Ive been using linux as my sole OS for the last 20+ years. Nothing windows based, anymore. That said, i find questions like this a bit disingenuous. There are a LOT of reasons why it aint the year of the linux desktop, and if youve been using Linux for any amount of time, you likely know this too. That one or two cruicial apps, games, compatibilty between office suites, ease of use for those who aren’t technologically inclined, forward momentum, hardware incompatibility (broadcom, realtek come to mind specifically, im sure theres others)
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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I've got Linux installed around the house. I also have a Mac and a couple of Windows machines.
My most recent journey into dual booting my daily driver was a mess. Theoretically everything on the laptop was well supported. But I had to fix a dozen problems and by the end I just couldn't care anymore.
I have had a job in IT or a related field for nearly two decades and have been an enthusiast since before that. But it's not my life and I don't want to spend all my time futzing with config files. I want to play games, make things out of wood, play music, ride motorcycles, hang out with people I like, and generally just live my life. Trying to get an OS running is so far down the list that I can't be bothered to care.
I still use it for a lot of programming and automation tasks as well as steam remote play devices I have set up like consoles. I use my Mac for music production because I already own the software there and I like my workflow. Windows is my "daily driver", but most of what I use it for is Internet and Office (which would be Linux if I hadn't had to fuck with it so much). Honestly, I use my phone more often than anything else so I guess vanilla Android is my daily driver because I haven't booted a computer in two days.
I understand the many issues currently standing and that they are probably a long way from solving, I was genuinely just curious as to what people's reasons are and that I could maybe answer some questions people had, not trying to be disingenuous or anything. Although, I do believe for many people (the people who simply use their computer as a boot loader for Google Chrome to watch Netflix and check their e-mail) that Linux could replace Windows for them, but hey, if Windows works for you, or you have some piece of software that only works on Windows, use Windows!
Because doing anything on Linux is unnecessarily complicated, and I'm not going to waste hours of my life troubleshooting tedious garbage. I've tried it dozens of times over the years and there is always some showstopping issue, or at best the baseline experience is just frustratingly worse. I use both Windows and MacOS daily, and they just work. The software selection on those platforms is also far superior, no contest. Linux has a place, but it's not going to be on my desktop.
i'm too tired
It really do be video games. It's not often I run something that absolutely wouldn't work in Linux but it happens enough that I can't be bothered to set up dual-booting.
I have decisional anxiety and every time I go to try and pick a version to install I get recommend like 5 different builds, get intimidated, and fall back to my safe space
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Vidia gaems
And I'm scared of learning a new operating system.
I'd say a large majority of games run on Linux either natively (quite a lot of games have been ported because of the Steam Deck, which runs Linux!) or under Proton just fine, at least in my experience. The only troubles you will have are games with DRM (things like Denuvo) or anti-cheats (things like BattlEye or Easy Anti-Cheat, which both have Linux support, but the developers have to opt-in to it and not many do). There's actually a website called ProtonDB that has an extensive catalogue of games and the status of their Linux support, maybe all the games you play already run!
these days, if a game doesn't run on linux, I don't bother buying it lol
There’s definitely a case to try gaming on Linux if you already have a reason to use it but when high end gaming is your top priority it’s come a long way but it’s still worse than windows. HDR and directstorage support are just now becoming a thing for example. And then there’s all the drivers for various peripherals that may or may not have an inferior third party solution. It’s very cool that it’s come as far as it has, and a lot of that is thanks to valve but unless you already want to use linux it’s still second best.
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I too am a videa gaem enjoyer and I have been running Linux as my main driver for more than a year with a dual boot setup specifically for games. The only times I have to boot into Windows are:
- Multiplayer games with anti-cheat that do not support Linux. Note that not all games with anti-cheat are Linux averse. For example I am able to run BattleBit Remastered just fine on Linux.
- Wabbajack modlists
For anything else, I just install the game on Steam, press play and let Proton do its thing. Sometimes I have to go to ProtonDB, check the comments for that particular game and copy-paste some launch settings, but that's about it. As someone who kept delaying making Linux my daily driver due to games, I have been really pleasantly surprised by the current state of Proton.
I do not mean to evangelize. While modern distros make the OS much more approachable than in the past, once in a while, things will break and need tinkering and this is something everyone who is interested in running a Linux machine should be aware of. Personally, I mind spending the occasional hour debugging myself out of some issue much less than I abhor Windows' intrusive features and lack of control over the OS. I have delayed switching for quite a while solely due to worrying about running my games, and I am sharing my experience for those who find themselves in the same boat.
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Counterpoint: Linux's mascot is a cute penguin
I use Linux on my laptop, but also have a Windows machine that I only use for gaming and those few random applications that don't want to perform well in wine.
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.
steam has wine built in, for most games you don't even need to futz with the settings
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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
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Most people have a valid excuse, like their one really important software or favorite hentai game doesn't work under wine. For example, I wanted to buy a specific android tablet, but a small number of cool exclusive features are windows only, which is annoying af. Do I subject myself to full-time popups, nagware, random restarts, fake restarts, etc. of windows, do I dual-boot and have to restart my computer for weird context switching, do I own 2 computers, or shall I forgo that one one cool software/feature?
If you're thinking you'd really like a minimalist, classic desktop experience, like say a windows 98 vibe but also frugal on your GPU/RAM/CPU stuff, I heavily recommend the MATE with brisk-menu installed.
The most beginner friendly version of think is the official https://ubuntu-mate.org/ ISO.
Personally, I prefer debian for servers, and Garuda (arch) for desktops/laptops. Garuda has a lot of desktop environment options, I use the Garuda MATE ISO. Garuda does a lot of hand-holding for you in general, but also has a lot of gamer specific things.
Another thing, I like using my computer to actually do things. I don't think dicking around for hours/days because some random thing (your OS, or drivers, to be specific) doesn't work by default is fun or interesting. It's something most linux evangelists seem to not understand about normal people, and when normal people use windows, the network effect usually forces windows on me somehow. Ubuntu MATE and Garuda MATE have been pretty good about "just working". Your luck on brand new/obscure hardware laptops is going to be tested.
I agree with this, although it's gotten a lot better in recent years but there is still a ways to go before I can install Linux on my grandma's laptop and just hand it back to her without worrying that it will break 6 months down the line. Although, I guess that's what things like Debian are for.
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too sleepy
I can barely manage to do the dishes most of the time and you expect me to learn a new OS? 
I got gun shy after failing an attempt at dual boot years back.
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.
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I basically only use my windows PC to play games and Linux just has too many compromises on that front. I have a steam deck and while I'm impressed at how far Linux gaming has come, it also reminds me of how far it has left to go.
tried it and it fucked my computer up
The file system. I can't touch that mess. And because I know Linux (Unix) will never adopt the windows file structure. I have given up on the idea of switching to linux, I am too attached to my partitions
Plus there are no professional grade CAD software for linux
This is one of the areas I think *NIX blows Windows out of the water. The Windows file system hierarchy is a complete disaster and probably one of the worst things about Windows. Programs just throw their junk wherever they feel like and it makes finding things like config files an absolute nightmare. Is it in %APPDATA%? Nope. Is it in Program Data? also nope. Is it in the Program Files? why is it in the Program Files?!
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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
It’s a preference thing. I just like Windows better. I know bash decently well, use WSL and have no qualms about using the Linux CLI, but for a GUI I’ve always thought Windows did a better job. For a “it just works” system it’s also worlds ahead of Linux (insert “well ackshully this specific distro does X now”), and I’ve stayed with Windows the whole time. I manage Linux servers at work, and also Windows servers and I can manage both from my Windows machine without having to jump around.
Now macOS? I won’t touch with a 10’ pole.
Gaming, even though that's come a long way thanks to Proton. Steam Deck has impressive compatibility, even if it can be janky at times.
My main reason for not running Linux these days is that iRacing doesn't work under it, and I'm not convinced the software and drivers for steering wheels and pedals work either.
I have a bad history with Linux, but in the future I plan to conquer this weird dimension as the current one (windows) is going to shit
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.
I only use my machine for work and I'm required to use Windows 11. I wish I'd gotten into Linux when I was younger and computers were still fun but I've come to hate this little electronic box.
I got a new laptop recently and decided to try Linux again. That being said, I ended up jumping into Fedora Sericea to experiment with both the immutable image thing and to try i3/Sway, so we'll see how that goes
I'm a Windows user who has wanted to swap over to Linux for a while, just have a few heavily used programs that using a compatibility layer is just begging for trouble. Music creation on Linux kinda sucks. Reaper and Ardour are good for recording, kinda awful for writing in DAW. LMMS is good for this, but is also garage band tier in terms of power. Bitwig is cool, but particularly bad at handling resources, so running compatibility layers for your plugins will really start to add up.
Pretty much everything else I do is faster and better in Linux tho
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.
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