edit: hey guys, 60+ comments, can’t reply from now on, but know that I am grateful for your comments, keep the convo going. Thank you to the y’all people who gave unbiased answers and thanks also to those who told me about Waydroid and Docker
edit: Well, now that’s sobering, apparently I can do most of these things on Windows with ease too. I won’t be switching back to Windows anytime soon, but it appears that my friend was right. I am getting FOMO Fear of missing out right now.
I do need these apps right now, but there are some apps on Windows for which we don’t have a great replacement
- Adobe
- MS word (yeah, I don’t like Libre and most of Libre Suit) it’s not as good as MS suite, of c, but it’s really bad.
- Games ( a big one although steam is helping bridge the gap)
- Many torrented apps, most of these are Windows specific and thus I won’t have any luck installing them on Linux.
- Apparently windows is allowing their users to use some Android apps?
Torrented apps would be my biggest concern, I mean, these are Windows specific, how can I run them on Linux? Seriously, I want to know how. Can wine run most of the apps without error? I am thinking of torrenting some educational software made for Windows.
Let me list the customizations I have done with my xfce desktop and you tell me if I can do that on Windows.
I told my friend that I can’t leave linux because of all the customization I have done and he said, you just don’t like to accept that Windows can do that too. Yeah, because I think it can’t do some of it (and I like Linux better)
But yeah, let’s give the devil it’s due, can I do these things on Windows?
- I have applications which launch from terminal eg:
vlcwould open vlc (no questions asked, no other stuff needed, just type vlc) - Bash scripts which updates my system (not completely, snaps and flatpaks seem to be immune to this). I am pretty sure you can’t do this on Windows.
- I can basically automate most of my tasks and it has a good integration with my apps.
- I can create desktop launchers.
- Not update my system, I love to update because my updates aren’t usually 4 freaking GB and the largest update I have seen has been 200-300 mbs, probably less but yeah, I was free to not update my PC if I so choose. Can you do this on Windows? And also, Linux updates fail less often, I mean, it might break your system, but the thing won’t stop in the middle and say “Bye Bye, updates failed” and now you have to waste 4GB again to download the update. PS: You should always keep your apps upto date mostly for security reasons, but Linux won’t force it on you and ruin your workflow.
- Create custom panel plugin.
- My understanding is that the Windows terminal sucks? I don’t know why, it just looks bad.
I am sure as hell there are more but this is at the top of my mind rn, can I do this on Windows. Also, give me something that you personally do on Linux but can’t do it on Windows.
- boot from a btrfs snapshot
- run docker without running a second kernel
- boot an older kernel, in case something fails
- run the system completely without a gui, to save video RAM for other tasks
- distro hopping
- use multiple desktop environments
- use your computer without a mouse
- create a directory named CON
- use old hardware painlessly
- have your system not spy on you without extra effort
- create weird stacks of software raid, volume manager, disk encryption and filesystems and then boot from it
- read the kernel developer mailing list and be hyped for new kernel features like bcachefs, which will hopefully come someday
[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo Click
Can you play Bash Roulette in Windows?
Seriously, you can hack it with one liners and scripts to do anything. I know you can do scripting with windows, but it just doesn’t have the sheer number of nifty little tools. The Linux philosophy has always been “do one thing and do it well”, so you can chain the simple but powerful tools together and knock up a little script to do something amazingly useful in seconds.
- run the system completely without a gui, to save video RAM for other tasks
- use your computer without a mouse
To be fair you can do these things with Windows too. There is a Windows server core edition without GUI.
So you have to completely reinstall Windows if you want to get rid of the GUI on an existing system?
On Linux just edit a file & reboot…
Linux is definitely the superior choice for someone who would decide that they wanted a GUI when they installed the system and then change their mind later.
I can switch without rebooting, so I may change my mind several times a day. I actually boot without gui by default and then start sway by hand. Usually after starting updates in a terminal multiplexer.
Interesting, I don’t know much about current windows, so this did not cross my mind. But you have to install a separate OS for this and can’t just decide to stop your display manager I guess? So playing games and running without GUI would require to different installations?
I am an idiot. I’ve heard a lot about bcachefs and I only just realized the name is about a cache, not a bunch of cooks.
Knowing that it originates from bcache probably helps to prevent this confusion.
Others have already answered your specific points, which are all (sort of) possible on Windows. I would like to present a quick list of things are not possible on Windows, this is split in 3 parts: Truly impossible, Possible but so convoluted it might as well be impossible, and possible but much harder than what it should.
Truly Impossible
- Choose your preferred program for things. Sure you can do it for simple stuff like text or video, but what about my graphical interface backend, my file explorer or my DE.
- Choose your disk format. Again you can use an incredible array of (I think) 3 formats, and while I also only use ext4 on Linux I know BTRFS is there for me if I ever want to switch to a modern filesystem.
- Customise your system. Again people are going to claim that this is possible on Windows via regedit, but it’s not on the same level, I can’t have a Windows version stripped of controller support or wireless support if I know I’ll never plug a controller or a wireless card on the machine.
- Upgrade every single component of your system in one go. Because the way programs are installed on Windows you need to upgrade each one on its own.
- Fix issues with the system, say you found a bug on Linux if you have the expertise you can 100% fix it, on Windows the best you can do is report it and hope for the best.
Almost impossible
- Using a tiling window manager
- Virtual desktops that actually work
Harder than what it should
- Customise Super+ commands
- Prevent auto updates
You’ve hit all the critical ones.
Headless may be the biggest one for me. I run multiple VMs in the cloud on tiny servers entirely without GUI bloat. I can, and do, automate anything that I do more than a couple of times, which I can do because there are decent command line interfaces for most things.
With Linux, it’s possible to replace every component except the kernel - for example, Chimera Linux even replaces the GNU tools with FreeBSD ones. A wide variety of filesystems, init systems, window managers, display managers (well, two) - and nearly everything is free.
Which is another thing that is impossible on Windows, that you can do on Linux: use this enormous library of software, legally and without piracy, for free.
You can also replace the kernel though.
You didn’t mention the ability to mount different drives and partitions to different directories. For example, I always keep
/homeon a different partition so I can reinstall my OS without worrying about data loss. You also can use tools like LVM to combine volumes into a single storage volume. Have a lot of games and want to install them all to one place? You can set up multiple large drives to act as a single volume. I guess you can do this with RAID utilities or something in Windows, but it’s really not the same.
It’s not only what you can do, but what it won’t do to you.
Using your computer is not wrong. You shouldn’t be punished for it.
Using your computer is not an imposition on someone else. You don’t owe anyone for the privilege of using it. You have already paid for it. The OS vendor doesn’t have a lien on it; they aren’t paying you to rent ad space on your desktop.
You bought it, you own it, you can break it if you like but it’s not anyone else’s place to tell you what you’re allowed to do with it.
Your computer is yours – just yours – and it shouldn’t be spamming you with ads, filling itself up with junk, or telling you “you’re not allowed to do that because of the OS vendor’s deals with Hollywood”.
I’m not anti-commerce or anti-corporate. My preferred browser is plain old Google Chrome (with uBlock Origin). I buy games on Steam. The game I spend the most hours playing on my Linux system is Magic Arena, hardly an anti-commercial choice. But that’s my choice. I buy computers from Linux-focused vendors (currently System76) and I expect my computer to be mine, not the vendor’s to do with what they like.
Soon with Plasma 6 and Wayland, you can let your Desktop crash but still keep all your Windows after the new Desktop spawned. This also means you can replace your KDE desktop with Gnome, XFCE Hyprland and some others whithout needing to logout or close applications.
Additionally you can save current states of the application with Wayland. Shit is getting so interesting right now.
Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=sAlIcn5meSCDKq3K&v=jlDhpFjBWiw
Not be spied on by microsoft
deleted by creator
Connect a printer and have it just work.
My printer doesn’t work. Though tbf it doesn’t work on windows either.
Bought a Brother printer. Opened up “printers” on Windows 11, it picked up my printer wirelessly, I clicked “add” and it was done.
No garbage software or anything.
So printers definitely do just work on Windows.
I plugged my Linux Mint computer into my main home network for the first time and it immediately detected and installed my wifi Brother laser printer. I didn’t even need to click anything.
On my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed computer I just had to tell it to look for the printer and it did the whole setup flawlessly.
I have several Windows PCs and I’m forever trying to persuade them to reconnect to the printer. They fail to find it, fail to print, give incorrect status reports, create duplicates of it, and so on. Linux has been amazingly unproblematic by comparison.
Same with my printer.
On Linux, I had to configure CUPS. This meant finding out which of the 30+ different drivers for my printer model actually worked. Then it meant determining which of the dozen or so different “devices” would actually work. And until I got it working correctly, it randomly crashed.
There are plenty of things Linux is better at but it isn’t that great at handling standard devices with any ease. I’m sure that I can do a lot more now with the Linux driver, but sometimes I just want to tell my computer that’s my printer and I just want this printed.
My shiny new printer will not work with windows. The drivers a pain in the ass. Even if it did, the drivers are bloatware.
With linux there is no garbage drivers and scanning. Copying and printing just work. With native dialogs no less.
It’s funny, printers used to be a huge pain in the ass on Linux, and some probably still are. But I got a low end Brother about a year ago. Had been using MacOS because I was trying to move away from Android, and buy into the whole ecosystem. Now that that experiment is thankfully over, I installed Fedora on a new laptop. Wouldn’t you know it, it automatically found my printer on the network without me even asking it to, and selected the correct drivers straight away.
But printing can be a pain on every OS, it’s very dependent on the printer.
Same but with scanners. Plugged in a canon protable scanner, which requires their software to work on windows while it just works on linux. The cherry on top was that when I then had to make a single pdf of the things i scanned, I just ran
pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf ... output.pdfand guess what… it also just worked.
Update the OS and all installed applications using a single command.
Also, none of this “stop what you’re doing, Microsoft is doing updates now” bullshit.
Just the other day I woke up my windows laptop, but instead of the lock screen I get several minutes worth of confirmations and check boxes after a surprise update. All of these screens were asking me in various ways to send all of my data to Microsoft and tie up my entire machine in their data harvesting and ad platforms.
Snap and flatpak would like to disagree.
Add to bashrc “alias update=’sudo flatpak update && sudo apt full-upgrade’ “ linux best
sudo flatpak update -y && sudo dnf update -yWhat you would install from flatpak and why
Have an actual sane developer experience? There is a reason why almost every developer that uses Windows actually uses WSL.
Personally I don’t care so much about the things that Linux does better but rather the abusive things it doesn’t do. No ads, surveillance, forced updates etc. And it’s not that linux happens to not do that stuff. It’s that the decentralized nature of free software acts as a preventative measure against those malicious practices. On the other side, your best interests always conflict with those of a multi-billion company, practically guaranteeing that the software doesn’t behave as you. So windows are as unlikely to become better in this regard as linux is to become worse.
Also the ability to build things from the ground up. If you want to customize windows you’re always trying to replace or override or remove stuff. Good luck figuring out if you have left something in the background adding overhead at best and conflicting with what you actually want to use at worst. This isn’t just some hypothetical. For example I’ve had windows make an HDD-era PC completely unusable because a background telemetry process would 100% the C: drive. It was a nightmarish experience to debug and fix this because even opening the task manager wouldn’t work most of the time.
Having gotten the important stuff out of the way, I will add that even for stuff that you technically can do on both platforms, it is worth considering if they are equally likely to foster thriving communities. Sure I can replace the windows shell, but am I really given options of the same quality and longevity as the most popular linux shells? When a proprietary windows component takes an ugly turn is it as likely that someone will develop an alternative if it means they have to build it from the ground up, compared to the linux world where you would start by forking an existing project, eg how people who didn’t like gnome 3 forked gnome 2? The situation is nuanced and answers like “there exists a way to do X on Y” or “it is technically possible for someone to solve this” don’t fully cover it.
I can declare the complete state of my systems in a config file that I store on sourcehut with git and pull down to have a fully configured system on new hardware whenever I want it.
I can use tiling window managers.
I can work with native containers easily.
I can run an operating system that is designed to be the most useful tool it can be, not the most profitable product it can be.
about the full system config: how?
I think they are using nixOS
Arch can do this too. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/archinstall
archinstall --config [/path|http://]
Haha it’s very easy now: I have an os with no adds.
I am the one telling the os when it updates or not and when it reboots or not.
I have a working terminal so I don’t need dozens of shady softwares to do basic stuff like transferring a file on a local network.
And the biggest ones: I can disable my firewall and no defender will erase files from my computer without my consent.
Video games work surprisingly well today. Recent ones at least.
Use a system that’s not a personalized ad billboard
Most if not all of these seem very easily done on windows. You can create scripts as you like and set up environment variables like vlc. Control of updates I’m not so sure about, I haven’t messed with it I just let it auto update.
If you own a Windows 10/11 Pro version, you can set a group policy for control of updates. If you own a Home edition, you need to change a Registry entry. It’s not hard, but just as you I like Auto update more because I tend to forget to manually update
The joy of creating powershell or cmd scripts. I’d rather do everything by hand. I get so irrationally angry whenever I have to even look at a script on windows.
You may be more used to bash, but after having tinkered with both and converted some scripts from one to the other, I arrived to the conclusion that both are bad.
The procedure to create shortcuts, as an example, is rather convoluted. I originally looked this up because I was 90% sure that you could just use
New-Itemand it’d just work.The problem is that even if you install things with a package manager like Chocolatey and do not hunt for installer wizards on the Internet (the default Windows way to install software), applications don’t commonly add themselves to the PATH and it’s just a pain to get it working.
scoop manages the whole PATH problem when installing apps. Winget on the other hand installs with the app’s installer if I’m not mistaken, thus should also have no problems with that.
Yeah, some of it may not be as easy on Linux, but I think the question was just if it’s possible or not
- adjust the drift speed of a thinkpad trackpoint
- stream audio from one computer to another one (or a phone) with ease (thanks pulseaudio)
btw 1 is literally impossible, there’s no gui driver setting, there’s no regedit switch, no nothing. on linux you just need to write to this file /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/drift_time
I had this bug (feature) where when I was hosting, pulse would stream the music I was listening to to other players in Deep Rock Galactic. I had no idea it was happening until some one asked me what mod I was using. It apparently wasn’t the best quality so I ‘fixed’ it.
Feel Free and secure with privacy
this is a big one too. I love the feel of using FOSS software!
