I have a fairly “bleeding edge” laptop with an RTX3000 series GPU and an AMD CPU/APU and I have been surprised at how well it runs on Linux.
Not only is my battery life consistently better but it handles the GPU switching flawlessly and performance in games is also consistently noticeably better than what I experienced running Windows on the same hardware.
Even in just the last year or two the advancements in Linux support have been downright incredible! (At least in my personal experience)
Of course I’m using Nvidia’s proprietary drivers, but I was in Windows too and my experience has only improved by switching to Linux.
I tried installing it on my 3 years old (at the time) Surface Book and while some things worked they certainly didn’t work as well as in Windows. I messed around with a specially crafted Linux kernel for the Surface devices and that was a bit better but the wifi routinely stopped working after resuming from sleep. The touchscreen worked but not with the pen. The device also consumed huge amounts of battery life when sleeping. Would not recommend.
I remember in 2008 when I was in university trying to use Linux on my laptop. I had to run a script at the command line to connect to my uni’s wifi, because the UI always failed to connect. Then I had to keep wpa_supplicant running in a terminal window the entire time.
That can be applied to most hobbies in general. Not using an automated coffee machine? Time worth nothing. Cooking rather buying takeout? Building your own pc rather than buying prebuilt? Drawing rather than generating with AI? Time worth nothing, that’s why.
I just made the switch a few months ago and I’ve only seen memes about audio, never anyone actually asking how to fix audio and I also never encountered issues with audio myself. my usb audio interface works just fine, although it’s not really professional. what’s the big deal?
I will have to keep a Windows install due to I'm a developer, and Windows is still more relevant for games (also GUIs for debuggers - is there any for GDB?), so no big deal.
windows is hell for development tho???
I spend most of my time in WSL2 and MSYS .
unless you’re developing specifically for windows using win32 api, but i think all software should be cross platform these days.
i use vscode/codiums built-in debugger gui but I’m pretty comfortable with gdb too
I don’t do a lot of native development (I’m primarily a Java guy) so I can’t vouch for it however upon a quick search Seer looks like an interesting GDB GUI.
I do use Linux, and I’m usually glad about it, but I wasted an hour last night trying to figure out how to change my microphone port to a subwoofer port, and never did solve the problem. Linux is awesome, but sometimes basic stuff is ridiculously difficult or impossible.
Probably not. Unless it’s bi directional combined port. But remapping audio ports like that seems like an extremely niche case I find support for it very rare in any case.
I went back to my Windows partition due to some performance issues with a specific game and it’s pretty frustrating to deal with. Icons on my taskbar I can’t get rid of, os hassling me about signing up for Microsoft products and overall a bit of a less polished experience than my Linux install out of the box.
Proton or Valve won’t magically make anti-cheat working on Linux. I do most of my gaming now on Linux, but for specific games I still boot into Windows.
I use a tablet for gaming, Linux for almost everything and a windows vm for de-DRM’ing books I boiught so I can read them the way I want. Windows vm is just for when I have no other option.
Serious question. I’m planning on switching from windows to some distro, but it will be the first time I’m daily driving Linux. Are there any solid beginner-friendly resources for getting started? I’m familiar with simple bash commands, but that’s about it
As someone who recently did a switch to get used to Linux, if you’re planning on gaming then Nobara is supposedly the beginner friendly gaming distro. I switched to Nobara and my only issue was screen flickering that I fixed by switching from Wayland to X11 (that was as simple a choosing the other option on the login screen). Everything else just works and KDE looks similar to the windows layout so it doesn’t feel too unintuitive either.
My two gripes that I can’t do anything about are the lack of HDR support (supposedly that’s finally in the works) and no Linux support for some online games (The Finals in my case, but maybe if Linux numbers go up they’ll finally flip the switch), neither could be solved by having a different distro.
If you just want to game and want it up and running without tinkering too much I recommend Nobara.
Raspberry pi os was built for education, it’s a fork of debain and can run on computers that aren’t raspberry pis. They also have a digital bookshelf with many ebooks that can also be downloaded without the OS as they’ve been released as creative commons.
be confused by all the options in the installation process, look up every unknown word, try to do everything manualy, fail
start installation process again, choose all the defaults, works!
trying to install a programm with terminal, fail because not in sudo list, look up how to get into sudo list
update in terminal doesn’t work, have to remove some lines in /etc/apt/sources.list - look up how to use the text editor nano, look many yt-videos about Linux filesystem (what to those folders mean? Everything is a file?)
try to resize a partition (can’t remember which), can’t, because I didn’t choose LVM in installation process - install Debian again, and do all the steps above again
I think I had to reinstall Debian 5 more times after that, just because I didn’t know what I was doing and it was an easy reset for me.
Very frustraiting at times, and a very rewarding feeling when something worked. Made me love tech again, 10/10 would do again.
Also, get the updated kernel out of the backports repo as the main repo is pretty far behind in my opinion. I needed 6.5+ to get the hardware compatibility for some stuff and then I more or less had an out of box experience. I also highly recommend having your /home on a separate partition or drive. This way you can keep your user files if you ever want to change or reinstall the OS.
Don’t feel bad about messing up the install. Everyone fucks it up a few times. The best one I did was forget to make the user account AND did not set a root password. Thou shall not install things at 2am…
I’m currently holding an opinion that everyone who can enjoy Linux will eventually try it on their own.
I think, despite what many people say, an average user still has a very rough time using it, and in my opinion you need some level of nerdiness in order to overcome adaptation pains, and such people already use internet in a nerdy way and will try out Linux on their own eventually.
Agreed. Unconditionally recommending Linux to regular people isn’t a good idea. In my opinion it’s fine with all the disclaimers about possible disadvantages and recommend them to inform themselves about it.
Just talking about my experience got them interested enough to at some point try to daily drive Linux on their desktop PC, one of them used PopOS for 2 years on their uni laptop at that point.
At the end of the day it’s all about expectations. Most people are uninterested in computers and want to continue using what they know. Others want to experiment and will learn more themselves after being shown something interesting (through YT, conversations, Steam Deck tutorials, …).
The only reason it’s like that is because devices come preinstalled with Windows. I would love if we had the Linux option that makes the device cost less
I don’t either (despite the fact that I use Arch BTW). The average adult in my country is barely able to use their computer for basic tasks (think Word/Excel, basic internet usage). Having all these people on Linux is a nightmare scenario I don’t want to imagine. I would love nothing more than Linux becoming the norm in the not-so-distant future, but the computer literacy in the general population is just too low right now.
I do both. When someone comes to me regarding their laptop overheating and slowdown issues, I recommend them Linux, right before fixing their Windows. And when someone asks me which one to use, or what to start with, or how to install, I warn them about the difficulties (because one who potentially can use Linux, will ask different questions).
Just wanted to add that i know folks who have no problem using distro like Mint but are extremely non tech. To the point they can’t set up their new TV. In fact it’s safer for them than Windows since they can’t just go clicling yes to all dangerous operations like on Windows.
I thinkbeginner friendly distros are more difficult not for total noobs but for users who are slightly experienced with PCs and want to do medium level operations like installing specific soft outside distro repo .
In that case, it seems to be a good idea to setup a linux installation yourself for the user and not give them sudo (or root password) and then make a service allowing them to use the app store and updating their system without requiring root privileges, but not letting them add a repository.
It doesn’t seem to be the case with distros like Mint. I even know folks who have Mint but they have no clue about tech or computers at all. As users they can hardly tell difference. And It’s actually easier on them because it doesn’t get all messy as Windows does for non tech folks, so there is almost no maintenance needed. I very much recommended it for granparents and such, so you don’t have to go fixing their Windows PC each visit because they downloaded tons of random danger ware by not understanding what they do.
Yeah, that’s the thing. Two categories of users can properly enjoy Linux (in my opinion):
Technically advanced users who can figure out a lot on their own
Technically illiterate users (“Show me where to click to get to Facebook”)
While average users are the ones to suffer. They are technically picky enough to require more advanced features than “click to open Google”, but not nerdy enough to spend hours reading stack overflow to make something they need work.
Most average users will be actively displeased that their settings menu is now different and confusing, office tools have slightly different UI, and some specialized software is missing.
Average user does not spend hours learning GIMP, they blame Linux for not having Photoshop and quit. Sad but true
I think this depends. People who need basic computer functions can get on very well with linux.
My classmate in highschool had ubuntu on his home pc as long as I remember, because someone preconfigured it for them and it was mainly a browser - schoolwork machine. He gamed on XBox. There was no hassle, it was fine.
My mom on her run down laptop has mint now, because I configured it for her. I haven’t heard any complaints.
E: Also many hospital here run Linux and it is just fine, and trust me, many of the medical staff are barely tech literate enough to register for email themselves.
Linux is a problem for people who come from windows and need more than basics but are not tech savvy enough to get their hands dirty. Then once your comfort level with tinkering goes up again, Linux is once again not a bad recommendation. It really kind of is the bell curve meme.
What about when they buy a new printer and need drivers. Or want to install some software they heard about that only works on Windows/Mac? I am a software developer and still struggle to find a use case where Linux would be better than Windows. If it’s not a game that won’t work then it’s an IDE that’s unavailable. There always seems to be something that isn’t fully compatible or doesn’t have a functional equivalent in Linux.
This is why I still have windows on the machines at home. There’s always some niche device, especially for my wife’s crafting, that only supports windows.
But then at work thanks to VMs I use windows and Linux side by side every day.
What about when they buy a new printer and need drivers.
Printers have “just worked” on Linux for longer than Windows has provided drivers through Windows Update. What printer do you have that requires special drivers in Linux?
Canon Pro 9000 mkii. It works but in a basic mode. There is no way to select a color profile or borderless printing. There is no way to clean the nozzles. Our Brother Laser Printer on TrueNas was a huge pain to find drivers for it to get air print to work correctly. I think I spent an entire work day messing with CUPS until I got things working properly.
I’ve already given a similar answer somewhere in this thread, but my point is, yes, it works well for advanced users (stack overflow enjoyers) and total beginners (Where do I click to get to Facebook?), while average users are in the middle, and are simultaneously require more features than beginners, but do not have the means to solve them.
Linux is a problem for people who come from windows and need more than basics but are not tech savvy enough to get their hands dirty.
Spot-on. For people with minimal to no computer skills in the first place Linux will serve them well.
The one who well struggle the most ironically are Windows “Power users” and other intermediate/advanced users who don’t have the equivalent skill already in Linux or time/willingness to learn Linux systems.
Either that, or they use specific tools that they can’t or won’t replace and which don’t work on Linux. Usually it’s creative or engineering software. There are usually good, Linux compatible, open source alternatives, but they’re not the same as industry standard tools that they need to know how to use and be 100% compatible with. Windows or MacOS is your only safe bet there.
If you’re a mere hobbyist and interested in learning new tools it’s an entirely different answer. You can try out the windows versions of the alternative software first, then try switching to Linux down the line when see the greener grass.
That’s exactly where I feel I’m at. I’m no tech expert but I’m the guy family calls to help with computer stuff and I know enough to realize I don’t like the direction Windows is going. I’ve gone as far as to install Linux on a single device I use but now I just use that device less cause I can’t be bothered to figure it out when I’ve already got other machines that I’ve got working just the way I like.
Feel like I’ve come to a wall that yeah, I could overcome and climb, but this side of the wall is still livable and I’m not even sure the other side will be much better.
Microsoft Office and Adobe software are the main anchors to Windows currently. Anyone using them (as is professionally required) is stuck with Windows or MacOS.
I used Linux for about a week, every game ran way faster (60 instead of 20 fps on ultra detail) - but all games were very unstable and crashed frequently (despite the clear performance advantage.)
I also had troubles getting the low latency kernel working properly for music production. I just could not figure it out. Something to do with WineASIO, JACK audio and pulseaudio. FL studio worked flawlessly, though some fonts were missing (‘easily’ fixed using winetricks and installing them)
On windows, all I had to do was install the focusrite drivers.
So for now, until these apps and devices have native support, I unfortunately am stuck with windows :(
A lot of these problems could be attributed to my computer specs, it’s a bit older:
8gb ram (plan to upgrade to 16 which is the laptops max), GTX 1050 ti, 2.8-3.4ghz i7
Most probably: wrong driver + background windows updates + background windows telemetry + background windows downloading ads + background windows Superfetch (SysMain) + background trial version of McAfee with windows
Win 7 worked pretty well on my 2010 desktop [Care2Quad 4GB DDR2] until a few years ago, when I just switched to Linux and didn’t care to look back.
Yeah but unconfigured windows currently is the winner since it actually works, though I’d like to prove that wrong and properly configure Linux , however I’m in no hurry since I’ve had to format my drive twice already
Gaming on Linux can still be considered difficult in general. The main reason I don’t have any difficulty is because the few games I play are well supported on Linux, giving me few to no crashes. Playing Elite Dangerous (Epic version) on wine seems to be causing memory leaks over time, making me have to restart every 5 hours, but Linux supported games I get from GoG work perfectly for normal scenarios normal => Single monitor 60FPS.
Apart from gaming, Linux has been a charm. But I am one of those ppl who likes programming and creating my own solutions for problems (which fits well with Linux), so I can’t say the same to someone who just wants “a solution. Any solution”.
I also had troubles with Deep Rock Galactic and a native application as well. Maybe a poor configuration.
But the real thing keeping me from the switch is not being able to figure out how to properly use my audio interface for low latency real time production 😮💨
DRG is the same IIRC. I do not know the state of Vulkan drivers on Nvidia, but if you crash they are probably the issue. For low latency audio check Archwiki on proaudio. Got a Focusrite for christmas I am going to setup myself. Should be doable.
😅 That’s what i thought as well but it also depends on distro and their community. I’ve never got such a support from MS or Google as i did from these non payer dudes who do it in their free time.
Well, as a Linux user myself, I used to do this kind of thing when I was getting started and was too damn hyped about FOSS and everything. Now, I simply ask people what they want from a computer and how much are they invested into tech.
Do you want things to be as simple as possible? Use Mac or Windows.
Do you want to learn more about how things work under the hood? Use Linux.
Gaming? Use Windows (and yes, although I’m a proud Proton user, some games just won’t work, like Valorant and PUBG).
Gaming? Use Windows (and yes, although I’m a proud Proton user, some games just won’t work, like Valorant and PUBG).
I love proton on my steamdeck, and I’d like to try to go linux vs having to stay on win10 with no updates on my gaming computer. But outside of some games not working, a lot of hardware/accessories don’t have official support either. As far as I can tell, goxlr, streamdeck, and other hardware/software I use daily, have no official support, which for items I use that often makes it pretty much a non-starter on migrating.
Thank you. I saw there is a community goxlr project on github as well. For me, not having the official support is frustrating. I spend a lot of time messing around with community projects for my homelab. I don’t want that effort transferred over to my daily driver.
What I’m really waiting for is a decent/cost effective AMD laptop I can scoop up to put linux on.
Yeah linux handles many games fine with proton and stuff, but there are too much things you give up.
Razer mouse with multiple side buttons? No GUI for setting that up, download some other hotkey software and make a custom profile on that. Open razer for RGB control.
Corsair headphones? No software, not able to get task bar icon about battery level.
Sometimes play racing games? Too bad there is no drivers for your wheel, except one that was made by some guy 5 years ago that got 60% of the features working, and to change settings you have to edit text files.
A new multiplayer game comes out that doesnt work on linux and all your friends are playing? Soon you find yourself just booting straight to windows instead of sometimes hopping on windows to play some game.
Connect a ps4 controller and linux sets it as default audio device and there is no GUI option to disable that, just gotta switch back when connecting the controller.
Boot to OS and open steam, no games are installed? Oh right you need to go mount the drive first. Watch a 10 minute youtube video where some dude explains how to auto mount drives.
Want to create a bootable windows USB and the tool that came with the OS tells you the usb stick is in use and that it needs to be unmounted, do that and then it tells you there is no usb there, because ya unmount it. Try another software but it wont select the iso file. Try google for help, top answer is “borrow your friends windows computer”
I like linux and learned a lot when using it, and will use it in the future on machines that dont need anything extra. But for my habits it just felt silly to be there, and constantly switch back to play games, or stay on linux and have a worse experience doing something, like driving games.
I am also real tech savy person and can overcome most of these hurdles, but most of my friends would never be able to overcome some of these things. I also found that many questions about linux on some forums are answered with stuff like “why on earth do you want that? Just dont do that or do something else” and that was kind of a bummer as well.
I think that your priorities are horrible. If the things you listed are enough to get you to abandon GNU/Linux, then FOSS might really not be for you. Also, you describe yourself as tech savvy, but I find that doubtful judging from the experiences you recounted and the non-technical way in which you write.
I dont really understand what you mean about my priorities being horrible. My priority is for my PC to do what i then and there need it to do, if it is to display my headset battery lever or create bootable usb media.
And I didnt say abandon, I said i like linux and will use it.
I told you that i am tech savvy, but instead of taking my word you decipher my message and say it is the opposite?
I am not the god of tech, but if a person who writes their own wifi drivers is 10 on the scale, and my father who can barely use a non smart phone is 1, i am a solid 8 on the tech savvy scale.
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