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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

111–120 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#111

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 a regular linux user for the last 20 years, who had used windows for games for about 25 of the last 30 years. When I had gotten a macbook pro for work in a company that was all apple there were three things that stood out: The M processors are amazing, the apple hardware is really good, and mac os is absolutely awful. I have no idea how people use mac.

Man, we didn't have this all along.

Six years ago everything was stable and solid, but Apple's board of directors seems to have decided that new Mac users can't handle a computer interface anymore and started merging it with mobile OS interfaces. And the result is absolutely terrible.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#112

As a long-time Linux user who fairly recently dropped the Windows partition entirely, I do think the remaining chafing points are these: * UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess. And now you don't just have different versions of GTK vs QT to keep track off, but also X vs Wayland, and their various compatibility layers. * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of th…

I had to dump a perfectly fine c.2012 workstation recently because of video driver limitations. Could no longer stay current on my flavor of Linux (OpenSUSE) and have better than hideous display resolution limited to just one monitor. NVIDIA’s proprietary drivers are great, but the limited support lifecycle plus poor open source coverage is actually making Linux turn fine systems into trash just the way Windows used…

>poor open source coverage is actually making Linux turn fine systems into trash just the way Windows used to do.

I'd blame Linux as a very small percentage of the problem here. This is on NVIDIA ensuring their hardware doesn't last to long and forcing you to throw it away eventually. Open source can make the monitor 'work' but really aren't efficient, and really can never be efficient because NVIDIA doesn't release the needed information and directly competes with their proprietary driver.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#113
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.

I guess I'd argue that "it depends on lot on what you mean by development".

For anyone hosting a product on servers (almost everything web related)... there IS something special about linux: It's where your product is going to run in production.

For folks who are doing work in other spaces, especially development that involves vendor provided physical devices: Then yes, I agree with you. Vendor support is almost always better for Windows, and sometimes entirely non-existent otherwise. I'll note this is starting to change, but it's not yet over the hump.

The only place I'd consider macOS as a "perfectly fine" linux alternative is mobile (and mainly because Apple forces it with borderline abusive policy/terms). Otherwise it's just a shittier version of linux on nice hardware, riddled with incompatible tooling, forced emulation problems, and a host of other issues. It's not really even "prettier" anymore.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#114

Maybe it's stockholm syndrome but I still have no interest in Linux. Are nvidia drivers still bad?

What do you mean by bad? Is this an ideological question? They are still primarily closed source. Is this an install difficulty question? If you can read you can install them. Is this a performance question? If you're a normie they're good. If you're demanding the top fps at the top resolution in dx12 games then there is still a noticeable difference but it should be fixed this year.

> Is this an ideological question? They are still primarily closed source.

That's a decent enough reason for a linux user to buy an AMD GPU but it isn't a good reason not switch to linux from a closed source OS. I'm in the process of switching to linux full time (it shouldn't really take that long but I haven't had a solid chunk of time in a bit) and am using an NVidia GPU so I went from closed source windows drivers to closed source linux drivers.

You're the top comment that addresses this so I'm putting this here but not exactly replying to you.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#116
> You had unsaved work? Too bad, it's gone, get bent.

This has happened to me a couple of times. I put the PC to sleep and the next morning I discover it has decided to close everything to install an update.

Not using Windows ever again to do any work. Say what you will about Apple but at least they don't do crap like this.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#118
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I run both operating systems. But I have to say it either runs the game you want to play or it doesn't. This is especially true if you play games with friends.

> But I have to say it either runs the game you want to play or it doesn't

Can you elaborate on this?

For example, it was convoluted getting StarCraft 2 to run. Then it did eventually work, though it felt ever so slightly laggy.

Anno 1800 ran though it occasionally slowed way down, occasionally crashed, and multiplayer never worked.

Hogwart's Legacy ran but crashed, and ran massively slower / lower quality settings than on the same hardware but in Windows.

All of those were not binary "runs / doesn't".

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm genuinely curious as to what the key differences are (especially those that would cause someone to switch), as someone who is pretty tech savvy but whose use of Linux as a daily driver is admittedly pretty weak.
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