Following a long how-to to install/configure something, just to get to step 99 and have the command not work, and not being able to find the solution.

It crashes at random times without any forewarning. One moment I'm browsing lemmy, the next moment I get a black screen and the computer starts to reboot. Also sometimes after waking up from hibernation, the computer freezes, not even switchting off/on caps lock works in those moments. It doesn't matter which distribution I use, they all crash on me (tried Fedora, EndeavourOS, Debian). I guess Linux isn't compatible with my hardware, but I don't know how to fix it or where to start.

I wanted to dual boot linux and windows but installed linux on the wrong drive partition and wrote over all of my data. Decided i was too stupid for linux. To be fair that was 3 years ago, maybe ill try again soon

I left windows because of the unauthorized data stealing and forced updates. linux has been a god sent and haven't look back.

I've tried Linux a few times each time would seem to be good apart from gaming but every single time something I Didn't Even realise I did broke it completely. I'd say I've never had linux work for more than a few months.

With windows an install no matter how inconviant has always lasted me years. Don't get me wrong though I hate Microsoft but I need my games and I want reliability.

I want linux to work but for me it's always just broken randomally.

I reached a point in my life where I just didn't have time for things that don't "just work."

I tried to use Ubuntu for a bit but I just wanted to have regular Firefox with the built in updater, turns out this is way more of a hassle than it is on Windows.

It shouldn't be that hard to "install" a program like Firefox directly from a website but all you get is an archive thing that you have to manually "install" basically, it's tricky enough that someone wrote a tool just do do this: https://gitlab.com/Linux-Is-Best/Firefox-automatic-install-for-Linux

APT and Flatpacks are all cool but an offline installation should still be available and easy to use without being forced to use a terminal. Maybe I'm incorrect and I would love to hear about it but this is my experience.

Steam for whatever reason is basically installed the same way on windows as on PC in terms of user experience, you download a file and double click it. Maybe it's Mozillas fault? Who knows, it's frustrating in any case.

Two things: the Adobe Creative Cloud (which I hate but am totally dependent on) and better support for FreeSync with more than one display. Even with a 7900XT, which gets open-source drivers, graphics stuff is just easier on Windows.

When I've tried Linux in the past, it's way too much work with limited selection of apps. It's more of a toy to play around with. Learning all the command line stuff, editing text files and selling up jobs, etc. It wasn't for me.

Mind you, last time I seriously looked at Linux was when Red hat was still free. I know things have changed since then.

Linux desktops are horrible. I like linux servers a lot, I have several running in my homelab.

I used Linux Mint for several years on a dual-boot laptop. I rarely found myself booting Windows. While there was a learning curve, Mint was fairly accessible out of the box and was generally a delight to use. Until it wasn't. At some point, the drivers for my video card updated, and just flat broke everything. And I can't really use a computer on which I can't see the desktop. I waited. And waited. A fix for the driver may have eventually come, but after awhile, booting into Windows just became my default, until eventually I just wiped the Linux partition to recover the storage space.

It was fun while it lasted, and I may choose one day to give it another go for the fourth time. This wasn't the first time I've had something like this happen. First time was with Fedora, and the second was Ubuntu. Each time, I had the same "it worked until it didn't" experience, and each time it stopped working was usually some kind of broken driver making my hardware incompatible.

I got tired of having to endlessly maintain it, vs windows which generally just works (no fighting with audio drivers, wifi drivers, gpu drivers, suspend to disk works without glitching, etc) and i like playing video games without having to deal with wine. Still run linux on servers, and my work desktop and laptop are linux since we have an IT department which maintains it for me.

I tried to install a package and apt started uninstalling my desktop. Maybe if I didn't panic and hit Ctrl-C I would have gotten all the packages it was removing replaced with shiny new ones? I doubt it somehow.

All the customization you can do is neat, but after that I was pretty much done with fiddling with my OS and finding FOSS versions of stuff I was already used to and wanted something that would just work. These days I have a small form factor PC with Mint that I run some server apps on, but I'm holding off on making it my daily driver again until Microsoft really puts the screws on the consumer.

Every few years I try Linux again. At this point I've decided that when I can install linux, and use all of my hardware/software without having to open a terminal window, I'll try it again. Until then, I only use it when I'm paid to.

The inability to play most games.

The first time I used Linux, I couldn't get it to work with my NIC so I couldn't play Counter-Strike. Big nope.

The second time, it wouldn't work with my GPU properly so anything that used 3D graphics either didn't run at all, or gave single digit frame rates.

The last time I tried, Wine just wouldn't work with anything or would constantly crash.

Until Linux is just super easy, plug'n'play, "it just works" like Windows, it will never become my daily use OS. The only thing I would run Linux on currently are purpose specific machines using a raspberry pi or similar computer, a server, or my phone.

I used Linux for maybe 15 years and I have to say I absolutely love it. I even attended Fedora Flock conference, I was really into all the FOSS world. But at some point I guess I got really tired of editing text files on a command line and googling to solve specific problems or just plain OS settings.

I can't say that I don't miss it though and especially more now than ever the itch is there and I am curious to install and use Linux again, so I dunno..

I tried Linux mint, I really liked it but I needed Autodesk software and that don't work on Linux 😞

Sadly, just software compatibility - doing music with specific programs needed for assignments etc - If drivers and compatibility weren't an issue, I never would have switched. :) I will consider using Linux again full time if my current machine ever gives up though, now that gaming has advanced so much further. :)

I've used both regularly for years and went back to Windows when I switched to PC gaming and it's just so much better. Everything just works on Windows.

Linux really needs to work on improving its user experience if it wants to be a true competitor to Mac and Windows. All these little config tweaks and command line prompts you have to do to get things working on Linux just isn't going to win a bunch of people over who are used to things being a few clicks on a wizard to get working.

Edit: it's been years since I last tried Linux so maybe things have changed.

mostly because I had to stick on Windows for video games. and for now, the amount of effort I'm already putting into making Windows functional when it's supposed to work out of the box, makes me scared of going back to Linux. Mostly a worry about changing so many habits and diving back into the unknown

Reading a lot of these comments I think people are under the wrong impression of the current state of Linux. I think you'll have a better experience with a bleeding edge distro like Arch or Fedora.

A lot of your productivity apps are on Linux, a higher percentage of your games work than you think, and you could see a performance boost over windows. Plus there are multiple app alternatives that are even better.

I ditched Windows three years ago. 99% of my 450 Steam library works (yes AAA games) thanks to Valve with Proton. What doesn't? Call of Duty, because of invasive kernel level anti-cheat and I'm good with that.

Steam, Zoom, Slack, Teams, Spotify, Plex, Jellyfin, Discord are all on Linux.

Edit: Also there is no "look/UI" to Linux. It's your DE, and you're free to choose one, or a Window Manager. Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, i3, Awesome, Openbox, XMonad, Sway, Hyprland.

I need iRacing and the software for the rest of my sim rig to be fully supported. This means “SimHub” for my wind sim, the “SimRig” app for my motion actuators, “SimCommander” for my wheelbase, and there are a couple others like “The Crew Chief” etc. oh and whatever emulation layer for iRacing; as there’s no Linux version; would need to not get me banned from the anti-cheat software.

I put my money where my mouth was though! I used Manjaro+Gnome for 2 or 3 years on my main machine, dual booting Windows only to sim race. I quit Adobe and Maxon and switched to DarkTable and Blender for photos and 3D modeling. All my 3D printing software and slicers have native Linux versions. I used Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Dropbox (have since switched to NextCloud self-hosted). Docker was a dream and so fucking fast for web development. I still keep a Linux VM around just for Docker web development.

Here’s the thing… on not one but two occasions my machine refused boot to a GUI. I’m speaking as someone who uses server Linux daily for work, Mac OS daily for work, and Windows daily for play. If Linux distros and GPU makers don’t get their shit together IT WILL NEVER be the year of Linux on the desktop. Exactly 0 times has Windows failed to boot to a GUI for me (short of a hdd or GPU hardware failure) and Mac OS has also not booted to a GUI 0 times. As long as seeing a desktop on boot is not a 100% guarantee when running Linux, it’ll remain as something only nerds or enthusiasts do.

I love Linux, but I’d say it’s a safe bet to say I’ll never sim race or run iRacing natively on Linux short of Microsoft and windows disappearing from existence overnight. It just won’t happen.

For web development or 3D modeling and hacking around? Gimme Linux or Mac OS! WSL is like 99% there but no where as performant as the aforementioned. Also with WSL simple fucking things like networking become a proxy-firewall-ssh-tunnel nightmare.

Basically visual arts software and some writing software. Additionally I have a free version of Ableton Live Lite 11 (so one music-making application as well) that came with my keyboard.

I mostly do photography, writing, and other visual arts type work on my two computers. I use quite a few photography and painting applications (Photoshop, ArtRage, Rebelle, Lightroom, Inspirit, and a few others; I'm also looking at BlackInk), as well as Scrivener and MS Office when I'm writing. I don't know if any of those run well or at all in Linux or in Wine, etc. Also I stopped flirting with learning programming and there wasn't much point maintaining a Linux machine after that. I think Linux is better than Windows all around, and I hate Windows, but it's just because I use certain apps and from what I've heard and seen the Linux apps just aren't as good.

TLDR, creative software that won't run on Linux (to my knowledge, anyway).

Gamepass and Minecraft Bedrock mostly. Gamepass is something that I use a lot that will never work with Linux, and my friend group is split between console and PC for Minecraft so Bedrock edition works best for us. I still use SteamOS on my Steam Deck and enjoy it, but switching operating systems on my main computer just to play games is a bit excessive

I have been using linux, mostly Pop OS, for the last several years. Haven't really touched Windows since maybe Windows 8 came out. Very happy with linux.

I just bought a new laptop that had Windows 11 installed, and I was travelling, so I didn't do the usual format and install linux right away. I thought I'll maybe keep windows installed and then try to dual boot so if I need Windows for anything specific, I will still have it installed. And I thought I'll just wait a few weeks until I get home to do that.

But with the Windows Subsytem for Linux thing they have now, I have an Ubuntu install running inside Windows and it works really well. Connects directly with VSCode, Ubuntu has access to Windows filesystem, Ubuntu comes up as my default when I open terminal, Oh-My-Zsh installed perfectly.

I'm sure at some point I'll find something really annoying with Windows and just scrap it, but for now it's easier to just keep running Windows and access Ubuntu through it.

I got my wife a netbook when they were popular. It came with Windows 7 Starter Edition. Shit was kind of slow, but it worked. I thought about installing Linux cause people say it's lighter and faster. When I started looking up Linux there were so many versions. I can't tell the difference between a Mint, Cinnamon, KDE, etc. As a noob (I'm still a noob) I don't know which one to choose so I settled on Mint cause I liked the theme. After the install it was slower than Win7SE. VLC video playback was trash. At the time I was using Photoshop 6 and Gimp was a not so great alternative. In the end the experiment failed. The netbook ended up being donated to the sis in law (teen). Best thing about Linux is the ability to run it off a CD/thumb drive. I think I'm too use to Windows though.. It's not worth the headache to switch Operating System unless I have to. I won't switch to Apple/iOS cause I'm use to Android. I currently run Win10 on my desktop/laptop and Win11 on my wife's Surface laptop. I fucken hate how Windows is always asking me to sign on with their account. I probably switch to Linux if Windows ever goes full online subscription base.