I Don't See a Reason to Switch to Windows from Linux Anymore in 2025
Do you think there's any reason to switch to Windows? Well, we don't think so, and here's why!
Okay, look, I don't want to be a hater, I promise. I have a setup with a Linux dual boot in my computer right now. But man, the crazy echo chamber around this issue is not just delusional, it's counterproductive. Being in denial about the shortcomings isn't particularly helpful in expanding reach, if that's what you all say you want.
So, in the spirit of balance, my mostly unbiased take on the listicle:
1 - Web tools get the job done: This is true when it's true. I work with Google's office suite, so yeah, many tools are indistinguishable. But not all tools are web tools. A big fallacy in this article is that just because a subset of items have embraced a solution doesn't mean that the solution is universal. If you need to work with Adobe software you're still SOL. MS Office still lacks some features on the web app. Some of the tools I use don't work, so I do still need to run those in a native Windows app. Since I'm not going to switch OSs every time I need to push a particular button, I'm going to default to Windows for work.
2 - Plenty of distros to suit your preference: This one is an active downside, and it pisses me off when it gets parroted. When I last decided to dual boot Linux I had to try five different distros to find one that sort of did everything I needed at once, which was a massive waste of time. I'm talking multiple days. Yes, there are a ton of distros. I only need to use one, though. But I need that one to work all the time. If one of the distros can get my HDR monitor to work but not my 5.1 audio and another can get my 5.1 audio setup to work, but not my monitors, then both distros are broken and neither is useful to me. This actually happened, incidentally.
3 - Steam has a decent collection of Linux games, plus Steam OS: Yes. Gaming on Linux is possible and works alright, but it's far from perfect. Features my Nvidia card runs reliably on Windows are hit-and-miss under Linux. Not all games are compatible in the first place, either. And while Heroic does a great job of running my GOG and Epic libraries, which are themselves just as big as my Steam one, it is a much bigger hassle to set up to run under the SteamOS game mode UI. Don't get me wrong, this has made huge strides but again, I'm not going to change OSs every time I hit a compatibility snag. This is the least fallacious of these points, though.
4 - Proprietary choices on Linux: Yes, there are some. Like the web app thing, the problem isn't what is there, it's what's missing. Also, as a side note, I find it extremely obnoxious when you have to enable these manually as an option in your package manager. As a user I don't care if a package is open source or not, I just want to install it.
5 - Electron makes app availability easier. Cool. Will take your word for it. Acknowledging the ideological debate behind it goes to the same argument I made in the previous point. And as above, it's not about what's there, it's about what's missing.
6 - No ads in your OS. I mean... nice? I still get ads for my selected distro on first boot, as well as on web apps and notifications for installed apps. Beyond a few direct links to first party apps in the one page of Win 11's settings app I don't find anything in Windows particularly intrusive, either. Which is not to say I don't dislike some of the overly commercial choices in Windows, they're just not a dealbreaker... yet.
7 - Docker, Homelab and self-hosting: This is... off topic, honestly. I do self host some things. Even used Docker once or twice... in my NAS, where the self-hosting happens. You don't need to switch your home desktop to Linux for that, and nobody is questioning that Linux is the OS of choice for a whole host of device ranges, from servers to the Raspberry Pi. Linux is great as a customizable underlying framework to build fast support for a niche device with a range of specific applications. We should be honest about how that breaks down if you try to use it as a widely accessible home computer alternative where the priorities are wide compatibility and ease of use.
Well, that became a huge thing, but... yeah, I guess I was annoyed enough by the delusion to rant. Look, I'd love to step away from Windows, and it's a thing you can do if you're tech savvy and willing to pretzel around the limitations in your hardware choices and your willingness to tinker... but it's not a serious mainstream alternative by a wide margin. I wish it was. Self-congratulatory praise within the tiny bubble of pre-existing fans (and why are there fans of operating systems in the first place?) is not going to help improve or widen its reach.
It works for me and has done so for almost 10 years.
Sure it won't work for everyone but to say it isn't viable isn't true either. It depends on the person.
It's not viable for the mainstream. "It depends on the person" suggests it's luck of the draw, but the Linux desktop penetration is something like 1-4%, at best, and that's inlcuding SteamOS and PiOS in the mix.
That's not, "depends on the person", that's "doesn't work for the vast majority of people". There is a reason for that.
Regarding Office, fear not! Microsoft is working hard to remove functionality from the Windows and Mac desktop apps, so soon we'll have feature parity! See: "New Outlook".
They've been pushing this shit for years already, nobody wants it, and they're forcing it next year despite still not fixing shared calendars (among other things). New Outlook is basically just the web app in a wrapper.
I mean, cool. Works for me. As soon as there is feature parity between their web app and their native app I no longer have a problem working with Office out of Windows. Not that I want to use Office in the first place, it's just not my choice.
But right now I need to push a button that doesn't exist on Linux, so I have to do it on Windows and that determines what I boot, which is the same situation from anybody who hates Adobe but has to use their software suite as well.
why are there fans of operating systems in the first place
Operating systems are huge endeavours of engineering and design by entire teams of people over decades, which are used literally daily. Is that not enough of a reason for people to be fans of them?
Hah. Of the concept of operating systems, maybe. I can see one appreciating technical solutions and UX choices just as a matter of skill and execution. Actively fanboying for them? Getting into playground-style arguments where you root for your favorite? Nah. Seems super immature to me.
There aren't even that many of the things anymore. It's not like the old days, where every computer brand had their own. Where are the TOS fanboys these days? All them kids and their obnoxious modern software interfaces. That's not a OS, it's just graphics.
Spot on. And like ants to sugar you have 20 or so ACKTUALLYs responding to you.
The only point I can really agree with you on here is Adobe products (and some other niche proprietary stuff like AutoDesk -- I don't consider MS Office an industry standard and if your job does I'm very sorry). And that's just corporate lock-in, if you're already paying hundreds of dollars a year to use those programs then yeah you're gonna stay on the corporate OS.
Other than that, everything you brought up just isn't quite accurate, or evaporates as you get more comfortable with the Linux ecosystem. The distro point, for example: every distro is just a starting point. Outside of some niche exceptions like Gentoo and NixOS that will radically redefine how you configure the system, any distro can largely be made to work similarly to any other. The major differences are just a) initial package set, b) the package manager, and c) the set of available packages. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to "what software should be on a computer", which is why there are so many distros and spins out there.
I would say gaming is actually pretty close to perfect, provided you don't play any of the games that have decided they just will never work on Linux -- almost exclusively games that use invasive kernel-level anti-cheat software which I wouldn't want to install on Windows either. There are a handful like Fortnite and Apex Legends which use EAC, which works great on Linux now, but the devs explicitly decided to disable it. Just like the corporate lock-in point, if you're committed to those games stay on Windows. Heroic and Lutris take a few more clicks to set up than Steam's one-click magic, but it's generally pretty straightforward for any game with any popularity.
The point about ads is where I start to think you're deliberately being obtuse. You think that, what, a splash screen telling you how to use your computer when you first boot it, and notifications from apps you installed, are advertising? And you find them similarly annoying as the actual sponsored content that shows up in your start menu, on the lock screen, in Edge, when you use Cortana... Not to mention the constant pressure from the OS to use those things? The only way I can interpret this without you just trolling is that you've spent too long in the Windows ecosystem and you've just adjusted to not notice how often it's shoving something in your face.
The only reason I have a windows laptop at home is because my employer forces me to. It's true that Adobe and MS stuff doesn't run or runs bad, same with some specific live service games. Personally I hate all of those and am more than happy to avoid em like the plague outside of work hours. They're horrible inadequate tools and horrible predatory games. Everything I actually wanted personally, has so far run just fine for years.
Edit: Remembered one specific thing that does really suck on Linux, and that's music production. That area is absolutely cluttered with proprietary shit. Even switching between windows and macos is a pain as many of the tools are just not compatible.
I'm not reading all that- anyway
I switched to full-time Linux this year. One of my programmer friends, whom I never expected to embrace Linux, switched to full-time Linux and is not going back. Our libraries have switched to Linux on all user-facing computers. 2 of my e-friends have approached me about Linux. Another friend is, despite not being a computer nerd, going to switch because Windows is forcing him to- and that's my point. It's not that Linux doesn't have deep flaws inherent to its development model, it's that those flaws are now less significant than those of Windows. Nobody likes Windows 11 and it's pushing people off.
Nobody even thinks about Windows 11, they just use it if it comes preinstalled. And from the data we have, the people that don't like Windows 11 are more likely to be on Windows 10 (or Mac OS).
There is no mass exodus to Linux. No data point we have shows that. The biggest Linux uptick we've seen recently is related to Steam Deck, which is as much Linux as Android or ChromeOS are.
Desktop Linux is better than it was, and it will be closer to its competitors if people ever agree that one consolidated system to support features that have been standard for years is the way to go... but it's not a mainstream option. Yes, even against Windows 11.
Have used Linux for decades. Switched over full time a few months ago and have generally been happy but all your points are extremely valid.
Plasma will occasionally freeze the taskbar/desktop when it wakes up or I switch back to my desktop from work laptop using a KVM, effectively connecting a monitor.
For me that's fine, manually open a terminal and kill the process so it'll restart. For all but a handful of my extended friends and family that means the computer is broken until you log off or restart. It's not a smooth experience.
Well, that's your opinion. For others it works fine. I've been using Linux since 1995 and exclusively for both home and work for well over a decade now. And there are rarely issues these days. Teams is a piece of shit, but my coworkers on Windows agree on that. Apart from that everything works for me.
Well, yeah, I think "Teams is a piece of shit" is a very uncontroversial statement.
I think "there are rarely issues" is demonstrably wrong, though. At least if we agree on the definition of "issues". Every Linux forum I've visited looking to fix my HDR monitor support seems to agree that HDR support in Linux is tentative at best, which I'd call an "issue", or that setting up a Nvidia card in distros that don't come preinstalled with the proprietary drivers can be a mess, which I'd call an "issue".
Linux desktop is certainly functional, but having learned to work around the limitations, to live without certain features or to purchase the better supported hardware alternative is different to there being no issues for a user migrating whatever PC they have over and expecting everything to work first time.
I literally tagged you a Linux hater months ago because you were raging about Linux. So I don't believe you're not a hater.
Also I tried to read what you wrote and the idea that it's unbiased is laughable to me. Claiming to have a dual boot doesn't sell me that you're remotely unbiased.
It's not a claim, I do have a dual boot set up at the moment. Manjaro (on KDE Plasma using Wayland, hence my whining about HDR setups) and Windows 11. Also a Lenovo Legion Go dualbooting Bazzite and Windows 11 and a Steam Deck. Plus a bunch of Linux handhelds, Raspberry Pis and assorted devices around the house that also count, I suppose.
You can ignore me all you want, it's your prerogative, but I'm as much a part of the actual userbase as you are.
Why is this thread getting flooded with people saying how they can't use Linux? Isn't that a little odd coming from a Linux community?
Hiya, intending to switch from Windows to Linux (it looks like I'll finally be pulling the proverbial trigger this holiday season!) but I got here via Local sorted by Active on programming.dev. I am not subbed to Linux.
In other words, people outside the target audience are getting exposed to this post.
I don't see why. You can be interested in Linux and like some aspects of it but still get annoyed at the blinkered zealots claiming that there's no reason to use Windows.
Lemmy is weird and this showed up on my 'all' page yesterday and again today. So that's where you're probably getting those comments (and mine!)
But I've been using Linux servers long enough and switching to Linux for my workstation once i finish getting parts for a new build
Ignore the trolls
Like most articles on itsfoss, this one is only a notch over clickbait — a kernel of an idea not fully developed, written with the last minute energy of a student who pushed off the assignment until right before deadline — but I'll be damned if that title isn't beautifully turned.
I haven't had to have Windows installed for more than a decade, but on recent occasion I've borrowed Windows and Mac computers for work. Those revisits didn't give me reason to switch back, only to long for my lean Arch install.
As the next major version of Windows approaches like a Santa down the chimney with all sorts of "AI"-infested gadgets in his sack, I do hope more will make the more often mentioned switch to a Linux distro from the advertising platform OS that came with their computer.
But this headline deliciously reminds us that there is already a good chunk of users who made the jump, or are sitting on the dual booting fence, one boot (sorry!) on either side. This article is for them, yes, but also a gentle nudge for those still gathering courage.
At this stage, it is time to seriously change the perspective of that switch. The single reason for switching from Windows to Linux is ... the utter state of Windows. Only the most blinkered of tech journos can continue to pretend that all is well on Windows, and not at all a sophisticated malware infection.
So bravo itsfoss for the clever barb, less so for the depth of the article itself.
I like the writing style of It's Foss. They don't make there articles dry and the tone is always positive and honest.
I think the Linux switch will heavily depend on your work flow and whether you like to tinker at all. I think It's Foss is right to say that for some Windows is not an option. People like me use a lot of Linux tools and apps.
I agree that the tone of their articles helps push the quality above some other tech blogs. At the very least they're sincere!
Windows is no longer an option for me either — I had made a conscious effort to use FLOSS apps even before switching, so there wasn't much holding me back. And, as you say, once I'd started modifying system settings to disable Microsoft telemetry, I was already at Linux tinkerer levels...
i never saw one to begin with
I wish. NVIDIA is still a buggy mess for me, and it seems that I am the only person with these issues, I see people praising NVIDIA on Wayland all the time now.
And VR is still bad on Linux.
I still love Linux, but I can't use it for now. God i miss NixOS );
I use X11 with Nvidia without issue. While I like the idea of Wayland, and it being pushed a lot now, it really remains beta software. While I think it's good Wayland is being focused on and promoted by the distros and DEs, I think it's a bit of a distraction from Linux as a whole.
I've had to switch back to X11 on both Nvidia and AMD devices due to bugs or compatibility issues in Wayland.
I agree about VR - I keep dual boot windows on my PC and VR is about the only thing I use it for now. But the result is I just use VR less.
I said good riddance to Nvidia forever. My amd card is better anyhow and has never had an issue on Linux
Tbh running AMD isn’t easier. For my workload I needed OpenCL and when it wasn’t installed by default, and wasn’t apart of apt package manager. I had to follow a script which involves amdgpu and only having OpenCL install if I wanted my machine stable.
Not the best experience.
For Nvidia some distros have installers built in to handle it. Like Mint where it’s one click and a restart and I have everything.
My problem isn't installing, it's after installing. Vsync has extra bad latency, frames are reversed, and more. And this is on 565, the latest version.
Games are unplayable.
The best way to use AMD GPU compute is to use containers. Keep in mind AMD only really has good performance on newer cards.
Last round of nvidia drivers made a mess, nix has a wiki on the issues on how to fix them until they are resolved.
Nothing is stopping you from using more than one OS. Use NixOS for everything other than what you're having problems with. And not using it at all won't do anything to solve the problems, use it and try updated and new things every now and then, eventually it'll work.
I mean, yeah. But it gets tiring to switch between them all the time.
I actually installed NixOS again, and I'm trying to figure out the solution. God help me with NVIDIA.
My reason is that VR gaming is not feasible on Linux, so I need to keep a Windows VM to play VR games.
why not?
Most VR headsets don't work at all on Linux, and for those that do, most games don't work anyway. For those that do work, they are unstable, and SteamVR itself is unstable and prone to crashes. Even when things work for a while, the frame rate is lower than on Windows, which is much more important for VR games.
So as much as flat games work perfectly on Linux nowadays, it's just not there for VR.
My daughter wants to play Sims 3 and use her Zune. I'm sure it's possible to do both with enough work and time spent tracking down old utilities but how much time do I want to spend on that when I could just crank out a VM.
sims 3 works ootb with proton... why do you need your computer for a zune?
That is not my experience. And you need a PC with the Zune software to manage your media on the player.
I remember Zune did not play well with Linux at all. One time I plugged my Zune into a Linux laptop just hoping to charge it. From that point on, until I plugged it back into a Windows PC, the Zune would play one song then skip the next two. As in track 1, 4, 7, then roll over to 2, 5, 8, etc.
That was the only problem I had with my Zune though, RIP Zune, you were the best.
Oh wait except for the leap year glitch. Microsoft apparently didn't think people would still use Zune in 2008 so all the Zunes stopped working for the duration of the leap day lol.
I said this in another thread but I set up a windows vm for someone because they needed it to run literally one scam tax software, otherwise they had no reason to switch back from Linux.
Even stuff like icue that uses windows drivers for peripherals will run in a VM with USB pass through.
And even then there's a nice open source alternative for icue; you only need it if you want to edit hardware profiles.
US? Here in scandi tax seems to work well automatically, as in, we just log into the government website and click OK most years. Corrections are easy enough too, if you need it, but it's usually not required.
@Sunshine Agree! Left Windows decades ago. Except for some ocassional office compability snafus and still poor gaming, it does everything I need and well.
Gaming is catching up. Valve has done a tremendous job getting games supported with Proton on SteamOS
@naonintendois @craigcorbin catching up? From what I heard, Linux surpassed winlol in gaming for certain titles, but yes, if you take the average, there's still a gap, and it's becoming smaller and smaller
@naonintendois Cool. I'll have to check that out. Thanks.
There will always be a game that is not supported.
Still poor gaming? I have all of my games working with zero effort on Steam. The only exception are my sim racing peripherals.
@AstralPath Good news. I tried a few games in October but the graphics were off. I'll have to give them another try. My machine is pretty old, too, so I may need to upgrade. Thanks
Technologies like Electron make it easier for app availability: Controversial opinion but True
I do agree, but currently Electron is great for apps the way Flash was considered great for the web. It solves one problem, but creates a bunch more.
In itself, Electron is pretty bloated, but I don't dare check how many versions I have installed because different apps have stuck with older ones. I'd really like to see a less resource consuming, backward compatible alternative to Electron.
From my thrifty perspective of keeping older hardware alive with Linux, that is. On your high grade, best-of-class gaming rig, mileage will definitely vary.
"Anymore"? I haven't ever owned a Windows machine, and I haven't used a Windows machine since 2015. I do have to fix a random issue on my wife's work laptop about once a month.
I get that there are some things some people can't do without and which keeps them in Windows: games, and requirements of their business (Word, Excel, PPT), but nothing about Linux has gotten significantly better in recent years. Incrementally, over there past decade, sure, but no big, recent change that might justify the title.
Except in the same way I've never needed Windows: in a very specific, individual way.
Coming from someone who just migrated myself and my family within the last year. Flatpaks were a big deal. I get people have their criticisms of it but wow, installing and updating apps is so much easier now compared to when I tried linux last and flatpak is probably the main reason why we are still on Linux today.
As a person who was all in on the AppImage distribution system (vs Flatpaks), I'm both sad and excited to see how well Flatpaks seem to be working out.
I guess they won that little competition in the end - which seems good, as there's now a healthy standard we can focus on.
It's genuinely great to now have widely accepted distribution independent packaging standards.
I’ve been planning to switch my PCs at home to Linux as a winter project this year.
I just installed a new SSD and put Mint on the main newer machine yesterday. Nary a speed bump in the process, and it’s so nice to have the snappy desktop and update experiences I’m used to from running Linux all day at work.
Me neither, if anything it's the other way around.
People who come here to say Linux is not good or that this community is an echo chamber and get mad for pointing out obvious flaws in the OS miss two things:
2025 year of the minutes desktop 🤣
It'll never happen because Linux zealots write this crap when 100% seriousness.
I've been using Linux on my personal desktop system since 1997 and I think it's great. However as a user I fucking hate Linux so much. It is so frustrating to use, it always breaks in weird ways.
It can do anything because you can configure so much and you can even go into the code and make thing your own. But at the same time it can't do anything, there usually isn't a basic framework to do what most people want. Each user is just supposed to figure it out for themselves and put their system together in a way that makes sense. Even someone like me who can understand all this crap and can read, understand and contribute to the code, doesn't always want to do this. And most users wouldn't be able to do it anyways. Let me just spend 12 hours of my own free time to figure out something that isn't documented very well, with often wrong or outdated information, weird bugs with quirks and workaround and fun interactions with other bugs and workarounds I have on my system.
Just the other day I raged my head off because some kind of update broke my shit. There is this protocol that allows for the OS to tell monitors what brightness they need to be on. This is awesome for tablet/convertibles/laptops/all-in-ones, but for desktop systems I don't really see the use case. But it can't hurt the feature is there and you choose not to use it right? However it turned out this latest update had a nasty bug in it. At boot it somehow set all my monitors to 100% brightness, which was highly unpleasant and kept resetting it to 100% every boot. Not only that, it turned out my main monitor had too much clever for its own good. It has two modes of operating, one mode where the builtin OS inside the monitor does everything, it handles all the settings, profiles, color shit, protocols etc. The other way of operating is where the OS inside the computer does everything, they have a driver for Windows and some neat software that allows you to do everything in there. It has game recognition software and tweaks the monitor to work perfectly with that game etc. However me being a Linux user, they ofcourse don't have any of that, not even a driver etc. but I know this when I selected the monitor so I made sure it could handle everything inside the monitor as well, so I could use it to it's full potential on Linux. But this update broke all of that, because the monitor saw the OS was telling it to go to a certain brightness setting, so it assumed the OS inside the computer would be running the show and reverted back to some default safe profile until the software utility could tell it what to do. This made my monitor borderline unusable and flash bang me every reboot (which was a lot of times whilst I was trying to figure out how to fix it).
I put in a lot of hours and was able to somewhat consistently block the brightness control so the monitor could again be in charge. But not after the monitor was fed up with all my shit and just completely doing a factory reset, so I lost the personal profile I had been tweaking for years.
Now I know the monitor probably shouldn't work this way and it's bullshit the manufacturer doesn't create Linux drivers and makes sure the software utility is available on Linux. But on the other hand, this is just the way the world is. Blaming it on some huge corporation that doesn't give a shit and runs on cost/benefit calculations doesn't fix my monitor. In my experience this is a huge problem in the Linux community (me included), we tend to get mad at other entities that cause the problem as an excuse for not fixing said problem. Which is perfectly valid from a person point of view, but very frustrating from a user point of view.
Most people who went through what I went through with my monitor wouldn't be able to fix it and simply give up on using Linux forever. Or at least till they get a new monitor 5-10 years down the line.
The self contradictions here are astounding. I love this thing that I hate. Now let me write 12 paragraphs about how much I hate to love to hate it
Humans are pretty complex so what may seem like a self contradiction actually isn't in fact.
But I can hit you with another one for me personally: I fucking love a big juicy burger, especially with cheese, pineapple, lettuce and spicy sauce. However I am normally a vegetarian and try to restrict my meat consumption as much as reasonably possible. I'm not a full vegan, because that just seems like self torture without a lot of extra gains, but maybe I'll become one in the future.
And I can write you essays upon essays about how much I hate Windows and other Microsoft software. Even though it has a special place in my heart, because when I got my first computer in 1984, it ran Microsoft BASIC as its primary "OS".
Ok Grandpa let's get you to bed
In all seriousness you have a fair point. Linux does occasionally have weird bugs if you are using something closer to upstream. Fedora does a pretty hood job of catching most stuff but it misses some things. If you want a more stable experience you want something that's for of a LTS such as Linux Mint or Debian. Also there is nothing stopping you from rolling back a update.
I just started using W11 after reading up on how to install it without all the bloat and spyware, and how to configure it to my liking
25 years in and I still don't see a reason to switch to Linux
You can't install Windows 11 without bloat and spyware, all you can do is minimise it and much of it cannot be disabled or removed. Linux can have 0 bloat and spy ware.
That is the difference.
You can get pretty close and go far by Ameliorating your Windows install.
Sir this is Wendy's
Are you actually bragging about refusing to learn anything? You sound like someone I knew who bragged about never having read a book in her life. Sad energy.
Because windows is annoying as hell to use and you get literally nothing from the spyware, ads, and intentional dark-patterns.
Windows is constantly malicious, even if you do your best to make it not so, it's designed to be as malicious as possible while still being tolerable.
Linux has never done something bad to me that was outright malicious. that alone makes a huge difference for me.
linux is slowly getting better, windows is rapidly getting worse.
Let me give you 2 big reasons:
Point 2 is wrong. It's very easy to basic stuff. I'd argue it's easier than Windows, which is a convoluted mess. You're just used to it being shit.
Point 1, maybe. The fact you just keep repeating "particular hardware or software that does not work" without actually giving an example shows you're talking out of your ass though. Sure, there are a few cases, but not many anymore. Most, if not all, of those cases can be handled by a VM though.
I can't agree with you tbh. It depends on the distro. On Windows I can basically one-click install OpenMW and it Just Works™. I can't even play it on my distro because for whatever reason it's broken. I ended up having to flat out purge it and install the daily build to get it working. Maybe it works better on other distros, idk. Worked fine until my distro updated some months ago. When I was still running Lubuntu I had to build it from source to get it to work.
This is the nature of open source and decentralized platforms. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if anyone expects the mainstream to adopt it when ease of use has been the name of the game for the last 20 years then they're mistaken. As good as Linux has gotten, there are still kinks that need worked out before the average user will adopt it. One step towards that is government adoption. This will almost certainly lay out a stable baseline standard that can be built off of for a more coherent experience. I can see Linux competing with Windows provided it comes up to par on UX.
The fact you just keep repeating "particular hardware or software that does not work" without actually giving an example shows you're talking out of your ass though
LOL I love it when people get offended because someone disagrees with them and then try to put forward their experience as if it's a fact. I didn't repeat anything. I said it literally 1 time. You expect me to sit here and list the dozens of hardware configurations that I've personally used that have conflicts with Linux? Hell anything with an Nvidia GPU (which is the vast majority of GPUs in existence) is an exercise in software engineering just to get it functional.
- It's a PITA to just do basic stuff.
In my experience basic stuff like browsing files, editing documents, launching apps, installing apps, and obviously a million things using a web browser, are all easy and snappy in a fresh out of the box install of Linux Mint.
- Linux does not work with the particular hardware or software you want or need to use.
That's a good reason
- It's a PITA to just do basic stuff.
What's outright bullshit so kinda obviated your argument. Sure, if downloading onto a thumb drive and rebooting a few times is hard becase you expect your OS to be preloaded then maybe but that wasn't even your point.
Mint has a web browser, Office Software, Graphic Software, Music Players etc all loaded. Open up the Application Installer, a GUI and type in the obvious bar at the top for what you want, download and good to go.
Sure, if downloading onto a thumb drive and rebooting a few times is hard becase you expect your OS to be preloaded then maybe but that wasn't even your point.
You're right. It wasn't. Not sure why you brought that up.
Open up the Application Installer, a GUI and type in the obvious bar at the top for what you want, download and good to go.
You're intentionally misrepresenting the situation. That's great if the software you're looking for is available in the "application installer". That is very often not the case. If it's available at all, it's often a .deb or .rpm or appimage, or you're expected to compile it yourself from scratch.
AppImages won't even run without some fuckery. And when you do that, they still have no icon and can't be pinned in your app tray. Sure, you can install Gear Lever to greatly simplify this process if you know about it but it's not typically not installed by default, which makes this process completely unintuitive.
And if they only make a .deb available, and you're running Fedora, well fuck you.
These are all complications that simply don't exist on Windows or Mac.
I can't afford a broken system anytime and that's why i can't use linux. It breaks when you least expect.
My son was literally crying earlier today because his VR headset is no longer visible from Windows and all of his efforts to fix it (driver updates, tweaking various program settings, and so on) failed.
So... ¯(ツ)/¯
Try a different USB port.
My Valve Index doesn't like my on-board Asus ports but works fine when plugged in a PCIe USB card.
A perfect example of what windows stans are blind to. That you will literally always have trouble on windows doing most things (at some point), and depending on what software you use and other factors, windows might be more problematic for you than even running a rolling release that might break any time. That's the case for me. Also, running the less stable releases is absolutely a choice. Other more stable releases probably break far less often than windows.
Funnily enough I could say the same about Windows
That thing has broken itself more times than I can count but my 2 linux machines (I still have 1 Windows machine) have been rock solid for 2 years now
The most only reason I have the last Windows machine is because I've been lazy about switching it lol
It really depends on your needs for sure. My linux systems have been rock solid. Been windows free for years. But i absolutely know people who have workloads that break seemingly weekly on linux. Like say example android emulation. Easy on windows, bluestacks. On linux? Lots of options from waydroid to blissOS on qemu but they break fucking constantly
I think it's really funny when people say this because this is exactly what made me stop using Windows.
The only thing I ever had consistently break on me on Windows was the search indexing running constantly and eating up all my resources. Easy enough to turn that off, but then you can't search files. I switched because I don't like corpos. Just curious what happened with your system to make you ditch it.
Well to be fair, this dude heard a story once that someone else's OS broke! /s
In my experience Windows takes way more troubleshooting and time debugging and fixing things than linux does. Theres a reason people use linux for critical servers, it tends to be extremely reliable once everything is set up.
Not to mention is is very easy to automate. You can deploy thousands of servers with a button and delete them all if you want.
Try Silverblue or Kinoite. They're designed such that if you find an update breaks something, you can literally revert to the version before that update with a reboot. Application distribution through flatpaks offers pre-configured environments so it's not a pain to get stuff running. Toolbox lets you dick around in isolation from the system. You'd really have to go out of your way to break something. Great stuff.
You also can revert transitional packages
Immutable systems do not have this problem at all.
Try out bazzite, which is based on silverblue/kinoite but comes with some extra stuff preconfigured.