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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#361

Post by sammorrowdrums »

jamaicahest wrote: post #352
pxeboot wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, most modern Linux distros are pretty god damn nice. This has been my experience recently as well. For laptops at least, as long as you buy a system with known good Linux support, the vast majority of the common complaints I see are not really valid. If you need macOS or Windows to run a specific application exclusive to that platform, great. If your software all runs on Linux, you can gain a lot of freedom…

> as long as you buy a system with known good Linux support And that is where the problem lies. With Windows I can buy pretty much any laptop and expect it to work with. With Linux I have a limited selection of laptops, if I want it to work fully. I'm a developer and I know my way around Linux pretty well, still I usually run into "missing drivers", "package management is broken", "hardware working mostly but not ful…

I sympathize with this as I had a laptop with Nvidia Optimus and installed Linux on it back before it was really supported, which wasn't fun.

However with Dell XPS Linux version, Lenovo has a couple, and also System76 and things you have now hundreds of laptops guaranteed to work and many more that actually still will. Just research them first if you're not sure. These days there is so much info on laptops that work well.

The first class supported ones like XPS (which I'm on my second) get firmware updates etc. it gets easier and easier every year.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#362

Post by f1refly »

simonh wrote: post #342
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 en…

I'm not sure how high your requirement on the "it just werks" factor are, but I can not recommend borgbackup enough for general use. They have a script[0] for local backups one can copy-paste in a cronjob and it takes care of backups reliably from that day on. Saved me from my own stupidity more times than I'm comfortable admitting.

[0] https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/deployment/autom...

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#363

Post by onlydeadheroes »

BRedSox wrote: post #320
Accacin wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally got fed up with tweaking Arch/DWM and switched to Manjaro with KDE on my main machine, I went through all the versions of Manjaro and all had their problems and I finally settled on KDE. Looks good, allows me some tweaking, runs surprisingly light. Although, still some annoying bugs, the most annoying being when I open an application on my 1440p screen, KDE often opens it on my second monitor for no real re…

If you hare looking for a more arch experience again, check out endeavouros. Phil and the Manjaro group have increasingly proved their incompetence.

There is funny business going on at manjaro, but by god do they deliver! I run 5 linux computers at home for various ends and I got tired of putting a new Ubuntu on them every now and then. At the time I looked at manjaro, other rolling distros couldn't even survive an update from the latest installation media to current (sidux). Arch is/was a hobby in itself and the opposite of what I was seeking, but it is an excellent foundation. Manjaro has kept these 5 machines for over 5 years through every possible update and it never broke them. Kernel switching is a joy. Driver installing switching is a joy. This is a very tall order.

That said I do hope endeavouros or others can fill Manjaro's immense boots.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#364

Post by fnord123 »

simonh wrote: post #342
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 en…

> The things that annoy me about Linux are the lack of system upgrade options, you basically have to reinstall from scratch every time

You mean migrating data to new hardware? Or do you mean clicking "Yes, please upgrade" (or typing `sudo do-release-upgrade`) doesn't provide enough options?

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#365

Post by gattr »

simonh wrote: post #342
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 en…

> The things that annoy me about Linux are the lack of system upgrade options, you basically have to reinstall from scratch every time

I'm using Fedora as my main OS (on the laptop since 2011, on the desktop since 2015) and here it's easy to upgrade to the next release, I've been doing it for years (with only 1 full reinstall at some point):

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf-system-u...

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#366

Post by imtringued »

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 use Nord in vim. I wasn't aware of the GTK theme. I'll check it out!

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#367

Post by Thorrez »

oehtXRwMkIs wrote: post #347
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 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…

>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.

Yes, but the github page this post is about is making that same mistake.

> Meanwhile in Windows the default behavior is to hide file extensions which I think is actually the worst of both worlds.

Oh yes, terrible, I can't believe I actually forgot about that. I've modified that on every Windows computer I use.

Thanks for the info! I'll keep this in mind when I eventually switch to Linux like I've been meaning to for a while...

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#368

Post by jeromenerf »

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…

This is ok. I don’t know why everyone should only use one OS for everything. Or one language, or one text editor. It has never been easier to use multiples, in parallel.

I personally use Linux and iOS. My main pain point isn’t Linux but apple lacking proper API to access iCloud services from Linux, or anything than Apple OSes really. I try not to spend too much time "expecting".

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#369

Post by cluoma »

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…

I think this is a common problem on Nvidia. Firefox used to crash for me all the time coming out of hibernate. You can try Nvidia's solution.[1]

[1]: https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/455.38/READ...

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#370

Post by tester34 »

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 so many packages, they are free and safe. I've tried Windows recently, have to install software from the web. It is scary.

If you write it this way (without details) then how people can argue?

What's so scary? I think I'm using 99% of my software from an actual vendor sites and never felt that way. Also using things like virustotal.com.

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