Switching my home computer to Linux has had its problems since I'm an avid gamer, but the more news I read about Windows the less I regret that decision.
After several...frustrating...hours of trying to talk them through things over the phone to get RDP working, just so I could install Docker to run some containers that didn't even work properly with networking, and having to call/text any time the machine thought it was smarter than me and rebooted because of an update, I finally drove out there, wiped it, and threw linux on it (Ubuntu 20, which serves the purposes I need).
The entire installation process took about 15 minutes because I was explaining it to my dad as I installed it. Zero headache since it was plugged in next to the router and powered on weeks ago, and the performance on the running containers makes it feel like a brand new computer compared to trying to run them in Windows.
I run a Windows desktop locally for gaming. I've heard good things about SteamOS and have been toying with switching, but I'm put off by the idea of trying to re-flash Windows if it doesn't work. Personally, I'll be happy when I no longer need Windows even for gaming.
Side note: if you end up dual booting your gaming PC, please learn from my mistakes and disable Fast Startup before you do. Otherwise you're going to have a bad time.
The only stuff that is completely broken is Easy Anticheat and BattleEye, but those will supposedly be working when the new Steam Deck starts shipping.
Lutris ( https://lutris.net/ ) also provides scripts for games that aren't on steam or bought on other stores.
You can also install Pop!OS which is another Linux distro for gaming (or so I've heard).
For anyone interested:
From what I've gathered, Pop!OS has a bit more support than the officially released SteamOS Beta version, which is actually someone outdated right now. But from what I've read about the Steam Deck, Steam has a new version of their OS that the deck runs on. So maybe (hopefully) it will be released along with the deck - couldn't find any info on that though.
Valve has stated that their SteamOS 3 will be a freely-available open platform, and that they encourage other device manufacturers to ship it on their hardware. I assume that this means isos will be available.
Having had similar problems (not just windows, RDP/VNC/you name it) to me this now sounds like 'wrong tool for the job'; just use e.g. Anydesk : no install, just an exe, have the remote side run it and tell you the ID and you're good (at least it didn't fail me once yet). From then on configure RDP/VNC yourself, and the router's port forwarding, etc.
Edit: I know right? How dare I express a preference for Windows. Downvote me to hell because I don't like using your favored OS.
Apple has never actually built a mouse with 2 distinct switches for left and right click. It's like they are too proud or something and "right" click needs to be faked for some reason.
Right now, I'm using a Steelseries one with a Mac. All six buttons and the scroll-wheel work fine.
Yes, I'm aware of that. When I last seriously used MacOS X it was still the PPC era, and while technically you could use a 2 button mouse it wasn't really designed for it. Anyway, compared to other complaints that's a minor gripe of mine.
I don't quite think this is true. I'm pretty certain that MacOS 9 had a right click menu if you plugged in a two button mouse; I've used MacOS since version 6 and I recall distinctly right click being a novelty in OS 8.
Apple's philosophy always was that context menus could aid other workflows in the program, but couldn't replace them -- the functionality had to be accessible in some other way. Which, I thought, certainly makes sense if 90% of your users have a one button mouse. Could this be what you're thinking of?
Nope. Plug in a two button USB mouse and it just worked.
..which promptly get replaced with mac annoyances. Random ones off the top of my head:
* closing a window (using the red x icon) doesn't close the app
* overwriting a folder deletes existing contents, rather than merging them
* weird scroll acceleration that makes clicky scroll wheels unusable
Wait. If there truly is not a setting for this then it makes finder unusable as a file explorer and arguably the entire OS. Recursive merge is one of the most fundamental things a personal computer does.
You can go out of your way to do it manually with rsync and similar tools, of course, but by default you're moving directory pointers around, not merging trees.
Nautilus, the default file manager of GNOME (and by extension Debian and its children such as Ubuntu) handles recursive merge. This isn't an issue on Linux.
It's obviously bad design to have something as high level as a file manager be a glorified 2D wrapper of 2 command line tools.
Not even slightly:
$ mkdir 1 2
$ touch 1/foo 1/bar 2/baz 2/quux
$ mv -T 2 1
mv: overwrite '1'? y
mv: cannot move '2' to '1': Directory not empty
$ mv --force -T 2 1
mv: cannot move '2' to '1': Directory not emptyCommand-Q is your friend.
There are applications with more than one window.
> * weird scroll acceleration that makes clicky scroll wheels unusable This is called "progress" or UI/UX or whatever name they have today for brain damage . Some years ago the Apple GUI was looking good. Then the replaced the window buttons with coloured circles. Guess which one is which ?
And windows handles it just fine. Clicking X on one window doesn't close the entire app.
Some people just don't like it.
Indeed. That goes for any software and it'd be really nice if we could grow beyond our childish tribalism and accept that "I don't like the way your favorite software works" is not a personal attack.
doesn't matter that pretty much all software is a dumpster fire, and linux is just another, less hot dumpster fire compared to windows.
Yeah, but the difference is that Linux is MY dumpster fire, not Microsoft's!
Just to give a recent example, 3 different IT support people, from 3 different countries, have worked one day each, trying to discover why MS Teams does not work on a certain new Dell laptop, while it works fine if you move the Ethernet cable to the old laptop. After many efforts, nobody has any clue.
Such things cannot happen on Linux.
[0] I've played that game a thousand times and it is always an exercise in frustration. No thanks.
If you swear by windows, you probably have good reasons. People who like windows would love to hear them. Otherwise, why partake in a conversation that frustrates you at all if you don't want to argue in support of your opinion?
+1 for the windows camp: Personally, I haven't found a better alternative for running Adobe programs on good hardware without taking out a loan on my house (mac pros are a no-go). So Windows works best here.
Another +1 for the windows camp: Gaming (but SteamOS is starting to compete here).
Other than that, I have found that some variant of linux or macOS outperforms windows in every way for my needs (insert obligatory, YMMV), and I am happy to list those out if anyone is interested or needs help deciding which OS suits their needs best.
I was making a specific counterpoint to the argument "there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft". My point needed no elaboration to be valid.
> Otherwise, why partake in a conversation that frustrates you at all if you don't want to argue in support of your opinion?
Because in my experience said "conversations" always devolve into the same useless arguments, which are entirely irrelevant to the point that people have good reasons they use Windows because anyone else's opinion of their reasons is irrelevant.
Because you want upvotes, so you gotta give people things to agree with. If I just say "Linux Sucks" I'm not giving people much to agree with, except naked tribalism.
But there are other things I can say that will allow members of my tribe to feel they're not voting tribally - and even some Linux enthusiasts to think I've got a point:
* "Linux doesn't support Photoshop / MS Excel / Altium / SolidWorks"
* "Microsoft's fanatical devotion to binary backwards-compatibility means I don't have to worry old software will break because I've got the wrong version of python installed, or my version of libreadline is too new."
* "I've got an nvidia graphics card, and nvidia drivers on Linux are a right mess"
* "Linux is all-too-often a second-class citizen, both hardware and software makers giving it less testing and support than they do Windows and Mac"
"You don't need those things anyway, Krita / LibreOffice Calc / etc are good enough. Alternatively, don't they run in Wine?"
> * "Microsoft's fanatical devotion to binary backwards-compatibility means I don't have to worry old software will break because I've got the wrong version of python installed, or my version of libreadline is too new."
"People shouldn't use old software because it is insecure. Fortunately there are armies of third party package maintainers dedicated to keeping software up to date for you and updating is easy and painless."
> * "I've got an nvidia graphics card, and nvidia drivers on Linux are a right mess"
"Don't use Nvidia then."
> * "Linux is all-too-often a second-class citizen, both hardware and software makers giving it less testing and support than they do Windows and Mac"
"That's why we have to push more for its adoption!"
Like I said, I've played this game a lot. This is exactly how it goes every damned time. No matter what you say, someone will come out of the woodwork to argue that your opinion is wrong, you chose the wrong hardware, or even, bizarrely, that normal people don't need that, like that has anything at all to do with why you need it.
Well, if you're going to post arguing against your own point every time... :)
You did exactly this.
Edit: changed to the relevant statement
But this is not arguing that the opinion is wrong. It just shows that it's not a universal true for everyone and that Linux could work for other people reading this.
I would say it is at least as good as this post:
"You actually can directly listen to many scientists on social media."
Literally everything that followed was people being upset I didn't give them reasoning to attack. Well you know what? I'm sick of their bullshit arguments designed to promote their favorite OS by telling me all my personal decisions are bad just because I don't like the same things they do.
"there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft" implies that Microsoft is bad, and on HN it's more or less accepted (mostly due to the user tracking and non-flexibility). Of course, there are still reasons to stay with Microsoft, so that argument is far from perfect too.
> I would say it is at least as good as this post: "You actually can directly listen to many scientists on social media."
My post suggests how to find the opinions of actual scientists. It's an actionable suggestion with reasoning unlike yours.
> by telling me all my personal decisions are bad
Nobody tells you that your personal decisions are bad. People are just discussing the reasons to choose one system of the other. Bystanders read that and decide for themselves. "I love Windows" arguments do not help anyone to decide.
Let me sum up:
>> There's no good reason to use Windows
> If Windows fits how you use a computer better, then that is a good reason.
That's it, that's all I'm saying. I didn't even say Windows was good. I certainly didn't say I love Windows, because I really don't and you will find many posts by me to back that up.
> Bystanders read that and decide for themselves.
THIS thinking precisely illustrates why I didn't elaborate on why I use Windows. With evangelists it isn't about discussion, or understanding, it's about performing a fucking sales pitch and I'm goddamned sick of it.
So it's been nearly 20 years running Linux and honestly I've never once missed Windows. I've never got people who said "I can't run x" because everything I've needed to work has worked or there has been some open source alternative that has worked equally well. And if I really needed a corporate platform there was always OSX. Unfortunately macOS these days is becoming a similar cesspool as Windows. Before long the only good operating systems left will ironically be the free ones.
I'd love to use linux but It's hard to say everyone should use linux when in 2021 not everyone even has proper video acceleration.
Except, if you run nvidia optimus laptop and have mixed display DPI.
Every few months I try to run Arch on my recent laptop and it’s always a nightmare.
I was hyped that 470 driver would fix wayland in nvidia (the only half decent way to fix mixed DPIs on Linux). Lo and behold, It’s still a buggy mess that made me crawl back to windows.
Maybe on 570 I will be able to use Linux on this laptop, likely never.
"Except if you want to use the drive through"
"So don't do that then"
Avoiding it personally doesn't alleviate that there is still a reason.
I believe Wayland may be better than X with this, but my displays have the same DPI so I haven't tested myself. My displays do have different refresh rates and Wayland handles that better in my experience.
NVIDIA has been slow on the Wayland front though, but I think they may have made decent progress with recent driver releases.
The NVIDIA settings program allows you to configure the monitors at any resolutions and in any geometric arrangement.
Some 6-7 years ago, I had a laptop with Optimus NVIDIA and I lost a couple of days until making it work. After that I had no problems, but the external monitor had the same resolution with the laptop display, so I have never tried mixed DPI with Optimus.
In any case, after that I have avoided Optimus and there are enough alternatives.
For some it's not a problem but for those that play games from developers which use kernel level anti-cheat Proton isn't a be-all-end-all that Linux is now ready to migrate to.
Ultimately the ideal setup will probably involve keeping a Windows machine around for gaming and using Linux for serious work. Or running Windows in a VM with PCI passthrough for the video card.
Then again, I mostly play single player games that don't have anti-cheat. Once Valve gets anticheat working though, which they are actively working on, it's basically game over.
If you're response to that is "well you should know what you're doing before you run as sudo," all I can say is no. There is no reason why changing a DE, or installing certain software should make it nigh impossible to revert to previous changes short of being an expert or full reinstall. Plus minor quirks with every single one. It gets tedious fast to the point that I just want to develop. I don't want to mess around with why I can't use this piece of software because of some configuration issue related to Linux. I just want it to work.
When I'm on Linux, more often then not I'd rather just not have complicated software as I'm used to on Windows or Mac. Linux is where you go when you borderline have to expect something isn't going to work or you'll need to do a reinstall at some point. I've never felt that way about Windows or Mac unless my root drive felt bloated and it was entirely optional.
Counterpoints:
* Fedora Silverblue provides an immutable base OS with atomic updates/rollbacks. Makes it hard to mess up your system to the point where it doesn't work.
* NixOS and Guix provide delarative system configuration with atomic updates/rollbacks.
* Even on a 'traditional' distribution, you can use something like btrfs or ZFS snapshots and rollback your changes if you have a tendency to destroy systems ;).
That said, Linux is not for everyone and it is completely fine to use macOS or Windows (as I write, I am using macOS on a MacBook).
I recommend Ubuntu Mate as something that works well for dev work with a minimum of tweaking needed.
Also, I always keep my data files on another partition so OS installs are not a worrisome operation.
You mean like `sudo rm -rf /`? Would an equivalent command run by an admin on Windows not cause the same types of issues?
Sure, there might be some files that can't be deleted while the system is running (like kernel32.dll or whatever it's called), but you'll certainly break a lot of things which you can only reasonably fix by reinstalling Windows.
> It gets tedious fast to the point that I just want to develop
What type of development do you do? Front end web development? C#/.NET/WPF? Something else?
Because life as a developer on unix is much much nicer than it is on Windows for most types of work. If you're not one of those people who is stuck with Visual Studio, you should invest time into learning to work on Linux, Mac, FreeBSD, etc. It'll be better for your job prospects (and sanity) in the long run.
My dock blew up to ~200% in size, all my icons increased in size and I can no longer enter the settings for dash to dock. It just opens up an error that is very long and I'm not willing to resolve.
This is why Linux desktop will never be taken seriously.
Because you personally don't know how to use it, the Linux desktop will never be taken seriously?
Imagine if a tech-illiterate person was using Windows, and then they accidentally enabled the option to hide the taskbar. If they were to throw their hands up and complain about how this shit doesn't work, you would probably think they were overreacting.
And if you send them some instructions on how to restore the task bar, and they reply with "instructions too long; I'm not willing to read all that, I'll just reinstall the operating system", you would probably think they were being ignorant and lazy.
I think the problem is that not everyone reacts differently to being made to feel stupid (which software frequently does to us): some people approach the situation with humility, other people get defensive and angry.
I see this a lot with programmers, where someone inherits another person's code and rather than attempt to understand it, they proclaim that it's shit and decide to rewrite it.
That's the only explanation I have for why so many tech literate people (incl' engineers) seem to completely shutdown when confronted with seemingly trivial issues. It has to be something emotional like that, because doesn't take much time or effort to look up how to fix whatever problem you're having. Sure, you might not need to "look up" how to do something on Windows, but you've also (probably) been using Windows for a very long time.
And with all that said, I would recommend you use KDE Plasma instead of Gnome, and a mainstream distro like Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, which comes preinstalled with KDE instead of Gnome).
Aside: Idk why people keep recommending Gnome to Linux newcomers. Gnome is basically a hyper-opinionated attempt to copy the worst parts of Windows/macOS/Android/iOS, and a half-assed attempt at that. KDE Plasma is an actually usable and mature desktop, and it should be much more familiar to people coming from Windows (which is probably the vast majority of people). I've been using it without issues for the past 6~7 years (never had to fix a broken thing, never had to copy and paste a magic command, and certainly never had to reinstall the operating system)