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Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

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Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#601

Post by lionkor »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #561
sysrpl wrote: post #44

Linux runs better on both new and older hardware. Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier. Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure. Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates. Linux dist…

> Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure. Wait, Linux doesn't prevent doing stupid things, quite the opposite.

it has extremely clear separation of permissions, unlike anything windows has. its very possible to set up a user account that can only use the browser and office programs, and that's incredibly valuable. windows can do this, too, but its messy, spotty, and to the user feels like an afterthought rather than something designed deep into the OS like on unix-likes.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#602

Post by account42 »

pmontra wrote: post #291
mrob wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. Swap thrashing can bring the system into a completely unresponsive state. This can be prevented using earlyoom (which is packaged in most distros): https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom It's probably too difficult to fix the underlying design errors, e.g. fork() duplicating the process's entire address space, thus requiring overcommit and copy-on-write, but losing only one process beats losing all of them. earlyoom…

Or simply disable swap if you have enough RAM. I've been running without swap since 2014 on a 16 GB laptop. I upgraded to 32 GB a couple of years later when I started to routinely use at least 12 GB. At least one browser and editor window per virtual desktop (one VD per customer plus a couple for me), docker, virtualbox, slack, thunderbird, etc.

You can still have thrashing without a swap partition/file: as memory pressure increases, the kernel will flush disk cache and buffers, slowing down operations that need them again. In the extreme case this can mean the program code you are executing being evicted from ram only to be re-read page by page for many times until the kernel finally decides to kill whatever was eating all the ram.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#603

Post by lionkor »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #92
sysrpl wrote: post #44

Linux runs better on both new and older hardware. Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier. Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure. Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates. Linux dist…

While I agree with all of these 100%, I'm a UI/UX designer, so Adobe continues to hold me hostage to my Apple and MS boxes. Some of the Linux alternatives are good, but they still aren't as good as Adobe. I still do quite a bit of JS development and some app development on my older Linux rig, but I just wish at some point Adobe will pull their heads out and support Linux. I remember in several threads on the Adobe fo…

I only have linux machines, but jesus christ, gimp is a piece of work. Especially for people who appreciate good UX, its pure torture.

That said, Krita is incredibly comfortable to use, Inkscape replaced Illustrator for anything I care about.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#604

Post by lionkor »

lenkite wrote: post #405
sysrpl wrote: post #44

Linux runs better on both new and older hardware. Better as in programs open faster, the file manager opens faster, the task manager opens faster. Everything uses less memory and less CPU cycles. Everything is snappier. Linux users don't have to worry nearly as much about malware, trojans, viruses, exploits. It's more secure. Linux distros generally don't annoy users with stealthy automatic forced updates. Linux dist…

>Linux doesn't have any phone home telemetry type "features" built into the OS. Unlike macOS, You can disable ALL telemetry in under 30 seconds on Windows. There is actually even a service named "User Experience and Telemetry" that you can conveniently stop and disable in a number of ways.

Opt-out is almost always possible, but that's missing the point.

Windows is often used as a personal operating system. There is no reason for it to collect analytics, especially after decades of development, I don't think the devs are getting anything actually useful out of knowing how often my grandparents check their email.

They're collecting data, and it doesnt seem to be used to help UX development much.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#605

Post by account42 »

yankcrime wrote: post #323
pmontra wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or simply disable swap if you have enough RAM. I've been running without swap since 2014 on a 16 GB laptop. I upgraded to 32 GB a couple of years later when I started to routinely use at least 12 GB. At least one browser and editor window per virtual desktop (one VD per customer plus a couple for me), docker, virtualbox, slack, thunderbird, etc.

Don't do this. Disabling swap is bad idea: https://chrisdown.name/2018/01/02/in-defence-of-swap.html

Not really. While there are still problems without swap, all swap does is move that problem further away while slowing down some things in the meantime.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#606

Post by lionkor »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #185
snazz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux would have to be extremely good for most people to take the effort to switch. Switching to Wikipedia doesn't require reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system—a completely foreign concept for 98% of the computer-using population.

Reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system is just the beginning of it. Such a drastic change of OS basically disrupts your whole workflow while you get used to the new one. Everything from where to find things to keyboard shortcuts to UX paradigms.

I would argue that the change from Win10 to a KDE linux or a similar windows-like UX is similar to a change from Win7 to Win10.

Its fair to say that even the Win7 to Win10 switch is something people only do if you force them, but I could see the Win10->Linux change happen for a lot of people if they saw anything it had that they needed.

Not having to worry about AV and automatic updates, automatic download and in-OS-ads would be pretty huge already.

Yes, most powerusers on windows know where to turn all that off, but a lot of people, like my parents, are scared to fuck something up, so they dont touch any settings, especially not if windows tells them "this improves your experience, you sure you wanna turn it off? nudge".

A lot of people would not notice or care if you switched their machine to Linux - as long as it means they have to worry about less.

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#607

Post by lionkor »

sergeykish wrote: post #232
snazz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux would have to be extremely good for most people to take the effort to switch. Switching to Wikipedia doesn't require reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system—a completely foreign concept for 98% of the computer-using population.

You can run Linux from USB stick. That still requires BIOS/UEFI setup, though I do not expect non-technical population switching. It would be great if Steam had non game applications.

You should be able to install most distros alongside windows without any extra work, just in the installer. UEFI+GPT boot is an option, and that never required me to fuck with the uefi setup, it just installed itself into the EFI partition together with windows's stuff, and you could pick in GRUB "windows" or "linux" :)

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#608

Post by einpoklum »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #598
einpoklum wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> language-specific package managers I wouldn't include those on the same list. It makes sense for various (source-form) libraries to be maintained and updated and made available independently of the OS and uniformly across operating systems. I don't see this as undermining Linux distributions - as these are used when you're making your own builds anyway. Otherwise - yes, agreed, and it's also about redundancy and bl…

> these are used when you're making your own builds anyway That's the problem: they encourage building with tons of random stuff pulled from the Internet on the fly, sidestepping OS distributions completely and providing no reproducible building, no vetting, no license review, no long-term security. The leftpad disaster is a good example.

Can you link to a description of "the leftpad disaster"?

Also - it's not supposed to be "tons of random stuff", it's supposed to be the libraries you're relying on. Maybe I'm missing something in the point you're making?

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#609

Post by lionkor »

To me personally, the biggest benefit is that I own the system and everything on it.

If MS decides to end support for whatever you're using, you're fucked. If Apple decides your hardware isnt supported any longer, or that you cant use your system without an update that makes your old apps incompatible, you're fucked.

If you're using a product, you rely on it not having its end of life before you stop using it, but you can't actually trust that, and we all know that. You know that, once you're in the MS ecosystem, you are at the mercy at whatever business decision they make for their products. If they decide to force you to pay for something that was free before, or decide that they are going to lock a feature behind paywall, the only reasonable thing is to comply.

Now, you might not care, and, hell, you might think the concept of owning your tools is idiotic anyways.

To get back to my point though - Linux gives hardware I own a system that I control. The OS I use helps me get done what I want to get done, it doesnt get in my way, it doesnt try to persuade me, trick me, sell me something, or anything like it. I like to pick what file browser I use, which browser I use, which keybinds do what - without the system acting like i'm an idiot with messages like "oh, you must have misclicked, im sure you want to use edge, not this 'firefox' garbage".

Do I have to pick which file browser I use? No, and I didn't, I just use the default, because it's good. If the developer of it decides to change it, I dont have to update it, I can use the old one, or use a different one altogether, or change it myself if I have the time.

I like Linux because it doesnt treat me like i'm an idiot, it doesnt treat me like i'm a customer, it doesnt actually treat me in any way at all, because unless i interact with it, it doesnt do anything.

When I need to write a patch, I open my laptop, and its immediately there. I open my messages, open my editor, pull, write the patch, commit, push, and close it. I didn't get a "didnt do AV scan in the last 2 seconds", i didn't get random programs autostarting, I didn't get news on my login screen, I didn't get programs notifying me that "its now up to date", it doesnt force me to update before i shut it down, and I dont have to look at a bunch of "welcome back" and "we hope your day is going great" and "did you know this random fact about a mountain in asia?" on my login screen.

Yet, all of these things happen regularly when I launch my windows machine at work. Yes, they're all small things, but once you're used to your system not nagging you for random shit, you can't help but notice.

Yeah

Re: Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

#610

Post by swiley »

alphachloride wrote: post #534
swiley wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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."

Its pretty simple: GUI is more intuitive. I do not find them bizarre. Their diversity or bespokeness doesn't register as a hindrance to me. The options are visible all at once, or are a couple of clicks away. Contrast this with the command line where I more or less have to memorize each application's interface or look online or browse the manual for answers. GUI lets me use keyboard + mouse. CLI is keyboard only. Reg…

>GUI is more intuitive.

I would completely disagree here, they're more aesthetic but not more intuitive or discoverable.

Compare tar with apple's camera app on the iphone for example: tar --help will tell you how to do everything in the app. Is there something equivalent that tells how to do manual focus in the camera app? (yes, it's supported that for years and no one knows how to do it because it won't tell you.)

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