Reasons to Switch from Windows to Linux | Hacker News Reader

Reasons to Switch from Windows to Linux

forbes.com

34 pointsaxiomdata31642 comments

I'm a bit concerned about all of the comments here, in HN of all places, praising Windows 10 as a daily driver. I thought this would be the most receptive audience for Linux.

I don't think Linux on metal can be beat for developing software. macOS is a close second, but its BSD toolchain feels a bit out of place when targeting Linux servers. Windows is only really suitable for doing .NET development.

Can someone who uses Windows 10 shed a light on how you are using it for development? Do you prefer to use Linux on a VM? is WSL a suitable substitute for a dedicated VM?

When I said I was using Windows 10 as a daily driver, I didn't mean for my development stuff.

I use my MacBook Pro with macOS for development stuff and work. Linux for file & web serving, troubleshooting devices, file system/partition management, etc.

Windows 10 is the system I come home to, sit down, and use for web browsing, document stuff, and playing Blizzard games after work.

My Ubuntu install could do all these things really. But VOIP on it, pulseaudio in general, is pretty garbage. I can't seem to get my mic to stop listening to itself through my headphones. I don't have this issue in Windows so I've been using Windows. I've tried to fix the issue, but it hasn't been easy to fix and I don't have the energy to mess with figuring out why pulseaudio is being a pos when I get back from work.

That said, I would never do anything beyond UI, .NET, and HTML dev on Windows. Too much of a hassle to get good flow. VS Code takes out most of the issues though.

I do almost all of my development work in WSL since moving off of macOS earlier this year. Works fine for my workflow: ocaml compiler/toolchain, anaconda python, gcc, X11 server on the Windows side for GUI apps, (g)vim, etc. I don’t do any .NET work - just regular Unix development. I bounce to the Windows side to run things that require direct hardware access (eg, CUDA), or running things like Mathematica or OneNote with the stylus.

I miss some things from the Mac: it was the hardware that drove to try new things. I’m growing to like the new environment. I’ve run Linux on my laptops on and off forever (mid-90s onward), and generally get irritated with them for one reason or another and look back at the Mac or Windows alternatives.

We are developping software which will run on Windows servers and desktop. And our company has developed a toolchain to deal with building artefacts and dealing dependencies that run on Windows, so we're stuck with it. And I haven't experienced the issues described in the article regarding nagging and updates. For the nagging part, it was already configured away before I even started. And for updates, a restart once per week is enough to avoid any interuption during work.

I'm working in embedded systems. Many of the debuggers and specialized compilers are only available on Windows. Web (server) development is not the only kind of development.

Conversely, I also do embedded development, and our environment is entirely Linux-based, even the RTL tools.

I have to be honest, I was expecting a list of things that Windows actively did wrong (e.g. phoning home) and why Linux is a better choice for people on that basis.

This is not really five reasons to switch to Linux, it's five things that Linux has finally gotten to be as smooth or smoother than Windows. That's quite a sales pitch right there!

I like Linux, I've used it extensively in the past, and I mostly run software that is cross-platform already. And if I didn't like games so much I would probably have switched a long time ago (circa Ubuntu initial release). But if you want Windows users to switch you gotta offer more than "You don't need to use a terminal and we have Spotify now!"

Could 2018 finally be the year of the Linux Desktop? /s

It is, it's called Chromebbok.

I feel like some of the commenters have 5 brand new computers at home. Some of us can't afford that sort of luxury. In my country you can buy 10 basic laptops for the price of one entry level mac. The result is that most people don't go for those things.

I am lucky enough to have two (rather old but still running) laptops at home. Neither are capable of running Windows 10, and the one which is able to run Windows 7 does so only sluggishly. Ubuntu with Xfce works great, super fast even on 32bits single core cpu, and there are no UI problems. I am able to do Android App development, Video Editing, and running a business.

Running Linux means I can have the latest security updates on older hardware for free. Extending the life of frankly still perfectly adequate machines as opposed to still running Windows XP - or worse just throwing them away and using the credit card.

Out of curiosity what do you use for video editing?

Kdenlive

I'll probably make the switch in early 2020 when Windows 7 support expires. I like Windows 10 but the spying and the lack of user control of the updates is a deal killer for me.

I switched to Linux Mint (Cinnamon) last year for this reason. I couldn't be happier. Even the non-technical users in my household are fine with it.

I don't like some of the Mint's practices, like holding back security updates if you chose stability settings (they seem to have fixed it in the latest release). But since it's the only flagship - top notch Cinnamon distro and it is so newbie friendly I keep recommending it.

I love Linux but just... no.

Windows 7 was great, Windows 10 is already better with the right license (that ain't free, whatever)

Thanks but no thanks

Huh, interesting. My experience with windows 10 has been generally awful. I still keep it around for games (yes, I've tried wine) but beyond that I try not to use it too much.

So, your computer not gets stuck half hour with a lot of hard disk work doing some Windows 10 stuff every time that W10 boot ups ? I actually I have only W10 installed to play a few games. My Kubuntu install works far better and faster that Windows for everything that I do.

My windows 10 installs never get stuck like yours.

Perhaps he/she means applying a significant number of updates on boot? W10 does do this fairly regularly.

Once a month, on patch Tuesday or thereabouts.

It's a balance between keeping your machine up to date, and not inconveniencing the user.

That said, I do struggle to understand why MS can't rework the deployment mechanisms to just stop/start services etc to allow for on-the-fly upgrades in the background, instead of doing it all at a reboot.

Never. My boot-up time has never been better than since I moved to Windows 10. Perhaps blocking all the updates at the download level might have helped too.

> Windows 10 is already better

I strongly dislike the flat UI theme of W10.

I liked Vista. Mostly for the design, but even performance and compatibility was fine for me on beefy and standard enough hardware.

I love using Linux. Sometimes. Mostly just from the CLI for servers.

I don't consider Linux desktop to be realistically usable for the average user, and that's the biggest problem. I think the UX isn't there on most setups. Small things like the screen blanking out when booting up to logging in after putting in a password.

Web apps and electron apps have certainly made using non-Windows easier. But people still want some of those popular big apps easily on their system.

I hope one day the display manager stuff like Wayland gets worked out. I would love to be able to let people free on Linux stuff, but only distro I would even feel somewhat okay to let someone use without teaching them much is Linux Mint with Cinnamon. Second would MAYBE be Ubuntu.

UI/UX consistency and polish is so important here. That kind of stuff is hard for FOSS though. Even companies like Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical, with a lot of money, don't seem to doing anything to make Linux Desktop really usable. They've instead focused primarily on enterprise, servers, and embedded.

Windows 10 is my desktop and daily driver. I have a MacBook Pro with High Sierra, a dual boot on the desktop for Ubuntu, servers with Ubuntu, Chromebook with Gallium OS, and test monthly VMs for various distros to see where they're at.

macOS feels basically like a "professional Linux". Unix-like, good UI/UX, consistency, good default desktop applications. Before someone says elementary, elementary is pretty, but it's UX is quite horrible and doesn't work very well. Pantheon somehow fails to be more basic in user features than anything else.

I think GNOME has a pretty good user experience. It's very mac like with actual window management rather than drag drop and stay right there. Although the cinnamon desktop feels very close to windows.

GNOME 3 has come a long way from it's initial release.

It's still quite inconsistent in how application menu options are presented, what window decor buttons are displayed, the light and dark decor options. Plus the top bar is not great with the middle clock display by default and the lock screen is still quite annoying.

I've always preferred Unity's Gnome 3 fork over Gnome 3. The changed Canonical has made to their Gnome 3 version post-Unity is nice, but it feels like a step back still.

The right menu stuffs a lot of things into a giant menu item and multiple drop downs. The apps menu is a graphically intensive animation and the layout could be utilized better.

Among other things of course.

For a new and non techy users it isn't at all. Hidden menus, undiscoverable features that you would need to read a lengthy manual to find out. Even the simplest stuff need extensions and they still keep removing things from the core.

1 reason I should stick with windows. I've never gotten Linux screen reading software to run properly in a virtual machine. About once year I grab the latest Fedora or Ubuntu distro, fire up Virtualbox, and install Linux. Then I reboot and speech will randomly die on me when using Orca. My Windows 10 insiders VM just works with both Narrator and NVDA screen reading software. To point 4 in the article I've found Chocolatey to be quite nice. While it's obvious that it's grabbing installers and running them as best as it can with Command-Line options instead of distro supported software updates it's better then the alternative of manually checking for updates or stopping what I'm doing to install an update when software prompts me. It's been about a year since I did my last Linux install so if anyone has experience with something that is accessible let me know. While Linux may work better on physical hardware instead of a VM I only have a Desktop that I don't feel like duel booting since it also acts as kind of a home server.

I actually have a Dell tablet style laptop that I really wanted to install Kali on, for some basic playing around with pen testing, but I was unable to ever figure out how to get it to properly dual boot in anything but a “live” configuration. (Not a deal breaker but for my application not as useable ). I may have to give it another shot. Sadly, I absolutely am tethered to Windows for work however.

Dual boot isn't generally recommended because Windows and Linux file systems don't mix well. Get yourself a second drive if you wan't to run them both on the same machine.

Aren't Linux NTFS drivers production quality nowadays? And how is the second drive on the same machine helping?

If I recall correctly, it's not so much an issue of actual filesystem incompatibilities, but rather something to do with Windows not respecting the other bootloader well. Separate drives mitigate that issue.

I haven't tried dual-booting since I moved to Windows 7 (on 10 now), but I never had any issues whatsoever as long as you installed Windows first and then whatever other OS after.

Windows only clobbers the MBR during install in my experience.

You boot on one disk or the other, I think (I never did that, but a classmate did)

Developing on Windows 7/10 is a painful experience that I never wish to revisit. I flat out refuse to work on Windows systems for development now.

I would choose either Debian or Arch as my daily development machine, with OSX as a second choice (there are some annoyances in OSX I just can't wrap my head around).

That said, I do have a Windows 10 machine at home, solely to play games.

What are the main problems you've encountered on Windows? I am currently developing on Windows 10 and it work well (java and c++)

I have a OSX desktop and a Windows 10 laptop...I hate using my laptop and am thinking of dual booting with Ubuntu. I just wish I could go entirely Ubuntu but I would miss Lightroom/Photoshop and MS Office too much.

I know that there are linux alternatives but I find them awkward to use and much prefer the Adobe/MS suite.

GIMP etc certainly isn't up there with the Adobe suite, however WPS Office (community edition) is pretty damn good as far as a MS Office clone (in terms of file format compatibility and user interface).

You need to have a look at Darktable.

I would switch to Linux completely were it not for the fact that I like gaming too much. All my non-gaming computers run some form of Linux (mostly Mint, but I'm thinking about buying a new laptop soon and trying Qubes OS).

I'd need to migrate to many little scripts and tools and occasionally play a game or use the latest photoshop...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com