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#Linux #Windows #ux

00:00 Intro
00:35 Sponsor: Monitor and secure your internet connection with Safing
01:35 The Start Menu
05:34 How the start menu affects Linux desktops
06:42 Disjointed User Interface
08:55 Program installs and storage
12:22 System Updates
14:17 Windows design matters to Linux
15:53 Sponsor: get a PC that supports Linux perfectly
16:46 Support the channel

This is going to be controversial, but the Windows menu, or really the whole start menu paradigm is bad. This menu is used to start and open things. It's not a multitasking experience. So having a menu that occupies a small corner of your screen is not great.

The reality of things is that people are now just used to it. In Windows 11, the centered menu is a disaster, and once it's open, it's just a bad launcher. Apps are sorted chronologically, so if you don't know the name of a program, you're out of luck, and you can't create any folder that you could build muscle memory upon. And there's the case of opening multiple apps in a row.
With the windows menu, you need to open it as many times as the number of apps you want to launch. Not efficient.

The issue is, this bad menu design affects Linux desktops. Because many distributions or desktops don't want users to run away, they mostly moved to a windows like menu.

We all know about the mismatched UI of Windows.The real problem is that people are now completely used to it. And for Linux, it means that UX, or just UI is not often considered.

Next, let's look at how apps are installed on the system.
On Windows, while the store is progressively getting better, the main way to install a program is still to head over to its website, download an executable, and run it, then click next a few times, pick a location, and let the program install itself.

The files are stored in a single folder usually, with all the libraries the program needs, and the program itself in its own directory structure, that varies from program to program.

And this is a bad design. First, for security reasons. Storing executables and libraries and data in a single folder is a surefire way to have badly set permissions on these files.

Second, it makes finding the files you're looking for difficult. You need to learn each program's directory structure, and look online to find where the data is stored.

And this bad design on Windows also influences Linux desktops negatively. Because to this day, I still get people telling me it's easier to install a program on Windows than on Linux. Seriously.

The reality is that a lot of people don't understand how to install programs on Linux. They're so used to downloading them manually that they try to replicate this, and get super confused.

And a lot of newcomers to Linux just don't understand where the files a program uses live, because they're used to having them lumped into a single directory. The better way to look at it is: what type of file am I looking to access? And then this tells you the folder where it's been stored.

It's no secret that system updates are dreaded by a lot of Windows users. Windows updates have always been problematic, super slow to install, they require a reboot in most cases, and they can make your system worse than it was, so it's no wonder that many users are wary of these.

App updates are also handled separately from system updates. And people that moved from Windows to Linux will keep this fear of updates, because it's been drilled into them again and again that updates or even worse, major version upgrades, aren't a good thing. But they ARE.

And that negatively affects Linux desktops, because you'll get plenty of people who don't apply their updates and then ask for help about a bug that's been fixed already, or who stick to insecure software that has patches available. It makes the work of maintainers and developers harder.

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#nvidia #linux #gpu

00:00 Intro
00:46 Sponsor: Free report on cybersecurity with the MITRE ATT&CK framework
01:26 Nvidia Drivers
03:27 Screen Tearing
06:04 Multi Monitor support
07:34 Hybrid graphics
10:10 Wayland Support
11:48 Power Management
13:04 It's not the whole story
14:09 Why would anyone pick Nvidia, though?
15:26 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly, from Tuxedo
16:19 Support the channel

Drivers are a one click install from the graphical app store. DO NOT install them manually from the nvidia website, and don't mess with kernels that your distro doesn't officially pack.

So, a first big issue people report with nvidia drivers is Screen tearing. I plugged my desktop's RTX 3070 into a basic 1080p monitor. That desktop uses X11, and tearing just isn't a thing here.

Now, if I launch a game to see how well things go, for example Darktide, with v sync off, we can clearly see some big tearing happening. With vsync on, it disappears.

If you still have tearing, you can auto start a command when your computer starts, with the following command line:

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}"

Add that command to your startup applications, and you're done.

But how about multi monitor support? I plugged my laptop running Wayland, into the same external monitor, the basic 1080p one, using the hdmi port that's connected to the nvidia dedicated GPU.
Nothing to say here, it just works.

I also plugged in 2 displays onto my desktop, the 1080p one, and my usual 1440p ultrawide, straight into the RTX3070.

No problems here, both displays are detected immediately. Same experience with KDE Plasma, no issues to report here, multi monitor support works normally.

Now, another thing people tend to hold against nvidia drivers is the hybrid graphics support, as in you have a laptop with a dedicated GPU from Nvidia, and an AMD integrated chip, or an Intel one.

On Wayland, it seems that hybrid mode is the default, and the only mode you can use, I could not find a way to move it back to the intel GPU only, or Nvidia only. Hybrid mode works perfectly.

On X11, the experience is pretty much the same. Hybrid mode is the default, and you do get a bunch more options in the nvidia control panel.

Nvidia has the reputation of not working with Wayland, but that's not true anymore. Everything works as it would on a normal wayland session: touchpad gestures, no screen tearing, fractional scaling support, screen sharing and recording, and running any application. Same experience on KDE with Wayland, it just works.

On my laptop, closing the lid will suspend the laptop. But very regularly, opening the lid doesn't wake the laptop back up, and I get a black screen.

I can get out of it by just getting into a TTY, then moving back to TTY1, and I'm good, but it's not what I'd call a smooth experience.

On my desktop, running Fedora also but with X11, suspend works perfectly, and resuming also happens without any issues.

All my tests are done using the latest nvidia drivers available on Fedora 37 with GNOME, and on Ubuntu 22.10 with KDE 5.25, and all these devices have relatively recent Nvidia GPUs. So it's only 2 distros, 2 desktop environments, and 3 different cards from the same generation.

Support for older GPUs, like the RTX10 series, or older ones, might not be as good, and might require you to use older legacy drivers, which very probably won't support Wayland, and might have more issues.