Ad I said. I realized I can’t have an opinion because my experience is old.

With that said following your tools analogy, and based on that old experience. imagine if over time, your tools became slower and slower until someone came to do maintenance and mine didn’t. Or if when you were closing shop for the day, the tools started updating and you couldn’t close the tool box.

Now, based on what other people are saying, imagine that every now and then your tools at home stopped to play an ad for more tools.

You wouldn’t see this from corporate tools because someone else takes care of it and it doesn’t show ads.

By the way. I used Windows really well (since the early days) so I could call myself an expert at the time. In my early life I was the one behind the scenes ensuring people could work seamlessly. I never really liked it the way I like Linux.

So no, not all tools are the same. But if you like yours, all the best.

I left before the ads era. That’s sounds awful. I’ll search to see how they look.

You mean my distros?

Different distros are the best for different purposes.

My Fedora is the best for my laptop because it just works and all the hardware is supported.

My Arch is the best because it’s a super fine tuned setup that prevents distractions and doesn’t waste memory or CPU doing things I don’t care about.

My mint is the best because it’s simple, stable, beautiful out of the box.

My debian is the best because servers are no nonsense.

My puppy Linux was the best when I was a developer for the distro because it was the smallest lightest and fastest distro I’ve ever used.

Etc.

Let me repeat, a big part of the success of windows is due to piracy. In developing countries, poor people rely on it. Eventually they may become educated and well, they know how to use windows.

If windows/office becomes annoying with the ads then people will look for alternatives.

And the rub should be radial, not circular.

How is no one mentioning the abuse on r/conservative where spewing all kinds of falsehoods, and xenophobias and you are gold, but trying to provide factual information gets banned?

I think there are more things to worry about than the number of groups someone helps moderate.

And alsothere is no recourse against improper bans. I was banned from my corresponding country sub because a moderator misinterpreted something I said.

Oh. Smart and pedantic about an autoincorrect. I’m not going to say I know more about computers than you because… One never knows. I just started in 1982 and have only worked in IT my whole life in pretty much every role, in more than 30 languages and many different platforms plus contributing as a developer in a small distribution around 2006-2010 and ending up as a lead entreprise architect providing advise on the technological direction of 300+ systems. But again, maybe I don’t know much.

Your answer confirmed my original comment. You are commenting without fundament. “I used it 15 years ago” qualifies for speaking about Linux in past tense. Not in present tense.

By the way, I don’t know if you used virtualisation or WSL to run Ubuntu inside windows (I remember the Ubuntu cd had that executable) but it’s not the same as running a proper installation and back then WSL was lacking.

For me talking about WSL also qualifies as past tense as I haven’t used Windows at all since 2019.

Good for you that you like Apple. It doesn’t mean that Linux is not stable or is lacking though.

I have a problem believing he thought is wholesome. to celebrate violence or lack of empathy.

I said “you” generic as a knowledgeable person.

The people you are talking about didn’t install windows either. I’m talking about comparing apples and apples.

There is no more difficulty installing or using windows or Linux, but in Linux there are less problems.

You start with any mainstream distro. Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Mint and the like.

The differencea between them aren’t relevant to a new user.

You install whatever you are comfortable with to be able to help them.

I put that in quotes because geeksquad sometime gets called to literally just connect cables and show the client where the power button is.

And my point is not to blame the clients. My car mechanic may be laughing about me taking the car to do things I can do my self in 5 minutes.

The point is that windows isn’t easier. It just has more readily available support and people who start using windows are OK calling someone.

People starting with Linux think that if they find an obstacle, “that’s it, Linux bad”, instead of paying someone to solve it.

Again. Have you used Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu?

Regular people get help with basic stuff in windows All the time. That’s why there is a Geek Squad in best buy. That’s probably the only thing missing for the non technical Linux users.

If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.

In fact, in Linux they’d need less tech support as many windows users calls are for slowness, virus and obsolescence.

Let’s not compare usability using different standards

Tell me you haven’t used a Linux desktop recently without telling me.

“I remember”. Using that phrase tells me it wasn’t recently enough. And “using it inside windows” tells me you tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or that you don’t know what you are talking about.

You may be a MAC fan and that’s OK if that works for you, but I haven’t needed to use anything else but Linux since 2004 (initially there were always pickups, though) and I’ve been runing it without issues since probably 2010.

“Microsoft testing new ways to lose customers”.

It’s well known that piracy was what made Word (.DOC) and Excel (.XLS) the de facto standard.

If the kids at home can’t use windows, they’ll find something different. And when enough of them find if, when they become decision makers they’ll stay away from Windows.

Imagine how different the landscape would be had MS cracked down on Piracy for their flagship programs.

I don’t have a soul, so probably I remain the same.

USB charger.

Your signature is your mark. Uniquely identifying. It doesn’t need to be your name.

I originally signed with name and last name plus a squiggle. I got tired of that and many years ago I changed it to my 4 letter first name barely legible. Way better more consistent than the variance writing my full name.

Butnintinknwe aware saying the same. Cursive is illegible, so. A bunch of squiggles is good enough. Some people call it cursive.

Note: other than nostalgia, I don’t understand why cursive. Barely legible even by the original writer.

Beat me to it. That was my first thought.

Hahaha, we can always hope.

When OP says “layout” I think he means the old as windows 3.1 layout and workflow. It was good in the 90’s. Now it feels cumbersome and dated.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that’s the main selling point of Mint: Familiarity and stability. I settled on it for 19 years after I got tired of distro hoping. I’ve contributed financially to it every month for years.

However, it’s that cumbersome workflow which got me back into Gnome where I use only two extensions: transparent task bar and window autotile.

Gnome on a laptop flows naturally and out of the way.