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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#311

Post by morserer »

thewebguyd wrote: post #128
giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

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…

> idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro They largely have now, archinstall. It's still text based/TUI but it's pretty simple and intuitive, anyone already familiar with installing a Linux distro (especially any sort of -server variant) will be comfortable with the archinstall script.

Came here to say this. Archinstall rocks.

Regarding why Arch doesn't "invest" in a graphical installer, it's worth mentioning that Arch's installation image has a different design philosophy than most installation media.

The image is a fully functional arch environment that copies the entirety of its contents to RAM on boot, giving you special installation opportunities such as the ability to install Arch to the same flash drive that booted the installer. Having no graphical dependencies lets this image remain small enough to pull this off, as well as allowing for fully remote installations over SSH out of the box, since archinstall is a TUI.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#312

Post by tracker1 »

jsheard wrote: post #163
marginalia_nu wrote: post #33

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…

> Wayland has fractional scaling as a sort-of workaround if you can tolerate the entire screen being blurry. Every other major OS can deal with this. I think Windows is the only other one which really does this properly, macOS also does the hack where they simulate fractional scales by rendering with an integer scale at a non-native resolution then scaling it down.

That's roughly what I did for my ANSI console/viewer... I started with EGA resolution, and each ega pixel renders 3x4 in its' buffer then a minor blur, then scaled to fit the render area. The effect is really good down to about 960px wide, which is a bit bigger in terms of real pixels than the original... at 640px wide, it's a little hard to make out the actual pixels... but it's the best way I could think of to handle the non-square pixels of original EGA or VGA... I went with EGA because the ratio is slightly cleaner IMO. It's also what OG RIPterm used.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#313

Post by willk »

ryukoposting wrote: post #259

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitti…

Your first gripe kind of sounds like DLP software is installed on the system and it is scanning files you're "accessing".

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#314

Post by bichiliad »

morserer wrote: post #245
alexambarch wrote: post #192

As an Ableton user myself, I’m pretty surprised that this musician could just… switch from Ableton to Bitwig. Goes to show how dire the situation was I guess. I still have yet to hear any non-technical person I know encounter issues on Windows and seriously consider switching away. The learned helplessness instilled by Microsoft is very difficult to get people to shake off.

Bitwig was developed by ex-Ableton devs, and the layout is incredibly similar. It's a very easy transition compared to coming from a DAW like FL or Logic. It's also a really attractive offering once you hear about it. It's intuitive, cross-platform, half the price of Ableton for a 3-device lifetime license without geofencing, and the software contains a modular software synth atop which most of the preset instruments…

I came in here looking for this thread specifically (I can't imagine moving off of Ableton). Thanks for taking a sec to write this up! I might give it a try, just for the synth alone.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#315

Post by runjake »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

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…

I use Arch but don't want to fiddle with stuff anymore.

Installing via the archinstall command was pretty easy. Not quite as easy as a Fedora or Ubuntu install, but for someone familiar with Linux, it's negligible.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#316

Post by perks_12 »

I've been using Linux on my devices for quite some time now. I was pleasantly surprised when I had to start 4k video editing work and could just use Davinci Resolve. 2026 might not be the year of the Linux desktop, but it's getting better day by day.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#317

Post by torstenvl »

DrBazza wrote: post #277
giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

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…

I've been using Fedora+KDE for over a decade, Windows 8 was last version of Windows I had installed at home, and we all know what a squarified mess that was. Gnome is fine, but it's just not for me. For everyone on here that complains about Windows requiring an 'online' account, MacOS does as well, but the perception is different. MacOS, just kind of quietly does it, with no ceremony, but Windows does a Ballmer-esque…

> Windows requiring an 'online' account, MacOS does as well

This has never been my experience. Is that new in Tahoe?

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#318

Post by Zekio »

grepfru_it wrote: post #287
giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

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…

> Steam and Proton work perfectly I am a hardcore DayZ player. DayZ does not work on Proton[0]. I cannot use Linux as my main gaming platform. Battlefield 6 does not work. Latest Call of Duty does not work. You can talk about voting with your wallet, but when millions of people are buying the game, your one non-vote means nothing. So either you punish yourself and refuse to play with friends, or you punish yourself a…

this is why a lot of people run arch and why valve based steamOS on arch instead of debian as the previous version was, you need a newer kernel and other packages to really play games on linux with the least friction possible

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#319

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Linux has plenty of video card driver issues too. Windows may suck, but Linux sucks in different ways. Windows suckage is solved by "buy a different machine and reinstall". Linux suckage is solved by weeks googling and trying technical fixes in consoles, installing different distributions and trying the same, then eventually buying a different machine.

Apple, for all its flaws, tends to not have the suckage of either. I don't like using Apple, but it does break a lot less. (One of the reasons is encompassed in this story... while Microsoft and Nvidia yell at each other, Apple makes both the OS and the graphics card, so they just solve the problem internally) Apple with VMs gives you everything without the hardware hassles.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#320

Post by cogman10 »

xattt wrote: post #280
giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

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…

> idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro It could be a deliberate measure to set the bar high and filter out people who don’t want to troubleshoot themselves.

The arch advantage is that your system gets setup exactly how you want it and you have to consciously choose the software set you want to work with.

That minimalism is somewhat the point of the OS.

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