4 ms·

Up until 2019, Windows was my daily driver and had been for the prior ~20. years. I had been regularly ssh-ing into Linux machines, but it didn't seem like a pl

Up until 2019, Windows was my daily driver and had been for the prior ~20. years. I had been regularly ssh-ing into Linux machines, but it didn't seem like a place I could live. Then, in 2019, I built a PC and, wanting to get more proficient in Linux environments, I made it a dual boot setup with a Ubuntu desktop partition and a Windows partition, expecting I'd inevitably get frustrated on the Linux partition by sidequests debugging driver issues or setting up peripherals, unproductive yak-shaving stuff. I had to google a setting or two over the first couple days, but other than that, everything just worked on the Linux partition. Things opened quickly, things installed easily, and things I was worried about (e.g. nvidia and printer drivers) were either automatic or a one-time step so small I don't remember it. After a couple weeks, I noticed there hadn't been a single moment where I had to switch to the Windows partition, and a month after that I reformatted the Windows partition ssd and added the storage to the Linux partition. If you have considered switching to Linux and worried that it would be a chore, give it a shot (if you have the freedom to choose). It has been polished and ready since at least 2019. I have to use a Windows machine for work and, like this New Outlook issue shows, MSFT has concluded most users can't or won't leave so there's no margin in improving UX and some margin in doing things that make UX much worse. I don't think I'll elect to have a personal Windows machine ever again in my life.

rwyinuse 4mo ago
I agree. Sometimes one needs Windows for some legacy software, but for 99% of use cases Linux works, is faster and respects your privacy more.
justsomehnguy 4mo ago
My favourite part of these success stories when Nautilus can,t replicate some functionality which Windows has since forever, eg copy-pasting tex and files across 3 RDP sessions deep. Sure, someone who uses their computer as a glorified SSH terminal with an occasional Google.Docs edition wouldn't see a problem, but I, who works everyday - do.
- kaladin-jasnah 4mo ago
  It's reductive to say that people who aren't "copy-pasting tex and files across 3 RDP sessions deep" are not "working everyday." While Windows fits your use case, some people do use SSH for their real work as well, even if it is simpler.
  - tracker1 4mo ago
    Hell, VS Code + Remote SSH is pretty freaking awesome.. edit locally run remote. The integrated terminal pretty much makes this as smooth an experience as working locally.
  - justsomehnguy 3mo ago
    > some people do use SSH for their real work as well Somehow all that 'real work' boils down to configuring servers. Most people don't configure servers 24/7 or even 8/5. They need to work with files of different formats and with different apps. Now tell me, how would you use SSH (not SSH tunneling, lol) to loot at some .jpegs to decide to what would be used in somewhere.
- grebc 4mo ago
  The only people who I’ve ever known to use tex are honours students & academics. Comedy gold saying that’s work.
  - hdgvhicv 4mo ago
    I used latex on occasion for about a decade after graduation, but now it’s only my CV I use, and I’m getting rusty. Markdown is far more covienient. Never used Tex specifically.
  - justsomehnguy 3mo ago
    Comedy gold is what it didn't occur to you what that was a typo in my comment. Now go consistently copy-paste text (at least) and files over your VNC connection.
- deleted 4mo ago
tyre 4mo ago
Have you tried a Mac? Apple silicon is fantastic, build quality is the best on the market, you're still running a unix OS, and there's a huge community of developers + companies making things work.
- modriano 4mo ago
  Yeah, and I'm a big fan of the the hardware. I bought a refurbished MacBook Air in 2022 (M1 or M2, I don't recall) to try it on and see how I liked it. I mainly used it as a thin client to ssh to my homelab, but it was far and away the best laptop hardware on the market and I loved the battery life. I found that I couldn't use it with two (non-duplicating) external monitors, so I considered the test a success, gave the MacBook Air to my wife, and bought a MacBook Pro (which I'm still using mainly as a thin client and ssh-ing to a Linux machine and working there; plug for Tailscale, it makes everything really nice and easy). I know it's silly to have a MacBook Pro just for the screen size, its ability to drive two external monitors, and the battery life Apple Silicon achieves. And I feel a bit rude not really learning much about the dev tools the community has made for MacOS. But it is just really nice hardware (I just wish it wasn't such a chore to configure my Macbook to have the same ctrl+c, ctrl+v keyboard shortcuts when using an external keyboard, but the hardware is sufficiently better than anything else on the market that I tolerate it).
  - annzabelle 4mo ago
    Macs are even at a good price point compared to similar hardware these days, and don't seem to have the same level of planned obsolescence of windows laptops. A mac with homebrew and rectangle installed works well enough as a hobby development machine for me that I rarely feel the need to ssh into something else.
- fsflover 4mo ago
  Macs are on their way to enshittification, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075 Also, see this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
dachris 4mo ago
Pretty much the same here. A happy Ubuntu user for 4 years now. Here and there, there's still minor issues, but nothing a quick search or AI can't help you with. And we're hackers here after all.
- techjamie 4mo ago
  8 years here. Mint->Arch->NixOS. Basically zero Windows use in that time outside of niche needs.
raincole 4mo ago
> It has been polished and ready since at least 2019. Linux people said things like this in 2019 too. It's always "been improved a lot in the past few years" (not saying this statement can't be true.) At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely dependent on how much Microsoft fucked up.
- RajT88 4mo ago
  2026 is the year of Linux on the Desktop! > At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely dependent on how much Microsoft fucked up. Lifelong Windows user here. If you could get the kind of driver support you have with Windows for just whatever the fuck you have lying around, I'd probably use my Ubuntu laptop as more of a daily driver.
  - tracker1 4mo ago
    I'm not really using anything too exotic... my hardware all works, and my printer has generally been without issue (HP Color Laser on ethernet) regardless of what I use to print from. For me, I switched when the start menu started showing internet ads as part of the results... I ran insiders for years, often joking that WSL was my favorite Linux distro... I love the new MS Terminal, and pretty happy with a lot of things. That said, there's far more that annoys me... it's too in your face trying to sell you additional software/services/features that frankly I find offensive from an OS. It's like built in malware ads. They might as well try to sell me an X10 camera in those popups, I'd feel just as irritated about it. I went from dual booting, to just Linux for my personal use a few years ago and been pretty happy. I'm not a gamer, and was already using Linux as my dev target for server software. It wasn't a big deal for me. Even the growing pains for Cosmic have been less annoying than some of the "features" of Windows.
  - saltcured 4mo ago
    Not lifelong, but I've been using Linux since 1993. Through subconscious selective pressure, I only have things lying around that are useful with Linux. It's kind of liberating, to be able to ignore a huge amount of crap in the market because you can tell it is just some sort of delivery vector for proprietary Windows drivers and their dodgy installers.
sirwitti 4mo ago
Man, I just realized it's been 20 years for me. I vaguely remember sometime in 2006 that Windows Vista was inevitable and decided to switch to linux. I don't care about fussing around and just need a useful machine for work and fun. Linux is far from perfect for me but the amount of crap windows or macos throw at me when I have to use them is almost comical.
- agumonkey 4mo ago
  I moved long ago to use a fully legally free OS, but at that time, win7 or even win10 weren't bad neighbors to visit from time to time. But win11 became a weird new-trend copycat with even more bloat.
- fracus 4mo ago
  Same for me. Possibly longer. I just never think about Windows anymore. I think it helps these days that "programs" aren't so much a thing anymore. A lot of what used to be an OS program is now a free online service.. like email, word processing, chats, multimedia, etc..
fho 4mo ago
I have some fond memories of getting into computers around 2000. Building PCs, installing Windows, re-installing Windows ever so often. At some point Windows just crashed and couldn't be brought back to life, straight up refused to be installed on that disk again. (Funfact: the crash happened while playing some opensource sci-fi game... Produced by Microsoft) I had a Gentoo Linux partition back then thanks to a friend from school and used that for everything from that point on. Interestingly I never really had major issues. Running Warcraft 3 on Gentoo, writing my thesis (theseses actually) on Ubuntu and later switching to Arch Linux just worked. I still remember switching to Gnome 3 (from KDE) and being impressed by how fast the Shell felt. ... Fast forward to two years ago and I am forced to use Windows for the first time in 20+ years, in a locked down corporate setting nonetheless. ... what a hot mess :-)
PeterStuer 4mo ago
I found AI (Claude) to be extremely effective in setting up, managing and maintainimg Linux, just like it was in managimg Windows for those of us incapable of memorizing 1.000's of Powershell commands.
jjav 4mo ago
> It has been polished and ready since at least 2019. Linux has been a fine desktop since almost its beginning. My first work-issued laptop was in 1994, running Linux. Using a PCMCIA modem to connect to the internet via dialup. Worked perfect. Every year since then (that's 32 years now) I've had Linux desktop(s) and laptop(s) and it all works fine. If one looks for excuses, excuses can be found, but it has worked fine since the beginning.
Markoff 4mo ago
get back to me when you will be able to install easily Chinese keyboard/input into Linux as you can with Windows and when you will be easily switch keyboards with alt+left shift, I was setting up computers with Linux and it's major PITA for such basic thing, same with reassigning right alt and windows menu keys to different buttons (Home/End) on laptop
Borborygymus 3mo ago
All Operating Systems suck. Linux sucks less for things I care about, and has done for a long time - much longer than 7 years for my purposes. I too am required to use a Windows machine for work, which seems to get worse with every release. They even ruined notepad.exe. The bloat is unavoidable. The new laptop I got one year ago that seemed more than enough when new, is now struggling under the bloat. It takes me in excess of 10 minutes to log in, connect VPN, start teams, outlook and putty in a citrix session. Madness!

rwyinuse 4mo ago

I agree. Sometimes one needs Windows for some legacy software, but for 99% of use cases Linux works, is faster and respects your privacy more.

justsomehnguy 4mo ago

My favourite part of these success stories when Nautilus can,t replicate some functionality which Windows has since forever, eg copy-pasting tex and files across 3 RDP sessions deep. Sure, someone who uses their computer as a glorified SSH terminal with an occasional Google.Docs edition wouldn't see a problem, but I, who works everyday - do.

kaladin-jasnah 4mo ago
It's reductive to say that people who aren't "copy-pasting tex and files across 3 RDP sessions deep" are not "working everyday." While Windows fits your use case, some people do use SSH for their real work as well, even if it is simpler.
- tracker1 4mo ago
  Hell, VS Code + Remote SSH is pretty freaking awesome.. edit locally run remote. The integrated terminal pretty much makes this as smooth an experience as working locally.
- justsomehnguy 3mo ago
  > some people do use SSH for their real work as well Somehow all that 'real work' boils down to configuring servers. Most people don't configure servers 24/7 or even 8/5. They need to work with files of different formats and with different apps. Now tell me, how would you use SSH (not SSH tunneling, lol) to loot at some .jpegs to decide to what would be used in somewhere.
grebc 4mo ago
The only people who I’ve ever known to use tex are honours students & academics. Comedy gold saying that’s work.
- hdgvhicv 4mo ago
  I used latex on occasion for about a decade after graduation, but now it’s only my CV I use, and I’m getting rusty. Markdown is far more covienient. Never used Tex specifically.
- justsomehnguy 3mo ago
  Comedy gold is what it didn't occur to you what that was a typo in my comment. Now go consistently copy-paste text (at least) and files over your VNC connection.
deleted 4mo ago

tyre 4mo ago

Have you tried a Mac? Apple silicon is fantastic, build quality is the best on the market, you're still running a unix OS, and there's a huge community of developers + companies making things work.

modriano 4mo ago
Yeah, and I'm a big fan of the the hardware. I bought a refurbished MacBook Air in 2022 (M1 or M2, I don't recall) to try it on and see how I liked it. I mainly used it as a thin client to ssh to my homelab, but it was far and away the best laptop hardware on the market and I loved the battery life. I found that I couldn't use it with two (non-duplicating) external monitors, so I considered the test a success, gave the MacBook Air to my wife, and bought a MacBook Pro (which I'm still using mainly as a thin client and ssh-ing to a Linux machine and working there; plug for Tailscale, it makes everything really nice and easy). I know it's silly to have a MacBook Pro just for the screen size, its ability to drive two external monitors, and the battery life Apple Silicon achieves. And I feel a bit rude not really learning much about the dev tools the community has made for MacOS. But it is just really nice hardware (I just wish it wasn't such a chore to configure my Macbook to have the same ctrl+c, ctrl+v keyboard shortcuts when using an external keyboard, but the hardware is sufficiently better than anything else on the market that I tolerate it).
- annzabelle 4mo ago
  Macs are even at a good price point compared to similar hardware these days, and don't seem to have the same level of planned obsolescence of windows laptops. A mac with homebrew and rectangle installed works well enough as a hobby development machine for me that I rarely feel the need to ssh into something else.
fsflover 4mo ago
Macs are on their way to enshittification, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075 Also, see this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

dachris 4mo ago

Pretty much the same here. A happy Ubuntu user for 4 years now. Here and there, there's still minor issues, but nothing a quick search or AI can't help you with. And we're hackers here after all.

techjamie 4mo ago
8 years here. Mint->Arch->NixOS. Basically zero Windows use in that time outside of niche needs.

raincole 4mo ago

> It has been polished and ready since at least 2019. Linux people said things like this in 2019 too. It's always "been improved a lot in the past few years" (not saying this statement can't be true.) At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely dependent on how much Microsoft fucked up.

RajT88 4mo ago
2026 is the year of Linux on the Desktop! > At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely dependent on how much Microsoft fucked up. Lifelong Windows user here. If you could get the kind of driver support you have with Windows for just whatever the fuck you have lying around, I'd probably use my Ubuntu laptop as more of a daily driver.
- tracker1 4mo ago
  I'm not really using anything too exotic... my hardware all works, and my printer has generally been without issue (HP Color Laser on ethernet) regardless of what I use to print from. For me, I switched when the start menu started showing internet ads as part of the results... I ran insiders for years, often joking that WSL was my favorite Linux distro... I love the new MS Terminal, and pretty happy with a lot of things. That said, there's far more that annoys me... it's too in your face trying to sell you additional software/services/features that frankly I find offensive from an OS. It's like built in malware ads. They might as well try to sell me an X10 camera in those popups, I'd feel just as irritated about it. I went from dual booting, to just Linux for my personal use a few years ago and been pretty happy. I'm not a gamer, and was already using Linux as my dev target for server software. It wasn't a big deal for me. Even the growing pains for Cosmic have been less annoying than some of the "features" of Windows.
- saltcured 4mo ago
  Not lifelong, but I've been using Linux since 1993. Through subconscious selective pressure, I only have things lying around that are useful with Linux. It's kind of liberating, to be able to ignore a huge amount of crap in the market because you can tell it is just some sort of delivery vector for proprietary Windows drivers and their dodgy installers.

sirwitti 4mo ago

Man, I just realized it's been 20 years for me. I vaguely remember sometime in 2006 that Windows Vista was inevitable and decided to switch to linux. I don't care about fussing around and just need a useful machine for work and fun. Linux is far from perfect for me but the amount of crap windows or macos throw at me when I have to use them is almost comical.

agumonkey 4mo ago
I moved long ago to use a fully legally free OS, but at that time, win7 or even win10 weren't bad neighbors to visit from time to time. But win11 became a weird new-trend copycat with even more bloat.
fracus 4mo ago
Same for me. Possibly longer. I just never think about Windows anymore. I think it helps these days that "programs" aren't so much a thing anymore. A lot of what used to be an OS program is now a free online service.. like email, word processing, chats, multimedia, etc..

fho 4mo ago

I have some fond memories of getting into computers around 2000. Building PCs, installing Windows, re-installing Windows ever so often. At some point Windows just crashed and couldn't be brought back to life, straight up refused to be installed on that disk again. (Funfact: the crash happened while playing some opensource sci-fi game... Produced by Microsoft) I had a Gentoo Linux partition back then thanks to a friend from school and used that for everything from that point on. Interestingly I never really had major issues. Running Warcraft 3 on Gentoo, writing my thesis (theseses actually) on Ubuntu and later switching to Arch Linux just worked. I still remember switching to Gnome 3 (from KDE) and being impressed by how fast the Shell felt. ... Fast forward to two years ago and I am forced to use Windows for the first time in 20+ years, in a locked down corporate setting nonetheless. ... what a hot mess :-)

PeterStuer 4mo ago

I found AI (Claude) to be extremely effective in setting up, managing and maintainimg Linux, just like it was in managimg Windows for those of us incapable of memorizing 1.000's of Powershell commands.

jjav 4mo ago

> It has been polished and ready since at least 2019. Linux has been a fine desktop since almost its beginning. My first work-issued laptop was in 1994, running Linux. Using a PCMCIA modem to connect to the internet via dialup. Worked perfect. Every year since then (that's 32 years now) I've had Linux desktop(s) and laptop(s) and it all works fine. If one looks for excuses, excuses can be found, but it has worked fine since the beginning.

Markoff 4mo ago

get back to me when you will be able to install easily Chinese keyboard/input into Linux as you can with Windows and when you will be easily switch keyboards with alt+left shift, I was setting up computers with Linux and it's major PITA for such basic thing, same with reassigning right alt and windows menu keys to different buttons (Home/End) on laptop

Borborygymus 3mo ago

All Operating Systems suck. Linux sucks less for things I care about, and has done for a long time - much longer than 7 years for my purposes. I too am required to use a Windows machine for work, which seems to get worse with every release. They even ruined notepad.exe. The bloat is unavoidable. The new laptop I got one year ago that seemed more than enough when new, is now struggling under the bloat. It takes me in excess of 10 minutes to log in, connect VPN, start teams, outlook and putty in a citrix session. Madness!