For the first time in a long time I might stick seeing the state of Linux today, especially Plasma 6. I’m eyeing Fedora 40 or Bazzite, tried Kinoite and pretty much everything I need works out of the box, the only thing I need to figure out is OneDrive.
It really is that hard to move. Your kids didn’t have decades of experience to relearn.
Sorry, Linux is no competitor to Windows on the desktop. Wish it were, it just isn’t.
As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I’d stuck with Cobol).
I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured it as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery.
There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.
There are many reasons why Linux doesn’t compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I’m not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That’s just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn’t realistically shareable with other people.
Now there’s that print monitor that’s on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?
Networking… Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn’t say “save creds”? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.
Someone else said it better than me:
Every time I’ve installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it’s gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn’t look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works… only it doesn’t save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically… but that doesn’t work, so now I can’t boot… so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that… then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution… wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it’s been four hours, it’s 3:00am and I’m like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren’t supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can’t wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can’t do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I’ve loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM’s on Linux (Proxmox) because that’s better than running Linux VM’s of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would’ve had a chance to beat MS, even then it would’ve required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980’s to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
My windows laptop does not want to conserve the battery, or use an 80% charge. It instead relies on a third party piece of software - typically the manufactures - that drags in all sorts of crap I do not want, with Eula’s I do not agree with. Linux doesnt do that, and properly preserves my battery. I don’t know whats wrong with your Mint install or laptop, but I have a laptop I put linux on 10 years ago, and it still works great and the battery is still within 95% of new, which frankly is amazing. Never had windows on it. And of course you can configure all of that with a GUI.
My other laptop had windows on it, and the intel driver would turn off features in my wifi card because I had not paid for that version. In linux it was a full feature wifi card.
My printer wont work with windows, even though it is supposed to be a windows printer. The drivers, which won’t install, even if they did will pull in a bunch of crap, and Eulas that I do not agree with. On my linux machine it just works. No drivers needed.
In Windows, it nearly bricked my Video card trying to update firmware from a driver update I did not ask for. Had to force a new driver, which in turn updated firmware. And once again, said driver adds a ton of crap and services and a Eula I do not want. On my Linux machine, it just works, AND does not require me to manage drivers at all. AMD.
I am not sure what you are trying to say about Excel, that is just a confusing sentence.
For me the world is the opposite. Linux is easy and just works. Windows is the pain in my ass and always does something annoying (exactly like this article is saying).
I daily drive Linux. Have for years. I choose to only remote into widows, and that is only if someone will pay me to do it. I have an MSDN and all MS software available to me, and even when it is free to me, I would rather not use it.
f it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would’ve had a chance to beat MS
really dude? you think Linux can’t compete with ms-dos? REALLY?
At least be a little more reasonable and respectable of decades of effort from the FOSS community. Had you said that todays Linux would only be competitive with windows from 15 years ago I would understand and somewhat agree with that. Also, Windows has been degrading ever since 2012 and Linux keeps getting more appealing compared to the current Windows releases as time goes on.
It also doesn’t help that half of your anecdotes also blatantly happens on Windows. Yes, PCs and PC manufacturers sure suck, it’s only a bit better on Windows because manufactures sometimes test their half-assed stuff there and make giant piles of workarounds to make it sorta work.
but windows is fucking unusable garbage now, and if theres a windows feature you can’t bear ti go without, your only option is hope somebody makes it on Linux, because its not sticking around on windows.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort.
I mean you have the same functionality in LibreOffice Calc, the automatic sorting and filtering is called AutoFilter and the table style is chosen from AutoFormat Styles.
I switched for the first time last year after using Windows exclusively for the past ~30 years, and have had no issues whatsoever. I understand I might be an outlier in that I always had a compulsion to dig as deep as possible into my Windows install to change little things I didn’t like about it, so maybe I just already had the base knowledge to more easily switch.
But I’ve been using EndeavourOS, and it’s been an absolute joy.
For your specific case, sure, but for that quote, I haven’t had those issues in years. I’m also running Mint, but on a desktop and have had zero issues. Mouse “just works,” extra monitors “just work,” and (most surprisingly to me), printer “just works,” games on Steam “just work” with all they’ve done with Proton. I switched to Google docs a long time ago, so at least for me the Office thing isn’t relevant. It natively supports discord, my password manager, Spotify, everything I’ve wanted. I switched my wife’s Mac to it years ago since it had gotten slow from bloat, and she’s been just fine despite not being very tech literate.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I’m not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That’s just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn’t realistically shareable with other people.
Oh you can take a look at LibreOffice instead which is open source and open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in LibreOffice Calc and see how it is there.
No GUI power settings? You mean like this menu https://jeroenverhoeckx.com/gnome-power-settings.html
You mentioned alot of Distros but didn’t mention a single Linux Desktop Experience. Gnome/KDE could easily compete with Windows Desktop .
The last windows I had on my home machine was Win95.
Embrace the penguin.
My kids didn’t have any problem figuring out how to do what they wanted to do on a Linux machine, it’s really not that hard to move.
For the first time in a long time I might stick seeing the state of Linux today, especially Plasma 6. I’m eyeing Fedora 40 or Bazzite, tried Kinoite and pretty much everything I need works out of the box, the only thing I need to figure out is OneDrive.
It really is that hard to move. Your kids didn’t have decades of experience to relearn.
Sorry, Linux is no competitor to Windows on the desktop. Wish it were, it just isn’t.
As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I’d stuck with Cobol).
I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured it as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery.
There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.
There are many reasons why Linux doesn’t compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I’m not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That’s just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn’t realistically shareable with other people.
Now there’s that print monitor that’s on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?
Networking… Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn’t say “save creds”? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.
Someone else said it better than me:
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM’s on Linux (Proxmox) because that’s better than running Linux VM’s of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would’ve had a chance to beat MS, even then it would’ve required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980’s to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
Please:
My windows laptop does not want to conserve the battery, or use an 80% charge. It instead relies on a third party piece of software - typically the manufactures - that drags in all sorts of crap I do not want, with Eula’s I do not agree with. Linux doesnt do that, and properly preserves my battery. I don’t know whats wrong with your Mint install or laptop, but I have a laptop I put linux on 10 years ago, and it still works great and the battery is still within 95% of new, which frankly is amazing. Never had windows on it. And of course you can configure all of that with a GUI.
My other laptop had windows on it, and the intel driver would turn off features in my wifi card because I had not paid for that version. In linux it was a full feature wifi card.
My printer wont work with windows, even though it is supposed to be a windows printer. The drivers, which won’t install, even if they did will pull in a bunch of crap, and Eulas that I do not agree with. On my linux machine it just works. No drivers needed.
In Windows, it nearly bricked my Video card trying to update firmware from a driver update I did not ask for. Had to force a new driver, which in turn updated firmware. And once again, said driver adds a ton of crap and services and a Eula I do not want. On my Linux machine, it just works, AND does not require me to manage drivers at all. AMD.
I am not sure what you are trying to say about Excel, that is just a confusing sentence.
For me the world is the opposite. Linux is easy and just works. Windows is the pain in my ass and always does something annoying (exactly like this article is saying).
I daily drive Linux. Have for years. I choose to only remote into widows, and that is only if someone will pay me to do it. I have an MSDN and all MS software available to me, and even when it is free to me, I would rather not use it.
my laptop has better battery life on qubes than it did on windows.
really dude? you think Linux can’t compete with ms-dos? REALLY?
At least be a little more reasonable and respectable of decades of effort from the FOSS community. Had you said that todays Linux would only be competitive with windows from 15 years ago I would understand and somewhat agree with that. Also, Windows has been degrading ever since 2012 and Linux keeps getting more appealing compared to the current Windows releases as time goes on.
It also doesn’t help that half of your anecdotes also blatantly happens on Windows. Yes, PCs and PC manufacturers sure suck, it’s only a bit better on Windows because manufactures sometimes test their half-assed stuff there and make giant piles of workarounds to make it sorta work.
you know ten years ago you might’ve had a point.
but windows is fucking unusable garbage now, and if theres a windows feature you can’t bear ti go without, your only option is hope somebody makes it on Linux, because its not sticking around on windows.
I mean you have the same functionality in LibreOffice Calc, the automatic sorting and filtering is called AutoFilter and the table style is chosen from AutoFormat Styles.
I switched for the first time last year after using Windows exclusively for the past ~30 years, and have had no issues whatsoever. I understand I might be an outlier in that I always had a compulsion to dig as deep as possible into my Windows install to change little things I didn’t like about it, so maybe I just already had the base knowledge to more easily switch.
But I’ve been using EndeavourOS, and it’s been an absolute joy.
For your specific case, sure, but for that quote, I haven’t had those issues in years. I’m also running Mint, but on a desktop and have had zero issues. Mouse “just works,” extra monitors “just work,” and (most surprisingly to me), printer “just works,” games on Steam “just work” with all they’ve done with Proton. I switched to Google docs a long time ago, so at least for me the Office thing isn’t relevant. It natively supports discord, my password manager, Spotify, everything I’ve wanted. I switched my wife’s Mac to it years ago since it had gotten slow from bloat, and she’s been just fine despite not being very tech literate.
Oh you can take a look at LibreOffice instead which is open source and open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in LibreOffice Calc and see how it is there.
No GUI power settings? You mean like this menu https://jeroenverhoeckx.com/gnome-power-settings.html You mentioned alot of Distros but didn’t mention a single Linux Desktop Experience. Gnome/KDE could easily compete with Windows Desktop .