[SH1N1G4MI]

Originally Posted by civic-sense

How did you buy a license? Internet says that it is only available for enterprises and in a bulk licence model.

With win10 you really don't need to activate it all, it will chug along just fine without it. The only real downside being you don't get to change the theme. But I've dealt with that using a more nefarious method, if you get my drift

[2000rpm]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

This is true not only in a technology space, it is true in almost all areas. People today are dumbing down majorly, don't know cooking? Hello processed food and 300 pound " I'm not fat but large" babies. Don't know driving? Hello Uber. Don't know personal finance? Hello manager and so on.

Hahaha. Please don't give Nirmala Sitharaman more ideas to nail on the millenials.

I think, with the tech landscape expanding like the universe, the people who understand it remain finite.

[vsbabu]

I have been on Linux from 1996. Slackware first, then Redhat, then Debian. From 1998, I used to have home computing entirely on Linux; my wife as well used to be fine with this. Mandrake Linux was the choice from 1999 to 2004 and then PCLinuxOS (Mandrake turned into this then). From 2011, I've been using Linux all the time - even for my work as a software guy - on various versions of Linux Mint. Since last 6 months, it has been totally on Elementary OS. I bought a Macbook in 2012, but didn't like the tactile feel and the overly colorful UX and switched back after 4 months.

Hardware from 2011 has been Toshiba Satellite (3 years), Lenovo Ideapad (1 year), Dell Latitude (3 years) and now LG Gram 14 - this one is amazing in that it weighs only 990g and has 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD with free space to add one more RAM stick and one more SSD. All these except Lenovo has everything working straight out of the box with dual boot.

Happy with all this. My team has also been on Linux across companies - though most prefer Ubuntu and some prefer Mint.

With LibreOffice and Google Docs available, I hardly miss anything from Windows world.

[DarthVeda]

Originally Posted by civic-sense

How did you buy a license? Internet says that it is only available for enterprises and in a bulk licence model.

Is that for Windows 10? Windows license are available for dirt cheap price on snapdeal, costs less than 1k.

I bought Win8 license the day it opened for 2k and have gotten free upgrade to windows 10 till now. I purchased license for Windows 10 for the other PC which i built and it's running fine.
Coming to Ubuntu, we are using that OS for development work in our office. My first experience was not a good one, with 32Gigs of memory being consumed by just have two instances of visual code, and notepad++, I had to restart that crap every few hours for me to use it. I got fed up and was cursing it a lot, this problem had our admins stumped as well, they then changed the machine thinking it might be hardware issue, and on the newer one it hasn't popped up yet. But hasn't my changed my opinion that it is a Piece of crap.

[bpnpmr]

Originally Posted by GTO

We interact more with software apps (e.g. Chrome, Excel) than with the OS on a daily basis.

This is an interesting view point.

Originally Posted by needmorebhp

Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, has put in a lot of work to fix and improve things.

All the hardware issues people face fall in two categories. 1. Microsoft forcing hardware OEMs into locking down hardware specs and 2. Inability of Linux engineers to keep up with these specs. My solution has always been to stay 1 generation behind on hardware and 1 major version behind on OS.

If you have any questions about adoption, software choices, installation troubles - message and I will happily suggest solutions.

And did I mention, if you value security and privacy you must move off Windows.

Canonical role is said to be more in the server space than the desktop, makes logical sense as server is where the money is.

I never heard anyone staying one version behind in hardware and OS to handle issues.

Thanks for offering help, linux mint & ubuntu are running fine for me. Privacy is an important issue, I am not sure how much privacy we compromise by using windows.

Originally Posted by Romins

Openoffice for MS Office, it lets you save files in MS Office formats.

Originally Posted by vsbabu

I have been on Linux from 1996.
With LibreOffice and Google Docs available, I hardly miss anything from Windows world.

I use LibreOffice suite and WPS office, these run well for me. There is a setting in libre writer which enables toolbar to be viewed similar to MS office layout. I use Libre for writing scientific paper as well. I use the Mendeley reference manager and its plug-in goes well with LibreOffice writer.

[tsk1979]

First and foremost, I do not really understand the question. Linux is Unix, what stops you from using BSD Unix on your desktop.
Or Commodore 64 is a computer. What stops you from using commodore 64 as your desktop.

Or Basic is a language. What stops you from using Basic instead from C++

I could go on.

Regarding what stops you from using linux?

Cost
Linux is very very expensive. For example, you bought your laptop for a very high cost if we include the time you spent to make your WIFI work. There is a time cost to linux. I can spend 1 hour on configuring WIFI, or I can spend one hour just to do something I enjoy, like processing a video. At one time I used to enjoy looking at Gentoo compile. So I did it.Now I enjoy processing video more. Factor in time cost and suddenly your linux laptop cost you 2000$ for same performance as a 400$ entry level windows laptop

Applications
Many applications are not available. Drivers for obscure hardware is hard to come by. Windows just works. And Windows 10 is much better than the Win 98 Fiasco


So its not a primary system. I do have Kali on a USB stick for "stuff". But stuff I do on primary desktop, just happens much easier on Windows, and much much cheaper too

[arunrajk81]

During 2004, I was using Ubuntu as multiboot option with Windows OS in my P4 PC. I am into Computer Networking field and it was my learning phase and I enjoyed it a lot. I was using it for some time till my PC hardware died.

Later I started getting involved in Photography and I can call myself a hobbyist photographer to some extent. That time I was looking for a new laptop for photo editing. I was considering Linux and with that I can use GIMP for photo editing. After trying GIMP for sometime, I never got into a comfortable position. Some other Photo editing softwares that I planned to use, those were not supported in Linux. (I am not a Photoshop or LR user which is in subscription model now days). With those said, I am left with two options, either windows or Mac (Here one can argue mac also is Linux based, but with better quality and we get support).

The primary issue with Mac is cost. Even if I consider it as a onetime investment, second issue is limited HDD space (Which I think it’s a marketing trick to sell icloud storage) and I don’t want to store my photos online or in any cloud storage. Hence the option for me is to go with a windows Laptop where I get huge HDD storage option and support for the softwares that I needed for half of Mac’s price.

Just for cost reason, I wouldn’t recommend Linux, since additional time you might spend on it might be much costlier than that. Like our friends mentioned earlier in this thread, sometimes simple things can take lots of googling and time which I am not comfortable now. But I have an old Win Vista laptop which I am planning to reinstall with Linux, and then I might prefer Centos over an Ubuntu and can use it for learning and experimenting.

[hserus]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

First and foremost, I do not really understand the question. Linux is Unix, what stops you from using BSD Unix on your desktop.

There is of course OSX which is BSD under the skin.

I remember a massive thread + flamewar between the late Atul Chitnis and about half the rest of the group that started out as "linux on the desktop" on either the long dead Linux-India (as it was then before it became linux-india-help and linux-india-general, both RIP as well) or the Bangalore Linux Users Group.

A lot of the points about lackadaisical driver and desktop app support applied even then, in spades. SIS graphics card drivers, cheap and no name and present on a variety of low end PCs, were a perpetual pain at the time for example.

So after 20+ years of using Linux, over the last several years I'm using OSX, so I can fire up the terminal.app or ssh into a personal server I have to scratch my itch for using mutt to read my mail. (still the best way to clear or file away hundreds of emails piled up in your mailbox overnight)

[sandeepmohan]

My experience with Linux starts back in 2002, at my first job. New company, not a lot of money to spend on Software and Hardware so we pirated the heck out of out everything, to get going. There was no way we could avoid Windows being an operating system at the user end so we pirated that too and bought a couple of those colorful little iMac's for the Photoshop user base. Where we did deploy linux to great success was on the server side. We were one of the first companies to head into the 64 bit architecture space with AMD's Opteron chip and the operating system was linux. It was a solid, fast,
and stable combination. Windows server was way to expensive and we knew Linux was a lot more efficient in utilization of hardware resources. I do not think any operating system beats linux at this. It is way more efficient in managing system resources and most mission critical systems run Linux.

As many have already said, adoption rate is low as support and familiarity is low. Back in 2002, there was no way an end user could install Linux. You had to know a string of commands to instruct the system to do just about anything. Front end interface was clumsy. Forget getting a printer to work, it would sometimes be a nightmare just to get all the internal hardware talking together (eg: display drivers). At an organisation, you needed an expert to ensure things was running stable and secure. The cost over head and time was just too much for an organisation to absorb.

It is a bit of a trade off really. Even the latest iteration of Windows 10 can be an absolute nightmare when it comes to resource management within a system. It does not have the stability of a Mac or Linux system. What it does do very well is make it easy to deploy, Administer and Use.

A lot has changed today but not enough for the adoption rate to go up. The interface is super slick and easy to use. Software support is still behind. Gamer's and Media content creators can forget about it. It is difficult to get a color accurate display from a linux workstation and this applies even on the Android eco system.

[tinshark]

Interesting discussion so far. Except for techies most people don't really care what OS they are using as long as they can get their job done.

The lack of apps and drivers were a big issue few years back. But at that time we still relied on desktops for all the work which meant people had to encounter installing OS at some point (either directly or through some technician) so there was a higher likelihood of getting someone to try Linux. With laptops, everything is pre-packaged and there is no need for doing any changes without an obvious benefit in sight. What does Linux provide to the lay user which isn't available on Windows / Mac?

I have seen a few journalists actively switch to Linux, who are aware of free/libre software movement and also those who despise big corps and extreme capitalism. That's a very niche crowd.

If anyone wants to switch to Linux, it is a great time. The wifi/BT driver issues have greatly reduced, graphics card drivers are decent from both AMD and Nvidia. Wine and Proton provide good support for running windows apps and games. Since most apps and services today are either online or have a web offering, we don't get stuck badly with a different OS. Firefox is great again, so that is also sorted.

For those who use Mac or like the clean polished look, Elementary OS is a great Linux distro to try.

The issues I still face today are mainly with high resolution displays and multi monitor setups. Display scaling is still not as nicely handled as with windows or Mac. I use Libre Office on Linux but if you spend all day in MS Office and use some advanced features, the Linux offerings may not be sufficient (I haven't tried running Office using Wine yet).

I have consciously tried to be remain platform agnostic and therefore I appreciate Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android today. In fact I use at least one device on each of those platforms either for work or personal use! It's a great time to be a tech enthusiast!

P.S. I next want to try Haiku OS ans ReactOS to admire the effort which has gone into them and for nostalgic reasons. For those curious, Haiku builds on the ideas of BeOS and ReactOS is a 'clean room' implementation of Windows and is capable of running Win 2000 apps. Both are not Linux based.

[Samurai]

Well, actually I do use Linux on my desktop. Just not as my desktop. There is a difference.

See a partial screenshot of my desktop. It has Debian8 VM, Debian10 VM and Debian 10 WSL, all on my Windows 10 Pro.

[reignofchaos]

Well lets get the elephant out of the room first - Android uses a customized build of the Linux kernel to boot, has an ext4 file system and you can open a shell to look at the file system. That is where the similarities with the desktop version of Linux end.

The GUI, hardware acceleration, networking stack, drivers and driver related bits are all very very custom and very very different. The entire media stack has nothing to do with Linux other than the base V4L2 subsystem. 3D acceleration for games uses a completely different windowing system with the same OpenGL or Vulkan APIs.

Anyways coming to the question of why people don't use Linux - most folks do without realizing. Probably every single person posting here has a router running some strain of linux . Many might have a Smart TV that runs some strain of Linux or Android. Then you have stuff like Raspberry Pi and home automation units that basically are purpose built. All these work great with Linux.

Linux on desktop is still not a great experience in spite of many improvements down the line. As many mentioned, wifi and networking drivers are a bigger pain than what most folks would like. Same is the case with Audio if you have anything other than the basic motherboard realtek audio codec. GPU drivers are in a much better situation now since there are just three vendors now on PC and two of them have a complete open source driver stack. Only NVIDIA is the pain in the rear for not opening up their drivers.

As for me personally, when I need to use some tools in Linux, I simply spawn a VM in VMware and mostly my work is done there. I can't be bothered searching for damn drivers as my computers are always bleeding edge and top of the line. My newest PC with a Ryzen 3950x CPU has 16 cores, 32 threads and 64 GB of ram so a few cores and 8-12GB completely dedicated to a VM that runs permanently in linux is a non issue.

[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by Samurai

See a partial screenshot of my desktop. It has Debian8 VM, Debian10 VM and Debian 10 WSL, all on my Windows 10 Pro.

Exactly - when one needs Linux, VMs are the way to go . No driver hassles and no time wasted setting up. Even if you screw up some setting, you can always restore a backed up image in a minute or two.

[haria]

I use both Ubuntu & win 10 Pro.


Things which I find "near to impossible" to get in Ubuntu
1. EXCEL --> the pivot table related functions are way too superior when compared with libreoffice, etc.. Just not possible for me to use any other spreadsheet other than MS-EXCEL


2. Onenote -> Desktop App - This is my goto for ALL note taking. This is always running. Have not found an alternative to this in Ubuntu. Yes, there is the browser based oneNote, but the user experience of it sucks in a big way (no instant search, no easy moving/re-arranging stuff, etc)


3. To a lesser degree: The search App "Everything". This is simply awesome and the blazing speed is unmatched. Can locate any file / document, lying in any obscure folder, almost instantly. Couldn't find an equivalent (in terms of the blazing speed) in Ubuntu.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Back in 2002, there was no way an end user could install Linux. You had to know a string of commands to instruct the system to do just about anything. Front end interface was clumsy. Forget getting a printer to work, it would sometimes be a nightmare just to get all the internal hardware talking together (eg: display drivers).

Now imagine me trying to get Slackware Linux GUI (X-Windows) to work with my monitor in 1994.

I had to download configuration files using my AOL account. Then roam the Internet to find the display frequencies of my monitor, so that I can tell the driver how to talk to my display. This was before plug-n-play was widely available. I finally got it to work. But there were no applications worth running on it. So I had to go back to Windows 3.1 partition to do anything useful.

Originally Posted by haria

Things which I find "near to impossible" to get in Ubuntu
1. EXCEL --> the pivot table related functions are way too superior when compared with libreoffice, etc.. Just not possible for me to use any other spreadsheet other than MS-EXCEL

2. Onenote -> Desktop App - This is my goto for ALL note taking. This is always running. Have not found an alternative to this in Ubuntu. Yes, there is the browser based oneNote, but the user experience of it sucks in a big way (no instant search, no easy moving/re-arranging stuff, etc)

I dumped MS-Office back in 2011 entirely, and switched to Google apps for my entire company, it can be used from Linux too. Google sheets can do most of excel stuff, Google Keep can do most of Onenote stuff. Do check it out, if you haven't.