Linux isn't bad, especially Ubuntu with the Mate interface but every time I use my employer's Windows machine, it's like "holy crap, if I was dependent on this at home, I'd be like serf or something".
I disagree. Ubuntu with the MATE interface feels familiar for people coming from windows as it's a very traditional veneer on the surface but it quickly breaks down. Pretty soon your hacking some random text file config that you'll forget about in a month and will be incompatible with your next upgrade.
I'm a long time Linux user but I've recently started using Windows for development. It's actually surprisingly decent. It's disgusting all the spam you get in a fresh install but after 5 mins of turning that off youre left with a clean feeling OS
The biggest thing that brings me back to windows is that Linux _still_ completely halts when hitting low memory situations. It's just embarrassing. Accidentally add an infinite memory leak to a program I'm building or open one to many tabs and your system grinds yo a halt while thrashing pages in and out of memory. Windows is capable of figuring out which processes I'm actively trying to use and somehow prevent trashing from making the system unusable.
> Pretty soon your hacking some random text file config that you'll forget about in a month and will be incompatible with your next upgrade.
Sure, but at least you can hack the random file, and you can easily document and back that up.
I much prefer that to having to edit some weirdly named registry key that has unexpected interactions with some unrelated settings panel, but only in one of the two settings places. Oh, and bonus points for that key being removed and / or changed by a random upgrade.
Most Windows GUI stuff breaks down badly when you try to do more advanced things. You quickly start needing to edit at least the group policy, if not applying powershell scripts.
> Most Windows GUI stuff breaks down badly when you try to do more advanced things.
Define "more advanced."
I hear what you're saying. The upgrade path in both can be very broken when you change things. But I find that in windows more of the options you need are provided by the settings GUIs and handle upgrades well. Most linux packages and OS settings start and stop with the text file config, or provide GUIs as loose wrappers over text configs which rarely support upgrade flows.
Providing upgrade support for user's arbitrary text configs is significantly harder than for a more restrictive and structured settings database.
The most basic: tell Windows the hardware clock uses UTC because I dual boot with Linux (registry).
A bit more advanced: Enable TPM + PIN for BitLocker (group policy).
At work: set up split-view DNS on a Windows Server (PowerShell).
> But I find that in windows more of the options you need are provided by the settings GUIs and handle upgrades well.
I beg to differ. I feel like every other month I have to go back and tell Windows that no, I don't want it to consider tabs in Edge as different windows when I alt-tab. It's one of the first things I change. Yesterday I had to go do it again on my gaming PC. Sure, this can be done comfortably in the settings GUI, but it doesn't seem to stick for some reason.
> Providing upgrade support for user's arbitrary text configs is significantly harder than for a more restrictive and structured settings database.
Oh, I definitely agree with this, and I think that Apple's approach to configuration (as in "there's none") is probably based on this.
But I think that Windows is pretty much the poster child for configuration broken up in a zillion different places. I mean, the registry is a meme for a reason, right?
Large compiles on Windows make the system unusable in a way I never saw om Linux. Process crearion time spikes and chrome tabs to different domains begin gaking 10+ seconds to open.
> The biggest thing that brings me back to windows is that Linux _still_ completely halts when hitting low memory situations.
Had this issue on a low-memory laptop but it got better after I enabled zram. A leak will eventually exhaust memory, but I guess it should compress well depending on the leak.
But it is not a complete solution (once exhaustion is reached it a freeze would probably still happen) and not very user-friendly either.
Yeah as a developer I can't guarantee that I'll never write an infinite loop that leaks memory, and I really don't want my only recourse to be restarting my machine. That's a pretty brutal dev cycle lol.
You can do that on windows, with GPU compute shaders and syncs - at least in that case on Linux, you can switch to terminal to kill the process. On windows, can't click, to kill a process you need the GPU to render your process managing window...
I'd agree that the decline of windows is a bigger boon for Linux that Linux itself. While Linux isn't bad it certainly isn't good.
The combination of Ubuntu and Mate is one of the worse to start with. Sure, it feels familiar but it's just Linux kiddie edition. Users tend to out grow it quickly or get frustrated with it breaking down from all the Linux goodness.
Don't get ne started on trying to use Ubuntu on any hardware released in the last 3 years...
Ubuntu has a few very serious problems, coming from a normal user from windows (wouldn't call myself a power user):
-No obvious way to make a filetype .xxx be opened always by program YYY
-An update can easily break things. Sometimes everything.
-Mouse doesn't work properly by default: sensitivity seems so weird, and there is no option in Settings to adjust number of lines mouse scroll skips. I have spent hours in the past (some years ago) to try and make mouse just like windows, but I wasn't able to do it.
-Not a single good alternative for notepad++
I'm gonna try windows 11 when I have the time. Dual boot is not comfortable at all and maybe I can stop using ubuntu interface forever and use Windows Terminal to do the stuff I need linux.
- No obvious way to make a filetype .xxx be opened always by program YYY
Answer: In Caja, Go to properties dialogue and choose the "open with" tab. You can edit the option there. This is a method consistent basic GUI guidelines as they've existed for 20 yeas.
-An update can easily break things. Sometimes everything.
Answer: I've used cheap laptops with Ubuntu for 10 years. Literally never had that problem.
-Mouse doesn't work properly by default: sensitivity seems so weird, and there is no option in Settings to adjust number of lines mouse scroll skips. I have spent hours in the past (some years ago) to try and make mouse just like windows, but I wasn't able to do it.
Answer: Pointer speed is set in the control center, under mouse preferences. The control center is a standard menu option. It sets most simple UI choices.
-Not a single good alternative for notepad++
Answer: Pluma is default for editing simple text files. Many commercial programmers editors are available (I use QT Creator). Notepad++ is halfway between simple editor and programmers product that doesn't come with Windows but some people. Lots of people swear by vi and emacs too, standards of the Linux world. And naturally, someone actually has setup notepad++ itself for Linux: https://itsfoss.com/notepad-plus-plus-linux/
The UX of UI on Linux can't compare with Windows, at least for me and I use Ubuntu with KDE (tried other GUI's as well) on my hope laptop and workstation and Windows 11 on my work laptop.
Windows just feels smoother and applying settings is more straightforward in most cases.
UX of UI on linux is usually just not consistent, because it is often a thrown in mix of different styles(from different projects) and the pro users don't use the UI for config, but the terminal, so don't notice or care too much.
The UI of current Windows editions is an extraordinary mess. I use a new, low-end Windows machine just to play DVD for a disable person I'm working for. It not up to the task out of the box and without VLC things would have been problematic.
And just consider Windows has two different command bars.