Compiz resulted in tons of Youtube videos showing how cool it is but it was a gimmick. An OS is much more than cool looking visualizations and to that end during the time it was introduced, Linux was less stable and so people come for the looks and then left because its Linux.
I still want to believe that Linux will become the king because we have lost so many freedoms over the years. As a result, every year I install a clean copy of Ubuntu on to my PC, start using it and then stop when I discover some serious bug. After that I put it back on the shelf and wait until next year. Maybe next year it will be better. This whole journey began during the Compiz era.
At the time it was easy to hear people complaining about how ugly linux was. Compiz helped a lot in that front. We were used to people saying "you can't do that on linux" and then things quickly changed to us saying "you can't do that on your OS".
Let's not fake it: linux is still far from being a diamond of UI design or consistency, but well, competition has its own problems too. The point is: things improved a lot and that event at that time in history made things improve a bit faster. To the point that almost two decades later something like this gets to the front page of hacker news and is filled by comments of people with fond memories of the time.
> This whole journey began during the Compiz era.
Another evidence of the impact it had.
While I'll agree those are important for usability, I'm not sure they're necessary for adoption. Windows 10 uses a mix of UIs ranging from win32 windows 95 legacy to MAUI and most popular programs implement their own UI frameworks and it's doing ok.
It's an old joke that one of the best ways to make someone perpetually unhappy is to teach them proper font kerning.
YMMV. I myself am very happy with Gnome and would say it's about as nice to use as a Mac. You can, of course, install ugly applications with horrendous UIs, that use Athena or Motif widgets, limited only to X bitmapped fonts or an ncurses UI that would work on a VT-52, and so on - but that's kind of a feature of Linux - it's Unix and it runs a lot of things originally built in ages long past. It can be consistent if you want, and it can embrace the past in ways no other OS can dream of.
Except, maybe, IBM's z/OS, but that's a completely different beast.
Not really jarring anymore with ok functionality between apps. I wish gnome-shell was more stable and shipped with a dock…
It does. It's just that it's hidden now by default.
What I really would like is a simple e-mail/messaging program to consolidate my mail, Slack and Teams inflows on a single threaded timeline.
>Another evidence of the impact it had.
Well for me it wasn't Compiz that brought me into Linux, it was this idea of something different from WIndows but it may have had this impact for others. Compiz was a gimmick to me and after trying it once I put it aside to try and just make my regular Linux installs remain stable.
Driver support was patchy at times, but then it wasn’t exactly easy on OSX (Apple: “if we don’t support you then you’re shit out of luck”) nor Windows (Microsoft: “we support everything. Albeit you’d have to manually find those drivers yourself so if your system doesn’t boot or network access fails then you’re shit out of luck”) either. At least Linux shipped 99% of what you needed on the install CD.
For that reason, I’d almost always switch to Linux if ever I needed to debug a hardware problem in Windows or OSX. Though that’s less of an issue these days because I haven’t run Windows in ~15yrs and if you have a hardware problem on a modern MBP then you’re shit out of luck so there’s little point trying to debug it yourself.
Good for you that you had this experience but this is the standard talking point I have been hearing for 15 years. Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS. However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications. Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users. If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck. If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools).
Which is entirely anecdotal.
I’ve done a considerable amount of research on this topic over the last 20 years and for the at least 10 years of it the actual main reason Windows users don’t like Linux is simply because it’s not like Windows. It doesn’t matter how much better Linux might be or how crappy Windows might get, if people are comfortable in one thing then they generally don’t like switching to another thing that behaves differently. And Linux behaves very differently.
This is the reason Microsoft practically gives Microsoft products away at schools. Get them comfortable at a young age and most of them will stick with you for life.
Just look at how successful Android, ChromeOS, Linux netbooks (before Microsoft subsidised XP on them) are/were. If a compelling platform comes with Linux pre-installed people manage just fine. But if you ask them to take a Windows machine, wipe it and install something alien the of course a lot of people with struggle. It’s no different to how few people install 3rd party firmware on smart TVs, routers or other consumer devices.
But I’m fine with that. I used to get wound up with tactics like MS subsidies 20 years ago but these days I’m very much more live and let live. As long as people don’t impose their preferences on me, I won’t be an arse about my preferences to them. Just don’t try to fob me off with pseudo-technical rubbish when it’s clearly just a subjective bias.
> Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS.
Open source is only part of the equation. It’s that the whole OS is modular and easy to interface with. Whether it’s CLI components, common APIs or even just hot swappable services like desktop managers.
Windows has elements of this too but frankly Linux just does it better. And I say this as someone who use to author a competitor to Windows Blinds. I’ve done my fair amount of low level hacking on Windows, I’d even go as far as to say that Win32 APIs are fun. But Linux is just easier to mould into whatever vision you have. But that’s not a criticism of Windows, Windows caters for a different audience.
And it honestly doesn’t take any more effort to learn Linux than Windows. People just get a head start with Windows given that’s what you grow up with. However having taught computer literacy to old people, I can tell you that Windows can be just as alien if you haven’t already had that head start. Equally my wife has bought Linux laptops before (because they were cheap) and had zero issues with them. So the stories of Linux being anti-user are far overblown.
> However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications.
I haven’t forgotten that. You just wrongly assume that only Windows can do that.
> Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users.
I did actually give examples. :) eg Linux being easier to install because there’s no googling around to find the correct drivers. They just get picked up by default from your install media.
Admittedly Windows has improved vastly in that area too but I think Microsoft had to borrow a lot of ideas from Apple and Linux to get there.
> If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck.
That’s just as big a problem on Windows and macOS as it is any other operating system, Linux includes. Software breaks on any platform. Heck, I’ve had far more instances of Windows Server failing after a broken update than I have on Linux despite running 2 orders of magnitude more Linux servers. And we are talking severs! Never mind all the junk that slows desktop Windows down from a thousand different independent update managers to printer bloatware that isn’t an issue on Linux. And Windows itself isn’t exactly big free itself either.
> If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools).
That’s not really a fair comment when Windows has multiple different control panels (has the Font applet even been updated from Win 3.x yet?) that were designed for entirely different desktop paradigms. Each with slightly different functionality and thus finding the right option usually requires clicking around a dozen hyperlinks in different applications for 10 minutes until, by chance, you happen upon the right applet.
Honestly mate, I’ve got nothing against other peoples preferences. Maybe you should relax your outlook on others too. Or at least stop pretending your preferences are technical in nature because for the vast majority of peoples that’s really not the case. For most people, it’s far more down to familiarity than it is down to which platform is objectively better (not that a vague term like “better” can ever be an objective metric anyway)
Just to reiterate: Every OS has problems but in MY experience Linux has broken on me in fundamental ways. MY experience is that Linux cannot be trusted for day to day usage even though I have been giving it chances for 15 years now. I'm glad that you have the fortune of having a better experience but I am not going to ignore what I have experienced with the OS just because you said it was good.
I'm not going to waste my time with this anymore so I bid you good day.
At risk of sounding like a school child: you literally started it.
My point was initially just to say that other people get on fine with Linux. Then you took us down the rabbit hole conflating preference with technical fact.
> Just to reiterate: Every OS has problems but…
Exactly my point. You try to sound impartial but then drift into anecdote and bias. Like what you like, I’m really not here to argue you into using another operating system.
> I am not going to ignore what I have experienced with the OS just because you said it was good.
I feel like I’ve said this a dozen times already…but: I’m all for people having preferences and I’d never dare try to change someone’s opinion. But you’re conflating preference as technical fact. Maybe you should relax a little and appreciate other peoples preferences too instead of assuming you’re right :)
If you read back what I’ve posted you’ll see I’m not here to argue with you that you’re experiences don’t matter to you. I’m just saying it’s all subjective.
Having done as much research as I have on this topic over the years (had to for work) it’s funny how much of what we believe is fact is actually just down to preferences and those preferences are usually just down to comfort (like an old friend) rather than technical capabilities.
But I’ll happily end the topic here if that’s you’re desire. :)
No. When someone relates their negative experience with an OS you happen to use, that is not a personal attack or invitation to expound upon your own contradictory experience. This happens every single time anyone ever says anything even remotely negative about the Linux Desktop. Can you honestly say the same happens with anywhere near the same frequency when discussing Windows or MacOS problems?
What personal attacks are these? All I’ve seen thus far are adults having a mature conversation.
> or invitation to expound upon your own contradictory experience
That’s literally the point of social platforms. You cannot post an opinion on a public forum and then declare that other people are forbidden to rely. If that’s your bag then you’re better off writing your thoughts and then popping them in a glass bottle and casting that out to sea :P
> Can you honestly say the same happens with anywhere near the same frequency when discussing Windows or MacOS problems?
Yes. Happens all the time and on any topic. This is a message board, opinions will differ and people will want to discuss them. I don’t see what the issue is there (as long as it’s civil).
Eg this started out a positive thread talking about Linux composing managers and there wasn’t any need for anyone to start arguing about how much better Windows was but that happened. And I’m fine with that. Weird you should think I’m not allowed to reply when that does happen though.
Anyway, this has gotten meta and in my experience that’s usually the point when the quality of conversations deteriorate so I’ll duck out of the chat now :)
That isn't what happened, this is my point about taking things personally. Let's look at what was actually said:
> Compiz was great at drawing curious people in but I'd argue that Compiz helped many people write off Linux.
After which that opinion was elaborated to say that despite the attraction of the window effects, Linux's issues during the time period in question drove people away and left them with the impression that Linux was all gimmick that couldn't hold up to serious use.
Your response to this was:
> I switched to Linux full time before Compiz took off and did so for exactly the reasons you cited the other platforms were superior: Linux was more stable, easier to reason with (as it was doing less magic behind the scenes), components worked better with each other since POSIX is designed for interoperability.
Which, at least to me and apparently nebula, sounded a lot like the "no, Linux is great actually" defensive anecdote you see every time anyone says anything negative about Linux. Worse, you didn't even engage with what was being said, only saying that you had a great experience. What does that have to do with the argument presented?
> That’s literally the point of social platforms. You cannot post an opinion on a public forum and then declare that other people are forbidden to rely.
There are useful replies and then there's tired old defensive performative argumentation. I'm arguing that 'I had a good time with Linux' in the context of what was posted is much more the latter than the former. I might be a touch too sensitive to this sort of thing after hearing it out of Linux Desktop evangelists for 20 goddamned years, though.
> Yes. Happens all the time and on any topic. [...] Eg this started out a positive thread talking about Linux composing managers and there wasn’t any need for anyone to start arguing about how much better Windows was but that happened.
Take a look back at the original nebula post and you will see that he only ever mentioned Windows negatively.
> I’ve done a considerable amount of research on this topic over the last 20 years and for the at least 10 years of it the actual main reason Windows users don’t like Linux is simply because it’s not like Windows. It doesn’t matter how much better Linux might be or how crappy Windows might get, if people are comfortable in one thing then they generally don’t like switching to another thing that behaves differently. And Linux behaves very differently.
Now, I am curious if that research is public anywhere? That's been my gut feel for the last 20 years too, but I've never had any data to prove it either way (provided the methodology for that research stands to scrutiny).
Now back to the point, I agree that Compiz contributed to both attracting and pushing people away from Linux. It exacerbated any stability issues in the graphics drivers, but at the same time, there was a huge presence of all the Compiz-stuff around. I similarly already used Linux (since '98) for stability and hackability on the desktop, and I had no interest in Compiz because of the fragility.
Still, it's obvious from the discussion here that there were people who were both pulled in and pushed out due to Compiz situation. As nebula says themselves, it hasn't really pushed them out, but instead it's the continuing troubles they experience with every yearly attempt to switch to Linux (and sure, their choice of hardware may contribute to it: I've had better experience with Thinkpads than even with Dell XPS 13 preloaded with Ubuntu). Basically, just like you get a very specific model if you want to run Hackintosh, you should look for computer models with decent support to run GNU/Linux on (it's just that there are many more models to choose from that would run great OOB): and don't trust the certification, because that doesn't cover all the things a consumer might care about.
But don’t bother looking it up. I’m done chatting to you after the last barrage of personal attacks you’ve made in the other thread. There’s only so many times you can post offensive remarks and miscomprehend the conversation while others are being polite and patient before their patients eventually wears out.
There is a difference between just liking the way things behave because you're comfortable with it and preferring the way it behaves because it is better.
To this day there is a good chance that if I want to run the latest version of any piece of Linux software I will have to compile it from source like it's the 1970s in order to do so. That is a problem that Windows and MacOS have never had, and the Linux Desktop community has been very slow and reluctant to do anything about.
Hell, even today as Flatpak beings to emerge as the dominant cross-distro application packaging format, it is still lacking basic features of 1980s Desktop software management and gets a lot of flak from the community for existing at all.
indeed there is. However the vast majority of people fall into the former category while assuming theyre the latter category.
Or to put it another way, everyone cannot be right that their preference is technically superior. Ergo our preferences must be subjective.
> To this day there is a good chance that if I want to run the latest version of any piece of Linux software I will have to compile it from source like it's the 1970s in order to do so. That is a problem that Windows and MacOS have never had, and the Linux Desktop community has been very slow and reluctant to do anything about.
That’s a huuuuge generalisation there. The truth is it depends on the Linux distribution (Arch and Fedora are bleeding edge, Debian and CentOS are not) what repos you have enabled (stable, testing, etc) and even what software you’re running. Eg some niche cross platform thing on GitHub might require compiling for all OSs never mind just Linux.
Linux will see more regular platform updates than Windows and macOS where you’re limited to service packs and new OS releases. You also don’t have to wait until “patch Thursday” for patches on Linux. They get released as soon as they’ve passed build and test pipelines.
So there are definitely plenty of examples where the generalisation is a way off. But for the sake of impartiality I do agree that some niche software and some distros will make you compile from source. However its definitely not the norm for common software and hasn’t been for 20 years.
> Hell, even today as Flatpak beings to emerge as the dominant cross-distro application packaging format, it is still lacking basic features of 1980s Desktop software distribution and gets a lot of flak from the community for existing at all.
Yeah cross platform package management is broken in Linux. Snap, flatpak, etc. all have problems. Personally I think the real issue is that Linux is trying to emulate Windows and Mac with portable installers. If you want a platform where the responsibility is on the user to download and install applications manually then there are already mature options available for that (Windows and macOS). So there’s no point trying to compete there. Where Linux excels is with its package management taking the risk of application installation away from the operator.
This won’t be to everyone’s preference but that’s fine because not every platform should behave the same. Just because a specific paradigm makes sense for one platform doesn’t mean it makes sense for every platform.
Just look at how fundamentally different remote management on Windows vs Linux is. Windows is based around RPCs while Linux is based around scripting. Neither is wrong or right. Both work effectively despite being completely different approaches.
And here lies the problem with people who say one is better than another: they look at the differences and say “I don’t like it” but think it’s a technical decision when in fact it’s just an emotive response based on what they’re comfort zone is.
That sounds arrogant and condescending. In order for that to be true you would have to presume that any given behavior was objectively better, and therefore anyone who prefers different behavior only does so because they are comfortable with the 'wrong' behavior.
> That’s a huuuuge generalisation there. The truth is it depends on the Linux distribution
No, it doesn't, and I'm really tired of hearing "you chose the wrong distro, bro" for literally every distro because none of them actually do what I, and many others, want. Why is it considered so insane to want a stable base system and be able to install applications of any level of bleeding-edgeness on top of it without jumping through a bunch of hoops?
> Linux will see more regular platform updates than Windows and macOS where you’re limited to service packs and new OS releases.
You clearly haven't kept in touch with Windows through the Windows 10 era.
> Yeah cross platform package management is broken in Linux. Snap, flatpak, etc. all have problems. Personally I think the real issue is that Linux is trying to emulate Windows and Mac with portable installers. If you want a platform where the responsibility is on the user to download and install applications manually then there are already mature options available for that (Windows and macOS). So there’s no point trying to compete there. Where Linux excels is with its package management taking the risk of application installation away from the operator.
I disagree with literally every statement in here except the first two sentences. There is no reason one cannot have "portable" applications that are also managed with a store or package manager! It just means that you don't actually have to and you don't need an army of unpaid volunteers to repackage shit constantly. And Linux, in my experience, doesn't excel at taking the risk away as I have seen updates break other package's dependencies plenty of times.
We're getting off in the weeds. My original point, I think, stands: Linux doesn't behave the way I think is best, therefore it isn't 'comfort' that makes me not like the way it behaves, it's my preference for a different --better in my reasoned opinion-- behavior.
> This won’t be to everyone’s preference but that’s fine because not every platform should behave the same.
If this is truly your opinion then you have phrased your initial assertion in a very poor and condescending sounding way. You very much make it sound like "people who don't like the way Linux behaves are just idiots who can't learn new things".
> And here lies the problem with people who say one is better than another: they look at the differences and say “I don’t like it” but think it’s a technical decision when in fact it’s just an emotive response based on what they’re comfort zone is.
Oh, I see, it's because you actually did think they're just idiots.
That’s the literal opposite of what I said. I was saying what’s “right” is often subjective and people (ie not just technical users but non-technical users too) often (ie not always but in a great many cases) chose what’s right based on what is familiar or comfortable.
That’s basic human psychology. There’s a number of published papers that demonstrate this exact phenomenon.
> > That’s a huuuuge generalisation there. The truth is it depends on the Linux distribution
> No, it doesn't
Of course it does. A bleeding edge distro is going to have packages mainlined sooner than a conservative enterprise distro. This isn’t some shocking news, it’s Linux 101.
The whole point of distributions is they are different distribution of packages on Linux. So it should be pretty obvious that some will ship different packages to others.
> and I'm really tired of hearing "you chose the wrong distro, bro" for literally every distro because none of them actually do what I, and many others, want
I didn’t actually say you chose the wrong distro though. I said the age of packages depends on a number of factors including what distro you use (but not limited to).
The second part of your statement reaffirms my point about how there’s not right or wrong with preference. Linux doesn’t do what you want it to do your preferences lay else where. You’re even admitting there that others have told you that you’re trying to bend Linux into behaving in a way that distro wasn’t designed to. Thus that’s a preference you’re demonstrating and not a statement of something being technically superior nor inferior.
> Why is it considered so insane to want a stable base system and be able to install applications of any level of bleeding-edgeness on top of it without jumping through a bunch of hoops?
It’s not insane and there are platforms out there that manage that better than others. However it’s pointless me listing them because there are a myriad of other reasons you don’t like Linux too.
> And Linux, in my experience, doesn't excel at taking the risk away as I have seen updates break other package's dependencies plenty of times
No software is infallible but package managers are robust and have been for at least 15 years. The only times I’ve seen a package manager go tits up is when I’ve intentionally overridden it’s default behaviour and then forced it to proceed regardless. Basically knowingly forced it to break. I’ve had Linux (and FreeBSD too) running for years, constantly upgrading it from the package manager without a single issue. So I don’t doubt you’ve ran into issues but with package management on Linux, after all you seem to find all the problems on Linux, but generally it does work well for most people.
The same is true for Windows. If you’re competent then you can run a stable Windows install for years without any issues. And equally on Windows people might bork the system installing the wrong software. Such as accidentally installing a dodgy copy of Firefox from a spoofing website.
This doesn’t mean manually installing software is worse - I’m just exampling where package management tools do help. Microsoft would agree too since they provide a number of tools for pushing software out in an automated way.
> You clearly haven't kept in touch with Windows through the Windows 10 era
I don’t see why you make that statement when Windows 10 still proves my point: updates happening slower and less frequently than on Linux.
That’s not a bad thing though. It’s just a different operating model.
> We're getting off in the weeds. My original point, I think, stands: Linux doesn't behave the way I think is best, therefore it isn't 'comfort' that makes me not like the way it behaves, it's my preference for a different --better in my reasoned opinion-- behavior.
“Better” in your context is subjective to your preference though. Which is the point you keep missing. And if the term is subjective then it cannot be argued as technically superior.
Then there’s the question of why do you subjectively prefer the platform that you’re already familiar and comfortable with rather than this other platform that feels alien to you. Could it perhaps be because it’s familiar?
> If this is truly your opinion then you have phrased your initial assertion in a very poor and condescending sounding way.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones:
> You very much make it sound like "people who don't like the way Linux behaves are just idiots who can't learn new things".
> Oh, I see, it's because you actually did think they're just idiots.
We don’t have to agree on everything but the ridiculously hostile way you’re twisting my post makes it hard to have a sensible conversation with you.
Give me a way to interpret this other than condescension. You're saying that people who espouse a preference are not doing so based on valid reasoning, and the only evidence you have offered for this is that you have a different preference.
I agree that 'better' is subjective, I don't think I ever said otherwise.
You don't give people the benefit of the doubt that when they say the prefer some behavior over other behavior that they have legitimate reasoning behind it. That's arrogant nonsense entirely deserving of the stereotype that IT people are arrogant, and I for one am sick of people acting like this in our industry.
…and now that you finally grasp enough comprehension skills that you’re not making wild presumptions and insulting interpretations of my posts, now you accuse me of being arrogant and the “stereotypical problem with people in IT” in your very same post that’s agreeing with the entire point that sparked all the initial venom? Even now you cannot bring yourself to be polite with other people and instead insult them while simultaneously agreeing with them.
We’ve chatted a few times before and each and every time you’ve failed miserably at even the most basic comprehension while repeatedly making aggressive and insulting remarks. On one occasion even berating me with the same point I’d literally made the post before. And Ive seen you do this to other people too. So I’ve been more patient in this conversation than you deserve. There’s one tangent where you can’t even follow the thread and keep referring back to the wrong parent while making a big hoohar about how everyone else has misunderstood the conversation.
Maybe the reason everyone in IT always disagrees with you and comes across a certain way is because you are the one being an illiterate ass to them? Communication is a two way street and I don’t have this issue with literally anyone else on HN apart from yourself. And after this experience of insanity I’ll certainly make sure I don’t bother to engage with you again too.
However, I submit that your language is not as clear as you might think it is. I am still not sure if you're trying to say that most people prefer certain behaviors purely out of comfort, or if you're agreeing with me that there is a good chance they prefer behaviors for legitimately technical reasons that just happen to be subjective. Your initial post on the subject very much strikes me as the former, and frankly so do nearly all your posts after that, yet you seem to insist that I am misunderstanding.
Because, it was less work to use windows. I like programming, I even like configuring, but I want to do them when I want and not because I need to do something third and computer is failing.
What do you do when you encounter a serious bug in your OS of choice?
When I say serious bug I typically mean serious OS breaking bugs.
Some examples from these past years(these all happened different years):
1) After clean install, desktop crashes after first reboot and I am thrown into terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on.
2) After Clean install, I wish to copy some files to an fat32 USB drive(Sandisk purchased directly from them). I get some error while the file is being copied, the drive is unmounted and then when I go to another system running Windows to check if my file was copied, the drive is corrupted causing all my files to be lost. Result: Stop usage and move on.
3) After clean install, I go ahead and connect a second monitor. Now my desktop becomes a garbled mess on both screens. I disconnect screen and the desktop remains a garbled mess on the main screen. I force reboot and upon reboot now I have been dropped to the terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on.
These issues don't happen on Windows and Mac in my experience. Don't get me wrong, Windows is degrading in usability and Mac is as well (at a much slower pace) but they are not falling apart in these fundamental ways. The very foundations of Linux seem to be built on sand and that does not convey trust when you expect your system to be more than just a toy. This is a machine to get work done on and I depend on it. I cannot be dealing with silly issues like this.
1) sounds like a hardware issue or hardware compatibility issue. Unfortunately, while Linux does come with great and extensive hardware support out-of-the-box, you'd still benefit from choosing hardware that works well with Linux. Thinkpad T series (I usually use X1 Carbon, but as the highest end ultraportable it can introduce some Windows-specific firmware issues that they only resolve in a few months after release — they did that with Gen6 when they switched to new always-on-standby, but they introduced a BIOS option for Linux ~6 months later) is usually the best bet out of big manufacturers, and Linux-focused ones like System76 are a good choice too. So if you want to try out Linux next time, get Linux hardware that will work well with it first (or be ready to debug issues like the ones you mention).
These sort of issues happen even more on Windows if you clean install it on a wide variety of hardware (MacOS can't even be installed on your non-Apple system, I am guessing, so I'd say that it's even worse :). The benefit Windows has is that it comes pre-installed on those systems.
I've seen 2) frequently ~5 years ago myself: you had to really ensure that you unmounted FAT32 devices cleanly and waited for the system to announce that the drive was safe to remove: don't do that a few times, and filesystem will be messed up enough for Linux FAT32 driver to be able to cope (Microsoft, having developed FAT32 themselves, has an obvious advantage there). They don't seem to cause as much corruption anymore (only the file you were transferring might be corrupted), or maybe I learned to wait properly. Also, flash drives can degrade and cause all sorts of issues where it seems to work properly in other systems but causes silent corruption. If this was an old flash drive, that's the most likely issue: I've learned to go with only SanDisk Extreme flash drives because they have the best write endurance, but they are multiple times more expensive for the same capacity compared to other flash drives (including SanDisk ultra stuff).
3) is really weird, and external display connectivity has been a huge issue ~10 years ago, but I haven't seen any issues since (including in presentations on random projectors, multiple screen types and such): the only stuff that still annoys me is the default of setting up new screens as extended, chromeless display areas (I'd definitely default to "mirror screens"), but once a screen is set up, it saves the settings forever. Still, this is most obviously a driver issue (integrated Intel graphics is usually most stable, Nvidia most performant, but AMD should be becoming the best of both worlds in the last few years, though it's hard to get their GPUs).
And since you say these don't happen with Windows, just 10 days ago I had to reboot my X1 Carbon into Windows (that it came preinstalled with) to file some tax paperwork and I connected it to my Dell 4K TB3 display (which I dock to and undock from repeatedly on Linux without issue: all of this is pretty high end Windows equipment). On reboot, TB3 light remained on and it stopped charging and passing DisplayPort through (still worked as a USB hub, and rebooting back into Windows did not fix it). I was thinking I'd have to go to the service shop since my laptop is still under warranty, but as I was pulling my SSD out to prepare for that, I realised I could just disconnect the battery and see if that helps, and luckily, it did.
In short, dealing with hardware is hard (which all your issues seem to be), and all of the operating systems have different quirks. As above, I had a pretty terrible issue with an expensive Windows laptop and Windows-supporting screen ($3000 + $1200) which worked without issue under Linux for more than a year. Apple has a huge advantage because they control the hardware they ship with, Windows is generally worse on arbitrary hardware but has the benefit of being pre-installed and "pre-debugged", and Linux is better than Windows but has to be clean installed (I am pretty confident that if you took random 20 laptops off the market today and attempted to clean install both Windows and Linux on them, you'd get a fully working Linux system more easily; MacOS easily loses out on such a benchmark).
With Linux the issues are fundamental to how the OS is designed and maintained. Several of these issues were fixed only to come back one or two releases in the future. These sort of terrible regressions don't inspire confidence.
You have listed excuse after excuse to justify these failures when in reality both other OSes have had these functions worked out over 10+ years ago.
1) I have heard this excuse before that I should stick to official Linux hardware. I have had issues with Thinkpads as well and some of these issues happened on a Thinkpad. I have also been hesitant to jump onboard System76 or Purism because their systems just look like junk and in 2021 when we have stunning Mac laptops with beautiful trackpads and retina displays and me entering my 30s I just don't have the stomach to spend hundreds of dollars on laptops that look like they came out of the mid to late 2000s. In the case of System76 they are rebadged Clevo systems from what I understand(could be wrong about this). So in reality I am paying for QA for this year of distro with no specific guarantee that I won't start hitting the same issues a few years down the road when the regressions start to come. There is no garuntee that System76/Purism will fix some small regression in a multi year old system. They suffer from the fact that the community will move on without them and so they have to maintain support. Mac systems have been supported for 7+ years. I have a 2012 Macbook Air that still runs pretty decent with no regressions on the latest MacOS (well second latest since they finally discontinued it giving it ~9 years of support).
2) I have never had any doubt as to Windows's ability to correctly write data to a USB drive ever since I started using this functionality back in Windows XP!
No I specifically mentioned that I bought Sandisk and direct from them to remove this commonly used excuse where Linux people blame everything but the OS itself. The flash drive is fine. Windows has written to it successfully without ever throwing an issue. MacOS has written to it multiple times without issue. The flash drive is not at fault!
I want you to stop for a moment. Picture yourself as the user. You have come to expect over the years that when you copy a file to a USB mass storage device, the file is correctly written. You don't do file integrity checks or other silly stuff. You just copy your files to the drive, unmount it and then move on. Now imagine you are trying linux out and you follow the same mindset. You copy files over and then unmount and move on. The horror and shock of losing precious data will definitely put permanent anxiety and distrust into the User's mind that will be very difficult to restore. If you cannot trust copy and paste then what can you trust? The OS is fundamentally flawed because these copy and paste operations in the GUI are basically abstracting command line operations that may or may not fail silently. This is garbage design compared to MacOS and Windows. When these other OS'es fail, sure they don't show you the error most of the time but the GUI is strongly tied to the operations that are occurring and so when they fail, you know they have failed. You're not in limbo because you are looking at a GUI that is not correctly tracking what the underlying command line application is doing.
3) All I know is that I have never had display issues in Windows and it is not even a thought on MacOS. In fact MacOS handles multi display so beautifully because it scales things perfectly. This is better than even Windows because while Windows always gets multi-monitor working without fuss, things like font rendering leave a lot to be desired. MacOS give you everything: Stable muti-monitor support, beautiful scaling and excellent font rendering across displays with different resolutions. Linux is not even in the same ballpark because you don't really know if the display you hook up will even start up properly and then when you need to do config changes you are stuck doing some stupid stuff like installing xrandr. You cannot expect to plug in the damn display and move on with your life. I recently hooked up a 640x480 CRT along with a 4K display to mac and to my surprise, it handled scaling across these wildly different displays perfectly. I couldn't believe it! I have gotten so confident in the Mac ecosystem that I don't even doubt it anymore. It just works and that freedom allows me to remove that cognitive load off of my mind.
I am happy to see you strongly disagree while making such a wild assumption even after I said it was factory pre-installed system.
I'm not using any "frankenstein Windows environment": this is factory installed and up-to-date Windows installation on a recent high end Windows laptop.
You are dismissing my experience in a worse way than you are saying your experiences are being dismissed. It's also not hard to find evidence of Windows messing up flash drives online too.
If all you can do is discuss in bad faith, there is no reason to discuss further.
I don’t know how much these different compositing window managers inspired each other. To me it seems like there is some convergent evolution. Compositing window managers are obviously superior (no redrawing when moving windows). In the mid 2000s memory and graphics cards became cheap and powerful enough to make compositing viable.
Opposite end of the year though since Compiz was released at the start of 2006. Compiz had seen significant development over that year (unlike Windows that only ships big graphical updates in new OS releases). So much so that by the time Vista was out it had already forked a mature competitor: Beryl.
Plus Compiz wasn’t the first compositing Window on Linux either. Just arguably the best in that era.
> I don’t know how much these different compositing window managers inspired each other. To me it seems like there is some convergent evolution.
Technology almost always works that way. But it’s fair to note that Compiz did feel miles ahead of the competition at the time. Which I think is entirely down to its module system. Meaning anyone could build their own effects and not just wait for their OS developers to release a new service pack.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say it brought it into the reach of everyone with a bit of willingness to learn how to install an obscure OS (as opposed to having a ton of money)?
If you want to argue that most of Compiz effects were overused and tacky then that’s a different issue; also an entirely subjective one.
Similarly compiz was important for the world beyond MacOS, while being utterly useless it attracted the attention of lots of kids like myself while also producing useful side-effects in the Linux ecosystem, and no doubt pushing desktop's outside of Linux.
Compiz was indeed a pioneer, and also explored far more effects compared to MacOS X for better and worse - In fact I'm pretty sure Apple copied the 3D rotating desktop from compiz for a short time... not that it's a particularly imaginative effect, compiz just stumbled upon it first.
... so how about we stop being petty.
> It pioneered useful things like selecting an area of the screen and saving it directly to a file
Pioneered? This was a standard feature on Macs since January 1997.
> It also showed how important compositing was on the desktop.
No, that would be the Quartz and Quartz Extreme compositors released with Mac OSX 10.0-10.2 years prior.
Compiz in the mid 2000s was a mixture of catching up to established ideas and a bunch of cute but useless visual wastes of time. It didn't pioneer anything except novelty display plugins and was quickly made obsolete when people realized that wobbly transition effects got very old very fast.