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

Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#541

Post by varispeed »

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 it's Intel then it might not be fully down to Windows 11. The PC laptops are universally crap. I had a few latest ones, Ultra 9 and they are atrocious. Experience reminds me using a netbook in early 2010s.

I would refuse to work anywhere without a Mac. If x86 then it would have to be linux, as that would be passable (apart from fan noise).

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#542

Post by bigyabai »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #156
_fat_santa wrote: post #60

I've been running Ubuntu Linux for a long time now (over a decade, started with 8.04). Linux still has it's fair share of bugs but I'll take having to deal with those over running Windows or MacOS any day. For me the biggest thing is control, with Windows there are some things like updates that you have zero control over. It's the same issue with MacOS, you have more control than Windows but you're still at the whims…

The control is both a blessing and a curse. It’s really easy to accidentally screw things up when e.g. trying to polish some of the rough edges or otherwise make the system function as desired. It also may not be of any help if the issue you’re facing is too esoteric for anybody else to have posted about it online (or for LLMs to be of any assistance). It would help a lot if there were a distro that was polished and…

There's several distros that are fully usable without ever touching a terminal. The control is a gradient, some distros give you all the control and others (eg. SteamOS) lock down your root filesystem and sandbox everything from the internet.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#543

Post by anon291 »

Once again, I don't really understand people who say Windows is easier. Take printer drivers. In windows you have a 'simple' wizard to install a printer driver. Except in my experience... it never works the first time and you have to fiddle. On Linux... I just bought a new printer, and it worked out of the box. My experience with most hardware today on Linux is out-of-the-box support while windows requires endless 'driver' installs. Even driver installs on linux are easier. Usually just drop a binary blob somewhere if you really need it and modprobe...

Again it's 2026... why is this so hard. Usually paid software is actually better and more feature-ful, but Windows is just not useful at all. The best use of Windows is WSL2

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#544

Post by colordrops »

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…

Fractional scaling on Wayland is only blurry for X apps, and even then, most apps have Wayland support at this point, so for the remaining apps, just turn off Xwayland scaling, and using native scaling through env vars and flags, and no more blurriness.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#545

Post by moron4hire »

Anyone have a recommendation on a decent cloud-based file sync tool ala OneDrive? I use OneDrive extensively but there is no official client for Linux and the unofficial one has some major stability issues. I'm willing to change providers but not willing to put in the effort to roll-my-own.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#546

Post by krs_ »

jama211 wrote: post #504
Zambyte wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them. So much this. People like to moan about "oh game XYZ doesn't run so it's not reasonable for gaming". More games run on GNU / Linux than any gaming console. There are simply too many games that do run to give a second thought about the ones that don't, and it's been that way for years.

There it is, the classic “just change what you enjoy then!!”. Linux will take off when the community stops trying to force new users to conform to the Linux way of life and instead respect that other people have other needs and wants that are valid, and not a moment before.

While I agree it's unreasonable, it's also kind of a chicken and an egg thing. These things won't change until Linux becomes big enough to ignore. I'm not sure what the solution is though, as I don't think it's realistic to make people give up what they enjoy to get there. That's not gonna happen. But Valve has at least made a dent with the Steamdeck and Proton in general, and maybe more with the upcoming Steam Machine. Devs actively target the Steamdeck nowadays for games where it makes sense, so it is taken into consideration at a whole new level compared to years past.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#547

Post by rahkiin »

AnonC wrote: post #344
willk wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first gripe kind of sounds like DLP software is installed on the system and it is scanning files you're "accessing".

On my company provided laptop with Windows 11 (previously Windows 10), the top three CPU usage was and is usually from Antimalware Executable, Microsoft Defender and MS Teams (or Crowdstrike). I don’t download files or get files from other sources often, yet these things keep doing busywork and slowing things down. Despite virus and threat protection running quick scans often and forcing a full disk scan every couple…

Same here. ng install takes 2000x as long as on my similairly priced mac. Installing a package for any language locks up the laptop for indexing

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#548

Post by everdrive »

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.

I think Apple gets a pass because they're a luxury product. For the record, even though Apple has some really impressive hardware, this is one of the reasons I'm not very big on Apple. People praise their phone's longevity all the time, but I think this is crazy. I could be running a 13 year old computer right now and it would work fine if I had Linux. Smartphones don't really have options for this due to the market capture. Apple's PC could be supported longer, but Apple isn't interested in doing it. (and apparently they change architectures every 15 years anyhow.)

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#549

Post by senfiaj »

I'm not against someone's preferences, but this looks like an anecdotal story. Windows, as much as it's hated here, still works fine for the vast majority of people. What's more, you have higher risk of having problems when running Linux.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#550

Post by ufmace »

jama211 wrote: post #494
ufmace wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the exact same boat. I was a little unhappy with the ads etc in Windows, but perfectly willing to give Windows 11 a try. But Microsoft decreed that my admittedly a bit old but perfectly workable CPU was incompatible, due to not having a feature I wasn't interested in. I'd need to replace most of my existing hardware to switch. So why not try Linux? It certainly seems reasonable when Windows apparently needs mo…

You can bypass the warning really easily, I googled it the moment I saw it and it was very easy. A keyboard shortcut to open the command window during the install and one cheeky command. I agree though that it’s silly they don’t offer it officially. But I get the feeling you were on the edge of transitioning anyway, which is fine! Sounds more like the straw that broke the camels back.

There's a little bit of considering it already yeah. Plus what the sibling comments say of it being clearly against what Microsoft wants, so no guarantee they won't disable it or make it even harder in the future. And also, the factor of, doing any of these check-disabling hacks also seems to require a full OS reinstall instead of an in-place update. If I need to do a full reinstall anyways, why not do it with an OS I don't need to hack up to get it to install on a system the OS maintainer doesn't want it to be installed on.

Apparently, fundamentally, Microsoft does not want me as a user. Hacking around their checks won't change that. I'd rather comply with their wishes and use an OS that actually wants me as a user.

Post reply on HN