Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who worked both in IT support and has parents who use compiters despite not knowing how to use them, this is not true.

I had a ton of issues with Windows when my mother used it (despite me being a long time Windows user and offering her remote assistence). At one point I got so fed up with yet another update that fucked things up (=changed the UI she was used to) that I decided to install Ubuntu. My mother was happy with the new system and the number of times I had to support her was one thenth of what it was before.

OSX is also not without pitfalls, especially the updates can break a lot of existing setups (hardware...)

Linux is great for real power users or real beginners, not so great for intermediate people who know enough to fuck a system up for good. But if you are a beginner or a power user it just works unless you fuck it up.

With Windows and OSX it just works till they decide to fuck it up, even if you are trying to actively prevent it.

You're missing my point, sorry if that was not clear from my wording. It is indeed perfectly possible that you experienced e.g. Linux working flawless for you and had other OS 'fuck it up'. But just like OSX isn't without pitfalls, nor is Windows, nor is Linux, nor is XXX. Not everyone encounters those problem, not everyone has no problems at all. There's enough anecdotal evidence around showing that (including your post). I don't think any of that is provable untrue.

Just like the sibling comment, some more anecdotes painting the 'it depends' picture: my main Windows 7 dev machine has been running for about a decade now. It's not slower than it used to and just works, year after year. My main Ubuntu (LTS 14 through 18) machine has also been doing pretty well in the roughly same timespan. Same hardware, but took substantially more hours on keeping it running. In the meantime also had an MBP with OSX and the software overall is pretty decent, just got unlucky apparently and the hardware died on me after just 3 years IIRC. Other machines I also use sometimes didn't all do so well, but there's really no clear loser.

That strikes me as highly anecdotal. Another anecdote for you; my Windows 10 Thinkpad which is used for 10 hours every day remains as quick and reliable as the day that I got it and generally goes for months without being restarted.

> That strikes me as highly anecdotal.

Well sure, because it is. As mentioned I also worked both in first- and second level support in an enviroment that had Windows, OSX and Linux desktop, with very varying degrees of proficiency between the users of all operating systems.

The anectdote from my mother is mirrored in the many experiences I made at the job. Sure that is still no true evidence, but I never claimed it was more than just my opinion. My opinion that I derived from working at precisely the issues involved.

Btw. there was one particularily bad Windows user (the type that comes with viruses and toolbars, the type that thinks someone can control their computer if you plug their mouse into another computer). We had nothing but hassle with that person until we moved said person to Linux, where a big pain turned into a much smaller pain.

This is again just another annecdotal example, but I could go on.

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