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Discussion on: What type of computer do Linux Developers use?

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sjustesen profile image
Simon Justesen • Edited

I've been using mostly custom machines that I built myself. I also have a VPS @ DigitalOcean.
As hardware vendors often don't supply Linux drivers for their shiny new hardware, you have to find out which hardware what and what to stay away from. Therefore the best rate of success is to build something yourself or buy a new rig from a PC vendor that supports Linux.

My journey as a Linux user started a few years ago with a dualboot setup, Windows on one partition and Ubuntu on the other (in fact RedHat was the first, back in 1997, but I failed getting it to work).
As time went by, I found myself using Ubuntu more and more. Having used Windows for 25 years, moving away is a bit of a process. I think Windows 8 was the final nail in the coffin. Windows 10 is cool, but you spend waay too long time waiting for updates.

Nowadays Ubuntu is my primary system while Windows lives happily inside a Virtual Machine. That setup is rock solid. I do miss gaming from time to time. But it can't beat the freedom of having access to every bit of source code of your system (almost... NVidia only supplies their proprietary drivers in binary form)

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andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

Microsoft really made a mess with previous versions of Windows that converted many people to other OS's. Agreed Windows 10 is much better but its hard to convert people back after such a long time. Memories last forever good or bad.

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Simon Justesen

Yes, they do :) They should have offered both UIs alongside each other. That would have cost them less headache and users would be happy. But, well ... it's fun to try something new. I didn't know the concept behind tiling window managers like i3 before I started using Linux. It's a godsend feature, which helps me focus.