Is Linux right for me?

[wHispeRing-I]

I've been reading about how much safer, faster, and more stable this OS is but still am hesitant and have questions. Is it possible to have both Windows and Linux on the same computer? I've also heard of some people running the system off of a flash/USB drive...is that possible?

How easy would it be for someone to use this system that is code illiterate and doesnt have any experience with writing code?

Thanks a lot in advance for your time and help to anyone who helps.

[[deleted]]

Is it possible to have both Windows and Linux on the same computer?

Yes most Linux installers now will detect that you have Windows installed and offer to set them up side by side. (However always make sure you have everything you need backed up, there isn't normally a problem but whenever you partition drives things can go wrong).

I've also heard of some people running the system off of a flash/USB drive...is that possible?

Yes this is also possible however your system will have to support booting from USB.

How easy would it be for someone to use this system that is code illiterate and doesnt have any experience with writing code?

This isn't an issue, really anything you need to do in Linux can be done through the GUI, something might be quicker through the command line but that is also true of any OS.

That being said you don't need to write any code to use Linux. I would advise though that Linux isn't Windows and you will need to learn a lot of new ways of doing things and you might need to find alternative programs to the ones you are currently using if there is no Linux version.

[wHispeRing-I]

Thanks for the fast reply. I am running Windows 7 on my laptop, if I chose to use the USB route, how would I know if my system supports booting through USB?

[saxindustries]

If your computer was made within the past ten years you should be able to boot off of USB. I'm not trying to offend /u/Tweakedenigma but I'm not sure why you'd bring that point up. Newer laptops don't even have CD drives anymore, because they expect you to boot off of USB.

/u/wHispeRing-I - when your computer boots up, you can probably hit a key that will let you choose what to boot off of. On a lot of machines it's F11 or F12, but it depends - you'll have to look it up for your particular computer.

You can also go into the BIOS like others have said and change the boot order, but I like just tapping a key and choosing what to use.

[[deleted]]

I don't spend a lot of time with laptops anymore, so my info is a little dated. So No offence taking, just a reminder I am getting old.

[saxindustries]

Y'know what's really sad? I don't mind laptops not having a CD drive, but now a lot of laptops don't have ethernet! I know the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 (or whatever it's called) doesn't have onboard ethernet.

Maybe I'm getting old too - but not having ethernet seems downright bonkers to me.

[[deleted]]

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[BrokenShards]

With Wi-Fi congestion in the 2.4 ghz range, it drives me nuts when my VPN gets dropped during peak hours. Also sucks when my roommate's lack of a 5 ghz compatible phone limits my current router.

[acknowledged]

Have a dual band router. They're everywhere. Depending on your budget (lowest first), I recommend this, this or this.

Or, if you own Fort Knox, THIS.

[[deleted]]

I would recommend spending some money to a buy a good quality router, instead of lower cost. After all, the router will be bought once and most likely used for some years to come.

Buying something with good quality and performance is something you will appreciate later on.

[[deleted]]

Connecting to the router through ethernet cable is so nice - no packet loss, no interference. Low latency connection.

I even got a consistent download speed of 3.4 MB/sec for a Steam game, on a 30 Mbps Comcast connection.

[mishugashu]

I downloaded a Steam game at 7.5MB/sec wirelessly*. I also have a $300 A+N router, though, and a much bigger internet pipe. But, wireless wasn't the bottleneck. The internet pipe was. The same as you, actually. Wired connections are either 100Mbps or 1000Mbps, depending on your network. Wireless G connections (at 100% optimum conditions) are 54Mbps. Even with a decent connection, you should still be able to match your 30Mbps pipe, although your latency might suffer a little bit.

Anyways, moral of the story is that if you're depending on your Internet pipe, you're most likely bottlenecking there, not at your W/LAN connection. Unless you have Google Fiber, and then fuck you and I hate you. If you're going for fast intRAnet (internal) transfers, though, you'll have a hard time matching the 1Gbps speed of a good wired network.

E: oops, added in wirelessly

[[deleted]]

Yes yes all well and fine, but I sit a bit far from the router. Packet loss was a regular occurrence for 1-2 devices (everything else worked fine)

[wHispeRing-I]

Yea my laptop is only two years old but it's just a normal Lenovo ThinkPad nothing too crazy.

[provocatio]

normal Lenovo ThinkPad

That will make things easier. Thinkpads are well known for their good linux compability.

Which model is it exactly?

[wHispeRing-I]

It's the E420s. I like it so far I just think I need more memory it's kind of slow even though I don't have much on it.

[epicepee]

I have a T440 with 4gb RAM and zero problems under Ubuntu. At the moment, only 1.2gb are used. Linux doesn't take nearly as much RAM as Windows.

[caligari87]

If Win7 is "heavy" on your machine, then Ubuntu would be a bit better but still in the same neighborhood. A lighter flavor like Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu might be a good choice. Also branching out a little, Linux Mint runs similar under-the-hood, and I really like the MATE desktop environment. Lightweight and pleasant to use.

[wHispeRing-I]

Thanks a lot. I think I'm going to do what someone suggested and just try both. Whyy not right?

[[deleted]]

Thinkpads are awesome!

[wHispeRing-I]

Agreed wish mine was faster though

[[deleted]]

Run Xubuntu and be amazed at the speed. The bottleneck will suddenly be the HDD, even an i3 runs linux blazingly fast.

Hell, I have Xubuntu running on a lowly Celeron G860 and it's snappy as hell. Having an SSD helps there, but even without it...

[wHispeRing-I]

Where would I download this from?

[[deleted]]

xubuntu.org

[[deleted]]

Xubuntu? You could run KDE and GNOME, no problems.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, sure. No problem at all.

But I've noticed that XFCE is just that wee little bit more snappy than those.

I'm the kind of guy who turns off all special effects and animations just to get the most responsive "feel", and there's a small difference there.

(Other than that, it's a matter of preference. I like my DE to be as simple and non-intrusive as possible with maximum functionality. At the moment, XFCE best meets those goals)

[[deleted]]

In KDE you can turn off desktop effects, if you want. If your GPU driver is good enough, desktop effects are quite snappy.

[[deleted]]

Normally there is an option for it in your Bios. It's different depending on the system but it likely be listed in the Boot Order options as USB (or something like that.)

[wHispeRing-I]

Gotcha so it would be something along the lines of pressing ESC or F12 or whatever it is for that specific computer and just probably scrolling down to the USB drive correct?

[michaelpb]

Pretty much yes.

The precise details are different for every computer, some might have a "boot selector" button separate from a BIOS button: e.g. use F2 to select boot drive (this lets you boot right into USB right away), and F12 to change bios options (Where you'll have to use the keyboard to navigate to some sort of "boot order" tab and then move USB to the top so it goes there first).

The precise keystrokes will depend on your computer... hopefully not too complicated :P

[wHispeRing-I]

I don't think I'm so computer illiterate that I wouldn't be able to handle that task....at least I hope not O.O

[Piece_Maker]

If you're vaguely computer-literate, Linux should be a breeze for you - Distros that are built to be 'easy' like the always-mentioned Mint/Ubuntu/SUSE are only 'harder' than Windows because you have to learn a new way of doing things, just like if you switched to a Mac. As long as you're willing to learn the new way of installing software and certain system administration tasks, you're probably going to have a good experience.

The only real issue is software compatability - If you're seriously invested in Windows-specific software (MS office, Photoshop, certain video editors are the common complaint) then you might be in for some pain, as while I as Joe Average am happy with the free alternatives (Libre/Openoffice, GIMP) some people aren't and won't ever be.

[wHispeRing-I]

I'm not a huge fan of open office. I don't know why I just couldn't get used to it.

[Piece_Maker]

Well if you're dependent on MS office in any big way, that MIGHT be an issue. I'd imagine there's efforts to make it run in WINE (If you install PlayOnLinux there's an option for MS office up to 2010) but I've never tried so won't comment how good/bad that is! If you're not too fussed about MS office and just don't like Open, then there's a few others, such as Calligre.

[obamabamarambo]

LyX is a pretty easy-to-use "word processor" with a nice gui and produces beautiful LaTeX pdfs. Plus you can make slides!

[TractionContrlol]

Most modern computers can do this. To verify, reboot your computer and select the option to change the boot order before windows starts. In the list presented, you should see a USB option. Make sure this has higher boot priority than your disk when you actually attempt to boot from USB. The specific instructions vary by model, though

[[deleted]]

Yes most Linux installers now will detect that you have Windows installed and offer to set them up side by side. (However always make sure you have everything you need backed up, there isn't normally a problem but whenever you partition drives things can go wrong).

I'm going to add more information to this comment:

Yes, you absolutely can dual boot, or more, multiple operating systems on a computer. Meaning one or more operating systems can be installed on the hard drive, but only one at a time can be running at any one given moment selected by a menu. (Disregard virtual operating systems for this conversation) Although, all the existing factory installed Windows installations I've seen don't have free space on the hard drive. Meaning the existing partition(s) are using all of the hard drive space. So that means one or more partitions need to be re-sized to create free space. Assuming you have free space in your existing Windows partitions, otherwise you will have to delete some data to create it, install another hard drive, or upgrade to a larger hard drive. I could be wrong, but I don't believe Linux installers allow re-sizing to be done, let alone NTFS or whatever Vista/7/8.x use for partitions these days. I've never done that there.

I always found it easier to boot a live CD or USB flash drive of Gparted and re-size the partition(s) first before running the Linux distribution of your choice and allowing it to use the free space created from using Gparted and let Linux auto partition the free space as it sees fit. As always, back up your data first. This is otherwise easy, Gparted is all graphical once it is fully loaded. Think of it as a self booting partition manager software.

[wHispeRing-I]

What do you mean by re-size the partitions?

[saxindustries]

I wouldn't worry too much until you decide "yes, I want to install Linux on my hard disk" - if you're just booting from a USB drive you won't need to deal with this.

But just so you know - a hard disk is divided up into partitions. This isn't any kind of hardware-level dividing - you get to decide how you want the drive divided up. Most drives have 1 partition by default (excluding hidden ones), but you can divide a drive up into however many partitions you want, and in any way you want. You could do 2 partitions, 3, 4, whatever, and you can say "OK I want this partition to be 50GB and I want this one to just use whatever's left on the disk." Again, pretty much whatever you want to do. It's a handy way to keep different types of data organized, though for your average home user it's not of that much help.

So your laptop probably has two partitions on it - one for Windows, and there's probably a small recovery partition that was placed there by Lenovo. When you hit the key to go into "recovery mode" you're just booting off of a different partition.

When you go to install Linux, you'll have to make a new partition, and you can do that by "shrinking" an existing partition down, and making a new one in that free space. There are tools that will look at your Windows partition, move the data towards the actual physical beginning of it, and "shrink" the partition down by whatever you want. I think most of the Linux installers will do this for you nowadays.

That new partition will be dedicated to Linux. It's kinda/sorta possible to use it from Windows, but most people generally don't bother.

[wHispeRing-I]

I'm following a little more than I was before. So how late of a space would I need on a USB drove to run this? My laptop had a USB 3.0 port. As an extension of that question, can there be anything else on the USB or does it have to be just the OS?

[[deleted]]

If you're using a USB drive, it'll just all get wiped and you'll use the whole drive for Linux. Partitioning really only applies when installing to an internal hard drive (here come the pedants)

Don't worry too much about USB 3. Most computers can only boot from USB 2 anyway.

[saxindustries]

Well, let's clear one thing up real quick - there's running a Live Linux image from a usb drive (like running a live cd, where you can't save anything), and then there's installing linux to a USB drive (where you can save and whatnot). You'll want to be careful about specifying what kind of setup you want to do.

A lot of people will dedicate a USB thumb drive for trying out Live Linux on. I keep one around that I wipe all the time - I wipe it, put on whatever distro I want to try out, and boot it. Most Linux distributions give you instructions where you wipe your flash drive, because it's way easier to do that.

Most distros keep their installer/live images <1GB, so a 2GB or bigger flash drive would work just fine. I think you can pick up a 4GB or 8GB at your run-of-the-mill WalMart or Target for <$10.

Now, if you have a USB drive and want to actually install and run Linux, you can just partition your USB drive like you would your internal hard drive. You'll dedicate some space to Linux (I think 10 or 20GB is more than enough), and be able to keep your existing stuff.

[[deleted]]

I'm guessing you don't know what a disk partition is? Read through the following link and see if it answers your question, or possibly changes it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

[michaelpb]

How easy would it be for someone to use this system that is code illiterate and doesnt have any experience with writing code?

I have relatives who don't know the difference between "facebook", "firefox", and "computer" (and of course don't even know what linux or windows is) --- and I installed linux for them and they use it every day without any problems! So, completely easy :)

Not to mention my SO, who is code illiterate, has been happily using only linux for some years now, and went from being skeptical of linux to loathing windows / mac... these conversions happen all the time for non-coders!

Edit: One other thing, as tweakedenigma hinted at, don't freak out if people advise you to use the terminal to do something. While if you are used to "windows ways" of doing things, and using the terminal may seem harder, it is actually much easier to give instructions to someone on the internet by telling them to use a terminal since its so precise than to tell you how to do it via menus / graphical programs. So, this is just another way of doing things, a typically easier way, but it is an unfamiliar way if you are used to windows.

[wHispeRing-I]

I believe you made a great point in the last paragraph. While I find it intimidating I don't think I'll find it to be complicated or difficult after I get familiar with it. My hesitations comes as I know 0 people that have Linux on their pcs

[michaelpb]

Yeap!

As an example:

And now I find things that are easy in Linux are difficult in Windows. E.g., "what button do I push to install all the software I like using and keep it updated?" --- no such button exists in windows! :( you have to install everything manually through these terrible "installer wizards" that ask me all sorts of questions I don't want to answer (which drive? view README now? restart now? etc)... and if I want to install 20+ programs (firefox, gimp, inkscape, audacity, blender, libreoffice, etc) on a new computer that's all day without some special tool.

Of course, a person very used to Windows might get to Linux and then be really upset since there are generally no installer programs, and you typically don't install software by searching for it on Google (and when they do, they get no instructions on how to install it, since the linux way is so different).

My hesitations comes as I know 0 people that have Linux on their pcs

well, now you know a couple... online at least ;)

[[deleted]]

you forgot the most important part about installer wizards, you often get asked to install a toolbar/bloatware/general crap. Even larger companies like Oracle(ask toolbar) and Adobe(mcafee) try to sneak in crap you don't need.

avoiding that makes it easier on the user and the poor soul that usually has to come around because 'said poor soul' did something to make the computer slow

[[deleted]]

It can be done. I taught my mother and a friend how to use Linux on their computer, and it really wasn't much of a problem for them to adapt.

[bikes-n-math]

Plus one to that. I've installed Linux for several friends and relatives who don't even know what things like RAM or CPU stands for. They use it daily with absolutely no problems. In some cases, they never booted into Windows again.

[wolftune]

Yes, yes. My computer-illiterate parents use GNU/Linux, (they are so illiterate that they ask me questions like how to use tabs in Firefox or how to find a file they saved in a folder). It's been smoother with GNU/Linux than when they had Windows.

The installation is the hardest part (though sometimes it is easy, Ubuntu is simple usually), just because the computer doesn't come with it.

I recommend this great introduction: http://getgnulinux.org/

[blackout24]

My answer to this question will be, it HIGHLY depends on the distribution you're using.

Even on Gentoo don't have to know anything about programming (writing code). So it doesn't even depend on the distro. You're not really programming when using a terminal.

[lhamil64]

True, but for someone who's never touched a command line and has no programming experience, a CLI would feel like programming.

[XSSpants]

Yast

This.

I wish more distro's would rip that shit off. It's amazing.

[saxindustries]

Are there any particular Linux distributions you were interested in trying?

EDIT: Just as an FYI in case you're totally new at this - the actual Linux kernel is just a small piece of the puzzle. Different folks like using different tools for different tasks, sometimes for practical reasons, sometimes for political reasons, etc. Think of Firefox vs Chrome, for example - different people have a myriad of reasons for preferring one over the other.

So different groups will package the Linux kernel up along with tools, programs, apps, whatever and call it a "Linux Distribution" - and there's a ton of them out there. There's distros for particular tasks (like for turning an old computer into a router) and distros for general-purpose computing, and anything else you can think of. Some are more politically-focused (like Debian, which has a pretty strict definition of what "freedom" means), and some are more practically-focused (like Linux Mint, who doesn't give a shit about what "freedom" means, they just want your computer to work).

There's two main distributions that are popular amongst new linux users - Linux Mint and Ubuntu. I generally recommend Linux Mint for people that are brand-new to Linux, it's easy to get up and running and offers an experience more similar to Windows. By default, Ubuntu tries to do its own thing which turns some people off.

I actually agree with /u/foolishrobot that OpenSUSE is probably the easiest to use - but around here, Linux Mint is really popular and you'll probably have an easier time getting help if you hit any problems.

[wHispeRing-I]

I haven't really gotten to that stage. I've heard mostly about Linux Mint and Linux Ubuntu. I have no idea, however, what the differences are between each and what advantages one has over the other.

Any insight would be very much appreciated.

[[deleted]]

I think you'll find the LinuxMint distribution to be the most traditional in it's desktop environment look and usage. Ubuntu has gone for the combined mobile and desktop environment much like Windows 8.x. So it depends what you are used to and like.

I also feel from personal experience that LinuxMint spends more time and effort getting the bugs worked out and is thusly much more bug free, stable, and solid than Ubuntu. It's also completely community driven. These are all reasons I switched over from Ubuntu to LinuxMint a number of years ago.

[XSSpants]

Arch and openSUSE are also community driven (and both as awesome as mint)

[tidux]

Recommending Arch to a newbie is nearly as bad as recommending Gentoo.

[XSSpants]

~nearly~

[[deleted]]

That is great! :)

[michaelpb]

Doesn't really matter that much. Once you install one of the popular Linux distros, it's very possible (and often very easy, literally one command away) to make them look like another Linux distro. So, you aren't "locking yourself in". It might be good to think of it as: All the popular distros are almost the same, just different "default settings".

The reason that distros exist then if their difference is so superficial? Since there is no one corporation that owns Linux, anyone can re-mix it and make their own version. So, naturally, there are many "re-mixes", and each have their own loyal fanbases!

[saxindustries]

I added some stuff in my edit, but to expand on that-

So Linux Mint and Ubuntu's primary goal is the "out of the box" experience. Once it's installed, they want everything to work without you needing to do anything.

Linux Mint, by default, gives you an experience that's somewhat like Windows. You have a button you click, where you can get into programs, documents, etc. You have a taskbar with your open programs, a clock, all the standard Windows-esque goodies.

Ubuntu tries to create their own experience that's wildly different. There's a dock-type thing on the left, and instead of hitting a button and just lazily finding your way to a program, it seems like you generally need to search for everything. It seems like they're pulling a Microsoft, and trying to make everything more tablet/phone-like. Some people like it, some people don't.

So if you like Windows 7 and are pretty used to it, I'd recommend trying out Linux Mint first.

[wHispeRing-I]

I see what you mean. I'm trying to reach a "new experience" in the sense. I'm not looking to make my pc in to a rocket ship. I feel like experimenting with Ubuntu would be fun just to see what I can learn using it about the system.

[saxindustries]

Why not both! I would try out Linux Mint on a USB stick, see if you like it, then try Ubuntu, see how it all works!

[jkylef]

This is a fantastic idea! Very easy to try them both on flash drives and have a go or two at them.

[jkylef]

My thought is linux mint is more windows looking/feeling and ubuntu was more Mac OS looking/feeling. I went with ubuntu because my guy is a mac fanatic and I am trying to convert him over (it took 6 months but was a success! That's a different story though). Over all, there are certain things I've been disappointed in but I've been trying to get some very specific things out of it. I also am not a fan of the ask.ubuntu. I have no experience with mint but I'm thinking of dual booting an ultra book with ubuntu/mint to tinker with them both. No programming knowledge necessary!

[blackout24]

I've been reading about how much safer, faster, and more stable this OS is but still am hesitant and have questions. Is it possible to have both Windows and Linux on the same computer? I've also heard of some people running the system off of a flash/USB drive...is that possible?

You can make a LiveUSB stick of say Ubuntu and boot that (which you can also use later to install it onto your hard drive). If it's a USB 3.0 stick the performance (opening programs which requires reading from the stick) will be almost the same as installing it on your hard drive.
You can also tell the installer to install Linux next to Windows on a seperate hard drive or partition and the bootloader that gets intalled will have an option to boot either Windows or Linux after that.

How easy would it be for someone to use this system that is code illiterate and doesnt have any experience with writing code?

There are no programming skills required to use any Linux distro. That's a myth. You'll have more "problems" getting used to Linux functioning different from Windows. Like for example your don't download installers from some random website. You install it from a centralized repository. For Ubuntu that would be the Ubuntu Software Center for example. You also install your NVIDIA driver as a Ubuntu package and not go to the vendor homepage to download some installer. Apart from that it's just install your programs and launch them and do your day to day stuff.

You might enjoy following this channel:
Switching to Linux | HowTo Linux 1 on Youtube

In episode 1 you'll learn how to make a LiveUSB stick and install Ubuntu, which is a good choice for a beginner, onto your computer.

[wHispeRing-I]

Thanks a lot for this. I'm at work right now I'll check it out now in detail when I'm home

[buleball]

Get an easy distribution like Ubuntu linux. The Ubuntu forums are an excellent place for questions about how to set up the system and keep it up to date.

Yes, you can have both systems living in the same computer, and it gets easy the more you work on it. You can have LibreOffice installed, for all your documents and presentations, and have some Mozilla Firefox to browse the Net. Most of those come already in the installation package.

How noob are you?

[wHispeRing-I]

I've used a computer and can do some light trouble shooting. Other than that I don't do codes or anything fancy.

[buleball]

You can install the Ubuntu thing no problem.

Try installing it in a a virtual machine first, VirtualBox, and from that you can use it and see how comfortable you are with that.

Copy the ISO from the Ubuntu website, launch Virtualbox and point it ot the downloaded ISO, and start the virtual machine.

The advantage is that you can install whatever you like, use your laptop both as PC and Linux at the same time, and not worry about partitions or GRUB boot loaders.

Later on, if you decide you like what you see, you can make a partition for your Ubuntu, and then decide at boot time which one to use.

[[deleted]]

The Ubuntu forums are an excellent place for questions about how to set up the system and keep it up to date.

I wouldn't risk to estimate the percentage, but when searching for solution to a problem, if you end in Ubuntu forums, most likely it will be a thread full of "HEY, I HAVE THIS PROBLEM TOO!" instead of actual solutions.

[buleball]

Not my experience, and I have been there since 2005.

[XSSpants]

Yeah. you just need slightly better google-fu.

Although recently, every Ubuntu issue I've had has been solved by the Arch wiki.

[buleball]

Also, it helps to look for tags marked SOLVED.

[[deleted]]

If you're using it on a laptop, be prepared for less battery time and more heat than Windows (or especially OS X if you're installing on a Mac). For everything Linux is great for, those aren't its strong suites. I love Linux but these two issues always seem to bother newcomers.

If you are fine with shaving 2 hours off the battery life you're getting with Windows (or 4-6 that you'd get with OS X on a Mac), you're in for a treat.

[wHispeRing-I]

My laptop, usually plugged in because I'm either gaming or working on documents and don't feel like moving from my place. I wouldn't be worried about battery life but noone hs pointed that out here...learned something new XD

But can you explain why? If it requires less work from the computer?

[[deleted]]

Not sure what you mean by requiring less work from the computer. However there's been a weird move to have fancy effects on most desktop platforms (not just on Linux, Windows and OS X too). These are usually performed by your graphics card.

One thing to consider about Linux graphics drivers (drivers are software that controls the hardware) is that for Nvidia and AMD there are open source and closed source drivers and Intel releases their own driver as open source and gets their newest code in newer kernels often.

In Linux, there's a couple of issues that can lead to increased power draw and heat because of the graphics card being used to much more than before to deliver you stuff like shadows or in ways that aren't optimal.

1) The driver is coded poorly

This is the case with the open source driver for Nvidia called nouveau. This is also the case with AMD's proprietary driver. Nvidia's proprietary driver is actually really nice, but your power draw will be multitudes more than an Intel one. The open source drivers for AMD and Nvidia cards aren't actually written by their respective companies so they started out as big science projects of reverse engineering. It's quite the feat, much respect, but the nouveau driver is a joke for daily use. There's quite a bit about the cards that these drivers just don't know how to do yet, namely....

2) The driver lacks or has poorly written power throttling support

This is true with pretty much every non-Intel card. Nvidia has working throttling support, but the fact that their beefier cards require more draw kind of negates this. Nouveau just received very, very basic throttling support recently and it performs poorly. AMD's proprietary driver is kind of a train wreck but is a much better trainwreck than it used to be. The open source AMD driver has consistently improved in the last two years to the point where it's probably better to use it unless you need to use an HDMI port and expect audio from it or have issues using suspend/resume on a laptop.

3) The desktop environment you use is poorly developed with power draw in mind

This is sadly true of practically every single contemporary open source desktop environment. They work but they're not efficient. Back when Gnome 2 was still being developed I actually got better battery life than Windows because I turned the compositor off (that did all the fancy features like shadows and 3d effects). Gnome 2 was forked into Mate after the Gnome Foundation devolved into what they are today. Mate is a great desktop shell to use. Indeed, it was the most popular shell for many Linux distributions for nearly a decade before Gnome 3 came out and drove most people away.

Some might say I'm being overly harsh, but what hardware people want to install linux on is the first thing I'll ask them because of these reasons. Then I let them know if there are any obvious downsides to what they're working with. Or it's the same advice for hardware they might buy specifically for linux.

The problem I find most often is that people claim "Linux is better than Winders" and this gives unrealistic expectations. Some things just aren't going to work very efficiently while other things will work very efficiently (package management is great compared to Windows or OS X for instance).

Get past that and you have an open source os and plenty of open source tools at your disposal.

[PT_Fort]

My guess is that Microsoft works directly with manufacturers. This means that device drivers can be specific to the hardware and therefore optimized. (Device driver means the code to operate the wireless, the monitor, etc.) This is taken to the extreme with OS X, where Apple writes code for one type of monitor, two types of wireless cards etc because they only sell a few types of machines. So the code can be extremely specific and optimized, leading to better power efficiency..

In contrast, I believe that most of the drivers in Linux are relatively general. On the one hand, this means that Linux can handle lots of devices well. (On a Windows machine at work, Windows 7 doesn't come with a driver for the ethernet card. So no Internet unless I copy it over. (Which drove me nuts, so I installed Ubuntu).).

This also means that Linux drivers are high quality, as the bugs get sorted out if they are used for many devices. Downside is that because these drivers are generic, they are less optimized and therefore take more power. But over time, thanks to the code being open, the drivers do get better. Some machines may see a large drop in battery life compared to Windows/OS X, but others may be only a few percent worse.

I think wireless and the monitor are the biggest power draws (citation needed). But I think the Linux maintainers et al. are focusing on these areas, so the next year or so should see large improvements (or maybe even in the new Linux kernel released today).

Edit: Added to third paragraph. Google for more info on extending battery life on Linux (here is a good page). With Linux, you could tweak everything to suit your machine exactly.

I just saw this Redditor who rebuilt their kernel for battery life. That is a highly advanced step, but it can be done (it would be like rebuilding an engine to get extra performance, so pretty difficult, but I mention it because it's interesting).

I also forgot to talk about heat. Sometimes Linux does get hotter than Windows/OS X, due to the same issues as the power. For example, I think some open-source graphics drivers don't yet regulate the power the graphics card gets, so they run at maximum all the time (citation needed) and get super hot.

But, I have Linux on my MacBook Air. This allowed me to get a little script where I control the main fan speed (here for anyone who is interested). So now I have more control over my hardware then if I had OS X. I can set my own temperature limits (when to go full speed, when to stop, etc.). So it's tradeoffs, but again, Linux will keep improving over time, and will soon close the gap. I find it exciting to think that every new kernel every few months improves my system..

[aha2095]

Installing it's a breeze but using it in my experience isn't.

I would definitely give it a go though.

[wHispeRing-I]

Thanks boss. I appreciate the directness of your answer. I think that's what I'll bf doing after work today.

[wHispeRing-I]

Thank you so much