Linux will never be anywhere close to plug and play for anything in the way Windows is, whether we’re talking games, applications, AD, etc… At least not for a very, very long time. Windows has about 40 years of development and is tried and true by the masses worldwide. You don’t have to be a master level 1337 h4xor to do anything in Windows, while you can’t do about 70% of what you can do on Windows with Linux without being an advanced power user.
Linux is great for some stuff, but unless there’s massive upgrades to where you can just hit “install” and something installs and works without fucking around in terminal, it will never see widespread adoption. Hell, half of my users can’t even figure out how to use a goddamn Mac, and that’s much more user friendly than any Linux kernel. You guys are delusional if you think otherwise.
Also, I’ve yet to see a single Linux kernel that is aesthetically pleasing on anywhere near the level of OSX or Windows 11… Or Windows 10… Or hell, 7, 8, and Vista lmao. Looks like a potato OS that was mocked up for some shitty low budget SyFy channel movie. Every single kernel I’ve ever seen. Even the ones that supposedly are “so nice looking bro I swear it looks better than 11 bro please why isn’t anyone switching to Linux don’t you guys want to learn a programming language to play games seriously bro it’s so easy it just works bro broooo.”
Dude I fucking hate those Linux ubernerds, and think that “looks shitty” is almost a Hallmark of your classic Linux application, but… you have no idea what you’re talking about. (…Also I don’t think you know what a “kernel” is.)
“40 year head start” is one hell of a fallacy. As if MS and Apple from 1983 are meaningfully related (in this sense) to what they are and do now.
The fundamental difference, anyway, is cross-platform compatibility. What percent of Linux users even use desktop office suites and shit like that? The desktop world has been moving to the browser for 15+ years and both Chrome and Firefox are practically identical on every OS.
Linux has a long way to go, but the stuff you were listing is madness.
I’ve yet to see a single Linux kernel that is aesthetically pleasing on anywhere near the level of OSX or Windows 11… Or Windows 10… Or hell, 7, 8, and Vista lmao.
The fact that you’re using the terms “kernel” and “aesthetically pleasing” in the same sentence (and equating that to GNU/Linux “Proper”) leads me to believe that you don’t understand what a kernel is. Or really know what you’re talking about, for that matter…
Agreed completely. After a fresh Windows 10 installation, and installing most recent drivers, I was able to download and play my Itch.io games after about an hour, hour and a half maybe. In Linux I have to make sure I get a properly performing or game optimized version of Arch, install Nvidia drivers, hope Optimus or whatever the internal/dedicated video card switcher is called now, install Lutris, hope the Lutris install script functions, install Steam, install Proton Glorious Eggroll version, enable Linux Proton beta and move GE to it, install Borderlands 2 and research why I’m getting 13-15 frames per second, do that for about a week, and then reinstall Windows. The above also is true for getting Pipewire and Wayland working for sound with my audio input device and lament that I didn’t get hardware that was tested beforehand to work with in-kernel drivers. Then find someone’s Github to install an interface because Pipewire broke itself or isn’t picking up my mic or broke itself with Discord.
Well I tried Ubuntu and Debian in the past, but according to testing that Photonic did, Arch was doing a lot better as far as gaming performance. It was a fun system to use, just could not get music or gaming working smoothly.
None of those are gaming related distros. There's Nobara, PopOS, Garuda, and many others that come with a bunch of gaming ready pre installed packages. Debian is like super stable, but it is that because it uses super old packages, which isn't ideal for gaming and Ubuntu is Debian based with similar issues, on top of its own issues. Arch is literally just the basic OS, that's what it is supposed to be. Installing Arch and then complaining that you have to manually install all those packages is just stupid because that's (more or less) the whole point of this distro. To have a very base line operating system without bloat. Not that it is that much of a task to install them, but yeah, it's obviously not something for some Windows bro who needs help installing a browser. If you cannot troubleshoot under Windows, then you'll not be able to troubleshoot under Linux, that much is for sure.
I don’t use a game optimised version of arch, I also use NVIDIA hardware, and I have no problems. I run a single monitor and have no need for Wayland at this point in time. X11 just works.
However, I game on desktops. My laptop is for work and that runs an Intel iGPU. It also runs Linux, without problems.
Just use nobara. Arch isn’t really for casual users who haven’t used Linux. Download steam and enable steam play for all titles in your settings. Proton ge isn’t necessarily always needed, but if you want it just download protonup-qt to easily install it. Use lutris for non-steam games, and optionally heroic games launcher instead of lutris for epic games. You make Linux sound complicated by separating every little step, as if multiple of those aren’t windows things too…
After a fresh nobara installation, and installing most recent drivers, I was able to download and play my steam games in an hour, hour and a half maybe. On windows I have to run a debloat script to optimize performance, make sure drivers are up to date, download the steam installer, click through the installer, download my game, then look up why random windows background services are randomly taking up CPU space. On Linux I just open discover, download steam, enable steam play for all titles, then download and play my games without any preinstalled apps and unnecessarily resource hogging background services.
while you can’t do about 70% of what you can do on Windows with Linux without being an advanced power user.
You clearly have no idea of what you're talking about.
Also, I’ve yet to see a single Linux kernel that is aesthetically pleasing on anywhere near the level of OSX or Windows 11… Or Windows 10… Or hell, 7, 8, and Vista lmao.
You also clearly have no idea what the fuck a kernel is.
What?? Are you criticizing the kernel (which you can but with actual arguments) or the esthetics of the UI which has absolutely nothing to do with the kernel? You don’t seem to understand what is a kernel
Linux is great for some stuff, but unless there’s massive upgrades to where you can just hit “install” and something installs and works without fucking around in terminal
You don’t even know what a kernel is, and I doubt you’ve seen any modern desktop environments. There’s nothing wrong with linux, there’s not development that needs to be done to fix it, the vast majority of issues I experienced were just a few windows apps or games not having good linux support. This isn’t a fault of linux, it’s the fault of the developers behind those apps and games. Also when I want to install something on Linux, I simply open discover and search for it then install. Anything not easily found in discover is most likely for more tech savvy power users anyways
I’d love to switch to Linux. I’ve used Linux off and on for almost two decades now. At one point I was triple booting Windows XP, Windows 7, and Fedora. The one thing holding me back is, strangely enough, game compatibility. I know Proton has made huge strides as I’ve seen it first hand on the Steam Deck, a lovely little machine. The problem is, I have a huge library, and while I’m okay with slightly less than ideal performance here and there on the Deck (40hz mode anyone?), I absolutely refuse to lose any performance due to running Linux. Benchmarks still show some titles losing 5-15% performance when running through Proton.
Don’t get me wrong. I love FOSS. I donate and try to spread the word as much as I can when I find a passion project, and find it particularly useful. Even though this may seem to go against what I previously said, I’m debating on switching to Linux when Windows 10 loses support. I do not want to enable fTPM on my motherboard or update my BIOS if I don’t have to. My PC is stable, no thank you. I feel like I’ll have to troubleshoot whether I choose Linux or Windows 11. Ugh.
You haven’t tried it recently. Every game I play works flawlessly and is just as good or you can’t tell vs windows. I’ve been back and forth for 20 years and now I’m 100% and have been since February. I love it, and I’m happy to have my OS be my OS and do what I want it to do.
Now, to be somewhat fair, I built my new PC with the plan to go Linux. I went team red and a single ultra wide monitor. I wasn’t sure about the single monitor at all at first but now, man I love it. I have it setup so when I hit the windows key I can pick a new desktop. The only thing I can’t do is watch video’s while I play games and it doesn’t bother me at all.
Seriously though, outside of work I kicked windows out of my house in 2020 and haven’t needed to go back. To be fair, my job doesn’t have any software requirements that would tether me to windows, but the gaming performance this year has been nearly flawless for the majority of my library, beyond anticheat some games actually run better on linux when you consider the reduced overhead in a lighter distro
God forbids you ever have to run a game with two or three frames per second less than on Windows. The horror! /s
Joking aside, DRM is the actual roadblock. And it’s not even Linux’s fault. Just stubbornness and lack of will from developers. Even then, it’s just a handful of AAA online games. For some, like me, it has zero effect in my enjoyment of games as I don’t play online competitive games. Every other piece in my library actually runs better on Linux no matter how old it is. As Wine/Proton holds a better backwards compatibility than windows 10. Games that no longer run on windows still run on a modern fully specced Linux. No hassle involved. And some modern games actually run as fast or better than on windows nowadays.
Very interesting perspective. It’s almost arguable that you may be better off keeping a legacy Windows 10 machine and adding a new Linux-based machine for new titles. At this point, most games pretty much just work from my experience…
Benchmarks also highlight a number of titles actually performing better under Linux than native Windows, especially where Vulkan is concerned. My gaming performance under Linux is fantastic, the advancements in the last five years alone have been astounding.
I like Linux a lot, but saying you can’t understand why someone would run Windows on a server just shows a lack of knowledge. Linux is great in a lot of server applications in the application realm. However, it doesn’t get close to the power of Active Directory and Group Policy for Windows device management. Besides that, a lot of people are more comfortable with a UI for managing DHCP, DNA, etc in a SMB environment. Even if they prefer a command line for those tools PowerShell allows those people to coexist with those that prefer a GUI. Under certain circumstances, (mainly ones where a business is forgoing AD for AAD), Linux can be the right choice. Pretending that there’s no place for Windows Server, though, is asinine.
Yeah, and Linux still doesn’t have a good answer to AD for managing suites of end user machines. Linux has a lot going for it - but windows isn’t strictly inferior or anything.
Honestly, the entire AD suite with auth and everything else built in is genuinely a good product. And if what you want is supported by Microsoft, their other services are decent as well.
Every time someone mentions that Linux has no alternative to AD, someone mentions an alternative.
But somehow it’s a different one that’s mentioned every time.
Notice how you’re ignoring the machine management and selectively choosing to focus on the user management. User management might be fine with Linux, but machine management can’t compete with GPOs, especially for managing Windows clients, which is what businesses are using for workstations whether we like it or not.
The main problem are companies forcing windows servers and technologies when they are not the good ones for the task.
If one needs to set up desktops for accounting, windows is fine. But I saw companies setting shared NFS drives used by Linux severs on windows machines! Not joking!
I know companies that even deploy kubernetes clusters on windows servers!
Just because finding cheap windows engineers is easy, everyone has had an experience on windows to put on a cv. Than some of that cheap labor go up the hierarchy as head of a random infrastructure team because all good sys engineers moved to manage linux servers after some time, he recruits people like-minded, and in few years you ends up with a team refusing to do the right thing because “we know windows and windows can do the same as Linux and Microsoft is good for governance and Linux bad”. Execs don’t understand the difference and force architecture to go along because they don’t believe it’s worthy to rebuild a team, we are anyway using windows for accounting and execs laptops, it can’t be that bad! Even accenture and mckinsey consultants us it! And they told us that wls2 is the holy grail
Corporate IT is the peak of suboptimal tools for the job because politics and money
This community is very much a “Windows bad” community. I personally find that annoying as I use Windows and Linux. Both have their pros and cons. Windows though is seen here as the shitest OS out there which far from the truth.
PowerShell is amazing and I install it on my Linux desktop.
We use both. Its not my department but i know the server guys are using windows for some servers and linux for others and the decision is normally made based on which is going to be best for the specific needs of the function of that server.
Pretending one is outright better than the other is childish. Just use whats best at the time.
Isn't the CPU support reason solely specific to a new feature Windows 11 was going to use, and you can just use Windows 10 while it's still in support? Plus Windows 10 knows this and won't even try to update your PC to windows 11?
It's not a really strong argument when most hardware drivers are made with Windows in mind first, and maybe someone is going to write up a Linux driver if they're interested. I mean Linux went for years having to do some hack&slash solution to broadcom drivers until they were finally added in. That affected at least 2 laptops in my lifetime.
I will stop to say that currently, I think Linux is in a good spot. But you can't just pretend the issue absolutely doesn't exist because your specific setup works.
I don’t think people are pretending Linux is perfect. More people than expected though, are simping for windows despite the fact that the money and energy spent on it truly ought to have led to a better product than what we got.
Oh no, I believe no one is under any delusions that Linux is a perfect OS that does everything well and has no issues (well, beyond a few nutcases). It’s just that on Linux you CAN solve issues, you CAN find causes, you CAN solve things, and in general once it works, it just keeps working indefinitely. Compare this to windows, which has new mysterious shit frequently, that breaks in unfixable ways to the point that even now the standard troubleshooting procedure is still the three Rs: Reboot, Reinstall, Reformat, and which frequently pulls the rug on you related to support of both hardware and software, all the while being full of telemetry and ads.
Agreed! I was talking to someone last night about revitalizing their laptop with Linux and they asked me how much RAM they needed. I checked my pop os machine ram usage with no apps running, just under 4 GB. Then checked windows 10 after closing like 10 autoloading programs. 9 GB. Windows is bloated af. It’s honestly a miracle it runs.
In the last five years, I’ve run Linux across a vast range of differing hardware, and I’ve encountered no more issues regarding driver support than I have under Windows.
I simply attach the hardware, and it works. At most I installed NVIDIA drivers via my package manager, which was simple and painless; or I downloaded the drivers as .Deb’s for my Brother printer and installed them quickly and easily using the supplied script.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with such experience.
That just means you didn't use the hardware that had the issues. Which is entirely possible given the nature of hardware issues. It happens all the time on Windows as well.
I officially switched my desktop and server to Linux. If I could switch my work computer I would. I bought a MacBook Air recently because I didn’t know Linux laptops were getting so popular. But I like the Mac and can still do some Linux like stuff in the terminal.
Good luck getting that past IT’s radar. Most corporate machines run fully encrypted disks and safe boot. Any competent department has their machines in lockdown.
Yeah my big issue is the software we use is all windows based. I don’t even technically need to use my work laptop to do most my work so I considering just a windows VM on my desktop
I tried to daily Linux on my laptop but gave up because it didn’t support the fingerprint reader or the speakers. Windows 11 drains the battery faster and feels sluggish more often.
I’d suggest Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC if you’re sticking with M$. It’s the least bloated and least intrusive modern OS. You should see improvement in battery life and your devices can use the same drivers. The official MSDN ISOs aren’t hard to find. Then find “massgravel” on GitHub and you can pretty easily figure out permanent activation via HWID.
I’m taking it as an opportunity to learn win11 since I have to deal with it at work. My plan is to buy a Framework or System76 laptop down the line and give Linux a second chance as my daily driver.
That makes sense. My Win 11 skills are definitely lacking. They are going to drag me kicking and screaming. I’m holding out for LTSC before I install it on a test rig (to play with at home). I only run 10 and Debian at the moment.
Linux is just all around snappier for me than windows is. I never have to wait, but on windows there are always delays opening windows and for some reason it will keep trying to generate thumbnails.
I really hate using windows. I’m a worse worker because of it. I’m just waiting for the m3 Macs to switch.
Sadly, my work stuff does not work on Linux. So I have a second computer for most of my work.
Yeah, this is what I don’t understand about windows. I get that as an IT professional, I don’t have a much of patience for sluggish system and that average users might not care that much about system responsiveness, but from my anecdotal experience, it has started to bug the average user too.
Even on a high-end device, windows just doesn’t feel smooth at all. And for some reason, it seems to get worse with every major release. How can you be a major industry leader, have users with more and more performative hardware, but your software seems to perform worse and worse?
There’s not a lot of things that stupid people can say, that would genuinely frustrate me, but when you make uneducated, factless statements, and then decide to fanboy about something in the same sentence, that genuinely frustrates me
I'll probably transition my AMD 8350 build over to Linux when Win10 stops being supported. As opposed to my mom's FX-8370 build, which I'll probably just have to replace with a new Windows 11 system, as there's no way I'm expecting her (an elderly woman) to learn anything other than Windows. Especially since she's reliant on Windows-only apps.
The actual hardware she's using will probably be converted to a Linux Desktop, but I'll have to migrate her data to a new mini Windows 11 PC or something.
Absolutely! I got a little Ryzen 5 box with 64GB RAM and 1.5TB of SSD for, like, $500 ($300 base 16GB+500GB, IIRC?). I’ve been used to XPS laptops as my daily drivers for several years, my most recent being less than 2 y/o. It is absolutely shocking to me how much better that little Ryzen is, for how little money.
I haven’t checked power consumption on it, but at this point I’m seriously considering just packing one up with a small LCD, a BT keyboard/mouse, and a honking 20k amp battery when I travel, instead of taking the laptop.
It’s a CPU/GPU combo chip, and the GPU doesn’t have separate memory. So some % is reserved for the GPU.
Beyond that, I hate swapping. I never, ever have to worry about running out of RAM. I can run multiple Electron apps at the same time. Originally, I thought I’d be running Gnome or KDE, both of which are memory hogs. I can even run Java apps if I like
It’s freeing, really. And given that it was, like, $100 for two 32GB modules… why not?
It is absolutely shocking to me how much better that little Ryzen is, for how little money.
I just replaced my older i7 CPU with a newer AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and it’s just absolutely RIDICULOUS how much faster this 3D V-cache (L3 cache) is when running Linux. It’s just crazy, even when doing computational fluid dynamics (CFD, which is my field of work). Intel’s Xeon Silver/Gold/Platinum series processors cost THOUSANDS of dollars, whereas this Ryzen processor is $320. TWICE as fast as Xeon Silver doing the same CFD work.
I ❤️ AMD. RISCV may win my heart, but we’re still a way out from comparable performance.
It’s the threads. The 5 has 12 CPU threads, which plays really nicely with concurrent applications. Go - and other languages which make threading easy and which take advantage of the architecture - really shines. I love it.
I know someone (86 yeard old) that never had a computer before her mid-70s. I built her several Xubuntu machines over the years, and she manages getting online, social media, e-mail and solitaire games just fine. She didn’t need much teaching from me at all. And it goes without saying that support requests are very rare and I’ve never had to reinstall her system because of some malware ate her files.
Linux has always been my go to for that specific use case as well, and I honestly have very little Linux experience. Linux just makes bizarre half broken hardware, like bad ram, work.
Correction: POP!_OS has their own APT deb farm that has the latest hardware stack. This includes the proprietary 535 nvidia driver and later as well as the kernel and mesa.
This is part of the history of the distribution as it was made to support system76’s latest hardware lineup on top of an Ubuntu base.
Nouveau is the libre driver for Nvidia on GNU/Linux with Nvidia slowly segregating their proprietary driver into a firmware blob.
Elementary OS didn’t work for me (broke during install – people online said it was video drivers), and on mint and Ubuntu gaming wasn’t working exactly right. In pop os 85% of my games run though
The first thing I installed windows on was an discarded office tower that I had to put new memory And hard drives in. Shit was ancient and specifically did not want anything but windows installed on it. Installed Linux anyway. Works great. No specific hardware
Linux has its flaws, but so does Windows. And for me, the flaws in Windows became much more annoying than the ones in Linux. Game compatibility was the main factor that kept me backt from using it on a desktop, and that's a non issue nowadays.
Why would you buy that? Overpriced and with that case it's no wonder that things get toasty. There's like fuck all for airflow. If you want a case with wood accents, there's the North from Fractal Design, which have great airflow thanks to their open fronts.
I'm just calling out those idiotic cases that completely choke your hardware of air. You want an open front (or similar depending on the form factor) to get a bunch of silent fans in to let your system breath properly. Bad airflow will just cause your temps to rise, which also severely increases the noise.
Designed, built and materials sourced in the USA, and high attential to details. Their own back plane for SATA connections and custom board for controlling thermals. All open sources designs. imgur.com/gallery/UfVBDWI
I’m not American, but system76 is an opensource company and actually builds a very good products and their own OS. I would choose USA built also because I’m Canadian and reduces chinese components and possible slave labour. Not sure why you care so much about my choice. lol
It just sounds very weird for non Americans to value "made in US" labels so much. America doesn't actually have that kind of product reputation, except for maybe fighter jets.
They don’t have to have a reputation, some people just want to support more locally made or sourced products than relying on China as the worlds factory for too many reasons to list. System76 has been building PoP!OS with good gaming and hardware support, they have also spent a lot of time doing proper airflow analysis, to maximize airflow without over revving the fans, and as somebody who values opensource as well as they have been opensourcing all their hardware designs so if you wanted to take their CAD files you could build your own case , keyboard, etc you could
Because it’s open source i.e. fully upgradable and repairable, and the mission behind the company is something I would want to support.
It’s a prebuilt company that doesn’t use proprietary garbage to force each and every customer to buy an entire new system when their original purchase starts to become obsolete.
I don’t own anything from system76, I’ve built my own my whole life, but I still believe prebuilts should be for people who can’t build their own, not a timeless and somehow socially acceptable way to scam your customer and still have them come back for more
That doesn't make sense. Many hardware stores offer an assembly of your hand picked hardware, which gives you 100% control over the components and actually fair prices, as well as the option to use a more sensible case. Of course it costs a bit extra to let them do that and you have to buy everything in one store, which might be more expensive than spreading it out, but it is still better than 90% of those prebuilt systems.
And nothing there is open source, you can install Linux on any computer you want, regardless of where it came from. They just save the Windows license costs.
Are there prebuilt desktop PCs that aren’t? I have personally yet to see one, even though I build my own. Maybe some small form-factor office rigs would be a hassle, but those are not really marketed to usecases where upgrading makes much sense anyway,
I’m still dualbooting Windows to play games with a controller until I can get off my ass and buy a USB hub. Reason being that the Xbox Series controllers has issues with my mobo’s Bluetooth chipset, even when updating the firmware. Bluetooth support is particularly inconsistent with these.
But outside of the odd app that needs Windows (and I can just boot a VM for that), Linux has been really good on the desktop.
I invested in an Icy Box IB-AC6110 powered 10 port usb hub a while ago too, but it is more for additional controllers, specifically joysticks and the likes. Mainboards just don't have enough USB ports for all that. Dual sticks or a hotas? Two gone. Maybe some pedals? Now it is 3. How about a camera and a head tracker? Well, 4-5 depending on your product solution. Defo gives me some peace of mind to be good on USB ports.
Again, this community is delusional lol. If you consider only about 5% of Steam games being Linux-friendly these days as “a non issue nowadays,” I’d hate to see your game library.
I game on linux regularly, primarily thanks to Valve. In the last 2 months steam lists 11 different games I’ve “Played Recently”.
7 worked flawlessly (Baldur’s Gate 3, Destroy All Humans!, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Besiege, Deep Rock Galactic, Shotgun King, Call of Cthulhu)
1 the native linux version doesn’t work, but the windows version works perfectly (Northgard)
1 didn’t initially work, but worked a month later after proton was updated. (Grounded)
1 I had to choose an older version of Proton (due to the external launcher breaking things), but with enough performance hitching during cutscenes that I chose to just play it on windows (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order)
1 I couldn’t get to work, but I honestly don’t know if it’s a linux issue because the game’s discussion forums are full of people saying the game is riddled with game breaking bugs on windows (The Sinking City)
I’ve been gaming on linux for a couple of years now, over that time I’ve put many hours into WoW, Sea of Thieves, Rimworld, Golf with your Friends, Core Keeper, Outer Wilds, and dozens more without any issues at all. 90%+ of the time the game starts up and just works.
I’m just one datapoint, but yeah, Linux as a gaming platform is totally viable for me these days.
Also, protondb lists 19% Verified and 16% Playable, so your 5% number is just demonstrably wrong.
Not sure why you’re getting down voted, you’re totally right. I wish I could have gotten it running on current proton as the recent performance updates are massive. Alas, EA Play ruined it. I found a GitHub issue for it and gave as much data as I could to help debug it.
Side note, when I ran the game on windows, EA Play was not only installed, but automatically configured to launch on startup. I just can’t imagine an app ever doing that to me on Linux.
Most of what you are missing out on are games that require some form of anti cheat. Most other stuff just runs. Most new triple A games just run these days.
Again, this community is delusional lol. If you consider only about 5% of Steam games being Linux-friendly these days as “a non issue nowadays,” I’d hate to see your game library.
Speaking of delusional. You don't seem to have a whole lot of ideas about Linux gaming if you truly believe this ignorant nonsense.
79% of my library has a Silver or higher rating on ProtonDB, 65% are Gold or Platinum rated. For the Top 100 in Steam it's even better with 89% Silver+ and 79% Gold+. Of the Top 1000 Steam games it is 87% Silver+ and 75% Gold+. Even if we look at the entire Steam catalog we have 13% & 11% respectively, and that's only so low because there's literally just no reports. Only 1% of the titles are considered to be "Borked", another 1% are Bronze rated.
You can check the data for yourself here: https://www.protondb.com/
And again, that's just Steam and what has been tested by people. Most titles just run, others require minimal tweaking, some require a little tinkering.
DRM isn't really an issue. The main one that's used nowadays is Denuvo and that has no issues with Linux. Anticheat usually only for competitive games, which I personally don't give a damn. Other multiplayer games and their anticheat work fine, since they aren't on a kernel level type rootkit.
The only games that don’t work are essentially the ones using DRM/anticheat implementations that don’t support multiple platforms. Meaning more like 75% of all Windows titles work under Linux just fine.
For me it’s the basic things that drive me crazy in Windows: the Start menu doesn’t work half of the time, and it shows web results above the program you want to run. File operations are slow and the File Explorer crashes a lot. Application windows constantly steal focus from the one I’m typing in, leading to passwords being typed into code, documents, web browsers or other unsafe places. Background indexing is constant and eats up CPU, and the file search still takes forever despite all this indexing.
These are all basic things that Microsoft has had decades to get working, and they’re all still broken. Microsoft always seem to be paying attention to anything but the quality of the user’s experience.
Man that MS indexing is so terrible. I shut it off because it was robbing my system when trying to work, and as you said it is slow anyway. Compared to GNOME desktop where the indexing is invisible to user, I hit the Suoer key type a few letters it instantly shows me results as you would expect indexing to work.
I always see people say this but does no one here use professional apps like solidworks or revit? Are there good Linux alternatives? I’d switch to Linux but I need solidworks for work I do.
Windows is the defacto standard for desktop PCs for a reason. In a corporate setting it’s kind of the ideal.
Because of the sheer number of users, most software is built with Windows in mind and therefore has the most support. It’s pretty rare that you find an application that doesn’t have a Windows build available.
On top of that tools like Active Directory, and group policy makes managing thousands of machines at scale a reasonably simple affair.
Microsoft is a corporation rather than a community so you can always expect their main goals to be profit-driven and that comes with some nasty baggage, but it’s not enough that it’s easy for professionals to make the switch.
Linux has made lightspeed progress over the last decade, especially with Proton making games mostly work cross platform, but outside of specialist use cases, the vast majority of business PCs and by extension home PCs will be running Windows for the foreseeable future.
The popularity of Windows is largely due to the fact it’s pre installed on most PC’s when you buy them, people literally think Windows ‘is the computer’. Such popularity has little to do with Windows being a great OS. In many ways Windows is like McDonalds: It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, it just fills that hump in the bell curve.
Due to the fact Linux has no marketing department, it’s unlikely this will ever change.
Windows comes pre-installed on PCs when you buy them because it’s what people are generally comfortable using, because it’s what they use at work too.
And Windows is used on business PCs largely because of how manageable they are at scale. Windows is expensive. Like, really expensive. If you have 1000 PCs that have Windows and Office E3, assuming a bulk discount, that’s an up front cost of ~$200000 with the subscription costing an additional ~$20000/month. If it was feasible for business to change to a free alternative, I guarantee they would’ve done so.
You’re right in that that Windows is not some super great OS, but it does some things way better than anything else that make it an ideal choice for business use.
And Windows is used on business PCs largely because of how manageable they are at scale.
… Linux being manageable at scale is kind of the reason why Linux is the standard for servers. Many enterprises run Linux workstation distros, and they can be managed at scale just fine, it’s just different tooling. You can deploy a Linux desktop OS with Ansible as easily as a Linux server.
You can replace pretty much the entire Office suite with Nextcloud and OnlyOffice, both of which can be easily hosted on-prem, for a fraction of the cost of paying MS for roughly the same thing on their awful infrastructure.
If it was feasible for business to change to a free alternative, I guarantee they would’ve done so.
They have. Just because you haven’t heard about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It’s pretty easy (and inexpensive) these days to run Linux desktop OSes like RHEL, Debian or Ubuntu on a VM running on Proxmox or OpenShift, complete with multiple monitor support and GPU. Hell, you can even run a Windows VM if you want. All you need is a system (like a thin client) with enough grunt to run a browser, and enough ports to handle multiple monitors and USB accessories.
And businesses aren’t interested in “free”, they’re interested in support, which they are willing to pay for. This is how companies like Ubuntu, Red Hat and SUSE make their money. The OS is free, but you can pay for professional support.
No, Windows comes preinstalled on most PC’s due to clever marketing. As stated, it’s more a case of people thinking Windows is the computer as opposed to any form of comfort regarding a fragmented touch/desktop UI making poor use of screen real estate.
I come across a number of Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa types that outright struggle with Windows; the device they feel comfortable with is the iPad.
The possibility does exist. I think the Adobe CC hasn’t been released under Linux for a similar reason, as Microsoft and Apple know that should Linux get the Adobe CC, people will flock to Linux.
A number of years back Adobe accidentally released a slide showing the Adobe CC running under Ubuntu, but strangely the product was never released on the platform.
I work in software and I haven’t touched windows in a very long time. Even back whenever I worked on FPGA development all of that software ram on Linux, so I think you’ll find that this is very field dependent.
Closest thing I use to a professional app is DaVinci Resolve Studio on a distribution that is not officially supported by Blackmagic. Not only does Resolve Studio work perfectly, I am able to use Blackmagic hardware (Intensity Pro 4k, Speed Editor) without having to mess around with settings, config files, permissions, packages, etc.
The caveat here is the initial setup: I use an AMD GPU, and it’s a bit of a pain to get the free and licensed versions of Resolve working with those under Linux. However, once that’s out of the way, it’s completely seamless.
As for CAD…yeah that’s where everything falls over. There are tons of FOSS alternatives out there but I have yet to see any of them in a professional setting. Even Fusion360 is hit or miss under Wine, I spun up a Windows VM just to use that for my 3D printer tinkering.
Windows with WSL became a lot better to what Windows used to be but with the TPM requirement Win11 became factually less compatible that modern Linux (at least without fiddling to override that requirement).
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