Windows 10 Refugees Flock to Linux in What Devs Call Their "biggest Launch"

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology#1-computer-o...

HN is atypical of the world, particularly anything outside of the USA.

Unfortunately Microsoft decided to stuff it with user hostile spyware instead.

https://www.autodesk.com/products

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer-aided_manufac...

* AutoHotkey

* Voidtools Everything

* Agent Ransack

* Irfanview

Agreed. Note though that the Ubuntu live installer has a "Try" mode that gives you a nearly normal desktop experience without installing, and is an effective test environment to discover what will work and what won't. Wifi, graphics and suspend are worth trying out this way.

Or test yours with a live distro beforehand

I would suggest to use Linux Mint or Pop_os for example.

Random Windows laptops have been slightly more frustrating. Hibernation may not work out of the box, and sometimes one other piece of random hardware won't be usable. For a laptop that basically lives on a desk, you might get away with it.

Desktops are usually easier. They don't have as much built-in hardware, hibernation to disk may not be necessary, and it's easier to replace a webcam or something if you need to. I'd still check the graphics card, especially if it's an expensive one.

This is the weakest point of modern Linux - suspend/resuming not working properly on many machines. And the systemd-logind / inhibitor architecture makes it incredibly hard for non-technical users to opt out of suspend.

I think this is a wrong approach. These are the first two thoughts that come to mind: 1. A major reason for migrating from Windows 10 to Linux is avoiding e-waste and by encouraging others to acquire a device specifically for Linux causes more e-waste to be generated (I don't deny the benefits of picking special hardware, I just think this it something worth pointing out). 2. Linux generally has excellent hardware support in my experience and while not everything may be plug-and-play, it's usually easy to get it working. I've installed Linux on an old no-name laptop with really unusual hardware and while Windows required special drivers (which I couldn't find) for audio, webcam and wireless networking, with Linux all worked out of the box. Many issues with laptops running Linux have already been solved. You might find the Laptops category in the Arch Wiki [1] useful.

> A lot of minor display related issues (mostly involving using an external monitor as my main screen) were solved when I switched to Gnome on X11 instead of Wayland.

Display issues are indeed one of the weak points of Linux, frequently due to the need for proprietary graphics drivers which may not even be available on Linux. X11 is more stable in this regard, as it is way more mature, but Wayland is catching up quickly.

Linux isn't perfect and you can certainly improve your experience by preferring well-tested setups, but existing hardware can be brought back to life, which is important. Not everyone can afford new devices.

Personally I focused on reducing the boot time when the suspend never worked properly.

Any source for this? I grown on Atari, DOS and Windows. Most kids today are on mobile or consoles.

Linux does not need advertising, it is by far the best option from point of hardware selection, development, gaming and ease of use.

Our daughter initially had a Linux machine (also for the reasons you outlined). But she quickly ran into issues when doing work for school, collaborating with other kids, etc. So we gave her a Mac Mini M1. It was not very expensive, she can run many common apps (MS Office is a fact of life) and it's more secure (app sandboxing, sealed system volume, etc). But many of her skills are be transferrable to Linux if needed (in contrast to using an iPad or Android tablet).

My kids have kubuntu on some old laptops and will have linux everywhere. Hopefully it is ok to maintain that,I'm afraid of school forcing incompatible software

demonstrate how linux faithfully executes your commands when windows tells you its too dangerous or insecure.

I'm running Linux on five different machines, and two of them are portables: a ThinkPad Z13 and a GPD Win Mini 2024 - and have none of the issues you mentioned. In fact there's literally zero issues at all, I couldn't be any happier to be honest.

I primarily used Linux in various ways since Ubuntu 6.06, and every year it gets a little bit better, useful and stable, from my point of view at least. But I also moved to Arch some years ago, and CachyOS this year, so that might cloud my view on how well things work, and I also stopped using laptops, which makes Linux life a lot easier.