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Windows is not free as in freedom (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by trespasser69 to c/technology

83 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Fuck Micro$oft

It's time to switch to Linux! Because it's free as in freedom.

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[+] [email protected] -20 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (5 children)

Aye so you can spend your Free™ time getting stuff to work aye sounds great mate

Edit - ha ha Linux users ITT

"Sudo reinstall mouse driver so I can downvote this guy's comment come onnnnnn!!!"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, like the constant driver issues. I had to reinstall the OS and it wouldn't even recognize my hard drive, just told me there's no drive.

Or when it refused to use my dedicated Nvidia GPU and only used the integrated one.

Or when my sound stopped working all of a sudden.

Oh, right, those were all Windows!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yes, but didn't you appreciate the targeted ads you were getting while trying to troubleshoot? Think about all of the trash you won't know about if you use anything other than Mac(i)OS/Windows!?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Heh, they didn't really stand a chance, I block them on network level, device level and I also used some software to block all the annoying shit on Windows itself (OO Shut Up or something like that). But the huge empty spaces where something was very obviously missing told me pretty exactly where I would see the ads.

[–] TheGrandNagus 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

People always say this as if you don't spend time doing stuff on Windows.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I use Linux specifically because it saves me all the time it takes trying to get things to work properly in Windows. Printers, USB drives, multiple hard drives, encrypted volumes - all of these give me less trouble in Linux than in Windows. And when it comes to software, the usual experience in Windows is to click on the icon and then wait around a minute or two to see whether it registered, then go and check the Task Manager, kill the process if necessary and try relaunching, etc. On Linux you click the icon and the program pops up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I just unplugged my SO's PC to clean it and reconnected everything, and during startup, it spammed me w/ endless popups saying it "recognized X device" or whatever (it's all the same equipment...). I just wanted to make sure the network was back up, but it kept covering the little popup window where the wifi settings were. I've never had this issue on Linux, on startup, things just work, no stupid popups telling me about it.

I haven't done any encrypted volumes on Windows, but the rest have been about the same on Linux vs Windows. I had to install a driver for my Brother printer on Linux, but other than that, everything is smooth, just plug it in and it'll probably just work (and Windows will "detect drivers" or whatever and spam popups to tell you about it).

So yeah, Linux just works for me, whereas Windows seems to constantly want attention. Both work fine, Linux is just less annoying.

[–] TheTechnician27 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Okay, anyone who's saying this either tinkers way the hell too much without the know-how to back it up, has never used Linux for more than a week, or should probably be using this as their daily driver.

Software is, in the vast majority of cases, obtainable through a GUI package manager, versus going out onto the Internet and finding whatever you trust to give you a valid version of the software. Software is updated all at once and without even being forced to reboot (save for some niche cases). With two (2) clicks and one (1) password, every single piece of software on the OS is up-to-date. It's like a half-step up from an app store in difficulty.
I have never once in two(?) years using Linux had to fuck around with software drivers. Whereas trying to connect game controllers to Windows was a fucking nightmare, and it feels like I would have to go mucking around with audio drivers every time Windows decided my headset didn't want to work anymore.
Windows 10 has, at least once, completely shit the bed to a point where I spent most of my day trying to get my desktop working again. Zero catastrophic issues with Linux.
Windows 10 placed itself into a state where it couldn't update at all because Microsoft fucked up and pushed an update that enlarges the recovery partition without regard to the users whose recovery partition is bordered on the right and can't be enlarged.
Linux's install is extremely fast and trivial, whereas Windows' is full of dark patterns, makes you sign up for a worthless account just to use your desktop (lol), and can be completely fucked if you replace too much hardware in your own PC.
The shell experience if you actually do need to get some kind of even light power user work done is way less intuitive than Linux.
Customizing Windows is the biggest pain in the ass imaginable. I had to go into the registry on Windows 11 just to give me the basic tools present on Windows 10's context menu. Go try to uninstall Internet Explorer. Go ahead, I dare you.
Whereas Linux has extensive, crystal clear, and highly specific guides for basically any problem you'll ever fall into (see: the Arch Wiki), Windows has support forums where you pray someone has the same issue as you, and if you find it, 90% of the time it's a canned response with fuck-all to do with the issue, terminating the thread. So then you go searching your issue appended with the term "reddit".

I use Manjaro KDE with Wayland on an Nvidia GPU, and it works right out the box. I then have maybe half an hour's worth of personal customizations which are not at all necessary to use. Something like Linux Mint is what I would recommend to my grandparents any day of the week over Windows.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Controversial opinion, if you enjoy Windows and want your software to work like Windows just use Windows (shocking)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

I've had far more problems on Windows than Linux. For example:

SOs computer marked the GPU driver as disabled?? WTF? I thought her monitor died...
SO's computer audio was messed up, and it took me an hour of fiddling to get it working (probably more AMD's fault than anything)
had to manually download drivers for a variety of stuff...

And this is just since I upgraded my SO's PC a couple years ago.

Here's a similar process for my Linux PC:

all HW recognized OOTB - I ended up swapping my WiFi card to something better, and it worked OOTB

That's it, everything just works. I sometimes need to fiddle w/ audio settings, but that's because I have three audio outputs (headphones, and both monitors), and it understandably gets confused, but switching takes like 10s. That's it. Oh, and I run openSUSE Tumbleweed, a rolling-release OS, and I've had fewer problems in the 5-ish years I've used it (and upgraded HW in between) than my SO has w/ Windows.

So yeah, don't know what to tell ya, Linux has pissed me off way less than Windows.