Unironically me as an IT professional who uses Windows. It just works. I have to fuck around with all that shit all day, I don't want to go home and do it too.
As a windows user in corporate IT. It just doesn't work. I spend most of my time hacking my way through useless unix pseudo toys, wsl2, cygwin, mingw... Each one for every tool because... Reasons. And because wsl2 is just painful. So we spend time creating fake unix virtual machines via docker on kubernetes using vs code remotely on expensive linux clusters... Frustrating.
Go home and turn on a linux laptop just to see a real functional terminal. Deep breath, zen, cathartic.
Windows makes my otherwise fine daily work miserable.
I hate enterprise IT. Built for sending around emails and working with excel sheets.
I am seriously thinking about starting an AI start up just to avoid risking another windows laptop switching job (they always promise cool stuff, at the end they always deliver overpriced windows garbage, my 8 years old laptop is more functional than their $ 3k notebook)
Sounds like you're just more familiar with Linux and that's fine. I use Linux, Windows and MacOS regularly and haven't had a problem with Windows honestly. The most frustrating of the 3 is MacOS, and even then it's nitpicking.
In sorry, but they're kind of right. Windows is HELL ON EARTH to support. Fixing issues is a guessing game because no one really knows what's wrong, its garbage driver enumeration system means a year down the line a users monitor/headset/dock will magically stop working, restarting is a 50/50 shot of getting stuck on the spinning circle, I could go on and on and on.
Within three months of starting that job windows was gone from every PC I owned.
10+ years of Windows and I still can't say I'm familiar with it.
Linux has a steep learning curve for sure, but if I have to say one good thing about it, it's the openness of Linux.
I dread seeing the message "An unknown error has just occurred" when I use Windows. Tell me, Microsoft, tell me what the error was!
While I can definitely understand and respect that, ever since I had an experience where I had to dual-boot Windows for work reasons and the printer that just worked without issue in Linux required a three-digit MB download of a bloated driver-suite with borderline spyware included in Windows, I don't trust Windows to "just work" any more.
Not saying it's on-par with each other, there's probably still more fidgeting with Linux (haven't used Windows in ages, genuinely have no perspective any more), but that experience taught me that Linux isn't the short straw any more in every situation, like it definitely used to be a few years ago.
(Also, was amused when during a LAN party when we wanted to play classic Warcraft III a while back, mine ran in wine without issue, but for a friend we had to deep-dive into the registry because of some obscure problem that prevented it from starting at all in native Windows).
There are generic printer drivers that work fine on windows too. You generally don't need to get the manufacturers bloated driver/utility/update/subscription package. Also that's not really the OS' fault, it's the shitty printer vendors.
It just works.
Same as GNU/Linux
Except if somebody uses distro like arch just because memes, and then complain on the internet that they have to download some stuff to connect to wifi or projector in this case
Except when I start a 10h build before going home only to find out in the morning that windows update restarted my computer in the middle of the night. Or when I can't edit a folder because a file "is being used", then I close absolutely every running program and it's still somehow "being used". Or when I can't turn off the PC because something is running in the background, even though I closed everything one by one. Or when my PC starts screaming because a VSCode subprocess is using all my resources, I kill it in task manager, and it somehow respawns as a process of its own. I can't end it, and closing VSCode doesn't do anything. My laptop became so hot I couldn't hold it.
I mean Linux causes problems too, ofc. I once spent like 2h trying to set up a keyboard to input Chinese characters on Fedora. But in my experience, Linux caused me less frustration by far. Or when a problem arises, I can fix it quickly.
This is not to bash on you for using windows, just thought I'd throw in that "just works" isn't universal.
Tech worker vs tech enthusiast
A looooot of tech workers start as tech enthusiasts but have the enthusiasm part of them ground away by the sands of time and toil.
As an IT professional i got rid of anything Microsoft related at home years ago just to not get bothered, can't imagine anything i'm missing and shit just works.
Linux Mint for people who have better things to do with their time.
EndeavorOS, arch based, gui installer up and running just as fast as a linux mint, but simply better
simply better
for you yes, I reallly don't like the linux community's mentality of hurr durr mine betterrr. To each their own.
Arch is the truest test of how much you're willing to sacrifice for control.
You get control of everything on your system, but you're basically on your own when it all goes to shit... which from how many of these posts I keep seeing seems to be a daily occurance haha
Hardly.
Gentoo is closer, it's like Arch except you're supposed to COMPILE every package...
Then there's Linux From Scratch. You don't download the Distro, you download the manual on how to MAKE the Distro.
Yep. Why not take Mint/Pop/etc and actually be productive instead of solving the ever so trivial issues on cmd? Matter of taste
Exactly. There's no such thing as a polymath in this day and age, so you're gonna have to trust somebody at some point, so why not put a little bit of the control freak away and accept a more put together OS from the community?
After using Ubuntu for a while I wanted to try out Arch once. Grabbed a step by step instruction and followed it.
Around step.. 7 or something I ran into a wall, because the commands simply didn't work. After messing around for an hour or two I finally gave up at that point. Of course that was years ago, so it might be easier now to install.
But overall I'd rather use Windows, Ubuntu or whatever, give me an OS where things just work, as I have actual work to do (instead of trying to fight with my OS). Hell, back in the day (~14 years ago) when using Ubuntu for school I once spent hours to get HDMI Audio to work, it was a nightmare.
Right now I just use Windows 11 on my desktop (as I game a lot and use Visual Studio) and Ubuntu on a server. I'd love to fully switch to Linux as my daily driver, but there's simply too many features that wouldn't work :-/
It's true. On Arch, you have to compile a different package for every pixel on your screen. It could take days to finish compiling and when it's finished compiling all the pixels, you have to start all over again.
I switched to Ubuntu Cinnamon and now I can walk on my own feet again.
Nah, that's Gentoo.
Driver for VGA/HDMI?
How much minimal that kernel is?
It's funny, but memes like this affect the opinion of people who haven't tried it.
They mistake some extreme minimal arch rice for the general Arch experience or the general Linux experience as well. If so many Lemmy users, who are statistically tech nerds, don't see through the meme, then the average person will definitely stay away from Linux.
Why do you automatically assume the person who wrote this wants people to use arch? It's written as a joke, which means it might be nonsense or it might be a real dedicated arch user who had a bad day, or it might be someone who thinks linux is terrible.
This isn't even a pro-linux community so OP probably doesn't care about "affecting the opinion of people who haven't used it".
This sounds like something that could've happened 28 years ago or if someone did a little too much fiddling for no good reason
What kind of weak anon compiles his kernel without supporting the clearly required and already integrated hardware?
It's fine and dandy if you remove coax or something, but video output? Really?
Lol they just needed the driver as a kennel module.
Yeah, then it totally would’ve worked and had no other issues
There really isn't much you need to do to get your HDMI port working on Linux. In fact, the kernel module is probably loaded by default.
From using arch with the default kernel and XFCE: the only thing that breaks is the external monitor gets the XFCE default desktop background rather than the one you set. Other than that hot plugging just works.
Granted minimal window managers tend to require explicit edits to a config file to get monitors working
You could replace Windows with Ubuntu/Mint/Debian/openSUSE/Fedora for even better effect.
Signed, a former Arch user
