I’m curious as to what everyone’s reasons are! The Linux desktop has came quite a far ways in the last few years and is improving every day. I’d say for most people, Linux could easily replace Windows as their daily driver nowadays.
My desktop’s a many-hats workstation. Half of it I could easily do in Linux using the software I use now, half of it I can’t. Do work with it a lot through WSL2 and our servers though.
And well, my laptop’s an M1 MacBook. It has its own issues. :P
Main issue on the desktop side though is not having the Adobe Suite, love em or hate em it’s what we use. And, I personally use every major bit of it a lot, and then also do collaborative work with it.
I use Linux at work regularly, and often prefer Linux and suggest Linux for work projects. It’s an extremely capable OS for infrastructure and embedded applications. It’s a pain as a desktop though. It’s just clunkier and harder to do things. Intermediate level configuration tasks which you can do with one dialog in Windows require editing shell scripts and decoding APIs designed by mathematicians in the 70’s on Linux. It’s just too much when I want to relax after work.
Also I like gaming, and gaming through a compatibility layer like Wine is always annoying. I don’t want launching a new game to be a project in itself.
Intermediate level configuration tasks which you can do with one dialog in Windows require editing shell scripts and decoding APIs designed by mathematicians in the 70’s on Linux.
Full disclosure, I’ve used linux since high school, to the point where I am lost as shit on windows. What I’m trying to get at is that the question I’m about to ask is not supposed to be judgemental or disbelieving or anything, I’m just genuinely curious: can you please give me an example of an intermediate config task that’s significantly easier on windows than linux? I have a hard time believing such a thing exists, but that’s likely because I haven’t used windows since like the vista days
can you please give me an example of an intermediate config task that’s significantly easier on windows than linux?
I feel like it’s the kind of thing that use to be true. I think it’s easier to edit a a text file in linux and run the restart service command in terminal than it is to wander through window’s new maximum white-space electron GUIs and hope what you’re looking for isn’t removed in windows 10 or doesn’t get reset back to default on next update.
I absolutely agree. I’ve been very happy with linux for years. I love a well-documented plaintext config file!
I do use Linux, but it isn’t quite there with gaming (although it is getting there). That is the only thing keeping me on windows 10 on the desktop. Every other kernel in my household is Linux.
I hate windows 11, so I will be making the full switch soon I guess.
I think an overlooked potential userbase for linux is older people who are still on windows XP. I have a few family members on manjaro mate (I know there are better distros, but it’s what I use personally) which is overall more familiar to them than newer windows versions would be. Get it set up with regular BTRFS snapshots and a grub hook, and you can talk them through rolling something back easily.
Because “computers” isnt a hobby for me
I gave it a go and ended up switching back to Windows. While I liked it overall even if aspects of it were pretty annoying, I need Google Drive to function and sync my files locally for work. There’s no native client and none of the third party ones worked like they were supposed to. I could have dual booted, I guess, but nah
I’ve used Linux and simply had no use for it. My DAW of choice is Ableton Live and there’s no Linux version. I tried running it through windows emulators but that was just finicky. The only big name DAW I know about that has a Linux version is Reaper, which is fine, but I’m not that great with Reaper and the stock fx aren’t great. I don’t know of any free software style DAWs for Linux that would work with vsts and ASIO.
I did use Ubuntu on a Chromebook for a long time when I was trying to learn more coding, but then I figured out I don’t enjoy coding. That’s probably my main reason for disliking Linux. I don’t wanna mess around in the guts of code, it’s tedious and uninteresting to me. I just want it to work already.
tried it and it fucked my computer up
I’m afraid of messing up a dual boot install
[grub boots into rescue mode]
I have seen the face of God.
I can barely manage to do the dishes most of the time and you expect me to learn a new OS?
I mainly use my pc to play games, maybe 90% works fine but that 10% is still quite a lot. Also, even if the games themselves work sometimes extra tools (like overlays) around them don’t, which is the case for my main game.
Lastly I have struggled with X11 in the past so much with my multiple different resolution and refresh rate monitors working, and it doesn’t seem like Wayland is there yet either.
I look forward to these things being ironed out, it has come a very long way in the past few years, I do believe a couple more and I’ll be able to switch back to Linux.
I hate how almost all system programs have weird names/icons. KDE, why is a file explorer named Dolphin?? It has zero link to files to me. And that goes for a lot of default programs making it unintuitive to use.
Windows uses clear names for everything, why can’t Linux do the same? Or at least, let me rename Dolphin (and others) to a name that makes sense. But that appears to be impossible too.
Gaming and troubleshooting knowledge. I make my living using my computers, and if something goes wrong and I can’t fix it on the spot, i’m screwed.
Last time I tried a dual boot, my rig had a wifi dongle that took me about a month to get working. It was great for a time, then all of the sudden it stopped and I couldn’t get it back. Terminal entry stuff should be a rarity too, I’m not afraid to go into it or Windows power shell but it has its own language and I don’t have time to teach myself. It seemed like every time I tried to do something, it NEVER produced the result other people were getting, and then I couldn’t find the error that I was getting.
I want to switch quite badlly tbh, but I really do need it to be as simple and reliable as Android. Once my home server is built, I’m loading a Linux distro on it to start, then I’ll add a dual boot to my main rig.
install termux on your phone if you wanna just mess around.
I feel like I’ll need to switch to linux at some point whether I want to or not, since the assholes at microsoft seem to want to turn Windows into a subscription service, but for now windows is fine and I’m scared of fucking up my computer trying to figure out how to get linux going.
For development, Linux is soooo nice. But when I want to play games, anticheats don’t tend to be happy running under wine. X11 is also ancient garbage, and Wayland is just not ready.
So instead, I run windows. When I need to do Linux stuff, I use WSL. VSCode lets me run it under WSL as if it were running on Linux directly, and very few of the things I’ve used under WSL have complained about it.
As soon as Wayland is actually ready, and companies stop their anticheats from getting mad under wine, I will switch back over.
