Rant: My recent experience of trying to install windows for gaming and why I'm really thankful for Linux

Never trust a rant from a person that can't install Windows.

14 days ago I tested Ubuntu. I couldn’t access my Wifi. The network was visible, but it refused to accept the password. (Yes, I quintuple-checked that I entered it right.) When I tried Linux Mint, it worked on the first try.

Moral of the story: Drivers are hit-and-miss on Linux, too.

Drivers for desktops are pretty much a non-issue on Windows, in fact, most will be installed via the internet before you even boot the desktop for the first time.

Drivers for gaming laptops are a nightmare on Windows, and you'll probably have to chase weird slow pages in the manufacturer's website to perhaps find 4 packages that might contain the driver you want.

Wi-Fi drivers don't exist

They absolutely exist, but perhaps isn't part of the installer.

Every single driver needed sourcing and installing.

Windows Update solves 95% of that automatically these days, as long as you have internet it will sort it out for you.

Plug in my sound card OK it's a bit old now UA-25 but nothing happens.

This an external USB sound card from 2004, Roland has drivers for it working on Windows 98/ME/XP/2000/Vista/7/8/8.1 it is a 20 year old card, it awesome that it works on Linux, but you can't blame Roland or Microsoft for not supporting a 20 year old device on the latest versions of the OS.

OK plug in wheel again not new stuff G25 oh it works cool. Oh, no H-shifter OK download driver. "Can't find device, ensure it's plugged in". Windows decided it knew better, downloaded its own driver that blocks the official one and loads the steering wheel as a gamepad...GG cool cool.

You are whining about a modern OS not being compatible with a 18 year old steering wheel? You can't expect indefinite hardware support for every random little device you happen to find, this like the sound card above is on you, not Microsoft.

I do not understand why we still have this image that Windows is noob friendly.

None of the above quoted examples are noob issues, this is like you are talking to a person in old english from the mideval times and being mad that a random guy in the middle of Londing in 2024 can't understand you.

A noob would realize that their devices were too old and buy new devices.

Windows is noob friendly in that most software have a Windows version, most people use it, it is a known variable.

Like it or not, Windows is the defacto standard, and that means that is it safe in the perspective of a noob user.

I am saying all of this as an IT guy who has worked professionally with both Linux and Windows, I ran Linux as my main OS for a year or two, I LIKE Linux, but this is not fair critisism of Windows.

Thanks for the post, interesting.

I do not understand why we still have this image that Windows is noob friendly, it’s such a convoluted obfuscated process to do anything.

Microsoft has been blackmailing pushing computer hardware companies for a long time to have Windows bundled with computers. Your story has now enlightened me why they did so all these years :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Refund_Day

Windows and MacOS are “noob-friendly” for those who use them for simple purposes and out-of-the-box. As soon as you want to do something more advanced, you’re back to googling and installing software from a variety of sources.

Many linux distros are like that too (others are just not noob-friendly at all), but centralized package management and documentation are nice.

I’m really glad to be away from registry editing, 50 app icons in the tray, and navigating my way through settings to control panel so I can actually fix my audio devices or network options.

I’m on Arch now, so I still have plenty of configuration and software, but I know the systems and choose explicitly which ones I use. If something isn’t working or is annoying, it’s my fault.

Huh? I'm all for d***riding on Linux but this is a weird case. I've not had a single issue with windows on gaming laptops even across multiple reinstalls. They're all automatically installed soon after you boot. Just need to wait through a few updates.

The pretentiousness is off the scales with this one

Upon installation, Wi-Fi drivers don’t exist, so you cannot use the internet while installing if you’re on Wi-Fi.

This is a good thing with modern Windows. You don't want it online while it's installing, you want to install, lock things down a bit and then connect.

Blame the oems, dell ships dell OS with windows branding.

I've installed Windows on a system I've built myself, and I've had so many problems...

Firstly, did you know what Windows doesn't allow you to install it on a partition that isn't the first one on the drive (under certain circumstances)? It also doesn't give you sensible error messages that that's the problem.

I also had to install audio drivers from the disk that came with my motherboard (the ones on the website didn't work).

I don't know if this was this system or some other one, but I've faced the whole "no network card drivers so can't download network card drivers" issue.

Recently I made the controversial decision of booting Windows with an external drive plugged in, so it decided to reorder my device letter mappings and break a bunch of shortcuts.

And of course, there's no resource like the arch wiki, so you're basically left on your own to fix things.

Windows may or may not be easier to use, but it certainly isn't easier to install and fix.

Windows and Linux have opposite problems for starters with newer hardware better supported on Windows and old hardware supported on Linux. As Linux gets more popular, it will start to shine because if newer hardware becomes better supported, the experience will truly be that Linux just works and Windows needs drivers for done stuff.

The other big factor is that Windows is already installed. So, you don’t have to do anything or, at most, one or two things. Even if that one thing is hard, you are more likely to blame that one thing than Windows.

Finally, we have to acknowledge that your experience sounds atypical for Windows installs. Most of my hardware is easier to put Linux on than Windows but I doubt any of them would be that hard.

We also have to admit that Linux does not have drivers for everything while Windows basically does ( somewhere ). So, Linux can be the bigger bummer overall. Of course, this is in the x86-64 universe only. Linux has vastly better hardware support when you consider other platforms.

This is mostly an Acer issue I think. A decent vendor will have a software package or even their website that will handle updating your drivers.

I often get shattered by windows users how hard it is to install Nvidia drivers or get it to work.

Like. Idk why they are like this or how I should tell them otherwise. But they will give me a response of their experience as proof of how hard it is.

I mean. Its even pteinstalled on some distros so wtf.

I can't say I've ever had this experience with installing drivers on Windows. Is it as smooth and centralized as Linux? No, but it's generally just go to manufacturers website, find product, find support page, locate drivers, download/install, rinse and repeat. Never had to go watch videos that led me to a partial install of drivers for an outdated Windows version. If WiFi doesn't work, use USB tethering from your phone. The laptop will act like it's connected to Ethernet (this at least lets you go to the Acer website to find the right WiFi drivers for your laptop).

Also never had Cortana bother me during setup. You can always skip all that extra crap. Last time I installed Win10 was to update my NVidia GPU firmware and it took 10 minutes.

From what I got online that computer has either an Intel or MediaTek PCIe Wifi card, both of them should be supported out of the box by Windows. Also you aren't required to install GPU drivers manually, just run Windows Update and it will pull the driver including the Nvidia panel for you.

I do not understand why we still have this image that Windows is noob friendly, it’s such a convoluted obfuscated process to do anything.

Because it is as long as you don't fuck things up because you think you know better. Just use Windows update to pull GPU drivers... or download what Acer says is for your computer on their support page... cheap ass hardware that shouldn't even be on the market doesn't help either.

Actually, both Ubuntu and Mint didn't have wifi drivers for my late-2014 Mac Mini (Intel based). I had to plugin ethernet so I could actually download the drivers. Also, the version of Windows you might have installed might have been older than your PC, so no drivers would naturally be in it (e.g. Win11 is already 2-3 years old).

Every single driver needed sourcing and installing.

Windows update on W11 will pull basically everything automatically, with the exception of some older proprietary hardware (a lot of gaming and sound devices have really screwed up drivers for example).

Drivers are extremely hit or miss on Linux too especially for anything new, and manually installing some driver is incredibly frustrating since you can't just run an exe and be done.

People have the cheek to complain about Linux’s Nvidia install, literally two clicks on most distros if it isn’t already baked in. Go to website find driver, download click click click agree click wait more software click click wait.

It's the same on windows, go to nvidia website and download the driver and install.

Don't get your Linux packages from random websites. That's bad practice at best

Amen.

Sounds like a user problem. Installing windows should take 30 minutes tops.

If you're having issues with VR on Linux, I might be able to help you with that, as I'm using Linux to play VR. Took some time to figure everything out but it's working great for me now. Only important thing is what VR headset you have.

I've fully given up on vr in Linux after spending a whole day trying to get it to work. I have Nobara and modern AMD hardware, tried SteamVR and FOSS VR (envision) (which was awful to set up on the "gaming OS"). I booted into my windows partition, clicked a button to update AMD Adrenalin (and several years of windows updates) and VR simply worked.

I love Linux but it definitely has its own issues. My boss (who got me into Linux) vented some of his frustrations with Linux while installing Android studio: "linux makes up a few percentage of the userbase but 90% of the OS's. It's far too splintered." I have to agree, and it's why i will likely always have a windows partition. Because things just work, and if they don't I have a wealth of information on the internet because there is only one OS people can have this problem with.

I think the valve and the steam deck is doing the linux community a massive solid and somewhat unifying the Linux gaming community.

Weird I've never had to manually install a driver for windows.

Lol I still have the CDs that came with my first built PC parts just to install the drivers because windows would never use the correct one even when the OEM had them very easily online.

Have a complete CD for my monitor, GTX 750ti, and motherboard. Actually had to use mobo CD to get ethernet working (killer ethernet e2400) and I think I might have used nvidia CD or just gone straight to GeForce download.

I can't believe I can actually say linux has had a working kernel module since at least 2013 but Windows 10 didn't

windows

Wrong community.