Comment by adontz 13 hours ago
These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11.
But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to make a living? Inevitably yes.
Windows pop-ups can all be turned off. I have them all turned off on my machines and nothing pops up anymore. Windows is extremely customizable and modifiable and it runs 100% of Windows software which is most of the software being produced in the world today.
Windows 11 isn't running half as bad for me as most here seem to say.
I experience no delays with the start menu, and it's perfectly smooth on my 240 Hz monitor.
I also never encountered crashes like described as OP's reason for the switch.
So what do I have to gain from using Linux? A bit better compatibility for my software work, but much worse game compatibility. Fewer annoying popups, but they aren't that frequent on Windows either. Probably a worse update experience, and more time spent configuring.
The only reason I'm not using Linux on my work-provided computer is due to the security software. None of it runs on Linux, it only runs on Windows and MacOS. Glad I don't have to use any software that only runs on Windows to do development. Hopefully the security software will someday support Linux.
Krita and Inkscape have successfully replaced Photoshop and Illustrator for me. There isn't any good video editing options and lightroom still beats Gimp.
For me the biggest sticking point to windows is cad/cam software, lightburn and anything proprietary needed for hobby equipment. I'm glad though that 3d printer software has always had equal Linux support (as long as you don't use Bambu).
Target audience is probably especially anyone not in the US?
It is beginning to look a lot like war is brewing between Europe and the US over Greenland. US media working super hard to make an "acquisition" sound reasonable and "FreedomTM".
I don't believe a "war" is brewing.
If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case. Maybe a few politicians will go on X/twitter and complain but every country in the EU knows that they are no match for the US military and I am saying that as someone who lives in the EU.
I suppose the EU could go after big US tech companies but since most of Europe's needs are covered by the very same companies, I don't think this would be viable solution either and let's be honest the EU people are not just going to switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning.
It's unfortunate but it's the reality.
> If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case.
Whether or not that's true, that doesn't mean they won't try anyway. Pride sometimes beats pragmatism. I think it's foolish to dismiss the possibility of war, been if you believe it will be one-sided.
>No match
The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered and found some alternative in Asia.
Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes.
On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's libre for the whole world, not just the US.
Software it's easily replaceable except for die hard industrial DOS (where FreeDOS experts would cover) and some special XP/w9x era machinery. European hardware, the industrial one... there's no alternative in the US. No one.
If the US army steps on Greenland in order to seize it, it's the end of the American economy.
China and Russia? These two should watch the Bering currents and South Asian quakes first; the upcoming ones will be a nightmare due to ice meltings.
I love you guys, and I wish you were right, but I don't think you are.
Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML, etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the EU. Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling costs to significantly disengage from the US, and no one has the vision or fortitude to make that happen.
You also wouldn't have any security. If you disengage from the US militarily (whatever's left of "NATO"), we'll all see how far Russia can project power. Not as far as they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in a half-dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts pressure on their neighbors of course. This would be a shooting war in the east, which would require central and western European countries to decide whether they want to spend blood and treasure to respond. "No" kicks the can down the road a few years, "Yes" is economically devastating.
China could step in! It's a long way from China to the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, and their naval power is ... thin, currently. But you don't want China to step in. They could send money, but then they'd own you worse than the US even fever dreams about owning you.
The US seizing Greenland would be a terrible thing for the world, but I think the most likely outcome is that there would be complaints from the EU countries at highest level and volume, and a handful of countries would get legislation through to make the US suffer, but it would fail at the EU level, maybe even split the EU into two factions of American-bully-reluctantly-aligned countries vs American-bully-righteously-andor-selfservingly-opposed countries. The instability would last a few years, maybe a decade, and then we'd be back to where we are now, with "Greenland (US)" replacing "Greenland (DK)" on maps, but otherwise no one would spend much time thinking about it.
And the stomach-turning irony is that all of this is completely unnecessary. The US has a compact of free operation in Greenland already, including military operations. This is just an exercise in establishing dominance (i.e. The End of Politeness). There are some administrative details like mineral rights and redrawing international exclusivity zones (watch out Canada), but those are not very important when the global economic machine is working properly.
The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are waiting to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we don't, they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a shred of truth to that -- it sounds like absolute manufactured BS to me (RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance), but I have a strong anti-trusting bias against liars who lie, and those are the people dominating the conversation on this side.
The next ten months in the US will decide the next fifty years of the world. On a personal level, that's the rest of my life, and I'm worried about it.
I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.
>Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes.
>it's the end of the American economy.
You assume that this is not the goal of the current US "leadership". They want the country to fail, so they can rule over the ashes. They are a lot more fucked up in the head than you probably think they are. They simply don't care what happens, so long as they are the ones in power.
Trump would love nothing more than to dissolve NATO, and isolate from all of the EU. He would see that as an accomplishment. I wish I were joking.
> The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered and found some alternative in Asia.
The EU uses Mastercard and Visa. If youblock them in the EU, you just cripple the EU economy instantly.
> On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's libre for the whole world, not just the US.
How many people do you know that would be willing to switch to an alternative OS tomorrow or give up their Iphones?
> If the US army steps on Greenland
The US army is already on Greenland. They have a military base there.
I agree with you in spirit but in reality any countermeasures would inflict a lot of pain the EU as well. I don't think anyone has a crystal ball but whatever happens won't be good for anyone.
We really need to make LibreOffice much better. I am tired of Microsoft really.
Maybe Windows should remain as a professional tool for using these applications. Most people don't need them. They need a web browser and not much else. Maybe some games for kids. Something like Ubuntu can serve those needs just fine. If you need VS for developing Windows apps, then you obviously stay on Windows.
“ They need a web browser and not much else.”
These people will probably use a tablet or phone.
Yes, but if they need to write a document, the larger screen and keyboard make it more usable.
Then they will attach a keyboard to their tablet. I think desktop OS for personal use is pretty much on the way out.
Yeah, but I guess part of the point is that MS themselves have been moving their desktop stack to the cloud making it even better for Linux users to maintain some degree of interoperability between the two OSs. I never particularly liked the Libre alternatives to Office, but now with 365 I can keep up with my colleges stack without having to switch to a VM or some other artifact just to collaborate on a document.
Drawing, yeah, true... design as well... closest the Linux world ever was to get something decent in the design department was the Serif/Affinity products, but they never made the port.
I guess it depends on your field, for the past ten years I've worked in companies that use Google workspace, google docs, google drive, etc, etc, and slack.
I've not had any lock-in to Microsoft software and I don't think I've deal with a .doc file in all that time. I need a terminal to run devops stuff, and emacs to write it with, but almost nothing else.
Artists, and so on, are probably tied to Adobe, etc. But random developers and sysadmins are certainly capable of switching I think.
The browser versions (and the mobile versions) are nowhere near parity with the desktop Windows version, even in quite basic matters of styling. To be honest this annoyed me enough in the end that I just moved to a PandaDoc/CSS/PDF workflow and honestly I now have both a simpler editing process, and a more powerful engine for customisation.
> I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is.
Are you all expected to provide your own personal hardware?
Maybe this depends on location, but everyone I can think of has a corporate-issued laptop on which their corporate software runs.
I see this argument again and again, but I would imagine most people reading this have separate work and home computers?
For the average home user I can see gaming - while hugely improved in recent years - could still be a showstopper.
But surely for the average user Libreoffice or online versions of MS Office will suffice? Surely there cannot be _that_ many average PC users that need the full power of Photoshop?
Of course I expect the average HN user to be quite different from the average user in general, but I really do think that many casual users get no advantages from Windows apart from familiarity.
Have you tried replacing Microsoft Office with Libreoffice? It's been perfectly usable for years and I'm even comfortable sending anyone .odt files. I haven't got a single question or comment about it. You may not be able to but in that case just use the .docx extension, install whatever fonts your colleagues expect and continue exactly as you were.
I can't take these kinds of arguments seriously because I regularly read, edit and create documents and spreadsheets and never felt the need to use Word or Excel. It seems most people I've met who claim they can't use Linux because they need X, Y or Z never really tried when I ask. It's just an assumption and they deal with Microsoft based on it.
It's a shame, we could have a world without data-mining and vendor lock-ins if we were principled and didn't always choose the easy path.
Not even remotely true.
You're making the exact same argument everyone here is making, and that's because you're attempting to argue from technical parity / superiority. Windows isn't the dominant desktop OS because of it's technical superiority to Linux, it's dominant because of deeply entrenched compliance and industry reasons.
Healthcare, finance, legal, engineering (less so today, but still very sub-discipline dependant), and government all have very specific software needs that no one in their right mind will bother writing new software, or rewriting existing software, would do for 6% desktop market share.
EMR programs (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), Practice management and billing, Tax and compliance, Legal discovery and case-management tools, Niche hardware and it's control software
This is all the realm of Windows. Most of these applications are Windows-only (Win32 / .NET / ActiveX legacy), they're only certified and validated on Windows, and they're only contractually supported on Windows.
Even if Wolters-Kluwer rewrote the entire CCH ProSystem fx suite for Linux, now there's recertification, regulatory review, vendor retraining, staff retraining, potential issues with auditors and regulators, etc.
There's currently no upside large enough to justify: Vendor finger-pointing, Compliance risk, Training costs, Downtime risk
It's negative ROI all the way down.
Windows has to become so bad that switching to Linux for desktops overcomes all of the above.
I have a Mac laptop, a Linux workstation, and a Windows workstation for different purposes and I use them all. I agree. Every time someone says they switched OSes and they don’t miss anything, it’s revealed that 90-100% of their work was in generic outlets like the web browser, terminal, e-mail, and Slack.
To be fair, that could cover a lot of people.
In my experience watching people make the switch in the real world, the failure point is either the last 10% of software that they actually need, or the first time they encounter some Linux quirk that they didn’t expect. Then it reaches a point where there isn’t really any upside for people who aren’t ideologically motivated and who don’t get triggered by Windows 11 design choices or occasional pop-ups.
I have some specific engineering software that must run on Windows, period. I’ve gotten flak from the software engineers at every company whenever it’s discovered that my second machine is Windows, but outside of software devs nobody else questions it. Using Windows for work is perfectly understood by most other disciplines