Who thinks Linux is better??

[rcorkum]

Simply Linux does exactly what you tell it to do every damn time ( per Slackware ifs Debian (pre systemD) etc..

 

you compile source and compile all the dependencies yourself and it fubar's because you didn't read you so deserve to be hit by the RTFM paddle .

 

windows lol, I been using pc's since 1984 when 300 baud was FAST.

 

and windows is such an experience, what most often fixes is reboot.  an update is trial and prayer now. and people PAY for this experience.

 

a couple one liners I came up with fixing pc's and running networks.

 

the day they put windows as the OS of airplanes, I am moving into a cave and buying a scrap metal business

 

if the internet backbone ran on windows we'd be needing to spray the wet string again.

 

[finest feck fips]

Right on time for this video,
Microsoft has sunk to a new low in basically trying to trick people into signing up for online accounts.

[YellowJersey]

1 hour ago, SenKa said:

DaVinci Resolve and GIMP FTW

I haven't worked with DaVinci Resolve. I, for one, find GIMP an incredibly frustrating piece of software to use. So much so that I think it makes more sense to stick with Windows for photo editing. I keep a Windows partition on one of my machines specifically for that purpose.

 

[blooper98]

Over the past couple years I've transitioned from windows to linux as my daily driver. I think linux is better because:

• Easy to use. While its true that some distros are a bit complicated, distros like ElementaryOS, Linux Mint, Manjaro, Ubuntu, etc. are intuitive and easy to use.
• Privacy respecting. Windows and MacOS have advertising identifiers built in to the operating system. Windows is especially bold for installing software users did not ask for, e.g. candy crush. If the user does have any control over a privacy setting, they are often limited to 'basic' and 'optional'. In contrast, ElementaryOS and Manjaro have no telemetry at all.
• Low resource usage. Already touched on by other users, Linux can idle with virtually no computer resources in a server setting, or under 1GB of ram for desktop.
• Workspaces / Desktops. When I first used the workspaces / desktops feature on linux (although, MacOS has this too), I could not believe that Windows had not yet implemented such a useful feature. Keyboard shortcuts to quickly switch back and forth, perfect for anything from web browsing, reading the manual while you work, or reading a wiki or walk through guide while gaming.
• Specialized distributions. Some may see this as a negative, but I have a familiar experience switching from CentOS for security at work, to ElementaryOS for a clean desktop at home, and sometimes Tails for anonymity on the go, providing various levels of security, elegance, and anonymity to my needs.
• No inconvenient updates. Earlier today I wanted to play some windows only games, and when booting up I was met with an update screen, slowing down the process and encouraging me to play linux supported games. Since I only boot into windows every couple weeks, I perceive this as happening frequently when using windows.
• Limited exclusivity. Open source means that software is open to anyone and can be used on, or adapted to, other systems. iMessage is great if you have an apple computer, but not very useful if you have a windows computer.  Similarly, applications built on the .net framework (e.g. AutoCAD) are stuck to windows. In contrast, applications built for linux are often adapted for use on windows and mac as well!

Love the series! Hope this helps.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

2 hours ago, rcorkum said:

windows is such an experience, what most often fixes is reboot.

 

That makes things easier for anyone working in IT though.

 

 

[kirashi]

On 9/26/2019 at 2:22 PM, James said:

Hey guys! We're doing another "10 Reasons _____ is just Better" video - this time with Linux. Now's your chance to tell us what you love about Linux and/or why Linux is better than MacOS/ Windows.

Note: we're not interested in hearing from non-Linux users here

One feature and one feature alone: Live Kernel Patching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kpatch

[mr moose]

Ironically I use it because I have found it to be more stable when reading exfat devices.    It might just be an exception to the rule but its true for me.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

On 9/28/2019 at 12:24 AM, YellowJersey said:

...Linus Mint changed that.

 

Linus has his own distro now. Cool! 

[hojnikb]

On 9/26/2019 at 11:29 PM, Genwyn said:

I can idle at 260mb of ram used with Xubuntu 16.04 32 bit, stock out of the box.

Compared to Windows 10 wanting to idle at 2.1gb on the same machine, or Windows 7 wanting 900mb.

Thats a very silly argument. Ram is there to be used, not left free. Windows 10 in its stripped down form (you can make it yourself or find online) can easily drop bellow 300MB of system memory "usage" in idle, if thats the thing you're after.

[hojnikb]

Honestly, been using Linux is all sorts of form for many years now. My take away (at least for my personal use) is this:

 

A strong no on the desktop/graphic environment. There's no real consistency in the UI, especially if you jump from distro to distro. There also seems to be a thing, where things need to be reinvented every other mayor release. Some hw compatibility can also be terrible (like intel atom) along with limited selection of software, if you're doing something very specific. Thats why i still stick with Windows on my desktop and laptop rigs. Just a better tool for the job. I frankly don't care much about microsoft and their ideology, if their product works for me.

 

Everything else (servers, routers etc) is all Linux based for me. Thats really a no brainer for me. Everything can be done from the command line, apps i use are proven and stable and there is good support even if OEM software is long forgotten (especially with routers).

 

 

Again, use the right tool for the job. Linux is not always the answer, even if GNU/Linux purists would like you to believe so.

[rogervn]

15 hours ago, Patrick C. said:

The variety of distros out there is not immediately harmful to end users, but the wide range of distros does pose a problem for third-party developers who are considering developing for Linux, especially developers of proprietary software. F/OSS developers can generally get away with just releasing source, and if their application is good and their source code is portable and easy to build, their software will find its way into the distros as distro maintainers pick it up. But proprietary software developers have to choose a distro or a limited range of distros to develop for and test on, which makes Linux harder to support and a less attractive platform because it further divides the already relatively small userbase.

I don't really need much of any proprietary software in my life, but videogames, for example, are nice to have. Steam partially solves this problem with its own runtime, but even then you get a lot of ‘Are you running Ubuntu?’ any time you try to report a bug with Steam or one of the Linux games on it. The solution, though, isn't to somehow get rid of a bunch of distros, but to move forward with desktop container technology like Snappy, Flatpak, and PipeWire, until we have a reliable cross-distro target for development.

(And I didn't mention any, but there are lots of good things about having many different distros each pushing their own vision for the desktop (or server, or whatever. I just wanted to articulate some of the more negative consequences since you were wondering about them.)

Yeah, I can see that. Steam, I'm looking at you!

 

I usually think that falls upon the distro to maintain a fair share of libraries and support for most mainstream features so this should be fixed by a simple repackaging like Steam AUR on arch. This way if the developer maintains support to a mainstream distro it should be fine. But there's always outliers and legacy binaries, which are definitely a problem on this environment.

 

But again, users can work around that if they decide to thread away from mainstream distros.

 

ButI agree that still for maintaining only the mainstream usually is a problem.

[Kilrah]

18 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Xubuntu 16.04 out of the box uses 260mb, no modifications, no killing half the programs, no snapping that number as soon as the system starts up.

That's only becasue not all tools report what it uses as cache.

 

But yes it's a waste not to use empty ram to fill it with stuff you might need. If you do end up needing what was cached it loads 10x faster than from the drive, if you don't or if the ram is needed for something else it's freed in an instant so no biggie.

 

With 32GB RAM I'd certainly want my OS to do something usesful with it instead of letting it sit empty.

[hojnikb]

58 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

That unused ram is wasted ram thing is just wintards tryna cope. (There, I used the funny “I hate windows users” linux elitist word)

 

Thats completely unacceptable for an operating system to use that much ram. Xubuntu 16.04 out of the box uses 260mb, no modifications, no killing half the programs, no snapping that number as soon as the system starts up.

Windows is bloated to the extent that it wants nearly ten times as much ram. 
 

and just because I have the ram doesn’t mean I want my OS to eat up all it wants just because it can

 

modern mainstream software is a disaster of bloat, chrome and Firefox these days eating a gig each on idle with 1 tab, even just to have a shitposting machine these days you need a minimum of 4gb of ram if you’re going to use mainstream stuff like Windows 10 and Chrome.

 

Not to mention just other problems with windows and it’s anti consumer control design, how many people complained that windows update basically ignores whatever you tell it to do? Now it’s the norm, it’s basically expected for Windows to just do what it wants unless you’re running a stripped down enterprise version with half its features removed before installation.

 

Well, you'd be surprised to know, that even your beloved xubuntu is eating aways _all_ your ram, it just doesn't report it (rest of the free ram is used up by cache and is not reported in typical task managers). Windows does the same, but reports it as a used ram. If you install Windows 10 on a 1GB machine, it won't eath 2GB+ of ram, but usage will be closer to 500-600MB, depending on setup.

 

As for "bloatware" software eating ram... Thats not really bloatware. Web these days is a lot more feature rich (html5 and the likes) and as such requires a lot more ram than it used to to work properly. If you're concerned about ram usage, you can always go to Lynx, but user experience will be abysmal.

[hojnikb]

7 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Pale moon running at 300mb with 5 tabs open says otherwise.

Open a youtube page or any other javascript page and report back.

[Bananasplit_00]

FOSS

No shitty background garbage bullshit

universal dark theme that works well

no telemetry garbage

no covert software installs of shit like candycrush

[YellowJersey]

6 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Linus has his own distro now. Cool! 

Sorry, I was distracted by those sandals and socks. Just... yummy....

 

 

 I actually misspell "Linux" as "Linus" all the time. Derp.

[Gegger]

when i actually use linux: it's free, it's lightweight, especially lightweight distros designed for things like chromebooks

 

also, there's a wide variety of distros to choose from, and most importantly to me, there's a huge community for it in case you need help or something

[Ringthane]

Just a reminder that open source does not automatically mean free.  Some of you really need to read your licenses once in a while.  

[kelvinhall05]

1 hour ago, CircleTech said:

However the linux community is so small so very little support exists except for the most common of problems. 

Completely disagree unless you're a hipster who refuses to use a Debian-based or Arch-based distro for no reason.

[Gegger]

5 hours ago, CircleTech said:

This assumes you leave out chromeOS. ChromeOS is a whole nother can of worms.

hey!

 

chromeOS lyfe ftw! /s

 

but seriously, chromeOS is like a linux distro for actual noobs

 

at least they are beta testing linux app support

 

but i'd only use it for playing mobile games

[finest feck fips]

9 hours ago, Ringthane said:

Just a reminder that open source does not automatically mean free.  Some of you really need to read your licenses once in a while.  

This is FUD. Any license that requires you to pay is not a FOSS license.

 

Free software that is distributed for a fee doesn't require people to pay as part of the copyright license. Instead, the distributor charges a fee _for their binaries_, and the source code is still available free of charge. Then communities (or intrepid individual users) can take those sources and build their own binaries, which they may use for free and distribute free of charge. This is what the CentOS developers do with RHEL, for example. It's also how Linux users still got free (gratis) packages of Synergy back in the day when it was still FOSS but the author was charging Windows users for access to the installer.

 

You're right that free software does not mean free of charge, but you're completely wrong that it has anything to do with copyright licenses or EULAs (although the latter are compatible with permissive licenses, but then what you're getting is not being distributed to you as free software), and you misunderstand how open-source software with a usual asking price may still be included in a distro for free.

[finest feck fips]

On 9/29/2019 at 7:03 PM, CircleTech said:

Statcounter disgrees with you:

 

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

 

The market shate for windows on the desktop is 78%.

 

The market share for linux is 1.7%

 

This means 45 times the number of problems and solutions are being generated for windows platforms. Meanwhile linux only makes up a very tiny precentage. Not only that but there are many, MANY versions and distros of linux. There are only a few versions of windows.

 

Conbined with a huge user base and a small number of OSes, (win 7, 8, 10) vs linux which has a bajillion distros and a tiny user base, windows is just easier to "debug" for an end-user than linux. 

 

Here is the other problem with linux: most debugging requires using the terminal. Guess what, people don't like to code or do programming. They like to have third party software with pretty looking UIs to solve their problem. Its the reason my dad pays $5 a month for cloud backup software vs building an offsite NAS + using rsync in the terminal. Could he custom build-out something? Yes. But it doesn't matter when he has a problem to solve, and just wants it solved, and will pay someone to do it. He doesn't want to f*ck around with settings and drive partitions and terminal errors. Just keep his data safe.

 

A computer is nothing more than a tool. We don't buy computers to play with the OS, we buy computers to do things. Windows does great in this category because it can run on anything made in the past 8 years, has huge community support, and is easy to use. Linux is best if you are doing something very specific, or if you really do like to play around with your PC, or if you are running very old hardware windows no longer supports.

 

I may move to linux one day as I have heard its a much easier enviornment to develop in, but I will still reccomend windows for my noob friends that do not care about their computer. The linux community is just too small and too eliteist for "normie" computer users.

 

This assumes you leave out chromeOS. ChromeOS is a whole nother can of worms.

This entire argument is a non-sequitur. Mere number of users doesn't tell you what you need to know to determine 'how much support' (also an unclear notion) is available for an OS.

 

Imagine two operating systems, HipsterOS and PoppyBoy. PoppyBoy has 300 users who all work at the same company, PopCorp. They are 'internal customers' of that company, which also develops that OS specifically for their use. The company has 5 technical support staff who take questions and assist users in identifying bugs before passing that info on to the company's 3 developers. PoppyBoy is available to download for free, but all of its manufacturer's support channels are internal. You do occasionally find a post from a PoppyBoy user outside PopCorp on SuperUser or whatever. If you reached out to one, maybe they would reply, but if your problem involved anything new, it's unlikely they would want to waste PopCorp's support staff's limited resources to resolve the issue. But maybe if you found one and you talked to them, you could get them to go back and forth on your behalf. Maybe.

 

HipsterOS is a smaller affair. It's got 30 users, 25 of whom are also the operating system's developers. Because it's a community-driven open-source project, its developers are distributed all over the world: some are in Canada, some are in the United States, some are in South America, one is in South Africa, several are in Europe, and one is in Hong Kong. There's no singular company from which to receive support, but most of the developers hang out in an IRC channel when they're awake. They're not always quick to respond, but they tend to reply eventually. A couple of them develop HipsterOS full time, since their employers are convinced they have a use for it. Plus, a couple of the European devs have formed a consultancy they offer on the side, offering support for big bucks. They've only ever had two customers (the companies that went on to hire full-time devs). But they reply to inquiries right away. If you don't have the availability to wait in IRC or the $$$ to call the consultants, since everything is developed in the open, you can at the very least file an issue on GitHub, or leave a message on the community Discourse server.

 

Now your logic would tell us that because PoppyBoy has 10 times the userbase, PoppyBoy users can expect 1000% the support! But you and I both know that's ridiculous af.

 

To make a real argument about the availability of support, you'd either (a) need to account for things like the proclivity of the userbase to post online, the distribution of issues about which each userbase posts, some way of quantifying the rarity of issues (to aid the latter), the competency of the users who do post online, some sense of space of possible issues a person can encounter or... (b) to examine actual issues in the wild instead of trying to devise an a priori argument because option A would be burdensome and dubious to the point of insanity.

 

This discussion isn't all that formal, so I'm not asking you to actually devise the protocol for a study on the availability of free end-user support for operating systems. But I do want to illustrate the full distance your argument has from being serious or convincing.

[JordanXion]

I find it vastly superior at almost everything, and use it wherever possible. Only thing keeping me from using Linux as my daily driver is software compatibility. Otherwise, for both performance and usability, I find it much more enjoyable to use, and love that I can customize absolutely everything to my hearts content.

[urmamasllama]

1. Customization. Don't like your desktop? you can change it out for a completely different one. In the case of KDE from there you can customize it to the point that two people running KDE might look like they have two completely different DE's. Don't want to fiddle around with themes, animations, and the like? Gnome is a highly polished and simplified experience focused on ease of use and support for any form factor. (side note Windows 10 multiple desktop system is almost a direct rip from how Gnome does it). have a low end or old system that you want to run efficiently lightweight desktops like Mate, XFCE, and LXQT/LXDE can breath life into a

system that you want to run well over having shininess.

 

2. CUSTOMIZATION (read: choices) don't like the backend that manages your system services? change it for a different one. don't like your audio management backend? change it for a different one! DON'T LIKE GNU????? you get the point... everything in your system can be replaced with something else. linux is a modular design everything can be replaced with something else if you really want to.

 

3. KDE Connect. it's basically apple continuity except for Linux and Android. it lets you do nearly everything that continuity does except for phone calls ( but it will pause video playback on your pc when you get a call) and you aren't locked to using KDE as your desktop to use this software.

 

4. gaming. it may not be as robust as windows but thanks to advancements from WINE DXVK and VALVE it's at least in a far better place than macs are. there are some rare cases where a game running in wine may actually perform better than it does on windows. this is especially true with much older titles as Wine is better equipped to handle them in some cases than windows compatibility mode.

 

5. QEMU/LIBVIRT. love linux but still have some software or games that you absolutely need Windows or OSX to run? run them in a virtual machine. in many cases you will need to build your computer with this purpose in mind, but it is really rewarding to be able to run and actively switch between two Operating system on the same pc with no reboots. To my knowledge no other VM software comes close to QEMU for doing GPU passthrough. especially not for the low low price of free. speaking of...

 

6. IT'S FREE. free as in speech and as in beer. yes there are distributions of linux that cost money in the corporate space but in the end user space it's basically all free to download and use. add to that, most of the software you use in linux is also free.

[sandvich64]

linux is a better option for lower end machines