
Why I'm sort of leaving Linux - ChowWi
https://dev.to/vetswhocode/why-i-m-sort-of-leaving-linux-1oh7
======
mikece
I literally laughed out loud when I saw the author's name and now wonder why
the headline wasn't: "Apple leaves Linux for Windows"

Yes, Windows has gotten far better in recent years; then again, there have
been great tools available for it for a while, like ConEmu and it's derivative
Cmdr, so when it was recently announced that Windows 10 does SSH I smirked
because I've been doing that -- and Vim and other things -- from Cmdr for
years.

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mark_l_watson
I don’t question his decision, people should do what is right for them.

That said, something caught my eye: he was spending a lot of time tweaking the
Linux UI instead of working. This was me fifteen or twenty years ago: wasting
tons of time tweaking things. Now, I use Pop Linux as is in my System76 laptop
and before that for years I just accepted the default Ubuntu setup. Good
enough.

~~~
beatgammit
I switched to Arch expecting to tweak a bunch of stuff, and now I just use
essentially stock GNOME with a couple of extensions downloaded through the
GNOME extension manager and haven't touched it in years.

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jdlyga
This is the reason I use Gnome. Sure, I could spend time tweaking and theming
KDE Plasma's bars or messing around with i3 config files. But Gnome is pretty
straightforward. Sure there are extensions and GTK themes. But it's primarily
designed with one workflow in mind, kind of like iOS. I find myself doing more
work when I'm using a Gnome desktop environment.

When I use Windows, there's a lot of "update work" to do that ends up
distracting me. Updating WSL Ubuntu, updating chocolatey, checking individual
apps for updates, checking windows for updates, etc. I end up being more
focused when I'm using Linux.

~~~
simonblack
Mint MATE. Quite spartan. The Gnome part is more or less Gnome 2 and quite
minimal. I cut down the panels to just one thin (24mm) strip at the top, and
most that is filled with just my everyday launch-icons, date, and desktop
switcher.

With my daily back-up, and a couple of scripts, I can completely re-install my
system from an absolute disaster to up-and-running normally within about an
hour or an hour and a half.

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gcbw3
Using windows/osx will always be more convenient at first. But then you hit a
wall and can't patch/write something easily. ...even on this article intro it
boast how he prefers a tiling window manager, then move to a platform that
makes them a nuisance.

It's the basic trade off of short term vs long term reward.

Using closed source is like having a diet of candy. Great in small amounts,
but bad if you are past 5 years old. And ridiculous if you are writing
articles to defend it.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> Using windows/osx will always be more convenient at first.

Or, you know, forever. The number of things the Linux Desktop community is
actively hostile to that could make computing life so much simpler is
ridiculous. Portable applications? Relative icon paths in .desktop files? A
standardized set of base libraries developers can rely on being present? Linux
Desktop cares not for such things. If you don't want to do things their way,
_fuck you_ , that's their motto. Then they wonder why people keep choosing
other OSs.

~~~
robrtsql
> If you don't want to do things their way, fuck you, that's their motto. Then
> they wonder why people keep choosing other OSs.

I definitely feel your pain (I can't count the number of times I have run into
UX issues on various Linux distros, and in search for a fix/answer find many
people that ran into the exact same issue but find that the maintainer has
stubbornly refused to consider changing or fixing it), but really? If you
don't like something on Linux, you can fork and fix it yourself.* If you don't
like something on Windows or macOS, it's Microsoft and Apple that are telling
you 'fuck you, deal with it.'

* Whether or not doing so is feasible is a different story..

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Other OSs still have the advantage of, well, working in ways that aren't
dreamed up by keyboard-only terminal jockeys who've only ever had GUI's
described to them. I mean seriously, just look at the .desktop spec, or really
any FreeDesktop.org spec, and tell me the person who wrote it had ever in
their life used the GUI as anything other than a really fancy tmux.

------
temporallobe
I use Windows 10 Enterprise for a project I work on. I really like File
Explorer, the taskbar, and the window switching system, but for system-level
scripting and cli-based development, nothing beats a good ol’ bash terminal,
whether on Linux or macOS. However, I detest Windows 10 Home for its extremely
bloated menu layout, pre-installed spyware, and forced no-questions-asked-no-
matter-how-much-you-protest updates. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of
some mission-critical task because it. will. update. For that reason alone, I
completely abandoned Windows for home/personal use and now use either Mint or
macOS (mostly macOS tbh). I’m no fanboi of any particular OS, and all I care
about is an OS that’s stable, easy to use, and that does what I tell it (or
tell it not) to do.

I never had OP’s experiences with Mint, so in that regard he’s generalizing.
Like Christianity and its many denominations, it REALLY depends on the distro.

~~~
llampx
WSL is truly a godsend for me and MS just keeps making it more and more
useful.

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twmiller
In an effort to reinvigorate my computer chops, I've been bouncing between
macOS, linux (Manjaro), and Windows 10 on my personal laptop, switching to the
next OS in rotation every Sunday night. I'm set up to develop a number of my
personal web projects in all three operating systems, with my environment
being (more or less) the same across all three (Angular and Python
development) using Sublime as my primary text editor, Firefox as my primary
browser. I've gone out of my way to NOT rely on the Linux subsystem on
Windows, trying to keep my Windows experience more 'vanilla'. I'm only on my
second week of using Windows, but I have to say, it is BY FAR my least
favorite environment to work in of the three.

~~~
m_mueller
Why restrict yourself to not use WSL? For me it's the best of all worlds
currently - your favorite package manager giving you all Linux binaries you
want, to operate on the same data that your windows GUI tools can also.
Especially with VS code it is seemlessly integrated through remote tools and
the "code" Linux binary. Only thing I'm missing is a terminal on the same
level as Terminal.app or iterm, but I assume the coming update should solve
that.

------
dhash
I have a Linux config I wrote for my desktop manager 8? Years ago. It took me
about a week to write, and is themed to my hearts consent. I’ve barely touched
it since then, once a couple years ago to add more workspaces, and another a
couple weeks ago to change the theme

It gives me the same keybjndings I want everywhere. Linux now feels the same
regardless of what distro I’m using, and it’s just the way I like it now.

It’s easy to get suckered in to ricing you’re environment, but you get tired
of it eventually and just copy/paste the config around.

Windows scares me at this point, it doesn’t have a nice timing window manger
and I inevitably lose what I’m working on in a pile of windows.

------
csdreamer7
Somewhat related rant.

I bought a 5700 after my GTX 970 died and I wanted to play games and do some
game programming.

I waited to buy it after it had been out for two months and I could get a good
3rd party cooler.

I had to wait _another_ two weeks for support to get into Manjaro (Arch). The
5700 series Navi cards had several dependencies. Mesa 19.2.1 (19.2.0 was not a
production release), LLVM 9.0, Linux 5.3, anddddd... a linux-firmware pkg
update.

Navi had been out for almost 2.5 months at this point...

Windows 7 just required an AMD Radeon graphics driver to be installed. And, I
could install it, justed booted into VESA mode, download it, install, reboot.

Nvidia had been having issues with elements flashing on their closed source
Linux drivers. An issue my 970 had in abundance. Which is why I went AMD,
better value and I can use proper open source drivers.

Recent AMD hardware support is really pitful for new Linux users. Especially
since I usually recommend Ubuntu, which is often using much older mesa and
Linux kernels than Arch distros. The 2000 series APU launches were an absolute
joke (although Windows users had similar issues).

Windows 10's rolling updates has it's issues (Orange Screenshots). But I
recently installed it to my laptop, wifi worked out of box w/o updated.
Windows Update complained about Intel drivers not being properly installed
when it tried to install, rebooted, everything worked fine as far I could
tell.

I bought AMD to support their support of open standards (Freesync) and their
open source software contributions (Nvidia didn't open source PhysX until AMD
released it's open source equivalent). AMD recently open sourced their AI mage
anti-aliasing tech for their cards which were ported to all cards by the
community.

AMD needs to do a better job of getting their open source drivers into mesa
and the kernel. Intel tries to get their initial support at least a year into
the kernel (source Phoronix).

From what I hear, Ubuntu 19.10 didn't update their linux-firmware pkgs for
their ISOs so you can't boot with the 5700 series Navi cards with Ubuntu
19.10... let alone for the rumored 5600 mainstream Navi cards coming out soon.

~~~
justinsaccount
> Somewhat related rant.

> I had to wait another two weeks for support

This situation is completely unacceptable. I hope you called Manjaro and asked
to speak to a manager to get a refund on your free operating system.

~~~
freehunter
If you can claim Linux is the equivalent of Windows or macOS and advocate for
people using Linux instead of other OSes, you can’t also say “you’re not
allowed to complain about it because it didn’t cost anything”.

Either it’s comparable or it’s “deal with it’s problems because it’s free”. It
can’t be both.

~~~
justinsaccount
Sounds like you are projecting a bit.

------
smacktoward
Enjoy the pervasive telemetry and Candy Crush ads!

------
huherto
> Tim Apple.

Isn't this person the CEO of Apple according to you know who.

~~~
Tajnymag
Voldemort?

------
mellowdream
Windows 10 is honestly really good as a user desktop as long as you run the
appropriate optimization and debloat scripts on an LTSC image.

I'm still using Linux as well, but I've been really impressed by the stability
of the LTSC Win10. Even fewer problems than the recent iterations of MacOS, in
my experience. It's worth considering especially if you need access to
commercial software like Excel or Adobe CC products.

~~~
JohnFen
I don't really agree. While I think Win 10 is certainly a usable OS, I find it
inferior to even Windows 7, let alone Linux.

~~~
guitarbill
This is a good point. WSL is a good addition, but Windows 7 felt more
streamlined and less cluttered. I almost dread dealing with Windows 10, the
updates and Cortana trying to activate have definitely made me lose trust
using it as a daily driver. Then again, I'll be putting off the Catalina
upgrade as long as possible, too

------
gabrielblack
Starting a job in a "Windows dependant" software house, I was forced to have
both WLS and Linux VM. They gave me a brand new HP computer they prepared with
company software, security software, etc. I was "Windows free" since 2009, ten
year without Windows. The first problem was BSOD, that computer start randomly
to crash, even after the software / system / driver upgrades the administrator
installed on the machine and it still does, randomly. The same happen to my
collegues. For the first time I noticed that now BSODs have a nice QR-Code. My
impression about WLS is that's nice but still a toy with lot of limitation:
first of all you can't full iteract using WSL tools with what is running in
Windows space. It's useful to have access to Linux tools like grep,
interpreters, etc to use against object resident on Windows file system.
Sometimes Linux programs silently doesn't work well I noticed this using some
Linux tool and Python libs, for example. This is the reason of the Linux VM
running on my PC. IMHO WLS is far to be a replacement of a native Linux pc /
VM, I still prefer to work on a Linux or OSX pc, even if Apple and Systemd are
spending big effort to make me hate both, with the result I'm evaluating BSD.

------
mlok
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. It sounds like an article written to show that
Windows is finally understanding and has now embraced Linux, therefore users
do not need to run away anymore : "Come back guys, we have all the Linux you
love here inside Windows." This article does not seem to be an honnest point
of view to me.

~~~
pjmlp
Linux only took off on PC because POSIX support was pretty lame in the
beginning, and later on not many care about SUA and Interix.

So we had to look elsewhere to run UNIX at home.

Nowadays Linux ABI is more valuable than plain POSIX source compatibility,
hence WSL. Which by the way Windows wasn't the first to go through this route.

------
JohnFen
I'm halfway with the author. I'm leaving Linux, but I'm not moving to Windows
-- I'm moving to BSD.

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acd
Use whatever os makes you the most productive.

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anon4lol
Some random nobody/front-end developer starts using Windows... this just seems
so out of place on HN.

~~~
pjmlp
A web site originally dedicated to startups and creating commercial products?

