Paging Linux Users: What Made You Give Up on Windows?

[nir]

Microsoft is trying to bring the world of Windows and Linux closer together with a series of updates

Once described by Microsoft as “a cancer,” the Linux world has become a key focus for Microsoft these days, especially as part of the company’s transformation started shortly after Satya Nadella took over the CEO role from Steve Ballmer.

With Nadella at the helm of the company, the software giant has made it very clear that “Microsoft loves Linux,” and this message has been reiterated pretty much with every single occasion.

At some level, this makes perfect sense, as Microsoft has become more interested in developers, and in their turn, developers are often deeply committed to the Linux ecosystem.

But for a company that stood so firmly against Linux, this is quite a change of mind. And not only that Microsoft likes Linux, but even Steve Ballmer, the former company leader who used the cancer phrase, thinks the open-source world is worth the love.

These days, instead of fighting against Linux, Microsoft wants to make this platform its own ally in a struggle to transform Windows 10 in the operating system for virtually everything and everyone.

Linux now runs on top of Windows 10 thanks to a feature called Windows Subsystem for Linux, and several super-popular distributions are available in the Microsoft Store, including Ubuntu. Microsoft joined forces with quite a lot of Linux companies, and a substantial share of Linux developers are now using Windows 10 thanks to the improvements mentioned above.

However, Windows 10 is far from becoming the operating system for everyone, as Microsoft itself hopes. And the most recent blunders that the software giant produced on its own show once again that an alternative to Windows 10 does exist, and that alternative is Linux.

Sure, many people think switching to Apple is the right way to go given the somewhat more user-friendly approach, but the overall costs of this transition is what pushes more people to Linux. Apple continues to build devices that are way too expensive for a significant share of computer users, so it’s either Windows or Linux for many out there.

 

Ubuntu is now available for Windows 10 users from the Microsoft Store

One of those blunders that made some users look beyond Windows is the October 2018 Update fiasco. Launched on October 2 with much fanfare, Windows 10 October 2018 Update, also referred to as version 1809, was pulled only a few days later after Microsoft discovered a critical bug which might have caused the removal of user files stored in libraries.

The next few weeks were all about further bugs discovered in Windows 10 version 1809, and this update eventually turned out to be one of the buggiest releases in a long time.

As a result, I’ve seen quite a lot of people praising the world of Linux, and some of our readers told me this is something you don’t see happening on distributions like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Of course, there’s no flawless operating system out there, but for many users, the Windows 10 version 1809 fiasco was just too much to continue using Microsoft products.

Statistics, however, don’t seem to indicate that an en-masse migration to Linux is happening right now, though there’s actually a chance that more users are actually exploring such a switch in the coming months. Linux isn’t exactly the right operating system for everyone, as it’s the case of gamers, for instance, but on the other hand, it serves quite a wide array of purposes with advanced functionality you don’t find on Windows.

Getting in touch with users is always the best way to receive feedback on a certain product, service, or trend, and because Microsoft has such a hard time getting Windows right, you are definitely the ones that should help guide the company towards its final goal of making Windows the best OS for everyone.

Why did you give up on Windows and switched to Linux? What does Microsoft need to do to win you back? Is there any Linux feature you’d want to see on Windows?

Let us and Microsoft know what you think in the box below.

Source

[BimBamSmash]

21 hours ago, nir said:

Paging Linux Users: What Made You Give Up on Windows?

 

So, what, no responses or comments here? Pings aren't going through? I thought we have quite a few Linux veterans on board.

I took a look at those few comments at the source article. Barely anything new to write home about. It's always about licensing fees, botched updates, performance issues and data collection. Maybe one day I see support for Linux because some amazing, widely-used consumer software or game only work on Linux or it looks and behaves better on Linux than the alternatives. That'd be amazing. Right now it is easy for the average Joe to read Linux advocates posts and conclude they are all poor, sloppy, paranoid computer nerds. No offense intended.

[steven36]

9 hours ago, BimBamSmash said:

So, what, no responses or comments here? Pings aren't going through? I thought we have quite a few Linux veterans on board.

There is a few Linux users on the board but  this mainly a Windows/Android  site you can't go to any  of the download sections of the board and find the latest  Linux software  so you at the wrong site to learn very much about linux.

 

9 hours ago, BimBamSmash said:

Maybe one day I see support for Linux because some amazing, widely-used consumer software or game only work on Linux or it looks and behaves better on Linux than the alternatives.

Steam for Linux now supports more than 2,600 Windows games

https://liliputing.com/2018/10/steam-for-linux-now-supports-more-than-2600-windows-games.html

 

That gaming excuse is old and crusty  Gimp , Kodi  and lots more software works faster  and takes less memory /cpu  On Windows you need 8 gb of Ram to make software run as fast as with 2gb of ram on linux . Linux is far faster than Windows that's why the worlds fastest Super computers are all on linux.

 

Its coming  Valve has been porting all there games too Linux preparing for the day for when Microsoft try to force devs to only make games for UWP on Windows.

 

9 hours ago, BimBamSmash said:

Right now it is easy for the average Joe to read Linux advocates posts and conclude they are all poor, sloppy, paranoid computer nerds. No offense intended. 

The average Joe that uses Windows and smart phones cant get off Netfilx , Facebook or YouTube long enough to read the PC Centric news so only computer nerds are interested in it and only a biased Windows Noob   that don't know nothing about Linux would be concerned  about  what the Linux community does. Lol  if you use Android you use Linux even windows 10 has a linux subsystem in it.  so unless you and Apple user Linux is in most everything. Microsoft  , IBM  , Google  all do donate to Linux . Microsoft would be a lot  less rich without Linux because Linux powers Microsoft azure.

 

Google would be nothing  without Open  Source .Because  when you use Google your just using a service built into a open source project.  Android Linux  is open source , Chromium browser  is open source if it were not for open source Google would still just be a Search engine and  make ads.

 

Time for Net Giants to Pay Fairly for the Open Source on Which They Depend

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/time-net-giants-pay-fairly-open-source-which-they-depend

 

They don't start paying more than do for it,  its going to die and Google and Microsoft projects going die along with it.

 

Microsoft done laid most of there techs off  and are depending  on  non paid volunteers that  don't even know how to write code . See were that's got them here it is Nov and Windows 10 OCT 2018 release  still  a insider release. Why are sites worried about what Linux users think about Mircoshaft ? They better be worried about the future of windows and its own users because it don't look very bright. Mircoshaft cant even get a release out  and upstream Linux Ditsros  have been  spiting  them out one after the other every since 1991.

https://distrowatch.com/

 

Ubuntu 18.10 been out almost a month now that's there  short-term support release some people upgrade them one after the other without many problems  and users on Rolling Releases like Arch based  get new versions and bleeding edge software all the time . The difference is they have a choice they can use Debian LTS or Ubuntu LTS  or something else and not upgrade but every 5 years . Windows use to  be cool like that but not anymore  and they  can't even get there rolling releases to roll they still stuck in testing .  Every time Windows 10 comes it's  the SOS, before they use to not even pull releases because of bugs,  only thing is changed is now they do.. But every version of Windows 10 was buggy when they forced updated it on consumers. Windows news sites are full of pages and pages full of complaints about Windows 10 that's reality and it's been that way since 2015. 

 

There a lot of Linux users who dual boot Windows and/or have other computers with Windows on them ..Some Linux users are forced to use Windows at work, some Linux users even fix Windows for a living . So saying why people stop using Windows is overkill and nobody that uses Linux wants to use Winux (aka subsystem for Linux = fake Linux)  for it to be real linux it has to run off the Linux kernel ..    Winux don't even have a UI  and is slower than Linux is on bare metal because it's not linux ,  plus you have to install buggy Windows 10 to use it, all my PCs that i still have windows on  don't include Windows 10. I have one with XP,...  3 with Windows 7 and  I have one with just Linux , but  the one i use the most, I dual boot  windows 8.1 and Ubuntu Linux .  Some diehards  only use Linux but you would never find them on a Windows centric website like this one try r/linux/.

 

Now  the real question should be  why do some of us use Linux most of the time ?  Well for me the answer was simple my  hard drive went out on one of my computers  when using windows 10 on it and i was fooling around  and downloaded Linux and put it on a DVD and i was able to surf the net and watch movies from  my other drives with just a DVD so when I fixed it i put Linux on it . Why did I keep using Linux  after using Windows all my life? That's simple too because they made up Windows as a service and made Windows 10. I say about half the Linux users we have now was because of Windows 10,  because the user base has doubled since it came out ,