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I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

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Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#441

Post by alisonsandy »

BuddyPickett wrote: post #434
volkercraig wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are thinking about it way too hard. Windows 11 is a dog. Constant hardware problems, slow, and frustrating UX. Is any desktop linux perfect? No, but its better than w11 right now.

No hardware problems in the version I run, not sure what version you use. It's also not frustrating for me but what I do get frustrated with is trying to get software to run and Linux but just won't work. Most people are smart enough to be able to use windows without getting frustrated.

That is the same thing many people using linux say. It not frustrating or have any issues.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#442

Post by BuddyPickett »

DetectDefect wrote: post #384
voxleone wrote: post #299

It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could…

> Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives? The reality is a lot more nuanced than that. Should one live in a forest, devoid of any city services and company of other individuals, so that one may be under "own control"? This is the essential value proposition with Linux and it's no wonder many prefer the comfortin…

Not everything that runs on windows is proprietary I use a lot of open source software on Windows myself. Windows is also a lot easier to configure to run exactly the way I wanted to run and to be the OS I need it to be. It's extremely customizable and easy to control. It's also modifiable in many many more ways.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#443

Post by adontz »

vanviegen wrote: post #218
g947o wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you'll ever see a web version of Visual Studio.

Is Visual Studio still relevant if you're not developing native Windows software?

I'm currently developing ASP.Net Core services and modern .Net is quite nice. Everyone around me uses absolutely free Visual Studio Community edition, so it would be weird to not use it.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#444

Post by poolnoodle »

I agree modern Windows sucks for the average consumer, with all the dark patterns and icky stuff, but if you are on this forum and technically inclined enough to install Linux, you can just disable all the bad parts of Windows and get a rock solid OS with perfect compatibility. Unpopular opinion, I know, but that's how I view it.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#445

Post by monkaiju »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #179

I have... I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best thing to ever happen to Linux. I get all the ease of use of something like macOS but pre-built with tools for development like distrobox, and then I can just build my dev environments and get shit done in no time, without having to worry about breaking updates or nuking the who…

I was originally blown away by Bazzite, which I run on my Legion Go, but then I discovered uCore (https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore) and haven't looked back! Running it on my homelab and multiple servers at work, its a wonderful server OS.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#447

Post by branon »

onli wrote: post #36

The article mentions that the author had a negative experience with Void Linux, that it was missing programs in its repository. If you considered it, give it a try anyway. Void is fast and ridiculously stable, even more so given it's a rolling release distro (so often has very new program versions). And in contrast to the author, I was impressed with the broad range of the package system - he might have had a bit of…

I've found a very comfortable home on Void Linux for nearly a decade at this point, and wouldn't consider any other distro for desktop use. I find Void to be rock-solid stable and relentlessly simple.

The author of TFA hopped from Mint -> Debian -> Bazzite -> Fedora -> Void -> Artix, so Void is an extremely obvious outlier here.

Aside from Void, every other distro he tried was either a newbie-friendly desktop distro (Mint, Debian, Fedora, Bazzite), or "Arch, but easier, with an installer" (Artix).

Bad luck with Void's package selection is fair enough, but I'm not sure what he meant by "driver compatibility was a big issue" - Void uses an upstream kernel and driver availability should be roughly the same anywhere.

He's using a Ryzen APU on desktop so graphics drivers shouldn't have been an issue there. The MacBook had problems with Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers on Artix(!), but I'd wager this would affect all distros out of the box, and Void has the Broadcom drivers[0] available as well.

It's frustrating that he doesn't explicitly mention what he couldn't find drivers for on Void. I assume it was Broadcom Wi-Fi and he didn't enable the nonfree repository. In fairness, Void's docs don't cover any Broadcom quirks so maybe this isn't as discoverable as it should be.

[0] https://voidlinux.org/packages/?arch=x86_64&q=broadcom

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#448

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P »

longhaul wrote: post #419

How do you deal with malware/etc ?. Are there reliable products available ?

The line of defenses are different. All my Linux applications are either installed via Flatpak (which runs in a sandbox) or via the official package registry (which requires programs to be open source, and has a strong track record)

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#449

Post by cbozeman »

adontz wrote: post #86

These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11. But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to ma…

Not even remotely true.

You're making the exact same argument everyone here is making, and that's because you're attempting to argue from technical parity / superiority. Windows isn't the dominant desktop OS because of it's technical superiority to Linux, it's dominant because of deeply entrenched compliance and industry reasons.

Healthcare, finance, legal, engineering (less so today, but still very sub-discipline dependant), and government all have very specific software needs that no one in their right mind will bother writing new software, or rewriting existing software, would do for 6% desktop market share.

EMR programs (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), Practice management and billing, Tax and compliance, Legal discovery and case-management tools, Niche hardware and it's control software

This is all the realm of Windows. Most of these applications are Windows-only (Win32 / .NET / ActiveX legacy), they're only certified and validated on Windows, and they're only contractually supported on Windows.

Even if Wolters-Kluwer rewrote the entire CCH ProSystem fx suite for Linux, now there's recertification, regulatory review, vendor retraining, staff retraining, potential issues with auditors and regulators, etc.

There's currently no upside large enough to justify: Vendor finger-pointing, Compliance risk, Training costs, Downtime risk

It's negative ROI all the way down.

Windows has to become so bad that switching to Linux for desktops overcomes all of the above.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#450

Post by tart-lemonade »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #268
aNoob7000 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a brand new Dell laptop with Windows 11 25H2 at the end of November 2025. The first patches released by Microsoft in December did not install. WTF!!! If you go online, you will see a whole YouTube videos and articles on how to fix the issue. Let me tell you, after a considerable amount of time, I gave up. I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 on my desktop, and I can't remember the last time I had issues applying patches…

Windows has problems all the time. There is widespread knowledge on how to troubleshoot and fix these problems. Similar problems will have very different solutions for Linux. The knowledge of how to resolve them is much less widespread. I’ve had very good success in asking ChatGPT how to resolve Linux issues, probably better success then I would on Windows because the error messages on Linux are much more detailed.

A lot of the time the "solution" to problems on Windows is to reinstall/in-place upgrade because, as you said, Windows errors tend to be more generic so you can browse Google all you want but none of the instructions people provide will be of much help. So I'm not sure "widespread knowledge" is a point in favor of Windows when the errors frequently aren't specific enough to be reliably actionable.
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