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Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#91

Post by lostmsu »

gjhh244 wrote: post #32
captainmisery wrote: post #10

I'm using Windows 10. In the past year I've tried: Manjaro, Fedora, Linux Mint and some others. Why I'm not switching? Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix. After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution. "Well, you know, you…

Weird how different people have different experiences. I've had way more cases of random things breaking on Win 10 than on Linux Mint. Especially corporate Win 10 on my working machine is utterly horrible, just endless problems.

Are any of those problems of "unchangeable 800x600 resolution" magnitude? Could you name a few?

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#92

Post by WelcomeShorty »

In short: dependency hell.

Whatever distro I used it is the same at one point in time: In order to run X-n, you need Y-n-1 but Y-n+1 is installed and needed by Z.

Next: sleep mode and or the not recovering from it.

Linux is GREAT for tinkering, love it on my single purpose Raspis, love a dedicated VM/Laptop with Kali. But I will never again switch away from my macOS that just works for the job I need to get done.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#93

Post by soco »

I have a guests laptop running Mint, every upgrade means wiping everything off because there's no human way to do otherwise. My Windows laptop has seen upgrades in-place since Windows 7. And then while on Windows the updates happen in the background (from time to time asking for a reboot) on Mint I have to start them by hand, using one of the three update managers (still no idea what's what) and every time they throw also some errors, usually about outdated update sites/links but not only.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#94

Post by lostmsu »

Visual Studio is still the best IDE for me (IntelliJ gets close, but debugger is still lacking).

Updates in Windows do not break graphics mode.

I wrote a custom tiling WM for Windows, and can't find Linux replacement (predefined layouts, tabs, multimonitor support, free-float allowed, also widgets).

A few years ago Ubuntu still had problems with multiple displays on Nvidia driver.

Recent: me & my friend do deep learning. I am on Windows and he is on Ubuntu. When I run an experiment, OS is responsive. When he does, DE slows down to a crawl. Looks like OS does not schedule GPU.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#95

Post by runjake »

haunter wrote: post #57

Too confusing for me. Too many different distros. Too many different DEs. Too many different package systems. Just look at this https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Comparison_of_desktop_envir... And this one distro doesn't even cover the package systems that differs between distros and other distros based on those (see how Ubuntu is based on Debian but there are distros based on Ubuntu, it's like the Inception). Of cour…

You can just pick a distro and stick with it.

You don’t need to learn about all the package managers and all the desktop environments.

I don’t really know anything about Arch’s package manager or Fedora’s dnf.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#96

Post by oarsinsync »

reportgunner wrote: post #85
orangepanda wrote: post #56

Because I’m not a masochist. I use ubuntu for work, some issues I’ve encountered: * No sleep mode by default * Snap is cancer. When I’m sent a pdf, I cant open it directly because the current app is isolated and cant see that a pdf reader is installed. Same with all other app specific extensions. * Snap, again. Whenever I’m sent a file on Skype, I have to reboot; It overrides my $home directory and I cant open or acc…

Ubuntu is a very bad example of a linux distro.

What is a good example of a linux distro?

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#97

Post by wayneftw »

lostmsu wrote: post #91
gjhh244 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how different people have different experiences. I've had way more cases of random things breaking on Win 10 than on Linux Mint. Especially corporate Win 10 on my working machine is utterly horrible, just endless problems.

Are any of those problems of "unchangeable 800x600 resolution" magnitude? Could you name a few?

Windows is slow af compared to Linux on the same hardware when I’m doing anything with Docker or Node.js/npm/yarn. The cli is incompatible with bash. I also can’t disable telemetry and other things I don’t want. It’s also missing features UI features that I get with XFCE.

That’s why I switched to Manjaro 3 years ago for work and never looked back. I still have Windows systems for games where it mostly works fine except for the occasional interruption to install updates while I’m in the middle of playing or watching something (which never happens on Linux since I have complete control there.)

The types of issues that Windows has can’t be fixed. An “unchangeable” resolution is fixable if it’s not a hardware issue. But I never have that type of issues at all on Linux. It just works for me and I have it on 3 desktops and a laptop. A lot of it comes down to picking the right distro and not being a cowboy. For instance, on Manjaro - just use the gui to install apps, not the command line - and restart when it tells you to. The gui does things that you won’t think to do on every update.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#98

Post by sealeck »

reportgunner wrote: post #86
sealeck wrote: post #2

The desktop environments are really confusing. Battery software isn't good.

> Battery software isn't good. Have you tried using TLP ?

Yeah I get really confused and unsure as to whether or not it's working. I probably need to buy a laptop from a vendor with first-class Linux support TBH.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#100

Post by taylodl »

A DAW (digital audio workstation) I can work with. There are DAWs available for Linux, and one, Reaper, is quite popular and even used in professional studios. Which is great, but it doesn't fit my work flow. If I were a Pro Tools, Ableton, or Cubase user (extremely popular DAWs) I would still be stuck: they only run on Windows or Mac OS. So I'm pretty much stuck on Mac OS (I use Logic Pro).

The additional problem I have with contemplating using Linux as my daily driver is hardware support. I like laptops with long battery life that I can get 8-10 years usage. System 76 has some systems that look interesting but I have to run their Pop! OS to ensure compatibility - which removes one of the reasons I'd want to use Linux as my daily driver: I want to pick my own distro.

In the end I'm fine with using Linux on the server and using Mac OS as my daily driver. It's been working very well.

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