Why i'm back to Windows 10 from Linux

I know that this might not be interesting to most people, but i’ve just felt the urge to write this down. So i thought i’d share it with you fine people.

At work, i’ve been with Linux only for the better part of two years. At home it was dual booting for 2 or 3 years too. I really like Linux. I like the concept of Open Source. I personally think it is the correct way to do software. I don’t like using a Product, that depends on a single company existing.
I also am a big fan of “the right tool for the job” and actually getting my job done. I’m not interested in making my OS choice a ethics discussion. I appreciate that others do and it’s certainly for the better, but i’m not on my PC to do politics. I either work or play and have fun. Both of those do not include making politics.

All that said, I’m really fed up with the endless holy wars of “X”. “X” being basically anything you use/do on Linux. I appreciate choice, to an extend. But using Linux for me has increasingly become an endless cycle of two to twenty solutions fighting over whats the best. And i don’t have time for that. My head wants to do that. I want to engange in finding the best terminal emulator out there. But it kills my productivity. Once i’ve spend a whole work day evaluating xTerm over Terminator compared to allacritty when st is still out there, i knew it was time to leave. The endless amount of choice for every single part of the OS never lets me get to a “i’m done point”. Wayland vs. X, Vim vs Emacs (and god forbid you use VS Code), the endless demonification of Electron Apps, DE vs WM, tiling vs floating, Firefox vs Chromium. I could go on for days. No matter what you choose, there is an alternative and people endlessly arguing how one is clearly supperior to the other. Limiting the available choices with Windows (basically, only the Browser is left for choice. The rest is as it is) has been a major productivity boost for me.

Same goes for my home/gaming rig. I know that almost anything CAN work on linux. This doesn’t mean i want to MAKE it work. Putting some work in is expected. But having to reinstall several games after every update, spending to evenings in winetricks to get the correct combination of settings for something to launch, and having lost countless weekends to Compositors, VSync, DPI handling and 144Hz mixed Setups, i’m really frustrated and fed up. I don’t spend my life in the Browser or Terminal. If i did i’d probably be fine on Linux. I have an Nvidia Card, three screens that aren’t the same, do Audio production and want to play the currently “hot” games with my friends. Because it’s what i do in my free time. I don’t spend my free time programming (mostly) or being on facebook, twitter or what not.

This doesn’t mean Windows hasn’t had it’s fair share of Problems. I’m in a special situation in that i have access to an LTSC License. This has fixed any gripe i’ve had with Windows 10 so far. I’m now back to Windows 10 LTSC on both my work and home machine. I enjoy that i can just install a programm. I know anything i paid for already just works (Games, VST Plugins, Software). I get official support for the errors my software produces, and don’t spend 20 hours a week looking for a new DE or Theme or Font. My Laptop goes to sleep properly and switches Displays when docked or not. All Monitors behave like they should and my Graphics Card hast the performance i expect. I’ve now settled with Firefox and will stop looking at new browsers. Because at the moment it just works.

Keep in mind, that my situation might be different than yours. I have access to a legal LTSC License, my work environment is based on MS products (Exchange, Teams etc), i need to use a Ticketing tool that’s Windows only and all the Games i mainly play aren’t officially supported on Linux. But i also feel that this is a big factor in why “normal” people don’t like Linux. You basically have to get into the very detail of every choice. And the community won’t accept that you don’t care. It’s expected that you care for what editor you use. Some people don’t want to get into why they are using systemd or KDE. They just want to install an OS and get some help if it doesn’t work.
This does NOT mean i don’t want Linux do suceed. I would love to do what i do now, just on Linux. I’ll be following it closely and keep testing in VM’s. My work is still 90% on Linux Servers and i still think Linux would be the better solution over Windows.
I’m just done being a beta tester, on the bleeding edge trying to make stuff work. I appreciate every single person who does push Linux forward. I’m contributing to projects i feel have an impact in that way and will keep doing so. Once all my needs just work on Linux, i’ll be the first to switch.
Until then, i’ll be chearing from the sideline and get some work done.

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I appreciate this kind of unbiased posts, based on true life and not being a fanboy/idealist.

But I think it’s the choice that’s giving you issues in the everyday life more than anything else. What could possibly so different between all the major terminals for example? Just pick one that does what you need until you need something more specific. Same goes for most things in Linux or even life. I experienced it too, trying to find the best of the best all the time. It’s mostly a waste of time.

Regarding gaming, properly docking and display switching I agree with you. The support is there and nobody can deny it.

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Yes, too much choice is a big problem for me. I’m one to research every decision i make. I watch videos, read articles. I try my best to make the “best” choice possible. In my head, it’s often a case of “what good is choice if i don’t put in the time to actually choose”?
It would often be easier for me if i could just not care. But mostly, that’s not the case for me, so limiting choice is a way to keep focus for me.

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That is the important thing, doesn’t matter how neat and shiny something is if it doesn’t work for you and creates more work. It’s why I still use W10 for newer games, that and I need a new computer to really do anything beyond what I am doing now.

I’m pretty much on the other end, every time I update something in windows or windows updates something breaks and it just works on linux. But the tools I use were made on Linux for Linux.

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The story of why I use 3 different terminal emulators. Well I only really ended up with Cool Retro Term because I find it amusing. Otherwise some things work in one but not the other.

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A nice and refreshing read. I see myself in some of the points you are making. But completly disagree on the “to much choice” and I encountered that argument a few times. I believe this is a personal thing/issue. I for one can choose one thing and go for it (Fedora a rolling release distro, Gnome the DE, gnome-terminal, vim, etc) until I really need a better one I don’t look for it.

But for the stability, performance and general linuxines that’s the reason I now use windows 10 as well. A lot can be taken care of with just buying an AMD card (Vega/radeon7) but not all can or have the time to do it.

Personally I am waiting for Ryzen 3 so I can do the GPU passthrough as this is probably the ultimate goal. The best of both worlds combined.

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100% a personal issue.

I feel like that’s just another workaround to fix the “shortcomings” of Games in the Linux department. Ideally all Games would recieve a native Linux port and Nvidia would stop their stuff being proprietary. Until then, i think GPU Passthrough is just not worth it. It’s a whole lot of work and Hardware needed, when you can just as well dual-boot. Boot times are in the seconds nowadays and SSD’s are cheap. If you’re running Windows in a VM anyways, i don’t see the benefit of doing that over just setting up a second Disk with Windows.

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OP in so many ways I couldn’t have said it better myself. Now if I wrote something like this after using Linux almost guaranteed my post would be taken down. We will see in the future as I am acquiring an old hard drive and other pc parts in a few days and mentioned under a video of Level 1 Techs I’d be trying some sort of Linux but didn’t think it would be this soon. I guarantee I will end up making a similar post but I’d be jumping back to Windows 7 64 bit. Eh though I will go into it with a positive mind or well at least laughing and hoping for the best.

Sure, I do that too but sometimes takes way more time than actual work that would be done using the “perfect” application. So I moved on to trying to keep things simple first and adapt as needs come and not try to cover every possibility.

@sycpuppy Sure, but if you just need to use the terminal for “general purpose” and you get used to the way one works why keep searching.

Nice writeup, I get where you’re coming from, and I bet most if not all linux users have been there.
Using linux does require a fair bit of manual tweaking to get the best out of it, and sometimes you just can’t be fucked, you’d rather use a preconfigured product - totally understandable.

Sure the choices and possibilities are endless to the point people might get sick of it, and on top of that opinions, needs and preferenses differ as well and all to often end up in a holy war, which becomes rather amusing when you just learn to not give a fuck and stick to what works for you - if it works, why change?
I’d say it’s a problem with (green) enthusiasts, all too often people give too many fucks about things that aren’t fuckworthy.

Man, I was just about to type up something similar. I wake up at 4:30 every morning. I usually get some software work in, or I play in the lab, or I read.

I went to log into my Fedora box, and I got the Plasma circle… Then a black screen with a mouse cursor.

I did Control + Alt + F2 and logged in. I entered startx and waited. I briefly saw my desktop wallpaper before I saw another black screen with a mouse cursor.

I did Control + Alt + F3 and logged in. I entered startx and waited. I saw my desktop and was able to open my browser.

Now I don’t want to do anything but remove this garbage operating system from my hard drive. It’s beyond frustrating and just killed 15 minutes of waiting and troubleshooting.

I hope you don’t mind me piling onto your thread. I can make my own. You were a lot more eloquent than I am, but I am admittedly heated as this always happens when I go full time Linux. I’m fucking tired of it. It’s not a viable solution to people that need to get work done. I’m sticking with VMs, WSL, and Linux Containers

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I think you’re generalizing :wink:

Windows Terminal:
Putty, MobaXTerm, PowerShell, PowerShell-Core, Windows Subsystem for Linux, CMDer, MinGW, Git Bash, Cygwin, ConEMU, Mintty

Windows IDE:
All of them

Windows editor:
All of them

Games:
All of them

You can even run whatever Linux distro you want on Windows, with your choice in Hypervisor :wink:

I get what you’re saying though, the DE, window manager, etc. is all given to you. It’s the same with OS X. Distrohopping is a disease that kills productivity.

Probably virtualized, which makes running bare metal irrelevant to the discussion. :wink:

It sounds like most of your needs just work in Linux (90%), and you believe in the best tool for the job, so you’re in the best spot you can be in. :grin: Good write up, though.

Xfce4 terminal because I can use F13-F24 in it and it works without having to screw with anything and has decent customization. For general use I usually use Sakura, but that has been around for a long time and part of the reason I use it is old habits. But stability goes out the window with Sakura when emacs enters the equation, or at least in my experience it does.

Amen :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed:

PREACH :cry:

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You filthy windows 10 using peasant.

Windows 7 for the win. Or die.

/s

(i.e., windows holy-war triggered)

Seriously though, holy wars is the lamest reason i’ve ever heard to shift platforms.

Use what works for you. Fuck what other people think?

I get it, finding the best/usable software can be an issue sometimes, but mostly the “standard” options will do the job. Just use something that works, don’t sweat trying to get the best thing.

If you don’t have time to figure out how to make stuff work in linux, fair enough. I’d consider that a totally valid reason.

But listing holy wars as a reason to switch? Seriously?

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I could see where it might be a problem when asking for advice on something you need software wise. Then the people you were asking just devolve into argument. Or someone criticizes your workflow because they think they have a better way.

It’s a failing of the Linux community that we seem to have more vocal users.

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It’s not so much that i care for what other people think. It’s more that i’m really passionate about such things and i really like to engage in discussion around basically anything. It’s sometimes a Problem to have a strong opinion on something you just need to get work done on.
I’m passionate about Linux. That’s why i spend days and days on things that make pretty much no difference in the end, and tend to “waste” hours on end on Forums and Reddit or such discussing all that. But more often than not, that’s time i don’t have nowadays.

I’m pretty unpassionate about Windows. It’s there, it works, i don’t care for much more and even if i did i couldn’t change to much about it.

In the end, my lack of self-controll is, what made me get aways from Linux. That and gaming :wink:

Also, you basically have to spend a solid amount of time defining the system first. Lets say some application doesn’t launch or doesn’t start automatically or has some graphical hiccup.
If you want help solving that Problem, you need to define your whole system first. Which Distro? Ubuntu. Which Spin? Kubunut. X or Wayland? Which Hardware. Arch? AUR? Git, Stable, Testing, which PPAs.
You can spend a whole day just getting the System defined before starting to even troubleshooting a Problem.

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I feel your pain. I want Linux to work for me. I wish it were better because there’s so many cool things about it. For me everything just falls apart when you have a desktop environment. I love me some Linux servers, it’s trying to use Linux as a desktop that doesn’t work.

I spent probably 12hrs or more (with the help of people who know more than I) recently trying to get mixed refresh to work in web browsers. It just doesn’t. Could only ever get the mouse pointer to the higher refresh. I get that I’m a niche case there but Linux is a niche thing so you’d think someone would have worked on that.

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One of the things I constantly tell people when they first get into linux or have been using linux for a few months is to find something that works and stick with it. When you are constantly changing or tweaking or upgrading or sidegrading or purging or dumping is generally when you are going to have a bad time.

One of the things I love about this platform is you do you.

Don’t listen to all the articles or forum posts about what is best or why you should use this or why you shouldn’t use that or whatever.

Who cares if you run OpenBSD with Xcfe3? If that’s what you want to do then do it.

Who gives a flying fuck if you use Visual Studio to code? If that’s what you want to use then fucking use it.

If you want to run a completely stock Ubuntu Gnome setup then why would you want to change it? I mean for fucks sake people. The entire point of this platform is choice and sometimes that means not making one.

I suddenly feel attacked and retract my sentiments.

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