Deaf people.

Literally anyone who wants to use a laptop in public withough annoying everyone around them.

Who out there using computers without sound?

I use my computers without sound, until I watch a vid (I use headphones for that). I hate the constant beeps for attention. Same with tablets, no sound, not even when playing a game. The only device that is allowed to make a sound is the phone. (and then very limited)

Why is that good?

I’ve had poor luck with AppImage. Because of how it works, it has failed in the exact thing it was supposed to do, just werk everywhere. But I’ve heard it generally works well.

1. Stop bothering with dead software.
2. You can repackage old FOSS source code into any of those containers and install and use it that way. Nothing is stopping you, the tools are free and widely documented. You don’t need to own the FOSS repository to repackage it, and actually a huge chunk of containers are packaged by people not affiliated with the development project of the software.

I mean not really, Appimage has been around since 2004, flatpak/docker for about a decade now. But at any rate I don’t see your point, the person I replied to said it’s hard to run old applications on Linux and I gave him solutions on how to do that. What does their age have to do with anything?

We only use software that has existed before the past decade in this household!

I mean to be fair, it’s likely you’d spend most of your time reverse engineering creative’s drivers with something like ghidra, which doesn’t need Linux 😄

I run Ubuntu at work where we have an Epson printer. My print jobs are mysteriously canceled ~50% of the time, and wouldn’t work at all throughout Ubuntu 20.10 and only started intermittently working with 22.10. (They were mysteriously quite reliable with 18.10.) Looking around on the Ubuntu forums, I was hardly alone. None of the posted fixes worked for my case, and seemed unreliable for others as well. A cursory Internet search shows me that printing problems are endemic to Linux and have been for a long time.

We don’t have a Windows machine to compare, but the Mac on the front desk prints 100% of the time without fail barring paper jam or something else that is the fault of the printer.

Tbf, every moderately old software product is a collection of built-up stupidity.

Worse, intentional malicious stupidity.

Eh, there are lots of utilities that will solve this problem very quickly and permanently.

Because of the ginormous community, every problem has a solution in Windows.

If it isn’t a Microsoft sanctioned solution, then multiple third party solutions exists that fix it.

Windows has a hell of a lot more support than any Linux distribution does.

Similarly, about 90% of the complaints I see linux users make about Windows are actually limitations in their understanding or are just outdated and no longer apply.

Ok, something didn’t work, I now have to figure out what driver wasn’t supported and what I need to download.

Unlike in Windows where you never need to download drivers. As executable binaries you have no chance of checking. Sometimes from very questionable sources. And actually you can be happy if it’s only a driver. Installing random 3rd party tools just to get basic functionality is a thing.

people on forums are helpful

Which also happens for Windows. But rarely. And if they really try… then there are still 10 different answers to a single problem and you have to test which one works for your specific version (no, chosing the most recent one sounds logical but is rarely the answer).

Now I gotta figure out this command line thing. Oh cool some people built GUIs for certain stuff so i don’t need to play with the command line

Which in what way is worse then editing random obscure values in the registry? Because it’s a window you type in. And in the worst case even the Windows help starts with poweshell nowadays, which is exactly the same.

And then at some point I got stuck because of file permissions.

That’s a solveable problem. Unlike in Windows where they put file permissions on top a file system not having them in a weird unintutive way. And don’t ever try to change the wrong permission as an administrator as that’s simply not allowed. After all you don’t own your Windows PC, MS just gratiously allows you to use it.

So, you see… it’s all a matter of perspective.

Trying to use proprietary drivers and NTFS on Linux is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. People work hard to make it work and maybe it does with a little effort but the proprietary model and Linux distros just don’t mesh well together. If you make it a point to purchase hardware that has open source drivers and use open source software (and as a consumer, you probably should anyway), everything does just work. Obviously this may not suit your use case and Linux may just not be for you.

If I was in your situation, I would try installing openSUSE or Fedora Linux on a computer where you don’t care if the entire disk gets wiped occasionally, using a flash drive you also don’t care about getting wiped occasionally. They probably have sufficiently comprehensive installers and installation instructions for you to succeed in using one of them, and if you don’t care about the content of the disks you use you’ll be more willing to experiment with the installation process (even though it’s unlikely your computer will work worse due to trying to install a Linux distribution). If you use a computer that has become slower and less usable than you’d like you will probably be pleasantly surprised by the results!

Also, you can back up your product keys and prepare a Microsoft Windows installation disk if being able to go back to Windows 10 makes you more comfortable with experimenting.

Overall, Linux enhanced my ability to to get productive work done, and also the opportunity to experiment and learn more about how to use computers to solve problems. I think learning how to use a GNU operating system is a good long term investment, though if you still need to keep around at least one computer that runs Microsoft Windows to protect your income I won’t disparage you.

Hey, how’d you see what I’ve done to my Android phone?

Cause this exactly describes what I do to it. Then I get weird conflicts. Lol. I do it to myself.

I was primarily noting that I usually don’t engage in unnecessary and unproductive customization, as there will always be some way you could meet your desires a little better, but unless you’re creating and documenting an automated system like https://larbs.xyz/ or even just “copy this file to ~/.profile” your customizations will eventually be lost when your system fails, leaving you with new reason to spend more time customizing.

As the video I linked said: if computers are as powerful as the universe and the universe was created in billions of years, you may only be done customizing billions of years from now (and at that point you will have had even more billions of years to come up with new ways you want to improve your customization).

If I’m spending time on something that won’t result in an update to a git repository, or a Lemmy comment, or even speaking to someone in person or me acquiring more property, I consider it more frivolous than not.

And that is bad?

I think it’s fine as long as they aren’t terrible insecure. But if they’re using an old runtime, people will bother them about it.

Did you manage to get your system working again? Iirc I did the same on Arch a few years ago and it wasn’t too bad to restore the system after looking at the permissions on a fresh install (maybe a container or vm, idr).

And Windows NT was the result of the failed joint venture with IBM while developing OS/2. While IBM wanted stability and preferred to let the user wait at power up until the IS was sure everything checked out, MS wanted fast user satisfaction and if things fail, just let the user reboot.

I prefer to get a cup of coffee when the computer boot up at the start of the day, but no, ‘the market’ preferred a quick start and regular coffee breaks during the day. I’d almost suspect MS from having stocks in the coffee industry.

Which OS is better? The one that meets the user’s needs. I’m glad there is choice, my choice isn’t everybody’s choice. The Windows desktop at work comes with a helpdesk, which works fine for me. (when I need them, but I’ll deny any knowledge of Windows ;) )

Actual, vanilla AOSP is a pretty good system. But as soon as a manufacturer takes it and puts their own stuff on top, things get annoying.

Crow doesn’t want us to classify which operating systems are superior, yet, believes that every operating system that isn’t Windows is superior.

Linux, as an OS, is much more feature rich. What it lacks is applications. There are many applications out there that are only available for Windows or OSX and there is no Linux app to do the same thing (or the Linux app is very far behind in quality). The inverse (a Linux only app) is rarely true, except for applications that are niche or heavily rely on an OS feature that does not have a close equivalent on Windows.

Plus, just about every piece of (consumer) hardware that can be connected to a computer has a Windows driver.

Something can cost $0 and still participate in the market. The cost to use something can even be negative $ (e.g. Bing paying you to use it).

The thing is that Unix will solve every problem, the only question is when. Year of the Linux desktop 2070?

I’m legitimately unsure if it’s appropriate to be running mission-critical systems on the Microsoft Windows platform nowadays, but transitioning will obviously take some time.