I will say, for anybody reading and finds it in any way uplifting, I have been a Windows user for 30 years, been a .net developer for 5 years at one point, groaned at how bad the 'Linux desktop' always was, but this year I finally switched to using Linux instead of Windows and I think it's because the inflexion point is starting to hit more of the masses.
Unfortunately Nvidia support mostly depends on Nvidia, they've done their best to keep info about their cards away from the Open Source driver projects.
This actually. AI is dramatically better at helping users deal with perennial issues that Linux gets, and using the command line to fix them, compared to Microsoft's fresh new bug introduced last Tuesday or navigating anti-user GUI.
I've been amazed at AI's usefulness for Linux sysadmin tasks.
Last week I installed KDE on a new computer with two identical SSDs. One I wanted to wipe for the OS and the other I wanted to keep the data on.
Unfortunately I couldn't tell which one to install the OS on! ChatGPT helped me open a terminal and run the correct udevadm and lsblk commands to see what files existed on each disk.
Good use case and an example of brokenness of UX on Linux in many small and subtle ways. It frustrates me to no end that GNOME, Nautilus, etc. will truncate or hide information in many places. I don't think this has been fixed but the launcher will truncate names with ellipsis. So analyzer will appear as "anal..."
You’re absolutely correct what used to take me hours reading docs and googling now takes minutes to find an answer to. Just this week my new beelink I couldnt get hardware acceleration working for transcoding. A couple prompts lead me to the fact the gpu was new and I needed a newer Linux kernel. I probably would have spent hours and hours fiddling with device drivers and configs in the past.
>AI is dramatically better at helping users deal with perennial issues that Linux gets
This was my first thought. All Linux troubleshooting with AI resulted in hallucinatory commands that don't exist or work on this version of the OS, and managed to help me trash one system installation.
That sounds... quite bad, to be honest. I never met one single Windows issue that can't be answered by simple google search for years. A desktop expecting the user to ask AI(!) for solutions that require command line(!!) is definitely not for average users.
High user count will make much more information available, but once in a while you will hit one bad issue that is niche enough, and your only hope will be to reach MS.
At that point I'd rather deal with an LLM that know the insides of my open source OS than MS support. Have you seen their community answers on the web? I'd rather deal with Arch wiki and the command line even without an LLM.
- AI is what gave Nvidia reason to finally work on GPU drivers (Linux is premier environment for AI/ML workloads)
- LLMs are more useful on Linux than on Windows (although manuals are still unbeatable)
- Windows users are sick of Copilot bullshit
...yeah, I almost agree. the best thing that happened to Linux is Valve consistently pouring a ton of resources into open-source Linux projects, but AI bubble firmly holds the second place position.
Ditto, but .net dev for ~20 years, now fully Linux for personal compute. Workplace is making a beeline for mac / linux full stack, and completely ditching Windows.
Alas, while all new development is on .net core, the main money maker is a .net 4.8 website, so no way to move off windows for me, for now (no, I don't want to dual boot).
I personally went with https://endeavouros.com/ in the end, so far working really great, I appreciate Linux distributions will have different audiences which is great, I think regardless of distribution though it seems like a lot more software (and hardware) is 'just working' and it's actually delightful to use the computer again, kudos to many hard working people making free software
I think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street.
From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
Most comments are interpreting this as purely tech. It's worth mentioning that this applies to basically everything: the only things that are worth gifting your loyalty to are living things: humans, pets, nature.
Offloading ongoing cognitive consideration when a situation seems to have proved itself consistent is the main idea at hand, perhaps? The notion of loyalty?
Pets are only interested in who feeds them and make them feel good, eventually offloading cognition to other tasks the same way we do; nature merely an agglomeration of entities seeking growth and propagation. We can count on these things, we can think about them, we can engage with them or let them slip past our minds, which a person might call “trust?” a lack of mental friction after that work has been done to our satisfaction.
Recognizing what may benefit us, and the short and long term dimensions of it, as well as acknowledging that we cannot know all those dimensions or control them or the future, seems the best way to go, if i may.
The idea of loyalty is naïve and dangerous, if I may use those terms without defining them also.
To be clear, it’s not cold calculation, far from it, simply acknowledging how systems tend to play out while leaving room for the unexpected. Once we recognize a pattern or system locking in that pattern in order to use our limited cognitive energies in other ways.
Those are the key words. You have the option to walk away from one distribution to use another if things start getting bad. Such has happened in the past, either because of distribution maintainers making decisions that certain users don't like (think Ubuntu from Unity onward) or because of distribution makers maintainers making decisions that put them ahead of the pack (think early Ubuntu). Overall, it has resulted in a competitive marketplace.
And if things got really bad, people can either fork the offending software or (if they use Linux as a more traditional Unix environment) there are various versions of BSD. If you use Linux for desktop applications, there is even the option of switching to Macintosh or Windows since open source applications tend to be multi-platform.
Being a Windows guy is a bit different. They are sticking all of their eggs in one basket. There isn't a viable Windows-like alternative to Windows if Microsoft messes up. Heck, it is growing increasingly difficult to stick with versions of Windows that are out of support. While I won't go as far as calling this brand loyalty, it means one is pretty much at the whim of the brand.
I like to think of Microsoft software (also applies to other companies) as painting a room, but starting at the doorway as it's easier. Eventually you find yourself stuck in the corner with the rest of the room painted and that's all well and good until you decide you want to leave (assuming the paint is still wet etc).
Using Linux as a teenager led to a step change in my family's generational wealth, some incredible personal and professional relationships, and life-defining opportunities for work and travel. I think at this point it's solidly wrapped up in my identity.
But you don’t define hand or tooth washing well enough. A pithy response means little if we haven’t broken down the comparison into appropriate component parts for meaningful comparison.
The other question is, is it even worth it? These things have worked for you well enough up to this point, all three. That’s fair and valid.
The question might be is it worth the cognitive friction to change those things?
I change the way that I brush my teeth, and now my overall health is better perhaps. Perhaps my mouth biome changed over decades, while I was unaware. A better way involves changing a habit, getting some new technology, and even this simple change may have knocked on effect in the rest of my life if I have a tight schedule and rigid habits, which benefit me. Is the trade-off worth it? Can we really know?
I’m not a surgeon so I don’t have an extensive method of washing my hands. However, some people don’t even wash their bodies more than once in a while. Science has discovered that this is probably healthier over the long-term, but other people simply take a shower and scrub scrub, scrub every single day. They say it benefits them, but the facts point to otherwise. They have a hard time changing that habit or believing the facts.
Same applies to an OS. Sure, looking backwards it has been good, but will it continue to be? Is it worth the cognitive friction to make those changes though? Honestly? For you, probably not at this point. But who is to say? Could what you have learned be leveraged in a different OS and bring you even more of what you feel benefits you? I suppose only you can know this, and that’s totally OK.
Past returns are no guarantee of future performance, in short.
Linux isn't a company and I wouldn't call it a brand either, in the same way that "death metal" isn't a brand. So it doesn't fit in the blank in the first place.
Yeah, not sure how people form almost "relationships" with their tools and refuse sometimes to even explore options. I'm always open to switching almost anything. I never end up doing, because things are usually not better, but maybe 1/100 times something is better, and then I switch. Initially did that around Ubuntu 9.10 before, and I'll switch away from Arch in a heartbeat if anything better comes around.
Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
> if you're always flitting between different products
But that's not what I suggested. I suggested use the best thing, try other things, switch if they're better. I don't think that's "always flitting between different products and never learning any one deeply", unless you happen to rely on tools that have new solid (and better) competitors every single month, but I'm not aware of any industry/space that is like that.
At least with distributions of Linux, most of the knowledge is easily transferred.
e.g. I tried out Arch for a while and discovered that its Wiki has some of the best information around. Luckily, Arch tends to use standard Linux tools such as systemd, so the information is applicable to almost any distribution.
This is especially bad when “GUI only” goes in the blank. In the early days I mostly worked with folks that were terrified of CLIs. Windows shops typically.
I still run across it sometimes, and it’s such a limiting form of identity.
Linux is the objectively best choice for a significant number of use-cases at the moment (not all of them). Using Linux and communicating that doesn't necessarily make you a "Linux guy."
Obviously, using Linux when a better solution exists for whatever you're trying to solve equally applies. While it may not be unhealthy, it certainly isn't a good idea.
Apple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.
I'm not saying Apple can't go the way of Microsoft, but if you've used macOS and Windows through the previous 5 years there isn't much of a comparison. Windows has gone from something I tolerated to something I absolutely dislike using. It's so bad that if it wasn't for WSL then I would consider finding a place to work where they didn't force me to use Windows. MacOS on the other hand hasn't really changed.
The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
A big issue with Linux has always been the poor battery life management on laptops. So even if a device has a good battery, Linux might not be able to exploit it.
Also the drivers for devices has always been an issue for me. Like there are multiple drivers for the track point, with a million customisation options but no way to get it to work well.
> The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
I have a framework laptop, and when it works it’s just ok. It looks just enough like a Mac to have me feel frustrated when I use it.
In theory we may be able to run Linux (reliably, not in the bleeding edge) on Apple hardware eventually. But you still pay the Apple tax, which is pretty bonkers these days. But dang those machines are nice.
macOS has gotten subtly worse in a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of way. But, nothing like Windows's speed-run to Awful.
Neither OS is empowering me to do what I want to do on my computer anymore. Instead they're constantly nudging me towards doing things Microsoft and Apple want me to do.
Don't you want a Microsoft account? You really should make a Microsoft account. Please make a Microsoft account. We're going to pop up the Microsoft account at you until you say yes. OK, fucker, now you have to make a Microsoft account in order to use your computer.
Sync your stuff to the iCloud! No, really, you're forgetting to use iCloud. Come on, don't you want to use iCloud? We're going to make iCloud the default for saved documents now.
Go ahead and install that app. OK, now go ahead and install it but we're going to warn you that it's from the scary internet. Now, when you install the app, we're going to put a scary dialog if it's not from a developer we're OK with. Now, when you install the app, we're not going to let you even run it until you go into settings and confirm a scary dialog deep in Settings.
I'm not really in the driver's seat anymore. I'm kind of a passenger with limited access to the steering wheel. These are just a few examples but there are plenty of other cases where both Microsoft and Apple are inserting themselves between me and my computer, gatekeeping what I can do on them and treating me like some kind of attacker towards my own computer.
I was a "Windows guy" from Windows 2.0 to Windows 10. Now I'm a "Mac guy."
These operating systems aren't my family members -- I'll ditch them if I believe that switching is worth getting over the learning curve of a new environment.
So why does open source support microsofts strategy by insisting the users throw away years of hard learned user knowledge (shortcuts, program quirks)? If you do it different from the defacto standards, you put a tax in time on users switching.
It likely just means they will always prefer certain classic aspects of Windows over how other desktop OSs do things. I’m largely in that boat as well. Of course Windows could get so bad in the future that another OS will be the lesser evil. Or another OS could adopt those preferred Windows things. But it won’t change the mentioned preferences, hence “always”.
Years ago, HN had an article 'Hacking my vagina'. It contains a line 'I was in the market for a $GADGET’.
With that one line, the author managed to put my view of buying things upside down. Not a passive consumer. Not: I bought a $GADGET. She had an active relation with a bunch of sellers, and she was boss. You saw the megacorps begging and pleading to her, from that one line. That's how you deal with them.
I've been mostly using Windows for the past few decades, but that's mainly because of the GUI; I think *nix shells are awesome compared to COMMAND.COM/CMD.EXE.
(As for PowersHell... yuck. It's like MS decided to reinvent bash but in the most bureaucratic and obfuscated way they could.)
I deploy all my code on linux and have been thinking about switching from windows to linux for my daily driver. But even I dread that. It´s as if linux has tried as hard as possible to make every single little thing as complicated as possible.
imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
If I could wave a wand and ban a single class of comments on HN, it would be this. Rambling, non-specific handwaving useless text.
> user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape.
It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating.
> People will tell you try this or that distro.
Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
I agree with you, that it is irritating when people make sweeping statements that casually dismiss a lot of things as not existing when they do, but it's an endless arguement. Operating systems are not the problem, support is. Just making a good operating system isn't what drives adoption.
reducing _pain_ does. Nerds arent good at empathy, so the response is normally "just read x and use y" and call people stupid if they still cant figure it how to use it
This doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years.
Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
I am willing to concede this might be true, but I personally have never checked Linux support before through 3 generations of desktops. Intel/Nvidia twice and then AMD/AMD.
Until you get some Windows apologist who points out that their proprietary touchscreen that has multiple layers of DRM doesn't have Linux drivers and therefore Linux doesn't have good hardware support.
You have to be careful in the same way that you can't expect to wipe an M series Mac and stick Windows on it.
Apple devices have multiple layers of touchscreen DRM, but most other devices are just lacking drivers, because there are far too many devices for five unpaid interns to write drivers for all of them.
What desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.
Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora have had a bug free desktop experience for years. If you stick to the default repositories and use last year's hardware everything just works.
Honestly, that’s a 2016 argument. I flipped a few contact centers over to Linux desktops and had very few issues. If anything we probably spent 5x the resources getting Windows 11 certified internally.
Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience.
Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
I'd stupidly assume that having a choice and control over the experience is empowering, and watching a couple of YouTube videos titled "which Linux distribution is best for me" isn't too hard?
Or is it in your opinion?
If it is maybe they better stay on the "shut up and do how I say, puppet" OS.
If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice.
Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible.
Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
Its not though - I dont want to write my own operating system, build an ecosystem of apps, write hardware drivers, etc.
Win11 has massive downsides, so does macOS, so does desktop Linux, so do all the other options - I have to choose between one of those options to get things done, going my own isnt an option.
For folks that still like the win32 ecosystem, they should pirate the heck out of LTSC. just as Microsoft don't have interest in them, they shouldn't give a damn about it and enjoy a dramatically polished Windows experience.
Agreed. I had the version of Notepad++ that got popped and was being nagged by Fusion 360, so I decided to burn everything down, get a new SSD, and install a copy of Windows 11.
Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95.
The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc.
Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--it has physical media and the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know)
At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine?
Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now.
Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ...
WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>.
4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries>
And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game.
Total time: no more than 20 minutes.
No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine.
Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft.
(And, as a side note, this is having a knockon effect--I finally went looking for an alternative to Fusion 360 and signed up for OnShape just so I can dump Windows permanently)
I'm no windows fanboy and I don't doubt your experience, but I honestly don't understand how this can happen. I recently did three clean Win 11 reinstalls and I was done in an hour. Maybe because I did it on slightly older hardware...
All that very justifiable work to avoid a cloud-connected OS . . . and then switch to OnShape which (afaict) has zero local option and requires a full cloud connection to run at all?
Seems like walking a tightrope across the river to avoid soaking your suit, then jumping in from the dock once you successfully get to the other side?
I'd love to have a Linux-based 3D CAD program, but the open source ones just aren't up to scratch.
I've tried using FreeCAD, but it still scrambles things topologically (for example: adjust an underlying object and your fillets may get totally hosed).
Fusion is especially frustrating as they have a macOS version. A Linux version really shouldn't be much different.
Yeah OnShape has been a godsend, and keeping it free for open designs is one of the better ethical stances to take. KiCad on the other hand is incredible (LibrePCB is shaping up really nicely too).
That's Linux's weakness right now - when a use-case misses it REALLY misses. Browser-native apps are a pretty reliable escape hatch for that.
Yup, sounds about right. Same issue with I tried Fusion a few years back...
I use RhinoCAD / MadCAM, and it is really the only thing keeping me on Windows. I've heard it works on some emulators like WINE, but haven't yet made the effort to test it, and can't really afford to have any latent issues pop up at random times after initial testing seems to work, so still enduring the Microslop insanity... ugh
> Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
Linux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible.
Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
Death by thousand cuts. I'm moving back to Gnome and ideally away from wayland too. The thing as simple as secret management (for git and keys) is just one of these things....
GNOME is crafted in exactly the same committee style as Windows and MacOS. It's crafted by the same people who brought you systemd, if that means anything to you.
If you're a lifelong KDE user you might not have used GNOME in a while and seen how it's gotten.
GNOME devs operates more like benevolent dictators. It sure is oppressive and you better be glad for what you are getting, but what they put out with so few resources is leagues above what microsoft can do nowadays.
I'm currently using Niri+Noctalia just to try them out, but I typically use Gnome and like it quite a bit for its simple, clean interface.
I use macOS and Linux, and the way GNOME works makes switching between them easier for me than when I run KDE, for instance (I'm sure others have a different experience, and that's what is so great about Linux).
I mean, from my perspective Linux has multiple good desktop environments. I've used both Cinnamon and KDE for years and have found both perfectly pleasant to use.
I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to.
Total Stockholm syndrome. The user is mistreated by a company but they continue accepting whatever offense is done to them. A big I'll advised fidelity.
So, obviously the provider has no reason to change anything regarding the fact that consumers are happy to be victims.
The funniest is the user having the feeling that the OS was better to them previously when it was like this since forever, even if it was just broken for the user in other aspects than breaking notepad for cloud licensing.
I cannot see myself installing Windows 11, it's sad, I've been primarily a windows guy for my home computer since W95 and I'll miss it. Windows 10 (LTSC) has been the best operating system experience of my life, once I disabled updates and all the nag screens it's been rock solid for me for many years. It's so important to be able to trust that your computer works the same way tomorrow as it does today.
I hope that there's enough people like me that the combined community will keep it alive for a few years longer, but I know eventually something will force me to upgrade to Linux.
I started on Win 3.1. Win95 and 98 were so cool. Then I thought Win2k Pro was the best thing that even happened. WinXP was probably the last time I cared a lot about Windows. Vista looked cool. Then things just got worse and worse.
I have a medium-range gaming laptop running Windows 11. Dedicated GPU, extra RAM, etc. It "boots to ready" worlds slower than any of my low end Linux laptops. Windows is just so ungodly slow.
Somewhere around 2020 I changed my work laptop to use Linux only, no dual boot. MS was pushing 20GB patches, which is unreal. At the time I had AT&T DSL.
I had been using Linux on and off since the early 2000s. But the 20GB patches and 'ransom-ware' pushed me to Linux full time.
There are no apps I use that are 'windows only' so Im free. Windows is made by a mega-corp and it's just gotten out of control. "Update and shutdown" always just reboots. You can spend ~1hr doing an OS update with multiple reboots. I can install Linux + LibreOffice in ~15mins or less. A full Linux updated is like ~5min to ~10min, or less.
Yeah, this is the chief issue with Windows, LTSC helps but I've gone further and only let this system update about 3 times in the last 5 years. That plus disabling all signature enforcement, zone.identifiers and other nonsense "security" stuff makes Windows pretty great. I have never lost time to a random windows update since the first time it happened to me, it's just an unacceptable UX, I would have swapped to linux long ago if I wasn't able to disable it.
I was a windows guy for a long time. I went to macOS. Despite the complaints I've seen on the internet I've been very happy in macOS land. Someone mentioned that while macOS has "never been worse" the difference between windows and macOS "has never been greater".
Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.
macOS seems cool in theory, but in practice it's not a "you own your computer" operating system so it's just a no go off the bat for me, i get it for people that just kinda stay in the center of the bell curve when it comes to computer use, but there's a 100% chance i'd end up in some situation where i'm fighting against apple's locked-down ness in approx 20minutes of owning a mac.
i'm fundamentally never going to accept a UX where i'm not absolute god of my computer, if i want to delete files crucial to my system's ability to function or run something with kernel level access to all my memory that's MY prerogative, i cannot imagine using a computer that doesn't listen to me
macos has gotten worse about this in recent releases - I was astounded when I learnt that apple news, apple books, and apple music are uninstallable; these are still removable on ios but not on macos for some reason.
Coincidentally, if you switch to use Windows Server 2025 (which is W11), you end up with a much better experience. No forced updates, no ads or messed up things with account
Author implies he was using a local account at the time of the error. Which answers an important question. I'd heard of people with Microsoft accounts getting locked out of their own computers, but that's a first I've heard of basic apps failing with a local account.
My one remaining windows machine is on 2021 LTSC and has no route to the internet. I am slowly working my way off it. This was onto macOS but that has gone down the shitter too. So it’s Debian. Hopefully be end of Q1 this year.
I honestly can’t believe what these vendors are doing. I don’t know anyone who approves of any of this.
Comment threads on the Closed Source OS topics like this regularly remind me about the large disconnect between skilled technical users and the "average" user. That average probably isn't your (great) grandparent who never learned how to type suddenly needing to learn the rapidly evolving early-days internet, but it's still just as dangerous to suggest "Use Linux" as the solution for everyone when plenty of "Average" users still don't know enough to be doing things safely in the console.
The "sudo rm -rf" and equivilant horror stories get told all too often as mistakes even made by "skilled users" who were in a hurry, and while that particular problem is becoming less common there is still a minefield out there. Wider use case where we need IT support is worse since there are plenty of Microsoft and Mac favoring restrictions and lockdowns required in the name of corporate level security requirements and certifications add to the mess and "security concerns" you can't get corporate to move away from.
I'm a daily Linux user who has had to put years of a software developer career's time into learning the easier system administration aspects and working with those who handle the harder issues, but doing this in my career I have had to step back every time someone comes to me with a problem. Once I understand the problem then go on to ask "at a guess, how much time will diagnosing this even take?" with the estimates varying based on how standard the OS install or deployment is.
Time and a relatively small amount of training is the problem with switching users from Windows to Mac or the reverse. Switching to Linux is training and introducing a technical mindset into a person. Idiot-proofing the system is a major issue Linux hasn't solved yet. VDI systems and the like might be a step in the right direction, but as soon as your use case for Linux requires a "average user" to open a terminal the problems will pile up and the minefield is exposed.
Years removed from using a Mac I still think of it as the most "child-proofed" OS. Windows being less restrictive but still doing a good-enough job of locking up the more dangerous things while also not drawing attention to them on a regular basis. Linux is like seeing the dangers left out in the open with few useful warning signs beyond some generic unspecified danger signs around the worksite.
imo, the 'grandparent' type user should really be on an ipad or chromebook etc. (unless they have some specific software needs). Too easy to get unwanted stuff running on windows and it needs admin.
I got an 80y/o a System76, for basic tasks. Knowledge transfer from Windows was relatively quick, a week at most (she was willing, which is not always the case). Maybe we'll see Linux support call scamming, but that's not the case right now - that advantage of Linux for old people cannot be understated.
You are the sysadmin for that machine. Just wait until an update borks or something. Maybe you are a hobbyist who likes fixing computers for free, so fine.
I have done zero technical support for my parent's ipads for like 15 years now. They even got it working with a printer without me. The biggest issue has been bogus emails from "Microsoft Tech Support" and "Norton Antivirus", so the Windows ecosystem still seems grim that way.
Windows has made improvements in that area in the last decade, but I don't disagree much. It could be the bias of having dealt with IT related issues for long enough, but I do think the "average" user might be regressing closer to that grandparent level as far as (needing, if not wanting to admit) that child-proofing the OS is needed. Chromebook and tablet PC stuff will probably continue to draw more entry level users in. As that marketshare grows we will have to wait and see how malicious programming evolves with it...
Same general guesswork, but everyone on here can make reasonably educated guesses at what the AI evolution process will do to the tech landscape. Nobody knows enough yet to have anything in cement, but it's out there, and the small changes of the last few years make it seem that we are going to regress rather than improve the level of technical knowlege needed to be "average" when working on a computer.
Really? I'm pretty sure all the GreetingCardPro-type stuff is available on iPads, and its a better device for banking/investment stuff (because GreetingCardPro can't fuck with it). I was thinking more like QuickBooks or a custom business app.
There are two technologies propped up by having to earn a living: windows and the iPhone.
No matter the android phone, trying to get your MFA experience working with the umpteen stupid MFA apps is painful because all the dev work went into the iPhone versions. I hate it but yep I ended up buying an iPhone although I never buy them new.
Windows is the other one and again it’s security related. More and more places simply rely on Active Directory/Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now. But whatever is installed on my work provided computer is what I’m using and that’s windows.
I suspect this is about work related MFA apps; for example, one of the reasons I switched to an iPhone many years ago is the MFA app used at work would not run if the latest Android version with security bugfixes were installed, and the manufacturer had stopped providing updates for quite some time. At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter.
>At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter.
That's your personal decision though, you don't need a flagship android phone to have the latest versions of android. I pretty much never spend more than $100-150 for android phones and they always support all the normal MFA apps.
Fair, I could just buy a new Android phone, but at the time every non-flagship appeared to stop updates every two years, and being on an upgrade treadmill on that time scale did not seem like a fair use of my money. I have no idea if this continues to be the situation or if Android manufacturers have gotten better with their update cycles.
That's fair assessment (and it pissed me off myself), but thankfully it's much better now with Android.
I mean, I still wouldn't trust Sony even if it give a blood oath (they used to abandon flagships after 16-18 month form release!), but there are also more reputable vendors.
They all work fine, you just have to be on a relatively current version of android, and that's dictated by which versions the apps enable support for and not anything inherent to android in general. The idea that MFA apps don't work for half of phone owners is silly.
We use Entra as our source of truth for users, groups, roles, permissions, intune, etc.
It get distilled down to various LDAP servers, but it's our primary SSO with MFA (several options, WebAuthn, U2F, TOTP, passkeys).
Our users (using various flavours of Linux/Windows 10, 11/Mac workstations, iOS/Android phones (inc. GrapheneOS), windows VDI) are simply enjoying the reliable authentication everywhere. Some time ago we added all our customers and all the customer services are on SSO+MFA on Entra too.
We protect almost everything with it and it "just works". Linux, windows servers, git* servers, integrations with colocation providers and suppliers, ancient things like odd IPsec, svn server or console switch.
Seriously if someone tells you your Linux or android is a problem, they're either lying or dangerously incompetent.
I've never used an iPhone and I've had an issue with 2FA / MFA. Mostly I use Microsoft Authenticator (even if, like Kleenex, sites will say "Use Google Authenticator.)
Can you name specific MFA experiences that don't work on Android?
> Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
Entra id private access will cover that (and it frankly can't become the norm soon enough). For an extra $5 per license. I wouldn't worry too much about that part of Microsoft though. They always knew how to sell stuff to enterprise. You gotta wonder what their Windows division is doing though, but maybe they just don't want private customers.
> I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now.
Unless you care about gaming at all. Sure you have the Linux evangelists who talk about how much better support has gotten (it has!) but there are still huge glaring holes.
I run MacOS for everything except gaming. I'm not even that big of a gamer but it's the only sane option there.
For quite a few years, it has gone from "unless you care about gaming at all" to "unless you care about an extremely specific type of game". You don't have to be an evangelist to see the value linux has for gaming now.
I'm fairly certain that the GNU/Linux percentage dropping has more to do with the Simplified Chinese and Russian language percentage rising. I.O.W. more Windows than GNU/Linux users joined.
It's self selected so much as you clicking "yes" when it asks if you are ok with the client submitting your data, it's not a survey in the sense that you have to take time out of your day to answer it. If anything linux is probably over represented, so seeing the number go down is concerning for anyone that hopes for linux to be a viable alternative for mainstream users.
Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.
I have to use Windows at work and I will never have weird cloud authentication issues because I'm required to use a work-provided MS account on the computer. The author says he's a Windows guy, and always will be. This article, and these types of complaints, are really only relevant if you're using it on your personal PC.
When it's not your problem, it's not your problem. If you're forced to use Windows in a corporate environment, your IT admin is in charge of you having an account.
I did think about personal devices, but it is a valid point, though many companies I know do support at least windows+mac if not linux. Supporting Linux desktop for a company is more difficult due to lack of anything resembling GPOs (and no ansible-pull isn't that). It is definitely a thing systemd should implement.
If you're in a Windows-only job and you've got proof that Windows is getting in the way of doing your job you might just be able to convince those who decided to make it a Windows-only workplace to change their stance.
If you’re not in control of the OS, then you’re not responsible for problems caused by the choice of OS. Tell your boss that Windows is not allowing you to use basic features and let them choke on it.
How do you answer questions like "how are other people getting their work done on Windows?" How much leverage do you expect the average white collar worker to have?
I don't get your reasoning. It's in fact very mature, everyone got their job to do and you don't mess with someone else job.
If you have to make spreadsheet on a windows computer, it's not up to you to check why excel won't open. You're not trained to do IT. You might do more harm than good.
> I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to
If you don't live in a mythical past, there was nothing "premier", so no categorical change in treatment, so Notepad has always been a bad primitive app you should've replaced years ago and also avoid any along l account bugs in the present (though it's also possible to use the old "premier" notepad instead of upgrading to the account linked one)
I work in academia and I've gotten most of my people to switch to Macs and no, Linux is not an option here.
I have about eight Windows PCs against about sixty MacBook Airs and guess which platform causes me the most work? 1:20 issue ratio. Even simple things like SMB in Windows 11 are hopelessly broken.
What makes Linux not an option? Is there specific apps you need to use? Or IT policies? Or something else?
The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.
The issue isn’t the technology, it’s that there’s more than one way to do everything and people tend to scratch their itches.
If you started a company today, you can immediately and cheaply hire people or an MSP to manage Windows PCs. I hire entry Windows techs for $70k. M365 E-whatever is $30-60/mo.
Apple fully aligned their products, so the guys running the iPhone fleet can run the Macs. They may need some higher level assistance to setup the configurations. Unless you have a lot of compliance work, enroll in MDM, done.
With Linux, other than Chrome, there’s no standard. You’re gonna need a smart/expensive person to setup things and you’re going to need smart/expensive people to operate. If you have compliance requirements appear, you’ll need to buy RHEL or something and rework stuff, which is more expensive than windows.
It's much harder for non-dev jobs where the management won't let you BYOD for whatever reasons, which could range from IT being too stubborn to allow you to keep company data on your own laptop that's not centrally managed, to everything including licenses for random 3rd party software the company is using being tied to the ActiveDirectory fleet of computers with centralized storage.
This is the reality of IT equipment in big parts of the non-dev world, and you'll have a hard time convincing the IT dept to take on extra hassle just for you to use Linux out of all hundreds of employees who're just fine with Windows.
Linux is good for a lot of things, but the end user has to be comfortable too. They've heard of a Mac, but a Dell with Mint or whatnot is a harder sell.
I have a friend that worked for a big corp back 15 years ago managing Macs. At one point they told him they were going to can him and switch the Mac uses to Windows. Didn't go anywhere when he pointed out he was managing all their Mac users. And he was managing 5 times as many Macs as his coworkers were managing Window Boxes.
XP brought real bluetooth support, WPA wifi, and built-in unzip and image viewing support. The default interface theme was terrible, but it's the oldest Windows that could be considered "modern."
Imagine if Fedora locked you out of vi because your Red Hat account had an issue.
The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine.
This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens.
When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.
Business users want everything online, so anything can be accessed from anywhere. They want central identity, so when someone is hired or fired they only need to look in one place.
With Macbooks Air M4 starting at $1k/€1.1k, and apparently soon some even cheaper Macbooks coming up, it's really difficult to justify buying a Windows laptop those days and having to deal with all Microsoft bs, unless you have specific needs and being locked in.
The difference of "value for money" in terms of build quality, battery life, screen, touchpad, OS stability, OS upgrades experience, and overall polish and level of user (non-)hostility is immense.
A Windows guy for two decades, got an MBP for work, and while I miss some Windows software and I don't like some Mac things (e.g. no real write-to-disk hibernation; pricey upgrades from base models etc.), but there's no way I'm going back.
Every horrible windows story is yet another glorious day for linux.
Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
> Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
So it was with Windows Vista, Windows 7, even Windows 8. It's not an impossible ask for Windows either.
It's not but when you're asking Microsoft you're not asking developers. You're asking marketers who are trying to pimp stuff like bing and Copilot. What you're getting is exactly what they want you to get.
Cinnamon is cool and all but I prefer KDE Plasma. It seems to eliminate all the pain points Linux desktop environments typically have and everything just works. Pair it with Debian and you got a solid system.
A KDE dev mentioned on a podcast that issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported :/
My wife was complaining about Windows issues so I ended up installing Fedora with KDE on her laptop. I would have preferred Debian but using Testing (as suggested by the dev) doesn't some ideal.
Debian Testing isn't really unstable - the dev wasn't exaggerating. But I'd also suggest Kubuntu (you can remove snap and all of its packages, and install Firefox and Thunderbird .deb's from the Mozilla repo)
You're thinking of Unstable (Sid). It's also not like Arch or Tumbleweed because it gets locked down during release freeze and then gets a ton of updates all at once.
Adding keywords in the relevant .desktop files should be enough to make this work in other DE's too. I just tried it in KDE (by adding a 'comment=... (like notepad)' line in ~/.local/share/applications/org.kde.kwrite.desktop), it works as expected
New to KDE and .desktop shortcuts were something I really liked coming from Windows. I can enter in whatever terms I want to use for an item to appear in search, no relying on filename.
It just makes sense to show travel deals. Why would an OS show text editors when searching for text editors? Obviously it can show something far more lucrative by matching what it knows from spyware AI taking screenshots of your every action.
Please don't recommend Mint. It's slow to merge upstream and I find noobs installing it all the time then complaining about features missing that were already in upstream for two years.
To be clear, this is the horrible "new" Notepad "app" that I absolutely hated and instantly removed when it was forced upon everyone. I doubt the old "edit field in a wrapper" one which has been nearly the same since Win95 has this problem.
Markdown support and the like are useful but their need to cram AI and account sign-in into it definitely seemed over the top. When they got rid of Wordpad I kind of anticipated them trying to pivot Notepad more in that direction.
>I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to.[...] and Windows 12 is ultimately an agentic AI OS, I wouldn't be surprised if more people stick with a debloated Windows 11, just as others did with Windows 10
Is there any justification for the first part other than that the authors job at windowscentral.com depends on it? Because I'm not seeing it in the article which amounts to the digital version of Stockholm syndrome. If even the author is predicting that this is what the next windows will look like, why aren't you running for the hills
What are you talking about? The desktop experience on linux is far superior to that brain dead lowest common denominator junk as found on windows or macos.
linux has(by personal preference order) middle click paste, tiling window managers, point to focus, focus on lower windows, the compose key. The linux desktop is a productivity goldmine compared to windows. and I want to say mean things about the macos ui, but I don't really use it (the last time I tried it could not do full screen windows, But I have been told that is not true any more)
It certainly feels that Microsoft is accelerating in this race. There have been almost weekly 'a new reason' that Windows 11 sucks and is user hostile. Previously it would be only once a month.
Edit has not shipped with Windows since Win9x -- which is to say, it hasn't shipped since Windows required DOS -- and what you linked is an homage project, not the same program.
And you know what else was included in versions of MS-DOS that shipped with Win9x? Edlin. The editor so basic most people can't figure out how to use it.
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be.
And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system.
They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
I will say, for anybody reading and finds it in any way uplifting, I have been a Windows user for 30 years, been a .net developer for 5 years at one point, groaned at how bad the 'Linux desktop' always was, but this year I finally switched to using Linux instead of Windows and I think it's because the inflexion point is starting to hit more of the masses.
Gamer for a few decades, this year home desktop is finally Linux. (Though my work laptops were already that way.)
Which is why it is relevant to foster a native Linux gaming ecosystem, and not one that depends on running Windows games.
I just need a better Nvidia support for something outside Arch niche (cachyos) in this space.
I'm already packed and ready to migrate. Can't wait.
> I just need a better Nvidia support…
Unfortunately Nvidia support mostly depends on Nvidia, they've done their best to keep info about their cards away from the Open Source driver projects.
Never had Nvidia issues on Fedora and Ubuntu so far, 1P a multi computer research lab as well.
AI is the best thing that happened to desktop Linux!
This actually. AI is dramatically better at helping users deal with perennial issues that Linux gets, and using the command line to fix them, compared to Microsoft's fresh new bug introduced last Tuesday or navigating anti-user GUI.
I've been amazed at AI's usefulness for Linux sysadmin tasks.
Last week I installed KDE on a new computer with two identical SSDs. One I wanted to wipe for the OS and the other I wanted to keep the data on.
Unfortunately I couldn't tell which one to install the OS on! ChatGPT helped me open a terminal and run the correct udevadm and lsblk commands to see what files existed on each disk.
Good use case and an example of brokenness of UX on Linux in many small and subtle ways. It frustrates me to no end that GNOME, Nautilus, etc. will truncate or hide information in many places. I don't think this has been fixed but the launcher will truncate names with ellipsis. So analyzer will appear as "anal..."
You’re absolutely correct what used to take me hours reading docs and googling now takes minutes to find an answer to. Just this week my new beelink I couldnt get hardware acceleration working for transcoding. A couple prompts lead me to the fact the gpu was new and I needed a newer Linux kernel. I probably would have spent hours and hours fiddling with device drivers and configs in the past.
>AI is dramatically better at helping users deal with perennial issues that Linux gets
This was my first thought. All Linux troubleshooting with AI resulted in hallucinatory commands that don't exist or work on this version of the OS, and managed to help me trash one system installation.
Has anything changed?
A lot has changed since ChatGPT 2.0. You could give it a go again :)
That is true but I believe he meant it as Microsoft shoving AI down your throat in every part of Windows driving people away into Linux.
That sounds... quite bad, to be honest. I never met one single Windows issue that can't be answered by simple google search for years. A desktop expecting the user to ask AI(!) for solutions that require command line(!!) is definitely not for average users.
Because hacking the registry or installing 3rd party de-bloat tools is for average users? You only think so because you've done it a bunch of times.
High user count will make much more information available, but once in a while you will hit one bad issue that is niche enough, and your only hope will be to reach MS.
At that point I'd rather deal with an LLM that know the insides of my open source OS than MS support. Have you seen their community answers on the web? I'd rather deal with Arch wiki and the command line even without an LLM.
AI for help figuring things out and Timeshift for when you accidentally break something. One reboot and it’s fixed.
given that:
- AI is what gave Nvidia reason to finally work on GPU drivers (Linux is premier environment for AI/ML workloads)
- LLMs are more useful on Linux than on Windows (although manuals are still unbeatable)
- Windows users are sick of Copilot bullshit
...yeah, I almost agree. the best thing that happened to Linux is Valve consistently pouring a ton of resources into open-source Linux projects, but AI bubble firmly holds the second place position.
Ditto, but .net dev for ~20 years, now fully Linux for personal compute. Workplace is making a beeline for mac / linux full stack, and completely ditching Windows.
Alas, while all new development is on .net core, the main money maker is a .net 4.8 website, so no way to move off windows for me, for now (no, I don't want to dual boot).
Which distribution?
I personally went with https://endeavouros.com/ in the end, so far working really great, I appreciate Linux distributions will have different audiences which is great, I think regardless of distribution though it seems like a lot more software (and hardware) is 'just working' and it's actually delightful to use the computer again, kudos to many hard working people making free software
I think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street.
From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
> I think saying "I'm a _______ guy"
Most comments are interpreting this as purely tech. It's worth mentioning that this applies to basically everything: the only things that are worth gifting your loyalty to are living things: humans, pets, nature.
Offloading ongoing cognitive consideration when a situation seems to have proved itself consistent is the main idea at hand, perhaps? The notion of loyalty?
Pets are only interested in who feeds them and make them feel good, eventually offloading cognition to other tasks the same way we do; nature merely an agglomeration of entities seeking growth and propagation. We can count on these things, we can think about them, we can engage with them or let them slip past our minds, which a person might call “trust?” a lack of mental friction after that work has been done to our satisfaction.
Recognizing what may benefit us, and the short and long term dimensions of it, as well as acknowledging that we cannot know all those dimensions or control them or the future, seems the best way to go, if i may.
The idea of loyalty is naïve and dangerous, if I may use those terms without defining them also.
To be clear, it’s not cold calculation, far from it, simply acknowledging how systems tend to play out while leaving room for the unexpected. Once we recognize a pattern or system locking in that pattern in order to use our limited cognitive energies in other ways.
What about "I'm a Linux guy?" I don't pay any company for my Linux OSes. My favorites are nonprofits and mostly interchangeable.
> My favorites are [...] mostly interchangeable.
Those are the key words. You have the option to walk away from one distribution to use another if things start getting bad. Such has happened in the past, either because of distribution maintainers making decisions that certain users don't like (think Ubuntu from Unity onward) or because of distribution makers maintainers making decisions that put them ahead of the pack (think early Ubuntu). Overall, it has resulted in a competitive marketplace.
And if things got really bad, people can either fork the offending software or (if they use Linux as a more traditional Unix environment) there are various versions of BSD. If you use Linux for desktop applications, there is even the option of switching to Macintosh or Windows since open source applications tend to be multi-platform.
Being a Windows guy is a bit different. They are sticking all of their eggs in one basket. There isn't a viable Windows-like alternative to Windows if Microsoft messes up. Heck, it is growing increasingly difficult to stick with versions of Windows that are out of support. While I won't go as far as calling this brand loyalty, it means one is pretty much at the whim of the brand.
I like to think of Microsoft software (also applies to other companies) as painting a room, but starting at the doorway as it's easier. Eventually you find yourself stuck in the corner with the rest of the room painted and that's all well and good until you decide you want to leave (assuming the paint is still wet etc).
Being a "linux guy" is more like saying you're a "computer guy" at this point.
The better example is being an "Arch guy". That's the same kind of problematic as being a "Mac guy".
No. It's not your identity, it's a piece of software. "I use ____ for as long as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks" is what you should be thinking.
Using Linux as a teenager led to a step change in my family's generational wealth, some incredible personal and professional relationships, and life-defining opportunities for work and travel. I think at this point it's solidly wrapped up in my identity.
That's fuzzy and all, but still not good. Being an uncritical fan of something, even when it's to your detriment, isn't something to be proud of.
As far as I can tell it's never been to my detriment. (I don't push others to use it in contexts where it's not my paid job.)
I also consider myself an uncritical and proud fan of handwashing and daily toothcare. Is that bad?
But you don’t define hand or tooth washing well enough. A pithy response means little if we haven’t broken down the comparison into appropriate component parts for meaningful comparison.
The other question is, is it even worth it? These things have worked for you well enough up to this point, all three. That’s fair and valid.
The question might be is it worth the cognitive friction to change those things? I change the way that I brush my teeth, and now my overall health is better perhaps. Perhaps my mouth biome changed over decades, while I was unaware. A better way involves changing a habit, getting some new technology, and even this simple change may have knocked on effect in the rest of my life if I have a tight schedule and rigid habits, which benefit me. Is the trade-off worth it? Can we really know?
I’m not a surgeon so I don’t have an extensive method of washing my hands. However, some people don’t even wash their bodies more than once in a while. Science has discovered that this is probably healthier over the long-term, but other people simply take a shower and scrub scrub, scrub every single day. They say it benefits them, but the facts point to otherwise. They have a hard time changing that habit or believing the facts.
Same applies to an OS. Sure, looking backwards it has been good, but will it continue to be? Is it worth the cognitive friction to make those changes though? Honestly? For you, probably not at this point. But who is to say? Could what you have learned be leveraged in a different OS and bring you even more of what you feel benefits you? I suppose only you can know this, and that’s totally OK.
Past returns are no guarantee of future performance, in short.
If a new OS comes along that's better than Linux and free, you should use it.
Much like Ethernet, this has happened several times but the replacement was also called Linux.
Linux isn't a company and I wouldn't call it a brand either, in the same way that "death metal" isn't a brand. So it doesn't fit in the blank in the first place.
I'm a Linux guy, but I've always had a little bit of FreeBSD on the side.
(I'm also forced to use Windows at work)
I’m a Ryobi guy.
I'm with the Red Army, I think we have to fight.
Team Teal coming in hot. You’re both in trouble now…
Blasphemy!
"I'm still a _______ guy, and I always will be."
No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
Yeah, not sure how people form almost "relationships" with their tools and refuse sometimes to even explore options. I'm always open to switching almost anything. I never end up doing, because things are usually not better, but maybe 1/100 times something is better, and then I switch. Initially did that around Ubuntu 9.10 before, and I'll switch away from Arch in a heartbeat if anything better comes around.
Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
The opposite isn't good either, if you're always flitting between different products and never learning any one deeply, you'll never get anywhere.
> if you're always flitting between different products
But that's not what I suggested. I suggested use the best thing, try other things, switch if they're better. I don't think that's "always flitting between different products and never learning any one deeply", unless you happen to rely on tools that have new solid (and better) competitors every single month, but I'm not aware of any industry/space that is like that.
At least with distributions of Linux, most of the knowledge is easily transferred.
e.g. I tried out Arch for a while and discovered that its Wiki has some of the best information around. Luckily, Arch tends to use standard Linux tools such as systemd, so the information is applicable to almost any distribution.
Honestly as a deeply antisocial person the Linux cult has always rubbed me the wrong way. Same reason why I don't have an iPhone.
What do you use then?
The biggest non-Linux non-iOS phone operating system is HarmonyOS, so I would assume he means that.
There's also Android, which isn't Linux, but just repurposes the Linux kernel in a non–Linux OS.
This is especially bad when “GUI only” goes in the blank. In the early days I mostly worked with folks that were terrified of CLIs. Windows shops typically.
I still run across it sometimes, and it’s such a limiting form of identity.
What about "Linux"? It is also a registered trademark.
For Linux as well. In my opinion you shouldn't remain blind to the benefits of other operating systems
Linux is the objectively best choice for a significant number of use-cases at the moment (not all of them). Using Linux and communicating that doesn't necessarily make you a "Linux guy."
Obviously, using Linux when a better solution exists for whatever you're trying to solve equally applies. While it may not be unhealthy, it certainly isn't a good idea.
Same problem. You shouldn't ignore BSD for example.
Apple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.
I'm not saying Apple can't go the way of Microsoft, but if you've used macOS and Windows through the previous 5 years there isn't much of a comparison. Windows has gone from something I tolerated to something I absolutely dislike using. It's so bad that if it wasn't for WSL then I would consider finding a place to work where they didn't force me to use Windows. MacOS on the other hand hasn't really changed.
The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
A big issue with Linux has always been the poor battery life management on laptops. So even if a device has a good battery, Linux might not be able to exploit it.
Also the drivers for devices has always been an issue for me. Like there are multiple drivers for the track point, with a million customisation options but no way to get it to work well.
Nah, macOS is going down the crapper too.
> The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
I have a framework laptop, and when it works it’s just ok. It looks just enough like a Mac to have me feel frustrated when I use it.
In theory we may be able to run Linux (reliably, not in the bleeding edge) on Apple hardware eventually. But you still pay the Apple tax, which is pretty bonkers these days. But dang those machines are nice.
https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
macOS has gotten subtly worse in a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of way. But, nothing like Windows's speed-run to Awful.
Neither OS is empowering me to do what I want to do on my computer anymore. Instead they're constantly nudging me towards doing things Microsoft and Apple want me to do.
Don't you want a Microsoft account? You really should make a Microsoft account. Please make a Microsoft account. We're going to pop up the Microsoft account at you until you say yes. OK, fucker, now you have to make a Microsoft account in order to use your computer.
Sync your stuff to the iCloud! No, really, you're forgetting to use iCloud. Come on, don't you want to use iCloud? We're going to make iCloud the default for saved documents now.
Go ahead and install that app. OK, now go ahead and install it but we're going to warn you that it's from the scary internet. Now, when you install the app, we're going to put a scary dialog if it's not from a developer we're OK with. Now, when you install the app, we're not going to let you even run it until you go into settings and confirm a scary dialog deep in Settings.
I'm not really in the driver's seat anymore. I'm kind of a passenger with limited access to the steering wheel. These are just a few examples but there are plenty of other cases where both Microsoft and Apple are inserting themselves between me and my computer, gatekeeping what I can do on them and treating me like some kind of attacker towards my own computer.
What an odd attitude! It's almost as if you felt you should have control over devices you pay for.
I was a "Windows guy" from Windows 2.0 to Windows 10. Now I'm a "Mac guy."
These operating systems aren't my family members -- I'll ditch them if I believe that switching is worth getting over the learning curve of a new environment.
Right. My current computer has Windows OS at the moment.
I wonder when they'll rebrand it as Copilot Agentic OS. It seems no brand of theirs is sacred enough to not be replaced with Copilot.
It's not like Microsoft to use extra words in brand names. I think they'll just call it Copilot.
So why does open source support microsofts strategy by insisting the users throw away years of hard learned user knowledge (shortcuts, program quirks)? If you do it different from the defacto standards, you put a tax in time on users switching.
It likely just means they will always prefer certain classic aspects of Windows over how other desktop OSs do things. I’m largely in that boat as well. Of course Windows could get so bad in the future that another OS will be the lesser evil. Or another OS could adopt those preferred Windows things. But it won’t change the mentioned preferences, hence “always”.
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be.
There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.
Years ago, HN had an article 'Hacking my vagina'. It contains a line 'I was in the market for a $GADGET’.
With that one line, the author managed to put my view of buying things upside down. Not a passive consumer. Not: I bought a $GADGET. She had an active relation with a bunch of sellers, and she was boss. You saw the megacorps begging and pleading to her, from that one line. That's how you deal with them.
I am $GADGET guy? Shudder.
I’m my experience, unwavering Windows folk are simply power users who find *nix shells burdensome.
I've been mostly using Windows for the past few decades, but that's mainly because of the GUI; I think *nix shells are awesome compared to COMMAND.COM/CMD.EXE.
(As for PowersHell... yuck. It's like MS decided to reinvent bash but in the most bureaucratic and obfuscated way they could.)
More like people who won’t bite the hand the feeds them.
I deploy all my code on linux and have been thinking about switching from windows to linux for my daily driver. But even I dread that. It´s as if linux has tried as hard as possible to make every single little thing as complicated as possible.
imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
Lucky now you can just ask an LLM to diagnose and offer ways to fix it. Takes 99% of the trouble away.
Can you be more specific and highlight one such simple problem?
Otherwise, your comment doesn't have much value.
If I could wave a wand and ban a single class of comments on HN, it would be this. Rambling, non-specific handwaving useless text.
> user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape.
It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating.
> People will tell you try this or that distro.
Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
and I would ban fanboying such as your username
I agree with you, that it is irritating when people make sweeping statements that casually dismiss a lot of things as not existing when they do, but it's an endless arguement. Operating systems are not the problem, support is. Just making a good operating system isn't what drives adoption.
reducing _pain_ does. Nerds arent good at empathy, so the response is normally "just read x and use y" and call people stupid if they still cant figure it how to use it
exactly, he's part of a problem
I could also say the Linux desktop creators are the problem as well. It's so buggy, it makes it impossible for me to switch.
This doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years.
Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
I am willing to concede this might be true, but I personally have never checked Linux support before through 3 generations of desktops. Intel/Nvidia twice and then AMD/AMD.
Because support is generally great.
Until you get some Windows apologist who points out that their proprietary touchscreen that has multiple layers of DRM doesn't have Linux drivers and therefore Linux doesn't have good hardware support.
You have to be careful in the same way that you can't expect to wipe an M series Mac and stick Windows on it.
Apple devices have multiple layers of touchscreen DRM, but most other devices are just lacking drivers, because there are far too many devices for five unpaid interns to write drivers for all of them.
All of them will work. What "support". What is this nonsense. Seriously.
What desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.
> I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas
Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora have had a bug free desktop experience for years. If you stick to the default repositories and use last year's hardware everything just works.
Honestly, that’s a 2016 argument. I flipped a few contact centers over to Linux desktops and had very few issues. If anything we probably spent 5x the resources getting Windows 11 certified internally.
Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience.
Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
Who are these “creators”? Can you point to them? Is there a legal entity?
Which “the” Linux desktop? GNOME? KDE? xfce? Cinnamon? COSMIC?
This question reinforces the point IMO
I'd stupidly assume that having a choice and control over the experience is empowering, and watching a couple of YouTube videos titled "which Linux distribution is best for me" isn't too hard?
Or is it in your opinion?
If it is maybe they better stay on the "shut up and do how I say, puppet" OS.
That linux has an awesome rich and diverse range of desktop experiences?
Who is better?
I think you're missing the point.
If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice.
Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible.
Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
Its not though - I dont want to write my own operating system, build an ecosystem of apps, write hardware drivers, etc.
Win11 has massive downsides, so does macOS, so does desktop Linux, so do all the other options - I have to choose between one of those options to get things done, going my own isnt an option.
At no point did I suggest that you build your own OS. To extend my tortured analogy, that would be like suggesting you grow your own spouse.
For folks that still like the win32 ecosystem, they should pirate the heck out of LTSC. just as Microsoft don't have interest in them, they shouldn't give a damn about it and enjoy a dramatically polished Windows experience.
and microsoft makes it so easy to pirate too, trivially easy.
Agreed. I had the version of Notepad++ that got popped and was being nagged by Fusion 360, so I decided to burn everything down, get a new SSD, and install a copy of Windows 11.
Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95.
The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc.
Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--it has physical media and the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know)
At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine?
Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now.
Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ...
WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>.
4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries>
And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game.
Total time: no more than 20 minutes.
No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine.
Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft.
(And, as a side note, this is having a knockon effect--I finally went looking for an alternative to Fusion 360 and signed up for OnShape just so I can dump Windows permanently)
I'm no windows fanboy and I don't doubt your experience, but I honestly don't understand how this can happen. I recently did three clean Win 11 reinstalls and I was done in an hour. Maybe because I did it on slightly older hardware...
How? The install was just sitting there and there was literally nothing I could do while it just ground and ground.
I'd love to know what to do differently in case I have to do this again.
All that very justifiable work to avoid a cloud-connected OS . . . and then switch to OnShape which (afaict) has zero local option and requires a full cloud connection to run at all?
Seems like walking a tightrope across the river to avoid soaking your suit, then jumping in from the dock once you successfully get to the other side?
Fusion is cloud-only, as well, annoyingly.
I'd love to have a Linux-based 3D CAD program, but the open source ones just aren't up to scratch.
I've tried using FreeCAD, but it still scrambles things topologically (for example: adjust an underlying object and your fillets may get totally hosed).
Fusion is especially frustrating as they have a macOS version. A Linux version really shouldn't be much different.
> the open source ones just aren't up to scratch.
Yeah OnShape has been a godsend, and keeping it free for open designs is one of the better ethical stances to take. KiCad on the other hand is incredible (LibrePCB is shaping up really nicely too).
That's Linux's weakness right now - when a use-case misses it REALLY misses. Browser-native apps are a pretty reliable escape hatch for that.
Ah open source 3D CAD is a topic on its own... Personally I like to use Dune3D and solve space, but those only do 3D modeling.
Yup, sounds about right. Same issue with I tried Fusion a few years back...
I use RhinoCAD / MadCAM, and it is really the only thing keeping me on Windows. I've heard it works on some emulators like WINE, but haven't yet made the effort to test it, and can't really afford to have any latent issues pop up at random times after initial testing seems to work, so still enduring the Microslop insanity... ugh
Goes the other way around too: Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
> Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
Linux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible.
Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
> Linux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible.
have you used GNOME?
Yeah; currently I'm on F43, wayland+KDE.
Death by thousand cuts. I'm moving back to Gnome and ideally away from wayland too. The thing as simple as secret management (for git and keys) is just one of these things....
I'm a lifelong KDE person but it's still clear to me that GNOME is crafted with care, and I find it pretty usable.
GNOME is crafted in exactly the same committee style as Windows and MacOS. It's crafted by the same people who brought you systemd, if that means anything to you.
If you're a lifelong KDE user you might not have used GNOME in a while and seen how it's gotten.
GNOME devs operates more like benevolent dictators. It sure is oppressive and you better be glad for what you are getting, but what they put out with so few resources is leagues above what microsoft can do nowadays.
GNOME is easy. Press the super key, type the first 1 to 4 characters of your application's name, press enter.
I haven't been in the GNOME settings for years.
I'm currently using Niri+Noctalia just to try them out, but I typically use Gnome and like it quite a bit for its simple, clean interface.
I use macOS and Linux, and the way GNOME works makes switching between them easier for me than when I run KDE, for instance (I'm sure others have a different experience, and that's what is so great about Linux).
I recently started using COSMIC and I would definitely call it good, even if it has a few rough edges due to just recently coming out of beta.
I mean, from my perspective Linux has multiple good desktop environments. I've used both Cinnamon and KDE for years and have found both perfectly pleasant to use.
Linux has had several good desktop environments for well over 20 years.
When is Windows going to get a good desktop environment?
Came here to post this, what an asinine thing to say.
The funniest is the user having the feeling that the OS was better to them previously when it was like this since forever, even if it was just broken for the user in other aspects than breaking notepad for cloud licensing.
I cannot see myself installing Windows 11, it's sad, I've been primarily a windows guy for my home computer since W95 and I'll miss it. Windows 10 (LTSC) has been the best operating system experience of my life, once I disabled updates and all the nag screens it's been rock solid for me for many years. It's so important to be able to trust that your computer works the same way tomorrow as it does today.
I hope that there's enough people like me that the combined community will keep it alive for a few years longer, but I know eventually something will force me to upgrade to Linux.
I started on Win 3.1. Win95 and 98 were so cool. Then I thought Win2k Pro was the best thing that even happened. WinXP was probably the last time I cared a lot about Windows. Vista looked cool. Then things just got worse and worse.
I have a medium-range gaming laptop running Windows 11. Dedicated GPU, extra RAM, etc. It "boots to ready" worlds slower than any of my low end Linux laptops. Windows is just so ungodly slow.
Somewhere around 2020 I changed my work laptop to use Linux only, no dual boot. MS was pushing 20GB patches, which is unreal. At the time I had AT&T DSL.
I had been using Linux on and off since the early 2000s. But the 20GB patches and 'ransom-ware' pushed me to Linux full time.
There are no apps I use that are 'windows only' so Im free. Windows is made by a mega-corp and it's just gotten out of control. "Update and shutdown" always just reboots. You can spend ~1hr doing an OS update with multiple reboots. I can install Linux + LibreOffice in ~15mins or less. A full Linux updated is like ~5min to ~10min, or less.
Yeah, this is the chief issue with Windows, LTSC helps but I've gone further and only let this system update about 3 times in the last 5 years. That plus disabling all signature enforcement, zone.identifiers and other nonsense "security" stuff makes Windows pretty great. I have never lost time to a random windows update since the first time it happened to me, it's just an unacceptable UX, I would have swapped to linux long ago if I wasn't able to disable it.
I was a windows guy for a long time. I went to macOS. Despite the complaints I've seen on the internet I've been very happy in macOS land. Someone mentioned that while macOS has "never been worse" the difference between windows and macOS "has never been greater".
Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.
macOS seems cool in theory, but in practice it's not a "you own your computer" operating system so it's just a no go off the bat for me, i get it for people that just kinda stay in the center of the bell curve when it comes to computer use, but there's a 100% chance i'd end up in some situation where i'm fighting against apple's locked-down ness in approx 20minutes of owning a mac.
i'm fundamentally never going to accept a UX where i'm not absolute god of my computer, if i want to delete files crucial to my system's ability to function or run something with kernel level access to all my memory that's MY prerogative, i cannot imagine using a computer that doesn't listen to me
macos has gotten worse about this in recent releases - I was astounded when I learnt that apple news, apple books, and apple music are uninstallable; these are still removable on ios but not on macos for some reason.
That's because the applications in macOS are in the sealed volume as part of the operating system.
On iOS, apps are managed by the operating system. On macOS, they're files.
Coincidentally, if you switch to use Windows Server 2025 (which is W11), you end up with a much better experience. No forced updates, no ads or messed up things with account
I would kill for Windows 7, but with security updates only. It was the last truly great OS Microsoft made.
Are you me?
Well, technically from 3.1 but everything else checks out.
Author implies he was using a local account at the time of the error. Which answers an important question. I'd heard of people with Microsoft accounts getting locked out of their own computers, but that's a first I've heard of basic apps failing with a local account.
My one remaining windows machine is on 2021 LTSC and has no route to the internet. I am slowly working my way off it. This was onto macOS but that has gone down the shitter too. So it’s Debian. Hopefully be end of Q1 this year.
I honestly can’t believe what these vendors are doing. I don’t know anyone who approves of any of this.
Comment threads on the Closed Source OS topics like this regularly remind me about the large disconnect between skilled technical users and the "average" user. That average probably isn't your (great) grandparent who never learned how to type suddenly needing to learn the rapidly evolving early-days internet, but it's still just as dangerous to suggest "Use Linux" as the solution for everyone when plenty of "Average" users still don't know enough to be doing things safely in the console.
The "sudo rm -rf" and equivilant horror stories get told all too often as mistakes even made by "skilled users" who were in a hurry, and while that particular problem is becoming less common there is still a minefield out there. Wider use case where we need IT support is worse since there are plenty of Microsoft and Mac favoring restrictions and lockdowns required in the name of corporate level security requirements and certifications add to the mess and "security concerns" you can't get corporate to move away from.
I'm a daily Linux user who has had to put years of a software developer career's time into learning the easier system administration aspects and working with those who handle the harder issues, but doing this in my career I have had to step back every time someone comes to me with a problem. Once I understand the problem then go on to ask "at a guess, how much time will diagnosing this even take?" with the estimates varying based on how standard the OS install or deployment is.
Time and a relatively small amount of training is the problem with switching users from Windows to Mac or the reverse. Switching to Linux is training and introducing a technical mindset into a person. Idiot-proofing the system is a major issue Linux hasn't solved yet. VDI systems and the like might be a step in the right direction, but as soon as your use case for Linux requires a "average user" to open a terminal the problems will pile up and the minefield is exposed.
Years removed from using a Mac I still think of it as the most "child-proofed" OS. Windows being less restrictive but still doing a good-enough job of locking up the more dangerous things while also not drawing attention to them on a regular basis. Linux is like seeing the dangers left out in the open with few useful warning signs beyond some generic unspecified danger signs around the worksite.
imo, the 'grandparent' type user should really be on an ipad or chromebook etc. (unless they have some specific software needs). Too easy to get unwanted stuff running on windows and it needs admin.
My parents have Linux laptops. They don't know it's Linux. All they do is browse the web and open PDFs.
Ever since I installed Linux for them, I don't have to drive every month to fix their system because they installed some malware on accident.
Us "grandparents" built and continue to maintain the tech stack we're all using. I think great-grandparents are the new grandparents.
That amuses me every time I hear a snarky, dismissive comment from the tiktok scroller zoomer/alpha gen.
Twice amusing when they (usually) don't understand that the application they use has more moving parts than animated pictures on their phone.
I got an 80y/o a System76, for basic tasks. Knowledge transfer from Windows was relatively quick, a week at most (she was willing, which is not always the case). Maybe we'll see Linux support call scamming, but that's not the case right now - that advantage of Linux for old people cannot be understated.
Probably the same for an iPad or Chromebook.
You are the sysadmin for that machine. Just wait until an update borks or something. Maybe you are a hobbyist who likes fixing computers for free, so fine.
I have done zero technical support for my parent's ipads for like 15 years now. They even got it working with a printer without me. The biggest issue has been bogus emails from "Microsoft Tech Support" and "Norton Antivirus", so the Windows ecosystem still seems grim that way.
Windows has made improvements in that area in the last decade, but I don't disagree much. It could be the bias of having dealt with IT related issues for long enough, but I do think the "average" user might be regressing closer to that grandparent level as far as (needing, if not wanting to admit) that child-proofing the OS is needed. Chromebook and tablet PC stuff will probably continue to draw more entry level users in. As that marketshare grows we will have to wait and see how malicious programming evolves with it...
Same general guesswork, but everyone on here can make reasonably educated guesses at what the AI evolution process will do to the tech landscape. Nobody knows enough yet to have anything in cement, but it's out there, and the small changes of the last few years make it seem that we are going to regress rather than improve the level of technical knowlege needed to be "average" when working on a computer.
>imo, the 'grandparent' type user should really be on an ipad or chromebook etc. (unless they have some specific software needs).
There is always some app that every 'grandparent' type needs that only works on Windows.
Really? I'm pretty sure all the GreetingCardPro-type stuff is available on iPads, and its a better device for banking/investment stuff (because GreetingCardPro can't fuck with it). I was thinking more like QuickBooks or a custom business app.
Have you ever actually tried to support a grandparent type? It's always easy when you've never done it.
> The "sudo rm -rf" and equivilant horror stories get told all too often as mistakes even made by "skilled users" who were in a hurry
There are ways to mess any system, when you are in a hurry. Think before you type/click.
There are two technologies propped up by having to earn a living: windows and the iPhone.
No matter the android phone, trying to get your MFA experience working with the umpteen stupid MFA apps is painful because all the dev work went into the iPhone versions. I hate it but yep I ended up buying an iPhone although I never buy them new.
Windows is the other one and again it’s security related. More and more places simply rely on Active Directory/Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now. But whatever is installed on my work provided computer is what I’m using and that’s windows.
I use an iPhone (out of choice) but what MFA doesn’t work on android?
I suspect this is about work related MFA apps; for example, one of the reasons I switched to an iPhone many years ago is the MFA app used at work would not run if the latest Android version with security bugfixes were installed, and the manufacturer had stopped providing updates for quite some time. At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter.
>At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter.
That's your personal decision though, you don't need a flagship android phone to have the latest versions of android. I pretty much never spend more than $100-150 for android phones and they always support all the normal MFA apps.
Fair, I could just buy a new Android phone, but at the time every non-flagship appeared to stop updates every two years, and being on an upgrade treadmill on that time scale did not seem like a fair use of my money. I have no idea if this continues to be the situation or if Android manufacturers have gotten better with their update cycles.
Pixel A series (from Pixel 8A) is a non-flagship that will receive 7 years of updates. I bought 1 last year around less than $300.
That's fair assessment (and it pissed me off myself), but thankfully it's much better now with Android.
I mean, I still wouldn't trust Sony even if it give a blood oath (they used to abandon flagships after 16-18 month form release!), but there are also more reputable vendors.
>but what MFA doesn’t work on android?
They all work fine, you just have to be on a relatively current version of android, and that's dictated by which versions the apps enable support for and not anything inherent to android in general. The idea that MFA apps don't work for half of phone owners is silly.
We use Entra as our source of truth for users, groups, roles, permissions, intune, etc.
It get distilled down to various LDAP servers, but it's our primary SSO with MFA (several options, WebAuthn, U2F, TOTP, passkeys).
Our users (using various flavours of Linux/Windows 10, 11/Mac workstations, iOS/Android phones (inc. GrapheneOS), windows VDI) are simply enjoying the reliable authentication everywhere. Some time ago we added all our customers and all the customer services are on SSO+MFA on Entra too.
We protect almost everything with it and it "just works". Linux, windows servers, git* servers, integrations with colocation providers and suppliers, ancient things like odd IPsec, svn server or console switch.
Seriously if someone tells you your Linux or android is a problem, they're either lying or dangerously incompetent.
Every MFA I know is TOTP now and it's interoperable with everything, even the Linux command line with oathtool
I've never used an iPhone and I've had an issue with 2FA / MFA. Mostly I use Microsoft Authenticator (even if, like Kleenex, sites will say "Use Google Authenticator.)
Can you name specific MFA experiences that don't work on Android?
I just use Mauth, its on fdroid. Pretty much everything is that common OTP standard. Same with OTPclient on gnu/linux
My only bad experience is duo mobile, but I expect it is equally bad on iOS
> Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
Entra id private access will cover that (and it frankly can't become the norm soon enough). For an extra $5 per license. I wouldn't worry too much about that part of Microsoft though. They always knew how to sell stuff to enterprise. You gotta wonder what their Windows division is doing though, but maybe they just don't want private customers.
> I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now.
Unless you care about gaming at all. Sure you have the Linux evangelists who talk about how much better support has gotten (it has!) but there are still huge glaring holes.
I run MacOS for everything except gaming. I'm not even that big of a gamer but it's the only sane option there.
"at all"? No. If you don't have nvidia card or don't play online games with borderline malware-behaving anti cheats, Bazzite solves it all.
For Nvidia it's cachyos right now, apparently.
More to come.
For quite a few years, it has gone from "unless you care about gaming at all" to "unless you care about an extremely specific type of game". You don't have to be an evangelist to see the value linux has for gaming now.
Reading the comments made me want to check the Steam Hardware Survey [0].
Some quick facts (Dec 2025 -> Jan 2026):
- Windows 10 gained more users than Windows 11 :D
- Linux lost users :(
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
I'm fairly certain that the GNU/Linux percentage dropping has more to do with the Simplified Chinese and Russian language percentage rising. I.O.W. more Windows than GNU/Linux users joined.
Those are survey results. Can't draw many conclusions from self selected survey responses. The survey lost Linux responders.
It's self selected so much as you clicking "yes" when it asks if you are ok with the client submitting your data, it's not a survey in the sense that you have to take time out of your day to answer it. If anything linux is probably over represented, so seeing the number go down is concerning for anyone that hopes for linux to be a viable alternative for mainstream users.
Switch to linux, don't look back
Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.
I have to use Windows at work and I will never have weird cloud authentication issues because I'm required to use a work-provided MS account on the computer. The author says he's a Windows guy, and always will be. This article, and these types of complaints, are really only relevant if you're using it on your personal PC.
When it's not your problem, it's not your problem. If you're forced to use Windows in a corporate environment, your IT admin is in charge of you having an account.
I did think about personal devices, but it is a valid point, though many companies I know do support at least windows+mac if not linux. Supporting Linux desktop for a company is more difficult due to lack of anything resembling GPOs (and no ansible-pull isn't that). It is definitely a thing systemd should implement.
If you're in a Windows-only job and you've got proof that Windows is getting in the way of doing your job you might just be able to convince those who decided to make it a Windows-only workplace to change their stance.
If you’re not in control of the OS, then you’re not responsible for problems caused by the choice of OS. Tell your boss that Windows is not allowing you to use basic features and let them choke on it.
You don’t sound very mature.
Why is it immature to hold decision makers responsible for their decisions?
How do you answer questions like "how are other people getting their work done on Windows?" How much leverage do you expect the average white collar worker to have?
Is a cashier, for example, not supposed to tell their boss when the cash register jams?
I don't get your reasoning. It's in fact very mature, everyone got their job to do and you don't mess with someone else job.
If you have to make spreadsheet on a windows computer, it's not up to you to check why excel won't open. You're not trained to do IT. You might do more harm than good.
That's how it works in mature work environment.
"choke on it, boss" when they're expected to use the approved OS and software doesn't sound very mature to me.
Came here to say this.
> I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to
If you don't live in a mythical past, there was nothing "premier", so no categorical change in treatment, so Notepad has always been a bad primitive app you should've replaced years ago and also avoid any along l account bugs in the present (though it's also possible to use the old "premier" notepad instead of upgrading to the account linked one)
I work in academia and I've gotten most of my people to switch to Macs and no, Linux is not an option here.
I have about eight Windows PCs against about sixty MacBook Airs and guess which platform causes me the most work? 1:20 issue ratio. Even simple things like SMB in Windows 11 are hopelessly broken.
What makes Linux not an option? Is there specific apps you need to use? Or IT policies? Or something else?
The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.
The issue isn’t the technology, it’s that there’s more than one way to do everything and people tend to scratch their itches.
If you started a company today, you can immediately and cheaply hire people or an MSP to manage Windows PCs. I hire entry Windows techs for $70k. M365 E-whatever is $30-60/mo.
Apple fully aligned their products, so the guys running the iPhone fleet can run the Macs. They may need some higher level assistance to setup the configurations. Unless you have a lot of compliance work, enroll in MDM, done.
With Linux, other than Chrome, there’s no standard. You’re gonna need a smart/expensive person to setup things and you’re going to need smart/expensive people to operate. If you have compliance requirements appear, you’ll need to buy RHEL or something and rework stuff, which is more expensive than windows.
It's much harder for non-dev jobs where the management won't let you BYOD for whatever reasons, which could range from IT being too stubborn to allow you to keep company data on your own laptop that's not centrally managed, to everything including licenses for random 3rd party software the company is using being tied to the ActiveDirectory fleet of computers with centralized storage.
This is the reality of IT equipment in big parts of the non-dev world, and you'll have a hard time convincing the IT dept to take on extra hassle just for you to use Linux out of all hundreds of employees who're just fine with Windows.
Linux is good for a lot of things, but the end user has to be comfortable too. They've heard of a Mac, but a Dell with Mint or whatnot is a harder sell.
I have a friend that worked for a big corp back 15 years ago managing Macs. At one point they told him they were going to can him and switch the Mac uses to Windows. Didn't go anywhere when he pointed out he was managing all their Mac users. And he was managing 5 times as many Macs as his coworkers were managing Window Boxes.
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me
I wonder if it works at all when no online connection to that store.
“But what if people used notepad without our permission?!” -dev/boss somewhere
"But I bought it!" - naïve customer somewhere
Microsoft is really shooting themselves in your foot.
It might be time to look at other options.
Tried switching to Linux years ago, what brought me be back were issues with Suspend-to-disk, CPU Core parking, GPU powerefficient idle mode
Since my PC is idle most of the time, I care about idle-powerefficiency a lot.
Does stuff like this these days just work? (AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU)
Windows started sucking with XP.
I know I know, a lot of people think XP rocked, but it was really just 2000 with a fugly skin and more crap.
Windows 2000 was peak desktop OS, and no one can convince me otherwise.
Arch Linux + XFCE, a distant second.
XP brought real bluetooth support, WPA wifi, and built-in unzip and image viewing support. The default interface theme was terrible, but it's the oldest Windows that could be considered "modern."
I mean, these were new technologies at the time and should have been a service pack..
When XP came out I migrated to *nix and I’m forever happy I did.
Windows 11 is the shittiest OS I’ve ever used. Nothing works, basically.
I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed.
Sometimes I prefer one machine over the other I rarely wish for anything other than sometimes being unable to transfer data between the two systems.
> I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed.
That's definitely a good reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, but why not run Linux on it? Then you'd get the best of both worlds.
I would not describe the Linux desktop experience as the best of both Mac and Windows.
Let's go with different, a different world.
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me
I wonder if it works at all with no online connection to that store.
Reminds me of this MacOS problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
Imagine if Fedora locked you out of vi because your Red Hat account had an issue.
The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine.
This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens.
When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.
Business users want everything online, so anything can be accessed from anywhere. They want central identity, so when someone is hired or fired they only need to look in one place.
> if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs
On macOS, only after you've run xattr -c to remove the Gatekeeper block on non-Apple approved apps.
With Macbooks Air M4 starting at $1k/€1.1k, and apparently soon some even cheaper Macbooks coming up, it's really difficult to justify buying a Windows laptop those days and having to deal with all Microsoft bs, unless you have specific needs and being locked in.
The difference of "value for money" in terms of build quality, battery life, screen, touchpad, OS stability, OS upgrades experience, and overall polish and level of user (non-)hostility is immense.
A Windows guy for two decades, got an MBP for work, and while I miss some Windows software and I don't like some Mac things (e.g. no real write-to-disk hibernation; pricey upgrades from base models etc.), but there's no way I'm going back.
ya, starting with M1, Apple really broke away hard. Windows laptops, especially of the thin-and-light variety, are so bad by comparison.
The renaming of “my computer” to “this PC” was quite telling.
thin clients are not personal computing.
I didn't even notice the Copilot button in Notepad until it was mentioned, "Even Notepad has a Copilot button."
Most of all, first-party apps from Microsoft have been ruined by them. Use alternatives when possible.
The subscription to his own machine had bugs that prevented him from using a basic windowed text editor and that isn't the last straw?
I believe this is related to known issues with KB5074109
It hit Both Win11 24H2 and 25H2.
Every horrible windows story is yet another glorious day for linux.
Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
> Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
So it was with Windows Vista, Windows 7, even Windows 8. It's not an impossible ask for Windows either.
Yet Micoslop chose not to make that happen, presumably because they get a kick out of seeing people not find what they need.
It's not but when you're asking Microsoft you're not asking developers. You're asking marketers who are trying to pimp stuff like bing and Copilot. What you're getting is exactly what they want you to get.
Note this can only work because they logged everyone's searches and saw people searching for notepad
Cinnamon is cool and all but I prefer KDE Plasma. It seems to eliminate all the pain points Linux desktop environments typically have and everything just works. Pair it with Debian and you got a solid system.
> Pair it with Debian
A KDE dev mentioned on a podcast that issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported :/
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pneqp4/kde_dev_do_n...
My wife was complaining about Windows issues so I ended up installing Fedora with KDE on her laptop. I would have preferred Debian but using Testing (as suggested by the dev) doesn't some ideal.
Debian Testing isn't really unstable - the dev wasn't exaggerating. But I'd also suggest Kubuntu (you can remove snap and all of its packages, and install Firefox and Thunderbird .deb's from the Mozilla repo)
Debian testing is rolling release. More akin to Arch or Gentoo really.
You're thinking of Unstable (Sid). It's also not like Arch or Tumbleweed because it gets locked down during release freeze and then gets a ton of updates all at once.
> That is curated search done right.
Adding keywords in the relevant .desktop files should be enough to make this work in other DE's too. I just tried it in KDE (by adding a 'comment=... (like notepad)' line in ~/.local/share/applications/org.kde.kwrite.desktop), it works as expected
New to KDE and .desktop shortcuts were something I really liked coming from Windows. I can enter in whatever terms I want to use for an item to appear in search, no relying on filename.
I'm betting someone included the desktop file in the upstream and it has nothing to do with the distro.
It just makes sense to show travel deals. Why would an OS show text editors when searching for text editors? Obviously it can show something far more lucrative by matching what it knows from spyware AI taking screenshots of your every action.
Please don't recommend Mint. It's slow to merge upstream and I find noobs installing it all the time then complaining about features missing that were already in upstream for two years.
Masochism is a choice when it comes to software.
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be
As a 7 year old, I was a fan of a certain sports team. At 11 I stopped watching, collecting items and took off their posters.
When family members and friends asked me why, I told them that the original team had changed, all that remained was the club which I didn't care for.
To be clear, this is the horrible "new" Notepad "app" that I absolutely hated and instantly removed when it was forced upon everyone. I doubt the old "edit field in a wrapper" one which has been nearly the same since Win95 has this problem.
(My newest machine is now running Linux.)
Markdown support and the like are useful but their need to cram AI and account sign-in into it definitely seemed over the top. When they got rid of Wordpad I kind of anticipated them trying to pivot Notepad more in that direction.
FWIW, when I used windows (up to 7), I always used Notetab.
For what it matters, Windows Server 2025 still has the edit field in a wrapper.
They all still do, just like the old Explorer context menu. It's what you get when you remove the new abomination.
Yes, I was pleased to see our new Windows Server boxes still have regular Notepad and Explorer.
Is that old still provided?
Yes, it’s still under C:\Windows\notepad.exe, probably for backwards compatibility.
>I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to.[...] and Windows 12 is ultimately an agentic AI OS, I wouldn't be surprised if more people stick with a debloated Windows 11, just as others did with Windows 10
Is there any justification for the first part other than that the authors job at windowscentral.com depends on it? Because I'm not seeing it in the article which amounts to the digital version of Stockholm syndrome. If even the author is predicting that this is what the next windows will look like, why aren't you running for the hills
If Microsoft wanted, it could make Windows good.
On the other hand, no matter how much time or money the Linux community gets, the desktop experience will never be good.
This means that our only hope at having a good desktop OS is Microsoft changing course.
What are you talking about? The desktop experience on linux is far superior to that brain dead lowest common denominator junk as found on windows or macos.
linux has(by personal preference order) middle click paste, tiling window managers, point to focus, focus on lower windows, the compose key. The linux desktop is a productivity goldmine compared to windows. and I want to say mean things about the macos ui, but I don't really use it (the last time I tried it could not do full screen windows, But I have been told that is not true any more)
In just about every aspect of life, the race to the bottom seems to be on the last lap, and all the players have that almost-there energy.
It certainly feels that Microsoft is accelerating in this race. There have been almost weekly 'a new reason' that Windows 11 sucks and is user hostile. Previously it would be only once a month.
If I had such a problem with my OS, I would have changed the distribution.
>After all, Notepad is supposed to be the absolute barebones, most ultra-basic app in the entire OS.
When was that ever the case? It's not even the most basic editor on Windows, which would be Edit.
https://github.com/microsoft/edit
Edit has not shipped with Windows since Win9x -- which is to say, it hasn't shipped since Windows required DOS -- and what you linked is an homage project, not the same program.
And you know what else was included in versions of MS-DOS that shipped with Win9x? Edlin. The editor so basic most people can't figure out how to use it.
Edit, what I linked, is shipping with Windows right now. This HN thread is about the current version of Windows. We are not talking about Windows XP.
How can Microsoft legally do that? Notepad++ is GPL-licensed open source. It's on Github.[1]
[1] https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus
Notepad++ isn't [Windows Notepad](https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9msmlrh6lzf3)
Hilariously related, the title of this topic now looks to me like "Notepad--"
Oops, sorry. HN condensed the title to " Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – ...", and I misread that.
And a minus-minus version is also available, which seems to be aimed at Chinese needs.
It's also seemingly automatically installed with Windows.