Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish
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@Pete-S said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
The only reason linux survives on the desktop is because it's open source.
Or maybe because it's so good. SO good. Like just try it and "holy crap, I didn't realize my desktop could improve so much."
Seriously, just try it. It's not a small margin that it improves on the Windows experience.
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@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
There is nothing Windows can do that Linux cant, however the opposite is not true.
Exactly. Linux gives you everything Windows can do, and 100x more. Windows is so limited. It supports 1% of the hardware, requires so much more tweaking and "nerd attention." Windows is for IT people to operate, not for "normals" to just use. Linux gives you all the power, while still being tuned for every day users to not have to deal with drivers or knowing if their hardware will be supported.
Linux doesn't make limits. It sets you free. Not just lower cost, not just way more hardware support, but so much more simple, so much more "just works". More intuitive. There is a reason we say it's for your grandparents now, finally a computer system that you don't have to be a power user to be able to get things done.
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@flaxking said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
I haven't done much of it with Windows 10, but back with Windows 7, if the peripheral was not officially Windows 7 compatible it could be a real PITA to install.
We are having TONS of this now after the Win7 > Win10 update. The number of common devices that "used to be supported but don't work anymore" is very high. He's clearly not been using Windows much if he's not seeing this regularly. HP printers are a big one, their older printers don't work on Windows 10. Thank goodness they "just work" on Linux, so we have simple fixes for people who upgraded to Windows 10 and got screwed by the limited hardware support.
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@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
What about GPU performance? and drivers for that
Yup, extremely good. Works just the same for me. So that's a non-issue unless you are doing something crazy.
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@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
Thats my point, you will get more in Windows ENV
No, you don't. Full stop. Anyone who thinks this is intentionally ignoring the entire boat. We can't take this discussion seriously if you say things like this.
Windows gets a small number of sometimes useful apps that no one else gets.
Linux gets a small number of sometimes useful apps that no one else gets.
No really great software company limits to either intentionally, all limits are legacy kruft. It's insane to do it intentionally, and embarrassing to any real developer. Nearly everything people claim is "Just on Windows" actually isn't (and vice versa.) There are things, but both sides have these apps, and both have alternatives.
There is simply nothing of significance that you can't do with both. But Windows introduces staggering complexity, fragility, cost, and limits that you just don't need. I've yet to have a greenfield company justify even keeping Windows on the table, the lack of any viable advantage being the simple problem. Without dealing with a foregone conclusion, find me a single example of where Windows would be viable with a greenfield?
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@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
System76 cheapest option 1000$ my hardware is like 300-400$
Okay then, Raspberry Pi 4. Full computer for about $70. Every peripheral "just works" on Linux. Whey the fuck would you blow $300 for a struggling piece of crap Windows machine when for half that you can have a nice power friendly Linux one with even better driver support?
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@Obsolesce said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
System76 cheapest option 1000$ my hardware is like 300-400$
What kind of nice gaming gpus are you talking about in a $300 system? I think you are full of it.
https://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/linux/pine64-pro-laptop-review/
A gaming GPU starts around $300 by itself!
I have the cheapest system you can get with even reasonable performance on ASRock and it is $405 without Windows and $500 with Windows (and obviously slower and less capable.)
Mobo of $50, case of $60, HD of $60, RAM of $120 or so, CPU is like $100
You can maybe get a little cheaper. But not with the A300 example that he gave. That's $150 for the mobo and case. The A10 processor is the cheapest you can do with any performance there and that's $75. That's $225 with no HD or RAM. And the GPU on the A10 isn't even remotely in the ballpark for gaming, it's like your iPhone's GPU. It's enough for a desktop, but not enough for anything but really old games. It's great for an office bare bones machine, but that's it.
If you got the cheapest hard drive and just a tiny amount of RAM, maybe today you could come out around $350 with Linux, but $450 with Windows.
If he has $300 with Windows, and Windows starts at $100, that means his hardware is $200 - $150 for the barebones kit leaving a total of $50 for his CPU, GPU, RAM, and hard drive all combined!
Windows is 33% of his entire computer cost! WTF How does anything think that that makes sense? LOL
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@scottalanmiller said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
System76 cheapest option 1000$ my hardware is like 300-400$
Okay then, Raspberry Pi 4. Full computer for about $70. Every peripheral "just works" on Linux. Whey the fuck would you blow $300 for a struggling piece of crap Windows machine when for half that you can have a nice power friendly Linux one with even better driver support?
Screenshot or it didn't happen, right?
I'm quoting this as it's one of the rare times that SAM has dropped an f bomb
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@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Obsolesce said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
System76 cheapest option 1000$ my hardware is like 300-400$
What kind of nice gaming gpus are you talking about in a $300 system? I think you are full of it.
https://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/linux/pine64-pro-laptop-review/
My smartphone has more resources than that crap...
ASRock DeskMini A300W AMD Socket AM4 AMD A300 1 x HDMI Barebone System
244.99 CADAMD 2200G
Was on sale got it for 100 CADsamsung 970 evo plus 250gb
90 CADtotal
340.56 United States DollarAnd RAM 8-16 GB, started with 8 then updated
So that's $340 base. Plus you need the RAM, maybe that's $50. Then $100 of Windows. Just to get it up and running. But you can run Linux on the same system and get slightly better performance for 27% less money.
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@DustinB3403 said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@scottalanmiller said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
System76 cheapest option 1000$ my hardware is like 300-400$
Okay then, Raspberry Pi 4. Full computer for about $70. Every peripheral "just works" on Linux. Whey the fuck would you blow $300 for a struggling piece of crap Windows machine when for half that you can have a nice power friendly Linux one with even better driver support?
Screenshot or it didn't happen, right?
I'm quiting this as it's one of the rare times that SAM has dropped an f bomb
It's funny to see this thread while we are in the middle of working on replacing Windows machines with Ubuntu for half the cost, because it makes the clients more efficient with fewer support needs, fewer driver issues, fewer update issues, etc.
Given that this past week was one of the most dramatic "Windows has so many problems" weeks where licensing, drivers, patching, cost, etc. all hit the average business pretty hard.
We are talking to customers who are facing fork lifts of their entire environment to make Windows function .... or maybe they will just move to Linux and eliminate the issue entirely.
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For those not aware. MSRP on Windows 10 is $139 (for Home.) Amazon and a few other main stream, legit retailers cut their margins to ribbons and sell it for $119. This is roughly the base legit price that you can get. Anything significantly below this cannot be from Microsoft as the retailer has to pay roughly that amount for the license to sell to you. There is no such thing as a "discount" on software like this, it logically cannot exist.
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@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
but it just takes alot of effort and patience to make linux work with peripherals and once you do keeping your system up to date is difficult it might botch your manual configs..
My guess here is that you have one or two extremely isolated, niche Windows-only peripherals that no one would normally use that are you stuck with for some reason. My guess is that the cost of these peripherals is a couple of dollars, which is small compared to the cost of Windows. These are likely not supported on Linux because they are old and effectively unused and they work on Windows because the vendor had to make drivers for something so that they could sell them long ago and no one works on them anymore and they just happen to still work on Windows so you are lucky.
If you use unsupported drivers on any OS it's going to make things complicated to maintain. Just try getting drivers working on Windows that aren't written for it, then tell me which is harder.
The simple answer is... never do this with any OS. You'd never consider it with Windows, macOS, Solaris, so don't consider it with Linux even though Linux is so powerful and easy that it seems like maybe you can get away with it. No OS can make that process truly easy, Linux simply makes it possible. That you experience this frustration is actually proof that Linux is kicking the crap out of everyone else in ease of use because it's just "impossible" with every other OS.
Your take away here is backwards, you are frustrated with Linux for making something previously impossible into just something "hard" instead of being frustrated with junk peripherals and too hard to even try Windows. You are taking a real problem, and getting angry at the solution maker.
In the real world, peripheral are normally purchased to work in a specific ecosystem. Why do you have peripherals that are only for Windows, but are running Linux? Are you trying to use "whatever is lying around", or did you buy something without checking first? In the first case, okay, but the cost of Windows ($120 - $140 per machine) adds up fast compared to what, a $5 USB dongle?
A quick search turned up a $3 adapter built for Linux (but not Windows), or this well ranked one that works for both: TPLink USB Wifi Dongle. Given those numbers, an older wifi dongle likely has a value of somewhere between $1 and $5, tops. A tiny fraction of the cost of Windows to fix a simple problem. Plus wifi is the kind of thing you want new from time to time, new standards, tech and all.
Somewhere is there expensive peripherals that only work on Windows? Sure. And the same for Linux. One thing we deal with literally every day is $10K+ equipment that isn't just Windows only, but old Windows only and can't be patched, maintained, or kept in any environment with HIPAA, PCI, etc. That's something that really never happens in the Linux world, but is continuous in the Windows world - those "Windows only" drivers are rarely maintained and seem like a good, supported deal when purchased but screw the customer when patches need to be applied and they learn that "Windows compatible" rarely means very much.
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We have one staffer that feels that they can't use Linux because they have special apps and do special non-IT tasks that require things that don't run on Linux. And the make a good case for it. However, in their case, those special apps don't run on Windows, either, and they need a macOS machine.
So in the only example that we have readily in house, the idea that "there are cases that every OS is needed, sometimes" certainly holds up. But that Windows meets the needs by "doing everything" completely doesn't. It doesn't do our normal IT tasks well, it doesn't work well on our IT and standard management hardware, and when it comes to "special needs", it fails just as much as Linux does.
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@scottalanmiller said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
What about GPU performance? and drivers for that
Yup, extremely good. Works just the same for me. So that's a non-issue unless you are doing something crazy.
Especially with ATI. They have repos you just pull the vendor drivers from.
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@stacksofplates said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@scottalanmiller said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
What about GPU performance? and drivers for that
Yup, extremely good. Works just the same for me. So that's a non-issue unless you are doing something crazy.
Especially with ATI. They have repos you just pull the vendor drivers from.
Oh yeah, AMD/ATI are great. Way better on Windows, too. I recently moved my big machine that used Nvidia over to AMD/ATI and what a difference it made for the drivers. Same thing on our Linux desktops (we did those a while ago, like 1+ years ago.) They got so much better just using AMD.
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Responding from a machine that Windows doesn't support its hardware
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@scottalanmiller said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
Responding from a machine that Windows doesn't support its hardware
Same :face_with_hand_over_mouth:
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@Obsolesce said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@scottalanmiller said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
Responding from a machine that Windows doesn't support its hardware
Same :face_with_hand_over_mouth:
I should have said a desktop device. LOL. I could have been on a phone and that wouldn't have meant much
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@scottalanmiller said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
@Emad-R said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
I know this will get alot of hate, but it just takes alot of effort and patience to make linux work with peripherals and once you do keeping your system up to date is difficult it might botch your manual configs..
Actually I find the opposite. We have continuous issues with Windows (but less than in the past for sure) and essentially zero with Linux.
LOL - I've been waiting on this post since I read the OP!
ROFLOL - Scott almost always seem to have this sitting there for nearly any occasion.
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@Dashrender said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:
Scott almost always seem to have this sitting there for nearly any occasion.
Well it's an every day thing. We run Linux for one set of users and Windows for another. And Windows generates essentially 100% of the support needs. All kinds of problems, all the time. It's an MSP gold mine. As long as we avoid it internally, that it has problems is great for us, it pays the bills. We only recommend it when a customer really needs it. And they only really need it when they've created a situation that forces that on themselves. So we never feel badly that it is out there, the customers are always creating these problems for themselves, we do all we can to protect them from themselves. So that it generates hours like crazy anyway, is just good job assurance.
