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> You literally have to reinstall windows because of how broken it got, and that's somehow okay?

Last time I did it was in the Windows XP SP0 days.

> The amount of BSOD I've seen and unfixable issues after spending hours googling and browsing windows shitty support sites are just the tip of the iceberg.

When was the last time you got BSOD? I've not seen them after Vista.

> The only reason Linux won't win the desktop is because it doesn't have a monopoly to support it.

"Win"? Start with software compatibility. There's no one Linux, there's a billion of incompatible distros that make it impossible to run old software.

> These discussions that pretend any of this is due to merits of one OS over the other are moot.

API and ABI compatibility are swear words to you, I get it.

I'm sorry if you don't care about those, the world will shrug you off. No other OS has this madness.

> by external factors.

Yeah, for Linux fans it's always someone or something else. The fact that Linux is a bug-ridden mess of software with no compatibility and no stability isn't an issue of course. It's because Microsoft/Oracle/NVIDIA actively interfere with Linux. Or aliens? Must be aliens.

1 comments

Wow, I guess some people are such die hard fans that they try to mention "aliens" instead of giving a semblance of an argument.

Keep your ad ridden Windows mate, you clearly deserve it. Not worth my time to answer this low level of a reply.

Rabid fanboyism is solely on you, mate.

I've been running Linux exclusively since RedHat 5.0 (no, that's not RHEL, that's more than a decade earlier).

This entire article is 1000% true. Every word of it. You can "opine" and "disagree" with it as much as you want. It's become too damn popular in the western world lately to opine about anything.

Feel free to opine about gravity, just don't fall off the top of a 10-storey building.

BTW this is why the entire world is running "ad-ridden"/"privacy-invading" Windows.

People run it because

1. Windows doesn't get in the way and allows them to run their software.

2. Windows is rock stable and doesn't break randomly after every upgrade (sans occasional conflicts with third-party software here and there affecting ~0.05% of people).

3. Windows is simple.

Linux has no implied compatibility, it's full of regressions, it's complicated as hell and it still has poor HW support. Yes.

People run Windows because it comes installed in their machines.

> Windows is rock stable and doesn't break randomly after every upgrade (sans occasional conflicts with third-party software here and there affecting ~0.05% of people).

What? I've lost count of the amount of times that I've had to restore botched Windows updates. It has gotten better lately, but it still happened more times than I've had to deal with update issues on my Linux installation. And I run my Linux near the bleeding edge where, in theory, everything should break all the time, right? Well, it doesn't.

My point stands. People don't choose their OS. It's chosen by the hardware manufacturer, their employers or their requirements. I'm gonna repeat this because it's extremely important: people don't spend a single second choosing their OS.

If you want to game, you have to use Windows (yes I know about Proton and love it, but mainstream online games require Windows). If you want to use your computer for work, you need Office. Even with Google Docs, people in my country simply default to the Office suite. Again, not because they choose it, but because it was already chosen for them by the monopoly that is already in place.

Aside from Office, you have all of the other specialized tools like the Adobe suite and many others that force you to use Windows again.

Windows doesn't have anyone competing with them. Their monopoly guarantees they can get away with anything. It's not a competition.

Windows 11 is a great example of this. Nobody asked for it. It's garbage with more ads in it. It wasn't built to improve the system for users, it was built to sell ads and force people to buy new computers. Being the only option allows them to do all of this. Windows simply doesn't need to add, change or remove features because of competitors since there aren't any.

> People run Windows because it comes installed in their machines.

People run Windows because it works. FTFY.

The number of times something in Linux has broken over the past 25 years for me has been insane.

How about the Linux kernel failing to boot for three releases in a row, a regression that affected tens of thousands of laptops?

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206175

Of course in the unicorn land of Linux cultists it "works" too, but then you open any Linux related forum and multiple threads about something not working anymore are posted daily.

I invite you to r/Fedora for example.

> My point stands. People don't choose their OS.

There's no point.

There's an actual OS, Windows.

And then there's a software compilation X version N that comes with no warranties whatsoever, it's called Linux Distro X version N.

People choose to run an actual OS with the ability to create and run third-party software for at least a decade, in the case of Windows for up to three decades.

Linux offers NONE of that.

No stability, no quality, no QA/AC and no implied or enforced backward or forward compatibility.

Continue to OVERLOOK all of that and believe "But mom, Windows is preinstalled!"

I know a TON of people who have left Linux after a few years of struggling with it at every turn. They are all now running Windows or MacOS.

Reading your answers you seem unhinged. Calm down mate.

> Of course in the unicorn land of Linux cultists it "works" too, but then you open any Linux related forum and multiple threads about something not working anymore are posted daily.

As opposed to Windows where nothing ever breaks? That doesn't make any sense. It's a known fact that Linux users report way more problems than Windows users because they are simply more technical, more in line with the open source spirit and dig deeper.

When I had issues on my Windows, it was extremely hard to find any solution online. Nobody goes to r/Windows for their troubles. From the few answers I've found, pretty much all of them ended up being "re-install Windows" or "re-install parts of Windows".

> People choose to run an actual OS with the ability to create and run third-party software for at least a decade, in the case of Windows for up to three decades.

Sorry but, that's simply not true for the average person. I'm not talking about the typical HN user here. The absolute vast majority of users *do not choose an OS*. Surely you can't argue with that, right?

> Continue to OVERLOOK all of that

No. I'm well aware that there are many things to improve on Linux (especially desktop linux), but my whole point is that it's utterly irrelevant until people actually get to choose an OS. Linux could have zero issues and work flawlessly everywhere and it would still have almost nobody using it outside of our tech savvy bubble.

If Linux as a whole was as bad as you say, it wouldn't be used in the majority of computers in the world. It's only desktop Linux that suffers from your complaints, and it's simply because it doesn't have companies with infinite money and monopolies behind it making it more seamless for the average user while forcing vendors to support it.