News Linux boot time reduced by 0.035 seconds thanks to a one-line kernel patch — aligning the slab in the ACPI code makes Linux boot faster

[Admin]

Linux engineer Colin Ian King discovered that aligning the slab in the ACPI code will make Linux boot consistently faster by 35 milliseconds.

Linux boot time reduced by 0.035 seconds thanks to a one-line kernel patch — aligning the slab in the ACPI code makes Linux boot faster : Read more

 

[salgado18]

Nice. Still waiting for those devs who will improve desktop usability so it becomes more popular, but I don't oppose a small speed boost.

 

[kiniku]

As a diehard Windows gamer, I tried to make a transition to Linux. I exploit virtually every available Windows feature to make things easier for me. And again, I am a gamer, which is still not Linux's strong suit. But my last time trying this was like over 10 years ago, so I wanted to try again. I did a considerable amount of research trying to find the best "gaming friendly" distribution.
All said and done, to get Linux even close to my acceptable baseline still comes with too many sacrifices to make it worth it. And I have no interest in dual booting, maintaining two separate OSs. But don't get me wrong, Linux is awesome! It's rock solid as a desktop OS. I like how it seems to do things automatically that Windows has to be "told" to. Linux is fast. But support for it can be hit or miss at times. And often even supported features/software etc. can be a research nightmare to get it to work properly. But if you are a tinkerer, and your need for gaming compatibility and development is not high like mine, Linux is fun!

 

[TJ Hooker]

Nice. Still waiting for those devs who will improve desktop usability so it becomes more popular, but I don't oppose a small speed boost.

Have you tried Linux recently, a user-friendly distro, like Ubuntu or similar? For basic desktop usability I don't really know what would be missing, unless there are specific Windows-only applications you need (which obviously isn't something Linux devs could help with).

Even for gaming, in my experience if you use Steam then (nearly) everything just works as it would on Windows. It'll transparently handle setting up the Proton compatibility layer in the background, if required. That being said I don't really play brand new AAA games, or competitive games that have invasive anti-cheat mechanisms. Maybe those are still probablematic.

 

[GeorgeLY]

As a diehard Windows gamer, I tried to make a transition to Linux. I exploit virtually every available Windows feature to make things easier for me. And again, I am a gamer, which is still not Linux's strong suit. But my last time trying this was like over 10 years ago, so I wanted to try again. I did a considerable amount of research trying to find the best "gaming friendly" distribution.
All said and done, to get Linux even close to my acceptable baseline still comes with too many sacrifices to make it worth it. And I have no interest in dual booting, maintaining two separate OSs. But don't get me wrong, Linux is awesome! It's rock solid as a desktop OS. I like how it seems to do things automatically that Windows has to be "told" to. Linux is fast. But support for it can be hit or miss at times. And often even supported features/software etc. can be a research nightmare to get it to work properly. But if you are a tinkerer, and your need for gaming compatibility and development is not high like mine, Linux is fun!

Depends of what you're playing - most (though unfortunately not all) older games work better in Linux that in Windows. Quite a few modern ones work very well too, the major exception being games with anti-cheat technologies, but personally I would not install them on Windows as well as they integrate with the kernel (a big no-no if you want your computer for anything besides gaming).

PS There are even aggregators, such as Lutris that make installation of Windows games easier.
PPS I bought quite a few old games from GOG, that people have tons of problems with, but the problems are limited to Windows. Modern games that work perform better in Linux also.
PPPS You need some minor knowledge of Linux to understand what you need to do in some cases (i.e. install i386 graphics libraries on Ubuntu).

 

[mitch074]

Nice. Still waiting for those devs who will improve desktop usability so it becomes more popular, but I don't oppose a small speed boost.

Have you tried more recent desktops ? They are not exactly unusable...
Also, you don't have to navigate between crapware and ads to reach your applications shortcuts.
It's not MacOS friendly yet, but it's much better than Windows 10 > 1709 or Win11...

 

[mitch074]

As a diehard Windows gamer, I tried to make a transition to Linux. I exploit virtually every available Windows feature to make things easier for me. And again, I am a gamer, which is still not Linux's strong suit. But my last time trying this was like over 10 years ago, so I wanted to try again. I did a considerable amount of research trying to find the best "gaming friendly" distribution.
All said and done, to get Linux even close to my acceptable baseline still comes with too many sacrifices to make it worth it. And I have no interest in dual booting, maintaining two separate OSs. But don't get me wrong, Linux is awesome! It's rock solid as a desktop OS. I like how it seems to do things automatically that Windows has to be "told" to. Linux is fast. But support for it can be hit or miss at times. And often even supported features/software etc. can be a research nightmare to get it to work properly. But if you are a tinkerer, and your need for gaming compatibility and development is not high like mine, Linux is fun!

A few years ago, I made a demo to a colleague at work : building a PC from scratch using AMD hardware, installing an OS and running a Steam game (Doom 2016 demo). We have a fast fiber at work, so download times were rather short.
OS was Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, lite install (no app, only Firefox).
It took 25 minutes from the moment I powered the system up to install the OS to the moment I had Steam installed, all system updates done, the game downloaded and running in OpenGL and Vulkan beautifully.
If your requirements are "all my Xbox/Epic games must run", it's very hard. If like me most of your games are on Steam, it's very very VERY easy. Activision Blizzard is touche and go - it depends on wherher the Lutrix script to install the Blizzard app is up to date.

Provided you're not running NVIDIA - their drivers installer breaks all the time - doing a gaming machine on Linux is very easy. As for development... No question asked, best OS ever.

 

[salgado18]

Have you tried Linux recently, a user-friendly distro, like Ubuntu or similar? For basic desktop usability I don't really know what would be missing, unless there are specific Windows-only applications you need (which obviously isn't something Linux devs could help with).

Even for gaming, in my experience if you use Steam then (nearly) everything just works as it would on Windows. It'll transparently handle setting up the Proton compatibility layer in the background, if required. That being said I don't really play brand new AAA games, or competitive games that have invasive anti-cheat mechanisms. Maybe those are still probablematic.

Have you tried more recent desktops ? They are not exactly unusable...
Also, you don't have to navigate between crapware and ads to reach your applications shortcuts.
It's not MacOS friendly yet, but it's much better than Windows 10 > 1709 or Win11...

I work with Ubuntu 8h a day, and I also play one Windows game using Proton. And I think Linux is pretty usable, if you know what you're doing.

But Ubuntu is way behind Windows and Mac OS in native functionality, some issues are hard to solve, the terminal will be needed sooner or later even for trivial stuff, and some basic stuff is nearly impossible to do (try using a token certificate to sign a document in both; in Windows it's plug and play, I still haven't solved it in Ubuntu).

I'll still migrate my home PC fully to Ubuntu, as I don't trust Microsoft anymore, and I can overcome these limitations to make it my main OS. But that is hardly acceptable for the average user.

My point is: Linux needs a lot more care from devs to reach a wider user base, not only tech enthusiasts but regular people.

(Last comment: open a file explorer window, and click on the address bar. Does it edit the path as a user would expect, or does it do something else incomprehensible for 2024?)

 

[mitch074]

I work with Ubuntu 8h a day, and I also play one Windows game using Proton. And I think Linux is pretty usable, if you know what you're doing.

But Ubuntu is way behind Windows and Mac OS in native functionality, some issues are hard to solve, the terminal will be needed sooner or later even for trivial stuff, and some basic stuff is nearly impossible to do (try using a token certificate to sign a document in both; in Windows it's plug and play, I still haven't solved it in Ubuntu).

I'll still migrate my home PC fully to Ubuntu, as I don't trust Microsoft anymore, and I can overcome these limitations to make it my main OS. But that is hardly acceptable for the average user.

My point is: Linux needs a lot more care from devs to reach a wider user base, not only tech enthusiasts but regular people.

(Last comment: open a file explorer window, and click on the address bar. Does it edit the path as a user would expect, or does it do something else incomprehensible for 2024?)

You shouldn't use Gnome as a desktop then - that's a Bad Windows reflex, to think that what you get is all you can get. I wouldn't be surprised if you found better usability from KDE.