I’m under no illusions that Linux is a viable alternative for everyone, but if you’re just using your computer as a web terminal and light gaming system, a decent Linux system + Steam makes for a very usable option these days.
I have exactly one computer in my house that has Windows on it. It was provided by my employer, and I turn it on maybe once every two weeks or so, for special-purpose activities that can’t be done on my Linux laptop. And most of the time, for most activities my Linux laptop is the clearly superior performer - it’s not even close, despite their similar hardware specs.
I don’t think everyone should - or can - switch. But if you’ve got an old beater laptop gathering dust, try popping Ubuntu or something on it, see how it performs. See if it’s something you could legitimately switch to full or part time.
Yes, you can either add the game as a non-steam game and force proton, or use Lutris or Bottles (with proton or other WINE runner). For repacks with installers, you can launch the setup.exe with Lutris or Bottles (install the game to ‘fake’ drive_c and move it), just make sure you include dependencies that require it (usually .net framework).
Source: most of my steam library on my steam deck is plundered loot
There are also repackers like jc141 e LinuxRulez that also manage the dependencies and prefix for you. LinuxRulez also gives you appropriate Wine versions if needed
Not to necro this thread, but lets say someone I know has gotten copy of a repack and when they try to install it with Lutris it says they don’t have enough disk space to run the installer, is it possible to create the wine bottle and specify the size of it before launching the installer?
At this point in time, I only occasionally have mild issues with newest games, because Wine is a continuously developed software, and games with an annoying anticheat, such as Destiny 2 or R6 Siege. Everything else just runs, including older games, that don’t even run on Windows, or titles you had to sail the seas for
However, if you have a friend fresh from Windows who already uses steam and you say, tick compatible proton 8 or latest and click play vs install new software and then add the game you’ve already lost the easy battle.
Yeah it’s great. Bottles is the best tool imo, lutris almost feels like a relic from the early days of Linux gaming, and non-steam games in steam don’t always work exactly how you might want, and aren’t so much fun. There is also heroic games launcher now which lets you add custom games and is also a very nice option if you don’t use gnome (bottles is a gnome style app so it may look out of place elsewhere). I would put some thorough research into VPNs if you torrent though because the one I used on my Linux box (expressvpn) leaked my ip at some point and I got a letter in the mail.
I’m a gamer. I’ve used Windows since the 95 days. I’m done with Microsoft. I was not happy with Windows 10 and the bullshit they introduced but there is no way in hell I’m signing up for Win11.
Steam has made a lot of progress with Proton. My next computer will be Linux-based.
It’s getting pretty easy to ditch Windows these days. Microsoft got too greedy and desperate, and actually using the damn platform they built is getting harder and harder, especially if you don’t want the nagging and annoyances that come from them trying to turn your computer into their subscription revenue stream. My impression is that Valve is aware of the problem, and wants to make sure that their store works regardless of which operating system you prefer.
Valve is and was aware of this problem even back then. I don’t have a reliable source on this but from what I remember it all started when Microsoft begun pushing the Microsoft Store.
Gabe Newell even said Linux is the future of gaming
Yeah this is so true. I have a gaming laptop with Linux on it and a steam deck. If it doesn’t run on Linux, I don’t buy it. The problem is that strategy isn’t really saving me any money these days.
There’s a real sense of relief whenever I close my (work) windows laptop and open my personal Pop_OS laptop… and then start up Baldur’s Gate.
I’ve been primarily a Linux user for several years now and it seems like Windows is just getting worse and worse in terms of user experience. I fear the day that my company wants everyone to move to Win11.
Give me GOG Galaxy and Path of Exile on Linux and I would install it now. Last time I wanted to switch, I installed everything I needed, went to download GOG and remembered why I switch back last time. :(
I can’t view my achievements so I don’t know. I assume no because there’s no overlay. I actually forgot GOG even had achievements. I just don’t care about them that much usually.
I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore since I have what I need but Dead Cells requires a connection to their servers (which requires GOG connection if on GOG version) to get the three items from daily challenges.
The problem with Linux as a desktop is that all the money and investment goes into server use cases. There really aren’t many companies investing into the desktop. I think Valve might he the only big company with a major interest in it, but they’re mostly focusing on their own closed ecosystem. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem.
So if magically we see desktop usage go up, investment will go up, and we’ll see much more momentum.
Regarding viability though, I think that’s not going to be solved with more investment. The problem is the millions of people making trillions of documents in MS Office. Microsoft goes out of their way to make it extremely difficult for competitors to achieve 100% compatibility. Unless that changes through regulation or something (since it’s clearly anticompetitive), I don’t think the hypothetical linux desktop wave will survive very long.
Adobe, Autodesk, and a few others are also at fault for not supporting linux, but that’s a different issue. They’ll go where the money is, and if Linux usage goes up, they’ll have to support it or risk losing their strong market positions.
Maya runs on Linux. They’d lose tons and tons of customers if they pulled support. The rule of thumb is “if it started on IRIX then now the main platform is Linux”.
Didn’t some municipality in Germany run Linux on all their desktops but had to stop, not because any fault with Linux but because of compatibility? The money saved on licenses was lost on having to find ways to integrate with other municipalities and problems when others had problems with their documents etc.
Munich. Staff were happy with it, compatibility had nothing to do with it, and it definitely had nothing to do with the Mayor rubbing Microsoft’s back for moving their German headquarters back to Munich. Perish the thought.
They’re more or less in the process of rolling back the rollback, though.
Getting Berlaymont switched over would be the big get. Those people are writing memos advocating for the adoption of free software solutions and open document standards using MS Office.
I remember reading someone responsible for the project saying something along the lines of hassle to send data to others. It could be another project or I could be wrong.
Personally I’ve ever only used Gimp even when I was on Windows. I wonder what gimp could possibly even do better to compete with photoshop. There’s also krita of course which is very popular but I’ve never tried it, gimp has just been everything I’ve ever needed from a drawing program.
Non-destructive editing is sorely missing, a.k.a. layer effects. Adding shadows and outlines in Gimp is a chore, and if you dare edit the layer you added a shadow to, you need to repeat the process again.
The problem is the millions of people making trillions of documents in MS Office. Microsoft goes out of their way to make it extremely difficult for competitors to achieve 100% compatibility.
Yep. I’ve worked with LibreOffice, it’s not bad – but it’s not MS Office. Especially Excel, but even MS Word is better depending on your usage and how much you rely on things like VB macros. I’m in the process of trying out Linux distros to eventually move all of my machines over to Linux, but even then I fully expect to be running MS Office in a virtual machine on at least one of them.
Fortunately, I like the older versions of MS Office and I don’t mind the extra setup, so it won’t be a problem for me. But for anyone needing the latest iterations of MS Office, it’s difficult to do on Linux from what I’ve seen so far, and maybe impossible for a total beginner without help.
A lot of responses and none of them are false but the main reason for the improved gaming performance is DXVK, it translates DirectX 9 and 11 to Vulkan and is used by default on every DX9/DX11 game on Linux when you use Proton.
The Vulkan stack on modern GPUs is much more optimized compared to DX9 and 11. It has gotten so bad that many Windows people use DXVK on Windows to solve performance issues and even Intel uses DXVK (or similar technology) for their Arc GPUs.
not OP but similar situation. My Linux desktop is just more snappy, despite being 5 years old (and the work Win11 laptop brand new). I already have customized with my shortcuts and apps. I don’t have to listen to the fan spinning up every time I open a new window (exaggerating a bit, but not much). Also I am not tied to work filters. If I want to read the news online for 5 minutes in a coffee break I don’t risk being monitored and potentially evaluated. But really, I’ve been a Windows and Linux user for 20-odd years. I’ve always found that Linux installed on the same hardware of Windows is just smoother and faster. Windows is getting so much bloatware (from MS or enterprise apps) that it doesn’t even have a fighting chance.
Memory management and file IO is far more efficient in Linux. So much so that I even got better performance in Windows running Debian in a VM for some very file-intensive stuff. And by better performance I mean a factor of about 10.
Depending on the situation, it actually can make huge differences.  For instance, I built my computer in 2010 it’s 13yrs old now. it can’t run windows 11 and while it can run windows 10 it runs like complete shit. Start up would take forever even on a fresh install, half the time Windows freezes just trying to get to the desktop after a fresh reboot. at idle background processes from windows would leave me running over 50% CPU usage just idling and opening anything like Firefox and Discord at the same time would jump to 100% CPU usage.
On Linux it runs just as good as the day I built it. Startup takes around 30 seconds and I can actually start working the moment I’m on the desktop, no freezing or waiting for background startup processes to finish. I currently at this moment have around 20 workspaces (aka virtual desktops) open across three monitors, within those work spaces is hundreds of tabs open in Firefox, simultaneously playing RuneScape and dwarf fortress. A bunch of terminals, SSH sessions, and other miscellaneous work stuff running. a ton of docker containers running, I also have both discord with a call going and Spotify playing in the background and I am setting at 30% CPU usage with the occasional spike to 50%. I can actually use my computer to do a ton of stuff and have power left over while windows would max out and freeze up just the start up, even on fresh installs. And it’s not just this one old computer, I can consistently see rather large performance differences going from Windows to Linux across the number of different computers. 
I’m on Fedora 38 with I3 WM and a few kde apps, originally installed as 35 and just upgraded since. Before that was arch briefly and before that was debian. 
I went with Fedora because I need my computer to work without issue when it’s time to work and on arch I spent more time tinkering and getting things working then actually working. I still think just plain Debian a solid choice and I use it on a lot of servers but as a desktop, I felt like I ran into a lot of outdated packages. With Fedora I’m getting up-to-date packages yet I have never had an update break the system.  I also prefer DNF and their repository over apt and deb files. It’s all just personal preference though. You just gotta try them all and see what you like!
I appreciate you taking the time to describe why you chose Fedora; now I’m tempted to try it, lol. I’m downloading the 38 Budgie spin now and adding it to the list. (It’ll run like shit with apps until I upgrade the RAM on my Macbook, but the minimum hardware reqs are met and I can still look at it and see what it does out of the box.) Thanks!
They’ve been talking about replacing NTFS for a long time. 10 years ago they put ReFS in the server builds and… show of hands anyone using it?
I think they were trying to make ReFS compete with things like zfs but 10 years later it still doesnt support compression, encryption, quotas or booting…
I don’t think NTFS is the actual problem, but the Windows VFS layer (or whatever it’s called over there).
Running windirstat (or similar programs) is dog-slow on Windows, k4dirstat eats through the same partition quite a bit faster. Getting metadata to sort a directory with what 5000 files by modification time can take minutes in explorer, with Linux it’s pretty much instant. minutes. That’s not just non-optimised that’s abysmal.
My comment isn’t really a viable argument but I’ve been thinking about how an advert for Linux would be:
“The top 500 supercomputers in the world run Linux, don’t you want to feel like having a supercomputer at home? Why wait? Get your Linux for free today!”
Not really to be taken seriously, but if you want a real argument and example:
My laptop is really laggy with windows 10, and it came preinstalled with it. Recently I tried dual-booting Linux and Windows, and Windows was simply too slow. I am so accustomed with Linux’s speed that I wiped Windows off it. Never again.
Most desktop environments are really efficient at what they do and minimize the background resources they take. Just checked my system and GNOME takes ~350MBs RAM (~700MB including gnome-software) and literally 0.0% CPU, it’s insane. I looked up Windows 11 and it seems like it can use up to 4 GBs (!) of RAM all by itself.
I’m gonna ride out Windows 10 since I’ve got it behaving and I’m lazy. But if Windows 12 is just like Windows 11, or worse, I’m switching to Linux and figuring out how to get a vGPU VM up and running for when I have to run something on Windows for one reason or another. I messed with a vGPU in Hyper-V on Windows and was amazed by how seamless the performance was compared to other VM GPU acceleration options. I found a project to do something similar on Linux, so I’m gonna mess with that. If I can get it running as well as I’ve seen in some videos, I won’t need a bare metal Windows install anymore.
Yeah same. When they do eventually kill 10 then im bailing for Firefox and Linux. I do also have it behaving but sometimes it tries the odd bullshit about edge.
Running AAA games with kernel level anti-cheat (aka malware) would be an example.
Windows-exclusive software like some ERP client, specific hardware drivers etc. Also, there’s no real alternative for Excel, unfortunately (LibreOffice isn’t good enough).
Linux needs a Chrome OS type thing but FOSS with steam and it’ll be the best version for most users, and if it’s configurable unlike Chrome OS it’ll even serve power users
(Chrome OS was actually really good imo, especially with their container method of running Android and Linux apps, but they moved it to VM, and it’s not as good functionally for some reason)
Chromium OS is the worst of both worlds (limited to chromium and you don’t get the ease of use from Chrome OS), unless you meant a fork of it, in which case I’m not aware of it and a Google search doesn’t give me any good results.
(Though I still should have remembered chromium OS, but that’s on me being used to it being ignored because of lacking Android apps mainly)
Nvidia drivers work fine, they always have (I’m using a 4090 on my fedora workstation). This is a common misconception.
Nvidia’s drivers are a problem because they are not open source. This creates headaches for developers and the community at large. But for end users, they work just fine. Nvidia doesn’t just dump untested code on the internet and call it a day, they have full time staff dedicated to building and testing linux drivers.
One recent problem is that the current latest driver is not compatible with Starfield. This is a common occurrence even on windows, and is why Nvidia and AMD regularly release “game ready” drivers before a major game launch. On Windows, Starfield crashed with the latest AMD driver for the same reason.
Since it isn’t open source, our only option is to wait for Nvidia to release a new version. If it was open source, the community could fix the issue immediately without having to wait.
One recent problem is that the current latest driver is not compatible with Starfield. This is a common occurrence even on windows, and is why Nvidia and AMD regularly release “game ready” drivers before a major game launch. On Windows, Starfield crashed with the latest AMD driver for the same reason.
DX12 and Vulkan were supposed to fix all that, but apparently not.
Well it depends on your DE. If you run Gnome, you will probably be fine. If you run Plasma you can run into problems but supposedly Plasma 6.0 is going to release with full Wayland support at the end of this year (or beginning of next one) so lets hold our thumbs for that.
I’ve been using wayland via Plasma for at least a year now and it’s been rock-solid. Granted, I have an AMD card and KDE is NixOS’ primary DE.
If you run Gnome you’ll run into compatibility issues as Gnome devs have a “our way or the highway” kind of attitude. Like steadfastly refusing to implement server-side decorations. They want to use CSD for their stuff, that’s not an issue, but it’s another issue to not allow random programs to say “hey, server, I don’t care about my decorations, paint something suitable”. Especially for programs like mpv which don’t have a toolkit that could do such a thing for them, and mpv is not going to start linking to qt or gtk just to draw a title bar.
I’m under no illusions that Linux is a viable alternative for everyone, but if you’re just using your computer as a web terminal and light gaming system, a decent Linux system + Steam makes for a very usable option these days.
I have exactly one computer in my house that has Windows on it. It was provided by my employer, and I turn it on maybe once every two weeks or so, for special-purpose activities that can’t be done on my Linux laptop. And most of the time, for most activities my Linux laptop is the clearly superior performer - it’s not even close, despite their similar hardware specs.
I don’t think everyone should - or can - switch. But if you’ve got an old beater laptop gathering dust, try popping Ubuntu or something on it, see how it performs. See if it’s something you could legitimately switch to full or part time.
Is Linux still a good option for gaming if one were to not purchase games?
Yes, you can either add the game as a non-steam game and force proton, or use Lutris or Bottles (with proton or other WINE runner). For repacks with installers, you can launch the setup.exe with Lutris or Bottles (install the game to ‘fake’ drive_c and move it), just make sure you include dependencies that require it (usually .net framework).
Source: most of my steam library on my steam deck is plundered loot
There are also repackers like jc141 e LinuxRulez that also manage the dependencies and prefix for you. LinuxRulez also gives you appropriate Wine versions if needed
Not to necro this thread, but lets say someone I know has gotten copy of a repack and when they try to install it with Lutris it says they don’t have enough disk space to run the installer, is it possible to create the wine bottle and specify the size of it before launching the installer?
Are you installing it to the C drive? There’s directory called drive_c, which will look like a windows C drive.
Linux is paradise when it comes to emulation 🎮
Lutris is good for that. It can be confusing at first if you don’t know how Wine works, but it’s very easy to use and doesn’t require Steam.
I find Bottles it’s less confusing than Lutris, (though it’s not UX perfect), and a better suggestion for people starting off with gaming.
Though Steam is the number one suggestion. If all your games run through Steam then you don’t even need to worry about Bottles or Lutris.
😏
At this point in time, I only occasionally have mild issues with newest games, because Wine is a continuously developed software, and games with an annoying anticheat, such as Destiny 2 or R6 Siege. Everything else just runs, including older games, that don’t even run on Windows, or titles you had to sail the seas for
Sure. I’ve run several modern … repurposed… games and it usually works through lutris.
yes but steam is so easy
Steam works on Linux.
yeah and it is very easy
Yes, Steam doesn’t do anything
You can just as easily use Wine/Proton as your runner as you can set up Steam to use Wine/Proton as your runner
Not true, steam makes it incredibly easy. Install steam, tick compatibility option, install, click green play button.
Lutris makes it incredibly easy. Install Lutris, tick runner option, install, click play button
Lutris is great, I use it myself.
However, if you have a friend fresh from Windows who already uses steam and you say, tick compatible proton 8 or latest and click play vs install new software and then add the game you’ve already lost the easy battle.
Yeah it’s great. Bottles is the best tool imo, lutris almost feels like a relic from the early days of Linux gaming, and non-steam games in steam don’t always work exactly how you might want, and aren’t so much fun. There is also heroic games launcher now which lets you add custom games and is also a very nice option if you don’t use gnome (bottles is a gnome style app so it may look out of place elsewhere). I would put some thorough research into VPNs if you torrent though because the one I used on my Linux box (expressvpn) leaked my ip at some point and I got a letter in the mail.
Yes, but it will take some learning time
Take your piracy back to the piracy sub
Take your ignorance elsewhere
Fuck off.
Pirate everything.
fuck off buddy
deleted by creator
I’m a gamer. I’ve used Windows since the 95 days. I’m done with Microsoft. I was not happy with Windows 10 and the bullshit they introduced but there is no way in hell I’m signing up for Win11.
Steam has made a lot of progress with Proton. My next computer will be Linux-based.
It’s getting pretty easy to ditch Windows these days. Microsoft got too greedy and desperate, and actually using the damn platform they built is getting harder and harder, especially if you don’t want the nagging and annoyances that come from them trying to turn your computer into their subscription revenue stream. My impression is that Valve is aware of the problem, and wants to make sure that their store works regardless of which operating system you prefer.
Valve is and was aware of this problem even back then. I don’t have a reliable source on this but from what I remember it all started when Microsoft begun pushing the Microsoft Store.
Gabe Newell even said Linux is the future of gaming
And for this I have a source: https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-linux-and-open-source-are-the-future-of-gaming/
Yeah this is so true. I have a gaming laptop with Linux on it and a steam deck. If it doesn’t run on Linux, I don’t buy it. The problem is that strategy isn’t really saving me any money these days.
There’s a real sense of relief whenever I close my (work) windows laptop and open my personal Pop_OS laptop… and then start up Baldur’s Gate.
I’ve been primarily a Linux user for several years now and it seems like Windows is just getting worse and worse in terms of user experience. I fear the day that my company wants everyone to move to Win11.
Give me GOG Galaxy and Path of Exile on Linux and I would install it now. Last time I wanted to switch, I installed everything I needed, went to download GOG and remembered why I switch back last time. :(
You don’t need GOG Galaxy. I play my GOG games through Heroic Games Launcher on my Artix Linux system.
Path of Exile is rated Gold on ProtonDB and according to reports works out of the box through Steam Proton.
Does it connect to achievements?
I can’t view my achievements so I don’t know. I assume no because there’s no overlay. I actually forgot GOG even had achievements. I just don’t care about them that much usually.
Steam achievements work normally, of course.
I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore since I have what I need but Dead Cells requires a connection to their servers (which requires GOG connection if on GOG version) to get the three items from daily challenges.
I haven’t tried installing gog but I do play path of exile on Linux, with a controller. Flawless ( my distro off choice is nobara)
Nice, I will have to look into that.
I use Lutris to install my GOG games, Battle.NET, EA launcher, and Ubisoft Play. It’s a very simple solution.
I use heroic launcher, works perfectly for me
If everyone swapped to Linux, how quickly do you think it’d be as viable as Windows?
The problem with Linux as a desktop is that all the money and investment goes into server use cases. There really aren’t many companies investing into the desktop. I think Valve might he the only big company with a major interest in it, but they’re mostly focusing on their own closed ecosystem. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem.
So if magically we see desktop usage go up, investment will go up, and we’ll see much more momentum.
Regarding viability though, I think that’s not going to be solved with more investment. The problem is the millions of people making trillions of documents in MS Office. Microsoft goes out of their way to make it extremely difficult for competitors to achieve 100% compatibility. Unless that changes through regulation or something (since it’s clearly anticompetitive), I don’t think the hypothetical linux desktop wave will survive very long.
Adobe, Autodesk, and a few others are also at fault for not supporting linux, but that’s a different issue. They’ll go where the money is, and if Linux usage goes up, they’ll have to support it or risk losing their strong market positions.
It’s all an annoying chicken and egg problem.
Maya runs on Linux. They’d lose tons and tons of customers if they pulled support. The rule of thumb is “if it started on IRIX then now the main platform is Linux”.
Didn’t some municipality in Germany run Linux on all their desktops but had to stop, not because any fault with Linux but because of compatibility? The money saved on licenses was lost on having to find ways to integrate with other municipalities and problems when others had problems with their documents etc.
Munich. Staff were happy with it, compatibility had nothing to do with it, and it definitely had nothing to do with the Mayor rubbing Microsoft’s back for moving their German headquarters back to Munich. Perish the thought.
They’re more or less in the process of rolling back the rollback, though.
Getting Berlaymont switched over would be the big get. Those people are writing memos advocating for the adoption of free software solutions and open document standards using MS Office.
I remember reading someone responsible for the project saying something along the lines of hassle to send data to others. It could be another project or I could be wrong.
Would be much easier to switch to Linux if it had viable alternatives to the most commonly used software, I feel.
Unfortunately, Gimp still sucks monkey balls compared to Photoshop, and Libre Office, although close, is not MS Office.
Personally I’ve ever only used Gimp even when I was on Windows. I wonder what gimp could possibly even do better to compete with photoshop. There’s also krita of course which is very popular but I’ve never tried it, gimp has just been everything I’ve ever needed from a drawing program.
Non-destructive editing is sorely missing, a.k.a. layer effects. Adding shadows and outlines in Gimp is a chore, and if you dare edit the layer you added a shadow to, you need to repeat the process again.
Yep. I’ve worked with LibreOffice, it’s not bad – but it’s not MS Office. Especially Excel, but even MS Word is better depending on your usage and how much you rely on things like VB macros. I’m in the process of trying out Linux distros to eventually move all of my machines over to Linux, but even then I fully expect to be running MS Office in a virtual machine on at least one of them.
Fortunately, I like the older versions of MS Office and I don’t mind the extra setup, so it won’t be a problem for me. But for anyone needing the latest iterations of MS Office, it’s difficult to do on Linux from what I’ve seen so far, and maybe impossible for a total beginner without help.
Whats the latest working “old” version of MsOffice on linux these days?
Depends on what method you’re using to try to run it. This article from January 2023 is a good overview:
https://itsfoss.com/use-microsoft-office-linux/
5 years for personal, 20 years for professional
Ummm… I’m thinking more like two years for personal, and now for professional. I’m a professional, using Linux as my daily driver.
The software has to be developed and then it has to be adopted
You can find companies running XP still just to avoid upgrading their embedded system
How or why does Linux have a higher performance for you?
A lot of responses and none of them are false but the main reason for the improved gaming performance is DXVK, it translates DirectX 9 and 11 to Vulkan and is used by default on every DX9/DX11 game on Linux when you use Proton.
The Vulkan stack on modern GPUs is much more optimized compared to DX9 and 11. It has gotten so bad that many Windows people use DXVK on Windows to solve performance issues and even Intel uses DXVK (or similar technology) for their Arc GPUs.
not OP but similar situation. My Linux desktop is just more snappy, despite being 5 years old (and the work Win11 laptop brand new). I already have customized with my shortcuts and apps. I don’t have to listen to the fan spinning up every time I open a new window (exaggerating a bit, but not much). Also I am not tied to work filters. If I want to read the news online for 5 minutes in a coffee break I don’t risk being monitored and potentially evaluated. But really, I’ve been a Windows and Linux user for 20-odd years. I’ve always found that Linux installed on the same hardware of Windows is just smoother and faster. Windows is getting so much bloatware (from MS or enterprise apps) that it doesn’t even have a fighting chance.
Memory management and file IO is far more efficient in Linux. So much so that I even got better performance in Windows running Debian in a VM for some very file-intensive stuff. And by better performance I mean a factor of about 10.
Probably just down to less stuff running in the background using up CPU cycles. I can’t imagine it makes a huge difference, but more than nothing.
Depending on the situation, it actually can make huge differences.  For instance, I built my computer in 2010 it’s 13yrs old now. it can’t run windows 11 and while it can run windows 10 it runs like complete shit. Start up would take forever even on a fresh install, half the time Windows freezes just trying to get to the desktop after a fresh reboot. at idle background processes from windows would leave me running over 50% CPU usage just idling and opening anything like Firefox and Discord at the same time would jump to 100% CPU usage.
On Linux it runs just as good as the day I built it. Startup takes around 30 seconds and I can actually start working the moment I’m on the desktop, no freezing or waiting for background startup processes to finish. I currently at this moment have around 20 workspaces (aka virtual desktops) open across three monitors, within those work spaces is hundreds of tabs open in Firefox, simultaneously playing RuneScape and dwarf fortress. A bunch of terminals, SSH sessions, and other miscellaneous work stuff running. a ton of docker containers running, I also have both discord with a call going and Spotify playing in the background and I am setting at 30% CPU usage with the occasional spike to 50%. I can actually use my computer to do a ton of stuff and have power left over while windows would max out and freeze up just the start up, even on fresh installs. And it’s not just this one old computer, I can consistently see rather large performance differences going from Windows to Linux across the number of different computers. 
If I may ask, what distro did you settle on? I’m trying out a handful myself right now.
I’m on Fedora 38 with I3 WM and a few kde apps, originally installed as 35 and just upgraded since. Before that was arch briefly and before that was debian.  I went with Fedora because I need my computer to work without issue when it’s time to work and on arch I spent more time tinkering and getting things working then actually working. I still think just plain Debian a solid choice and I use it on a lot of servers but as a desktop, I felt like I ran into a lot of outdated packages. With Fedora I’m getting up-to-date packages yet I have never had an update break the system.  I also prefer DNF and their repository over apt and deb files. It’s all just personal preference though. You just gotta try them all and see what you like!
I appreciate you taking the time to describe why you chose Fedora; now I’m tempted to try it, lol. I’m downloading the 38 Budgie spin now and adding it to the list. (It’ll run like shit with apps until I upgrade the RAM on my Macbook, but the minimum hardware reqs are met and I can still look at it and see what it does out of the box.) Thanks!
Also, the file system. For the longest time windows used NTFS exclusively, which is (or was) slower than Ext4 (the most widely used on Linux).
I think MS is moving away from NTFS and are going to use a different file system in the near future (maybe even now, I don’t know anymore)
They’ve been talking about replacing NTFS for a long time. 10 years ago they put ReFS in the server builds and… show of hands anyone using it?
I think they were trying to make ReFS compete with things like zfs but 10 years later it still doesnt support compression, encryption, quotas or booting…
I don’t think NTFS is the actual problem, but the Windows VFS layer (or whatever it’s called over there).
Running windirstat (or similar programs) is dog-slow on Windows, k4dirstat eats through the same partition quite a bit faster. Getting metadata to sort a directory with what 5000 files by modification time can take minutes in explorer, with Linux it’s pretty much instant. minutes. That’s not just non-optimised that’s abysmal.
My comment isn’t really a viable argument but I’ve been thinking about how an advert for Linux would be:
“The top 500 supercomputers in the world run Linux, don’t you want to feel like having a supercomputer at home? Why wait? Get your Linux for free today!”
Not really to be taken seriously, but if you want a real argument and example:
My laptop is really laggy with windows 10, and it came preinstalled with it. Recently I tried dual-booting Linux and Windows, and Windows was simply too slow. I am so accustomed with Linux’s speed that I wiped Windows off it. Never again.
Most desktop environments are really efficient at what they do and minimize the background resources they take. Just checked my system and GNOME takes ~350MBs RAM (~700MB including gnome-software) and literally 0.0% CPU, it’s insane. I looked up Windows 11 and it seems like it can use up to 4 GBs (!) of RAM all by itself.
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And you can put windows in a virtual machine for edge cases for most use cases. Use Linux for everything else.
I’m gonna ride out Windows 10 since I’ve got it behaving and I’m lazy. But if Windows 12 is just like Windows 11, or worse, I’m switching to Linux and figuring out how to get a vGPU VM up and running for when I have to run something on Windows for one reason or another. I messed with a vGPU in Hyper-V on Windows and was amazed by how seamless the performance was compared to other VM GPU acceleration options. I found a project to do something similar on Linux, so I’m gonna mess with that. If I can get it running as well as I’ve seen in some videos, I won’t need a bare metal Windows install anymore.
You should probably just go ahead and switch now. It’s not going to get any better, at least not over one iteration. Maybe Windows 14…
Should I remind you of ME, Vista and Win8?
Yeah same. When they do eventually kill 10 then im bailing for Firefox and Linux. I do also have it behaving but sometimes it tries the odd bullshit about edge.
@kescusay Just out of interest, what are the “special-purpose activities that can’t be done on my Linux laptop” if you don’t mind sharing?
Running AAA games with kernel level anti-cheat (aka malware) would be an example.
Windows-exclusive software like some ERP client, specific hardware drivers etc. Also, there’s no real alternative for Excel, unfortunately (LibreOffice isn’t good enough).
Ironically enough, some of the Linux certification exams only work on Windows and macOS.
Linux needs a Chrome OS type thing but FOSS with steam and it’ll be the best version for most users, and if it’s configurable unlike Chrome OS it’ll even serve power users
(Chrome OS was actually really good imo, especially with their container method of running Android and Linux apps, but they moved it to VM, and it’s not as good functionally for some reason)
You know there is a Chromium OS out there that is not only for Chrome OS computers. I don’t remember the exact name, Google it.
Chromium OS is the worst of both worlds (limited to chromium and you don’t get the ease of use from Chrome OS), unless you meant a fork of it, in which case I’m not aware of it and a Google search doesn’t give me any good results.
(Though I still should have remembered chromium OS, but that’s on me being used to it being ignored because of lacking Android apps mainly)
For most things I fully agree, unless it’s for windows specific applications that don’t exist in other platforms.
What about Nvidia drivers for games?
Nvidia drivers work fine, they always have (I’m using a 4090 on my fedora workstation). This is a common misconception.
Nvidia’s drivers are a problem because they are not open source. This creates headaches for developers and the community at large. But for end users, they work just fine. Nvidia doesn’t just dump untested code on the internet and call it a day, they have full time staff dedicated to building and testing linux drivers.
One recent problem is that the current latest driver is not compatible with Starfield. This is a common occurrence even on windows, and is why Nvidia and AMD regularly release “game ready” drivers before a major game launch. On Windows, Starfield crashed with the latest AMD driver for the same reason.
Since it isn’t open source, our only option is to wait for Nvidia to release a new version. If it was open source, the community could fix the issue immediately without having to wait.
Nvidia drivers also don’t support a lot of features that other drivers do
I see thanks for the info.
Next computer I would consider to go full Linux instead of getting windows 11 dual booting
got a citation there bud? running a 4080 on endeavour OS and have same issue :(
I think you misinterpreted my comment. Starfield is currently broken, and we need to wait for a fix from Nvidia.
Ah yeah sorry, when nvidia does when / how would I update driver, would it be a normal os update like yay -Syu I’m new and don’t understand it all yet
DX12 and Vulkan were supposed to fix all that, but apparently not.
Use X11 and you are fine
Actually, these days you can use Wayland and be fine, too. It’s my daily driver now.
Well it depends on your DE. If you run Gnome, you will probably be fine. If you run Plasma you can run into problems but supposedly Plasma 6.0 is going to release with full Wayland support at the end of this year (or beginning of next one) so lets hold our thumbs for that.
I’ve been using wayland via Plasma for at least a year now and it’s been rock-solid. Granted, I have an AMD card and KDE is NixOS’ primary DE.
If you run Gnome you’ll run into compatibility issues as Gnome devs have a “our way or the highway” kind of attitude. Like steadfastly refusing to implement server-side decorations. They want to use CSD for their stuff, that’s not an issue, but it’s another issue to not allow random programs to say “hey, server, I don’t care about my decorations, paint something suitable”. Especially for programs like mpv which don’t have a toolkit that could do such a thing for them, and mpv is not going to start linking to qt or gtk just to draw a title bar.
I would switch tomorrow if I didn’t play competitive CS that requires third-party anti-cheat like Faceit/ ESEA.
Which version of CS? Many of them work fine now.