Windows 10 - Awful Performance and UX - spin spin spin...
- Thread starter kmiklas
- Start date
I am running several servers on Linux (see photos in the "Photos of Workspaces thread), trust me when I say I am very well versed in Linux. Linux is easy to install. Everything else requires close to expert knowledge to configure and work as intended. While Linux provides for more configuration flexibility, advanced knowledge in many areas is required to get it right. While Linux lends itself very well for true workload tasks it exposes many pitiful weaknesses when trying to configure it as HTPC, workstation, or home PC. The list of gripes and sighs is endless but I can get you started on remoting into Linux machines: The lack of standardized desktop to use with remote desktop is simply infuriating. I have never got remote desktop to work really well, how many times have Linux distros changed the desktop from Unity to others and back and forth? Performance of remote desktop is poor in comparison to Windows' RTD. Then getting wake up on lan or wake up on input device is an adventure in itself. Getting hard drives to sleep when idle for a longer period is not working across the entire hdd spectrum, especially not when the hdds are in any sort of raid mode. Those are all issues that are at the heart of average home users who want a quiet PC or get similar convenience features as Windows users. Did I forget to get deep learning toolkits working correctly with GPU support? Let me tell you that this is an absolute chaos unless you use docker. In Windows you install the Nvidia driver, install Cuda, install Tensorflow or Pytorch with Visual Studio support or other IDE and you are up and running in less than 15 minutes without the slightest hiccup. I can continue this list for ages. Again, I am a heavy duty Linux power user especially in deep learning space but configuring Linux to my liking for an HTPC or home PC is a nightmare to say the least, unless of course you don't care about any features and just turn on your PC, want to work with it, then turn it off.
PS.: Check out the Unraid user forum and you know what I am talking about, pages over pages over pages of issues to configure a raid array and make the computer behave as desired based on the Linux distro that Unraid is based on. And those are your typical home users who want to setup storage space for their home media repository.
Installing Linux is just 5% of the entire task. Configuring Linux with all the bells and whistles that user got accustomed to in Windows is a nightmare. And I say this from years of personal experience. I code in C++, C#, wrote an entire algorithmic trading architecture from the ground up. I think I know what I am talking about.
PS.: Check out the Unraid user forum and you know what I am talking about, pages over pages over pages of issues to configure a raid array and make the computer behave as desired based on the Linux distro that Unraid is based on. And those are your typical home users who want to setup storage space for their home media repository.
Installing Linux is just 5% of the entire task. Configuring Linux with all the bells and whistles that user got accustomed to in Windows is a nightmare. And I say this from years of personal experience. I code in C++, C#, wrote an entire algorithmic trading architecture from the ground up. I think I know what I am talking about.
I don't want to turn this into a Linux rant, so I wont say more then this. While some of the issues you mentioned are true (wake on lan, even system sleep, remote beyond ssh). Setting up the GFX (at least with nvidia proprietary), HTPC, python stack, have never been difficult if you choose a good distro. FWIW I have never found ubuntu to be a good distro (its simply the most used).
I can live with both. I use TT and TOS on Linux and PhotonTrader on Windows. Both platforms can annoy one to no end and both can work fine. If you choose to devote as much time to the Windows internals as you are forced to in Linux, you'll be surprised how elegant and powerful it can be. Just watch for substandard hardware
If you disable Secure Boot from within Windows 8-10 (becomes a legacy bios system and not UEFI), and I've read Fast Boot also in WIndows 10, then you should be able to configure a dual boot system just like in Windows 7. If you don't, well ...
Here are some videos you all might be interested in:
1. How Microsoft Helped Build China’s Nightmare Surveillance | China Uncensored
2. Google “Being Evil” in China? (It's a little ironic this video is hosted on YouTube.)
3. Is Google Helping China’s Military? | Trump vs Google on CCP | China Uncensored
Ubuntu has its issues but it has one great thing about it -- the userbase. It's well tested and you get things done fast searching for problem solutions instead of inventing the solutions. Their auto-update is stupid and Windows-like though.
Linux is awesome if the application base a user needs is either incredibly broad (internet access browsing, listening to video streams, and Java based applications) . Or on the other hand if the application base is very specialized and narrow, such as using Linux as OS for storage purposes or the like. For everything in the middle Linux imho is a horror to work with. Let me give you an example: let's say I want a workstation that let's me perform deep learning research (incredibly complex and time consuming to get Cuda, tensorflow, gpu drivers to play well together and configure all to work well in Linux, unless you use docker containers. In windows you install the driver, Cuda, tensorflow and are ready to go), I want to configure an nvme cluster as stripes, sync that cluster with a Hdd mirror, sync that mirror with several cloud storage accounts (which software would you use to start with? How long would it take to configure RoCE and the like to perform well...), to develop and code in C# and other languages (multiple dev envs needed rather than doing it all in VS on Windows), run a high performance/low latency network (speaking of 100gbe) between different machines, potentially game on that machine (most modern demanding games do not even work in a Linux environment forcing one to run a Windows VM, smirk), and a number other tasks. You either end up splitting the workload up across different machines with different OSs and/or a looooooong time to find all the apps and configure them properly to achieve above setup. It took me less than a day to get all the above running on a Windows Server or Windows 10 for Workstation machine. Trust me, I have tried it on Linux and gave up in disgust. Synching with cloud storage providers alone was a nightmare on Linux.
Getting high bandwidth and low latency to serve files to connected windows machines was also an absolute nightmare and I believe I possess enough domain knowledge to claim that this was not the bottleneck. Ever tried to get hard drives to spin down after a certain time in Linux? Nightmare. Sleep and wake functions in Linux? Nightmare. Multiple monitors and setting apps up to run only on specific screens and stay on the screens when one or 2 monitors are turned off and back on? Nightmare. Updating Cuda or tensorflow to new versions? Nightmare. Remote desktop? Worst nightmare ever and incredibly slow, orders of magnitudes slower than RDP on windows. Also not standardized as even same Linux distros for whatever reason choose to switch back and forth for different versions between desktop UIs.
I use linux only for very specific use cases on separate machines for everything else Windows raigns Supreme imho.
Getting high bandwidth and low latency to serve files to connected windows machines was also an absolute nightmare and I believe I possess enough domain knowledge to claim that this was not the bottleneck. Ever tried to get hard drives to spin down after a certain time in Linux? Nightmare. Sleep and wake functions in Linux? Nightmare. Multiple monitors and setting apps up to run only on specific screens and stay on the screens when one or 2 monitors are turned off and back on? Nightmare. Updating Cuda or tensorflow to new versions? Nightmare. Remote desktop? Worst nightmare ever and incredibly slow, orders of magnitudes slower than RDP on windows. Also not standardized as even same Linux distros for whatever reason choose to switch back and forth for different versions between desktop UIs.
I use linux only for very specific use cases on separate machines for everything else Windows raigns Supreme imho.
Last edited:
ubuntu. I prefer xubuntu, its leaner but regular ubuntu is more full featured.