I would use Linux as my main operating system if...



  • Nope, not a poll. Just curious what your thoughts would be to make Linux your main operating system.

    Mine are:

    1. Steam games must work
    2. Needs better .NET support (mono is doing a reasonably good job, but 4.5 is out and a decent chunk of async things have issues)
    3. I'd appreciate a better GUI wrapper for pretty much all the magical incantations that are required to get things working.Granted, this doesn't stop me from using Linux on my server, but FFS this is more work than should be required. It's a barrier to entry!

    Yes, I know a chunk of you already use linux as a primary OS.



    1. All my games, not just Steam ones. I have a bunch of emulators and stuff that don't work well under Wine or Crossover.
    2. Less fiddly with stuff. I'm a programmer, sure, but I don't want to spend time on my tools. Big fan of click and done, and my experience of Linux on the desktop continues to require hassle to get most things done.


  • Gaming and Microsoft Office. I need to be able to handle spreadsheets with macros from time to time and the Open Office variants don't cut it. I also don't trust Open Office to maintain layout compatibility with Word for any remotely complex document.



  • @Keith said:

    I also don't trust Microsoft Office to maintain layout compatibility with Word for any remotely complex document.

    FTFY



  • Unfortunately for me, "my games on Steam" includes a certain Valve game from 2010 that only supports Windows.



  • Not even via Crossover?



  • My games on steam includes darksouls 2.



  • I could probably run it through wine, but that would mean running Steam through wine, and that would mean either not having any native Steam games or having to restart Steam every time I wanted to play a different game.


  • BINNED

    @ben_lubar said:

    Unfortunately for me, "my games on Steam" includes a certain Valve game from 2010 that only supports Windows.

    Huh? Which one? Is there a Valve game, not just a Source engine game from 2010 that hasn't been ported? Portal 2 is 2011, and it has indeed been ported, no idea when but I see a penguin there (meaning it's high time I buy the damned thing).



  • probably the one he keeps showing us youtube videos of.


  • BINNED

    @ben_lubar said:

    I could probably run it through wine, but that would mean running Steam through wine, and that would mean either not having any native Steam games or having to restart Steam every time I wanted to play a different game.

    Again, WUT? Steam on Wine is not perfect, but for what works, it works the same as a native install. Unless you insist on a separate Wine prefix for each Steam + game install combo. I have Steam in Wine and I can start a game, close the game, and I'm back in Steam.


  • BINNED

    @Matches said:

    probably the one he keeps showing us youtube videos of.

    Oh crap, that's VALVE? Ok, my mistake, I thought it was an independent title made in Source engine.



    • The perfect Windows VirtualBox emulation, including seamless game support.
    • Linux Desktops ironing out the kinks to the point they are as polished as Mac or Windows.

    So, probably never.


  • BINNED

    And as a response to the OP: I already did. Overall I experience less irritation with it than Windows. Shit mostly just works for me. Either I'm lucky or annoyed more with Windows' failings for some reason. Or I am TRWTF. Pick one or all.



  • You have a low performance PC right? (ie: 1-3gb ram, 2ghrz dual core type of thing?)

    I wouldn't want windows with that either (unless you're talking about xp, but xp and the new linux stuff are mostly comparable... mostly.) [my work computer meets these specs, supposedly getting an upgrade by december. but I would fucking rage if i had to deal with it at home too]


  • BINNED

    @Matches said:

    You have a low performance PC right? (ie: 1-3gb ram, 2ghrz dual core type of thing?)

    Nope, it's fairly decent. Though my main machine atm is a laptop with a i5 ultra-low power thing (i5-3317U) but I'd imagine it behaves well under Windows.

    I guess I'm not afraid of tinkering a bit if I need to. Which I can't even if I wanted to on Windows even if I was so inclined. I do use Mint though, which is as close to "use GUI for everything" as Linux comes these days. I don't have the patience for things such as Arch Linux either.



  • Yeah, I stole your linux mint suggestion passing mention and am now running it in text mode for an nginx reverse proxy server that's also hosting a php vm and shortly a windows application vm. (For the prototype thing I'm working on) Of all the linux distros i've used in the past 5 years, it's been by far the least frustrating.


  • BINNED

    @Matches said:

    Yeah, I stole your linux mint suggestion passing mention and am now running it in text mode for an nginx reverse proxy server that's also hosting a php vm and shortly a windows application vm.

    Tried that myself for some of our servers, turned out stock Debian fits us well and, as small as it is, Mint's overhead is just that in our case - overhead. With no need for a GUI and PPA support Debian does a fine job.

    I'm still a fan of having easy access to some experimental / third party software through the package manager, and PPAs are the least obtrusive way of doing that I saw so far, so it's Mint for desktop machines still in my case.



  • @Arantor said:

    FTFY

    OH SNAAAP someone's been reading the Big Book 'O' Slashdot Tropes.

    Yes, "Word can't open Word files any better than OpenOffice" is common wisdom there. Yes, it is in fact complete and utter bullshit as anybody who's actually used either product could easily verify. Or, in their words, "FUD".



  • Some of the tiling ones are really polished! Just barely usable if you don't learn them.
    ...
    KDE5 seems to be taking a step towards less chaos without neutering everything like Gnome3 did, so who knows, maybe it will end up being the Linux Desktop to win over people's hearts.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    OH SNAAAP someone's been reading the Big Book 'O' Slashdot Tropes.

    Yes, "Word can't open Word files any better than OpenOffice" is common wisdom there. Yes, it is in fact complete and utter bullshit as anybody who's actually used either product could easily verify. Or, in their words, "FUD".

    Having used Word extensively in my old job, the number of times I did in fact have formatting errors from documents produced by other people using the same version of the software astounded me - everyone in the office all had the same version since it was site licensed.

    So no, it's not just from the big book of tropes.



  • Still, I'd bet OpenOfice can open OpenOffice files better than Word can open Word files.



  • @Arantor said:

    Having used Word extensively in my old job, the number of times I did in fact have formatting errors from documents produced by other people using the same version of the software astounded me - everyone in the office all had the same version since it was site licensed.

    HOLY SHIT ANECDOTE DUEL!

    Because I've never seen the type of problem you're describing. Ever. MY ANECDOTE WINS ALL!!!



  • Just because you can't reproduce it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

    Are you admitting to being Jeff?



  • No I'm just saying I'm not convinced by anecdotes.



  • If I were using it as part of a constructed argument, or even - say - as part of a bug report, that'd be fine.

    Except I was simply having a slightly snort of laughter based on my own miserable experiences, but I guess having anything approaching a sense of humour is forbidden these days unless it conforms to your ideas of funny?

    Shit, you are Jeff.



  • Anything posted on Slashdot is wrong. Even if it's right.


  • BINNED

    @blakeyrat said:

    Anything posted on Slashdot is wrong. Even if it's right.

    Sounds reasonable. Is there a newsletter you run that I can subscribe to?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Anything posted on Slashdot is wrong. Even if it's right.

    I wouldn't know, I can't remember the last time I went there.



  • Well, you can't run two instances of Steam on the same account at the same time, and I'd prefer to have native games when possible.


  • BINNED

    @ben_lubar said:

    Well, you can't run two instances of Steam on the same account at the same time, and I'd prefer to have native games when possible.

    That makes sense, yes. Never bumped into that since I rarely switch between playing multiple games in the same day. Lack of time and all.



  • @Arantor said:

    Just because you can't reproduce it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

    [puts hand up]
    I've seen that too, sir. Not on documents that were at all complex, in formatting terms, but were biggish.

    There's a bloody good reason I went back to producing any reasonably long document in latex, and it's not just that latex typesets better than tuword or openoriffice (although that is the main reason my CV has always been produced in latex)



  • I should probably add.

    I used to use linux as my primary desktop system. From 1996 on to 2001 or so it was pretty much all I used. I still have one Linux machine, but I don't use it very often (it's mainly kept around for compatibility testing).

    The main reason I walked away from it was consistency. It was almost as consistent in its inconsistency as Pissforce.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    To be the main OS at home Linux would need to be as easy to use, and as well-supported with drivers with all of the software I use.
    Yes, I could spin up a Windows VM for the stuff that's not available, but that's not fundamentally different to the current setup of running a Xubuntu VM within Windows.

    At work it's not my choice for desktops/laptops, and we already use UNIX or Linux for servers where the software we need is available.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    Well, you can't run two instances of Steam on the same account at the same time, and I'd prefer to have native games when possible.

    This isn't exactly true, I've done family sharing on one computer, put it in offline mode and opened another one in online mode - Then used the games networking to play co-op on the game.



  • @Matches said:

    This isn't exactly true, I've done family sharing on one computer, put it in offline mode and opened another one in online mode - Then used the games networking to play co-op on the game.

    Why does that sound like it should be in the bad/evil ideas thread?



  • I agree, and is one of the primary reasons I'm not changing. Windows currently runs everything I want, plus it can run a vm of linux if I ever desired to (though as windows does everything I want, I've never needed this for 'normal' use.)

    If I had to use a VM of windows using linux, there's no reason to be running linux, and windows should still be my primary OS.

    I'm mainly curious where other people see issues with linux as a main OS. I keep dreaming of a day when you don't have to shell out for windows licensing, but until linux can stop with the fucking million different flavors, with a million different UI, all of which are only about 50-60% functional and don't bother trying to wrap up normal day-to-day use items, and can't get any real foot in the door as being a pre-installed OS I don't feel it will ever become 'main stream' [and until those issues are addressed, it shouldn't qualify for it].

    Curious what SteamOS will do, as it has a targeted purpose and should theoretically be user friendly, and theoretically should have better support for their games (though that's probably an ambitious statement - it might at least be a step in the right direction)

    But mostly just pondering the future.



  • Doesn't seem like a bad idea, or an evil idea to me. I bought a game and wanted to play local co-op.



  • @Matches said:

    Doesn't seem like a bad idea, or an evil idea to me. I bought a game and wanted to play local co-op.

    Because the game doesn't natively support this out of the box and you have to go through several hoops to make it work?



  • The game DOES support it out of the box, and steam blocks it because of how it launches games / disallows mutex



  • Seems legit, it wasn't entirely clear that you had to do that for that reason, so I just assumed it was some unnecessarily complex fandango.



  • Unnecessary complex fandango includes hamachi, steam, online and offline mode, 2-8 computers



  • All because Steam is messed up? 😦


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Keith said:

    I need to be able to handle spreadsheets with macros from time to time and the Open Office variants don't cut it. I also don't trust Open Office to maintain layout compatibility with Word for any remotely complex document.

    I've seen problems with OO where it would destroy images inside a DOCX container. Something about encountering an ordinary PNG in there seemed to make it shit itself and write a zero-length file back in there instead. As well as the PNGs it was adding; it's not like it couldn't read or write the damn format. Fortunately I had the original so I could fix all the shit, but goddamnit basic stuff like not fucking over the original data is about the level that I'd expect people to focus on as step one of even the simplest QA.

    INB4Blakeyrant.



  • Nope, you can force a public-only multiplayer game to only allow lan connections by abusing hamachi - and steam+the game both think it's the public internets


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Matches said:

    Just curious what your thoughts would be to make Linux your main operating system.

    It's my main server OS. I use a MacBook Pro for main client system, so I'm not likely to switch soon. (It's got vi and MS Office at the same time…)

    I don't game on my main system.



  • @Matches said:

    Nope, you can force a public-only multiplayer game to only allow lan connections by abusing hamachi - and steam+the game both think it's the public internets

    That still seems like a lot of work to go to when I don't see why the game+Steam couldn't just support it in the first place. Surely the mechanics of private LAN are no different in practical terms than public internets?

    But I'm only a lowly PHP programmer, maybe there's something I'm missing where this is being made unnecessarily complicated by devs that are stupid.



  • game+steam can, developer+game didn't bother.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Matches said:

    I keep dreaming of a day when you don't have to shell out for windows licensing

    I buy a laptop, it comes with it. Yes, the price will include the windows licensing but it's a small fraction of the cost and I can live with that.



  • @loopback0 said:

    it's a small fraction of the cost

    Except it's not. It's a significant fraction of the cost, even at OEM pricing. It's more of an issue when we're talking about the kind of "commodity" hardware most people have in their pockets - the reason Android is kicking seven shades of shit out of Windows Phone, despite being (IMO) technically inferior is everything to do with the fact Android is effectively free.

    OEM Win8 Pro is, IIRC, ~200 bucks on the top of the price of your hardware. That's 2/3 of the cost of my current hardware, purchased (second hand refurb) without OS. Hell, even compared to the new price of the newer model, it's etting on for 1/4 of the purchase cost.


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