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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#501

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

whatch wrote: post #408
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 have the same effective level of support which is to say none-at-all or via the community of volunteers. I find community support for linux much much better (askubuntu, superuser and numerous blogs rather than official ms forums). Not sure if this is because I am software developer and am used to stackoverflow-like kind of support or windows "community support" is a mess.

Official (free) support from Microsoft is pure garbage, but at least in my experience it is much easier to get support from the Windows community than Linux for a few reasons: 1) no ideological bullshit, 2) there aren't 100 different distros, 3) the way things are done doesn't change drastically every few years.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#502

Post by sgtnasty »

MrDresden wrote: post #491

Who cares which is better. If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better. Also can we just stop this endless bickering over irrelevant things like this. I say this as a Linux user for a little over a decade, and someone who can not tolerate using Windows with its extreme need for bad system gui to be able to achieve anythi…

I get what you are saying and agree. However the reason these types of articles appear in the internet is because the linux desktop needs more market share. More means the ability to get better support from other organizations OR to get open source replacements of apps and drivers. Linux needs better market share to get better, so you get stuff like this posted.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#503

Post by craftinator »

MrDresden wrote: post #491

Who cares which is better. If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better. Also can we just stop this endless bickering over irrelevant things like this. I say this as a Linux user for a little over a decade, and someone who can not tolerate using Windows with its extreme need for bad system gui to be able to achieve anythi…

> If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better.

On a personal level, I completely agree with this sentiment. If grandma wants to use windows, macOS, or whatever, she should do so!

When a Windows update fails halfway through and can't boot to Windows, or when macOS can't connect to it's all powerful binary validation server and her system becomes unusable, she's going to call me. Okay, fine, I'll play tech support for my relatives because they've chosen to use an unstable system. Same as if my junker car broke down, I'd call my uncle, because he's a mechanic, and he'd berate me for not having a reliable car, then fix it. What's family for.

However, my workplace is Windows only. I've wasted literally hundreds of hours fighting against Windows to make firewall and server settings correct (and fixed them again when it updates and borks the settings) for network applications that I've wrote. Something that would take about an hour to write a bash script for, push it to all the computers if they were Linux, and they'd never ever fail after that. It's just mind boggling that people accept this kind of behavior, and it's very damaging in the workplace. So I'm gonna keep pushing for Linux as standard at the workplace, and run whatever you want at home.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#504

Post by MrDresden »

craftinator wrote: post #503
MrDresden wrote: post #491

Who cares which is better. If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better. Also can we just stop this endless bickering over irrelevant things like this. I say this as a Linux user for a little over a decade, and someone who can not tolerate using Windows with its extreme need for bad system gui to be able to achieve anythi…

> If it works for you and your situation, great. Stop trying to make me change what works for me because you believe it would somehow be better. On a personal level, I completely agree with this sentiment. If grandma wants to use windows, macOS, or whatever, she should do so! When a Windows update fails halfway through and can't boot to Windows, or when macOS can't connect to it's all powerful binary validation serve…

Yes, and that is because Windows isn't working for you. But I know of plenty of lay people and professionals who use Windows, and enjoy it. For them it works.

And I know of plenty of people, me included, which would walk away from a job if Windows was a requirement (which I have done after a mandatory switch was made post hiring).

So you do you, and I'll do me, and please can we just move onto something more important.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#505

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

keutoi wrote: post #388
Nginx487 wrote: post #371

"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…

It is a stereotype, but the statement itself is not an exaggeration. An average user has most of the software he needs even in linux. It is not foreign to the user if it is the first one (if it is default) he/she encounters.

> An average user has most of the software he needs even in linux.

"Average User" is a strawman. The average human has fewer than two legs, yet we do not design things with the assumption that no one has two legs.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#506

Post by swiley »

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…

>regularly dropping to command line for configuring my system

I've really never understood this complaint. "oh why do I have to use a standardized set of abstractions for configuration instead of bizarre bespoke GUIs that are different for every piece of software."

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#507

Post by Nginx487 »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #458
Nginx487 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got your point, but as a developer working on User Privacy products, I consider "software as a service" model personally unacceptable. I do not force anyone into my philosophy, but I will try to keep my offline software functional as long as possible, before maybe I find self-sufficient solution to replace it (like I did with migrating all Evernote documents into Nextcloud). And again, I emphasized "software of tha…

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried wps office? I found it to be more compatible with MS Office than Libreoffice and it works on Linux. Furthermore I'd like to know its limits, but only have relatively simple excel files and never used scripts within excel.

I used it couple of times, my wife's laptop came with pre-installed WPS. I definitely liked the product more than Libre Office, it is fast, could fit most of average user needs and compatible with MS Office.

My needs are far from average though, as I mentioned in the post. Not sure its spreadsheet editor would even recognize what's happening in my Excel files.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#508

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

einpoklum wrote: post #404
Nginx487 wrote: post #371

"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…

> that's not true.... I keep using Windows A counter-example doesn't disprove a general point. You're describing a strong tie-in in your work environment to specific commercial software articles that are unavailable on Linux. This does not characterize most people (or even a large enough minority). Now, you could make the argument that people interact with others using MS-Office documents, and that support for them i…

> In general, it _is_ true that people use the Operation System that came installed on their system. Most people are unable, or feel unable, to install an OS themselves and would not feel comfortable taking responsibility for choosing a different OS for their computing. Most do not even see this as a choice they are making.

This suggests that, if given the option, people would buy a computer with Linux preinstalled instead of Windows. Yet, when such things were tried, people did not. Windows is pre-installed because it is the OS people want and need, not the other way around. There are an uncountable number of specialized applications for niche workflows available on Windows that are not available on Linux.

As briefly mentioned by the parent, a large part of the problem is how Linux approaches software: no real binary compatibility, for instance, means that you need this army of maintainers and packagers to keep software working. Who is going to do that for these niche pieces of software? I know that to many developers the idea of not-constantly-maintained software being used by people is an existential career threat and therefore a high crime, but the rest of the world has work to do and is totally fine using VB6 applications last compiled in 2004 because it allows them to actually get things done.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#509

Post by dsr_ »

jamaicahest wrote: post #489
jamaicahest wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Did any of you replying actual read my comment or did you just auto-reply "buy a supported Linux laptop"? I said ". With Windows I can buy pretty much any laptop and expect it to work with", and you are saying "Just research if the laptop you want to buy works with Linux", you are completely missing the point. I do not want to have to bother researching if a specific laptop will run Linux and research if all the hard…

I, too, would like to live in a world where I do not need to research if a particular laptop will work with Linux.

The reason I don't live in that world is because laptop manufacturers, in the general course of things, don't ship their laptops with Linux; they ship them with Windows.

The obvious answer is to buy from manufacturers who ship their laptops with Linux. You could try Dell or System76.

Incidentally, it would be nice to live in a world where I didn't have to check for MacOS compatibility; I could just buy MacOS from Apple and run it on whatever. The answer is very similar: if you want that experience, buy it from the laptop manufacturer that ships their machines with MacOS.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#510

Post by modo_mario »

roytries wrote: post #425
sysrpl wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent author reporting back. I am going to have to sort of disagree with you there (in Lumbergh voice). In all seriousness though, you are wrong on all points. Sorry, yes you are wrong. Rather than write a point by point rebuttal, against my common sense (you know, the thing about arguing with someone one the Internet) I'll just write a few paragraphs, provide some professional anecdotal and maybe quantitative evide…

I find this an extremely weird set of argument. Opening the task manager or explorer takes less time than I can measure on both Windows and Linux... what kind of metric is this? As for background services, of course they spend (at that moment unused resources). But you completely forego that they have an actual usefulness. Indexing files makes searching later faster. Prefetching makes loading commonly used programs f…

>Opening the task manager or explorer takes less time than I can measure on both Windows and Linux... what kind of metric is this?

I feel like a lot of people here are devs running reasonably modern computers but as someone running dualboots at home (manjaro KDE) and at work from time to time dealing with the kind of desktops most people use in their day to day life.... (As in they're not actually that old but weren't top of the line when bought either) ....this is actually one of my biggest gripes with it.

Windows really is slow as fuck. Sometimes it's really noticeable on the somewhat older hardware but on the other stuff it doesn't really annoy you until you compare because we're talking very short delays, little bits of lags....the thing is...It's there for just about everything. There's not a whole lot that feels instantaneous which makes it all perfectly usable but feel off at the same time.

I didn't even think about it till I switched to Linux at home and noticed just how snappy stuff feels. MacOS has felt similarly snappy the few times i've used it but I don't use it enough to really comment.

>As for software, on Windows you're free to install all the software you want (just as on Linux), some software is not so nice, just as on Linux. I find it hard to blame Windows itself for that. Microsoft does not curate all the software you can install it, and a user is free to install what they want. The only OSes where this is really different are mobile OSes.

Tbh I thought similar (and mostly it'll still be true) until I tried to use a playstation 3 controller (a very common item at least at the time) for a windows only game. It worked out of the box on Linux and I believe an xbox controller would have worked like that and on windows as well but to get the ps3 one I had working on windows i had to jump trough hoops, change some stuff so i could then disable driver signature enforcement and tweak a few other things only to give up in the end when it still didn't work after I had managed. Even if it worked it wouldn't work every time because the ways of getting around permanently disabling signed drivers constantly keep being patched by Windows.

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