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Comment by theshadow | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak for OSX, but Ubuntu beats Windows these days in terms of usability, mainly because the software ecosystem is not polluted with crapware like it is with windows. If I want to find a tool to do x, it is an 'apt-get install' away where as with windows I have trawl through pages of google search results, trudging through trial versions before I find something that does what I want. If you are a developer, even just the basic unix tools are a god send in saving hours every week, on windows you have to deal with cygwin just to get something approximating those great tools.

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This is not entirely true. As someone that recently switched to Ubuntu from being a long time windows user.

Your apt-get scenario only works if what you're looking for is in the official repositories. If not, you have to add those repositories first. That's a lucky menu find in the Ubuntu installer or some random add repo command with some possibly untrusted domain in it.

Then... You get random install errors. Missing so files or package dependencies etc.

Trust me, I've done more googling trying to install stuff on Ubuntu than I ever did on Windows. At least with windows if you had the exe or msi file you were dons 99% of the time. And you almost always found that file on the site for that program.

Even if you can find your package in the repos, you can always build from source if you like. In that case it a ./configure && make && make install away

That's what got me to make the switch. I just wanted a command line without all the crud that comes with Windows. I don't see going back to Windows as long as I'm writing code.

It also takes ages to set up a windows system relative to Ubuntu. The difference can literally be measured in hours for the average user.

I disagree. For most users using a GUI installer will be better 99% of the time.

God no.

you spend a couple hours (not even really) setting up a few pieces of software.

Your reward is not to be saddled with unity trash until you realize it's a piece of crap and go back to windows (or OS X).

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