I don't get this one. I don't see ads, Cortana hasn't been a thing for like 2 years. My work pays for my license. Security seems fine in 2024. My time is very valuable.
Same that's why I don't use Windows in a professional setting. Programming in it is slower and doing office work in it is 'fun' when things change for the sake of it.
I don't use VSCode, that'd be slower too.
I just use emacs and tmux.
But one category of things that's faster is any linux utility that needs to interact with files.
NTFS stores metadata differently making things like "stat" much more expensive on windows than on linux. Naively ported programs used to doing I/O that is cheap on linux will be slower on Windows. git is an exception where they coded around this problem.
If you use nodejs for example, you'll find that the thousands of files and folders under node_modules results in way slower builds and searches on windows than linux. It's comical that a linux VM running within windows on a virtual disk on an NTFS partition will still be faster than windows itself at this because the I/O will be, from the windows perspective, one big file.
- Booting my PC until login takes approx 10s for Linux and 60-120s for Windows. Logging in takes another 1s for Linux (i3wm) or 60-120s for Windows.
In Windows, I often need to manually connect to my local wifi after logging in.
- Accessing a local file (as in git status, or opening a file in emacs) while having VPN turned off takes <1s in Linux and somewhere between 10-30s in Windows.
- Windows forces me to stop using all Office products during Office updates
- After approx 50% of all Windows updates, Windows gives me nag messages until I restart my computer
I use emacs as editor in both scenarios. Compilation and running programs is subjectively similarly fast.
The ability to actually use all of the hardware I buy.
Also using an external monitor without scaling issues is nice.
Also not having to spend days on figuring out whether I want Linux or Unix and then which distro, window manager, audio driver, package manager, etc to use is quite nice.
Being able to configure all of my hardware (including mouse scrollewheel) without resorting to writing scripts and hacks is nice.
100 percent worth dealing with extremely terrible Microsoft Windows, because the alternative is even worse in terms of usability.
Without wanting to discredit your experience, I am surprised any of this is a problem.
I switched to Mint around 3 years ago, and I never looked back. It was a surprisingly smooth sailing, everything worked out of the box. Nothing needed any hacks (including having an external monitor without any scaling issues, audio and video working out of the box, mouse and keyboard functining properly, etc and so forth).
I had no anxiety picking distros or desktop environments, just stuck with Cinnamon and I love it ever since.
What I can say, ia that my computer works as well, or maybe even better than when I did a fresh install 3 years ago. Unlike my experience with Windows where yearly fresh installs were a thing, as the computer would feel slow and sluggish over time, as if Windows deteriorated with every passing day.
The only thing I needed to hack a little with on Linux was the fingerprint sensor thing. I could make it work, but it was unreliable, so I ended up disabling it. A very small price to pay.
Literally all of the issues you've mentioned in terms of compatibility is fixed if you buy hardware that aims to have Linux compatibility out of the box.
Before you say "ah, but I didn't even need to think about it, I just bought some parts and assembled a computer."
So the companies that have done it, did for you, made it "work well on Windows", think about it. But as this is the norm you think that Linux compatibility is bad, rather, it's the reverse. Those companies didn't care about Linux and that's why its compatibility is bad.
There are now plenty of companies that have a real focus on providing great computers that works well in Linux, you could go for that option if you don't like to run scripts (which mostly isn't true as you have many applications to configure exactly what you complained about). And your external monitors will work well, I'm sure.
Nowadays with so many PC and Laptop product lines that are great in Linux, if you aren't gaming or using applications that just doesn't exist or work in Windows or want to use the battery advantage that Mac laptops have, Windows is not a necessity.
To me, it's a okay comment if you would say "I use Windows because that's what I'm comfortable using", rather than complaining about things that Linux can do well Today.
Usability-wise Linux nowadays have many distros that are better, don't have all the adware or useless fluff.
I use a Windows 11 at home for gaming and it's a terrible OS. I seriously can't wait until more and more games runs well on Linux so I can completely ditch it.
What hardware do you have issues with nowadays? I agree it used to be problematic, though lately the only remaining thing I'm struggling with is (some) printers. Then again, thankfully I haven't had to set them up on Windows either.
Ultimately people care only about what they see, not what they cannot see. An OS is useless if it can’t run Microsoft Office or the thousands of other Windows-only printer drivers. Not to mention the “where’s my start button” crowd.
That hasn't been a thing for me since the mid 2000's, thanks to CUPS. From the app side every printer is PostScript (and some even gained features the native driver doesn't have under Windows).
I'd imagine non-CMYK printers might present issues if CUPS doesn't support them, but Apple is one of the maintainers of CUPS and I'd be surprised if that were the case.
Bullshit. Linux uses almost always the same printer drivers as Mac meaning printer support is amazing. Maybe if you if you run something really obscure like a printing press but otherwise everything is supported.
There is hardware Linux struggles with but printers have not been an issue for the last 20 years.
