Keep it for gaming if you need. But give Proton a try first.
My almost 75yo dad switched recently. I swear I'm telling the truth: his main complaint was, after buying a new printer, he couldn't find the matching drivers. I told him just to print, and that was that.
> Just switch to Linux already.
> It's really there. Some compromises required, sure, but they are already far and between.
There are a lot of compromises:
- The Linux desktop is far flakier and far less elegant than Windows and especially macOS. KDE's a little less flakey than GNOME, I suppose.
- A lot of the apps you love don't exist on Linux.
- The Linux replacements for the apps you love are way less functional.
- Keyboard shortcuts are chaotic unless you spend a lot of time deep diving on how to configure them coherently across applications.
- Odd behaviors with snap/flatpak apps, but those will get worked out with time.
Pluses:
- The underlying Linux OS is rock stable with compatible hardware.
- You can customize your desktop pretty much infinitely, if that's your thing.
- Everything is free.
- Logging is, compared to macOS and Windows, excellent.
- If you're a developer, everything is more compatible on Linux.
Anyways, after a year, I went crawling back to my Mac. I still have a Linux desktop SSD in the PC, ready to go, but I rarely pop in anymore.
That said, if you live the terminals plus browser lifestyle, you won't miss much switching to Linux desktop.
Edit: for context, I used UNIX and Linux way before I ever used Windows or DOS. I have, in the past, done deep dives on Windows, Windows kernel, Windows and .net programming, etc. I just prefer *NIX.
A lot of the apps that I love don't exist on windows. Unix vs windows is like a very large and well stocked toolbox versus a set of nail clippers and a bent hairpin.
At some point in the next year or two, I plan to re-dogfood Linux desktop with i3 or Sway, as I effectively work in a tiled arrangement and it's far more stable than GNOME.
I don't really use Windows, but when I do, I'm pretty much in a web browser or WSL. I don't have much interest in the rest of it anymore, especially with the ruination Microsoft is committing.
While I've done a lot of Windows programming and PowerShell and whatnot, I'm a UNIX native, I'm old, and I'm sticking with some variant of it until EOL.
I had tons of apps on Windows, and all alternatives on Linux are better to me (IntelliJ vs. Visual Studio, VS Code the same, CodeLion). I had a MacOS stint in the middle of the transition, so maybe that's a difference.
But still: I'm not you, you are not me, and that's okay. I'm just proof that it is probably subjective, and not objective, what you describe.
And regarding the desktop OS experience: couldn't disagree more. But, as already said, probably taste :)
About this point, I switched to Ubuntu in 2009 after I realized that all the apps I was using in Windows XP were open source and available on Linux too. Some of them were actually Linux native and were much faster there, example: Gimp.
Battery life, display scaling, sleep & wake up issues, trackpad gestures, sound output, GPU-accelerated video playback... Just to name a couple of problems I hope not to encounter every time I decide to give Linux another chance, but I still do.
To fix them, you need to run some arcane commands, edit some config files, compile your own kernel, ... I don't know. I'll have something that "just works". I'll keep using Linux headless on a server, where it really shines.
At least you can fix them.
Also, sorry can't help the cheap shot: how is typing "arcane commands" any different than clicking on "gnostic glyphs"? Anything can sound complex if you want it to :)
I'm not disputing your experiences but it's so surprising to me. I exclusively use Linux on the desktop on numerous devices, some of which seem like prime candidates for the types of issues you mention, but I've not had any major problems in literal years, especially since switching to the zen kernel.
It's always a shame when people don't like the things you do I guess.
YMMV. Just yesterday, I discovered that the Debian installer doesn't include support for UFS drives, which have been available in laptops for 3+ years now.
(Explaining to my wife why I was returning the laptop I'd just bought wouldn't have been a great endorsement for "Linux runs out of the box".)
Coincidental bug report from mail list last week: https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.o...
And for myself, I'd rather pay for O365 than use Linux on the desktop. It is just so so so broken. High DPI is a mess, half the apps are only 60% complete, weird ass bugs (LibreOffice won't open spreadsheets it created half the time for example) and on top of that things break all the time on routine upgrades from power management to GPU drivers.
I say this as someone who actually spends most of the day SSH'ed into Linux boxes.
I've been trying for 25 years to get it on my desktop and it's nowhere near any commercial product in any way.
¹ both on Wayland and X11, so maybe we're really being lucky.
² mostly Dell Laptops, but also Lenovo
Dell? I have a cupboard full of ones I've murdered and a limping one. No thanks.
I use Remote Desktop to log into my home PC when I'm at work or away. No need to have a powerful laptop and no need to worry about laptop getting stolen.
Tried all the Linux alternatives (latest round was last year). Yes there are functional remote desktop solutions, where functional means it actually works. But they're not really usable on a day-to-day basis and none of them are anywhere near the RDP experience.
I see some developments on the horizon which make me a bit hopeful though.
Is it though? A friend of mine bought AMD RX 7800. He went with AMD specifically to make sure Linux compatibility is top notch given that AMD drivers are included in the kernel and developed by AMD developers. The result is that he cannot boot his Arch machine with it until he disconnects his monitor. Seriously. It just hangs forever [0]. Everything is up to date. Tried with NixOS and got same result. That's on top of other performance related problems he's encountered (mostly in Blender). Tried Windows to make sure the card is not at fault and voilà everything works correctly with no issues.
