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!
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)
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
This isn’t a Windows issue - this is an Office issue
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.
I’ve had an issue where nvidia drivers stopped working. For half a day while the update was rolling in. Thankfully linux has super easy rollback feature that automagically activates when you force restart using the power button.
Seriously, ever since I went to “shitty, always broken tinkerers toy not a real os for real people” linux, I have not had to use the switch on my psu. Seems it’s literally only there for windows.
Fedora Linux has been the most stable OS in my experience, having used Windows XP to 10 and switching to Linux before 11 came out. I can leave it on for literally weeks on end and the memory never randomly fills up, nor does it get more and more glitchy/crash prone as you leave it on, both of which I have experienced on Windows.
In my experience, Fedora tends to be what a lot of developers settle on after distro hopping. This is by no way universal and RedHat has issues. But at some point, the OS and desktop environment become background noise compared to your own code and IDE. Younger people probably have different preferences — and they should — but you get more experienced and you have your setup. If my laptop dies, I can get back to coding quicker with Fedora than any other distro and it’s almost always stable.
In the end, a computer is a tool and being skilled with an old tool can be better than being new to a more modern tool. I still use the same brand/type power drill that I used in high school/college when I worked construction in the summers. (Dewalt and I’d rather the old 18v but they switched to 20v. I have an adapter to charge either battery, though, so it’s fine.)
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.
Good call. I’ve had to use Windows on work computers for the last 15 years, and I think it’s insane when people talk about it being simple or just working. I feel like I’m being gaslighted by people who maybe don’t know Linux very well so they decided Windows is good actually.
It appears to be all held together with string and ready to crumble randomly.
We keep one Windows laptop in our house so my partner can use some proprietary software she needs for work. When something goes wrong we just reimage it with the HP support tool because otherwise trying to fix it is like pulling your own teeth out.
I work in IT supporting windows (server primarily) and from my perspective it does work pretty well. We have around 1500 Windows clients and around 400-500 Windows servers and it works pretty damn well. Sure problems happen, in general it does work. Now, I don’t work in T1 support so I’m not sure how often people have problems but I would definitely hear about it if it were as bad as some on Lemmy claim.
Our Windows Servers in general work great, I don’t think we have noticeably more problems with them compared to our Linux servers which we have maybe 20% more of.
Remember that pretty much the entire enterprise world use primarily or exclusively Windows clients and that would absolutely not be the case if they were “held together with string and ready to crumble randomly.” That would simply not be acceptable in companies which could lose millions in just lost productivity.
Relax, mate. I’m not trying to take away your Windows Server. Just talking about how bad windows is from end user perspective… absolute rubbish, barely usable, nearly impossible to troubleshoot.
I’m glad you get along with it from your IT professional/server admin role.
I get what you are saying, and Windows is absolutely frustrating at times but so is Linux and especially MacOS.
I’m no developer but I do really get that Windows isn’t the best suited OS for some development work, but calling it barely usable in general is just ridiculous.
It’s certainly not impossible to troubleshoot either. You just need to learn it, like how you have to learn any OS.
I won’t argue that it isn’t rubbish, that’s fair enough. There is a lot of bullshit with Windows and Microsoft
The main reason Linux clients are largly missing in most IT environments is that managing it on a scale comparable to Windows clients is hard. Afaik there isn’t a great way to push out configuration, policies, certificates. And making it all be seamless.
Unmanaged windows clients might be quite bad, but together with stuff like active directory it just works really well for authentication and is part of a good ecosystem that in general just works. The various admin tools for Active Directory are quite annoying to use since they haven’t been developed in years and are missing obvious features. Fortunately you can just use Powershell.
I really really wish Linux were better in these enterprise aspects, I wish we could pivot more to Linux for all users or at least for those that don’t need specialized software like CAD. There is a large possibility that the majority of our users would riot if we did that though.
For the record I personally like Linux a lot and would absolutely run exclusively Linux if windows wasn’t my work. I will probably get my home pc on Linux someday, but I haven’t yet because it’s simply just so much easier for me to fix Windows when it breaks compared to fixing Linux which always turns into a huge rabbit hole for me. It’s also just in general annoying to switch OS since I have TBs of data on it.
That’s because of active directory. It makes managing hundreds of users, across as many devices, in a centralized manner, easier. You make a user for the person with the intended access scheme, hand them a random laptop imaged from a master system OS, and off they go with access to all the software and tools tied to their user login. There’s no similar alternative with a robust support service for Linux clients. If there were, then changing a culture to Linux clients wouldn’t have so much friction.
Yes absolutely! Active directory is very powerful
Welcome back to sanity
i setup my old job with linux internally. never had issues. day i quit boss told me to install windows so he can find a replacement employee. sure.
3 years later. boss wants me back. they’ve had nothing but problems. but i’m not allowed to install linux again.
he says, “if windows didn’t have so many problems you would be out of a job.”
Yea, I have to use windows at work presently and I hate every second of fighting with it.
Windows doesn’t even have a fully functional implementation of focusing windows on hover, a common feature of any Linux system WM I have ever used. There is a setting to do this in Windows accessibility settings, and it’s true, it DOES change focus on hover; but it DOESN’T change the functionality of foreground windows getting pushed behind those windows, making it pretty much pointless, and actually more annoying to use.
Also just the performance is such shit, probably because it’s now designed to be doing hundreds of unnecessary telemetry tasks at all time on the back end. Also what the fuck is with every piece of Windows software configuring itself to run on boot or as a service? So incredibly annoying.
It’s interesting seeing the variety of experiences in this thread. I definitely had to fight Linux to get it setup and stable on my machine, but ever since then it’s been rock solid in a way I’ve never experienced with a Windows install.
Windows has a mind of its own…and being at the mercy of their update cadence or w/e other nonsense Microsoft is pushing sucks.
Meanwhile on Linux, I’ve had two CPUs that have C-State/P-State issues (5900x, 1700x), some weirdness with my audio interface, and a GPP0 bug that interferes with sleep. All of them are fixed or managed on Bazzite now, and it took plenty of digging for docs/reddit threads but now it’s rock solid.
On Windows, any time I’ve needed to deal with the Microsoft Store I run into issues that require registry fixes, uninstall/reinstalling various things, etc. Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 5 had issues launching as a result on Windows but not on Linux.
Ultimately, not being under the Microsoft gun is such a relief that the initial battle is completely put out of my mind. I’ve had some instances where I’ll boot into Windows for games, or HDR/Atmos support more reliably for my living room setup, but they have gotten rarer and rarer over the past couple of months.
For the record, Sea Of Thieves is also available as a standalone purchase through Steam, bypassing the Microsoft Store and their half abandoned UWP format entirely. Never had any issues with the Steam version on Windows.
Honestly I think this may have happened on the Steam version for me, I ended up reinstalling on Linux same-day and didnt have the same issue.
IIRC it had something to do with the Xbox Game Bar/App registry entries that still applied to the Steam version. I had definitely used the UWP version before though, so it’s possible it was that or that had contributed.
But downloading it on Bazzite and just having it work was…a little bizarre to experience.
The microsoft store sells games? I thought that was only used to occasionally update your xbox for pc controllers by grabbing the xbox accessories app. Never seen the microsoft store otherwise.
I think the Xbox App somewhat serves content through the Microsoft Store, I definitely had to troubleshoot between the two for a couple things.
They do sell games as well. I think I got an episode of the Batman Telltale series through it for free, though much like Epic managing an additional library with less features/support is usually not worth it for me.
Ah sorry, guess I should have tagged it as sarcastic.
Does Sea of Thieves work on Linux? I thought it had kernel anti-cheat.
Sea of thieves has been working on Linux for years, and really well. I regularly play it on both my Linux gaming rig and on my Steam Deck, it runs awesome on both.
It works! Looks like some people have run into issues with EAC but it worked without finicking around for me.
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 😅
All operating systems suck, some just suck harder than others.
Yeah that’s hard to see when i have to boot windows for work every weekday.
The issues are the little things, like 300ms lag here or there where things are instant on Linux. Or the flashing taskbar icon when an app wants your attention. Or the obfuscated settings. Or the ‘everything is an edge applet’. Or the cpu fans racing to send data back and forth with MS services. (Seriously try simplewall sometime. It’s scary to see the connections, and blocking them makes your computer silent)
Booting into Linux at the end of the day is such a relief every single time.
Eh, Gentoo is pretty quiet most of the time once you’ve got it installed. After that, you just have to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn’t go off its meds (although once every few years, it will come up with a weird and wonderful way of doing so that you can’t block.)
Windows is fine for me. I work with it all day long too. But yeah Windows is just another enshitification product.
My work just changed from gsuite to m365 and it is atrocious. Obviously fuck google but god damn if microsoft arent just the worst at designing UI and considering actual consumer concerns when dsigning programs. Quit your job if they change to office.
It’s definitely an abusive relationship.
In that way it’s become adversarial.
Back in the 2000s, I was able to say that while a fundamental install took only about a half hour to set up, usability tweaks and a full fleshing out of functionality took another 4-8 hours depending on what the user was going to use the machine for.
I just did a Win11 24h2 install. It took nearly 24 working hours before I considered it even minimally functional for my needs. Cycling through Win10Privacy two or three times was particularly frustrating. Registry work alone took me a good 8-10 hours of trying stuff a step at a time and then rebooting to see how it worked.
At this point, the only reason why I am still running with a Windows rig is for those half-dozen programs that don’t have appropriate non-Windows variants. It’s why I’m also running a Mac Mini and an OpenSUSE tower through the same 4-port, 6-head KVM.
Indeed it is difficult to hammer it in to shape. In addition, Microsoft will often quietly reset setting back in their favour. It’s that constant fight that tipped the scales for me.
Put it in a VM?
That still doesn’t solve 99.9% of my issues, it just tries to solve a problem for which I already have a solution actively in-place: a KVM.
i almost forget how much it sucks whenever i’m not forced to use it for a while.
I just installed Linux Mint yesterday. Can’t wait to get home to continue playing around with it. I like it so far!
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.
Most of the time, the package is available on the standard package manager which makes the process extremely simple. Hardest part is knowing the package name. If you know
apt search, you don’t even have to search on the browser to find the package name. But certain packages are only available as tar.gz or as source. But those are usually not encountered by newbies.If someone is using Nix, they generally don’t have trouble finding packages. Also, Nix has more packages compared to AUR.
apt searchis very inefficient. It outputs way too many results and at least 8/10 times, I search for a keyword related to the package, which is not in the package name or description itself, so the package does not show up for me.Searching online is better, but still crap. I work a lot with Container Images, Alpine etc. professionally and in my free time. Searching for the right Alpine package is always a huge pain in the ass.
Less is more. Nix has lots of packages, but they are barely maintained. For fun, I set up a Kubernetes cluster on NixOS a couple of years back. Had it “running” until last month. Long story short: Kubernetes is broken on NixOS. There are several open GitHub issues since years and nobody fixes them, because not enough people care to fix Kubernetes for NixOS.
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.
Tbf, winget is a god sent and works surprisingly well, took them what? 30 years to get it done?!
winget is everything which Windows fanboys are against. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic (terminals ftw). However, I remember people often smirked about the fact that in Linux you have to type commands to install something and the GUI method is much superior.
I think you were being biased.
- You heard the name of the software
- You search on Google, which takes you to their official website
- You click on the download button and download it
- Double click on the file and follow the on-screen guide to finished the installation
To your conscious brain, it might seem like 4 steps. But we are doing a lot more in reality because install process is second nature to us (Because of several years of usage).
If you tell someone who has never used a Windows PC to install a software and my list is more accurate.
- Forgot scan app with virus total
- Investigate if hits are false positives
- Get frustrated and run exe any way
Exactly. It took me 4 hours a couple months ago to get a scanner to work on our Windows 11 PC. It turns out there was some Windows Image Acquisition service built in that had to be disabled because it was conflicting with the driver of the scanner. Absolute insanity lmao
I told one of my friends about this since my friends sometimes tease me about using Linux, their response was get a better scanner.
lol
Literally the same story happened on Linux in the span of decades countless times. On Windows? Cannot remember this happening more than once.
Just today I logged into a Workstation at work, just to see 2 versions of Teams being auto launched. And no, no one installed 2 Versions, it was Windows.
Third party licensed apps are everything on Windows.
