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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#381

Post by vladvasiliu »

willk wrote: post #313
ryukoposting wrote: post #259

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitti…

Your first gripe kind of sounds like DLP software is installed on the system and it is scanning files you're "accessing".

I don't know, my personal windows install which I use for photoshop, lightroom, and the occasional game also has similar issues, and it only has the included windows defender. I've noticed on many computers that whenever there are a bunch of files in a directory, the explorer grinds to a halt.

At work we use clownstrike for our driving-around-with-the-handbrake-on needs, which I have installed on both Linux and Windows, and the former flies while the latter lags all the time (I dual boot, so it's the same exact hardware). Doing something which is fully equivalent, like installing an IntelliJ update takes around a minute on Linux and many more on Windows.

The fan also comes on much more often on Windows than Linux, even though most of my job is done on remote servers via SSH. Under Linux I only hear the fan when I compile something. This morning I booted windows and the fan was running constantly while I was just catching up with a few mails in outlook.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#382

Post by sedatk »

My story is simpler. Microsoft dropped the support for Windows 10 and gave me no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently.

So I installed Fedora on that machine, I learned the process, I went through the hurdles. It wasn’t seamless. But, Fedora never said “I can’t”. When it was over, it was fine.

Only if Microsoft had just let me install Windows 11 and suffer whatever the perf problem my CPU would bring. Then I could consider a hardware upgrade then, maybe.

But, “you can’t install unless you upgrade your CPU” forced me to adopt Linux. More importantly, it gave me a story to tell.

There is a marketing lesson there somewhere, like Torvalds’ famous “you don’t break userspace”, something along the lines of “you don’t break the upgrade path”.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#383

Post by cyberpunk »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

What kinda graphics card do you have in there? I’m considering building one soon.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#384

Post by pimeys »

jraph wrote: post #301
marginalia_nu wrote: post #33

As a long-time Linux user who fairly recently dropped the Windows partition entirely, I do think the remaining chafing points are these: * UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess. And now you don't just have different versions of GTK vs QT to keep track off, but also X vs Wayland, and their various compatibility layers. * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of th…

> Wayland has fractional scaling as a sort-of workaround if you can tolerate the entire screen being blurry Not blurry for me on KDE and I wouldn't tolerate blurry, I'd prefer the imperfect solution of using bigger fonts.

KDE Plasma 6 might be the only desktop that does this right on Linux.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#385

Post by Nihilartikel »

drillsteps5 wrote: post #297

I think Linux is not quite there as gaming system. Simply due to games' compatibility (and I don't play latest and hottest titles, more like Cities-Skylines/Transport Fever/Anno/Satisfactory etc). Plus to my knowledge NVidia drivers are still an issue. But for literally anything else I think it's ready. Just browsing? Office work (writing/spreadsheets/presentations/email)? Development? Media production? You're good.…

My quick rebuttal is that gaming is pretty close to 'there' if you pick a distro that prioritizes it. I run bazzite-DX (nvidia rtx4070) for dev and pleasure and gaming there is ON POINT. I don't play any anti-cheat games, but Cities Skylines, Doom Eternal, Cyberpunk (with full raytracing and HDR), GTA5-Remaster, etc, all run like champs. As of last month, full HDR10 mode started working in chrome and video players too, so hdr videos get those popping brights.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#386

Post by tracker1 »

consp wrote: post #177
ColinWright wrote: post #3

Still reading the article, but early on it says: "Also, is it weird that I still remember the specs of my first computer, 22 years later?" My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1, 1.78 Mz Z80 with 16 KB RAM. That was 48 years ago. Is it weird that I remember that?

First PC: 8088 with 640K, then a 286 with 2MB! The memory! First own "PC": Atari ST 1040e, 1MB, with supercharger to run DOS and a 30MB hard disk the size of a regular PC. Donation from a family member.

First family PC was a used IBM PC XT, 8088 w/ 640kb ram and a cga card with an amber monochrome monitor attached. I remember getting a 14.4 modem on it, and it would freeze, had to force it to 9600bps. Then managed to wranle a 486sx w/ 4mb ram and an EGA card and display.

First decent computer I built was an AMD 5x86 133mhz with the larger cache module and a whopping 64mb ram that I'd traded for some ANSi work. The irony is for some things it ran circles around the Pentiums that friends had, for others it just slogged. Ran OS/2 warp like a beast though. Ever since then, I've mostly maxed out the ram in my systems... I wend from 128gb down to 96GB for my AM5 build though since the most I've ever used is around 75gb, and I wanted to stick to a single pair at a higher speed.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#387

Post by newsoftheday »

byronic wrote: post #229
kuerbel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed fedora yesterday. Instead of steam i am hoping that GOG with heroic games launcher will work nicely. Idk, I want to support drm free software so if it's on gog, I buy it there.

[obviously YMMV, take me with a grain of salt etc] I actually tried Fedora first (thinking dev-first workflows) but ended up switching to Ubuntu w/x11 for gaming. A lot of that had to do with Fedora's release schedule (rather than Ubuntu's 2-year LTS) breaking working GOG/steam/wine-based apps on a rotating basis. Since switching to a defaults lifestyle / Ubuntu with x11 I deal with NVIDIA driver compatibility issues…

I've used Ubuntu since 2006 and started using Kubuntu (I prefer KDE) about 2 years ago. Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) are very solid for gaming. It puzzles me how often I see highly customized distros like Bazzite and CachyOS touted for gaming after looking into some of the wild tweaks those distros do; it's amazing to me that they run at all.

PS I keep Snap disabled.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#388

Post by wsve »

I tried to make this shift, but managed to somehow brick Linux Mint, so now I'm back on Windows for now...

I was already not very impressed when I attempted to okay a video file, and VLC told me I didn't have the right codec installed, and I had to run a shell command to get the codec... I have to open a shell to watch a common video file?

But then while attempting to install some packages to install Steam (which I also needed shell commands for...), I updated some kernel package, as instructed, rebooted my machine, and now Mint just sits there doing nothing right after I get through the bootloader. Can't seem to run any commands to recover either.

Bricking Mint is annoying, but I was much more astonished that I saw so many people hold up Mint as this beacon of user friendly Linux distros, but to do even the most basic things, I had to start running commands on the shell. That is NOT user friendly. I'll probably try again soon, but I'm pretty disappointed in my first experience.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#389

Post by uiframeworks »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #33

As a long-time Linux user who fairly recently dropped the Windows partition entirely, I do think the remaining chafing points are these: * UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess. And now you don't just have different versions of GTK vs QT to keep track off, but also X vs Wayland, and their various compatibility layers. * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of th…

[dead]

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#390

Post by reconnecting »

geophile wrote: post #380
reconnecting wrote: post #5

Apple forced me to switch to Linux! Linux should consider paying Microsoft and Apple for new customers. Perhaps the customer acquisition funnel is quite long, at least it took 20 years of using Apple in my case before switching to Debian ( Xfce ), but it was worth it!

For a long time, I had a MBP (this is in Intel days), with a Linux VM. It was like a reverse mullet, party in front (multimedia), work in back (dev). And then: - Butterfly keyboard - Touchbar - M-series CPUs, which, while technically awesome, did not allow for Linux VMs. So I switched to System76/Linux (Pop OS) and that has been wonderful, not to mention, much cheaper.

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