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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#341

Post by zeta0134 »

Zambyte wrote: post #94
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…

> 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.

The giant bugbear in this conversation is always multiplayer. That's because almost all of the big players in that space currently favor rootkits in the form of overly invasive anti-cheat, which the Linux wrappers (mostly the wine project) refuse to support for security reasons.

If you don't play PvP specifically, the rest of the library is significantly more open to you. Personally I have always favored single player experiences and indie games from smaller studios, and for the most part those run great.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#342

Post by bambax »

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…

Same experience here, but I'm not sure it's just MS fault; companies have a way of installing a bunch of stupid software on top of one another, that you can't get rid of without admin rights, that continuously do things that slow the system down.

(And, you can have a tabbed file browser on Win7. I still have a Win7 box at home that works perfectly well and that does have tabs in file explorer. I think it was an addon I installed a while ago; don't remember exactly, but it works perfectly.)

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#343

Post by godelski »

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
Because its supposed to be stripped down. To serve as a base to create things like Endeavour, Manjaro, or Cachy.

There's still a lot of utility to doing things the hard way. I do suggest people that want to actually learn Linux install Arch and live in the terminal. You learn a lot very fast because you're forced to. But it's not for everyone and that's totally okay too. That's the beauty of Linux after all. That's the beauty of computing. You can't build a product for everyone but you can build an environment that can become what anyone needs.

But I'll second your point. I've been on Endeavour on my main machine for about 3-4 years now and only had one problem where I just got a mismatch in a new kernel and new Nvidia driver so I couldn't load the desktop. Easy rollback (from the cache) and a day or two later the issue was solved so I could upgrade without a problem. Took no more than 10 minutes to solve and that's the worst problem I've had the entire time. I will also give the advice that if you have an Nvidia card give your boot partition like 5GB instead of 1GB

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#344

Post by AnonC »

willk wrote: post #313
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".

On my company provided laptop with Windows 11 (previously Windows 10), the top three CPU usage was and is usually from Antimalware Executable, Microsoft Defender and MS Teams (or Crowdstrike). I don’t download files or get files from other sources often, yet these things keep doing busywork and slowing things down. Despite virus and threat protection running quick scans often and forcing a full disk scan every couple of weeks or so.

It’s almost as if these programs are people who ought to show that they’re doing something even though they’re just heating the room and running the fan.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#345

Post by shevy-java »

Zambyte wrote: post #94
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…

> 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.

Well I used to game a lot when I was younger.

Initially I hated that Linux was so niche in 2005 or so.

Meanwhile now, I don't have time for games anyway. I still think gaming should be better on Linux, but I don't miss Windows anymore either (though I have it as secondary operating system on another computer; I just don't really care about it, it could die tomorrow and I would not miss it one iota).

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#346

Post by pdntspa »

bee_rider wrote: post #110
W3zzy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

''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.

If ubuntu had stuck with APT for software installs instead of snap and whatever else, it would be a lock less headachey

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#347

Post by robby_w_g »

alphax314 wrote: post #336

There was a post here a while back saying that Microsoft will eventually switch to Linux instead of maintaining Windows. Given all the negativity around Windows this seems more and more likely (I haven’t used Windows myself for over 20 years so I have no idea what its like now. Last time I used it, it was XP)

If Microsoft vibe codes a Linux distro and calls it Windows 360 Copilot, I’m on board with the conspiracy theory that the Hadron Collider broke reality

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#348

Post by drillsteps5 »

publicdebates wrote: post #193

How likely is a future where Microsoft (a) gives us back 2000/XP/7/11 options for UI, (b) gives us a desktop-first experience when we have keyboard/mouse plugged in, (c) stops turning every OS feature into an ad, and makes it utilitarian again, (d) and focuses 100% on making a stable OS and high quality dev/office apps? It would be so nice if they just forked a commit from ~2005 and started from there. (Maybe Copilot…

Give me back the proper search which last worked Windows 7-ish (or XP?). And traditional Office interface (not stupid "context-specific" tiles).

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#349

Post by Orygin »

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…

> UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess

I thought you were talking about Windows there. There are 4 (5?) different UI paradigms within Windows, and doing one thing sometimes requires you to interact with each of them.

At least on Linux, with GTK/KDE, you can pick a camp and have a somewhat consistent experience, with a few outliers. Plus many apps now just use CSD and fully integrate their designs to the window, so it's hopeless to have every window styling be consistent.

I never had to mind X vs Wayland when starting user applications tho.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#350

Post by cogman10 »

jimbokun wrote: post #309
tracker1 wrote: post #228

I came to rely pretty heavily on Docker and WSL(2) in Windows. I was an insiders user for a bit over a decade, and worked with .Net and C# since it was "ASP+" ... I had setup a dual boot when I swapped my old GTX 1080 for an RX 5700XT, figuring the "open source" drivers would give me a good Linux experience... it didn't. Every other update was a blank/black screen and me without a good remote config to try to recover…

It's really hard to maintain a product team where the mandate is just "don't break anything and keep the quality high". Especially something with as big of an installed base as Windows. The team will look for excuses to build new and exciting stuff and new opportunities to increase revenue. Even if the product is pretty much "done".

I disagree, I think companies mostly just don't want to spend development money on existing "finished" products. That's the smell I'm getting from microsoft.

There are plenty of easily identifiable issues with performance in windows 11. There should be people in the windows team dedicated to eliminating "jank". MS product owners, on the other hand, are much more interested in getting copilot integrations into every menu. That's an "easy" task which looks good on a scorecard when you complete it.

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