Me neither, if anything it’s the other way around.
“Anymore”? I haven’t ever owned a Windows machine, and I haven’t used a Windows machine since 2015. I do have to fix a random issue on my wife’s work laptop about once a month.
I get that there are some things some people can’t do without and which keeps them in Windows: games, and requirements of their business (Word, Excel, PPT), but nothing about Linux has gotten significantly better in recent years. Incrementally, over there past decade, sure, but no big, recent change that might justify the title.
Except in the same way I’ve never needed Windows: in a very specific, individual way.
Coming from someone who just migrated myself and my family within the last year. Flatpaks were a big deal. I get people have their criticisms of it but wow, installing and updating apps is so much easier now compared to when I tried linux last and flatpak is probably the main reason why we are still on Linux today.
Why is this thread getting flooded with people saying how they can’t use Linux? Isn’t that a little odd coming from a Linux community?
Because on lemmy a post getting 100 up votes is enough to end up somewhere high on all, so your seeing people from outside of the Linux community in here.
That’s why I’m here, front page.
I would say “people don’t see the community a post is in before commenting?” But of course they don’t. :'(
Hiya, intending to switch from Windows to Linux (it looks like I’ll finally be pulling the proverbial trigger this holiday season!) but I got here via Local sorted by Active on programming.dev. I am not subbed to Linux.
In other words, people outside the target audience are getting exposed to this post.
Because people are mad any time someone suggests they could change anything about themselves. It’s pretty sad.
But this is a Linux community
Lemmy is still a small place with a lot of Linux users, so this likely shows up in several people’s /all
I understand. I agree with you. Just commenting on how personally people take things and how stubborn they are
Okay, look, I don’t want to be a hater, I promise. I have a setup with a Linux dual boot in my computer right now. But man, the crazy echo chamber around this issue is not just delusional, it’s counterproductive. Being in denial about the shortcomings isn’t particularly helpful in expanding reach, if that’s what you all say you want.
So, in the spirit of balance, my mostly unbiased take on the listicle:
1 - Web tools get the job done: This is true when it’s true. I work with Google’s office suite, so yeah, many tools are indistinguishable. But not all tools are web tools. A big fallacy in this article is that just because a subset of items have embraced a solution doesn’t mean that the solution is universal. If you need to work with Adobe software you’re still SOL. MS Office still lacks some features on the web app. Some of the tools I use don’t work, so I do still need to run those in a native Windows app. Since I’m not going to switch OSs every time I need to push a particular button, I’m going to default to Windows for work.
2 - Plenty of distros to suit your preference: This one is an active downside, and it pisses me off when it gets parroted. When I last decided to dual boot Linux I had to try five different distros to find one that sort of did everything I needed at once, which was a massive waste of time. I’m talking multiple days. Yes, there are a ton of distros. I only need to use one, though. But I need that one to work all the time. If one of the distros can get my HDR monitor to work but not my 5.1 audio and another can get my 5.1 audio setup to work, but not my monitors, then both distros are broken and neither is useful to me. This actually happened, incidentally.
3 - Steam has a decent collection of Linux games, plus Steam OS: Yes. Gaming on Linux is possible and works alright, but it’s far from perfect. Features my Nvidia card runs reliably on Windows are hit-and-miss under Linux. Not all games are compatible in the first place, either. And while Heroic does a great job of running my GOG and Epic libraries, which are themselves just as big as my Steam one, it is a much bigger hassle to set up to run under the SteamOS game mode UI. Don’t get me wrong, this has made huge strides but again, I’m not going to change OSs every time I hit a compatibility snag. This is the least fallacious of these points, though.
4 - Proprietary choices on Linux: Yes, there are some. Like the web app thing, the problem isn’t what is there, it’s what’s missing. Also, as a side note, I find it extremely obnoxious when you have to enable these manually as an option in your package manager. As a user I don’t care if a package is open source or not, I just want to install it.
5 - Electron makes app availability easier. Cool. Will take your word for it. Acknowledging the ideological debate behind it goes to the same argument I made in the previous point. And as above, it’s not about what’s there, it’s about what’s missing.
6 - No ads in your OS. I mean… nice? I still get ads for my selected distro on first boot, as well as on web apps and notifications for installed apps. Beyond a few direct links to first party apps in the one page of Win 11’s settings app I don’t find anything in Windows particularly intrusive, either. Which is not to say I don’t dislike some of the overly commercial choices in Windows, they’re just not a dealbreaker… yet.
7 - Docker, Homelab and self-hosting: This is… off topic, honestly. I do self host some things. Even used Docker once or twice… in my NAS, where the self-hosting happens. You don’t need to switch your home desktop to Linux for that, and nobody is questioning that Linux is the OS of choice for a whole host of device ranges, from servers to the Raspberry Pi. Linux is great as a customizable underlying framework to build fast support for a niche device with a range of specific applications. We should be honest about how that breaks down if you try to use it as a widely accessible home computer alternative where the priorities are wide compatibility and ease of use.
Well, that became a huge thing, but… yeah, I guess I was annoyed enough by the delusion to rant. Look, I’d love to step away from Windows, and it’s a thing you can do if you’re tech savvy and willing to pretzel around the limitations in your hardware choices and your willingness to tinker… but it’s not a serious mainstream alternative by a wide margin. I wish it was. Self-congratulatory praise within the tiny bubble of pre-existing fans (and why are there fans of operating systems in the first place?) is not going to help improve or widen its reach.
Regarding Office, fear not! Microsoft is working hard to remove functionality from the Windows and Mac desktop apps, so soon we’ll have feature parity! See: “New Outlook”.
They’ve been pushing this shit for years already, nobody wants it, and they’re forcing it next year despite still not fixing shared calendars (among other things). New Outlook is basically just the web app in a wrapper.
I must be nobody, because I like the new Mac outlook. Granted it’s because I like the option to pin emails in top and I don’t recall any missing feature. Why the hate?
Granted I am used to the web version from the time I used Linux at work. The windows version seemed much worse in comparison
I mean, cool. Works for me. As soon as there is feature parity between their web app and their native app I no longer have a problem working with Office out of Windows. Not that I want to use Office in the first place, it’s just not my choice.
But right now I need to push a button that doesn’t exist on Linux, so I have to do it on Windows and that determines what I boot, which is the same situation from anybody who hates Adobe but has to use their software suite as well.
I mean, cool. Works for me. As soon as there is feature parity between their web app and their native app I no longer have a problem working with Office out of Windows. Not that I want to use Office in the first place, it’s just not my choice.
But right now I need to push a button that doesn’t exist on Linux, so I have to do it on Windows and that determines what I boot, which is the same situation from anybody who hates Adobe but has to use their software suite as well.
It works for me and has done so for almost 10 years.
Sure it won’t work for everyone but to say it isn’t viable isn’t true either. It depends on the person.
It’s not viable for the mainstream. “It depends on the person” suggests it’s luck of the draw, but the Linux desktop penetration is something like 1-4%, at best, and that’s inlcuding SteamOS and PiOS in the mix.
That’s not, “depends on the person”, that’s “doesn’t work for the vast majority of people”. There is a reason for that.
Yeah I’m not going to lie that’s kind of a weird take.
By that logic captain crunch cereal isn’t ready for mainstream because it doesn’t have enough market share.
We may not be reading the word “mainstream” the same way here, because when you have a small oligopoly with one player at 75%, one at 15% and one at 4%… well, yeah, one of those is mainstream and one of those is not. That’s kind of how being mainstream works. Hell, that’s borderline monopolistic.
That’s not the same as a commodity where dozens or hundreds of options are available and compete on relatively equal footing. The comparison isn’t Captain Crunch versus Corn Flakes, it’s Coca-Cola versus Green Cola. I can find Green Cola in my supermarket… but it sure as hell isn’t the mainstream choice.
That’s different to “being ready for the mainstream”, though. Linux is not mainstream because it has big blockers that prevent it. The lack of readiness is a cause of the lack of mainstream appeal, not the other way around. For the same reason that Green Cola’s stevia-forward absolutely wild aftertaste is a cause of its lack of mainstream appeal.
I do realize not everybody will get this comparison, but if you know you know.
It’s not viable for the mainstream. “It depends on the person” suggests it’s luck of the draw, but the Linux desktop penetration is something like 1-4%, at best, and that’s inlcuding SteamOS and PiOS in the mix.
That’s not, “depends on the person”, that’s “doesn’t work for the vast majority of people”. There is a reason for that.
That is not true though. The vast majority of people are people that don’t do much on their systems at all. Maybe look at Facebook or a few sites, write the occasional document or email and maybe play a few simple games. The type of people that have never heard of Linux or even know what an OS is let alone able to switch to another one. Those types of people will be perfectly happy on Linux if it came pre installed.
The people switching ATM and having issues are the highly technical people that have far more complex requirements and for those it does depend on the person and what they need to do.
The low percentage of users is not a sign of of it not being ready, just the sheer marketing and effort Microsoft has put into making windows the default option.
Again, same as the response above: that use case is covered in phones and tablets. Nobody who is just browsing the web is changing their entire OS. Especially if their main device is currently running Android or iPadOS/iOS. I am sure my parents could use Linux the same way they use their current device, but their current device is an Android tablet they know how to use and works just like their phone. I’m not switching them over for nerd bragging rights.
I mean, sure, they mostly would use a Linux device as a ChromeOS device (ChromeOS also at residual usage levels, incidentally), but it’s disingenuous to pretend articles like the one linked here are targeting those users, and it’s definitely not the focus for Linux desktop usage and development, either.
You just proved [email protected] point. Android OS is a Linux kernel variant. Since it comes pre-installed, most users have no issue with it.
No no but see the narrative is that they are a completely neutral Linux user who just knows the truth that no one besides them would ever like Linux because reasons!
To suggest otherwise is straying from that narrative and that is not allowed. Bad XBeam!!
Man, I would love for desktop Linux to get to the level of Android when it comes to dedicated support. Are you kidding me? Hell, I was telling raging fanboy down there that I actually find desktop Android is a more reliable experience for light usage at this point. At least you have some expectation of universal app support across the ecosystem and the hardware comes pre-configured out of the box.
The problem is that a desktop OS is a much, much harder problem. You’re not shipping a custom image dedicated to the specific piece of hardware and just ensuring all software runs in it, you have to provide a modular install that will not just adjust to whatever weird combo of hardware the user has at the time, but also support radical changes in that hardware going forward. It’s kinda nuts that computers ended up working that way.
But they do. And Windows handles it by way of being the default use case for all that hardware, so it gets all the third party support. And Apple doesn’t handle it because they ship their OS like phones ship their OSs, so they don’t have to.
But I’m telling you right now, the day the desktop Linux experience matches Android I will default to it, no questions asked, just like I did on my phone and on my tablet.
Man, I would love for desktop Linux to get to the level of Android when it comes to dedicated support. Are you kidding me? Hell, I was telling raging fanboy down there that I actually find desktop Android is a more reliable experience for light usage at this point. At least you have some expectation of universal app support across the ecosystem and the hardware comes pre-configured out of the box.
The problem is that a desktop OS is a much, much harder challenge. You’re not shipping a custom image dedicated to the specific piece of hardware and just ensuring all software runs in it, you have to provide a modular install that will not just adjust to whatever weird combo of hardware the user has at the time, but also support radical changes in that hardware going forward. It’s kinda nuts that computers ended up working that way.
But they do. And Windows handles it by way of being the default use case for all that hardware, so it gets all the third party support. And Apple doesn’t handle it because they ship their OS like phones ship their OSs, so they don’t have to.
But I’m telling you right now, the day the desktop Linux experience matches Android I will default to it, no questions asked, just like I did on my phone and on my tablet.
Well that’s unlikely to happen since Android is locked down spyware.
I’m not really seeing your point. You don’t have to use Linux and you are perfectly free to use whatever you want. The strange part is how you keep insisting that it is somehow behind. Linux for me is the only thing that works for me. Windows simply lacks a lot of the Linux feature set and apps. Plus I can’t stand ads, AI and other user hostile stuff. I straight up could not use Windows as it would slow me down.
Again, same as the response above: that use case is covered in phones and tablets. Nobody who is just browsing the web is changing their entire OS. Especially if their main device is currently running Android or iPadOS/iOS. I am sure my parents could use Linux the same way they use their current device, but their current device is an Android tablet they know how to use and works just like their phone. I’m not switching them over for nerd bragging rights.
I mean, sure, they mostly would use a Linux device as a ChromeOS device (ChromeOS also at residual usage levels, incidentally), but it’s disingenuous to pretend articles like the one linked here are targeting those users, and it’s definitely not the focus for Linux desktop usage and development, either.
There are more people who only browse and use cross platform apps that don’t realise they could switch easily, than there are people for whom a switch would be problematic.
Windows has more supported software, but many people use a small range of common software. Gamers are just one niche. Just like you think Linux users are an echo chamber here, you are not considering the echo chamber of gamers you’re in that dont represent most windows users.
Honestly I’m waiting for a small company to license a Linux desktop to companies with support. It would need to be desktop focused and designed to be indestructible.
And those people have phones and iPads.
My concern isn’t gaming. If you do read what I wrote above, I actually say explicitly that gaming improvement is one of the more solid improvements on Linux recently.
The real problem isn’t PC gamers, who are typically tech savvy (although the issues with anticheat and display hardware compatibility are relevant for a big chunk of many millions of casual gamers). The problem is with people who use their PCs for work using unsupported software in Windows or Mac. Those people have no time for troubleshooting. One key piece of software doesn’t work or isn’t available? That’s a dealbreaker. One area of the setup has a problem that needs tinkering for troubleshooting? That’s a dealbreaker. I am using my computer to make money, I don’t have time for posturing. Either all the stuff I need works or it doesn’t.
Gaming is a problem, but it actually has a lot of people working to support it because at least one major company is betting on that to make money. Software and hardware compatibility doesn’t have the same corporate backing and it makes Linux impractical.
I’ve even known gen z people who would prefer a laptop because they are easier to reliably type on and have bigger screens, yet here you are denying that anyone wouldn’t just settle for the crippled experience of a shitty phone or tablet if they could opt for better. As if there aren’t millions of people who would prefer a desktop OS, because of several reasons, but having grown up with them as just being one of them.
You really have a rage boner for Linux.
That is barely a sentence, let alone a cogent argument.
We do have data on these things, we know how the market breaks down. For the record, the experience for tablet devices is way less crippled than you may remember if you haven’t used one in a while. The tablet my parents use has a very nice detachable keyboard and a dedicated desktop mode. For web applications there isn’t much difference from using a laptop, and they do appreciate the ability to use it as a screen with no keyboard for media consumption.
I have tried to get Linux running on a few PC hybrids and tablets, but most of them are a bit too quirky, and even the ones with some attempt at dedicated support from the community are a bit of a hassle, unfortunately.
That is barely a sentence, let alone a cogent argument.
We do have data on these things, we know how the market breaks down. For the record, the experience for tablet devices is way less crippled than you may remember if you haven’t used one in a while. The tablet my parents use has a very nice detachable keyboard and a dedicated desktop mode. For web applications there isn’t much difference from using a laptop, and they do appreciate the ability to use it as a screen with no keyboard for media consumption.
I have tried to get Linux running on a few PC hybrids and tablets, but most of them are a bit too quirky, and even the ones with some attempt at dedicated support from the community are a bit of a hassle, unfortunately.
Great, my grammar is somehow imperfect so you win. /s
Popularity is far from an indicator of preference. Tablets and phones are cheap and thus popular. Unfortunately I use both often for testing work stuff. It’s never fun. Typing on a touch screen is trash.
And those people have phones and iPads.
My concern isn’t gaming. If you do read what I wrote above, I actually say explicitly that gaming improvement is one of the more solid improvements on Linux recently.
The real problem isn’t PC gamers, who are typically tech savvy (although the issues with anticheat and display hardware compatibility are relevant for a big chunk of many millions of casual gamers). The problem is with people who use their PCs for work using unsupported software in Windows or Mac. Those people have no time for troubleshooting. One key piece of software doesn’t work or isn’t available? That’s a dealbreaker. One area of the setup has a problem that needs tinkering for troubleshooting? That’s a dealbreaker. I am using my computer to make money, I don’t have time for posturing. Either all the stuff I need works or it doesn’t.
Gaming is a problem, but it actually has a lot of people working to support it because at least one major company is betting on that to make money. Software and hardware compatibility doesn’t have the same corporate backing and it makes Linux impractical.
It is not a problem of whether it works for most people or not. It is a cultural problem. People hate change. That’s largely why people hate windows 11 even.
And it even leads people to spend an hour arguing with strangers about how completely unacceptable Linux is for most people when there’s actually a lot of arguments against that and very few in favor of it.
Rage on. No one believes you’re unbiased lol
Spot on. And like ants to sugar you have 20 or so ACKTUALLYs responding to you.
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I literally tagged you a Linux hater months ago because you were raging about Linux. So I don’t believe you’re not a hater.
Also I tried to read what you wrote and the idea that it’s unbiased is laughable to me. Claiming to have a dual boot doesn’t sell me that you’re remotely unbiased.
You can tag people on lemmy? Great! I’ll tag you as an asshole. Can you please tag me as a shrimp-dick bitch? Thank you.
Cry harder
It’s not a claim, I do have a dual boot set up at the moment. Manjaro (on KDE Plasma using Wayland, hence my whining about HDR setups) and Windows 11. Also a Lenovo Legion Go dualbooting Bazzite and Windows 11 and a Steam Deck. Plus a bunch of Linux handhelds, Raspberry Pis and assorted devices around the house that also count, I suppose.
You can ignore me all you want, it’s your prerogative, but I’m as much a part of the actual userbase as you are.
It’s not a claim, I do have a dual boot set up at the moment. Manjaro (on KDE Plasma using Wayland, hence my whining about HDR setups) and Windows 11. Also a Lenovo Legion Go dualbooting Bazzite and Windows 11 and a Steam Deck. Plus a bunch of Linux handhelds, Raspberry Pis and assorted devices around the house that also count, I suppose.
You can ignore me all you want, it’s your prerogative, but I’m as much a part of the actual userbase as you are.
I’m not reading all that- anyway
I switched to full-time Linux this year. One of my programmer friends, whom I never expected to embrace Linux, switched to full-time Linux and is not going back. Our libraries have switched to Linux on all user-facing computers. 2 of my e-friends have approached me about Linux. Another friend is, despite not being a computer nerd, going to switch because Windows is forcing him to- and that’s my point. It’s not that Linux doesn’t have deep flaws inherent to its development model, it’s that those flaws are now less significant than those of Windows. Nobody likes Windows 11 and it’s pushing people off.
Nobody even thinks about Windows 11, they just use it if it comes preinstalled. And from the data we have, the people that don’t like Windows 11 are more likely to be on Windows 10 (or Mac OS).
There is no mass exodus to Linux. No data point we have shows that. The biggest Linux uptick we’ve seen recently is related to Steam Deck, which is as much Linux as Android or ChromeOS are.
Desktop Linux is better than it was, and it will be closer to its competitors if people ever agree that one consolidated system to support features that have been standard for years is the way to go… but it’s not a mainstream option. Yes, even against Windows 11.
I didn’t imply a mass exodus, I’m just telling you that ‘linux has issues’ isn’t a good argument when both W10 and W11 also have issues of the same grade and that it is, in some nerd circles, pushing people into Linux because they’d rather deal with Linux problems than Windows problems.
But I want a mass exodus.
I want to be on the OS with all the support and the software and the compatibility and the patches and the drivers. I don’t want to be in the nerd corner manually troubleshooting every piece of hardware I want to use. More to the point, I have things to do and can’t afford that anyway.
And I would love if that OS happened to be free, open source and not trying to sell me crap.
Hey, if you’re happy with the nerd corner, then that’s great for you, but man, does it not line up with the headline of “I don’t see a reason to switch to Windows anymore”, which is what we’re discussing here.
But I want a mass exodus.
I want to be on the OS with all the support and the software and the compatibility and the patches and the drivers. I don’t want to be in the nerd corner manually troubleshooting every piece of hardware I want to use. More to the point, I have things to do and can’t afford that anyway.
And I would love if that OS happened to be free, open source and not trying to sell me crap.
Hey, if you’re happy with the nerd corner, then that’s great for you, but man, does it not line up with the headline of “I don’t see a reason to switch to Windows anymore”, which is what we’re discussing here.
But I want a mass exodus.
Then why are you investing so much energy telling everyone why there shouldn’t be one?
I never said there shouldn’t be one, I said there are good reasons for most people to not migrate that need to be resolved before they will be one.
I don’t think it’s annoying to have a million distros that each have their own quirks and problems with my system because I don’t want people to move out of Windows, I think it’s annoying because it IS and it’s one of several reasons preventing me and many others to move out of the corporate walled gardens.
I never said there shouldn’t be one, I said there are good reasons for most people to not migrate that need to be resolved before they will be one.
I don’t think it’s annoying to have a million distros that each have their own quirks and problems with my system because I don’t want people to move out of Windows, I think it’s annoying because it IS and it’s one of several reasons preventing me and many others to move out of the corporate walled gardens.
You sure fooled me. Your whole attitude in this thread is anger at the simple truth: the vast majority of computing done by end users is done in a web browser, and therefore many people could switch oses and barely notice any negative impact. How much irreplaceable desktop software are you running that shapes this perspective?
I’m a power user by all measures and i still typically have no more than 2-3 apps running outside my browser. And even most of those are cross platform apps. It seems like you’re time traveling from 2005 with this take.
Steam OS is just a Linux desktop with the Steam client in fullscreen. With two clicks you are on an ordinary KDE desktop. It’s not at all like Android or ChromeOS. If it were, Android would be a much bigger market for Steam to want to put their games. Everyone outside the US having their Steam library in their pocket would far outweigh however many thousand Decks they’ve sold.
Your ignorance on this tracks with the less obvious clues that you don’t know what you’re talking about, like your talk of “Linux games on Steam”. Linux games on Steam vs playing Steam games on Linux are two different things.
Thankfully Valve has done a ton of work to minimize that divide, although even the two checkboxes you have to tick on most desktop Linux installs to automatically fire off Windows games under Proton instead to filtering out only native Linux games are completely unnecessary and kind of annoying.
As for SteamOS, people need to get their story straight. Either it’s just Big Picture running by default over Linux, and then it’s just like having Steam Big Picture autolaunch on boot on a Windows handheld, or it’s a fantastic consolized UI that is the killer app that makes the Deck so much better than any other handheld.
Honestly, I lean towards the latter. SteamOS is great, compatibility aside. But if you do want to use it as a full Linux install then you have the same limitations you have on any Windows handheld, which kind of defeats the point.
Thankfully Valve has done a ton of work to minimize that divide, although even the two checkboxes you have to tick on most desktop Linux installs to automatically fire off Windows games under Proton instead to filtering out only native Linux games are completely unnecessary and kind of annoying.
As for SteamOS, people need to get their story straight. Either it’s just Big Picture running by default over Linux, and then it’s just like having Steam Big Picture autolaunch on boot on a Windows handheld, or it’s a fantastic consolized UI that is the killer app that makes the Deck so much better than any other handheld.
Honestly, I lean towards the latter. SteamOS is great, compatibility aside. But if you do want to use it as a full Linux install then you have the same limitations you have on any Windows handheld, which kind of defeats the point.
🙄 but my Linux works so well on this embedded device, totally the same thing as a desktop!
Again, it’s just a computer. You can open it and replace parts. You can plug in a USB hub and a monitor and do spreadsheets with keyboard and mouse.
My favourite bit of weirdness from it being just a computer is that the screen is actually a vertical screen by default, so when you boot to the desktop, for half a second the cursor is rotated the wrong way.
Nobody even thinks about Windows 11, they just use it if it comes preinstalled. And from the data we have, the people that don’t like Windows 11 are more likely to be on Windows 10 (or Mac OS).
There is no mass exodus to Linux. No data point we have shows that. The biggest Linux uptick we’ve seen recently is related to Steam Deck, which is as much Linux as Android or ChromeOS are.
Desktop Linux is better than it was, and it will be closer to its competitors if people ever agree that one consolidated system to support features that have been standard for years is the way to go… but it’s not a mainstream option. Yes, even against Windows 11.
Like most articles on itsfoss, this one is only a notch over clickbait — a kernel of an idea not fully developed, written with the last minute energy of a student who pushed off the assignment until right before deadline — but I’ll be damned if that title isn’t beautifully turned.
I haven’t had to have Windows installed for more than a decade, but on recent occasion I’ve borrowed Windows and Mac computers for work. Those revisits didn’t give me reason to switch back, only to long for my lean Arch install.
As the next major version of Windows approaches like a Santa down the chimney with all sorts of “AI”-infested gadgets in his sack, I do hope more will make the more often mentioned switch to a Linux distro from the
advertising platformOS that came with their computer.But this headline deliciously reminds us that there is already a good chunk of users who made the jump, or are sitting on the dual booting fence, one boot (sorry!) on either side. This article is for them, yes, but also a gentle nudge for those still gathering courage.
At this stage, it is time to seriously change the perspective of that switch. The single reason for switching from Windows to Linux is … the utter state of Windows. Only the most blinkered of tech journos can continue to pretend that all is well on Windows, and not at all a sophisticated malware infection.
So bravo itsfoss for the clever barb, less so for the depth of the article itself.
I like the writing style of It’s Foss. They don’t make there articles dry and the tone is always positive and honest.
I think the Linux switch will heavily depend on your work flow and whether you like to tinker at all. I think It’s Foss is right to say that for some Windows is not an option. People like me use a lot of Linux tools and apps.
I agree that the tone of their articles helps push the quality above some other tech blogs. At the very least they’re sincere!
Windows is no longer an option for me either — I had made a conscious effort to use FLOSS apps even before switching, so there wasn’t much holding me back. And, as you say, once I’d started modifying system settings to disable Microsoft telemetry, I was already at Linux tinkerer levels…
Okay, look, I don’t want to be a hater, I promise. I have a setup with a Linux dual boot in my computer right now. But man, the crazy echo chamber around this issue is not just delusional, it’s counterproductive. Being in denial about the shortcomings isn’t particularly helpful in expanding reach, if that’s what you all say you want.
So, in the spirit of balance, my mostly unbiased take on the listicle:
1 - Web tools get the job done: This is true when it’s true. I work with Google’s office suite, so yeah, many tools are indistinguishable. But not all tools are web tools. A big fallacy in this article is that just because a subset of items have embraced a solution doesn’t mean that the solution is universal. If you need to work with Adobe software you’re still SOL. MS Office still lacks some features on the web app. Some of the tools I use don’t work, so I do still need to run those in a native Windows app. Since I’m not going to switch OSs every time I need to push a particular button, I’m going to default to Windows for work.
2 - Plenty of distros to suit your preference: This one is an active downside, and it pisses me off when it gets parroted. When I last decided to dual boot Linux I had to try five different distros to find one that sort of did everything I needed at once, which was a massive waste of time. I’m talking multiple days. Yes, there are a ton of distros. I only need to use one, though. But I need that one to work all the time. If one of the distros can get my HDR monitor to work and another can get my 5.1 audio setup to work, but not my monitors, then both distros are broken and neither is useful to me. This actually happened, incidentally.
3 - Steam has a decent collection of Linux games, plus Steam OS: Yes. Gaming on Linux is possible and works alright, but it’s far from perfect. Features my Nvidia card runs reliably on Windows are hit-and-miss under Linux. Not all games are compatible in the first place, either. And while Heroic does a great job of running my GOG and Epic libraries, which are themselves just as big as my Steam one, it is a much bigger hassle to set up to run under the SteamOS game mode UI. Don’t get me wrong, this has made huge strides but again, I’m not going to change OSs every time I hit a compatibility snag. This is the least fallacious of these points, though.
4 - Proprietary choices on Linux: Yes, there are some. Like the web app thing, the problem isn’t what is there, it’s what’s missing. Also, as a side note, I find it extremely obnoxious when you have to enable these manually as an option in your package manager. As a user I don’t care if a package is open source or not, I just want to install it.
5 - Electron makes app availability easier. Cool. Will take your word for it. Acknowledging the ideological argument behind it goes to the same argument I made in the previous point. And as above, it’s not about what’s there, it’s about what’s missing.
6 - No ads in your OS. I mean… nice? I still get ads for my selected distro on first boot, as well as on web apps and notifications for installed apps. Beyond a few direct links to first party apps in the one page of Win 11’s settings app I don’t find anything in Windows particularly intrusive, either. Which is not to say I don’t dislike some of the overly commercial choices in Windows, they’re just not a dealbreaker… yet.
7 - Docker, Homelab and self-hosting: This is… off topic, honestly. I do self host some things. Even used Docker once or twice… in my NAS, where the self-hosting happens. You don’t need to switch your home desktop to Linux for that, and nobody is questioning that Linux is the underlying OS of choice for a whole host of device ranges, from servers to the Raspberry Pi. Linux is great as a customizable underlying framework to build fast support for a niche device with a range of specific applications. We should be honest about how that breaks down if you try to use it as a widely compatible home computer alternative where the priorities are wide compatibility and ease of use.
Well, that became a huge thing, but… yeah, I guess I was annoyed enough by the delusion to rant. Look, I’d love to step away from Windows, and it’s a thing you can do if you’re tech savvy and willing to pretzel around the limitations in your hardware choices and your willingness to tinker… but it’s not a serious mainstream alternative by a wide margin. I wish it was. Self-congratulatory praise within the tiny bubble of pre-existing fans (and why are there fans of operating systems in the first place?) is not going to help improve or widen its reach.
why are there fans of operating systems in the first place
Operating systems are huge endeavours of engineering and design by entire teams of people over decades, which are used literally daily. Is that not enough of a reason for people to be fans of them?
Hah. Of the concept of operating systems, maybe. I can see one appreciating technical solutions and UX choices just as a matter of skill and execution. Actively fanboying for them? Getting into playground-style arguments where you root for your favorite? Nah. Seems super immature to me.
There aren’t even that many of the things anymore. It’s not like the old days, where every computer brand had their own. Where are the TOS fanboys these days? All them kids and their obnoxious modern software interfaces. That’s not a OS, it’s just graphics.
The only reason I have a windows laptop at home is because my employer forces me to. It’s true that Adobe and MS stuff doesn’t run or runs bad, same with some specific live service games. Personally I hate all of those and am more than happy to avoid em like the plague outside of work hours. They’re horrible inadequate tools and horrible predatory games. Everything I actually wanted personally, has so far run just fine for years.
Edit: Remembered one specific thing that does really suck on Linux, and that’s music production. That area is absolutely cluttered with proprietary shit. Even switching between windows and macos is a pain as many of the tools are just not compatible.
I can’t afford a broken system anytime and that’s why i can’t use linux. It breaks when you least expect.
Try Silverblue or Kinoite. They’re designed such that if you find an update breaks something, you can literally revert to the version before that update with a reboot. Application distribution through flatpaks offers pre-configured environments so it’s not a pain to get stuff running. Toolbox lets you dick around in isolation from the system. You’d really have to go out of your way to break something. Great stuff.
I think it’s really funny when people say this because this is exactly what made me stop using Windows.
My son was literally crying earlier today because his VR headset is no longer visible from Windows and all of his efforts to fix it (driver updates, tweaking various program settings, and so on) failed.
So… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Try a different USB port.
My Valve Index doesn’t like my on-board Asus ports but works fine when plugged in a PCIe USB card.
In my experience Windows takes way more troubleshooting and time debugging and fixing things than linux does. Theres a reason people use linux for critical servers, it tends to be extremely reliable once everything is set up.
Funnily enough I could say the same about Windows
That thing has broken itself more times than I can count but my 2 linux machines (I still have 1 Windows machine) have been rock solid for 2 years now
The most only reason I have the last Windows machine is because I’ve been lazy about switching it lol
It really depends on your needs for sure. My linux systems have been rock solid. Been windows free for years. But i absolutely know people who have workloads that break seemingly weekly on linux. Like say example android emulation. Easy on windows, bluestacks. On linux? Lots of options from waydroid to blissOS on qemu but they break fucking constantly
I I believe Linux appeals to a specific group of users. Personally, I rely heavily on Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, LibreOffice and OpenOffice don’t meet my needs because they often alter document formats when I share files across different platforms.
- Web-based tools get the work done: agreed,especially when half of these web tools are Electron like number 5
- Plenty of distributions to suit your preference: my personal favorite thing about Linux
- Steam has a decent collection of Linux Games (& you may get a console): True,And outside of steam will work nicely aswell (like touhou 6 for example like Proton/soda does a great job of running touhou 6 patched with THCRAP)
- Proprietary choices on Linux (Better late than never): True and maybe even custom versions of wine (like elemental warriors fork and vanilla wine but vanilla wine cannot run complex apps tho)
- Technologies like Electron make it easier for app availability: Controversial opinion but True
Technologies like Electron make it easier for app availability: Controversial opinion but True
I do agree, but currently Electron is great for apps the way Flash was considered great for the web. It solves one problem, but creates a bunch more.
In itself, Electron is pretty bloated*, but I don’t dare check how many versions I have installed because different apps have stuck with older ones. I’d really like to see a less resource consuming, backward compatible alternative to Electron.
* From my thrifty perspective of keeping older hardware alive with Linux, that is. On your high grade, best-of-class gaming rig, mileage will definitely vary.
It’s quite a storage hog having multiple 500+ MB electron blobs. Unfortunately that’s a platform agnostic issue now.
yeah true its spinning a instance of the Chromium browser which is where the bloat is at.
I wish. NVIDIA is still a buggy mess for me, and it seems that I am the only person with these issues, I see people praising NVIDIA on Wayland all the time now.
And VR is still bad on Linux.
I still love Linux, but I can’t use it for now. God i miss NixOS );
I said good riddance to Nvidia forever. My amd card is better anyhow and has never had an issue on Linux
Tbh running AMD isn’t easier. For my workload I needed OpenCL and when it wasn’t installed by default, and wasn’t apart of apt package manager. I had to follow a script which involves amdgpu and only having OpenCL install if I wanted my machine stable.
Not the best experience.
For Nvidia some distros have installers built in to handle it. Like Mint where it’s one click and a restart and I have everything.
The best way to use AMD GPU compute is to use containers. Keep in mind AMD only really has good performance on newer cards.
My problem isn’t installing, it’s after installing. Vsync has extra bad latency, frames are reversed, and more. And this is on 565, the latest version.
Games are unplayable.
I use X11 with Nvidia without issue. While I like the idea of Wayland, and it being pushed a lot now, it really remains beta software. While I think it’s good Wayland is being focused on and promoted by the distros and DEs, I think it’s a bit of a distraction from Linux as a whole.
I’ve had to switch back to X11 on both Nvidia and AMD devices due to bugs or compatibility issues in Wayland.
I agree about VR - I keep dual boot windows on my PC and VR is about the only thing I use it for now. But the result is I just use VR less.
I dual boot Windows for VR and Fusion360. Do alternatives exist? Yes, but it’s just not something I want to spend hours tinkering with for what I perceive to be a worse experience.
I tried ALVR but it kept disconnecting if it connected at all. VD on Windows works flawlessly every time.
I heard of an ALVR alternative made by Collabora, you could try it. Dunno if it’s good or not.
Thanks for the heads up. It looks like it’s called ElectricMaple. I’ll definitely give it a go, although having no updates on the main branch in 6 months doesn’t fill me with confidence.
I suspect your issues stem not from hardware incompatibility but outdated kernel/applications. If i had to guess you run one of the ‘stable’ distros. Which translates to dealing with bugs for longer.
I never had any major issues with nvidia and VR is improving aswell
That just makes it even weirder, how does seemingly nobody have any problems on NVIDIA, except a small minority?
What driver version are you using?
It’s mostly people on older cards with those problems I guess
Me for example on my GTX 1080 can’t use G-Sync (monitor blacks out in specific fps ranges). Nvidia “fixed” this like 5 times already. Newer cards work correctly I guess?
I also get graphical bugs in Wayland after Nvidias final Wayland “fix”. Other people somehow do not experience this so I guess newer cards work correctly (again)
Imo Nvidia just didn’t bother fixing this on their old cards so there is a minority left with those problems which can be ghosted safely by Nvidia because “those bugs got fixed”
It’s not uncommon for Nvidia to ignore their normal users since the most money comes from other companies purchasing their GPUs anyway
I have an rtx 3060, i don’t think that counts as old. I feel you, should have gone with AMD
I am using the latest proprietary driver on a gtx 1650 gpu and my distro cachyos preinstalls it
@Sunshine Agree! Left Windows decades ago. Except for some ocassional office compability snafus and still poor gaming, it does everything I need and well.
Gaming is catching up. Valve has done a tremendous job getting games supported with Proton on SteamOS
There will always be a game that is not supported.
@naonintendois @craigcorbin catching up? From what I heard, Linux surpassed winlol in gaming for certain titles, but yes, if you take the average, there’s still a gap, and it’s becoming smaller and smaller
@bargo @naonintendois Awesome 👌
@naonintendois Cool. I’ll have to check that out. Thanks.
Still poor gaming? I have all of my games working with zero effort on Steam. The only exception are my sim racing peripherals.
@AstralPath Good news. I tried a few games in October but the graphics were off. I’ll have to give them another try. My machine is pretty old, too, so I may need to upgrade. Thanks
Definitely give it a go! My machine isn’t crazy modern by any means but it’s decent.
I’ve been using Linux on my personal desktop system since 1997 and I think it’s great. However as a user I fucking hate Linux so much. It is so frustrating to use, it always breaks in weird ways.
It can do anything because you can configure so much and you can even go into the code and make thing your own. But at the same time it can’t do anything, there usually isn’t a basic framework to do what most people want. Each user is just supposed to figure it out for themselves and put their system together in a way that makes sense. Even someone like me who can understand all this crap and can read, understand and contribute to the code, doesn’t always want to do this. And most users wouldn’t be able to do it anyways. Let me just spend 12 hours of my own free time to figure out something that isn’t documented very well, with often wrong or outdated information, weird bugs with quirks and workaround and fun interactions with other bugs and workarounds I have on my system.
Just the other day I raged my head off because some kind of update broke my shit. There is this protocol that allows for the OS to tell monitors what brightness they need to be on. This is awesome for tablet/convertibles/laptops/all-in-ones, but for desktop systems I don’t really see the use case. But it can’t hurt the feature is there and you choose not to use it right? However it turned out this latest update had a nasty bug in it. At boot it somehow set all my monitors to 100% brightness, which was highly unpleasant and kept resetting it to 100% every boot. Not only that, it turned out my main monitor had too much clever for its own good. It has two modes of operating, one mode where the builtin OS inside the monitor does everything, it handles all the settings, profiles, color shit, protocols etc. The other way of operating is where the OS inside the computer does everything, they have a driver for Windows and some neat software that allows you to do everything in there. It has game recognition software and tweaks the monitor to work perfectly with that game etc. However me being a Linux user, they ofcourse don’t have any of that, not even a driver etc. but I know this when I selected the monitor so I made sure it could handle everything inside the monitor as well, so I could use it to it’s full potential on Linux. But this update broke all of that, because the monitor saw the OS was telling it to go to a certain brightness setting, so it assumed the OS inside the computer would be running the show and reverted back to some default safe profile until the software utility could tell it what to do. This made my monitor borderline unusable and flash bang me every reboot (which was a lot of times whilst I was trying to figure out how to fix it).
I put in a lot of hours and was able to somewhat consistently block the brightness control so the monitor could again be in charge. But not after the monitor was fed up with all my shit and just completely doing a factory reset, so I lost the personal profile I had been tweaking for years.
Now I know the monitor probably shouldn’t work this way and it’s bullshit the manufacturer doesn’t create Linux drivers and makes sure the software utility is available on Linux. But on the other hand, this is just the way the world is. Blaming it on some huge corporation that doesn’t give a shit and runs on cost/benefit calculations doesn’t fix my monitor. In my experience this is a huge problem in the Linux community (me included), we tend to get mad at other entities that cause the problem as an excuse for not fixing said problem. Which is perfectly valid from a person point of view, but very frustrating from a user point of view.
Most people who went through what I went through with my monitor wouldn’t be able to fix it and simply give up on using Linux forever. Or at least till they get a new monitor 5-10 years down the line.
Ok Grandpa let’s get you to bed
In all seriousness you have a fair point. Linux does occasionally have weird bugs if you are using something closer to upstream. Fedora does a pretty hood job of catching most stuff but it misses some things. If you want a more stable experience you want something that’s for of a LTS such as Linux Mint or Debian.
The self contradictions here are astounding. I love this thing that I hate. Now let me write 12 paragraphs about how much I hate to love to hate it
Humans are pretty complex so what may seem like a self contradiction actually isn’t in fact.
But I can hit you with another one for me personally: I fucking love a big juicy burger, especially with cheese, pineapple, lettuce and spicy sauce. However I am normally a vegetarian and try to restrict my meat consumption as much as reasonably possible. I’m not a full vegan, because that just seems like self torture without a lot of extra gains, but maybe I’ll become one in the future.
And I can write you essays upon essays about how much I hate Windows and other Microsoft software. Even though it has a special place in my heart, because when I got my first computer in 1984, it ran Microsoft BASIC as its primary “OS”.
I gave up daily driving Linux and reverted to Win11 Pro and do all my Linux shit in WSL.
No Cygwin/git bash?
WSL in my experience really sucks.
Debian WSL has been legit more stable for me than running it as the primary OS. Dunno what to tell you, because you can’t change my past experience with what I have been dealing with for the past two decades using Linux as my daily driver coming up as a broke student and now have money to pay for an OS that is less robust but more stable and better driver development.
Dealing with Linux for 2 decades doesn’t make you and expert in modern Linux. It just makes you old.
Even leaving Linux for a few years means that you get behind. I had to explain to a coworker what Wayland was because he hasn’t used Linux in years.
If WSL works for you that’s great but here are the issues I’ve had
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weird networking issues where Windows can access Linux but Linux can not access Windows without lots of work.
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any advanced networking like VPN’s will not work
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It is slow and requires working virtualization
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Filesystem sharing is not as easy as I would like
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It is a bit finicky to get working and requires a bunch of disk space and resources.
Meanwhile native Linux doesn’t have these issues and git bash/cygwin is almost native in the sense that it has little overhead. Architectural perspective Cygwin is a lot like Wine. It just translates Linux calls to Windows ones.
If you need Windows I would run it in a VM under Linux as that’s going to be a much better experience.
Without doxxing myself, I promise you I know more about linux than you do and I’m not saying windows is better, you silly fuck, I am saying it’s more stable. I don’t even recommend using either as a server when BSD is better at stability than both OS combined.
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2025 year of the minutes desktop 🤣
It’ll never happen because Linux zealots write this crap when 100% seriousness.
I just started using W11 after reading up on how to install it without all the bloat and spyware, and how to configure it to my liking
25 years in and I still don’t see a reason to switch to Linux
My dude, you better take cover… 🤣
Meh, it’ll take them at least an hour to get their keyboard drivers working 😂
I know you think this is funny but I haven’t dealt with a driver issue in linux since I switched to it. However in windows I’ve sunk hundreds of hours of my life into trying to get a driver working. So that comment is unintentionally funny lol
However in windows I’ve sunk hundreds of hours of my life into trying to get a driver working
Christ on a bike mate, hundreds of hours? You’re embarrassing yourself 😂
Hope you don’t work in IT lmao
Kinda proves you haven’t. Also you’re probably 15.
You can’t install Windows 11 without bloat and spyware, all you can do is minimise it and much of it cannot be disabled or removed. Linux can have 0 bloat and spy ware.
That is the difference.
You can get pretty close and go far by Ameliorating your Windows install.
Sir this is Wendy’s
Are you actually bragging about refusing to learn anything? You sound like someone I knew who bragged about never having read a book in her life. Sad energy.
