[heresie-dabord]

> I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming.

I see a likely inversion of motives here: you earn your living coding or otherwise are deeply vested in Windows, so you are committed for survival to Windows and to fixing the absurd account problem that MSFT has inflicted on you.

The expression "muscle memory" here just means the cognitive load of working with a technology. MSFT has added a hard-blocking piece of stupidity to your cognitive load.

I am sure this is not the first time! Registry problems, update problems, and now for pity's sake account problems.

As a long-time user of both Linux and Windows, I'd say my OS cognitive load with Linux is almost entirely related to efficient actions, whereas with Windows I have a quiver of stupid arrows to shoot at all the problems that MSFT inflicts.

When people advise you to switch to Linux if you can, they are giving solid advice.

[noosphr]

My Ubuntu servers have been in an undefined state since canonical botched a regular upgrade to 26.04 LTS due to the ongoing DDOS. Their status page says everything works. A simple ping tells me nothing works.

Let's not pretend Microsoft has a monopoly on idiocy in the software world. All major Linux distros are hell bent on repeating the mistakes of Windows. Especially since the people in control of the stack (minus the kernel) are the rejects who couldn't make it in Microsoft and Apple in the 90s and 00s but really wanted to.

Meanwhile my small happy place with OpenBSD and Guix just works.

[codedokode]

Linux has lot of bugs and issues, but they are not caused by intention to make users' life worse.

[noosphr]

They are caused by moral busy bodies who think they know better.

To quote CS Lewis:

>Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

[gchamonlive]

> They are caused by moral busy bodies who think they know better.

If you know better just hack it your way. Linux is an open platform. Nothing prevents you from gutting Ubuntu and making it your own. You can't say the same for Windows though.

So I guess is not a matter of monopoly of idiocy, but whether you can do something about idiot decisions when they are made. This is why an open platform will always win. It's just architecturally better for the end user.

[fasterik]

>If you know better just hack it your way.

While this might be technically true, I also think it's a lazy argument that ignores practical reality. It's basically a way to avoid any kind of accountability or self-reflection on the part of developers. "Users aren't happy? If they don't want to make the change themselves, they can fuck off." This is a toxic attitude which I see a lot in discussions of free software.

In practice, 99% of the time it's not worth the time and effort to fork and maintain a large project. Even in a free ecosystem, users get locked into specific products and technologies. This is why sane technical leadership and responsiveness to user feedback are important, even (especially?) in open source projects.

[gchamonlive]

Can you tell me an instance where users got locked into a dying ecosystem in Linux?

What I can tell you is that CentOS, which was used extensively in servers, died and you didn't really see much issue, at least not as much as compared to the pain and suffering users are having to go through now that Windows is the dying place.

What's lazy is the repetition of this realist fallacy of the technical lockin, when in fact what you really have is what you see, an open platform you can very well just leave for another when you disagree with the current vendor.

Dislike Ubuntu and you can very well migrate. That's the practical reality.

[heresie-dabord]

> If you know better just hack it your way. Linux is an open platform.

The GP already knows about FOSS. He uses OpenBSD and Guix and in his own words this is his "small, happy place".

Guix in particular is an excellent example of FOSS innovation.

[joe_mamba]

>If you know better just hack it your way. ... It's just architecturally better for the end user.

As an end user I want the product/tool to serve me well out of the box, I don't have time to hack it to fix what I dislike about it on my own dime. That's what my job is for.

[codedokode]

This is not always available. What smartphones "serve well out of the box", meaning zero telemetry, root privileges, open source, not requiring an account in a foreign country (and not spamming notifications about this), and working? Google Pixel requires time to fix, despite costing like 3-4 ordinary smartphones.

The same probably can be said about laptops. Linux is great but buggy, and proprietary OSes do not pass the requirements.

[zbentley]

Tangential, but how is

> The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated

Holding up in 2026? Pretty poorly, I’d say.

[smackeyacky]

How ironic. Reactionary old fart mostly known for writing moralistic children’s novels wants you not to listen to moralistic crusaders. I shall take his advice.

[kwertyoowiyop]

CS Lewis certainly got it wrong, if he believed that the greed of robber barons can ever be satisfied. I’ll take the moral busybodies, if I have to take either.

[luqtas]

CS Lewis: a prolific author of fantasy, science fiction, and Christian apologetics

[maleldil]

Does that mean what he says is less valuable?

> Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Said by a monster himself, but doesn't make it any less true.

[Scroll_Swe]

In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence.

[red_admiral]

Intention or not, Gnome 3's "desktops are outdated" caused even Linus to switch away from it.

[tapoxi]

He actually still uses GNOME, at least as recently as 5 months ago.

I'm a KDE user but I get why people like it.

[snowpid]

and I am a GNOME user and I find it totally fine to use KDE. Thats the cool thing about open plattforms. Just some people having too much time to make a UI interface part of their personality rant too much on the internet about other UI interfaces.

[olyjohn]

What's your point? At least he was able to switch away from it and choose from any plethora of other options.

[deathanatos]

… Linux literally just had the age-verification outcry, and the "let's put AI in Ubuntu" thing, and that's just off the top of my head.

I want to toot the Linux horn too, and I do think MS is on another level here, but let's take a look in the mirror first.

[charcircuit]

There is plenty of elitism going on where everyday users' experience is intentionally made bad.

[ninjagoo]

> My Ubuntu servers have been in an undefined state since canonical botched a regular upgrade to 26.04 LTS due to the ongoing DDOS. Their status page says everything works. A simple ping tells me nothing works.

So is it the DDOS that's responsible, status page notwithstanding?

Anyway, heard about Timeshift for Ubuntu on here, might be worth taking a look at it: https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift

Doesn't require a GUI, so it can be used for servers/headless too. Please note that's it's not a backup solution, just an OS snapshot one, albeit with scheduling.

[Kamq]

> Let's not pretend Microsoft has a monopoly on idiocy in the software world.

Entirely fair, but let's not pretend the situation is symmetrical. Canonical doesn't have monopoly on the linux or broader *nix world the same way that Microsoft has on the Windows world.

[LocalH]

normalize coming up through slackware like many did in the 90s

[kelvinjps10]

You can download from a different mirror in linux and open source you always have another option

[naikrovek]

> When people advise you to switch to Linux if you can, they are giving solid advice.

They absolutely are not. Switching operating systems isn't like switching toothpaste. They are declaring, without evidence, that you don't need Windows, without knowing if you do or not. They are avoiding the problem that the person is having entirely and asking that the user replace their single problem with a whole new class of problems that the user has no idea how to solve. And there will be problems, because someone who has never used Linux before isn't going to know how to do anything in Linux. They aren't going to know what software to use to do anything, they aren't going to know how to install software or update it, they aren't going to know what to do when any problem comes up at all.

"Just switch to Linux" is a malevolent and self-serving recommendation, is absolutely not realistic, and is not ever intended to actually help the user needing help with a problem they are having.

[sagacity]

Yeah, so, to be clear: I'm fairly sure Linux will also have its fair share of issues that I occasionally would have to repair.

I don't necessarily even have a problem with Windows occasionally needing a bit of hand-holding, either. It sucks, but it's IT so meh, unfortunately it still comes with the territory.

What I'm mostly pissed off about is the fact that I have a perfectly useable machine but since I'm unable to login due to vague Microsoft nonsense and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it I need to reinstall. This seems wholly unnecessary.

Even having some sort of repair installation that doesn't blow away all installed applications would have been somewhat ok as a last resort, but that doesn't exist either.

[chinathrow]

> Yeah, so, to be clear: I'm fairly sure Linux will also have its fair share of issues that I occasionally would have to repair.

Issues with account, login and passwords would be none of them. Sure, there are other areas of common issues at times, but I have never, ever had issues logging into any of the linux OS I ran for the last 23years or so.

[charcircuit]

I've had PAM break due to distro's ridiculous policy of updating the system in place allowing for invalid combinations of files to exist. I've had Linux distros break the booting process countless times.

[Krasnol]

I don't know where you are but oobe/bypassnro worked for me just 2 weeks ago.

[sagacity]

I've reinstalled using this trick, so this issue won't bite me again in the future.

[deterministic]

> When people advise you to switch to Linux if you can, they are giving solid advice.

I am forced to use Linux at work and I dread updating anything because the result is usually a broken system. I never have that problem with Windows.

So YMMV is as always valid here.