Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don’t use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge had simply taken over where I’d left off in Chrome. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I have tried to switch my daily driver to linux for more than 15 years now, Linux desktop just isn’t ready.
Full disclosure: I am an IT admin with near 3 decades of experience, including administrating linux servers, so this isn’t a skill gap.
Something isn’t adding up here. I switched to mostly Linux around 2003. By 2005 it was all Linux unless I got paid for it. My wife has been only Linux since then and she doesn’t really know how to use a computer and doesn’t want to. Linux just works for her.
I do all my work from a Linux desktop and two Linux laptops. Well and a Steamdeck I use as a desktop when traveling. I remote into windows machines when I am using windows for jobs. Sometimes desktops, sometimes Azure virtual desktops, but my local client is always Linux.
I have an MSDN, I admin Azure instances, SQL servers, Windows Servers, and work on Windows desktops. Over the last two to three years it has been the windows machines that are the most annoying and troublesome. Linux is just easy and just works.
The Linux desktop is ready. Has been ready. Something is going on with your situation. Could be breaking old habits, could be hardware. I don’t know. But saying Linux is to blame here is ridiculous.
You think it’s impossible that Windows, an operating system with whole teams of people paid well to work on design and UX could be easier to use than Linux desktop which is primarily people working in their spare time?
Did I say that? I said windows has caused me more issues lately. I was replying that Linux desktop is fine. It works. Has worked for a very long time.
But since you brought it up… No. I do not think Windows is an easier desktop to use. Depends on familiarity and what you want to do with it. They can’t get single click right. They can’t get multiple desktops right. They certainly do not have activities. If you are using a Gnome workflow, windows seems almost insane in comparison. Don’t get me started on the ads and what this whole discussion started about with Edge trying to push itself into your way. And how about that registry system? So intuitive and useful right?
Nearly identical story here, and I agree.
Habits and hardware are definitely the big ones to overcome. I still remember how absolutely lost I felt the first couple times I tried installing slackware in the 90s. I could install/set up windows in my sleep. But then slackware dropped to an unfamiliar command prompt, I can’t dir, there isn’t even a C drive, and now I’m expected to configure something called xfree86. Luckily I wasn’t told to use vi or I’d be stuck there to this day.
New users aren’t thrown into the deep end quite like that anymore, but it’s still a big change for a windows power user. So much of what you learned is not applicable or just the wrong way to do things. Mac users and Windows non-power-users seem to have a much easier time accepting the changes.
It’s definitely not for everyone (is any OS?) but it’s been ‘ready’ as a desktop OS for me since Mandrake 8 in ~2001. That’s about when I ditched windows 2000 and haven’t looked back.
Weird, I switched my daily driver in December 2022 over to Mint (likewise I’ve been using Linux for various things since '08, so not a noob) and it’s been pretty damn solid since then, including upgrades from Mint 20 to 21 and all of the Mint 21 point releases.
Mint was the last one I tried and it was awful, really buggy and poor UX
Do you game often?
That’s the main use of my main rig, so yes.
Steam with Proton-GE works great. For everything else I use Heroic Games Launcher and the Linux native itch.io launcher.
I admit that Mint is the distro I got the furthest with, several weeks in I just stopped being able to do full screen 3d. I spent a month and a half on forums trying to figure it out including 2 clean installs and couldn’t get anywhere.
I even did board level diagnostics on my video card.
Just gave up and went back to windows, never had an issue there and still don’t.
I’ll use linux for remote servers or fun little house gadgets, but as much as I hate windows, (and I hate windows with the seething glowing magma aged bitterness of someone who has had to support it since WIndows 3.11.
I would LOVE to ditch it, especially now, but until I can get a clean install to doing what I need to do in under a day, I can’t advocate linux.
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the discourse between you two in this thread is not productive; please chill out a bit and stop antagonizing each other.
We really should be allowed to block admins.
i’ve already rendered my verdict here—which was i banned the other person for a bit and not you (even though you both said things which run afoul of our rules) because you’re a member of our instance and we can afford to be more patient and understanding with you accordingly. but to be clear: if you respond in this manner even to very light moderator feedback then for moderation purposes you’ll be held to outsider standards going forward. which is to say, you’re not going to get anywhere near the benefit of the doubt or the lenience when you break rules.
Well I appreciate that but it doesn’t really do anything to reduce my general anti-authoritarian streak.
That being said you have already proven yourself saner than 99.5% of reddit admins and is a bit of a relief considering the treatment I got at lemmy.world.
One thing though: Criticism of admins should never be considered a rule breaking event provided it is not derogative or endangering, and if my reply to you is considered a reason for admin action then I need to reconsider my participation in beehaw as well.
That’s hilarious. I was a full time IT admin earlier in my career and still have run Linux full time for well over a decade now. For anything proprietary, i have a qemu image.
Of course, now I’m a DevOps admin so I get play with linux all day, for $$$! Hundreds of servers of all distros! Ubuntu, Cent, RHEL, Alpine containers… My big task this year is to get off Docker/Mesos and into OCI/Kubernettes. It’s going to be an incredible project.
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