After all of the frustration I experienced getting Windows 11 setup in a way that was comfortable for me to use I'm ready to switch to Linux the next time I need to reinstall a operating system. So glad that SteamDeck is making Linux gaming viable. Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver support Windows gets.
> Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver support Windows gets.
We're already there: AMD has first class upstream Linux support!
I played steam games for ten hours on 6.11-rc3 last week with zero problems, on a very old userland (Debian bullseye). The amdgpu driver was built-in, not a module.
Now ask yourself the same question but only for iGPU/dGPU compute API support from AMD on Linux and I do not think that you or anyone will come to the same conclusion on Linux!
And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on Linux than AMD is!
Even Intel has better Blender 3D iGPU/dGPU Accelerated Cycles rendering support for Intel's ARC/Earlier iGPUs and dGPU hardware(Via OneAPI/Level-0) and iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux. And so really one must first consider what Linux Opensource applications need proper iGPU/dGPU compute API support so they do not have to use the slow and power hungry CPU rendering/whatever fallback instead.
And Blender 3D used to support OpenCL as the iGPU/dGPU compute API for AMD and Intel Graphics but even back then AMD's OpenCL component was not easy to get installed and working on Linux. And Linux/MESA had the old clover OpenCL implementation in the MESA drivers but that was not kept updated for OpenCL feature set support! And even with the newer Rusticl OpenCL Implementation in MESA that's just been created is that Rusticl/OpenCL implementation been fully enabled in any Ubuntu versions or Ubuntu derivatives currently?
Look at support for AMD's ROCm/HIP in Linux and for Consumer/Client iGPUs and dGPUs and that's rather limited and Polaris dGPUs have long since been dropped form the ROCm/HIP support matrix and Vega iGPU/dGPUs are on borrowed time for ROCm/HIP support.
So be careful there giving too much credit to AMD's iGPU/dGPU efforts on Linux as there's more to that story. And Look at Blender 3D where that works with Nvidia's CUDA and Works with Apple's Metal and iGPU compute API support there and dGPUs as well.
And I'm on Linux Mint and never going back to Windows but all my older AMD iGPU/dGPU hardware has never been properly supported for Blender 3D's iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles rendering. Intel's got better iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux but for ARM Based Processors Apple's the only choice there for proper Blender 3D iGPU support and no mention of Blender 3D iGPU accelerated Cycles rendering support for Qualcomm's Adreno X1 iGPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite SOC based laptops or Mini Desktop PC(Coming soon for consumers).
Sure, as long as you don’t mind hdmi 2.1 being busted because AMD blindly assumed that hdmi would open-source it for them.
Imagine spending the money for a premium laptop and the hdmi port being just permanently busted because it has an AMD apu inside, lol.
Even worse… AMD has settled on rdna 3.5 as their forever architecture for APUs (like Vega before it) so this isn’t going away anytime soon even if it’s fixed in rdna4. Same problem with av1 encoding - the bugs are present in rdna3.5 and won’t be fixed until rdna4 at earliest, and AMD won’t put rdna4 in APUs because it’s got raytracing, so these bugs are just gonna stick around forever. It’ll be probably 3 years until they launch APUs with rdna4.5 or rdna5 or whatever the next forever architecture is.
So anyone who wants plex transcoding is best advised to stay away as well. And that’s the problem - with Radeon you’ve always had to start listing off all the people who shouldn’t buy the product, and if you don’t use any of those things it’s great. (well, decent… except for x y and z…)
> Sure, as long as you don’t mind hdmi 2.1 being busted because AMD blindly assumed that hdmi would open-source it for them
That's not AMD's fault and there's nothing AMD can do here outside of releasing a proprietary driver. Which they used to do. It sucked and caused a lot of confusion and problems.
> That's not AMD's fault and there's nothing AMD can do here outside of releasing a proprietary driver.
Actually,
(1) it’s their product so yes, it is their fault, and blindly assuming HDMI would be willing to open-source their product for AMD (after release!) was an incredibly stupid decision from the get-go. You get legal approvals beforehand like any other company does. You certainly don’t release a whole second generation (or further cards in the same generation) without it fixing it, and you don’t continue advertising it on products that don’t support it.
(2) literally everyone else has figured it out, including intel, who has an open driver. They do it by implementing a LPCON onboard, which is perfectly fine and gets the job done. AMD is the only one with broken HDMI support under Linux.
(3) AMD already has a proprietary driver, amdgpu-pro, so this clearly isn’t a problem or burden. In fact it was and is their primary focus of development, per their communication with geohotz.
I will never understand why the AMD fan base engages in this kind of apologism for clearly broken features etc. like oh gosh poor lil AMD had no idea that hdmi was unwilling to open-source their shit, despite every single other vendor realizing this and implementing workarounds. It’s not their fault, they had no choice but to ship a broken feature, advertising it on the box, and spend 5 years leading people on that it was going to happen!
Like they are literally still shipping broken products today! Not just standalone cards, but laptops etc where it will never ever be fixable.
That’s shitty anti-consumer behavior and you’re enabling it.
At the end of the day it's AMD's product, the buck stops with them. Nobody is making them continue falsely advertising the product, and in fact it really is their job to make sure it works properly before release, not begging HDMI to open-source their product after the fact. Imagine if literally any other company had gone ahead and released the product before they knew they were legally allowed to release the product - "oops" would not cut it.
> And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on Linux than AMD is!
Which is an extremely questionable business decision, probably driven by statistics like desktop market share.
But the resources need for driver development are negligible and Linux does run on most computers worldwide, so the behavior of many hardware manufacturers is quite puzzling from a business and technology standpoint.
Unfortunately when they pulled official servers they also yanked the game off of most storefronts, and now what few community servers still exist suffer from a complete lack of new blood. Sure, you can still play it, but I'll still miss its heyday.
Some game developers do test under Proton. Saying that because I'm in the discord server(s) for a few, and they mention stuff they're working on/support/etc over time.
Likewise, some do write GNU/Linux games, yet that wasn't in a number relevant enough to keep the original SteamOS going as businesses, until translation of Windows APIs was added.
Sure, I didn't want to belittle your experience at all. It's great that vendors think about Linux as first class citizens on desktop , too.
My understanding though, is that most of "steam games" are still windows binaries + wine + patches (proton, etc). It's well hidden behind a nice GUI, but the tech couldn't exist without the legacy of pure old wine.
Hahaha not belittling at all, I'm just old enough that "running X with Wine" means "spending hours upon hours pulling your hair out until X barely works" to me. Getting it for free feels like cheating :)
Well, if this is steam, isn't it proton, which is wine underneath?
I'm not discounting your experiences at all, btw. My 11 year old has been using Ubuntu as his main gaming rig, and the NVidia drivers work incredibly well and Steam games just work. It's still mind boggling to me that it works so well.
And, I no longer have to troubleshoot removing Windows virii from his computer.
Bought an AMD GPU as my most recent graphics card for this reason. I was able to play just about all my Windows games without issue, except for multiplayer games that rely on anticheat that does not run on Linux.
When Win10 goes out of support I'll probably be using Linux as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad Valve put in the work.
Can confirm. Playing Elden Ring on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Just installed the Steam flatpak, enabled proton, installed the game, works just as well if not better than my Windows install. Nothing extra to install gpu driver wise this is practically vanilla OpenSUSE install with Steam really the only extra thing, playing online with multiplayer summons, etc.
There's also the fun approach which Valve had for 10 years in CSGO until CS2 release. They just didn't run anticheat on Linux clients meaning an opensource cheat was absolutely undetected for years.
Yes, the Nvidia proprietary driver has a kernel module that must be installed separately from the kernel. Most distros that focus on desktop usage and/or gaming handle this for you in a relatively simple way, but even with that, if you use a cutting-edge kernel you'll often end up with an unbootable system due to the kernel updating before the nvidia kernel module does. If you need nvidia on Linux, either use the (much worse, but rapidly improving) open source drivers or a distro that uses consistently supported kernels like Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop!_OS
I was trying to make it clear it was built as part of the kernel source, not as an external module.
There are some subtle arguable advantages, for example on x86 static kernel text sits on 2MB hugepages while module text sits on 4K pages from vmalloc.
The kernel on my gaming machine is actually built without loadable module support at all. It's a static binary with only the exact necessary set of drivers turned on.
They have an optional open-source kernel module. It's still pretty far away from being upstreamed and their userspace driver is still fully closed source
I had similar feelings about Windows 11, but I recently found the Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC build, and it works perfectly for me.
Debloated and no ads. You do have to do a little bit of troubleshooting, install extra components (e.g. to install the Microsoft store), etc., but it was significantly easier than debloating a regular Windows 11 install.
I installed Fedora on laptops of few mine friends during last years. All of them are using it till today.
One of them was really sceptical, but after while said "I though linux is more for nerds and more different than Win." Well, she is just casual user of browser, few chat apps, Kodi and occasionally libre office, but still positive with change.
However while I use linux on server and laptop, I cannot use it on workstation beacuse of Adobe that I need for professional work.
Do you provide support when they ran into issues? IMO there are a lot of variables here that boil down to Windows (and macOS) having the benefit of familiarity, widespread use, and more consistency.
Your experience with Linux will heavily depend on your experience with computers, distro, hardware (e.g. due to obscure driver issues), and workload.
Your experience with macOS/Windows will be fairly consistent. There are still driver issues with Windows, but they're less common than Linux.
- Do you provide support when they ran into issues?
Sure, few of them are from family. They never had issue with OS, mostly it was application related.
- Your experience with macOS/Windows will be fairly consistent.
I do not agree. Every system update scares me quite a bit.
- There are still driver issues with Windows, but they're less common than Linux.
On Fedora, I never had to install drivers manually. All drivers was installed together with first upgrade after fresh install. Even on very old ThinkPad x201 from 2011. On Windows it's mix of searching on multiple HW manufacturer sites, manually installing them and trying if they are compatible.
So a set of barely maintained applications that cannot support modern Hidpi screens that are shipped with almost every midrange laptop (except Thunderbird which is the only passable app in comparison to its alternative).
The rendering of the Office file formats by the LibreOffice is dogshit. Feature parity is a rounding error. LiberOffice UX is completely from last century. There is so many little UX things that MS added which are so out of the league (like live content update from Office 2007!) for LibreOffice and its outdated codebase.
The Office alone can maybe replaced partially in Linux-compatible environments. However the MS Office-integrated prosumer software ecosystem is the thing that keeps people on Windows. Unless Linux people redesign the whole ecosystem to be as accommodating to closed source app ecosystem and find a time machine to replace all the existing Windows ecosystem, nothing will change.
You are getting downvoted, which is sad but also a testament of how delusional the fanboys actually are. Not that I don't think doesn't have its uses cases/upsides.
The reality is that even without talking about the UI and various stability/compatibility/performance (oh god) issues there are even some very basic missing functionalities that ones will encounter regularly when doing stuff that is not just low-level administrative filler work.
If one company would decide to invest in developing a decent competitive alternative it could be worthwhile but, in the meantime, most people are better served with browser-based stuff.
Either the Google stuff, free Microsoft version or even the newer Proton offering are decent but there are some semi-commercial offerings that can be decent too.
On the surface LibreOffice is all right, but the hard reality is that it is way too much of a PITA to work with for most people to bother unless they really don't have a choice or are forced too for some reason.
The fanboys don't like that reality and would rather deny it instead of working on fixing the issue; which is precisely why it's a lost cause.
I just got off the phone from my aunt who was filling forms in with Adobe Reader, editing word documents sent from her solicitor.
No it's not all in a browser. That's a shitty assumption and one that should not be forced upon anyone.
I always wonder how many people have been fucked over by a helpful relative giving them a Linux install with a browser and telling them to get on with it ...
I disagree. I use Linux mainly because it's just simpler than Windows. MS went on a pretty dark path in recent years with anti-user behavior, dark patterns etc.
The caveat is that I don't play games on my computers. For gaming, Windows is still the best choice.
So either I can use LTSC and then do a bunch of stuff to get things reasonably working, hope that MS doesn't discontinue the edition next year with no replacement, or ... I can just use Linux. Sounds like a simple choice.
> The average person, though, still would prefer regular Windows 11 over your favorite Linux distro.
I don't know, I think it depends on their needs. Most users these days use their computers as "browser launcher" and for that Linux works just fine. I also don't think most people are enjoying those massive ads in Windows 11.
I don't know if you see the irony of stating how difficult Linux is to use just after telling which hoops to jump to make Windows usable. Modern Linux requires way less than that.
For managing SQL Server and other enterprise grade infrastructure and resource planning. And at least for now, many many other Windows based multi platform development tools that aren't yet practical on Linux desktop. Although, progress is being made in that direction, which is great to see.
I thought about going down this route, but decided not to; if Microsoft is purposefully making it challenging to make Windows usable, why should I devote resources trying to fight it?
For me, simply because I was tired of the shortcomings of Linux. I wanted something closer to a gaming console vs spending a week to get Ethernet over Thunderbolt working.
I really don't think I can say enough good things about the Steam Deck. If you haven't seen it, they have even supported the device helping people install Windows on it.
I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past. Given time, I'm sure they will do more in the future. Today, though, they are such a breath of fresh air for the support they have shown.
> I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past
Oh man, what did they do in the past? I have Valve on my very short list of "good companies". Go ahead and rip off that band-aid: what are you referring to?
I'd wager that adding "I am aware that XYZ has done some shady stuff in the past" when praising any XYZ is starting to become a common defensive hygiene in internet forums generally, just to preempt that inevitable somebody who is "absolutely outraged" and wants to ruin your day because you could ever like XYZ.
Worst I know of, is that they were among the early movers on loot boxes. That said, my understanding is that their were not the same as the ones people grew to hate? I don't actually know the details that heavily.
The government in Australia literally had to take Valve to court to make them honour software warranties.
In response, Valve seems to have had a tantrum and won't release things like the Steam Deck here. I guess they're afraid they might need to honour the warranty for those too. ;)
Naive question: Most of ML workload in a datacenter runs on Linux, for which I assume there's good driver support. Why do we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver support on linux?
> Why do we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver support on linux?
It's a long story.
Nvidia has provided pretty-good datacenter/CUDA support on Linux for a long time, now. The problem is desktop Linux. Nvidia wanted to focus on supporting the old x11 desktop server at a time when most distros were switching to Wayland as a replacement. Nvidia tried to fix the issue by giving Linux devs a proprietary render API to develop Wayland support on, but it was largely rejected since it required writing a lot of platform-specific code. For a few years, the only way to properly accelerate Wayland on Nvidia hardware was to use the reverse-engineered Nouveau drivers that broke most desktop software - a catch-22 for Nvidia users that wanted a more updated desktop experience.
Very recently, a few things started changing. For one, Nvidia started to shuffle around their proprietary GPU code to make their hardware more open and modular. For two, starting with 510-series drivers and continuing through 535 and 555, Nvidia has started to make Wayland support a priority. In the long-term this should resolve the issue of Nvidia GPUs requiring special workarounds to support modern desktops.
They are pretty distinct. Having good CUDA drivers didn't mean raster graphics were accelerated well, and for a while the bulk of Nvidia's efforts were focused on a depreciated backend.
The good news is that those days are mostly behind us, with the more recent Nvidia drivers. Guess the crypto/AI boom helped them find the cash to hire better Linux devs.
It's a reasonable but naive question. There's a big difference between Nvidia offering driver/CUDA support for DC hardware vs providing driver support for desktop/gaming gear. There's also a big difference between the quality & consistency of driver support for desktop GPUs between Nvidia & AMD.
It's the very same driver. And one big selling point of NVIDIA has always been that you could run CUDA on your consumer card too - unlike AMD where their compute stack of the day would only run on a select few cards of the last generation.
It is mostly the same but the support that the DCs are getting are completely different. Nvidia can and does give them slightly tweaked drivers. Data centers ship a set of enterprise distros with tightly managed set of software that's been vetted. Since there are no binary guarantees in Linux, anything can happen with consumer hardware.
Source: once worked as an student system admin in my university HPC center.
As far as i know, Nvidia drivers are not stable enough. When a driver crashes in a data center the computer might reboot and continue the operation after some minutes. When a player plays a game and the graphic card crashes, he might readily switch to Windows.
What about using rufus with preset settings like not have to use a Microsoft Account and so on? Just drop a Windows iso in it and it will make a nice Windows copy out of it.
There’s definitely been a sea change in efforts to provide a better UX when it comes to gaming. When steamos released, it seems to motivate scattered efforts to start congregating together in a more coherent way. See also:
But to backyp steam doing something right, https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comments/vcnaqe/very_poor_pe... so I can see winehq not being so useful when they just say game version x wine version, while steam's Proton may be better configured & kernel version / gpu etc matter. I'm on an AMD gpu
Ah you'll spend all that time trying to get Linux to do all that and then it'll hit a wall somewhere and 1-2 apps you really need won't work so you'll be ready to switch back to Windows 11 the next time you need to reinstall an operating system.
I've shared this before but in recent years (basically Win8+) it's actually been the opposite. I've had to help companies set up Linux systems running wine because they have better compatibility with ancient "must have" applications.
These days for 90% of users, the only "must have" application is a web browser anyways.
It works until you need Excel. I have yet to find a business which doesn't use Excel in some capacity. As in proper Excel, not somewhat dubious compatibility Excel (LibreOffice).
I'd still argue large swathes of things we take for granted on other platforms don't exist or don't work either.
To be honest, probably. The vast majority of users don't need the advanced features of excel. I've seen people be awed by pivot tables. I'm sure some people need those extra features, but I'm guessing vloopup is about as fancy as it gets.
We do it for all of our quarterly planning so that's a sync with Jira as a datasource, multiple tables and pivot tables, etc. I'd say the whole thing is probably a few MB.
I don't know where you'd start to see a performance difference compared to Excel for Win32.
I never hit that wall you speak of. Has been so amazing I donate 20 bucks every year to the project, just because I feel it has no right being at the same time free and that good.
Apart from the bit where it didn't like the fractional scaling that still doesn't work properly, the power management issues, the absolutely terrible inconsistent user experience, the poor photo management and editing applications, the non-existent support for working with other people via the apps that they use etc etc.
It works for a narrow group of vocal people who use it for specific tasks but generic and usable, it is not.
Eh, it depends on what you're using it for. I switched to Linux around six years ago and am quite happy about it. It's not all rainbows and sunshine of course, but at this point I much prefer it to the alternatives.
If Microsoft and Apple weren't continually making their platforms worse I might switch back to one, but they have been continuously going in the wrong direction for many years now, while Linux keeps getting incrementally better.
I actually booted up an old Windows 7 PC the other day and had forgotten how clean and nice the UX was. An OS like that is not bad, but Windows 11?! Good lord, I want nothing to do with it and would much rather deal with some occasional rough edges in Linux.
