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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

If you want to move out of osx, but wsl is not good enough, then... why not just Linux?

I can't find hardware that I both like and works well with it. The XPS 13 came close, but it had a coil whine you could hear from another room, and I didn't like the track pad.

I tried the XPS and more recently the G3. The G3 is very nice, I dual boot Windows and Linux and haven't found any big problems yet. Wasnt a fan of the XPS either, the high DPI wasnt well supported on either OS (Java apps needed workarounds). The G3 seems perfect so far, 32g ram, good connectivity and ports, NVidia support has been fine on multiple monitors etc

The last time I found a Dell laptop that didn't work with Linux out of the box was in 2010 or so.

You may have some odd hardware issues with discrete GPUs and some other devices (I'm looking at you, Lenovo, and your gorgeous e-ink keyboard I want so much), but if you stay within the basics, there's no reason to assume Linux won't work with it.

The parent mentioned specifically wanting a Surface device, on which surely Windows would work better?

As another osx refugee, I've spent time on both Windows and Linux. There's no "just" Linux, it has plenty of its own annoyances - to be honest it's a bit of a wash between it and Windows for me. WSL 2 could push me back.

I can’t remember how many times I have given Linux (Ubuntu, mint, etc) a try on a laptop since 2008. I am just tired of random regressions after an upgrade and spent a few hours every months to fix (frantically google if I would call).

for me: trash fonts rendering. Some people don't see the difference (I don't blame them), I can't work with Linux-rendered fonts more than 1 hour. Tried Ubuntu and Debian.

Here I thought I was the only one on the planet who apparently complained about or even noticed this.

Coming from years on Mac OS X and Linux (which I find has as good font rendering as OS X, if not slightly better), the thing that most annoys me about Windows right now are the skinny, badly-rendered fonts. It's close to unbearable, and I'm considering going back to OS X just because of the font rendering.

ClearType is shockingly bad. However, I remember that when I was a teenager I absolutely adored ClearType. But then I hadn't been exposed to other font rendering systems.

Weird, I still love ClearType more than any others... I find it actually sharper and crisper than the others, yet still smooth. Microsoft botched font rendering when they started migrating everything and its mother to GPU (Direct2D? or similar) rendering and decided to replace ClearType with grayscale smoothing just to spite users (e.g. taskbar, Office ribbon), but in other places where we still have ClearType I find it fantastic.

I understand how someone can appreciate ClearType on a normal DPI screen, but the techniques that ClearType uses to maintain sharpness are completely useless on hiDPI. On hiDPI you can have your cake and eat it too: accurately rendered glyphs with no sharpness compromises.

Windows may change to accomodate hiDPI displays, but it make take a decade or more given how Microsoft prioritizes backward compatibility, and most computers in the wild have low resolution screens.

MacOS had always optimized for typeface fidelity, and the results were blurry on low resolution screens, although you got used to it pretty quickly. But now with Retina screens that problem has been solved. Whereas Windows used a hack (ClearType) to make type more readable at the expense of fidelity, and now it can't use high resolution screens to the fullest because now applications assume certain things about font rendering. There's a lesson to be learned here about sticking to your values and software design, but I don't know what it is exactly.

can't speak for the OP, but there are several apps I wanted to run that would have been cumbersome with that approach (although I looked at it). Main apps in question were Excel, and Ableton Live.

I run Windows for Office, CAD software etc. and then have Virtualbox with Linux that I run fullscreen for coding work. Works nicely, haven't noticed any major performance hit.

Also you can go the other way. I've been running on Linux with a seemless VirtualBox window for Outlook.

CAD software is just a bit more demanding that Outlook..

I meant in general, not specifically for CAD. But even then... You can do gfx card passthrough to the VM these days if standard 3d acceleration is not enough. CADs should work just fine.

gfx passthrough is always a crapshoot. It normally doesn't work, and even if it does it simply adds a lot of complexity to something that doesn't need it.

Wine nowdays can run most apps flawlessly, same thing for wsl, so the end user decision depends on os specific apps ratio and how bad is the windows ui for him PS and also maybe antivirus tolerances, since there is no need for antivirus on windows.

Apps may run fine, but anything that interfaces with hardware is a crapshoot.

Quite frankly, the difference here is that WSL is supported by Microsoft and it ensures compatibility with open source tools, while Wine is all about reverse engineering, it's not complete and every time an application gets updated it could completely break. Furthermore, performance and direct HW access are way more important in my DAW (where I make music and want to eliminate every ms of latency) than in my dev environment (at least to a certain degree).

Running a complex, resource-hungry DAW that needs direct and fast access access to audio hardware and features a demanding plug-in ecosystem on an emulation layer isn't a good idea.

WebEx is a big one for me, if not for that I could switch over full time. Currently using a windows VM in qemu.

Linux Desktop is not fine tuned like Windows.

Things take longer, and don't work out of the box.

I LOVE Ubuntu Server though, fav of all time.

> Things take longer, and don't work out of the box.

Specifics here would be valuable input.

Mouse settings, video websites, GUI isnt great, having to use terminal is a major turnoff.

I'm a linux user, so terminal isnt a big deal, but Ubuntu is no windows.

I'm more curious about the performance specifics of the things taking longer aspect.

That was it. it takes longer to set up.

I tire of these threads. Half of them are issues people had with Linux more than 15 years ago and the rest are based either on hearsay and just damn preference. I'm so tired of the same flames I'm making this comment now and before it turns into a shitfest.

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