Tempted to try Linux

[Mark Kaine]

5 hours ago, EffeectFTW said:

is the server x settings menu that looks like someone cooked it up in an afternoon one day and left it

Basically my whole issue with Linux in a nutshell, nicely done! 

 

Spoiler

I'ma be honest I'm almost equally disappointed with windows, when I got my PC back in 2017 after a long hiatus from PCs I thought by now PCs are probably highly customizable and envisioned a PS2 or PS3 style OS (with clock, changing colors, XMB etc)

 

But nope, it's just still windows XP with a new skin and more bugs than ever and any kind of customization apps are not natively running as they're just tacked on... And they kinda suck.  

 

 

[NoLeafClover]

A few people in this thread, and quite a bit more beyond, mention issues with dual boot. Do people recall what issues they had, I'm curious? As a long term Linux user I admit I might be unaware, but I have rarely had any issues problem with dual boot systems.

 

Back in the MBR days I would agree - dual booting on the same drive, the pile of dung that is Windows would regularly overwrite the MBR with its own boot loader after Windows updates, making it a pain the rear to restore whatever Linux boot loader people used. But on modern EFI systems with GPT formatted drive that's pretty much an issue of the past. The worst that Windows can do is change the default boot order but that's a relatively minor inconvenience and can easily be reverted from the BIOS. I also part blame BIOS vendors for not including an option to lock the boot order from changes outside of the BIOS set up (some ThinkPad laptops still have this awesome feature). But other than that, even Secure Boot tends work out of the box with most major distros.

[Mark Kaine]

42 minutes ago, NoLeafClover said:

A few people in this thread, and quite a bit more beyond, mention issues with dual boot. Do people recall what issues they had, I'm curious? As a long term Linux user I admit I might be unaware, but I have rarely had any issues problem with dual boot systems.

 

Back in the MBR days I would agree - dual booting on the same drive, the pile of dung that is Windows would regularly overwrite the MBR with its own boot loader after Windows updates, making it a pain the rear to restore whatever Linux boot loader people used. But on modern EFI systems with GPT formatted drive that's pretty much an issue of the past. The worst that Windows can do is change the default boot order but that's a relatively minor inconvenience and can easily be reverted from the BIOS. I also part blame BIOS vendors for not including an option to lock the boot order from changes outside of the BIOS set up (some ThinkPad laptops still have this awesome feature). But other than that, even Secure Boot tends work out of the box with most major distros.

Last time I used Linux was in 2007 and I never had this issue, but it's this:

 

1. Working fine

2. Windows or Linux updates

3. "WINDOWS KILLED MY BOOTLOADER EVEN THOUGH I HAVE TWO DRIVES!!!!!!”

 

Something along those lines ~

[xAcid9]

  

9 hours ago, EffeectFTW said:

To be honest, my only issue with Nvidia Drivers on Linux (specifically in Ubuntu) is the server x settings menu that looks like someone cooked it up in an afternoon one day and left it, 20 years ago.

FTFY

[needshmeed]

9 hours ago, NoLeafClover said:

A few people in this thread, and quite a bit more beyond, mention issues with dual boot.

 

Every single time I have tried dual-booting windows and linux, without fail, at some point (months later, a year later, whatever) the computer would fail to start up. Don't know enough to say what caused it, but I have avoided dual-booting ever since (and been much happier). Because I am a masochist, I only gave up after it happened the third or fourth time. This is with different hardware / systems. Never again.

[Beskar]

19 hours ago, EffeectFTW said:

To be honest, my only issue with Nvidia Drivers on Linux (specifically in Ubuntu) is the server x settings menu that looks like someone cooked it up in an afternoon one day and left it (and a weird occurring issue where it will disable gsync on a gsync compatible monitor from time to time). Otherwise, I think they are pretty good these past few years.

 

 

Ya, it's been like that for a while lol.. It's one of those things that Nvidia put a little effort as possible into, including their drivers for so long. At least now they are working hard to improve their drivers. IMHO, I would rather them focus on that for the time being, as it has the biggest impact on the overall performance/compatibility of their cards on Linux. It would be nice if they clean it up a little, maybe one day they will get to it.

 

11 hours ago, NoLeafClover said:

A few people in this thread, and quite a bit more beyond, mention issues with dual boot. Do people recall what issues they had, I'm curious? As a long term Linux user I admit I might be unaware, but I have rarely had any issues problem with dual boot systems.

 

Back in the MBR days I would agree - dual booting on the same drive, the pile of dung that is Windows would regularly overwrite the MBR with its own boot loader after Windows updates, making it a pain the rear to restore whatever Linux boot loader people used. But on modern EFI systems with GPT formatted drive that's pretty much an issue of the past. The worst that Windows can do is change the default boot order but that's a relatively minor inconvenience and can easily be reverted from the BIOS. I also part blame BIOS vendors for not including an option to lock the boot order from changes outside of the BIOS set up (some ThinkPad laptops still have this awesome feature). But other than that, even Secure Boot tends work out of the box with most major distros.

 When I switched over to Linux 4-5 years ago I was dual booting with Linux and Windows on my gaming rig and didn't run into any issues. I know it was a bigger issue in the past with MBR as Windows would be Windows and override the MBR when it felt like, but I don't think it's that much of an issue now. On my system each OS was on their own separate drive, so I've never tried dual booting on a single drive. Who knows maybe the issue in the MBR days still appears from time to time?

1 hour ago, needshmeed said:

Every single time I have tried dual-booting windows and linux, without fail, at some point (months later, a year later, whatever) the computer would fail to start up. Don't know enough to say what caused it, but I have avoided dual-booting ever since (and been much happier). Because I am a masochist, I only gave up after it happened the third or fourth time. This is with different hardware / systems. Never again.

Just curious, did this happen after you did a major update to Windows, or was it just random? Also were you dual booting on the same drive, or separate drives? I'm just curious as it should be a lot better these days, but maybe it still causes problems from time to time in certain scenarios.

[Ha-Satan]

I use Linux Mint XFCE on my laptop as my daily driver for productivity, but I still use Windows for my gaming PC (and will continue to use Windows as it's basically only an entertainment machine).

 

Obviously it doesn't make sense for everybody to just buy a second computer to run Linux, but IMO that's the actual easiest way to get into it - get a second computer and use it as your productivity daily driver on Linux instead of worrying about Linux gaming.

[needshmeed]

18 hours ago, Beskar said:

Just curious, did this happen after you did a major update to Windows, or was it just random? Also were you dual booting on the same drive, or separate drives? I'm just curious as it should be a lot better these days, but maybe it still causes problems from time to time in certain scenarios.

I am not sure whether it was a Windows update. The last system it happened on was a laptop. I would swap between two separate drives (I had one of those HD caddies that were shaped like an internal DVD drive but that would accept a SATA hard drive), and it still happened there.

 

I remember once I solved my non-booting dilemma with some kind help on a Linux forum and a Linux booting utility, and then it happened some time later, again. I gave up at that point. With the cheap price of second-hand laptops and desktops & various computer hardware (non-gaming hardware, that is!), my preference today is for separate machines to start learning about Linux at your own pace. Obviously not a solution if you want to game on Linux.

 

Reading about Nvidia Linux drivers above....I am reminded of the video where Linus Torvalds said F You to Nvidia. You can find the video on youtube. LOL.

[jejones3141]

On 4/28/2025 at 12:24 AM, Sacro said:

Maybe I should start with dual booting

I've seen some people who recommend putting Linux and Windows on separate drives to avoid problems. The standard advice I've seen if you do put both OSs on the same drive is (or maybe was, it's been a long time since I last saw it) to install Windows first, because if you install Linux and then Windows, Windows will cheerfully wipe Linux and use the whole drive for Windows. I've never dual booted, so I have no experience with it.

[NoLeafClover]

On 5/3/2025 at 12:49 AM, jejones3141 said:

The standard advice I've seen if you do put both OSs on the same drive is (or maybe was, it's been a long time since I last saw it) to install Windows first, because if you install Linux and then Windows, Windows will cheerfully wipe Linux and use the whole drive for Windows.

The advice still holds true, but not for the reasons you outline. Windows will not wipe Linux to use the whole drive - this has never been the case.

 

The reason it's the preferred way is so that Windows doesn't change the boot order.

 

In the MBR (Master Boot Record) days, this was more problematic because the bootloader would sit in the MBR part of the hard drive and there could only be one boot loader, meaning that Windows would override GRUB (default). This doesn't wipe Linux, but will render it unbootable and make it a PITA to repair the bootloader with a live CD etc.

 

Today things are better, in that Windows only re-arrange the BIOS boot order which is easily fixed from the BIOS. But to avoid having to go through that extra hoop, it's still best to do Windows first. Basically not a problem. This also makes reinstalling Windows much less of a problem. This is also the case when booting with two drives, so the differences between having one or two are non-existent provided the user pays attention to things like drive selection and partitioning, which has always been the most critical part.

 

It's interesting to hear people's stories re dual boot because I've never had any problems with it.

[Beerzerker]

In my experience coming from Windows to Linux when Win 10 was introduced with all it's crap, I skipped Win 10 entirely and started with Mint and it was fine for awhile but then tried Peppermint and it was just as good or maybe even better (For me at least).

Those two are more or less like Windows in how they are to use.
There are a few things to figure out but it's not enough to put one off, if I could figure it out (I'm not a programmer or poweruser) I'd have to think most anyone could.

No need to do any real programming (Bashing/Sudo - That kind of stuff ) at all just to make things work - They just do aside from Windows-based games which has always been an issue anyway but it's gotten better over time at least. 

Know that Mint (When I was using it) didn't really care for Nvidia stuff too well and Peppermint was/is the same way for AMD based GPU's, so ATM I'm running an Nvidia GPU (GTX 970) with my Peppermint install and it's doing great.

I can't say if newer GPU's of either make would play nice with what was giving me problems but that's how it was for me at the time when figuring out what wanted to work well with what.

In my case I still have Windows 7 on a drive and if I ever want to play a Windows based game I just swap drives and game on.
For all else such as posting this, I have my Linux drive in use and it's fine.

Yes - Your board will change boot order at times, favoring Windows by default and that's something MS made damned sure would happen with their influence over vendors but it's really not a big deal.

With that said:
I've never tried a dual boot drive with both on it before so I can't comment on that - Will have to try it one day for myself but until then I just swap drives (Move the SATA cable from my Windows drive to the Linux drive) and go.
Sure - There is a period of adjustment betwenn the two OS types but that goes by quickly and you'll settle in.

For moving onto distros later that are more "User-involved", that's something you'll have to decide for yourself but just for getting started, those are the two I suggest.