Why are you trying a 10 year old Linux?

hmcpretender, thanks for your honest, and calm reply. I apologise if I came across a bit negative. Many times I have clashed with the real rabid Linux users and came out of it feeling cold towards them, and Linux.
Enjoy your day.

If the same can be said then why the hate on Linux? This seems to a case of people hating something because they simply don't like it. True not everything works out of the box. I realise it should but by the time you get your gfx card the drivers are already outdated anyway so it's no big issue to get the drivers off the internet. I can't actually remember the last time I installed a gamepad, keyboard or mouse so don't know how drivers will be an issue. I use the Logitech software because it offers extra functionality which I'd miss in Linux but as i understand there is software which does the same. Actually I had to integrate a driver MS was lacking into the Windows 7 installation to make it work with Ryzen. I wish all my favourite programs and games were on Linux so I cold use it.

It's more to do with all the crap MS regularly pull. It's a matter of personal taste. Some would like the Windows experience while others prefer the Linux experience but don't be fooled to think an updated windows system is more secure. If it's connected to an open net connection it's just an insecure in it's updated state as its out of the box state. As for age, I don't see why you'd use an old Linux system when you can have a new one that looks and feels exactly the same. That's what i don't like about windows as it tries to force a new UI and way of doing things with every version and no easy way to revert.

Just thought I'd post being a veteran Windows user, as well as Mac, and having some limited experiences with Linux:

1. The biggest problem with Linux is driver support.

I installed the latest Linux Mint on an older Thinkpad T61 (which should be pretty well compatible with Linux by now).

Sure, everything worked fine, except I could not for the life of me, get the TrackPoint to speed up. On a Windows machine, you have the TPEX driver extension that allows it.

I tried searching for days for a solution, and most of them were editing INI files to increase pixel range, etc. None of them worked. I gave up and reloaded Windows 7 on that machine.

I remember having the ACPI problem as well, which is most noticeable on battery life.

I know this is not the fault of Linux, it's just simply the reality. Companies are not going to bother with putting resources toward drivers for an OS that like 1% of the population will use.


2. Linux is confusing for new users. For example. if I want to install a driver, usually in Windows, I will download from the main website for that company's product, run the EXE and it usually does everything. If it didn't work, I can go to device manager and uninstall and then reinstall manually by pointing to the CAB and INF files for the driver.

In Linux? First of all, it took me a while to understand that every version of Linus has a repository of approved drivers and updates.

It didn't make any sense when I read to "type apt-get something something driver" to update a driver for something. UNTIL that is, that I understood that Linux is configured to connect to a database (Canonical usually, no?) to pull drivers from anytime you type an "apt-get" and "apt-install" command.

You mess up your machine? Try getting into some kind of safe mode? lol I know it's possible, but its not intuitive for a Windows user.


In Windows, you hardly ever have to go to command line to do anything. The GUI for Windows is NOT a front end, at least not an overt one, the way it is in Linux. In Linux, EVERYTHING is CLI, and you just happen to have a front end for a few things (maybe 50% of all the software).


And then of course, another huge issue is the fact that Linux does not have many games native to it, and unfortunately, for most end users, Windows is basically a gaming platform.

I would like Linux to succeed, but it needs to be made more idiot friendly like Windows is.

While this is different compared to searching the web for an .exe, is this really less intuitive? On mobile devices most people get their stuff from a central distributor, too.

And (at least in Mint), there are GUIs for managing your libraries, programs, PPAs and whatnot, so no need to go full hacker mode with the terminal ;)

I mean Linux is not just a skin for windows or something. It's a different operating systems, so things work a bit differently. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better of it.

1. some distros are better optimized than Windows.
2. Security
3. Stability
4. you can resurrect that old pc that is horrible old to use Win 10 properly and you don't need use the insecure XP again.
5. No surprises included (bloatware)
6. No extra process run on background only what you need.
7. it's a free OS
9. some distros are noob friendly (I'm one), Ubuntu is an awesome OS for people who used Windows for years
8. all you need in software you can get it for free without trash ( no toolbars , no malwares, etc.)

So as I've told, I nowadays have also Linux (Mint) on this same PC, beside Windows 7/64bit.

I recently decided to try Team Fortress 2 on Linux (Steam) just to see if it plays as good as in Windows. TF2 isn't that demanding game graphically by today's standard so I wasn't really measuring the performance, but generally if it works ok. Findings so far:

1. Performance overall seems pretty much the same, but as said, this is not a demanding game.

2. It was just as easy to set up and start playing the game as it was on Windows, no difference there. I first had to install NVidia proprietary GPU drivers, but that was very easy on Linux Mint with the Driver Manager, just a couple of clicks. Even easier than in Windows 7 where I have to go to NVidia's pages to get a driver installer etc.

2. On Windows 7, I sometimes have this very annoying and persistent issue where the game occasionally pauses and the sound loops like for a second or so. Sometimes I don't see it at all, and sometimes it happens so much that it pretty much makes the game unplayable.

I have never figured this one out, sometimes it seems to start happening and gets worse the longer I play (and I have to reboot the PC to get back on track), sometimes I don't notice it much at all for the whole day. Yes I have updated the audio drivers, and I recently even clean installed Windows 7. I first thought that after that the problem was gone, but later it started happening again.

On Linux, I don't have this same problem at all, so apparently the Linux audio drivers work better in this regard. This is a definite plus for me.

3. On the other hand, generally speaking the Linux version does seem to have a bit of micro-stutter, which is a bit annoying. I haven't really tried to fix this yet (e.g. disabling or enabling vsync or whatever might affect it). So on Windows, as long as I don't get those dreaded audio-loop pauses mentioned above, the game seems to run smoother, without microstutter.

Anyway, for now I prefer the Linux version of TF2, due to the reason above.

Other findings, negatives and positives:

- After installing the proprietary NVidia Geforce drivers for Linux Mint, the screen brightness control buttons on my laptop don't seem to work correctly anymore. When I boot up Mint, the brightness is all the way up, but if I merely touch those brightness control buttons at all, the brightness goes all the way down to the dimmest.

I think it used to work correctly before, so somehow the Nvidia drivers broke that. Fortunately there is a workaround though, the brightness slider on the Mint desktop still works correctly, so I use it with my mouse if I want to change the brightness. No biggie then.

- Lately I have been copying my old CD-Rs and DVD-Rs to a big 8TB hard drive, just so that I can throw all the CDs to trashbin in order to clear the cupboards of them.

Sometimes on Windows 7 I have this very odd but annoying issue that when I take out one CD and put in another, Windows Explorer still seems to think I have the old CD in there. So it shows the contents of the old CD, not the new CD.

I haven't found out why it is sometimes behaving like that, F5 / refresh doesn't help nor ejecting and disabling the CD repeatedly etc. The only workaround is to restart Windows.

On Linux, I never have this problem, even with those same CDs. So now I am doing that CD-to-HDD copying project on Linux. It overall goes smoother there because for some reason on Windows detecting an inserted CD takes longer (seems like it is creating some kind of snapshot if there is video file in the CD, for showing its icon on the bottom of the Windows Explorer window), and Linux handles error cases more cleanly too, e.g. sometimes when there has been a read error on Windows, the whole Windows Explorer may become stuck and if I force the CD out with an eject button, Explorer sometimes apparently crashes, I lose the whole desktop and trying to either log off or shut dows Windows (through e.g. Ctrl-Alt-Del) may end up being stuck forever into the logout screen.

No such problems on Linux side whatsoever. Remember, this is a clean and recent Windows 7 installation, so this seems more like a feature of Windows more than some specific problem on my setup.

Things just seem to work more cleanly on Linux side overall, Windows has all those odd quirks with oddball file indexing just at the wrong times etc. Not sure if all those issues are fixed in Windows 10.

This is the point many people seem to miss. They compare it to the way it's done in windows rather than whether it's good or bad. Other platforms like Android, Ios and Mac all have their own issues but people don't go off on them as being bad because it's simply how things are done.