Join the Linux club. You'll never go back once you get the hang of it! Nothing in my house has Windows. Left it years ago and have had zero regrets.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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How do you deal with the lack of natural light?
The Archs let in light
Despite not being nearly as user-friendly as Windows, the problem with Linux, at least in my many attempts to use it as a daily driver, is that system failures are often catastrophic and involve expert-level skills to work through.
In contrast, I haven't had a Windows system in the last 20 years force me to reinstall the OS.
But if Microsoft goes this route, I will absolutely have no issues with switching to Linux and working through any pain points.
Personally, I find KDE Plasma to be extremely easy to use. I prefer it to Windows, but that could also just be familiarity.
I've also not had a catastrophic failure in I don't know how many years. I have several machines running Linux and the only time I reinstall is when I get a new computer. 20 years ago we were still running XP or maybe Vista and I absolutely remember reinstalling XP several times. Windows even today has it's share of "expert-level" fixes too. I find the incantations to fix Windows problems even more mysterious, and often coming from sources I'm not sure I can trust.
In any case it's all anecdotal, but I wanted to offer a counterpoint in favor of Linux. :)
I do recommend giving it a go, as it's really improved a lot in the last several years.
I will keep giving it a go. I mean, I've been trying to get into Linux for like 25 years 😂
What I mean by windows being easier to recover from, if there's ever an issue, is that it has multiple layers of restore, repair, and other modes that are very user friendly.
Just installing a simple app in Linux often involves numerous lines in the terminal. My wife would 1000% never be able to use Linux. LMAO
Mind you, I've only really tried various flavours of Ubuntu, so many there's a better distro for me.
You don't need to use the terminal to install a program at all, at least on Debian with KDE Plasma. You can either download a .deb file and install it with the graphical deb installer, or you can open the software centre (Discover for KDE) and search for it. You can even add extra repositories graphically (and for Debian, you probably are going to want to enable the non-free repo by doing this, which I think has a tick box).
I've also never had Linux break on me, unless I broke it myself after poking things I shouldn't poke.
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Installing software is one of the big blockers I see with people, especially when they're used to downloading a random executable from a website somewhere. (haha! Anyone remember Tucows?) Ubuntu has also been making their installation worse lately with pushing Snaps, which always seem to be only partially integrated into the rest of the system. I have been playing a bit with Flatpak distributed software and it seems to work well, with some nice UIs to browse the various repos. I'm also a fan of AppImage for the ease of distribution. But yeah, just the fact I have to type this out means it's quite different and yet something else to learn.
Good luck with your Linux adventures! :)
Fedora Silverblue has a read-only OS and uses Flatpak for apps. It’s pretty hard to break while being pretty simple to install software.
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Most of the time Linux fails on me it's nvidia related. I hate nvidia.
In the past month I’ve given up Reddit, Windows and Nvidia. If I had a carbon-fibre submersible, I’d give that up too!
Same here. Once or twice I've switched to the non-free Nvidia drivers thinking it might be better, but it's worse, with some sort of basic xrandr (or such) missing. The free/open-source Nouveau drivers are better but far from perfect.
I'm not sure there is a better alternative, except for Intel (integrated GPU).
personally the problem for linux to me is lack of support from companies
Honest question(s) from someone who's been using Linux as a daily diver for well over a decade:
What distro were you using as a daily driver that encountered "catastrophic" system failures? What sort of use case? Was this recent?
If you really want to tinker, you can certainly break your system if you don't really know what you're doing. I'm sure I encountered that in my early days of playing around with home servers and whatnot; but I can honestly say that I haven't had this experience at all with my "daily driver". I've been running Fedora for a couple years now on my laptop; and everything just works. I run updates (at my leisure) once every week or two. I can't remember the last time something just "broke". I certainly can't remember the last time (if ever?) I had to "reinstall the OS" due to a catastrophic failure.
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How do you deal with compatibility issues? I dual boot Fedora on my surface but I keep having to boot back in for various reasons.
The surface isn't a great Linux machine. I tried to run it on my Surface Pro 4 and it was just OK. These days I go for hardware that has known Linux compatibility. I'm especially a fan of the Framework laptop, but my Dell XPS 15 has been a solid Linux machine too.
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I very regularly complain about the eGPU issue on Linux, since I want to swap so badly--every program I use (with the exception of Drawboard PDF, which operates on a universal standard) is cross platform, and I have successfully installed a wide variety of linux distros on my laptop and got everything working well (even pen input on Xournal!!).
However, I use an Nvidia eGPU to drive three additional monitors I use for work, and on Linux I am unable to hotplug my eGPU, instead requiring a login/logout (or at least me closing all my open programs, which defeats the purpose of hotplug). I've tried Wayland/Xorg, and distros varying from Fedora to Pop OS (so far, my best experience was on Kubuntu/Wayland, but the computer still regularly crashed when disconnecting). I wish I were a better programmer, since then I could figure the issue out myself!
As soon as the Linux kernel has better support for hotplugging, I will never need to boot Windows again!
Edit: I am not unfamiliar with Linux, and I've been running Linux servers for well over a decade--I just have little experience in the realm of graphics drivers
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And I want to move Windows fully to my past
shit if I could go back in time and remove it from my past that'd be even better
I just need to figure out how to do GPU VM passthrough on an NV card and I'm gone
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Making everything a service for the sake of revenue sucks ass.
I’m not interested in a future where my computer is literally useless without an internet connection.
The thing that I don't get is that moving everything to the cloud kind of destroys their moat, doesn't it? The only reason Windows has maintained it's place in the OS ecosystem is because people claim everything runs on Windows. I think it really speaks to how far software on Windows has fallen (e.g. scammy nonfree programs being required for basic tasks like managing hard drive partitions) that Microsoft thinks that's worth blowing up. Of course, I understand the justification of Microsoft is a huge cloud player, but why wouldn't they try to maintain OS dominance?
MS Windows as a subscription service. What a nightmare.
Are they going to add ads to the task manager or something next? At this poinr I feel more and more compelled to keep using Fedora.
Microsoft is doing anything to push me towards Linux…
I understand it from a business perspective. They make the user more dependent and can earn more money. But the day you force me to store MY business data on some cloud servers which do not belong to me you lose me as a customer.
Maybe I should load my old Nixos config and have a look how my Laptop is doing now 😉
Agreed. Forcing me to rely on my inconsistent home wifi when trying to work on documents is just going to push me away as a long term advanced Office user.
Guess this is the year for change - time to start looking into alternative options.
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if the rumors are true & microsoft is planning to make windows 365 the de-facto way to purchase windows in the future like with office, it'll be the dumbest move they've ever made & proof some new leadership is probably needed at some level. individual apps are one thing but no one wants something as critical & expansive as the os to just be a glorified rdp session, nor do they want it to be dependant on a subscription. i've told some of my non techie friends about this (all lifelong windows users) & they all said it'd be the one thing that makes them go to something else.
Hopefully Microsoft will do that. Then maybe I'll finally stop putting off switching from Windows to Linux on my main PC.
You might.
I'll keep booting into Linux, and I would recommend anyone that Microsoft pisses off to try the same.
Do I want an OS that can offload to remote servers? I mean kinda actually, that'd be neat. Do I want another thing in my life to be a subscription I have no control on, absolutely not.
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Christ, how to push away a lifelong windows user...
Companies seem to love making moves that destroy themselves recently
Hey, another company that wants customers to RUN away.
Is this a trendy thing to do in the business world now?
Great how basically the only argument for this from the consumer side is AI-stuff, which perfectly works already and even has foss versions which can run locally
Microsoft can move fully to deez nuts.
Windows as a service. Yuck.
Debian.
Yeah, I'm really hoping this is just going to be an additional option for those who want a lightweight ChromeOS style experience. Forcing everyone to a streaming OS is not going to go well.
Ah, the Adobe f u I want more model.
Sounds like ChromeOS?
Hey, even ChromeOS itself runs off of the computer.
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If only Linux had an official Xbox and Game Pass app so that I could play my Xbox games on it natively without having to stream it from a webpage :(
Obviously Microsoft will never add support for game pass or Xbox stuff to Linux. They want to keep people inside windows as much as possible.
But why on consumer gear? Stadia failed due Google; how is this going to be better?
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