Many people only use Windows because the software they have don't have a Linux build. Maybe people should start pressuring vendors to make Linux builds and that could end Windows.
Switched from 10 years of Debian-based linux (mostly Ubuntu, recently Pop_OS) to Windows because of some MIDI driver thing I could not get to install in WINE.
I have had a significantly less pleasant time on both Win10 and Win11, and it's slow as hell. Ubuntu/Ubuntu-derivatives with Regolith as a DE + Tiling WM is the best computing experience I've ever had
(Disclaimer: Have never used a Mac. Have been told OSx is better than Linux by people who have used both for long time.)
The ironic thing is that, I later had a passing convo with a developer of a DAW, who told me that MIDI driver stuff is usually for running specific software from the vendor and that MIDI is universal over USB.
So I never even needed to switch in the first place! I was just too hardware-stupid to know this!
Oh man it hurts my soul.
I could switch back but it takes a whole weekend to properly backup + wipe and setup a machine. I think I am going to go back to Pop_OS or Ubuntu though.
As someone who used both for a long time, I would agree 2-3 years ago, now though I'd say I prefer Linux. I do really love the new m1 macs in term of temperature control and performance though.
The advantage of Linux is that when it doesn't work it's much easier to diagnose and fix by yourself, that didn't use to be a problem on macs because Apple's QA was much better and they were pretty stable (if you skipped the first 3-4 months of a new OS release) but nowadays, it's a lot less stable, my mac cannot even go to deep sleep properly (which ironically used to be a major pain on linux) and it's just a black box that's hard to diagnose but doesn't work well enough to justify it being a black box. And for the mac, I used to use things like SIMBL to modify the system exactly how I liked it but all of that has been slowly removed by Apple. Now I just want the flexibility of Linux.
> "I would agree 2-3 years ago, now though I'd say I prefer Linux"
Call me a heretic, but I am jealous of the M1 performance-for-price being outside the Apple ecosystem and have thought to buy an M1 laptop and wipe it + put Asahi Linux on it hahaha
It's a bit the straw that broke the camel back. As time went on, little things became more and more aggravating.
I'm eagerly watching Asahi Linux's progress :)
Active Directory - The centralised control it gives corporates.
Games and DirectX - Although this seems to be getting to be less of a reason.
Backwards compatibility - Windows 16 bit apps are now dead, but you can take the VB6 code I wrote pre-Y2K and run it today.
Linux fragmentation - It's difficult to support all the Linux variations with a single binary (or at least it feels that way to me) I suspect it has a very high support cost. Related to this is the GPL and it's potential to force release of source code.
you don't have to bother with the console. Everything can be installed and run with a mouse.
Don't take me wrong. I understand the good sides of console programs. You can do a lot there but your average user doesn't care.
That sort of thing would be a small (though very irritating) waste of time for many of us on HN but it could have been a showstopper for other potential Ubuntu users who aren't technically inclined and just want a system that works.
Unfortunately in my experience that still sums up desktop Linux in a nutshell. You probably can fix just about anything if you know what you're doing. If you do, you get the benefits that come with running Linux, including avoiding the kind of controlling behaviours we see from Microsoft and Apple in their desktop platforms these days. But the reality is that most normal people won't know what they're doing to that degree and so can't fix the problems.
So continues the cycle where "normal people" don't use Linux and so there is no big market for commercial applications and so most commercial applications don't run on Linux and so "normal people" don't use Linux.
> Ubuntu Software Center is a one-stop shop for installing and removing software on your computer.
> It is included in Ubuntu 9.10 and later.
> - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuSoftwareCenter"Should" being the operative word unfortunately. It clearly wasn't installed by default for this machine that had been upgraded through earlier versions (starting around 16 I think so well after 9.10), nor was there any obvious indication to the user that it was missing and available to be added.
There were some other oddities after that upgrade, for example Firefox no longer appearing for one-click launching from the default UI layout when it had before, so the lack of Ubuntu Software (and, apparently, its underlying apt package) wasn't the only anomaly. It just wasn't a polished experience that a non-technical user should have to deal with.
I understand your frustration!
In fact, there are apps that can do that automatically. Admittedly these apps tend to create not very good UIs, but the point is that it’s not hard at all.
When my Asus Netbook dies (1215B with XUbuntu), the next UNIX travel laptop will be an Air.
So you can spare the talk about how much GNU/Linux has progressed, since I see it every time I take that netbook into use.
> "Maybe Linux on the desktop doesn't suit your individual needs, but you seem awfully combative about it on the basis of your specific niche."
Ideally an OS should have tools for everything. Though I'm not certain if "Graphics Programming" means like GUI in C++ (pjmlp often talks about C++ Builder and C++/CX, so I believe he means that kind) or programming GPU's via CUDA. I don't think it's the second one -- Linux is much easier for GPU stuff (IE most ML projects/tutorials are only set up for Ubuntu) than Win.
I imagine the argument stems from a lack of Visual Studio equivalent on Linux. It looks like the only version that runs properly on Linux is VS 2005 -- LOL!
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?iId=892&sClass=ap...
If you work with some of the Visual Studio specific tooling around things like XAML or C++/CLI etc, yeah there's absolutely no substitute.
It's like Sketch on Mac (god I hate that company for being Mac-only) or Xcode. You're SOL, better buy a Mac.
Lettuce pray for the day WINE is good enough to run Visual Studio.
I do think it's a little reductive to discuss Linux struggling with things like Visual Studio that are only relevant because Windows is relevant, but that is our unfortunate reality.
Have you ever considered that this "huge amount of users" might not care about graphics programming or usable UI/UX tooling, but that >99% of them sure care about either graphics (games, photos, video, digital painting, ...) or usable UIs and UX?
I'm using Linux all the time, and it's quite amazing how terrible anything Desktop related is. Who is going to fix that if the state of graphics and UI/UX tooling is so poor that it either drives away or stymies all the people with relevant skills to drive some improvements?
Linux has an obvious lack of contribution from designers, designers are employed for products, noone is making money selling desktop Linux as a product. Also, most designers aren't tinkering with open source software alternatives in their free time like developers do.
I also feel like I'm missing something because my experience on desktop Linux is way better than anything I've ever had on Windows or Mac, meanwhile everyone's saying it's unusable. Can't be easy for the handful of people working on desktop environments and the like.
[0] for literally any distro choice
[1] even when it isn't a hardware problem
I know what you mean, but in this instance the complaint is poor UI/graphics while the distro in question is using a very cut-down desktop environment (running in a VM).
> "which to this day still doesn't provide a proper experience to anyone that cares about graphics programming and usable UI/UX tooling."
Not one of those raving Linux zealots (don't really care that much about privacy), I've just had positive experiences on Linux -- not using it masochistically for ethical reasons, but because it worked very well for me.
So I would be interested in hearing the other side of the coin, since you've been around the block a time or two.
Ed:
> it's actually a decade-old hairball which significantly harms the experience and can't be fixed cleanly under X.
This is literally the whole argument for Wayland - things that can't be fixed under x11?
I suppose the only answers here are qt or game engines like godot/heaps.io etc - and they probably aren't as good as windows. But it's a little tricky to know exactly what you mean.
> When my Asus Netbook dies (1215B with XUbuntu), the next UNIX travel laptop will be an Air.
> So you can spare the talk about how much GNU/Linux has progressed, since I see it every time I take that netbook into use.
If you're looking for a "windows desktop replacement", you should probably compare it to one of the "big" desktop projects - ie: Ubuntu standard desktop (not a spin, like xubuntu), Red Hat or SuSe.
It's also not clear which version of xubuntu you're running - 20.04 lts?
Personally I think 20.04 with Wayland and pipewire has made great strides as a "just works" Desktop - and I'm looking forward to the next lts (pipewire baked in, hopefully).
That said, I doubt much will beat an m1 Mac in the near future, if you're happy with apple/macos.
It is the best cross-platform C++ GUI framework, but nothing specific to Linux per se.
Thanks for educating me on Linux distributions, pity that I have been using them since 1995, and yes it is the LTS version, it tends to break less.
VMWare is crippled performance wise, doesn't detect autorotate, and using it in full-screen requires me to resize the VMWare window every time I reboot the VM.
VMWare also doesn't detect all the buttons in my mouse.
I also started with Slackware.
Vast majority of people use Windows because it comes preinstalled. And it comes preinstalled for business reasons that are very hard to counter or reverse.
The only way to weaken Windows is through legislative measures and that ain't likely to happen.