Back to Windows

With much disappointment I am back to Windows as my desktop OS. I really wanted to leave Windows for all personal use on my computer. I was almost there, except for a few issues. So, why did I return to Windows?

Drivers

This is why I inevitably decided to flip back to Windows; at least for some tasks. I had too many issues with a variety of drivers. Looking back, there are probably a number of ways to avoid these issues, mostly with setting expectations and for specific use cases.

Nvidia

First, we have graphics issues. Let this be known, I brought this upon myself. I decided to use the nvidia graphics drivers instead of the Ubuntu recommended drivers. Do I remember why? No, I just thought it was a good idea.

What ended up happening was that every time there was an upgrade to 'blank' (not sure what, assuming something related to graphics) I would have to repoint the graphics driver back to the video card. It would fail over to the 'default' driver, which had no sort of output. This would cause a blank screen on login and the inability to display a desktop environment. The easiest way I found to fix this was to reinstall the driver through command line every single time this happened. Not good.

Gamepad issues

I have two gamepads (I even ordered a third to replicate this specific scenario) that present random panning and button ghosting; one even using playstation based drivers and other using xbox. I can only assume it is a driver issue as both controllers work perfectly fine in Windows.

Corsair Controller

This was just another point to add. I couldn't make my lights pretty. They were just stuck at the default rainbow swirl. I did come across ckb-next which was great for my mouse, but not the case lights. Oh well.

Work

Work life has not really changed. I have found great solutions in both environments to help work with virtual machines and our product suite.

Games

I can now play Blizzard / Activition games again. That means some Warzone. One of the perks of returning, not really a reason for leaving.

Keyboard

So, this was a huge issue that I could not figure out. I am hoping a lot of the issues I was having were because I was on a non-LTS version of Ubuntu.

I was encountering a significant amount of character ghosting. I would type a word or sentence and letters that were typed would randomly appear. For example, if I were to type "This is a fun situation" it could turn out to something like "Thisis is ais funis situationfun". SUPER FRUSTRATING! I was able to resolve the issue temporarily by clearing the keyboard profile. This meant, that every so often (after an update, or reboot) I would have to clear my keyboard profile and restart again; not ideal.

To Be Honest, Linux Is Still Around

I have started to encounter areas where I NEED to go back to Linux.

My basic scripting and development is not the same on Windows. Jumping to the terminal, wiping up VI and doing a minor tweak is not really a thing anymore. Now, it is a matter of remoting into a machine to do that. Linux brings a type of ease to my development process. All my VMs are Linux, my self hosted projects and services are all Linux; when I need to make a tweak it is a lot smoother when using Linux. OK, I am ranting.

While I have been using Windows I also encountered the first scenario where I REQUIRED Linux! Yes, Openshot GPU renderer for an Nvidia graphics currently is only supported in Linux; what some annoyingly great news! An excuse to install Linux!

I did something. I dropped $80 CAD in order to have the best of both worlds. I purchased an SSD to run Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for all of my projects and required uses.

So, I will be a dual booter... stay tuned for more details on that.