Dealing with a crisis of confidence

[PendragonUK]

This is going to be long and rambling...

I'm guessing I'm older than most here, in my early fifties. I have been a computer enthusiast/hobbyist since I was around 16 and my dad came home with a Sinclair ZX81 in the early eighties. I have seen home computing grow from those early enthusiast days to what we have now, omnipresent computers.

Since those early days I have always been a computer gamer, it was my dad that was into programing, I just wanted to play. Even now I'm in a gaming clan and play regularly. The same bunch of guys since for the last 15 years or so. Sunday night, chatting on teamspeak, a drink and having a laugh with my buddys.

I first started looking with Linux in the mid/late nineties. I would not consider myself an expert, just a user. I know enough to install and maintain a Linux system. I'm more a hardware guy than software.

As a PC gamer and Linux user I would dual boot, or have a couple of systems. I have always had to balance these two worlds. Taking a pragmatic view on the subject, and avoiding the religious fervor many have. However Windows 10 pushed me over the edge, Microsoft were behaving in a way I found difficult to stomach.

So back in November 2015 I wiped my system and ran Linux only. For the first time since DOS there was no Microsoft in my life.

Things were good, a general smugness and certain knowledge that I was on the right side of the argument. Taking a stand and all that. I could get 99% of the things I wanted to do done. After little over a year I discovered that that missing 1% became more and more important. Not being able to play the games I wanted. Not being able to play the same games my buddies were playing. I recently bought a Steam Controller and Steam Link in the last sale. It should have worked out of the box, it didn't. I knew I could faff about and make it work. However this just highlighted in my mind an issue I had with Linux, at times it a lot of faff! Things that ordinarily should just work, don't. Most do, but some don't and you have to learn to live without them.

So it's not you, it's me...

I started writing this last night on Linux and finished it this morning on Windows 7.

Windows was a total bugger to install, updates, drivers and installing software. It drives me mad that Windows is such a dog at times. It may be several days before everything is to my liking. Unlike a Linux system that would install in 15 minutes and configure in an hour. But I played Dayz this morning, I have not played that in over a year. I'll be having a look at Battlefield 4 in a bit, that will be fun.

Could I have done this with hardware pass through? Of course I could. That is an awful lot of faffing about and I feel tired, worn down. Standing alone holding the torch in my stand against the almighty Microsoft and it's new business plan. It's a bit like pissing in the wind. I feel like I have let the side down, more than a little disappointed in myself.

"All OS's suck, just that Linux sucks less." I still believe this to be true, but I'm done. I'm taking a break, some time off. At least until this feeling of being a martyr subsides or I become so pissed off by Windows that I try again to go 100% Linux.

[Zibob]

Nah I think that you hit the balance. Or at least close to it.

Right now I am all windows 8.1 and when next hardware upgrade comes I will be running Linux as a primary OS, but wildows will live on, hopefully in a hardware pass through but more likely and also possibly in parallel as a second IE to dual boot into with hardware access.

I would like to go Linux primary and windows just for games really, a super pared down win install solely to play games and nothing else running in a VM, but like you I have mentally run through the process and there will be issues. It will be a hassle to set up but hopefully once there I can more or less leave the VM alone and only fire it up when non native games are needed.

With that in mind though the plan is to dual and VM windows at the same time. When the VM Is being shitty I can just take the 15 seconds or so and hard reboot back to actual windows for my games. So Linux windows windows install.

Edit you ain't let shit down. You made the most effort possible and then made a solution.

[Zoltan]

I was never a huge gamer, and have so many things to do and see that I don't really have time for mass entertainment, so my use case scenario is not so typical I guess.

I was always a DOS user, even during the Win3.11 days, even though I had Windows 3.11/95/98/Me, I never used it because it was standing in the way for what I wanted to do. WP 5.1, Harvard Graphics, dBaseIII+, etc.., was more than enough fluff for my taste, I mainly needed custom code.

In the nineties, I switched to linux as a student because I couldn't afford anything else, it's a simple as that. In fact, it took me until 1996 to be able to afford linux, as linux required 80386 CPU's and faster, and I was still on 80286+80287 and it did everything I needed.

I have always followed up on Windows and MacOS/OSX to be able to solve technical problems with those operating systems, because that was always a thing: as simple as the linux solution often was, the situation in a hybrid environment always got complicated pretty fast because of proprietary code and solutions that did not aim at making things simpler, but exactly the contrary.

I still don't really use Windows now except to be able to hack together solutions for problems that clients have. My company provides open source platform independent software to clients that buy our services and solutions, but we do also require certain hardware to function in order for products to work. Sadly not everybody can enjoy the simplicity of linux, so we have to know how to solve the problems with commercial software consoles too.

I'm also never bored, so I don't go looking for "enhanced graphics" or "new storyline" or any of the other things with which new games are sold. If I want to have a bit of fun with friends, I will probably rather start up a red eclipse server quickly and get things over with, because any problem solving and driver updating time is substracted from the fun time, and I don't have too much of that anyway. FPS games are FPS games are FPS games to me, I don't care enough to sacrifice tons of time and money and privacy and human rights in commercial software console options. Red Eclipse or any other open source Cube/Quake spin-off or clone is entertaining enough for me, and in just a few secs it can be configured any way I want it, open source games offer the equivalent experience of many closed source games because of that configuration freedom. For my limited requirements that is.

For my own production needs, I just never want to depend on closed source or commercial products. The economy as it works these days, with more takeovers and sell-outs than you can throw a hat at, gives you absolutely no guarantee that if you invest in a commercial or closed source solutions, that solution will still exist or serve your purpose tomorrow, or even respect you or your rights tomorrow. I find that unacceptable. I would never ever use a closed source solution again for production or education, it's way to dangerous in all aspects.

I'm a happy linux user, have been since 1996. These days issues with linux are really rare, and the software offering is huge, much larger than any closed source platform. I could not use a closed source platform just because of the very limited software that is available for it, and the discontinuations and incompatibilities... I couldn't live with that. Everything about commercial software consoles feels like discomfort or danger to me, because nothing comes even close to the ease of use of linux or the multitude of available software or the customization options, and especially no commercial software console comes near to linux' security and respect for human rights and users' choice.

[wendell]

Systems are so cheap now, use more than one. Some friends DS we've coverted the nicer Chromebooks to Linux dev boxes and they are really swank. Someone I know got on if those Chromebook pixels and it's the sexiest damn thing I've seen (wish I got it instead of the surface. But I wanted ram and SSD). Then run Windows on another PC to scratch that itch.

We are right on the precipice of having enough compute hardware to make the Os totally agnostic. Want to run a Windows app? Here's your windows container. That's why Ms is pushing Linux on Windows btw. It prevents the genie from getting out of the bottle just a bit longer. Can you imagine containerized win apps? Suddenly problem solved. Dual boot is a lot of fun.

I gotta do a guide on setting up windows with dual hardware profiles. I don't do this myself much anymore because of activation bs in win8 but maybe it's fixed in win10. You can boot one windows install in a VM or on bare metal either one. So was easier than passthrough and works on lesser hardware.

Not as much faffing.

I am really impressed with how little I need commercial software to do the day to day these days. It's pretty neat. And good for society.

[PendragonUK]

I feel both happy and pissed off at the same time. Becoming reacquainted with my games not played for a year. Installing TeamSpeak was a breeze, and my Steam controller just works. The messages I have received from the guys in my clan have all been positive, the return of the prodigal son. These things make me feel happy but on the other hand I feel like a failure all at the same time. Linux will be banished to my Chromebook running Crouton, I still have to get that sorted. There was once a time when I was surrounded by hardware, several PC's around me but no more. A move to a new home resulted in downsizing my collection of odd and obsolete hardware. I had all of the choices in the world to run whatever I wanted. Now it's just the one desktop PC and a Chromebook because I couldn't afford to replace my dead ultrabook.

Over the next three years I will have to work something out, I have until 2020 for Windows 7 support to end. At some point running Windows in a VM with hardware passthrough will be as simple as putting a tick in a dialog box. I fear it may be some time before that happens I know it has to get a lot more simple. The fact I would have to buy a second graphics card put me off the whole idea if I'm to be honest.

I'm not sure quite how long I can bare running Windows full time. The novelty will wear thin quickly enough and I will be changing something and attempting to run Linux 99% of the time with Windows tucked into a secure little box like that kid in class they would find in the supply cupboard eating glue.