[tachyonbeam]

I switched to Linux around the same time as you. Before that I was a Windows user from 1997 until ~2008. In the late 1990s and early 2000s people just accepted that Windows crashing everyday was a normal feature of that software, and they blamed every crash on user error, eg: "your drivers are bad", "you're running buggy software", etc. My Windows 98 install couldn't run for more than ~4 hours without crashing, it was infuriating. Windows 2000 did better, but it would still crash once every couple of days.

Linux was a million times more stable and much more pleasant to use as a programmer (no SDKs to download with complex installation instructions). It also had a package manager which made installs/reinstalls a breeze. You could actually write a bash script to redo your setup automatically, wow! Never looked back.

I recently installed Windows 8 on an older computer I was setting up for my mom (she didn't want Linux, understandably). It was my first time using Windows in two years or so. Windows Update was broken out of the box. It wouldn't run. You had to manually download a patch to get it to work. I don't really understand why desktop Linux gets so much hate when commercial software is this bad.

[Gwypaas]

Windows 8.1 reached end of mainstream support on January 9, 2018, over three years ago. Windows 8 support ended on January 12, 2016.

No wonder you ran into issues if you installed it and tried getting it "updated" recently.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/windows#windo...

[tachyonbeam]

Here is a post from 2016 outlining the same problem I was describing: https://superuser.com/questions/1103966/windows-update-doesn...

There is a bug in the Windows Update client on Windows 8.1, and it can't update itself.

[pitay]

Do note that Windows Update may just not offer a major update because such as Windows 10 2004 because of concerns about driver compatibility. It happened to me because Microsoft and the manufacturer of the PC didn't come to an agreement about driver compatibility. Windows update gave me warning about updating to the new Windows 10 version (to 2004 or 20H2), but there was no update for it in Windows Update, I had to download the update manually to get it installed. Also had to do that manually for a previous version as well.

[cl0ckt0wer]

because printer/scanners don't work with the included software, and linux has a reputation.

[tachyonbeam]

I guess my point was, Windows should have just as much of a reputation, given Microsoft has shipped release builds with absolutely horrible and blatant bugs (does anyone remember windows millennium?).

I did do some research before I bought my printer and found a brother that connects to wifi and works flawlessly with both Mac and Linux. I find you can also make your life much easier as a Linux user by choosing popular distributions. It's always easy to Google specific fixes for Ubuntu.

[ginko]

I have an old Canon scanner that doesn't work on Windows because Canon never released a driver for anything after Windows XP. Works like a charm on Linux though.

Same experience with an old Nikon Super CoolScan negative scanner I recently bought used. It came with a Firewire PCI card. I installed the card, plugged in the scanner and it just worked.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

No, printers/scanners work without the manufacturer's software; if it's supported (which, I admit, is incomplete but more than you might expect), you just plug it in, tell CUPS to add a printer (which it can do seamlessly without installing extra garbage from the manufacturer), open Simple Scan (or any other SANE frontend) and off you go.