[vidarh]

I bought my son a new laptop earlier this year. It is something like ten times faster than his old Linux laptop (my old hand-me-downs), yet it boots slow and is sluggish with Windows where his old Linux setup was fast. I haven't had it freeze, but I've spent far more time solving problems with his new laptop in the last few months than in the last few years of having him use Linux. If it wasn't for some of the games he likes that aren't available for Linux, I'd have insisted he stick to it.

Maybe they're not common problems, but it's certainly not just him that find it gives a poor experience.

[alkonaut]

If a new laptop is slow something must be wrong. Such as it having a mechanical disk. It might not seem like a big problem but it's almost a complete no go with win 10. If there are performance issues/freezing on a machine with 8GB and SSD then something is wrong and you should contact the manufacturer, chances are a bios or driver update will fix it

[thriftwy]

> Such as it having a mechanical disk. it's almost a complete no go with win 10

Why then do Windows 10 laptops get sold with HDDs? You come to store and that's what you get out of it.

Also, Linux doesn't mind running from HDD. Not ten years ago, not now.

Lesson to MS: Get your act together or get out of this business. Come back from make-believe world. MS is running on make-believe for the last 10 years. Windows 8, the whole Avalon story, Windows Phone and now this Windows 10 "which only works well on SSD but never discourages anybody from getting an HDD laptop". Supposedly we should learn about this by telepathy or something.

[tw04]

>Also, Linux doesn't mind running from HDD. Not ten years ago, not now.

That's factually incorrect. OSX, Windows, Linux, it makes no difference. You cannot hide the 8ms of response time that comes with a crappy laptop spinning drive. If you spend all your time in a web browser with ample amounts of memory... sure. If you're doing ANYTHING that requires disk I/O - whether it be launching a game, or opening a large directory, you will experience significant lag time with a spinning drive.

[thriftwy]

Guess what, Linux distros figured out how to sprint read everything that is needed into RAM and boot under 10 seconds. Windows takes more than a minute on better hardware by seeking the hell out of it.

[tw04]

That's just not even remotely based in reality. Linux is SIGNIFICANTLY slower to boot on HDD than SSD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgmph_bL8V4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Rsr4E6b68

But I would once again question why you care how long it takes to cold boot a laptop. I think my laptop gets cold booted MAYBE once a month.

[thriftwy]

For some reason, my Windows 10 install reboots itself regularly. Or sometimes it freezes so the only solution is hard reset. That I'm not going to blame solely on Windows, but still, that's what I'm observing.

[alkonaut]

Is there any Linux dist, even a minimal one, that out-boots windows? TIL.

On my SSD, my Win10 cold boots faster than my Dell U2410 screen displays anything if powered at the same time (couple of secs)

[beagle3]

Yes. For years now (at least since 14.04), on HDD, Ubuntu boots to login screen (and once password is given, gets faster to usable desktop) than Win7, Win8.1 and Win10 on every hardware I've run both. And Ubuntu isn't the fastest booting desktop out there.

[flukus]

> That's factually incorrect. OSX, Windows, Linux, it makes no difference. You cannot hide the 8ms of response time that comes with a crappy laptop spinning drive.

Sure you can, you can load stuff in memory so you don't have to hit the hard drive every time you do something like open the start menu. Once in a while the taskbar likes to "refresh" itself and the icons disappear while the drive spins up. It's not a problem I ever had on windows 7 or any linux machine.

[alkonaut]

> Why then do Windows 10 laptops get sold with HDDs?

Excellent question. These machines should do better with Win7 but Microsoft doesn't want to sell it.

Microsoft sells windows 10 and Microsoft sells laptops with Windows 10 on an SSD. I doubt (but do correct me if I'm wrong) Microsoft sells any computers with Windows 10 on a mechanical drive.

Various manufacturers sell underpowered computers with Win10 on it, but thats hardly microsofts fault. They do that because otherwise they can't hit the lowest price segments.

What IS Microsoft's fault:

1)Microsofts "hardware requirements" only say what's necessary to use it, not what's needed for a decent experience.

2) not selling Win7 or making newer versions of windows work with older hardware.

[thriftwy]

> they can't hit the lowest price segments

That's a lie right here because the laptop in question not low end, definitely middle one.

> Various manufacturers sell underpowered computers with Win10

That was always part of Microsoft deal. You get your computer from a manufacturer other than MS and they still have to deliver experience, and they've failed that one.

[alkonaut]

A recent middle range laptop didn't have an SSD? Obviously it might be a config option so a buyer might opt for a better gpu instead at the same price for example, but it still makes me a bit upset it's even possible to get a hdd if the laptop isn't low budget.

[vidarh]

So in other words we need to buy substantially more expensive computers to get a usable experience with Windows vs. Linux. On top of the Windows license.

You'll note that with respect to my sons laptop, Linux ran just fine on his much older, slower laptop.

Says it all, really.

[alkonaut]

> So in other words we need to buy substantially more expensive computers to get a usable experience with Windows vs. Linux.

Well, "Linux" is much broader than a specific version of windows (Windows 10). But yes, for most kinds of linux setup (distro, window managers etc) I'd say the bare OS definitely needs less resources on Linux than on Windows.

I do find that apart from the storage issues, Win10 actually runs about as lean (on cpu and mem) as Win7. The problem with consumer hardware such as cheap or midrange laptops is usually that it's infested with crapware from the start, something I also blame microsoft for, not manufacturers.

The OEM agreeements microsoft do with laptop manufacturers should explicitly ban them from installing any crapware such as antivirus trial versions, poorly written hardware apps and similar. I realize the $400 price of a cheap laptop sometimes includes a big rebate due to the software bundles - but ms ought to put a stop to it. Has to be damaging to their brand.

[vidarh]

Maybe we have different expectations of speed - I've never seen a Windows machine since about Windows 95 was current that didn't feel sluggish.

[kuschku]

Oh, so you're offering to buy me an SSD for Windows 10? That's so nice of you!

/s

If it doesn't work on a mechanical drive, it's fucking broken.

[alkonaut]

I didn't understand the question here (the /s was lost on me because I'm slow probably)

[kuschku]

If you say that a product that is forced upon me by an automatic upgrade just needs better hardware than what I had before, then that hardware upgrade should also happen automatically, or at least for free.

Additionally, you don't get to compare two products if one of them has massively higher hardware requirements.

[alkonaut]

Oh - updates. Right.

Completely agree that having a major version bump as an automatic is insane.

That's why they should just skip the version numbering and just make it a subscription. Then they can sunset hardware 5-6 years old continuously like iOS, but let people choose to stay on the of version indefinitely.