Been There - Tried It - I'm going back...

Steveocee

Steveocee

Steveocee

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An odd thread but one I think some of us may have some stories to tell from.

Who's made the jump and then categorically not been able to get on so gone back to Windows or OSX?

I really enjoyed my days with Mint but the graphical bugs caused by my GTX1070 were driving me mad and whilst my PC is W11 compatible, I just couldn't be bothered dithering about trying to get it to work so have taken my PC back.

I do maintain on both my work laptop and my new W11 install on desktop a WSL so I have a bash terminal.
 
Linux is a tool for me - there is no way I could adopt it as my main desktop any time soon. I use Debian and Ubuntu a fair bit though in specific applications.
 
Nope nope and nope.

I've tried it numerous times over the years, different distributions, and tried it for the desktop and for various server roles.

For all the grief that windows gets, most of the time you can muddle through and solve issues yourself. Linux not a chance, normally 3 hours of googling to find the 1 person who was had something similar happen and then try and find the cryptic command line that actually works on your particular distro.

Don't get me wrong, I run several VMs with normally Ubuntu server both at home and work for various services, but they are very much a follow idiot guides to set up, and then not touch :D
 
I'm the opposite now - I use MacOS a lot and despise the software, give me my Linux install any day. I barely ever use Windows now. I still have an install on the gaming rig, but it's not been booted into for a while.

I think my workflow is different than the average user though - I've been on the tiling window managers for years now, all keyboard driven and a big user of all the native tools too. I've rarely run into issues where things don't work, but I read about some of the things people do and they're nowhere near anything I do. I use a web browser, a terminal and that's 90% of my life. So not much to go wrong. Not had many issues gaming on Linux over the past few years either.

Mostly Debian stable and OpenBSD here though, so both known for stability and not necessarily cutting edge. I think that's where a lot of people tend to go wrong, they want the latest and greatest and to be honest I don't think it's worth the hassle.
 
I’m about 50:50 between MacOS and Windows these days. Frankly I don’t really care about the OS anymore, they generally just sit in the background and let me run my stuff.

I used a Linux VM for work for a while but end up just using my Mac Air for the day job, and remote from that to my desktop and (windows) home server.

Bizarrely, Mac OS Remote Desktop client is miles better than the Windows one, particularly when it comes to hidpi monitor support.
 
With windows breaking on almost every other update, the 'it just works' argument for windows is starting to get weaker. That said, linux has always been and even now remains brittle as a long term desktop platform. Ultimately that's why I ended up on mac even if I don't love it.
 
I've got Mint on my old laptop as it barely supports Windows never mind TPM but even then it has issues that I can't fix the boot manager complains but it does boot up, eventually. I've tried various distros with varying degrees of success Ubuntu, Red Hat etc but I've always come back to windows despite its faults. Mint is fine for basic things like browsing or playing media transferring files and whatnot but anything more "power" user... nope. The best OOTB distro I ever tried was Open SUSE but the lack of third party software availability killed it for me unfortunately.
 
kar said:
With windows breaking on almost every other update, the 'it just works' argument for windows is starting to get weaker. That said, linux has always been and even now remains brittle as a long term desktop platform. Ultimately that's why I ended up on mac even if I don't love it.
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Agreed. If anything, I'd opt for Mac OS if I wanted a "it just works" scenario.
 
I really wanted out of windows a while back and tried Linux and liked it a lot, but for me the workarounds for photo editing compared to the software I actually licenses for meant that Linux as the main machine just wasn’t quite there for me … so I went back to Mac OS.

I still use Linux on a laptop though as the browse the web device in the living room.

I dont miss windows and the more I read I’m glad I’m out.
 
MacOS and a MacBook for general stuff as I’m in the ecosystem and the hardware is great.

MacOS for work as it’s good for software development and the large enterprise stuff like office suite is still supported.

Linux for gaming and home projects (inc servers and anything that has to work reliably) :-)
 
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I'm 80/20 on Linux now after making the move for EOL windows 10 since I have multiple older PC. After trying a few distros I went back to Mint on my desktop mini PC. It does dual boot to Win 11 though the only time I booted windows on it in the last couple of months was to play a couple of steam games that wouldn't run properly under Linux, or at least I didn't have the patience to patch at the time due to anti cheat nonsense. Also have a NAS and some 1L lenovo's that run PopOS.

To be fair it's been fine, though I don't do any critical work on it. I do have some windows progs that run OK through wine, I tend to use google docs anyhow for convenience and I'm slowly getting the hang of snipping tools and simple things you take for granted on windows like backing up or copying a memory card ends up being a command line journey. Coding is the same..... overall I've got a lot better with my Linux in the last couple of years, now I struggle in with windows command line when it doesn't like my linux commands.

Gaming PC will stay on windows 11, it's effectively a big xbox for steam and the MS store games I have though, it's only used when I want to game now and as my windows account and xbox account are different... there is quite a bit of separation.
I don't miss all slow updates and stupid adverts / popups that windows 11 brings... and I really don't want copilot trying to get in on the act as soon as I try to do anything. I have enough of that at work.

Similar to another thread about consoles disappearing, I think we're less than 10 years from windows being a remotely hosted OS you stream to a dumb local terminal. Much easier to have all that AI power in the cloud than run it locally so Linux could be the only options for local compute.
 
decto said:
Similar to another thread about consoles disappearing, I think we're less than 10 years from windows being a remotely hosted OS you stream to a dumb local terminal. Much easier to have all that AI power in the cloud than run it locally so Linux could be the only options for local compute.
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I genuinely don't see that happening, I mean terminal services have been around for donkeys years, but really only aimed at enterprise/SMB environments due to the infrastructure/setup needed. It'd just be complex and overkill for your typical home user. Running a local OS doesn't take that much grunt, and realistically what will your typical home user need vast amounts of AI compute for.

From my perspective I'm probably about 70:30 in favour of Linux. The appliance we sell runs solely on a custom Linux variant, all the servers we use for dev and test all run Linux. Although we do have windows based laptops, it's not unusual for me to spend the majority of my day SSH'd into a server. At home I run proxmox on a mini PC hosting a variety of services/tools which are pretty much 99% Linux based. Leaving just my PC running Windows that I typically game on, life admin, maybe tinkering with HA or researching stuff etc. I guess I've just left this to run Windows just for ease of use.
 
It is a wet dream for some to remove power from the end user and control what they can and can't do at every level so I can see a push for remotely hosted OSes but people would be fools to go along with it - sadly I don't see people pushing back :( hence one of the reasons MS is pushing stuff like TPM, etc.
 
Semple said:
I genuinely don't see that happening, I mean terminal services have been around for donkeys years, but really only aimed at enterprise/SMB environments due to the infrastructure/setup needed. It'd just be complex and overkill for your typical home user. Running a local OS doesn't take that much grunt, and realistically what will your typical home user need vast amounts of AI compute for.

From my perspective I'm probably about 70:30 in favour of Linux. The appliance we sell runs solely on a custom Linux variant, all the servers we use for dev and test all run Linux. Although we do have windows based laptops, it's not unusual for me to spend the majority of my day SSH'd into a server. At home I run proxmox on a mini PC hosting a variety of services/tools which are pretty much 99% Linux based. Leaving just my PC running Windows that I typically game on, life admin, maybe tinkering with HA or researching stuff etc. I guess I've just left this to run Windows just for ease of use.
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The average home user wouldn't know.... they just rent a plan with X compute and Y storage.

They fire up their local windows XIII and use it as normal, but it's a lightweight arm device that runs 20+ hours on a charge as all the 'work' gets done in the cloud.
All your documents are in the cloud, all you web history is in the cloud... you can log in from any device and everything is there just as you left it.
You can already get a great desktop experience over local LAN.

For a power user you can easily ramp up compute with 'boosts' if you want to speed up a workload such as rendering, compilation but if you're just working on a presentation use a lower tier plan.
Or perhaps you buy a compute plan which you consume at different rates depending on load much like data on a mobile contract.
 
mid_gen said:
I’m about 50:50 between MacOS and Windows these days. Frankly I don’t really care about the OS anymore, they generally just sit in the background and let me run my stuff.

I used a Linux VM for work for a while but end up just using my Mac Air for the day job, and remote from that to my desktop and (windows) home server.

Bizarrely, Mac OS Remote Desktop client is miles better than the Windows one, particularly when it comes to hidpi monitor support.
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Recently tried Mac OS remote client and it ran poorly for me vs Windows to Windows. Kinda put me off moving to Mac..
 
I left the Windows world about 10 years ago after getting monumentally fed up up with breaking updates. The fact we still get breaking updates on Windows says a lot about MS and how badly put together Windows is.

My laptops and desktops are all Macs whilst my two servers run rock solid Linux variants (Unraid and Proxmox). My gaming PC runs Bazzite, my handheld runs SteamOS and my retro arcade cabinet runs Batocera. I wouldn’t dream of putting Windows anywhere near a PC these days.
 
I swapped back and forth between Windows and Linux for years on my main rig so understand completely when people say they couldn't make the switch. I'm now totally linux except for my work laptop and couldn't be happier. I can only encourage people to stick with it.

Every time I get to use a Windows machine these days I can't stand it.
 
im trying out bazzite at the moment ith an nvidia 1650
i had some issues with Baulders Gate 3 getting it to work but a short google fixed it, i had to use proton 9.04

so far im pretty happy with it, im strugglng a little with steam link vr but havent actively looked in to fixing that yet.

i may not have to many options with regards to windows for the forseable future.
 
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