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

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

#151

Post by kitsunesoba » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

dschuessler wrote: post #8

The trackpad experience on MacBooks is unbeatable. Another comment here on HN described it as the trackpad completely disappearing from your mind. You don't have to fight it at all. You don't even think about it anymore. The cursor just becomes a natural extension of your hand. Also, as a person working with PDF documents on a regular basis, I don't know of any application that can beat the feature set and UX of Prev…

It's kind of crazy how long Preview.app has been one the best at what it does. I remember it being a minor revolution back in the early 2000s, running like butter compared to the clunky-even-then Adobe Reader and handily sweeping up a few different format viewers into one app.

It's been 20 years and still no other desktop environment ships with a true equivalent.

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

#152

Post by temporallobe » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

I used to be an avid Linux Mint user and would constantly promote it to friends and colleagues, but no longer. I still really like Mint and Ubuntu in general and is far better than the Windows spyware/unstoppable forced updates nightmare, but it makes an impractical daily OS for me and I have switched to macOS. The primary reason is for music/audio production for which I have invested a significant amount of money and time for Logic and the entire Universal Audio ecosystem using Luna as the DAW. I am well-aware of the Linux alternatives, but I am unwilling to make a switch right now and there simply is no equivalent to Luna on any OS or platform.

Another issue I had with Linux desktop distros is with software compatibility and inconsistency of available binaries among the them. I got really sick of trying to build libraries from source just install simple apps or libs. I do enough of that in my day job.

I am not hating in Linux though. There a great many advantages and for simple use cases it’s more than adequate. I even had my teenage daughter use Mint for a while until I broke down and had to get her a Macbook when she started university (there were some specific system requirements that their software had, and it wasn’t compatible with *nix).

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

#153

Post by OrgNet » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

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…

> Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update

You can't be serious that the updates aren't worst in Windows... I finally got my 80yo dad to Linux because of them being ridiculous in Windows.

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

#154

Post by t0bia_s » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

Adobe.

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

#155

Post by iamcreasy » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #94

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 learn…

I have heard about it before about debugger but I've only used Intellj. Can you please elaborate on what I am missing out?

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

#156

Post by MiddleEndian » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

I used Linux as my primary OS for awhile, and Mac OS for a long time before that, but I switched to Windows 10 a few years ago.

It's got the Adobe Suite for graphics and video stuff, and WSL for Linux development in a way that's better than MacOS ever reached in that category. The window management is really good nowadays. I'm also writing some software that will target Windows (and also Linux). Great touch screen support on top of that, the Surface Book has a great design (although very limited internal hardware, so I won't be getting another lol)

Plus I like Notepad++ better than any other graphical text editor I've used, and Ditto is my favorite clipboard manager by far.

I think a lot of this could be replicated or improved upon in Linux (and maybe having a secondary Windows box to target stuff to be released for Windows), but the Adobe suite and touch support are the two things that would be too much to miss. Also, audio on laptops has also proven to be an issue with Linux in the past.

Microsoft does seem to be actively hostile in pushing irritants on the user, but they can be disabled, and Apple is similarly hostile nowadays, so I am not inclined to switch back to MacOS.

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

#157

Post by milesvp » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #129

xboxnolifes wrote: post #127

1. Video games. Easily the biggest one. I don't want to have to potentially jump through hoops or be completely unable to play a game by chance every time I download a new game. 2. The subtle issues from various audio devices, mice, printers, GPU driver support, etc. Or just driver/hardware support in general. 3. Learning the equivalent (or worse) software for the various little things that need to get done like pict…

I got Proton running quite nicely on my Lenovo ( https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400 ), but I agree with all your points (see my other comments in this thread).

I second this. I had a dualboot system for a long time. Between steam proton, and lutris, I havn’t needed to boot into windows for a game in over 2 years. That said, I’m super flexible, and if a game doesn’t work and I can’t find an acceptable fix I’ll get a refund from steam.

I also kind of like trying to get games working, it’s one of the reasons I got into computers initially. Getting games to work on dos was not for the faint of heart.

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

#158

Post by dhruvkar » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

I've been on Ubuntu/PopOS! for the last ~5 years and the biggest reasons I think about switching back to macOS is printer and scanner support.

I have a Fujitsu Scansnap scanner and two Brother printers. Although I got the Fujitsu scanner to work, it didn't have all the software goodies (auto-straighten, OCR etc.). It works out of the box on mac. I cannot get my color printer to work with my Lenovo Thinkpad PopOS machine, and the black and white Brother printer works, but is..... fiddly.

If I also had to edit images/video regularly, I'd switch back to macOS.

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

#159

Post by karmakaze » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #127

1. Video games. Easily the biggest one. I don't want to have to potentially jump through hoops or be completely unable to play a game by chance every time I download a new game. 2. The subtle issues from various audio devices, mice, printers, GPU driver support, etc. Or just driver/hardware support in general. 3. Learning the equivalent (or worse) software for the various little things that need to get done like pict…

I've heard that Starcraft 2 plays perfectly on Linux. Here's some instructions (I haven't tried myself):

[0] https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-starcraft-2-on-ubuntu...

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

#160

Post by YaBa » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

I always had a dual boot system until Windows 7 became EOL. Now Linux is my primary OS and couldn't be happier. Still use Win7 in VM because the lack of support of some special software I work with. For everything else, Linux is the right way.