Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaaarrgh | Hacker News Reader

I've used a Linux desktop for decades and I'm sick of it. My Windows machine never bricks itself on updates. All my hardware works with it. Getting something as basic as Bluetooth or 3D rendering working doesn't require a PhD. I don't have to replace half the GUI apps when suddenly Microsoft decides to redesign its whole UI layer for philosophical engineering reasons.

I can rebuild an engine, but I pay a mechanic to do it. I don't buy cars as pet projects. I just want to drive the goddamn thing.

I would pay the NSA money in addition to letting them spy on me if I could just have a working fucking computer.

View on HN

> I don't have to replace half the GUI apps when suddenly Microsoft decides to redesign its whole UI layer for philosophical engineering reasons.

have you used Windows in the last 20 years?

While Windows UI changes a lot, all old apps work fine in Win11. I guess the author was referring to Wayland bull…t

“Have to update” is the key here. You can still run apps from windows 95 if you want to.

I can run X applications from the 80s on Wayland

meanwhile Windows 11 has 4 or 5 different UI styles in control panel

I don't run Wayland, but a few times per year I find myself picking up some unmaintained X thing and running it with a recent OS. I'd say on average compatibility is much better on Windows.

Binary compatibility on Linux is often out of the question. Frequently this means picking up some old libs. libc5, old stdc++... For really old stuff with fewer dependencies that may not be a problem. As you get into a more modern era where software started to pile on large heaps of dependencies it becomes more challenging.

Source compatibility typically means porting, sometimes nontrivial. Likely something is written in a time capsule of that era's poor C and C++ standards compliance. (i.e. C89 or C++98 existed, but compilers of the day accepted lots of nonsense, so software of that era doesn't even conform to those.)

In contrast the Win32 API or COM is designed around binary compatibility. Maybe early 2000s dependencies (when MS started getting worse at this) are a problem. I think Win16 on modern amd64 is also a problem. But on average, compatibility is higher.

Yeah. My takeaway after 20 years is that Linux is in a constant state of churn and it's always going to be. It's like if you're a mechanic and every single year someone swaps your entire toolbox for something with new tools that work completely differently. Of course there's a point where you get sick of it and rage quit.

To make it even worse, no one likes doing the last 20% of the work to make things stable and even less people like maintaining finished projects, so basically everything in Linux is about 80% done and gets replaced before it even hits the point of being reliable.

> Bluetooth

Heh, in my experience Bluetooth is actually entirely broken on Windows. I simply cannot get my headset to connect to my Windows laptop, but it works just fine on my Linux laptop out of the box.

It's amusing because, for me, Bluetooth doesn't work anywhere. Not a knock against Linux because IME the technology just doesn't work _anywhere_

Wireplumber and Pipewire is the first time it just worked for me on Linux, it was definitely hit or miss for me before but I haven't had any issues in a couple years thanks to those replacing pulseaudio

The last time I tried to get it to work on linux, I remember modifying what I believe to be pulseaudio config? And hating it. But I've also just stopped buying non-apple bluetooth products.

Have you tried ChromeOS?

> I can rebuild an engine, but I pay a mechanic to do it. I don't buy cars as pet projects. I just want to drive the goddamn thing.

this is hackernews, not usernews

Modern computer has near infinite amout of software.

Do i want write code. Yes.

Do i want to write ALL of it. No.

But linux assumes you kinda sorta do want to do it.

> But linux assumes you kinda sorta do want to do it.

huh?

Why would OS devs bother supporting hardware drives when people can do it themselves amirite? Who doesn't know how to write a kernel module anyway...

Also bluetooth, who even needs that? It's important that we have out of the box docker support. /s

Yeah, and messing around configuring and troubleshooting my OS gets in the way of my preferred "hacking".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com