Should I use Linux instead of Windows?

[Xdqwerty]

I'm using Windows 8.1 and I heard Linux is a lot better, and I saw that everyone here uses Linux, but i'm afraid of switching to Linux since i'm very used to Windows, and i have understood a lot of programs arent compatible with Linux and you have to write code to install the ones that are compatible

 

[DragonMals]

MS has been investing a lot into their CoPilot program designed to track what users do and collect data.

Exactly, and if MSI Center can be installed NATIVELY on Linux, I'll make the immediate merge. Thing is, discounting Ubuntu, Idk which OS do I use. Mint was one I have been considering on using, but Zorin is another runner up

 

[Robert Newbie]

My advice is to consider what software you use. Go to the WINE database and see if the games you play are compatible. Look for Linux versions of anything you commonly use.

Thankfully, OpenOffice and multimedia players will bridge the gap for everyday documentation and media. Your browser of choice is likely available too.

Many users have become sensitive to all the telemetry that comes with Windows, and Microsoft hasn't made things easier with all the strange and intrusive choices they've made over the years. (Ads in the start menu? Oy) If the whole "Windows as a paid service" thing becomes a reality, users are going to actively seek out alternatives.

 

[SylverReZ]

Exactly, and if MSI Center can be installed NATIVELY on Linux, I'll make the immediate merge. Thing is, discounting Ubuntu, Idk which OS do I use. Mint was one I have been considering on using, but Zorin is another runner up

If you're new to Linux and want an easy-to-use experience just like Windows, I recommend Mint.

 

[DragonMals]

If you're new to Linux and want an easy-to-use experience just like Windows, I recommend Mint.

I have already tried mint, but things weren't... The best. My laptop has 125% as a screen option for my 1920x1080 monitor and Windows handles it fine, but Linux doesn't, and things look rather choppy. Notepad++ Also isn't natively on there and while it can be run with Wine, the plugins don't work

Speaking of Plugins, Steam would have to allocate MB to even get to have steam games run on said device, although I don't know how much do you need but with Windows (and Mac!), it can do it mostly natively.

Post automatically merged: May 29, 2024

I also remembered that I made a whole thread talking about my move to Linux, but locked it after I thought of not making the move.

 

[Robert Newbie]

If you're new to Linux and want an easy-to-use experience just like Windows, I recommend Mint.

Everyone on the forums seems to recommend Linux Mint, and I want to try it out at some point. I know Ubuntu's a solid choice, though some of my installs end up asking for a password to use the browser.

I truly don't know how to feel about AI. It's coming, it's going to be implemented left and right, it's going to make our lives easier and take away jobs. I know it's off-topic, but it leaves me wondering how things will look in a few years.

 

[RedColoredStars]

You can disable co-pilot. And you'll most likely be able to disable whatever else is added. I've proven people here wrrong about quite a few misconceptions surrounding Windows on more than one occasion. People exaggerate and say a lot of things that just simply aren't true at all, or are quite misleading.

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

I also remembered that I made a whole thread talking about my move to Linux, but locked it after I thought of not making the move. View attachment 439691

Unless you are using patches to circumvent the anticheat, to run the game on linux, its not likely to just get banned, they will just block you from playing online as long as the anticheat is not available (so either it get linux support or you boot into windows and play it there). If a game uses EAC or Battleeye, there is also an official linux runtime you can install, which allows you to play many games using them, as long as the dev enabled the proton support.
There are still (mostly competetive) games that won't work on linux, but as mentioned, as long as you are not using patches it should be fine.
Besides that, Games without any special kernel anticheat will most of the time just work by now, and the Steamdeck release also helped quite a bit with devs at least supporting proton.
So yeah, its not really multiplayer games, and more some bigger competetive multiplayer games with invasive anti cheat solution.

I started with dual boot, so that I can boot back into windows in case I need it for something, but I didn't really need it in months by now.

Btw. if someone want to use something like manjaro or arch to have faster access to new kernel and software fixes, I can recommend to use BTRFS as filesystem for root, and then to use the BTRFS file system level snapshots with timeshift. This allows easy and very fast rolebacks in case something breaks during an update for most problems

 

[DragonMals]

Unless you are using patches to circumvent the anticheat

I don't want to have to do that if I have to switch to using Linux if I can play said game on Windows without having to have issues. Although I know no game that I have that San possibly trigger this anti cheat. The only one I could think of is GTAV.

If a game uses EAC or Battleeye

I don't know what any of these are.

Dualboot would most likely be the option for me but I remember already getting to Linux and I just couldn't. Just restoring myself back to my original state took more than 5 full clean installs of Windows 11.

 

[ErrorOliver]

I have already tried mint, but things weren't... The best. My laptop has 125% as a screen option for my 1920x1080 monitor and Windows handles it fine, but Linux doesn't, and things look rather choppy. Notepad++ Also isn't natively on there and while it can be run with Wine, the plugins don't work

Speaking of Plugins, Steam would have to allocate MB to even get to have steam games run on said device, although I don't know how much do you need but with Windows (and Mac!), it can do it mostly natively.

Post automatically merged: May 29, 2024

I also remembered that I made a whole thread talking about my move to Linux, but locked it after I thought of not making the move. View attachment 439691

I use EnveavourOS and it's pretty good for me (As long as you're not changing configs that clearly say "THIS MAY BREAK YOUR OS" like me hahaha (and my OS is kinda wacky right now but I'm too lazy to reinstall due to it being so hard to transfer my files over to something else since I'm lazy... also my drivers don't work, haven't figured that out yet but hope to soon since sometimes things freeze.. but I'm not switching back to Windows since it's like spyware and I like FOSS.))

Also, about anti-cheat... You could run a Windows VM in Linux with this:
I've not really tried it but it seems like it's gonna work, so maybe check it out

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

I don't want to have to do that if I have to switch to using Linux if I can play said game on Windows without having to have issues. Although I know no game that I have that San possibly trigger this anti cheat. The only one I could think of is GTAV.


I don't know what any of these are.

As mentioned, it really depends on the games you play many work without any problem, mostly competitive games like Fortnite, velorant and lol make problems.
I personally mostly play Guild wars 2 and Genshin Impact with some other games from time to time. Many steam games just work, especially if they are rated good for the steamdeck.
For games in other launchers it can sometimes be a bit annoying, but apps like heroic games launcher (GOG and Epic Games), lutris (many sources with predone isntall scripts), AnimeGamesLauncher (Genshin other hoyoverse games) and more normally make it easy to install them through.
On a quick glance on the protondb website, GTA V seems to work well online and offline on linux, but I didn't test that myself.

EAC (Easy Anti Cheat) and BattleEye are two anti cheats, that are relatively common. As mentioned, both of them are officially support via steams proton (the compatibility layer to play windows games), as long as the developer doesn't decide against activating it.

Also In case you are using VR, native steamvr headsets work well under linux too, as long as you are not using Gnome, and for my amd gpu, I have better performance in VR under linux with wine, then I had under windows.
Windows mixed reality headset on the other side seem to only make very little progress on linux. The quest can be used via the network with something like ALVR, if I remember it correctly.

 

[DragonMals]

(As long as you're not changing configs that clearly say "THIS MAY BREAK YOUR OS" like me hahaha

If a Linux Distro makes you have access to stuff like that, then I don't want to touch that Linux Distro.

mostly competitive games like Fortnite, velorant and lol make problems.

I don't play those games as I am not much of a competitive gamer and more lenient towards the emulation and low level side of retro and indie games.

Also In case you are using VR

I don't and won't use VR

 

[The Catboy]

Considering Windows 11 continues to get worse by the day and Microsoft is trying to push people away from 10, I would advise trying Linux.
Personally, I recommend Linux Mint

 

[DragonMals]

Considering Windows 11 continues to get worse by the day and Microsoft is trying to push people away from 10, I would advise trying Linux.

I have already done that through the course of March and April but couldn't get myself hooked to it, especially since there's an undocumented way to remove Linux off a Windows PC safely.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

If a Linux Distro makes you have access to stuff like that, then I don't want to touch that Linux Distro.

On any PC platform you have full administrative power and that includes the power to destroy/delete.

For example dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=16M entered with root privileges into a terminal will mercilessly overwrite the first HDD/SSD in that computer. (So for heavens sake don't do that unless you *want* to overwrite the disk).

And yes, Windows, can self-destruct as well despite protecting drive C:\ from trivial mistakes.

My signature contains the solution for such problems.

While root/admin access can have bad effects obviously if used without knowledge and without care, having full system control is what makes the computer platform so good compared to locked platforms, which give higher privileges to the manufacturer than to the owner.

Just experiment with multiple OS (it's fun) with virtual machines. Snapshots make any experiments safe.

 

[LightyKD]

I'm partial to Windows but that's because Windows makes it easy for me to have physical games via SD cards. Ironically I ONLY use Windows on my Steam Deck and the VM I use for work. For my own personal computing needs it's all about Chrome OS with a mix of Linux and Android apps. OP, you could go with a dual boot and see how you like things.

 

[DragonMals]

experiment with multiple OS (it's fun) with virtual machines

With ZorinOS, things have nene working out well although I couldn't get some games to work on Zorin. Thing is, I dint know if that's because it's the game, or that it's a virtual machine. I did get Terarria to work but due to Vulkan support not being the best on there, it was WONKY.

you could go with a dual boot and see how you like things.

Ik I'm not the OP, but like I said earlier, there should really be a document for Windows and Linux to provide a way for users to know and do in the case if they remove either Linux or Windows from their distro without losing access to neither of them. You can remove the Linux partition yeah, but the Grub Bootloader will still be there and trying to move to Windows till cause an issue that you need to go to the BIOS/UEFI settings for, and even that didn't help in the case of me trying to completely take any hints of Linux off my PC.

 

[RedColoredStars]

Considering Windows 11 continues to get worse by the day...

Except nah.

 

[linuxares]

Except nah.

Yes, yes it is.
Forced ads, more telemetry, wanting to you to login to a Microsoft account for my OS (even if it's easy to bypass. Shouldn't be a question either way), re-renabling stuff you turned off because "they know better", The search function is broken that it want to search the internet rather than going online.

Now Microsoft want to get this "Recall" on computers. I guess it starts with "NPU" for AI and probably will eventually use your inbuilt GPU eventually to start using this "Recall" more. It's just one whistleblower away from being a massive clusterfuck, not to mention all virus makers will target it to extract passwords etc.

Windows 11 is far from perfect and it's scary how bad it's starting to get.


EDIT: Linux is no way near ready for the big mass of people that just want to click .exe and run their game. It's getting there on these distros could fucking unite with a standard.

 

[a_username_that_is_cool]

I went to Win11 -> Linux (Ubuntu) -> Win10 (forced ->) Win11

 

[RedColoredStars]

Yes, yes it is.
Forced ads, more telemetry, wanting to you to login to a Microsoft account for my OS (even if it's easy to bypass. Shouldn't be a question either way), re-renabling stuff you turned off because "they know better", The search function is broken that it want to search the internet rather than going online.

Now Microsoft want to get this "Recall" on computers. I guess it starts with "NPU" for AI and probably will eventually use your inbuilt GPU eventually to start using this "Recall" more. It's just one whistleblower away from being a massive clusterfuck, not to mention all virus makers will target it to extract passwords etc.

Windows 11 is far from perfect and it's scary how bad it's starting to get.


EDIT: Linux is no way near ready for the big mass of people that just want to click .exe and run their game. It's getting there on these distros could fucking unite with a standard.

You do know, right, that a lot of what you say is not even accurate? Guess not. I've already addresed some of this stuff elsewhere. Maybe learn how to use WIndows and you won't have the problems. Becasue I sure don't. And let me guess, you don't have a single social media account. No credit or debit cards. No Android phone. No Google account. No Apple account. No anything at all that collects data from you. lol. Overblown telemetry talk is overblown telemetry talk.