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I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

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611–620 of 832 posts

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#611

I don't know about the "you should too" part. I use Arch, it works fine for me but I am patient and want to use it. Realistically, I would expect the largest migration should be devs switching from mac to Linux. I don't see any reason at all to use a mac for development anymore.

Omarchy is a nice experience for devs.

Funnily enough, though, you can get a very user friendly experience using Niri and Dank Linux (don't remember the exact name). It takes two 3 CLI commands to install, and the top bar incredibly cool, compared to the i3 defaults and even to what I remember of Gnome and KDE.

Next up: somebody comes up with a desktop environment called BTW.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/BEEFY-JOE/AbletonLiveOnLinux https://hanez.org/document/ableton-live-linux-wine/ https://github.com/wineasio/wineasio The biggest thing with any Linux and Wine mix for DAWs is using JACK and WineASIO for low latency

This doesn't work like everyone makes it out to. The first problem is overcoming the plethora of build errors. Then if you're lucky enough to actually get Ableton launched and working, you'll run into weird issues like Ableton crashing as soon as you attempt to add a MIDI track. When you find a work-around for that, you then run into random crashing in the middle of playback with absolutely atrocious latency despite…

It does work and no you don’t need to fiddle with build errors and crap unless you have some weird hardware.

It works for me plug n play with my scarlett devices. Many tracks.

Core i9, RTX 3080, Fedora w/ Proton on Vulkan. USB-C Scarlett.

I think your issue might be that you aren’t using an ALSA device.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Arduino and RPi demonstrate that there is still a relatively strong attraction for tinkering. In the past, freedom meant a lot to tinkerers. My sense is that this is not so true today. Perhaps I am wrong. It may be that few people respect licensing enough to care. As long as somebody (not necessarily the producer) has made a youtube video of how to hack something, that's good enough. This was probably always…

I don't think tinkering is the dominant culture behind tech anymore, but it's definitely operating at a higher scale than ever before. There's more OSS projects than ever, and there are tons of niche areas with entire communities. Examples could include: LoRa radios (or LoRA adaptors!), 3d printing, FPGA hacking, new games for retro hardware...

There was a gap before (think 90s and early 2000s) where there was a niche tinkering and more mainstream user/power user/programmer crowds. All these groups have knowledge gaps between them, but the gap was surmountable.

Now, the groups have drifted apart. Even if you're a programmer, unless you care or get excited about the hardware, you don't know how things work. You follow the docs, push the code to magical gate via that magical command, and that works. It's similar even for Desktop applications.

When you care about performance, and try to understand how these things work, you need to break that thick ice to start learning things, and things are much more complicated now, so people just tend to run away and pretend that it's not there.

Also, since the "network is reliable, computing cheap" gospel took hold, 90% of the programmers don't care about how much performance / energy they waste.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No hardware problems in the version I run, not sure what version you use. It's also not frustrating for me but what I do get frustrated with is trying to get software to run and Linux but just won't work. Most people are smart enough to be able to use windows without getting frustrated.

So why are so many people complaining about Windows 11?

People have complained about every version of Windows, including the ones that were considered to be good milestones (like 2k and 7).

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#615

It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could…

MS Office is hardly "niche professional software." I hate it, and recognize that I can use the online services, but the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this application and I can't easily do it on Linux.

I am also forced to use "productivity" software from MS, but I make do with the web versions on Linux at work. I hate it all, but it's okay. I am playing the long term game of trying to get my whole org to Linux. It helps that I can influence technical decisions, slow but steady process.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#616

I’m so close to the switch myself for silly reasons. I don’t like windows due to their creepy business practices and negative design patterns in their OS so I’m very bias against it. Forcing copilot is just the latest in their creepy practices… For more details on why I came close to switching: I use my win desktop as a host for ai services such as Comfy UI for stable diffusion generation since it is a beefy platform…

Running ComfyUI or _any_ AI stuff on Linux is a night and day difference in terms of ease of use and performance when compared against that of Windows users. Python on Windows is suffering

I fail to see how Python or ComfyUI would be easier to setup and use on Linux, unless we're talking about torch compile or Triton.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#617
post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>niche professional software may lack native support Microsoft Office is not "niche professional software"

What is Microsoft Office? Do you mean Microsoft 365 Copilot?

*Microslop 365 Copilot

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#618
post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and he was skeptical and concerned at the idea of just downloading and running an executable from somewhere on the internet Ironically, being concerned and skeptical about running random executables from the internet is a good idea in general.

> Ironically, being concerned and skeptical about running random executables from the internet is a good idea in general. I agree you shouldn't run random executables, but the key word is "random". In this case, Ring Racers is a relatively established and somewhat well-known game, plus it's open-source. It doesn't guarantee it's not harmful of course, but ultimately for someone with the mindset of "I should never run…

> plus it's open-source

Open-source only matters if you have the time/skill/willingness to download said source (and any dependencies') and compile it.

Otherwise you're still running a random binary and there's no telling whether the source is malicious or whether the binary was even built with the published source.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#619

It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could…

Will these issues with Linux ever be overcome? I want to switch but I just don't feel confident yet, and I wonder how long the "yet" will remain.

>Will these issues with Linux ever be overcome?

I'd ask you the inverse question: If Linux never got any better than it is currently, what would it take to push you away from Windows? I don't mean this as a challenge, I'm genuinely curious.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#620
post #86

These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11. But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to ma…

Have you tried replacing Microsoft Office with Libreoffice? It's been perfectly usable for years and I'm even comfortable sending anyone .odt files. I haven't got a single question or comment about it. You may not be able to but in that case just use the .docx extension, install whatever fonts your colleagues expect and continue exactly as you were.

I can't take these kinds of arguments seriously because I regularly read, edit and create documents and spreadsheets and never felt the need to use Word or Excel. It seems most people I've met who claim they can't use Linux because they need X, Y or Z never really tried when I ask. It's just an assumption and they deal with Microsoft based on it.

It's a shame, we could have a world without data-mining and vendor lock-ins if we were principled and didn't always choose the easy path.

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