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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

#791

Post by Ajedi32 »

happymellon wrote: post #754
mjr00 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which goes back to the main point; "total control of your computing environment" fundamentally means that you are responsible for figuring out which applications to trust, based on your own choice of heuristics (FOSS? # of downloads/Github stars? Project age? Reputation of maintainers and file host? etc...) Many, maybe most people don't actually want to do this, and would much rather outsource that determinati…

> Right, which goes back to the main point; "total control of your computing environment" fundamentally means that you are responsible for figuring out which applications to trust, based on your own choice of heuristics Hard disagree. Total control of my computing environment would be to allow an application access to my documents, a space to save a configuration, perhaps my Videos folder or even certain files in tha…

Technically you can do all that with on Linux with SELinux. But it's not the default, nor is it easy.

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

#792

Post by happymellon »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #791
happymellon wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right, which goes back to the main point; "total control of your computing environment" fundamentally means that you are responsible for figuring out which applications to trust, based on your own choice of heuristics Hard disagree. Total control of my computing environment would be to allow an application access to my documents, a space to save a configuration, perhaps my Videos folder or even certain files in tha…

Technically you can do all that with on Linux with SELinux. But it's not the default, nor is it easy.

> it's not the default, nor is it easy.

That's really the main point for me. Flatpak could also a lot of this, but Flatseal isn't the default, nor is it easy for users.

MacOS has a bunch of switches for access, but they are hidden away inside the settings, and they are not granular.

If it's not the default, and it's not easy then it may as well not be there for most people.

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

#793

Post by Moosdijk »

graemep wrote: post #506
Moosdijk wrote: post #303

The opening paragraph gives the reason why Linux is still not at the same level as windows: “ A few months and several headaches later…” Additionally, the first comment I read is very positive, yet it also gives insight into the same situation.

Given how many people here are saying that Windows is great after you do enough tweaking it does not seem very different.

Yet it is. I don’t see myself or anyone in my family effortlessly choosing and setting up a Linux distro without outside help.

Windows on the other hand is easy to install and set up. I’d argue most people in my family can do this and I’m the only one that is technically inclined.

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

#795

Post by pxoe »

abhinavk wrote: post #778
pxoe wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the expected way and the attitude is to just break user installs, then that's no better than Windows, perhaps even worse.

It's the Arch way. A beginner shouldn't be using Arch, Gentoo, NixOS or FreeBSD etc. That's why there are myriad of distros.

So it wouldn't be incorrect to refer to Arch and Arch based distros as 'well, if you want to have fun with a broken system, otherwise avoid', just so it could be mentioned in a succinct way when talking about what distros one could try.

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

#796

Post by KellyCriterion »

comprev wrote: post #311
iinnPP wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback. Been 90 days with zero issues.

When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad for a long time, and more recently an iPhone. Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers (colour/scanne…

Apple is by far the best integrated ecosystem for nontechsavy users; its incredible how they follow this approach; iPhone is since V1 (?) without manual.

Im looking fearfully into the future: What will happen to Apple product perfectness if any of these MBA or even PE guys is taking over CEO role?

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

#797

Post by nurettin »

I watched gnome evolve to the point where your calendar notifies you of meetings 10 minutes prior and has a join button which runs the appropriate application. I also get notifications for new emails and slack messages. Last week I was pleasantly surprised by

    snap install tmnationsforever
We are in a good place.

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

#798

Post by distances »

pxoe wrote: post #795
abhinavk wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the Arch way. A beginner shouldn't be using Arch, Gentoo, NixOS or FreeBSD etc. That's why there are myriad of distros.

So it wouldn't be incorrect to refer to Arch and Arch based distros as 'well, if you want to have fun with a broken system, otherwise avoid', just so it could be mentioned in a succinct way when talking about what distros one could try.

No, I don't think that's a fair way to put it. People regularly report having quite old Arch installs without stability issues. And people also regularly advice Linux newcomers not to pick Arch.

If you check their news section, it's a reasonable number of notes, 13 for last year. I think it's fair to say it seems to work well if you are willing to follow their procedure and already know what you're doing.

https://archlinux.org/news/

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

#799

Post by KronisLV »

mjr00 wrote: post #722
raincole wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was skeptical and concerned at the idea of just downloading and running an executable from somewhere on the internet. It's quite concerning that you frame this as a bad idea.

> It's quite concerning that you frame this as a bad idea. Downloading and executing other people's compiled software is how things worked for many decades. It's only been in recent years that people have come to believe that Google/Microsoft/Apple should be the final authorities on which executables are safe to run.

> It's only been in recent years that people have come to believe that Google/Microsoft/Apple should be the final authorities on which executables are safe to run.

I mean, the OS package repositories at least have some vetting and processes behind them, as opposed to a random website found online - so there's surely middle ground there!

You don't need to give everything up to a few big corpos to have at least a bit of a sense of security - I personally trust the Debian maintainers quite a bit due to their track record, short of bad actors infiltrating the community or accounts getting compromised.

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