# Linux is more stable and reliable.
I've reinstalled Windows so many times, never reinstalled Linux. System is separate from the user, I can remove all user configurations and it would work like new.
# Linux is more secure and private.
I have so many packages, they are free and safe. I've tried Windows recently, have to install software from the web. It is scary.
No telemetry by default. I send package statistics, have install it myself:
# pacman -S pkgstats
There are many communities, some run Destkop Environments, I run quite minimal setup, boot to graphical environment takes 100MB RAM. Old netbook is router/NAS, 1GB is plenty.
# Linux is more flexible and customizable.
Primary reason I've switched. So many options, it is awesome! GNOME, KDE, XFCE, OpenBox, wmii, dwm, xmonad. Entire distributions — Ubuntu, Arch, Nix and many more.
# Linux gives you more control over your computer.
There was liberating feeling — my computer is just a hardware. Never felt it with Windows, it always had its own way. You know, some people kick their computers in rage. That has gone.
Linux has a great driver support for supported hardware, it is like complaining about hackintosh. Windows adopting command line and package management tools. Yes, had to stop gaming, that's changing with Proton. I find Windows UI atrocious, my desktop for comparison:
http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png
multiple workspaces, no decorations, not even browser scroll bar. I'd like to have universal solution for sticky headers.
And, maybe, the most valuable — Linux is getting better while Windows and macOS getting worse. Telemetry, advertisement, walled garden, executable restrictions, firewall bypass, proprietary hardware — scandal after scandal. While on the Linux side — AMD GPU, Wayland, Flatpak, Steam Proton, web applications, better than ever laptops support.
You couldn't pay me to put up with the massively inferior environment of any of the Linux DEs at this point. They are all, in varying ways, completely miserable to use.
Windows 10 is actually a really solid OS, and virtualization makes it so easy to spin up a Linux VM if I really need it.
I've tried Windows 10, it is not bad as consumer OS. Tray notifications gone, so good. WSL1 has limitations, should be solved in WSL2. PowerShell, OpenSSH and winget are good improvements.
Windows interface is changing, at least some people should like it. I feel it is getting progressively worse. That's strange — I like macOS Aqua. I didn't like brushed metal, it has gone now. I have no other explanation but blind spot of Windows users.
So we suck up MS treatment of us as cattle whose data and behaviours to be harvested and the dumbing down of the UI in the interest of getting things done and getting on with our lives.
It's a faustian bargain, but the alternative is worse.
I already work on a computer all week, then and spend a lot of my discretionary time on it for career research, for necessary involvement in modern life and for some leisure.
If I fulfil my desire to use linux for all the various advanced desktop scenarios I demand of my computer I'm giving up the remaining free time in my life!! And for what - to tweak driver configurations and DEs, again, AGAIN, for the hundredth or thousandth time in my life to keep things working. Learning how everything works was fun but constantly canoodling with configuration and setup for the nth time is as pointless as working around MS antifeatures, and seems to take up more time on balance if you are doing a wide variety of advanced scenarios occasionally (in my experience as a 20 year linux tinkerer).
So it's not a blind spot, it's a faustian bargain to have some hours left in my life to exercise, to look after my health, to go outside and enjoy the garden and live a wider life.
Sounds like you're using Visual Studio... which at this point is closer to an Operating System than an IDE...
PS: I haven't had any version of Visual Studio installed since about 2004.
I would encourage you to try Gnome again. I use it everyday on a 7 year old laptop with Ubuntu, and it is impressively stable and smooth and a pleasure to multi-task with vertical windows.
Maybe this is interesting for you?
Well, some things are arguably not getting better.
> Flatpak
That's part of what's getting worse: Fracturing/deterioration of the use of distribution package management, instead of improving and expanding it.
> web applications
Another part of what's getting worse: Instead of having compact apps you have to load a behemoth of some web browser/app framework, to do semi-trivial things.
There's also systemd; Gnome having taken application UI in a weird an (IMHO) unfortunate direction, and the fact (?) that the hardware resource requirements have risen significantly.
There is a need to package closed source software, to provide dependencies. Some people use outdated distributions, that's root cause. If distribution is switching I'd better search like minded and help with maintaining (or it would be systemd scenario).
At least there is application. Everyone is free to make native. There is Void (Linux), runit [1], at least on Arch Linux there is big choice [2]. Fork Gnome, KDE 3 forked as Trinity Desktop Environment [3]. Boot to xmonad — 100MB RAM, Chromium — several GB RAM.
It is easy to imagine arguments against — Steam builds distribution platform on top of Linux, no packages there, Wayland vs X11, distributions spread resources, maintainers breaks software. I am not Steam user, I am not Ubuntu user, but I benefit from wider community.
Indeed, the popularity of docker, flatpak and hobby/fad distributions and language-specific package managers is leading to many security nightmares and harming traditional distributions.
There are reasons for painstakingly vet and package software:
- security
- stability AKA you don't want to force feature upgrades with new bugs on servers and workstations
- legal compliance: people are unaware of the amount of license issues in docker hub, flatpaks and most distributions
I wouldn't include those on the same list. It makes sense for various (source-form) libraries to be maintained and updated and made available independently of the OS and uniformly across operating systems. I don't see this as undermining Linux distributions - as these are used when you're making your own builds anyway.
Otherwise - yes, agreed, and it's also about redundancy and bloat when installing software; and some entities writing software that can only run on their own docker image; etc.
That's the problem: they encourage building with tons of random stuff pulled from the Internet on the fly, sidestepping OS distributions completely and providing no reproducible building, no vetting, no license review, no long-term security.
The leftpad disaster is a good example.
Also - it's not supposed to be "tons of random stuff", it's supposed to be the libraries you're relying on. Maybe I'm missing something in the point you're making?
> it's supposed to be the libraries you're relying on
When an ecosystem has poor engineering practices and encourages small libraries with many dependencies you get a quadratic explosion of indirect dependencies.
You might not care about having 100 transitive dependencies until a poor soul has to maintain your code in 4 or 10 years from now.
I was a thing I just did once in a while more than a decade ago but I haven't had to on multiple systems for a long time now.
I do that, and have had no issues in the Windows 10 timeframe across 3-4 Win 10 OSes, one on canary, err Windows Insider (slow ring).
If you write it this way (without details) then how people can argue?
What's so scary? I think I'm using 99% of my software from an actual vendor sites and never felt that way. Also using things like virustotal.com.
I've used open source OS for a decade. It has changed my mind. I've never downloaded software from site. I trust community, not vendors. I use just one non open source application (slack) and I do not trust them, I'd rather run it in a sandbox.
My system comes with a framework to download, build, install any package with just a few commands:
$ yay -G foo
$ cd foo
$ makepkg -sei
No other ecosystem comes close. Browser extensions and smartphone applications replicate some of it but
* it can be adware/spyware/malware
* it can change overnight, no one checks
* one gallery by popularity or by restriction
Even my closed source software comes from community maintained recipes, Windows finally got it with winget.
Oh, I know! Compare it with programming language package managers — gems, pip, cargo.
And having all these different package managers require me to either have blind trust in a lot of different communities, or spend a lot of time comparing CRCs and reading code.
I do not like apt, dpkg, aptitude — interface is not good, output extremely verbose by default and it was slow. Its existence does not annoy me as I do not use it anymore. I use pacman, but this annoys you, what should I do? Abandon it and fill the web with grieve?
Maybe you have to work with different distributions, it should not be hard to create (or google) wrapper https://github.com/icy/pacapt
Separate communities is Linux power. We do not argue on a true form, we solve our needs.
Maybe because it requires "huge shittons" of effort to try to controle the software, and yet, at the end of the day I still have to trust somebody (OS, Drivers, ISP, Firmware/Hardware, Govt)
If you get your packages from a single source, you mostly have to trust that source (lower attack surface), and can be assured they will meet a minimum quality level.
Example oopses from valve (but really, most vendors have theirs):
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671
Sure, it is about trust. Browser addons and language packages pushed by authors, this results in leftpad, spyware. Distributions dissolves authors power, provides buffer, they pull new versions, walk it through stages, there are many eyes and build is (often) reproducible, stable distributions pull only critical updates. Overall effect would not be as dramatic.
https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/archlinux/archlinux.ht...
For instance, I upgraded Fedora from 32 to 33, and Spotify stopped working. Can this be fixed? I'm absolutely sure it can be fixed. Do I have time? No.
I have watched way too many coworkers bomb meetings because of trying to use bluetooth headsets on Linux. Am I trying to cause suffering? No, I will use a headset with the good old headphone jack, because I have something else that I need to do with my actual day.
All the support posts that I read told me that bluetooth is the problem, not windows. But I call BS on that as the bluetooth duplexing works perfectly fine on Linux as well as macos.
I used to try Linux once a year or so but gave up doing that a few years ago because there is no single place to go to for answers and it's a time sink. The operating system needs to get out of my way so that I can make software. Windows does that.
I'm sure bias has a lot to do with my perception, I'm ok with that.
Haven't had any issues with Microsoft mice on Linux, though. knocks on wood
I haven't had time to Google how to debug the problem, but only about 1 in 10 games "just work"
Update: OK, instead of surfing HN I googled the problem. I think it may be that my games are installed on an NTFS drive. I will try moving the installs to a new drive and see if I have more success!
In 2018 I switched to Arch Linux at home because I heard "Linux has less games". Before that I used Linux exclusively at work. To test it out I installed it on a 32GB flash drive so that I don't have the urge to install games when I'm space limited. It worked for the first 3 months. Then I got a new SSD and installed it there. A few days later proton came out and I ended up clocking in 600 hours in Warframe. The idea that linux has "no games" is an urban myth. I got scammed by Windows users.
On Linux? Its yours. Change anything you want.
All arguments of convenience go out the window when you are not in control.
But Im no tipical user, I don’t play games and don’t consume a lot of modern media or crazy new hardware, but do watch some youtube, listen to podcasts and read a lot and linux offers more than what I need. Linux got to a point that installing it is way frictionless. I had some attempts to install linux 15 and then maybe 10 years ago and gave up quickly. Nowadays not only that it runs live off a usb stick, it also installs easily on an existing windows system with a choice of partition of any convenient size.
Also playing with python, racket, chicken scheme plays a whole lot nicer under Linux. I am really thrilled to be on Linux.
Beware of this though, if you really want to remove all the telemetry. Seems like telemetry is deeply ingrained in the OS. Last time I used Windows tried to enable every option in O&O ShutUp10, got a BSOD.
Dennis R.
I have a secondary Win10 OS and, throughout months, after each update it kept losing more and more of the preferences which I initially set -> too frustrating -> I gave up trying to have it be set the way I want.
The same can happen of course as well on Linux, but it happens definitely less frequently.
I've really never understood this complaint. "oh why do I have to use a standardized set of abstractions for configuration instead of bizarre bespoke GUIs that are different for every piece of software."
Linux config files absolutely do not follow one standardized convention.
GUI lets me use keyboard + mouse. CLI is keyboard only.
Regardless of any rationale, my experience is what it is. No amount of counterpoints are going to change what I've felt using CLIs.
I would completely disagree here, they're more aesthetic but not more intuitive or discoverable.
Compare tar with apple's camera app on the iphone for example: tar --help will tell you how to do everything in the app. Is there something equivalent that tells how to do manual focus in the camera app? (yes, it's supported that for years and no one knows how to do it because it won't tell you.)
I personally use Linux and iOS. My main pain point isn’t Linux but apple lacking proper API to access iCloud services from Linux, or anything than Apple OSes really. I try not to spend too much time "expecting".
Native I/O performance is good but without shared files, WSL2 doesn't have any benefits over a VM.
Plus WSL2 has way better tooling integration than most VMs - Windows Terminal, VSCode, etc. work well. I've found the experience compelling enough that I don't see much reason to dual boot Linux outside of CUDA applications (which are also supported now on Insiders.)
Ubuntu's kind of lost its way recently though (snaps/apt mess, went a tad bit early with pushing Wayland as default). The derivatives like Mint, Manjaro, PopOS and Zorin seem to be the way to go for the average user.
The one thing that might trip you up is (these days rare) hardware incompatibilities. Dell and Lenovo (the only personal experience I have) are great when it comes to laptops. For integrated GPU, Intel Just Works; nVidia and AMD can occasionally require a bit of hassle depending on chipset and kernel. Discrete GPUs I don't have any recent experience but the word on the street seems to be that if you're fine with proprietary drivers both nVidia and AMD/ATI works flawlessly while FOSS drivers can be hit or miss.
In fact, AMD actively recommend you use the open source ones. I think the community radv vulkan driver also outperforms anything proprietary they offer.
Nvidia still requires proprietary out-of-tree drivers and causes breakage every so often, but AMD is just like Intel integrated graphics now. Never tried it with an AMD APU, but I would hope it would be the same with the open source amdgpu driver.
It is a big regression that won't ever be fixed, OpenGL 3.3 instead of OpenGL 4.1 and barely working hardware video decoding.
Yep, it is a 10 years old hardware, yet Windows 10 drivers are perfectly capable of handling it properly.
E.g. I remember nVidia drivers always being crap. Even the blob ones.
Latest example for me is Swiftpoint Z mouse. Doesn't work on Linux.
From what I understand, either drivers are in the Kernel and thus open source. Or the drivers are outside of Kernel and thus break on every kernel update.
As for Kickstarter projects with proprietary drivers targeting only Windows and/or OS X, well, yeah...
You’re right that with proprietary closed-sourced drivers one has to be prepared to be a bit cautious or conservative when upgrading the kernel. Though unlike Windows there’s no real reason to always be on the most recent version (critical kernel security issues are rare).
Running a 4.x kernel is still considered bueno.
Please expand on this gem. Bear in mind that all drivers in Linux are delivered by the kernel. I'll grant you that not everything is golden in Linux land but the sheer pain of finding and updating drivers in Windows is an order of magnitude worse than in Linux.
You get them out of the box in Linux, in Windows you don't.
What sort of Window Manager are you having problems with? Why not try another one?
Yes, especially the ads, they're so colorful and shiny !
/s>
I do ask seriously - I'm using Win Pro and I'm not sure what you're talking about
recommendations of installing Microsoft Chrome?
Back when I was using linux 2010s or so, it had serious issues with drivers and overheating. Config files would break unexpectedly and I found myself spending a lot of time in IRC channels trying to fix stuff.
At uni they were pushing us to use Linux and I think that made a lot of sense. People would learn bash effectively and learn some lower level bare stuff as well.
A lot of time "linux is free if your time has no value" made a lot of sense.
Nowadays, I hear some good news about Linux though I would never switch to it as a main OS.
> dropping to command line for configuring my system
Doesn't add up. You're a programmer, write a script if it bothers you?
> I find the user interface on windows nicer
Seriously though, expand on this. Interested in what you are comparing it to; Gnome, KDE, etc.
It does add up. "I'm a programmer" doesn't mean "I want to program every little thing in my life". I want to be not a programmer for a significant portion of my life.
You don't expect a surgeon to perform surgeries all the time, do you?
See how stupid it sounds?
As a programmer, I cannot recall being hindered by file name conventions, un-resizeable dialog boxes, bug trackers etc., as much I have been inconvenienced on linux by poor driver support, and regularly dropping to command line for configuring my system.
As a gamer, well, there is no competition for me, really.
As your average user, I find the user interface on windows nicer and see more compatible programs.
If there is anything I absolutely have to have linux for, I can just use a raspberry pi, a cloud server etc.