My 70 year old mother has been using Linux on the desktop for the past 21 years(unixsheikh.com)
unixsheikh.com
My 70 year old mother has been using Linux on the desktop for the past 21 years
https://www.unixsheikh.com/articles/my-70-year-old-mother-has-been-using-linux-on-the-desktop-for-the-past-21-years.html
327 comments
> It's a little ironic, but I find Linux to be perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders.
I started using Linux around '99 as a computer-illiterate and became a coder. I see no irony in this. One of RMS' goals was to have the ability to study and learn from the software and systems you were using.
That, I feel led to the ubiquity of high-quality documentation and materials - an embarrassment of riches. I ordered physical copies of TLDP (two phone books, in size). I read the slackware manual and learned the basics of how filesystems work and networking (culminating in redirecting X from my single good computer to a couple of dumpster-worthy systems on my home network). I didn't need to fork over money I couldn't afford for a compiler.
It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness.
I started using Linux around '99 as a computer-illiterate and became a coder. I see no irony in this. One of RMS' goals was to have the ability to study and learn from the software and systems you were using.
That, I feel led to the ubiquity of high-quality documentation and materials - an embarrassment of riches. I ordered physical copies of TLDP (two phone books, in size). I read the slackware manual and learned the basics of how filesystems work and networking (culminating in redirecting X from my single good computer to a couple of dumpster-worthy systems on my home network). I didn't need to fork over money I couldn't afford for a compiler.
It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness.
>One of RMS' goals was to have the ability to study and learn from the software and systems you were using.
This is a huge understated benefit of Linux and FOSS. Instead of being hidden you can see how things work, sometimes you might even need to fix them
>It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness
I must admit, I do understand this sentiment. Working in a proprietary system its harder to imagine how I would want to change things to better work for you, because I can't see how it works. I wouldn't know what to change because I don't know what's in there, it makes things more difficult to see all the possibilities with the lack of information
This is a huge understated benefit of Linux and FOSS. Instead of being hidden you can see how things work, sometimes you might even need to fix them
>It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness
I must admit, I do understand this sentiment. Working in a proprietary system its harder to imagine how I would want to change things to better work for you, because I can't see how it works. I wouldn't know what to change because I don't know what's in there, it makes things more difficult to see all the possibilities with the lack of information
In theory, sure. But this requires that you be a coder, effectively, and not just a coder but a coder with time on his/her hands.
If I'm a professional photographer I'm paid essentially by throughput. The more pictures I take, edit, and post, the more money I make. I literally can't afford to dive into the source for GIMP to try to customize my workflow, even if I had the coding skills to do so.
And that's my point really. Yes, IF I'M A CODER, Linux is superb. But if I'm not, those benefits don't really benefit me.
To be clear, I personally am a coder. Even then, though, how many of us really have the time to debug Linux device drivers? I don't.
If I'm a professional photographer I'm paid essentially by throughput. The more pictures I take, edit, and post, the more money I make. I literally can't afford to dive into the source for GIMP to try to customize my workflow, even if I had the coding skills to do so.
And that's my point really. Yes, IF I'M A CODER, Linux is superb. But if I'm not, those benefits don't really benefit me.
To be clear, I personally am a coder. Even then, though, how many of us really have the time to debug Linux device drivers? I don't.
GlenTheMachine, I responded to you because what you said struck a chord in me. Were I a truth-sayer, dawn's light would once more meet your eyes.
Yet, I am split; in my older, enervated state, I simply want my tools to get the fuck out of my way. But that is mediated by my understanding of "the way", which was informed by the myriad practitioners eager to spill the secrets of how things really work (i.e. de rerum natura), and to them I give my eternal thanks.
As a photographer, perhaps you can empathize with the likes of Edgard Varèse or Charles Ives. Ives decided to earn his filthy lucre in insurance so that he could write a symphony (the rehearsal of which was hired out to the BSO) in which the 4th trumpet had but one note to play. The artistic and idealistic in a single 4th trumpet tone.
If, on the other hand, you are saying you are owed some factory for your blind impress to stamp out mercantile -- here we part company. Have at you whatever promised fiefdom the FAANG (or is it MANGA) might, of its own beneficence carve out for you.
Have at you: be you artist or manufacturer?
Yet, I am split; in my older, enervated state, I simply want my tools to get the fuck out of my way. But that is mediated by my understanding of "the way", which was informed by the myriad practitioners eager to spill the secrets of how things really work (i.e. de rerum natura), and to them I give my eternal thanks.
As a photographer, perhaps you can empathize with the likes of Edgard Varèse or Charles Ives. Ives decided to earn his filthy lucre in insurance so that he could write a symphony (the rehearsal of which was hired out to the BSO) in which the 4th trumpet had but one note to play. The artistic and idealistic in a single 4th trumpet tone.
If, on the other hand, you are saying you are owed some factory for your blind impress to stamp out mercantile -- here we part company. Have at you whatever promised fiefdom the FAANG (or is it MANGA) might, of its own beneficence carve out for you.
Have at you: be you artist or manufacturer?
> I'm paid essentially by throughput
I’ll take it down a notch and start with I agree with both of you.
One thing that maybe is more clear as I have aged, it’s obvious that my lifetime isn’t going to be long enough to see the changes that are most necessary and desired.
I’ll take it down a notch and start with I agree with both of you.
One thing that maybe is more clear as I have aged, it’s obvious that my lifetime isn’t going to be long enough to see the changes that are most necessary and desired.
> One thing that maybe is more clear as I have aged, it’s obvious that my lifetime isn’t going to be long enough to see the changes that are most necessary and desired.
This is the end game and the reason why many opensource programmers work the way they do, not only to scratch their own itch, but to instead leave the world in a better digital state than what they found it.
This is the end game and the reason why many opensource programmers work the way they do, not only to scratch their own itch, but to instead leave the world in a better digital state than what they found it.
If you pick your hardware somewhat carefully you won't have to waste time into it.
I feel like the misconception Linux tends to break is because of Ubuntu. It's easily the most popular distribution and every time I had the misfortune of working with it I run into packaging issues and upgrade issues every 6 months.
Once I switched to rolling release distros I had way less problems.
I feel like the misconception Linux tends to break is because of Ubuntu. It's easily the most popular distribution and every time I had the misfortune of working with it I run into packaging issues and upgrade issues every 6 months.
Once I switched to rolling release distros I had way less problems.
You can also pay someone else to work on the GIMP for you. You don't have that option for Photoshop.
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Like, I'm a professional C++ coder for living, but whenever something breaks in Linux I don't even know where to start fixing it. I'd just rather not deal with it.
I've stopped using desktop Linux at home because it's, unsurprisingly, a rather complex system with lots and lots of moving parts (moreover, some of the parts tend to get replaced often) and it has some annoying UI issues I consider unacceptable. I did some research and concluded that proper fixes for these issues are effectively insurmountable for a very-part-time developer like me, and workarounds will just keep breaking. Sure, I can read the code, I understand how the system works to some extent, but actually changing it requires orders of magnitude more energy.
> This is a huge understated benefit of Linux and FOSS. Instead of being hidden you can see how things work, sometimes you might even need to fix them
This is a little like calling a dilapidated home a "handyman's dream." The vast majority of computer users want to accomplish their task with minimal fuss, not learn about computers.
This is a little like calling a dilapidated home a "handyman's dream." The vast majority of computer users want to accomplish their task with minimal fuss, not learn about computers.
> Instead of being hidden you can see how things work, sometimes you might even need to fix them
Well, using proprietary system as a child made me a reverse engineer instead :P
Well, using proprietary system as a child made me a reverse engineer instead :P
> It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness.
That’s totally it and I’m very concerned about the current/future generations of people who are using fully locked proprietary hardware as their main computer.
I have the feeling that this creates an artificial barrier between technology literates and the rest of the world. Sure, it’s probably good for my career but it sounds terribly wrong to live in such a dystopian world.
Even the grandmother of the author is very lucky. Because once your grandmother of the future buys the cheapest Surface/Chinese android tablet… good luck installing Linux on this.
That’s totally it and I’m very concerned about the current/future generations of people who are using fully locked proprietary hardware as their main computer.
I have the feeling that this creates an artificial barrier between technology literates and the rest of the world. Sure, it’s probably good for my career but it sounds terribly wrong to live in such a dystopian world.
Even the grandmother of the author is very lucky. Because once your grandmother of the future buys the cheapest Surface/Chinese android tablet… good luck installing Linux on this.
They will do as we did 40 years ago, buy books and software.
I started using someone else's Linux in 1993, remotely, to help him port a user space threading library written in C to it. The machine was at the guy's house, online via SLIP.
Several people in the computer lab were standing behind my back, watching me live code the x86 context switching routines in GNU syntax (which I knew from coding some graphics demos using the DJGPP environment supporting writing extended DOS (DPMI) programs with GCC).
Several people in the computer lab were standing behind my back, watching me live code the x86 context switching routines in GNU syntax (which I knew from coding some graphics demos using the DJGPP environment supporting writing extended DOS (DPMI) programs with GCC).
Yeah, I agree with this. Linux Desktop is fine if what you need is essentially a web kiosk, and if you happen to be doing webdev work or a few other coding disciplines. It's all the many and varied other usecases that exist where it falls down hard, and the really unfortunate part is that when you express that this is why you don't use it the community seems flabbergasted that you don't just want a web kiosk and aren't a webdev. It's kind of maddening.
It’s come a long way for other uses, though. We have decent 3D modeling, paint, office suites, and gaming (better than Mac, almost as good as Windows). It’s still not quite there, I’ll grant it, but it does feel miles closer than the last time I used Linux (a decade or so ago).
It will never be there. Adobe and Microsoft won’t allow it. There can’t be a replacement for industry standard tools (like Word, Excel, Illustrator, Premiere) unless the replacement becomes the new standard.
> There can’t be a replacement for industry standard tools (like Word, Excel, Illustrator, Premiere) unless the replacement becomes the new standard
I thought about this in the past and disagree. You can already see it with google docs. Office file format interop is becoming irrelevant because the new format is just an url you point your browser to. I worked at a company that used gdocs and had a total of 0 complaints about sending customers a link to a gdoc instead of a docx attachment. There is no need for an industry standard anymore.
As for adobe tools, ok they might still be an issue currently.
I thought about this in the past and disagree. You can already see it with google docs. Office file format interop is becoming irrelevant because the new format is just an url you point your browser to. I worked at a company that used gdocs and had a total of 0 complaints about sending customers a link to a gdoc instead of a docx attachment. There is no need for an industry standard anymore.
As for adobe tools, ok they might still be an issue currently.
Google docs is useable if what one expects from a word processor is being a digital typewriter with Write like features.
The people needing advanced features of Office are a tiny minority
Except each minority wants a different set of Office features.
I believe Premiere is very popular for mid-range stuff, but it's not really the "industry standard". If that was anything, I think it'd probably be Avid Media Composer. Linux has (freemium / non-Free) Davinci Resolve, which is increasingly popular in the mid range, across all the main platforms.
Edit: The multimedia things I find really painfully missing in Linux are Izotope RX9 and Kontakt.
Edit: The multimedia things I find really painfully missing in Linux are Izotope RX9 and Kontakt.
Google docs, Office online and Adobe cloud are giving these a run for their money. Adobe cloud is probably the least successful of three purely due to price and high piracy levels.
Those programs have certainly gained a lot of features in the past 10 years. But they're just as user-unfriendly as they were before. Look at OpenOffice from 10 years ago vs LibreOffice today. The window is more cluttered with buttons and toolbars, but the experience for a MS Office or Mac Write user who sits down for the first time is about the same.
Windows/MacOS are great for developing native software for the respective platform. For virtually every other development scenario i can think of, Linux is imho the weapon of choice, not just web development.
How about editing or colour grading a commercially-released movie?
DaVinci Resolve is historically a Unix (IRIX) program, and works best on Linux; post-houses who have dedicated Resolve workstations generally use Linux.
How many people are doing that? But as to your question, wasn’t the original high-performance version of Da Vinci Resolve only available on Linux?
> colour grading a commercially-released movie
I'm wondering if you deliberately picked an example where the undisputed industry standard runs on Linux.
I'm wondering if you deliberately picked an example where the undisputed industry standard runs on Linux.
I didn't! I had no clue. I'm even surprised Linux has good support for the colour space needed for colour grading.
OTOH, Blender and DaVinci Resolve have first class support for Linux.
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You’d use a specific workstation, not a general purpose counter. That workstation is probably something like a quantel rio,
Rio was apparently Quantel's last ever product, released seven years ago. These days I don't think there's any reason to use specialist computing hardware, although if you're high-end you'd have a bunch of specialist input devices and calibrated HDR monitors.
Oh yea they were bought by grass valley. Been a long time since I was in that area.
Nobody is grading on a laptop, they are doing it in a proper post production suite with a dedicated workstation, same with audio, and editing
Nobody is grading on a laptop, they are doing it in a proper post production suite with a dedicated workstation, same with audio, and editing
No, that's just plain wrong. Me, my family and everyone in my company use Linux exclusively for everything, and did so for the past 15 years. We use it for photo editing as well as CRM, video editing as well as videoconferencing, gaming as well as office management, etc.
Sure, it seems to work well enough for you, but what are you asserting? That everyone else who is claiming Linux Desktop isn't a good fit for what they use a computer for is intellectually lazy?
I think that's a trap Linux Desktop evangelists have fallen into because they can't stand to recognize the truth that maybe a collection of fragmented pseudo-platforms cobbled together from disparately developed software --mostly by hobbyists-- just isn't actually as good at a lot of things as something developed by one well funded professional team as an actual platform.
I think the way some of the Linux Desktop community denigrates people who don't use it and pretends that there are no legitimate reasons anyone reasonably competent wouldn't is doing the community as a whole a great disservice and has been for twenty years. Not only are they driving otherwise interested parties away, but they're also refusing to admit to deep seeded problems that subsequently are never addressed.
I think that's a trap Linux Desktop evangelists have fallen into because they can't stand to recognize the truth that maybe a collection of fragmented pseudo-platforms cobbled together from disparately developed software --mostly by hobbyists-- just isn't actually as good at a lot of things as something developed by one well funded professional team as an actual platform.
I think the way some of the Linux Desktop community denigrates people who don't use it and pretends that there are no legitimate reasons anyone reasonably competent wouldn't is doing the community as a whole a great disservice and has been for twenty years. Not only are they driving otherwise interested parties away, but they're also refusing to admit to deep seeded problems that subsequently are never addressed.
No I'm asserting that people are more comfortable and productive with the system they know best. I'm just saying that I know many people who are perfectly happy and productive using MacOS, or Linux, and that your dismissive comment was pretty rude and uninformed.
But at what cost? What did your family give up in terms of time, money, mental load, and having to do things on Android or iOS because we use Linux in this household?
It's just that most of the complaints about switching to Linux, i.e. it's hard to do X, are wrong. My dad won't try it because he can't run MSword. There's nothing you need to do in Word that can't be done as easily with Linux workflows. There are exceptions, but most of the time it's true. It does mean learning new workflows, but that's usually as hard as it feels.
I'm not a graphics person so I can't say if gimp can replace Photoshop, but a lot of little tasks I used to open Photoshop for on Mac are easily handled by GIMP or even imagemagick. The majority of users would be fine learning these tools.
I'm not a graphics person so I can't say if gimp can replace Photoshop, but a lot of little tasks I used to open Photoshop for on Mac are easily handled by GIMP or even imagemagick. The majority of users would be fine learning these tools.
It's where you take some anecdotes and then apply "most" and "the majority" to them that I really disagree with. There are a lot of serious computer users and professionals who would love to be using a FOSS OS free from all the bullshit of Microsoft and Apple, but are unable unable to because even if it is theoretically possible to do what they do on Linux, the headaches of doing so are just not worth it and it doesn't look like the Linux Desktop community is very interested in changing that because it is "good enough" as far as they are concerned.
That's wrong.
Linux works for myriad of usecases the same way that windows and macos do. And it sucks at a fraction of other ones but windows and macos do too suck big times at other things.
The difference with my grandmother and most average people is she hasn't been forced through school and work to the windows or mac ecosystem. She wasn't used to software x and y. When she asked how to do things, she didn't have any preconceptions. Resistance to change is the main deterrent to people. Most people used to amiga or atari suffured when they had to learn windows. Most people are struggling a bit when switching to MacOS, I sure do as well. The difference is you seallow it easily because you actually bought a freaking expensive equipment and feel forced to get used to it. While if you are just a format + reinstall away from windows you will just not have the patience to dedicate the time to discover the UI, shortcuts and softwares to achieve the same thing but with a slightly different workflow.
If anything, Linux and the BSD have never struggled from unsolvable usability or compatibility issues, provided the hardware was chosen carefully, they struggled because they are free, are installable on commodity hardware already sold with other OS and thus aren't taken seriously.
Linux works for myriad of usecases the same way that windows and macos do. And it sucks at a fraction of other ones but windows and macos do too suck big times at other things.
The difference with my grandmother and most average people is she hasn't been forced through school and work to the windows or mac ecosystem. She wasn't used to software x and y. When she asked how to do things, she didn't have any preconceptions. Resistance to change is the main deterrent to people. Most people used to amiga or atari suffured when they had to learn windows. Most people are struggling a bit when switching to MacOS, I sure do as well. The difference is you seallow it easily because you actually bought a freaking expensive equipment and feel forced to get used to it. While if you are just a format + reinstall away from windows you will just not have the patience to dedicate the time to discover the UI, shortcuts and softwares to achieve the same thing but with a slightly different workflow.
If anything, Linux and the BSD have never struggled from unsolvable usability or compatibility issues, provided the hardware was chosen carefully, they struggled because they are free, are installable on commodity hardware already sold with other OS and thus aren't taken seriously.
I agree the usability issues of Linux are not unsolvable, they're just unsolved and have been for 20 years because the Linux Desktop community in general isn't that interested in solving them.
My parents used a Linux desktop for years in the late '90s and '00s, mostly because it was substantially easier for me to help provide support for. The only reason they no longer do is because tablets are simply a much more convenient form factor to do virtually everything they need to do on a daily basis.
There is a point at which usability is not about the specific interface, but that it's about applications and the OS being consistent. I, as someone using and programming computers for upwards of 40 years now feel that software is getting harder to use: it is less and less consistent while features are more and more difficult to discover. I hate the direction Gnome has taken where almost everything about the UI gets thrown out and re-written every few years, with features that I use simply disappearing. I hate newer versions of iOS where more and more gestures are added, while things like the home button are now gone and my phone pocket dials or turns on the light if I put it in my pocket the wrong way (which wasn't a problem in the first few generations). UI changes take mental resources away from the task at hand as one has to figure out how to do something that was easy to do before. An interface that that looks hard to use initially may well end up being easier to use if it is consistent and discoverable.
My number 1 UI complaint about GUIs these days is about the complete lack of keyboard shortcuts. Google Earth is one of the worst offenders: so many of the menus and dialog boxes have no keyboard shortcuts. The ridiculous part is that the Amiga did better on this measure more than 30 years ago. There was even an official Amiga User Interface Style Guide published in 1991 that spelled out how apps should look and feel. Even most MS-DOS apps had a consistent style to their interfaces and menus with shortcuts. MacOS may be one of the few in which menus remain fairly consistent and discoverable.
I now understand why the greybeards were grumpy with us young whippersnappers going and replacing the world. I am become one.
There is a point at which usability is not about the specific interface, but that it's about applications and the OS being consistent. I, as someone using and programming computers for upwards of 40 years now feel that software is getting harder to use: it is less and less consistent while features are more and more difficult to discover. I hate the direction Gnome has taken where almost everything about the UI gets thrown out and re-written every few years, with features that I use simply disappearing. I hate newer versions of iOS where more and more gestures are added, while things like the home button are now gone and my phone pocket dials or turns on the light if I put it in my pocket the wrong way (which wasn't a problem in the first few generations). UI changes take mental resources away from the task at hand as one has to figure out how to do something that was easy to do before. An interface that that looks hard to use initially may well end up being easier to use if it is consistent and discoverable.
My number 1 UI complaint about GUIs these days is about the complete lack of keyboard shortcuts. Google Earth is one of the worst offenders: so many of the menus and dialog boxes have no keyboard shortcuts. The ridiculous part is that the Amiga did better on this measure more than 30 years ago. There was even an official Amiga User Interface Style Guide published in 1991 that spelled out how apps should look and feel. Even most MS-DOS apps had a consistent style to their interfaces and menus with shortcuts. MacOS may be one of the few in which menus remain fairly consistent and discoverable.
I now understand why the greybeards were grumpy with us young whippersnappers going and replacing the world. I am become one.
I don't agree either. I have been using Linux as a primary desktop for 24 years and I don't have any major issue. I have a lot however, when I am using a Windows computer.
Try gaming then. Linux for gaming sucks. It’s been improving but it’s still dogshit. Especially with how games are always updating now and are constantly adding new content/changes. Drivers are often terrible too.
Gaming on computers is such an edge case for a tiny fraction of the population, the hardcore gamers. Most people simply don't even have a powerful enough computer to run AAA games anyway and buy a playstation, xbox or switch to play games.
And I always had fun playing hedgewars on linux with some friends, thank you.
It is funny you mention drivers because: - printing and scanning on my fedora laptops is a totally flawless and transparent experience, only requiring at the beginning to install a package which was pretty quick using gnome software. Doing the same on the windows laptop of my girlfriend required spending 10 minutes getting the correct driver on the manufacturer website, installing the drivers including a ton of random unneeded software, rebooting the laptop and now everytime she wants to print anything she gets some annoying popup windows. - the prior scanner I used for 25y before moving country was still perfectly supported on my linux distributions while the last available driver for windows was for windows 2000. Better hardware support from Linux actually allowed me to use my scanner more than 10y longer than if I had been using a Windows or Mac.
Some exotic hardware may not be supported at time of release on linux but all in all if you do your homework before shopping there is no issue.
And I always had fun playing hedgewars on linux with some friends, thank you.
It is funny you mention drivers because: - printing and scanning on my fedora laptops is a totally flawless and transparent experience, only requiring at the beginning to install a package which was pretty quick using gnome software. Doing the same on the windows laptop of my girlfriend required spending 10 minutes getting the correct driver on the manufacturer website, installing the drivers including a ton of random unneeded software, rebooting the laptop and now everytime she wants to print anything she gets some annoying popup windows. - the prior scanner I used for 25y before moving country was still perfectly supported on my linux distributions while the last available driver for windows was for windows 2000. Better hardware support from Linux actually allowed me to use my scanner more than 10y longer than if I had been using a Windows or Mac.
Some exotic hardware may not be supported at time of release on linux but all in all if you do your homework before shopping there is no issue.
You're kidding, right? PC gaming is huge.
Huge in money because gamers spend a tons of money on hardware and games.
It is not huge in term of % of computing users. Most computers sold are tablets and laptops without any decent GPU. Most people cannot run less than 10y olds AAA games (and many of those usually works well on linux with proton anyway).
It is not huge in term of % of computing users. Most computers sold are tablets and laptops without any decent GPU. Most people cannot run less than 10y olds AAA games (and many of those usually works well on linux with proton anyway).
> Most computers sold are tablets and laptops without any decent GPU.
Sure, but we're talking about desktop computers here.
Sure, but we're talking about desktop computers here.
The only development you can't do on Linux is Apple and maybe some Microsoft related stuff
Linux works great for a variety of computer applications, what you mention and others. It has problems on a variety of others but often can be made to work for many of those. Windows also has problems with quite a few applications but also can be made to work for them.
Windows has costs in terms of security and control. But to the end user, Windows is "free as in beer", even more than Linux, since it comes just sitting on your new machine and you only have to sign away vague "rights" to use it. So it's no surprise Windows wins.
Windows has costs in terms of security and control. But to the end user, Windows is "free as in beer", even more than Linux, since it comes just sitting on your new machine and you only have to sign away vague "rights" to use it. So it's no surprise Windows wins.
I’ve always found that windows is free as in beer, but Linux is just some jerk handing you bunch of grain and hops and a vague diagram of what to do next. It’s free, and it’ll make beer, but it might also make weird oatmeal instead.
Windows is free as in beer until it decides arbitrarily that you can’t output audio from certain applications on certain sound devices. Or how about arbitrarily deciding that the volume output on my headset should be 90% lower? Please go through a painful troubleshooting process that results in losing 15 minutes of your time and then having to reinstall the drivers anyway. By the way, did you need to change some audio settings? No not that audio control panel, the other one (changes in that audio control panel don’t actually have an effect)! Or that some wifi settings should just be hidden and inaccessible even from the command line (I mean who would need to set a static IP anyway). Or meh let’s not respect your selected times for scheduled updates and just do it whenever Windows wants (this will only take an hour or so ;). Oops, the start menu can’t search local applications anymore for some reason, but maybe bing search results will work. Did you want to pay $100 to upgrade this Windows 10 Home PC to Pro? Ok we charged your card. :( Something went wrong and we couldn’t complete the upgrade. Please proceed to spend 1 hour getting in touch with Microsoft support. Oh, we know it says you don’t need a license key and we didn’t send you one, but you actually need one so use this key.
And honestly all of this would be acceptable except I have zero control over what it’s doing. You can get this exact same experience on Linux except you have full control over everything. So just give me the weird Linux oatmeal, at least I can pick what spices go in it.
And honestly all of this would be acceptable except I have zero control over what it’s doing. You can get this exact same experience on Linux except you have full control over everything. So just give me the weird Linux oatmeal, at least I can pick what spices go in it.
+1 - I laughed. (Haven't used Windows in 20 years, but it's all just so much deja vu)
BUT. I used to have full control. And then Ubuntu foisted snap on me and now I have to suffer the constant worry that snapd might choose to update some trivial piece of shit right when I need to be doing something actually important.
So, yes, I just did `sudo apt purge snapd` but now I'm stuck with messing with the oatmeal for a couple of applications, and that's likely to increase as time goes by.
I'm in the market for a new distro, but would prefer to stick with something based on Debian/apt because of the rich app ecosystem. Oh, and KDE.
BUT. I used to have full control. And then Ubuntu foisted snap on me and now I have to suffer the constant worry that snapd might choose to update some trivial piece of shit right when I need to be doing something actually important.
So, yes, I just did `sudo apt purge snapd` but now I'm stuck with messing with the oatmeal for a couple of applications, and that's likely to increase as time goes by.
I'm in the market for a new distro, but would prefer to stick with something based on Debian/apt because of the rich app ecosystem. Oh, and KDE.
I've found Fedora to strike a good balance between working out-of-the-box and getting out of my way when I want to customize it. I can't say how well KDE works because I don't use it but it is supported. With the half-year release cycle it stays fresher than Debian and I prefer DNF over APT anyway.
I've never had any issues with application support, but even in the worst case you can always run an Ubuntu container or something.
I've never had any issues with application support, but even in the worst case you can always run an Ubuntu container or something.
KDE on Fedora works great. I'm one of those people that has a hard time figuring out why people are complaining about desktop Linux.
My Fedora+KDE does have some problems occasionally, but they are problems of my own making, such as compiling the entire graphics stack and kernel myself so I can use the cutting edge development versions...
Yeah, that's my experience too. Fedora generally just works unless I break it myself. This system has seen 5 or 6 major release upgrades and the only time I've had issues was when I let the root disk fill up mid-upgrade, and even then it was easy to fix without a reinstall thanks to dnf distro-sync.
Granted, I specifically chose my hardware to be Linux-compatible, which meant no nvidia and a bit of googling when choosing the motherboard, but even Windows would have issues with a lot of the shoddy hardware that's out there.
Granted, I specifically chose my hardware to be Linux-compatible, which meant no nvidia and a bit of googling when choosing the motherboard, but even Windows would have issues with a lot of the shoddy hardware that's out there.
My hardware wasn't even selected for Linux compatibility. Also, I've done in-place upgrades on this PC for the last 6 years. I did skip some versions though.
As far as I can remember, nothing actually broke when doing upgrades ever.
I love Fedora's in-place system upgrade, and it just keeps getting better.
As far as I can remember, nothing actually broke when doing upgrades ever.
I love Fedora's in-place system upgrade, and it just keeps getting better.
I persuaded my partner to switch to Linux, because Windows is increasingly hostile if you don't want online services, accounts and offers.
We went with Silverblue, because it Just Works™, it's simple to upgrade, and it's difficult to break (and it's what I've used for years now).
One of my criteria when recommending a distro is "if I leave them alone with it for 10 years, would it be EOL (or broken)?" and IMO Silverblue makes major version upgrades much simpler than Ubuntu.
We went with Silverblue, because it Just Works™, it's simple to upgrade, and it's difficult to break (and it's what I've used for years now).
One of my criteria when recommending a distro is "if I leave them alone with it for 10 years, would it be EOL (or broken)?" and IMO Silverblue makes major version upgrades much simpler than Ubuntu.
NixOS has been pretty good for me, but I wanted to learn Nix. I can repair issues a lat faster than other options and rollbacks are native.
I can’t say much about the KDE experience on Debian, but Debian with Gnome was my daily driver for many years and I didn’t have much trouble with it. I’m on more exotic distros as of late, but if something happens, I always have Debian to fall back on. My only problem with the Debian lineage is it holds me back on older software versions and their unstable is … unstable as advertised, haha.
I'd recommend looking at openSUSE tumbleweed. Best KDE integration IMHO. Well tested rolling release, snapshots on upgrade.
If you want Ubuntu without snaps, run Pop_OS. I'm using it and it's really fine.
Mint w/Xfce works for me. They purge snap by default, and support debian/Ubuntu packages.
Actually I went a bit further and use i3 as WM. Tiling windows as God meant it to be.
Actually I went a bit further and use i3 as WM. Tiling windows as God meant it to be.
Use Flatpaks instead.
Depends on distribution. Ubuntu works quite well out of the box for a lot of hardware. It’s great for basic usage like editing docs, browsing the web etc.
I found that Manjaro just works, which is super confounding: Arch is supposed to be one of the nerdier distros. I've thrown Manjaro (and now pure Arch) at my Linux-hostile laptop, and everything works. Provided you have access to good internet Arch is almost like off-cloud-SaaS on your machine, and that model makes tons of sense for desktop usage.
Printers, the bloody cursed things, are far more reliable than Windows.
In terms of hardware support, Ubuntu comes really close. The Linux desktop has come very far in the past few years.
Printers, the bloody cursed things, are far more reliable than Windows.
In terms of hardware support, Ubuntu comes really close. The Linux desktop has come very far in the past few years.
I very recently took a look at Manjaro to replace Kubuntu and the fucking trashfire that is snap, but got stuck on several apps that I use all the time not being available through their repo. And yes, I could go all Gentoo and `configure && make install` but really... I no longer have the time and patience for that.
And sadly, no, I do not have good internet, so that's an interesting thing to note.
And sadly, no, I do not have good internet, so that's an interesting thing to note.
can you cite an example of missing app? my experience with Manjaro and Arch tells me you're doing somerhing wrong.
Quite likely you're right; I didn't spend time digging deep. I may yet make the switch...
Enable AUR: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository
You could also try Fedora, I ran that for a while and it's also really good.
You could also try Fedora, I ran that for a while and it's also really good.
Good to know. I will give it a try too
> Just some “jerk” handing you a vague diagram
Seriously ? , You look at docs provided by stuff like archiwiki, gentoowiki, man pages, tldr tools, whole bunch of other cool blogs helping you around with setting things up, entire web forums, matrix rooms, irc chats, mailing lists, and all sorts of other places to get help from.
And it is a jerk handing you a “vague” diagram?.
..... idk, if you can’t read a manual, then say so. A person doesn't become a jerk to provide you with one.
I understand linux/bsd variants of open source operating systems can be unviable/hard to use for people. Doesn't mean the builders become a jerk just because you cant match it to your usecase.
Seriously ? , You look at docs provided by stuff like archiwiki, gentoowiki, man pages, tldr tools, whole bunch of other cool blogs helping you around with setting things up, entire web forums, matrix rooms, irc chats, mailing lists, and all sorts of other places to get help from.
And it is a jerk handing you a “vague” diagram?.
..... idk, if you can’t read a manual, then say so. A person doesn't become a jerk to provide you with one.
I understand linux/bsd variants of open source operating systems can be unviable/hard to use for people. Doesn't mean the builders become a jerk just because you cant match it to your usecase.
One might argue that you shouldn’t need a manual to do many of the things on Linux you definitely need a manual for.
Those who argue that , should not use the tools provided which definitely need a manual for.
There are extensive manuals and documents for those tools, because of the flexibility and freedom they provide, its a lot harder on windows to code a script to change my display screen's color tone , depending on my mood, time of the day, or any way i want to, meanwhile with xrandr and a bash script, its just 3 lines away from me.
To some people it might be unacceptable to even just operate with xrandr or similar such commandline tools, but then, why are you trying to use these tools in the first place ?, use mac, windows or a linux distro which is more hands free like Ubuntu, or Deepin or Pop_Os.
My point was someone isn't a jerk, for providing that flexibility or freedom, no one likes to write huge manuals or documents, they do it out of kindness to help others use their tools, I just think it's wrong to call people like that jerks.
There are extensive manuals and documents for those tools, because of the flexibility and freedom they provide, its a lot harder on windows to code a script to change my display screen's color tone , depending on my mood, time of the day, or any way i want to, meanwhile with xrandr and a bash script, its just 3 lines away from me.
To some people it might be unacceptable to even just operate with xrandr or similar such commandline tools, but then, why are you trying to use these tools in the first place ?, use mac, windows or a linux distro which is more hands free like Ubuntu, or Deepin or Pop_Os.
My point was someone isn't a jerk, for providing that flexibility or freedom, no one likes to write huge manuals or documents, they do it out of kindness to help others use their tools, I just think it's wrong to call people like that jerks.
And I'd argue that the need for manuals on Linux is greatly overstated.
Man, I was making a joke. Obviously maintainers of documentation aren’t jerks. I’m usually good at reading documentation. I’ve run Ubuntu on a laptop for a year or two in the past, but the headaches of audio and Wi-Fi drivers were beyond documentation, and well into SO and google rabbit holes.
Ultimately I gave up and reverted to Mac. If my choice was windows or Linux, I might choose Linux, but as long as I can keep Mac OS, I’ll probably not use either.
Ultimately I gave up and reverted to Mac. If my choice was windows or Linux, I might choose Linux, but as long as I can keep Mac OS, I’ll probably not use either.
Ah okidoki,
Meh linux , no linux both are ok, I’ve just had too many people genuinely call people jerks for providing foss tools that don’t meet their criterias....
Confused you with those, extremely sorry.
Confused you with those, extremely sorry.
> handing you bunch of grain and hops
Which is still quite comfortable. Imagine you would have to wait one year for the grapes.
Which is still quite comfortable. Imagine you would have to wait one year for the grapes.
It is almost as if the people selling the software align thier product with the middle of the target market. And with only two big players (MS and Apple OSs) they inevitabbly coverge toward that middle until they are back-to-back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
Let linux forever be the desktop of the not-middle. Keep linux different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
Let linux forever be the desktop of the not-middle. Keep linux different.
IMO people making software align the software with their motives. Generally, for proprietary software that's selling services to consumers and/or ad partners; for open source software that's making a useful tool.
> Yes, if you need your computer to check email and visit websites, and maybe deal with digital photos and do a little light word processing, Linux is rock solid stable and more than up to the task
I would go further and say that browsing, email, and light word processing doesn't require a laptop/desktop at all, whatever the OS - this is what a tablet (perhaps with some kind of keyboard) would be perfect for.
I would go further and say that browsing, email, and light word processing doesn't require a laptop/desktop at all, whatever the OS - this is what a tablet (perhaps with some kind of keyboard) would be perfect for.
> or do Photoshop-level editing of photos
How far ahead is Photoshop when compared to Gimp for the type of editing an average Photoshop user does? Do people really find Gimp lacking?
How far ahead is Photoshop when compared to Gimp for the type of editing an average Photoshop user does? Do people really find Gimp lacking?
Like a good FOSS nerd (and cheapo), I tried to steer my daughter towards Gimp rather than shelling out for Photoshop. She dug in her heels, and eventually I was able to divine that the reason was, the internet is chock-full of tutorials on using Photoshop to do all the kinds of art she wanted to do. The number of equivalently-useful Gimp tutorials was effectively zero. That's when I gave in.
I guess a variant of the network effect?
I guess a variant of the network effect?
And yet, GIMP could have an interface much more like Photoshop. There are commercial Photoshop clones on the market (Paint Shop Pro). Why do open-source devs always have to make something out in left field?
heck, even as a seasoned developer currently learning my way around webdev, i tinkered a bit with roda and hanami (both of which are wonderfully designed frameworks), and ended up ditching them both for rails because that's where all the tutorials, articles and example code are.
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Well, the average Photoshop user is a professional. I don't know if GIMP is lacking in features, but I definitely feel very out of place whenever I need to do anything. The features might be there, but either the UX is bad or I'm not used to it.
I've used GIMP way more often than Photoshop for the past two years, and I definitely don't feel any more at ease. The transform tool, for example, I always find unintuitive and hard, and everything else is more or less the same. It's a pity.
I've used GIMP way more often than Photoshop for the past two years, and I definitely don't feel any more at ease. The transform tool, for example, I always find unintuitive and hard, and everything else is more or less the same. It's a pity.
Yes, you’ll often see Gimp’s UX problems handwaved away as the user being too used to Photoshop, but it runs deeper than that.
I was having a discussion with a proprietor of a software retailer many years ago. He was thoroughly annoyed by people who walked in and insisted upon getting Photoshop and complaining about the price of Photoshop when it was clear their needs would be met by an inexpensive alternative. What they needed was the brand name, not the tool. Sometimes that need for the brand name is legitimate, say when you want to learn a tool to pursue a career. Usually that need for the brand name is purely emotional.
I suspect that Gimp has all of the features needed for the typical editing done by an average user. In cases where it is ill suited to their needs, I suspect it is due to a steep learning curve because it follows an image editing model similar to Photoshop.
I suspect that Gimp has all of the features needed for the typical editing done by an average user. In cases where it is ill suited to their needs, I suspect it is due to a steep learning curve because it follows an image editing model similar to Photoshop.
Until GIMP fixes its UI to be usable to an average graphic designer, it's a complete non-starter. Until it gets CMYK editing and color separation, and nondestructive editing, it's a non-starter.
Though Krita[1] insists on advertising itself as a "painting program", it handles everything you listed: CMYK support,[2] color separation,[3] and non-destructive editing.[4] Krita supports both raster and vector layers as well. It's well-suited for graphic design, and its interface is more familiar to Adobe product users.
[1] https://krita.org
[2] https://docs.krita.org/en/general_concepts/colors/color_mode...
[3] https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/separate_image.ht...
[4] https://docs.krita.org/en/user_manual/layers_and_masks.html#...
[1] https://krita.org
[2] https://docs.krita.org/en/general_concepts/colors/color_mode...
[3] https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/separate_image.ht...
[4] https://docs.krita.org/en/user_manual/layers_and_masks.html#...
If GIMP changed their UI we'd end up with drama and a fork.
The main reason I still use gimp as my daily driver is because it didn't change and I still am able to do things. Everytime I worked with Adobe products (every X years) it felt like learning a new software. Which i have zero interest in
The main reason I still use gimp as my daily driver is because it didn't change and I still am able to do things. Everytime I worked with Adobe products (every X years) it felt like learning a new software. Which i have zero interest in
What's the point of CMYK? Your image is going to be displayed on a panel that has some form of red, green, and blue LEDs. For something like printing a picture you can always just have the printer do the conversion from RGB to CMYK.
Working in CMYK lets you avoid the stage where everything looks muted when printed because you didn’t properly account for the different gamut, and because nobody knows how to properly set up conversions.
And beyond that, Adobe’s stuff knows about things like using spot inks outside of the RGB/CMYK spaces. Spot gloss, metallics, etc. Open source alternatives do not.
And beyond that, Adobe’s stuff knows about things like using spot inks outside of the RGB/CMYK spaces. Spot gloss, metallics, etc. Open source alternatives do not.
Conversion isn’t a perfect process and often has undesirable effects on the image. This makes it necessary for documents intended for print to be created in CMYK.
How do you preview your image then? You have to have it in RGB for editing to show up on your monitor.
This is not a discussion worth having, there isn't good logic in any of the discussions with photoshop users, its pretty much going to come down to personal preference.
If by Photoshop users you mean print professionals, you're right. Arguing isn't worth your time. Adobe has built its reputation around actually listening to professional designers working in the print, film, and Web industries and adding features to their software to support workflows from those industries. GIMP... has not. (As another example also mentioned here, in addition to CMYK, Photoshop also knows about spot colors and can separate those for prepress as well.) Until GIMP gets actual, professional customers and really listens to them, it's a nonstarter in this space.
What exactly is unusable about its UI beyond not being Photoshop and breaking muscle memory?
I found Photoshop CS6 from 10 years ago much more usable than Gimp. I was trying to do very basic things on Gimp and it was very hard or impossible. Like non destructive text editing or setup print size with ruler and markers. I think Gimp is fine to make some rough and quick edits but that's it.
I run Photoshop CC 2018 on Ubuntu 20.04 with WINE and it runs like a dream.
Anything earlier than 2018 won’t support high resolution displays and anything later is not currently supported by WINE, but Photoshop CC 2018 is very good.
Anything earlier than 2018 won’t support high resolution displays and anything later is not currently supported by WINE, but Photoshop CC 2018 is very good.
Hey that's good to hear, I'm going to try it out later. I never succeeded to run photoshop on WINE until now. Did you had to do anything special?
I am using Play On Linux on Ubuntu 20.04. You can run CS6 without doing anything special, but if you want hires GUI then you need CC 2018. I set it up a while ago and don’t recall how much I had to do, but I pulled the latest Photoshop script from the Play On Linux website and modified it to point to my install.exe. I think the main thing was using a Windows XP base. Then once you open Photoshop you will have to disable in the preferences to disable automatic plugin updates or you will periodically get an annoying error message. Also set to hires in preferences. Other than those two things, it’s flawless. I run it almost daily. This stuff is all noted in the comments sections on the Play On Linux and WINE websites Photoshop versions pages, but admittedly there should be a guide somewhere. One last thing: I do not own the copy I am using because you can’t buy CC 2018 anywhere. Running the crack is done with the ‘Run an executable’ option in Play On Linux.
Not a professional in the area, but I follow gimp development for the last decade.
Biggest UI problems have been fixed by Peter Sikking and a few remaining will be fixed by the switch to gtk3 on version 3.0. Version 3.0 will also improve color management and, at least for a few non-professional cases, good enough CMYK.
Last remaining deficiency for me to suggest professional photographers to consider it is non-destructive editing (adjustment layers) which will (hopefully) be available in 3.2.
Biggest UI problems have been fixed by Peter Sikking and a few remaining will be fixed by the switch to gtk3 on version 3.0. Version 3.0 will also improve color management and, at least for a few non-professional cases, good enough CMYK.
Last remaining deficiency for me to suggest professional photographers to consider it is non-destructive editing (adjustment layers) which will (hopefully) be available in 3.2.
Interplanetary distances. My usual use case is editing 16k hdri's. Gimp can't do this, it simply crashes or grinds to a halt. I also spend a lot of time creating textures with filters. Gimp can't do this. Even editing a 4k texture barely works. Also digital painting sucks, tablet recognition is still terrible, and the UI is even worse than Photoshop's, which takes genuine, conscious effort and work on the part of the devs. The docs almost always show examples from several versions back with a different interface making them functionally useless.
And it crashes. All. The. Time.
Even for ordinary photo retouching the experience is just worse.
Now darktable is a decent opensource alternative for Lightroom and parts of Photoshop for photo adjustment and if your aim is to make your photos look good rather than heavily manipulate them I would go with that. Krita is also ok for digital painting, although it has its issues.
Even for ordinary photo retouching the experience is just worse.
Now darktable is a decent opensource alternative for Lightroom and parts of Photoshop for photo adjustment and if your aim is to make your photos look good rather than heavily manipulate them I would go with that. Krita is also ok for digital painting, although it has its issues.
Non-destructive editing is a big one for photo editing.
Photoshop has some really clever AI based tools that neither Gimp or Krita can match. For what I do, which is not manipulating photos for magazines, erasing objects and so on, Gimp has been overkill.
> Photoshop has some really clever AI based tools
Can you expound on these?
Can you expound on these?
It does deep-learning based denoising and super resolution, de-blurring (as a result of camera shake or out-of-focus shots), sky replacement (e.g. if you took a shot on a "severe clear" day it can make your sky cloudy), and depth-aware haze removal. It can do auto-portrait touchups. It can automatically tweak a subject's apparent age and expression, it can transfer a style of makeup from one subject to another. It can adjust lighting in post, you can actually move the highlights and shadows around. Etc.
It's kind of amazing tbh.
It's kind of amazing tbh.
Thanks, those sound pretty cool. I need to give modern Photoshop a spin one of these days, I haven't touched it since CS6.
Microsoft Image Composer came bundled with Frontpage (Microsoft's HTML editor from the 90's). It was easy to use and did nearly all the things an "average user", me included, would need. I used it all through the XP years. I've since learned to do most of what I need with GIMP.
one of the nice things about software going web-based (figma, for example) is that I don’t need to worry about the OS
I don’t know if gimp is lacking because I have no reason to use it. I need to use photoshop to work with other people using photoshop… we not only need to send each other files, but know the same interface, share scripts, etc…
I don’t know if gimp is lacking because I have no reason to use it. I need to use photoshop to work with other people using photoshop… we not only need to send each other files, but know the same interface, share scripts, etc…
I have no problem using GIMP. The lack comes in when people send me Photoshop files. GIMP usually mangles them.
I used Linux to play my music collection for a while, but it just had too many problems with crashing and randomly needing to regenerate its index. Windows Media Player just works.
The current Windows Media Player is a bloated mess with unnecessary features. Not unlike iTunes.
The original WMP was pretty good! But you really can no longer get anything like it. ETA: at least under active development. WMP Classic was a suitable replacement I used to use: https://mpc-hc.org/
Full disclosure: for music I still run Winamp 2.95, and for video it is a mix of Kodi for set top boxes and VLC for PC/Mobile.
The original WMP was pretty good! But you really can no longer get anything like it. ETA: at least under active development. WMP Classic was a suitable replacement I used to use: https://mpc-hc.org/
Full disclosure: for music I still run Winamp 2.95, and for video it is a mix of Kodi for set top boxes and VLC for PC/Mobile.
I'd recommend checking out foobar2000. It feels old in a good way and you can use a lot of the Winamp plugins if you want them for whatever reason. No fancy nonsense, just a music player. There are also plugins to integrate with streaming services, youtube, etc for when you want something outside of your library.
I resort to VLC media player for music for the same reason.
>Not unlike iTunes
iTunes is dead although its replacements aren't much better.
https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/
iTunes is dead although its replacements aren't much better.
https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/
Is it REALLY possible for a media player to be "bloated" to the point that it matters (for playing music), when even the cheapest new PC has 8GB of RAM, 4 cores, and an SSD?
I can appreciate the performance aspect of your perspective here. But, if it takes up way too much screen real estate, it matters. If I spend extra time navigating a bad UI, it matters.
Interestingly, the dev tools on Linux are rock solid. The other stuff, not so much. Hence Windows is my desktop, where I have putty text windows into my Ubuntu machine for dev work.
Aren't you still using Ubuntu 14, or am I remembering a thread from too long ago.
"Modern" Ubuntu is absolutely rock solid as my work machine, the current iteration of the windows media player is total rubbish compared to VLC which does actually work with just about everything.
Interestingly, this Linux box is the first machine I've had with which the suspend actually works reliably, unlike every windows machine I've used.
"Modern" Ubuntu is absolutely rock solid as my work machine, the current iteration of the windows media player is total rubbish compared to VLC which does actually work with just about everything.
Interestingly, this Linux box is the first machine I've had with which the suspend actually works reliably, unlike every windows machine I've used.
As I mentioned in another post, I am still using 14, as the newer Ubuntus would just crash on the machine. It's perfectly adequate for what I use it for.
Weird. Sounds like you had an issue with a buggy music player. What lead you to think the entire operating system was to blame?
As a desktop replacement, I expect a music player, just like I expect a browser. The music player is a pretty good test of if the the operating system drivers work, although it was never clear if the music players were bad, or the sound drivers.
BTW, the music players on Roku, Grace Digital's streaming boxes, and Galaxy Audio's streaming boxes, are all unusable. The only ones that ever worked were the Turtle Beach Audiotron (now obsolete), and Windows Media Player.
I also have an Ubuntu desktop machine. It started pestering me to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu, and I finally relented and did. The new Ubuntu simply would not function with my graphics card. The old one worked fine with it. I spent a whole day trying to figure that one out, but there was no solution other than wiping the disk and reinstalling the older Ubuntu. A proper desktop replacement would:
1. warn me that I needed a new graphics card when pestering me to upgrade
2. refuse to install if I had a graphics card that was abandoned
BTW, the music players on Roku, Grace Digital's streaming boxes, and Galaxy Audio's streaming boxes, are all unusable. The only ones that ever worked were the Turtle Beach Audiotron (now obsolete), and Windows Media Player.
I also have an Ubuntu desktop machine. It started pestering me to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu, and I finally relented and did. The new Ubuntu simply would not function with my graphics card. The old one worked fine with it. I spent a whole day trying to figure that one out, but there was no solution other than wiping the disk and reinstalling the older Ubuntu. A proper desktop replacement would:
1. warn me that I needed a new graphics card when pestering me to upgrade
2. refuse to install if I had a graphics card that was abandoned
I immediately uninstall the media players that come on any linux distro and install vlc, which is a magnificent piece of software
I've been burned by this. It was a result of nVidia deprecating support for my video card in new drivers, and Ubuntu only shipping up-to-date and compatible proprietary drivers in their latest releases. According to Canonical, this was because the nouveau driver has some support for the deprecated hardware and the old drivers were no longer compatible with up-to-date distros.
If that was your issue, there's scripts that patch support for newer distros into the old drivers.
If that was your issue, there's scripts that patch support for newer distros into the old drivers.
It sounds like my issue.
If there are scripts that fix it, those scripts should be run automatically by the installer. Otherwise, it's just not a desktop replacement. I'm sorry to have to say this, but to call it a desktop replacement means it has to:
1. just work
2. failing that, detect the problem and explain what to do. Crashing is just not acceptable anymore.
I do support all the time for the D compilers. In my experience, if the install does anything but "just work", you immediately lose 50-90% of your users.
Every error path in the installer needs to be gone over and engineered to "just work". Messages like:
"Unknown Error: TXerr 66x53 failed, aborted"
are so 1980's :-/
If there are scripts that fix it, those scripts should be run automatically by the installer. Otherwise, it's just not a desktop replacement. I'm sorry to have to say this, but to call it a desktop replacement means it has to:
1. just work
2. failing that, detect the problem and explain what to do. Crashing is just not acceptable anymore.
I do support all the time for the D compilers. In my experience, if the install does anything but "just work", you immediately lose 50-90% of your users.
Every error path in the installer needs to be gone over and engineered to "just work". Messages like:
"Unknown Error: TXerr 66x53 failed, aborted"
are so 1980's :-/
No desktop operating system meets this criteria though, at least not if you allow user-defined hardware combinations.
I remember I had to do some hackery on a driver to get my sister's printer to work with her macbook/OSX.
I've had all sorts of issues with printers/scanners/random software combinations/drivers/failed automatic update crash loops(!)/etc with Windows.
The only operating systems that might meet the criteria are on tablets and phones (which are obviously not desktops) -- and even then I've had to cross-compile a kernel module to support a wifi adapter w/ USB OTG.
I remember I had to do some hackery on a driver to get my sister's printer to work with her macbook/OSX.
I've had all sorts of issues with printers/scanners/random software combinations/drivers/failed automatic update crash loops(!)/etc with Windows.
The only operating systems that might meet the criteria are on tablets and phones (which are obviously not desktops) -- and even then I've had to cross-compile a kernel module to support a wifi adapter w/ USB OTG.
Honestly I'll take that google-able error code over the modern trend of "The software has did a sad, please try again or contact our useless support".
A surprising lot of people consider a media player as part of the OS.
One criticism of Linux that I've never heard before is too few music players ;)
Whichever music player didn't work for you here, there are dozens of others that might.
Whichever music player didn't work for you here, there are dozens of others that might.
IMO, if you're going to use Linux to manage your music collection, the web app options are your best options, unless you really like mpd for some reason (which is valid because mpd is nice).
Funkwhale, Jellyfin, and the dozen Subsonic forks/clones are better than whatever desktop music managers exist, and they have cross-platform clients so you can access your collection on your FireTV or phone.
There's no real reason to run any of them on Linux, though, since they're just web apps. Jellyfin and some others are written in C# using .NET Core, so they'd probably be more stable on Windows, anyway.
Funkwhale, Jellyfin, and the dozen Subsonic forks/clones are better than whatever desktop music managers exist, and they have cross-platform clients so you can access your collection on your FireTV or phone.
There's no real reason to run any of them on Linux, though, since they're just web apps. Jellyfin and some others are written in C# using .NET Core, so they'd probably be more stable on Windows, anyway.
I don't want a web app to play my local music collection. What I want is:
1. here's the directory with my music files in it
2. shuffle play it.
That's it. This is not rocket science. I appear to be a unique snowflake, or somebody on the WMP team is just like me. Because that just causes every other music player to commit seppuku.
1. here's the directory with my music files in it
2. shuffle play it.
That's it. This is not rocket science. I appear to be a unique snowflake, or somebody on the WMP team is just like me. Because that just causes every other music player to commit seppuku.
VLC (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/) has always handled shuffling music without issue for me on Linux (and any other operating system). Have you tried VLC yet?
Also, there are other Linux media players that focus more specifically on music:
- Lollypop (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Lollypop): GTK-based
- Elisa (https://elisa.kde.org): Qt-based
- Vvave (https://vvave.kde.org): Qt-based, mobile-first
Also, there are other Linux media players that focus more specifically on music:
- Lollypop (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Lollypop): GTK-based
- Elisa (https://elisa.kde.org): Qt-based
- Vvave (https://vvave.kde.org): Qt-based, mobile-first
As I recall, it was VLC that would randomly crash and corrupt its index file. Maybe they fixed it since then, but I got tired of dealing with it. I just want to listen to my tunes while I work. I just can't believe that in 2022, all the streamers I bought except WMP are unable to do this.
You might like Quod Libet. It comes from the "spreadsheet" school of music library management.
mpg123 -C -Z *mp3 works for me.
This is sarcastic isnt it?
> do a little light word processing
For the vast majority of people, “a little light word processing” involves Microsoft Word, which instantly rules out Linux for the near computer illiterate.
For the vast majority of people, “a little light word processing” involves Microsoft Word, which instantly rules out Linux for the near computer illiterate.
For the near computer illiterate, the tiny subset of Word they use can be easily replaced by Libre Office or Google Spreadsheets.
Except of course people send .doc/.docx around and expect .doc/.docx to be sent around. Ask the average person to do some word processing and send the result to you, the chance of receiving something else is close to zero.
Speaking from experience dealing with near computer illiterates, including my mom.
Of course you can argue that it’s easy to learn to export to .doc/.docx.
Speaking from experience dealing with near computer illiterates, including my mom.
Of course you can argue that it’s easy to learn to export to .doc/.docx.
> Ask the average person to do some word processing and send the result to you, the chance of receiving something else is close to zero.
Sometimes even if you just ask for photo.
Sometimes even if you just ask for photo.
Or you can share your Google doc around and let them edit it without creating new files.
Problem with that is that either they have to have a Google account that they are willing to share with you or you have to make it so that anyone with the link can edit the doc, which is a big no no usually.
This is just not true. It’s a big change. LibreOffice has a lot of problems. It will never be anything close to Word.
It's my impression that for a near illiterate user, they won't be able to notice the differences unless they cannot open the document at all. Those differences crop up once you know enough Word features to notice the difference. Near illiterate users don't use almost any features of Word beyond the bare basics.
As an aside, before we moved entirely to Google docs in my job, I used LibreOffice to edit Word documents without major problems.
As an aside, before we moved entirely to Google docs in my job, I used LibreOffice to edit Word documents without major problems.
LibreOffice[1] handles light word processing pretty well. For more complex use cases involving Microsoft Office's "Office Open XML" formats, the proprietary but free-of-charge WPS Office for Linux[2] has great compatibility with Microsoft Office documents. It's available as a Flatpak[3] (which lets you turn off network access for the application if you don't trust it).[4]
[1] https://www.libreoffice.org
[2] https://www.wps.com/office/linux/
[3] https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.wps.Office
[4] https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal
[1] https://www.libreoffice.org
[2] https://www.wps.com/office/linux/
[3] https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.wps.Office
[4] https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal
ONLYOFFICE also has desktop editors, and good compatibility with docx while being open source.
https://www.onlyoffice.com/en/download-desktop.aspx
https://www.onlyoffice.com/en/download-desktop.aspx
My mum and dad both had zero issues just replacing the whole office stack with libre.
I, kinda know both, and by far prefer libre mostly because it's UI doesn't change every other year.
I, kinda know both, and by far prefer libre mostly because it's UI doesn't change every other year.
It's always the random stuff like Bluetooth working haphazardly, webcam not having the right driver, USB-C not working with your 4K monitor, or some other cutting edge feature with a dealbreaking kernel bug that gets you.
I have an XPS 7390 with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (developer edition, so it shipped with Linux) that I'm afraid to upgrade to 20.04 because of a known Bluetooth issue that would prevent me from taking any zoom calls. And the Bluetooth already barely works as is.
I do all my zoom calls on Windows. Have you tried WSL lately? It's increasingly reduced the necessity for a dedicated Linux machine.
I have an XPS 7390 with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (developer edition, so it shipped with Linux) that I'm afraid to upgrade to 20.04 because of a known Bluetooth issue that would prevent me from taking any zoom calls. And the Bluetooth already barely works as is.
I do all my zoom calls on Windows. Have you tried WSL lately? It's increasingly reduced the necessity for a dedicated Linux machine.
I have a Precision 7540 that came with 18.04. I wasn't too satisfied with the experience out of the box. However, after upgrading to 20.04, things have been nearly flawless. I installed the default 20.04 image without anything from Dell. You might try installing a more recent version of Ubuntu.
But how many people to multimedia desktop publishing or photoshop level editing of photos? I bet it's far less than the number of coders and people who just need a system for web browsing and light office suite usage and other "light" tasks. Linux is perfectly fine for those people. the only people I can think that aren't "almost there" are hardcore gamers and people who need professional software that only runs in windows or macos. Most things in business are in the cloud these days anyway.
Better not watch YouTube in the process though.
Getting hardware video decoding working is hit-and-miss to this day, even with forced flags, which naturally the computer illiterate don't have a clue.
Getting hardware video decoding working is hit-and-miss to this day, even with forced flags, which naturally the computer illiterate don't have a clue.
> But God help you if you need to do multimedia desktop publishing or do Photoshop-level editing of photos or (in my case) do anything requiring a Common Access Card.
Common Access Card's are one of my favorite examples of regulatory capture. You can use them on any OS you want, as long as it's Window's. The software to use them on Linux is free to anyone with military credentials and has no good way to test it works except by logging onto a military website.
Common Access Card's are one of my favorite examples of regulatory capture. You can use them on any OS you want, as long as it's Window's. The software to use them on Linux is free to anyone with military credentials and has no good way to test it works except by logging onto a military website.
They now work nearly flawlessly on macOS (this did not used to be the case).
I tried it for a year on Linux. Really, I truly tried. I threw out my MacBook and bought a Dell, put Ubuntu on it, and tried to integrate it into a DoD corporate network environment.
It was hell. And it was LONELY hell.
I tried it for a year on Linux. Really, I truly tried. I threw out my MacBook and bought a Dell, put Ubuntu on it, and tried to integrate it into a DoD corporate network environment.
It was hell. And it was LONELY hell.
Yeah my MIL had a 2012 Dell that my son uses at her house. It was running Windows 7, and took about 10 minutes to boot and the same to shut down.
I put Pop_OS on it. It has Firefox and Minecraft which are the only two things he cares about, and it runs so much more quickly. She wanted to throw it out but now it’s less junk in the pile.
I put Pop_OS on it. It has Firefox and Minecraft which are the only two things he cares about, and it runs so much more quickly. She wanted to throw it out but now it’s less junk in the pile.
It’s not ironic. It’s by design. Too many companies depend on closed-source ecosystems to siphon a profit from the average user, so they will never allow Linux to serve the masses while also allowing it to remain open and free.
To reverse this. Too many companies depend on open-source ecosystems to siphon a profit from the average dev by persuading them to work for free. Foss isn't free. It merely shifts the costs from users and corporations to that one guy in Nebraska.
Foss came about because RMS wanted to fix his printer, other academics wanted to share their code, devs didn't want to have to go through finance to buy software, and internet companies wanted to reduce their costs. The rest is just post hoc rationalization.
Foss came about because RMS wanted to fix his printer, other academics wanted to share their code, devs didn't want to have to go through finance to buy software, and internet companies wanted to reduce their costs. The rest is just post hoc rationalization.
> perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders
But what if their children all use FaceTime to communicate?
I think the illiterate place is already taken by Apple.
But what if their children all use FaceTime to communicate?
I think the illiterate place is already taken by Apple.
[deleted]
Isn't the "computer illiterate" the majority of people. Those other activities are working professionals in relatively niche fields.
Windows is for the people that knowingly pay to build their own digital prison with ads, where they will be beaten up by other prisoners.
No, it’s for the average computer user who uses it because megacorps like Microsoft and Adobe need to siphon a profit somehow. People don’t choose to use Windows. It’s a decision made by many of the same industry titans who have increasing influence on the direction of Linux as well. But Linux will never serve the masses because Microsoft and Adobe won’t allow it.
Linux already serves the masses pretty well.
I've found this to be true too. And unfortunately, those "in-between" users make up 99% of all users.
I'm the same age as OP's mother (69, will be 70 in July) and I've been using linux on the desktop since 1997 (24 years ago). Windows 97/98 was so flaky and crash-prone that I did a search for some other OS for my Compaq desktop after being connected to a neighborhood cable modem from Roadrunner. I read about Unix and the commercial trademark fights, and then came across info on Linux on Yahoo. It seemed promising and I found a Red Hat boxed version in my local CompUSA in Florida - I used a different commercial boot-loader and kept windows and Red Hat on my computer - it was great! Linux (in 1997) was a bit clunky and stiff but it was reliable and programs could run overnight or for days and not crash - unlike my experience in Windows.
I've kept some version of Linux in a dual-boot configuration ever since (Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, Ubuntu, Debian sid, and for 10 years Debian testing). I've never been able to find native Linux tax programs so have needed to boot into Windows each tax season - but this year I may use a cloud/online tax service, so after 24 years I may be able to nuke the windows partition and use it for additional ext4 storage. But I'll wait till after my taxes are filed this year to see how things go - I'm a bit conservative!
I've kept some version of Linux in a dual-boot configuration ever since (Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, Ubuntu, Debian sid, and for 10 years Debian testing). I've never been able to find native Linux tax programs so have needed to boot into Windows each tax season - but this year I may use a cloud/online tax service, so after 24 years I may be able to nuke the windows partition and use it for additional ext4 storage. But I'll wait till after my taxes are filed this year to see how things go - I'm a bit conservative!
Curious why you have still decided to go with a dual boot configuration for simple programs like tax software? Virtual machines are sufficiently effective nowadays.
The only reason I still have a dual boot is for video games now. But once I can afford a new graphics card, I'll keep my current one in the secondary PCIe slot, and pass it through to a virtual machine so it's basically native performance, and I will no longer dual boot.
The only reason I still have a dual boot is for video games now. But once I can afford a new graphics card, I'll keep my current one in the secondary PCIe slot, and pass it through to a virtual machine so it's basically native performance, and I will no longer dual boot.
TurboTax always worked perfectly in a Windows virtual machine. I used Microsoft's Internet Explorer VMs for this purpose, since they're free of charge. Microsoft currently offers downloads of Windows 7-10 VMs (intended for testing IE8-11 and Edge): https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
I've since switched to the web-based FreeTaxUSA (https://www.freetaxusa.com), and the operating system became irrelevant.
I've since switched to the web-based FreeTaxUSA (https://www.freetaxusa.com), and the operating system became irrelevant.
I worked on tech support back then and every time somebody had Windows 97 I knew it was going to be a tough call.
As if Linux problems were/are not tough to solve for average user. The difference is that most Linux users don't have the luxury of calling tech support to fix their issues, so they waste hours fixing something that shouldn't have existed in the first place. What would it be like to help someone update their Linux nvidia drivers over the phone...
The point you have missed is that there was no Windows 97. Anyone claiming to be running Windows 97 was most likely getting confused between Windows and MS Office, which did have a 97 version.
You're right, I didn't notice that! The tech support comparison between Linux and Windows is still valid though.
You mean compared to the abondended threads on Apple forums with major issues that never even get looked at? Or like the Microsoft support site where you can expect nothing but a canned response that does not even begin to tackle you actual issue?
Linux has its problems, support is none of them.
Linux has its problems, support is none of them.
I don't wanna start a flame war between Linux and non-Linux OSs, because Linux has already lost this war on the desktop front.
I've tried so much to make Linux suck less as a desktop OS, only to realize that it's all a waste of time. And for the ordinary person out there, firing up a terminal to do things is just not intuitive, and frankly, this cli thing belongs to the past when good gui and excellent monitors were not a thing.
I've tried so much to make Linux suck less as a desktop OS, only to realize that it's all a waste of time. And for the ordinary person out there, firing up a terminal to do things is just not intuitive, and frankly, this cli thing belongs to the past when good gui and excellent monitors were not a thing.
Many years ago, my mother (in her 60's) called me to tell me she had dumpster-dived an old laptop that she wanted to get working but it needed a reformat and she didn't have the Windows install media nor product key. What should she do?
I really didn't want to deal with walking her through this so in an attempt to brush her off I said: "I dunno, I guess you could install Ubuntu."
Didn't hear anything more about it for some time. Many months later I asked what happened to the laptop. She said she installed Ubuntu and it was working great.
Wait, what!?!
I really didn't want to deal with walking her through this so in an attempt to brush her off I said: "I dunno, I guess you could install Ubuntu."
Didn't hear anything more about it for some time. Many months later I asked what happened to the laptop. She said she installed Ubuntu and it was working great.
Wait, what!?!
Come on, she raised kentonv - have your seen your profile?
Imagining my own mother in this scenario is only possible in a sitcom episode
Linux is underrated for "webbooks"
It was wonderful on an eeePC 1000HA that I picked up in 2008. I used that netbook until 2014 or 2015 when I needed more RAM and IIRC I couldn't extend it beyond 2GB. I've been on ThinkPads as my personal laptop ever since but I do sometimes miss the smaller form factor that those netbooks had.
One of the best comments I’ve read on the internet in a while
this https://xkcd.com/456/ seems relevant…
Going through the Gentoo install process was a great drinking from the firehose experience in understanding how Linux worked.
And compiling your own kernel, that feeling when it actually booted and worked after your many attempts failing and having to remount the install image...quite amazing.
And compiling your own kernel, that feeling when it actually booted and worked after your many attempts failing and having to remount the install image...quite amazing.
some highschool senior hazed me as a freshman with a gentoo install but boy did I know linux after that. It's unfortunately caused me to have Opinions about systemd et al.
Started helping elderly people (all retired) in the early 2000's with their Windows PCs and as you guessed it, quickly became the computer guy as word spread. The service was "free" ... Payment was tea, some-carbs and a nice story if it organically came up.
After the first few service calls, my repair formula became:
If anyone's missed it, giving uneducated computer users admin/root perms by default is a bad idea. A little education goes a long way. Those windows-pcs remained rock solid/fast and matched any linux-pcs uptime. Watching those "pesky computer smart grand kids" being stopped dead in their tracks from mindlessly installing "games" was weirdly satisfying. You get that "ah ha! it was you feeling"
The typical use for those computers was word, excel, some-app-to-print-cards-for-grand-kids, aol/msn chat, media-player, and some simple games.
Am equally comfortable in windows||*nix. and harbor impure thoughts of linux as DOS and the desktop-environment as windows 2000 experience (WoL - Windows on Linux)
After the first few service calls, my repair formula became:
- backup data
- clean install windows + restore data
- create user with only User permissions
- create strong admin password shared to both I and them
- rename the admin user account to root :)
- enabled "run as" option in context menu
- setup that HP printer with just a print driver! lol
If anyone's missed it, giving uneducated computer users admin/root perms by default is a bad idea. A little education goes a long way. Those windows-pcs remained rock solid/fast and matched any linux-pcs uptime. Watching those "pesky computer smart grand kids" being stopped dead in their tracks from mindlessly installing "games" was weirdly satisfying. You get that "ah ha! it was you feeling"
The typical use for those computers was word, excel, some-app-to-print-cards-for-grand-kids, aol/msn chat, media-player, and some simple games.
Am equally comfortable in windows||*nix. and harbor impure thoughts of linux as DOS and the desktop-environment as windows 2000 experience (WoL - Windows on Linux)
W2K was also my fave version of Windows and my last one before I jumped ship to Linux.
Your repair formula is the same idea behind this post called Setting Up a Windows System to Protect Untechnical Users from Themselves:
https://noteaureus.org/post/tutorials/sysadmin/win4unsavvy/
Your repair formula is the same idea behind this post called Setting Up a Windows System to Protect Untechnical Users from Themselves:
https://noteaureus.org/post/tutorials/sysadmin/win4unsavvy/
Most of my support problems went away when I took away my parents admin privileges. It wasn't really them that was the problem, somehow my brother had managed to install two 3rd-party anti-virus programs on top of Windows Defender.
> my brother had managed to install two 3rd-party anti-virus programs on top of Windows Defender
Well, uhm, I knew for a fact that proprietary antivirus software for Linux* makes the system unstable, and two of them will crash the whole system. I know that Windows has ELAM APIs, but I'm still impressed on some of my relatives' computer on how their computer still runs despite having McAfee/Norton and Avast (for example).
* The kind that closely matches Windows' (aka with real-time scanning), not ClamAV scanning mail attachments.
Well, uhm, I knew for a fact that proprietary antivirus software for Linux* makes the system unstable, and two of them will crash the whole system. I know that Windows has ELAM APIs, but I'm still impressed on some of my relatives' computer on how their computer still runs despite having McAfee/Norton and Avast (for example).
* The kind that closely matches Windows' (aka with real-time scanning), not ClamAV scanning mail attachments.
Windows' reliability has improved significantly over the past 20 years so maybe this author needs to revisit.
I'm happy the author's mother is happy using GNU/Linux, but as someone that's used Windows, MacOS, and Linux, I don't think this article is giving Windows a fair shot. I'd rank all Linux distributions I've used relatively recently (Mint, Ubuntu, Rasbian) a distant last place when it comes to reliability and robustness. Even trivial things like upgrading minor versions of hugely popular distributions with out-of-box configurations is fraught with highly technical problems that need hours of internet searching. I'd say my experience might be an outlier, but it's consistent year after year.
I'm happy the author's mother is happy using GNU/Linux, but as someone that's used Windows, MacOS, and Linux, I don't think this article is giving Windows a fair shot. I'd rank all Linux distributions I've used relatively recently (Mint, Ubuntu, Rasbian) a distant last place when it comes to reliability and robustness. Even trivial things like upgrading minor versions of hugely popular distributions with out-of-box configurations is fraught with highly technical problems that need hours of internet searching. I'd say my experience might be an outlier, but it's consistent year after year.
I use windows 10 for a gaming PC that I turn on once every few weeks. Almost every single time, windows update and defender scan bring disk and CPU usage to their knees. I can’t game until it’s done, sometimes an hour and one or more reboots.
I’ve spent significant time trying to turn these off and allow me to run them manually. No luck. I think I was able to turn one of them off but not the other, don’t recall.
So it might be stable but it’s not usable unless you leave the device powered on 24/7.
I’ve spent significant time trying to turn these off and allow me to run them manually. No luck. I think I was able to turn one of them off but not the other, don’t recall.
So it might be stable but it’s not usable unless you leave the device powered on 24/7.
For a while I did the opposite to you. Ran Windows full time with the occasional boot into Linux. Every time I booted in Linux I'd find hundreds of packages were out of date and needed updating. Even a week of not booting in Linux can see a large number of packages needing updates especially on rolling distributions like Arch. Even Debian would have many packages needing updates despite their very conservative package update policies.. I think it just part and parcel of running a modern OS that there are regular updates. When you run it daily it's easy enough to do a few updates every day rather than do a lot of updates all at once. Not a Windows specific thing. Heck, even Apple is not immune. I have a MacBook for work I have not touched since my last day of work in mid December. I bet you When I open it again soon Mac os will nag me to install all the updates that have been released in the last few weeks.
The big difference is that in the Linux world, updates are in your control and the other way around. You're free to skip the updates, disable the notification, uninstall the thing that auto-fetches the package list, uninstall the package manager even. You can install a package that will silently install security-critical, or other updates for you. There's an upgrade that can even update the kernel itself while running. Simple updates will tell you to restart, but you don't have to - it's fine to use the machine even if it tells you you better restart.
Updates are frequent in both worlds because the high-speed always-on internet enables and requires it. But while Linux gives you options to deal with this, Microsoft decided to remotely manage your computer instead.
Updates are frequent in both worlds because the high-speed always-on internet enables and requires it. But while Linux gives you options to deal with this, Microsoft decided to remotely manage your computer instead.
Those packages generally don't "need" updating. I generally go months between updates on Linux systems with 100% uptime the entire time.
This problem cuts both ways. I have a Ubuntu VM I use occasionally and the last time I allowed it to update it took literal hours and died halfway through and I lacked the expertise to figure out what went wrong.
It still boots so I just ignore the update nags since I don't really use it for much that is important.
But the install is extremely vanilla and I'm a little shocked the update had issues.
It still boots so I just ignore the update nags since I don't really use it for much that is important.
But the install is extremely vanilla and I'm a little shocked the update had issues.
I'm primarily a windows user with a couple of linux-based servers. I just went through this very thing, except I ended up spending hours Googling after failed updates to ensure I could jump to latest LTS from two LTS versions behind.
Half way through I cursed myself for not having documented my set up well enough to just wipe and install clean latest LTS image so I wouldn't have to wade through various forum question/answers.
Half way through I cursed myself for not having documented my set up well enough to just wipe and install clean latest LTS image so I wouldn't have to wade through various forum question/answers.
That may be specific to apt or your hardware? Recently I updated a laptop I hadn't touched in a while with pacman and it went through in a few minutes (decompressed update size was around 11GB iirc). Download phase took longer than the install phase.
Are you using a mechanical disk? I can't even remember the last time windows updates or defender made a meaningful impact on my day to day usage. Even after a year of being off line, I anticipate the problem and just leave it sit for an hour and it's ready to reboot to install all the updates. It does indeed take numerous reboots often, as does MacOS, which is imperfect. Though I'll take automatic reboots over cryptic package compiler errors any day.
The problem with windows updates + windows defender seems to be that they interact synchronously and only use a single thread. Even on my work laptop with an NVMe drive updates bring a single core to 100% for several minutes and it's nowhere near saturating IO bandwidth or IOPS.
Yes mechanical disk because i could not get a ssd with 5 year warranty, although they are now available and i have not upgraded yet
I’m curious. I dual boot both windows and Linux and when I switch over to my windows vm I don’t have these issues. Then again I’m running decent hardware and my boot drive is on an nvme drive. Are you running windows on an HDD? I’ve noticed probably since Microsoft dropped all support for Windows 7 that Windows 10 runs horribly on an HDD, but if you swap the HDD for an SSD it’s like a whole new machine.
I get the same problem on a machine with an SSD. The only time I hear the fans is when Windows update is running.
> Windows' reliability has improved significantly over the past 20 years so maybe this author needs to revisit.
That is the one thing that drives me nuts about Linux advocacy. Windows is not the same thing as it was 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago, so stop criticizing it based upon outdated experiences. Heck, stop criticizing it altogether since Linux has many benefits of its own.
In my case, I like how it works perfectly on my two year old laptop and how its lighter footprint allows me to do more with less. I deeply appreciate how open source software makes my life easier since liberal licenses let distribution makers automate things that are difficult to automate with restrictive licenses (such as software installation and updates). It is wonderful that I can freely use software, especially for those one-off tasks that I would not do otherwise.
That is the one thing that drives me nuts about Linux advocacy. Windows is not the same thing as it was 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago, so stop criticizing it based upon outdated experiences. Heck, stop criticizing it altogether since Linux has many benefits of its own.
In my case, I like how it works perfectly on my two year old laptop and how its lighter footprint allows me to do more with less. I deeply appreciate how open source software makes my life easier since liberal licenses let distribution makers automate things that are difficult to automate with restrictive licenses (such as software installation and updates). It is wonderful that I can freely use software, especially for those one-off tasks that I would not do otherwise.
I find Windows bloated and user unfriendly. Lightweight? Sometimes it’s doing some bizzare shit that you have no control over and the system slows down to a crawl. Not to mention nagging pop-ups, restarts and worst timed ever forced updates. Windows 7 was quite okay if I remember correctly but 10 and 11 not so much. Nowadays I dual boot and find myself doing what I need to do in Windows then immediately boot Ununtu where it remains on 24/7.
I agree that Ubuntu and co. feel far less stable than they used to. I recently installed Ubuntu on a work laptop and had a ton of problems: interface locking up under heavy CPU load when compiling, insane amounts of RAM utilization, unexpected problems with software updates. My wife installed Ubuntu on a laptop a few months prior, and had a similar experience.
Recently I switched to NixOS and she to Arch, and it’s stunning how much better everything runs. All of my issues disappeared, and everything is super smooth now. Definitely neither NixOS nor Arch is for the non-tech-savvy, but it seems we may be in a time now where you’ve got to search out the more minimal distributions if you want an actually pleasant, stable Linux install. I have heard good things about Manjaro in that regard.
Recently I switched to NixOS and she to Arch, and it’s stunning how much better everything runs. All of my issues disappeared, and everything is super smooth now. Definitely neither NixOS nor Arch is for the non-tech-savvy, but it seems we may be in a time now where you’ve got to search out the more minimal distributions if you want an actually pleasant, stable Linux install. I have heard good things about Manjaro in that regard.
> I have heard good things about Manjaro in that regard.
Unfortunately, Manjaro's been... not the greatest.
A little while ago they forgot to upgrade their SSL certificate. Their suggested work around? Users setting the clock back.
Unfortunately, Manjaro's been... not the greatest.
A little while ago they forgot to upgrade their SSL certificate. Their suggested work around? Users setting the clock back.
I switched from Debian to Arch and I've been very impressed with the stability of Arch as well. I wonder how much that is due to Arch packaging versus perhaps the simple benefits of running more current Linux kernel directly and software directly from upstream.
I was primarily a macOS user prior to Windows becoming my daily driver for personal computing due to game availability, but I'm about to switch back. The other day I tried to set up a Zoom call with friends. Normally, I either Zoom from my work computer or use my phone to join, but this was an extended personal call, so I tried to set up my Dell laptop for Zoom for the first time in 3 years. Process:
1. Connect external webcam due to poor quality of laptop camera. Looks like a grainy 90s CRT TV.
2. Connect AirPods because speakers on laptop sound blown out.
3. Start Zoom. Zoom stops responding during test call and continually crashes every time I try to re-launch.
4. The Windows audio system itself crashes. I can't hear any audio or attempt to switch audio devices.
5. Restart computer. Now, the audio system is running, but Bluetooth isn't running, and I can't connect my AirPods.
6. Restart computer. Now, the audio system and bluetooth are both available, and Zoom starts! Hooray!
7. Have Zoom call.
Don't even get me started on printers. I've been dealing with this for years. It may just be a Dell driver thing, since my husband claims to have no problem with Windows stability with his PCs. I'm buying a Mac next week.
Nothing against Linux, either. I love it for software engineering. I just find Macs nice to use for their integration with my phone for personal use.
1. Connect external webcam due to poor quality of laptop camera. Looks like a grainy 90s CRT TV.
2. Connect AirPods because speakers on laptop sound blown out.
3. Start Zoom. Zoom stops responding during test call and continually crashes every time I try to re-launch.
4. The Windows audio system itself crashes. I can't hear any audio or attempt to switch audio devices.
5. Restart computer. Now, the audio system is running, but Bluetooth isn't running, and I can't connect my AirPods.
6. Restart computer. Now, the audio system and bluetooth are both available, and Zoom starts! Hooray!
7. Have Zoom call.
Don't even get me started on printers. I've been dealing with this for years. It may just be a Dell driver thing, since my husband claims to have no problem with Windows stability with his PCs. I'm buying a Mac next week.
Nothing against Linux, either. I love it for software engineering. I just find Macs nice to use for their integration with my phone for personal use.
I've never had apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade create any "highly technical problems"
Jumping major release version, yes there are always new things to learn. Windows is no different in that regard.
I agree that the Windows kernel is pretty stable. The driver and application landscape is another story altogether.
Jumping major release version, yes there are always new things to learn. Windows is no different in that regard.
I agree that the Windows kernel is pretty stable. The driver and application landscape is another story altogether.
> Windows' reliability has improved significantly over the past 20 years
The amount of telemetry installed and ran within Windows is obscene. That, alone, should drive people away.
The amount of telemetry installed and ran within Windows is obscene. That, alone, should drive people away.
> I originally advised my mother to migrate from Microsoft Windows on the desktop to Linux because before that I had to go to her apartment about once a year to make a clean install of Windows because Windows had suddenly broken and didn't work any longer, or because everything suddenly started to become really slow. The classical Windows problems.
Back in the Windows 95/98/Millenium days this was sooooo common and problematic that, as "the computer guy" in my friends and family circle, and because I hated Windows with a passion (I was already using Linux), I'd use the same ballistic solution: I'd perform a clean install, once. Then I'd use Ghost to image the install (Ghost from already way back before Norton bought it and it'd became Norton Ghost). Then I'd keep copies, on HDDs, of everybody in my circle's Windows clean install. Once every x months someone would call and I'd re-image the clean system.
What a piece of turd.
Back in the Windows 95/98/Millenium days this was sooooo common and problematic that, as "the computer guy" in my friends and family circle, and because I hated Windows with a passion (I was already using Linux), I'd use the same ballistic solution: I'd perform a clean install, once. Then I'd use Ghost to image the install (Ghost from already way back before Norton bought it and it'd became Norton Ghost). Then I'd keep copies, on HDDs, of everybody in my circle's Windows clean install. Once every x months someone would call and I'd re-image the clean system.
What a piece of turd.
Just the other day I found myself offering tech support for Windows 10. Bare in mind, I last really used Windows Vista (which was a curse). I managed to figure out how to solve all of their problems, install Chrome, convince them not to download McAffee, put VLC and GIMP on there, and away they go.
My review is this:
The UI change from XP/Vista is jarring, people are _still_ not used to it. I can understand wanting to consolidate the user experience across touch and non-touch devices, but at what expense? I _really_ suggest to offer a 'classic' mode, bring back a proper taskbar and startbar that your customer base recognises. It's not that hard, it's one program (explorer.exe).
The menus are ultra confusing. I type 'config' into the start search and open some configuration menu. I select the one that has 'power', opening a menu of the configuration (which is not clear). I then go through the power options, randomly find what looks like a hyperlink to adjust power configurations. This then opens a new window that looks different and allows me to adjust the configuration.
I then asked them how they wanted to set the configuration, and explained how the behaviour would be experienced. The average person for example does not know what the difference between sleep and hibernate are, but they will certainly know when their battery is drained. The person looked at what I was doing and said "I would never have figured this out".
It's like Microsoft Windows is still stuck somewhere between XP (probably older) and Windows 10. A lot of the tools in the background look like legacy tools (and have a legacy UI). The experience is simply broken. How hard would it have been to write a wrapper library around their new UI layout and compile the old tools against it?
And then don't get me started on user accounts, privacy settings, a virus scanner that is essentially broken unless you are constantly networked, an OS that is essentially baked into all UEFI firmware - it's just insane. It's not even obvious how to fix it at this point. I'm not sure there is even meaningful levels of kernel abstraction that can be built upon.
My review is this:
The UI change from XP/Vista is jarring, people are _still_ not used to it. I can understand wanting to consolidate the user experience across touch and non-touch devices, but at what expense? I _really_ suggest to offer a 'classic' mode, bring back a proper taskbar and startbar that your customer base recognises. It's not that hard, it's one program (explorer.exe).
The menus are ultra confusing. I type 'config' into the start search and open some configuration menu. I select the one that has 'power', opening a menu of the configuration (which is not clear). I then go through the power options, randomly find what looks like a hyperlink to adjust power configurations. This then opens a new window that looks different and allows me to adjust the configuration.
I then asked them how they wanted to set the configuration, and explained how the behaviour would be experienced. The average person for example does not know what the difference between sleep and hibernate are, but they will certainly know when their battery is drained. The person looked at what I was doing and said "I would never have figured this out".
It's like Microsoft Windows is still stuck somewhere between XP (probably older) and Windows 10. A lot of the tools in the background look like legacy tools (and have a legacy UI). The experience is simply broken. How hard would it have been to write a wrapper library around their new UI layout and compile the old tools against it?
And then don't get me started on user accounts, privacy settings, a virus scanner that is essentially broken unless you are constantly networked, an OS that is essentially baked into all UEFI firmware - it's just insane. It's not even obvious how to fix it at this point. I'm not sure there is even meaningful levels of kernel abstraction that can be built upon.
Yeah I finally abandoned Windows for good after Windows 7. Up until then it still basically was familiar (except for the earlier change in Office to the Ribbon interface, which I still find unfathomable). Windows 10 was just a bridge too far. It was not worth the effort for something I wasn't using much anyway.
> What we need is for some of the big game developing companies to release some of their biggest names on Linux only, with absolutely no support for Windows. This will help break the monopoly and make gamers want to migrate to Linux for PC gaming.
And why would they do that? Make a solid business case for it.
And why would they do that? Make a solid business case for it.
Going hypothetical for a moment, if Windows finally pulls the trigger on the app store only model or get too close to doing it, I could see Valve pulling out one of their big name series and going Linux only with it.
Pretty much the only situation I see this happening in, aside from some company deciding they just want to try breaking Windows down, come hell or high water.
Pretty much the only situation I see this happening in, aside from some company deciding they just want to try breaking Windows down, come hell or high water.
Not everything is about business. Steam's heavy investment in various SteamOSes, Proton and co could be defended from a business perspective ( they don't want to be fully reliant on Microsoft's whims regarding an app store), but it's also quite easy to argue against such an operation on purely business terms - it's a monumental undertaking with an unclear chance of success. However, it's absolutely a wonderful thing to do for everyone, and everyone benefits but Microsoft.
I don't know about no support but there is probably some benefit to weakening Microsoft's stranglehold on this market. Spolsky wrote an interesting article on this:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
Steam Deck exclusives?
Valve is going to pull the gaming industry, kicking and screaming, towards Linux. At the end of the day they are here for profits but, unlike almost everyone else, they understand that doing good by your customers is a great way to do that.
Are publishers seriously going to turn down the best of consoles (the Switch) combined with PC? Exclusives aren't even needed. While I broadly agree with the article, I consider building a bridge to Linux (Proton) pure egoistic altruism.
Are publishers seriously going to turn down the best of consoles (the Switch) combined with PC? Exclusives aren't even needed. While I broadly agree with the article, I consider building a bridge to Linux (Proton) pure egoistic altruism.
Have you seen the actual market share? Linux is a fraction of a percentage point.
There is no way this is happening anytime ever since quake iii drummed up zero support.
A hardware platform like the steam deck is the only hope. And I wonder how many will be running windows within a year of launch
There is no way this is happening anytime ever since quake iii drummed up zero support.
A hardware platform like the steam deck is the only hope. And I wonder how many will be running windows within a year of launch
It’ll always be an option to install Windows, but Valve has been trying to get away from Windows dominance for years now.
SteamDeck is a Trojan horse in disguise, designed to get their gaming platform off the dominance of Windows.
SteamDeck is a Trojan horse in disguise, designed to get their gaming platform off the dominance of Windows.
It might be Trojan horse but it is defensive one - if Microsoft makes Windows iOS/Android/console-style walled garden and starts extracting 30 % from every game, Valve needs a way out.
My mom, now 87, used Linux as her daily driver from 2010 to 2019. The only reason she changed is because I moved to a different country in 2016 and my cousin set her up with a newer PC running Windows and manages it as part of her corporate fleet - she’s a total Windows fangirl. She also can get to my moms house about 100 times faster than me.
my grandmother started using a computer when she was 72.
i helped her buy it and put OS/2 on it with emacs and LaTeX.
some time after i left, when she had trouble a helpful friend replaced OS/2 with a pirated copy of windows.
i then put linux on it and she continued to use that until she passed away almost 20 years later.
it helped that i was nearby so i could help her and she could learn from watching me.
i had set up a gui with shortcuts for her commands but eventually she started using the commandline as she saw me do it.
i created a LaTeX template for the reports and letters she wanted to write and a spreadsheet with a script to convert it to a LaTeX table.
beyond that she liked to play a few of the games that were available at the time.
i helped her buy it and put OS/2 on it with emacs and LaTeX.
some time after i left, when she had trouble a helpful friend replaced OS/2 with a pirated copy of windows.
i then put linux on it and she continued to use that until she passed away almost 20 years later.
it helped that i was nearby so i could help her and she could learn from watching me.
i had set up a gui with shortcuts for her commands but eventually she started using the commandline as she saw me do it.
i created a LaTeX template for the reports and letters she wanted to write and a spreadsheet with a script to convert it to a LaTeX table.
beyond that she liked to play a few of the games that were available at the time.
I got my grand-father (who is an early-adopter type of person but not tech savy) on Linux (latest LTS Ubuntu) about three years ago.
Telling him he won't have to bother about antivirus and making sure it had applications and drivers for all his uses (chess, emails, internet navigation, picture and video) was the only things needed.
So far he is really happy it and loves that you can get a high contrast user interface with large font size out of the box.
Telling him he won't have to bother about antivirus and making sure it had applications and drivers for all his uses (chess, emails, internet navigation, picture and video) was the only things needed.
So far he is really happy it and loves that you can get a high contrast user interface with large font size out of the box.
As an article this starts well but descends into the usual denial of commercial reality you see from Linux enthusiasts. The reason why you can get your 70 year old mother, or my 75 year old father in law to use Linux is because for their use case it is good enough and the best operating system is the one that a) meets your needs and b) you are used to. For me that is Windows. It could be macOS (except for games), but it isn't, because I'm not used to it so find it frustrating. It can't be Linux because I do a lot of intensive image manipulation, digital sculpting and CAD and frankly gimp et. al are terrible compared to photoshop, Zbrush is a none starter (yes Blender is good, I develop addons for it, no it's not a replacement for zbrush), fusion360, catia etc. not a chance to get them working properly and the open source alternatives are like going back to the 90s.
The idea that major games companies should spend 10s or 100s of millions to develop games just for Linux isn't commercially viable. I mean why would They do this? They don't have any kind of emotional investment in Foss which is the only real motivator. They would go broke AND they would get attacked by every other Linux user because the game wasn't free (as in beer and as in speech).
The idea that major games companies should spend 10s or 100s of millions to develop games just for Linux isn't commercially viable. I mean why would They do this? They don't have any kind of emotional investment in Foss which is the only real motivator. They would go broke AND they would get attacked by every other Linux user because the game wasn't free (as in beer and as in speech).
You seem to be blaming linux users for vendors' lack of interest in launching the software you want for the linux platform. It's not their fault. Nobody really expects Adobe or Epic to launch their products just on linux, but in today's age when a game gets shipped to multiple platforms and Photoshop has OSX and Windows versions, what's one more platform to add to the build matrix?
Granted linux is not exactly a single uniform platform, the market is small, and the users are the most vocal about submitting issues. However Valve proved it can be done, and other vendors are just hiding their laziness with "market share" excuses.
And to your last point, to my knowledge nobody is really up in arms against Valve because "closed source" because if you want to support a open source OS you inadvertently contribute to the ecosystem one way or another, and their work with Proton and flatpak and Steam OS is more than worth it.
Edit: I guess I should have read TFA before replying to you, but as a linux user of almost 20 years I disagree with some of the fringe opinions in it, as you can tell from what I wrote. :D
Granted linux is not exactly a single uniform platform, the market is small, and the users are the most vocal about submitting issues. However Valve proved it can be done, and other vendors are just hiding their laziness with "market share" excuses.
And to your last point, to my knowledge nobody is really up in arms against Valve because "closed source" because if you want to support a open source OS you inadvertently contribute to the ecosystem one way or another, and their work with Proton and flatpak and Steam OS is more than worth it.
Edit: I guess I should have read TFA before replying to you, but as a linux user of almost 20 years I disagree with some of the fringe opinions in it, as you can tell from what I wrote. :D
Relatively few people do intensive image manipulation requiring photoshop. If an iPad or Chromebook is good enough (and for many people, it is) then a Linux distro with a sensible desktop certainly is.
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I am 71 and I have been using Linux-only laptops for 14 years. Pre-Linux days were the dark ages of my computing experience. I wasted so much of my life with Windows. I used to dread those untimely updates that used to ruin my apps and the data. I never seemed to have enough RAM or hard disk or enough processing power. A re-boot took forever. Regular fresh installation was a must. MacBook was a great improvement. But the flexibility and openness of Linux beat the pants off those. An ordinary cheap laptop with a fresh installation of Ubuntu flies like a bird. I never need to worry about big RAM or huge disk etc. I have created my own help files and ways of accessing all options and flags of commands and their examples with just a few clicks and key presses. I love learning new tips and tricks every day even though I know I will never master it fully. I don't waste time encouraging people to switch over to Linux. It is astonishing how much fear there is among even the young people to try a new operating system.
A good case could be made for using Windows 7. That was pretty good. Microsoft had finally figured out how to make their OS work reliably. (The two key tricks: the Static Driver Verifier to do proof of not breaking the kernel for kernel drivers, and a classifier for crash dumps which routed all the crash reports for similar problems to the same developer.)
But since then, it's been all downhill. Ads on the desktop? Come on.
But since then, it's been all downhill. Ads on the desktop? Come on.
On YouTube some years ago, there was a kid in Australia who made a series of videos where his Mum would try a different OS in each episode. IIRC, most were Linux distributions.
With respect to computers, people can learn to use anything. With computers, most people exercise little choice. Most do not care about computers or software (i.e., they are not like you, dearest HN reader). These things are just a means to an end. They learn what they are forced to learn to do what they have to do. I once read the majority of "smartphone" owners do not even install any "apps". This sort of indifference is not something the "tech" crowd will ever acknowledge, but that does not make it less real. There is life outside of "tech" hype, lots of it.
In the 1980's I watched many people who cared nothing for computers (i.e., not people like you, HN reader) use text-only programs to get things done. The lack of obsessively manipulative "UI" did not stop anyone from using computers back then.^1 Unlike today, not everyone had to use computers. Those that did used what they were forced to use.
1. I reckon it wouldn't stop them today either, if that was what they were forced to use. But we will never know. For a fun example of how things might have turned out differently, check out this Netflix series from 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniac_(miniseries)
With respect to computers, people can learn to use anything. With computers, most people exercise little choice. Most do not care about computers or software (i.e., they are not like you, dearest HN reader). These things are just a means to an end. They learn what they are forced to learn to do what they have to do. I once read the majority of "smartphone" owners do not even install any "apps". This sort of indifference is not something the "tech" crowd will ever acknowledge, but that does not make it less real. There is life outside of "tech" hype, lots of it.
In the 1980's I watched many people who cared nothing for computers (i.e., not people like you, HN reader) use text-only programs to get things done. The lack of obsessively manipulative "UI" did not stop anyone from using computers back then.^1 Unlike today, not everyone had to use computers. Those that did used what they were forced to use.
1. I reckon it wouldn't stop them today either, if that was what they were forced to use. But we will never know. For a fun example of how things might have turned out differently, check out this Netflix series from 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniac_(miniseries)
> On YouTube some years ago, there was a kid in Australia who made a series of videos where his Mum would try a different OS in each episode. IIRC, most were Linux distributions.
Yeah, I quite liked those videos. This is the channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRjXNz9JNSuE8n-Oej4Rflw
Yeah, I quite liked those videos. This is the channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRjXNz9JNSuE8n-Oej4Rflw
> However, you're really not supposed to run Windows games on Linux. Just like you're not supposed to run PlayStation games on Windows. Windows games and Windows applications are meant to be run on Windows, not on Linux.
I couldn't disagree with this more! Operating systems are designed to run programs and an OS designed to run more programs is better than one that runs less.
Windows 11 can run Linux, Android, and Windows apps and is better for it. The ultimate OS, in my mind, should be able to run everything.
I couldn't disagree with this more! Operating systems are designed to run programs and an OS designed to run more programs is better than one that runs less.
Windows 11 can run Linux, Android, and Windows apps and is better for it. The ultimate OS, in my mind, should be able to run everything.
Devil's advocate (I use Ubuntu at home).
My parents 20 years ago had a windows xp lenovo notebook, never had to reinstall, battery just stopped working after 10 years, IIRC.
My brother had a windows 8 notebook, never had to reinstall, 1 year and half ago the hdd failed, he bought a new notebook, I kept the old one with a cheap ssd as a spare.
In 2010 I bought an acer 4810tg (450€, really cheap) with windows 7. Over time I upgraded RAM and replaced hdd with ssd using dd to copy data from old hdd to new ssd, so no reinstall was done. I stopped using it because it became too slow, even for a "normal" linux distro with a DE (I don't have time anymore to play around with distros).
I really-really tried to on-board Linux on the desktop, but it's not there quality-wise. On my work setup, I have 2 monitors connected to 2 computers (to fully isolate work-connected / monitored PC and personal stuff), using a software KVM (Barrier) to share the mouse / keyboard / clipboard.
I went through half a dozen distros and none actually worked ok with my PC (an older Asus laptop) - either the external monitor wasn't seen, the touchpad kept registering ghost movements with the lid closed, the KVM lagged (mouse movements or -worse- virtual keys stuck pressed), or the main monitor switched to the (closed lid) built-in randomly. Installed Windows 10 and everything just worked flawlessly :(.
All this on a PC were I literally only needed / used a browser, didn't even venture into the native programs space.
That said, I am running Linux on a home server (Docker everything) and a bunch of Raspberry Pis and it works awesomely, but they're all headless (just managed remotely through SSH / Portainer / etc).
I don't doubt there are some setups where Linux on the Desktop works, but so far it never did for my needs.
I went through half a dozen distros and none actually worked ok with my PC (an older Asus laptop) - either the external monitor wasn't seen, the touchpad kept registering ghost movements with the lid closed, the KVM lagged (mouse movements or -worse- virtual keys stuck pressed), or the main monitor switched to the (closed lid) built-in randomly. Installed Windows 10 and everything just worked flawlessly :(.
All this on a PC were I literally only needed / used a browser, didn't even venture into the native programs space.
That said, I am running Linux on a home server (Docker everything) and a bunch of Raspberry Pis and it works awesomely, but they're all headless (just managed remotely through SSH / Portainer / etc).
I don't doubt there are some setups where Linux on the Desktop works, but so far it never did for my needs.
So basically, "I bought hardware designed to work with Win10, the suppliers of which decided only to make it work with Win10, and it worked better with Win10"?
Weird that no one starts with "I bought hardware designed for the Linux distro I installed" and nothing worked.
It's like "I bought flip flops and live somewhere really muddy, flip-flops are obviously not ready for walking in yet; I'll stick with welly-boots". But if you'd bought a house on the beach to start with then the flip-flops would be better and you be complaining that welly-boots are bad!?!1one
Weird that no one starts with "I bought hardware designed for the Linux distro I installed" and nothing worked.
It's like "I bought flip flops and live somewhere really muddy, flip-flops are obviously not ready for walking in yet; I'll stick with welly-boots". But if you'd bought a house on the beach to start with then the flip-flops would be better and you be complaining that welly-boots are bad!?!1one
I mean, that's literally Linux's whole spiel: "works great on older hardware", isn't it?
I wasn't in the market for a new computer, just wanted to use an old one I had lying around (from the Windows 8 era BTW).
I wasn't in the market for a new computer, just wanted to use an old one I had lying around (from the Windows 8 era BTW).
That's hardly linux's "whole spiel" and like any OS, you need to check that your hardware is compatible.
I use the exact setup you describe and have no issues.
I recently replaced an older Acer laptop with a newer Lenovo but otherwise you're describing a system that's worked for me for literally years, down to the software KVM (I'm using Synergy rather than Barrier).
I recently replaced an older Acer laptop with a newer Lenovo but otherwise you're describing a system that's worked for me for literally years, down to the software KVM (I'm using Synergy rather than Barrier).
This guy has me beat by a few years... I think I had my parents on linux somewhere in the mid-2000's.
It was gnome 2 and seamonkey back then and it is mate & firefox right now. I wish seamonkey/netscape suite (web/email) could have stuck around, but the banners of "unsupported browsers" from banks et al. was the tipping point.
I really feel for those who don't have someone like me to support them... if I wasn't around, my mom would be certainly paying someone for either windows or macs. It kinda makes me sad, but that's the reality.
It was gnome 2 and seamonkey back then and it is mate & firefox right now. I wish seamonkey/netscape suite (web/email) could have stuck around, but the banners of "unsupported browsers" from banks et al. was the tipping point.
I really feel for those who don't have someone like me to support them... if I wasn't around, my mom would be certainly paying someone for either windows or macs. It kinda makes me sad, but that's the reality.
I find _myself_ confused by Windows, when I have to support it - I'm surprised Microsoft expects anyone without support chops to understand some of the questions they're asking.
Several of my family members are in the same boat as the author's: they run Linux in spite of having low computer aptitude. I do typically have to help them with, say, installing software, but so much of their experience happens in a Web browser that it's a rarity (the last install I helped with was Skype, the web app not being terribly great). Given that they're also somewhat change-averse, the Linux desktop has been pretty great for them: the UI metaphor of Cinnamon is more or less the same as Windows XP's or Windows 7's, which is what they were used to, and it doesn't seem at risk of changing anytime soon.
Several of my family members are in the same boat as the author's: they run Linux in spite of having low computer aptitude. I do typically have to help them with, say, installing software, but so much of their experience happens in a Web browser that it's a rarity (the last install I helped with was Skype, the web app not being terribly great). Given that they're also somewhat change-averse, the Linux desktop has been pretty great for them: the UI metaphor of Cinnamon is more or less the same as Windows XP's or Windows 7's, which is what they were used to, and it doesn't seem at risk of changing anytime soon.
> Proton and Wine are helping prolong the Microsoft monopoly on PC gaming! What we need is for some of the big game developing companies to release some of their biggest names on Linux only, with absolutely no support for Windows.
Not going to happen unless the community comes up with something better than DirectX and port it everywhere.
Not going to happen unless the community comes up with something better than DirectX and port it everywhere.
OpenGL existed before DirectX. Now we also have Vulkan. I'm not a fan but there are also some DXn available on Linux.
The problem is nothing more than a lack of will on game developers part to move the needle.
The problem is nothing more than a lack of will on game developers part to move the needle.
You're proposing that developers should use OpenGL instead of DirectX 11/12?
Unfortunately, there's no comparison. DirectX is much, much nicer to work with. As for Vulkan, it's... okay, in the sense that it lets you write fast code, but unless you're building a major engine it's a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, there's no comparison. DirectX is much, much nicer to work with. As for Vulkan, it's... okay, in the sense that it lets you write fast code, but unless you're building a major engine it's a terrible idea.
OpenGL is NOT a replacement or alternative for DirectX. Nor is Vulkan a replacement for DX12. DirectX is, quite simply, the 3D API with the best design, support, and tooling. Nothing else comes anywhere close. And because all the professional gamedev workflows are organized around DirectX, it becomes a GIMP vs. Photoshop situation.
Developing for anything but Windows and DirectX adds cost and friction, and even if you use an engine that abstracts all that "away" you still have to deal with testing and support costs for niche platforms that do not pay for their costs in revenue.
So no, if you want to play PC games, it's Windows or gtfo.
Developing for anything but Windows and DirectX adds cost and friction, and even if you use an engine that abstracts all that "away" you still have to deal with testing and support costs for niche platforms that do not pay for their costs in revenue.
So no, if you want to play PC games, it's Windows or gtfo.
> So no, if you want to play PC games, it's Windows or gtfo.
I think you mean, if you want to develop PC games.
So far the following have worked out of the box on Linux, via Steam's Proton compatibility layer:
Supposedly these actually run better, since a fair few of them are written using OpenGL, more than you would expect, actually.
I think you mean, if you want to develop PC games.
So far the following have worked out of the box on Linux, via Steam's Proton compatibility layer:
Elite Dangerous
Halo MCC
MSGV
Sable
Dark Souls Remastered
Cloudpunk
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut
Psychonauts (Windows version works better than Linux
Native version -- Had to switch to Proton
5.13-6 to remove a log item appearing on
the screen for whatever reason, but it was
just selecting a different menu item)
Journey
The Witcher 2
The Witcher 3
Doom [2016] (I had to tinker with it to get it to have
a decent framerate, but it was basically
just switching an option to Vulkan and
adding an option or two in the little box
that I copied and pasted from
https://protondb.com/ )
Risk of Rain 2
Sekiro
Silicon Dreams
Mirror's Edge
Worms: Armageddon
Supposedly these actually run better, since a fair few of them are written using OpenGL, more than you would expect, actually.
I honestly don't care why I can run Steam on Linux and download games that work fine.
I tried to move my parents to Ubuntu, but it ultimately caused them to call me more often than when they had Windows. Especially with things related to printing.
In the end I bought them a macbook air. I've had 1 call in 5 years due to internet not working and it turned out the ISP had an outage.
In the end I bought them a macbook air. I've had 1 call in 5 years due to internet not working and it turned out the ISP had an outage.
This is the one use case I -semi- didn't believe. I'm a Linux diehard of two decades, and always get confused when people claim they have to compile drivers or things not working. Maybe I've been fortunate. BUT....printing in Linux is still a nightmare for most brands I've used. Currently using a Canon laser that I love the quality of, but want to sledgehammer it every time I need to print something.
I worked with a Linux desktop for years. Changed jobs and moved to Windows. The huge advantage is Microsoft office finally works for me. I don't have issue with documents and spreadsheets that people send. Outlook has a search that works much better than Thunderbird. With windows subsystem for Linux everything works well, with one exception docker desktop. That seems to be a steaming pile on Windows. Every few months the networking falls over and a reinstall of docker desktop is required.
>Outlook has a search that works much better than Thunderbird. //
I can never find anything with Outlook search, but Thunderbird gets me what I want straight away. Maybe we're holding it wrong?
I can never find anything with Outlook search, but Thunderbird gets me what I want straight away. Maybe we're holding it wrong?
There's a Thunderbird add-on called "Expression Search - NG" that provides advanced search options:
- Add-on: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/expre...
- Source: https://github.com/opto/expression-search-NG
It's a nice substitute for Outlook's Advanced Find feature, but without the GUI. (Despite the description, it is working on Thunderbird 91.)
- Add-on: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/expre...
- Source: https://github.com/opto/expression-search-NG
It's a nice substitute for Outlook's Advanced Find feature, but without the GUI. (Despite the description, it is working on Thunderbird 91.)
Honestly I love outlook search, but it definitely works better if the items you are searching for are in a exchange mailbox. Anything outside of exchange is usually hit or miss.
> Not only is it much less likely you will ever get a virus on your computer, but you will also enjoy better performance, [...]
When I (rarely, just to game) boot into Windows, I'm always surprised to see how much CPU it eats up just... sitting there. Being Windows I guess? I don't think my system is totally virus riddled or anything, and I'm sure Windows is doing something useful in the background, but jeez. Mine appears to be completely allergic to idle.
When I (rarely, just to game) boot into Windows, I'm always surprised to see how much CPU it eats up just... sitting there. Being Windows I guess? I don't think my system is totally virus riddled or anything, and I'm sure Windows is doing something useful in the background, but jeez. Mine appears to be completely allergic to idle.
This is what I don't get - what is it doing? What is possibly more important than responding to user input as fast as possible? Computers serve us as a tool, why should humans have to wait on them as if they're asking another busy human for help?
It is scanning for viruses (windows defender), and downloading and applying updates. It sucks. The only solution I’ve found is to leave the device on 24/7 so all this nonsense happens when I’m not using it.
I set up a linux desktop for my mom and at some point she told me "I have a virus, I tried to fix it but it didn't work".
Me: How do you know you have a virus?
Her: It told me
Me: Ummmmmm
I go look. She'd get a "fix your virus" popup and download whatever sketchy .exe file, but it couldn't launch. I think I added a ad blocker at some point, but not having the ability to launch whatever random exe she inadvertently download was a huge win for me.
Me: How do you know you have a virus?
Her: It told me
Me: Ummmmmm
I go look. She'd get a "fix your virus" popup and download whatever sketchy .exe file, but it couldn't launch. I think I added a ad blocker at some point, but not having the ability to launch whatever random exe she inadvertently download was a huge win for me.
Same story here. My mom (in her 90s) has been using Linux since about 1997 or 1998.
And here's the beauty: The interface is exactly the same today as it was then!
This would be impossible to achieve with any commercial system where they break and change the UI and UX all the time.
The setup is build on fvwm, mutt, emacs. All of them heavily customized to be minimal and simple. She's very non-technical, so the goal was to have a kiosk-like experience where everything is straightforward. But the most important criteria was stability, so once she memorized how to do something, it will never change.
The browser is of course the most problematic one as that keeps changing, to endless frustration. I try to lock into extended support releases and keep them as long as possible but that's been the only difficult part.
And here's the beauty: The interface is exactly the same today as it was then!
This would be impossible to achieve with any commercial system where they break and change the UI and UX all the time.
The setup is build on fvwm, mutt, emacs. All of them heavily customized to be minimal and simple. She's very non-technical, so the goal was to have a kiosk-like experience where everything is straightforward. But the most important criteria was stability, so once she memorized how to do something, it will never change.
The browser is of course the most problematic one as that keeps changing, to endless frustration. I try to lock into extended support releases and keep them as long as possible but that's been the only difficult part.
My GF, who is a realtor (and not what I'd call a power user), has been using Linux and LibreOffice for nearly a decade and it's been nothing but great.
Before, I'd have to go to her office at least a couple of times a month to deal with Windows issues (I don't recall what but I was there frequently).
Now? Never. Like twice a year I have to go help her.
I've been a Linux user primarily for 15 or 18 years and even made my own distro at one point (it was for fun and not that great). I'm not sure she would have had the same ease of use 15 years ago but now? Many Linux distros are very usable for non power users and much more stable and trouble free then Windows (which to be fair may have changed as well, I haven't used Windows in a long time).
Before, I'd have to go to her office at least a couple of times a month to deal with Windows issues (I don't recall what but I was there frequently).
Now? Never. Like twice a year I have to go help her.
I've been a Linux user primarily for 15 or 18 years and even made my own distro at one point (it was for fun and not that great). I'm not sure she would have had the same ease of use 15 years ago but now? Many Linux distros are very usable for non power users and much more stable and trouble free then Windows (which to be fair may have changed as well, I haven't used Windows in a long time).
My mother has been using Linux exclusively since I was in high school. Occasionally I have to head over to her place to deal with some weird issue but it has become less and less common over time, to the point where I am almost surprised when problems arise.
Of course she has very straightforward needs. If Firefox and VLC work she has 95% of her needs met, and the remaining 5% are related to her printer which has not been a problem for a long time now. For some people who need specific Windows software this is probably much harder, and likewise for anyone who purchase some obscure hardware that only has Windows drivers.
Of course she has very straightforward needs. If Firefox and VLC work she has 95% of her needs met, and the remaining 5% are related to her printer which has not been a problem for a long time now. For some people who need specific Windows software this is probably much harder, and likewise for anyone who purchase some obscure hardware that only has Windows drivers.
Same with my nontechnical wife and daughter: they run Ubuntu.
My wife mainly uses the browser, LibreOffice, and Google Docs+Sheets. Same with my daughter, who also plays Steam games and does a bit of relatively simple Python programming.
My wife mainly uses the browser, LibreOffice, and Google Docs+Sheets. Same with my daughter, who also plays Steam games and does a bit of relatively simple Python programming.
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This post hit close to home. About 15 years ago, Ubuntu got decent enough to replace Windows on my parents PC. They needed to access websites and receive and send email, something Linux could definitely provide. No more worrying about malware or other Windows demons. Fast forward 15 years and their PC has been fully replaced by iPads with keyboard cases and iPhones. Yes, they are in a walled-garden curated by Apple but for the technical illiterate this is actually a good thing because the experience is seamless across devices. I’ve downloaded apps for all of their financial services and they've learned to never log in to a website when dealing with their banks which minimizes the risk of phishing. They use iOS’s native password manager to create unique passwords for all there sites, minimize password reuse risks. But most importantly, they know how to keep their devices up to date with the latest OS release without me having to do a monthly patch for them. Strongly recommend exploring this setup if you struggle with supporting your parents’ tech the way I did. Life is much better now.
These sort of crusaders will never quit. Reality is that you can't beat a Macbook Air for most people on battery life, performance etc. And I say that as someone that loves his Windows and Samsung Notebook 9 Pen with that lovely Wacom EMR S-Pen. Have no intention of buying a Mac, but it's laughable to compare an M1 Macbook to what you're going to get out of a Linux laptop. Same goes for this 2-in-1's smooth operating Wacom EMR touchscreen on the Windows side.
I like Linux on the server, it is a server OS primarily after all, then adapted for other uses. And my personal use of it is usually in Android form. To each their own, but in no world do I see eye to eye with people who think Linux-all-the-things makes sense. As someone whose choices include a Linux VPS, iPhone, Windows desktop, Windows laptop, Android set-top boxes, I'll always be switching up my gear to whatever I consider to be best-of-breed for the task at hand. As always, my opinion subject to change upon receiving new information. I don't recommend going on crusades.
I like Linux on the server, it is a server OS primarily after all, then adapted for other uses. And my personal use of it is usually in Android form. To each their own, but in no world do I see eye to eye with people who think Linux-all-the-things makes sense. As someone whose choices include a Linux VPS, iPhone, Windows desktop, Windows laptop, Android set-top boxes, I'll always be switching up my gear to whatever I consider to be best-of-breed for the task at hand. As always, my opinion subject to change upon receiving new information. I don't recommend going on crusades.
Until recently I worked support in a large design firm. I love (/hate) Macs, but the firm like most places was mostly Windows. The graphic designers of course got Macs, and were mostly Mac-native and loved it. But I have so many stories of 40+ manager-level people pulling strings to get a Macbook because it's "hip", who were like fish out of water on MacOS. Strangely no amount of time spent with it seemed to get the core concepts across, they just came up with groan-inducing workarounds that were good enough for them. A couple decades spent on Windows seems to really poison some people against MacOS for good.
>>> A couple decades spent on Windows seems to really poison some people against MacOS for good.
I spent several years with 68k/PPC Mac, and was recently given an older MacBook with Snow Leopard. Both of those systems were equally touted as being intuitive. I learned the old Mac by having friends who showed me the ropes, and reading manuals. The newer Mac was completely opaque to me.
A potential issue is that the Mac is touted as "intuitive," but that's a marketing buzzword. In reality, "intuitive" means it uses symbols and workflows that you've already learned to recognize. And the training process has changed, or has simply vanished. My mom (89, taught programming in the 80s), first learned to use Windows from manuals. And it's harder to learn when you get older.
For myself, I've learned to be platform-agnostic. Realistically, I seldom interact with the operating system, except perhaps for the file explorer. Things like setting up networking are O(1), meaning you do them once and forget about it. The rest of the time, I'm working inside apps that are remarkably consistent across platforms, such as the browser and programming tools. A bad website design is equally bad across platforms. I choose a new computer and platform based on a few simple needs such as good battery lifetime, and a touch screen.
I spent several years with 68k/PPC Mac, and was recently given an older MacBook with Snow Leopard. Both of those systems were equally touted as being intuitive. I learned the old Mac by having friends who showed me the ropes, and reading manuals. The newer Mac was completely opaque to me.
A potential issue is that the Mac is touted as "intuitive," but that's a marketing buzzword. In reality, "intuitive" means it uses symbols and workflows that you've already learned to recognize. And the training process has changed, or has simply vanished. My mom (89, taught programming in the 80s), first learned to use Windows from manuals. And it's harder to learn when you get older.
For myself, I've learned to be platform-agnostic. Realistically, I seldom interact with the operating system, except perhaps for the file explorer. Things like setting up networking are O(1), meaning you do them once and forget about it. The rest of the time, I'm working inside apps that are remarkably consistent across platforms, such as the browser and programming tools. A bad website design is equally bad across platforms. I choose a new computer and platform based on a few simple needs such as good battery lifetime, and a touch screen.
That's interesting analysis, and I think you're onto something. I've owned Macbooks in the past, but I never liked macOS. In fact, I'm old enough that I never really liked Windows. I spent my formative years on a Commodore and DOS. That said, for GUIs, none really felt as right to me as Windows does. I'm capable of fully adjusting to macOS, but I don't want to.
But I'm practical. If Windows machines never get close to the battery life of the M1s, then I'd eventually jump ship. I suspected Intel's 12th gen chips will be the beginning of a new era on that front.
For me, it's about getting things done and running smooth while doing it. Whatever that takes. I bailed on Android phones after the Samsung GS3 because my 5S was just more reliable. iPhones have their pain points, like Lightning ports, USB 2.0 speeds in 2022, and software limits on how large of files you can transfer by a cable, requiring workarounds like Simple Transfer Pro. But I weight it all out and decide if any given trade off is worth it in the end. I don't understand illogical stances about tribes and grudges against the other team. Use what works.
As a developer, I've had good luck requesting Thinkpads at work. I use an X1 Extreme at work and it's very reliable. I'd never request a Macbook, but I've had the urge when most PCs were squeaking pieces of plastic.
I think the only reason anything but a CLI is necessary is due to the internet. Without it, I wouldn't see the need for it. Applications would simply have to be full featured, absent the multitasking required today.
But I'm practical. If Windows machines never get close to the battery life of the M1s, then I'd eventually jump ship. I suspected Intel's 12th gen chips will be the beginning of a new era on that front.
For me, it's about getting things done and running smooth while doing it. Whatever that takes. I bailed on Android phones after the Samsung GS3 because my 5S was just more reliable. iPhones have their pain points, like Lightning ports, USB 2.0 speeds in 2022, and software limits on how large of files you can transfer by a cable, requiring workarounds like Simple Transfer Pro. But I weight it all out and decide if any given trade off is worth it in the end. I don't understand illogical stances about tribes and grudges against the other team. Use what works.
As a developer, I've had good luck requesting Thinkpads at work. I use an X1 Extreme at work and it's very reliable. I'd never request a Macbook, but I've had the urge when most PCs were squeaking pieces of plastic.
I think the only reason anything but a CLI is necessary is due to the internet. Without it, I wouldn't see the need for it. Applications would simply have to be full featured, absent the multitasking required today.
Having worked in IT support early on in my career, I have observed that the typical user doesn't so much learn how to use a computer/OS as much as they learn to perform tasks by rote. You will get users that live in Word or Excel and know it inside and out, but for most other tasks they are stumped. This, I would suggest is the same for the "70 year old" grandmothers out there using "Linux".
> it is a server OS primarily after all
Whether it is a server OS or a desktop OS or an embedded OS depends on the configuration. By itself Linux and even most of the distros are completely application-agnostic.
Whether it is a server OS or a desktop OS or an embedded OS depends on the configuration. By itself Linux and even most of the distros are completely application-agnostic.
My mum had started using a desktop at work (Windows) for the first time in the mid 2000s (she was ~50 at the time) which was used for basic work like creating / editing documents / spreadsheets and emails/browsing. She used to find it challenging to use and usually got her work done by subordinates.
Around 2008 I got myself a new personal laptop and gave her my old one (2003 compaq, setup with Ubuntu) and taught her basic usage during a short trip to home. She picked it up quite well and managed to do all her work on her own, and even used it for general browsing. She continued to use it till around 2015 when she retired and decided to live with us. It functioned just fine even then without slowing down like a typical windows machine, even though the battery had basically become useless and it needed to be plugged on to be used.
Recently we emptied our old home (set to be sold) and she got that laptop back. It still functions the same way, though she has no use for it now as she's used to smartphones/tablets so its set to be donated.
Around 2008 I got myself a new personal laptop and gave her my old one (2003 compaq, setup with Ubuntu) and taught her basic usage during a short trip to home. She picked it up quite well and managed to do all her work on her own, and even used it for general browsing. She continued to use it till around 2015 when she retired and decided to live with us. It functioned just fine even then without slowing down like a typical windows machine, even though the battery had basically become useless and it needed to be plugged on to be used.
Recently we emptied our old home (set to be sold) and she got that laptop back. It still functions the same way, though she has no use for it now as she's used to smartphones/tablets so its set to be donated.
Should we be surprised someone who perhaps retired in 2017 is computer savvy?
An 80 year old grandmother was 65 in 2007. She could be a retired tech company CEO.
An 80 year old grandmother was 65 in 2007. She could be a retired tech company CEO.
So many times here on HN I see "grandmas" used to mean "people who cannot use a computer at all except maybe to check Facebook".
Somehow I never see anyone do this for any demographic category other than age and sex.
Somehow I never see anyone do this for any demographic category other than age and sex.
In my mind, being over 50 has stopped being an excuse to be computer illiterate while holding an office job in the last decade. They were 30 in 2000, 25 in 95 when you started working with computers. If in 2020 you still don't understand how to print a document or find your word files then you are. I don't know what you are but you better have a medical issue or something to justify still not getting file size and things like that.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing... a lot of Linux was probably written by people who are almost 70 now...
> While it is possible to play a lot of Windows games on Linux using Wine and/or Proton I don't recommend it. Getting Windows games to run on Linux in the first place is "a miracle", it's amazing how well many games run and perform. However, you're really not supposed to run Windows games on Linux. Just like you're not supposed to run PlayStation games on Windows. Windows games and Windows applications are meant to be run on Windows, not on Linux.
I appreciate the piece but you lost me here. I get that Proton isn't as good as a native title, but how do we get from there to being told what I'm "supposed" to run on my computer? Emulators are a pretty valid use case I think.
I'm glad the author's family is comfortable on Linux, but I hope they won't get this type of bad advice if they happen to ask about Linux gaming (or emulation! or compatibility libraries for foreign systems, or ...).
I appreciate the piece but you lost me here. I get that Proton isn't as good as a native title, but how do we get from there to being told what I'm "supposed" to run on my computer? Emulators are a pretty valid use case I think.
I'm glad the author's family is comfortable on Linux, but I hope they won't get this type of bad advice if they happen to ask about Linux gaming (or emulation! or compatibility libraries for foreign systems, or ...).
> is for some of the big game developing companies to release some of their biggest names on Linux only, with absolutely no support for Windows
no game company could ever justify this, their primary goal is profit, not Linux adoption
no game company could ever justify this, their primary goal is profit, not Linux adoption
The problem with this is that you lock yourself to be the computer support forever. Problem with bank login? Bank won't be able to help, only you. Printer problem? Same thing.
do printer manufacturers actually help you if you're having trouble on windows? I assume you would either google it and figure it out, or post to some official forum and get responses by either people who don't work there or nobody. As for banks, everything uses the browser as a platform these days
My parents, both 90, use Linux Mint as their only OS (aside from occasionally using an iPad), and have for more than 5 years. They only surf the web and send email, and it (almost always) works perfectly for them.
I visit every month or two and keep their system updated. The only issue came when they needed to use a Wi-fi dongle, and after trying four different dongles I ended up having to downgrade to an older version because none of the newer kernels seem to work with these dongles.
I visit every month or two and keep their system updated. The only issue came when they needed to use a Wi-fi dongle, and after trying four different dongles I ended up having to downgrade to an older version because none of the newer kernels seem to work with these dongles.
My parents use an Ubuntu PC for all their online banking on their saving accounts. My father knows how to keep it up to date and I help him to upgrade it to the latest LTS every 2-3 years.
It's just a peace of mind, otherwise I will be paranoid about their online security. They still do usual stuff on their smart phone and their windows laptop.
They can really use Ubuntu for all their needs at this point. I'm just too lazy to go there and install it on their laptop.
It's just a peace of mind, otherwise I will be paranoid about their online security. They still do usual stuff on their smart phone and their windows laptop.
They can really use Ubuntu for all their needs at this point. I'm just too lazy to go there and install it on their laptop.
This so much. The reason my family has no choice but running Linux is because I get peace.
I still remember the regularity they found new viruses to fuck up their computers (15+ years ago). Hasn't happen once since.
I still remember the regularity they found new viruses to fuck up their computers (15+ years ago). Hasn't happen once since.
It's cool but it's not going to be that uncommon a story around here! I also switched my parents from Windows to Ubuntu 20 years ago. However, I subsequently switched them to Mac 10 years ago. They'd have been mostly OK staying on Ubuntu but various annoyances would have come up over the years; their hardware wouldn't have been as nice; they get their daily paper "delivered" to their iPad, etc.
Linux is super easy for users who only need a browser. Which is, these days, most people. Also incredibly easy for dev-things.
The problem lies with certain proprietary software or ex Windows 'power users' who insist on doing strange things to their DE. Like people talk about changing config files and whatnot, I've never done that in a decade of using Linux on laptops.
The problem lies with certain proprietary software or ex Windows 'power users' who insist on doing strange things to their DE. Like people talk about changing config files and whatnot, I've never done that in a decade of using Linux on laptops.
The problem with Linux has always been lack of support for newest hardware. I keep going back to Windows because I just want all the cool features of the hardware like webcam, fingerprint reader, and reliable sleep/hibernation.
Linux always runs well on HW that is a few years old. or HW that was specifically certified for Linux, such as Thinkpads.
Linux always runs well on HW that is a few years old. or HW that was specifically certified for Linux, such as Thinkpads.
“ She uses her computer daily for banking, email, online shopping, browsing, printing, writing documents, etc.”
So, just a browser then.
This feels like a very common use-case, but it’s not like Linux is tailor made for it. Any basic OS will handle it. Chromebook would be ideal and even easier to setup and powerwash where necessary.
So, just a browser then.
This feels like a very common use-case, but it’s not like Linux is tailor made for it. Any basic OS will handle it. Chromebook would be ideal and even easier to setup and powerwash where necessary.
Isn't that kind of the point, that most people don't use enough stuff to make it matter?
i've had some kind of linux in my life since 0.99pl2. ('93 maybe?)
truth be told, it's been quite usable out of the box since canonical/ubuntu. previous incarnations were also usable, but required time or skill to bring to a stable state.
truth be told, it's been quite usable out of the box since canonical/ubuntu. previous incarnations were also usable, but required time or skill to bring to a stable state.
>> In all my years of doing tech support, in all the various areas of work I have been doing, I have not seen a single case where it was not beneficial to migrate from Windows to Linux whether we're talking about servers or desktop.
Doubt
Doubt
Mine too, for the last 10 years or so. She found some local IT guy who set her up with some random distro, provides in-person and remote support. Seems to work great. If she’d asked me I’d probably have just bought her a Mac.
A friend of the family has been running Mint as a daily driver for a couple of years. It works pretty well but it does require some Linux expertise.
I definitely would not recommend that to anyone out of the box. More for power users still.
I definitely would not recommend that to anyone out of the box. More for power users still.
Out of curiousity: what made the OOB experience bad for you? I've always found it extremely easy to use.
There we're enough issues with a couple of things that I felt like I would have required some 1-800-linux-help for most of my family members.
- APT randomly breaking and require some CLI magic. - Installing french translation packages was awkward since they we're not part of the official repos. - He unfortunately was running 32bit Mint which is much less fresh when it comes to the repos.
Not bad overall, but I wouldn't throw my Windows for 25 years aunt in there!
- APT randomly breaking and require some CLI magic. - Installing french translation packages was awkward since they we're not part of the official repos. - He unfortunately was running 32bit Mint which is much less fresh when it comes to the repos.
Not bad overall, but I wouldn't throw my Windows for 25 years aunt in there!
For internet browsing and light email (even light word processing), I would suggest than an iPad with a keyboard is a better choice than a PC, regardless of whether it runs Linux or Windows.
I can't really agree with this, since web browsers on iOS/iPadOS (and Android, for that matter) have reduced functionality compared to desktop web browsers. For iOS/iPadOS specifically, the lack of uBlock Origin makes it a hard sell for users who are discerning about comprehensive ad blocking.
This. Every few months I think that I should get an iPad as a light weight browser / video player alternative to traveling with my awesome new (but heavy and large) MacBook Pro. I am all in on Apple's ecosystem and so it makes sense, but then I think of not having uBlock Origin and I recoil in horror as I remember why I don't browse or watch videos on my iPhone.
Why does my mom need an ad blocker? (And btw there are ad blocker plugins for mobile Safari now). For someone who is not tech savvy, it might break her favorite sites in ways that she can’t fix herself.
I could also put a pi-hole on her network rather than a browser plug-in.
I could also put a pi-hole on her network rather than a browser plug-in.
Everyone benefits from not seeing ads that sap their time and attention, distracting them from what they're trying to do on the device. I have never had anyone report any issues with uBlock Origin on default settings after setting it up for them, and the users are generally very grateful. It's also simple to make sure there's another browser on the device without ad blocking, and to tell the person to use that as a backup in the rare case the main browser doesn't work with anything.
Pi-hole is great (and can block some ads in other apps), but it's not as comprehensive as uBlock Origin in the browser. For example, Pi-hole doesn't block YouTube video ads. It also doesn't cover any other network than the one it's on, a blind spot for devices that are used in locations you don't manage.
Pi-hole is great (and can block some ads in other apps), but it's not as comprehensive as uBlock Origin in the browser. For example, Pi-hole doesn't block YouTube video ads. It also doesn't cover any other network than the one it's on, a blind spot for devices that are used in locations you don't manage.
My son has been on linux TWM desktop since he was 3.
Youtube and Java Minecraft!
Youtube and Java Minecraft!
I found out that offloading any windows softwares I need to other PC and use remote desktop to use it is the best of both worlds instead of trying to run it on linux
I suspect the Steam Deck will help chip away at Windows dominance over the long run. Not at first. It’ll be a slow transition. But it’ll definitely be the beginning.
i'm confused, which of those years is the year of the linux desktop?
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There is something inherently patronising about this statement. Is about older people or women that makes it remarkable?
For what it's worth, I'm a 66 year old who's been using 'ix's since 1981. Is that remarkable?
For what it's worth, I'm a 66 year old who's been using 'ix's since 1981. Is that remarkable?
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How do they do updates? Do they not do updates?
My father actually has an old laptop with Ubuntu that he uses exclusively to use its dvd drive; which is something he can't do with his Macbook Air. And he's about as clumsy with computers as you can imagine. I set up that laptop when the windows installation that came with it became so slow and obsolete that connecting it to the internet was just downright dangerous and irresponsible. The free update to windows 10 failed with some weird errors and after that, I just put Ubuntu on it and it was fine. My mother also used another old laptop with Ubuntu that was no longer usable with Windows on it right until she got her first iPad (which is awesome for people like her). The only application she ever used on that laptop was a browser. However, since she got her first iPad, she's the biggest Apple fan girl ever. And with good reason. They are very usable for people like her.
However, for people with old crappy windows laptops, installing Linux on them is usually a massive upgrade. Hardware support can be an issue sometimes but mostly the old stuff is supported well enough. And it's not like getting a cheap new laptop with only 4GB is going to help people like that a lot in terms of performance. Crappy hardware like that is better with Linux on it.
I switched out my own mac book pro for a linux laptop a few weeks ago. The mac broke and I needed a replacement urgently and the shiny new M1s were a combination of expensive and unobtainable in a hurry. So, I opted not to put money in getting an Intel based obsolete on day 1 replacement and picked up the cheapest windows laptop with 16GB I could find at a local store instead (700 Euro).
I dutifully sat through the windows onboarding, which is ridiculously horrible these days. Just endless questions, nagging, and waiting. What a load of crap. After it finally activated, I rebooted it in disgust with a Manjaro USB stick, wiped the disk and I haven't looked back since.
I've dabbled with linux on servers, in vms, and as a dual boot thing since the nineties (Slackware in 1995) but never really committed to using it full time as my primary driver until a few weeks ago. But it was always an option for me. I do mostly server and a bit of frontend development and spend a lot of time on the command line.
All the development tools I use professionally are open source and actually run best on Linux. I've not used Microsoft Office since 2012, which is the last time I worked as an employee for a big corporation. These days, I do all my office stuff in a browser. Google Docs is good enough for me. Gmail & calendar work fine as well. I have zero need for native software for that stuff. I guess, if I ever needed it, I could use Microsoft Office 365 in a browser as well. In addition to that, I installed a variety of snap applications (slack, vs code, etc.).
For photography, I've been using Darktable for several years on my mac and that of course works great on my new Linux laptop. If you are not familiar, it compares quite nicely with Adobe Lightroom in the sense that Darktable has way more features and capabilities. It's the opposite of Gimp vs Photoshop. The Darktable UX has gotten loads better with recent versions and its masking tools are fantastic. And it's a tool designed by photographers for photographers so it makes no compromises on quality. Lead developer Aurelian Pierre is doing some commercial work as a photographer and he is a hard core color theory and tone mapping nerd.
And best of all, Steam works great on Manjaro and a lot of games that no longer worked on my mac are now usable again. It was really easy to set up and to my surprise Intel's Iris XE isn't half bad as a GPU and unlike my mac book pro, there is no thermal throttling. I was not expecting this laptop to be this good. This is the best laptop I've had since I got my 2012 mac book pro. And it only cost me 700 Euro.
However, for people with old crappy windows laptops, installing Linux on them is usually a massive upgrade. Hardware support can be an issue sometimes but mostly the old stuff is supported well enough. And it's not like getting a cheap new laptop with only 4GB is going to help people like that a lot in terms of performance. Crappy hardware like that is better with Linux on it.
I switched out my own mac book pro for a linux laptop a few weeks ago. The mac broke and I needed a replacement urgently and the shiny new M1s were a combination of expensive and unobtainable in a hurry. So, I opted not to put money in getting an Intel based obsolete on day 1 replacement and picked up the cheapest windows laptop with 16GB I could find at a local store instead (700 Euro).
I dutifully sat through the windows onboarding, which is ridiculously horrible these days. Just endless questions, nagging, and waiting. What a load of crap. After it finally activated, I rebooted it in disgust with a Manjaro USB stick, wiped the disk and I haven't looked back since.
I've dabbled with linux on servers, in vms, and as a dual boot thing since the nineties (Slackware in 1995) but never really committed to using it full time as my primary driver until a few weeks ago. But it was always an option for me. I do mostly server and a bit of frontend development and spend a lot of time on the command line.
All the development tools I use professionally are open source and actually run best on Linux. I've not used Microsoft Office since 2012, which is the last time I worked as an employee for a big corporation. These days, I do all my office stuff in a browser. Google Docs is good enough for me. Gmail & calendar work fine as well. I have zero need for native software for that stuff. I guess, if I ever needed it, I could use Microsoft Office 365 in a browser as well. In addition to that, I installed a variety of snap applications (slack, vs code, etc.).
For photography, I've been using Darktable for several years on my mac and that of course works great on my new Linux laptop. If you are not familiar, it compares quite nicely with Adobe Lightroom in the sense that Darktable has way more features and capabilities. It's the opposite of Gimp vs Photoshop. The Darktable UX has gotten loads better with recent versions and its masking tools are fantastic. And it's a tool designed by photographers for photographers so it makes no compromises on quality. Lead developer Aurelian Pierre is doing some commercial work as a photographer and he is a hard core color theory and tone mapping nerd.
And best of all, Steam works great on Manjaro and a lot of games that no longer worked on my mac are now usable again. It was really easy to set up and to my surprise Intel's Iris XE isn't half bad as a GPU and unlike my mac book pro, there is no thermal throttling. I was not expecting this laptop to be this good. This is the best laptop I've had since I got my 2012 mac book pro. And it only cost me 700 Euro.
btw I use Arch
Yes, if you need your computer to check email and visit websites, and maybe deal with digital photos and do a little light word processing, Linux is rock solid stable and more than up to the task. I can see my own mother being just fine with it for those purposes.
Conversely, if you need to roll some scientific HPC code, it's the preferred solution.
But God help you if you need to do multimedia desktop publishing or do Photoshop-level editing of photos or (in my case) do anything requiring a Common Access Card.