No idea why you guys put up with this bullshit. I use Safari on macOS, it works great. I use Firefox on my Windows PC, it works great.
I got fed up with it at the start of December last year and rinsed my credit card in the Apple Store. I walked out with an MBP and an iPhone and neither have not yet kicked me in the nuts once. I'm slowly porting my data over at the moment and then I'm chucking this crap on ebay and never touching it again.
Well done Microsoft. You burned a 30 year long developer relationship.
It's fast. It respects the user. Games work beautifully with proton. Most software has an equivalent on Linux if they don't offer their own binaries.
More and more I don't understand the desire or need to generate revenue for companies that treat you like dumb cattle.
Used Ubuntu from 2006 to 2011. It used to take some effort, compared to OSX.
But if we’re talking Linux vs Windows, I completely agree.
* ElementaryOS(https://elementary.io/) * PopOS(https://pop.system76.com/) * Linux Mint(https://linuxmint.com/) * As always, Ubuntu(https://ubuntu.com/)
All solid, functional, and not treating you like cattle.
I'm not sure this is really what it meant (I didn't see the prompt myself), but it was what Ubuntu made her believe.
After updating without this "option", all her VirtualBox VMs stopped working (I don't mean to imply that these two issues are linked).
Ubuntu Pro allows for things like patching the kernel while the kernel is running. If you're using VirtualBox, which uses kernel drivers on the host for acceleration, and you do a normal update, you need to reboot to make those drivers work again. You shouldn't need to, but something in Oracle's DKMS driver building process removes the existing drivers for some reason.
If the kernel is replaced while running, the new kernel modules should be loadable immediately and there will only be a brief moment during which VirtualBox wouldn't work.
Ubuntu Pro also provides updates to software packages that weren't maintained before the introduction to Ubuntu Pro (the Universe packages) so it's probably not a bad idea to enable it.
If you don't log in, you'll get the same experience Ubuntu always had before Pro was introduced, which includes the possibility of VirtualBox being broken until you reboot. This isn't Canonical sabotaging your wife's computer, it's just how some updates go down on Ubuntu.
I didn't think that Canonical was sabotaging her computer. What I do think is that Canonical is using security updates as an upselling opportunity.
In my opinion this is a bad idea, especially if the language used is vague enough to mislead people.
Most of the popular FPS games require anti-cheat software that does not work in Linux :(
Nonsense. It worked on the day of release for me, on Linux. I don't know what went wrong on your side, but I played it on release day.
There were two issues, namely:
1. It crashed on start-up roughly half of the time. Not great, but survivable.
2. Swapping to a different workspace (Sway, Wayland) for an extended period of time made the game think your framerate is low, and it forced you to play offline with "FPS unsuitable for online play".
That's all. Other than that, the game experience was buttery smooth.
Of course, if you play them for the experience. If you have to have 144 fps in 8k, you need to give a kidney to a video card manufacturer indeed.
But you don't have to play 'popular FPS games'.
There are thousands of good single player games that offer memorable experiences and tens of thousands that offer so and so experiences.
If you want to socialize, go for a beer with friends :)
I'm just using a Mac as a terminal for an EC2 instance where I do all the software dev now.
Adobe is an issue, there are many analogs though. In place of Photoshop you could use Photopea, Krita, GIMP. That said I understand that people generally love their Adobe apps.
I tend to use Adobe stuff because it is literally a decade ahead of the closest open source software and is not expensive on a monthly basis for what you get. I could not get close to what I do with open source software. I have tried. I mean just the AI denoise in Adobe Lightroom can't be touched by anything. I wish it could. And I wish I could contribute to something open source to do that but I'm not good enough at it :)
For QT5/6 software into GTK desktops, there's QT5CT.
My XFCE4 desktop running QComicbook (QT5 comic viewer) both have the exact same theme, Zukitre. Ditto with the icons.
Apple is the farthest thing from "anti-consumer".
Let's find one company that takes security in any way shape or form as seriously. Name one company that consistently picks up the phone. What device are we going to give to my dad, or my less than stellar relatives... (do you want to be their linux support line?).
>> More and more I don't understand the desire or need to generate revenue for companies that treat you like dumb cattle.
The apple tax: what your family gives to apple because they aren't going to pay you for support.
This is even using the supposedly "reliable" distros like Ubuntu and Mint.
At this point when a linux user says they never have an issue I just can't believe them. I don't do anything complex, but linux always eventually fails in some way. I have above average knowledge of computers, and still linux cannot work reliably for me. It will never go mainstream until it can work without breaking, and never touching the terminal for 10+ years like MacOS can.
As an example, look at the "Switched to linux challenge" Linus Tech Tips did a couple years ago, he tried to install steam and it broke his entire OS. I have never installed anything on Windows or MacOS that has broken my OS. If you want regular users to use linux, things like that should not be possible.
You mean the distros with a marketing budget?
Confusing those two is a common misconception.
I think this is key. I'm comfortable in the terminal so it really doesn't bother me and I doubt many days go by where I'm not using it. Linux works for me, but its not for everyone and I still have an old macbook for some photo editing applications.
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[0] Likely impossible. Even making it difficult enough to slow MS if they had the intention is likely completely impractical.
That's the authoritarian alternative, to the perpetually backstabbing option.
Debian Stable is the actually wholesome marriage material.
OK, sure
>Stable
Masochism
(Even though the MTBF of Debian testing is at least 5 times larger than Windows.)
For awhile, there would be a thing with people using, say, JS libraries, and they'd want to Stack Overflow copy&paste something. But the more reckless of those people just ended up bypassing Debian with NPM or some other language-specific package manager. And less-reckless people can decide when they can just use Debian or have to pull select bits of software some other way.
— Bob Dylan
Neither do I. All it takes is Ublock Origin.
No, please don't suggest Linux or FOSS alternatives. They are all dead on arrival. I need Office, not LibreOffice. I need Photoshop, not GIMP. I need Illustrator, not Inkscape. I want Windows, not Proton.
I need a computer, not a tinkerer's toy.
I don't care to computer either, because that's not what I consider computers to be at my point in life. I use tools, not tool tools.
You remind me typical pro-Russian men who claim they are non-interesting in politics with no realizing their choice "not to be interested in politics" is a pro-war choice.
Computers are tools to run software. Software is what makes (or breaks) the computer a useful tool. A computer without software is just as useful as a lump of pig iron: handy as a paper weight but no more.
Closed software which locks your data in its grasp may be OK for some purposes but in the long run it nearly always ends up causing problems - try opening an older Word file in current Word [1] for an example of such.
Firstly I have raised two bugs against LibreOffice in the last decade where it can't open files it created and can't print a spreadsheet.
Secondly the specifications for proprietary software are not necessarily closed: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_form...
The only thing here is that crap software is crap software. And Word is crap software.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given the HN audience, but come on. Ordinary people use computers because they need or want to do something, and a computer will help them do it.
Good point. Is something a tool still if the user has no choice but to use it?
Certainly it is no longer "an extension of the mind-body and will" as some philosophers define "tool".
Is it a crutch? And does that imply that we have become "disabled" or are now "differently abled but dependent"?
I think the GP's appeal to simple dignity of labour and clear purpose troubles me for other reasons though.
All tools shape their users, and none more-so than a computer. So much indeed that I think it deserves a different status. It's a different quality of tool than a hammer. Today, it very much uses you in equal measure to you using it.
Calling computers (mere) tools seems a little dismissive.
And in that regard I think the GP shows a typical nonchalance around what they _think_ is their (very mysterious and serious) "doings".
When a system already defines all the possibilities for what you can make and do, and these days it even curates, censors, "corrects" and extrapolates for you... what is left of that glorious will to action (doing)?
Has it been magnified such that it's "AIA" = AI aligns with IA (artificial intelligence is aligned with intelligence amplifications) and the tool is a lever (bicycle) for the mind?
Or are we cranking the handle on a auto-cookie-cutter machine that gives a choice of three shapes? That can feel a lot like "doing" stuff too.
The closer one is to that kind of "doing on rails" the more vulnerable to being replaced by a robot/algorithm.
OTOH, remembering how to see computers as engines of possibility rather than certainty again (as Ada Lovelace did), seems to me more where humans fit with computers. YMMV
Seeing as this needs demystifying for some bizarre reason...:
* Office work (including literally Microsoft Office documents, no substitutes acceptable).
* Occasional specialist work (CAD, Adobe Illustrator, etc.)
* Play; a man needs his vidja gaemz and some cold beer at the end of a long day.
You made it sound like they were somehow special, like, I dunno, particle physics that could only run on a custom quantum computer.
Now you're specific, looks like those are all perfectly normal and ordinary things, right?
I also had to use a very specialist CAD system. In those days the only things it would run on were Sun Microsystems and HP Unix boxen.
Other than Microsoft's monopoly grip, and your need to interface with other use ^H^H^Hvictims of that monopoly, is there any reason you wouldn't try a friendlier, more socially conscious solution?
Daring to ask about a problem will inevitably devolve into "You're committing heresy." and getting taken for a ride about changing my entire process and environment when that was never my inquiry nor even desirable.
As for socially conscious: Paying for good, practical software that serves my needs is a good thing. Both for myself and the developers, a win-win.
FOSS has a social contract problem. There are many open source developers who need/want money for their labor who get shut down and even coerced into free-as-in-beer for daring to ask for compensation, and many more project derelicts strewing the land abandoned due to lack of resources.
I see no fact here.
If you think about it computers have done as much to reveal and create new ends as they have to satisfy existing ones.
I'm an adult with duties and responsibilities and limited time now, not a naive teenager with too much time, too little money, and a bad case of acne. I simply do not have the time, energy, nor will anymore.
Note: Also, I'm cursed. I've killed more Linux installs (barring Android) than I can bother to count at this point, for something as bluntly mundane as updating them. I cannot rely on Linux (again barring Android).
Recently I needed to de-duplicate 150,000 photographs from my dead father's NAS. I spent about 3-4 days trying to find an OSS solution that did the job and actually worked unsuccessfully. In the end I found some proprietary software (PhotoSweeper) that did the job in a couple of hours and cost $10
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...
Metaphorical you of course. Parent does not want to run it. I believe this is a moral error and a coordination failure, and that saying a computer that is out of your control is "more of a computer" while a computer that actually does what you say is a 'toy' is disingenuous.
It is an unfortunate fact that you pay for freedom with effort. IDK if it ever was not so.