Perhaps for old time's sake. It used to be using its own engine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presto_(browser_engine)

There was a lot of BS advertising not long ago about it being a web browser "for gamers", whatever that means.

There is a good chance that this guy is a bit counter-cultural and does not want to use the obvious version of anything.

Look at the Windows mail client he tried to go with.

i enjoy being spyed on by china. and before the whataboutisim, i dont mind that the US or Canada spies on me.

I love Vivaldi, which is like a spiritual improvement on Opera. I switched a few years back, and once you get used to the UI and the key shortcuts it's just such a breeze using the internet. Magnificently customizable, very nice little extras. ALAS! Because Vivaldi is based on Opera which is based on Chromium and Google came out and started blocking or restricting addons (the implementation of Manifest v3 blocks a lot of API block requests that ad blockers rely on), I went back to Firefox. Because fuck that.

People were saying the exact same thing when I first started using Linux in 1999-ish

Granular permissioned access for apps from trusted supply chains is better than attempting deny lists based on signatures (AV).

I still use it, but I put way more effort into SLSA, securing containers, flatpaks, and limiting their blow back. From there its keeping up with CVEs in ways that do not create more or break functionality.

I will say A LOT of the Linux software ecosystem is was more secure than Window's default.

I don't think a Linux anti virus program would be such a big security win. Phishing is the biggest security threat to most users, and no amount of software can prevent that.

Sure, downloading and running random shit is a concern, but people in that group are a bit of a lost cause. The best solution for that is to harden the OS, prevent running executables through the GUI, or from user folders (I think SELinux could do that), disable sudo on the user account, and only allow installing Flatpaks. The security of Flathub may not be perfect, but it's a smaller attack surface than the whole internet.

But even if you do that, an Indian call center scam is still going to manipulate your grandma into buying Amazon gift cards, so... It's a lost cause.

There is virus protection for Linux if you really want it (both free and paid).

https://www.safetydetectives.com/best-antivirus/linux/

Why are we shouting?

Anyway, don't waste your time with "antivirus" software. That is not how you secure a system.

AV is a joke. Best thing is ephemerality. No persistence

Well yeah, you need to use Linux, the Linux way to make it secure.

If you are running VSCode as root after having logged into the DE as root and installing extensions willy-nilly, it won't matter that your RHEL has SELinux installed.

I agree that an email program is not Microsoft’s problem. However, there was a real issue there.

His point was that he knew how to easily use SSH to get around a badly behaved Linux GUI program that was monopolizing or disabling the UI. He did not know how to accomplish that on Windows.

As a Linux user, this scores points for me as it does highlight the flexibility, power, and control that Linux offers. It is also true that you have more power at the Linux command-line (even in a world with PowerShell) which is what SSH gives you access to.

That said, this article came across too much like “Windows does not work exactly like Linux and does not have all the things I love about Linux”. It also came across like a Linux expert being frustrated with a system he does not know as well.

We have had years of these kinds of articles slamming Linux when Windows people expect it to work exactly like Windows does. Those articles are dumb. We do not need to start filling the world with Linux versions of the same.

All of the stuff on this arrival is small time, first time run noise. Use it for a month and give an honest assessment of the pros and cons. What saved you time once the system was set up? What took longer? What entirely new capabilities got added to your workflow? What limitations were you just not able to overcome?

The two that I think are more systemic are OneDrive and Ads. Those are going to continue to drag on you long after the initial setup issues have faded into the background.

To me, it felt like an obvious imitation of the myriad of articles that often have someone try Linux out, shortly, and then – often with obvious not understanding or just a surface level insight – proudly and definitively stating (or, at least, subtextually implying) that Linux was interesting but clearly not ready to be a Real™ operating system, etc.

But it seems most didn't read it as that, either.

We have seen that a lot. It often ends with an article a lot like this.

That said, many, maybe even most Linux users started Windows users first. So, not everyone writes a snarky article and goes back.

I think a Windows user that is adventurous enough to try Linux is more likely to be pragmatic and open minded about it. They can push through basic issues like the ones raised in this article to get to the real experience underneath. Many of them like what they find enough to stick around.

But we get our fair share Linux sucks articles that are not better than this one.