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Why is there just 3 main PC operation systems? Is there room to market a platform that isn't as intrusive as Windows 10, but more user friendly than Linux based ones?
After trying windows 10 a few years ago and disabling all the marketing stuff and disabling other features that hinder performance, I've been curious why my only other real choice is linux, or reverting back to windows 7.
Compatibility.
Linux and macOS struggle so much against Windows because Microsoft has held the space for so long; although obviously less so for macOS, it still holds less than 9% of market share, to Windows' 89%. Since Windows is the main OS, everything is designed for it; since everything is designed for it, it gains more users. It's a self-fulfilling loop that can't be broken unless Microsoft majorly screws it up.
EDIT: Just noticed you said Linux isn't user friendly in the title, I couldn't disagree more. I dual boot Windows and Linux, and I find Linux to be much less confusing; everything is where you expect it to be, and when something breaks it's usually a logical fix (even assuming you know nothing about tech, headphones bugging out on linux? go into headphones settings, test things out until they start working again; headphones bugging out on windows: the fix is rarely in the headphones settings). The sole reason I use Windows is games.
Unfortunately we've now reached the same point with mobile operating systems as well.
I disagree. Android and iOS dominate the mobile market, but Android is incredibly versatile, and since it's open source, there are dozens of fan made projects that are fully compatible with all Android apps. It's a fantastic system that allows for pretty much infinite customization of UX, something that couldn't be further from the truth with Windows. Yes, Android and iOS have pretty much no competitors in the literal sense, but Google has created competition for itself in allowing platforms like F-Droid and the Yalp Store, letting people use Android while having absolutely zero connection to Google.
That is definitely valid, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I can't by a phone in the foreseeable future with anything other than Android or iOS and expect a decent experience.
Are there any actual alternatives with modern hardware? Maybe out of China? I know that Samsung was looking to develop their own OS, but I can't remember if that ever made it off the ground.
It was called Tizen, it's still on some of their lower end phones but it's been pretty unsuccessful from what I understand.
A lot of Chinese phones use heavily modified Android, and by modified I mean filled with tracking software.
All of phones I know that try to respect user privacy use AOSP, or "Android Open Source Project", and add whatever they need to from there, since building your own OS from scratch is a massive amount of effort. You could also just buy a phone from any big manufacturer and throw LineageOS on it, that's the largest community-made AOSP spin I'm aware of and it supports phones by most major manufacturers.
You could look at newer feature phones that still have internet access, but yeah it’s really a two-platform thing/:
If you're unhappy with your Android, check out some custom ROMs. It's a much better experience, in my opinion. You can find a lot of different stuff if you're willing to try the lesser known ones, too.
It would be nice to have a phone operating system that isn't just a method for a large corporation to vacuum up our personal data.
With Windows 10 now including key-loggers, it's like there's no way to access the internet without someone watching everything you do.
That's pretty much the sole financial appeal of an operating system, so that's not happening anytime soon. The only operating systems not made to collect data are those not made to make money, like Linux (and even most major Linux distros are made by companies that want your data).
"That's pretty much the sole financial appeal of an operating system"
So how did Microsoft make all their money before Windows 10? They simply sold their software. I would be happy to pay more for an operating system which I could own outright, and which did not have a data vacuum feature attached to its back end.
Microsoft Office actually generates significantly more revenue for them than Windows itself, and Windows profits had been heavily declining prior to the release of Windows 10, I would assume that's why they pushed data collection so much more than they had before (although they always collected and sold data, they just do it much more now).
I'm not saying they weren't profitable before that, but the only reason they were was because Windows is literally required for most programs. Anyone trying to make it into the space simply wouldn't make money without preying on unsuspecting customers' data. The only way I see around this is cloud streaming the software, something that Steam (who has an OS, SteamOS) and Nvidia (who doesn't, but likely wants to pounce on the 11% non-Windows marketshare) are both working on.
That's disappointing. "The only way you can use your computer is if you let us watch everything you do." I don't want to live in that world. I want some privacy. I don't want Microsoft or Google or Apple watching everything I do on the internet or on my own personal computer.
Alternatives are tough to find, but they're out there. For mobile, LineageOS is great if your phone supports it, only issue is that your photos will probably look like trash since you're losing all the software made specifically for your camera. There are a lot of Linux distros that respect privacy (of varying usability), my personal favorite is Antergos but there are many choices; you'll be giving up a lot by moving from Windows, but unless you're heavily invested into exclusive games or, say, Adobe software, you should be able to get used to it.
It's unfortunate how quickly the Internet is being turned into a means to expand advertising rather than knowledge, but it can be avoided, the question is how willing you are to sacrifice the convenience that comes from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon.
I feel like people don't realise how many alternatives are out there for those things, and how great they can be.
They're inconvenient. I use Linux, but I can't deny there are some things I miss on Windows (mostly games, but some software too). To me it's just not worth all the other garbage that comes with Windows, but I can totally see why it would be to others. I've considered getting a PS4 for the Windows games I've missed but that would kinda defeat the purpose, eh?
I agree about Android though, you can completely avoid Google tracking and all you lose is a little bit of your time and a non-shitty camera yet no one seems to know about it, I find it weird.
What would be the best distro that doesn't want your data?
correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think any of the distros collect any user data
What are your thoughts on that? Good? Bad?
Are we sure the opt out works?
That's what I hoped.
IIRC Manjaro had a big controversy involving collecting user data, Ubuntu's been doing it for years to the point where everyone knows about it, Mint claims it stopped collecting data last month after being caught doing so in the past... Of course, there are hundreds of distros that haven't been caught doing any of this, but the only really popular ones I can think of are Debian and Arch/Antergos.
Do you know if arch is the joke people make it into?
Depends on what joke you're referring to. If you talk about the "breaks every other update", that's false. If you mean about the joke that Arch is for "expert users only", that's false. If you're going on about the joke that Arch is lightweight and customizable, that one's also false.
Surely, Arch isn't ment for the average mom, so to speak, you do require the skill to be able to read and comprehend an installation guide. But it's also far from rocket science.
I've personally not have Arch break on my due to an update, but I've seen some pretty odd shit happening from time to time. The incident that I remember best was an AUR package accidentally running
rm -rf /usrdue to a space in the command.Many of its users also hail the distro as being lightweight or customizable, but neither are cases that it actually excells in. It may feel lightweight because you have to install most things yourself, but compared to something lightweight like a Debian netinstall or FreeBSD, it's actually not doing that well.
Customization is similar, while the users generally feel like they've customized their system, all they've done is install everything themselves from the get-go. This isn't much better than any other distro that provides a minimal version, such as Ubuntu or Debian. You can't easily customize much more beyond that, or you'll have to go into the ABS. Then you're just having a much more labour intensive Gentoo. Besides that, the community at large doesn't really like it if you customize it beyond what they think is good for you. The wiki will inform you with a red box that some packages just aren't supported, and even raising the question on IRC will see you being bullied out of there.
If you intend to set up a bare system that Just Works, don't intend to customize too much, but want up to date software, Arch might be a good pick. I personally use it for my media pc, because dealing with drivers and Steam on Arch is probably as simple as it gets.
Sorry about linux honestly never even seen it be used and just assumed from the way people talk about it.
Don't worry about it. I assume it gets talked about that way because it used to be garbage and anyone who tried it then assumes it's the same way now. There are, of course, a lot of distributions (distros for short) that look old for the sake of minimizing the storage space they take up, but others like Deepin, elementaryOS or Nitrux look great! Those links are just to images, by the way.
Worth adding Solus to your list of attractive, user-friendly Linuxes.
Operating systems are incredibly, mind bogglingly complicated and require huge amounts of work to develop and then maintain to make sure they work on the vast range of hardware combinations out there. Windows and MacOS do that by having vast financial reserves and dedicated teams of people, linux (insomuch as one can call "linux" an OS, it's more a collection of programmes which share some characteristics) does it by being massively distributed and having significant reserves of volunteers, although these days plenty of people are paid to develop and maintain linux projects. Including Linus himself.
There are other options out there - Amiga OS has a modern clone, BeOS has a fairly recent port and so on, even Plan9 (one of the coolest OSes ever devised imho) has something - but good luck finding anything more than the most basic of software for them. That's if they even work on your hardware.
I would contest your claim that linux isn't user friendly though. I've ported many friends to it with no significant problems. Even my retired old mum can find her way around Mint or Ubuntu without too much trouble. Personally I find a modern linux considerably easier to use than Windows, but that could just be familiarity (although I might, at some point, go into some detail about how the windows UX is horrifically, objectively broken compared to Gnome/GTK or even KDE.)
Linux is exactly that though, the kernel that provides hardware support. Everything on top of that (userspace) is usually GNU. So if we're getting into semantics, we should at least be doing it correctly ;)
Ha! A fair point indeed. Well played. :)
Definitely with you on that one. Ubuntu is just as easy to use as Windows. The biggest problem is software support. I haven't used Linux as my main OS, but not every program has a Linux version (granted you could probably find equivalent alternatives). In my case the biggest problem is Linux gaming is non existent. Would totally swap over otherwise. I have no love for Windows.
I wouldn't say non existent, quite, but it's a fair complaint. There are games around but not many big AAA ones - I remember the days when all there was was solitaire and tux racer, things have got a bit better since then at least. Personally if I still gamed on my pc I'd probably dual boot. Linux for day to day use and just fire up windows for gaming. I do that with Traktor (DJ software there is no good Linux alternative for), it adds a minute to the start of a session but that's not so bad considering the upsides!
Dual booting is definitely an option, but I just can't be bothered to do it. I'm better off using Linux on a VM on the rare occasion I actually need it
There's other options that just sticking to Windows for everything.
I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about this subject and in the end sticking to Windows is the better option for me.
For a start, I play World of Warcraft which doesn't have Linux support, so running only Linux is out straight away. VMs are also not an option for gaming because the performance is terrible and consoles are out for similar reasons (plus, why have two devices when I can have one that covers both functionalities?).
Really the only solution I've thought of would be dual booting Windows/Linux, but I don't think it's worth the trouble considering how used I am to Windows and how rarely I actually need to use Linux.
If it doesn't fit your use case, then that's fine.
I would like to point out, though, that WoW most likely plays fine in WINE, or if you can do GPU passthrough in a VM then most performance differences would be negligible, especially with an MMO, which doesn't rely on having the newest graphics card anyway.
In the end, though, if you don't want to try to get it to work, then it doesn't really matter.
Yea, WoW is definitely more CPU intensive than GPU intensive, but I don't think playing it in a VM would ever work. VMs are so slow and unresponsive that there's no way I'd ever play anything on one. Haven't tried WINE, so maybe that would do.
Usually when I play something in a VM it seems to work well enough for my purposes, but I guess with most things one's mileage may vary.
I only use it for coding so it definitely works for me, but there's very noticeable input delay and the framerate is pretty bad. That's why I don't think it'd work for gaming.
Huh, I wonder if the VM has enough RAM and cores given to it?
Since my laptop is ... well not much of one for running multiple VMs, I usually just give each one half of all available resources and only run one at a time. It seems to work well enough. Although, I do find that certain VM programs do have better performance than others, e.g. Virtualbox doesn't perform as well as Vmware in my experience.
RIP lol I do use VirtualBox. Can't remember the CPU configuration off the top of my head (don't think I've ever messed with it), but I allocate 8GB of RAM to all of them. Never messed with GPU settings too. Maybe I should take a look at those and see if I can get it to play nice.
I do think that last time I ran a Virtualbox VM is set almost everything at the lowest settings, so maybe it can help a little, especially if it's taking only a minimal amount of GPU RAM and CPU cores.
Without getting into far into semantics, Linux is technically a kernel, not an operating system. There are many flavors of linux, including Android and ChromeOS. You can easily hide the technical bits of linux behind shiny UI elements. Much like MacOS and the Playstation 3/4's OS are based on FreeBSD's kernel.
There have been lots of efforts to create different OSes. IBM OS/2, BeOS, Inferno, etc. The problem has always been adoption. Convincing developers to write software for it, while simultaneously convincing users to use it. You have a chicken-and-egg problem where users don't want to use it because it doesn't have any software, and developers don't want to port their code to it since it has no users.
Problem is it takes a lot of work to create an OS, and no one wants to use it unless it's any good. There are some alternatives you can try, but they're not likely to be more polished or user-friendly than linux. There's the BSDs, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenDarwin, etc. There's GNU Hurd, which started as a project to be the kernel that linux eventually became. There's Haiku, which is descended from BeOS. There's ReactOS, which aims to make an OS with a UI that's as similar to Windows as possible and is compatible with Windows programs. Then you've got all kinds of experimental project OSes like Singularity and TempleOS.
The problem is almost none of those are usable as a daily-driver since there's so little software available.
You know, I think the idea behind that would be pretty epic if the OS weren't so crappy. It reminds me a bit of some occult communists I read about once who were designing a virus that would infect networks and bring about the communist revolution. Iirc they were putting different sigils and other crap in there to help it become self-aware. Both very sci-fi projects, but somehow i think a bit off-kilter in terms of mental stability.
That reminds me of the plot of the show Humans, I won't spoil it, other than to say it's about robots.
I'm typing this comment on a computer running Windows Vista. I've been wanting to get a new computer for a while now, but after all the horror stories I've read about Windows 10 regarding forced updates and privacy issues my plan is to hold out on getting a new computer as long as possible at this point.
"I'm typing this comment on a computer running Windows Vista."
I upgraded to Windows 7 when Microsoft withdrew support for Vista, and I'm staying here until they withdraw support for 7 in 2020. At that point, I'm strongly considering switching to Linux. I'm not really a fan of the idea of an operating system that monitors everything I do, and serves up advertisements.
Just curious, why not move to a Linux distro sooner, rather than later?
Or just playing with one in a Virtual Machine until end of support on Windows 7?
Because I like Windows. I'm used to it. And Linux is my last resort - but I'm not at that point yet. Windows 7 is still supported for another 2 years.
I don't know anything about Virtual Machines: I'm not a computer programmer. (And that's not an invitation to teach me!)
I did a test installation of a Linux distro on an old netbook a while ago, under instructions from a programmer friend of mine. It seems not too bad, which is why I'm content to switch to it in 2 years when I have to abandon Windows.
Fair enough. I suppose I've never liked Windows, having used it from 3.1 and up it just seems to find new and interesting ways to be annoying after every upgrade.
I won't mention anything more about virtual machines, other than you don't need to be a programmer to install and use one.
Anyway, good luck on your eventual travel from Windows to Linux.
Any thoughts on ReactOS?
I saw it mentioned elsewhere in this thread and it's now on my "watch" list (like MycroftAI) as a possible future alternative (I've subscribed to the subreddits for both of them, to keep updated on their progress). They're both softwares which will reduce corporate involvement in, and data harvesting from, my devices.
For now, though, it's not relevant. It's still in development. For my purposes, it's doesn't exist yet. But maybe it will exist by 2020.
Same here, I just can't support W10.
I don't think the worst horror stories about windows 10 could make me go back to windows vista, rather do all my work with a pen on paper.
Get a new computer and install Linux on it, you won't be disappointed!
Will Linux run Word and Excel, Chrome web browser, Inkscape, VLC Media Player, Adobe Acrobat, TurboTax, etc.? That would be my main concern. I don't want to have to learn a bunch of new programs.
You can run Word and Excel in an emulator called Wine, and there is a Linux native program called LibreOffice that is a full replacement (although it doesn't support some of the more esoteric features, most of it it does, and you might want to try this first on Windows to see if it does everything you need). Adobe Acrobat can also be run in Wine I believe, although I have never seen a PDF that doesn't display correctly in Linux's native PDF viewers. Chrome I know for a fact is fully natively supported, Inkscape and VLC are actually Linux programs that jumped to Windows (so naturally they'll work just fine). TurboTax I have no idea honestly. But I can guarantee it'll work just fine inside of a virtual machine, which is another emulator, like virtual box; you can also try this on Windows if you like first. It will let you run windows on top of windows, or indeed, Linux on top of windows, or windows on top of Linux,with full compatability in every way. You can even use it to test Linux out for yourself, although you should make sure to install the special module in order to speed up whatever OS you run inside of it (which is very easy)
Okay, it's starting to sound a bit involved... that's not to say it isn't worth the time investment to learn about the various emulators required, though. Thank you for the detailed answer.
It's much easier then it sounds, there's an adjustment period since you have to learn how to do things in a new way, but it's not that bad. If you run into any trouble, let me know or post in ~comp or ~tech and we'll see if we can help :D
It's mostly easier than it sounds. TurboTax runs just fine in Wine, or did in 2016 at least. Installing Wine in Ubuntu is as simple as opening the Software Center, searching for and selecting it to be installed. At that point, you'll run the Wine configuration tool once to set everything up (it's automatic!), and then you can just run most windows .exe files without much hassle. You might need Winetricks to make it easier to install Windows dependencies like the dotnet runtime, but again, that's in the software center.
Also you can do pretty much everything online with TurboTax too and it’s a pretty good experience, so on the off-chance it stopped working on wine, you could always use that.
That sort of description makes it sound pretty complicated, and to be fair it kinda is, but trust me it's worth it and it's really not that bad. WINE stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, but to oversimplify it it's an emulator haha, basically it'll try its best to act as Windows-like as possible to make a program work within Linux. Everything you're doing as you described should work fine (even without WINE) except TurboTax, which you would either have to do through the web or make a virtual machine as he described; this is done by downloading VirtualBox, which essentially creates a fake desktop within your main one, and putting a copy of Windows into it, which kinda defeats the purpose but it at least limits the information they get from you.
Virtual Machines aren't emulators, they are visualized computers. They don't try to act like anything they aren't. They use actual, real hardware that you have available.
Emulating an Atari 2600 means convincing something that the machine it's running on is an Atari 2600 without any of the hardware, so it all has to be done in software. Virtual Machines use real hardware.
Also, Wine literally stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, although I wouldn't know a better way to describe it.
Can you explain this part a little bit more? Virtual machines and emulators are in fact the same thing, virtual machines are just something like the NES or GBA emulators scaled up.
Wine's not an emulator by the technical definition. See, an emulator simulates the original hardware; when you load an NES rom for example, it will then set up a virtual microprocessor, sound chip, etc. and read the instructions in the ROM. When it encounters one, it modifies the state of the virtual processor in the same way a real processor would be, and then sends the output to the virtual sound chip and then simulates the same state a real NES sound chip would produce. Then it's just a simple matter of displaying the output, which should be identical to a real NES, since you did the same operations and hold the same state. The advantages of a true emulator is that it can can get you perfect compatibility, since you're simulating the fundamentally lowest level part of the machine, but the disadvantage is that it can be very complex and is very computationally expensive. the NES is easy because the 6502 processor is very well understood and not very fast, but for example emulating the Gamecube is notoriously tricky and took many years to get right.
Wine works in a different way. Rather then emulate the hardware, Wine emulates the software. The program code for Windows and Linux programs is identical at a low level, since they're each talking to the same x86 processor; Wine only attempts to simulate the high level commands, like "download this file from the internet" or "display this texture map", and it does this by simulating each OS's API and system calls. In other words, when it sees the Windows version of a command saying "draw this buffer", it then turns around asks the Linux kernel to do the same thing, and sends the results back to the Windows program. This has the advantage of being simpler from a design perspective, since you don't have to worry about actually implementing many of these system calls, and is much faster (since you're mostly just doing lightweight conversions), but has the disadvantage of not being nearly as compatible and having to keep up with changes to either platform.
However, Wine is an emulator in that it's a piece of software that lets you execute other pieces of software that wouldn't normally work on the system you have.
The reason why a virtual machine isn't an emulator is because the Virtual Machine doesn't do anything fancy in software to convince the machine about what CPU or type of RAM it's using. It's using the actual hardware. An SNES doesn't have an x86 CPU or DDR RAM and our Computers don't have hardware that in anyway resembles an SNES. We have to make software that acts like that hardware otherwise the games from an SNES won't work. Our computers today don't have the correct instruction sets and hardware is organized in a totally different manner.
On the other hand, a Virtual Machine just needs an environment. The environment acts like a little garden that might restrict resources artificially, but it doesn't pretend it's anything it's not. The Virtual machine will use the CPU directly. It'll store stuff in RAM like it would normally. If it's been passed a GPU, it'll use that normally as well. There is a 1:1 performance ratio with virtual machines (when used with a bare-metal hypervisor) We don't have to convince the machine that the RAM is a certain type and there is only so much of it. We allow the virtual machine to have access to those resources.
The generic term is compatibility layer, which is the most apt description, but I feel silly saying it. I know that wine is converting APIs on the fly, but I don't know at all how that works. My understanding of Wine is very basic.
No, that's not true. Modern processors do contain extensions specifically designed for virtual machines that eliminate most of the performance loss; however, these only work when you're using the same architecture. A common virtual machine program is one called qemu, and it supports cross-architure virtualization; you can run ARM or PowerPC programs on an x86 processor, and it does this the same way the NES emulator does. Virtual machines don't need to be of the same architecture nor are they just passing through components; they can, but they don't have to. You're thinking of a hypervisor or sandbox environment, like Xen or FreeBSD's Jails, but these aren't really emulators since they're not disguising the hardware, and that's why they need to match the architecture of their hosts.
Qemu has some emulation features but also works as a normal hypervisor. It would be inaccurate to call all virtual machines emulators just because qemu can emulate other architectures. It is irregular for a virtual machine to not match the parent architecture.
Wine is not an emulator. But yeah either use that or one of the paid versions like crossover office
I'll take this point by point like others have.
The good news is that there is info everywhere. People love Linux and there are tutorials out the ass on how to make things work. I'm sure you don't want to find a workaround for everything you want to do, but the world of Linux isn't that complicated. Most popular distros are made to be very user friendly. It's intimidating at first, but you'll learn to love it.
On another note, I would suggest doing something because using Windows Vista puts you at risk. Vista won't be receiving any more updates for security. When security issues are found bad people will be looking for you specifically. Upgrade to Windows 7 or try out a Linux distro. Considering that you're using Vista, I assume the computer you have is pretty old. Windows Vista had a pretty short life span of two-years before Windows 7 came to the scene. There are Linux distros aimed at older computers that will run better than any Windows OS.
It can run anything and if there is something that isn't made for linux you can use wine
Okay, thanks for the info. I'll look into it.
I'd like to point out that ReactOS is in active development, as an open-source complete Windows replacement.
They're not all that far along, but they are making progress.
They aim to release new builds with more and more progress every 3 months.
Note that at the moment, you probably should not run this as a production OS on real hardware. It's possible, just not recommended.
The recommended way is to run it in a virtual machine for now.
They're synced up with other programs, such as WINE and others, and they all share code back and forth as applicable.
A quick demo video I found - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne88Is2cymQ - He demoed v0.4.7, the current version is 0.4.8.
Someone even got Skyrim running on it not too long ago. It was buggy, and it had no sound, but it ran!
ReactOS Has been in development since 90s. It's progress is really slow. So I would not hold my breath for it.
Nor would I, but it seems that they have made progress lately, and are now on an "every 3 months" release schedule. So I would for sure keep an eye on their progress.
There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. Newer Linux distros are a lot more user-friendly than you might think, and it's way easier to make linux user-friendly than it is to write a whole new operating system from scratch.
Because the three we have adequately cover the market for PC operating systems. Windows is compatible with everything and easy to control in a corporate environment, macOS is user friendly and the vendor offers direct support to users through AppleCare and Apple Retail, and Linux is infinitely customizable: as others have pointed out Linux isn't an OS as much as it’s a large family of compatible components. What other relevant market exists that isn't covered by these three use cases?
By the way the OS you're looking for is macOS: user friendly and not riddled with invasive marketing or data collection.
I've been using macOS at work for the past 9 months. Let's just say that "user friendly" is in the eye of the beholder. It might be fine for personal use, but I'm finding it quite hard going for a work environment. So many non-intuitive features!
The biggest one for me is that the menu bar for an application is entirely disconnected from the window for that application. I'm working on my Word document here, but the main menu for Word is over there. That's very strange behaviour.
macOS menu bar is an an application of Fitts's law: since any target at the edge of the screen is "infinitely large" in the direction of the border, the menu bar is a larger target—and therefore easier to get to quickly—than a menu embedded in a window.
Given that you still have to aim for a particular target within the menu, I'm not sure of the benefit here. It's not like you can just swing your cursor to the edge of the screen and hope you hit the 'File' menu.
Really? You don't see the benefit in eliminating the need to be precise one of two available axes? There's a lot of research behinds Fitts's law that says that bears out. The Windows taskbar reaps the same benefit, and the Start Menu doubles down on it by being in the corner.
I don't think the benefit of having menus in the top of the screen outweighs the drawback of separating those menus from the applications they apply to. Sure, it might be slightly easier to hit the menu options (for you - I don't experience that), but it's a lot more confusing to have to continually find that menu when it's nowhere near the place on the screen that I'm actually working. Any time I might save in aiming at the menu is much less than the time I lose in finding the menu.
Experience begets intuition, to some extent. I'm not sure, between global menus and window-associated menus, that one is really more intuitive than the other. The Windows way is to have each window stand on its own as a whole instance of the application; the Mac way is to have an application as a whole become the currently active one, displaying its global menu, while each window represent a document instead of an application instance.
Plus screen-edge-justified menus are easier to hit, because you can bang the mouse against the edge of the screen and not miss your target.
Those so-called "global" menus aren't really global at all. Are you somehow telling me that the "global" menu for Outlook is the same as for Word and for Adobe and for every other application? Those menus are all slightly different, not global.
"while each window represent a document instead of an application instance."
But those multiple windows are a lot harder to find in MacOS than in Windows. In Windows, I can separate multiple files into multiple icons on my toolbar: if I have two Word documents open, I can have two Word icons in my toolbar (the default is different, but there's at least a user setting to turn this feature on). On Mac, I get only one Word icon, so I have to navigate through a pop-up menu to find a particular document that's open.
macOS's distinction between windows and applications makes window management faster, once you grok it. Because macOS makes this distinction, it's also able to draw the distinction with the keyboard shortcuts used for window management.
Here's what I mean: on Windows, you have Alt-Tab. That's all you have. Alt-Tab cycles through all your open windows (and therefore program instances) in the order they were last active. On macOS, Alt-Tab is split across two functions:
So for your example, if I want to get to my background Word window, I CMD-Tab to Word and then I CMD-` to the window I want. On Windows I'm just Alt-Tabbing through windows that may or may not be Word windows, even though I know I'm looking for a Word window.
Same thing for CMD-W and CMD-Q. On Windows these are collapsed into a single shortcut, Alt-F4, because there is no distinction between window and app. But on a Mac I have fine-grained control: I get to choose between simply closing the active window and shutting the whole app down.
I totally get how if you're used to the Windows model, the Mac model of drawing the distinction between windows and apps seems weird and alien, but once you get used to it, the Windows model of not drawing the distinction seems clumsy.
Nope. I have that taskbar at the bottom of my screen. With the right settings, I can make every active window have its own icon in the taskbar (2 Word documents open = 2 Word icons showing). I don't use Alt-Tab to navigate between windows: I just click on the appropriate icon in the taskbar. Each window is immediately accessible with a single click.
MacOS hides all those windows by grouping them behind single icons. That's very frustrating.
Doesn't that fill up your entire task bar, though? I see that taskbar config less and less, now that it's no longer the default.
Just right-click on the icon in the dock, from there you can see the name of each window in the context menu, or click "show all windows" to tile them.
I don't open a hundred applications & files at a time. I'm not that good at multi-tasking! I tend to have only about 5 - 8 icons in the taskbar at any given time.
I know. And then a second click to get the window I want. But in Windows, all the icons are visible and directly clickable.
I don't do that. That's just confusing.
As far as "global menus" are concerned, I believe it's just called that because the top menu is used "globally" for all programs, not necessarily because it includes all the same features and functions when switching to different programs. I do find that I generally prefer global menus now, both to save on screen real estate and because I can always find the menu no matter where the program is on screen.
Although, I must agree, trying to find multiple windows of the same program is a pain in macOS, as is window management in general. Now, I just try to put everything full screen, or on it's own separate virtual desktop in order to find it.
I've never heard anyone call the macOS menu bar "global." It's just called the menu bar. Global isn't a good descriptor because the menu bar definitely isn't system global, but that's what "global" implies.
CMD-` there just for this: it cycles all windows in the frontmost application.
You'll have to forgive me then, I've only heard it called a "global menu" in the Linux community and just used that terminology. To me, just being in the same spot no matter what window I am using is enough to warrant the usage of "global".
I found out this shortcut recently (from a Linux subreddit, no less), but thanks for reminding me. I just have to remember to use it.
CMD-Tab and CMD-` are super useful. A few other tricks:
Usually I'll want to use CMD + h, but I'll play with CMD + tab and CMD + ` some more.
Thanks.
Linux is far more user friendly than people think both to install, maintain and use. Anyone who could make the adjustment between Windows versions could make the adjustment between Windows and Linux.
I find Ubuntu more user friendly than Windows 10 or Mac OS. I've been using it for the past year, dual booting with windows. Can't remember the last time I logged into my windows partition.
I've used all three, and the big thing with Ubuntu for me, is that I find it far easier to find solutions to my problems online.
modded android OS is a thing, mainly used in tablets
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/18/15988382/jide-remix-os-desktop-android-development-ending
https://maruos.com/
https://liliputing.com/2017/07/remix-os-fades-away-phoenix-os-keeps-android-desktop-os-alive-v2-1-0-release.html
I have it on my surface book, but mainly because I'd like to use it as a tablet, and windows is not very well know for that kinda thing.
Look into the Windows 10 LTSB branch. It's a cut down version of W10 without the app store, tracking, pre-installed applications, etc. The new release is coming out this summer (it only receives a new version every couple of years).
From what I've read it's a favorable alternative to rolling back to Windows 7.
inb4 "I'd just like to interject for a moment...".
The biggest reason is software compatibility with Windows.
Luckily, there are many good solutions. For gaming there's VFIO, which lets you give a VM direct access to your GPU, so you could run a Windows VM and play games on it with full performance. I've been running it for a few months now on Arch, and have had little to no problems.
For software in general, there's Wine, which has great compatibility with a lot of software, and it's always improving. There's also ReactOS, which aims to be a binary-compatible replacement for Windows XP.
For modern software, it's so easy to write crossplatform software that I fail to see why some developers go WIndows only, unless it's some very specific niche software.
Also, I'd have to disagree with your last point about Linux not being user friendly. Especially compared to the shitshow that Windows 10 has become, I think Linux is infinitely more user friendly. Linux is open, anyone can understand how it works. It isn't full of adware and telemetry. When you run into problems on Linux, they make sense, and troubleshooting is sane. On Windows, it's a mess of going through endless confusing menus and background processes.
I think what we have is enough. We just need to work on standardizing stuff for Linux, which is hard. Ubunut going to GNOME and dropping Unity was a good move in my opinion.
Mac did something incredible. It is a Unix OS, so you have all of the Unix tools, but you also get proprietary software. People buy Macs because they are hip and never understand this. Mac is this polished Unix OS with time, money, and resources put behind it that Linux never had. Being able to have a Unix OS with tools like grep and vim built in, and then use industry standards like Photoshop and Solidworks is huge.