Desktop Linux: Free is too expensive

I think it's very much a matter of resources. Windows will always win because it has the greater market share. Regardless, they still manage to produce a dud every second release; think Windows ME, Vista, Windows 8 (pre-emptive).

My work uses a linux inspired toolchain, complete with emacs setup, however, we use the Microsoft compiler and target the Windows platform specifically because our users demand it.

My home PC is an ArchLinux machine, however, I'm still plagued by the inability to play my videos without tearing on my dual screen monitor setup with hardware acceleration; something that works perfectly well on Windows. I'm sure NVIDIA could provide a suitable solution but there's no money involed so they don't.

Linux will always have it's place in the server world, but as far as end user PC's go; I feel it's days are numbered.

> You must not have installed Linux Mint or Ubuntu lately, because they both do this.

I've installed both recently, thanks. Neither save your system state on a reinstall--or if they do, it's certainly not the default and isn't made clear when you're doing the install.

The only acceptable thing is to reinstall and properly reconfigure any user-installed packages when they do a pave-and-reinstall, and while that's nontrivial, it's the only way to deal with the "oh, lol, reinstall everything every six months" clusterfuck in which Linux is currently enmeshed.

It seems more likely that nobody will do anything about it and instead we can have even more self-absorbed gnashing about Linux being primed to take over the desktop.

Windows, on the other hand, does this by virtue of not screwing with installed software. Loose coupling, believe it or not, has its advantages.

> Not sure why this is an issue

I think you misunderstand me. In order to get the new and shiny applications, I have to dist-upgrade. Which hilariously and regularly breaks like fucking mad. This means that, no, I can't really stay on an LTS release (and most people won't want to), because to keep up to date, I have to either play Russian roulette with dist-upgrade or...pave the entire thing. Not the case for Windows, which is what I was saying.

Oh, one of those lunatics again.