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I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

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Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#161

Post by pixl97 »

fabian2k wrote: post #36
MostlyStable wrote: post #9

The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence. This was with the install on a fast SSD. I tried a whole bunch of things and never figured out what the issue was. Then, one day, it just....went away. I'm not trying to make much of a point other than that: anecdotes aren't…

I switched to Linux again because on this PC Windows suddenly just doesn't run stable anymore. Even a complete reinstall didn't fix it, I assume it is some driver issue or something like that. It took me a while to convince myself it wasn't a hardware defect. I had very frequent single tab crashes in any browser I used. And regular bluescreens, sometimes multiple a day. But it runs entirely stable on a parallel Ubunt…

>But it runs entirely stable on a parallel Ubuntu installation with the same hardware.

This mostly means nothing because the hardware drivers between the 2 OSs are totally different.

For example you could have bad memory and Linux isn't sticking anything important there, whereas Windows is. Same with things like video drivers and storage drivers.

As someone that's salvaged a lot of old machines, sometimes some particular hardware is bad in a particular OS and replacing it with a non broken card of the same kind fixes the issue.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#162

Post by pixl97 »

cmehdy wrote: post #127
badc0ffee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence. I know you're not asking for tech support here, but I wanted to share that a friend's laptop was doing this, and the problem turned out to be a massive amount of files in %TEMP%. So many that I had to write a little PowerShell script to remove them all.

Powershell is a great scripting language, but when you want to massively delete stuff I strongly suggest you use "robocopy /MIR" with an empty folder as source to be "mirrored". Much faster, better multithreaded performance, decent logging. It will save you a ton of time if we're talking about large and/or numerous files.

/MIR /MT:16

Kick those threads way up.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#164

Post by lukaslalinsky »

I don't get it, I've been using Ubuntu from the very early days, that's probably 20 years now. And I really didn't encounter any serious problems. Over the years, I had one instance of driver update breaking wifi. That said, it was always on a Thinkpad or my own desktop PC.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#165

Post by bitbasher »

I can't really relate to this post at all.

I've tried Windows a few times over the years and every time I regretted it. From nagging notifications, random restarts while I sleep (for "updates"), ads in the start menu, ai shoved into every orifice, to constant "updates required" after you just updated.

On the bright side, the battery life was better on Windows and sure-- games work. The latter is slowly becoming the norm on Linux as well.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#166

Post by isityettime »

mplanchard wrote: post #148
kuglimon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with explaining NixOS is that once you get to the benefits people get intimidated and start telling how they never have these issues. I think immutable distros/software are the most intuitive way, even if people get intimidated with the idea. What's the action you did as a junior when windows/linux/x broke? You most likely reinstalled. When encountering issues we tend to try to emulate immutability. The…

We used nix for developer environments, and nix to define docker containers for our production services. The biggest problem is the “nix people” can become blockers if there is an issue and they aren’t around to figure it out, because most engineers are just not going to learn nix. However, we felt the benefit was worth the cost, overall, especially because we used the same flakes and therefore versions across all de…

I'm the Nix guy on my small team at work and I'd love to train any of teammates on Nix stuff. One of them already has some Nix experience and I make sure to walk him through my Nix work whenever I finish something new. But it seems like no one is really interested in truly diving in like I did when I was new to Nix.

I don't really know why that is, because it doesn't seem to have to do with intelligence or general experience with adjacent skills. I think it's probably at least 30% down to temperament, but it may also be because my team is mostly fairly senior and each person has a lot of responsibilities of their own.

On the bright side, the tooling is easy enough that nonetheless, my team generally has no problems spinning up new Nix environments without me, or making small changes to the ones I've set up. And LLM agents are now good enough with Nix that I'm confident they can unblock themselves until my return whenever I'm on vacation or whatever.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#167

Post by whyagaindavid »

happytoexplain wrote: post #35
MostlyStable wrote: post #9

The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence. This was with the install on a fast SSD. I tried a whole bunch of things and never figured out what the issue was. Then, one day, it just....went away. I'm not trying to make much of a point other than that: anecdotes aren't…

>The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. That's not what the author said. And anecdotes are perfectly fine - in fact, they are literally are all we have to write about. In this case, everything I've experienced and heard from others suggests that the author is correct. Linux distros are amazing, and their issues are generally fixable with experience, but the problem i…

> that their issues are usage-blocking

What?

Sure - if one has some weird hardware? or need to use some specialist windows only software/workflow.

> they are just fucking annoying

> are either solvable without a comp sci degree,

with that argument - even ChromeOS is great. Just works. Especially for all the school kids without compsci degree or even Amazon staff (that use a modified form of chrome OS).

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#168

Post by ivell »

happytoexplain wrote: post #35
MostlyStable wrote: post #9

The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence. This was with the install on a fast SSD. I tried a whole bunch of things and never figured out what the issue was. Then, one day, it just....went away. I'm not trying to make much of a point other than that: anecdotes aren't…

>The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. That's not what the author said. And anecdotes are perfectly fine - in fact, they are literally are all we have to write about. In this case, everything I've experienced and heard from others suggests that the author is correct. Linux distros are amazing, and their issues are generally fixable with experience, but the problem i…

Frankly nowadays Windows is rage inducing. Dark patterns, annoying pop-ups, mandatory single sign-on.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#169

Post by Our_Benefactors »

veidr wrote: post #153
mrb wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH your problem sounds like a hardware issue. Maybe the PC's new location is warmer due to a more enclosed space, triggering more unrecoverable hardware faults.

I agree it sounds like that, but (having that same thought) I kept the temp in the living room 20℃ or less for a week but nah My best guess at this point is the 2025 LG TVs have some different HDMI ARC something something compared to the 2019 it was plugged into before. But also my point is that there's no way a human with 3 kids and job could ever know... it either starts working or I get a PlayStation or a differen…

You could look into EDID settings, lots of weird quirks around that spec.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#170

Post by nuancebydefault »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #96
happytoexplain wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. That's not what the author said. And anecdotes are perfectly fine - in fact, they are literally are all we have to write about. In this case, everything I've experienced and heard from others suggests that the author is correct. Linux distros are amazing, and their issues are generally fixable with experience, but the problem i…

> Windows issues are much more common, but they are just fucking annoying. Apart from the ones that are completely 100% usage-blocking.

I find that a very weird thing to write. I think the last BSOD i had was 10 years ago and when a laptop didn't work anymore, it was usually because some of its hardware broke. It's true though that over time laptops become too slow or have too little resources to run a recent (and secure) windows version over time, but that goes for most software in general.
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