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I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

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Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#191
post #86

These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11. But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to ma…

We really need to make LibreOffice much better. I am tired of Microsoft really.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#192
post #137

I just turned 60. My first computer was a 4.77MHz IBM PC with an 8088 processor, two floppy drives, and that magnificent mechanical keyboard IBM shipped in those days. My father, clearly receiving excellent financial advice at the time, picked up a 300bps Hayes modem for the princely sum of $599. CompuServe, here I come! For context, this was early 1982. That 599 would cost 1,900 today — still a lot for a modem, but…

What Linux distributions did you try?

What hardware were you using?

What kind of troubleshooting did you perform?

>> Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was happening.

Without more details it would be difficult to determine what problems you were having.

I have never had problems like you describe with Linux. I would be interested to know more details.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#194
I switched to Debian/Cinnamon few weeks ago. I am fairly good with the server sides of things, but the desktop a little painful.

Screens dont wake up properly, sometimes only one screens wakes up, sometimes one screen wakes up with a wrong resolution. The usual linux desktop problems where nothing really works and finding a solution is very hard to many different permutations of hardware / os / kernel / drivers / window manager / etc.

I have the framework desktop with AMD 395+

My windows ssd is plugged and I can boot it directly using virt-manager, so thats kinda solves some windows specific stuff like tax software.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#195
post #164

Every now and then a new article "Why you should go Linux". I get it, I like Linux too but every case is different. I want to use Linux but I have to use Digital Audio Workstation. So in my case, I shouldn't dump Windows (and thousand of $$ I've spent on audio software). I know people desperately want to believe that Linux is "there", but it really isn't. And will probably never be. It’s still too confusing for the a…

I guess it depends on your needs. 90% of my working life is a terminal to run terraform, emacs to write code, and slack to chat with colleagues. In each of the companies I've worked over the past 10 years I've had a google workspace account, and I think I've never even touched microsoft office in all that time.

Yes there are options. In practice you pick one distro, the one your friend recommends, or that the IT department gives you.

There are probably fields in which you cannot use Linux software, but for your average joe? It's not impossible, and it's not that confusing with a little patience.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#196
post #86

These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11. But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to ma…

I guess it depends on your field, for the past ten years I've worked in companies that use Google workspace, google docs, google drive, etc, etc, and slack.

I've not had any lock-in to Microsoft software and I don't think I've deal with a .doc file in all that time. I need a terminal to run devops stuff, and emacs to write it with, but almost nothing else.

Artists, and so on, are probably tied to Adobe, etc. But random developers and sysadmins are certainly capable of switching I think.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#197
post #189

As a long time Linux user I started with Red Hat 7.2. Then moved on to Slackware from there to Ububtu and finally to ArchLinux. While Linux and the user space ecosystem has come a long way there are still plenty of sharp edges and anyone planning to use Linux long term must be able to figure some issues that will inevitably happen sooner or later when some update/system upgrade happens. Even though I consider myself…

Ironically, instead of Linux eventually closing this usability gap, what we have is windows developing its own sharp edges and annoyances.

For many users, linux is already easier to use.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#199
Am I the only one who thinks (mobile safari with an ad blocker) it’s a jackass move to show a fake popup that leads to “must be an adblocker” and prevents page viewing? Or maybe just bad JS junk causing it?

Update: OMG I turned ad blocker off and what a disaster of a site.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#200
As somebody who's doing the same thing for the first time in almost 2 decades: kubuntu wins for me.

Mint was too buggy. It just felt so single-threaded. It had upsides - easiest Nvidia support for example. Cinnamon is nicely customizable and has some great ideas but it's just too rough around the edges.

Raw Debian was just too hard to get Nvidia drivers playing nice.

But for "I'm comfy editing config files but I need some hand-holding for this" KDE with Ubuntu is the best balance of performance and clean design and support.

My biggest disappointment is how little batteries-included gui I'm seeing for core Linux functionality. Where is the systemd service manager? Why are all the file managers so bad at editing permissions?

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