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Comment by anotherhue | Hacker News Reader

Both Windows and OS X have become utterly unreliable for my professional and increasingly personal use.

Here's the smell test:

If I stop working on something and go to the shop, or to sleep, or say "It's 8pm on Friday, I can pick this back up on Monday", can I reliably walk away and have my stuff (apps, sessions, etc.) where I left it when I come back?

Not. A. Hope.

I've done all the regedit hacks, the group policy changes, the mouse jiggler, but it's never enough.

Your computer shouldn't fight you. Homeservers have uptimes measured in weeks or months, that's what I need my desktop to be like.

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I have three machines: Linux, Windows and a Mac.

The uptime of my Linux machine (general server/media machine) is… A few months at least. Probably half a year at this stage.

The Mac (main work machine) has an uptime of at least 1-2 weeks.

The Windows (gaming) machine. Haha, no. Turn off in the evening, start up in the morning. Loads Steam UI in full screen, and nothing else. Given its purpose, I feel a mixture of love and loathing towards it.

So, my personal experience agrees with yours, with the exception of MacOS. It'll definitely be where I left it.

If you haven't restarted your Linux machine in 6 months, you're most likely leaving it open to vulnerabilities. 65 CVEs for just the kernel published in 2022: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-33/p...

I'm assuming you're not using ksplice, which has its own issues and should really only be used for critical updates when you're unable to reboot.

Thanks for the information. I’ve been lazy with updates, maybe it’s time.

On the other hand, it’s very, very locked down. It barely has access to the internet at all.

True nirvana for me would be to have a functioning Linux desktop, with which I can send a startup command to a windows PC when I want to run some Windows-only games, that also switches my monitor input and peripherals.

Instead of dual-booting, I could give Windows a 1tb SSD that it thinks it owns, and let it live on in its little bubble.

Have you looked into KVM/Qemu and GPU passthrough?

It works really well when/if it works, but I found it to be a rabbit hole of constant tinkering.

There is some software that can pass the framebuffer back to your Linux desktop without a huge performance hit.

Maybe https://looking-glass.io ?

That might be the ticket for me, thanks! I don't have a spare license key (or high-seas version) for Windows, but if I can get a game working with Proton, then I can at least try running some Proton-supported game within that tool on a Linux desktop.

Not yet, since my 'new pc' idea is shelved for at least another year or so, but that sounds like it could be a great help if Steam and Proton don't make things work out of the box. Thanks!

I find this funny because this feels like the opposite of my experience: my Linux laptop, Windows laptop, and Windows desktop usually have an uptime of a month+ with a sleep and resume schedule. Mac on the other hand is the one that is most unreliable and most flakey for me. I have to hard reset it regularly after it becomes completely unusable. At least when I am deciding to restart Windows/Linux it's because I want to pick up an update instead of it just being unusable.

My Mac laptops typically have uptimes of months (85 days, currently). However, I am still on Mojave, and I do have 32 GB of RAM. I do routinely encounter two problems. When switching desktops while have full-screen video the cursor frequently disappears; the solution is to move up a ways until the cursor is surely at the menubar and then click, which will restore the cursor to visibility. The other problem is that audio occasionally stops working (one symptom is that pressing play seems to work but the play time never advances, and of course there is no sound). The solution here is `sudo killall -9 coreaudiod`.

My Windows NUC, on the other other hand, seems to reboot itself within a week, but usually is unusable long before that because it won't wake the monitor up after sleep. And even though I disabled sleep, it still seems to not be able to wake the monitor up.

Windows, sure, but OS X? Not in my experience. It's been rock solid and utterly reliable.

MacOS does better, but it still does the "restart by default if an update appears" usually, and it is pretty darn good about opening everything where you had it, but it's not perfect by a long shot.

Atm: "....About 4 minutes remaining...."

My third Macbook (company provided) doing an unexpected update. That takes 10(!) minutes. After the download.

My ElementaryOS on a 6 year old thinkpad downloads and installs 3GB+ updates weekly, without rebooting, in 2 minutes!

Mac and Windows are ages and miles behind Linux.

Your company-provided Mac is being managed by your company - they have the ability to force updates and re-boots on you. If this were your personal Mac then you would not have enabled automatic updates. The fact that companies can manage their fleet of Macs in this manner is why they use Macs and not Linux. So no, Linux is not miles ahead of Windows or Mac OS when looking at managing a fleet of company-owned laptops and desktops.

BTW - I have a company-owned and managed Mac and my own personal Mac. World of difference in experience between the two. My company forces updates on a frequent basis, and not just to Mac OS. There's a lot of software they manage and license on the machine and force updates.

I do auto updates in Linux. Because they just work. And take < 2 minutes. And do not need a reboot.

Regardless if I manage a Mac or not, the time it takes to apply the update is the same.

MacOS updates are ridiculous. Doing a point update (like 12.1 to 12.2) on my 2018 MBP would literally take no joke over 20 minutes. In that time I can completely reinstall Ubuntu and have already set basically everything up.

Oh, it’ll open everything alright. Perhaps it’s asking too much, but could macOS open everything in the correct virtual desktop so that I don’t have to spend five minutes after a restart dragging-and-dropping windows?

It’s odd that it remembers that there were four virtual desktops, but then forgets which window goes where. And I’d swear that it remembers some, but the majority get dumped into Desktop1. Not the end of the world, and I don’t restart all that often, but it’s enough to make me hesitate come update time (“do I really want to be rearranging my desktops right now?”)

Yes this seems like a total crapshoot. I have an application that always lives on my second monitor, and it’s seemingly completely random if it will start there or not. Just like this for a decade!

I haven't personally experienced that issue on a Mac accept for one with some awful corporate software that prevented sleep from working.

Yeah, same here. There’s been several occasions where I’ve left both desktop and laptop macs sleeping for weeks and they sprang back to life right where I left them with no problems.

Ok:

  - enable sleep after 20mins
 
  - enable hibernate, after 50mins 

  - disable all timers interrupts

That would make your machine hibernate itself w/o dumb restarts, activity. Ugly as ugly goes, but it appears to be better

Current uptime 33 days :)

I have disabled updates and defender among other things tho.

ive not had this problem, my windows desktop currently has an uptime of 33 days

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