Windows is becoming increasingly uncomfortable in that regard. I’ve been thinking about switching to Linux Mint for a while now.

As someone tried to build the snes9x-nwaemu fork from scratch today after spending hours fighting the Linux mint updater getting stuck, ahhhhhhhhjjj. I still have to have windows for a couple of things anyway which makes this all the more annoying. The update also wrecked my davinci install which I need to produce videos. Also, I work two jobs so not a ton of time for this.

LOL the suppliers I work with ONLY Support IE 6 to 9. If they could still get away with DOS and intranets they would.

Having to use windows 11 for work for the last few years.

(1) Randomly a program on the taskbar just has an invisible icon. Like you can click it but if you don’t know it’s there it just seems like that program is gone. I keep waiting it to be fixed after every forced update 3-4x a week. Still happening.

(2) Sometimes the entire process just disappears graphically. Not even an invisible icon on the task at. Still running in the background but it’s gone in the UI. Have to manually kill it or restart.

(3) I can’t unzip multiple ZIP files at the same time. Like I can’t select multiple ZIP files and extract them all into their own folder. Something that worked since I’ve used windows. Worked on windows 10, 7, and XP. It now just unzips only the file you right click even if multiple are selected.

I’m sure there are more but I avoid using windows and mostly just use it to connect to a work VPN and SSH into my redhat VM. Still, all 3 of these really common issues have existed for at least two years. The first two are constant on MS teams and Outlook. Literally no excuse, they are windows apps. Total garbage OS.

feel free to donate them to me, they work great as servers.

Switching from Windows to Linux on an older computer is like when you finally get around to clearing the bathtub drain after years of hair and crud building up. Who knew a bath could drain that fast!? And now there’s no pool of water building up when I shower. Anyway, I highly recommend both Linux and clearing the drains.

I’ve had a Steam Deck for a few years, and it runs Linux. I have come to the conclusion that I could easily switch at any time if I needed to. Windows only has an an advantage when hot swapping between my office and TV dock. Linux just doesn’t yet handle desktop resizing on the fly well.

i’ve only ever used linux for servers as a web dev but friday i decided to erase windows on my laptop and install mint and i’m basically obsessed now (the best part is how updates just happen but they don’t restart your computer randomly when you don’t ask)

Linux is better than Windows.

I’m really curious what things people can’t get running or didn’t have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn’t choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.

If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don’t know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?

In my experience:

• MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)

• KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don’t have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)

• The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.

• I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)

• I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I’m not sure, because I didn’t need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you’ll probably have to worry about it.

Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don’t - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.

One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn’t create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a ‘suite’ in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.

(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)

edit: spelling error / typo

Still very happy with Mint after a month and a half. Highly recommended!

When I get back to my personal computer, I’m going to finally move to Linux. I’m a developer primarily on Microsoft technologies, but I’m willing to see if there is a way for me to work on Linux and branch out to other tech.

I have to make the switch…

So glad I made the switch to Mint back when the EoL for win10 was announced. It has “just worked” with a bit of research beforehand. I like it way more than win10 - looks better, feels better, runs everything I want it to (except games with kernel level anticheat, but whatever), hardware is under less strain and PC no longer sounds like a jet engine. No regrets at all.

And, another perk I didn’t hear as much about, it is really easy to automate stuff. For instance, I play CloneHero streaming from my PC on an Nvidia Shield on a controller with a USB dongle plugged into the shield (shield doesn’t do that normally, linux allowed me to connect to the dongle over wifi with a little finagling) and I have it set up to automatically connect to my computer any time it’s plugged in. I also have certain files set to automatically back up to cloud storage with a simple crontab task (automatically repeating tasks are very easy via crontab).

Mint may not be as fancy as a lot of other distros, but damn if it doesn’t work well.

Where is the conversation about the mountain of e-waste that’s heading to landfills if a concerted effort is not made to put Linux on millions of machines and to put those machines into the hands of people who can benefit from them?