I think off the bat it is easier in the main Linux distros but as you add more and more to it 50/50 sounds about right?

I've never found the BSOD on Windows all that helpful when something small takes down the whole system.

Keep your hair and your sanity, try Slackware.

2 members found this post helpful.

Funny, I have the exact opposite experience as the OP. Windows is ALWAYS more difficult to set up and keep running than Linux in my experience. Sure they both have their problems, but Linux is much more open about what's going on, while Windows tries to hide it, which makes searching for and fixing the problem infinitely harder. The last FOUR (4) Windows systems I've set up have failed out of the box and needed registry hacks to get them going, not so with Linux.

2 members found this post helpful.

And, what do we use to rescue either OS Live...

Based on your timetable and age range you listed, you're younger than me. I do not view myself as too old for stuff. But perhaps that's just you coining a phrase.

My other thinking is from what you originally wrote, you seem to be mentioning that you're trying distro after distro. Yeah ... there are a LOT of them. Why try everything you can? Why try something the minute it's released? If you go through a search phase, accept the fact that there will be some tuning until you get what you want; or determine that a distro is not one that you'd prefer and try another. But end your search phase and just stay with one distribution for a while. What really is the point of trying distro after distro? I have work, which is based on Linux; the dev station is Linux as are the targets; on the targets variation is a lot when we bring up a new board, but once that's done we do very little and concentrate on the applications. Changing the dev station is risky; I actually bring up an entire new computer before I change the distribution; too much risk that tools may not work. For home, I use one distro for a pretty long time, eventually try something new; that led me to MINT's newest release, 16 - I tried it via LiveUSB; gave it a week or more to convince myself that I wanted that more than Ubuntu 10.04; and so I swapped over permanently.

I suppose what I should also relate is that since it was a LiveUSB, I could install stuff like Truecrypt and set up Firefox with my bookmarks and add-ons, pretty much the way I had then on Ubuntu. Therefore when I did make the swap permanently, I knew what elements I needed to resolve or data I needed to save to maintain my current levels of usage.

You are running testing. If you're not prepared to fix problems like that, don't run testing. It's really that simple. I don't understand the Debian culture of users running testing/unstable and then complaining vocally when stuff breaks.

Run the stable distribution with backports if necessary and install the fglrx driver from the repos if you need it.

Or install the kernel firmware (firmware-linux-nonfree) for the radeon driver and use that instead of running a proprietary driver.

If you installed the driver from the fglrx/catalyst installer from AMD's website, then that's probably why fglrx is broken. Particularly with testing, it gets so many updates that the blob drivers installed from outside the Debian repositories will break (because they get clobbered) and you will have to reinstall them - especially when the kernel is upgraded - the packages from the repositories don't have this problem.

And even if installed from the repositories - it's testing and this would not be the first time the proprietary video drivers have been broken.

2 members found this post helpful.

There are a few people I have noticed that use Testing/Rawhide or other testing branches of various distros -- seemingly not understanding that they are literally for 'testing' features and packaging and aren't meant for daily use unless you are a developer or qa person. I think it has to do with the want of people to be using the 'latest' version, bleeding edge as it were, and not understanding the difference between bleeding edge stable and development testing.

If you want bleeding edge, go for a rolling distro. They tend to keep packages up to date with upstream. Avoid 'testing' at all costs unless you are a developer or qa person.

There is this myth that Debian testing is a "stable" distro usable by anyone who wants newer software. Many of the users who run testing, probably need a few backported packages and a newer kernel at most, but instead upgrade to a semi rolling system and get a constant stream of everything and the kitchen sink updated on a daily basis. They do this usually on the advice of others or because they do not want to take the time to research into backports, or creating their own backports. There are few people who absolutely have to run testing.

What is/not a problem depends on your perspective. fglrx breaking was never a problem for me - I'd just read the errors, find out what packages were involved, purge and reinstall and just fiddle around until I'd solved it. If it turned out there was a bug or the usual ABI breakage due to a new xserver, I'd just downgrade the xserver or purge fglrx and run radeon for a while. To me that was just the normal ups and downs of running testing/unstable, to some it's something they find upsetting.

FGLRX made me switch to nvidia.

are you having problems with chrome or chromium ?

If I had that problem and I didn't want to spend time fixing it, then I would switch to another browser, not to another OS.

Greetz
I am truly confused and disagree entirely with so-called "valid points". I've used multiple operating systems for decades, including Windows, and the main reason I still even have multiboot on my main box is to keep in touch with the problems in Windows that is part of what keeps me employed. I hate having to boot Windows on my own box because of all the 3rd party crap I have to run and fixing problems often makes me want to claw out my eyes.

My main OpSys, Slackware, has been through several upgrades, starting with v 11.1 and is now 14.0, over 8 years and transferred through several hard drives and motherboards and I've spent almost zero time fixing anything on it. I don't have to deal with wiping and reinstalling every year or two just to get speed and stability back nor bi-weekly Virus and Malware scans.

Switching to windows now is orders of magnitude worse than the guy who swam halfway across the ocean, decided he couldn't make it, and swam back.

Edit - Also, if it weren't for "long hairs" both gainfully employed and working toward that, there wouldn't even be PCs let alone Windows and Macs.

My "Mustang" (I would never buy one) hasn't broken down yet, and if it does I know exactly how to fix it or if I don't then I'll use the internet to find a fix. I have yet to find a problem without a solution.

I cut my hair regularly and will soon have a job

After years of faffing with the proprietary drivers, I now just use the FOSS drivers on older hardware, Radeon HD 3xxx, and all I can do is relate my own experiences: it works. I am not playing proprietary games of course, nor do I use my computer to watch TV, but kwin compositing effects work, 2D rendering is very good - no problems, no jerky scrolling, glitches, no crashes, nothing.

With the nvidia driver on my old PC, 2D performance was crap and I had to run a shell script when X started to apply some settings to nvidia-settings to get half decent performance.

I haven't used fglrx for over two years, but I think they dropped support for my GPU at some point anyway - either way don't care and don't want to deal with fglrx.

When all is said and done, high end AMD/Nvidia graphics hardware is designed for windows games...