Tag: atlas os

“The Linux philosophy is ‘Laugh in the face of danger’. Oops. Wrong One. ‘Do it yourself’. Yes, that’s it.”

Linus Torvalds – Creator of the Linux Kernel

Microsoft Windows has been a part of my entire life. I grew up with it at home, at school, and later on at work. When I reached the end of high school, I had a life goal: to work for Microsoft. The only time I used Linux was when I needed to bypass security controls on our home computer so that I could game when I was supposed to be doing my homework. However, since the release of Windows 8 and the interface changes Microsoft continues to push; I decided to change my daily driver to Linux. As you will find out, it wasn’t that simple.

Why?

Since Windows 8, Microsoft has been pushing an update to its interface and dumping any interface that still looks like it was built in Windows 98. While some of these changes have been great, many have been terrible. The list is pretty long, but here are the top things that have pushed me over the edge:

• Windows 11 has decided to hide context menus. If you right-click a file, you must click more options to see what you want. (Whoever thought this was a good idea….Shame)
• Windows 10 and 11 are trying to do away with Metro UI from Windows 8. However, there are still Metro UI elements in Windows 11, on top of the new UI from Windows 10. Hell, there are still UI elements from Windows 98.
• The endless push to get you to sign in with a Microsoft Account instead of a local account
• Targeted Ads – Tracking telemetry
• Ads in the start menu
• The amount of bloat being shipped in standard Windows installs.
• General lack of cohesion
• Forcing Windows Server to use the same UI as consumer Windows.

I’ve stayed with Windows mostly because it’s still one of the most used operating systems in the world and its gaming credentials. While I use Linux more and more at work, most of what I do at home is on Linux. I love to game on my PC, and for the longest time, Windows was the only way to game on a PC. That changed recently with the release of the Valve Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs Linux with a compatibility layer called Proton that allows you to play Windows games on Linux easily. Proton isn’t new. It’s a supercharged version of the compatibility tool called Wine. I’ve used Wine in the past, and while some things worked well, it was always a bit janky and didn’t always work. After getting my Steam Deck, I realized that times have changed, and maybe it was time to give Linux another shot.

Setup

I have two computers at home. A gaming computer I built myself and a laptop I use for gaming and work. Since I know I will need at least one computer with Windows, I decided to trial-run Linux on my laptop. This was my first mistake, as some laptops are better suited to Linx than others; I’ll get to that in a minute. After deciding to use my laptop, it was time to pick a distro. In the past, I have usually stuck with Debian-based distros like Ubuntu or Mint, but I wanted to try something fresh. When it comes to Linux, they usually come in two different flavors, Point Releases (LTS) and Rolling Releases. Point Releases or Long Term Support releases are usually distros like Ubuntu or Fedora that release big updates and drivers once or twice a year. Point Releases have been the gold standard since Linux was made, but in the last few years that has changed. Rolling Releases are distros that update as soon as a driver or update is released. They are usually cutting-edge and have all the latest and greatest features. Arch Linux is one of those distros and has been growing in popularity over the last six years to the point it is one of the most popular distros around. I tried it a couple of times in 2015 and struggled with it. However, I wanted to try it again because most users who game on Linux swear by it. Instead of installing true Arch Linux, I decided to go with a distro called Manjaro. It’s a more user-friendly Arch Linux and has a lot of built-in scripts to get Steam up and running for gaming. I will be installing it on the following:

• Asus G15 Laptop 3070ti AMD 5900HS 32GB Ram
• Logitech MX Master Mouse

Installation

Unlike the command line installer that comes with Arch Linux, Manjaro comes with a simple-to-use interface to get everything set up. It was no different than setting up Ubuntu. After installing, I was greeted with a nice desktop interface. That was when the trouble began. While everything worked, my Bluetooth mouse did not. I have a Logitech MX master mouse which I love. For whatever reason, it would not show up in the Bluetooth menu. Per the Arch documentation, it should just work, but it just wouldn’t. Looking around on Reddit and Manjaro forums, I found this thread about installing different Bluetooth managers. At this point, we went off the rails. By testing some of these out, I destroyed the package manager and could not install any packages. At this point, I spent about 2 hours trying to get my mouse working and was incredibly frustrated. I had seen a post earlier that said Manjaro wasn’t a true version of Arch Linux with all the under-the-hood changes they made. I decided to try Arch and see if I would have better luck.

He did not have better luck.

Narrator

Arch Linux comes with nothing. It’s a minimalist Linux system and doesn’t come with anything. It gives you enough tools to get up and running; the rest is up to you. I installed a GUI, got the OS up to date, and got display drivers running. Arch doesn’t come with Bluetooth support. You have to install the Bluetooth stack. There are many versions you can pick from, but I went with the default utility package. This is where I ran into almost the same problem. The mouse would pair this time but wouldn’t control the screen. I spent another hour on this before I closed my laptop and just walked away. The next day after doing some research, I found some very interesting things:

• Some laptops are more Linux-compatible than others. Gaming Laptops have a lot of custom firmware to control the fans, RGB lighting, and other system resources. This software is usually written for Windows and has no Linux-provided support.
• A team of developers has specifically made guides and firmware for Asus gaming laptops.

Without knowing it when I started, I had picked hard mode to get Linux installed on my laptop. During my late-night search, I stumbled on the folks over at asus-linux.org. This team of developers has been working on getting Asus Laptops working on Arch Linux and Fedora. Their guide specifically calls out not to install Manjaro on your laptop due to multiple compatibility issues. While they have a very straightforward guide to Arch Linux, the guide that caught my eye was the one for Fedora. Fedora has been around a long time, and while it may not be bleeding edge, it does try to be a middle ground between Arch and Ubuntu. I have used it before, and I am a lot more comfortable with it than Arch.

Installing Fedora 37 is very straightforward. I had zero issues getting everything up and running. While I have no love for the Gnome interface and its touch-centric design, unlike Windows, I can change it to whatever I want. Bluetooth worked without issues, my mouse paired, and all the hotkeys worked. The Fedora guide was straightforward, and getting the Nvidia drivers to work was a breeze. My only issue was that booting from a hibernated state can take about 1 minute to boot. This issue concerns the Sabrent NVMe drives; developers say it will be fixed. Before I get into my day-to-day driving of Fedora, I need to take a minute and call out Nvidia.

Nvidia

Unlike Intel and AMD, Nvidia does not open-source its drivers for Linux. They do provide a blob that you can run, but in almost all distro’s you need to do special changes under the hood to get them to work without breaking your whole system. The open-source equivalent of this is a package called Nouveau. The developers for this package, with little to no support from Nvidia have been hacking and patching support on Linux. It works but it’s never been great. If I had gotten a laptop with Intel CPU/AMD GPU or AMD CPU/AMD GPU I would have had little to no issues running in Linux. While Nvidia has stated they will partially open-source their driver for Linux, the progress has been very slow. If you plan on moving to Linux to game in the future, just be aware that Linux gets treated like crap compared to Windows. I hope that changes in the future, and frankly, I am disappointed.

Trial Run

Broadly speaking, running Fedora on my laptop daily has been a breeze. I enjoy seeing daily updates to the kernel and being able to tweak performance at will. Steam and its Proton compatibility work amazingly well. Some games do better than others, but for the most part, I only had a few issues here and there playing games. One of the only major issues is that most Anti-Cheat software doesn’t support Linux. Because of this, most online games don’t work. With older games, like Total War: Rome II, the game would have issues seeing the correct amount of VRAM on my GPU. None of these issues were game-breaking, and I could game without issue. Emulation also worked well, and playing my Nintendo Switch and DS games via emulation was a breeze. While the team over at Asus-linux.org have done a great job of providing 1 to 1 tooling from Windows, it’s not perfect. The tool they use to update RGB doesn’t always work, and despite being able to control the fans, the laptop did run a little hotter than it did on Windows. Overall, when gaming, I only lost 5 to 10 frames per second against Windows. In most games, that wasn’t very noticeable, but in more modern games where every frame mattered, it could be annoying.

In terms of productivity, I didn’t have many issues here either. I found tools that would have replaced what I used in Windows. Email was a little bit of a hassle. I use multiple Office365 accounts spread over multiple domains. I have used Thunderbird Email Manager in the past, and while it’s usable, it’s not Outlook. I ended up having to pay a third party to get authentication to work in Thunderbird with Office365. Libre Office is a great 1 to 1 replacement for Microsoft Office. I spend most of my productivity tasks on the web, so using Firefox and Chrome is no different than on Windows. I did have some issues with the Nvidia driver where the laptop would come back from sleep, but the display driver would not. There were lots of complaints about this online about this, and a simple crontab hack was able to fix it. In general, Fedora consumed far fewer resources at boot, and I didn’t have to worry about bloat or Fedora selling my data. One issue I did have was a tool called Remote.it. I use this to connect to my crypto mining warehouse in Montana. I unfortunately have to use this tool because the service provider, StarLink uses Carrier Grade Nat (CGNAT) for its service. CGNAT is used by smaller providers who can’t get ahold of a large enough pool of IPV4 addresses (There is a shortage). There is a great write-up here, but to make it simple, if you use StarLink you will be double NAT and have no way to port forward. Remote.it is a service that allows you to tunnel around those limitations. Unfortunately, they don’t provide an installer for Fedora. My workaround for this was to install VirtualBox and run…..Windows. It was annoying to have to install Windows for one application, but it also solved my email issues. My other issue was that my laptop was a 4k display. While I usually set it at 2k, Linux doesn’t have support for HDR and window scaling. There were a couple of workarounds to get scaling correct, but Linux has a long way to go to support HDR (so does Windows in that aspect).

Notes For The Future

I installed Fedora back in December of 2022. Compared to how things were five years ago, I can already see a future where I no longer use Windows in my day-to-day life. Last month, I purchased a second NVMe 1 TB drive for my laptop as it had a port available. I ended up installing Windows on one drive and Fedora on the other. I spend most of my time in Linux, and I switch to Windows if I need to use a Windows Native application or I want to play a more modern demanding game. If I could go back to December 2022 and give myself some tips, I would probably have said the following:

• Buy an INTEL CPU/AMD GPU laptop or an AMD CPU/AMD GPU laptop. Dealing with Nvidia is a pain in the ass.
• Rolling releases have tremendous support, but you are beta-testing the software.
• Make sure any future laptop you use has basic Linux support. Many laptops these days have special hardware that only works on Windows.
• Check to make sure every program you use day to day runs on Linux.

I am pleasantly pleased with how far Linux has come. It still requires that tweaking that it’s so well known for, but if you stick with the mainstream Linux distros, it almost “just works.” Even if I didn’t have an ASUS laptop and I went with installing Linux on my desktop, I think I would have ended up on Fedora. It is such a solid operating system (OS), and even Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, uses it as his day-to-day system. If you want to make the switch, I honestly can’t recommend a better OS. Last but not least, if could make some recommendations to Microsoft, I would state the following:

• You don’t have to be like Apple. Sure, they are riding high, but all great empires fall. Return to the Windows 7 interface and change everything to match that interface. Upgrade the internals to match Windows 11 (Direct Storage, DirectX Support, built-in Linux, etc.).
• If you don’t want to settle on the Windows 7 interface, then stay set on the Windows 10 interface and clear out all the old design elements.
• If you want to support handheld or touch devices, let the user choose what interface they want to use at installation. Trying to make an operating system that supports all devices is impossible. Gnome did the same thing with their UI, and it’s almost universally hated.
• Focus a little more on gamers. I know they aren’t a big subset of your users, but you will lose them if Linux and Proton continue on their current path. Performance is everything.

I will continue to use Windows, and I am sure Windows 11 will get itself sorted out by Windows 12. In the meantime, I will keep using Fedora and enjoy the experience. For now, Windows is still installed, but if things continue, I will probably drop it entirely in the future.

Authors Note: After writing this post, I stumbled upon the Atas OS project. The idea behind this project is to remove all the bloat from Windows. It was designed to be used on older hardware, but it has already been shown to speed up gaming FPS on modern systems. All it requires is Windows 10. It does have a long list of drawbacks, but if you want to dual-boot a normal Windows OS and a gaming Windows OS this is probably the way to do it.