Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
(himthe.dev)1860 points by bobsterlobster 5 days ago
1860 points by bobsterlobster 5 days ago
Depends on the games. If your kid wants to play anything with kernel level anticheat, it will not work on Linux, period - these anticheats don't support Linux, and either prevent the game from running altogether or disable certain online modes.
Otherwise, CachyOS is extremely popular these days, and I suppose a valid choice.
Recommend making a live drive with Ventoy. Copy over latest .iso’s of Mint, Fedora, Bazzite? for gaming.
Give them all a test drive, see what you like before committing. After install try new things in VMs.
if theyre not that technical i would say just stick with something simple like zorinOS, which is ubuntu based so there is a bigger community behind it if they run into issues. zorin has an option to install nvidia drivers during the initial setup. popOS would be another option along the same lines
I switched after running basic dev tools became genuinely unusable (randomly freezing for minutes, start menu just didn't work, crashes all the time) despite being on good, new hardware.
I never wanted to switch before because I just wanted an OS that worked, didn't require babysitting, and was compatible with apps. But clearly, Windows has dropped the ball on this.
> my first computer was a Windows 98 machine, with an Athlon XP 1900+ (Palomino core)
Off topic, anyone else think Windows 98 is too old for this machine? At a similar era I built an athlon t-bird 1.0GHz, I was mostly using Linux by then but if I did Windows then it would have been Win2k, maybe by the time of Athlon "XP", Windows XP would have been a thing too.
I think I'm pretty much there and just haven't made the switch yet. I'm going to give Mint a shot on my old PC soon and if its a good experience I'll switch on my desktop as well. Every time I have a bad experience in Windows lately I wonder why I'm sticking with it. Everything has been solved, its only momentum keeping me going.
I used https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat on a family member's new Win11 install and it actually works reasonably snappy. I wouldn't be want to caught dead with it, but I couldn't convince this one to go for macOS.
I'm not sure that "multi-compose" chrome bug is a windows-only thing though. I use chrome on Linux (slackware) with an nvidia card, and I get that issue all the time if I try to open more than one chrome WINDOW. Multiple tabs are ok, and SOMETIMES multiple windows are ok, but more often than not, I can only have one chrome window.
It is quiet sad to see Windows deteriorate that much over the years because of the decreased investment and lack of care and craftsmanship for the quality of the software being pushed out.
Thankfully unless you're running a few specific applications that only run on Windows, you can use any other operating system. It will do the job, with much less frustrations.
Upvote for Arc Raiders :D
I was running win11 up until three weeks ago. Just a gaming rig, a steam launcher. A used behemoth tower I got for a song via CL. Installed Bazzite and have been incredibly impressed.
Also ty to the author for the link to the nvidia sleep fix. That’s been the only hiccup, and it sounds like I’ll have it sorted before bedtime.
It's bad it really is, I got fed up and rolled back to windows 10 when I tried downloading a file and the whole UI locked up until the file finished. On my own personal high performance desktop with tons of memory, cpus, etc etc. Never saw this in Windows 10. Certainly never saw it in modern Linux.
> You might be thinking "just disable updates, man" or "just install LTSC", or "just run some random debloat script off of GitHub". Why? Why would I jump through all these hoops? I'd rather put in the effort for an OS that knows what consent is and respects me as a user.
The absolute choice quote here. Tattoo it on your forehead.
My work-issued dev device is a Surface Pro 10. I can't use WSL2 for various regulatory reasons. I will never, ever work on software like this again. Worst development experience of my life because of what a miserable dev env windows is.
I know that's been a meme since forever, but my first hand experience supports it to the extreme.
I just have to figure out how to play a few of my games on Steam and I can move over. Unfortunately, a few titles are still PC only so I can't make the switch. I very much would love to, but I basically need a $600 PC at all times to play a few select titles that will never come to Linux due to anti-cheat.
Anyone have a recommendation on a decent cloud-based file sync tool ala OneDrive? I use OneDrive extensively but there is no official client for Linux and the unofficial one has some major stability issues. I'm willing to change providers but not willing to put in the effort to roll-my-own.
"Video playback works flawlessly, with hardware acceleration even" not really, especially on Netflix
FWIW for similar reasons I nuked my Windows install and installed CauchyOS. My main reason for not doing it earlier was concerns about game compatibility but so far the games I want to play either are working without any issue or work after enabling Steam's proton compatibility layer.
I'm in the opposite position. Been a Linux user exclusively for 16+ years.
But I wanted to build some desktop apps and look at arcGIS so I finally installed Windows 11 on a laptop my first Windows in nearly 2 decades.
This was a month ago and I haven't opened the laptop since. But I'm going to soon maybe!
I'd be happy to switch to Linux, but my Macbook with M processor is a real work horse. First of all, everything works (bluetooth, headphones, camera, etc). Second of all, ARM based processor is a beast. Until someone release an ARM based laptop, I don't see myself switching to Linux.
Came here to say this too - after 10+ years with SolidWorks I switched to OnShape. A small learning curve but now I enjoy it just as much.
Ironically for me Linux has become the obvious default for casual use - web browsing, entertainment, paying my bills etc. I only boot Windows when I need to do some weird nerdy stuff, like checking updating SSD firmware with some proprietary software available only for Windows.
>No more waiting for the Start menu to decide it wants to open. No more File Explorer hanging when you need it the most.
I ran XP in a VM on Windows 10.
The start menu opens instantly. After one video frame.
Windows explorer opens instantly. One video frame.
If they had literally done nothing for 20 years, it would be like 50x faster now.
Regarding high-quality commercial Linux software: SideFX Houdini offers a relatively affordable Indie license and is fantastic for most kinds of 3D work, compositing, and post-processing tasks. It’s also fully procedural and scriptable, which really makes my brain buzz.
> Windows is now also too much work.
Most people overlook that. I only ever see comments complaining about time spent to set up Linux. It's not the only variable, and for Windows it's the constant maintenance that's the issue. You are never just done setting up Windows.
Since most application run in the browser nowadays, the OS becomes less meaningful and more of a layer between browser and hardware.
If you see your PC as a tool, not a gimmick to consume, Linux is the only choice. Even MacOS crappifies over time and becomes a Windows copy over time.
It's worth noting that if someone has the skill to install and run Linux with games, they probably have the skill to use massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts and ask AI to help bypass to install a local Windows account. And that probable takes less time.
Also, just to DISH hard on Microsoft's engineers - How could they make it throught the job interview the loser who wrote add / remove programs it takes so long to load and they are not even embarrased.
** Embracing the Dark Side here **
Why is opening the taskbar right click menu slower on Win11 than on Win95?
Why is there a gap between the menu and the taskbar?
I used to have muscle memory to quickly close windows rightclick taskbar -> leftclick “close” but this stopped working. Why??
There is a good parallel here with Myspace and Facebook. Myspace added an ad network & was hammered by spammers around the same time Facebook was opening up user registration to everyone. Facebook had no ads. Myspace was dead.
This time Linux has very good game support to the point where some games have a higher FPS on Linux. It will be so expensive for Microsoft to attempt to turn this ship around, and it will likely still fail.
This is happening at the same time AI agents have gotten really good, so users will just use local AI agents to configure and troubleshoot the rough stuff about Linux. And then they will customize it so much they will never be able to go back to Windows.
Ubuntu is just fine for 99% of non tech users. Windows has so many anti-patterns, tricks, and OneDrive rugpulls now that Ubuntu is actually much safer and simpler for non-techies to use (I can also make the case it beats iOS in that department too.)
If only league of legends was playable in Linux. And a few other games.
I did the same on my laptop and PC. Unfortunately, my sound system receiver doesn't support Linux but I'll survive. And the speed of my machines more than makes up for it.
> my first computer was a Windows 98 machine
The moment your Commodore 64 made you old.
I switched during windows 10 and I had several friends switch after win7 wasn't supported. In hindsight I should have spent the few weeks to learn linux and switched back then too
That Ableton Flicker: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3vENli7wQ
Wow gun to head and everything. Glad he survived the transition.
More seriously, editing is either a lost art or click bait headlines are more important than ever. The title is very immature.
lol! Sorry about the clickbait. Everyone's doing it nowadays, and I wanted to follow. Gonna think of a better title next time
For what it's worth, personally I thought your writing style and sense of humor was excellent, and my favorite part of the post.
I also appreciate you giving me an updated copy of the "Microsoft is a corporation" meme, as the one I have downloaded seems to become outdated each time a new Windows update comes out.
Thank you! Sadly, the one I posted is outdated too. I tried looking around for the newest one because I had seen it before, but couldn't find it anymore. The list was ~30% longer.
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
-- Napoleon.
Any suggestions for photo-editing, sharing, album management process for linux?
Its really the only thing on macOS + iOS that I use. Otherwise I am so over the mac lifestyle.
I haven't driven a Windows box since 2010 (and even then it was just a few months at work) and I'm perfectly happy! Except I'm on a Mac and have been at every job since 2006 when they came out with the Intel-based ones. I of course run Linux on VMs at work, but my daily driver has been and likely will forever be a Mac. I don't miss installing/tweaking video drivers or registry settings. Things just work 99.99% of the time for me. No one is perfect and Apple has made mistakes, but for me, I'm 100% satisfied.
How do you find macOS Tahoe? I have deliberately avoided installing it on my M3 MacBook Air that I use for work mainly due to the lack of attention to detail they seem to have dumped on the UI.
I have used a Mac at work on/off since the Snow Leopard days and I think Snow Leopard made the most sense from a UI point of view, without wedging in iCloud file nonsense.
I have a Windows 10 machine at home for gaming / development but my daily driver at home is a Linux M910 Lenovo (small enough and powerful enough for C++ dev), along with a Windows 11 mini Lenovo machine for GeForce Now usage on a TV in the house, but do I hate using Windows 11.
> 've used Windows for as long as I've been alive. At 6 years old, my first computer was a Windows 98 machine,
this sounds like child abuse.
Ubuntu since 2011
Now if only "Linux" would make a good phone.
It’s been so long since I’ve used Windows I practically forgot it even exists as a “thing”. @_@
it's really bad these days. even the teams web client doesn't work properly and when it does it is missing the most basic features like "test my audio." i don't understand what it is about how that company is organized that the software keeps coming out with interfaces and user experiences that look like they were created by 2023 era generative ai.
I really want to like Linux but every time I try it (and I tried a lot of distros and DEs) it is death by a thousand UX paper cuts.
Once again, I don't really understand people who say Windows is easier. Take printer drivers. In windows you have a 'simple' wizard to install a printer driver. Except in my experience... it never works the first time and you have to fiddle. On Linux... I just bought a new printer, and it worked out of the box. My experience with most hardware today on Linux is out-of-the-box support while windows requires endless 'driver' installs. Even driver installs on linux are easier. Usually just drop a binary blob somewhere if you really need it and modprobe...
Again it's 2026... why is this so hard. Usually paid software is actually better and more feature-ful, but Windows is just not useful at all. The best use of Windows is WSL2
* thirteen years ago. The lost me with win7->win8 migration. I thought the cannot go lower that that, and here we are.
At this point, the only thing holding me back is Adobe Lightroom. Which even that can technically run in a browser.
Welcome to the club. I started my Linux and BSD journey in ~1998 and I haven't really touched Windows since ~2001 except for the occasional brief interaction.
I've never missed it. Like at all. There have been instances where some piece of software didn't have a Linux alternative, that's mostly been a mild inconvenience. There have been cases where it's been a serious problem too, such as when my ever-so-wonderful government decided to start using e-ID which only worked on Windows (thanks, Wouter from grep.be for fixing that).
Mostly I enjoy how I'm in control of my machine, instead of having to rely on a bunch of untrustworthy moneygrabbers who seem hell-bent on making the worst possible decisions at every turn.
Linux has plenty of video card driver issues too. Windows may suck, but Linux sucks in different ways. Windows suckage is solved by "buy a different machine and reinstall". Linux suckage is solved by weeks googling and trying technical fixes in consoles, installing different distributions and trying the same, then eventually buying a different machine.
Apple, for all its flaws, tends to not have the suckage of either. I don't like using Apple, but it does break a lot less. (One of the reasons is encompassed in this story... while Microsoft and Nvidia yell at each other, Apple makes both the OS and the graphics card, so they just solve the problem internally) Apple with VMs gives you everything without the hardware hassles.
Yeah my 70 year old father purchased for the first time a Macbook after being a Windows user his entire life.
Another problem with Windows, that has been going on for quite some time now, is that they do not have a real support channel for non-enterprise users that produces useful knowledge for the future. Almost any issue you google now has a thousand "answers" on microsoft.com that do not fix the problem because the people answering have not reproduced it and have not confirmed their solution.
In Linux forums, generally speaking, there is either a way it works or agreement that it hasn't been fixed yet. The main source of spam now is actually StackExchange, that prioritizes discussions from 10 years ago on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, rather than up-to-date questions and answers.
Honestly Linux has been so much easier to use since Claude / codex came out. Now I don't need to remember esoteric commands or scroll old forums to fix issues, Claude does it all for me.
Been using ubuntu + regolith as my daily driver for over a year now and haven't needed to use windows for anything. Almost all games all work well on Linux now too.
I feel Windows 11 is in the initial phase of Windows 10. Remember beginning of years for 10? Sluggy, clunky, full of bugs? And everybody and their cat was holding to 7? I was the same, I was holding down the fort with 7. This year 7, next year 7 and so on until at one time I, like countless times before, spun a new virtual machine for a client and as usual I had to put 10 in there. Except this time 10 felt faster. No more clumsiness, no more slop. 2 months later I fully switched to 10 as my host OS.
I am currently on 10 so much that I installed the LTSC version that has support until 2032. Keep hammering Microslop, they deserve it. We need to keep bugging them, throw dirt on their face until they actually fix it. Seems that's the way with them nowadays. So I don't feel any shame to call them names at every corner.
But I am still not switching to Linux. Maybe in '32 when LTSC stop being supported and they still didn't fix 11. Oh, and from my experience, Debian will be the way to go. I like a proven distribution even if their repository is not the greatest and the latest.
Microsoft Windows is an entitled tenant that thinks it owns the property (your computer).
Incredible moment when you have to ward off Windows, macOS and iPhone updates like a bouncer.
I’ve gone over the years from Visual Studio fanboy to writing everything in vi, entirely due to software decay.
Our culture and economy can no longer maintain complex GUIs.
Going to switch my non technical gf to Linux she is pissed at Windows 11 lately
I'd switch if it weren't for anticheat breaking the games I play. I really, really hate Windows, and Windows 11 even more than normal levels of Windows hate. I had to do some really weird shit to get it to a place that feels sane.
"The only real limitation is that some games with anti-cheat like Valorant, Call of Duty or League of Legends won't run. But honestly I think not being able to launch League of Legends is actually a feature - one final reason to install Linux."
Fair point though :P
A few years ago, I would have said that any game that uses such a level of anticheat that makes wine/proton unable to play it (ie: kernel level anticheat) is basically malware and you _shouldn't_ play it anyway, out of both principle, and also because if they had a bug in their code, you're just opening up your device to an unnecessary privilege escalation vector that other malware can abuse to escalate their privileges. (This is not theoretical, this has happened before, eg: with Genshin. Though I believe just the mere existence of a signed driver was enough, since malware can just "Bring your own Driver" (BYOD) and download the driver, at least before it was revoked)
Now, I still hold this belief in most regards. But I do see the appeal, especially if your friends and peers are gamers and actively play these sorts of games, and you feel that you're missing out on socialising or making new friends in that aspect. But there are plenty of other games and consoles, if you could just convince them to switch...
This sort of anticheat exists because cheat developers ruin the experience for players, and for games that intend to be competitive in a real sense, the integrity of the game. Cheat developers keep getting smarter, so anticheat developers need to do the same. I guess the kernel is sorta as deep as you can go, at least with software.
I don't like it personally but I do understand why they do it. It just means I can't play those games on Linux, and some studios just don't care.
It's a shame that they don't care, though supporting such a minuscule percentage of the gaming market doesn't make a lot of sense unless out of principle/just do to it.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree here.
You absolutely can design a non-intrusive anticheat that doesn't hook into the kernel layer, and many games do exactly that. They do checks server-side, without hooking into your system. Or design their game to make it harder, eg if a player is behind a wall and can't be seen, don't even send the packets saying there's a player there.
Even with invasive anticheat, any dedicated actor can (and usually eventually do) find ways around it, and it becomes a game of cat and mouse. I feel a similar way about DRM in general.
Imo the tradeoff and danger is not worth it for consumers, but most are just not aware of the risk. Game developers take advantage of this and also do it because it's easier than actually designing their game in a way to minimise cheating (be it through code, or game mechanics)
On a tangent, even though it's for the wrong reasons (Even if I were a full-time user and a fan of Windows, I would not want to install games with invasive anticheat and pollute my system, out of principle), I'm glad that there is at least some pressure and pushback on invasive anticheat by gamers that usually run Windows, just for the reason so that it can run on something like a Steam Deck.
Many games do that, yes, though with varying degrees of success and often they get beaten by cheat tools. That's not to say that kernel-level anticheat can't get beaten, though there is a reason why games like Valorant have fewer such incidents. The cost/effort required to bypass the anticheat is way higher than some client-side checks.
Some games do choose to go the route of server-side authority, only showing what the client should be able to see, though I understand that's super compute heavy. Final Fantasy XIV does something akin to this, but players still develop client-side plugins to make their lives easier (higher-than-allowed camera zoom-out, displaying hidden boss mechanics when the client receives them, etc)
Cheats are also financially supported, specially in higher-profile games like Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends, or similar, so the incentive to produce higher quality cheats exists.
People have been caught by pretending to play but actually screensharing the view of a pro player on their account, so I suppose that won't cover this :P
I made the decision to just play a different game when I switched back in 2022 or so. Thankfully, the game in question supported Linux shortly after the switch even though I got used to not playing it and just don't anymore :) I still try any anti-cheat games I come across to see if they work and it's surprising how many actually do.
Nothing wrong with staying on Windows if compatibility is an issue, though.
It's probably the toxicity that bothers you, so if you just switch chat to private mode you'll be golden.
Ever since I did that, League of Legends is great honestly, and able to be played daily with no toxicity or rage.
I'm so glad ditching it 20 years ago, didn't look back once since.
To Protect yourself, this is what I did and experienced:
I set windows update service to manual, and so far the updates have not reset it, and I have been able to choose to install when I want. I feel safer, but I KNOW microsoft will fuck this over probably on their next update.
Another trick is as a super-super admin you can make executables UNEXECUTABLE by anyone. Things like Edge, etc. They do not let us remove their TRASH, but we still can lock them out, at least for now.
Another thing I had to do with Windows 11 when I had to rebuild my system because of Microsoft's SSD bug they would not cop too... They got rid of the magic trick to disable to OOBE which forces you to login with a microsoft account.... I could not find a way to work around it, but as soon as I was in I created a local admin user and it works well, they only force logged me in when I had to run FUCKING TEAMS for a job interview.
I'm heading down the linux path very soon, I almost did last year. Dual boot for a while, to see if how well my Steam library plays (literally it's the only thing keeping me on Windows 11).... Looking at Bazzite for this but we'll see.
We must UNITE to fight this tryany!
My experience is more like:
"I'll switch when Linux supports X."
Linux still doesn't supports X.
"Okay, but how about my X?"
Linux still doesn't supports X.
"Well, X is still missing..."
Trados Studio, good luck finding equivalent, I tried, and the alternatives are horrendous and I'm not gonna run it in VM.
Also I tried at least for son on his old computer live distro Mint from USB drive, everything works fine (unlike Zorin, which had problem with sound I think), but when I try to install it of course it doesn't detect Windows, same with wife's laptop.
So I have 3 computers: son's old laptop where I could install Mint - Linux Mint doesn't detect Windows
wife's old laptop where I could install Mint - Linux Mint doesn't detect Windows
my daily driver where my work SW requires Windows and there is no point installing Mint - Linux Mint detects Windows
I will have look at it during CNY holidays, if I will be able to install it alongside Windows (I need there Windows in case something would happen with my daily driver laptop).
I also plan to switch my father's old desktop to Linux Mint, but somehow I already know what will be most likely Windows detection status over there as well after son's and wife's laptop experiences. It works where it's not needed and it doesn't work, where I could actually install it.
Btw, my first computer was an Intel Pentium MMX 166Mhz IIRC, massive 64MB of SIMM ram, and impressive 8GB of disk. Trident "graphic card", Creative sound card and the ultra fast Motorola 56k modem haha
"I installed CachyOS .... It wasn't a painless process. In fact, sleep mode was broken from the start"
This is the problem with newbies into Linux world, they follow hype instead of installing a stable distro.
As it stands in 2026, Linux Mint Cinnamon is by far the best distro to use, no matter if you are into IT field, heavy gaming, video editing and 3D design, it just works.
It follows the well known stability of Debian Linux, while being up-to-date like Ubuntu but without all the bloatware, kernel panic and privacy issues from Ubuntu.
If you are following hype or those distro so called "rolling releases" aka Arch Linux, don't complain that you are having problems. They are everything but stable and "just works" lmao
Microslop must be stopped, absolute cancer of a company
I’ve been working at a school that uses a mix of Surfacebooks, HP Elitebooks and MacBook Air M2s (now migrating everyone to M4s!).
I used to prefer Windows for work. After the absolutely abysmal performance using a SurfaceBook Pro, never again. I’ve never had to deal with such slow performance in my life. I literally cannot get work done. Staff with Windows have constant problems, updates take forever, reboots aren’t very fast, programs crash, and (not OS related) but the new Outlook is universally despised.
I’ve never seen a company shoot themselves in the foot so badly as I’ve seen Microsoft do this of late. More and more staff want MacBooks , and are even ok with using a remote session (ugh) to access the one app that relies on Windows.
Iv'e switched all but my work laptop because of well work, but the push came after they seemed to 'dumb' down the OS.
The disjointed WebView mixed with old winforms for navigating simple things is infuriating alone. I've had a problem where the webview wouldn't render any of the display settings so my machine was stuck at a certain resolution and scale.
Simple things like accessing Environment Variables now is atrocious and hidden in the most obscure unintuitive way. That's to say nothing to the crashing. Linux desktop environments have come such a long way it's really any wonder anyone would put up with Windows anymore.
But then again, Microslop don't seem to care about the customer market much anymore anyway.
"Oh you're doing work? That's so cute... we're gonna close whatever apps you had open, because we're updating now. We own your computer. You had unsaved work? Too bad, it's gone, get bent."
This, a 1,000 times. I hate, hate, hate this "feature". My Macs don't do that. My Linux systems don't do that. The whole, "screw you, we don't care" attitude of Microsoft is quite appalling.
Microsoft now makes it very difficult to disable this feature. After a few registry edits, I thought I was able to put a stop to the madness. But, then it went to rebooting on its own again.
I keep telling Windows 10 to delay these updates by 1 week each time...
Curiously, Office apps have auto-save, so does IntelliJ, VSCode, and even Notepad nowadays.. "restore my work environment after a reboot" almost works, but some things do disappear (e.g. unsaved web input forms) that it's aggravating enough. I wonder if they'll make it mandatory for apps to persist more across restarts.
Ok, that requires them to be competent, if they're competent we won't even have what we have now.
Literally just hit the MPO bug yesterday - what a shitshow that things like display scaling can fail with a mainstream gpu/cpu and windows 11 - like do they not have testing rigs for this in microsoft? if insiders preview is fine but production windows gets all these bugs... what are they inside previewing? The most stable build of windows I ever had (hell it's still chugging along with 1050 days of uptime...) was a windows 10 enterprise edition added to domain controller with update GPO set to basically never install windows updates automatically.
There is some serious work needed inside microsoft camp to continue with a 6 month release cycle.
> If 3 years ago you would have told me that Microsoft would singlehandedly sabotage their own OS, doing more Linux marketing than the most neckbearded Linux fanboy (or the most femboy Thinkpad enjoyer), I'd have laughed in your face
I have no idea what that Thinkpad burn is supposed to mean.
Its not a burn. Just acknowledging the memes about cross dressing and programming/computer science that has been going around certain online circles for years.
As time goes on, I get closer and closer for Linux to be my daily driver. The ads, the Microsoft account login, the OneDrive in the explorer window, the 'recommendations' to change my default browser, etc make me more angry by the day. However, when I install Linux on an old machine, I initially have driver issues like wifi. And after fighting with that for an hour, I decide it's not worth the risk to blow away my main machine. So I accept the slop from MS and continue on.
The author tried everything except switching graphics drivers?! That's like listening to the top 10 hits on broken speakers and declaring all new music is terrible.
Uninstalled with DDU, switched to multiple versions back. But it wasn't the nvidia driver, and I proved that when I switched to an insider build and the flickers were gone :D
You didn't use a non Nvidia driver then. Sounds exactly like you were always using beta drivers.
Fwiw... I've been doing Leenucks since '92. Back when you had to install BSD first, compile the kernel and reverse engineer how to boot into the new kernel you just built with gcc. But it was cheaper than SunOS, and the developers mailing list was more active than the BSD lists. I still miss my 3B1.
Anyway... welcome to the party. We saved you a beer. Doesn't matter you came later than other people. It just matters you made it here eventually.
I’ve been using a Mac for a about three years now, but every once in a while I use my old gaming laptop to play some games and every time I am reminded of how insufferable windows has become, using it feels I’m dumpster diving and the dumpster is asking me to sign into my Microsoft account. Apple gets a lot of shit for how they do things, but no one can deny that once you’re properly established in their ecosystem, it’s a phenomenal experience.
Similar journey, different distro! I wanted a Linux gaming machine, but given my recent admission into the cult of NixOS, I went with Jovian.
Jovian is a NixOS module that sets up a SteamOS-like experience on top of your existing NixOS config. I was able to build & tweak the config before even building my PC. It booted first try and has since been working without hiccups. Now I am setting up emulators, which is relatively straightforward with nixpkgs :)
> I'm gonna go full conspiracy nut here, but I bet it's because the LLM understands JavaScript better, and Microsoft can't be asked to pay actual humans to write proper native code.
Do LLMs like Claude really excel at JavaScript than other programming languages? Similarly does OpenAI prefers Python over other languages?
It's hard to square their complaints about Microsoft's delivering AI crap when the top work project reference they have is:
> DesignVerse
> AI website builder startup.
> - Tech Stack: Next.js, Vercel AI SDK, Mastra AI Framework
> - Role: Full Stack Developer
> - Built core features (full stack) and helped implement the AI-powered editing system.
I did that years ago, at the end of Windows 7 and the beginning of the need for a Microsoft account.
I seem to have a much lower tolerance for enshitification than most people. I'm off Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn. Purely because they became annoying.
It's still disappointing how few folks know about gpedit and how much you can reclaim your own machine just by running through the local policies and setting them to "no, I call the shots".
need to pay for a pro license for gpedit - normies still get forced updates
And for those we tell them the truth: if all this bothers you, and it should, pay for the version of Windows that you can control, instead of paying nothing and having your computer (and data) be controlled by someone else.
Or, of course, pay nothing and use Linux. But as much as we want to pretend that's a solution that works for everyone, that's not a solution that works for everyone. Especially as, just like Windows, you're not done once it's installed, you still need to do that one time configure-all-the-things pass on Linux, too.
No to mention that the cloud-based user system that they are forcing on us instead of local accounts. So much trouble.
And Copilot crap being shoved down our throats at every turn.
Don't even get me started on Teams.
Microsoft is its own worst enemy.
Microsoft had a chance make even better OS than XP and 7 and convince millions of users to use Windows.
Okay maybe with Office products the ocean was already red, but still, instead of disgusting its millions of users, they could make them happy.
I am not a firm believer that GNU/Linux distributions are a drop-in replacement for Windows. One can work around compatibility issues, but for non–tech-savvy people, it's just not feasible.
I switched to MacOS since the release of Windows 10 and never looked back, of course I did miss some apps, though using laggy windows was much more painful.
I honestly don't understand the hatred that Microsoft gets for most of the work they're doing in Windows. As I've stated before, most 'problems' people ultimately have are either configuration issues or hardware issues. And I still stand by this even as I've had issues over the years here or there.
I think the most recent 'production' Windows issue I've had was OneDrive failing to recognize it was syncing my data even though it was syncing. The status symbols for the files and folders wasn't showing up. But that's about it.
My gaming desktop is stable, my PC is rock solid, I run VMs on it (game servers, dev/test environments), and overall just absolutely 0 problems with Windows or my OS at all.
I do, however, have hardware issues semi often. One of my monitors doesn't turn off its backlight, for example. I've had Razer devices just flat out quit on me over the years (multiple Razer mice, at least a couple of Nagas, etc.).
I contend that most people would do better with Windows if they just didn't mess with it (don't run any of those tools proclaiming to "debloat" your OS), and make sure you read the hardware compatibility list of your systems REALLY hard. Incompatible RAM can cause significant problems, a lot of which is completely avoidable if you just read the RAM QVL.
The only thing that I wish vendors would do more is work closer with Microsoft to provide BIOS updates over Windows Update. But, most of these motherboard IHVs are absolutely terrible about doing BIOS updates anyway and require specific mechanisms to keep going correctly. This is in contrast to the Enterprise/Business devices released by HP or Dell which have a usually solid BIOS update track. And again, the only issue I've ever had there was incompatible RAM.
>> I honestly don't understand the hatred that Microsoft gets for most of the work they're doing in Windows. As I've stated before, most 'problems' people ultimately have are either configuration issues or hardware issues.
And then you go on to describe your own hardware problems with windows. That's called "projection" - attributing your experience to everyone else. It's like you don't read the other complaints or somehow dismiss them. Have you not seen the ads yourself? Maybe you take the suggestions to use other Microsoft products as helpful suggestions rather than ads. Is that it? OneDrive failing? Try saying NO to using OneDrive - that's what some people would like to do and it'll keep advertising and trying to enable itself. Then when we do use it... well you've got issues with it not working right too.
Windows 11 isn't terrible, as long as you go back to how it was in Windows 10. Disable everything introduced in 11.
Maybe it's stockholm syndrome but I still have no interest in Linux. Are nvidia drivers still bad?
The driver situation on Linux is still pretty hit-or-miss, but thanks to Microsoft's recent efforts, Windows has reached the same level of reliability as well.
What do you mean by bad?
Is this an ideological question? They are still primarily closed source.
Is this an install difficulty question? If you can read you can install them.
Is this a performance question? If you're a normie they're good. If you're demanding the top fps at the top resolution in dx12 games then there is still a noticeable difference but it should be fixed this year.
One aspect I wonder about is not so much about whether the collective gaming-on-linux effort can close the performance/features gap, but keep it closed. The story has been that windows is the main target system for "PC" game development and hardware/drivers (for good reason, it has majority market share), and then linux lags behind as various efforts figure out what's missing and how to implement.
Right now and for the foreseeable near term (3 years or so?) it seems like the focus on GPU advancements isn't aimed at gaming so will be a period of stability, but I wonder if/when focus does come back to gaming, when there's a new round of consoles, when a company wants a new feature set to distinguish a new generation (like geforce 20 series versus 10 and earlier), what can be done to make sure linux users aren't second class citizens. I'd also wonder about development tools, to use the most popular engine as an example, what could change with unreal engine to make sure it builds software that plays nice with the linux ecosystem even if the tooling works best under windows.
Yeah the main reason to dislike Nvidia drivers on Linux these days from a regular user point of view (I am not a Wayland developer so I don’t have to deal with whatever technical annoyance there is there) is just the philosophical/potential-privacy annoyance of running closed source code on my open source system. This doesn’t give the entirely closed source OS any points.
> Is this an ideological question? They are still primarily closed source.
That's a decent enough reason for a linux user to buy an AMD GPU but it isn't a good reason not switch to linux from a closed source OS. I'm in the process of switching to linux full time (it shouldn't really take that long but I haven't had a solid chunk of time in a bit) and am using an NVidia GPU so I went from closed source windows drivers to closed source linux drivers.
You're the top comment that addresses this so I'm putting this here but not exactly replying to you.
Depends on why they are bad.
If they're bad because they are proprietary, it is what it is. If they're bad because their dx12 performance is worse on linux than windows, supposedly the fixes for the vulkan descriptor boogeyman problem are just around the corner.
> Are nvidia drivers still bad?
Depends a ton hardware. Newer hardware has been playing well with the kernel but still not fully oss.
You’ll still have less trouble over all with amd though.
The nvidia gods smile upon me, zero issues except the one I mentioned in the article. They do have to fix VKD3D performance though, 10-30% perf loss on Intel/Nvidia hardware when playing DX12 games.
Haven't really ever had much issues with nvidia drivers on Linux tbh, and I've been using it since the early 2000s.
I’ve asked before but the answer keeps changing before I get around to implementing it:
My kid wants to upgrade their PC from Windows 11 to Linux. They have a recent-ish Nvidia card. I’m very technical: I don’t mind doing whatever arcane thing needs done. They are not, yet.
I haven’t run Linux on my desktop in a decade and I’m completely out of date here. What should I steer my kid toward to run recent games?