I’ve been using Linux exclusively for about 8 years. Recently I got frustrated with a bunch of issues that popped one after another. I had a spare SSD so I decided to check out Windows again. I’ve installed Windows 11 LTSC. It was a nightmare. After all the years on Linux, I forgot how terrible Windows actually is.
On the day I installed the system and a bunch of basic software, I had two bluescreens. I wasn’t even doing anything at that time, just going through basic settings and software installation. Okay, it happens. So I installed Steam and tried to play a game I’ve been currently playing on Linux just to see the performance difference. And it was… worse, for some reason. The “autodetect” in game changed my settings from Ultra to High. On Linux, the game was running at the 75 fps cap all the time. Windows kept dropping them to around 67-ish a lot of times. But the weirdest part was actual power consumption and the way GPU worked. Both systems kept the GPU temperature at around 50C. But the fans were running at 100% speed at that temperature on Windows, while Linux kept them pretty quiet. I had to change the fan controls by myself on Windows just because it was so annoying. The power consumption difference was even harder to explain, as I was getting 190-210W under Linux and under Windows I got 220-250W. And mind you, under Linux I had not only higher graphical settings set up, but was also getting better performance.
I tried connecting my bluetooth earbuds to my PC. Alright, the setup itself was fine. But then the problems started. My earbuds support opus codec for audio. Do you think I can change the bluetooth codec easily, just like on Linux? Nope. There is no way to do it without some third party programs. And don’t even get me started on Windows randomly changing my default audio output and trying to play sound through my controller.
Today I decided to make this rant-post after yet another game crashed on me twice under Windows. I bought Watch Dogs since it’s currently really cheap on Steam. I click play. I get the loading screen. The game crashed. I try again. I play through the basic “tutorial”. After going out of the building, game crashed again. I’m going to play again, this time under Linux.
I’ve had my share of frustrations under Linux, but that experience made me realise that Windows is not a perfect solution either. Spending a lot of time with Linux and it’s bugs made me forget all the bad experience in the past with Windows, and I was craving to go back to the “just works” solution. But it’s not “just works”. Two days was all it took for me to realize that I’ll actually stick with Linux, probably forever. The spare SSD went back to my drawer, maybe so I can try something new in the future. It’s so good to be back after a short trip to the other side!
Welcome back to sanity
I’d summarize the current OS situation as
Windows Just Works until it doesn’t, at which point there’s basically nothing you can do about it and you just have to kick it until something clicks into place and it starts working properly again.
Whereas linux Just Works to a slightly smaller degree, but when it stops Just Working it does so in granular steps most of the time, and every part of the ecosystem tries to help you fix things when they break.
Windows is a resin-potted black box that takes input and does stuff, if it breaks you’re supposed to just chuck it and buy a new one.
Linux is a slightly bulkier thing that you can just unscrew and replace a capacitor when it breaks.Only if you refuse to put forth the same effort into fixing windows as you do with Linux. Not wanting to learn doesn’t mean it’s not learnable.
Have a different experience. Usually, Linux does not even boot, due to driver issues, in the first place. So, the first installation process usually easily takes 5 to 10 hours, straight. And this is only for common popular distributions, not to mention lesser known and lesser supported ones. (Talking about Linux GUI based installations, only.)
I almost never had Linux not boot after a fresh install, even with nVidia hardware. It happened a few times like 10 years ago and never again. What hardware are you running?
Happened to me all the time, when, for example, setting up very generic and common laptops for family & friends. It never worked out of the box. Every single time, I had to give special treatment. Research extra drivers, etc… Hard to do in some locations, when they do not have a second system to do all the work from.
Laptops have historically been a little iffy yeah. Personally I haven’t had many issues except for Nvidia optimus, but since most of them are non standard and proprietary it used to be kind of a pain. Now though it’s much better, at least on newer hardware, even my newest laptop with hybrid graphics just worked out of the box.
Lol “the main computer market is iffy”
Historically, yeah. Nowadays (as in the last 2-3 years) I don’t really see many issues. It’s fairly solid in my experience.
And let’s be honest, Windows is a nightmare as well on many laptops. If you wipe them and start from scratch, there is a non zero chance that you’ll have to source like half the drivers manually.
To get to a working state you’re very likely to be fine. They’re all using Intel wifi and some elan touchpad, so the basics work well enough to bootstrap up to your vendors website.
For this hypothetical activity most people never think about doing.
Tried it over many years. Last one was last year. Every time, the same problem. I even considered moving to Windows, but it would be tougher for me to administrate for me, as I’m used to headless Linux. It’s just, whenever Linux tries to GUI, it fucks up everything colossaly.
I just don’t see it. I run it on all my PCs with nvidia, amd, hybrid graphics, pretty much any combination (I have too many 😅). It works. Even various friends of mine have tried it on their older setups, no problems there either.
Unless you’re using something like Debian or whatever with crazy old packages, everything works for the most part. Nvidia is still not great on Wayland but it at least works now.
I’m not saying your experience isn’t valid, I’m not trying to gaslight you, but I’m not sure it’s representative of the average experience nowadays.
What PCs? Certified by some Linux supporting company? If you buy a random laptop or pre-made PC, chances are high, that it won’t work. And I’m not even a “beginner”, who does “beginner” mistakes. No, I’m actually a Linux pro. I work with Linux literally every single day, even in my free time.
yeah no i’m sorry but this just sounds completely fucking made up
What do you need as proof? All I have to do, is getting a random laptop, doesn’t matter which one and I will make a video for you. Is that enough?
Over the past 5 years, I’ve installed ubuntu about 30 times on different computers. Not once has an install on an SSD taken me more than an hour, with it typically taking me 30 minutes or less except for rare occasions where I’ve messed something up.
It’s not about the speed of the installation… It’s about the installation not working. Crashes. Hard to see error logs. Drivers missing for the most generic hardware, ever. No, I’m not talking about an unmaintained fringe distribution. I’m talking about Ubuntu, Lubuntu & Debian. Plain old stable and simple.
What Linux distro are you using share Bluetooth and audio “just works”?
Probably the DE more than the distro, for me Bluetooth has “just worked” under KDE
I can’t relate to this at all.
We use windows machines as software developers at work and really have no issues at all. Never had a bluescreen in these two years.
I use windows at home to play Factorio, Minecraft, and RDR2. Again, never had an issue. No blue screens. I turn it on open steam and play my games then turn it off when done.
I tried Linux again cause I got sucked in by this echo chamber and that did not go well at all. I explicitly said I don’t want to have to be a nerd in my free time to manage Linux which I was assured isn’t the case. Then one day I turn it on and have no sound and no idea why it just died. I swiftly removed Linux and went back to windows.
I do use Linux for servers for Jellyfin and stuff and I like it for those things, but me personally have had a better experience using windows and I can’t understand all these people against it.
Yep, I have used Linux since 2017 after W10 just made everything slower for home use and work. I have been using W11 for work lately, and it sucks. The office16/root/vfs/ProgramFilesCommonX64(86)/office16/ai.exe and aimgr.exe keep hogging resources in task manager and bogging down the system when ever I try to get work done. Deleteing those files helps but they come back after updates, so for now I created two empty text files and changed the filename and extensions to match the deleted files, so far that has kept updates from reinstalling those ai files
My main issue with Windows isn’t its technology, but its attitude. The user is no longer the most important consideration. In that way it’s become adversarial.
Yes. I prefer my os to be more passively adversarial. Like Gentoo. It hates everything equally.
Now I’m imagining an angry Gentoo penguin snapping at fingers any time someone wants to use their PC 😅
As somebody who works in IT at a Windows-only environment, I know exactly what you mean.
I have to fight with Windows on a weekly basis. Driver issues, firmware issues, software crashes/lockups, performance issues, etc etc.
Just this week, I have two users experiencing issues with their monitors. Identical enterprise grade laptops, identical drivers, identical docking stations, all totally up to date on Windows 11. Their old Windows 10 computers worked fine. Still trying to figure out what’s wrong.
The Windows 24H2 update broke my Bluetooth audio, the sound is completely messed up and makes the system lag a bit. Uninstalled the update, Bluetooth works. The update automatically installed itself again after a few weeks and broke it again but I can no longer uninstall it for some reason.
@feddup @Lettuceeatlettuce Sadly the Debian 12 update did the same to me. I fixed it and it stays fixed. But its annoying nevertheless.
I have an ongoing irritation with windows (use it for work, Linux at home): It steals focus from the window you’re using if another window opens.
Drives me nuts. I’ll be typing my password and pop! Oh look I just typed my password into something else that popped up because IT requires this program to run on login today.
KDE is much better about not stealing window focus like that.
Mac os is pretty bad with that bullshit too
I had to set up an app on Wine + macOS, the app spawns bg processes that have a window (on Wine, not on Windows) for some reason and each time that happens the main window app loses focus. Couldn’t solve it. On Linux + Plasma Wayland the problem is inverse ie. even the main window doesn’t have an icon on taskbar, if you minimize it you can restore with only Alt + Tab.
What windows are you having randomly pop up? That might be width investigating because that shouldn’t be happening.
Say I print something, and it’s going to take 5 minutes, I go and work on an email or something, and the save dialog pops up and what I’m typing for the email starts going into/overwrites the save name. Hate it.
I’m not trying to be difficult but I genuinely don’t follow. I print and write emails at work all the time and cannot relate.
Maybe I should have specified print to PDF.
It sounds like you might have some network places set up for windows to use but that are no longer reachable (or something along those lines) because that shouldn’t be taking so long so you might have things timing out in the background.
Or your internet is slow and it’s taking a long time to communicate with one drive or send its screenshots of your document to their creep department.
Or maybe a print driver that no longer exists still has an orphaned entry in the registry and it spends some time trying to locate it.
Or malware has set up hooks for any new window that pops up but the print to pdf dialog is set up in such a way that it churns very inefficiently on that window specifically.
I joke but any one of those might actually be what’s going on.
Heh thanks, but it’s just that I’m printing 2000+sqft of high res pdfs from many gigs of files at a time.
They’re things like drive mapping scripts, stuff like that. They’re definitely normal for our setup. Just not sure why they have to interrupt me!
Well, Windows was never perfect. People just got used to its shenanigans. They tend to meddle with bullshit registry yet somehow basic commands on Linux is too complicated.
In windows’ defense, the “complication” comes from the fact that there is no constant visual display of the filesystem structure in a terminal window like there is in the Windows registry.
That said, taking an hour to become comfortable with the terminal is not a difficult task. Understanding
~, and constantly usingdf -handls -al(for me anyway) will help a lot of people figure it out.
Yeah when I see people say that gaming on Linux “isn’t there yet” I have to wonder how long it’s been since they’ve tried. And people who install Windows on their Steam Deck? Don’t get it.
people who install Windows on their Steam Deck?
I see this way too often, nearly half of the 2nd hand Decks sold here have Windows🤷♂️
Yep. The difference is simply put just ppl are used to the quirks on Windows but not on Linux.
How to install an application on Windows
- You hear about some application
- You google the application name
- You get a bunch of links
- You click the first one (and hope it’s valid and not hijacked by malware ads)
- You scan the webpage to find the correct download button (and hope it’s not an ad link)
- Download the application
- Double-click the application.exe
- Windows UAC pops up which you have to allow
- Install start and you click next, next, next (You hope the installer does not change your homepage or install some browser toolbar)
- Installation finished
Windows is so much easier /s
How to install the app on Linux.
You search for it. Highly likely it is not available or barely functional.
IF it works, it’s only packaged for Ubuntu, Debian and Arch. If you use Nix or something even more niche, good luck with proprietary software or sometimes even openly available open source software.
Or, you DO find it, but it’s glitchy/outdated (I think there was an issue with Steam). Or you search for the program, find the website, download a .tar.gz, wonder what the hell is this double extension abomination, double click it, doesn’t work, look it up, apparently it’s a type of container like a zip and not a basic program like an exe and instead of using the GUI like a normal person you have to type “tar -xcv” or something that might as well be black magic (I can’t even remember the correct letters), then to actually install you have to find the magic “make” “sudo make install” command, and it still fails.
Much easier to double click the .exe, accept the license agreement, and hit continue a few times.
In my experience as well, fedora just works more than windows. Games work and run better without crashing. No bsods. No needing to manually start drivers for my tablet and restart my DAC.
Only thing windows has is coherent one release and exclusives in terms of a few softwares. Like adobe which is a scam now.
And the second advantage will vanish with more people on linux.
My exact experience too. Fedora “just works”. I especially like the immutable varieties for even more “just works (and continues to just works)-iness”
I have been using Nobara and Bazzite, both Fedora spins, and they are working great.
Level1tech was reviewing the Ryzen 9950X/9900X and he noted how performance on Windows was wildly inconsistent depending on peculiar settings such as sidestepping security features and marking apps to run as administrator (aka also sidestepping windows security features) yet on Linux you can get better performance via Proton OOTB.
Linux has its quirks too but people kid themselves when they convince themselves that the dozens of weird tasks and apps and tweaks they make to Windows are “plug and play” compared to Linux, which in my experience has been way less tweaking.
The main tweaks I’ve done on linux usually include installing ROG-control-center (optional laptop faff) or cryotweaks on Steamdeck (which just sets some sensible options already enabled on most distros)
Now imagine Linux with
mitigations=offThat’s the thing, though. I don’t have to turn off mitigations on Linux. And I don’t even think it’s possible to disable the very same mitigations in Windows - Windows itself is just a super inconsistent platform for software benchmarking.
In fact, whenever I’ve found benchmarks it’s not that much of a benefit, especially as the mitigations get more optimised with time.
In my experience, a stable beginner friendly distro such as mint, is 10x closer to “just working” but…
I do think that the windos DE tends to be more reliable than any linux DE I have tested. The only DE that compares is gnome, which I find very very stable (but I hate it)
I think that non-technical people are just used to a simple playbook of:
- GUI is rarely the issue, so you never need to see the terminal.
- If there is an issue, restart
- If that didn’t work, ask for help from your local techy
And for linux step 3 usually doesn’t work because your local techy is probably someone who just knows how to google and paste into cmd.
I think problems that could be solved are generic hardware compatibility. Being able to install Wi-Fi adapters and Digital Tokens easily on Linux would go a long way. I think it will get there, though.
Wifi works great on every distro I tried
BCM4360 doesn’t work reliably for me even to this day
I just reinstalled and configured Windows for a friend who’s machine was hacked, so my frustration with Microsoft is very fresh. (She lost 8 thousand dollars of her savings she’s still trying to get back.) After years of using Linux I feel like I’m being punished every time I help someone with their Windows machine.
/Rant
These things in particular drive me nuts:
- Sending everything users do and type (including passwords) back to Microsoft. It’s called spyware when other companies do it. It should be called spyware when it’s an OS called Microsoft Windows.
- Flooding 1/2 the screen with web search results when a search is done from the start menu. I’m looking for an installed program, not a potato recipe.
- Requiring a registry edit to turn that web search off and lots of other simple things that use to be configurable in settings.
- Placing ads throughout the operating system and making it difficult to turn those ads off.
- Forcing the use of the Edge browser no matter what users choose.
- Preventing the removal of unwanted programs without editing the registry.
- Forced updates at Microsoft’s convenience.
- Absurdly long restart times after updating.
- Forced OS version upgrades.
- Reverting settings that have been changed by the user to settings that directly benefit Microsoft’s sales and marketing goals.
- Forced restarts of the operating system causing data loss and the loss of millions of hours of work for millions of users.
- Removing more and more user settings with each new OS release.
- Burying commonly used menu items multiple menus deep.
- Preventing the removal of Start menu items. I will never use the Xbox Game Bar no matter how many time I’m forced to see it.
/
That sucks about your friend. I can relate.
Scammers hacked my elderly mother on her windows laptop. They tricked her with an ad saying there was a problem with her computer, and they had her install remote access software. She mentioned seeing the terminal so I assumed they installed (at least) a keylogger. Luckily, they either ran out of time, or their con took two days, but they said they were going to call my mom the next day and have her log in to the bank to make sure her computer was still working.
So, I wiped her computer and installed Linux Mint with auto updates set up. She only had one simple question about logging in to google chrome and that’s been it for the last month. She has just been using it no problem.
Side note: The next day the scammers had the nerve to call my mom and ask her why her computer was turned off.
Forcing upgrades at Microsoft’s convenience.
This is the only one I agree with. Upgrades are necessary for security, it’s just a fact of life.
On my kid’s laptop I was holding Windows 11 24H2 back because of Recall, but this week it just decided to install itself. Now it’s a Linux laptop.
FYI: Recall is delayed and will only work on specific arm computers anyway. So you weren’t in at any immediate risk. Not arguing against installing Linux though. That’s great!
will only work on specific arm computers anyway.
For now.
