Why i'm back to Windows 10 from Linux

Software & Operating Systems Windows
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:rofl:

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No one ever talks about compiling
Yet everyone wants to pick os side and fight

The magic is in compiling correctly for the system you plan on using program on(as cpu are similiar but not identical)

Pentium 4 could compile linux kernel on boot in <20 secs so wonder how threadripper does?

Only good thing about linux is source code is open source so simple transpile gets things running on windows or unix fairly simply

Windows source is closed so not good two way share but biased to windows favor

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Thirty years ago, I had a DECstation 3100 at home. Required for work.

The reality is that Desktop Linux Software hasn’t advanced that much from that DECstation 3100. In some ways, Desktop Linux is worse.

At this point, I shouldn’t have to fight with graphics/wireless drivers just to get a system working. When I last looked at Linux, back in 1999, I was fighting with networking and graphics support. Well, not much has changed in all those years.

But, I have 10,000 distributions to choose from, with more arriving every week.

The efforts that are being put into these distributions should be going elsewhere. Why aren’t these distribution-specific applications being created as “layered product” additions to one or two standard distributions? Why aren’t some of these efforts being put into cleaning up what already is out there?

In short, you’re right. Desktop Linux was lost to Apple’s polished MacOS years ago.

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Graphics drivers pretty much “just work”, or simply enable certain repositories (usually single click operations). Not much harder than on Windows. Wireless mostly “just works” as well, with a few problem devices (not really the OS’s fault when no drivers/documentation is available).
Fragmentation is Linux’s strength. Many people see it as a negative, and it depends on what you expect from the OS itself. Many people want, for some insane reason, Linux as a whole to be a drop in replacement for Windows/MacOS. It is not. Linux is an alternative OS for those that need certain tools/functions. Some distros do make an effort to try and be a Windows replacement, but those are few.

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I’m sticking to Linux for now. Yesterday my system crashed 2 times in time of ten minutes, and then it just continued to work. It’s been like half a year or more this has occurred before, so i was totally worried it’s the old hardware giving it’s last breaths. I got Fedora 29 installed and it’s been very stable, one of the most stable OS i have ever had. Some minor issues with sounds and streaming there has been but those are mostly fixed, until next big update comes to that specific software…

It is concerning, but i just cant go back to that license code hell called Windows. It seems you have that awesome licence that wont bother you too much. (Most problems comes with licences when you change hardware “too often”…)

I’m also trying to sign to many different game betas as a linux user to get them data about how their code works in wraps or native and stuff. Latest i signed in is that EvE Online Aether wars test.
There in the sign in options they surprised me by having linux option on question about what operating system i’m planning to use in the test and other questions about your components like gpu and cpu…

I hope i can courage more companies to have native linux client.

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My boss at my old job would dual boot because the company’s entire technology stack was based on Linux, but he viewed Windows as the One True Operating System, ordained by his Holiness the Lord Gates on the 8th day, and would boot into Windows whenever he could.

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Tfw when other peoples’ flames play a role in your choice of an OS

So no choice is better than more. Well, that’s your choice.

Other points seem valid to me. Linux can be a timesink, and people want it all to

just work

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And what do you do when you’re trying to find that first thing that works when the “standard way” (which varies by distro and day of the week) doesn’t? When I’m under a tight deadline and trying to google “how to do ___ in Linux” the absolute last thing I need is a million choices. All you need is the newbie “don’t care, it just needs to work” method, and the Linux guru method. I can get to guru from newbie, but I need that initial newbie-friendly method so that I can get the system up and running long enough to have the time to investigate how & why it works.

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Throw in ELI5 in your thread, and maybe someone will take the time to explain in a deeper way, while still being in an easy way, what they are telling you to do/saying.

It might not work tho. But then again it might.

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Thanks, but I don’t work there anymore. I started tinkering with Linux on my laptop, but I haven’t done anything with it for a while… Hmm… I need to get back to that, thanks for reminding me. :slight_smile:

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Chances are there’s a preinstalled package to do most of the stuff you need to do - more so than windows. Just use that one.

And if there isn’t, the choice of what package to install is still an issue in WIndows.

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I work for $majorvendor and I used ROXterm until I found out xfce4-terminal has the ability to change tabs by scrolling with mouse wheel. stupid, but simple reason to switch. I didn’t care for years til I wondered, and searched. that’s how it should go.

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I’ve run various different flavours of Linux over 16 years so here are my experiences & what just works for me. I too do not have time to tinker & fix things.

You don’t mention which flavor of Linux you were using but it sounds like Fedora if you felt like a beta tester (or maybe vanilla Arch or Debian Testing) - I’ve run them all & more besides. When you are new to Linux it is natural to try everything. It’s also the best way to learn.

As always there are pros & cons for each solution. If you want a system that just works you should consider:

Stable Linux distributions:

  • Xubuntu LTS / Debian Stable (but old software versions can be a nuisance if you use your system for development or gaming) - the same goes for Centos 7. Your desktop will never break & they are great for servers but not so good for gaming.

  • For me Manjaro just works. The testing they do before moving packages into the stable repos catches most problems. It’s a rolling release too so software is always up to date & you never have to reinstall your system. It makes a great development workstation. Fedora are planning to move to a similar model to improve stability. Steam works & I sometimes use this for Linux native games but I mainly use a Windows 10 kvm with GPU passthrough.

  • Ubuntu / Linux Mint are good choices for new users (good forums) but are not a rolling release so you may have to reinstall every 1-2 years or so if a dist-upgrade does not end well. This shouldn’t however be a problem if you partition your disks correctly with a separate /home

Stable Desktop Environments:

  • XFCE - I cannot remember any major show stoppers in 15 years. Manjaro use it for their flagship edition for this same reason. I am probably a bit biased but it’s low memory footprint & default apps I’ve always found to be good enough for day to day use. This stability is also why xfce is the top rated DE for developers.

  • I never liked gnome or kde - shiny but too slow & often changing & breaking.

  • If you are new to Linux it is probably a good idea to also install a 2nd desktop environment so if you have a broken desktop you can login to your secondary desktop & fix it. I use to also install fluxbox for this very reason alongside xfce when I had more time & ran Debian Testing. I don’t remember fluxbox ever breaking & it is a tiny install. It just takes a bit of time to configure.

Terminal choices, choices, choices:

  • I’ve tried lots of different terminals & nowadays I just use pacmanager. Tabbed ssh / remote sessions & keypass support are great. Being able to run commands on multiple machines simultaneously is also sometimes useful. The xfce default terminal xfce4-terminal is a good alternative & backup terminal with tabs.

Showstoppers:

  • Nowadays a broken grub is usually fixed with a simple update-grub run as root from a live cd or usb stick after you chroot into your broken installation. Having a Linux live usb stick is always handy. If you dual boot Windows it needs to be installed before Linux at the beginning of the disk.

  • Broken desktop logins are often due to corrupted session data which are fixed by CTRL ALT F2 & logging in as root & deleting the appropriate desktop manager user session data & forcing the logout of your user session. Alternatively login to your secondary desktop as mentioned above to fix things.

  • For gaming fiddling around with proton & Steam on Linux for each game is a little tedious so I have a small SSD for a Windows 10 KVM virtual machine & I also passthrough an AMD Rx 570. I get around 95% of bare metal speed & I no longer dual boot. I run dual monitors with either 1 or 2 for Linux & 1 for Windows gaming running on the 2nd input of the 2nd monitor. I have some vfio notes here.

  • The Arch Linux wiki has the solutions to most problems (whatever Linux distribution you run). If you have a secondary desktop manager or Linux live usb stick (as mentioned above) it is simple to fix a broken system. The other advantage of running an Arch system is you can downgrade broken packages to a previous version while waiting for a bug to be fixed.

  • Disk space is cheap - running a dual boot system is sometimes useful if you are new to Linux (& do not keep a Linux live usb stick handy). I no longer boot into Windows due to my vm performance being good enough to play The Division on high settings.

Linux inside Windows:

  • Years ago before I setup KVM GPU passthrough with libvirt & VFIO on my gaming machine I ran Linux inside vmware on Windows. This worked quite well with the vm being a full screen window I could minimize & maximize like any other application.

  • The downside of this solution are the privacy issues from Windows & the less than ideal performance. If you have 8 or more cores available virtualization with kvm in Linux makes much better use of your hardware if you use pinningfor the cpu cores & iothreads. Using real-time schedulers for the pinned cpu cores is the secret sauce with vfio performance.

  • You also lose flexibility with your networking configuration. It is much simpler to run multiple vpn's simultaneously in Linux for instance.

As always YMMV.

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Now that was a response. Thanks for taking the time to write all of this out.
I’ve been on many Distros. After some time back on Windows, i’ve been back to Linux for Work. I try to force myself to stop looking for stuff. I agree with everything you’ve said.
I personally really like KDE, but found it to finicky with all it’s configuration. I’m now on Gnome and enjoy it quite a bit. Yes, performance is sometimes not up to the levels of dwm or i3 i tended to run, but most stuff just works. I like it’s default theme (especially with the 3.32 release). XFCE is great, but just takes to much configuration for me, plus GTK2 Application get rarer and looks are all over the place. Gnome is really consisten in that regard. I don’t fault anyone for not liking it though.

I’m on Fedora at the moment. Just because it was the last thing i installed and i didn’t feel like reinstalling at work atm. If i do, i’ll go with debian testing. I have had great results with that in the past. Though Fedora hasn’t had any Problems on my work PC.

At home, I’m staying on Windows 10 LTSC. I keep a 256G SSD with Linux on it in my PC for those days, where i just want to check the current state. Manjaro has been great on there, but since i’m testing mostly Games, i tend to go with Ubuntu. That’s what most developers test on.

I have a spare Graphics Card laying around and wanted to test GPU Passthrough, but realized i bought a mATX board back when i got my current PC. That’s not allowing me to put in two graphics Cards. But really, i’m fine with dual-booting now. Once i’m fed up with Overwatch and such, or my Games just work on Linux, i’ll be happy to ditch Windows. Until then, Linux will be for the evenings i want to tinker with something and Windows for the rest at home.

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  • PureOS would be a good choice to run Debian Testing. It comes with Gnome & respects your privacy.

  • I ran AntiX Linux for 2 - 3 years with Debian Testing repos. It’s great for older systems & is simple to run multiple desktop managers.

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IMO your post should be parsed and formatted in a way to become a post in a “new to linux” pinned thread. Very helpful.

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@Token - nice of you to say.

I’ve reposted in a new thread here.

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Got quite a lot of replies. Personally, I don’t care what other people use, I agree with the tool for the job. But I’m here to reply that choice is what makes Linux great. Just FYI, I’m using Windows 10 on my gaming PC. On my work laptop I’m using Ubuntu with a tweaked KDE (made it look and feel like Unity, minus a few things that I couldn’t emulate), on my home small server I’m using default Ubuntu (GNOME Shell) and most of the time just remoting via SSH, I used Arch Linux in the past (I kinda want to go back to it, as I hate not having the latest features, especially on KDE), I administer CentOS VMs (of course w/o GUI), I’ve got a pfSense firewall and OpenVPN for my home network and I could go on about the OS and platform I interact with on a daily basis.

On all the Linux boxes (and even in Windows pcs) I have, I don’t find a need to replace the apps I’m using, I’m mostly using default ones. I don’t have music on my PC, I just go on YT for that. I’m only using Firefox, Falkon and sometimes Brave (for things that I don’t trust on my main browser), VLC on everything, usually default Terminals (GNOME Terminal / Konsole), Kate / Gedit, nano / Vim, Remmina for RDC and VNC, Libre Office on everything, Thunderbird on everything, Kodi (for YT if I don’t enable JS, like on my work PC), KeePassXC, GNOME Software / KDE Discover and the list goes on.

I never needed to look for other software and test “what’s best”, I use what’s available. I did try to look once for non-GTK and non-KDE Qt apps that don’t use lots of resources, for a very low-end PC (we’re talking Intel Atom D and nVidia Ion level here) to use under JWM and found a few on Gentoo’s wiki. But other than a very few specific cases, or when you truly need to look for a better tool for the job, then you don’t have to change the defaults or your preferences. I never understood people who came to Linux only to fill their time with changing everything once every 2 days and distro-hopping every 2 weeks (for a short period when you first begin your Linux journey, that’s fine, but after a year of getting used to it, then what’s the point, I can’t get that).

I’m not bashing you, I’m genuinely curious as to why are you looking to change your text editor, your terminal, your DE and whatever-else very often. On Windows you probably use Notepad / Notepad++, 1 or 2 browsers, Windows Explorer for files, either the UWP app for music or the old Windows Media Player 12, the UWP Photos or Windows Photo Viewer and so on. In Windows you probably aren’t looking to change Explorer with Saladin or Total Commander, Photos with whatever else and so on. Why are you looking to change them in Linux and not use what you got by default or what your preferred software is?

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I agree with everything, except the KDE part. I am biased for KDE, I acknowledge that, but the performance and stability for me is way better than GNOME Shell or Unity (and I’m a Unity fanboy, it was hard decision for me to abandon it after the support ended and I’ve even been part of the community testing on 17.10 daily build and of 18.04 daily build for around 1 month). Of course, YMMV and of course again, as you mentioned, KDE is not on the performance and stability level of XFCE, but KDE is in very active feature development (especially on the Wayland side with KWin) and always gets new tools (like how they made KDEConnect a few years ago). If you want new features and pretty good performance and stability, KDE is great. If you want rock-solid stability, I agree that XFCE is the home of stability.

KDE requires a few tweaks for me to get it running, but after I’ve configured it, I don’t need to change it for a long time and it just works.
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Forgot to mention something, coming back to the OP, what I hate about my budget gaming PC (running W10) is the unexpected restarts that sometime happen when I sleep. I hate finding my PC locked. I never pressed the “Check for updates” button and managed to get a bug and Windows couldn’t update itself anymore and managed to get an uptime of 1 month (I think it was around July / August last year), but I had my noVideo GPU driver crash and had to restart and since then, it started checking for updates again. Now I can’t get 5 days without my GPU driver crashing (it works for a while, around 3-4 days uptime and after that, boom, 640x400 resolution - yes, I purged the old driver, cleaned installed the new one and still got issues; no, I did not try to revert to the old driver, I don’t want to go back in time). I will always hate Windows with a passion, but it has pretty good performance on my budget SSD (stability and control of the OS is the problem). I want to buy an M.2 SSD and install Arch on it and do the KVM GPU passthrough, but since I never did that before, I’m too lazy to look what IOMMU groups my MSI B250M PRO-VH has or even if it has IOMMU at all, not to mention that I doubt my Pentium G4560 and 8 GB of RAM would be enough to satisfy Windows 10 as a guest OS (if you wonder what I’m gaming on it, I’m only into ultra-casual, low-resource MMORPGs - Tree of Savior - and into DOOM mods, nothing else - no, I don’t “need” a performance PC and I’m a low-power consumption, USFF PCs fan - in the future I might get a quad-core with SMT Ryzen 3 or 4 APU when DDR5 will be fast enough to satisfy the iGPU and AMD makes something equivalent to a 1050Ti or 1060; and I know they can, they did it on Intel’s Hades Canyon NUC using HBM).

This comment is longer than I expected, I’ll stop here.

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I understand. Im kind of adicted to a linux work flow now and when using windows get frustrated.

Still Civ Vi on Fedora 29 just stopped working. I used support and a month and a half later I have the DLC Gathering storms for free but the game still does not work.

I stuck in an SSD and it works on Ubuntu 18.10…But yer. Im over distro hopping and customizing every container and flatpak.

Shit should just work I get that.