I am now using Ubuntu for around 9 months, before that I was a windows user.
There are certainly many things in Ubuntu I love like custom themes, ...
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I used some time off between my jobs to install and configure arch linux on my work laptop.
It was a lot of work, it took me 2 weeks to get a 100% fully functional system, but I learnt tremendously in the process, so it was definitely worth it.
Now I have a system that was built from the ground up by myself for myself. My workflow productivity increased tremendously. I have the joy of working every day on an amazing and beautiful operating system that I optimized for my needs and which I know everything about.
Granted, there were headaches along the way, and not everyone can give 2 weeks of their life for this. But if I had to I would do it all again.
And since arch is a rolling release, I don't need to perform any major upgrades. Btw, I use arch.
What a beautiful post, I feel like you summed it up really well. It's really a learning experience that only makes you better. I feel like anything else I say is just reiterating what you said.
Btw, I use arch.
I think back to issues that would take me hours to figure out some years ago, and how now similar ones take 5 min or less. It's all about learning. Granted that most learning comes, at least in my case, from screwing things up and ending up reading a ton of docs (there is no wiki like the arch wiki!) to fix things up.
Btw, I use Arch.
Arch wiki😎
Btw, I use Arch
As long as you're not shy to look at that wiki, it's literally the best documentation I've seen when it comes down to configuration as well as just general knowledge around a lot of tools and libs. I'm so happy that I use arch.
I have heard great things about the Arch Wiki, AUR.
Maybe I will switch to manjaro in future.
Btw, I use Debian
I think even users of other distros end up using the Arch wiki from time to time
I just read about arch linux and rolling release(didn't knew much before).
It seems that arch linux gets latest updates very fast (which makes it less stable) and you have to configure it to make a complete OS like Ubuntu. I would definitely want to go through the same process as you to configure everything on arch linux from start in future, but would definitely go with Manjaro for now if want to use arch based linux.
Still, printing the Arch Installation and Beginner's guide and following it for a couple times will give you a completely new perspective on how your system works. I suggest everyone that works with computers includes doing that on their to-do list, even if just as study/practice. When things break, no matter how badly, and you know you can fix it without formatting, it's awesome.
Plus, by using the terminal so much, you start to write code that works like that. Many friends think it's funny how I use the terminal to check stuff, be it searching for packages or reading documentation, but this actually feels very liberating, and I can say for sure I make better stuff, and faster, because of this understanding.
I agree on the last point, however the rolling release system is actually pretty stable if you know what you're doing - which can be hard for a beginner.
For lesser worries regarding Arch Installation, I suggest using the archfi script by MatMoul.
One more quick tip, while installing use IITK mirror if you are currently residing in India. Its blazing fast.
Btw, I use Arch
you need to tweak your mindset.
yes, at first arch might scare you away because it's rolling release.. but..
if you understand how pacman works, what pacnew files are and that you should always check the news before updating, you will get a insanely stable experience on it.
some projects have a few bugs.. kde on wayland for example.. but using that is really bleeding edge.
in general you are the one making the decisions when it comes to your installations.
apart from that, the archlinux irc on freenode is filled with people willing to help.
side note: i even use arch on servers
This is where you should probably make full use of Docker container. I have different container for different project, where rolling release nature of Arch wont be a problem for me. My containers will always in stable state.
Yes, it will take some times to setup Linux, but it will worth it.
Btw, I use Arch.
Someone told me once that the best Debian based distro is Debian, haven't you tried it? 😁
I recommend you to use Elementary OS and Snap.
Setting up a new laptop for work lasts only an hour like this and the software is more containerized.
If you have time, mounting all parts by your own (a.k.a. creating your own distro in some manner) is the way to learn how it works pretty well as Samuel pointed out.
Depends, best for what?
If you're looking for a non gui thing, perhaps, yes, but the last debian I played around with, looked like a 2005 Redhat clone. Like, between a windows 95, NT, and a 3.11.
It was only something like a joke, but you can add your preferred GUI into it and.. tada! a debian with nice GUI on it.
The other way to go is the same as Elementary OS does. It's based on Ubuntu (which is based on Debian). Then decouples packages from it and repack all into a lighter distro for being more efficient (with a prettier and easy to use GUI).
Feren OS was nice at the beginning, now it's more like a nonsense Frankenstein monster.
I would recommend you not use snaps. They're buggy, and slow. Which is exactly what the poster was complaining about (bugs and speed). In fact, it's possible that the poster would have a better time if snap was completely purged from the system and the existing snap packages were appropriately replaced by the equivalent Debian packages.
I've had issues with Discord only on snap, then i installed it as deb package and it was still buggy so i assumed it was version bugs and used it on web version.
I'm using docker, php storm, spotify, gitkraken, slack, dbeaver and more everyday without issues TBH.
I'll need to check your speed concerns between deb and snap packages to see if it makes an observable difference. If it does I'll simply move phpstorm and gitkraken out of the snap as on big projects these two are the most resource-consuming packages (both indexes the entire project). Thanks for the info
There are plenty of people that have tested things such as startup speeds, some snaps taking almost a minute to load vs their Deb versions taking a couple seconds:
Here's a link, happy to help
discourse.ubuntu.com/t/testing-def...
Thanks I'll take a look, at the first sight it seems the article talks about load times only which is something i haven't to concern about. I open all software at the beginning of the day while taking a coffee and i didn't close it till I'm about to go home.
I'll look this article further and make some tests with the apps i use and will see.
Manjaro sucks and you won't learn much more than you already know.
Either you go back to windowz or try Arch.
Linux is customizable. so is there not a way to customize manjaro or ubuntu?
Answer is yes they can be customized. It's users choice, right? for eg we can remove gnome and add MATE in ubuntu.
I think there is need for better discussion than just dismissing everything and saying arch or nothing.
If for you it is a matter of customization go ahead and use whatever you want.
I am speaking about the rock solid base (first of all the package manager) over which Arch and other serious distributions (Gentoo, Slackware, Alpine...) are built. Also their communities are made by compentent people. Manjaro is born to make easy something which has its own complexity: in my opinion this is exactly the opposite of the Arch KISS philosophy.
I don't really want to try Arch on my main machine as It is my only machine.
So will persistent bootable USB with arch Linux a good start?
I've no time nor want to spend 2 weeks on it (for now) so i usually use Elementary OS that works fine. Better optimitzed than ubuntu, prettier interface. Moreover I usually go for Snap as package manager (some people blame it for working different) but I think the productivity is much better.
No upgrades from APT to the software I'm using for work, if something breaks up I just snap remove and snap install again and I'm working again on a minute.
Can you get a normal keyboard layout in Elementary? I loaded it and I could only seem to get a Mac layout. Is that bolted down and essential?
I'm using the same layout I get on windows or ubuntu or... Simply selected keyboard layout on installation process like almost any Debian based linux installation.
Can't agree more, I also love how easy it is to create identical environments, even across different distros. on top of that the privacy and the open source as default is huge.
I use arch BTW
I think what people don't really understand about the stability differences between Windows, macOS, and Linux all have to do with the drivers that have been developed to support those platforms. If you try installing any OS on hardware that it wasn't intended for you are going to have problems. I spent many hours attempting to install Windows 10 on an older MacBook Pro only to be stuck in the end because of the lack of Windows support for the dual video card setup in the MacBook Pro. The macOS works great on Apple hardware, Windows works great on PCs because the OEMs have invested the time to develop solid Windows drivers for their hardware. Unless you are using a machine that the OEMs have invested time in to provide solid support for Linux you are going to have problems.
I run Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 that has solid OEM support for the device. Dell & Lenovo sell devices pre-installed with Linux which means they have invested time into supporting that hardware. However, that also doesn't mean that they have invested that time in every hardware combination they produce.
Before choosing Linux as your OS you have to ensure you are picking the right hardware with OEM support. If you purchase a System76 device you are in the realm of Apple because System76 is controlling both the hardware and the Linux distro it's running on.
And as we all know it doesn't matter what OS you are running Microsoft, Apple, etc can still put out bugs that cause their OS to have problems on their own hardware.
You make a good point but I think it should be added that stuff isn't always so black-and-white.
I use a Dell, didn't come with Linux, still the Dell with the worst Linux support will be 200% easier than something actually hard, such as your experience with the Mac, or, God forbid, my saga to install Linux on a PowerMac G5 (Nobody supports PowerPC anymore, still it runs Gentoo pretty nicely, took me a couple months to make it work though).
It's a trade-off, Ubuntu is especially bad but for most distros, there are many levels of hardships depending on the hardware.
OEM not supporting Linux is not a reason to drop Linux, is just an indication that you may have some degree of troubles masking it work, but it may be actually pretty easy.
Well, my point was more about those that struggle with getting a Linux distro working on their machine. And their concern that the time required to get things working was not worth it. If they want it to be easy, and just work, then they can't expect this for a Linux desktop with just any hardware. If they don't want to invest the time to get it working then they need to choose their hardware wisely.
Couldn't agree more. First, choose your hardware wisely: certification.ubuntu.com/.. I switched to Ubuntu after 20 years of using windows and never looked back. It's true that you have to invest more time in the beginning to operate it, but you get greater control. Plus you'll learn shell scripting on the way, which you'll benefit from when you're code ends up on a Linux server, which will inevitably happen.
The Ubuntu hardware certification list is pretty telling when you look at HP's 12 certified laptops, none of which are certified for 20.04, compared to Dell's 300+ certified laptops, only 5 of which are actually certified for 20.04.
I guess it is not updated yet. Both Dell and Lenovo go at great lengths to make their laptops Ubuntu ready. I just upgraded to 20.04 on an Inspiron 5000 series laptop and it works like a charm
Being able to run 20.04 and actually being certified for it are different things.
I will definitely consider Using Windows 10, Please Now don't scroll down 😅, I know there are alot of lags, Memory Issues In Windows 10.
But I was also a Linux Lover Before I came to know following Points:
These are some good points.
When I was using windows, I had removed all bloatware manually using PowerShell. I just think WSL is not that stable right now. I had just moved to Linux to give it a try. Now it is very hard to go back.
I have been using Ubuntu installed in WSL2 for a few months now. It's been pretty stable other than a couple of minor quirks. I get the best of both worlds. I still run linux on a laptop for most of the development work, but I'm moving (back) to Windows for the main desktop experience.
I used Mac for 10 years before this. It used to provide the best desktop experience but not any more. The software quality has been declining while the price tag stays high. Once I realized I didn't need the "cool looking factor", I was ready to ditch it. :-)
Are you sure we didn't talk? Exactly what I had done. Two weeks into Winux and loving it so far. The high price tag of Mac forced me to consider this option and it's working great so far.
Counterpoints as a Linux user:
But then you will have the worst things about Windows still
Unless your work locks down your Windows 10 so you can't install WSL2. They have not yet blessed a new enough windows release.
Rather than using WSL, I use my Windows 10 box as a client to one of the many Linux or Unix boxes that I have access to.
I can run windows apps on windows and Linux apps on Linux and they all just work.
I can even use ThinLinxOS as a thin client for both if I want...
It works, until it doesn't. WSL2 is leaps and bounds better than WSL1, but it's still not quite native. E.g. we couldn't use WSL to develop on some embedded hardware at my last workplace, as it relied on the device being mapped to a /dev/USBx, which simply didn't work with the WSL VM.
But I've spent a couple of days developing with Python and Node without thinking much about it. When it works, it works pretty well. But at that point, if it's not actually better, I'll just keep dual booting.
i use wsl2 and docker at work.
the network stack constantly breaks apart and it doesn't properly integrate into vscode in comparison to a native linux experience.
I'll totally stick to arch.
That's a lie (...You can do any task, which you can do with linux...). Try using simple native security Linux tasks over WSL (nmap), it's not supported, therefore, it is not native.
I have my whole dev environment in a docker image. The day windows had native docker support, I will try..
I recently switched from Mac to Windows 10. WSL 2 is slow at least for Java development. Intellisense is also as well as compilation is even slower.
Don't know your case, but I felt a huge leap when I hosted my projects (a python and a reactjs one) on the linux's home folder. I was previously using them from another disk and it was unusable
I assume you installed Linux on your Laptop. May I ask which brand?
In general, I would only suggest Linux to anyone who has thinkpads or dell xps lines. Other than that: too much hassle, worse battery life, etc.
I code daily on Linux because I’m an embedded software engineer and because the target system is (embeded) Linux. Even then I only use it on my workstation.
My macbook pro is my daily driver because of 1) battery life 2) it works out of the box 3) almost all Linux tools are there.
On my Huawei MateBook D14 the battery life lasts bit more than I got on my MacBook Pro 13" 2017 touchbar, and getting more performance (that's why i sell the MacBook after some months).
Note that the comparison is from a 2.006€ MacBook "Pro" vs a 600€ Huawei.
Apple performance per price is a shame...
Right.. you compare battery life of a notebook with a different one. I’m not going to argue with your logic.
Hey, my Audi A4 uses more gas than my Vespa.
Note that "dealing more performance" on the text.
For further details, it was a MacBook Pro 13 with intel i5 with iris plus integrated graphics, 8Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD vs Huawei MateBook D14 with Ryzen 5 with Vega integrated graphics, 8Gb of RAM and 256Gb SSD. First one at 2006€, second one is 600€ (you have the i5 option at 650€). Both promoting 10H battery life.
It's like buying a vespa at the price of an A4, that's what disappointed me.
I’m not going to argue about price or performance of any laptop.
What I was trying to say is from my experience, if you have a windows laptop and you install linux on it, the battery life on Linux (on the same laptop) is comparatively worse than Windows (on the same laptop). At least out of the box. You could tweak the power usage but as I stated before, it might not worth it.
That's true on the major laptops with intel and from my experience the difference between windows and linux battery life it's almost 0 on AMD ones (i tried only 3)
Funny enough, I get about 4 hours on Linux on my Inspiron, didn't use Windows all that much but I remember it didn't last as long.
Still, I use Arch so it may be the tweaking things. Since Arch doesn't do anything for you, tweaking things is basically what you have to do when installing, so obviously I have it turned for what I need...
Though a Macbook would be perfectly acceptable for me, if not for the fact I live in Brazil and here a Mac costs an arm and a leg, and maybe also a kidney or two...
Should be interesting to see what this will look like if arm laptops go mainstream. Battery life with Linux on arm should be nice
I'm a little sceptic about performance of ARM for heavy tasks, general purpose and multi-tasking. Yes there are supercomputers with ARM but they perform a little set of actions instead. Will see how it's managed on a close future for general purpose devices.
Yep... time will tell
Sadly, even then it's some models. At my last job I had a Lenovo P50 with Linux Mint. The Nvidia Quadro graphics were poorly supported. The laptop screen would only work with the Intel GPU and external displays with the Nvidia one. Plus I could not reposition the monitors or switch which was primary in software.
I've since run it on a Lenovo Yoga, E540, and an ASUS VC66 desktop without any trouble.
Nvidia drivers had been messed up by Nvidia itself and I wouldn't blame distros for it. Though I haven't faced those issues with Nvidia external display support although I don't have Quadro instead have GeForce 1050Ti and it's working great with ubuntu although I switched to pop os for better support 3 months ago.
nVidia is pretty much the best reason to use windows on any machine. As for the reason, I recommend watching this answer by Linus Torvalds himself: youtu.be/IVpOyKCNZYw
Hehe... Buying a Dell xps 15 made me switch to windows. Horrible support for hybrid graphics. Linux on that laptop was basically unusable for me in 2016. But I too read the articles about the xps 13 being a fantastic Linux machine. Should've researched more
Although I personally haven't, did you or anyone tried the dell XPS developer edition for linux? Or system 76?
I am having HP laptop. My laptop and workstation are same 😅
I didn't really have problem with battery life but things just break from time to time.
HP laptop and Linux. What could go wrong :P
😂
On MSI things don't work better too hahaha
I'm using full AMD since like 12 years ago and no issues related to GPU nor CPU.
I've a Dell with intel CPU and GPU at work and it runs fine till I add more load, then it starts freezing a bit.
Sometimes intel cpus works well and suddenly you get an update from intel team to the linux drivers and the CPU start overheating so... I prefer to keep the brainless safety of AMD.
A 3600X + Vega64 for playing and heavy duty tasks, and a 2500u on my laptop for little projects and "sofa code". 😂😅😅
Is your BIOS current? I've recently been dealing with someone who had Linux problems on their HP laptop and discovered the BIOS had never been updated since new. A number of revisions since had been missed.
Regardless, I've been impressed with how Dell has embraced Linux, and I've seen fewer problems running Linux on Dell than HP. YMMV
I checked my BIOS and it is indeed older than the latest release. It was last updated before I switched to Linux.
Thank you for this comment. Updating my BIOS might resolve some issues with performance.
I've been using an older HP elitebook and it works surprisingly well on Ubuntu. In fact, the multi-screen support is better than Windows which amazed me. The laptop has discrete graphics from a FirePro m5950 and has both displayport and VGA connections available. Windows refused to run the internal display in addition to the two external monitors, but Ubuntu worked out of the box. HP had led me to believe that it simply wasn't possible. And as far as I can tell, everything else works in regards to hardware too.
We have pretty much similar experience then. I never had HP laptop that runs Linux works comparably well like on Windows. From my experiences, I had to tweak A LOT to get everything working at least as good as on Windows. And that costed me time that I nowadays don't want to spend.
Imagine tweaking a laptop for 2 weeks straight. And even then there's no guarantee that after updates it will work properly. For me it's not worth it.
If I were you I would use Windows. It works. And WSL 2 is surprisingly good. I've been testing A LOT of cross compilation stuffs with it. It's not perfect yet, but it's getting there.
I have been using Linux for the past 3 years, mainly Ubuntu. For me, being productive is about getting comfortable with the thing. There's no doubt that it's annoying when you have to troubleshoot basic problems like bluetooth not connecting or updating broken drivers. On the plus side, the very same process helps me in learning new things about the OS itself. TBH, I learned how to Google problems only because I switched to Linux from Windows and faced tonnes of problems during the transition.
As with all things, it depends.
After using Linux for 10+ years now, I feel safe in saying "the moment you leave the terminal your possible productivity declines rapidly".
Linux as in the kernel, is cli-centric. So all tools it brings are made to be used there. It is convention to give results in the form of exit codes or some sort of string so results can be easily piped and processed in other programs.
This is where productivity with Linux hits it's peak performance I would claim.
UI in the Linux world has always been lagging behind windows and MacOS. Though in the last decade several Linux distros made tremendous improvements and are very user-friendly. Some notable distros that come to mind would be
If you live in the terminal and can live without UI, like me, there is no contest really. Linux is very productive there :)
Yes. I can't live at work without at least one Linux box with a tmux session running. However, Linux isn't the right tool for every job. Some things are easier on other systems, but it's usually worth the effort to learn the linux way.
Most of your weird issues can be avoided by carefully selecting hardware with good open source drivers. There are several vendor that treat linux as a first class citizen and make sure their supported distros work properly on their hardware.
I also run LTS releases... Usually CentOS, but sometimes Ubuntu LTS or Debian on stuff I just don't have the time or desire to be tinkering with. If I need cutting edge for something, I run Fedora because it's easy to do major release upgrades, and because it's upstream to RHEL.
I am far more productive than I would be without my time investment in Linux. I'm also a Senior Sysadmin instead of slapping out pizzas for a living because of it. Stick with it. The more you learn command line tools and shell programming, the more value the system will have for you.
To have a smoother experience with Ubuntu IMHO, as well as with any other distro, the point is to buy hardware that is known to work well.
For example, most Lenovo laptops are Ubuntu certified hardware. certification.ubuntu.com/make/Lenovo
I haven't had any problems with Ubuntu on my T480, media keys, wifi, audio, Bluetooth all are working out of the box. There's one thing though, the digital imprint device, since it's proprietary, it only works on Windows.
Hi Dhruv, as a base Ubuntu used to be a good choice. When it comes to productivity, it depends upon if you are planning to use it for personal use or professional use. For professional use suse, in my opinion, is the best choice due to yast. It's rock solid and it works. You can try opensuse and see what you think of it. For personal use you can try manjaro, but for me it was limited because it's dev use their own dependencies causing issues with certain software. If you want to learn , try arcolinux. You can start with a base and then at your own pace, you can learn to build basically your own distro from scratch.
Productivity is a relative term. What may be productive for me, may not be productive for you. When you design something that works best for you, with the apps you need, in a layout you like, you can be the most productive.
I admit it - I've been using Linux since... 1995 or so and things definitely got much better.
I work on headless Linux servers and things are generally fine.
BUT on the Desktop I still hate it.
Recently I switched to Pop OS because things were smoother with internal + nvidia GPU, CUDA and generally like the improvements I did.
But just in the last two days I gathered such a list of issues for my TOFIX list, it's not fun.
Apart from the usual "printer not working"... (ignoring that and just booting into windows or using the macbook):
On the Laptop - suddenly brightness controls completely stopped working, the function keys do something else and the slider does nothing.
I didn't expect the fingerprint scanner to work without tricks - doesn't, don't care enough to waste time on that.
Wasn't much better with plain Ubuntu. Over 3-4 years I reinstalled it a dozen times while that Win10 installation which was even updated from Win7 still runs without issues. The MacOS on my 5 year old cheapest Macbook Air also still working well (except that it seems to get slower and slower).
Previously I used Debian, Mint, Undead Linux, SuSE and a couple others but overall there were generally too many issues with the desktop environment to bother at some point.
While writing this article suddenly the airplane mode turned on? wtf?
I never had all those issues with Windows many people report, although I never early-adopted and also skipped Win8, XP, Vista etc. (went from 3.11 to 95 to Win2K (that one I had for ages and never reinstalled it) to Win7 to Win10). Since 2k I never had to reinstall any Windows once. I mostly want to get rid of it because of annoying ads, data gathering etc. I had 4 years with mostly using MacOS X, which was generally smooth but I hated the walled garden and forced upon choices.... what the hell do you mean you have to delete all my files on that ipod if I switch account? reparing that disk drive is 300€? really? on my PC I plug in a new one for 20€. I can't just upload that iOS app to the phone? Oh yeah, sure, just drop OpenGL support, makes sense. What do you mean that thing costs 3-4k€? I just got a ZBook for 1200€ with 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, dedicated GPU.
rant rant
Think it's just me getting old and hating everything ;)
Your experience seems even worst than mine. I understand your pain a little. The airplane mode line made me laugh, LOL.
Even though I have never bought MacOS but I don't like it exactly because of the reasons you mentioned. They force you to use everything Apple and even slows down devices so that users buy a new one(iPhone 6 case that happened). It is super expensive and not even allow to develop apps for their platform without MacOs again their close ecosystem mentality is very frustrating. Now people won't even be able to dual boot macOS with Linux or Windows after they start putting Apple chips in them (even though Intel version will also be available).
I don't really have anything particularly bad to say about windows other than what I already mentioned in OP. Because all the Bloatware can be removed and there can be much more customization done than people talk about through the windows registry (granted not on the level even close to Linux). Also, It is much more affordable.
I still prefer to use Ubuntu, but right now I feel less productive with it.
I have switched from Windows to Linux, and yes initially it was a different experience from Windows, I had to break my head over simple things like installing a software, extracting it, I was not aware of centralised repository concepts, I had to struggle for setting up environment variables etc. But at the end of the day, once you learn to use Linux, your entire workflow becomes faster and there are many free tools for photo editing , reading etc which I find even better than windows.
I use either Ubuntu or Xubuntu on my personal machines, except for an ageing white plastic Macbook that I only ever get out to sync my iPod with Last.fm, and have done so for over a decade. I moved my parents to Xubuntu six years ago when Windows XP came out of support, and they do fine - it's particularly amusing when they get Windows support scam phone calls. I've used it professionally in three different places, and would still do, but for the fact that my current employer doesn't allow it so I have to settle for a Macbook Pro.
Obviously it depends on the hardware, but by and large Ubuntu has mostly just worked for me, and in general for what I do it's easier than a Mac, let alone Windows. Homebrew is a reasonable package manager, but I spend more time fighting to get things working with that than I ever do in Ubuntu. And both Windows and OS X are terrible for locking out the whole system when installing a big update - in Ubuntu installing any update, no matter how big, you can keep using the system.
Recently I updated all of my personal machines and my parents' one from 18.04 to 20.04 and it was quick, efficient, and caused no problems at all. Overall I'm far happier using Ubuntu than either Windows or OS X, and will continue to do so unless something happens to make me stop.
Sometimes I find myself spending a lot of time configuring something that would be simple on a Mac or Windows. For me though, that's why I love it. Not only have I gotten so much better with Linux but it also has improved my ability to read, debug and write code. When I think back to when I first started using Linux how confusing it all was to the progress I've made now it's a real sense of accomplishment. I say stick with it you can learn so much and you're guaranteed to. That's the point of being a developer isn't it? Developers are lifelong learners.
I use Ubuntu full-time. It is on my notebook computer and my desktop at home. The issue with Linux that yes, things don't always out of the box. However I have noticed that hardware vendors that have stronger support for Linux (i.e Dell and Lenovo) tendo to have the best experience. My PCs came with Windows, but they know run Ubuntu and it is perfectly fine. Nowadays, Ubuntu has better support for hardware than they did 15 years ago.
How does Linux work on the laptop wrt. the battery? It was not acceptable some years back (e.g. compared to Windows). Is it better now?
I keep running Ubuntu at home for two reasons:
That is awesome. I have always liked the role of system architect.
I've been using Linux since 2002 and there have been many hours spent configuring and fixing broken functionality over the years, but I just installed Ubuntu 20.04 a few days ago (switched from Arch) and have experienced no problems at all. Everything is working perfectly out of the box as far as I can tell. It's unfortunate that you're having so many problems. I definitely know the frustration of getting hardware to work in Linux, but it's come a long way over the years.
You were lucky. They broke the clipboard (GNOME did) with Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) (it worked fine in Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo)), and it wasn't fixed in Ubuntu 20.04.
Dhruv Agreed. But this worked for me. Instead of using Ubuntu desktop iso , I first used Ubuntu server iso then using taskel downloaded desktop environment. I don't know the reason why this give a bit stable system.
Also, Ubuntu with gnome desktop environment requires lot of resources. Instead try some other distro.
Look at CLEARLINUX . Design by intel for intel.
I remember reading a review recently that performance is good on amd chipsets too. Made clearlinux USB to test. However, issues booting with usb. So tried different distros. Namib looks promising (built on arch- although easier to install and configure than arch pure)
yeah, ubuntu certainly takes more resources than I had thought. I don't think ClearLinux is general-purpose distribution, It's more suitable for cloud.
If I remember they are not wording it for cloud only . In case, you are installing os , let us know your experience
I won't be changing distro right now for main system, but I am thinking about trying manjaro on USB stick.
Maybe will try ClearLinux also. will share my experience with it, if I do so.
Nice ... will wait for your experience
HI, you might find this video interesting. It's on clear Linux.
youtube.com/watch?v=uBNrWXewzqU
Hey, bug are part of Linux, but the experience is different for every people. I personally can't even cite you a but right know because I have so few and so little I can't think of one known. I have a friend who have a lot of problems.
maybe Ubuntu have some problems on your hardware. I personally use and recommand manjaro but Linux mint is a good just work distro. obviously there a lot of other distro. maybe you can try another distro ?
personally I don't ever had a problems that requires me more than 5min to fix it. so few bug and there a little.
sorry for my English
I would give another distro a try in the future.
No need to apologize for English. Try Grammarly chrome extension, it will certainly help you with it. I also use it.
Interesting 🤓 I see a lot of answers from a lot of hard core Linux guys but I can't relate to them because I don't have the time or desire to constantly tinker with my OS. I too came from Windows background into a startup where no one used Windows and had to make a choice - always figure out how to make something work on Windows or switch to Linux or Mac. So I chose Mac, got used to it, set it up the way I need and able to run everything without any major issues. My dev environment just works and I am able to focus on my job without burning extra time maintaining my OS. I have a few older laptops at home running Linux Mint and they work great for basic user stuff but even then I see that certain software titles like Zoom work better on Mac or Windows. And that's the root of the issue to me - it doesn't matter how good you are with OS if the software you use is not maintained on Linux as well as it is on Windows or Mac so I guess one's experience on Linux may be highly dependent on the hardware and the software used, where on the popular desktop OSes it's a lot less of an issue.
Ive spent about 2hrs in the last couple of days trying to get my bluetooth and sound working correctly on Fedora 32. I love the environment for development but some seriously basic things in daily use can be extremely frustrating to get working.
No offense to Arch Linux fans but rebuilding a machine for what is mainly an IntelliJ issue is a terrible idea. Open a ticket with Jetbrains and they'll quickly figure that out.
If you can't drop everything for two weeks to build your OS installation from scratch there are other polished distros that can be installed in no time. Install Time Machine and backup ubuntu to somewhere besides the root file system. Back up your user files also. Both Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are easy to setup and be productive with in 30 minutes vs. weeks.
I'd like to share my view on things. I used to be kind of polarized on this topic, Windows vs Linux, but currently things have settled down dramatically.
Linux is amazing. It has lots of possibilities. Super customize-able. You can fiddle all day long for weeks and months and still have stuff to play around with. You can build anything you want, made specifically for your needs.
At the same time, Windows is simply amazing. It just works, straight out of the box. For a fresh install you may want to fiddle for a bit - install fresh drivers and such, but then it is mostly smooth sailing. And it has a ton of software that works just the same way - you install it, it works.
My preference between the two is rather straightforward:
Windows
Let me explain: I need a tool to get the job done. No distractions, no fiddles. I've tried Linux a number of times, it has awesome features, but I always come back to Windows. I just install it, set it up and get the job done.
I've tried Linux a few times but came back to Windows, simply because I know it well and it allows me to just get the job done quickly and efficiently.
For someone else, Linux may be what Windows is for me and they can get the job done faster using Linux. And that's awesome!
In short: OS is just a tool to get the job done. The job is the important part, and I want to do it well and I want to do it fast (enough to meet the deadlines). As long as the tool helps me in that, its great. Use whatever works for you.
This sums up everything pretty well.
I feel like a lot of people might have missed the point that OP makes so because i share it, I'll reiterate it.
Linux doesn't "just work" in the way that Win 10 does. I think OP is pointing more at the out of box experience, setting it up inititally (because he refers to drivers etc), not the adding software on part.
my experience is with Ubuntu and Mint.
My problems were always with stuff that should just work. Bluetooth drivers are in an appalling state. they dont work out of the box, i can't pair my msft keyboard and mouse to either. I could only get mono audio on my sennheiser usb headset. I run a USB c hub to control my peripherals, but there are no drivers for it. power management issues, fans spinning constantly.
stuff that should just work. go back to windows 95 and 98, you could just plug anything into it and it'd mostly work. the driver library must have been colossal. but its just not there for linux.
in terms of the software experience, the thing that attracts me to linux is not having to tinker. Snaps, to get what i need working up and running. and yet all the die hard linux fans are not fans of snaps.
and back in the windows camp, lets look at windows terminal. it integrates with clipboard history which is native in windows, but you've got to mess with linux to get the same running. people say you've got more choice in linux because its not bundled, but when its bundled and it just works, its hard to argue with.
all imo and i get that some people want to spend a couple of weeks setting their OS up. I'd probably put that effort in if i could use backup and restore points as easily as in windows (3rd party software admittedly). i'll also admit to having never tried arch or read the wiki. i think i'll go look at that next.
Noting the title, using linux is indeed productive. How productive is dependent on you.
The learning curve for linux is higher than other operating systems, that should be a given.
My recommendation to you is use whatever you are comfortable with and enjoy.
At the end of the day, every operating system is going to have pros and cons.
For me:
As a software developer, I use OSx for work on a Macbook Pro (I would not pay for mac products personally, but if your company offers it, it has bonuses).
My beefiest computer is running Windows 10, as I tend to game.
Every server I maintain is running Linux, the distribution/flavor does not really matter.
I could easily swap my OSx/Macbook experience to a *Nix/System76 one if a company offers that. But, generally speaking, Linux is 3rd place with Desktop compatibility and experience, 1st place for server experience.
With nine months, you're still a rookie. If you'd started to use Windows for the first time, it could have been similar after such period. To add to that, you've chosen Ubuntu, which is on the tech side, not on the user side of range of Linux distributions. So you can expect more configurations done via command line and in more raw way.
I've set up a new machine and upgraded old one this year (OpenSuse) and the only problem I had was with finger print reader dongle, which I knew was a trouble. I did my homework though and with the new machine, I checked compatibility beforehand.
I love Linux for the following reasons:
That being said, I'm not entirely sure it makes me more productive. I have trouble finding normal features that I use on Windows 10 like a clipboard, hibernate (not available in Ubuntu 16.04) and much more that I can't recall. Also, I don't quite understand the package management system so it troubles me sometime.
I also haven't been able to find a proper substitute for AutoHotKey that works for Linux.
Windows is now integrating the Linux kernel with WSL. That should be a hint that development on Linux is productive. I quit using windows when 95 came out. Mac and Linux. It's easy to set up web development on both. Great cli utilities. Apple has switched CPU architectures a few times, dropped support for glsl, and has become bloated with unnecessary gui making it slow. Currently using Manjaro with gnome for desktop.
Decades Linux user here. When you purchase hardware designed for Windows you typically encounter the issues you're describing. Buy a computer from a company like System76 and, I PROMISE, you'll never have those issues you describe.
After reading most of the comments, this is clear to me that the main issue is the support provided by the hardware. In my case, I had bought windows PC and then installed Linux on it (as many people out there do) and it seems HP doesn't provide that good support for Linux at least in my model.
So as many people have written the best thing would be to invest in a laptop with better support for Linux. I would certainly buy a Laptop that promises support for Linux next time, whenever I am financially able to do so.
One more thing, I have a problem with DELL for not providing all range of its laptops in India. There is some very good laptop like New XPS 13 Developer Edition, which are not available in India for some reason.
I've used Ubuntu on both my work laptop and gaming pc. I had audio issues and sometimes USB mouse receiver isn't detected after sleep. the situation was worse on my gaming PC: Ubuntu didn't knew very well to remove old kernels and I ran out of space for many, MANY times.
on my gaming PC I've installed Manjaro two weeks ago and I'm happy about it. sure, I ran into small inconsistent stuff like white gtk color scheme in updater software, no dark theme in lutris (even if it's ticked) and visual artefacts after changing theme / cursor and stuff (which needed a reboot).
I want to install Manjaro on my work laptop but it's an old 860M Nvidia graphics card which isn't supported anymore and the proprietary driver gives me a black screen. hope in Manjaro I won't have these issues. and I hope it will play well along Windows.
My first exposure to Linux was Ubuntu's first release. I settled on Slackware in those days because it was the only distro I could get my 56k softmodem's drivers to compile on. When I hear people talk about hardware support almost two decades later, I'm not sure they appreciate how far things have come. I didn't fully make the switch to full time Linux until recently though, once Steam and Proton really had me impressed.
I try to stay in the habit of keeping pace with the major desktop and mobile OS ecosystems. I daily drive Linux and Android, but I try to keep an open mind. As a desktop environment, I use Cinnamon the most--Linux has the most freedom of choice in that department by far. I don't care for the direction Gnome took, but MATE reminds me a bit too much of 15 years ago. The choice is up to the user though. There's also no real shame in using the GUI interfaces available to you, and it's very possible to use Linux without spending much time at all in the terminal.
Though, you'd be doing yourself a disservice shying away from the CLI. It really is faster, but even with double digit years of experience I don't consider myself a pro.
Comparing Linux and Windows in terms of productivity is tough. It really depends on what you do. There's probably a FOSS attempt at anything you could ever want, but sometimes the feature parity isn't there or relearning something complex with a different interface and shortcuts just isn't worth it to you. And as far as an OS--they have different paradigms and different approaches. Being an expert in the Windows ecosystem doesn't mean you'll pick Linux up instantly, and vice versa. Things are "harder" insofar as they're not "the same". The overlap in skills required like diagnosing, troubleshooting, and researching solutions are cross-applicable though. The ability to Google an issue instead of immediately giving up isn't as universal as we'd like, and I often forget that myself
I kinda like CLI, when fn keys do not work with Rhythmbox, I open rhythmbox-client in CLI with -i flag and It solves my problem. I can then use n and p keys for next and prev.
After watching many videos on Linux(YouTube), I am finally able to understand little about terms like MATE and why people like it or why the arch is so loved.
I think I made one mistake, I should have worded post better and researched more about the Linux community before posting this because I can solve problems generally because of very helpful forums. The point was just that it can be a bit frustrating when you are working on something important and things like OS break. So you have to kinda initially invest time in OS and work gets bit delayed. But then again these things don't hamper productivity if you are good with Linux. So I will just have to improve my knowledge.
When I finished college years ago, I worked at a warranty repair facility for a major laptop manufacturer. Hardware features that people like (in this case, fingerprint readers for login) require development efforts. I had multiple "internal" tools, including a half dozen drivers for that thing for Windows alone. The slightest difference in SKU was very problematic for that little device.
I recall the days where installing Linux on a laptop and having a WLAN card was a "good luck" endeavor. Hardware support is far from perfect; I just spent an hour today getting my desktop's PCIE wireless card working after a kernel update myself.
I'm lucky that my discrete sound card (think what you will about that haha, I dabble in audio hobbyism) has Linux support because the manufacturer sure doesn't support it. It takes resources to develop, and a company (especially a laptop manufacturer) simply has to say "we don't support Linux" and they're off the hook.
Hardware support requires having the hardware to develop, and the Linux community isn't getting free documentation and (expensive) hardware to test with... it's mostly a community funded and development effort. I know I'm straying from the point, but the Linux community remains small enough for vendors to effectively ignore.
My point is I very much see where you're coming from: time spent troubleshooting my WiFi on a production machine is wasted effort and possibly income. My home computer is one of my hobbyist devices and it's a little easier to digest lost time there. No matter how long you use it Linux always seems to feel like a learning experience.
If you stay patient you'll start to unlock your potential. If you're using Linux as a production machine, I would recommend checking into distros that tout time tested stability at the cost of being bleeding edge. Something like Debian Stable might be a better fit for you.
I agree with all of your points. I think this is my problem, youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2269. so I will just downgrade kernel for now.
But I think now the Linux community is expanding especially because of distros like Ubuntu, PopOs, Mint, and Manjaro which are more beginner-friendly. Some hardcore Linux lovers sometimes hate on these distros but they are very important for wider usage and support for Linux.
Now many hardware manufacturers/vendors have even started to provide better support like Dell developer edition laptops and System76. The only thing I don't like about this is that both are not available in India, LOL.
It gets easier and easier. I have been a full-time Linux user since 2007 and was using a Mac for about 5 years at work (still Linux at home). I then had a much better Mac that I used for everything for about three months before migrating back to Linux.
This last migration - partly from my old Linux laptop and partly from the Mac - went really quickly and without challenge. Almost everything works out of the box and I just copy my settings as part of the migration. I was surprised how easy it all was and how quickly it went.
I don't use IntelliJ so cannot comment, but I do use Emacs and that works for pretty much everything.
It depends. Simple problems are less common in polished consumer OSs like Mac and Windows; OTOH, hard server-side problems are virtually impossible to identify & solve in Windows and, to a lesser extent, in Mac. So, I put up with the extra time needed to solve client-side issues (e.g., audio and video) on Linux. Decades ago, I deployed server-side products to Solaris, HPUX, Linux, and Windows -- I now deploy strictly to Linux which an enormous load off my shoulders, in simplified deployment, analysis, and debugging once you learn the incredible tools available.
FWIW, my primary development system is exclusively Linux for last 15 years; I inherited my wife's old MacBook Air laptop which I can still use for light development when I'm on the road or typing stuff like this. I started with developing on Linux in the late 90s in mixed environments with Windows. While I've tried quite a few distributions I keep returning to openSuSE.
I Got Same Problem With Ubuntu My Bluetooth earphone always making Trouble To Connect With Laptop, Cant Change Desktop Effectively. multitasking So Poor In This. and I was dissatisfied with That
Lot Of thing Not Wokring Properly So Finally I Switched back To Windows 10, Now I'm Using Windows Sublinix System in That. and Im More Productive With Windows rather Than Linux.
No, please. Can you edit that?
You are experiencing the reality of Linux.
It doesn't have paid teams worth billions of man hours behind it propping/patching it up.
So things are mostly complete, and a LOT of it is barely complete.
So guess what, if you try Mac or Windows 10, whichever you haven't yet, you will find the same situation... there are some things you need/want to do that are simply easier/more stable on another OS.
Linux is great for SOME server programs that were built for it, and need an OS that will simply keep going. (I dropped a Progress/OpenEdge ERP database onto CentOS, 11 years ago, and that setup has been running without OS problems that long.)
Now if you want IntelliJ to "just run", AND your desktop to "just run" with your hardware, I would choose Windows or Mac.
(If you haven't been on Mac, wait for the ARM Mac, and spare yourself having "old Mac" hardware.).
Windows 10 is decent. My JetBrains IDEs run with no problem, as does sound, video, and wireless. I have Windows 10 running on AMD A10 and Intel i5 and i7, hardware.
(Just don't depend on the "Restore Partition", keep/make your install media and back your stuff up off your system.)
I have seen Windows Server 2019 run on the same level of hardware, but there the specific hardware may not automatically work like it does with Windows 10 (sound). And it works with no issue on old hardware I previously could not run Windows Server 2012 R2 on.
Choose your OS based on what you want to accomplish, (and on your hardware).
Oh and don't choose Mac if you are going to Administer Windows Servers... too much hoop jumping in that setup too.
If you want to run everything on VM's... my experience won't help. I am old-fashioned preferring my "iron" to be physical.
This is a matter of experience. How long were you using Windows?
I'm a "soft" Linux user - just get the job done - with Ubuntu / Mint / etc. I recently transitioned to Kubuntu, and my past 17 years experience made it a snap ( except for Snap packages, which are not ready for prime time).
My last salaried gig had me on a Windows PC in the (pre-COVID) office, and I am way more productive in my Linux box now.
So, learn Linux. It's a tool. Try several distros. It's not for everyone. Gain some experience. Enjoy!
I've been using Linux as my desktop exclusively for 20 + years. Ubuntu used to be very usable and efficient. Today, I use Linux mint. Ubuntu unity desktop makes working with the operating system less efficient then using the cinnamon desktop in Linux mint. There is also a strange divergence in Ubuntu from net tools and towards snap that makes the system overall more difficult to use. Having used distributions since around 1994, exclusively since 1999, pick a flavor that works best for you. Mint works with everything out of the box. I've been very happy with it as my desktop.
First off, if you use the words "Ubuntu" and "Linux" interchangeably, then you are mistaken. I love Linux but not overly fond of Ubuntu. I run Linux Mint Mate, and although based on Ubuntu, is NOT Ubuntu. It's solid as a rock right outta the box. Everything works except I replace caja with thunar and VLC seems to crash but celluloid works great. Aside from that, it just works.
I get what you are saying and I meant Linux in general as you will see from other comments other distros of Linux also have some issues as generally, hardware manufacturers such as HP don't give good support for Linux (many have started to give better support in newer laptops).
I mentioned ubuntu as an example of my experience since I have only used that.
So, one of the things I hear about (I've used Linux for more than a decade and Ubuntu mainly) is all of a sudden features like audio start dropping out, including headsets, mics, and players or similar services. This is most commonly associated with a condition where the machine is hitting it's upper resource limits e.g. RAM. The machine having reached it's limits will start to shutdown less important services to prevent the OS from stalling out completely (freezing up). You can test for that condition by installing HTOP linuxhint.com/install-htop-ubuntu/.
Restart your machine and open a terminal. Then run
htopcommand and keep an eye on resource levels as you start adding/opening/using apps. a lot of tabs open on Chrome on Gnome, apps that load your machine. It's a pretty good method to see if you may need more RAM or maybe upgrade soundcard, especially on older machines and laptops. This is a WAG mind you, but could be helpful. At the least it will eliminate that cause.I think it's users' responsibility to research best hardware for using Linux. I have a Lenovo with none of these problems, and Ubuntu, Fedora, any distro really, is significantly more productive than Windows on the same machine because the software selection, ease of use, and portability are unmatched. Most complaints about Linux come from a place of not having much experience with it, like trying to shoehorn it into poorly supported hardware, not knowing your way around the filesystem and so on. When you plan, it's simly capable of much more than Mac or Windows, assuming the app tools you use are available for the platform. Simple as that.
I used Ubuntu for almost ten years but always found myself plagued with distractions as bits misbehaved, particularly connectivity.
I switched to Fedora and have had virtually nil issues to distract me, it seems to be rock solid.
I used to use xfce on Ubuntu though, and use gnome 3 generally on fedora, although I have used xfce on fedora and it also seems to not break as regularly.
linux is productive only in the hands of somebody who knows their system well. I mean who can do can use terminal better than gui. If you are trying to use apps made for windows, then better stick to windows. At the end of the day it gets your work done. But if you want more control then you need to do it unixish way like everything from terminal. I use mint for base install on top of it I use i3wm and vim for coding, gets most of my work done with very little effort.
hello, i have been entire life on windows and last year on ubuntu > pop!_os. After a year i realised how everybody talks about workflow and how everything is miracle on linux but in my case not. I just open vs code, dbeaver, browser, pomodoro and thats it. THATS IT!!! what others do so different to be 100x more effective on linux ? its same 😂... vs code, dbeaver, browser, everything opening and works same on any OS.... so i just wait to WSL2 on windows, tested, it worked very good so i am back on windows. I am not more productive on linux and dont have to resolve why nobody hear me on 50% meetings because linux has problems with many external devices etc. Only what i need is terminal and with WSL2 i can have it with solid performace ( honestly i dont see difference between ubuntu and windows WSL2 ) ... some tests says on windows it has -8% but i didnt notice.
I totally agree with you. For the actual work, all tools are mostly the same, I am still using IntelliJ idea, vscode, chrome, etc.
I had just moved away from windows because of some problematic updates in 2019 and to learn Docker. But I do like the level of customization that can be done in Linux. I spent 3 hrs yesterday to manually customize my terminals look instead of installing zsh or bash themes 😂. That's why I sometimes question my choices.
After writing this post, I have done close to zero development and am just looking for perfect Distro, Now I want to install manjaro. It would take another 2 days to get everything on it according to my needs and customizing applications on it again. That's why I think overall my personal productivity has declined recently on Ubuntu 20.04.
What you need is a system integrator unless you want to learn how to optimize every bit for yourself. For most users, paying the small premium for tested and optimized hardware gets paid back constantly and many times over. This is true for every general purpose desktop OS, but it's often overlooked by people who try to convert a supported W10 or Mac device to an unsupported Linux device.
I think the Kubuntu Focus (kfocus.org) - a product I manage - does it best. Of course there are a number of system integrators, so shop around.
What do you mean by supported windows ??
Bill Gates never answered my questions when I had drivers trouble 😋
But with Linux you join a true community. There is bugs of course, but you can hope someone will try to fix them with you. Don't say things you don't know.
Well see that’s a mistake.. You should ask the hardware vendor to fix your driver, not Bill Gates...
I have been running Enlightenment on Arch since 2011. Before that I used Ubuntu since 2006. I am on my third laptop with Arch and have reinstalled only when upgrading my laptop.
On my last install (Dell precision) I discovered that LUKS2 forced me to use systemd boot with the latest nvme m2 PCI ssd. My discreet graphics are easier to access than previously and vulkan is more integrated. I have a Windows Enterprise 3 licence for my VM running with KVM libvirt for Microsoft administration.
For maximum use of my hardware, understanding exactly how my system works and having all my regular tools setup am really happy on Linux.
What version of Enlightenment? I used to use E16 back in the day. Now it's Gnome.
If your goal is to deliver value out of the box as a developer, then go with MacOs or Windows. GNU/Linux in a nutshell is about customization and giving the end user the power to decide. Basic things as color themes or fonts to low-level stuff like kernel and drivers.
I run Linux on my desktop but I wouldn't make that recommendation to everyone. I say that as a 20yr+ Linux user. My laptop is windows, but it runs an X server and I SSH everywhere. I'm using VS Code most of the time anyway, so it doesn't really matter what OS I use. I think a developer should have at least one Linux machine however, Even if that's just a raspberry PI or a VM.
I've been using Ubuntu Linux for years and I've learned so much from it. Sure enough, I've had to spend some really long nights fixing the issues that show up, especially after an update, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
One thing I always found is that cutting edge hardware may not be fully suported the moment it is introduced. this includes new motherboards, chipsets etc. The vendors rush to get windows support before release, but then it takes a while for Linux coders to get their hands on new stuff to write the drivers.
I have never had the problems you describe, but I always choose my hardware with Linux support in mind. I have been using Linux exclusively for over 20 years, and from my perspective things were great and now they are even better
I think that is somewhat correct. Last year I worked on over 20 Aiot Dev kits and what I found was there was a lack of Gnu Linux knowledge... To the point I needed to edit config files and build modules. Modules existed but they didn't even build them or load to the kernel. I mean let's be honest here, there are a lot of these windows developers trying to work on Linux and they don't even know how to roll out a package. I also have been using gnu Linux for over 20 years and I think maybe my insight about being new to Linux is not as applicable... But I can say that I recently converted a process workflow to remove proprietary software and this long-drawn Windows GUI workflow was replaced with a 20 line bash script... and this definitely improved my productivity!
Certainly - however, at this stage of Linux development, users expect the drivers to their hardware to be present and configured "out of the box". Very few new users will have the type of skills necessary to discover the correct driver/module, configure it or compile it for their kernel, especially if it requires tweaking the device tree.
As to the productivity gains, that is the reason I switched all those years ago. I prefer a system that I need to configure once, that works efficiently and without breakdowns, to one that automatically detects and configures new hardware, but breaks down over time and becomes unusable.
I had the chance to try out Ubuntu after getting a new laptop about 3 weeks ago. I initially started with dual booting Ubuntu 20.04 with Windows 10. I had it for about 3 days before trying Manjaro instead. I think the issues I had with non smooth scrolling bugged me an awful lot (I came from using a Mac where this was never an issue). After that I switched to Manjaro before finally trying PopOS. I really liked it and had it installed for about 2 weeks before I went back to Windows 10, which I plan on sticking with.
My biggest issues were problems with battery life (2hrs on PopOS vs about 5 on Windows), smooth scrolling in VSCode and Firefox (everything felt quite slow and jittery), Bluetooth headphone issues with my airpods (sound was very quiet) and finally a vsync issue that I couldn't unsee and wouldn't go away even after 2 days of googling for a solution and tweaking a number of config files.
I was confident going into it that Linux would be great for me. I'm a PHP and Node Developer and having had a mac for the past 7 years I feel more confident with terminal. I really have respect for and understand people that want that extra level of customisation not found in other OS'. The fact that you can just jump in and change how absolutely everything works is a great strength. For me personally though those small remaining issues bugged me too much and used up way too much of my time, when I just wanted to jump in and start developing.
I'm actually getting by fine with using WSL on Windows 10 at the moment, I may however come across issues in the future that might change my mind.
When I'm next due for a hardware upgrade though (or WSL isn't cutting it for me), I'll definitely try a few different flavours of Linux again!
I've found that I'm much more productive in Windows 10 than with Linux. People who are extremely skilled with Linux, and who focus on the command line, can be productive, but they'll still run into all sorts of hassles with drivers and desktop bugs.
Windows is much more polished, and has a higher quality interface than Linux (and macOS in my opinion). One example of greater productivity is the Your Phone app from Microsoft. It integrates with my Android phone and allows me to read and respond to text messages on my PC, make calls, move photos from my phone to PC, etc. I wouldn't know how to do any of that on a Linux distro – does Ubuntu have something like this?
I also don't like how old and obsolete most Linux distros are with their kernel versions and app versions. It's confusing. RHEL is using an ancient 4.x kernel on their latest release. I can never get the latest version of gcc or many other apps when using Ubuntu – their repo only has older versions for some reason. To use modern kernels and apps you have to use Fedora or maybe Arch. Fedora's docs are frustrating and their community is unfriendly. Arch's docs are great, but last time I checked Arch requires tons of maintenance effort, and doesn't have trivial automatic updates. And with any distro, there will be lots of glitches and hassles on desktop.
KDE Connect offers similar functionally to the Your Phone app. I really prefer using Google's Messages for Web, though, since it's mostly texting via the PC I'm interested in. It can be installed as a Chrome app and run in its own window. Photos can be accessed via Google Photos on the web or through USB. If you use iOS and not Android, I'll agree that Linux doesn't do much there.
It's difficult to compare package versions across distros strictly by version number though. Different distros have different ethos behind them.. Rock solid stability, bleeding edge, and in between. Sometimes a version appears outdated, and may be missing newer features, but upstream security patches and such are backported. It's not always intuitive, and I wouldn't blame somebody for having the opinion that it's more effort than it's worth keeping up with the differences that can pop up between distros that way.
RHEL probably isn't the best example since it's aimed at enterprise. My last job had me using a Windows laptop 4 or 5 "feature update" versions out of date (about 3 years) with newer security patches applied. Companies like that would still probably be running Windows XP if they could
With all due respect, no we don't. We buy hardware certified for Linux and never look back. Serious professionals don't buy machines preinstalled with Windows then try to run Linux on it for kicks.
Why don't you switch Intellij Idea to something else? Visual Studio Code and Vim are better options. It takes a lot of time to configure and get use to Vim but it's capabilities cannot be matched by any other editor and it's native Linux app.
I do use vs code but it's not better than Intellij Idea. Don't know about vim but nothing out there can compete with Intellij Idea in my opinion. I can guarantee once you use IDEs by Jetbrains, it will be very hard to use anything else again. It's an IDE and capable of much more than any editor out there, especially for java projects.
I have not met a single soul who can argue that Intellij Idea is not good.
Sorry, I meant VS code and Vim are better options for Ubuntu in terms of stability (not as IDE) because of their bigger community and support for Linux. With Linux you should always sacrifice something if you don't want to try other IDEs then you should change the Linux distribution.
I got your point. This has only happened recently and honestly for me ubuntu 19.10 was working like a dream and both 18.04 and 20.04 have some issues.
I do not know about your hardware, but I'm using Linux for almost 20 years and it works as expected, some issues time to time but this is normal in every O.S. for me it's better use some time to solve something than reinstall the O.S. setting my developer envinronment is tedious and I do not do this for 7 Years since I bought my laptop.
Linux is a little less stable than windows to run it multiple days/weeks without supervision.
The second biggest con for me, is that you sometimes need another PC, to look up procedures to get things done in linux.
However, wifi, bluetooth, lan, all work fine for me.
I do use lubuntu, one of the most stable ubuntu variants, and in my opinion, far superior.
I've been a Linux person by trade for some time now, but in a corporate environment, Windows/OSX reigns supreme. Whether it's the need to run bespoke software (various work-specific meeting or chat tools) or just everyday essentials like mail (Outlook on Windows/Mac is far more trivial than the alternatives), or even from the view of Enterprise using/requiring managed systems, Linux isn't great for use on desktop.
For me, I can't stand OSX, so I stick with Windows out of spite; but with the newer Windows insider builds with WSL2 (especially with the VScode integration), I can have my and Linux cake, and eat it :)
There's a big difference between using Ubuntu on a Dell laptop and really investing in Linux.
It might sound strange because nobody asks you to do much of anything to commit and use OSX. But Linux is not that.
Linux is owned by all of humanity, not a corporation. Linux is entirely programmable unlike Windows or OSX which are heavily proprietary and controlled.
Linux systems can be completely customized. When taken as a mission, a programmer can often create their ideal workspaces by combining tooling that other developers made freely available.
You are best off buying the right machine. It's a ThinkPad T series. I prefer the slim model like the T490s. ThinkPad T series is well supported because frankly they're the best business class machines available. I can elaborate on this or any other point via Twitter. I have over 25 years of Linux experience and plenty of experience with OSX, Windows, and about 16 other laptops.
Because these machines are so well respected in Linux / programmer circles they're very well supported. After all, these humans are improving their own computer software by doing so. Because it's a team effort.
Ubuntu is a distro meant for people who don't want to have to put as much time into customizing their computer etc. Unfortunately the packages in its repositories are always out of date and frankly the GUI stuff is trying to look pretty so that it had a wider appeal which makes it suffer in the UI department.
Learning to use a distro like Arch /Manjaro (there are others but I can't write forever) gives you more control and a more convenient packaging system.
You can spend a lifetime creating custom user interface tooling.. running tiled window managers and whatnot.
As a programmer you have incredible power.. total power actually... And because of the unix philosophy the software is written in ways that allow you to compose then easily.
But look.. Linux isn't just something you install to run spreadsheets on.. I mean it is.. not that's not all it is..
Linux is a lifestyle. You are part of something bigger than yourself. You can stay here and play for the rest of your life because you belong here because it is yours. You are not beholden to companies and their closed systems. much..
If you really want to benefit then I can show you lot.. I'm always happy to share.
I have a Windows machine in the other room for games. My work machine is my ThinkPad laptop on a dock with 2 monitors attached, or on the road.
My Linux machine is so customized that it's a part of me.. it's not standardized at all. Nobody would know how to use it. I do this because I like to take my computing experience to an extreme. I live for this and what I can do here is incredible. But it doesn't have to be done like that. It's up to the individual.
Anyway to each their own but I'm on Twitter @shawnmccool if you want to talk about it.
Choosing good hardware is an important step too.
20 years working on different nix OS. At first you can spend 2 weeks to build your rig. But now I need just a couple of hours.
I stick with Thinkpads (love my T470).
I know what I need (Gnome on Fedora what else ?).
I've documented many steps (copy/paste, reiterate).
I've scripted some steps (data/db migration, etc, and sipping my coffee).
Et voilà !
I've had windows completely die after an update and require a reinstall or full restore from backup.
Although Linux updates have occasionally resulted in a broken system or application, I've always been able to boot rescue mode and fix things. It's so much easier to backup and restore Linux too.
The most productive OS is the one that you are most productive on. Nothing else really matters.
Does it fit your needs? Does it work reliably on your hardware? Does it fit your workflow?
If the answer is "no" to any of those, then it's not going to be the most productive for you, and it doesn't matter if that "it" is Linux, Mac, or Windows.
About a year and a half ago, I built a gaming rig. I had designed it specifically to support VR gaming and aside from that, I had one other thing I wanted -- built in bluetooth support.
And I got it. ASUS ROG Crossfire motherboard with bluetooth and wireless support (I didn't care so much about the Wifi, but it was a nice perk given the layout of my house and potential places for my computer versus where the router was).
I also assumed this whole time that I would be running Windows, because VR gaming.
Fast forward three months and four Windows reinstalls later. I eventually said "screw it!" and installed Manjaro on it and found it ran better and ran all of my non-VR games (it'd probably run my VR games, too, but I made the mistake of getting an Oculus, but again...hadn't planned on running Linux).
Why did I have to reinstall Windows several times? Because of a bug in one of the critical updates that couldn't be bypassed at the time without doing some super low-level digging in the OS that bricked the computer.
Oh, and the drivers for the Wifi and the Bluetooth conflicted with one another, so even if the OS issue hadn't happened, I would have to choose between Wifi or Bluetooth, not both. Both chips were from the same manufacturer (and again, built in to the board), so it's not like this was a builder error.
On the other hand, Manjaro has been solid and I can use both the Wifi and the Bluetooth at the same time, should I choose to.
And yet, my work computer is a Mac, because I get my developer-friendly *nix environment and the specific userspace tools needed for supporting my clients.
That said, if you really don't want to go back to Windows for principle reasons, give a few other distributions a try. Some support a given set of hardware better than others, especially out of the box. Pop_os, Elementary, and Linux Mint are among the most popular "beginner friendly" distributions, but there's a huge selection to choose from to best fit your specific needs.
Having used Windows for decades since the first DOS versions, it was the OS which allowed me to be productive in many fields over the years and I love my Windows 7. However, after testing Windows 8 and 10 in Windows Insider, I concluded that although Windows 10 was a big improvement, I would never want it on a desktop. After a month of testing most of the major Linux distributions and several desktop environments, I preferred Arch with Cinnamon DE to all others. After the distribution I was using closed down, like Samuel Faure, I decided to compile my own system using Arch, despite advice from Linux old-timers that said Arch is not for novices. I added the Cinnamon desktop and it does everything that I want, all my peripherals work, I have used it for over a year without any crashes and it updates almost daily.
I continued to evaluate other distributions and especially those based on Ubuntu with the purpose of installing Linux on a the computer of a relative, who might prefer an OS, which is less technically challenging. I have been unsuccessful to get any of them to provide the ease of installation and stable performance that I have with Arch. For example, Ubuntu follows Debian, when installing Apache for LAMP, apparently to simplify switching PHP versions. However, installing multiple PHP versions and getting the MySQL database to work was a nightmare that took hours to accomplish, compared to minutes with Arch.
I've been using Linux for about 15 years, ofc not exclusively but almost equally with Windows.
One of the things that I'm very grateful for linux, open source generally and the community is that, they taught many many things.
Linux is fine and has improved tremendously, as well as windows, but I would never force myself to use something that has many issues.
For the past 2 years I use mostly windows coz now I don't really have the need for linux.
Some reasons I'm not using linux as my main OS are mentioned in the following link but I'll list the most frustrating for me:
itvision.altervista.org/why.linux....
As I said, Linux is fine, in many cases is even better than windows but as a generic desktop OS is still not quite there yet.
About docker, personally I've never used it but I believe it works fairly good with wsl2, if not, virtualbox/vmware or dual-boot. Use linux as your dev OS and windows for everything else.
Moreover, you can disable search results via registry
howtogeek.com/224159/how-to-disabl...
PS. plz don't tell me linux is a kernel and not an OS
Everything works perfectly if you can ignore peripherals GUI support. Eg. Logitech Options, video output on lid closed, keystroke mapping
I am suffering with switching from cmd to ctrl, even after half year usage
Ex-Manjaro Gnome and i3 user
I don't know about your particular situation, but if I was going Linux, I would be very careful about hardware before I started.
I've had similar unpleasant experiences with Linux and computers/monitors etc. and I learned that certain hardware companies and Linux don't go well together. I note that the things you're complaining about are mostly to do with hardware.
I need my pc to work every time it turns on without fail or it's not making me money or doing what bbn I want it to do. Linux never works when I need it, none of my steam games work in it, and that makes linux worthless. To me anyways. Many say it's better and works with everything, I've been to busy using my pc to waste energy on something that never works for me. Best advise is give up on linux until it's a finished polished product.
We run a dev shop that is pure Linux and every dev except me was new to Linux. I trained 5 people to use it, and we all started with Mint because it just works out of the box. I got harassed more signing up to post this message than I did installing mint on a laptop. From there, devs individually chose Arch to roll their own, Debian for a bit more access with common options, stayed with Mint, or tried centos on servers to broaden their experience. Try Mint First is my paradigm, then pick a distro that gives you exactly the level of control and automation that you want. I have not seen anyone choose Ubuntu in over 5 years.
My take on your problem is that you should go back to older LTS version, preferably 18.04. Because what you just described is the classic problem of using an OS version before it matures. Right now, 20.04 is still new and even its first point release would not have been released yet. Hence it still has few ironing to do with its bugs. But on other hand 18.04 is ironed out already. And i use it daily since mid 2019, and never had the problem like i did when I installed 18.04 in June 2018.
I'm a big fan of Gnu / Linux, even in the old days of linux, when linux was terrible in terms of conneciton using modem internet (winmodem). But, days are moving forward and time are getting less. I have a lot of experience using linux, from desktop to production environments, and ... Always I have the same reason to consider if Linux is the best choice for desktop. In this kind of terms, Linux sucks in desktop, because their Achiles heels and his great chance for success, the segmentation and difference in the community is getting huge. Difference philosophy is well, but ... kernel not is the all world (if you are trying to use in desktop environment).
We are spending more time configuring GNU/Linux to be productive rather to using it.
Moreover, GNU / Linux is falling down by decisions from corporate rather community features. Thats sucks and is the main reason why distros sucks in desktop rather servers.
youtube.com/watch?v=cZN5n6C9gM4
PD: I love Linux when I have time.
i've been using PHPStorm with Fedora. there were time its frozen, but only on specific version, after update PHPStorm to latest, i got it working perfectly fine.
Fedora expose some difficulties like docker compatibility, or even grub config lost, it happened to me after firmware upgrade.
Productivity wise, personally its not that much compared with Windows. I prefer linux, or fedora to be specific because its customizable by default, and my Windows always get more sluggish by time
I started using Ubuntu after they had already moved over to Unity, and actually Unity was a big selling point for me because I liked the style, I liked the maximized screen real estate, and it was different than every other distro, which made it feel unique. After distro hopping I ended up installing Ubuntu and really enjoyed it. But over time I kept having things break and not work properly, and had dependency issues and upgrade issues.
Eventually I moved in to other distros, particularly Fedora, Mint, and Linux Mint Debian Edition, and they were all more stable over the long term, I had relatively few issues with drivers, devices, and stuff breaking like I did with Ubuntu.
I'm still a fan of Ubuntu, but I think I'll stick with distros that are a little more stable and just work for most things that I use.
After wrestling with different Linux distros over the years, I really wanted to find a stable, reliable system going forward.
I bought a System76 Thelio desktop running Pop!_OS, which is a variant of Ubuntu that is designed to work well on that hardware.
It has been very stable and fun to use as my main dev environment, and things simply work. With a well rounded stable system, it works much better than the custom setups I've tried before.
I've been using Linux since 2003 for professional purpose. Either graphical production or development production. I totally gave up windows since I had lost weeks of code.Today I run Debian stretch. I do not care about the play button on keyboard or Bluetooth since it is absolutely useless for productivity. You ask if using Linux is productive but you talk about Bluetooth and play button... Linux gives you full control to the system. You do not need to install extra software to get a fully functional shell for example. When the shell is loaded it does not stop like gitbash and so on. Moreover the skills you get using Linux rise you up to a strong level and help you to remain reactive on learning new technologies and update yours. I use jetbrain products as well and they are memory greedy.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years and I haven't experienced issues with audio in over 10 years and no issues with Bluetooth in over 7 years.
Arch Linux is not friendly to new users, if you want to use Arch based Linux in a user friendly format please check out Manjaro. And if you like Ubuntu I recommend trying Linux Mint which is apt based but a better overall distribution.
I am a windows user for work, but a Unix and Linux user at home.
My Windows 10 Laptop will randomly lose it's Bluetooth connection to my headset necessitating a reboot.
I don't use Bluetooth on Linux much so that is not a problem.
Most of my home Linux boxes are used like appliances, a raspberry pi running Home Assistant, another acting as a thin client for an Atomic Pi in a different room, a Marvell based NAS, several OpenWRT routers...
All of them have been solid for what I am using them for. Sure I could have just bought one bigger machine for the price, but the flexibility of lots of smaller machines (several with their own battery backup) is worth it in my opinion.
Having said that I am considering replacing the Atomic Pi with a NUC or similar to allow a bit more development power. Or I could just move that workload out to the cloud as needed.
The first things you notice in every transition from one operating system to another are the things that no longer work as expected. It takes some time to discover and get used to the features that work better than in the old operating system. For me, as a long time Linux desktop user, it's kind of painful to work with Windows (and almost impossible to use a Mac, where are my special characters on the keyboard ;) Don't worry, learn to embrace things like middle-mouse-button copy-paste, and whenever you buy your next computer, take Linux compability into consideration.
If you like Ubuntu but don't like the little annoyances you just mentioned in your article, you should consider taking popOS for a spin.
I am sure others have said that. I use pop on my desktop and Manjaro plasma/kde on my laptop.
I used pop on my laptop last year and all of my function buttons worked and I could wake-up from a suspended state on my aging HP Probook 4540s.
I've been using Linux since 2008 when I bought an Eeepc. I bought another Eeepc about three years later, with windows installed out of the box and it was completely hamstrung by the operating system, so I put Ubuntu on and it did take a lot of fiddling. I wasn't caught out a second time, I'm sorry checked each component in my next computer also an Asus for drivers and it just worked out the box. My third computer Lenovo took a bit more fiddling because it had some new components and I had to make kernel modifications, which was time consuming. Ubuntu 20.04 though work out the box with only one extra script to get the Wi-Fi to work.
Top tips: Don't buy bleeding edge, check compatibility beforehand, watch out for certain companies not providing adequate drivers, or no Linux drivers. Dual boot windows for games etc if you're not an open-source zealot.
Once you set up though you have a much better system, you have to get used to using different tools though, but these have a lot of polish now: R, python, rstudio, atom, gimp, inkscape... I can't remember the last time I had an issue with any of my setup. The thing that most annoys me is the key layout on the laptop.
Typically if you have a problem someone's already solved it, you don't have to be some uber kernel hacker.
If you want ... errrm ... need to use some piece of software that only runs on Windows or macOS, then Linux is a drag. Running Windows in a VM is just to much of a hassle.
Other than that, Linux beats any other OS, hands down. A week configured KDE on a fast machine even beats out macOS in usability.
I personally am done and finished with proprietary systems. Used macOS/OSX professionally for 15 years (it was nice but not any more), Windows is stuck at Win2k levels 20 years back and both systems have baaad lock-in issues. The only system I "recommend" for non-experts is chrome OS, that's an actual improvement for regular users who don't want to spend a small fortune on contemporary computing.
All other things is best done with Linux, arm or x86, doesn't matter. Manjaro, Ubuntu, SuSe, you name it. Zero fuss, no trouble, no lock-in. Linux has come a long way and it's my primary OS from here on out, I've ditched my alternatives completely.
And I am way more productive because I don't have to deal with licensing nonsense.
I haven't had any issues with intellij in 20.04 installed with snap package. It could be your specific setup causing a hangup though. What's your typical project setup?
intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/...
You might have better answer from idea forums and get the thread logs when you post there.
I think you read then types of machine where ubuntu work fine. At least you must have 4GB ram and 2GHz then you will run it without any problems.
I have been using it for a year now but never uncounted these kind of issue I use Thinkpad.
I had these sames issues when using Ubuntu so next thing i tried was using Pop os. 4 months into it no complaints. Everything works right out of the box. But mind thay you have to do some gnome tweaks. (Missing minimize button lol)
That is me in reverse. I just cannot imagine using windows. I did the jump for little more than a year with windows 10. Eventually got back to linux.
I am very familiar with both. Linux is, simply put, better.
Yes, Linux is far more productive than Windows over the course of a developer's career. There is a learning curve to climb, but once you've mastered it, you will have skills that are useful everywhere. I did 15 years of Windows development and found that I was wasting a lot of time relearning things every time Microsoft came up with a new "rule the world" strategy.
I've been using Linux for almost 4 years.
Started with Linux mint, then Ubuntu (both were quite laggy), then moved to Fedora , have used it for 3 months,
Then tried OpenSUSE, Solus, Arch, Linux lite, Elementary ... and dozens of other distros.
but finally tried Manjaro and since then I've been using it and would happily suggest it to anyone.
The thing with Linux in general is that not all distros are the same and you should find a distro that gives you best experience and fit your needs.
You'll always face troubles and you should learn how to fix them, It may be hard in the beginning but at the end I felt my productivity greatly increased.
IMHO, switching to Linux is not just productive, it is constructive for you as developer.
I switched to Linux more than 13 years ago, that time installing the OS, configuring drivers or the WiFi connection were not as easy as the current versions. Sometimes I came back to Windows (specially for the games), but with the time I learnt a LOT about operating systems, file systems, networking, shells, building systems, virtual machines, etc, etc, etc.
As developer I worked also in Windows, but always trying to emulate the tools Linux provide natively. There are a lot of projects to migrate Linux tools to Windows, but you will find that these tools always will have better performance in Linux.
About what version to use, only you will know, you started with Ubuntu, that I think it is the most used version and a good one for general purposes, but there are more flavors for Ubuntu (Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc) as well as other distributions like Fedora, Arch, CentOS, OpenSuse, Linux Mint, and the list goes on...
As an advice, don't give up so soon and use long term support (LTS) versions for more stable installations.
I have been using Linux since 2007 from the era you have to work hard to make your wlan card works.
There are many desktop choice on Linux. If you find any bug or freezing issue in ubuntu desktop (which is using Gnome shell), you could try to move to another DE, let's say KDE or XFCE.
I am a happy Linux user. I even find strange to use Windows unless I am stuck in a curcumstance where I am forced to use Windows.
I faced many of these problems when I first installed Linux as well, on several distros. The common denominator was that they were all Ubuntu-based, which gets outdated quickly because of its LTS release cycles. Once I switched to Fedora, it was smooth sailing. The only configuration I had to do was install a few proprietary codecs from the Software Center and enable a few repository. Didn't even have to think about my system after that. Upgrades were effortless as well.
It depends on what you do with it. If you’re going to do something like video editing in Davinci Resolve, or 3D animation in Blender with some python scripting, then it is probably great.
Also, the version of Linux that I always hear is the most reliable, is Red Hat or It’s Derivative Cent OS, so maybe you started with the wrong version of Linux.
Productivity on what?
I'm a Backend/Infra/Devops side. The stack I worked with always on top of Linux and a Linux desktop is perfectly what I need.
Testing sever side software on your desktop almost feel like what going to run on your sever. Some specific things like Docker is native for Linux (when you run Docker on Mac, you need a VM, which I don't really like since that VM some time eating some resources).
When you go deep enough, will be different things from your desktop vs sever but in the end that is the closest thing you can have.
From time to time I learned how to buy a hardware which will Ubuntu okay, but if your company give you a Mac, that good enough in some cases when you can testing thing on VM or directly on the cloud.
For development I like to use anything but windows. I was a windows user for too long, but linux or macOS make my productivity grows up.
For me one of the most important things is that when I’m in linux or mac I don’t get distract with games, for example. Believe or not, for me this make a huge difference in my productivity.
But talking about my dev jobs, I run all my dev environment using docker so for me it’s much better to do it with linux or macOS.
And I don’t have any problems configuring my environment even to common stuffs like play music, watch videos etc since i make everything online.
I use ubuntu and the only things that give me trouble are Microsoft programs, to wit teams and Skype they have trouble finding my mic, nothing else does, but judging by the Microsoft forum's Windows people have the same problems, as for the programs you mentioned i don't use them so I don't know how they would go on my system
I've been using Linux on at least 1 machine, if not my main machine since 1996. I enjoy developing on it, even developing for Windows.
I used to hate developing on Windows because the updates reboot me all the time, but WSL has made most other complaints that I had go away. As far as audio or other devices not working, that happens with Windows as well pretty much any time that I install it on a freshly built machine.
I think that if Linux was the OEM OS, like with Purism, System 76, and even some Dell machines, then there would be minimal problems.
Dude 9 months is nothing. I would also say windows is for end users/personal PC's. That's what people pay for with Windows. It holds your hand through everything. Linux is a major time saver, only if you know what your doing. Ubuntu is like the total opposite of that spectrum I would say. It's completely open, as opposed to something like CentOS which cost less than Windows, more than Ubuntu, but is still commercially managed. Ubuntu is difficult to use, but it's free, and completely open source.
Everything you posted has nothing to do with Development. I work in Speech Recognition, I don't experience the problems you mention with third party apps as I don't use them. My personal laptop is an 8 yr old, still blazing fast Asus My company manages 20,000+ instances of RHEL Linux servers - only a few hundred relate to speech analytics though. The rest are telephony related.
Choose your Poison with hardware. I run Mint Cinnamon for my laptop, it just works and though I've been running desktop Linux since 1994, I just don't have the desire to fiddle with any OS on any laptop.
Hmm. I haven't tried Intellij on Ubuntu. Most of my engineering friends use Eclipse. If you are able to build it locally on your system I'm sure JDB would dump the errors to the console like it faithfully does just before JVM crashes. Have you tried invoking it directly from command line?
I also recommend running Ubuntu as a VM image. You might find the systems can grow very rapidly. Thus if you start working on an Intellij patch branch with all its tests and dev dependencies installed locally, it is isolated from the primary project. Thus many risks are mitigated and backups are easier.
The most recent Ubuntu releases are methodically targeting different computing platforms like IoT and mobile apps. Good breakout from the server closet - hope it gains some momentum.
Yeah... If you are not using LTS, and you do not actually know how to configure it, it is actually your fault.
Linux system has this kind of problem where you need certain knowledge to make it work.
But if you want the easiest version, just use LTS.
Or if you do not know how then just go with manjaro or arch, it will keep everything fresh, which is the easiest one in some sense.
I use Fedora in 4 different laptops, 3 brands:
No issues with none of them, even the Asus that has an nVidia GPU. Maybe the issue is not the software, maybe even it's not the hardware.
Ubuntu is awesome for 99% of the people who just want to use a GUI - if it works. I personally went through a series of distros and settled down with Fedora. Personally I don't have hardware problems since years, the thing that the audio goes on/off randomly is most probably Ubuntu's "magic" (which is what I hate the most of that distro).
Keep in mind that using Linux is in any case different from using Windows: it's a different approach to using an instrument (the OS).
In my opinion, particularly from a developer point of view, there is no match between Win and Linux: Windows has never been a productive environment besides writing in Visual Studio... all the instruments available in UNIX like make, bash scripts, compilers, simply have no match in Windows, or are way more difficult to install / use (i.e. try to compile a C source: Linux: install GCC and you're good to go, Windows: install 1GB+ of VS and figure out how to compile without a GUI)
I think a "productive" system means multiple things
1) How fast you can do things with your system, includes system efficiency, how much it fails, shortcuts etc, So even if you use it with out-of-the-box settings you could be extra productive, I suggest popOS for this.
2) Linux being extremely configurable makes it perfect for any person, given that you don't need software that does not run on linux.
Creating your own workflow, shortcuts, etc eanbles you to work faster.
I switched form popOS to manjaro i3, I change my settings every now and then and make it better for me.
3) How much of it you actually use, can you use it as it was meant to?
This means Linux might not be for some people, some work better with windows, some other with osX, depending on what you use and what you need your computer for.
About your BT issues, I bet there is a fix somewhere, on some forum for your specific system/OS combination, that is the beauty of linux. Imagina having a BT issue with windows? You are done, get a BT dongle.
Anyway, yeah, sort your issues, learn about them, customize your system, it is worth it :D
I hate using Linux desktop, instead I use Windows and putty for ssh access to my Linux servers. Because in the end you only need Linux for its shell access, not its GUI which is very inferior to what I'm used to with Windows. But that's just my style 😘
Personally I'm using alpine linux. I took an entire afternoon to set it up but now is pretty and works so fast. It took around 5 seconds to turn on/off (with connect to WiFi) and it uses around 500/600Mb whith Firefox opens. Windows need 3Gb only to be booted (my PC at work cries every time I boot it on) and it isn't optimized, it's just a bunch of s**t and nothing more than that.
Welcome to linux. And reasons why a lot of devs (including me) think apple products are THE CHEAPER option of them all. ;)
PS. I heard a lot of good about popOS, maybe its just distro you are using sucks.
I use a rolling release distro at home and a point release in the office. For the office PC I dont upgrade the OS version for 6 too 12 months after its release just to be careful. My boss wouldn't be ok with me troubleshooting for days.
I use the rolling release to game on and home dev projects. It serves also as a sort way of scout out problems.
It's fun for me though. Maybe one magical day linux will be less difficult. But depending on what hardware you are using it's easy or a pain. It can be fun to troubleshooting if u r into that. If not... maybe windows or mac with a VM? Windows WLS?
I find things the opposite way. Maybe I've been using some weird machine configuration, but all of my laptops has a problem with Windows10 in more ways than one. But with Ubuntu/Mint, everything works out of the box.
I think the problems you mentioned may be more to do with Ubuntu than Linux itself. I've used Arch Linux, fedora, Ubuntu, and currently Clear Linux by Intel as my daily driver. Of all these, though with an easy installation process, Ubuntu was the most troublesome for me. Ubuntu just frustrated me, I switched back to Arch.
Linux is the most ubiquitous platform in server space, supercomputers, mobile systems (android), satellites, etc. And for good reason; it's fast, stable, secure, and reliable. Even Microsoft's servers operate on Linux primarily.
Desktop space, on the other hand, is certainly dominated by Windows and macOS, for reasons entirely different. Windows was released about 5 years before the first Linux kernel I believe. And windows have been developing on the OS and desktop server space, with particular importance on user experience, ease of use and productivity of general end users. Whereas Linux was focusing on building a solid kernel with high performance. Windows has had a very early head start. The only reason Windows desktop handles things like bluetooth and media better is because more people use windows, therefore more device drivers developed and optimised for Windows. It doesn't make windows a better platform.
I agree Linux desktop definitely isn't everyone's cup of tea. It's prone to have some hiccups along the way for the small little things. But if you're skilled enough to be able to fix these little issues, perhaps with shell scripts and configuration files, you then have the full power of the Linux kernel/OS at your disposal. Like you said, native docker systems, more transparent and better organised filesystem, Unix tools, better integration with Linux servers, speed, etc. While windows can handle the small, little things better, it's an inferior platform for these more advanced things. WSL2 seems to address some of these, didn't try it out. But I doubt it'll give the same performance as native Linux. I personally wouldn't switch to windows just cos they now offer WSL2.
Chrome OS is an excellent example to illustrate how Linux can be successfully developed to shine in the desktop space as well. Chrome OS is essentially just like any other Linux distro, with a key difference. It's backed by corporation with tight integration of services that consumers already consume, like Google drive, play store and chrome. While not as prevalent as windows, it's definitely a success. And people don't even know that chrome OS is Linux.
Didn't mean to go off topic, but just wanted to illustrate why Linux desktop is definitely the superior operating system. Having said that, it might not make much sense if all you're doing with your desktop is MS office, YouTube, checking emails and the normal stuff. For normal, non-tech savvy users using normal productivity tools, or prefer something more classy, I'd recommend windows and macOS over Linux. Otherwise, loving my Clear Linux setup so far.
Well I've been a Windows fan boy and when I tried Linux, first Ubuntu, I was amazed. You call Windows good? Well then you haven't seen the random cpu hogging windows defender or many other services at work in the middle of your work. The annoying virus that keep on infecting your chrome browser when you wander some new and mysterious places on the web. The windows explorer freezing up on you anytime. The random blue screen reporting so many new issues that need to be fixed by creating a media disk or safe mode restart. Corruption of data or hdd. The slow startup of the Os as well as programs. Only thing good is that it is good for is gaming, which I love!
Now coming to Linux, I have faced frustration in the beginning few years ago, when Linux wasn't that much stable and didn't have good support/softwares tools, stability etc. Later I have used distros like Budgie, Pop os, Deepin Os, Elementary Os and I was really tired to end my search for a stable Linux Distro which was stable with minimum bugs, core os functionality issues like loss of network connection on suspend, start menu editing, etc. And note these issues were faced on my desktop which was a mid range gaming desktop purchased in 2015. Fast forward 2020 I have finally found it. Its been nearly a year and I'm using Linux Mint 19.3 which is like both a beast and an angel. No issues at all! No core os functionality issues! I use Spring Tools 4, Intellij 2019 edition, Mysql, Docker, Firefox and so many more Development softwares, watch movies, play some King of Fighters on fightcade, as well as some virtua Nes goodies and tried a bit of counterstrike global offensive. I am yet to face any major or even minor issues on this os. I bought an ssd even though I have an old mobo and this gives me instant speed boost. Fast startup of Os in approx 30-45 secs and instant startup of all programs including firefox, spring tools suite and everything you want. I have triple boot of Windows, Mint and Manjaro. Manjaro looks and feels amazing as well as bleeding edge with support of all the Softwares you can imagine. Even on my old Kingston 1 tb Hdd drive, Manjaro feels snappy but I cannot find time to explore it and it seems complicated to me as of now, since I'm not familiar with Arch yet. Those who are complaining of Linux looking old fashioned and crap. Seriously, I just advise you to look at Manjaro. It's so much better than Windows 10 and has some feels of Windows Fluent design. I have Mint installed on my wifes old 4 gb ram Laptop as well. Pop os struggled to play bluray or 1080p videos in Vlc on the same. But to my surprise, Mint played it as smooth as my desktop with better video quality. And no issues faced since 6 months. I believe Linux is still not the same as it used to be. I just hope someday Linux does become the no 1 os in future someday.
I recently purchased a laptop with the intention of only running Ubuntu on it. I ended up setting up dual boot because manufacturer updates only work in Windows. Other than that it has been a superior development machine for nodejs, php, ans anything else I've needed. I like how it starts up and shuts down quick and I can easily get into whatever projects on it.
That being said, I too have that weird Bluetooth glitch where I may need to restart the computer a couple times. Also, getting the wifi adapter setup and a few other things for the first time took a lot of time. I generally don't like to customize much so I haven't seen much advantage in that front. All-in-all it has been great for development, but there are some pain points getting things set up and maintained.
I Love the Ubuntu version of Linux, setting it up was a pain for me that took round about a week the first time around.
Over time debuging and configuring got easier and easier.
By over time I mean it took me 3+ years using linux(Ubuntu, Backtrack to Kali and Mint) to get to fix quickly when it breaks.
All I can say to you, Linux distros more tolerable of they are like your interests projects and then over time make them your main desktop.
Acer also makes decent laptops with some standard components (from standard I mean something that has proper drivers for all kinds of platform) that support Linux out of the box I have been using ubuntu for 4 years and I have a Nitro 5 gaming laptop (currently runs Pop Os because of better nvidia support and doing things right that ubuntu messed up) and I had a 10 years old Aspire 4738z which also works great on Ubuntu.
I have seen a lot of my friends facing driver issues on HP while using Ubuntu so I would suggest anyone who wants to switch should use Acer or Lenovo or Dell systems while Hp is great for windows it always runs into issues with Linux.
Finally anyone who would like to make a switch and want proper Nvidia support try Pop Os they have really done a great job at building the distro what Ubuntu did initially and they are based on Ubuntu so it's fully compatible with ubuntu supported stuff.
I’ve been using Windows 10 but doing all of my development in an Ubuntu WSL2 environment (with VS Code running between them), and it feels like the best of both worlds. 🙂 Linux can be good on its own, but keeping everything running properly, as you describe, felt like a bit of an ongoing chore. I eventually got tired of doing that for my personal computer. WSL does still have a few rough edges, but it’s been continually improving and works for about 95% of what I want these days. I can even do Linux GUI development if I run a Windows X server!
If you have another team responsible for making sure your Linux environment works, such as at Google, that can also be a good experience. 😛
I've using Linux since Windows 10 was released, I consider Windows 10 as a fiasco. Anyway, talking about Linux Desktop, I consider that my productivity with Linux is at its maximum. I haven't had the necessity of installing Windows (not even virtualized) to work, in fact, sometimes I do some .Net coding. I have to say that like previous Post, I recommend Dell or Lenovo Thinkpad for using Linux, my previous computers were Lenovo T420, Dell Inspiron 7348, I am currently using a T460p and a L490 from Lenovo, which work flawlessly with Linux.
Have you tried Snaps or Flatpaks? You can avoid messing with Linux libraries by installing software through those repositories.
Seriously, the only obstacle for using and configuring Linux are inside you're head and some bad computer brands, I do not recommend HP.
Ok, ok. I've been reading these posts, and for the most part I agree with everyone. However, I saw one post that suggested Linux only be used on old Thinkpads. Nah, I run Linux on several different laptops and on my desktop tower. (Working on converting a Chromebook as well, but that's another story)
While many users experience some problem or another with their favorite distro, not everyone runs into the same trouble all the time. In my own case, distro du journal was Lubuntu with LXDE. Nothing but problems there, so I dug out one of my last surviving Windows 7 units and began learning all about Linux (since it could still get online), and I've been enjoying my little trip down the rabbit hole since.
BTW, the problem Lubuntu distro was on an Acer One 10 "cloudbook" and has since been totally redone with a new DE similar to Cinnamon and works beautifully.
If you want to use a bunch of heavy HEAVY tools like InteliJ then maybe you should use a heavy OS like Windows, OSX or Ubuntu (yes even I consider Ubuntu heavy).
I use Linux (arch Linux with i3wm) as my development OS for the very same reason I use Emacs as my text editor. I am 10x more productive using lightweight systems. The performance of a lightweight system is worth it. Lightweight systems are built for productivity (everyone who gets past the learning curve never returns).
I am using 8 i9 intel cores with 32GB of memory and my lightweight system outperforms Windows and Ubuntu (yes I’ve tested them on this machine). By outperform I mean they freeze my system, but I’ve never had arch Linux with i3wm freeze and I’ve been using it for 3+ years.
Perhaps the reason people who invest in arch Linux love it is because it forces the user to learn the OS. When you learn your OS, “problems” it has aren’t really problems and are easily fixed.
The fact that Linux users typically understand operating systems better than non Linux users is another strong reason why it’s better. I actually require all of the developers in the company I work at to use Linux and they are all more productive because of it.
Also I can’t stress how important it is to research your hardware. Brand new hardware can have issues because the drivers aren’t always immediately in the kernel or may still have bugs that haven’t been worked out. I typically buy brand new Dell laptops with older generation hardware and they don’t disappoint.
How does that make you better? How does it make you more productive?
Comment section is full of similar vague statements and nothing specific.
It is really productive. In most cases free, and for developers who develop medium/small (or even Large) applications is the right tool. However, my experience in the last year has not been productive.
I've been using Linux Mint since 2014. I finished my degree and my master thesis using it and I am really proud of that (no one did that when I studied in the university). Even when I develope my personal projects or some enterprise project I prefered to use Linux rather than windows.
In this last year, while using eclipse and Visual studio code I have been experiencing a lot of problems (lag, freezings and so on) that I don't have the time right now to focus on solving them (via editing system files... ).
Last month I did the switch with Windows 10 and I am more confortable now.
From my point of view, It does not matter whether you are using Windows or Linux. Use the one that fits your needs the most. Of course, there are several things I miss from Linux (bash and theme customizations), but in the overall view I am happy with the change.
Dont get me wrong, I love open source software and collaborative work between developers, but right now I feel that Windows is my right tool.
I'm a linux user (for work) for long time. I suppose your issues are related to the eay you use linux. If you understand how it works you can tweak it like you want. Maybe Ubuntu is not the best distro for it.
I'm using Elementary OS as main OS for work.
BT issues are on Windows and Linux too when you try to use "mobile phone earbuds", after a disconnect you need to do the entire process again. That's why I use a Corsair Void Elite wireless headset or wire old iPod ones.
I've no issues with play,pause, next or prev buttons on spotify, nor on VLC. You may just need to use another APP for music.
By the way when you get your system working you may need to know which software is installed and which not, and remember the config (or storing it wherever), as when you do the common
apt update && apt full-upgrade -y, if you didn't read the changelog, you could get your things different. Same happen on windows when it updates (I've games that worked on first Win10 version and now they simply can't even start for example).I have been using Linux for many years and still sometimes have problems you've just mentioned. However what I like about Linux it allows you to be more efficient in a way you don't need a fancy IDE to get things done , it naturally teaches you to learn how things are built and how build those things.
After all what I need for the most of my tasks is a terminal, nano editor and my favorite language which now is Raku.
I have Lenovo Laptops and have never had any problems. I mostly run Ubuntu on my towers and servers. So much easier to deal with. I end up re installing Windows due to conflicting installations and and proprietary windows conflicts.
I don't really care for Ubuntu myself, I find other distributions serve my purpose better. I choose Fedora due to it being more bleeding edge than Ubuntu, DNF is a far superior package manager plus I hate PPAs, systemd is all but a redhat construct so it works well in Fedora. Etc, etc, etc...
FWIW, even my preferred OS required a little fixing in that my laptop has an NVIDIA graphics card and that for whatever reason was causing Nouveau to crash constantly, but installing the NVIDIA drivers is all but trivial these days...
I've been 100% Linux since 2010. There was a learning curve, but these days I find it takes me longer to fix my wife's Windows 10 problems than anything I have encountered on Linux or Mac. Being able to script things and have such convenient access to CLI tools have greatly increased my productivity as a developer. I feel much more self reliant using Linux as I know how everything works and there aren't any secrets that I can't just look up and hack on.
Additionally, it runs faster on everything using less CPU and RAM so I can focusing on compiling and running VM's.
The one area that still frustrates are graphics drivers and sometimes printing. Although HPLIP has been working a lot better for me in the past 2 years.
I've been using Arch Linux for work for more than 5 years and I wouldn't change it for anything. It all boils down to two things:
You can be more productive with Linux in the same way you can make your car faster by swapping parts: you need a good knowledge of the inner workings. if you're interested, you'll eventually learn them. If not, better stick with Mac or Windows, both are very good OSes to work and are much more streamlined.
What I've done recently is moved my windows workflow over to Manjaro Linux. It was a but of work, but I'm having a great time with Manjaro. Beware it is arch based, this was the first arch distro I've ever used so it took a learning curve but I do prefer it over windows in almost everything already. But I do have a low speced desktop so I needed an OS with less overhead, that's why I love to linux
There's an old saying... "Linux is free, if you don't value your time. Windows is cheap if you don't value your sanity."
Window's advantage is CSP Applications (Constrant Satisfaction Problem). Basically, a number of apps run on Windows to fix problems, some with user interaction (Network Troubleshooter), some autonomous (Disk Repair).
Linux will remain the best choice for the developer and the techie, Windows for the occasional user and non-techie. If you want to change Linux to be more user friendly, write the code yourself. That's something that is off limits for Windows-- user change.
What stops you from doing that for Windows? And if we're talking about features outside of user-space, well, kernel development isn't exactly an accessible pursuit for the average tech-savvy/developer user.
Using Linux is productive for me! I have to look up most terminal things every time, but I've lost entire DAYs trying to do the same things in Windows...
Another thing that's relevant to me is the fact that Ubuntu will run smoothly on processors that were wrecked by the Meltdown and Specter fixes, but... if you're actually working at something, you'll likely just have the money to but something that's not 4+ years old...
I cut my teeth on Freebase and moved to Gentoo with KDE. This ingrained constant terminal access into my working habits. It has been a pain at times to either get or keep things working, but it kept me very close to the type of work I was doing. Linux service, and kernel module development all but required working on Linux. So, to that end, working in Linux was very productive minus several weeks worth of work (over my career) spent fixing silly problems.
For the last 7 or 8 years, I have been working exclusively in Windows. The one thing I have missed is a great terminal, and the ability to control the entire OS through it. I have used Git Bash to great extent, and it keeps that part of my habits productive. However, Windows is a good OS, and I am just as productive in it after taking some time to adjust to different ways of working and using new tools, e.g. Visual Studio instead of Netbeans.
Now, Windows has WSL2. I'm not sure I will ever go back to Linux. The tools and systems Linux has make me very productive, but maintaining a Linux system can be time consuming. Windows makes it easier. I think that is the key OS combination for productivity.
I have just started using Windows again after 15 years of using mainly Linux at home and then only using it at home and work for around 5 years. What I realized basically was that if you averaged out the time you spend over several years, both systems take far too much time! I have lost absolutely MASSIVE amounts of time trying to get stuff to work properly on Windows 10. Part of it is habit. I hadn't had to think about antivirus for so long I didn't even consider it could have been messing with communication between HyperV virtual networks. I spent many 10s of hours trying to get stuff to work on Win10 Home before realising that spending 100$ on pro was going to save me hugely! I never had to do that on Linux.
And I can promise you that there are many things that are simply less stable on Windows - built in virtualisation ? Please! HyperV crashes my VMs regularly. It also appears that it is only now starting to let other virtualization managers work at all. Only with Microsoft can they make decisions that mean that their products work and everyone else's stop for several months!
WSL2 is ok, and acceptable for me, though has lots of drawbacks compared to native Ubuntu in my experience. I particularly do quite a bit of virtualization/containerization stuff that requires messing with low-level system network and disk. That causes lots of lost time on both Windows and Linux alike.
Don't get me wrong, there are definitely things I like about Win10 but suggesting Windows necessarily makes you more productive than Linux is simply not true in my now very long history of using both.
Pseudo-elitism centered around Ubuntu Desktop as a waypoint for Windows migrants has hurt development on the platform, and thus the whole Linux project. I had no problems with it in v6.04 about 2006? Granted I had nothing to do but learn. Facing peer pressure as a semi-pro Rails dev about 30 months later, I got (via my mother's charity) a 2010 MacBook pro. And just forgot about hardware/OS issues and started (mini) trucking. I returned to Ubuntu at 18.04, stunned by the lag in high level finish. I continue on but it's disheartening. I don't know how to recommend Linux except as a purist. That seems like a dilemma or hypocrisy. So I don't recommend it. Welcome to the diaspora.
I've been "testing" Linux for years. I probably tried all the most usual ones, from the dumb Ubuntu to the complex Arch. Each has its one pros and cons, so it's good to test and learn along the way.
Now I use Linux Mint, it's stable, fast in my old laptop and has all the features I need.
But of course it all depends on your needs, and sometimes hardware...
Good luck!
Productivity is why I switched and stayed with Linux.
If you want to stick with Linux I recommend using a ThinkPad (or find hardware that has similar support). I used to have these issues in the past. Since I switched to a ThinkPad T series almost all hardware related issues are gone. Ubuntu (and other distros) just works out of the box. I like to stick with Ubuntu because whenever I run into a problem I can most likely find the solution immediately on the web.
Samuel said pretty much everything. Basically, if you dislike doing that kinda stuff, perhaps Windows is a better fit for you, at least for now.
Ubuntu tries to make things simple, but things are anything BUT simple. I use Arch since 2014, and excluding when switching machines, which happened twice, I only had to reformat once, due to a corrupted hard drive. Sometimes I still spend hours on seemingly basic stuff such as hibernation, touchscreen etc., but the time spent on those things keeps getting smaller, and more meaningful. If you want to have a deeper understanding of your machine, Arch or Gentoo would be my recommendations (I started with Slackware around 2001, and I've tried a lot of distros before settling on Arch). Gentoo takes a lot of time to update but doesn't have many updates, while Arch has a lot of updates but is very fast to update in comparison (Gentoo takes hours to compile stuff).
If you want something that just works, well maybe you should consider a Mac. Jit's also *NIX, it's POSIX compliant, it's basically Linux with less freedom and less control, but also with less quirks and bugs and so on.
If Mac is not an option, well I don't think Windows is such a monster, and if you don't have the time to spend on your OS perhaps the whole format-every-few-months and viruses etc could be a better fit.
It's a choice, and there are trade-offs. I think Linux makes me a better programmer, but Ubuntu is not likely to give you this feeling. Ubuntu has "Canonical" Bugs. It's better to deal with "Linux" bugs, that apply to every distro, imho. Take a look at arch, or Manjaro, or AnArch, or Elementary, or even Debian or something else based on Debian, but not on Ubuntu. I think you will find the hours you spend on quirks more meaningful, at least after you start understanding what you're doing instead of simply copy-pasting.
I hear you and have had similar experiences though not to the point of wanting to go back to windows.
I'm on a Zenbook and a couple of Lenovos
I've tried a lot of distros in the first 18 months covering near all the flavors. Around about April last year I switched to Ubuntu 19.04 and everything was as close to perfect as I could wish for, my servers are on 18.04 and at that point I decided enough no more distro hopping. With 19.04 I had some minor annoyances but very minor I think it was sound in Skype
Along comes 19.10 and another appeared copy n paste needing double clicks 20.04 better than 19.10 but similar minor stuff.
The fix for myself.
For myself generalized is:
What you login with.
The very annoying cut copy paste problem requiring a double click to copy is solved by using Wayland.
All other sound issues with Skype and screecasting are solved by NOT using Wayland.
I set up my own HotKeys so this was a problem but is not.
The only new one I have with 20.04 is CTR H does not work in libre office I have to click in the menu.
It all has its pros and cons. My approach is to set up a stable environment that I can count on for my everyday work (which is in itself super hard but you know - something you know works well enough) and then I just experiment and learn on another machine. A $60 ThinkPad x200 works great in that context. Arch + dwm and it's pretty snappy. Anyway, my point is - after 8 years of using Linux, I still use Windows on my work laptop. It's not perfect but eventually I hope to set up an environment I'll truly enjoy. Can't do that in a weekend tho. This sort of thing takes years it seems. Because Linux sucks. So does Windows. Software in general is far from perfect
I'm not interested in getting better in OS arcana. Or at least another OS. "I've learned so much." "I've gotten better." Learned what? Better at what? At using Linux? Duh.
No one ever brings up anything that's not idiosyncratic to Linux.
And I'm a gamer. For all the recent improvement, gaming on Linux is still dogshit.
Don't get me wrong, not fanboying here, I use Linux on an almost daily basis, in a basic fashion, admittedly. Yet to see any advantage, anything that would make me go "oh I wish Windows did that" or "had this". I'm curious though, if anyone can sell me on the idea of Linux.
If I started my computing life on Linux, it'd probably be the other way around, but it's not.
I've been using Linux since the late 90s in server roles. I don't use the desktop due to issues such as others have mentioned. I stick to basic hardware with in kernel driver support for everything except Nvidia if I need CUDA support. As much as possible I use official repos. For development I use windows with putty, winscp, git, and vscode with the ssh extension. Once you have your certificates setup it's a easy and you still get breakpoints and variable debugging and whatnot through vscode at least in .net core and python.
Bluetooth, audio, video hardware acceleration power management, wifi, non Intel or realtek NICs, etc have all caused me grief in the past. I also strongly recommend not using the latest hardware the day it comes out. Proper ryzen support took a while. New chipsets sometimes take a while as well.
One machine for work, one for play.
I love Linux for a work machine because it matches production - all the same libraries, tools, utilities, exactly where I expect them to be, and it runs my IDEs of choice (RubyMine and Idea) flawlessly. I have a desktop machine with two large monitors and a full-sized keyboard.
But for recreation, or for Photoshop/Lightroom, I use a Macbook Pro. Sure, the disk capacity is tiny, the keyboard is cramped... but I'm not programming on it all day. It's for morning and evening use.
This way I don't have to care that Linux doesn't support every video format known to mankind, or interface with oddball peripherals like drawing tablets, as I never ask it to do these things.
I've had Linux as my primary desktop environment since about 1996. (Yeah, I'm old).
Are you using a laptop or desktop? Some laptops have crappy hardware that is MS Windows only. I still do a little research before buying a new laptop to review the hardware specs. I have been using Linux for 10 years and I build my own desktops and I experience zero hardware issues and great stability.
I'm not a fan of Ubuntu or distros that do a massive upgrade to new versions. There are 100's if not 1,000's of packages to upgrade and it can be a mess. When I used Ubuntu I kept my home directory on a separate drive or partition so I could do a clean upgrade and have all my stuff ready to go. I also install a lot of apps under ~/apps, that is where I have JetBrains apps installed then I can add ~/bin to the end of my path and drop links or startup scripts in there to run my apps I keep in my home directory. I have long since moved to Arcolinux, which is a very nice version of Arch Linux.
Buy a Bluetooth adapter that works on Raspberry Pi and you shouldn't have any problems.
I own the whole JetBrains applications stack. You can delete your settings for IntelliJ and see if that helps. Also, are you using the bundled JetBrains JRE/JDK? It would be in a directory named jbr under the JetBrains IntelliJ installation folder. Delete that and use OpenJDK.
I've used Debian Linux for a while now and it's probably the most stable operating system I've ever used. Most of your Ubuntu software will probably work on it as well and the package management scheme is the same.
YMMV based on the hardware you're using. Generally ThinkPads and Dell XPS (without NVIDIA/AMD GPUs) is what I prefer. When I install Ubuntu on my XPS 13 everything works out of the box. You can start working right away and get 6+ hours of battery life on average.
To avoid driver issues, I've always recommended to purchase a machine for Linux instead of retrofitting a Windows machine. Ultimately Linux doesn't get the same level of driver support as Windows, but you have more choices than Macos when it comes to hardware. Dell, Lenovo, and System76 are some pretty good OEMs for Linux.
Linux support for hardware is nowadays exceptional, and your issues are quite uncommon. Back in the days when I've started using linux as my main working OS, 10 years ago, It was buggy and hardware support was spotty. I was like you, frustrated but I wouldn't have a choice, given the fact that WSL didn't exists and virtualization was not so good. Back then I would't invest so much time into solving installation time issues or even issues from updates, but I didn't have a choice. Now - believe me or not - I use linux because it just run better out of the box than windows 10. updates takes seconds, usually won't break up things, no need for an antivirus to cripple the performance, better privacy, better integration.
It's just better out of the box. Of course not everything is great, there are tools that I miss from windows, there are things incomplete or quirky in linux but overall is a better experience. Also I don't play games anymore. If I really need anything windows I just spin off a virtual machine.
my current hardware: AMD Ryzen 5 desktop and Dell Latitude laptop. I use ubuntu with regolith desktop environment.
So, I have been a Linux user for years, and 6 months ago I decided to try Windows and see what is the noise about. Surprisingly I am more productive with a system I am used to and understand from all these years that with windows. Something must be wrong with my windows. It also reboots without asking for permission sometimes. Jk. But you get the point.
I've lost count of the number of times I have done a fresh Ubuntu install but not for the last few years. It's been generally stable and just works.
There are two things to make the experience easier:
Overall when Linux works it's an amazing thing which in my opinion is worth all the hardship
Maybe you want to try using another distribution? Ubuntu is a nice place to start, but if you've gotten the hang of using the terminal for your day-to-day tasks, you might want to move up the tree to something a little more stable. I'd suggest Debian but there's a ton of options.
Do you have a mechanical hard drive? That might be it. The only time I had issues with any Intellij based IDE(In my case Android Studio) was because my mechanical hard drive was old and reaching the end of its life. Then I switched to a SSD. What a huge difference. But even when I had a HD and it was working normally, never had any kind of issues regarding Ubuntu or Intellij. I've been using Ubuntu MATE for 4 years now and never had such problem. Intellij is really well tested so chances are the issue may be related to your hardware. If it's everything ok with it, then it might be some bug on Ubuntu really
Hi, what is tour kernel version ? How much ram do you have ?
kernel 5.4.0-40-generic and 8 GB ram
Ok you can update your kernel using mainline. I switched to 5.7 and things works better. Then, I guess you should look at your ram use when it starts to freeze. I think you are swapping, and the memory to disk transfert is capped by your disk memory freq and your disk speed. Don’t forget to feedback when you’ll test it out. Regards 😉
I am a bit reluctant to update kernel to 5.7 😅.
I am trying to update my BIOS and that is also becoming a bit difficult right now.
I use the kubuntu flavor, and yes, I also fight with the ever changing conflicts that occur as I approach (but never reach) 100% of what I want to do on (k)ubuntu. I find that as time progresses, a few apps become unstable, and I usually can't wait for the next major release. This is why perhaps a rolling release my look tempting, but I feel the app that hurts me most is not the one that gets fixed.....
It seem the consensus of the 100+ messages I've seen here is: YMMV
So, just for kicks, here's a list of my current struggles:
Try Fedora. I had all those problems you mention like bluetooth and audio, and i hated it. They were solved when i installed Fedora. Install and forget. Everything works out of the box.
I've used ubuntu for many years now. It does have some nice customisability but that comes with a steep learning curve to get some things working. And you should ideally know something about hardware and drivers to really get to grips with Linux since the drivers are usually the thing that causes pain. Because some hardware needs proprietary drivers and working around that is hard. That said I would say what OS you work with depends very much on your needs, what your work uses and who is available to help support you as you learn. It is much easier to have someone teach you how to do something than to read pages of documentation.
Some things are more efficient with linux. For example, most server environments are Linux, so once you get running things in your local environment, it is very easy to do the same on the server.
Having said that, Linux isn't always convenient. It is true some simple things take longer. But that's part of the charm. I've gotten to learn many little things about computers over the years from dealing with Linux, which I wouldn't have if I had been using a more streamlined OS
Reading posting and suprised seeing how many people have/having issues. Guess I must be just lucky, have not had a problem with linux as desktop since year 2000 or so. Used on variety of hardware and thing just work, like I said must be lucky.
One thing I would suggest is laptop/PC brand not that important, but graphical chipset is. Intel, AMD ok but Nivida just a waste of time (using free drivers hardly worthwhile and Nvida driver pointless [having to reinstall after a system update]).
Have used Slackware (and SLS) linux, Arch, Ubuntu/Debian and Redhat based Installs over the years. Love Slackware (if you want to learn how to do things) but use Fedora as its updated more often also it easier to setup NFS home directories etc (LDAP, autofs etc).
Could I go back to windows, no - lifes just too short and windows is too frustrating.
Don't use /like windows, find Linux more productive (haven't used Windows on a regular basis since windows 3.11 days) .
No it's not productive, it's something Linux users tell themselves to get through configuring something cool. (I was once one of them)
Real programmers sit in absolute silence, use a wired keyboard & mouse and would never develop in anything other than vi. Perhaps it isn't Linux but your mindset that is the problem sir.
For the sake of a useful reply. Also a strong Ubuntu user. Tend to not use snap and install when possible from official repos when possible. I do use a wired mouse & keyboard, on desktop using Rog stuff and Nvidia mo problems. Had very good results with wireless and thunderbolt on the newer Dell laptops. Never a problem with sound but again using an external card and only Spotify.
Everyday environment is docker and Storm. Storm is solid assuming you have the latest release, be careful with your plugins and make sure your underlying system is running fine. Be careful it can really hit your disk up when scanning projects and I imagine given the same base intelliJ might cause you similar issues on massive projects given a lack of resources.
Stick with it. To me it sounds like some of your issues could just be hardware, perhaps grab a cheap dongle for WiFi or Bluetooth. Reminds me of an issue with Pi which turned out to be Bluetooth and WiFi sharing the same hardware, all is good till you try to stream audio.
Real programmers use mechanical keyboards, so it's not very silent.
Good point ;) they usually tap them pretty hard too from time to time.
My answer is yes. I used to be a distro hopper, and back then my answer was no. But when I decided to stop tweaking, and just use a distro as is like you would windows or macOS, it was productive.
oh ffs... if you want to use linux get a good one like debian, centos, arch, maybe even suse or gentoo if you are up for the task, and not something from those canonical dimwits
and if you dont have the skills yet, buy hardware that is known to work well with linux
My Workstation is a HP Zbook... and booooy does its linux compatibility suck compared to Lenovo P-Series. I had to fix the damn ACPI tables myself to get a workable system
never ever wanted to buy anything from hp again the past 15 or so years, but I got the Zbook for around 1400€ with Xeon, 64gigs ecc ram, etc instead of around 3500€ or more for a comparable lenovo, so I tried my luck
Well, I switched to Linux as my primary OS and dev platform back in 2007/2008. I used Mandriva at that time. Yes, what you experience now is normal, in fact, now I would struggle for a few hours to get things to work on Windsor 10. On the other side for my ubuntu box, in a few minutes my dev environment is ready.
I use Windows on the desktop and Linux in a virtual machine switching with Alt-Tab between the two. Your editing could happen on Windows and compilation on Linux. The virtual machine overhead is quite small nowadays, and Linux can see your Windows files if you mount your Windows directory as a shared folder on Linux.
When the Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (and with GPU support) becomes common place that will be like a seamless experience likely.
Try Debian LXQT. it's much faster than Ubuntu, much simpler, and the Debian maillist is far more helpful than the Ubuntu help forums.
I never experienced any of the problems you mentioned. It's all down to your hardware I guess, it's best if you pick hardware that's certified for Ubuntu. Just check Ubuntu's website for the list of certified devices.
That said... I seem to understand that your worst problems come from IntelliJ Idea. Just install it from flathub.org or from snapcraft.io and you'll get a way more reliable and stable experience than installing it from any other sources, including IntelliJ's own website.
I can relate a lot to this problem. I've been on Ubuntu 19.10 and then switched to 20.40 and all the time had some issue with my IDE, audio was switching all the time to wrong output, my CPU was overheating because of old kernel didn't work well with my new Ryzen CPU, and few weeks ago when I got second display with higher DPI than second one I run into constant app crashing for no reason. Then I decided to try a new distribution and ended up choosing Manjaro (arch) with Cinnamon DE and all my issues are gone. CPU is idling below 40C, multi display setup just works without any adjustment on my side, and IDE has not crashed ever since. Yes it has less familiar package manager than ubuntu but Manjaro comes with built in GUI that automates all the process and makes it easy to use. Docker works great and is constantly updated in arch repository unlike official ubuntu repo, highly recommend to try it out.
yeah, I also prefer ubuntu despite frustration sometimes. Steam is available on ubuntu.
Definitely you should try Manjaro.
Let's be honest, the productivity of Linux is in the command line, not the GUI.
why not just dual boot to windows too? then you can use native windows software that isnt compatible when you want,,... or use virtualbox to run linux natively
Did you try linux mint? I always perfer mint over ubuntu
On my Dell laptop everything works fine. Intellij Idea is a Java app and Java apps do not always behave as expected in PCs. Why don't you report your problem to their community?
I have no such problems. 4th gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Arch.
Found this awesome video, while searching about OpenSUSE Linux on youtube.
youtube.com/watch?v=zbABy9ul11I
I use Debian and Ubuntu
Simple, Secure, Speed
Their are more things to say...
A Great OS, Thanks to Linus Torvalds to made Linux*
Try Zorin OS. It's update feature are good. Feels like windows update in ubuntu. And installing wine with some clicks. Not complicated. You should try it...
Even only one of your problems make me stay in my MacOS world. Ten years ago I would have had the energy to solve problems like this - today I want simple things to work without tinkering.
I am experiencing similar problems. After trying multiple distros, the conclusion that best describes it : life's too short for Linux.
We're on the same page. We need to tweek and tweak, literally hack to get a basic EQ for music.
I love windows 10 more and more. With WSL 2, there is very little reason to use linux as a PC OS
You should change your post title to "is using Ubuntu really productive?"
In my last year I've using Pop! after few bugs in ubuntu.
Give a try, you won't regret ;)
I use IntelliJ IDEA APP on both my Ubuntu server and my Windows workstation. I've also noticed some infrequent momentary freezing but the general performance is outstanding.
Windows & Linux are tools.
To select proper one for different tasks is the key for success.
Last opinion, everyone can survive w/out Linux, nobody can survive w/out Windows.
I have been using PopOS on a NUC, a Dell XPS and a Tuxedo laptop, all of those worked like a charm without any tweaks or hacks.
So, no excuse for not being productive :)
Personally, if you can get away with it - ChromeOS is the best for just getting work done. Outside of ChromeOS I'd I always preferred and had better luck with PopOS on my old Asus Zenbook.
There might be problems in linux, but problems can always be fixed, unlike in Windows! Ubuntu is pretty slow and old-school distro. I prefer some other distro like Mint or pop os.
Switch to Manjaro, it is way better than Ubuntu
Describe "some bug", logs?
As a developer I never have much trouble pinning down the issue and get to fixing it!
Here's clear evidence in a poll that people feel more productive running a Linux desktop:
linkedin.com/posts/kvegh_desktop-p...
Yes it is.
It is for me. Unless you're doing Windows dev no need to use Windows, having to reboot 2x a day is not productive.
I can't relate to any of these issues, my hardware just works. Infact, when I was using Windows (1 week), it was not detecting my PC microphone.
Linux is great when it works. But when something breaks (always graphics for me) be prepared to spend hours troubleshooting and then hope once fixed it continues working in the next update.
debian for stable. Simple as. If you want to burn days and weeks, keep using other bleeding edge distros
Hey
Why don't you try POP!OS?
Manjaro is also a painless distro for you I think.
Is it productive? When it works, yes.
It's unfortunate that linux distributions are so unpredictable. I can't in good faith say "just install [some distribution] and you'll be fine".
I've installed Mint on many machines. Using the Mate desktop not Cinnamon as it is still buggy. I find its one of the few that I could just install and run. I replace caja with thunar and keep celluloid and don't use VLC and I'm good to go.
Try Clear Linux distro from Intel. It's just amazing.
Interesting... I switched to Ubuntu due to a bug with IntelliJ in Windows!
If you have some hardware issues , you must blame the manufacturer for the poor support for the linux, not the Ubuntu team in my opinion. Try minimal Debian , Ubuntu has been bloated these days.
I’ve had MUCH better luck with hardware support and general smoothness when running Pop!_OS, a slight variation of Ubuntu supported by System76.
I use Ubuntu since 2008 at home and windows at work. The only problem I got mostly are fan speed which I don't get on latest release. Lately I get minor bugs that get fixed when you report it
5 years ago I moved from Ubuntu to Fedora. Never coming back. :)
What about Windows and WSL2?)
How about macOS? It will really save a lot of time