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!
Good call. I’ve had to use Windows on work computers for the last 15 years, and I think it’s insane when people talk about it being simple or just working. I feel like I’m being gaslighted by people who maybe don’t know Linux very well so they decided Windows is good actually.
It appears to be all held together with string and ready to crumble randomly.
We keep one Windows laptop in our house so my partner can use some proprietary software she needs for work. When something goes wrong we just reimage it with the HP support tool because otherwise trying to fix it is like pulling your own teeth out.
I work in IT supporting windows (server primarily) and from my perspective it does work pretty well. We have around 1500 Windows clients and around 400-500 Windows servers and it works pretty damn well. Sure problems happen, in general it does work. Now, I don’t work in T1 support so I’m not sure how often people have problems but I would definitely hear about it if it were as bad as some on Lemmy claim.
Our Windows Servers in general work great, I don’t think we have noticeably more problems with them compared to our Linux servers which we have maybe 20% more of.
Remember that pretty much the entire enterprise world use primarily or exclusively Windows clients and that would absolutely not be the case if they were “held together with string and ready to crumble randomly.” That would simply not be acceptable in companies which could lose millions in just lost productivity.
Relax, mate. I’m not trying to take away your Windows Server. Just talking about how bad windows is from end user perspective… absolute rubbish, barely usable, nearly impossible to troubleshoot.
I’m glad you get along with it from your IT professional/server admin role.
I get what you are saying, and Windows is absolutely frustrating at times but so is Linux and especially MacOS.
I’m no developer but I do really get that Windows isn’t the best suited OS for some development work, but calling it barely usable in general is just ridiculous.
It’s certainly not impossible to troubleshoot either. You just need to learn it, like how you have to learn any OS.
I won’t argue that it isn’t rubbish, that’s fair enough. There is a lot of bullshit with Windows and Microsoft
The main reason Linux clients are largly missing in most IT environments is that managing it on a scale comparable to Windows clients is hard. Afaik there isn’t a great way to push out configuration, policies, certificates. And making it all be seamless.
Unmanaged windows clients might be quite bad, but together with stuff like active directory it just works really well for authentication and is part of a good ecosystem that in general just works. The various admin tools for Active Directory are quite annoying to use since they haven’t been developed in years and are missing obvious features. Fortunately you can just use Powershell.
I really really wish Linux were better in these enterprise aspects, I wish we could pivot more to Linux for all users or at least for those that don’t need specialized software like CAD. There is a large possibility that the majority of our users would riot if we did that though.
For the record I personally like Linux a lot and would absolutely run exclusively Linux if windows wasn’t my work. I will probably get my home pc on Linux someday, but I haven’t yet because it’s simply just so much easier for me to fix Windows when it breaks compared to fixing Linux which always turns into a huge rabbit hole for me. It’s also just in general annoying to switch OS since I have TBs of data on it.
That’s because of active directory. It makes managing hundreds of users, across as many devices, in a centralized manner, easier. You make a user for the person with the intended access scheme, hand them a random laptop imaged from a master system OS, and off they go with access to all the software and tools tied to their user login. There’s no similar alternative with a robust support service for Linux clients. If there were, then changing a culture to Linux clients wouldn’t have so much friction.
Yes absolutely! Active directory is very powerful