Asklemmy

I like to use parsec to play games with my friends. When I found out Linux could not host parsec, that was a bummer for me. If parsec had compatibility to host in Linux I'd switch back immediately.

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 bought Skyrim for PC so that I could give mods a try. Wine was garbage at the time, and I wanted to use my computer to game. So, Windows it was.

Thanks to proton, I was able to switch to arch on my desktop for the last few years before my power supply died. At least I'm pretty sure that's what's wrong with it. I've been staving off insanity for a few months now with my steam deck. I got a dock for it a couple weeks ago, so I'm technically running an arch desktop again even if it is KDE.

Admittedly, it's been a long time since I did anything with linux, but I have done some. I'm not a developer, I don't know how to write any code. I know some DOS scripting and now some powershell. If I need to do anything slightly different with linux, it would require me to learn a whole new scripting language, and all of the documentation I've seen for anything linux seems to be written for an audience of people who already really know what they're doing in linux and just need a specific reference material.

I've had mainly Windows machines all my life, I have been forced by necessity to figure out how to do what I need on those. I imagine if I'd had linux machines since ... 1995? I would feel as comfortable with linux now. But the barrier to entry to even having a linux machine, let alone making it do what I needed it to do, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, was way higher than it was for Windows. It arguably still is.

@agelord

My main problem is that I have "legacy" games that don't work on Linux as well as Linux ports and native Linux builds being worse than their Linux counterpart.

#limuxgaming has come a long way and I'm curious and excited to see where it goes, but ease of use simply doesn't have parity. I want one click installs with identical performance.

The bigger issue with the #linuxdesktop in general is that no distro actually thinks about it as a product. 1/2

I dualboot both.

Windows for games with anti-cheat.

Linux for everything else. EndeavourOS is my darling.

Simple compatibility and useability. It works with nothing and handles like I'm trying to have a debate over single channel walkie talkies. Does your audio interface work? Probably not. How about your keyboard software? Nope, not that either. Well surely it supports the most common GPUs for AI, gaming, and content development? No, it's not officially supported. So when the only way you can use Linux without complications is just barebones equipment to edit flat text files or browse the internet in a web browser, you just ask yourself why bother when windows doesn't force me to the terminal when I want to solve a simple problem.

I rode in waves. Last time I switched back to Windows was just to play one game. As far as my life goes normally I'd do everything else in Linux so I dual boot. But I have 2 windows laptops for work and there's no getting around that.

Have a mouse? You need to find a driver Oh Is that a keyboard? Yeah you'll need to get a driver for that too. Oh you have a monitor now? Guess what?.. Yeah go find a driver. But wait, there's more. Oh you want to run that software? Yeah you're gonna need to search for an hour for some random file so you can run it.

Well, that was my experience about 4 years ago, no idea which distro, but I just upped, left and felt warm and cosy in my fat bloated windows 🤷‍♂️