Linux vs Windows 11: 3 underrated and common features that make the open-source software superior

[Redaktion]

There are a number of benefits to using Linux-based operating systems, including improved customisation, a more stable system, and a more responsive system, but there are also a number of Linux features that often go under the radar. Here are three of those underrated Linux features that Microsoft could learn from.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Linux-vs-Windows-11-3-underrated-and-common-features-that-make-the-open-source-software-superior.709689.0.html

[A]

Yes, Linux and open source software in general needs more coverage. Back in the day, getting linux working on laptops was difficult with many things not working. Now, 95%+ of the time you can get linux running on a laptop with no issues. With remaining 5% being mostly fixable if you search around
On top of that, linux has come a long way from needing people to open the terminal to get things done. Knowing your way around the terminal helps, but most users can use many linux distros without touching the terminal at all.

Wine has also improved a lot if you happen to really need a windows software and there is also Virtualbox in the off chance wine has problems

But generally, I haven't found a single software that I needed to go back to windows for as linux has good enough alternatives. Many of which can be tried in windows too

Though personally I prefer KDE over Gnome.

[Cristi]

I come to this site for your excellent, fact-based in-depth reviews.

This here article has no place on this website for many reasons.

1.
For special symbols & emojis, on Windows 10 & 11 you press Start + . , and that brings up the emoji & symbols panel, in which you can find, neatly categorized, all special symbols that you may need.

Its OK if you prefer the Linux way. But here is also a user-friendly Windows way you should know about and at least present it in your article. Its been with us for years now.


2.
The "MS spying eye", while true, is debatable if its customer-hostile.

3.
The "open source is safer because it is open source" part... Thats just opinion thinly disguised as fact.

Please, Notebokcheck, stick to the well-researched articles that represent who you really are.

[Irrelevance.]

I think this article is missing the point. It doesn't matter how many underrated additional features Linux has, I still won't use it only for 1 reason alone. Gaming. I'm not even talking about about modern gaming but many older games have tools, anti-cheat software, patches/mods made by community that were just never really tested as extensively on Linux and as such may behave unexpectedly. I don't want have to fiddle and debug through all this stuff. Often these programs are made by one dev as a hobby and since 99% of the players are windows users, they rather not even waste any time testing for Linux. This problem is never gonna go away so I'm most likely never gonna use Linux.

Also, if I cared about privacy/security at all, I'd just use some arm android derived hardened OS, like GrapheneOS instead. It is pretty common knowledge that the x86 just has more vulnerabilities than arm being a much older ISA that supports a ton of legacy extensions for compatibility. See: madaidans-insecurities(dot)github(dot)io for further details on how desktopOS compare vs mobileOS.

@A:
I also dunno about the whole 'it's far easier to install linux on laptops with no probs' .. Most Ryzen laptops are using mediatek wlan which seems to perform so poorly under it's linux driver that users of Asus ROG G14, x13 and many other laptops are forced to perform surgery on their laptops and swap their wifi chip for an intel AX210. Even after 3 years this practice is still being recommended and well-documented on reddit. Pretty dismal state of affairs I'd say.

[A]

@A:
I also dunno about the whole 'it's far easier to install linux on laptops with no probs' .. Most Ryzen laptops are using mediatek wlan which seems to perform so poorly under it's linux driver that users of Asus ROG G14, x13 and many other laptops are forced to perform surgery on their laptops and swap their wifi chip for an intel AX210. Even after 3 years this practice is still being recommended and well-documented on reddit. Pretty dismal state of affairs I'd say.

Before, you could get linux on only 10% of laptops if lucky. And had far more serious issues than just wifi not working.

Most Ryzen laptops are not using mediatek, that said mediatek wlan is known to perform poorly even on windows. Looking at threads on reddit you see people swapping it to Intel even though they  are using windows due to unstable connections.

Overall though, most common reason for wifi issues on linux has been due to use of old kernel. Many distributions stick to LTS kernel, and not all things get backported to the LTS kernel. The mediatek issues on linux were fixed in kernel 5.12 but LTS did not get it until 5.15. The most common distro, Ubuntu had an LTS release in April 2022 with 5.15

[Irrelevance.]

@A:

What are most Ryzen laptops using then if not mediatek? I've seen Realtek used in a few budget notebooks and Qualcomm (in a Razer Blade 14, Thinkpad Z series?). There isn't a single one with Intel wifi (Think a few Cezanne laptops had Killer, which is rebranded Intel AX200 - but nothing for Ryzen 6000 series / Rembrandt laptops). Ryzen 7000 seems to use the same as prior gen.


You're right about about mediateks not being great even on windows and people swapping them there as well. I think for this reason alone I will stay far away from laptops in general until amd decides to fix this issue. At least with handhelds even if they use trash wifi chips, you're getting what you pay for. Just find it ridiculous paying thousands for a laptops only to get stuck trash wifi.

However, chromebooks often use cheap mediatek wifi and always have solid connections, so yeah dunno what's going on there..

[Hunter2022]

Agree with NUMBER 2. There is only one way to tame Win10/11, don't allow it internet access.  Ever since I got my Win11 laptop I had always dual boot Win11 with Linux, keeping the Win11 partition permanently offline!

BTW, author forgot about #4:  Built in software not for in Windows. For example Deepin Linux comes with torrent downloader built into the download manager app.  It's been plentiful useful downloading anime episodes with it.  The other thing is Microsoft Edge sucks.  I couldn't use it to translate the web page of my router that is all in Chinese that I bought from Aliexpress.  Deepin Browser is also based on open source Chromium and allows me to translate CHN to ENG on pages that fail to translate in MS Edge!

[JohnM]

I've been using Linux for software development for 4 years now, basically because one of the tools I need remains unavailable on Linux (Xilinx Petalinux). Prior to that, I'd used Windows almost exclusively for software development since 1997 (from 1987 to 1997 I used a combination of VAX/VMS, Unix, DOS, Windows 3.1, and that OS that was on the HP-9000 machines).

I find it quite amazing that there are a number of tools, for example Tortoise Git, FileLocator Pro, WinDirStat, that are free and provide nice, simple UI interfaces that help avoid having to remember all sorts of weird incantations on the command line, but which, on Linux, are either available but don't do a very good job (or no longer supported), or you have to pay for the privilege of using on an Open Source OS.

There is often a lot of choice but, in my experience, it would be much better with less choice, and better quality. For example, I use HHD Free Hex Editor on Windows. Even in the free, restricted, version it's a pretty capable tool. I looked for a Linux alternative recently and spent most of a day installing and testing about a dozen hex editors listed in various 'best linux hex editor' articles; pretty much every single one of them was junk. I seem to remember one specific one that was recommended, but it wasn't free.

There are some nice things about developing software on Linux but, on the whole, I think it's easier on Windows.

[A]

What are most Ryzen laptops using then if not mediatek? I've seen Realtek used in a few budget notebooks and Qualcomm (in a Razer Blade 14, Thinkpad Z series?). There isn't a single one with Intel wifi (Think a few Cezanne laptops had Killer, which is rebranded Intel AX200 - but nothing for Ryzen 6000 series / Rembrandt laptops). Ryzen 7000 seems to use the same as prior gen.


You're right about about mediateks not being great even on windows and people swapping them there as well. I think for this reason alone I will stay far away from laptops in general until amd decides to fix this issue. At least with handhelds even if they use trash wifi chips, you're getting what you pay for. Just find it ridiculous paying thousands for a laptops only to get stuck trash wifi.

However, chromebooks often use cheap mediatek wifi and always have solid connections, so yeah dunno what's going on there..

From what I saw a lot of Realtek, but it is possible that these things switch around based on generation. I guess with AMD supporting Mediatek as Intel alternative for wifi it may have seen a jump?

Chromebooks are linux. My guess is that since laptops are made for chromebook, they backport the latest kernel firmware. Thus no issues.

To give my experience, around 2 years ago I bought an Intel AX210 to get access to 6e for lower latency. I put it into my linux and it didn't work. The reason was I was on latest LTS build that pinned my kernel at 5.3 on one linux distro(OpenSUSE Leap), and 5.4(Linux Mint) on another. But you needed 5.10 to make AX210 work. And 5.11 if you wanted bluetooth to work

Mint limited what kernels I could get ahead to 5.8 at best. So I had to get a special tool to install latest kernel. For OpenSuse Leap, it was easier, but still some work where I had to install a backports repository.

This is why you often times hear people having new components not working properly. Because they are on an LTS linux build and their component requirement isn't backported. The easiest solution to this for those who want to use newest hardware but don't want to download special apps or repositories is to go Rolling Release. I've avoided Rolling Releases because for work I needed LTS to match, but now with Docker and microvms for my next computer I plan to go rolling release

[linuxman]

What even is this article. None of the points are even remotely important and telemetry is necessary to improve software development, almost every linux software comes with telemetry enabled by default. This is just bait for the average MUH LINUX WINDOWS BAD neckbeard.

[CCJ111]

The remark about telemetry just isn't true.  Telemetry is anonymized data used for reliability metrics and for gauging the popularity of features for product improvement.  Asserting as of it is a fact that telemetry is monetized is pretty irresponsible.  You don't know that.  Even if it is, why should I care if anonymized data is sold?  Not that it is.  I think there is too much imagining what an evil corporation must be up to and then that becomes "common knowledge" about what it IS up to.  Maybe it's more responsible to not repeat unsubstantiated accusations.  Establishing that data is sent 15 times an hour is a far cry from establishing that it's monetizable personally identifiable in nature.

[Eduardo]

Linux will never become the dominant OS unless it deals with gaming and full Windows compatibility. No one wants to edit a .docx on Linux and make de file unusable on Windows.

[A]

What even is this article. None of the points are even remotely important and telemetry is necessary to improve software development, almost every linux software comes with telemetry enabled by default. This is just bait for the average MUH LINUX WINDOWS BAD neckbeard.

Most linux software even if they have telemetry is off by default. And the telemetry is open source so you know exactly what is being sent and where

The remark about telemetry just isn't true.  Telemetry is anonymized data used for reliability metrics and for gauging the popularity of features for product improvement.  Asserting as of it is a fact that telemetry is monetized is pretty irresponsible.  You don't know that.  Even if it is, why should I care if anonymized data is sold?  Not that it is.  I think there is too much imagining what an evil corporation must be up to and then that becomes "common knowledge" about what it IS up to.  Maybe it's more responsible to not repeat unsubstantiated accusations.  Establishing that data is sent 15 times an hour is a far cry from establishing that it's monetizable personally identifiable in nature.

It's closed source and sent over encryption, can you prove what and where is being sent?

Linux will never become the dominant OS unless it deals with gaming and full Windows compatibility. No one wants to edit a .docx on Linux and make de file unusable on Windows.

*nix is technically already the dominant OS, it owns the server space, most devices like routers and mobile phones/tablets. The only place it hasn't dominated is the desktop and even there it is gaining and now at around 22%

Download LibreOffice (default doc editor on most linux and available on windows), make a docx file. Open it in MS Word and see for yourself. It works just fine.

Steam is working on making most games work on linux.

The real bottleneck for linux is most OEMs don't offer linux options off the bat. Only on some models is there a linux option, and you can't access it through the regular page you have to look for it specifically. If people notice they can save $50-100 on going Linux over Windows you'd be surprised how many would choose it in a heartbeat

[NotDelusional]

The only place it hasn't dominated is the desktop and even there it is gaining and now at around 22%

Hah. MacOS and ChromeOS are not Linux. Linux has sub-3% desktop market share, up a whopping 2% from where it was 10 years ago when all the Linux fanboys were saying "we're gaining market share!" They were saying the same thing 10 years before that.

I've dabbled with Linux over these past 20 years. I've never enjoyed it. I've often hated it. I've broken things in Linux with what should have been routine package upgrades more times than I can count. Finding solutions takes top-tier Googling skills, wadding through mostly outdated information. More often than not I'd find a random forum post with my exact issue... And no replies.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but every Linux desktop experience feels exactly as it did 20 years ago. Clunky. I've settled on Mint lately, but I'll take Microsoft's mishmash of 3 generations of UI cobbled together any day. At least they have vision. Every distro/desktop I've used in Linux feels like it was designed by a committee of engineers in a stale conference room while the lone UX/UI person sits in the corner scribbling in their notebook because they can't get a word in.

You can keep making excuses for Linux on the desktop... If only OEM's... If only more people knew... If only more software was ported. Nah... The real bottleneck for Linux IS Linux.

See you in 10 years when Linux grabs another 1% of desktop share...

[A]

Hah. MacOS and ChromeOS are not Linux. Linux has sub-3% desktop market share, up a whopping 2% from where it was 10 years ago when all the Linux fanboys were saying "we're gaining market share!" They were saying the same thing 10 years before that.

ChromeOS is Linux. Linux isn't really even an OS, it is the kernel and ChromeOS is on the Linux kernel.
MacOS is on the XNU kernel which is based of FreeBSD. Both Linux and FreeBSD are brothers that came from Unix. Which is why they are referred to *nix.

I've dabbled with Linux over these past 20 years. I've never enjoyed it. I've often hated it. I've broken things in Linux with what should have been routine package upgrades more times than I can count. Finding solutions takes top-tier Googling skills, wadding through mostly outdated information. More often than not I'd find a random forum post with my exact issue... And no replies.

A lot has changed over the years. For one package managers became better and many will warn you if your dependencies change or etc. Some like OpenSuse even offers multiple versions of same package to allow things to work side by side with little issue.

But the biggest quality of life improvements for average people is introduction of things like FlatPak, Snap and Appimage. They are kind of similar to Microsoft's MSI with some going a step further. They remove the worry of things like needing to upgrade application dependency as all of it is included. Thus, you only need to upgrade packages that keep up your OS, applications are decoupled so you don't need to worry about breaking packages to use latest version of X or Y.

For those who are worried of breaking things but have tech knowledge, I suggest trying NixOS. No more breaking things as you can always go between states. It prevents any package from interfering with others and you can always replicate states or go back and forth.

Another interesting thing to see for tech users is MicroOS which will become the basis for OpenSuse Leap 6. The concept is simple, an immutable OS with all apps are installed either by flatpak or Distrobox(dockerized). It leaves 0 worry of breaking anything

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but every Linux desktop experience feels exactly as it did 20 years ago. Clunky. I've settled on Mint lately, but I'll take Microsoft's mishmash of 3 generations of UI cobbled together any day. At least they have vision. Every distro/desktop I've used in Linux feels like it was designed by a committee of engineers in a stale conference room while the lone UX/UI person sits in the corner scribbling in their notebook because they can't get a word in.

You clearly have not been using linux that long if you think it is the same as it was 20 years ago.

Mint is a repackaged Ubuntu taking out snap packages and using non-Unity DE with some of their own default software aimed at more casual users. That said, Mint comes with multiple Desktop Environments that can give different experience. Cinemon, Mate and XCFE. All 3 are more closer to older windows with Cinemon having most polish, Mate in the middle and XCFE is most barebone

It's okay, but KDE Plasma 5 is much better, especially over the past years where the experience has been more polished.

Gnome also has their own DE which is fairly polished, but it's a bit too mobile for my taste (like Android, MacOS and OSX kind of interface) but others like it for more modern experience. There are also derivatives like PopOS's Cosmic which is like Mint for Gnome but with a company backing it

You can keep making excuses for Linux on the desktop... If only OEM's... If only more people knew... If only more software was ported. Nah... The real bottleneck for Linux IS Linux.

See you in 10 years when Linux grabs another 1% of desktop share...

If that is the case, explain why Android and iOS are beating Windows? Despite being *nix based.