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Comment by fabian2k | Hacker News Reader

I switched to Linux again because on this PC Windows suddenly just doesn't run stable anymore. Even a complete reinstall didn't fix it, I assume it is some driver issue or something like that.

It took me a while to convince myself it wasn't a hardware defect. I had very frequent single tab crashes in any browser I used. And regular bluescreens, sometimes multiple a day. But it runs entirely stable on a parallel Ubuntu installation with the same hardware.

If you're unlucky, you can run into weird issues that are hard to impossible to fix as a regular user.

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I recently noticed the bloat building and building. It came to the fore when I tried to install Kerbal Space Program on my T14s gen 2. I don’t really play video games, and I thought the incredibly slow performance and crashes were down to my hardware, since why would a 5 year old mid-range notebook be able to play this (probably badly optimised) 3D game?

As an afterthought I downloaded Steam and played on Debian. Worked out of the box. No crashes. Minimum of 30fps, most of the time around 50-60. It was more than playable, enough to be pretty fun.

>But it runs entirely stable on a parallel Ubuntu installation with the same hardware.

This mostly means nothing because the hardware drivers between the 2 OSs are totally different.

For example you could have bad memory and Linux isn't sticking anything important there, whereas Windows is. Same with things like video drivers and storage drivers.

As someone that's salvaged a lot of old machines, sometimes some particular hardware is bad in a particular OS and replacing it with a non broken card of the same kind fixes the issue.

It's funny that Windows is well known for the "BSOD", to the point it became a meme in itself.

The BSOD where the computer shits itself so much, that it gives you a nonsensical "error", which you have to use another machine to look up. Or if you want to deep-dive, you have to use 3rd party software to deal with.

Meanwhile a Linux Kernel Panic will dump out (while very technical) everything it knew at that moment...

And things like memory errors are picked up, and you can test your memory, BY STANDARD

At least for me, the BSOD is way less common than it used to be. I don't think I've seen one for years now.

The static checking of drivers has been a big benefit to Windows. Nowadays, a bsod is probably due to memory corruption or a hardware fault.

It's been a long time since I've seen a kernel panic in Linux, and it's been my daily driver for years. I don't use any exotic hardware on either system.

Things that are mere "annoyances" to other people are blocking to me because distraction is blocking. If I have everything set up a certain way and Windows restarts overnight, I lose my place completely. If I'm working and stupid ads pop up uninvited, or Windows takes a moment to tell me about the great new AI feature I'll never use, it throws me off. I'll take the risk that Linux won't support a piece of hardware over the guarantee that Windows will shred my attention and concentration.

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