Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#101

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

What made you switch from Pop OS? I just installed it on a couple of old PCs I had lying around for my kids to play around with/learn from.

Probably same reason most folks who are capable of running Linux don't stay on Ubuntu, etc.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#102

Apple forced me to switch to Linux! Linux should consider paying Microsoft and Apple for new customers. Perhaps the customer acquisition funnel is quite long, at least it took 20 years of using Apple in my case before switching to Debian ( Xfce ), but it was worth it!

As much as I love the idea of moving to Linux - Mac hardware is like two years ahead of PC currently in pretty much any regard aside from gaming. I keep looking for an iteration where it makes sense to switch but currently the intel core 3 stuff is at best comparable to M5 base. Strix Halo is much more power hungry and also not that impressive other than having a bunch of cores. Nothing comes close to the pro/max chi…

So whatever resources you have, Apple will use them mostly to render 3D glass effects. With Debian (Xfce), I can't speak for other desktop environments, you need roughly three times fewer resources to run the OS itself.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#103

Like the author says: > Linux is the preferred platform for development Honestly I'm surprised he was using a non unix system this long, I guess it kinda proves his point that switching costs can seem huge

I'm basically developing on Linux despite running windows. I just set the terminal emulator to open wsl by default, and have VSCode connect to the WSL instance. This also gives you the "native docker" the author mentions, just ignore Docker for Windows exists and install docker in your wsl. This does have downsides, and the author lists many. It also has some marginal upsides. For example running multiple distros for…

That seems to be the preferred path for many devs on Windows - unless you can get your hands on a Mac at work WSL is much better/easier. Most non-software companies may not even offer a Linux laptop.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#104
post #12

I'd switch if it weren't for anticheat breaking the games I play. I really, really hate Windows, and Windows 11 even more than normal levels of Windows hate. I had to do some really weird shit to get it to a place that feels sane. "The only real limitation is that some games with anti-cheat like Valorant, Call of Duty or League of Legends won't run. But honestly I think not being able to launch League of Legends is a…

I made the decision to just play a different game when I switched back in 2022 or so. Thankfully, the game in question supported Linux shortly after the switch even though I got used to not playing it and just don't anymore :) I still try any anti-cheat games I come across to see if they work and it's surprising how many actually do.

Nothing wrong with staying on Windows if compatibility is an issue, though.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#105
post #89

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

Yeah, yay works until it doesn't anymore, because the pacman library dependency it uses was updated but yay was not... and then you need to recompile yay manually. I mean, I'll still use it (or rather paru, which works basically the same way), but it's very annoying, when it happens every few months.

I don't understand, yay updates itself. I've never once had this problem.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#107

Apple forced me to switch to Linux! Linux should consider paying Microsoft and Apple for new customers. Perhaps the customer acquisition funnel is quite long, at least it took 20 years of using Apple in my case before switching to Debian ( Xfce ), but it was worth it!

> Linux should consider paying Microsoft and Apple

Who or what is the "Linux" entity in this context?

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#108
post #30

Like the author says: > Linux is the preferred platform for development Honestly I'm surprised he was using a non unix system this long, I guess it kinda proves his point that switching costs can seem huge

Both MacOS and Windows with wsl are perfectly fine for development. Especially MacOS. There's literally nothing special about Linux when it comes to development. And there are quite a few downsides especially when it comes to some specialized tooling because many vendors often only have Windows tools for their devices.

This depends entirely on your stack and preferred workflow. MacOS is increasingly hostile to powerusers. If you don't mind following their golden path, all is fine, otherwise... I wonder how long before you have to enable a scary "developer mode" to install software outside the app store.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#109
post #94

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

> if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them. So much this. People like to moan about "oh game XYZ doesn't run so it's not reasonable for gaming". More games run on GNU / Linux than any gaming console. There are simply too many games that do run to give a second thought about the ones that don't, and it's been that way for years.

Most of the games I play would work fine, but it’s the damn anti cheat and multiplayer games that forces Windows down my throat, and I’m not happy about it. I only use my gaming rig for gaming so I have no other requirements, which kind of makes it even worse.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#110
post #81

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

''By the way, I use Arch''

The meme was “I use Arch, BTW,” but I think it has mostly died as enough people have pointed out that Arch isn’t really hard-mode Linux or something. It is a barebones start but

1) very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes

2) the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki”

Eventually I switched to Ubuntu for some reason, it has given me more headaches than Arch.

Post reply on HN