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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#771

Post by neop1x »

jhickok wrote: post #49
reconnecting wrote: post #5

Apple forced me to switch to Linux! Linux should consider paying Microsoft and Apple for new customers. Perhaps the customer acquisition funnel is quite long, at least it took 20 years of using Apple in my case before switching to Debian ( Xfce ), but it was worth it!

I am good laptop hardware away from making the move.

I can also recommend HP Zbook Ultra G1a. It's probably the closest thing to Macbooks at the moment. It has lower battery life and latest M chips are still faster but it's fast enough for me. The hardware is solid and sw support is great.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#772

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

bunderbunder wrote: post #553
bambax wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems industry-wide these days. What I’ve seen as an older-than-average developer is that the Agile movement has made it increasingly difficult to make time for paying attention to some of the more subtle aspects of user experience such as performance. Because I can’t predict how much work it will be accurately enough to assign story points to the task, and that means that this kind of work frequently results in a…

That’s not agile’s fault. That’s the orgs fault.

We used to have a few days set aside regularly to fix things that would never get prioritised.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#773

Post by chungusman »

FlossyBean wrote: post #701
chungusman wrote: post #529

You've sold me. Does anyone have a lightweight guide or something of a no-nonsense tutorial on how to do this without causing an even bigger headache than using windows?

Ubuntu with the Gnome Desktop works well as a family PC. Very easy installer with a GUI that walks you through everything. https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop Linux Mint is nice, but it's been a few years since I installed it. Back in 2018ish we had a lot of machines with old dual cores and 2-4GB of RAM that chugged on Windows. But after installing Linux Mint, they were given new life and ran very well. https://linux…

I use linux all the time for work - i just haven't acutally ever installed it myself haha. Thanks for the links.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#775

Post by demilicious »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #581
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…

KDE is bloated garbage too! Half of the OS didn't work. The only DE's that I haven't had poor experiences with are xfce, bspwm, i3/i3gaps, and xmonad. Note how 3 of these are tiling WMs.

KDE has been great for me on Fedora. What problems have you encountered?

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#776

Post by Wojtkie »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

I'm currently on Pop, but have an install of Cachy ready once I have some time and a stable connection. My main gripe of Pop (other than the COSMIC issues) was mostly audio issues with how they set up PipeWire and regressions with some releases. Do you find Arch to be a bit less of a headache when dealing with drivers?

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#777

Post by koyote »

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…

I have the same specs in my work machine.

Task manager takes 10 seconds to load the list of processes. Right-click on the desktop takes about 1.5-2 seconds to show the 'new' context menu. Start menu is actually fast to start drawing but has a stupid animation that takes about half a second to fully load.

I sort of understand how the anti-consumer 'features' (ads) get added to a piece of software. But I have no idea how they manage to continuously degrade the experience of existing parts of the system for seemingly no one's benefit.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#778

Post by mixmastamyk »

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 recommend Mint over Ubuntu, the snap issue does not exist there.

> And don't tell me that Linux doesn't need antivirus... you sometimes log in on public WiFi networks.

This is a misunderstanding of the threat model of Wifi. Stick to software from the signed repos and SSL. Avoid attachments, keep updated. I've never used antivirus with Linux, despite working on symantec antivirus back in the day.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#780

Post by jiggawatts »

sysworld wrote: post #731
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…

Corporate probably loaded up the laptop with work monitoring software, and some terrible AV software. Among other bloatware. A PC of your spec should run without noticeable delay, something else is going on there. Having said that, Windows has made a lot of the basic functionality way to resource heavy.

Another common issue on corporate-issued workstation laptops is that they don’t install the proper GPU drivers. The basic ones that ship with the OS are awful, but work just well enough that people don’t notice that they’re missing something important.
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