I could never go back to Windows, after having tasted the freedom of Linux.
Linux has its flaws, but so does Windows. And for me, the flaws in Windows became much more annoying than the ones in Linux. Game compatibility was the main factor that kept me backt from using it on a desktop, and that's a non issue nowadays.
Game compatibility
Steam+Proton is pretty impressive. I can play Baldur's Gate 3 on my Thelio. Does get a little toasty, though ....
I always see people say this but does no one here use professional apps like solidworks or revit? Are there good Linux alternatives? I’d switch to Linux but I need solidworks for work I do.
Windows is the defacto standard for desktop PCs for a reason. In a corporate setting it's kind of the ideal.
Because of the sheer number of users, most software is built with Windows in mind and therefore has the most support. It's pretty rare that you find an application that doesn't have a Windows build available.
On top of that tools like Active Directory, and group policy makes managing thousands of machines at scale a reasonably simple affair.
Microsoft is a corporation rather than a community so you can always expect their main goals to be profit-driven and that comes with some nasty baggage, but it's not enough that it's easy for professionals to make the switch.
Linux has made lightspeed progress over the last decade, especially with Proton making games mostly work cross platform, but outside of specialist use cases, the vast majority of business PCs and by extension home PCs will be running Windows for the foreseeable future.
Enough with the fan wars. Let's be perfectly honest for once. Windows, Linux, MacOS - they all suck. Sometimes in similar ways, sometimes in different ways. But they all suck.
Windows users - I get you, you use it because it sorta works 40%, of the time and sucks in the way you understand.
Linux users - I get you, you know all of the arcane incantations you need to quickly install, update, and troubleshoot your os in a terminal window. It works - once you apply your custom bash script that applies every change you need to get everything exactly how you like it. But again, it sucks in the way you understand.
MacOS users - well I don't really get you. You know what you've done.
We deserve better than this, guys. We deserve an os that just works, is easy to use, easy to configure, doesn't require an IT degree to use, and that we can recommend to our grandma without a second thought.
just works, is easy to use, easy to configure, doesn't require an IT degree to use, and that we can recommend to our grandma
TempleOS satisfies all of these conditions
MacOS users - well I don’t really get you. You know what you’ve done.
I laughed hard on this one hahahahaha
Windows: "We dropped support for that thing you bought brand new 5 years ago"
Linux: "We are considering dropping support for something that has existed for longer than you had"
Linux: “We're dropping support for this device because we're fairly sure we had the last one in existence and it just died.”
Hell, I can get a 30 year old HP LaserJet 4 printer working just fine on almost any version of Linux with the official HPLIP CLI software provided by (shockingly) HP, which was updated 2 months ago with support for over 50 new printers and the following OSes:
I HATE HP and their printers (PC LOAD LETTER WTF FOR LIFE) but I will admit that this is impressive support.
I've worked exclusively with Linux servers since 2002 and exclusively Linux desktop since 2004 and I've come to the point where I prettyuch refuse to touch windows for fear it will infect me somehow.
I know most people don't know any better but it's insanity to me that anyone still pays money for windows. It's a scam, no other words for it.
Don't even get me started on Windows servers. It's just sad to see how much money is spent on a company that has so litte focus on quality.
Even the online services suck. Dear God Microsoft, would it kill you to understand that people might have gasp TWO tabs open with your teams "app"?
Windows requirements: sprawling list of unsupported hardware based on an arbitrary requirment for a security chip that doesn't actually improve security at all
Linux: CPU (optional)
carefully select hardware
lmao, i've exclusively run linux on franken pcs cobbled together out of mostly second hand parts
I like Linux a lot, but saying you can't understand why someone would run Windows on a server just shows a lack of knowledge. Linux is great in a lot of server applications in the application realm. However, it doesn't get close to the power of Active Directory and Group Policy for Windows device management. Besides that, a lot of people are more comfortable with a UI for managing DHCP, DNA, etc in a SMB environment. Even if they prefer a command line for those tools PowerShell allows those people to coexist with those that prefer a GUI. Under certain circumstances, (mainly ones where a business is forgoing AD for AAD), Linux can be the right choice. Pretending that there's no place for Windows Server, though, is asinine.
This community is very much a "Windows bad" community. I personally find that annoying as I use Windows and Linux. Both have their pros and cons. Windows though is seen here as the shitest OS out there which far from the truth.
PowerShell is amazing and I install it on my Linux desktop.
I upgraded my Intel system to AMD today. And I didn't have to reinstall a damn thing, because my existing Linux installation Just Worked™. It really is to the point that I could never imagine going back to Windows.
CPU vendors are usually pretty seamless to swap on Winblows, other than the fact that Windows will possibly whine that you've modified your system too much and need a new license 🤓
There's this thing I notice. If windows asks you to learn something or put up with some BS it's seen as the cost of business, reasonable, or simply not even noticed. If Linux requires you to learn something, like read one article about which distro might work best for you, it's seen as an insurmountable difficulty or an absurd ask.
it's sunk cost bias. I have this trying to use windows or macos, after using linux exclusively for half my life - everything feels foreign and frustrating, with an obnoxious amount of UX patterns you're expected to know in order to find anything. ugh, I could rant for hours on how obtuse macos is (mainly because I have to interact with it for work right now - if you force me to use windows, I'll rant about that too)
I was flirting with Linux for 20 years. There was always something that put me off an I went back to Windows. Recently I installed ubuntu with Kde plasma and I'm not going back. It just works and is heaps faster on older hardware. The old driver issues are gone, compatibility is awesome. The only issue is getting used to new software names.
Everyone acts like nvidia support on linux is completely broken. I game with nvidia on mine regularly and have never had a driver bug.
It's not that it's broken, it's that the open source driver stack and AMD cards are a superior experience. The Nvidia Linux driver is just like the Windows driver.
You know, I've been using Linux on desktops and laptops for like 20 years now. I can count on one hand then number of times I've had hardware support issues. Outside of a fingerprint scanner, I've been able to solve all of those issues.
Meanwhile, my adventures across the years dealing with Windows drivers led me to finally say "fuck it" earlier this year and nuke the Windows install on my gaming rig in favor of Nobara.
I'll take Linux hardware support over Microsoft any day of the week.
Linux will run on anything
Ps3. Raspberry pi. Phones. All computers ive ever tried to install it on.. and even M-chip macs.
The new CPU requirements for Windows 11 are why I wiped it and am now on Linux Mint. No dual-booting.
Wha? Even a bleeping potato can run Linux nowadays, with zero issues at day 1.
t. Got a Orange pi zero 3, and the lil' bastard is rocking solid -- even with (near zero) support.
Linux does support more CPU architecture (x86 Arm PowerPC RISC) while Windows only support x86 and some Arm CPU so technically Linux support more CPU but Windows does support more GPU and Plug and Play devices (controller, external sound card...)
They have a point. I'm in the market for a new laptop and I have, so far, returned two of them.
First, I tried a Huawei Matebook 16. I was foolish, but I thought it was "easy". No NVidia, no dGPU at all - just part that looked very standard. It was based on the info I had gathered from a few years of Linux usage: "Basically avoid NVidia and you're good". It was anything but. Broken suspend, WiFi was horrible, random deadlocks, extreme slowness at times (as if the RYZEN 7 wasn't Ryzen 7-ing) to become less smooth than my 5 year old Intel laptop, and broken audio codec (Senary Audio) that didn't work at all on the live, and worked erratically on the installed system using generic hd-audio drivers.
I had a ~€1500 budget, but I raised it to buy a €1700 ThinkPad P16s AMD. No dGPU to speak of, sold with pre loaded Linux, boasting Canonical and Red Hat hardware certifications.
I had:
Boggles my mind that the 2 biggest enterprise Linux vendors took this laptop, ran a "thorough hardware certification process" on it and let it pass. Is this a pass? How long have they tried it? Have they even tried suspending?
Of course, that was a return. But when I think about new laptops and Windows 11, basically anything works. You don't have to pay attention to anything: suspend will work, WiFi will work, audio and speakers as well, if you need fractional scaling you aren't in for a world of pain, and if you want an NVidia dGPU, it does work.
Furthermore, the Windows 11 compatible CPU list is completely ~~unofficial~~ arbitrary, since you can still sideload Windows 11 on "unsupported" hardware and it will run with a far higher success rate than Linux on a random laptop you buy in store now. Like, it has been confirmed to run well on ancient Intel CPUs with screens below the minimum resolution. It's basically a skin over 10 and there are no significant kernel modifications.
To be clear: I don't like Windows, but I hate this post as a consumer of bleeding edge hardware because it hides the problem under the rug - most new hardware is Windows-centric, and Linux supported options are few and far between. Nowdays not even the manufacturer declaring Linux support is enough. This friend of mine got a Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition, and if he uses ANY ISO except the default Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 audio doesn't work at all! And my other friend with a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition has various GPU artifacts on the screen on anything except the relative Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 image. It's such a minefield.
I have effectively added €500 to my budget, to now reach an outrageous €2000 for a premium Linux laptop with no significant trade-offs (mostly, I want a good screen and good performance). I am considering taking a shot in the dark and pre ordering the Framework 16, effectively swaying from traditional laptop makers entirely and hoping a fully customized laptop by a company that has been long committed to Linux support will be different.
To be fair, Nvidia support on Linux has been historically quite poor, with users having to manually install drivers (something the average person shouldn't have to think about). Though even that has gotten much better recently, with Debian now allowing forks to have proprietary drivers built in.
More important IMO is the fact that Linux re-detects hardware on every boot! Try moving a Windows hard drive to completely new hardware and getting it to boot. Not a chance...
Active directory and it's integration with services such as DNS and DHCP is pretty great though. I wish Microsoft started focusing less on cloud and improved the user (or rather admin) experience of their server tools, they are quite awful is some cases.
I know hardware compatibility has massively improved, but back when I was messing with Linux in high school compatibility was a huge issue. I managed to end up with two laptops and some desktop hardware that were truly difficult to get running. It's like I somehow found a list of incompatible hardware and chose the worst options.
The most frustrating were an evil Broadcom (I think) wireless card and an AMD switchable card (they did actually make a few). That graphics card wasn't supported for very long and was a bother even in Windows.
Edit to add: I was just saying that to point out why some people might have that opinion, even if it isn't valid anymore. I'm actually thinking of jumping back on the Linux bandwagon.
People say that Nvidia just doesn't work right on Linux. I'd never know that except for everyone saying it. My desktop has Nvidia and all Linux distro I've tried on it are like perfectly fine. Yes for gaming also.
The only real hardware problems I come across these days with Linux is WiFi cards being shit. As far as I'm concerned, carefully selecting hardware is a problem for the *BSDs at this point. Am I missing something?
Ah yes... it is easy as long as you do something difficult first.
Reminds me of that comment on Dropbox where some guy said it's going to fail because he can easily build something similar with an ftp server.
Surely we can admit that Linux is ready for general population on the desktop? It's the better choice overall, but the barrier to entry is very high.
Edit: I mistyped and missed the word "not". It's "not ready for general population on the desktop". Sorry guys.
I want to use Linux at the desktop, but I want HDR and Freesync support. Not sure if Linux supports either in a big way.
Freesync yes, HDR soon™
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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