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!
Nah just stuff I built myself or random laptops.
Some old Lenovo laptop with an Intel iGPU and an AMD GPU I can’t remember, worked out of the box but was a bit finicky for some things. I don’t remember what it was, it broke years ago.
ASUS TUF FX504GM (1060 maxq), zero issues on X11
Lenovo Legion 5 (3070 + AMD iGPU), zero issues, daily driver
Custom Desktop (1070 + Intel iGPU though I didn’t really use it), some issues but i was testing Wayland years ago. Good on X11.
Custom Desktop (7900xtx + 3080), zero issues, daily driver. It used to just have a 3080, which is fairly solid on Wayland as well but not perfect.
A few other random laptops and desktop some friends owned over the years, fairly smooth on pretty much all of them.
I’ve found in general that anything that doesn’t have an Nvidia card as the display output works fine. Wayland is getting quite usable on Nvidia as well, but there are still growing pains. Still, no black screens anywhere.
Sure I’ve tinkered a bit during the years, but I almost never had a black screen, much less stuff not booting, on install. I did brick my display drivers a few times (just Nvidia being a pain, mostly) but it was mostly my fault.
It may be that you’ve just been really unlucky. There are definitely hardware combinations out there that cause problems, but I haven’t really found any particularly problematic ones up until now.
I’ve tried many many laptops. Don’t remember which ones, but they there the most sock common, you can probably imagine. For example, the last one is a budget acer with a Radeon discreet card or something. No NVIDIA. Installed Lubuntu on it. Absolutely standard installation. Worked for some while. Then it stopped working. Whenever I booted up the laptop, the screen went black after a second on login screen. Researching for hours and hours did not help to find a solution.
Funnily enough, I only installed Lubuntu in the first place, because I tried Debian Stable before that and that one didn’t boot at all. It did not work even once. So, I had switched to Lubuntu…
This is one representative example for how those great Linux installations always go in my cases. Again, this did not happen once or twice. This happens almost every single time I try to install Linux on any normal stock hardware, whatsoever.
The only time I had no trouble installing Linux is on my current laptop (tablet, but like a laptop) device. But do you know why? Because I reserched for hours for a device, which fits my needs and is very compatible with Linux. That’s why. I had to research tons of hours to find a device, which is actually Linux compatible.
That said, not even this device works fine. Actually, the opposite. It is dangerous to your health. Yeah, I’m not joking, I literally mean it.
One time, I started Firefox on it and the screen started flickering really hard. Couldn’t control or fix it. If my friend would’ve been there, he would’ve gotten a seizure 100%, since he has photosensitive epilepsy. Linux is literally dangerous to your health.
Windows might be annoying and all… But it doesn’t give anyone literal seizures.
Have you tried anything not Debian based?
Well, a very long time ago, I tried plenty of distributions on old hardware and that worked enough, so I could at least boot. But yeah, older hardware was always easier for Linux.
At some point I switched to the ones, which are most likely to succeed. Ubuntu is the biggest one out there and should work the best, with the most support and acceptance across the globe.
If not even Ubuntu works on those devices, then what will work, out of the box?
Besides, Ubuntu has already diverted enough from Debian, that I wouldn’t really put them in the same basket, at all, anymore…