Windows over Linux based OSes. The support (albeit via mass adoption) is much better. I can run almost any old software, including games. Plug in anything that's plug and play and not worry about driver compatibility. Things tend to just work and I'm not one accidental sudo away from wrecking the whole OS.
I just disable ads, put a custom start menu in place, and I'm golden.
I'm not saying Windows doesn't have issues, but for me personally it's likely far less than a Linux OS.
The driver thing confuses me. What I love about Linux is I DON’T have to go on a wild search expedition for drivers or install random software to get my hardware working.
Wacom tablet just this week.. plug in and works perfect on Linux.
Wasted 30 minutes getting it to work on Windows and disabling the junky software it comes with on boot.
Yep. I've got a Logitech mouse that always bugged out on Windows. Tried downloading their app/drivers and the install indicator just kept going and going above 100%. Completely broken.
Same mouse on Ubuntu works perfectly.
I have a razer mouse, the OSS alternative for linux has never worked perfect.
Often times it forgets the color settings, which admittedly isnt a big deal and not life altering.
but the clutch has never worked, and considering I have hand tremors, that clutch really helped me with sniping in games on windows, and now its just a dead feature i can never use on linux.
Never a day where a Razer product doesn't have an issue with something in particular.
Just sucks that the very thing I bought it for, to help me overcome a physical issue, is now functionally useless/nonexistent thanks to switching to linux.
if I knew then what I knew now I'd have just bought a cheap PoS generic mouse lol
Blaming windows because Logitech fucked up is a bit weird to me.
It’s up to the hardware company to make drivers. If they do a shit job it’s their fault not windows. If the driver isn’t working well it’s the developer who wrote it.
The only issues I’ve ever had with drivers in windows is when the company building the hardware does a bad job at it. Super rare for me anyway.
You may want to re-read the comment I was replying to. At no point did I blame Windows. I simply provided an anecdote supporting that Linux has decent out of the box support for drivers.
I like Linux but there are absolutely some driver problems with laptops.
Just go on the arch wiki and search for any recent laptop and it's quite likely that something will be slightly buggy or not working. Often there is an easy solution.
I don't think I've ever had a driver issue in Linux where something straight up didn't work, except for printers (but I've had printer issues with Windows and osx too, so that's more a printer than an OS problem). I have had to find different drivers when I want some very specific feature though. Really most of my issues with Linux are just because I'm trying to do something complicated in the first place. If I had simple usage I don't think I'd have any problems at all, vs Windows where sometimes it just randomly fucks itself up.
Maybe not just driver but also firmware. Some firmware is not included by default and needed to be installed/downloaded.
I use Linux as my main pc, and while things will work without looking for drivers. They don't always have 100% of their functionality. My Logitech keyboard and mouse for example, worked without doing anything but the macro or "G" keys aren't re-bindable by any software currently.
You specifically mention old software, but for older software Wine on Linux seemed very reliable to me, probably because older interfaces are better tested already. Some very old games (i.e. Win 95-XP era) worked better for me on Wine than on modern Windows out of the box.
DXVK definitely made all the unoptimized older games easier to run, compared to running them natively on Windows.
I used to think all of these too bud, trust me, but it has gotten better over the last 5 years. I did have a couple of hiccups but for the most part Ubuntu was pretty smooth. Steam makes all of your old games real easy too.
I attempted a home Linux machine about 7 years ago and had to give way over family needs. I'm now running mint on the next iteration of the family computer.
I came here to say similar. macOS > all for me. I personally generally detest Windows, but I keep an install around because I want to game and don't want getting my games to run to be a hobby. I'd much rather do most productivity types of things on Linux rather than Windows. That said, I'm far and away most productive on macOS, and the tooling there is just better for me for most things, especially given that I use an iPhone as my mobile. Just the integrations between those two would make switching either one hard, especially given it's not nearly as good on any other platform. But honestly, even trying to use a computer without Keyboard Maestro and Launchbar just feel straight up broken to me now.
Also, people downvoting in this thread maybe didn't read the question? "Which do you prefer?"
I did and I'd still downvote, particularly because of the incorrect points contributing to the general quality of that opinion. You can have an opinion but it won't necessarily be correct or justified.
For obscure problems I actually find it easier to solve issues on Linux. The problem with Linux support isn't that it isn't out there, it's that there's so many variations that it's hard to know which one is right for your setup. It's the main reason why I stick with Ubuntu forks.
Windows over Linux based OSes. The support (albeit via mass adoption) is much better. I can run almost any old software, including games. Plug in anything that's plug and play and not worry about driver compatibility. Things tend to just work and I'm not one accidental sudo away from wrecking the whole OS.
I just disable ads, put a custom start menu in place, and I'm golden.
I'm not saying Windows doesn't have issues, but for me personally it's likely far less than a Linux OS.
The driver thing confuses me. What I love about Linux is I DON’T have to go on a wild search expedition for drivers or install random software to get my hardware working.
Wacom tablet just this week.. plug in and works perfect on Linux.
Wasted 30 minutes getting it to work on Windows and disabling the junky software it comes with on boot.
Yep. I've got a Logitech mouse that always bugged out on Windows. Tried downloading their app/drivers and the install indicator just kept going and going above 100%. Completely broken.
Same mouse on Ubuntu works perfectly.
I have a razer mouse, the OSS alternative for linux has never worked perfect.
Often times it forgets the color settings, which admittedly isnt a big deal and not life altering.
but the clutch has never worked, and considering I have hand tremors, that clutch really helped me with sniping in games on windows, and now its just a dead feature i can never use on linux.
Never a day where a Razer product doesn't have an issue with something in particular.
Just sucks that the very thing I bought it for, to help me overcome a physical issue, is now functionally useless/nonexistent thanks to switching to linux.
if I knew then what I knew now I'd have just bought a cheap PoS generic mouse lol
Blaming windows because Logitech fucked up is a bit weird to me.
It’s up to the hardware company to make drivers. If they do a shit job it’s their fault not windows. If the driver isn’t working well it’s the developer who wrote it.
The only issues I’ve ever had with drivers in windows is when the company building the hardware does a bad job at it. Super rare for me anyway.
You may want to re-read the comment I was replying to. At no point did I blame Windows. I simply provided an anecdote supporting that Linux has decent out of the box support for drivers.
I like Linux but there are absolutely some driver problems with laptops. Just go on the arch wiki and search for any recent laptop and it's quite likely that something will be slightly buggy or not working. Often there is an easy solution.
I don't think I've ever had a driver issue in Linux where something straight up didn't work, except for printers (but I've had printer issues with Windows and osx too, so that's more a printer than an OS problem). I have had to find different drivers when I want some very specific feature though. Really most of my issues with Linux are just because I'm trying to do something complicated in the first place. If I had simple usage I don't think I'd have any problems at all, vs Windows where sometimes it just randomly fucks itself up.
Maybe not just driver but also firmware. Some firmware is not included by default and needed to be installed/downloaded.
I use Linux as my main pc, and while things will work without looking for drivers. They don't always have 100% of their functionality. My Logitech keyboard and mouse for example, worked without doing anything but the macro or "G" keys aren't re-bindable by any software currently.
You specifically mention old software, but for older software Wine on Linux seemed very reliable to me, probably because older interfaces are better tested already. Some very old games (i.e. Win 95-XP era) worked better for me on Wine than on modern Windows out of the box.
DXVK definitely made all the unoptimized older games easier to run, compared to running them natively on Windows.
I used to think all of these too bud, trust me, but it has gotten better over the last 5 years. I did have a couple of hiccups but for the most part Ubuntu was pretty smooth. Steam makes all of your old games real easy too.
I attempted a home Linux machine about 7 years ago and had to give way over family needs. I'm now running mint on the next iteration of the family computer.
I came here to say similar. macOS > all for me. I personally generally detest Windows, but I keep an install around because I want to game and don't want getting my games to run to be a hobby. I'd much rather do most productivity types of things on Linux rather than Windows. That said, I'm far and away most productive on macOS, and the tooling there is just better for me for most things, especially given that I use an iPhone as my mobile. Just the integrations between those two would make switching either one hard, especially given it's not nearly as good on any other platform. But honestly, even trying to use a computer without Keyboard Maestro and Launchbar just feel straight up broken to me now.
Also, people downvoting in this thread maybe didn't read the question? "Which do you prefer?"
I did and I'd still downvote, particularly because of the incorrect points contributing to the general quality of that opinion. You can have an opinion but it won't necessarily be correct or justified.
For obscure problems I actually find it easier to solve issues on Linux. The problem with Linux support isn't that it isn't out there, it's that there's so many variations that it's hard to know which one is right for your setup. It's the main reason why I stick with Ubuntu forks.