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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#341

Post by Thorrez »

IceWreck wrote: post #334
Thorrez wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But I think of the file extension as a way to tell the OS which program I want a file to open with. In Windows when I see a .mp3 file I know which program will open when I double click on it. In Linux it's a mystery. I like my computer to behave in a predictable manner. In Windows extensions have a meaning. In Linux, why even bother having extensions? In neither OS does the extension tell you about the content…

> In Linux, why even bother having extensions While the file extension can be lying maliciously or can be just plain incorrect in 1% cases, its informative for the user in the other 99% cases

I agree with you. But pmontra seems to operate differently than that, and have files with mismatching extensions. In that case the extensions tell you something on Windows but not on Linux.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#342

Post by simonh »

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…

In 2018 I ended up calling both Apple and Microsoft for phone support within a few months of each other and, to my surprise, got excellent support from both of them. The Apple issues turned out to require an NvRAM/SMC reset to fix a weird performance issue. The Apple support person was very polite, helpful and knowledgeable.

The Microsoft issue was I’d bought a laptop which came with an Office trial, but wanted to enable Office using a license I bought through work. It required uninstalling the trial version, running a power shell command line tool to clean it up, then install the required SKU of Office. The MS rep was also very knowledgeable, logged on remotely with my permission and I watched the whole process. It took a while, but the engineer knew exactly what to do and did a great job.

That was the first time I’d had phone support from Apple or Microsoft. I wasn’t too surprised at Apple, I’ve had great support from the stores before so that extending that to over the phone wasn’t too much of a stretch. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed and quality of the support from Microsoft though, I really couldn’t have asked for more. It’s just brain bindingly ridiculous that getting their software, that’s supposedly already on the blasted machine to actually work took such a torturous set of steps to perform.

I suppose that’s all incidental to the thread, but anyway. The things that annoy me about Linux are the lack of system upgrade options, you basically have to reinstall from scratch every time, and the awkwardness of system backups. I’m spoiled by a Time Machine I suppose, it’s the thing I miss the most on Windows as well.

[EDIT - Looks like I'm missing some options on keeping Linux up to date, thanks for the tips]

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#343

Post by [deleted] »

IceWreck wrote: post #334
Thorrez wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But I think of the file extension as a way to tell the OS which program I want a file to open with. In Windows when I see a .mp3 file I know which program will open when I double click on it. In Linux it's a mystery. I like my computer to behave in a predictable manner. In Windows extensions have a meaning. In Linux, why even bother having extensions? In neither OS does the extension tell you about the content…

> In Linux, why even bother having extensions While the file extension can be lying maliciously or can be just plain incorrect in 1% cases, its informative for the user in the other 99% cases

[deleted]

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#344

Post by pmontra »

Thorrez wrote: post #301
pmontra wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. But I think of the file extension as a way to tell the OS which program I want a file to open with. In Windows when I see a .mp3 file I know which program will open when I double click on it. In Linux it's a mystery. I like my computer to behave in a predictable manner. In Windows extensions have a meaning. In Linux, why even bother having extensions? In neither OS does the extension tell you about the content…

Out of curiosity I checked what Files (the desktop app) and file (the CLI tool) do in Ubuntu 20.04.

Files says that image.png is a PNG image

  $ file image.png
  image.png: PNG image data, 965 x 720, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced

  $ mv image.png program.exe
According to Files it's a DOS/Windows executable. If I try to open it from there it opens Archvie Manager and displays an error dialog. And yet

  $ file program.exe 
  program.exe: PNG image data, 965 x 720, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
  $ eog program.exe
It loses bash autocompletion on program.exe but eog opens the image.

  $ mv program.exe sound.mp3
Files reports it as MP3 audio. It opens in the sound player program (it has no nome on screen) and does nothing. Of course file correctly identifies the file as PNG. eog sound.mp3 works.

  $ mv sound.mp3 text.pdf
Files says it's a PDF document and opens it in evince, which fails with an error message. eog text.pdf works

A suggestion to Files' authors: check the magic file definition, not the extension, especially when opening files.

What I use extensions for: to remember what a file is, by the name of it when doing ls in the terminal. The extension is more to help me than the OS. I open most of the files I work with by the command line, not in Files. Another reason is that if I send the file to somebody else I want to make it easy for them. So screenshot-2020-11-16_1000.png and not screenshot-2020-11-16_1000 which maybe breaks some of their tools. Third reason: some files must have an extension: header.h, program.c, program.o, program and not header and code, code, code :-)

And yes, programs in *NIX never had extensions. So ls / and not ls.exe /

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#345

Post by pmontra »

Thorrez wrote: post #341
IceWreck wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Linux, why even bother having extensions While the file extension can be lying maliciously or can be just plain incorrect in 1% cases, its informative for the user in the other 99% cases

I agree with you. But pmontra seems to operate differently than that, and have files with mismatching extensions. In that case the extensions tell you something on Windows but not on Linux.

I don't mismatch extensions because I don't want to play tricks to me in the future :-) Sometimes I don't add extensions, usually on plain text files.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#347

Post by oehtXRwMkIs »

Thorrez wrote: post #301
pmontra wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. But I think of the file extension as a way to tell the OS which program I want a file to open with. In Windows when I see a .mp3 file I know which program will open when I double click on it. In Linux it's a mystery. I like my computer to behave in a predictable manner. In Windows extensions have a meaning. In Linux, why even bother having extensions? In neither OS does the extension tell you about the content…

> In Linux it's a mystery. I like my computer to behave in a predictable manner.

You're not really talking about Linux. You're talking about mime types and xdg-open, the de-facto default way Linux desktop environments (not to be confused with distros) handle default applications. You mentioned double clicking so I'm going to assume you were talking about it in the context of a GUI DE opening files from a file manager or the desktop.

xdg-open is configurable and even completely replaceable. For example, I have it replaced with mimeo, which I have a couple hardset rules based on extensions. Any time I don't like its default behavior, I'll add 2 lines to the config file to specify what I want. I personally don't like configuring mime types and stuff itself. It's incredibly predictable because for example I just tell mimeo that anything that ends with pdf should be opened with zathura. I find that Linux tends to be way less mysterious since it's so open and transparent and configurable.

But a valid complaint to this response would be that defaults matter, and that you shouldn't have to tinker to get what you want. So I think in that sense you're thinking of how KDE/GNOME handles this, which last I checked was extremely simple. You just right click a file and set the default application for opening its mimetype. Any future file of this mimetype will be opened by what you specified. And I think mimetypes are just better UX than raw extensions; it's a much better experience telling KDE to open all music files with your music app rather than specifying extensions. And various applications come with .desktop files that let you know what they can handle. So you get a nice list of relevant applications but you can still tell it to open it in whatever you want. Meanwhile in Windows the default behavior is to hide file extensions which I think is actually the worst of both worlds. Using file extensions to inform default applications while hiding them. I find that to be more mysterious.

> In Windows extensions have a meaning. In Linux, why even bother having extensions? In neither OS does the extension tell you about the content of the file. But on Windows the extension does tell you something useful about how the OS interacts with the file.

Again, "Linux" is not a monolith (yes the kernel is monolithic, but you know what I mean) that you can compare directly to Windows. Windows basically has a mime types system but worse (less intelligent with clunkier UI and legacy defaults), and there's nothing you can do to change it. On Linux it depends entirely on what you have setup. For example, for a long time I just never had it set up. There was nothing to "double-click" to begin with, and if I wanted to for example open an image file with my image viewer, I would just type out `imv bruh.png`.

What you're actually debating is xdg-open vs. whatever it's called in Windows. I personally kind of agree with you so I don't use xdg-open. But I'm still using Linux.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#348

Post by simooooo »

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…

Arch and ubuntu booted slower and had choppier UI than windows in my experience

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#349

Post by executesorder66 »

pault wrote: post #303
fartcannon wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology out of the way, advertisements in the menus, right?

I’m so tired of reading this same comment over and over every time someone on HN dares to say they prefer Windows. As if it obviates all of their other points. Also, you turn it off once after install and that’s it.

The fact that there are ads on by default, in an OS that you PAID for, is really so laughable.

There is so much cognitive dissonance in the typical windows users minds. You'd think the average person would not PAY to have LESS control over their own machines. But I guess that microsoft PR has got you all by the balls.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#350

Post by _hao »

aliceryhl wrote: post #339
TylerE wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My Linux computer uses a tiling-based window manager, and damn, I could never go back. The workspaces concept they use is infinitely superior to alt-tab.

Windows has virtual desktops with Win + Alt + Tab to show the options and then you can switch with Win + Alt + Left/Right arrow. Also you can tile your apps in every corner/side you want or size? I use a 43" Dell 4k monitor and it even comes with software (Dell Display Manager) to manage all these options.
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