Comment by eightysixfour
2 years ago
I wish I had written this into the original comment because I knew someone would say this.
No it isn’t - MacOS and Macs are a singular product sold together. Windows and Linux are OSes that are downloadable from the web or buyable from stores and Windows consumer hardware support is simply better. And that’s okay, there are people who will seek devices that support it better, but I am not one of them, I will just virtualize it or run it in WSL.
If Linux had 30% desktop market share that would change, but it doesn’t.
FWIW, I agree with most criticisms of Windows. It is clear Microsoft no longer treats Windows the OS as a product, they treat every individual piece of it as a product, and that’s resulting in some weird, ugly, user hostile shit, but I can still get rid of it in no time at all and have a better personal OS. I think of it like adding unlock to a browser.
If it continues down its current path, I may be willing to switch, but it hasn’t passed the value/pain curve point for me yet.
> Windows and Linux are OSes that are downloadable from the web or buyable from stores
Virtually no (offline) stores sell devices with Linux. Being downloadable doesn't imply compatibility with all hardware in the world.
> Virtually no (offline) stores sell devices with Linux.
I did not specify offline, I was mainly catching Windows as an individually purchasable product.
> Being downloadloadable doesn’t imply compatibility with all the hardware in the world.
I did not say that it does, but there are plenty of distros that strive to be a consumer desktop OS, and part of that effort is working with a broad range of hardware, and for me they continually fail. I would rather install an OS where all my hardware works and then I can tweak it to behave the way I want than install an OS where the hardware doesn’t work and I still spend my time tweaking it to behave the way I want.
Even ignoring hardware support and things like sleep and hibernate, every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup than I do getting rid of the things they complain about in Windows.
It is fine to have a preference, there’s no perfect OS for everyone, but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on. There are valid reasons for tech literate users to consciously choose Windows over Linux.
I you stop trying to play armchair systems integrator and instead buy computers with Linux preinstalled fully supported by the vendor, you'll have a much better time of it.
Modern hardware is complex enough that it supports Windows or Linux. Not both, though.
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First, I never tweaked the suspend or hibernate on my laptops and they always've been working flawlessly (Librem 14 and 15).
> every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup
You were asking wrong people perhaps. My non-technical relatives are just using Linux for their tasks and don't even know what a console is. People who like tweaking, do it. It's definitely easier on Linux anyway.
> but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on.
Most people are unaware that subjecting all their life and security to a for-profit, huge corporation is a bad idea for many well-known reasons. I am willing to dedicate my time to explaining that and promoting Linux, especilly when there are harmful myths about it like those you're propagating.
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