Comment by zmxz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zmxz | Hacker News Reader

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I seldom post on annoyances, but what you wrote is such a similar experience to mine.

Recent experience: I boot into Windows, but it screams for update. Ok, I update. It triggers my bios update - to my surprise, I had no idea an OS can do that. Ok, updating bios. Now Windows want me to update to win 11. Sure, let's give it ago, I waited this long. Message pops up - "Windows can't be updated to version 11 on this machine" or something along those lines.

OK, deep breaths, let's try to play some Dota. I start the game, play with friends aaaand here's the popup that asks me if I want to restart my machine now or schedule it for later - of course, this popup comes at the worst time possible, minimizing the game in the crucial moment and then I remembered - "ah yes, this is why I abandoned Windows, the updates and constant annoyance every week".

On topic - I run PopOS! and it boots below 10 seconds. After reading this article, I'll fiddle to see if it can be lowered.

The best thing about Windows 11 is that it finally pushed me to go to Linux, and I switched to Pop OS. I had played around with Mint 10 or so years ago, so honestly, I was braced for a whole lot of friction and little irritations, missing drivers, hours on stack overflow, that kind of thing. The best way I can describe the actual feeling was like putting on aftersun after getting sunburned. It's honestly bizarre that I can feel the absense of intrusion as the OS just does its thing in the background.

Out of curiosity. Why not Pop and not the latest Mint?

Both are among my favorites. I'd say Pop is good for people wanting something more modern while Mint is ideal for people liking a more traditional UI.

Its always real hard o make these decisions. It was between Mint, Ubuntu and Pop. Pop comes with nvidia drivers, and I liked the window tiling and keyboard shortcuts.

doesn't mint also have the nvidia drivers? typically there's a "drivers" menu in the settings.

> It triggers my bios update - to my surprise, I had no idea an OS can do that.

Linux can do that too, it's an UEFI trick (it reboots into a capsule loader, which loads the new firmware into RAM and reboots into the current firmware's built-in updater). Try it: "fwupdmgr get-updates" to see if you have an update, then "fwupdmgr update" to reboot and install the update.

Ditto. Windows' disrespect is what finally pushed me to Linux full-time.

Gentoo also boots incredibly quickly. I can't recommend it enough.

Or, if you're sane, Manjaro.

Or, if you're less sane but not insane enough for Gentoo, Arch. :p

I would say NixOS is well worth checking too!

Apologies if you're already aware of this, but DoTA is one of the first games Valve ported to Linux, so it should play just fine (some say better) without requiring to boot into Windows.

It works on Linux, but there's constant stuttering when the game starts. I do play it on Linux, however it's easier to boot into Windows when it comes to odd LAN party here and there and playing games with friends without looking into which Proton runtime to use and such :)

Thanks for the heads up, I did know but I appreciate the intent!

Proton is not needed because it's a native version. The stuttering might be due to uncached shaders, which now steam downloads periodically, so it shouldn't be an issue.

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