Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

It doesn't annoy me, it makes me laugh. As for friends and family, I've already switched two of them to Mint/KDE and they're both quite happy with it as it suits their limited needs extremely well (web browsing, simple document editing, watching DVDs) and is extremely reliable.

> (I don't include third party packages as "UI")

That seems like an unimportant distinction, if it otherwise does what you need. It makes it sound like you're not making a sincere appraisal of the tools based on their merits.

You're welcome. Just to be clear: The ZenBook Pro UX510VW is a nice Linux laptop, once properly configured. If you're okay with a investing several hours of setup, it could well be one of your better options.

Here's a quick rundown of the issues I remember encountering, in case it matters. (I was setting it up a few months ago, so I would have been trying to install Ubuntu 16.10 and Mint 18.1.)

(1) I can't remember all the details, but I was unable to install either Ubuntu 16.10 or Linux Mint 18.1 using the traditional BIOS-based installer. I had to use a UEFI-based one instead. (Which wasn't a big deal, but I had no past experience with UEFI, so I had to read up on it first.)

(2) The trackpad jumped around a lot. I found an easy solution at [1]. IIRC, I had the problem initially with the 4.4 kernel that came with the Linux distros mentioned above. The problem might be fixed on its own with more recent kernels.

(3) The laptop has both nVidia and (built-in) Intel graphics chips. The ability to switch between them is pretty seamless, except for the need to log out and back in again in order to go back and forth. However, this only worked well for me when using nVidia's proprietary driver, which in turn prevented me from (easily) using very recent Linux kernels (4.10+). Supposedly there are other ways to get this working (Bumblebee, et al), but making that work required more effort than I wanted to invest.

(4) The laptop has two connectors for external monitors: a USB-C, and HDMI. My monitor accepts DVI and HDMI. IIRC, I tried three ways of connecting the laptop to my monitor (a Dell U2412M):

   (a) HDMI --> HDMI
   
   (b) HDMI --> (adapter) --> DVI

   (c) USB-C --> (adapter) --> HDMI

Of those three, only (c) worked. Regarding (a) and (b), I can only guess as to where the blame lies.

(5) The laptop has a high-DPI display, which many Linux apps have trouble with [2]. Those problem aren't peculiar to this laptop, but mention the issue because a lower-DPI laptop display wouldn't have this trouble. For one app I use (Intel VTune, which uses Gtk2), the only really workable solution was is to use an external monitor when using that app.

Another consequence of the high-DPI display is that the virtual terminals (e.g., the terminal you get when you hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 ) have really small text. Which can make it a real hassle when you have to fix graphics-driver problems, etc. There may be an easy fix for this; I haven't checked.

(6) When I'm fiddling with graphics drivers, sometimes the laptop's fan runs loud and stays on until the next time I reboot. When I've got the graphics drivers working right, this problem doesn't occur.

[1] https://github.com/vlasenko/hid-asus-dkms.git

[2] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-hidpi-support-for-gnome-k...

oh yes, is extremely slow to launch and load files but then it's ok, online apps have same issue but they stay slow even when using them and can't work with them when traveling on international train like i did last time with Studio

I wouldn't put it like that. I would put the notion of Windows users as sign of conservatism, rather than lack of technical skill. They're not entirely divorced, but it's not the same.

It also depends on your field. Yeah, if you're doing web dev, seeing Windows on the desktop might be a smell. But if you're doing embedded programming? Or gamedev? Or even just native software development for desktops? All of those areas pretty much require Windows. The toochains are, in many cases, Windows-only, and even if there are cross platform toolchains, 95%+ of your users are going to be using Windows, so you may as well run it to experience the app as your users will see it.

In fact, this is why I lament the lack of Windows in web development. There are so many web sites out there where you can tell (usually from font choices) that the entire development team was using Macs, because the site looks fine on a Retina display, but absolutely atrocious on, say, something like a 1366x768 TN laptop panel.

Moreover, in the Seattle area, at least, I'm see a slow but steady movement back to Windows machines from OSX because Apple is neglecting its offerings, and people are finding out that most server-side programming languages and frameworks actually work just fine on Windows these days. While setting up, e.g. Python and Ruby on Windows was really complicated and annoying at one point, these days it's as simple as just downloading the .msi installers from their respective websites and running them. And that's leaving aside WSL, which (though currently unfinished) promises to bring a full Linux userspace to the Windows kernel.

I don't know what you mean by, "Choose MS as a driver," but I personally have willingly chosen to go back to Windows as my normal day-to-day computing experience. Linux GUIs are atrocious messes designed by people too busy cargo-culting what Microsoft and Apple put out in their last iteration to do any actual UI/UX research. And OSX, for whatever reason, never really sat well with me. Maybe it was the lack of a proper "maximize" function. Maybe it was the menus at the top of the screen rather than the top of the application window. Maybe it was the fact that closing the last application window didn't close the application. There were too many decisions that I, personally found weird and unintuitive, even though OSX is supposed to be the more "intuitive" GUI environment. Again, this is all client-side. On the server, I still have no hesitation in choosing Linux. It works, it's stable, and it's very well supported.

As far as "closed source", well, honestly, I don't care that much. Like I alluded to above, I've seen too much crap open source software to have the illusion that open-source is some magic pixie dust that makes software better. It doesn't. The continuing state of Linux GUI (un)usability proves this. The fact that there are no open source IDEs that even approach the power, speed and usability of JetBrains products or Visual Studio proves this. There's a reason that "the year of the Linux desktop" only happened when Google took over and transformed Linux into something indistinguishable from a closed source OS.