Why I'm leaving Linux | Hacker News Reader

Why I'm leaving Linux

jeancarlomachado.net

26 pointsJeanCarloM29 comments

During the years since I use Linux I experienced some of those issues too. But many times when I came in contact with mainstream operating systems like Windows and MacOS I saw similar problems and thought many times: "Good to know that it isn't any better outside of the Linux world"

Two extreme examples:

- A Windows which takes 4 hours to upgrade itself, after it did a forced reboot on the day the bachelor thesis had to be submitted

- A MacOS which brought itself to an unbootable state during a major upgrade

At least with Linux I have complete control over when updates happen (unlike on Windows). That way I can test the functionality of my system before it will be required.

And on linux you can always boot a live usb and mount your file system to it and try to figure out whats wrong. I had to do that only a few days ago to repair the bootloader that had fried itself somehow. Of course you have to know what to look for, maybe this is possible with windows and macos too, but the way I always went with those was to do a fresh install.

Used all three major OSes. HDMI not working is an extremely common problem on MacOS. every event I go to has either only VGA or HDMI that doesn't work after three adapters between thunderbolt and HDMI/VGA/etc. Networking can become a problem in MacOS and Windows and when it stops working on these OSes, the only thing to do is restart your computer.

MacOS also freezes a lot if your computer is about 3 years old. Won't even consider using macbooks older than that. Used Android studio and Robomongo on a couple year old Macbook and it would keep freezing now and then. The most painful 3 months on the job. So, problems exist on all OSes. The grass isn't lush green anywhere, it's a pale green everywhere.

I have been using Ubuntu on the desktop and laptop for 5 years and it has been stable. There have been problems, but I haven't run into anything show stopping yet. I haven't been doing this long but I believe that the key is to think about all the different ways things could go wrong and ensuring you handle a reasonable amount of them, without going too crazy about it.

eg: set up your demo on a digital ocean droplet (I do this when the demo doesn't have any GUI). create a throwaway SSH key and keep the private key handy (say email) and add the pub key to the droplet. if your laptop completely crashes, you still have your demo. slides backup is completely standard no matter what OS you have. so you have handled one of the worst possible cases :)

weird, i'm still using the 2012 MBP retina not maxed out, only issue is that i need to replace the battery. other than that is the most reliable machine i ever had

>MacOS also freezes a lot if your computer is about 3 years old.

On my 2011 Mac mini, I've experienced less than one event that deserves the description "freeze" per 1000 hours of use.

I can understand his reasoning in some way.

I liked to play around with compiling kernel and install stuff from source to get a very personalised experience.

Now I just want to be an end user and have an OS which I install and majority of things work right out of the box, or at least they are easy to configure. So I can concentrate on other things.

A lot of times there is something that is missing from the UI and you have to dive deep just to have it fixed. Editing config files etc... Even just simple things as a touchpad sensitivity.

Not to mention some special stuff like handling a discrete GPU in a gaming laptop.

I want a distro that works well and has most of the configuration accessible in the UI so I don't have to hunt the internet for information about how to fix something on a particular distro with a particular version.

Ubuntu comes close to this dream, but not close enough.

IMHO debian comes closer. I like to install the server version and then install gnome-core on top of that, sort out the dependencies of what I need and I'm golden.

apt is way better than apt-get anyways.

After reading these gems:

  For long my opinion is that to be a real Linux user one should use as few GUI as possible

and

  the Linux kernel is optimized for servers, not for desktops

I can't tell if this is satire or not.

The author appears to be serious. His desire of being a 'True Kernel Developer' probably led him to google something like "best distribution for Linux Hacker", perhaps the first result was Arch. At some point our "Linux Hacker" probably started to feel confortable running pacman -Syu twice a day to be on the cutting edge.

Why don’t you ask him instead of just making shit up?

and he's using Arch, not even a mainstream distro

I've been using Gnome on a Dell XPS 13 for a few years, and it's fine. In many ways the user interface is considerably better than the Macbook Air I had before.

In particular, connecting external video always works really well. And connecting printers always works really well. And it always goes to sleep and wakes up. Those weren't the case 10/15 years ago with Linux desktops.

So yes - buy hardware by a company which actually ships it with Ubuntu, and use Ubuntu... Linux isn't the problem here, compiling kernels and not using a desktop distribution are.

Even Windows was split into desktop and server variants. IIRC, OS X was briefly offered as a server product before being discontinued, in large part because it was awful on server-like loads. Android's UI smoothness is still lagging behind iStuff, and that has Google money behind it. Seems natural that systems optimised for one thing would be bad at others.

And unless there appears a compelling and profitable business case for Linux on the desktop/laptops, it's likely better to let the "Year of Linux on the desktop" meme die.

So if you use a distribution that requires you to set up everything yourself - you have to setup everything yourself ? No way ...

In my experience the distributions with longer release cycles like RHEL are really stable and don't have as many issues like this or you experience them only during the initial setup and then run normally for years. I had a very good experience running a CentOS desktop for two years, even considering the initial hassle I had with sound, installing Skype and video-card drivers.

However I actually don't install them because I want the latest toys and so do most users. Honestly my desktop experience has decreased on both Windows and Linux in the past 10 years. Windows 10 also has begun to have the same stability issues for a lot of users - so rolling release seems to be the wrong approach for desktop users.

> "I want the latest toys"

Fortunately now a lot of linux software is being released as distro-independent packages like AppImage, Flatpak, or Snap. And they contain the particular library versions. So that allows you to have your base OS be something stable while still being able to use the latest version of a particular program.

>> all Linux interfaces sucks

I use KDE everyday, works fine. Sometimes a bit rough but "sucks" sounds far fetched to me.

>>> Twice I was going to the podium and the remote display connection failed.

Why not check before ?

>>> The answer is simpler than that: the Linux kernel is optimized for servers, not for desktops.

Really ? I'm sure the Ubuntu team might say something else.

And to add to the "this is my own opinion" stuff : I use linux because it allows me to escape the grips of Windows and Apple (a bit). I do it because I'm a dev therefore I can technically do it. If I don't, who will ?

Then use a dual boot with Windows. It's quite simple to set up.

Linux is the best os for programming imo (especially if you develop software for Linux servers), so why not keep both?

Very few cases can't be covered by either WSL or a VM, and having dual-booted for years I can tell you that after a few days you get into the habit of only booting the more convenient OS most of the time. It's twice the maintenance and 5-15 minutes of context switching every time you need to do something else.

I have a window sitting next to my Linux and I use it about twice a year, it's no maintenance at all (less than a VM I would say)

Ah, WSL... which gives you the best of both worlds: unpredictable and unreliable Windows updates combined with whatever grievances you have about Linux applications.

If by 'booting to the most convenient OS' you mean 'booting to the OS which does not usurp your machine for internal housekeeping purposes (plus a little side of snooping here and there 'to enhance your experience') the moment you switch it on that would surely mean booting to some variant of Linux? Windows seems to think it is more important to try to install the 1709 or 1803 update pack for the umpteenth time, try to stuff the 'Windows 10 update assistant' down unwilling users' throats, ignoring all those 'do not update' flags and settings they were told to hack into the registry. Where the OS can suddenly decide that you obviously are not using that FileHistory backup so let's remove it altogether. In other words, the OS which isn't at the whim of a supplier with an agenda different from yours.

I didn't specify which operating systems, which makes it ironic that Windows was not involved at all in that process. I've used WSL, but on my Windows-only desktop that mostly runs games. See, my work machine never ran Windows. Good job going on a rant about it though.

I think the many complexities with running Linux (Especially Android) on many different devices is why Google is creating Fuchsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia

to sum it up: if you use a distro where you have to configure everything yourself it will be hard and things will break

I think that's fair. My take was that the person chose a bleeding edge rolling release to feel 133t but had an unrealistic expectation about stability.

I love ArchLinux, and used it on my primary dev laptop a while back. But you have to expect breaking changes that take some manual maintenance from time to time, and choose your update window accordingly. Maybe not really close to a conference presentation.

There isn't a shortage of distros, and the person could have chosen elsewhere on the spectrum according to needs.

You can try Manjaro, it's a tamed arch. It's what I use. Very happy with it...

More than happy with Arch itself on various machines :) Was just pointing out that it's good to factor in a little time in case troubleshooting is needed. Although that's mitigated by keeping up to date with their news feed...

Okay then, bye.

P.S. Looks like you want a Mac instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGcHNnI2mh4

Reply on news.ycombinator.com