Observation from an old time Linux enthusiast
Posted by Phydoux@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 34 comments
I started tinkering with Linux back in 1994 and saw promise in it's future. I was already sick of Microsoft and their, "You have to buy the new Windows version because it's not going to be supported after the new one is released" bull-crap. But I stuck with it.
In 2007, I designed my system to use a hot-swap tray so I could test out Linux a little more. At that time, I was doing a LOT of photography work so I lived in Adobe Photoshop. There really wasn't anything as good yet for Linux at the time so I was kinda stuck with Windows.
I found that the only time I was using Windows was when I needed to edit photos. That was it. Once I was done, I'd shut down the computer, slide out the Windows drive tray and slide in the Ubuntu drive tray and I booted up Linux. I spent 85-90% of my time in Linux vs Windows. That was a real shock to me and an eye opener that if Linux ever had a way to edit raw images from my Canon camera, I would Ditch Windows in a heartbeat.
I was probably using Windows XP at that time. Then I went to Windows 7 and that was my final Windows version. At that time, Adobe was the king of the hill when it came to photo editing. I had both Photoshop and Lightroom. 2 excellent programs that worked hand in hand together. That is the #1 reason why I didn't switch to Linux full time earlier. Photo shoots and editing those photos was my secondary source of income at the time. It proved to be a very valuable way to make extra money for sure. So I kinda had to keep Windows around just for that.
In 2018, I bought Windows 10 figuring Windows 7 support was going to end soon as it was already on Life Support (was supposed to end in 2015 but I waited until the last minute to get Windows 10). So I installed Windows 10 on a new hard drive (that was the ONLY thing new in that already 8 year old PC) and it ran really slow. I tried it for about a day and opening a file manager or browser took a couple of minutes just to open. It as a complete and utter joke!
Fast Forward to today, I have Been Windows free since around June or July of 2018. I ran Linux Mint from 2018 til February 2020. At that point, I tried Arch Linux. I used the old Window 7 drive I used to use Window on and installed it and it ran great! My intention on switching distros was so I could try out several Tiling Window Managers. After about a week of testing different ones, I really liked the look and feel of Awesome WM. I'm still using it today and it is a heavily modified Window Manager. This is my main screen...
The top section is all my Virtual Desktops. They're labeled for better organization so I can find stuff.
-NET would be things like the browser I'm using now and anything else related to internet stuff like FTP programs and whatnot.
-OBS is precisely that. I use it for creating videos with OBS.
-FILE is exactly what that is for. File Managers.
-TERM would be my terminal program.
-DEV is where I use emacs, or any other text editor to edit say a config file and whatnot.
-OFFICE is for anything LibreOffice related.
-VM is for when I want to run a Virtual Machine to try stuff in.
-MUSIC is where things like Spotify hangs out in.
-PHOTO would be my photo editor location like GIMP.
-VIDEO would be for video editing like the stuff I do with OBS.
-CHAT is for things like Discord and Google Messages and things of that nature.
So, yeah, I've taken a lot of time setting this up to work perfectly for me. I would never be able to do this with Windows. EVER! I feel like I'm WAY more organized with a setup like this and this makes me very happy indeed! I will never ever go back to Windows. In fact, if I ever work a job where I need a computer, if I can use Linux instead of Windows, I most certainly will. In fact, the fact tat a company would MAKE me use Windows might alter my decision to work for them. That is how much I despise Windows now. And I would probably be completely lost on a Windows 10 or Windows 11 system.
What made me write this?
I see these types of videos a lot lately
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PyxWPuIUyk
as well as posts on Reddit from newcomers coming to Linux from Windows because they're sick of the BS. Windows 11 is making this happen more than Windows 10 did I think. But seeing that video this evening kind of reminded me why I switched to Linux 8 years ago. It's a harsh reminder as to how bad Microsoft has become. Such a shame too...
Time_Way_6670@reddit
It's a great time to become a Linux user. More and more stuff just *works* on Linux now and Windows 11 keeps getting.. worse, somehow. I've used both Windows and Mac basically my entire life and it is shocking how bad 11 is. Like yes, it works... but it's so sluggish for no reason. Like, technology has not leapfrogged overnight. It's functionally the same as Windows 10/8/7, yet its way slower.
Windows rant aside, I'm happy to be using Linux for most of my computing these days. I still keep a Windows install on my machine for the off chance I need it OR want to use an Adobe program, but that's few and far between at this point.
PresentDirection41@reddit
I know this is the wrong place for this discussion but I really don't know how redditors are having these experiences with 11. To me it feels exactly the same as 10 from a performance perspective, if not slightly faster. It feels like I'm being gaslit by an entire website, it's just baffling.
Fiftybottles@reddit
Not sure what you're rocking under the hood, but on "threshold systems" it's pretty rough. I know the laptops my company hands out have been a constant source of frustration for pretty much the entire office since the Windows 11 upgrade; they lack a considerable amount of grunt.
On my desktop machine at home I doubt I'd have many issues, but it's also a quite beefy machine which would power through most issues without breaking a sweat.
PresentDirection41@reddit
Just normal corporate Dell laptops. My work laptop has been on 11 since like 2022 and I haven't had any of these issues. We finished upgrading the entire company last year and, again, haven't heard of any of these issues across like 40k devices. And we're cheap, we're not buying top of the line hardware. It's literally Windows 10 with different security requirements and a tweaked UI, it makes no logical sense that it would be slower.
Fiftybottles@reddit
You're probably right honestly. My company also uses very standard corporate Dell machines but I'm pretty sure they also dump 3-4 different security agents that audit all I/O 24/7 and it's likely the primary factor. It just has definitely gotten worse since the move to Windows 11; unsure if it adds another layer of encryption atop any of those transactions but I don't know enough to say definitively that it does.
When I say poor performance, I mean I've genuinely not seen my Latitude 7430 fall below 75% CPU usage at idle, and the memory is constantly pinned above 80% (of 32GB). It was not like this on Windows 10! Copying files in explorer takes minutes; maybe the IT team here is installing ExplorerPatcher, but I feel the odds are unlikely :)
PresentDirection41@reddit
I mean disk I/O is famously one of Windows' (via NTFS) greatest weaknesses, so if that's the case then I'm not surprised you're having such poor performance. I have a Latitude 5450 and it's currently using 30% CPU and 11GB of RAM, and I'm actively installing software.
Fiftybottles@reddit
Oh how I envy this experience. It's a shame that it's likely on my company to cut out the security agent crap, but it's still pretty unfortunate that the disk I/O is such a bottleneck in the first place.
PresentDirection41@reddit
Well it may also just be Defender, if you guys are using that. Defender's scans just a ton of disk resources and bad IT departments regularly forget to schedule them for off hours, so they just run randomly during the day. But yeah, this is a problem with Windows that can't really be fixed until they get off NTFS, which I suppose they're trying to do with ReFS, but that doesn't look anywhere close to getting a desktop release.
Microsoft has a lot of very fundamental issues with older components of their OS that simply can't be fixed without replacing those components. It's why they went through the whole Control Panel/Settings song and dance, because there were things they needed to fix in Control Panel that they couldn't practically fix in place, so the only solution was replacing it.
Fiftybottles@reddit
IIRC we use a combination of Rapid7 and Defender, and yes there's no regard as to when these things run (and that isn't isolated to the machines of employees... I've heard a few server admins complaining about crazy I/O because defender is constantly running even in production).
I appreciate the insight as someone who spends most of their time and energy inside Linux (and WSL at work). I haven't really done a lot of research into these aspects of the Windows operating system, and have spent most of my time instead being rather blindly frustrated by it in its most recent incarnation. I naturally won't be giving our own company's shortcomings a pass in this regard, but I echo again that it's a shame these problem seem easy to surface.
PresentDirection41@reddit
Windows is fundamentally a fine OS. Not great, but fine. The problems with it are twofold:
Windows has so many little things that can break, like DLL associations, that they've built a whole system designed to identify those broken things and fix them. "DLL hell" no longer is a problem in Windows today because it has a separate store of all the DLLs it needs and can detect and replace them if they get corrupt - which is an insane fix, if you think about it, but it works. In many cases where people think Windows is nefariously undoing something they've done, it is in fact because they've done that thing in an unsupported way, and one of these guardrails has simply interpreted it as being broken and reverted it to the default to be safe.
Historical_Bread3423@reddit
Laptop support needs to be a lot better.
PresentDirection41@reddit
My experience with Dell laptops has been incredible, actually. Not sure if they go out of their way to support Linux or something, but I've installed several distros on an old Latitude and all the laptop-specific features just work out of the box. Very good battery life as well, better than Windows.
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
I was actually going to pull out my laptop tomorrow and get it setup for a photo gig i have coming up next month.
Historical_Bread3423@reddit
I'm just talking about battery life, sleep, stuff like that. It's just not good enough.
The problem is the market is just small and while we have some great linux specialized manufacturers, I don't think they have the volume to fix this. Most linux distro work is for servers and shit.
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
You sound like you're about where i was at in 2008. I can sense the end of Windows is near for you with Windows. And you can take that as a positive for sure.
SteveHamlin1@reddit
What did you replace Photoshop/Lightroom with?
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
Photoshop - GIMP
Lightroom - DarkTable
3rssi@reddit
For PS, you could switch to Krita or Gimp, but they are not as good (but they are FOSS which is a good thing)
For Lightroom, you have Darkroom which is on par.
autodialerbroken116@reddit
Hi, thanks for your post.
I have some feedback, so have a laugh and don't take it too seriously?
Totally enjoyed the realism and true nature of someone's workflow discussion. The perspective was nice, but the anti-Winflows stuff read like you didn't want us to be interested in this post altogether. We all get that stuff already from the meme content and Linux idea. It could have been maybe 1 paragraph of I left windows because of this pricing model feature blah blah blah, and maybe 4 paragraphs of talking about your workflow, not how "Linux makes it better", we all get that already. Customization, virtual desktops aren't even Linux specific nowadays.
The workflow stuff is. That's why we're here.
Dunno. Didn't learn anything.
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
Well, it was kind of a how I transitioned slowly from Windows to Linux and why I couldn't just jump right into it. That wouldn't have worked for me at all. Luckily, I was in a position to rip the bandaid off and start using Linux full time when I did.
I tried to keep my workflow the same when I switched to full time Linux and with Linux Mint, I did exactly that. It looked and felt a lot like windows 7 which was pretty nice since that was the last windows os I was very familiar with. Had I switched to Mint Cinnamon after using windows 10 for a couple of months, it would have felt like a step backwards. Many windows 10 users now may not like Linux Mint Cinnamon or MATE or XFCE. I kinda wish they'd develop a KDE Plasma version because I think (not 100% sure though) that windows 10 is more like Plasma than Cinnamon is.
And I made this post because now im seeing more and more PO'd windows users making videos of them switching to Linux. It just shocking to see Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot like they are. And the whole having to have a Microsoft account now just to install windows 11 seems pretty absurd.
PresentDirection41@reddit
Unfortunately that's the norm here whenever Windows is mentioned. I can't take these people seriously because they just lie constantly. To say it takes "a couple minutes" to open Explorer in Windows with a straight face is hilarious.
Really wish there was a place to normally discuss the advantages of Linux without the weirdo fanboy shit that verges on delusion.
StevieRay8string69@reddit
Sounds like you dont know how to use windows.
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
Not windows 10 or later. Windows 7 is knew like the back of my hand. Windows 10 wouldn't run on an already 8 year old machine. So, I KNEW how to use Windows. But I really don't need to use Windows anymore. I'm perfectly happy using Linux.
CritSrc@reddit
How did you change your workflow away from Adobe, was it incremental or sudden?
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
It was quite sudden. But I had chilled out with the photography thing about a year earlier. My rates were already the lowest possible for me and at the time, I was being under cut for wedding photography and I was only charging $250 to shoot and process the photos. The client would receive a DVD from me with their photos that I shot and processed from raw to jpgs they could then print themselves. When I found out that my competition was shooting weddings and providing an actual hard bound book with photos in it. I did do a couple for samples and those cost me $25-$40 each to make.
To shoot an 8-10 hour wedding, then spend another 4-6 hours processing their photos, I was lucky if I was averaging $15 per hour.
michaelpaoli@reddit
I switched to Linux in 1998 ... from UNIX.
I knew as early as around 1985 or so, how Microsoft quite sucks. Some things don't change.
Yeah, I started with UNIX in 1980. Alas, didn't always have access to UNIX/Linux, but having well seen UNIX quite early on, yeah, ... I could well see how comparatively inferior Microsoft was - even from very early on, and likewise for other operating systems too.
markus40@reddit
I switched from a Commodore Amiga 4000 to Linux in 1998. I started the switch from Sun Solaris and SGI Irix to Linux at work in 2000. Faced out the last Unix machines in 2006. I never used Windows or Apple as a main OS at home.
Jumpy_Captain_7370@reddit
Great to read, thanks for your contribution! I used at the end of the years '80 Xenix. A Unix based operating system from Microsoft! Before they sold it to SCO. Mid '90 I was introduced to Linux. And still using it!
AggravatingGiraffe46@reddit
Can we go a day without saying windows and more of things like kernel, driver, development, functioning App Store, distro fragmentation problems, Wayland sucks. Or we going to be in denial. Pride from installing Linux is worth of an opinion a you know how much they are worth.
Hour_Bit_5183@reddit
This was a super interesting read! Thanks for this OP. Never accept the premise of aholes! that is the way :)
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
Thanks for that!
Yeah, Windows/Microsoft has complicated things in truly stupid ways. I just watched a Chris Titus video where he goes through (jumps through a bunch of hoops actually) the process of blocking some software to make you use a Microsoft account. I didn't even know this was a thing but apparently, you HAVE to have a Microsoft account now in order to use Windows 11? If that's true, Microsoft deserves to fall flat on its face with Windows 11. What a complete and utter shambles that OS has fallen into. Un-friggin-believable!!!
But again, thanks for that comment. It means a lot to me!
Hour_Bit_5183@reddit
Yep. It's truly getting dystopian ASF and people are gonna get harmed.
bmwiedemann@reddit
These days, you can even run Photoshop and office on Linux with WinBoat https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/s/j665BTDvS4
Phydoux@reddit (OP)
Really, I'm getting by with libreoffice for spreadsheet and document writing (actually, geany and emacs have been reliable text editors for me). And as far as photo editing, GIMP & Darktable have been working perfectly fine for me.