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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#371

Post by Nginx487 »

"Most people use Windows on the desktop because it's the default"

That's just a stereotype, and that's not true. I keep using Windows (hardened and almost isolated Parallels instance of Windows 7), because Linux has serious lack of software I need.

I need fully functional MS Office, including API bindings for data import to Excel, and no, Libre Office Calc does not have even 20% of features I need. Of course, I need 3rd party addons, like Grammarly for MS Office.

I need Enterprise Architect, modeling software of that class simply does not exist on Linux.

I need Photoshop (I have one since old good times when Adobe offered lifetime license), I use it occasionally and not 100% effective, but nope, there are no functional open-source alternatives for Linux with the same comfort of use.

People don't use Linux not because it is not pre-installed, they don't use it because it's a totally foreign ecosystem. Doing a fully functional ports of software people use under Windows would've probably moved 1% share of Linux on desktops, but it does not happen, partly because open-sourse software designers do not recognize the problem, partly because it's an immense amount of work, impossible without huge financial and human investments with unclear outcome.

I don't even say about technical issues, like total lack of backward compatibility, it's mostly a headache for techies like us.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#372

Post by tester34 »

ur-whale wrote: post #287
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 your average user, I find the user interface on windows nicer Yes, especially the ads, they're so colorful and shiny ! /s>

which ads?

I do ask seriously - I'm using Win Pro and I'm not sure what you're talking about

recommendations of installing Microsoft Chrome?

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#373

Post by joelthelion »

mherrmann wrote: post #346

20y on Windows, 2y on Mac, 2y on Linux: Linux is sometimes painful, but beats the alternatives. Pros: Customizability, speed, MS/Apple can't dictate what's on my PC. Cons: Wifi issues, screen tearing, time spent configuring.

Screen tearing is a thing of the past with Wayland. Granted, not everyone can use it yet.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#374

Post by aldanor »

For some user categories, Linux is simply not a choice, whether you like it or not.

E.g., for musicians. There's Reaper/Bitwig, but you no longer have Live/Cubase/Logic/etc. Your multi-$k audio interface no longer works because its proprietary drivers only work on macos/win too. None of the hundreds of plugins you have work on Linux either. So it's between win/macos most of the time and the choice there is obvious.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#375

Post by eptcyka »

est31 wrote: post #87
mikeryan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

File system access? Ability to Play a Video stream without a user click? Access to non-CORS enabled APIs if needed?

Most apps don't need that feature. In fact, the apps which insist on electron experience often misuse it. Think of the zoom daemon that remained on mac desktops even if you uninstalled zoom.

Zoom has nothing to do with electron

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#376

Post by messo »

danmur wrote: post #340
heavyset_go wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, most modern Linux distros are pretty god damn nice. I agree, and what really sold me was Plasma Desktop, as someone that couldn't stand KDE 3 & 4. It used to be that GNOME was the desktop environment you could turn into a Windows or macOS clone, but it looks like that switched with GNOME 3 and KDE 5. I have Plasma Desktop set up[1] to take advantage of my macOS muscle memory when it comes to the GUI and key…

I'll have to try KDE again, I always found it really messy and disorganised (but that was many years ago). It's really hard not to have some bias, but I used OSX for work for about five years, currently been using Windows at work for about two years, and I still find Gnome to be the most usable and aesthetically pleasing desktop by far.

Do give KDE a try. I recently helped a friend migrate from Windows 10 to KDE. I have personally been using i3, XFCE and GNOME back and forth during the last decade, and the one time I tried KDE a few years back, it did not boot to desktop so I just switched back to GNOME.

After helping my friend setting up KDE I discovered the level of polish and customizability that KDE now offers. That same day I installed KDE on my own machine and soon after removed every GNOME component from my system. I have been using it the last few weeks and really feel at home!

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#377

Post by pjmlp »

g_p wrote: post #336
3np wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you gave it a serious try? I've been Linux only for several years now and things have stabilized a lot in past years. Ubuntu's kind of lost its way recently though (snaps/apt mess, went a tad bit early with pushing Wayland as default). The derivatives like Mint, Manjaro, PopOS and Zorin seem to be the way to go for the average user. The one thing that might trip you up is (these days rare) hard…

On the discrete GPU front, most AMD users will be using FOSS drivers that are built into the kernel, plus the standard open source Mesa. In fact, AMD actively recommend you use the open source ones. I think the community radv vulkan driver also outperforms anything proprietary they offer. Nvidia still requires proprietary out-of-tree drivers and causes breakage every so often, but AMD is just like Intel integrated gr…

> Never tried it with an AMD APU, but I would hope it would be the same with the open source amdgpu driver.

It is a big regression that won't ever be fixed, OpenGL 3.3 instead of OpenGL 4.1 and barely working hardware video decoding.

Yep, it is a 10 years old hardware, yet Windows 10 drivers are perfectly capable of handling it properly.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#378

Post by mackrevinack »

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…

pop_os updates are fairly seamless most of the time but I usually do a clean reset anyway since I wrote a 'post-install' bash script to setup up my computer exactly how I like it. its a bit of work to set up but I would definitely recommend it.

i have all my program settings files saved in a syncthing folder and the script creates softlinks where those files are supposed to be. dconf let's you backup and restore a ton of settings in one go. the only thing I have to do after the script is done is log into websites and then my computer is fully set up

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#379

Post by imtringued »

duxup wrote: post #237
sergeykish wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It has been ages since I had to reinstall windows. I was a thing I just did once in a while more than a decade ago but I haven't had to on multiple systems for a long time now.

Unfortunately I always got my windows updates as soon as possible which meant lots of bricked systems because Microsoft doesn't test their updates.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#380

Post by pjmlp »

RMPR wrote: post #333
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell XPS 17 from 2020. Sound doesn’t work. Thee we drivers exist. For the first time in over a decade I had to install drivers manually. And don’t even start with hibernate or even just waking up. I’ve never rebooted a laptop so many times. And what’s the deal with flatpak? A screen shot app is not 700mb? WTF?

It really surprises me since there's a developer edition coming natively with Ubuntu (it only exists for the XPS 13 though). Is the underlying hardware that different?

The Asus EEE PC that I bought (1215B) also came with Linux, when I say support Linux OEMs I meant it, yet not everything worked as expected, e.g. wlan and hibernate were an adventure during the first years.

And then the whole story with AMD open source driver, means I am unable to take full advantage of the GPU in Linux.

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