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| Goodbye Windows, Hello Linux [advice needed for a Linux workstation at home] |
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| Siwastaja:
As a whole, both Windows and Linux tend to suck horribly in multiple ways, but the ways they suck are surprisingly different. You can take advantage of this. I have very little issues now; I have found the dualboot system to work best for me. My Linux still doesn't run Altium or Solidworks, but my computer does, because it has both systems. On Windows, I need to run CAD behemoths - this often means flow of 12-hour working days for weeks, just running said CAD tools (+ web browser and a PDF viewer) and not doing much else. For everything else, I boot in linux, which is my default boot since 2014. Mint was a fairly good choice for someone like me who would have agreed to free_electron's view about the "typical linux enthusiasts" and didn't like the idea of configuring the shit out of basic OS blocks to get it usable. XFCE Mint indeed worked out of box acceptably, unlike, for example, Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, and Ubuntu installs I had tried over the preceding two decades (just to give them a shot; they never did fly for me; yes I'm lazy, and I didn't really need them enough to warrant the learning curve back then). The tools I run most on linux are, approximately in this order: web browser (for both work and fun), text editors, gcc/make/binutils/etc. firmware/software development tools, my own custom development tools, spreadsheets, octave, multimedia players for freetime, and a large bunch of small stuff. Some of the software I use is clearly compromised compared to what I could get on Windows (compare Gimp to Photoshop, for example) - this only works when you use Gimp for such ridiculously simple tasks, and at such low duty cycle, that it doesn't even warrant booting into Windows (or acquiring a Photoshop license). So, in the end, I boot into Windows to run Altium only. If my work consisted of multitasking between many Windows-only applications, of course there would be no point running linux for web surfing only. Most of what I do can be done on Windows, and I had a similar workflow years back, on Windows XP + Cygwin. But it's clearly better on linux, the difference is large enough to warrant the hassle of occasional rebooting into Windows. This is especially true on a laptop, I really appreciate predictable bootup and shutdown times of about 5 seconds and 3 seconds, respectively, compared to randomly varying 20 seconds to half a freaking hour; this prevents me from doing work, and working on small tasks on the road. When running a 12-hour marathong on Altium, half-an-hour shutdown time on Windows is not such a big issue. I also get longer battery lifetime on Linux when running lightweight tasks, which is a plus. But this comparison is kinda irrelevant; I need to run Windows to run Windows-specific applications, to get the job done, and I don't "idle" the computer on Windows. I do that on linux. If you look at the number of different software I use, 99% run on Linux. But if you look at the time spent, it's only about 80% on Linux. |
| Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: RoGeorge on January 19, 2019, 07:51:09 am ---This needs a framerate conversion from 23.976Hz to 60Hz. --- End quote --- And because 23.976:60.000 = 999:2500, that means that every 999 source frames need to produce 2500 output frames. No matter what you do, you get either jitter (from consecutive source frames being displayed for different durations) or ghosting (from displaying a mix from two consecutive frames), or you do some really fancy video processing that probably generates some odd visual perceptions and must be somewhat tuned for the source material. --- Quote from: RoGeorge on January 19, 2019, 07:51:09 am ---I don't know who's job the frame rate conversion is, the GPU driver, the movie player/decoder, or maybe some other window composer. --- End quote --- Depends on the entire pipeline used. Proprietary graphics drivers tend to restrict the rest of the options a lot. For myself, the jitter (each frame being visible for 0.033333 to 0.050000 seconds, instead of the proper 0.041708 seconds or so) works, although it does show up in slow pan type shots as unevenness. --- Quote from: Siwastaja on January 19, 2019, 08:04:38 am ---I also get longer battery lifetime on Linux when running lightweight tasks, which is a plus. --- End quote --- That can depend highly on hardware. Although the Linux device subsystems do support power saving states and such, they may not have as good settings as they do in Windows, because most laptop manufacturers don't care even a little bit, and the laptop mode defaults are rather generic. Having less stuff running obviously helps a lot in any case. That said, when I first built a nice little software-RAID (RAID0 for OS, media, and similarly recoverable data, and RAID1 for more important personal stuff) in late 00's for my own home workstation, I really wondered why that was not the norm. At the added extra cost of $150 or so, I had a two-terabyte RAID setup that just made everything go faster. (I had two Samsung HD103UJ 1TB drives that were not only cheap, but darned reliable; it was a pity the division was sold to Seagate. I don't touch those with a pole anymore; too many bad experiences.) Of course, I tend to move a lot of data myself; a few gigabytes is typical for a dataset. Later, I got access to a laptop with a fast Samsung SSD. (About five years ago?) Now that was seriously snappy; hibernates and wakes up in literally a couple of seconds. Bootup from poweroff to completely loaded steady state does take almost half a minute... If you use a desktop computer, and you do anything that involves large amounts of data, use a good SSD for your OS, user profiles, and your swap (for hibernation!); and a nice little software RAID array for media storage. No matter what the OS. |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: apis on January 19, 2019, 02:06:44 am ---Wow, yeah, Linux users doesn't get any work done, all they do is configure their desktop day out and day in. :palm: --- End quote --- I haven't touched mine in at least 4 years. If I don't like my desktop (think flattie GUIs where there are too few clues as to what can be clicked and what the state is), I can change it. Windows users don't get any work done: their machines are too busy running ineffective anti-virus software, and the users are too busy rebuilding their machines that have been borked by the latest forced MS Windows "update". |
| soldar:
Web clients' OS share: --- Code: ---Android 41% Windows 36% Apple 19% Linux 0.78% --- End code --- Linux might be great for nerds and engineers but the public at large do not show much preference for it and I do not think it will gain significant market share as long as the attitude of the Linux community is one of smug superiority. Maybe trying to make Linux more user-friendly would help Linux become more widespread. A backhoe is a great tool if that is what you need but it makes a very unsatisfactory mode for family transportation. Linux can be great for whatever but the public at large do not consider it user friendly enough, in spite of it being free. Most people would pay money to have something easier to use and which saves them time. |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: soldar on January 19, 2019, 10:34:47 am ---Web clients' OS share: --- Code: ---Android 41% Windows 36% Apple 19% Linux 0.78% --- End code --- Linux might be great for nerds and engineers but the public at large do not show much preference for it and I do not think it will gain significant market share as long as the attitude of the Linux community is one of smug superiority. Maybe trying to make Linux more user-friendly would help Linux become more widespread. --- End quote --- These numbers are very skewed. A while ago there was a poll on this forum. It turns out 60% of the people here use Linux regulary. And that also agrees with what I'm seeing at customers. I have several customers where the engineering departmant runs Linux on their computers. Besides that: Android technically is Linux. |
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