Technology

Another twenty plus years Linux server and devices admin and user that found last year that Linux is finally mature and stable enough to replace my desktop too without having the fiddle with it every once in a random update. It was a decision that I can accept making workarounds for legacy windows software and l can live without other eco system. Yeah, there are plenty of reasons that people are still running Windows and keep doing so.

Don't make being user of an operating system your identity, people. It's just as annoying and unnecessary as those Apple fanboys we all know and dislike.

Exactly. These type of comments only come from an immature POV that how they use Linux is how everyone would use Linux.

And for a lot of people I would still recommend Windows.

Eh, only if someone needs it.

For instance my 75 year old father is happily using Linux Mint on his laptop. Why? Because all he's doing with it is web surfing, watching youtube, and checking his email. At home that's all most people are doing, especially older people. I set his up so that it backs up his stuff and auto-updates. It just works and if it does get broken I can recover it with minimal effort.

It's the same for me at home. My main PC is Linux Mint where I do almost everything. For the occasions I need Windows I have an Intel NUC attached to my KVM. For work I've got LM installed on my work laptop and when I need Win11 I have a VM setup in QEMU/KVM with it.

Are there people who have workloads, or gameloads, that only run on Windows? Sure there. We all know that.

But there are a lot of people, especially home users, who could easily run Linux and don't.

You're also SOL if you have a couple of decades of music projects in various DAWs (though predominantly Ableton, plus a decent number of Maschine & Reason projects, for me) using all sorts of VSTs from over the years. I keep several versions of some VSTs installed so I can open older projects, and those older versions are never getting patched to fix broken Linux support by the developer, even if a more modern version does get fixed. It's all got to come from wine devs, which frankly probably have more important issues to focus on.

I've tried a few times to get Ableton working with all my plugins and MIDI hardware and it's always been an exercise in madness ultimately resulting in failure and usually a lost weekend. It particularly doesn't like anything with my iLok key involved, last I tried a couple of years ago.

I happily run Linux elsewhere, but my main desktop is going to mainly run Windows for the foreseeable future unless something drastically changes. At least my projects aren't all in Logic!

There's also some software I use for my photography that didn't properly work on Linux when I last tried (e.g. GPU features in PureRAW are the main thing I remember), but I think there're some alternatives there I'd look at if I could get the audio production stuff working perfectly.

Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it's kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations.

Are you new? Windows will barf all over itself and all your files doing regular updates. Happened to my wife's computer just recently. She has almost nothing installed on it aside from Steam and Chrome. Windows update turned itself into a hot mess, and it's a known issue. The only option was to do a completely fresh install of Windows.

Idiot proof my ass.

I have to disagree about the idiot proof. KDE Plasma and Mate Desktop are more idiot proof and easy for newbies than Windows 10-11, yet have more features in their simple control panels.

I've had no bootloader problems in the last 10 years of Debian, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu (15-20 installs, plus another 20-30 if you count VMs.) However, my work computer's bootloader was semi-bricked twice in 2019 (Windows 7).

• To use Windows only and legacy software.

This is a fair point. If you're a creator and need adobe software then Linux is pretty much a no go. However, a lot of windows software have Linux equivalents (and those

• Some laptops don't support Linux due to missing drivers. are generally free as well), so its a matter of doing research.

If you pick the right distribution it may include all the drivers you need. So far I tested 5 distributions and they all worked straight out of the box. I'll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I'm optimistic it will just work also.

Some very old people hate change and would want to use windows 10 till the end of times, matter of fact I had seen a full office with about 5 desktops that is still running windows xp. (Spoiler alert:they got a ransomware 2 years ago.)

Fine. These people who refuse to adapt to the world can just keep using windows. No skin off my nose either way.

finally, Windows is idiot proof, meaning that it's kind of hard to ruin desktop windows during the normal operations. In comparison, a bad Linux update could fuck your boot loader beyond repair (it happened to me twice in fact, once on openSUSE tumbleweed and the other on Clear Linux).

Now this "idiot proof" take is really funny. You see, I've been using Mint for about a month now, never having to log into Windows. Yesterday I needed to log into windows and was immediately met with an update (against my consent), followed by a blue screen of death and when I restarted my laptop my profile couldn't be acceded and I was instead logged into a safe Environment.

I ended up having to troubleshoot using the Registry to get my account back. If this is idiot proof I have no idea what you consider a system that just works (which is what Linux does in my experience). You'd feel like Heaven is on Earth. On another note, WiFi never autoconnected on login in on windows in my laptop, but it does on Linux.

As for the issues you had, I understand. Rolling releases aren't for everyone and if you're not particularly into tinkering or just use your laptop to browse the web, an immutable distro is pretty much unbreakable.

Otherwise, Linux Mint is very conservative so it won't break with updates (and in the rare instance that does, you can just use Timeshift to rollback the updates anyway).

Windows is idiot proof

Could we at least add more idiot support to system crashes?

Windows has a QR code for you to scan, you can make a personalized recovery drive so that it restores your computer, ctrl alt delete gives you options to click on.

Fusion 360 is a big sticking point for me too. I tried FREECAD but it ran like ass on every system I've tried it on. I'm currently dual booting but windows already wiped the secure boot key once which rendered the Linux os unbootable somehow even after I turned off secure boot. That was like a week after setting it up. I hadn't even got started on the laundry list of other shot I needed to get working on Linux.

How long did you try each one? Usually when trying anything new it takes a little while to get used to the things that you readily accept as "just how things are" with something you have been using for a while. I am a long-term Linux user and I can tell you that Windows has plenty of major UX problems when I occasionally have to use it on someone else's PC.

Which distribution did you try?

https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/hardware/ According to this your VR headset works with "✅Monado SteamVR plugin" on Linux

I hear you, but me get this straight:

Windows fleeced you out of a technology they were supposed to support for the years to come, but you're still gonna snide Linux and stay with Windows? Lol.