> I recoil at the possibility that some developer 5 years from now might ask me "Why bother installing your own linux distribution? You can just get Windows Go 15 and run Arch/Ubuntu/SUSE from inside there. Don't forget to disable the ads and tracking that come standard".
"I mean, the privacy is shit, but you can sort of deal with it. But at least you don't have to dance the Ritual Dance of PulseAudio if you need to do MIDI (or get as much as a hiss out of your speakers), suspending your computer doesn't garble your desktop background or desktop icon labels, you can update Windows Go 16 and it'll work after you reboot..."
I don't like Microsoft any more than I like any company of its size, but they're making a compelling case, while the Linux "community" is busy supporting cloud, IVI, and IoT vaporware.
Edit: ten years ago I was certain they were going to pry Debian and OpenBSD from my cold, dead hands. But Windows, for all its privacy compromises, is working better and better, whereas Linux desktops are getting worse (and less portable), with a never-fulfilling promise that it's going to get a lot better when they finally get stable, this massive rewrite that we started like six years ago is just about done...
Edit edit: I know my comment looks overly negative and I seem grumpy but really, I'm not, I like Linux, I make a living out of writing Linux software and I've used it one way or another for almost twenty years. That being said:
1. Please stop recommending me that I use something more user friendly, like Mint or Ubuntu. "You can update to Windows Go 16 and it'll work after you reboot" was a joke about Ubuntu.
2. This "I got this new machine and it works flawlessly out of the box, Linux is great if you get good hardware" is the wrong mentality if you're not Apple. Every operating system, including TempleOS, runs flawlessly out of the box on some hardware. It's getting it to run flawlessly on hardware other than the developers' machines that's complicated. Go ahead, grab ten high-end laptops at random and see how well plugging and unplugging your monitor works, even on systems that are officially supported. How do you think I ended up knowing xrandr's command line options better than I know tar's?
Not being able to care for my Linux box is not my problem, my problem is that I don't want to care for my Linux box. I babysit Linux at least eight hours a day at work. I don't want to have to do it at home, too.