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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

Fair enough, but that's not a typical experience on either Windows or Linux in this decade - if that's happened to you, then I think you've just been incredibly unlucky.

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On the other hand I was gifted a 2015 MacBook Pro 15 and I can't run away screaming fast enough from it. I know people rave about the touch pad, but when I use it I find apps get minimized, or don't launch or some other weird gesture causing behavior. I guarantee that this is classic PEBKAC. The other day a family member with a MacBook Pro asked me to assist them with Safari which on launch wouldn't appear. I was able to get it to appear by using the Finder or something which allowed me to pin/size Safari to one side of the screen, but on appearing the window simply displayed a single pixel frame with a black interior. I liked the process, launched it again but it did the same thing. I told them they would have more success with Google than me. I have never had those experiences with Windows. Yes I've had other lame experiences, but I can always solve them, it at least find a solution online. Again probably PEBCAK so no fan boy retorts please. In the end all programs and operating systems suck.

I’m personally quite a big fan of the trackpad and gestures but I understand that they take some getting used to. If they are causing you frustration then you can turn them off under system preferences > trackpad in the “scroll and zoom” and “more gestures” sections. I’d recommend keeping most of the scroll ones and disabling most of the others, then one by one turning on any of the ones you think would be most useful as you get more used to them.

As for the Safari issue, I have no idea off the top of my head.

I have to say I also don't understand all the fanfare for the MBP trackpad. I have a 13" 2016 MBP, and I actively dislike the trackpad. You need to use far too much pressure to "click" (even when the resistance at the lowest setting), and there is something "off" about the mouse pointer tracking - I can't figure out what it is, like if it feels too smooth, too jerky, I don't know, but it feels wrong somehow.

Oh, I do like the gesture support, though even Windows 10 supports gestures nowadays.

I think you can enable tap to click

Disagree with Linux. I make an LVM snapshot before making any attempts to upgrade the graphics driver. It's a disaster. And don't say proprietary code, that's beside the point. Windows runs drivers in a way that one that crashes can be restarted without bringing down the kernel or the whole system.

FYI I've had the issue you describe half a dozen times with CentOS but literally never with Arch Linux (on both machines with similar nVidia cards, using the proprietary driver). In general I'm pretty impressed with Arch's package quality, I seldom encounter any issue and when I do it's patched very quickly.

Very true. I have used Ubuntu and Fedora for a while, but when I switched to Arch, I never go back. Arch is described as bleeding edge, but another way to put it is it always has latest software, which is what a dev machine should be. My experience with installing Nvidia driver in ubuntu is nightmare. Tried official repo then failed, and tried different ppa and then failed again and again. At last, I found that I have an older kernel version and I need to compiled a latest kernel which is not in official ubuntu repo. I gave up at this point because I don't want to compile kernel every time I need to upgrade. With Arch, you always get the latest kernel and you won't usually missing feature from using an old LTS kernel.

I tried Arch Linux in a dual boot scenario on this System76 laptop and I don't recall why I switched back... I think it's because I tried to upgrade the graphics driver and got into state where I couldn't get X to run at all.

A co-worker keeps telling me to try Manjaro. I'm just not sure if I want to spend a weekend reinstalling all the stuff I use.

My windows box has crashed over a dozen times in the past few years because of GPU driver issues with nvidia and amd

Nope, there have been a few issues with BSOD that have impacted quite a lot of people. The latest one was with nvidia drivers being old that caused BSOD after update.

In a previous company the IT dept had to revert a forced by MS update manually on each machine by “hacking” and deleting and replacing files as it was causing BSOD.

It happens with forced win10 updates.

Albeit rarely, and with the diversity of commodity hardware out there, I would say that Microsoft has done pretty well with updates.

(P.S. I despise Windows from a technical standpoint though)

It shouldn't be their business.

> with the diversity of commodity hardware out there, I would say that Microsoft has done pretty well with updates

This is a good point actually - with their walled garden approach, Apple has a much easier job with drivers than Windows or Linux have.

Of course, the end user may not care a jot, but it's an interesting point from a technical perspective.

It happened to me pretty much every other forced windows update, from broken graphics drivers to non functional start menu.

I just replaced that pos with a mac mini....

I use centos 7 for my daily driver, it'll get 8 on it next hardware upgrade. Touch wood not a single problem with that for years now, and amd5000/nv3000 are looking very tasty.

Happened to me with a stock install of ubuntu after an update about 9 months ago.

If by this decade you mean 2010 - 2020, I have enough Linux examples.

I presume you mean desktop Linux - I admit haven't tried a desktop edition Linux in this decade, so I might me off there.

Desktop Linux on an Asus laptop officially sold with Ubuntu on it.

I believe you must have been using Windows 7 without updates for the decade, because with windows 10 every[1] update[2] borks the system so much that Microsoft had to pull updates. And last but not the least, a big guide to fix problems caused by a forced, mandatory windows update[3]

[1] https://www.techradar.com/in/news/microsoft-kills-off-window...

[2] https://www.techradar.com/news/dont-install-this-windows-10-...

[3] https://www.techradar.com/in/how-to/windows-10-may-2020-upda...

Meanwhile on Linux, I cannot upgrade to the new kernel that contains a lot of support and fixes for my new shiny AMD Ryzen chip because it completely breaks the Nvidia driver, refusing even to boot.

Apple may suck, but it still sucks less than the alternatives

> Meanwhile on Linux, I cannot upgrade to the new kernel that contains a lot of support and fixes for my new shiny AMD Ryzen chip because it completely breaks the Nvidia driver, refusing even to boot.

Well that's the problem with Linux distros for the desktop in general. A user upgrading a newer version of a single system component risks breaking the whole desktop: systemd, libdrm, x11, whatever and something else doesn't work. I'm even excluding drivers here but again it's clear what happens when a user finds that out for themselves on Linux. If they even have the time and energy to do all that digging and googling of cryptic errors.

To save yourself the time and frustration, Just keep using Windows 10 with WSL2. I don't have any reason to dual boot to a Linux desktop any more due to this.

And I believe you must not have been using Windows, and are relying too much of news of incidents affecting small numbers of people.

It is - quite clearly - a gross exaggeration that "every update borks the system".

Aside from MacOS, I use Windows 10, and have done for several years. I have the Microsoft Action Pack, which means I get multiple Windows 10 Enterprise licenses - and no forced updates.

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