Moved to Linux as primary OS.

odoe

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 10, 2001
Messages
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So I've usually kept a Linux VM around, but haven't had a machine of only Linux since Gentoo and some Red Hat stuff years ago.

My Windows install crapped out and I ended up installing Mint on the whole thing and I couldn't be happier. This is way easier than it used to be. I had used Ubuntu for a couple of days, but wasn't a fan of that sidebar, so Mint seemed like a nice choice and I'm happy with it. I'm very at home with the terminal and tmux, so that's not an issue.

I still have to use Windows for some projects, so I spin up a VM in VMWare and it is way faster than it was on Windows, that's for sure. I'm also using Remmima to remote to a some Windows machines with no issues. Only trouble so far is WebEx doesn't seem to like my USB Headset, but it works everywhere else so far. Also having trouble getting this Brother wireless printer hooked up, but I think I just need to dig into CUPS for that one.

So yeah, I think I'll stick with it. This is much more comfortable for me. This is pretty much how I use my MBP, but without the $$ attached.
 
The only thing keeping me on windows anymore is games. Well, and remote desktop; I use RemoteApps, and I have yet to see an RDP client for linux that can do RemoteApps.

Otherwise, most flavors of linux offer a decent desktop anymore.
 
I personally prefer Windows 8.1 as my primary OS since it is nice and fast. (Virtualbox also works quickly in it with Win7, Vista, WinXP and Ubuntu virtual installs.) However, I think it is great that Linux Desktop is still around and improving over the years. I have used it on and off since about 1997 with Caldera Open Linux being my first use of it.

That said, enjoy and have fun.
 
I'd be able to switch when Apple, Adobe and Avid get their products on Linux, but I'm still not convinced there'd be that much value in me doing that even then. I'm generally pretty pleased with commercial operating systems and not displeased with their costs.

If I were running a business with many machines, I'd probably be much more concerned with OS licensing costs, but on a personal scale, it hasn't been a problem.
 
I still have to go back to my MBP when I have to use XCode, just like I need my Windows VMs for Visual Studio/IIS and what not. As of right now, I don't have any particular apps in either platform that I really miss, well maybe Alfred/Launchy, but that's about it. I don't do hardcore Adobe stuff but I can see how that could keep me on Apple. I don't play many PC games anymore, so that frees me up as well.
 
I switched about a year ago. My biggest grippe is lack of proper multi monitor support. Can't have more than 2 per X session without jumping through some hoops or sacrificing a lot and it's very flaky. Right now I have not been doing much coding so I'm just running on one monitor, I will have to figure out the other 2 later on once I get back to my coding projects. I may just use two raspberry Pi's to drive them if I can find a HDMI to VGA converter and then use synergy. Otherwise I'll build two separate 1U boxes and run the cables from my server room.

I only boot to Windows for certain games, that's about it. I do miss photoshop though, gimp is really tedious and annoying to use I find.
 
I love Linux Mint. I'm running 14 on my old Core 2 Duo laptop, and it's real nice. Do remember that if you have the Windows itch, VM's work both ways. You could always install a virtual machine in Linux running Windows. :)
 
Yep I like Mint too. I''m currently using 15 with the 3.12 kernel. I'm also using the nVidia 331.17 driver. No issues.

Xfce is a great DE with it. It's snappy and relatively easy to customize. I got transparency going with a couple of clicks. I like the dusk appearance settings.

If you want to install Mint from within Windows and use them both try the Mate DE. It has a Windows installer. It's stable and easy to adapt to as well.

Install 15, slap all your updates on it then switch to the 3.12 kernel.

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-ke...r-os-elementary-os-debian-wheezy-and-kwheezy/

After doing that I've a habit of doing sudo update-grub before I restart.

If you're using an nVidia card, after that's done, pop the terminal and go-

sudo mdm stop
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-331
sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo shutdown -r now

331.17 works fine on a GTX 660 and I've not tested it on other cards. Many are supported though.

One warning, when I tried kernels at or greater than 3.11.6, Cinnamon became broken. Xfce and Mate did not. Things may have changed or been tuned by now though.

I've run Skyrim on Steam through PlayOnLinux without issues. I also tried the Linux version of the Valley bench for the heck of it. My 660 got 47FPS with Ultra settings and
no AA @ 1920x and 42 something with Ultra settings @ 1920x with 4xAA. 8x AA is crippling to my 660 in Windows or Linux with this bench so I didn't bother with that.

I should note I'm using a custom BIOS with my 660. Its def power is 142-147 and it boosts to 1176. 1137-1176 is typical for a Valley run. Mem is set @ 3300. I've tried higher clocks
and they're not worth it with the card's cooling. What I've set now is the card's sweet spot.

The below guide helped me get Skyrim running.

http://www.gamersonlinux.com/forum/threads/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-guide.331/

Other games this fellow has tested:

https://sites.google.com/site/gamecaveoffline/linux-games
 
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The only thing keeping me on windows anymore is games. Well, and remote desktop; I use RemoteApps, and I have yet to see an RDP client for linux that can do RemoteApps.

Otherwise, most flavors of linux offer a decent desktop anymore.

Not quite the same as the built in appstreaming, but this works pretty well for me. I just install the ThinLinc shell on a Win TS, and put together a shell script named outlook on the linux client, that contains the following lines:

---
cred="$(cat /etc/security/creds/win-username)"
rdesktop -d domain -u username -p $cred -A -s "%programfiles%\ThinLinc\WTSTools\seamlessrdpshell.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\OUTLOOK.exe" SERVERIP/HOSTNAME
---

the cred stuff is just for reading my AD password from a file and injecting it, so of course you can remove that if you don't want auto-login, I use this a lot for winexe as well since I admin a mostly-windows environment from a linux workstation.

(the /etc/security/creds/win-username file contains only a single line with my AD password in plain text)
 
Unless Microsoft hires Stephen Elop as their next CEO, most people will probably be moving to Linux.

*This is a tongue-in-cheek statement*.
 
I'm just about to give Mint a go on my wifes retired Q6600 HP machine to have a look at it.
I'm fed up with all the Windows hassles with each iteration of a new OS.
I'm still running Win 7 on my main PC but I'd sooner give Linux a try before wasting more time having to relearn yet another MS OS with marginal gains in performance and the necessary bulk dollar hardware upgrades.
I did look at Ubuntu a few years ago and almost did the switch then.
 
Tried it, saw zero benefits and went back to Windows. I have neither will nor time for a sidegrade switch at best.
 
At times I was getting a little chop when casters would gang up on me and fire off spells in Skyrim.
It turns out my CPU was dropping to low clocks sometimes indoors and in cities. That was the culprit.
Fixed it with cpufreq.

The command for that app-

sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

I manually set "performance" before I start the game. Now I've zero complaints.

Currently, I've Mint 16 with MATE on one computer. Ubuntu 13.10 is on my laptop
and my other computer. I don't miss Windows at all.
 
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Tried it, saw zero benefits and went back to Windows. I have neither will nor time for a sidegrade switch at best.

I'll reserve any comments until I've given Mint a go on the old pc, but from what I've seen the pluses far outweigh the negatives, at least to make it worth giving it a try.
Especially if it's going to be easier to run a VM from Mint.

I don't really have any issues with Win 7, just that when you see what they've done to it in Win 8 and now 8.1 and what they've done with Office and how the 2010 version has been overcomplicated from the 2003 version I can't see any good point going on with MS products or as my primary OS.

Sure I'll get used to 2010, but from my point of view it's now got so cluttered. Happy to have a look at Open Office and Gimp software :)
 
Tried it, saw zero benefits and went back to Windows. I have neither will nor time for a sidegrade switch at best.

The absolute best benefit is that you're no longer on the Windows bandwagon. I absolutely love Windows 7, but hate the direction MS is going with 8 and 8.1, so I like having an alternative. My guess is that Windows is going to get worse, not better, so being familiar with alternatives just makes sense. Mint is by far the best of the distros I've tested so far.
 
If it is between Win 8.x and Linux I would also rather go Linux. But I'll stay on Win 7 as long as it is viable. Even if Win 9 continues with the downward spiral, I don't see Win 7 going anywhere soon.

Then there are video playback (things like LAV, madVR and MPC-HC), gaming and general familiarity that are the main reasons for me to stay with Windows. It would be hard to lose that AND learn everything from scratch to customize and set up properly all of my computers.
 
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If I were still playing PC games like I used to, I would probably be Windows as primary still and Linux in VM. But these days, I rarely play PC games and my main focus is development, which in the kind of work I do is just simpler to do on a Linux environment.

I still have about half a dozen Windows VMs from WinServer 2003 to 2012 and 8.1 that I have to spin up for client work and they work flawlessly. Remmina, I think it's called has been great for RDP as well.

Now that I'm just about back in Linux groove, I'm thinking of going vanilla Debian just to see what it's like.
 
Tried it, saw zero benefits and went back to Windows. I have neither will nor time for a sidegrade switch at best.

Linux is not for everyone. Similar to how Windows is not for everyone. I have not use Windows personally since Win98 because I find the OS very restrictive. Its processes are so cryptic, it takes forever to troubleshoot simple issues. And I still don't get Windows users fascination with reinstalling their OS. It is such a time consuming process. At the end of the day, people have choices to use the tools which fits their needs.
 
If you don't know why you need linux, you probably are not the user who will benefit from it (devs/admins).

Windows is fine enough and 'works' when you get some obscure device or obscure setup (still took me 2 hours to get quad monitor on Centos - works out of the box in Windows)
 
Linux is not for everyone. Similar to how Windows is not for everyone. I have not use Windows personally since Win98 because I find the OS very restrictive. Its processes are so cryptic, it takes forever to troubleshoot simple issues. And I still don't get Windows users fascination with reinstalling their OS. It is such a time consuming process. At the end of the day, people have choices to use the tools which fits their needs.

If the last time you've used Windows much was 98 then that might be the reason you're saying these things. The majority of the time I can take an error message or issue, plug it into a search engine and find an answer and solution if 5 minutes. And the Event Viewer is your friend, Windows these days does do a fair job of telling what's going wrong and there are a good number of one click automatic troubleshooting tools that fix a whole host of issues.

Of course plenty of things can go wrong with Windows considering the vast array of hardware and software that it supports and there's always things that are hard to find easy fixes to, but that's the case for any OS when you through enough hardware and software at it. Eventually something is going to crap out. The biggest reliability and stability issue for Windows unique to it is malware, without question Windows has much more difficulty with it than any other OS. It's easy enough to avoid overall but there's still too many people that just install anything and open any attachment.
 
If you don't know why you need linux, you probably are not the user who will benefit from it (devs/admins).

The one benefit for people like this would be less malware. If one is just using a desktop or laptop to do basic stuff I've long said that Linux is perfectly viable. That said even in those situations time to time they'll want to plug in a printer or some other device or run a program and then the problems start.
 
If the last time you've used Windows much was 98 then that might be the reason you're saying these things. The majority of the time I can take an error message or issue, plug it into a search engine and find an answer and solution if 5 minutes. And the Event Viewer is your friend, Windows these days does do a fair job of telling what's going wrong and there are a good number of one click automatic troubleshooting tools that fix a whole host of issues.

Sometimes it can be frustrating as hell though.

I eventually gave up on my backup solution on Windows. Not only do they have all sorts of idiotic restrictions on my version (Home Premium), but every time the backup runs, after about an hour it fails with, "Backup Failed with unspecified error 0x80004005." I just couldn't take it anymore.

If you take the time and learn Linux and know your way around, everything is so much easier in my experience. My backups on Linux take a little over a minute and they're rock-solid, never give me any problems and are completely transparent. And if something were to happen, I wouldn't be dealing with a black box.
 
I have not use Windows personally since Win98 because I find the OS very restrictive. Its processes are so cryptic, it takes forever to troubleshoot simple issues.

Windows 98 is a completely different animal. The difference between Windows 98 and Windows 7 is like the difference between a late 40's Formula One car and a present day Formula One car.

As for being restrictive, it might depend on what you're doing, but as far as 'normal' hardware goes, I haven't found anything I can't do with Windows that I can with Linux. I also can't see a single good reason why Windows would be more difficult to troubleshoot, either. Windows' kernel and internals are much newer and more modern than what Linux offers, but certainly not much more complicated. Adept troubleshooting skills are essentially platform agnostic.

For almost everything, both platforms are equally capable. People who claim Linux is 'so much better' than Windows generally are lacking in their experience and understanding in Linux and/or Windows. And if it comes down to two different but nearly equivalent platforms, I personally am going to pick the one with the large commercial support.
 
I personally prefer Windows 8.1 as my primary OS since it is nice and fast. (Virtualbox also works quickly in it with Win7, Vista, WinXP and Ubuntu virtual installs.) However, I think it is great that Linux Desktop is still around and improving over the years. I have used it on and off since about 1997 with Caldera Open Linux being my first use of it.

That said, enjoy and have fun.

I just installed Windows 8.1 and so far I hate it. I'm giving it a fair shot but so far this new start menu bugs the shit out of me. It does run well though.
 
Windows 98 is a completely different animal. The difference between Windows 98 and Windows 7 is like the difference between a late 40's Formula One car and a present day Formula One car.

As for being restrictive, it might depend on what you're doing, but as far as 'normal' hardware goes, I haven't found anything I can't do with Windows that I can with Linux. I also can't see a single good reason why Windows would be more difficult to troubleshoot, either. Windows' kernel and internals are much newer and more modern than what Linux offers, but certainly not much more complicated. Adept troubleshooting skills are essentially platform agnostic.

For almost everything, both platforms are equally capable. People who claim Linux is 'so much better' than Windows generally are lacking in their experience and understanding in Linux and/or Windows. And if it comes down to two different but nearly equivalent platforms, I personally am going to pick the one with the large commercial support.

I don't know what your argument is here. No one said Linux was better. Are you saying that the current version of Windows will work better than my current Linux setup? Win98 didn't work how I wanted it, so I switch to something that worked at that time. That same tool has continued to work so I have not seen the reason or felt the need to invest in a new tool. I surely hope you don't think a piece of code is better because you get commercial support.
 
Experimenting with Neverwinter and Drakensang now.

I've always been an RPG nerd, so why not.

I'm going to try doing AoC through PlayOnLinux too with what I've learned.

EDIT: Yep, AoC will run fine through PlayOnLinux with Wine 1.7.6.
 
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Linux is not for everyone. Similar to how Windows is not for everyone. I have not use Windows personally since Win98 because I find the OS very restrictive. Its processes are so cryptic, it takes forever to troubleshoot simple issues. And I still don't get Windows users fascination with reinstalling their OS. It is such a time consuming process. At the end of the day, people have choices to use the tools which fits their needs.

I did Windows support for 20 years and I'm now the Windows client subject matter expert for our information security team and I've never found Windows that restrictive or cryptic, at least not until Windows 8. Windows 8 is more restrictive because MS has decided it knows best and it wants to force Metro/Modern down your throat whether you want it or not. Since I'm a Desktop user and don't have touch screen laptops, I want to use only the desktop, not any part of Metro/Modern, but you can't do that unless you want to use third party utilities. I will say that I haven't had to reinstall Windows 7 on any of my home machines except for on new builds. One nice thing I liked about Windows 7 was that it installs in about 10 - 15 minutes. Hardly time consuming. That said, due to the problems I have with Windows 8 listed above, I've been trying out various Linux distros and have found them to be quite compelling.

The one benefit for people like this would be less malware. If one is just using a desktop or laptop to do basic stuff I've long said that Linux is perfectly viable. That said even in those situations time to time they'll want to plug in a printer or some other device or run a program and then the problems start.

Ubuntu 12.04LTS and Mint 15 both found my Wireless HP Printer and installed a driver for it without any issues whatsoever. Actually, much easier then Windows, which I found ironic.

I just installed Windows 8.1 and so far I hate it. I'm giving it a fair shot but so far this new start menu bugs the shit out of me. It does run well though.

Yep. Had the RC of Windows 8 on a spare computer for about 6 months and hated it. Almost bought it because it was so cheap when released, but hated the way MS is forcing their crap touch interface on Desktop users, so I decided to stick with Windows 7 and now, certain Linux distros on certain of my machines. If MS continues to try to gain mobile market share at the expense of Desktop users, I can see myself going Linux only after Win7 support ends.
 
I switched to Linux full time for productivity several years ago. Started with Ubuntu. After a while and lots of frustration with Gnome and UNITY I jumped to KDE (Kbuntu).
I game on a Win7 machine but it is funny how frustrating I find Windows to use now.
I have gotten pretty comfortable with the Ubuntu ecosystem (debian packages) so I stick with -buntu versions of distros. (Xbuntu,Kbuntu) Xfce is a relatively light and fast desktops that works great on older systems and laptops.
 
So I've usually kept a Linux VM around, but haven't had a machine of only Linux since Gentoo and some Red Hat stuff years ago.

...

So yeah, I think I'll stick with it. This is much more comfortable for me. This is pretty much how I use my MBP, but without the $$ attached.

Good on you for switching. I have been using Linux as my primary OS for decades. Although I usually have a number of systems lying around.

I switched about a year ago. My biggest grippe is lack of proper multi monitor support. Can't have more than 2 per X session without jumping through some hoops or sacrificing a lot and it's very flaky.

I have some experience with this having done multi monitor linux setups for quite a long time. There are a number of things you need to do, including editing your raw xwindows config files. I also have found that generally Nvidia cards still have better support than AMD for linux. Although AMD has put a lot more into that area the last few years. In any case, if you want some help with it, pm me with what you have done, perhaps I might know some tricks you haven't tried yet.
 
Good on you for switching. I have been using Linux as my primary OS for decades. Although I usually have a number of systems lying around.



I have some experience with this having done multi monitor linux setups for quite a long time. There are a number of things you need to do, including editing your raw xwindows config files. I also have found that generally Nvidia cards still have better support than AMD for linux. Although AMD has put a lot more into that area the last few years. In any case, if you want some help with it, pm me with what you have done, perhaps I might know some tricks you haven't tried yet.

Actually I heard the opposite, that ATI is better (for multi monitor). I recently switched to ATI as I was having nothing but issues with the nvidia drivers (artifacts all over the screen would appear at random, GUI lockups etc). I've been busy with other stuff so did not get a chance to revisit the multi monitor thing yet. I want to look at getting two new monitors for the side ones as if I can get monitors that support DVI it will make my life easier as I have display port to DVI adaptors and those don't work if you put a VGA adapter at the end.
 
Sometimes it can be frustrating as hell though.

I eventually gave up on my backup solution on Windows. Not only do they have all sorts of idiotic restrictions on my version (Home Premium), but every time the backup runs, after about an hour it fails with, "Backup Failed with unspecified error 0x80004005." I just couldn't take it anymore.

If you take the time and learn Linux and know your way around, everything is so much easier in my experience. My backups on Linux take a little over a minute and they're rock-solid, never give me any problems and are completely transparent. And if something were to happen, I wouldn't be dealing with a black box.

Did a full Windows Drive Image backup last night of my Lenovo x220t SSD on Windows 8.1, 157 GB on the 512 GB SSD wired over the network, 35 minutes. Easy peasy.

Throw enough hardware and software at a either Linux or Windows, you're going to run into issues, it's inevitable and even then some people won't have issues under similar circumstances. People can debate what's easier to use but there's no question that Windows is much better supported formally by 3rd parties. Just try putting Linux on one of these new Bay Trail tablets or hybrids. Doable but with no support there are no drivers and they aren't going to come from the OEMs or Intel anytime soon. And Android isn't desktop Linux. Not a Linux problem directly but as is the case that Microsoft suffers with Windows Phone, when you don't have a lot of market share, you don't get a lot of support from 3rd parties.

Ubuntu 12.04LTS and Mint 15 both found my Wireless HP Printer and installed a driver for it without any issues whatsoever. Actually, much easier then Windows, which I found ironic.

Windows 8.x automatically installs drivers for networked connected printers, it's worked perfectly with my Brother MFC-9840CDW. Unfortunately it doesn't automatically install drivers for the scanners of multi-function printers like this one AFAIK.
 
Did a full Windows Drive Image backup last night of my Lenovo x220t SSD on Windows 8.1, 157 GB on the 512 GB SSD wired over the network, 35 minutes. Easy peasy.

I'm happy to hear you're having an enjoyable experience. Have you found the solution to my 0x80004005 error yet? :)

Throw enough hardware and software at a either Linux or Windows, you're going to run into issues, it's inevitable and even then some people won't have issues under similar circumstances. People can debate what's easier to use but there's no question that Windows is much better supported formally by 3rd parties. Just try putting Linux on one of these new Bay Trail tablets or hybrids. Doable but with no support there are no drivers and they aren't going to come from the OEMs or Intel anytime soon. And Android isn't desktop Linux. Not a Linux problem directly but as is the case that Microsoft suffers with Windows Phone, when you don't have a lot of market share, you don't get a lot of support from 3rd parties.

Mostly true. Though give Intel a lot of credit -- they had Bay Trail drivers in the kernel before it was released. They've already submitted patches for Broadwell too. Like NVIDIA they're pretty good with day one support.
 
I'm happy to hear you're having an enjoyable experience. Have you found the solution to my 0x80004005 error yet? :)

There are a lot search results for this specific error but in general from what I've looked at briefly is that it seems to have something to do with access to backup storage. In the case of a DVD/CD backup the solution is to ignore it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982727/en-us.

Mostly true. Though give Intel a lot of credit -- they had Bay Trail drivers in the kernel before it was released. They've already submitted patches for Broadwell too. Like NVIDIA they're pretty good with day one support.

The success of Atom SoCs is critical to Intel and they are stressing cross platform support very heavily.
 
Actually I heard the opposite, that ATI is better (for multi monitor). I recently switched to ATI as I was having nothing but issues with the nvidia drivers (artifacts all over the screen would appear at random, GUI lockups etc). I've been busy with other stuff so did not get a chance to revisit the multi monitor thing yet. I want to look at getting two new monitors for the side ones as if I can get monitors that support DVI it will make my life easier as I have display port to DVI adaptors and those don't work if you put a VGA adapter at the end.

I just recently heard that as well, but i have been using multi monitor setups with linux for over a decade, never really had too many problems. However, it is not intuitive and there are a number of steps you have to go through to get it setup correctly. I haven't tried multi-monitor with AMD because I had so many problems with their drivers and linux over the years. It is getting better, and I will probably test them out some more when I get the new vmware server setup this next year. About 2 years ago i developed a baseline for quad monitor vmware workstation systems with Nvidia quadro cards on both Ubuntu and RedHat distros. We couldn't get it to work with the AMD firegl at the time. I still have some 6950s sitting around though, most likely support will be better now.

As for the DVI vs VGA, you definitely want to get monitors that use DVI or HDMI. Digital adapters to the analogue VGA can be prone to issues sometimes. Especially if you required active display port.

EDIT: By the way, an interesting article today about the multi-monitor support for Nvidia and AMD at phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=quad_monitor_linux&num=8.
 
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Actually I heard the opposite, that ATI is better (for multi monitor). I recently switched to ATI as I was having nothing but issues with the nvidia drivers (artifacts all over the screen would appear at random, GUI lockups etc). I've been busy with other stuff so did not get a chance to revisit the multi monitor thing yet. I want to look at getting two new monitors for the side ones as if I can get monitors that support DVI it will make my life easier as I have display port to DVI adaptors and those don't work if you put a VGA adapter at the end.

I've been a long time Nvidia user since their drivers have historically been better, but with my last video card I decided to give AMD a try (5850) since I had heard that their linux drivers have gotten better. Dual monitor has worked just fine, but performance using the proprietary drivers has been terrible (e.g. slow moving windows) and I actually get better performance using the open source drivers. I was also experiencing lots of artifacting, but this seems to have been fixed in later driver versions. For my next card, I'll be going back to Nvidia, we'll see how it goes.

I'm really hoping that Steam Machine takes off and gaming on Linux in general grows and gets better, can maybe dump Windows altogether!

(Running Ubuntu Gnome currently, FYI).
 
I just installed Windows 8.1 and so far I hate it. I'm giving it a fair shot but so far this new start menu bugs the shit out of me. It does run well though.

What else do you hate about it besides the start menu which is easy enough to fix? I ask as I've deployed a bunch of windows 8 pro systems and we just load classic shell or start 8 and no one seems to care.
 
Now that I'm just about back in Linux groove, I'm thinking of going vanilla Debian just to see what it's like.
it's awesome. I highly recommend it compared to any of the *buntu's or mints or whatever else people are currently excited over.

having come from gentoo myself, what over ten years ago?, I'm extremely appreciative of teething on a stage1 install. but now that I simply want something to run and run well with the ease of apt-get on top of it all I find debian does all I want and then some.
 
What else do you hate about it besides the start menu which is easy enough to fix? I ask as I've deployed a bunch of windows 8 pro systems and we just load classic shell or start 8 and no one seems to care.

You weren't asking me, but I'll give you my reasons. Forcing a touch screen interface on non-touch screen devices, the charms bar and anything that jars you out of regular "desktop" mode and into Metro/Modern, plus the removal of Aero, which I liked (same with the Start Menu). They could have provided desktop users a much better experience, with the ability of the OS to detect touchscreens and activate Metro/Modern, or give us a on/off switch. Instead, they decided to force us into the current mess to artificially drive mobile sales, which has not gone over well with their consumers.Worse, for MS is that their decisions and the direction the company has talked about for future versions of Windows has turned off enough long time Windows users that, like me, they are now looking into alternatives. I worked helpdesk/desktop support for 20 years and in that time was very familiar and comfortable with Windows. Windows 8 is the first consumer version I skipped, aside from ME (which I don't count). If MS continues to force desktop users into using their crap touchscreen interface, I'll likely move to Mint, or Ubuntu. I don't game nearly as much as I used to, so Linux works just fine for my needs and at least with Mint the interface is very similar to the old Windows style.
 
I'd kind of like to switch. I used OpenSuSE exclusively for several months after we moved (before I had my office set up), and it worked fine. The big reasons I haven't switched, other than Win 7 works fine, is AutoCAD, my scanner (film scanner), and games. I can run a VM for AutoCAD & maybe my scanner, so when I wean myself off games I'll probably get off the Windows wagon. I moved my file server to FreeBSD quite some time ago and have been quite happy with it.
 
Actually I heard the opposite, that ATI is better (for multi monitor). I recently switched to ATI as I was having nothing but issues with the nvidia drivers (artifacts all over the screen would appear at random, GUI lockups etc). I've been busy with other stuff so did not get a chance to revisit the multi monitor thing yet. I want to look at getting two new monitors for the side ones as if I can get monitors that support DVI it will make my life easier as I have display port to DVI adaptors and those don't work if you put a VGA adapter at the end.

IMHO, 2D support for multimonitor best -> worst is:

OSS Radeon Driver with 2 of (dvi/vga/hdmi) + n*displayport.
Binary Nvidia driver with 650GTX or higher with 3-4 monitors
Binary Radeon driver (I think I had this working, once....)
OSS nvidia > 2? not sure
 
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