Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 636 posts

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#291

Post by pmontra »

mrob wrote: post #150
red75prime wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Swap thrashing can bring the system into a completely unresponsive state. 2. Linux servers are targeted and breached. Linux desktop share is too small to be worth it (yet). 3. Windows updates aren't stealthy for a considerable time. 4. That's a matter of opinion. 5. Some distros do, but it's opt-in. Transparency is better on the Linux side too. I agree on this point. 6. You are tempted to spend time on customizati…

>1. Swap thrashing can bring the system into a completely unresponsive state. This can be prevented using earlyoom (which is packaged in most distros): https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom It's probably too difficult to fix the underlying design errors, e.g. fork() duplicating the process's entire address space, thus requiring overcommit and copy-on-write, but losing only one process beats losing all of them. earlyoom…

Or simply disable swap if you have enough RAM. I've been running without swap since 2014 on a 16 GB laptop. I upgraded to 32 GB a couple of years later when I started to routinely use at least 12 GB. At least one browser and editor window per virtual desktop (one VD per customer plus a couple for me), docker, virtualbox, slack, thunderbird, etc.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#294

Post by pmontra »

Thorrez wrote: post #290

The article says determining filetype via heuristics is better than via extension. I don't agree with that, heuristics are confusing. File extensions lead to behavior that a human can predict.

mv image.png program.exe

mv program.exe sound.mp3

mv sound.mp3 text.pdf

Same file, always a PNG despite the extensions I can attach to it.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#295

Post by zvrba »

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…

Same here. I used Linux for 10+ years, then at one point, copy/paste between browser and terminal stopped working. I got mad at that shit (yes, also constant tinkering, subpar drivers, etc.) and installed windows, never looked back.

And yes, font rendering is horrible. I went out of my way to find bitmapped fonts for coding. And yes, trying to get audio mixing to work on Linux was just a waste of time.

My Win10 machine runs rock-solid, when I'm done for the day I put it to sleep, and resume my session the next day in under 10 seconds. Like 90% of my reboots (and it's like WEEKS in between) are due to updates.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#296

Post by zvrba »

marcan_42 wrote: post #268

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 bootlo…

Hah, indeed. I had to build a custom Windows install image, so I had to learn about DISM and other stuff. Everything is documented, but rather badly organized.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#297

Post by gsich »

sergeykish wrote: post #232
snazz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can run Linux from USB stick. That still requires BIOS/UEFI setup, though I do not expect non-technical population switching. It would be great if Steam had non game applications.

Steam has that.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#298

Post by Spearchucker »

lukeschlather wrote: post #213
tcbawo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently spent 30 minutes figuring out why the Bluetooth pairing process wasn't giving me the pin number I needed to pair my new wireless keyboard. Ugh. Eventually, after searching through forums, I updated the right modules to get it working. I want to use Linux as my daily driver, but I am frustrated by little things that don't work or go wrong.

I've been using Windows for the past couple years for work after mostly using Ubuntu for several years. I felt the same way about Bluetooth but I've found all the Bluetooth problems I thought were "Linux" are just as bad on Windows. But Windows is just a lot more unstable. Every other week there's some new thing that breaks in a confusing way, and it's all closed source shovelware so I can't even figure out what is c…

Counter example I've been using bluetooth for keyboard, mouse and headphones on my Surface Pro 1 since the Surface Pro 1 was released in I think 2013 or 2014. Never reinstalled Windows, and it works to this day as it did on day 1. I use it 3/4 times a week for maybe 5 hours when I'm not at my PC.

I used to try Linux once a year or so but gave up doing that a few years ago because there is no single place to go to for answers and it's a time sink. The operating system needs to get out of my way so that I can make software. Windows does that.

I'm sure bias has a lot to do with my perception, I'm ok with that.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#299

Post by cambalache »

sysrpl wrote: post #283
itvision wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Parent author reporting back. I am going to have to sort of disagree with you there (in Lumbergh voice). In all seriousness though, you are wrong on all points. Sorry, yes you are wrong. Rather than write a point by point rebuttal, against my common sense (you know, the thing about arguing with someone one the Internet) I'll just write a few paragraphs, provide some professional anecdotal and maybe quantitative evide…

You have the patient of a saint, the person you are responding too is at best an amateur "Microsoft Evangelist"

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#300

Post by heavyset_go »

est31 wrote: post #236
berkut wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? It's LGPL, so as long as you link dynamically, it's fine for proprietary software to use it. A lot of commercial proprietary software in the VFX industry does this (Nuke, Katana, Mari, Maya, Houdini, etc).

IDK a lot of proprietary developers don't understand the LGPL and are scared by its copyleft. They like how simple the MIT license is. Also, apple's app store is famously LGPL-incompatible.

> Also, apple's app store is famously LGPL-incompatible.

If you're shipping a proprietary application that links to LGPL libraries in accordance to the license, that's fine.

It's GPL applications that the App Store bans.

Post reply on HN