Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

Dealing with finding driver support is one.

Lack of quality apps that I can find on Mac, like Fantastical, Reeder, MindNode, and more.

But the single biggest one for me is I just want my devices to work and not have to fix them in my free time. Not to say Linux requires fixing all the time. It’s more that I’d just like things to work and Linux, last I used it, required I have to tinker and research things too much. It was fun then. But now I just want to live my life and not tinker with things when I want them to do what I want. For that reason my Macs do well enough at just continually working.

Video games. I work on a company issued MBP and my own daily driver is an M1 MBP. My PC runs Windows mainly because of video games. Yes, I know about Steam's efforts and Proton, but Proton lacks DXR. I paid top dollar for a gaming video card and I want to see those rays traced! On a serious note once Linux allows me to play AAA titles with the same level of fidelity as I can on Windows, I am switching over to Ubuntu.

Generally unpolished quirkiness that requires time and attention to resolve. For example, in ten years of using Linux at work I've never experienced tear-free browser scrolling despite hours of fussing with X11 and compositor settings or graphics drivers. Or how my default file associations change unbidden all the time, frequently to poor choices like GIMP to open a JPEG. And more recently Internet Explorer through WINE for no clear reason.

I try every two years or so to daily drive Linux on my personal desktop. Between these kinds of rough edges and running CAD tools, I inevitably eventually go back to Windows no matter how much I enjoy my terminal emulator options in Linux.

I recently upgraded from Debian 10 to 11 on my Thinkpad T490 and there are noticeable trackpad improvements. Maybe it reset my settings or maybe there are driver improvements, I’m not 100% sure. Either way the default out of the box experience is faster and snappier.

Still not on the same level as MacBooks though. But it is making progress.

I'm a developer that still works on a product that runs on DotNet 4.8, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Visual Studios's performance on large solutions has gotten so poor that I've switched to Rider fully, but I still need to be on the platform my stuff has to run on.