I was always on Linux since Varsity but two years ago when I bought a gaming Laptop, it had Windows 11 on and worked great. I thought I would give it a chance and it was great especially for gaming. Luckily a lot of the open source software I was used to were available on windows. I also liked some of the Linux tools like the cmd tools being adopted by windows.
But yesterday, after two years of seeing issues pile up and the system degrading, I thought how is the grass back on the other side, since I am sick of this shit. Installed my go to distro, Mint, and god what a fucking idiot I feel like. Even if Windows improved since I used it back from 8, but how much has Linux improved in these last two years, like eons compared to windows. My system is smooth and fast, hell my Cyberpunk 2077 runs amazing, even better and less crashing with nothing more than install and no other settings from steam. Chef’s kiss
Windows 8 really was one of the worst in recent history. I’d personally put Win11 as second-worst since Vista. Sure it worked well enough, but so intrusive to both your workflow and privacy. I had trouble with my last attempt to switch to Linux for gaming, but I think it’s time to try again.
Yeah windows 8 was terrible. Windows 11 was not that bad, enjoyed it a bit, except that nagging feeling I am being mined for data. But what killed it for me is the instabilities, my PC stuttered and froze like crazy, and all they say is do a clean install. So I clean installed, Mint that is
Welcome back, brother.
Thanks
Your arrival back home was foretold in the man files. All is as it should be.
I see windows being used by managers at work and I’m soo happy I invested time in Linux so I can run it on my daily machines. It’s something that pays off every single day.
Also on Mint, only real issue I’ve encountered was trying to get my old gaming mouse working… What a cold med fueled rabbit hole that was while home from work for a few days. I think I understand the issue now, which is there is nothing written into the distro itself to support more than a 3 button mouse, so I would need to write in custom USB inputs after mapping them from the device. Wanted it bad enough at the time to actually go and see if input detection was able to see the extra mouse buttons, and it could, so I finally launched a game and tried rebinding to buttons to test it, and it just worked… I think I rebuilt from a snapshot about 4-5 times in the whole process trying to make sure I hadn’t messed up something else up while trying suggested fix after suggested fix, and remembering I had issues with the initial setup of the mouse software on windows thanks to .NET Framework 3.5. I don’t need extra mouse buttons for my DE badly enough to go through the whole process of custom inputs if it works the way I need it to in game, but it’s nice to know I have a “rainy day” project if I need one.
So true about Linux improving more rapidly than Windows, it’s incredible how the ecosystem has evolved just in the last few years while windows doddles along investing their dev resources into adding cloud and AI into all they’re offering.
How many times do I have to tell them I’m not interested in their AI crap on my Win10 box? I didn’t use Cortana, I’m not going to use this. Just make it stop!
Welcome back.
This weekend I finally joined the club of folks that install Mint on their parent’s aging laptops. I’m a Nix/Arch user btw and am very impressed with the ease of use and flexibility that Mint brings to the table.
Yeah, it’s a nice almost out of the box and getting started distro. I have tried Arch and Manjoro about 8 years ago, not for me, nice customisation but it is really too bleeding edge with the rough edges that go with it. After trying a crap load of distros I like the boringness of Mint
Are you running Cinnamon? I was impressed with the customization options out of the box and had to stop playing with it as I wanted to keep things fairly plain. Looking forward to later dropping it on a burner laptop for my own twiddling.
Yeah cinnamon, they have the balance of just enough customisation if you want to fiddle and plain enough that a noob can just start working with it
Steam really is a chef’s kiss. It makes it so easy these days to play a lot of games on Linux. So easy!
Yeah, Steam really is an asset and ally to Linux gaming scene. So glad the steam deck worked out for them after their failed steam machine failure, shows they don’t give up on their vision but also change and adapt to come up on top.
