Those who tried Linux and went back to Windows, what caused you to go back to Windows?

I got tired of everything taking so much effort. I was almost always able to eventually wrangle what I wanted out of the OS, but every change I wanted to make and thing I wanted to try needed so much searching and learning. I wanted stuff that just worked, even if it was "dumber."

That, and some parts of the community I ran into were really prickly. One that was especially memorable: I was asking for help on a big-ish project with a lot of followers and helpers and didn't expect the lead dev to answer my question, but when he did, he felt the need to make a snide as hell comment about how I have no business being there if I'm going to forget to start a service. On top of the exhaustion I was already feeling, I had a massive moment of "okay my guy, I guess I'll just fucking leave then."

Anyway, it just feels better being a poweruser on windows. I know enough to keep it clean, safe, and slim (like using powershell to disable the bits they don't expose to a settings UI, for example) -- to truly admin my machine -- without having to work so hard for it day in and day out.

I really, really want to love Linux.

Mate introduced me to Red Hat in the very late 90s and I keep trying various distros every year or two - last time was about 2020 so my views here might be a bit out of date now...

When Ubuntu launched I truely believed this would be the start of genuine transformation. While I do see the overall progression in modern distros - installing them is easier than ever - but at its core, it just doesn't seem to truely improve when it comes to usability and user friendliness. As others have said, small changes or issues might require hours of research or a game of copy/paste/pray with commands found on a long lost forum page.

MS make plenty of mistakes and dumb changes but windows has had significant improvements over the years both to the interface but also functions:

W2k/XP dragged us kicking and screaming out of DOS and into the modern era.

Vista made much needed changes to security/driver issues - but it was still a slow pig - particularly updating.

Win7 fixed what Vista should have been - faster, cleaner and simpler, BSoD mostly a thing of the past now driver manufacturers have caught up from Vista fixed updates a bit.

Win8.1 improved boot speeds, had a lot of good under the hood changes that improved deployment and self-repair, good tools for power users (we just don't talk about that start menu)

Win10/11 greatly improved the updating process - still far from perfect but significantly faster and more reliable. No longer the upgrade lottery it was in XP - 7 era.

Not wanting to start a fight here, just my perspective - unfortunately, every time I install Linux, the visuals look good but it always feels like a fancy modern skin over top of something akin to Win98. Sure, it's fast, secure as a MF and not riddled with modern bloat but genuine advancement of the platform feels absent.

Maybe it's because I don't live elbow deep in Linux like I have in windows desktop for the past 20+ years. I do know that it's versatility and power is incredible - from phones and Pi's to world class infrastructure, so maybe that's it. It's designed for maximum power and flexibility that it's not really suited as a general purpose desktop for the masses like windows. It might always remain as a oddity at the desktop level, insanely powerful in the right hands and just a little too complex and less refined to appeal to those not willing to go deep into really learning it.

Shit never works and I basically have to become a programmer and expert in CLI to get shit to work... until it breaks again. So after having to Google everything on how to do supposedly simple shit, I always end up going back to Windows and GUI's because I don't have time to become a developer.

Necessity. When most of the software you use is reliant on Windows it's hard to make Linux your daily driver. That being said, the changes needed to make it worth it are already done in limited contexts. Steam deck is pure Linux, the user interface and everything is implemented in a way that the user does not have to deal with the complexity, but the underlying mechanisms for doing wonky shit is still there if you want to mess with it. It's kinda the best of both worlds in that sense.

If we wanted a desktop experience to replicate that, you would just have to do the exact same thing. Abstract the user experience such that the layperson does not need to engage with the complicated bits, but leave them there for those that do want them. And arguably that is being done with some distros, but it's just not quite there yet.

It just doesn't work. It's a simple as that. Things are constantly breaking. When they do I look up support articles that are written in fucking Klingon and sent to the terminal to type in commands that always return some sort of generic error "command not found" or some shit because the solution is written for a different one of the 862700422 available distros.

I have no idea how to install all the different program types (flathub, db, appimage, etc.). Windows has exe. I click "install" and boom, it's done.

Sometimes I try to remove software in the package manager and it acts like it is uninstalled but it's still fucking there.

I can't even select a file because there are no previews. Just a gazillion blue squares with names like "dlcosn_3947912947".

And other reasons, but I digress. I don't have time to learn a new career, I just want a computer that works.

I have to have a computer science degree to install a peice of software.. I just wanna double click the installer icon. I don't want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. And sometimes it's different depending on distro.

because i like driving but hate fixing my temperamental car

My PC only gets used for gaming and I was fed up of switching into Windows for every other game. I WANT to use Linux but game developers just aren't allowing me.

I think it comes down to my level of proficiency with computers. I'm a photographer and an artist. However, I am above average tech literate but with absolutely no formal training compared to anyone in the computer sciences.

When I use a Mac or PC I am a power user and most people think of me as very tech inclined there. I used terminal or command prompt for commands that I have learned from Google for a specific tasks and can follow most guides and tutorials online, but I can't come up with strings of commands creatively to fix a problem.

With Linux, there's all these weird little problems that might be unique to me and looking them up is really difficult and when someone says "oh it's easy. Use the terminal" as if this incredibly confusing thing that I have zero fundamental knowledge of can solve my problem. A genuinely feel illiterate when I use Linux. I can write sudo though 🤷‍♂️

I feel like saying "just use terminal" is like telling a kindergarten kid to just use creative writing, algebra and calculus. The fundamentals have not been taught yet, I have no idea what to do.

When I learned Mac or PC, I was shown how to use a mouse, I could read and just clicking around and opening things and reading help files let me intuitively learn on my own what to do. With Linux, this way of learning achieves nothing. Maybe I can turn wifi on and off assuming it works when I install it.

And then when an update breaks everything and I have to mess around and terminal for hours or days between doing actual work, It's a nightmare. The only Linux thing I've managed to keep running for years on end is a Synology. I use it for a bit of backup things but thank goodness the OS updates and app updates all work. Nothing is broken and I barely touch the machine. It just grabs my files from the network and backs them up. You should have seen how shocked I was when I was trying to install something on docker and it took days for me to realize I just type the name of the thing I want and it grabbed it from the web and installed it automatically. I spent way too long trying to figure out how to grab the actual package files and open them like installing something via an MSI file in windows.

It kept working.

Linux, every time, without fail, commits suicide after a few weeks/months. It's never something big, always small stuff. A conf file which got fucked by a package. Init.d calls something stupid. Mbr bullshit.

And the same applies to get stuff to work. It's not hard, but researching the issue and fixing it takes time. Those issues do not exist in windows.

It gets annoying. Windows, for all it's shit has gotten more and more self repairing over the years.

I want to work. I want to play. Now, preferably.

First time I ever seriously used Linux was for work, back when I was a developer. You'd have to pay me to use it again. I like gaming, but I don't like wasting my time troubleshooting games. Nor do I enjoy debugging random crashes/black screens in random drivers. Sure, it's fun, but if I'm gonna work for it, someone somewhere better be signing my overtime slip. Cause I get a few hours free per day, and I'd rather not deal with sigsegv anymore if I can help it.

Not to mention sound. My job as dev included using ALSA for some use cases. I don't know if you ever had the misfortune to need to do that or how it went for you, but if I ever need to touch that shit again I will scalp Torvalds with a goddamn headphone jack.

I installed windows 11 when I bought my last PC. I figured I'd give it a shot, see if it's as bad as all my dev friends say it is. You know how many drivers I've had to fix to make my games work? Zero. You know how many hours I spent debugging weird issues? Also zero.

There's a reason windows has a price tag. And part of that reason is that it works better than free stuff. I'm a believer in FOSS, but if you're a craftsman and you can't hammer a nail without needing to adjust your hammer every few swings, you should find a hammer that's not made out of silly putty and dreams.

My employer 😢

I find the community can be toxic at times; instead of helping newcomers or treating each other nicely, the community can be toxic and alienate the people they want to use Linux.

You have ro spend some time making things work, I don't always have the time.

Although I'm using WSL2 with Ubuntu because of the terminal.

I just found every little thing so hard in Linux.

Screens, scaling, nvidia drivers, games... Even spent an hour on gnome trying to get my desktop background image to fill the whole screen instead of repeating to fill the space. Solution ended up being download an image editor and resize the image to be the exact same size as my screen resolution. Tried KDE and kept hitting 100% CPU bug

In the end I just wanted a pc that worked, so went back to Windows with WSL.

Seems a perfect combo. Do my dev in WSL, and the desktop just works.

However I'm getting increasingly frustrated at every UI change Microsoft make... Which is what made me try Linux in the first place. If Microsoft Win7 and early 10 was great, I wish they'd stop touching UI and just improve under the hood

The best thing about Windows is that if there is something you want to do, either there is a detailed guide online for the specific issue or someone went a step further and created a simple tool to accomplish that task. Windows is stable/reliable/accessible.

To run Linux it would need to be just as easy to install, be as compatible with games as Windows, and not have to involve deep dives into Linux user forums to accomplish basic stuff.

With the main intention of Linux, outside of just not supporting Apple or Microsoft, is to be able to customize your OS experience. I don’t have time/patience/desire to do that. I want my computer to be there ready to open a game launcher and launch that game without issue. That is true about Windows 99.8% of the time, I have not had that same experience with Linux.

I think the main difficulty with Linux desktops is this "all or nothing" approach to the OS.

Recently got a Steam Deck and most of the games really just work, but that's a handheld where I play solo. On desktop I mostly play online with friends.
I really don't want to constantly switch OS depending on the anticheat situation when we play something else.
And then there is software (fusion360, simhub) & hardware (3d mouse, joysticks, ffb wheel, maybe VR?) that just works on Windows.

So instead of maintaining Windows & Linux on dualboot I just stick with Windows on the desktop.
And I used Linux for a long time on my laptop (and can't wait to ditch MacOS), still use it on servers, but the desktop is just a whole different beast.

Quite simple: When using Linux, I tend to play around, try different stuff, switch distros every couple of month.... When using Windows or MACOS, I just use it as is and don't try to break stuff. And while I could use Linux quite easily without breaking it, my inner child prevents me from using it this way...

A few apps I needed didn't work on Linux without a hassle and a lot of games I play with friends only run on Windows. I also found a lot of things were kind of a hassle on Linux, especially screen scaling. Fractional screen scaling straight up barely works and everything on my laptop screen was usually tiny.

I would totally go back when the experience is a bit nicer, I'm pretty frustrated with Windows. I think the Linux desktop experience isn't totally ready imo.

1. I found navigating overly complicated at times. The command window uses all the little archaic squiggles around the edge of the keyboard and one missing space will do you in.
2. For me, the wifi connection always seems sketchy. I currently still have a Linux PC connected to my TV. It's only used for surfing the net and every time we use it to exercise to a YouTube channel, I might as well walk away and do something else before it can get in. I really should change my distribution on that and see if it helps.
3. When I got really serious about it and was having all kinds of issues the community asked for my hardware list and when I posted it, the response was, "Oh, all that stuff is too new, you have to wait for someone to write drivers for it." I always build my own computer and I don't like the idea of a let down when I turn it in for the first time.

There's a lot to like about Linux and I always want to free myself from the Microsoft shackles, but every time I do, it just doesn't work for me.

This entire thread looks like everyone who stopped using Linux over 2 or 3 years ago should have another look at it, so many (now) none-issues.

I suppose I can technically answer this. I do use Linux full-time now and have for several years, but prior to that I had a few false starts where I'd switch back to Windows. Usually it was because I'd encounter some technical issue I just didn't know how to fix besides reinstalling the whole OS, or a graphics driver issue. For example, at one point when I had an NVIDIA graphics card only the newest drivers from NVIDIA's website supported it but the 'stable' drivers in Ubuntu's repo didn't, so I had to manually install the drivers. Except then whenever the kernel was updated by Ubuntu (basically every week) my display stopped working and I'd have to switch into a TTY and manually reinstall the drivers.

Now I know how I'd fix that (setup some rule to reinstall the drivers whenever the kernel updates, which I believe is now the default anyway), or use a PPA containing the latest NVIDIA drivers, or use AMD instead - but really any kind of problem that requires the user to both diagnose and fix the issue prevents non-technical people from adopting it.

Software. What's a computer without software other than an over glorified calculator.

That was my first experience with Linux back in the early 2010's and pretty much up to recently. However with changes to my workflow and Steam improving and sharing the improvements with Wine. My software library went from web browsing and office software t

99% of games, and all of my business software.

The UX experience needs some work under the hood. There is still a nasty tendency to over rely on the terminal to fix basic problems. (IBT=off for VM to work).

But its close enough that I can almost recommend it to my grandparents.... Almost.

Shit just works. I'm not dicking around looking for drivers and stuff. The way I use a computer I'm not really getting a benefit from linux

The anticheat for a game I liked to play with my wife didn't work on Linux and playing in a VM barely worked due to the game's outdated spaghetti code. It was more important to me at the time because the game was how I met her and at the time we weren't dating yet, she was just a friend I was crushing on big time, enough to reinstall windows for her.

We don't even really play it anymore, so maybe I'll switch back to Linux. I still got mint installed on dual boot, just never thought about starting it up until now. I always did like how a couple of terminal commands could fix like, 99% of issues whereas windows says "Noooo... You have to reinstall me for the 20,000th time! It's the only way!"

Two things: the Adobe Creative Cloud (which I hate but am totally dependent on) and better support for FreeSync with more than one display. Even with a 7900XT, which gets open-source drivers, graphics stuff is just easier on Windows.

I tried installing Zorin amd Pop_OS on my laptop, but the mousepad gestures, bluetooth, speakers, and a bunch of other small things didn't work.

I just don't have the time to tinker with it. I have an hour or two of free time a day and it's hard to convince myself to spend it trying to get linux to work whenever I have windows that just works.

Plus, i found that people just weren't helpful. Unlike some people, i didn't come out of the womb knowing how linux works. I did research and fixed what i could, but some things i could't fix. People were rude, condesending, and just not helpful whenever i would ask a question

Just not worth it for me at this moment

I kept spending insane amounts of time trying to make simple things work, that should work without me having to make them do so.

Couldn't have dual monitors due to Nvidia drivers not working correctly. Couldn't play Overwatch. Deep Rock Galactic ran very badly and slowly. I've used Linux in the past for years but it's just not good on a gaming laptop.

I've tried Linux a few times each time would seem to be good apart from gaming but every single time something I Didn't Even realise I did broke it completely. I'd say I've never had linux work for more than a few months.

With windows an install no matter how inconviant and annoying with forced updates has always lasted me years. Don't get me wrong though I hate Microsoft but I need my games and I want reliability.

To me following linux guides has mostly ended in an unbootable system.

I ditched Linux after realizing my Nvidia card was just gonna sit there and rot

Following a long how-to to install/configure something, just to get to step 99 and have the command not work, and not being able to find the solution.

I used Linux desktop as my work rig for a year and a half. I absolutely hated it, had constant problems and lost time almost every day to stupid workarounds. When I tried to search or ask for help the answer I was usually met with was "your hardware is wrong" or "why do you want to do that" or more often than no "you're using the wrong distro, you should use [different one every time]". I also found the UI to be quite ugly and often obtuse, you can tell that there's very few open source UI/UX designers. I switched back to windows and I've had better performance and less bugs.

The miserable drivers for my video card and all the other little things that required hours of fiddling with to get working right. Also, how very few programs ran 100% with WINE. I went back to the simple life to get through school but I'm now eyeing Linux for the dev experience.

The amount of comments in here that are conjecture or just straight up bullshit is off the charts... my tech illiterate wife, and my 80+ year old grandparents use Linux without any problems.

I reached a point in my life where I just didn't have time for things that don't "just work."

Sadly, just software compatibility - doing music with specific programs needed for assignments etc - If drivers and compatibility weren't an issue, I never would have switched. :) I will consider using Linux again full time if my current machine ever gives up though, now that gaming has advanced so much further. :)

It crashes at random times without any forewarning. One moment I'm browsing lemmy, the next moment I get a black screen and the computer starts to reboot. Also sometimes after waking up from hibernation, the computer freezes, not even switchting off/on caps lock works in those moments. It doesn't matter which distribution I use, they all crash on me (tried Fedora, EndeavourOS, Debian). I guess Linux isn't compatible with my hardware, but I don't know how to fix it or where to start.

I wanted to dual boot linux and windows but installed linux on the wrong drive partition and wrote over all of my data. Decided i was too stupid for linux. To be fair that was 3 years ago, maybe ill try again soon

Every few years I try Linux again. At this point I've decided that when I can install linux, and use all of my hardware/software without having to open a terminal window, I'll try it again. Until then, I only use it when I'm paid to.

When I've tried Linux in the past, it's way too much work with limited selection of apps. It's more of a toy to play around with. Learning all the command line stuff, editing text files and selling up jobs, etc. It wasn't for me.

Mind you, last time I seriously looked at Linux was when Red hat was still free. I know things have changed since then.

I got tired of having to endlessly maintain it, vs windows which generally just works (no fighting with audio drivers, wifi drivers, gpu drivers, suspend to disk works without glitching, etc) and i like playing video games without having to deal with wine. Still run linux on servers, and my work desktop and laptop are linux since we have an IT department which maintains it for me.

I used Linux Mint for several years on a dual-boot laptop. I rarely found myself booting Windows. While there was a learning curve, Mint was fairly accessible out of the box and was generally a delight to use. Until it wasn't. At some point, the drivers for my video card updated, and just flat broke everything. And I can't really use a computer on which I can't see the desktop. I waited. And waited. A fix for the driver may have eventually come, but after awhile, booting into Windows just became my default, until eventually I just wiped the Linux partition to recover the storage space.

It was fun while it lasted, and I may choose one day to give it another go for the fourth time. This wasn't the first time I've had something like this happen. First time was with Fedora, and the second was Ubuntu. Each time, I had the same "it worked until it didn't" experience, and each time it stopped working was usually some kind of broken driver making my hardware incompatible.

I tried to install a package and apt started uninstalling my desktop. Maybe if I didn't panic and hit Ctrl-C I would have gotten all the packages it was removing replaced with shiny new ones? I doubt it somehow.

All the customization you can do is neat, but after that I was pretty much done with fiddling with my OS and finding FOSS versions of stuff I was already used to and wanted something that would just work. These days I have a small form factor PC with Mint that I run some server apps on, but I'm holding off on making it my daily driver again until Microsoft really puts the screws on the consumer.