Programmer and big Linux fan here. I use Linux for multiple servers/vm's. For a while I also had Linux on my desktop and using a Windows VM with PCI-passtrough for gaming. It works. However I came to the conclusion I was only using the PC for gaming (on the VM), and doing all my programming on my MacBook. So basically the Linux part on my desktop was just useless. Although I want to, I don't have any use cases for Linux on the desktop.

Edit: I do have a steamdeck. Love the thing!

It's more of a "why do I keep Windows on my main machine and only use Linux for my servers?"

The answer is two-fold

a) most of my games and a (dwindling) amount of productivity software are windows based. I know things are improving... But the fact remains that I am still literally invested in some software that is only supported on Windows (that pile is shrinking).

b) there are a few everyday tasks that are still just too frustrating to be practical for non-technical people. For example, why in the fuck do I need to deal with user and mod permissions for files on an external harddrive? I get why for system files, but for media files on an external drive? It's a level of pedantry I'm just not ready to deal with.

There is no AMD Adrenaline software so I can't properly use my AMD card

games just don't run as smooth and I can't use gsync with how xorg works, also everything on windows just seems to work unlike Linux. although I've been running a Linux server for almost a year for myself and I'm now quite comfortable with the terminal

Hate to say it but, laziness.. bought a new gaming laptop with windows 11. My old laptop was running Mint for a couple of years and I really loved it. Software wise everything I needed just worked.

FIFA23. 22 was working great on linux but they added a new DRM so the new one doesn't work anymore. Hopefully someone can get the next one to run on Linux so I can ditch windows again.

My pattern with linux is that I tinker with it until I eventually break it in a way I don't have the knowledge or skill to repair, and then I balk at the thought of starting from scratch again, so I just put windows back on the machine...

I use Linux full time now, with the exception of the Adobe suite, which runs in a VM right now and will be changed to a dual boot once I installed a second hard drive. I use GIMP and Inkscape where I can, but i need the big evil Corp software for bigger projects where the Foss software falls short.

If the software runs on Linux natively someday or a Foss alternative is on par, I will gladly make the full switch.

I think o went back because I wanted to play LoL? And I kind of became complacent?

I use autodesk products and other electrical engineering industrial products that require using windows. I'm mostly happy with being able to live in the mingw environment provided by git bash. Gives me most of what I need for a POSIX environment.

To switch to Linux full time I'd need to change jobs, lol.

Basically photoshop and games. I was dual booting and when I switched computer it wasn't worth reinstalling because I spent most of my time in windows. This was a long time ago.

Now that windows is moving into subscription basis I keep thinking I should try getting into linux again but I don't have the time to fiddle around making stuff work.

I'm actively trying to switch to Linux, so it's not from a lack of effort.

The main two reasons are Photoshop and scanning. I'm a photographer, and I'm scanning and restoring old photos of the family. There's no decent alternative to Photoshop, especially now that it has the neural filters, so editing and colouring photos is in a different league.

As far as scanning goes, I was getting better results in Windows 20 years ago. I've got an Epson scanner, and the software can automatically crop, as well as restore the colour balance of a photo. Using Linux, I was lucky to get more than a dodgy .bmp through an interface that would have looked clunky in the 90s. I could open it in GIMP, but then couldn't save as a jpeg without either exporting the file or installing addons.

On top of problems like these, there are issues that crop up because of an apparent need to be different to Windows.

My Xubuntu server won't let me resize windows unless I grab the top left corner. Any other edge of the window is apparently half a pixel thick, and too small for my mouse to register.

Smooth scrolling by clicking the mouse wheel has been replaced with the paste command, as if pasting into a browser window is something that people do dozens of times a day.

Mint's settings window constantly resizes itself, no matter what I set it to. I can resize it, open a setting then click back, and it's back to the default size again!

The universal paste keyboard shortcut, ctrl & v only works in some programs. Others need shift, ctrl, and v!

Silly little things like this spoil my workflow and take me out of what I'm doing. They're the minor annoyances that frustrate people and encourage them to switch back to Windows. Yes, they can probably be changed, but why were they changed in the first place? I could paste with ctrl v in DOS 6.22 and could trust a window not to resize itself in Windows 3.1, long before any modern distro was dreamed up, so why are the basics different?

I never tried Linux, but I consider it every few years. However if I weigh that

• O&O Shutup10 and group policies can remove all the telemetry and intrusiveness from Windows +
• most of my work involves Adobe products +
• my main hobby is gaming, with the vast majority of my games not having a Linux port

there are simply too many factors that would make Linux to be more hassle, have less performance or downright impossible to serve as a substitute for Windows, while for me personally not really offering any practical benefits over Windows.

Games (Blizzard and Riot) I have a linux laptop that I occasionally use. It is far better than it was years before, yet there are still occasions when it just does not work, or it refuses to update.

I could never get my bluetooth microphone to work under Linux, and I was having to input my password many times every day just to accomplish simple tasks. Couldn't even make the password into a PIN, that wasn't allowed for some reason.

Peripheral compatibility was my biggest issue. Most vendors just don’t make Linux versions. One that I couldn’t work around was my Razer Huntsman v2 Analog. While I was told about the open source Razer app alternatives, they were far from feature complete. My keyboard ended up defaulting to a profile where WASD emulated a controller instead, and the software didn’t have a way of changing it outside of windows.

Indie software is also a big miss. I play FF14. I use a Streamdeck with a custom plugin for hot keys. That is windows only. I use Teamcraft. Also windows only.

The problem is really one that I’m feeding into by going back to windows. There’s just not enough people on Linux to rationalize app development on smaller projects for it. I feel bad going to a one man Dev team and being like “Hey, you should stop everything and do this for just me, because no one else will use the Linux version”.

Could I work around some of these issues? Probably. Could I advocate for Linux software and put together my own alternatives? Probably. But by the time I’m done with work and just want to play a game…I don’t want to spend hours reinventing the wheel.

Ultimately windows is there, and I can make it do what I need it to do. While I’d love to use Linux, it’s just not a viable option for me.