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Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
61–70 of 85 posts
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#62I kind of hate articles like this. I use Linux, I think it's great, I think everyone should use it.
I don't think you need user skills to use it. Gnome is super friendly to use (although maybe it needs to make the dock visible by default). KDE isn't bad and is Windows-like.
I don't think Linux is more complex than Windows. Folders are laid out in a common sense way. Ever tried uninstalling a Windows program that was installed in a weird way by some proprietary installer?
I don't think normal users particularly need to care about OSS either, Linux is more than functional enough nowadays that it's a great choice merely for utility, ideology isn't needed.
What's up with everyone thinking they need Photoshop/GIMP? Those are photo editing tools. For design/content creation Krita is the best tool for raster images by far...
And NetBeans? Really? Is this article from 2005? IntelliJ Community is open-source. VSCode is kinda, VSCodium more so. Gnome Builder is really good now. So is QtCreator and KDevelop. Plus Vim/Neovim and Emacs, especially nowadays that distros make it easy to get started.
Linux nerds still don't quite get normies...
Here's my pitch: it's easier and less annoying than Windows. It's free. For normal everyday use, it has everything you need.
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you can then explain how programs they use will continue to work Microsoft Office and games. No, not LibreOffice and Tux Racer. Wine has gotten a lot better compared to years past, but if you need/want Windows software you still need Windows. You also only get one shot at convincing them, since first impressions are everything. A better argument might be recommending MacOS, at least Microsoft Office works just fine…
games is a terrible example here, basically everything runs perfectly fine. If you use Steam, there is absolutely no perceivable difference or inconvenience to speak of. The only argument to be made in this department is proprietary kernel level anti-cheats. Other than that, its download Steam -> install game -> click big green play button. I have like 500 hours gaming on Linux, from indie titles, to triple A games o…
> The only argument to be made in this department is proprietary kernel level anti-cheats
Just last year we saw that an actual cybersec company like Crowdstrike couldn't prevent a massive screw up with kernel level code. Given that, I am stunned that people are willing to trust game publishers with access to their kernels. Even leaving aside abstract notions of freedom, do people not get that this is extremely poor security practice? Is any game worth the risks that come with giving random game companies (who are presumably less cybersec savvy than Crowdstrike) the keys to the kingdom?
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#64I kind of hate articles like this. I use Linux, I think it's great, I think everyone should use it. I don't think you need user skills to use it. Gnome is super friendly to use (although maybe it needs to make the dock visible by default). KDE isn't bad and is Windows-like. I don't think Linux is more complex than Windows. Folders are laid out in a common sense way. Ever tried uninstalling a Windows program that was…
some quotes from the article:
switching to Linux is not some stroll through a digital park. It’s more like trying to navigate a labyrinth blindfolded while simultaneously herding cats. The potential drawbacks are like those pesky little flies at a summer picnic—annoying, omnipresent, and difficult to swat away.
One of the most immediate challenges that new Linux users face is the formidable learning curve. Unlike the user-friendly interfaces of proprietary operating systems, Linux can feel like a maze designed by someone with questionable intentions. For the uninitiated, the command line might appear as an ancient script etched on a stone tablet. It’s not uncommon for beginners to experience bouts of frustration reminiscent of a toddler trying to solve a Rubik's Cube.
WAT?
for one, i have never seriously used windows, and every time i do, i feel like the above. what does that tell you? for one, part of the problem is in the switch itself and in dealing with problems in an unfamiliar system. that goes for any switch, whether it is to linux, to mac, to windows or anything else. for two, i actually believe that linux is easier to use than windows. on linux, when i have a problem, i actually get help and answers. on windows when i have a problem, i often simply can't find any solution, because it's not FOSS and many solutions depend on microsoft who does not care to fix them. on linux, when problems amount that an app developer does not want to fix we get a fork.
and also this:
Another common myth claims that all Linux distributions are command-line driven and devoid of graphical interfaces. Spoiler alert: that’s as far from the truth as you can get.
yet a few paragraphs earlier there is the following:
Think of it as a workout for your brain; you’re trading intuitive GUI interactions for the raw, exhilarating power of the command line.
which one is it now?
Many popular applications, especially proprietary ones, do not have direct Linux versions
but no mention of wine? and how some windows apps run even more stable under wine than they run on windows?
i have yet to find any windows program that i needed or wanted to use that i could not run under wine. and most of the ones i did use are games.
your favorite video game might not run as seamlessly
not true in my experience. again, no mention of steam. why?
in summary, this article claims to clean up myths and misconceptions, yet it is perpetuating them.
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other advantage I see to macOS is commercial app support. Like it or not, it can be a fact of life for many. Photoshop users don’t want to use GIMP. While Electron has made Linux on the desktop much more viable in this respect, there is are some key apps that macOS has where Linux is lacking. And of course there is also working between mobile and desktop, which macOS/iOS seem to do best. Part of me longs for the…
> Photoshop users don’t want to use GIMP. I'm very curious, as someone who is a hobby photographer and takes photos on both a phone and a decent mirrorless camera... What normal person needs Photoshop and what's the use case? Like, the phone and camera both do a good job of creating jpegs, both can adjust lighting, colour, highlights, etc..., and there's specific apps for adjusting lighting of photos. I can't say I'v…
If you’re looking to point, shoot, and share with the phone camera, and keep your mirrorless stuff true to life, you probably don’t need Photoshop. If you’re looking to create things that didn’t exist before, or bend reality, that’s where Photoshop would come in.
My dad is a big into photography and while he does his management and RAW processing in Lightroom, he still uses Photoshop here and there. He’s been enjoying playing with their AI image generation to change up scenes, replace skies, etc. Even without the AI, it can be good for tweaking things in the image to your liking, like removing a random person from the background of your vacation photo. Depending on what you’re looking to do, this can either be easy or take incredible skill.
Myself, I have a bit of an obsession with desktop wallpapers, and will often make my own or tweak ones I find to my liking. At different points in my life, going back 25 years, I’d use it for various things in school, work, or socially online. Not because it was required, but because I enjoyed it and could make things that didn’t exist.
These days I use Affinity’s suite instead of Adobe, so I don’t have to pay a subscription. Apple recently acquired Pixelmator, which I also used for a while, so I’m interested to see what comes of that.
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#66I loathe macOS but stick with it mostly for the hardware. I use a beefed-up 16-inch M3 Max for work and a baseline 15-inch MacBook Air for writing and OSS work. I love the Air’s hardware and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Before switching to Mac, I was running a maxed-out 16-inch Dell XPS and enjoyed using Ubuntu and Pop!_OS on it. But the hardware just wasn’t there—the trackpad felt cheap, and the keyboard would cr…
I need a Windows laptop for work but really appreciate the exceptional build quality of my MacBook Air. I had a ThinkPad, but it creaked and didn’t feel nearly as solid. Are there any Windows laptops that come close to MacBook-level hardware quality?
Unfortunately, in my experience, no. XPS is close but it has too many tiny little issues for a 3 grand device.
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#67I loathe macOS but stick with it mostly for the hardware. I use a beefed-up 16-inch M3 Max for work and a baseline 15-inch MacBook Air for writing and OSS work. I love the Air’s hardware and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Before switching to Mac, I was running a maxed-out 16-inch Dell XPS and enjoyed using Ubuntu and Pop!_OS on it. But the hardware just wasn’t there—the trackpad felt cheap, and the keyboard would cr…
This. I’ve worked with Linux on servers for more than 10 years. I know my way around. I’d love to use it on my laptop, but the hardware/firmware just isn’t there compared to a minimal MacOS. I feel that MacOS is bloated with features I don’t need or want. However, As a laptop with a kick-ass CPU, fast memory, fast(albeit limited and expensive) storage, high DPI display, solid battery capacity and importantly working “sleep and wake up” feature upon closing the lid and opening it, Apple has earned their money.
I could tune my way into making Linux do many of those things, but even in 2025, that feels like an exercise of putting lipstick on a pig.
So, I’ve made my peace and settled on a minimal MacOS on MacBook Air as the client, and do majority of my dev/admin work on a beefy Linux server that I can ssh into with ease. Play to each OS’s strengths..
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#68I do use Ubuntu Desktop (22 LTS now, went through 16 and 18) on one of my laptops but I also have Windows and must say, even as a power user Linux sucks compared to Windows.
I got constant bugs over time, I can't place a breakpoint directly in the Java Swing GUI thread because it will block my entire desktop, completely dead, so I have to ctrl+alt+fX login to a different virtual desktop and kill the Java process. No such bug on Windows. Also the browser sometimes gets crazy, jitters or something, I have to kill it and restart the app, not to mention the weird "chromium" processes taking up 100% of CPU that pop up every time I try to visit Yahoo Finance.
On games, which is the main strongpoint of Windows, I installed Counterstrike 2 and it would work .. provided I unplug the second monitor and run it on the small laptop one. There's no way to tell what happens if I leave the second monitor on, all hell breaks loose and I have to physically turn off the power to be able to reboot the machine.
I can no longer connect to the internet using the (faster) wired connection because a bug in the RTL8111/8168/8411 driver. I tried everything, update, configure, still unusable, works enything from seconds to half an hour then it's dead. On top of that, the WiFi connection also drops occasionally, it sometimes reverts when I turn off / turn it on from UI, but often I have to reboot to have it work again. Needless to say on Windows both wired and wifi work flawlessly.
So on a 2022 release of the most popular desktop Linux distribution, both the UI and connectivity are nigh-unusable to someone who actually knows their way around computers. And you want regular people switching from Windows and MacOS. Not gonna happen.
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other advantage I see to macOS is commercial app support. Like it or not, it can be a fact of life for many. Photoshop users don’t want to use GIMP. While Electron has made Linux on the desktop much more viable in this respect, there is are some key apps that macOS has where Linux is lacking. And of course there is also working between mobile and desktop, which macOS/iOS seem to do best. Part of me longs for the…
> Photoshop users don’t want to use GIMP. I'm very curious, as someone who is a hobby photographer and takes photos on both a phone and a decent mirrorless camera... What normal person needs Photoshop and what's the use case? Like, the phone and camera both do a good job of creating jpegs, both can adjust lighting, colour, highlights, etc..., and there's specific apps for adjusting lighting of photos. I can't say I'v…
The technical answer is layers and destructive edits, you could probably summarize this as compositing (i.e., combining different images together). I don't think there's necessarily even a correlation between pro vs. non-pro (I'm not remotely a pro, but run into limitations of the Lightroom-approach to editing [which is what you're talking about, editing that can't do destructive edits or non-adjustment layers] quickly). I think what it correlates with is whether you want to quickly edit lots of photos (Lightroom) or deeply edit a single photo without limitations (Photoshop).
Re: Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom
#70I loathe macOS but stick with it mostly for the hardware. I use a beefed-up 16-inch M3 Max for work and a baseline 15-inch MacBook Air for writing and OSS work. I love the Air’s hardware and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Before switching to Mac, I was running a maxed-out 16-inch Dell XPS and enjoyed using Ubuntu and Pop!_OS on it. But the hardware just wasn’t there—the trackpad felt cheap, and the keyboard would cr…
I need a Windows laptop for work but really appreciate the exceptional build quality of my MacBook Air. I had a ThinkPad, but it creaked and didn’t feel nearly as solid. Are there any Windows laptops that come close to MacBook-level hardware quality?
> appreciate the exceptional build quality of my MacBook Air
Wait until your battery dies.