I ditched in the middle of Windows 7, with absolutely no regrets. Valve has made tremendous inroads in gaming with Proton, along with developers releasing for Linux, there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft.
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.
..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 emptyThere 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.
Command-Q is your friend.
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.
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.
[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... :)
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.
You did exactly this.
Edit: changed to the relevant statement
doesn't matter that pretty much all software is a dumpster fire, and linux is just another, less hot dumpster fire compared to windows.
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.
Yeah, but the difference is that Linux is MY dumpster fire, not Microsoft's!
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.