I swapped to Linux Mint. I went back to Windows, here's why

[bobsmith432]

First of all, I love Mint, it's probably the best Ubuntu-based distro and I think the mintstore is great and a easy way to get applications (except the outdated apps), to keep this simple and short and to keep it from being redundant, I'll list the pros and cons of my experience

Pros
+ The mintstore made it really easy to get some of my favorite programs
+ I really liked the preincluded apps like the Driver Manager, Software Repos, and System Reports
+ XFCE looks nice with the Mint-X theme
+ Other DEs are easy to install
+ Gaming is a great experience
+ Newest kernel updates were easy to get

Cons
- Apps on the store were old
- Some older apps required me to add older repos to get dependencies
- NO GTA 5!!!! (jk)
- Windows has a sturdier system for mounting USB drives and playing media on them
- Barely any games had a Vulkan renderer
- WINE is what happens when users are offered 4 different versions of the same software with no exact differences described
- The open-sourced driver for my Realtek wifi chip was really ghetto
- System sounds were super hard to get working
- No startup sound?

If I forgot anything I'll mention it

[Pierre]

Sure .. but that LinuxMint experience .. is kinda deliberate, too.


the LinuxMint System, in general, is built for Reliability, more than anything else.

thus, there are some Linux Systems, that are actually more "cutting edge",
and so would have those "more up-to-date" programs, that you mentioned.

you certainly Don't have to Move back to the Windows System,
- just to get those more "up-to-date" programs.
you may have to move away from this LinuxMint System, though.

[rambo919]

This is where PPA's come in as needed....

Though we have to admit that realtek linux support of uncommon chips is..... essentially non-existent.

[Hoser Rob]

Linux isn't for everyone. I'm not a gamer but if I was I'd definitely still have some WIndows. Linux gaming is a bit of a joke. Flame away.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...Cons...
- No startup sound?...

Heck, that's a Pro for me. Start up sounds are annoying and get old pretty fast.

[Schultz]

Heck, that's a Pro for me. Start up sounds are annoying and get old pretty fast.

They do get old, fast, but one reason I like 'em is because it's like the computer is saying "I'm ready; start using me please!"

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Heck, that's a Pro for me. Start up sounds are annoying and get old pretty fast.

They do get old, fast, but one reason I like 'em is because it's like the computer is saying "I'm ready; start using me please!"

Mint's login screen works just fine for me for that but everyone has their own preferences.

[cretsiah]

Windows has a sturdier system for mounting USB drives and playing media on them

if your talking win7 or winxp id say its about the same... but win10 id have to disagree..... it borks my usb's (especially bootable ones )that had previously been working fine...

out of personal interest could you clarify what you mean by this one?

- Barely any games had a Vulkan renderer

just curious

[motoryzen]

Linux gaming is a bit of a joke

Around 4 years ago, I'd say I'd agree to some extent. Now and even late last year, I disagree. About the last thing many are waiting on involving Linux gaming to catch up is for those titles/launchers that are E.A.C. only to finally start working ( as an announcement was made that E.A.C. is now supported).

Everything else works with Wine by itself or with Lutris( be it ootb or with some settings effort or installing a couple of .dll files within Wine and yes this includes Battle.net launcher, Heroic Launcher, as well as Ubisoft Connect). For everything else that isn't Linux native...Steam handles the rest. *shrugs*

[karma65]

I had Windows 10 since the start on a old Dell XPS 8300 it ran well but more Windows updates over the years , and it was getting slower, bogging down, making it difficult to use, I have used Mint and Ubuntu in the past, I know they are great for older systems, I have a single core IBM laptop that I put some light version of Linux , just for web surfing and its runs fine,
Now with Mint installed this second Generation ICore 5 with 12 gigs of ram has a second lease on life, yes there is is things i do miss with Windows certain features like reading my mobile messages in Windows, One Drive Sync with Windows though you can in Linux with Insync there is a cost,but other than that instead of binning this Desktop , it runs brilliant on Mint,
I will get a new system eventually but Linux Mint gave this old girl another shot in life, I recommend Linux Mint , or any Linux OS on a older PC or Laptop, instead of binning it and sending to the tip, and yes new systems also,

Glad to be back to the Dark Side

[AndyMH]

yes there is is things i do miss with Windows certain features like reading my mobile messages in Windows,

Use pushbullet, a browser add-in. I use it in chromium. There are others.

[AZgl1800]

...Cons...
- No startup sound?...

Heck, that's a Pro for me. Start up sounds are annoying and get old pretty fast.

that is the very first thing I do, get rid of that damn clunk sound when the desktop comes up

[Portreve]

Cons
- Apps on the store were old
- Some older apps required me to add older repos to get dependencies
- NO GTA 5!!!! (jk)
- Windows has a sturdier system for mounting USB drives and playing media on them
- Barely any games had a Vulkan renderer
- WINE is what happens when users are offered 4 different versions of the same software with no exact differences described
- The open-sourced driver for my Realtek wifi chip was really ghetto
- System sounds were super hard to get working
- No startup sound?

The Portreve Take
Because everyone is entitled to my opinion

...on Windows

I don't know what the present model is for Windows driver support, but it used to be that Microsoft (and others) would pay hardware makers to write drivers to support the Win16 or Win32 environment. Of course, it's been a very long time since Windows became the biggest target and source of revenue for device makers. I'd think it's generally assumed that if your device needs specialized drivers to function, you'd darned well better write and deploy them if you expect to sell your stuff.

That all said, Windows is still a massive sinkhole of exploit vulnerability. With no insight into the code, there's no way to externally validate or audit the OS and thereby fix bugs or other vulnerabilities, nor to keep from having back doors and other such nefarious deliberate components included in one's device's OS.

I've told folk IRL in the past that if you're concerned about safety and security and you're still running Windows¹, it's frankly impossible to take anything they say seriously. I'll be more than happy to say that again and again directly to someone's face.


...on Linux Mint

Different DEs are different, no matter how "equivalent" they may be. Different distro spins, likewise, are going to be different. So, maybe LM XFCE is like that, but that's not "how it is" on an absolute basis. Cinnamon has a default startup sound. Arguably, KDE as shipped by openSUSE has an even nicer startup sound. It's trivial to adjust all system sounds in Cinnamon.

To me (and let's remember this is my opinion) both MATE and XFCE feel like rougher-around-the-edges takes on the classic Gnome 2.x environment. That's why I don't use them.

The Linux community in general, to say nothing of the subset of that which is the LM community, has a broad range of different priorities, with "the latest and greatest" being a priority which many do not have. That doesn't mean it's an invalid complaint; it isn't. However, by taking the approach LM and some others do, we end up with more well-worn versions of software which tend to be less buggy.

I'm on the fence when it comes to technologies such as WINE, but I would also include in this the running of an actual OS, Windows or macOS (etc.) to support a given program. There are times when the capacity to run a specific program which is not written or ported for Linux is so important that it justifies running proprietary software (i.e. that program itself, as libre-licensed, open source software is unlikely not to be written for Linux. However, I feel that in far too many cases, the claim of "I have to run 𝑥" is either a cop-out or the result of not trying (or trying hard enough) to explore the world around oneself. Regarding Vulkan, there evidently is an effort to bring it to Linux. Of course, they'd darned well better get a Wayland version up and running and totally solid, since that seems to be the direction things are going in the GUI world.


...on a side note

I find it very interesting, as a sci-fi nerd, that the future of graphics and display subsystems revolves around Vulkan, Khronos, and Wayland.

---

¹ Clearly, the same applies to Android OS, iOS, and macOS.

[AZgl1800]

I'm the guy that refuses to change until the life is squeezed out of the OS,
as my signature implies, i will be running 19.3 Cinnamon until it is EOL

it just simply works, feels good, easy to like and it never crashes.

Wine?

Mixed experiences with this.
Tried it as 'Wine' and never got anything to work the 1st time.

Paid for Cross Over, and was able to install "most of" MS Office Pro 2003....
even so, it has bugs that cannot be resolved.

• ACCESS simply refuses to work, and CodeWeavers told me there is 'no hope' to get it to work.
  Word mostly works right, but it has glitches that irritate me, the primary glitch is including Images and being able to see them, and resize them like in Win7 or Win10

My laptop is flush with drives and RAM, so I installed VirtualBox and Win10 and MS Office Pro and every thing works just like it should, except for TurboTax.....

So, I just reboot and come up in Win10 OEM from the factory, boot up TurboTax and get the job done, and then it is back to Linux for another year.

I have LM 20.x on a ThinkPad and it seems to be just fine, leave it power on all the time, instantly works when I open the lid.

[bobsmith432]

out of personal interest could you clarify what you mean by this one?

Majority of games I played (Garry's Mod, Team Fortress 2, POSTAL 2, Minecraft) only had an OpenGL renderer and not a Vulkan renderer which is leagues faster on my AMD hardware, this was a driving factor to swap back to Windows to get the DirectX renderer back since it's performance along with Vulkan's outweigh OpenGL vastly.

[majpooper]

Sample Size = 1 I only know one real hard core gamer - young guy worked for Red Hat - Fedora is his daily driver (why not RHEL you ask - donno). What I do know his gaming machine is Windows. Maybe it's the games he is into but it just seems whenever the gaming topic comes up gamers never seem to be all that keen on linux.

[bobsmith432]

Sample Size = 1 I only know one real hard core gamer - young guy worked for Red Hat - Fedora is his daily driver (why not RHEL you ask - donno). What I do know his gaming machine is Windows. Maybe it's the games he is into but it just seems whenever the gaming topic comes up gamers never seem to be all that keen on linux.

I usually strayed away because of games like GTA 5 not supporting it, and even with Proton it is liable to lose up to 20 FPS, Microsoft however (or at least the third-party contractors left developing Windows) have been pissing me off, forcing more and more crap onto the default W10 experience, I remember back in the Creators/Redstone update days we could use DWS to rip all the bloat out of W10, not anymore unfortunately, I recently reinstalled Mint XFCE and am having an okay experience aside from the abundance of Winamp and the fact that I've grown so accustomed to W7 and W10 UI I can do lots of basic functions in half the time most others can, plus I always knew all the workarounds and tools to get games running faster and other things like that, other than those issues Mint has been fine and if I do go back to Windows, I'm probably going to install LTSB to avoid all the crap Windows devs keeps pushing onto my PC, will ofc keep you guys updated here with my commentary on Mint and my experience with it.

[sarge816]

I was a long time WINE defender, and I used to enjoy slogging through all the trials and tribulations of trying to game on Linux. Until I no longer enjoyed it, and then I dual booted with Windows. If you are a gamer, I found after 10+ years of dedicated WINE hacking, using different versions for different games, etc - there is just no substitute for Windows. Even when I got a game working, it often ran at less than 50% normal frame rate compared to Windows. This is all anecdotal, ofcourse. Depending on the games you play, you may have totally different experiences with Linux, but most people will have much better luck just dual booting.

TL;DR: Internet, Office, and basic functionality: Linux. Gaming: Windows. Dual boot is your friend.

[mikkelbreiler]

I have LM 20.x on a ThinkPad and it seems to be just fine, leave it power on all the time, instantly works when I open the lid.

Best practice is you should remove the battery from the laptop when you do not use the battery at all. Discharge to 30% then remove and store it until you need it or you decide to give it away or sell the laptop. In addition to taking care of the battery you will also not have it bulge when it turns bad, or have other things to deal with from a failed battery left inside some tech.

[Portreve]

I have LM 20.x on a ThinkPad and it seems to be just fine, leave it power on all the time, instantly works when I open the lid.

Best practice is you should remove the battery from the laptop when you do not use the battery at all. Discharge to 30% then remove and store it until you need it or you decide to give it away or sell the laptop. In addition to taking care of the battery you will also not have it bulge when it turns bad, or have other things to deal with from a failed battery left inside some tech.

Unfortunately, that's not possible with all systems.