133/public-key-is-not-ava....) Also the fact that some apps update via 'apt', some by 'snap', and if you don't watch out some might update by 'flatpack'. While I think snap is updating automatically, it's hard to tell; some mornings I wake my PC up and only hours later do I discover that there's an update pop-up hidden behind other windows. Oh, and every day I get a 'system problem' popup that asks if I want to submit a report, but won't tell me what the alleged problem was. I thought only Microsoft did that sort of thing? I'm also not happy about the malware protection. Apparently the only anti-virus still available is ClamAV (and Kapersky, but for reasons I won't go into I don't trust that). But the gui for ClamAV has not been supported for several years, and running it from the command line is not so straightforward, never mind keeping it updated. (And don't tell me that Linux doesn't need antivirus protection. That's just whistling past the graveyard, particularly if you sometimes log in on public WiFi networks.) I guess there are distros that are better about some of these things, but life is too short to try all of them, and hope that some bug (like the Vivaldi update thing) doesn't show up months later. So yes, I'm using Linux, and I'm not planning to go back to Windows. But Linux sure could work better.
- pamcake 9mo agoCan't help you with AV but otherwise your issues and confusions are all Ubuntu and Canonical and nothing on there is representative of other Linux dists. Ubuntu is highly opinionated. Great for some/many people but not the best fit for everyone or even an obvious recommendation for newcomers (anymore). For your consideraion: Mint is basically a project that repackages Ubuntu to adress those issues to make it accessible for people not onboard with the Ubuntu idiosyncracies and more casual users who just want their desktop. Should be an easy migration for you. Your Vivaldi problem comes from that you trusted gpg key for their stable. release repo, and fail verifying package from their archive. repo. Change repo to stable (that's prob what you want) or get the key for archive. Your Ubuntu experience as told is not representative of desktop Linux experienced outside of Ubuntu. "But Linux sure could work better" is a misleading conclusion to share when that's all you know.
- nothrows 9mo agoMy wife was complaining about her Windows 11 laptop crashing. I tried everything and even did fresh installs. Still crashing (and honestly pretty slow). I gave up on Windows and installed Ubuntu and Chromium for her. She can instagram, facebook, save her memes, and its all fast. No crashes. She's a happy camper now. I think a lot of (even) non technical people would like Linux a lot more than they realize if they gave it a shot.
- asveikau 9mo ago> my first computer was a Windows 98 machine, with an Athlon XP 1900+ (Palomino core) Off topic, anyone else think Windows 98 is too old for this machine? At a similar era I built an athlon t-bird 1.0GHz, I was mostly using Linux by then but if I did Windows then it would have been Win2k, maybe by the time of Athlon "XP", Windows XP would have been a thing too.
- abetaha 9mo agoIt is quiet sad to see Windows deteriorate that much over the years because of the decreased investment and lack of care and craftsmanship for the quality of the software being pushed out. Thankfully unless you're running a few specific applications that only run on Windows, you can use any other operating system. It will do the job, with much less frustrations.
- thatjoeoverthr 9mo agoIncredible moment when you have to ward off Windows, macOS and iPhone updates like a bouncer. I’ve gone over the years from Visual Studio fanboy to writing everything in vi, entirely due to software decay. Our culture and economy can no longer maintain complex GUIs.
- TheGRS 9mo agoI think I'm pretty much there and just haven't made the switch yet. I'm going to give Mint a shot on my old PC soon and if its a good experience I'll switch on my desktop as well. Every time I have a bad experience in Windows lately I wonder why I'm sticking with it. Everything has been solved, its only momentum keeping me going.
- system2 9mo ago>"If you're always finding the next reason not to switch, you're not looking for solutions, you're looking for excuses to stay complacent." No, my friend. It is not the reason. I have over 50 apps installed, many of which are corporate applications, such as Teams and other Microsoft products. VMwaresing VMWare and WSL foLinux distributionsnux distros. The other things that Linux is missing are ShareX (has flameshot I know), no WhatsApp (PWA might work, but it is a hack). Google Drive that I use to share my KeePass databases (no GDrive on Linux afaik). And gaming is not 100% with linux becuase of anti-cheat (author mentions it). The only thing stopping me from switching to Linux entirely is that I must find a way to port all of these without compromises. Reinstalling Windows is one thing; changing OS types is another. We all want to be Mr. Robots, but reality is different. It is like moving to a new house. Exciting but sucks.
- callamdelaney 9mo agoMicroslop must be stopped, absolute cancer of a company
- Night_Thastus 9mo agoIt's still not quite there yet, for me. A lot of older games (which I'm a big fan of) won't run well or at all - and support for Nvidia is still not great. If I could get within even 10% of the performance I get on Windows, and know I could safely choose to play some old 2000's game or something that just released just fine, I really wouldn't mind. But it feels like a roulette wheel and some important game I wanted to play just may not work, or may run terribly.
- barbs 9mo agoWhich games?
- Night_Thastus 9mo agoFor older games: MechWarrior 3 and 4 (plus expansions). Thief 1+2. Freespace 2. Gothic 1+2. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. But in general, I play a lot of weirder, niche games that just don't get a lot of traction for community fixes and so on.
- klooney 9mo agoYou can tell all the Microsoft executives use Macs at work.
- matltc 9mo agoI switched back in 2022 to Ubuntu 20. I barely knew JavaScript at the time. I had zero problems doing so. Maybe my use case is narrow enough--I just use it for dev work and web browsing--but it was the least daunting process ever. Everything worked out of the box basically. Learning bash and unix changed my life. I don't understand how one could complain about Linux unless they've never even tried it That said, I threw NetBSD on a P4 tower and it took me half a day just to get a GUI and an internet connection. Was kind of fun,though.
- anthem2025 9mo ago[dead]
- projektfu 9mo agoAnother problem with Windows, that has been going on for quite some time now, is that they do not have a real support channel for non-enterprise users that produces useful knowledge for the future. Almost any issue you google now has a thousand "answers" on microsoft.com that do not fix the problem because the people answering have not reproduced it and have not confirmed their solution. In Linux forums, generally speaking, there is either a way it works or agreement that it hasn't been fixed yet. The main source of spam now is actually StackExchange, that prioritizes discussions from 10 years ago on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, rather than up-to-date questions and answers.
- ark296 9mo agoI switched after running basic dev tools became genuinely unusable (randomly freezing for minutes, start menu just didn't work, crashes all the time) despite being on good, new hardware. I never wanted to switch before because I just wanted an OS that worked, didn't require babysitting, and was compatible with apps. But clearly, Windows has dropped the ball on this.
- flaburgan 9mo agoI had the same story but 15 years ago. I was so happy with XP, but Vista was terrible, so I put Ubuntu on my laptop. When 7 came, it became my OS on my desktop. But then it was 8 time. Couldn't bare it. Now it's Linux everywhere, including my sister, parents, grand parents, girlfriend, brother. Linux Mint is perfect for non technical people BTW. I heard good things about Zorin OS as well.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo agoI might be starting down the path of introducing Linux to family members soon. I need to make sure I have enough spare time for the initial 'speed hump' of transition questions...
- ninjagoo 9mo ago> I might be starting down the path of introducing Linux to family members soon. I need to make sure I have enough spare time for the initial 'speed hump' of transition questions... The first couple of months are high touch after the switch. After that it's usually just smooth sailing for years. Much less work support-wise. Been that way for my family and friends.
- pzo 9mo agoIts was a good read until at the end ... > For the remainder of 2026, Microsoft is cooking up a big one: replacing more and more native apps with React Native. But don't let the name fool you, there's nothing "native" about it. These are projects designed to be easily ported across any machine and architecture, because underneath it all, it's just JavaScript. And each one spawns its own Chromium process, gobbling up your RAM so you can enjoy the privilege of opening the Settings app. I'm a little tired of people junking on react native when they have no clue what they talked about (And I'm not even react native dev but iOS dev). React Native doesn't spawn any chromium process. This is not electron. React Native doesn't even use v8 engine. All UI views and widgets are native. Platform SDK is native, Yoga Layout is native C++ and even faster than UIKit layout. Majority of RN code is Native - go have a look at github at languages section. JS is only 19% of codebase, everything else is C++, Obj-C, Obj-C++, Kotlin, Java. The problem AFAIK with startup being laggy was making http requests to downloads those ads.
- 85392_school 9mo ago> React Native doesn't even use v8 engine Are you saying you would use React Native with a language other than JS?
- tempaccsoz5 9mo agoEngines other than v8 exist. React Native uses Hermes or JavaScriptCore (Apple/Safari). [0] Other engines include SpiderMonkey (Mozilla/Firefox) [1] and QuickJS [2] [0]: https://reactnative.dev/docs/javascript-environment https://reactnative.dev/docs/javascript-environment [1]: https://spidermonkey.dev/ https://spidermonkey.dev/ [2]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/ https://bellard.org/quickjs/
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- thefz 9mo agoI'm a little tired of "hey I installed Linux!" posts. Ok, you installed Linux. Great. Wow! Now what, wanna show a screenshot of your desktop with an anime girl as the baackground and neofetch in a terminal window?
- CamouflagedKiwi 9mo agoI remember reading an article many years ago about product management being like being a parent, and there being a latter point where you need to let the product go and admit it's done. Windows is clearly there, and Microsoft are doing a terrible job of it. Yes, it's less relevant than it's ever been, but it's still vastly widely deployed, earns money, and delivers other cash cows (like Office) - all they have to do is do the basic stuff to keep it going and not mess it up, but somehow that is not what's happening. Wild.
- mirekrusin 9mo agoI'm so glad ditching it 20 years ago, didn't look back once since.
- YVoyiatzis 9mo agoThat is exactly why I ditched Microsoft for Mac thirty years ago. I’ve never looked back or regretted leaving MSFT during my "formative" years; in fact, I’m glad I did. That said, it’s great to see Linux stay the course and build a real alternative for PC users. I’ve always wanted to try running Linux on one of my Macs, but I never seem to find the time to actually explore it. One of these days...
- LowLevelBasket 9mo agoI switched during windows 10 and I had several friends switch after win7 wasn't supported. In hindsight I should have spent the few weeks to learn linux and switched back then too
- tacker2000 9mo agoWhy is opening the taskbar right click menu slower on Win11 than on Win95? Why is there a gap between the menu and the taskbar? I used to have muscle memory to quickly close windows rightclick taskbar -> leftclick “close” but this stopped working. Why??
- roba6 9mo agoI only need Windows for a few programs, mostly licensed EDA programs that [dumb] companies didn't manage to port to Linux. Most engineers who use EDA tools are into linux so having to run a few things on Windows is a pain. The 'A' in EDA stands for automation and Windows is not the OS for that. I installed a standalone WIN10, then enabled the TPM and installed WIN11. Seems pretty solid but I had to guard against MSFT repeatedly trying to lead me into servitude.
- cess11 9mo ago"All major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave) have native Linux builds. Full support. No compromises." This is kind of true. It depends on whether you're doing Serious Stuff on MICROS~1 365 and probably other similar services, because if you for example want to do a download of email or files or whatever from an account in the compliance portal, then they force you to use Edge on Windows. There's a browser module that can only run in that context, probably due to some deep and obscene integration between Edge for Windows and the operating system, plus they get users. Other than that I agree with the article. Windows has been way suckier than mainstream Linux distributions for a long, long time. Yes, there might be some driver or configuration issues sometimes, but it doesn't crash, it doesn't force system upgrade reboots, and Windows still has driver issues. Once set up a Linux system tends to just tick along for years, unless you do something weird, which is more likely under Linux because you'll probably let curiosity bring you around more than it easily can under Windows and you'll learn to do stuff that carries more risk than what a regular user can under Windows. And the nice part is that it is very rare that you actually, terminally brick your Linux. There is almost always some forum thread that tells you the steps to bring it back up again, whereas MICROS~1 support threads commonly consist of 'hello, did you try to reboot? if it didn't work, try reinstalling'.
- mbowcut2 9mo agoIf you thought we were getting bad bugs before, just wait until the 90% agent-coded PRs start landing. We're gonna have multiple crowdstrike-level blowups.
- hnsmhthrow 9mo agoThat Ableton Flicker: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3vENli7wQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3vENli7wQ
- tomsiw 9mo agoWould be great to switch except I need Visual Studio Pro
- mrandish 9mo agoI'm still surviving on Windows but only because over the last four years, as each new annoyance and regression arose, I made the mistake of very gradually, in tiny increments, sinking the time into invoking the arcane incantations necessary to tame each one. 15 minutes to deactivate an entire branch of notification pathways, 20 minutes to (mostly) restore the Right-Ctrl key they hijacked into a CoPilot key. 10 minutes to restore Win10 functionality to the Win11 taskbar with the wonderful ExplorerPatcher. $5 spent on Start11 to sidestep the whole start menu train wreck. And little 3 to 5 minute fixes with WindHawk (an amazing store-like platform to discover, install and manage open source Windows GUI patches). I'm the stupid frog who didn't leap from the gradually heating pot. I acclimated to the boiling. And it's... okay. At least for now. But I know someday soon, the thousand faceless product managers at MSFT will break something unfixable. Somehow exceed the considerable abilities of the large community finding clever hacks and patches to keep the harsh Win wasteland livable for hardy souls. While I greatly appreciate Linux philosophically and deeply respect it architecturally, I still really liked what Windows got so close to being - right before MSFT shifted biz models, simultaneously de-investing and turning it into a promotional platform for their other business. When that day comes, it'll suck to leave behind the wonderful third-party tools like Everything search, Ditto clipboard and AHK automation that streamline my day. The thing I don't understand is why MSFT refuses to just make a version of Windows that's a Product again. I'd gladly pay them $100/yr for an upgraded "Windows Ti Super+" that just wants to be a good operating system for advanced users, instead of a strategic moat or monetization flywheel.
- thr1owaway9621 9mo agoI never realized Windows tuning was a thing (WindHawk, Start11). Thank you for mentioning those. I recently had to install Windows 11 to play a video game that runs janky on Linux, and I am encountering all the annoying problems people are describing in this thread (forced updates, full-screen ads, etc). It does not bother me too much, since I effectively use Windows only to play that one game. But maybe I can tune Windows 11 into something less obtrusive with the custom hacks. Thanks.
- mrandish 9mo ago
- ilvez 9mo agoEveryone are very unhappy with Windows 11. They kind of were OK with Windows 10. It's continuing the same old cycle. Windows 12 they will make hopefully things tolerable again.. I use Windows to play some games. I remember dual booting on 2000s -- my grub entry for Windows was called "WOW Client".
- vanillax 9mo agoI made the same switch but all linux always feels slightly jank. I think Macos is the best premium decoupling from Winblows, but that comes with its own ecosystem lock in. I use all three equally daily and it just drives me insane. Lots of games on Windows ONLY work on windows due to anti cheat. Ie BattleField 6.... MacOs Gaming is non existent and any attempt with say wine/parallels or whatever brings you back to windows.... Linux / PopOS / Cosmic is so close to being there but the gaming restrictions takes you back to Windows.. I tried the whole WSL2 but lots of apps need so much tuning to work properly.. Ie android studio needs to be specially configured to use the WSL2 paths and it gets broken fast.
- bigyabai 9mo agoWhich would almost be unfortunate, but Battlefield 6 is the same slop as 2042 with a fanservice texture pack on top. You can play BF4, BF2, Bad Company, Arma 2/3/Reforger, and even DCS World without issue on Linux - why are you spending $70 to install a rootkit for a game you'll put 20 hours into, tops? Giving up Windows pushed me to play better games and stay off the unhealthy AAA release cycle that has strangled innovation for years. If I was still playing Rainbow Six Siege then I wouldn't know how to cold-start an F-16 blk. 50.
- vanillax 9mo agoI mean next on list is Escape From Tarkov.. the list goes on. its more than just Battlefield 6, theres tons of games that require a anti cheat solution for linux..
- bigyabai 9mo agoEscape From Tarkov doesn't have functional anticheat on Windows. Most people either play EFT against bots (which is a $10 DLC) or modded SPT (which is free and works on Linux). Even livestreamers are struggling to play a match without cheaters post 1.0 release, you might as well play Anomaly EFP. There's definitely a list of games that don't work; they're usually outnumbered 10:1 by better titles. I haven't booted into Windows for 7 years, there's just not many new releases worth the effort.
- ingohelpinger 9mo agoGive it a few more years and Linux will complete its inevitable evolution into Microsoft, same consolidation, same gatekeeping, just with better slogans and a smug sense of moral superiority.
- leptons 9mo agoThat is highly unlikely.
- ingohelpinger 9mo agoWell, look at this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572
- leptons 9mo agoYeah, you don't really understand what "Linux" is. It isn't one thing, you can't force anything into "Linux" because there are so many distros to choose from. With Windows that isn't possible - there's either Windows, or something else (or an old version of Windows).
- procone 9mo agoHow is this possible? I don't think you quite understand what "Linux" is. There is no corporation, board, or CEO to force unwanted changes. Pretty much every piece of the operating system is free and open source. If you don't like your "Linux", you can swap it out for another distribution or "distro".
- heliumtera 9mo agothanks for the clarification on how the kernel development works. do you mind expanding on what is the benefit for companies like Microsoft, Google, IBM, Red Hat, Meta, Oracle, SUSE, Canonical, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcom, Samsumg, Broadcom, Cisco, arm to spend an enormous amount of capital, both employing individuals to work full time on the kernel and making donations to cncf/linux foundation? Certainly all of the big players behind linux have our best interest in mind and certainly NONE of this companies have some history of making decisions in detriment of consumer agency and freedom. I would love to hear more about how linux is driven by passion and generosity if you don`t mind, please share!
- maximgeorge 9mo ago[dead]
- liendolucas 9mo agoI just hope that more people are forced into this! I understand that the transition, learning path can be daunting but once someone's head gets the mindset on a Unix OS there is basically no turning back.
- scotthenshaw3 9mo ago[dead]
- Animats 9mo agoI did that years ago, at the end of Windows 7 and the beginning of the need for a Microsoft account. I seem to have a much lower tolerance for enshitification than most people. I'm off Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn. Purely because they became annoying.
- cepcode 9mo agoAs time goes on, I get closer and closer for Linux to be my daily driver. The ads, the Microsoft account login, the OneDrive in the explorer window, the 'recommendations' to change my default browser, etc make me more angry by the day. However, when I install Linux on an old machine, I initially have driver issues like wifi. And after fighting with that for an hour, I decide it's not worth the risk to blow away my main machine. So I accept the slop from MS and continue on.
- Toorkit 9mo agoMy CPU can run Windows 11 fine, but what I don't tolerate is full-screen ad pop-ups on my desktop. When Win10 popped up an ad for Win11, I moved fully to Linux the next day.
- vimwizard 9mo agoI finally installed Windows 11 last year so I could use Wifi 6E. Other than that, it is certainly a downgrade. With some debloating and ExplorerPatcher, its mostly the same as Windows 10 now, but I'm praying that an update wont brick my install. Thankfully the latest forced feature update didn't affect me.
- fasterik 9mo agoWith Windows 10 EOL, I had to decide whether to upgrade my laptop to Windows 11 or Linux. I've been a Windows user for decades, but with all the user-hostile bullshit coming out of Microsoft and the degradation of performance on Windows 11, I decided to go with Ubuntu instead. I'm still on a Windows 11 desktop for the time being, but seriously considering switching there as well. The main thing stopping me is the undeniably better ecosystem on Windows for professional video editing and music production, with no comparable open-source options. I've spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on high quality virtual instruments and effects plugins. But if I can manage to run these under emulation on Linux or find equivalent Linux-native versions, I will happily abandon all Microsoft products at this point.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoRecommend to split your music workstation from your personal files machine to get some privacy back. Then run cleanup scripts to pare Windows down to the bone. Also Mint over Ubuntu.
- fasterik 9mo agoWhy Mint over Ubuntu? I like the Ubuntu experience out of the box. It seems to handle high-DPI and per-display UI scaling well, due to Wayland. From what I've read, Mint still uses X11.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoThey are quite similar but Mint doesn't use snap. Mint can use X11 or Wayland. I think Cinnamon didn't have Wayland support for a while, but that was fixed a couple of years ago.
- shmeeed 9mo agoWayland on Mint is still experimental, and will be for years to come. I've yet to hear from somebody using it. Are you the one? ;)
- j45 9mo agoThis seems to historically have been a pattern. There was a period where Windows Vista was forced on everyone and downgrading to Windows XP until Vista was better was forbidden. Lots of people jumped to Mac or Linux at that time. There's article floating around that the Macbook Pro ironically was the best laptop to run Windows XP on via dual boot because it was so intel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista
- stewartjarod 9mo agoAI bubble pop, when???
- hn_acc1 9mo agoI'm not sure that "multi-compose" chrome bug is a windows-only thing though. I use chrome on Linux (slackware) with an nvidia card, and I get that issue all the time if I try to open more than one chrome WINDOW. Multiple tabs are ok, and SOMETIMES multiple windows are ok, but more often than not, I can only have one chrome window.
- LePetitPrince 9mo ago[dead]
- floxy 9mo ago>Also, is it weird that I still remember the specs of my first computer, 22 years later? Only weird because you were only 6 years old. My first computer was an IBM XT clone, with the full 640k of RAM, a 30 MB harddrive, 5 1/4" floppy drive, Hercules graphics and the amber-colored screen. Also had the turbo button that took it from 4.77 MHz to 10 MHz. Ran DOS v3.3 for a while but eventually upgraded to v5.0.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoGoing to switch my non technical gf to Linux she is pissed at Windows 11 lately
- qwertox 9mo agoPast week I got to know about InputActions [0] so I installed Kubuntu 25.10 to test it, and it is very promising. Linux never had a proper mouse gesture support, and I won't go into details, but this was one of the three dealbreakers for me. The other one was a Windows-only app which ran so sluggishly on all previous tests I've made over the years, but with Wine 11 the app is just as good and fast as on Windows. Though I first need to populate the registry with an icon set. But now with AI this can be easily automated (letting it write a script I then run). The third is some custom electron-based launcher which is heavily Windows-customized, which I will need to migrate to Linux, but also this should be easy with AI. For the first time I feel like there is a real path for me to switch to Linux, and it's about time! [0] https://github.com/taj-ny/InputActions https://github.com/taj-ny/InputActions
- tgtweak 9mo agoLiterally just hit the MPO bug yesterday - what a shitshow that things like display scaling can fail with a mainstream gpu/cpu and windows 11 - like do they not have testing rigs for this in microsoft? if insiders preview is fine but production windows gets all these bugs... what are they inside previewing? The most stable build of windows I ever had (hell it's still chugging along with 1050 days of uptime...) was a windows 10 enterprise edition added to domain controller with update GPO set to basically never install windows updates automatically. There is some serious work needed inside microsoft camp to continue with a 6 month release cycle.
- quijoteuniv 9mo agoWindows was the robbery of the century.
- riccardomc 9mo agoI just came here to say that is ackchyually GNU/Linux.
- dev_l1x_be 9mo ago* thirteen years ago. The lost me with win7->win8 migration. I thought the cannot go lower that that, and here we are.
- dimitrisscript 9mo agoIf only league of legends was playable in Linux. And a few other games.
- shnpln 9mo agoI just switched to Linux as well on my Windows laptop. 10 was getting so hard to run and I had no clear/stable path to 11. Ubuntu runs great for me!
- mihaic 9mo agoI've had a similar path, and I always recommend KDE with its taskbar on Ubuntu, it made the transition smoother for me in terms of preserving workflows.
- hnmullany2 9mo ago[dead]
- purpleredrose 9mo ago> 've used Windows for as long as I've been alive. At 6 years old, my first computer was a Windows 98 machine, this sounds like child abuse.
- linza 9mo agoi also vividly remember the specs of my first machine but weirdly nothing else after. i386SX with 4MiB RAM and a 10MB hard drive
- aa_is_op 9mo agoI'm keeping an eye on SteamOS. I love how it's much better at running games than Windows, the platform those games were designed for.
- dismalaf 9mo agoI switched to Linux circa 2010 when I needed a word processor but didn't want to go to the store to buy Office (was pretty young and poor at the time). After some Googling I found LibreOffice and Ubuntu. I had used Suse Linux years earlier when I was a kid but it definitely wasn't ready for use (2003) so I was also curious about Ubuntu and the current state at the time. I installed Ubuntu, used LibreOffice for the thing I needed, and never looked back. Linux was a breath of fresh air and it did all the things I needed. I went to university using only Linux (2012-2016), opened businesses, did all sorts of things, all 100% on Linux. Nice to see everyone else finally catching up. Also has always been interesting seeing people whine about Linux the whole time I've been using it problem-free, across 4 PCs and 16 years.
- ddtaylor 9mo agoSo happy to see so many new Linux users as a long time user and developer for the platform. I want to welcome anyone and PLEASE feel free to use AI to make awesome stuff or solve problems. The FOSS community is still adapting to the new influx of developers and tools, vibe coders, etc. Be cautious with running commands or making package changes based on suggestions from AI tools. Ask clarifying questions and it may realize doing so would either break your system or be attempting to vastly modify it. My advice is get Docker installed and do most of your stuff in there. If you mess up and expose a Postgres container it will get hacked, but not escape the container, whereas if you install Postgres as a system package and make that same mistake you will be fully owned.
- mrsssnake 9mo agoI could talk about things better in Linux whole day. But besides popularity (so being preinstalled, proprietary software availability, being presented from childhood) is there a single reason to use Windows? Backwards compatibility, accessibility? Maybe?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- nout 9mo agoFor a while when I bought new computer (recently Intel NUC), I'd just keep the Windows installed there in case I needed it and I'd dualboot into Linux. More recently I just reflash the whole ssd with Debian and I haven't looked back. Interestingly enough I also have older Macbook Pro from 2015 that I also installed clean Debian on and it's been working amazingly well too. The only thing that would need any patching is the camera, but I don't use it. Everything else worked out of the box - keyboard backlight with nice UI controls in GNOME, LCD brightness, sound, bluetooth, etc.
- jairuhme 9mo agoI'm an Apple guy through and through, but I am in Georgia Techs OMSCS program. For some of the classes, you need to use a VM that doesn't play nicely with Apple Silicon. So I went over to Microcenter and picked up a cheap PC with Windows. I loathe using it, even if I am in the VM the whole time. I'm amazed at the amount of ads that pop up and for a while, sound just didn't work. Like not with headphones or just out of the normal speakers until eventually a random update fixed it. I get not wanting to be in the Apple ecosystem, but at this point in time I don't know why you would want Windows and not go for Linux.
- surcap526 9mo ago[dead]
- geoffbp 9mo agoMy main reason for getting into Linux, forget the version or distribution maybe Slackware or RH at the time (later loved Debian the most) was that windows in that era was horribly unstable, BSOD etc
- geoffbp 9mo agoObligatory: It’s the year of the Linux desktop!
- Desafinado 9mo agoI did the same on my laptop and PC. Unfortunately, my sound system receiver doesn't support Linux but I'll survive. And the speed of my machines more than makes up for it.
- j0057 9mo agoI used https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat on a family member's new Win11 install and it actually works reasonably snappy. I wouldn't be want to caught dead with it, but I couldn't convince this one to go for macOS.
- jxdxbx 9mo agoThe only thing keeping my secondary / gaming / file-server computer on Windows is Backblaze. The main obstacle to me switching from macOS to Linux is Office 365 (doesn't work on Wine).
- banku_brougham 9mo agoAny suggestions for photo-editing, sharing, album management process for linux? Its really the only thing on macOS + iOS that I use. Otherwise I am so over the mac lifestyle.
- jdboyd 9mo agoI think Windows 11 would have had much more consumer buy-in in the early days if they would have at least extended non-OEM support back to the Skylake generation, if not further, which it looks like it would have be easy to do, since it ran just fine on much older machines. I didn't object to them making TPM 2.0 mandatory for new OEM builds, just to the making it mandatory for people wanting to upgrade to it. Of course, then the ads and other broken-ness got a lot worse. But people might put up with that more if they had upgraded to Windows 11 years ago instead of just looking at doing it now that Windows 10 support has ended.
- h4kunamata 9mo agoBtw, my first computer was an Intel Pentium MMX 166Mhz IIRC, massive 64MB of SIMM ram, and impressive 8GB of disk. Trident "graphic card", Creative sound card and the ultra fast Motorola 56k modem haha "I installed CachyOS .... It wasn't a painless process. In fact, sleep mode was broken from the start" This is the problem with newbies into Linux world, they follow hype instead of installing a stable distro. As it stands in 2026, Linux Mint Cinnamon is by far the best distro to use, no matter if you are into IT field, heavy gaming, video editing and 3D design, it just works. It follows the well known stability of Debian Linux, while being up-to-date like Ubuntu but without all the bloatware, kernel panic and privacy issues from Ubuntu. If you are following hype or those distro so called "rolling releases" aka Arch Linux, don't complain that you are having problems. They are everything but stable and "just works" lmao
- rbc 9mo agoAt work, my employer is still running Microsoft products for the desktop environment. At home, assuming I'm using Microsoft products at all (rare), it's from inside the Chromium web browser on Linux or BSD.
- insane_dreamer 9mo agoNo to mention that the cloud-based user system that they are forcing on us instead of local accounts. So much trouble. And Copilot crap being shoved down our throats at every turn. Don't even get me started on Teams.
- randomNumber7 9mo agoI'll switch to emacs if things go on like this.
- tedk-42 9mo agoWithout knowing anything internally about how microsoft builds: Product driven development and too many managers with MBAs led to this problem.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo ago> Basic operations are so much faster on Linux. Opening directories, The fact that "opening directories" is something specifically mentioned as a point of difference hints to me that there is something terribly wrong in Microsoft / Windows -land. If "opening directories" isn't a solved problem in any Operating System that's no longer in beta, never mind one that's been around for 30-odd years, there's something rotten in the foundations.
- rekabis 9mo agoI take an adversarial approach to Windows. Which started with Windows XP and its supremely annoying zip-files-as-folders approach. Sorry, but I didn’t want that, and I still gleefully rip it out of every Windows install I touch. And then things started snowballing with every version. Plus, I have elderly clients that got hopelessly lost on any UI after XP, so I had a lot of hacking-and-slashing to do there for not only them, but also myself. Like, just give me the option of a traditional XP-style start menu, goddammit. Thank goodness for StartIsBack. But what took me about 6-8hrs of directed work with XP is now about 24-48hrs of work with Windows 11. Honestly, I am at the point where I just want to create a highly opinionated one-click configuration app that does everything for me. And I would, if I still did as many installs as I was doing even half a decade ago. Hmmm… as a DotNet developer… anyone interested in a spyware-eviscerating, copilot-extracting, settings-preserving app that allows you to retain a mostly-XP style look, and which remains resident to alert you of Microslop changing settings back?
- shmeeed 9mo ago>anyone interested in a spyware-eviscerating, copilot-extracting, settings-preserving app that allows you to retain a mostly-XP style look, and which remains resident to alert you of Microslop changing settings back? I'm not, MS already lost me. But I would bet there's a market for such an app, if done right.
- LandenLove 9mo agoAt this point, the only thing holding me back is Adobe Lightroom. Which even that can technically run in a browser.
- zamadatix 9mo agoIt's hard to square their complaints about Microsoft's delivering AI crap when the top work project reference they have is: > DesignVerse > AI website builder startup. > - Tech Stack: Next.js, Vercel AI SDK, Mastra AI Framework > - Role: Full Stack Developer > - Built core features (full stack) and helped implement the AI-powered editing system.
- lawgimenez 9mo agoYeah my 70 year old father purchased for the first time a Macbook after being a Windows user his entire life.
- highmastdon 9mo agoStill to this day I don't understand how people manage to do software development on a Windows PC. I started with my first secondhand MacBook which was one before the unibody, and then upgraded to unibody and never have left ever. The only reason I was forced to use Windows was for clients that didn't have support for MacOS or Linux. The only thing I need Windows for is rootkit enabled games... which pains me, otherwise I'd have Linux on my desktop
- nipperkinfeet 9mo agoWindows 11 isn't terrible, as long as you go back to how it was in Windows 10. Disable everything introduced in 11.
- vermaden 9mo agoLOL :D 1500+ points for a switch from Windows to Linux :)
- starkeeper 9mo agoTo Protect yourself, this is what I did and experienced: I set windows update service to manual, and so far the updates have not reset it, and I have been able to choose to install when I want. I feel safer, but I KNOW microsoft will fuck this over probably on their next update. Another trick is as a super-super admin you can make executables UNEXECUTABLE by anyone. Things like Edge, etc. They do not let us remove their TRASH, but we still can lock them out, at least for now. Another thing I had to do with Windows 11 when I had to rebuild my system because of Microsoft's SSD bug they would not cop too... They got rid of the magic trick to disable to OOBE which forces you to login with a microsoft account.... I could not find a way to work around it, but as soon as I was in I created a local admin user and it works well, they only force logged me in when I had to run FUCKING TEAMS for a job interview. I'm heading down the linux path very soon, I almost did last year. Dual boot for a while, to see if how well my Steam library plays (literally it's the only thing keeping me on Windows 11).... Looking at Bazzite for this but we'll see. We must UNITE to fight this tryany!
- starkeeper 9mo agoAlso, just to DISH hard on Microsoft's engineers - How could they make it throught the job interview the loser who wrote add / remove programs it takes so long to load and they are not even embarrased. ** Embracing the Dark Side here **
- nsoonhui 9mo agoLast Thursday windows 11 forced this update on my Acer machine. It caused me BSOD: inaccessible boot device [0], so I had to reformat my machine to get Windows running again. You might think that in 2026 you shouldn't get BSOD, but here we are. So I am now very wary of any Windows updates, including a Out of Band Update [1], which it is claimed that it resolves some issue. However, since it's never mention whether the Out of Band Update will solve mine, I'm very hesitant to update. [0]: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-11s-botched-patch-tuesday-update-nightmare-continues-as-microsoft-confirms-some-pcs-might-fail-to-boot https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358
- ninjagoo 9mo agoWindows has always been a bit of a high-maintenance OS. To keep it running well used to consume a lot of time on a weekly/monthly basis. That went down to almost nothing after I switched to Ubuntu LTS a couple of decades ago. Heard it had gotten a bit better in Winland in the recent past but it appears things are going downhill again.
- accrual 9mo agoI also recently switched to Debian + KDE after decades on Windows. I cloned my previous workflows in a few days and now have a very smoothly working desktop that I can still game on. High DPI and refresh are also working OK.
- _aaandrew 9mo agoUpvote for Arc Raiders :D I was running win11 up until three weeks ago. Just a gaming rig, a steam launcher. A used behemoth tower I got for a song via CL. Installed Bazzite and have been incredibly impressed. Also ty to the author for the link to the nvidia sleep fix. That’s been the only hiccup, and it sounds like I’ll have it sorted before bedtime.
- cheema33 9mo ago"Oh you're doing work? That's so cute... we're gonna close whatever apps you had open, because we're updating now. We own your computer. You had unsaved work? Too bad, it's gone, get bent." This, a 1,000 times. I hate, hate, hate this "feature". My Macs don't do that. My Linux systems don't do that. The whole, "screw you, we don't care" attitude of Microsoft is quite appalling. Microsoft now makes it very difficult to disable this feature. After a few registry edits, I thought I was able to put a stop to the madness. But, then it went to rebooting on its own again.
- netsharc 9mo agoI keep telling Windows 10 to delay these updates by 1 week each time... Curiously, Office apps have auto-save, so does IntelliJ, VSCode, and even Notepad nowadays.. "restore my work environment after a reboot" almost works, but some things do disappear (e.g. unsaved web input forms) that it's aggravating enough. I wonder if they'll make it mandatory for apps to persist more across restarts. Ok, that requires them to be competent, if they're competent we won't even have what we have now.
- Arainach 9mo ago"requiring apps to do X" means blocking running every app written prior to you instituting the requirement, bricking everyone's workflows, so that would be the least competent thing imaginable.
- twodave 9mo agoI understand the frustration when things don’t just work. Also I find it kind of funny when people act like Linux just solved all their problems, despite recurring driver and dependency issues, compatibility problems, etc. These all get hand-waved somehow because it’s not Linux’s “fault” I suppose? Good for the author but the opportunity cost of moving to Linux alone is prohibitive based on the comments I see here, my own experience notwithstanding…
- bobsterlobster 9mo agoI agree with you that there's some friction involved and a bunch of trade-offs. The thing is that I absolutely lost it, because of the bugs and the ads, and just wanted something reliable that doesn't nag me all the time. I know that other people's linux experience may be radically different due to different hardware, so I'll consider myself lucky it all worked out.
- ninjagoo 9mo ago> despite recurring driver and dependency issues, compatibility problems, etc Citation needed. Uncited, I would posit that those complaints haven't really been a thing for at least a couple of decades. And any issues have been far less than in Winland :)
- twodave 9mo agoJust read the other comments in this thread, all the evidence you need is in plain sight. Conversely, I’ve been on windows 11 for work for a few years now with zero issues.
- ninjagoo 9mo ago> Just read the other comments in this thread, all the evidence you need is in plain sight. Do anecdotes constitute citable/useful data for OSes with millions of users? Especially for comparison? > Conversely, I’ve been on windows 11 for work for a few years now with zero issues. By your previous standard, this thread (and the OP's article) are the evidence of Win11 being especially problematic. :) Also, is there an entire IT team supporting your Win 11 instance to make it usable? :)
- code_duck 9mo agoThe whole upgrade to Windows 11 was forced on me by Microsoft, basically using trickery. I opened windows update and it said there were some updates… Did not make it clear at all that it would be taking my system from Windows 10 to 11. I thought it was just installing security updates. I would’ve had to change it anyway when 10 support ended, but I still had about four months and wanted to wait.
- rednafi 9mo agoSimilar sentiment but I think opting for a debian based intro would have solved some of the hurdles.
- bfrog 9mo agoIt's bad it really is, I got fed up and rolled back to windows 10 when I tried downloading a file and the whole UI locked up until the file finished. On my own personal high performance desktop with tons of memory, cpus, etc etc. Never saw this in Windows 10. Certainly never saw it in modern Linux.
- eb0la 9mo agoFor me the only reason to keep windows 11 is Clip Studio Paint doesn't work yet in Linux... I use it mostly on my Android tablet BUT I want to have an alternative in case something is easier on a computer
- fraaancis 9mo agoIf you can handle Linux, you should try Reaper as a DAW. It's really great.
- tekfen 9mo agoI was a big fan of windows and I am still currently using it but recently, I am getting weird problems, crashes, frozen laptop etc. So right now, after 23 years later, I decided to switch MacOS. I've used it before but couldn't adapt because I was efficiently using windows with no-alternatives tools in MacOS. But anymore, Windows is no longer usable, it's unbearable.
- unnouinceput 9mo agoI feel Windows 11 is in the initial phase of Windows 10. Remember beginning of years for 10? Sluggy, clunky, full of bugs? And everybody and their cat was holding to 7? I was the same, I was holding down the fort with 7. This year 7, next year 7 and so on until at one time I, like countless times before, spun a new virtual machine for a client and as usual I had to put 10 in there. Except this time 10 felt faster. No more clumsiness, no more slop. 2 months later I fully switched to 10 as my host OS. I am currently on 10 so much that I installed the LTSC version that has support until 2032. Keep hammering Microslop, they deserve it. We need to keep bugging them, throw dirt on their face until they actually fix it. Seems that's the way with them nowadays. So I don't feel any shame to call them names at every corner. But I am still not switching to Linux. Maybe in '32 when LTSC stop being supported and they still didn't fix 11. Oh, and from my experience, Debian will be the way to go. I like a proven distribution even if their repository is not the greatest and the latest.
- mizuki_akiyama 9mo agoIt’s been so long since I’ve used Windows I practically forgot it even exists as a “thing”. @_@
- arthurfirst 9mo agoWindows 98 did the same for me
- arendtio 9mo agoOne of my favorite recent KDE features: Press Meta+t to design a custom window layout, and later hold Shift while you drag a window to place it in a slot in that layout.
- tsoukase 9mo agoThere is a negative Moore's law for software, valid when the one for hardware stopped: with constant CPU speed, the speed of software decreases as its version increments.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo agoMany years ago before I stopped using Windows and switched back to NetBSD (I had originally used it on the VAX), I used Cygwin and later MSYS on Windows in the process of moving back to UNIX I was not interested in graphical programs, I only wanted a UNIX shell and standard UNIX utilities I recently received a used computer with pre-installed Windows 10 Home for personal use so I will be experimenting with it offline^1 I used Windows Services for UNIX ("SFU") on work computers back in the day to compile programs I wrote for UNIX. I am curious about using "WSL" in a similar way NetBSD is still favorite OS but I use Linux the most 1. I can boot this computer from USB stick so I will also use it to run NetBSD from RAM
- etempleton 9mo agoI had a different issue with Windows on my old daily driver but similar experience. The whole system began crashing randomly, but only occasionally, and only when not under load. It never once crashed while being taxed. I tried everything. Reinstalling the OS, reseating everything, tweaking memory timing, frequency, voltage, installing new firmware. Nothing fixed it. What did fix it? Installing Linux. I still don’t know what was wrong. I have to imagine there was something with my exact hardware configuration that Windows did not like.
- stevefan1999 9mo agoRight now I'm running a setup with Fedora on my work machine, CachyOS on my laptop, Windows on my home battlestation gaming rig and a Mac Mini M4 I bought for a educational discount. I basically run 3 different kernels, and I feel the same with the author here. Windows 11 is such a mess that Microsoft thought that they are Apple, so they want to enforce Microsoft Account just like Apple enforces Apple ID to some extent, except this time Microsoft is staking in higher than Apple -- Any active "exploits" that bypasses Microsoft Account got patched not so soon after they are published, and that is what finally intrigued me. Unfortunately, some of my games runs on Easy Anti-Cheat, and to my knowledge, the Linux switch is opt-in rather than opt-out, most game developers simply didn't put the Linux as a matter on the table even with the introduction of Steam Deck and Steam OS. I'm planning to wipe my PC after settling some scores, and I still have to go for Windows, but except I will be rolling back to Windows 10 IoT LTSB. Chances are, if I have another drive (which is slowing going into the unobtainium territory, just like RAM) But, long as I settled that dust, I will bring another PC back to my home. I'm planning to get another CachyOS on that.
- TimJRobinson 9mo agoHonestly Linux has been so much easier to use since Claude / codex came out. Now I don't need to remember esoteric commands or scroll old forums to fix issues, Claude does it all for me. Been using ubuntu + regolith as my daily driver for over a year now and haven't needed to use windows for anything. Almost all games all work well on Linux now too.
- aagha 9mo ago1. Install Win 11 Pro 2. Install O&O Shut Up The behavior you're describing is not normal
- mariaerica 8mo ago[dead]