Hacker News Reader

>Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time.

Counterpoint: I also value my freedom, privacy, mental health, and the longevity of my hardware.

Freedom: I can install it whenever I want on whatever I want. I groan whenever I have to deal with "activation" headaches. It also works just the same on ARM - and anything else! All the programs I use are open source so they come right along too.

Privacy: Even setting aside the Windows 10 debacle, Windows is incredibly noisy on the wire. Linux doesn't make a peep unless I ask it to.

Mental health: System updates happen when I say. It doesn't strong-arm me into restarting when I'm busy doing something else, or hold my system hostage while it does god-knows-what on boot. As for application updates, I have a package manager, so I'm not bugged by a dozen different things like flash updater, java updater, etc. In fact, stuff doesn't spontaneously "happen" in general. If a system service starts chewing up resources or otherwise behaving badly (a rare occurrence) I can a) notice, because it's not lost in the noise of normal system chatter and b) actually find out what it is instead of it being hidden behind "svchost.exe". The primary interface (command line) is comparatively stable - I don't have to keep relearning where things are (it's not perfect in this respect, but it's better than Windows).

Longevity of hardware: I'm writing this on my 2007 EeePC 901. It has 1 gig of ram and runs Debian flawlessly. I never need to restart it and my load average is somewhere around 0.2. Can any Windows do that?

Look, I don't mean to come across as belligerent. You're entitled to choose whatever system makes you comfortable and allows you get work done. But I find Windows wastes far more of my time than Linux.

I'm actually somewhat surprised at the number of people writing that Linux saves them time. Clearly not everyone has had the horrible experiences I have. I'm curious what distro you people use and on what hardware. I tried Ubuntu, OpenSuse, and Debian. All of them, excpting Ubuntu, needed so much work out of the box just to get to parity with a fresh windows install as to cost me more than a Windows license. Ubuntu was the least stable after install. Updates would frequently break it. I didn't even make it a week this time, and my past experience with it (LTS version) has been that every few months something new would break after updates.

Ubuntu LTS versions on totally unsuitable made-for-windows laptops (my next one will not be). I've never (touch wood) had an Ubuntu LTS release break during an update. However, I do a fresh install for each LTS release (takes about 45 minutes -- I keep my /home on it's own partition and the new install finds and uses it).

EDIT And I don't get how a Linux distro can take more work than Windows to get into a useful state. With Linux I just apt-get the software I want and start work. With Windows installing even a minimal python/R/unix tools/compiler/ssh client/office package/tex distribution/browser/video viewer set of software etc takes ages, lots of baby-sitting and frankly nerves as one navigates around the malware.

Debian needs serious help to get the multiple monitors configured and working at full resolution. OpenSuse had that problem plus terribly ugly fonts. It took a lot of reading up online and trying things before I figured out how to fix that. Ubuntu actually had a broken apt-get for me on some recent installs, it turned out to be an issue with using the us subdomain repos, switching to de made apt-get painfully slow, but solved the problem. Luckily I haven't had this issue on my new VM install, so I'm hoping it was resolved. All of them had issues booting (black screen) with the default open-source display driver and required the proprietary drivers to be installed (this is not an issue in a VM.) Just to get Spotify to run on OpenSuse was a herculean effort that I eventually gave up on, but not before buggering up the system.

> Debian needs serious help to get the multiple monitors configured and working at full resolution

I must have some pretty reduced needs. I just use one xrandr command to tell all my monitors what position to be in and it works - and I think my wife uses the GUI program in Ubuntu's Unity desktop without any pain.

> Ubuntu actually had a broken apt-get for me on some recent installs, it turned out to be an issue with using the us subdomain repos

Did you submit a bug report about this? Seems like a bad bug for a distro like Ubuntu.

> Spotify

Spotify is not supported for OpenSuse (it's beta at best on Ubuntu -- but runs very nicely). Trying to run propriety software on unsupported platforms seems like a very bad idea. And of course installing a bunch of random things in random places will spanner an OS. Btw if you want to run Spotify on unsupported platforms I think that there is an addon for Clementine that works nicely and the addon gets installed in your home dir so won't break things (haven't used it for years because the Spotify client works fine for me so things may have changed).

EDIT

I was wrong Ubuntu doesn't install Nvidia drivers for you. You need to install them after install and the process looks annoying.

Yeah, it sounds like you've had some really bad luck with hardware.

Since you asked, for what it's worth, I invariably run Debian-based distros. I haven't touched Ubuntu since they decided to get weird with the interface. This laptop is a ThinkPad X61T running Linux Mint + Cinnamon, which is only "okay" - little laggy at times but it works fine. Surprisingly, the fastest-feeling, stablest, easiest-to-use machine I have is... the ancient EeePC. Standard Debian + MATE desktop. The thing about Debian is, if you can put up with somewhat out of date software, is it just does. Not. Break.

I don't really understand where your problems with multiple monitors come from. I just plug 'em in and they work. It's been a while since I had a desktop with an NVidia chip - all my laptops have Intel graphics - but NVidia's self-extracting installers have always worked for me (although they're built against the kernel so you might have to re-run them every upgrade).

I've had the repository problem you describe, long ago - the UK repos were being weird so I switched to France, which worked fine. Nowadays though all you have to do is use http://httpredir.debian.org/, which will always serve you the file from the fastest place it's available from. Never had an issue with it.

I guess I won't deny that it can sometimes be a hassle getting things working just right on a fresh Linux system. But at least you only have to do it once.

> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time.

I think these words are actually on the cover of the 2004 edition of the Microsoft Anti-Linux Talking Points Guide.

It's not that it isn't credible that you had a bad experience, it's that people have bad experiences with Windows too, and often.

And the Windows problems are harder because the solutions are typically some kind of hideous workaround to the fact that the real problem can't be fixed, instead of the much-maligned Linux solutions that involve typing things into a terminal but, if you type the things into the terminal, it actually fixes the problem.

Yes, I remember the talk about total cost of ownership. But it's entirely valid in my experience. I wouldn't ever use desktop Linux again outside of a VM. The bottom line is that my experience with Windows is rock solid. It looks good out of the box (metro asside), works out of the box, even supports SLI, gaming, multiple monitors without any fight. Even "dist upgrades" work. I've never had an issue with malware because I know what to do and what not to. And it's so nice that third-party software runs and runs well on Windows. Many companies don't support Linux or only offer a stripped-down product that barely works.

> I think these words are actually on the cover of the 2004 edition of...

So what? The words that you're saying are on the tips of every Microsoft-hating Linux fanboy's tongue.

> ...the Windows problems are harder because...

Oh please. The Linux problems are harder because most of the time the solution doesn't exist at all ~ (e.g. Does a driver even exist for a particular device? Does it actually work though? Can I get a particular piece of industry-standard software? Probably not (but oh - here's an actually hideous emulation (WINE) of a much better GUI system (Windows) that you can TRY and run it on... ).

> ...if you type the things into the terminal, it actually fixes the problem.

Good one - please tell me what to type to be able to run Linux on a touch screen tablet, so I can run Linux in the same places I can run Windows. Also, what do I type to get a decent desktop GUI experience?

Oddly enough, I've had exactly the opposite experience. I'm locked into Windows due to industry standards (translation tools are all Windows-only, and the vast, vast majority of business documentation runs on Microsoft Office), but with my last machine, I installed Ubuntu as the host OS and run Windows 7 in a virtual machine - and love it.

I even have the opposite of your unbootability experience - towards the end of 2014 I rendered my Windows machine unbootable, without hope of recovery. I did manage to boot Linux from a USB drive and rescue my files. Late last year I did a similarly stupid thing with Linux - but I was able to reinstall the kernel without needing to reinstall everything, as Windows had required.

Although you're right about the average-person thing. I shudder to think about walking my mom through a kernel reinstall.

> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time

I had the opposite experience. I do tech support for my extended family and I grew tired of cleaning up viruses and chasing up drivers from questionable sites.

3 years ago, I started pushing everyone to Linux (Mint). I must say, I have saved myself a lot of time (yes, I do value my time)

Unbootable within days? As in, you install a linux distro and it can boot, you switch between using it and using windows for a few days, and then after a few days linux can't boot? That's very strange; I've never seen that in over a decade of using various linux distros and dual-booting. My guess is that some "security" related mechanism in the firmware or windows is checking on and reverting the uefi boot setup somehow.

Since virtually no one buys a laptop designed for linux, but rather hopes that linux has adapted (with all the driver "quirks" necessary) for that hardware, it's really just that linux gives you the tools and the freedom to figure things out and set them up how you want. It can't do it for you. Sometimes it's just an impractical amount of work. But depending on what you do, it's often worth it.

On OpenSuse it was a software install that went bad. The much vaunted snapshot feature didn't work out of the box! It actually could not boot snapshots in that nice little grub menu. I had to reinstall after spending hours trying to rollback to a snapshot.

On Ubuntu it updated the kernel, which made it unbootable. I could still boot the old kernel, but after taking out a ticket and being asked to upgrade my BIOS, that became unbootable as well.

On Debian it was just too much work to get to a point where it supported the real resolution of my displays and my multi-monitor setup. I eventually just threw in the towel and went and installed Ubuntu in a VM, which at least got me up and running quickly.

I'm leaving out a variety of colorful failure stories, but the bottom line is very little worked out of the box, it was insanely time consuming and difficult to get things into a decent state, and then it didn't stay in that state for long.

I stopped using Linux in the early-mid 2000s, when applying a security patch to sendmail required (at least then) that I learn its arcane compiler/build process. Burned at least a half day with no success. That was the last straw in a series of straws.

I was trying to build a business and was losing too much time. Went back to Windows, installed a free version of mailenable via point and click, then configured it through an intuitive GUI within minutes.

I'm sure I lost some tech cred on that transaction and it offended my sensibilities around MS at the time. But, man it just worked and that was priority one. I was already the CEO, developer, and customer support rep. There was just no value in adding Linux SA to the list.

Have never regretted it nor looked back.

EDIT: Interestingly, downvotes don't make any of my experience less true.

Maybe downvoted because things changes on the space of 10 or more years...

Perhaps. But, then, here I am replying to someone who is sharing essentially the same experience in the modern Linux era.

> Honestly, desktop Linux is the most expensive OS out there if you count the value of your time.

Can't agree with this more. All the "control" and "freedom" you have over PC fades quickly in the shadow of man hours needed to make things work on linux.

I wonder if you used hardware than is actually supported by the distributions you tried? If you need/want Linux I would highly recommend buying something pre-installed. You don't have to use the pre-installed OS but at least you can reasonably assume that drivers will be available.

Nothing exotic: NVIDIA 970 graphics card, Gigabyte motherboard with Intel NIC, Haswell CPU, Samsung SSD and a couple HDDs.

I seriously don't recommend checking Linux compatibility on laptops this way (component by component). What about the wifi? How about your system's screen brightness controls? Trackpad? Etc. Getting something that is OK is takes work and getting something really good is a lot of work.

For comparison. Try installing Windows on a Chromebook. It'll suck. Install Linux on a made for windows laptop and it'll sort of work if your lucky and suck if you're not.

If you want to use Linux just buy laptops that are certified -- it's easy and there are several options these days (I'm not going to name any but google for them).

I use a desktop.

You are either unlucky or doing something very weird then.

It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. I have routinely had hardware that was perfectly supported by one distro or another immediately break on the next update.

Kernel versions are particularly picky. With Debian, I have historically regularly had to jump around between stable, testing, and unstable because one thing or another wouldn't work or the machine wouldn't even boot, because of the version of the kernel used.

The amount of hardware regressions I've run into honestly stagger me. Video is another one that's notoriously bad. I've had to abandon Linux installs on multiple distros because after some update or another, suddenly some or all of video functionality just ceased to work. Debian broke my OpenGL. Fedora developed a system freeze when upgrading to 23. Ubuntu routinely fails to recognize common hardware or even existing hardware that ran previous versions, defaulting back to ugly VGA resolutions and software-only rendering.

I frankly would take any pre-installed Linux laptop's claims of compatibility with a generous grain of salt, and basically expect that it too would eventually fail on some future version.

I wonder if part of the problem is people going outside of the OS's curated repositories.

With Debian at least the curation of the repositories is one of the biggest attractions for me. Everything in there is tested at length and is known to work well together. I've never had problems staying within the repos.

Friends on the other hand always want to install the latest version of whatever package and install tens of external PPAs to achieve that, without consideration for what that means for the stability of their system.

They still carry their windows experiences and think that to install software you have to go find the software authors website and read their instructions - which much of the time apply to other distros and not the one you are using. I have to keep teaching people the Linux way to install software, use your local repos.

It turns out the OP borked one of his attempts at Linux by trying to install Spotify in OpenSuse...

I.e. exactly what you are saying.