Linux

Driver support for (older) graphics cards.

The screen tearing issue (may be related to above)

Dependency hell.

How a program or game used to work fine on an older version but doesn't work anymore. Basically lack of backwards compatibility for software.

How you can't always do everything you want in the gui and have to use the terminal sometimes and know some of the basic commands.

How a lot of the gui programs don't have (usefull) error messages so it just leaves you confused when a program you installed doesn't want to run.

The average person wants the iphone experience. They want the device to just work. Sometimes, in Linux, you have to install things that aren't so straight forward and the average person has no clue how to do that.

If we want more people on Linux, we need to dumb it down a lot.

Linux gives you freedom.

Freedom lets you break stuff.

If, like Windows or MacOSyou just use it as intended by official support, it should be fine. If you start just adding everything and anything from anyone you're gonna break stuff.

Other stuff is made to be idiot proof, Linux is not.

It's like so many other things, it's simple when you know it well but when you don't have a lot of experience it's very daunting. A lot depends on understanding the file system, like what is the difference between /run and /media and / and /root? So much is command line with some pretty arcane commands and parameters. And not knowing what tools there are to help, and not knowing how to fix things when they break.

Because people like to do stuff using a graphical UI but since that varies drastically from one distro to another all the instructions and support is reliant on doing stuff from the command line. That almost was solved by Ubuntu becoming ubiquitous but then they lost the plot.

I put Linux Mint on my grandmothers old computer because the hardware was preventing it from upgrading from Windows 7 without massive slowdown. Back when she was using windows (albeit windows 7) she would call me every week with a new issue. Since installing mint she very rarely has issues and whatever issues she does run into can usually be solved very easily over the phone. I would say that Linux is what you make it. If you want to copy and paste commands from sketchy guides, things are going to break. But if you just use it like my grandmother does, browsing the web and writing emails, nothing can really go wrong

Many (most?) Windows users find Windows to be frustrating. I find Gentoo to be extremely frustrating a lot of times. Frustration doesn't really drive people away from tools that are necessary to them.

The Linux community doesn't understand what "just works" really means.

Whether windows or mac, I plug my machine to the docking station, and it just works.

With Linux, every day a different problem. Out of the blue, screens just stop working. Resolutions change. Every restart different behavior. Zero consistency.

I'm not 17 anymore... I don't have the time to keep tweaking. I need to be productive.

So what do I do? I SSH to a Linux machine whose desktop environment I don't wanna see, and code remotely. Most productive setting.

You asked. Here's the answer.

Watch my dad use a any computer if you want to see frustration.

Because I like to play videogames.

That's it. That's all that keeps me back. I can't play Destiny 2 on linux and I'm an addict with a need.

It is hard to adapt Windows habits to Linux for some cases. E.g. you sometimes use Adobe Photocrap for editing photos. Reasonable that ppl want to use what they know, so they will try to use it with WINE and obviously will fail. „Linux sucks, it cant run the properitary shit subscription software, going back to Windows!“ if someone really depends on such software then yes stay the fuck with Windows. For most other tasks there is a solution available. And for the fear of terminal: I bet most users never ever have to see or use it once since there are GUI tools available for such crucial tasks like updating. Mint does a great job in terms of windows like experience for beginners but also is a full fledged GNU/Linux distro. But yeah if you want to change to Linux it is not just the desktop that changes, it is a whole philosophy that opens up a new world if you are curious.

Simple tasks can take you way more time than needed. For example, I have an old laptop under Bunsenlabs (based on Debian with Openbox). The other day, I wanted to connect a secondary monitor. I wasn't expected the nightmare I had to setup this thing. The layout was totally off with a dead space between the two screens where the cursor disappeared and ArandR was very rough to use. I ended up editing txt file if I remember correctly.

I absolutely love Linux but this kind of thing happen quite regularly to be honest.

There are a lot of factors I think.

Some are pretty legitimate, like the lack of Adobe or Autodesk support on Linux, which means a lot of people just 100% cannot participate in their industry using Linux. It's borderline illegal to use Linux if you're a mechanical or civil engineer; Solidworks and MATLAB are pretty much regulatory requirements; you'd probably lose your engineering license if you turned in a drawing made in FreeCAD. In the art space, tell a publishers you drew something in Inkscape and watch their personality leak out their ears. Everyone hates Adobe, but glory to Adobe.

There are also legitimate culture shocks; there's this LTT video where they had iJustine on, and Linus and Justine swapped platforms, he on a Mac, she on a PC, and they were given basic tasks like "install Slack. Take a screenshot. Paste that screenshot in a Word Processing document. Save it as a PDF. Send that PDF to James in a Slack message. Uninstall Slack." Justine immediately started looking around the back of the monitor for USB ports, rapidly found that a fresh install of vanilla Windows doesn't (or didn't at the time) come with a word processor that could save documents as a PDF, Linus immediately went to the web browser instead of the app store...They did similar stunts with their Linux challenge later on, though I'd kinda argue about the tasks they were set to do (such as "sign" a document, which Linus started to do cryptologically but didn't have any keys enrolled because who the fuck does, and Luke just...copy/pasted an image of his handwriting?) But anyway. Linux is different than Windows to use, and even a VERY windows-like DE like Cinnamon is going to have differences that will feel foreign. I remember tripping over "shortcuts" being "links or launchers depending on what you want to do."

There's also the fact that Microsoft has done a world class job at making the average normie hate and fear the command line interface. Because universally, when you see a cmd prompt appear in Windows, it is a bad thing. That hate gets transferred to Linux, where we do routinely use the terminal because while it can be a little arcane, with a little bit of learning you can do some powerful stuff. But, because people have been so conditioned to hate the CLI by Microsoft, you get exchanges like this:

"Hey I'm trying out Pop!_OS because you nerds keep saying it's good, and my laptop can connect to the internet with ethernet but not Wi-Fi, what's up with that?" "Well let's see, could you open a terminal and type sudo lshw -C network, and then copy-paste what it says here for me to look at?" "NO!!!11!! NEVAR!!!! How DARE you suggest I use a computer by doing anything other than pointing at little pictures?! The indignity! It's current year!!"

Finally, before I hit the character limit for this post, there's just a reputation around Linux. I've had this happen more than once, someone will ask to use my computer to look something up on the internet. "Sure." They find the Firefox icon on the quicklaunch bar just fine, it pops open, they're doing fine, then they notice the color scheme and icons are a little different and they ask "uhh, what version of Windows is this?" And I say "It's Linux Mint." And they lift their hands off the keyboard with the same gesture as if I just told them my cute furry pet in their lap is actually a tarantula. They have it in their head that Linux is deliberately hard to use because it's for computer nerds--they think all Linux is Suckless--and because they're not computer nerds, they can't use Linux. So the second they know it's Linux, they "can't" use it.

You are doing something wrong. I stopped distrohopping ~13 years ago and never had to reinstall OS after that. If I get error messages, they are helpful enough to figure out the root of the problem (unlike that in Windows, where everything under the hood is hidden from user). For me Windows and macOS are frustrating, not Linux.

Maybe Linux is not good enough for you, maybe you are not good enough for Linux. Anyway, don't constrain yourself, use software that you are comfortable with.

I only touch windows when I absolutely have to, and luckily that is getting rarer over time

It’s not plug and play

My first foray into Linux was Mint on an old laptop. Then on my desktop I can't quite remember what I used, but I stumbled across the rolling release versus point release divide in distros. I think I wanted a more up-to-date PHP version at the time, and debian/ubuntu were both slow to update to cutting edge had me jump to Arch, at least for development purposes. That was 2017, gaming on Linux wasn't really great back then.

I ended up dual-booting Arch on my desktop, and for all the supposed complexity, if you can read a manual properly, and work through the guides on the wiki… it actually leaves you with a better understanding of how Linux is put together. So long as you're aware of what commands you're putting in.

If I were to compare it to anything, then it's the same sort of difference between building your PC for yourself (Arch), against getting something custom built (ubuntu) versus getting a prebuilt system (Windows). And you know, since migrating to Arch I haven't actually reinstalled once—people who do that are, and this may be controversial, but they're doing it wrong. If you fuck up majorly, like running rm -rf / then sure, you'll have to.

A tip for using the terminal, when you're trying to discover things, you can use tab completion to speed things up. You don't have to type entire commands, or entire directories/filenames. Of course it won't give you any arguments for a script or program, that is what man <command> is for, or a quick search online.

Only a few weeks ago did I finally scrub Windows from my system, I'm never going back, and if I really need it… I'll look into a virtual machine.

Because clicking a button, finding out it works sometimes but not for you, then the top 3 google links might have a solution to parts of your problem, and you'll have to type in commands to run stuff you probably ran less than 20 times in your entire lifetime, kinda sucks. Even if you try to learn what actually went on, you'd need to do mental gymnastics.

Having multiple buttons to click and have what you want done almost all the time is much easier in comparison.

Source: was once a beginner, although it does get easier.