- cross-posted to:
- windows@sopuli.xyz
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
- cross-posted to:
- windows@sopuli.xyz
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
TLDR: StartAllBack, ExplorerPatcher and some other projects are being blocked on 24H2.
One more reason to switch to Linux
Micro$oft are being dicks again, film at 11 but here’s the thing - if you’re interested in customizing Windows - just grab that live distro and get to it man. Linux is here and it’s ready for prime time.
At this point Windows is just for businesses who don’t know better (or refuse to learn) and people who haven’t been told The Good News yet.
This will be true when Linux supports anticheat (well, when anticheat supports Linux).
Sure, not everyone uses their computer for gaming, but I’m sure a lot would like the option.
It certainly does in many games. Helldivers 2, Hunt: Showdown, and Warframe are rated gold on Linux, Guild Wars 2 is rated platinum. Those are the first four multiplayer games that came to mind.
Those are all great games, but the unfortunate truth is that you’re still going to be limited. Some people may be totally okay with only playing the games that get support but I feel like I’d always feel like I’m missing out if a game I’m really interested in doesnt.
only games you’ll be missing is games with invasive kernal level drm/anticheat.
most people with common sense tend to avoid those games and their rootkits to begin with, so you’re really missing nothing by switching.
Sometimes theres a game that doesnt run great at the moment but within 3-6 months runs like a dream.
You have my attention, as someone who’s been considering switching my main to a Linux.
Sorry, it’s not ready for prime time.
It’s great for advanced users who are willing to put in the effort to work for them as a desktop.
It’s also great as a host for services.
And is dogshit in a business environment.
As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I’d stuck with Cobol). So I was in IT working before Linux existed.
I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured it as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery.
There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.
There are many reasons why Linux doesn’t compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one. So many run-of-the mill things that take effort to deal with.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I’m not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That’s just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn’t realistically shareable with other people.
There’s that print monitor that’s on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?
Networking… Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn’t say “save creds”? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.
Someone else said it better than me:
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM’s on Linux (Proxmox) because that’s better than running Linux VM’s on a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment, or for most users who are used to Windows/Office.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would’ve had a chance to beat MS, even then it would’ve required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980’s to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
As a very advanced user, I just don’t have the time to play fuck-fuck with Linux on a desktop - I have work to do with what little time I have.
Here’s a question: if Linux truly competes with Windows, why don’t massive organizations that have the IT manpower/expertise use it for their desktops? They’d save millions in licensing alone. Why is it they feel those tens of millions are better spent on contracts with MS?
Curiously, for me it’s more or less the other way around, in a sense. I run Linux on both my Desktop and my Laptop, and feel that after setting them up the way I like, I am more productive than under Windows. In Windows, I oftentimes had the feeling that I had to work against the OS whenever I wanted to configure it in a way that wasn’t quite standard, while I tend to feel that I can work with the OS when using Linux. Especially Win11 introduced lots of things that detracted from the user experience for me, and where only changeable by editing the registry, which isn’t great.
I do recognise that parts, or even most of that probably isn’t applicable to the standard user, but as what could reasonably be called a power user, I never really had any problems working with Linux.
I’d also say that for non-power users, people who mainly work within Word processors, or their browser, a stable LTS distros can in some cases be less hassle than Windows.
Regarding Excel - gotta give that to you, I always felt that Excel in isolation was good software, and I am not aware of any replacement that’s equally as friendly to non-programmer users, while also being equally as capable.
Regarding your last point - Dunno, I don’t work there. I would however raise that inertia can be quite powerful. No one ever got fired for buying IBM, no one ever got fired for licensing Windows. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t other, possibly good, reasons.
Good for you I guess but good luck with commercial software development when your whole toolchain is Windows only. Same for video games, and Proton only works properly if you have a new GPU which supports all the Vulkan features.
I’ll switch to Linux when Visual Studio Community (NOT Code) works on it and I never have to touch the command line ever again.
Just switch to code.
I put in the effort to redesign my work flow from VS (Enterprise license) to VS Code (totally free) earlier this year. I thought it couldn’t be done, but it was easier than I thought. I’m super happy with the result as I hated what they did with recent VS versions. Microsoft just can’t stop fucking up perfectly fine UIs in the name of “progress”.
As someone who genuinely loves the command line - I’d like to know more about your perspective. (Genuinely. I solemnly swear not to try to convince you of my perspective.)
What about GUIs appeals to you over a command line?
I like the CLI because it feels like a conversation with the computer. I explain what I want, combining commands as necessary, and the machine responds.
With GUIs I feel like I’m always relearning tools. Even something as straightforward as ‘find and replace’ has different keyboard shortcuts in most of the text-editing apps I use - and regex support is spotty.
Not to say that I think the terminal is best for all things. I do use an IDE and windowing environments. Just that - when there are CLI tools I tend to prefer them over an equivalent GUI tool.
Anyway, I’m interested to hear your perspective- what about GUIs works better for you? What about the CLI is failing you?
Thank you!
Not OP. Used Linux since the late 90s. My daily driver is NixOS. GUI here is synonymous with TUI.
I like the GUI because I can see what options the tool can execute in this state. I don’t have to pass
--help
togrep
or keep several man page sections open. The machine knows what it’s capable of and I direct it.With CLIs I feel like I’m always relearning tools. Even something as straightforward as ‘enable a flag’ has different syntax. Is it
-flag
?--flag
?--enable-flag
? Oh look, a checkbox.Not to say that I think a window environment is best for all things. When using an IDE, I have the terminal open constantly. Programmers are as bad at visual interfaces as they are module interfaces. If no UX designer was involved in displaying complex data or situations, I’m likely to try to fall back to the commandline. Just that - when there are GUI tools I tend to prefer them over an equivalent CLI tool.
tl;dr GUIs can represent the current state of a complex process and provide relevant context, instead of requiring the user to model that information (with large error bars for quality of the UI).
Anyway, I hope you take this in good humor and at least consider a TUI for your next project.
Absolutely. I see what you did there… 😉
But seriously, thank you for your response!
I think your comment about GUIs being better at displaying the current state and context was very insightful. Most CLI work I do is generally about composing a pipeline and shoving some sort of data through it. As a class of work, that’s a common task, but certainly not the only thing I do with my PC.
Multistage operations like, say, Bluetooth pairing I definitely prefer to use the GUI for. I think it is partially because of the state tracking inherent in the process.
Thanks again!