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(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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Unironically me as an IT professional who uses Windows. It just works. I have to fuck around with all that shit all day, I don't want to go home and do it too.
As a windows user in corporate IT. It just doesn't work. I spend most of my time hacking my way through useless unix pseudo toys, wsl2, cygwin, mingw... Each one for every tool because... Reasons. And because wsl2 is just painful. So we spend time creating fake unix virtual machines via docker on kubernetes using vs code remotely on expensive linux clusters... Frustrating.
Go home and turn on a linux laptop just to see a real functional terminal. Deep breath, zen, cathartic.
Windows makes my otherwise fine daily work miserable.
I hate enterprise IT. Built for sending around emails and working with excel sheets.
I am seriously thinking about starting an AI start up just to avoid risking another windows laptop switching job (they always promise cool stuff, at the end they always deliver overpriced windows garbage, my 8 years old laptop is more functional than their $ 3k notebook)
Sounds like you're just more familiar with Linux and that's fine. I use Linux, Windows and MacOS regularly and haven't had a problem with Windows honestly. The most frustrating of the 3 is MacOS, and even then it's nitpicking.
In sorry, but they're kind of right. Windows is HELL ON EARTH to support. Fixing issues is a guessing game because no one really knows what's wrong, its garbage driver enumeration system means a year down the line a users monitor/headset/dock will magically stop working, restarting is a 50/50 shot of getting stuck on the spinning circle, I could go on and on and on.
Within three months of starting that job windows was gone from every PC I owned.
In a big corporate/ large enterprise environment, I've usually had few major problems with my windows laptops. It's just always slow as balls because of all of the security shit they put on them. So these $3k laptops take forever to load or launch outlook and teams.
I always dream of a Linux laptop, but then realized they'd butcher it all to hell and make it useless with security policies and tools. I can't imagine using a Linux machine at work where I didn't have the ability to "sudo" anything.
That'd be more frustrating than windows tbh.
10+ years of Windows and I still can't say I'm familiar with it.
Linux has a steep learning curve for sure, but if I have to say one good thing about it, it's the openness of Linux.
I dread seeing the message "An unknown error has just occurred" when I use Windows. Tell me, Microsoft, tell me what the error was!
Agreed, the lack of proper (and often any) error messages is incredibly infuriating. It makes it impossible to diagnose anything, the only thing you can do is look for forum posts to make sense of the weird behaviour.
On linux, if something doesn't work it tells me why and I can just follow a chain to the root cause every time without fail.
I am familiar with all 3. Power user some would say. But I must use unix. I do ML/AI, corporations pay money for the ML/AI guys and give them windows. Like partecipating to an f1 race with a Fiat panda...
For my work windows is simply painfully useless
It's just windows being almost default OEM OS. Why should they bother to install Linux over it for you while they don't know particular flavour of Linux you like?
Because they need to maintain multiple huge servers and virtual machines with my favorite flavor of Linux, to make us doing the job very ineffectively. Because Linux does the job they need, it is needed, no escape, while windows is just for outlook and for creating issues.
I am paid enough that I really should not complain if companies waste money on the wrong tools for the job. Most of my salary pays to find solutions to problems that exist only because of windows. They have to waste a lot of money because the former accenture guy they hired as head of IT support (or whoever decides for the laptops) told them that windows is the only possible solution for big corporations. Good for them.
As said I am seriously thinking about starting my own start up, because my experience with corporate IT has been so miserable in all places I worked (outside academia, that has many defects, but at least they can manage a decent IT).
Is it forbidden to install a different OS? I'm propably ignorant as in all my dev jobs so far (N=1), I have been permitted (and encouraged) to install OS of my choice.
Nope unfortunately. Having worked in finance and pharma I have access to systems with sensitive data (and build them). IT is responsible for everything. When we set up a cluster, for instance, we say what to do, at the level of the single command line, but the work is physically done by an engineer from IT.
Ah, I see. Thanks for explaining
While it is partly true, I can't deny I spent the last 15years on linux, I have my fair amount of deal with windows in a professional setup, I can't totally accept this response then, hence the word partly true :P.
Now, explain me how any familiarity with Windows can help when a vanilla installation for windows 10 pro, used for two specific application (nothing cloudy), no game, almost offline, etc... How this system decides, randomly to not allow me to literally login in, looping forever before giving prompt, or pretend there is issue with my PIN and or my profile although I use plain passphrase and my account is local and literally nothing has changed system wise since the last session! I have disabled all the auto update shit everywhere (the obvious one and the one I know about) and no updates in between.
You could say I might no know this particular register bit field. Probably but then, we are not in the easy/just works view.
Honestly this sounds like a freak accident. I use Windows myself and work with people using Windows regularly and never heard of something like that. And I guess you can achieve an unrecoverable state on any operating system given the right conditions.
Sure for the possibility for every OSes to break but what I said was just a recent example, even though it's on a pretty pristine installation in term of alteration. There's so many other things where Windows and its ecosystems is a mess but I guess it is more or less forgiven because you can game on it and because that particular device you would use has the driver while on Linux it must be reverse engineered and written if not, never exist.
Anyway, my whole point is about the "just works" label which has been proven to be wrong more than I can count.
I have the exact same issues as @jeanma@lemmy.ninja . Every single work day contains at least 10 minutes of waiting for windows to log me in and 2 login errors without exaggerating. IT have told me on numerous occasions there's nothing they can do other than reinstalling windows since the error source is very proprietary.
At this point I'm considering switching jobs just to get rid of windows.
Honestly sounds like you're just not very good at your job. As a windows wsl2 user I don't have any of these problems. Everything just works for me.
Happy for you. I am literally the one who fixes the issues for the whole department, that chooses technologies and design systems and solutions and lead integrations. I have no issues with pretty complex technologies, including cuda on kubernetes, that is pretty tricky.
But I know c# developers are also happy with just windows and visual studio.
As suggestion, try the real thing, you'd likely never want to go back
I'm Dev ops and a developer, I use cuda daily and kubernetes is my personal stack of choice. I have to use the real thing constantly for servers etc. It works ok, would much rather a Linux server than a windows one. But servers is where it ends.
My last use of Linux for personal machine was Ubuntu on an Alienware laptop. It didn't have drivers for most of it. Got 90% of it working (took a good 6 hours) then one day I went to stick my headphones in and the jack wasn't working (a Linux issue) I went back to windows and never looked back.
People scream about Linux being so much better but the hard truth is it just isn't unless you are also willing to reinvent several wheels that are already handled for you in other operating systems. But if you like that level of fine control over every element and are ok with your UI lacking the finishes of commercial ones and custom drivers not being as effective with hardware management as the proprietary ones then Linux is the distro of choice. There seems to be a very thin line between people bragging about Linux to make it appear they are smarter than they are and actual Linux users, like it's some sort of tech badge to shout that you love Linux that gives you some sort of superiority but after 25+ years in the industry I can honestly say all the actual Linux users I've met are also all very much on the spectrum and don't have people skills. It would be fair to say what they are looking for in an OS isn't the same as everybody else.
We have linux on our clusters. It is the de facto standard for scientific computing, and it is the best choice for kubernetes. So we have both linux as host OS and only linux containers on our servers.
Everyone uses Linux nowadays. Even Microsoft makes more money on Linux than windows on azure. No one wouldn't even think about using windows for the job I do, not even Microsoft.
That's why they created wsl2, to provide unix for enterprise IT. The real struggle is that wsl2 is suboptimal. A real Linux desktop, or even a mac would be much better. Problem is that enterprise IT doesn't want to manage them, because accenture said so... I guess. Bigger the enterprise, less willing to support unix laptops they are.
If your diagnoses of professional unix users in the spectrum was right, you'd have to put most of scientific computing, hpc, ML and AI commuties in the spectrum.
It is a bit stretched, I'd say.
I don't claim to be smarter than anyone, I started the thread pointing out that "windows just works" (as OP claimed) is not always true. For my work, it doesn't work and it is painful
True, before i started to work with Windows i already disliked Microsoft, but what they are able to break constantly is astonishing.
While I can definitely understand and respect that, ever since I had an experience where I had to dual-boot Windows for work reasons and the printer that just worked without issue in Linux required a three-digit MB download of a bloated driver-suite with borderline spyware included in Windows, I don't trust Windows to "just work" any more.
Not saying it's on-par with each other, there's probably still more fidgeting with Linux (haven't used Windows in ages, genuinely have no perspective any more), but that experience taught me that Linux isn't the short straw any more in every situation, like it definitely used to be a few years ago.
(Also, was amused when during a LAN party when we wanted to play classic Warcraft III a while back, mine ran in wine without issue, but for a friend we had to deep-dive into the registry because of some obscure problem that prevented it from starting at all in native Windows).
There are generic printer drivers that work fine on windows too. You generally don't need to get the manufacturers bloated driver/utility/update/subscription package. Also that's not really the OS' fault, it's the shitty printer vendors.
First point, i readily agree. I could not be bothered to search for any longer back then, but there most likely was a better alternative than going with the official driver suite.
Second point though - if the OS doesn't come with drivers that allow for a plug and play experience out of the box (like my Linux install, think it was Manjaro back then, did), I think that can be held against it. Shitty vendors harm the Linux experience all the time, and it is very often - legitimately as it can severely impact the user exerience - held against it.
Every one that bitches about Linux and plug-and-play always says it's Linux' fault for not working.
Now you say it's the vendors fault for not supporting Windows.
Make it make sense, other than 'I will defend my preferred option without logic'.
I remember building a PC with motherboard not supported by Windows, with drivers on a CD. Obviously I didn't have a CD drive, since why would I. Ubuntu supported it out of the box. Had way more success with printers on Linux than Windows. And god bless AMD.
When have I bitched about Linux? I've had a great experience with Mint, Debian, and Ubuntu. I use Linux, Windows and MacOS on a regular basis.
Some people just like to complain. Can't fix that.
Same as GNU/Linux
Except if somebody uses distro like arch just because memes, and then complain on the internet that they have to download some stuff to connect to wifi or projector in this case
Even Arch can be made to "just work".
Install a generic kernel, install a famous desktop environment (GNOME or KDE), don't go out of your way customizing everything. I never had much problem with this setup, maybe except that my installation is 1GB larger than the "minimalist" ones. But hey, I would trade 0.05% of my disk space for sheer convenience!
Except when I start a 10h build before going home only to find out in the morning that windows update restarted my computer in the middle of the night. Or when I can't edit a folder because a file "is being used", then I close absolutely every running program and it's still somehow "being used". Or when I can't turn off the PC because something is running in the background, even though I closed everything one by one. Or when my PC starts screaming because a VSCode subprocess is using all my resources, I kill it in task manager, and it somehow respawns as a process of its own. I can't end it, and closing VSCode doesn't do anything. My laptop became so hot I couldn't hold it.
I mean Linux causes problems too, ofc. I once spent like 2h trying to set up a keyboard to input Chinese characters on Fedora. But in my experience, Linux caused me less frustration by far. Or when a problem arises, I can fix it quickly.
This is not to bash on you for using windows, just thought I'd throw in that "just works" isn't universal.
As someone who had to switch to windows at work, why the fuck do I have to set the path variable so often for every program. choco does it sometimes but most often something doesn't work ootb and I have to set this path variable
This is one of the main reasons that I want to bash my head against the wall when setting up new stuff on Windows
Tech worker vs tech enthusiast
A looooot of tech workers start as tech enthusiasts but have the enthusiasm part of them ground away by the sands of time and toil.
As an IT professional i got rid of anything Microsoft related at home years ago just to not get bothered, can't imagine anything i'm missing and shit just works.
Same. I swear, people running Windows don't really know what "just works" means.
I have Windows on my work and home machines for years. Never needed a reinstallation or recovery.
Fellow IT pro (don't feel like it though) who also uses Windows here. It's not the perfect OS, but I'm kinda getting tired lately of the amount of Windows bad over exaggeration going on (seriously I'm seeing people complain about windows not having features that it actually does have or running into errors that are entirely user related in cause). If I want to sit down and have a 90% chance of not having to mess with anything then Windows is my choice.
In the chance it does mess up it's usually something I can find and fix easily even for obscure issues just cause the amount of exposure to errors and documentation for Windows is insane... That and usually a reboot will fix it 9/10 times.
While I do dual boot and use linux from time to time for enthusiast stuff, and while Linux is now fairly comparable to Windows in "it just works" stuff. A lot of programs still don't have full or even well kept Linux versions. And after getting off of work where I deal with fixing a ton of complicated Linux errors, a lot of times with little documentation or similar error documentation. I just want something that will be reliable, fairly predictable, and also "just work".
Honestly. I'm basically the same I just use a fedora because it works. I tried arch and its cool but I'm too lazy to keep up with stuff at home since I already have to do so much at works. Linux is as stable as you want and you actually can do whatever you want unlike linux
Am same job. I just hop around from platform to platform when I get bored at home. All the shit I care about is on an unraid box. My PC at home is just a toy I play around with to suit my mood.
I have the exact opposite experience. Windows at work just doesn't work. I start every day by clicking away a few error messages (like the KDC certificate or a PIN that doesn't work without any more details) when logging in, then checking for updates and installing them while I get a drink so windows won't force a restart on me during the day. Then I fix all the shared drives we use because they just don't mount properly without help from a batch script. If I didn't reboot the PC for updates already, I restart outlook and teams because otherwise they will eventually lose connection and stop working without any error messages.
That continues through the rest of the day.
When I get home, I can confidently run a pacman -Syu (unless there are nvidia updates) and everything just works. I can launch games and (after a minute or two because proton and excluding EA of course) they just work. Usually better than on windows too.
Oh, I actually meant Windows at home. Windows at work is definitely problematic.
But at home, for my own stuff, Windows just works, with zero setup or maintenance hassle. I used to do the whole Linux thing, had set up dual boot (again for games that only work on Windows ) it was not only not fun, what was I getting out of it? I found myself not even booting to Linux because it literally was not providing me with anything I needed.