Here I am, back in Windows. I’m realizing that my journey to a Freedom-Of-Choice Desktop environment is riddled with traps from my past. My familiarity with the apps and processes of Windows haunts my every move. It’s challenging to find replacements and workarounds for what I used to be able to do… But then my determination kicked in. If I really think about it, would it be such a loss to switch to a Linux alternative? I rebooted back into Linux and got to work. Any hope for a Windows-centric guy to transcend his limitations and biases? Only time will tell…
I tried running on Linux (Ubuntu) and using Reaper, so I don't have to use Windows with it's BS.
Getting the audio stack running was a nightmare, and it always just sounded bad. Something was wrong with the drivers that caused a ton of latency and weird compression. It appeared to be something to do with everyone's favorite default audio system: Pulseaudio (have a look sometime at how many troubleshooting steps there are for the simple "I'm not getting audio out of Ubuntu", it's silly)
I spent a few days trying to figure out the proper magical incantation to make ALSA work with my setup (Scarlet 2i2, pretty common), with no success. No matter how many semi-sketchy and unofficial websites I went through.
Put it on Windows, works out of the box, sounds great. Went back to recording audio instead of doing IT.
Sound is the primary reason why I eventually left the Linux desktop - it broke on a regular basis, and randomly, because of pulseaudio. It worked in some apps, and not in others. In the end, I needed to get some work done, and not constantly fix my workstation, so I went down the OSX route I never looked back (no need to tinker at all, and I kind of understand the UI, while I find Windows to be very confusing, and to require tinkering ).
I started using Linux in 1996, used a Linux desktop as my main box between 2001 and 2011, but, much to my chagrin, it just never reached any kind of 'it just works' level. Sure, there were good parts ( interesting UI ideas ), but the moment you started plugging/doing funky things into your computer ( printers, bluetooth, power outlets, wifi, speakers, fonts, multiple screens, 3d cards, etc you name it ), things started not working as expected.
Note I still use a Linux workstation at the office. It still doesn't work well for anything which is not terminal oriented, it still loses its graphics settings on a regular basis, I still run into graphics driver issues, but I have a windows box next to it to handle everything else.
The one thing I really miss on windows/OSX is i3, which completely changed my view of windowed environments ( I gave up on Gnome/KDE eons ago ).
Same here. I'm a Linux advocate (even named my son after the creator) and I definitely manage more Linux than Windows machines but after trying (forcing) Linux on my main workstation I gave up.
I need nvidia drivers (for ML and sysadmin stuff) and had so many random problems with multiple distros like sound randomly wasn't working or some USB ports were not detecting anything.
WSL has changed the game and now I have the stable and driver supported desktop environment with all the tools I love from my linux servers.
I like Linux and have used both professionally but too much of my income is dependent on Windows. That and it's just a great day to day environment. I'm just sticking with 10 for the foreseeable future and hope Microsoft turns direction. But I'm not holding my breath.
I switched about the time windows made a major change too. Maybe it was win10? I don't remember. The point is when I hop on a windows machine now it feels just foreign enough that I go back to Ubuntu.
