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I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

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Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#231

Post by nwallin »

t43562 wrote: post #61
toddmorey wrote: post #9

Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent tran…

Even within the range of Linux distros there are some that feel more agenda-driven than others. That's the absolute wonder of it. One can sidestep the flamewars and just use another distro that suits likeminded people. On the other hand I think this makes it difficult to provide a perfect experience - you have to stay closer to the herd if you want trouble free computing. You have the choice.

I think it's great that there are Linux projects where the people in the project are obviously unhinged fanatical idealists sent on a mission by god to do in the One True Way. I wouldn't use any of those projects, but it's great that they exist, and sometimes their good ideas percolate out to projects that I do use.

Like fine, they're gonna make a distro that only uses software under one of the FSF's free as in freedom copy-left open source licenses, not just excluding closed source software, but also binary blob device firmware and software distributed under one of those filthy permissive licenses. That's great. It's fucking unusable, but it's awesome that it exists and it's great that they're doing it.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#232

Post by RiverCrochet »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #14
toddmorey wrote: post #9

Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent tran…

Come back when I can run Linux on a laptop that has 12+ hours battery life, runs fast, that’s lightweight, quiet and doesn’t cause infertility from the heat when I put it on my lap…. Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. Of course if you are a gamer, ignore everything I just wrote.

Most of Linux's laptop woes is due to two things:

A. ACPI which is a sprawling, overengineered mess created by Microsoft, Intel, and Toshiba, and

B. ACPI-specific things like sleep and power being tested only for Windows

B is a direct result of two things: 1) crappy outsourced firmware developers, and 2) Microsoft's 1990s strategy of disallowing OEMs from offering systems with other operating systems preinstalled.

So, not really Linux's fault. If the interfaces that controlled all the laptop goodies were exposed as normal hardware (and documented) instead of gatekept behind ACPI methods that have to be written by firmware vendors that can often barely spell the menu options correct in the setup screens, then this issue would not exist.

UEFI is ACPI's successor and carries on this legacy. It's disappointing that it's seeping into the ARM world.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#233

Post by g947o »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #126
bee_rider wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is a bizarre product at this point; it is what the company is famous for, but it is small beans next to Azure, right? Nobody would get into the Operating System business to make money I think, the going rate is $0, subsidized by something (an ad company, a hardware company, or general kindness and community spirit).

No, Windows still has Windows tax, which is why I always choose "No OS" when buying a machine. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS were never for sale separately, so we can't judge the price. Android sure is subsidized though.

Android does have a cost. While the OS itself is free, any manufacturer that wants to put Play Store, which is almost every company outside China, needs to pay Google a license fee, which effectively pays for Android. Of course there are also ads everywhere in Android and Android apps that helps pay the bill.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#234

Post by iam-TJ »

pjmlp wrote: post #175
xerox13ster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that this is your stance and demands for laptop hardware I have to assume that you have never once participated in the laptop market prior to the M1 releasing? That’s the only way your unrealistic expectations make sense. Of course, people have been parroting that about Linux on laptops for over a decade. I never understood it, since I’ve never had any significant issues with Linux on my laptops.

Indeed nothing other than being the only device that dropped connections on some of my routers, no hardware video decoding no matter what tips from Linux forums I tried, OpenGL 3.3 when the card supported OpenGL 4.1.... And when during 2024 I looked for a replacement after it died, I was so lucky that I got one with an UEFI that refused to load whatever distro I tried from SSD, while having no issues loading the same…

"refused to load whatever distro I tried from SSD" sounds very much like a feature in AMI InsydeH2O firmware (and possibly others) where-by one has to manually "trust" the boot-loader file the boot menu entry points to. This doesn't seem to apply to Microsoft Windows boot loaders so I've always assumed the signing certificate is checked directly against the MS UEFI CA root rather than the intermediate 3rd party certificate that is used by Microsoft to sign distro shim files.

I have kept a screenshot of the firmware setup for years to remind me where the option can be found; looking at it now:

menu: Security > "Select UEFI file as trusted"

That would bring up a file-chooser where one can navigate the files in the EFI System Partition and select the distro's initial boot-loader file. For example, for a Debian install it would either or both of:

/EFI/debian/shimx64.efi /EFI/debian/grubx64.efi

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#235

Post by forgotaccount22 »

nh2 wrote: post #226

I'm using Linux on the desktop for 15 years and I still sometimes cannot connect to Wifi. This is because the list of network refreshes (and disappears) before I can find and click the correct Wifi: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/issu... This completely breaks the Linux experience for anybody living in a reasonably populous area. The issue has 3 upvotes. I also put a 400 $ bounty on it, if an…

PR on the way

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#236

Post by leptons »

redeeman wrote: post #176
jama211 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would never use the cd lol, it would auto install - and if it didn’t you’d download the drivers online though if it’s such a piece of junk as to need that then it’s a junk piece of hardware anyway.

hardware that doesnt have builtin drivers to windows are a piece of junk? i think you'll find thats most hardware then

You are hilariously wrong. Seriously, what century are you living in? It's been a very long time since I had to install a specific driver for any piece of hardware on Windows, and I go through a lot of hardware. Every piece of hardware I had is automatically installed and configured without any hassle whatsoever.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#237

Post by freedomben »

jna_sh wrote: post #190
freedomben wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, if you have a specific dev flow that is compatible with the immutable OS approach, then these can be wonderful dev machines, but personally I don't want to change my workflow to fit the OS, I prefer the OS to fit my workflow. At some point I I'm pretty confident that I will switch to an immutable version of Fedora and relearn my workflow in a distro box like world as I do see some real benefits to doing so,…

I expected it to be an issue but I’ve had surprisingly few problems so far. If you’re working in docker-land or can use devcontainers, it just works. If you’re not but your stack is well supported by homebrew, also not a problem. Anything else you can handle via a distrobox container, where you can install from package managers to your heart’s content, and they have good integration with the base OS, but I’ve had to…

Interesting, thanks! Out of curoisity would you (or anyone else) mind sharing some details about which stacks you work on? And have you done any GTK or linux native apps?

I do a decent amount of GTK and occasionaly Qt, and wonder if there's any extra friction for that

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#238

Post by herczegzsolt »

nh2 wrote: post #226

I'm using Linux on the desktop for 15 years and I still sometimes cannot connect to Wifi. This is because the list of network refreshes (and disappears) before I can find and click the correct Wifi: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/issu... This completely breaks the Linux experience for anybody living in a reasonably populous area. The issue has 3 upvotes. I also put a 400 $ bounty on it, if an…

If you are sensitive to these issues, unfortunately you need to go with a mainstream linux distribution and use near-default settings.

It's great that you can customize everything and use your own window manager, compositor, etc ... but these issues are the price you pay. It is unfair to compare this to Windows, where you don't even have these customization options.

Specifically for the network manager applet, it is not fixed because it's not really used anymore. GNOME Shell has it's own network selection menu that does not use the applet. It is the default on most systems, so users don't face this issue by default.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#239

Post by bee_rider »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #219
bee_rider wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I saw various comments to the effect that the Vision Pro is just a developer thing to bootstrap the app ecosystem, a prelude to a real consumer product. But if that is the case I’m slightly confused as to why they aren’t sharing more of their roadmap…

I mean, if this was the strategy, it has clearly failed, right? The Vision Pro doesn't have anything approaching a thriving app ecosystem. And if this was the strategy, I'd have expected to see that consumer product by now. It has been almost two years.

100% agree.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#240

Post by themafia »

toddmorey wrote: post #9

Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent tran…

> and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent transition

They've already fumbled it.

> the way they did with mobile.

It's the exact same way they fumbled with mobile. They were very late to the party and decided to buy their way in. It _never_ works.

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