Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 636 posts

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#511

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

swiley wrote: post #506
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."

> "oh why do I have to use a standardized set of abstractions for configuration"

Linux config files absolutely do not follow one standardized convention.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#512

Post by wazoox »

Osiris wrote: post #223
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'm using PopOS (with i3 instead of Gnome) on a System76 laptop. I have some serious issues with resume from sleep. All browsers and electron apps have significant rendering issues after I resume and I have to close them down and restart them. I was able to fix Chrome and Firefox by enabling Vulkan, but Slack still requires a restart after every resume. My external monitors periodically stop working due to an NVIDIA…

I'm running Pop_OS on my IdeaPad and have very few problems. From time to time, the Wifi doesn't come back up after resume (particularly when I've let it in sleep overnight, or switches networks while sleeping) and I have to reboot. As the machine boots in less than 12 seconds that's a tolerable annoyance though.

The machine is Ryzen5/Vega so it requires no proprietary driver though it isn't Linux certified at all. The only piece of non-working hardware is the fingerprint reader (apparently a driver will come someday...).

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#513

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

lenkite wrote: post #403
lukeschlather wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Windows for the past couple years for work after mostly using Ubuntu for several years. I felt the same way about Bluetooth but I've found all the Bluetooth problems I thought were "Linux" are just as bad on Windows. But Windows is just a lot more unstable. Every other week there's some new thing that breaks in a confusing way, and it's all closed source shovelware so I can't even figure out what is c…

Windows updates unstable ? That seems strange. Can you describe what "breaks in a confusing way" ?

Windows updates break things all the time. A common headline in my google feed around Feature Upgrade season is "Reminder: disable Windows Update to avoid problems". Microsoft has made updating windows a liability.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#514

Post by lukeschlather »

Spearchucker wrote: post #298
lukeschlather wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Windows for the past couple years for work after mostly using Ubuntu for several years. I felt the same way about Bluetooth but I've found all the Bluetooth problems I thought were "Linux" are just as bad on Windows. But Windows is just a lot more unstable. Every other week there's some new thing that breaks in a confusing way, and it's all closed source shovelware so I can't even figure out what is c…

Counter example I've been using bluetooth for keyboard, mouse and headphones on my Surface Pro 1 since the Surface Pro 1 was released in I think 2013 or 2014. Never reinstalled Windows, and it works to this day as it did on day 1. I use it 3/4 times a week for maybe 5 hours when I'm not at my PC. I used to try Linux once a year or so but gave up doing that a few years ago because there is no single place to go to for…

It might be that the Surface laptops legitimately "just work." I am using a bleeding-edge MSI gaming laptop and its drivers are very bad. Bluetooth is just the easiest problem to identify and point at in a single word.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#515

Post by joseluisq »

messo wrote: post #376
danmur wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Yeah, I was a Gnome user for past years ago along with Fedora. And I share the same Greg K.H feeling about that such big change called Gnome 3 that honestly I was not able to track it at all from UI perspective on a Fedora machine at that time. They together never convinced me for my daily job. In the other hand, KDE has evolved without that big major difference like Gnome 3 and now with Plasma 5 we have a very polished interface with great performance resulting is a pleasant experience on my daily basis. Basically now with ArchLinux + KDE on my laptop I have everything that I want as developer: an OS performing and booting at high speed (around 10 secs the whole OS + desktop env) and a great desktop experience. Such experience that you can not afford it using Windows or "even" Macos.

That's Linux empowering your computer. So that simple.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#516

Post by jjice »

I've been full time Linux for about a year now, and prior to that I relied heavily on WSL. I'm very happy. I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows on my main machine (Windows for games), but I haven't booted into Windows for over three months (busy semester is mostly the reason). My laptop is full time Linux and I wouldn't have it any other way.

As a developer, Linux is everything I could want, and I really want desktop Linux to continue to gain traction. While DEs like GNOME (which I use) and KDE look and feel modern and come with some great software out of the box, I still run into issues on occasion. The desktop environment is where Linux begins to fall short in my experience.

Windows and MacOS have the advantage of having a single "DE" to worry about, where as Linux offers a variety which are independently developed. That's awesome, but when I run into a bug once a week, it really sucks. I can fix the problem no issue, but it makes me hesitant to recommend GNOME to a friend to relative.

Granted, this can be because I'm using a 4K display with a new version of GNOME. I haven't used KDE or XFCE recently, so maybe they take care of these a lot better. If they are significantly better, please, let me know. I'd love a good out of the box desktop experience on Linux.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#517

Post by cashewchoo »

anonymou2 wrote: post #441
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…

So you install Linux to install a bunch of proprietary software on it? I don't get the point.

Linux with a few blobs is still light-years better for your freedom than osx or windows. Plus, from a platform perspective, software built on windows or osx is categorically not free (in the strictest sense - even if the software is gpl, if it's built for a nonfree os, it's still not very useful in the grandest scheme of things even if it's better than if it were proprietary as well). However, software written for linux can be truly free.

Note when I say "written for" I'm not even really speaking very technically - lots of programs written nowadays won't really have any particular dependency on a library that's only available on a certain OS. But if you're using an application that's written in a platform-agnostic way but the programmer only develops it and uses it on a Mac, it's usually easy to tell. Both in terms of system interop/integration and how bugs are prioritized.

So, even if people do things you don't like on their linux install, it's still far better to have as many people on linux as we can get.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#519

Post by Nkuna »

majkinetor wrote: post #428

There are many factual errors in the text (config files, chocolatey not having moderation or that its worse then linux repos (its much better and more up to date then majority, even Arch), etc.). Most others are not a benefit, just preference. Many are simply omitted where Windows is better (such as MUCH more software, easy of use - for example no automatic mounting on many linux distros of usb drives by default in 2…

Lets be honest - there is 0 technical benefit regarding what OS you use today

Then you're being dishonest. There are many technical reasons to choose Linux over Windows. On mobile so will keep it short.

My desktop lacks Hyper-V. I went years thinking I can't run Docker because of this fact. Turns out the PC has no such limitation when running Linux.

Years ago, tried using Meteor. It was practically unusable as I kept getting error after error. Multiple roundtrips searching and a ton of Windows-specific GitHub issues later, I gave up on the framework.

There are plenty of frameworks and dev tools that are an afterthought for Windows. This, of course, is due to Windows requiring often heavy extras to be compatible whereas Unix systems simply just work. Plenty devs just don't Care that much whether their software runs on Windows. Those that do only consider it months, years even, after releasing for Mac and Linux.

Also relevant: MS have released new software or updates to macOS first. That is a testament to how poor their OS is when a vendor fails to release software primarily targeting its OS.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#520

Post by vel0city »

3np wrote: post #335
vel0city wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use OEM licenses on Windows boxes you build yourself. The main difference with an OEM license and a retail license is that OEM licenses do not come with as much support. The idea is the system builder is supposed to provide the first level of support, while retail licenses are supported by Microsoft directly.

Except that's a breach of the EULA and therefore comparable to piracy.

I don't see where its a breach in the EULA to have the end user also be the manufacturer/builder of the system. Can you point out where its a breach?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Useterms/OEM/Windows/10/UseT...

Post reply on HN