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Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

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Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#62

Post by blakesterz »

jnsie wrote: post #36
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance No telemetry No forced upgrades No intrusive ads

I'm out of the loop - are there intrusive ads in the Windows OS? If so, what kind of ads and when/where?

Yeah, that start menu area (not sure what the real name is) has panels (I bet they have a real name too) for games and junk. Not to mention how the OS is really pushing people to only use the MSFT Chromium (aka Edge) browser now, similar to how it used to push IE. I'd call that an ad as well, though not exactly what you might think of an ad.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#63

Post by Tenoke »

jnsie wrote: post #36
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance No telemetry No forced upgrades No intrusive ads

I'm out of the loop - are there intrusive ads in the Windows OS? If so, what kind of ads and when/where?

By default, yes. I always quickly follow the instructions online to disable all of that on a new install so I've never encountered them. For me it's no more hassle than the things I need to do on a fresh Linux install.

I haven't seen it push for Edge, in fact I don't think I've opened Edge since install day.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#66

Post by apeace »

CaioAlonso wrote: post #5

As a counterpoint: Reasons to consider NOT switching to Linux https://corn.codeberg.page/notlinux.html

Right. I was going to comment "Reason #12 to switch to Linux: you love reformatting the entire system every once in a while, typically after struggling to fix a driver for hours and completely screwing everything up in a way you can't figure out how to undo."

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#67

Post by earthtolazlo »

nivenkos wrote: post #34
earthtolazlo wrote: post #27

As someone with RSI who uses speech recognition to control most software on my desktop, X11 -> Wayland has been a massive roadblock. Ad-infested Windows isn’t great, but at least it doesn’t feel like I’m fighting any devs just to be able to use my computer in an accessible manner.

How is OS X for that sort of accessibility? It seems to be the best for accessibility in general.

I’ve only ever used Windows and Linux so I couldn’t say for sure, but my impression is that it’s pretty good. Talon or Dragonfly with the Kaldi backend handle speech recognition and provide nice Python APIs for controlling the keyboard, mouse, windows etc.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#68

Post by tmalsburg2 »

Tenoke wrote: post #21
jdlyga wrote: post #2

The real reasons I use Linux are mostly out of convenience. For example, updating all my software and OS using one command rather than clicking on 50 updaters.

Linux has its conveniences but I think I definitely spend more times on updates. Some break things and some like Nvidia's drivers can take me ages to actually apply (though with that one the usual trick seems to be to remove --purge nvidia-* first).

> Linux has its conveniences but I think I definitely spend more times on updates.

That depends on which distro and hardware you're using. I use laptops that are known to work well with Linux and Ubuntu LTS releases. This way, I spend perhaps 3-5h a year on admin tasks and it's mostly easy stuff.

It's actually amazing how GNU/Linux allowed me to gradually transition from configuring everything (when I was a student: XFree86, custom kernels, ...) to using GNU/Linux productively with almost zero housekeeping effort.

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