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

  1. Adobe
  2. 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.
  3. Games ( a big one although steam is helping bridge the gap)
  4. Many torrented apps, most of these are Windows specific and thus I won’t have any luck installing them on Linux.
  5. 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?

  1. I have applications which launch from terminal eg: vlc would open vlc (no questions asked, no other stuff needed, just type vlc)
  2. 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.
  3. I can basically automate most of my tasks and it has a good integration with my apps.
  4. I can create desktop launchers.
  5. 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.
  6. Create custom panel plugin.

  1. 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.

  • django@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    1 year ago
    • 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
    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Sneaky Bastard@feddit.de
      0·
      1 year ago
      • 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.

  • Julian_1_2_3_4_5@slrpnk.net
    1·
    3 months ago

    okay basically so many things sooo much better, first of all i can change any part of software of the os for any other one i like. I can fix my installation no matter how broken it is as long as the filse system is still intact.

        • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
          1·
          1 year ago

          Surprisingly profound for just another windows v linux slapfight. I recently watched Cory Doctorow’s DEFCON talk on enshittification, and something he brought up is how once-good, now-shitty social media platforms held their users hostage by being the only platform with all their “friends” (or at least that specific group of people)—the alternatives being to organize dozens of people to migrate to a new service or losing all those friends.

          Real friends aren’t platform exclusive

  • fubo@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Blizzard@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago
    1. Not update my system

    You can’t do that on Windows, the updates are forced on you.

    • Magnetar@feddit.de
      0·
      1 year ago

      There are USB-killers, which produce voltage spikes to fry your mainboard, or just the USB part of it, if you’re lucky.

  • dark_stang@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I can use my computer without it installing software I don’t want (like when Windows installs candy crush) and without it advertising to me.

    • Treeniks@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      The only thing Windows installs without you wanting to is Edge. Ads like Candy Crush will only be installed after installing windows for the first time, not after any updates.

      • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
        0·
        1 year ago

        Lol the excuses. “Windows only ever messes up all your settings twice a year with the big updates. The rest of the time it’s fine.”
        How about they don’t touch my shit at all?

  • BitingChaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I found something I couldn’t easily do on Linux…

    I wanted to create a Shortcut to a GUI application directly on my Desktop on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04), and after fucking with Gnome extensions and googling multiple terms, I thought I was going insane. There is seriously no easy, standard, or simple way of doing that.

    On Windows or macOS you can just click & drag to make a shortcut to a file, and then put the shortcut on your Desktop. Done.

    On Gnome you have to manually create a .desktop file, fill it with the parameters to run the application (usually by opening a different .desktop file and copying & pasting the contents), ensure you also have Gnome configured to even allow desktop icons, and then copy the .desktop file to the Desktop.

    The Gnome experience was the most-rigid, least user-friendly or user-customizable interface.

    I guess the problem is that I shouldn’t be using Gnome. I liked how simple & clean it is by default, but I hate how inflexible it is.

        • Aetherion@feddit.de
          0·
          1 year ago

          Yeah personally, I use Mac for the peace of mind, because generally, I don’t trust package managers anymore. Don’t get me wrong, Debians repository is extremely well maintained, and I use Debian as server OS, but I like the Mac as a daily driver for banking stuff, because I trust the Mac App Store (people have to pay, Apple checks every App and so on). And for the daily stuff I do with my Mac, I don’t need any special software from Homebrew.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    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
    • bzxt@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      I think I read somewhere a while ago that Docker is only really “native” on Linux, because on Mac and Windows it spawns some internal virtual machine or something like that. Not sure if i remember it correctly but that would probably be a reason for worse performance i guess.

      • nous@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        There is a native windows docker as well, where you can run windows containers inside it. But no one uses it, everyone just wants to use the linux containers which require a linux kernel and thus virtualisation on windows. Performance should not be worst on it though, but the layer of a VM added to it adds a layer of jank to make it appear to work like the native linux version (ie mounting host folders need to be mounted on the VM first before they can appear in docker, and while that is mostly transparent it can cause a few issues with some things).

  • NormandyEssex@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • DrM@feddit.de
      0·
      1 year ago

      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

  • somenonewho@feddit.de
    0·
    1 year ago

    Nothing. Also everything.

    You can probably do most of not all of the things I do on Linux on a regular basis on windows just as well. But at this point I feel like I have a reverse “Windows is the default” effect going on since for me Linux has been and is the default for over 10 years.

    When I start work in the morning I turn on my Linux laptop to ssh into some Linux servers (and RDP to the occasional windows servers/desktops).

    After work I play games on my Linux handheld or do some work on my Linux desktop. Maybe move some files on my Linux Nas.

    Like I said I could probably do all of this on windows. It would be a major change and in would have to relearn some things in addition to figuring out how to do some stuff on windows that I just never do. But at this point why even bother. There are a lot of ideological reasons to move to Linux there might be some technical reasons on either side but I just don’t have any pull to use windows unless I need to (some special program/firmware updater whatever) for which I do have an install hanging around, which I boot once in 6months or so