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0 pointsllimllib2y ago0 comments

> As mentioned earlier, it'd have applied to MSIE in 2005 as well.

What's funny is, I was around in 2005 and had already adopted Firefox well before it was called Firefox. (I was also around for the release of IE 4, and spent half a day downloading it on our 56k modem on release day! Exciting times.)

That's because the web is what I work on, and I am OK taking on buggy/beta stuff in the web domain because I learn useful things.

In the OS space, I was a linux user for a decade before I realized that I was wasting tremendous amounts of time and energy debugging stuff very like this monitor issue, and getting no transferable benefit out of it.

I switched to mac at the time, and have experienced vastly less of this sort of configuration nightmare since.

I love linux and I root for it, and occasionally I still try to switch again, before I end up having to figure out this sort of issue that just empirically doesn't exist on my mac, then I get sad and switch back.

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sho_hn2y ago

I think that's fine and a respectable choice. I think it's even OK to argue that Windows has a value prop as a paid product because MS spends more effort on HW-specific quirks handling, or arguments along those lines.

Still, I think it does matter what's technically going on and where the fault lies. I also think that just like browser diversity, OS diversity is a net positive for the enforcement of good standards that makes things work better for users overall.

For example, I'm willing to bet (and it's because I know cases of it :-) that many PC peripherals work better on Macs because Linux existing has made HW-manufacturers more standards-conscious than a Windows-only world would have, especially since so many HW/embedded engineers run it.

> I was wasting tremendous amounts of time and energy debugging stuff very like this monitor issue, and getting no transferable benefit out of it

You got me there - in my case it lead to a career of making cars, phones, game consoles and other stuff running Linux, so I guess the over-under on the direct utility shakes out a bit differently here :-)

That said, it's been a very long time since I've done any fiddling/debugging to make any HW work privately. Ironically, I've had a lot more issues making HW work correctly on the M1 Mac I also have, e.g. my (quirky) Bluetooth earbuds work a lot better on PipeWire than macOS ...

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