To those who used to use Windows - what made you abandon it and go for Linux?

[rado84]

Just out of curiousity - what made you abandon Windows and go for Linux?

I for one had many reasons, piling up over the years but there's one reason (happened yesterday) for which I'm never gonna look at Crapows ever again. The very long and almost endless story short - story with a laptop Lenovo of 2015 (owned not by me) and with all the modern Windows (Win 10 included) - both integrated and external peripheria woudln't work. Whereas with Linux (my favorite Mint, ofc) everything worked perfectly, so since yesterday the Linux religion earned another follower.

 

[Deleted member 58530]

Can't really say I got any complaints with Microsoft Windows.

OK I don't care for Windows 10 and don't use it and never really have.

I checked out Linux prior to Windows XP EOL which I still use for Flight Simulator X and X-Plane Flight Simulator strictly off-line by the way.

Started with Debian Wheezy and found it to work for what I needed so started looking at other Linux Distros and here I am.

The Wife uses Windows 10 and doesn't seem to have any complaints with it although I don't see myself ever returning to Windows as a daily driver although I do have a Windows 8.1 desktop I'm forced to use every so often to access my state retirement.

I just like the options Linux offers and it does seem to do most everything that I need to do on a computer although there are a few things that Windows does better than Linux but Linux works for what I use it for.

 

[kenJackson]

I really don't like Windows. It's frustrating to use.

Up until Windows2000, Windows stability was absolutely terrible. I continued to use Windows98 at work and at home until early 2002 when I switched to GNU/Linux. I found it necessary to reboot my Windows98 systems every day. I did it at the end of the day so they could proceed through the long, long boot-up sequence in my absence and be ready in the morning. Sometimes one would crash during the day in spite of my precaution. Starting with Windows2000, stability improved markedly, so maybe this complaint is historical, but I switched back then.

The command language (DOS bat) is the worlds worst scripting language. And there are no native equivalents for the everyday workhorse tools of the UNIX and GNU worlds such as find, grep, head, less, make, tail, and sed. There are a few clumsy tools included like find (different function than GNU find) and more, but these are poor substitutes.

There's no package manager like dnf, yum or apt. Though now there is Chocolatey, a third party package manager for many apps. But Windows Update is still necessary to update Windows itself, and it's got problems.

There are a couple other lists of complaints here and here.

Have you noticed how all the Linux distros and BSD variants and even illumos distros all play nice together? They borrow from each other, easily boot from the same disk and cross mount each other's disks, etc. But Windows goes out of its way to be different and try to keep users isolated. (And the whole world is confused about which slash is the "backslash" because of Windows.)

 

[wizardfromoz]

I pushed the wrong button.

That's the short answer.

I'll let some other folks respond first and if anyone is interested, I'll put in a few paragraphs.

Nice Thread, Rado

Wiz

 

[rado84]

I pushed the wrong button.

Hahahaha, nice!

I'll let some other folks respond first and if anyone is interested, I'll put in a few paragraphs.

I am.

there are a few things that Windows does better than Linux

What are these things?

 

[Deleted member 58530]

[radio84 post #5]
poorguy said: ↑

there are a few things that Windows does better than Linux


What are these things?


The main one for me is Windows has never failed to safely unmount and eject a usb thumb drive.

Linux doesn't always safely unmount and eject usb thumb drives and has more than once corrupted data on them.

Graphics card driver support and System hardware monitoring support in Linux ain't as good

Don't get me wrong Linux is good and works for me and for its cost and I do donate I'm satisfied with it and there ain't nothing better at present date.

 

[JasKinasis]

In five words:
Windows XP Service Pack 2

As soon as that was released - it completely crippled my home-built desktop PC. It took almost 15 minutes to get from a cold boot, to logging into the desktop. And when you were finally logged in, everything ran at a snails pace - it was virtually unusable.
The first thing I did was check for viruses/malware - and a full scan that would usually have taken an hour or so took two days to complete. But it was clean.

A fresh re-install of Windows did not help - as soon as SP2 was installed, my machine was crawling again. And running XP without SP2 was out of the question because SP2 had a lot of security fixes. Increasing the RAM did not help. Reinstalling on a fresh HD did not help either. I couldn't afford to buy or build a new PC. So my only other option was Linux.

I installed Debian (after a brief flirtation with Fedora). And it was like having a brand-new PC. It was faster and more responsive running Linux than it ever was with Windows, plus I had no 3rd party antivirus/anti-malware software running, no 3rd party firewall etc.

So that was that. I've used Linux on all of my PC's ever since. And I've never looked back. Whenever I buy a new (second hand) PC, Windows is the first thing to go!

 

[kenJackson]

A fresh re-install of Windows did not help - as soon as SP2 was installed, my machine was crawling again.

You just nailed Microsoft's modus operandi. I first noticed it way back when Windows95 came out. I saw a lot of people who were quite content with their computer's performance under Windows for Workgroups 3.1 suddenly decide that their computer was "old and slow" after upgrading to '95. "I need a new computer!"

But since they had just purchased Windows95 for their old computer, that meant they could buy a new computer without an OS or at least without paying the licensing fee yet again, right?

NO, of course not. Microsoft got two royalty checks. One for slowing down the old computer and one for running the new one.

They rode that wave of double dipping all the way to the top.

Though people like you started defeating the trick by switching to Linux instead of buying a new PC with a new license.

I wish I had kept the article that told of a company that lost 1000 servers running Windows in the 9/11 attack. They begged Microsoft to let them repopulate new servers with their existing licenses. Did Microsoft lend a sympathetic hand in those extenuating circumstances? No. New hardware requires new licenses. No exceptions. So the company bought 800 Linux servers instead and were were pleased with the improved performance.

 

[kenJackson]

The main one for me is Windows has never failed to safely unmount and eject a usb thumb drive.

I've seen countless movies where the spy slips into someone's office, inserts a thumb drive and starts copying all the secret data to it. The little progress dialog pops up and we watch the sweat build on the spy's face while he/she hears voices down the corridor wondering if there'll be enough time. Finally, it says "done" and they whip the drive out of its socket and bolt.

No one on TV ever clicks the little "safely remove" icon. Do you?

On Linux, I kind of like to keep things manual, so I mount my thumb drive where I want it and umount it when I'm done.

Do you umount it or fusermount -u it or something else? Or just pull it out?

 

[rado84]

I wish I had kept the article that told of a company that lost 1000 servers running Windows in the 9/11 attack. They begged Microsoft to let them repopulate new servers with their existing licenses. Did Microsoft lend a sympathetic hand in those extenuating circumstances? No. New hardware requires new licenses. No exceptions. So the company bought 800 Linux servers instead and were were pleased with the improved performance.

I'm happy for what that company did to the greedy mastard* Bill Gates - hurting his pocket. Let's hope there will be many more companies like that one.

* This is my way of censoring a similar word starting with a "b".

 

[Deleted member 58530]

I've seen countless movies where the spy slips into someone's office, inserts a thumb drive and starts copying all the secret data to it. The little progress dialog pops up and we watch the sweat build on the spy's face while he/she hears voices down the corridor wondering if there'll be enough time. Finally, it says "done" and they whip the drive out of its socket and bolt.

No one on TV ever clicks the little "safely remove" icon. Do you?

TV don't count.

Yes when I was using Windows I click the little "safely remove" icon and never had a problem.

On Linux, I kind of like to keep things manual, so I mount my thumb drive where I want it and umount it when I'm done.

The USB mounts automatically or I mount the USB depends on the Linux Distro I'm using

Do you umount it or fusermount -u it or something else? Or just pull it out?

I always manually unmount and eject the USB on any Linux Distro I'm using and never just pull out the USB.

 

[Vrai]

Just out of curiousity - what made you abandon Windows and go for Linux?

I for one had many reasons, piling up over the years but there's one reason (happened yesterday) for which I'm never gonna look at Crapows ever again. The very long and almost endless story short - story with a laptop Lenovo of 2015 (owned not by me) and with all the modern Windows (Win 10 included) - both integrated and external peripheria woudln't work. Whereas with Linux (my favorite Mint, ofc) everything worked perfectly, so since yesterday the Linux religion earned another follower.

I have a long laundry list of reasons I do not like to use Microsoft Windows operating systems but the very first annoyance which pushed me into looking at and trying out Linux was constant drivers issues with Windows 95.

Microsoft's many foibles and missteps combined with their latest iteration of an operating system and the many misdeeds associated with it ensure I will never go back.

 

[wizardfromoz]

No one on TV ever clicks the little "safely remove" icon. Do you?

My answer is "Yes, every time".

Most File Managers on most Distros (I run 90, remember) provide the option to, in the left-hand pane, right-click the USB drive and be provided with either or both of Eject and/or Safely Remove Drive.

If the latter is available use it, and in either case you will usually get a popup indicating you can remove the drive.

Use it, folks, your drives will last longer and be more accurate.

Cheers

Wizard

 

[rado84]

right-click the USB drive and be provided with either or both of Eject and/or Safely Remove Drive.

There's no need for that. There's a quicker one-click way: the buttons in the yellow circle on the following screenshot. The effect is the same as safe removal and if you're in a hurry, this saves time.

 

[wizardfromoz]

You might have to translate the Bulgarian a little, mate, and tell us what the window represents?

Cheers

Wiz, out for my night

Enjoy your weekend

 

[rado84]

You might have to translate the Bulgarian a little, mate, and tell us what the window represents?

There's nothing to translate - this is the file manager. PCManFM in my case. Any file manager can be set to display mounted devices which mine does. These buttons in the yellow circle appear for USB devices as well. So if you wanna safely remove a USB stick, there's no need to right click it and look for the option (which depending on the file manager can be buried among other options) - simply click on the eject button next to it and it's done.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Quite right ... my bad

Wizard

 

[TechnoJunky]

I never use the Remove Safely option, on Windows or Linux. Can't say I've ever had an issue either.
I played with Linux for years. Sometimes it was my primary OS, sometimes my secondary. I really got tired of it slowing down. Reinstalling to clean things up was a PITA because you have to reinstall and reconfigure everything. Windows Update always rebooting when you didn't expect it to, yeah you could set it to only do it at night, but if you left something running you were out of luck. I also hate(d) how MS decides what apps and hardware you can no longer use. Upgrade to the new OS and your scanner is no longer supported, the old application isn't supported either. With Linux you can still run those old apps and use the old hardware. And we decide when to update and when we're going to reboot. For the past 5 years or so it's been my only OS and I couldn't be happier.