I’ve used Linux as my “daily driver” PC and for 95%+ of my computer work since about 2012. Starting last year, my company decided to migrate the next generation of our product to Windows, and my daily driver desktop PC died, so… I figured I’d just eat the dogfood and replace it with an off the shelf Windows PC - I’m typing this on that PC now.
First place I’d diverge from the article is: most Windows users don’t install windows, ever. It comes pre-installed. They’re afraid of operations like installing an operating system, and rightly so: the Windows installer is a bit scary. I have installed Windows, mostly in virtual machines, but several “bare metal” systems too maybe 20 times over the past 10 years. It’s not impossible, but it’s certainly not as user or developer friendly as installing Linux. Particularly the part where you enter the license codes.
There’s still pain jumping between Linux and Windows, I have a colleague who goes through it regularly - trying to copy files between systems, ending up with line ending translation issues… If you stay on one side or the other it’s not an issue, but if you don’t strictly use a tool like git to move code between systems it can bite in surprising / unexpected places.
The main thing I HATE about my Windows system is how the OS periodically pegs the CPU utilization for… well, it’s unclear what it’s doing it for - it has a habit of stopping immediately when you touch it - but the fan noise is clear enough, and that’s something that you could easily configure a Linux distro to not do, Windows 11… not very cooperative in that respect.
After a year on Windows as my daily driver, I haven’t really found anything I actually like about it better than the various Linux distros. The desktop toolbar is a bit more user friendly than, say, XFCE4, but I still prefer XFCE4 on the whole to Gnome or KDE for… reasons, so… I’m not going to give a lot of kudos to Windows there. I don’t often feel stymied by Windows, I can usually get it to do whatever I want it to do that Linux can do. But, unlike 30 years ago when I used AutoCad - available only in Windows, no real Linux substitute at the time - the tools I use today are readily available on both sides.
If it weren’t for work, I’d re-image my daily driver to Debian + XFCE, but I don’t feel heavily hobbled by the current situation, and now when somebody has a “but I’m using Windows…” question I can concretely answer “I’m using Windows too… it’s not the OS, it’s something else.”
I’ve used Linux as my “daily driver” PC and for 95%+ of my computer work since about 2012. Starting last year, my company decided to migrate the next generation of our product to Windows, and my daily driver desktop PC died, so… I figured I’d just eat the dogfood and replace it with an off the shelf Windows PC - I’m typing this on that PC now.
First place I’d diverge from the article is: most Windows users don’t install windows, ever. It comes pre-installed. They’re afraid of operations like installing an operating system, and rightly so: the Windows installer is a bit scary. I have installed Windows, mostly in virtual machines, but several “bare metal” systems too maybe 20 times over the past 10 years. It’s not impossible, but it’s certainly not as user or developer friendly as installing Linux. Particularly the part where you enter the license codes.
There’s still pain jumping between Linux and Windows, I have a colleague who goes through it regularly - trying to copy files between systems, ending up with line ending translation issues… If you stay on one side or the other it’s not an issue, but if you don’t strictly use a tool like git to move code between systems it can bite in surprising / unexpected places.
The main thing I HATE about my Windows system is how the OS periodically pegs the CPU utilization for… well, it’s unclear what it’s doing it for - it has a habit of stopping immediately when you touch it - but the fan noise is clear enough, and that’s something that you could easily configure a Linux distro to not do, Windows 11… not very cooperative in that respect.
After a year on Windows as my daily driver, I haven’t really found anything I actually like about it better than the various Linux distros. The desktop toolbar is a bit more user friendly than, say, XFCE4, but I still prefer XFCE4 on the whole to Gnome or KDE for… reasons, so… I’m not going to give a lot of kudos to Windows there. I don’t often feel stymied by Windows, I can usually get it to do whatever I want it to do that Linux can do. But, unlike 30 years ago when I used AutoCad - available only in Windows, no real Linux substitute at the time - the tools I use today are readily available on both sides.
If it weren’t for work, I’d re-image my daily driver to Debian + XFCE, but I don’t feel heavily hobbled by the current situation, and now when somebody has a “but I’m using Windows…” question I can concretely answer “I’m using Windows too… it’s not the OS, it’s something else.”