Linux Misadventures: Back to The Windows

Before I start, I just wanted to make it clear that I did not want to go back to Windows. I had to. I connect with family through gaming and Linux doesn’t really work well with games. The games I want to play are available on Linux but after several updates the games will always break. The way in which the games broke though were pretty interesting.

Firstly, games could just fail to launch. Most of the time, you won’t know what is happening to the game. The rest of the time you’ll be notified that the game is missing some form of library. Fixable, so not that bad of an issue.

Assuming that you were able to launch the game, you may experience performance issues or artifacting. The game models may not appear in the way they should. The models may get stuck in the middle of an animation. Again, not fun but not game-breaking.

The worse issue is that sometimes, games would just hang mid-way. That’s fine if you are not playing a competitive game but I got put into single draft mode just because my computer froze one too many times when transitioning to the Dota 2 matchmaking screen. Not cool. This is a game-breaker for me. Literally and figuratively.

Not being able to play the only game I want to play is a deal-breaker. So, I had to move to Windows. But you know what, before doing that I thought I would just give Ubuntu a whirl. Afterall, Steam on Ubuntu is officially supported by Valve.

I went ahead with the Ubuntu installation. Everything was going fine. My hopes were rising. I was prepared to put away the Windows 10 installer USB. But then, my computer failed to wake up from sleep. Not a good sign. However, I can still deal with this. All I have to do is shut down my computer instead of putting it to sleep. No biggy. Then came the dreaded game updates. As many of you may have guessed, the game caused a memory leak.which inevitably caused my computer to freeze. So sadly and rather unwillingly I moved back to Windows.

Now that I’m back on Windows, everything seems normal again. The desktop is familiar. Games work as they should. The programs I need are just a few clicks away. The world felt right. So was it wrong to try Linux again?

Despite the issues I had with Linux, it was an eye-opening experience. Now, I have a better understanding of the inner workings of my computer. The side-effects of my Linux though is that I am more weary of installing closed-sourced programs but I believe those feelings will pass soon.

So, will I try Linux again?

I don’t know. So, let’s just leave it at that. Cool?