My Linux mint install gets a duplicate mouse cursor appearing sometimes, just floating on top of everything on my desktop. If I don’t reboot the machine often weird things break. Like after a few days my media keys stop working on my keyboard. My trackpad sometimes stops working and needs to be power cycled. (One time after awaking from sleep my mouse was moving upside down.) The activity monitor in the tray freezes for me after a week or so. I’ve had some hard graphical freezes as well, which I assume is an AMD graphics driver bug.
Then bugs aside, I hate how inconsistent the keyboard shortcuts are between applications. I’ve been spoiled by macos where the same keyboard shortcuts to move a text editing cursor (cmd+left/right and so on) work the same in every application. Not so in Linux - and I can’t even configure it to work based on my muscle memory because IntelliJ doesn’t support using the start/meta key as a modifier. And some applications don’t support smooth scrolling for some reason.
So yeah, it’s viable. But I can’t say I’m impressed. I love having the source code, and knowing that if I want to I can actually fix these issues. But I’m still considering bouncing back to macos for my next computer.
There's always that one deal-breaker on linux. Some hardware that you need just doesn't work or the software does some very minor thing that makes it unusable.
Yeah. Though I'd say broken things are the exception, not the rule now. It mostly works most of the time. And the list of broken / awkward interactions is much smaller than the list of stuff that just works out of the box.
I got sick of any Debian based OS. On AMD hardware I get nothing but problems on Pop_OS!, Mint, Ubuntu.
Screen tearing, screen flicking, random reboots or screen freezing etc.
Been on Manjaro as the recommendation of someone on HN and it's been absolutely rock-solid. No more random reboots, no screen tearing out of the box, no flicking. Works and works well, but still have the occasional issue.
There was an update the other day where I had to find out which package wasn't being used and remove it so I could do an upgrade. If you update NPM outside of pacman it gets messy when theres an upgrade in pacman.
But after ~10 years of on/off use of Linux, then Jan 2020 putting myself on it full time, I'm a bit over it, Windows just works, since Windows 10 I've never had any issues at all. I miss just getting work done and gaming.
Edit: Oh the thing I hate most about Linux is multi-monitor setup.
I had 2x 1440p monitors, 1 was 144hz and the other was 60hz. If either 1 was connected, boot time was like 20s, very quick, if both were connected, it was 2-3 minutes to boot. Took me ages to figure out having 2 different monitors caused Ubuntu boot times to suffer. If I took the wifes 144hz monitor which was same as mine, boot time < 20s, but mix-match, 2-3 minutes.
I mostly play older games, but the ones I play work on Steam through PlayOnLinux. I've used Linux as my primary OS off and on since the 90's, I switched back again recently and I'm impressed. Almost everything worked except for the color printer, and that doesn't work on Windows either, I have to get the MacBook out.
2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop, for sure.
As recently as a decade ago, Linux was borderline unusable for a home computer. Lots of driver problems. Lack of software.
In contrast to Apple's OSs (and increasingly Windows) which assumes you don't know what you're doing, Linux as a whole basically assumes you already know everything you need to know about what you're doing. Fixing a display issue could be a whole adventure, complete with side-quests as you worked your way to a solution. Not the best experience TBH.
Some time between 2010-ish and 2015, Linux (at least Mint and Ubuntu) suddenly became MUCH better. I'm not saying it's perfect, but things tend to "just work" much more often. A lot of the open source software improved by leaps and bounds during that period as well.
Sadly for the past few years, I game at home, and I'm stuck using windows programs at work (embedded development), so I haven't really kept up well with Linux.
> As recently as a decade ago, Linux was borderline unusable for a home computer. Lots of driver problems. Lack of software. [...] Linux as a whole basically assumes you already know everything you need to know about what you're doing.
This really doesn't match my experiences at all. Using Linux in 2008 was essentially the same as using Windows. I got my parents using Ubuntu in 2010 without complaints.
Instead of the "you have to know what you're doing" line that's been around for 30 years, I think the situation has been more "80% of the installs works perfectly" for a long time. But if you get hit by that 20%, from a driver issue or whatever, then expect a few days of debugging followed by constant hassles for the life of that machine.
And yeah, a lot of niche professional programs are Windows-only, so if you need them you're stuck. And gaming on Linux has been getting better, but only the chart-toppers and obscure indie games have actual Linux support with any regularity, with anything between those extremes rarely having any support.
Installed it for a friend. Most of his steam games were working and some who didn't I easily installed them with Lutris Iirc.
Libre office may not look super polished but it really covers any normal person's use case and beyond. The only thing he does not get are updates but automatic updates are coming soon anyways.
I am a programmer and I run Linux Mint myself on all my machines because it just works. Any software that's not in the packages I use an Appimage or Flatpak or language specific packages manager such as cargo.
If you use a high DPI screen things have been fine for many years. Mixed DPI is a different story, no idea if it works well, but it doesn't really work well on Windows, either.
I use mixed dpi screens on Linux mint. It works but it’s officially experimental and there are some small bugs. (After sleeping all my window move to one of my displays. And some other small things)
> After sleeping all my window move to one of my displays.
Well Windows 10 does that randomly as well, don't even need to use mixed DPI. Arguably "better than Windows for multihead" is a very low bar to clear, since Windows is utter garbage at dealing with it.
Games should work fine on Mint. The only reason I can't recommend Linux for most people is that there is no usable office suite. And no the libre and open office really are not usable.
I've been exclusively using LibreOffice for ~10 years, and OpenOffice before that, and aside from just doing some things differently (not worse) compared to MS Office, it's been smooth sailing.
And for most people Google Docs or... Office 365 are all they really need.
WPS Office is alright for most people, if you are okay with proprietary software from a Chinese vendor. However, it obviously doesn't cover e.g. Excel power user needs.
Or you can just use Google Docs, or even the browser edition of Microsoft Office.
I bought an Android phone (Palm Phone) for under $100 that rarely bothers me at all, definitely the least annoying Android device I've ever had. Still not really an Android fan, but it has the least shovelware of any Android device I've had.
Meanwhile, I have a Surface Book 2, an expensive laptop from Microsoft running Windows 10 Pro. I actively removed all the ads in when I got it, yet still it periodically fucks with my OS and creates new ads, such as a new not-so-helpful keyboard shortcut with Win10 1903 that advertised Office at me that had to be disabled with a Registry Edit.
So even though MS does some cool shit, I do not trust them. I paid the money, I got the pro version, and they still come up with bizarre new ways to advertise at me.
I sign into my phone with an account, but not my primary personal one. I use a secondary one I use for this and some other throwaway uses. I'm sure this isn't the norm, but I bet it's not that unusual, at least among tech people.
But if you want get android app from playstore, you still need google account. Same for iOS, and it's even worst than android, since you can't sideload apps
Yes, ONLY if you want to download them from the playstore. As you already noted, on Android you can sideload apps and get them from other places other than the playstore. So you can still get the same app from another source without an account.
Some companies like DJI actually let you download from their site directly and bypass the playstore. Notice the apple version links to the apple store but the Android version downloads the APK directly from DJI: https://www.dji.com/downloads/djiapp/dji-fly
Bypassing the Play Store is also a bad sign, especially from chineese company. This is bypassing the Play Store rules about permissions granted to the app.
From experience, companies that provide apps directly have some malware to hide.
Here is an example: GAN Cube is the world leader in Rubik's Cube. They provide an Android app by direct download [1].
Strangely this app has the permission to install other apps. That's obviously something not allowed to publish on the Play Store.
Why not create a throwaway account? When you setup the phone, just go through the process of setting up your fake Google account, and don't use it for anything aside from the Play Store for easily downloading and updating apps.
Because once you have that account, it links all apps data to it, and you give enough data about yourself to be indentified somewhere else even without the account.
> You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from and against any and all costs, damages, liabilities, and expenses (including attorneys' fees, costs, penalties, interest and disbursements) we incur in relation to, arising from, or for the purpose of avoiding, any claim or demand from a third party relating to your use of the Service
I'm not sure what is the worst: being tied to Google or being tied to a company which wants to push me in front of Google's lawyers if they get annoyed.
@cronix, @BiteCode_dev, @gruez: I know we can sideload, but it's inconvenient. Fdroid have limited number of apps, and store like apkpure is security risk. Most of regular people just get an Google account.
A smartphone isn't a desktop OS. You're free to think it's juvenile, and I'm free to prefer a desktop OS that doesn't require an account like win10 or linux.
If its anything like windows 10 was you could just never activate the license and nothing practically would be different, unless you wanted desktop backgrounds I believe. I barely notice the watermark anyhow telling me to activate windows for the last few years.
I've never heard of that one before, but it must be one of the most squatted domain phrases. There's like 20 versions just in top results and I could not figure out which one is official and which one just installs malware...
What's frustrating about the Mac is that every time they screw up bad enough that I try to switch back to other options (I was a Windows and Linux, among other things, user for 15 years before I started using Mac) I find they're still so much worse that I'd just be cutting off my nose to spite my face, by switching.
I wish they had actual competition. It doesn't seem like anyone else is targeting the same market at all, despite technically having "competing products".
This is false. A pirated Windows 10 Pro license costs like $25. These are not legitimate licenses, they're overprovisioned enterprise keys being sold in violation of the license agreement. And yes, they register differently in Windows, and can be easily detected. (Command is slmgr /dli)
Like, if you want to pirate software, go pirate software. If you're going to pay someone on a per-install basis for pirated keys, I'm gonna laugh at how easily you're being taken advantage of.
For $25 I can get a legitimate Windows 7 Pro license sticker that works like any Windows 10 license, which is perfectly legal all the way through.
But depending on your jurisdiction, the $5 enterprise keys can also be entirely fine. Sure, in a way that's outsourcing piracy. But the law doesn't have to see it that way. There's nothing illegal about buying enterprise keys, and if they are overprovisioning keys that's between them and MS, I can't even know if that's the case.
It's not perfectly legal, but reasonably more legal than the alternative (a key bought from a reseller). Those stickers are meant to be affixed to a machine sold by a reseller, and is only meant to be used for that machine. If the machine is destroyed and the sticker/key is kept, then it can be used, and it does register Windows Professional/Home installation rather than an Enterprise/Education installation, but is in violation of the TOS that it's provided under.
That being said it is difficult to shed a tear for Microsoft of all companies over this practice.
Cheap key allows you to activate windows and to bind valid windows license to your hardware, so you won't have to enter any product key anymore. Using cracks is just not safe for most people. I'd recommend to buy cheap key over crack any time.
Wait, are free pirated keys that work as reliably as paid technically-pirated enterprise keys and don't require downloading some probably-comes-pre-botnetted "hacked" Windows installer, but work flawlessly with the installer downloaded straight from Microsoft, readily available? Asking for a friend.
Looks like I'll be skipping windows 11 and any future windows iterations if this is unavoidable