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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#531

Post by Joe_Cool »

wackget wrote: post #493
Orygin wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess I thought you were talking about Windows there. There are 4 (5?) different UI paradigms within Windows, and doing one thing sometimes requires you to interact with each of them. At least on Linux, with GTK/KDE, you can pick a camp and have a somewhat consistent experience, with a few outliers. Plus many apps now just use CSD and fully integrate…

If we're talking about mass adoption of Linux then there really has to be no concept of even "picking a camp". The vast majority of users - even techy people - will not understand what a window manager is, never mind be capable of choosing one. Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once.

Hard disagree. You can run the same programs on any DE or Window Manager or even without one (on pure X11 for example). That's not a hurdle it's a feature.

Users who don't know about the feature can just use a pre-configured system like Mint Cinnamon and never know about any of these things.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#532

Post by elric »

Welcome to the club. I started my Linux and BSD journey in ~1998 and I haven't really touched Windows since ~2001 except for the occasional brief interaction.

I've never missed it. Like at all. There have been instances where some piece of software didn't have a Linux alternative, that's mostly been a mild inconvenience. There have been cases where it's been a serious problem too, such as when my ever-so-wonderful government decided to start using e-ID which only worked on Windows (thanks, Wouter from grep.be for fixing that).

Mostly I enjoy how I'm in control of my machine, instead of having to rely on a bunch of untrustworthy moneygrabbers who seem hell-bent on making the worst possible decisions at every turn.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#533

Post by simoncion »

jhasse wrote: post #258
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…

I'm using KDE with Wayland and 2 non-standard DPI monitors (one at 100% the other at 150% scale). No workarounds needed, nothing is blurry. I think your experience comes from GNOME which lacks behind in this regard.

FWIW, I can do the same with KDE on Xorg with Gentoo Linux.

Since the introduction of the XSETTINGS protocol in like 2003 or 2005 or so to provide a common cross-toolkit mechanism to communicate system settings, the absence of "non-integer" scaling support has always been the fault of the GUI toolkits.

> I think your experience comes from GNOME which lacks behind in this regard.

When doesn't GNOME lag behind? Honestly, most of Wayland's problems have been because a project that expects protocol implementers and extenders to cooperate in order to make the project work set those expectations while knowing that GNOME was going to be one of those parties whose cooperation was required.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#534

Post by GoatInGrey »

petcat wrote: post #29
progforlyfe wrote: post #6

Every month more and more people switch to Linux and I just love it. I'm tired of one company controlling the core operating system of 85% of desktop computers and users being at their whim. You want proprietary programs? Alright, fine, one can argue for that. But the central, core operating system of general purpose computers should be free and fully controllable by the users that own them!

> Every month more and more people switch to Linux We've been hearing this for decades and yet the home Linux userbase is microscopic and somehow even smaller than ever. Unless we're going to count Google's Android and Chrome OS. Those are the only Linux-based distributions that have ever gained market share over desktop Windows.

As phones replace desktop computers for non-technical users, leaving a concentration of "skilled" users, my suspicion is that the pattern will resemble the quote "Slowly, then all at once."

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#535

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

ryandrake wrote: post #516
sedatk wrote: post #382

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…

Apple does this all the time, though, and seems to get a free pass here. I have four Macs in my home, and they are cut off at Ventura (for the 2017 iMac), Monterey (for the 2014 Mac Mini and the 2015 MacBook Air), and El Capitan (for the 2014 iMac). They are all stuck at 3, 4, and 5 major OS versions back. Nobody really seems to complain about this, though.

because desktop Apple users have been domesticated for decades now and just accept whatever shows up in the feeding trough.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#536

Post by physicles »

iberator wrote: post #83
bittumenEntity wrote: post #19

Like the author says: > Linux is the preferred platform for development Honestly I'm surprised he was using a non unix system this long, I guess it kinda proves his point that switching costs can seem huge

Citation needed. It's not. Linux is only good for hosting. Only very very few large companies gives laptops with Linux to developers. Linux for desktop is a joke, always have been since at least Slackware 7.1 running at my 486

Did you have a particularly bad experience? Things have changed _a little_ since 1992.

I switched from Windows in 2018 because I was trying to install some Python packages, and it was hours of work to find the specific visual C++ runtimes that were needed to get them working.

On Linux: pip install, done.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#537

Post by radium3d »

ryandrake wrote: post #516
sedatk wrote: post #382

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…

Apple does this all the time, though, and seems to get a free pass here. I have four Macs in my home, and they are cut off at Ventura (for the 2017 iMac), Monterey (for the 2014 Mac Mini and the 2015 MacBook Air), and El Capitan (for the 2014 iMac). They are all stuck at 3, 4, and 5 major OS versions back. Nobody really seems to complain about this, though.

They don't get a free pass, I think people have spoken with their wallets and it shows with the user base counts: Windows 66–73%, macOS 14–16%, Linux 3–4%.

Apple seems to support their previous generation OS on older macs for ~8-9 years or so from what I've seen. You just don't get the latest generation features, they cut it off and move on similar to how Microsoft did.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#538

Post by kaiokendev »

I never advocated for Windows, but I always used it because it "just worked". At a certain point, I realized - as OP had - that I was spending just as much time configuring Windows as I would be spending configuring Linux.

I've moved to Kubuntu and haven't looked back. Proton support is amazing, and Claude Code fixes the doc-diving problem that used to plague Linux. In fact, with Claude, I was able to get such a buttery smooth setup on Kubuntu - Wezterm auto-saving and restorable sessions (even with multiple windows), a working fading background switcher with history, automounting drives and vhdx images on startup - and these are all relatively simple things, but they were near-frictionless to set up and they don't break on a random Tuesday. I love it and would recommend anyone who is on Windows to reconsider.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#539

Post by Nekorosu »

Regarding high-quality commercial Linux software: SideFX Houdini offers a relatively affordable Indie license and is fantastic for most kinds of 3D work, compositing, and post-processing tasks. It’s also fully procedural and scriptable, which really makes my brain buzz.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#540

Post by n4bz0r »

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…

> If my computer goes to sleep, WSL becomes unresponsive. I have to save all my stuff and reboot to continue working.

Try wsl --shutdown. Works for me when WSL hangs for no apparent reason.

I've also noticed that, in my case, these hangs are somehow tied to Docker for Windows. Couldn't figure what triggers them so far, though. I just restart DFW and kill WSL when that happens.

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