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Comment by captainmisery | Hacker News Reader

I'm using Windows 10. In the past year I've tried: Manjaro, Fedora, Linux Mint and some others.

Why I'm not switching? Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix.

After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution.

"Well, you know, you could just SUDO this, or SUDO that."

Yeah. I know. But I don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that. I want a operating system that just works.

I installed Windows 10, took 10 minutes, everything works great.

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Yeah its funny how experiences differ.

I was at my parents,and wanted to sketch out something for my dad. So I grabbed my mom's win10 laptop, went to the blender download location, downloaded, double clicked, got a popup about updates. Whatever, not my computer, not my problem. double click again. Again with the popup. Read it carefully this time. WTF? I NEED to update their store to install a third party package?

Not my computer, not my mandate.

It looked like I could install the stores' version, but of course, its not up to date. Then some more bullshit about updating.

I shut it down and went for paper and pencil.

Yeah. I know. You don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that. But I want a operating system that does what I tell it to do.

I would really like to have an OS that quietly keeps itself up to date without bugging me about it. My work Macbook and Windows laptops also bug me a lot and keep demanding reboots at inconvenient times, with popup notifications blocking things I need.

Just quietly download your updates, install them in the background, and quickly switch to the new version at some point when I'm not using it.

That's exactly what ChromeOS does. Quick reboot (a few seconds) and it's done.

NixOS has this feature, though you will have to rewrite parts of your configuration if you're using bleeding edge/nonstandard stuff.

I run automatic updates nightly, sometimes when I get back to the machine it's in init waiting for me to input my ZFS password.

NixOS is the last system you install, which is really nice. It's the Linux dist I've run the longest consecutive at home.

I'm on Arch now, but definitely have Nixos on my radar to try out some day. Looks like a fairly steep learning curve though (as was Arch, really).

If I were to install a Linux distro for my father again I would probably use NixOS, because he won't be installing packages, and then just maintaining the config file, automatic upgrades and killing older generations just works. Staying with stable and possibly having to patch the config sligtly (to fix upgrades) every 6m.

The learning curve is higher once you wanna start building software that isn't packaged already, that's when you'll have to learn to write nix expressions.

I've been planning to package FRRouting for NixOS, It'd be the perfect OS for a router, atomic forward and backwards rolls. (Except for user data, but that could be solved with ZFS snapshots, NixOS makes it VERY easy to use ZOL).

Nix is super unique, you can set up your own Hydra (the Nix build bot), run your own package cache, fork and maintain your own stuff. It's really more like working with code than maintaining a system.

Another great thing is that with Nix, once a problem is solved once, It's solved forever (Since literally everything defining your system is under version control).

I love it, but i wish to learn the Nix language proper and contribute back.

That is pretty much what Windows 10 does. Okay, maybe not quickly switch to the new version as we all know that it can take 10 - 20 minutes sometimes, but here is the thing. By default it reboots and install the updates when I sleep so I don't notice this. It always puzzles me when I hear that Windows suddenly starts to install updated while you are doing something, because that is not the default. The default is to install and reboot outside of your normal working hours. Best guess is that many people turn off their computer when they don't use it. In that case it is only possible to install the updates while you use that machine.

> Best guess is that many people turn off their computer when they don't use it

If the update is fully downloaded, you have the option to "install & shutdown"

I was attending my client conference when the invited speaker had his windows machine update right in the middle of his powerpoint presentation ! The whole room had to wait about 15 minutes for windows to finish its "important update".

(Of course he probably should have done it before and certainly ignored previous warnings. But it doesn't matter : the whole room of executive was wasting 15 minutes watching the speaker being angry at his machine)

To my knowledge, Linux would not do such a thing.

Exact point, no ads, no stop-working anytime

Linux / OsX just rock solid

Yep, which is clearly preferable in and of itself. But.

Windows is the haven of the uninformed. ITT we have the adept comparing update strategies - some arbitrary granny can't work like that. So Windows has to be engineered to maintain itself, even over the wishes of the user. And we've seen what happens if you allow the plebs to skip updating - many of them never update at all.

A lot of these sorts of issues tend to spring up around specific hardware.

Point in case, proprietary drivers for Broadcom wifi/bluetooth and Nvidia GPUs. I had a problem where every N rounds of updates, Fedora would just eat the Broadcom drivers and I'd get stuck tethering from my phone over USB to fix it. Similar things happened albeit much less frequently with the Nvidia drivers on various distros.

Of course the best "solution" for this is to use hardware supported well by the FOSS drivers; Intel wifi/Bluetooth, Intel/AMD graphics, etc. For desktops and a shrinking number of laptops that's an option, but people using machines with soldered components are just stuck with a crappy experience and are probably better off running Windows/macOS.

I'm just a single anecdatum, but Ubuntu from the installer through the installed system has been pretty flawless on my hybrid-GPU laptop. The GPUs aren't even from the same vendor. It's an AMD APU and an nVidia discrete GPU. The right-click menu in Gnome for every program gives me the option to start the program with the discrete graphics.

At the time I tried, the Debian installer got very confused about the video situation. Fedora and Mint weren't really happy either. I didn't try Pop, Arch, or anything else.

Weird how different people have different experiences. I've had way more cases of random things breaking on Win 10 than on Linux Mint. Especially corporate Win 10 on my working machine is utterly horrible, just endless problems.

Are any of those problems of "unchangeable 800x600 resolution" magnitude? Could you name a few?

Windows is slow af compared to Linux on the same hardware when I’m doing anything with Docker or Node.js/npm/yarn. The cli is incompatible with bash. I also can’t disable telemetry and other things I don’t want. It’s also missing features UI features that I get with XFCE.

That’s why I switched to Manjaro 3 years ago for work and never looked back. I still have Windows systems for games where it mostly works fine except for the occasional interruption to install updates while I’m in the middle of playing or watching something (which never happens on Linux since I have complete control there.)

The types of issues that Windows has can’t be fixed. An “unchangeable” resolution is fixable if it’s not a hardware issue. But I never have that type of issues at all on Linux. It just works for me and I have it on 3 desktops and a laptop. A lot of it comes down to picking the right distro and not being a cowboy. For instance, on Manjaro - just use the gui to install apps, not the command line - and restart when it tells you to. The gui does things that you won’t think to do on every update.

Performance for specific use cases is debatable (as in not everyone has your use case, and even your use case might not be as important as you think in comparison to cumulative effect of other performance differences). However, the comment was specifically talking about breaking issues:

> random things breaking on Win 10

Windows users just randomly lost free access to Docker desktop too.

Enjoy that!

I can name two.

I had Windows 7, which was then upgraded to Win10. Problem is, my computer doesn't support UEFI, so I cannot reinstall Win 10 from USB on an SSD even though it's gotten really, really slow (as in, 15sec for right click). I also cannot generate a recovery DVD because the generated image is too big and doesn't fit. As a result, the computer spends it's first 15+ minutes updating stuff I don't need. The only solution at this point is to throw away a perfectly good computer.

Plugging a PS3 USB controller the reboots Windows. This doesn't happen under Linux. I also need to reinstall the controller driver every time because Windows removes it.

Win 10 has a reset button in settings similar to mobile phones.

Does "Windows 10 upgrades the driver for the monitor to a Microsoft-provided version, causing BSOD on boot" count?

Definitely! Was it an "optional update"? They recently stopped offering that because it was poorly presented: it was not actually an update rather installation of a different driver altogether.

Also, monitor driver? Are you sure?

No idea, wasn't my machine (been a linux user for >15 years), I just needed to fix it (which I did via a linux live usb). Yes to monitor driver (I don't even know why it needed one, removing the driver allowed it to work fine, it definitely wasn't the GPU driver), and if you plugged in a different monitor it worked fine (and if I recall, installing a old graphics card I had lying around and connecting the "bad" monitor to it still caused problems).

I'd have thought it was some kind of joke if I hadn't seen it myself (apparently this wasn't the first time)...

Don't remember if it was Windows 8 or 10, but I had an issue that I would say was at least in that magnitude when I for one reason or another temporarily needed a bare-metal Windows install a few years ago.

The actual install went fine and everything worked reasonably well during that part. However, when booting up the system for the first time after install, Windows realized that my USB controller was a USB 3 controller and asked me to provide drivers. Windows then helpfully disabled the controller, the one where I had my keyboard and mouse hooked up, for me until I had installed said drivers. I had to dig out an old PS/2 keyboard out of the closet and navigate without mouse to install the drivers.

Same experience. I have one Linux box set up because of a project I'm working on that needs access to USB ports and doesn't work well in virtual environments.

It's just used to compile and test some software. But I do run the recommended updates (it's a Ubuntu desktop distro) and about once a week, something breaks. (X Server and monitor support are a frequent one.) This is a very standard Supermicro Mobo with Xeon CPU.

My Windows 10 machine is extremely reliable. I set it up about 2.5 years ago and I've never had to reinstall the OS, or fix display problems, or wonder why audio stopped working, etc.

Like others here I have the opposite experience: to such extend that I am actually installing Ubuntu instead of Windows10 on computers of friends who are not technical and they love that it works so well.

What magical software and hardware combination are you using, where there are less issues on Linux than on Windows?

A lot of times when people say they've had no issues whatsoever what's really happened is that they've become so used to all the issues that crop up and have so much practice dealing with them that they aren't even conscious of them anymore. Same thing happens to Windows and Mac users.

It's a bit like how people who browse without an adblocker aren't even consciously aware of them anymore, but you use their computer for a second and want to rip your eyes out.

> A lot of times when people say they've had no issues whatsoever what's really happened is that they've become so used to all the issues that crop up and have so much practice dealing with them that they aren't even conscious of them anymore.

Or they forget how much time they spent tweaking their system to get it just right. My Linux systems are now good as gold. I can say I have no issues whatsoever. They work reliably for me day after day. But hell if I didn't spend hours/days setting up all sorts of crazy things you'd expect to just work out of the box like Sleep/Suspend, WiFi, and High-DPI displays.

This is so very true. I've learned to take statements like "xxx works flawlessly" with a massive grain of salt

Eh, after getting exhausted with forced Windows updates, I've run Ubuntu and Debian on a Lenovo X1C5 for years with basically no issues. The only thing that didn't work was the oddball fingerprint reader on the unit, which was disappointing but far from a dealbreaker.

Frankly, I was a little shocked it worked as well as it did. Hell, even my USB dock was plug-and-play, which really blew me away. I was used to Linux on laptops being a giant PITA, and yet...

As others have said, it's funny how experiences differ. I have almost the same exact experience, only in reverse.

> After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution.

I have a 2560x1440 thunderbolt screen. For some reason, when if I let it go to sleep, it's very likely it won't wake up. Next, in order of probability is that it WILL wake up, but stuck at 1280x720. Sure, that's better than 800x600, at least it has the right format, but still. Display Preferences shows 1280x720 as the highest resolution. I can set it lower, though.

Then, even better, I have another screen, that does USB-C, with Display Port alternative mode. Everything works fine, at full resolution, all the way until the windows login screen. Here, it's extremely likely that the screen will go blank. In the rare event that it doesn't, as soon as I log in, the screen goes blank. I've tried reinstalling Windows from scratch, using the usb-c connection, no dice. The installer works, then on the last reboot, blank screen.

The computer in question is an HP EliteDesk with full Intel components, no exotic GPU or anything. Only "aftermarket" components are the RAM sticks.

Both screens work perfectly both on other computers and on the same computer under Linux (Arch), with no tweaking required.

I've had the opposite experience with windows lately -- start menu type to search randomly stops working and I have to restart, windows will do this weird thing where you have to rapidly click their dock icon to get them to show up or they minimize. The pre-windows-11 updates have been nothing but bugs for me.

On my Ubuntu Budgie desktop I have none of these problems. Sure I have to deal with the occasional linux challenge but nothing "buggy" stuff either works or it doesn't.

Are you using the Win 11 beta?

No but ever since windows 11 was announced and they started doing the updates preparing for it everything has been breaking for me.

I really like snapping windows to parts of the screen. Mac doesn't do this well.

Linux, well, I do a search for it, and get this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/26346/how-to-use-window-snap...

The first answer is great. That second answer is typical with every "how do I do anything in Linux" question. It's a chain of things I dread and I end up spending an hour because I forget to type "cd .scripts" and then get lost.

Copying and pasting a bunch of code also makes me wary. There's vague hardcoded stuff like 'Paste this in, and then change your mouse id from 11 to the number from the output of the "xinput list" command.'

Do you Linux users just apply random advice like that off the internets without seeing what every line means? Do you just sudo stuff because someone said so? Instead of a single possible security hole to check for by installing a thing, it's now multiple possible security holes to check on every line of code.

Worst of all, it probably doesn't do what I want it to do. I can't tell until I'm about half an hour into doing it. I just want to sort my windows neatly. This isn't worth it.

> Do you Linux users just apply random advice like that off the internets without seeing what every line means?

This isn't just a Linux issue. I've used Windows many years, and the vast majority of solutions to problems is inserting some cryptic string into the registry and rebooting.

Though I eventually dumped Linux, too, a few years ago as the solutions to the weekly show-stopping bugs, driver issues, and kernel glitches constantly required the same type of unintelligible shell commands copied and pasted from some random blog. Unlike earlier days of Linux, the commands now were completely foreign to even long-time users of Linux who understood most of the main components of a standard Linux install. It would require modifying some file in /etc or using some sub-component or binary that I'd never ever heard of and had no idea why it was even included into my "base" install of Fedora or Redhat or whatever distro was downstream.

I blame mostly RedHat for this change; Systemd may not have always been the problem, but its design and complexity (compared to traditional minimal Unix "do one thing and do it well") is a good metaphor for how modern Linux has been bastardized into just another black-box like Windows, where your only solution for many problems is some esoteric command which must be pasted off of some RHEL paid-license-required mailing list.

I haven't had to insert anything in the Windows registry in about a decade. That's also about the last time I used a Linux based OS, so I can't really compare. There was some point where Ubuntu was more user friendly than Windows Vista.

But the issue I have is that it's very difficult to mess up your computer as a Windows/Mac beginner, but you have to play with fire pretty frequently as a Linux beginner.

Linux users RTFM. Command line flags aren't hard when you have the documentation at your fingertips.

It can be mildly frustrating to find the flags in extremely large man pages. They tend to write them all over the place ('oh but this does this when you combine -r with -tr') so searches light up matches all over. This gets compounded when there are flags with two letters and you try to search for the first letter. (want -t but have to wade through 3000 mentions of -tr, -t1, -tz, -tmmm, -tt, -tttt, etc)

Maybe I just suck at searching man pages. Or I'm too impatient. Either way, https://explainshell.com/ has been a great website for explaining flags.

> I really like snapping windows to parts of the screen. Mac doesn't do this well.

Rectangle for macOS

https://rectangleapp.com/

> Why I'm not switching? Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix.

You mean every time you log into Windows 10, there is something to update, so you don't have time to switch?

My Linux machine nagged me to do a system-wide update (usually a language pack for Firefox, because they changed one word) every day. Windows 10 is a lot smarter about when to nag about updates.

> Yeah. I know. But I don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that.

This is an exceptionally good point. I've NEVER, in my life, tried to either install something, update something or, even literally open a random localhost port from a development test suite in VS Code without having to click through a UAC authorization dialog sequence on Windows.

(I know that HN encourages the assumption of good faith, but when a poster just straight up lies through their teeth about the on-the-ground reality of user authorization, it's really hard not to push the (obviously correct, hanlon's razor be damned) corporate shill angle. (sorry, dang))

I don't think it's about admin powers, but about having to type commands to fix things. That's not the same as just clicking 'allow' in UAC.

Don't try the cool distros, try Ubuntu or Kubuntu LTS.

> Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update

You can't be serious that the updates aren't worst in Windows... I finally got my 80yo dad to Linux because of them being ridiculous in Windows.

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