8 ms·

Windows is not technically inferior to Linux. To the extent it has problems, it is mainly because of top-down anti-user behaviour mandated from corporate. But a

Windows is not technically inferior to Linux. To the extent it has problems, it is mainly because of top-down anti-user behaviour mandated from corporate. But anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. I use both literally side-by-side, two laptops with a KVM switch, and I still greatly prefer Windows for many reasons. Some reasons: Even as a low-level programmer fully capable of resolving problems, I want to spend my time working on my programs, not working on making my OS work, and Linux frequently demands that I spend hours chasing down issues. Windows does a better job of managing memory/swaps, at least out of the box. Windows has a stable userland with 30 years of backwards compatibility. Windows makes good use of both GUIs and CLIs, letting you choose whichever is faster for the task, while Linux distros and devs have some kind of bizarre ideological purity culture and generally refuse to make good GUIs. Windows has a built-in tool for easily making full system images while the system is running, without requiring the image destination be larger than the system drive including unused space. Windows developers are not so in love with dynamically linked system libraries that dependency management becomes a pain in the ass. Windows generally has a polished UX with a lot fewer papercuts.

chistev 8mo ago
What about Macs, you use those?
- applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
  I have never tried one, I'm not interested in Apple's walled garden approach. Buying a Macbook and being unable to put a (properly working) alternative OS on it if I don't like the one on it is a non-starter to me.
  - drzaiusx11 8mo ago
    Asahi Linux is definitely a "properly working" Linux distro at this point. MacBook hardware tends to be better than almost all the alternatives I've tried.
    - Rohansi 8mo ago
      Only works on three generations old SoCs and doesn't support external displays still. The hardware is great and it's impressive Asahi Linux works at all but it's not for everyone.
      - drzaiusx11 7mo ago
        Agreed that lack of m4+ support is unfortunate but it'll get there. However, m2 MacBook still outperforms any other kit I have (dell developer edition shipping with Linux etc.) Also external displays work today as long as you use a USBC display port cable, the other USBC video standards are supposedly in the works but display port dongles aren't exactly hard to find.
        drzaiusx11 7mo ago
        Also preliminary m3 support just landed upstream in Linux this past week
        Rohansi 7mo ago
        > Agreed that lack of m4+ support is unfortunate but it'll get there. The question is when? How many generations behind will they be then? Will they have to skip support for some generations to keep up? > m2 MacBook still outperforms any other kit I have That's fair but you should consider what happens when Apple decides to lock down the boot process on newer hardware. I'm sure most people would give in and use macOS instead of going back to worse hardware. If you don't see that happening just remember that all of Apple's other devices have a locked down boot process. They possibly only allowed it on Mac hardware to ease possible concerns people may have had during the Apple Silicon transition. Apple does not provide documentation for the hardware so Linux support is based on reverse engineering. If third-party operating systems do not support any of the recent hardware what is stopping Apple from cutting that unused feature from new hardware? > preliminary m3 support just landed upstream in Linux this past week Still way too early to actually use. GPU support is not there yet.
        7mo ago
  - nout 8mo ago
    You can put linux on the older Macs. I have 2015 Macbook with Debian and everything works very smoothly.
- baq 8mo ago
  macs are amazing, you can close the lid on a macbook and the computer will be mostly asleep and won't burn down the house; and the best part is it'll work when you open it again. amazing tech. macOS though, that's getting worse each year.
  - GTP 8mo ago
    I have the exact same lid behavior on my HP laptop running Arch Linux.
    - baq 7mo ago
      Trust me I’d happily take a similarly specced Linux-compatible laptop over this company-mandated MacBook, alas.
  - seanmcdirmid 8mo ago
    You do know the reason the Mac goes to sleep when you close the lid is because of the OS right?
    - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
      It doesn’t matter why it works to anyone but geeks
rolandhvar 8mo ago
+1 on the UI thing. I don't know what it is, but UI on Linux always feels too disjoint from the rest of the system. It's a bit like how Windows 3.11 was just UI-on-DOS. I get the same feeling. Don't get me wrong - I love Linux for all its CLI use but for some reason I've never been able to primary drive it without going insane after a week. Windows just seems to feel more put-together and I guess that's because the kernel probably has hacks to support Office, and Explorer probably has hacks to support the kernel, etc. The only other system I've felt this level of unity in is FreeBSD with its userland+kernel harmony. Maybe I need to try a Linux desktop again as I haven't done it in ~10y but the other comment here about Fedora not feeling production ready doesn't inspire much hope... Any ideas?
- edstarch 8mo ago
  Windows UI is the most disjoint though, with designs accumulated over the past 20 years still kicking in various places. You really should, yeah. I've given up Linux as a daily driver in favor of a MacBook but I do have a work mandated Windows machine and I hate that thing with a passion. I cannot think of a single thing that's better on it than on my MacBook or any Linux distro I've ran as a daily driver. In fact, most of the time I want to do any tasks which are not directly Teams or MS office related I find it easier to just use WSL.
  - b473a 8mo ago
    > Windows UI is the most disjoint though, with designs accumulated over the past 20 years still kicking in various places. But every Linux distro has its own UI, and pretty much every distro makes it easy to configure it to look how you want, with tens of thousands of themes out there developed over the past 20 years by people wanting their os to look a certain way. The most glaring inconsistencies are going to be user-inflicted. If I spend a weekend tweaking defaults to look just right I need to be ok with possibly tweaking any new software I download to fit my theme. But even from a non-power-user perspective, if my mom runs into problems with her computer it's much easier to walk her through a fix over the phone if she's on Windows or a Mac. My dad, who is very tech-literate, once tried Linux and all the trouble shooting guides required him to open a command prompt (because there isn't a consistent GUI you can use to fix things across distros). He never forgave it.
fsloth 8mo ago
Exactly. I want to have a computer with stable vendor supported OS so _I can do my stuff_ not tweak some os level configs. I _don’t_ want to spend my time playing an os systems programmer. OS is a _component_. Like the wifi driver. I think it’s great some people love developing wifi drivers but personally I just want network that-just-works because there are billion other cool things you can do with a computer. Similarly I want an OS that just works! Without asking me to do a anything! Because _i don’t really care_. (I mean i care it works but i expect the engineers actually developing an os offering to have a far better idea than myself what is a good stable default config for the system)
- nine_k 8mo ago
  > I want an OS that just works! This is exactly why modern Windows is problematic. MacOS is better. A right Linux distro (e.g. Fedora Silverblue) on right hardware (e.g. Thinkpad T series) also just works™; this basically the same kind of limitation as with MacOS. I wish they issued a Windows Rock Stable edition. Ancient as rocks (Win7 look, or maybe even WinXP look), every known bug fixed, every feature either supported fully, or explicitly not supported. No new features added. Security updates issued regularly. It could be highly popular.
  - andybak 8mo ago
    MacOS has the drawback today any software compiled more than x years no longer works. That is an unforgivable sin in my eyes.
    - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
      Yes Apple should have kept supporting 68K software and have emulators for 68K, PPC and 32 bit x86.
      - ZeWaka 8mo ago
        false equivalence much?
anal_reactor 8mo ago
Linux just isn't friendly to newcomers. 1. Lots of rough edges "yeah it almost works if you tweak it a little" yeah thank you but no. 2. CLI is better for doing the thing you want, but GUI is better for discovering what options you have in the first place. The fact that GUI is an afterthought on Linux says a lot.
- applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
  Not only is GUI better for discovery, it's not even always true that CLI is better for doing the thing you want. Depending on the complexity of the task, building a tower of CLI commands/arguments can be a pain, and if it's something you do ~once a month, good luck remembering the syntax. A GUI lets you not even have to think about it, not have to memorise syntax or go out of your way to write a script to save it. And while CLI is great for things you do routinely... Windows still offers great CLI support, so you simply get the best of both worlds.
  - pdonis 8mo ago
    > A GUI lets you not even have to think about it, not have to memorise syntax or go out of your way to write a script to save it. Unless the GUI buries what you want to do in five or six levels of menus and options--and then changes where they're buried in the next release, so you have to re-learn everything all over again. That's happened to me with work computers more times than I care to remember. By contrast, my collection of shell scripts on my home Linux computers is still serving me well after more than twenty years.
  - alright2565 8mo ago
    We're in the age of LLMs and this is exactly what they shine at. Just the other day I got tired of Libre office having some crappy custom file picker. "Claude, change the libre office file picker to the system default" "Beep boop it is done" Linux has a big leg up over windows in this regard because all the GUIs are essentially wrappers around CLIs and text files that LLMs can deal with quite well.
pdonis 8mo ago
> anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. MS has made hacking out the BS harder and harder with each new version of Windows. Back in the Windows XP days, yes, I could avoid a lot of the BS on my home Windows computer (although I still had to deal with it at work because work computers are usually locked down so employees don't even have admin rights to them--if I have an issue with my work computer I have to put in a support ticket to the IT department). But even then there was enough friction on my Windows home computer to make me start using Linux at home. For a few years I was running both OSs at home, but even that got to be too difficult, and I simply stopped using the Windows computer at home, at least for my own use (see below). I've never looked back. I do still have one Windows laptop at home, because some of the Python programs I write (I write them on the Linux computer) have to run on Windows, so I have to have a way of testing them. Even that is clunky compared to how easy it is to do things on my Linux computers. That laptop runs Windows 10, and if I am ever forced to upgrade it to Windows 11, I will probably just stop testing my programs on Windows (fortunately my livelihood does not depend on being able to do that), because Windows 11 is a nonstarter for me; the BS level has just gotten too high. > Linux frequently demands that I spend hours chasing down issues. As someone who has been running Linux at home for well over twenty years now, this has not been my experience. Back when I still had Windows computers at home, I spent more time dealing with issues with them than I have spent dealing with issues with my Linux computers at home. I would make similar comments about the rest of your post.
ufmace 8mo ago
I used to argue in favor of Windows with basically the same argument. But honestly, using Windows nowadays seems to require even more hacking than Linux. Particularly if you don't have the newest hardware made to Microsoft's standards. Or don't want to deal with regular full-screen ads to update to Windows 11, or don't want Copilot jammed into every app. I installed Linux instead, Fedora specifically, and everything just worked. It actually cleared up some weird hardware issues I had on Windows that I could never manage to track down. I'm pretty sure I didn't need to do any CLI or config file tinkering for anything that wasn't getting an actual CLI app I wanted to use running. Beats the dozens of different registry hacks and powershell scripts downloaded off random Github repos people kept telling me I needed to do to make Windows 11 work and not be too annoying.
zem 8mo ago
I miss win2k personally. the UI was decent, and I was able to install enough oss on it that it felt like I could do most of the things I did with linux, but with good font rendering. there were also, to my surprise, a couple of apps (winmerge and proxomitron) that felt like they should totally have been linux apps, but for which I have yet to see anything as good over on the linux side.
- GTP 8mo ago
  What were those applications about?
  - zem 8mo ago
    winmerge is an open source diff/merge tool with a really good UI. comparable linux apps are meld and kdiff3, but winmerge is more capable than meld and feels a lot more polished than kdiff3. I'm actually surprised no one has ported it to linux, though I presume a lot of the polish is due to focusing on look and feel in a way that is tied to the underlying windows gui libraries. proxomitron is a rewriting proxy, which I always thought was a very nice approach to webpage filtering. again, I remember it having very good UI/UX as well as being fast and capable.
    - kvemkon 7mo ago
      > meld and kdiff3 When I need to compare large text files I use diffuse instead of meld.
      - zem 7mo ago
        didn't know about that one! I'll check it out
nout 8mo ago
I think there are 3 major points that made Linux much more viable option in the last 2-3 years. 1) Somehow both GNOME and KDE got much better in the last 2 years. It's very smooth and polished experience that I now prefer to both MacOS and Windows. I only need to install 1 or 2 extensions and it's good to go for me. 2) AI! It's orders of magnitudes easier to fix any Linux issue now compared to 3 years ago. The issues that would take a whole afternoon of fighting are now just a couple back-and-forths with the LLM like ChatGPT or Gemini. 3) Valve and SteamOS. The large and mostly successful push by Valve to make Linux be the platform for gaming has cleared many Linux issues and hurdles on the way. I think this will have ripple effects in the industry. My prediction is that thanks to Valve and SteamOS we will see a viable, widely used Linux based phone in the next 3 years.
- idiotsecant 8mo ago
  Woooah that's a long way from 'gaming works on linux' to 'this is now suitable as a general purpose mobile OS'
  - nout 8mo ago
    There are more details that make me believe that linux as mobile OS is more feasible in near future. Apart from the Valve&SteamOS push, the one notable phenomenon that I see happening is retrogaming. In retrogaming handhelds ecosystem there are now many devices with form factor close to phones (they often literally use screens from older iPhones, etc) that are running on Linux or in some cases provide option to easily switch between Android and Linux. For example on Anbernic RG35XX using Garlic OS there's a toggle in the UI to switch between Android and Linux. Similarly Retroid Pocket 5 allows switching in the bootloader menu. As a separate point, it seems quite feasible to run Android apps in VM on Linux based phone and make the experience fairly seamless. Something like what Waydroid provides.
    - keyringlight 8mo ago
      It looks like the combination of PostmarketOS (based on Alpine linux) and Waydroid would seem to fit that.
riedel 8mo ago
I am using Windows now for about 20 years after being a FreeBSD user. I switched to Linux actually to be able to interact with my work environment which was using Windows tools (both office but also embedded development tools at the time) and I think virtualization/emulation was a lot easier. After bricking my laptop multiple times while traveling, because I always feeled inclined to fiddle with everything in my OS even during meetings. Linux was the perfect distraction (also me having latent ADHD). I eventually switched to windows for my laptop, when I needed to focus on productivity. What was meant to be temporary was permanent. I actually have stayed a console user and still use a lot of cygwin, using also the posix compat stuff earlier and now using WSL. Lately I even learned to like Powershell a bit. Only the latest annoyance with trying to force me into the Microsoft cloud and the temporarily very instable UI (taskbar hangs with not updating clock made me miss meetings) makes me think about switching to a free OS again seriously.
baq 8mo ago
the swap and vm tuning required on Linux to make it work even somewhat reasonably compared to Windows or macOS is batshit insane - or brain dead to quote Linus. you shouldn't need to do any of it and yet if you don't you risk hard locking your system when you run out of RAM - or even just write a lot to a disk - with zero warning.
everdrive 8mo ago
>Windows does a better job of managing memory/swaps Not sure I can buy that one
- wang_li 8mo ago
  100% of OSes are better than Linux in this regard as long as overcommit is the default.
  - hunterpayne 8mo ago
    I always turn off swap and that solves this problem. I really don't understand why it is on by default anymore. If you need swap, you are doing something very wrong somewhere else.
    - subscribed 7mo ago
      So, it depends on how much RAM do you have. Also with a swap enabled system can swap out some very rarely used memory pages, and cache some frequently used files instead - so by disabling swap you rob yourself of this opportunity :) I have 64 GB RAM on my workstation, yet i still have swap enabled (but with lowered swappiness value).
neuropacabra 8mo ago
I hear you, me personally I only use Fedora when it comes to Linux. It is easy to install, has everything I need. I keep everything default - maybe change wallpaper and install my apps and IDE. That is it. From this standpoint it is MUCH better than a Windows box for games, which always has some ads, long update, sometimes it breaks, a lot software is actually writing their config in "My Documents" folder which bugs me a lot AND I do not have to have Microsoft account (actually I don't need any account on that matter) to create a local account on my own computer. So yes, I would agree with inferiority argument almost completely. If Linux got a bit mainstream, the ecosystem and apps would follow very quickly I am sure. But Microsoft is trying hard to people try out Linux (which is good btw) so let's see. Myself, I am off to Fedora even for the games, I am done with Copilot and inability to have offline account.
GTP 8mo ago
> Linux frequently demands that I spend hours chasing down issues This is one of the points where people have vastly different experiences. I'm one of those that has fewer issues with Linux, and I definitely don't spend hours fixing problems. And this despite the fact that I use Arch, which is supposed to be an unstable distro. Why is that different users report so different experiences I don't know. I think that this might be partly due to perception: we tend to forgive more the OS we like. But your case doesn't seem to be just about perception. So I wonder how much the hardware could play a role here. I think Linux has quite good hardware support nowadays, but maybe I was just lucky so far.
- ux266478 8mo ago
  No, it has to do with how your system is set up. Without fail, someone who has his opinion about Linux is using some ungodly bloated corpse of a distro because they genuinely do not know better. Hence why they blame their system's problems on the kernel, despite ostensibly never having any actual problems with the kernel itself. It's not like Linux is particularly perfect, but how many complaints about using it as the basis of a desktop system include the mistake that is the devtree? Or the fact that nice values are complete placebo? Or the million quirks with it's specific implementation of SIGALRM? You don't have problems with Arch presumably because you've avoided building your system into a neutron star of corporate shitware, while that's the default state for most distributions.
  - hunterpayne 8mo ago
    You forgot the part where they edited a bunch of config files (that they didn't understand) for no reason or are running some experimental UI extension that makes their mouse pointer have a trail of stars or something.
    - Rohansi 8mo ago
      All of these points apply to every OS. Windows bricking itself after updates is far more likely to be caused by all the bullshit software installed by manufacturers and the user.
suhputt 8mo ago
[dead]
VerifiedReports 8mo ago
Windows USED to have a polished UX. Is it still better than most Linux distros? Maybe. But it has regressed so far from where it was 25 (or more) years ago that every day I'm still infuriated and depressed that I've had to return to it for work. The idiotic UI blunders alone must waste hours of my life per week. Aside from the absolutely baffling functionality removals, there are the hateful petty ones. Great example: the removal of Remote Desktop. I erred in getting my parents Windows laptops, thinking they'd benefit from the familiarity. NOPE. And when they encounter some defective bullshit that stops them from doing what they're trying to do, they call me for help but I can't log in from 2400 miles away because MICROSOFT REMOVED THAT ABILITY. Disgraceful.
- chihuahua 8mo ago
  You can use TeamViewer (free) for remote assistance for Windows. It even has a web client so you don't have to use Windows if you don't want to.
  - Rohansi 8mo ago
    Parsec.app is also really good and free. Both are so much better than Remote Desktop.
  - subscribed 7mo ago
    TeamViewer is absolutely atrocious for incidental home use. Endless chasing of the versions upgrades/matching, to the point of rendering itself unusable. For one-off I use something else. For more persistent access needed I use either Tailscale with mstsc or *VNC.
- anonymars 7mo ago
  What about Remote Assistance (built-in)?
  - VerifiedReports 7mo ago
    It's not built in anymore. Microsoft took it away. I can't remember exactly what the last name was that they gave the remote-assistance tool, but they removed it from all but so-called "pro" Windows... the one used by the LEAST-likely people to need it. More anti-user BS from Microsoft. The baffling aspect is how Microsoft thinks it benefits from screwing users like this. I can't wait to buy my parents a Neo and shitcan Windows from their home forever.
Nifty3929 8mo ago
Me too! I daily-drive Windows as my personal, Mac for work stuff, and Linux for all server-like activity. And I have been for 20 years.
wltr 8mo ago
It’s really unclear whether you have any Linux experience. Because it feels like someone who knows Windows very well, and spent some time with Linux here and there.
gspetr 7mo ago
> anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. Go ahead, try to delete the useless Microsoft Edge browser if you're not in a select few EU countries. In my experience, you can't do it cleanly. Asking LLMs will tell you the following: 1)Modify a certain registry key to enable deletion. Which I did, but the only thing that accomplished is un-gray the delete button in the Control Panel. Once you press it nothing happens. 2)Windows will eventually reinstall Edge. So you're basically screwed.

chistev 8mo ago

What about Macs, you use those?

applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
I have never tried one, I'm not interested in Apple's walled garden approach. Buying a Macbook and being unable to put a (properly working) alternative OS on it if I don't like the one on it is a non-starter to me.
- drzaiusx11 8mo ago
  Asahi Linux is definitely a "properly working" Linux distro at this point. MacBook hardware tends to be better than almost all the alternatives I've tried.
  - Rohansi 8mo ago
    Only works on three generations old SoCs and doesn't support external displays still. The hardware is great and it's impressive Asahi Linux works at all but it's not for everyone.
    - drzaiusx11 7mo ago
      Agreed that lack of m4+ support is unfortunate but it'll get there. However, m2 MacBook still outperforms any other kit I have (dell developer edition shipping with Linux etc.) Also external displays work today as long as you use a USBC display port cable, the other USBC video standards are supposedly in the works but display port dongles aren't exactly hard to find.
      - drzaiusx11 7mo ago
        Also preliminary m3 support just landed upstream in Linux this past week
      - Rohansi 7mo ago
        > Agreed that lack of m4+ support is unfortunate but it'll get there. The question is when? How many generations behind will they be then? Will they have to skip support for some generations to keep up? > m2 MacBook still outperforms any other kit I have That's fair but you should consider what happens when Apple decides to lock down the boot process on newer hardware. I'm sure most people would give in and use macOS instead of going back to worse hardware. If you don't see that happening just remember that all of Apple's other devices have a locked down boot process. They possibly only allowed it on Mac hardware to ease possible concerns people may have had during the Apple Silicon transition. Apple does not provide documentation for the hardware so Linux support is based on reverse engineering. If third-party operating systems do not support any of the recent hardware what is stopping Apple from cutting that unused feature from new hardware? > preliminary m3 support just landed upstream in Linux this past week Still way too early to actually use. GPU support is not there yet.
        7mo ago
- nout 8mo ago
  You can put linux on the older Macs. I have 2015 Macbook with Debian and everything works very smoothly.
baq 8mo ago
macs are amazing, you can close the lid on a macbook and the computer will be mostly asleep and won't burn down the house; and the best part is it'll work when you open it again. amazing tech. macOS though, that's getting worse each year.
- GTP 8mo ago
  I have the exact same lid behavior on my HP laptop running Arch Linux.
  - baq 7mo ago
    Trust me I’d happily take a similarly specced Linux-compatible laptop over this company-mandated MacBook, alas.
- seanmcdirmid 8mo ago
  You do know the reason the Mac goes to sleep when you close the lid is because of the OS right?
  - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
    It doesn’t matter why it works to anyone but geeks

rolandhvar 8mo ago

+1 on the UI thing. I don't know what it is, but UI on Linux always feels too disjoint from the rest of the system. It's a bit like how Windows 3.11 was just UI-on-DOS. I get the same feeling. Don't get me wrong - I love Linux for all its CLI use but for some reason I've never been able to primary drive it without going insane after a week. Windows just seems to feel more put-together and I guess that's because the kernel probably has hacks to support Office, and Explorer probably has hacks to support the kernel, etc. The only other system I've felt this level of unity in is FreeBSD with its userland+kernel harmony. Maybe I need to try a Linux desktop again as I haven't done it in ~10y but the other comment here about Fedora not feeling production ready doesn't inspire much hope... Any ideas?

edstarch 8mo ago
Windows UI is the most disjoint though, with designs accumulated over the past 20 years still kicking in various places. You really should, yeah. I've given up Linux as a daily driver in favor of a MacBook but I do have a work mandated Windows machine and I hate that thing with a passion. I cannot think of a single thing that's better on it than on my MacBook or any Linux distro I've ran as a daily driver. In fact, most of the time I want to do any tasks which are not directly Teams or MS office related I find it easier to just use WSL.
- b473a 8mo ago
  > Windows UI is the most disjoint though, with designs accumulated over the past 20 years still kicking in various places. But every Linux distro has its own UI, and pretty much every distro makes it easy to configure it to look how you want, with tens of thousands of themes out there developed over the past 20 years by people wanting their os to look a certain way. The most glaring inconsistencies are going to be user-inflicted. If I spend a weekend tweaking defaults to look just right I need to be ok with possibly tweaking any new software I download to fit my theme. But even from a non-power-user perspective, if my mom runs into problems with her computer it's much easier to walk her through a fix over the phone if she's on Windows or a Mac. My dad, who is very tech-literate, once tried Linux and all the trouble shooting guides required him to open a command prompt (because there isn't a consistent GUI you can use to fix things across distros). He never forgave it.

fsloth 8mo ago

Exactly. I want to have a computer with stable vendor supported OS so _I can do my stuff_ not tweak some os level configs. I _don’t_ want to spend my time playing an os systems programmer. OS is a _component_. Like the wifi driver. I think it’s great some people love developing wifi drivers but personally I just want network that-just-works because there are billion other cool things you can do with a computer. Similarly I want an OS that just works! Without asking me to do a anything! Because _i don’t really care_. (I mean i care it works but i expect the engineers actually developing an os offering to have a far better idea than myself what is a good stable default config for the system)

nine_k 8mo ago
> I want an OS that just works! This is exactly why modern Windows is problematic. MacOS is better. A right Linux distro (e.g. Fedora Silverblue) on right hardware (e.g. Thinkpad T series) also just works™; this basically the same kind of limitation as with MacOS. I wish they issued a Windows Rock Stable edition. Ancient as rocks (Win7 look, or maybe even WinXP look), every known bug fixed, every feature either supported fully, or explicitly not supported. No new features added. Security updates issued regularly. It could be highly popular.
- andybak 8mo ago
  MacOS has the drawback today any software compiled more than x years no longer works. That is an unforgivable sin in my eyes.
  - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
    Yes Apple should have kept supporting 68K software and have emulators for 68K, PPC and 32 bit x86.
    - ZeWaka 8mo ago
      false equivalence much?

anal_reactor 8mo ago

Linux just isn't friendly to newcomers. 1. Lots of rough edges "yeah it almost works if you tweak it a little" yeah thank you but no. 2. CLI is better for doing the thing you want, but GUI is better for discovering what options you have in the first place. The fact that GUI is an afterthought on Linux says a lot.

applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
Not only is GUI better for discovery, it's not even always true that CLI is better for doing the thing you want. Depending on the complexity of the task, building a tower of CLI commands/arguments can be a pain, and if it's something you do ~once a month, good luck remembering the syntax. A GUI lets you not even have to think about it, not have to memorise syntax or go out of your way to write a script to save it. And while CLI is great for things you do routinely... Windows still offers great CLI support, so you simply get the best of both worlds.
- pdonis 8mo ago
  > A GUI lets you not even have to think about it, not have to memorise syntax or go out of your way to write a script to save it. Unless the GUI buries what you want to do in five or six levels of menus and options--and then changes where they're buried in the next release, so you have to re-learn everything all over again. That's happened to me with work computers more times than I care to remember. By contrast, my collection of shell scripts on my home Linux computers is still serving me well after more than twenty years.
- alright2565 8mo ago
  We're in the age of LLMs and this is exactly what they shine at. Just the other day I got tired of Libre office having some crappy custom file picker. "Claude, change the libre office file picker to the system default" "Beep boop it is done" Linux has a big leg up over windows in this regard because all the GUIs are essentially wrappers around CLIs and text files that LLMs can deal with quite well.

pdonis 8mo ago

> anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. MS has made hacking out the BS harder and harder with each new version of Windows. Back in the Windows XP days, yes, I could avoid a lot of the BS on my home Windows computer (although I still had to deal with it at work because work computers are usually locked down so employees don't even have admin rights to them--if I have an issue with my work computer I have to put in a support ticket to the IT department). But even then there was enough friction on my Windows home computer to make me start using Linux at home. For a few years I was running both OSs at home, but even that got to be too difficult, and I simply stopped using the Windows computer at home, at least for my own use (see below). I've never looked back. I do still have one Windows laptop at home, because some of the Python programs I write (I write them on the Linux computer) have to run on Windows, so I have to have a way of testing them. Even that is clunky compared to how easy it is to do things on my Linux computers. That laptop runs Windows 10, and if I am ever forced to upgrade it to Windows 11, I will probably just stop testing my programs on Windows (fortunately my livelihood does not depend on being able to do that), because Windows 11 is a nonstarter for me; the BS level has just gotten too high. > Linux frequently demands that I spend hours chasing down issues. As someone who has been running Linux at home for well over twenty years now, this has not been my experience. Back when I still had Windows computers at home, I spent more time dealing with issues with them than I have spent dealing with issues with my Linux computers at home. I would make similar comments about the rest of your post.

ufmace 8mo ago

I used to argue in favor of Windows with basically the same argument. But honestly, using Windows nowadays seems to require even more hacking than Linux. Particularly if you don't have the newest hardware made to Microsoft's standards. Or don't want to deal with regular full-screen ads to update to Windows 11, or don't want Copilot jammed into every app. I installed Linux instead, Fedora specifically, and everything just worked. It actually cleared up some weird hardware issues I had on Windows that I could never manage to track down. I'm pretty sure I didn't need to do any CLI or config file tinkering for anything that wasn't getting an actual CLI app I wanted to use running. Beats the dozens of different registry hacks and powershell scripts downloaded off random Github repos people kept telling me I needed to do to make Windows 11 work and not be too annoying.

zem 8mo ago

I miss win2k personally. the UI was decent, and I was able to install enough oss on it that it felt like I could do most of the things I did with linux, but with good font rendering. there were also, to my surprise, a couple of apps (winmerge and proxomitron) that felt like they should totally have been linux apps, but for which I have yet to see anything as good over on the linux side.

GTP 8mo ago
What were those applications about?
- zem 8mo ago
  winmerge is an open source diff/merge tool with a really good UI. comparable linux apps are meld and kdiff3, but winmerge is more capable than meld and feels a lot more polished than kdiff3. I'm actually surprised no one has ported it to linux, though I presume a lot of the polish is due to focusing on look and feel in a way that is tied to the underlying windows gui libraries. proxomitron is a rewriting proxy, which I always thought was a very nice approach to webpage filtering. again, I remember it having very good UI/UX as well as being fast and capable.
  - kvemkon 7mo ago
    > meld and kdiff3 When I need to compare large text files I use diffuse instead of meld.
    - zem 7mo ago
      didn't know about that one! I'll check it out

nout 8mo ago

I think there are 3 major points that made Linux much more viable option in the last 2-3 years. 1) Somehow both GNOME and KDE got much better in the last 2 years. It's very smooth and polished experience that I now prefer to both MacOS and Windows. I only need to install 1 or 2 extensions and it's good to go for me. 2) AI! It's orders of magnitudes easier to fix any Linux issue now compared to 3 years ago. The issues that would take a whole afternoon of fighting are now just a couple back-and-forths with the LLM like ChatGPT or Gemini. 3) Valve and SteamOS. The large and mostly successful push by Valve to make Linux be the platform for gaming has cleared many Linux issues and hurdles on the way. I think this will have ripple effects in the industry. My prediction is that thanks to Valve and SteamOS we will see a viable, widely used Linux based phone in the next 3 years.

idiotsecant 8mo ago
Woooah that's a long way from 'gaming works on linux' to 'this is now suitable as a general purpose mobile OS'
- nout 8mo ago
  There are more details that make me believe that linux as mobile OS is more feasible in near future. Apart from the Valve&SteamOS push, the one notable phenomenon that I see happening is retrogaming. In retrogaming handhelds ecosystem there are now many devices with form factor close to phones (they often literally use screens from older iPhones, etc) that are running on Linux or in some cases provide option to easily switch between Android and Linux. For example on Anbernic RG35XX using Garlic OS there's a toggle in the UI to switch between Android and Linux. Similarly Retroid Pocket 5 allows switching in the bootloader menu. As a separate point, it seems quite feasible to run Android apps in VM on Linux based phone and make the experience fairly seamless. Something like what Waydroid provides.
  - keyringlight 8mo ago
    It looks like the combination of PostmarketOS (based on Alpine linux) and Waydroid would seem to fit that.

riedel 8mo ago

I am using Windows now for about 20 years after being a FreeBSD user. I switched to Linux actually to be able to interact with my work environment which was using Windows tools (both office but also embedded development tools at the time) and I think virtualization/emulation was a lot easier. After bricking my laptop multiple times while traveling, because I always feeled inclined to fiddle with everything in my OS even during meetings. Linux was the perfect distraction (also me having latent ADHD). I eventually switched to windows for my laptop, when I needed to focus on productivity. What was meant to be temporary was permanent. I actually have stayed a console user and still use a lot of cygwin, using also the posix compat stuff earlier and now using WSL. Lately I even learned to like Powershell a bit. Only the latest annoyance with trying to force me into the Microsoft cloud and the temporarily very instable UI (taskbar hangs with not updating clock made me miss meetings) makes me think about switching to a free OS again seriously.

baq 8mo ago

the swap and vm tuning required on Linux to make it work even somewhat reasonably compared to Windows or macOS is batshit insane - or brain dead to quote Linus. you shouldn't need to do any of it and yet if you don't you risk hard locking your system when you run out of RAM - or even just write a lot to a disk - with zero warning.

everdrive 8mo ago

>Windows does a better job of managing memory/swaps Not sure I can buy that one

wang_li 8mo ago
100% of OSes are better than Linux in this regard as long as overcommit is the default.
- hunterpayne 8mo ago
  I always turn off swap and that solves this problem. I really don't understand why it is on by default anymore. If you need swap, you are doing something very wrong somewhere else.
  - subscribed 7mo ago
    So, it depends on how much RAM do you have. Also with a swap enabled system can swap out some very rarely used memory pages, and cache some frequently used files instead - so by disabling swap you rob yourself of this opportunity :) I have 64 GB RAM on my workstation, yet i still have swap enabled (but with lowered swappiness value).

neuropacabra 8mo ago

I hear you, me personally I only use Fedora when it comes to Linux. It is easy to install, has everything I need. I keep everything default - maybe change wallpaper and install my apps and IDE. That is it. From this standpoint it is MUCH better than a Windows box for games, which always has some ads, long update, sometimes it breaks, a lot software is actually writing their config in "My Documents" folder which bugs me a lot AND I do not have to have Microsoft account (actually I don't need any account on that matter) to create a local account on my own computer. So yes, I would agree with inferiority argument almost completely. If Linux got a bit mainstream, the ecosystem and apps would follow very quickly I am sure. But Microsoft is trying hard to people try out Linux (which is good btw) so let's see. Myself, I am off to Fedora even for the games, I am done with Copilot and inability to have offline account.

GTP 8mo ago

> Linux frequently demands that I spend hours chasing down issues This is one of the points where people have vastly different experiences. I'm one of those that has fewer issues with Linux, and I definitely don't spend hours fixing problems. And this despite the fact that I use Arch, which is supposed to be an unstable distro. Why is that different users report so different experiences I don't know. I think that this might be partly due to perception: we tend to forgive more the OS we like. But your case doesn't seem to be just about perception. So I wonder how much the hardware could play a role here. I think Linux has quite good hardware support nowadays, but maybe I was just lucky so far.

ux266478 8mo ago
No, it has to do with how your system is set up. Without fail, someone who has his opinion about Linux is using some ungodly bloated corpse of a distro because they genuinely do not know better. Hence why they blame their system's problems on the kernel, despite ostensibly never having any actual problems with the kernel itself. It's not like Linux is particularly perfect, but how many complaints about using it as the basis of a desktop system include the mistake that is the devtree? Or the fact that nice values are complete placebo? Or the million quirks with it's specific implementation of SIGALRM? You don't have problems with Arch presumably because you've avoided building your system into a neutron star of corporate shitware, while that's the default state for most distributions.
- hunterpayne 8mo ago
  You forgot the part where they edited a bunch of config files (that they didn't understand) for no reason or are running some experimental UI extension that makes their mouse pointer have a trail of stars or something.
  - Rohansi 8mo ago
    All of these points apply to every OS. Windows bricking itself after updates is far more likely to be caused by all the bullshit software installed by manufacturers and the user.

suhputt 8mo ago

[dead]

VerifiedReports 8mo ago

Windows USED to have a polished UX. Is it still better than most Linux distros? Maybe. But it has regressed so far from where it was 25 (or more) years ago that every day I'm still infuriated and depressed that I've had to return to it for work. The idiotic UI blunders alone must waste hours of my life per week. Aside from the absolutely baffling functionality removals, there are the hateful petty ones. Great example: the removal of Remote Desktop. I erred in getting my parents Windows laptops, thinking they'd benefit from the familiarity. NOPE. And when they encounter some defective bullshit that stops them from doing what they're trying to do, they call me for help but I can't log in from 2400 miles away because MICROSOFT REMOVED THAT ABILITY. Disgraceful.

chihuahua 8mo ago
You can use TeamViewer (free) for remote assistance for Windows. It even has a web client so you don't have to use Windows if you don't want to.
- Rohansi 8mo ago
  Parsec.app is also really good and free. Both are so much better than Remote Desktop.
- subscribed 7mo ago
  TeamViewer is absolutely atrocious for incidental home use. Endless chasing of the versions upgrades/matching, to the point of rendering itself unusable. For one-off I use something else. For more persistent access needed I use either Tailscale with mstsc or *VNC.
anonymars 7mo ago
What about Remote Assistance (built-in)?
- VerifiedReports 7mo ago
  It's not built in anymore. Microsoft took it away. I can't remember exactly what the last name was that they gave the remote-assistance tool, but they removed it from all but so-called "pro" Windows... the one used by the LEAST-likely people to need it. More anti-user BS from Microsoft. The baffling aspect is how Microsoft thinks it benefits from screwing users like this. I can't wait to buy my parents a Neo and shitcan Windows from their home forever.

Nifty3929 8mo ago

Me too! I daily-drive Windows as my personal, Mac for work stuff, and Linux for all server-like activity. And I have been for 20 years.

wltr 8mo ago

It’s really unclear whether you have any Linux experience. Because it feels like someone who knows Windows very well, and spent some time with Linux here and there.

gspetr 7mo ago

> anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. Go ahead, try to delete the useless Microsoft Edge browser if you're not in a select few EU countries. In my experience, you can't do it cleanly. Asking LLMs will tell you the following: 1)Modify a certain registry key to enable deletion. Which I did, but the only thing that accomplished is un-gray the delete button in the Control Panel. Once you press it nothing happens. 2)Windows will eventually reinstall Edge. So you're basically screwed.