Using Linux in 2024 (Part 2)

My six month update of using Linux for a year.

Published by Zakariya Oulhadj on 29 May 2024

Having daily driven my Linux laptop (Arch btw) for 6 months now I have quite a few observations. The main issue I’ve had is full system reboots due to the amdgpu GPU driver crashing. After a few months of investigation I believe that the core of the issue is related to P-State and how the CPU manages power. Having said this, I have not had a crash for at least a month now so heres hoping that it has been fixed in a recent update.

Other than that, everything else has been pretty enjoyable especially because of how fast Linux is compared to Windows. Occasionally, I will use my Windows desktop and perform simple tasks such as clicking on different web pages, opening Visual Studio or just interacting with the file explorer which feels sluggish. This is not the case on Linux which performs great even under heavy workloads.

As a programmer, I have to say, working on Windows is a pain. Many tools that are commonplace on Linux are simply not available and even if they are, I have to deal with installation directories being totally random as well as poor performance. For example, running git pull takes a good 2 seconds just to run the program whereas on Linux its seemingly instant. To be fair, this could be as a result of a another issue but I am not totally sure.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how things are going and will see how things go towards the end of the year and if I will continue using Linux full time.