A few months ago, the hardware in my iMac shit the bed one final time. Rather than replace it (Apple hardware is not that great, and certainly not designed to last), I decided to convert this epic Xidax gaming rig I have into my primary production machine.
It worked like a dream for a long time, and Windows 10 began to feel like a pretty decent OS, even if I missed some Mac OS UI features (hitting space to preview files, and easy keyboard screen shots were the two I missed the most.)
But about a week ago, something went wrong. Everything started slowing down like crazy, Chrome just quit working entirely, and even Firefox ran so slow, I felt like I was using a 386. So I used every bit of computer learning and troubleshooting I’ve picked up in thirty-five years of computer use, and I turned it off and back on again.
It wouldn’t start up.
So I booted from the DVD, and told it to repair the problem. That didn’t work.
So I attempted to reinstall Windows. That didn’t work.
So I formatted the drive that C: lived on, and tried to reinstall Windows. That didn’t work, and I lost a ton of media by mistake as a bonus (I have it backed up on a Seagate drive, but it’s still a pain in the ass to lose it).
I went to the Internet, and I downloaded a few Linux utility distros to check the hardware integrity on the machine. I booted from those CDs, ran their tools, and confirmed that everything was working correctly.
At this point, my lungs were aching for air.
I got super frustrated, because all the diagnostics I ran appeared to work, and every test told me that there wasn’t anything wrong. It just turns out that Windows won’t install, and it gives me the super helpful advice to check the install logs that I can’t read because when I boot from the Windows DVD, it won’t let me write to any of the mounted file systems.
So I’m moving my opinion dial from “Windows isn’t that bad” back to “Windows is awful garbage that is an affront to all good people in the world.”
Also, one kid seems to really love the Speedo Guy.
Spinning the dial was satisfying, but it didn’t give me a working OS that I could use to get my work done, so I grabbed the latest release of Debian Linux, and booted from the resulting live DVD. It felt familiar, and unlike my Windows nightmare, it Just Worked(tm). For longtime *nix users, especially the subset of us who started using Red Hat or Debian or Mandrake or whatever back in the late 90s, this reality — that Linux worked effortlessly and without any configuration hassles — will likely prove to be quite pleasing.
I wondered if there was a hardware problem that I hadn’t uncovered, maybe a failing HDD or something, and I decided that the best way to test it would be to attempt a Debian install.
About seventeen minutes later, I booted my machine from GRUB, and like a magical leprechaun, Debian just worked. I had to install a couple of drivers to get the most out of the graphics card, to get Flash and Java to go, and to update Chromium, but that was it.
I’m still annoyed with Windows and its lack of useful error messages, and I am confident that I’m not getting the most computing/processing/graphics/awesome power out of this epic machine, but I have an OS that is solid and stable, that is making it possible for me to do my work, browse the Internet, and read and send Email. There are some idiosyncrasies that I’m not crazy about, and there are a few mild frustrations (I can’t easily watch Netflix or Hulu because of stupid DRM issues, and some websites like Twitter are painfully slow), but I’m definitely turning my dial toward “Linux is awesome.”
I had a mac once upon a time, I hated it. Sorry mac people, but no it overheated all the time, I also prefer windows layout, but sorry your computer died. Now i’m not telling mac people to switch to windows, mac is your preference. I just can’t. Also my computer runs great (it’s windows 10) my friend built it. the only thing that is sub-par is the graphics card because i didn’t have money to buy a nicer one, so he’s going to teach me how to switch it out. I’m not really a computer nerd like at all. I tell people I’m a geek not a nerd. I always had my dad to fix my computer when I flubbed it up. He even turned one of my which i thought was unsalvageable into a computer that ran diagnostics on cars. Now I have a friend who can. I will mentally punch anyone who tells me to get a mac Also glad you enjoy linux I’ve never used it. So i can’t comment on whether or not i like it.
I own several PC’s and 2 Macs and I find trouble shooting Macs a bigger pain in the ass then Windows PC’s. To me it sounds like a piece of hardware was/is giving up the ghost. The biggest culprit is most likely a stick of ram going bad. Linux has this habit of recognizing the bad portions of the memory and bypassing it. Windows not so much, it just blue screens and throws out different Bug Checks. If it isn’t that i would still wager a hardware issue, I would change out the SATA cables, clean the motherboard and PSU really good and give it an other go.
Hi Wil, I’m generally product agnostic, so I’m not trying to be a Windows evangelist here… I’ve built two Windows gaming PCs (my current rig also doubles as a development environment btw), and I understand how completely unhelpful and frustrating Microsoft’s error messaging can be. You’d think they have a few bucks to shell out for UX and QA; sometimes I wonder if they’re too big to care.
Anyway, this may be totally off the mark… but MS has changed things with their product activations, so even if you’re reinstalling Windows for a legit reason (like a failed mobo), the hardware won’t automatically recognize a reinstall as an activated copy — in which case it may necessitate calling MS customer service with the product key.
Another thought occurred to me… my first build was with a Windows 7 developer version, and IIRC that was a one-time install. So I was out of luck if any of the hardware failed – I would’ve had to purchase a new license.
I don’t know for sure that either of these scenarios match your issue, just guessing. Sounds like you’re happy with Linux. I’ve been considering installing a Linux partition on my machine. I love the open source and inclusive nature of their products.
You didn’t come off as an evangelist. The possibilities you outlined support leaving Windows for Linux; there are no activation headaches with Linux distros!
Re: trying Linux. With many Linux distributions, you can create what’s called a live USB. This will allow you to run the distribution from a thumb drive (will be slower) in order to demo it without making changes to your hard drive. If you like it, then you can use the same thumb drive to install the distro to your hdd.
My windows laptop has crapped out 3 times and been unrecoverable every time. My Ubuntu laptop has been going strong for 10 years on the original Ubuntu install.
I’ve been a Mac guy since Vista, but about 6 months ago I bought a new laptop and decided to try Windows again. What a great machine – Dell xps13. But I wanted to upgrade it to a 1TB HD and Win10 completely crapped the sheets. It had encrypted my HD (without permission, to my recollection) and wouldn’t allow a backup or mirror or transfer or re-install or anything. It wouldn’t even allow me to install the drive in another machine without a complete wipe, nor would it allow me to slave the drive and mirror a backup. WTF? Instead of grinding through hours of pointless aggravation, I loaded Linux Mint in under an hour & got my friggin work done, thinking I’d figure out how to dual boot later on.
That was 5 months ago. With each passing day, I’m less likely to try to dual boot because I have come to love Linux. It never tries to sell me apps. It never tries to get me to join its cloud services. It never does stuff without my permission. In short it never F*s with me. It just acts like a computer. I have come to love Linux for that and a dozen other reasons having to do with reliability, inter-operability, efficiency (battery life) etc..
Enjoy the Penguin, Wil.
If you are having difficulty with netflix, install chrome. I am sure it will work on a debian install. I am running lubuntu on an old core 2 Duo dell optiplex 755 and it will stream all day long…..
Or Firefox. It’s Chromium that’s having issues.
I definitely feel your frustrations with Windows. I honestly believe that Windows peaked at Windows 2k and they have slowly degraded ever since then in the spirit “easier user experience”. As for Linux, I am slowly getting more and more comfortable with it and living within the limitations of it that I am not immediately able to troubleshoot. Mostly, it really allows older computers to find new vigor. I first installed Ubuntu on an Ivybridge laptop last year and it was definitely energized!
Also, I did recently discover the Elementary distribution, and I definitely feel that it is a very solid transition distribution (if not a persistent one) for regular desktop use cases. Very clean UI in a way that should be familiar to other GUI OS.
Even though I use it every day: I call it Winblows :).
/Beginning of rant
Most of my friends tell me how good they think version 10 is. I say it’s at least as crappy as Vista, if not more in certain cases. At least when you’re a bug trigger like me, then this (excuse for an) OS is a nightmare. I got to take a couple of days and revert to good old 7, now THAT was a great OS (and so was OS X 10.6.8 but freaking nothing runs on it anymore, thanks Apple for forcing us to weaker, buggier and slower OSes. It’s good to mention that you can still run 98% of your programs on Windows XP to this day, so 1 point for Micro$oft on that one). If I didn’t need apps that don’t run on Linux, I’d have switched ages ago. Every time I tried a distro in the last 4-5 years, it just worked. But for my writing and cover arts I need Scrivener, Photoshop, Vellum (Mac) and a few other tools that won’t run on Linux outside of a virtual machine… so yeah, not gonna try to edit 1-2Gb PSD files in a crappy virtual low-performance environment I’m afraid.
Just my 2 cents.
/End of rant