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

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

#131

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

shawnb576 wrote: post #43

Every time I try this I go thru standard stages: 1. Ugh I want to run docker natively, Ubuntu looks good, I’ll do that 2. Install latest Ubuntu. It’s great! Love the shell. Hardware works. I can run Windows in Virtual Box for odd apps. 3. Why is my battery life so bad? Why won’t Bluetooth stay connected? 4. I am full Linux. I am living the creed! 5. I am so tired of constantly fixing something. Why is Spotify renderi…

> I think now that WSL has matured

Again with the WSL. It's just a VM with preconfigured integration, and without the ability to tweak it to taste. I much prefer to run VirtualBox or VMWare, and we've been able to do this for a long, long time.

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

#132

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

I ran Linux on the desktop for 19 years before moving to Macs. I never had any hardware issues, because I always bought kit that was well-supported under Linux, and stayed away from, say, "winmodems" and wifi chipsets with Windows-only binary blobs. I think so many of the problems people have with trying to move to Linux is that they get a wild hair one day, and then just try to switch, using the Microsoft-subsidized hardware they already have. My advice? Switch with some fresh hardware. Buy a GOOD machine that is known to have good support. Buy GOOD peripherals. With both, make sure you're buying stuff that actually works on its own, and doesn't require software magic in Windows. You're going to have to research a little, and probably spend a little more than you normally would, but Microsoft has made this situation the way it is. If you really want to escape their gravity well, you're probably going to have to do more than just switch your OS.

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

#133

Post by spicymaki »

V_Terranova_Jr wrote: post #95
spicymaki wrote: post #90

Am I the only one that uses Linux, Windows, and MacOS daily? Why settle for just one OS environment? What a time to be alive. I fail to see the value in all of these culture wars. It never ends. All of these systems work great for me. Thanks to all of hard work from all of the engineering teams and volunteers that put these systems together.

They're not merely culture wars, they're also value wars. Both Windows and MacOS are headed toward continuous behind-your-back communication with their respective motherships. In the case of Windows, they have the audacity to shamelessly advertise on your personal computer.

There are plenty of opensource programs with telemetry built in. Many company build there products using opensource components and sell your information in the backend. This is not an opensource vs. closed source argument. This is a data rights/privacy argument and until governments and citizens take the matter seriously we will get nowhere.

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

#134

Post by jonathantf2 »

foxes wrote: post #89

I find it totally incomprehensible how anyone could possibly still use Windows seriously as a developer/hacker/programmer/interested in computing. Installing software in Windows is insane, relies on you to blindly trust an exe, non reproducible, and with no way to automate anything. Don't conflate problems with your proprietary software and Linux. Shockingly you may have to adapt and learn something new, or find some…

> with no way to automate anything

Most things in Windows can be automated with PowerShell, application installs are usually just a silent install switch away.

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

#135

Post by __del__ »

foxes wrote: post #89

I find it totally incomprehensible how anyone could possibly still use Windows seriously as a developer/hacker/programmer/interested in computing. Installing software in Windows is insane, relies on you to blindly trust an exe, non reproducible, and with no way to automate anything. Don't conflate problems with your proprietary software and Linux. Shockingly you may have to adapt and learn something new, or find some…

i was similarly perplexed but upon reflection i may understand it. windows kept me at the level of "power user," and i suspect it lulls many into that complacency.

sure i wrote a few windows programs, debugged a few i hadn't written, and i ran some pretty niche tools, but i wasn't truly hacking on my system. most of it was off limits anyway, but more importantly i had stopped learning because i was a power user with niche tools and that felt like plenty.

with linux i can patch software to satisfy whims and have it cooperating with the package management ecosystem in minutes. suppose i want to do something simple, like suppress an annoying error message i don't care about. i expect that downloading the source code, grepping for the error, removing it, compiling, packaging, and installing will take me something like 3 minutes of effort.

seriously. these power users don't know what they're missing.

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

#136

Post by V_Terranova_Jr »

spicymaki wrote: post #133
V_Terranova_Jr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not merely culture wars, they're also value wars. Both Windows and MacOS are headed toward continuous behind-your-back communication with their respective motherships. In the case of Windows, they have the audacity to shamelessly advertise on your personal computer.

There are plenty of opensource programs with telemetry built in. Many company build there products using opensource components and sell your information in the backend. This is not an opensource vs. closed source argument. This is a data rights/privacy argument and until governments and citizens take the matter seriously we will get nowhere.

I totally agree that we are well past the point where data security and privacy need strong regulation or legislation. At least Europe has GDPR.

However, I hard disagree with drawing a false equivalence between the open source community, particularly in the operating system space (which this article is about), and the closed-source commercial vendors. Also disagree that adopting open source "gets us nowhere" in this battle.

Sure, there is some telemetry in the open source world, as we see in the Firefox discussion. We also see reactions such as LibreWolf, or community outrage at the likes of GitLab when this happens. It's just not part of the open source community's ethos to look the other way at hidden telemetry. In the open source realm it is a) it is the exception rather than the rule, and b) the fact they are doing it is clearly knowable and neuterable[1]. That's a far cry from Apple validating every executable you run, or Microsoft not even allowing you to opt-out of telemetry, and god knows what other vendors of core closed source software do now.

I'm not an open source zealot, but the race to the bottom over the past 10 years just hardens my resolve to own my devices and not the other way around.

[1] Again, talking about client-side software or servers you run/control. You will always have to figure out how much you trust SaaS providers regardless of what software is part of their offering.

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

#137

Post by __del__ »

marcodiego wrote: post #53
SBArbeit wrote: post #5

It's good to know that this year is the year of the Linux Desktop. Just like last year. And the year before that. And the year before...

The year of Linux Desktop for me was 2006. For every linux user/fan out there: when was yours?

2005 if i recall correctly.

i downloaded a 200mb iso file over the course of a couple days: a [then] slackware-based distro called slax. i quickly came to understand that its packages were just tarballs overlaid on the filesystem (how simple!) and some of its GUI tools were just bash scripts calling a tool called zenity (amazing!).

i was hooked immediately. the biggest hurdle was my glorified sound card of a modem. booting into win2k to google about compiling a kernel driver, then booting into slax to try what i'd read, was a tedious but manageable task. i believe i sent away for a kubuntu cd soon after and never looked back.

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

#138

Post by eMSF »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #39
michaelcampbell wrote: post #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 m…

Heh, that was what prompted me to switch to Linux, all the way back in 2003! Suddenly saw that Windows was rebooting the computer. I had about 1 minute of warning and I lost a lot of work.

You're referring to Blaster (worm), right?

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

#139

Post by phendrenad2 »

antifa wrote: post #129
phendrenad2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to use Linux but it was a death by a thousand paper cuts of bugs and glitches. I've never experienced Windows stopping me from running a program, maybe you're actually trying to run malware? It's a good idea to install an antivirus or at least windows defender so you can avoid these.

Windows after version 7 is essentially death by a thousand dark patterns, forced surprise updates, forgotten preferences, etc..

Linux is death by a thousand bugs and glitches, I've never experienced a dark pattern in Windows.

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

#140

Post by phendrenad2 »

kkfx wrote: post #123
phendrenad2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you "just keep using" apps that are broken and need lots of fiddling to fix them, often repeatedly after every app update?

Personally I'm using NixOS, sometimes a rebuild is broken, but that's not an issue since I can keep using the old ones in a snap... I'm not using Windows, my last one was XP in it's early days, but anytime for a reason or another I'm on it on someone else desktop the experience is so frustrating that I do not know how it's users can keep using it...

NixOS is complicated to use, it's nice to say "everyone should learn nixos" but that's not realistic. It's easier to use Windows.
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