Big Linux user here. It's been my daily driver on my personal desktop and laptop for coming up on 20 years (damn). I haven't had any of the dreaded graphics-driver-breaking-during-update or other hardware issues since like 2008. It works great with Zoom, Teams, WebEx, whatever you throw at it. It's fast and stable. My laptop uptime regularly hits 30+ days before I go down for an upgrade.
When my 70+ mom needed a new computer, I put Ubuntu on it and turned on unattended upgrades. I do SSH into it every 6 months and update her Zoom .deb manually (I guess there's a ppa for that?). She uses it every day and has had no problem.
I'm really impressed with the Linux experience. Thanks to all who have contributed!
- The best developer experience with the most hackable toolkit
- A great gaming experience that plays the vast majority of titles on Steam
- A "dumb by default" non-cloud enabled workstation
- IMHO the most well-design, does most things "vanilla" desktop environment with GNOME.
The tradeoff is
- You will need to learn to update your system and learn some new things. Things will seem difficult till you learn how they work.
- There are gaps in third-party applications (primary, video editing is sub par). The smaller apps you pay for now, you'll end up making scripts or small pieces of software to replace. Eventually this will be freeing, but it's a learning curve and you'll initially miss some things (Alfred, Screenshot tools...etc).
- Customization comes with a larger maintenance cost.
- Your phone is not really connected to your PC, and syncing systems is all manual. If it's not web-based, that app you like doesn't probably doesn't work.
I switched 3 or so years ago and it's been a revelation. Although I'd been using computers since the 80s I never really understood how an OS works. While you could argue I never needed to, I find myself much more digitally literate now. After a hump year, I mostly tailor the OS to what I need it to do, and it feels like an extension of me.
> You will need to learn to update your system
> Customization comes with a larger maintenance cost
Depends on what you want to achieve, in general and day to day. In a lot of cases, either of these are dealbreakers on the long term. You can say 1001 bad things about Windows, but you can safely update, and run most your apps from 20+ year ago just fine, including "customizations" (shell scripts, registry entries etc). And handle all the hardware you throw at it. On a Linux Desktop you will have 100% control, but at many orders of magnitude harder learning curve and maintenance.
However bad the path is it goes down currently, Windows is still the best middle way between macos and Linux.
I observed some normal users and they are clueless when it comes to computers. If there is a problem, they ask it to be serviced or buy a new pc.
Even things like logging into google with an already logged in account (click on your face) is not intuitive they press instead the "log in with account" button and retype the credentials.
All of this to say, there might be challenges with Linux. But then the opposite it's also true, windows restarts the computer in your face without caring
For UNIX workloads development, and by offering Windows compatibility layer, so that game developers can keep ignoring GNU/Linux, while having no issues targeting other POSIX like platforms.
> [Hardware on Linux] have mostly become just plug-and-play. That favorite software [and game] of yours probably either works natively on Linux nowadays or there are alternatives/workarounds to make it work.
> But this is not an article about Linux and its current features so far. In fact, what should be pushing you towards Linux should not only be the features it has to offer nowadays. Instead, it should be the grim future with Windows that you should try to escape from.
> Microsoft just announced [...] “Recall” has been added to Windows which takes screenshots of your screen every few seconds so that you can ask the AI model about your previous activities anytime you want.
> This is not to add on some other spyware-like “features” in Windows 11, such as ads being displayed right in your start menu or File Explorer according to your user metrics.
Microsoft won't fix intended, by design, behaviour, it is not broken from their point of view. And even if you disable Recall by whatever name they put to hide it, it could be silently reenabled by "security" updates.
At least if some Linux distro includes something that users consider bad for their privacy, you can choose among several alternatives, including direct forks. That is an actual strength of that approach.
A laptop that's fanless? Is that real? Or do they call it fanless because it's very quiet? The wikipedia article for fanless design redirects to quiet which to me suggests some people use the term in this way.
Already confirmed but it’s legit one of the best features of all time: a completely silent portable computer.
Second-best is a mobile-first portable computer, that you don’t have to worry about having it plugged in except for an hour or so every ~day of usage.
These things don’t really show up in any kind of stats but I can say that they change the definition of computing for humans (vs. data centre servers, etc)
A fan is a weird thing to be hung up on. This sounds like a clear example of moving the goal post. For what it's worth, I've heard my FW 13's fan kick on only a couple of times.
Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 just came out a week ago. No crapware, no TPM, no Secure Boot etc. Works like a charm. I'm using LTSC versions for a long time and it's the Windows version that should be the default for every home user.
Yes LTSC is not "legal" to use as an ordinary end user but MS doesn't care about piracy at all.
Was thinking of switching my mom's pc to linux because windows 10 is nearing its end and the pc doesn't have tpm chip for Win 11. But thankfully i found that windows 11 Iot LTSC version doesn't require tpm (or uefi secure boot) and doesn't have most of the crapware preinstalled. But the ethics of acquiring it and activating it is a different story (MAS)
My point is roughly there isn't even a remotely comparable bit of software to the stuff built into macOS on Windows or Linux (calendar, contacts, notes, reminders, mail, maps).
I was forced to switch this last year. I decided to upgrade my 10 year old motherboard, and Windows refused to boot with the new one despite nothing else changing. I absolutely refuse to pay good money to "upgrade" to a worse version of Windows, so Linux it is.
Mostly it's been a good experience. I can still open all my old documents, and you can't even tell the difference when browsing. There are some Windows only apps that I relied on, including a couple I helped develop - I haven't figured out how to deal with the loss of those yet.
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When my 70+ mom needed a new computer, I put Ubuntu on it and turned on unattended upgrades. I do SSH into it every 6 months and update her Zoom .deb manually (I guess there's a ppa for that?). She uses it every day and has had no problem.
I'm really impressed with the Linux experience. Thanks to all who have contributed!
- The best developer experience with the most hackable toolkit
- A great gaming experience that plays the vast majority of titles on Steam
- A "dumb by default" non-cloud enabled workstation
- IMHO the most well-design, does most things "vanilla" desktop environment with GNOME.
The tradeoff is
- You will need to learn to update your system and learn some new things. Things will seem difficult till you learn how they work.
- There are gaps in third-party applications (primary, video editing is sub par). The smaller apps you pay for now, you'll end up making scripts or small pieces of software to replace. Eventually this will be freeing, but it's a learning curve and you'll initially miss some things (Alfred, Screenshot tools...etc).
- Customization comes with a larger maintenance cost.
- Your phone is not really connected to your PC, and syncing systems is all manual. If it's not web-based, that app you like doesn't probably doesn't work.
I switched 3 or so years ago and it's been a revelation. Although I'd been using computers since the 80s I never really understood how an OS works. While you could argue I never needed to, I find myself much more digitally literate now. After a hump year, I mostly tailor the OS to what I need it to do, and it feels like an extension of me.
I wrote a blog post about this more generally here. https://www.davesnider.com/posts/im-a-linux
Depends on what you want to achieve, in general and day to day. In a lot of cases, either of these are dealbreakers on the long term. You can say 1001 bad things about Windows, but you can safely update, and run most your apps from 20+ year ago just fine, including "customizations" (shell scripts, registry entries etc). And handle all the hardware you throw at it. On a Linux Desktop you will have 100% control, but at many orders of magnitude harder learning curve and maintenance.
However bad the path is it goes down currently, Windows is still the best middle way between macos and Linux.
Not exactly sure what you mean, but KDE Connect is amazing for connecting my phone (and any device that has the app, including other PCs) to my PC.
Does your setup:
1. Back phone things up to the PC wirelessly? Not just photos but app data, documents, drawings, etc. Note: must all be in original quality/format
2. Allow your PC to update an app itself (in a way that can be scripted)?
3. Allow copy/paste between the desktop and the phone? (Though with LocalSend being decent this is less and less relevant)
4. Transfer edit history for photos, videos, and audio?
5. Allow you to install and debug your own apps wirelessly? (ok, this one is a gimmie bc linux to android does this natively through adb)
6. Allow your phone to mount drives from your PC so that you can access and transfer files wirelessly?
Even things like logging into google with an already logged in account (click on your face) is not intuitive they press instead the "log in with account" button and retype the credentials.
All of this to say, there might be challenges with Linux. But then the opposite it's also true, windows restarts the computer in your face without caring
> [Hardware on Linux] have mostly become just plug-and-play. That favorite software [and game] of yours probably either works natively on Linux nowadays or there are alternatives/workarounds to make it work.
> But this is not an article about Linux and its current features so far. In fact, what should be pushing you towards Linux should not only be the features it has to offer nowadays. Instead, it should be the grim future with Windows that you should try to escape from.
> Microsoft just announced [...] “Recall” has been added to Windows which takes screenshots of your screen every few seconds so that you can ask the AI model about your previous activities anytime you want.
> This is not to add on some other spyware-like “features” in Windows 11, such as ads being displayed right in your start menu or File Explorer according to your user metrics.
I have more faith in Microsoft to stop breaking Windows than on the Linux community to fix any of their desktop distros and environments.
At least if some Linux distro includes something that users consider bad for their privacy, you can choose among several alternatives, including direct forks. That is an actual strength of that approach.
All of the power I need, fanless, insane battery life, unix shell.
I know I can put Asahi on it, but I also know there are still issues around webcam/graphics drivers (I spend a lot of time on video calls)
If there was something with the form factor of a MacBook Air I could put Linux on, and it would run as well, I wouldn't look back.
The closest is the Framework laptop, amazing bit of kit, but still a fan, and worse battery life.
Not what I'm looking for personally in computing so no idea if either are what you are looking for.
Second-best is a mobile-first portable computer, that you don’t have to worry about having it plugged in except for an hour or so every ~day of usage.
These things don’t really show up in any kind of stats but I can say that they change the definition of computing for humans (vs. data centre servers, etc)
Yes LTSC is not "legal" to use as an ordinary end user but MS doesn't care about piracy at all.
Honestly MS doesn't care about piracy at all. They rather have you pirate Windows than lose you as a user to another OS.
My point is roughly there isn't even a remotely comparable bit of software to the stuff built into macOS on Windows or Linux (calendar, contacts, notes, reminders, mail, maps).
Mostly it's been a good experience. I can still open all my old documents, and you can't even tell the difference when browsing. There are some Windows only apps that I relied on, including a couple I helped develop - I haven't figured out how to deal with the loss of those yet.