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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?

#191

Post by sam0x17 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #170
sam0x17 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the opposite experience with windows lately -- start menu type to search randomly stops working and I have to restart, windows will do this weird thing where you have to rapidly click their dock icon to get them to show up or they minimize. The pre-windows-11 updates have been nothing but bugs for me. On my Ubuntu Budgie desktop I have none of these problems. Sure I have to deal with the occasional linux cha…

Are you using the Win 11 beta?

No but ever since windows 11 was announced and they started doing the updates preparing for it everything has been breaking for me.

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

#192

Post by rito_ »

teitoklien wrote: post #180
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…

3> equivalent or worse software 1. Krita is very good for picture editing And id say more user friendly than photoshop 2. For video editing, Davinci Resolve is often more reputable and popular in studios than Adobe premiere 3. Editing docs tho , ye kinda sucks but you can use wine to run office suite , libreoffice exists but i get your point on that one The rest are either equivalent or superior for almost every usec…

I don't remember the last time I used MS Office or Libre Office. Nor have I seen it used in my job or coding clubs.

I and everyone I know uses Google Suite now.

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

#193

Post by caeril »

I'm not a Mac user (anymore) but I often ask myself this, as well. MacOS is buggy as hell, the UI sucks, and a stock Ubuntu or Fedora installation is much, much, much more usable, particularly for development tasks.

From what I've been able to gather, there are two reasons:

1. Vidya (this is somewhat valid)

2. Status signaling (but you'll never get them to admit it)

That's it, full stop. You either need to play Fortnite, or your status needs to be affirmed by others. There's a small minority who pretend that LibreOffice can't open MS Office docs, but considering 99% of corporate Mac users use G Suite in the browser for docs anyway, this is a ludicrous complaint.

Just accept that they care about their public image, or like to play vidya, and move on.

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

#194

Post by alexitosrv »

A bit late to the question, but for me is mostly my cloud workloads definitively means I am more platform agnostic, and I am inclined to use the least resistance path for (high quality) videocalls and that means to be able to easily connect audio/video devices. From College I used to be a evangelizer of the goodies of linux, but nowadays I am too tired to fight that battle.

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

#195

Post by mark_l_watson »

I am stuck with my M1 MacBook Pro because it is so fast and has all of my dev tools installed and working. (I know that Linux and BSD is starting to work on M1).

I love my heavy System 76 laptop with a GPU but the UI is not quite there for me. It is too heavy to travel with but good for at-home deep learning work because for the GPU.

A possible sweet spot for you to look at: Chromebook's because the UI is pretty good and the Linux container support is pretty good. I just bought a super cheap, super portable Lenovo Duet that is surprisingly useful. However, the cheap price entails slower performance and the USB-C port will not drive a hires external monitor. Something twice as expensive with better performance and better external monitor support might meet your needs.

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

#196

Post by karmakaze »

chrisseaton wrote: post #163
karmakaze wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I guess that people interested in gaming will want to play more than a single, decade-old, game.

The instructions, while for Starcraft 2, may well work for many not so recent/AAA games. I may be an outlier but I bought PS/2 and PS/3 only for Gran Turismo, and PC gaming is SC2 or a Java Go game client (unless you also count Universal Paperclips).

Edit: I also remember that I used to run Windows as host OS and a Linux virtual box with hardware graphics acceleration and direct access to the Linux (ext_) formatted partitions. That was a pretty nice setup. I could if necessary dual boot to real Linux on the same setup.

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

#198

Post by kreetx »

onceiwasthere wrote: post #115
binaryblitz wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they run MacOS (or OSX for older versions), a version of Unix. The M1s still run MacOS, just on a different type of processor hardware.

I figure kreetx is referring to bootcamp'd intel Macs running full Linux.

Yup

(Though note that Bootcamp is a macOS app to install Windows only. For linux the process less GUI assisted (but still pretty straight-forward).)

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

#199

Post by cestith »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #149
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…

A lot of these sorts of issues tend to spring up around specific hardware. Point in case, proprietary drivers for Broadcom wifi/bluetooth and Nvidia GPUs. I had a problem where every N rounds of updates, Fedora would just eat the Broadcom drivers and I'd get stuck tethering from my phone over USB to fix it. Similar things happened albeit much less frequently with the Nvidia drivers on various distros. Of course the b…

I'm just a single anecdatum, but Ubuntu from the installer through the installed system has been pretty flawless on my hybrid-GPU laptop. The GPUs aren't even from the same vendor. It's an AMD APU and an nVidia discrete GPU. The right-click menu in Gnome for every program gives me the option to start the program with the discrete graphics.

At the time I tried, the Debian installer got very confused about the video situation. Fedora and Mint weren't really happy either. I didn't try Pop, Arch, or anything else.

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

#200

Post by cestith »

I use Linux as my primary OS on some systems. My work laptop is a Mac and is specified by the company. I use it mainly to connect to Linux VMs and work within the VMs. My main gaming desktop is Windows because the selection of games is so good and Proton is great but not a perfect replacement. I'm more likely to buy a game that's available on at least two OSes, though. That's normally Windows and either macOS or Linux if it's two. Games that support Mac and Linux but not Windows are rare. My non-game computing at home is almost entirely Linux, with some Mac, DOS, Amiga, Atari, Commodore, TI/99-4a, Tandy CoCo, Apple II, a single Pi that runs RiscOS instead of Linux, some old DEC machines, and various Z80 machines thrown in.
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