This is a rant. My desktop is not the newest. But in general it suits me quite well. You can see a full listing of the machine here. The machine is called Frankenstein as it is built and rebuilt over the years, new cpu, new motherboard, memory upgrade and yesterday I decided to add a second SSD and install windows 10 on it.
Windows 10 was already installed on a normal 1T HD. But it was showing signs of instability. Strange crashes that were, for me at least, unexplainable. The idea was to get a good new SSD the Samons 850 EVO 500 and do a complete fresh install of Windows 10 on it. The installation went smooth but after the final restart the problems started. Downloading anything from the internet (like the Nvidia drivers) was pure hell. It kept telling me that it had no internet. Everybody in the house had internet. The switch was working fine, the lights on the back of the computer were flashing happily, but windows could not find the internet.
The moments that there was no internet the complete system to freeze. Mouse movements were working but selecting the start menu, or another window would not do anything at all, untill after 40 or 50 seconds the freeze was over and all selections came through.
Switching back to Linux to test the connections was of course not possible anymore as Windows had rewritten the boot sequence. Luckily I had a bootable usb stick and with that I could check that with ubuntu everything was working just fine. No freezes, no “no internet connection” reports. Everything just worked. I wiped the Windows install and did it again. But alas all the same problems kept cropping up. I spend a complete evening (actually till 1 in the morning) trying to fix it, installing the ethernet drivers, older nvidia drivers (they are not always the most stable ones). But at 1 I gave up.
The SSD is fast and 500GB. So I installed linux mint 18.1 on it, installed the right Nvidia driver and I was up and running. System is stable as a rock and Cinnamon is getting better and better.
ByeBye Windows