The journey with mini PCs has long been riddled with frustrating hurdles, especially for those seeking flexible, affordable computing solutions without compromising usability. For many, devices like the Geekom A8 and Khadas Mind became synonymous with spotty Wi-Fi reception and inconsistent hardware performance, ultimately relegating these otherwise portable wonders to backup roles. When the Geekom IT15 arrived for review, history threatened to repeat itself—until a bold change of operating system turned the story on its head, challenging the conventional wisdom about Windows’ monopoly on best-in-class PC experience.
A Familiar Pattern of Connectivity Woes
Unboxing new hardware often sparks excitement, but that anticipation can quickly sour when core functionality falls short. Such was the initial experience with the Geekom IT15. The device’s first run-through—in this case, via Windows 11’s out-of-box experience (OOBE)—immediately revealed sluggish internet speeds. App downloads trickled in, operating system updates lagged, and even fundamental productivity tasks seemed daunting.Network performance is a frequent Achilles’ heel for mini PCs. Factors such as modest antenna design, non-premium network card chipsets, or lackluster driver development for Windows frequently conspire to limit throughput, manifesting acutely in environments farther from the router. In the case of the IT15, things were distinctly worse than average, with Discord calls failing to connect and content uploads stalling out entirely. Even a desperate rearrangement—relocating the setup adjacent to the Wi-Fi router—did little to alleviate the performance bottleneck. While a full system reset or additional troubleshooting within Windows might have been possible, it begged the question: why persist with an OS that transforms a modern mini PC into a paperweight?
The Linux Pivot: Immediate Gains, Lingering Mysteries
The decision to wipe Windows 11 and install Ubuntu was both radical and refreshingly effective. Network connectivity improved dramatically. The previously failed Discord group calls became possible, uploads no longer failed, and work continuity was restored—even at a distance from the router that had previously doomed connections. While the IT15’s Wi-Fi module still fell short of its theoretical Wi-Fi 7 max speeds, for practical purposes, the device was finally—if not gloriously—reliable.The improvement raises thorny technical questions. Were faulty drivers at the root of Windows’ network deficit? Or do certain Wi-Fi chipsets simply enjoy better kernel-level support under Linux? Research suggests the latter is not uncommon, with some Realtek and Intel card variants performing better on Linux due to rapid open-source driver deployment, compared to slower vendor updates for Windows. However, persistent issues—like periodic call drops and connection resets even with Ubuntu—hint at possible hardware defects, or at minimum, weak overall antenna design. Interestingly, switching to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band mitigated some of these drags, despite comparable Macs sustaining 700Mbps on 5GHz under identical conditions. While there’s no silver bullet, the Linux “fix”—though not perfect—transformed the device from unusable to functional for most scenarios.
USB-C Display Drama: A Tale of Two Operating Systems
The connectivity story did not end with wireless struggles. Display output—especially via USB-C, increasingly a preferred medium for single-cable setups—presented its own saga. On Windows, recurring black flickers every ten minutes or so rendered the experience both distracting and frustrating. Such issues frequently stem from a blend of firmware bugs, driver mismatches, and poorly tested compatibility matrices between hardware and particular Windows builds.Remarkably, after transitioning to Linux, these flickers vanished. While some minor image-freezing issues crept in when waking the system from sleep, these were easily remedied by reseating the monitor cable or power-cycling the display. The contrast was stark: both macOS and Linux left the user working undisturbed for hours on end, whereas Windows failed to maintain a stable connection even in routine use. Given that even Apple’s Mac Mini sometimes fumbled the initial handshake on cold boot, some of these quirks likely reside with the monitor itself or the nuances of USB-C alternate mode compatibility. Still, the day-to-day stability was clearly superior on Linux.
The Linux Learning Curve: Not Quite Plug and Play
While Ubuntu delivered a sizeable leap in usability, the journey was not entirely frictionless. Getting audio to work proved a particular pain point. Sometimes, despite drivers and volume sliders appearing normal and output options recognized, no sound emerged from the speakers. Workarounds—including reloading ALSA modules and toggling between various audio server packages—sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. Bluetooth headset microphones, another productivity staple, proved even less reliable, dropping out or failing to be recognized at random.Underlying these struggles is a broader truth: the Linux audio stack—spanning ALSA, PulseAudio, and more recently, Pipewire—remains fragmented and occasionally brittle. Hardware detection, permissions, and default device routing may differ subtly across distributions and kernel versions, often making plug-and-play a moving target. Furthermore, the mini PC’s peculiarities—possibly due to new or poorly supported components—exacerbate these pains.
App installation and package management introduce another layer of complexity. Ubuntu supports a panoply of formats: legacy DEB (Debian package files), Snap (Canonical’s universal packaging experiment), AppImage (standalone containers), and Flatpak (a rising cross-distro star). The upside is choice and flexibility; the downside is confusion and inconsistency. Not every package format integrates equally well. For instance, apps installed from Snap sometimes miss key hardware acceleration features, causing issues like video frame drops that don’t appear with traditional DEBs or Flatpaks. Compatibility issues and erratic first-launch visual bugs further underline a lack of universal polish.
For long-time Windows users, these quirks accentuate the value of a “standard” software ecosystem, even with its own bloat and limitations. Still, adaptability comes with experience, and the Linux environment’s flexibility is a double-edged sword—at times empowering, at other times bewildering.
The Adobe Conundrum: Missing Creative Tools
No Linux experiment is complete without facing down the creative software gap. In this case, the biggest pain was losing access to Adobe Lightroom, a mainstay for photography workflows. Open-source options like Darktable and RawTherapee, while steadily improving, simply couldn’t replicate the intuitive editing and output quality of Lightroom, reminding users that some domains still lack true parity outside of Windows or macOS.While crossover solutions like running Windows apps via Wine or virtualization exist, they introduce overhead, instability, and often incomplete compatibility with hardware acceleration or specialized plugins. For creative professionals, this remains a firm dividing line in platform choice.
Performance: Subtle Gains and Surprising Snap
Benchmarking tells only part of the story. Running Geekbench 6 on both Windows and Ubuntu produced almost identical single-core and multi-core results—approximately 3,000/15,000, with only a few percentage points of variance, easily attributable to background tasks or minor OS overheads. What stood out wasn’t raw compute grunt, but the user experience: Ubuntu felt snappier. Boot times were quicker, animations more fluid, and most applications launched with less delay than their Windows counterparts.The reasons for this are manifold. Ubuntu and many modern Linux distributions have optimized startup routines, leaner resource footprints (particularly at idle), and often skip or streamline background updates common in Windows. The exception, in this review, was Steam—where Ubuntu’s launch time lagged, possibly due to back-end dependency checks or less aggressive pre-caching than on Windows.
Day-to-day, the criticism that “Linux is for tinkerers only” grew hollow. For general productivity, writing, calls, and even light multimedia, the operating system delivered a fast, reliable, and controlled experience with minimal fuss post-setup.
Broader Trends: Mini PCs, Drivers, and Windows Reliability
The Geekom IT15’s odyssey says as much about the state of mini PC ecosystems as it does about Linux vs. Windows debates. Mini PCs typically sacrifice premium components, including networking and display controllers, for the sake of price, size, and power requirements. As a result, driver support becomes a critical variable in user experience. Windows, while theoretically the best-supported OS, depends heavily on vendor-supplied drivers—which are sometimes outdated, misconfigured, or simply not optimized for the latest chipset/firmware combinations.Linux, paradoxically, benefits when the wider open-source community has already adopted and ironed out drivers for a given piece of hardware. This may lead to better support for certain chipsets (especially Intel and Realtek), though it can also expose users to acute pain when running on brand-new hardware not yet fully integrated into current kernels. Mini PCs, sitting at the intersection of affordability and experimenter appeal, are uniquely positioned to experience both these extremes.
Another key factor is that Windows’ hardware abstraction layers and “universal” driver models occasionally introduce inefficiencies or mask low-level issues, causing subtle failures like the display flickering or Wi-Fi regression detailed above. For end-users lacking time (or patience) to debug, these issues can be deal-breakers. Linux, unencumbered by legacy cruft and benefiting from a different development philosophy, sometimes sidesteps entire classes of bugs—though it can also expose others.
Strengths of the Linux Approach
- Immediate usability improvement: For the Geekom IT15, Linux made possible what Windows could not—a functional, daily-driver PC.
- Better hardware handling in some scenarios: USB-C display output and network throughput notably improved; Linux can be less prone to legacy driver bugs.
- Snappier, more fluid experience: Users may notice smoother animations and faster boot/app launch times; Linux’s lighter idle footprint shines on modest hardware.
- Greater control: Once familiar, users can tune and optimize to suit exact needs (e.g., desktop environment, update cadence, background service management).
Drawbacks and Remaining Risks
- Steep learning curve for non-technical users: Setup, especially for audio/bluetooth troubleshooting and app formats, can stump first-timers.
- Inconsistent device compatibility: Not every hardware revision is fully supported out-of-the-box, especially fresh releases.
- Patchwork application ecosystem: Snap, Flatpak, AppImage, and DEB/ RPM coexist, occasionally leading to conflicts and erratic app behavior.
- Creative software gap: No full replacements for Adobe’s best-in-class offerings; solutions are “good enough” at best, frustrating at worst.
- Potential hardware limits: Even Linux can be stymied by shoddy antennas, weak chipsets, or physical defects. No OS can salvage fundamentally poor components.
What This Means for Windows Mini PCs
For anyone facing lagging performance, unstable Wi-Fi, or display issues on Windows, Linux offers a credible—and sometimes, transformative—alternative. The Geekom IT15 story provides a crucial counterpoint to the narrative that “hardware problems are operating-system agnostic.” In reality, the interplay of firmware, driver support, and OS kernel-layer integration determines daily experience far more than product marketing materials let on.Moving to Linux is not a panacea, especially for users with heavy creative software needs or brand new hardware. However, the sharp improvement in usability for tasks as basic as video calls, file uploads, and reliable displays cannot be ignored. Linux won’t solve poor physical hardware design, but it shows that a careful rethink of your operating system—combined with a willingness to experiment—can unlock real, everyday productivity gains.
A Measured Verdict: Not a Miracle, but a Major Win
Ultimately, the Geekom IT15’s redemption via Ubuntu is more than a private victory. It serves as an object lesson for the wider community of mini PC enthusiasts and Windows die-hards alike. When the familiar turns frustratingly foreign—when a slick new PC chokes on basic tasks—a change of OS may hold the key. Linux’s learning curve and application fracturing remain barriers, but for many use cases, it delivers comfort, stability, and speed where Windows sometimes falters.If an aging or frustrating Windows mini PC is gathering dust or testing your patience, don’t discard it just yet. A well-chosen Linux distribution could, in a matter of hours, grant your investment a renewed life. Just approach with open eyes: some rough edges persist, and you may need to tinker. But as the IT15’s story shows, the payoff—in usability, workflow, and peace of mind—can be well worth the adventure.
Source: XDA I (almost) fixed this mini PC... by installing Linux
