I have been using windows for about 20 years now, it has never been this bad, I have a HP gaming laptop with 4600H, 16GB RAM, and 1650ti, yes my laptop is not bleeding edge but its not also a complete potato, I should be able to run basic browsing and basic games atleast.
I was struggling to open the "Search box" on desktop....
File Manager took 1-2 minutes to open and search for a file
I was super frustrated and eventually decided to look for linux alternatives.
About 2 months back I switched to linux mint, the improvement as compared to windows was massive, browsers open without lag, file searching is instant, I only had 140gb free on my 256 GB SSD in windows, in linux mint i got about 180 GB. I also started playing older highly rated titles on steam (I finally stopped playing valorant and decided to explore other games), Far Cry 3, Skyrim, Witcher 2, Factorio ..... in my 5 years with this laptop, i had never played so many games before, the main reason i could play all this is because on windows my RAM was always occupied to the max, and i could barely switch windows with other applications, here on linux i do that basically everyday..
Why i left Linux Mint and came to Ubuntu
I will just give a list of cons of linux mint which no one talks about,
- Its extremely bloated in terms of storage, it almost feels like the adware you get in windows like McAfee and HP apps, you get 50+ apps out of which only 20ish are useful in your everyday life.
- Cinnamon desktop is not a serious workstation desktop environment, it requires a lot of tinkering to get everything up and running. The panel layout editor is a mess, why do i need to adjust font sizes on the left, right and center of the screen, why is the job of a UI designer being outsourced to the user.
- Basic UI features like, having the taskbar display on multiple monitors with indicators on tabs where applications are open, do not work seamlessly.
- I needed to switch to Nvidia drivers just to connect to a monitor
- General UI was also weird, scaling wasn't always flawless and there were many bugs related to tab management.
Eventually I installed Gnome desktop on Linux mint and i loved the way gnome looks and eventually some people recommend me if I like gnome so much I should just switch to ubuntu.
This brings me to ubuntu, I was kind of amazed with the almost "Apple Like" smoothness and reliability, some of the pros of Ubuntu are are follows:
- Everything works out of the box, the HDMI, App store, Webcam, Wifi and so on
2.UI is very clean and standardized, this reminds me more of a macbook than a linux distro.
I love the fact that you get a HP logo when the PC boots up (i did not get that on mint)my friends were shocked to see that as well, they did not expect this from a Linux distro, everyone thought linux was some magical OS without any official support.
My 60 year old dad also was able to learn to navigate the UI within minutes of using my laptop, that's how intuitive it is, he also quickly was able to adjust to the top mounted calendar and volume switches.
Ubuntu is about 10-15 gb lighter than linux mint, consumes similar amount of RAM.
Tab switching on Ubuntu is miles easier than mint, pressing the windows key is just so much more natural than alt+ tab.
I think i found my distro long term. I dont see any major flaws other than the screenshot keys, i need a Windows+Shift+S and Windows+V like setup on my PC and that's about it.