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My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

scottrlarson.com

11–20 of 173 posts

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#11

Fair comments but as someone who has tried many times to adopt Linux, I can honestly state that nothing in Windows comes close to the user-hostile UX approach in Linux. For example, Radarr is an extremely popular tool for managing movies. It connects to usenet and torrent clients, as well as indexers and movie databases. It makes maintaining a home movie collection seamless. Radarr is not in major package managers, a…

This is true, although the Windows model of .exe installers , which require admin permissions, isn't even the one to follow. The macOS, and especially the App Store model is far more user friendly.

The non-esoteric distros and GNOME[1] recognize it and ship with a software manager akin to an app store. Those install snaps or flatpaks with one click. That's how you'd install Steam and all of its dependencies like Proton.

The problem is that some software authors, like Radarr's, don't believe in the model.

https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/41.0/figures/softw...

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#12
post #9

Adobe CC, Microsoft Office and Visual Studios prevent an all out shift to linux for the majority. LibreOffice, VSCode, Gimp/Inkscape and everything JetBrains has to offer just doesn't make the cut yet. But we are getting close by each passing year.

> Adobe CC, Microsoft Office and Visual Studios prevent an all out shift to linux for the majority

How do you figure? Most people don't do any real photo editing or real asset creation. Microsoft Office isn't required for anything except Excel and that's fairly specific to a certain type of office worker. Visual Studio has many replacements, especially if you aren't using an MS stack top to bottom.

Heck, when I was in business school (majored in Finance) the profs told us to use Google Docs over MS Office for basically everything except our Excel-specific assignments... Like we'd hand in assignments simply by sharing a Google Doc. So much easier than dealing with Word compatibility nonsense.

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#13
post #9

Adobe CC, Microsoft Office and Visual Studios prevent an all out shift to linux for the majority. LibreOffice, VSCode, Gimp/Inkscape and everything JetBrains has to offer just doesn't make the cut yet. But we are getting close by each passing year.

I greatly prefer Google docs to Microsoft Office. Their online versions feel like afterthoughts.

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#14
> In 2015 when Windows 10 rebooted my machine to automatically install an update, closing down an unsaved document I was in the middle of working on,

Do I have some magic aura that causes Microsoft to give me at least a 12 hour warning about updates? Because I honestly can't remember a time this sort of thing (instant update, no warning) has ever happened to me with Windows.

I love Linux and do as much as I can for my job with it, or at least as close to POSIXy *ix as I can, but I hear these Windows stories and they just aren't in my reality.

Note: I don't have an overbearing company that pushes a slew of nanny-spy-ware on to my work machine - I have a friend who does, and I BELIEVE his tales of woe because I believe him.

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#15
post #7
post #2

Here I am, back in Windows. I’m realizing that my journey to a Freedom-Of-Choice Desktop environment is riddled with traps from my past. My familiarity with the apps and processes of Windows haunts my every move. It’s challenging to find replacements and workarounds for what I used to be able to do… But then my determination kicked in. If I really think about it, would it be such a loss to switch to a Linux alternati…

Same here. I'm a Linux advocate (even named my son after the creator) and I definitely manage more Linux than Windows machines but after trying (forcing) Linux on my main workstation I gave up. I need nvidia drivers (for ML and sysadmin stuff) and had so many random problems with multiple distros like sound randomly wasn't working or some USB ports were not detecting anything. WSL has changed the game and now I have…

>I need nvidia drivers (for ML and sysadmin stuff)

Even with WSL I don't see how Windows is better than Linux for nvidia ML stuff and I use Windows+WSL, too. Care to explain?

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#16

Fair comments but as someone who has tried many times to adopt Linux, I can honestly state that nothing in Windows comes close to the user-hostile UX approach in Linux. For example, Radarr is an extremely popular tool for managing movies. It connects to usenet and torrent clients, as well as indexers and movie databases. It makes maintaining a home movie collection seamless. Radarr is not in major package managers, a…

> In Linux I have to follow a reasonably complicated and time consuming installation process,

You don't /have/ to, you choose to. Docker provides a way easier path for all the *arr's.

Not to mention removal is equally easy - with windows can you be SURE all the registry stuff is gone?

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#17
post #12
post #9

Adobe CC, Microsoft Office and Visual Studios prevent an all out shift to linux for the majority. LibreOffice, VSCode, Gimp/Inkscape and everything JetBrains has to offer just doesn't make the cut yet. But we are getting close by each passing year.

> Adobe CC, Microsoft Office and Visual Studios prevent an all out shift to linux for the majority How do you figure? Most people don't do any real photo editing or real asset creation. Microsoft Office isn't required for anything except Excel and that's fairly specific to a certain type of office worker. Visual Studio has many replacements, especially if you aren't using an MS stack top to bottom. Heck, when I was i…

A typical business org uses microsoft office for documents, and they employ programmers writing plugins to their microsoft office products using visual studio which also integrates into their internal .NET business services. I doubt migration would be easy, as everything ties into each other.

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#18

Fair comments but as someone who has tried many times to adopt Linux, I can honestly state that nothing in Windows comes close to the user-hostile UX approach in Linux. For example, Radarr is an extremely popular tool for managing movies. It connects to usenet and torrent clients, as well as indexers and movie databases. It makes maintaining a home movie collection seamless. Radarr is not in major package managers, a…

If you use an Arch-based distro, it's available in the Arch User Repository (AUR) [1]. With Aura [2], installation is as simple as:

    aura -A radarr
Yes, you need to use the CLI to run that, but it's trivial to do so and a real package management system brings many advantages over exe installers. The AUR, inspired by BSD's Ports, is one of the major advantages of Arch. It's very rare to find a package that isn't supported.

[1] - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/radarr

[2] - https://github.com/fosskers/aura

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#19
1970s: Secretaries learn to use Emacs for documents, and to literally write Emacs Lisp to customize it to their needs

2020s: Professional software developers on Hackernews: "Desktop Linux doesn't have software that works exactly like the software I like, so it's a complete nonstarter. I'd rather keep bending over for Microsoft than deal with anything different or with any sort of learning required."

Re: My transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age

#20

Fair comments but as someone who has tried many times to adopt Linux, I can honestly state that nothing in Windows comes close to the user-hostile UX approach in Linux. For example, Radarr is an extremely popular tool for managing movies. It connects to usenet and torrent clients, as well as indexers and movie databases. It makes maintaining a home movie collection seamless. Radarr is not in major package managers, a…

> Radarr is not in major package managers, and requires the CLI for install (https://wiki.servarr.com/radarr/installation#linux). In Windows, I double click an .exe. In Linux I have to follow a reasonably complicated and time consuming installation process, full of opportunities to misconfigure the install.

Why are directing this complaint against Linux and not Radarr? They could choose to package it for various Linux distributions if they do wish.

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