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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#391

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

tliltocatl wrote: post #137
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 me I'd take balkanization over the "we force-migrate everyone to the hot new thing where nothing works". > It'll probably work fine out of the box, but if it doesn't. Drivers are a pain point and will probably stay so until the market share is too large for the hardware vendors to ignore. Which probably aren't happening any time soon, sadly.

> I'd take balkanization over the "we force-migrate everyone to the hot new thing where nothing works".

The UI framework for macOS has not changed in any substantial design-update-requiring ways since OS X was first released. They did add stuff (animations as a core concept, most notably).

The UI framework for Windows has changed even less, though it's more of a mess because there are several different ones, with an unclear relationship to each other. win32 won't hurt though, and it hasn't changed in any significant ways since dinosaurs roamed the silicon savannahs.

The UI framework for Linux ... oh wait, there isn't one.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#392

Post by greener_grass »

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.

Does a game "run on Linux" when it has 100% feature parity? 90%? 80%? What are you willing to cut? Some performance? A few graphical effects? Multiplayer?

When you look at the details, Linux gaming is not as good as it might seem.

But I'm still gaming on Linux!

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#393

Post by megous »

senko wrote: post #41

Arch is great. However, I would never recommend Arch (or an Arch derivative) to a first-comer to Linux. Ease in gently, with Ubuntu or Fedora. Get familiar. Then go crazy.

I started with Slackware Linux—something arguably even more “hard-core” than Arch.

What mattered most at the beginning was good installation documentation, and both Arch and Slackware delivered on that front. Slackware, however, had an additional appeal: it was intentionally simple, largely because it was created and maintained by a single person at the time. That simplicity made it feel conceivable that the system could be fundamentally understood by a single human mind.

Whether a newcomer appreciates the Slackware/Arch approach depends heavily on learning style and goals. You can click through a GUI installer and end up with a working distro, but then what? From a beginner’s perspective, you’ve just installed something somehow—and it looks like a crippled Windows machine with fewer buttons.

Starting with Slackware gave me a completely different starting reference point. Installing the system piece by piece was genuinely exciting, because every step involved learning what each component was and how it fit into the whole. The realization that Linux is essentially a set of Lego bricks—and that I might actually master the entire structure, or even build my own pieces—was deeply motivating.

That mindset was strongly shaped by how Slackware and similar distros present themselves. Even the lack of automatic dependency management acted as an early nudge toward thinking seriously about complexity, trade-offs, and minimalism, which stayed with me forever.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#394

Post by curiousmindz »

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…

Maybe investigate the background apps that are running on your laptop?

By the way, I just opened a directory that I hadn't accessed in months. It contains 10945 log files, and Windows Explorer displayed them instantly.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#395

Post by tracker1 »

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)

Except the problem is their UX more than the kernel itself. I don't see them keeping Gnome or KDE as a desktop UI even if they did fully adopt Linux for desktop usage.

MS should really just buckle down, finish simplifying the UI and make it consistent again... the last time it was mostly consistent was Windows 7, and even then.

I'm willing to bet that System76 gets COSMIC to the level that Win7 reached faster than MS can turn anything around in terms of Windows at this point.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#396

Post by stackghost »

sedatk wrote: post #382

My story is simpler. Microsoft dropped the support for Windows 10 and gave me no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently. So I installed Fedora on that machine, I learned the process, I went through the hurdles. It wasn’t seamless. But, Fedora never said “I can’t”. When it was over, it was fine. Only if Microsoft had just let me install Windows 11 and suffer whatever the perf problem…

>no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently.

Let's be real. It's because new systems support DRM and Microsoft has been captured by the media company lobby.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#397

Post by causalscience »

pier25 wrote: post #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.

The fact that you leave unsaved work overnight is the actual crazy part.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#398

Post by tracker1 »

bittumenEntity wrote: post #19

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

Before MS really started mucking things up the past few years, I was referring to WSL as my favorite Linux distro... MS took a LOT of the rough edges off in terms of development.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#399

Post by HendrikHensen »

petcat wrote: post #29
progforlyfe wrote: post #6

Every month more and more people switch to Linux and I just love it. I'm tired of one company controlling the core operating system of 85% of desktop computers and users being at their whim. You want proprietary programs? Alright, fine, one can argue for that. But the central, core operating system of general purpose computers should be free and fully controllable by the users that own them!

> Every month more and more people switch to Linux We've been hearing this for decades and yet the home Linux userbase is microscopic and somehow even smaller than ever. Unless we're going to count Google's Android and Chrome OS. Those are the only Linux-based distributions that have ever gained market share over desktop Windows.

More and more desktop apps are just becoming websites. More and more desktop apps are using Electron rather than some native app. Windows is slowly becoming a dumpster fire in terms of usability and issues. Most games these days Just Work on Linux without any tinkering.

While I hardly think that this year will be "the year of the Linux desktop" or whatever, but if these trends keep going, I really foresee Linux market share growing, slowly, each year, until it's not so microscopic anymore.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#400

Post by billfor »

sedatk wrote: post #382

My story is simpler. Microsoft dropped the support for Windows 10 and gave me no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently. So I installed Fedora on that machine, I learned the process, I went through the hurdles. It wasn’t seamless. But, Fedora never said “I can’t”. When it was over, it was fine. Only if Microsoft had just let me install Windows 11 and suffer whatever the perf problem…

    .\setup.exe /product server /auto upgrade /EULA accept /migratedrivers all /ShowOOBE none /Compat IgnoreWarning /Telemetry Disable
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