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Comment by coeroble | Hacker News Reader

Linux desktop is in its best shape since its inception, and yet a thousand light years away from Windows.

> and yet a thousand light years away from Windows

Yep, in the front.

Stuff works. You don't need 32GB of memory to run anything. The system doesn't get locked down all the time while the OS uses the entire IO capacity. The computer does not misbehave all the time and instead does what you order. You get software for almost everything right from the package manager, and it works for you, instead of shoving ads or licensing constraints into your face.

Such rants would actually be believable when instead of cherry-picking the ultimate worst experiences and generalizing them you'd stick to more average statements, more reflective of the truth. I'm not saying this to defend Windows, denying it has problems would be insane, but just to let you know it's prerfectly possible to rant on Windows without going into extremes which sound ridiculous to people who actually know and use Windows on a variety of devices. E.g. I can rant the same way about Linux or OSX based on the worst experiences I had with it, and you'd recognize it would be far away from your experience. Also I can counter each of your examples just based on a Windows 10 install I happened to do a week ago so clearly something is off with your statements: after boot uses about 2.5GB of memory. Personally didn't experience lock downs, though I heard it from others as well, but not 'all the time'.. Driver issues? As far as I'm concerned it does what I tell it to, 'all the time'. I installed a terminal, text editor and IDE using a package manager. They all work for me and don't show adds nor licensing constraints.

Windows not running on 8GB of memory isn't non-usual. (Yes, 32 was an exaggeration.)

I see Windows using the entire IO capacity of my work computer every working day, 1/3 to 1/2 the time.

Windows update destroying your configuration isn't even news anymore. It restarting when people don't want is a widely known fact, and more than 1/4 of the times I have a half-hour meeting at work the computer stays there updating for 1 hour or more.

Windows software installation is a worst in class experience on nearly any dimension. It's not something that happens once in a while.

I don't know what you call "cherry-picking". Those "ultimate worst experiences" happen every day.

That depends on your needs and values. As far as freedom is concerned, Windows is a far cry from what Linux offers. Windows restricts you to NTFS as root filesystem, for example. Windows offers no open-source disk encryption. Linux distros come out of the box with great integrated tools and workflow, something Microsoft only wishes to emulates with its Linux subsystem. But Windows aims to restrict your workflow to singular proprietary applications like VS. Windows as a whole is a packaged product that makes choices for you, and restricts the user in the process. That may be OK with you, but in no way does that make it "light years" ahead of Linux, only the opposite. This isn't even mentioning privacy.

> But Windows aims to restrict your workflow to singular proprietary applications like VS.

Out of curiosity: how does Microsoft stand in the way of developing with GCC and Clang?

Not if the point is to get work done. I see a new version of Windows and my reaction is usually " oh that's nice, to bad it's MS and at some point it will be pathetic ". Because I know it's coming, it always does and it's always worse than the last thing that pissed me off. Linux Desktop is light years ahead if the point is to get stuff done and not hate your machine.

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