Live data from Hacker News

Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

lpi.org

111–120 of 346 posts

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he is right. Linux is not for everyone. It's for people who can learn how to double click an icon that looks different from the one in Windows. That excludes probably 50% of Windows users right there.

This is the exact elitist mentality that the article writer is talking about. Not only are you saying everyone who can't figure it out is dumb, but you forget, there are actually people who probably can't understand it because its a different icon like very elderly people. My grandma would only use a browser if I set the icon to the little IE6 icon. lol

About half of windows users are dumber than the average person, and the average person is dumb.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#112
post #75

Yet another one of thoses guides. When XP came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to Toy'R us interface. When Vista came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to DX 10 drivers and hardware requirements. When 8.x came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to tablet UI. When 10 came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to telemetry. Now Windows 11 came out, naturally everyone is going to go…

The ever coming year of the linux desktop.

Full disclosure: I dual boot, but only to game. Linux been my daily driver since before 7 went eol. I am that linux fanboy. Debian, primarily.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#113
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Windows have a decent terminal nowadays?

No, it never even had a resizable terminal until early win 10. Unix terminals are an economic powerhouse in themselves and binutils like sed/awk/grep (which windows never had and you need to modify windows to have these tools).

Are you saying that installing or building software on your machine is modifying Windows?

There have always been plenty of terminal options on Windows.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#114
post #66

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."

I have updated my laptop across 4 major releases of Debian now, never reformating the system. And the copy of my home directory (think user profile in windows) is even older. If you don't know what you are doing, saving a full system backup to an external hard drive is actually easy so you can try things and revert if it doesn't work.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#115
post #91
post #75

Yet another one of thoses guides. When XP came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to Toy'R us interface. When Vista came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to DX 10 drivers and hardware requirements. When 8.x came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to tablet UI. When 10 came out everyone was going to go GNU/Linux, due to telemetry. Now Windows 11 came out, naturally everyone is going to go…

I went to linux around the time ME was on the shelf, not sure why I'd want to move to windows, I want something that just works.

Funny, that's why I still use Windows on my desktop.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#116

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

The top reason NOT to switch to Linux should be "Because someone told you to." The Linux community has a terrible problem with proselytizing and then gatekeeping ("Welcome to Linux! Oh, you're using Linux Mint? Get fucked, then.")

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#117
post #17

I never switched from Linux to Windows. Why would I want to?

You can run Adobe software on it for cheaper than the cost of getting a Mac. And you can run an enormous number of games which aren't available on Linux or Mac at all. At least that's why I do it.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#118

The first point I think is one of the main arguments. I've been using Ubuntu on a computer I bought in 2007. Worked like a charm (until the PSU blew up a few months back). Linux is a system that outlast its hardware! One can also turn the argument around. What would be the reason to use Windows instead of Linux (if, like most of the people on HN I assume, you are computer literate) ? Games I guess.

A lot of people apparently run into hardware support issues with Linux.

Personally, I have not had any issues in about fifteen years, but I cannot blame people for expecting their hardware to Just Work (tm). Back in the day, I enjoyed spending a weekend getting sound or wifi to work, but these days not so much.

At the same time, hardware support has gotten so much better over the twenty one years I have been using Linux, so it is much less of a hassle today.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#119
post #51

My main reason for running Linux is the Terminal. I'm 35. Began with computers ~10. Spent my first 10 years using Windows, followed by 10 years of the Mac. I'm (hopefully) in my 10-year Linux run?!

Doesn't Windows have a decent terminal nowadays?

They have 2 built in ones. powershell and cmd. CMD has been there forever and works mostly like MSDOS (mostly). powershell is pretty neat and is in many ways better than bash once you understand it. They have also in the past 2-3 years actually fixed up some very long standing issues with the shells. There is also an experimental shell manager in the windows store which is kind of nice. You can also install other unix shells if you want. But being different systems they can get a bit quirky.
Post reply on HN