I’ve been using Linux off and on before USB drivers were added to the kernel around the turn of the millennium. In all those years, I couldn’t find a distro that I enjoyed.
I blame nVidia.
As someone that liked Linux more, how did I justify using Windows? By telling myself that
I’m more productive in Windows and spend a lot more time tinkering with things in Linux
I don’t have to worry about the fans on my nVidia GPU’s not spinning and locking up the system (an interesting horror story using Manjaro).
An improperly tested nVidia driver could brick my machine (again - that Manjaro horror story).
I don’t really need a NAS as a 2TB cloud service will work for my needs.
Sound is the worst thing about Linux
Adobe works on Windows and that makes my life easier.
It’s easy to install a new “shell” for Windows 11 to make it look how I want it.
Visual Studio proper is the best C/C++ debugger that I know of.
Not all games work in Linux
All of these reasons as you can see, it’s easy to convince yourself todo things you don’t want to.
What’s the other side of the coin I had purposefully overlooked just for the sake of using Windows?
The tinkering in Linux is making me a better engineer and getting me interesting in things that I wouldn’t never known about. Plus there are more C/C++ projects on github targeting Linux over Windows.
There’s other options than bleeding edge Arch distros.
I have 8-drives containing a 48TB zfs pool unplugged doing nothing. I was too afraid to hook it up in Windows via a passthrough to a hyperv VM for fear of Windows messing something up. That fast NAS would’ve come in handy to have made me even more productive.
Making the GPU fans spin was an hour long project via a simple bash script.
Adobe just rips people off and is in big trouble right now for doing so, there’s other options out there.
I already invested in an external DAC and everything needed to run audio outside of the PC.
Installing a new “shell” in Windows breaks everything and there’s some screen flickering as a result.
The debugging and gaming aspect, that I’m still under the assumption it’s better done in Windows.
Windows 10 got in major trouble for privacy issues. Plus it’s clear that Windows 10/11 UI issues are a symptom of Microsoft’s lack of care for their devs.
Have to balance the pros/cons and that’s just something I didn’t do.
I used to swear by EndeavourOS, but I know I needed to use a non-arch distro. Official switch to Linux was on July 4th. Installed Fedora as I heard Wendell mention it before and give it high praises. First time using a red hat distro since 2000. Enjoyed it, but didn’t enjoy Wayland as some things just weren’t there yet. Then a week later I tried Pop OS! and so glad I did. The tiling feature lets me get used to a tiling WM at my own pace.
Next for me is setting up lxd/lxc and passthroughs to hook up the NAS again.
Sadly this isn’t a lovey-dovey story about Linux Desktop being better than Windows Desktop. It’s just an example of how a person that would rather be using Linux over WIndows wasn’t. I don’t believe Linux Desktop is better for the average person and even Linus would agree with that statement. But I do believe if you are a technical person, under the right conditions it might be perfect. Have fun.
pffft bahahaha, every neck beard has a pipewire story
riced out Windows? Gross
GIMP, DaVinci Resolve, Handbrake, etc…
And never looked back
It isn’t what it used to be, definitely not for prod but great for tinkering or a taste of bleeding edge
interesting choice
I disagree as the average user is checking email, watching YouTube, and basic word processing. Linux does all that while being less resource intensive and less prone to malware (hard to install quick support exe’s on Debian)
Gamers are a different story, but my devs and engineers are now running linux machines with Windows available for remote support.
Indeed. When I look at my wife’s computer usage, it’s 99% internet (browsing, Gmail, FB, YT; used to be Netflix as well but now we have a huge-ass TV, she’s watching it there), and a little bit of Word/Excel. Her laptop is running Windows 10 just because she wanted MS Office. However, when support for Windows 10 runs out (5 months to go), I’ll see what Linux system I can migrate her to, and I’m currently thinking KDE Neon since I’ve been using it successfully for a couple years now. But we’ll see.
Not exactly wrong, VS is a good debugger interface. However…
It is possible to run GDB as a debug backend, and that really brings the best of both worlds.
I’ve been working with multithreaded applications for so long now, and I have never found a good thread debugger. The reason for this is because as soon as threads have some kind of interdependence, pausing one thread crashes the program full stop. So I taught myself not to rely on debuggers anymore, instead using trace logs and print debug statements. (note, I have not used a debugger proper the last 15 years, so things have probably changed somewhat)
Anyway, you might want to give gdb a whirl. I’ve heard it’s the best debugger for everything period. Could be wrong.
Sounds like a prime candidate for LibreOffice, then again she’s probably too stuck in the Ribbon swamp by this point.
Try installing it and say it’s a beta version of a new MSO look.
Haha… she was using Linux (Mint) and LO for years before she got her current laptop. Therefore I’m quite sure going back to Linux again won’t come as much of a shock. I honestly thought she’d be using Office more but from what I’ve seen over the last 3 years or so, LO should be perfectly adequate for her needs.
Well my last negative experience with (Pulse)audio was more like this:
And me piping Audio to a bluetooth sink in Pipewire was the same picture except each “speach bubble” contained only the first letter of a sentence.
Edit: To the defense of the audio subsystems I must admit I tried to repurpose an really old Athlon (Shuttle Mini PC) as Audio BT transmitter with 32bit experimental Debian to get pipewire and its graphical frontends working. I think this was the latest software this system has ever ran.
I would have one point of statement of intent/protip to share, something I regret I didnt do in the past.
Keep a log of configuration changes + explanation and all related research. Basic markdown file on shared storage suffices.
Over time lot of this hard earned tinkering data can be lost, and then 10 years later you find out that your sources are either impossible to find again (thanks google) or digital rot has set in.
Once you have documentation, you can script you setup in ansible easily.
Loss of about 25% of performance in games and the lack of some programs like Daz3D and Photoshop/Lightroom are the only remaining reasons that tied me to Windows.
Ended up doing the opposite recently. Most of my multiplayer games I play just don’t work atm, due to several different reasons, and just got tired of constantly trying to wrestle with Nvidia drivers. Unfortunately most everything I do on my desktop for leisure just works on windows atm and the inconveniences are just getting in the way of me being able to sit down and enjoy my free time. I really don’t like the loss of privacy/control, but it’s getting to the point where I don’t have the free time to constantly wrestle pop os or hop distro’s trying fix these problems. So RIP. I’ll probably try coming back to Linux again in a year or so.
Will continue to use Ubuntu for my home server as it just works and the documentation and support is solid.
Fanboy-ism isn’t good for anyone, so I welcome a realistic look on things. You summed up many of the same pros and cons I was weighing before I switched to Linux. You mention gaming, I sometimes spin up old games and came to the realization. Old games on Linux can actually be easier than trying to get win95/98 era games to run on win10.
