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.
Apart from Steam I mostly use consoles for gaming these days so it would only be Photoshop I guess ( I think ms office works on Linux now?). Gimp is cool but it still can't do everything photoshop does and I find the GUI counterintuitive.
The one thing I still do use Linux for is booting with a thumbdrive when a computer running Windows has a meltdown.
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 find the community can be toxic at times; instead of helping newcomers or treating each other nicely, the community can be toxic and alienate the people they want to use Linux.
Microsoft "community" is a bunch of salarymen who's job is to try to empty your pocket and boost the company profits at your expenses. Linux community is people helping you for free.
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’ve used Ubuntu as at least a dual booted daily driver since 2016 and have also discussed with friends and family about what they liked and hated about it when they have used it, how they use their computer and whether they would swap. Here are some observations from that:
Hardware Issues and stability: For the most part, I’ve not really had to deal with hardware issues outside of trying to get NVidia graphics cards to play nice with everything else. However, I often have weird system stability issues or just plain quality of life. E.g. 2-in-1 decides randomly when put into sleep mode to flip the screen to a random orientation which I then have to go into settings to revert back. I’m used to buggy and annoying software, but for a lot of people this is a complete killer. Similarly, while I love the diverse options within Linux, having so much diversity means that troubleshooting and testing is so much more complex and you will usually have to go over multiple answers in order to solve your problem making it much harder to get into and use reliably
MS Office: This one tends to be the largest reason in my experience for people not going over to Linux. For a lot of people this is their main use for a computer and the fact that it is not available on Linux is a deal breaker. I’ve tried the online version and it is just not a viable alternative (nor is any cloud option). Similarly LibreOffice is a lot better than nothing, but the UI feel like it came out of the 90s, Latex is faster and easier to use than the math input, I never have been able to get referencing to work, drawing tools are lacking if they even exist at all. Opening office documents breaks all the formatting and looks awful, etc etc.
Games and other windows software: While I think value has done wonderful work in encouraging developers of games to support Linux and Proton does work quite well, you never quite know how a game will perform on Linux and if it will even work, whereas on Windows you can guarantee it has been tested and will work well. Similarly for other software: Will this work on Wine or Crossover? Maybe or maybe not but it’s a bit hard to swap if you are paying large amounts for software just to find out it cannot run on Linux.
A reason to move: I think Linux will always remain fairly niche as for most people there just isn’t a good enough reason to move over from Windows or Mac. These platforms already offer them everything they want in a computer in an easy to use and polished way. For most people, they really don’t care that windows is constantly spying and with ads everywhere already, what is a few more ads or that the cost of a Mac and is absolutely extortionate. Moving across would require a whole bunch of troubleshooting and learning how to do just about everything all over again and that would require a really good reason to do which Linux doesn’t (and possibly can’t ) provide and MS and Apple haven’t done anything stupid enough to offer.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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