[Zhyl]

To everyone reading this who feels uneasy about this, has broader concerns about the direction of desktop computing generally and Microsoft Windows specifically I say this: "give Linux a go".

You may not like it, you may go back to Windows and decide that the dark patterns are worth the cost of things 'just working' etc, but I implore you to at least give it a go. Burn a Live USB. Boot it up and have a look around. If you're coming from Windows 10, try Linux mint or anything with the 'Cinnamon' Desktop.

I say this mostly because the Hackernews crowd is generally pro-Linux as a concept, but sceptical of Linux as a daily driver. Those that do use it as a daily driver will (in my anecdotal experience) have been using it for 5-10 years or more and will have been used to making a good deal of compromises, or are tech savvy enough to have been able to fix things in the bad times.

But in the last few years desktops have gotten really good. You will likely find one that you like out of the latest versions of Cinnamon, KDE or Gnome. Or MATE/XFCE/LMQT if you want to go back for a lightning-quick old school feel.

Since 2018, thousands of games now work. It's now 'good enough' for pretty much all single player games. I ask people who haven't tried Linux since before then to have another try (or at the very least to look up the games they play on ProtonDB to see if they would work nowadays).

In short, a larger (albeit probably still small) number of people who would have jumped the Windows ship in 2015 instead of going to 10 will actually be able to do so now instead of upgrading to Windows 11.

[jlkuester7]

+1 Don't get overwhelmed by the miriad of Linux distros to choose from. As OP said, start with Linux Mint. It is super user-friendly and based on Ubuntu/Debian which makes it stable and widely supported in terms of applications, drivers, etc. You can always switch to something more exotic later if you want, but IMHO Mint is one of the best there is for a normal Desktop experience.

[_piif]

While using Linux itself as my desktop OS isn't a problem for me (I'm quite comfy with Arch + KDE, also yes the obligatory I use arch btw :p), my problem so far which has always caused me to just go "f it, back to Windows I go" has been productivity.

Basically what I'm missing is an equilavent to Visual Studio for my line of "work" (game modding and reverse engineering with IDA + x86dbg and working with the win32 API). Writing and especially debugging windows binaries with mingw + winedbg has been painful for me so far, also I simply couldn't find any IDE/editor I could get comfortable with (I've tried VS code, kdevelop, qt creator and vim so far). Contrary to that VS simply let's me create a new project with a few clicks which lets me immediately get to work, gives me premade Release / Debug configurations with (mostly) sane defaults, an intuitive GUI for managing compiler + linker settings, running and debugging with the click of a button with multiple views for resource consumption, local vars and what not, the ability to easily debug dump files, etc. etc. Essentially in the time I tried to get basically anything done on any of the other toolsets I've probably already done some actual work on VS. It just works perfectly for my use case.

The last time I've tried running Linux I actually went through the effort of setting up a KVM VM with dGPU pass through + intel gvt-g to drive the SPICE display (I have a laptop with an integrated + dedicated gpu and that seemed like the most intuitive setup) and - while it did work fairly well - the refresh rate was kind of off (even after patching QEMU to allow for more than the hardcoded 30Hz) and there was some weird stutter that I couldn't resolve (I've tried setting up virtio devices + installing the corresponding drivers, enabling hyper-v enlightments, changing the amount of vcpus, core pinning, static hugepages, etc. already, nothing helped in my case unfortunately). Those along with the realization there isn't much of a point of not simply running it in bare metal if I'm going to be in the VM most of the time anyways, brought me back to where I am right now: running Windows out of necessity / comfort.

Not sure what to classify this wall of text as (a mixture of rant and search for suggestions?) but that's essentially the cause of the "dilemma" (nothing short of a first-world problem basically) I'm in right now: I want to run Linux as my desktop OS and regularly try to do so but as soon as I want to be productive I just have to reach out to Windows again.

[abraxas]

What's the status of SteamVR on Linux? VR is the sole reason I still have a windows machine around.

[devetec]

An article about this: https://boilingsteam.com/the-state-of-virtual-reality-on-lin...

[fsflover]

> Burn a Live USB. Boot it up and have a look around.

Note however that if your device is designed to run Windows you may have occasional problems with WiFi or suspend. This is not a Linux fault. I am using a laptop designed for Linux and it is rock-solid.

[Spivak]

Oh it’s 100% a Linux problem. You can’t just be like “well driver support for this hardware is bad” and throw up your hands. It might be spiritually the manufacturer’s fault but the end user will never care.

The fact that there’s no way for non-technical users to figure out if a given hardware configuration will actually work for them makes it a non-starter, especially when the spectrum isn’t “works perfectly” or “fails catastrophically” but the frustrating middle where it kinda works but not always. Suspend might work on Tuesday, multi-monitor will fail with this dongle but not this one. Nvidia Optimus will only work three times ever and you can’t turn off the dedicated GPU to save power or pass it through to a VM because of how it’s wired.

Fedora is my daily driver but I would never suggest that it’s as easy as “oh just install Fedora” when I had to painstakingly research every piece of hardware in my laptop to see what the support was like.

[fsflover]

> The fact that there’s no way for non-technical users to figure out if a given hardware configuration will actually work for them makes it a non-starter

There is: Buy a computer with preinstalled Linux. I did and it works. You can later install another Linux flavor and it will work, too. Even Qubes OS works for me with reliable suspend and WiFi.

> You can’t just be like “well driver support for this hardware is bad” and throw up your hands. It might be spiritually the manufacturer’s fault but the end user will never care.

Would you also complain if your Windows installation doesn't work reliably on a Macbook? This is a user's fault if they are trying to use the device in an unintended way. Although the Linux community is trying to support everything, this is practically impossible.

[nokya]

Four reasons I gave up Linux each time I tried: 1. Laptop battery falling to half what I get under Windows. 2. No full-disk encryption, there is always one partition that stays in clear. 2. There is no hibernate. 3. I need to run Office apps (I can't force my employer and all our clients to suddenly forget Office).

The day these issues are resolved, Windows is no more. To me at least.

[_-david-_]

For #1 have you used tlp? This has made my battery quite comparable to windows. It may depend on the laptop though.

For #2 as far as I know it is possible and I believe OpenSuse does this by default. https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Encrypted_root_file_system

[nokya]

Hi D., thanks for the advice on tlp, I had never heard of it. I noted it down for my next tryout.

For Suse, I will be honest, I am not brave enough to switch to another distribution now that I have learned my basics on another one. If tlp works well, I could give it a try though.

thanks!