Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#741

Post by fragmede » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

mcswell wrote: post #573

I switched from Windows (11) to Linux (Xubuntu) back in November, mostly because of all the AI stuff I didn't trust. While Linux is working ok for me, I can see why people complain about its not being user-friendly, particularly if you're not a Real Programmer. I've had to go to forums too many times to figure out why this or that doesn't work. The latest is the fact that 'apt update' has stopped working today for Vi…

I've spent a long career getting good at Linux. Real good. But I'm only human. Over the decades, the number of how-tos, wiki pages, Linux distros, Linux kernel source, other programs documentation and source; all of that which I've ingested and used in practice and gotten good at, doesn't hold a candle to AI having been trained on every single last one of them. The solution to your apt/Vivaldi problem is easy: install Claude code, and paste in the error. Hit ctrl-o to gain insight on how it fixes it.

You used to be able to charge a decent hourly consulting rate to do some Linux, but because Claude code is so good at it, there's no market for that anymore.

(for one, your URI is wrong, resulting in apt looking for .../deb/dists/stable/dists/stable/Release )

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#742

Post by aa_is_op » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

I'm keeping an eye on SteamOS. I love how it's much better at running games than Windows, the platform those games were designed for.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#743

Post by fragmede » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:44 PM UTC

mcswell wrote: post #573

I switched from Windows (11) to Linux (Xubuntu) back in November, mostly because of all the AI stuff I didn't trust. While Linux is working ok for me, I can see why people complain about its not being user-friendly, particularly if you're not a Real Programmer. I've had to go to forums too many times to figure out why this or that doesn't work. The latest is the fact that 'apt update' has stopped working today for Vi…

> particularly if you sometimes log in on public WiFi networks

If you're on Linux and have a firewall, so there are no listening ports, there is no threat from using public wifi. TLS encrypts your connection on ~all websites these days.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#744

Post by dismalaf » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:44 PM UTC

I switched to Linux circa 2010 when I needed a word processor but didn't want to go to the store to buy Office (was pretty young and poor at the time). After some Googling I found LibreOffice and Ubuntu. I had used Suse Linux years earlier when I was a kid but it definitely wasn't ready for use (2003) so I was also curious about Ubuntu and the current state at the time. I installed Ubuntu, used LibreOffice for the thing I needed, and never looked back. Linux was a breath of fresh air and it did all the things I needed. I went to university using only Linux (2012-2016), opened businesses, did all sorts of things, all 100% on Linux. Nice to see everyone else finally catching up.

Also has always been interesting seeing people whine about Linux the whole time I've been using it problem-free, across 4 PCs and 16 years.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#745

Post by neocron » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:47 PM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #478

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'm in the exact same boat. I was a little unhappy with the ads etc in Windows, but perfectly willing to give Windows 11 a try. But Microsoft decreed that my admittedly a bit old but perfectly workable CPU was incompatible, due to not having a feature I wasn't interested in. I'd need to replace most of my existing hardware to switch. So why not try Linux? It certainly seems reasonable when Windows apparently needs mo…

Iike that you both started with Fedora. Same for me but almost 20 yrs ago

Haven't touched it in a long time ever since debian8 was the point in time where it was fine to run on desktop and laptop for me, not only on server. Ever since then I have it on all my 20something machines

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#746

Post by tempaccsoz5 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:47 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #29

progforlyfe wrote: post #6

Every month more and more people switch to Linux and I just love it. I'm tired of one company controlling the core operating system of 85% of desktop computers and users being at their whim. You want proprietary programs? Alright, fine, one can argue for that. But the central, core operating system of general purpose computers should be free and fully controllable by the users that own them!

> Every month more and more people switch to Linux We've been hearing this for decades and yet the home Linux userbase is microscopic and somehow even smaller than ever. Unless we're going to count Google's Android and Chrome OS. Those are the only Linux-based distributions that have ever gained market share over desktop Windows.

Have a look at the Steam Hardware [and software] Survey [0] results. Linux has been trending upwards whist Windows has been trending down for a wee while. And the population this looks at is primarily interested in gaming, which means that this is despite a compatibility layer being needed for a large amount of the software used. I imagine in other communities (software, old people) it's trending much faster.

E.g. I recently installed Linux Mint for my grandma so she could use email and an up-to-date web browser on her old laptop that can't run (secure) Windows anymore. The UI differences are marginal for her, and she can do everything she needs to much better than she could before (which was not at all).

[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#747

Post by ddtaylor » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:48 PM UTC

So happy to see so many new Linux users as a long time user and developer for the platform. I want to welcome anyone and PLEASE feel free to use AI to make awesome stuff or solve problems. The FOSS community is still adapting to the new influx of developers and tools, vibe coders, etc.

Be cautious with running commands or making package changes based on suggestions from AI tools. Ask clarifying questions and it may realize doing so would either break your system or be attempting to vastly modify it.

My advice is get Docker installed and do most of your stuff in there. If you mess up and expose a Postgres container it will get hacked, but not escape the container, whereas if you install Postgres as a system package and make that same mistake you will be fully owned.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#748

Post by purpleredrose » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:48 PM UTC

> 've used Windows for as long as I've been alive. At 6 years old, my first computer was a Windows 98 machine,

this sounds like child abuse.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#749

Post by jjordan » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:50 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #342

ryukoposting wrote: post #259

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitti…

Same experience here, but I'm not sure it's just MS fault; companies have a way of installing a bunch of stupid software on top of one another, that you can't get rid of without admin rights, that continuously do things that slow the system down. (And, you can have a tabbed file browser on Win7. I still have a Win7 box at home that works perfectly well and that does have tabs in file explorer. I think it was an addon…

Microsoft is progressively making everything an instance of Chrome. They've seemingly altogether given up the notion of native platform rendering. The win32 api for native ui elements hasn't been touched in two decades. There have been a few failed attempts to move on from it like Siverlight, WinForms, UWP, LightSwitch, etc, but they never bothered to revisit their native UI library. So now everything is a Chrome instance.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#750

Post by mrsssnake » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

I could talk about things better in Linux whole day. But besides popularity (so being preinstalled, proprietary software availability, being presented from childhood) is there a single reason to use Windows? Backwards compatibility, accessibility? Maybe?