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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

#151

Post by Reelin »

mehrdadn wrote: post #146
AsyncAwait wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that this is somehow better on Windows is, from my experience, false. In fact if say the GUI freezes on Linux, which doesn't happen often with open-source GPU drivers for Intel/AMD, then I still at least have the option to switch to tty and restart the display server. On Windows the option seems to be a hard reset pretty much. There's also many occasions where some .exe has simply "stopped working", or som…

> In fact if say the GUI freezes on Linux, which doesn't happen often with open-source GPU drivers for Intel/AMD, then I still at least have the option to switch to tty and restart the display server. On Windows the option seems to be a hard reset pretty much. This reasoning... doesn't make sense. Say Linux freezes 1% of the time, and half that time you can go into the TTY and fix it; the other half of the time you c…

You are the one claiming that some particular Linux DE freezes more than Windows. If we're comparing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS running Unity under Xorg to Windows 7 then I don't agree at all; in my experience they're both rock solid.

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

#152

Post by AsyncAwait »

mehrdadn wrote: post #146
AsyncAwait wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that this is somehow better on Windows is, from my experience, false. In fact if say the GUI freezes on Linux, which doesn't happen often with open-source GPU drivers for Intel/AMD, then I still at least have the option to switch to tty and restart the display server. On Windows the option seems to be a hard reset pretty much. There's also many occasions where some .exe has simply "stopped working", or som…

> In fact if say the GUI freezes on Linux, which doesn't happen often with open-source GPU drivers for Intel/AMD, then I still at least have the option to switch to tty and restart the display server. On Windows the option seems to be a hard reset pretty much. This reasoning... doesn't make sense. Say Linux freezes 1% of the time, and half that time you can go into the TTY and fix it; the other half of the time you c…

> This reasoning... doesn't make sense. Say Linux freezes 1% of the time, and half that time you can go into the TTY and fix it; the other half of the time you can't do anything. Now say Windows freezes 0.001% of the time, but never provides any way to recover.

You're attacking a strawman, you specified the numbers and now say how they don't really make sense. I'd say Windows freezes are actually more frequent for me than on Linux, but maybe it's about even, (general slowdowns, ie "Not Responding", are certainly more frequent on Windows).

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

#153

Post by Reelin »

andrepd wrote: post #134
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.

>Installing a program (not from the Ubuntu Software Center) and getting a launcher icon took way too much time and Googling. I don't understand this. You can open the "App Store" and search and download programs. If, for some inexplicable reason, you don't want to use the Software Center, you can open a terminal and type "apt install [name]". Surely this is easier than installing a program on Windows. What exactly is…

The issue is that installing something that's not in the official repositories and getting a functioning .desktop file set up for it can (in some cases) be a complete PITA if you don't already possess a reasonably detailed understanding of how the desktop launcher system works under the hood.

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

#154

Post by mehrdadn »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #152
mehrdadn wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact if say the GUI freezes on Linux, which doesn't happen often with open-source GPU drivers for Intel/AMD, then I still at least have the option to switch to tty and restart the display server. On Windows the option seems to be a hard reset pretty much. This reasoning... doesn't make sense. Say Linux freezes 1% of the time, and half that time you can go into the TTY and fix it; the other half of the time you c…

> This reasoning... doesn't make sense. Say Linux freezes 1% of the time, and half that time you can go into the TTY and fix it; the other half of the time you can't do anything. Now say Windows freezes 0.001% of the time, but never provides any way to recover. You're attacking a strawman, you specified the numbers and now say how they don't really make sense. I'd say Windows freezes are actually more frequent for me…

Wasn't that exactly my point? That you can't merely judge them based on the recovery mechanisms when the frequency of freezing on each one actually makes a huge difference?

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

#155

Post by mehrdadn »

Reelin wrote: post #151
mehrdadn wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact if say the GUI freezes on Linux, which doesn't happen often with open-source GPU drivers for Intel/AMD, then I still at least have the option to switch to tty and restart the display server. On Windows the option seems to be a hard reset pretty much. This reasoning... doesn't make sense. Say Linux freezes 1% of the time, and half that time you can go into the TTY and fix it; the other half of the time you c…

You are the one claiming that some particular Linux DE freezes more than Windows. If we're comparing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS running Unity under Xorg to Windows 7 then I don't agree at all; in my experience they're both rock solid.

I didn't claim such a thing? What I said was the parent needs to specify how frequently each one is freezing for them in the first place, which is what you're also saying. And I illustrated it by giving an example of how the freezing rate would make a difference.

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

#157

Post by gbuk2013 »

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’ve been running Linux Debian Sid) as my primary OS for well over a decade and it’s great not to be an average user.

It has come so far over the years (back from when kernel / Xorg / drivers whatever) has to be compiled to get things to work. Now it mostly just works, although some effort is always required.

Over the years I have reduced my GUI usage to a minimum (it is still very useful for some types of operations) and it has made life simpler because there is a lot less variation in the CLI than than GUIs.

It can still be a pain (I have Nvidia card in my most recent laptop and it took some effort to get it working) but I have learned enough over the years that I was able to do it with only minimal Googling.

Once everything is set up it works and keeps working. It doesn’t slowly build up crap over the years, it doesn’t gradually work slower and slower. And if I took out my hard drive and put it in another machine it will probably just work, or at least get me to a shell where I can tweak a few things.

I can run the same OS on my desktop as I run in my servers and routers.

Being fluent in Linux has done wonders for my career in IT.

If I need some Windows apps for work I just run them in a VM with zero problems.

A big part of why things work so well of course is Debian - it is really good. As good a balance of freedom as you get in the Linux world.

So my experience is: if you are a basic user Linux is great, if you are an advanced user it is great. If you are an average user, not so great, but it’s hard to please everybody.

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

#158

Post by AsyncAwait »

mehrdadn wrote: post #154
AsyncAwait wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reasoning... doesn't make sense. Say Linux freezes 1% of the time, and half that time you can go into the TTY and fix it; the other half of the time you can't do anything. Now say Windows freezes 0.001% of the time, but never provides any way to recover. You're attacking a strawman, you specified the numbers and now say how they don't really make sense. I'd say Windows freezes are actually more frequent for me…

Wasn't that exactly my point? That you can't merely judge them based on the recovery mechanisms when the frequency of freezing on each one actually makes a huge difference?

> the frequency of freezing on each one actually makes a huge difference?

Of course it does. But you presumed that Windows freezes much less frequently, which is not accurate in my experience and indeed I don't specify numbers precisely because the difference isn't significant.

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

#159

Post by JdeBP »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #92
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows NT was designed by some DEC people with lessons learned from VMS, though certain microkernel-like aspects of it were influenced by Mach. > They really ought to have, at minimum, aliased a lot more bash commands to Powershell 'cmdlets'. First of all, I am of the opinion that PowerShell is significantly superior to bash+coreutils in many ways. If you took a step back from your familiarity with the UNIX stack an…

> PowerShell is significantly superior to bash+coreutils in many ways Presumably it should be, given that PowerShell came out in 2006, while Bash appeared in 1989 and is tied to the model of Bourne shell which appeared in 1977 which itself was tied to the model of the Thompson shell of 1971. Which means that traditional UNIX terminal environments have certain artificial limitations which are tied to these earlier par…

Newer implying better is a bad presumption. Don't compare on dates. Compare on architecture and design.

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

#160

Post by mehrdadn »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #158
mehrdadn wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that exactly my point? That you can't merely judge them based on the recovery mechanisms when the frequency of freezing on each one actually makes a huge difference?

> the frequency of freezing on each one actually makes a huge difference? Of course it does. But you presumed that Windows freezes much less frequently, which is not accurate in my experience and indeed I don't specify numbers precisely because the difference isn't significant.

Then my entire point is that you need to say that! For me Linux freezes noticeably more often than Windows so hearing how I can recover more easily from it is cold comfort and makes no sense. For something like this you just can't assume people know how often your system freezes or otherwise all have the same experience as you.
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