It is by far more “ready” than Linux. But even if it wasn’t, that’s where 80% of people already are. Whatever quirks Windows has, they are already aware of them.
But seriously, no, that’s not a valid argument. Forget software. Hardware compatibility alone makes those two things entirely different from each other. Tell me again what types of GPU I should buy for my Linux gaming PC using an HDR VRR display and what DE I should choose. Is the answer “any”? No? So it’s not ready.
I think you’ll find there’s mainly one group of people that fall into the “Linux isn’t ready” category - ‘Windows Power Users who cite specific use cases’.
But wait, I thought the meme was about normies that tried Linux once a long time ago and never bothered with it again. Which is it?
“Specific use cases” here seems to be “has a Nvidia GPU”, which seems to be specifically 90% of the PC market. Should a normie gamer with no tech skills who is not a power user try to migrate their mid-range PC with a 3060 to Linux? 3D modellers? Video editors? Twitch streamers?
This conversation always goes like this. Turns out that when you start scratching off all the exceptions then yes, Linux is ready to work first time out of the box. If you’re trying to salvage a specifically supported ten year old laptop with no dedicated GPU to do mostly web stuff and coding.
Man, there’s some lore behind Nvidia support in Linux. Short of it: Nvidia are assholes, they pretty much could give Linux users an on-par experience to Windows, but don’t want to. Things have been generally improving in the last 5 years or so I would say though. CUDA and PCI Passthrough also usually work, so getting a cheap Intel Arc to draw your DE and using your Nvidia for heavy lifting is a relatively cheap and ‘drop-in’ fix to your workflow.
But the thing is, while I understand that for hobbyists this is all cool Linux gossip that feeds Youtube videos and is entertaining, it’s very, very far from what a normal user expects.
Which is, you know… no lore at all.
For the record, I ran an A770 on Linux for a bit on fairly recent drivers for a bit and there was definitely something wrong (frame pacing? straight up worse performance? I’m not sure). I should give that another shot one of these days.
People keep saying this, it keeps not being true. I mean, yeah, a ten year old card may be as far behind in features as the current drivers, particularly if you’re not trying to use it in full, but even conceding that most people don’t have top tier parts, the most popular dedicated cards are the 3060 and 4060.
Drivers aren’t supposed to just show you a desktop, feature support and performance matter. “It works for my use case” it’s not the expected level of support for mainstream usage, the same way “it works on my computer” is not a valid reason to dismiss a bug.
Literally me lol. I built a brand new Nvidia machine last year, tried a few distros and just had nonstop issues with games. Which became me googling reddit forums for fix actions and advice, which would just be try a new a distro or run these commands that breaks something else so another thing works. I love foss and what it represents, but I’m not a software guy nor do I have time to waste hours googling why kingdom come is playing at 5 fps on my 4080.
Yep. And even recognizing that 4080 owners aren’t “mainstream”, either, the experience is pretty much the same on any affordable gaming laptop with a dual GPU setup or most mid-range desktop PCs.
I’d say that the rise of AMD APUs is interesting in terms of brute forcing Linux’s limitations by making Linux-friendly hardware more popular, but it’s a long way to go to GPU parity and it’s not like Linux is trivial to get running on those, either. Bazzite and SteamOS help for some applications, but I think people downplay how weird they can be to use as desktop daily drivers just by virtue of being immutable distros with some very specific gaming-focused quirks.
It is by far more “ready” than Linux. But even if it wasn’t, that’s where 80% of people already are. Whatever quirks Windows has, they are already aware of them.
But seriously, no, that’s not a valid argument. Forget software. Hardware compatibility alone makes those two things entirely different from each other. Tell me again what types of GPU I should buy for my Linux gaming PC using an HDR VRR display and what DE I should choose. Is the answer “any”? No? So it’s not ready.
I think you’ll find there’s mainly one group of people that fall into the “Linux isn’t ready” category - ‘Windows Power Users who cite specific use cases’.
But wait, I thought the meme was about normies that tried Linux once a long time ago and never bothered with it again. Which is it?
“Specific use cases” here seems to be “has a Nvidia GPU”, which seems to be specifically 90% of the PC market. Should a normie gamer with no tech skills who is not a power user try to migrate their mid-range PC with a 3060 to Linux? 3D modellers? Video editors? Twitch streamers?
This conversation always goes like this. Turns out that when you start scratching off all the exceptions then yes, Linux is ready to work first time out of the box. If you’re trying to salvage a specifically supported ten year old laptop with no dedicated GPU to do mostly web stuff and coding.
Man, there’s some lore behind Nvidia support in Linux. Short of it: Nvidia are assholes, they pretty much could give Linux users an on-par experience to Windows, but don’t want to. Things have been generally improving in the last 5 years or so I would say though. CUDA and PCI Passthrough also usually work, so getting a cheap Intel Arc to draw your DE and using your Nvidia for heavy lifting is a relatively cheap and ‘drop-in’ fix to your workflow.
Was using CUDA a problem?
Does someone want to convince me that the whole AI industry is training their models on windows machines?
Yeah, I know.
But the thing is, while I understand that for hobbyists this is all cool Linux gossip that feeds Youtube videos and is entertaining, it’s very, very far from what a normal user expects.
Which is, you know… no lore at all.
For the record, I ran an A770 on Linux for a bit on fairly recent drivers for a bit and there was definitely something wrong (frame pacing? straight up worse performance? I’m not sure). I should give that another shot one of these days.
My 1080 Ti was plug&play in Mint …
People keep saying this, it keeps not being true. I mean, yeah, a ten year old card may be as far behind in features as the current drivers, particularly if you’re not trying to use it in full, but even conceding that most people don’t have top tier parts, the most popular dedicated cards are the 3060 and 4060.
Drivers aren’t supposed to just show you a desktop, feature support and performance matter. “It works for my use case” it’s not the expected level of support for mainstream usage, the same way “it works on my computer” is not a valid reason to dismiss a bug.
If being ready means “runs Windows applications” to you, then obviously Windows will always be the best choice.
Like, what a metric lol
Next you’re gonna tell me MacOS isn’t ready either, because you can’t play many Windows games on it as well
Literally me lol. I built a brand new Nvidia machine last year, tried a few distros and just had nonstop issues with games. Which became me googling reddit forums for fix actions and advice, which would just be try a new a distro or run these commands that breaks something else so another thing works. I love foss and what it represents, but I’m not a software guy nor do I have time to waste hours googling why kingdom come is playing at 5 fps on my 4080.
Yep. And even recognizing that 4080 owners aren’t “mainstream”, either, the experience is pretty much the same on any affordable gaming laptop with a dual GPU setup or most mid-range desktop PCs.
I’d say that the rise of AMD APUs is interesting in terms of brute forcing Linux’s limitations by making Linux-friendly hardware more popular, but it’s a long way to go to GPU parity and it’s not like Linux is trivial to get running on those, either. Bazzite and SteamOS help for some applications, but I think people downplay how weird they can be to use as desktop daily drivers just by virtue of being immutable distros with some very specific gaming-focused quirks.
Complaining about hardware compatibility on Linux while Windows 11 doesn’t even support first gen Ryzen CPUs is crazy.