For like a month or two I decided, screw it, I am going to use all the programs I cannot use on Linux. This was mostly games and music making software.
I guess it was fun for a bit, tries different DAWs, did not play a single game because no time.
Basically, it was not worth it. The only thing I enjoyed was OneDrive, because having your files available anywhere is dope, but I also hate it because it wants to delete your local files. I think that was on me.
Anyways, I am back. Looking at Nextcloud. Looking at Ardour. I am fine paying for software, but morally I got to support and learn the tools that are available to me and respect FOSS. (Also less expensive… spent a lot on my experiment).
Anyone done this? Abondoned their principles thinking the grass would be greener, but only to look at their feet coverered in crap (ads, intrusive news, just bad UI).
I don’t know. I don’t necesarily regret it, but I won’t be doing it again. What I spent is a sunk cost, but some has linux support, and VSTs for download. So, I shall see.
Windows lately: The office and SCADA machines I work with are the most obstructive systems imaginable. Randomly logging users out while running a machine, blue screening despite only running a single 2mb .exe for more than a week. Surprise, bitch, you gotta update even though this is a mission critical machine that is in use!
In all seriousness I would really love to see how you people are using Windows and how good is your hardware. I don’t get it, been using Windows both at home and work since ever (alongside Linux) and I can’t complain since Windows 10. Instead of spending around 2 months tweaking a Linux DE and Wine to get something somehow working if you just spend a single afternoon configuring Windows properly it will run fine for years.
And btw if you’re running mission critical systems / SCADA and Windows nags you with updates and whatnot maybe that isn’t Window’s fault, its yours because you decided to cheap out and instead of getting Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC you went with Windows 10 Home or Pro. At least get a regular Enterprise edition and hire a good consultant that knows his way around group policy. :)
I ran Debian on my daily driver laptop starting in 2016 and after the first week of tweaking I ran it for 5 years. And that’s not just web browsing, I used it for gaming, running VMs, programming and CAD. It was the lowest maintenance machine I have had. Conversely my W10 gaming machine surprises me pretty much monthly with its Windowsy bullshit. Will the USB mic be detected or will I have to restart Steam to regain voice chat, will the latest update disable my second monitor, will a joystick that requires no extra software under Linux require me to run an unsigned executable with an EULA written in Chinese? Who knows! 🤡
Our IT department was outsourced to an international support company that thinks blocking NTP but allowing SSH and mandatory reboots of production equipment is a solid security policy. “Windows Brain” is a thing in corporate settings.
So you were virtualizing Windows for those tasks and you say the entire machine was low maintenance. How come you say that a Debian machine with Windows VMs is more low maintenance than a simple Windows machine?? If you had Windows all along how come you didn’t have to deal with the alleged “annoyances” of Windows inside those VMs?
On the first comment you said Windows was at fault for rebooting itself and asking for updates… now you’re saying it reboots because some support company in India is forcing reboots… So in the end its your CEO’s fault for hiring them not Window’s…
I use software to program industrial hardware, it’s Windows only and if you install it all (or multiple versions of one package) on a single machine they start to break each other’s shitty hacks. Using VMs saves me from having to own and maintain 5 physical machines. The VMs don’t even have a virtual nic so they stay frozen in a working state and don’t get broken by a bugfix.
Denmark.
The Windows problem is that it needs to restart during the update process and that Windows “professionals” have no other option. The fact that updates are on a mandatory schedule at all is the result of 20 years of vulnerabilities that were going unpatched because Windows updates break working systems.
Security updates for Linux are just as needed, an unpatched bug can be exploited, but applying those patches does not interfere with operation of the machine. The update can be installed at any time, restarting the application or the whole machine can be done at any time.
This isn’t always true. Kernel updates require reboots and those are as equally important when it comes to security. There are tons of systems that get hacked in this way, people update the software without rebooting and suddenly they’re running a 4 year old kernel that is exploitable in some way and they thing they’re secure.
Also you don’t seem to have experience with LTSB and what and how updates are done. Long story short: security and very critical updates only reboots aren’t required as often as with regular Windows Pro/Home/Enterprise nor they’re are surprise updates randomly rebooting things. Your admin will control everything how it happens and when.
When it comes to Windows the reboots are usually require reboots are feature updates and other non essential stuff. Apart from those situations similar to the Linux kernel it won’t require a reboot.