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I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

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Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#141

Post by mmcnl »

einrealist wrote: post #44
dividedbyzero wrote: post #23

Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I…

It's such a shame that Lenovo discontinued the X1 Nano series. It's my everyday casual driver. I would buy a newer model instantly if necessary.

X13 is not that much bigger I believe.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#142

Post by randunel »

decide1000 wrote: post #61

I am on Linux for 26 years. Last 5 years I run PopOs! on my desktop. User friendly and stable, Ubuntu based.

Linux user for 25-ish years here, and exclusively so.

I used to heavily configure my ubuntu distros to be keyboard exclusive with i3wm and such, but I ended up with regolith desktop, a version of ubuntu with pre installed i3wm and keyboard focus. I'm too old to keep my dotfiles updated.

Nowadays, imo you should only choose the package manager, any os using that chosen package manager (aptitude for ubuntu) definitely had a version that's close enough to your use cases.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#143

Post by nickjj »

formerly_proven wrote: post #133
nickjj wrote: post #125

I also switched to Linux last month. It hasn't been a smooth experience with my GPU as I'm encountering memory leaks in popular compositors. I also get 150-200ms keyboard input delay in all games using some compositors but not all. I documented as much as I could here https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/gpu-memory-allocation-bugs-wi... . Still, despite all of that when it works it is better than Windows. It's just ironic…

It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you with a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but is unlikely to be a common experience.

> It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you with a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but is unlikely to be a common experience.

The drivers are still getting maintained by NVIDIA until August 2026. They also got classified as "legacy" on paper 1 day before I installed them.

The compositor memory leak is affecting a lot of people. Since COSMIC and niri both use the same one (smithay), there's threads on GitHub with people using modern GPUs, both NVIDIA and AMD who experience it. There's a lot of replies across all of the different open issues.

The GPU allocation issue on Wayland (separate from the memory leak) also has hundreds of replies on the NVIDIA developer forums with people using new NVIDIA cards with the latest drivers.

The thing is, most people don't talk about either of them because if you have 8+ GB of GPU memory and turn your computer off every night then you won't experience this problem since all GPU memory allocations get reset on shutdown. It happens to be more of a direct problem for me because I have 2 GB of GPU memory but that doesn't mean the problem isn't common. The root cause is still there. Even if I switched to an AMD GPU the niri / smithay memory leak would be present. Instead of rebooting twice a day, if the GPU had 8 GB of memory I'd have to reboot every 2 days (x4 basically).

Since I opened that issue on GitHub NVIDIA did acknowledge it and suggested I try their experimental egl-wayland2 library. I did try that and it hasn't fixed it fully but it has made GPU memory allocations more stable. It even fixed 1 type of leak in niri. This library is decoupled from the drivers themselves as far as I know. I mean, this same library could still be used for the 590 series, it's not 580 specific which means it's not dependent on your GPU model.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#144

Post by mmcnl »

primer42 wrote: post #18
grigio wrote: post #8

I hope one day to upgrade my laptop to a Honor/Huawei AMD Ryzen AI computer to run Linux. Modern Macbooks unfortunatly do not run Linux and the other laptop manifacturers basically produce expensive trash laptops

Modern MacBooks DO run Linux Check out https://asahilinux.org/

Not really, it's a nice tech demo at best.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#145

Post by clates »

snazz wrote: post #84
kryogen1c wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weird keyboard layout Classic lenovo. Some models have FN as the most bottom left key, instead of ctrl. Gotta be the worst design decision ive ever seen. Everyone copy+pastes and finds, whoever thought that was a good idea really needs relieved of decision making power.

Apple also puts fn/globe in the bottom left corner and control to its right.

Yeah, but that's conflating that a key labeled "control" for a Windows machine and a key labeled "control" for a Mac refer to different concepts.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#146

Post by mmcnl »

fragmede wrote: post #135
grigio wrote: post #8

I hope one day to upgrade my laptop to a Honor/Huawei AMD Ryzen AI computer to run Linux. Modern Macbooks unfortunatly do not run Linux and the other laptop manifacturers basically produce expensive trash laptops

In case you hadn't heard of Framework, they're making modular laptops with the intention of reducing e-waste. http://framework.computer

Repairable laptops don't reduce e-waste. You replace the mainboard and then what? You have a spare mainboard that sits there collecting dust. The best way to prevent e-waste is to build durable laptops that last a lifetime. Like Dell, HP and Lenovo have been doing for years (while also being very repairable at the same time).

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#147

Post by mqus »

INTPenis wrote: post #21
meetingthrower wrote: post #15

How to run PowerPoint and Excel? I'm stuck with these for work?

No libre office suite will ever be on par with Microsoft proprietary options. It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers. I've used Linux for 25+ years and my reaction is always to do my best with the options I have, but in those cases when it's not enough I just say "I'm sorry but I can't edit this document" or "sorry but some of the formatting was lost when I saved th…

> using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.

I'm not even sure this is true. Isn't there some company (or more) like Collabora behind most of the dev work right now?

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#148

Post by stainablesteel »

keyshapegeo99 wrote: post #134

For both ideological and practical reasons, I'd love to switch. If I were a desktop computing person, I'd already have done so years ago. Alas, I exclusively use laptops - as I work a great deal while travelling. I do not wish to have to carry around a mouse with me wherever I go with my portable computer. If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experien…

[flagged]

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#149

Post by brightball »

keyshapegeo99 wrote: post #134

For both ideological and practical reasons, I'd love to switch. If I were a desktop computing person, I'd already have done so years ago. Alas, I exclusively use laptops - as I work a great deal while travelling. I do not wish to have to carry around a mouse with me wherever I go with my portable computer. If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experien…

I always agreed with this take until I went all in on keyboard driven tiling window managers. First with i3 and now with Omarchy/hyprland.

I find my use of the trackpad so rare now that it’s a non factor.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#150

Post by nehal3m »

keyshapegeo99 wrote: post #134

For both ideological and practical reasons, I'd love to switch. If I were a desktop computing person, I'd already have done so years ago. Alas, I exclusively use laptops - as I work a great deal while travelling. I do not wish to have to carry around a mouse with me wherever I go with my portable computer. If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experien…

Take this with a grain of salt, it's impossible for me to tell what you are and aren't comfortable with, but there is an alternative to using trackpads or mice at all and that's tiling window managers. You drive the OS with your keyboard. Combining this with plugins like Vimium for Chromium based browsers (or Tridactyl for Firefox) you can drive your entire OS and browser with keybindings.

As an aside, the latter also teaches you the bindings for Vim which is a nice boon if you've tried in the past and couldn't make it stick.

But again, this might not fit your use case or your preparedness to invest time and effort. I'm just saying.

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