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Comment by zubspace | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's hard to replace a tool which worked for you since many years. You learn all it's tricks and you can build up your workflows around that tool.

Maybe I just had some bad luck regarding Linux. I started with Suse, switch to Gentoo, then Ubuntu and Fedora and others inbetween. I remember the fights I had to take to make 3D acceleration work, strange problems with hardware, things which could not be solved easily where you instead search for step-by-step tutorials on every corner of the internet, distributions which completely failed after certain updates...

You know, it's interesting and all. But in some way I got older and value my time more. So I always went back to the tool I know best, which is Windows. And I think, many many people had similar experiences I had.

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This is it definitely my experience. Those of us who were stubborn to stick with Linux (or BSDs) learned it inside out. It is hard to switch habits after all those years. If all those sleepless nights trying to fix hardware problems were spent on learning the Winapi/NT kernel inside out, it could be hard to switch back.

What I found most interesting was that I saw a video of the creators of plan9 who were running it inside a Windows VM. At that time, I thought if those guys formerly working in the experimental OS division of Bell Labs are not bothering with Linux hardware support and simply using Windows, why shouldn't I. I forced myself to use Windows as a host and ran a Linux VM for development for 6 months or so, then I gave in again and formatted back to Linux.

The same stubbornness that led me use Linux for years also led me to switch to FreeBSD, because off-the-shelf Linuxes became so decent that no config was necessary. (I also jumped on the systemd hate train.) After switching computers and getting a modern one I couldn't use FreeBSD because of GPU support. Now it has support but I don't go back to FreeBSD. I got older and valued my time more. Debian is what I feel the most comfortable with and I shall use Debian for a while.

OTOH, I really also want to try NixOS and DragonFlyBSD as my daily drivers at least for a couple of months :).

Very interesting and kinda funny, that you ended up at Debian :) But I can understand that.

One thing that tells me is, that it is good to have multiple operating systems, open ones and proprietary ones. They can all learn from each other. And I long for the day where Windows will offer me an equal commandline experience like Linux and where Linux will give me a decent desktop environment, where "it just works". In some ways we're really close to that day. In many ways not so much.

The only thing which sometimes gets me is, when I think about all the time me and mankind in general did (and will) waste on learning the intricacies of operating systems. It's funny and sad at the same time :)

Just wanted to replay that I can relate to both of you guys very much.

I have been a tinkerer all my life. I've installed and played with pretty much any OS you can think of (From BeOS to Solaris to Linux. Even DragonFlyBSD - which I wish would take off as I like the community). I will always continue to play and check Distrowatch, but I have started to value time more and more as the years add up {sigh}.

So with that, my love child though is, and always will be, Microsoft OS's. Started with DOS as a 10 year old and each new one I've enjoyed better than the last with Win10 being the best yet. Although I do deep down wish it wasn't full of telemetry and such, I don't get caught up in the FUD. I disable most of it and with the rest I just hope Microsoft uses it well/privately and that I am helping to make Windows better.

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