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I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

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Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#411

Post by azangru »

lpcvoid wrote: post #317
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come back when I can run Linux on a laptop that has 12+ hours battery life, runs fast, that’s lightweight, quiet and doesn’t cause infertility from the heat when I put it on my lap…. Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. Of course if you are a gamer, ignore everything I just wrote.

Just buy any modern Laptop? What you describe hasn't been an issue for at least ten years now.

> any modern Laptop

When I looked up Dell Pro Max 16, I found a thread complaining that its camera doesn't work: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=307529

And there are numerous other reports of how various modern laptops have various problems under linux.

So no, "any modern laptop" is not a good recommendation. It should be specific models.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#412

Post by globalnode »

snek_case wrote: post #101
blauditore wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop Lol, that's what Microsoft tried 10+ years ago and everybody gave them shit for it, especially Apple fans. Now Apple is "inventing" this again.

Ubuntu also tried this with Unity. They were hoping that Ubuntu would become more popular on tablets if they had a more tablet-friendly UI... They imposed this on desktop users even though nobody asked for it and basically nobody used Linux on a tablet. It was kind of a disaster. Ubuntu is a commercial entity though, so yeah, prone to the same kind of bad management decisions. as Microsoft and Apple. At least with Li…

yep ubuntu lost me with the tablet ui and snaps.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#413

Post by xenonite »

dualogy wrote: post #309
fao_ wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KDE supports this! It's called the "global menu", and has search built in. GTK app support is iffy, though

Since I found with searchable app menus / start menus that I don't ever navigate through menus but just start typing, I ditched the menu entirely and have KRunner bound to the Win key. Not only is it fine with any desktop app GTK or not (that packagers have ensured will install with its FreeDesktop metadata file or some such), it supports all the enabled KDE Search plugins. So I don't ever open a calc app again, eith…

Sorry but no, the parent commenters looked for a global menu within an application (File -> Open, File -> Save, etc.)

by the way, on macOS the global menu is searchable, too. Shortcut is Command+Shift+/

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#414

Post by 3form »

tombert wrote: post #365
shevy-java wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it was horrible. It is similar to GNOME here - a design for tablets and smartphones. It simply does not work on the desktop computer.

I disagree with this characterization. I don't run Gnome now (since I have more fun hacking on Sway), but I really don't think that the characterization of it being a "tablet desktop" is actually very fair. I found Gnome to be very productive, and actually extremely keyboard focused. Outside of a tiling window manager like Sway or i3, I actually have found it more keyboard-centric than any other desktop I've used. Th…

> I feel like everyone hated on Gnome because it was different. They tried it for ten minutes, didn't bother trying to actually learn how to use it, declared it as "shit", and moved on

Anecdote time.

I was using GNOME for a substantial amount of time, despite all the issues that it was giving me - the regressions, removing functionality, breaking extensions every so often; but the final straw that broke the camel's back was a tablet thing. At some point I think the ability to resize the left panel in Nautilus went away? Or maybe was never there to begin with. In any case, I found a discussion about the exact issue where the outlook was that resizing the left panel will not be added, as there's no way to signal the ability to resize it on touch screens.

At this point I decided that enough is enough and moved to KDE.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#415

Post by tombert »

peanut-walrus wrote: post #7

I've been a Linux admin for 25 years but up until a few months ago my personal computer has been windows (gaming desktop) or Mac (laptop). I decided to give desktop Linux another shot and I'm glad I did. I was prepared for a lot of jankiness but figured I have enough experience to fix whatever needs fixing. Surprisingly, this has not been the case at all, the PC has been not only as stable as Windows or Mac but also…

I've been running desktop Linux for about eighteen years, though I did take a break and run a Macbook for about four years.

It's a little upsetting that Windows has gotten so terrible, because I think in a lot of ways the NT Kernel is a better piece of software than the Linux kernel. Drivers are simply easier to install and they generally don't require a reboot and they don't require messing with kernel modules, IO is non-blocking by default, and a bunch of other things that are cool and arguably better than Linux.

The problem is that, while the kernel is an important part of an operating system, it's not the only part. Even if the NT kernel were the objectively best piece of software ever to be written by humans, that still doesn't change the fact that Windows has become a pretty awful mess. They have loaded the OS with so much crap (and ads now!), the Windows Update tool routinely breaks your computer, their recovery/repair tools simply do not work, their filesystem is geriatric and has been been left behind compared to stuff like ZFS, btrfs, and APFS, and they don't really seem determined to fix any of this stuff.

Even if the Linux kernel were to be slightly worse, it's still good enough. Even if you do have to muck with kernel modules it's not that hard now with DKMS. Even if the IO is blocking by default epoll has been around for decades and works fine.

So at that point, if the kernel is good enough, and if we can get userland decent enough, then desktop Linux is better than Windows. Linux is good enough, without ads, with recovery tools that actually work, and performs comparably or better than Windows.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#416

Post by lifetimerubyist »

surgical_fire wrote: post #211
lifetimerubyist wrote: post #54

I replaced Windows with Linux about 6 months ago. Then I ran into a game I really wanted to play but it didn’t run well with Proton (not kernel anti-cheat, just bad performance) after all the tweaks so I just reserved to dual booting with Windows 10. After not using Windows for so long, I came to realize that Windows is just as much a mess as Linux just in different ways. You get used to the quirks so you don’t notic…

> Then I ran into a game I really wanted to play but it didn’t run well with Proton Out of curiosity, which game? I promise I am not asking as a gotcha. Just genuinely curious. I don't play many new games on PC (normally I play recent games on consoles). What I play on PC is older/niche games. I have a couple of oddballs that I could not make work on Proton. Others had weird issues that got fixed over time. Sometimes…

The game is called HROT it’s an indie “boomer shooter”. The game was first locked to 30fps which is horrible for an FPS. Then I got that figured out, but FPS was all over the place and it felt basically unplayable to me even though I was often getting 100+ FPS. Frame pacing was absolutey FUBAR’d no matter which version of Proton or Wine, so even though frames were high it still felt terrible to play. So I just decided to create a Windows dual-boot just for the odd game. Now I can get a locked framerate to my monitor refresh and the game feels great to play.

It’s basically “Soviet Quake”. Very moody atmosphere with just weird random details in the game. Amazing level design.

On the flip side. The original Max Payne does not play on Windows but it works perfectly on Linux for me.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#417

Post by cyberax »

snek_case wrote: post #101
blauditore wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop Lol, that's what Microsoft tried 10+ years ago and everybody gave them shit for it, especially Apple fans. Now Apple is "inventing" this again.

Ubuntu also tried this with Unity. They were hoping that Ubuntu would become more popular on tablets if they had a more tablet-friendly UI... They imposed this on desktop users even though nobody asked for it and basically nobody used Linux on a tablet. It was kind of a disaster. Ubuntu is a commercial entity though, so yeah, prone to the same kind of bad management decisions. as Microsoft and Apple. At least with Li…

I liked Unity! Especially the global menu that macOS also has. I was disappointed when Ubuntu stopped supporting it.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#418

Post by bigstrat2003 »

temporallobe wrote: post #327
blauditore wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop Lol, that's what Microsoft tried 10+ years ago and everybody gave them shit for it, especially Apple fans. Now Apple is "inventing" this again.

They also seem to be reinventing Windows Vista (visually).

That's fine by me. Vista was by far the best looking Windows release imo. I would be using Aero right now if I could.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#419

Post by cyberax »

debo_ wrote: post #351
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think Tohoe is much worse! Windows 8 is fundamentally just Windows 7 with a full screen start menu. This is a dumb usability downgrade, but unless you went out of your way to install Metro apps, it wasn't such a big change. Your apps worked the same way they always had.

Mac OS Touhou would probably be better received than Mac OS Tahoe.

Well, Bad Apple!! video is pretty neat after all. Perhaps Apple can be just less Bad?

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#420

Post by tombert »

Salgat wrote: post #230
peanut-walrus wrote: post #7

I've been a Linux admin for 25 years but up until a few months ago my personal computer has been windows (gaming desktop) or Mac (laptop). I decided to give desktop Linux another shot and I'm glad I did. I was prepared for a lot of jankiness but figured I have enough experience to fix whatever needs fixing. Surprisingly, this has not been the case at all, the PC has been not only as stable as Windows or Mac but also…

My experience, as a software developer, is that both Windows and Linux desktop are great. The biggest advantage Windows has is better support for desktop applications that are used by a lot of people, which is just the nature of Windows being more popular for desktop users, and is why I use it. With Linux, it's more likely you'll have to be a bit more savvy with occasional issues. To note, with official Linux support…

> To note, with official Linux support on Windows, it's trivial for me to get everything I want as a developer on Windows, so that's never been a hard blocker for me.

Maybe not as a developer, but as a user I still think WSL is only kind of superficially a solution. You still are stuck with an update process that happens automatically and can brick your computer and recovery tools that, as far as I can tell, have never actually worked for anyone in history. You're still stuck with NTFS, which was a perfectly fine filesystem thirty years ago but now is missing basic features, like competent snapshotting/backups, and instead you have to rely on System Restore, which again doesn't actually work.

I mean, yeah, you can do `sudo apt install neovim`, and that's kind of cool I guess, but the problems with Windows, to me are far deeper and cannot be solved with a virtualization layer on top.

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