Five Reasons NOT to Switch to GNU/Linux

[RobertX]

Perhaps RodneyYouPlonker can have a case right now through this video:




I don't fully agree with it, because mainly what got me in is that I took my own time to learn about it. I had previous experience in school to use the shell even though when I was in college at the time, there were no lessons on how to use, say an OS like Ubuntu or Fedora. I had to use whatever resources necessary to use it at home.

He cited games being another major factor, specifying "anti-cheats" being a  fucker when running Windows games in GNU/Linux. That I do agree, but most of my games weren't purchased, and I would [b]never[/] spend my money on them even if there is no other option, so eat my dick on that.

He goes on to saying "Microsoft Office" not running on Wine. Well, it's actually five years since I haven't used Microsoft Office (my mother still uses it though) and I never found a reason to switch back. Openoffice and Libreoffice both worked well and I am happy.

Well, RodneyYouPlonker can Fant0men/ill88eagle, you guys can while the time away to fight tooth and nail shilling for your favourite software.

[RodneyYouPlonker]

The main thing with me Robert is that I have programs that I've bought in the past that I use from time to time, I don't mean Office though, that I like and I was quite happy to purchase and they work in Windows.  I'm not really much of a gamer anymore now but I do use certain programs like for example for ripping etc. and other things.  If I used Linux I wouldn't be able to use those programs anymore and I like them.

The truth is I don't have time to be messing around with Linux I'm far too busy.  I was actually trained to use Windows years ago and it's where I got all my IT education from, which might not sound like much to some folks but I do know what I'm doing with it and I don't have issues with Telemetry or any of those other problems that people have.  It all just seems to work for me, had a problem recently with a display driver that wasn't working properly but somebody must have fixed it because I installed the new one and then it was fine was having a green screen of death issue which I've never seen before much which I wasn't very happy about it seems that the programmers that made that driver messed up just recently which can happen.  People seem to mess things up a lot when it comes to drivers and other things in the Windows world.

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Also something worth mentioning was that a while ago I was wanting to try and use Linux, it was SuSE actually and I tried to install the driver for it for my printer which is like an office style printer but the trouble was the driver was crap in Linux and it didn't work and it would put all lines of text down the side of the page.  The driver was totally messed up and it must have all been programmed wrong which was no good so I had to get rid of it and get rid of Linux.  I did give it a try in Linux but it was just bad so I gave up but in Windows it was totally fine and worked.

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The thing with me when I tried Linux a while ago was that I'd bought this silly card thing that was no good and it was a fault of the card but I had to try Linux and see if the card was working in there but it was just the same in both Windows and Linux and it was dropping the connection.  When I installed Linux I had a backup of Windows so I just played around with Linux for a bit and I tried various things, a lot of things didn't work too well came up against this brick wall thing when I was trying to compile some libraries and I just couldn't figure it out spent ages but it just wouldn't work it was no good at all.  Just gave up eventually and that's a shame as I'm an IT person that has been professionally trained years ago and even I couldn't figure it out.  When I wanted to get rid of Linux I just wiped the system and removed the bootloader from the drive and then managed to restore Windows back to how it was again and then I was much happier. The whole printer thing was no good I just liked the driver that they supplied in Windows it was very nice.  I've bought all kinds of things in the past that you can plug into the PC and none of them will work in Linux because there's no driver for them and I've known that for years so really me using Linux is an absolute Zero as I just don't see a need for it and Windows does everything I want it to.

[ill88eagle]

Ok, so these are the issues he lists:

1 - windows is kind of free
2 - programs: ms office and adobe
3 - games and anticheat
4 - time / patience - learning curve
5 - Hardware issues: nvidia & broadcom

I'll adress them one at the time.

1: Pay special attention to *kind of* - and we are only talking about free as in gratis, which is still *kind of*. The problems here are too many to mention, and some tie directly into the other points (like time spent making it werk). But let me remind everybody of a basic truth in commercial IT: If you're not paying for it, you are the product. Think facebok, google and other data harvesters. Windows jumped on that bandwagon with win10. (Ubuntu tried and got so much flack for it they had to give up their amazon botnet search bar). In orther words, while you might not be paying money for your windows 10 download, you are paying a heavy price in terms of privacy and freedom. If you don't give a shit about those things, by all means, go right ahead and drink the cool-aid.

2: Microsoft office is being mentioned here, which is funny cause they have made office for macOS for years and still do. What is stopping them from making office for linux? I guess I will concede that a lot of commercial software creators refuse to port their shit to linux (adobe comes to mind and is mentioned too), and I will suggest that it is because their business model anno 2020 is locking the user into paid subscription and/or data harvesting, which falls back on my previous argument: you are paying with your privacy and freedom (on top of your wallet).

3: MUH GAYMEN - yea, and as you can see in the video, there is a simple solution for that. I never thought about running windows off an sd card, but besides that, you can dual boot or run a virtual machine if you just can't live without your particular game.

4: This is where it becomes funny. Look at what rodney says:

I was actually trained to use Windows years ago and it's where I got all my IT education from

- that is to say he spent how much time again to learn how to use windows? He also repeatedly all over the place states that he knows how to get rid of telemetry - good for you rodney! but how much time does a windows user have to spend getting rid of that, and forced updates and fucking ads in the start menu? Point in case: for an acceptable windows experience you have to do a shit load of tinkering AND we are not counting the time you spent learning how windows work. Let me add that a french guy recently published a paper about how the european IQ in younger generations has been dumbed down by technology (i'll dig it up if you insist). If you ask me, this is a direct consequence of the "learning curve bad" policy of macOS and Windows. Who the fuck thought raising children on iPads was a good idea? Well Apple certainly tried real hard to make schools adapt them as learning tools- and suceeded in many cases.

5: Hardware issues. Yes, NVIDIA and Broadcom are notorius for refusing to play ball with linux in a time where AMD and Intel have realized that by cooperating with the linux kernel devs they expand their market share. Is that a good reason to sacrifice your privacy and freedom?

I will add that my main issue with linux when I switched was missing proper software and drivers for digital audio / music production stuff. That was 10 years ago. Today that is a non issue as shit just werks™ with midi, realtime audio and the amazing jackd server for linux (which neither macfags nor windozers will ever have) + awesome DAWs like Ardour and a shit load of excellent FLOSS audio plugins.

[waregim]

My 2 rubles:

1 - windows is kind of free

Last I knew, the 'free' updates from 7 ended a while back, and it adds a chunk of change to a new machine.
It sucks in the 4 Freedoms. That said, a helluva lot can be done to make it respond like a Posix\Linux system by adding scripting languages and strippiing the hell out of Services and Task Manager.
Linux is very restrictive to the point of stupidity as far as its 'security' for single user systems. And stripping it down is far more difficult than with Win.

2 - programs: ms office and adobe

These programs are nearly always used for work and school. LibreOffice doesnt cut it. Newer Office versions have problems with LibreOffice .doc files, and cannot read .odt. And Gimp still has a long way to go to catch up to Adobe. Older versions of Office *should* work in Wine, however.

3 - games and anticheat

Linux is not a gamer platform. There are a bunch of games there, but not alot of good ones. Wine can run a decent amount of older Win versions. Every VM I have seen limits video memory making it pretty useless for gaming in a Win VM.

4 - time / patience - learning curve

The learning curve for Win is much steeper than for Linux. Compare Python to Powershell. Both platforms are fairly simple for consumer use with distros like Ubuntu Mint and Magaeia. Linux apps are typically more difficult simply because they have less options. Like UDF for burning DVDs.

5 - Hardware issues: nvidia & broadcom

A perennial issue. Linux has a serious issue with drivers, though in fairness they do try to catch up. Bot often for less common hardware lile art pads and microscopes - can be hopeless. Video cards are another issue. Too new, no drivers, to old and they are deprecated.

That said, I heartily recommend a system with *BOTH* . Dual boot.
Each has its strengths and weaknesses.
Linux is great for programmatic creativity. It does not have Visual Studio.
Windows is great for artistic creativity. It is not limited to Gimp.

[deathberries]

[quote pid="318981" dateline="1607505805"]

That said, I heartily recommend a system with *BOTH* . Dual boot.
Each has its strengths and weaknesses.
Linux is great for programmatic creativity. It does not have Visual Studio.
Windows is great for artistic creativity. It is not limited to Gimp.
[/quote]

[First post here, hello everyone!]

Using Linux distros since 90s, I fully agree.

Even for the simplest prog called rufus that I use to make bootable USB's, something really messy to do on linux with little chance of doing it right, windows dual boot can be handy some times..

[dueda]

1. Hardware. Many devices (entire systems included) just can't run it - lack of drivers or incompatible proprietary "enhancements", whatever, some just can't. If your hardware is one of those, X isn't for you.
2. Software. Many apps aren't available to X and if the one(s) you'd like to run are amongst those, same as above.
3. Complex configuration and customization. Mostly.
4. Very different environment with a long learning road (with many curves). It's made for techies, not for dummies. If that's your case, sorry.
5. Linux has been around for decades now and still not so popular, while MS's still winning; a clear sign X has something wrong for the peoples.

[RobertX]

I always observe that the people who say switching to a thing is hard say so because they make no effort to switching to it. That has been evident to me because I was one of of those. If you think about it, of course it's hard if you don't do it.

Me a techie? I'm a village idiot, dueda, not a fucking techie. Yet I managed to switch.

The GNU/Linux distribution I switched to never complained about my drivers no matter how old and decrepit the AMD machine I bought from a local franchise store, Factory Direct. It had Windows 10, but I wiped it and put Linux Mint on it, and it never even asked for a driver. Of course, lately, the newer x64 versions don't like my printer drivers, so I had to use a Windows 2000 virtual machine to print out of. So I cheated, but that's the only way and the only time. Nobody's perfect.

Of course of all those reasons, I can still see why it's intimidating to make a leap of faith, but an operating system is an operating system is an operating system. It, at least Linux Mint, does make an effort to make you feel at home.

The reason I posted the video is still to provide a balanced approach, but, as I stated on that post, I don't fully agree with his opinions, mainly because even being able to know how to use a computer needs effort. Yet, it can also be said that making and eating chicken sandwich also require common knowledge and common sense.

That's not to say that I think people who use Microsoft Windows and are conditioned to it are idiots, just look at RodneyYouPlonker! The guy's a genius! It's just that I found your post to be a little generalised and flawed, no offence, dueda.

I think GNU/Linux has grown admirably since the last thirty years; you'll be surprised about how hard you have to install Red Hat Linux , 5, even if you have a book that is sold with a CD and a free t-shirt (which I've lost). Now, who the fuck needs instructions? Just pop the disc in and do what the computer tells.

The thing is, the home GNU/Linux scene is still young, yet it's constantly evolving. About your comments with software, there are many programs that do the same things that the Windows equivalents do, and are free. I'll let you explore the capabilities, because an explanation was done to death.

[waregim]

Mint has probably got to be the simplest OS ever to run out-of-box. It has run hardware that Debian cannot. And has been compared to MacOS in human engineering terms.

For consumer (consumption) use, and non-techies I would recommend it over Win.
With one caveat: TURN OFF AUTOUPDATES. They are not your friend.
The packaging system is awesome, and works great: Until it dont. The solutions to its problems are in /var/lib/dpkg but under no conditions would I advise any non-hacker types to venture there. There are hidden dragons.

Clement has created a world class product but he treads a fine line between Debian and Ubuntu, and created colossal confusion with his debian.multimedia.net which is *his* repo and NOT Debians.

I used Mint(Debian) for years and was able to hack it in unspeakable ways. Not simple, though, and an 'apt-get upgrade' can take days (for my large system)!

I would highly recommend mint to non-teckie friends and relatives as a means to navigate the net and email with almost zero risk of booger infections and expensive trips to the Geek Squad. This alone is an excellent reason to use Linux as a 'browsing OS'.

[Fant0men]

Well, RodneyYouPlonker can Fant0men/ill88eagle, you guys can while the time away to fight tooth and nail shilling for your favourite software.

No need to shill GNU/Linux. The people who are capable of critical thinking, and hence are able to recognize that it's a superior system (as well as a superior philosophy), are probably already using it.

Rodney is a perfect example of this.

[waregim]

Is a hammer a better tool than a wrench? One is useless for nail, as is the other for bolts.
Its not shilling for a roofer to decry the utiliy of a torque wrench?

Philosophy is a good and salient point.
But our cyber saviour has been cyber cancelled. RMS has been martyred, and we are now cyber-shia.

Linux has fallen into (Red Hat) sin. SystemD is the mark of the Beast, and Lennart the cyber-AntiChrist.

Machines were not supposed to be the singularity: WE WERE. A massive democritazation force using blockchain to enforce a worldwide referendum rule. Switzerland on Steroids. Tethered by Open Source.

Not happening.

Put the philosophy in the coconut, And drink it all down.

(Always look forward to your posts...)