Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#601

Post by matltc » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

I switched back in 2022 to Ubuntu 20. I barely knew JavaScript at the time. I had zero problems doing so. Maybe my use case is narrow enough--I just use it for dev work and web browsing--but it was the least daunting process ever. Everything worked out of the box basically. Learning bash and unix changed my life. I don't understand how one could complain about Linux unless they've never even tried it

That said, I threw NetBSD on a P4 tower and it took me half a day just to get a GUI and an internet connection. Was kind of fun,though.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#602

Post by anthem2025 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#603

Post by AuthAuth » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

Zekio wrote: post #318

grepfru_it wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steam and Proton work perfectly I am a hardcore DayZ player. DayZ does not work on Proton[0]. I cannot use Linux as my main gaming platform. Battlefield 6 does not work. Latest Call of Duty does not work. You can talk about voting with your wallet, but when millions of people are buying the game, your one non-vote means nothing. So either you punish yourself and refuse to play with friends, or you punish yourself a…

this is why a lot of people run arch and why valve based steamOS on arch instead of debian as the previous version was, you need a newer kernel and other packages to really play games on linux with the least friction possible

thats not a kernel issue its an anti cheat issue. No kernel except the windows kernel is going to allow him to play battlefield and cod.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#604

Post by projektfu » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:54 PM UTC

Another problem with Windows, that has been going on for quite some time now, is that they do not have a real support channel for non-enterprise users that produces useful knowledge for the future. Almost any issue you google now has a thousand "answers" on microsoft.com that do not fix the problem because the people answering have not reproduced it and have not confirmed their solution.

In Linux forums, generally speaking, there is either a way it works or agreement that it hasn't been fixed yet. The main source of spam now is actually StackExchange, that prioritizes discussions from 10 years ago on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, rather than up-to-date questions and answers.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#605

Post by ark296 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

I switched after running basic dev tools became genuinely unusable (randomly freezing for minutes, start menu just didn't work, crashes all the time) despite being on good, new hardware.

I never wanted to switch before because I just wanted an OS that worked, didn't require babysitting, and was compatible with apps. But clearly, Windows has dropped the ball on this.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#606

Post by flaburgan » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

I had the same story but 15 years ago. I was so happy with XP, but Vista was terrible, so I put Ubuntu on my laptop. When 7 came, it became my OS on my desktop. But then it was 8 time. Couldn't bare it. Now it's Linux everywhere, including my sister, parents, grand parents, girlfriend, brother. Linux Mint is perfect for non technical people BTW. I heard good things about Zorin OS as well.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#607

Post by crazygringo » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #216

jsheard wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wayland has fractional scaling as a sort-of workaround if you can tolerate the entire screen being blurry. Every other major OS can deal with this. I think Windows is the only other one which really does this properly, macOS also does the hack where they simulate fractional scales by rendering with an integer scale at a non-native resolution then scaling it down.

> I think Windows is the only other one which really does this properly Windows is the only one that does this properly. Windows handles high pixel density on a per-application , per-display basis. This is the most fine-grained. It's pretty easy to opt in on reasonably modern frameworks, too; just add in the necessary key in the resource manifest; done. [1] Linux + Xorg has a global pixel density scale factor. KDE/Qt…

> then the final result is raster-scaled with some sinc/Lanczos algorithm back down to the physical resolution. This shows up as ringing artifacts, which are very obvious with high-contrast, thin regions like text.

I don't think this is true. I use non-integer scaling on my Mac since I like the UX to be just a little bit bigger, and have never observed any kind of ringing or any specific artifacts at all around text, nor have I ever heard this as a complaint before. I assume it's just bilinear or bicubic unless you have evidence otherwise? The only complaint people tend to make is ever-so-slight additional blurriness, which barely matters at Retina resolution.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#608

Post by jdc0589 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

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…

the scaling and UI framework issues are by far my biggest pain point. I will inevitably end up with an app with tiny and/or blurry UI elements every few weeks and have to spend a ton of time figuring out the correct incantation to make it better.

This is on a pretty clean/fresh install of current ubuntu desktop

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#609

Post by thewebguyd » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

bunderbunder wrote: post #445

bjt12345 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really bad time for Microsoft to force consumers to upgrade - even computer parts from 5 years ago are price hiking.

Which Microsoft really should have been able to see coming, since it’s largely their money that’s being used to soak up all the supply of computing hardware.

Someone inside Microsoft probably did see it coming. That comic of their org chart being individual bubbles, all pointing guns at each other really does explain that company's behavior.

Microsoft doesn't seem to be one unified entity, but a bunch of smaller competing companies under the same umbrella, each trying to destroy the other.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#610

Post by CamouflagedKiwi » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

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…

I have a similar issue with Windows. The machine already dual-boots Linux, but it is simultaneously demanding Windows 11 and telling me that it doesn't support it. It's a three year old Ryzen, it plays every game I've thrown at it flawlessly - which admittedly is only just so many things, but if it could manage Oblivion Remastered at launch it should manage a bloody operating system surely.

I hear it might be some TPM thing. If so, it still seems like a bad decision to require this thing, and it's telling that I'm working on speculation here - it doesn't _tell_ me that's what it is.