I’ve been using Linux exclusively for about 8 years. Recently I got frustrated with a bunch of issues that popped one after another. I had a spare SSD so I decided to check out Windows again. I’ve installed Windows 11 LTSC. It was a nightmare. After all the years on Linux, I forgot how terrible Windows actually is.
On the day I installed the system and a bunch of basic software, I had two bluescreens. I wasn’t even doing anything at that time, just going through basic settings and software installation. Okay, it happens. So I installed Steam and tried to play a game I’ve been currently playing on Linux just to see the performance difference. And it was… worse, for some reason. The “autodetect” in game changed my settings from Ultra to High. On Linux, the game was running at the 75 fps cap all the time. Windows kept dropping them to around 67-ish a lot of times. But the weirdest part was actual power consumption and the way GPU worked. Both systems kept the GPU temperature at around 50C. But the fans were running at 100% speed at that temperature on Windows, while Linux kept them pretty quiet. I had to change the fan controls by myself on Windows just because it was so annoying. The power consumption difference was even harder to explain, as I was getting 190-210W under Linux and under Windows I got 220-250W. And mind you, under Linux I had not only higher graphical settings set up, but was also getting better performance.
I tried connecting my bluetooth earbuds to my PC. Alright, the setup itself was fine. But then the problems started. My earbuds support opus codec for audio. Do you think I can change the bluetooth codec easily, just like on Linux? Nope. There is no way to do it without some third party programs. And don’t even get me started on Windows randomly changing my default audio output and trying to play sound through my controller.
Today I decided to make this rant-post after yet another game crashed on me twice under Windows. I bought Watch Dogs since it’s currently really cheap on Steam. I click play. I get the loading screen. The game crashed. I try again. I play through the basic “tutorial”. After going out of the building, game crashed again. I’m going to play again, this time under Linux.
I’ve had my share of frustrations under Linux, but that experience made me realise that Windows is not a perfect solution either. Spending a lot of time with Linux and it’s bugs made me forget all the bad experience in the past with Windows, and I was craving to go back to the “just works” solution. But it’s not “just works”. Two days was all it took for me to realize that I’ll actually stick with Linux, probably forever. The spare SSD went back to my drawer, maybe so I can try something new in the future. It’s so good to be back after a short trip to the other side!
I just reinstalled and configured Windows for a friend who’s machine was hacked, so my frustration with Microsoft is very fresh. (She lost 8 thousand dollars of her savings she’s still trying to get back.) After years of using Linux I feel like I’m being punished every time I help someone with their Windows machine.
/Rant
These things in particular drive me nuts:
- Sending everything users do and type (including passwords) back to Microsoft. It’s called spyware when other companies do it.
- Flooding 1/2 the screen with web results when a search is done from the start menu. I’m looking for an installed program, not a potato recipe.
- Requiring a registry edit to turn that web search off and lots of other simple things that use to be configurable in settings.
- Placing ads throughout the operating system and making it difficult to turn those ads off.
- Forcing the use of the Edge browser no matter what users choose.
- Preventing the removal of unwanted programs without editing the registry.
- Forcing upgrades at Microsoft’s convenience.
- Force restarts of the operating system causing data loss for (likely) millions of users.
- Removing more and more user settings with each new OS release.
- Burying commonly used menu items multiple menus deep.
- Preventing the removal of Start menu items. I will never use the Xbox Game Bar no matter how many time I’m forced to see it.
/
I dunno, I dont think it’s normal to get two blue screens on a fresh windows install.
Windows audio really is trash though, I’m totally with you there.
Windows will never have the flexibility of JACK
Amen. This is similar to the experience I have too. When I use Windows I have as many if not more problems. If I was only using a web browser, like most non-power users, I would have across the board worse issues on windows.
Fedora Linux has been the most stable OS in my experience, having used Windows XP to 10 and switching to Linux before 11 came out. I can leave it on for literally weeks on end and the memory never randomly fills up, nor does it get more and more glitchy/crash prone as you leave it on, both of which I have experienced on Windows.
Well, Windows was never perfect. People just got used to its shenanigans. They tend to meddle with bullshit registry yet somehow basic commands on Linux is too complicated.
In windows’ defense, the “complication” comes from the fact that there is no constant visual display of the filesystem structure in a terminal window like there is in the Windows registry.
That said, taking an hour to become comfortable with the terminal is not a difficult task. Understanding
~, and constantly usingdf -handls -al(for me anyway) will help a lot of people figure it out.
I have an ongoing irritation with windows (use it for work, Linux at home): It steals focus from the window you’re using if another window opens.
Drives me nuts. I’ll be typing my password and pop! Oh look I just typed my password into something else that popped up because IT requires this program to run on login today.
KDE is much better about not stealing window focus like that.
Mac os is pretty bad with that bullshit too
What windows are you having randomly pop up? That might be width investigating because that shouldn’t be happening.
They’re things like drive mapping scripts, stuff like that. They’re definitely normal for our setup. Just not sure why they have to interrupt me!
The fact that Windows devs seem to not know how to run tasks hidden and in the background always bothers me. I’m sure it’s the fault of Windows itself, but Linux doesn’t open jack until I tell it to. With all the extra helper programs needs in the tray to run all the proprietary hardware, I about lose it with all the shit popping up to yell at me.
i setup my old job with linux internally. never had issues. day i quit boss told me to install windows so he can find a replacement employee. sure.
3 years later. boss wants me back. they’ve had nothing but problems. but i’m not allowed to install linux again.
he says, “if windows didn’t have so many problems you would be out of a job.”
I forgot how terrible Windows actually is
Windows, while always shitty, has seriously gone downhill in the past 5 years. I’m looking to switch back to Linux myself, but I have an NVidia GPU that needs constant driver babying on OpenSUSE (my preferred distro). My current plan is to find someone who is willing to swap a RTX 4070 for a equivalent or slightly worse AMD card, and then switch back to OpenSUSE.
That’s more of an OpenSUSE issue, as much as I hate to say it’s not Nvidia. Fedora may work better for with the options available for non-free DKMS builds on kernel upgrades, but you’ll always be battling the Nvidia side with newer kernels pack releases. The open builds don’t work for display yet, so that’s not an option anywhere.
Oh for sure. I just like OpenSUSE enough to switch GPUs for. I only really run older games aside from Baldur’s Gate III and Cyberpunk, so I really don’t need the latest and greatest.
It’s interesting seeing the variety of experiences in this thread. I definitely had to fight Linux to get it setup and stable on my machine, but ever since then it’s been rock solid in a way I’ve never experienced with a Windows install.
Windows has a mind of its own…and being at the mercy of their update cadence or w/e other nonsense Microsoft is pushing sucks.
Meanwhile on Linux, I’ve had two CPUs that have C-State/P-State issues (5900x, 1700x), some weirdness with my audio interface, and a GPP0 bug that interferes with sleep. All of them are fixed or managed on Bazzite now, and it took plenty of digging for docs/reddit threads but now it’s rock solid.
On Windows, any time I’ve needed to deal with the Microsoft Store I run into issues that require registry fixes, uninstall/reinstalling various things, etc. Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 5 had issues launching as a result on Windows but not on Linux.
Ultimately, not being under the Microsoft gun is such a relief that the initial battle is completely put out of my mind. I’ve had some instances where I’ll boot into Windows for games, or HDR/Atmos support more reliably for my living room setup, but they have gotten rarer and rarer over the past couple of months.
For the record, Sea Of Thieves is also available as a standalone purchase through Steam, bypassing the Microsoft Store and their half abandoned UWP format entirely. Never had any issues with the Steam version on Windows.
The microsoft store sells games? I thought that was only used to occasionally update your xbox for pc controllers by grabbing the xbox accessories app. Never seen the microsoft store otherwise.
There is no perfect OS that just works for everyone. They are all software so they all have bugs. People how say an OS just works have never hit those bugs or have gotten used to fixing/working around or flat out ignoring them.
This is true of all OSs, including Windows, Linux and MacOS. They are all differently buggy messes.
Linux is the buggy mess that works best for me though.
Nothing is bug free, but that doesn’t mean everything is sort of the same just different flavor.
The last couple days I dealt with Windows, which is out of the ordinary for me. I had to build a little thing and chose PowerShell and that is quirky but ok at a glance. Now we are in 2025 and PowerShell is a modern thing, and kid you not you install a thing using
Module-Installand then you uninstall it usingModule-Uninstalland what happens? The thing is only gone partially and some broken remains stay. And then another curiosity comes up where after long rummaging it turns out that one user (Admin) simply cannot see another user’s mounted share - has microsoft ever heard of the concept of “permission denied”?That’s not a differently flavored bag of bugs, that is like decades of computing and software engineering hadn’t taken place
While that’s true, there are objectively different levels of ‘just working’ though.
I’ve never spent so little time googling how to fix things as I do with Ubuntu or Mint. It’s much more frequently needed and time consuming on other Linux OSs, iOS, Windows, Android. Haven’t personally used Mac.
Also, I’ve always found a fix on Ubuntu. The same can’t be said for other OSs.
That’s just personal examples, but the general idea still stands: different systems have a different amount of bugs, (or worse, ‘features’) and the difficulty of fixing them isn’t the same for everything either.
Man I’d kill to be able to use all of the APT commands I see online. DNF forces me to know what I’m doing lol.
I disagree, as much as I wish it weren’t so. Compared to Linux from the perspective of this gamer, it does just work. I wish I could main Linux but I can’t handle any more critical boot issues or significant reductions in framerate. Not to mention that I cant easily auto-wol my lg tv “monitor” like I could from windows.
Yeah, op just had a very rare experience.
I came to the same conclusion recently. Had a bunch of issues after i decided to try running windows 11 instead of 10 in a vm. One of them being that my usb dac refused to work, turns out after googling and finding a weird random chatgpt article that it was caused by a specific update. Had to roll the update back to solve it. Now i have to hope that they solve it before they decide to force the update on me anyways.
Good call. I’ve had to use Windows on work computers for the last 15 years, and I think it’s insane when people talk about it being simple or just working. I feel like I’m being gaslighted by people who maybe don’t know Linux very well so they decided Windows is good actually.
It appears to be all held together with string and ready to crumble randomly.
We keep one Windows laptop in our house so my partner can use some proprietary software she needs for work. When something goes wrong we just reimage it with the HP support tool because otherwise trying to fix it is like pulling your own teeth out.
I was in a somewhat similar place when I first got a laptop with Windows 11 preinstalled. Decided to dual boot, set Windows up with strictly local accounts, and actually poke around in there out of curiosity.
Tbf, the last time I was regularly doing anything in Windows was during the Vista --> Win 7 era. This did not make 11 any more approachable or easier to get even very basic things accomplished. I didn’t like the UI (still don’t), and kept getting frustrated at those “little” things like the Bluetooth codec issue you mention. Haven’t even tried to do much gaming on that side, to compare, other than a couple I couldn’t get working properly through WINE/Proton. (A couple of other software packages too.) So I ended up rarely playing those, and only booting into there at all once in a blue moon.
I did recognize that a lot of that frustration was on me and my expectations, though. Doesn’t mean that I still don’t want to have more control over basically everything about my system. I probably could make even modern Windows work better for me, but why bother when I’m already happy enough elsewhere. ¯\(ツ)/¯
See, I’ve had a similar experience getting games to run on Debian. Steam games crash and require research and testing to see if I can even get them to run, having some in-game videos just not play, black screens, and games just kinda freezing are all super common for me. That’s just when trying to run games via Proton.
I get some of it can be tied to a skill issue on my part, but at the end of the day I’m tired and don’t want to spend what little free time I have tinkering to get a game working, at least most days.
Still, my dislike for Windows 11 outweighs my interest in gaming so Debian stays.
