101–110 of 177 posts
Thanks for writing it up, interesting stuff! - An i3 user
Save your FUD, I've been using computers for 16 years and I've never had this problem. Malware/Ransomware hit only if you go around the dark corners in search of porn/free stuff without knowing what you're downloading. Even then the built in Windows defender catches it. I love Arch too but people like you are so die hard in their toxicity that any collaboration asking about Windows related stuff is impossible.
For me, modern virtualization has gotten so good that it's my preferred solution. kvm, libvirt, virtio, and PCI passthrough et al have opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Currently still requires fairly specific hardware and kind of a pain to figure out how to make it work, but it's already very impressive. This is still really cool though.
Thing is you can't run Windows natively that way, it has to be a guest operating system. Then you need multiple videocards to pass through, and the guest operating systems require custom drivers at that. My preferred setup would be Windows native, with macOS (ha) and Linux guests running with GPU acceleration—preferably in a manner that doesn't necessitate multiple videocards. Too bad Apple is hellbent on locking mac…
I, for one, think that sounds excellent. For a workstation, I would much rather host everything on a simple Linux distro with focus on security and privacy, and keep Windows in VMs where I can manage it a little better. And the Windows Subsystem for Linux will run in there perfectly if I need it.
Also, multiple video cards are only necessary if your guest needs that GPU power. Considering that having 2 video cards these days is surprisingly common (Intel on-board + separate video card), I'm wondering about the feasibility of easily switching between shared video (eg. when your laptop is on battery) and separate GPU passthru (eg. when you're plugged into your epic 16-monitor setup).
A lot of comments about Thunderbird here, despite the article saying "Save your apologist comments and what about Open Office/Geary/Thunderbird comments.". That means don't comment about it. The interesting part of the article is not the part about why this guy uses Windows!
I used Thunderbird for about 10 years on my Mac laptop and every time I tried to switch to Apple Mail (or anything else) I quickly switched back. But the truth is, I have used Linux on my primary desktop PC for about 15 years now and can honestly say that it is a very pleasant experience.
I would agree that for a long time OpenOffice had compatibility issues (often no worse than trying to open an Office document on a Mac) but those days are long gone.
As a software developer and general techie, I believe that Free Software is important for my profession and for the public at large. For me, even if Linux was less convenient (which it is not - today anyway...it was more challenging, say, a decade ago) I would use it because I have serious concerns some of how Apple and Microsoft treat developers and the Free Software movement.
This is awesome stuff. If you fullscreened MobaXTerm and autohide the Windows taskbar then what are the problematic points vs running a linux/i3wm natively? Do certain keystrokes get intercepts by Windows regardless? You mention Firefox have you tried Chrome/Chromium in i3wm? Can you play a HTML5 youtube video? Thanks for writing it up, interesting stuff! - An i3 user
author here - would love advice or tips on how to get dbus running so settings work well and other WMs work like Gnome.
Nice work. A few days ago I tried xfce4 with little luck, although xfce4-terminal + Xming get me pretty much everything I need. Windows ConHost.exe is a pretty poor terminal (specifically in terms of fonts and colors) but hopefully things will get better in time. Regarding Dbus, I haven't had time to try this out yet: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4ea4w4/fyi_you_c...
dyed in the wool...
I'm one of those weird people that uses free software even if it isn't better. The quality of the software is beside the point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thing is you can't run Windows natively that way, it has to be a guest operating system. Then you need multiple videocards to pass through, and the guest operating systems require custom drivers at that. My preferred setup would be Windows native, with macOS (ha) and Linux guests running with GPU acceleration—preferably in a manner that doesn't necessitate multiple videocards. Too bad Apple is hellbent on locking mac…
>you can't run Windows natively that way, it has to be a guest operating system. Then you need multiple videocards to pass through, and the guest operating systems require custom drivers at that. I, for one, think that sounds excellent. For a workstation, I would much rather host everything on a simple Linux distro with focus on security and privacy, and keep Windows in VMs where I can manage it a little better. And…
Granted, Windows makes for a fairly terrible host operating system when you have to reboot it frequently on account of updates.