A Linux User Reminds Himself Why He Stopped Using Windows

The Windows taskbar displays only icons. Maybe that works for you. Personally, I prefer seeing Windows XP-style names of programs in the taskbars. It just helps me keep track of what I have open more easily. That’s how Ubuntu does it (with GNOME Classic installed).

There’s no easy-to-access terminal. OK. This one’s not really a problem with Windows as much as a reflection of my personal preference. Most users don’t want to work through the terminal. But one of the things I have come to love about Ubuntu is how I can quickly open a terminal and run some quick commands to complete a task that would take much longer when done using the mouse. Want to move all the PDF files in one directory to another one? You can do that in a few keystrokes on the command line. I suppose you could do this in Windows, too, but the Windows CLI is arguably much less user-friendly, and it takes longer to open.

Windows endlessly nags me about registering. The Windows virtual machine image I downloaded is supposed to be a trial for use by developers. If you want to run it permanently, you need to register. I get that. But since first boot the system has nagged me to no end about registering. It pops up boxes all the time telling me to register, or warning that I may be a victim of “software counterfeiting” (which is rich, because, again, I obtained this image perfectly legally from Microsoft’s own site). I know that if I actually registered, this annoyance would go away. But I like that on Linux, I never get bothered about registering — or warned that I need to update my registration and so on. I can spend my time actually doing work instead of clicking boxes telling me to register.

It reboots when it feels like it. This is definitely the most annoying part of my recent Windows experience. The system reboots itself periodically, presumably to install updates. Sometimes a tiny pop-up appears warning me that it’s going to reboot, and asking if I want to postpone. If I miss the pop-up, then the system will reboot suddenly while I am in the middle of working. It’s a tremendously obnoxious feature. In contrast, Ubuntu usually manages to apply updates without requiring a reboot at all. On the rare occasion that it does want to reboot — which generally only happens after a kernel update — it patiently waits until I give it permission. Ubuntu has never rebooted on me while I am in the middle of working.