Linux

It's react

I've used Linux as my "daily driver" PC and for 95%+ of my computer work since about 2012. Starting last year, my company decided to migrate the next generation of our product to Windows, and my daily driver desktop PC died, so... I figured I'd just eat the dogfood and replace it with an off the shelf Windows PC - I'm typing this on that PC now.

First place I'd diverge from the article is: most Windows users don't install windows, ever. It comes pre-installed. They're afraid of operations like installing an operating system, and rightly so: the Windows installer is a bit scary. I have installed Windows, mostly in virtual machines, but several "bare metal" systems too maybe 20 times over the past 10 years. It's not impossible, but it's certainly not as user or developer friendly as installing Linux. Particularly the part where you enter the license codes.

There's still pain jumping between Linux and Windows, I have a colleague who goes through it regularly - trying to copy files between systems, ending up with line ending translation issues... If you stay on one side or the other it's not an issue, but if you don't strictly use a tool like git to move code between systems it can bite in surprising / unexpected places.

The main thing I HATE about my Windows system is how the OS periodically pegs the CPU utilization for... well, it's unclear what it's doing it for - it has a habit of stopping immediately when you touch it - but the fan noise is clear enough, and that's something that you could easily configure a Linux distro to not do, Windows 11... not very cooperative in that respect.

After a year on Windows as my daily driver, I haven't really found anything I actually like about it better than the various Linux distros. The desktop toolbar is a bit more user friendly than, say, XFCE4, but I still prefer XFCE4 on the whole to Gnome or KDE for... reasons, so... I'm not going to give a lot of kudos to Windows there. I don't often feel stymied by Windows, I can usually get it to do whatever I want it to do that Linux can do. But, unlike 30 years ago when I used AutoCad - available only in Windows, no real Linux substitute at the time - the tools I use today are readily available on both sides.

If it weren't for work, I'd re-image my daily driver to Debian + XFCE, but I don't feel heavily hobbled by the current situation, and now when somebody has a "but I'm using Windows..." question I can concretely answer "I'm using Windows too... it's not the OS, it's something else."

Not really, it was actually Apple that introduced an emoji picker in 2013. The Windows one works since 2017 and KDE has it since 2020.

I had no idea this existed lmao

As a long time less-technical linux user I don't really wanna be that person but I do think its important to point out that generally the issues they were frustrated with are things that would be invisible to average users, and would irk the hell out of technically competent people and power users pretty much exclusively

I adore linux and have used it exclusively for like 10+ years, but it has a fair bit of jank that is most noticable to normal folks, and is frankly invisible to technical folks because it just doesnt pose a meaningful obstacle or speedbump to them. So yes, talking about the ways in which its way better is fantastic, but much of this is not a useful comparison for anyone except the people who already use linux and have happily done so for ages

There's kinda this disconnect where technical folks will tell you linux is light years ahead and so much better than dreadful proprietary options, and as a less technical art and design nerd, I can tell you it still really needs UX polish and attention to usability (like more graphical ways of doing things), and those are things that impact the kinds of folks who don't use linux and have been standard on windows and Mac for a long time.

It's both, but I do wish technical folks could see the things that less technical new users get hung up on, because that stuff is REALLY important for linux to keep improving if we want more and more adoption

Thats one of the reasons I'm so excited for it to be gaining steam (hah, Valve pun) with gamers, since volume of users that aren't sysadmins or pen testers is really important to those issues becoming visible to folks building linux and talking about where it needs to improve.

20 years ago, fixing easy stuff in Linux was a matter of Google searching, finding it, then copy pasting what you needed to do from the browser into a terminal.

Since the beginning, the difference between a problem in Windows and a problem in Linux is that the problem in Windows can (and often does) hit a dead end - proprietary wall, it's broke and you just have to live with it. In Linux (more generally: free open source software) it may be broke, but the fix is always possible, if you're willing to put in the necessary work.

With AI reducing the effort necessary to do this kind of work, rather dramatically, I expect Linux and FOSS in general to be getting a bit of a boost. Not taking over the world, 2030 still won't be the year of the Linux desktop, but... the ability to scratch all the itches is more valuable today than it was a year ago.

I guess I get paid a lot more than that... I do it for work.

Back in Houston the badges read "HO" - the badge wearers said "we do it for money."

How would an operating system even cater to a country? Is there a distinctly American way to access files

Windows Explorer opens a zip like a folder, Nautilus extracts it but has no feedback that it does so. You just have to notice. If you have another extractor installed then it will open in that program.

Opening a zip file with nautilus looks like this btw The window you see behind the zip file one is how nautilus look like for normal folders

Webapps are not software