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I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

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Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#61

Post by thewebguyd »

kenjackson wrote: post #25

I'm learning that while Windows has a bad rap in some tech circles, its surprisingly still pretty well regarded. This past school year my daughter and niece both moved from Windows to Macs. A couple of weekends ago I asked them both how they liked it -- they seemed to transition well to the Mac. They both said the same thing -- Windows was better at basically everything except the Message app and iPhone mirroring, bu…

I think Windows (and some, but not all, Linux window managers/DEs) are really kings of "general productivity" type work that macOS is really unintuitive about.

I daily drive a MBP now, and have since the M1 air released, but even this many years later I still think the more windows-y desktop metaphor is superior for any type of work that requires heavy multi-tasking (which I do as a sysadmin type role).

Apple tends to assume you are working inside one app at a time, on one workspace at a time. This is evident from the get go with how the OS treats apps & windows/documents as separate, and how Cmd+Tab only switches between apps, not app windows.

Without third party tools, it's a terrible OS for actually managing multiple windows and contexts and that throws people off because nearly everything else outside of mobile doesn't use that paradigm. Context switching is expensive on macOS, by design, but most general user's and office workers work involves heavy context switching, and frequently.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#62

Post by gchamonlive »

The article is really poor in details about what exactly is OPs workflow in windows and Linux, so we are only left to wonder. But it seems to me that the unpredictably of Linux and therefore the predictability of windows is in part because friction in windows is known to him while Linux is not, and also in part because maybe by accident the way he uses windows play nicely with it. Maybe if the user didn't distro hop so often he would have been more familiar with the architecture of the system and these issues like fedora update system breaking down (surprising because bazzite is based on fedora and it's been rock solid for a while, can't help but think OP is doing something really wrong there, but APT in Ubuntu for instance does tend to break for no reason, so I'll throw him a bone). It's like giving up often on something and blaming the thing for its unfamiliarity.

Does windows bloat bother you? It bothers me. Ever tried doing a windows install from something like tiny10 and then use the system? Nothing works quite right.

The rest of my argument as to why windows is less predictable than Linux is here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150812

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#63

Post by repelsteeltje »

MostlyStable wrote: post #9

The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence. This was with the install on a fast SSD. I tried a whole bunch of things and never figured out what the issue was. Then, one day, it just....went away. I'm not trying to make much of a point other than that: anecdotes aren't…

Yeah, like key bindings in IntelliJ that might make sense on Windows or Macintosh, but conflict with Linux defaults. I switched to Linux couple of decades ago, but this second class treatment of Linux desktop is one of the reasons I'm still doing most of my work in the terminal.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#64

Post by jordanpg »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #19

Is this AI generated? The “two things broke” reasons are just so laughably bad in a real world context yet strangely vague.

100% agree. The two examples are garden-variety computer problems and not articulated with any degree of precision for someone who claims to have attempted to troubleshoot them. It's either AI-generated or the author has only elementary Linux know-how (which is cool, but we don't need to take their wholesale dismissal of an entire ecosystem quite as seriously).

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#65

Post by BLKNSLVR »

I kinda switched to Linux when I realized that Microsoft had fractured the control panel into different areas in "Settings" and there was almost no pattern in how to get to the various system settings and diagnostic tools that had become ingrained in muscle memory for me over the course of 15-odd years.

I decided I'd rather start from scratch on Linux than Windows for reasons of Microsoft's various decisions and direction. Windows essentially pushed me away by saying my prior experience was no longer useful.

It's a decision I'm frequently reminded of how good it was.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#66

Post by topaz0 »

mergy wrote: post #51

WINE via Crossover Linux has become very good. Also webapp versions of Office apps are mostly there and respectable if used in mixed environments. WSL is okay but you are better going full Linux as host. Linux Mint is a good platform for most. Stable, keeping modern kernels updated, but not crazy bleeding-edge wastes of time. You don't have to quit Windows but you can quit being hostage to Windows.

Libreoffice is also pretty good these days if you need to edit office files, impress has the most compat issues but they are rare even there. In many ways it is more capable than office ime.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#67

Post by ThrowawayB7 »

"¿Por qué no los dos?" A lot of the issues that he has seems to be running on hardware that Linux doesn't currently support well. Used 1 liter PCs that are old enough to have solid support under Linux but still fast enough to do serious work are $200-400 and can be accessed remotely from Windows by VNC or RDP.

To forestall the inevitable, yes, that's extra cost. Well, the person says the want to use Linux more. Do they want it badly enough to put money behind it?

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#68

Post by gbro3n »

martinald wrote: post #37

Two thoughts (I was in the same situation, constantly trying desktop Linux then pinging back to Windows after hitting issues). 1) Fedora is really worth a try, it's extremely polished. The best thing is the packages in the repo are generally much more up to date that debian based distros, which maeans less random PPAs to work around it, which cause issues. 2) The biggest change is having Claude Code/Codex able to dia…

Similar to this, but NixOS. Having AI to help me through made this so much easier. I was sold on the idea of an 'IaC' config based machine, after a general push to move all of my processes towards full GitOps. Windows had been pretty good to me (running 4 years on the same laptop install), but it had started overheating with fans sounding like a vacuum cleaner and it was time to start over. The difference with NixOS is that sure there are issues and preferences to work through, but when I fix them, they get committed in config, and thats an investment in time rather than something that will be right until next time I have to do it. I was able to reproduce, and rebuild on a separate machine with minimal hassle (it's good to go through this process to be sure you've got it right) and that really was amazing to see. SSH keys, SMB share, monitor configurations, themes, apps, utilities - a fully set up dev machine, everything is just there. I've been planning changes on a Copilot integrated taskboard I built (https://www.agentkanban.io) and then handing them off to the agent, reviewing the changes in the VS Code git client and then apply, commit. Being able to see the number of commits makes me realise how much I was doing manually, every time I set up a new machine.

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#69

Post by jordanpg »

> Second, the update utility got stuck. Just frozen. Couldn't open it. I hadn't tweaked anything, hadn't installed anything unusual, hadn't deviated from the vanilla setup. Day seven of a fresh Fedora install and the update tool was bricked.

"update tool was bricked"? What?

Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows

#70

Post by gdevic »

Absolutely agree with the OP! My first Linux installation was in 1993 when I hauled dozens of floppies from my Uni back home (X-Windows was like 15 floppies?). Even remember emailing to Linus about some issue and he responded. Ever since I _wanted_ to be using Linux but was always put off for all the reasons described in that post. I wanted a nice OS so I can do my school/work/hobbies but not constantly having to work on that OS, figure out dozens of config files, brick the system etc.

At this point WSL2 is more than filling this void. I even stopped using VMWare since WSL is that good.

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