# Do I need to buy windows 10?



## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Hypaspist said:


> Was going to recommend a different distro of linux, but that's a very good point.


I wanna share my problems with linux, so it's a rant below.

-------------------------------

I tried many distros myself and to be honest linux is only suitable for tinkerers or specialized devices. It's definitely not a great OS for average user. Personally, I found that it's always sound cards that have crappy support or wifi cards/sticks. There are no drivers for Topping D10, malfunctional drivers for Asus Xonar DG (sound doesn't work). Asus wifi cards (AC56 and AC51) are either unsupported or have abysmal drivers. With one drivers were only written for ancient kernel for another drivers that existed didn't work at all. 

The thing with open source software is that it's only good for personal use or if you are a boss of small team. LibreOffice is a pretty good software. However, if you have to write files with other people then it's not great. It's not completely compatible with Office formats and if you use open source formats, then you may encounter a situation, where Word doesn't read them or messes up formatting. Gimp is also fine, but if you have to work with others, then it has the same problems. Forget things like Aftereffects, Autocad or other popular productivity software. Most of it isn't natively supported, alternatives are lacking and often insufficient. Using Wine or compatibility layers in general isn't really straightforward, compatibility isn't always great and there may be performance issues. 

Gaming on linux isn't great either. I really wanted to give it a shot with CS:GO, which is a native linux game. Sadly it ran worse on linux. Framerate had weird stutters, occasional awful performance. And these problems continued even with lowest settings and with lower resolutions. Only at 720p low I was able to have an acceptable performance, meanwhile in Windows 7 I could run same game at 1080p mixed settings and get over 75 fps. And that's an ideal scenario. Most games aren't rewritten for linux at all and you have to use proton. That will cause even more problems. 

Some linux distros aren't stable. I found some visual glitches, bugs and caused whole OS to freeze once. Generally on Windows stuff like that doesn't happen and user experience is consistently better. 

If you want to run any older software it's hard. Practically impossible since most software is always updated and no one really keeps old version back ups as often as for Windows software. If you have to run older Windows software or games, forget about it.

Many common and well known fonts aren't included with linux. Some are downloadable, but some aren't. May be problematic for some users. My university requires us to write papers with Times New Roman font and thankfully it was on linux, but other users may find it unacceptable. 

Some linux distros have different terminal commands and lower compatibility with software. That can be very annoying. Generally it's better to use less forked distros and distros that existed for a longer time. 

And you will need a terminal at some point. You can't avoid it and it's scary. You can learn it, you can get more used to it, but it's not as user-friendly as GUI.

Linux help forums aren't really good. Not even once they actually helped me to fix a single problem.

Installing drivers without internet isn't an easy process, yet it is extremely straightforward if you have internet. I had problems with wifi card and I don't have internet cable. Only by accident I found out that linux natively supports tethering from Android, but if I hadn't found this workaround, there wouldn't be any drivers for me.

By accident I uninstalled whole GUI. A complete noob mistake, but I wanted to get rid of just one small thing on PC and that one small thing was tied to whole GUI. Ruined OS. It's probably fixable if you know how to use commands, but at least some warning about deleting system file would have been nice. 

I wanted to find antivirus software and that quickly ended with conclusion that there aren't any well known antivirus program. And yes linux is more secure, but not immune. I would say that it's less secure than Windows with antivirus and firewall.

Wasn't able to fix screen tearing issues.

Pretty much every single distro came with some unwanted software. I tried many, like Lubuntu, Elemental, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian... And there's always something that just simply something. Like irc client, several web browsers, gimp, chat software. Sure, it's removable but then again things like that aren't necessary in OS. And really, I thought that irc was dead.

Having to write your password for every single little shit is annoying. I get it, it's for security but it's irritating as hell. You can't disable it either or at least I don't know how. 

I found that all linux distros used CPU much more than Windows. Also loaded cores more, but not necessarily did tasks faster. It felt like some glitching. 

Default OS fonts are really ugly as well as icons. And while it depends on distro or your software configuration, generally they tend to look bad.

Printers. Haven't tried it yet, but from my existing experience with hardware support I couldn't expect anything good from that. Even worse if your printer is wireless.

---------------------------------------

So, yeah. I don't think that linux is a truly viable alternative. It would be nice to have alternatives to Windows, but they must have decent usability and something interesting to offer. For me, linux just isn't cutting it. And to be frank situation of linux barely got better in last 15 years. It's quite hopeless at this point to expect that it could really be a viable alternative. Even if whole world decided to ditch linux, it would take years for it to get as good as Windows and even longer to get better than it. In any realistic way, I wouldn't expect my experience with it to change in next decade.


----------



## ShirleyDubois (Feb 20, 2020)

Do you like Windows 10?I am using Windows 10,it didn't create any problems for me.


----------



## Lucan1010 (Jul 23, 2018)

Windows 10 is an excellent operating system. The biggest reason why you shouldn't be using anything older is security, Windows 7 and older are no longer receiving security patches. So if your computer can support it, go with Windows 10. If not, as you already know, Ubuntu is a good free and more lightweight option.


----------



## ani_ko (Mar 11, 2020)

Why not? It is much better than Windows 7


----------



## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

There seems to be a lot of dissent concerning the purchase of windows 10 in this community.

How about you throw away the computer to your nearest recycling center and save yourself the trouble of buying windows 10? If you follow this one step you will forever not need to buy windows 10. Nothing worse than buying windows 10...


----------



## Hypaspist (Feb 11, 2012)

Lots of Linux distros look (and behave) like Windows or OS X, but I completely agree on the software front. It's the one thing that keeps me from linux'ing my old laptop.



The red spirit said:


> Having to write your password for every single little shit is annoying. I get it, it's for security but it's irritating as hell. You can't disable it either or at least I don't know how.


Hardly unique to Linux. It's the same on OS X, and it sucks when you can never remember your password (when the Apple system is the only Apple thing you own). This is seriously annoying. I think I've actually reset my password with Apple 2-3 times because of it.



> Default OS fonts are really ugly as well as icons. And while it depends on distro or your software configuration, generally they tend to look bad.


To be fair, that was one of the fun things about Linux. The customization is insane compared to what used to require tweaking kernels back in the day in Windows. I haven't tried to reskin or faff about with the launcher on Windows in ages, but that's honestly a plus in the Linux world IMO.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Hypaspist said:


> Lots of Linux distros look (and behave) like Windows or OS X, but I completely agree on the software front. It's the one thing that keeps me from linux'ing my old laptop.


To be honest, if someone made finished linux distro, centralized it's creation and charged 15-20 dollars I think it could go against big boys. It's pretty clear already, that linux doesn't lack too much it's the fragmentation and lack of interest in finishing things is the biggest problem. They don't even have to make that software available for it. It would be fine if that same company made rather inexpensive useful software, that just lacks rarely used features. I understand that making linux commercial is going against its own core values, but so far there hasn't been a truly compelling distro for real usage. There was one attempt with Linspire and another with React OS, both failed. I still think that those did a lot to bringing linux name to masses. 




Hypaspist said:


> Hardly unique to Linux. It's the same on OS X, and it sucks when you can never remember your password (when the Apple system is the only Apple thing you own). This is seriously annoying. I think I've actually reset my password with Apple 2-3 times because of it.


Well, it was a really unique quality to me. I use Windows and Android, neither wants passwords to confirm many things. Windows just occasionally asks for it before installation or launching programs with admin rights. It had password on start up, but I disabled that (it's a desktop PC and only I use it). Android never really asks me for password either. You can set it up as your lock screen, but I disabled any locking mechanism on my phone (not very great for security). Anywhere else it just asks for permissions instead and only if you try to install apps not from Play store. I guess I'm just spoiled, but having freedom on a freedom OS should be standard. 




Hypaspist said:


> To be fair, that was one of the fun things about Linux. The customization is insane compared to what used to require tweaking kernels back in the day in Windows. I haven't tried to reskin or faff about with the launcher on Windows in ages, but that's honestly a plus in the Linux world IMO.


I'm not too much into personalisation stuff. Changing fonts isn't easy in linux, at least wasn't to me. Most of the time their fonts are like cuter version of mutation of Comic Sans and Calibri. They could really use Arial at least or Lucida Bright, Linux Libertine G, Noto Serif. Arial would be the most practical as it has good support for non-English alphabets. It's one of the rare fonts to have Lithuanian letters. 

I actually love standard ASCII fonts used in BIOS and other semi-GUI software of older times. It was simple, formal and nice. Perfect. DOS got it right, Macintosh OS got fonts right later, even mobile phones got them right. I just really don't like linux stock fonts. It's like Calibri in MS Office, once you see it in document you quickly kill it with fire and don't let it spread any further.


----------

