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Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

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161–170 of 346 posts

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#161
post #21
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).

Once you learn to avoid NVIDIA, your life gets way easier. I've bought an RX 580 4 years ago and it's been a pleasant plug'n'play experience ever since.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#162
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.

I run Linux desktop with no issue, been doing it for years. The year of the Linux desktop has been here for a while, you just haven’t looked.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#163
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 worked retail in xp/vista days the regular customers had no idea about linux existing, few knew about MacOS it has changed but no way these people would ever touch linux, laptops needs to come with it even then it would be a hard Sell..

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#164
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

This is an interesting observation, considering that traditionally Windows has had these opaque failure and degradation modes that are "unfixable" unless you reinstall. Personally, it doesn't ring true to me - I've been using the very same OS install for around a decade now, I just kept moving it from machine to machine and I think my laptop install is actually a duplicate. I've restored it from backups a few times,…

Yeah; one of my favorites in recent history was the Windows 11 developer preview. I installed it ahead of time to test an application my company distributes. Eventually, Windows 11 is released, and I think: Well, I'd like to get this machine off of the "dev channel" and on to stable, so I can (1) run what my users are running, and (2) not deal with instability.

You can't. Their official recommendation, in the Windows 11 Settings app, is to reinstall Windows 11. There's no way to migrate "backwards" on update channels, you can only go "more unstable".

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#165
post #132

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.

Have you ever tried to teach people how to use a computer or is that paper talk ? because in theory everything is well designed, but very few things are.

Of course "in theory" good tools are solid and simple.. in reality bro how insane the world is. Every update, every fix, changes the poor ground of habits users tried to build. Just yesterday I had to help a neighbor because she couldn't grasp a word document embedding a invisible table as layout forbidding the caret to move right as she used too. I think you're very much misunderstanding the vastness of psychologies, of tooling variations, of hidden variables and parameters and the immense layering of software.

People are confused by the slightest change in computer interaction. How do you want to make them understand when to click, double click, right click, drag, press. What's an URL, what happens when they click save, why errors or not ? people don't even know what saving a file is. Really, go in any office you can pick 30% of users totally clueless about folders and files.

Every attempt at hiding information causes trouble, it taps into shallow understanding and rote memory. People become mere users and it sucks. History is interesting, details are interesting, your brain loves it, if it's tied to a tangible concept and use for the people. It's not about making VBA6 classes or a talk about Linus Torvalds acrobatics for the sake of geek pleasure. It's to situate what are the reasons (as in reasoning) for why things are the way they are. Even your keyboard has a long history.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#166
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you disabled them all after you installed it?

I don't see any either, maybe because its the Enterprise / Pro SKU?

Oh, yes, enterprise windows cuts out most of the ads. The personal additions fill the start menu with ads for various windows products (and paid placements, iirc? I can't remember, since them I disabled them all a long time ago).

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#168
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.

Apparently chromebooks have broken 10% of sales, which are sort of Linuxey. https://www.geekwire.com/2021/chromebooks-outsold-macs-world...

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#169
As a person who has been using Linux as my main desktop OS since 2003, unfortunately there are almost as many impediments to the average user switching to Linux now as there was back then.

1. Although game support has gotten better, most AAA titles still don't work on Linux, even with proton.

2. There are still a lot of devices that either don't talk to Linux at all or require the kind of tinkering that the average user is not capable/willing to do to set up: iPhones, any VR headseat that isn't the Index, etc.

3. There are still a lot of highly popular industrial-strength applications that don't work on Linux, even with WINE. The entire Adobe suite, AutoCAD, etc.

For these reasons (and other smaller ones), I have always needed to have a Windows dual-boot setup, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#170
We have three choices for the desktop:

-one that seems to treat anyone as an idiot and it's an walled garden -one that is broken -one that kind of works but is boring and it is kind of a new skin on a very old paradigma interested most in keeping backwards compatibility

20 years ago as an OS enthusiast, I was in Heaven. Apart from Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, we had a lot of new operating systems, each trying to work on a new paradigm: BeOS, Syllable, SkyOS, and some more which I forgot.

People were enthusiastic about the the OS landscape and we thought some new breakthroughs will be just around the corner.

But what happened is everything is aligned to money and if the money don't follow enthusiasm and ideas, then we end up with a boring landscape.

I think innovation in the OS landscape is at its worst but that it is because it is not rentable.

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