What came to mind when I saw that stock photo
What came to mind when I saw that stock photo
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I wouldn't call it Stockholm syndrome. The problem is that even a single application that's critical to your workflow can keep you from switching, even if everything else is much better.
I've switched to Linux on my laptop about 6 months ago and the overall experience is pretty good. A few annoyances that I can't seem to fix but overall pleasant. But there are still some things that keep me from doing the same on my main workstation:
- I just can't get used to RawTherapee or darktable for developing photos. Everything takes me three times as long to get the results I want and at hundreds of photos per shoot, that adds up really quickly. I'm sure I could learn those tools and get as comfortable with them as I am with Adobe CameraRaw but that would cost me weeks or even months of productivity and I just can't afford that right now.
- Similar problem with general graphics stuff. I'm sure that Gimp and Inkscape are amazing tools if you're used to them but coming from tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, they're so different that the switch feels like hitting a brick wall at running speed. Krita is nice but it seems to focus heavily on painting which is my least common graphics use case. I really hope that Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer will get ported to Linux at some point even if that means the open source purists will probably kill me.
- A lot of my existing software projects are written in C#. Most of them are cross-platform and run on Linux servers anyway, so that's not the problem. But neither VSCode nor Rider are quite as comfortable as VS2022. No, I won't just port everything to Rust.
- Steam on Linux has made amazing steps but getting some games to work is still pretty fiddly and reminds me of gaming on DOS in the 90s when you had to dig through half a dozen config files before you could play your new game.
All those problems can be solved with enough patience but to be honest, I'm in my late 30s and free time is getting rare so I'd rather spend it on something that brings me joy or on learning something entirely new instead of relearning an existing skill.
And no, this not a criticism against Linux or its community. I'm just trying to give an insight into how small problems can make the switch incredibly hard, even for someone who has a degree in computer science, has worked with Linux machines for about 20 years now and would love nothing more than to leave Windows behind.
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Completely agree with your comment about "hitting a wall at running speed" . I switched my music production PC to Linux in a fit of pique at Microsoft. I have used Linux/unix for 25 years at this point, but this move and the resulting technical hurdles took my output to 0% and it hasn't recovered in a couple of months.
I don't want to switch back but I also really miss my hobby and main creative outlet
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Excel.
Business LIVE by Excel. They have processes that automatically output and input via excel.
Users spin up spreadsheets with tables, every day, for quick analysis of large datasets. Open Office devs refuse to ever implement tables.
There's no way an extant business can switch to even Open Office, let alone Linux, and realize an actual cost savings in a reasonable time frame.
Now, we can implement new back end/middle systems using Linux as appropriate.
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I've been dualbooting linux for a while now and my biggest problems have been:
- Multi monitor support. It was a pain to get all 3 monitors running at proper refresh rate and there is nothing to replace LittleBigMouse that I'm using on windows
- Hardware monitoring and cpu/gpu/system fan control. The sensors whatever package cant detect any sensors on my system and I had to resort to bios for cpu/system fan control. Still have no idea how to set fan curves and overclocking on my gpu either
- Games. I've had to tinker or give up on half the games I've tried and I don't even play pvp games with anticheats. Problems have been ranging from poor fps and/or input lag to broken alt tab behaviour to straight up refusing to run at all
Still 90% of the time I boot up linux instead of windows but I don't see a more casual user putting up with all of this
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Looks interesting but having to use it from their website feels... not great. I'd rather have something that I can still use on a train or when my router dies. Or when they decide to shut it down.
They claim that everything runs locally and doesn't phone home. Then why do they charge 500 to 2000 bucks per month for a version that you can host on your own machine?
There seems to be an unofficial offline version but that hasn't been maintained for years.
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Real talk now, I know there are use-cases where Windows is mandatory unfortunately. Video editing and civil engineering/architecture are two good examples.
Maybe switching to Mac is an option, but whether that's any better is debatable.
However, most people I know that suffer from these issues are in neither field of work and aren't necessarily even hardcore gamers. Yet they don't even want to try anything else.
I've also had some difficulties fully switching to Linux a decade ago, but nothing that couldn't be solved or I couldn't abstain from (e.g. modern games, back in the day).
All it takes is the will not to be bullied by a corporation at home every day.
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I think something that is often underappreciated is the level of independent technical knowledge needed to install and use Linux, let alone troubleshoot it, even today.
Microsoft has a support hotline, and staff that will help you, it comes pre-installed, and every tech store under the sun will help you along.
With Linux, that's a bit harder. Plus, although it's often a criticism for some people, windows' hand holding won't let you truly fuck up, and will always have a backup ready.
Linux on the other hand will let you run it into a brick wall, and completely delete your whole laptop.
Those are generally still really good reasons people want to stick with Microsoft or Apple, since there's a far more accessible support network around it.
And in my experience Linux portals and forums are quite gatekeepy if you're not aware of what's going on. That's not the most fun place to be if you're stuck and don't know what you're doing.
Linux is great and I personally would recommend it to a lot of people, but definitely not everyone, and it's definitely not just downsides. There's plenty of legit cases where it's the better option, even if the tools and everything function equally.
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Well, the recovery argument really only checks out when there are recent restore points made and a recovery partition is present, which is not the case in every or even most Windows configs, otherwise you're SOL anyway.
Often times even those failed on me when Windows had shat itself and told me it can't fix the issue and needs a restore medium, on which I then manually had to /fixboot and /rebuildBCD from the console. That's not any more feasible for the average user.
I think installing Linux is definitely a hurdle, but you could usually find someone or a shop to do it for you or help you.
Otherwise, with all the new random prompts and welcome screens in Windows, I think any Linux system will stay out of the users way much more and let them work on their stuff without distractions.
Sure, Linux troubleshooting is bad for the average user, but you can also get help with that and Windows forums are bloated with trash replies and not any better quality-wise (same with Android nowadays, unfortunately).
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57 comments