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> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system. They onl
by wlesieutre 9mo ago
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be.
And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system.
They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
- lousken 9mo agoexactly, he's part of a problem
- billy99k 9mo agoI could also say the Linux desktop creators are the problem as well. It's so buggy, it makes it impossible for me to switch.
- prmoustache 9mo agoThis doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years. Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
- pluralmonad 9mo agoI am willing to concede this might be true, but I personally have never checked Linux support before through 3 generations of desktops. Intel/Nvidia twice and then AMD/AMD.
- hparadiz 9mo agoAll of them will work. What "support". What is this nonsense. Seriously.
- happymellon 8mo agoBecause support is generally great. Until you get some Windows apologist who points out that their proprietary touchscreen that has multiple layers of DRM doesn't have Linux drivers and therefore Linux doesn't have good hardware support. You have to be careful in the same way that you can't expect to wipe an M series Mac and stick Windows on it.
- direwolf20 8mo agoApple devices have multiple layers of touchscreen DRM, but most other devices are just lacking drivers, because there are far too many devices for five unpaid interns to write drivers for all of them.
- lousken 9mo agoWhat desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.
- xigoi 9mo agoWhich “the” Linux desktop? GNOME? KDE? xfce? Cinnamon? COSMIC?
- xeromal 9mo agoThis question reinforces the point IMO
- amlib 9mo agoThat linux has an awesome rich and diverse range of desktop experiences?
- subscribed 8mo agoI'd stupidly assume that having a choice and control over the experience is empowering, and watching a couple of YouTube videos titled "which Linux distribution is best for me" isn't too hard? Or is it in your opinion? If it is maybe they better stay on the "shut up and do how I say, puppet" OS.
- bdavbdav 9mo agoWho are these “creators”? Can you point to them? Is there a legal entity?
- Spooky23 9mo agoHonestly, that’s a 2016 argument. I flipped a few contact centers over to Linux desktops and had very few issues. If anything we probably spent 5x the resources getting Windows 11 certified internally. Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience. Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
- hparadiz 9mo ago> I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas
- nik282000 9mo agoDebian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora have had a bug free desktop experience for years. If you stick to the default repositories and use last year's hardware everything just works.
- wrs 9mo ago"I'm still a _______ guy, and I always will be." No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoYeah, not sure how people form almost "relationships" with their tools and refuse sometimes to even explore options. I'm always open to switching almost anything. I never end up doing, because things are usually not better, but maybe 1/100 times something is better, and then I switch. Initially did that around Ubuntu 9.10 before, and I'll switch away from Arch in a heartbeat if anything better comes around. Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
- expedition32 9mo agoHonestly as a deeply antisocial person the Linux cult has always rubbed me the wrong way. Same reason why I don't have an iPhone.
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoWhat do you use then?
- DetroitThrow 9mo agoThe biggest non-Linux non-iOS phone operating system is HarmonyOS, so I would assume he means that.
- direwolf20 8mo agoThere's also Android, which isn't Linux, but just repurposes the Linux kernel in a non–Linux OS.
- 8mo ago
- BadBadJellyBean 9mo agoI think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street. From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
- arcologies1985 9mo agoWhat about "I'm a Linux guy?" I don't pay any company for my Linux OSes. My favorites are nonprofits and mostly interchangeable.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo agoI'm a Linux guy, but I've always had a little bit of FreeBSD on the side. (I'm also forced to use Windows at work)
- stavros 9mo agoNo. It's not your identity, it's a piece of software. "I use ____ for as long as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks" is what you should be thinking.
- arcologies1985 8mo agoUsing Linux as a teenager led to a step change in my family's generational wealth, some incredible personal and professional relationships, and life-defining opportunities for work and travel. I think at this point it's solidly wrapped up in my identity.
- stavros 8mo agoThat's fuzzy and all, but still not good. Being an uncritical fan of something, even when it's to your detriment, isn't something to be proud of.
- john01dav 9mo agoApple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.
- Quothling 9mo agoI'm not saying Apple can't go the way of Microsoft, but if you've used macOS and Windows through the previous 5 years there isn't much of a comparison. Windows has gone from something I tolerated to something I absolutely dislike using. It's so bad that if it wasn't for WSL then I would consider finding a place to work where they didn't force me to use Windows. MacOS on the other hand hasn't really changed. The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo ago> The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though. I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
- switchbak 9mo agoI have a framework laptop, and when it works it’s just ok. It looks just enough like a Mac to have me feel frustrated when I use it. In theory we may be able to run Linux (reliably, not in the bleeding edge) on Apple hardware eventually. But you still pay the Apple tax, which is pretty bonkers these days. But dang those machines are nice.
- hparadiz 9mo agohttps://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
- dist-epoch 9mo agoGoes the other way around too: Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
- xigoi 9mo agoI recently started using COSMIC and I would definitely call it good, even if it has a few rough edges due to just recently coming out of beta.
- ErroneousBosh 9mo agoLinux has had several good desktop environments for well over 20 years. When is Windows going to get a good desktop environment?
- bigstrat2003 9mo agoI mean, from my perspective Linux has multiple good desktop environments. I've used both Cinnamon and KDE for years and have found both perfectly pleasant to use.
- Mordisquitos 9mo ago> Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it. Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
- wolvoleo 9mo agoLinux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible. Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
- Aloha 9mo agoWho is better?
- monooso 9mo agoI think you're missing the point. If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice. Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible. Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
- navigate8310 9mo agoFor folks that still like the win32 ecosystem, they should pirate the heck out of LTSC. just as Microsoft don't have interest in them, they shouldn't give a damn about it and enjoy a dramatically polished Windows experience.
- Aloha 8mo agoand microsoft makes it so easy to pirate too, trivially easy.
- Aloha 8mo agoIts not though - I dont want to write my own operating system, build an ecosystem of apps, write hardware drivers, etc. Win11 has massive downsides, so does macOS, so does desktop Linux, so do all the other options - I have to choose between one of those options to get things done, going my own isnt an option.
- monooso 8mo agoAt no point did I suggest that you build your own OS. To extend my tortured analogy, that would be like suggesting you grow your own spouse.
- bdavbdav 9mo agoCame here to post this, what an asinine thing to say.
- guidedlight 9mo agoI’m my experience, unwavering Windows folk are simply power users who find *nix shells burdensome.
- wesammikhail 9mo agoI deploy all my code on linux and have been thinking about switching from windows to linux for my daily driver. But even I dread that. It´s as if linux has tried as hard as possible to make every single little thing as complicated as possible. imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- conception 9mo agoLucky now you can just ask an LLM to diagnose and offer ways to fix it. Takes 99% of the trouble away.
- nixosbestos 9mo agoIf I could wave a wand and ban a single class of comments on HN, it would be this. Rambling, non-specific handwaving useless text. > user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating. > People will tell you try this or that distro. Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
- bloqs 9mo agoand I would ban fanboying such as your username I agree with you, that it is irritating when people make sweeping statements that casually dismiss a lot of things as not existing when they do, but it's an endless arguement. Operating systems are not the problem, support is. Just making a good operating system isn't what drives adoption. reducing _pain_ does. Nerds arent good at empathy, so the response is normally "just read x and use y" and call people stupid if they still cant figure it how to use it
- pavel_lishin 9mo ago> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.
- layer8 9mo agoIt likely just means they will always prefer certain classic aspects of Windows over how other desktop OSs do things. I’m largely in that boat as well. Of course Windows could get so bad in the future that another OS will be the lesser evil. Or another OS could adopt those preferred Windows things. But it won’t change the mentioned preferences, hence “always”.
- bsder 9mo agoAgreed. I had the version of Notepad++ that got popped and was being nagged by Fusion 360, so I decided to burn everything down, get a new SSD, and install a copy of Windows 11. Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95. The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc. Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--it has physical media and the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know) At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine? Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now. Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ... WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>. 4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries> And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game. Total time: no more than 20 minutes. No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine. Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft. (And, as a side note, this is having a knockon effect--I finally went looking for an alternative to Fusion 360 and signed up for OnShape just so I can dump Windows permanently)
- qq66 9mo agoI was a "Windows guy" from Windows 2.0 to Windows 10. Now I'm a "Mac guy." These operating systems aren't my family members -- I'll ditch them if I believe that switching is worth getting over the learning curve of a new environment.
- ScoobleDoodle 9mo agoRight. My current computer has Windows OS at the moment.
- therein 9mo agoI wonder when they'll rebrand it as Copilot Agentic OS. It seems no brand of theirs is sacred enough to not be replaced with Copilot.
- direwolf20 8mo agoIt's not like Microsoft to use extra words in brand names. I think they'll just call it Copilot.
- hghjnbhff 8mo ago[dead]
- meandmycode 9mo agoI will say, for anybody reading and finds it in any way uplifting, I have been a Windows user for 30 years, been a .net developer for 5 years at one point, groaned at how bad the 'Linux desktop' always was, but this year I finally switched to using Linux instead of Windows and I think it's because the inflexion point is starting to hit more of the masses.
- int_19h 9mo agoAI is the best thing that happened to desktop Linux!
- digiown 9mo agoThis actually. AI is dramatically better at helping users deal with perennial issues that Linux gets, and using the command line to fix them, compared to Microsoft's fresh new bug introduced last Tuesday or navigating anti-user GUI.
- wookmaster 9mo agoYou’re absolutely correct what used to take me hours reading docs and googling now takes minutes to find an answer to. Just this week my new beelink I couldnt get hardware acceleration working for transcoding. A couple prompts lead me to the fact the gpu was new and I needed a newer Linux kernel. I probably would have spent hours and hours fiddling with device drivers and configs in the past.
- therein 9mo agoThat is true but I believe he meant it as Microsoft shoving AI down your throat in every part of Windows driving people away into Linux.
- raincole 8mo agoThat sounds... quite bad, to be honest. I never met one single Windows issue that can't be answered by simple google search for years. A desktop expecting the user to ask AI(!) for solutions that require command line(!!) is definitely not for average users.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- hyperman1 8mo agoYears ago, HN had an article 'Hacking my vagina'. It contains a line 'I was in the market for a $GADGET’. With that one line, the author managed to put my view of buying things upside down. Not a passive consumer. Not: I bought a $GADGET. She had an active relation with a bunch of sellers, and she was boss. You saw the megacorps begging and pleading to her, from that one line. That's how you deal with them. I am $GADGET guy? Shudder.
- inquirerGeneral 8mo ago[dead]
- inquirerGeneral 8mo ago[dead]
- assaddayinh 8mo agoSo why does open source support microsofts strategy by insisting the users throw away years of hard learned user knowledge (shortcuts, program quirks)? If you do it different from the defacto standards, you put a tax in time on users switching.
- newdee 8mo agoTrue, but someone writing for a site called windowscentral.com has a business interest in being a windows guy. Although I find it funny to imagine them furtively using Linux.