> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be.
And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system.
They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system.
They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
(I'm also forced to use Windows at work)
I also consider myself an uncritical and proud fan of handwashing and daily toothcare. Is that bad?
The other question is, is it even worth it? These things have worked for you well enough up to this point, all three. That’s fair and valid.
The question might be is it worth the cognitive friction to change those things? I change the way that I brush my teeth, and now my overall health is better perhaps. Perhaps my mouth biome changed over decades, while I was unaware. A better way involves changing a habit, getting some new technology, and even this simple change may have knocked on effect in the rest of my life if I have a tight schedule and rigid habits, which benefit me. Is the trade-off worth it? Can we really know?
I’m not a surgeon so I don’t have an extensive method of washing my hands. However, some people don’t even wash their bodies more than once in a while. Science has discovered that this is probably healthier over the long-term, but other people simply take a shower and scrub scrub, scrub every single day. They say it benefits them, but the facts point to otherwise. They have a hard time changing that habit or believing the facts.
Same applies to an OS. Sure, looking backwards it has been good, but will it continue to be? Is it worth the cognitive friction to make those changes though? Honestly? For you, probably not at this point. But who is to say? Could what you have learned be leveraged in a different OS and bring you even more of what you feel benefits you? I suppose only you can know this, and that’s totally OK.
Past returns are no guarantee of future performance, in short.
Those are the key words. You have the option to walk away from one distribution to use another if things start getting bad. Such has happened in the past, either because of distribution maintainers making decisions that certain users don't like (think Ubuntu from Unity onward) or because of distribution makers maintainers making decisions that put them ahead of the pack (think early Ubuntu). Overall, it has resulted in a competitive marketplace.
And if things got really bad, people can either fork the offending software or (if they use Linux as a more traditional Unix environment) there are various versions of BSD. If you use Linux for desktop applications, there is even the option of switching to Macintosh or Windows since open source applications tend to be multi-platform.
Being a Windows guy is a bit different. They are sticking all of their eggs in one basket. There isn't a viable Windows-like alternative to Windows if Microsoft messes up. Heck, it is growing increasingly difficult to stick with versions of Windows that are out of support. While I won't go as far as calling this brand loyalty, it means one is pretty much at the whim of the brand.
The better example is being an "Arch guy". That's the same kind of problematic as being a "Mac guy".
Much like Ethernet, this has happened several times but the replacement was also called Linux.
Most comments are interpreting this as purely tech. It's worth mentioning that this applies to basically everything: the only things that are worth gifting your loyalty to are living things: humans, pets, nature.
Pets are only interested in who feeds them and make them feel good, eventually offloading cognition to other tasks the same way we do; nature merely an agglomeration of entities seeking growth and propagation. We can count on these things, we can think about them, we can engage with them or let them slip past our minds, which a person might call “trust?” a lack of mental friction after that work has been done to our satisfaction.
Recognizing what may benefit us, and the short and long term dimensions of it, as well as acknowledging that we cannot know all those dimensions or control them or the future, seems the best way to go, if i may.
The idea of loyalty is naïve and dangerous, if I may use those terms without defining them also.
To be clear, it’s not cold calculation, far from it, simply acknowledging how systems tend to play out while leaving room for the unexpected. Once we recognize a pattern or system locking in that pattern in order to use our limited cognitive energies in other ways.
At that point I'd rather deal with an LLM that know the insides of my open source OS than MS support. Have you seen their community answers on the web? I'd rather deal with Arch wiki and the command line even without an LLM.
Last week I installed KDE on a new computer with two identical SSDs. One I wanted to wipe for the OS and the other I wanted to keep the data on.
Unfortunately I couldn't tell which one to install the OS on! ChatGPT helped me open a terminal and run the correct udevadm and lsblk commands to see what files existed on each disk.
This was my first thought. All Linux troubleshooting with AI resulted in hallucinatory commands that don't exist or work on this version of the OS, and managed to help me trash one system installation.
Has anything changed?
- AI is what gave Nvidia reason to finally work on GPU drivers (Linux is premier environment for AI/ML workloads)
- LLMs are more useful on Linux than on Windows (although manuals are still unbeatable)
- Windows users are sick of Copilot bullshit
...yeah, I almost agree. the best thing that happened to Linux is Valve consistently pouring a ton of resources into open-source Linux projects, but AI bubble firmly holds the second place position.
I'm already packed and ready to migrate. Can't wait.
Unfortunately Nvidia support mostly depends on Nvidia, they've done their best to keep info about their cards away from the Open Source driver projects.
No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
e.g. I tried out Arch for a while and discovered that its Wiki has some of the best information around. Luckily, Arch tends to use standard Linux tools such as systemd, so the information is applicable to almost any distribution.
But that's not what I suggested. I suggested use the best thing, try other things, switch if they're better. I don't think that's "always flitting between different products and never learning any one deeply", unless you happen to rely on tools that have new solid (and better) competitors every single month, but I'm not aware of any industry/space that is like that.
Obviously, using Linux when a better solution exists for whatever you're trying to solve equally applies. While it may not be unhealthy, it certainly isn't a good idea.
This is very much an imprecise abstraction, more like a rule of thumb. Just be careful how you think of yourself.
"I ride bicycles" - Fine. "I'm a cyclist" - Getting weird.
"I voted for X" - Ok. "I'm team X" - Dangerous.
I still run across it sometimes, and it’s such a limiting form of identity.
The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
In theory we may be able to run Linux (reliably, not in the bleeding edge) on Apple hardware eventually. But you still pay the Apple tax, which is pretty bonkers these days. But dang those machines are nice.
Neither OS is empowering me to do what I want to do on my computer anymore. Instead they're constantly nudging me towards doing things Microsoft and Apple want me to do.
Don't you want a Microsoft account? You really should make a Microsoft account. Please make a Microsoft account. We're going to pop up the Microsoft account at you until you say yes. OK, fucker, now you have to make a Microsoft account in order to use your computer.
Sync your stuff to the iCloud! No, really, you're forgetting to use iCloud. Come on, don't you want to use iCloud? We're going to make iCloud the default for saved documents now.
Go ahead and install that app. OK, now go ahead and install it but we're going to warn you that it's from the scary internet. Now, when you install the app, we're going to put a scary dialog if it's not from a developer we're OK with. Now, when you install the app, we're not going to let you even run it until you go into settings and confirm a scary dialog deep in Settings.
I'm not really in the driver's seat anymore. I'm kind of a passenger with limited access to the steering wheel. These are just a few examples but there are plenty of other cases where both Microsoft and Apple are inserting themselves between me and my computer, gatekeeping what I can do on them and treating me like some kind of attacker towards my own computer.
Also the drivers for devices has always been an issue for me. Like there are multiple drivers for the track point, with a million customisation options but no way to get it to work well.
These operating systems aren't my family members -- I'll ditch them if I believe that switching is worth getting over the learning curve of a new environment.
There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.
imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
> user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape.
It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating.
> People will tell you try this or that distro.
Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
I agree with you, that it is irritating when people make sweeping statements that casually dismiss a lot of things as not existing when they do, but it's an endless arguement. Operating systems are not the problem, support is. Just making a good operating system isn't what drives adoption.
reducing _pain_ does. Nerds arent good at empathy, so the response is normally "just read x and use y" and call people stupid if they still cant figure it how to use it
Your software or hardware is a relationship with whoever experiences it. You need to curate that relationship and represent it somehow using a fixed thing, software or hardware, and in a way it almost needs to anticipate and read people’s minds . Represent the product factually, so it can do what a person expects, and represent it emotionally so people have a good feeling when they perceive it. Obviously, the technical side must be good to fulfill both of these too. But that is only the first step.
Technology should serve mankind, not the other way around, and people who are too locked into the technical side seem 1000% blind to this idea. They feel excited at their own accomplishment, which is a totally valid by the way, but failed to take it the next step to represent it to other people. Sometimes it isn’t an idea that can be represented well with things as they are, so it’s a non-starter and just a personal project.
At this point in my life, I have a very old house that needs fixing. I have a partner that needs attention. I have my self who needs attention. I have 1.5 jobs that need attention. I have a network of social friends who are worth attention…
Well, it used to be fun a long time ago to go down a rabbit hole for endless hours or days trying to fix things. AI has helped lessen that time too!
My benchmark for a good OS, or a painful one, depending on how you want to look at it, is how often I need to spend an hour or two diagnosing and fixing something. Is that simplistic? Yes. Am I a power user? Only once in a blue moon because I don’t really have to be yet.
Do I learn a little something? Yes. Am I curious to learn? Yes, and no… I have the urgency certainly to fix it because I am frustrated and the system is not doing what I wanted to do…
I'm all in favor of empathy and reducing pain. If only there was a single, SINGULAR fucking concrete, OR EVEN HAND WAVEY CRITICISM.
It's literally "lol linux suxors". Very actionable! /s
Sorry, some of us use it and are tired of this? Let alone contribute.
Otherwise, your comment doesn't have much value.
(As for PowersHell... yuck. It's like MS decided to reinvent bash but in the most bureaucratic and obfuscated way they could.)
Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
Until you get some Windows apologist who points out that their proprietary touchscreen that has multiple layers of DRM doesn't have Linux drivers and therefore Linux doesn't have good hardware support.
You have to be careful in the same way that you can't expect to wipe an M series Mac and stick Windows on it.
Or is it in your opinion?
If it is maybe they better stay on the "shut up and do how I say, puppet" OS.
Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience.
Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
With that one line, the author managed to put my view of buying things upside down. Not a passive consumer. Not: I bought a $GADGET. She had an active relation with a bunch of sellers, and she was boss. You saw the megacorps begging and pleading to her, from that one line. That's how you deal with them.
I am $GADGET guy? Shudder.
Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
When is Windows going to get a good desktop environment?
Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
have you used GNOME?
If you're a lifelong KDE user you might not have used GNOME in a while and seen how it's gotten.
I haven't been in the GNOME settings for years.
I use macOS and Linux, and the way GNOME works makes switching between them easier for me than when I run KDE, for instance (I'm sure others have a different experience, and that's what is so great about Linux).
Death by thousand cuts. I'm moving back to Gnome and ideally away from wayland too. The thing as simple as secret management (for git and keys) is just one of these things....
I hate their opinionated design and I love settings so I use KDE. I love that. That's the good thing about Linux. Everyone can use it as they like. Unfortunately there seems to be some pressure to unify things to make it more for "the masses" but I will not play along with that for sure.
Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95.
The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc.
Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--it has physical media and the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know)
At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine?
Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now.
Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ...
WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>.
4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries>
And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game.
Total time: no more than 20 minutes.
No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine.
Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft.
(And, as a side note, this is having a knockon effect--I finally went looking for an alternative to Fusion 360 and signed up for OnShape just so I can dump Windows permanently)
I'd love to know what to do differently in case I have to do this again.
Seems like walking a tightrope across the river to avoid soaking your suit, then jumping in from the dock once you successfully get to the other side?
I'd love to have a Linux-based 3D CAD program, but the open source ones just aren't up to scratch.
I've tried using FreeCAD, but it still scrambles things topologically (for example: adjust an underlying object and your fillets may get totally hosed).
Fusion is especially frustrating as they have a macOS version. A Linux version really shouldn't be much different.
I use RhinoCAD / MadCAM, and it is really the only thing keeping me on Windows. I've heard it works on some emulators like WINE, but haven't yet made the effort to test it, and can't really afford to have any latent issues pop up at random times after initial testing seems to work, so still enduring the Microslop insanity... ugh
Yeah OnShape has been a godsend, and keeping it free for open designs is one of the better ethical stances to take. KiCad on the other hand is incredible (LibrePCB is shaping up really nicely too).
That's Linux's weakness right now - when a use-case misses it REALLY misses. Browser-native apps are a pretty reliable escape hatch for that.
If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice.
Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible.
Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
Win11 has massive downsides, so does macOS, so does desktop Linux, so do all the other options - I have to choose between one of those options to get things done, going my own isnt an option.