First off, Iām not here to tell you what to do or shame anyone for making different choices. What works for me might not work for you, and thatās t...
Some comments have been hidden by the post's author - find out more
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Was into Linux a lot at the beginning of 2000s, made my own distro from scratch, but usability and user-friendliness were quite low that time, so of course you need to be a pro to use any Unix system. Donāt appreciate Windows at all, now is only MacOS.
macos is slow and bloated just like windows, but at least windows can run on hardware that you build part by part, unlike apple's walled garden so imo macos is way worse... personally I'm in team Linux
YES! Preach! XD
Yeah, I have my gripes with both, but I think Apple makes me more mad than Windows nowadays personally. The OS is pretty good until you've seen the true power of Linux imo.
It's faster, no vendor lockin, less bloat, you can enforce your opinions instead of being beholden to their opinions. M2 doesn't beat a thread ripper ;)
Cool post, I thought I'd pop in here.
I've been using Linux for many years myself and I love it so much, but sometimes I just really want a fully fledged clean system that helps me get work done without distraction, that being MacOS, (which for reference I haven't used much personally but greatly admire).
And yes I could put in hours upon hours into making the "perfect" Linux system for me with no distractions and absolute control but what working person really has time for that?
Anyway awesome post, love the Linux appreciation! (also what distro do you use ;D )
Well, I've already put in that time. So Mac holds me back from what I want because I can't customize it and make it operate the way my daily driver. So when I have to work on a Mac for work, it's a big drag for me. I totally understand the desire to not put in that kind of time, though.
I'm an Arch Linux guy. There's something to building your OS from scratch and maintaining it that's an almost spiritual experience for me. I love working in the system that I have build and everything works exactly how it should based on my design. Arch gives you that freedom (albeit a difficult road to travel in the beginning, it gets so much easier over time). Rolling distributions also make life simple and easy
12+ years in team Macos, never seen it being slow, i think your opinion is way biased. I'm good with Linux, no issues, but it doesn't have some very specific software i need, so that's why. At the end it is up to you what team are you, if it suits your tasks, dude
I work on Mac for a living being an Android developer. There's def things you can do to Mac to make it feel less slow. The animations in Mac are seen by many Linux peeps as slow, but you can turn that off and make things feel more snappy for someone who's been using linux for years. I'm running Hyprland tiling manager, which is animations galore and it still feels smoother and more snappy compared to my mac experience with animations.
Other then that, my main machine would blow my mac out of the water when it comes to building an Android project. Even though the M chips are really good, the hardware I've installed on my PC is better. But I understand that comparing desktop to laptop experience isn't fair.
The point being that my main PC with Linux feels a lot better in a lot of different ways. I like doing 3D modeling and game dev as a hobby, and that kind of workflow doesn't hold a candle on any laptop.
But if it suits your needs and you like it, then I think you should be happy with it. If you don't have the same gripes against Apple and their OS's opinions, and you have the money for their brand, then more power too you. :) You have the freedom to choose what you like, and I support your right to love and enjoy Mac and Apple products.
We're just sharing our experience when dealing with both OS's. It differs from yours, and that's life. :) Not trying to convert anybody here, just giving honest accounts of our experiences.
Linux has come a long, long way since then :)
Well, obviously. Itās a proper tool for servers.
For sure, specifically in the desktop experience though. Printers, speakers, microphones, gaming and much more are incredibly strong in the desktop world now. :)
Which Linux version are you referring here? I will also replace my Windows by it
I'm speaking about Linux for desktop generally. I recommend people try out Manjaro if their just starting out! :) Try it in a VM first to familiarize yourself with the process and watch plenty of videos. :)
I would also recommend Zorin OS (which is based on Ubuntu) to anyone migrating from Windows. It can even be customized to look like MacOS. It's what I use btw.
Dang, Zorin has it all! Very cool looking distro. All things included :) Looks beautiful too!
Yep, I haven't regretted my choice since I started using it.
Good choice ā¤ļø
Ty ty šš§
I started out coding on Windows with NotePad++ in the early 2000s. I used to hack the registry to squeeze every bit of performance i could. But got sick of the crashing, rebooting, licensing, and general headaches.
I bought a Linux magazine with a dvd containing 99 distros(!!), and was hooked. I must have tried them all.
Eventually, i settled on Ubuntu, LTS releases. Everything just worked, and so much software was available. I am not a gamer, i just need a super stable and secure machine. Finally Nvidia drivers got better and better.
Instead of buying a machine every 24-36 months, i use custom builds and get 6-8 years of joy. Instead of rebooting every night, i reboot every 6-10 weeks. And native Docker is icing on the cake.
Glad there are other happy Linux desktop users out there. Be sure to support your favorite software vendors when they make their software available for Linux. If the software is free, sponsor them, it's way cheaper than an Adobe subscription. If they charge, pay them, they deserve it.
Yes!!! Exactly šÆ
One thing that's still left on my TODO list as a developer is Arch Linux. I heard a lot of good things about it and my colleague says that the best part about it is that, while installing the OS, you really learn how it works. Think I'm going to try in a VM first, don't wanna mess up my Windows/Ubuntu dual boot setup just yet :D
So, if you know how to install Arch: a tutorial would be very welcome :D
Funny you should ask! ;) dev.to/jimmymcbride/hitchhikers-gu...
Oh wow, seems like you have an article for everything! š
Shtap it! ;p I try and do one article a day. I've play a lot with Arch in the past (Manjaro main while testing and learning Arch and tiling managers). But I recently swapped and went all in and homies in my discord where like, "You should make some content about it" to which I responded "everyone and their mom has made a Arch Install guide" and they made some good counter points, and it got me thinking. Arch Wiki is the best guide. Following a YouTube vid to learn arch install is slow and kinda sucks, the offical written guide is way better. But some things are unclear, or you have to dive through some links and read to figure out what the right command for you are. other things are concepts someone brand new will have trouble understanding, so I can offer my perspective and knowledge to help explain things like partitions and all that. So it's basically a guide through the wiki with me exlpaining stuff along the way.
It's also a future resource for me. Instead of going to the arch wiki directly I can go to this article and follow the step-by-step guide with all the commands right there to copy.
So true which is you wrote about Ownership and Freedom! I like this arguing.
My experience of linux a bit diffrent. My home computer is my favorite MacBook Pro M1 with touch bar - which I don't understand why no popular. - but that is another topic. So I am a bit familiar with unix like commands.
In my works - windows laptop - a last year we have a option: work on VDI windows or VDI linux. So with my MacOS experience and on windows always use gitbash as terminal so I think maybe the linux is good enough for work.
And this is a 100% true. Fare better than windows, even througth VDI the intercation is slower than usual, but with a right workspaces setup this problem is eliminated.
The best of linux is the terminal where you can work much more efficent vs graphic interface heavy application. I was set the history to 100.000 to do not forget which I used, and that why:
give a
h zipfor example show how zip cli parameters are works. ( rg -> rip grep )the other secret weapon is zoxide to hyperjump to a right folder.
Bonus: much cleaner work with docker and cloud system, where the easiest option is select a right linux distro for build.
For a modern Linux distro to work with docker and cloud systems, try [(projectbluefin.io/)]
Wow! Super cool! š Will have to boot this up in a VM and see what it's all about!
As a fellow Linux user, I fully agree with everything you said. It's nice having full ownership of your machine. What distro are you running?
Thanks! I started off with Manjaro w/ Gnome for a very long time, did some playing around with many others, but now I'm just running vanilla Arch with Hyprland like a filthy meta slave. Haha
Lol that's understandable. I started with Ubuntu using Gnome a year ish ago, but now I'm using Arch with i3.
I have a friend who loves i3. He's a total Linux chad and I learned a lot from him! :)
What about you? What's your main distro of choice?
Arch Linux as well!
š
For those saying MacOS is slow, I can kinda understand, but saying linux is faster is like comparing a relatively barebones OS with a very loaded consumer grade OS. You can definitely get Linux to be a lot better for your purposes, but for everyone else a Mac works better out of the box.
Basically your points are valid, but my choices remain different. :)
For my JS purposes, I've seen Macs perform better than most linux machines.
Def not trying to convince people I'm right, just an opinion piece on why I stick to strictly Linux. What works for me won't work for everyone. I'm blown away by the response to this blog. No one should actually care what my opinion is on Linux anyways. XD
Linux sure give you soo much freedom which can be overwhelming at first, but then you take it all in slowly, there and there you eventually get comfortable with it.
Then you reach a point where distros don't even matter anymore š .
Yup! The are minor differences, but the biggest ones are rolling/fixed release (HUGE fan of rolling releases for desktop), and what you call the package manager. Some a little more up-to-date than others. I prefer the more up-to-date side, but that's not for everyone. But yeah, they are all incredibly similar haha
For me, I have almost an entire career of familiarity with the combination of UNIX and Linux systems. My first UNIX system that I regularly used dates back to 1982; I heard about Linux on newsgroups as far back as the 1992-1993 timeframe, though I didn't get my hands on one to experiment with on my personal time until the Fall of 1995. Ever since then, Linux has been my favorite system for personal use.
Not long before my retirement in 2018 I had at least two opportunities to use a combination of UNIX and Linux systems on the job too and that was enjoyable, since it's what I've used myself for almost thirty years.
I customize a few scripts and my own login shell (I generally use bash; definitely prefer the sh family of shells and I make my shells easy to modify in case I happen to change shells).
Wow! That's awesome man! I love it when I get the chance to talk to Linux guys who've been a part of it for so long! I worked with lead dev a long time ago that had been a Linux main for a very long time as well. We had such great conversations!
I don't know if any of you are familiar with a guy named Jon "maddog" Hall. Jon has worked as a teacher, marketing professional, book writer and Linux advocate; he brought Linux Torvalds to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late nineties and arranged to get Torvalds a DEC Alphastation so that Linux could be ported to the Alpha computer line.
Jon and I often met at a break nook that had a vending machine, coffee and microwave, where we'd often pop some popcorn and chat about UNIX and Linux.
We also met socially a few times at a nearby seafood restaurant, which also happened to be the place that I privately invited a few friends (Jon included) when I left DEC.
The last time I saw Jon write, he had a column called Maddog's Doghouse in the Linux Magazine. I haven't picked up a copy of that mag in a while, but the article I read was entitled "Early Days of Linux". Several of the things Jon mentioned in the article were similar to many of the conversations between the two of us so I read it with interest, bringing back many positive memories.
Wow! That's really cool! Community is so great. I love it when stuff comes full circle like that. What a history!
I am still using macOS on an M1 mini but have an older Dell laptop that has Linux on it, a couple old NUCs with Zorin and Fedora on them. I am trying to see what I need to transition to Linux full time once the Mac dies.
I use NixOS, btw š
NixOS is amazing! :) I'll be booting that on my home lab soon enough!
I've been using Linux since 2009, around that time I got one of the free Ubuntu CDs and I have not used a windows PC willingly since then. While I am in the Apple eco-system I have replicated most of the "ecosystem" features on my linux desktop, all of them work just as good sans some quality-of-life integrations that are not deal breakers for me. I encourage almost everyone to at least give it a try
Linux does have some pretty good Mac clone features available now! And the desktops workspaces work better! :)
Thank your for sharing, great article!
I started with Ubuntu during my university years (around 2010), and I have been a huge fan since then.
Do you think I should move to some other distros, or is it OK to stay on Ubuntu? As a webdeveloper guy, it's perfectly fine for me, I love all the tools and the GNOME environment as well, and I have never thought about switching to another distro.
I love Gnome and Ubuntu is a great distro! :) Perfect for everything you need. If you're itching to try something new, but not too new, I recommend checking out Rhino Linux! Rhino is a Ubuntu based distro, but the twist is that it's a rolling release! So instead of having to reinstall your OS each times there's an update, you just update the package manager and your up-to-date! No restart required! :)
It also has an additional package manager installed and the packages are all very up-to-date. Everyone compares it to pacman, it's that good!
But, no. You don't have to switch your distro at all. :)
Hi @jimmymcbride !
Thank you for your comment and the recommendation as weel, I will check on Rhino :)
Let me know what you think about it! If you want to, hop in the discord! Have a lot of Linux people coming in right now too and I'm super active in there. :) Cheers!
I want to highlight one point how people admire MacOS/Windows for just working out of the box, didn't have much issues with windows but it was definitely slow and bloated, The biggest headache i had with my MacBook Air m1 is Bluetooth, with each major release BT driver breaks for my machine, when i connect my buds with MacBook, it might connect and disconnect in seconds and cycle will keep going until i reinstall the OS.
I raised issue with apple support team and they denied the problem and said that issue is with 3rd party hardware, FINE ! i bought magic keyboard and mouse, the same BT issue happened with mouse-keyboard as well, raised issue again with apple support and this time they acknowledged their mistake and gave me solution to reinstall the OS and promised that issue would be resolved in future update, issue still persists . I have this macbook for 3 years now .
i am using Linux for more than 5 years and never had any such an issue, only WIFI driver issue once, that's all . Never broke, no spying, no data theft, no virus issue .
I used to do a lot of customisation in beginning but at some point i was just happy with default UI and kept it as it is . It was quite smooth journey for me in Linux .
Thanks for sharing your story! Yeah, I have a very smooth experience on Linux myself! :)
The feeling you describe with Linux nowadays is the same feeling I had when I became a fan of Apple and macOS back in 1996. I was a Windows user before that and a MS-DOS user before that. macOS was like traveling 10 years into the future. I remember one Appleās slogan was: To see the PC from the future, use the Apple from today. Anyway, I had the same issues, like having to sacrifice certain things. I still remember that I communicated with a lot of friends through ICQ and then Microsoft Messenger, but the macOS versions were very basic while my friends had all the bell and whistles. I had to look up apps to read or use certain documents. But the overall user experience was completely worth it. While my friends had to reboot their PCs constantly, I could stay all night without problems. I didnāt need an antivirus, or paying for licenses of operating system. I could tinker all I wanted with the operating system to make it my own. However, somewhere along the road, Apple lost that magic. I still love macOS. I have to use Windows in my job, and everyday I see how bad it is. I have also always liked Linux, and I used to dual boot my Apple computers just for the fun of it and always thought: This is what macOS would be without the extras that Apple adds to it. Now I have Linux (Ubuntu) on my computer and I am feeling that magic again. Linux has become to Apple what Apple was to Windows back in the late 90s and early 00s, at least in my experience. It is awesome to be able to feel that magic again, with all its pros and cons.
Love this!
Main gripe, and reasons for not getting off my dual boot soapbox, is Visual Studio (VS Code has most, not all, features and integration points of its "big brother" -- in many senses of the term haha--VS); and Lenovo/HP. Why these two? More in the Redmond "orb", and convenience apps that only work in Windoze. Okay okay you got me, I'm lazy!
Neovim for me and Idea for Kotlin. Really wish the Kotlin LSP wasn't proprietary and could be set up effectively in Linux, but hey, Idea still makes a great IDE!
JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, Kotlin and Bash are my main languages, and I like to do Godot with C#, but it seems like GDScript my have fixed some of my complaints!
If you want to feel the same way about money/finances as you do about FOSS/Linux, learn about Bitcoin and Cardano.
I won't go into a bunch of detail so I don't hijack this thread, but I'm happy to discuss more off thread.
To get started, read The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous. You can buy it or you can find it for free if you look hard enough.
Thanks! I'll check this out! Feel free to hijack a channel in the discord if you wanna tell me all about it! :)
I am proud to be a Linux Users since 2000ās tried MacOS and suffer all the pain of Windows, I still surviving in all companies and luck to not be forced to use nothing else but Linux
I chose the less famous distros always like Slackware, Gentoo and now Arch, suffer all the pain of not be a voice heard in the plans of suppliers like NVidia, my own Bank and all productive applications vendors available to other platforms, but I am surviving and most important happy, like we used to say: Be Happy, Use Linux
The best takeaway from being a Linux User is that I am learning and learning quite a lot, all challenges from pandemic times like remote work, video calls, communication tools, again all products that donāt give a shit for Linuxers made me stronger and help me to learn way more
GNU/Linux is life, is proud and is freedom
YES!!! I love this! Very closely reflects my experience as well. Accept I'm forced to work on a mac as and Android engineer :p
I like Linux as well! It's definitely my preferred OS, by far.
To all the people who say āit's complicatedā or āyou have to be a proā, just try it! You don't know until you have. Distros like Ubuntu are super easy, probably more intuitive actually, than Windows or macOS are.
I agree 100% . It took me a long time to committ to linux for my personal. In my business, its good to stay on Windows too, because Windows pays the bills. As for my personal and development preferences, I am a Linux lover. Of course 70% of the internet still runs on Linux too !
I switched to Linux around 3 years back, main advantage is freedom from bad decisions of Microsoft and way more things can be customized. No spying, annoying updates, no antivirus that slow down system.
The biggest disadvantage is how GPU works, it got way better, but you still can't normally play modern games. Some other hardware devices have problems. Not all software work too, some soft is a standard de facto, so need to choose OS based on your needs.
Just because Linux is 1-3% of the market, many companies don't care about such problems.
And last but not least - choose the right distro, I recommend Fedora, it's more polished than Ubuntu and easy to use.
After you set it up (and that might take a lot of effort if you have strange hardware like me, a ZenBook Duo Pro) it works and it's stable.
I've used first Mac and then Windows for the past few years and the experience was quite horrible (especially on Windows).
Nice! I'm a big desktop guy. Having a little beater laptop is nice, but I love sitting down at a desk dedicated to my computer and development environment. Plus I like to play around with things like Godot and Blender. It's really nice to have 3 big screens, and a home office space to just get work done. :)
I really like Linux. Though, I am using Macos (MBP) for personal stuff. But for the reasons you mentioned, linux has a special place.
What hardware (pc) do you use?
I used ubuntu distro for a while. When I was using Linux, I had dual booted from a windows machine and probably didn't make the best decisions in swap and os storage (then eventually I had to increase the Linux partition sizes)...
Plus I had much to learn and study (was learning SW development, at nights, sleeping very little, hustling all the time), and therefore I could not spare my time on this...
and it is similar with NeoVim nowadays. I returned back to VS code after using Lazy config... Since you mentioned it, had to tell, it is a really fantastic tool really, but being skilled in it (not the key bindings, it is ok, I am using vim on VSCode, but the configuration and other deep stuff, like Lua, modules etc.) requires time and dedication..
Well, Who knows maybe in the future I can switch to linux and neovim again...
Anyway... It was nice reading this post. Thanks
It's a process! My full swap to Linux took time. Duel booting, making lots of mistakes, but not giving up. I would go back and forth between VS Code and Neovim, learning when I could.
Just keep coming back when you feel motivated too and over time things will all start to fall in place. It's a journey, not a sprint. :)
On Ubuntu from last 16 years and never looked back
š
Dual booting for me, Windows and Linux :)
(Linux canāt play a lot of my favorite games, yet)
Which one's? I don't play games as much as I used to, but gaming support for Linux is through the roof now
Honestly, it might be really soon where itās time to retire āwindows for gaming, Linux for productivity,ā due to Proton and WINE, itās less feasible to Dual boot like I am, ngl. Honestly? My attention span is so bad that if all I have to do to switch to a game from VS Code is close it and open steam, Iāll get no coding doneā¦.
(To fully answer your question, Minecraft Bedrock, and probably some Niche indie games that donāt have Linux support already)
Minecraft is available on Linux :) but I feel you! Keeping games and productivity separate is nice with duel boot! I found myself hanging out on windows for far too long haha I just don't game anymore haha. Solves the whole issue for me XD
I've been using Arch for quite some time now. I distro-hopped a lot but finally settled on it. Arch with Gnome, with no animations, feels heavenly. š«
I went from Manjaro-Gnome to Arch-Hyprland. Did Qtile for a while, but moved to Hyprland and love it. Def have animations with Hyprland. Everything still seems snappy to me though! :) Def can't do animations in Mac, they seems so cumbersome. Thanks for sharing!
I started with Ubuntu with Gnome probably about 10 yrs ago, maybe a bit less, because I always encountered issues with web development tools on Windows and then eventually also on MacOS. All the web apps I worked on got deployed to Linux servers so it felt right to have the same OS to work on and have never looked back. Moved to Manjaro for a while until major updates started causing problems and then switched to EndeavourOS (also Arch based) with i3 for about 3-4 and never have any issues, no crashes, most games I want to play also work well pretty much out the box. Am about to set up my new PC with EndeavourOS again but will also go with Hyprland as the WM, it looks amazing.
I love Hyprland! It's my main now :) So beautiful
I just Upgraded to Ubuntu 24.04 I like it very much on this Lenovo legion.
Very cool! Ubuntu is a solid distribution!
Very cool article as well! If I ever need to replace my keyboard this going to be my go to! :)
it is a very satisfying feeling when a D.I.Y project goes to plan š
If it weren't for insane anti-cheat requiring kernel access and Adobe (I have to have to have this as I'm a professional graphic designer, and no, GIMP and Inkscape are NOT feasible solutions), I would be running Linux as a daily driver.
Yup. I'm happy that GIMP works for my simple use cases but that's the unfortunate truth for professional graphic designers like yourself. GIMP can't replace Adobe at that level
What about security?
I knew I was missing something! Haha
I don't know why, but I fall in love in header image... Is there larger version somewhere?
Here you go! :) cdn.midjourney.com/66b67f43-8613-4...
Ohohoho....
Not today bro
x.com/HowardL3/status/183929431534...
Interesting to see how this plays out!
I'm on linux since 2004. Very well explained each point. Gnu linux is the best. Even if I have to go to a Windows station, the first thing I do is install WSL and do everything around.
Thanks man! I'm glad you liked it. :) WSL is pretty nice!
i am using arch BTW
I use arch btw too
I use Mac but I love Linux.
I know a lot of people that turn their Linux OS into a mac clone :)
Thank you for sharing!
I also like Tux. Tux is great.
Thank you so much for this great article in Linux. It is very encouraging and inspiring.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks :)
Made the switch recently and I don't miss much. All my favorite games are supported by Valve's Proton Layer.
Proton is so awesome! :)
A big mission of mine is to bring more developers to the terminal :)
If Linux is utilised as a daily driver or Desktop Version, I only have one question: How do I install ms. Office in Linux?
I installed it via Wine, and it was successful, but when I opened it, that application couldn't save to a document. That is just the reason why I came back to use the Windows OS.
Long ago and far away, there used to be a product called Crossover Office that made Office run on Linux. I haven't looked for many years. LibreOffice is great, but it lacks some fine points that Office has and the scripting language for spreadsheet formulas in completely different than Visual Basic or whatever Office uses.
I would recommend switching to Libre Office :)
This blog is pretty good! I think linux is far more better when you become attached in technology. The control over the system, the usability is at finest, the features that other operating system such as Windows and MacOS is exquisite. And using linux is more likely a side quest that you can learn new things!
No Microsoft is not into child labor nor in the next 500 weird things you imagine. Now even children are at risk if I understand, insaneā¦ nor are they obsessed with making money while doing nothing, as the Fruit incorp. Expecting anything factual or honest is futileā¦ ābeliefsā and dogmas are religious concepts and have no place in technical debatesā¦ which hardly ever are debates, or a normal discussion.
So, Microsoft. My life, I first discovered Linux distros about 25 years ago, I was young, can I be pretentious? not yetā¦. I work with it daily. I studied CS, and I know MULTIPLE OS, including exotic ones, a privilege really. and how they work and stuff!, and many many languages !! Can I be... no! I started programming at 11/12 drawing random pixels with GDI ! at first. So, I do know my sh**. Now can I be? .. noā¦ And professionally, there is no manual., the internet does not know, for instance, the OpenSSL RSA custom engine that works with the proprietary HSMs, and the 70+ servers, and their custom modules (in this case httpd modules) handling so many cryptic protocols and10th of millions of sessions (TLS) webservices, but also most card or ecom payments, in a whole country, so one sp-called systemic platformā¦ and this is one small example, of the things we do, and there is no man page, the solution is never the first result in a search engine, or page 50ā¦ itās not even some orally transmitted tribal kind of knowledge, no, itās just figure it out, and has been the case for so long.
So the challenges, āreal pain and sacrifice behind a lot of these beautiful open-source projectsā is also there whatever the license isā¦ and then I am still not feeling superior or part of some elite, or condescending, or judgmental, the typical attitude of the āpurestā of all.
Do you thing non FOSS is writing itself? or that Microsoft appeared one fine day and collected money doing nothing Apple-style ? Or is doing that now ? The history of micro computing/personal computing (so not a big time share based mainframe, with punched card, is something to fundamental to know, and full of suspense, drama, companies were fighting, it was harsh, and there were much bigger companies than Microsoft or WordPerfect Corp, Intel, Novel, HP, etc (on Wikipedia, it shows that mister GNU-Anti-Ms-but-canāt-tell-why has took over some areas, Mr Apple too, but not in French, or not in English, or sometimes the Dutch one is closer to what you can read in some reference books.. anyway.). Any wrong decision, it could be WordPerfectCorp/BlackberryRim overnightā¦
Software engineering is difficult, good, elegant, on time, on budget, and, I am not a dev, Iā¦ am versatile, with my small team, is not common. The passion, the curiosity to learn and caring about doing a good job, I expect even more than good from myself, is a necessary condition. Just like knowledge of Windows, is mandatory. Just like anyone āworking in ITā should know Linux too. Otherwise, you can work on MQSeries or be a fancy 1-brand of DB DBA your whole career. Whether it is open source or not makes no difference. And there is no reason to think FOSS is pure and good, the rest is evil. This makes no sense. And I like open-source software, and spend my time on GitHub rather than Instagram and the likesā¦ and I donāt hate any software or corporation, they are not very receptive to the time and energy youād loose. A bunch of people have no ethics, at Apple, or Musk, or one extremist and a bit stupid guy writing for Proton made it into the list recentlyā¦
On Windows... you have always been free to do whatever you wanted ^^ for decades. Apis are available to use, leverage or customize hundreds of components, but you can also create your own implementation and/or replace entire stacks by your own, TCP/IP or the full network stack, audio, most of it runs in userlandā¦ the shell (the desktop environment) can be replaced by the one of your choice ! yes, it is necessary to have basic knowledge of Windowsā¦ so it can be replaced : Sun had some, now KDE, and other Unix or non-Unix related desktops were/are available on Windows, still today. Amazing, no?
It's nice to ābelieveā in a world with no anger, free software, made by magical ethereal beings, who do not feed, or drink, or need a roof over their head, or have familiesā¦ and no concept of money, living naked surrounded by pristine natureā¦ with no need for school, healthcare, energy, or even computersā¦
The truth starts with the timeline: ... Unix, first public "release" (complex situation, but not free, not open source) 1973, Microsoft 1975 (Altair, etc.), GNU 1983 (Windows too)..., Linux Kernel... first version 1991 (very confidential) and prod "capable" in 1994... (with many tools from the 70s, still the common toolchain)... so 20 years later... an eternity, and not at all open source free and unicorn timesā¦ yet, it looks like Linux was always thereā¦ it wasnāt.
So yes, the most disruptive and hard part of the personal computer revolution was over already... MS (cf MSDN CDs, and sources) provided a lot of open source software back then (maybe not with a MIT license, they had 3 OS an up to 4 architectures to support... so the code (and also 2 DOS 16bit and 32bit running on an hypervisor... speech recognition or TTS frameworks, DirectX, .. etc. yes, they were and are very good and innovative, it wasn't luck) but it was also aimed at Unixes, and later specifically for Linux... (until 1997... what happened then, I do not know, but probably the pretentious and unfriendly, and fragmented, community was not appealing... or Gates met Linus? Heās a piece..).
And without money, open-source software, or any human endeavor for centuries, will not work. So, it was not a success... in the early 2000s Linux distros were terrible, lack of proper drivers, like all C based software had numerous (and still has) a lot of security flaws, which is nothing anormalā¦ and I wonāt mention the desktop experience...
And people working on open-source software, were employees of evil consumerist compagnies, or made money one way or anotherā¦ fast forwardā¦
Open source became great... when money was availableā¦ Not my choice... and was backed by those evil corporations or written by. And progressively adopted a very common business model, FOSS, with some paid support/features, etc. And for 10 years now, Microsoft has been a major actor, supporting open source, with money sure, but talented people, or with MS Research, they contribute and gives back.. because Windows and Linux are very different, and more complementary than competing... and they use both OS a lot in Azure or in generalā¦ and so does the whole worldā¦ Windows is not going anywhere, look a the stats, all sort of stats, āless dual bootā is not a sign (also, dual boot ? 2024ā¦)
And, it was surprising but not unexpected, NT 3.51/4 apps (from a MSDN CD I downloaded) still just run on Win 11, and perfectly scaled... including a virtual desktop apps, originally from 1993... screenshot below. At the time the Linux Kernel was still a monolithic babyā¦
I will not make a list of all of what is part of āWindowsā, it would be overwhelming, since having the choice in desktop environments is causing head spinsā¦
But thousands of developers in hundreds of teams, this is not Neovim... or close to anything else, this is a unique case. Especially when you run 30 years old apps, or when Windows is expected to run on a 486.. or any piece of computer shaped piece of plastic and metalā¦ (it runs, yet, not in the miracle business either).
So, a few interesting places no one will visit:
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ or MS Learn in general, includes a lot of non MS related resources tooā¦
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinter... a classic book for people curious and interested about a unique piece of software... whatever you ābelieveā is not changing the reality. And written by Mark Russinovichā¦
MS Research, biggest research institution working on computing, and also non related topics.. scientists, this is not R&D, yet MS spends aroundā¦ā¦.. 30 billions in R&D this year: statista.com/statistics/267806/exp...
So not itās not luck nor do they order from California to Samsungā¦
And tomorrow I will do proselitysm for the color purple, I like it, and this would make a fascinating article for sure ! like I read below: YES! Preach! XD and believe.
About paranoia, especially misplaced (then non rational issues are always misplaced):
No telemetry is not a way to collect personal data... it is in all OS, even Linux distro's, so many apps, Proton, or Ad Guard.. extensions, addons, electronics, IOT devices. It is a particularly useful technology, on a DEV website, the concepts should be clear... if they aren't... And in Windows, you can analyze it (it's very interesting... really). Windows is not trying to steal your data, they have more interesting things to do and are busy...
Gaming support is very bad on linux
I don't game anymore, but before all I played was steam games and had a great experience. I'm too busy with life to play games anymore though, so even if it was bad, doesn't really effect me and my decision to go full Linux