I ran Manjaro Linux as my daily driver a few years ago but slowly phased it out for Windows for some reason, and I’m finally back using Linux (currently Linux Mint). I gotta say, I don’t know why I ever switched back to Windows. There’s just so much freedom Linux gives you right off the bat that Windows is just plain stubborn about. The final straw for me was a couple weeks ago when Microsoft added a Copilot (Bing AI) Shortcut to my Windows 11 taskbar. They’d already added ads to my start menu and preinstalled a bunch of garbage that should be opt-in, not opt-out, so I was just fed up with it at that point. Plus, Linux is so much more customizable. Been running Mint for about a week and a half now, and honestly, I don’t think I’ll be using Windows much anymore.
Welcome home
I always think about going back to Windows, but then I snap myself out of it seeing what Microsoft are doing. I still have a virtual machine for MusicBee (which… isn’t the greatest in WINE, I’ll just say that much) but everything else works fine. Also had a pretty good experience with Apple Music in Waydroid, with scrobbler support (Pano Scrobbler)
I was trying to get MusicBee working earlier this week and gave up, ended up trying something called Strawberry and found myself liking it for the brief amount I’ve used it
My workflow is too married to MusicBee to do that lol, it’s the reason I keep a Windows VM handy nowadays (okay, and Apple Music if I need to do some playlist things)
Mint is just lovely
It’s a breath of fresh air…
Imagine being a PC guy, paying thousands of dollars for a decent rig, and not having control over it
🤡🤡🤡
All these, PC gamers got some learning to do.
Windows 11 finally made me tell my boss “i’m not using that anymore.” I’ve used Linux exclusively at home and Windows at work, but got fed up just like you. I have a VM for testing purposes as the security admin and it’s actually improved my workflow since I can tear down and bring up VMs instead of using my main OS for testing.
Glad to hear you’ve had a positive switch as well.
Happy that you are on the light side now!
I just switched back to windows, after using Kubuntu for the past 13 month.
I’m a software dev, I work on a Dell precision 5560 and just got tired of the worst touchpad experience ever, the endless Bluetooth issues, the fact that sleep mode basically does not exist anymore and a bunch of other small things.
On windows I do almost everything in WSL so I still work on Linux, but this way I get a much better desktop experience on my laptop.
I used to be a Windows system developer, think device drivers etc. for what, 20 years? I switched to Linux 18 years ago and never looked back - the whole dev experience is a lot more pleasant, more control, reasonable tools and software installation, proper customization etc.
I believe you didn’t have a Linux problem, you had a problem with hardware manufacturers being fussy about enabling development of proper support for their hardware. Why not look into hardware that is actually readily compatible with Linux? Tuxedo Computers are often recommend, I used to run a Clevo and had a great experience as well.
I believe you didn’t have a Linux problem, you had a problem with hardware manufacturers being fussy about enabling development of proper support for their hardware.
Which is a Linux problem at the end of the day, unfortunately.
My current laptop is also “Linux certified”, whatever that means. I cannot say that linux does not work on my laptop because that is not true. It works. Bluetooth works, touchpad works, like 95% of the time. In that 95% I love linux. However, when the remaining 5% hits, that is freaking annoying. And you can bet the bluetooth issue hits in the middle of an online meeting, and not when you just listen to music. 4K monitors are around since ~2013, still, no user friendly solution for fractional scaling, and the list goes on.
My main problem is that, this 95% was always 95% for me. I have been trying to switch to linux since 2011. I spend 3-15 month on linux and switch back to windows for a year or two. As I see, linux desktop just runs after the desktop market and it is 2-10 years behind. I know that is mostly because of the HW vendors. But knowing this does not make me feel better when my productivity decreases due to these issues.
Why not look into hardware that is actually readily compatible with Linux?
Honestly? Because I don’t believe that 95% is significantly higher on those laptops and I just don’t have ~1500EUR for an experiment like this.
Windows + WSL2 works great. I use a Windows distro, if you will. All the issues I had with my native linux install are gone, and I can still use linux comfortably while working. This is the reality from my point of view.
Hm, I never had any hardware issues in the last ~10 years, but don’t get me wrong, I hear you. I absolutely believe that it is possible to find a combination of HW and SW that will simply not work for a particular use case, and if my productivity would be threatened, I’d also switch in a heartbeat. In fact, I’ve gotten so used to the customizations Linux offered me that I can’t even imagine working on another Linux system without my setup and dotfiles - a different kind of vendor lock-in, if you will.
Anyway, just wanted to put a brand out there that offers some guarantees when it comes to hardware support, in case you (and others) might not be aware of such vendors.
Fellas, the FOSS team gets +1 c:
I’ve been daily driving Debian with cinnamon on top. The only thing keeping my windows partition going is lack of HDR support and horrific Wayland nvidia support.
Both of those features are only starting to make appearance in newer software
Are you using Mint ( LMDE ) or running Cinnamon on Debian directly?
Used to use LMDE but moved to Debian to get 12 early.
Why is everyone in here saying “daily driver” all of a sudden?
It’s a term that has existed for quite a while, at least in this kind of community.
It has always been a very common term to describe the distro/OS of choice. Even moreso when linux was a bit less usable as a desktop OS and dual-booting was pretty necessary
People using cars as wallpapers on GNU+Linux is trending right now
Here’s someone using the term in 2011.
https://xdaforums.com/t/what-os-are-you-using-as-your-daily-driver.919218/
And I’m sure there are plenty of older examples.
But some others are here from 2015
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34990
2017
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=222919
2014 (ish?)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2njaz3/what_are_you_using_as_your_daily_driver/
All that from a simple google search.