My first experience with Linux was going to an event at my school for installing Linux (in the 2000s), I went there with a working windows xp netbook and left with a computer that wouldn’t boot, because the install process somehow took hours and the person lending their USB drive needed it back. It was a while after that before I was willing to try again, but I was deterred by a variety and volume of some bullshit or other that took way too much time and attention to get things even half working, and all the gaslighting and excuses about it online (an OS doesn’t not suck just because the reason it sucks can be blamed on a third party).

It’s genuinely way better now though and is on all my computers, the shit Windows pulled was somehow even worse and made me more angry than all of that, everything generally just works now and if it doesn’t it’s much easier to figure out how to fix. Point being, for anyone in this situation, give it a few years, see how things go.

It’s not that I dislike Linux, I love it, but I have motor disabilities that AutoHotkey is very, very, very good at accommodating. Python/autokey et al can’t compare.

ms office 365 not working,

That’s a feature, not a bug. Just skip Microslop and use LibreOffice

Getting video editing software to work and stay working. I gave up; I work two jobs and have limited time anyway.

Bonuses: some gaming stuff doesn’t work well, and a bunch of HAM radio stuff has huge audio headaches (if it builds and runs on the machine without endless tinkering and hunting now-outdated libs).

I do have a laptop with linux that basically never gets touched anymore (mostly was using it for HAM stuff). I used to dual-boot on this machine but, with no video editing and WiresX and such only supporting windows, it didn’t make sense to keep switching. I’ve been using linux in varying capacities since the late '90s and loved running gentoo building everything up back in the early 2000s. I still use it in varying capacities at work, but I can’t daily-drive it on my main machine.

Lemmy takes a big ol’ shit on Windows, but the fact of the matter is that Windows is easy and it works.

I used Linux when I was a broke grad student many years ago. I use Windows now because I don’t want to mess with some obscure settings in every mainstream application that was really meant to run on Windows.

I admit there’s some one-time fiddling with the OS to remove the bloat and telemetry, but I don’t see all that turning itself back on like so many nay-sayers bring up.

I’m just lazy, and Windows just works.

Edit: To be clear, part of the problem is also having to find alternatives to applications, because the normal ones are all meant for Windows.

The only way I would use windows is if I was paid. Linux can be a hassle but after using windows recently goddamn that shit sucks I fucking hate it, bloat, ads everywhere, laggy AF, not customisable at all, file manager that doesn’t work… a little hassle is a small price to pay

I make music and my music plugin library doesn’t like Linux. Also professional visual creative programs are not ported yet, and I don’t wanna use gimp etc.

I’m ready, but for creatives, it doesn’t seem to be there yet.

I’m surprised those people exist

I was on & off with Linux for decades. It was usually some minor problem that would take a weekend to fix, often driver or audio-video related. And GRUB errors were an early end to many experiments.

But about 3 years ago, Windows started crashing and I couldn’t figure it out. After much troubleshooting, I finally installed Linux Mint and have had no real problems.

I’d also say AI, used with caution to troubleshoot, is a better tool than google search by a country mile.

I went back to windows for a little bit a couple years ago because when I tried to install mint on the new desktop, Ethernet WiFi and HDMI didn’t work. I tried some fixes but it was a real shit show.

After a little while on windows, I went with pop!_os , which worked out of the box

I didn’t always want to have to fix 2-3 things just so I can do 1 thing. Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Windows, but things just work and I rarely have issues.

It’s not all the way there yet, I feel. And I mean that I still cannot 100% use everything on it that I can use on Windows. Not without having to use alternatives I don’t care about.

I also don’t have patience to troubleshoot anything that could go wrong on a Linux system.

Maybe I shouldn’t be answering in this because I do use Linux. But there was certainly times where I tried and went back. Here’s a novel.

I tried Backtrack 5, Monjaro, Arch, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, some other things I’m forgetting… over the years and none of them could really stick with me.

My problems were mostly self-inflicted, plus a lot of game and social incompatibilities. The game issues are basically non-existent for me now, but I never played the huge multiplayer, kernel anti-cheat titles, which are where most people still get stuck today.

The other half of the issue was maintenance and updating, particularly on rolling releases. I would just get fucked by bad timing and user error of not reading the forums first. Particularly with arch, either update too fast, or update too slow, and things get out of sync and borked. I also just didn’t like there are tons of little tweaks that I did all over a system to customize it that mostly gets wiped out between versions or between distros; little workarounds for issues that were temporary, and I always forget what I changed and where or why. Re-installing and starting from scratch was pretty common for me.

Ultimately, I kept using Windows 10 until EOL or very close to it anyways. I was the kind of person who would do a crap ton of registry tweaking, micro-managing of services and group policy, and hand-curate PATH. I found that winget and WSL kind of offered me the best of both worlds for a time. I was the kind of power user who had uses for the Administrator account; so I just sticked with what I knew and what was working. But I really didn’t want to go to Windows 11… Windows 10 had been getting worse and worse over time.

But, then I discovered NixOS which kind of solved all my major gripes about traditional Linux, while also offering valuable features that didn’t exist (at least to my knowledge at the time) on any other windows or Linux system.

Regular Linux distros were always just kind of “like windows but with more rough edges” with very little to no tangible benefits to me. The main pitch I got for Linux was one of FOSS and ethical software. Controversy aside: the Stallman angle was always a lawful good “they don’t respect the user, so I won’t use it.” My take was a bit more chaotic neutral with piracy and cracking; “if they don’t respect users then I don’t need to respect their software either lol” so Linux didn’t really offer enough value to justify switching and all the effort that entailed, when I could just beat windows into submission instead.

NixOS changed that equation. Instead of just “being windows but slightly worse,” it offered major feature and quality of life improvements that I really valued as a user and that I could take advantage of as a programmer. It gave me an island of stability and the confidence that I could spend a lot of time learning and tinkering and none of it would really go to waste. I saw it as “the last operating system I’ll ever need” which gave me the motivation to dive deep on it, which also increased my transferable/generalized Linux skills.

I still have issues occasionally, but honestly, it’s not really more frequent than it was with Windows, and at least on Linux I feel like I’m fighting the problem whereas with Windows it felt like I was just fighting Windows.

Nix just happens to synergize very well whatever flavors of autism and ADHD I have, and made Linux infinitely more approachable, while also offering value that made me want to approach it.

I didn’t exactly left, I still have Linux on laptops and whatnot. I’ve tried switching my main PC to Linux twice now, and both times I eventually ended up going back to Windows.

The thing is, and I know some peeps disagree with this, Linux is great if you enjoy tinkering and customizing things. I love doing that, and I even enjoy the troubleshooting part, BUT only when I have the time and energy for it.

But sometimes I just need to be able to jump on a Teams call and have my audio, mic, camera, and screen sharing all work immediately without any hassle. That’s just not the reality on Linux desktop yet. Ofc it’s possible to get all those things working on Linux, but it just isn’t the same It just works! experience you get on Windows.

I’m using Mint as my daily driver, and to this day Bluetooth mics STILL don’t work on my setup. I use my phone for audio whenever I have any sort of call or meeting. This sort of issue is why I would not recommend Linux as a daily driver to non-techies. There’s just too many minor things that don’t work flawlessly that I’d end up being tech support for.