I'm not trying to make much of a point other than that: anecdotes aren't going to get you very far.

My problems with linux have nothing to do with the quality of the OS itself (which I personally haven't had many issues with), but rather with software support from companies that don't want to put the engineering effort into making their linux version as good as the windows version. And I can't really blame them, but some software I just need.

Your intuition was right.

Learning to fix issues in Linux gives you long-term transferable valuable skills in troubleshooting and far-reaching knowledge. Learning to fix Microsoft's latest fubar gives you nothing, unless you're in corporate IT fixing other people's computers.

You'll become more confident and niggles won't bother you that much.

1) Fedora is really worth a try, it's extremely polished. The best thing is the packages in the repo are generally much more up to date that debian based distros, which maeans less random PPAs to work around it, which cause issues.

2) The biggest change is having Claude Code/Codex able to diagnose and tweak things extremely quickly. If something goes wrong, I ask claude code (in a specific folder with various docs about workarounds) and it goes and fixes it 99% of the time very quickly.

Coding agents being able to fix Linux actually makes it _more_ stable than Windows for me. In my experience Windows is less buggy _in general_ than desktop Linux.[1] However, once you hit random issues you are basically screwed if basic attempts don't work. With Linux you can have a coding agent go thru all the reams of logs to find the issue and even clone the underlying source code to find issues.

[1] For example, there is some ridiculous problem with wayland and notifications on GNOME at least, see this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/work_items/358?... which has to be disabled with an extension unless you want to go insane

Windows has a lot of annoyances and quirks, but generally it seems much more reliable that I'll at least be able to log in and look at the desktop, even when things are really messed up. The issues are usually just annoying, they don't stop me using the computer for basic tasks.

I'm using linux now, but I keep a separate windows machine just in case. It's already payed off, because my linux install is slowly breaking for no apparent reason. Sometimes the entire computer locks up completely, and sometimes after a reboot, the mouse won't move or will get stuck in a corner. I no longer try to fix these kinds of issues, I just re-install if things get annoying enough. But I've had the same windows install for five years now, and I've never managed to make a linux desktop last longer than a year.

(Yes, I know arch linux is not what you want if you're a "I just want something that works" person switching from windows. That's not me, I'm more of a "I want all the control and responsibility guy". I just don't have four hours to spend figuring out how to get hardware video acceleration working in vlc by trial and error the first time I try to play a video. Twenty minutes though? OK. I'll even learn something in the process.)

https://massgrave.dev/faq

WSL is okay but you are better going full Linux as host. Linux Mint is a good platform for most. Stable, keeping modern kernels updated, but not crazy bleeding-edge wastes of time.

You don't have to quit Windows but you can quit being hostage to Windows.

Does windows bloat bother you? It bothers me. Ever tried doing a windows install from something like tiny10 and then use the system? Nothing works quite right.

The rest of my argument as to why windows is less predictable than Linux is here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150812

And no, Gimp is not alternative. Neither Affinity, bucause lack of linux support. Or Capture One. Only DaVinci resolve is competition to Premiere because of linux support.

I'm curious if Adobe ends because of unsustainable pricing models and aggressive terms of use (no offline more than week, constant data sending to adobe servers) or because of Ai. Because post-production via complex tools will soon became obsolete compared to prompt-like editing.

FWIW I am essentially full-time Linux on all my devices for the first time in my 20 years since first using it (Ubuntu 6.06). The only issue I had is with a wifi card that is a brand-new spec without Linux support - I happened to have another wifi card that has a more open chipset that is also wifi7 that works great.

Here's my quick intro to anyone interested in running a Linux machine for gaming and everyday use.

https://docs.zeropolis.net/doku.php/tech:cachyos

If you have a problem open the agent and tell it, give it the access (after backup of course), let it figure it out for you.

Then when it has ask it what it did and what the issues were.

Doing this massively reduces the friction of even very advanced Linux issues that you don't have time to look at.

And at the end you can document the solution or turn it into scripts that you keep forever.

Missing : good old debian :)

I get that every person is different, so what works for someone might be dysfunctional for someone else. But I wonder if there's a growing tendency to over-emphasise things that aren't "perfect" or the perceived friction caused by different ways to approach or solve things.

Perhaps it's my own personal bias but the same way I like using Ubuntu, I think Windows is fine, as well as MacOs. They're fine the same way many other products I use are. Often, I struggle to find big differences between the stuff I use. I mean, I can see the differences (often small, rarely big), but I'm the same guy. I'm not that special.

At this point WSL2 is more than filling this void. I even stopped using VMWare since WSL is that good.

I decided I'd rather start from scratch on Linux than Windows for reasons of Microsoft's various decisions and direction. Windows essentially pushed me away by saying my prior experience was no longer useful.

It's a decision I'm frequently reminded of how good it was.

Instead of dealing with this I have taken to doing activities where I don't need to use the computer now. So for example photography is a major hobby for me. I went back to film just to get away from the bloody computer.

I've tried Windows a few times over the years and every time I regretted it. From nagging notifications, random restarts while I sleep (for "updates"), ads in the start menu, ai shoved into every orifice, to constant "updates required" after you just updated.

On the bright side, the battery life was better on Windows and sure-- games work. The latter is slowly becoming the norm on Linux as well.

On the other hand, Debian Xfce on my old Acer laptop with a i3-370M runs superb - Windows feels like a downgrade there.

The OS/Desktop is not the show, it's the stage/floor.

But I found it interesting how, for non-technical users, they both really found the Mac still unintuitive and buggy compared to Windows.

With LLMs I've been able to tackle bugs to a level that either fix or lower down the annoyance level. It's still not perfect, but the tradeoff is in linux favor IMO.

To forestall the inevitable, yes, that's extra cost. Well, the person says the want to use Linux more. Do they want it badly enough to put money behind it?

People really dislike change, it's the same thing about some freak thing that happens like twice that you heard of, like shark attacks, but still drive their ton and half vehicles for thousands of hours a year. People accepted those issues as part of the thing, they blame Linux in general when an application doesn't work, but never blame Windows in general when the OS doesn't work.

https://github.com/kernalix7/winpodx

"update tool was bricked"? What?

As many complaints as I have about Apple and MacOS and iOS, their products hit a niche and commoditized it.

In fact, I am using now Pop!_OS in parallel with Windows. But linux desktop experience still feels broken when compared with Windows and macOS.

I want to install the system with the defaults, not spend time configuring it and have an "it just works" experience. But even if I spend tons of time configuring and fiddling with it, something will fail, there will be problems, something won't work at all, something won't work properly and something will require complex workarounds that take time and exhaust my patience.

Before trying Pop!_OS I tried CachyOS. It provided me a broken desktop experience but in a different way.

Probably the best linux desktop experience now is provided by WSL2, followed by ChromeOS.

I'm honestly surprised why it's taking the rest such a long time.

> Linux friction is unpredictable. [..] The friction isn't necessarily higher in total, but the unexpected issues are more likely to cost me an entire afternoon rather than a few seconds.

The good news is this is largely a matter of experience: if you can push through and get used to doing root cause analysis on Linux, you'll find that desktop Linux issues tend to become transparent and easy to fix. If you stick to distros that support rollbacks, you also win back the option to defer anything that feels likely to be a time sink until either you have time/patience/interest, or someone else has fixed the issue and sent their fix upstream.

The bad news is that it's an experience issue: if you want to get to the other side of it, you have to invest in building the skill. The age old tongue-in-cheek advice is actually still good: install Gentoo. (Install Arch if you want a diet version of the experience.) The desktop Linux userland is indeed Lego, and if you go through the process of piecing it together instead of grabbing a preassembled kit, even just once, you will build a new troubleshooting muscle that serves you well for a long time. Can you find the energy for that? Can you make the time? Probably, but it won't be effortless. Maybe you'll even need to dual-boot, or have two computers for a while.

But I promise it's an issue of familiarity, intuition, and skill. You absolutely can cultivate those things.

Linux as a server is very good, and there is not much discussion on that front.

Linux as a desktop system is fine. I could live with it for the added value of having a flexible, predictible system. Windows is much more polished but, again, this is a tradeoff I would happily make.

The problem are applications. And particularly Outlook. I have to use Outlook because of its integration with the calendar, Zoom, ... This is the Outlook client for on-premises Exchange.

OWA suck to the point I simply cannot look at it (the one coming with Exchnage on premises, I do not the MS365 one). Without Outlook working seamlessly I am done.

This is really a pain - one software that stops an extended trial.

Here are some minor things that always went sour on Windows:

    Webcam's settings would always get reset semi-randomly
    The date from the clock would frequently disappear
    Mic's volume would often get lowered

Switched to native Linux. Had a rough start but it improved after going down a few rabbit holes.

My GeForce 750 Ti (2 GB) didn't play nice with Wayland. The official NVIDIA drivers have big problems allocating system memory when GPU memory is filled causing apps to crash constantly[0]. Games were lagging and stuttering. My whole machine would pause for 5-10 seconds and then unpause, a few times a day.

Ended up having to modify a udev setting on my SSD to enable max_performance for its power management and the machine never paused again.

Switched to an AMD RX 480 (8 GB) GPU and all of the GPU related problems went away, and the games I played stopped stuttering and lagging.

Now it's quite stable but there's still 3 problems. I've gone down pretty deep rabbit holes for each one but didn't resolve them.

If I'm downloading a file with Firefox and I start a Docker container that involves configuring a Docker network, my file download will get interrupted. Not 100% of the time but pretty close to it. I tried a million settings individually and nothing has stopped this behavior.

If pretty heavy I/O or network traffic is happening while recording a video with OBS, sometimes my webcam's audio will get desync'd from the the video, making my lips move a half second after the video happens. Tried a ton of different PipeWire settings here, couldn't find out a resolution.

If I'm on a video call in a browser with Firefox (Google Meet, Zoom, Discord, etc.), usually after about 45-60 minutes folks will say my audio is getting really choppy and I have to reload the browser for it to get fixed. I tried a ton of things other than switching browsers and it made no effect.

Nothing in the journalctl logs for any of the above 3 issues are present.

I'm not posting this expecting someone to fix it, but I can relate with the OP in that Windows "just works".

I don't mind going down these rabbit holes if I find a resolution and when it's working, it's a much better environment for me than Windows without question.

I'm not switching back to Windows but there is certainly an expectation that there could be issues. This is the sole reason why I wouldn't recommend Linux to all of my technical friends, unless they are die hard into tech and fully understand what they're getting into.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/gpu-memory-allocation-bugs-wi...

It's the fragmentation in linux that will always make it tough for "normies". Distro differences is obvious first thing, but the two big ones are desktop environments (gnome/kde/etc) and app package formats (flatpak/snap). These add friction and more problems (I heard you like packaging: here's another package format and big ass repository for you. And portals? really?).

I just keep to a simple desktop in fedora using rpm/dnf and build from source if I have to. Yes, I know that's not an answer for normies, but there's not going be simple answers.

And what can I say: It worked. There are still aspects I'm missing (Preview app, Mail) and other Aspects I really hate (Printing on my Canon MB5150 just does not work) but I stayed. I found workarounds and solutions, fought my way through the distro-jungle and I'm glad I made it.

All in all I think it is more a know-how Problem, than a Problem with the system itself.

However, if you don't have this time, it's understandable but how much time goes into experimenting every year and then switching back?

Kubuntu (Ubuntu with the KDE plasma desktop) is quite windows-like without the advertising and crappification. KDE is doing a great job honestly.

> I need my machine to work. I can't spend an afternoon tweaking my computer anymore.

Until Microslop OS decided on its own that you haven't had a reboot in a while and since we're at it some of the drivers you desperately need suddenly are not kosher anymore.

When stuff breaks I prefer something I'm actually allowed to repair. That's just me.

Also, if you're familiar with sysinternals suite for Windows there's a Linux equivalent to all the tools with nice GUIs. So you should be able to track down most process-caused performance issues fairly easily without knowing all the appropriate CLI commands.

It's been perfect for me. The included Bazaar app store is very impressive compared to something like the apple app store. It reignited the lost joy of opening up the app store to find something new and interesting. A wonderful contrast to current meta of app stores just being a front to push expensive SaaS products, with platform operators taking their slice at gunpoint on the payment processing side.

It also includes a lot of development related packages by default, so you don't need to worry much about layering your basic tools with rpm-ostree. I generally found that most things I wanted as a developer and gamer were already installed or easily installed. The default KDE software is all good too. Perfectly functional utility software for viewing media, calculator, paint, remote desktop, text editor, filelight (so fast. way better than windirstat).

Flatpak is a treasure. With Flatseal you can view and manage application-system permissions with a level of granularity I have not seen in other systems. And most importantly Flatpak gives application developers a powerful common target to create a Linux bundle that will work on ~every~ distro. Downloading and installing my common apps like discord/.was extremely fast.

The singular deficiency I've seen is games that require anti-cheat. I'm not a heavy competitive gamer, so I simply do not play those games. I still keep a small windows partition around, should I fancy a game of league of legends, but I haven't booted it in at least two months. Last time I did all I could think was "holy shit. it really is this bad. it wasn't my imagination."

Nvidia drivers have been rapidly improving recently. HDR support in KDE 6.6 is really good. Better than windows actually. I have less HDR related problems on Linux now than I did on windows 11.

Old game compatibility is OUTSTANDING. On Windows I literally could not play CivCity: Rome with my ultrawide. With no windowed mode option, this 1280x1024 game was stretched across my entire screen and I couldn't stop it. On Linux the gamescope tool provides a custom isolated graphics context to any game you designate at your desired resolution/refresh rate. I can simply add "gamescope -W 1280 -H 1024 -r 60 -e -- %command%" to my steam properties for CivCity: Rome. And I get a properly sized window in borderless mode running at the correct frame rate for the game. Mouse jitters are fixed. Resolution size is fixed. Game runs perfectly.

As a longtime dabbler, the Linux ecosystem has made crazy progress in the last few years in bringing about the fabled "Year of the Linux Desktop". For me, that year was 2026. At this point I don't see why I would ever go back.

Fedora + KDE feels like coming home to windows 7. Anything else, YMMV.