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How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

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Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#41

Post by [deleted] »

davidscolgan wrote: post #19
doxavore wrote: post #17

Is there a pleasant way to run a Linux laptop today with decent drawing/touchscreen support, HiDPI, and working dock/undock multi-monitor support? I have used various distros on and off over the years, but today I can run Windows 10 on a Surface Book 2, and the non-development portions of my experience are spectacular, for the low, low price of selling my soul: lazy file syncing with OneDrive, pen support combined wi…

My strategy has for a long time been to run Windows 10 for all of my browsers and games and paint programs and then run a virtual machine of linux with VirtualBox. I just use terminal Vim, so I run the virtual machine headless and ssh into it with a cygwin terminal. It's a bit janky but no more janky than actually running Linux on a laptop. No worries about my HDMI projector connection working, no fighting with wifi,…

[deleted]

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#42

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

saagarjha wrote: post #40
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. Well it doesn't help that Linux desktop is backed by one of the most condescending cultures that ever stalked the internet. Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the way Linux works just doesn't jive with a lot of people? Like, everything has a middleman involved. Driv…

> Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the way Linux works just doesn't jive with a lot of people? Like, everything has a middleman involved. Drivers for your hardware? Have to be merged into the kernel. Applications? Should go through (all of) the distro package repo(s) unless you want it to be a pain …? This is a really strange perspective, since I've found Linux to remove middlemen. No more searching a manu…

Getting the driver from the manufacturer directly is somehow involving a middleman in your world, but having that vendor have to submit kernel patches and hope they're blessed by the community, merged, and eventually distributed by the distros isn't?

> No more waiting for Microsoft to roll out fixes; you can apply your own changes yourself.

You don't have to wait, since vendors can roll out new drivers. And what's the equivalent on Linux? Pollute your system with an unnecessary kernel dev environment and compile from source. Personally, I think having to resort to that for such a simple operation when it is almost 2020 is a gigantic failure.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#43

Post by saagarjha »

briandear wrote: post #24
shmerl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company doesn't need to be a nasty anti-competitive jerk to pay developers.

What’s anti competitive?

Having all software distribution for their embedded devices go through a centralized authority?

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#45

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #39
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have Windows-only software, you can always just be a "pirate", flip Microsoft off and block all updates, telemetry and whatnot It's an awful lot of work to maintain this, and of dubious value with the end result being running a second-rate OS.

Windows is a first rate OS saddled with some stupid bullshit that's been piled on top of it. And be fair, maintaining a Linux configuration just the way you like it is a lot of work too. If it weren't, there wouldn't be hundreds of slightly-different distros.

> Windows is a first rate OS saddled with some stupid bullshit that's been piled on top of it.

I'm sure there are good bits of Windows - Microsoft has a lot of very smart people working for them. But I've never experienced Windows as a first rate OS - it's always had bullshit on top (and beneath) it.

> And be fair, maintaining a Linux configuration just the way you like it is a lot of work too. If it weren't, there wouldn't be hundreds of slightly-different distros.

Maybe "just the way you like it", but "functional and not sending your private information off to a dubious corporation" is pretty easy.

When there are issues with a Linux install, it's usually transparent enough to debug. Windows? Opaque all the way down. Ask for help online? They say "check your anti-virus; if that doesn't work, reinstall your OS". In what world is that sane?

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#46

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

shmerl wrote: post #4

> If you’re a serious gamer, Linux won’t satisfy you (yet). That's moot. Linux gaming today is a lot better than ever before, considering advances in graphics APIs (Vulkan), increasing amount of native Linux games and rapidly improving support for Windows games through Wine, dxvk, vkd3d, including projects like Proton integrated into Steam client and etc. Many former Windows gamers find it acceptable to switch. So at…

While the work Valve has done improving the Linux gaming situation is actually quite impressive, 'serious' PC gamers already do enough configuration tweaking and working around problems already, it doesn't strike me that they'll really want to deal with even more of that.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#47

Post by gst »

I've used Linux since the early 1.x kernel versions, but for my next laptop I'm thinking about switching to a MacBook. Not because of the software (I prefer Linux to macOS), but because of the hardware.

Apple seems to be the only manufacturer that so far escaped the race to the bottom and which still produces somewhat premium hardware. I want: a hidpi screen with lots of nits and a good contrast, a trackpoint or a huge touchpad, good battery life and somewhat light weight.

In the past Thinkpads worked really well for that, but recently I had multiple issues with Lenovo hardware. I'm currently using a X1C3 and originally considered upgrading to a X1C6 or T480s, but given there are known issues such as the throttling bug (https://github.com/erpalma/throttled) that Lenovo hasn't fixed in over half a year I'm very close to giving up on Thinkpads.

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#48

Post by AmericanChopper »

Theodores wrote: post #23

I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. I was guilty of hanging on to the dual boot for a few years but never ended up using the Windows side or any of those programs that I thought were so fundamentally important to my life. I am not sure why people can't just give Ubuntu a go on a brand new machine rather than may…

>I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long

Whether I’m capable or not is irrelevant. I consider the extra effort required to configure and maintain a Linux desktop to be a waste of time, because I’m perfectly satisfied with my MacBook, which doesn’t require all that extra effort (for what I consider to be an inferior user experience to boot).

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#49

Post by shmerl »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #46
shmerl wrote: post #4

> If you’re a serious gamer, Linux won’t satisfy you (yet). That's moot. Linux gaming today is a lot better than ever before, considering advances in graphics APIs (Vulkan), increasing amount of native Linux games and rapidly improving support for Windows games through Wine, dxvk, vkd3d, including projects like Proton integrated into Steam client and etc. Many former Windows gamers find it acceptable to switch. So at…

While the work Valve has done improving the Linux gaming situation is actually quite impressive, 'serious' PC gamers already do enough configuration tweaking and working around problems already, it doesn't strike me that they'll really want to deal with even more of that.

My point is, that Linux is already well usable for gaming, including for very demanding games. "Serious gamer" is too much of a generalization, to assume what people are willing or not willing to do to configure their systems.

Many gamers are actually very much into tweaking things as you say, from custom PC builds to game mods and other customizations. They see configurability as a benefit, not as a downside. So Linux is a natural fit.

Besides, Linux gaming is quite accessible today without any extensive manual tweaking (while you can always do that if you want to, a lot more than on Windows).

Re: How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too

#50

Post by Theodores »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #34
Theodores wrote: post #23

I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. I was guilty of hanging on to the dual boot for a few years but never ended up using the Windows side or any of those programs that I thought were so fundamentally important to my life. I am not sure why people can't just give Ubuntu a go on a brand new machine rather than may…

> I find it amusing that so people who are quite capable feel compelled to hold onto the hand-rails for so long and won't just dive in to Linux. Well it doesn't help that Linux desktop is backed by one of the most condescending cultures that ever stalked the internet. Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the way Linux works just doesn't jive with a lot of people? Like, everything has a middleman involved. Driv…

Patronising and condescending seems to be something you know a lot about.
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