Overall, everything seems to "just work" at least as well as on MacOS and is not quite (for me) as endlessly frustrating as Windows. Gaming has also been effortless and honestly just the most delightful surprise about the whole thing. I can write code AND play games... on the same machine... and it's running Linux?! I would've lost that bet ten years ago.
I was/am totally prepared to use GPU pass-through to a Windows VM to get native gaming performance or work around bugs-- but I haven't needed to.
I'm using PopOS but am pretty indifferent toward the distro I use. I honestly got it confused for different distro, but it was still Debian/Ubuntu based so I'm chill (ha).
Really, most modern Linux distros are pretty god damn nice. It's a little weird to even think about dialing in the aesthetic more to my liking coming from the world of MacOS. But I've found themes like Nord (https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1267246/) provide some visual familiarity while maintaining their own unique aesthetic qualities.
Making apps, or interacting with the OS, is absurdly easy using GTK and Python vs anything Microsoft or Apple have to offer. I have the same effective level of support which is to say none-at-all or via the community of volunteers. I can't ever imagine calling Microsoft or Apple for meaningful help (roflcoptr and we say we pay for support).
Linux is rocking the desktop hard, if you haven't tried it in a few years or just maintain a Windows installation to play games-- seriously give it a try. It's wonderful.
I agree, and what really sold me was Plasma Desktop, as someone that couldn't stand KDE 3 & 4. It used to be that GNOME was the desktop environment you could turn into a Windows or macOS clone, but it looks like that switched with GNOME 3 and KDE 5.
I have Plasma Desktop set up[1] to take advantage of my macOS muscle memory when it comes to the GUI and keyboard short cuts, and I couldn't imagine going back.
> Linux is rocking the desktop hard, if you haven't tried it in a few years or just maintain a Windows installation to play games-- seriously give it a try. It's wonderful.
It's not just developers or power users that Linux shines for, either. I'm of the opinion that if ChromeOS would suit a person's needs, so would a polished distribution like Ubuntu along with a browser like Firefox or Chrome. Ubuntu has an app store-like interface to install Zoom, Slack, and other work apps.
This has been my experience recently as well. For laptops at least, as long as you buy a system with known good Linux support, the vast majority of the common complaints I see are not really valid.
If you need macOS or Windows to run a specific application exclusive to that platform, great. If your software all runs on Linux, you can gain a lot of freedom and privacy for little effort these days.
I have spent 95% of my time in Linux, and only get into Windows for a game or two that I haven't bothered to figure out a Windows VM setup for.
Definitely recommend Linux for those looking for dev machine alternatives to a Mac. There are certain finiticky things when setting up, and it doesn't have the immense MacOS polish, but I would say it's 80-90% of the way there to a good, intuitive dev machine that gives you a very similar experience to a Mac programming setup.
Note, I'm referring to a desktop setup, no idea about how it works with laptop hardware and I have a MBP for my portable needs.
My external monitors periodically stop working due to an NVIDIA driver bug.
Have you had any similar issues?
I find community support for linux much much better (askubuntu, superuser and numerous blogs rather than official ms forums). Not sure if this is because I am software developer and am used to stackoverflow-like kind of support or windows "community support" is a mess.
The Microsoft issue was I’d bought a laptop which came with an Office trial, but wanted to enable Office using a license I bought through work. It required uninstalling the trial version, running a power shell command line tool to clean it up, then install the required SKU of Office. The MS rep was also very knowledgeable, logged on remotely with my permission and I watched the whole process. It took a while, but the engineer knew exactly what to do and did a great job.
That was the first time I’d had phone support from Apple or Microsoft. I wasn’t too surprised at Apple, I’ve had great support from the stores before so that extending that to over the phone wasn’t too much of a stretch. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed and quality of the support from Microsoft though, I really couldn’t have asked for more. It’s just brain bindingly ridiculous that getting their software, that’s supposedly already on the blasted machine to actually work took such a torturous set of steps to perform.
I suppose that’s all incidental to the thread, but anyway. The things that annoy me about Linux are the lack of system upgrade options, you basically have to reinstall from scratch every time, and the awkwardness of system backups. I’m spoiled by a Time Machine I suppose, it’s the thing I miss the most on Windows as well.
[EDIT - Looks like I'm missing some options on keeping Linux up to date, thanks for the tips]
I strongly doubt Python+GTK is easier option compared to WinForms/WPF. Maybe installing IDE is blocker for you?
But I can't resist using macOS at this point and their hardware.
I'd like to see someone run Linux on the new M1 hardware.
As a programmer, I cannot recall being hindered by file name conventions, un-resizeable dialog boxes, bug trackers etc., as much I have been inconvenienced on linux by poor driver support, and regularly dropping to command line for configuring my system.
As a gamer, well, there is no competition for me, really.
As your average user, I find the user interface on windows nicer and see more compatible programs.
If there is anything I absolutely have to have linux for, I can just use a raspberry pi, a cloud server etc.
# Linux is more stable and reliable.
I've reinstalled Windows so many times, never reinstalled Linux. System is separate from the user, I can remove all user configurations and it would work like new.
# Linux is more secure and private.
I have so many packages, they are free and safe. I've tried Windows recently, have to install software from the web. It is scary.
No telemetry by default. I send package statistics, have install it myself:
# pacman -S pkgstats
# Linux is faster and less bloatedThere are many communities, some run Destkop Environments, I run quite minimal setup, boot to graphical environment takes 100MB RAM. Old netbook is router/NAS, 1GB is plenty.
# Linux is more flexible and customizable.
Primary reason I've switched. So many options, it is awesome! GNOME, KDE, XFCE, OpenBox, wmii, dwm, xmonad. Entire distributions — Ubuntu, Arch, Nix and many more.
# Linux gives you more control over your computer.
There was liberating feeling — my computer is just a hardware. Never felt it with Windows, it always had its own way. You know, some people kick their computers in rage. That has gone.
Linux has a great driver support for supported hardware, it is like complaining about hackintosh. Windows adopting command line and package management tools. Yes, had to stop gaming, that's changing with Proton. I find Windows UI atrocious, my desktop for comparison:
http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png
multiple workspaces, no decorations, not even browser scroll bar. I'd like to have universal solution for sticky headers.
And, maybe, the most valuable — Linux is getting better while Windows and macOS getting worse. Telemetry, advertisement, walled garden, executable restrictions, firewall bypass, proprietary hardware — scandal after scandal. While on the Linux side — AMD GPU, Wayland, Flatpak, Steam Proton, web applications, better than ever laptops support.
In 2018 I switched to Arch Linux at home because I heard "Linux has less games". Before that I used Linux exclusively at work. To test it out I installed it on a 32GB flash drive so that I don't have the urge to install games when I'm space limited. It worked for the first 3 months. Then I got a new SSD and installed it there. A few days later proton came out and I ended up clocking in 600 hours in Warframe. The idea that linux has "no games" is an urban myth. I got scammed by Windows users.
On Linux? Its yours. Change anything you want.
All arguments of convenience go out the window when you are not in control.
I've really never understood this complaint. "oh why do I have to use a standardized set of abstractions for configuration instead of bizarre bespoke GUIs that are different for every piece of software."
I personally use Linux and iOS. My main pain point isn’t Linux but apple lacking proper API to access iCloud services from Linux, or anything than Apple OSes really. I try not to spend too much time "expecting".
Ubuntu's kind of lost its way recently though (snaps/apt mess, went a tad bit early with pushing Wayland as default). The derivatives like Mint, Manjaro, PopOS and Zorin seem to be the way to go for the average user.
The one thing that might trip you up is (these days rare) hardware incompatibilities. Dell and Lenovo (the only personal experience I have) are great when it comes to laptops. For integrated GPU, Intel Just Works; nVidia and AMD can occasionally require a bit of hassle depending on chipset and kernel. Discrete GPUs I don't have any recent experience but the word on the street seems to be that if you're fine with proprietary drivers both nVidia and AMD/ATI works flawlessly while FOSS drivers can be hit or miss.
Please expand on this gem. Bear in mind that all drivers in Linux are delivered by the kernel. I'll grant you that not everything is golden in Linux land but the sheer pain of finding and updating drivers in Windows is an order of magnitude worse than in Linux.
You get them out of the box in Linux, in Windows you don't.
What sort of Window Manager are you having problems with? Why not try another one?
Yes, especially the ads, they're so colorful and shiny !
/s>
Back when I was using linux 2010s or so, it had serious issues with drivers and overheating. Config files would break unexpectedly and I found myself spending a lot of time in IRC channels trying to fix stuff.
At uni they were pushing us to use Linux and I think that made a lot of sense. People would learn bash effectively and learn some lower level bare stuff as well.
A lot of time "linux is free if your time has no value" made a lot of sense.
Nowadays, I hear some good news about Linux though I would never switch to it as a main OS.
> dropping to command line for configuring my system
Doesn't add up. You're a programmer, write a script if it bothers you?
> I find the user interface on windows nicer
Seriously though, expand on this. Interested in what you are comparing it to; Gnome, KDE, etc.
Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure.
Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates.
Linux distros have a better app store experience than Windows, plus most of whatever there is free without much if any risk.
Linux doesn't have any phone home telemetry type "features" built into the OS.
Linux user experience is much more customizable. There are a much greater variety of tools at your disposal to customize how you want your desktop to look and operate.
Linux is free.
This is very much debatable. What's true however is that if your HW is not supported by at least Windows 8.1 you're SoL.
> Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier.
I haven't observed any slow downs in Windows 10 for ages. As for "less memory and CPU cycles" it's just outright false. Windows offers much better hardware acceleration for everything: display rendering, video encoding and decoding, RDP (VNC in X11/Wayland taxes the CPU quite a lot and forget about effectively streaming video via VNC), etc. Linux is quite horrible in this regard.
> Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure.
Unless you're obsessed with downloading software illegally, it's not an issue in Windows either. I don't remember the last time I had to deal with malware for my +20 of friends using it.
> Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates.
Windows updates are very much in your face.
> Linux distros have a better app store experience than Windows, plus most of whatever there is free without much if any risk.
Except there's 100 times more software in Windows.
> Linux doesn't have any phone home telemetry type "features" built into the OS.
No one has ever proven Microsoft accesses or downloads any of your files, or uses telemetry data to find out what applications you're running.
> Linux user experience is much more customizable. There are a much greater variety of tools at your disposal to customize how you want your desktop to look and operate.
This one is true however with a lot of choice comes a lot of confusion and doubt.
> Linux is free.
Windows 10 OEM license can be bought for as little as $10. This is 100% irrelevant nowadays.
Some of the Linux alternatives are good, but they still aren't as good as Adobe. I still do quite a bit of JS development and some app development on my older Linux rig, but I just wish at some point Adobe will pull their heads out and support Linux. I remember in several threads on the Adobe forums, the attitude towards Linux users was pretty offensive. Their argument was all the Linux users would want Adobe products to be free and open source and its not something they could do and still support all the Apple and MS people "who actually pay for their products".
It pissed me off enough where I did give it a full go on Linux with Gimp Shop and some other alternative open source alternatives, but it just wasn't the same - which really bummed me out.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that Adobe's Creative Cloud app is a total resource hog as well. Not to mention any of their programs you run will quickly eat up to a gig or more of your resources.
2. Linux servers are targeted and breached. Linux desktop share is too small to be worth it (yet).
3. Windows updates aren't stealthy for a considerable time.
4. That's a matter of opinion.
5. Some distros do, but it's opt-in. Transparency is better on the Linux side too. I agree on this point.
6. You are tempted to spend time on customization with unclear objective benefits.
7. Developers don't owe you anything.
In my opinion it's flawed logic _if_ you wanted to say that "Linux is more secure because windows has more malware"
>Linux user experience is much more customizable.
In what way? desktop? kernel tweaks?
But I still run Windows because the only really good video editor on Linux (Davinci Resolve) is really unstable there with the hardware I have, the USB audio interface I use has all sorts of issues on Linux and not all games run well on Linux.
Basically what it boils down to is I've been one of those folks who builds their computers from parts for 20+ years with the goal of using 1 computer for everything (dev, video editing, gaming, etc.). I'm afraid Linux isn't ready for such users yet if you don't want to dual boot or set up a Windows 10 guest VM with a GPU pass-through.
If I didn't care about gaming or video editing and only focused on pure software development I would switch in a heart beat.
And don’t even start with hibernate or even just waking up. I’ve never rebooted a laptop so many times.
And what’s the deal with flatpak? A screen shot app is not 700mb? WTF?
Linux runs better on both new and older hardware. Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier.
Simply untrue. It could be true for some distros, some driver versions and some hardware... but if you consider everything, Windows runs better than Linux. Mostly because most hardware is designed to run well on Windows. The Linux versions are either an afterthought or built and maintained by third-party.
Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates.
Windows updates aren't stealthy and they can be disabled. If you really don't want an update, it is MUCH MORE straightforward to avoid installing the optional update in Windows than it is for Linux distros.
* Linux distros have a better app store experience than Windows, plus most of whatever there is free without much if any risk.
Which Linux distro has a better App Store than Windows? Since Microsoft launched the Windows App Store, it is the best App Store in any non-macOS computers.
Linux doesn't have any phone home telemetry type "features" built into the OS.
Some distros do. Ubuntu has it, for example.
Linux user experience is much more customizable. There are a much greater variety of tools at your disposal to customize how you want your desktop to look and operate.
This is true. However, this has been a problem, which is why something like Ubuntu which has good defaults which they stick to has been so much successful than anything else.
Linux is free.
Sure! Many things are. That's not always a good reason to use it.
Unless "hardware" is many laptops or all tablets, which effectively can't run Linux (unless Android etc.)
1. Zero problems with sleep and resume.
2. Zero problems with bluetooth or wireless. Please recommend what vendors work well here.
3. Minimal issues with Slack or Teams.
4. Error free desktop environment.
5. Updates do not break stuff leading to Google searches on how to solve it.Wait, Linux doesn't prevent doing stupid things, quite the opposite.
Unlike macOS, You can disable ALL telemetry in under 30 seconds on Windows. There is actually even a service named "User Experience and Telemetry" that you can conveniently stop and disable in a number of ways.
That's just a stereotype, and that's not true. I keep using Windows (hardened and almost isolated Parallels instance of Windows 7), because Linux has serious lack of software I need.
I need fully functional MS Office, including API bindings for data import to Excel, and no, Libre Office Calc does not have even 20% of features I need. Of course, I need 3rd party addons, like Grammarly for MS Office.
I need Enterprise Architect, modeling software of that class simply does not exist on Linux.
I need Photoshop (I have one since old good times when Adobe offered lifetime license), I use it occasionally and not 100% effective, but nope, there are no functional open-source alternatives for Linux with the same comfort of use.
People don't use Linux not because it is not pre-installed, they don't use it because it's a totally foreign ecosystem. Doing a fully functional ports of software people use under Windows would've probably moved 1% share of Linux on desktops, but it does not happen, partly because open-sourse software designers do not recognize the problem, partly because it's an immense amount of work, impossible without huge financial and human investments with unclear outcome.
I don't even say about technical issues, like total lack of backward compatibility, it's mostly a headache for techies like us.
A counter-example doesn't disprove a general point.
You're describing a strong tie-in in your work environment to specific commercial software articles that are unavailable on Linux. This does not characterize most people (or even a large enough minority).
Now, you could make the argument that people interact with others using MS-Office documents, and that support for them in LibreOffice is insufficient. One could argue this both ways (as support has improved over the years and is by now passable IMHO), but that's not the same as what you're using.
In general, it _is_ true that people use the Operation System that came installed on their system. Most people are unable, or feel unable, to install an OS themselves and would not feel comfortable taking responsibility for choosing a different OS for their computing. Most do not even see this as a choice they are making.
Finally, the "foreign ecosystem" argument is circular. If you get a computer preinstalled with some operating system, and you learn how to use that, than other systems seem foreign. Few people get a Mac as a present then try to install Windows on it because it's a "foreign ecosystem"
> Doing a fully functional ports of software people use under Windows would've
It's the commercial companies which sell this kind of software that can port it.
I consider myself a geek, a fairly advanced user of software and a software developer.
I have been trying different versions of Linux since the Mandrake Linux times, so about what, 20 years?
I always come back to Windows, which from Windows 2000 has been getting better and better. Of course there have been sh*t moments like Windows Vista and Windows 8, but Windows 2k, XP, 7, and now 10 (enterprise version), have always been good to me.
I can use Linux for sure, and I appreciate the effort the community does, however, for my use case, I don't see the advantage of using Linux over Windows, and I find many disadvantages: missing software (office, adobe, although I have run it under wine), missing or not perfect drivers (energy efficiency is a problem even on thinkpads).
Again, I really like the effort, and if I must use it, I can, but I don't see the advantage.
Now, I use it on my dad's computer (he is 80), as it is much difficult for him to screw up than Windows.
- Photoshop : your lifetime license is not really lifetime, CS2 servers got shut down recently, Adobe will shut down those servers sooner or later. While you may not find it true for you, for the non professional Gimp is generally good enough. Also the Mac version of Photoshop while having some kinks even for professional use is pretty comparable, you don't need Windows given you are already using a macOS.
- Enterprise Architect: If your argument is nobody is investing in Linux desktop modelling apps it can be argued nobody is investing in desktop modelling apps today period whether in Windows or Linux or Mac .
Modelling applications on the web/mobile like Miro(just raised $100M+) or draw.io or many others have gained a lot of traction. Sharing and collaborating on the model has lot more value than few advanced features, Yes today Enterprise Architect has more features, however that is not going to last and these apps have a lot of functionality already that average users will not find them lacking even today.
- MS Office: Sharepoint/o365 is almost as good as desktop office for most common use cases and getting better lot faster than upgrades to Excel. Yes Excel is used for those million row sheets with gazillion circular dependent formulas, and it works pretty darn well for all that people throw at it. Sharepoint is improving, the use cases it is poor at handling will become smaller and smaller that procurement departments will start questioning desktop license budgets for Office apps.
On the whole barring some exceptions like gaming, graphics etc there are only few new active investments for desktop apps that are not just electron apps of web.
OS is becoming irrelevant for productivity apps outside of these sectors and legacy reasons. It is not big tech does not know that, Apple is dropping dual boot in the next gen chip and it is not like windows or linux cannot support ARM, the pace of OS development has slowed considerably, Windows is only do to incremental updates to 10, the cost and effort of doing a major release is no longer worth the returns.
That is not quite true. At least Visual Paradigm exists for Linux. I consider it to be even better than Enterprise Architect.
https://www.visual-paradigm.com/download/index.jsp?platform=...
No compatibility with Windows, hardly anyone changes OS. Have not heard much complains about MS Office, Photoshop or Enterprise Architect. People use browser 99% of the time.
Relatedly, Electron is a problem because desktop apps nowadays require a huge browser just to display a window, not because web apps are packaged in a browser to get slightly better desktop integration.
I can definitely understand people sticking to Windows though if they need gaming or Office.
I'm finding I keep getting pushed to Jupyter and just am not crazy about it.
* Horrible font rendering that makes me not even want to code
* Terrible application support
* Audio and touchpad support is noticeably superior on Windows
* Small things that you have to tinker with in order to get everything set up
But the most important thing is that I am just tired of tinkering. Nowadays I just want to open my computer and get on my programming job and have everything just work. MacOS seems to be a good compromise though (Application support and UNIX subsystem for programming)
All right, then I really need to ask: it took you 13 years of using Ubuntu unhappily before you decided to switch to Windows?
> Horrible font rendering that makes me not even want to code
I know every system does font rendering a bit differently, and what people like to see really seems to have a big subjective factor it. Personally, I've always had a preference to how fonts are rendered on, for example, Ubuntu compared to Windows 10, especially with 2x scaling on high-DPI displays, but I acknowledge everyone's different.
> But the most important thing is that I am just tired of tinkering. Nowadays I just want to open my computer and get on my programming job and have everything just work.
Not disagreeing with you on this point. However, when it comes to "tinkering", I find all the cloud-connected nonsense and "extras" that Windows comes with turned on and thrown in your face by default after an install a much bigger annoyance, and I often have to go digging through all kinds of settings windows to get a good deal of that turned off, and even then it's not always possible (see telemetry, for example). A new Windows 10 install is a lot more effort in "tinkering" with all the settings into some sane configuration than any Linux distro where you're not compiling your own kernel and/or packages (and maybe even then).
On Windows, I find the tinkering insufferable. No, windows, I don't want you to track me. New update? Do it all over again. Advertisements in the start menu? Ever update I have to disable that. Every time I try and fix something broken, Windows forces me to redo it again and again.
Then I got a bit sick of Apple, So I tried installing Linux on my macbook. Some things didn’t work like randomly opening the laptop and nothing appears on the screen.
It was ok, but I missed critical apps like, iTerm2, Tableplus, Nice email client like Mac Mail etc. (Today might be different to when I tried this 3 years ago)
Then WSL 1 came out and I thought i’ll try windows again, purchased a surface, but the UNIX features just wasn’t compatible with what I needed.
In the end I purchased a new Macbook Pro again.
WSL 2 might change things and I might end up back on Windows one day, but I really wish I could simply just use a Linux distro as a desktop daily driver, that’s my ultimate desire.
For now I use a Mac. For two reasons, It 99% of the time just works and great app support and it’s unix subsystem.
And yes, font rendering is horrible. I went out of my way to find bitmapped fonts for coding. And yes, trying to get audio mixing to work on Linux was just a waste of time.
My Win10 machine runs rock-solid, when I'm done for the day I put it to sleep, and resume my session the next day in under 10 seconds. Like 90% of my reboots (and it's like WEEKS in between) are due to updates.
I love being on Linux but I am sick of tinkering too. I make music and game on Windows and Dev on WSL2 with X11 forwarding to desktop, which is flawless.
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/06/better-font-rendering-in-linu...
you can choose between different system font rendering styles, including macos and windows
We all cried in 2016, 17, 18 when ms was patching too fast, releasing too fast, now they are steady pushing a semi-annual build with little problems. There will no windows 11 and because Linux is OOS, with no central model for support, Microsoft will continue to dominate the desktop space. It's just Windows now, not ubuntu, arch, mint, red hat, deb, gnu.
3 main gripes:
Cost - sure? MS doesn't really make money here it wouldn't cost much to ship windows to the planet for free. Forced updates - again 3 years ago yes big problem, last year still killing my nic drivers, future 3-5 years? Unlikely that we will even notice them, we are down to a monthly reboot.
Telemetry - not going away.
https://threatpost.com/google-yanks-106-malicious-chrome-ext...
For example, when I was into gaming in my younger years I was lucky to have access to a family computer rather than a gaming console. Because of this, I gained experience tinkering with config.sys and autoexec.bat in order to make my games run on limited memory, and later, learning how to add hardware like 3D accelerators for faster performance. If I had been stuck with a static console without any room for modification, I may have taken a less interesting career path as a result. I feel a similar lamentation when seeing kids with iPads, but feel hope when I see them tinkering with Minecraft :)
I'm a longtime Linux user and every time I have to do this on Windows I find the documentation poor, but it is possible to do things like load kernel modules (drivers), partition a drive, format a new NTFS filesystem, copy all the files over preserving special filesystem features, reinstall the bootloader, add required additional drivers, ensure the drive assignments are correct, etc. all from a command line prompt which you can pull up from the Windows 10 installer image. The process ends up being very similar to doing the same thing on Linux at a high level, just with different tools.
What Windows needs in this regard is something like the Arch Linux wiki.
Just in case it's useful to someone, here are some pointers:
To add critical (e.g. storage) drivers to a mounted Windows install (or image file within installers): dism
To modprobe a driver within the live environment: drvload
To rsync files over to a new filesystem preserving (almost?) all critical metadata: robocopy (use the latest Windows 10, older versions had trouble with stuff like directory junctions and symlinks; read the manual carefully to figure out what options to use)
To fix drive assignments (i.e. fstab): you actually just pull up regedit and edit the registry directly; you copy the (binary) drive ID info from the live instance, mount the registry hive of the target, and paste it there (this isn't really morally different from running blkid and then editing fstab by hand to paste a UUID). Search terms: MountedDevices and DosDevices.
Fix the bootloader: bootrec is the top level "fix stuff automatically" tool, kind of like grub-install and grub-mkconfig. However, you may have to delete your BCD (grub.conf) first so bootrec can make it fresh, as it often won't fix existing bootloader entries with a problem. bcdboot and bcdedit are the lower level tools.
One a Linux LiveCD, I've sometimes connected to the internet and installed non-default packages; is something analogous possible with Windows 10 installer image, or is it only the tools that come on the disc?
I bet we couldn't find this information consolidated in a single place anywhere on the internet.
This would also be useful as a blog post (if you have one and have the time).
Thanks again!
Whole industries have died because a free product has emerged that's "good enough" for 90+% of people. When was the last time anybody bought the electronic Encyclopedia Brittanica now we have Wikipedia?
When tax dollars are still being shuttled to the deep pockets of MS and Oracle, a more proactive stance is needed.
https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t...
In the end you have strong arguments both ways. I personally use both on a daily basis. Generally that's Linux for work (coding, mostly) and Windows for fun (games and media).
If I want to change something, I can do it fairly easily, like add a dock or even change Window managers. I don't have to do things the Microsoft way or the Apple way...if I don't like something I can just change it.
https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html
And some things from it are outright cringe-worthy, e.g. "Ineffectual read-only permissions semantics". Windows ACL for files/directories is 100 more powerful than what Linux offers.
Some Windows advantages are shown as shortcomings, e.g. case-insensitive filenames vs. case-sensitivity in Linux which in absolute most times just leads to confusion. In my 20+ years of using Linux I haven't found a single usecase for case sensitivity.
* No bullshit forced updates when the OS feels like it.
* No phoning home with you being unable to launch an app when your manufacturer's server is slow.
* No shuffling about trying to install drivers for a thousand components before your computer is usable.
How's that?
I had used KDE, which gave me a good experience, but the general Linux desktop ecosystem doesn't feel ready for me. Maybe years later, the situation will be good enough to switch, but it is not now.
I don't even touch proprietary Nvidia drivers, all my machines are Radeon or Intel GPU and they used to work fine. But currently on Radeon I have to revert back to kernel 4.19 to get sleep to work. On Intel anything newer than 5.6 won't even boot. I don't get it. Maybe kernel devs mostly care about servers and VMs and are letting the desktop stuff bitrot?
If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better.
Also can we just stop this endless bickering over irrelevant things like this.
I say this as a Linux user for a little over a decade, and someone who can not tolerate using Windows with its extreme need for bad system gui to be able to achieve anything, and lack of the software suites I have gotten used to.
You do you, and I will do me.
/edit: I am mostly talking to the comments here, not the document as I find it refreshingly non judgmental in its analysis of pros and cons.
On a personal level, I completely agree with this sentiment. If grandma wants to use windows, macOS, or whatever, she should do so!
When a Windows update fails halfway through and can't boot to Windows, or when macOS can't connect to it's all powerful binary validation server and her system becomes unusable, she's going to call me. Okay, fine, I'll play tech support for my relatives because they've chosen to use an unstable system. Same as if my junker car broke down, I'd call my uncle, because he's a mechanic, and he'd berate me for not having a reliable car, then fix it. What's family for.
However, my workplace is Windows only. I've wasted literally hundreds of hours fighting against Windows to make firewall and server settings correct (and fixed them again when it updates and borks the settings) for network applications that I've wrote. Something that would take about an hour to write a bash script for, push it to all the computers if they were Linux, and they'd never ever fail after that. It's just mind boggling that people accept this kind of behavior, and it's very damaging in the workplace. So I'm gonna keep pushing for Linux as standard at the workplace, and run whatever you want at home.
Some people want a bean to cup espresso machine with built in grinder. Others want something similar, but insist on a separate grinder and brewer.
Some people want to hand grind their beans then put them through an Aeropress, possibly while sitting in a field.
A handful of organizations will brew by the ton, freeze dry the results, and sell it on as a kind of brewing as a service product. It’s worse and better at the same time.
The fact that these are all called coffee is a simplification that makes most comparisons more complicated.
I think the above reasons explain this better rather than the deep dive the article tries to accomplish.
We're talking about preferences here. If I prefer Linux I don't need an explanation. Personally I like the lesser restrictions (Both Windows and Mac are locking down more and more) and the higher customisation it offers.
But the thing about preferences is that they are largely a feeling. Therefore reasons don't have to be concise or defined scientifically. One example: I hate the way Windows 10 forces me to update whenever it wants, and doesn't allow me to turn off telemetry. Neither of those things will actually affect me very much: I would usually update within the required timeframe anyway and the telemetry is minimal.
However it is the feeling of increased corporate control over my machine, in a time where corporate surveillance is already rampant that makes me hate this.
So objectively these arguments are hardly valid but still I feel better moving to Linux (or rather: FreeBSD) as a daily driver. That's ok as it is my preference :)
PS: I use pretty much all platforms every day for various reasons
I've had to change some things I do normally, but for me they weren't a big deal.
Games I play that work well on Linux:
- Overwatch
- League of Legends (not so much anymore because URF is gone)
- Hades
- Frostpunk (highly recommend)
I use an Xbox controller for Hades, and I use it in wired mode (one of the things I needed to change about how I use my computer). Bluetooth has some issues I didn't want to bother fixing.
I am using Xanmod because the regular Linux scheduler is just trash in my opinion for desktop use. It doesn't prioritize UI threads which just makes the linux experience so much worse for me.
By contrast most of Windows development is focused on it being a consumer OS. It's unrealistic to expect Linux to ever catch up to windows as long as this is true, especially when we spread effort too thing creating 15 different distributions.
Or don't choose and use both.
Who wants to be a loser and miss all the great stuff?
Hence if I ever needed more reasons to prefer Linux over Windows now I have "to prevent the creators of the software from manipulating me".
But to address the list's content, it would be interesting to update it to take into account developments made in more recent versions of Windows 10.
Switched to MacOS around 2002. It was not user-hostile back then and a decent Unix env. and Apple seemed to be headed down the right path, promising to support FOSS.
Switched from MacOS to Linux circa 2008 when it became abundantly clear that Apple's "backing" of OpenSource was a complete hoax designed to attract FOSS hackers to the platform and lock them in (the only parts of the OS that were FOSS were the lower layers, the entire stack above it was closed source - a tiger simply can't change its stripes).
Never had to look back, and when I look at the locked-in walled garden privacy hell that OSX has become, boy am I glad I switched.
Now that Windows dev experience (for me) is almost comparable to Linux and will continue to improve, I don't see much reason to switch back to Linux.
Of course that's not to say I don't have any complaints for Windows. For example file names are not case sensitive and it drives me crazy when I need to change a file name's casing.
Then the points being made did not resonate with my own reasons for using Linux.
Microsoft loves Linux and Open source, in paper, but the reason you are not using Linux right now is mostly due to Microsoft.
MS Office, the defacto Office suite, runs only on macOS and Windows, and the OOXML standard was created with obfuscation in mind.
Microsoft bought Corel, and shortly after Corel Office dropped its Linux release.
Microsoft lobbies governments so that they adopt MS Office. Some of those goverments are starving impoverished countries that could rather use that money for humanitarian reasons.
OpenGL was the target of a FUD campaign that scared game developers forcing them to adopt DirectX.
Arguably my desktop is not that complicated (i3wm), so there's not a ton of processes running around.
When I find a bug, I can try to fix it myself. When I want an extra feature, I can add it. I did this so many times already, it's ridiculous. From adding support for new HW to the kernel, to patching my postgresql to support my language better, to adding zstd support to qemu qcow2, and hundreds of other small things over the last 15 years or so.
This is what's great on GNU/Linux.
Pros: Customizability, speed, MS/Apple can't dictate what's on my PC.
Cons: Wifi issues, screen tearing, time spent configuring.
We need to divide the debate into two perspectives: Development and Desktop environment.
As a dev, I always use Linux. I love to use shell all the time. However, I use Windows as a desktop environment because I fed up with the whole Xorg vs Wayland situation and inferior VNC experiences to Windows RDP.
mv program.exe sound.mp3
mv sound.mp3 text.pdf
Same file, always a PNG despite the extensions I can attach to it.
Office runs on it, games work on it, Thinkpad touchpad drivers aren't shit, Microsoft To Do is still better than anything anyone else has come up with, fractional scaling that works properly, power management that works properly, half decent recovery options, best corporate SSO and device management on the market, smoothest full disk encryption.
Linux and other Unices have much better CLI, but the GUI of Windows is far more consistent and complete than the dozen or more variances in UI frameworks/libraries/etc. of the Unix world... that is, until recently, when Electron and other non-native monstrosities took over with their superficially pretty but otherwise horribly unusable dumbed-down mobile-ish UIs.
I say this as a long-time Win32 programmer who actually started writing software for DOS and briefly for Win16 --- the CLI in DOS and Windows is so much less consistent and powerful than the *nixes (and PowersHell is a real abomination of syntax, as powerful as it may be...)
However it would be easier to write the list of why Windows is better because it would be a much shorter list
Just recently kwin started freezing occasionally when starting up KDE with the logs mentioning absolutely nothing related to that. I've tried several solutions I found through research but the issue still remains. Even restarting kwin won't solve the problem and I have to resort to rebooting to hope it fixes itself. Quite annoying.
Also occasionally my nvidia dGPU (with power management enabled) just doesn't power itself off even if its not being used by any process. I've once again played around with all kinds of parameters and configs without any luck. I'm aware it's an experimental feature but it's still a major issue for me since its the difference between 6 and 3 hours of battery life.
On top of that for some reason all of my games randomly decide to drop down to very low framerates while barely utilizing my CPU and GPU. It's nothing to do with my temps or either CPU or GPU throttling down (they're still at their max clock speeds), there's nothing in the background using any kind of significant amount of system resources and the niceness / ioprio of my game's process is set high enough so some random process going rogue shouldn't affect game performance too much.
These are just some examples of random problems I'm facing regularily and it's just frustrating having to tinker around (sometimes for days) to (hopefully) fix them. Which is a shame since I'm really enjoying my Linux install.
As a developer, Linux is everything I could want, and I really want desktop Linux to continue to gain traction. While DEs like GNOME (which I use) and KDE look and feel modern and come with some great software out of the box, I still run into issues on occasion. The desktop environment is where Linux begins to fall short in my experience.
Windows and MacOS have the advantage of having a single "DE" to worry about, where as Linux offers a variety which are independently developed. That's awesome, but when I run into a bug once a week, it really sucks. I can fix the problem no issue, but it makes me hesitant to recommend GNOME to a friend to relative.
Granted, this can be because I'm using a 4K display with a new version of GNOME. I haven't used KDE or XFCE recently, so maybe they take care of these a lot better. If they are significantly better, please, let me know. I'd love a good out of the box desktop experience on Linux.
That said, Windows 10 is solid and with the combination of WSL2 and Hyper-V, I can do everything on Windows that I can do on a Linux desktop.
E.g., for musicians. There's Reaper/Bitwig, but you no longer have Live/Cubase/Logic/etc. Your multi-$k audio interface no longer works because its proprietary drivers only work on macos/win too. None of the hundreds of plugins you have work on Linux either. So it's between win/macos most of the time and the choice there is obvious.
Aside from GNOME. For professional users CLI and TUI usage on the terminal is bless and necessity. What is needed are more developers, testers and companies investing into it. The decline of Nokia and their withdraw from Gtk was a huge setback. Then the lost of Sun. And least Canonical helps now again but - years where lost. Canonicals current improvements are significant.
Aside from that. Free software seems to strive always to improve existing solutions when necessary, people see actual problems and want improve them. Within closed-ecosystems this is impossible and you're required to stay within boundaries to survive.
I can't remember the last time I touched one of my friend's computer without seeing any kind of suspicious search bar or fishy "helper" installed. I'm pretty sure this counts as malware.
If anyone knows the answer and has a solution, please let me know. I'd love to dual boot this machine.
The Linux (Gnome) UX is miles ahead of Windows.
I genuinely wish I could have Gnome on Windows.
Does it have filepicker thumbnails yet?
I'm one of those people who never turns their computer off. I've done no changes to gnome other than installing tweaks to bring back minimize buttons.
Still though, every 1-2 days I need to do Alt + F2 and `r` to restart gnome.
I think this kind of argument works both ways
Attacking servers is harder and probably may give you better "reward" (stolen data), but...
Attacking normal people is easier (I think its fair to assume normal user is worse at computers than e.g trained admin), so you can do it at bigger scale and normal user may not want to sue/find you/call cops meanwhile if you're hacking companies then things are more likely to be very serious.
Thus, both are under constant attacks.
> Attacking servers is harder and probably may give you better "reward" (stolen data), but Attacking normal people is easier so you can do it at bigger scale...
I think that attacking normal people is easier. I disagree that it scales though. Normal people have huge variances in their systems and the version they run, their network connectivity, their IT savvy, etc. and therefore the kinds of exploits required to break into their home systems will vary a lot.
The variance in commercial systems is probably as high, but who cares since you only need to take down one or two, rather than hundreds or thousands, for equivalent payoff.
The pick-pocket will make a million dollars more slowly than the bank robber.
I actually prefer it to Mac, but there are some programs that I just can’t use on Linux. And I now use Windows as my gaming OS.
So while I wish I could do everything on Linux, I’m happy to switch as needed. Linux is my home work station, Mac for the cafe and some other things, and Windows for everything else.
That said, Linux is almost for everyone now, at least if they get someone else to set it up for them.
The single biggest problem is that there is still not one document format to rule them all, and most people use PDF (can't be edited) or Microsoft (can't be rendered correctly and have limited support in other programs) formats. For most things, openoffice or libreoffice can get the job done, but for things that need to actually look the same, or where one needs to fill out the "formula" it often falls short, and then we have to resort to a VM with Windows inside it..
Then there's battery life, at least for EVERY laptop I've ever owned, or serviced, Linux requires a fair amount of tweaking, and then it (or some software running on it) still results in a worse-off battery life than a stock install of Windows.
That said, there are so many good things about Linux and the tools on it, that it's definitely worth the shortcomings, it's still the best OS for me.
RE path limitations. I actively -- and have for many years -- use paths much longer that 25x characters. Including in Windows Explorer. I can't recall the last time I had a issue, though IIRC there is some sort of operation (that I guess I never use?) via Explorer where one can run into issues.
The main issue, and it exists on Linux as well is this in code:
char path[MAX_PATH]; // or equiv
In Linux this generally gives you a 4k buffer so you're MUCH less likely to hit the issue of course.
No overriding auto-update settings.
No license to pay.
I was confused about why there were so many new Github issues filed, and sure enough I did a search on Hacker News and found it posted here.
This was inspired by my annoyance with the prevailing tenor of Windows vs. Linux comparisons at the time, which consisted largely of unsupported generalizations like "Linux is about choice" or undecidable debates like whether the GIMP was an acceptable replacement for Adobe Photoshop, or if LibreOffice was a good enough Microsoft Office. I wanted to go in a different direction and examine how technical design decisions in the kernels affected everyday use, which is why there's so much time spent on filenames.
Ultimately, though, it's just a highly selective overview of the operating systems at the time, with a few historical asides. (I'm particularly proud of digging up the part about case-insensitive filenames using less RAM in the DEC SIXBIT encoding.)
I haven't updated it significantly since 2014, so it is probably out of date in spots. However, much of it is still holds true today. I continue to use both Linux and Windows on a daily basis, and I still occasionally run into the same old problems with path lengths, filename restrictions, and file locking semantics.
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://gist.github.com/telamon/85fbfb0caa482786483bd2b8d3fc...
All three have pros and cons.
I use Linux at work because I love i3 and am willing to put up with other quirks to have it.
I use Windows for games, Lightroom, etc.
I use macOS for compiling iOS apps (work) and in bed/on the couch at home for browsing (because I have an extra Macbook leftover from a consulting gig).
I use whatever tool works best for the job I'm doing.
No one OS is better at everything than another. They all have their strengths and their weakness.
However, as much as I like it, I've not even tried to run it on my primary desktop due to the lack of a viable RDP alternative.
The irony here is that with Microsoft implementing RDP support in WSL2, the thing that might finally remove the key obstacle might render the entire point moot.
It used to take work and knowledge to use Linux as a daily driver, like you would Windows. But Linux has matured, and now all of the things you expect to work just do work.
And, aside from doing any .NET projects, EVERY programming endeavor I've worked on in Linux has been an absolute breeze. 98% of the time, everything I need is just an "apt install" away, configures correctly, and runs correctly. There is no reason for Windows to exist anymore.
But still, I'm looking for a decent distro that has minimal setup, very customizable, in active dev, and have decent graphics / audio driver for game dev, for a possible future shift. I haven't done much research yet but am currently looking at KISS and Arch, if you know more please let me know thanks!
Overall I loved i3 window manager as it made things much easier and keyboard centric
But after using macbook for a while I am leaning towards it as it works like a charm and I can do everything what I did on my linux.
Linux is great and one thing I like about it is that it’s highly customizable but sometimes you don’t wanna be spending countless hours customizing your environment you just want something that just works that’s just my opinion
Overall my experience has been great with linux but sadly i can’t run adobe suite on it :( So I decided to get a MacBook
Would love to hear everyone else’s experiences
Not having to reinstall Windows every 6 months just to keep it running fast
I still use Windows for games and stuff, but Windows terminal emulators mostly seem to suck and I spend a lot of time in there.
Either way the platform wars are over. Electron + WSL made them irrelevant. On Linux I have access to every modern app I want. This has been fantastic. All the guys who championed web standards and the web as an application platform should feel proud of being visionaries. Well done.
No it wouldn't - UTF-16 is a variable-length encoding of Unicode codepoints just like UTF-8. Not to mention that what most normal people think of as "characters", i.e. grapheme clusters, are variable length even with UTF-32.
From my point of view, case sensitivity in filenames is not an advantage but a disadvantage.
Why would I want to have "presentation to management.ppt" and "Presentation to management.ppt"?
Same for some of the restrictions in file names. I never found any problem. Maybe it is because I write in english and spanish.
And I do still vaguely recall RADIX 50
But nix has vi, native package managers and doesn't need a GUI most of the time. Saying that, I don't mind hyper-v and it's VBS technology.
If you need to run a business use Windows, if you need to host infrastructure or run an app...use nix.
Spend your time well, people. Solve real issues, have real impact.
Only some games and ableton live are missing from some platforms.
My chrome, lightroom and games (a lot) work very well on my windows desktop.
On my nas, freebsd is doing a great job.
My servers? Ubuntu doing what it does best.
MacOS on my work laptop; Also not bad.
Most others are not a benefit, just preference.
Many are simply omitted where Windows is better (such as MUCH more software, easy of use - for example no automatic mounting on many linux distros of usb drives by default in 2020 is simply insane, much better support all around from vendors, just to mention some).
Some basic and most important stuff are not there, such as difference between Windows and Linux process or difference between PowerShell and Bash.
Some thing are not very comparable but still involve performance differences (for example Windows role based security vs very limited linux default g/u/o security)
TLDR, another linux-is-better-then-windows article that is poorly done, although it pretends its not, by giving tones of references mostly for irrelevant stuff and talking about technological decisions that have almost 0 relevance for most of the people (importance of having API calls in unicode 16 vs 8 to end user is less then 0)
Lets be honest - there is 0 technical benefit regarding what OS you use today, the only difference is:
1. Windows costs money
2. Community
Unless you use thousands of containers point 1 is negliable for most services especially on Windows 10 which you can run perpetually in trial mode. Point 2. is not however, on linux open source mindeset and hacking culture is favored which is something that is for me personally much better (although I still use Windows as my main OS). Windows community just started to go along in that direction, but it will probalby take another decade to come to the level where Linux is now (if ever).
Then you're being dishonest. There are many technical reasons to choose Linux over Windows. On mobile so will keep it short.
My desktop lacks Hyper-V. I went years thinking I can't run Docker because of this fact. Turns out the PC has no such limitation when running Linux.
Years ago, tried using Meteor. It was practically unusable as I kept getting error after error. Multiple roundtrips searching and a ton of Windows-specific GitHub issues later, I gave up on the framework.
There are plenty of frameworks and dev tools that are an afterthought for Windows. This, of course, is due to Windows requiring often heavy extras to be compatible whereas Unix systems simply just work. Plenty devs just don't Care that much whether their software runs on Windows. Those that do only consider it months, years even, after releasing for Mac and Linux.
Also relevant: MS have released new software or updates to macOS first. That is a testament to how poor their OS is when a vendor fails to release software primarily targeting its OS.
I hope WSL will be better in the future. May be someday people will not compare Windows and Linux when they have WSL on Windows machine.
I currently use Linux as my primary machine on both my PC where I do remote work and on my Thinkpad which is serving as backup and mobile workspace.
The Windows is on a company-issued laptop that I do not use at all and in a VM which is dedicated solely for carrying the invasive stuff that monitors my every keystroke and executed application that my company thinks is good idea to have on my private machine to protect company interests. Hopefully, they never learn to figure out they are running this in a VM.
When I use Windows as my desktop I feel powerless. If something breaks, there is no recourse other than trying stuff I read on the Internet. On Linux I can automate pretty much everything and pretty much everything is open to me and the only thing that limits me is how much time I am comfortable spending on solving my issue.
I hate that Windows does things on my own machine that I am not able to stop or audit. Should I resign myself to giving away my privacy to another company? I think not.
I hate that I am absolutely unable to create an environment on Windows that will still work, without maintenance, in months or years. I do electronics design and embedded development in my free time and I just can't be spending time figuring out what changed in my environment every time I go back to modify code for some gadget I did a year or five ago. On Linux, I just create a VM for every single project, set up my toolchain, turn off any automated updates and then back up the entire image to unfreeze it when I need it.
I find it funny, that Linux had an app store with huge selection of free, powerful application, ready for immediate installation and use, and Microsoft required decades and Apple and Google to finally figure it out and still fail to make it usable. I like the fact that I can bring in seconds a piece of software to be immediately available to me without having to find the installation package, worry about custody of the source of the package or that it might be doing some malicious thing to my PC, worry about how it will pollute and slow down my machine even if it is installed, and so on. I do work on my PC, maintaining it is not my full time job.
I still work on Debian Unstable that I installed ca 2001 which I successfully maintained over the years. The first PC that it worked on had Duron 600 on it (does anybody still remember it?) and 20GB of disk space which was quite a lot at the time. If everything goes well it will see another AMD CPU next year when it becames available next year. I just can't imagine doing the same with Windows. All Windows desktops I had required full re-install after couple of years of use.
It was true in the past that you had to use Windows to use any serious tools. That is no longer the case, most of the time. You can even play games (Steam works though not all games are designed to play on Linux). The tools that don't work on Linux are no longer enough to force me to misery of working on a Windows desktop as my primary one.
Granted, Linux is not fun either. The Gnome is buggy as hell, has trouble with 2 4k monitors. The Nvidia drivers aren't nearly as stable as on Windows and Chrome experiences issues every time I wake up my machine from suspend. The machine sometimes locks and I did not have time to debug it and I just need to press reboot button. Still, beats Windows.
i use linux on a desktop every day but cannot even after trying for many years, develop blinders for all of the shitty parts
Until then it’ll be mainly a server OS for me
Once they find the exe or msi of their choosing is found they quickly double click on it and answer yes to any prompt that comes up regardless of whether it asked for admin rights or to sell their kids to a veal farm.
Fortunately they have an antivirus to catch them if they do anything stupid. Unfortunately so do malware authors who will carefully craft their wares to bypass such protections while the antivirus will spastically check every file that is opened and everything the computer wants to do before it lets it do it catching only the dumbest malware while ruining performance.
Meanwhile Linux users can get all or virtually all software from a single app store which actually contains all or most of what they need. Not installing malware remains a vastly easier solution than trying to contain malware you are stupid enough to install.
I'll give my highly subjective experience. I used Fedora 3x on a X1 Carbon gen 7 and it was not awesome. While I had a highly customizable UI via KDE Plasma, the font always felt off. I had issues directly attributed to Wayland (screen sharing in apps), though I could have gone back to X11.
Eventually I switched to Gnome and the UI was just frustrating from a UX standpoint. The UI lacked so many options to make it more flexible, though some frustrations were taken care of by extensions.
For either DE, if I didn't want to use Firefox, many types of media were unavailable, including certain videos in YouTube due to lack of included libraries. Some of those libraries were available in 3rd party builds, but given the security sensitive nature of browsers, that felt risky.
Performance was fine and the apps I needed were available.
Overall, application in each DE felt more crash-prone. This was true of the updater for the Gnome app store, too.
More than a couple of times I would have odd graphical issues occur in both KDE Plasma and Gnome. A couple examples were font-related issues (incorrect font despite being set correctly in settings) and window-color issues. The Gnome app store window was in dark mode while the rest of the DE wasn't. Oh and lack of DE-wide mouse scrolling on windows was a bit frustrating. I had to get a plugin for Chromium but never found a DE-wide solution.
I was tired of Windows on a laptop, so I did end up buying a MBP, which was my first Mac since my PowerBook G4. MBP does everything I need for personal use and as a development playground, plus generally stable apps. I still use Win 10 on a P1 for work and of course have a desktop for gaming, primarily.
What I'd like to see from a DE is to be highly integrated into the system. We've seen successful implementations via Windows and Mac (classic and OS X/11), and perhaps the not-so-commercial success, BeOS. Many of the Linux DEs "feel" tacked-on.
With that said, I run unbound and haproxy on a handful of Linux VMs where they work wonders and I've had zero issues with stability, etc.
All-in-all my Fedora 3x experience was just OK. It felt rough around many, though not all edges. App crash was more than I'd see using the same apps on Windows (and now macOS).
There were other things that irritated me; lack of fingerprint reader support and lack of a Bitlocker-style solution (no password on boot) available.
Again, my experiences, my impressions. They could all be wrong.
If MS decides to end support for whatever you're using, you're fucked. If Apple decides your hardware isnt supported any longer, or that you cant use your system without an update that makes your old apps incompatible, you're fucked.
If you're using a product, you rely on it not having its end of life before you stop using it, but you can't actually trust that, and we all know that. You know that, once you're in the MS ecosystem, you are at the mercy at whatever business decision they make for their products. If they decide to force you to pay for something that was free before, or decide that they are going to lock a feature behind paywall, the only reasonable thing is to comply.
Now, you might not care, and, hell, you might think the concept of owning your tools is idiotic anyways.
To get back to my point though - Linux gives hardware I own a system that I control. The OS I use helps me get done what I want to get done, it doesnt get in my way, it doesnt try to persuade me, trick me, sell me something, or anything like it. I like to pick what file browser I use, which browser I use, which keybinds do what - without the system acting like i'm an idiot with messages like "oh, you must have misclicked, im sure you want to use edge, not this 'firefox' garbage".
Do I have to pick which file browser I use? No, and I didn't, I just use the default, because it's good. If the developer of it decides to change it, I dont have to update it, I can use the old one, or use a different one altogether, or change it myself if I have the time.
I like Linux because it doesnt treat me like i'm an idiot, it doesnt treat me like i'm a customer, it doesnt actually treat me in any way at all, because unless i interact with it, it doesnt do anything.
When I need to write a patch, I open my laptop, and its immediately there. I open my messages, open my editor, pull, write the patch, commit, push, and close it. I didn't get a "didnt do AV scan in the last 2 seconds", i didn't get random programs autostarting, I didn't get news on my login screen, I didn't get programs notifying me that "its now up to date", it doesnt force me to update before i shut it down, and I dont have to look at a bunch of "welcome back" and "we hope your day is going great" and "did you know this random fact about a mountain in asia?" on my login screen.
Yet, all of these things happen regularly when I launch my windows machine at work. Yes, they're all small things, but once you're used to your system not nagging you for random shit, you can't help but notice.
Yeah