This is why Linux will never take over the desktop...

[whm1974]

How Linux gamers are there here? And how many of you guys no longer use any version of Windows?

 

[lxskllr]

Not a gamer anymore, but I don't use any version of Windows aside from a 2kpro vm at work that's used solely for talking to my hp48 calculator.

 

[J.Wilkins]

How Linux gamers are there here? And how many of you guys no longer use any version of Windows?

Not a gamer but none of my devices run anything other than Linux distros, same for my whole family. My son in law plays games on his console which runs an ancient fork of FreeBSD (Orbis OS, PS4).

 

[whm1974]

For myself I've been without Windows for about three years now, ever since we could watch Netflix and Amazon Prime video on Linux natively without using Pipelight.

 

[you2]

Sadly I still have a sep computer with windows for games. but i've been running unix (first freebsd then linux) on my primary machine since early 1990's.

 

[Rifter]

How Linux gamers are there here? And how many of you guys no longer use any version of Windows?

Still use windows on my main PC because half its use is gaming, they have been saying that gaming on linux is going to catch up to windows for years and that they are making strides but i havent seen it. I keep trying every few years but there are still way to many games that either flat out dont work on linux or the performance is so bad its like taking 2-3 steps down in GPU power(IE you have a 1080 that performs like a 1050/1060)

 

[whm1974]

Still use windows on my main PC because half its use is gaming, they have been saying that gaming on linux is going to catch up to windows for years and that they are making strides but i havent seen it. I keep trying every few years but there are still way to many games that either flat out dont work on linux or the performance is so bad its like taking 2-3 steps down in GPU power(IE you have a 1080 that performs like a 1050/1060)

I have a 970 GPU and I'm still getting decent performance out of it.

 

[Rifter]

I have a 970 GPU and I'm still getting decent performance out of it.

In some games sure, but until its that way in the vast majority of games linux is not a valid gaming OS. Im going to keep trying it out every few years i would love nothing more than to ditch MS but for gaming thats still not an option.

 

[you2]

Well for games that run on linux they seem to run pretty well. I've played borderlands 2, shogun 2, middle-earth shadow mordor, wasteland 2, divnity original sin. Of course if you are noting that most games don't run on natively on linux period - i guess that is true though we can hope that changes eventually.

 

[whm1974]

Well for games that run on linux they seem to run pretty well. I've played borderlands 2, shogun 2, middle-earth shadow mordor, wasteland 2, divnity original sin. Of course if you are noting that most games don't run on natively on linux period - i guess that is true though we can hope that changes eventually.

Yeah but some good news is that more games are starting to have day one releases for Linux instead of having to wait until later.

 

[Jovec]

Ubuntu 16.04 (AMD 8350 w/32GB ram, SSDs, and Intel onboard nic) took 16+ hours to copy ~600GB of data from one NAS to another, both via samba shares via cut and paste with the default file manager. Win10 (4790k,32GB, SSDs, Intel onboard nic) took about 2.5 hours to copy ~650GB between the same two NAS boxes. Probably something fixable, not something I care to look into fixing. It's something that should just work (better).

 

[Red Squirrel]

Another quirk that kinda annoys me in Linux is how there does not seem to be consistency, even on the same distro, when it comes to things like "open", "save" dialogs etc. Like it seems to depend on the program. In windows these tend to be consistent and familiar across all programs. It's a small thing, but it can throw some users off. Some of the dialogs are also annoying as they don't let you type a path in, while some do.

 

[Rifter]

Another quirk that kinda annoys me in Linux is how there does not seem to be consistency, even on the same distro, when it comes to things like "open", "save" dialogs etc. Like it seems to depend on the program. In windows these tend to be consistent and familiar across all programs. It's a small thing, but it can throw some users off. Some of the dialogs are also annoying as they don't let you type a path in, while some do.

I agree, its a bit of a cluster when it comes to consistency across apps. But id still ditch MS in a second if all games worked equally well on linux.

 

[whm1974]

I agree, its a bit of a cluster when it comes to consistency across apps. But id still ditch MS in a second if all games worked equally well on linux.

Yeah gaming on Linux still does need a bit of work, but so far I only had minor problems that were easy to solve or had help with from the Manjaro Forums.

Linux distros have gotten better at being easy for new users to install and configure. Easier to keep updated then Windows 10 as well.

 

[Rifter]

Linux distros have gotten better at being easy for new users to install and configure. Easier to keep updated then Windows 10 as well.

For sure, i even setup my mother in law on a Linux Mint box almost 5 years ago now and shes having no issues and is not at all computer literate, she just uses it for e-mail web browsing and facebook. Linux for sure has made strides in the ease of use department. She used to get viruses and worms/malware constantly on her old windows PC(she has absolutely no self control and clicks random bad links that pop up constantly, because she is gullible enough to believe the you have a virus click here to delete it links....). So far no issues with malware on the linux box.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah it seems windows is actually becoming HARDER and more frustrating to use. I find Windows 2000 was the golden era for Windows, then it started to go downhill from there. Even XP was crap when it first came out but once they came up with a couple service packs and then you switch to classic mode, it was basically like win2k.

I actually get frustrated trying to use windows now. 8.x was the worse, but even 10 has lot of annoyances. That horridly bright white GUI being one of them, and you can't even change it. Well there's a few selections but they all suck.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I'm not familiar with the bright white gui. I use 7 and 10 daily.

 

[pmv]

Yeah it seems windows is actually becoming HARDER and more frustrating to use. I find Windows 2000 was the golden era for Windows, then it started to go downhill from there. Even XP was crap when it first came out but once they came up with a couple service packs and then you switch to classic mode, it was basically like win2k.

I actually get frustrated trying to use windows now. 8.x was the worse, but even 10 has lot of annoyances. That horridly bright white GUI being one of them, and you can't even change it. Well there's a few selections but they all suck.

10 is just that little bit harder to use than 7. The minimalism,lack of colour choices, and loss of skeuomorphism just makes it take that tiny bit longer to see certain things, like where window borders are and where one object ends and another begins, etc. I make far more 'mis-clicks' with 10 than I did with 7.
Also they keep changing it in puzzling ways with each update, e.g. progressively hiding the control panel.

 

[Rifter]

Yeah it seems windows is actually becoming HARDER and more frustrating to use. I find Windows 2000 was the golden era for Windows, then it started to go downhill from there. Even XP was crap when it first came out but once they came up with a couple service packs and then you switch to classic mode, it was basically like win2k.

I actually get frustrated trying to use windows now. 8.x was the worse, but even 10 has lot of annoyances. That horridly bright white GUI being one of them, and you can't even change it. Well there's a few selections but they all suck.

I agree the white GUI is just freaking horrible.

 

[whm1974]

I agree the white GUI is just freaking horrible.

I prefer darker themes myself.

 

[edcoolio]

I really didn't have a problem with the white GUI at first, but it did annoy me after a while. This is the best you can do with Windows 10, and frankly, it's not bad at all like this. Just incase you have not done this:

Settings
Personalization
Colors

All the way at the bottom, move radio button to "Dark" for default app mode.

 

[manly]

The more things change, the more they stay the same?

I used to use desktop Linux from the late 90s until roughly 2005. So not the earliest adopter, but definitely the scary old days. For the most part, was happy with it but moved on to Mac OS X because it had much better integration, particularly with laptops.

This year, I jumped ship back to Dell when it became clear that the Mac platform isn't as compelling as it used to be. I have an XPS 15 9560, so pretty new hardware. Very well reviewed. Installed Ubuntu Linux 17.04 because that's what I'm most comfortable with on servers. For the most part, everything has worked fine but not without some hassle.

* I don't need discrete GPU in Linux, so using just the nouveau driver. Had to use kernel option nouveau.modeset=0 to prevent occasional kernel panics.
* WiFi throughput is very crappy with the Killer 1535 NIC that Dell uses. This might be a TCP bug, but I'll probably just throw an Intel 8265 (or 9260) in there when I'm motivated enough.
* Recently installed the latest 1.3.4 BIOS and now the machine just hard locks every few hours. Nothing in syslog to clue what the problem might be, but it was definitely right after the BIOS upgrade. Googled like crazy but nobody else is reporting the same problem with this BIOS and Linux. Earlier I gave up and downgraded back to 1.1.3 (1.2.4 had horrible reviews).

Overall, the software experience is pretty good but obviously I can't solve why the latest BIOS causes hard locking. There's a fair amount of Linux on Dell XPS 15 info out there, but I don't geek out on troubleshooting as much as I used to.

Fedora is getting good reviews lately, but I prefer Debian-based distros. Also it's a bit of a pain to back up /home and then reinstall.

 

[sweenish]

I'm late to the party, but it's far less of an issue if you mount /home on its own partition.

I had to switch distros recently (from Kubuntu to Fedora, yay for much better multi-monitor support), and because I had done exactly that, I preserved all my personal data and just had to worry about re-installing the programs I needed.

I think I have to do a full wipe, re-partition, and re-install during the holidays because there are a bajillion Latex packages, and my system partition is feeling the crunch.

I currently dual-boot, in case anyone was dying to know.

This is on an older laptop, and I'm leaning quite heavily toward an Apple for my next upgrade. Need Linux stuff, and need things to "just work." And access to XCode for potential iOS development is enticing.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I've thought of backing up /home or putting it on another partition, but won't you run into issues because all your various profiles will be for the version of programs that are for another distro? Or will that stuff work across multiple distros? What about system stuff like GUI related settings? Ex: if going to a distro that uses another type of DE.

 

[whm1974]

I have always had /home on a separate partition ever since I start using Linux. It certainty does makes it very easy to switch distros.