The Last Straw!

[Chromatinfish 123]

Today something memorable happened.

To me at least.

My last standing Windows desktop, having Microsoft "forced" me to upgrade to Windows 10 or the end of support- has been switched to Linux Mint.

That means I have no more Windows computers in my house. Why, even my workplace computer is running Red Hat Enterprise. My laptop is running OS-X El Captain, and Linux Ubuntu.

Why Should I Switch To Linux?

Going Windows-free is a huge decision by me- I've used Windows since 2003- When I bought my obsolete clunky Dell for over $1,000. Windows is second nature to so many people (and probably you too) and using OS X (Which is Unix-based, and basically Apple's re-skin of Unix) and Linux has definitely made my irate- a lot!

But- the goods outweigh the bads and that's the fact that Windows 7's support has either already ended or about to end before you could say supercalafrajilisticexpialadocious, So now I have a choice between Windows 8 (Which is going to be pulled before you say it twice) or Windows 10, both which I'm not particularly fond of.

There is also a very powerful terminal included in Linux, which (quite honestly) frustrates me when I was using a Windows machine how different these are (however, it does have a learning curve to it- it's very different from the windows command line or something like that).


Drawbacks

Unfortunately, not much software is designed to run on Unix-based OS, which is almost everything but Windows. Thankfully, a lot of major software companies are allowing their products on mac and Linux (Valve, for instance) and open-source alternatives developed for Unix-based OS (GIMP & Banshee). You'll also notice that Linux & Mac will include a free office productivity suite, namely Libre Office & iWork, respectively, Neither of these (in my opinion) beat Microsoft Office (my favorite year was 2007), despite its price and issues.

Since my computer here is dual-booted Linux & Windows (since I have docs and pics I want to keep without backing up), I will still have Windows handy for if I need it, but most of the time I can see that I'm going to play around with Linux Mint and see how it's different from Ubuntu & Red Hat Enterprise.

Note: Since you can no longer buy blank CDs from many retailers, you have to go through a process of using UNebootin to make a USB installer. Unfortunately UNebootin did not download for me so I had to gruelingly manually install Mint.

 

[Azure]

The forced upgrade aside. Did you tried out/ tested Windows 10? What problems in it made you switch?

 

[DaveM]

The biggest downside to Linux is that most distros aside from Arch, Fedora and maybe a couple of others don't release security updates for a lot of the apps in the repositories. You can read about that herehttps://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2016/02/01/on-webkit-security-updates/ . Linux also unfortunately suffers from the lack of Flash support unless you use Chrome or use Fresh Player Plugin. The problem with the Fresh Player is that there is no sandboxing with it, unlike proper Flash. Neither of these problems look like they'll be solved anytime soon.

Windows 10 isn't terrible, but it isn't fantastic either.

 

[above]

Did the same thing. Ubuntu comes with flash and and it was included in the first update.

 

[Chromatinfish 123]

Actually I'm going around with flash disabled which limits a lot of content but most major sites now use Built in tools to make graphical content.
No chrome for Mint either. Of course you can just install through getting Debian

 

[jamescv7]

Way back on high school, I've prefer Linux because I've use only for browsing and typing some documents however some developers tends not to support much on that OS due to small market scale.

Wine Emulator is a good alternative to install your favorite Windows based application however limitations are still occur at all.

I have a plan to install Linux as part of my testing purpose and Windows for important task. (Future plans)

Still as Windows dominate throughout the years, its scenario will be same.

 

[Chromatinfish 123]

Still as Windows dominate throughout the years, its scenario will be same.

That's the unfortunate bit. Still wishing that Windows someday won't be the predominate OS- and all the OSes can finally get same treatment

 

[TheSuperGeek]

Linux is really good but it's sad that some good software aren't ported on it.
I'm using Fedora for the moment but I have windows 7 too

 

[hjlbx]

Linux is really good but it's sad that some good software aren't ported on it.
I'm using Fedora for the moment but I have windows 7 too

This is why many users migrate back to Windows.

Lots of "last straws" in IT...

 

[TheSuperGeek]

I use ableton Live 9 and I have no alternative that using windows..... or buying a mac that is very expensive

 

[jamescv7]

@Chromatinfish 123: One hypothetical scenario will be if Windows OS source code become open source hence it will for better and reliable OS production that will remove privacy issues, lesser complications and faster response.

However Windows and Linux have different perspective views on their targets so that's another reason too.

 

[TheSuperGeek]

I use now mageia (like I was using 1 week ago )

 

[Soulbound]

I use now mageia (like I was using 1 week ago )

what made you choose Mageia over other distros base?
Bleeding Edge: Fedora
Rolling Bleeding Edge:Arch Linux
Stable: Debian for apt-get and nearly all repositories available or CentOS for RPM based but requires a bit of searching for some repos
Up to date: Ubuntu; Debian Testing/SID; OpenSUSE

The above 5 main bases have the most software available. Then after that is the sub distros which incorporate tweaks and some bells and whistles, which you can actually do it manually if you know how to do it, including kernel customization to your own machine.

 

[TheSuperGeek]

Hello @Inkurax, good question
First Mageia is a fork of mandriva (died) but is a "alone" linux distro. It is based on RPM but they make they own packages with they own package manager (urpmi).
I like Mageia because it combine LTS and recents softwares (not so recent as archlinux, i agree but they have more recents packages than debian).
I like it too because their French community is just great (Mageialinux online) and the OS is community based (not like ubuntu and caronical strange spying). And the 3rd thing I like on this distro is the tools included (tools from mandriva and the mageia control center (a super-user panel)).
If you have others questions about Mageia or why I like this distro just ask me

 

[Soulbound]

I have used Mageia since their first reincarnation, and throughout the years they have improved.
Also used ROSA before. In the end I prefer standalone originals and apply the tweaks myself.

Gentoo is not something I will venture due to its compile method.