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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#181

Post by snazz »

est31 wrote: post #101
foxrider wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but then it is supposed to - you are expected to have knowledge to fix it as a user. And unlike proprietary OSes it gives you legible errors and great logging/debugging tools and a path to downgrade. Last time I had to help my friend troubleshoot his Windows setup all we would get would be an extremely cryptic error code and we solved it by finding a thread on an Italian forum and had to google translate a solu…

I think the difference is not between legible errors vs none, but how many people who deeply understand computers are in the community. So a community difference instead of a technical one. In Windows land, most folks don't understand it, so most you'll find on the internet is "I reinstalled windows, the problem is gone" and "try Pro Cleaner ^TM 2000, the trial version has some ads but it removed the problem for me.…

Windows is also far more difficult to debug in the first place. macOS has stuff like the defaults command in the Terminal and verbose mode that give power users the tools to debug issues. Even if the Mac-using community isn't super tech-savvy on average, the architecture of macOS means that you're left with "Something went wrong; please try again later" far less often.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#182

Post by kazinator »

snazz wrote: post #175
phendrenad2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Astronomically lower probability of catching a virus. Correct, but when was the last time you got a virus on Windows? (Obviously it's different for Regular Joe User, I'm talking about the HN audience). > No bullshit forced updates when the OS feels like it. In practice, my Windows install always updates in the middle of the night when I'm not using it. It closes all of my apps and only reopens the web browser. But,…

> In practice, my Windows install always updates in the middle of the night when I'm not using it. It closes all of my apps and only reopens the web browser. But, it's not so bad. It doesn't bother me. I can however see how it might annoy some people. But I think the effects of this are exaggerated. Apple has definitely figured out the "reopen apps when you reboot your computer" feature. I wonder why it's taken Micro…

Even if Microsoft were to provide some special API for this, tons of legacy programs won't be using it, and most new ones will also ignore it.

Under Microsoft Windows, application installers can register some handler to run on startup, and can implement this themselves: the program can check whether an instance of the program was interrupted by reboot, and if so, start it up in a special way whereby it is told to recover the state from the most recently saved parameters. Those could include volatile state like position of windows, object selections and whatever.

There is really nothing for Microsoft to do there other than maybe lead by example; implement some sort of best practice in a few notable Microsoft programs, document the practice and encourage developers to do same.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#183

Post by lights0123 »

hossbeast wrote: post #171
im3w1l wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron app: works offline has more permissions can use udp separate alt-tab, tray display is not throttled because it's in the background (on desktop) unaffected by browser settings unaffected by clear cookies unaffected by extensions less confusion over who handles keybinds

> can use udp What are you even talking about? Any unprivileged process can open a udp socket.

That comment was in response to

> Why do you need web apps wrapped in their own window, though? Just open a browser.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#184

Post by davrosthedalek »

alphachloride wrote: post #132

I am a sample size of 1. For me, the inconveniences of using linux are far greater than the inconveniences of using windows. This article is targeted at the developer community mostly. As a programmer, I cannot recall being hindered by file name conventions, un-resizeable dialog boxes, bug trackers etc., as much I have been inconvenienced on linux by poor driver support, and regularly dropping to command line for con…

...or just run WSL2, which is absolutely amazing.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#185

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

snazz wrote: post #174
jleahy wrote: post #5

Does it have to be better, or even preferable? Is "it's sufficiently good for my needs but it's free" not enough? Whole industries have died because a free product has emerged that's "good enough" for 90+% of people. When was the last time anybody bought the electronic Encyclopedia Brittanica now we have Wikipedia?

Linux would have to be extremely good for most people to take the effort to switch. Switching to Wikipedia doesn't require reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system—a completely foreign concept for 98% of the computer-using population.

Reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system is just the beginning of it.

Such a drastic change of OS basically disrupts your whole workflow while you get used to the new one. Everything from where to find things to keyboard shortcuts to UX paradigms.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#186

Post by [deleted] »

archseer wrote: post #169
alphachloride wrote: post #132

I am a sample size of 1. For me, the inconveniences of using linux are far greater than the inconveniences of using windows. This article is targeted at the developer community mostly. As a programmer, I cannot recall being hindered by file name conventions, un-resizeable dialog boxes, bug trackers etc., as much I have been inconvenienced on linux by poor driver support, and regularly dropping to command line for con…

Proton makes almost everything playable on linux. Sometimes with worse performance, sometimes with a lot better performance so it balances out.

[deleted]

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#187

Post by tiltrus »

1986 wrote: post #20

I know quite a lot of folks here are fed up with moves away from native apps and towards Electron-wrapped web apps (and often for totally valid reasons) but it's been a godsend for making Linux a usable daily driver OS. IMO if you're doing eg web dev work in a GSuite / Slack / Figma / etc organization, it's never been a better time to try desktop Linux!

Agreed. Between Gsuite, Gitkraken, Figma, VSCode, PopOS, and my $700 Ryzen 4700u laptop, web dev is absolutely stellar. Would never go back to Windows or MacOS. Everything with PopOS and this AMD laptop works out of the box.

I can definitely understand people sticking to Windows though if they need gaming or Office.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#188

Post by sergeykish »

delfinom wrote: post #6
agustif wrote: post #3

No telemetry. No overriding auto-update settings. No license to pay.

As long as it's not ubuntu for the first two points

Even if Canonical ever become evil, we have distributions and it is open source. You can change any part, a lot of distributions built on top of Ubuntu. For example Google can disable uBlock in Chromium, some would switch to Ungoogled, Iridium, some to Opera, Brave, Vivaldi.

Imagine if Windows, macOS, Google services were easy to fork.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#189

Post by cjbconnor »

archseer wrote: post #169
alphachloride wrote: post #132

I am a sample size of 1. For me, the inconveniences of using linux are far greater than the inconveniences of using windows. This article is targeted at the developer community mostly. As a programmer, I cannot recall being hindered by file name conventions, un-resizeable dialog boxes, bug trackers etc., as much I have been inconvenienced on linux by poor driver support, and regularly dropping to command line for con…

Proton makes almost everything playable on linux. Sometimes with worse performance, sometimes with a lot better performance so it balances out.

Many of the multiplayer games I play won't work on linux, typically due to the anticheat software they use. Also, there's typically a few hoops to jump through for popular games.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#190

Post by moocowtruck »

jbirer wrote: post #178

I started my journey with linux at the age of 12 when Canonical was sending out free CD's of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04. After nearly 13 years of usage I am a happy user of Windows 10 now. My reasons are: * Horrible font rendering that makes me not even want to code * Terrible application support * Audio and touchpad support is noticeably superior on Windows * Small things that you have to tinker with in order to get ev…

I've been using linux since 95, both doing kernel dev and using as desktop. At some point around windows 8 i decided to give windows a try, and purely use windows 10 now and love it for many of the same reasons you mentioned. To me OS wars are over, if someone prefers linux desktop more power to them, but for me anymore I feel like I want technology out of the way as much as possible, and I feel like windows 10 desktop does that for me.
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