I'm using Windows 10. In the past year I've tried: Manjaro, Fedora, Linux Mint and some others.
Why I'm not switching?
Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix.
After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution.
"Well, you know, you could just SUDO this, or SUDO that."
Yeah. I know. But I don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that.
I want a operating system that just works.
I installed Windows 10, took 10 minutes, everything works great.
I was at my parents,and wanted to sketch out something for my dad. So I grabbed my mom's win10 laptop, went to the blender download location, downloaded, double clicked, got a popup about updates. Whatever, not my computer, not my problem. double click again. Again with the popup. Read it carefully this time. WTF? I NEED to update their store to install a third party package?
Not my computer, not my mandate.
It looked like I could install the stores' version, but of course, its not up to date. Then some more bullshit about updating.
I shut it down and went for paper and pencil.
Yeah. I know. You don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that. But I want a operating system that does what I tell it to do.
I was attending my client conference when the invited speaker had his windows machine update right in the middle of his powerpoint presentation ! The whole room had to wait about 15 minutes for windows to finish its "important update".
(Of course he probably should have done it before and certainly ignored previous warnings. But it doesn't matter : the whole room of executive was wasting 15 minutes watching the speaker being angry at his machine)
A lot of these sorts of issues tend to spring up around specific hardware.
Point in case, proprietary drivers for Broadcom wifi/bluetooth and Nvidia GPUs. I had a problem where every N rounds of updates, Fedora would just eat the Broadcom drivers and I'd get stuck tethering from my phone over USB to fix it. Similar things happened albeit much less frequently with the Nvidia drivers on various distros.
Of course the best "solution" for this is to use hardware supported well by the FOSS drivers; Intel wifi/Bluetooth, Intel/AMD graphics, etc. For desktops and a shrinking number of laptops that's an option, but people using machines with soldered components are just stuck with a crappy experience and are probably better off running Windows/macOS.
Weird how different people have different experiences. I've had way more cases of random things breaking on Win 10 than on Linux Mint. Especially corporate Win 10 on my working machine is utterly horrible, just endless problems.
Same experience. I have one Linux box set up because of a project I'm working on that needs access to USB ports and doesn't work well in virtual environments.
It's just used to compile and test some software. But I do run the recommended updates (it's a Ubuntu desktop distro) and about once a week, something breaks. (X Server and monitor support are a frequent one.) This is a very standard Supermicro Mobo with Xeon CPU.
My Windows 10 machine is extremely reliable. I set it up about 2.5 years ago and I've never had to reinstall the OS, or fix display problems, or wonder why audio stopped working, etc.
Like others here I have the opposite experience: to such extend that I am actually installing Ubuntu instead of Windows10 on computers of friends who are not technical and they love that it works so well.
As others have said, it's funny how experiences differ. I have almost the same exact experience, only in reverse.
> After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution.
I have a 2560x1440 thunderbolt screen. For some reason, when if I let it go to sleep, it's very likely it won't wake up. Next, in order of probability is that it WILL wake up, but stuck at 1280x720. Sure, that's better than 800x600, at least it has the right format, but still. Display Preferences shows 1280x720 as the highest resolution. I can set it lower, though.
Then, even better, I have another screen, that does USB-C, with Display Port alternative mode. Everything works fine, at full resolution, all the way until the windows login screen. Here, it's extremely likely that the screen will go blank. In the rare event that it doesn't, as soon as I log in, the screen goes blank. I've tried reinstalling Windows from scratch, using the usb-c connection, no dice. The installer works, then on the last reboot, blank screen.
The computer in question is an HP EliteDesk with full Intel components, no exotic GPU or anything. Only "aftermarket" components are the RAM sticks.
Both screens work perfectly both on other computers and on the same computer under Linux (Arch), with no tweaking required.
I've had the opposite experience with windows lately -- start menu type to search randomly stops working and I have to restart, windows will do this weird thing where you have to rapidly click their dock icon to get them to show up or they minimize. The pre-windows-11 updates have been nothing but bugs for me.
On my Ubuntu Budgie desktop I have none of these problems. Sure I have to deal with the occasional linux challenge but nothing "buggy" stuff either works or it doesn't.
The first answer is great. That second answer is typical with every "how do I do anything in Linux" question. It's a chain of things I dread and I end up spending an hour because I forget to type "cd .scripts" and then get lost.
Copying and pasting a bunch of code also makes me wary. There's vague hardcoded stuff like 'Paste this in, and then change your mouse id from 11 to the number from the output of the "xinput list" command.'
Do you Linux users just apply random advice like that off the internets without seeing what every line means? Do you just sudo stuff because someone said so? Instead of a single possible security hole to check for by installing a thing, it's now multiple possible security holes to check on every line of code.
Worst of all, it probably doesn't do what I want it to do. I can't tell until I'm about half an hour into doing it. I just want to sort my windows neatly. This isn't worth it.
> Yeah. I know. But I don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that.
This is an exceptionally good point. I've NEVER, in my life, tried to either install something, update something or, even literally open a random localhost port from a development test suite in VS Code without having to click through a UAC authorization dialog sequence on Windows.
/s
(I know that HN encourages the assumption of good faith, but when a poster just straight up lies through their teeth about the on-the-ground reality of user authorization, it's really hard not to push the (obviously correct, hanlon's razor be damned) corporate shill angle. (sorry, dang))
1. Video games. Easily the biggest one. I don't want to have to potentially jump through hoops or be completely unable to play a game by chance every time I download a new game.
2. The subtle issues from various audio devices, mice, printers, GPU driver support, etc. Or just driver/hardware support in general.
3. Learning the equivalent (or worse) software for the various little things that need to get done like picture editing, video editing, editing doc/docx files, etc.
4. Attempting to fix issues leading to multi-page long support involving installing new software, editing configs, running cryptic commands, etc. (Not that Windows is much better, since most big issues seem to lead me to the suggestion of a fresh install. and there have been some issues caused by updates that I haven't been able to fix to this day.)
1. Krita is very good for picture editing
And id say more user friendly than photoshop
2. For video editing, Davinci Resolve is often more reputable and popular in studios than Adobe premiere
3. Editing docs tho , ye kinda sucks but you can use wine to run office suite , libreoffice exists but i get your point on that one
The rest are either equivalent or superior for almost every usecase scenario tho.
I know this will probably come across as trolling to most in your place, but I'm effectively in the same position as you, largely for the same list (yes including games), except in the reverse direction in terms of OS.
You're not wrong, but here's what I do because I think it's worth doing:
1. I keep a separate Windows machine for games. I never liked playing games and doing personal stuff on my workstations anyway.
2. For my workstations, I buy older refurbished towers, upgrade the RAM and SSD and everything just works. I've actually had more hardware issues on my Macs, with incompatible mice and keyboards, never on Linux. Example of one of my workstations - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FBSW5G6
Luckily for web/mobile dev, I don't need a dedicated GPU but my old Acer E5-575 laptop has a dedicated nVidia card and Manjaro has no problem running on that. There was one small flag that I had to enable to stop screen tearing.
3. I hardly had to learn anything new since I'm a minimalist and most of my software carried over. Thunderbird is there. VS Code is there. Instead of Paint.net I use a fork called Pinta, (but it is slightly lower quality than Paint.net but luckily again as a full stack guy, I don't have to do much with it). Plenty of options to edit doc/docx like Libre office, Google docs or Office 365... but this is not something I really ever have to do. The only thing I've never done on Linux really is video editing, but that was never great on Windows either - the best video editing experience I've had was on my iPad.
4. I've been using Linux since around RedHat 3 or 4 and I didn't switch to a Linux desktop until about 3 years ago, because I've always had problems keeping a Linux desktop running... until I switched to a rolling release. With Manjaro, I have had zero issues getting all the most recent software versions that I want. In the past, with Ubuntu, I'd have to add so many third party repos that eventually an update from one of them would make my machine unbootable. Never happened once with Manjaro. One time an update broke some fonts, but I downgraded the package and locked it from receiving updates until the problem was fixed.
Honestly, I have to do non-trivial setup for any desktop OS that I run because I'm a picky minimalist.
Anyway, the best part of switching to a Linux desktop for me was the speed and ease of using things like Docker and all the other CLI stuff that I normally do on my servers. Doing things with Node.js/npm/yarn is super fast compared to Windows. There is no split-brain between my development environment and the server because it's the same OS.
The trackpad experience on MacBooks is unbeatable. Another comment here on HN described it as the trackpad completely disappearing from your mind. You don't have to fight it at all. You don't even think about it anymore. The cursor just becomes a natural extension of your hand.
Also, as a person working with PDF documents on a regular basis, I don't know of any application that can beat the feature set and UX of Preview.app.
These are the only two things keeping me back. If there were viable alternatives in the Linux ecosystem I'd switch in a heartbeat.
I've been using a Magic Trackpad 2 on my Linux desktop for a year now and it's great. Two finger scroll and right click works, but it also does three finger middle click which is super convenient for opening and closing tabs in Firefox - it's something I miss when I'm on macOS.
Inertial scrolling depends on the app, but Firefox implements it well and that takes care of 80% of it for me.
It's kind of crazy how long Preview.app has been one the best at what it does. I remember it being a minor revolution back in the early 2000s, running like butter compared to the clunky-even-then Adobe Reader and handily sweeping up a few different format viewers into one app.
It's been 20 years and still no other desktop environment ships with a true equivalent.
I'll always be a Linux enthusiast, but this is one of the key things that keeps me on macOS at least some of the time. To be honest I don't think there's a reason to nail your colours to the mast with any OS, there's no reason not to use two for different tasks. I juggle macOS, Linux, and to a lesser extent FreeBSD just fine, although the context switch is much more expensive adding Windows to the mix in my experience although I expect a lot of that is down to personal taste (I'm very set in my *nix ways).
> The trackpad experience on MacBooks is unbeatable
Only if you use it as your main OS. If you use a combination of Windows, Linux and MacOS, the latter's trackpad tends to do the opposite of what you expect. the first thing I do is change the vertical scroll direction so it behaves like the others.
My Pixelbook has a better trackpad experience than my M1 Macbook and it runs on Linux (ChromeOS).
The big problem is a lack of investment by either Linux or Windows. It's such a huge quality of life improvement that I really don't understand why there's not more focus.
The real downer on Linux for me (chromebook aside) is that it's hard to get good laptop battery life and even with all the tweaks, it generally still isn't as good as my macbook.
I'd give KDE and Okular a look. There are some rough edges, but I find myself missing it when I'm on my mac.
All my desktops run Linux though as it's a beast there.
I recently upgraded from Debian 10 to 11 on my Thinkpad T490 and there are noticeable trackpad improvements. Maybe it reset my settings or maybe there are driver improvements, I’m not 100% sure. Either way the default out of the box experience is faster and snappier.
Still not on the same level as MacBooks though. But it is making progress.
My Lenovo Flex 5 with Fedora 34 (GNOME) has an incredibly smooth trackpad experience. Also, GNOME sushi is a useful preview.app alternative, maybe not on the same level, but you should try it. I used Xfce before getting my new laptop, but on newish hardware, GNOME is great.
For me, it’s the lack of polish and full corporate productivity suite.
There are _zero_ effective replacements for a multitude of things I need, although I would be perfectly happy with a fully standard implementation of Remote Desktop (and no, Remmina still lacks the authentication and virtual desktop workspace support I need). Edge and Teams betas are coming close to providing around half of what I need, but not all there yet (I work at Microsoft).
However, all my personal stuff (mail, photos, music) still lives on a Mac, and I don’t see that changing as for “civilians” (as a friend puts it), the lack of even half-baked e-mail and calendaring, let alone the kind of creature comforts you get from the Mac App Store (and the Windows one) make Linux a no-go unless they just want to browse Facebook and read webmail.
(Again, Elementary comes closest and flatpacks are _nearly_ there, but the core apps aren’t ready yet.)
Just in case you didn't know, since the SolarWinds debacle from last year, Microsoft has completely blocked authorisation for corpnet and other tools on anything other than enrolled devices. And since they only support managed devices on Windows/MacOS, using Linux for day job is a no go. Last I checked, circa Jan, I couldn't use Teams/Office on a web browser in Linux (of course, this might have changed in the meantime).
Lack of proper remote desktop and a subpar experience with substitutes is what does it for me. My home network is full of Windows machines, and it's simply easier to be on the same ecosystem.
I have a Linux VM for dev work where Windows won't do (certain Ruby gems for example)
I would like to, but just always put off by various small things. I like the UIs available in linux and the free and open software. But often there is a difficulty, a nag, an issue to solve. And things don’t fit together, it’s lack synergy between its components. Hardware support is another difficulty- track pads like others said.
Tbh, I am looking to upgrade my laptop, and was thinking of going pure linux, but all these things are making me reconsider. I don’t want to buy a nice piece of hardware and then struggle to use it because of software compatibility. Yes I know there are Linux only systems with dedicated hardware, but tbh the hardware (system76 etc) isn’t as good as other options (that I can tell), and it locks me to linux. And yes, there are linux/windows laptops like x1 and xps, but I don’t want to buy Lenovo and I’ve had bad experiences with dell. So, I’ll probably end up going Apple and donating to some linux alternative to help forgive my sin of giving in.
Too confusing for me. Too many different distros. Too many different DEs. Too many different package systems.
Just look at this https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Comparison_of_desktop_envir... And this one distro doesn't even cover the package systems that differs between distros and other distros based on those (see how Ubuntu is based on Debian but there are distros based on Ubuntu, it's like the Inception). Of course some of these doesn't matter on a huge scale but analysis paralysis is real. And stone me for that but I really don't believe the more choice is better. Or leads to better things in this case. Like imagine if people would work together to have _one_ better distro instead of having... hundreds or thousands of different one.
I have to use Linux for some projects in VM but that's more than enough for me.
Switching OS incurs costs. The benefits must outweigh the costs. I'm a great fan of the principles and philosophies of Linux, but if I'm to use it as my daily driver, it has to be above all else a practical solution. There's so much weird shit involved with Linux that the costs outweigh the benefits.
Weird shit like, Linux refusing to let me copy files on an external hard drive because "I'm not the owner" of those files. What the hell? I've owned these files for 20 fucking years. Linux telling me I don't have permission to access my own files. GTFO.
Another big issue is lack of software. The alternatives just don't measure up. Graphics and audio editors are garbage. Gimp ain't Photoshop. A similar issue used to be games, but Valve's been fixing that very rapidly.
And then there's the analysis paralysis of too much choice. What distro do I go for? There are over 500 distros actively maintained. You'd need to study this for years to choose well. I ain't got years to switch, I need to work now.
It's primarily because I want things to consistently work as expected. Sure, macOS doesn't always work as expected, but compared to my experiences with various Linux distros, it does.
Others have mentioned the trackpad experience, and that's a thing, but not a deal breaker for me since I use the keyboard a lot.
Hardware quality is another issue, more important than the trackpad for me. MacBooks are built like tanks compared to most other laptops, and it's not difficult to keep one running well for 8+ years. In fact, I have a 2013 MacBook Air and a 2015 MacBook Pro, both of which are running as well as ever.
I have, for years now. Coming from a former all Windows (and a couple years on an MBP) user, it's perfectly fine. I have a dual boot, so whenever I need windows, I can use it, but it's becoming less and less frequent. Nowadays it's usually only for games.
Reading through this thread though, I'm baffled by some of these issues. I have been using the latest Ubuntu release for the past several years, on a variety of machines (T440s, 2 self-built desktops, a Lenovo Legion) and haven't experienced any problems to the degree others have mentioned. Out of the box support across Intel, AMD cpus, no graphics issues, nothing with scaling or extra monitors, never, on any machine. I did notice one problem when I updated to Ubuntu 20 about six months ago that my left Gsync monitor was acting weird, but I just disabled gsync and it runs perfectly fine. That's it in the past 5 years of using Linux as daily driver.
I work as a software engineer full time so maybe I just don't notice "issues"? As the old saying goes, it works fine on my machine(s).
I just switched from macOS to PureOS running on a purism Librem 14 about a month ago. Overall, it's pretty good and I'm happy with it. It really is the kind of computer I've dreamt of since the early 2000's. All black, no logos, aluminum case. The ports I need and nothing more. The right size and weight. And privacy first.
As other have mentioned here, the trackpad experience on macOS is literally an extension of your body it's that good, so it's hard to compete. It really is pretty incredible that my 10 year old macbook air trackpad is still technologically superior to literally every trackpad in existence that isn't from apple. From the glass surface, to non-linear scrolling of screen lines per trackpad distance traveled, to inertial scrolling, to two finger swipe for back and forward, to pinch and twist to adjust Preview'ed files. It goes on...
Beyond the trackpad, the battery life is iffy and wake from suspend still somehow doesn't work perfectly every time are my only complaints. Of course it took a few weeks of getting things configured to how I like it, but I feel set now. I also only really browse the internet and watch movies. I don't code or do strenuous video, image, or audio editing. Oh, and the audio is terrible compared to apple laptops, which again Apple somehow is incredible at.
The big issue for me is privacy and ownership of my hardware. I will put up with all these small issues to truly own my computer. Most don't care, which is sad, but it's a common discussion point here which I won't get into.
Because the desktop experience is bad and I can get everything I need from the CLI in WSL on Windows or from the terminal in MacOS. And I try not to be a martyr for politics in my choice of tools. If all else was roughly equal, I would prefer FOSS, but it's not and the sooner the FOSS community realizes a license isn't a feature the sooner we will have that world.
1. Cohesiveness - there are many things Linux does excellently if done independently. But, when you want a cohesive experience to achieve a good user experience, it falls flat in its face.
Examples:
Have an excellent file system? Check. ZFS, ext4 and plenty more.
May I expect a simple equivalent of a GUI file explorer in the class of Windows Explorer or Finder? Nope. There is not even thumbnail previews if images in the default views. Sure, there will be some commenter that will prove me wrong by saying “if you choose this district and combine it with this particular program I found and follow on GitHub, and simply run this command, it will all obviously work”. But, that only proves my point. I don’t have the time or the interest to do that. I applaud Linux for its powers in the server ecosystem, and use a cohesive yet restrictive Mac or Windows for the Desktop.
2. Battery life. Of course there is “laptop projects” and a plethora of scripts I can run to make Linux consume less power on a laptop, but the default option will just be poor in comparison with Mac and Windows because of their focus. Linux being powerful is actually at odds with the goal here.
3. Reliability around on/off/on/off/suspend operations like that of a laptop. I expect my Mac to wake up instantly and allow me to pick up work from wherever I left it. I reboot on my terms about once every couple of weeks when I am off work and relaxing. With Linux, it may work, but also not. Updates of packages break each other more often taking my productive time to fix things back in place. That anxiety is simply not worth it IMO.
In my opinion, being a good DesktopOS needs a authoritative and opinionated ecosystem so as to achieve that cohesion at least at the base system level. Unfortunately Linux does not target that. There have been attempts at it from PopOS, ElementaryOS etc, but they haven’t hit the mark yet as they too lose their focus quickly and try to do it all, and add yet another option in an already fragmented toolset. Example: ElementaryOS brought Vala as a language to write apps. Of course their apps are good, but the rest of the apps needed dont look or behave like the ones they made :-(
On my “hobby” workstation, I use Linux and enjoy it because I don’t have the anxiety about losing it at critical times. I simply have my /home backed up throughly and don’t care if the OS gets borked. I can always reinstall and bring my /home. Can’t live with such a setup on work PC.
There aren't any major showstopper faults any more. But everything is a little bit off and I'm not willing to spend the hours required to customise everything to my liking.
Also if I find a nice piece of software, it might just die because it doesn't have a business model, just 1-2 enthusiastic developers who may or may not suddenly burn out.
Generally unpolished quirkiness that requires time and attention to resolve. For example, in ten years of using Linux at work I've never experienced tear-free browser scrolling despite hours of fussing with X11 and compositor settings or graphics drivers. Or how my default file associations change unbidden all the time, frequently to poor choices like GIMP to open a JPEG. And more recently Internet Explorer through WINE for no clear reason.
I try every two years or so to daily drive Linux on my personal desktop. Between these kinds of rough edges and running CAD tools, I inevitably eventually go back to Windows no matter how much I enjoy my terminal emulator options in Linux.
I ran Linux as my daily driver OS from 1995 to 2004. I learned a lot along the way, but I was always fixing something, vs you know, actually working. I ran FreeBSD as my daily driver in 2005 and part of 2006. To me, it was more thought out, consistent and documented vs a random mishmash of components like Linux at the time. The problem with both is that a number of apps I needed didn’t run in either and the open source alternatives sucked in comparison. In 2006 I switched full time to MacOS and have not regretted it. I’ll give some reasons that are in addition to what I’ve seen mentioned so far:
- HDPI displays work fantastic and have for a long time
- hardware is generally well supported of all types. Installing a printer is trivial and doesn’t mean adding a metric ton of crapware like on Windows of past.
- I get a close enough Unix environment that I feel at home in the terminal. Maybe it’s my prior background with *BSD (Free and Open BSD) that helped so I wasn’t as attached to GNU flags on commands, so YMMV.
- app ecosystem exists for almost everything I need natively. The few examples that don’t (SolidWorks and some FPGA toolchains) are trivial to run in a VM (they also don’t run on Linux natively either).
- Several apps available only on MacOS are best in class (at least for my needs, but generally considered great anyway by all)
- I could buy the latest Apple machines (which is best in class in my opinion, at least for the things I care about) and it always worked out of the box with my OS of choice. If you agree that Apple hardware is great, but prefer Linux, you will consistently be a third class citizen hoping somebody is able to write a say graphics driver for the M1 while you sit using older inferior hardware. Yes, you can get decent hardware that has official manufacturer support for Linux, but it’s inferior to Apple hardware in ways I care about (Trackpad as one obvious example).
1. Lack of good mobile hardware. ThinkPads used to be good, but sadly more than a decade ago they switched to 16:9 screens. Macbooks were 16:10. This was and still is an absolute dealbreaker for me. Fortunately, ThinkPads started bringing 16:10 back (but see below). There were a few non-16:9 PC laptops on the market, like the Microsoft Surface or some Dell XPS models. Absolute junk.
2. Even though we started to have 16:10 ThinkPads again, it doesn't matter, because Linux doesn't support non-integer display scaling factors well and these new screens come with dumb resolutions that would require a non-integer scaling factor. And the screens are crap compared to macBook screens still.
3. AMD ThinkPads only have crappy screens compared to their Intel counterparts. There exist Intel ThinkPads with Intel (non-Nvidia) GPUs that I would consider for buying, but they are unobtainium. They are either only sold to select countries, or require some kind of commercial agreement to buy.
4. When I used unix systems in the 90s and early 2000s the unix GUIs were better than the commercial counterparts. Now this situation is reversed. Gnome 3 is 10 years old now and I still have no idea how it works.
5. I used to use unusual window managers like fvwm and windowmaker. As things have become more and more integrated with the GUI, and as "popular" distributions like Ubuntu have taken the responsability of integrating everything in the GUI, it has become unfeasible for me to do the integration myself, so I'm stuck with crap software like Gnome 3, which I do not want.
6. RawTherapee and Darktable are usability nightmares compared to Capture One. Plus, what would I do with my C1 sessions anyway?
7. I use an iPhone and make heavy use of the integration between iOS and macOS. Specifically things like iMessages, Photos.app and Facetime. I can't do any of that on Linux.
8. Ubuntu is doing things I don't want (e.g. Snap) while Debian refuses to package useful software. if you think that niche Linux distributions like NixOS solve anything you are part of the problem.
People like to talk about "year of the Linux desktop", but I've been using Linux on the desktop in the 90s, and let me tell you it's been only downhill since.
I have a laptop that dual-boots into Linux Mint. I haven't logged into the Linux side for ages.
I like the Linux command line, but I get what I need via Git Bash for Windows. Also there's Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Windows generally has better compatibility with hardware with less fuss. Especially on laptops. My friend tried to use Linux-only for a while, but he said trying to video conference just sucked. Sure, there might be some programs that work, but often the client dictates the video conference platform, and he simply couldn't do anything but tell clients he couldn't video conference. So he switched to Mac, which is like Linux with better multimedia support.
Finally, I'm just more used to Windows. And I personally don't have a big incentive to switch.
There are two Linux things I wish I could have on Windows:
Because I’m not a masochist. I use ubuntu for work, some issues I’ve encountered:
* No sleep mode by default
* Snap is cancer. When I’m sent a pdf, I cant open it directly because the current app is isolated and cant see that a pdf reader is installed. Same with all other app specific extensions.
* Snap, again. Whenever I’m sent a file on Skype, I have to reboot; It overrides my $home directory and I cant open or access anything elsewhere.
* Why do links sometimes keep opening in firefox? I dont have it installed, did a full scan and cant find where it comes from. Yeah Microsoft is pushy about Edge, but at least it respects your settings when you do change them.
* There’s a memory leak somewhere, I have to reboot every week. Probably that’s why sleep is disabled…
* spotify sometimes can no longer find an output device and everything gets muted (might be an app issue, but I haven’t encountered it on other platforms so ubuntu gets the blame)
* When disconnecting external displays, the pointer still “sees” them and disappears into oblivion. Also it doesn’t work for half the screen.
* With external displays, I sometimes have to log in twice
For personal devices, I just want reasonable defaults so I dont have to tinker with them
1. The Handbook. I get the distinct feeling from most Linux distributions that they’re trying to do things for me. FreeBSD, in contrast, is trying to teach me how to do things.
2. Lower churn. I enjoy finding manuals from the 90s that are still relevant to how my system does things.
3. Simpler system. Feels less magical, like I have a chance at groking the system in front of me. The installer includes sources. Building from source is a Makefile. I’ve found myself reading the source code as a frequent first step before a web search since switching to FreeBSD.
[+] [-] captainmisery|4 years ago|reply
Why I'm not switching? Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix.
After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution.
"Well, you know, you could just SUDO this, or SUDO that."
Yeah. I know. But I don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that. I want a operating system that just works.
I installed Windows 10, took 10 minutes, everything works great.
[+] [-] Alan_Dillman|4 years ago|reply
I was at my parents,and wanted to sketch out something for my dad. So I grabbed my mom's win10 laptop, went to the blender download location, downloaded, double clicked, got a popup about updates. Whatever, not my computer, not my problem. double click again. Again with the popup. Read it carefully this time. WTF? I NEED to update their store to install a third party package?
Not my computer, not my mandate.
It looked like I could install the stores' version, but of course, its not up to date. Then some more bullshit about updating.
I shut it down and went for paper and pencil.
Yeah. I know. You don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that. But I want a operating system that does what I tell it to do.
[+] [-] mlok|4 years ago|reply
(Of course he probably should have done it before and certainly ignored previous warnings. But it doesn't matter : the whole room of executive was wasting 15 minutes watching the speaker being angry at his machine)
To my knowledge, Linux would not do such a thing.
[+] [-] kitsunesoba|4 years ago|reply
Point in case, proprietary drivers for Broadcom wifi/bluetooth and Nvidia GPUs. I had a problem where every N rounds of updates, Fedora would just eat the Broadcom drivers and I'd get stuck tethering from my phone over USB to fix it. Similar things happened albeit much less frequently with the Nvidia drivers on various distros.
Of course the best "solution" for this is to use hardware supported well by the FOSS drivers; Intel wifi/Bluetooth, Intel/AMD graphics, etc. For desktops and a shrinking number of laptops that's an option, but people using machines with soldered components are just stuck with a crappy experience and are probably better off running Windows/macOS.
[+] [-] gjhh244|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fortran77|4 years ago|reply
It's just used to compile and test some software. But I do run the recommended updates (it's a Ubuntu desktop distro) and about once a week, something breaks. (X Server and monitor support are a frequent one.) This is a very standard Supermicro Mobo with Xeon CPU.
My Windows 10 machine is extremely reliable. I set it up about 2.5 years ago and I've never had to reinstall the OS, or fix display problems, or wonder why audio stopped working, etc.
[+] [-] tluyben2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vladvasiliu|4 years ago|reply
> After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution.
I have a 2560x1440 thunderbolt screen. For some reason, when if I let it go to sleep, it's very likely it won't wake up. Next, in order of probability is that it WILL wake up, but stuck at 1280x720. Sure, that's better than 800x600, at least it has the right format, but still. Display Preferences shows 1280x720 as the highest resolution. I can set it lower, though.
Then, even better, I have another screen, that does USB-C, with Display Port alternative mode. Everything works fine, at full resolution, all the way until the windows login screen. Here, it's extremely likely that the screen will go blank. In the rare event that it doesn't, as soon as I log in, the screen goes blank. I've tried reinstalling Windows from scratch, using the usb-c connection, no dice. The installer works, then on the last reboot, blank screen.
The computer in question is an HP EliteDesk with full Intel components, no exotic GPU or anything. Only "aftermarket" components are the RAM sticks.
Both screens work perfectly both on other computers and on the same computer under Linux (Arch), with no tweaking required.
[+] [-] sam0x17|4 years ago|reply
On my Ubuntu Budgie desktop I have none of these problems. Sure I have to deal with the occasional linux challenge but nothing "buggy" stuff either works or it doesn't.
[+] [-] muzani|4 years ago|reply
Linux, well, I do a search for it, and get this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/26346/how-to-use-window-snap...
The first answer is great. That second answer is typical with every "how do I do anything in Linux" question. It's a chain of things I dread and I end up spending an hour because I forget to type "cd .scripts" and then get lost.
Copying and pasting a bunch of code also makes me wary. There's vague hardcoded stuff like 'Paste this in, and then change your mouse id from 11 to the number from the output of the "xinput list" command.'
Do you Linux users just apply random advice like that off the internets without seeing what every line means? Do you just sudo stuff because someone said so? Instead of a single possible security hole to check for by installing a thing, it's now multiple possible security holes to check on every line of code.
Worst of all, it probably doesn't do what I want it to do. I can't tell until I'm about half an hour into doing it. I just want to sort my windows neatly. This isn't worth it.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kazinator|4 years ago|reply
You mean every time you log into Windows 10, there is something to update, so you don't have time to switch?
[+] [-] caeril|4 years ago|reply
This is an exceptionally good point. I've NEVER, in my life, tried to either install something, update something or, even literally open a random localhost port from a development test suite in VS Code without having to click through a UAC authorization dialog sequence on Windows.
/s
(I know that HN encourages the assumption of good faith, but when a poster just straight up lies through their teeth about the on-the-ground reality of user authorization, it's really hard not to push the (obviously correct, hanlon's razor be damned) corporate shill angle. (sorry, dang))
[+] [-] simion314|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OrgNet|4 years ago|reply
You can't be serious that the updates aren't worst in Windows... I finally got my 80yo dad to Linux because of them being ridiculous in Windows.
[+] [-] xboxnolifes|4 years ago|reply
2. The subtle issues from various audio devices, mice, printers, GPU driver support, etc. Or just driver/hardware support in general.
3. Learning the equivalent (or worse) software for the various little things that need to get done like picture editing, video editing, editing doc/docx files, etc.
4. Attempting to fix issues leading to multi-page long support involving installing new software, editing configs, running cryptic commands, etc. (Not that Windows is much better, since most big issues seem to lead me to the suggestion of a fresh install. and there have been some issues caused by updates that I haven't been able to fix to this day.)
[+] [-] rcarmo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teitoklien|4 years ago|reply
1. Krita is very good for picture editing And id say more user friendly than photoshop 2. For video editing, Davinci Resolve is often more reputable and popular in studios than Adobe premiere 3. Editing docs tho , ye kinda sucks but you can use wine to run office suite , libreoffice exists but i get your point on that one
The rest are either equivalent or superior for almost every usecase scenario tho.
[+] [-] tpoacher|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wayneftw|4 years ago|reply
1. I keep a separate Windows machine for games. I never liked playing games and doing personal stuff on my workstations anyway.
2. For my workstations, I buy older refurbished towers, upgrade the RAM and SSD and everything just works. I've actually had more hardware issues on my Macs, with incompatible mice and keyboards, never on Linux. Example of one of my workstations - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FBSW5G6
Luckily for web/mobile dev, I don't need a dedicated GPU but my old Acer E5-575 laptop has a dedicated nVidia card and Manjaro has no problem running on that. There was one small flag that I had to enable to stop screen tearing.
3. I hardly had to learn anything new since I'm a minimalist and most of my software carried over. Thunderbird is there. VS Code is there. Instead of Paint.net I use a fork called Pinta, (but it is slightly lower quality than Paint.net but luckily again as a full stack guy, I don't have to do much with it). Plenty of options to edit doc/docx like Libre office, Google docs or Office 365... but this is not something I really ever have to do. The only thing I've never done on Linux really is video editing, but that was never great on Windows either - the best video editing experience I've had was on my iPad.
4. I've been using Linux since around RedHat 3 or 4 and I didn't switch to a Linux desktop until about 3 years ago, because I've always had problems keeping a Linux desktop running... until I switched to a rolling release. With Manjaro, I have had zero issues getting all the most recent software versions that I want. In the past, with Ubuntu, I'd have to add so many third party repos that eventually an update from one of them would make my machine unbootable. Never happened once with Manjaro. One time an update broke some fonts, but I downgraded the package and locked it from receiving updates until the problem was fixed.
Honestly, I have to do non-trivial setup for any desktop OS that I run because I'm a picky minimalist.
Anyway, the best part of switching to a Linux desktop for me was the speed and ease of using things like Docker and all the other CLI stuff that I normally do on my servers. Doing things with Node.js/npm/yarn is super fast compared to Windows. There is no split-brain between my development environment and the server because it's the same OS.
[+] [-] karmakaze|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-starcraft-2-on-ubuntu...
[+] [-] dschuessler|4 years ago|reply
Also, as a person working with PDF documents on a regular basis, I don't know of any application that can beat the feature set and UX of Preview.app.
These are the only two things keeping me back. If there were viable alternatives in the Linux ecosystem I'd switch in a heartbeat.
[+] [-] haileys|4 years ago|reply
Inertial scrolling depends on the app, but Firefox implements it well and that takes care of 80% of it for me.
[+] [-] kitsunesoba|4 years ago|reply
It's been 20 years and still no other desktop environment ships with a true equivalent.
[+] [-] BoxOfRain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ASalazarMX|4 years ago|reply
Only if you use it as your main OS. If you use a combination of Windows, Linux and MacOS, the latter's trackpad tends to do the opposite of what you expect. the first thing I do is change the vertical scroll direction so it behaves like the others.
[+] [-] hajile|4 years ago|reply
My Pixelbook has a better trackpad experience than my M1 Macbook and it runs on Linux (ChromeOS).
The big problem is a lack of investment by either Linux or Windows. It's such a huge quality of life improvement that I really don't understand why there's not more focus.
The real downer on Linux for me (chromebook aside) is that it's hard to get good laptop battery life and even with all the tweaks, it generally still isn't as good as my macbook.
I'd give KDE and Okular a look. There are some rough edges, but I find myself missing it when I'm on my mac.
All my desktops run Linux though as it's a beast there.
[+] [-] SamuelAdams|4 years ago|reply
Still not on the same level as MacBooks though. But it is making progress.
[+] [-] luke2m|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsflover|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miguel-muniz|4 years ago|reply
Like they couldn't have built in a PDF reader/editor?
[+] [-] rcarmo|4 years ago|reply
There are _zero_ effective replacements for a multitude of things I need, although I would be perfectly happy with a fully standard implementation of Remote Desktop (and no, Remmina still lacks the authentication and virtual desktop workspace support I need). Edge and Teams betas are coming close to providing around half of what I need, but not all there yet (I work at Microsoft).
I am, however, pretty happy with Linux for personal use and development work - I even bought a new laptop exclusively for it: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400
I am running Elementary on it, which is (by far) the best distro for my needs (and habits): https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/16/1200
However, all my personal stuff (mail, photos, music) still lives on a Mac, and I don’t see that changing as for “civilians” (as a friend puts it), the lack of even half-baked e-mail and calendaring, let alone the kind of creature comforts you get from the Mac App Store (and the Windows one) make Linux a no-go unless they just want to browse Facebook and read webmail.
(Again, Elementary comes closest and flatpacks are _nearly_ there, but the core apps aren’t ready yet.)
[+] [-] krut-patel|4 years ago|reply
Just in case you didn't know, since the SolarWinds debacle from last year, Microsoft has completely blocked authorisation for corpnet and other tools on anything other than enrolled devices. And since they only support managed devices on Windows/MacOS, using Linux for day job is a no go. Last I checked, circa Jan, I couldn't use Teams/Office on a web browser in Linux (of course, this might have changed in the meantime).
[+] [-] spikej|4 years ago|reply
I have a Linux VM for dev work where Windows won't do (certain Ruby gems for example)
[+] [-] Engineering-MD|4 years ago|reply
Tbh, I am looking to upgrade my laptop, and was thinking of going pure linux, but all these things are making me reconsider. I don’t want to buy a nice piece of hardware and then struggle to use it because of software compatibility. Yes I know there are Linux only systems with dedicated hardware, but tbh the hardware (system76 etc) isn’t as good as other options (that I can tell), and it locks me to linux. And yes, there are linux/windows laptops like x1 and xps, but I don’t want to buy Lenovo and I’ve had bad experiences with dell. So, I’ll probably end up going Apple and donating to some linux alternative to help forgive my sin of giving in.
[+] [-] haunter|4 years ago|reply
Just look at this https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Comparison_of_desktop_envir... And this one distro doesn't even cover the package systems that differs between distros and other distros based on those (see how Ubuntu is based on Debian but there are distros based on Ubuntu, it's like the Inception). Of course some of these doesn't matter on a huge scale but analysis paralysis is real. And stone me for that but I really don't believe the more choice is better. Or leads to better things in this case. Like imagine if people would work together to have _one_ better distro instead of having... hundreds or thousands of different one.
I have to use Linux for some projects in VM but that's more than enough for me.
[+] [-] hypertele-Xii|4 years ago|reply
Weird shit like, Linux refusing to let me copy files on an external hard drive because "I'm not the owner" of those files. What the hell? I've owned these files for 20 fucking years. Linux telling me I don't have permission to access my own files. GTFO.
Another big issue is lack of software. The alternatives just don't measure up. Graphics and audio editors are garbage. Gimp ain't Photoshop. A similar issue used to be games, but Valve's been fixing that very rapidly.
And then there's the analysis paralysis of too much choice. What distro do I go for? There are over 500 distros actively maintained. You'd need to study this for years to choose well. I ain't got years to switch, I need to work now.
[+] [-] auslegung|4 years ago|reply
Others have mentioned the trackpad experience, and that's a thing, but not a deal breaker for me since I use the keyboard a lot.
Hardware quality is another issue, more important than the trackpad for me. MacBooks are built like tanks compared to most other laptops, and it's not difficult to keep one running well for 8+ years. In fact, I have a 2013 MacBook Air and a 2015 MacBook Pro, both of which are running as well as ever.
[+] [-] fsn4dN69ey|4 years ago|reply
Reading through this thread though, I'm baffled by some of these issues. I have been using the latest Ubuntu release for the past several years, on a variety of machines (T440s, 2 self-built desktops, a Lenovo Legion) and haven't experienced any problems to the degree others have mentioned. Out of the box support across Intel, AMD cpus, no graphics issues, nothing with scaling or extra monitors, never, on any machine. I did notice one problem when I updated to Ubuntu 20 about six months ago that my left Gsync monitor was acting weird, but I just disabled gsync and it runs perfectly fine. That's it in the past 5 years of using Linux as daily driver.
I work as a software engineer full time so maybe I just don't notice "issues"? As the old saying goes, it works fine on my machine(s).
[+] [-] DrAwdeOccarim|4 years ago|reply
As other have mentioned here, the trackpad experience on macOS is literally an extension of your body it's that good, so it's hard to compete. It really is pretty incredible that my 10 year old macbook air trackpad is still technologically superior to literally every trackpad in existence that isn't from apple. From the glass surface, to non-linear scrolling of screen lines per trackpad distance traveled, to inertial scrolling, to two finger swipe for back and forward, to pinch and twist to adjust Preview'ed files. It goes on...
Beyond the trackpad, the battery life is iffy and wake from suspend still somehow doesn't work perfectly every time are my only complaints. Of course it took a few weeks of getting things configured to how I like it, but I feel set now. I also only really browse the internet and watch movies. I don't code or do strenuous video, image, or audio editing. Oh, and the audio is terrible compared to apple laptops, which again Apple somehow is incredible at.
The big issue for me is privacy and ownership of my hardware. I will put up with all these small issues to truly own my computer. Most don't care, which is sad, but it's a common discussion point here which I won't get into.
[+] [-] garbagecoder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reacharavindh|4 years ago|reply
1. Cohesiveness - there are many things Linux does excellently if done independently. But, when you want a cohesive experience to achieve a good user experience, it falls flat in its face.
Examples:
Have an excellent file system? Check. ZFS, ext4 and plenty more. May I expect a simple equivalent of a GUI file explorer in the class of Windows Explorer or Finder? Nope. There is not even thumbnail previews if images in the default views. Sure, there will be some commenter that will prove me wrong by saying “if you choose this district and combine it with this particular program I found and follow on GitHub, and simply run this command, it will all obviously work”. But, that only proves my point. I don’t have the time or the interest to do that. I applaud Linux for its powers in the server ecosystem, and use a cohesive yet restrictive Mac or Windows for the Desktop.
2. Battery life. Of course there is “laptop projects” and a plethora of scripts I can run to make Linux consume less power on a laptop, but the default option will just be poor in comparison with Mac and Windows because of their focus. Linux being powerful is actually at odds with the goal here.
3. Reliability around on/off/on/off/suspend operations like that of a laptop. I expect my Mac to wake up instantly and allow me to pick up work from wherever I left it. I reboot on my terms about once every couple of weeks when I am off work and relaxing. With Linux, it may work, but also not. Updates of packages break each other more often taking my productive time to fix things back in place. That anxiety is simply not worth it IMO.
In my opinion, being a good DesktopOS needs a authoritative and opinionated ecosystem so as to achieve that cohesion at least at the base system level. Unfortunately Linux does not target that. There have been attempts at it from PopOS, ElementaryOS etc, but they haven’t hit the mark yet as they too lose their focus quickly and try to do it all, and add yet another option in an already fragmented toolset. Example: ElementaryOS brought Vala as a language to write apps. Of course their apps are good, but the rest of the apps needed dont look or behave like the ones they made :-(
On my “hobby” workstation, I use Linux and enjoy it because I don’t have the anxiety about losing it at critical times. I simply have my /home backed up throughly and don’t care if the OS gets borked. I can always reinstall and bring my /home. Can’t live with such a setup on work PC.
[+] [-] theshrike79|4 years ago|reply
There aren't any major showstopper faults any more. But everything is a little bit off and I'm not willing to spend the hours required to customise everything to my liking.
Also if I find a nice piece of software, it might just die because it doesn't have a business model, just 1-2 enthusiastic developers who may or may not suddenly burn out.
The old adage still holds true:
- Linux for servers
- Windows for games
- MacOS for work
[+] [-] zbrozek|4 years ago|reply
I try every two years or so to daily drive Linux on my personal desktop. Between these kinds of rough edges and running CAD tools, I inevitably eventually go back to Windows no matter how much I enjoy my terminal emulator options in Linux.
[+] [-] jsjohnst|4 years ago|reply
- HDPI displays work fantastic and have for a long time
- hardware is generally well supported of all types. Installing a printer is trivial and doesn’t mean adding a metric ton of crapware like on Windows of past.
- I get a close enough Unix environment that I feel at home in the terminal. Maybe it’s my prior background with *BSD (Free and Open BSD) that helped so I wasn’t as attached to GNU flags on commands, so YMMV.
- app ecosystem exists for almost everything I need natively. The few examples that don’t (SolidWorks and some FPGA toolchains) are trivial to run in a VM (they also don’t run on Linux natively either).
- Several apps available only on MacOS are best in class (at least for my needs, but generally considered great anyway by all)
- I could buy the latest Apple machines (which is best in class in my opinion, at least for the things I care about) and it always worked out of the box with my OS of choice. If you agree that Apple hardware is great, but prefer Linux, you will consistently be a third class citizen hoping somebody is able to write a say graphics driver for the M1 while you sit using older inferior hardware. Yes, you can get decent hardware that has official manufacturer support for Linux, but it’s inferior to Apple hardware in ways I care about (Trackpad as one obvious example).
[+] [-] 4ad|4 years ago|reply
1. Lack of good mobile hardware. ThinkPads used to be good, but sadly more than a decade ago they switched to 16:9 screens. Macbooks were 16:10. This was and still is an absolute dealbreaker for me. Fortunately, ThinkPads started bringing 16:10 back (but see below). There were a few non-16:9 PC laptops on the market, like the Microsoft Surface or some Dell XPS models. Absolute junk.
2. Even though we started to have 16:10 ThinkPads again, it doesn't matter, because Linux doesn't support non-integer display scaling factors well and these new screens come with dumb resolutions that would require a non-integer scaling factor. And the screens are crap compared to macBook screens still.
3. AMD ThinkPads only have crappy screens compared to their Intel counterparts. There exist Intel ThinkPads with Intel (non-Nvidia) GPUs that I would consider for buying, but they are unobtainium. They are either only sold to select countries, or require some kind of commercial agreement to buy.
4. When I used unix systems in the 90s and early 2000s the unix GUIs were better than the commercial counterparts. Now this situation is reversed. Gnome 3 is 10 years old now and I still have no idea how it works.
5. I used to use unusual window managers like fvwm and windowmaker. As things have become more and more integrated with the GUI, and as "popular" distributions like Ubuntu have taken the responsability of integrating everything in the GUI, it has become unfeasible for me to do the integration myself, so I'm stuck with crap software like Gnome 3, which I do not want.
6. RawTherapee and Darktable are usability nightmares compared to Capture One. Plus, what would I do with my C1 sessions anyway?
7. I use an iPhone and make heavy use of the integration between iOS and macOS. Specifically things like iMessages, Photos.app and Facetime. I can't do any of that on Linux.
8. Ubuntu is doing things I don't want (e.g. Snap) while Debian refuses to package useful software. if you think that niche Linux distributions like NixOS solve anything you are part of the problem.
People like to talk about "year of the Linux desktop", but I've been using Linux on the desktop in the 90s, and let me tell you it's been only downhill since.
[+] [-] Leftium|4 years ago|reply
I like the Linux command line, but I get what I need via Git Bash for Windows. Also there's Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Windows generally has better compatibility with hardware with less fuss. Especially on laptops. My friend tried to use Linux-only for a while, but he said trying to video conference just sucked. Sure, there might be some programs that work, but often the client dictates the video conference platform, and he simply couldn't do anything but tell clients he couldn't video conference. So he switched to Mac, which is like Linux with better multimedia support.
Finally, I'm just more used to Windows. And I personally don't have a big incentive to switch.
There are two Linux things I wish I could have on Windows:
- Proper X-Mouse
- Tiling windows manager
[+] [-] orangepanda|4 years ago|reply
* No sleep mode by default
* Snap is cancer. When I’m sent a pdf, I cant open it directly because the current app is isolated and cant see that a pdf reader is installed. Same with all other app specific extensions.
* Snap, again. Whenever I’m sent a file on Skype, I have to reboot; It overrides my $home directory and I cant open or access anything elsewhere.
* Why do links sometimes keep opening in firefox? I dont have it installed, did a full scan and cant find where it comes from. Yeah Microsoft is pushy about Edge, but at least it respects your settings when you do change them.
* There’s a memory leak somewhere, I have to reboot every week. Probably that’s why sleep is disabled…
* spotify sometimes can no longer find an output device and everything gets muted (might be an app issue, but I haven’t encountered it on other platforms so ubuntu gets the blame)
* When disconnecting external displays, the pointer still “sees” them and disappears into oblivion. Also it doesn’t work for half the screen.
* With external displays, I sometimes have to log in twice
For personal devices, I just want reasonable defaults so I dont have to tinker with them
[+] [-] baal80spam|4 years ago|reply
2. In case something broke in Linux I would spend a lot of time looking how to fix it. I use Windows since 3.1 and I know it inside out.
[+] [-] r3trohack3r|4 years ago|reply
1. The Handbook. I get the distinct feeling from most Linux distributions that they’re trying to do things for me. FreeBSD, in contrast, is trying to teach me how to do things. 2. Lower churn. I enjoy finding manuals from the 90s that are still relevant to how my system does things. 3. Simpler system. Feels less magical, like I have a chance at groking the system in front of me. The installer includes sources. Building from source is a Makefile. I’ve found myself reading the source code as a frequent first step before a web search since switching to FreeBSD.