Those who tried Linux and went back to Windows, what caused you to go back to Windows?
Additionally, what changes are necessary for you to be able to use Linux full time?
Additionally, what changes are necessary for you to be able to use Linux full time?
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.
Yikes, that is why I hate tech forums. Too many times I’ve asked an informed/thought out question I’m unable to find via search and the first replier basically says “hey go FUCK yourself.”
I work in IT, this is how a lot of engineers and administrators are to be honest. I hate the dick measuring contests in my field.
Unfortunately, those kinds of interactions are inevitable when the developer/user relationship is so close. And it goes both ways. I saw a thread just yesterday where a user reported an issue on github, a second user said they saw it too. Later the first user posted a workaround to the issue, and the second user came back with "took you long enough", and that was the end of the exchange.
Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn't mean we should reject interacting with everyone. Similarly, a community of user-maintained software is going to have some asshats, but that doesn't mean we should hand our computing freedom over to one or two corporations. Just my two cents.
Corollary: Your personal aversion to corporations doesn't mean users have have any motivation or obligation to keep trying when we're getting pushback from both the software and those who maintain it.
Anyway, I'm not sure how you got that I reject interacting with everyone after my experience, but extrapolating my statement to that kind of extreme phrasing sure doesn't fill me with confidence about future interactions, either.
Hey there, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I'm not discounting anything you're saying, I agree that it's definitely a very real phenomenon, and didn't intend to provoke a defensive response. I didn't say that you were "rejecting interacting with everyone", on the contrary, I'm saying that in the physical world you deal with people who act like dicks, but you specifically DON'T reject interacting with everyone. I'm drawing a parallel between that behavior in the physical world with how I believe we should also behave in the digital one.
I also did not say that I have any personal aversion to corporations, I owe most of my daily comforts to corporations, so I would be a hypocrite to say as much. But if I had said that "I don't think we should stick our hands in blenders" that doesn't mean I have a personal aversion to blenders.
Cheers
I still can't really agree that the comparison holds; we try harder in real life because the bar for being a dick is (usually) higher. On the internet, when all it takes is a few easy sentences to be a dick to a faceless stranger whose reaction we don't have to see... to me, the response should be equally fluid, else we get bogged down being the only one putting in the effort and taking a constant beating to our self-esteem when we wonder why no one is bothering to hear us.
However, I appreciate you being chill about clearing up what you meant. I did initially miss the comparison you were going for and feel like I was getting cereal box therapy about not cutting people off (and thus staying in toxic communities) when that wasn't what you meant.
Cheers back.
Unfortunately everyone has a limit for how much work they'd like to put in.
Currently my experience with 3D printing. It's one thing after another, and the community, at least on Reddit and Facebook, fucking sucks. If I ask a question, it's always "hey how about you go fuck yourself" or an essay that has zero relevance to what I'm asking. Made a post on Reddit the other day (I know, but have a single burner account until the 3D printing community here takes off more) and just asked to see some settings due to just constantly having issue after issue. Half of the responses were people just telling me they're not fucking wizards and they need to know what kind of problems I'm having. I... didn't ask for that whatsoever. I very explicitly just asked for someone's slicer settings to compare to.
That's absolutely the worst help forum experience, when you're asking one question but everyone extrapolates the question they think you REALLY meant to ask and talks down to you about it.
And of course if you try to steer the conversation back to your actual question, you get painted as the unreasonable one placing all sorts of conditions on the generous free help others are allowed to bestow upon you.
The less reliance on others Linux requires, the better off it will be for general adoption.
Haha your second paragraph sums it up perfectly. A few folks did share their settings, but they were for completely different printers/hardware haha. Most of the online guides I've found are written under the assumption that you're already a master at the hobby, and it's strangely spread out in random little nooks of the internet - there's not really a ton of centralized discussion forums. Maybe the hobby is way smaller than I thought, or maybe I'm just in way over my head, but I fix tech problems for a living - did not expect this to be as much of a challenge. Never buy a 3D printer if you value your sanity and living stress-free. Sorry, I just needed to rant for a minute haha.
I've had exactly the opposite experience lol. Most of the stuff out there is dreadfully basic, and if you want detail like scientific comparisons of the strength-weight ratios of different infill patterns, good fuckin luck. Some chum on YouTube will have some half baked experiments and that's as good as it gets.
Yeah 3D printers are fussier than I expected. Especially when printing anything involving supports and more specifically... small areas that need supports. I print a lot of stuff for D&D and have just started cutting things up into pieces with blender to print easier, then glue it together
I will say. My first thought was obviously to ask what printer you have, to see if I could send you my profile for you to compare (depending on the slicer you use). Then my second was to ask if you're having issues and if so, what the issues are.
Only because sometimes a seemingly large issue could be a very small fix.
When I first started, I got it working great and then out of no where nothing would stick to the bed. I spent more time than I'd like to admit messing with settings only to realize it was the oils on my hands causing adhesion issues. Some 99% IPA fixed all my issues real quick haha.
That would be awesome! I've got an Ender 6 with a Micro Swiss NG extruder. I was printing decently with the stock hardware, but that stock extruder was a nightmare and kept slipping or completely losing grip on filament mid-print, so I upgraded to this extruder. Now I'm just trying to find that perfect spot to where it extrudes but doesn't grind filament. I've been having some really messy prints.
I just had a feeler gauge arrive in the mail, so I'm about to use that to try leveling the bed more accurately. Everyone says to just use a piece of paper or something, but different paper is different widths haha.
I do have a PEI bed, so stuff sticks and comes off way easier now, but I would love to check out your slicer settings to get a good baseline! What kind of hardware do you have, and which slicer do you use?
Sure thing, I have a two Sovol SV06's, one for a 0.4 nozzle and one for a 0.2 nozzle, and a Bambu Labs X1C.
The SV06's took me a few weeks to tweak, especially the one with the 0.2 nozzle.
Here is my cura profile for the Sovol SV06 with the 0.4 nozzle https://filebin.net/ljh52w2lehipzbms
Just using that outright probably won't work. What I would do is load up the default Ender 6 profile that Cura has, and then adjust settings based on mine. For instance. You went from a bowden extruder to a direct drive. So you can probably copy my retraction settings as a baseline and adjust from there. You need far less retraction on direct drive extruders (i.e. 0.2mm-1mm for direct drive vs 5mm-8mm for bowden).
I would also look up CHEP and Teaching Tech on youtube. They have great videos on bed leveling and everything else related to 3d printing.
Jeez that is nasty. What project was it?
I was trying to run my own personal-use instance of LiveJournal back 20 years ago when it was open source (and not owned by Russia). Just to see if I could, as is the spirit of a tinkerer.
There was a handful of paid staff as well as a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers, so I expected one of them to answer a low-priority newbie support request, not.. what I got.
Unfortunate, but to be fair, things have changed a lot in 20 years.
There are definitely still angry linux nerds on forums, but I think the experience is a lot more streamlined.
I've found this same type of animosity and superiority all over tech forums in general.
You're not wrong, but running Linux directly correlates to more time spent on "tech forums in general," so it's still a bigger problem with that OS than others imo.
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.
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.
That's strange, I've always felt that installing stuff is a lot easier on Ubuntu than windows. It's just
apt install <program>andapt remove <program>. Having to manually download and run an exe feels outdated in comparison.Curious what distro you installed that had that issue. The only preview issue I've encountered was on win10 where I had to pay for windows to support H.265 to give me previews of H.265 files.
That's a fair point though. If you aren't willing (and most aren't) to learn enough to be comfortable with the terminal, it can be very easy break something when you are forced to interact with the terminal.
Apt does not have most packages you need anymore. You have to add custom repositories for everything. Which means you have to go to a website and still run a whole bunch of commands. Worst of both worlds. Other distros are not as bad, but between snap, flathub, etc. Linux package management is not in a good state at the moment.
Agreed. Try using apt install program name, not found. Search Google "how to download program name on Linux". Get told you first have to add these 3 different repos or whatever in the terminal, then type in this command to download it. Why do I need to Google HOW to download a program? Nothing is ever simple with Linux. It's absolute bollocks in that regard.
The sad part is that it used to be simple. You could do apt install whatever and it would usually get it.
They also used to have a graphical frontend for apt, which felt like an app store before app stores (and even the iPhone itself) existed.
I suspect it'll get simple again. If canonical doesn't do it, some other distro will overtake it.
😂 Except that you have to know exactly what <program> is, character for character, and usually includes some long string of numbers and letters where 1 character is wrong and you have to retype the whole damn thing. This is the opposite of easy.
Fedora/Gnome
Yes and the problem is you're ALWAYS sent into the terminal for absolutely any kind of debugging.
Been using linux for 6ish years.
Aint nothin @HughJanus said thats wrong.
assuming what you want is even on apt. if its not, then you gotta add the repository.. and some stuff doesnt even offer that. So you gotta find and download the .deb file. or even compile it from source yourself.
Everything has [Tab] completion these days.
What is that!?
Wikipedia explains it better than I would
If it a program you are unfamiliar with, yes you'll probably need to search for the apt name and copy paste. I much prefer that over searching a website, verifying it's not a scam site, then download the exe, and then run the exe once the download is finished. After the first time, just add it to a .sh script and then you can download every program you need automatically if you ever need to set up a new instance again.
I guess it's not for all, but worst case it's hardly any more work than needing to go to a website to download the exe.
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.
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.
Steam works flawlessly with Linux now. If you have an Nvidia GFX card then you can even get a Pop!_OS install with the driver pre-configured. It's pretty rad!
Necessity for me, too. After three years of using Linux, I went back to school and it was needlessly difficult trying to get everything to work together. The nail in the coffin was when I had to use some proctoring software and I couldn't use a virtual machine. I just went back to Windows.
If I didn't have to use Windows, I'd probably still use Linux. I really enjoyed how snappy it was.
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.
Most major distributions come with a software center of some kind. And with Flatpaks, AppImages, and gag Snaps, it pretty much is just click and install these days.
What’s wrong with snaps? I’m giving Linux another go so I’m still learning. I’m trying Ubuntu on an ancient iMac right now but I also have Pop!_OS in a vm on my windows pc to play with. I haven’t installed anything on pop but I noticed Ubuntu had snaps.
Snaps are proprietary to Canonical (Ubuntu). Historically, they were larger, slower to load, and generally slower overall to use With a good SSD and system, I'm not sure that's the case anymore though.
Ohh. Thanks for that info. Proprietary stuff and forced ads are two of the biggest things pushing me away from windows right now so that’s good to know.
"I don't want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. "
I'm no expert, but isn't it literally just apt get (name of software) to download and install through terminal?
There have been "app store" frontends for most distributions since at least 2012, and packagekit has the same CLI on every major distribution.
Everyone in this thread saying shit like that hasn't tried Linux since 2004
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.
You should look into VFIO. I was in the same place where I wanted to have a Linux desktop but I don't want to dual boot to play games because that shit is CRAZY annoying. However, there's a way to virtualize Windows inside of you Linux desktop and get 99% of your GPU's performance due to VFIO. I think if you use Kubuntu specifically there's a really strong guide for setting it up, although admittedly it's not trivial. Good luck!
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.
I am literally a Linux system admin, I bang on a command line interface for a living.
But I don't use Linux at home, it's just so much work. Every single thing is complicated. Last time I really tried in earnest to switch to a full Linux setup I was somewhere in the middle of a quick and easy 24-step process to get my webcam working, compiling the drivers from a modified source - and it was just a moment that broke me. Like, I've been working on this for an hour and I know I can do it but this is stuff I don't even think about with windows.
So I broke down and bought Windows 10. It's what I was trying to avoid, being a tight ass and didn't want to buy an new OS.
I just don't have the patience to troubleshoot every tiny thing like a big endeavor. I can, I just don't want to. Everything I install, every peripheral I connect, it's always a big deal getting it to work. Heck with that, not worth the trouble.
And here I use Windows and get into a blind rage within 5 minutes at how much fucking around there is getting devices working properly, and then they just drop out for no apparent reason.
I don't think anything like this has really been the case for a long time. How long ago was this?
I think you've hit the nail on the head... many of us grew up using Windows and/or Mac. Incremental changes to the OS aren't a hindrance because of the baseline familiarity with the OS. Without OS familiarity, you're going to feel like a fish out of water.
I'm getting better with linux, but I still daily drive on a Windows machine and I'm not sure if that will ever change.
The Windows command line is just so far removed from linux/mac terminal. Powershell is the closest Windows has out of the box really, and it's a poweruser tool exclusively. Not to mention that by default, Powershell comes with aliases for common commandline inputs, so users are still not learning the correct commands and syntax.
This builds an ignorance problem, as you alluded to. I've done a lot in android and linux, but not enough where I can hammer away at a linux terminal and do anything but cause damage.
And I don't think this is a "fault" in linux so to speak, but it's an issue that needs to be overcome for most users to make the switch from something where the terminal was strictly and "optional" tool for them.
WSL? Windows for GUI programs and WSL for any CLI work. All my servers are Linux but I just ssh into them. Everything runs this way all nice and happy and I never ever touch PowerShell.
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.
A few years ago I installed Ubuntu on a laptop, used it a bunch of times then it got put away for a year or so. When I booted it back up it told me the OS was out of date and needed to be updated. When I tried it gave me some errors. I searched online and basically I couldn't update because it was too old. I needed to update in stages but the next release was also out of support.
I realised I don't use it enough to care. I installed windows on it.
I do use Linux at work and on things at home like routers, retro gaming, etc. They're not really comparable though.
So, I've been running Linux as a desktop for a number of years, never had a problem of it dieing weekly or monthly. I've had my share of "ah shit, I should restart because some package updated and tings got a little spooky", but never out right ded.
In saying that, I'm used to this modus operandi, and how to fix these things, but I'm curious as to why you were having weekly/monthly issues. E.g. were you running the latest distros, and not LTS versions?
A comparison with windows is that they control the whole OS, and on theory everything is LTS. Linux gives you those freedoms, and also those problems if you choose to use them etc.
This, and gaming. Linux has come a long way, but has a long way to go. Linux seems to be a long string of hicccups that need to be solved, instead of something that works for me. Although the POPos distro was by far the smoothest, it still became troublesome trying to play games on it.
You must be doing something really wrong with it because on popular distros this is not really supposed to happen. If you encounter such issues report them to the devs. You probably want to try a more stable distro
They're not doing anything wrong. This is my experience, as well as many many others. Why else would so many people and businesses overlook a completely free operating system? I've used all the "stable" distros.
If I reported issues to the devs, I wouldn't be doing anything else, and it wouldn't solve the problem I have TODAY. This is not a solution.
"Why else would so many businesses overlook a completely free operating system"
Well, they don't. Plenty of businesses use Linux systems. It's not (only) because it's free, though. The issue of licensing often isn't a factor that comes into play over having a system that just works. It's easy to customize, flexible and comparatively secure. Your experiences with Linux are valid, but many businesses and individuals do use it daily and for good reason.
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.
Odd that you've had so much trouble with Linux. My experience generally had been that it requires more time on initial config, then it just keeps working unless you change something.
Years ago I had the opposite issue. The printer driver would rarely work. When I switched to ubuntu for unrelated reasons the printer worked everytime. I suspect that this is very unusual and 99.999% of the time your scenario is more likely. Just wanted to share =).
My employer 😢
See, I sometimes complain about having to use a Mac (the hardware is fine, the OS, meh), but you have reminded me that it could be worse. Thanks for your suffering.
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 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.
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.
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.
Your wifi issues sound like a network card with poor support in the kernel. I think hardware compatibility is one of the most understated sources of user friction in Linux. Nearly anything modern will work but only a few vendors’ network drivers are really as performant as their windows implementation.
Not much you can do as a user unless you want to become a driver developer and/or reverse engineer.
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.
My experience is the opposite. Whenever I run into a weird problem on Windows, half of the time I can't find an answer anywhere. And when I find an answer, it often seems really sketchy, like deleting a specific registry key, without explaining WHY it is required.
I also had some problems, where I couldn't find anything with Linux, but less so than on Windows.
I guess it depends a lot on what you do, I don't play a lot of games and don't need any Software that's supported only by Windows.
ArchWiki is my first point of contact after experiencing an issue. Its an amazing resource.
I'm surprised Windows default troubleshooting solution has been to employee people who spend their time answering questions on forums, often just copy/pasting answers which often don't apply to the question being asked.
It's not stable (servers run on linux) it's not reliable (autoupdates) it's not accessible (closed source)
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.
This is very close to where I’m at.
I could see using Linux as a daily driver for work and flipping to windows for games if work had a stipend or Byod option. But otherwise I seem to tend to stick to one or the other.
That said I do keep a Linux distro on my laptop mainly for gimp and kdenlive for making videos from my drone recordings for a buddy.
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...
Tell me your parents were upset at you when you were eight, for dismantling appliances, without telling me your parents were upset at you when you were eight, for dismantling appliances
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.
Especially with the shit windows 11 has pulled.
In some cases, vulkan driver comparability gives games on Linux a performance boost. Valve steam deck is improving compatibility as well
I tried it just last month for a whole week before I ditched it back for Windows. Its just not ready for serious gamers. I am very anti microsoft so when it is ready, I will happily make the switch.
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
I honestly get where you're coming from as I went through a similar process of hating Windows, trying to make Linux work for me and just ending up back on Windows. I finally settled on Nobara Linux, but in my personal opinion it might be worth looking into Linux Mint for you if you want a rock solid distro. I installed Mint for my girlfriend not too long ago and everything magically worked with Nvidia drivers, wallpapers, Discord screen sharing, etc. I was so impressed that I considered distro hopping one last time.
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.
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
I'm the opposite. No drivers required in Linux for me. Printer just worked. Wacom tablet just worked. Monitor colour profile just worked. Etc etc etc. Everything has just worked. However, I don't do bleeding edge video cards, so maybe that's an issue? I have no idea. Linux though for me, has never needed a driver.
This has been me as well. I switched to daily driving Linux after a week on windows 11. It hasn't been 100% perfect but answers were so easy to find and implement. My shit works, and works well. More importantly it works exactly how I want it to.
I went with EndeavourOS
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.
Linux is perfect for grandparents or non tech savvy family if you set it up for them. Once it's up and running, there isn't much of anything they can do to break it.
That is just a straight up lie.
Not so, it was true for my 86-year-old mom. I installed Linux Mint and put the Chrome browser icon on her desktop, and that was all she used. She only checked e-mails and browsed like Facebook, etc. Every month or so when I went to visit, I'd just run the updater. Never broke and I never really had to do anything. The reason why I put it on, was her PC was getting old, and Windows was getting super slow. So it was win-win. She did not even know it was Linux.
If the only thing you're doing is turning it on and firing up a browser, I can see that working for just about any device with just about any operating system...
Yeah, but Mint is completely free and doesnt come with much of the software bloat that might be confusing to an older person. It's a simple user experience by design.
That is why Linux is good for a lot of people.
Not in my experience. They don't know how to use the terminal and downloading anything shady online won't install. No auto-updates, no bloat, nothing but what I put there. How would that not work?
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.
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.
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!"
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 think the biggest thing here is how insular the linux community can be. I do think that Lemmy's linux communities are much better about being supportive and welcoming however. Less of a dick measuring contest and more a group of people who are passionate and want to engage with the topic.
I definitely felt that. It's demotivating to feel like you're being looked down upon for trying to learn an OS that they themselves promote so much
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 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.
Do you feel like you ever got over the initial setup period? A lot of what you are describing is what I encounter after a fresh install but I don't typically have any issues after a little bit of tweaking.
Maybe because it was a work laptop I didn't spend as much time on setup as I would for a personal computer. There's were a lot of issues that I solved with tweaking at the start, but many of the lingering issues either had no solution or were so intermittent or complex that I couldn't figure out how to word it in a way that would lead me to the solution.
I ditched Linux after realizing my Nvidia card was just gonna sit there and rot
What does that mean?
Are you talking about about the lack of games on Linux? Because that makes no sense. Check out protondb.com
And if your GPU is still only lukewarm, Stable Diffusion runs better in Linux than Windows.
Could've been a long time ago. Nvidia driver support hasn't always been great.
I really don't want to delve into details, but even when I made gpu work there was noticeable drop in performance in games compared to when I ran them under Windows
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 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
If you try again, follow a dual-boot guide for your distro. Also, make your root and home partitions separate, so if you run into issues, you can reset safely.
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.
steam's proton extension (or mod, whatever) to wine has really increased the number of games that run well in wine.
these days most productivity "apps" are just web based, so wine isn't as relevant.
I keep a Windows partition around for a little better (~10%) performance in intensive games, but plan to ditch it when I upgrade my CPU.
Exactly, but I get down voted for saying this. 😂
It happens lol I got someone telling me that "I just need to use the right settings!" D'oh, silly me, I always try to use the wrong settings. Nevermind the time it takes to look up & set that all up, if I only knew the right ones from birth 😆
Right!?! I don't think this post actually wanted to hear anything bad about Linux, and if they do you just get called a potato for being a dumb ass. 🤷♂️
AMD or NVIDIA? Also how long ago?
I found most prograns I need run on wine, you just need to use the right settings. Playonlinux and Lutris are useful for applications, not just games.
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 understand, and as a Linux fanatic of 8 years now, let's not be too judgemental of the ex-Linux crowd 😄
Meh. Most of the top comments are pretty reasonable.
Different needs, different hardware, different skill levels. My kindergarten kids used it for 2 years for school, no problem. I still don't use it because its too rough for my advanced needs.
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'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 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.
The inability to play most games.
The first time I used Linux, I couldn't get it to work with my NIC so I couldn't play Counter-Strike. Big nope.
The second time, it wouldn't work with my GPU properly so anything that used 3D graphics either didn't run at all, or gave single digit frame rates.
The last time I tried, Wine just wouldn't work with anything or would constantly crash.
Until Linux is just super easy, plug'n'play, "it just works" like Windows, it will never become my daily use OS. The only thing I would run Linux on currently are purpose specific machines using a raspberry pi or similar computer, a server, or my phone.
Now that Steam is all in on the Steam Deck and SteamOS there is much better support for games on Linux. See ProtonDB.
Also, the Linux distro Pop!_OS has worked quite well for me for games. I use the NVIDIA version which bundles NVIDIA's propietary library blobs which also helps with the game compatibility.
But all in all I agree with you that even with all of this it is not as smooth as just click and play on Windows. 🙂 Plus some games just don't work on Linux at all so there's that. Lol.
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.
Try Tumbleweed then. It has yast and will cover the important stuff you'd probably do in console otherwise.
Just out of curiosity: What's your problem with the terminal?
If I have to open a terminal just to get up and running, the UI has failed. If something that basic has failed, there are other much larger problems to deal with still. None of which I want to deal with.
Also I've spent 40 years working in various versions of dos and PowerShell interfaces, and there's enough difference with all nix type interfaces that I don't want to deal with swapping back and forth. I do that enough with the programming languages I use every day that it's a constant annoyance.
Terminal is too much effort. I just want a pc that works with out me needing to do what I already do at work
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.
That seemed to be a major bug in POP_OS at one point, the youtuber Linus Tech Tips fell victim to it while trying it and it ended up being patched VERY fast
I'll add one bit of info from me. I've installed aptitude on Mint, as it was supposedly the best package dependency conflict resolver. I don't remember what conflict I had, but when I launched aptitude to fix that broken package, it begun to uninstall every package. After reinstall, I've been using Mint as computer for modifying bootloaders in phones, and some minor works, returning to modified windows 10.
I'm not the OS police, seems like using windows is kinda reasonable given your experiences with Linux
Tbf I've had a similar thing happen like 6 years ago. I've been using Linux still but at the time I didn't have much going on that system outside of a few games so it just turned into a long reinstall weekend. I forget exactly what happened but I also had another issue where I tried to install KDE Plasma desktop environment and it completely nuked my system. Idk if it was a user error or what.
I'm still a Linux fanboy but it's not without its own set of issues. I try to be a bit more careful in the terminal after all that and I haven't had any major issues since. I do need to do a fresh install sometime in the near future though.
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. :)
Ive heard this a few times. Hardware and software for music production is lacking in linux. Games support is very good now though
what software? I do a little bit of music myself, but just as a hobby... and FL studio runs great with wine
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 reached a point in my life where I just didn't have time for things that don't "just work."
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.
Oh boy have things changed. The big headline distros of today are more stable, functional and have a much wider variety of software than 2 years ago, let alone a decade ago.
I've used both regularly for years and went back to Windows when I switched to PC gaming and it's just so much better. Everything just works on Windows.
Linux really needs to work on improving its user experience if it wants to be a true competitor to Mac and Windows. All these little config tweaks and command line prompts you have to do to get things working on Linux just isn't going to win a bunch of people over who are used to things being a few clicks on a wizard to get working.
Edit: it's been years since I last tried Linux so maybe things have changed.
fwiw, I'm now pretty darn happy with Linux and gaming. Granted, I use Steam, so there's that.
There are issues sometimes, but I just keep a copy of windows around for windows-only things. Generally, Linux "just works" for me, but I've also learned to just skip it when something requires too much involvement to get working.
Games and Photoshop. Linux is nice, but if you're a serious gamer its not even in the solution space.
Define "serious gamer". I play almost everything on Linux with little to no downsides, especially in Dota2 and CSGO or single player games.
Yeah, Proton has made leaps and bounds the past few years with the sheer amount of time and money Valve is funneling into it. Now you can often expect newly released games to run just fine on Linux through steam, the big remaining hangup being anti-cheat software.
I would guess a "serious gamer" is one who wants to play all the latest AAA multiplayer games. Just not possible for Linux to work for 100% on Day 1 with the ridiculous kernel-level anti-cheats.
For me, even though I play mainly on Linux, the issue is with random niche mods or hardware; Tobi eye-tracking, headtracking, VR.
This is so wrong. 99% of my 450 game library on Steam works perfectly. Great performance with proton.
Use gimp
I'd be interested to know the breakdown of AAA titles in that library!
Gimp is appropriately titled as it is a joke compared to Photoshop. If this is the closest suggestion to a suitable replacement it will guarantee windows/osx always has a place in my work environment.
For AAA titles (not gonna list every one), here's a few:
Hogwarts Legacy, Dead Space remake, Resident Evil 2/3/4/7 remakes, God of War, Returnal, The Last of Us Part 1, Uncharted 4, all the Assassin's Creeds, Atomic Heart, the Batman games, Bioshock games, Dark Souls 1/2/3, Death Stranding, Elden Ring, Days Gone, Dying Light 1/2, all the Far Crys, Final Fantasy 7 remake, FF8-15, Ghostrunner, GTA5, Hi-Fi Rush, Spider-Man/Miles Morales, Tomb Raider games, Sekiro, Sonic Frontiers, Star Wars (all) and Jedi Fallen/Survivor, The Division 1/2, The Witcher 1/2/3, Yakuza (all), plus more
Oh hey that's pretty solid. What's the state on Rocket League?
Not here to disagree, just here to advocate for Krita over Gimp. I found it much more pleasant to use for digital art
Oh haven't heard of it, I'll check it out!
I tried to use Ubuntu for a bit but I just wanted to have regular Firefox with the built in updater, turns out this is way more of a hassle than it is on Windows.
It shouldn't be that hard to "install" a program like Firefox directly from a website but all you get is an archive thing that you have to manually "install" basically, it's tricky enough that someone wrote a tool just do do this: https://gitlab.com/Linux-Is-Best/Firefox-automatic-install-for-Linux
APT and Flatpacks are all cool but an offline installation should still be available and easy to use without being forced to use a terminal. Maybe I'm incorrect and I would love to hear about it but this is my experience.
Steam for whatever reason is basically installed the same way on windows as on PC in terms of user experience, you download a file and double click it. Maybe it's Mozillas fault? Who knows, it's frustrating in any case.
Ubuntu (and most other linux distributions) have a slightly different way of installing programs and applications. It has an app store, similar to Android and iOS, you can search for Firefox (and other apps) from in there. If I'm not mistaken, Ubuntu searched and notifies you for updates regularly.
The philosophy of Ubuntu (and most other linux distributions) is that you don't need to go to a bunch of different sites to download your software, you can just download all your software from the "app store".
And all of these tools are GUI's (so 'point and click'-based), so you don't need to open a terminal, if you don't want to.
to me this is a feature rather than an issue, whenever a package is updated in the package repository it's super convenient to just update them from the same place instead of having auto-updaters built into all applications on the system. i guess that's a preference thing though.
I got my wife a netbook when they were popular. It came with Windows 7 Starter Edition. Shit was kind of slow, but it worked. I thought about installing Linux cause people say it's lighter and faster. When I started looking up Linux there were so many versions. I can't tell the difference between a Mint, Cinnamon, KDE, etc. As a noob (I'm still a noob) I don't know which one to choose so I settled on Mint cause I liked the theme. After the install it was slower than Win7SE. VLC video playback was trash. At the time I was using Photoshop 6 and Gimp was a not so great alternative. In the end the experiment failed. The netbook ended up being donated to the sis in law (teen). Best thing about Linux is the ability to run it off a CD/thumb drive. I think I'm too use to Windows though.. It's not worth the headache to switch Operating System unless I have to. I won't switch to Apple/iOS cause I'm use to Android. I currently run Win10 on my desktop/laptop and Win11 on my wife's Surface laptop. I fucken hate how Windows is always asking me to sign on with their account. I probably switch to Linux if Windows ever goes full online subscription base.
I used Linux for maybe 15 years and I have to say I absolutely love it. I even attended Fedora Flock conference, I was really into all the FOSS world. But at some point I guess I got really tired of editing text files on a command line and googling to solve specific problems or just plain OS settings.
I can't say that I don't miss it though and especially more now than ever the itch is there and I am curious to install and use Linux again, so I dunno..
I use both. Linux as a homserver runs a bunch of docker containers and a Nas/personal cloud. Desktop and notebook runs Windows because compatibility and honestly Linux as a desktop still sucks ass. I tried it the first time in the mid 90s and even after all the promises and a quarter of a century later its still shit. Just take the L Linux and be what you are; the best server os.
See, I always find it funny when people say Linux is rubbish for desktop. I main Linux and boot Windows for some games, and Windows continues to find ways to bug me while my Linux desktop feels great.
I guess YMMV
I tried Linux mint, I really liked it but I needed Autodesk software and that don't work on Linux 😞
I hate the CLI and every time I had an issue every manual or forum or user would give me the solution using the CLI.
Also gaming. There is lots that runs fine on Linux now, but there is also lots which does not. Especially gaming peripherals like my Fanatec wheel and pedals.
Preach fellow sim racer! Linux on desktop is simply not realistic for many of us because of the sims themselves and the peripherals.
Basically visual arts software and some writing software. Additionally I have a free version of Ableton Live Lite 11 (so one music-making application as well) that came with my keyboard.
I mostly do photography, writing, and other visual arts type work on my two computers. I use quite a few photography and painting applications (Photoshop, ArtRage, Rebelle, Lightroom, Inspirit, and a few others; I'm also looking at BlackInk), as well as Scrivener and MS Office when I'm writing. I don't know if any of those run well or at all in Linux or in Wine, etc. Also I stopped flirting with learning programming and there wasn't much point maintaining a Linux machine after that. I think Linux is better than Windows all around, and I hate Windows, but it's just because I use certain apps and from what I've heard and seen the Linux apps just aren't as good.
TLDR, creative software that won't run on Linux (to my knowledge, anyway).
I need iRacing and the software for the rest of my sim rig to be fully supported. This means “SimHub” for my wind sim, the “SimRig” app for my motion actuators, “SimCommander” for my wheelbase, and there are a couple others like “The Crew Chief” etc. oh and whatever emulation layer for iRacing; as there’s no Linux version; would need to not get me banned from the anti-cheat software.
I put my money where my mouth was though! I used Manjaro+Gnome for 2 or 3 years on my main machine, dual booting Windows only to sim race. I quit Adobe and Maxon and switched to DarkTable and Blender for photos and 3D modeling. All my 3D printing software and slicers have native Linux versions. I used Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Dropbox (have since switched to NextCloud self-hosted). Docker was a dream and so fucking fast for web development. I still keep a Linux VM around just for Docker web development.
Here’s the thing… on not one but two occasions my machine refused boot to a GUI. I’m speaking as someone who uses server Linux daily for work, Mac OS daily for work, and Windows daily for play. If Linux distros and GPU makers don’t get their shit together IT WILL NEVER be the year of Linux on the desktop. Exactly 0 times has Windows failed to boot to a GUI for me (short of a hdd or GPU hardware failure) and Mac OS has also not booted to a GUI 0 times. As long as seeing a desktop on boot is not a 100% guarantee when running Linux, it’ll remain as something only nerds or enthusiasts do.
I love Linux, but I’d say it’s a safe bet to say I’ll never sim race or run iRacing natively on Linux short of Microsoft and windows disappearing from existence overnight. It just won’t happen.
For web development or 3D modeling and hacking around? Gimme Linux or Mac OS! WSL is like 99% there but no where as performant as the aforementioned. Also with WSL simple fucking things like networking become a proxy-firewall-ssh-tunnel nightmare.
I have been using linux, mostly Pop OS, for the last several years. Haven't really touched Windows since maybe Windows 8 came out. Very happy with linux.
I just bought a new laptop that had Windows 11 installed, and I was travelling, so I didn't do the usual format and install linux right away. I thought I'll maybe keep windows installed and then try to dual boot so if I need Windows for anything specific, I will still have it installed. And I thought I'll just wait a few weeks until I get home to do that.
But with the Windows Subsytem for Linux thing they have now, I have an Ubuntu install running inside Windows and it works really well. Connects directly with VSCode, Ubuntu has access to Windows filesystem, Ubuntu comes up as my default when I open terminal, Oh-My-Zsh installed perfectly.
I'm sure at some point I'll find something really annoying with Windows and just scrap it, but for now it's easier to just keep running Windows and access Ubuntu through it.
mostly because I had to stick on Windows for video games. and for now, the amount of effort I'm already putting into making Windows functional when it's supposed to work out of the box, makes me scared of going back to Linux. Mostly a worry about changing so many habits and diving back into the unknown
It's more of a "why do I keep Windows on my main machine and only use Linux for my servers?"
The answer is two-fold
a) most of my games and a (dwindling) amount of productivity software are windows based. I know things are improving... But the fact remains that I am still literally invested in some software that is only supported on Windows (that pile is shrinking).
b) there are a few everyday tasks that are still just too frustrating to be practical for non-technical people. For example, why in the fuck do I need to deal with user and mod permissions for files on an external harddrive? I get why for system files, but for media files on an external drive? It's a level of pedantry I'm just not ready to deal with.
Ltt made a video on this, they switched to Linux for some time and documented their experience as windows users
My pattern with linux is that I tinker with it until I eventually break it in a way I don't have the knowledge or skill to repair, and then I balk at the thought of starting from scratch again, so I just put windows back on the machine...
Hate to say it but, laziness.. bought a new gaming laptop with windows 11. My old laptop was running Mint for a couple of years and I really loved it. Software wise everything I needed just worked.
Last time I tried Linux was about 10 years ago. I installed multiple different combinations until I found one I liked (I forget which though). I was attending university at the time (chemistry) and had it dual booting so I could switch back to Windows as needed. I really tried, but everything on the Linux side was just so buggy or complicated.
I was using Open Office or something similar, mainly for spreadsheets, and I just kept needing to switch back to Windows so I could spend my time getting the actual work done, rather than trying to figure out how to make the computer work. It was so long ago that I don't remember the details, but I vaguely remember it repeatedly freezing up on me for relatively simple spreadsheet tasks.. the kind of stuff they teach in beginners or maaaaybe intermediate Excel tutorials with 10-50 rows of data.
Eventually, I gave up on trying to do any of my work in Linux and figured I'd come back to it when I had some free time. When I finally had some free time, I decided to wipe the current Linux install and try something else. I had gone through the installation process so many times before that I thought I remembered the steps. Well, I didn't, and I managed to delete something super critical and couldn't even boot to Windows anymore. After much trial and error, some kind internet stranger offered to help walk me through it.. the only problem was that they were only familiar with Arch (?), so that was the distro we were going to use to get me back up and running. We got it fixed so that my computer dual boots, but I have to supervise the boot process every time since the default boot is Arch, and I'm just not ready to deal with that.
I've casually looked a few times to see if I can figure out how to change the boot order, but I'm too scared I'll end up worse off, so I've just left well enough alone since then.
I have an Android phone and rooting it is always the first thing I do, so it hasn't scared me off tinkering altogether, but I hardly touch a PC outside of work anymore, so there's just no motivation to try again.
Programmer and big Linux fan here. I use Linux for multiple servers/vm's. For a while I also had Linux on my desktop and using a Windows VM with PCI-passtrough for gaming. It works. However I came to the conclusion I was only using the PC for gaming (on the VM), and doing all my programming on my MacBook. So basically the Linux part on my desktop was just useless. Although I want to, I don't have any use cases for Linux on the desktop.
Edit: I do have a steamdeck. Love the thing!
Gamepass and Minecraft Bedrock mostly. Gamepass is something that I use a lot that will never work with Linux, and my friend group is split between console and PC for Minecraft so Bedrock edition works best for us. I still use SteamOS on my Steam Deck and enjoy it, but switching operating systems on my main computer just to play games is a bit excessive
I think o went back because I wanted to play LoL? And I kind of became complacent?
Works great with no issues on my Linux machine and has for years!
Basically photoshop and games. I was dual booting and when I switched computer it wasn't worth reinstalling because I spent most of my time in windows. This was a long time ago.
Now that windows is moving into subscription basis I keep thinking I should try getting into linux again but I don't have the time to fiddle around making stuff work.
You've got a good point regarding Photoshop. Gimp exists on Linux, but I find it immensely powerful but hard to wield.
Gaming with the Steam Desk has gotten better for Linux with the introduction of Proton and I imagine this'll only improve.
You can see if your favorite game is supported with Proton here.
I use autodesk products and other electrical engineering industrial products that require using windows. I'm mostly happy with being able to live in the mingw environment provided by git bash. Gives me most of what I need for a POSIX environment.
To switch to Linux full time I'd need to change jobs, lol.
I never tried Linux, but I consider it every few years. However if I weigh that
there are simply too many factors that would make Linux to be more hassle, have less performance or downright impossible to serve as a substitute for Windows, while for me personally not really offering any practical benefits over Windows.
If you need adobe, fair enough.
With Steam's Proton, you can play games made for Windows. The only games which certainly won't work are ones which require anti-cheat.
My main system is Windows, I'm a Windows developer. My older machines are Linux - because Windows runs like a dog on them and no longer supports them.
A few apps like Photoshop and Fusion360 keep my running Windows. The graphics card situation is also a giant pain in the ass, my laptop has a Radeon and a RTX 3080 and I can't get any kind of prime offloading to work. I'd really like to use the radeon unless i'm running something intensive that needs 3d acceleration, but i think I'd likely have to reboot to switch between them.
That leaves me running the RTX chip the whole time so the laptop draws about 40W at idle, when running windows it's more like 10W because the nvidia chip is completely off.
games just don't run as smooth and I can't use gsync with how xorg works, also everything on windows just seems to work unlike Linux. although I've been running a Linux server for almost a year for myself and I'm now quite comfortable with the terminal
Building WiFi kernel drivers myself where on Windows its a double click, finding a desktop environment that lets you add a 2nd taskbar in the GUI without losing certain important items like the start menu, system clock, or system tray (I always lost something), finding replacements for certain niche Windows programs is frustrating (VoiceMeeter -> PipeWire), or completely absent, as my Oculus Rift and the Adobe Suite (which I need for my job) was unusable, and my Razer, Logitech, TourBox, Xence, and Elsra devices aren't programmable, missing or bad support for basic features like multiple monitors and HDR, having to manually set AppImages to run as an application and not open like a file (I know it's a file), but in the end, needing 2 GPU's to virtualize a Windows machine officially ended my Linux dreams for the near future.
My OS kept stalling/crashing on boot-up a few months into using it and I could not figure out why or how to fix it. Couldn't log in or input any commands into the terminal to try out anything so I just gave up.
Luckily my important data was backed up and I had Windows on another drive. I thought the drive might have failed, but it hasn't had any issues since on Windows. I'd love to return to Linux in the future but I think that experience wil haunt me for a while.
Linux desktops are horrible. I like linux servers a lot, I have several running in my homelab.
There is no AMD Adrenaline software so I can't properly use my AMD card
That's really surprising to me. I've been buying AMD only for many years now specifically because they have better Linux compatibility than Nvidia.
I think they are talking about the features of the software. On Windows, both AMD & NVIDIA has a program suite that can do a lot of things that are much more convenient than installing multiple programs and trying to configure them all.
Having an RX 6800, I'm really satisfied with it it when I boot Linux. So far it didn't let me down.
What were you trying to do, out of curiosity?
Games (Blizzard and Riot) I have a linux laptop that I occasionally use. It is far better than it was years before, yet there are still occasions when it just does not work, or it refuses to update.
League works on Linux with zero issues for me. I haven't played all blizzard games on there but OW and Diablo work
I'm actively trying to switch to Linux, so it's not from a lack of effort.
The main two reasons are Photoshop and scanning. I'm a photographer, and I'm scanning and restoring old photos of the family. There's no decent alternative to Photoshop, especially now that it has the neural filters, so editing and colouring photos is in a different league.
As far as scanning goes, I was getting better results in Windows 20 years ago. I've got an Epson scanner, and the software can automatically crop, as well as restore the colour balance of a photo. Using Linux, I was lucky to get more than a dodgy .bmp through an interface that would have looked clunky in the 90s. I could open it in GIMP, but then couldn't save as a jpeg without either exporting the file or installing addons.
On top of problems like these, there are issues that crop up because of an apparent need to be different to Windows.
My Xubuntu server won't let me resize windows unless I grab the top left corner. Any other edge of the window is apparently half a pixel thick, and too small for my mouse to register.
Smooth scrolling by clicking the mouse wheel has been replaced with the paste command, as if pasting into a browser window is something that people do dozens of times a day.
Mint's settings window constantly resizes itself, no matter what I set it to. I can resize it, open a setting then click back, and it's back to the default size again!
The universal paste keyboard shortcut, ctrl & v only works in some programs. Others need shift, ctrl, and v!
Silly little things like this spoil my workflow and take me out of what I'm doing. They're the minor annoyances that frustrate people and encourage them to switch back to Windows. Yes, they can probably be changed, but why were they changed in the first place? I could paste with ctrl v in DOS 6.22 and could trust a window not to resize itself in Windows 3.1, long before any modern distro was dreamed up, so why are the basics different?
The first time I tried to switch to Linux, it was a bad choice of Distro (Puppy, I think Lucid Puppy, where I learned that I would rather use Windows 3.1's UI than stock XFCE) me incorrectly believing I could just run it from USB all the time so my family could just use Windows (I couldn't have been older than 14 and the PC was old at the time, we got it in 2005 and it came with XP and struggled with Windows 7, and the storage was low,) and just not making an earnest effort to learn Linux. This was all user error. I tried Mint also, which straight-up didn't work on my hardware at the time.
The second time I tried to switch, Mint again, about a year or two and a new PC after the first. I think Cinnamon is one of the best UIs ever made, but I also think Windows 10's is pretty good (to be clear I despised Windows 7's UI,) and I ran into compatibility issues and ultimately found that, with no strong benefit to web browsing or gaming (this was well before Proton) which were the main things I used my PC for, and still needing a lot of Windows software, just being mostly Windows worked.
Last time I tried to use Linux earlier this year, I didn't intend to switch fully, but I wanted to switch my music making hobby, that I do with Linux Multimedia Studio, to Linux because some features of LMMS don't work on the Windows version (I wanted to link multiple channels to a single VST plugin, which is necessary for the VST plugin "Genny" to produce a file that works on a real Sega Genesis.) This feature does work on the Linux version of LMMS, but Genny itself does not (and I did install WINE, some other VSTs did work.)
I'd love to say I'll switch when Windows 10 EOL hits, Windows 11 has a fucking awful UI and starts to introduce some of the reasons I've never seriously considered Mac or iOS (I feel like Windows used to at least respect that my PC is MY PC when Win11 doesn't,) but I can't because that last one still sticks in my mind. I keep a Mint partition on my PCs, but it's pretty much solely for doing things that might get me malware on Windows, or helping fix Windows if I break it.
I could never get my bluetooth microphone to work under Linux, and I was having to input my password many times every day just to accomplish simple tasks. Couldn't even make the password into a PIN, that wasn't allowed for some reason.
Skill issue.
Kidding lol. It sounds like you just picked a bad distro. I run EndeavourOS and I can make 1 character pins if I want.
PUBG, waited for years and then caved.
Was using arch +5 years and eventually I just wanted to play some PUBG. win10 has been bearable as it doesn't change much anymore. Wallpaperengine is nice plus. Yes there are ways to achieve the same on Linux, but haven't seen anything as good with built-in library for Linux.
Back on win10 for something like 6 months, during which I switched to NVIDIA. NVIDIA + Wayland is not really something I wan't to tackle anytime soon.
Being able to focus on gaming, fixing other parts of my home lab and automating updating other system has been breath of fresh air. Gaming and upkeep of the system was always some amount of work, when comparing to windows. I have felt the windows hasn't gotten in my way almost at all, ( apart from getting ansible automation working. Windows being the target of palybooks. But that was just my inexperience with windows and such stuff)
For now if my win10 installation stays solid, I don't see myself going back anytime soon on my gaming machines. Even on my lan pc getting full control of fans has been a hassle on Linux, yes there probably is kernel module on aur for the chipset or the support will be in future kernel but the simplicity of https://github.com/Rem0o/FanControl.Releases is just golden, I don't know will I bother when everything works without hassle on windows. This is all on ASRock B650E PG-ITX WiFi.
After troubleshooting/automating Linux systems for 8 hours a day I guess I just want to be able to play games and relax after work. For now the os of choice for that is windows for me.
Couldn't agree more. It's the niche, or hardware-specific, or "what do I need to do this?" apps. Does this game work on Linux? No idea, I know it works on Windows though.
Fan Control is simply one of the best apps in the last couple years. I can't live without EqualizerAPO. I recall installing Logitech G-Hub, turning off the RGB on my mouse, then uninstalling it. MSI products require and app, also.
It's just easier on Windows, the apps exist and work reasonably well.
LSB dependent printer driver (Epson M100)- (Debian has a love hate reatioship with LSB - Compat package), Display Link - official drivers available only for ubuntu LTS, and Hikvision CCTV cameras IVMS is not officially supported by linux. Basically corporates making bad decisions.
I left windows because of the unauthorized data stealing and forced updates. linux has been a god sent and haven't look back.
My main issue was trying to get two monitors to work. I followed some guides on how to update the drivers and each time it broke to the point that it would only be a black screen. Not even a terminal to help troubleshoot.
I have a 3080 12GB and can't use it on Linux. After about a week of trying I gave up.
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He's not wrong. I do regret going Nvidia.
Peripheral compatibility was my biggest issue. Most vendors just don’t make Linux versions. One that I couldn’t work around was my Razer Huntsman v2 Analog. While I was told about the open source Razer app alternatives, they were far from feature complete. My keyboard ended up defaulting to a profile where WASD emulated a controller instead, and the software didn’t have a way of changing it outside of windows.
Indie software is also a big miss. I play FF14. I use a Streamdeck with a custom plugin for hot keys. That is windows only. I use Teamcraft. Also windows only.
The problem is really one that I’m feeding into by going back to windows. There’s just not enough people on Linux to rationalize app development on smaller projects for it. I feel bad going to a one man Dev team and being like “Hey, you should stop everything and do this for just me, because no one else will use the Linux version”.
Could I work around some of these issues? Probably. Could I advocate for Linux software and put together my own alternatives? Probably. But by the time I’m done with work and just want to play a game…I don’t want to spend hours reinventing the wheel.
Ultimately windows is there, and I can make it do what I need it to do. While I’d love to use Linux, it’s just not a viable option for me.
My main device is Windows, but for peripherals for at least keyboards I have moved towards actively choosing those with qmk support since it got annoying needing dedicated software for corsair or Logitech or razor and so on.
Arch Linux based distros (arco, Manjaro, endeavor) have my favorite package manager in the world (not pacman) but yay. I've tried every package manager and for me nothing comes close to yay. But the sad part is arch updates have completely destroyed every arch based distro I've ever had. The last one (endeavor os) literally made me hate Linux for awhile, because I put a great deal of work and love into setting up a desktop environment, configuring the hell out of my terminal and my dev environment and one update just destroyed my whole desktop. It takes me more than 2 days to completely get my Linux desktop configured to where I like it, and endeavoros just breaking my desktop environment really demoralized me from trying to set up another Linux box again for a long time, so I just went back to my super stable MacBook that wasn't as fun or ergonomic but at the end of the day it's never given me serious issues. Of course I'm back to using Linux, this time with stable old Ubuntu.
Laser cutter control software is windows only, just haven't had the time/energy to rip out the entire control system and rework it to be open source.
I can't use Fusion 360 on Linux, so I dual boot windows. But that's the only time I ever go back. I don't even run a bootloader with options and you'd never know Windows is on my machine unless you interrupted the boot process and checked boot drives. Getting into Windows is a manual process on my system.
I’ve tried and used Linux many times. Sometimes over the course of a whole year, but I always end up going back to Windows because of my games and Adobe.
I use Linux full time now, with the exception of the Adobe suite, which runs in a VM right now and will be changed to a dual boot once I installed a second hard drive. I use GIMP and Inkscape where I can, but i need the big evil Corp software for bigger projects where the Foss software falls short.
If the software runs on Linux natively someday or a Foss alternative is on par, I will gladly make the full switch.
HDR support didn't work when I tried it for madvr or games. Not sure if that area has changed.
No, it's being worked on but it's not there yet.
I had to recompile nvidia-bl every time the Linux kernel updated or my backlight control keys wouldn't work. Put up with it for four years then installed Windows 10 when it came out.
Just one thing: Lightroom.
Honestly Darktable works pretty damn well after you adjust to the work flow differences. I would still prefer Lightroom but after switching jobs and no longer using a company subscription for Adobe, Darktable is perfectly fine for my hobby photography.
I tried to switch a couple of times. The version I tried was not estable enough, too much crashes for my taste. Lightroom now has selecting automagically, now that I tried it I can no longer live without it.
It's always something that doesn't work and I can't get working. Right now (I dual boot) it's my 4G modern in my laptop that I don't seem to understand how to activate the GPS receiver in. Even if I got it to work I wouldn't know since I have no idea on how GPS is supposed to work on Ubuntu...
My gf and I only plays valorant. I really wanted to get into linux environment but I might give it another chance tho. I just need a good distro.
They're all good distros
Bront
I understood that reference.
Because in my experience Linux hasn’t been consistently reliable in the long term.
My computer is a tool. I need it to just work, not cause me work. I’ve tried many distros and sooner or later something random stopped working, causing me to stop what I was doing and troubleshoot the problem.
Like the time I installed Mint on my desktop and my GPU fan ran full throttle all the time. Or that time when OpenVPN stopped working from one boot up to the next. Or those times when a fresh install hung up and failed fully boot.
Contrast that with the thousands? tens of thousands? of days when Windows just started without incident, got out of my way and let me work or game or whatever.
Is Windows bloated and slow? Yes. Is it constantly spying on me? Yes. Is it annoying in dozens of little ways that Linux isn’t? Yes. But it is consistently reliable and Linux isn’t.
I’m not a Windows fan boy, and I’d love to be able to use a linux desktop on the reg but every time I forget my previous disappointment long enough to try again, I am once again disappointed.
One thing has been working well for me. I have a Raspberry Pi with Raspian running Pi Hole, MiniDLNA and a couple of other things. It’s been as solid and reliable as I could ask.
I haven't run Linux myself, but I know people who have.
The Linux experience, from the outside, seemed to consist of solving problems that wouldn't exist if you just used the OS your computer came with, and being so very proud of your geek prowess, without having the self awareness to realise you're the one who broke it in the first place.
The cure seems to be growing up, having adult responsibilities, and not having the time or inclination to spend an evening un-fucking your computer.
Reading a lot of these comments I think people are under the wrong impression of the current state of Linux. I think you'll have a better experience with a bleeding edge distro like Arch or Fedora.
A lot of your productivity apps are on Linux, a higher percentage of your games work than you think, and you could see a performance boost over windows. Plus there are multiple app alternatives that are even better.
I ditched Windows three years ago. 99% of my 450 Steam library works (yes AAA games) thanks to Valve with Proton. What doesn't? Call of Duty, because of invasive kernel level anti-cheat and I'm good with that.
Steam, Zoom, Slack, Teams, Spotify, Plex, Jellyfin, Discord are all on Linux.
Edit: Also there is no "look/UI" to Linux. It's your DE, and you're free to choose one, or a Window Manager. Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, i3, Awesome, Openbox, XMonad, Sway, Hyprland.
My work uses Azure Virtual Desktop and there is no Linux client for it, only the web client which seems vastly inferior. Even running in a browser on Windows the colours are terrible.
My primary desktop is Windows 11, but literally no other computer I personally own runs Windows. Part of it is games, part of it is proprietary software (music production, dj, etc). I could probably game on Linux full time, but until the commercial software situation is improved I will always have an additional Windows or Mac computer.
WSL2 and work. Firstly at work i'm forced to use Windows since all the dev toolchains and deployement Tools are unfortunately Windows only... And secondly since I have be able to work from home (at night or afterwards) I need Windows on my Box as well. Thirdly, other than that my private coding projects all died since I just wanna switch off once I'm done and game a little... So there Windows also wins out. And lastly since all my Servers run Linux if i need to write a Script and test it WSL did the Job so far.
Very unfortunate since i enjoy using Linux (love i3) but i cant be bothered at the moment :( Maybe the next dev job allows for a Linux Environment :)
So I didn't quite try it to switch, rather installed linux to dualboot specifically because one game had lag issues on windows, and ultimately there are just 2 things keeping me from making linux the main and windows the backup.
One is game compatibility, while linux has come a long way it's simply more convenient to be on windows which can effectively run everything (even if there are a few more performance issues at times).
The other is that I couldn't find a DE of which I liked the look that could handle high refresh rate monitors properly. LXDE works for my purpose and I think it looks ok, but by design it just doesn't feel as nice to use as windows.
Hated gnomes UX, liked KDE but it couldn't handle my monitor. Wouldn't wanna bother with trying many more options unless I actually know it will work with my hardware.
Got a long one. I've gone back and forth a few times (I've landed on a dual-boot Windows 10 and Arch setup, maining Arch) (btw) and my biggest takeaway is this:
Mainstream Linux distros, like Mint, do have admittedly very polished basic experiences. The problem is, though, is that it breaks down as soon as you introduce it to unique use-cases or hardware features.
Linux, specifically stable distros like Mint, are already ready for mainstream use for people who use it for basic stuff like email, web browsing, desktop social media like Facebook, and so on. It's also very usable for gaming, as we saw with Steam Deck, but still has issues primarily with adoption.
But if you have for example, a 2-in-1 laptop or a VR setup, things break down very quick. I had to configure my 2-in-1 manually and not everything works still, and VR is a joke if you don't have a Vive or Index, and even that's iffy. SteamVR is still extremely buggy and missing features.
Linux is, by design, configurable and open. This is both its greatest strength and weakness, because it allows users to set up their systems how they want, but only if they know how to. A truly "user-friendly" distro is simply not possible if you retain the configurability, which Valve knows, and is why SteamOS is locked down the way it is. This model is growing in popularity but it's not quite here yet.
At the end of the day, I still use it despite these shortcomings because I feel it's important. I should be able to look at the code and know what my machine is doing, and trust that it respects my rights and freedoms. This is why Linux, and maybe BSD, have to win. But for now, I still have a drive with Windows 10 because it's just simply not a full experience yet, and that's okay. For now
Gaming
I didn't go back to Windows, at least not directly.
I was enjoying Linux on my old lap, but then I managed to get a MacBook Pro 2014 in that year and ditched Linux for macOS they are very alike although macOS is way more closed...
Then I discovered you can't go full macOS either, that's why I BootCamp as well with W10 installed, I barely touch it but it's still there for simple things like running .bat scripts, having a no lame NTFS support, and some light Steam gaming and local government software gore.
It's been a couple years since I tried maining Linux (Ubuntu). The state of Linux gaming was definitely less than today. Back then, Apex Legends that I played with friends didn't support Linux yet.
Probably the main reasons for me personally is that I was dual booting from a secondary SSD, so Windows was just always there to switch to if I ran into Linux hiccups I didn't want to deal with. Also I remember the secondary SSD was only 256gb so I ran into some problems with that.
As for what's preventing me from switching today
Fucking up my UEFI on my laptop, making it difficult to boot into Linux.
Undoing that.
Bootloaders don't interact with the UEFI, the UEFI interacts with the bootloader.
Sounds like you just used a bad one. systemd-boot is superb, it autodetects all kernals and shows an option to access the UEFI.
Windows however, assumes it owns your boot partition, so likes to delete Linux bootloaders if installed last.
My laptop's trackpad doesn't work in linux and I keep losing my mouse.
Screen size problems. My PC is setup as gaming/HTPC for the living room.
Constantly having to fight with it reverting from the 1080 I set, to native 4k. Pretty jarring when you’re popping out of a game and expecting a different res.
Other than that my daughter plays Minecraft with her friends and needed windows for that because I’m not purchasing the game a third time.
The Java edition should run on Linux without requiring another license. I think you're boned if it's bedrock though.
I would love to use Linux on my laptop but the touchpad isn't recognised and only has windows drivers :( i have tried so much stuff but it didnt work out. My desktop is mostly for gaming so windows makes more sense.
What laptop is it?
it's an HP based on ryzen. the ID is "HP 15s-eq1706nz" I tried looking for info on internet and asking in a few forums but the model does not seem popular and HP wont provide linux drivers. I tried a lot of stuff like editing configs and such but nothing worked. The interesting thing is that when booting from a live USB, the touchpad works perfectly but after installing it isn't even recognised.
These are my list of changes. I still don't use it full-time but I use it outside working hours. I use Ubuntu 23.04 and I dual boot with windows 11:
Install gnome extensions and “dash to panel”
Install Chrome from google site (.deb package)
Same for Steam
Install mangohud sudo apt install mangohud Source: https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud#debian-ubuntu
Disable Intel Bluetooth device so the realtek one is the only one. (Now there is a new option to also disable Intel Wifi adapter in the same word~ document).
Change default display for “Lockscreen”
Change the local time ( timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock enabled RTC in local time.
For Ryujinx I added this “vm.max_map_count=524288” to /etc/sysctl.conf because it was saying it fixes a crash with TOTK
Disk Performance (System hanging with encryption on the SSD): Disabled the ‘no-read-workqueue" and "no-write-workqueue" sudo gedit /etc/crypttab Added "discard" "no-read-workqueue" and "no-write-workqueue" at the end of the string.Looks like this: dm_crypt-0 UUID=4170cddc-59a8-4f4e-afdb-125f70004fef none luks,discard,no-read-workqueue,no-write-workqueue sudo update-initramfs -u -k all sudo reboot
Enable OC en AMD card (Source: https://linuxgamingcentral.com/posts/increase-power-on-amd-gpus/) sudo gedit /etc/default/grub Somewhere in that file should be a GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= line, followed by a pair of quotation marks. In my case it looks like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" We add amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff at the end. Example: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff" Sudo update-grub
Install codec bluetooth AAC for Pixel Buds (codec is lighter than SBC-XQ)
Be sure that bluetooth dongle MPOW is on USB2 and no USB3 which causes interferences (at least in Linux I can suffer it, but not in Windows).
Do the tutorial to make BT devices to work with “Dual Boot” between Ubuntu and W11 without needing to re-pair them everytime (for dualsense and pixelbuds).
Enable AMD ROCM (used to run apps like SDXL).
Video games for one. Hated the UI (only thing I've ever hated worse was the BS Windows pulled with 8, which I skipped). The GUI experience just felt... Like a very distant after thought. Only reason I use Linux at all is on servers (homelab) because... Well the cost is spot on and once I get it working I don't have to deal with it anymore.
Which distros have you tried? I was given Ubuntu and thought I hated Linux. It turns out that I just hated the UI, and some other distros were actually ok.
Well, Ubuntu was one. Before that it was Fedora many years ago.
Tried out a few times in the 90s and early 2000s and the biggest barrier was lack of support for video cards and other hardware that I needed for gaming. It was also more complex to set up at that time, and windows was both easier to work with and resolving issues was easier to figure out.
In all cases I was dual booting and after a while just stopped trying with Linux because the other option was easier, not because I disliked Linux.
Haven't tried recently because windows 10 and 11 have been rock stable for me and Windows Defender plus Firefox and ublock origin have made it safe to use windows. While I thought about giving it a go again recently, I just don't have a reason to switch when things are going to well and I don't have time anymore to just fiddle with it due to other priorities.
I do keep an eye out though in case I do a media server or something as that would be a good use case for another go.
Gaming and HFR support.
I bought Skyrim for PC so that I could give mods a try. Wine was garbage at the time, and I wanted to use my computer to game. So, Windows it was.
Thanks to proton, I was able to switch to arch on my desktop for the last few years before my power supply died. At least I'm pretty sure that's what's wrong with it. I've been staving off insanity for a few months now with my steam deck. I got a dock for it a couple weeks ago, so I'm technically running an arch desktop again even if it is KDE.
Although I do use Linux (so should not respond here, I know), the reasons are probably similar to why Android vs iOS. They are different philosophies. No-one really is wrong, it is about personal fit.
I like to use parsec to play games with my friends. When I found out Linux could not host parsec, that was a bummer for me. If parsec had compatibility to host in Linux I'd switch back immediately.