Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

lpi.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 346 posts

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#151

Post by magicalhippo »

ziml77 wrote: post #132
agumonkey wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's right. It's like maths. A vast majority of people like to not like / learn it. I've spent a lot of time with average users of all kinds. They couldn't care less. To them it's a thing that has less value than a coffee cup. I could, and would sit down and explain to them everything that is cool, cute about every layers of a computer, with simple language and pragmatic use, with history context, and bits of ben…

No, he's not right. A computer is a tool. A tool should help you accomplish tasks. A well-designed tool that is meant to be used in the average household should be easy to use and hard to screw up. It shouldn't feel like it's getting in the way. There's no reason why anyone should need to know the details of how a computer works to use the computer. The history you're so eager to tell should just be trivia.

> There's no reason why anyone should need to know the details of how a computer works to use the computer.

Paraphrasing the CEO of Sun Microsystems (IIRC): you don't need to know how to operate a nuclear power plant to get light when you flick the light switch.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#152

Post by ddek »

I've really given up on the operating system debates. I don't think it's a very interesting subject, because I think the individual constraints are more important than general 'UX' concerns.

My personal computer usage is about 60% web browsing, 10% coding, and 30% AoE2. The game really doesn't run well through proton, at least not enough to play competitively, so I'm kinda locked onto Windows. I think it's stupid to talk about which OS to use firefox from. I'm slightly biased against MacOS here, because for some reason I can't get the extra buttons on my mouse to be forward/back... It's a stupid reason, but it's my stupid reason.

That leaves 10% coding. Most of my programming right now is JS/TS (it's really grown on me), so again the OS doesn't really matter.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#153

Post by hotsauceror »

ridaj wrote: post #51
ramanujank wrote: post #26

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?

It does, the new Windows Terminal app is pretty nice. What it does not have is a good set of command line tools. Powershell is powerful and great in its way, but it is cumbersome to use for little tasks. And the lack of a command-line text editor like vim is a huge pain in the ass.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#154

Post by signal11 »

codeflo wrote: post #121
pjmlp wrote: 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…

OTOH, 11 is the first version of Windows where Microsoft actively tells a large portion of their userbase that they don’t want them to run it. I’m not a believer in “the year of the Linux desktop” either, but those insane policies around fictitious hardware requirements surely must have some impact on market share?

> I’m not a believer in “the year of the Linux desktop” either, but those insane policies around fictitious hardware requirements surely must have some impact on market share?

I will give them (some) benefit of the doubt -- they probably are using Windows 11's more stringent hardware requirements as an instrument to drive increased security in the PC space. New PCs will want to be advertised as Windows 11 compatible, and will benefit from the newer features. Every type of Windows user will benefit. And yes, if it gets them more money, so much the better.

But Windows 10's retirement date is October 14, 2025[1] and I don't think that's sustainable. They'll almost have to extend that date.

Because otherwise, four years from now, there's a lot of devices that'll be out of support, on an OS that Microsoft sold as "the last version of Windows ever". There'll be lawsuits if that happens, mark my words.

Of course I suspect Microsoft is hoping most Windows 11-ineligible machines will have been retired by then, but we know people (public sector, developing countries, lower income groups) hang on to their PCs. More realistically, they'll either extend Windows 10's support date like they did with XP, or lower the system requirements based on user feedback. More likely extend the support date, because honestly, the cost of supporting 10 vs 11 is minimal, it's not that big of an update.

I'd definitely encourage people to put Linux on an old laptop though. For instance I know people who've put Linux on old Thinkpad X230s and given it to their children, who basically use them like a more-capable Chromebook. On the right hardware, Linux laptops are pretty darn good. But yes, if you have a weird hardware configuration which Linux isn't good with, and you have no time for mucking around -- do yourself a favour and stay away from Linux.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#157

Post by seltzered_ »

I switched to Linux recently.

It isn't perfect, and had to be picky about what computer I'm using it with, but it doesn't suck as much as it used to. You have to have a bit of chaos tolerance but there's something interesting about being in a more collaborative relationship with software packages. I may go back to a Mac or Windows if they make something I really want.

For those considering a switch and just want to see workflows across OSes rather than the motivational essays or distro lists, I keep a humble spreadsheet on that here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3... . I spent about a year sketching out this list before committing to switch to linux.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#158

Post by kangalioo »

skywal_l wrote: post #57

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.

For me it's the "it just works" factor. Just tons of tiny issues I have on Linux:

- I have to disable the compositor to get 144 Hz in programs - With the compositor disabled, animations become very drawn out and pixelated - Konsole's layout breaks on a new version so I have to keep downgrading it manually - Audacity takes like 10 seconds to load - I have to run modprobe every time I want to use my webcam - The cursor is different in login screen and main desktop - Spectacle (screenshotting tool) needs to be invoked twice to actually do a screenshot - I can't print double sided pages on my network printer - Dolphin can't connect to our household's Windows file share server (or maybe the fault lies in samba?) - VLC hard freezes every once in a while and needs to be killed with -9 flag

At one point I maintained a txt of these issues but I don't have access to that right now

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#159

Post by inciampati »

magicalhippo wrote: post #142
agumonkey wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and its dual, not having to restore apps configuration every 3 weeks because some bloatware has the rights to change boot settings etc I like windows for various reasons but it's a constant maintenance chore. Linux is more like a stone wall.. set and forget.

Interestingly for me it is the other way around. I have Windows 10 on the main PC, KDE Neon on a NUC and "obviously" several Raspberry Pi's doing various things. I spend far more time maintaining the Linux machines, while my Windows box just works. KDE Neon has been much better last year, but still every now and then some conflict pops up which requires manual command line intervention. Clearly YMMV... That said, I'm…

What exactly are you doing to maintain the Linux system? Configuring it? I haven't done much of any Linux maintenance over the past decade, and I'm nearing two decades of full time use.

The only issue I could sink time into is the lack of deep (S3) and that's completely an issue caused by Microsoft's capture of most laptop manufacturers (they have forced new hybrid sleep states that don't even work on windows machines).

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#160

Post by marcianx »

justupvoting wrote: post #112
pjmlp wrote: 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.

Linux desktop already came for me personally a long while back. I've been single-booting Linux and gaming for an incredibly long time.

CodeWeavers[1] has done amazingly for the Linux gaming scene via

- Steam's Proton (Steam pays CodeWeavers for development, and I happily throw my money at Valve for that) and

- their own CrossOver product which I use for non-Stream games. (I paid for their lifetime subscription[2] because I wanted to support them so much.)

Stream's Proton works well for many games that don't officially support it (one can check others' reports in protodb). Examples of games I've played recently that don't officially support Proton include Iron Danger and Horizon Zero Dawn. The latter runs surprisingly smoothly given what I'd heard about its PC performance issues from when it first came out. Granted, I'm playing both of these 1 year after their PC release, but I've already got a long Steam backlog of games to play, so that's not bothered me.

For reference, I run PopOS on a System76 Thelio with an 8-core AMD processor and Radeon RX 580.

[1]: https://www.codeweavers.com/

[2]: https://www.codeweavers.com/store

Post reply on HN