Is Linux faster than windows?

[Leon]

Tends to be faster due to lower resource use, at least from my experience.

 

[diapered]

One last thing, I don't recommend RedHat and derivates, I use them at work and they are just "bad". Maybe someone here had a different experience, but working with them for almost 4 years I only can say avoid them lol.

@SpikeSlania is probably going to have an opinion on that hot take

Btw, I've read about Mandriva, I didn't know there was still some interest in that distro. I started with Mandrake (I'm kind of old) and I had the worst experience in my life, no wonder it died more than 10 years ago lol.

oh shit, I know that pain. Madriva was endless frustration It died for a reason, and good riddance.

 

[SpikeSlania]

One last thing, I don't recommend RedHat and derivates, I use them at work and they are just "bad". Maybe someone here had a different experience, but working with them for almost 4 years I only can say avoid them lol.

@SpikeSlania is probably going to have an opinion on that hot take

I guess since I been summoned, yes I'm a Fedora fan and am generally positive about Fedora, but I also know Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stunted version of Fedora. Fedora is pretty much their test bed for Red Hat so we get all of the cool new toys and features way before RHEL get them in their main distro. They just have to make sure everything works perfectly before they sell RHEL to businesses while Fedora is more community driven and only second to Arch in terms of the latest drivers/programs.

But now lets take a crack at the original question.

Hello!
Since my laptop broke I've been saving up on a new PC. What's the difference between Linux and Windows? I prefer something more optimized I don't care if Linux is hard to navigate through.

What's best for gaming? I've seen videos claiming that Linux is better, but comments say otherwise with the man's claims. I just want something that doesn't affect the performance of my PC so that if can play games smoothly.

Your mileage will vary. I don't think I seen anyone ask what your hardware set up is. If you have an AMD GPU you will be great out of the box. Nvidia GPU might take a few extra steps to get going properly but the drivers are getting better. Intel APUs are greatly supported while the Intel Arc GPUs you might want to double check if the distro you use will properly support them. When it comes to gaming Linux can be better at Windows especially at running older games that Windows could struggle to run since we use Wine/Proton to run games it's a lot easier for us. But then when it comes to modern games it's down to what the developers decide. Some block out all Linux users just because they believe it will cut down on hacking so a lot of competitive online games that use kernel level anti cheat are unavailable for us. And then some games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 don't mind Linux users but also won't support us so if there's a random update that makes it difficult for us to try to play, we have to wait for 3rd parties to fix the issues and trouble shoot it ourselves which this has happened to me in the last year with battle.net and not being able to download updates for games and took changing compatibility layers in Lutris to finally get working. But then in terms is Linux faster than Windows? It varies. We do have a lot less bloat running in the background but drivers for Windows also tend to be top of the line in terms of performance so at any given time you can see better performance in either platform. But we do have Valve throwing a lot of money at Linux (arch) and they keep developing Proton so you won't have a bad experience either way.

im on arch now

You didn't say the line!
"I use Arch, BTW"

 

[wscp]

After that I went to Suse before OpenSuSe was born and it was night and day. I continued using it and moved to OpenSuSe after a while and my experience was kind of "lacky" because the transition of all the SUSE tools took more than expected, so I jumped to Archlinux and I didn't understand a thing, but even so I learned a lot from it using it only for a year.

I've faced a lot of issues with openSuse personally. Drivers never worked whenever I tried installing it. pop-os and arch (Actually, endeavoros) are much more stable in that regard.

One last thing, I don't recommend RedHat and derivates, I use them at work and they are just "bad". Maybe someone here had a different experience, but working with them for almost 4 years I only can say avoid them lol.

Nobara is the one distro I know of based on RedHat, and I believe it's quite good thanks to the immutable file system constraints. It's hard to brick your system if things are controlled enough, I suppose.

 

[Poltergeist]

Linux distros usually don't run any background bloat, so yeah, they're faster, but I must warn you: Linux doesn't work "out of the box," like some people on the internet claim it does. It can be a very rough experience for you if you don't have time, nor will, to sit and fix everything that broke, and oh boy, it'll break, trust me!

If such challenges don't concern you, I suggest you give it a shot. Just don't install it on your main machine.

 

[Leon]

Linux distros usually don't run any background bloat, so yeah, they're faster, but I must warn you: Linux doesn't work "out of the box," like some people on the internet claim it does. It can be a very rough experience for you if you don't have time, nor will, to sit and fix everything that broke, and oh boy, it'll break, trust me!

If such challenges don't concern you, I suggest you give it a shot. Just don't install it on your main machine.

The biggest problem with linux is "de-learning" to control it like windows, linux, even the easiest distros, has it's advantages and disadvantages for difficulty, especially as you get older.
Linux IS easy, if it's your first os, it's exponentially harder if your coming from osx or windows.

 

[SpikeSlania]

Linux doesn't work "out of the box," like some people on the internet claim it does. It can be a very rough experience for you if you don't have time, nor will, to sit and fix everything that broke, and oh boy, it'll break, trust me!

If such challenges don't concern you, I suggest you give it a shot. Just don't install it on your main machine.

Now that's a statement that is both true and false. It depends on the distro. A lot now days do work out of the box these days, but at the same time there is still a bunch that takes a bit to set up. With how many distros there are blanket claims like that don't hold up well. Though one thing that is vastly different from Windows and Linux is that instead of going through websites to get all of your programs, you will actually use the application store front on Linux to download most things unlike Windows where you avoid the Windows Store like the plague.

 

[Poltergeist]

A lot now days do work out of the box these days

I installed the most popular distro, Linux Mint, on my laptop that is supposed to work out of the box without any issues, and after I restarted my system, I ended up with no sound.

Linux desktop isn't reliable, and most likely never will be. I grew tired of people trying to convince others in opposite.

 

[SpikeSlania]

I installed the most popular distro, Linux Mint, on my laptop that is supposed to work out of the box without any issues, and after I restarted my system, I ended up with no sound.

Linux desktop isn't reliable, and most likely never will be. I grew tired of people trying to convince others in opposite.

Can't comment on Linux Mint since I avoid Ubuntu based distros. Never had an issue with sound on my desktop distros using my $10 logitech speakers. I did have issues briefly on my couch rig in Steam Game Mode using HDMI through my AMD GPU and that was sound stuttering which was an issue on a few kernel versions so just had to use a Distro that was on an up to date Kernel version. Other than that the only sound issues I can think of from Linux would be if you are like Linus from Linus Tech Tips and used a sound system that isn't supported but granted he used a really expensive system that hardly anyone has which you need Windows to operate.

 

[PorronFrio]

I have an Intel Celeron N4020 netbook that came with 4GB of RAM, which I later upgraded to 8GB and a 512GB SSD. Windows 11 drags on this computer, so I decided to install Linux Mint to perform daily office tasks and watch TV shows and anime. With Linux, I had a better user experience—more fluid, with less lag, and more moderate resource usage. I also dual-booted with Batocera, since I like to play games from the 90s and early 2000s. With this processor, I was able to run emulators like PSP, Dolphin, and Dreamcast, considering I connected it to a 29" CRT TV.

 

[diapered]

I have an Intel Celeron N4020 netbook that came with 4GB of RAM, which I later upgraded to 8GB and a 512GB SSD. Windows 11 drags on this computer,

lol, I bought a new i5 laptop last year and thought windows 11 was slow as hell on it. To be fair, I only use xfce (so I am used to speed) and the w11 wasn't unusable, but damn it was slow, imo. Granted, it is a budget laptop (~$300 and has 8GB soldered ram so no upgrading ), but I can only imagine how slow w11 ran on your rig. Why do they ship an os they know is going to chug on the hardware? Currently running garuda xfce and mine runs at lightspeed

 

[Johnathan Smikey Johnathan Smikey]

I would assume it does, but I haven't felt any difference.

 

[Krazy Kat]

have you ever tried MX Linux this distro's awesome and lightweight too less bloatware

 

[TheCartoonFan9890]

Yes. Just install Gentoo and you'll see a big difference.

 

[popckorn]

 

[IrkenElite]

I just installed Bazzite to see how well my PC games with it...I'm having a good time. Knock on wood, so far.