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PurpleGaga27

Would you be willing to switch to Linux if Windows sucked?

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I do not like the way how ****ty Microsoft/Intel/AMD are limiting with their products. With Intel's Kaby Lake and AMD's Ryzen supporting Microsoft to only support Windows 10, that's good for gamers who wanted to play DirectX 12 material, but terrible for everyone else especially for those who wanted to a buy/make a new PC. I highly doubt older Windows OSs and Linux/Mac OS X can run in virtual machines under those new CPU chips.

 

Windows 10 is barely improving and even Linux/Mac OS X are getting far better with their features and not putting in their spyware/Internet crap and excluding a lot of stuff that should have stayed there like what Windows 10 have right now. If Microsoft maintains a lot of material (including older drivers), the Windows 10 download or physical disc should be as large as Mac OS versions over 10.5 (which fits for a dual-layer DVD). Even as of now, Windows 10 is NOT the world's largest operating system. When you google that term, Windows 7 lands as the world's largest operating system with Linux Ubuntu as the second largest.

 

Would you be willing to switch to Linux if Windows sucked?

 

I am about one step away to try using Linux for older PCs. Newer PCs can use Windows 10, which I don't care but I already know Microsoft/Intel/AMD are planning to strip away 32-bit OSs soon, forcing you to buy/make a PC that's only 64-bit compatible and only using Windows 10.

 

On another topic, guess what China is using to counter Microsoft, a OS replacement to WinXP named NeoKylin using Linux material:

Source: https://qz.com/505383/a-first-look-at-the-chinese-operating-system-the-government-wants-to-replace-windows

Latest version is 6.0, under the name Kylin.

Edited by PurpleGaga27

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That's an interesting question. At the moment I have Linux on a netbook and nothing else. My netbook is like a glorified MP3 player and photo browser. It's useful for backing things up and the LXDE desktop environment is fast and responsive. This year I have little intention of moving back to Linux because my current hardware is quite good on Windows:

 

Desktop: AMD A-10, 8GB RAM, mechanical hard drive (using a Windows 10 'retail' license that I bought from Microsoft store for $200 NZD)

 

Laptop: AMD A-4, 8GB RAM, SSD hard drive

 

My opinion on Windows 10 versus Linux: The advertising in the start screen hasn't annoyed me that much and I haven't seen the File Explorer ads which advertise One Drive. If Windows annoys a person, I'm sure he/she will find just as many annoying things in Linux! Moving from Windows to Linux simply because you're annoyed isn't a good reason in my opinion, even though it was my reason when I was 15 (and again when I was 19). Of course if you have multiple PCs then it's a good idea to try Linux - a user may discover that Linux can do 90% of what they want. It's annoying having to reinstall/upgrade though, I warn anyone who has never ventured into Linux before, that Ubuntu has a new version every 6 months, while OpenSUSE and Fedora have a new version every 12-18 months. If you use Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) it gets updates for 5 years but you'll be stuck with older software in the repositories. OpenSUSE has a variation called Tumbleweed which is a "rolling release" meaning it gets new packages as they're available, there's no "new version" of Tumbleweed (it's the same idea as Windows 10)

 

Linux is slowly getting more and more bloated. Ubuntu "Breezy Badger" (from 2005/2006) ran really well on my old Dell PC with integrated graphics and a Intel Celeron. If you tried putting a modern Linux distro on old hardware then you might be disappointed ("old" being 2007 - 2011, just an estimate). If you want the 'K' desktop environment then it's very nice but it doesn't run well on my AMD A-10 ... KDE can take 2-3 minutes to load. Fedora Workstation is where folks should begin, it has all the tools you need and it runs well on most hardware. If you want a quicker system then XFCE and LXDE are pretty good, but some of the utilities and programs typically included are quite trashy and not as good as their GNOME or KDE equivalent.

 

Linux is slowly killing support for old things too: did you hear that 32 bit Linux kernels may not exist for much longer? It's a nuisance for the developers to specifically compile an extra kernel. It has to be packaged and tested and distributed too. I'll probably put Linux back on one of my PCs, once my course is over, I have thought about using Debian because it's a good developer's system.

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If Linux had the same compatibility and overall use as Windows, I'd switch to it but I have no real need to switch over. I'd say at least 90%, if not a bit more, of my games library is Windows only and I'm not leaving that behind. WINE is okay for a few things but playing demanding games is out of the question.

 

32-bit needs to die already. It only serves to limit hardware. There's no need to keep using it. Even with older hardware, 32-bit is still not necessary. I have a laptop from 2008 that runs Windows 7 64-bit. I thought about 32-bit but it was a waste and limited the potential of nearly a full gig of my RAM.

 

Windows has its issues, but it's not the worst thing ever invented. Even if Microsoft did phase out 32-bit systems, nothing says you can't still use old hardware. It will become more and more difficult to continue using, but that will take a fair bit of time still. IDE died years ago but it's still possible to get new IDE drives.

 

The whole point here is just another way for purplederp up there to whine about nothing because he's too stubborn to upgrade. Like I tell my customers, you can't keep using decade old hardware and expect it to keep up. You'll have to eventually catch up to those of us in 2017.

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Regarding purplederp's philosophy: I used to think I could run old hardware forever, so long as I had Linux installed; not true though. Linux has become bloated with time and I'm not just talking about System-D becoming the new init system. Everything in Linux is slower and worse than it was 10 years ago but it's still much faster than Windows.

 

PC technology has improved a lot since 2009 ... I didn't notice until I bought a PC in 2015. I didn't realise at the time that 8GB of RAM was normal - 2 sticks of 4GB each. 500GB hard drives are now the minimum it seems (mechanical). I also thought you judged a CPU partly by its front-side-bus speed, rather that the advertised clock-speed - when really all you need to know is Intel i5 versus cheaper, worse AMD chips. I also thought that I'd use a white (DVI?) connector for my monitor, but the monitor they gave me had only an HDMI cable.

 

You can upgrade systems of course but it isn't an eternal solution. I could put a solid state drive in my current PC and perhaps I could get a newer AMD A-10 which would improve CPU speed and the integrated graphics capability. At best I might give myself an extra 2-3 years with those upgrades. I used to enjoy running Linux on nasty old PCs but now I prefer to run Linux on things that are 2-3 years old which are still formidable. There's no point in making a Linux experience more annoying than it has to be.

 

Next year I'm thinking about either Debian or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, as a development system.

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On 3/21/2017 at 12:27 AM, jeffnz said:

Regarding purplederp's philosophy: I used to think I could run old hardware forever, so long as I had Linux installed; not true though. Linux has become bloated with time and I'm not just talking about System-D becoming the new init system. Everything in Linux is slower and worse than it was 10 years ago but it's still much faster than Windows.

 

PC technology has improved a lot since 2009 ... I didn't notice until I bought a PC in 2015. I didn't realise at the time that 8GB of RAM was normal - 2 sticks of 4GB each. 500GB hard drives are now the minimum it seems (mechanical). I also thought you judged a CPU partly by its front-side-bus speed, rather that the advertised clock-speed - when really all you need to know is Intel i5 versus cheaper, worse AMD chips. I also thought that I'd use a white (DVI?) connector for my monitor, but the monitor they gave me had only an HDMI cable.

 

You can upgrade systems of course but it isn't an eternal solution. I could put a solid state drive in my current PC and perhaps I could get a newer AMD A-10 which would improve CPU speed and the integrated graphics capability. At best I might give myself an extra 2-3 years with those upgrades. I used to enjoy running Linux on nasty old PCs but now I prefer to run Linux on things that are 2-3 years old which are still formidable. There's no point in making a Linux experience more annoying than it has to be.

 

Next year I'm thinking about either Debian or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, as a development system.

i've found Lubuntu to actually be light and stable.

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The necromancy is strong in this one.

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