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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#221

Post by Osiris »

I use Linux, Windows, and macOS basically every day.

All three have pros and cons.

I use Linux at work because I love i3 and am willing to put up with other quirks to have it.

I use Windows for games, Lightroom, etc.

I use macOS for compiling iOS apps (work) and in bed/on the couch at home for browsing (because I have an extra Macbook leftover from a consulting gig).

I use whatever tool works best for the job I'm doing.

No one OS is better at everything than another. They all have their strengths and their weakness.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#222

Post by ClumsyPilot »

cryptoquick wrote: post #86
throwaways885 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Astronomically lower probability of catching a virus. Yes because nobody uses consumer desktop Linux. With higher market share the malware will come. > No bullshit forced updates when the OS feels like it. True, but that also means you're going to end up with a lot more botnet nodes out there because people will never update. Or they'll never update and still complain things are not working. > No phoning home with…

1. There are nearly a million Linux gamers on Steam alone. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?module=steam_linux_s... In fact, the latest versions of Proton are so good, the only games I haven't been able to get to work with regularity are the ones that require EA Origin, and honestly, I've had similar problems on Windows. In fact, sometimes the Proton version of the game works better than the Linux binary. So,…

>"The Linux kernel absolutely supports non-free drivers. Inclusion of non-free driver "blobs" is a common argument."

Linux kernel has no stable ABI for drivers as a matter of ideology / strategy, we can debate it's merits but you certainky can't claim it suppports them.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#223

Post by Osiris »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #214

I just moved to Linux as my primary OS; been fucking great. 11/10 Overall, everything seems to "just work" at least as well as on MacOS and is not quite (for me) as endlessly frustrating as Windows. Gaming has also been effortless and honestly just the most delightful surprise about the whole thing. I can write code AND play games... on the same machine... and it's running Linux?! I would've lost that bet ten years a…

I'm using PopOS (with i3 instead of Gnome) on a System76 laptop. I have some serious issues with resume from sleep. All browsers and electron apps have significant rendering issues after I resume and I have to close them down and restart them. I was able to fix Chrome and Firefox by enabling Vulkan, but Slack still requires a restart after every resume.

My external monitors periodically stop working due to an NVIDIA driver bug.

Have you had any similar issues?

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#224

Post by dblohm7 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #93

Here is a website with opposite arguments (against Linux on the desktop specifically) https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t... In the end you have strong arguments both ways. I personally use both on a daily basis. Generally that's Linux for work (coding, mostly) and Windows for fun (games and media).

Lost me at Windows being harder to debug.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#225

Post by the_af »

Osiris wrote: post #212
extra_rice wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Linux servers are targeted and breached. Linux desktop share is too small to be worth it (yet). Why aren't we replacing them with something better then? Why are most servers still running GNU/Linux?

Linux as a server/headless OS has been fantastic for me. I have a home NAS running Linux that hasn't been rebooted in over a year and that was due to swapping out hard drives. Linux as my desktop OS, not so much. I have to reboot my Linux laptop every few days for various reasons, including complete unresponsiveness to any keyboard input.

That's really weird. Which distro and hardware are you using? I can go months without rebooting. I mostly do so when Linux tells me it needs a reboot to apply some update.

Keep in mind I use my laptop for both coding and gaming (if it ever locks up it's because of a game -- which wasn't uncommon years ago when I used Windows, either).

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#226

Post by Overdr0ne »

I've never experienced anything close to the stability and performance of a lean Arch build personally. It does a very good job of teaching you up front how your OS works, and how to configure it without dumbing things down for your grandma. Once I understood that, bugs just kinda disappeared, because I wasn't naively misconfiguring things anymore. I find linux pretty well organized and reasonable for most dev tasks. Your OS can be spectacularly powerful for automating things if you just understand it's basic components. It updates when I want it to, it looks the way I want it to, and darn near any operation I can put a name to I've writtent a script/elisp function/systemd service for. I feel limited really only by my own imagination at this point. Maybe the problem is Ubuntu or other such imitation distros, that rob people of that deeper understanding in exchange for a shallow illusion

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#227

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Most uses of linux are in server or embedded space, and so are most of the contributions.

By contrast most of Windows development is focused on it being a consumer OS. It's unrealistic to expect Linux to ever catch up to windows as long as this is true, especially when we spread effort too thing creating 15 different distributions.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#228

Post by scarygliders »

Anon4Now wrote: post #216
Subsentient wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I'd suggest they just use Qt then. Our company is writing a portable replacement to our Electron client right now. The electron option was absolute garbage, very limited, and caused us untold pain. We got tired of telling customers "we can't really do that". The Qt version is already working on Linux and Windows, and on whatever CPUs we compile it for. There's no excuse for Electron, because there are good,…

Because then you have to use C++. That alone is a big turnoff to a lot of developers.

Nope, you can also use Python, like I do with my 3rd party Elite: Dangerous application: https://captainslog.scarygliders.net/captains-log-2/

All written in Python, recently moved to Qt5 and PySide2, runs on Windows and when I figure out packaging for Linux (probably AppImage) will release it for Linux as well.

I believe there are Qt bindings for other languages too.

So you're not stuck with C++ :)

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#229

Post by danShumway »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #134
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

Web apps have been able to work offline for like a decade now, iirc.

Not well. I'm optimistic about the web in general, but I consider good, reliable clientside storage to still be an unsolved problem, at least for the moment.

Some of the things we're still missing:

- the ability to easily share data between domains without opening yourself up to massive security risks.

- the ability to share data with native apps.

- the ability to move data between browsers without syncing it to an online account.

- the ability for normal users to inspect offline data.

- the ability to trust that browsers like Safari won't just arbitrarily delete your data one day.[0]

- the ability to trust that browser upgrades won't ever corrupt the data you have stored.[1]

- the ability to share large amounts of data without worrying about storage limits (this matters a lot if you're making an editor like Atom or Visual Studio).

Typically, what I see with offline apps is that they'll use offline storage, but they don't trust it. They use it when possible as a progressive enhancement, but then they have to sync that data to a server someplace if it's something that users actually care about. And that matches my experiences as a web developer as well. I can't imagine building something like a password manager or text editor in-browser that was only storing data locally, I wouldn't trust that.

It's also not just a technological problem, it's a problem of UX. If I tried to make a purely offline web app, I'd be getting angry customer calls in a week asking where their data went just from them clearing browser history and not realizing that it deleted all their data as well. There isn't a user-friendly, user-controlled way to indicate that storage for one website should be permanent, and users aren't really trained to think that way about the web anyway -- their instinct is to think of it as transient.

----

[0]: https://ar.al/2020/03/25/apple-just-killed-offline-web-apps-...

[1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/12/17/google-fixes-chrome...

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#230

Post by TylerE »

sergeykish wrote: post #220
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…

As Linux user the article does not resonate with me. The actual points are discarded points # Linux is more stable and reliable. I've reinstalled Windows so many times, never reinstalled Linux. System is separate from the user, I can remove all user configurations and it would work like new. # Linux is more secure and private. I have so many packages, they are free and safe. I've tried Windows recently, have to insta…

I have literally not needed to reinstall Windows in close to a decade.

You couldn't pay me to put up with the massively inferior environment of any of the Linux DEs at this point. They are all, in varying ways, completely miserable to use.

Windows 10 is actually a really solid OS, and virtualization makes it so easy to spin up a Linux VM if I really need it.

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