Why is this thread getting flooded with people saying how they can’t use Linux? Isn’t that a little odd coming from a Linux community?
Hiya, intending to switch from Windows to Linux (it looks like I’ll finally be pulling the proverbial trigger this holiday season!) but I got here via Local sorted by Active on programming.dev. I am not subbed to Linux.
In other words, people outside the target audience are getting exposed to this post.
I don’t see why. You can be interested in Linux and like some aspects of it but still get annoyed at the blinkered zealots claiming that there’s no reason to use Windows.
There is no reason for some people to use Windows
Definitely true for a minority. Not the way most of these articles are presented though (including this one).
I never had a reason to use Windows outside of job requirements. If I bothered I could find a job without such requierements.
deleted by creator
Ignore the trolls
Like most articles on itsfoss, this one is only a notch over clickbait — a kernel of an idea not fully developed, written with the last minute energy of a student who pushed off the assignment until right before deadline — but I’ll be damned if that title isn’t beautifully turned.
I haven’t had to have Windows installed for more than a decade, but on recent occasion I’ve borrowed Windows and Mac computers for work. Those revisits didn’t give me reason to switch back, only to long for my lean Arch install.
As the next major version of Windows approaches like a Santa down the chimney with all sorts of “AI”-infested gadgets in his sack, I do hope more will make the more often mentioned switch to a Linux distro from the
advertising platformOS that came with their computer.But this headline deliciously reminds us that there is already a good chunk of users who made the jump, or are sitting on the dual booting fence, one boot (sorry!) on either side. This article is for them, yes, but also a gentle nudge for those still gathering courage.
At this stage, it is time to seriously change the perspective of that switch. The single reason for switching from Windows to Linux is … the utter state of Windows. Only the most blinkered of tech journos can continue to pretend that all is well on Windows, and not at all a sophisticated malware infection.
So bravo itsfoss for the clever barb, less so for the depth of the article itself.
I like the writing style of It’s Foss. They don’t make there articles dry and the tone is always positive and honest.
I think the Linux switch will heavily depend on your work flow and whether you like to tinker at all. I think It’s Foss is right to say that for some Windows is not an option. People like me use a lot of Linux tools and apps.
I agree that the tone of their articles helps push the quality above some other tech blogs. At the very least they’re sincere!
Windows is no longer an option for me either — I had made a conscious effort to use FLOSS apps even before switching, so there wasn’t much holding me back. And, as you say, once I’d started modifying system settings to disable Microsoft telemetry, I was already at Linux tinkerer levels…
i never saw one to begin with
My reason is that VR gaming is not feasible on Linux, so I need to keep a Windows VM to play VR games.
why not?
Most VR headsets don’t work at all on Linux, and for those that do, most games don’t work anyway. For those that do work, they are unstable, and SteamVR itself is unstable and prone to crashes. Even when things work for a while, the frame rate is lower than on Windows, which is much more important for VR games.
So as much as flat games work perfectly on Linux nowadays, it’s just not there for VR.
I ask because it works fine for me
What sort of hardware are you using (gpu and headset)? I’m thinking of picking something up soon.
deleted by creator
Nice, thanks. I’m on nvidia. I was thinking about the quest simply because it is so much more affordable, and newer than the index. Only thing holding me back is I don’t have a meta account nor do I want to make one, even if it’s just for the quest.
meta account would be necessary unless there’s another way to run developer tools
I wish. NVIDIA is still a buggy mess for me, and it seems that I am the only person with these issues, I see people praising NVIDIA on Wayland all the time now.
And VR is still bad on Linux.
I still love Linux, but I can’t use it for now. God i miss NixOS );
I use X11 with Nvidia without issue. While I like the idea of Wayland, and it being pushed a lot now, it really remains beta software. While I think it’s good Wayland is being focused on and promoted by the distros and DEs, I think it’s a bit of a distraction from Linux as a whole.
I’ve had to switch back to X11 on both Nvidia and AMD devices due to bugs or compatibility issues in Wayland.
I agree about VR - I keep dual boot windows on my PC and VR is about the only thing I use it for now. But the result is I just use VR less.
I dual boot Windows for VR and Fusion360. Do alternatives exist? Yes, but it’s just not something I want to spend hours tinkering with for what I perceive to be a worse experience.
I tried ALVR but it kept disconnecting if it connected at all. VD on Windows works flawlessly every time.
I heard of an ALVR alternative made by Collabora, you could try it. Dunno if it’s good or not.
Thanks for the heads up. It looks like it’s called ElectricMaple. I’ll definitely give it a go, although having no updates on the main branch in 6 months doesn’t fill me with confidence.
deleted by creator
How out of touch are you? Thry are using the most up to date repo.
Nix has the largest and most updated repo of all of them by a large factor according to live stats.
deleted by creator
Tbh running AMD isn’t easier. For my workload I needed OpenCL and when it wasn’t installed by default, and wasn’t apart of apt package manager. I had to follow a script which involves amdgpu and only having OpenCL install if I wanted my machine stable.
Not the best experience.
For Nvidia some distros have installers built in to handle it. Like Mint where it’s one click and a restart and I have everything.
My problem isn’t installing, it’s after installing. Vsync has extra bad latency, frames are reversed, and more. And this is on 565, the latest version.
Games are unplayable.
The best way to use AMD GPU compute is to use containers. Keep in mind AMD only really has good performance on newer cards.
Last round of nvidia drivers made a mess, nix has a wiki on the issues on how to fix them until they are resolved.
Nothing is stopping you from using more than one OS. Use NixOS for everything other than what you’re having problems with. And not using it at all won’t do anything to solve the problems, use it and try updated and new things every now and then, eventually it’ll work.
I mean, yeah. But it gets tiring to switch between them all the time.
I actually installed NixOS again, and I’m trying to figure out the solution. God help me with NVIDIA.
I never had any major issues with nvidia and VR is improving aswell
That just makes it even weirder, how does seemingly nobody have any problems on NVIDIA, except a small minority?
What driver version are you using?
I am using the latest proprietary driver on a gtx 1650 gpu and my distro cachyos preinstalls it
I’m semi convinced the downloads don’t work right if you use the GUI distros like Mint provide for Nvidia drivers
My 2080ti had multiple issues until I installed a different version (same issues) and then RE-installrd the original drivers manually
When I updated later: same exact series of events went down except I was able to get it to install on the third try from GUI properly because I wanted to see how many tries it might take for the lulz
I think it’s older cards and some sort of glitch in the proprietary driver manager shit most people use by default
It can’t be that, I use NixOS. But yeah, GUI installers are buggy as shit for me too. And i don’t use an old card.
Nvidia is just universally shit :(
It’s mostly people on older cards with those problems I guess
Me for example on my GTX 1080 can’t use G-Sync (monitor blacks out in specific fps ranges). Nvidia “fixed” this like 5 times already. Newer cards work correctly I guess?
I also get graphical bugs in Wayland after Nvidias final Wayland “fix”. Other people somehow do not experience this so I guess newer cards work correctly (again)
Imo Nvidia just didn’t bother fixing this on their old cards so there is a minority left with those problems which can be ghosted safely by Nvidia because “those bugs got fixed”
It’s not uncommon for Nvidia to ignore their normal users since the most money comes from other companies purchasing their GPUs anyway
I have an rtx 3060, i don’t think that counts as old. I feel you, should have gone with AMD
I have an rtx 3060, i don’t think that counts as old
Huh, that just makes everything weirder
I feel you, should have gone with AMD
Yeah, this is definitely my last Nvidia card
My daughter wants to play Sims 3 and use her Zune. I’m sure it’s possible to do both with enough work and time spent tracking down old utilities but how much time do I want to spend on that when I could just crank out a VM.
Did I just go back in time?
It’s funny to me that I couldn’t* even tell which post of mine this was a response to 😅
Yes, we are quite anachronistic in my house.
I’m surprised that Zunes even work anymore. I thought that Microsoft had that locked down so tight that it wouldn’t work without the Zune software on your PC (which likely hasn’t been updated since 2012).
I have multiple 120GB Zunes, one being my original and the others I bought for cheap when everyone was dumping them for their phones. They all work fine. You do have to track down the software; I keep the executable on my local file share. I just found my old brown 30GB Zune in storage. It has music from a bunch of local bands from the area I grew up in that are irreplaceable. Unfortunately the software can’t read it because the firmware is out of date, and it can’t be updated without wiping the music off it, which defeats the purpose. There’s a utility called zalternator that allows you to mount the zune as a disk but I haven’t been able to find a copy anywhere. I was going to make a Windows XP VM and install the 1.1 version of the Zune software and see if that works. I digress, they do work still, with a bit of effort. MS could have brought it all back after GotG3 and cashed in, but nope!
Using an older version of the software would work I think, or is there some other snag with Zune? Archive.org
After the 3rd (iirc) Guardians of the Galaxy movie referenced Zune, they have had a small resurgence
sims 3 works ootb with proton… why do you need your computer for a zune?
That is not my experience. And you need a PC with the Zune software to manage your media on the player.
I remember Zune did not play well with Linux at all. One time I plugged my Zune into a Linux laptop just hoping to charge it. From that point on, until I plugged it back into a Windows PC, the Zune would play one song then skip the next two. As in track 1, 4, 7, then roll over to 2, 5, 8, etc.
That was the only problem I had with my Zune though, RIP Zune, you were the best.
Oh wait except for the leap year glitch. Microsoft apparently didn’t think people would still use Zune in 2008 so all the Zunes stopped working for the duration of the leap day lol.
- Web-based tools get the work done: agreed,especially when half of these web tools are Electron like number 5
- Plenty of distributions to suit your preference: my personal favorite thing about Linux
- Steam has a decent collection of Linux Games (& you may get a console): True,And outside of steam will work nicely aswell (like touhou 6 for example like Proton/soda does a great job of running touhou 6 patched with THCRAP)
- Proprietary choices on Linux (Better late than never): True and maybe even custom versions of wine (like elemental warriors fork and vanilla wine but vanilla wine cannot run complex apps tho)
- Technologies like Electron make it easier for app availability: Controversial opinion but True
Technologies like Electron make it easier for app availability: Controversial opinion but True
I do agree, but currently Electron is great for apps the way Flash was considered great for the web. It solves one problem, but creates a bunch more.
In itself, Electron is pretty bloated*, but I don’t dare check how many versions I have installed because different apps have stuck with older ones. I’d really like to see a less resource consuming, backward compatible alternative to Electron.
* From my thrifty perspective of keeping older hardware alive with Linux, that is. On your high grade, best-of-class gaming rig, mileage will definitely vary.
yeah true its spinning a instance of the Chromium browser which is where the bloat is at.
It’s quite a storage hog having multiple 500+ MB electron blobs. Unfortunately that’s a platform agnostic issue now.
That is true, definitely not an OS exclusive problem!
deleted by creator
Gaming is catching up. Valve has done a tremendous job getting games supported with Proton on SteamOS
@naonintendois @craigcorbin catching up? From what I heard, Linux surpassed winlol in gaming for certain titles, but yes, if you take the average, there’s still a gap, and it’s becoming smaller and smaller
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
There will always be a game that is not supported.
Still poor gaming? I have all of my games working with zero effort on Steam. The only exception are my sim racing peripherals.
@AstralPath Good news. I tried a few games in October but the graphics were off. I’ll have to give them another try. My machine is pretty old, too, so I may need to upgrade. Thanks
Definitely give it a go! My machine isn’t crazy modern by any means but it’s decent.
I said this in another thread but I set up a windows vm for someone because they needed it to run literally one scam tax software, otherwise they had no reason to switch back from Linux.
Even stuff like icue that uses windows drivers for peripherals will run in a VM with USB pass through.
And even then there’s a nice open source alternative for icue; you only need it if you want to edit hardware profiles.
US? Here in scandi tax seems to work well automatically, as in, we just log into the government website and click OK most years. Corrections are easy enough too, if you need it, but it’s usually not required.
“Anymore”? I haven’t ever owned a Windows machine, and I haven’t used a Windows machine since 2015. I do have to fix a random issue on my wife’s work laptop about once a month.
I get that there are some things some people can’t do without and which keeps them in Windows: games, and requirements of their business (Word, Excel, PPT), but nothing about Linux has gotten significantly better in recent years. Incrementally, over there past decade, sure, but no big, recent change that might justify the title.
Except in the same way I’ve never needed Windows: in a very specific, individual way.
Coming from someone who just migrated myself and my family within the last year. Flatpaks were a big deal. I get people have their criticisms of it but wow, installing and updating apps is so much easier now compared to when I tried linux last and flatpak is probably the main reason why we are still on Linux today.
As a person who was all in on the AppImage distribution system (vs Flatpaks), I’m both sad and excited to see how well Flatpaks seem to be working out.
I guess they won that little competition in the end - which seems good, as there’s now a healthy standard we can focus on.
It’s genuinely great to now have widely accepted distribution independent packaging standards.
I’m glad Flatpack appears to be winning over the utterly horrible Snap, but I still don’t like it. I fear a day when it becomes difficult to get software that isn’t packaged in Flatpack, and I have good reason to: Ruby Gems. Long ago, I was big into Ruby, and was a major contributor (I authored one of the core standard libraries). Gems came along, and I hated them; eventually, for unrelated reasons, I stopped using Ruby altogether, and now when I encounter it, it’s impossible to use anything that doesn’t have Gem woven into it. Consequently, AFAIK, my current system has nothing Ruby installed on it - unless my OS package manager is doing it under the hood.
IMHO, Flatpacks are a really poor work-around for people supporting and using programming languages that don’t build software correctly. Rust and Go do it right: they build stand-alone executables. Flatpack adds literally no value to software built with these. They’re not the only languages that do this, but they’re the ones having their moment; any language that builds stand-alone, statically linked binaries would do.
I’m with you about AppImage; it would have been a better solution. Any packaging solution requiring extra software to be installed and a service to use is a bad design. I’d be objecting less if AppImage were emerging as the winner.
Incidentally, this is why Podman is superior to Docker: yes, you still need extra software to be installed, but there’s no system service with crazy, root-level permissions required to run containers with podman.
wait… are you arguing that gems are a bad thing???
I’ve been planning to switch my PCs at home to Linux as a winter project this year.
I just installed a new SSD and put Mint on the main newer machine yesterday. Nary a speed bump in the process, and it’s so nice to have the snappy desktop and update experiences I’m used to from running Linux all day at work.
People who come here to say Linux is not good or that this community is an echo chamber and get mad for pointing out obvious flaws in the OS miss two things:
-
The post is an opinion of someone. Notice the “I” in the title? That should give you some clue.
-
You are offended when people suggest that you learn and adapt to the OS, but you suggest that Linux should support your workflow without any effort on your part to learn the OS. Which is hypocritical to say the least.
-
But… I wanna play Fortnite.
I know it’s not a solution for everyone, but this is why I dusted off my Xbox. Fortnite on Xbox supports keyboard and mouse too
I don’t have an Xbox. Come on.
I figured, which is why I worded my comment the way I did.
It’s an option worth considering for games that are incompatible.
I mean, if the option is “just have a separate device that runs a Microsoft OS”, it might as well be my desktop.
I don’t exclusively mean Xbox. Playstation, Nintendo consoles, take your pick.
I get that, but the suggestion is still to have a dedicated device to play Fortnite and that’s exactly what I’m doing, the device just happens to be a PC running Windows.
Play better games lol (/s)
Me neither, if anything it’s the other way around.
2025 year of the minutes desktop 🤣
It’ll never happen because Linux zealots write this crap when 100% seriousness.
