[noisy_boy]

Windows is insurance. I love Linux and exclusively (at home) use it daily. I love the idea of open source and the unmatched flexibility that comes with it - I can customize my desktop to match my workflow to the nth degree. However, sometimes (very rarely now a days), stuff breaks and when I absolutely cannot afford to spend 30 mins troubleshooting, I reboot into Windows and basically get the job done. I do get back into Linux once the time-bound crisis is over and fix the problem, but I don't delete the Windows partition. Because Windows is insurance.

[tinus_hn]

You must have the golden Windows installation that never breaks itself! Be careful with it!

[noisy_boy]

Well, it doesn't break because Linux is where I spend the lion's share of my time. So the Windows setup basically just stays almost unchanged (I'm quite careful with the software updates on Windows so that also helps).

[npteljes]

A second Linux installation would do the same for you. The insurance is less Windows, and more having redundancy. Especially true if the situation is time critical - a default Linux installation won't stall you with a mandatory update.

[srazzaque]

For some things yes, but not for all things. I can think of 2:

For a remote interview that I had a while back over Cisco WebEx, when things didn't work on my Fedora machine immediately, I'm glad I had my wife's XPS13 with Windows as stand by. Zero time wasted, worked immediately. If that didnt work, it would have been a phone call. I really wouldn't have wanted to muck around with some other distro at that point in time, even if I disagreed with the values of the software developers in question.

For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office.

[npteljes]

I also dual-boot because some of the games I like run on Windows better. But this is not what OP was about, OP's Linux worked well otherwise, that's why I suggested that if they had two of them, they'd have the same "insurance". So that it's not a matter of the operating system itself, but the redundancy.

[trynton]

@srazzaque: "For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office."

Why not get them to install LibreOffice and sent you the spreadsheet in the native format?

https://www.libreoffice.org/

[npteljes]

Because this creates friction, and from the other party's point of view, it's you who introduces it.

But I think MS Office Online, and to some extent ONLYOFFICE solves this problem mostly, no need for Windows or a VM.

[colejohnson66]

LibreOffice doesn’t format all Word documents the same. They’ve done an amazing job, but AFAIK, they haven’t solved every quirk. Also, if you use Excel, Calc doesn’t support everything from VBA. So esoteric VBA macros won’t work sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for LibreOffice to become better, but having Office on a second install is also a sortove “insurance” for when LibreOffice doesn’t work 100% on old documents.

(The Office XML based file formats are a lot better here. I’m mostly talking about the old OLE-dump pre-XML formats)

[depressedpanda]

> For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office.

My solution to this is that if someone sends me something that can only be opened in Word or Excel, they don't want me to look at it.

[qqii]

Since you enjoy tinkering with linux have you considered trying Fedora Silverblue/NixOS/Guix or the like? It's quite a steep learning curve but almost guarentees that you're never left in a bad state of configuration.

I'm of a similar mindset and in my period of using Windows as a daily driver I concluded that neither Windows or Linux was that much more unstable but it is my tinkering that causes 99% of my own problems.

[noisy_boy]

I did explore installing Fedora but found its installer confusing compared to Ubuntu's installer so ended up just using Pop!_OS (which is based on Ubuntu so uses the same installer).

[globular-toast]

Why Windows? Ubuntu is my insurance. Windows takes way longer to install and supports far less hardware.

[iso1631]

I love Linux and use it exclusively at home (there's a corporate macbook once a month)

The last time I booted from a rescue cd or similar would be early 2000s. I certainly wouldn't be able to "get stuff done" in windows, wouldn't know where to begin.