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

I thought I’d chuck windows on my gaming laptop an Acer nitro 5 from last year, to see how it’s going do some bits I can’t on Linux VR, certain multiplayer games etc.

What a disaster! I’ve spent the whole day brute forcing drivers and generally dicking about trying to get my setup sorted.

Upon installation, Wi-Fi drivers don’t exist, so you cannot use the internet while installing if you’re on Wi-Fi. Mint’s had this since what 2006? But that’s cool, Cortana is here to chat away and not understand any requests. Once finally in the OS after 20 questions that could be considered harassment if it was a person, nothing was ready to go. Every single driver needed sourcing and installing.

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.

Plug in my sound card OK it’s a bit old now UA-25 but nothing happens…hmm find obscure video partially install a driver from Vista then cancel the installation program so you can side load a driver from 8,1 but wait there’s more disable core isolation to allow the driver to work reboot into a now slightly more compromised 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 a steering wheel as a gamepad…GG cool cool.

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. It does worse than nothing, it thinks it’s smart enough to carry out tasks on the user behalf and just bork it.

All of these issues are because I don’t have the new shiny things, but it really highlighted why I love Linux now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to install a distro and play on my 20-year-old peripherals

DinosaurThussy , (edited )
@DinosaurThussy@hexbear.net avatar

Installing an operating system is a process that’s full of potential to be very painful no matter what the operating system is. All 3 major operating systems do their best to make it as painless as possible, but if you stray from the happy path, it requires technical knowledge to fix that most people don’t have. So the bottom line is that the OS which can make deals with manufacturers to pre install their OS with confirmed working drivers will seem more user friendly than the OS you have to install yourself. If you gift a noob a System 76 laptop and ask them to install Windows on it, they’re gonna balk at you the same ways as they would if it’s the reverse.

sirico OP ,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

Well said

Evilsandwichman ,

…you’re using Vista? Even when Vista was new it was terrible. Just get Windows 10. Also if you use old peripherals then yeah, you’re probably gonna have problems. No idea what all these issues with installing drivers is about; it stopped being a problem with newer Windows. It’s like this post was made over a decade ago, lol.

sirico OP ,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

This was 11 I had to use Vista drivers as an attempt to get my ancient hardware working

eugenia ,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

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).

onlinepersona ,

Actually, both Ubuntu and Mint didn’t have wifi drivers for my late-2014 Mac Mini (Intel based).

It’s a Mac… the shittiest hardware in existence to try and install anything else but OSX. Until asahi linux, there was no concerted and funded effort to make linux run on the mac.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

eugenia ,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

No, it’s not the shittiest hardware in existence. The wifi in question was just Broadcomm, not Apple. The Apple-based Macs are just PCs, with a modified UEFI firmware, nothing else. Only the Silicon-based ones are more Apple-based.

onlinepersona ,

No, it’s not the shittiest hardware in existence.

Here’s there full quote for you

the shittiest hardware in existence to try and install anything else but OSX

Also claiming macs are “just PCs with modified UEFI firmware” is hilarious. If that were the case, installing other operating systems would be a breeze like on other laptops. We both know it’s not.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Fisch ,
@Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

Landless2029 ,

… so what headset do you have?

I’m thinking about the index on linux

Fisch ,
@Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I actually have the Index, it’s really great but also really expensive

Landless2029 ,

Yeap. I hate meta that much but also valve does goos hardware.

The knuckles sold me on it. It’s FANTASTIC

Fisch ,
@Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

The knuckles are easily the best VR controllers by far

ReakDuck ,

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.

neo ,
@neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

We are improving your experience. Please do not resist.

LeFantome ,

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.

bigmclargehuge ,
@bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world avatar

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.

onlinepersona ,

This is very similar to my experience with a laptop from 2020. I wiped it and tried to install windows on it and nothing worked. It couldn’t find a recovery partition (no surprise, the entire disk was wiped) and just refused to continue. I tried everything I could find online to make it work and nada. Partitioning it with linux MBR and GPT, enabling/disabling secure boot, enabling/disabling UEFI, different USB sticks, with a network connection, etc.

The previous experience had been a successful install on another, older laptop but the graphics card drivers were too old and only available from sketchy websites. Experiences before that of reinstalling windows every year or so to keep it fast involved backing up the driver installers and installing them in the right order otherwise it wouldn’t work.

Windows was the most tedious OS I had to deal with.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

rab ,
@rab@lemmy.ca avatar

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

MangoPenguin ,
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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.

ReakDuck ,

The last part you mention is not a comparison how it is better but rather to put the idea away that its hard to install nvidia drivers on Linux

Lmaydev ,

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

Dasus ,

The pretentiousness is off the scales with this one

neo ,
@neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

accurate tho

i had to manually disable driver updates via windows update because it picks the shittiest possible drivers for everything

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Built a PC for my cousin, Windows likes to delete its own Wi-Fi driver among other issues, not to mention using modern Microsoft products feels like a rectal probing with how invasive it is.

rah ,

windows

Wrong community.

killwill ,

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.

cevn ,

VR seems to be one of the last things that does not work. My Index is laggy af on Ubuntu and Fedora but completely fine on windows.

bigmclargehuge ,
@bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world avatar

I use ALVR with Steam VR and a Quest 2 on Arch. Not as smooth as native but it works pretty well. Had Blade and Sorcery running at comparable performance to Win10

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

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.

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