At a certain point it becomes apparent that proprietary operating system vendors don't have your best interest at heart, and the only winning move is software freedom.
Not everyone sees a candy crush ad or some basic telemetry if you're not willing to pony up the $150 for the "Pro" edition as a complete moral outrage.
For those that don't the downsides of using Windows are generally less than the downsides of using Linux. For many people, the idea that their computer will be making a full recording of literally everything they do on their computer might be enough to tip the scales.
(Yes, there's always been telemetry, but we're talking the difference between some guy that sits outside your neighbourhood and writes down what time of day cars come and leave versus some guy with a video camera that follows you between your bedroom and bathroom and records while you sleep, shower and shit, but totally promises to not show anyone the recording. This is pretty obviously different.)
I say this as someone that's used Linux and BSD for over three decades... on servers. Ran Windows on my desktop (including Windows 10 for over half a decade). Every year or two I'd throw Linux on my computer and see how it did. A couple years back is when we finally got to the point where at least all the essential functionality I needed worked out of the box. The downsides of using Linux were less than that of Windows, and I immediately wiped the drive, installed Linux, and have used it exclusively since. This sort of stuff, if it couldn't be disabled, would have definitely tipped the scales in Linux's favour much sooner.
I had exactly this conversation with a friend of mine today looking at getting a one of the new windows arm laptops. I can’t see this features not ending up in tears down the road.
If/when my Windows-using friends move to 11 on a machine that meets the hardware requirements for Recall, I will make sure they know how to turn it off and strongly encourage them to do so.
Are you going to constantly remind them to check that is still off after the first time they turn it off. This is exactly the kind of setting that I would expect to get reset after any/all updates
Constantly? My friends and I hardly ever talk about computers, and that's how it is for most people. What you are suggesting would be a very weird habit. Your friends have agency, are allowed to like or not care about Recall, and needn't be nannied the whole time. Reminder: being more tech-literate than the average person doesn't grant anyone the right to be annoying about such topics. Cherish the time with your friends instead.
No. I'll of course mention it in the first place, but they're grownups who can make their own decisions. They don't need me to babysit them, and if I were to bring it up after every update, they'd quickly learn to stop listening to me because I'd just come off as "that guy".
I'm just hoping that Linux support on the new Snapdragon ARM laptops is good. I've already completely abandoned Windows but I'm holding out on getting a new laptop because I would prefer not to run MacOS.
Windows 10 made me buy a mac... After many years of alternating between Windows and Linux, the lazy "drivers just work" alternative without all the Microsoft bloat is a Mac.
Linux is great, love it on the server, but it's never a "just works" experience on any modern laptop type hardware.
Should work soon; 555-series drivers are doing great on GNOME and KDE both in my testing.
But yes; Nvidia has been the sore thumb of Wayland and Linux adoption for almost a decade now. It's interesting to see the tides finally start turning!
Does a high dpi screen, WiFi 6 and hibernate all work out of the box these days and keep working for a few years? Because I still see coworkers with issues in those areas even in 2024, while a simple macbook air does all of those no questions asked. Maybe they're not doing it right, but it looks close to my experience up to a few years ago.
If you buy a Linux laptop all of those things should work just fine, yes. Just like if you buy a Macbook, MacOS will work fine, but if you buy a Windows laptop and try to install MacOS onto it... you are likely to be in for a much worse time than trying to install Linux on a Windows laptop.
Hibernate does not "just work" though. Every system update causes settings to come unbolted. The screen starts shutting off at the 30-second mark, being super aggressive until you do an `xset -dpms` to turn it off. Killing Gnome from the system console and restarting will make it use whatever other setting it's supposed to use, but it doesn't "just work."
Granted, this won't be for every flavor of Linux, just the one I happen to be using. I imagine there's all kinds of different issues with the proliferation of Window Managers and graphics servers. Users looking for "just works" are not looking to dive into the various overlapping software processes.
Worse, the UIs themselves don't give you insight into what underlying settings you're manipulating when you click some button or toggle in the GUI settings. As a Linux user you know there's a conf file somewhere. But the UI obscures that from you. Perhaps the doc (or the source code (!)) says what the UI is doing. I'd love for there to be a little fly-over in the UI or even a path to the underlying configuration files. I'd be perfectly happy tweaking those in Emacs or Vim but I'm less happy hunting them down to figure out what they are.
I'm determined to avoid Windows, and I want x86 hardware because I can load it up for AI workloads. So I'm happy to be on Linux, but it comes with an overhead that most consumer level equipment doesn't. Linux is the equivalent of those shop tools that aren't safe by default, and are intended to provide the flexibility needed by machinists that know what they're doing. I'll accept that trade-off, but I'm not going to sell it to anyone who is a developer.
It's hit or miss. Some laptops work flawlessly, others do not. And then there's the gamut of features that not many people use, but maybe it's critical to your use case (like a mixed multi-monitor setup).
> […] like any audio hardware that ain’t totally mainstream is not good.
Funnily enough, it totally depends on the hardware. If your audio hardware is supported by Core Audio on Mac, chances are it will also work on Linux without problems. If your audio hardware is older, chances are it will not work on Windows due to the lack of modern drivers but will work on Linux without problems. This also applies to a lot of other older hardware like scanners/printers/... or even built-in peripherals in older laptops.
But if it's something strange (e.g., MOTU MIDI interfaces come to mind which use a non-standard USB protocol), you'll have to hack your own kernel driver which you probably don't want to do. Of course if you are adventurous and do hack your own kernel driver, even this will work, and you'll probably even find someone else's driver code on github.
What's also interesting about hardware support on Linux is that a lot of things which require extra drivers on Windows just work out of the box on Linux, especially if it's in any way relevant for servers like various network cards or if it's one of the many "standard" USB UART chips.
I would happily pay 15$/month to get a maintained Linux distro that "just works" on my machine without the Mac bloat/perkiness/weknowbetterthanyoudo. Many distros get _so_ close, but there's always an extra setup step to get basic things right. Machines-specific drivers, etc.
My brother, the least tech-oriented person you can imagine, got tired of windows updates breaking his drivers and ended up with a linux system sold by and supported by Dell. I get zero calls for help.
Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux.
From Dell, supported by Dell. Save your $15/month.
I bought a cheap mini pc a while back that shipped with Windows 11. I ultimately planned to use Linux, but kept the Windows install around “just in case” and went for a dual boot. In case of what? I have no idea, I haven’t had Windows in my house in many years. I think I didn’t want to give up the license, and when I looked around, I couldn’t find an easy way to save it.
I saw recall about the same time as I was thinking of using the mini pc for something else. Seeing what Windows had planned, and seeing Copilot shoehorned into my taskbar after a Windows update was enough. I blew away the install and only have Linux running now.
in theory, if it has been activated once on that machine it should install without a product key and activate based on hardware identifiers, so should be fine to nuke the partition
A company floating this 20 years ago would have been laughed into oblivion. Stuff like this is a nightmare; it's terrifying that Microsoft just trots it out like they have, as if there's absolutely nothing wrong or concerning at all.
A problem with AI I don't hear anybody really talking about is how it is creating a massive incentive to start gathering more and more personal information. More and more training data will be needed to make better and better AI products.
If the data is ananomous (as it should in all telemetry), this is less of a concern. But yeah, it's definitely concerning to see more incentive for data collection beyond ad targeting.
> Turns out that LLMs learn a lot better and faster from educational content as well. This is partly because the average Common Crawl article (internet pages) is not of very high value and distracts the training, packing in too much irrelevant information. The average webpage on the internet is so random and terrible it’s not even clear how prior LLMs learn anything at all.
People keep assuming that AI companies want to pipe any old junk into their models, but I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't true.
Setting aside the copyright issues--just like the AI companies already have--it would be interesting to train a model only on text books of all ages. Would it be able to tell the edits/revisions/versions that have been made over time and categorize them from new learning vs changes in political winds?
And all the drivel that google's own search AI has been spewing comes from where? Or the incredible breadth of, often wrong, knowledge that ChatGPT can spew out in seconds, where does that comes from?
Maybe at some point they will try to create their own, very limited, "knowledge base" but then those AI assistants cease to be a jack of all trades, while still being masters of nothing.
It stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation. It is the trick where you answer questions that are not in the model's original training data by first running a search For documents relevant to their question, and then invisibly pasting there results into the model as part of the prompt along with their question.
It's the trick used by ChatGPT Browsing mode and Bing and Perplexity and Google Gemini and the new Google Search.
> People keep assuming that AI companies want to pipe any old junk into their models, but I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't true.
meanwhile in dimension reality: Google's AI tells people to put glue on their pizza, the only source being a single reddit comment from user "fucksmith"
Evidently they still need to experiment. They don't know if it's junk until they try to use it. I'm convinced they are going to try as much data as they can simply because they need to compete in the market.
Linux isn't suitable for the non-tech user, and it will never be. Linux will never reach the peak that Windows has. It's just too clunky.
Those willing to seek something different will embrace but if I gave my mother a computer with Linux installed, I'd never not be tech support.
And my mother is technology oriented. Her first computer was a Wang Labs machine back from the 80's. She can create her own website, operate photoshop and she even built her own system. She's 73.
Recall just doesn't matter to those out of the geek sector. As with privacy for that matter. "I got nothing to hide"
This comment seems unnecessarily brutal and reads like it is written by someone who knows nothing about Linux.
If anything, keep your mind open and never say never.
I used Linux as my primary OS for 15 years and currently earn money from maintaining an internal distro that is compiled from scratch. I can go as deep into the kernel as I want and if the business needs I can change or patch a package. The more I gain experience in Unix family systems the more I discover how haphazardly those are made.
It's not like Windows is any less haphazard (if not more)! I think you'd be stunned by the OOTB experience of distros meant for newcomers （Fedora or Vanilla come to mind).
Right, and for a gamer they may. But the average gamer is now more console than PC.
As a legacy gamer when of the age 20, I didn't care about the crap that Microsoft pushed upon. I just downloaded some rogue batch script, probably infecting myself with a trojan and just played games.
Looking at porn after hours and downloading matrix.reloaded.2.pif.gif.exe from Kazaa. Teenagers just don't care otherwise TikTok wouldn't be thing.
My brother, the least tech-oriented person you can imagine, got tired of windows updates breaking his drivers and ended up with a linux system sold by and supported by Dell. I get zero calls for help.
Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux.
Just because people are not aware that Recall exists and is actively collecting data without their knowing does not mean it doesn't matter. The people that believe it doesn't matter is precisely why these companies get away with what they do.
I'm not saying it doesn't matter; stereotyping here, you've got two groups.
Those who know about it, and don't care and those who don't know but do care.
Those who do live in the world of part time computer usage. They check their facebook, shop amazon, grocery shop. But are the "I've got nothing to hide, so what does it matter" category.
And those who are concerned for it are unable to embrace the difference. As like teaching an old dog new tricks. By all means they can, and they want to change. The learning curve is however too steep.
What they have learnt is what they can handle. They don't the same time to learn as the younger audience does. My mother wants the internet to look up patterns of leaves so she can lino print not wanting to diagnose why systemd hangs at night when she turns off her computer.
If you take an existing install of Linux
First of all, who is the one going to give them a USB key and let them install the OS? Burning an ISO is tricky enough for anyone. Google usb iso burner and you get swamped by download promiscuous download sites. My father doesn't know about Rufus, my mother doesn't know about DD.
And this is where Windows and OSX leaps ahead. They come pre-installed, press the power button and your good to go.
Back to Linux you then have to run some chonky installer. Ubuntu's installer is astrocious in requiring to be connected to the internet. You then have to hope that the drivers work.
Compatibility is better than how it used to be but with OEM computers it can be easily sabotaged by the vendor and then on top of that the decision of the Window Manager and hope they like.
TL;DR, Steam's Proton compatibility layer. 90% of steam games work out of the box on it, with the biggest exceptions that don't work being due to anti-cheats explicitly preventing the game from running in something like proton/wine. You can thank the steam deck for bringing this level of functionality, as it's basically a Linux box with -actually reasonable defaults-.
I'm all for people switching to Linux from Windows. But doesn't Recall only work on Microsoft Copilot+ PCs? I'm assuming anyone on a normal PC doesn't have to worry about Recall. But I could be completely wrong.
Most PCs don't have the chip capable of running it though. Running it without the chip would probably slow most people's current PCs to a crawl. And if that were to ever happen, it's easy enough to roll back to an earlier update.
Eventually more and more machines will come with the necessary chips.
And it will be more of an effort to opt out. Then only professional versions will be able to opt out, through more and more complicated pathways. Eventually it'll just be part of the OS.
Meanwhile they'll find ways to sell the side effects of the functionality to other organisations, for example to monitor employees etc, to begin with. Then to governments, why not.
Death by a thousand cuts. Microsoft Recall in a vacuum isn't the issue, but rather a decade of
- Forced Cortana (oops no let's shut that down)
- Forced OS Updates (oops your computer doesn't have the requirements)
- Ads in your start menu
- "Yes" and "maybe later" interactions everywhere
- Edge force defaulting itself on occasion
- Literally needing configuration management to run powershell on a daily cadence because settings might not get respected
- 5 Layers of failed UI frameworks duct taped together
Basically Windows is becoming such a bear to wrangle that you might as well use Linux and save yourself the pain and $100 per computer.
We're actually at step 45 or so; if you showed Windows 11 to a user 20 years ago they'd run screaming. So no, when we get to step 49 you'll have adjusted your expectations and go along with it.
These articles are always weird because they ignore the most likely next steps for people who don’t want Recall:
1. Don’t turn recall on
2. Switch to Mac
Jumping straight to the Linux Desktop deep end after using Windows for years is an unlikely change path for most. These arguments ignore the fact that most Windows users have a lot of Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
Speak for yourself I suppose. I can hop between Linux (KDE, Gnome, whatever) and Windows and still feel like my muscle memory for OS interactions and application shortcuts still works. There are minor differences, but things like copy and paste still work properly.
When I try to use a Mac, everything is just ... different. CMD instead of Ctrl, buttons on the other side of windows, inconsistent maximize logic between programs, whatever Finder is supposed to be doing with folder navigation. It's certainly learnable with effort, and I can move around the OS competently now with some practice, but it's just unpleasant enough that I'd rather not use it as my daily driver.
I wasn’t talking about long time Linux users like yourself. I was referring to people who have been using Windows for years and were looking for something to switch to.
> I can hop between Linux (KDE, Gnome, whatever)
If you’ve been using Linux long enough to be familiar with KDE and Gnome and even know the difference between them, you’re very firmly a Linux enthusiast user. It’s easy to forget that the average computer user isn’t really interested in the details of their window management. They want the OS to get out of the way and support them, not be something they’re actively invested in.
I think you overestimate how much people don't really care what OS they are using and familiar with.
For non-expierienced people Linux will look as exactly the same black box as the previous one. It is bad for intermediate users that are familiar with the system but not enough to be an administrator.
I think this is death by 1,000 cuts for Windows. While privacy might not be a major issue for many users, when you couple that with mandatory sign-in to Microsoft accounts to use your own computer, a constant stream of commercials you are forced to view on your own computer and the never-ending up-selling of unwanted, intrusive Microsoft bloatware like Co-Pilot and One Drive, more and more people are going to be inspired (or compelled) to look for an alternative.
I've been a Windows user since Windows was originally released (and was an MS-DOS user before that), but Windows 11 is the straw that broke the camels back for me. I've dabbled with Linux before, but the lack of gaming support and the hassles to configure it properly to get all my hardware to work made it to inconvenient to switch, but I am 100% going to switch when support for Windows 10 expires. As I am the one who offers tech support to numerous relatives who are less tech savvy, I will also migrate them to the most user-friendly Linux build I can find. Almost all of them, especially the older ones, use their computers almost exclusively for web-browsing and streaming videos, and this will be a virtually seamless process for them. Most of my Gen-X friends are of the same mindset (except for the ones who have been captured by the Mac ecosystem).
Certainly Windows is not going to go away no matter how terrible and odious their OS becomes, but I think many people have underestimated just how far they can push the envelope without seeing a significant migration away from MS.
Not sure if you pay attention to how Microsoft operates (think IE/Edge) but they’ll accidentally-on-purpose toggle that ON with a magical Windows Update.
Windows for all it's faults is a very open ecosystem, in contrast Macs aren't that appealing. Especially if you aren't running iphones and ipads etc.
I do agree that Recall isn't the reason to switch though. The abuse Microsoft has put their users through the last few years has been unimaginable, to the point where switching to anything will feel liberating. Even Linux desktop.
This is kind of an outdated argument and nearly a solved problem - the majority of Steam's library can be run near-effortlessly on Linux today. I'd expect a large portion of Windows PC gamers to be aware of that, too, at least in the US. I don't really know anyone who's tied to any Windows-specific apps that aren't games, either.
Games are the easier part. There are a few examples of software which is only available for Windows and Mac or even Windows only, like professional audio software or various CAD tools. If you need one of those, you can't really avoid Windows / Mac and usually there is no proper replacement for such software that works on Linux. Of course you can have a dedicated Windows or Mac machine just for those programs, but that's still not ideal.
> […] Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
As if many Windows games don't work on Linux via proton, to the point that Valve's Steam Deck runs on Linux and is "good enough" most of the time. Compatibility purely depends on the game and more often than not incompatibilities are caused by anti-cheat mechanisms.
And about jumping to Linux: we had Windows computers in my family, originally with Windows 7, then upgraded to Windows 8.1, and once 8.1 was EOL, they were reinstalled with Linux (KDE as desktop environment). Since these computers were mainly used for email, web browsing, and some basic "office activities" like writing a simple document occasionally, there was exactly no issue with it. KDE itself is also similar enough to a Windows desktop that it wasn't hard for anyone to learn the few relevant things that are different. I'd be quite surprised if this was different for the majority of current Windows users.
> Jumping straight to the Linux Desktop deep end after using Windows for years is an unlikely change path for most. These arguments ignore the fact that most Windows users have a lot of Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
I think nowadays you would have a much worse experience switching from windows to mac, as you said, the user wants their apps and games to carry over, but you are actually going to have a much better time getting those to carry over to linux. Specially regarding games, just the fact that Steam runs almost any Windows game effortlessly on linux is a big deal. Meanwhile, Apple has made sure to burn all the bridges they could with game developers and game compatibility in the last decade or so.
I think Linux Desktop users have become blinded to how much easier it is for the average person (not developer, command-line enthusiasts) to use Mac or Windows than Linux.
I have Mac, Windows, and Linux machines that I use for different purposes. None of them has been perfect, but the amount of time I’ve lost fighting driver issues, weird upgrade quirks, software incompatibility problems, and other little loose ends over the users has been a magnitude worse on the Linux machines than anything else. In the moment it doesn’t really feel like much because it’s similar to daily work with Linux servers, but looking back it’s just so much more predictable to have basic things working on Mac or Windows than on Linux.
I do mostly agree with this comment, although I would like to point out that one of the only reasons that MacOS has less driver issues is because it is mainly built for one type of device, Macs. Also, the upgrade quirks might come from the overlap in between dependencies of packages that don’t update at the same time as each other or the dependency, such as the qtile window manager, which can be easily fixed with using the Nix Package Manager, and the software incompatibility could be solved by using a Virtual Machine. Although, these solutions also have some quirks so they just might end up switching back anyway.
I agree linux has its shortcomings and on average is inferior to the trillion dollar backed alternatives, but I was focusing on countering the point of gaming that was made, which is for a fact much better on linux than on macos. You WILL have a better time gaming there.
Anyway, we should all be glad how far linux has improved over the years and how it is a viable alternative to many use cases now. Hardware support used to be appalling and it used to be painful to use it for basic things like internet, video, music, games etc. Even developers had a rough time, with windows being the gold standard dev environment. But look at it now, linux is the gold standard dev environment, meanwhile microsoft is having to course correct and embed a copy of linux into windows, buy github and create a multiplatform text editor to try and lure developers back.
I also think it's important people keep giving linux a chance every couple years, If it doesn't work for you now give it another chance 2 to 5 years from now, it might finally click.
Recall isn't the argument, it's just the latest example for the same argument: you should be able to decide what your computer does, inspect it, modify and share.
I no longer buy this argument at all. Between the work Steam put into Proton, this is had been largely a non-issue. About the only game I needed to use VM for was Fallout 3 ( I didn't feel like messing with it for more than 15 minutes ). There are some things Windows is still good for, but that list is growing shorter.
<< I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
The intended audience is the people, who most need to hear it, because they do not realize there are options other than OS1 or OS2. And that it is not nearly as hard as it was only a decade ago.
Well, I'm a Linux user of 20 years, but always used a work provided MacBook. However I just bought my own personal MacBook and it feels bittersweet. I'm actually really loving it but feeling guilty about it, as if I've sold out. I'm enjoying everything just working and it is making me reconsider my philosophy on software. I even bought a few paid macOS apps. It feels comfortable.
You can always keep a Linux desktop / server around. I have all three major OS’ and will likely never buy another Windows device moving forward. Once my Surface Book 2 cannot update anymore I will retire Windows from my life outside of employers providing me with Windows laptops / workstations.
I don't think it's selling out. I think it's just using the best available tool(s) for the job. Inverse point, I have used Mac Mini's as dedicated servers and there is much lacking in the experience compared to a headless Linux box.
Yeah actually, one of my reasons was that the MacBook is physically a really nice machine. The battery life is so good, the screen, the trackpad... It feels great to dev on it.
The pile of dark patterns in Windows 11 pisses me off a lot more than Recall.
Recall is easy to disable, but the rest of the crap in Windows 11 is a constant game of cat and mouse. No respect for the user/client at all.
I find it interesting that if a random person had made a program the takes screenshots of their desktop periodically, does OCR, and locally trains an LLM on the output, it would have been a super cool project that nobody would have an issue with. It sucks that we are at the point where we can’t trust large tech companies to do the right thing.
If only could someone switch to Linux! But there is no Linux. There is Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, Gnome, KDE, Sway, apt, yum, dnf etc. Especially when something is broken and you want to fix it that's the biggest hurdle as a new Linux user. Searching for forums, "how do I do X on Linux?" Oh I mean not Linux but Ubuntu. But MATE or LXQT? etc. It's a bottomless pit.
This fragmentation is biggest barrier against the wide adaptation of Linux. I mean Debian and Ubuntu and Arch and openSUSE and Gentoo and.
I see Linux as an idea. Or more like an umbrella of ideas that several OSes share. Which sounds good on paper but not enough for end users and for the 99.99% doesn't make any difference. At all.
The only thing I personally I recommend to friends who switch to Linux is to use an immutable distro because those are the most breakage resistant ones. Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue are nice. But then we will have Ubuntu Core Desktop soon as well. And other distros. So the wheel of fragmentation rolls forward.
If you could only go to the supermarket to buy water. There's Great Value Spring Water and Great Value Purified Water. And Fiji water, and Dasani, etc. It's a bottomless pit. Having to choose between these similar products makes it impossible for me to buy water... said noone ever.
The problem is approaching these decisions as if there were final and irreversible decisions from which one answer is right and the other one is wrong followed by eternal doom. That's not the situation at all. Most of these decisions are similar and you can change your mind at any time.
You make a false assumption that all Linux things are equivalent and provide a good baseline feature set. They are not equivalent, each one misses something that Windows provides out of the box to an extent.
Choosing a Linux distro / DE / whatever is not going a supermarket and choosing a bottle of water. It is choosing a bottling factory next to a sewer or bottled distilled water.
> You make a false assumption that all Linux things are equivalent and provide a good baseline feature set. They are not equivalent, each one misses something that Windows provides out of the box to an extent.
Of course, each of them possesses some advantage that Windows lacks out of the box, and sometimes at all.
I feel like Mint + Cinnamon is such an easy switch from Windows, comparatively, and that Linux users should be more comfortable recommending it to newbies. For people who don't know what they're doing with Linux/unix at all, there's no point in even saying "you have all these distros, pick the one you like!" when they're mostly too advanced. It should be, "Pick Mint. If you like it, you can change later and start working on something more complex."
Now, I am sure there will be not a few disagreements that Mint should be the canonical beginner's choice. Honestly, fine, if there's a distro even more dead-simple it could be that, but bike-shedding won't help. We don't need to find the best distro for each user, we just need to give them a safe and comfortable starting point.
Here is the thing. MS Windows has no alternative. There is no other OS that:
- is primarily user friendly (no terminal use, good accessibility support, well known patterns, well made paid human translation)
- has drivers working out of the box with every single hardware
- has long term software support
- has long term hardware support
- has a healthy closed-source specialized software ecosystem
- has good developer support
- has not perfect but reasonably future proof API
- good interoperability with majority of the other software
Once you step out of programming or hobbyist use it is 90% Windows for the use cases one uses a full fledged computer. Yes you can replace many things with a tablet or a smartphone.
You can't replace a PC with a tablet for accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT and many other things.
The professional grade software you do those built on Windows, Office and Active Directory. They trust the backwards compatibility and wide range of API and integration Windows ecosystem provides.
People don't use computers because they like them. They use them because they do work for their goals.
Even for nonprofessional use case Windows still has the best hardware support. For example you cannot use old low DPI monitors with Macs anymore; the text is unreadable. Certain audio workstations doesn't work with ARM chips.
> You can't replace a PC with a tablet for accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT and many other things
For each one of those examples there's already a superior Linux based choice.
You kind of have to pick an argument though. Are your parents tech-illiterate, or are they routinely doing CAD, simulation, and manufacturing work?
Being tech-illiterate is where Linux shines. Point them to a browser, set up unattended-upgrades, and you're good for a few years - at which point they'd have needed help installing a Windows update (98 -> XP -> 7 -> 8) had Microsoft not decided that thou shalt update, whether the user wants to or not.
Doing any of the above turns it into a hobby. All hobbies require tools, and many software based hobbies require one to learn software. It doesn't seem unreasonable to learn to use publishing software because you want to self-publish a book. Same with learning CAD because you want to learn to 3D print doo-dads and helpful thingamajigs.
And if we're discussing office workers? Well, the IT department is paid handsomely for a reason. One of those reasons is to make the OS as close to invisible as possible. Which again, seems reasonable enough to me.
If you want to say Linux isn't there, then fine. But please don't derail parent's thread by changing the hypothetical user and moving the goalposts.
I have a tech-illiterate grandfather using Linux who is a gearhead. During the pandemic he wanted to get into sim racing to stay in contact with his friends and enjoy his hobby. I ended up having to write drivers for all of his equipment for Linux because almost none of it was supported, whereas it would have been a simple plug-n-play task on Windows.
Just because somebody only needs a browser for now doesn't mean their OS choice won't restrict them in the future from enjoying their life.
No. There is not. Without changing how "Linux" is built from the very C library to binary loader and graphics APIs, there cannot be either.
Try finding alternatives to Excel with its entire feature set (no cheating all SQL db integration and VBA equivalent scripting, plugin APIs should be there), PowerPoint with all the integration with other Office, Solidworks with its entire feature set, Altium with its entire feature set, Siemens NX, Catia, SAP, Ansys, Active Directory, Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity or CorelDRAW, Cubase, Sibelius just a start. And the software you mention has to have succesful companies behind them and has to be used widely.
> Try finding alternatives to Excel with its entire feature set (no cheating all SQL db integration and VBA equivalent scripting)
If you need those many features you should not be using Excel.
> PowerPoint with all the integration with other Office, Solidworks with its entire feature set, Altium with its entire feature set, Siemens NX, Catia, SAP, Ansys, Active Directory, Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity or CorelDRAW, Cubase, Sibelius just a start
The most critical business software in the world never left the mainframe. The one that did now runs on Linux somehow or their competitors do. If it doesn't run then it can run on a compatibility layer like Wine or on a VM.
> Active Directory
The most overhyped software ever. Some phishing e-mail can bring an entire organization using Active Directory to its knees.
GPL is also part of the problem. Linux will simply never support HDMI 2.1 properly because the license precludes it. It will never support OSS like ZFS properly because the license precludes it.
It is a restrictive/closed copyleft ecosystem by design, and that’s actually completely unsuitable for a world where you must have some kinds of software (including open/libre software) and some parties simply will not license that way.
(And I know people will object to the term but it undeniably is more restrictive and closed than BSD/MIT/CDDL-style licenses - intentionally, openly, and by design. The point is that you are supposed to license your software GPL too - and when that is not possible, your freedom is denied. Intentionally, by design. But it is a closed ecosystem - you are either in it, or not, and there are large swaths of code (even open/libre code) that is excluded by design. That is a closed model, just as much as, say, CUDA. You play by their rules or you play in a different sandbox. And open CUDA code exists too, etc - that doesn’t mean anything to the overall ecosystem if licensing precludes people from using it.)
The minimum standard for even reaching usability would be to guarantee a BSD-style stable ABI such that kernel upstreaming is not required in the way that it currently is, and that’s a nonstarter with the current kernel leadership team. Actually they have in many cases gone out of their way to explicitly break compatibility to push others to relicense, even when they know that it’s not going to happen and their users will suffer.
When you get to the point of rejecting interop with other libre code due to license, and actively take steps to break other libre code to prevent interop - you certainly are not fully libre in the typical sense anymore. There’s a degree of fairly open hostility to other libre code at this point, in fact.
Again, it’s not 1992 anymore, Linux could absolutely maintain a stable ABI through major releases. Not only do they not want to do that, they are actively, willfully, maliciously breaking other libre code (GKH has done this repeatedly). Which gives sort of a different color to the former: kernel upstreaming is one of the most potent weapons at this point, for pushing more stuff into their closed ecosystem. It’s not exactly embrace-extend-extinguish, but certainly of a similar tone and kind - join or die.
I disagree. For vast, vast majority of cases, linux would likely do the trick these days. People would complain initially and, predictably, would complain again if new functionality was taken away from them. But that is just human nature.
Lets talk reality. More and more applications users access live in a browser.. you technically could run the entire company on dumb terminals if you were so inclined ( and jobs were sufficiently.. in dire of automation, but for one reason or another human is doing those ). Windows is not needed for that.
You could argue banking/finance with excel ( and there are some neat things Office introduced with 365 ), which is presumably why that sector is going to be locked in for a while, but then.. my last class at university, all kids were running google docs and they will be making decisions one day. I am not sure that bodes well for MS/Office/Windows.
As for "accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT", you might be right, but somehow I doubt it. There is nothing magical about Windows. It is currently held by inertia and contracts, but even inertia ends eventually.
> my last class at university, all kids were running google docs
Corporate use looks nothing like that. I was actually working in an accounting firm that tried to move people over to google sheets and docs. Took about a week for people to realise the sheets plan is utterly idiotic.
Docs lasted about a month before even the “thought leaders” in charge of pushing the initiative went quiet.
For casual use sure, but it’s no more replacing office than ms paint is replacing photoshop.
The problem is that there's no Linux. The Average Joe cannot download Linux from Linux.com.
He will waste hours, maybe days learning about different distributions, window managers, packaging, etc. This is true even for experienced professionals. It's demotivating IMHO.
There's a book named "The Paradox of Choice", it gives a good psychological overview of this topic. No distribution is ready to compete against Windows
Here comes the perfect business opportunity for purveyors of Linux laptops.
I know, they exist. But, If Microsoft really pulls off that shitshow (and even the mainstream press is not very kind about it) there could be a significantly large market for such offerings.
AutoCAD for Mac lacks feature parity and has been known to break functionality in dwgs in my clients' workflows. Tool pallets get jacked up. IIRC, also problems with dynamic blocks.
Your os is still a gatekeeper. I get the appeal of Apple products and the desire to work on a Mac and the rage of going back to Windows (Your file system uses backlashes? Your mount points use drive letters that can be hard codes into files, making resources unreliable users and devices that aren't mapped perfectly? Your files include a newline and a carriage return just in case you reach for the teletype machine? You did what to your start menu? My laptop battery just dies by default when I close the lid unplugged? The list goes on).
Famously, life is suffering and you suffer differently (maybe less?) by going where your tools are (for CAD in AEC it's still very much Windows).
I love me some linux distros, and I would sure love to play all of the steam games I like on a real Linux os... And if that's actually improved, I'll sure consider it. And if it's not, I don't really have a choice other than to actually go touch grass.
So many conflicting views here not sure where to start. With so many OS (OS/370 …) macOS user interface is easy. So easy to freak with a few folders within folder and size sum etc. And the market is high end enough you got some support.
But the linux hostile (even though unlike some comments behind the screen they tried to help it seems) and nvidia absence need to have some windows pc to run linux and windows.
For the compatibility, my hp Vr headset will be gone soon. And so will be my windows 10 AI cum VR due to missing some feature.
Meta Quest 3 just bought to prepare the lost of VR with most users run on windows and mac … possibility just a knowledge issue as it is a standalone Vr but to run pcvr …
Anyway I restrict myself to sdl and gl for cross platform.
As said you cannot escape … all will co-exist and each of us (and probably thee is no us) will have to find a way to live in this jungle.
To me, the most important way to make more people use Linux is for manufacturers to start shipping PCs and laptops with a hardware-tested, user-friendly, and trusted Linux distro like Ubuntu.
Sadly, the "make you consider" part of the article title here is not applicable for most people, but of course is valid and good.
The user experience of Linux fundamentally has not changed in 25 years.
Apple has had a decent shot, but their desktop seems to be rotting.
Linux had a chance with alternative looking desktops, but was dragged back to the same old same old.
The permission systems, elevation, driver management are all archaic.
Your best bet is Ubuntu plus, but as another poster said, there is no support. There are no friendly call centers, it's a mass of agro and multiple paths of confusion when looking for a solution for a Linux problem online.
Linux is not a replacement, and it probably won't ever be. Ubuntu may come up with a snappy Linux distribution that distances itself enough from the chaos of choice, just like apple did, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I've seen this discussion for twenty years, and the conservative Linux base won't allow popularity.
At home I have used Linux (Slackware) for decades. At work, about 20 years ago we were allowed to dump windows and use Linux (RHEL) on our Work Laptop. I switched as soon as I could. About 10 years ago, MACs were allowed.
If you are a developer, you should be on Linux or a BSD. It is almost as if Microsoft is trying to kill of Windows.
Maybe Finance people have a reason to use Windows, but, the Finance people I work with all when full in on MACs. So, really, people should be off of Windows at this point.
144 comments
[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadTo be fair, it really is scores and scores of jabs to avoid in Windows - with more added bi-weekly. Today I had to counter (for many users)
1) the orange notify dot (start menu->user) trying to lure users into a non-consensual Microsoft account setup and
2) the clickable suggestions on the lock screen, carefully positioned in the click-space where the password box will be.
It's like MS found a copy of Creepy Uncle For Dummies and hovered for hours over every page.
At a certain point it becomes apparent that proprietary operating system vendors don't have your best interest at heart, and the only winning move is software freedom.
For those that don't the downsides of using Windows are generally less than the downsides of using Linux. For many people, the idea that their computer will be making a full recording of literally everything they do on their computer might be enough to tip the scales.
(Yes, there's always been telemetry, but we're talking the difference between some guy that sits outside your neighbourhood and writes down what time of day cars come and leave versus some guy with a video camera that follows you between your bedroom and bathroom and records while you sleep, shower and shit, but totally promises to not show anyone the recording. This is pretty obviously different.)
I say this as someone that's used Linux and BSD for over three decades... on servers. Ran Windows on my desktop (including Windows 10 for over half a decade). Every year or two I'd throw Linux on my computer and see how it did. A couple years back is when we finally got to the point where at least all the essential functionality I needed worked out of the box. The downsides of using Linux were less than that of Windows, and I immediately wiped the drive, installed Linux, and have used it exclusively since. This sort of stuff, if it couldn't be disabled, would have definitely tipped the scales in Linux's favour much sooner.
I didn't mean constantly as in nagging. I meant constantly as in how often MS would have the opportunity to break this with their updates
I know someone who works for Qualcomm, he says they are taking Linux support very seriously.
Linux is great, love it on the server, but it's never a "just works" experience on any modern laptop type hardware.
It's doable, but it doesn't "just work".
But yes; Nvidia has been the sore thumb of Wayland and Linux adoption for almost a decade now. It's interesting to see the tides finally start turning!
Granted, this won't be for every flavor of Linux, just the one I happen to be using. I imagine there's all kinds of different issues with the proliferation of Window Managers and graphics servers. Users looking for "just works" are not looking to dive into the various overlapping software processes.
Worse, the UIs themselves don't give you insight into what underlying settings you're manipulating when you click some button or toggle in the GUI settings. As a Linux user you know there's a conf file somewhere. But the UI obscures that from you. Perhaps the doc (or the source code (!)) says what the UI is doing. I'd love for there to be a little fly-over in the UI or even a path to the underlying configuration files. I'd be perfectly happy tweaking those in Emacs or Vim but I'm less happy hunting them down to figure out what they are.
I'm determined to avoid Windows, and I want x86 hardware because I can load it up for AI workloads. So I'm happy to be on Linux, but it comes with an overhead that most consumer level equipment doesn't. Linux is the equivalent of those shop tools that aren't safe by default, and are intended to provide the flexibility needed by machinists that know what they're doing. I'll accept that trade-off, but I'm not going to sell it to anyone who is a developer.
Funnily enough, it totally depends on the hardware. If your audio hardware is supported by Core Audio on Mac, chances are it will also work on Linux without problems. If your audio hardware is older, chances are it will not work on Windows due to the lack of modern drivers but will work on Linux without problems. This also applies to a lot of other older hardware like scanners/printers/... or even built-in peripherals in older laptops.
But if it's something strange (e.g., MOTU MIDI interfaces come to mind which use a non-standard USB protocol), you'll have to hack your own kernel driver which you probably don't want to do. Of course if you are adventurous and do hack your own kernel driver, even this will work, and you'll probably even find someone else's driver code on github.
What's also interesting about hardware support on Linux is that a lot of things which require extra drivers on Windows just work out of the box on Linux, especially if it's in any way relevant for servers like various network cards or if it's one of the many "standard" USB UART chips.
My brother, the least tech-oriented person you can imagine, got tired of windows updates breaking his drivers and ended up with a linux system sold by and supported by Dell. I get zero calls for help.
Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux.
From Dell, supported by Dell. Save your $15/month.
I saw recall about the same time as I was thinking of using the mini pc for something else. Seeing what Windows had planned, and seeing Copilot shoehorned into my taskbar after a Windows update was enough. I blew away the install and only have Linux running now.
> Turns out that LLMs learn a lot better and faster from educational content as well. This is partly because the average Common Crawl article (internet pages) is not of very high value and distracts the training, packing in too much irrelevant information. The average webpage on the internet is so random and terrible it’s not even clear how prior LLMs learn anything at all.
People keep assuming that AI companies want to pipe any old junk into their models, but I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't true.
Maybe at some point they will try to create their own, very limited, "knowledge base" but then those AI assistants cease to be a jack of all trades, while still being masters of nothing.
It's the trick used by ChatGPT Browsing mode and Bing and Perplexity and Google Gemini and the new Google Search.
meanwhile in dimension reality: Google's AI tells people to put glue on their pizza, the only source being a single reddit comment from user "fucksmith"
Those willing to seek something different will embrace but if I gave my mother a computer with Linux installed, I'd never not be tech support.
And my mother is technology oriented. Her first computer was a Wang Labs machine back from the 80's. She can create her own website, operate photoshop and she even built her own system. She's 73.
Recall just doesn't matter to those out of the geek sector. As with privacy for that matter. "I got nothing to hide"
Icepack Linux was my first Linux OS:
https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=icepac...
Where Matrox S3 drivers were something you needed to modify yourself and Xorg was XFree86.
If I was to gloat; sadly my open mind has become a cynical one a long time ago.
I agree with the commenter 100%.
Giving me life and supporting me though it; I've not been an easy child.
Windows reached its peak through deals where it comes preinstalled.
Windows is bloated and OEM manufacturers add even more bloat to it. The result is sluggish machines that are a complete waste of potential.
Forced updates, ads and now outright spying makes Windows the inferior choice. Having 3 extra FPS in some dumb game is not worth your privacy.
As a legacy gamer when of the age 20, I didn't care about the crap that Microsoft pushed upon. I just downloaded some rogue batch script, probably infecting myself with a trojan and just played games.
Looking at porn after hours and downloading matrix.reloaded.2.pif.gif.exe from Kazaa. Teenagers just don't care otherwise TikTok wouldn't be thing.
Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux.
Just because people are not aware that Recall exists and is actively collecting data without their knowing does not mean it doesn't matter. The people that believe it doesn't matter is precisely why these companies get away with what they do.
Those who know about it, and don't care and those who don't know but do care.
Those who do live in the world of part time computer usage. They check their facebook, shop amazon, grocery shop. But are the "I've got nothing to hide, so what does it matter" category.
And those who are concerned for it are unable to embrace the difference. As like teaching an old dog new tricks. By all means they can, and they want to change. The learning curve is however too steep.
What they have learnt is what they can handle. They don't the same time to learn as the younger audience does. My mother wants the internet to look up patterns of leaves so she can lino print not wanting to diagnose why systemd hangs at night when she turns off her computer.
If you take an existing install of Linux
First of all, who is the one going to give them a USB key and let them install the OS? Burning an ISO is tricky enough for anyone. Google usb iso burner and you get swamped by download promiscuous download sites. My father doesn't know about Rufus, my mother doesn't know about DD.
And this is where Windows and OSX leaps ahead. They come pre-installed, press the power button and your good to go.
Back to Linux you then have to run some chonky installer. Ubuntu's installer is astrocious in requiring to be connected to the internet. You then have to hope that the drivers work.
Compatibility is better than how it used to be but with OEM computers it can be easily sabotaged by the vendor and then on top of that the decision of the Window Manager and hope they like.
It's not an easy change.
The reason was the introduction of copilot, ads and other shenanigans.
Now it's those machines only, and opt-out.
Eventually more and more machines will come with the necessary chips.
And it will be more of an effort to opt out. Then only professional versions will be able to opt out, through more and more complicated pathways. Eventually it'll just be part of the OS.
Meanwhile they'll find ways to sell the side effects of the functionality to other organisations, for example to monitor employees etc, to begin with. Then to governments, why not.
- Forced Cortana (oops no let's shut that down) - Forced OS Updates (oops your computer doesn't have the requirements) - Ads in your start menu - "Yes" and "maybe later" interactions everywhere - Edge force defaulting itself on occasion - Literally needing configuration management to run powershell on a daily cadence because settings might not get respected - 5 Layers of failed UI frameworks duct taped together
Basically Windows is becoming such a bear to wrangle that you might as well use Linux and save yourself the pain and $100 per computer.
1. Don’t turn recall on
2. Switch to Mac
Jumping straight to the Linux Desktop deep end after using Windows for years is an unlikely change path for most. These arguments ignore the fact that most Windows users have a lot of Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
When I try to use a Mac, everything is just ... different. CMD instead of Ctrl, buttons on the other side of windows, inconsistent maximize logic between programs, whatever Finder is supposed to be doing with folder navigation. It's certainly learnable with effort, and I can move around the OS competently now with some practice, but it's just unpleasant enough that I'd rather not use it as my daily driver.
> I can hop between Linux (KDE, Gnome, whatever)
If you’ve been using Linux long enough to be familiar with KDE and Gnome and even know the difference between them, you’re very firmly a Linux enthusiast user. It’s easy to forget that the average computer user isn’t really interested in the details of their window management. They want the OS to get out of the way and support them, not be something they’re actively invested in.
Windows desktop users are all over the planet. Only a small percent of them could ever afford this.
I've been a Windows user since Windows was originally released (and was an MS-DOS user before that), but Windows 11 is the straw that broke the camels back for me. I've dabbled with Linux before, but the lack of gaming support and the hassles to configure it properly to get all my hardware to work made it to inconvenient to switch, but I am 100% going to switch when support for Windows 10 expires. As I am the one who offers tech support to numerous relatives who are less tech savvy, I will also migrate them to the most user-friendly Linux build I can find. Almost all of them, especially the older ones, use their computers almost exclusively for web-browsing and streaming videos, and this will be a virtually seamless process for them. Most of my Gen-X friends are of the same mindset (except for the ones who have been captured by the Mac ecosystem).
Certainly Windows is not going to go away no matter how terrible and odious their OS becomes, but I think many people have underestimated just how far they can push the envelope without seeing a significant migration away from MS.
I do agree that Recall isn't the reason to switch though. The abuse Microsoft has put their users through the last few years has been unimaginable, to the point where switching to anything will feel liberating. Even Linux desktop.
This is kind of an outdated argument and nearly a solved problem - the majority of Steam's library can be run near-effortlessly on Linux today. I'd expect a large portion of Windows PC gamers to be aware of that, too, at least in the US. I don't really know anyone who's tied to any Windows-specific apps that aren't games, either.
As if many Windows games don't work on Linux via proton, to the point that Valve's Steam Deck runs on Linux and is "good enough" most of the time. Compatibility purely depends on the game and more often than not incompatibilities are caused by anti-cheat mechanisms.
And about jumping to Linux: we had Windows computers in my family, originally with Windows 7, then upgraded to Windows 8.1, and once 8.1 was EOL, they were reinstalled with Linux (KDE as desktop environment). Since these computers were mainly used for email, web browsing, and some basic "office activities" like writing a simple document occasionally, there was exactly no issue with it. KDE itself is also similar enough to a Windows desktop that it wasn't hard for anyone to learn the few relevant things that are different. I'd be quite surprised if this was different for the majority of current Windows users.
But those multiplayer online games are the most popular games on the planet. It's another topic of discussion but people want to play them
I think nowadays you would have a much worse experience switching from windows to mac, as you said, the user wants their apps and games to carry over, but you are actually going to have a much better time getting those to carry over to linux. Specially regarding games, just the fact that Steam runs almost any Windows game effortlessly on linux is a big deal. Meanwhile, Apple has made sure to burn all the bridges they could with game developers and game compatibility in the last decade or so.
I have Mac, Windows, and Linux machines that I use for different purposes. None of them has been perfect, but the amount of time I’ve lost fighting driver issues, weird upgrade quirks, software incompatibility problems, and other little loose ends over the users has been a magnitude worse on the Linux machines than anything else. In the moment it doesn’t really feel like much because it’s similar to daily work with Linux servers, but looking back it’s just so much more predictable to have basic things working on Mac or Windows than on Linux.
Anyway, we should all be glad how far linux has improved over the years and how it is a viable alternative to many use cases now. Hardware support used to be appalling and it used to be painful to use it for basic things like internet, video, music, games etc. Even developers had a rough time, with windows being the gold standard dev environment. But look at it now, linux is the gold standard dev environment, meanwhile microsoft is having to course correct and embed a copy of linux into windows, buy github and create a multiplatform text editor to try and lure developers back.
I also think it's important people keep giving linux a chance every couple years, If it doesn't work for you now give it another chance 2 to 5 years from now, it might finally click.
It's on by default if you have the right (wrong) hardware as I understand it.
I no longer buy this argument at all. Between the work Steam put into Proton, this is had been largely a non-issue. About the only game I needed to use VM for was Fallout 3 ( I didn't feel like messing with it for more than 15 minutes ). There are some things Windows is still good for, but that list is growing shorter.
<< I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
The intended audience is the people, who most need to hear it, because they do not realize there are options other than OS1 or OS2. And that it is not nearly as hard as it was only a decade ago.
This fragmentation is biggest barrier against the wide adaptation of Linux. I mean Debian and Ubuntu and Arch and openSUSE and Gentoo and.
I see Linux as an idea. Or more like an umbrella of ideas that several OSes share. Which sounds good on paper but not enough for end users and for the 99.99% doesn't make any difference. At all.
The only thing I personally I recommend to friends who switch to Linux is to use an immutable distro because those are the most breakage resistant ones. Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue are nice. But then we will have Ubuntu Core Desktop soon as well. And other distros. So the wheel of fragmentation rolls forward.
The problem is approaching these decisions as if there were final and irreversible decisions from which one answer is right and the other one is wrong followed by eternal doom. That's not the situation at all. Most of these decisions are similar and you can change your mind at any time.
Choosing a Linux distro / DE / whatever is not going a supermarket and choosing a bottle of water. It is choosing a bottling factory next to a sewer or bottled distilled water.
Of course, each of them possesses some advantage that Windows lacks out of the box, and sometimes at all.
Now, I am sure there will be not a few disagreements that Mint should be the canonical beginner's choice. Honestly, fine, if there's a distro even more dead-simple it could be that, but bike-shedding won't help. We don't need to find the best distro for each user, we just need to give them a safe and comfortable starting point.
Once you step out of programming or hobbyist use it is 90% Windows for the use cases one uses a full fledged computer. Yes you can replace many things with a tablet or a smartphone.
You can't replace a PC with a tablet for accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT and many other things.
The professional grade software you do those built on Windows, Office and Active Directory. They trust the backwards compatibility and wide range of API and integration Windows ecosystem provides.
People don't use computers because they like them. They use them because they do work for their goals.
Even for nonprofessional use case Windows still has the best hardware support. For example you cannot use old low DPI monitors with Macs anymore; the text is unreadable. Certain audio workstations doesn't work with ARM chips.
For each one of those examples there's already a superior Linux based choice.
No.
Being tech-illiterate is where Linux shines. Point them to a browser, set up unattended-upgrades, and you're good for a few years - at which point they'd have needed help installing a Windows update (98 -> XP -> 7 -> 8) had Microsoft not decided that thou shalt update, whether the user wants to or not.
Doing any of the above turns it into a hobby. All hobbies require tools, and many software based hobbies require one to learn software. It doesn't seem unreasonable to learn to use publishing software because you want to self-publish a book. Same with learning CAD because you want to learn to 3D print doo-dads and helpful thingamajigs.
And if we're discussing office workers? Well, the IT department is paid handsomely for a reason. One of those reasons is to make the OS as close to invisible as possible. Which again, seems reasonable enough to me.
If you want to say Linux isn't there, then fine. But please don't derail parent's thread by changing the hypothetical user and moving the goalposts.
I have a tech-illiterate grandfather using Linux who is a gearhead. During the pandemic he wanted to get into sim racing to stay in contact with his friends and enjoy his hobby. I ended up having to write drivers for all of his equipment for Linux because almost none of it was supported, whereas it would have been a simple plug-n-play task on Windows.
Just because somebody only needs a browser for now doesn't mean their OS choice won't restrict them in the future from enjoying their life.
Try finding alternatives to Excel with its entire feature set (no cheating all SQL db integration and VBA equivalent scripting, plugin APIs should be there), PowerPoint with all the integration with other Office, Solidworks with its entire feature set, Altium with its entire feature set, Siemens NX, Catia, SAP, Ansys, Active Directory, Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity or CorelDRAW, Cubase, Sibelius just a start. And the software you mention has to have succesful companies behind them and has to be used widely.
If you need those many features you should not be using Excel.
> PowerPoint with all the integration with other Office, Solidworks with its entire feature set, Altium with its entire feature set, Siemens NX, Catia, SAP, Ansys, Active Directory, Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity or CorelDRAW, Cubase, Sibelius just a start
The most critical business software in the world never left the mainframe. The one that did now runs on Linux somehow or their competitors do. If it doesn't run then it can run on a compatibility layer like Wine or on a VM.
> Active Directory
The most overhyped software ever. Some phishing e-mail can bring an entire organization using Active Directory to its knees.
It is a restrictive/closed copyleft ecosystem by design, and that’s actually completely unsuitable for a world where you must have some kinds of software (including open/libre software) and some parties simply will not license that way.
(And I know people will object to the term but it undeniably is more restrictive and closed than BSD/MIT/CDDL-style licenses - intentionally, openly, and by design. The point is that you are supposed to license your software GPL too - and when that is not possible, your freedom is denied. Intentionally, by design. But it is a closed ecosystem - you are either in it, or not, and there are large swaths of code (even open/libre code) that is excluded by design. That is a closed model, just as much as, say, CUDA. You play by their rules or you play in a different sandbox. And open CUDA code exists too, etc - that doesn’t mean anything to the overall ecosystem if licensing precludes people from using it.)
The minimum standard for even reaching usability would be to guarantee a BSD-style stable ABI such that kernel upstreaming is not required in the way that it currently is, and that’s a nonstarter with the current kernel leadership team. Actually they have in many cases gone out of their way to explicitly break compatibility to push others to relicense, even when they know that it’s not going to happen and their users will suffer.
When you get to the point of rejecting interop with other libre code due to license, and actively take steps to break other libre code to prevent interop - you certainly are not fully libre in the typical sense anymore. There’s a degree of fairly open hostility to other libre code at this point, in fact.
Again, it’s not 1992 anymore, Linux could absolutely maintain a stable ABI through major releases. Not only do they not want to do that, they are actively, willfully, maliciously breaking other libre code (GKH has done this repeatedly). Which gives sort of a different color to the former: kernel upstreaming is one of the most potent weapons at this point, for pushing more stuff into their closed ecosystem. It’s not exactly embrace-extend-extinguish, but certainly of a similar tone and kind - join or die.
NVIDIA drivers being one example of that.
If this is a problem to you don't use Windows.
Lets talk reality. More and more applications users access live in a browser.. you technically could run the entire company on dumb terminals if you were so inclined ( and jobs were sufficiently.. in dire of automation, but for one reason or another human is doing those ). Windows is not needed for that.
You could argue banking/finance with excel ( and there are some neat things Office introduced with 365 ), which is presumably why that sector is going to be locked in for a while, but then.. my last class at university, all kids were running google docs and they will be making decisions one day. I am not sure that bodes well for MS/Office/Windows.
As for "accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT", you might be right, but somehow I doubt it. There is nothing magical about Windows. It is currently held by inertia and contracts, but even inertia ends eventually.
Corporate use looks nothing like that. I was actually working in an accounting firm that tried to move people over to google sheets and docs. Took about a week for people to realise the sheets plan is utterly idiotic.
Docs lasted about a month before even the “thought leaders” in charge of pushing the initiative went quiet.
For casual use sure, but it’s no more replacing office than ms paint is replacing photoshop.
He will waste hours, maybe days learning about different distributions, window managers, packaging, etc. This is true even for experienced professionals. It's demotivating IMHO.
There's a book named "The Paradox of Choice", it gives a good psychological overview of this topic. No distribution is ready to compete against Windows
Here comes the perfect business opportunity for purveyors of Linux laptops.
I know, they exist. But, If Microsoft really pulls off that shitshow (and even the mainstream press is not very kind about it) there could be a significantly large market for such offerings.
Give some market demand, they could switch back and support Linux
Lot of these are .Net based and .Net is now more or less cross-platform.
Your os is still a gatekeeper. I get the appeal of Apple products and the desire to work on a Mac and the rage of going back to Windows (Your file system uses backlashes? Your mount points use drive letters that can be hard codes into files, making resources unreliable users and devices that aren't mapped perfectly? Your files include a newline and a carriage return just in case you reach for the teletype machine? You did what to your start menu? My laptop battery just dies by default when I close the lid unplugged? The list goes on).
Famously, life is suffering and you suffer differently (maybe less?) by going where your tools are (for CAD in AEC it's still very much Windows).
But the linux hostile (even though unlike some comments behind the screen they tried to help it seems) and nvidia absence need to have some windows pc to run linux and windows.
For the compatibility, my hp Vr headset will be gone soon. And so will be my windows 10 AI cum VR due to missing some feature.
Meta Quest 3 just bought to prepare the lost of VR with most users run on windows and mac … possibility just a knowledge issue as it is a standalone Vr but to run pcvr …
Anyway I restrict myself to sdl and gl for cross platform.
As said you cannot escape … all will co-exist and each of us (and probably thee is no us) will have to find a way to live in this jungle.
Sadly, the "make you consider" part of the article title here is not applicable for most people, but of course is valid and good.
At home I have used Linux (Slackware) for decades. At work, about 20 years ago we were allowed to dump windows and use Linux (RHEL) on our Work Laptop. I switched as soon as I could. About 10 years ago, MACs were allowed.
If you are a developer, you should be on Linux or a BSD. It is almost as if Microsoft is trying to kill of Windows.
Maybe Finance people have a reason to use Windows, but, the Finance people I work with all when full in on MACs. So, really, people should be off of Windows at this point.