I have always been using Windows as my main OS since I begin using computer. I have had Windows 95/
But last December, I finally bailed to Ubuntu. It has been three months, and I couldn’t be happier.
When I was using Windows XP, I need to re-install it every 6 months. It was okay; I still doesn’t have much data. I could back it up on a few DVDs easily.
Windows Vista was much, much more stable than Windows XP (contrarily to most opinions on the internet) I need not to recover it during 2.5 years of usage. But it slows down a LOT during use. When I was abandoning it, it is so slow it takes 20 minutes to boot. I believe it is hard disk problem though. I think it is 320GB 5400rpm (which I think maxed at around 60-70MB/s serial)
Windows 7 was really stable. Among the best Windows I have ever used. Windows 8.1 was disaster. Windows Explorer is bad, a lot of things feels slow. Generally it seems to hold better than Windows 7, but there are a lot things that bug me includes the fact that it crashes hard on Out of Memory (which I have never had in Windows 7 with same amount of RAM and similar usage, so I am not really sure what is happening).
Windows 10 is better than Windows 8.1. But I still have a few problems with it. I suspect that my hard disk has bad sectors somewhere too, so it might contribute. Explorer is much better in Windows 10.
However, the things that finally push me through to Ubuntu is Windows Update. In Vista and 7, Microsoft advertised on being to rarely need to restart to upgrade. This doesn’t seems to hold in Windows 10. In Windows 8.1 I could change some registry to prevent automatic restart. Windows 10 doesn’t have such options. I cannot even set it to automatic download and manual install. It would have been okay if Microsoft continues to use Patch Tuesday. But somehow I get the restart every other Tuesday and Thursday. This pissed me off so much that during last 2 months of my 6 months usage, I completely disabled the Windows Update. (I know I am moving to Ubuntu soon so I couldn’t care less)
So after I submitdc my last work for the 1st semester of 2016, I replace the hard disk (which I have feeling is failing) with an SSD, and install Ubuntu. And as I said, I couldn’t be happier.
First, let say that I am not novince when it comes to Ubuntu. I have been managing Ubuntu server since 2009, so I have a very good idea of using The Terminal and various services. The problem I may have is that I am very unfamilier with systemd. Fortunately most command from upstart era still works.
The only thing I have problem with right now is that bumblebee stops working after suspend. I see no way of resolving this, but restart is not hard anyway.
Transitioning software
Prior to transitioning, I have extensively research softwares and alternatives:
Browser
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox both works well under Linux. No problem on this front. Depends on your usage, you might spend most time on your computer using this software anyway.
Editors and IDEs
This really shouldn’t be problem for anyone ever. Major text editors (Sublime Text, Atom, VS Code) all works on all OSes. Major IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans, JetBrains) also all works on all OSes, with sole exception of Visual Studio (which is not surprising, really).
Prior to transitioning, my to-go text editor was VS Code (before that Atom, before that Sublime Text). I still have VS Code installed, but my main text editor is now vim. I have used vim for long time. When I was initially using Ubuntu Server, I don’t know about nano so I learn basic vim to be able to manage the server. I also have my personal .vimrc from the last time I was using Linux. I mainly use terminal vim, and it sucks a lot on Windows.
Entertainment
Built-in options to Ubuntu should works well, but I use cmus and mpv for mu music and video consumption. mpv because it is the most customizable and I customize my video player a lot (My player back on Windows was MPC-BE set up with LAV Filter and madVR), cmus because I want something simple. I had wanted to use cmus on Windows, but unfortunately I cannot so I was using foobar2000 on Windows.
Games
Steam Linux has a number of game. Newer games also tend to support Linux. Wine and PlayOnLinux for everything else. However the real challenge is setting up Bumblebee…
Office, Graphics, and CAD
This is where real problem come in. Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suites/Cloud, and many of Autodesk offerings. However, I rarely use those softwares anyway. I do have VirtualBox setup with Windows 7 for this purposes.
However, basic image editing (which happens more often) can be done using other application. I am currently using Pinta for that purposes.
Conclusion
I use Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity. I must admit, Ubuntu has a LOT of rough edges. However, I feel that rough edges are more acceptable here than in Windows.
If you are programmer and live mostly in browser and text editor/ide anyway, nothing changes because those applications offer same experience across platforms.
If you are C++ programmer, being able to sudo apt install boost-dev-all is a very strong pluses for using Linux!