Make posts and comments about how much better it is to spend a ton of effort.

Program easily and efficiently. Not having to wait 5 minutes for a window to come. Fast boot/reboot times (less than 10 minutes). Native support for many things without having to install them. Installing is usually as easy as running an apt-get command. Not having to kill update processes because they take 100% of your disk bandwidth and starve all your other apps.

Windows feels like an ugly and sloggy system with a ton of duck tapes. Only reason I use it on my gaming laptop is for games.

Linux on the other hand just works. Nothing fancy, but it's just what someone who wants efficiency needs.

If by adobe you just mean photoshop, that works fine on linux, or you can get the version of GIMP with the photoshop menus. Wider adobe, that's a vm.

MS Word, I reckon Libre's fine but YMMV, there's office 365 anyway.

Games as noted are mostly there.

Many torrented apps : If you mean the *arrs etc, they go fine, better even (more contained, safer) in docker

Android apps: We've had Waydroid for a while now.

Hopefully that puts the FOMO to rest...

Desktop customization; I am using KDE Plasma, and I have two panels: one on the right, which has a "task manager", and the top panel which has an app-launcher, pager, clock, cpu load, and the system tray. I don't know if you can even have two panels in Windows.

Modularity: Switch whatever component with whatever you see fit. You can switch out the desktop environment you're using, switch out the sound server, the init system, the bootloader, etc.

You can update flatpaks using a bash script, you can even make a command to update system packages and flatpaks, by just adding alias update="sudo pacman -Syu && flatpak update" to your ~/.bashrc file.

2. MS word (yeah, I don't like Libre and most of Libre Suit) it's not as good as MS suite, of c, but it's really bad.

Have you tried onlyoffice? Its interface is closer to ms office and an online version can even be self hosted and integrated with nextcloud or seefile.

It has apps for Linux and Android

https://www.onlyoffice.com/

Edit:

Here is the link to the standalone desktop app (not the online version): https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop.aspx

And here is the link to the supported OSes for the desktop app (incl download links): https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx

Finally, here is the link to the github repo of the desktop app: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors

Compiz Fusion wiggly windows/cube

1. sudo dd if=never_gonna_give_you_up.mp3 of=/dev/sda

2. Say "It's a UNIX system! I know this."

3. Make your capslock LED blink along with network activity using a built-in kernel driver

4. Fix bugs yourself

ssh (out of the box)

I found something I couldn't easily do on Linux...

I wanted to create a Shortcut to a GUI application directly on my Desktop on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04), and after fucking with Gnome extensions and googling multiple terms, I thought I was going insane. There is seriously no easy, standard, or simple way of doing that.

On Windows or macOS you can just click & drag to make a shortcut to a file, and then put the shortcut on your Desktop. Done.

On Gnome you have to manually create a .desktop file, fill it with the parameters to run the application (usually by opening a different .desktop file and copying & pasting the contents), ensure you also have Gnome configured to even allow desktop icons, and then copy the .desktop file to the Desktop.

The Gnome experience was the most-rigid, least user-friendly or user-customizable interface.

I guess the problem is that I shouldn't be using Gnome. I liked how simple & clean it is by default, but I hate how inflexible it is.

Possibly dumb question, but... can Windows pipe things? Like, can I pipe a grep to a text file, or send stdout to a text? Or, like, tee a command onto the end of a config? I don't use this a lot in Linux, but I have never done in Windows and literally don't know if it can be.

Upgrade without reformatting. Update without restarting.

Set one mouse to left handed and another to right handed.

Manage multiple windows efficiently.

Alt + click to move and resize the windows exactly the way I want. Also, throwing windows into specific virtual desktops is smooth, efficient, fast and you can use keyboard shortcuts to jump straight to the point.

If someone knows a way to do this on my windows work computer, please please please tell me. Sluggish window management under Windows is driving me nuts.

Enjoy my workflow.

It may sound glib, but I REALLY mean it.

Use the command line to do everything instead of using mouse clicks for everything. It's so annoying how much mousing you have to do on Windows even for stuff only admins/programmers would touch.

I think an important thing to talk about here is that Linux is not Windows. Which I know is an obvious statement, but I'll elaborate.

Most deskop/laptop users use Windows. Most deskop/laptop software is for Windows. The way that most people know how to navigate an OS is Windows-centric. Windows does what most people expect a computer to do. A lot of what your focus seems to be on is if Linux can do what Windows can. And while the answer is often yes, I don't really think it's the right question.

Do you want to use Linux? If so, use it. One of things you'll have to accept with that is that you'll lose access to some of those Windows specific pieces of software. Sure, there's wine and steam/proton and you might be able to get any given thing running. But it's not a guarantee you will be able to, or that it will continue to run. If you're really beholden to Windows software, you should probably stick with Windows. If you're willing to explore FOSS alternatives to the software you're accustomed to, even if it may not work the way you expect it to, stick around. And you should, because Linux is awesome!

My understanding is that the Windows terminal sucks? I don't know why, it just looks bad.

Your understanding is wrong. I've tried 8 different terminals on mac, arch and kubuntu, and I miss Windows Terminal every day. It looks good and the config is a pleasure. I don't expect Linux to look pretty, but MacOS had fucking awful font rendering and it's supposed to be this upmarket OS for moneyed pricks in black turtlenecks. Was everyone in unixland busy doing drugs while Microsoft was implementing anti-aliasing? Is clear legible type for losers?

Install quickly and without license hoopjumping.

Start/update your computer in seconds.

It's simple answer, my Linux (Arch Linux) is my OS with my choice what of app I have, faster, privacy (very important), just my, not from Windows or Apple, it's my choice what I will delete, install, use, how look my desktop... And my comp is ten years old and working like new.

Pulseaudio's networked audio devices are sick, and similarly getting your computer's headphones/mic on your phone by just connecting your phone to your computer over bluetooth is fantastic.

1. You can start applications from windows command line. Depending on the program you might need to provide the full path to the executable though. Eg: Start chrome.exe
2. Windows has a (preinstalled in Window 11, optional in Windows 10) software called WinGet that will update all recognized applications via command line. Covers stuff from Windows Store, and most popular software installers. Basically acts as a Windows package manager.
3. batch files, software like autohotkey... automation can definitely be done in Windows too.
4. You mean shortcuts?
5. Pretty certain you can defer updates until the time suits, but Windows is definitely more forceful in pushing updates than Linux. There are ways of turning off updates too, but probably not without third party software or digging in regedit blindly.
6. Rainmeter could provide something similar.
7. Do you mean Command Prompt, or Windows Terminal? Terminal is actually pretty nice, and very customizable, both in terms of theme and functionality.

I run Arch Linux (btw) and have a very neglected Windows 11 partition.

I have a command set up in linux using ddcutil that allows me to tell my second monitor to swap source from HDMI (Chromecast) to DisplayPort (PC) and back as desired. No clue how I'd do that in Windows.

If you wanna MS Office replacement, you can check out Only office, it looks nice, and also supports Linux iirc

I don't know what you mean with Adobe. It's a company not an application. Adobe Reader sucks and I don't need Adobe Pro, because I am able to use LaTeX.

Why I need a real distribution instead of a naked operating system like Windows is that it comes with ten thousands of preconfigured packages.

Then the system is transparent. I know what it does and can analyze it easily. When something doesn't work, I am able to find the cause. This is essential for me.

I don't need any shady antinvirus that hooks into the kernel, making the computer overall insecure. I generally trust the OpenSource community more than I trust Microsoft.

I also don't like ads on my system, except I subscribed to them. I pay for software and give devs money to keep projects running. But I don't want to see unrelated ads.