So I would say your advice isn't helpful. Microsoft has a financial relationship with their users (especially their business users) and despite what many people think, they do listen to their customers. So I would say the best way to fix Windows 10 is to continue to let Microsoft know that you aren't happy with specific changes they've made.
Have you actually tried it in recent years? Wine runs a lot of stuff just fine.
grep --files-with-matches wine ~/opt/win32/*/launch.sh | wc -l
71
> far from user-friendly.
While I agree that wine can get nasty if you need to debug anything or if you have unusual requirements, but the standard "just run this win32 binary" case has also been trivial for years. I believe some distros even enable the kernel feature that launches wine automagically when running a .exe file.
> it is not perfect
Of course it isn't. It is, however, worth trying.
I think his advice is perfectly reasonable, it just doesn't apply to everyone. I bet that it applies to a lot of people in a technical audience, though.
Elaboration: when I have 3 Chrome windows, 2 work VMs fired, a separate Chrome window for the work services, several consoles outside of the VMs, and a live Twitch stream running on the TV hoooked to my PC then no, I am not willing to reboot only to play a game.
I had actually planned to setup GPU bypass on the box and run Windows in a VM, but I have more games now to last a long time, and I haven't actually bothered.
Frankly? Not much. What gaming I do do is either on the PS4 or is indie gaming, which largely works on Linux or Wine.
Convenience > all, including for some of us the programmers. =)
Yes, maybe on my phone once in a blue moon? Otherwise, that went out the door(at least for me) sometime in my 20's.
Sure, that's still not much compared to 2.5 billion, but that's also 5 times what you said.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games
The Toyota Corolla is the best selling car of all time and has only sold 37.5 million units.
By your measure, driving is clearly a niche activity as well.
So... adds up ;)
Define "gaming". There is a sense in which the best selling PC game is almost certainly solitaire.
I'm only one customer but I'm letting Microsoft know that I'm not happy with the way they go with Windows by not using Windows 10.
These days, hardware and software is very inexpensive compared to time. I love the idea behind free software, but sometimes it's just too expensive to choose.
In the university context I've found that there is a lot of free software that works good enough or sometimes even better than commercial products. If you factor in that you still can use that particular program after you leave, it becomes a big plus.
That's very true. For example, if I need to use an image editor, Photoshop is the only thing I would consider. It's inexpensive ($35 for a month subscription), but more importantly it's easy to hire people that know it well. It's also well supported and documented.
When the subject "Windows 10 Privacy" comes up, linux folks come running offering linux as a magic pill, it's not.
As mature as linux distro's can be there's always the hardware variable in the equation, specially on laptops using nvidia optimus, the experience still sucks. It's the truth.
I have nothing against linux, i actually tried it very recently (you can see it here:https://calbertoferreira.blogspot.pt/2016/10/moving-from-win...) and got a nice initial impression of it, but i will be moving to Windows again very soon.
Want to know why ?
- Creating a virtual machine on virtualbox freezes my machine (excessive IO ? i have an ssd);
- Battery life sucks even with powertop and such;
- My wired internet connection had the same speed as my wireless connection (i disabled wireless to make sure);
- Hdmi audio simply doesn't work and when i asked for help on askubuntu i was even downvoted (http://askubuntu.com/questions/845996/how-do-i-make-hdmi-sou...)!
I tried, i really did but it's a no go for me.
And i feel sorry for it, because i recognise that there are advantages in linux , but until nvidia fixes the damn optimus issues, linux will be held back.
Most Linux proponents are people with older hardware and trivial setups: 1-2 monitors, 1 sound card and a pair of normal speakers (without subwoofer), 1 ethernet or wireless card, only 1 ISP, etc.
We get it, for very regular setups Linux works fine. But there are many people who have more requirements outside the warm little box that Linux serves and I cannot understand why do these people come here convincing us this is not the case; and why are they downvoting the people who are outside this bubble.
Linux is not a magic pill on the desktop. For all its strengths (and I do use it in my work every day) it's still a lousy desktop OS and this hasn't changed for 10+ years now.
Try to keep in mind that the vast majority of internet provided services are served on linux. A large portion are developed on linux, by people that don't seem to be hindered by the parents problems.
edit: typo
Don't be bitter. The fact that most of the internet infrastructure is served by Linux doesn't make it a user-grade OS. Unrelated areas.
Look, if we're trying to avoid OSes that call home with telemetry about what you've been doing...
Oh, absolutely, but if we're going to advise would-be Linux converts who are concerned with data leakage, may as well advertise actually-telemetry-free distros.
>Afaik Ubuntu removed that module like 2-3 years ago
Hey great! Link? Trust but verify...
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus-unity-8-deskt... [2] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feat...
Furthermore, native Linux games are only becoming more popular, and one way to make them more popular is to use Linux.
I'd say that's plenty efficient enough.
Additionally, video-card drivers are still buggy and fragile. And it's not just video cards, but wifi and sound as well.
Requires a recent or non-K intel CPU with IOMMU though and the chipset has to play nice.
I'm using it on my machine in conjunction with Synergy to passthrough keyboard and mouse between host and VM seamlessly.
Performance hit: somewhere between 5% and -2% (some games actually run faster in the VM than on baremetal, most notably KSP and CSGO)
Setup is not trivial, as it will probably require an ACS-patched kernel if your CPU is older and also needs VFIO kernel parameters to be maintained.
If you do this, I recommend Arch, as the performance on the newer kernels is sometimes better (due to KVM/Xen and QEMU improvements)
Also lots of RAM and Swap. You're gonna need lots of it.
You also probably don't realize that many of us stream video and music 24/7 and your main PC is de facto a programming + gaming + home entertainment server.
You can hibernate one OS and still start the other one. This way all your apps will reopen the next time you boot the OS.
> You also probably don't realize that many of us stream video and music 24/7 and your main PC is de facto a programming + gaming + home entertainment server.
You're right, most people will have to use Windows at some point :(
They run Windows in a virtual machine, and pass a dedicated GPU into the VM, the results are very impressive, but the installation is very complicated, and you won't get rid of Windows.
As VFIO matures, and the API stabilizes a bit more, I think we will see distros offering an easy "install and play" experience.
There is a complete guide here: https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08/gpu-passthrough/ And as you can see, it involves all kinds of steps.
One day, hopefully Windows will be just a shell to play games on :-)
Linux is fast to install (when no problem occurs). Software installation (and deinstallation) is a breeze. Everything is available out of the box. I maintain a diary with a list of non default packages to install: apt-get install nfs-common wine gnome-media openssh-server squid curl filezilla curlftpfs ethtool docker.io xtightvncviewer x11vnc tmux whois git wakeonlan youtube-dl npm sshfs
Concerning support for old hardware, it was the main reason that made me switch to linux: vista64 had no support for my printer and my scanner.
The only hardware-related issues I've ever had have been trying to run a brand new graphics card or on the latest macbook.
I usually just went with Ubuntu because at the time it seemed like it was user friendly. I tried openSUSE at one point. If you can name a distro better aimed at supporting these types of devices I'm game.
Back in the 90s, sure, there were a hell of a lot if blocking issues. But now?
Frankly anyone posting on a tech site that can't get it up and running adequately should be embarassed.
And this is a big reason why so many people still don't want to use linux. The "Why aren't you as smart as I am" attitude isn't as strong as it used to be, but it's still there. It turns off users. Nobody wants to use software when the other users are going to treat them like idiots. There are still many complicated problems to get linux up and running, and being a jerk ignores those problems, rather than helps solve them.
If you can't install linux on some reasonably generic pc hardware in this day and age, and you consider yourself a hacker or coder, you probably ought to be a little embarrassed. Certainly not proud as some seem to be.
If I was interviewing someone for a role and asked them for their thougts on using linux and got "well I usually give up after a few hours trying to install it" I'd look elsewhere.
Look, it's fine if you breathe Linux in your free time and you don't watch movies or play games, or nail your girlfriend, or even watch the ceiling in half-meditative state with all lights out. That's not sarcasm. Everyone has the right to do what they want with their free time.
But many of us are hackers / coders AND have a happy personal life and don't want to bring their work to their free time. And want to make the best use of their work time, too.
Linux gets the job done and I very much like my XFCE 4.x on my virtual Debian, but it's still far away from a full-blown user OS on the desktop. Numerous articles agree with this fact.
It's a simple comment - if you're working in tech in any capacity and you can't install linux satisfactorily, that really is nothing to be proud of in the modern day and age.
Not directly, but you are being condescending to someone who has legitimate issues. Just because someone is on HN doesn't mean they are great with linux, or that they are even a technical person. Maybe he's got a different skillset, and doesn't like dicking around with shitty config files, obscure error messages, and jerks that tell them they should be "embarrassed" for not being omniscient.
Can you tell me the best way to pull HE levels from a GE MRI's MM? If not, are you going to spend a lot of time looking it up just because? Why aren't you embarrassed that you don't know that?
> If I was interviewing someone for a role and asked them for their thougts on using linux and got "well I usually give up after a few hours trying to install it" I'd look elsewhere.
Depends on the role. If it was a linux-admin job, absolutely. If it was for a job in HR, then I wouldn't care at all.
"Giving back" to the open source world in my case is done by committing code and documentation, not free support. So when you hear "go read the manual" or RTFM - we aren't insulting you or being jerks. We genuinely want you to better yourself and acquire education, and are pointing you in the right direction to do so.
Linux is an industry standard, I think this sort of brag about how much trouble you have with just getting it running reflects much worse on the complainant than the system.
20 years ago? Sure. Now not so much.
If anyone is bragging here, it's you, so no need to be a hero. If you're hearing this a lot, maybe it's not us and instead it's people like you. The whole point of a good UI is to make it easier for people that don't regularly use your system. So if you're hearing this a lot then maybe it really isn't good.
> Linux is an industry standard
On servers it is, on desktops Windows still rules and that's for a reason. Common users don't need to hit up a Reddit beginner forum or spend hours pouring over documentation to learn the command line and all the various utilities for their chosen distro.
On the server, yes it's rock solid and I've had a pretty good experience with it. On the desktop, no. Also, my experiences are not from 20 years back, try 2.
Installing it is not complicated, with a live CD it's arguably easier than windows these days. It reflects badly on you as a person working in tech if you can't do it.
A user can live on the same LTS version of a distro for years but eventually they'll need to upgrade. I have yet to see anyone successfully upgrade major releases of any distro without serious issues. The process is basically format and start over. That's unacceptable.
Sure Windows and macOS have their own set of problems but for the average user they just work. You don't have to dive into the bowels of the registry or modify ktext files to get most things to work and the majority of users don't even know about the CLI.
I've been using Debian since v1.3 and have upgraded I-don't-know-how-many machines across major versions. I've got production servers running Debian 8 right this moment that were running Debian 6 when they were installed.
With regard to RHEL, I always reinstall from scratch instead of attempting upgrades. I think they're a lot better about upgrades nowadays but I still remember, very clearly, the day when attempting an upgrade was just asking for trouble.
I've been using Linux in various forms for over 15 years in all forms including daily driver desktop, daily driver laptop, HTPC, foisting it upon my children via netbooks, custom router firmware, Raspberry Pi development, custom ROMs on cellphones, home server hosting, cloud hosting, NAS appliances, development VMs, and production VMs. I tried use the desktop environments really hard for about a decade and constantly founding myself wondering why certain tasks had to be so hard. I always chalked it up to inexperience or unfamiliarity and pushed forward but then my job required me to use OSX. I quickly realized that it was the Linux desktop envs and not me. It was also around this time my kids started using computers more heavily for school and the Linux netbooks I provided them just couldn't cut it. Surprisingly they were able to use Nexus 7 tablets for their school work with relative ease.
I still use Linux daily but never on the desktop. CLI or nothing.
Linux desktop is just not there in terms of "set it up in 15 minutes and forget it unless you want to heavily modify it". Of all OS-es Linux has the biggest potential to be the ultimate desktop system but alas, not just yet.
Thank you.
they sure are: difference in e.g. desktop usability with like 15 years ago is huge. You can finally install something from cd and have it up and running including audio/network/automatically mounting pendrives/... without having to touch a config file. Usually. But the problem seems to be in the getting better: I'd rather just have it good enough already right now. Too often it does, for me, as a desktop, still not feel quite right yet and still too buggy. 15 years ago a lot of things Windows just worked and now they still do and a bunch of nice stuff was added (ok crap was added as well) and for what I do with it I have close to 0 problems. I just wish I could say that everytime I try any of the distros you mention.