Moved to Fedora many years ago, and also AMD based kit for the usual reasons. Had zero problems, uptime of months, if not longer, and still gaming and developing. No random pauses, and everything, including search, just work.
Windows 11 - used it $day job$ and it's ok. That's as charitable as I can be. They're looking to move staff to Macs and Linux, and retire W11. It's only in use because of things like Office, Outlook, and the odd bit of software that's Windows only. Which is kind of ironic, because there are quite a few programs I've come across that download only for Mac or Linux which is the opposite to 20 years ago.
It's funny and a bit sad that Windows 11 is the kind of version of Windows I would have associated with Ballmer. A sort of in-your-face money making machine with all its ads and cruft. Yet, it's Nadella. Does Microsoft, at some level, have a 'we know Windows is dying' attitude? They have their other billion dollar 'pillars' of Azure, Office, XBox, and so on.
> Had zero problems, uptime of months, if not longer, ...
That's the thing with Linux: most updates, including security updates, do not require a reboot. And the thing is rock stable solid.
> No random pauses, and everything, including search, just work.
One detail I really love about Linux, since forever, it's that when you ask it to turn off, it turns off. Not in minutes. Not in a minute. No: it's turns off nearly instantly.
When you ask to turn Windows off, for oh-so-many people, "stuff" happens. You don't know what exactly: it's probably sending your whole life as "telemetry" to "enhance your user experience" back to M$FT. Yup, it maybe childish to write M$FT like that, with a '$', but it doesn't change the fact that stuff happens when you turn Windows off and you don't know exactly what. And it's by now certainly related to '$' going somewhere to Microsoft seen how much that thing is spying on people.
> Windows 11 - used it $day job$ and it's ok. That's as charitable as I can be.
I only use Windows at work and was recently forced to switch to Win 11. That's pretty much my review as well. There are UI changes that I hate quite a lot, but I could find utilities and settings that mitigate much of that.
I didn't find anything (yet) that I consider an actual improvement.
> I didn't find anything (yet) that I consider an actual improvement.
Serious question: has there (ever?) been any, since say, Windows 2000?
Some progress has been made with regards to stability, but other than that? Usability hasn't improved and i'd consider Windows 10 and especially 11 extremely user hostile and full of spying.
Aside from stability and security improvements, most of which happened years ago, not really. In terms of usability, Win 7 remains the best version of Windows in my opinion. It's all been downhill from there.
Last I checked you couldn’t even use absolute positioning to place elements in Word docs. I was trying to make a lost pet poster, and that was the first and last time I tried Office365.
There's still a lot of Office functionality in the desktop versions, such as automation of other desktop apps, and also Excel plugins (so many finance companies use that), so there's still "lock in".
Most can, although you probably don't want it. Updates on linux are already infinitely better than windows. That's not the question to ask. You should ask if a laptop goes to sleep on linux, will it wake up ? Nobody knows.
I have never heard or never had myself any problems with sleep on Linux laptops and i'm using Linux(Arch, Debian, Lubuntu) as my only driver for past 10 years
Well, on Thinkpad (which, unlike many, is actually intended to support Linux users) you have to specifically charge something in BIOS to make it work, so one at least has to be aware. Also, I have some old Asus lying around, which after some update started having a lot of trouble with both going to sleep and waking up. Never figured out what it was, I didn't really need it anymore, so now it's just lying somewhere in the closet, maybe will use it for something someday.
Modern sleep (s0ix) is a mess on linux. Laptops will either not sleep, or sleep but not wake up, or drain the battery while they are asleep, or peripherals won't work after they wake up, or monitors won't light up, or things won't be where you left them on the monitor, or wifi or bluetooth won't work after resume, or they'll get stuck in a low frequency mode, ....
Modern sleep also drains your battery and heats up your laptop on Windows too (but not most of the other problems). I miss the days when you could put a sleeping laptop in a bag, but now, on Windows, you have to either re-enable hibernation (for however long they allow that), or fully shut down. Modern sleep was a mistake.
Or the issue that currently annoys the hell out of me: if I disconnect my laptop from the docking station and reconnect it, will it continue running or will it spontaneously restart (Dell laptop and docking station, Ubuntu 22.04, Wayland)?
You can opt for security only automatic updates which a lot of server admins do. However, if you are running something in production, you don't want to risk any breakage due to an automatic update. This is independent of the operating system.
This. Security-only updates are the only ones I allow automatically. Broader updates are too risky to allow to happen without supervision. I think this is independent of the operating system being used.
All of them? On Debian and Ubuntu you can also enable security updates only (red hat claims to support this but apparently security is a paid feature for them). This helps for stability since it only applies security updates automatically.
Linux's updates occasionally require manual intervention on some distros, which is why they don't do it automatically. The more popular/stable ones should have less though.
I’ve been usually ubuntu LTS for a very long time now and can’t remember the last time I had a bad update experience. Now if you live on the edge with Arch your chances go way up, especially if you wait too long between updates.
That begs the question, was Windows ever good? OTOH, the Linux desktop experience may be better than Windows, but (as someone who uses Linux both on my home PC and work laptop) I also wouldn't describe it as 100% "good". It works most of the time, but if you run into issues, good luck - especially with things like Wayland, that Ubuntu simply decided to let loose on its unsuspecting users...
Valve's proton and VKD3D basically covers all of that. The only games that I have any trouble running on my fedora/amd system are those that use invasive anti-cheat.
To the downvoters: I am well aware that Linux can run modern games. In fact my gaming rig is a KDE Neon 6.2 install with all latest mesa, amdgpu, etc. I play the latest dx12 games just fine on it.
But the original point wasn't whether Linux could, but whether it's different from Windows.
And as someone who compiles DXVK from git: dx12 won't work out of the box; it is different from Windows. Not particularly difficult, but different...
Caveat: I don't use any special hardware like audio interfaces or racing wheels, so no idea about the experience with those (I'd assume getting drivers to work might be a PITA/impossible?).
It's crazy, people used to be excited when a new version of Windows came out. New features, prettier UI. People used to pay a lot of money for a new mayor OS version. I probably haven't payed more than 5 € for Windows in the last decade.
I think if Microsoft would focus on quality of life improvements and fix the mess that Windows UX often is, maybe implement a fancy new theme every once in a while, then they could get people excited about updates again.
> It's crazy, people used to be excited when a new version of Windows came out.
I remember in 1995 a few of my fathers coworkers lining up for a midnight launch of Windows 95. By 2007 and Vista the same people were saying that you'd take XP from their cold dead hands.
Moving to Linux is not an option for everyone. I like Linux for development, but from time to time I use other software (e.g. graphics software) that is only available for Windows and macOS. Hopefully more commercial software will be available for Linux in the future.
windows 12 will be out before then. As per the tradition, w12 will be what w11 tried to be. That being said, I really need to consider using linux for gaming. I only use windows for gaming so and most of my games are small indie ones.
Yeah, but no. Proton is the best thing that happened to Linux gaming, but sometimes it's still not good enough to get full Windows-like experience.
HDR still doesn't work properly, there are no codecs (Atmos, DTS:X) for my surround system, latest nvidia driver broke Microsoft Flight Sim and other games on wayland. The list goes on.
And as for Copilot - I'm sure I'll be able to rip it out, just like the other crap MS forcefully pushes on people.
Every version gets a little shinier. That's part of the problem of course.
MS should take responsibility for all the trashed hardware that they cause with their idiotic upgrade policies and ever increasing system requirements.
The article is calling windows 10 a "winning formula" - while it is already a dumpster fire.
Running from the arms of one untrustworthy corporation into another untrustworthy one isn't addressing the issue, that's just pigs, lipsticks, brand, and marketing.
Indeed. I decided after getting fucked by Epic that I wasn't going to invest in any games any more. The whole market leaves a bad taste in my mouth now. Apple was an easy move.
Hat tip to any Linux switchers. I hope you get what you need out of it.
Absolutely. Unless you play some crap that relies on anti-cheat malware (and in that case, you might want to re-evaluate your gaming tastes), I have been gaming on Linux without any issues.
During the Pro install, Choose International vs US and you don't get any bloat. With Pro ($90?) nothing is pushed on you. The small things that are, can easily be removed with Powershell.
Windows 11 - used it $day job$ and it's ok. That's as charitable as I can be. They're looking to move staff to Macs and Linux, and retire W11. It's only in use because of things like Office, Outlook, and the odd bit of software that's Windows only. Which is kind of ironic, because there are quite a few programs I've come across that download only for Mac or Linux which is the opposite to 20 years ago.
It's funny and a bit sad that Windows 11 is the kind of version of Windows I would have associated with Ballmer. A sort of in-your-face money making machine with all its ads and cruft. Yet, it's Nadella. Does Microsoft, at some level, have a 'we know Windows is dying' attitude? They have their other billion dollar 'pillars' of Azure, Office, XBox, and so on.