Microsoft: Windows 10X is not coming

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, May 19, 2021.

  1. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    Are you using some old 10MB drive or what is your issue exactly?
    My Windows 10 drive eats up around 74GB, programs included, will take quite some time before I have to get a bigger drive before it takes up all the space, bet my drive will die a natural death before that ever happens.
    Apart from that you don't want to have no winsxs unless you do not run any older applications, never need to enable/disable functions, do a system restore or uninstall a problematic update.
     
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  2. Alessio1989

    Alessio1989 Ancient Guru

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    Because if you have a OS failure, with the component store it is far easier to repair and you have more chances to fix it (OS failure, what can go wrong more? anything related to external network for example). WinSxS folder average on a Pro installation is about 10GB or less, which is nothing compared to all benefits and less headaches a remote function could do (plus, even in best scenarios where the OS failure does not frack your connection, you don't have to download it, not everyone has a fast network which would download the OS image in few seconds) Al this is meant to be the best offer and trade-off between reliability (less variables involved), speed (you already have the components locally), and space (it's compressed but you can ask on-the-fly each file without decompress the full image), which makes totally sense for the PC user.
    Hardlinks are great because you do not have to manually search the dlls to link them on program startup. There is not bloat at all, everything is done automatically by manifest. In fact hardlinks and winsxs solve the last issues of the so called DLL hell. If you still have today dll issues is because crap third party (un)installers remove redistributables that are from other companies.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2021
  3. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    A question was asked, so I gave an answer. I don't use Windows on my PCs, so I personally don't have an issue. Note how nobody brought up WinSxS prior to that question, so it's not like anybody here was complaining.
    My Linux workstation uses less than 14GB, programs included. That includes a desktop environment more feature-rich than what Windows offers, an office suite, web browser, support for a very wide range of media codecs, an IDE for the development I do, CAD software, and so on. For argument's sake, let's say you use some commercial software I don't that you depend on, so let's tack on another ~20GB of disk usage. Where is the rest of the 40GB going? 40GB is enough to install a modern AAA game. 40GB is enough to store 5000 songs at 320kbps. 40GB is enough to make a clone of everything installed on the computer, with some extra.
    So where do you draw the line between "it's no big deal" and "I don't like how much disk space this uses"? Do you walk around with a backpack containing 4L of water in it everywhere you go? Why not? It might come in handy. I'm sure you're capable of carrying it throughout your day. There ought to be room for you to carry other things. It'll be quite some time before you suffer significant health problems as a result of the weight.
    I didn't say you don't want to have it. But even then, you're over-estimating its usefulness. There are ways to clean up the folder to a more sane level and I'm sure you would be surprised how nothing seems to have broken as a result.


    I had a feeling you'd mention that. Brings us to another list of problems:
    1. Windows is pretty slow at setting up the component store (which to my understanding, usually happens during updates). Ironically, the slowness of Windows update dramatically increases the chances of failure happening. So basically, all the extra junk in that folder causes a feedback loop - it needs to get more bloated to repair from disk errors, but you are more likely to cause disk errors because it's so bloated. Bear in mind, the folder used to be practical, back when it was a solution to "DLL Hell". Though even then, many programs just started shipping DLLs themselves.
    2. If one of the hardlinks break, you have no fallback to use.
    3. In the event of a significant failure, it doesn't guarantee a repair. 10GB is an absurd amount of disk space to lose for a "might fix".
    4. It makes sense to have copies of last-known-working critical binaries. It doesn't make sense to have copies of older versions, and it isn't necessary to have non-critical binaries. If you really want to argue there are 4GB+ of critical binaries, well, apparently you're just used to an environment full of bloatware.

    One of the reasons Windows has always struggled to get on mobile and embedded devices is precisely because of this kind of crap, and that inefficiency adds up when you're trying to build a mainframe. For a modern desktop or laptop, it's no big deal, but that's a rather closed-minded perspective.
     
  4. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    Multimedia means supporting HDR and spatial audio, and also setting up Bluetooth devices without prayers to Belzebub.

    Best tuned means that on a 5950x with a 3090, on KDE, with the Nvidia driver on X11 mode, 16GB of zram swap, linux-tkg-bmq-zen3 installed with the CPU governor set to performance, installed on a Samsung PMA9A1, using it in 4k, I still get desktop stutters that I don't get when I run the exact same software on the same hardware with Windows.

    The Linux install is my work environment and hand tuned btw. I got things like ananicy etc running, tweaked swappiness, and it's still laggier on basic 2D operations sometimes.

    It's still my favourite set up for productivity, because I can set it up to my liking, but there is a distinct lack of optimisation on the entirety of the desktop stack (Qt & GTK), and the vanilla kernel is basically unusable out of the box for a desktop machine. It's good Arch is at least providing Zen in the official repositories.

    Btw, my usual workload is around seven messaging apps, email with around 30k emails, a browser with around 20 tabs, Spotify, 3-4 Vscode with medium sized projects open, 2-3 terminals and Postman, spread around five virtual desktops.

    Windows never skips a bit, Linux still does, and it especially suffers with window resizes. It is better these days than what it used to be, but not by much.
     

  5. ManofGod

    ManofGod Ancient Guru

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    Bad or not, I do not care but, that folder gets ridiculously large.
     
  6. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    Isn't that why most people just opt for a receiver that handles all the work, and then just do PCM passthrough? That way you get better audio quality, a system compatible with more devices, less CPU utilization, and less hassle. Aside from that niche, Windows is definitely worse than alternatives. Android, Kodi, Plex, Mac OS, and iOS are all better equipped for media out-of-the-box. Windows doesn't provide a worthwhile media player, it lacks a lot of codecs, it lacks a lot of network-based media protocols, and it doesn't support most specialized input devices without 3rd party software. You can make it do all these things, but it takes either work or money to do it, whereas the alternatives I mentioned take most/all of the additional steps out.
    Also, not sure what kinds of Bluetooth issues you've had but I've had a smooth audio experience with any OS I've used; Windows doesn't stand out as better or worse in that regard.
    That's like saying "Jeeps are the best tuned vehicles" when you're driving off-road - is it fair to say a Lexus is worse simply because it can't get out of knee-deep mud, when it might be able to do everything else better? Your problem is entirely tied to the Nvidia drivers. Not the GPU itself, but the drivers. If you were to use pretty much anything else, even nouveau (which currently doesn't support the 3090 but I'm sure will some day), your stuttering problem would likely go away. I wouldn't be surprised if you would get less stuttering by running your Linux setup with VirGL in a VM (with Windows as the host). The Nvidia drivers are notorious for stuttering issues and this has been an ongoing problem for over a decade.
    Meanwhile, take the Nvidia drivers out of the equation and most other things you do would actually run faster, smoother, and/or more efficiently. Not everything of course, but the fact that Linux would outperform Windows in most non-GPU tests is already enough proof that Windows is not all that refined. And that's just your average distro - get Clear Linux involved and then the performance gaps get even wider. But let's take Linux entirely out of the equation for a moment:
    Neither OS has anything on the level of refinement in the new M1 Macs. The fact a roughly 24W CPU can be compared to (and win against) a 125W i7 at all says a lot about the OS. On paper, ARM should be slower - lower clock speeds, fewer instructions, less cache, fewer threads, etc. The fine tuning of the OS is what makes it win, because even Rosetta 2 offers compelling performance, despite the M1's lacking instructions.
    By default, Linux doesn't use swap until you're running dangerously low on RAM, so if you tweaked the swappiness, that means you increased it, and that can cause performance issues. Unless you legitimately risk running out of RAM, I would suggest you not even have a swap at all. Unlike Windows, Linux doesn't really care if a swap exists, though, it will fail very hard if you run out of RAM; Windows is much better at recovering from out-of-memory situations (even without a paging file).
    For the record, many programs in Linux treat buffered/cached RAM as used. So if it looks like you're using 90% but all you have open is a media player, nearly all of that memory is just the movie you were playing.
    Your laggy 2D operations is again likely due to the Nvidia drivers.
    I recommend you take your existing KDE install, clone it to another drive, purge all of the Nvidia drivers, and try it on a system with either Intel, AMD, or nouveau-compatible graphics. Doesn't matter if the CPU is 1/8 the speed. I feel very confident it'll feel just as smooth as Windows.
    EDIT:
    There's a reason for Linus' famous quote with him flipping off Nvidia.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2021
  7. Freeman

    Freeman Master Guru

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    You would be surprised about linux.
    Its basically there with virtual os, no loss in performance.
    It will take time to get used to, but its basically "there" with friendly versions like "debian".
     
  8. Raserian

    Raserian Master Guru

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    You seem to forget about windows being universal, it has to work practically on all computers and to have a lot of compatibility. It cannot be optimized ideally for that reason, W10 is likely used on everything from newest high end rigs to some pretty old ones, equipped with single core 32-bit CPUs and so on. I think that overall, despite some issues Windows is pretty good at handling everything given how much compatibility it must have. Comparing Linux distros or MacOS is bad example, because MacOS is only run on a few pieces of apple hardware and linux is mostly tweaked by users and if it still does not work you can switch to other distro.
    So if you can include 4-10 GB libraries and remove compatibility issues for huge chunk of your user base, it's rational option to do so. If you can include more drivers and libraries to get it working on older hardware which another huge portion of your userbase it's going to be a rational decision as well. Storage IS abundant. Unless you have hard disk smaller than 60 GB you are not going to have a problem.
    Same goes for stuff like integration of apps. Windows does lack some built-in programs because once they add something in, MS is quickly sued for it. Internet Explorer and Windows Media player were notable lawsuits probably everyone has heard of. You could build OS with all the best programs in it already preinstalled, which is fine until anti-trust regulators will knock on your door.
    Your example with a car is not well given.
    Your Jeep is high end luxury and expensive vehicle with off road capability and tons of gizmos inside.
    You can think of your jeep as a new high end computer with 1TB SSD system drive and 4 TB of storage drives. That 4 gig DLL library is not gonna mean anything.
    Linux can be thought of as well optimized high performance racing car which is fine for winning races but is not road legal and you have no accessories inside and sitting in it feels like you are piloting a space rocket.
    Windows can be thought of mid range car that is fast when you need it to and can be driven on the road just fine, with plenty of space to carry your friends and their stuff and is comfortable to ride in.
    I don't want to really get into any argument here but you seem to think of windows users as skilled enough to tweak linux and use it because it's lighter yet you also think they need to do it because they use very old and slow computers with small hard drives and can't afford any space to waste. Protip for you even when linux is considerably lighter system, it does not always give better performance than windows. Oh and did you know that windows has pagefile and hibernate file which each have like 20GB and are not used unless you page RAM or hibernate but are consuming the space all the time.
     
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  9. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    Those 40GB might be used for pagefile, DAW and tons of plugins which will take up the same amount of space on a Linux box.
    I have a single program taking up 229GB on it's own, it will do the same on Linux as well as it should. (got that on it's separate disk both to avoid to big of a backup and to keep a steady load time, hence why it's not included)

    My Windows installation is without quite a lot of the defaults, uninstalled and manually removed the slack, same for winsxs backups, so other software is taking up majority of the space.
    The most annoying thing when it comes to other software is lack of proper uninstall, why a lot of program always leave leftovers baffles me, seen that happen on Linux too.

    Besides all that, to have a slim Linux install you will need to invest a lot of time, it's not like any distro is tailored for exactly your hardware by default.
    The other downside of Linux is still lower performance for a lot of games, even loads that support other rendering methods than DX.
    So I can't see any point in downgrading performance and utiliwith an OS when it comes to mixed usage that includes gaming.
     
  10. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    No actually, I didn't forget. I don't have a problem with the folder, I have a problem with how much unnecessary crap it hoards. It very much can be optimized and Microsoft's own documentation tells you how.
    You are right that Mac OS is a bit of an exception, which is why I didn't mention it.
    Linux is in this weird middle-ground. Folders like /lib and /usr/lib are a much better approach, and any applications that depend on a specific version of a library tend to just ship it themselves in their own folder. However, where Linux falls flat is when:
    A. Newer versions of libraries break compatibility but don't change the file names, thereby only having one version that all programs must be built to use.
    B. Some distros (like Ubuntu or Debian) build things their own way, which breaks compatibility with some closed-source software.
    So in terms of a "it just works" perspective, Windows has a better approach. In terms of an efficiency standpoint, the Windows approach is counter-productive.
    Here's the thing though: we're talking compatibility with some really legacy applications here. Applications that, back in the day, didn't ship their own libraries. Pretty much everything you install for Windows comes with what it needs, or will install redistribution packages, making much of the WinSxS folder redundant. You need to pay for a more premium Windows 10 license to take advantage of the compatibility feature (when you right-click on an EXE and go to Properties).
    Even when I wrote it, I realized it wasn't the best example, but you're missing my point (which I guess is my fault for using a not-so-great example). My point is it doesn't make sense to say Windows is "the best tuned" OS when:
    A. the reasoning is dictated by a 3rd party driver
    B. if you were to ignore that driver, Windows performs overall worse
    C. "best" is determined by priorities
    So if being in the mud is how you judge a vehicle, obviously a Jeep is going to be better, but it's basically just moving the goal posts of what makes something worth driving. The Lexus, meanwhile, has more comfort, better fuel economy, better reliability, and can do pretty much everything the Jeep can as long as it's not in the mud. So, the Jeep can't be the best.
    You're making a lot of assumptions here. My gripe with Windows isn't that it's big; it's big because it has to be. My gripe is that it is unnecessarily bloated. I also don't recommend Linux to just anyone, because there's a lot it can't do. PrMinisterGR is a Linux user, so I already know his level of Linux competence.
    I didn't say it always gives better performance. I phrased myself very deliberately, because I know Windows doesn't win in every test and I implied that. However, Windows loses in most performance tests, and that fact by itself is proof it is not the best tuned OS.
    I am aware of the pagefile and hibernation file. The context here is WinSxS, not the OS as a whole.

    Fair enough. In hindsight, I guess a better argument on my end would be "Windows by itself takes up more space than all the installed applications I have combined".
    It's not a good idea to make such comparisons. That's like a kid coming home from school with a F saying "yeah but nobody got better than a B!" as though it changes the fact it was a failing grade.
    I agree that it's annoying when uninstalling programs leaves behind so many files. Linux tends to only leave behind config and user-created files, which I think should be left behind because those aren't so easily replaceable and usually that's no more than a megabyte or two. I suppose I'll give a pass to the clutter in the Windows registry for the same reason, even though that's much harder to clean up [manually]. What annoys me most is when binaries are left behind.
    Eh... Linux used to be a lot more of a time investment, but some distros can (not guaranteed) get you up and running much faster than Windows. Granted, it can still be a huge time investment (especially if you're still learning it) but it's not like where it was 10 years ago where it was always a time investment - now it's mostly optional. In either case, I don't recommend it to everyone, especially those who are impatient and/or don't care about tweaking.
    Gaming is in a bit of a gray area lately. Games that were ported sloppily tend to have very poor performance, where running the Windows version (on Linux) is often a better/faster experience. But, when a game was ported properly, or, when something like Wine/Proton need no/minimal tweaking, Linux lately has yielded better performance than Windows, despite the lack of game profiles for GPU drivers. That says a lot when you consider there are no application-specific profiles, at least if you're not using the Nvidia drivers. The real problem with gaming comes down to things like anti-cheat or DRMs, and for those 2 reasons alone, I never recommend Linux to gamers. The Nvidia drivers cause stuttering issues too, but apparently a lot of people don't seem to be bothered by that.
     

  11. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    We are talking about the OS, not applications. Kodi, Plex etc, they all exist as applications for Windows. When talking about the OS itself, Windows supports HDR (which you didn't comment on at all), and it supports encoding to bitstream on the fly for normal applications, not just media players (using Atmos for Home Theater, for example) and it even supports a plugin application that allows multiple vendors (like DTS) to do that. macOS is a joke, comparatively, and so is Linux, in that regard. HDR and bitstreamed gaming isn't a niche at all, all consoles support it, there are more than ten million of the new gen ones out at this moment, and the only PC operating system that has parity is Windows.

    There is also the issue of open source developers behaving as if NVIDIA isn't 80% of the discrete market, and still pushing for things that their driver doesn't do well. The driver itself is actually quite fast, even in gaming. Its only issue is with X11 applications in Wayland, and that will be solved literally in the next release.
    The issue with that is that it overlooks that for desktop usage you don't care about absolute performance, you care about responsiveness. I don't care if a video encode finishes 30 seconds earlier, if I can't use the computer for 20 minutes.
    Again, I'm strictly talking about the desktop experience.
    Are we talking about the desktop here? Clear is not really a desktop distro, and most speed advantages come from compiler optimizations that are auto-in in Windows. The M1 isn't magic. It's faster for some things, and ARM shouldn't be slower on paper, it's a different CPU architecture than x86, not necessarily a slower one. The M1 also has hardware acceleration for its x86 emulation, and it implements QoS on the thread level, that makes things feel snappier. Is it faster than even a 5600x? No, even though it's a node down also.

    This is not a great idea either, and zram basically does just that. It effectively starts to compress memory as it gets full, or it needs to be in the swap. The swap has nothing to do with if you run out of memory. By default the kernel sends things in the swap as your memory is more than 60% full. Extra bonus is that it doesn't give a crap about desktop performance and just CPU-pukes it and you can feel it in the gui. One of the most common Linux tweaks is about the memory manager and swappiness, for the very reason that the operations themselves cause chugging, as the kernel doesn't care about userspace responsiveness.

    The laggy 2D operations is because the desktop and HiDPI are a second-class citizen in Linux. One of the most popular desktop environments (Gnome), doesn't even support fractional scaling.

    Every single Linux desktop I've had, was less responsive than the Windows equivalent on the same hardware up to now. That starts from a Q6600 and the horror days of fglrx, coming to Sandy Bridge and a 7970 with proper open source drivers, to this system now. It's almost a fact of life, and it has generated countless efforts to do something about this (see all the custom kernels etc), but the main issue that remains is that Linux exists for geeks and corporations running millions of headless servers. The traditional desktop is an afterthought on this level, and major DEs never had enough contributors to tweak properly for speed.

    Ironically, I'm posting this from my work setup on Arch and KDE. And yes, there is a reason I'm using it, and the reason I'm mad at it is because it has been half a step from greatness for like 15 years now.
     
  12. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    I know that you have distros like Pop! OS which get you running in no time, a Windows 10 install doesn't take that much longer thou.
    What I was implying is that to have a super uber smooth Linux install you still need to select and compile, which also takes up as little space as possible once installed, no full distro release can compete with that apart from less work and ease of installation.
    There is still quite a few things that need to be added manually to get on with gaming, something that people really do not need to think about when using Windows.
    The performance yield is not overall, Windows still does better in that regard, I'm quite sure that it will get better on Linux with time thou.
    Another issue are updates, upgrades and even worse, changing distro because the chosen distro started to lack behind, never had any problems with that in server environments but for a desktop environment that is kept on the edge for triple A games it's really not ideal.
     
  13. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    Those programs also exist as standalone OSes that are media-ready the moment you boot them up the first time. In either case, some of what you're speaking of are not features of the Windows OS but rather 3rd party addons, so where are you drawing the line here? I don't deny Windows can handle just about any type of media, but the point I'm trying to drive home here is what Windows isn't inherently better for media, as it lacks most features out-of-the-box. What makes it better is the #1 reason to use Windows in the first place: compatibility. There isn't anything special about Windows as an OS for media, it's just simply a widely-adopted platform.
    I don't know what makes you think Mac OS is a joke for media, then again, I use it even less than Windows.
    I will agree Linux is overall worse than Windows for media, which is why I didn't bring it up. It can be just as good in some situations, but there's a lot it either can't do or doesn't do well.
    I touched on HDR, saying it is niche, because in terms of people who have a complete system capable of it, it is niche.
    The problem is that Nvidia deliberately refuses to comply with Linux standards. This has been going on for years. Nvidia is notoriously stubborn, and Linux isn't the only OS they're in a feud with. You have companies like Intel, AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Valve, Red Hat, Broadcom, Google, etc all pitching in to Mesa, and then you have Nvidia who not only refuses to join in but makes the Nvidia-compatible Mesa drivers (Nouveau) unlikely to succeed. Nvidia has done a little bit to help Nouveau here and there, but mostly just for the Tegra series.
    So, it's not a matter that open-source devs ignore Nvidia's markshare, but rather, Nvidia refuses to cooperate. You're pointing fingers at the wrong people. I wouldn't say this so confidently if Nvidia wasn't so notorious for making enemies.
    Nvidia does perform quite fast, but it doesn't matter how many frames you have if you get microstuttering (hence your comment later about responsiveness). Nvidia's main source of profit in the Linux world is servers and workstations (so, mostly things depending on ArtX and CUDA), so they don't really have a reason to care about what everyone else wants, and that's why it's taken over a decade for them to finally do something about Wayland.
    The only reason I brought up Clear was to show how much room there is left to improve upon Linux, which is already overall faster than Windows without those supposed auto-in optimizations (which apparently aren't doing much if it's losing to un-optimized Linux).
    You're right, the M1 isn't magic. The hardware acceleration doesn't give it any leverage. My point is, even though it should be worse at almost everything except power consumption, it achieves tremendous performance. This performance is because the OS is so well optimized. So objectively speaking, Windows can't be the best tuned desktop OS when a M1 Mac can do much of the same things at 10% the wattage. I can't comprehend how you could argue against that.
    I guarantee you, if Windows were ported to the M1, it would not see the same level of performance. Linux is currently in the process of being ported and I have no doubt it'll run benchmarks slower too.
    Tell that to the thousands of Linux users who don't use a swap and aren't suffering the same performance issues as you. Swap can and will slow you down, which is why the kernel by default doesn't touch your swap until your memory usage gets really high. I've seen instances where I've reached 75% usage and it only used no more than 100MB of swap, because it just isn't worth the performance impact. The only reason to have a swap is if you either risk running out of RAM or can't afford to do so (because again, Linux doesn't gracefully handle OOM situations). So, that pretty much just limits swap usage to servers, mission-critical workstations, and crappy desktops/laptops that don't have a lot of RAM.
    Can't say I'm surprised seeing as you mentioned fglrx (which is definitely worse than what Nvidia ever had) and custom kernels.
    I'm also writing this from an Arch+KDE setup, which is butter smooth, snappy, and very responsive. I even have compositing effects enabled. It's an i5 1135g7 with the integrated Xe graphics - nothing fancy.
    I have another setup using Arch+Budgie on an all-AMD system, and is again butter smooth and snappy. The responsiveness could be better, since I'm using a budget SSD in that computer.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2021
  14. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    Right, but then you have to account for installing all the programs you need and drivers, which is where Windows starts to slow down. Granted, Windows 10 is pretty good about automatically installing drivers, but it usually picks failsafe drivers rather than ones with the better features or performance.
    No, you don't. That was true back in the Core2 days, but not anymore. That's not to say you won't see any differences compiling something yourself, but the cons of doing so (for a desktop OS) don't outweigh the pros.
    If you're using Nvidia and not using Steam, that is true. Otherwise, the only thing you have to think about when gaming on Linux is whether something is compatible with Proton. Granted, that's still more work than Windows, which is why (as I've already said) I don't recommend Linux to gamers. I personally use Linux for gaming, but I wouldn't tell anyone else to do it.
    And yeah, I would agree that currently, Windows performance is overall better. Not so much in terms of max FPS, but rather whatever game you play on Windows is likely to play fine, whereas on Linux there is a reasonably high probability that it will perform badly, if at all. Again - this is why you don't recommend Linux for gaming.
    Depends on your distro. If you're using Debian stable, yeah, you're going to have a bad time with updates, because a lot of packages are outdated. If you're using something like the latest version of Ubuntu, you risk regressions and breakages every time. For distros like Arch, Fedora Tumbleweed, or (to a lesser extent) Debian testing, you won't fall behind.
    Even if you use nightly builds of kernels and drivers, Linux will likely never be on top of AAA games. But that goes to another thing about the Linux desktop: I don't recommend it if you care about using the latest tech and the latest software.
     
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  15. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    Self repair redundancy for file corruption.
     

  16. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    Someday on or several distros might be there thou, the development in the last couple of years really pushed it into the right direction.
    I will probably never use it as my main desktop since there are several programs that I won't be able to use, they only write them for Windows and MacOS.
    Got a machine on the shelf which was supposed to turn into a Linxu gamer but you know, current GPU prices, kinda killed that idea for now.
    Thanks for being honest about it btw. to many Linux users deny that there are any downsides to it.
     
  17. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    Asus RTX 3080 Ti
    Those offline files don't need to be there for that though since DISM can be pointed to a image anywhere you want, maybe not so much on a home version thou.
    Neither is it very pro active to have redundancy for file corruption, what Windows needs is preventing it from happening to begin with, I know it's dreaming since Windows own engineers tend to screw things up now and then as well.
     
    schmidtbag likes this.
  18. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    If the day ever comes where Linux gets equal treatment to Windows for both drivers and games on release day, sure. The thing is, the "year of the Linux desktop" will likely never happen, and so Linux is highly unlikely to keep up with anything cutting-edge for games. As someone who doesn't use Windows even for gaming, believe me, I'd like to be wrong about this. Though oddly enough, the Intel and AMD GPU drivers seem to be much better on release day for Linux for the past couple years.
    My brother is the same way - he'd use Linux if graphic design and music software had better compatibility. It doesn't matter how much better something is in theory if in reality it can't do what you want. Besides, I don't argue with preferences, so long as others don't argue with mine.
    Whenever prices get normal, feel free to PM me if you need help.
    Haha and yeah... let's say Linux has a lot of zealots. As much as I don't have popular opinions among Windows users, I don't have popular opinions in the Linux community either. No OS is perfect and never will be. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a reason for alternatives. Doesn't matter what the subject is, people take sides too strongly. So to come full-circle, the WinSxS folder isn't stupid and shouldn't go away, but there is a lot of unnecessary crap put in there.
     
  19. Alessio1989

    Alessio1989 Ancient Guru

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    did you check the real size of folder? and did you understand what there is inside?
    Average Bob doesn't know what the hell DISM is. Component Store is for automated tasks mostly. The alternative is like android, having a compressed image for wasting less space (makes sense on phones) but most of time it is useless unless you have a tool like ADB, a PC and you know what your are doing since auto-repair ability of androids are kinda... crap if not non-existent.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2021
  20. Alessio1989

    Alessio1989 Ancient Guru

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    A more modular installation would be great, it could help reducing the space of that. Last time I saw it was on a x86 version of Windows Embedded. Not sure if it is still produced/supported by Microsoft. Like even if I use only the Pro version on my systems, I don't need at all ISS stuffs an related. But I confess, I do not know how much space does it take on winsxs folder.
     

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