Shit never works and I basically have to become a programmer and expert in CLI to get shit to work… until it breaks again. So after having to Google everything on how to do supposedly simple shit, I always end up going back to Windows and GUI’s because I don’t have time to become a developer.

I have to have a computer science degree to install a peice of software… I just wanna double click the installer icon. I don’t want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. And sometimes it’s different depending on distro.

It just doesn’t work. It’s a simple as that. Things are constantly breaking. When they do I look up support articles that are written in fucking Klingon and sent to the terminal to type in commands that always return some sort of generic error “command not found” or some shit because the solution is written for a different one of the 862700422 available distros.

I have no idea how to install all the different program types (flathub, db, appimage, etc.). Windows has exe. I click “install” and boom, it’s done.

Sometimes I try to remove software in the package manager and it acts like it is uninstalled but it’s still fucking there.

I can’t even select a file because there are no previews. Just a gazillion blue squares with names like “dlcosn_3947912947”.

And other reasons, but I digress. I don’t have time to learn a new career, I just want a computer that works.

Necessity. When most of the software you use is reliant on Windows it’s hard to make Linux your daily driver. That being said, the changes needed to make it worth it are already done in limited contexts. Steam deck is pure Linux, the user interface and everything is implemented in a way that the user does not have to deal with the complexity, but the underlying mechanisms for doing wonky shit is still there if you want to mess with it. It’s kinda the best of both worlds in that sense.

If we wanted a desktop experience to replicate that, you would just have to do the exact same thing. Abstract the user experience such that the layperson does not need to engage with the complicated bits, but leave them there for those that do want them. And arguably that is being done with some distros, but it’s just not quite there yet.

I think it comes down to my level of proficiency with computers. I’m a photographer and an artist. However, I am above average tech literate but with absolutely no formal training compared to anyone in the computer sciences.

When I use a Mac or PC I am a power user and most people think of me as very tech inclined there. I used terminal or command prompt for commands that I have learned from Google for a specific tasks and can follow most guides and tutorials online, but I can’t come up with strings of commands creatively to fix a problem.

With Linux, there’s all these weird little problems that might be unique to me and looking them up is really difficult and when someone says “oh it’s easy. Use the terminal” as if this incredibly confusing thing that I have zero fundamental knowledge of can solve my problem. A genuinely feel illiterate when I use Linux. I can write sudo though 🤷‍♂️

I feel like saying “just use terminal” is like telling a kindergarten kid to just use creative writing, algebra and calculus. The fundamentals have not been taught yet, I have no idea what to do.

When I learned Mac or PC, I was shown how to use a mouse, I could read and just clicking around and opening things and reading help files let me intuitively learn on my own what to do. With Linux, this way of learning achieves nothing. Maybe I can turn wifi on and off assuming it works when I install it.

And then when an update breaks everything and I have to mess around and terminal for hours or days between doing actual work, It’s a nightmare. The only Linux thing I’ve managed to keep running for years on end is a Synology. I use it for a bit of backup things but thank goodness the OS updates and app updates all work. Nothing is broken and I barely touch the machine. It just grabs my files from the network and backs them up. You should have seen how shocked I was when I was trying to install something on docker and it took days for me to realize I just type the name of the thing I want and it grabbed it from the web and installed it automatically. I spent way too long trying to figure out how to grab the actual package files and open them like installing something via an MSI file in windows.

It kept working.

Linux, every time, without fail, commits suicide after a few weeks/months. It’s never something big, always small stuff. A conf file which got fucked by a package. Init.d calls something stupid. Mbr bullshit.

And the same applies to get stuff to work. It’s not hard, but researching the issue and fixing it takes time. Those issues do not exist in windows.

It gets annoying. Windows, for all it’s shit has gotten more and more self repairing over the years.

I want to work. I want to play. Now, preferably.

You have ro spend some time making things work, I don’t always have the time.

Although I’m using WSL2 with Ubuntu because of the terminal.

I tried installing Zorin amd Pop_OS on my laptop, but the mousepad gestures, bluetooth, speakers, and a bunch of other small things didn’t work.

I just don’t have the time to tinker with it. I have an hour or two of free time a day and it’s hard to convince myself to spend it trying to get linux to work whenever I have windows that just works.

Plus, i found that people just weren’t helpful. Unlike some people, i didn’t come out of the womb knowing how linux works. I did research and fixed what i could, but some things i could’t fix. People were rude, condesending, and just not helpful whenever i would ask a question

Just not worth it for me at this moment

I find the community can be toxic at times; instead of helping newcomers or treating each other nicely, the community can be toxic and alienate the people they want to use Linux.

A few apps I needed didn’t work on Linux without a hassle and a lot of games I play with friends only run on Windows. I also found a lot of things were kind of a hassle on Linux, especially screen scaling. Fractional screen scaling straight up barely works and everything on my laptop screen was usually tiny.

I would totally go back when the experience is a bit nicer, I’m pretty frustrated with Windows. I think the Linux desktop experience isn’t totally ready imo.

Shit just works. I’m not dicking around looking for drivers and stuff. The way I use a computer I’m not really getting a benefit from linux

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 and annoying with forced updates has always lasted me years. Don’t get me wrong though I hate Microsoft but I need my games and I want reliability.

To me following linux guides has mostly ended in an unbootable system.

Quite simple: When using Linux, I tend to play around, try different stuff, switch distros every couple of month… When using Windows or MACOS, I just use it as is and don’t try to break stuff. And while I could use Linux quite easily without breaking it, my inner child prevents me from using it this way…

I just found every little thing so hard in Linux.

Screens, scaling, nvidia drivers, games… Even spent an hour on gnome trying to get my desktop background image to fill the whole screen instead of repeating to fill the space. Solution ended up being download an image editor and resize the image to be the exact same size as my screen resolution. Tried KDE and kept hitting 100% CPU bug

In the end I just wanted a pc that worked, so went back to Windows with WSL.

Seems a perfect combo. Do my dev in WSL, and the desktop just works.

However I’m getting increasingly frustrated at every UI change Microsoft make… Which is what made me try Linux in the first place. If Microsoft Win7 and early 10 was great, I wish they’d stop touching UI and just improve under the hood

I think the main difficulty with Linux desktops is this “all or nothing” approach to the OS.

Recently got a Steam Deck and most of the games really just work, but that’s a handheld where I play solo. On desktop I mostly play online with friends.
I really don’t want to constantly switch OS depending on the anticheat situation when we play something else.
And then there is software (fusion360, simhub) & hardware (3d mouse, joysticks, ffb wheel, maybe VR?) that just works on Windows.

So instead of maintaining Windows & Linux on dualboot I just stick with Windows on the desktop.
And I used Linux for a long time on my laptop (and can’t wait to ditch MacOS), still use it on servers, but the desktop is just a whole different beast.