7 ms·

I never dual boot. It's a PITA with UEFI or not and has been since the dawn of time. It's Linux -or- Windows. UEFI is not a problem though - people need to stop

by bananas 13y ago

I never dual boot. It's a PITA with UEFI or not and has been since the dawn of time. It's Linux -or- Windows. UEFI is not a problem though - people need to stop badmouthing something they really don't understand. I settled on using Windows as a host OS[1] and use Linux on VMs because to be fair, Windows power management, suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support is miles better i.e. it actually works more than once. Oh and they really don't fuck up the kernel every 2 minutes like on Ubuntu and don't throw out buggy shit like Apple do. I used a 2011 MBP for the last 6 months or so however (with virtualbox) and I had to go back to an older and slower T400 as it was more reliable as well. So virtualbox on windows 7 it is. And it works really well. I'm pretty happy and I'm a picky as they come when it comes to hardware and software. On my desktop (a Dell T3500 with piles of RAM), it's 8.1 with Hyper-V with Linux in it as that works pretty damn well too. Is suspect the problem here is users rather than hardware and vendors. [1] On my Lenovo T400.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
I also find dual boot painful. On my old machine I switched main OS several times (back and forth from Windows to Linux). I couldn't dual-boot because it just wouldn't be fun. There's no real way to share data properly between the two OSes, I wouldn't have the exact same set of available apps, etc. Now I have a MacBook with OS X. It combines the things I want from Windows and Linux, so I have no need to change OS. If I really need Linux or Windows for something, hardware virtualisation makes things easy.
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  A FAT32 partition doesn't do it for you? That's where I have all my music.
  - flogic 13y ago
    That helps but invariably you want to use both OS's at the same time. It sucks to have to reboot every time you want to shift data about. Much easier to have both machines running at the same time. VM's also have tools for the guest to share clipboards.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
    FAT32 does not support file permissions.
johnchristopher 13y ago
Are you using any desktop environment with the Linux VMs you run ?
- bananas 13y ago
  No. I run windows as a desktop. I wouldn't run any Unix derivative as a desktop - they've all been horrible to me (that includes OSX). Server-side though, it wins a lot of the time.
  - diminish 13y ago
    windows as a desktop? you reminded me of that torture :) all installers and updaters popping out in front of you, taskbar icons filling up for no reason, quickly degrading file system/launch performance, no package management, no workspace or tiling window managers, no sane ruby, python dev environments.. i gave up dual boot long time ago, and erase completely any remnants of windows. when i need windows (seldom), i open it on aws.
    - bananas 13y ago
      No installers and updaters popping up for me (other than the usual windows update one just like OSX/Ubuntu), tray has 6 icons in it (less than my Mac's bar at the top right), the install is 2 years old - no degradation, package manager - nope never I mean we don't use MSI's and MSU packages at all, alt-tab?, ruby I agree with, python is nice on windows (.chm help)... I can't open windows on AWS when someone digs up my Internet connection...
naner 13y ago
I've reached a similar conclusion but have wildly different experiences. I've never had issues setting up dual boot. It works fine and I can read/write NTFS if needed from Linux or just rely on Dropbox for simple stuff. The problem is it is too inconvenient to reboot so I usually just run Win 7 from a VM inside Linux. I also had a number of issues with Windows being glitchy (this persisted on three different Thinkpads with Windows 7 and, back in the day, Windows XP) and a pain to maintain, which is why I use Linux as my primary desktop OS. I also don't have a problem with power management and suspend on Linux, though I know it probably isn't as good as Windows. I don't use hibernate so I'm not sure if it is awful. For my next PC upgrade I'm not getting a laptop, however, since I hardly ever travel with it... I like OSX fine enough, too, but I rely on a lot of Linux tools so I have no real reason to have an OSX machine.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  What Linux tools that you use can you not get for OS X?
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    Not the parent commenter, but for me Apt-get is irreplaceable, as is the ability to apt-get source any package on the system.
    - zht 13y ago
      have you tried using brew?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
      Homebrew or MacPorts? I'm using the former and it works pretty well for me. Though I wish either of those would use apt-get like Fink did.
    - wyager 13y ago
      Homebrew always builds from source. I have different machines running different linux distros, so I'm familiar with all the popular package managers (apt-get, yum, pacman), and I must say, Homebrew is really my favorite.
wyager 13y ago
> Oh and they really don't fuck up the kernel every 2 minutes like on Ubuntu and don't throw out buggy shit like Apple do. It seems my experience with computers has been radically different from yours. The only kernel I've ever had problems with is the NT kernel, and one of the reasons I stick with Apple portables is that they're generally the least buggy devices I can find.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  Apple's been getting slightly worse of late, though. They're spreading themselves too thin.
bite 13y ago
I've been using GNU/Linux as my only OS for years, and honestly, I have never had any issues with it; of course I may have other use cases than you, I don't play video games or anything - but when working on a project, that for instance relies on gstreamer, it's better to use Linux natively. VM's have always been a pain for me, they're slow, IO issues, and you'd waste more battery having to run a VM anyway, so the trade off doesn't make sense. Also, how could you say the problem is from users? Why should installing another OS be so difficult? You should give GNU/Linux another try, and try fixing your kernel panics rather than giving up and switching to windows.
- zanny 13y ago
  One issue though is that people consistently try Linux on a computer built for Windows and say "what the hell, it doesn't work out of the box flawlessly, fuck this". If you really want to try Linux, you need to buy a computer designed to run it, or at least vet your hardware before a purchase. I haven't bought a computer with a Windows license attached in over a decade because that isn't buying a Linux capable machine - its buying a Windows machine you might be able to run Linux on. My most recent system was a build I made last year and I vetted every part for LInux support (and boy, did it take a while to verify Asus z87 motherboards had a working EFI that could boot a linux kernel, albeit they have a busted EFI shell and can only have one EFI boot table entry).
  - Rizz 13y ago
    Why should I vet my system before buying it? I've seen Linux advertised as "it runs on everything" plenty of times, and for well over a decade. It's rare to see someone who evangelizes Linux to say that hardware support on Linux is inadequate for a non-technical user to just make the switch. If that is indeed the case I think it would be tremendously important to fix that.
    - yc-kjh 13y ago
      It used to be the case that Linux just ran on everything, until Microsoft started throwing their monopoly weight around again, and insisting upon UEFI (better called "Restricted Boot"). http://www.FSF.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot http://www.FSF.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot http://TechRights.org/wiki/index.php/UEFI http://TechRights.org/wiki/index.php/UEFI
ithinkso 13y ago
I've been using linux as my desktop OS for more that 8 years. It has ups and downs but there is no comparison in user experience to windows and thats why I have it changed. That being said, drivers in linux are mostly painful, for instance I've spent several days and nights fighting with this ridiculous bluetooth stack and I'm still nowhere to go. It is not only linux fault because they are doing wonderful job but hardware manufacturers just don't give a shit. Almost every piece of hardware out there has 'Compatible with Windows XP,Vista,7,8!' and that's it...
crististm 13y ago
You do know that there is life beyond Linux and Windows, do you?
unsignedint 13y ago
> suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support is miles better While it is not apple to apple reason, this part is why I actually moved away from Windows -- yes, resume and hibernate (mostly) works on Windows, but with a great pain of waiting forever for that process to complete.
- bananas 13y ago
  I have an SSD. Windows resume from hibernate in about 8 seconds. Complete cold start takes 12 seconds (less than OSX). That's windows 7. On windows 8.1 it's even faster.
  - unsignedint 13y ago
    Well, I don't have SSD, but same machine Linux was a way better experience (at least for what I had) -- and then there was this culprit of it taking forever to scan datastore.edb, too after recovery.
donniezazen 13y ago
Generalization that Windows has better "power management, suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support" is grossly wrong. Noob friendly Linux distributions like Ubuntu provide excellent support of all the points you mention.
- bananas 13y ago
  They really don't. Suspend doesn't always wake up all devices, different kernel releases break hibernate completely. Also Ubuntu just disabled hibernate for a vast chunk of time. It's never worked properly. And don't get me started on all the playing around you have to do with powertop to get usable battery life. And that is Ubuntu (12.04 LTS) noob friendly edition on standard Intel Centrino hardware.
  - girvo 13y ago
    Hibernate is a good point. But on my Samsung Series 5 ultrabook, Ubuntu 13.04 got better battery life, out of the box, than Windows 8 did.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  So maybe you can explain to me why Ubuntu 12.04 LTS hangs on hibernate on my Asus Netbook.
  - donniezazen 13y ago
    Yeah, it doesn't work for me, so it must not work for everyone.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      Quote: > Noob friendly Linux distributions like Ubuntu provide excellent support of all the points you mention.
    - renata 13y ago
      When was the last time you heard a Windows user complain that hibernate hung for them every time?
pjmlp 13y ago
Same here. I have a small Asus netbook for traveling with Ubuntu LTS, bought from Amazon with Linux already installed. My home system, a more beefy laptop, has Windows with VMWare for Linux related stuff. Since 1995, my first Linux experience, there are things that hardly have changed in terms of hardware support. My latest issue is trying to make MTP support work properly.

by bananas 13y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago

I also find dual boot painful. On my old machine I switched main OS several times (back and forth from Windows to Linux). I couldn't dual-boot because it just wouldn't be fun. There's no real way to share data properly between the two OSes, I wouldn't have the exact same set of available apps, etc. Now I have a MacBook with OS X. It combines the things I want from Windows and Linux, so I have no need to change OS. If I really need Linux or Windows for something, hardware virtualisation makes things easy.

andrewflnr 13y ago
A FAT32 partition doesn't do it for you? That's where I have all my music.
- flogic 13y ago
  That helps but invariably you want to use both OS's at the same time. It sucks to have to reboot every time you want to shift data about. Much easier to have both machines running at the same time. VM's also have tools for the guest to share clipboards.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  FAT32 does not support file permissions.

johnchristopher 13y ago

Are you using any desktop environment with the Linux VMs you run ?

bananas 13y ago
No. I run windows as a desktop. I wouldn't run any Unix derivative as a desktop - they've all been horrible to me (that includes OSX). Server-side though, it wins a lot of the time.
- diminish 13y ago
  windows as a desktop? you reminded me of that torture :) all installers and updaters popping out in front of you, taskbar icons filling up for no reason, quickly degrading file system/launch performance, no package management, no workspace or tiling window managers, no sane ruby, python dev environments.. i gave up dual boot long time ago, and erase completely any remnants of windows. when i need windows (seldom), i open it on aws.
  - bananas 13y ago
    No installers and updaters popping up for me (other than the usual windows update one just like OSX/Ubuntu), tray has 6 icons in it (less than my Mac's bar at the top right), the install is 2 years old - no degradation, package manager - nope never I mean we don't use MSI's and MSU packages at all, alt-tab?, ruby I agree with, python is nice on windows (.chm help)... I can't open windows on AWS when someone digs up my Internet connection...

naner 13y ago

I've reached a similar conclusion but have wildly different experiences. I've never had issues setting up dual boot. It works fine and I can read/write NTFS if needed from Linux or just rely on Dropbox for simple stuff. The problem is it is too inconvenient to reboot so I usually just run Win 7 from a VM inside Linux. I also had a number of issues with Windows being glitchy (this persisted on three different Thinkpads with Windows 7 and, back in the day, Windows XP) and a pain to maintain, which is why I use Linux as my primary desktop OS. I also don't have a problem with power management and suspend on Linux, though I know it probably isn't as good as Windows. I don't use hibernate so I'm not sure if it is awful. For my next PC upgrade I'm not getting a laptop, however, since I hardly ever travel with it... I like OSX fine enough, too, but I rely on a lot of Linux tools so I have no real reason to have an OSX machine.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
What Linux tools that you use can you not get for OS X?
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Not the parent commenter, but for me Apt-get is irreplaceable, as is the ability to apt-get source any package on the system.
  - zht 13y ago
    have you tried using brew?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
    Homebrew or MacPorts? I'm using the former and it works pretty well for me. Though I wish either of those would use apt-get like Fink did.
  - wyager 13y ago
    Homebrew always builds from source. I have different machines running different linux distros, so I'm familiar with all the popular package managers (apt-get, yum, pacman), and I must say, Homebrew is really my favorite.

wyager 13y ago

> Oh and they really don't fuck up the kernel every 2 minutes like on Ubuntu and don't throw out buggy shit like Apple do. It seems my experience with computers has been radically different from yours. The only kernel I've ever had problems with is the NT kernel, and one of the reasons I stick with Apple portables is that they're generally the least buggy devices I can find.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
Apple's been getting slightly worse of late, though. They're spreading themselves too thin.

bite 13y ago

I've been using GNU/Linux as my only OS for years, and honestly, I have never had any issues with it; of course I may have other use cases than you, I don't play video games or anything - but when working on a project, that for instance relies on gstreamer, it's better to use Linux natively. VM's have always been a pain for me, they're slow, IO issues, and you'd waste more battery having to run a VM anyway, so the trade off doesn't make sense. Also, how could you say the problem is from users? Why should installing another OS be so difficult? You should give GNU/Linux another try, and try fixing your kernel panics rather than giving up and switching to windows.

zanny 13y ago
One issue though is that people consistently try Linux on a computer built for Windows and say "what the hell, it doesn't work out of the box flawlessly, fuck this". If you really want to try Linux, you need to buy a computer designed to run it, or at least vet your hardware before a purchase. I haven't bought a computer with a Windows license attached in over a decade because that isn't buying a Linux capable machine - its buying a Windows machine you might be able to run Linux on. My most recent system was a build I made last year and I vetted every part for LInux support (and boy, did it take a while to verify Asus z87 motherboards had a working EFI that could boot a linux kernel, albeit they have a busted EFI shell and can only have one EFI boot table entry).
- Rizz 13y ago
  Why should I vet my system before buying it? I've seen Linux advertised as "it runs on everything" plenty of times, and for well over a decade. It's rare to see someone who evangelizes Linux to say that hardware support on Linux is inadequate for a non-technical user to just make the switch. If that is indeed the case I think it would be tremendously important to fix that.
  - yc-kjh 13y ago
    It used to be the case that Linux just ran on everything, until Microsoft started throwing their monopoly weight around again, and insisting upon UEFI (better called "Restricted Boot"). http://www.FSF.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot http://www.FSF.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot http://TechRights.org/wiki/index.php/UEFI http://TechRights.org/wiki/index.php/UEFI

ithinkso 13y ago

I've been using linux as my desktop OS for more that 8 years. It has ups and downs but there is no comparison in user experience to windows and thats why I have it changed. That being said, drivers in linux are mostly painful, for instance I've spent several days and nights fighting with this ridiculous bluetooth stack and I'm still nowhere to go. It is not only linux fault because they are doing wonderful job but hardware manufacturers just don't give a shit. Almost every piece of hardware out there has 'Compatible with Windows XP,Vista,7,8!' and that's it...

crististm 13y ago

You do know that there is life beyond Linux and Windows, do you?

unsignedint 13y ago

> suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support is miles better While it is not apple to apple reason, this part is why I actually moved away from Windows -- yes, resume and hibernate (mostly) works on Windows, but with a great pain of waiting forever for that process to complete.

bananas 13y ago
I have an SSD. Windows resume from hibernate in about 8 seconds. Complete cold start takes 12 seconds (less than OSX). That's windows 7. On windows 8.1 it's even faster.
- unsignedint 13y ago
  Well, I don't have SSD, but same machine Linux was a way better experience (at least for what I had) -- and then there was this culprit of it taking forever to scan datastore.edb, too after recovery.

donniezazen 13y ago

Generalization that Windows has better "power management, suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support" is grossly wrong. Noob friendly Linux distributions like Ubuntu provide excellent support of all the points you mention.

bananas 13y ago
They really don't. Suspend doesn't always wake up all devices, different kernel releases break hibernate completely. Also Ubuntu just disabled hibernate for a vast chunk of time. It's never worked properly. And don't get me started on all the playing around you have to do with powertop to get usable battery life. And that is Ubuntu (12.04 LTS) noob friendly edition on standard Intel Centrino hardware.
- girvo 13y ago
  Hibernate is a good point. But on my Samsung Series 5 ultrabook, Ubuntu 13.04 got better battery life, out of the box, than Windows 8 did.
pjmlp 13y ago
So maybe you can explain to me why Ubuntu 12.04 LTS hangs on hibernate on my Asus Netbook.
- donniezazen 13y ago
  Yeah, it doesn't work for me, so it must not work for everyone.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Quote: > Noob friendly Linux distributions like Ubuntu provide excellent support of all the points you mention.
  - renata 13y ago
    When was the last time you heard a Windows user complain that hibernate hung for them every time?

pjmlp 13y ago

Same here. I have a small Asus netbook for traveling with Ubuntu LTS, bought from Amazon with Linux already installed. My home system, a more beefy laptop, has Windows with VMWare for Linux related stuff. Since 1995, my first Linux experience, there are things that hardly have changed in terms of hardware support. My latest issue is trying to make MTP support work properly.