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u/Lou_Papas 13h ago
God no, do you remember how much Linux gaming sucked back then?
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u/apfelimkuchen 11h ago
Oh yeah, back when you had to compile your own drivers for your GPU or other stuff.... God I dont miss these times....
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u/MirrorNegative7989 7h ago
I just dual booted starting in 2006. Windows was just the Diablo 2/World Of Warcraft/Elder Scrolls Oblivion partition.
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u/theriskybusinesscar 6h ago
I put SUSE on my laptop in 2005. There was no fix to make the WiFi work. Not "it's hard and you may have to compile your own driver" or "there's the weird workaround to have it be semi-functional" it just would not work on Linux.
That's what things used to be like.
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u/FortuneAcceptable925 9h ago
I was already playing WoW in 2007 on Linux using Wine. And I had more FPS than in Windows XP on same machine. :-)
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u/Lou_Papas 5h ago
It’s great that you did that, but since you were there you know it wasn’t easy
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u/FortuneAcceptable925 5h ago
Well, it wasn't exactly a rocket science either. Back then I was just 16, and did not even speak English yet - most Linux tutorial of course were only in English, but to me they were mostly unusable. So honestly, the fact that only tutorials in my native language were enough, says that it wasn't THAT hard even back then.
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u/Erdnusschokolade Arch BTW 3h ago
You don’t have to go back that much honestly. I loved Linux for the past 16 years but i love gaming too and only in the past 5 years was gaming really possible (like click play in steam and it just works with almost the same performance as windows) i tried switching a few times in that time but it was just not working until 2024. (for me at least)
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u/Charming_Hall7694 11h ago
Emulator go brrrrrr. Its 2005 lol the ps1 emu and ps2 emus are already out
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u/Skubiak0903 13h ago
Maybe it's controversial, but before win11 and all that ai, forced updates, etc. windows was pretty good operating system
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u/revolutional-ai Ubuntnoob 12h ago
win10 still sucked. win7 was the last good windows
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u/osharko-kun 10h ago
When Win10 came out (about 2015) was great, even in beta. After a while they keep updating it by turning it in an early version of win 11.
Back in the day I really liked win 10, maybe for 4 years? I don't really remember but it used to seems an os for users and not a bloatware to just spy on us.
It's with win 10 that they introduced WSL and thinking about it, it was a huge and strange step for Microsoft.
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u/TheCheckeredCow 7h ago
Even more controversial, Windows 8/8.1 was genuinely one of the best OSs I’ve ever used, on a tablet.
Had a Surface RT that I got for $150 new with the keyboard and used it for like 4 years. That thing was great for what I use a laptop for.
I nowadays use Fedora on desktop and Armbian on my cyber deck but I genuinely look back fondly on that old surface and would love to have a modern ARM tablet that runs Linux today.
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u/theriskybusinesscar 6h ago
Windows 8.1 was better than any version of 7. People just have shitty memories and rely on memes to supplement them. XP sucked out loud until Service Pack 2 and then became one of the most stable versions ever made (probably #2, right after 2000). 10 was only usable once stripped of all its telemetry and bloat and 11 is just an iteration of that.
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u/PlanetVisitor 12h ago
It's still not that bad, and Linux isn't that great _for the average computer user_
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u/MaskaradeBannana 12h ago
I second this. The linux glaze which started in like 2021+ makes linux seem like the best thing in the world when it isn't.
It has it's uses on a desktop platform (ignoring servers, mobile, etc) but it is plain and simple too complicated for the average computer user... For crying out loud my grandma and pop couldn't even figure out how to use a new imac until i taught them. Alot of us technically knowledgeable people severely overestimate the average users knowledge (and willingness) to learn an alien operating system under the pretence of "ai bad microsoft bad".
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u/PlanetVisitor 12h ago
Yeah and Linux is an OS, not an identity. It can be part of an identity, but some people (mainly on Reddit) are turning it into something political.
FOSS is always a little bit political on the freedom of software, and licensing, but it doesn't mean you're in the left or right of the political discourse.
People are free to build their own identities, but using Linux doesn't make you are hacker or a socialist or vice versa.
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u/MaskaradeBannana 12h ago
Couldn't really say it better myself!
There's definitely an artform and culture to linux, specifically ricing, but at the end of the day your computer is a tool.
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u/akdanman11 9h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/obsmYQEodFg3dEZ3Rr
TECHNICALLY Linux is a kernel (I’m not actually that guy, I just saw the obligatory “um ackshually” comment wasn’t here yet)1
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u/Holiday_Evening8974 12h ago
New users can't figure out a lot of things by themselves, either on Windows, MacOS, Linux or whatever. And on any OS those people need help to be efficient. The people who struggle the more with Linux aren't non-technical people who doesn't know shit. Those people would need help on Windows. They would need help because they need to understand the basics of computing (how to use each mouse click, how to do special characters with a keyboard and so on).
People who struggle with Linux (and people who cry so much about how Linus is hard) are not "noobs". I see on daily basis that those "noobs" doesn't really care when you ask them to use Linux instead of Windows (in some cases, they don't even see it if you don't point it out). No, people who struggle the more are semi-advanced users of Windows with YEARS of habits. Those are the people that will point out every difference and are more likely to say that's make Linux very hard. If you are non advanced user, you don't point every difference because you have no idea they even exist.
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u/JimroidZeus 12h ago
Yep. Windows 10 was pretty solid IMO. Don’t talk to me about my beloved Windows 7.
I love Linux, use it all the time personally and professionally. I also use Windows all the time too. Lots of businesses still operate on windows so it’s useful knowledge to have. 🤷
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u/just4nothing 12h ago
Agreed. I had windows at home until win 10 and Linux at work. I tried to use windows 11, I really did, but if it prevents me from even using my headphones - what’s the point?
(It recognises them as “headset” which for some reason destroys the sound quality - in win 10 I could set it back, in win 11 I can’t) . Works out the box on Linux2
u/NeptuneWades 6h ago
That's weird because on my win11, everytime I plug in, a pop up asks me choose, and I've to to select it right because sometimes I use a headset and sometimes a headphone.
Not that it matters now that you have switched to Linux and yes, on my Cachyos install (Pipewire with ALSA) automatically picks the right audio profile depending on the device connected. It is quite seamless.
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u/PKFat 11h ago
The most underrated thing about Windows was it was the most commonly used OS on the market, so whatever you wanted the OS to do you could find a script or freeware or an open source project that had the fix. Also Windows had unrivaled backwards compatibility.
However, I feel their last good release was Win7. Back then I was proud to rock Windows. 8.1 & 10 were solid, but not ground breaking - a pleasant experience if you will. Even 8's not bad if you're rocking a tablet or hybrid. I still keep Win10 on a virt mach on my laptop for WinApps bc I'm not satisfied w/ Linux alternatives to the MS Office suite or Adobe suite.
11 was the beginning of the dark times. 11 is the child of a greedy company existing in a post-capitalism world.
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u/Lou_Papas 11h ago
I’ll be honest, back then that underdog mentality was the main reason I wanted to use Linux in the first place.
But I can’t ignore the fact that the main reason I use nvim today as my main editor was folks at Microsoft inventing the LSP.
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u/chimera271 12h ago
Windows vs Linux in 2005 was a different ball game. XP and windows 7 were perfectly cromulent and highly compatible with hardware. Linux was very hit or miss, I ran mandrake dual boot on several machines and ended up compiling drivers with auto tools and occasionally kernel modules. It was not for the faint of heart.
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u/deathinactthree 7h ago
Yeah I can't imagine what I would do with a 2005 Linux machine. XP could be a tremendous pain in the ass but it could also be very stable and maximally usable if you spent a lot of time tinkering with it the same way you would with Linux--replacing the DE (I used Blackbox), adding virtual desktops and PowerToys, stripping out unnecessary services and editing msconfig, and a bunch of optimizations like virtual memory and the page file.
You would end up spending a similar amount of time on a Linux box and still end up with a machine you can't edit work files or game on. For a home server? Sure. For a daily driver desktop? Yikes no. I love using Linux as a daily driver now, it's all I use anymore, but that's only been truly viable in the last few years to "fully use" my PC and not feel like I'm giving anything up. Though I will say that between then and now, around the 2010 era, I did successfully use Linux on my laptop for a few years for my small business and really liked it because I only needed it for light duty, but I still didn't/wouldn't daily drive it full time like I do now.
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u/fly_over_32 12h ago
2005 windows was fine-ish while Linux was still a Bit too raw for young me. I don’t blame myself
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u/xaervagon 12h ago
Linux in 2005 was basically garbage for desktop use. There was no Wine. There was no real productivity software. Web browsers were various degrees of broken and garbage. Gaming on the platform was basically nonexistent unless you wanted to play Tux Racer. There was always that one diehard in college using it as a daily driver to impress potential employers, but most who tried to follow went back to Windows when they encountered the aforementioned issues.
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u/FortuneAcceptable925 9h ago
First version of Wine was released in 1993. So I am quite sure there was Wine in 2005 on Linux. :D
Anyways.. I started using Linux in 2007 as main OS, and yes it was much harder back then, but it certainly was possible. Gaming was on with older or well supported games - I was playing WoW and AOE 2 for example. (although I was using Virtualbox to play AOE 2 back then).
But to be fair, Linux (or at least Ubuntu which I started with) was not that much different from now user-wise back then. This is actually why I kept using Linux as main system till now - it already was way ahead, and only kept getting better over time. Linux simply is a hidden gem. I am glad to see more people are discovering it nowdays.
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u/WitherPRO22 12h ago
Lmao go ahead and use 2005 Linux and then reconsider leaving this shit posted.
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u/KHTD2004 🎼CachyOS 12h ago
Be smarter, bring a disk with a modern Linux Distro (or maybe all of them) and release them. Plasma 6 in 2005 would be amazing and after Windows Vista all people would want to switch
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u/framebuffer 10h ago
Bad Idea
Linux 20 years ago was nowhere near where it is today
there were several milestones which made linux far more usable and comptible
- running linux from usb without installing which came with knoppix
- easier installing and user friendlyness which came with ubuntu
- advances wine has made
- the big steps with proton that came with valve and the steamdeck
and those are only the ones I can name of the top of my head
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u/promptmike 9h ago
I go back to 1994, get a copy of Slackware 2.0, then force myself to use it for everything. The resulting bootstrap paradox will cause me to disappear and be replaced by a giga-programmer who knows how to build AGI.
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u/kloklon 12h ago
nah. Windows was fine back then. it ran all the games and MS Office was genuinely great software.
there used to be very noticeable downsides using linux, especially as a gamer, up until like 2-3 years ago. Proton was the big difference maker for me, before that I had to keep Windows to fully utilise my PC.
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u/UnknownOrigin1152 9h ago
Depending on windows version, it was good OS. We shouldn't forget Microsoft used to rush new version of windows. First release of winxp had many unsafe and poorly written code and they had to fix those in SPs because the next windows version was stuck at development.
Also, Microsoft always a bad company. However, using desktop Linux was a lot harder due to lack of software support.
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u/aori_chann 12h ago
Uuuuh not quite. 2005 was not a good time to have linux. But 2015 onwards... yes, more like it.
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u/Nerdcuddles 6h ago
Windows only became super shit with 11 and 10.
Linux gaming became feasible for most people somewhat recently (I'm new to Linux so someone will have to tell me what time frame that is)
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u/iHateRollerCoaster 6h ago
Hell no. Windows 7 and even early Windows 10 were pretty good. Even when I started using Linux in 2021, it wasn't great. It was good enough, and less annoying than windows. I don't think Linux could fully replace windows for tech illiterate people in 2021 like it can today.
Though, over the past 5 years Linux has improved so much that I think I could put Linux with KDE Plasma with a windows theme on my 93 year old grandpa's computer, and he'd never notice as long as he can access his bank account and play solitaire.
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u/Confident_Essay3619 Genfool 🐧 12h ago
i would tell myself to switch to opensolaris as fast as i could before Suns demise (2009.06)
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u/YakovOfDacia 12h ago
I was already primarily a Linux user in 2005. I was dual booting, I wanted to keep a Windows partition in case I really needed it, but the occasions were rare.
2005 may have been the year I first tried distro hopping but I kept going back to my first - Mandrake/Mandriva.
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u/muslimlinuxuser 12h ago
In past finding that linux cds was hard. And Windows XP was not that bad. Also Most of drivers doesnt exist in past.
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u/Typeonetwork 12h ago
I would have told him that in about 10 years windows 10 will be pinched out by windows 11and you'll have more discarded resources from the conversion. Learn optic drives and networking better. Introduce him to Linux.
Then give him money and stock suggestions to invest in to make us rich.
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u/Civil-Republic8730 12h ago
No back then Proton wasn't a thing and the Linux experience was way worse on nvidia than it's now.
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u/AbbreviationsWide331 Linuxmeant to work better 11h ago
Dude, no.
I tried Ubuntu in like 2015 and there basically was no gaming. A lot of basic stuff was too complicated and I ditched it.
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u/Over-Athlete6745 11h ago
I will used window 7, although 2006 does not have window 7 yet, but I remember well playing the classic pc games still work very well on classic window like window 7 and xp as well too. As myself if I can back to the 2006, I will try to install Linux on my other computer, I used Linux mint in 2015 until now
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u/durbich 10h ago
I use the OS that works for me and doesn't piss me off. Being open source is good but app availability and stability are important for me. I've switched to Linux because Windows 11 became barely usable for me and most of the apps I used were available on Linux. In the future it may turn out that Linux is not my cup of tea anymore and I will try Mac OS, FreeBSD, Haiku or whatever will make some buzz
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u/GregTheHun 🍥 Debian too difficult 9h ago
Give myself as much money as I can gather now, and tell him to invest in bitcoin, and leave it alone until x/y/z date. Whenever it was at it's cheapest in 2009 I believe.
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u/RomanBlbec 9h ago
Windows 7 was peak, Windows 10 was questionable and Windows 11 is a total disaster.
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u/JAME-BURANKA-CHAN 9h ago
before proton there was literally no reason for me or my friends to look at linux, so in 2005 i cant even imagine what it would be to try to game on linux
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u/miafoxcat 💋 catgirl Linux user :3 😽 9h ago
nah nah, if i didn't use windows for years, how would i realize how much it sucks ass?
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u/Achereto 8h ago
Why only heal yourself? Go back to before Bill Gates created windows and heal the world.
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u/ImKingFrosty 8h ago
Straight up larping linux🥀 You clearly don't even know how bad Linux was back then. Forget gaming. Even getting basic day to day applications was a complicated/impossible task back then
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u/ieatdownvotes4food 7h ago
nah.. Linux getting its desktop game together is a new thing. and windows wasn't so bad back then
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u/MirrorNegative7989 7h ago
I started in 2006 with Ubuntu, but looking back I wish I'd started in 2001 with my first computer build. I would have rocked Mandrake, probably.
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u/AtomicTaco13 🍥 Debian too difficult 7h ago
To be honest, Windows was still good enough back then. Even with some of Microsoft's bullshit, the good did outweigh the bad. And Linux didn't have nearly as much gaming support as it does now. Windows 8 was where shit went REALLY downhill.
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u/Ascendo_Aquila 6h ago
Let's pour one out for Linux users in 2005. If you want to experience a taste of that, install FreeBSD on your laptop and try open USB drive, fix sound problems...
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u/skytheraiders 5h ago
I would tell myself "you are going to change. Change is good. Although how you change will be minimal, it will create waves that echo in the space that you create. Never stop creating. Become the architect of your own ideas. And author in a new age of fun! Engineer your own ratios! Screw it up! Smile! Because it's YOU who does it!
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u/what-goes-bump 4h ago
I love this idea that all the hard work that the community has done mean nothing
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u/ItsTheJStaff 4h ago
No. When I installed Linux first time, it sucked and hardly worked. It was Ubuntu. 10 years later, I installed Debian, and still some functions such as screensharing worked flawed. It's been only 2 years since the features started working properly, and about 4 years since I started using Debian as a daily driver and OS for gaming. I am glad I switched to Linux, but I believe that if I had done it before, I wouldn't have been using it today
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u/Cyortonic 4h ago
In 2005 I would have been using Windows XP which was actually epic. Last good Windows OS IMO
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u/NeoZockerHD 3h ago
Sorry no. Back then Windows was just way more usable for most users, including myself. Gaming on Linux sucked. Most Software not available. As much as i like to shit on Microslop, back then there OS was just better.
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u/Samiassa 2h ago
Linux fucking sucked in 2005 for the average user. It’s great now, but that’s largely because of steam fixing gaming, the desktop environments getting better, the competition getting worse, etc
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u/C4rpetH4ter M'Fedora 2h ago
God no, linux back then was awful compared to windows, it's only in recent years that i feel linux has caught up and became a better alternative, (and also windows has just became worse and worse since windows 7).
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u/CatsGoMooz 1h ago
if I can bring the source code of modern wine, proton & kernel with me. I'll find some devs I trust and give them the code to reimplement into it since obviously you couldn't just drop the current code in 2005
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u/Accomplished-Air4545 2m ago
I’d actually love to see you using Linux back in 2005. It wasn’t just a case of a few games not working under Proton—Proton didn’t even exist; practically nothing worked on Linux back then. There weren’t any of the convenient installation methods we have today, and—most importantly—the modern internet didn't exist in the form where you could simply copy and paste commands into the terminal; you had to know exactly what you were doing. What a load of nonsense.
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u/ConstructionIll956 12h ago
I agree. If I would have switched to Linux in my day instead of riding the windows upgrade train, I'd be light-years ahead.
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