Linux Gained Some Weight The Past Two Weeks: Around 200,000 Lines

[droidhacker]

I know people who find they write better code when they have a cat in the room glaring at them... doesn't seem to work with dogs though.

My wife writes better code when the dog is sitting on her chair supporting her lower back. She's not a pro in the field, but I've gotten her into some rudimentary web scripting so she can handle her sites without relying on some bloat fest that outputs nearly all broken code at 1000x the LOC that it should be.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

So the caveat to what you said is *as long as my hardware is in the compatibility lists.

Actually, that is more so for Windows than it is for Linux. In both directions. Both forwards and backwards, compatibility for deprecated hardware is far less impressive in Windows than it is in Linux, in my experience.

In recent times, I've installed Xubuntu on 4 different machines.

- The machine I am typing this on, everything working out of the box straight from Live CD boot on. Windows 7 would not even bother installing proper drivers, it had none.
- My more powerful gaming PC, everything working out of the box straight from Live CD boot on. In Windows, I end up having to browse arduously slow websites (the Asus support site is dreadfully slow, typically), looking for the proper drivers for various components.
- My mother-in-law's 10-year old laptop, everything working out of the box straight from Live CD boot on. Windows XP was installed but is EOL. No other Windows will boot on it. Too old of a machine.
- My father-in-law's 2 to 3 year old laptop, everything working out of the box straight from Live CD boot on. In a brainfart moment, he had accepted the free Windows 10 upgrade (from Win 8.1). That just tossed stability and performance right out the window. I tried fixing Windows 10 for a while but ultimately concluded it's an OS that still needs to mature for a few more years before I'd consider it in a useable state.

That's 4 machines where Windows failed me (or others) hard and where Linux just worked out of the box, no questions asked.

Additionally, I'm a tweaker, I like to mess around with my OS' installation. I can't begin to tell you how often I've had to reinstall Windows simply because it could not take the beating I was giving it. Linux? Pfffft, worst case scenario I have to undo some of my tweaking in a console, post-boot, when X won't launch or whatever.

TL;DR -- There remains, in my opinion, just one use case where Windows is superior to Linux -- Cutting edge hardware.

[starshipeleven]

Actually, that is more so for Windows than it is for Linux. In both directions. Both forwards and backwards, compatibility for deprecated hardware is far less impressive in Windows than it is in Linux, in my experience.

As I said, this is true for supported hardware lists. It's indeed improved A LOT for core hardware, but peripherals it's still far west. The following from my personal experience, but there are other fields too.

Printers. If you want to print something on linux it's either HP with basically all printers supported since ages ago + opensourced printer utility + stuff, or you need to look for each model IF it is supported and at what level it works, and optionally at what magic spells you must do from CLI to make it work.
HP printer/scanner/multifunction stuff is generally plug-and-play on linux.

Wifi dongles. This is hell. You need to track down not just the model but the revision number as the fuckers like to change the whole thing between revision numbers. I wanted a good dualband wifi dongle with external antennas, I wasted a week to track down one and I still doubt that there are others at all (apart from the wifi cracker ones that cost twice as much and are clearly recognizable as such like the Alphas or well-known others).

UPS. there are SOME models/manufactuers that have linux drivers, but the vast majority does not (the driver for a UPS is useful as it allows the linux device to react to power failures like shut down on its own while the UPS still holds)

Tools for various things. Only some tools for screen calibration are supported, only a few BIOS chip flashing tools are supported.

[starshipeleven]

I don't care about paying 200$ every 5 years or so to upgrade Windows.

Yeah, I always laugh when people tell me that a windows license costs a lot.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

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[starshipeleven]

Valid points to be sure but as I tried to illustrate, hardware support in Windows is a far cry from guaranteed as well.

When you buy it new it is supported. If that support lasts is not a given. (again excluding random crap that runs badly even in Windows)

Believe it or not, that's the main complaint I receive about linux boxes from common people. When they buy it must work.
If with the next version of windows it will not work... they don't care.

Common people don't give a shit and keep using a old POS OS like XP for decades just to keep using their hardware that is unsupported beyond it, so they are less affected by this lack of support.

What most people IS affected by is the lack of support when new.

Any number divided by zero equals infinity. Therefore, Windows costs me infinitely more than Linux is costing me.

Different use-cases.
You (and me) mostly salvage and refit old and low-end hardware to make office PCs (internet, libreoffice, and little more), where the hardware is cheep and must run for the longest possible time.

In this case, paying 200$ for a license (actually much less because everyone knows people sell OEM stickers on the net) is nonsense.

In the case of the average gamer like Master probably is, we are talking of 1k-1.5k dollars (or more) in a powerful gaming rig that will be obsolete and will get sold anyway within a few years, that cost isn't going to matter much.

Of course disregarding for a moment that most/all PC games run better on Windows, so there isn't a lot of choice anyway.

Also disregarding that I've yet to see a gaming PC where Windows is genuine.

imagine if I were to actually ask money for it?

I do. The place I work at does that, and most of the income from these activities comes from a monthly fee everyone pays (in return for techsupport on the phone /teamviewer and on stuff they bring us). Plus any weird thing the customer ask us to do like converting a fuckton of videos, or ripping piles of CDs, or buying technologic presents for their friends/relatives (to make sure it isn't a piece of shit).

A good amount of PCs we serve run linux now, we are migrating many XP machines to Linux. And I see many peripherals (most from a bygone age, 5+ years) that don't work at all or require week-long voodoo dances in CLI to work, and must be replaced with linux-compatible ones.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

In the case of the average gamer like Master probably is, we are talking of 1k-1.5k dollars (or more) in a powerful gaming rig that will be obsolete and will get sold anyway within a few years, that cost isn't going to matter much.

I'm a gamer. And that is, in part, why I actually switched to Linux. Odd as that may sound. But, I'm done catering to the essential requirements to running Windows online; malware scanner, AV, etc, etc, etc. It all adds up and it all bogs the performance down. Particularly given the nature of Windows' still-default NTFS file system. Which is just a monstrosity compared to ext4, to name but one Linux FS. Obviously, Microsoft cannot be blamed directly for the fact most Windows AVs have become bloatware but still, NTFS isn't helping.

Sure, I may not get the FPS in Linux as I did in Windows. But, loading times are infinitely better. And without an AV, a heavy software firewall (ufw is very light actually, since it works by means of iptables, which is very light in operation) and whatever else I need to safely run an online title in Windows, my network latency typically is better in Linux as well. And so is my network bandwidth.

FPS doesn't mean everything; responsiveness and reliability are equally so, if not more so, of importance.

Regarding performance, funny story -- I wrote a password manager in C#, so obviously its native OS is Windows. Guess what? After switching to Linux (and Mono, to replace .NET), I immediately noticed a ~25% performance improvement in the password manager. And then, with a recent update of Mono, a dramatic ~200% improvement. Culminating in a situation where my password manager written in C# is exceedingly much faster in Linux than it is in Windows.

[starshipeleven]

I'm a gamer. And that is, in part, why I actually switched to Linux. Odd as that may sound. But, I'm done catering to the essential requirements to running Windows online; malware scanner, AV, etc, etc, etc. It all adds up and it all bogs the performance down.

Fun fact: I know of quite a few gamers that keep their gaming PC with only Steam and games on it, while their "day-to day" PC is a (non-gaming) laptop with whatever (windows with bells and whistles and AV and anticrapware or linux).

Particularly given the nature of Windows' still-default NTFS file system. Which is just a monstrosity compared to ext4, to name but one Linux FS. Obviously, Microsoft cannot be blamed directly for the fact most Windows AVs have become bloatware but still, NTFS isn't helping.

NTFS shortcomings come into play only in some very server-y cases, for common usage it's not terribly different from whatever.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

NTFS shortcomings come into play only in some very server-y cases, for common usage it's not terribly different from whatever.

Actually, I can most decidedly tell. In fact, I could easily tell NTFS' shortcomings within an hour of installing a fresh Windows install. Performance degradation over time most decidedly was measurable for me. Thing to remember here is, not everyone use SSDs as main OS storage device or, taking it one step further, as data storage device.

Some of us still use HDDs. NTFS really loses out hard to ext4 on HDDs, has been my experience. Particularly given the ever, to dramatic extent at times, increasing size of videogames.

[starshipeleven]

Actually, I can most decidedly tell. In fact, I could easily tell NTFS' shortcomings within an hour of installing a fresh Windows install.

C'mon, that's bs. I can understand a generic "linux is faster", but this is a bit too much.

Just after install and after installing updates there are stuff in the background bogging down everything to rebuild god-knows-what. This is especially noticeable on crappy hardware. Again known complaint.

Also there are usage-learning routines that DO work from win7 onwards and will pre-cache things in RAM and other stuff to boot faster, but need time to learn what you need in that machine.

Some of us still use HDDs.

Modern-ish HDDs still trash older HDDs.

NTFS really loses out hard to ext4 on HDDs

No offence, but quit smoking funny things. The only way to distinguish ext4 from ntfs is to put them under server-y loads.