Rant on Windows and Linux

jayeshshetty

Geez it’s been a fun ride, I’ve installed Linux at least 5 times in the last 6 months, with the times in between being me installing Windows again after Linux not having every. single. thing I used on Windows. I do need to give some of that up to fully transfer. One thing that keeps pulling me back is troubleshooting, oh how I hate that. Linux shines in so many things, server like tasks being what it has shown me primarily. But again, troubleshooting to get it to all work, it can just be a pain sometimes, and every time it’s brought me right back to Windows. I don’t know, I’m in a place where neither does everything I need, and it, just, sucks. My computer has successfully put me into a place of infinite torment. I’ll be on Windows for a bit. I’ll try to get more used to this “troubleshooting” process by using more beta software. Part of this, new features and a “unique experience” of sorts is another thing I admire in Linux, but its what’s holding me back, yet also what keeps bringing me back. Hopefully one day I’ll enjoy the “real Linux experience”

coop

Windows is what you are used to. On the occasions where I'm forced to troubleshoot Windows (for other people) I usually have to boot the machine into Linux one way or another so I can actually do things like test hardware, examine and fix corrupted disks etc.
There is also no need to give up Windows while you learn Linux, you can either do dual boot, or use a VM. I do confess to having one VM that runs windows 10 simply because it is the most efficient way for me to do my taxes, and I don't even have to not run Linux to do it. Dual boot is a little more complicated to set up, but once you have done it you can leave it alone. It's only difficult if it is hard to partition properly.

Good luck !

luisviveropena

Hi @jayeshshetty ,

Few days ago we we were working on memory, cpu and I/O performance monitoring in the office hours. It's in the labs as well, so you can get some practice with it whenever you want/can.

Many regards,
Luis.

jayeshshetty

Thanks

chrisfeig

I started migrating over to linux with the use of a dual boot, and I found myself using windows 10 often at first, but then less and less frequently. now i have no need for windows, I can't remember the last time i booted into it. it would make much more sense for me to use a VM now.

also it depends what distro you use, as to what your experience will be like. I started with Ubuntu, then there was something I didn't like about it. I've been using Manjaro KDE for quite a while now and I can't fault it!

heiko_s

Having had some bad experiences with MS Windows, I try to do everything I can on Linux. However, there are applications that haven't been ported to Linux, such as Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, which I run in a Windows 10 VM using QEMU/kvm with VFIO or PCI/VGA passthrough.

I've done that for the past 8 years, first using a Xen hypervisor and for the last 5 years I'm using QEMU / kvm. I wouldn't want to go back to dual-boot.

Doing what I do requires specific hardware (IOMMU support) and usually doesn't work that well on laptops. But performance is nothing less than stellar.

I always have some backups of my Windows VM, so if I install something that turns out to be malware or something else breaks, I can restore my Windows VM within 5-10 minutes (I should actually try and use an LVM snapshot, in which case it would take a second or two). Yes, my Windows NTFS partitions run on LVM.

Everything in Linux is so much more robust, and as coop wrote, you can even use Linux to fix problems in Windows installations.

If you are interested in trying out Windows 10 running in a VM with near-native performance, I've written some tutorials you may want to check out. This way you can enjoy both worlds. If your Windows demands are more modest, VirtualBox is the easiest solution.

Creating a Windows 10 VM on the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X using Qemu 4.0 and VGA Passthrough

Here is an older tutorial using a bash script to start the VM. There are many more details and a trouble shooting section.
Running Windows 10 on Linux using KVM with VGA Passthrough

About Linux distros:

If you are coming from Windows, check out Linux Mint Mate (or Cinnamon or XFCE). It's Ubuntu based and very easy to install. It also has the classic user interface with a menu button, task bar etc. (not the Ubuntu tablet style GUI that lets you accumulate lots of "mouse mileage" to get things done). Like Ubuntu it has a LTS long term support cycle and it's basically install and forget.

Although I wrote one of the tutorials above for Pop_OS, I can't recommend that distro - it has next to no support and more bugs than I care about.

Manjaro is a rolling distro based on Arch. It also has a classic style. Unfortunately Manjaro (like Arch) has its own package manager and sometimes a little different way of doing things. It's also pretty bleeding edge so expect to have things break once in a while (and you're the one to fix it). That said, it has good support and the Arch Linux documentation is one of the best to find on the web.
About breaking: I ran Manjaro for half a year in a VM and never had an issue. Until I made it my host OS, when QEMU upgrades broke my passthrough VMs. It's long been fixed and all is good now. But because of it being a rolling distro constantly pushing the latest packages I will probably return to Linux Mint.

Both Linux Mint and Manjaro deliver a complete desktop OS with lots of goodies.

Then there is Centos (the conservative longterm version of RedHat) and Fedora (more on the bleeding edge).

lfarizav

I really forget how Windows looks like. Upon I started working on Linux, I left Windows aside.
I found Linux so simple and practical and almost inconvenient is solved with the help of the community.

coop

It has been a long time since I trashed Windows. one should use the platform that has the tools and software you need, so I do keep a Windows VM around to do my taxes and bookkeeping as the open source versions I've experimented with are just too much work to get right. If you have years of experience using PhotoShop then you may not want to bother learning gimp etc. And Microsoft itself is no longer an evil empire like in the old days and actually contributes quiet a bit to OSS. (Please, no flames, we stay out of such wars here.)

As far as which Linux distro to use, I have never favored the ones which are easy to use for windows users as they lock people into distributions which are not as well maintained or up to date. So I would stick with the main ones and choose based on what you need. If you need a stable Enterprise machine, maybe a server, pick ones that don't require frequent updates, such as CentOS, Debian, openSUSE or even Ubuntu. If you want to be more on the edge, use Fedora which has the same packaging tools as anything in the rpm family. (But Fedora can require hundreds of MB of updates on any given day.) Archlinux (and derivatives) and Gentoo are for people who like to experiment and have the patience for it (especially Gentoo which is a bear to install and keep up to date.)

You can find literally hundreds of distributions at https://lwn.net/Distributions/ or https://distrowatch.com/ (the rankings there are nonsense you should be warned.)

Whatever floats your boat.