...and then even claim that Linux requires more effort. For power users, sure, but for basic users it's a different thing.
EDIT: no point in dogpiling comments listing your favorite windows-only software. It is entirely besides the point of this comment.
For common problems in windows you can find a current guide with pictures in seconds, on linux you are more likely to find a slightly out of date forum. And thats ignoring the complexities of different desktop environments and hardware compatibility.
This actually isn't my experience. It's possible that I only ever have had less common problems on windows, but invariably whenever I've looked something up for that, I've usually found terrible windows support forums with incorrect information and usually no correct solution at all.
For linux, and again I'd consider myself a power user so am familiar with most things, I usually find the information easily and it's quite straightforward. I believe part of this is due to the more technical nature of linux users, and due to there being active stack overflow resources e.t.c. which is far better than windows support forums (both in quality of questions and answers).
Obviously this is a very opinion based position, but I find the opposite to what you've asserted.
Windows is a fucking joke of an OS, and that’s why nearly no one defends it on its merits. It’s always defended on the stance of compatibility because of things like O365 and Adobe products. It has nothing to do with the quality of Windows as a platform because as a platform, it’s a pile of shit, and everyone knows it. We’re just forced to deal with it if we want to game, edit photos and music, etc., without a ton of config changes and other hassles.
M$ forgot whats actually good about their OS, its been slowly metastasizing, but even so I dont think desktop linux is the answer. There are some real advantages to the windows paradigm, the idea that the program and the window are the same thing is important; the application should always show what its doing and what you can do. Settings are selected from all the possible options (you dont need to know whats available in advance)
When talking about common problems, I mean truly common, the things an average high-school student runs into like joining an online classroom or editing a document (or even playing a game!). These things do fail on linux, and without being a power user that knows where to start and some keywords to search getting past square one is not so easy.
The only data point I have, is my non-technical partner, who has had far fewer issues since moving to linux than on windows. It's a data point of n=1, and I'm not sure if I'd recommend it for everyone.
I was more than happy to recommend it for her since I know if there is any issue she has, I'll be able to solve it quickly and easily. The fact is though after throwing a standard ubuntu system on the machine I don't think she's had any issues past the first week or two of figuring out where the settings were, and what program does what.
There might have been the odd libre office question maybe?
The fact is, I'm pretty much the family tech support. My linux "support burden" is far lower than my windows "support burden" was when she used that (both in frequency, and for me, complexity). I still get a fair few macOS or iphone questions from my parents from time to time, but almost never things about linux.
Bluetooth, email, music, writing, video chat. Everything is just plug and play these days.
The culprit was libinput, which, for some reason, ignored the "flat" acceleration profile for touchpads. It was eventually fixed, but the fix didn't hit an LTS version of Ubuntu until this year.
And yet I clearly wrote "basic user"...
For example, I can't think of one RAW image processor from the original manufacturer that's available on Linux. Honestly, if there was, it would actually be a good reason to switch to that brand.
Also yes, I'm aware of RawTherapee and DarkTable. I use RawTherapee regularly, it's absolutely excellent and I highly recommend it, but it's also absolutely useless for certain use cases.
Nowadays I tend to use linux apps on Windows, thanks to WSL. For example, Windows' file browser crashes frequently on my setup, so I use Dolphin instead.
I'm active in a few photography spaces online and I don't think I've talked to a single person who actively uses one of those. Most people use Lightroom or Capture One, which are also not available on Linux.
I'm curious as to what value you get from OEM RAW processors.
Exactly (or almost) the same render as from SOOC images.
I hate it when I deliver SOOC preview images that the customer really likes, but wants some small tweaks (remove a fly from the image, for example), and the colors or contrast on the resulting image is different because I didn't use the same processing engine or color profiles.
From what I remember, Nikon RAW files don't retain any changes you made to them in-camera unless you remove them from camera using the OEM app.
(Things may be different these days. My knowledge is from 2015.)
Also, some of those software are mission-critical for me, and I can't really afford to use something that may break unexpectedly when I need to deliver images same day.
The idea that you can slap wine on the few things that you need is a weirdly repeated fiction, it wont make it true by repeating it, stop doing it.
It’s amazing how people tolerate the poor usability of windows and then prefer the poor usability of Linux.
But after being unable to even _install_ the Win7 downgrade that was promised with my purchase of a Win10-only machine (several years back), I decided Microsoft's obsession with licenses and stuff was just getting in my way. I grabbed Ubuntu and haven't looked back.
Linux is awful for its own reasons, not least of which is a flippant glee with which decades-reinforced UI reflexes are jettisoned in favor of someone's new window-management metaphor-of-the-moment. But those seem easy enough to opt out of, I can tweak a few things and I'm largely fine day-to-day.
Updates tend to break things in weird ways, but I can always just reinstall, or decide it's time to try a new distro, restore /home/ from backup, and go on with my life. A Windows reinstall is usually a multi-day affair and barely works afterward.
My biggest Linux gripe lately, and this might be Ubuntu-specific, is hiding the names of the programs. There's an image viewer apparently just called Image Viewer, and if you think that's fucking obnoxious to search for help about, you're right! Ditto with pretty much all the other default GUI tools. I think the file manager is probably called Nautilus but you can't get it to tell you that, you have to just infer that from googling error messages and finding them mentioned in issue-trackers for something called "nautilus". Aaaaagh.
That's just Ubuntu.
> My biggest Linux gripe lately, and this might be Ubuntu-specific, is hiding the names of the programs
Again it's Ubuntu-specific.
This is all re: vanilla Gnome, not whatever Ubuntu delivers.
Oh no they didn't.
I know that there's LibreOffice but MS Office definitely beats it in reality.
Yes, I know there's Wine, but I worry (possibly unfounded) that it won't work, or will stop working with some future Office update.
Anything a tiny bit smarter than your usual document (with scripts and/or macros) won't work too.
There's definitely pieces of software that aren't available for linux, and if you require that to do your job, it probably isn't the best solution for you. For me, and my partner (who is a classic browser + office software user, as I suspect 90%+ of computer users are), it's never been a problem (and office software has never been an issue for me personally).
Hours is weird way to spell 5min on pc over half of decade old.
Patch day is once a month and takes 15 minutes at worst, sometimes only a reboot after the work day.
edit: Not to mention how upgrading Firefox on Linux-based systems through the console forced me to restart my Firefox mid-day, because "it works that way". Never had that on Windows.
Not everyone has top of the line or even mid-range hardware.
People like to dramatically exaggerate how long Windows update bind you each month. Probably no Windows users but it's an easy target.
- Everyone knows that car tabs have to be renewed by a deadline and everyone knows Windows has forced updates by a deadline.
- Everyone knows how to pay to renew their car tabs and everyone knows how to check the Windows update so that it updates when you have free time for it. And if they don't, it's just 5 seconds of Googling to find either.
- Everyone knows what is going to happen if they don't renew their car tabs or allow the reboot by a certain date.
- Everyone knows that neither the vehicle licensing authorities nor Microsoft is going to change their policies. It doesn't matter what people think the policy ought to be because it isn't that way and they know it.
So basically, they picked up a gun, took careful aim at their foot, pulled the trigger, and are shocked and angry that there's a bleeding hole? Sure, they can go ahead and change operating systems but it isn't going to fix the fundamental problem, if you know what I mean.
Also; where the do you live such that there isn’t a grace period on registration renewal? Do you think a car just stops working when that happens in the middle of your commute to work?
"Whoosh", as the kids these days say.
> "Also; where the do you live such that there isn’t a grace period on registration renewal?"
There's a grace period for forced reboots for Windows updates too and these users blithely ignored that. So what's your point?
What’s your point again, with all this bullshit car analogy? And why won’t you post your bad opinions under your real name?
You can defer it.
Update and reboot? Update and shutdown? Reboot/Shutdown without updating now? All three are possible, so it's fine.
Again, computers are our servants, not our managers.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/MOTILE-14-Performance-Laptop-FHD-...
Installing updates takes less than five minutes once a month.
I don't do media on it, so I've been quite happy running 9front lately.
There's your problem. Even the cheapest of SATA SSD will massively outperform almost any laptop hard disk drive when it comes to random I/O. And it'll probably increase your battery life a smidge as well.
I wouldn't put applications on any spinning rust these days, especially laptop 5400 (or worse!) drives.
$40 for a 512GB SATA SSD that'll blow the socks off whatever spinning drive you have.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/659868/inland-profession...
I do think my point still stands though. I don't think it's acceptable for software to run this slow, even on this. I'm talking windows has been idling for hours and basic tasks like clicking on the volume slider are sluggish.
On a side note: I'm fascinated HOW cheap SSD storage has become. Really looking into changing my backup drives to SSDs instead of good old spinning drives...
The time locked in update is undefined because the first time an update is available, Windows will never terminate downloading and unpacking it.