Hacker News Reader

Comment by megaloblasto | Hacker News Reader

I know this upsets some HN people (for some reason), but all these things are possible with linux.

Edit: lol, I got down voted. Do you think these things are not possible on linux?

Observations like "I know this upsets some HN people (for some reason)" and "lol, I got down voted" are not productive meta commentary. Writing like this just annoys readers and highlights the lack of substance in the rest of the comment.

I'm pointing out that Hacker news has a lot of members that get very upset if you suggest using Linux when they complain about Windows. I think meta commentary about the platform is valid, especially since the platform is just posts and comments.

That meta commentary was part of the substance of my comment. And it relates to the article.

To be more specific, I feel strongly against people who defend Microsoft, and their massively immoral actions like their military ties, and invasion of privacy.

I think these people defend Microsoft largely because they are used to it, therefore have a bias towards it, and because they feel attacked when linux users point out that they are supporting an evil megacorporation.

It's sort of like how members of one religion often feel attacked by the mere existence of people who follow other religions, or no religion at all.

I think that people with sufficient technical capability shouldn't support microsoft, and should use open source software.

Yes, I understand all of that (although I don't have all the same ethical or moral compunctions that you do). I still think that if/when you seek to engage with that audience, you should still follow community norms.

One annoying thing about linux are drivers. They often don't work out of the box. E.g. fingerprint reader, screen brightness, audio too low. I tried multiple distros on multiple laptops, there is almost always some fiddling needed.

On the other hand corp forced me to move from pc to mac, hardware is awesome but I need to get used to software (keyboard shortcuts), it looks and feels like linux with drivers that actually work (I know it technically it's not linux, I'm just saying that it feels like it, probably due to history of unix/bsd/linux).

Speak for yourself. When I plug in an Nvidia GPU, MacOS plugs its ears and pretends that working compute drivers don't exist. On Linux it's plug-n-play.

Same with a Wacom tablet, ext4-formatted drive, Xbox/Nintendo controllers, DAC software, Sony LDAC headphones... much of Linux' driver support is best-in-class. It just depends on what you own (like all OSes).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com