I’ve been using Linux exclusively for about 8 years. Recently I got frustrated with a bunch of issues that popped one after another. I had a spare SSD so I decided to check out Windows again. I’ve installed Windows 11 LTSC. It was a nightmare. After all the years on Linux, I forgot how terrible Windows actually is.
On the day I installed the system and a bunch of basic software, I had two bluescreens. I wasn’t even doing anything at that time, just going through basic settings and software installation. Okay, it happens. So I installed Steam and tried to play a game I’ve been currently playing on Linux just to see the performance difference. And it was… worse, for some reason. The “autodetect” in game changed my settings from Ultra to High. On Linux, the game was running at the 75 fps cap all the time. Windows kept dropping them to around 67-ish a lot of times. But the weirdest part was actual power consumption and the way GPU worked. Both systems kept the GPU temperature at around 50C. But the fans were running at 100% speed at that temperature on Windows, while Linux kept them pretty quiet. I had to change the fan controls by myself on Windows just because it was so annoying. The power consumption difference was even harder to explain, as I was getting 190-210W under Linux and under Windows I got 220-250W. And mind you, under Linux I had not only higher graphical settings set up, but was also getting better performance.
I tried connecting my bluetooth earbuds to my PC. Alright, the setup itself was fine. But then the problems started. My earbuds support opus codec for audio. Do you think I can change the bluetooth codec easily, just like on Linux? Nope. There is no way to do it without some third party programs. And don’t even get me started on Windows randomly changing my default audio output and trying to play sound through my controller.
Today I decided to make this rant-post after yet another game crashed on me twice under Windows. I bought Watch Dogs since it’s currently really cheap on Steam. I click play. I get the loading screen. The game crashed. I try again. I play through the basic “tutorial”. After going out of the building, game crashed again. I’m going to play again, this time under Linux.
I’ve had my share of frustrations under Linux, but that experience made me realise that Windows is not a perfect solution either. Spending a lot of time with Linux and it’s bugs made me forget all the bad experience in the past with Windows, and I was craving to go back to the “just works” solution. But it’s not “just works”. Two days was all it took for me to realize that I’ll actually stick with Linux, probably forever. The spare SSD went back to my drawer, maybe so I can try something new in the future. It’s so good to be back after a short trip to the other side!
Yep. The difference is simply put just ppl are used to the quirks on Windows but not on Linux.
How to install an application on Windows
Windows is so much easier /s
How to install the app on Linux.
You search for it. Highly likely it is not available or barely functional.
IF it works, it’s only packaged for Ubuntu, Debian and Arch. If you use Nix or something even more niche, good luck with proprietary software or sometimes even openly available open source software.
Or, you DO find it, but it’s glitchy/outdated (I think there was an issue with Steam). Or you search for the program, find the website, download a .tar.gz, wonder what the hell is this double extension abomination, double click it, doesn’t work, look it up, apparently it’s a type of container like a zip and not a basic program like an exe and instead of using the GUI like a normal person you have to type “tar -xcv” or something that might as well be black magic (I can’t even remember the correct letters), then to actually install you have to find the magic “make” “sudo make install” command, and it still fails.
Much easier to double click the .exe, accept the license agreement, and hit continue a few times.
Most of the time, the package is available on the standard package manager which makes the process extremely simple. Hardest part is knowing the package name. If you know
apt search, you don’t even have to search on the browser to find the package name. But certain packages are only available as tar.gz or as source. But those are usually not encountered by newbies.If someone is using Nix, they generally don’t have trouble finding packages. Also, Nix has more packages compared to AUR.
apt searchis very inefficient. It outputs way too many results and at least 8/10 times, I search for a keyword related to the package, which is not in the package name or description itself, so the package does not show up for me.Searching online is better, but still crap. I work a lot with Container Images, Alpine etc. professionally and in my free time. Searching for the right Alpine package is always a huge pain in the ass.
Less is more. Nix has lots of packages, but they are barely maintained. For fun, I set up a Kubernetes cluster on NixOS a couple of years back. Had it “running” until last month. Long story short: Kubernetes is broken on NixOS. There are several open GitHub issues since years and nobody fixes them, because not enough people care to fix Kubernetes for NixOS.
I think you were being biased.
To your conscious brain, it might seem like 4 steps. But we are doing a lot more in reality because install process is second nature to us (Because of several years of usage).
If you tell someone who has never used a Windows PC to install a software and my list is more accurate.
Tbf, winget is a god sent and works surprisingly well, took them what? 30 years to get it done?!
winget is everything which Windows fanboys are against. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic (terminals ftw). However, I remember people often smirked about the fact that in Linux you have to type commands to install something and the GUI method is much superior.
Exactly. It took me 4 hours a couple months ago to get a scanner to work on our Windows 11 PC. It turns out there was some Windows Image Acquisition service built in that had to be disabled because it was conflicting with the driver of the scanner. Absolute insanity lmao
I told one of my friends about this since my friends sometimes tease me about using Linux, their response was get a better scanner.
lol
Literally the same story happened on Linux in the span of decades countless times. On Windows? Cannot remember this happening more than once.
Just today I logged into a Workstation at work, just to see 2 versions of Teams being auto launched. And no, no one installed 2 Versions, it was Windows.