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Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#81

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

My OS is part of my toolset that I want to work and not have to tinker with to get functioning. The Apple hardware and OS are the best I've used from the perspective of I want it to just work and it doesn't get in my way with a huge amount of annoyances.

I used to use Windows and it had so many annoyances and differences when doing work that deploys to Linux. Using Linux as an end user had many more annoyances and things that just didn't function or required a lot of effort to get working just right (wifi and trackpad are the big offenders that I recall).

To answer the question specifically - the end user experience for Linux needs to surpass Apple's for me to switch. I don't see that ever happening, tbh.

Taking a step back - I don't see myself as a fanboy, this is purely from the perspective of I've already paid my dues doing IT desktop/laptop support earlier in my career and just want it to work.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#82

Post by lexa1979 »

VR Games - After years of DOS, then windows 9x, XP, 7, I switched to Xubuntu in 2012. The first 2 years were made of learning and experiencing, then I worked and played with my computer without ever thinking of switching back to Microsoft. I switched my whole family, dad, sisters, uncle and so on, on Xubuntu over the years, everyone is happy with it, it just works for them. ...Then came the Quest 2 in my cousin's home. I tried it. I wanted it. I bought it. ...And I reinstalled Windows on my main computer.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#83

Post by thorin »

Linux is fine from a technical perspective, running servers and managing processes and data. I've used it frequently since the 90s.

When I last used an IDE in Linux 10+ years ago it wasn't a great experience. 99% of end users in a business environment are on windows 10, so it makes sense that I am too. The others on Apple I'd guess, not Linux.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#84

Post by xtracto »

The one user desktop thing that I find funny Linux does out of the box but Osx and windows dont have is the ability to pin a window to be "always on top" there was a separate unofficial app on Mac that did that (afloat) but Apple managed to make it not work with their updates.

Its 2021 and I cant pin a window always on top? Crazy

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#85

Post by reportgunner »

orangepanda wrote: post #56

Because I’m not a masochist. I use ubuntu for work, some issues I’ve encountered: * No sleep mode by default * Snap is cancer. When I’m sent a pdf, I cant open it directly because the current app is isolated and cant see that a pdf reader is installed. Same with all other app specific extensions. * Snap, again. Whenever I’m sent a file on Skype, I have to reboot; It overrides my $home directory and I cant open or acc…

Ubuntu is a very bad example of a linux distro.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#87

Post by watermelon0 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #60
captainmisery wrote: post #10

I'm using Windows 10. In the past year I've tried: Manjaro, Fedora, Linux Mint and some others. Why I'm not switching? Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix. After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution. "Well, you know, you…

Like others here I have the opposite experience: to such extend that I am actually installing Ubuntu instead of Windows10 on computers of friends who are not technical and they love that it works so well.

What magical software and hardware combination are you using, where there are less issues on Linux than on Windows?

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#88

Post by drcongo »

I'm on a Mac, reproducing the value adds on here would mean running more than just a Linux desktop, I'd also need a server somewhere running all sorts of things to give me what I get from iCloud, which I would then need to maintain, not just for me but for family members. All in all, switching to Linux would be a massive drain on what little free time I have in life, with little to no benefits (YMMV).

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#89

Post by jzellis »

I'm weird because I have a couple of older MacBooks, but my primary OS, even for web dev, is iPadOS. I use Textastic as my primary IDE for Node/JS/HTML and Blink to log into my remote servers and my Raspberry Pi.

For me, as someone who does a lot of music and recording, Mac was always the 800 lb gorilla - Windows could never touch Mac in terms of giving OS priority to the audio layer, etc. Linux I don't even bother with, because I have zero desire to dick with Jack/ALSA to just get stuff down. Also, I use Ableton Live as my main desktop music environment and nothing even comes close on Linux.

But iOS is actually better than MacOS for music, in my opinion. The ecosystem for synths is insane, the touch interface lends itself perfectly to making music, and the apps are a lot cheaper.

Honestly, OS hardly matters anymore for 70% of what most people, even nerds, do for productivity. VS Code runs on everything, most of the business crap is in the browser now, and you can watch and listen to streaming media on anything. If you're a gamer you need a Windows box, if you're a multimedia person you need a Mac, but if not you can use Mint or Elementary or whatever or even a Chromebook as your daily driver and not really notice any significant difference.

(I don't care about desktop environments because I run 99% of my apps full-screen and always have. If I need to have a console open I'll work on my Mac and have my iPad running a mosh or ssh shell, or vice versa.)

I mean, of course, all this goes out the window if you're writing compiled stuff that targets specific platforms, but me, I just do Node and frontend JS and HTML for money, man. I can do that on literally anything. I just use MacOS and iOS because I've got MacBooks and a 12" iPad Pro that weighs nothing that I can pair a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to and use for hours at a cafe or in a park without needing a power outlet.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#90

Post by 4ad »

dTal wrote: post #80
4ad wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> KDE Plasma supports "non-integer scaling" perfectly, and for my money is vastly superior to any other GUI available, open or commercial. Sorry, but no, this is simply not true. Unlike Gnome, it actually tries to support it, which is laudable, but only Qt programs work reasonably well, other programs "work", but you can tell they only work through a hack. Also, it all goes to hell once you connect an external displa…

>only Qt programs work reasonably well, other programs "work", but you can tell they only work through a hack How is that different from Windows? Native toolkits get scaled natively, non-native toolkits get image-based scaling. >you have to use [nvidia] if you want to use external displays. You are simply mistaken. I have a T480 with an nvidia GPU, which I never even load the kernel module for, and the HDMI works jus…

> How is that different from Windows? Native toolkits get scaled natively, non-native toolkits get image-based scaling.

It's not, Windows is just as bad as Linux, but I don't use Windows. On macOS this problem doesn't exist.

> I have a T480 with an nvidia GPU, which I never even load the kernel module for, and the HDMI works just fine.

Great that it works on your T480. It doesn't work on the ThinkPads I was interested in when I last looked, like the P-series or the X1E series. That said, a few years back it didn't work on any ThinkPad with nvidia GPU at all. So there's progress I guess.

But it doesn't matter anyway, I don't want to give nvidia any money, and I certainly don't want to give Lenovo any money if they don't want to sell me the SKU I want (the one without nvidia). I vote with my money and buy from someone who actually wants to sell me stuff.

> Yeah, I really don't. You're complaining about how two specific distros picked more or less at random don't suit your use case. What else am I supposed to say than "well use a different distro then"?

No, they are not picked more or less at random. They are by far the two most common Linux distributions, and certainly the most common distributions used as Linux desktops. Trying to make the proprietary software for the government-issued USB dongle so I can pay my taxes on Linux is bad enough, trying to do the same on NicheOS instead of Ubuntu is a different level of pain. Not to mention other kind of commercial software that do in fact support Linux, like various CADs or Mathematica. These used to require RHEL, fortunately most of them support Ubuntu now. Try getting tech support to help you even install the damn thing.

Or, you know, try to file a Chrome bug report and get it accepted instead of being sent back with "try on Ubuntu please". I know because I use FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Hell, they don't even accept patches to build Chrome on these systems, that's why the BSDs have to maintain a lot of patches.

Doing anything outside the mainstream carries a cost. When I was young and I had all the time in the world I could afford that cost, because my time was worth nothing. Now my time is worth something (and I don't have enough of it!) and I can't affort any of this stuff.

Linux is not universally more expensive, for example, homebrew on macOS more closely resembles a disease than a package manager. I have to build GCC myself. If I need a GUI unix program that doesn't run on macOS I have to deal with the embarrassment of XQuartz, etc, etc. That is why I even entertain the idea of a Linux alternative. But as bad as macOS is, it's still significantly cheaper than Linux for me. And I feel that if we ever come to the point of Linux being cheaper to operate than macOS, it will be because macOS got worse and worse (which it does), and not because Linux got better.

It's great that you can afford this cost, but the Linux community pretends this cost doesn't exist. That's why there hasn't yet been the year of the Linux desktop.

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