The indoctrination of windows is extreme. Windows is just as hard as linux, harder even with all the layers of obscurity.
And yet... linux is hard, and users decry RTFM as "not growing the userbase"
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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I'm probably gonna get hated on for this but here's my story:
About 3 weeks ago I bought a new gaming laptop with no OS with the intention of installing Linux myself and ditching Windows.
I'd read a lot online about how Linux was now competitive with Windows as Linux emulators could run Windows games with a 10-15% boost in performance. I read that it was all a case of finding the right distro and that Linux is much more user friendly and compatible now. So I did a little research, made myself a ventoy boot USB with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Pop, Garuda and Fedora to see which one I liked best.
None of them worked properly. All of them had weird little quirks. Some I could live with, some were completely infuriating. So l did a little tinkering as I was determined not to give in. None of the distros detected my hardware properly, and so I went away found forums with similar issues and I fixed most of them. However, no matter what I tried I could not get the laptop speakers to work. No problem, I thought, I'll be either using headphones or BT to my soundbar (as that worked fine). So having given up on the speaker issue, I downloaded some games. In all of the distros they ran like shit. Sound bugs, laggy game play, some wouldn't play at all. Again, I tried tinkering with the settings, using a different version of proton, different sound drivers, different graphics settings, different commands and programs which might solve the issues. No. Each different distro threw up different issues which I spent hours and researching and experimenting. I tried a few more distros and found new issues which needed more research and more experimenting.
Over the three weeks or so I was trying I became irritable and depressed. I'd spent a lot of money on the laptop and I was unable to use it because no matter what I tried, even with relatively low resource hungry games, they did not run well at all, and even linux itself seemed slow and unresponsive in comparison to what I was used to.
So after hours and hours of climbing the walls and snapping at my wife and neglecting my kid, I downloaded Windows. And everything just works. There are bespoke programs for my graphics card and everything in my steam library runs beautifully with very minimal tinkering. So now I have a dual boot system, windows for games only and Linux for everything else.
I hate that I'm still enthralled to Windows, but seriously, Linux is just not ready for mass adoption. If something doesn't work on Windows , it's usually a case of just downloading the correct driver and Windows normally knows which one you need. If something doesn't work on Linux it's a slog through paragraphs of text which all assume some basic knowledge of coding or Linux's file system or some other jargon, or watching endless YouTube videos and then still getting nowhere. As a working husband and father I just do not have the time to put into it.
Tl;Dr - Windows is much easier than Linux. That's why everyone uses Windows.
To be fair, you most likely have nvidia in your PC.
As I see it, the distos you tried ether have a gui to install those proprietary drivers, but are on old kernel or no GUI to install them, but a recent kernel.
Installing nvidia drivers on endeavourOS is very simple and you always get the newest fixes after writing โyayโ into console.
Installing apps is as easy as โyay [desired app]โ and then choose out of the list. (Just donโt take the โ-gitโ versions but the โ-binโ versions ๐คญ)
After that, install steam out of multilib and make sure to pick the right vulkan package (based on GPU driver in use)
All this nvidia stuff is so complicated on Linux, because nvidia is not caring enough about Linux yet.
Only way to fix that is adoption.
Thanks this is very helpful. I was steering clear of the more terminal heavy distros as tbh I find the terminal a bit daunting as a noob. I'll give it a go tho.
Don't know about your hardware. I don't own a notebook anymore. I read good things about the AUR package optimus-manager-qt for hybrid GPUs (iGPU+dedicated GPUs) but also that it can be a bit tricky.
I exlusively used dedicated Nvidia cards in desktop rigs with Arch & EndeavourOS since 2017 when I switched from Win 10. Additionally exclusively KDE.
Though I had a bit of experience with other distros and desktop environments before my switch I'd wager to say you should give one last try to EndeavourOS, even if you have barely any Linux experience. I mean you had so many failed attempts. One more won't hurt.
Use EndeavourOS not arch. First, it uses the standard initial graphical system-setup (Calamares), then it comes with some good default settings & tools and finally a welcome screen which features links to additional tools like mirror selection (for faster updates), update shortcuts, package search, docs/wikis/forums or logs.
I'd select KDE in Calamares and I'd install the graphical package manager octopi via "yay octopi" after system installation and activate yay for the AUR in the octopi settings as e.g. optimus-manager-qt (which you should only use with hybrid GPUs) is only available in the AUR. You need to click the alien symbol in octopi to install from the AUR.
The AUR (Arch User Repository) is the repository for packages not available in the main repositories. AUR packages are user contributed where the maintainers write a so called PKGBUILD file which contains the steps to build and install a package from foreign sources (e.g. from a debian DPKG or from github sources). With octopi you can quickly open the PKGBUILD file and look from where the maintainer pulls the parts of the package.
The amount of software available in the AUR is gigantic but it can potentially contain malware (which happened a very few times). But you'll have a hard time finding users who actually had that happen to them. A good indicator that the package is ok are its number of votes. But if you really want to know you have to check the sources in the PKGBUILD. If they come from github, you could check the github-repo and only it's stars (votes) if you won't read the sourcecode.
That all sounds mighty complicated but it isn't. Just try to install packages from the main repo. Click the alien symbol only when you don't find something official.
So with octopi and the welcome screen you don't need to enter any terminal commands for package installation or the system update. I had only a few updates where problems occurred in like 7 years and they were always fixable. The Arch Wiki and the Endeavour forums could always help.
I can't guarantee you'll have a better experience than with the other distros and you will meet some bumps or roadblocks for sure. I'm not playing the the most current games and a lot of retro games via Lutris and Heroic. For some of them I had to tinker a bit and try different starters than Steam. Arma, Path of Exile, Sekiro (fitgirl repack), Diablo Immortal were tricky but all the steam games or e.g. Witcher 3 via Heroic run very nice.
On the screen where you login (usually SDDM) you can switch between Wayland and X11. Which are two very different Display managers. Wayland is the replacement for the very old X11. It works way(land) better with AMD GPUs than with Nvidia which are usable though but work much better on X11. Games can be faster on wayland for Nvidia than on X11. But things like missing color management in nvidia-settings make me stay with X11.
Thanks of taking the time to write all this. I'll certainly give it a go once I've worked up the will power to go back down the rabbit hole!
Oh yeah as mentioned in a comment below Nobara based on Fedora could also be a very good distro if you're out for gaming.