I just don't care that much about my OS as long as it runs the programs I need it to run, which windows does and Linux doesn't.
Is a different paradigm. The way you do almost anything is different from windows, from updating drivers to downloading programs. It's frustrating in the same way driving in the wrong side of the road can be frustrating, or going a whole day using only your non dominant hand.
I've tried to convince a couple people over the last few years to convert, and their issues always baffle me, until my brother tried for a week and I finally understood. It's just unlearned everything they've been doing for years, to do things a different way.
Well lets look at what i did to switch to linux. It was about 2 years ago and I was still using windows 8 since I didn't all the spyware in my operating system. I went with linux mint first since it was stated to be super new user friendly. I was so new to linux that I had to ask what neofetch was and how to use it. It was easy to use but I mostly just use web browser, steam, and libre office, which I had been useing libre office for years before that. Linux mint made a very frictionless new user experience. But I still needed that motive to move onto to something now. For me that breaking point was windows just having so must spyware in the os. Rather then using windows 10 or 11 I held onto window to windows 8 and then moved onto linux mint.
I hope that snaps, flatpaks, AppImages, etc., will make a big difference in terms of adoption and ease of use. As @Millie@lemm.ee said, if complications arise while trying to install or use software, then you're basically screwed unless you have a really good tutorial or deep knowledge. I've been using various Linux distros as daily drivers for the past ~10 years, and in that time, I still haven't figured out why there's such a big emphasis on compiling software. Your average Windows user has probably never even heard of compilation let alone been required to compile software in order to use it. For better or worse, the emphasis in Windows is on shipping binaries that the user can simply double-click to run. And if we want to reduce frustration for new Linux users, we can't expect them to know how to compile software. Snaps, flatpaks, and AppImages definitely move us in the right direction even if there's a lot of internal debate about which of those is best.
It's also nice to see big flagship projects like Gnome finally really taking off in terms of quality. Of course, the Gnome desktop environment won't appeal to everyone aesthetically, and it's generally much more resource-intensive than Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE, LXQt, etc.; but distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop!_OS, etc., look really great and work really well out of the box for most people. Same with Linux Mint. And I personally don't care for KDE, but it's another DE that's pretty solid.
Maybe give an immutable OS, like Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite a try?
The idea is that it's very hard to break the system, because apps are containerized, so they don't 'touch' the system, and updates take effect only on reboots.
If update is broken, it won't apply. And you can always rollback to previous state, if you don't like something.
You don't need to install stuff from the terminal, and you can install them from a GUI 'store'.
I have used Linux for around 10 years. My daily driver has changed a couple times but I always go back to Mint. I think its better than Ubuntu personally. Its what I always recommend and I've been a sys admin for 5 years and dealt with production environments across all the core distros.
All that said it really depends on what programs you are using. Some have alternatives sure but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you will have a program that just pins you to Windows until you don't need it anymore.
You should list out what things you use that you need. Take some recommendations on their alternatives or how to set them up in Linux and see if it sounds like it'd work for you.
Pretty simple, really. Buy a console for gaming, or a separate machine for gaming. I don't game, the joy of that died with the loss of lan parties and Tribes II.
Choose a system, make it your daily driver for work and home, and you will form the habits and muscle memory. Don't and it will remain a struggle to some degree or another.
I simply know where the settings are on Windows. I can find almost all stuff in the settings, I can fiddle with the registry and I can do narrow searches if I do need to look something up. I also understand how and where programs on Windows save their files. On Linux I have only very little experience.
I've been daily driving Pop on my laptop and my biggest frustrations currently are lack of working drivers for the fingerprint reader and speakers, and the Proton VPN client is crap compared to Windows.
Does proton support wireguard? That has first-class support on Linux.
Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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