I was able to get mine working by setting it up as a network printer via windows and then just accessing it like that through Linux. But yeah, if I ever change wifi ssids I would need to factory reset it go back into windows and configure it again. (ET2400)
Edit to be clear the windows instance is only needed for setup, it can be shut down or removed entirely after setup
I also had a windows server for that for a little bit, but dumped it in the end. Realistically only my wife is using it, and she is still stuck with windows on her Thinkpad
HP Reverb G2 for me. Still waiting on Monado to get it fully working but no such luck yet. Hugely appreciative to the dev team for all of their amazing work, of course.
Broadcom hardware (WiFi cards an webcams in particular).
Plus there are quirks with some proprietary driver version not building against some kernel version...
With unsupported hardware and closed drivers you are always on the lookout for some breakage.
And it's not a Linux problem nor a complaint on distro maintainers. It's manufacturers that are shit.
I'll be honest, A lot more of it works than I expected. Linux runs and is quite stable.
Keyboard Backlighting? Had to write some Python. Windows driver manages this, proprietary. I still can't get backlight to work in bluetooth mode.
Trackpad Palm Rejection? Had to write a service. Windows driver manages this, proprietary.
Function keys on the keyboard in wired mode? Not supported, no work-around that I can find. I have to remove the keyboard and put it into bluetooth mode. Windows driver.
Peripheral devices, mostly. I have some half-supported, like Logitech mouse (G-shift doesn't work), and for some I rely on open-source devs (like Corsair keyboard for certain keys/modes/connectivity fix). Sure, you can say just buy compatible devices, but it's not always viable to replace everything you owned before moving to Linux.
I've got some LianLi case fans that aren't supported by anything Linux that I've been able to find. I run a barebones VM just to control their features.
Off the top of my head, my case is a LianLi O11, but I was talking about my case fans, which are... Oh lord, their naming is so obnoxious, the... TM LCDs I think?
lconnect just isn't linux friendly, which is kinda surprising. I've got the 8.8 universal screen, which I could just toggle into a second display and get all the system data that way when running under linux.
Oh yeah I gave up trying to run LConnect on linux a while ago. I then looked into alternative tools people have made, of which there are a few and they seem great, but none of which (when I looked last) support my specific fan models. So my current solution is Windows 11 in a barebones VM that autostarts. It literally just runs Lconnect and nothing else, and the only things passed through to it are the USB controls for the fans. It has allowed me to at least control the colours, and screens, though not fan profiles or stats.
I've got a SpaceMouse Pro that, although useable with Blender, I haven't been able to get it working as well as it did on windows, but I think that's the only device I had any trouble with so far.
My case: I have an nvidia GTX 980. It's old but it's what I have.
Nvidia dropped its support from driver version 595.
Driver 580 is what I need, it worked until 7.0 but no longer in 7.1 (was using Fedora 44). Since my hardware is old I switched to Debian Trixie.
Another example is the facetime HD Webcam of macbook pro: to make it work you have to install OSx or download a recovery image, compile a C program to extract a specific binary blob, then use that blob to recompile the driver on your kernel.
There are lots of examples: it's a big world, with lots of hardware and mostly no producer interested in the Linux world.
This depends a bit on the distro you are using. Like in arch you should not use the proprietary drivers for older cards but the open ones. My guess is there are some community drivers you should use instead.
😆😂🤣 Are you kidding? Have you tried using nouveau? It works, sure, but you can’t play games that are even vaguely modern and if something uses up a bit too much RAM the entire display system starts jittering/lagging or becomes unresponsive. Source: I ran nouveau with a GTX 2080 for years. I was only able to fully ditch Windows once I fully ditched Nvidia (by switching to an AMD GPU and scrubbing every last vestige of Nvidia’s bullshit off my PC).
you mean the nouveau driver? the one that is unable to up the frequencies from the minimum because it is not signed by nvidia? it may work as a display output, but not much else
For desktop? Probably. For laptop, linux support can be awful, because manufacturers keep introducing hardware that don't support standard drivers. Webcam? How about an IPU6 that needs kernel modules just to be detected and then special calibration files just so the image is not a stripey corrupted mess... How about no on-board sound because screw you I guess. How about a non standard USB controller so that you cannot even communicate over your USB ethernet dongle when the wifi is once again some special sauce non standard shit...
These are Dell and Lenovo Yoga machines at the University I work at. Some are absolute garbage where the USB is always powered and will drain the battery when the computer is turned off and no BIOS setting will disable this.
We are now looking into Tuxedo and Framework...
PS.: even windows has issues with these, where you have no touchpad and no USB anything (mouse, keyboard) until you somehow install a driver...
PS.: even windows has issues with these, where you have no touchpad and no USB anything (mouse, keyboard) until you somehow install a driver…
It's very much not meant for user OS install at all. The 'correct' way to install an OS on those is to flash it onto the SSD before installing the SSD.
And if the drive goes bad or the data gets corrupted and it needs to be reinstalled? Well fuck you -- throw it away and buy a new one. If these laptop manufacturers had their way, nothing would be user-repairable and 'throw it away and buy a new one' would be the solution to every possible problem.
Unfortunately this is not true. If manufacturers do not support Linux, then it is up to dedicated community members to reverse engineer drivers. Much love to these amazing people ❤️
Things have gotten much better in recent years because now Linux is seen as a legitimate operating system and not just a platform for hobbyists.
Psht. I wish! This is wrong and will set people up for failure. There is absolutely hardware that will work well with Linux and hardware that will not.
I tend to run into problems with brand new laptops. Microphones don't work, web cams don't work, fingerprint readers don't work.
I have a Dell Dell Pro next to me with a web cam that doesn't work. Arch, btw.
I also have a Lenovo T14 where everything does work.
The point is you have to RESEARCH before you buy. Otherwise, you're gonna get mad a Linux for not supporting your hardware, instead of being mad at yourself for not researching first.
Hardware that's too old is problematic and hardware that's too new can be problematic.
No, the point is not to nuke it. One point is to have control over your own hardware and (in principle) be able to make sure the software/OS is not using your devices to spy on you.
There's still tons of devices where Linux doesn't work properly with them.
My Intel wireless cards cannot maintain a 6ghz wireless connection for shit despite some of them being over 5 years old. And Intel. Latest stuff, older kernels, none work well. Oddly whatever version of Fedora I had worked the best. My wifi wasn't unusable when 6ghz was an option. It only dropped to 5/2.4ghz once a minute instead of every 5-20 seconds.
I tried this but it didn't seem to help. Mostly because it only wants to use 5ghz. I think I tried doing a bunch of "fixes" so maybe I should just start fresh. This is on my testing machine that I don't use regularly so only god knows what I've done to it.
Also did you do this on a laptop with S0 standby? How does that affect sleep?
If the old (or LTS) version of the kernel doesn't support something newer, and the new version of the kernel does, that would not be a regression.
I learned this when Skylake first came out. Ubuntu LTS didn't work on it because it was an old kernel and this was new hardware. If you have new hardware, use a new kernel.
2 separate bootloader partitions. Grub launches the windows bootloader on a different partition so it isn't aware of anything other than itself. Then the 2nd bootloader actually launches windows. Don't try to share one partition or else windows will inevitably wind up clobbering the Linux loader.
This assumes windows is not maliciously checking for other bootloaders in order to fuck with them, which I'm not willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt on tbh.
If you have two EFI partitions, Windows will stop looking once it finds the first one.
Which is actually a problem sometimes, as it will stop looking and use the first one it finds, even if it's on different drive than windows.
Imagine installing windows on a machine with two drives. Drive A already has an OS and an EFI partition, so you install Windows to drive B.
Except Windows will still go ahead and drop the bootloader onto drive A. Potentially breaking the OS that's there, plus setting up Windows in such a way that it requires drive A to boot. EVEN THOUGH THAT ISN'T WHERE YOU INSTALLED IT.
This is why guides tell you to install windows with only one drive connected. It's the only way to ensure it puts the bootloader and OS on the same drive.
I have found that removing the EFI flag from the partition also works.
I just choose which is easier, since removing some nvme SSDs can be buried under a few components depending on the motherboard
Then Windows will fuck up the EFI entry itself. Easy to fix of course but a pain in the ass when you are just starting with Linux and have barely any idea other than reinstalling for the 10th time in a few weeks.
This is the way. I just discovered this, but the lazy way. If I want windows, I mash f8 on startup to get the manual boot selection. I never start windows through grub (systemd-boot in my case). It has its own EFI partition.
Dual booting us viable, if you're curious its good to try linux via dual boot. Windows doesnt break the linux bootloader. The incident referencing was a bug I believe. I know plenty of people who've been dual booting for 2+ years keeping both OSs up to date with no issue.
I have had it break my bootloader when I was dual booting, if it wasn't my main pc then I might risk it but I'm not rolling the dice on if windows decides to break it again.
I believe dual boot is more feasible when you have more than one drive, so you don’t risk corrupting it. Another option to test a Linux distribution would be using virtual machines
My laptop only has one m.2 ssd/slot. I have the ssd partitioned for Linux and windows 11 dual boot. Grub boot loader. I have had it set up this way for 4 years now, and no windows updates have messed up by Linux install or boot loader yet 🤞
My bootloader has survived just fine despite being dual boot for the past 2 years. It may have something to do with me only having booted windows once in all that time (to fix a borked NTFS drive) 😁
Windows finds the first and doesn't bother looking for a second one, which happens to contain grub and my efistubs.
Windows will go ahead and clear the UEFI menu sometimes, but manually booting an efi file and then re-adding the grub and stub boot entries is small compared to having my stuff actually deleted.
I'd had a dedicated windows drive for a little while...
Maybe a bug and not malice, but the forced Windows 8 -> 10 upgrade deleted everything on my second drive that windows wasn't installed on
I had two disks and windows still fucked my secure boot keys somehow in a way that I wasn't able to fix so I had to reinstall the linux side. I turned secure boot off afterwards so should be fine now but it was a thing that happened.
The reason I just overwrote the Windows partition, instead of futzing with fixing dual boot was GDID. MSFTs global ID that tracks, literally, everything you do.
Windows does stupid things with boot because it's apparently alone in the world.
Like this NTFS lock up thing because it's not really shutting down anymore but going into hibernate.
I had to change that setting but other than that dual boot works.
Just realized that's still win 10 on this machine. When that runs out time for fresh Linux only install.
If you are on a desktop, there is always the option of throwing a GT 1030 in the secondary pcie slot and jumping through the 100 hoops to get Looking Glass set up.
Windows can't fuck the bootloader if you lie about its HDD access.
Or just use QEMU/KVM wirh VirtIO extensions if you don't need hardware rendering on Windows. Problem is most dual-booters I know use Windows to play games with kernel anti-cheat. Not much you can do to virtualize that
Ah shit, now the battle is lost! Well, you guys in the van can pack it up. I'm not good at this cop thing I tell you, but by your response I bet you don't realize Epstein was a cop too. Still alive for that reason. Same reason Trump's in office; it's a sting that he's helping investigators with, which totally was not what I was doing. Because I'm not a cop, obviously. I'd be real bad at it, talking about cop shit, amirite? Yea, no, I'm just some crackhead on the internet. All I am.
I love Linux, but damn unless you use Amd video cards. It’s a hard sell, especially if you’re a gamer. Not to mention, how often games break because they’re designed for windows. So dual boot is reasonable, in my opinion.
I wasn’t talking about bricked systems, just the games themselves have issues and glitches. Especially with Nvidia. Not all games mind you. Plus the performance tax on Nvidia with Linux.
It's actually the opposite if you're trying to use your GPU for compute tasks, though.
Having tried both, nvidia GPU compute just worked, right out of the box, as soon as I installed the nvidia drivers. With AMD, though, I could never get GPU compute working, despite months of screwing around with it, trying different drivers from different sources, trying different methods to install them, trying different configurations -- nothing could get GPU compute to work. And ... that's kind of a problem when I want to use software like Davinci Resolve, which requires GPU compute to run.
The argument for dual boot is mostly for gaming, as far as compute is concerned your AMD graphics card would have been fine on Ubuntu or an RHEL/CentOS operating system. But honestly in my experience, it’s always good to dual boot just in case. There are many scenarios where it saves you headaches and precious time.
It used to be much, much worse. While some people still struggle a little with Nvidia on Linux, it seems perfectly usable in most distros and games by now.
I agree it has improved, but I still have enough issues to where for me anyways. To justify dual boot, that is until I get an AMD video card. Believe me if I didint have to constantly find Nvidia workarounds, for performance and bugs. I would be on Linux 100 percent of the time.
It's apparently the third day (in a week!) I see people share their negative view on the booting being damaged by Windows...
Frankly, it's quite odd to see so many people having the issue when Windows or any other OS rewrites the bootloader...
It's sure possible to have it safe, so that even Windows won't rewrite during its update.
Though, I've been into Linux for more than 20 years now, I do have a machine that has Windows 10 installed alongside Linux, even if it's more frequent to boot Windows in a virtual machine nowadays.
The idea is to not share the location for the EFI files (in UEFI mode), but let the systems have their own keeping them fairly isolated, where Grub v2+ or another bootloader you prefer, load them all respectively, being located on a safer partition.
For example:
We have two storages (e.g., SSD): /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.
Install Windows on /dev/sdb (so it creates its own ESP);
Install Linux on /dev/sda (so it creates its own ESP), with a normal/manual partitioning:
- /boot/ (for Kernels I have 4 GiB+);
- /boot/efi/ (commonly, from 128 to 512 MiB is enough);
- Here I normally also have a swap partition, and separate: /home/, /var/;
- Select Grub to be installed on the /dev/sda;
Boot the Grub in /dev/sda;
Update Grub within Linux, so it finds the Windows EFI on another drive via its os-prober.
Here, I believe efibootmgr should show the existing EFI, or you could check it manually in /boot/efi after.
Windows should operate on its own ESP it created on its own storage, and don't overwrite the Grub.
At voila!
To additionally clarify, in my personal experience for many years on Linux, I usually tend to see (and are fond of, personally) having separate mounts for contextually different data, where one of the most adequate in frequent circles and duties is to separate the responsibility as, for example:
Main system (root) - /;
Kernel (~4GiB) - /boot/;
EFI (~128-512MiB) - /boot/efi/;
User personal - /home/;
Variable - /var/;
Swap;
(Optional) System configuration - /etc/;
(Optional) Temporary - /tmp/;
It's also frequent to see the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) active, that may support a more fluent organization of hardware and logical devices. In this case, we might have all the above mounts, except 2 and 3, practically encrypted, too.
One of my current main machines have the following partitions (though no dual-boot on it):
On Windows, if I am not mistaken (please correct me if wrong), the most frequent is to have at least two explicit partitions, in addition to the implicit primary 4 ones:
EFI Boot Partition we mentioned above;
Recovery Partition;
Microsoft Reserved;
Primary Windows.
For example:
- C:\ - System and automatically organized User personal files (desktop, documents, variable as AppData/ProgramData);
- D:\ - Manually installed programs and manually organized User personal files;
You can include a separate data partition to enable easier maintenance for situations where either the primary operating system is likely to be replaced, or when multiple operating systems exist on the same device, such as Windows 10 and Windows 7. When a device has multiple hard drives, a data partition may be stored on another drive.
For typical single-drive configurations, it's best that you not use a separate data partition. There are two main reasons:
- The partition may not automatically protect data that is stored outside the user profile folders. For example, a guest user might have access to files in an unprotected data partition.
- If you change the default location of the user profile folders to any volume other than the system volume, you cannot service your image, and the computer may not apply updates or fixes to the installation.
Source (Hard drives and partitions - Windows Documentation...)
Oh! I would recommend KDE Partition Manger if you prefer GUI for partitioning.
It's likely worth to mention that KDE Partition Manger (project source) is likely one of the best out there I found (tried at least 11 a few years ago) for convenient GUI Luks2 and LVM support, if required.
Even if compared to some of the popular, where Gnome's, GParted, and QtParted resulted in either unsupported logic for Luks2 and LVM or did not complete the task successfully. These tools are still awesome for other tasks, I believe!
Though, perhaps likely as you I do prefer shell or TUI, being dived mostly in terminals/servers, and a script is always an option, of course. Not to mention that even with the GUI above, manual commands are normally eminent/imminent.
We have two storages (e.g., SSD): /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.
Install Windows on /dev/sdb (so it creates its own ESP);
Install Linux on /dev/sda (so it creates its own ESP), with a normal/manual partitioning:
- /boot/ (for Kernels I have 4 GiB+);
- /boot/efi/ (commonly, from 128 to 512 MiB is enough);
- Here I normally also have a swap partition, and separate: /home/, /var/;
- Select Grub to be installed on the /dev/sda;
Boot the Grub in /dev/sda;
Update Grub within Linux, so it finds the Windows EFI on another drive via its os-prober.
Here, I believe efibootmgr should show the existing EFI, or you could check it manually in /boot/efi after.
Windows should operate on its own ESP it created on its own storage, and don’t overwrite the Grub.
At voila!
Then Windows will fuck up your EFI entries. Which is not a big deal if you know what you are doing but a completely different story for the audience you are explicitly addressing here when you even explain how to check those entries in the first place.
Also you did not actually mention that fastboot needs to be disabled in Windows, thus a clueless person will not understand the random hardware errors on Linux caused by not properly initialized devices and will blame Linux.
(And let's not even talk about some of the really insane stuff like pre-installed Microsoft SecureBoot keys that brick you whole system when removed because idiotic OEMs signed their own hardware's EFI drivers with the keys already pre-installed just because they can...)
So no, it's not "quite odd to see so many people having the issue when Windows". That's what Windows is causing, often intentionally so. Is most of this easily fixable? Sure... But it's a very effective deterrent for many people, so they never reach the point where they understand and be able to fix that stuff.
Windows never touched the main EFI entry in my cases, even at updating it from 10 to 11, and I clarified it 3 times.
With a few Google queries we may find it mentioned, yet I've just found a weak one at this moment:
If you are booting with Windows, you should simply be aware of the problem, because you can easily overcome it by temporarily changing the type code of the non-Windows ESP(s) if you run into problems. Note that Windows will boot just fine on a disk with multiple ESPs; it's just the installer that chokes on such disks.
Some documentations found mentioned relatively similar:
The only Microsoft supported workaround for booting multiple installations of Windows in a uEFI environment is to use a dual boot configuration. This will make use of a single ESP and one MSR while still allowing the user to choose to boot to an installation on disk 1 or disk 2.
Note that Windows will boot just fine on a disk with multiple ESPs
Nice for Windows to support this theoretically but the UEFI standard does not require support for multiple ESPs on a disk, so you will easily find hardware that in fact will simply discover the first ESP then stop. Because actual implementations matter and a lot of them are bad.
Speaking of bad implementations. We got several manufacturers a few years ago where their UEFI implementation broke and bricked the whole device after editing the EFI entries via efibootmgr exactly as defined by standard. Oh, you wanted to install Linux? Your device is now done because no one ever tested them without anything but the Windows pre-installs.
Yet two other cases of totally coincidental "This should work but doesn't, must be a Linux issue" artificially created by Microsoft (who after all were one of the driving forces behind UEFI development, also the reason we are still stuck with FAT32 ESPs - the only file system ESPs are required to support by the standard with everything else optional).
Windows never touched the main EFI entry in my cases
In the end positive anecdotal experiences don't matter much. If a relevant fraction of users has issues that should not exist when installing Linux (and that obviously don't exist with Windows because here OEMs actually do proper testing here... or it's Windows/Microsoft itself causing the issues (pre-installed key, fast boot shenanigans, hardware that should be supported but randomly isn't etc.)) that's helping to prevent a lot of people from trying it in the first place. And that's by design.
Microsoft has no authority to dictate if a user can or should run more than one OS on their system. Regardless if that OS is Windows, Linux, or anything else. It's the user's choice, as it should be. What is egregious is Microsoft constantly breaking the bootloader. Totally on accident, I'm sure.
Except we both know the bootloader breaking with their updates is no happy accident. Microsoft is and always has been a very underhanded and anti-consumer company. I'm sure we don't need to talk about Microsoft's track record though, right?
Oh, I just realized you're the Linux Sucks guy, haha. I blocked the sub but not you specifically. Sorry, I don't have time to debate with someone who's whole schtick is to be an ass. Good luck with spreading your message, or whatever though.
How do I know? because I JUST tried to move over to linux.
First I tried Zorin OS, and TBH it pretty much worked right out of the box.
BUT!
My monitor would only go up to 120hz Refresh rate, even though it can do 144hz natively. And games that are supposed to work on Linux (Arma 3) did not work no matter what I did. And forget about VR.
So I tried Arch.
And Jesus Christ...
Zorin was as easy to install as windows.
ARCH is actively trying to stop you from installing it.
So I did what most people do and youtube'd how to install Arch and oh my god, I encountered the living embodiment of the "Linux user meme" so hard when I did that.
But I finally was sort of able to get it up and running. Of course there are no list of packages that you will need for the smooth operating of Arch. Like I dunno, how about a file manager?
So I said fuck it and was going to try to install steamOS. but I fucked up formatting the drives and USB drive.
Fortunately, I had an old windows installer kicking around and finally able to get windows re-installed.
So my opinion for now is simply "Not ready for prime time... yet."
But when it does maybe I will give it another try.
If I do go back it, will be back to Zorin. very simple installation, and everything worked. For example, on Zorin, my bluetooth would connect to my headphones just fine. On Arch, they saw my headphones, but refused to connect. I tried a few fixes I found online but just gave up and went wired.
It’s not like Zorin is easy to install because the devs made their own simple installer. Almost every modern linux distribution ships with one of two or three prebuilt installer tools, with very few exceptions (one being arch, though if I recall correctly even arch has an option to use an installer)
You will most likely have the same or a very similar experience installing mint or bazzite or endevour or whatever else you choose.
On the other hand, I set up a dual boot with 1 of my 4 ssds being available to both OS just in case. That was 8 or so months ago, and I haven't booted into Windows 10 once since then.
My 165hz monitors are fine at 165, and that was without any config (NobaraOS). All the games I actively play work fine, and the closest thing to an issue is have is my H.O.T.A.S. registering only 12 or so buttons/switches instead of the much larger amount it has, but i haven't put any effort into figuring it out because I only use it for one game.
Experiences vary, but I feel like you're judging a whole platform from choosing a simple Windows replacement then switching to one of the harder OS's to setup.
There's plenty designed more for gaming which seems to be your monitor setup.
I’ve used Ubuntu for years and it’s easy to install and widely supports all the things I need. Bazzite is also a great option. I’ve never been interested in Arch and SteamOS just came out for desktop so I’d rather not be an early adopter when Bazzite is already ironed out and waiting to be installed.
Love steamOS on my deck, but see no use for it on my Desktop atm.
Windows 11 is actually spyware garbage and I won’t have it in my house.
I don’t see a reason to use Windows for gaming if you don’t play games with anticheat. I have a 9070XT so it just works with Linux. Left Nvidia and Linux is much happier.
dual booting just makes things more difficult. windows likes to silently change things in the bios and on disk drives it manages, basically pulling the rug out from under linux. you can mitigate it by making linux aware of the fact but that's not the default behaviour, because again dual booting isn't really recommended.
Havent tried out zorinOS but so far i never hat problems running games under Linux : steam + proton experimental just makes it as easy AS downloading via steam and hitting the play button - literally die nothing else (have used Linux mint first now Debian - Debian required a bit oft fiddeling for steam but not with individual games)
arma is an annoying one because it's a bespoke engine with a lot of deep windows integration, coming from the fact that parts of it is from 1995. add online multiplayer anticheat to that and it gets even more difficult.
that said, i got it running on linux in like... 2019, so i would have thought it to be easier now.
I think that's why peeps install stuff like gnu/linux and then slap Nvidia & Steam on them for lolz, they often can't live without pretending they are a wizard or a soldier in some novel machine generated propitiatary hallucinations from an app store no matter the cost, Gabe needs better yachts.
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"Linux supported hardware" is an outdated phrase only used in windows propaganda today.
System 76, Tuxedo Linux, Mint, and several other Linux developing OEMs I can think of exist?...
Absolutely not.
Signed, owner of half-supported hardware.
Out of curiosity what hardware are you using that's not supported?
Printers 🤣
In my experience, the only OS where printers won't have drivers is Windows.
But I don't deal often with dark demoniac systems, so there are probably lots of niche hellish devices that I don't know the details.
BS, I have gotten HP printers to work on Linux with no problems.
My Epson inkjet is a paperweight without w*ndows
I was able to get mine working by setting it up as a network printer via windows and then just accessing it like that through Linux. But yeah, if I ever change wifi ssids I would need to factory reset it go back into windows and configure it again. (ET2400)
Edit to be clear the windows instance is only needed for setup, it can be shut down or removed entirely after setup
I also had a windows server for that for a little bit, but dumped it in the end. Realistically only my wife is using it, and she is still stuck with windows on her Thinkpad
If I were already using Linux when I bought a printer like that, it would be returned immediately lmao
Epson seems to supply Linux drivers according to their website and some Linux users when I searched around
Yeah, there's some drivers but I never could get it quite work.
How old is it? Almost all relatively recent printers should support driverless network printing by now.
Maybe 5 years old, haven't tested in a while but it's USB only with no network connectivity
They work better on Linux ,more prints than on windows ,same Cartwright. Installing was plug play (Office jet 6950)
my brother laser was easier to set up in linux . windows needed a big ass download , linux just printed.
Certain fingerprint readers and touchscreens
ex. Goodix
It's not the fault of Linux, it's the hardware manufacturers. Still, you need to consider it before buying the device
HP Reverb G2 for me. Still waiting on Monado to get it fully working but no such luck yet. Hugely appreciative to the dev team for all of their amazing work, of course.
Audio gear.
Broadcom hardware (WiFi cards an webcams in particular). Plus there are quirks with some proprietary driver version not building against some kernel version...
With unsupported hardware and closed drivers you are always on the lookout for some breakage.
And it's not a Linux problem nor a complaint on distro maintainers. It's manufacturers that are shit.
Asus Zenbook DUO
I'll be honest, A lot more of it works than I expected. Linux runs and is quite stable.
Keyboard Backlighting? Had to write some Python. Windows driver manages this, proprietary. I still can't get backlight to work in bluetooth mode.
Trackpad Palm Rejection? Had to write a service. Windows driver manages this, proprietary.
Function keys on the keyboard in wired mode? Not supported, no work-around that I can find. I have to remove the keyboard and put it into bluetooth mode. Windows driver.
ohh shit, now that this reminded me to look, someone's done something about it
https://github.com/zakstam/zenbook-duo-linux
Now I just need to figure out how to wedge that into nixos
Peripheral devices, mostly. I have some half-supported, like Logitech mouse (G-shift doesn't work), and for some I rely on open-source devs (like Corsair keyboard for certain keys/modes/connectivity fix). Sure, you can say just buy compatible devices, but it's not always viable to replace everything you owned before moving to Linux.
I've got some LianLi case fans that aren't supported by anything Linux that I've been able to find. I run a barebones VM just to control their features.
What case are you using? I've got a LianLi Lancool 216. It's a little loud but it runs just fine for me.
Off the top of my head, my case is a LianLi O11, but I was talking about my case fans, which are... Oh lord, their naming is so obnoxious, the... TM LCDs I think?
lconnect just isn't linux friendly, which is kinda surprising. I've got the 8.8 universal screen, which I could just toggle into a second display and get all the system data that way when running under linux.
Oh yeah I gave up trying to run LConnect on linux a while ago. I then looked into alternative tools people have made, of which there are a few and they seem great, but none of which (when I looked last) support my specific fan models. So my current solution is Windows 11 in a barebones VM that autostarts. It literally just runs Lconnect and nothing else, and the only things passed through to it are the USB controls for the fans. It has allowed me to at least control the colours, and screens, though not fan profiles or stats.
I've got a SpaceMouse Pro that, although useable with Blender, I haven't been able to get it working as well as it did on windows, but I think that's the only device I had any trouble with so far.
Lenovo thinkbook 16 G7 iml
Yes it's a POS. It wasn't my choice. Work laptop.
What Linux kernel are you running which isn't supporting your hardware?
My case: I have an nvidia GTX 980. It's old but it's what I have.
Nvidia dropped its support from driver version 595.
Driver 580 is what I need, it worked until 7.0 but no longer in 7.1 (was using Fedora 44). Since my hardware is old I switched to Debian Trixie.
Another example is the facetime HD Webcam of macbook pro: to make it work you have to install OSx or download a recovery image, compile a C program to extract a specific binary blob, then use that blob to recompile the driver on your kernel.
There are lots of examples: it's a big world, with lots of hardware and mostly no producer interested in the Linux world.
This depends a bit on the distro you are using. Like in arch you should not use the proprietary drivers for older cards but the open ones. My guess is there are some community drivers you should use instead.
😆😂🤣 Are you kidding? Have you tried using nouveau? It works, sure, but you can’t play games that are even vaguely modern and if something uses up a bit too much RAM the entire display system starts jittering/lagging or becomes unresponsive. Source: I ran nouveau with a GTX 2080 for years. I was only able to fully ditch Windows once I fully ditched Nvidia (by switching to an AMD GPU and scrubbing every last vestige of Nvidia’s bullshit off my PC).
you mean the nouveau driver? the one that is unable to up the frequencies from the minimum because it is not signed by nvidia? it may work as a display output, but not much else
For desktop? Probably. For laptop, linux support can be awful, because manufacturers keep introducing hardware that don't support standard drivers. Webcam? How about an IPU6 that needs kernel modules just to be detected and then special calibration files just so the image is not a stripey corrupted mess... How about no on-board sound because screw you I guess. How about a non standard USB controller so that you cannot even communicate over your USB ethernet dongle when the wifi is once again some special sauce non standard shit...
These are Dell and Lenovo Yoga machines at the University I work at. Some are absolute garbage where the USB is always powered and will drain the battery when the computer is turned off and no BIOS setting will disable this.
We are now looking into Tuxedo and Framework...
PS.: even windows has issues with these, where you have no touchpad and no USB anything (mouse, keyboard) until you somehow install a driver...
Yeah laptop hardware is garbage to deal with
It's very much not meant for user OS install at all. The 'correct' way to install an OS on those is to flash it onto the SSD before installing the SSD.
And if the drive goes bad or the data gets corrupted and it needs to be reinstalled? Well fuck you -- throw it away and buy a new one. If these laptop manufacturers had their way, nothing would be user-repairable and 'throw it away and buy a new one' would be the solution to every possible problem.
Unfortunately this is not true. If manufacturers do not support Linux, then it is up to dedicated community members to reverse engineer drivers. Much love to these amazing people ❤️
Things have gotten much better in recent years because now Linux is seen as a legitimate operating system and not just a platform for hobbyists.
except when the manufacturer puts effort into locking out reverse engineers through cryptography.
fuck you, nvidia!
Psht. I wish! This is wrong and will set people up for failure. There is absolutely hardware that will work well with Linux and hardware that will not.
I tend to run into problems with brand new laptops. Microphones don't work, web cams don't work, fingerprint readers don't work.
I have a Dell Dell Pro next to me with a web cam that doesn't work. Arch, btw.
I also have a Lenovo T14 where everything does work.
The point is you have to RESEARCH before you buy. Otherwise, you're gonna get mad a Linux for not supporting your hardware, instead of being mad at yourself for not researching first.
Hardware that's too old is problematic and hardware that's too new can be problematic.
And unsurprisingly my framework laptop works perfectly under Linux
Wait, it isn’t the point to nuke “spy equipment” with a new OS?
No, the point is not to nuke it. One point is to have control over your own hardware and (in principle) be able to make sure the software/OS is not using your devices to spy on you.
There's still tons of devices where Linux doesn't work properly with them.
My Intel wireless cards cannot maintain a 6ghz wireless connection for shit despite some of them being over 5 years old. And Intel. Latest stuff, older kernels, none work well. Oddly whatever version of Fedora I had worked the best. My wifi wasn't unusable when 6ghz was an option. It only dropped to 5/2.4ghz once a minute instead of every 5-20 seconds.
For me any Wi-Fi drops were solved by disabling power saving in NetworkManager
Create a conf file:
sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave.confAdd this into the config file:
Then restart
NetworkManageror reboot your systemI tried this but it didn't seem to help. Mostly because it only wants to use 5ghz. I think I tried doing a bunch of "fixes" so maybe I should just start fresh. This is on my testing machine that I don't use regularly so only god knows what I've done to it.
Also did you do this on a laptop with S0 standby? How does that affect sleep?
My guess is that you are noticing the difference between new and old kernels
Sure, but that doesn't change that it's regressed since that one version and still hasn't been re fixed.
If the old (or LTS) version of the kernel doesn't support something newer, and the new version of the kernel does, that would not be a regression.
I learned this when Skylake first came out. Ubuntu LTS didn't work on it because it was an old kernel and this was new hardware. If you have new hardware, use a new kernel.
This Fedora version was a year+ ago. Even on 7.0 wifi is unusable on my machines if I have 6ghz enabled.
it does not sound like its the new version that is better for them. more like an older version was better, newer is worse.
Different disks if you must at all.
2 separate bootloader partitions. Grub launches the windows bootloader on a different partition so it isn't aware of anything other than itself. Then the 2nd bootloader actually launches windows. Don't try to share one partition or else windows will inevitably wind up clobbering the Linux loader.
Windows will know, its lik a cancer
This assumes windows is not maliciously checking for other bootloaders in order to fuck with them, which I'm not willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt on tbh.
It does work.
If you have two EFI partitions, Windows will stop looking once it finds the first one.
Which is actually a problem sometimes, as it will stop looking and use the first one it finds, even if it's on different drive than windows.
Imagine installing windows on a machine with two drives. Drive A already has an OS and an EFI partition, so you install Windows to drive B.
Except Windows will still go ahead and drop the bootloader onto drive A. Potentially breaking the OS that's there, plus setting up Windows in such a way that it requires drive A to boot. EVEN THOUGH THAT ISN'T WHERE YOU INSTALLED IT.
This is why guides tell you to install windows with only one drive connected. It's the only way to ensure it puts the bootloader and OS on the same drive.
I have found that removing the EFI flag from the partition also works. I just choose which is easier, since removing some nvme SSDs can be buried under a few components depending on the motherboard
Then Windows will fuck up the EFI entry itself. Easy to fix of course but a pain in the ass when you are just starting with Linux and have barely any idea other than reinstalling for the 10th time in a few weeks.
This is the way. I just discovered this, but the lazy way. If I want windows, I mash f8 on startup to get the manual boot selection. I never start windows through grub (systemd-boot in my case). It has its own EFI partition.
My gaming PC dual boots Debian and Ubuntu
Kirk : I use a computer with an AI assistant and 1 gb of free ram. How about you?
Homer : I have a normal computer that lets me do what I want with my hardware.
Dual booting us viable, if you're curious its good to try linux via dual boot. Windows doesnt break the linux bootloader. The incident referencing was a bug I believe. I know plenty of people who've been dual booting for 2+ years keeping both OSs up to date with no issue.
I have had Windows update completely obliterate my Linux partitions at least twice.
Do you remember if its happened in the past 2 years? A patch windows put out in 2024 is supposed to fix this.
No, I jist run straight Linux (Laptop) or straight Windows (Desktop) now. I don't have a need to dual boot anymore.
If I didn't play Fortnite so much I wouldn't run Windows at all honestly.
I’ve had windows nuke my bootloader at least thrice. Stopped dual booting a few years ago so I’m free of that nonsense.
That wasn't "an incident." The notion of Windows breaking Linux's bootloader has been a known thing for at least a decade.
I have had it break my bootloader when I was dual booting, if it wasn't my main pc then I might risk it but I'm not rolling the dice on if windows decides to break it again.
Still it's a really good idea to keep a rescue USB drive handy, for when windows decides to update it's boot loader and blitzes your setup
I believe dual boot is more feasible when you have more than one drive, so you don’t risk corrupting it. Another option to test a Linux distribution would be using virtual machines
If you're just testing a distro, then a live-bootable USB is also a great option.
My laptop only has one m.2 ssd/slot. I have the ssd partitioned for Linux and windows 11 dual boot. Grub boot loader. I have had it set up this way for 4 years now, and no windows updates have messed up by Linux install or boot loader yet 🤞
My bootloader has survived just fine despite being dual boot for the past 2 years. It may have something to do with me only having booted windows once in all that time (to fix a borked NTFS drive) 😁
That certainly helps.
In my case the solution is two EFI partitions.
Windows finds the first and doesn't bother looking for a second one, which happens to contain grub and my efistubs.
Windows will go ahead and clear the UEFI menu sometimes, but manually booting an efi file and then re-adding the grub and stub boot entries is small compared to having my stuff actually deleted.
Only evil if you use one disk. :)
I'd had a dedicated windows drive for a little while... Maybe a bug and not malice, but the forced Windows 8 -> 10 upgrade deleted everything on my second drive that windows wasn't installed on
The Windows installer partition manager also does not ask for confirmation before formatting a drive. That was a costly misclick
tbh if you notice it early, it probably only deleted th partition table entry at that point
I had two disks and windows still fucked my secure boot keys somehow in a way that I wasn't able to fix so I had to reinstall the linux side. I turned secure boot off afterwards so should be fine now but it was a thing that happened.
I needed to know this about 5 years ago, when I lost a partition on my SSD because of a poorly done dual boot.
The reason I just overwrote the Windows partition, instead of futzing with fixing dual boot was GDID. MSFTs global ID that tracks, literally, everything you do.
If you bought a store laptop, I’d bet those configuration signatures were recorded when it got imaged… for the police of course.
My second-hand laptop I bought for cash at some garage sale is looking pretty good right about now...
Put Windows in a virtual machine where it belongs!
i've quadbooted a lot before (linux/freebsd/osx/windows), it works pretty well these days with uefi. was pretty hard to handle with legacy bios though
Why no Plan9? Are you even an OS enthusiast?
What no TempleOS? YOU'LL BURN IN FLAMES!!!!
lol. i only tried 9front like once but it was too difficult!
I wish it has more hardware support, it doesn't even run on my hardware
Windows does stupid things with boot because it's apparently alone in the world.
Like this NTFS lock up thing because it's not really shutting down anymore but going into hibernate.
I had to change that setting but other than that dual boot works. Just realized that's still win 10 on this machine. When that runs out time for fresh Linux only install.
Microsoft’s boot killing shenanigans convinced me to just scrub the taint of 11 off this time.
666 upvotes
This might be the most dweeby thing I've seen. I love it :)
If you are on a desktop, there is always the option of throwing a GT 1030 in the secondary pcie slot and jumping through the 100 hoops to get Looking Glass set up.
Windows can't fuck the bootloader if you lie about its HDD access.
Or just use QEMU/KVM wirh VirtIO extensions if you don't need hardware rendering on Windows. Problem is most dual-booters I know use Windows to play games with kernel anti-cheat. Not much you can do to virtualize that
Yeah, I can't think of anything I need windows for that doesn't also need a real GPU to be useful.
And even then its only really 1 game, setting up looking glass was as much for tinkering amusement than actual use.
The newer GPU virtio stuff is all happening in Linux guests right now, but that is of course also not useful for the Windows gaming use case.
Now that Windows isn't being updated anymore (unless you enroll for extended security updates), can this still happen?
Been dualbooting for years, no problem thus far.
I wish Linux wasn't so god damn complicated so everyone would use it.
I have normie family using it without issue, as do many.
Linux is free and doesn't care if you bootleg porn. Microsoft might, and definitely notes it.
This comment has me loling so hard. It's kind of like the difference between Bad Dragon and Doc Johnson.
Either way you are getting DESTROYED
I don't get that reference. The only thing I know is how to do my job I was trained for in the most dubious manner.
Just use windows. We don't want you here.
Unfortunately, I'm needed everywhere.
drops badge
Ah shit, now the battle is lost! Well, you guys in the van can pack it up. I'm not good at this cop thing I tell you, but by your response I bet you don't realize Epstein was a cop too. Still alive for that reason. Same reason Trump's in office; it's a sting that he's helping investigators with, which totally was not what I was doing. Because I'm not a cop, obviously. I'd be real bad at it, talking about cop shit, amirite? Yea, no, I'm just some crackhead on the internet. All I am.
You are fun because you are silly.
No I'm just funny looking
No funny looking is chellyxcx on redgifs
I don't even wanna know what type of porn chelly is. It's gotta be related to the fluffy community, I know that.
Oh buddy - you have to go see. Smooth and soft, but no hair/fur
I love Linux, but damn unless you use Amd video cards. It’s a hard sell, especially if you’re a gamer. Not to mention, how often games break because they’re designed for windows. So dual boot is reasonable, in my opinion.
Why? I have an nvidia card and haven't noticed any major issues. It hasn't even bricked the system on a driver update in years now.
I wasn’t talking about bricked systems, just the games themselves have issues and glitches. Especially with Nvidia. Not all games mind you. Plus the performance tax on Nvidia with Linux.
When running the games through Proton I never had issues because of Nvidia.
I have issues because of Nvidia, but none are related to gaming.
If you have the newest propertary drivers it should work just fine.
It's actually the opposite if you're trying to use your GPU for compute tasks, though.
Having tried both, nvidia GPU compute just worked, right out of the box, as soon as I installed the nvidia drivers. With AMD, though, I could never get GPU compute working, despite months of screwing around with it, trying different drivers from different sources, trying different methods to install them, trying different configurations -- nothing could get GPU compute to work. And ... that's kind of a problem when I want to use software like Davinci Resolve, which requires GPU compute to run.
Which is a perfect argument for dual boot scenarios. Which unfortunately are necessary for optimal use.
With an nvidia GPU, I'm using Davinci Resolve just fine on Linux, no need for Windows at all.
The argument for dual boot is mostly for gaming, as far as compute is concerned your AMD graphics card would have been fine on Ubuntu or an RHEL/CentOS operating system. But honestly in my experience, it’s always good to dual boot just in case. There are many scenarios where it saves you headaches and precious time.
I was on Ubuntu. And it was not fine.
It used to be much, much worse. While some people still struggle a little with Nvidia on Linux, it seems perfectly usable in most distros and games by now.
I agree it has improved, but I still have enough issues to where for me anyways. To justify dual boot, that is until I get an AMD video card. Believe me if I didint have to constantly find Nvidia workarounds, for performance and bugs. I would be on Linux 100 percent of the time.
Wonderful day!
It's apparently the third day (in a week!) I see people share their negative view on the booting being damaged by Windows...
Frankly, it's quite odd to see so many people having the issue when Windows or any other OS rewrites the bootloader...
It's sure possible to have it safe, so that even Windows won't rewrite during its update.
Though, I've been into Linux for more than 20 years now, I do have a machine that has Windows 10 installed alongside Linux, even if it's more frequent to boot Windows in a virtual machine nowadays.
The idea is to not share the location for the EFI files (in UEFI mode), but let the systems have their own keeping them fairly isolated, where Grub v2+ or another bootloader you prefer, load them all respectively, being located on a safer partition.
For example:
We have two storages (e.g., SSD):
/dev/sdaand/dev/sdb.Install Windows on
/dev/sdb(so it creates its own ESP);Install Linux on /dev/sda (so it creates its own ESP), with a normal/manual partitioning:
-
/boot/(for Kernels I have 4 GiB+);-
/boot/efi/(commonly, from 128 to 512 MiB is enough);- Here I normally also have a swap partition, and separate:
/home/,/var/;- Select Grub to be installed on the
/dev/sda;Boot the Grub in
/dev/sda;Update Grub within Linux, so it finds the Windows EFI on another drive via its os-prober.
Here, I believe
efibootmgrshould show the existing EFI, or you could check it manually in/boot/efiafter.Windows should operate on its own ESP it created on its own storage, and don't overwrite the Grub.
At voila!
To additionally clarify, in my personal experience for many years on Linux, I usually tend to see (and are fond of, personally) having separate mounts for contextually different data, where one of the most adequate in frequent circles and duties is to separate the responsibility as, for example:
/;~4GiB) -/boot/;~128-512MiB) -/boot/efi/;/home/;/var/;/etc/;/tmp/;It's also frequent to see the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) active, that may support a more fluent organization of hardware and logical devices. In this case, we might have all the above mounts, except 2 and 3, practically encrypted, too.
One of my current main machines have the following partitions (though no dual-boot on it):
If interested, please check the following:
- file-hierarchy (File system hierarchy overview... - Linux manual page...)
- Encrypting an entire system;
On Windows, if I am not mistaken (please correct me if wrong), the most frequent is to have at least two explicit partitions, in addition to the implicit primary 4 ones:
For example:
-
C:\- System and automatically organized User personal files (desktop, documents, variable as AppData/ProgramData);-
D:\- Manually installed programs and manually organized User personal files;Oh! I would recommend KDE Partition Manger if you prefer GUI for partitioning.
It's likely worth to mention that KDE Partition Manger (project source) is likely one of the best out there I found (tried at least 11 a few years ago) for convenient GUI Luks2 and LVM support, if required.
Even if compared to some of the popular, where Gnome's, GParted, and QtParted resulted in either unsupported logic for Luks2 and LVM or did not complete the task successfully. These tools are still awesome for other tasks, I believe!
Though, perhaps likely as you I do prefer shell or TUI, being dived mostly in terminals/servers, and a script is always an option, of course. Not to mention that even with the GUI above, manual commands are normally eminent/imminent.
Related: https://wiki.t2linux.org/guides/windows#separate-the-efi-partition-after-linux-is-installed
Then Windows will fuck up your EFI entries. Which is not a big deal if you know what you are doing but a completely different story for the audience you are explicitly addressing here when you even explain how to check those entries in the first place.
Also you did not actually mention that fastboot needs to be disabled in Windows, thus a clueless person will not understand the random hardware errors on Linux caused by not properly initialized devices and will blame Linux.
(And let's not even talk about some of the really insane stuff like pre-installed Microsoft SecureBoot keys that brick you whole system when removed because idiotic OEMs signed their own hardware's EFI drivers with the keys already pre-installed just because they can...)
So no, it's not "quite odd to see so many people having the issue when Windows". That's what Windows is causing, often intentionally so. Is most of this easily fixable? Sure... But it's a very effective deterrent for many people, so they never reach the point where they understand and be able to fix that stuff.
Windows never touched the main EFI entry in my cases, even at updating it from 10 to 11, and I clarified it 3 times.
With a few Google queries we may find it mentioned, yet I've just found a weak one at this moment:
Some documentations found mentioned relatively similar:
Nice for Windows to support this theoretically but the UEFI standard does not require support for multiple ESPs on a disk, so you will easily find hardware that in fact will simply discover the first ESP then stop. Because actual implementations matter and a lot of them are bad.
Speaking of bad implementations. We got several manufacturers a few years ago where their UEFI implementation broke and bricked the whole device after editing the EFI entries via
efibootmgrexactly as defined by standard. Oh, you wanted to install Linux? Your device is now done because no one ever tested them without anything but the Windows pre-installs.Yet two other cases of totally coincidental "This should work but doesn't, must be a Linux issue" artificially created by Microsoft (who after all were one of the driving forces behind UEFI development, also the reason we are still stuck with FAT32 ESPs - the only file system ESPs are required to support by the standard with everything else optional).
In the end positive anecdotal experiences don't matter much. If a relevant fraction of users has issues that should not exist when installing Linux (and that obviously don't exist with Windows because here OEMs actually do proper testing here... or it's Windows/Microsoft itself causing the issues (pre-installed key, fast boot shenanigans, hardware that should be supported but randomly isn't etc.)) that's helping to prevent a lot of people from trying it in the first place. And that's by design.
Thank you, heartfelt, for a more experienced, informative, and great response, with more details to learn from!
Man you people never learn do you. Linux isn't secure from what windows is doing.
Is Microslop going to transition toward making Linux-targeted viruses that install Windows on Linux machines against your will?
Microsoft nor Windows instructs on dual-booting. -They didn't give the bad advice.
Microsoft has no authority to dictate if a user can or should run more than one OS on their system. Regardless if that OS is Windows, Linux, or anything else. It's the user's choice, as it should be. What is egregious is Microsoft constantly breaking the bootloader. Totally on accident, I'm sure.
They can't and don't dictate. I'm merely pointing out where the horrendous advice is coming from. (people like you who point the finger).
Except we both know the bootloader breaking with their updates is no happy accident. Microsoft is and always has been a very underhanded and anti-consumer company. I'm sure we don't need to talk about Microsoft's track record though, right?
They have reasons. You must be allergic to search engines and get all your info from conspiracy theory forums.
Oh, I just realized you're the Linux Sucks guy, haha. I blocked the sub but not you specifically. Sorry, I don't have time to debate with someone who's whole schtick is to be an ass. Good luck with spreading your message, or whatever though.
Okay, troll. Go back to r/LinuxSucks on reddit where tech bros will gargle your balls.
Linux isn't there yet.
How do I know? because I JUST tried to move over to linux.
First I tried Zorin OS, and TBH it pretty much worked right out of the box.
BUT!
My monitor would only go up to 120hz Refresh rate, even though it can do 144hz natively. And games that are supposed to work on Linux (Arma 3) did not work no matter what I did. And forget about VR.
So I tried Arch.
And Jesus Christ...
Zorin was as easy to install as windows.
ARCH is actively trying to stop you from installing it.
So I did what most people do and youtube'd how to install Arch and oh my god, I encountered the living embodiment of the "Linux user meme" so hard when I did that.
But I finally was sort of able to get it up and running. Of course there are no list of packages that you will need for the smooth operating of Arch. Like I dunno, how about a file manager?
So I said fuck it and was going to try to install steamOS. but I fucked up formatting the drives and USB drive.
Fortunately, I had an old windows installer kicking around and finally able to get windows re-installed.
So my opinion for now is simply "Not ready for prime time... yet."
But when it does maybe I will give it another try.
I replaced the tomatoes with oranges and the garlic with apples, and I changed the cooking time
THIS RECIPE SUCKS!!!
Windows isn't there either. We're just used to it.
And my impression is that they currently rather make things worse rather than better.
Honestly, I'd go for Mint instead of Zorin or Bazzite instead of SteamOS.
Those have treated me well in my light usage over the past few years.
If I do go back it, will be back to Zorin. very simple installation, and everything worked. For example, on Zorin, my bluetooth would connect to my headphones just fine. On Arch, they saw my headphones, but refused to connect. I tried a few fixes I found online but just gave up and went wired.
It’s not like Zorin is easy to install because the devs made their own simple installer. Almost every modern linux distribution ships with one of two or three prebuilt installer tools, with very few exceptions (one being arch, though if I recall correctly even arch has an option to use an installer)
You will most likely have the same or a very similar experience installing mint or bazzite or endevour or whatever else you choose.
Skill issue. Everything works for me. I use Arch btw
^^^This is the other "Linux user meme" More than happy to tear someone down and not offer help.
Why would you go from thing not working to Arch? Arch is about setting stuff manually up.
On the other hand, I set up a dual boot with 1 of my 4 ssds being available to both OS just in case. That was 8 or so months ago, and I haven't booted into Windows 10 once since then.
My 165hz monitors are fine at 165, and that was without any config (NobaraOS). All the games I actively play work fine, and the closest thing to an issue is have is my H.O.T.A.S. registering only 12 or so buttons/switches instead of the much larger amount it has, but i haven't put any effort into figuring it out because I only use it for one game.
Experiences vary, but I feel like you're judging a whole platform from choosing a simple Windows replacement then switching to one of the harder OS's to setup.
There's plenty designed more for gaming which seems to be your monitor setup.
I’ve used Ubuntu for years and it’s easy to install and widely supports all the things I need. Bazzite is also a great option. I’ve never been interested in Arch and SteamOS just came out for desktop so I’d rather not be an early adopter when Bazzite is already ironed out and waiting to be installed.
Love steamOS on my deck, but see no use for it on my Desktop atm.
Windows 11 is actually spyware garbage and I won’t have it in my house.
I'll probably get around to dual booting Zorin. except I'll be using Linux for productivity and windows for gaming.
I don’t see a reason to use Windows for gaming if you don’t play games with anticheat. I have a 9070XT so it just works with Linux. Left Nvidia and Linux is much happier.
I have a 7900XTX and don't like the fact that there is no software support. Only drivers. Plus you get worse framerates than on windows.
Dang that’s a bummer. Wish it wasn’t that way for that card.
dual booting just makes things more difficult. windows likes to silently change things in the bios and on disk drives it manages, basically pulling the rug out from under linux. you can mitigate it by making linux aware of the fact but that's not the default behaviour, because again dual booting isn't really recommended.
Havent tried out zorinOS but so far i never hat problems running games under Linux : steam + proton experimental just makes it as easy AS downloading via steam and hitting the play button - literally die nothing else (have used Linux mint first now Debian - Debian required a bit oft fiddeling for steam but not with individual games)
arma is an annoying one because it's a bespoke engine with a lot of deep windows integration, coming from the fact that parts of it is from 1995. add online multiplayer anticheat to that and it gets even more difficult.
that said, i got it running on linux in like... 2019, so i would have thought it to be easier now.
I'm sorry your delightful parody of failed install went over their heads, please continue posting your eccentric new-to-linux word art
You do realize you sound like the "AKShully" meme right?
Is 22hz of refresh rate really that much of a dealbreaker?
Yeah, god forbid I get everything I paid for...
just get base debian
I think that's why peeps install stuff like gnu/linux and then slap Nvidia & Steam on them for lolz, they often can't live without pretending they are a wizard or a soldier in some novel machine generated propitiatary hallucinations from an app store no matter the cost, Gabe needs better yachts.