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

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271–280 of 306 posts

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

#271
post #237

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…

I really like snapping windows to parts of the screen. Mac doesn't do this well. Linux, well, I do a search for it, and get this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/26346/how-to-use-window-snap... The first answer is great. That second answer is typical with every "how do I do anything in Linux" question. It's a chain of things I dread and I end up spending an hour because I forget to type "cd .scripts" and then get los…

> I really like snapping windows to parts of the screen. Mac doesn't do this well.

Rectangle for macOS

https://rectangleapp.com/

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people give that advice, ignore it. No matter what, you're going to get some unhelpful advice. Comes with the territory. Similarly, just include your distro in any searches.

> If people give that advice, ignore it. No matter what, you're going to get some unhelpful advice. Comes with the territory. Answers like that are very common , meaning that you commonly get unhelpful advice. But worse, those people get angry when you don't accept their advice. The Linux Desktop community has a serious problem with letting these kinds of people continue to represent them. > Similarly, just include y…

>The Linux Desktop community has a serious problem with letting these kinds of people continue to represent them.

I am not letting this fanboys bully people, but what else can we don, I can't waste my time guarding forums for "U use Arch " dudes and "calm them down" , we all were at that point sometime in our live where the programming language/framework/OS/music was a big part of our identity = some of us got wiser , you need to remember this people exist and keep your distance.

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

#273

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.

Ubuntu/Kubuntu LTS is the distro for people that do not need the latest core libraries. Most issues people get on Ubuntu is when they try to install stuff from the wrong PPA or when they listen for bad advice for random clueless people.

Sure Arch users need to raise their hand and scream they use Arch and that the code is vanilla and they run GNOME with all it's bugs... do you remember how when Ubuntu went back to GNOME the Canonical developers fixed GNOMe's bugs, yes a distro actually fixing bugs upstream and not just packaging shit, some would prefer that instead of pretending the memory leaks are the fault of the user.

I used many distro including Arch, SUSE,Debian(and Sidux),Fedora, Mandriva and for years I am stuck with Kubuntu LTS because it works and I don't need latest library co compile latest XYZ program. I use this Kubuntu machine for my work so I can't and also I don't get any plesurre from rolling updates and fixing broken stuff or fighting with new bugs(I know how to work around existing ones)

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people give that advice, ignore it. No matter what, you're going to get some unhelpful advice. Comes with the territory. Answers like that are very common , meaning that you commonly get unhelpful advice. But worse, those people get angry when you don't accept their advice. The Linux Desktop community has a serious problem with letting these kinds of people continue to represent them. > Similarly, just include y…

>The Linux Desktop community has a serious problem with letting these kinds of people continue to represent them. I am not letting this fanboys bully people, but what else can we don, I can't waste my time guarding forums for "U use Arch " dudes and "calm them down" , we all were at that point sometime in our live where the programming language/framework/OS/music was a big part of our identity = some of us got wiser…

I think that if the community cares about its image it needs to take a more proactive approach to keeping these kinds of people from behaving like that. Otherwise they will always be associated with that behavior.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Linux Desktop community has a serious problem with letting these kinds of people continue to represent them. I am not letting this fanboys bully people, but what else can we don, I can't waste my time guarding forums for "U use Arch " dudes and "calm them down" , we all were at that point sometime in our live where the programming language/framework/OS/music was a big part of our identity = some of us got wiser…

I think that if the community cares about its image it needs to take a more proactive approach to keeping these kinds of people from behaving like that. Otherwise they will always be associated with that behavior.

It is hard though, I personally stopped following Linux podcast or subreddits , so I will try here in this thread to stop some fanboy reactions and provide a balanced response but I am not sure there is too much a regular person with no fame can do.

Apple community is as toxic too, if you mention a hardware issue(like the keyboards) you get accused you did not used ir correctly or you are paid to do bad publicity. Then you have fanboys claming how Apple does good thing X but misslead you by not mentioning that Apple only does X because a judge forced them to do X (ex Apple was forced to replace bad hardware by judges after lawsuits or inform you that you phone is crippled)... for this people Apple is perfect. My point is that there is always a very loud number of fanboys that is hard to shut them up(Apple,Linux, Tesla, Rust).

I think people tried to make fun of "I use Arch" and "rewrite it on Rust" crowd that some people calm down but I think those are few and most of them are just a bit less loud.

If some Linux user that still reads linux related reddit please downvote and try if possible to respond to fanboys , espeically if they are of-topic,

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

#276
post #252
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like snapping windows to parts of the screen. Mac doesn't do this well. Linux, well, I do a search for it, and get this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/26346/how-to-use-window-snap... The first answer is great. That second answer is typical with every "how do I do anything in Linux" question. It's a chain of things I dread and I end up spending an hour because I forget to type "cd .scripts" and then get los…

Linux users RTFM. Command line flags aren't hard when you have the documentation at your fingertips.

It can be mildly frustrating to find the flags in extremely large man pages. They tend to write them all over the place ('oh but this does this when you combine -r with -tr') so searches light up matches all over. This gets compounded when there are flags with two letters and you try to search for the first letter. (want -t but have to wade through 3000 mentions of -tr, -t1, -tz, -tmmm, -tt, -tttt, etc)

Maybe I just suck at searching man pages. Or I'm too impatient. Either way, https://explainshell.com/ has been a great website for explaining flags.

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

#277
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like to have an OS that quietly keeps itself up to date without bugging me about it. My work Macbook and Windows laptops also bug me a lot and keep demanding reboots at inconvenient times, with popup notifications blocking things I need. Just quietly download your updates, install them in the background, and quickly switch to the new version at some point when I'm not using it.

NixOS has this feature, though you will have to rewrite parts of your configuration if you're using bleeding edge/nonstandard stuff. I run automatic updates nightly, sometimes when I get back to the machine it's in init waiting for me to input my ZFS password. NixOS is the last system you install, which is really nice. It's the Linux dist I've run the longest consecutive at home.

I'm on Arch now, but definitely have Nixos on my radar to try out some day. Looks like a fairly steep learning curve though (as was Arch, really).

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

#278
I used Ubuntu LTM as a daily driver at work for about 5 years. Most of the time it was fine, but several times I’ve had Ubuntu totally fail to boot after an update. Kernel issues or some such. This was in a work environment. I don’t know if it was a combination of hardware that the update didn’t like, or a random software package.

Once I could forgive, once a year is unacceptable.

I do have an Apple bias, as I grew up on Macs. I’m competent enough on Linux to use it, but I don’t want to play IT while I'm also trying to do my regular job. When one became available, I switched to a Mac. It’s not a perfect experience, but it is reliable.

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

#279

It's primarily because I want things to consistently work as expected. Sure, macOS doesn't always work as expected, but compared to my experiences with various Linux distros, it does. Others have mentioned the trackpad experience, and that's a thing, but not a deal breaker for me since I use the keyboard a lot. Hardware quality is another issue, more important than the trackpad for me. MacBooks are built like tanks c…

My 2014 personal laptop continues to work really well, in spite of some drops and liquid spills. I do want to move to an Apple Silicon machine but I’m not sure I have a decent reason to.

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

#280
post #111

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…

I was attending my client conference when the invited speaker had his windows machine update right in the middle of his powerpoint presentation ! The whole room had to wait about 15 minutes for windows to finish its "important update". (Of course he probably should have done it before and certainly ignored previous warnings. But it doesn't matter : the whole room of executive was wasting 15 minutes watching the speak…

Exact point, no ads, no stop-working anytime

Linux / OsX just rock solid

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