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I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

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

#701

Post by odie5533 »

poolnoodle wrote: post #423
odie5533 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I recommend macOS to everyone. It's the only OS that is truly polished and where you don't have to worry about viruses and everything just works. mac could be better, but it's still leading the pack. People don't want the OS to become their hobby.

I dislike what Microsoft is doing to Windows as much as the next guy but if you get Windows Pro and disable all the icky stuff it is a rock solid OS that just works. Sure, once a year an update might add some new icky stuff but then you just spend 10 minutes to find out how to disable that and go about your business. It. Just. Works.

Windows is prone to getting malware and ransomware. When you buy a new Macbook, you can use the Migration Assistant to move all your apps and files to the new Mac. With Windows there's no easy way. On Mac, apps are almost always safe and not going to crap up your computer. With Windows you have to be wary. Windows usually comes with bloatware, Mac doesn't. Windows you have to manage and install drivers and always update them and sometimes they break. With Mac, drivers and updates are seamless.

I daily drive Windows since Win 95 but there are rough edges that less technical people get cut on.

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

#702

Post by sedatk »

It’s astonishing to me that Microsoft is letting go of all these users because someone drew something on whiteboard that looked like “force Microsoft Account on all users -> ??? -> Profit”, and has repeatedly done the same with Teams, Ads, Bing, OneDrive, use of WebView in essential components etc.

I’m not only saying that as a former Windows engineer, but as someone who actively uses Windows, OneDrive, Office, etc. Microsoft is hurting their userbase and that’s not a winning strategy in the long term.

But I’m sure some exec will eventually justify Windows’ decline caused by these thousand cuts as “inevitable outcome of macro-level changes in technological trends” or whatever.

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

#703

Post by w4yai »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #321
pelagicAustral wrote: post #179

I have... I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best thing to ever happen to Linux. I get all the ease of use of something like macOS but pre-built with tools for development like distrobox, and then I can just build my dev environments and get shit done in no time, without having to worry about breaking updates or nuking the who…

Not that there aren't trust issues with bigger projects but don't folks worry that the further down the "branch of a flavour of of a branch of a flavour" chain they go the higher and higher the risk of someone sneaking nefarious code through becomes? I guess there's a natural barrier in that the lesser known code bases become less of a target. Sometimes I just find it wild with how much we talk about containers and s…

We don't talk about that here. We're here to spit on Microsoft.

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

#704

Post by dessimus »

Aurornis wrote: post #562
voxleone wrote: post #299

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…

> But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps For people who are trying to get their work done now, in the present, this doesn’t change anything. We all know that Linux could technically run the same productivity apps and games if every company put enough investment money toward it. However even some of the apps I use which had a Linux version have announced th…

>The reasons people don’t use Linux isn’t because it’s not “perfect”. People use Windows because it works, it’s familiar, and their software runs on it.

The reason most people run Windows is because that is what their jobs IT department put on their computer, and those IT departments run Windows because of the enterprise tools Microsoft has provided for lifecycle management with AD, GPO, etc.

Linux will have difficulty making progress with enterprises for the non-SecDevOps staff until it's as easy to centrally manage user and computer polices, accounts, and upgrades across the entire end-user fleet as it is with Microsoft.

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

#705

Post by Ajedi32 »

mjr00 wrote: post #669
Nextgrid wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Of course this is true. But you can keep going down the rabbit hole. How do you know there isn't a backdoor hidden in the source code? How do you know there isn't a compromised dependency, maybe intentionally? Ultimately there needs to be trust at some point because nobody is realistically going to do a detailed security analysis of the source code of everything they install. We do this all the time as software devel…

The problem is that on Windows or your typical Linux distro "how much you trust" needs to be "with full access to all of the information on my computer, including any online accounts I access through that computer". This is very much unlike Android, for example, where all apps are sandboxed by default.

That's a pretty high bar, I don't blame your friend at all for being skeptical.

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

#706

Post by AyyEye »

bachmeier wrote: post #388
voxleone wrote: post #299

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…

> Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather: Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives? As a user of Linux as my main desktop OS for more than 20 years, a user of Linux far longer than that, and a promoter of FOSS before that was a term, th…

> Most of the world does not care. I suspect that is more true today than ever before

100% of the people I have spoken with, from uber drivers to grandparents, have all noticed, hated, and are sympathetic to the fight against the rental/subscription economy. In 2025 I don't think I've had a single person defend the status quo because they all know what's coming.

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

#707

Post by dajt »

bayindirh wrote: post #613
mrstackdump wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm guilty of this. I started with a C64 and love hardware and programming, but modern CPUs and MCUs are so complicated I can't be bothered learning about them.

The old 8-bit Arduinos were pretty understandable, but with an ESP-32 I just assume the compiler knows what it's doing and that the Espressif libs are 'good enough'.

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

#708

Post by reactordev »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #504
bhewes wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows VM with USB passthrough. I haven't had any issues with USB devices this way.

I've tried to passthrough Behringer audio interface, as well as HX Stomp (to, of course, avoid dual-boot) and it stuttered like crazy. Maybe there is a way to make it more "realtime" but it's not the default, at least in VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is the worst VM software.

QEMU on Linux with kvm is gold.

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

#709

Post by foxglacier »

NamlchakKhandro wrote: post #573
magicalhippo wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was, some 25+ years ago.

No it wasn't. Only in your head

Over 90% of desktops had Windows back then. So yea, that's everybody. Unless you're being pedantic because one guy was using IRIX on an SGI workstation, or the odd Mac.

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

#710

Post by sudonem »

taf2 wrote: post #436
voxleone wrote: post #299

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…

Fusion360 is the one tool I wish had better wine support

I got tired of fighting to keep Fusion running in wine so now Fusion is literally the only reason I maintain a windows partition to dual boot into. I hate that.

I’m no longer using it professionally so I could explore other options but FreeCAD kinda sucks (I will die on that hill), and OnShape offers the choice between my designs to be publicly visible, or a subscription that assumes I have a corporate expense account makes it not viable. (I don’t mind paying for good tools but there has to be a middle ground).

If Autodesk ever ported Fusion to Linux… I’d probably pay for a subscription just out of sheer elation ha.

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