Windows & macOS can't do this, but Linux can!
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#Linux #macos #windows
00:00 Intro
00:29 Sponsor: 100$ free credit for your Linux or Gaming Server
01:26 Ultimate portability
02:59 Modularity
04:52 Live Systems
06:03 Support for older computers
07:25 Driverless printer support
08:54 Visual customization
10:37 Escaping vendor lock-in
12:13 And more!
13:47 Sponsor: Get a PC that supports Linux perfectly
14:46 Support the channel
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You can literally grab your hard drive or SSD, plug it into another completely different PC, and still enjoy a fully functional install, with all your files, applications, and configurations.
Since the drivers for all the hardware Linux supports are in the kernel, you don’t depend on what the manufacturer has preinstalled on your computer, and you don’t have anything to install either when you move your disk to another PC.
The second thing is the ability to replace parts of your operating system with others, that fit your needs better. Windows and macOS are one size fits all operating systems; they’re designed to provide a good enough experience for everyone. On Linux, you can pick a distro that fits your needs out of the box, or you can replace components. Get a other file manager, get a different window manager, change the init system…
Third, we have the live USB, or Live CD. This is something only Linux based operating systems do. You slap a reasonably sized ISO onto a reasonably sized USB drive, and you boot from it, and you get a fully usable system.
Not only can you try before you install, which is crucial when you’re deciding what will run on your PC, but you can also have a distro that ONLY runs through a Live USB, like Tails, which means your whole system is in your pocket, and you can boot from it from any computer you want.
Have you tried running Windows on a 10 year old computer? Or even older? The latest, still supported version of Windows? Good luck, without spending time building a custom ISO to debloat the OS, and crossing your fingers for drivers to exist for your old hardware and that specific version of Windows. On a Mac, it’s even less doable, the latest version of macOS supports at most the mac pro from 2013, and that was a very powerful, expensive device when it released.
On Linux? No problem, pick a distro that’s lightweight, and enjoy your old computer like it was new. You’ll get patches, security fixes, the very latest applications if you want them, but your system will run fine. If what you want is an OS that occupies the least amount of space possible? You also can.
Fifth thing you can do on Linux but not on Windows or macOS? Driverless printer support. On Linux, printers are detected automatically, and work out of the box. No driver CD to try and fit in your computer that doesn’t have a CD drive anymore, no need to download anything from the internet.
You plug it in, and you print.
Next is UI and UX customization. Windows and macOS can’t be customized visually. Not out of the box, not more than light or dark theme, and an accent color. If you want to change the icons, the general theme, the layout of the desktop, you can’t.
With Linux, all major desktop environments let you change how your system looks or works. Yes, even GNOME. With extensions, and themes, you can have a radically different experience than the default.
Next, is no vendor Lock-in. On Linux, you’re free to move to anything else. Once your distro is end of life, and won’t receive any patches, you can upgrade for free to the next version, or, if you don’t like that new version, you can also just decide to change distributions entirely.
On Linux, you could even BUY extended support to keep a distro alive and patched even when the distro’s developer have abandoned it.
ubuntu
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Some of these are true and some are pushing the edge of reality. ALL of them are for very techie people. Choose your filesystem? Choose your desktop environment? Sure, but how many Windows or Mac users even know what that means? Linux does have phenomenal hardware support, and it is portable.
That said, if you're techie enough to install Linux, choose your desktop and apps, add the repos, and use the command line to get all that working, it is free. Upgrading to newer versions of the same distro, as long as it's the NEXT version (not 3 versions removed) has gotten better. But you better have a way to go back if it fails. And when it fails, it can fail bigtime as in "unbootable"! But, like with a Mac, you're happy with the apps offered by the basic distro install, and you don't need VNC or a closed-source video driver, and don't need compatibility with MS Office, Photoshop, etc. Linux is a definite option.
Guy… i tell you something from a guy who worked in a Small PC shop. FORGET Linux. As long they dont make theier Product the way that EVERY Person can handle it. It will never get the big outcome it may allready had if the people programming it…. where not all f… up lol. I have sooo many customers who had a PC with Linux… and then…. buyed Windows. Cause no one wants to put his head into the Software to learn how the fuck it works. And as long this shit doesnt realy change… it stays a Corner OS. Thats how its goes. It is not that Linux is bad. NO.. but to Handle it, is fuckin ridiculous. The support is ridiculous and if you dont wanna get a Nerd kindof… it doesnt work. So ,,, its the Distributors fault that theire Products dont get used much
In my experience printing on macOS is pretty similar to Linux. They do actually ship a lot of drivers with the OS if you cannot use AirPrint. Just pick the printer from the detected list, select the appropriate model if it didn't do so already, and done! (Though on the new arm macs it's not that simple as (at least some of) the drivers are x64 based while the printer add tool doesn't mention that.)
9:10 you can change icons one by one via Finder in macOS which is official, but Linux theming is much better
13:06 FYI mac has something unofficial called cakebrew
Since 2016 on Linux, but this with just put the SSD into the new laptop, I did not know. Had always a different type of SSD.
There is one thing Linux can`t do what the others can.
Get you an acceptable computer experience.
That first one you assume the PC only has one drive installed! If the system files are spread over a couple of drives then just transporting one drive will not work. Even if you transport both drives you have to make sure they get assigned the correct letters to make sure hard links point to the right locations!
Also, MacOS should be able to do this too as it's built on Unix/Linux and also has a Kernel. The only difference is they only support official hardware. As long as you are putting the drive from one Mac to another it should be fine. Note, I am only theorizing as I don't use Mac computers!
Oh man, you really do not know a lot about Windows do you. You do know that you can replace the desktop manager in Windows? You know you can install personalization apps too? Windows is not as inflexible as you make it out to be. Even without changing the desktop manager you can make Windows look like MacOS or even Linux! Go look up Stardock Software! You should see my Windows desktop, you would not say anyone else has the same setup as me! Yes Stardock are a paid option but they are not the only option, you should be able to find free apps that do similar things as theirs. There used to be plenty of replacement desktops but due to lack of interest they mostly died out but they still work even in Windows 11. Now I'm not a Windows fan boy, most of my computers run Linux and only my main PC runs Windows, but I will point out misinformation whenever I hear it.
Speaking of misinformation, Valve made SteamOS for the Steam Deck did they? WRONG! LOL They originally created SteamOS for 2 failed projects, a dedicated Steam branded gaming PC and a Steam TV gaming device.
I have to stop, I can't watch anymore! LOL
good points. except for the printer part, for me that has always been a struggle on ubuntu with canon 5100 or other, always have had to find a driver-installer from canon.
I would like to switch to Linux but the major software companies (like Adobe) still do not provide their software on the Linux platform. So no matter how good the operating system is, without the software you have to use on a daily base it's just a nice thing to look at.
When I went from a 80286 to a 80486, i dropped Windows for Slakware, with a 0.97 kernel.
Have found Windows to be antiquated since!
In Linux you know what is running in the background and if you don't want something you can change it, edit it, stop it, remove it completely. Linux Desktop distributions may suck in many ways, but the feeling of having control is priceless. In my 20 years of Linux experience, I have encountered many annoying problems with different distributions, but for this reason I never thought of using Mac or Windows. In fact, it's kind of a miracle that something like this can survive against commercial monsters and even beat them in many ways. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to Linux in some way.
Portability: This only works because you have all the drivers compiled into the kernel that you need. If you are running a customized slimmed kernel (e.g. Gentoo) this will not work. If you install the drivers you need on Windows before hand you can do the same thing, or just install the drivers afterwards. Anyways, Windows 10 comes with enough drivers to allow drive swapping to different machines. I have never had the "license" issue.
Modularity: Valve definitely did it to save the $40 for an Embedded key and because they already had SteamOS. Embedded builds of Windows can be customized by the manufacturer.
Live Systems: Windows can do this too.
Support for older computers: Windows 10 will "run" on a Pentium III. Linux also has essentially forced updates. The oldest Linux distro release that is still receiving updates is RHEL 7 from 2014. It will stop receiving updates next year. An installation of Ubuntu 16.04 is essentially useless now and cannot run modern software without manually compiling all libraries. Windows 7 can run more up to date software than Ubuntu 16.04.
Driverless Printer Support: Linux uses CUPS, the printing system developed by Apple for use in macOS and iOS. They use the same (PPD) drivers. Windows has the best driver support for printers assuming that you are running the latest version of Windows (as you will be running with Linux). Even then, Linux could not handle my OKI Microline ML186 while windows could. I could only get Linux to work with it if I used it as a line printer. Even then it had a bunch of issues regarding permissions. To get it working as a line printer on windows I just had to share the printer and then net use LPT1: \localhostprinter.
Vendor Lock In: Instead you are stuck with GNU/Vendor Lock In. No matter how much the FSF will complain about Microsoft's EEE and Proprietary Standards, they do the exact same thing. It is explicit GNU policy to IGNORE non-GNU standards. For example, GNU is non-POSIX compliant because it changes du and df to use 1k block sizes instead of 512 byte ones, which means any scripts that rely on GNU's misfeature will break on BSD or System V systems. Same goes with GNU's atrocious __attribute__(packed(1)) syntax instead of the non-standard but generally accepted #pragma pack(push, 1). As I have said previously, if you are not running the absolutely latest packages and libraries in Linux, you will not be able to run the latest software. This is just a consequence of how dynamic linking works in Linux. You get one copy of one library and you better hope that works (ofc there are the so.0, so.1, so.2, etc. but we all have seen the errors due to those not existing and being unable to install it) so who cares if I can run Ubuntu 16.04 until 2026? I won't be able to install anything new in Ubuntu. The version of Linux that I use at work, RHEL 7.9, uses Kernel 3.10 which is 3 major versions behind the current one. And in the case of RHEL, if a new version of Python comes out you will be waiting up to 6 months for the RPM to show up on the repos, if it does at all. RedHat will not be updating Python on 7.9 beyond 3.8. Meanwhile I can install Python 3.12 on Windows 8.1, which came out before 7.9.
Updates: Windows NT can live patch and always could. Driver updates do not require a reboot. The forced reboots on updates is not a technical requirement in NT but instead exists to avoid Murphy's law where the running version of a program is inconsistent with the one on disk, which can happen on Linux. Most updates on Linux are software updates, not operating system updates, and I don't know of any modern system that requires a reboot after installing software updates.
Your OS will never force you: until you want to install a package that requires a newer version of a dependency.
Libraries: because Windows comes with all the native Win32 libraries required. Same goes with macOS. The only software that needs libraries is ported Linux software that is dynamically linked with GPL libraries to avoid virility. The issue of Linux DLL hell is apparent by the necessity of things like snap, appimage, and flatpack. Windows has solved this with SxS (and therefore Windows 1.0 software will still run on Windows 10) and Apple has solved this by only changing things when necessary and when it breaks something making developers recompile.
GUI package managers: Many times I tried to use GNOME software it broke. Just use the command line.
Maintained repos: The version from 2016 will be maintained yes.
Virus: Linux comes with a built in virus facility known as LD_PRELOAD. Set that environment variable and whatever you set it with will be linked with whatever you run in the future, hooking API calls. Hope that whatever program you use doesn't call another program with SUID bit set or it can gain root. In the past, mkdir was a superuser program because of… uh… mknod(2) being the same syscall to create directories as device files. MINIX still does it this way I think.
Tuxedo (Business Model: "Uber for System76"): Because we needed another company selling Clevos (Business Model: "Uber for white label laptops") with Linux preinstalled and then charging a premium for it.
Your advantages are only important for a geek, the majority of people are careless about SO modularity.
On the older computer side. There are STILL Linux distros that support 32 bit. And some of the Netbooks from only 5-6 years ago still used 32-bit, which is why Windows 10 did have a trimmed down 32-bit version, but Mac hasn't supported 32-bit in 20 years. Now that most newer machines are 64-bit, the options for 32-bit support are starting to dwindle though.
Pretty sure Live 11 isnt legal. It's not licensed by Microsoft, which I can understand why when Microsoft WON a copyright claim against Lindows for merely using a similar OS name for their easy to install/use Linux Distro based on KDE to provide a Windows like feel. Given enough time, this dev would be forced to pay an egregious license or fines from MSFT. (Why many of us NIX "nerds" call it the Microsoft Tax is how Microsoft sneaks there way into everything.)
OPENVMS IS THE STANDARD … NOW RUNS ON X86 AND NO RANSOMWARE OR MALWARE WORRIES …
Using printer on Linux: works fine.
Trying to use a HP scanner on Linux: Nightmare.
[English] With Apple it's much simpler. You have just to buy the printer Apple tells you to buy, do the things Apple tells you you can do, and think different what Apple tell you to think different. And nobody will get hurt.
[Esperanto] Kun Apple estas multe pli simpla. Vi nur devas aĉeti la presilon, kiun Apple diras ke vi devas aĉeti, fari tion, kion Apple diras al vi, ke vi povas fari, kaj pensu alie, kion Apple diras al vi, ke vi pensu alie . Kaj neniu vundiĝos.