Comment by jbstack
1 day ago
You can't really make blanket statements like this about "Linux" in general because it depends on what distro you use. For example, in NixOS to fix this type of problem all you have to do is rollback to a previous configuration that is known to work. I've not used it, but I believe Arch has something similar.
Even with imperatively configured distros like Ubuntu, it's generally much easier to recover from a "screen of death" than in Windows because the former is less of a black box than the latter. This means its easier to work out what the problem is and find a fix for it. With LLMs that's now easier than ever.
And, in the worst case that you have to resort to reinstalling your system, it's far less unpleasant to do that in a Linux distro than in Windows. The modern Windows installer is painful to get through, and then you face hours or days of manually reinstalling and reconfiguring software which you can do with a small handful of commands in Linux to get back to a state that is reasonably similar to what you had before.
"Screen of death" in Windows? I haven't heard of one of those in over a decade.
I've had one, although it was due to a vendor releasing inconsistent driver updates.
Incidentally, I can now honestly say I've had more driver issues with Windows than Linux.
I spent years (maybe a decade) without seeing them in the Windows 7 and early 10 era, but in the last few years I have them sometimes. Many seem Nvidia-related, but I also remember some due to a bad update that broke things in some laptops.