I am considering seriously to start using Fedora instead of Windows. And I have not had particular good experiences out of the box with linux (things breaking here and there for no reason). But lately I have been exactly having the same situation with Windows (start menu stops working, computer refusing to turn off and restarting instead, context menu stop working...)
The ads is also another problem, I am a mini sysadmin controlling not only my computers but my parents one. And I need to keep their computer in a safe state that they dont get in trouble by a misleading ad, but also, unable to do something because of an anti-ad pop up or similar.
And having them being stressed out because onedrive/office365/nobackups pop up is asking stuff they dont understand is getting on my fucking nerves.
I have been using different Linux distros, and I decided to settle on Linux Mint Mate edition: based on debian/ubuntu.
I tried Manjaro, the concept is very cool, but adding my Canon Pixma 5051 driver was extremely difficult, and adding OneDrive support was also difficult (getting some errors at compile time, no matter what package from AUR I choose), so I decided not to use it.
Furthermore, I also tried Fedora, Mate edition. I was really surprised how unpolished it looks compared to any other Mate editions (Mint, Manjaro, Solus (solus is the most polished of them all), Ubuntu).
It is my understanding (and I am not an expert in Linux at all), that deb is better than RPM, so can I ask you, why Fedora?
By the way, you can install Windows 10/11 Enterprise (10 IoT will be supported till 2035), which has none of these problems.
Why Fedora? I had a chinese wifi dongle that I bought for a raspberry pi 2B. And when raspbian updated, it stopped working, with fedora, it was recognised immediately. With raspbian, you end up in a page of a community were the drivers are compiled with a script that you run, and that let me tell you I never managed to make it run.
That is the only experience I got. But it is a fairly popular cheap wifi dongle, and I think that fedora just has better compatibility. I am not sure about deb/rpm. I am more familiar with deb. But honestly, I prefer that things just work.
I have a windows 10 enterprise on my work laptop and I can still see several pop-up and annoyances. I am also not sure where would I be able to get a windows 10 IoT key that I can use and is reasonably priced. But I will have a look. thank you.
IMO there should be at least the possibility of paying for an ad-free experience, whatever the monetary value of that per user might be.
I used software called RaiDrive on the desktop a while ago and they have an ad-supported free version - there is a banner that shows up on top/bottom of the app window, IIRC: https://www.raidrive.com/
If developers need money but users want free software, wouldn't that be a possible option in the case of OSes and desktop software, in addition to that being the status quo on mobile? Then smarter users who don't want to pay can use a PiHole or something like that, users get the software and devs get some additional money, OR people can straight up pay for an ad free version and/or more features, or use an open source alternative.
I think the only thing holding us back in that regard is a lack of proper sandboxing for most desktop software, e.g. the user data that you agree to give it, rather than having spyware/PUP getting installed and so on. I do wonder why there are no good reputation ad networks for desktop software and such, say, AdSense for Windows/Linux.
> I think $MS is innovating in some areas that, if nothing changes, Apple will ape to great fanfare in a few years
IMO too late. Pretty much my entire network that I'm aware of refuses to use Microsoft anything - Windows, Teams, Visual Studio, .NET etc. The only exception to that are gamers but these people seem less and less as we all get older.
I enjoyed writing C# back in the day, its a great language, but I probably never will again.
On the other hand, VsCode dominates the basic editor space. TypeScript basically became the standard in web development. GitHub is MS, NPM is MS. .net is now open source and I'd not be surprised if it starts getting popular again.
I'd say they are in a better place in terms of developer relations and perception compared to a couple years ago. Might be my network bias though.
This I don't get. Microsoft is copying Apple in this case. When you use OSX then you are more or less obligated to have an iCloud account. And then they ask you if you want to have iCloud+.
What is difference between Apple and pestering me with getting iCloud and Microsoft pestering me with getting Microsoft 365.
Both are convenient and provide great value and a better UX.
In my experience, it's mostly the less experienced use it. It's electron shovelware, with horrible typing latency and memory usage.
No matter how hard MS wants to push it, those don't change. If I need a text editor I use one, if I need a full IDE I use those. This Frankenstein abomination has zero purpose.
I love Linux and despise $MS in general. VS Code is the only thing from them I genuinely enjoy using. Since most of it is open source I have some confidence it will escape the usual $MS enshitification, or at least VS Codium. There's just not anything I've come across that's as versatile.
My dilemma: choosing between Windows that has too many ads and is increasingly buggy, a Linux desktop environment that requires lots of time to configure and always has something not working, or a Mac computer that has atrocious RAM and SSD markup. (A mac mini that matches my current $500 pc with 32GB/1TB would cost $1,899.) I decide to live with Windows and find ways to turn off the ads or ignore them.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm definitely a Linux fanboy, and am totally biased, but while yes, some distros require a lot of configuration, but others, like Mint and Fedora, just work. The only major issue I've ever had with those was, on rare occasions with niche WiFi cards or very new ones, missing WiFi drivers, which are available separately and can be installed pretty easily with just a quick Google search.
In my opinion, it's much less time to configure and get Linux working than Windows. For example, just last week I was on Debian, but then I decided I wanted to switch back to Fedora (just some minor preferences, nothing major), and I was able to reinstall and get back up and running within an hour or two–including reinstalling programs. And I had a separate /home partition, so I had all my data separate and just switched out the OS.
There's always something not working on Windows. Especially as cruft accumulates over time. We have a tendency to bail at the first sign of trouble and return to where we're comfortable. This doesn't mean there were no issues there. It just means we know how to handle them. It is in my opinion a much more useful skill to know how to handle Linux than Windows. Especially if one is into or adjacent to IT things.
I’d been off Windows since the early XP days, first Mac then Gentoo then running a hackintosh for several years, and got fed up with the maintenance. Since in the end I was mostly using it for gaming I just thought, WTH, I’ll use Windows 10, how bad can it be!? I lasted a month and then in a figure of pique and frustration I downloaded and installed Linux Mint 20.3. What a breath of fresh air! And the silver lining is Steam Play which makes it as good a gaming machine as ever and far better than it was as a hackintosh
I switched to Linux last year and it's an absolute dream in comparison.
Using Windows when Linux is available is just like using WhatsApp when Signal is available. It's a matter of mass-adoption and really not much more (ie the platforms are nearly functionally identical). So help spread the word! :-)
I would not say functionally identical but more productivity tools are available on all platforms. For a developer I can only say that it is a must to use Linux. No emulation required to run docker for instance...
Inevitably they open network connections to untrustworthy content.
One of the best unintended side effects to happen in recent months was
that the NSO group weaponised ads, via the ad-serving infrastructure
at least in mobile devices, as a means to deliver malware.
They couldn't have stuck a knife into the heart if a nicer industry.
Now the mere presence of "advertisements" is a legitimate
cybersecurity concern. Adblockers, and configuring browsers to stop
ads is at the same level as firewalls and updates.
Advertisements baked into the Windows operating system is no mere
question of "annoyance", it's a sound, rational reason to dump
Microsoft in favour of something more secure.
Slowly boiling myself away from this and subscription software. The last few months have been moving my data to portable formats, open source software and on disk rather than in the cloud. The first step was to move away from macOS to Windows ironically because I can dispose of the Apple hardware and use my target hardware and what remanining software I am locked in to will work on windows. I'll boil the last few things off on that then migrate to Linux.
The biggest problem remaining is what to do with email as I need access to it on the road and I've got used to outlook/o365 for that. A half decent neutral IMAP service would do the job. Any recommendations?
I was very confused when I booted a Windows VM the other day and a mini Freddie Mercury appeared in the taskbar’s search box.[1] Turned out that it would have been his birthday, but it’s an odd thing for an OS to do.
Readit News
The ads is also another problem, I am a mini sysadmin controlling not only my computers but my parents one. And I need to keep their computer in a safe state that they dont get in trouble by a misleading ad, but also, unable to do something because of an anti-ad pop up or similar.
And having them being stressed out because onedrive/office365/nobackups pop up is asking stuff they dont understand is getting on my fucking nerves.
I tried Manjaro, the concept is very cool, but adding my Canon Pixma 5051 driver was extremely difficult, and adding OneDrive support was also difficult (getting some errors at compile time, no matter what package from AUR I choose), so I decided not to use it.
Furthermore, I also tried Fedora, Mate edition. I was really surprised how unpolished it looks compared to any other Mate editions (Mint, Manjaro, Solus (solus is the most polished of them all), Ubuntu).
It is my understanding (and I am not an expert in Linux at all), that deb is better than RPM, so can I ask you, why Fedora?
By the way, you can install Windows 10/11 Enterprise (10 IoT will be supported till 2035), which has none of these problems.
That is the only experience I got. But it is a fairly popular cheap wifi dongle, and I think that fedora just has better compatibility. I am not sure about deb/rpm. I am more familiar with deb. But honestly, I prefer that things just work.
I have a windows 10 enterprise on my work laptop and I can still see several pop-up and annoyances. I am also not sure where would I be able to get a windows 10 IoT key that I can use and is reasonably priced. But I will have a look. thank you.
I used software called RaiDrive on the desktop a while ago and they have an ad-supported free version - there is a banner that shows up on top/bottom of the app window, IIRC: https://www.raidrive.com/
If developers need money but users want free software, wouldn't that be a possible option in the case of OSes and desktop software, in addition to that being the status quo on mobile? Then smarter users who don't want to pay can use a PiHole or something like that, users get the software and devs get some additional money, OR people can straight up pay for an ad free version and/or more features, or use an open source alternative.
I think the only thing holding us back in that regard is a lack of proper sandboxing for most desktop software, e.g. the user data that you agree to give it, rather than having spyware/PUP getting installed and so on. I do wonder why there are no good reputation ad networks for desktop software and such, say, AdSense for Windows/Linux.
IMO too late. Pretty much my entire network that I'm aware of refuses to use Microsoft anything - Windows, Teams, Visual Studio, .NET etc. The only exception to that are gamers but these people seem less and less as we all get older.
I enjoyed writing C# back in the day, its a great language, but I probably never will again.
I'd say they are in a better place in terms of developer relations and perception compared to a couple years ago. Might be my network bias though.
This I don't get. Microsoft is copying Apple in this case. When you use OSX then you are more or less obligated to have an iCloud account. And then they ask you if you want to have iCloud+.
What is difference between Apple and pestering me with getting iCloud and Microsoft pestering me with getting Microsoft 365.
Both are convenient and provide great value and a better UX.
Jetbrains Fleet is already looking to be a let down, with it being a larger resource hog by VSCode.
No matter how hard MS wants to push it, those don't change. If I need a text editor I use one, if I need a full IDE I use those. This Frankenstein abomination has zero purpose.
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In my opinion, it's much less time to configure and get Linux working than Windows. For example, just last week I was on Debian, but then I decided I wanted to switch back to Fedora (just some minor preferences, nothing major), and I was able to reinstall and get back up and running within an hour or two–including reinstalling programs. And I had a separate /home partition, so I had all my data separate and just switched out the OS.
Using Windows when Linux is available is just like using WhatsApp when Signal is available. It's a matter of mass-adoption and really not much more (ie the platforms are nearly functionally identical). So help spread the word! :-)
Are you saying that Signal is better than WhatsApp more than just philosophically?
I've been using both WhatsApp and Signal for years and I find it difficult to say which is better from a UI/UX point of view.
However, I prefer my Linux desktop (Fedora/Sway) to my Windows 11 desktop experience in every way I can think of.
Inevitably they open network connections to untrustworthy content.
One of the best unintended side effects to happen in recent months was that the NSO group weaponised ads, via the ad-serving infrastructure at least in mobile devices, as a means to deliver malware.
They couldn't have stuck a knife into the heart if a nicer industry.
Now the mere presence of "advertisements" is a legitimate cybersecurity concern. Adblockers, and configuring browsers to stop ads is at the same level as firewalls and updates.
Advertisements baked into the Windows operating system is no mere question of "annoyance", it's a sound, rational reason to dump Microsoft in favour of something more secure.
The biggest problem remaining is what to do with email as I need access to it on the road and I've got used to outlook/o365 for that. A half decent neutral IMAP service would do the job. Any recommendations?
Fastmail is a good service, not free but imho good service doesn't need to be free.
Edit: scrap that. I needed to pay for it first! It's working now.
[1] https://mastodon.social/@robinwhittleton/111011217374727839