edit: hey guys, 60+ comments, can’t reply from now on, but know that I am grateful for your comments, keep the convo going. Thank you to the y’all people who gave unbiased answers and thanks also to those who told me about Waydroid and Docker

edit: Well, now that’s sobering, apparently I can do most of these things on Windows with ease too. I won’t be switching back to Windows anytime soon, but it appears that my friend was right. I am getting FOMO Fear of missing out right now.

I do need these apps right now, but there are some apps on Windows for which we don’t have a great replacement

  1. Adobe
  2. MS word (yeah, I don’t like Libre and most of Libre Suit) it’s not as good as MS suite, of c, but it’s really bad.
  3. Games ( a big one although steam is helping bridge the gap)
  4. Many torrented apps, most of these are Windows specific and thus I won’t have any luck installing them on Linux.
  5. Apparently windows is allowing their users to use some Android apps?

Torrented apps would be my biggest concern, I mean, these are Windows specific, how can I run them on Linux? Seriously, I want to know how. Can wine run most of the apps without error? I am thinking of torrenting some educational software made for Windows.

Let me list the customizations I have done with my xfce desktop and you tell me if I can do that on Windows.

I told my friend that I can’t leave linux because of all the customization I have done and he said, you just don’t like to accept that Windows can do that too. Yeah, because I think it can’t do some of it (and I like Linux better)

But yeah, let’s give the devil it’s due, can I do these things on Windows?

  1. I have applications which launch from terminal eg: vlc would open vlc (no questions asked, no other stuff needed, just type vlc)
  2. Bash scripts which updates my system (not completely, snaps and flatpaks seem to be immune to this). I am pretty sure you can’t do this on Windows.
  3. I can basically automate most of my tasks and it has a good integration with my apps.
  4. I can create desktop launchers.
  5. Not update my system, I love to update because my updates aren’t usually 4 freaking GB and the largest update I have seen has been 200-300 mbs, probably less but yeah, I was free to not update my PC if I so choose. Can you do this on Windows? And also, Linux updates fail less often, I mean, it might break your system, but the thing won’t stop in the middle and say “Bye Bye, updates failed” and now you have to waste 4GB again to download the update. PS: You should always keep your apps upto date mostly for security reasons, but Linux won’t force it on you and ruin your workflow.
  6. Create custom panel plugin.

  1. My understanding is that the Windows terminal sucks? I don’t know why, it just looks bad.

I am sure as hell there are more but this is at the top of my mind rn, can I do this on Windows. Also, give me something that you personally do on Linux but can’t do it on Windows.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
      2·
      1 year ago

      gcc and MSVC are only a bit over a hundreg MB each, but neither of them are very useful without an SDK, though. Add Qt5 and Qt6 to actually run a GUI and you start approaching Microsoft’s bloat real quick.

      On my machine, the sizes are about equivalent, because every time I try to compile anything I found online I need to install libsomethinghwhatever-dev. Windows just gives you the dependencies beforehand.

      • Aatube@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        but I just want libstdc++… what you described in the second paragraph is thee definition of bloat. You don’t always get every library you want in MSVC either. How the heck do you get stand-alone MSVC with only STL and less than a GB?

        • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
          2·
          1 year ago

          Last time I checked, the SDK installer had a whole bunch of checkboxes you could just disable. It looks like the 2023 version of the compiler is only packaged with Visual Studio, though, which is a bit weird. Luckily you can just download gcc for Windows.

          Saying you don’t want libstdc++ on Windows is like saying you don’t want gcc on Linux, just g++. Almost every modern Windows API is built on C++, except for the driver part. It doesn’t make sense to just ship a C compiler for Windows.

          You can pop in your legally acquired Visual Studio DVD or ISO image and install vc_compilerx64x86.msi if you just want the compiler. It doesn’t so anything useful, but you can!

          If you’re writing new code for Windows, though, you’re better off with either C# or Rust. Those are the languages Microsoft themselves seem to be switching to at least!

          • Aatube@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yes, there are checkboxes, but even if I only check MSVC v143 … build tools I need to install 1.57 GB, while I only need 376.1 MB+175.3 KB to install GCC on arch, edit: my arch methology is flawed, just check niXman / mingw-builds-binaries, which is just C, C++ and Fortran and only 68.9 MB. 1.57GB is way too large.