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How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

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Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#111

Post by ikfmpwdsoz »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #105
ikfmpwdsoz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is a headache for two reasons: (1) because it's basically packaging your app for half a dozen different app stores, so you need tools that make that easier for you, and (2) lots of frameworks have no, buggy or unwieldy Linux support, because Linux had such a small userbase. So you're right, it is more of a headache for the developer, but the end user has a much nicer experience (it can't be overstated how nice…

> it is more of a headache for the developer, but the end user has a much nicer experience (it can't be overstated how nice it is to be able to install almost anything with one command, and update everything with another) It's a trade off. For that you're giving up control as a user about what can and cannot be installed on your system, you're giving up portable applications, being able to have applications on differ…

I still don't understand - you can still have a standalone executable if you want, nothing's stopping you! Package managers just streamline the common case of "I just want to install some software on this computer and have it update automatically". Linux has all the freedom of Windows and more.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#112

Post by kdamica »

I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about a year now, and while I agree that Linux has come a long way, it's definitely not ready for prime time just yet. Here's why:

- GUI performance is bad. I have a reasonably high end system, but switching between desktops is choppy unless I turn my resolution down to 1600x900.

- Trackpad support is bad. It works but feels clunky. You really feel the difference when you use a Macbook for the first time in a while.

- Hibernate doesn't work. I've tried and tried to get this to work but haven't succeeded. So now I either need to keep my laptop plugged in all the time or shut it down (which is annoying, because I encrypt my hard drive so I have to enter two passwords to start).

- Bluetooth doesn't work well. I have to run a command to restart my bluetooth service every time I connect, and still sometimes have to re-pair my headphones. I use a wired connection now to avoid dealing with it.

I bought a Linux-native laptop (System76 Galago) thinking things would work out of the box, but this hasn't been the case. (Also, the Galago's battery is awful so I wouldn't recommend it even if everything worked well.)

The next time I'm ready to drop $1500+ on a laptop, I'll probably just get a Macbook.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#114

Post by wyattpeak »

pmontra wrote: post #108
wyattpeak wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Libreoffice was fine enough until I started working in an office with people on Windows. I ran into so many compatibility problems I could barely believe it. Couldn't edit each other's headers, no maths support worked between the two, images and other objects would get randomly shuffled in the documents (one image showing up where another used to be). To say nothing of the minor niggling display differences…

No different than what would have happened if you had Windows and all of them were working with Macs and its office suite. You would have had to buy a Mac. It's not an OS issue.

It's certainly not an OS issue, because I'm not talking about OSs. I'm talking about Libreoffice.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#115

Post by unhammer »

Animats wrote: post #83

I've used Linux on the desktop for over a decade. Currently, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on x64. It still sucks for the average user. The GUI is lipstick on a pig. As soon as anything goes wrong, it's back to the command line. You look up the problem, and there will be a dozen articles about it, all contradicting each other. Look up what it takes to create a desktop icon for something. (Hint: the top result in Google won't work…

I recently tried updating a Windows 8 system (planning to eventually get it to Windows 10). I let Windows Update try to "check for updates" for some hours before I eventually decided it looked like it was stuck (it gave no feedback either way, but people on the internet did claim it could take hours so I gave it a chance). On Googling, it seems like the accepted solution is to open an administrator command prompt in Safe Mode, paste in some weird-looking commands that seem to move files around in C:\Windows\system32 and stop and start services, manually download and install some KB13u319787wahtever.msi files and reboot a few times. It took me at least four tries to follow the instructions scraped from various forum replies, though I did eventually get it to start updating again. I haven't had so much work updating a system since I ran Arch Linux instead of Ubuntu =P

And then just try getting the built-in OpenSSH in Windows 10 installed and playing nicely with Linux – I'm still not sure it was worth the effort over just e-mailing files back and forth. I've had at least as much trouble with Windows as with Linux lately (but I don't do anything involving graphics).

The way I see it, the main reasons for using Windows over Linux are simply that there are still lots of programs written for Windows that aren't there on Linux, and although there may be good alternatives, they won't have the same community around them or training materials or third party tools and integrations. E.g. if you use Adobe CS, you can get lots of howtos on youtube, filters and plugins, help from friends etc. – if you try to switch to GIMP/Krita/Darktable, you're on your own and when you come across a cool-looking plugin you can no longer even try it out. And that feels bad.

By the way, what is iDrive? I've used varous linuces for nearly two decades and never heard of it.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#116

Post by [deleted] »

beagle3 wrote: post #104
bootlooped wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have infrequently fooled around with Linux only a handful of times in the last 15 years. I recently installed it on my laptop but was disheartened to see how much you still need the command line to do some very basic things. Installing a program (not from the Ubuntu Software Center) and getting a launcher icon into the start-menu-equivalent took way too much time and Googling.

That’s true, but on the other hand, you have some 15000-30000 packages installable from software center that are guaranteed virus free, with automatic updates. (And they are liver and gratis to boot), so the average user rarely if never needs to go there.

[deleted]

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#117

Post by killjoywashere »

CFeminine wrote: post #71
ikfmpwdsoz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay for Windows, but Linux is free. Windows is filled with ads; Linux has none. Windows is slow; Linux is less slow. Windows tried to pull some weird tablet hybrid nonsense; Linux desktops are just desktops. Cinnamon, Mate and KDE took the very best parts of old Windows and made them better. Gnome and Pantheon ripped off macOS and they're also great. Every single one of them is more polished and more useable than…

i hear you 5 by 5, i would also wonder who would tolerate subsription like leasing of software such as norton or office 360.

Some one who has deals with top 5 orgs on Earth gives zero shits about the software or who made it, as long as it gets the job done. Actually, they might care, in a sort of "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" sort of way, but if you're on deadline and there are jobs on the line, people paying rent, you really can't afford to worry about whether Office costs you $100/year every year for the rest of your life.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#118

Post by hsivonen »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #8

Tangentially-related rant (since the author is pushing Ubuntu): I wish Canonical would offer an 'End-User Desktop Support' offering. Right now Ubuntu Advantage is available for $150 per year, but that's only for enterprise (you have to order at least 50 units). I think it would be interesting if Canonical offered an equivalent product for home users, understanding that the $/year would be higher. That would give all…

Single-seat support used to be available for Ubuntu. I paid for that in roughly the 2010-2012 time frame.

It was useless, and I don't really blame Canonical: Consider how much of a competent person's time the annual price back then, 190 euros, could buy. Not much.

If you want to support them monetarily, the donation thing covers that. If you want to pay for them to provide support for you, what do you expect "support" to mean and at what cost? The trope that if you pay for Open Source support, you get to affect bug fixing priorities doesn't work at the money levels that individuals (except maybe ones who have the kind of money Shuttleworth has) are willing to pay.

But even for just advice on how to perform a task or resolve a problem, if you can't get the answer right away using a Web search engine, chances are that the solution needs a competent person to pay attention for a longer period of time than your expected annual per-seat price pays for.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#119

Post by simion314 »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #67
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe "just the way you like it", but "functional and not sending your private information off to a dubious corporation" is pretty easy. Sure, and that's great if that's all you want out of a personal computer. > When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. Bull. I've been using Linux for decades and it's always the same story. You have a problem with X, you do a search for…

> > When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. > Bull. I've been using Linux for decades and it's always the same story. You have a problem with X, you do a search for your problem with X, you find a dozen solutions that don't apply to you because you're on a different distro or they're from 2013 when half the software stack was different. Ok, so in some cases there can be c…

I also had issues installing Win10 for someone, weird error messages, the solution was to open a command prompt and format the disk manually with fdisk and create partitions manually.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#120

Post by simion314 »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #88
saagarjha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the way Linux works just doesn't jive with a lot of people? Like, everything has a middleman involved. Drivers for your hardware? Have to be merged into the kernel. Applications? Should go through (all of) the distro package repo(s) unless you want it to be a pain …? This is a really strange perspective, since I've found Linux to remove middlemen. No more searching a manu…

> No more waiting for Microsoft to roll out fixes; you can apply your own changes yourself. And now you have to, forever, since you're no longer using a package manager to get updates to your custom buggy horror show. > No more searching a manufacterer's website for some garbage closed-source driver Please point me to the source for the drivers for my rtx2080. That would be super helpful!

>Please point me to the source for the drivers for my rtx2080. That would be super helpful!

There are cases where good hardware has no drivers for latest windows, like I had a Wacoom tablet that the vendfor would not result drivers for newer Windows version but continued to work out of the box on Linux. The fact that NVIDIA are jerks and not providing at least documentation for the community to make drivers is not the fault of the Linux community or the fault of us the NVIDIA customers,

The proprietary driver work well enough for my 970 but my next card will be an AMD one

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