9 ms·

not to be glib but the best way to fix windows 10 privacy issues is to stop using windows 10 and switch to linux, there are many user friendly, mature distros o

by lingben 10y ago

not to be glib but the best way to fix windows 10 privacy issues is to stop using windows 10 and switch to linux, there are many user friendly, mature distros out right now and they are only getting better: ubuntu, linux mint, arch, manjaro, openSUSE, centOS, etc. as well as up and comer new distros like elementary

warcode 10y ago
Please write the tutorial to run all windows games (at the same performance level) on linux and we're talking.
- jhasse 10y ago
  Dual-boot ;)
  - invokestatic 10y ago
    That doesn't solve the privacy problem, then.
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      It helps a lot if you encrypt the other OS's drive and use Windows as little as possible. If you have a computer with an IOMMU and a virtualization-friendly graphics card you can do even better.
    - homarp 10y ago
      yes, it helps by sending a signal: it gives to microsoft the information that you are only using Win10 for playing. And 'something else' the rest of the time.
    - crdoconnor 10y ago
      If all you're doing on the OS is playing games there's not much privacy to violate.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    People suggesting dual-boot make me think they only switch on their PC for maximum of 1 hour a day and have no idea what it's like to have dozens of programs started (and you needing all of them) and what kind of inconvenience is to start them all manually or wait your OS 2-3 minutes to start most of them automatically. You also probably don't realize that many of us stream video and music 24/7 and your main PC is de facto a programming + gaming + home entertainment server.
    - jhasse 10y ago
      > have no idea what it's like to have dozens of programs started (and you needing all of them) and what kind of inconvenience is to start them all manually You can hibernate one OS and still start the other one. This way all your apps will reopen the next time you boot the OS. > You also probably don't realize that many of us stream video and music 24/7 and your main PC is de facto a programming + gaming + home entertainment server. You're right, most people will have to use Windows at some point :(
- nilved 10y ago
  No need, someone else has done so: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3lno0t/gpu_passthrough_revisited_an_updated_guide_on_how/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3lno0t/gpu_pa... Furthermore, native Linux games are only becoming more popular, and one way to make them more popular is to use Linux.
  - NTripleOne 10y ago
    He said at the same performance level, which will never be achieved in linux until the GPU drivers are not fucking awful.
    - kawsper 10y ago
      This solution passes the GPU to the Windows OS, running inside the VM, so it will use the Windows GPU drivers.
    - SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
      ~3% performance loss is barely anything. I'd say that's plenty efficient enough.
      - CaptSpify 10y ago
        But ~3% is also what that tutorial found, and IME, is not the norm. Most other video cards that I've tried get much less than that. I'd love some kind of stats that show what the average performance difference is. Additionally, video-card drivers are still buggy and fragile. And it's not just video cards, but wifi and sound as well.
      - NTripleOne 10y ago
        You need 2 GPUs and one of them isn't utilised at all in the guest, so I'd say that's more than a ~3% performance loss.
- tscs37 10y ago
  GPU passthrough. Requires a recent or non-K intel CPU with IOMMU though and the chipset has to play nice. I'm using it on my machine in conjunction with Synergy to passthrough keyboard and mouse between host and VM seamlessly. Performance hit: somewhere between 5% and -2% (some games actually run faster in the VM than on baremetal, most notably KSP and CSGO) Setup is not trivial, as it will probably require an ACS-patched kernel if your CPU is older and also needs VFIO kernel parameters to be maintained. If you do this, I recommend Arch, as the performance on the newer kernels is sometimes better (due to KVM/Xen and QEMU improvements) Also lots of RAM and Swap. You're gonna need lots of it.
- trendia 10y ago
  Many newer Steam games work on Linux
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kawsper 10y ago
  You can start following here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ it is a subreddit dedicated to hardware passthrough. They run Windows in a virtual machine, and pass a dedicated GPU into the VM, the results are very impressive, but the installation is very complicated, and you won't get rid of Windows. As VFIO matures, and the API stabilizes a bit more, I think we will see distros offering an easy "install and play" experience. There is a complete guide here: https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08/gpu-passthrough/ https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08/gpu-passthrough/ And as you can see, it involves all kinds of steps. One day, hopefully Windows will be just a shell to play games on :-)
criddell 10y ago
Who picks their operating system first? IMHO, the OS is only there to support the applications I need to use. If those applications are available only on Windows, then your advice isn't very useful. So I would say your advice isn't helpful. Microsoft has a financial relationship with their users (especially their business users) and despite what many people think, they do listen to their customers. So I would say the best way to fix Windows 10 is to continue to let Microsoft know that you aren't happy with specific changes they've made.
- floopidydoopidy 10y ago
  Exactly, financially support Linux devs and your tools will follow.
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  And here come the "b-but you can use wine" comments, which of course everyone who would be a proponent of such would understand that it is not perfect, does not run everything and is far from user-friendly.
  - jsight 10y ago
    Yeah, Wine is amazing for what is is, but is never quite good enough for current, big desktop applications.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    > does not run anything Have you actually tried it in recent years? Wine runs a lot of stuff just fine. grep --files-with-matches wine ~/opt/win32/*/launch.sh | wc -l 71 The most obvious incompatibility right now is probably DX11-only software. Aside from that kind of known compatibility problem, wine has worked well for several years now. > far from user-friendly. While I agree that wine can get nasty if you need to debug anything or if you have unusual requirements, but the standard "just run this win32 binary" case has also been trivial for years. I believe some distros even enable the kernel feature that launches wine automagically when running a .exe file. > it is not perfect Of course it isn't. It is, however, worth trying.
6DM 10y ago
I've tried many times to run linux, it usually ends 3-4 hours later in frustration. I tend to run older hardware so a lot of times support isn't there. I will admit that it's getting noticeably better (or I'm getting luckier).
- marcelluspye 10y ago
  How old is older? There are a lot of distros designed with the purpose of making old hardware useful, up to definition of old.
  - 6DM 10y ago
    Probably 2007-2010 range, I still have my budget desktop that I put together in 2008 if that gives you an idea. These were never top of the line machines so they don't get much love. I usually just went with Ubuntu because at the time it seemed like it was user friendly. I tried openSUSE at one point. If you can name a distro better aimed at supporting these types of devices I'm game.
- reacweb 10y ago
  After using exclusively linux at home during a couple of years, I have bought a laptop to my wife. I wanted to experience windows 8 (new at that time). It was a complete week of frustration. Almost no application are present by default, the video player complains about all file formats, installation of visual studio express succeeded only at the third try for no obvious reason. The ergonomy was a nightmare (it became usable after discovering many keyboard shortcuts that existed already in win7). Linux is fast to install (when no problem occurs). Software installation (and deinstallation) is a breeze. Everything is available out of the box. I maintain a diary with a list of non default packages to install: apt-get install nfs-common wine gnome-media openssh-server squid curl filezilla curlftpfs ethtool docker.io xtightvncviewer x11vnc tmux whois git wakeonlan youtube-dl npm sshfs Concerning support for old hardware, it was the main reason that made me switch to linux: vista64 had no support for my printer and my scanner.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
justratsinacoat 10y ago
>ubuntu Look, if we're trying to avoid OSes that call home with telemetry about what you've been doing...
- akerro 10y ago
  Afaik Ubuntu removed that module like 2-3 years ago. It still reported like 1/100000 of what Win10 does daily.
  - justratsinacoat 10y ago
    >It still reported like 1/100000 of what Win10 does daily Oh, absolutely, but if we're going to advise would-be Linux converts who are concerned with data leakage, may as well advertise actually-telemetry-free distros. >Afaik Ubuntu removed that module like 2-3 years ago Hey great! Link? Trust but verify...
    - ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
      For those out there that haven't bothered to do a quick search, one notable story about the issue can be found here [1]. Note that the date on that article is from 2014, and only refers to the Unity service for searching from Amazon. A later article [2] shows that Ubuntu has changed directions, but it certainly hasn't been 2-3 years. Needless to say, while it took Canonical some time, at least they dialed back what they were doing with online searches and made them opt-in. I've yet to see Microsoft, Google, or Apple dial back their telemetry services regardless of what criticism they may have faced (fair credit here, at least Apple is opt-in for the most part, though not entirely). [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus-unity-8-desktop-removes-the-amazon-search-spyware.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus-unity-8-deskt... [2] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feature-disabled-16-04 http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feat...
cptskippy 10y ago
Linux's greatest strength, freedom of choice, is also it's biggest weakness. Instead of a clear vision and focus, you have a million developers getting frustrated with half baked implementations and rolling their own half baked implementations. Because of this there's a constant churn and things can change radically from one version of a distro to the next. A user can live on the same LTS version of a distro for years but eventually they'll need to upgrade. I have yet to see anyone successfully upgrade major releases of any distro without serious issues. The process is basically format and start over. That's unacceptable. Sure Windows and macOS have their own set of problems but for the average user they just work. You don't have to dive into the bowels of the registry or modify ktext files to get most things to work and the majority of users don't even know about the CLI.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Why are you getting downvoted for stating facts? Baffling.
  - cptskippy 10y ago
    My feeling is that a lot of people around these parts use Linux as their desktop environment and think that just because it works for them, then it will work for everyone else. What they fail to realize is that if they're reading HN comments then they're probably above average when it comes to computer prowess and they're not reliant on someone else to support their computer needs. I've been using Linux in various forms for over 15 years in all forms including daily driver desktop, daily driver laptop, HTPC, foisting it upon my children via netbooks, custom router firmware, Raspberry Pi development, custom ROMs on cellphones, home server hosting, cloud hosting, NAS appliances, development VMs, and production VMs. I tried use the desktop environments really hard for about a decade and constantly founding myself wondering why certain tasks had to be so hard. I always chalked it up to inexperience or unfamiliarity and pushed forward but then my job required me to use OSX. I quickly realized that it was the Linux desktop envs and not me. It was also around this time my kids started using computers more heavily for school and the Linux netbooks I provided them just couldn't cut it. Surprisingly they were able to use Nexus 7 tablets for their school work with relative ease. I still use Linux daily but never on the desktop. CLI or nothing.
stinos 10y ago
> they are only getting better they sure are: difference in e.g. desktop usability with like 15 years ago is huge. You can finally install something from cd and have it up and running including audio/network/automatically mounting pendrives/... without having to touch a config file. Usually. But the problem seems to be in the getting better: I'd rather just have it good enough already right now. Too often it does, for me, as a desktop, still not feel quite right yet and still too buggy. 15 years ago a lot of things Windows just worked and now they still do and a bunch of nice stuff was added (ok crap was added as well) and for what I do with it I have close to 0 problems. I just wish I could say that everytime I try any of the distros you mention.
calferreira 10y ago
Please stop it. Seriously. When the subject "Windows 10 Privacy" comes up, linux folks come running offering linux as a magic pill, it's not. As mature as linux distro's can be there's always the hardware variable in the equation, specially on laptops using nvidia optimus, the experience still sucks. It's the truth. I have nothing against linux, i actually tried it very recently (you can see it here:https://calbertoferreira.blogspot.pt/2016/10/moving-from-windows-10-to-ubuntu_20.html https://calbertoferreira.blogspot.pt/2016/10/moving-from-win...) and got a nice initial impression of it, but i will be moving to Windows again very soon. Want to know why ? - Creating a virtual machine on virtualbox freezes my machine (excessive IO ? i have an ssd); - Battery life sucks even with powertop and such; - My wired internet connection had the same speed as my wireless connection (i disabled wireless to make sure); - Hdmi audio simply doesn't work and when i asked for help on askubuntu i was even downvoted (http://askubuntu.com/questions/845996/how-do-i-make-hdmi-sound-work-on-an-asus-n56vz http://askubuntu.com/questions/845996/how-do-i-make-hdmi-sou...)! I tried, i really did but it's a no go for me. And i feel sorry for it, because i recognise that there are advantages in linux , but until nvidia fixes the damn optimus issues, linux will be held back.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Even though you're downvoted, I mostly agree with you. Most Linux proponents are people with older hardware and trivial setups: 1-2 monitors, 1 sound card and a pair of normal speakers (without subwoofer), 1 ethernet or wireless card, only 1 ISP, etc. We get it, for very regular setups Linux works fine. But there are many people who have more requirements outside the warm little box that Linux serves and I cannot understand why do these people come here convincing us this is not the case; and why are they downvoting the people who are outside this bubble. Linux is not a magic pill on the desktop. For all its strengths (and I do use it in my work every day) it's still a lousy desktop OS and this hasn't changed for 10+ years now.
  - module0000 10y ago
    It's a magic pill if you can RTFM. Not everyone can. Try to keep in mind that the vast majority of internet provided services are served on linux. A large portion are developed on linux, by people that don't seem to be hindered by the parents problems. edit: typo

by lingben 10y ago

warcode 10y ago

Please write the tutorial to run all windows games (at the same performance level) on linux and we're talking.

jhasse 10y ago
Dual-boot ;)
- invokestatic 10y ago
  That doesn't solve the privacy problem, then.
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    It helps a lot if you encrypt the other OS's drive and use Windows as little as possible. If you have a computer with an IOMMU and a virtualization-friendly graphics card you can do even better.
  - homarp 10y ago
    yes, it helps by sending a signal: it gives to microsoft the information that you are only using Win10 for playing. And 'something else' the rest of the time.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    If all you're doing on the OS is playing games there's not much privacy to violate.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  People suggesting dual-boot make me think they only switch on their PC for maximum of 1 hour a day and have no idea what it's like to have dozens of programs started (and you needing all of them) and what kind of inconvenience is to start them all manually or wait your OS 2-3 minutes to start most of them automatically. You also probably don't realize that many of us stream video and music 24/7 and your main PC is de facto a programming + gaming + home entertainment server.
  - jhasse 10y ago
    > have no idea what it's like to have dozens of programs started (and you needing all of them) and what kind of inconvenience is to start them all manually You can hibernate one OS and still start the other one. This way all your apps will reopen the next time you boot the OS. > You also probably don't realize that many of us stream video and music 24/7 and your main PC is de facto a programming + gaming + home entertainment server. You're right, most people will have to use Windows at some point :(
nilved 10y ago
No need, someone else has done so: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3lno0t/gpu_passthrough_revisited_an_updated_guide_on_how/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3lno0t/gpu_pa... Furthermore, native Linux games are only becoming more popular, and one way to make them more popular is to use Linux.
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  He said at the same performance level, which will never be achieved in linux until the GPU drivers are not fucking awful.
  - kawsper 10y ago
    This solution passes the GPU to the Windows OS, running inside the VM, so it will use the Windows GPU drivers.
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
    ~3% performance loss is barely anything. I'd say that's plenty efficient enough.
    - CaptSpify 10y ago
      But ~3% is also what that tutorial found, and IME, is not the norm. Most other video cards that I've tried get much less than that. I'd love some kind of stats that show what the average performance difference is. Additionally, video-card drivers are still buggy and fragile. And it's not just video cards, but wifi and sound as well.
    - NTripleOne 10y ago
      You need 2 GPUs and one of them isn't utilised at all in the guest, so I'd say that's more than a ~3% performance loss.
tscs37 10y ago
GPU passthrough. Requires a recent or non-K intel CPU with IOMMU though and the chipset has to play nice. I'm using it on my machine in conjunction with Synergy to passthrough keyboard and mouse between host and VM seamlessly. Performance hit: somewhere between 5% and -2% (some games actually run faster in the VM than on baremetal, most notably KSP and CSGO) Setup is not trivial, as it will probably require an ACS-patched kernel if your CPU is older and also needs VFIO kernel parameters to be maintained. If you do this, I recommend Arch, as the performance on the newer kernels is sometimes better (due to KVM/Xen and QEMU improvements) Also lots of RAM and Swap. You're gonna need lots of it.
trendia 10y ago
Many newer Steam games work on Linux
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kawsper 10y ago
You can start following here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ it is a subreddit dedicated to hardware passthrough. They run Windows in a virtual machine, and pass a dedicated GPU into the VM, the results are very impressive, but the installation is very complicated, and you won't get rid of Windows. As VFIO matures, and the API stabilizes a bit more, I think we will see distros offering an easy "install and play" experience. There is a complete guide here: https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08/gpu-passthrough/ https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08/gpu-passthrough/ And as you can see, it involves all kinds of steps. One day, hopefully Windows will be just a shell to play games on :-)

criddell 10y ago

Who picks their operating system first? IMHO, the OS is only there to support the applications I need to use. If those applications are available only on Windows, then your advice isn't very useful. So I would say your advice isn't helpful. Microsoft has a financial relationship with their users (especially their business users) and despite what many people think, they do listen to their customers. So I would say the best way to fix Windows 10 is to continue to let Microsoft know that you aren't happy with specific changes they've made.

floopidydoopidy 10y ago
Exactly, financially support Linux devs and your tools will follow.
NTripleOne 10y ago
And here come the "b-but you can use wine" comments, which of course everyone who would be a proponent of such would understand that it is not perfect, does not run everything and is far from user-friendly.
- jsight 10y ago
  Yeah, Wine is amazing for what is is, but is never quite good enough for current, big desktop applications.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > does not run anything Have you actually tried it in recent years? Wine runs a lot of stuff just fine. grep --files-with-matches wine ~/opt/win32/*/launch.sh | wc -l 71 The most obvious incompatibility right now is probably DX11-only software. Aside from that kind of known compatibility problem, wine has worked well for several years now. > far from user-friendly. While I agree that wine can get nasty if you need to debug anything or if you have unusual requirements, but the standard "just run this win32 binary" case has also been trivial for years. I believe some distros even enable the kernel feature that launches wine automagically when running a .exe file. > it is not perfect Of course it isn't. It is, however, worth trying.

6DM 10y ago

I've tried many times to run linux, it usually ends 3-4 hours later in frustration. I tend to run older hardware so a lot of times support isn't there. I will admit that it's getting noticeably better (or I'm getting luckier).

marcelluspye 10y ago
How old is older? There are a lot of distros designed with the purpose of making old hardware useful, up to definition of old.
- 6DM 10y ago
  Probably 2007-2010 range, I still have my budget desktop that I put together in 2008 if that gives you an idea. These were never top of the line machines so they don't get much love. I usually just went with Ubuntu because at the time it seemed like it was user friendly. I tried openSUSE at one point. If you can name a distro better aimed at supporting these types of devices I'm game.
reacweb 10y ago
After using exclusively linux at home during a couple of years, I have bought a laptop to my wife. I wanted to experience windows 8 (new at that time). It was a complete week of frustration. Almost no application are present by default, the video player complains about all file formats, installation of visual studio express succeeded only at the third try for no obvious reason. The ergonomy was a nightmare (it became usable after discovering many keyboard shortcuts that existed already in win7). Linux is fast to install (when no problem occurs). Software installation (and deinstallation) is a breeze. Everything is available out of the box. I maintain a diary with a list of non default packages to install: apt-get install nfs-common wine gnome-media openssh-server squid curl filezilla curlftpfs ethtool docker.io xtightvncviewer x11vnc tmux whois git wakeonlan youtube-dl npm sshfs Concerning support for old hardware, it was the main reason that made me switch to linux: vista64 had no support for my printer and my scanner.
- pdimitar 10y ago

justratsinacoat 10y ago

>ubuntu Look, if we're trying to avoid OSes that call home with telemetry about what you've been doing...

akerro 10y ago
Afaik Ubuntu removed that module like 2-3 years ago. It still reported like 1/100000 of what Win10 does daily.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  >It still reported like 1/100000 of what Win10 does daily Oh, absolutely, but if we're going to advise would-be Linux converts who are concerned with data leakage, may as well advertise actually-telemetry-free distros. >Afaik Ubuntu removed that module like 2-3 years ago Hey great! Link? Trust but verify...
  - ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
    For those out there that haven't bothered to do a quick search, one notable story about the issue can be found here [1]. Note that the date on that article is from 2014, and only refers to the Unity service for searching from Amazon. A later article [2] shows that Ubuntu has changed directions, but it certainly hasn't been 2-3 years. Needless to say, while it took Canonical some time, at least they dialed back what they were doing with online searches and made them opt-in. I've yet to see Microsoft, Google, or Apple dial back their telemetry services regardless of what criticism they may have faced (fair credit here, at least Apple is opt-in for the most part, though not entirely). [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus-unity-8-desktop-removes-the-amazon-search-spyware.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus-unity-8-deskt... [2] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feature-disabled-16-04 http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feat...

cptskippy 10y ago

Linux's greatest strength, freedom of choice, is also it's biggest weakness. Instead of a clear vision and focus, you have a million developers getting frustrated with half baked implementations and rolling their own half baked implementations. Because of this there's a constant churn and things can change radically from one version of a distro to the next. A user can live on the same LTS version of a distro for years but eventually they'll need to upgrade. I have yet to see anyone successfully upgrade major releases of any distro without serious issues. The process is basically format and start over. That's unacceptable. Sure Windows and macOS have their own set of problems but for the average user they just work. You don't have to dive into the bowels of the registry or modify ktext files to get most things to work and the majority of users don't even know about the CLI.

pdimitar 10y ago
Why are you getting downvoted for stating facts? Baffling.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  My feeling is that a lot of people around these parts use Linux as their desktop environment and think that just because it works for them, then it will work for everyone else. What they fail to realize is that if they're reading HN comments then they're probably above average when it comes to computer prowess and they're not reliant on someone else to support their computer needs. I've been using Linux in various forms for over 15 years in all forms including daily driver desktop, daily driver laptop, HTPC, foisting it upon my children via netbooks, custom router firmware, Raspberry Pi development, custom ROMs on cellphones, home server hosting, cloud hosting, NAS appliances, development VMs, and production VMs. I tried use the desktop environments really hard for about a decade and constantly founding myself wondering why certain tasks had to be so hard. I always chalked it up to inexperience or unfamiliarity and pushed forward but then my job required me to use OSX. I quickly realized that it was the Linux desktop envs and not me. It was also around this time my kids started using computers more heavily for school and the Linux netbooks I provided them just couldn't cut it. Surprisingly they were able to use Nexus 7 tablets for their school work with relative ease. I still use Linux daily but never on the desktop. CLI or nothing.

stinos 10y ago

> they are only getting better they sure are: difference in e.g. desktop usability with like 15 years ago is huge. You can finally install something from cd and have it up and running including audio/network/automatically mounting pendrives/... without having to touch a config file. Usually. But the problem seems to be in the getting better: I'd rather just have it good enough already right now. Too often it does, for me, as a desktop, still not feel quite right yet and still too buggy. 15 years ago a lot of things Windows just worked and now they still do and a bunch of nice stuff was added (ok crap was added as well) and for what I do with it I have close to 0 problems. I just wish I could say that everytime I try any of the distros you mention.

calferreira 10y ago

Please stop it. Seriously. When the subject "Windows 10 Privacy" comes up, linux folks come running offering linux as a magic pill, it's not. As mature as linux distro's can be there's always the hardware variable in the equation, specially on laptops using nvidia optimus, the experience still sucks. It's the truth. I have nothing against linux, i actually tried it very recently (you can see it here:https://calbertoferreira.blogspot.pt/2016/10/moving-from-windows-10-to-ubuntu_20.html https://calbertoferreira.blogspot.pt/2016/10/moving-from-win...) and got a nice initial impression of it, but i will be moving to Windows again very soon. Want to know why ? - Creating a virtual machine on virtualbox freezes my machine (excessive IO ? i have an ssd); - Battery life sucks even with powertop and such; - My wired internet connection had the same speed as my wireless connection (i disabled wireless to make sure); - Hdmi audio simply doesn't work and when i asked for help on askubuntu i was even downvoted (http://askubuntu.com/questions/845996/how-do-i-make-hdmi-sound-work-on-an-asus-n56vz http://askubuntu.com/questions/845996/how-do-i-make-hdmi-sou...)! I tried, i really did but it's a no go for me. And i feel sorry for it, because i recognise that there are advantages in linux , but until nvidia fixes the damn optimus issues, linux will be held back.

pdimitar 10y ago
Even though you're downvoted, I mostly agree with you. Most Linux proponents are people with older hardware and trivial setups: 1-2 monitors, 1 sound card and a pair of normal speakers (without subwoofer), 1 ethernet or wireless card, only 1 ISP, etc. We get it, for very regular setups Linux works fine. But there are many people who have more requirements outside the warm little box that Linux serves and I cannot understand why do these people come here convincing us this is not the case; and why are they downvoting the people who are outside this bubble. Linux is not a magic pill on the desktop. For all its strengths (and I do use it in my work every day) it's still a lousy desktop OS and this hasn't changed for 10+ years now.
- module0000 10y ago
  It's a magic pill if you can RTFM. Not everyone can. Try to keep in mind that the vast majority of internet provided services are served on linux. A large portion are developed on linux, by people that don't seem to be hindered by the parents problems. edit: typo