[HN Gopher] I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
___________________________________________________________________
I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
Author : smurda
Score : 675 points
Date : 2026-01-11 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.notebookcheck.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.notebookcheck.net)
| smitty1e wrote:
| Can recommend https://system76.com and Pop!_OS
| https://youtu.be/IOp7g7BNzRE?si=IKm6SLIdedgHr-u3 even if the name
| "Pop OS" isn't my favorite.
| tweakimp wrote:
| Can you also add why and for who you recommend it?
| rasmus-kirk wrote:
| I like it because it's based on Ubuntu, so there's almost
| always a working guide/solution targeting it. It also ships
| with Nvidia drivers which saves a lot of headaches for some
| users. To me the game-changer is the fact that it supports
| tiling window management with minimal configuration.
|
| It also looks and feels pretty sleek.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Pop!_OS is a solid desktop tailoring of Ubuntu for the
| hardware.
|
| I would not recommend Pop for server situations, as the
| desktop trim might be unneeded.
| sumalamana wrote:
| Try CachyOS, it's based on Arch but with additional
| optimizations, better defaults, and is user friendly. The
| problems the author of the article had would not have happened if
| he spent some time using an user friendly distro before trying a
| hard distro.
| YorickPeterse wrote:
| A user friendly distribution would be something like Fedora or
| Ubuntu, not "Arch but with some optimizations that probably
| won't matter much"
| zabzonk wrote:
| Or Mint? Works flawlessly for me when I need a Linux, which
| is not so often these days, but if I was still doing cross-
| platform software development it's what I'd use. Minimal
| fuss.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| Mint is one of the greatest distributions to get started
| with for users coming from Windows. I've been using Fedora
| full-time for more than four years now, but before that I
| used Linux Mint for about a year. It's a great, seamless
| experience.
|
| Only problem I believe is the lack of customization options
| in Cinnamon compared to KDE and even Gnome with extensions.
| I guess that makes the user miss out on some of the cool
| parts of owning your software. Also, being stuck in X11
| will start to become a problem in the next few years: I'm
| waiting to see what they come up with on that front.
| TOMDM wrote:
| I find this comment funny given it reminded me of a very
| similar recent thread.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567586
| dizzy9 wrote:
| That's what I first thought of too. The author picks CatchyOS
| as their first Linux distro, only to find it's more
| complicated to set up, and then the mouse buttons don't work.
|
| For the Linux newcomer, the biggest advantage of Ubuntu (or
| Ubuntu derivatives like Mint) is the wealth of guides,
| tutorials, and Q&As online, allowing you to google most
| common problems. You can always switch to another distro once
| you become more confident with Linux.
| tormeh wrote:
| Maybe don't tell beginners to use something that will so easily
| break because you didn't read a wiki post. CachyOS is for the
| kind of gamer who'd de-bloat Windows, etc. to squeeze 1 fps
| more out of their hardware. If this isn't you then use
| something else.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| Do CachyOS optimizations actually make any difference
| whatsoever? I know they enable certain optimization flags
| whenever building software, but that doesn't directly equate to
| performance improvements unless you're actually benchmarking
| and testing it. I've seen some benchmarks in games and it seems
| there is literally zero performance difference (sometimes it
| loses to Fedora, even).
|
| I'd always recommend upstream distributions with corporate
| backing for novice users: Ubuntu or Fedora. If they're coming
| from Windows: Linux Mint. There's also a clear upgrade path for
| users who enjoy Mint or Ubuntu: Debian testing.
|
| Arch Linux is awesome, don't get me wrong. I just believe it's
| borderline unethical to recommend someone installing anything
| related to Arch on their workstation. It's just not what a
| beginner should choose at all. CachyOS included, it even makes
| you choose your bootloader at install (any user-friendly distro
| would simply never bother you with that and go with GRUB right
| away).
|
| A user's first distro can make or break their Linux experience.
| Think hard before recommending new users the flavor of the
| month or an Arch derivative.
| lenova wrote:
| > Do CachyOS optimizations actually make any difference
| whatsoever? I know they enable certain optimization flags
| whenever building software, but that doesn't directly equate
| to performance improvements unless you're actually
| benchmarking and testing it.
|
| I switched from Windows 11 to Kubuntu a year ago, and then
| gave CachyOS a shot after hearing praise for it. I'm on a
| laptop with an AMD iGPU, and CachyOS's `znver4` optimized
| repos gave a significant bump on my Geekbench results:
|
| (Note: these results are from almost a year ago though)
|
| Lenovo Thinkpad P14s Gen4 AMD
|
| - Windows 11: 2366 Single-Core Score, 10717 Multi-Core Score
|
| - Kubuntu: 2496 Single-Core Score, 9878 Multi-Core Score
|
| - CachyOS: 2569 Single-Core Score, 11563 Multi-Core Score
|
| Repeat tests were essentially the same (Win11 23xx/107xx,
| Kubuntu 24xx/98xx, Cachy 25xx/115xx)
| spoaceman7777 wrote:
| I love Cachy, but please don't recommend it as a reasonable
| first step into Linux.
|
| It's a lot more polished than Arch, but it's not for someone
| who hasn't used Linux before and wants a reliably rock solid
| and predictable experience 365 days a year, with no fiddling.
|
| It's rolling release, and there are inevitably bugs when
| updating immediately to every minor version of every part of
| the OS stack. Arch/Cachy/Endeavour are for experts, and those
| who enjoy tinkering. (If you want to recommend something Arch-
| flavored, just recommend Manjaro, and don't listen to the
| memers who parrot some youtuber's list of ancient and silly
| engagement-bait grievances.)
| ezst wrote:
| CachyOS? That distro asking you to pick one out of 5
| bootloaders and one out of 13 desktop environments? That is
| rolling and so comes with the implicit contract that you would
| have your eyeballs liking every package's release notes for any
| one of them that you ever update?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against CachyOS (I really
| couldn't care less), but if this is where we collectively set
| the bar for what is "user friendly", we are doing it wrong.
| UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote:
| This is hilarious. Recommendations like this are exactly why
| nobody takes desktop Linux seriously (aside from gamers who
| yearn to dick-measure about something). A rolling release
| distro? Let alone Arch? You may as well recommend Gentoo.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| That's one of the biggest pain points of convincing someone to
| switch to linux: the bazillions distributions
| juliangmp wrote:
| Yeah, it can quickly lead to analysis paralysis. I've set up
| three laptops with a Linux on them for non-tech friends and
| family members and deliberately went with distros that "just
| work" (Debian and Fedora specifically).
|
| In general I'd recommend sticking to the simple options and
| not going into niches unless you/the user actually wants or
| needs to.
| tmtvl wrote:
| If you wanted to recommend a distro which is a bit more 'out
| there' (so not just the quadfecta of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu,
| Mint), I'd much sooner go with Mageia or OpenSUSE than an Arch
| derivative.
| sunil_loanmeet wrote:
| What about computer games such as age of empires ? Can we play
| regular computer games ?
| realusername wrote:
| You can play almost all solo games and most multi-player games
| depending on anti-cheat
|
| Age of empires will be okay.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| For reference, you can always check out these websites:
|
| [0]: https://www.protondb.com/explore [1]:
| https://areweanticheatyet.com/
| onli wrote:
| For years now. Look into proton, its built into steam even.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Sure, Valve has done some amazing work in that regard. Most
| mainstream and older games just work, others require some
| tinkering.
| ggeorgovassilis wrote:
| Many are playable with Steam on Linux, each game in the store
| states whether that's supported or not. Even non-supported
| games allow an override. I've tried that for a few with varying
| success. Steam has so far refunded purchases that didn't run on
| Linux. Then there's Lutris which runs many old games fine.
| Saoshyant wrote:
| Yes. Valve (Steam) spent more than a decade building and
| refining a translation layer called Proton. Nearly 80% of the
| vast Steam library is now compatible with Linux to the point
| they are releasing actual Linux consoles (Steam Deck and Steam
| Machine).
|
| For your regular PC, you can install a gaming-focused
| distribution like Bazzite to get everything sorted out
| automatically.
| IshKebab wrote:
| 80% is really impressive, but another way to state it is that
| 20% of the games you try won't work. I don't think I'd put up
| with that if I was a gamer. I guess maybe it's not evenly
| distributed. Do a higher percentage of the most popular games
| work?
| colinb wrote:
| I think it's largely to do with the whether the games are
| PvP multiplayer or not. I.e. many such games have anti-
| cheat systems that embed in the Windows kernel (or
| something like that - my Windows internals knowledge is...
| slim).
|
| I assert that most people who're happy running Linux on
| their desktop (for games or productivity or development) do
| not overlap much with the people who're happy to take
| kernel patches from UbiFuckingSoft. And this includes those
| people who're willing to take closed-source NVIDIA drivers.
| ndepoel wrote:
| That 20% is mostly covered by competitive online
| multiplayer games that use kernel-level anti-cheat systems
| which will only work on Windows. There's not a whole lot
| Valve can do about that, other than continuing to push
| Linux for gaming and hope that it gets popular enough to
| create an incentive for anti-cheat providers to start
| targeting Linux as well.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I never understood why game devs don't just segregate
| players based on their anti-cheat status. Have a setting
| in the game like "only play with anti-cheat verified
| players" that defaults to yes.
|
| That way Linux gamers can still play with other Linux
| gamers if they want (and cheaters).
|
| Not an ideal situation but probably better than nothing.
| quesera wrote:
| I think that would make Linux players into second-class
| citizens who could only play in a pool that is 90+%
| filled with Windows cheaters.
|
| Segregating into two pools: Windows-verified, or Linux-
| unverified, would probably not work for Linux users
| either. It'd be the same problem (on a smaller scale) as
| not including kernel anticheat in Windows. No fun for the
| non-cheaters.
|
| I'm not a gamer though, so I may be missing important
| details.
| Telaneo wrote:
| Games with kernel-mode anti-cheat consistently don't work
| and probably never will (barring them having it removed or
| made optional). Titles released more recently are more
| likely to not work simply due to not having had fixes
| applied to them, although a rather large amount of newer
| games work fine out of the box if they aren't doing weird
| stuff. Other than that it's a toss-up, since while it's
| usually the same few things that prevent games from working
| properly on Linux, it's not something you as Jonothan S.
| Gamer will know about unless you go and do research and
| check ProtonDB and whatnot.
|
| A good rule of thumb is that single player games generally
| just(tm) work and that older games generally just(tm) work.
| anthk wrote:
| Building, no. Refining Wine, yes.
| arkx wrote:
| In a word, yes. While Wine has been an option for decades,
| Valve and Proton have made gaming on Linux mainstream. You can
| check compatibility reports from https://www.protondb.com/ for
| whichever games you're interested in.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Valve and Proton have made gaming on Linux mainstream.
|
| "Mainstream" is maybe too hefty, the amount of Linux users
| (including SteamDeck) who participate in the Steam surveys
| are still in the single digit if I remember correctly. Most
| gamers today still use Windows, even though Valve made great
| strides with Proton.
| m4ck_ wrote:
| There is a community maintained website for checking game
| compatibility: https://www.protondb.com/
| tmtvl wrote:
| I haven't had any issues installing AoE Gold under Wine.
| Furthermore, stuff on Steam is usually trivial to get running
| (just click and play). With Heroic same goes for stuff on GOG
| (and presumably Epic as well, IDK). PlayOnLinux and Lutris have
| good support for games you install from CD (I probably could
| have used either of them to install AoE Gold, but I've been
| using wine directly for so long I find it more convenient to do
| it myself).
| globalnode wrote:
| recently had need to run a legacy win32 game on linux. the game
| works fine but the updater is in some windows specific java
| that i just could not get to work, which is kind of ironic
| since its the "run anywhere" java that wouldnt work but the C++
| game would. anyway -- i run the updater in a windows vm that
| has shared access to the game files, close the vm then run the
| game through wine. works.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| Having a steam deck, I can say that gaming on linux is totally
| doable, but you may want to look on protondb to see what is not
| compatible with your library.
| worksonmine wrote:
| There was an article on the front page a few months ago that
| showed most games performed better on the Steam Deck with Linux
| than Windows.
| grigio wrote:
| I hope one day to upgrade my laptop to a Honor/Huawei AMD Ryzen
| AI computer to run Linux. Modern Macbooks unfortunatly do not run
| Linux and the other laptop manifacturers basically produce
| expensive trash laptops
| primer42 wrote:
| Modern MacBooks DO run Linux
|
| Check out https://asahilinux.org/
| TheDong wrote:
| > Supported processors - M1 and M2, not M3 or M4
|
| The M2 models came out in 2022. You can't buy them new
| anymore.
|
| Asahi linux doesn't support any of the currently sold
| macbooks, so I think it's fair to say modern macbooks don't
| run linux.
|
| This is also at Apple's mercy, if enough people do it there's
| a non-zero chance they lock things down further. They've done
| even more consumer-unfriendly things before.
| al_borland wrote:
| Looking at the support page, that comes with a lot of
| asterisks still.
| mmcnl wrote:
| Not really, it's a nice tech demo at best.
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| What's so great about Huawei laptops?
|
| I've been using an Asus EliteBook for the last 3 years. Despite
| taking a beating, the build quality has held up flawlessly and
| with 32 GB of RAM, 1 kg form factor, and great battery life, I
| have no reason to upgrade yet.
| everdrive wrote:
| > What's so great about Huawei laptops?
|
| Unlike other laptops, there is always the lingering fear of a
| Chinese backdoor.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Because we all know ASUS doesn't install backdoors by
| default...
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| Backdoors in the OS or firmware?
|
| I always use Linux, so I don't care what software it came
| with. If you're suggesting there are firmware backdoors,
| I'd like to see your evidence.
| guerrilla wrote:
| There have been known vulnerabilities in ASUS firmware,
| but I was referring to Armoury Crate which is forcefully
| pushed on Windows users.
|
| > I'd like to see your evidence.
|
| I think this is a really bad epistemological stance in
| this case.
| axiologist wrote:
| I'd rather be concerned about friendly fire from our own.
| As an US American, i'd rather be concerned about big tech
| and government backdoors than anything else. Especially in
| the current atmosphere of doom inside the US.
| everdrive wrote:
| >As an US American
|
| I have my doubts
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Pretty sure GP meant "if I were American..."
| grigio wrote:
| Build quality is better and do not have USA backdoors
| fragmede wrote:
| In case you hadn't heard of Framework, they're making modular
| laptops with the intention of reducing e-waste.
|
| http://framework.computer
| mmcnl wrote:
| Repairable laptops don't reduce e-waste. You replace the
| mainboard and then what? You have a spare mainboard that sits
| there collecting dust. The best way to prevent e-waste is to
| build durable laptops that last a lifetime. Like Dell, HP and
| Lenovo have been doing for years (while also being very
| repairable at the same time).
| nrp wrote:
| We have open source documentation and CAD around the
| Mainboards to enable people to reuse them as single board
| computers or mini PCs after upgrading them out of their
| laptops. Even if the original owner of the Mainboard has no
| use for that, the functionality means it has resale value
| for others to use, reducing waste.
| grigio wrote:
| Frameworks computers are expensive, you aren't reducing the
| e-waste because on amd ryzen ai laptops the ram is soldered
| like in the other laptops from other manifacturers
| fragmede wrote:
| Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. They're
| expensive because they don't have the volume that other
| manufacturers have. If you dig in my comment history,
| you'll see me complain about the soldered in ram as well,
| and some of their other decisions. However their modular
| configuration is still better than the rest of them.
| nrp wrote:
| That is incorrect. All of our laptops have modular,
| upgradable memory. Our Framework Desktop is a mini PC that
| does not because AMD's Ryzen AI Max platform doesn't
| support it. Regardless, we maximized modularity and
| reuseability on that product too by following PC standards.
| It uses a MiniITX form factor, standard 120mm fan, and
| FlexATX power supply.
| ivankra wrote:
| Nonsense. I've been running Linux just fine as my daily driver
| on Macbook M4 for a year. Besides battery life (VM is kinda
| heavy on it) and some minor issues (fewer than you'd think,
| especially with Vulkan landing in UTM today) it's the best
| Linux laptop I've owned ever so far. I like macOS as much as
| the next Linux user here, but it's fairly decent as a
| hypervisor. If anything, at least it comes with UI unlike Intel
| ME.
| meow_cat wrote:
| Only thing holding me back is Adobe Lightroom, and has been for a
| while.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Only thing holding me back is Adobe Lightroom.
|
| You might be interested in Darktable or the less common fork
| called Ansel.
|
| https://www.darktable.org/
|
| https://ansel.photos/en/
|
| These have Windows versions you can try before moving your
| world to Linux.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| Darktable is the best photography editing and classifying
| software I've ever used. New users should be warned it's
| quite power-user centric though. Adopting isn't like opening
| up Lightroom and messing around. You may have to read a bit
| of documentation regarding the modules and different
| workflows (i.e. Sigmoid vs FilmicRGB).
|
| I think the Ansel developer has a YouTube series with
| tutorials on how to edit in Darktable using the Filmic RGB
| workflow. Not sure if that's where I'd get started nowadays
| (I've just adopted Sigmoid and it's way quicker to edit with
| it), but it gave me a solid base in how to use this software.
| p_ing wrote:
| Darktable is another piece of software that really shows
| warts in UX.
|
| For example, you can right click empty space to "remove" or
| "update path to file..." in the left hand rail. There
| shouldn't be a right click option in empty space.
|
| Everything lower case makes it very difficult to quickly
| parse, especially the settings menu.
|
| Inkscape is also full of these sins. For that matter, so is
| KDE.
| meow_cat wrote:
| I tested literally all alternatives to Lightroom, including
| even other commercial Windows only software, just because I
| want to get off the subscription. I tested two specific
| functions I use and need, and zero of all other programs do
| them well. It's frustrating.
| meow_cat wrote:
| to add on: alternatives I am seriously considering is
| buying a macbook m2 purely for lightroom and run linux on
| intel, and macbook m2 + asahi + dumping the intel.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| How to run PowerPoint and Excel? I'm stuck with these for work?
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| dual boot
| viraptor wrote:
| Or a VM for just that purpose. Quickgui was discussed here
| recently for example to make this easier
| https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickgui
| al_borland wrote:
| This never lasts long, in my experience. It's a nice idea,
| but it's a huge pain. At some point, I always end up sticking
| with the OS that has what I _need_ , which is never Linux.
| Linux is what I install when feeling idealistic, but it
| doesn't allow me to do anything I can't do on a mainstream OS
| that is mission critical to my life.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| so dual pc ???
| al_borland wrote:
| I'd say commit. Force yourself to find new tools and
| workflows on the new OS of choice. If that isn't
| possible, it seems like a waste of time and effort.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Can you use the online versions? They are starting to become
| usable now.
|
| That is what we are supposed to do at work.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Move my documents off _my_ PC and give them to Microsoft?! As
| a way to stop using a Microsoft OS? It beggars belief.
| INTPenis wrote:
| No libre office suite will ever be on par with Microsoft
| proprietary options. It's a constant race of keeping up with
| features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
|
| I've used Linux for 25+ years and my reaction is always to do
| my best with the options I have, but in those cases when it's
| not enough I just say "I'm sorry but I can't edit this
| document" or "sorry but some of the formatting was lost when I
| saved this in libreoffice".
|
| The thing is that I'm a senior Linux specialist so people
| accept my excuses because they generally need my work.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using
| mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
|
| What new features are Microsoft bringing out that are that
| critical for LibreOffice et al to catch up with?
|
| I can't think of much which I use that wasn't already
| available in Office 95 which was released 30 years ago.
|
| Aside from OOXML (which isn't nearly as open as the name
| suggests) and the ribbon bar (which i personally hate), there
| hasn't really been any big innovations.
|
| The only features I can think of are:
|
| - better security model for marcos. But that was only needed
| because MS Office was insecure to begin with so not really
| relevant here either
|
| - Unicode support
|
| - more rows in excel (though generally once you start
| reaching that point, the memory footprint of Excel becomes
| too great to make working on that spreadsheet practical)
|
| The real issue with LibreOffice isn't new features. It's the
| subtle rending and parsing quirks when working on OOXML
| documents. But that's likely Microsoft's fault and thus OOXML
| working as intended.
| layer8 wrote:
| Excel had tons of new and useful features over the past
| years.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| ...and they are?
|
| I don't doubt there's been plenty of new features. But
| are they significant enough that users on older versions
| or non-MS suites are left longing for the latest version
| of Excel?
|
| I just don't think there is much innovation left. Or at
| least not without changing the UX and/or paradigm
| significantly. Neither of which have happened.
| layer8 wrote:
| Take a look here:
| https://www.icaew.com/technical/technology/excel-
| community/e.... There's really been a sea change since
| around 2019. In the aggregate, they change how you work
| with Excel today.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Thanks for the share. These do look like really nice
| improvements.
|
| Albeit I wouldn't say they're significant enough that
| LibreOffice would struggle to keep up.
|
| But it is nice to see that Excel is still working on
| basic quality of life features.
| mqus wrote:
| > using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
|
| I'm not even sure this is true. Isn't there some company (or
| more) like Collabora behind most of the dev work right now?
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Maybe in a VM.
|
| Or try running via Wine.
|
| You could also try LibreOffice or OnlyOffice and see if the
| documents are readable / writable.
|
| Failing all that the web versions might work just fine.
| viraptor wrote:
| Unless you need precise formatting because you will send
| someone nontrivial slides to present, libreoffice should be
| fine.
|
| Excel really depends - if you're using it as a glorified
| document with a table, then libreoffice will do fine. If you
| need compatibility and more advanced features, or your whole
| company runs on excel like a financial corp - there's no
| alternative. VM in that case.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > Failing all that the web versions might work just fine.
|
| I use ~~Office 365~~ the Microsoft 365 Copilot App online all
| the time on Debian at work.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Winapps is pretty good to run the Microsoft office suite.
| https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
|
| A office specific winapps fork :
| https://github.com/eylenburg/linoffice/
| c7b wrote:
| Winboat should be able to run them: https://www.winboat.app/
|
| As far as compatibility goes, OnlyOffice is fairly good at it,
| more geared towards MS-compatibility than LibreOffice, which is
| more of its own thing (and pretty good at that).
| everdrive wrote:
| Do you not have a work-issued computer? I'm not being flippant.
| I don't need to install _anything_ on my home PC for work. It's
| actively discouraged.
| ndkap wrote:
| MS Office Online has been good with most of the things I need.
| Has that not been the experience for you?
| perihelions wrote:
| This HN thread is ongoing,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566465 ( _" I replaced
| Windows with Linux and everything's going great (theverge.com)"_;
| 20 hours ago, 596 comments)
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political
| climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've
| been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy,
| always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker,
| heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen
| right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy
| keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I buy if I want
| something as sleek and well-built and polished as Apple?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| So the weird answer is... a better model Lenovo. They vary from
| plastic disaster to metal or carbon fiber dream machine.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Yeah, if you don't like the case quality of a T model
| Thinkpad, you are the problem ;) - fiber reinforced plastic
| is arguably a more suitable laptop case material than
| aluminum.
|
| Lenovo's cheap laptops are as bad as anyone's.
| everdrive wrote:
| I don't think anyone will build as nice hardware as Apple
| anytime soon, so I think if that's your primary requirement
| then any other choice will be a compromise. I don't really like
| Apple, but it must must acknowledged that even a few basic
| things (the monitor turning on immediately as I open the
| screen, the touchpad quality, etc.) seem totally elusive to
| other manufacturers.
|
| Apple's pretty imperfect, and it's sad to see that they've
| neglected and regressed their desktop OS, however I don't think
| anyone can argue that macOS is anywhere near as bad as Windows
| 11.
| Kye wrote:
| Some of the stuff coming out of CES is nice. Whether the
| apparent quality survives in production is another question.
| anta40 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Apple is unavoidable if you work as a mobile
| app developer. I mean, no iOS SDK for Windows/Linux.
|
| If your work area is anything other than it, perhaps the Mac
| isn't necessary.
| pbalau wrote:
| > If your work area is anything other than it, perhaps the
| Mac isn't necessary.
|
| How about photography and video production?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| While not strictly required, for me macOS has been less
| cantankerous for running Android Studio on compared to
| Windows/Linux too.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Don't they offer downloads of Xcode outside of the App
| Store if you pay their developer program fee? That includes
| their SDKs. Theoretically there is only an expenditure of
| time and effort to build an iOS app on Linux. I forget if
| it is against their terms or not, but I don't think the SDK
| available is a barrier.
| a456463 wrote:
| Eh. debatable. my work MBP frequently dies and the screen
| never turns on when i plug it in. I have to wait 15-20
| minutes for it to turn on. My Linux laptop on the other hand,
| the screen turns immediately power or no power/just plugged
| in
| AuthAuth wrote:
| Apple's only just started getting good hardware. For so long
| their hardware was so below standard and in a lot of areas it
| still is. Apple users will sit there with a straight face
| telling me about how much they care about a good cpu when I
| know they paid 3k for a low tier intel cpu and 8gb of ram not
| to long ago.
|
| Also when they talk about how their laptop can handle all
| this stuff without fans spinning up its only because the
| laptops come with next to no cooling and spend most of the
| time thermal throttling.
| louthy wrote:
| Nothing is quite as slick as Apple, but companies are popping
| up doing pretty sleek Linux-first laptops, I have a Starlabs
| notebook [1] and am waiting for their new Starfighter [2]...
|
| [1] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook-horizon
|
| [2] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Batter life claims are very bold. Also the starfighter
| launches with a 3 year old CPU .
|
| Doesn't seem to me like a good deal especially price wise.
| louthy wrote:
| Don't buy one then.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It looks like the best option for somebody who wants a
| great laptop and doesn't want a Mac.
|
| And the price looks perfectly fine.
| tiberriver256 wrote:
| https://frame.work/
| mmcnl wrote:
| Nice for experimentation, but if you want a daily driver that
| lasts for years: Dell Latitude (now Dell Pro), HP EliteBook
| or Lenovo ThinkPad. Literally laptops built to last. Will
| last a decade with ease. Higher segments ofcourse better than
| lower segments, but in general very very good if you stay
| away from lowest tier
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Snapdragon Elite X Gen 2 laptops are coming out as we speak.
| Assuming you're not doing GPU heavy work (or gaming), that's
| what you should be looking at. They are equal to M4
| performance. Personally I'd look at the new Asus machines from
| CES.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| That sounds like just what I want, that ought to have great
| battery life as well. Very promising, if someone were to
| build a nice light laptop around it...
| aruggirello wrote:
| Not so sure :(
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x-elite-linux-
| eoy...
| einrealist wrote:
| It's such a shame that Lenovo discontinued the X1 Nano series.
| It's my everyday casual driver. I would buy a newer model
| instantly if necessary.
| mmcnl wrote:
| X13 is not that much bigger I believe.
| Unfunkyufo wrote:
| This is also my problem. I am currently using my docked Macbook
| instead of my much more powerful desktop running Linux, even
| though I also want to use Linux more.
|
| Why? Because as much as I want to get rid of my dependence on
| tech giants, Apple's products are just so damn good, and they
| Just Work^TM, especially with each other.
|
| Having used Linux on/off for many years, I can say that it's
| definitely gotten better, but I am still waiting for the year
| of the Linux desktop. It doesn't have to be as polished as my
| Mac, but I'd like to at least not have to fight with Bluetooth
| especially, and things like the dongle for my headset not
| working and other issues like that.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think we're always going to have that: there will always be
| That One Software that doesn't work on Linux, and you need to
| keep another OS around just to run it. I was able to get rid
| of Windows everywhere in my home except for one gaming PC,
| where I keep it around just for Fortnite, because of Epic's
| insistence on using their nasty kernel-level anti-cheat. So I
| keep that one machine around isolated from the rest of my
| network, for the sole purpose of playing one game.
|
| I'm now in the process of un-Appleing my home too, and it's
| going pretty well, but I know I'll need to keep a single Mac
| somewhere in the corner of my garage in case I need to use
| Xcode to build an iOS app or something.
| walthamstow wrote:
| As well as beautiful hardware that is a pleasure to use, Apple
| machines can be capable of running local models like gpt-
| oss-20B or Qwen Coder portably and without sweating. My 24GB M4
| Mini was very cheap considering the local models it can run.
| faust201 wrote:
| Yes hardware is great. Price per performance watt is also
| great. But UI sucks. Look at all then posts even macOS fans
| about new macOS release like the glass ones. I prefer ssh and
| running jobs in macOS.
| bar8uyr wrote:
| Huawei?
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > weird keyboard layout
|
| Classic lenovo. Some models have FN as the most bottom left
| key, instead of ctrl. Gotta be the worst design decision ive
| ever seen. Everyone copy+pastes and finds, whoever thought that
| was a good idea really needs relieved of decision making power.
| nehal3m wrote:
| You can swap those in BIOS for most models.
| bmacho wrote:
| Yes. I use my Lenovo that way. Bottom left key is labeled
| "Fn" and act as Ctrl because I swapped them in BIOS.
| snazz wrote:
| Apple also puts fn/globe in the bottom left corner and
| control to its right.
| clates wrote:
| Yeah, but that's conflating that a key labeled "control"
| for a Windows machine and a key labeled "control" for a Mac
| refer to different concepts.
| mmcnl wrote:
| All MacBooks have Fn at the left bottom corner too?
| Xiol wrote:
| But CMD is generally used instead of control, and at least
| in my case, with the thumb rather than pinky. Different
| muscle memory.
| myself248 wrote:
| You've got history backwards. IBM Thinkpads did it that way
| 30+ years ago, when there was no consensus in the industry.
| Do you switch it now, and anger every lifetime Thinkpad
| loyalist, or keep it and annoy just the folks who switch back
| and forth between different vendors' laptops?
|
| In a brief survey of laptop photos from the early 90s, IBM,
| Toshiba, Zenith, NEC, Packard Bell, Compaq, and Fujitsu all
| put Fn on the outside.
|
| Epson, Apple, HP, Panasonic, and Sony put it as the second
| key.
|
| A handful put it as the _third_ key. Heck, one Toshiba
| machine had Ctrl left of A, Alt on the extreme lower-left
| starting out the bottom row, followed by Caps Lock and Fn and
| backslash and finally spacebar.
|
| Only in the last 15-ish years have most of the Fn-Ctrl
| keyboards died out and the majority of the industry is now
| using Ctrl-Fn. Thinkpads are the last major holdout, but they
| didn't decide to buck the trend, the trend bucked them.
| scrlk wrote:
| > Thinkpads are the last major holdout
|
| ThinkPads _were_ one of the last major holdouts, they went
| to the Control-Fn layout in 2024.
| myself248 wrote:
| Whoah.
|
| Is that the end of it, then?
| bluecalm wrote:
| Idk, I find it easier to press control on a Thinkpad because
| it's closer. It being in a corner would be farer away.
| Anyway, control should be (and traditionally was) where
| CapsLock is. Just remap it - everything is suddenly easy and
| ergonomic.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| I really like my HP Omnibook 14 with the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip..
| it's sleek, well built (so far, at least).. insane battery
| life.. the standby time on Linux is in weeks and the battery
| life when light browsing/YouTube viewing is easily 9+ hours.
| Even the finger print sensor finally just works. The touchpad
| gestures with kwin input actions are as smooth as, if not
| better than os x.
|
| The only thing my work 16" MBP does better is the speakers.
|
| edit: Updated the battery life to 9+ hours from 7+ hours based
| on what the battery monitor says.. I remember binge watching a
| couple of long movies/tv shows without ever having to plug in
| the laptop that day...
| sva_ wrote:
| You can get more than double that battery time with an ARM
| ahartmetz wrote:
| But then you need Apple hardware and MacOS.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| I think they mean snapdragon hardware?
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Right, that works if you don't also need very high
| performance.
| amlib wrote:
| Once you cross the ~7h battery range the cons of having to
| use apple hardware and software is too much to bare.
| kombine wrote:
| Such is the cost of freedom, unfortunately. There is no free
| lunch. Historically, people abandoned comfort and made
| sacrifices for a greater social good.
| UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote:
| It's a computer. Stop acting like a martyr. Your "suffering"
| is meaningless.
| nehal3m wrote:
| A computer (or a smartphone, basically whichever type of
| Turing complete Von Neumann machine you use) is your
| interface to the modern world, from interacting with your
| government to the stores you frequent and talking to the
| people you love to the media you consume.
|
| So in that sense I think it _does_ matter who is the
| ultimate arbiter of what it will and won 't do, not only in
| an individual sense but a societal one. The more people
| switch to something they themselves control, the less power
| third parties have over their behavior.
| willtemperley wrote:
| My computer is my work environment and often an
| entertainment device. As such it affects my quality of
| life. It affects my mental health as well as my eye health.
|
| Suffering can be real with a bad screen, an overheating
| laptop or difficult to use software.
|
| My mental health definitely suffers if I'm forced to use
| software that enriches companies I dislike for good reason.
| AnonC wrote:
| I think I get what you're hinting at. But is there a more
| expensive option that's free (as in freedom) _and_ provides
| an experience that the GP referred to?
| kombine wrote:
| And there will never be such option if we all collectively
| choose to perpetuate Apple's monopoly. It is us, of all
| people, who need to take a stance, because we have the
| necessary skill.
| saubeidl wrote:
| If you want something a bit more like a Macbook Pro, consider
| the HP Zbook G1A.
|
| It's basically built like a Macbook in terms of case and screen
| quality, but it's based on an AMD Strix Halo chipset - mine is
| an AI Max Pro+ 395.
|
| The chip design is somewhat similar to Apple Silicon in that
| it's one big chip with unified memory - you can get them with
| up to 128GB of unified ram - that thing is a beast for running
| local LLMs.
|
| Since HP also sells them with Ubuntu preinstalled, Linux
| support is quite good, though it requires some bleeding edge
| packages for everything to be supported.
|
| In my case, I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly,
| fingerprint reader, webcam, etc all work.
| nottorp wrote:
| > I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly
|
| In Linux? Seriously? How much tweaking did that require?
|
| Do you dare to throw the laptop into a backpack in sleep mode
| instead of shutting it down first?
| dominicm wrote:
| I mean, it's certainly not as seamless as an open x86 machine,
| but if you have an Air already you can always try Linux on it?
| The Fedora Asahi spin [1] supports pretty much everything on
| M1/M2 devices.
|
| [1] https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
| robin_reala wrote:
| USB-C display support is coming soon too.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| Mac hardware is overrated. Asus ExpertBooks, Thinkpads and Dell
| XPS models are all very nice, and have lasted for just as long
| as Macbooks do.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Maybe! But the fact that Apple also makes the operating
| system means the hardware/software integration can't be beat.
| I've never used a non-Apple laptop where the trackpad worked
| a tenth as good as any MacBook.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| To each his own. I liked may company issued ThinkPad so much I
| ended up buying one myself and I have been pushing back getting
| a replacement (HP Elitebook).
|
| Some of your points are common, such as the touchpad being
| garbage, or that it runs hotter than an Apple Silicon MacBook
| Air. But most people consider ThinkPad keyboards to be way
| better than Apple's and while most (not all) ThinkPads have a
| plastic shell, they certainly don't feel cheap. Apple displays
| are typically really good, but ThinkPads have a lot of options,
| so it is hard to tell.
|
| Your comment, especially regarding the keyboard makes me think
| you just love your MacBook. Why buy anything else?
|
| Linux support is not great, but a lot of a significant part of
| what makes Apple great is in their hardware/software
| integration and they are not doing it open source. It means a
| MacBook without OSX is a lesser MacBook, but at least, it is
| not Windows 11.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| ThinkPads run the gamut. Their flagship line is nice. In most
| regards, I enjoy my first gen X1 Nano -- good keyboard,
| screen (even if it annoyingly requires fractional UI
| scaling), body feels solid despite being lightweight, soft
| touch plastic makes it feel nice to hold. Trackpad is just ok
| but the trackpoint makes for that.
|
| It likes to spin up its fan doing the most insignificant
| things though (even plugging in a pedestrian 1x scaling
| external monitor can while idle can do it) and its battery
| life is somewhat abysmal. Standby time is also quite poor.
|
| Some of these things are in theory improved by a newer CPU
| (Lunar Lake in particular looks decent) but sadly they
| discontinued the Nano. The Carbon isn't that much bigger, but
| the size difference is noticeable in some circumstances.
| a456463 wrote:
| Are you running windows on this?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It dual boots Windows 11 and Fedora, and I've played with
| other distros in the past. They have minor edges over
| each other in various ways but none offer a major
| concrete advantage over the others in any category
| (except harassment/junkware, which any distro has a major
| upper hand over Windows 11 in, but Windows 10
| accomplishes that almost as well).
|
| Either there's simply a hard limit on how good this
| hardware can be in terms of thermals and battery life or
| neither Lenovo's tuning of Windows nor any Linux distro
| has gone far enough in properly leveraging power
| management and the like.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| > The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same,
| runs hot like crazy
|
| I have a personal Thinkpad (Linux) and a company provided one
| (W11). The personal one basically never turns on the fan. The
| company one is hot all the time. Guess why.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > So why did I switch to Linux, and why am I writing this article
| about the experience? In a word: joy.
|
| I think this is really what more people should take away from the
| switch. A lot of the time I see people not wanting to make the
| leap because they're afraid: Afraid of learning how to use the
| command line, afraid of asking other people for help, afraid of
| really _using_ the computer. Learning how things work is how you
| learn to be free, and that holds true no matter your hobby. The
| cyclist with their repair kit, the driver with their beater car,
| the cook and their kitchenware. The more we give away for the
| sake of immediate convenience, the less control we have.
|
| Linux is no longer in the realm of needing to be an expert to
| resolve issues, just a little bit of willingness to experiment.
| This isn't to say all issues are easily solvable, there's plenty
| of workflows that still require you to stay on Windows and some
| edge cases where things won't work as you expect. But I always
| encourage people to try, because why not?
| senectus1 wrote:
| Did this 2 years ago.
|
| I run Fedora, if its what Linus himself runs then why should i
| choose anything else?
| al_borland wrote:
| Linus runs this specifically because it supports kernel
| development decently well. If you aren't developing the kernel,
| his reasons for running Fedora have little to no impact on you.
| onli wrote:
| The article mentions that the author had a negative experience
| with Void Linux, that it was missing programs in its repository.
| If you considered it, give it a try anyway. Void is fast and
| ridiculously stable, even more so given it's a rolling release
| distro (so often has very new program versions). And in contrast
| to the author, I was impressed with the broad range of the
| package system - he might have had a bit of bad luck with the
| selection.
| archargelod wrote:
| Seconding this. I was impressed by Void linux stability and
| speed: xbps (with xtools) might be the fastest and most
| powerful package manager I've *ever* used.
|
| Sure, Void doesn't have the endless options of Arch+AUR for
| packages, but it had everything I needed. Even the well-
| maintained, latest versions of less common software, like Nim
| compiler.
|
| The author might also missed that Void has a non-free
| repository, that you have to install for stuff like proprietary
| drivers, DRM and Steam.
| branon wrote:
| I've found a very comfortable home on Void Linux for nearly a
| decade at this point, and wouldn't consider any other distro
| for desktop use. I find Void to be rock-solid stable and
| relentlessly simple.
|
| The author of TFA hopped from Mint -> Debian -> Bazzite ->
| Fedora -> Void -> Artix, so Void is an extremely obvious
| outlier here.
|
| Aside from Void, every other distro he tried was either a
| newbie-friendly desktop distro (Mint, Debian, Fedora, Bazzite),
| or "Arch, but easier, with an installer" (Artix).
|
| Bad luck with Void's package selection is fair enough, but I'm
| not sure what he meant by "driver compatibility was a big
| issue" - Void uses an upstream kernel and driver availability
| should be roughly the same anywhere.
|
| He's using a Ryzen APU on desktop so graphics drivers shouldn't
| have been an issue there. The MacBook had problems with
| Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers on Artix(!), but I'd wager this would
| affect all distros out of the box, and Void has the Broadcom
| drivers[0] available as well.
|
| It's frustrating that he doesn't explicitly mention what he
| couldn't find drivers for on Void. I assume it was Broadcom Wi-
| Fi and he didn't enable the nonfree repository. In fairness,
| Void's docs don't cover any Broadcom quirks so maybe this isn't
| as discoverable as it should be.
|
| [0] https://voidlinux.org/packages/?arch=x86_64&q=broadcom
| Jackknife9 wrote:
| I tried to leave Windows 11 for Linux - it just didn't work for
| me. I installed EndeavourOS onto my main gaming desktop. It
| worked great for a while and ran all the games I played with my
| friends. However, one night when I went on to play a game I ran a
| system update and it seemed to completely break my nvidea drivers
| - I tried reinstalling them and also using the open source
| driver. This meant I just couldn't play any games that night and
| was simply diagnosing linux issues.
|
| I probably chose the wrong distro for this but I really just want
| the PC to work for playing games without any issues. I don't use
| it for anything other than playing games so for my time I just
| went back to Windows 10 and will use that until apps stop
| working.
| clappski wrote:
| The mistake is that you did a system update when you wanted to
| use the computer. Not implying that system updates should be a
| dangerous thing to do, but just something learnt from
| experience - I've had similar issues, especially with Nvidea
| drivers and kernel versions getting updated at the same time.
| The take away is keep the updates to when you have an hour to
| debug or get comfortable rolling back updates.
| agoodusername63 wrote:
| So just like windows, don't update it
|
| Year of the Linux desktop for sure
| smrq wrote:
| I mean, you get what you signed up for. If you wanted total
| stability and infrequent updates then why would you use
| Arch? (If the answer is "I didn't know what I signed up
| for" then that's fair. Simply understanding the practical
| differences between distros is a huge hurdle.)
| drysart wrote:
| That's absurd. The system should be able to update itself
| without fear that it's going to break anything. The user
| should not be expected to have to set aside time to babysit
| an update.
|
| Windows isn't perfect in this respect by any means, but it
| sure seems like it handles updates a lot better than the
| distros that have been mentioned in this thread; in that
| Windows at least takes steps to examine your hardware _first_
| and to not apply updates where it 's known something has
| fallen out of support.
|
| Windows also, apparently unlike these mentioned distros,
| maintains a Last Known Good configuration so if an update
| _does_ start causing failures, it can automatically roll
| itself back (or, at worst, can manually be rolled back).
| There _are_ some distros that do similar, particularly
| immutable distros; but honestly this sort of thing should be
| table stakes to the point that if a distro doesn 't do it, it
| should be laughed out of the room.
|
| There is _absolutely no acceptable excuse_ for any operating
| system to break itself in an update.
| phkahler wrote:
| Never heard of that Linux variant. Use one of the big names:
| Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian.
|
| If you have a choice don't use nVidia either, but the bigger
| distributions do handle them well.
| aruggirello wrote:
| Yeah the real mistake was starting with Endeavour. I wonder
| just how many people are turned off by their initial Linux
| experience because they choose stuff like Arch, Gentoo, or
| some obscure variant rather than Fedora, Kubuntu or Mint.
| Even stuff like Bazzite is probably an odd choice for a
| novice - though it would have handled that failed nVidia
| upgrade nicely.
| al_borland wrote:
| This is why I go the console route. I tried building a PC after
| being inundated with people saying it was better. Even on
| Windows it felt like it turned into a sys admin job that I
| didn't care for. I just wanted to play some games after work.
| zahlman wrote:
| I can't understand this reasoning. System updates obviously
| don't become less risky because of the OS they're updating. But
| going back to Win10 means having less control over when those
| updates happen (and much less control over, and understanding
| of, what is updated), and waiting much longer for them to
| complete.
| jakkos wrote:
| > System updates obviously don't become less risky because of
| the OS they're updating
|
| The last time I used arch, I ran an update and it broke my
| bootloader, meaning the next time I restarted it wouldn't
| boot at all.
|
| Sure I could make a recovery USB and fix it, but at that
| point I was away from home, and just really needed to do the
| totally crazy thing of "using my computer to actually do
| work".
|
| (To be clear, I didn't and I'm not recommending going back to
| Windows, just a more sane Linux)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yikes. It's 2026. "Don't break the bootloader" should be
| table stakes for any OS distribution's update process by
| now. I am not a fan of Windows or macOS, but I don't even
| recall the last time an operating system software broke my
| ability to boot--maybe during the Windows 2000 days?
|
| Yet, when you go online to refresh your memory on how to
| update your Linux installation, too many of the guides
| still say STEP 1: Back everything up because you may not be
| able to boot after you do this!
| zahlman wrote:
| My point was exactly that GGP shouldn't have expected to be
| able to do the system update without risk.
|
| But the usual way to install Linux nowadays is from a live
| boot, so you automatically have a recovery drive anyway.
| It's not hard to set up regular restore points with
| Timeshift or similar, either.
|
| That said, I haven't had problems like what you describe in
| nearly 4 years.
| jakkos wrote:
| I've used Windows, Ubuntu, and NixOS all for longer than
| I ever used arch and never had an update leave my
| computer inoperable.
| zahlman wrote:
| And the other person did, as have many others on support
| forums.
|
| Updates generally just work, on the balance of my
| experience and other available evidence. It's still
| unwise to schedule them at a time where a failure would
| be more disruptive than baseline, and it's still best
| practice to be prepared for a failure and not have to
| figure things out on the fly.
| ndkap wrote:
| I think using an atomic distro like Bazzite would have solved
| your problem.
| rasur wrote:
| I have been 'enjoying' this with Debian on a PC with a 1080Ti
| nvidia card, which is no longer supported by the nvidia v590 +
| drivers. I've had to pin to v580, but the whole "oops, I
| updated, rebooted and 'look ma, no high-resolution anymore'"
| got tired really quickly. You have my sympathies.
|
| EndeavourOS is apparently Arch-based so I've got no useful
| suggestions for fixing there, sorry.
| cbruns wrote:
| Haha, exact same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago. You
| probably had the same issue as me. The driver dropped support
| for older cards and you had to switch to a legacy AUR package.
| I fixed it with some frantic googling while my friends waited a
| half hour. Not sure how you would know this without subscribing
| to some arch news feed or something. Not ideal.
| distances wrote:
| That's exactly how it's supposed to work: Arch expects you to
| check the notes on their news section always before you
| update. The NVIDIA driver issue and solution was posted on
| Dec 20th.
|
| I'm not saying I'm reading these regularly, just that yes
| it's the expected way.
| pxoe wrote:
| If the expected way and the attitude is to just break user
| installs, then that's no better than Windows, perhaps even
| worse.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| The fix is not buying Nvidia, even though some people here will
| tell you how much AMDs drivers actually sucked in 2009 and how
| good Nvidia is now and all that noise.
|
| Buy full AMD in 2026, and you'll have no problems with games.
|
| Also, Bazzite would have saved you from this.
| foresto wrote:
| > I probably chose the wrong distro for this
|
| Indeed. Arch-based distros ought to be reserved for
| intermediate-advanced users. Linux Mint is better suited to
| beginners.
|
| > but I really just want the PC to work for playing games
| without any issues.
|
| If you decide to give it another go, and you have the means, I
| suggest using an AMD graphics card. Nvidia's drivers are
| notorious for being troublesome on Linux, and although they can
| usually be made to work (either by the user or by a distro
| developer), the drivers for AMD GPUs are much better integrated
| with the OS.
|
| I switched to AMD a few years ago and have been very pleased
| with the results, both in games and in non-gaming tasks. (I
| don't use my GPU for LLM development, though, so I can't speak
| to the current state of things in that area.)
| molteanu wrote:
| I thought this was Hacker News! How come dumping Windows for
| Linux in the year 2026 makes the headlines?
| doodlesdev wrote:
| For some reason, there's a huge amount of Hacker News readers
| who are still full-time Windows users. With the forced
| migration to Windows 11, I guess a lot of them are now not only
| trying out Linux for the first time (as a desktop system), but
| also for some reason going for Arch derivatives, which is
| always fun to see a beginner mess with LOL
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| It's been Eternal September for quite a few years now.
| Telaneo wrote:
| Today is the 11820th of September 1993.
| haunter wrote:
| Easy karma on HN. We have these posts every couple of days.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566465
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46483432
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471199
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457770
| molteanu wrote:
| Oh, damn!
|
| I bet 2027 will be the year when writing code by hand will be
| (re)discovered.
|
| Hopefully.
| buzzardbait wrote:
| Ah, so karma is a thing on HN as well. That would explain it.
|
| Since 2001 I've used Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Ubuntu,
| and Mint. I got rid of them at the first available
| opportunity. Elon Musk himself couldn't pay me enough to
| switch to Linux.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Desktop Linux is still very niche, even in technical
| communities like HN.
| everdrive wrote:
| Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, and Mint remain great recommendations;
| good stability, community support, etc. (even for Ubuntu, a
| regular user might not actually care that much about snaps so
| long as everything works)
|
| I just moved to CachyOS, (from Fedora, and earlier from Ubuntu --
| I've been on Linux for a while) and I've been very, very happy.
| The gaming performance is legitimately better than what I was
| getting on Fedora, and I've just enjoyed the OS and KDE much more
| than Gnome Shell. I haven't had any real showstoppers with
| CachyOS, and it really has felt like a user-friendly version of
| Arch finally exists.
| troupo wrote:
| I've yet to have a day when CachyOS can come out of sleep:
| hangs at various steps and requires a hard reboot that somehow
| relaunches apps on login that I explicitly closed hours ago.
| everdrive wrote:
| I had the same problem with Fedora which is part of what
| prompted me to switch. It works great for me in Cachy. I
| assume either way it was an Nvidia problem.
| troupo wrote:
| Yup, I have Nvidia :)
|
| Interestingly enough, I didn't have the same issue with
| Omarchy/Hyprland. Hyprland doesn't have even the most
| rudimentary ability to restore windows but it was almost
| rock solid when it came to coming out of sleep.
|
| Still searching for that one true Linux distribution :)
| Will stay on Cachy for now because gaming is so much
| better.
| GordonS wrote:
| Are you able to quantify the performance improvement, e.g. in
| FPS on particular games?
|
| Curious as to how CachyOS does it.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I think a lot of cachy performance is placebo, because Steam
| games use the container runtime's Debian 11 libraries, it
| doesn't use the native CachyOS ones at all.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm CPU-bound on one of the games I play, and cachy's
| scheduler may have made a difference for me. I was also fully
| on the closed-source NVIDIA drivers in Fedora, and had been
| totally out of the loop that that the kernel driver had been
| open sourced. And, cachy had me on a more recent version of
| the driver.
|
| None of these things are truly unique to CachyOS, but
| nonetheless I do think I experienced a boost when I switched.
| everdrive wrote:
| To expand a little bit, I think it might clearer to say
| that CachyOS does out of the box what many other distros
| could also do with manual configuration. So, in that sense
| (default) CachyOS probably is faster than (default)
| [mainstream distro].
| tuckwat wrote:
| I went Arch recently as well for about 6 months but am now back
| on Windows. I was impressed by the amount of games that "just
| work" but ultimately went back for the few that didn't. Had
| issues on BF6 and major performance issues on Borderlands 4.
| decide1000 wrote:
| I am on Linux for 26 years. Last 5 years I run PopOs! on my
| desktop. User friendly and stable, Ubuntu based.
| randunel wrote:
| Linux user for 25-ish years here, and exclusively so.
|
| I used to heavily configure my ubuntu distros to be keyboard
| exclusive with i3wm and such, but I ended up with regolith
| desktop, a version of ubuntu with pre installed i3wm and
| keyboard focus. I'm too old to keep my dotfiles updated.
|
| Nowadays, imo you should only choose the package manager, any
| os using that chosen package manager (aptitude for ubuntu)
| definitely had a version that's close enough to your use cases.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Similarly, I picked up Linux in 1997 and have used it as my
| primary since 1999. I've distro hopped through probably a dozen
| or so distros, but ultimately landed on PopOS for most of my
| machines, similarly to you. These threads are always somewhat
| disheartening, hearing everybody say they tried to switch but
| couldn't because of one issue or another. I guess I've just
| learned to work through it.
| chenzhekl wrote:
| Some of the games I am playing only run on Windows. Thats's the
| biggest obstacle for me to adopt Linux.
| Fronzie wrote:
| Do they require anti-cheat kernel drivers? If not, there's a
| good chance proton/steam to runs them.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| C'mon Steinberg, Make cubase for Linux so i can jump ship.
| Kye wrote:
| I'm waiting on Ableton, Arturia, and Native Instruments. The
| latter two should have the easiest time since all their stuff
| is already VST3 and it can support Linux.
| jonesjohnson wrote:
| I can recommend the other way round:
|
| For un-bricking my phone, I had to use some proprietary windows-
| only software. So I took an old Laptop and installed Windows 10.
|
| Installing it was such a pain already. So many dark patterns, so
| many privacy issues. I even had to create a microsoft account!
|
| After the deed was done, I closed the Laprop, went back to my
| Linux system and enjoyed it even more :-)
| adontz wrote:
| These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience,
| because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is.
| Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is
| good enough to replace Windows 10/11.
|
| But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word,
| Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something)
| and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate
| software to make a living? Inevitably yes.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Don't all of these run in the browser nowadays?
| Neywiny wrote:
| While office can run in the browser, the browser version
| sucks and I commonly need to open the files in the desktop
| version. This often happens when there's a browser version or
| a mobile version or an app version. There's a lack of feature
| parity.
| g947o wrote:
| I don't think you'll ever see a web version of Visual Studio.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Is Visual Studio still relevant if you're not developing
| native Windows software?
| adontz wrote:
| I'm currently developing ASP.Net Core services and modern
| .Net is quite nice. Everyone around me uses absolutely
| free Visual Studio Community edition, so it would be
| weird to not use it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Only limited versions, and the usability downgrade is severe.
| alkonaut wrote:
| The browser versions aren't as good as the desktop versions.
| And Googles alternatives aren't as good as Microsofts. Both
| do 60% of the job, which is probably enough for 80% of the
| people.
| thom wrote:
| The browser versions (and the mobile versions) are nowhere
| near parity with the desktop Windows version, even in quite
| basic matters of styling. To be honest this annoyed me enough
| in the end that I just moved to a PandaDoc/CSS/PDF workflow
| and honestly I now have both a simpler editing process, and a
| more powerful engine for customisation.
| lukaslalinsky wrote:
| Maybe Windows should remain as a professional tool for using
| these applications. Most people don't need them. They need a
| web browser and not much else. Maybe some games for kids.
| Something like Ubuntu can serve those needs just fine. If you
| need VS for developing Windows apps, then you obviously stay on
| Windows.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| " They need a web browser and not much else."
|
| These people will probably use a tablet or phone.
| lukaslalinsky wrote:
| Yes, but if they need to write a document, the larger
| screen and keyboard make it more usable.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Then they will attach a keyboard to their tablet. I think
| desktop OS for personal use is pretty much on the way
| out.
| morcus wrote:
| > I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am
| definitely not and I don't know anyone who is.
|
| Are you all expected to provide your own personal hardware?
|
| Maybe this depends on location, but everyone I can think of has
| a corporate-issued laptop on which their corporate software
| runs.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Yeah, but I guess part of the point is that MS themselves have
| been moving their desktop stack to the cloud making it even
| better for Linux users to maintain some degree of
| interoperability between the two OSs. I never particularly
| liked the Libre alternatives to Office, but now with 365 I can
| keep up with my colleges stack without having to switch to a VM
| or some other artifact just to collaborate on a document.
|
| Drawing, yeah, true... design as well... closest the Linux
| world ever was to get something decent in the design department
| was the Serif/Affinity products, but they never made the port.
| shevy-java wrote:
| We really need to make LibreOffice much better. I am tired of
| Microsoft really.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| This begs the question of who "we" are.
| 1over137 wrote:
| The people who want people to switch from Windows to Linux.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I guess it depends on your field, for the past ten years I've
| worked in companies that use Google workspace, google docs,
| google drive, etc, etc, and slack.
|
| I've not had any lock-in to Microsoft software and I don't
| think I've deal with a .doc file in all that time. I need a
| terminal to run devops stuff, and emacs to write it with, but
| almost nothing else.
|
| Artists, and so on, are probably tied to Adobe, etc. But random
| developers and sysadmins are certainly capable of switching I
| think.
| Eupolemos wrote:
| Target audience is probably especially anyone not in the US?
|
| It is beginning to look a lot like war is brewing between
| Europe and the US over Greenland. US media working super hard
| to make an "acquisition" sound reasonable and "FreedomTM".
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| I don't believe a "war" is brewing.
|
| If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there
| is not much that Europe can do in any case. Maybe a few
| politicians will go on X/twitter and complain but every
| country in the EU knows that they are no match for the US
| military and I am saying that as someone who lives in the EU.
|
| I suppose the EU could go after big US tech companies but
| since most of Europe's needs are covered by the very same
| companies, I don't think this would be viable solution either
| and let's be honest the EU people are not just going to
| switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning.
|
| It's unfortunate but it's the reality.
| anthk wrote:
| >No match
|
| The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard
| and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure
| AMD would have its asses already covered and found some
| alternative in Asia.
|
| Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes.
|
| On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's
| libre for the whole world, not just the US.
|
| Software it's easily replaceable except for die hard
| industrial DOS (where FreeDOS experts would cover) and some
| special XP/w9x era machinery. European _hardware_ , the
| industrial one... there's no alternative in the US. No one.
|
| If the US army steps on Greenland in order to seize it,
| it's the end of the American economy.
|
| China and Russia? These two should watch the Bering
| currents and South Asian quakes first; the upcoming ones
| will be a nightmare due to ice meltings.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid
| Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for
| Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered
| and found some alternative in Asia.
|
| The EU uses Mastercard and Visa. If youblock them in the
| EU, you just cripple the EU economy instantly.
|
| > On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software
| it's libre for the whole world, not just the US.
|
| How many people do you know that would be willing to
| switch to an alternative OS tomorrow or give up their
| Iphones?
|
| > If the US army steps on Greenland
|
| The US army is already on Greenland. They have a military
| base there.
|
| I agree with you in spirit but in reality any
| countermeasures would inflict a lot of pain the EU as
| well. I don't think anyone has a crystal ball but
| whatever happens won't be good for anyone.
| microtonal wrote:
| Yeah, I think it is naive of the grandparent to believe
| that iPhones, Android phones with Google Play Services, a
| lot of cloud services can be replaced overnight. That
| said, it might not happen overnight, but it will surely
| happen.
|
| I feel like we are close to a tipping point where
| governments and companies will move off US services en
| masse as fast as they reasonably can. I think this
| movement already started. E.g. our local university has
| forbidden use of US (well, any non-EU) LLMs for work and
| are trialing Mistral. Two years ago they would have gone
| Gemini without thinking (since they are already using
| Google Workspace). They are also extending support for
| their Linux workspace, which has primarily been
| maintained for CS'y groups, but they want to be ready to
| roll it out when needed.
|
| A lot of organizations (especially non-profits,
| universities, etc.) have woken up when Microsoft
| relinquished Microsoft 365 access of the ICC chief
| prosecutor overnight.
|
| I guess one side effect of the US going rogue is open
| source getting a lot more traction.
|
| I hope that the EU (and UK) will also invest heavily in
| iOS and Google Android alternatives, because that will be
| the hardest bits to replace, but as long as AOSP still
| exists it will be possible to bootstrap reasonably
| quickly.
| graemep wrote:
| Its going to be a very long time before it changes enough
| to do without US tech. How many European governments are
| encouraging the use of apps that only run on iOS and
| Android? How many critically important businesses like
| banks require customers run unrooted Android or IOS?
| HSBC's app will not even work if you install apps from
| F-Droid!
|
| A few governments are trying to do something about
| reliance on the US, but they are also doing things that
| create greater reliance.
|
| Its good your university is trying, but that sounds like
| a limited response. Do they use Windows? MS Teams? Google
| Drive?
|
| I know of no government making serious attempts to get
| the private sector of US dependence. Just check how many
| things you use regularly run on AWS. Desktop Linux is
| great but is any governmentactually making consistent
| attempts to persuade businesses to switch to it?
| microtonal wrote:
| _Its going to be a very long time before it changes
| enough to do without US tech. How many European
| governments are encouraging the use of apps that only run
| on iOS and Android? How many critically important
| businesses like banks require customers run unrooted
| Android or IOS? HSBC 's app will not even work if you
| install apps from F-Droid!_
|
| Step by step. For example, most Dutch banking apps work
| fine on GrapheneOS. Yes, still with Google Play Services,
| but at least they are sandboxed. It shows that there is a
| path to removing dependence incrementally. There are also
| a bunch of European phone brands (yes, most manufactured
| in China), like Nothing, Fairphone, Gigaset, HMD, etc.
| and at least one of them already supports alternative
| Android versions. Yes, I know they have issues, but you
| need to start somewhere.
|
| _Its good your university is trying, but that sounds
| like a limited response. Do they use Windows? MS Teams?
| Google Drive?_
|
| Yes, but they also have an official Linux workplace, last
| time I was there, you could choose to re-image a machine
| to run Linux on every machine. They are also trialing
| ownCloud.
|
| The migration won't happen overnight, but it's good that
| they are setting up the alternatives, trialing them with
| small user groups, etc. It's the best way to prepare
| yourself.
|
| _I know of no government making serious attempts to get
| the private sector of US dependence. Just check how many
| things you use regularly run on AWS. Desktop Linux is
| great but is any government actually making consistent
| attempts to persuade businesses to switch to it?_
|
| I agree, not enough persuasion is done. But being gloomy
| is not going to help. Best is to trust in our own
| strength (we _can_ do it), accept that the solutions are
| going to be worse (at least initially), make people aware
| of the risks and alternatives.
|
| The whole situation sucks, but big changes also give rise
| to big opportunities and it is an opportunity to change
| to a more open, more privacy-friendly, more user-
| oriented, etc. ecosystem.
| quesera wrote:
| I love you guys, and I wish you were right, but I don't
| think you are.
|
| Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML,
| etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the
| EU. Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling
| costs to significantly disengage from the US, and no one
| has the vision or fortitude to make that happen.
|
| You also wouldn't have any security. If you disengage
| from the US militarily (whatever's left of "NATO"), we'll
| all see how far Russia can project power. Not as far as
| they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in a half-
| dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts pressure
| on their neighbors of course. This would be a shooting
| war in the east, which would require central and western
| European countries to decide whether they want to spend
| blood and treasure to respond. "No" kicks the can down
| the road a few years, "Yes" is economically devastating.
|
| China could step in! It's a long way from China to the
| Mediterranean and North Atlantic, and their naval power
| is ... thin, currently. But you don't want China to step
| in. They could send money, but then they'd own you worse
| than the US even fever dreams about owning you.
|
| The US seizing Greenland would be a terrible thing for
| the world, but I think the most likely outcome is that
| there would be complaints from the EU countries at
| highest level and volume, and a handful of countries
| would get legislation through to make the US suffer, but
| it would fail at the EU level, maybe even split the EU
| into two factions of American-bully-reluctantly-aligned
| countries vs American-bully-righteously-andor-
| selfservingly-opposed countries. The instability would
| last a few years, maybe a decade, and then we'd be back
| to where we are now, with "Greenland (US)" replacing
| "Greenland (DK)" on maps, but otherwise no one would
| spend much time thinking about it.
|
| And the stomach-turning irony is that all of this is
| completely unnecessary. The US has a compact of free
| operation in Greenland already, including military
| operations. This is just an exercise in establishing
| dominance (i.e. The End of Politeness). There are some
| administrative details like mineral rights and redrawing
| international exclusivity zones (watch out Canada), but
| those are not very important when the global economic
| machine is working properly.
|
| The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are waiting
| to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we don't,
| they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a shred
| of truth to that -- it sounds like absolute manufactured
| BS to me (RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't
| project at that distance), but I have a strong anti-
| trusting bias against liars who lie, and those are the
| people dominating the conversation on this side.
|
| The next ten months in the US will decide the next fifty
| years of the world. On a personal level, that's the rest
| of my life, and I'm worried about it.
|
| I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > This is just an exercise in establishing dominance
| (i.e. The End of Politeness).
|
| I agree.
|
| It's a way to assert dominance and the EU countries are
| partially responsible for the state of things.
|
| I mean, when you outsource your manufacturing
| capabilities to China, your tech services to the US and
| your security to NATO, then it frees up a lot of cash to
| spend on other things and that is probably why life in
| the EU is pretty good.
|
| Unfortunately the other side of this coin is that it
| leaves you completely unprepared if/when things change
| quickly.
|
| > Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling
| costs
|
| Once again unfortunately, many EU countries are already
| maxing out their budgets each year and running sky high
| deficits so there is not much dry powder to absorb these
| costs.
|
| Raising more money through taxes is politically
| unpalatable when a lot of the EU countries are already in
| the top 10 of most taxed countries on the planet.
|
| The only notable exceptions are Poland and Germany but
| they won't be able to carry the rest of the EU by
| themselves.
|
| > maybe even split the EU into two factions of American-
| bully-reluctantly-aligned countries vs American-bully-
| righteously-andor-selfservingly-opposed countries.
|
| The smallest EU countries have no choice. There is no EU
| army and therefore if the US leaves there is no one to
| replace it. It's a basic case of choosing the best worst
| outcome. Become a vassal of Russia or become a vassal of
| the US.
| anthk wrote:
| Again, Russia would need to fight harsh natural disasters
| first. If any, they will need _us_. Earthquakes due to
| ice melts and current flows will be no joke. Temperatures
| will be warmer in the Arctic, and a potential small war
| due to gas /resources/routes will happen, everyone knows
| that. But what no one speaks it's that the damn nature
| can crush any vehicle in between no matter if it's from
| USA, Europe, Russia or China. It will be _scary_ and
| nature doesn 't give a shit where are you from. Every
| base you set on either ice or the coast can be plummeted
| down due to a quake/tsunami in hours.
|
| Also, back to economics. The inner European market can be
| huge. We have decent armies ourservers, too, among market
| with the whole Mediterranean, Africa and South America
| (Spaniards know how to do deals, no matter which
| political side). Oh, and don't forget China, the Chinese
| will _love_ to sell us advanced tech at bargain price.
|
| The US tries to set right wing sided mafias in LatAm,
| Europe tries to get good deals. The US needs to behave
| like gentlemen and not like thugs.
| graemep wrote:
| > Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML,
| etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the
| EU
|
| And many other places - most countries depend in US tech
| and increasingly so (recent NH stories about Vietnam
| mandating banks only use unrooted mobile phones). Just
| card payments not working would be an economic disaster.
| So would closing down all the businesses and services
| that rely on AWS, GCP and Azure. So would whatever the US
| chose to do through Apple, MS, and Google OSes.
|
| > we'll all see how far Russia can project power. Not as
| far as they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in
| a half-dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts
| pressure on their neighbors of course. This would be a
| shooting war in the east, which would require central and
| western European countries to decide whether they want to
| spend blood and treasure to respond
|
| I am more optimistic than you about this. Russia is
| struggling just against Ukraine. They might just invade
| the Baltic states but anything more would force Western
| Europe to commit and the Russians know this. Even in
| Ukraine they invaded because we had signalled we would do
| nothing by not responding to the previous invasion of
| Ukraine, to threats to invade and previous Russian
| invasions of other countries.
|
| > The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are
| waiting to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we
| don't, they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a
| shred of truth to that - RU isn't strong enough to hold
| it, and CN can't project at that distance
|
| If Greenland becomes independent in a few years time
| would it then become more of a threat?
|
| > RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project
| at that distance
|
| China is building its armed forces, and there are ways of
| getting a country within your sphere if influence short
| of invasion.
|
| > I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.
|
| We all do but I think we are living in a new cold war.
| faust201 wrote:
| > Vietnam mandating banks only use unrooted mobile phones
|
| Other way around. They are used to using money. Even
| India tried to make everything electronic. A bit
| successful but not totally.
|
| Yes Playstore is important. But unless US mandates
| Qualcomm and mediatek, apple to brick all non US.phones
| this won't happen.
| leptons wrote:
| >Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes.
|
| >it's the end of the American economy.
|
| You assume that this is not the goal of the current US
| "leadership". They want the country to fail, so they can
| rule over the ashes. They are a lot more fucked up in the
| head than you probably think they are. They simply don't
| care what happens, so long as they are the ones in power.
|
| Trump would love nothing more than to dissolve NATO, and
| isolate from all of the EU. He would see that as an
| accomplishment. I wish I were joking.
| Eupolemos wrote:
| No, we know it would be the breaking-point for not acting.
| It will be a shooting war if the US tries it.
|
| We don't need to annihilate the US forces, just make the US
| bleed enough to rethink this stupid shit.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| > If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland,
| there is not much that Europe can do in any case.
|
| Whether or not that's true, that doesn't mean they won't
| try anyway. Pride sometimes beats pragmatism. I think it's
| foolish to dismiss the possibility of war, been if you
| believe it will be one-sided.
| saubeidl wrote:
| France has nukes and the only shoot first, ask questions
| later nuclear stance in the world.
|
| I would advise Americans not to do anything stupid.
| layer8 wrote:
| Windows 11 is actually less annoying in the EU than in the
| US, thanks to the DMA.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I have a Mac laptop, a Linux workstation, and a Windows
| workstation for different purposes and I use them all. I agree.
| Every time someone says they switched OSes and they don't miss
| anything, it's revealed that 90-100% of their work was in
| generic outlets like the web browser, terminal, e-mail, and
| Slack.
|
| To be fair, that could cover a lot of people.
|
| In my experience watching people make the switch in the real
| world, the failure point is either the last 10% of software
| that they actually need, or the first time they encounter some
| Linux quirk that they didn't expect. Then it reaches a point
| where there isn't really any upside for people who aren't
| ideologically motivated and who don't get triggered by Windows
| 11 design choices or occasional pop-ups.
|
| I have some specific engineering software that must run on
| Windows, period. I've gotten flak from the software engineers
| at every company whenever it's discovered that my second
| machine is Windows, but outside of software devs nobody else
| questions it. Using Windows for work is perfectly understood by
| most other disciplines
| leptons wrote:
| The only reason I'm not using Linux on my work-provided
| computer is due to the security software. None of it runs on
| Linux, it only runs on Windows and MacOS. Glad I don't have
| to use any software that only runs on Windows to do
| development. Hopefully the security software will someday
| support Linux.
| nikanj wrote:
| A big reason why Linux runs better than Windows is the
| absence of Crowdstrike and similar real-time-fuck-shit-up--
| alyctic engines
| BuddyPickett wrote:
| Windows pop-ups can all be turned off. I have them all turned
| off on my machines and nothing pops up anymore. Windows is
| extremely customizable and modifiable and it runs 100% of
| Windows software which is most of the software being produced
| in the world today.
| user34283 wrote:
| Windows 11 isn't running half as bad for me as most here seem
| to say.
|
| I experience no delays with the start menu, and it's
| perfectly smooth on my 240 Hz monitor.
|
| I also never encountered crashes like described as OP's
| reason for the switch.
|
| So what do I have to gain from using Linux? A bit better
| compatibility for my software work, but much worse game
| compatibility. Fewer annoying popups, but they aren't that
| frequent on Windows either. Probably a worse update
| experience, and more time spent configuring.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Not even remotely true.
|
| You're making the exact same argument everyone here is making,
| and that's because you're attempting to argue from technical
| parity / superiority. Windows isn't the dominant desktop OS
| because of it's technical superiority to Linux, it's dominant
| because of deeply entrenched compliance and industry reasons.
|
| Healthcare, finance, legal, engineering (less so today, but
| still very sub-discipline dependant), and government all have
| very specific software needs that no one in their right mind
| will bother writing new software, or rewriting existing
| software, would do for 6% desktop market share.
|
| EMR programs (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), Practice management and
| billing, Tax and compliance, Legal discovery and case-
| management tools, Niche hardware and it's control software
|
| This is all the realm of Windows. Most of these applications
| are Windows-only (Win32 / .NET / ActiveX legacy), they're only
| certified and validated on Windows, and they're only
| contractually supported on Windows.
|
| Even if Wolters-Kluwer rewrote the entire CCH ProSystem fx
| suite for Linux, now there's recertification, regulatory
| review, vendor retraining, staff retraining, potential issues
| with auditors and regulators, etc.
|
| There's currently no upside large enough to justify: Vendor
| finger-pointing, Compliance risk, Training costs, Downtime risk
|
| It's negative ROI all the way down.
|
| Windows has to become so bad that switching to Linux for
| desktops overcomes all of the above.
| nlkl wrote:
| I see this argument again and again, but I would imagine most
| people reading this have separate work and home computers?
|
| For the average home user I can see gaming - while hugely
| improved in recent years - could still be a showstopper.
|
| But surely for the average user Libreoffice or online versions
| of MS Office will suffice? Surely there cannot be _that_ many
| average PC users that need the full power of Photoshop?
|
| Of course I expect the average HN user to be quite different
| from the average user in general, but I really do think that
| many casual users get no advantages from Windows apart from
| familiarity.
| nikanj wrote:
| Target audience is anyone who will click it. They don't make
| money from you installing Linux, they make money from you
| wanting to read how the switching went
| worksonmine wrote:
| Have you tried replacing Microsoft Office with Libreoffice?
| It's been perfectly usable for years and I'm even comfortable
| sending anyone .odt files. I haven't got a single question or
| comment about it. You may not be able to but in that case just
| use the .docx extension, install whatever fonts your colleagues
| expect and continue exactly as you were.
|
| I can't take these kinds of arguments seriously because I
| regularly read, edit and create documents and spreadsheets and
| never felt the need to use Word or Excel. It seems most people
| I've met who claim they can't use Linux because they need X, Y
| or Z never really tried when I ask. It's just an assumption and
| they deal with Microsoft based on it.
|
| It's a shame, we could have a world without data-mining and
| vendor lock-ins if we were principled and didn't always choose
| the easy path.
| wbshaw wrote:
| Even though the author trivialized the problems he had getting
| his laptop up and running, there were enough obstacles to keep
| 90% of non-techies from actually getting it working. How many
| normies have a USB ethernet laying around and understand enough
| to uninstall drivers that are interfering with the UI?
| Certhas wrote:
| Getting Windows up and running isn't necessarily easier. There
| was a recent review of a handheld Windows device that needed
| unauthorized hidden driver updates to get performance to match
| Steam OS. The only way to avoid this type of stuff is to get a
| Laptop with Ubuntu or Windows preinstalled.
| ndepoel wrote:
| Windows is not exactly free of this sort of nonsense either.
| Just recently I built a new PC for a friend, and we wanted to
| keep using his old SSD and Windows installation. After messing
| about with Bitlocker recovery keys which was already cumbersome
| enough, we ran into a catch-22 issue where we needed internet
| access to be able to log in and verify his Microsoft account,
| but we needed to install a driver for the new motherboard's
| networking chipset first, for which you need to be able to log
| in to an account first. Eventually we found that you can use
| USB tethering from a phone to gain internet access, for which
| no special driver is needed, which got around the issue but it
| was not exactly an obvious solution.
| fyredge wrote:
| Non-techies neither build their own pc, nor do they bother
| with bitlocker...
| randunel wrote:
| It's next to impossible to get windows up and running if you
| dare not get a computer with it preinstalled, AHCI drivers are
| almost never included in the installation disc. And windows
| support gives you links to self installing exe files which you
| can't run, because you presumably run a linux live cd to be
| able to access the internet and ask for help, and exe files
| don't run on it, and can't be accessed by the windows installer
| either.
|
| Then windows and intel support decide to blame the customer,
| because it's never their company's fault. Sample conversation:
| https://community.intel.com/t5/Rapid-Storage-Technology/Inte...
| p_ing wrote:
| > AHCI drivers are almost never included in the installation
| disc
|
| This was a valid argument with... Windows 9x and XP. Today,
| not.
| rasur wrote:
| Gaming is all well and good, but I'd be interested to hear of
| experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live,
| Cubase and other Steinberg apps, plus many VSTs) from Windows to
| Linux.
|
| I see Wine, YABridge and LinVST mentioned in searches, but while
| I've got plenty of Linux experience, I'm time-poor and would
| prefer to make computers make noises rather than spend my time
| making things work. I have Reaper which is cross-platform but
| again, getting the VSTs working would be great (at a bare
| minimum).
|
| A Mac is not an option here. Any pointers gratefully received!
| nickjj wrote:
| I can't speak for DAWs but in 2019 when I tried switching to
| native Linux my Scarlett 2i2 3rd gen USB audio interface did
| not play nicely with Debian at the time. I'd get an endless
| amount of crackles and pops during recordings / playback and I
| spent days going over tons of audio configs / tools (Jack,
| Alsa, PulseAudio, etc.). They weren't xruns, at least Jack
| wasn't reporting them as that. Buffer sizes were normal too.
|
| The good news is the same interface today works fine with
| PipeWire, without needing to tweak anything. I am using Arch
| this time around.
| rasur wrote:
| Yeah, these days the Scarletts are fine (as is the aging
| Firewire connected Edirol FA-101 I've got attached). Non-DAW
| things such as Supercollider work fine, but I focus less on
| that sort of environment (which isn't a dis - SC is great!).
| hejira wrote:
| I use Reaper for Linux and love it. Getting Windows VSTs to
| work is okay with lin-vst and wine. Bascially install wine with
| your package manager, maybe run winecfg, then get lin-vst and
| make a copy of its single so-file, named the same as each vst
| binary in the same directory, then add that dir as a vst
| location in Reaper. As far as I remember.
| rasur wrote:
| thanks!
| vindex10 wrote:
| I love how windows-linux discussion is populated by DAW/VST
| incompatibility. I'm still new to the industry, and therefore
| also open minded about daw/plugins.
|
| I actually had good experience with setting up yabridge, it
| could have worked for me I think. But the elephant in the room
| is that many big commercial plugins use JUCE as a framework,
| and the recent release of JUCE (JUCE8) just broke compatibility
| with wine and seem to be sabotaging wine-based usage
| completely, and are not considering going back at the moment.
|
| https://forum.juce.com/t/juce8-direct2d-wine-yabridge/64298/...
|
| https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/issues/386
|
| There are patches based on binary diffs to JUCE7, but it is
| just so much pain to simply run the commonest plugins in the
| field :/
|
| So I'm now kind of stuck between using windows with commercial
| plugins or use linux with mainly smaller scale alternatives
| (although there are good ones: lsp, decent sampler, cardinal,
| surge)
| rasur wrote:
| Thanks! I wasn't aware of the JUCE newer version issue.. I'll
| have to (sometime) dig into that a bit deeper. Me I don't
| mind the idea of the smaller-scale alternatives, but having
| to occasionally work withothers that aren't linux based could
| be.. problematic.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and
| using Audio apps (Ableton Live
|
| I've been using Linux for work and hobbies for more than a
| decade at this point, mostly Arch Linux, some CachyOS, but
| always had a partition of Windows available too. Why? Almost
| solely because Ableton does not run properly with Wine, Proton
| or any other tooling, and has never been able to do so, for as
| long as I've used Ableton (since version 8 or 9 I think).
|
| If you spend most of your day with Ableton, then Linux is not
| ready for you, and then I'm not even considering plugins or
| what not, just the default and standard stuff is not running
| properly no matter what you'll try.
| rasur wrote:
| right - same here WRT windows partition. Not always using
| Live, but it gets used when it's necessary. I'm slightly
| disappointed that they haven't done the decent thing and
| released a Linux version, but .. ah well, what can ya do hey?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I'd be willing to shell out for a new license if they need
| that for making a Linux version... I guess next step is to
| fund some FOSS developer to actually add support for it to
| Wine, by force if must be :P Wonder if there is some way
| for developers to raise money for adding support for
| specific software to Wine? Might not be such a a bad idea.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| > I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises
|
| Then Linux is not for you at this point. I don't mean to
| discourage you - for me, Reaper works, Scarlett works, ffmpeg
| works etc. But there are quirks. Reaper has horrible scaling on
| 4k screen, which I believe can be resolved by forcing UI
| scaling, but this requires change every time I switch from
| laptop to external monitor, so I just live with tiny buttons.
| Scarlett works, but requires JACK, and I never got it working
| properly with Pulse/Pipewire (outputs get duplicated
| sometimes), also control software doesn't exist, aside from one
| opensource reimplementation, which works but looks horrible.
|
| If you don't have time, just don't.
| rasur wrote:
| I'm not a Linux noob, but I do have better things to do than
| admin/fix in the evenings too.
| nickjj wrote:
| I also switched to Linux last month. It hasn't been a smooth
| experience with my GPU as I'm encountering memory leaks in
| popular compositors. I also get 150-200ms keyboard input delay in
| all games using some compositors but not all. I documented as
| much as I could here https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/gpu-memory-
| allocation-bugs-wi....
|
| Still, despite all of that when it works it is better than
| Windows. It's just ironic that my Linux desktop is less stable
| than Windows 10 since I have to reboot 2-3 times a day from GPU
| memory leaks. Windows 10 was really stable with the same hardware
| and had no input delay in games. I only rebooted when the OS
| pushed an update since I keep my machine on 24 / 7.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you with
| a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but is
| unlikely to be a common experience.
| nickjj wrote:
| > It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you
| with a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but
| is unlikely to be a common experience.
|
| The drivers are still getting maintained by NVIDIA until
| August 2026. They also got classified as "legacy" on paper 1
| day before I installed them.
|
| The compositor memory leak is affecting a lot of people.
| Since COSMIC and niri both use the same one (smithay),
| there's threads on GitHub with people using modern GPUs, both
| NVIDIA and AMD who experience it. There's a lot of replies
| across all of the different open issues.
|
| The GPU allocation issue on Wayland (separate from the memory
| leak) also has hundreds of replies on the NVIDIA developer
| forums with people using new NVIDIA cards with the latest
| drivers.
|
| The thing is, most people don't talk about either of them
| because if you have 8+ GB of GPU memory and turn your
| computer off every night then you won't experience this
| problem since all GPU memory allocations get reset on
| shutdown. It happens to be more of a direct problem for me
| because I have 2 GB of GPU memory but that doesn't mean the
| problem isn't common. The root cause is still there. Even if
| I switched to an AMD GPU the niri / smithay memory leak would
| be present. Instead of rebooting twice a day, if the GPU had
| 8 GB of memory I'd have to reboot every 2 days (x4
| basically).
|
| Since I opened that issue on GitHub NVIDIA did acknowledge it
| and suggested I try their experimental egl-wayland2 library.
| I did try that and it hasn't fixed it fully but it has made
| GPU memory allocations more stable. It even fixed 1 type of
| leak in niri. This library is decoupled from the drivers
| themselves as far as I know. I mean, this same library could
| still be used for the 590 series, it's not 580 specific which
| means it's not dependent on your GPU model.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > The compositor memory leak is affecting a lot of people.
| Since COSMIC and niri both use the same one (smithay),
| there's threads on GitHub with people using modern GPUs,
| both NVIDIA and AMD who experience it. There's a lot of
| replies across all of the different open issues.
|
| But then this sounds like a bug in that particular
| compositor rather than the driver(s)?
|
| fwiw, I have a modern nvidia card, _and_ use the
| proprietary drivers, _and_ Wayland (KDE /KWin), _and_ that
| box has a few weeks of uptime.
| nickjj wrote:
| > But then this sounds like a bug in that particular
| compositor rather than the driver(s)?
|
| The NVIDIA GPU memory allocation issue affects all NVIDIA
| cards, at least based on that forum post where there's a
| good amount of people replying with similar issues with a
| large combo of cards + drivers.
|
| You probably don't notice it because you rarely ever use
| all of your GPU's memory at once. Try running `watch
| nvidia-smi` and then open multiple copies of every
| hardware accelerated app you have available. Once you
| reach nearly the max GPU memory apps will either start
| crashing or fail to open and if you get semi-unlucky your
| compositor (including KDE on Wayland) will crash if it's
| the app trying to allocate resources to render the
| window. I've had plasmashell or kwin hard lock / crash
| many times with just a small amount of testing.
|
| The expectation is the driver allocates those memory
| resources to system memory instead of denying the memory
| to the app. It works correctly in X11 or if you have an
| AMD card, in Wayland and X11.
|
| The leak is separate and is compositor specific, possibly
| related to NVIDIA driver bugs (to some degree) but this
| leak wouldn't be experienced unless you used this
| compositor. This leak is the compositor doesn't release
| any GPU memory after any window is closed, so simply
| opening and closing apps will cause the leak. Combine
| this with the first problem and that's how you end up
| rebooting every few hours with a lower end GPU. AMD and
| NVIDIA are affected.
|
| The post goes into all of these details and there's
| reproducible tests, and even demo videos showing the
| first GPU memory allocation problem in Plasma Wayland but
| not Plasma X11. It also links to all of the related
| GitHub issues that I could find.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| For that old of a GPU you may have a better time on X instead
| of wayland - there the NVIDIA drivers are supposed to be pretty
| decent.
| keyshapegeo99 wrote:
| For both ideological and practical reasons, I'd love to switch.
| If I were a desktop computing person, I'd already have done so
| years ago.
|
| Alas, I exclusively use laptops - as I work a great deal while
| travelling.
|
| I do not wish to have to carry around a mouse with me wherever I
| go with my _portable_ computer.
|
| If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the
| smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experience, I'll
| switch. I have yet to find one, however (and yes, I've tried all
| the Asahi variants - they don't come close).
| mmcnl wrote:
| Agreed. Trackpads on Windows are very good (approaching Mac
| quality) but on Linux it's hit and (mostly) miss. Gnome
| gestures are borderline unusable. Sometimes Gnome forgets how
| many fingers I'm using and every single finger mouse movement
| is suddenly a gesture, have to retry gestures to switch
| workspaces because the first two times it fails, etc. It
| becomes worse with more windows open. No back swipe gesture in
| Chrome, etc. Basic stuff that is annoying in every day use.
| Flawless mouse/touchpad support is not too much to ask.
| brightball wrote:
| I always agreed with this take until I went all in on keyboard
| driven tiling window managers. First with i3 and now with
| Omarchy/hyprland.
|
| I find my use of the trackpad so rare now that it's a non
| factor.
| fragmede wrote:
| what do you use to get web browsing to work without a mouse?
| I tried Vimium and Vimperator, but that was a really long
| time ago.
| brightball wrote:
| I still use the mouse in a browser, but I find myself
| tabbing around a lot more often than I used to.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Take this with a grain of salt, it's impossible for me to tell
| what you are and aren't comfortable with, but there is an
| alternative to using trackpads or mice at all and that's tiling
| window managers. You drive the OS with your keyboard. Combining
| this with plugins like Vimium for Chromium based browsers (or
| Tridactyl for Firefox) you can drive your entire OS and browser
| with keybindings.
|
| As an aside, the latter also teaches you the bindings for Vim
| which is a nice boon if you've tried in the past and couldn't
| make it stick.
|
| But again, this might not fit your use case or your
| preparedness to invest time and effort. I'm just saying.
| frr149 wrote:
| I've been using fedora desktop on laptop for years, alongside a
| Mac, without any issues
| STKFLT wrote:
| > If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the
| smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experience, I'll
| switch
|
| I find Niri to be a great WM for trackpad use if you are
| amenable to a scrollable-tiling workflow. All gestures are
| inertial like MacOS and to my fingers they often feel snappier
| and more natural than their macOS equivalents. Scrolling is
| consistent and natural, though which apps have inertial
| scrolling is definitely hit-or-miss. It perfectly recognizes
| three and four finger gestures. PikaOS (debian-based) and
| CachyOS (arch-based) both offer Niri as an option if you want
| to give it a try.
|
| For context, my experience is on a 4 year old thinkpad which
| admittedly is probably best case for driver support but is
| definitely not the best touchpad hardware on the market.
| keyshapegeo99 wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation! I've been playing around with
| Niri for the past hour and I have to say there's a lot here
| that I like. I'm still going to need to figure out how to
| adjust the trackpad gesture sensitivity a bit (which doesn't
| seem especially straightforward to do) - but this is
| considerably more buttery than anything I've experienced
| before on Linux
| ryandrake wrote:
| Here's a perfect example of this: Using a Mac trackpad on
| macOS, you can two-finger scroll as fast or slow as you want.
| If you go slow enough (you might have to "roll" your fingers
| instead of moving them down), you can scroll your browser
| pixel-by-pixel. This behavior carries through every app on the
| system. Scrolling basically does exactly what your fingers do.
|
| Now, run Linux (say, Ubuntu) on that exact same hardware and
| try scrolling in Firefox or something. Instead of the content
| moving exactly as your fingers are moving, it does this weird
| jumpy "page up / page down" like thing as your fingers move.
| Even moving your fingers as slowly as you can will make the
| content jump to the next "page" 20 pixels down. This is not
| just Firefox's behavior: it carries through to every
| application.
|
| Yes, there's probably some obscure GNOME configuration I need
| to add to fix this behavior, and if you search online you'll
| find forum after forum of people asking for logs and responding
| with "I dunno, try this." For something that should work out of
| the box.
| matteotom wrote:
| idk, the two finger "rolling" pixel-by-pixel scroll seems to
| work for me - Firefox (also foot terminal, Slack (xwayland),
| and Signal) on Scroll (a Sway fork) on Debian (testing) on a
| ~year old Thinkpad X11. I don't think I've done anything to
| configure or customize it either.
|
| I got a Thinkpad (after a few years on a Macbook) largely
| because in the past the track point was a lot better than
| trackpads. But in those years, it seems hardware and/or
| software have improved enough that I barely use it.
| cubano wrote:
| I just turned 60. My first computer was a 4.77MHz IBM PC with an
| 8088 processor, two floppy drives, and that magnificent
| mechanical keyboard IBM shipped in those days. My father, clearly
| receiving excellent financial advice at the time, picked up a
| 300bps Hayes modem for the princely sum of $599. CompuServe, here
| I come!
|
| For context, this was early 1982. That 599 would cost 1,900 today
| -- still a lot for a modem, but not quite the "gazillion" I
| remembered. Still, it illustrates just how far we've come.
|
| Since then, I've written software professionally for over 40
| years (with varying degrees of success). I've owned well over 200
| computers -- roughly 90% Wintel machines and 10% MacBooks. I've
| built them, repaired them, debugged them, and occasionally, after
| particularly frustrating days, set them back together again. I
| like to think I know my way around a PC.
|
| Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of the
| Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I
| installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from
| DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on a
| mission to rediscover the joy of computing.
|
| For a while, it was genuinely fun. The sheer number of options
| was overwhelming in the best way possible. Customization
| everywhere I looked. All those incredible free software packages
| waiting in the repositories. In the beginning, I didn't even mind
| that I found myself doing full reinstalls every two or three days
| due to random instabilities. I was living the dream. Desktop
| effects and visual flair? Bring it on. Why does Compiz get so
| much criticism these days? What's more satisfying than a
| beautifully animated window?
|
| Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to
| degrade -- subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns.
| Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The
| kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder
| what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across
| distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here
| or there. Something fundamental was happening.
|
| And yes, I'm aware of the irony. The system celebrated for its
| stability and reliability was the one leaving me longing for a
| responsive desktop environment. But that's exactly what I
| experienced, and I gave each distribution a fair shot.
|
| There's also the practical reality: I'm a heavy Ableton Live
| user, and dual-booting has become increasingly grating. The Linux
| audio ecosystem has made real progress, but for my specific
| workflow, it's not there yet. Maybe in another year or two.
|
| So I'm back on Windows 11. It works. It doesn't surprise me.
| After four decades, I'm okay with "it works" as a primary
| criterion.
|
| Will I try Linux again? Maybe. The ecosystem continues to
| improve, and who knows what the next wave of AI-assisted tools
| might change. But for now, I wanted to share an honest account of
| what I encountered -- because I genuinely wanted Linux to win.
| The_President wrote:
| > Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of
| the Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I
| installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from
| DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on
| a mission to rediscover the joy of computing.
|
| Twenty distributions in six months, using each one for at least
| two weeks. Aside from the overlap, the post claims experience
| with debugging and repairing computers - but a lot of the blame
| here is placed on Linux without specifics of hardware of actual
| distributions used. Reads formulated like the typical narrative
| meant to deride Linux with surface level anecdotes.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| > but a lot of the blame here is placed on Linux without
| specifics of hardware of actual distributions used.
|
| I don't read blame in this; it's a description of his or her
| experience.
|
| > Reads formulated like the typical narrative meant to deride
| Linux with surface level anecdotes.
|
| I don't see this. It is possible for others to have different
| experiences and preferences without theirs being derision.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| What Linux distributions did you try?
|
| What hardware were you using?
|
| What kind of troubleshooting did you perform?
|
| >> Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations
| started to degrade -- subtle at first, then undeniable. Random
| slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15
| seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the
| screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was
| consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't
| just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was
| happening.
|
| Without more details it would be difficult to determine what
| problems you were having.
|
| I have never had problems like you describe with Linux. I would
| be interested to know more details.
| ordu wrote:
| _> The Linux installations started to degrade -- subtle at
| first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that
| wouldn 't register for 10 or 15 seconds._
|
| Very interesting. It is something I've never hit. Or, rather, I
| know the symptoms, but in my case they are caused not by the
| age of the installation, but by the memory use and swapping.
| When I compile something big, it can eat a lot of memory, and
| even 32Gb or RAM is not enough sometimes, there are lags and
| sometimes very painful.
|
| It is really interesting because the behavior was persistent
| for all Linux distributions you tried, so probably there was
| some program that ate all the memory. Pity you didn't try
| running top and watching CPU and memory usage. Now I'll think
| of possible causes to the end of my days without any hope to
| find a real cause.
| graemep wrote:
| > Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started
| to degrade -- subtle at first, then undeniable. Random
| slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15
| seconds.
|
| This is something that I would expect with Windows over time
| (not in a few weeks though) but has never happened to me with
| Linux. I have run less stable rolling release distros, and I
| have done multiple major version upgrades on the same machine
| over time over many machines.
|
| its sounds to me as though you are doing some unusual things -
| few people use Compiz now because DEs like KDE provide those
| through their default Window managers.
| mnls wrote:
| Every now and then a new article "Why you should go Linux". I get
| it, I like Linux too but every case is different. I want to use
| Linux but I have to use Digital Audio Workstation. So in my case,
| I shouldn't dump Windows (and thousand of $$ I've spent on audio
| software).
|
| I know people desperately want to believe that Linux is "there",
| but it really isn't. And will probably never be. It's still too
| confusing for the average user (many distros, many desktop
| environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap vs flatpak).
| reactordev wrote:
| Reaper is just as good as FL Studio or Logic Pro. VSTs are
| really your biggest hurdle. Depending on how they are compiled,
| they may rely on platform specific code. Most big plugin makers
| have VSTs for all platforms though and your license works on
| all.
|
| The pathway is there should you choose, one day. Linux is quite
| good now. That being said, I know a lot of niche plugins that
| some guy wrote that only works on windows because that's all
| he/she has access to. Some 8-bit synth bitcrushers come to
| mind.
|
| Also Steinburg made VST 3 sdk open source so you have a path to
| a free music production studio.
|
| https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk
| g947o wrote:
| "as good as" (debatable in the first place) isn't enough
| justification to switch. Everyone has their own workflows,
| settings etc that they used over many years, which they are
| not going to give up, just to "switch to Linux". This is
| about real loss in productivity.
| reactordev wrote:
| Yes but readers may be reading and think that Linux isn't
| capable. It is. There's plenty of DAWs available. You can
| also use WINE with proton to run FL Studio on Linux. My
| suggestion is just that, a suggestion to explore the
| possible.
|
| If we just learn one thing and never change then we wind up
| being left behind. While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and
| Ableton are what most people know. There's ways of running
| ALL of them on Linux.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and Ableton are what
| most people know. There's ways of running ALL of them on
| Linux.
|
| As I just managed to get VR working with HP Reverb G2 in
| my Linux environment, quite literally the only reason I
| have Windows still installed on my computer is because of
| Ableton, and not being able to run that properly on even
| workstation hardware.
|
| How exactly do I get Ableton running with an external USB
| soundcard and everything running exactly like it runs on
| Linux? I'm quite literally ready to give you money if you
| manage to give me an answer that actually leads to me
| being able to run Ableton on Arch Linux, because for
| years I have tried, and waited for the moment it's
| possible. So please do tell, how do I get it running?
| bhewes wrote:
| Windows VM with USB passthrough. I haven't had any issues
| with USB devices this way.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| I've tried to passthrough Behringer audio interface, as
| well as HX Stomp (to, of course, avoid dual-boot) and it
| stuttered like crazy. Maybe there is a way to make it
| more "realtime" but it's not the default, at least in
| VirtualBox.
| bhewes wrote:
| Yeah passing through usb devices to a VM for audio seems
| to be a dark art like working with a bunch of analog
| equipment. Everything has to be tuned. I do understand
| why a bare metal windows and/or mac computer is always in
| a studio, one can skip the head ache. Even if main DAW is
| Linux.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Windows VM
|
| That's not wine, and I'd rather keep dual booting that
| running Windows VMs that barely can keep up. Have you
| tried doing music production inside a Windows VM before?
| bhewes wrote:
| Yes Ableton, VST and usb. I have used the Coreweave
| windows VM with Nvidia to run everything audio and video,
| though haven't routed USB devices to it.
|
| Cognitively it's easier to just buy a second PC for
| windows. But threadripper pro etc have so many cores and
| pcie lanes it's easy to run multiple OS VMs with
| dedicated GPUs at close to native speed in one box.
| reactordev wrote:
| https://github.com/BEEFY-JOE/AbletonLiveOnLinux
|
| https://hanez.org/document/ableton-live-linux-wine/
|
| https://github.com/wineasio/wineasio
|
| The biggest thing with any Linux and Wine mix for DAWs is
| using JACK and WineASIO for low latency
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| This doesn't work like everyone makes it out to. The
| first problem is overcoming the plethora of build errors.
| Then if you're lucky enough to actually get Ableton
| launched and working, you'll run into weird issues like
| Ableton crashing as soon as you attempt to add a MIDI
| track. When you find a work-around for that, you then run
| into random crashing in the middle of playback with
| absolutely atrocious latency despite the claims of "low
| latency". It's not worth it. I gave up
| reactordev wrote:
| It does work and no you don't need to fiddle with build
| errors and crap unless you have some weird hardware.
|
| It works for me plug n play with my scarlett devices.
| Many tracks.
|
| Core i9, RTX 3080, Fedora w/ Proton on Vulkan. USB-C
| Scarlett.
|
| I think your issue might be that you aren't using an ALSA
| device.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Thanks, I've seen that repository before, but when I last
| saw it it boiled down to basically "create a prefix with
| these winecfg values" and not much more, but it seems a
| lot more fleshed out now, will give it another go.
|
| Would be great if we'd eventually get some PipeWireASIO
| thing, sounds like a missing piece of the puzzle still,
| although not strictly required I suppose.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| You can't, I've tried. The "passthrough" is bullshit, it
| doesn't fucking work and I wish people would stop
| recommending this time wasting "advice". That's not even
| the main issue as 90% of your VSTs will probably not work
| either and latency will be through the roof.
| oamaok wrote:
| > VSTs are really your biggest hurdle.
|
| And that is unfortunately the place where I spent my big
| bucks.
|
| I do however use Linux for my work, and have for more than a
| decade. If all the plugins (plus FL Studio, I've tried Reaper
| but it might be not for me) worked, I'd switch my personal
| desktop in a heartbeat. It's honestly the only thing locking
| me to Win10. Maybe I'll try a Mac through work (we get to
| keep the machines).
|
| And yes, I've tried running FL using Wine, and it works
| surprisingly well! Just not _well enough_, and some plugins
| do not work at all. Most do, and that's great, but not enough
| for me at least.
| reactordev wrote:
| I fully understand, that's me and basically all those
| Native Instrument packs. You'll have to pry guitar rig from
| my cold dead hands.
| buzzardbait wrote:
| I still remember the first time I stumbled across Logic Pro
| X. For the price of $200 I got a complete package that
| contains about 200 plugins and instruments. The DAW itself
| was maybe 7% of the full contents of that package.
|
| That is unbeatable value for money in the DAW market and
| that was before Logic Pro 11 came out and added a ton of
| new plugins.
| buzzardbait wrote:
| "As good as" is highly debateable. Have you used Logic Pro 11
| in the past two years?
| reactordev wrote:
| Yes, I own Logic Pro
| allears wrote:
| It's not the apps, it's the drivers. I've got expensive high
| quality audio hardware (RME Fireface 800) that doesn't have
| Linux drivers. Oh sure, I could invest $2000 to get a newer
| version, but that would just mean a steep learning curve to
| get drivers, hardware, and DAW working anywhere near as
| seamlessly as my Windows setup. It's not that I'm a Windows
| fan, I'm just looking for the most cost- and time-effective
| solutions. I'd rather spend my time recording and making
| music than sweating over driver and software issues.
| reactordev wrote:
| FireWire is dead. Apple moved on to Thunderbolt
| mnls wrote:
| > Most big plugin makers have VSTs for all platforms though
| and your license works on all.
|
| Most??? I can't find Arturia, Korg, Reason Rack Plugin,
| FabFilter, Native Instruments, Softube and those are just
| from the top of my head.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I guess it depends on your needs. 90% of my working life is a
| terminal to run terraform, emacs to write code, and slack to
| chat with colleagues. In each of the companies I've worked over
| the past 10 years I've had a google workspace account, and I
| think I've never even touched microsoft office in all that
| time.
|
| Yes there are options. In practice you pick one distro, the one
| your friend recommends, or that the IT department gives you.
|
| There are probably fields in which you cannot use Linux
| software, but for your average joe? It's not impossible, and
| it's not that confusing with a little patience.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| I'm sure you mean Microsoft Copilot 365 App, not Office :D
|
| I can't get over how they torpedoed one of the most famous
| brands in the world... but that's kind of on brand for them
| now, self-sabotage.
| teo_zero wrote:
| > So in my case, I shouldn't dump Windows (and thousand of $$
| I've spent on audio software).
|
| If you mean that there's no Linux replacement for Digital Audio
| Workstation, then I agree: switching is not for you. But if
| what worries you are the $$ you have spent, you are just
| another victim of the sunk cost fallacy. The earlier you
| realize your mistake, the earlier you are ready to evaluate the
| options without biases.
| luqtas wrote:
| most interesting part is to guess how many here complaining
| about a _poor_ ecosystem on Linux audio, actually work
| professionally on the field
|
| Surge-XT, Vitalium and/or PlugData or Cardinal can get you so
| far on the synthesis world that maybe not even a full
| dedicated lifetime can explore everything you can do with
| it... Ardour isn't a shinning pot for MIDI editor
| generational features but if you actually know music-theory,
| it works pretty solid for writing. the in-line editor makes
| very much sense, just like sheet music can hold an orchestra
| info. on a sigle page
| drnick1 wrote:
| I am not familiar with Digital Audio Workstation, but this
| seems a good use case for WinApps.
| vanviegen wrote:
| > It's still too confusing for the average user (many distros,
| many desktop environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap
| vs flatpak).
|
| Users don't need to know about any of that, except for picking
| a distro and just using whatever is there.
|
| Regarding DAW - I get sticking with Windows if you have
| thousands invested in it. Even so, there's quite a bit of
| professional software out there with native support (like
| Bitwig) or flawless Wine support.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| They absolutely do, the moment you have any problem you are
| on your own. I spent half a day troubleshooting why nvidia
| drivers were not loading (mint was not signing them and
| secure boot silently kicked the module out), and I'm many
| times more proficient at technology than an average person.
| aNoob7000 wrote:
| I bought a brand new Dell laptop with Windows 11 25H2 at
| the end of November 2025. The first patches released by
| Microsoft in December did not install. WTF!!!
|
| If you go online, you will see a whole YouTube videos and
| articles on how to fix the issue. Let me tell you, after a
| considerable amount of time, I gave up.
|
| I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 on my desktop, and I can't
| remember the last time I had issues applying patches.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Windows has problems all the time. There is widespread
| knowledge on how to troubleshoot and fix these problems.
|
| Similar problems will have very different solutions for
| Linux. The knowledge of how to resolve them is much less
| widespread. I've had very good success in asking ChatGPT
| how to resolve Linux issues, probably better success then
| I would on Windows because the error messages on Linux
| are much more detailed.
| fragmede wrote:
| Windows has a "check the Internet for solutions" option
| that never works. You can just let Claude code loose on
| your system and have it go fix your shit for you instead
| of copy and pasting anything.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| A lot of the time the "solution" to problems on Windows
| is to reinstall/in-place upgrade because, as you said,
| Windows errors tend to be more generic so you can browse
| Google all you want but none of the instructions people
| provide will be of much help. So I'm not sure "widespread
| knowledge" is a point in favor of Windows when the errors
| frequently aren't specific enough to be reliably
| actionable.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| > (like Bitwig)
|
| Been there, done that... worked fine but with an unacceptable
| performance penalty.
| vanviegen wrote:
| That's kind of surprising? Any idea what might have caused
| that?
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| Not really sure... drivers maybe, or sound server ? When
| it's time to make music I don't want to waste time
| troubleshooting things so after a few attempts at fixing
| this I just got back to Windows.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| I'm fairly proficient when it comes to Windows, but the
| diversity in install methods for Fedora threw me for a loop,
| too. It seemed easier at first -- get all your software from
| trusted sources in the default package manager, just like an
| app store! But then there's the question of RPM vs. Snap vs.
| Flatpak vs. downloading an installer from their website, some
| versions being further behind than others, the method you use
| having implications for where/how programs are installed and
| maintained, etc. It adds cognitive friction and makes
| troubleshooting harder; I'm not even sure if there's a
| reliable way to see a list of all programs installed on your
| machine (regardless of method) or how to easily uninstall
| them. I don't regret switching, but it is an obstacle, and
| more consistently than the initial question of which distro
| to use.
| vanviegen wrote:
| I've been a full-time Linux user since 1998, and over the
| years I've invested uncountable hours doing all kinds of
| tweaking and fixing. But with time that has gotten less and
| less (probably due to both Linux and me maturing), to the
| point that I now basically use my laptop as an appliance.
|
| I run Aurora, an immutable Linux distro. It auto-updates
| the core OS without me even noticing (just remember to
| reboot your laptop every couple of weeks). It has a
| software center to install GUI apps (all Flatpak, I think)
| and comes with brew to install command line apps. Things
| pretty much just work, and for the occasional small issue,
| I generally manage to just shrug.
|
| To be fair, one thing still lingers just above my annoyance
| threshold: connecting/disconnecting monitors while my
| laptop is suspended will sometimes lead to a black screen
| when resuming, requiring a reboot. A gentle wink from the
| bad/good old days. :-)
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Pick any distro and it'll still have at least 3 ways to
| install software. Might also have 2 window systems and 4 DEs.
| pxoe wrote:
| Even if they pick a distro and decide to install it, more
| often than not the install process is still overly convoluted
| even in just making installation media.
|
| Going to a distro website and trying to find where to get it
| (ubuntu has a habit of leading with literally anything else
| other than regular desktop distro on their front page).
| Finding a download page, and having it just spit out an iso
| file, with no explanation on what to do with it, or 'how to
| install' link in sight (debian, it's very nice that there's a
| big download button, but like...then what. where's the
| explanation link. it's buried under other downloads, but
| that's not very intuitive). Getting to a 'how to install'
| page and having it be intimidatingly long, perhaps even
| needlessly. Sites, pages and explainers being laid out in
| confounding ways, and install process sometimes laid out in a
| bit of an overcomplicated way. (debian has an installation
| guide that's presented perhaps in the most intimidating way
| possible to a new unwitting user, and also buried under click
| on a click on a click. somehow writing the iso is not even
| among the first dozen of pages there. ubuntu mate gives you
| links to iso downloads, and yet the installation process is
| buried under 'faq' (again, not very intuitive or
| straightforward), that faq only has a bunch of oddly laid out
| 'making installation media' pages, and the rest of actual
| installation process is just somewhere else.)
|
| That's before someone even gets to the actual install
| process. Somehow all of that stuff hasn't gotten more
| streamlined or user friendly. If you try to see how one would
| go about getting and installing any distro, you'd quickly see
| that it's very confusing and convoluted, way more than it has
| to be, or needs to be to appeal and be simple for new users.
|
| There's glimmers of hope, like fedora which has its media
| writer, which is gonna hold your hand through the whole
| thing. Even that links out to github for a download, despite
| clicking on a seemingly specific 'windows/mac or linux'
| button. It's a little buried too, below iso downloads, when
| it really should be brought up more forward, and explain a
| little bit better on how it's gonna guide you thru the whole
| thing.
|
| It really should be an app that's gonna guide you thru it, or
| a dead simple 1-2-3 step tutorial that's gonna guide you thru
| writing an image (download writer, download iso, write an
| image - laying it out more than that is just overcomplicating
| it really, at least in the initial quick install guide), with
| a clear, visible link to it - and yet somehow even this is
| too high of a bar for many distros to clear.
|
| What has done a number on the ease of installing linux is how
| compact discs have just went away, because having a compact
| disc, burning it, or having it be just sent to users was
| making that step of the process simpler. Sure, writing to a
| USB is easy, but the expectation that everyone's just gonna
| have a spare usb is naive (and you're never gonna hear that
| you actually need to buy a usb stick in any of those guides
| lol), and there's just a little more opportunity to fuck up
| there (overwriting other disks, unless the writer app is laid
| out nicely and fail-proof). Distros might as well start
| selling usb sticks with installers on them. If someone's
| gonna be brand new to the whole thing and they're gonna have
| to buy a usb stick anyway, they might as well buy it from the
| distro with the distro on it already.
|
| Some distros may want to get real about how a new user would
| even navigate their websites in order to get the thing. Like
| just trying to go thru that process themselves and see what's
| that experience like.
| n3storm wrote:
| I am a linux user for 26 years. And used windows since 3.11 up
| to 2005. After that point I just helped people with windows,
| never worked with it.
|
| I had this friend while my kid went to school with his kid, he
| was a musician. He absolutely was frightened of even handling
| me the mouse of his windows 7 setup in case I break his DAW,
| cherry audio tools and midi mixers just by me showing him a
| website. Also helped to switch some dlls (hi didn't know how to
| kill background task to release dll to be replaced) and edit
| windows registry cause he needed an upgrade for some pirated
| software.
|
| I have seen many more nightmarish stuff hapenning in windows,
| even on holy sacred windows xp.
|
| On the other hand my mother has been using debian xfce in her
| acer touch screen laptop for 15 years. No issues. Many elder
| people got in shock when windows 8 made all those changes.
|
| So whenever windows users talk about linux confusion I smirk.
| bhewes wrote:
| I have Windows only audio and 3d software. I ended up with a
| windows VM with GPU passthrough on Linux. It sits on its own m2
| drive for the rare occasion I need to dual boot. So Windows has
| been become legacy software for me. (IClone and CC).
|
| And Steam Deck is there.
|
| But I think the desktop interface is legacy for anyone under
| the age of 25, I get a kick out of watching them navigate a
| desktop.
| Vinnl wrote:
| There is no "there" for Linux to be, because
|
| > every case is different
|
| Every article like this is another person for whom Linux is
| there.
| a456463 wrote:
| FLStudio in Wine, Bitwig and Reaper work amazing on Linux,
| Mixxx for DJing works with Traktor keyboards.
| graemep wrote:
| > t's still too confusing for the average user (many distros,
| many desktop environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap
| vs flatpak).
|
| Average users need to buy hardware with a suitable distro
| installed. Usually that means Ubuntu. Its a decision that
| should be taken for them
|
| With regard to DEs - Gnome for touch devices, KDE for mouse and
| keyboard driven ones. Both set up to be Windows like by
| default.
|
| The average user is never even going to know whether they are
| running Wayland or systemd or snap. They will never change the
| default.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Ableton + Serum + many custom VSTs user here. You're spot on.
| This is actually the biggest reason I can't switch. In fact
| Steve Duda (creator of Serum) has said many times that he
| doesn't ever plan to support Linux. That's not a deal-breaker
| necessarily, but the fact we paid lots of money for this stuff
| makes it a bit unreasonable to switch to Linux.
| nlkl wrote:
| I see this mentioned again and again, but I don't buy it.
|
| For power users or users with niche use cases, sure there might
| be specialized software that lock you into Windows or Mac.
|
| But for most casual home users, I think Linux would be
| perfectly adequate, and familiarity being the only real
| detractor.
|
| Assuming someone can help install a friendly Linux distribution
| (and that the hardware is compatible), then what are the big
| blockers? Gaming maybe, for those where it is relevant.
|
| But looking at all my not so tech savvy family members and
| friends, a browser, online versions of MS Office (or
| Libreoffice for sure), maybe Spotify or the like, would really
| be enough. Being able to install apps via an (actually useful)
| app store is a big win in itself.
|
| Looking at those friends/family members, it is not like they
| are able to support their Windows machines either when
| something goes wrong or needs to be changed - I (or someone
| else technical) always need to help out anyway, fixing driver
| issues, installing software, changing any non-trivial settings,
| and so on. And I could just as well do that on Linux - and
| whether I need to pull up a terminal is irrelevant.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| The confusion is a problem for nearly every use case. They
| don't even seem to be converging on things, it's getting worse.
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| Another of those? Can people install their OS without having to
| tell the whole planet about it?
|
| I don't see articles about people installing Windows or Mac
| everyday like the people installing Linux.
|
| Is it such an achievement to do? That make you proud enough to
| tell the world?
|
| It's worse than vegetarian people at that point.
|
| And what's the point? The whole thread is filled with "yeah yeah,
| I installed Linux too!" just like some kind of cult.
|
| Look at you...
| buzzardbait wrote:
| Misery loves company. You won't see anybody telling people to
| switch to Windows, Mac or iPhone because those people are too
| busy enjoying their OS.
| rasmus-kirk wrote:
| Not really, Linux evangelists are a thing because Linux is
| primarily held back by lack of adoption. A lot of common
| issues can be attributed to either:
|
| 1. The hardware manufacturer has never tested Linux support
| for drivers. 2. Some application that you need doesn't target
| Linux due to lack of users
|
| This isn't everything, sure. But I think it's a majority of
| the headaches. Thus, Linux-users really want other people to
| also use Linux, so that companies actually give a shit about
| supporting it.
|
| There's also the whole ideology involved. A lot of companies
| are increasingly pushing that you are not allowed to control
| the computer/phone/device you buy and Linux is at the
| forefront of combating this.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I have...
|
| I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which
| is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best
| thing to ever happen to Linux. I get all the ease of use of
| something like macOS but pre-built with tools for development
| like distrobox, and then I can just build my dev environments and
| get shit done in no time, without having to worry about breaking
| updates or nuking the whole file system because my bash sucks.
|
| Its Linux for babies, and it makes me happy.
|
| =====
|
| Further ass-kissing:
|
| Also I forgot to mention I tried gaming on it via Steam and it
| works like a charm... Not so sure about bleeding edge AAA games
| since I don't play any of that, but at least for all my oldies it
| works just fine.
|
| Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.
| iinnPP wrote:
| As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My
| mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular
| websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but
| positive feedback.
|
| Been 90 days with zero issues.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I thought about mentioning my mom, since she's been my number
| 1 tech support client since ever... And I was going to say
| that, I am so certain of how solid this distro is, that I
| would even install it on my mom's laptop without any
| hesitation.
| odie5533 wrote:
| I've not heard of Universal Blue before, so thank you both
| for mentioning it! Seems like a great step forward for Linux
| Desktop!
| 747-8I wrote:
| It's very good
| flexagoon wrote:
| To be fair, the people who barely use the computer are the
| easiest to move to Linux. As Mental Outlaw said, "to a
| normie, an OS is just a bootloader for Google Chrome". If all
| you do is check emails, it doesn't really matter what OS you
| have installed.
|
| Switching to Linux hasn't been an issue for those users for a
| long time - it's usually gamers, users of professional
| software, or IT people with deeply established workflows who
| have troubles
|
| I guess the only part that matters is updates, and atomic
| systems like Fedora Silverblue do allow you to enable
| automatic updates without the fear of breaking everything,
| which is great
| odie5533 wrote:
| Laptop battery life suffers greatly on Linux. When their
| Google Chrome bootloader is out of battery all day, it
| matters which OS they installed.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Doesn't matter though. Every single one of these "casual"
| users I know has a terribly outdated device with a broken
| battery that doesn't even charge anymore.
|
| And I agree: if it works, why replace it?
| tapoxi wrote:
| This doesn't make much sense, ChromeOS is itself Linux,
| and those are prime "computers for parents" machines.
| johnny22 wrote:
| not the same thing at all. Different userspace that may
| or may not be that efficient at power, as well as well
| tested power management in the kernel for specific
| devices.
| evilduck wrote:
| People who care deeply about unplugged battery life
| aren't on Windows to begin with.
| Salgat wrote:
| My old man was using Ubuntu 20 years ago because all he
| needed was a browser and openoffice. Shoot, with a live cd
| you can even make computer use foolproof since it's
| impossible for them to permanently break it.
| comprev wrote:
| When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell
| PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad
| for a long time, and more recently an iPhone.
|
| Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after
| using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was
| happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word
| for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers
| (colour/scanner, b&w) worked with zero hassle after simply
| plugging them in.
|
| Now he loves the ability to FaceTime anyone in the family
| (kids, grandkids, etc.) at the click of a button using the
| webcam plugged into the Mini, and really enjoys the sync of
| photos, emails, notes, etc.
|
| I think he would have really struggled with Windows 11 so I
| was tempted by an older-person friendly Linux distro if macOS
| wasn't an option.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| > Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.
|
| While I haven't experimented with it that much yet, Affinity
| (the new one, the one after the Canva acquisition) does work in
| Wine 10.20.
|
| Now, I won't say it is a _smooth_ experience, one of the
| workarounds that I needed to do is use Wine 's virtual desktop
| so Affinity's tooltips are rendered correctly instead of being
| pure black, and the GUI does seem to not render correctly
| sometimes (it renders as white until something causes a
| redraw).
|
| The Canva global marketing lead did say that Linux support is
| "being discussed seriously internally":
| https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big...
|
| This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that
| already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the
| application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the
| application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux
| support"?
| dotancohen wrote:
| > How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80%
| working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to
| make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine
| and say that it has "native Linux support"?
|
| First 80% of a job typically takes 80% of the allocated time.
| The last 20% of a job typically takes another 80% of the
| allocated time.
| snitch182 wrote:
| Yeah, the 80/80 rule. That made me smile.
| flexagoon wrote:
| > This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business
| that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch
| the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle
| the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux
| support"?
|
| CodeWeavers (developers of CrossOver and one of the main
| contributors and sponsors of Wine and related tools) actually
| offer something like this as a paid service for companies
| called PortJump:
|
| https://www.codeweavers.com/portjump
| jcelerier wrote:
| > This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business
| that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch
| the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle
| the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux
| support"?
|
| I've had cases where running an app under wine worked better
| than the native linux port :/
| tempest_ wrote:
| Getting it running in linux is the easiest part dev wise.
|
| It is the rest of the iceberg that causes problems.
|
| - You need your support to be able to support linux which
| means they will need training and experience helping people
| in an entirely new system
|
| - Linux comes in finite but vastly more combinations than OSX
| and Windows which means you are probably going to need to
| pick something like Ubuntu or struggle with the above
|
| - Gotta track bugs in twice as many places
|
| - Need CI / CD for more platforms
|
| etc
| lukan wrote:
| And then people wonder, why electron became a thing.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| But most of those issues are because Linux doesn't have
| enough market share. No one brushes off Windows because
| they need to support Windows and they need to add CI/CD for
| Windows.
|
| The combination issue is a real issue though that (as far
| as I know) is mostly solved with Flatpaks, or in case of
| games, by using the Steam Runtime.
|
| Of course, it is a "chicken and egg" problem of "we don't
| want to support Linux because there aren't enough users
| using it" but "we don't want to use Linux because there
| aren't enough business supporting it".
|
| Thankfully with improvements in Wine the need of having
| "native" Linux support is shrinking, but at the same time
| there is still a looooong way to go (like the issues I said
| before with Affinity).
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Windows userland compatibility is outstanding. I can run
| most 30 year old Windows applications on Windows 11
| without a problem. This makes it easy for a commercial
| vendor to support their applications on Windows.
|
| The same is not at all true on Linux.
|
| Right now at work, I've got a bunch of commercial apps
| built for RHEL9 for which I'm chasing vendors for new
| builds that work on RHEL10, for a variety of reasons.
| Dependencies like libXScrnSaver have simply been removed,
| and so apps linked against that library no longer work.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| Funnily enough there are old Windows applications that do
| work on Wine, but doesn't work on Windows 11
| GlumWoodpecker wrote:
| >- Linux comes in finite but vastly more combinations than
| OSX and Windows which means you are probably going to need
| to pick something like Ubuntu or struggle with the above
|
| This is easily solvable by distributing the app via a
| distro agnostic mechanism, like as a Flatpak or AppImage.
| Using Flatpak also eliminates the need for rolling their
| own app update mechanism.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| AppImage relies on the old, unmaintained and suid root
| fuse2. Not a wise choice in 2025.
| TechPlasma wrote:
| This. OMG Affinity is the ONE piece of software I actively
| miss. I tried the wine setup for it and it just doesn't work
| to a usable extent.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| Yeah, I thought that Affinity would work pretty well in
| Wine because I've seen a lot of people pointing to the
| "just follow the guide (AffinityOnLinux repo) and it will
| work!" but in my experience it didn't work _that_ well as
| people were saying.
|
| And the guide itself seems to be outdated, the guide says
| that you need to install some stubs/shims but doesn't say
| that happens if you don't do it (I think that it would
| crash) but at least in my experience it did "work" without
| them when using an up-to-date Wine version.
|
| Sadly Photoshop also doesn't work, if you want to follow
| the rules and use Creative Cloud it won't work at all, if
| you decide to sail the seven seas and download an older
| Photoshop version it will work but it also has some
| annoying bugs (sometimes the canvas doesn't update after an
| edit until you try to do another edit).
|
| Don't get me wrong I do think that Wine is an amazing
| project and I hope that it continues to improve, but
| sometimes people don't seem to actually point all the
| issues that it exist when running an application in Wine.
| ack_complete wrote:
| Wine has some gaping holes in some of its API
| implementations. Direct2D, for instance, has existed since
| Windows 7 but is badly implemented in Wine -- there is no
| antialiasing and the ArcTo() function draws a line. The MS
| documentation is not that great either, so fixing Wine isn't
| necessarily easier than porting to native.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| How does bluefin compare to Linux Mint? I ask because I always
| thought mint was Linux for babies.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Not that there aren't trust issues with bigger projects but
| don't folks worry that the further down the "branch of a
| flavour of of a branch of a flavour" chain they go the higher
| and higher the risk of someone sneaking nefarious code through
| becomes? I guess there's a natural barrier in that the lesser
| known code bases become less of a target.
|
| Sometimes I just find it wild with how much we talk about
| containers and sandboxes for the user space code we run that
| there's still regular recommendations for the random distro of
| the week published by who knows who.
| fragmede wrote:
| I'm currently working on converting an ARM Chromebook to run a
| different userland from ChromeOS and have been wondering which
| distro to use. I've starting getting Nix on it, but I think
| I'll switch over to Bluefin based on your recommendation.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Keep an eye on the Graphite vecor app that's in development.
| It's Linux native I think.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| I have an old pc lying around and will be installing bluefin
| today. Thanks for the inspiration.
| scoopdewoop wrote:
| Bluefin, Aurora, and Bazzite are taking over my home.
|
| I've been using desktop linux since before ubuntu, and I have
| never had so much confidence in my linux rigs. They are
| dependable, which is refreshing after boot-breaking updates
| have ruined my setups before.
| xedrac wrote:
| > The current Linux desktop didn't get us there, but we believe
| that what was made, can be unmade.
|
| This is a strange thing for them to say when they are pretty
| much a clone of Fedora Silverblue, with a few minor tweaks.
|
| If Bluefin works for you, great. But I find their marketing
| rather pretentious.
| monkaiju wrote:
| I was originally blown away by Bazzite, which I run on my
| Legion Go, but then I discovered uCore
| (https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore) and haven't looked back!
| Running it on my homelab and multiple servers at work, its a
| wonderful server OS.
| faust201 wrote:
| I am curious.
|
| Does the flatpak Firefox allows access to all folders?
| shevy-java wrote:
| It is indeed a huge problem. The whole operating system now
| behaves and feels like the US government spying on everyone. Now,
| Microsoft has done that before, but with Win11 it really now
| seems almost shameless AND desperate in abusing users, while also
| alienating many of them via "features" they don't want, in
| particular all the AI garbage slop.
|
| It does not really affect me that much, as I switched to Linux in
| 2005 or so, give or take, but some people around me, in
| particular elderly, depend on Windows still. So that's a dilemma.
| Do I want to install Win11 for them? Or Win10? And help maintain
| either? Replacing those computers with Linux is not so trivial.
| You would need virtually kind of 100% "what works on Windows must
| work on Linux too". Any complexity is a real total showstopper
| for many elderly people who have very little experience with
| computer systems.
| samiv wrote:
| As a long time Linux user I started with Red Hat 7.2. Then moved
| on to Slackware from there to Ububtu and finally to ArchLinux.
|
| While Linux and the user space ecosystem has come a long way
| there are still plenty of sharp edges and anyone planning to use
| Linux long term must be able to figure some issues that will
| inevitably happen sooner or later when some update/system upgrade
| happens.
|
| Even though I consider myself fairly proficient Linux user I also
| gave up on Linux on laptops..life is just too short to tinker to
| make it work. (Power saving, suspend/resume, graphics with
| Optimus etc. Are still pain points)
| cptaj wrote:
| Ironically, instead of Linux eventually closing this usability
| gap, what we have is windows developing its own sharp edges and
| annoyances.
|
| For many users, linux is already easier to use.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I'll echo this. I keep at least one secondary machine booting
| Linux and periodically try moving a main one over, but the
| experience definitely is not yet without significant pains,
| depending on one's needs.
|
| This is not to discount the tens of thousands of hours of hard
| (often volunteer) work put into the ecosystem, but a
| substantial amount of work remains on things like battery life
| and UX (both for devs and more typical end users).
|
| For example, why does getting virtualization under Fedora
| working require a whole stack of commands? Elsewhere, the most
| that's needed is ticking a checkbox (if that). Worse, the mode
| of failure if you haven't done the correct dance is
| unintelligible errors in e.g. GNOME Boxes that don't even point
| the user in the right direction.
|
| There's all sorts of somewhat low hanging fruit like this that
| I suspect hasn't gotten attention because it's not particularly
| sexy or interesting.
| Zak wrote:
| Windows has its own sharp edges, such as the crashes the author
| of this article experienced.
|
| It's hard to evaluate fairly. This author, for example is fed
| up with specific issues on Windows and new to Linux. He is
| likely be more forgiving of sharp edges on Linux, recognizing
| that it's normal for something unfamiliar to be more
| challenging. On the other hand, someone content with Windows
| might think of its sharp edges as _just how computers are_ and
| consider every way in which Linux is merely different to be
| pointless aggravation.
|
| Most publications covering Windows have a bunch of articles
| about how to tinker with Windows 11 to keep it from spying on
| you, showing ads, and forcing the use of an online account. One
| might argue life is also too short for that.
| linhns wrote:
| This author uses a Mac and he's trying to compare Windows and
| Linux. Sounds futile for me.
| distances wrote:
| I feel there's also a fundamental difference in tinkering to
| get something working vs. tinkering to remove user-hostile
| features. In the first one the goals of the OS and user are
| aligned, in the second one not.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I don't think I have ever had a system upgrade break my system
| on any Debian derived or Fedora I used. Also upgrades are not
| forced upon you like they are in Windows, with its dark
| patterns nudging you to upgrade.
|
| I am also using GNU/Linux on laptops just fine, and the only
| issue is with battery life.
|
| I think hardware-wise one needs to do some reading before
| buying, to check what is supported and what is not well
| supported. Other than that, I don't have issues. But then again
| I am also a strict on or off guy, who does not use things like
| hibernation or standby or whatever at all, so maybe I am
| dodging many bullets there.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Can we stop with the implicit agism that always pops up in Linux
| threads? I know it's meant to be positive for Linux but it's
| still agism that diminishes people whose only crime is that
| they're of advanced age.
| graemep wrote:
| I hate it too. Not long ago I met a grandmother who had spent
| part of her career writing embedded software for nuclear
| reactors. I met many others who had jobs in technology.
| free652 wrote:
| I switched to Debian/Cinnamon few weeks ago. I am fairly good
| with the server sides of things, but the desktop a little
| painful.
|
| Screens dont wake up properly, sometimes only one screens wakes
| up, sometimes one screen wakes up with a wrong resolution. The
| usual linux desktop problems where nothing really works and
| finding a solution is very hard to many different permutations of
| hardware / os / kernel / drivers / window manager / etc.
|
| I have the framework desktop with AMD 395+
|
| My windows ssd is plugged and I can boot it directly using virt-
| manager, so thats kinda solves some windows specific stuff like
| tax software.
| WD-42 wrote:
| You are using a distro that is generally very behind on
| software versions and doesn't bundle non free software (Debian)
| on a laptop with brand new hardware. Additionally, you are
| running a DE (cinnamon) which is really designed for a specific
| distro (Mint) which you are not using.
|
| If you want stuff to just work you might want to try using a
| more up to date distro with a mainstream desktop. Stock Ubuntu
| or Fedora would probably work fine for you.
| free652 wrote:
| debian 13 is using kernel 6.12 vs ubuntu 24 6.14. I don't
| think it's a kernel issue, and more that amd drivers aren't
| there yet for the new hardware.
|
| running the latest also is problematic, i.e. a new kernel
| upgrade that blows thing up.
|
| and that's the main difference between linux and windows,
| windows just works, osx just works, linux is a minefield of
| different quirks.
| WD-42 wrote:
| The amd drivers might not there, and they will continue to
| not be there on the version of the kernel you are using and
| choosing to be stuck on by using Debian. Drivers are part
| of the kernel in Linux, it's not how windows works. Ubuntu
| and Fedora are not unstable, you are just choosing pain for
| yourself.
| free652 wrote:
| >Drivers are part of the kernel in Linux
|
| While the drivers at the runtime are part of the kernel,
| they are not distributed as part of the kernel.
|
| My drivers are *latest* -> 6.16.6.30200100-2255209.24.04
|
| https://instinct.docs.amd.com/projects/amdgpu-
| docs/en/latest...
|
| Debian is *stable*, but you are so far only proving my
| point in my original post.
|
| If you are going to download ubuntu, the version proposed
| is 24.04 that has older kernel version than my debian 13.
|
| https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop -> Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS
| -> Kernel 6.8
| WD-42 wrote:
| This is just false. Amdgpu is an in tree kernel module
| and has been forever. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/lat
| est/gpu/amdgpu/index.html
|
| If you are installing via an outside method, again, you
| are going agasint the grain for no good reason and making
| problems for yourself.
|
| Nobody is suggesting installing LTS on brand new
| hardware.
| free652 wrote:
| >This is just false. Amdgpu is an in tree kernel module
| and has been forever. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/lat
| est/gpu/amdgpu/index.html
|
| You are arguing and arguing and shifting goal posts as we
| go.
|
| The facts are:
|
| * I am running the latest amdgpu video driver.
|
| * AI 395 wasn't released yesterday, but a year ago.
|
| * (My original point) Many different permutations of
| hardware / os / kernel / drivers / window manager / etc.
|
| I highly doubt that installing Ubuntu 25.10 will fix the
| issue. Can you provide that guarantee? No. Then we can
| stop talking.
| WD-42 wrote:
| I'm not shifting any goal posts. I'm just tired of these
| posts from people saying that Linux is unstable, has
| quirks, etc but when you dig into it, all of the "quirks"
| are actually the result of strange decisions made by the
| author.
|
| It's fine to be new to Linux, but please refrain from the
| sweeping generalizations until you are more familiar with
| how it works.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Honestly, just switching to a kernel that isn't older
| than your hardware have a decent chance of fixing your
| issues. It is typically fine to upgrade kernels unless
| the distro has made some special modifications to them,
| and it was a very long time since I was hit by something
| like that.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| > Debian is _stable_ ,
|
| Stable in Linux language is a synonym for OLD. Don't let
| any stable OSes near any hardware that is newer than the
| release, and you'll be fine.
|
| Linux 6.12 was released back in 2024, which is several
| months earlier than the hardware you have. So the
| reasonable expectation is that there is a high chance
| that fixes for it won't be in yet.
|
| And use the builtin AMD drivers, you shouldn't have to
| touch those assuming other choices were done ok.
| quaffapint wrote:
| This has been my issue as well - screens waking or not waking
| up. On latest Linux Mint and everything is great except when
| switching back and forth inputs between my personal and work
| laptop (running Windows), I have to do it twice going to my
| personal laptop or else the external monitor won't show.
| sakopov wrote:
| I never run into stability issues and couldn't care less about
| telemetry which feels like admitting some kind of a sin on HN.
| Windows 11 is fine and Linux will always be for niche use cases.
| re5i5tor wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks (mobile safari with an ad blocker)
| it's a jackass move to show a fake popup that leads to "must be
| an adblocker" and prevents page viewing? Or maybe just bad JS
| junk causing it?
|
| Update: OMG I turned ad blocker off and what a disaster of a
| site.
| Pxtl wrote:
| As somebody who's doing the same thing for the first time in
| almost 2 decades: kubuntu wins for me.
|
| Mint was too buggy. It just felt so single-threaded. It had
| upsides - easiest Nvidia support for example. Cinnamon is nicely
| customizable and has some great ideas but it's just too rough
| around the edges.
|
| Raw Debian was just too hard to get Nvidia drivers playing nice.
|
| But for "I'm comfy editing config files but I need some hand-
| holding for this" KDE with Ubuntu is the best balance of
| performance and clean design and support.
|
| My biggest disappointment is how little batteries-included gui
| I'm seeing for core Linux functionality. Where is the systemd
| service manager? Why are all the file managers so bad at editing
| permissions?
| graemep wrote:
| > Where is the systemd service manager?
|
| Kde used to have a systems settings module for Systemd. There
| are defitely GUIs for managing user services (its called
| Background services for me)
|
| > Why are all the file managers so bad at editing permissions?
|
| What does right click and then choose properties in Dolphin not
| do satisfactorily for you?
| alkonaut wrote:
| I wouldn't worry much about operating systems. They are just a
| means to an end (which is running your applications) few are in
| the situation that 100% of their applications run on more than 1
| OS, so they even get a choice of OS.
| erghjunk wrote:
| I tried it (PopOS) on my old gaming laptop. It worked when it
| worked but when it didn't, it REALLY didn't. Linux unfortunately
| does not support my preferred (which I use semi-professionally)
| photo software, either (Capture One). Linux desktop feels like
| nuclear power to me - I've tried switching many many times over
| the last 20 years and it's just never quite there. I even use a
| lot of the open source solutions for office software etc.
| already, just on Windows.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I can't fully switch because of audio plugins but I'm using
| Linux, Windows, and macOS anyway because I'm creating cross-
| platform apps. I think it's best to use all common operating
| systems and stay proficient with them.
| zkmon wrote:
| I never understood the Linux guys. All that matters to a common
| user is the user interface and whether their apps and games run
| or not. They don't care about telemetry, architecture etc. The
| damn thing should just work and it should allow familiar
| interactions.
|
| I have tried switching to Linux several times over the decades.
| It required many compromises on the interface and
| compatibilities. Why is it so difficult to slap on a clone of
| Windows or Mac UI on Linux? I'm not saying they are good. But it
| avoids the feel of moving to an alien land and learn everything
| afresh. People don't have time for that.
| pawelduda wrote:
| Have you tried Linux with KDE? Feels more Windows-ish than
| modern Windows
| johnebgd wrote:
| Trademarks and other intellectual property rights prevent
| cloning those.
| odie5533 wrote:
| This is why I recommend macOS to everyone. It's the only OS
| that is truly polished and where you don't have to worry about
| viruses and everything just works. mac could be better, but
| it's still leading the pack. People don't want the OS to become
| their hobby.
| splatter9859 wrote:
| MacOS has its warts and 'unpolish' as well, as it also gets
| viruses despite what Apple may want you to believe.
| poolnoodle wrote:
| I dislike what Microsoft is doing to Windows as much as the
| next guy but if you get Windows Pro and disable all the icky
| stuff it is a rock solid OS that just works. Sure, once a
| year an update might add some new icky stuff but then you
| just spend 10 minutes to find out how to disable that and go
| about your business. It. Just. Works.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Frankly I'd love to switch from Windows to Linux. But it's the
| applications. My last attempt to switch got hung up on a few
| things (in order if importance, probably):
|
| - Quicken. I have 30 years of personal financial data in quicken.
| I'm not completely opposed to migrating to something else, but I
| haven't seen a good substitute. I'd probably have to learn double
| entry bookkeeping, and I'm unsure if other software could still
| download data from my bank and investment accounts. I'm sure as
| hell not going to start entering transactions manually (ugh).
|
| - Ableton live. I do have a copy of bitwig, but I am unfamiliar
| with its workflow, and would have to figure out which of my vsts
| I would lose, and it seems a big pain in the ass.
|
| - Plex server. For some reason, out of the box this was dog slow.
| Because of the other issues, I was unwilling to spend the time to
| try to figure out what was going on with this.
|
| - The are games I would probably lose, but honestly there are so
| many games available I doubt I would care that much.
|
| How many hundreds of hours am I gonna have to take to figure this
| all out before I have a working system again? Not my idea of a
| good time even if I like the outcome.
|
| Edit: and this is from somebody who loves the idea of Linux! I
| first installed 0.11 or 0.12 way back in the early 90s from a
| stack of floppies!
| SecretDreams wrote:
| > - Quicken. I have 30 years of personal financial data in
| quicken. I'm not completely opposed to migrating to something
| else,
|
| Genuinely curious - outside of personal satisfaction/scratching
| the itch to store data, does personal financial data dating 30
| years ago serve any practical purpose?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Occasionally I want to see what I paid for something, or when
| it happened, or who the vendor was. So if I can't migrate the
| data somehow, I'd still have to keep a copy of quicken around
| to access that old data even if I was using some other
| software for current data.
|
| I _might_ be willing to give all that up if I could find
| something that worked for new transactions, but I haven 't
| found it yet.
| dangus wrote:
| Based on your assessment you'd have almost no issue at all.
|
| I'm almost certain you'd have no trouble running Quicken or
| Ableton. Ableton even has a Bottles configuration available,
| which is a one-click GUI install:
|
| https://usebottles.com/app/#abletonlive
|
| Isn't Quicken also primarily a web/cloud app now?
|
| Of course, if Wine-based solutions really don't work, you also
| have the option to run a VM or dual boot for those one-off
| needs.
|
| Your comment on plex server seems odd. It seems like most
| people run it via Docker, I can't imagine what kind of Linux-
| specific issue you had. Docker/podman on Linux is quite
| superior to the experience on Mac and Windows.
|
| As far as games, I have trouble finding games that don't work.
| Steam and other launchers for other stores have pretty much
| eliminated this issue. There are even some online games with
| anti-cheat software that work in Linux.
|
| Hundreds of hours? No, not really. Not these days. I know it's
| hard to believe me but I went through this same thing switching
| from macOS to Linux last year. I was shocked, I almost thought
| my experiment would fail and I'd go back. But no, it's so solid
| and a bunch of stuff I expected to not work just...worked. (I
| chose Bazzite as my distribution on a Framework 13).
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Current quicken doesn't run on Linux, and the web version
| doesn't connect to any online investment accounts as far as I
| know, only bank accounts.
|
| Ableton would still have the issue of: which plugins can I
| still somehow get to work? And which do I just lose? And
| then: how reliable is it? Does it really just work, or am I
| gonna be fighting glitches all the time?
|
| I suspect part of the problem might be a mental block on my
| end. I spent 25 years as a sysadmin before I retired, and the
| idea of going back to that is just not acceptable. And I know
| it would be hundreds of hours because that's what I spent
| last time I tried to make the switch a few months ago.
| dangus wrote:
| I know it's not the same application but Quicken Simplifi
| definitely connects to investment accounts.
|
| Hundreds of hours makes me wonder what distribution you
| chose...I think if you choose something that's more
| designed to work out of the box as a ready to go solution
| you might have a better experience. For example, since I
| like occasionally playing games, I chose Bazzite which
| comes with all the gaming stuff installed already and is an
| immutable OS that "just works."
|
| And for sure, I think trying to shoehorn complicated non-
| Linux applications into your Linux workflow might waste
| your time. I tried this with Autodesk Fusion and I almost
| got it to work. But it didn't work. So I just use that on
| Windows, but it's also nice to not be bothering with
| Windows for the majority of what I do.
|
| The way I do it is that my laptop is Linux and my desktop
| is on Windows and I can just RDP into it over WireGuard to
| use Windows apps. So I guess this is cheating: ideally my
| desktop also leaves Windows but I haven't made that leap.
| tmtvl wrote:
| In 2012 I borked my Windows 7 install by messing with the
| registry. I then used an Ubuntu live disk to back up my data.
| Then I reinstalled Windows 7, but when I couldn't access the
| internet because I hadn't installed the ethernet driver I had a
| thought: 'that Ubuntu thing didn't need me to install an ethernet
| driver to access the internet'. So I decided to install Ubuntu
| instead and I've been using GNU/Linux exclusively since then. I
| switched away from Ubuntu when the Amazon lens controversy
| happened and eventually wound up bouncing between Arch and
| OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
| hinkley wrote:
| Mate, I haven't touched a Windows machine in almost fifteen
| years. It's all Linux and Mac.
| ordu wrote:
| _> After a Windows update (that I didn 't choose to do) wiped
| that partition and, consequently, the Linux installation_
|
| WHAT? How people could tolerate a software that wipes partitions
| without asking? I mean, I can see that it can be handy if OS
| managed partitions by itself without asking a user what to do,
| but if it leads to removing user created partitions, it is a no
| go.
|
| A long time ago I tried to install Mandrake Linux. In the
| installation process I started to change partition table and
| wiped it all, due to a fact that Mandrake Linux used its own
| custom made partition managed written in Perl that applied
| changes to a partition table as they arrive. I was used to fdisk,
| that accumulate changes and allows to review them before
| applying, the behavior of Mandrake's partition manages was
| completely alien for me. It was the first and the last time I
| touched Mandrake or its successor Mandriva or anything with
| "Mand" in front, even despite the fact that it was my mistake, I
| should've learned more about the partition manager before using
| it. It was hard (or maybe impossible) to do in an installer, but
| it is not an excuse. It was the last time I used installers to
| install Linux, I don't trust them anymore.
|
| But people are tolerating windows that can wipe a partition when
| you even do not touch them. I can empathize the author ditching
| Windows.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| It is a known and fairly common dual booting people gets hit
| with in that windows update rewrite the dual booting setup, it
| is possible that the author misunderstood what had happened and
| that it could have been fixed by just fixing the boot setup.
|
| That should of course not be necessary, but it could have saved
| a few hours of setup if that was the case.
| dangus wrote:
| I don't really agree with the "Windows 11 is unstable" narrative,
| especially compared to the ways that system updates on macOS and
| Linux have not always been 100% stable.
|
| The functionality of the iPhone connection to Linux is not unique
| to the platform, that works on Windows as well. iPhones present
| themselves as cameras when connected via USB and as the author
| found out, some apps present their internal storage for
| manipulation.
|
| I'm surprised the author didn't get KDE Connect to work. It's a
| clutch app, and it's even better for Android users. It's one of
| the things that has had me consider switching to Android over
| iPhone (but there are still a couple of things I just can't quite
| get over leaving behind like FaceTime for my non-technical
| family, the unmatched-by-competitors utility of AirTags, Siri
| Shortcuts, and my general feeling that without installing
| GrapheneOS, that Android is a less private and secure OS).
| crocowhile wrote:
| I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now. I don't
| understand people who use anything else, to be honest.
| luqtas wrote:
| have you tried to draw a circle with GIMP? /s
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| Yes but i usually use inkscape for geometric figures.
| breezykoi wrote:
| Yes, on my work's laptop that is running windows...
| buzzardbait wrote:
| I'm sure most people feel the opposite way. I've been using
| Windows and Macs for 20 years and I don't ever see myself ever
| using Linux as a desktop OS.
| asveikau wrote:
| Among the subculture that would be the type to visit Hacker
| News (or Slashdot back in the day), this attitude emerged
| around 25 years ago. In the late 90s, there was widespread
| enthusiasm for the Linux desktop. I remember those days
| fondly. It was glorious. Then macOS (or OS X as we called it)
| swept away a lot of people. A lot of them would get hostile
| or angry or mock people when they would mention they didn't
| join the Mac bandwagon.
| NegativeK wrote:
| > I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now.
|
| Ditto. I can't stand other OSs; they are constantly in my way
| for just the basic tasks.
|
| > I don't understand people who use anything else, to be
| honest.
|
| Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents. They're
| capable enough to maintain their own Windows computers, and
| switching them to Linux would mean that I'd have to take over
| all of those tasks -- because they've got other, more important
| things to do than to learn a new OS.
|
| I'd agree with you if you could buy rando PC with Linux
| installed and working with no stupid hardware issues. People
| who can live in Google Docs/Office 365 web and don't have
| industry specific use cases will almost always be fine. But
| once you break out of that subset of people, tossing them a
| Linux machine can be kind of mean.
| raffael_de wrote:
| > Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents.
|
| I don't know about your parents but most people (including my
| parents) just use a browser and some applications that are
| identical to their Windows versions or sufficiently similar.
| There isn't really anything new to learn.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| System76!
|
| One huge barrier is printing. I've been using Linux as my
| daily OS for a decade and I still have stupid problems with
| printers. I can't print from my laptop because the printer
| spits out unicode garbage if I try. My desktop works, but
| sometimes I have to reboot to get the print queue to clear.
| rkomorn wrote:
| To be fair, I also have stupid problems with printers in
| all other OSes.
|
| Printers are their own slice of misery that seem to
| transcend brand, OS, platform, etc.
| pmontra wrote:
| Printing has always been the most brittle experience of all
| IT at least since when I started printing in the 80s.
|
| To add an anecdote I let a friend print on my HP LaserJet
| from his Windows laptop today. It detected the printer over
| Wi-Fi but it could not print anything because it was
| missing the driver. After a 100 MB download from HP's site
| the installer wanted an USB connection to the printer. That
| friend of mine is young so he never saw a USB cable with
| the small squarish plug that connects to a printer (or
| scanner, or USB2 disk) but that's another story. The
| installer run for minutes and failed with an error. I told
| him not to trust the error and attempt to print anyway. It
| did print. However after a few pages a pop-up complained
| about a non original toner (probably true) and it stopped
| printing. However he managed to find the printer from his
| Android phone and print from there. Then he was able to
| print from Windows too.
|
| All of that took about an hour. I installed Debian 13 on my
| laptop last week and I could detect the printer instantly
| and print without any problem. No driver to download. I
| know that I can apt install hplip to get more specific
| drivers but it was not necessary.
| graemep wrote:
| I did give Linux to my dad and he used it fine for many years
| until my sister gave him a Windows laptop.
|
| Most people just use an OS to start applications. There is
| nothing they need to learn other than maybe the start button
| has a different logo on it.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Do you use a laptop? It seems that doing the right then when
| opening / closing the lid only happened in the past 5 years or
| so.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| This is something I see repeated everywhere but I've been
| using Linux daily on all sorts of laptops for a little over
| 15 years and never struggled with this issue.
|
| But during my brief period on Windows I would get issues like
| my colour settings changing or the behaviour of certain meta
| keys being switched out when I woke a sleeping laptop.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| My colleagues run linux laptops and they don't struggle
| with this issue either. They just completely turn off their
| laptops anytime they want to move somewhere. That's how
| they trust their OS.
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> They just completely turn off their laptops anytime
| they want to move somewhere
|
| Fine but that attitude isn't going to increase Linux
| adoption. Arch does work in this regard today but it does
| require some BIOS tweaks to get it to work flawlessly.
| Compare this to a MacBook where closing the lid always
| does the right thing and seems to use basically no power
| at all in this state. For me, I'll accept the trade-off
| as I don't want to use macOS (makes no sense for
| development imo) but some aspects of the experience are
| clearly superior.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| This point is now moot since x86 broke sleep for
| everyone.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| My development machine is a macbook air, which is
| fantastic for me because I can work anywhere without a
| power outlet for long hours. Production target is usually
| debian servers, they just work reliably. And my
| game/music machine is windows (all the games, all the
| vsts). I don't like trade-offs.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Battery life is great on a mac, but then I would have to
| use my macbook / macOS. For me that is a tradeoff as I
| would prefer to use Arch / Hyrprland, kernel support for
| cgroups, etc.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| Certain versions of Ubuntu have this issue on Thinkpads,
| which requires updating a specific setting in Grub.
| raffael_de wrote:
| Same here. Using Linux Mint for about 15 years now. Same for
| various computer illiterate family members. As far as I am
| concerned it is significantly more pleasant to use than Windows
| and MacOS.
| danans wrote:
| > I don't understand people who use anything else, to be
| honest.
|
| Most people don't make their coffee in an Aeropress either.
|
| I've also used Linux exclusively (in my case 25 years), but I
| also realize that with a few niche exceptions, there are few
| mass marketed products that feature the traditional Linux
| desktop as their primary UI.
|
| Desktop OS UI is hard. It takes investment in technology,
| product, and marketing all focused on a target market. Even
| with all of those most upstarts have failed to gain traction.
| Also consider that most people buy laptops for 2 reasons: 1)
| browsing the web and if they can afford it 2) as a fashion
| accessory. People will put up with a lot of BS from a product
| if they feel like the product gives them social status and
| acceptance.
|
| No Linux laptop really hits (2). Arguably only a few Windows
| laptops do either.
| worksonmine wrote:
| > Most people don't make their coffee in an Aeropress either.
|
| Stupid analogy, the Linux version of that would be whatever
| french press you want to use. Buy your coffee ground or as
| beans and grind yourself, depending on preference. And for my
| girlfriend there's always the Starbucks equivalent (Debian
| stable with Gnome).
|
| Apple would be picked by modern slaves and sold in a capsule
| at 100,000% markup and it only fits their machines. Windows
| comes with pesticides for the "benefit of the user".
| jlamberts wrote:
| I don't see how their analogy is stupid. Aeropress and
| french press are pretty similar from an "enthusiast coffee
| device" perspective. Lots of room for variability in grind
| size, coffee choice, and specific brewing technique with
| both methods.
| worksonmine wrote:
| Aeropress is a brand, one I've never heard of. It fits in
| the Linux ecosystem (maybe as one of the Red Hat
| flavors?) but as an analogy it is simplified. Linux is so
| much bigger than that and there's everything from LFS
| (grow, grind and brew with tools you've sourced and put
| together yourself), to Android (plain old drip machine).
| Reducing everything that's the Linux ecosystem to a niche
| brand of a specific type of coffee maker is dishonest.
|
| I use a french press myself, and never heard of
| Aeropress. My machines all run Debian with DWM and I
| never have any problems. My non-technical girlfriend is
| fine on Debian and doesn't really know the difference.
| She did mention how fast her laptop boots though.
| arendtio wrote:
| Some people are not allowed to use Linux.
|
| At work, I got a fancy MacBook, and as much as I admire the
| hardware, I despise the MacOS window management. IMHO, it is
| broken by design, and I wonder how anybody at Apple considers
| this a good system. There is still a small chance that I didn't
| understand a crucial concept, but until now, nobody was able to
| explain to me, how it is supposed to work.
|
| I have reached the point where I believe that it must be
| something historical, like Steve wrote it himself, or else, and
| now nobody dares to reform it.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Can you understand why someone would buy a $20 Mr. Coffee
| coffeemaker from Walmart and not a $2000 DeLonghi Eletta
| Explore superautomatic espresso machine?
| graemep wrote:
| I agree.
|
| However, most people do not know what an OS is. They do not
| understand its software rather than hardware.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I have multiple computers with multiple operating systems, but
| I still need my gaming machine to be windows because some of my
| favorite games require it.
| ashish01 wrote:
| I have an old Lenovo IdeaPad with fairly modest hardware, and I
| have both Fedora and Windows installed. About 90% of the time I
| use Fedora, and it works fine overall. The only thing that
| bothers me is that Firefox on Fedora feels noticeably more
| sluggish compared to Edge or Firefox on Windows. Maybe it's just
| a perception issue, but I'd love to know what others are using as
| their web browser on Linux.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Edge is based on Chromium. I'd test any Chromium based browsers
| (Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, etc) to see if performance is better.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > There's also ADB (Android Debugging Bridge) via the terminal
| for executing commands to an Android device. However, I use an
| iPhone.
|
| I am sorry for you.
|
| Looking forward to your next article: I dumped my iPhone for
| GrapheneOS, and you should too.
| tcbawo wrote:
| I am pretty sure that my previous attempts at a Linux desktop
| have failed because I would tweak my setup by installing packages
| and updates until I broke it and needed to reinstall. But I want
| my machine to be indestructible and "just work". Waiting day(s)
| to diagnose and fix an issue just isn't worth it. I have been
| contemplating a switch to Linux again. This time, I will embrace
| a LTS distribution and virtualization so that my tinkering
| doesn't break things. I always want a safe level to fall back to.
| Also, I would enthusiastically pay for a support subscription. I
| know they are out there. Which companies/organizations have the
| most positive impact in the open source community?
| TingPing wrote:
| There is no meaningful support subscription for end users, only
| enterprise. If you want to donate pick specific small projects
| you like.
|
| I don't understand how someone breaks a system but look into
| immutable options like Fedora Silverblue.
| tcbawo wrote:
| It has been a few years, but for example breaking the
| display, bluetooth, power states/sleep, or wifi. Or subtly
| messing up dependencies of various other packages that I was
| trying. I just don't want the overhead of system
| administration. These days I mostly use VMs or WSL. But I am
| thinking that I want my host OS to be Linux.
| TingPing wrote:
| Immutable saves you from packaging issues but configuration
| always has to happen to some degree. To help there maybe
| use file system snapshots (btrfs) to rollback changes.
| tcbawo wrote:
| From what I remember, trying to fix configuration was
| mostly to recover from whatever broken state
| package/distro updates caused. Thanks for the Silverblue
| suggestion. In recent years, I enjoyed using Pop!_OS, at
| least on VMs.
| voxleone wrote:
| It's worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this
| thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases,
| hardware support isn't always perfect, and niche professional
| software may lack native support or require workarounds. But
| these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much
| as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects,
| standards efforts, and wider adoption could drive improvement
| without sacrificing freedom.
|
| Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the
| question isn't simply "Is Linux perfect?" but rather: Do we want
| our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our
| control, or controlled by private interests with their own
| incentives?
| volkercraig wrote:
| I think you are thinking about it way too hard. Windows 11 is a
| dog. Constant hardware problems, slow, and frustrating UX. Is
| any desktop linux perfect? No, but its better than w11 right
| now.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| I take it you just read the first sentence and darted to the
| reply button...
| normie3000 wrote:
| Or GP knows that anyone who finds the following appealing
| has already been using linux for years:
|
| > Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be
| ultimately under our control, or controlled by private
| interests with their own incentives?
|
| But if windows is now objectively worse than linux, normal
| people also now have a reason to switch.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| The problem I see with most people is that it just
| doesn't occur to them that there are alternatives.
| They're so used to a shitty experience with Windows and
| MS apps, and to them there's no such thing as os" and
| "hardware", in their minds they're lumped together.
|
| So they shrug, say "meh, computers, I just can't
| understand them," and go on their merry way rebooting
| Windows for the 10th time that day.
|
| Now, don't get me wrong, Windows has improved a lot from
| a robustness standpoint. Moreover, most people only use
| computers that come pre-configured, either from the
| factory or by their IT department. They won't face the
| crazy shit I have to put up with when I manually
| reinstall mine. Half the things on my 5 yo HP Elitebook
| don't work out of the box and I need to install a bunch
| of drivers from HP with dubious names, like sp1234 which
| makes the touchpad work, and sp4321 which enables the
| webcam. After a further set of updates, I can use my
| external screen connected to the intel integrated gpu and
| finally try to get some work done. Good times.
| buran77 wrote:
| > I need to install a bunch of drivers from HP with
| dubious names, like sp1234
|
| This is just how HP names their software deployment
| packages. Lenovo will have something like "u6chp70us17"
| or "83wo12ww". You go on your product's page, download
| the driver, install it. I understand complaining about a
| device that doesn't work out of the box, but about the
| name of the driver installer?
|
| To be honest I've never seen an EliteBook that needed any
| drivers for the common components, and in general any
| laptop that needed a touchpad driver to work in over a
| decade. And I've played with a lot of different laptops,
| business models in particular. Not saying it doesn't
| happen, just that I don't think it's common.
| leptons wrote:
| Frustrating UX? Nope. Slow? Nope. Constant hardware problems?
| Just no.
|
| I've already switched to Linux, but this was not at all my
| experience of Windows. The only reason I switched was because
| Windows is going towards an "AI" focused OS which I do not
| want, as well as the cost of the Pro version - I run many VMs
| and not shelling out for Pro for all of them.
| BuddyPickett wrote:
| No hardware problems in the version I run, not sure what
| version you use. It's also not frustrating for me but what I
| do get frustrated with is trying to get software to run and
| Linux but just won't work. Most people are smart enough to be
| able to use windows without getting frustrated.
| graemep wrote:
| So why are so many people complaining about Windows 11?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| As a Windows user since 3.x days, I complain mostly about
| UX issues these days. It's also clear leadership is not
| aligned with what I want with my desktop.
|
| I've hardly had hardware issues since I moved to Windows
| 2000. Sure some, but few enough I can't recall any in
| particular.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| People have complained about every version of Windows,
| including the ones that were considered to be good
| milestones (like 2k and 7).
| alisonsandy wrote:
| That is the same thing many people using linux say. It not
| frustrating or have any issues.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| > Windows 11 is a dog.
|
| So, man's best friend?
|
| Anyway, while I agree about the slowness (now that I've
| experienced Linux snappiness and done the benchmarks), it's
| the constant nagging / dark patterns that seals the deal for
| me. Microsoft would still have me as a happy customer and
| MSVC user if they hadn't bricked their OS after Win 7 and
| shoved AI, MS account, ads etc down everyone's throats.
|
| On that note, even more hilarious/tragic is their turning MS
| Office into Microsoft Copilot 365 App lol, probably the tech
| biggest marketing blunder of all time, and entirely unforced
| (unlike for example Intel mostly abandoning the Pentium brand
| after the P4).
| the__alchemist wrote:
| This is an clarifying perspective. In particular, I think this
| sheds light on understanding the various perspectives in the
| thread:
|
| > Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship,
| the question isn't simply "Is Linux perfect?" but rather: Do we
| want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately
| under our control, or controlled by private interests with
| their own incentives?
|
| We make choices, become passionate about some, and wear values
| we feel strongly about on our shoulder. What we witness here, I
| believe, is a conflation of two things:
|
| A: _Linux as a value: Representing open source software,
| rejecting bad corporate behavior, and as a philosophy for
| software ownership_
|
| B: Linux as a collection of related operating systems, as
| practical software.
|
| I think trying to understand each person's perspective, and if
| it can be categorized as one or the other makes sense of this
| article, similar ones, and discussion. Someone in Category B
| evaluating operating systems as tools should not be viewed by
| someone in Category A as an affront to their identity. It may
| just be different use cases; different hardware; different
| priorities; different variants and versions of operating
| systems used.
| bb88 wrote:
| The people who wanted A created B. It's not really a
| conflation but more of a causal reality.
| TheCleric wrote:
| Yes but the headwinds of Linux adoption are (to some
| extent) that Linux is the best choice for A, but it is not
| far and away the best choice for B (not saying it's bad or
| even worse than Windows, it's just not CLEARLY better).
|
| But when you approach 99% of the population who, to the
| extent they've even thought about it, will only judge an OS
| on B, Linux is just one of 3 main choices (sorry BSD folks.
| Don't yell at me). Is it the best choice purely on
| functionality and app ecosystem? Maybe, but also maybe not.
|
| Since the majority of Linux does not come on hardware by
| default what you're essentially asking people to do is to
| buy a car and swap out the motor. We have to convince them
| why that new motor is better and is worth the effort of
| doing so. If it's marginally better or worse, it just won't
| be worth the headache to most people.
|
| To be clear Linux (and MacOS) are my preferred OS. I
| haven't owned a Windows box in at least 5 years.
| DetectDefect wrote:
| > Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be
| ultimately under our control, or controlled by private
| interests with their own incentives?
|
| The reality is a lot more nuanced than that. Should one live in
| a forest, devoid of any city services and company of other
| individuals, so that one may be under "own control"? This is
| the essential value proposition with Linux and it's no wonder
| many prefer the comforting institution of proprietary
| prisons^Wsystems.
| BuddyPickett wrote:
| Not everything that runs on windows is proprietary I use a
| lot of open source software on Windows myself. Windows is
| also a lot easier to configure to run exactly the way I
| wanted to run and to be the OS I need it to be. It's
| extremely customizable and easy to control. It's also
| modifiable in many many more ways.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| You are using subjective claims to back an objective
| assertion...
|
| Windows is strictly quite a bit less configurable than
| Linux. You likely just know Windows better?
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| I think there are two factors that lead people to make
| statements like that. The first is a given: they're
| talking about configuring it as a user, not a developer.
| Obviously Linux can do whatever you want it to do if you
| build your own distro from source. But additionally,
| while Linux is also substantially configurable in
| userland, those configurations might not actually cover
| the cases people need. You can, for example, pick between
| GNOME, KDE, etc -- which, on a pedantic level, is
| "objectively" more customizable than Windows, where you
| have exactly one option. Yet, if the settings within all
| of the off-the-shelf GUI shells do not serve the use
| cases the settings of the single option on Windows does,
| users will have every reason to assert that, on a
| practical level, the degree of customizability is
| inferior and not sufficient for them.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Should one live in a forest, devoid of any city services and
| company of other individuals
|
| extremely bizarre comparison given that 90% of people spend
| their time on the web which is utterly agnostic as to what
| operating system you're on.
|
| The reality of Linux in 2025 isn't that you have to live like
| Tom Hanks in Cast Away and talk to a football as your best
| friend, it's that maybe you have to spend a few hours
| learning how the OS works. Almost your entire Steam Library
| runs on Linux courtesy of Valve and a lot of ambitious
| individuals.
|
| If people are too lazy to invest even the tiniest bit of
| personal effort into trying out new things that's one thing,
| but at least be honest about it instead of giving me the "I
| don't want to live in the jungle" spiel. Don't be the tech
| equivalent of the person who runs around telling everyone
| they can't get into shape without a million dollars and a
| personal trainer
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship,
| the question isn't simply "Is Linux perfect?" but rather: Do we
| want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately
| under our control, or controlled by private interests with
| their own incentives?
|
| As a user of Linux as my main desktop OS for more than 20
| years, a user of Linux far longer than that, and a promoter of
| FOSS before that was a term, this has always been the question.
| Most of the world does not care. I suspect that is more true
| today than ever before. There are now adults that grew up in
| the age of social media that have no idea how local computing
| works.
|
| Not to be negative but the "obstacles" to adopting Linux were
| never actually obstacles most of the time. Fifteen years ago my
| mother started using Linux as her main OS with no training. I
| gave her the login information, but never had a chance to show
| her how to use it, and she just figured it out on her own.
| Everything just worked, including exchanging MS Office
| documents for work.
| graemep wrote:
| The same with multiple people I know. Its not perfect, but
| neither is Windows.
|
| > There are now adults that grew up in the age of social
| media that have no idea how local computing works.
|
| They like it given a chance. My daughters for example far
| prefer Linux to Windows.
| buran77 wrote:
| > They like it given a chance. My daughters for example far
| prefer Linux to Windows.
|
| The two topics are orthogonal. GP talks about "local
| computing" vs. "black box in the cloud", the difference
| between running it vs. using it. You're talking about
| various options to run locally, the difference between
| running it this way or that way.
|
| Linux or Windows users probably understand basic computing
| concepts like files and a file system structure, processes,
| basic networking. Many modern phone "app" users just know
| what the app and device shows them, and that's not much.
| Every bit of useful knowledge is hidden and abstracted away
| from the user. They get nothing beyond what service the
| provider wants them to consume.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Most of the world does not care. I suspect that is more
| true today than ever before. There are now adults that grew
| up in the age of social media that have no idea how local
| computing works.
|
| Yep. I was amazed when I was talking to a friend who's a bit
| younger (late 20s) and told him about a fangame you could
| just download from a website (Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers, for
| the record) and he was skeptical and concerned at the idea of
| just downloading and running an executable from somewhere on
| the internet.
|
| I suspect _most_ adults these days are like this; their
| computing experience is limited to the web browser and large
| official corporate-run software repositories e.g. app stores
| and Steam. Which ironically means they would do just fine on
| Linux, but there 's also no incentive for them to switch off
| Windows/MacOS.
|
| To them, Microsoft and Apple having control of their files
| and automatically backing up their home directory to
| Azure/iCloud is a feature, not a problem.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| To be fair, downloading and running random executables from
| the internet is a genuinely terrible security model when
| the OS (like Windows, Linux, or (to a lesser extent) MacOS)
| does nothing to prevent it from doing anything you can do.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > and he was skeptical and concerned at the idea of just
| downloading and running an executable from somewhere on the
| internet
|
| Ironically, being concerned and skeptical about running
| random executables from the internet is a good idea in
| general.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Ironically, being concerned and skeptical about running
| random executables from the internet is a good idea in
| general.
|
| I agree you shouldn't run random executables, but the key
| word is "random". In this case, Ring Racers is a
| relatively established and somewhat well-known game, plus
| it's open-source.
|
| It doesn't _guarantee_ it 's not harmful of course, but
| ultimately for someone with the mindset of "I should
| never run any programs that aren't preapproved by a big
| corporation", they may as well just stick to
| Windows/MacOS or mobile devices where this is built into
| the ecosystem.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > plus it's open-source
|
| Open-source only matters if you have the
| time/skill/willingness to download said source (and any
| dependencies') and compile it.
|
| Otherwise you're still running a random binary and
| there's no telling whether the source is malicious or
| whether the binary was even built with the published
| source.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| It's no guarantee, but it's a positive indicator of
| trustworthiness if a codebase is open source.
|
| I don't have hard numbers on this, but in my experience
| it's pretty rare for an open source codebase to contain
| malware. Few malicious actors are bold enough to publish
| the source of their malware. The exception that springs
| to mind is source-based supply chain attacks, such as
| publishing malicious Python code to Python's _pip_
| package-manager.
|
| You have a valid point that a binary might not correspond
| to the supposed source code, but I think this is quite
| uncommon.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Of course this is true. But you can keep going down the
| rabbit hole. How do you know there isn't a backdoor
| hidden in the source code? How do you know there isn't a
| compromised dependency, maybe intentionally?
|
| Ultimately there needs to be trust at _some_ point
| because nobody is realistically going to do a detailed
| security analysis of the source code of everything they
| install. We do this all the time as software developers;
| why do I trust that `pip install SQLAlchemy==2.0.45` isn
| 't going to install a cryptominer on my system? It's
| certainly not because I've inspected the source code,
| it's because there's a web of trust in the ecosystem
| (well-known package, lots of downloads, if there were
| malware someone would have likely noticed before me).
|
| > still running a random binary
|
| Again "random" here is untrue, there's nothing random
| about it. You're running a binary which is published by
| the maintainers of some software. You're deciding how
| much you trust those maintainers (and their binary
| publishing processes, and whoever is hosting their
| binary).
| pluralmonad wrote:
| You are right. Most will never care. I think of it like, lets
| try to keep the lights on for the folks that inevitably get
| burned and need an escape hatch. Many will not, but always
| some will. At least that's my way of not being a techno-
| nihilist.
| mrstackdump wrote:
| > There are now adults that grew up in the age of social
| media that have no idea how local computing works.
|
| Very few people of any age understood how local computing (or
| any computing) works. There's probably more now since most of
| the world is connected.
|
| Profit scale has reached a point where commercial OS creators
| have to do stuff like shove ads into the UI. There's probably
| more legitimate need from non-developers to use Linux now
| than ever before, just to get a better base-line user
| experience.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I think Arduino and RPi demonstrate that there is still a
| relatively strong attraction for tinkering. In the past,
| freedom meant a lot to tinkerers. My sense is that this is
| not so true today. Perhaps I am wrong. It may be that few
| people respect licensing enough to care. As long as somebody
| (not necessarily the producer) has made a youtube video of
| how to hack something, that's good enough.
|
| This was probably always true. Replace youtube with Byte
| magazine and it was probably the same 45 years ago. I wonder
| if the percentage of true FOSS adherents has changed much. It
| would be a bit of a paradox if the percent of FOSS software
| has exploded and the percent of FOSS adherents has declined.
|
| Note: I mean "adherent" to mean something different than
| "user".
| mrstackdump wrote:
| I don't think tinkering is the dominant culture behind tech
| anymore, but it's definitely operating at a higher scale
| than ever before. There's more OSS projects than ever, and
| there are tons of niche areas with entire communities.
| Examples could include: LoRa radios (or LoRA adaptors!), 3d
| printing, FPGA hacking, new games for retro hardware...
| bayindirh wrote:
| There was a gap before (think 90s and early 2000s) where
| there was a niche tinkering and more mainstream
| user/power user/programmer crowds. All these groups have
| knowledge gaps between them, but the gap was
| surmountable.
|
| Now, the groups have drifted apart. Even if you're a
| programmer, unless you care or get excited about the
| hardware, you don't know how things work. You follow the
| docs, push the code to magical gate via that magical
| command, and that works. It's similar even for Desktop
| applications.
|
| When you care about performance, and try to understand
| how these things work, you need to break that thick ice
| to start learning things, and things are much more
| complicated now, so people just tend to run away and
| pretend that it's not there.
|
| Also, since the "network is reliable, computing cheap"
| gospel took hold, 90% of the programmers don't care about
| how much performance / energy they waste.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I think Arduino and RPi demonstrate that there is still a
| relatively strong attraction for tinkering
|
| Raspberry Pi is an interesting example because it is
| constantly criticized by people who complain about the
| closed source blobs, the non-open schematics, and other
| choices that don't appease the purists.
|
| Yet it does a great job at letting users do what they want
| to do with it, which is get to using it. It's more
| accessible than the open counterparts, more available, has
| more guides, and has more accessories.
|
| The situation has a lot of parallels to why people use
| Windows instead of seeking alternatives: It's accessible,
| easy, and they can focus on doing what they want with the
| computer.
| bayindirh wrote:
| The problems with SBCs are primarily software. I have a
| ton of SBCs, mostly Raspberry Pis and OrangePis.
|
| OrangePi boards are great. Zero is almost stamp sized,
| plus and pro has tons of options and on-board NVMe +
| fast-ish eMMC with great official cases, whatnot.
|
| But, guess what? The OS is bad. I mean, unpatched,
| mishmashed, secured as an open door bad.
|
| You get an OS installation which drops you to root
| terminal automatically on terminal output. There are many
| services which you don't need on board. There's an image,
| not an installer, and all repositories look to Chinese
| servers.
|
| Armbian is not a good solution, because it's not designed
| to rollover like Debian and RasberryPi OS. So you can't
| build any long-term system from them like you can build
| with RaspberryPi.
|
| On top of that, you can't boot anything mainline on most
| of them because either drivers are closed source, or the
| Kernel has weird hacks to make things work, or generally
| both.
|
| So, what makes Raspberry Pi is not the hardware, but
| software support.
| Terretta wrote:
| >> _Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be
| ultimately under our control, or controlled by private
| interests with their own incentives?_
|
| Define "our".
|
| Because having general compute under developer/engineering
| control does not mean end-users want, need, or should, tinker
| inside appliances.
|
| So there are two definitions of our: our end-users, and
| ourselves the engineers.
|
| Worldwide, in aggregate, far more harms come to users from
| malware, destroying work at the office and life memories at
| home, than benefits from non-tech-savvy users being able to
| agree to a dialog box (INSTALL THIS OR YOUR VOTING
| REGISTRATION WILL BE SWITCHED IN 30 MINUTES!!!) and have
| rootkits happen.
|
| Our (hackers) tinkering being extra-steps guardrailed by
| hardware that we _can_ work within, to help us help general
| computing become as " _don 't make me think_, and _don 't do
| me harm_" as a nightstand radio clock, seems a good thing.
|
| Not hard to see through the false "only two cases" premise of
| the quote, however un-hip to agree so.
| xedrac wrote:
| I would argue that hardware support in Linux is superior to any
| other operating system on the planet.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| MS Office is hardly "niche professional software." I hate it,
| and recognize that I can use the online services, but the
| reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this
| application and I can't easily do it on Linux.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Check out WinApps.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| This looks interesting, how is the experience?
| graemep wrote:
| > the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in
| this application
|
| Why? You can edit MS Office documents fine in LibreOffice and
| other similar software.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| If you're working in a corporate environment, this may not
| be viable. LibreOffice is great software, but it's not 100%
| compatible. Things may look slightly different, get lost or
| otherwise cause problems. I've really tried, but at the end
| of the day I occasionally do need to use actual Microsoft
| Office.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Yep. And then there is Visio which gets used a lot where
| I work. LibreOffice Draw doesn't come anywhere near it.
| It saves a lot of grief just to give our Linux users a
| Windows VM with Office on it if they need to do any
| significant docs or drawings.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I used Word to write a reasonably complicated document
| that necessarily used tables. It was one of the most
| frustrating, bug inducing experiences of my life. I had
| to open the document and edit it in LibreOffice to get
| any sort of stability.
| vel0city wrote:
| How do I join a live editing session of an Excel file with
| several people using regular Excel with LibreOffice?
|
| I can't.
|
| Or the same with PowerPoint.
|
| I can't.
|
| In a modern workspace it's not just local software running
| solely on just your local machine emailing around files or
| clobbering changes in some corporate file share.
| acheron wrote:
| I don't do corporate work on my home computer? I don't know
| who's suggesting corporate IT departments should convert
| everyone to Linux. "Work computer" and "home computer" are
| entirely separate use cases.
|
| (Also a ton of MS Office work is being done through the web
| interfaces now anyway. I find the web versions pretty
| terrible but people seem to put up with them.)
| lpcvoid wrote:
| I am also forced to use "productivity" software from MS, but
| I make do with the web versions on Linux at work. I hate it
| all, but it's okay. I am playing the long term game of trying
| to get my whole org to Linux. It helps that I can influence
| technical decisions, slow but steady process.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Will these issues with Linux ever be overcome?
|
| I _want_ to switch but I just don 't feel confident yet, and I
| wonder how long the "yet" will remain.
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| It isn't an issue with Linux, it's an issue with the
| companies that make proprietary software and devices with
| only windows support. A better world is possible, but you
| need to accept the fight isn't easy. Switch today.
| TheCleric wrote:
| Here's a simple decision tree:
|
| Do you run any exotic hardware? Do you run MS Office
| regularly? Do you run any highly specialized software?
|
| If the answer is no to all those then Linux is worth a shot.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| > Will these issues with Linux ever be overcome?
|
| As a Linux user forced to run Windows at work, I only see
| issues with Windows ;)
|
| > I want to switch but I just don't feel confident
|
| Live distros make it very easy to dip your toes and try,
| without committing to anything.
|
| IMO Linux has much better UI options because there are so
| many choices and freedom.
|
| You can likely find something that looks/works EXACTLY like
| you've always dreamed of - but maybe you have to try a few
| options to find it.
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| > Will these issues with "the other side of the road" ever be
| overcome?
|
| > I want to switch but I just don't feel confident yet, and I
| wonder how long the "yet" will remain.
|
| For people like you who think like this.
|
| FOREVER
|
| You'll always dream up some reason why this side of the road,
| is just better.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Will these issues with Linux ever be overcome?
|
| I'd ask you the inverse question: If Linux never got any
| better than it is currently, what would it take to push you
| away from Windows? I don't mean this as a challenge, I'm
| genuinely curious.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Not OP but I have a couple of red lines that if crossed, I
| would move to Linux: things stop "just working", and
| ads/nags/notifications/behaviors that I don't want cannot
| be disabled.
|
| Things are very occasionally annoying right now when a new
| update enables some new idiotic thing but 99.9% of the time
| things just work.
| taf2 wrote:
| Fusion360 is the one tool I wish had better wine support
| 112233 wrote:
| I'll be glad if someone tells that I'm wrong but doesn't
| current windows 11 present even more of the same challenges?
| Last I tried, old driver compatibility in newer windowses was
| not fantastic, Wine slowly is becoming more compatible with
| legacy windows programs than the windows itself, forced updates
| are dealbreaker for many usecases. And need for workaroubds and
| poking around has reached Windows XP levels.
|
| I mean, there are two ways to make Linux better alternative
| than Windows, and currently the main effort is coming from
| Microsoft...
| nottorp wrote:
| > hardware support isn't always perfect
|
| It's not perfect on windows either. Crashes, non working sleep
| on almost any windows laptop... at least compared to what Apple
| can do.
| xattt wrote:
| > ... desktop Linux still has rough edges ...
|
| My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an
| extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the
| _other_ toolkit apps you inevitably end up using.
|
| KDE/Qt has excellent scaling support, but GTK apps (OrcaSlicer
| for example) end up having blurry text or messed up text labels
| if you run a non-integer scaling resolution.
|
| The Wayland transition almost seems akin to the IPv6 debacle.
| Support is there, but it's half-baked in half the cases. I
| crave RDP remote access, but this is currently not possible
| with KRDP as it does not work with Wayland sessions. Wine is
| just getting there, but only with scary messages that say that
| it's an experimental feature.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| >> ... desktop Linux still has rough edges ...
|
| > My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an
| extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the
| other toolkit apps you inevitably end up using.
|
| Is this perhaps an issue of fractional scaling? I've run
| Openbox/Blackbox on Linux for ~15 years and never had these
| issues. Not 100% sure I understand the issue at least.
|
| Things look mostly fine (to me) and even if they don't, the
| apps still work as they should (no blur). AFAIK Openbox/X11
| just uses the DPI the monitor reports and things scale as
| they should.
|
| Sounds like an issue with Gnome/KDE to me, not with Linux?
|
| I may be wrong, I'm not seeking a super polished look or want
| to tweak my UIs a lot.
| faust201 wrote:
| This is only for people that know choices.
|
| We at out Uni provide default Ubuntu installs on laptops.
| Most people just live with whatever UI.
|
| I have a feeling that many have stopped configuring, themeing
| etc. those only from 80s to 2000 were just spending lots of
| time building and creating many themes like matrix etc.
|
| Also people are so addicted to smartphone. That is the main
| place for their heart.
| tobadzistsini wrote:
| Some desktop versions of GNU/Linux have rough edges. Self-
| important grognards think everyone should "git gud" and install
| Arch or waste a weekend waiting for Gentoo to compile in order
| to optimize the install. This article along with this one
| (https://www.theverge.com/tech/858910/linux-diary-gaming-
| desk...) go on about using an Arch-based distro rather than a
| Debian-based distro.
|
| Clearly there will be challenges, minor or major.
|
| The failure of these articles is the authors aren't going for
| distros that "just work". Want to undercut Microsoft's user
| base, grow GNU/Linux, and herald the year of Linux on desktop
| that's been promised for decades? Keep it simple.
|
| Majority of people going online with their computers are
| browsing the web, doomscrolling, and engaging on social media.
| They're not pentesting with Rust, running an instance of a LLM,
| or setting up a webserver for giggles.
|
| Keep it simple.
|
| But pushing Arch and other beardy distros with these kinds of
| articles reeks of gatekeeping as if only "smart" people are
| allowed to engage online and control their experience. Everyone
| else should suck it up with Microsoft having Copilot phone home
| since they don't deserve to know better. And I don't care how
| much preamble they give about Debian-based and beginner
| distros, they're just wagging their dicks to easily-awed proles
| and relishing imagined egoboos from other neo-Stallmans.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| >niche professional software may lack native support
|
| Microsoft Office is not "niche professional software"
| ipjrms wrote:
| What is Microsoft Office? Do you mean Microsoft 365 Copilot?
| spooneybarger wrote:
| Well played sir. Well played
| lpcvoid wrote:
| *Microslop 365 Copilot
| pixelpoet wrote:
| You forgot the "App" :) I'm still astonished at how dumb
| that rebrand is...
| jraph wrote:
| I suspect the person you are responding to wasn't including
| everything that doesn't work on Linux, in particular
| Microsoft Office, in this phrase, but domain specific /
| specialized business software.
| kazinator wrote:
| I have two Windows systems; I use LibreOffice on them. It's
| just so much better.
| znpy wrote:
| > But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations
| so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community
| projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could drive
| improvement without sacrificing freedom.
|
| Are you sure? My second-hand thinkpad still won't hibernate
| properly. It's not a weird model, it's a ryzen-based X13 Gen1
| so not even shiny new. You can imagine on a laptop one would
| want hibernation to just work.
|
| The fault is surely on Lenovo's table... Yet it would work if I
| was to run Windows (which I don't want to do).
|
| So yeah... Now I have a laptop from a brand which is known and
| appreciated for linux compatibility, and a basic thing like
| hibernation does not work.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > You can imagine on a laptop one would want hibernation to
| just work.
|
| Well, I think MS took care of that by removing the
| hibernation option from the start menu. You have to manually
| turn it back on from the old control panel.
| jama211 wrote:
| Yeah but folks around here like to stick their heads in the
| sand when reminded that this is a very real and concerning
| barrier to adoption of desktop Linux. It could happen 1000
| times and they'll still scream that it's either user error or
| even worse "it works on my machine".
|
| Until the Linux community stops pretending and accepts that
| these are real issues and they need addressing, it will never
| be the year of the Linux desktop.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Maybe not for everyone, but it will never be the year of the
| Windows Desktop for everyone either.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| It was, some 25+ years ago.
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| No it wasn't. Only in your head
| freeopinion wrote:
| Desktop Windows still has rough edges. Desktop MacOS still has
| rough edges. Desktop Linux still has rough edges. Pick your
| poison.
|
| Niche professional software may lack native Windows support or
| require workarounds.
|
| Windows has a strong grip in enterprise environments where it
| is desirable to remove desktop control from users.
|
| You have things like FreeIPA and Samba making weak offers
| beyond directory services in that direction. You have things
| like OpenTofu and Ansible making partial efforts in that
| direction. But you don't have an integrated goto standard
| solution for giving Linux desktop control to the enterprise. So
| Windows continues its grip in the enterprise. (If I'm wrong,
| please post a correction here. I'll be grateful for the
| education.)
|
| For companies less obsessed with taking control away from
| users, Windows has less of a grip.
| koyote wrote:
| > Desktop Windows still has rough edges. Desktop MacOS still
| has rough edges. Desktop Linux still has rough edges. Pick
| your poison.
|
| I think this sentiment is often overlooked as people are used
| to their 'poison'.
|
| As someone who uses Linux a their main personal machine (with
| dual boot to Windows every now and then) as well as W11 for
| work, it's amazing what you get used to.
|
| I was almost agreeing with OP, remembering bluetooth issues I
| had with Linux just last month when one of my headphones
| couldn't connect properly and I had to spend 10-15 minutes
| messing about with bluetooth stacks to get it working again.
|
| But reading your comment I just realised that my current work
| machine doesn't even detect my bluetooth headphone's
| microphone and I have not found a fix yet. That machine also
| does not go to sleep properly (a common, real, complaint from
| many linux users) and I have to hibernate it manually via
| command line as the option does not exist in my power menu
| due to corporate's rules and regulations.
|
| I also get Windows blue screens far more often than I get
| Linux kernel panics.
|
| You're just so used to the issues and inconveniences that you
| don't even recognise them as such anymore. Issue and
| inconveniences from a new piece of software you're trialing
| stick out like sore thumb though...
| broodbucket wrote:
| The thing I like about Linux is that if your thing doesn't
| work you have a way better chance of being able to wrangle
| it into working (odds increasing as your technical skill
| increases)
|
| Meanwhile on Windows if something doesn't work you're
| generally SOL.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Nobody cares about what runs under the hood (I mean the real
| market, not the dozen of us nerds), as long as it looks and
| plays nice. Market already uses linux both in the form of
| android but also as a server OS. For both of these the
| financial incentive was there for someone to write the drivers,
| make the UI user friendly (android users never have to open a
| terminal), create sales channels.
|
| Desktop and laptop market is weird because no hardware vendor
| wants to compete with MS. The only one who does (apple), owns
| both the hardware and software as well as sales channels, so
| they are not affected by MS's deals.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations
| so much as ecosystem and investment gaps
|
| For people who are trying to get their work done now, in the
| present, this doesn't change anything. We all know that Linux
| could technically run the same productivity apps and games if
| every company put enough investment money toward it. However
| even some of the apps I use which had a Linux version have
| announced that they're sunsetting Linux compatibility due to
| low demand.
|
| For all of the people whose work lives inside of text editors,
| web browsers, and terminals switching to Linux is easy. I think
| these threads become biased toward people who fit that
| description who don't understand why everyone can't just switch
| over.
|
| > Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship,
| the question isn't simply "Is Linux perfect?" but rather:
|
| That feels like a strawman argument. Most people don't choose
| their OS on ideological grounds. The reasons people don't use
| Linux isn't because it's not "perfect". People use Windows
| because it works, it's familiar, and their software runs on it.
| All of these calls to make OS choice about ideological wars
| isn't convincing or even relevant to people who haven't already
| switched to Linux.
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| That's the problem that you highlighted.
|
| It's not -their- software is it.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| You overestimate the level of investment the average person can
| and will make for these freedoms. People buy Kindles because
| they work (and are heavily marketed), they buy Apple because
| they simply work, and will keep preferring windows to Linux
| until Linux offer a easier barrier to entry.
|
| Microsoft will (almost already has) loose its advantage to
| Apple before it loses to Linux.
| faust201 wrote:
| May be in the US (as Apple products are cheaper and people
| are dependent on iMessge)
|
| Rest will remain on pirated windows or linu.many often don't
| even use computer.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| >desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases,
| hardware support isn't always perfect, and niche professional
| software may lack native support or require workarounds
|
| Personally, I believe the REAL problem is the rough edges WITH
| Linux.
|
| Hardware support? You can blame manufacturers for not
| supporting Linux. Software support? Same.
|
| But if you use a Linux software made for Linux by Linux users
| and it just feels inconvenient, non-intuitive, buggy, and
| mentally painful to use, you're going to think that Linux is
| full of bad software. Because it doesn't matter if you use X11
| or Wayland under the hood, you try to drag and drop an icon
| from the start menu to the desktop or vice-versa and that only
| works in some DEs. You try to drag and drop an image from
| Chrome to the file manager, and that doesn't always work. You
| try to click the close button and sometimes there is a few
| pixels of padding at the top so you can't close the window on
| first try.
|
| This isn't Nvidia's fault, or Adobe's fault, or Microsoft's
| fault. It's just Linux.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases_
|
| Windows is shit from the total management viewpoint: what it
| means to own and operate Windows over the long haul.
|
| windows is okay when there is some program on it that works
| well and that you like, and you're interacting with that while
| avoiding Windows.
|
| If Windows were the dominant platform and Windows were trying
| to eke out share, it wouldn't stand a chance.
| tombert wrote:
| I have been running desktop Linux for a very long time, but I
| actually agree. There's a lot of rough edges. I do think a lot
| of these problems do go away if you are a bit proactive in
| choosing compatible hardware. I bought my mother in law a
| laptop for Christmas, and I put Linux Mint on there [1]. There
| were no issues getting it working on Mint with Cinnamon, but
| that's in no small part because I double checked all the common
| hardware (wi-fi, GPU, trackpad, etc) to make sure it worked
| fine in Linux and it did.
|
| If you don't do your homework, it's definitely a crapshoot with
| hardware compatibility, and of course that sucks if you're
| telling people that they should "switch to Linux" on their
| existing hardware, since they might have a bad experience.
|
| That said, it is weird that people seem to have total amnesia
| for the rough edges of Windows, and I'm not convinced that
| Windows has fewer rough edges than Linux. I've grown a pretty
| strong hatred for Windows Update, and the System Restore and
| Automatic Repair tools that never work. Oh, and I really think
| that NTFS is showing its age now and wish that Microsoft would
| either restart effort on ReFS or port over ZFS to run on root.
|
| [1] Before you give me shit for this, if anything breaks I
| agreed to be the one to fix it, and I find that generally I can
| solve these kinds of problems by just using tmate and logging
| into their command line which AFAIK doesn't have a direct easy
| analog in Windows.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| How do you check the hardware is compatible in practice? Is
| there some reliable resource for doing this?
| tombert wrote:
| As a rule AMD stuff is pretty safe, but to answer your
| question, I generally go look at kernel sources, or
| sometimes I go and see if I can find the model in the NixOS
| Github and see how many workarounds that they have to do to
| get it working.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| I'm so close to the switch myself for silly reasons. I don't like
| windows due to their creepy business practices and negative
| design patterns in their OS so I'm very bias against it. Forcing
| copilot is just the latest in their creepy practices...
|
| For more details on why I came close to switching: I use my win
| desktop as a host for ai services such as Comfy UI for stable
| diffusion generation since it is a beefy platform; for example, I
| generate reference stuff for Krita (digital painting software)
| illustrations on my drawing tablet. I remember the process to
| configure windows as being strange, GUI bound (NOT windows strong
| suit), and just annoying due to my aforementioned bias. Valve has
| done great work with running games on linux which is the only
| reason I keep that OS and I'd rather set up services on linux.
|
| This comment serves as a reminder to myself that I should just go
| ahead grab my windows license keys for archival purposes and
| flash a better OS on that system.
| krior wrote:
| Don't forget that Krita has home-turf advantage on Linux :)
| bigyabai wrote:
| As does Wacom. My drawing tablet from 2002 is plug-and-play
| with zero driver installation.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Krita is among the main reasons why I am so impressed with
| the KDE project. Not only do they deliver a very good desktop
| environment, but they also deliver some genuine flagship apps
| for it
| francoi8 wrote:
| There's nothing silly about those reasons.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Eh those applications can both be run in linux without issue.
|
| They are likely to have more issues related to getting the
| drawing tablet configured correctly.
|
| The rest is just having to start from scratch and lose the
| decades of windows experience and intuition which can make
| things painful as that type of thing cant be replaced without
| time.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| I call it silly because essentially I'm complaining that I
| don't like setting up a service on an OS I don't normally set
| up services for. My quibbles with that process can in part be
| addressed by crafting a terminal based workflow to configure
| the host and enable the service on my desktop, skipping the
| GUI completely. E.g. I'm sure I can do Task Scheduler
| shenanigans through powershell. More experience would help
| sand down the rough parts I experienced.
|
| Now the product decisions behind the OS giving me the icks...
| The terminal can't (completely) help with that ^_^
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Having just yesterday installed a fresh Mint distro on a newly
| received PC that came with Windows pre-installed, I can tell
| you that this is merely an hour of work, and most of the time
| will be spent downloading and burning the .iso on the USB key.
|
| You should just give it a go tonight.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Do you have reference for the krita+comfyui setup? I have a
| drawing tablet and always wanted to augment drawings using AI
| but never got around to deploying a stack for that. I have a
| 3090 that should be enough for it, I just need a reference for
| the setup.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| Plugin for Krita I use: https://github.com/Acly/krita-ai-
| diffusion
|
| App I recommend to download models and manage UIs:
| https://github.com/LykosAI/StabilityMatrix
|
| (1) Download Krita (2) Download and install the Krita AI
| diffusion plugin (3) Run comfy UI using StabilityMatrix
|
| Docs for using the Krita AI plugin:
| https://docs.interstice.cloud/basics/ It's a really fun
| plugin to use!
| otherme123 wrote:
| I recently started using Lutris for gaming in Linux, and so far
| so good.
| BuddyPickett wrote:
| Copilot is already great and it's only getting better. I can
| get so much more work done and the same amount of time or get
| the same amount of work done in a lot less time. It's funny how
| many people were afraid of AI. Technophobes abound in this
| world
| grub5000 wrote:
| Funny, I disagree. I think copilot truly sucks compared to
| the other options. But you can uninstall copilot, so I don't
| see why it bothers people at all.
| Zetaphor wrote:
| Running ComfyUI or _any_ AI stuff on Linux is a night and day
| difference in terms of ease of use and performance when
| compared against that of Windows users. Python on Windows is
| suffering
| user34283 wrote:
| I fail to see how Python or ComfyUI would be easier to setup
| and use on Linux, unless we're talking about torch compile or
| Triton.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The pain I've experienced running ComfyUI on windows is from
| (1) pytorch and the complexities of managing it through pip
| when python's platform concept doesn't encompass CUDA
| versions, (2) dependency conflicts between custom nodes (some
| of which also involve #1 because they pin a specific pytorch
| version as a dependency), and (3) gratuitous breakage in
| ComfyUI updates.
|
| None of which Linux makes any better.
| Moosdijk wrote:
| The opening paragraph gives the reason why Linux is still not at
| the same level as windows:
|
| " A few months and several headaches later..."
|
| Additionally, the first comment I read is very positive, yet it
| also gives insight into the same situation.
| mariusor wrote:
| > The opening paragraph gives the reason why Linux is still not
| at the same level as windows:
|
| > " A few months and several headaches later..."
|
| These are the words of someone that hasn't tried to install
| Windows on a recent machine. There's plenty of headaches there
| too.
| graemep wrote:
| Given how many people here are saying that Windows is great
| after you do enough tweaking it does not seem very different.
| knollimar wrote:
| I just want autodesk stuff on Linux and I'll move over, but I
| imagine they wouldn't like that since it would be easier to
| circumvent license checking.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| >Dolphin held a pleasant surprise: it could detect my iPhone when
| it was plugged in. This made it a snap to transfer files to and
| from my phone as the file manager granted full file access to the
| iPhone
|
| Wait, what? Is this true? Since when?
| graemep wrote:
| Do iphones show the file system as a USB storage or MTP device
| when plugged into a computer? If so, that has worked for many
| years.
|
| You can also access the file system over the local network from
| Dolphin using KDE connect. I know that with Android the phone
| just appears as a drive and I think its the same with Apple
| devices.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I don't know about the "you should too" part. I use Arch, it
| works fine for me but I am patient and want to use it.
| Realistically, I would expect the largest migration should be
| devs switching from mac to Linux. I don't see any reason at all
| to use a mac for development anymore.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Unfortunately Mac hardware is a huge leap ahead of anything
| else.
| raffael_de wrote:
| Most of those advantages are practically irrelevant for the
| majority of users or a matter of having gotten used to things
| being a certain way.
| kortilla wrote:
| No, the touchpad alone puts it way above every laptop I've
| tried
| raffael_de wrote:
| The touchpad is great, yes, I like it, too. But I'm
| anyway mostly using mouse and keyboard and occasionally
| the 3-finger-swipe which is possible with Thinkpad+Linux
| as well since a few years. Thinkpads are also famous for
| their touchpad/trackpoint if one doesn't fancy using a
| mouse.
| nottorp wrote:
| > I'm anyway mostly using mouse and keyboard
|
| Have you considered that you're using the mouse because
| the touchpad doesn't work as well on any other OS?
|
| It's not the hardware, it's the software somehow that
| makes the touchpad usable in Mac OS.
| raffael_de wrote:
| i have been using macbooks for many years as that's
| usually the only corporate option next to
| thinkpad+windows. and i definitely prefer a logitech
| mouse.
| umanwizard wrote:
| That just isn't true. Battery life, for example, is
| definitely not irrelevant for most users.
| raffael_de wrote:
| Most people sit at their desk with the laptop plugged
| into the socket and use the battery for meetings or in a
| cafeteria. Either takes maybe an hour or two, three hours
| tops.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| So what? Most people don't care about battery, so let's
| just have a crap battery? That argument would work, if
| Apple released a super light laptop with a tiny battery,
| specially made for "most people who sit at their desk".
|
| No, people do care about battery life. That's where Macs
| excel. (I'm saying this as a Thinkpad user, where getting
| 6-8hrs of battery is doable, if you don't do anything on
| the laptop).
| raffael_de wrote:
| my point is that foregoing a superior OS for reasons that
| are only relevant on paper is not logical.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Sure, there are pros and cons for everything. It also
| depends on circumstances. I remember in 2012 I'd dim the
| screen and play with cpufreqd to get maximum time out of
| a battery, because I had a 3h train ride to my university
| weekly, with no power sockets most of the time on the
| train. I barely could do 3h. Today, in age of cheap PD
| powerbanks and USB-C everywhere, I'd easily take a better
| OS over battery life.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Mac battery life is insane - I agree. It is very
| impressive what they have done. Still, I prefer my
| ThinkPad running Arch even though it probably has 1/2 the
| battery life of my Macbook.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Has apple severely degraded the developer experience on MacOS
| recently or something?
| osigurdson wrote:
| You may not need it but no kernel support for containers /
| cgroups is a deal breaker for me. Windows at least makes an
| attempt with WSL. But, at the end of the day, most things are
| just about rationalizing what you _want_ to use. I personally
| identify with Linux tribe, not Mac tribe therefore that is
| what I want to use.
| tacone wrote:
| Omarchy is a nice experience for devs.
|
| Funnily enough, though, you can get a very user friendly
| experience using Niri and Dank Linux (don't remember the exact
| name). It takes two 3 CLI commands to install, and the top bar
| incredibly cool, compared to the i3 defaults and even to what I
| remember of Gnome and KDE.
|
| Next up: somebody comes up with a desktop environment called
| BTW.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| Every major tech publication seems to be making a version of this
| article for the new year.
|
| It's impressive Microsoft has bungled Windows enough to make this
| go viral.
| doubleorseven wrote:
| let me know when you can run visual studio, the best IDE in the
| world, on Linux, and I wont flinch
| QuiEgo wrote:
| I am very interested in the Steam Machine, because it will be an
| out-of-the-box Linux experience with (hopefully) no tweaking
| required. Hardware designed for Linux gaming from the beginning.
| I'm willing to put up with worse performance per dollar to not
| have to spend time tweaking the thing myself, similar to a game
| console.
|
| I think Steam Machine + macOS laptop + NAS running debian
| headless is my personal compute plan for the next few years.
| systemtest wrote:
| I'm not interested in the Steam Machine, but I DO am interested
| in switching my gaming PC to Steam OS! I hope the Steam Machine
| will put more pressure on getting Steam OS to the masses.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| I won't comment on the merits. Each person can do what they want.
| But, the line that caught my attention was:
|
| > The first question often asked of Windows refugees migrating to
| Linux is, "Why Linux?"
|
| The answer, realistically, is probably "What else?". Unless
| you're comfortable with the BSD's (which I like, and weren't
| mentioned), or unless you have recent Mac hardware lying around,
| it's the easiest and most practical alternative.
|
| It's a bit of a duopoly, isn't it?; with a third leg that's
| sometimes something in the BSD camp, and sometimes in the MacOS
| camp.
| thom wrote:
| I installed Bazzite on a slightly esoteric machine, a 16" dual-
| screen Asus laptop. It's not really my cup of tea as a
| distribution, either philosophically or practically, but it has
| some specific patches for Asus hardware and as a result it seems
| to work better in every way than Windows. Every couple of months
| I'm annoyed for a moment by all the immutability stuff and the
| package system, but for both work and play it's running
| perfectly.
| squeegmeister wrote:
| I would if Unreal Engine was properly supported
| jwpapi wrote:
| I switched to fedora and I'm so happy it's so chill not ads and
| bullshit everywhere.
|
| All my littler hacking projects are faster setup and my idea is
| faster
|
| However I think if you do video editing you need Mac or Windows
| fragmede wrote:
| Davinci Resolve is a high end professional video editing suite,
| and is well supported on Linux. Also Lightworks (but I'm biased
| because I used to work there).
| a-dub wrote:
| it's really good these days. nvidia finally fixed their drivers
| (i suppose all it took was becoming the richest company on
| earth), kde is really nicely polished and all the friction from
| the x11 to wayland transition is over (at least from my
| perspective of an end user of linux desktops).
|
| it's remarkably stable and reliable and way less annoying than
| modern windows or macos. i'm looking forward to a panther lake
| thinkpad with robust linux support and incredible battery life.
| a456463 wrote:
| I did the same for my media centers! Netflix and iQIYI refuse to
| work. I am cancelling Netflix. Been a member since 2010. I don't
| need 4k either. The 4k tax is losing ownership over your media.
| HDMI is closed source compared to display port.
|
| My media center experience is so so much better. The apps on roku
| logout randomly, the nvidia shield remote craps out, windows
| firefox/chrome are slow and the logitech keyboard doesn't work.
| But the same keyboard and browser setup works like a charm on the
| same machine on linux.
|
| Manufactured waste, fight against general purpose computing and
| ownership is what is at stake.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| You're all too generous. The first time Netflix didn't display
| past 720p in Firefox, I immediately cancelled my subscription
| (which was paying for the whole family) and redirected everyone
| to Bitsearch[0] to pirate everything instead. I don't agree the
| moral or ethical arguments against it either.
|
| [0] Bitsearch uses a distributed hash table (DHT)[1] to find
| all public tracker content
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table
| longhaul wrote:
| How do you deal with malware/etc ?. Are there reliable products
| available ?
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| The line of defenses are different. All my Linux applications
| are either installed via Flatpak (which runs in a sandbox) or
| via the official package registry (which requires programs to
| be open source, and has a strong track record)
| BuddyPickett wrote:
| Linux doesn't have all the features that Windows has, features
| that I use daily. It also doesn't work with all of my games and
| software so it's a non starter for me still. Tried it several
| times but it always falls short of what I need. I do have it
| sandboxed in Windows but it's rare that it is needed for how I
| use a computer.
| graemep wrote:
| What specific features? Some people have specific software they
| need, but features really surprises me.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| For me, one of them would be an actually working way of
| putting laptop to sleep. Screw you, modern standby.
| YVoyiatzis wrote:
| That's the exact same 'missing features' script people used to
| dismiss Apple during the height of the PC era.
| poolnoodle wrote:
| I agree modern Windows sucks for the average consumer, with all
| the dark patterns and icky stuff, but if you are on this forum
| and technically inclined enough to install Linux, you can just
| disable all the bad parts of Windows and get a rock solid OS with
| perfect compatibility. Unpopular opinion, I know, but that's how
| I view it.
| fassssst wrote:
| Sure but I use Ableton, Lightroom, and Battlefield 6 daily.
| smetj wrote:
| Its simple. If you require specific software which only runs on
| Windows, then you cannot use Linux. If that's not the case, the
| Linux desktop these days is entirely capable of helping you
| achieve your goals.
| rkagerer wrote:
| If you must, _Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC_ is where the
| goodness is at. Less bloat, no ads, a frozen feature set (so they
| won 't move your cheese every 6 months), 10 years of official
| support and security updates... it's like it's 1997 again! And
| you can install tools like Classic Shell (with its superior Start
| menu) to make it even better.
| DenisDolya wrote:
| Eh, I wanted to do this, but the manufacturer of my laptop
| doesn't allow me to disable RST in the BIOS, so I can only work
| from a flash drive, and it's slow. :(
| Chance-Device wrote:
| Everyone is talking about moving to Linux lately, it's a bit of a
| trend. I wish they'd stop, for one simple reason: I've been using
| Linux exclusively (when I'm not forced to use macOS by work) for
| several years now, and I rather enjoy the lack of malware,
| spyware and other bullshit on the platform.
|
| If the general public comes over this situation might end.
| Desktop linux isn't a target right now because its niche, I'd
| prefer that didn't stop.
|
| Oh well. Maybe nothing lasts forever.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| While I sympathize with this angle, there's another side to
| this coin: if more people do the switch, maybe some
| applications will finally get linux versions.
|
| I'm a Sunday photographer and quite like Lightroom and
| Photoshop (I know about the drama, but to me, I get enough
| value from them compared to Darktable and the GIMP to not
| switch just yet). It's the only reason I still have a windows
| pc hanging around the house.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| I am in a similar boat; my media editing machine ruined
| windows 10 so that I can use Lightroom. But I would dearly
| love to ditch windows so I'm currently looking to try out
| running Lightroom under Winapps to see if it is usable.
| There's no way of passing the GPU through without something
| like SR-IOV so I'll have to see how it goes.
|
| https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I was thinking of doing that, but since that would require
| me to switch the monitor and whatnot, it would be just like
| using two PCs. And since I only use my desktop for LR and
| not much else, jumping through the hoops with emulation
| doesn't make much sense.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| How so? Winapps lets you run windows applications as if
| they were native to Linux, you interact with them the
| same way you would anything installed by apt/pacman/dnf
| etc. Unless I'm very much misunderstanding things (which
| I don't believe I am)
| dlcarrier wrote:
| There's a lot of servers running Linux that are regularly
| targeted by malware.
|
| There is a big difference in what software a desktop user runs
| versus what runs on a server, but the great thing about Linux
| is that you can keep just as much variation between your
| install and the average desktop user.
|
| Your best bet for security is probably running OpenBSD, but
| within Linux, if you avoid common optional applications and
| services like Gnome, KDE, pulseaudio, systemd, etc., you'll
| have a significantly different attack vector. Avoiding Python
| and Node package managers and sticking to your distribution's
| package manager would be great, too.
| Chance-Device wrote:
| Thanks, and that probably is a good security posture, but
| having to stop using everything good and switch to OpenBSD is
| exactly what I want to avoid!
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Not that OpenBSD isn't good, it's just different
| priorities.
| tsoukase wrote:
| Better spread the Linux word because with enough users more
| developers will be attracted and the race good vs bad hackers
| in OSS will be won be the former. "Nothing is hidden under the
| sun". Closed source is made to push malware secretly.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Closed source is made to push malware secretly.
|
| That is factually incorrect flamebait. Closed source is made
| primarily due to a desire to retain control. While one can
| use control for malicious reasons, the predominant use is to
| make money.
| minusSeven wrote:
| Folks on reddit and hackernews aren't normal people. Outside of
| this bubble few people have heard of linux. Hell so few people
| I know use firefox which makes me mad. You are safe from that
| fear.
| desireco42 wrote:
| First you don't have to dump anything to use Linux. The whole
| thing should not be as antogonistic.
|
| I switched to Linux, Arch btw, Omarchy, sometime last year when
| it was announced. I installed it on my old Thinkpad and it worked
| wonderfully, for most part. I realized that I am more productive
| there in real sense and experience is more delightful.
|
| When I would go back to Mac, I would realize I need several
| clicks to accomplish something I had on shortcut available.
| Having websites/apps on shortcuts as an app is huge help. Also
| working on command line is really much more focused.
|
| Sometimes in September I plugged Thinkpad to desktop setup and in
| December I set my powerful computer to Omarchy as well.
|
| It isn't seamless experience, there are issues switching from
| speakers to headphones and dictation can be hard to setup.
| Overall whole machine seems more powerful and interesting to work
| on.
|
| This is first time in many years that I can both play and work on
| same machine which is definitely welcome and surprising.
| desireco42 wrote:
| One more thing to note, nowadays Arch is more stable then
| Ubunty and works better. However, any distro you pick, you
| should be happy with, especially if you want to do work, you
| should just pick and stick with distro.
| jama211 wrote:
| Oh look, a "I switched to linux" article that will convince
| nobody because it's full of issues they ran into that users don't
| want to and should not have to learn how to solve. Or maybe I'm
| wrong and everything is smooth now? _reads article_ Nope, it's
| exactly as I expected.
|
| Ugghhh.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| My last Windows was Windows 95 (or 98?). I've been exclusively
| using Linux for ~25 years. I use Ubuntu because I've been using
| it for ~20 years and have better things to do than try out
| different distros. My mother, my grandmother, and many of my non-
| computer-savvy friends also use Ubuntu. I know a Germanist who
| uses Debian.
|
| It's a bit like with cars. If you know someone who really knows
| about cars, they'll be able to recommend a solid, simple, super
| cheap, practical car that will just work and give you no
| problems. It'll probably be something like a 2010 Toyota Aygo,
| which you can pick up for next to nothing on the used car market
| (here in Germany) and which you would never have thought of
| buying yourself. This is a Linux laptop. Other people who never
| got this insider tip that driving can be cheap and hassle-free
| might instead buy a new car from a German manufacturer on credit
| for half a gross annual salary (or even a whole one). Two years
| later, the car may already be in the repair shop because the
| engine is losing oil or because the Nanoslide/Nikasil cylinder
| liner coating is damaged.
|
| With the Aygo, you can drive from A to B just as well as with any
| other car, and you might even have a little more fun doing so.
| But if you need CarPlay and heated seats, distrust things that
| are cheap, and love that je ne sais quoi that comes with things
| you've just bought for a lot of money, then this simple 2010 Aygo
| is not for you.
|
| This weekend, I wrote code for a non-trivial compiler on my old
| everyday laptop. I didn't even buy it; I got it for free because
| the previous owner considered the device obsolete and unusable.
| Slowly, the thing is getting too old for me too, but Linux
| (Ubuntu) has gotten another couple of years of use out of it.
| Meanwhile, a friend of mine just bought a used Macbook that still
| cost more than I would ever spend on a new laptop because she has
| to write papers for her studies and thinks she needs a "good"
| computer for that.
| deepakrb wrote:
| Bluefin has been a game changer for me
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| fwiw... after 20 years I went back to FreeBSD from Linux. I
| recommend it if you like FreeBSD. [Actually, I run a hybrid where
| I have a stripped down Debian system and run BSD in a virtual
| machine, but 99% of my interaction w/ the machine is via
| FreeBSD.]
| foopalooter wrote:
| Yep, once I read microsoft was going to integrate that
| abomination co-pilot into the taskbar and desktop in general, I
| wiped my windows partition for good. I didn't even back anything
| up. I have fedora servers at work, but I just need a stable and
| performant OS at home to do some remote work, hobby coding, and
| connect to some telescope equipment. So I just run Ubuntu LTS -
| why? because I don't need to spend my time nerding out on ricing
| a linux distro, I have better things to do with my time. The same
| goes for Windows, I have better things to do than try to get an
| operating system to work - and there lies the big rub. Linux is
| easy enough now for anyone who is decent at windows to learn and
| use, and it's free, upgradable, tons of support available, and
| WORKS BETTER.
|
| As I'm typing this, on my work windows PC, the taskbar icons
| aren't rendering. Generally the graphics are slow, Microsoft
| outlook randomly freezes my entire computer, and occasionally my
| USB drives turn on/off if I'm plugged into a docking station. I
| experience exactly zero of these issues when running
| EbNar wrote:
| I'm a Linux users since 1999ish and I find extremely annoying and
| condescending these kind of titles.
|
| What about "Hey! I tried Linux and it's cool! Let me show you!",
| instead?
| raziel2701 wrote:
| I bought a thinkpad X1 carbon refurbished for about ~$300. I
| wanted to travel abroad with a laptop I wouldn't mind getting
| stolen if it happened. During the installation of Win11 it asked
| me to create a microsoft account, fuck that. I installed linux
| mint. Very nice experience overall, so nice to not get assaulted
| by ads in the start menu. Pleased to see the nightlight
| functionality (I googled f.lux for linux and that's how I
| discovered it) is built-in, and with flatpack I installed vlc,
| qbittorrent and obsidian. Firefox setup was straightforward. And
| that was it. This is a laptop for youtube and movies, I used the
| pre-installed libre office calc for small budget things and list
| making. It just worked for me.
|
| The things that bother me about this laptop are primarily
| hardware related coming from using a mac laptop (which is the
| laptop I would mind getting stolen). Trackpad on X1 carbon is
| definitely not as good, battery life not as good. And opening the
| lid momentarily reveals what you were on before the lock screen
| comes on. This last one tastes more like a software issue. I had
| another issue with the hdmi port being finicky, but that's
| hardware again.
|
| Overall very happy with this setup, linux mint is in great shape.
| I do wish there were fewer distro choices for people considering
| making the switch. It does introduce choice paralysis. I had to
| set aside my ego and pipe dream aspirations of being a "hacker"
| and went with a distro that seemed to be simple and
| straightforward to setup. Mint definitely is easier to install
| than windows, hands down, no need to create a microsoft account
| and you don't have to deal with all the slop features it tries to
| shove down your throat.
| cranium wrote:
| I've linked it multiple times on HN already but winapps
| (https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps) can be a game-changer
| for people relying on some Windows-only software.
|
| It sets up a Windows machine in Docker where you can install your
| apps, then you'll get .desktop applications that starts the
| program in the VM and use RDP to only show the app window - it
| feels nearly native. I've even bought an Office 2024 license to
| improve some VBA Excel macros for a client.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I tried Linux again recently. Microsoft needs to be deleted, but
| this plan is still delusional. Linux is way too confusing for
| preventable reasons, not even talking about compatibility with
| Windows stuff.
|
| I'm no Linux expert, but if a SWE has a hard time with it, can't
| imagine how an average person is supposed to use this. Yeah it's
| learnable, but nobody wants to. Come back when I can install
| Linux on a PC, not a "distro" but just Linux, no choices for
| random stuff like DEs unless you're an expert. And that's
| necessary, not sufficient.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| Which distro and shell you've tried? I believe this makes a lot
| of difference, and there are distros that are catering for
| average users, but I have no ideia if it works.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Ubuntu, Mint, Debian lately. Tons of others before. bash
| shell
|
| At some point Ubuntu had Gnome2 and only apt for packages,
| that made more sense than now
| Zetaphor wrote:
| You are learning an entirely different operating system. You're
| going to have to make some choices and do some research/learn
| new things. There will be challenges because it's something
| completely different from what you know.
|
| The entire point of Linux is there isn't just one Linux, having
| centralized control of an OS is how Mac and Windows ended up so
| godawful.
|
| As time goes on the UX will continue to improve (through
| targeted distros) for less sophisticated users, but we're
| realistically only now at the point where everything in the
| ecosystem is "good enough" for a large number of people.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I've been using Linux on and off for a decade+, and it's a
| moving target. There is one Linux kernel, they can make one
| Linux OS. (and ofc people can fork but it should remain
| niche)
|
| Meanwhile I can go on Windows after years and still know how
| to use it. Last version I daily used was 98, but 11 is still
| intuitive (despite being annoying).
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| With recent ntsync changes in Linux and wine.
|
| Start citizen runs fine and gives excellent FPS NOW
| lizknope wrote:
| I switched from Solaris/HP-UX to Linux in 1994. Never ran
| dos/windows. It's been working great for me for 31 years now.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I did this sometime in 2022. First I was using POP OS but I
| wanted to have something more up to date so I gave an Arch based
| distro a shot, EndeavourOS has been my go to for a full year
| without any feel of missing out on another distro or features.
| Yay is the best thing to happen to Arch Linux and its
| derivatives.
|
| I feel like Pacman is the real reason for instability with people
| who dont understand how Pacman works messing up upgrade commands
| and not getting all their dependencies properly updated. When I
| tried Manjaro like ten years ago it was a mess.
| opponent4 wrote:
| This was, still is and for the foreseeable future it'll be bad
| advice. Stay on Windows 10 as long as you can. With LTSC IoT
| that's 2032. We will figure out something then.
|
| It doesn't work. Right now the main issue is Wayland vs X where
| Wayland is not working and will never work because the underlying
| ideas and goals do not align with that of a desktop. Someone
| described X as ALSA, Wayland as PulseAudio and we are waiting for
| PipeWire to arrive. Maybe Phoenix will sweep in to save the day,
| maybe something else will.
|
| Also, hardware and software issues will always be there because
| the incentives are not there.
|
| I swear Linux on the desktop adherents sound like they have some
| sort of Stockholm Syndrome but of course in reality just
| cognitive dissonance explains it.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| This was true for a majority of users even fairly recently, but
| the 'niche' for which Linux is a better option has grown such
| that those who are worse off with Linux (better off with
| Windows) are becoming the 'niche'.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| >Wayland is not working
|
| What's your source on that? I have been using it for years.
| Skill issue?
| foresto wrote:
| > Wayland is not working and will never work because the
| underlying ideas and goals do not align with that of a desktop.
|
| Can you elaborate on this?
|
| I don't use Wayland because it lacks something I need
| (unprivileged Scroll Lock LED control) but I'm curious about
| what else keeps people from using it.
| psyclobe wrote:
| Just be sure to give up any dreams of power saving, sleep states
| or hibernation
| misterbishop wrote:
| I love desktop linux. I've used it on and off since 2000. Even
| with Valve's excellent work on gaming, there's still whole
| software categories that require Windows. Pro audio software is
| very Windows reliant and I don't see it changing. If you're a
| software developer, there are many benefits to using and deeply
| learning linux. But even as a linux super-geek, I don't expect to
| ditch Windows entirely any time soon.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| At some point it is not that Linux is better, it's about
| rejecting the decisions made by a company blinded by profits.
| vlod wrote:
| Yeah this is what switched me. I was forever complaining about
| wall gardens and yet was too 'comfortable' with my macbook-pro
| as it was the best laptop period.
|
| I switched to a thinkpad x1-carbon and popos and never looked
| back. Sure I would love 10 hour battery life, but it's not THAT
| big of deal (for me) to carry a charger.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| new intel cpus might change that as long as standby is fixed
| :)
| AdeptusAquinas wrote:
| I switched my laptop (Surface Laptop Go) from Win11 to
| Tumbleweed, and its great. Mainly because Windows kept getting
| slower, and arguably Win11 isn't great for an 8GB system.
| OpenSuse is a great distro.
|
| But my gaming PC and primary workstation remains Win11, and
| always will be (windows, that is). Notably Suse under WSL2 works
| great there as well, and my Kubes workflow is just as easy with
| PowerShell commands as it is with bash.
|
| OS's have purposes, and arguably there is no single platform that
| is better than the others in every way - Windows is better for
| games and is more stable across different hardware and
| configurations. Linux is much lighter, more _intentional_ , and
| for me better for infosec and some coding activities.
| vegabook wrote:
| I moved from Windows about 10 years ago and it took 6 months to
| click. It was an enlightening experience, like the curtains had
| been drawn back. The only comparable experience was finally
| clicking with NixOS, about 18 months ago. Will never go back to
| any other Linux distro.
| silexia wrote:
| I would be interested in doing the same, but my Linux server in
| my house has been a bit of a pain for my remote employees to use.
| Maybe I don't know the best software?
| jadbox wrote:
| My home nvidia desktop is running CachyOS and it's been an
| overall good experience. 99% of the apps I need just run without
| issue, and I've only needed to apply a few minor tweaks to get my
| other laptop set up (switched to deep sleep). As a long time
| Fedora fan, I was not sure about switching to CachyOS but the
| performance has been marginally better under heavy use-cases.
| However, Fedora is fine and can be tweaked to get most of the
| same benefits though.
| indymike wrote:
| Since 2008 I've been on linux as my daily driver. You'll find two
| laptops in my backpack: a macbook air and whatever linux machine
| I'm using for development. I'm almost to the point with the mac,
| I use it maybe once a month. So much works better on linux. The
| Mac (and occasions where I've tried Windows) is not nearly as
| easy to deal with as it was. Far too many decisions for the user
| to make, and far too many situation where you just aren't
| allowed. For example, I once fired up my macbook, only to be
| jarred by Apple News notifications about a gristly mass murder.
| While I sympathize with the victims, I do not want my routine
| broken by news out of my control. So I tried to get rid of Apple
| news only to be told by Apple support that was not possible.
|
| My computer is mine. I do not want the manufacturer or author of
| the OS controlling it. Ever. Full stop.
| 0x59 wrote:
| I bought a laptop in 2008 and in 2017 was forced to install W10.
| Well, the `08 hardware wasn't having it and I didn't have the
| cash to pony up for a new laptop so I installed Linux. Great
| decision.
|
| There's definitely specific niche software that is restricted to
| MS and if you _must_ use that, then by all means stay aboard.
| Otherwise, today 's a great day to scroll distrowatch and pick
| your poison.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| My non technical friend she choose to try installing linux and
| picked mint. I laughed and I was sure she would brick it at least
| once but its been over 6 month and the system is still running
| fine. She did end up dual booting windows because there are a few
| games which were to hard for her to get setup and some that will
| never work. I think dual booting is fine its a good pressure
| release valve as long as you're spending most of the time booting
| into linux.
| unlikelytomato wrote:
| The real issue is the lack of support. Real users buy those
| support packages from vendors. They bring their PC in to be fixed
| at their local shop. They might Google a problem and find a
| solution occasionally of they are feeling spicy but how often do
| you get screenshots to get something to work in a Linux GUI? Web
| browser only laptops are great until your uncle gets a "killer
| deal" on some random printer on Facebook marketplace and they
| can't get it to work. Or a webcam. Or a Bluetooth headset. Or a
| game controller. Scanner. etc etc.
|
| On top of all of this, they will just give up and buy a new
| machine and return it if that doesn't fix their issue.
|
| Linux provides virtually nothing on any of those fronts unless
| you get a private level 8 tech support contact provided by your
| grandson. Who wants to be 24/7 on call for their extended family?
| adammarples wrote:
| I installed CachyOS on a spare ssd with the idea that if it
| became a headache I would go back to windows. All my games work,
| even weird open source ones. All my sounds, monitor, kvm switch,
| volume rockers, Bluetooth game controllers, headsets, everything
| works with zero issue. Cuda works, I can run ML models, and it
| all works much better and faster than Windows. There's been no
| reason so far to switch back. Next, I'll wipe my NVME drive and
| be done with windows for good.
| Escapade5160 wrote:
| If you're primarily a gamer, Bazzite is fantastic.
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