Poll: Why don't you use Linux?

[chakkman]

Hardware trouble is definitely the primary issue I have with it, but, I also think the free software and open source approach is counterproductive, and a big part of the problem with hardware compatibility. You can't force a whole (competitive) industry to have your way.

Edited June 4 by chakkman

[Zerush]

-Not enough first-party application support on Linux

- The Lack of Driver support

- To much different Distros, not always compatible one with another

- Install soft out of the repository is often a mess

I use Windows, not because it's better, it isn't, but it was installed by default and worked out of the box. So I preferred to gut it to my like, deleting all the AI crap, services which nobody need, telemetries and bloatware it had, having a fast and stable OS which does what I want and not M$. If something works, there is no reason to change it. I used Linux in the past (Kubuntu) in Dual boot, but for me it didn't offer an advantage enough to substitute an working OS.

Linux is maybe an alternative for those with an very old PC with few RAM, but in a modern PC not so (my Windows 11 use ~700 MB RAM out of 16GB, not a difference with a modern distro, eg Mint).

 

 

[revelator]

The reason for most private windows user changing is mostly because windows eroded user trust by constantly changing UI removing usefull features while plastering the OS with advertising backdoors and incessant spying.

pair that with most of their tools changing to a service model which means microsoft can shut you down without notice and it becomes aparant why other countries want to get rid of it.

you as a private person can still use microsoft if you fancy that but in any official capacity it is dead in the EU. we do not want our systems to rely on software from a country that acts hostile to us.

as for linux forcing companies into providing drivers, they dont. about 95% of drivers are in house (reverse engineered) based on specs (but they sometimes fail due to abstractions).

a few companies have opensourced they're drivers which helps immensly but for most you have to rely on the makers to provide linux compatible drivers (nvidia for one) and they can have some rather annoying bugs which can only be fixed by those corporations themself.

linux does however provide a universal driver for most nvidia cards which actually works ok most of the time despite it being in house.  

AMD has been more open towards the linux scene especially in light of emerging consoles like the steam machine it kinda made sense for them since pretty much all consoles use AMD developed gfx cards today.

but in the end it is up to you 

[Zerush]

3 hours ago, revelator said:

The reason for most private windows user changing is mostly because windows eroded user trust by constantly changing UI removing usefull features while plastering the OS with advertising backdoors and incessant spying.

pair that with most of their tools changing to a service model which means microsoft can shut you down without notice and it becomes aparant why other countries want to get rid of it.

you as a private person can still use microsoft if you fancy that but in any official capacity it is dead in the EU. we do not want our systems to rely on software from a country that acts hostile to us.

as for linux forcing companies into providing drivers, they dont. about 95% of drivers are in house (reverse engineered) based on specs (but they sometimes fail due to abstractions).

a few companies have opensourced they're drivers which helps immensly but for most you have to rely on the makers to provide linux compatible drivers (nvidia for one) and they can have some rather annoying bugs which can only be fixed by those corporations themself.

linux does however provide a universal driver for most nvidia cards which actually works ok most of the time despite it being in house.  

AMD has been more open towards the linux scene especially in light of emerging consoles like the steam machine it kinda made sense for them since pretty much all consoles use AMD developed gfx cards today.

but in the end it is up to you 

Agree, also not happy with the US policy and I'm aware that M$ can change it's policy respect the user in any moment. But until now they have to fullfit the EU policy and forced they do (I checked it). I'm also aware that they add o remove features and the  UI is not much customizable, ugly and crappy, but I fixed all this, also the default UIXº, all functions and apps I use are FOSS, mostly European and not from M$ (except the Vivaldi browser (Norway) which isn't full OpenSource), I monitor and block all unwanted traffic with Portmaster (mandatory in the todays web, also for Linux). As said, for me at the moment valid, if in the future M$ becomes more crappy, it's still time to switch to Linux. Google is a way bigger risk and needed to search alternatives, eg. GDrive, often used by the TDM members, European alternatives are eg. Murena (France) or kDrive (Germany, 15 GB free), maybe also Filen cloud storage (Germany, 10 GB free).

º

Edited June 4 by Zerush

[taffernicus]

On 6/4/2026 at 10:32 PM, revelator said:

The reason for most private windows user changing is mostly because windows eroded user trust by constantly changing UI removing usefull features while plastering the OS with advertising backdoors and incessant spying.

pair that with most of their tools changing to a service model which means microsoft can shut you down without notice and it becomes aparant why other countries want to get rid of it.

you as a private person can still use microsoft if you fancy that but in any official capacity it is dead in the EU. we do not want our systems to rely on software from a country that acts hostile to us.

as for linux forcing companies into providing drivers, they dont. about 95% of drivers are in house (reverse engineered) based on specs (but they sometimes fail due to abstractions).

a few companies have opensourced they're drivers which helps immensly but for most you have to rely on the makers to provide linux compatible drivers (nvidia for one) and they can have some rather annoying bugs which can only be fixed by those corporations themself.

linux does however provide a universal driver for most nvidia cards which actually works ok most of the time despite it being in house.  

AMD has been more open towards the linux scene especially in light of emerging consoles like the steam machine it kinda made sense for them since pretty much all consoles use AMD developed gfx cards today.

but in the end it is up to you 

This might be a bit off-topic, but aside from privacy , change to service model and telemetry issues, Microsoft is now scrambling to optimize windows performance and resource efficiency for cheap low-end devices that will be competing with the MacBook Neo.

 

I like to see that, they’re starting to feel the heat.

 

this should be their expression now :

Edited June 7 by taffernicus

[taffernicus]

Our commitment to Windows quality | Windows Insider Blog

 

There should be a lot more key points in the performance section, or if they want to bring in a competitor’s brand, that’s fine too

 

 

 

[revelator]

It rolled out on my windows box today. 

First impressions are not an eye opener. 

Ui load times should have improved by boosting the cpu clock while it is loading but that does not seem to work on my old ryzen 3700x.

It also caused some programs i had to fail to load properly (system informer for one).

So im not really impressed so far.

This is a rolling release though so lets see down the line.

[Zerush]

13 hours ago, revelator said:

It rolled out on my windows box today. 

First impressions are not an eye opener. 

Ui load times should have improved by boosting the cpu clock while it is loading but that does not seem to work on my old ryzen 3700x.

It also caused some programs i had to fail to load properly (system informer for one).

So im not really impressed so far.

This is a rolling release though so lets see down the line.

The reason isn't a CPU problem in Windows, it's because Windows load a lot of services, features, telemetries and bloatware which nobody needs, but which waste a lot of RAM.  Eg. hibernating and Index Services are real data hogs and not really needed. Hibernation load every active app in Memory, so it appears duplicated in RAM, Index service has the only function to write in the index any change and with this to acelerate somewhat the search of archives and documents. Without it it last some second more in a HD and almost nothing in a SSD, but slow down generally the system.

Only desactivating these can can improve the performance a lot, more if you also desactivate the services, animations, transparencies and startup apps which you don't need (by default a lot). Windows as is, isn't heavier as any Linux distro with plasma desktop, you can find a lot of tutorials with lists of what you can desactivate with security. Loading mine after the pasword input is almost instant, also all other, ~700 MB in RAM

[revelator]

I know though this what they themself posted about changes . I usually disable all the cruft though some of it needs to be active to not break apps which is imho locking people into unwanted shit.

[datiswous]

On 6/4/2026 at 4:28 PM, Zerush said:

Linux is maybe an alternative for those with an very old PC with few RAM, but in a modern PC not so

I think it's actually better on a modern pc. Better to install Windows 2000 on an old pc.

[revelator]

I have to agree there. Current linux while able to be installed on pretty old hardware does not run to well on this.

 

[Zerush]

Depends of which one of the hundreds of distros you use. Less because performance, but there are even distros with which you can respawn an old Pentium, no possibility with any valid Windows.

Eg.Tiny Core Linux is the smallest functional Linux available. The headless "Core" edition is around 11 MB and runs in 64 MB of RAM, loading entirely into memory at boot.

Edited June 11 by Zerush

[revelator]

oh it is perfectly capable of running on old hardware that was not the point.

small systems like the one you described can indeed run on pretty old stuff but is pretty lacking in regards to gaming or overall functionality.

there was one which was written in assembler it could load a full desktop from a floppy  and only required 4 mb ram, sadly it was neither compatible with linux dos nor windows as the guy who made it wrote the kernel himself. I think the only game that got ported to it was doom (the dos version).

a good deal of modern linux versions do run on old hardware as well but performance is pretty meh and an old windows version would easily overtake it.

the sad thing is with the advent of 64 bit optimizations went out the window it does not really matter if a developer today knows how to get the best performance of say a 32 bit linux OS when all his dependencies are developed by people who dont really care about such anymore.

[Zerush]

Well, most devices had 64 bits since 2005, even if they used 32 bit soft for compatibility in these years. It's correct that you can run Windows on these, but the problem are not the sys specs (those of W11 are the same of eg, W7, the limit is imposed by M$, not tecnically, higher sys specs only due all the crap they added) which avoid that you can install it. But even if you want to run Windows on an old device, you can only install the current version to be usefull, run an outdated Windows without support is only advisable for an local use, going online with it is risky business. This is why it is better to use Linux, where you can use updated versions with the last security patches and current soft.

[revelator]

LINUX SECTION:

it was not really a microsoft comment, the linux world was pretty much first out to ditch 32 bit so even though you can still build something as 32 bit and make sure that your code has the best performance for that arch all dependencies like libc (bare minimum) will still not have been developed with 32 bit in mind making a good deal of what said developer does moot.

its a bit like trying to fit a ferrari engine inside a beetle, it wont work to well or not at all.

sure if you are adamant in bringing back the glory days of 32 bit you could go ahead and start optimizing dependencies for 32 bit (which for one person would take a lifetime or two in a worst case scenario) so it is not going to happen.

even worse for 16 bit code or older which not many compilers today can handle (djgpp and open watcom are pretty much the only still developed ones with that capability and only the open watcom compiler even runs on a 64 bit OS).

MICROSOFT SECTION:

microsoft for all they're bad decisions have in most regards tried to keep compatibility with older software without going the way of using full fledged virtual machines. this was not like many belive to appease gamers but to keep the big companies locked in as many of them used in house tools developed ages ago which would be hard if not impossible to replace.

with windows 11 that stance has changed though and most of the old cruft has been neutered or outright removed.

for an example see ntvdmx64 which was a project that aimed to allow users to use the old dos mode and 16 bit vdm on 64 bit. it is now largely defunct due to them removing a boatload of old 16 bit compatibility code.

you can still get it to work but instead of one VM you now need two. one is for DOS (ntvdmx64) the other is for 16 bit (WineVdm). and both require you to turn off a good chunk of the new security features because neither are compatible with core isolation etc.

[revelator]

also one gripe i had with all the 32 bit bashing was the buzzword that all current cpu's are 64 bit, no they are not and if you research it a bit you will see that i am right. they are 32 bit processors with a 64 bit register addition not the other way around.

this came to be after AMD developed the x86_64 standard because of demand and forced intel to reevaluate the itanium.

https://devicetests.com/difference-between-x86-64-amd64-64-bit

and even they get it wrong... by pointing out that a 32 bit cpu cannot run 64 bit software when most cpu's today are indeed 32 bit with a 64 bit register .  a 32 bit OS however cannot run 64 bit processes because the VM is not set up that way but it could be done. a real i686 or i386 cpu however cannot run 64 bit no matter what VM you have.

It is all in the details x86_64 means its an x86 processor with a 64 bit register, if the reverse should be true someday it would have to be named something like x64_86.

the only real (intel standard compatible) 64 bit cpu is the itanium which as you might guess can only run 64 bit software (vm's do not matter in that regard).

i tried it many years back and it ran quite ok. the real gripe was that most software at the time was 32 bit so it was hell to get any work going on it. even worse the software had to be built for the itanium model...

steam and wine for one just had a recent fallout with ubuntu because they wanted to scrap 32 bit multilibs completely.

steam is 32 bit and they do not have any current plans for porting the client to 64 bit, wine also got hissy because it would mean most of they're userbase would dissapear as many use it for both older games as well as older but better tools than what is currently on offer.

so ubuntu relented but it is only a matter of time before it becomes a hard target as the push to put the older arch's in the grave is massive.

 

[revelator]

ok so i did what i said i would newer do again. i tried out different distros to see which could handle old hardware properly and i was sorely dissapointed. not one of them supported hardware acceleration on the nuveau driver on my old gtx 560 ti. and installing the nvidia driver turned into practically rebuilding the kernel because it was no longer compatible with the newer models sigh...

so if you want yes it is still possible but it is by no means easy and people who dont know how to do kernel rebuilds dont stand a chance.

the last cards officially supported by the new kernel models are AMD rx 5xx and nvidia gtx 9xx series.

so i stand by my suggestion that it would be better to just use an old windows install. for my 560 ti it depends on whether you want dx 11 support in which case windows 7 is a nice to go (it does work in later windows versions as well). but if you just want to play old dx9 games then xp or even windows 2000 will do. there is a site that still offers the old patches and service packs for 2000/xp by redirecting the defunct windows update site to they're servers.

i would discourage going online for anything but updates but if you do need a working browser for 2000/xp then mypal does work.

[taffernicus]

regarding linux on old / low end hardware,

MGLRU is the least discussed topic, but it seems it will have an impact on low-end devices. The “MGLRU on Android” section in this post is also interesting (since it was already implemented on Android 3–4 years ago) :

What is to be done about MGLRU? [LWN.net]

The Linux kernel 6.1 introduces a more mature MGLRU feature

i found the nice layman writeup as well :

Android Memory Management is Getting Better with a New Linux Kernel Feature

 

Edited July 1 by taffernicus

[revelator]

hehe yeah linux memory management has allways been a complex beast mostly due to the kernel using memory mapping instead of simple malloc calls. my thought was allways that the mmap etc. functions were used to help alleviate the complexity to some degree it is still complex but atleast not as much as if you had to write the entire thing yourself.

around gcc-4 / 5 they had to up the limits somewhat due to hitting constraints (the linux kernel used a pretty diminutive kernel stack) and it has grown worse since then with more complex programs and the advent of 64 bit.

you can see some of the problems they encountered over time with blender which constantly brushed against the memory constraints. 

in retrospect this might also explain why so many of the devs who wanted new flashier features wanted to ditch 32 bit.

there was a huge resistance to using things like LAA or PAE to get around the constraints because it added to some allready pretty complex code. linux devs being hobbyist by nature did not want to spend time developing workarounds for what was percieved as a natural limit of an architecture.

[revelator]

agh i just tried running the original bioshock on the nuveau driver with my 560 ti i get 1 fps  in XP i get 167 fps.

so i bit the bullet and popped in my old radeon x1900 and it runs bioshock at 57 fps on noveau and a bit more in XP.

nvidia's driver model for linux in the old days was pretty horrid .(run files) and the drivers were newer updated for newer kernel models so even recompiling them will not work as much of the internal code is no longer supported so it just fails.

so if you use an older nvidia card stay the hell away or braze for a lot of code fixing.

amd on the other hand has been pretty supportive of the linux kernel models and uses a much better practice of driver installs by using the built in package managers. the radeon x1900 is a very very old card which only supports dx 9 and it works out of the box on the latest linux versions.

nvidia has changed the driver models on more modern cards to be more in line with the amd model but older cards have newer had drivers updated to run on these kernels so its a clusterfuck to get older cards running on current versions.

so if looking for a linux distro to use with pre pascal cards i would advise to use something like linux mint 19 which is one of the last to support these out of the box. but you might run into stability problems even so.

also linux mint 19 is no longer supported so it wont recieve any updates, but you should still be able to get software that works on it.

[AluminumHaste]

I've been having weird crashes on my wife's computer, whole computer freezes, video driver timeouts etc.

Turned out to be swap file, a forum post said to change the default, which was like 512MBs, to 16GBs.

Tried that, and so far no more crashes. Man is linux ever brittle though. I can be playing for hours and days without issues, then all of a sudden it won't boot properly and I'll have to ALT+F3 and do some shenanigans.

So annoying. 

[revelator]

depends a bit on the distro, some can indeed seem very brittle if you are not an expert on unix based systems.

i mainly use systemd based distros these days because i find them to be very stable and also a tad easier to work with.

but depending on hardware windows can be just as brittle and in some cases even more so.

over my many years i have seen pretty much all that can blow up your OS ranging from incompatibilities between certain hardware components to downright oddness which turned out to be a totally unrelated program crashing a driver over and over.

some of it can be downright impossible to fix at first but then replacing a hardware component magically fixes things, or some program you might have installed for monitoring events messes up some driver related stuff by hooking the same adress in memory.

i got pretty good over the years guessing what to look at and in time most people do but it can be rather annoying for new users who just want to use they're system.

but in the end as long as we have computers built by multiple companies or private users with wildly differing hardware which might not allways work to well together, then we are sorta stuck with these things popping up from time to time.

[Zerush]

On 6/28/2026 at 8:56 AM, revelator said:

ok so i did what i said i would newer do again. i tried out different distros to see which could handle old hardware properly and i was sorely dissapointed. not one of them supported hardware acceleration on the nuveau driver on my old gtx 560 ti. and installing the nvidia driver turned into practically rebuilding the kernel because it was no longer compatible with the newer models sigh...

so if you want yes it is still possible but it is by no means easy and people who dont know how to do kernel rebuilds dont stand a chance.

the last cards officially supported by the new kernel models are AMD rx 5xx and nvidia gtx 9xx series.

so i stand by my suggestion that it would be better to just use an old windows install. for my 560 ti it depends on whether you want dx 11 support in which case windows 7 is a nice to go (it does work in later windows versions as well). but if you just want to play old dx9 games then xp or even windows 2000 will do. there is a site that still offers the old patches and service packs for 2000/xp by redirecting the defunct windows update site to they're servers.

i would discourage going online for anything but updates but if you do need a working browser for 2000/xp then mypal does work.

Agree, in some old and not so old games, eg. Dark Messiah (very nice game with good graphics), don't work in W7 and up without patches. 

[SeriousToni]

Is anyone able to give me some advice about my sound problems ? Ambient music and calm game noises are super low but as soon as a battle starts, the sounds of battle are really loud. I have an ASUS xonar dx audio PCIe card and use the oxygen HD audio driver. No matter which game, it's always the same behavior  

[revelator]

sounds like some sound profile got activated. not familiar with the xonar cards though i hear they should be quite good.

but on windows there is usually a control panel for advanced effects and such. on linux i have yet to see any besides the built in mixers. even my jurassic park old creative x-fi platinum does not have any.