Hacker News Reader

Comment by bshipp | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me that reading PC vs Mac vs Linux arguments sound the exact same today as they did 20 years ago. PC is too bloated and intrusive, Mac is too expensive with limited software options, Linux is user-unfriendly but great for servers. Reading this thread feels like reading an IRC or Usenet argument from the late 90s.

View on HN

All true but it does seem the emotion of it has softened a lot since then. In general, people seem more open to choosing the best tool for the job and keeping a mix of devices if need be.

It helps that interoperability and common software (or at least competent alternatives) is dramatically better than it used to be, that you can comfortably and inexpensively run Windows or Linux in a VM almost anywhere, and the web got big. There was once a lot of friction to so much as moving a file.

Gaming beyond Windows and native big name productivity software for Linux remain pain points.

Macs (let's ignore the Mac Pro) are relatively far less expensive than they used to be. The price difference was eye-watering for a lot of years. Still premium but about on the level of premium PCs.

Agreed, and I'm far more concerned about the impact of the walled gardens between mobile app companies than the old desktop wars. At the moment, this feels like the nostalgia of a comfortable old debate between two elderly men sitting on a park bench.

Indeed, but Linux is crazy more popular now. Nearly all non-apple phones, all chromebooks, large fraction of servers, quite a few routers/switches, etc.

In the 90s there was much more non-Linux Unix, many more CPUs (not just Intel/AMD/ARM), and very few linux laptops.

Who is saying Linux isn't user friendly? It's far better than Windows these days.

Something like Ubuntu these days feels to me like Windows 7, which in my opinion was peak Windows. You can sit down, find your files, install software relatively easily, and the settings are pretty intuitive.

Obviously there are edge cases, but generally speaking, any random machine I've put Ubuntu on just works.

I usually don't have an issue installing Linux on a computer. The issue generally pops up when the recipient wants a piece of software that is only available on windows (which is also true for people migration to Macs). It's one thing to learn a new OS, but having to learn new software generally becomes the sticking point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com