• Ulrich@feddit.org
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    19 hours ago

    Until Macs become cheaper or Linux becomes easier, Windows will remain the largest OS.

    • nao@sh.itjust.works
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      19 hours ago

      What’s easier in Windows compared to Linux? Except the fact that you have to install it, since it doesn’t come preinstalled on as many PCs. But many people who think Windows is easy would probably still consider installing it difficult.

      • That Weird Vegan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 hours ago

        it’s easier because they’ve been using it all their life. If they’d been using linux all their life, they’d say that windows was too hard to use, nod oubt.

      • Einar@lemmy.zip
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        18 hours ago

        Sadly, quite a few things. Here’s a few:

        • Application support; some popular software is built with Windows in mind.
        • One-click installers; Software usually comes with user-friendly installation wizards. No command lines or dependency juggling. Also better compatibility woth past versions
        • Driver availability; Linux is getting better, but Windows is superior
        • Better peripheral support like for printers, webcams, game controllers.
        • Gaming performance; although Linux is gaining ground, Windows is just better in this regard
        • Media codecs and formats; again, Linux is getting better, but this isn’t always an out-of-the-box experience
        • Business integration; Windows plays nicely with enterprise tools like Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and legacy business apps.

        Don’t get me wrong. I use Linux as my daily driver. That also means I get frustrated on occasion when again I must consult man pages instead of just running a troubleshooter or fiddling with Nvidia drivers instead of just running the game.

        • rakeshmondal@lemmy.zip
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          6 hours ago
          • Driver availability; Linux is getting better, but Windows is superior

          Doesn’t Linux have pretty much every driver built into the kernel with the only notable exception being the NVIDIA closed source drivers. Even those drivers are a single command away from installation, it even configures itself correctly out of the box for Wayland support.

        • Ulrich@feddit.org
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          14 hours ago

          Gaming performance; although Linux is gaining ground, Windows is just better in this regard

          I mostly agree with you but this contradicts everything I’ve seen. Presumably you have evidence of this?

        • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          (venting frustration)

          I’d argue with the installer point - if it’s in the repo, and it almost always is for anything a newbie would be using, it’s actually easier. Search, click, done. BUT…

          Drivers though, specifically companies not supporting Linux drivers, is shit. I’m helping a friend transition to Linux and am dual-booting myself so I can help with the actual os available for troubleshooting. And fuck me, sound drivers fucking suck ass on Linux. It’s because Creative is a bitch and won’t make Linux drivers, but also apparently literally nobody is both running a creative card and anything above 2.0 speaker setup. I have two creative cards, a decade apart, neither works with my 5.1 speaker setup. FL and FR work, the rest are some sort of fucked and come from an incorrect speaker(s). One of these cards is like 15 years old now, and nobody has noticed or rectified it. And if I reboot straight from windows to Linux, the sound is mangled. I need to shut the system down and boot it cold. Then FL and FR work. Hours of troubleshooting last week got me absolutely no progress.

          Then I need software for my Logitech g903 (there is 3rd party software available) that does profiles and switches on the fly based on the application in the foreground (crickets).

          Then there is an issue where if my monitor goes to sleep, when I wake it up I get patches of graphical artifacts. On the 2D desktop. Every few seconds, for about a quarter of a second. Random location each time. Random size. I’m on a Radeon 7900 XTX, which isn’t terribly new now. But the friend I’m helping, no issues at all with drivers or hardware. An older 6700 XT. But come the fuck on.

          Both of us are on bazzite (I suggested it so they wouldn’t nuke the system as they learn) so it’s just Fedora silverblue with a few tweaks, not some out-there distro.

          And, shit. If you need cellular connectivity on Linux, as far as I can tell you’re fucked if you don’t go the Ubuntu route. Debian doesn’t work, Fedora doesn’t work, Mint doesn’t work, I went down a rabbit-hole and tried a dozen distros. I ended up with kubuntu, since I wanted kde, but I tried anything just to see what would work. This is on a modern ThinkPad, still under (extended) warranty. I thought ThinkPads and Linux were supposed to be like this holy-grail of free-as-in-freedom computing? Ugh.

          So yeah if you have a basic system, aged a bit, nothing special, it works well. Take one step outside of that perfect-scenario bubble, and paaaaaain.

        • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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          17 hours ago

          To be fair, a lot of those are due to a Windows legacy of dominating the market, which isn’t going to change until there are more people elsewhere. It’s a bit of a catch-22, and yet even being a small percent use in desktop Linux has started to get distros that feel and run similar to Windows enough so people who don’t dabble in Windows specific software don’t miss it. It’s also a bit much to weigh Windows as better in many of those above features when it still have its own issues often, even though it is the dominate and supported OS.

          I laughed at your last part. I have never not had to do the same for Windows as I have for Linux when a problem pops up. Google the problem. Those troubleshooters are such a waste of time, and honestly the only time I’ve had an automated fix that worked to resolve a situation was in Linux via purging the old driver and reloading it. The Windows troubleshooter is like the first tier on a tech support line, where you tell them, yeah, I already did all that.

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        What’s easier in Windows compared to Linux?

        Graphics drivers. I can’t say I ever had a graphics driver update in Windows that rendered my system borderline unusable, but I 100% blame Nvidia for me running windows until recently. I tried a dozen times over a decade and ended up back on windows when the Nvidia update trashed my system and I got sick of dealing with it.

        On team green and running Bazzite with no issues

      • Ulrich@feddit.org
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        14 hours ago

        Doing anything requires the memorization of thousands of commands that must be formatted perfectly and are specific to your distribution, into a black box that rarely provides any feedback at all, and when it does it’s extremely generic.

        I’m sure my inbox will be blown up by delusional people claiming you don’t need it but it’s just not true.

        The simple act of installing software is crazy complicated and different on every distro.

        My current distro has 2 separate system update apps and I don’t really know how to use either of them, nor do I understand why I need to use them at all. Why does the system need me to click buttons to make it go? Just do it in the background. Then as soon as it’s done I get another popup 3 minutes later saying another package needs to be updated.

        Hardware compatibility is a huge problem, fingerprint readers, WiFi, facial recognition, Bluetooth, etc. etc. Very few companies make computers with Linux compatibility being considered at all. Everything will have drivers day 1 on Windows and then they’ll trickle down to Linux a year or two later.

        Nvidia GPUs are by far and away the most popular and they’re still very painful to use. And even though that’s entirely Nvidia’s fault, the problem remains.

        I dislike Linux the least but there’s no way I could recommend it to anyone who isn’t a giant nerd who likes fixing computers.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          15 hours ago

          i wouldnt know where to begin if i had to switch, since im not in the tech industry, only 2 of my bros would switch since they are programmers.

        • tane69@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          I don’t use Linux except on my steamdeck and even I know there are a bunch of distros that look and act (minus lots of the bad stuff) just like windows

          • Ulrich@feddit.org
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            15 hours ago

            They act like Windows (minus lots of the good stuff) too.

      • Beacon@fedia.io
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        17 hours ago

        installation of software on Linux is very bad. Literally everything else on Linux is very ready for the mass market, but installing apps is horrible to the point of making the whole OS not ready for the general public

        • voodooattack@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          What? When was the last time you tried Linux?

          With flatpak, it’s usually a one-click process to install anything nowadays.

          • TheNamlessGuy@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            Except:

            1. Most of them are bundled terribly, forcing you to use flatseal or similar to make it work - way to much to do and understand for the average user
            2. Roughly half of all the programs I install are flatpaks, and the other half are appimages. They both largely work the same, but the fact that there’s a difference will be crippling to the average user. Especially if you ask them to choose between one or the other
            3. Believe it or not, a lot of people are not comfortable with the app store mentality flatpak seems built around. Googling “chrome download” is far more ingrained in the average person. Aside from browsers and projects of similar scope, this is difficult to achieve on linux

            Can 800 year old grandma Doris use the feature? Can the average person who writes comments on YouTube videos? Minion meme posting facebook aunts? If not, it’s not ready for mainstream.

          • Ulrich@feddit.org
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            15 hours ago

            That would be totally true if every software was distributed as a flatpak and every distro had flatpak enabled in the package manager out of the box. That’s just not reality.

            • voodooattack@lemmy.world
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              6 hours ago

              I said “usually”, and I’m talking about mainstream distros.

              Also the original comment says “the whole OS is not ready for the general public”, which is also vague. I don’t expect the “general public” to install Gentoo and suffer from this issue.

              • Ulrich@feddit.org
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                5 hours ago

                I said “usually”, and I’m talking about mainstream distros.

                They don’t all have that either

            • Beacon@fedia.io
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              15 hours ago

              Not even then. For example the biggest Linux distribution in use is Ubuntu, and it doesn’t have flatpak built in. So even if a flatpak of an app is available, a user of Ubuntu would have to already understand what a flatpak is, and already know that it would make the app installable on Ubuntu, and know that flatpak itself can be installed separately, and know how to use a different install method already just to get the flatpak system onto their computer in the first place

          • Beacon@fedia.io
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            15 hours ago

            I use Linux regularly, and the last time i installed an app was probably within the past 365 days

    • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      I would rather be set on fire and have it put out with shovel than use a mac.

        • hisao@ani.social
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          18 hours ago

          Hmm, I have kinda opposite opinion, hardware is pretty good, build quality is great, but the OS itself is meh. File manager is bad and clunky, desktop customization is very limited, network manager is buggy, especially with VPNs, no built-in functionality to import VPN config files like in Linux. Also, I used it for years and still couldn’t get used to all the shortcuts and "Mac-way"s of doing things. Just not for me perhaps. Not bad, but in terms of UX worse than both Windows and Linux for me.

          • NotSteve_@piefed.ca
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            18 hours ago

            I’m the opposite of both of you. The build quality is good and the OS is good. I love having a familiat UNIX system while also having a polished desktop environment that supports 4k scaling very well (though the polish has been lacking a lot lately)

            The issue for me is the insane price of their computers and the fact that you can’t (officially) install MacOS on your own hardware. I have a Linux desktop and a MBP but I’d run MacOS on both if it was officially supported

        • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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          18 hours ago

          Modern Mac hardware is excellent. The software is good too, but’s more a matter of taste. Not everybody likes how macOS works but Asahi Linux has made incredible progress so it’s a daily driver option for some already.

          • Ulrich@feddit.org
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            14 hours ago

            Mac hardware is a fucking atrocity. $2k for a “pro” laptop with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage and no i/o except 4 USBC ports, that’s completely and intentionally irreparable and unupgradeable? SSDs and RAM that are marked up 3000%? That’s what you call “excellent”? If they were cheap I might not completely object to them being disposable but it’s the opposite. It’s fucking gaslighting. You’ll never convince me it’s anything other than a cult.

            • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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              13 hours ago

              I will give you the RAM and SSD capacities are atrociously priced. USBC is perfectly acceptable for the people apple is targeting. Nobody is trying to use a MacBook as a server. Ignore the “pro” name in any consumer electronic device. It has nothing to do with anything other than marketing, and that’s not exclusive to apple. Apple did give up on the 8GB bullshit already though.

              You need to take a closer look at how the M-series chips work and why they work they way they do. There are design considerations in how PC does things and Apple does things and they are not 1 to 1. What makes sense the PC world doesn’t always make sense int he Mac world.

              Apple does a lot of anti-consumer bullshit which we should absolutely club them over the head for, but many of the things they pulled off with the M-series Macs were NOT possible with traditional PC methodologies. One thing’s for sure though, the hardware performs and it does so with very little energy. It’s so great a difference the entire industry is changing course to try to outdo Apple. They eventually will too, but they haven’t yet. They are just cheaper.

              • Ulrich@feddit.org
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                12 hours ago

                USBC is perfectly acceptable for the people apple is targeting.

                It’s literally called a “pro”, who do you think they’re targeting?

                Ignore the “pro” name in any consumer electronic device.

                I do, thanks to Apple. It doesn’t make it any less shameful or ridiculous.

                You need to take a closer look at how the M-series chips work and why they work they way they do

                You’re going to have to elaborate because I already have and I don’t understand what bearing that has on this discussion.

                Apple does a lot of anti-consumer bullshit which we should absolutely club them over the head for,

                You shouldn’t “club them over the head”, you should just stop buying their trash. That’s literally the only thing that will work.

                • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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                  12 hours ago

                  Daves garage actually had a good video on the shared memory architecture recently that gives some insights on why apple designed this way they did. Don’t dismiss “different” as “trash.” You sound like an idiot when you do and it makes it difficult for adults to take you seriously. PC and Mac are designed with different goals in mind, so they tend to make different choices in their engineering, and you aren’t going to like every decision either side makes.

                  https://youtu.be/Cn_nKxl8KE4

                  • The_Decryptor@aussie.zone
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                    8 hours ago

                    Shared memory is different to unified memory, AMD’s got an implementation of the later with their “Ryzen AI MAX+” (ugh) systems, does quite well in benchmarks.

                    It also doesn’t hurt that Apple puts the RAM on the SoC and gives it a truckload of bandwidth. DDR5 is about 70GB/s, meanwhile the M4 Max is around 540GB/s.

                  • Ulrich@feddit.org
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                    5 hours ago

                    This is not “different” this is “anti consumer non-sense” and you sound like a chud when you recite corporate propaganda.

        • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          Apple’s entire software design philosophy is god-awful. There’s only one way to do things and if you don’t like “The Apple Way”, fuck you. “It just works” only works for very basic normie stuff. If you try to do anything advanced, it most likely won’t work and it’ll give zero feedback as to why.

          • Ulrich@feddit.org
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            14 hours ago

            I mean I don’t particularly like it either but not having tons of choice is not always a complete negative, it simplifies a lot of things. And having an OS that mostly functions like an OS instead of a fucking billboard is nice. Just keeping things in context here.