Why i'm back to Windows 10 from Linux

Operating Systems & Open Source Windows
98

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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