Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#281

Post by medo-bear » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #270

filmgirlcw wrote: post #186

Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate at Microsoft with a focus on Linux, I am typing this on a laptop running Windows 11 (it also has another SSD that runs Linux), and I'm a diehard Mac user. I hate this sort of SEO-driven clickbait that is trying to inflame wars that frankly, were settled two decades ago. Use Linux. Use Windows. Use macOS. Use Chrome OS. Use OpenBSD. Use Haiku. If you're a complete masochist, use GN…

> that frankly, were settled two decades ago No, it wasn't. Windows didn't have a camera, TPM, TPM 2.0, and mandatory Microsoft online account requirements two decades ago, nor did it come "bundled" with Cortana, Teams, advertisements in your Start menu , Windows Defender, forced/"highly incentivized" OS updates, loads of dark patterns meant to try to get you to use a Microsoft account or switch to Edge, and telemetr…

well put! one nit pick:

> Nobody (well, except maybe RMS), including the article, is telling you that you must switch to Windows.

you must mean, switch /from/ Windows

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#282

Post by ihattendorf » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

anthk wrote: post #191

walls wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having to worry that upgrading one app will break things for other apps. Safe screen locking. Not having to spend hours getting hardware working properly but unreliably. Not having to deal with audio issues when you want sound from multiple apps. A responsive interface that doesn't feel like a clunky children's toy from the early 2000s.

>Not having to worry that upgrading one app will break things for other apps. That's subjective. >Safe screen locking. Slock. >Not having to spend hours getting hardware working properly but unreliably. No issue with Void. Good luck with Windows and old harware. You don't have your wifi drivers on your laptop reinstall? You are fucked. Yes, SDI Tool Origin, but you need an extra USB drive about 16GB to do so. >Not ha…

> That's bullshit, I solved that in 2004.

Not the GP, but just because you solved it in 2004 doesn't mean others don't have issues. There are still hardware/app configurations that are broken on Linux. Pipewire is helping, but it's not perfect.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#283

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #234

Zhyl wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like with the uptick in Linux gaming, Valve's investment in Proton, the Steam Deck, EAC/Battleye compatibility with Proton, modern desktops catching up to Windows look and feel, it's closer to being 'the year of the Linux desktop' than ever before. Sure, 'the year of the Linux desktop' is a loosely defined term that doesn't necessarily have any key metrics that you'd agree with, and it's not like any of the wo…

"The year of Linux on the desktop" is a meme for a specific reason. It'll take longer than a year. The claim is funny because you imagine the whole world switching to Linux, like, overnight. Which is obviously unrealistic. It's a gradual process. But last year Chromebooks outsold Macs. Chromebooks are Linux. Even if they're not "Linux Linux," there isn't much you can do with one that you can't do with most other dist…

Outside US school market and Googleplex, Chromebooks are nowhere to be found.

Also running the Linux kernel is an implementation detail, those that allow for GNU/Linux applications and Android, without breaking security into developer mode, do it with additional VMs, hardly any different from running WSL + WSL/Android on Windows 11.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#284

Post by pxc » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #186

Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate at Microsoft with a focus on Linux, I am typing this on a laptop running Windows 11 (it also has another SSD that runs Linux), and I'm a diehard Mac user. I hate this sort of SEO-driven clickbait that is trying to inflame wars that frankly, were settled two decades ago. Use Linux. Use Windows. Use macOS. Use Chrome OS. Use OpenBSD. Use Haiku. If you're a complete masochist, use GN…

> Again, use whatever you want. But this is such lazy writing

It is, but I also think ‘use whatever you want’ is lazy, or at least resigned, in a different way.

There's a pattern that often takes hold with new desktop Linux users involving an intense evangelism phase. Some of the reasons for that phase are cultural artifacts that aren't especially interesting or valuable, like a tendency to ground one's identity in consumer choices.

But the evangelistic phase in a new Linux user's journey with desktop Linux is also grounded in experiences of joy, wonder, and a kind of digital ‘pride of place’ that really are special to free software desktops, and is nowhere realized as fully as in the desktop Linux world. Those kinds of experiences are worth sharing, examining, and celebrating, even in naive forms. Some good examples of content creators who've gone through this process in the last few years are Jason Evangelho (Forbes writer and longtime tech/gaming journalist) and Chris Titus (longtime Windows sysadmin and power user gone Linux YouTuber).

The ‘right tool for the job’, ‘use whatever works’ nostrum is as uninteresting and useless a meme as ‘Arch Linux is teh best and Ubuntu is for n00bz!!1’, with the additional problem that that its emptiness is obscured by its apparent even-handedness.

To be clear, I agree with most of what you've said and overall critique of the specific article in the OP. But I want to point out that ‘why Linux’ as a genre or topic is not just flamebait, and that there are other articles along those lines that I think have a legitimate place on HN or any forum where people are interested in people's experiences with computers.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#285

Post by md8z » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

Zhyl wrote: post #275

md8z wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I get that, but you still probably are not going to want to run desktop apps on that thing. It doesn't have a keyboard or mouse. It looks more suited to running tablet apps. And regardless of that, my point is that the status of gaming APIs shipped by one vendor on a proprietary bundling of Linux has little to do with the status of the rest of the platform, which by the way is also woefully inadequate for shippi…

With a dock you can have a keyboard and a mouse :) Moreover, given that the Steam Deck is essentially a PC, any investment in the Deck in drivers, APIs, desktop environments, display manager (Valve have invested in KDE Plasma/Wayland and Gamescope), native game compatibility, compatibility layers (applies to all software, not just games) is also an investment in desktop Linux as a whole. Even if we are just limiting…

All of that stuff is fine and good but it's the same incremental progress as always. I don't see anything particularly special about using this device with a dock, that seems like a really niche use case. These type of devices are not new and have never been big sellers. I'd assume most customers would just use it for games and don't care that it technically runs Linux and allows them to switch out of their game and fumble around trying to use LibreOffice or GIMP on a touchscreen until they get frustrated enough to plug in a keyboard. Unless Valve is planning to invest billions of dollars in overhauling KDE for general uses (including non-gaming uses), then I don't think anything is going to change significantly. Yes, that's how much money it would cost. This is what Google had to do to with Android to make that kind of "Linux" a viable platform, it won't happen with anything else unless similar amounts are invested.

And for windows software I'm not talking about Microsoft Office or Adobe, I'm talking about the "long tail" of Windows apps that don't get attention from Wine developers. There's still a lot of those.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#286

Post by Zhyl » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #276

Zhyl wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, I’m not dismissing Linux though. > But Linux on the desktop, sorry. It’s not going to happen. I mean this seems like a dismissal to me. I am specifically talking about the desktop. I don't think the impact that the Linux kernel has had on the server or mobile spaces is up for debate - as you say it's pretty massive. The issue I have is the certainty with which you can dismiss the viability of Linux desktop.…

I’ll put it this way, I think that a successful Linux on the desktop would not be something a lot of the people that advocate and love Linux on the desktop would embrace. It would be a lot more like Chrome OS (and Google is writing their own kernel, which just blurs a lot of the lines even more), meaning purposefully obfuscating the Linux bits, using custom or highly-customized desktop environments, being tightly con…

Well that's definitely the answer I was looking for. Thank you for this. I will concede that I agree with your points.

Nothing further to add, your honour.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#287

Post by Zababa » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #210

msla wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) Trying to "Both Sides" telemetry and spyware fails because you can use Linux without either, whereas macOS and Windows are inherently married to it and you can't use them without submitting to their respective surveillance regimes. Oddities like Deepin barely matter and can't be used…

I actually disagree. Ubuntu has a lot of telemetry on by default (unlike Deepin, they disclose this, but I'm pointing this out) and for many years, Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing (RIP Ubuntu One). Not to mention the time Ubuntu inserted Amazon affiliate links into the search app (which to their credit, they eventually removed -- tho the Amazon app that was just an affiliate launcher didn…

> Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing

And yet Ubuntu has no "account login thing", and Windows has one. If Ubuntu is doing thing you dislike, it can be easily forked (that's a bit what Pop does, and it works well).

> If it makes you feel better that your chosen distro doesn't have as many options enabled by default and that you can't have a common user account to sync settings across multiple desktops, that's awesome. But I think that ignores a fundamental way humans use computers and the web -- regardless of OS. You're being surveilled. Linux isn't going to save you.

I'm glad I'm not using Windows if that's the opinion of a developer advocate at Microsoft.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#288

Post by donio » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

apeace wrote: post #66

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."

I haven't done that once in 25 years of desktop Linux use. One of the reasons I use Linux is that I can actually understand and fix problems.

On my main desktop the image has been rolling forward since 2008 when I switched to 64 bit. Naturally the hardware has been replaced around it several times since then.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#289

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

goohle wrote: post #213

filmgirlcw wrote: post #186

Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate at Microsoft with a focus on Linux, I am typing this on a laptop running Windows 11 (it also has another SSD that runs Linux), and I'm a diehard Mac user. I hate this sort of SEO-driven clickbait that is trying to inflame wars that frankly, were settled two decades ago. Use Linux. Use Windows. Use macOS. Use Chrome OS. Use OpenBSD. Use Haiku. If you're a complete masochist, use GN…

> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) Android(Linux) is used by majority of users (40%), while Windows holds just 32.3%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share .

Linux kernel is not a public API on Android, app developers don't care where ART + NDK (public APIs) run on.

Re: Reasons to switch from Windows to Linux

#290

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

wayneftw wrote: post #241

pjmlp wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still good enough to power about 85% of desktop computers worldwide, one games console and game streaming service, all of which also need developers.

Oh, gee well I thought we were on a developer/techie forum. McDonald's is also one of the most popular restaurants. I eat there once in a while. I still run Windows boxes to play games too. And it's more like ~30% for Windows when you measure against all operating systems , not just the desktop ones. [0] Android is the top dog since at least October 2020 when it went to over ~40%. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-ma…

Android runs ART + C and C++ NDK APIs, the fact that there is a Linux kernel underneath matters zero to app developers.