this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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I realize this is a Linux community, but I was wondering why you still hate Windows. I mean, I love Linux, but I will not argue that it's more convenient to the average person in most use cases to use Windows, I recently had to switch back to Windows and I realized how convenient it all was and how I was missing so many things because of my love for Linux. But at this point, Linux is a part of my personality and my self-image and I will not leave it, but I gotta be honest, it's pretty convenient being on Windows. So, why have you guys chosen to still stay on Linux? Some reasons I can appreciate include

  1. The terrible privacy policies of Microsoft. It sometimes makes you feel like your computer is not owned by you but lent to you by Big Tech.
  2. The community and the spirit of sharing
  3. The joy of "figuring it out" and customizing everything you want to the minutest details
  4. FREEDOM!!! sudo su Kinda ties into the previous points, but still one of the best selling points, the freedom to do whatever you want is liberating. You can run a server on it or you can create a script while knowing you have control over almost every FOSS app there is or just destroy your whole system with one command. Idk, feels good man!

These are the big ones, but one must realize you are sacrificing many things while not using windows too, productivity can be much greater there if you are a normie, it's really convenient! So yeah! Give me your reasons! Also, how many of you dual boot?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I don't hate. It's just a piece of software. I just use Linux because I like the privacy and I'm a tech savvy person

I don't wanna learn Windows whatsoever, cause I can do everything I need on Linux and it serves me well

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Honestly, privacy and freedom of choice alone is why I switched back.

I will give windows credit, it's definitely better than any other platform out there when it comes to support and it is really nice just having things "just work". I went relatively 8 years having almost zero issues with gaming with the exception of my graphics driver which was a fault of AMD not necessarily Microsoft. All I would have to do is install a program maybe restart the computer and then run the program the way I went. With my current system I can't even guarantee if the software I want to use will work because the ecosystem is geared towards Microsoft so every product out there is Microsoft first Unix if we get around to it.

My only reason for switching was the lack of choice I was getting. While I never had to restart for updates because it automatically updated nightly when I turned it off so it was very non-invasive, the fact that I I wasn't trusted enough with my computer to be able to turn those updates completely off if I wanted to, on top of the fact that every major update seemed to hard push the office suite, and every update seemed to respect my privacy less and less was already putting me on the edge of switching every time that I had it happened to me.

But the recent rumor wave that was going through that Windows 10 when it reached end of life wasn't going to be the same way that every other OS that they've had has been where they will release security updates past closing and instead they're going to open the business only support tier to your Standard customer and offer Windows 10 at a subscription price instead, on top of the fact that Windows 11 wasn't going to support how I wanted to set my computer up without having to reinstall it anyway, I just took the plunge and went back to Linux. Overall it has been enjoyable, but I really do miss the ease of being able to just install something and have it work that comes with being in the dominant ecosystem. That being said, It is nice not having to worry about what a mega company thinks I should run the computers that I paid for, built, and set up myself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

better than any other platform out there when it comes to support

Lol, as a user Windows support is garbage. Every step is "restart, reinstall drivers, scannow".

None of those things are going to make windows pass all LR audio to the FLR channels of a 5.1 system, yet I know it's possible. It can happen if enough settings are fiddled with, but I don't know which ones, and it gets reset every reboot.

None of those things are going to stop some system utility maxing out disk writing and freezing the system for 10 minutes every boot.

None of those things will stop hardware acceleration from crashing my browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah that's my fault, I wasn't clear with what type of support I was talking about, I should have put that line at the end of the paragraph that way it was clear I was talking about compatibility as the rest of that paragraph was and not software support.

But for the sake of responding to that comment, if we are talking about actual user support and not power user support, I think you'll find it hard to do the exact same things you have listed there under any of the other distributions, especially if it's using pulse audio or pipe wire as that's actually one of the issues that I encountered switching off of windows, as my headset has a double Channel mixer on it that separates chat and game and nothing so far has been able to properly identify it as that and I had to actually go in and tell it that it had two channels and even then the current GUI programs available are not able to handle it, so if I change anything it resets it again

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Pulseaudio can remap channels directly, so you can take a 7.1 input and output two entire stereo outputs to a 7.1 speaker system, which would solve my issue and then some. Making a custom profile is a tad more involved than clicking buttons, but CLI isn't needed at all.

I found a solution in under a minute that should work on most modern Linux DEs. I suppose it's not by an official Linux support channel, but AskUbuntu was literally the first search result.

Ah, support as in "this program is supported". I can definitely agree with that

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I have attempted every solution I have found so far on remapping the channels for my headset including adding specific device profiles for it, none of worked so far. My current solution is patchwork that was supposed to split them by adding a device profile that knows how the device is to separate them(because it uses a dual channel layout, one stereo one mono iirc with one being chat and the other game), but it lacks the ability to handle/process those channels as a whole so I only can use one of the two channels at a time but since I at least have one channel that's functional I have mostly given up on it. It's just annoying cause that was the main reason for getting this headset, the ability to have a chat mixer to change voice call volume and game volume separately, it's one of the few things that worked flawlessly on windows that I have been unable to get to work on the new system. I'm glad that you could find a solution that worked for you though, I have had no luck lol

that being said, if you know of a non-cli method of setting up pulseaudio custom profiles, I'm down to try that as well, maybe I just screwed my custom profiles up somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

sudo su is a bad idea. sudo -iu is better for ACLs and avoids the potential security gap.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Because it makes doing the things I want to do with a computer difficult and annoying.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Poor workflow. Switching applications is horrible if you have 4 windows open in one desktop. Even gnome is far better at that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Windows is always going to be proprietary software, so I’m never going to give it the time of day.
Next question.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

A few months ago I blindly copied the hosts file from https://github.com/Ultimate-Hosts-Blacklist/Ultimate.Hosts.Blacklist as I was used to on BSD and Linux systems. It bricked Windows. Turns out that I had to use the installer script for Windows. Realised too late. That was my final goodbye to the Redmond giant.

For running a walled garden with iron grip, Apple allows copying the hosts file. Which I use for things like certification exams and any governmental agency stuffs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I haven't used Windows in years and rarely think about it. But, ads. I hate ads with the burning fury of a thousand suns. Therefore, MS catches some fraction of that hate by putting them in the OS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I find Linux to be MUCH easier to use. Granted, this is unusual, especially for an i3wm user, but hear me out: Although Linux has a very steep learning curve and using it seems very hard at first, this difficulty is short-lived. Getting anywhere is significantly faster and requires fewer steps, and the "simplicity" of windows quickly turns into complexity when you actually want to multitask and keep having to resize and click through dozens of windows.

Of course, I also really like the freedom of actually owning my system, and that of tinkering with all the software on it when I am annoyed at something not being how I'd like. Privacy is a nice bonus, but honestly the lesser concern since I already have none anyway by owning a phone and being too lazy to degoogle it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Good point. Startup effort is not the same as effort once you are comfortable with your system.

I had my turning point early on when I first learned to update all my packages from the terminal. For me, this changed the game compared to how Windows programs handled updates at the time and Linux became officially easier than Windows... for me.

I could see how this "point of equal ease", could come later for some users, especially those who want to run Windows software or do something advanced.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Most Linux distributions and thus development feel like passion projects. Each time I try to revisit Windoze I feel like the product. That’s completely ignoring the customization I am provided in Linux. I don’t care about ricing. I just want a functional machine tailored to my use case, which is easier to do on FOSS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Hate is a strong word, indifferent is more the word I'd use.
And I'm indeifferent because I have used (GNU)Linux as my main desktop OS since 2005, and (GNU)Linux exclusively for the past 15 years. And now even games run fine on Linux, so to me it's all benefits now.
So it's just that Windows and everything Microsoft is irrelevant now, except for a classic game I still play occasionally with my wife.

Obviously the proprietary nature with all the problems that includes, was what motivated me to shift originally, and it is also the reason I don't even want to dual boot Windows, not if it was free as in beer either.

  1. The joy of “figuring it out”

No absolutely not, I used to be an IT consultant, but like most people I like things to just work, and Linux has done that for many years now.
I do however like the freedom, and that I am not prevented from configuring my system like I want to. I remember Windows having the most ridiculous mechanisms to prevent me from for instance replacing something as banal as notepad as default/system text editor. Absolutely bullocks behavior by Microsoft IMO. I am very happy to have a system where I decide, and not some company that wants to lock me into their ecosystem.

PS: I have never tried anything Windows beyond Windows XP. But boy did Vista and Windows 8 convince me that I did the right thing switching to (GNU)Linux. Almost everybody I knew were absolutely pissed about both.

Windows Vista was the most golden opportunity to buy expensive hardware for cheap, because it didn't have drivers for Vista. Laughing my ass off about people who claim hardware lacks drivers for Linux, when it's actually worse on Windows with every new release.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago
 The joy of “figuring it out”

No absolutely not, I used to be an IT consultant, but like most people I like things to just work, and Linux has done that for many years now.

My bad, I meant that for Linux.

except for a classic game I still play occasionally with my wife.

Cheers to that!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I don't hate Windows but I hate being forced use it. I feel that I'm very effective when using Linux and just don't like when I am being slowed down. I want to use my machines to get things done and don't like it when operating systems and tools get in my way instead of enabling me to do what I need to do. Hating Windows is pointless because it's a waste of energy: it is what it is, why expect more?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Even with all the privacy concerns aside, I absolutely fucking despise it, when I cannot use my computer the way I want it to be used. That alone would have been enough to convince me to switch. Not to mention that trying to fix issues is a waste of effort, because the system internals are obscured into oblivion. Looking up any issue results in a generic "have you tried turning it off" answer from a Microsoft forum bot.

I like how the Linux kernel works, and I like how things around it are designed. It's much simpler, a lot more straight-forward, and I can setup shit how I like it. It's almost as if people who are working on Windows know that they want to tighten their grip over your system, to the extremes, but at the same time, don't have the reputation of Apple, to be let off the hook, when they pull complete bullshit moves every time

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

This is what I say about Android. Drives me crazy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Someone can hate Windows for their own purposes while still acknowledging that it may be the ideal OS for the average consumer

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Maybe they are new users who miss Windows, so they are trying to find reasoning to stay on Linux. I as an old user have no more any special emotions about Windows. I play with it form time to time. But the OS is quite conservative because of its market monopoly and I don't find anything new and interesting in new releases. It is not special about Windows, all consumer OSes are kinda stabilized now, and corporations do not want to experimenting and build new things.

So, I don't hate Windows, I just don't find it interesting for me. I use and will use it on a separate machine for some niche tasks, when they require windows-only software.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The fact that my game throttles when windows does update in the background as it pleases is enough reason

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't say I hate Windows. I've had Windows 2.0 through NT 4.0 installed, but it was more of an application that I rarely started because it usually just interfered with my MS-DOS programs. DESQview was a much preferable option, as it had true multitasking (yes, so did NT 4.0 - but it broke a lot of things).

I dual booted DOS and Linux for a couple of years, but DOS box was good enough in 1997 that I rarely had to boot DOS, so I've been Linux only for a couple of decades.

Sounds like I should give Windows another try.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

You should write a post if you do. Would be funny!

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