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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#261

Post by hanklazard »

forgingahead wrote: post #250
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…

+1 to this -- invested in a desktop earlier this year to tinker more with ML projects, and dual-booted Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 18 LTS) on separate SSDs with separate HDs for data storage for each system. I have spent 95% of my time in Linux, and only get into Windows for a game or two that I haven't bothered to figure out a Windows VM setup for. Definitely recommend Linux for those looking for dev machine alternati…

re: linux laptops, I'm writing this from one of the new Lenovo Carbon X1 models that comes pre-installed with Ubuntu. I prefer pop!_os (except for the name) so I installed that when I first got the machine, and it's worked with no issues. I've had it for a few weeks and zero complaints. The fingerprint reader even works with linux, which wasn't the case on my previous gen CX1 laptops.

Let me also just say that I am basically at the point where I may soon recommend a pop!_os machine to my parents (who are in their late 60's and have limited abilities on computers). Given that I'll personally be on the hook for any and all tech support, take that as a strong vote of confidence!

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#262

Post by slmjkdbtl »

I hope I can move to linux right now, but I just bought Ableton Live, and have to occasionally use stuff like Affinity Designer, or Adobe. Open source GUI software that runs on Linux generally does not have good UI/UX (for good ones I can only think of Blender), and big commercial softwares generally does not support Linux, being trapped between sucks..

But still, I'm looking for a decent distro that has minimal setup, very customizable, in active dev, and have decent graphics / audio driver for game dev, for a possible future shift. I haven't done much research yet but am currently looking at KISS and Arch, if you know more please let me know thanks!

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#263

Post by rhacker »

itvision wrote: post #167
sysrpl wrote: post #44

Linux runs better on both new and older hardware. Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier. Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure. Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates. Linux dist…

> Linux runs better on both new and older hardware. This is very much debatable. What's true however is that if your HW is not supported by at least Windows 8.1 you're SoL. > Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier. I haven't observed any slow downs in Windows 10 for ages. As for "less memo…

I had to buy Pro for Docker usage. $200

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#265

Post by magicalhippo »

I've been running KDE Neon on a NUC for several years now, and has been quite happy with that as a secondary PC.

However, as much as I like it, I've not even tried to run it on my primary desktop due to the lack of a viable RDP alternative.

The irony here is that with Microsoft implementing RDP support in WSL2, the thing that might finally remove the key obstacle might render the entire point moot.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#266

Post by dadrock »

toyg wrote: post #209
snazz wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many PC builders just don't activate Windows at all—other than a few occasional nags, Microsoft doesn't really enforce Windows activation anymore. It's just like how Apple doesn't crack down on Hackintoshing. Both the build-your-own PC market and the Hackintosh market are small enough that it's not worth the time.

> Microsoft doesn't really enforce Windows activation anymore Except an unactivated Windows, once past its trial window, will shut down after an hour of use, without warning. That's very annoying. MS absolutely does enforce activation. They likely won't come after you for using cracks (unless you have hundreds of corporate machines using them), but they will make your life awkward remotely, as they are entitled to by…

This is no longer the case.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#267

Post by SXX »

toyg wrote: post #209
snazz wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many PC builders just don't activate Windows at all—other than a few occasional nags, Microsoft doesn't really enforce Windows activation anymore. It's just like how Apple doesn't crack down on Hackintoshing. Both the build-your-own PC market and the Hackintosh market are small enough that it's not worth the time.

> Microsoft doesn't really enforce Windows activation anymore Except an unactivated Windows, once past its trial window, will shut down after an hour of use, without warning. That's very annoying. MS absolutely does enforce activation. They likely won't come after you for using cracks (unless you have hundreds of corporate machines using them), but they will make your life awkward remotely, as they are entitled to by…

   > Except an unactivated Windows, once past its trial window, will shut down after an hour of use, without warning.
Only LTSC Evaluation version gonna do that.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#268

Post by marcan_42 »

It's worth noting that these days you can move Windows installs across hardware/VMs and fix issues from a live image.

I'm a longtime Linux user and every time I have to do this on Windows I find the documentation poor, but it is possible to do things like load kernel modules (drivers), partition a drive, format a new NTFS filesystem, copy all the files over preserving special filesystem features, reinstall the bootloader, add required additional drivers, ensure the drive assignments are correct, etc. all from a command line prompt which you can pull up from the Windows 10 installer image. The process ends up being very similar to doing the same thing on Linux at a high level, just with different tools.

What Windows needs in this regard is something like the Arch Linux wiki.

Just in case it's useful to someone, here are some pointers:

To add critical (e.g. storage) drivers to a mounted Windows install (or image file within installers): dism

To modprobe a driver within the live environment: drvload

To rsync files over to a new filesystem preserving (almost?) all critical metadata: robocopy (use the latest Windows 10, older versions had trouble with stuff like directory junctions and symlinks; read the manual carefully to figure out what options to use)

To fix drive assignments (i.e. fstab): you actually just pull up regedit and edit the registry directly; you copy the (binary) drive ID info from the live instance, mount the registry hive of the target, and paste it there (this isn't really morally different from running blkid and then editing fstab by hand to paste a UUID). Search terms: MountedDevices and DosDevices.

Fix the bootloader: bootrec is the top level "fix stuff automatically" tool, kind of like grub-install and grub-mkconfig. However, you may have to delete your BCD (grub.conf) first so bootrec can make it fresh, as it often won't fix existing bootloader entries with a problem. bcdboot and bcdedit are the lower level tools.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#269

Post by trevorishere »

The article is obviously old and out of date (i.e. MAX_PATH, given you don't mention Office...) and at times incorrect (i.e. NT kernel performance where async I/O has historically been better than the various Linux implementations -- io_uring excluded as I haven't seen any comparisons).

I'll give my highly subjective experience. I used Fedora 3x on a X1 Carbon gen 7 and it was not awesome. While I had a highly customizable UI via KDE Plasma, the font always felt off. I had issues directly attributed to Wayland (screen sharing in apps), though I could have gone back to X11.

Eventually I switched to Gnome and the UI was just frustrating from a UX standpoint. The UI lacked so many options to make it more flexible, though some frustrations were taken care of by extensions.

For either DE, if I didn't want to use Firefox, many types of media were unavailable, including certain videos in YouTube due to lack of included libraries. Some of those libraries were available in 3rd party builds, but given the security sensitive nature of browsers, that felt risky.

Performance was fine and the apps I needed were available.

Overall, application in each DE felt more crash-prone. This was true of the updater for the Gnome app store, too.

More than a couple of times I would have odd graphical issues occur in both KDE Plasma and Gnome. A couple examples were font-related issues (incorrect font despite being set correctly in settings) and window-color issues. The Gnome app store window was in dark mode while the rest of the DE wasn't. Oh and lack of DE-wide mouse scrolling on windows was a bit frustrating. I had to get a plugin for Chromium but never found a DE-wide solution.

I was tired of Windows on a laptop, so I did end up buying a MBP, which was my first Mac since my PowerBook G4. MBP does everything I need for personal use and as a development playground, plus generally stable apps. I still use Win 10 on a P1 for work and of course have a desktop for gaming, primarily.

What I'd like to see from a DE is to be highly integrated into the system. We've seen successful implementations via Windows and Mac (classic and OS X/11), and perhaps the not-so-commercial success, BeOS. Many of the Linux DEs "feel" tacked-on.

With that said, I run unbound and haproxy on a handful of Linux VMs where they work wonders and I've had zero issues with stability, etc.

All-in-all my Fedora 3x experience was just OK. It felt rough around many, though not all edges. App crash was more than I'd see using the same apps on Windows (and now macOS).

There were other things that irritated me; lack of fingerprint reader support and lack of a Bitlocker-style solution (no password on boot) available.

Again, my experiences, my impressions. They could all be wrong.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#270

Post by lytigas »

Osiris wrote: post #223
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…

It's possible the Chromium/Electron thing is this bug[1], which affects new proprietary nvidia drivers on recent Chromium versions. I also experienced that bug, though I don't think it affected Firefox for me.

It resolved itself for me recently in all apps except Slack. I have no idea why. I'm fairly sure I didn't update anything.

While it was still reproducing, I tested a purported fix in the upcoming Chromium 87 (or 88?) and it was resolved. So just wait a bit or try Canary. More specific info in the bug thread of course.

[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=111304...

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