While all my servers are Linux, on the Desktop it is my last choice. Interesting enough I used to love customizing the window manager to death but I'm older now and I just want something that is consistent and works out of the box.
Macs work really well out of the box but with some tweaks WSL makes Windows a quite decent development workstation.
Currently I'm using Windows + WSL and I'm quite satisfied. Looks like with the new version some of the tweaks to use docker are not necessary anymore. Great work, Microsoft, keep the pace.
I have the same motivation as you, I just want shit that works.
But Windows is the absolute last place I find that. All I get are updates that break my setup, constant inane interruptions from Cortana or the desktop or wherever, advertisement tiles in the fucking start menu, forced updates that can't be done in the background, Windows Activation disappearing after hardware upgrades, etc.
I feel like I'm in the Stepford Wives with all these people coming out of the woodwork to proclaim how majestic the Windows experience is.
A few years back I switched from Mac to Ubuntu for the faster, cheaper, diverse hardware and I have to say, it's pretty much perfect in the "Just Works" department on the 3 laptops + 2 desktops I've installed it on. But I'm also one of those people that actually liked Unity so I don't have to mess with it much after installing.
Just to add my own anecdote here, I have been getting months of uptime on Windows, since Windows 7. I have a W7 Laptop and a W10 dev workstation that are currently at over 4 months of uptime. https://imgur.com/a/U8fGpCi
Edit: Oops looks like someone rebooted my W7 laptop.. :'(
Interesting, may be I have some setting that prevents Cortana from annoying me and prevents windows from placing ads on the start menu. Not that I use the start menu often, generally I just hit the search box and start typing the name of the app I want (if it is not pinned to the task bar already).
I'm using Windows 10 Pro (Insider Preview fast track) and not seeing the annoyances you are experiencing.
I don't tweak anything after installing Debian/RHEL at work or at home. They're stable and flexible. IMO, the folks who spend hours customizing their desktops are usually the ones who don't know linux well and want to feel like they do.
A more positive perspective, they want to learn what they can do. I remember trying every distribution, DE, and window manager when I started with Linux. These days I stick with stock GNOME on Fedora.
When I was a teenager, my father brought an Ubuntu 6.06 CD home from his workplace. It didn’t interest him much, but he let me play with it on an old family computer. Once the setup finished I spent as much time as I could playing with the colour scheme, figuring out how to install Compiz for the cube animation, and making Kingdom Hearts wallpapers. Those activities were mostly playful, but they ended up helping me get exposure to tools like cd, ls, and apt-get.
Today I feel a lot more confident in using Linux (or any Unix, really), but that’s likely 100% due to having time to spend playing and being curious.
There’s a lot of discussion about an education in computing helping people get ahead economically, but part of me wonders how much proficiency comes from being a child on a Commodore 64 than learning express+mongodb in a few weeks (not that being the latter is a bad thing, either!).
I do have several setups, each for a separated task. It depends on what you do. E.g. doing creative stuff, it can be annoying when you get constantly derailed by one darn ugly UI like Gnome3.
Now, you don't need to dabble with eyecandy every full moon, but there is nothing wrong with setting it up once for a specific workflow, is there?
Same here. Even when I switched laptop it was a painless: copy homedir, apt-get the same packages I had in the old one, let it cook for a while, and I was up and running with not a hiccup.
The only secret is to use hardware you know beforehand is well supported.
There are two clipboards in X11. One is the middle-click-paste, selection clipboard that gets clobbered when you highlight something. But C-x, C-c, and C-v (in CUA applications) operate on a different clipboard altogether that doesn't exhibit this behavior.
> Macs work really well out of the box but with some tweaks
Really? I don't know your definition of tweaks, but I've always found macOS requires a bunch of third party apps (often only paid alternatives) to be useful for a power user. Last I checked even its window management support was awful, and in a lot of situations it's impossible to get to where you want without touching the mouse.
KDE works much better out the gate, and is actually an advanced desktop environment in terms of possible customization if that is your bag.
I use Linux exclusively on all my systems, and have not had any problems at all. So I always wonder what hardware is being used that does not work...
For my laptops I use Think pads and various Dell systems. The only thing I always try to make sure when buying a laptop though is it is a Intel CPU with integrated inlet GPU -- just doing that and I have never really had any problems.
In any case, I am looking for the exact model you are using that has the problem -- so I can maybe find a cheap one on ebay and mess around with it.
Dell XPS with Fedora (work laptop). I don't think it's specific to the model because my colleagues don't all have the same model but most have the same problem.
Looks like a DAW, right? DAWs aren't really the problem - Reaper is on Linux as well, and it's perfectly serviceable. The issue is proprietary software like Helix Native/ HX Edit, and VSTs that have tough DRMs would be borderline impossible to set up. I assume.
I kinda gave up on Linux when I got my XPS 15 though, because there just didn't seem to be a way to have good switchable graphics without reboots, because that's just dumb and impractical, decent battery life, and the OS not freezing every time the touch screen was activate (mainly an issue with Ubuntu and derivatives, for whatever reason). Oh and the fingerprint sensor wouldn't work. Per display scaling seemed finicky in some desktop environments, etc.
Might try it again soon with Pop_os! or something of that sort, but I need this to be a stable machine for work, so dunno :|
I've been using Ubuntu on my primary work laptop for years now, and the only real sticking point is video conferencing. Skype for Business and Webex barely work. Google hangouts is n't bad, but often runs into audio trouble with pulse and alsa.
And the real trouble is that you can't just go find the one that works. If your co-workers all use webex then you're stuck.
I assume any compatibility issues with Chromium will soon disappear given Edge's migration to being Chromium based but how well do the web versions work with Firefox?
My workstation that I use almost exclusively is Mint. I am one of those people who are, to put it politely, not keen on Google's ad and data sponge tentacles in every last item on the planet, and so I use Firefox as my primary browser.
O365 has yet to show me many problems with the O365 suite. The only problem I do have is a complete and utter lack of desktop notifications. I'm late to meetings a lot. For someone who values punctuality, it's a major flaw in my view.
We also use Teams a lot, and there the Firefox + Linux story is significantly worse. You lose all teleconference capabilities - and that's true for Chrome or Chromium as well. The chat functionality is acceptable and weirdly, the notifications on Teams work without any problems. Someone on that team needs to show the O365 team how to do it.
I have a VM for when I absolutely have to do something in Windows. For everything else, there's ~~mastercard~~ linux.
I put all notifications on my mobile device, it works well. A web app should be able to send OS notifications however, e.g. slack does on my copy of Ubuntu. Believe I had to enable permission once.
That's a good idea; it probably wouldn't matter for me since my phone is muted all day long and I only use my phone if I'm on a coffee quest, but most people are a lot more attached to their phones than I am
Postgres has been working on Windows forever, I used it from 2007 or so.
Also, my Ubuntu Mate has been working flawlessly on the desktop for 5 years, 10+ if you count the gnome2 days. No privacy invasion or helpful ads either.
Macs work really well out of the box but with some tweaks WSL makes Windows a quite decent development workstation.
Currently I'm using Windows + WSL and I'm quite satisfied. Looks like with the new version some of the tweaks to use docker are not necessary anymore. Great work, Microsoft, keep the pace.