this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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My operating system.
It's not that I prefer it per se, rather I have better things to do then e.g. spend 2 hours messing with my font rendering to end up with a result half as good as Windows is out of the box.
Funny. That is why I do not use Windows. It takes so long to set up. First, so many of the drivers are not built in. Then, hardly any of the apps I need are built in. Then, none of the programs stay current without constant admin.
Who has that kind of time?
Also: you now need to remove all the pre-inatalled crap
Have you not used windows in the last decade? Most drivers you need are built in now. I've not needed to install manual drivers except for Nvidia since win 10 came out. Vs Linux where I definitely have needed to install drivers in order to get my wifi working which is always a load of fun if you didn't make sure to grab it before wiping your primary os
In practice that means that Windows suddenly decides that it doesn't want to use the AMD drivers I installed any more but its own, while I'm playing, crashing everything.
It sounds like you haven't used a user friendly Linux distro in the last decade. Mint and Ubuntu will install any proprietary driver you need, but even beyond that most WiFi cards are supported out of the box by the Linux kernel now.
Literally this. Even though I never faced any of the issues both of you had, but I don't get why it's hard to use Windows.
Linux is meant to be difficult to setup for new users.
Windows is meant to be an asshole to setup for enthusiasts.
Want to use Windows? You need: WSL2, Powertoys, AltDrag, Scoop, and so on.
You want to install thousands of fonts inside hundreds of folders? You have to learn some obscure undocumented Powershell class to make a script that installs all those fonts for you system-wide (or even user scope for that matter).
You also need MSYS2 for stuff like GNU Make, GDB, etc. You can use Visual Studio, but have fun with that because you'll be pulling out hairs every once in a while.
Oh you want to process multiple files with regex? Definitely good luck with that.
It's funny that I find it easier to use Linux, and do everything that I used to do on Windows the same on Linux just as easily.
Edit: powertoys, not powertools. my bad
I've got a Windows desktop and a MacBook. For the life of me I cannot figure out why coding on the desktop feels like ass.
The only time I remember spending any significant amount of time messing with font rendering on a Linux box in the last decade, it was because I was trying to convince it to use the old Macintosh bitmap fonts Chicago and Geneva (not the TrueType versions that B&H made, which in my opinion are ugly). That was an interesting little project.
Other than that, though, font rendering pretty much just works.
Font rendering works OK if you just use your PC for whatever, but for me as a developer I am staring at text all day so I need them as crisp and legible as they can be.
On Windows, out of the box the fonts render perfectly, meaning I can jump between my various editors and tools and just get to work. On Fedora (which I dual boot with currently), even the exact same fonts look like a mess compared to Windows. In particular, the Ubuntu Mono font looks like a completely different (and much nicer) font on Windows than it does on Fedora for me. The same was true for Mint as well which I used previously.
I've probably put several hours of effort messing with my .fonts.conf and Fontconfig settings to attempt to get it even close to as great as on Windows and nothing ever comes close. I'd love anybody to hand me a silver bullet and fix it but not a thing I've read online does.
If text legibility is a priority for you, you should consider a 4K+ display. The pixels on a standard display just aren't small enough to render text crisply, even with Windows' font renderer.
As for issues specifically with Ubuntu Mono, I can't help you there as I don't use it. I must say it's odd that it renders better on Windows than Linux, though, since it was presumably designed specifically for Linux.
That would be nice but the finances don't allow it currently. However, one shouldn't need a 4k monitor to get nice text rendering on Linux when it's perfectly fine on Windows on resolutions smaller than that.
This isn't unpopular.
When I was working at the Unix shop - we worked making Unix - we all were on windows, securecrt, Mozilla and winamp as coding rigs.
We were 100% using Windows desktops to code a different operating system. I mean, it actually built on Unix and only Unix, because of course, but we were all using vandyke on windows for the ssh client.
Why? Same as you: we could have run Unix or windows on our desks, but windows did winamp and vandyke and Mozilla better and we didn't wanna grab a nightly build and discover it was fucked. And Linux modelines, oh-my-god. So it was windows, because it was kinda their sweet spot: music, ssh, Mozilla.
How long ago was this?
Have you tried KDE Neon or Zorin OS?