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Comment by voidfunc | Hacker News Reader

The difference between 7 and basically every other Windows OS since XP was that it was actually really really good. They took Vista and fixed most of the things that pissed everyone off about it. I don't remember a lot of problems with 7 at all.

Then they scrapped it for 8 which was a UX disaster. Win10 was OK, but still quirky as hell with lots of weird 8 carry over. I loathed when I finally upgraded from 7 to 10.

I've been using Win11 Pro for gaming mostly and it's OK but not great once I moved the task bar back to the left. I dunno why anyone felt that was worth mucking with. What I really resent about Win11 is the desire to connect my Microsoft account to everything.

Someday I'm gonna seriously give the Steam/Proton thing a try on Linux. I'm battle scarred from trying to game on Linux in the early 2000's... but I need to give it another chance. I'd much rather stay on my Linux host for both work and fun rather than just work.

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As a game developer (and avid player), I moved to straight Linux last year. Proton is really damn good, I think I only had (trivially fixable) issues with two games so far (out of like 30 I played).

Unfortunately my game engine of choice (Unity) has pretty spotty support, but even with it crashing every 3 hours (as opposed to once a day on Mac or once a week on Windows), the performance is still much much better than when running the editor under Windows. You win some, lose some.

But as a user, my setup is nearly flawless, and I didn't have to fiddle with any custom stuff beyond what I was already doing on Windows either, maybe less if you count not having to reset my browser from Edge back to Firefox every major update. (Weren't M$ sued to high hell back in the IE days just for bundling it? This seems 10x pushier)

Proton is incredible, I had an itch to play GTA IV recently. I was on Windows but due to the old DX calls used in the game (it's something like 14 years old), it didn't play well on Windows.

I dropped DXVK on it under Windows and it worked better but was constantly stuttering.

I moved over to Linux (I dual boot) and Steam+Proton ran the game flawlessly. I had to install the xone driver to get my Xbox S/X controller working (and it's a little janky to get connected after restarting) but the game ran _flawlessly_. I was even able to OC my TV to 90Hz under Linux!

It's wild that I used Linux to play a game that wouldn't run under Windows.

I personally find Gnome 4x fantastic, it still feels incomplete but I like the direction it's going.

My only gripe with Linux is applications can be a little janky. Chrome runs like crap (I know people tell me to use Firefox, I am already so deep in the Google ecosystem I don't want to change) - I run it with wayland and regularly submit bug reports to the Chromium team.

Once Chrome is as nice as it is on Windows, I will likely move to Linux as my primary OS.

I'm on the KDE camp, but I got to say both are shaping up incredibly.

Did not have any problems with the Xbox controller, though I believe mine is from a Xbox One. Just plug (or bluetooth, which also works fine, unlike in the past!) in and play.

Can't speak about Chrome, I've been on Firefox since 2014.

"Once Chrome is as nice as it is on Windows...”

What issues did you have? With amd/Nvidia, I've never seen an issue in the last year or so.

Various issues; Disclaimer - Might only be present on Gnome and I am a stickler for UX so they are minor annoyances.

Until Chrome 109 the scroll speed was too slow. Chromium devs solved this by statically increasing the scroll speed hardcoded in the source, but it still wasn't something defined by the DE so scrolling just doesn't feel like it does under Firefox.

Chrome doesn't respect system defined dark mode.

Dragging tabs off the window to open in its own window isn't implemented correctly. You can drag the window off the tab-bar but you cannot position it on the desktop. You must first drag the tab off the tab-bar, then drag the newly created window to the desired position.

Broadly chrome doesn't really integrate well with GTK, with inconsistent window decorations - like the profile window having a different top bar than the main window.

Edge does a better job than Chrome as far as experience is concerned, but it has its own issues.

Like if you highlight text, you are unable to click anything else on the page without first hitting ESC to unhighlight the text.

Firefox works flawlessly though. If Chrome worked as well as Firefox I'd be happy (haha I know, "then why not just use Firefox" - that's what I do on Linux, but it does keep me away not having my bookmarks, passwords, etc synced between Windows and Linux. Plus I use Chrome for my work and also use PWAs)

Thanks for sharing! I wonder if Chrome under KDE is any better or if this is a general Chrome<>x11 issue?

It might, though I honestly really like Gnome. Going between MacOS, Windows and Linux on a near daily basis (work laptop and dual booted personal desktop), I am drawn to the flash of Gnome. It's reminiscent of MacOS but with some more sensible UX decisions.

> Someday I'm gonna seriously give the Steam/Proton thing a try on Linux. I'm battle scarred from trying to game on Linux in the early 2000's... but I need to give it another chance. I'd much rather stay on my Linux host for both work and fun rather than just work.

I sometimes forget to even look up Linux compatibility on steam games causeI assume they work, especially with single player games. We are at what feels like 98% compatibility and it's usually at worst looking up a few cmdline switches on protondb

Do it. I've been gaming solely on Linux for the last five years. Sure, you miss out on a handful of popular triple-A multiplayer titles with incompatible anti-cheat, but I don't miss them. Also, the more users Linux gets, the less it will be ignored by developers and publishers.

Do it. Peer pressure!

I've been trying to game on Linux for a long time too. Have been dabbling on and off for a long time.

I can honestly say that it is better than ever.

You really need a distro that stays up to date. Fedora, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Arch, something like that. Ubuntu is probably a close runner up since they release their HWE updates once in a while.

When I say up to date, it is the kind of up to date where some of the new improvements in Proton/Steam/DXVK need Nvidia drivers/Mesa published this month. Although I'd have loved to use Debian stable everywhere, it was the wrong fit for this purpose, and only caused me pain.

Debian Sid is only an apt dist-upgrade away, and its suprisingly stable to boot!

i really loved Vista, don't really get the hate. I recently used a computer with vista, and oh boy it is BEAUTIFUL! more prettier than modern flat bland paint-made Windows

Ok then, but in which ways was it better than 7? I'm firmly in the "Vista was pretty unpolished" camp, and it wasn't helped by the fact that like the majority of people, I first experienced it on underpowered hardware, adding insult to injury. The story goes that during development, Microsoft overestimated the advances that would be made regarding raw computing power, extrapolated from previous years where we did in fact move crazy fast. So when 7 rolled along, half of the performance issues were solved by hw finally catching up, the other half were tweaks and fixes by MS. The UI I think was improved across the board. So that's why I'm curious what the Vista fans loved so much about it compared to 7.

I didn’t hate vista. It was the same as 7 just that 7 was without the drm and a new coat of paint.

Vista mainly got a bad rap in the beginning cos driver support sucked. Had 7 come out instead of vista then the same driver issues would have existed. However when all the drivers were out 7 came out and used all those same drivers and people were like “omg it’s soooo much better” even tho it was basically the same thing.

> but in which ways was it better than 7?

Vista lets you turn off ClearType, has the classic start menu, still retains the older quick launch, has the fully-featured classic theme customization, Paint and WordPad didn't get assaulted with a ribbon facelift yet.

Windows 7 isn't unworkable with the addition of some third-party customization apps, but you could do a lot more to smack sense into Vista without reaching for them.

> Ok then, but in which ways was it better than 7?

The way I remember it it was less gratuitously flashy, or at least easier to switch back into a win2k-like mode. Doesn't 7 force you to use a GPU-accelerated desktop or something?

You could still switch to the classic look & feel on Windows 7, which turned off DWM (GPU acceleration). It was Windows 8 that removed that option, forcing DWM.

Vista was a multi year beta test for 7

Vista had a lot of genuine security improvements for corporates, the extent to which you could create a much more reliable environment with judicious use of group policy was actually genuinely impressive.

Honestly, apart from the horrible mistake they made around UAC prompting, most of the rough edges didn't bother me and once I got used to it and could just follow the paths I'd beaten previously to get it to do what I wanted it to, for me it was "mostly just another slightly different Windows UI atop a kernel+OS layer that for my purposes appeared to Just Work.

I am well aware this was not the experience a lot of people had with Vista.

What horrible mistake was made with UAC prompting?

The alternative is admin-privileged programs do not run. See Linux and sudo for an actual terrible decision in privilege escalation in terms of desktop usage.

Vista prompted for everything, so much so you'd get fatigued and auto click yes, making it useless.

What's up with sudo?

Sudo is unusable in a GUI. Simple as that. It's unintuitive to create a user with sudo rights, and it is unintuitive to run a program with admin rights in a DE.

Vista upgraded the security expectations, although rather harshly compared to XP, but much more useful than anything Linux had or still has. Being prompted vs. looking up commands in manpages/wikis/blogs are two very different things.

Pretending that blindly typing "sudo" in a terminal prompt anytime a command doesn't work without it doesn't make it any better than UAC.

If I try to run, say, software updates on Ubuntu, it prompts me for my password/fingerprint, isn't that the same?

I imagine usability might've changed over time, but in my default Ubuntu DE I can't run an app as Admin via a "Run As" option. Have to delve into config files to change either shortcut properties or to manually create a "Run As" option.

As far as prompts go - why does Chrome/Chromium prompt me on a clean install for a gpg key ring password upon every run?

Is that not worse Than Vista?

My point is, Linux, even at its most refined, most popular version, lags behind Vista.

I've not seen that Chrome prompt.

I guess you can't run things as root, but I've never noticed before now, guess I've never needed to

Based on my admittedly shoddy memory, I believe most of the hate against Vista was due to its early release and lack of drivers with moving to a new model requiring signing. This broke a lot of legacy drivers and thus the hardware no longer worked without the manufacturers providing an update. I was mostly on newer hardware so didn't have the compatibility issues a number of users experienced with that migration.

Proton works great with the exception of some online titles that require useless anti-cheat software or wacky drm.

BTW for those considering this WSA thing, in Linux land we have Waydroid!

Lutris makes linux gaming entirely painless last I tried, and before that wine was quite good

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