>>Windows 10 needs at least 8GB physical memory to run the operating system properly
Define "properly" - I'm running Win 10 2004 on 1GB of ram and it's absolutely fine. Maybe the author is confusing "need" with "will use all available ram to prefetch".
Yeah, of course - it works fine in Edge as long as you keep to 1-2 tabs max. Running in idle uses about 700MB ram so 300MB is enough to work with. The other things I do with this are running the Netflix app to watch movies and run the Windows 10 Minecraft client - both run smoothly.
Well you can have as many tabs open as you want, just that beyond 2 or so tabs Edge will vacate the contents from memory and the page will reload when you go back to it. Like, it's a very basic, very cheap machine, and it works fine as long as you are reasonable.
No, just stock normal 32bit windows 10. Can browse web using edge, watch movies, play some games. Yeah you're not going to run visual studio on that but I've got a different machine for work.
In what browser? I specifically said Edge because I find it uses a lot less ram than Chrome. I can easily use Edge and browse smoothly on that little PC, but with Chrome it's dead after opening facebook.
No, regular x86 Windows 10. 32 bit version minimum requirement is exactly 1GB of ram and all functionality is there. It only uses about 700MB when running, leaving enough memory to use it like a normal computer.
Author claims the computer had Windows 98 on it so I would assume it is second hand since you couldn't buy a new computer with W98 on it in 2008 either. Or as you say a typo or mistake.
It's about right if you grew up poor in that time period, and bought something secondhand. I was part of a small club out in the (impoverished) country where we were learning on DOS computers using Qbasic in like the early-mid 00s.
If I had to give an introduction to programming to someone with absolutely no prior knowledge, I might still use QBasic (or rather something like QB64 or an online interpreter) for it. The simplicity of the syntax and no required boilerplate for getting started really lends itself to it.
Until 2012 I was using an old laptop, Celeron with 760mb RAM, running Lubuntu and Windows XP. It was very crappy, but allowed me to do some web freelancing (thanks Sublime Text, I miss you) and browse web in general (sure, one thing at a time. Sometimes I couldn't listen to music on Banshee and have a heavy RAM tab opened). That's what I could afford at the time. Today I got a powerful Dell laptop, don't care anymore about these micro optimizations. I feel like I'm betraying my old self, hah.
I switched to Ubuntu on my main machine a few years ago. This is my second attempt. There are still some annoyances I run into, the biggest being that the dock regularly disappears after sleep. How would I ever set my parents up on something where even the most basic features require fixes like this https://leimao.github.io/blog/Ubuntu-Dock-Disappear/?
yeah the first period after switching to Linux is almost always ok-ish, sometimes even pleasant, depending on one's specific use case.
then you live trough your first pulse audio upgrade. or maybe you have to bring a laptop in two wireless location with slightly different network configs. or it's just a distro upgrade where the default filesystem changed and they dropped the older fs kernel module. or you have a second monitor, or a multitouch pad, and at every update there's a chance for some package change breaking their config.
Yeah and consistently there seems to be a bad Windows Update that breaks a whole bunch of stuff... Not sure if people are just used to Windows being a piece of shit, or if we are holding the Linux desktop to a higher standard.
I don't want to start a distro ware here but... Ubuntu is really opinionated about the UX and if you want to change or fix anything you have to get kind of hacky. Sometimes when I woke my computer of from sleep it would ignore the keyboard and you had to use the mouse to click and slide the screen upward as if it were a tablet. Multiple workspaces only worked on the main monitor, side monitors would only show Workspace 1. There was a workaround for this, but it was a little bit buggy. When I want to drag a window, exit a window, or minimize, I usually just slam my cursor into the top of the screen. On Ubuntu there's a thin black status bar at the top of the screen, so you have to aim your cursor carefully instead of gesturing your mouse upwards, and it was a huge pain to try to remove that.
I started a new job and my boss installed Linux Mint on my work laptop because that's what he was using; after a month I installed Mint on my home desktop. The defaults are sensible, there's tons of customization options, and I don't have to hack my way into really simple and obvious changes.
I second Mint. Have used it for a decade on my main dev machine. Only now have I turned to Win 10 and WSL for my main work and I've got to say: it's not bad. And it pretty much just works.
Lets not pretend that your parents will be able to fix any obscure Windows issues either.
I put my dad on Ubuntu about 10 years ago and never looked back. I do 100x less support than I had to do when he was on Windows. Windows was a malware shit show back then, but I have no interest in trying to switch him back to Windows again.
I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 since it's release now (a few months?) and my biggest gripe has been bluetooth connectivity and fixing updating issues (gpg keys, no releases, etc.)
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has been using Windows since 3.1 and Linux since 2.0.x (early Debian). Nothing in this article is exactly "news" at this point in history.
When I read this piece, apart from the generally terrible writing, the poor spelling and grammar, I initially wondered if it was a spoof from GPT-3 or some other bot.
When I decided it wasn't, I checked the dateline, as it seemed likely to have been written a decade or so ago.
Lots of inaccurate info in here but also some valid points. UWP sucks really bad and it does reduce the reliability of the system, especially when UWP-type things end up in the shell (e.g. start menu and action center).
I will point out that File Explorer includes a shortcut for opening PowerShell at the current directory, which can be triggered through the File menu or alt-f-r.
Its worth highlighting that Linux isn't an option for everyone. I personally prefer the design to Windows 10 and hate Microsoft's anti-consumer stance. I'd love to confine it to a VM that I only run when I need something specific. Unfortunately, Ubuntu at least cannot handle using Intel graphics with Nvidia graphics in a mixed-DPI setup (one monitor 1080P, one monitor 4K). I think this is a reasonably common setup. Running a kernel update is also troublingly likely to render the system unbootable (it has happened multiple times on Ubuntu, zero times on Windows; I've done many orders of magnitude more Windows work than Ubuntu work).
I feel slightly jealous of the folks who are feasibly able to run Linux on the desktop without compromising on hardware.
I'm running Windows now after trying to switch my primary device to Ubuntu periodically for the last 5 years... I've been experimenting with Ubuntu since 2007 and none of my devices have been able to run it well. If you've got a basic setup or don't want a graphical environment, things are fine, but I think I tend to push the limit a bit too much
In my case I also need KVM etc. On Windows I just use Hyper-V when I need a VM (many years ago I'd use Virtual PC). Hyper-V has never rendered my device unusable, even when pushing the limits with things like GPU pass through. I think my 2018 attempt failed when trying to update Ubuntu kernel after setting up KVM for a Windows VM; I had restarted between getting KVM set up and doing the Ubuntu update.
I haven't documented anything - I wanted to but I never really found the solutions I was looking for. I'm not making this up; I'd really love to be typing this from Ubuntu right now.
edit: I reviewed and made changes for a more constructive tone.
yes, apt can get temporarily broken if your boot partition fills up - but it does not make a system unbootable when this happens (Which GP says he encountered). a few apt-get removes and apt-get installs -f, and it's all back to normal - but it's only ever "apt" that stops working, and only until you fix it. (I've seen got in the habbit of doing "apt-get autoremove --purge && apt-get autoclean" regularly on all machines I manage.
The only borked Ubuntu kernel upgrade I've ever seen did not render anything unbootable, but a bad OOM Killer patch caused programs to get spontaneously killed in some cases - and I'm runnig, and automatically updating, tens of Ubuntu machines automatically all the time.
>Unfortunately, Ubuntu at least cannot handle using Intel graphics with Nvidia graphics in a mixed-DPI setup (one monitor 1080P, one monitor 4K)
Yes, this is unfortunate and means I don't run Linux at home much. IIRC it's an Xorg issue though, and Wayland supports it. I got it working on Wayland, but then there was a different issue with Wayland that I don't remember so I went back to Windows :\
It's unfortunate because even my usual reason to use Windows (games) doesn't matter at the moment, Overwatch runs perfectly on Linux with Wine.
I've long avoided "switchable graphics", for this reason. The complexity breeds issues. Be happy with just intel graphics, or go for an AMD/radeon, to improve your chances of not running into bugs/incompatibilities. Modern graphics are just such a monster of complexity, change, variety, secrecy, etc.
(I'm going to venture a guess that the "kernel update [can] render the system unbootable" is due to nvidia binary-blob driver needing some glue code to both update and recompile for new kernel versions ... it can work fine, usually, but for best experience, skip the hassle of nvidia on linux, or keep it as simple and vanilla as possible with a distro that takes care of it for you I guess.)
I didn't know Radeon was better with Linux. I'd like to turn my current device into a headless server and build a new PC specifically to run Ubuntu well.
CUDA is a key use case for me though - I actually use quite a lot of software that depends on it and my understanding is I can't do that with AMD graphics. I'd also like to get in on the RTX 3080/3070 action and I think I might value that performance more than being able to run Linux natively.
I decided to ditch NVidia due to bad linux compatibility and went with an AMD. Had no issued whatsoever since then (half year). I was also surprised to see a Phoronix benchmark for Blender with many graphics cards and different GPU off loading libraries showing AMD doing well there too. I always thought I'll be compromising on performance there.
...or older, like my Thinkpad T42p with a 'Mobility FireGL T2' (Radeon RV350). Other than some occasional AGP-related instability which seems to be hardware-related Xorg works fine on this machine.
> I will point out that File Explorer includes a shortcut for opening PowerShell at the current directory, which can be triggered through the File menu or alt-f-r.
You can also type "powershell" or "cmd" or whatever into the Windows Explorer address bar.
>I will point out that File Explorer includes a shortcut for opening PowerShell at the current directory, which can be triggered through the File menu or alt-f-r.
Shift-right click should show "open powershell here" and a few others. You can also type "powershell" in the file explorer path bar and it'll do the same.
All the criticism of Linux in your comment is a criticism of Ubuntu. Try a different distro as there is choice. I've tried Ubuntu a few times but it has been unstable and yeah, an update made it unbootable. I'd always returned to Manjaro, never had an issue with it.
I unfortunately agree with a lot of what he says (this after using linux either a primary or secondary desktop OS for over 23 years) have kind of the same fatigue.
It really saddens, this current state of the linux desktop.
The problem that I see with this review is he keeps jumping distros (and sticking to ubuntu based distros). Instead of sticking to one and documenting his issues/fixes. It seems like he would be better served by having more spartan install and customizing it from there.
I started feeling better about it after considering that system install for upgrade is my only test for recovery from drive loss under non-emergency conditions. Two root partitions; install to the spare, them populate it from backups (admittedly very fresh). If anything is missing, copy it on from old root, figure out why backups omitted it, and fix the scripts. Non-essential data e.g. read-only git tree clones goes on a third, large "cache" partition.
Quote1: "For example, just compare the file manager application on both Ubuntu and Windows."
Both defaults are crap. I use Total Commander / Double Commander on Win/Lin.
Quote2: "Linux still has a few (~2%) market share in the general-purpose users' segment compared to Windows. Therefore, there are not so many malicious programs that target Linux users"
Ah yeah, the famous security through obscurity. I think I prefer a battle hardened OS instead of one kept in an ivory tower. But that's not actually true. As a freelancer I use them all, and I know Linux is actually more battle hardened due to majority of cloud infrastructure running it. Which means Linux nowadays is way more under attack than Windows. Except the article's author is looking with horse blinders at the situation.
Conclusion - crappy article, not worth of a place atop of HN.
Indeed, Desktop-Linux doesn't offer much in terms of security.
APIs to restrict applications accessing your user data?
Sandboxing for GUI applications?
A secure GUI path, i.e., something where you can trust that this kind of window is not malicious software but your OS?
Biometrics? (making non-techies into using some authentication at all)
I am just annoyed by people saying Linux or Windows is more secure. It such a non argument. If someone is just plain stupid, clicks all links and downloads all kind of crap no amount of OS hardening will help him.
I agree that article is crapy and I wasted my time reading it.
_Desktop_ Linux is absoultely not under attack whatsoever. So no, this _IS_ security by obscurity (in an arguably somewhat different sense of the word though) at work.
I personally do not engage in activities which would attract NSA attention. I am a lot more scared of an average malware which soo abundant on Windows and even MacOS (yep, had fix friend's Mac, which had malware on it).
I remember people saying that of OS X when I bought my first Mac in 2002 -- my response "well, might as well enjoy a few years of not being targeted by malware while I can..."
Let's see if actually escaped that. What is malware purpose? If it's prank, a mild nuisance or just a bit of wasting your time I think it's an OK malware. But if it manages to siphon your finances then I'd say it's bad.
Now look at the history of Apple. Did they or did they not always delivered same hardware performance at double the price? I'd say you paid for malware, fully and on top of that you're also proud. Q.E.D.
I love Linux, but it's still got a long ways to go before becoming an reliable desktop OS. For most people they could easily use it. However the moment they gotta hop in terminal kills it for them. Linux is great if you know how to fix your problem or look in the right direction.
My main beef with it is driver support. It's far better than it was 10 years ago but nobody wants to be dealing with that. It's annoying. I can deal with program crashes or some minor feature not working right. I can't deal with being hindered due to no drivers.
Linux will always just be a tool to me and nothing more. It's a great fleshed out fully customizable tool. But it is hardly what it needs to be before widespread adoption will occur.
I love Windows, but it's still got a long ways to go before becoming an reliable desktop OS. For most people they could easily use it. However the moment updates don't install correctly kills it for them. Windows is great if you never shut down your computer during an update or always give them the time to apply.
My main beef with it is the telemetry and inconsistent UI. It's far better than it was 10 years ago but nobody wants to be dealing with that. It's annoying. I can deal with program crashes or some minor feature not working right. I can't deal with random UI changes, random resetting of settings, and uploading usage data behind my back.
Windows will always just be a tool (slowly becoming an integrated Azure client) to me and nothing more. It's a great fleshed out customizable-as-Microsoft-allows tool. But it is hardly what it needs to be to quit non-creatives from migrating to iPads and smartphones.
When is the last time you had to reinstall windows because the grub loader failed to install correctly upon the initial install?
Or a device didn't work out of the box because the company didn't make drivers for it? How about the amount of times you needed to run wine on windows to play a specific game.
Linux is awesome. But you gotta get out of your bubble and realize it's super niche and for techy people. Not average joes that just wanna watch youtube.
If Windows 10 didn't suck so bad, I'd agree with this post.
But honestly, the Windows 10 network I used to manage had just as many, if not more problems per-machine than my linux network at home.
Honestly, I can not recall ever having a major issue with Grub. It's probably the most reliable part of a Linux machine. Sure, getting the right graphics drivers can be a pain on Linux. Then again, I can say the same about the process on Windows too. And as far as gaming goes, I can play 85% of my Steam Library right out of the box with default settings. Steam has it's own Winetricks built in. And default Winetricks has come a long way too. There really isn't any Windows program I can't get running with 30 minutes of tinkering.
As far as linux being niche and for techie people, you're somwhat right but it's still a frustrating misconception that an average Joe couldn't figure out Linux. I mean, modern Ubuntu is no more complicated to use than Windows 98 was. I just plugged in a Canon printer/scanner into my Lubuntu desktop tonight and fired up included SimpleScan and did some scanning. I didn't need to open a terminal. It all just... worked. Most of the casual things I do just work. It's me messing with stuff that makes things go haywire. But I'm one of those techie people and that's what I enjoy doing.
Don't think of Linux like a geeky alternative to mainstream. Think of it as the mainstream that Windows is trying to improve upon. In all reality, it is. Linux is to computers what the manual transmission (stick shift) is to automobiles. It takes some getting used too, but it's easier than it looks. And if you can drive a stick, you can drive literally any vehicle with wheels. Same with linux. If you can use a linux PC you posses the knowledge use any PC.
Aside from the telemetry BS, what is wrong with windows 10? There is nothing wrong with windows and it's extraordinarily convenient. Mail and Calendar integrated into the OS has never been better. Sure it's not as good as Apple's stuff, but it's more than worthwhile.
Linux you have to mess around CONSTANTLY or learn more about how things work in order to get them to your liking. Linux IS a "geeky alternative to mainstream." Linux is exactly as your example is about manual vs automatic. Stop and think for a sec why over 90% of cars are automatic and not manual. It's easier! We can argue all day how Linux is superior to windows but at the end of the day, what OS are you wasting more time on trying to get something to work as opposed to that being just abstracted from you in the first place since you don't need to know about it 99/100?
The average joes watching Youtube are doing it on their smartphones, iPads, or Chromecasts now. It's why Microsoft is letting Windows fall apart because cloud services accessible from any device is the future.
I've moved my entire workflow over to foss. I can't tell you how freeing it is to know I can always jump into any OS and not be hindered whatsoever with what I need to do.
I am pessimistic that Linux will ever see widespread adoption. It has too many warts and no killer app for the regular user.
For me, it's not just driver support, it's the deep dives required to get random things working. Like finding the right commands to get my 4k monitor scaled correctly.
I think it will eventually. We're still in the advent of computing technologies in the grand scheme of history. Much like how companies can pay someone to make their own custom software, they'll likewise be able to do it with their own custom distros and operating systems for particular security. I would say we're still a solid 100+ years out from that.
I've started using NixOS as my primary OS. Lots of rough edges - both due to Linux and then NixOS on top. But the immutable nature of it has made it so easy for me to fearlessly hack around. And once I solve something, I immortalize it in code that I check into git.
Upgrades (both NixOS and kernel) are also fearless and trivial to roll back.
It's really nice to declaratively manage stuff like NVIDIA drivers (w/Prime), udev, printer drivers, etc. Much nicer than running commands and getting my computer in a stable state that I hopefully never mess up.
Me, I use old Apple mechanical keyboards on my Macs, and IBM mechanical keyboards on my PCs. The different feel engages different muscle memory, and I use Cmd-C etc on macOS and Ctrl-C on Linux without thinking about it. For terminal emulators, use Ctrl+Shift+C etc. I personally find this a much simpler solution, but YMMV.
If you want an easier life, dump GNOME. I've tried every blasted desktop out there and XFCE makes my life easier and happier than any of them.
You will definitely want to backup your existing hotkeys on your DE and then try out Kinto.sh. Otherwise Kinto will assume that you are using default keymaps of the DE/distro.
I will admit.. at some point adding in the logic to pull in the currently mapped keys into Kinto's config directly would be the preferred method and is doable.. that just isn't how Kinto works today. It assumes you are using your DE's or distro's hotkey defaults.
Thanks for the referral! I am the author of Kinto and just made a major update to it a few days ago. It now has a system tray, gui and a simple setup wizard for Linux users as of v1.2.
The system tray only works for DEs that support Appindicators however. And at one time I was like you in that I would just know what keys to press by OS or keyboard feel, but as I've spent more and more time in the terminal I've discovered I just like the mac way of doing things more and it really is more comfortable for long coding sessions, especially on a laptop.
I left a comment on your project a year or 2 ago, seeking clarification what it was or did -- I did not understand from your original description. I hope that this was more helpful!
I'm happy with my way, but if I may say, the desktop which really needs this kind of tool is GNUstep. http://www.gnustep.org/
Packaging systems make things easier. You can install software in less than a minute, and keep things updated pretty easily.
Linux is not the frequent target of malware, specifically ransomware. There will be always that one non-compliant person in an org that clicks every link and believes in every email and having that person use Windows is a bad idea.
Office suites used to suck on Linux... not anymore. SoftMaker Office is on par with Microsoft Office for the most essential use cases.
Gaming is getting better on Linux with many native games, as well as Wine, Proton and DXVK... Many games run pretty well on Linux, you can check ProtonDB for details. Perhaps not every game or the newest games, but you can have a decent gaming experience on Linux.
And for development, Linux is king. Everything is observable, everything can be measured, most things have debugging symbols and source code. On Windows, get used to read assembly code and become a reverse engineer if you want to understand what's going on.
I love Ubuntu and I can't switch back to Windows 10. Windows 10 looks and feels like an entire commercial. Although, I'd imagine this wouldn't be the case for the professional edition. Of course, there are plenty of (high quality) apps that I miss on Ubuntu that do exist on Windows. I guess having a MacOS, you get the best out of both worlds... But I'd hate being stuck to Apple's ecosystem.
My non-apple desktops and laptops have been running linux exclusively since 2004 or so (though I also have a Mac running MacOS in the last few years).
I installed Win10 for a relative who needed Win10 a couple of years ago, and ran Tr0nscript at the time. Somehow, that machine is usable and doesn't feel like a commercial. All other Win10 machines I've encountered do.
I switched to Ubuntu after many years on Windows. Lasted about 3 years, - the UI was just not the same. Then I went to MacOS. The MacOS UI is great, but the runtime for C++, various software packages is cumbersome. Not to mention the absence of a CUDA environment in MacOS (MacBook pro)! Now, I have a hybrid setup: all UI is done on MacOS, all runtime is done on Ubuntu desktop. PyCharm remote server (Ubuntu desktop in my case) works like a charm.
I use Linux since 1994 for servers (more now than then). It works great.
I try about every day to use Linux on a desktop for day to day work. It is dreadful when you install it, and then a pain if you want to use office files to a greater extend, connect to Exchange etc.
I constantly have problems with my cursor.
So I give up and I go back to Windows 10. They work consistently for me, are fast enough and I have all the software I need.
The choice is simple, but still I diligently try on Linux.
As for servers, I never use Windows because I do not feel they ate made for servers
But others do it successfully so why not.
The only thing I really miss from the MS world on Linux is their Active Directory that manages users, computers etc. and is so tighly bound with the OS.
I've been using Linux on more or less everything since the late 90's, before that I used OS/2. Have there been hiccups? Sure there have, sometimes I needed to go hunt for some odd driver or even go so far as to use ndiswrapper to use Windows drivers because the native drivers either sucked or did not exist. This is a long time ago though, nowadays Linux tends to have an edge over Windows when it comes to supporting a wide range of hardware out of the box. This might also be related to my tendency to use older hardware - I'm typing this on a Thinkpad T42p from 2004 - which would be close to useless with current Windows versions. The odd thing is that my ancient T42p is a more agile desktop machine than my wife's 1yo Dell running Windows 10. The reason for this is... the Linux desktop. Let's rephrase that, the reason for this is that Linux is very malleable when it comes to 'the desktop', you can mix and match parts from left and right to end up with something that works for you. In my case that turns out to be no desktop at all, relying on a keyboard-driven window manager (Xmonad) with a few utilities (dzen2, dmenu, conky and trayer), for others it might be Gnome-with-all-the-bells or some glitzy KDE incarnation or whatever Ubuntu pushes this year.
The Linux desktop is what you make it. The tools are there to make it work, choose wisely. If it doesn't work for you, try something else.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 78.0 ms ] threadDefine "properly" - I'm running Win 10 2004 on 1GB of ram and it's absolutely fine. Maybe the author is confusing "need" with "will use all available ram to prefetch".
/s
Edge and Chrome use much more RAM compared to Firefox, atleast on my machine.
Maybe if all you do is stare at the desktop all day (or use your computer as a dumb terminal).
I think this must be a typo. 2008 seems quite a late time to buy a Pentium II, I had my Pentium II in 1998ish.
If I had to give an introduction to programming to someone with absolutely no prior knowledge, I might still use QBasic (or rather something like QB64 or an online interpreter) for it. The simplicity of the syntax and no required boilerplate for getting started really lends itself to it.
I haven't used GNOME in years because it was too unstable when I used it myself.
then you live trough your first pulse audio upgrade. or maybe you have to bring a laptop in two wireless location with slightly different network configs. or it's just a distro upgrade where the default filesystem changed and they dropped the older fs kernel module. or you have a second monitor, or a multitouch pad, and at every update there's a chance for some package change breaking their config.
I started a new job and my boss installed Linux Mint on my work laptop because that's what he was using; after a month I installed Mint on my home desktop. The defaults are sensible, there's tons of customization options, and I don't have to hack my way into really simple and obvious changes.
That's what I have been doing the past 7 years.
I put my dad on Ubuntu about 10 years ago and never looked back. I do 100x less support than I had to do when he was on Windows. Windows was a malware shit show back then, but I have no interest in trying to switch him back to Windows again.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has been using Windows since 3.1 and Linux since 2.0.x (early Debian). Nothing in this article is exactly "news" at this point in history.
(and I've been using OS X on the desktop longer than both of those combined, at this point)
When I decided it wasn't, I checked the dateline, as it seemed likely to have been written a decade or so ago.
I will point out that File Explorer includes a shortcut for opening PowerShell at the current directory, which can be triggered through the File menu or alt-f-r.
Its worth highlighting that Linux isn't an option for everyone. I personally prefer the design to Windows 10 and hate Microsoft's anti-consumer stance. I'd love to confine it to a VM that I only run when I need something specific. Unfortunately, Ubuntu at least cannot handle using Intel graphics with Nvidia graphics in a mixed-DPI setup (one monitor 1080P, one monitor 4K). I think this is a reasonably common setup. Running a kernel update is also troublingly likely to render the system unbootable (it has happened multiple times on Ubuntu, zero times on Windows; I've done many orders of magnitude more Windows work than Ubuntu work).
I feel slightly jealous of the folks who are feasibly able to run Linux on the desktop without compromising on hardware.
In my case I also need KVM etc. On Windows I just use Hyper-V when I need a VM (many years ago I'd use Virtual PC). Hyper-V has never rendered my device unusable, even when pushing the limits with things like GPU pass through. I think my 2018 attempt failed when trying to update Ubuntu kernel after setting up KVM for a Windows VM; I had restarted between getting KVM set up and doing the Ubuntu update.
I haven't documented anything - I wanted to but I never really found the solutions I was looking for. I'm not making this up; I'd really love to be typing this from Ubuntu right now.
edit: I reviewed and made changes for a more constructive tone.
The only borked Ubuntu kernel upgrade I've ever seen did not render anything unbootable, but a bad OOM Killer patch caused programs to get spontaneously killed in some cases - and I'm runnig, and automatically updating, tens of Ubuntu machines automatically all the time.
Yes, this is unfortunate and means I don't run Linux at home much. IIRC it's an Xorg issue though, and Wayland supports it. I got it working on Wayland, but then there was a different issue with Wayland that I don't remember so I went back to Windows :\
It's unfortunate because even my usual reason to use Windows (games) doesn't matter at the moment, Overwatch runs perfectly on Linux with Wine.
(I'm going to venture a guess that the "kernel update [can] render the system unbootable" is due to nvidia binary-blob driver needing some glue code to both update and recompile for new kernel versions ... it can work fine, usually, but for best experience, skip the hassle of nvidia on linux, or keep it as simple and vanilla as possible with a distro that takes care of it for you I guess.)
CUDA is a key use case for me though - I actually use quite a lot of software that depends on it and my understanding is I can't do that with AMD graphics. I'd also like to get in on the RTX 3080/3070 action and I think I might value that performance more than being able to run Linux natively.
The ones that rely fully on the the dedicated video card are high end and usually have different disadvantages (weight, battery time).
You can also type "powershell" or "cmd" or whatever into the Windows Explorer address bar.
Shift-right click should show "open powershell here" and a few others. You can also type "powershell" in the file explorer path bar and it'll do the same.
I unfortunately agree with a lot of what he says (this after using linux either a primary or secondary desktop OS for over 23 years) have kind of the same fatigue.
It really saddens, this current state of the linux desktop.
I'm using manjaro now, I want see what happens when there's a big version change.
Both defaults are crap. I use Total Commander / Double Commander on Win/Lin.
Quote2: "Linux still has a few (~2%) market share in the general-purpose users' segment compared to Windows. Therefore, there are not so many malicious programs that target Linux users"
Ah yeah, the famous security through obscurity. I think I prefer a battle hardened OS instead of one kept in an ivory tower. But that's not actually true. As a freelancer I use them all, and I know Linux is actually more battle hardened due to majority of cloud infrastructure running it. Which means Linux nowadays is way more under attack than Windows. Except the article's author is looking with horse blinders at the situation.
Conclusion - crappy article, not worth of a place atop of HN.
APIs to restrict applications accessing your user data? Sandboxing for GUI applications? A secure GUI path, i.e., something where you can trust that this kind of window is not malicious software but your OS? Biometrics? (making non-techies into using some authentication at all)
I agree that article is crapy and I wasted my time reading it.
Is that actually true? For example, we know NSA targets sysadmins and sysadmins use desktop Linux at much higher rates than the general public.
Relatively few people use desktop Linux, but those who do may generally be more attractive targets.
Now look at the history of Apple. Did they or did they not always delivered same hardware performance at double the price? I'd say you paid for malware, fully and on top of that you're also proud. Q.E.D.
I've posted it here several times myself :)
My main beef with it is driver support. It's far better than it was 10 years ago but nobody wants to be dealing with that. It's annoying. I can deal with program crashes or some minor feature not working right. I can't deal with being hindered due to no drivers.
Linux will always just be a tool to me and nothing more. It's a great fleshed out fully customizable tool. But it is hardly what it needs to be before widespread adoption will occur.
My main beef with it is the telemetry and inconsistent UI. It's far better than it was 10 years ago but nobody wants to be dealing with that. It's annoying. I can deal with program crashes or some minor feature not working right. I can't deal with random UI changes, random resetting of settings, and uploading usage data behind my back.
Windows will always just be a tool (slowly becoming an integrated Azure client) to me and nothing more. It's a great fleshed out customizable-as-Microsoft-allows tool. But it is hardly what it needs to be to quit non-creatives from migrating to iPads and smartphones.
Or a device didn't work out of the box because the company didn't make drivers for it? How about the amount of times you needed to run wine on windows to play a specific game.
Linux is awesome. But you gotta get out of your bubble and realize it's super niche and for techy people. Not average joes that just wanna watch youtube.
But honestly, the Windows 10 network I used to manage had just as many, if not more problems per-machine than my linux network at home.
Honestly, I can not recall ever having a major issue with Grub. It's probably the most reliable part of a Linux machine. Sure, getting the right graphics drivers can be a pain on Linux. Then again, I can say the same about the process on Windows too. And as far as gaming goes, I can play 85% of my Steam Library right out of the box with default settings. Steam has it's own Winetricks built in. And default Winetricks has come a long way too. There really isn't any Windows program I can't get running with 30 minutes of tinkering.
As far as linux being niche and for techie people, you're somwhat right but it's still a frustrating misconception that an average Joe couldn't figure out Linux. I mean, modern Ubuntu is no more complicated to use than Windows 98 was. I just plugged in a Canon printer/scanner into my Lubuntu desktop tonight and fired up included SimpleScan and did some scanning. I didn't need to open a terminal. It all just... worked. Most of the casual things I do just work. It's me messing with stuff that makes things go haywire. But I'm one of those techie people and that's what I enjoy doing.
Don't think of Linux like a geeky alternative to mainstream. Think of it as the mainstream that Windows is trying to improve upon. In all reality, it is. Linux is to computers what the manual transmission (stick shift) is to automobiles. It takes some getting used too, but it's easier than it looks. And if you can drive a stick, you can drive literally any vehicle with wheels. Same with linux. If you can use a linux PC you posses the knowledge use any PC.
Linux you have to mess around CONSTANTLY or learn more about how things work in order to get them to your liking. Linux IS a "geeky alternative to mainstream." Linux is exactly as your example is about manual vs automatic. Stop and think for a sec why over 90% of cars are automatic and not manual. It's easier! We can argue all day how Linux is superior to windows but at the end of the day, what OS are you wasting more time on trying to get something to work as opposed to that being just abstracted from you in the first place since you don't need to know about it 99/100?
For me, it's not just driver support, it's the deep dives required to get random things working. Like finding the right commands to get my 4k monitor scaled correctly.
Upgrades (both NixOS and kernel) are also fearless and trivial to roll back.
It's really nice to declaratively manage stuff like NVIDIA drivers (w/Prime), udev, printer drivers, etc. Much nicer than running commands and getting my computer in a stable state that I hopefully never mess up.
There are other, simpler ways of doing a lot of that stuff. If you want accented characters, enable the Compose key.
E.g. https://www.setphaserstostun.org/posts/setting-the-compose-k...
If you want Mac-style keystrokes, try Kinto: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
But there are other ways: https://medium.com/@petrstepanov/a-macos-like-keyboard-remap...
Me, I use old Apple mechanical keyboards on my Macs, and IBM mechanical keyboards on my PCs. The different feel engages different muscle memory, and I use Cmd-C etc on macOS and Ctrl-C on Linux without thinking about it. For terminal emulators, use Ctrl+Shift+C etc. I personally find this a much simpler solution, but YMMV.
If you want an easier life, dump GNOME. I've tried every blasted desktop out there and XFCE makes my life easier and happier than any of them.
I will admit.. at some point adding in the logic to pull in the currently mapped keys into Kinto's config directly would be the preferred method and is doable.. that just isn't how Kinto works today. It assumes you are using your DE's or distro's hotkey defaults.
The system tray only works for DEs that support Appindicators however. And at one time I was like you in that I would just know what keys to press by OS or keyboard feel, but as I've spent more and more time in the terminal I've discovered I just like the mac way of doing things more and it really is more comfortable for long coding sessions, especially on a laptop.
You're welcome.
I left a comment on your project a year or 2 ago, seeking clarification what it was or did -- I did not understand from your original description. I hope that this was more helpful!
I'm happy with my way, but if I may say, the desktop which really needs this kind of tool is GNUstep. http://www.gnustep.org/
There's a new GNUstep-based OS called LIVEstep, based on FuryBSD: https://github.com/probonopd/LIVEstep
At present, GNUstep uses Alt instead of the Mac's Cmd, leading to weird keystrokes which are neither Mac-ish nor Windows/Linux-ish. It's a mess.
Packaging systems make things easier. You can install software in less than a minute, and keep things updated pretty easily.
Linux is not the frequent target of malware, specifically ransomware. There will be always that one non-compliant person in an org that clicks every link and believes in every email and having that person use Windows is a bad idea.
Office suites used to suck on Linux... not anymore. SoftMaker Office is on par with Microsoft Office for the most essential use cases.
Gaming is getting better on Linux with many native games, as well as Wine, Proton and DXVK... Many games run pretty well on Linux, you can check ProtonDB for details. Perhaps not every game or the newest games, but you can have a decent gaming experience on Linux.
And for development, Linux is king. Everything is observable, everything can be measured, most things have debugging symbols and source code. On Windows, get used to read assembly code and become a reverse engineer if you want to understand what's going on.
I installed Win10 for a relative who needed Win10 a couple of years ago, and ran Tr0nscript at the time. Somehow, that machine is usable and doesn't feel like a commercial. All other Win10 machines I've encountered do.
I try about every day to use Linux on a desktop for day to day work. It is dreadful when you install it, and then a pain if you want to use office files to a greater extend, connect to Exchange etc.
I constantly have problems with my cursor.
So I give up and I go back to Windows 10. They work consistently for me, are fast enough and I have all the software I need.
The choice is simple, but still I diligently try on Linux.
As for servers, I never use Windows because I do not feel they ate made for servers But others do it successfully so why not.
The only thing I really miss from the MS world on Linux is their Active Directory that manages users, computers etc. and is so tighly bound with the OS.
The Linux desktop is what you make it. The tools are there to make it work, choose wisely. If it doesn't work for you, try something else.