I need help choosing an OS. I'm stuck between mouse input lag and completely unethical corporate practices

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
, , , ,
1

I’ve spent a combined total of months upon months trying different stuff out to have an enjoyable gaming experience. High refresh rate, low latency, performance. I cannot go to Linux when all I know is Windows for over 20 years yet I’ve already been pushed to the point of doing so and tried a few different distros.

I’m not going to lie. I cannot stand Linux, I cannot stand the lack of instructions and help or direction, I cannot stand the million different distros. However Windows has, for the last two decades, become so disgustingly tyrant and violating to the end user.

Interruption: Funny how it’s called “end user” but the end user is the same thing as a Server host domain controller… and “dev”.

Funny how “bare-metal” hardware is always attached to something that’s a “visible” prefix of dev… dev/sda, dev/nvme0n1, dev/pornmovies…

Funny how Windows doesn’t let you just be a “personal computer user”. You’re either running Home edition and forced into a workgroup or running Enterprise or Server and forced onto the same workgroup but with more goodies in the properties menu.

Choosing a domain is no different, and why is it called a domain if, and I’m being serious, the computer IS THE DOMAIN BY DEFINITION. But Windows won’t let you make your computer name the same thing as your domain name even though they are. Windows won’t allow you to have a PERSONAL computer. And they have become so disgusting with tracking every single movement during every single thousandth of a micro second that’s it’s literally terrorism at this point. I wish I could laugh.

Linux isn’t much better but I don’t know too much about it other than it made me realize how crap Windows is and how all of their “optimizations” are actually trash compounded problems they call evolution.

I tried PopOS, ran x11 on gnome with proprietary Nvidia drivers and the pipeline off, and I experienced almost zero I’m taking crazy low latency between the mouse moving and the games visual response and the “feel”. I never experienced anything like it I only got close isolating games on certain cores with Windows DWM.EXE. Never and to this day has Windows ever gotten close to the feeling of playing Squad on x11 and gnome, and I hate gnome because canonical is another bat shit insane violating monopoly that works with Microsoft… Scary.

Oh and here’s another thing I’m going to bitch at. These pieces of shit carriers try to throttle down to unusable Internet speeds because of some pathetic 5-50GB limit which is illegal by the way. They say I hit my hot spot limit 10 minutes into downloading a game while I was USB tethering. Call me silly but I feel like the whole world has gone bat shit insane.

Windows default firewall configuration, half the services literally being viruses. Them always migrating crap and then they want cloud syncing and setting transfers, what are they retarded!?

Windows gets worse and worse because they’re retarded and keep trying to optimize a shit design… and Linux is retarded because it’s been 20 years and they have gotten absolutely nowhere basically(that’s why people distro hop)… considering that’s half my life span with the dumbasses in control…

They need to scrap windows, scrap unix, get rid of all that bullshit and make a real god damn personal desktop computer, HOLY SHIT.

Now I get remotely attacked on Linux and Windows for simply trying to optimize a video games input lag, or ffs, removing that trash they call edge. ANY REASON you will be attacked at a software and emotional level for doing ANYTHING nowadays.

Corporations and government, do me a favor and SHOVE IT.

4 Likes
2

Ehm, so what do you need help with then? I get it, everything sucks. This is a pick your poison type of deal. Or like me one choice will not run the software you need so the decision is easy.
(Windows PATH is so annoying)

5 Likes
3

That’s what the current trend is with immutable distros. To provide a foolproof experience, read-only root filesystem so the user can’t accidentally mess it up, automated updates (can set to manual too), automated rollbacks incase something goes terribly wrong.

But the user doesn’t need to know any of it.
Just install apps from the app centre and just use the damn machine. It’s literally like using Android or iOS, simple.
The only thing you need the terminal for is installing nvidia drivers, altho it’s still straight-forward.

Canonical is not behind Gnome btw, but if you dislike Gnome here’s the KDE version:

2 Likes
4

I hate living in the future sometimes. NT and Linux are like, the only options. There are BSD solutions out there, but hardware support is hit or miss.

Windows 7 had none of the issues 11 has. Besides the reliance on NTFS, the shittiest format. Really wish Windows 7 was stable on modern hardware. It just wokred, amd i didnt downgrade until hardware support forced me to get newer OS. Like how i was using kitkat on my phone until 2021 when ATT decided to mandate IMS, just to force people to buy newer, worse phones. The future sucks.

If you can tolerate ARM, i hear apple’s solutions nowadays are quite intuitive.

If your subjective problem is cannonical, then just dont use them? My gaming systems all just use X11 with openbox. I use lxde for my more office-work oriented systems.

Gnome used to be good. Gnome 2 + compiz was the comfiest ive ever been using a gui. But we cant have nice things in the future i guess. Ubuntu dropped support for compiz a while back, and ive been on debian with openbox or lxde ever since.

windows 7, kitkat, gnome 2, GM’s 3800 v6 engine, all abandoned because incompetent managers and devs try to fix what aint broke, and as a result of trying to fix what was perfect, the future sucks.

2 Likes
5

really Windows 10 is a viable option still as long as you don’t mind either waiting for the security patches to leak, or paying the yearly ESU cost. (I plan on waiting for the patches to leak on my 1 gaming Windows 10 PC)

the ‘multiple computers’ route is about as good as it gets today, with the hope of ‘better things are coming.’

Grab a second hand Apple PC for your day to day tasks, game on Windows 10, keep a linux computer around for the times when it is needed. or some combination of those.

1 Like
6

Lol, I need a new life with world leaders that actually have a brain.

Actually I was hoping for recommendations like some x11 and tweaked kernel for gaming, something I can turn the pipeline off or something… When I used popOS a month or two ago I almost could not believe how responsive vulkan is with Squad, I didn’t really know what was being used but I could use dlss 3. There’s just some down sides, particle effects are crap in comparison and some textures aren’t the same. Shadows aren’t as high res either, but hell the game ran great if not better than Windows…

What shocked me, to this day, is how much BETTER the game looked at native resolution on PopOS. There is no combination of virtual resolutions and scaling or anti aliasing or sharpening I can come up with to make Win11 Squad look even 75% as crisp as PopOS and Squad looked. I NEVER game at native 1440 on Windows and PopOS looked better at native than weeks of me using Nvidia profiles, tweaks, using hybrid graphics and dgpu igpu hybrid, nothing came close. People bullshitting when they say gaming is useless on Linux. It’s pretty much the only time I’ve ever had 1440 NATIVE remind me of my old 4K TV, and instantaneous camera/weapon movement. No lag at 160fps, where in Windows it would feel noticably worse with the same frames, kind of like how dlss frame generation feels(like shit).

1 Like
7

Not to mention the capitalization of letters leading to “secret” places, it’s like abuse of symbolic links but mixed with interconnected cloud and a little Satan.

8

If you want an X11/ gaming setup with nothing in the way, try openbox without a compositor.

As far as kernel tweaks go, realtime scheduling, preemption full, mitigations off. march and mtune set for the target machine. Governor locked to performance. Make sure to force enable io_uring and futex_wait_multiple

1 Like
9

I’m here to piss us both off further, this is no lie. All USBA is becoming USBC pretty much and USBC, and American brands, yes I’m calling you the f out SanDisk, Google, and att… they all wirelessly symlink or some shit… When I plug my flash drive USBC into my phone Androids base folders start populating it it’s fkng infuriating. Guess what, here’s some NSA SHIT, lick my ass! anyways if you take a SanDisk USBC the sheath off, remove the three metal junctions, and break half the pins off (the side without the two missing) guess what. IT FUKN STOPPED AUTOMATICALLY TRANSFERRING FILES WITHOUT MY CONSENT AND STILL WAS 100 PERCENT FUNCTIONING. I don’t hate the future I hate piece of shit liars.

I guess they lied about it being for national security so they could all become terrorists and creepy mother fkrs.

When a 10 dollar flash drive can cause months of stress and permanent mental anxiety, the countries gone way too god damn far. I opened up a pamphlet for Corsair headphones week ago, FCC no longer says can accept interference, they now say it must only for them and if the owner chages the device they arent authorized to use it, WHAT THE FU!?!? bruh They crossed every line

3 Likes
10

USB is serial. Serial is gonna get interfered with. Thats what error corrections is for.

They keep ruining the future. We were promised better… 10Ghz by 2009! No more waiting for any computer to do any task!

11

Basically every connector is the same. Take a dsub or vga for example… What somebody failed to do is… well I don’t know, all I know about that is they basically fkd the whole world tech wise.

“Serial is gonna get interfered with.”

Guess what else is the same way, ever opened up a T-Mobile modem? Those cheap ass antennas literally pick up EVERY FREQUENCY.

4g 5g 6g wifi wifi direct Bluetooth. SAME ANTENNA AN INCH BIG. We Are all doomed because “they” are retarded, so somebody give me a proper OS for gaming before I die on this pathetic earth. lol

1 Like
12

Rf needs to die. The future should be fiber.

2 Likes
13

They would if haven’t already find some way to take beautiful technology and weaponize it. That fiber would turn into optical thought manipulation via optic nerve and different heated lights, etc…, Then they’d come up with some excuse to use deca-quantum computing to manipulate lasers and light emitting diodes and calculating what you’re looking at at any given moment with nothing more than a processor and reflections on surfaces. Ugh

And most of the world is scraping by and gamers like us can’t even get 1000fps. They’d rather make disgusting tech than make a magnet space ship, food gel, and colonize a dead planet. Their priorities are fkd.

I’m pretty sure the tech we “lowly normal people” have is like… ancient.

2 Likes
14

If you don’t like gnome look into other desktop environments or DE as they are called:

KDE plasma
Cinnamon
Gnome
XFCE
Mate

Just to name a few.
Currently I’m using Linux mint with the cinnamon de!

2 Likes
15

future isnt all bad, apparently realtime just comes with mainline linux as of 6.12. so no more fucking about with rtkit services and stuff, linux now just… comes with go fast mode.
does this mean that under/overunning audio is automatically solved? because having to manually setup realtime pipewire on each of my machines is getting annoying.

1 Like
16

Linux mint 22 made the switch to pipewire as the default audio subsystem. I don’t know if you need to do any more configuration than that for your use case. It’s still on kernal 6.8.0.45 thou!

1 Like
17

I understand your frustration. Many long-time Windows users feel disillusioned with its increasing control and privacy concerns, yet Linux, while offering more freedom, presents its own challenges. The steep learning curve and fragmented ecosystem can make it hard to achieve the experience you’re seeking, even if distros like PopOS show promise in performance and low latency.

Your point about the invasive nature of ISPs and OS developers resonates—there’s a clear demand for a truly personal computing environment, free from unnecessary restrictions and tracking. Unfortunately, both major ecosystems seem to fall short, leaving users stuck in a cycle of compromise and constant tweaking.

Hopefully, in the future, we’ll see the development of an OS that offers the balance between control, privacy, and ease of use without forcing users to jump through so many hoops.

1 Like
18

Apple’s ARM-based hardware is top-notch in terms of both performance, and battery life. Not so top-notch in allowing to run software not sanctioned by Apple. Also, I had Macbooks from work for several years, both Intel and ARM, and the user experience provided by macOS is just a tad less annoying than what you get on Windows, and the user interface just a tad more consistent. I’m definitely not a convert.

Lightweight and unobtrusive. Good stuff. I ended up moving away from Openbox because my laptop screen is 1920×1080, and I had an external screen with 2560×1440, and whenever I wanted to use both displays, I got only a partial, messed up picture on the external monitor, and a mouse pointer that displayed several hundred pixels below where it clicked. In other words, it was unusable; in KDE, it just works, so that’s where I stayed for the last 3 years.

1 Like
19

This thread made me :joy: and :sob: and generally made my day by somehow merging pure comedy gold and ugly reality :poop: – thanks!

1 Like
20

i have some really cursed xrandr setups that fix all my external displays on openbox. definitely wasnt easy to setup though. openbox has zero hand-holding