The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is not that it has improved but that its biggest competitor has dropped the ball? That’s not really praising it.
Linux is the better OS. Windows 11 just forces people to evaluate other OS's to experience the latest Linux for themselves.
I didn't have the time as a working Adult for distro hopping and Gentoo compiles, but the thought of having to live with Windows 11 made me try out modern linux again, glad I did.
Linux is now the better OS, after the other one got significantly worse than it used to be, and even that is close call depending on what you need Linux to do.
IMO, it was definitely the better OS even going back to 15 years ago. People use Windows only because of the network effect of people being school-taught how to use computers on Windows, which leads to a positive feedback loop of more software being made for it which locks-in people further.
I remember after learning Linux, how much of a toy Windows felt, with my needing to grab windows by the bar to move them around (instead of grabbing from anywhere), and trying to resize them by the thin corner (instead of resizing from anywhere), having no concept of workspaces, having no choice of window manager while Linux could engulf windows in flames and render them in a cube, only being able to backspace single characters at a time, no choice of file manager, files having weird limitations on their names, having nothing like bash (pre-powershell) while Linux had multiple shells, no block devices (this could be expanded into a lot of points), no simple way to work the partition tables, not being able to mount things wherever, not being able to treat a regular file like a disk, no real choices of filesystems, poor network utilities, ping only pings an arbitrary 3 times by default instead of just going on indefinitely, no package managers and repos, etc. I could go on a lot more probably, but this is enough. Windows XP was a toy compared to Linux.
Also not to forget the 260 character file path limitation, which still haunts Windows till date! You can lift the limits via a registry key, but programs still need support for it. Forget third-party programs, even many first-party Microsoft apps like Explorer itself still can't handle long paths.
But my biggest pet peeve with Windows is updates. Updates, updates, updates, it's such an underrated thing that Linux does so much better, I wish more folks would speak about this:
1. You only really need to reboot for kernel updates
2. Updates aren't forced upon you
3. You're in full control of the whole process - you can even decide to hold back certain packages, , or choose a different flavour that suits your needs better
4. Update everything - including thirdparty apps - from either the CLI or GUI (KDE Discover or Gnome Software etc)
5. Unlike Windows, updates rarely slow down your system, and if anything, they tend to make your system faster and better.
6. Most Linux users actually look forward to updates, whereas Windows users groan and swear at them, praying and hoping they MS doesn't break anything or add more crap/anti-features
7. When you reboot after updates, it's instant - no annoying "configuring... please don't turn of your computer" message that hijack your system when you need it the most.
8. If you've got an immutable distro, updates are atomic and can't break your system.
9. Many decent mutable distros also have the option to instantly snapshot the OS before an update, and allow you to rollback right from the boot menu.
Honestly, updates for me is easily the top reason why I feel Linux is a superior experience to Windows, I could write a whole essay on this.
No it doesn't. You can navigate to long paths, but try doing any file operations (like renaming a file) and you'll see it doesn't work.
Also, the rest of my points are end user impacting. Updates impact everyone and is a very important part of an OS experience. I used to work on a helpdesk for an MSP, and you've no idea the number calls we used to get from users frustrated about updates for various reasons. Hell, we use Windows at work and I still get annoyed as a user.
Just to clarify, this was actually like most of Windows. You could (in XP at least via Disk Manager), but they made it harder than it needed to be.
Multiple workspaces was a thing as well that came with XP Power Toys and was a feature in later versions, but not simple to access, and mostly broken because they never test it.
I made my final transition during Vista. Touching 7, 10 and 11 for work purposes means I can see that I don't miss any of it.
Windows is awful, and has terrible discovery for features, and anything off the main "happy path" is usually broken. This isn't a new thing since they fired their QA folks, it's always been bad.
It is just the "Windows can't do this" statements, when it can.
The average windows users wants it to run the software they want and not completely fucking shit the bed. Windows is allowed to be designed poorly, and it is.
But, shockingly, despite Windows goals being so small and easily achievable, Microsoft still fucks it up.
Wine is a better Win32 implementation than Win32. And Microsoft just can't help making the OS worse. Every new feature is basically strictly worse than the stuff before.
All they have to do is do nothing and continue making the same things work. But no.
As someone who was burned by it during the 2010s, this is no longer the case. My Bazzite install worked out-of-the-box with no tweaking whatsoever. I've been on this install since April 2024.
Better hardware support, more funding and development on the desktops, Flatpak, more apps being web apps, Proton, everything converged finally.
What's odd is this machine does not work seamlessly under Windows, it doesn't support the wifi or ethernet driver out of the box and refuses to load it during Windows setup, and that of course requires an internet connection to complete now. This works fine under Linux.
I'm afraid you are not going to convince anyone like that who was not already convinced.
I've been using both Windows and Linux for the past decade, and I think we have to acknowledge that both have their strengths and weaknesses. For instance, there is no doubt that the Linux UX is less polished or that Windows makes UI customization more difficult (it is possible but you have to write dlls instead of css).
But the points you make do not really touch the core of the difference. The ability to drag windows from any point? That's horrible for people who like to click on stuff without intention to drag a window. It's like the shitty toolbars in Office 95 that were not 'locked' by default so you would accidentally move them around all the time.
Backspace only single characters? Windows 2000 already supported ctrl+bs/del, so not sure where this is going. Same for block devices, those were supported for an eternity, and were contributing to make Windows more prone to rootkits. And so on for most of the points you made - they are simply not true, perhaps because you are not familiar with Windows :(
I do agree that Linux should be preferred today for most people who are just starting out on computers. So let's get the facts straight and leave out controversial and opinionated topics that only let Windows fanboys go "Akshually".
> I do agree that Linux should be preferred today for most people who are just starting out on computers.
As someone who's used a variety of OSes (ranging from FreeBSD to Windows and macOS) on desktops and laptops, including trying out 6 Linux distros in the past couple of years (Arch, Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Bluefin, and currently NixOS), I honestly don't understand how you end up with "Linux is the best choice for people who are just starting out".
I'm experienced and I prefer Linux, but the amount of time investment I've needed to put into troubleshooting and customizing any of these distros (from Mint having the least to NixOS having the most) has been higher than either Windows (10 or 11) or macOS.
Depends on what you’re customizing them toward. If you want to make it act exactly like macOS, that’s going to be a lifelong struggle. (The opposite is also true: I hated my Mac until I stopped trying to make it work like my Linux desktop and started doing things its way.)
> The ability to drag windows from any point? That's horrible for people who like to click on stuff without intention to drag a window.
Not OP, but that's not the way it works - you'll need to press a modifier key (typically Alt or Win/Meta) along with the drag operation, so you can't do it accidentally. And you can always turn it off from the settings if you don't like this behaviour.
> I do agree that Linux should be preferred today for most people who are just starting out on computers
Why just single out newbies? Even old fogies can switch to Windows. My 70yr old mum used all versions of Windows from 3.1 - 7, and she switched to Linux about a decade ago, starting with Mint, and now on Aurora. She does all the basic tasks most PC users do (surfing the web, editing docs, printing/scanning, backing up photos etc) and has zero issues. If my mum - and old school Windows user - can use Linux, so can anyone else.
Just use a sensible distro with sane defaults (like Aurora), or a DE with a sane GUI (KDE or XFCE) and you'll be fine. The core UI /UX paradigms is the same as Windows, you just need to have an open mind and take your time getting used to the differences.
Naturally there are some people who can't deal with change, so Linux may never be an option for them, but for other folks, unless the have a legit reason to stick to Windows (like dependency on some proprietary app/workflow), Linux is a pretty viable option these days.
That's uncharitable: Stability matters, and Linux just doesn't give a fuck about breaking the environment since software is of course FOSS and can just be recompiled from sauce, right?
Meanwhile try to launch a proprietary app and have it work after some years? Lol, good luck unless you constantly update it. Windows, you can still run ancient apps because key parts of the system are stable.
Very subjective. I made the switch to Linux from Windows 7 over 10 years ago and even at that time I found Linux to be orders of magnitude better in almost every aspect, and those few areas where it was worse (which, aside from games, I'm struggling to even think of any now) were well worth the trade-off.
People use Windows because of the software, not because of the operating system itself. The best thing windows can do is not assert itself and hide as much as possible. As soon as you have to start interacting with any windows systems, it becomes clear how hacky and poorly conceptualized the OS is.
The best versions of Windows were the least annoying.
Windows wasn’t fully usable until the terminal and WSL shipped. And now isn’t due to adverts and loss of local accounts, and other hostile anti-features.
My first attempt at Linux was installing Mandrake sometime circa 2002. I was only a kid that liked computers back then, not really an advanced user. I could not make the mouse work, and gave up. Probably for a more advanced user that was not an issue, and Linux was better already.
Many years later, around 2015, I had the option to work from a Linux environment at my workplace, and went for it. Ubuntu this time around, during Windows 7 days. Many consider Windows 7 to be peak Windows, and I found Ubuntu to be much, much better. At least for regular use and Dev work. The only thing that kept me from using it on my own PC was that running my game library was not possible back then. I did keep it on dual boot for a few years though.
What allowed me to move for good was Proton. In some ways, that is the point where I can say, without any caveats or asterisks, that Linux is definitely better.
My experience is kinsa similar to yours, started around 98/99 with Red Hat and Mandrake. Linux was just so clunky at the time. I could never take it seriously, having to compile the kernel for getting something basic going was not very fun. Although it was pretty fun trying out all the various distros that would come on free CDs bundled with computer magazines (remember those?!).
I was in fact playing around with several alternate OSes at the time, and the ones which really impressed me the most were QNX and BeOS. I absolutely loved QNX for being so performant - especially at multitasking, was smooth as butter my humble 450MHz PIII. QNX solved the desktop interactivity problem more than two *decades* before Linux did, and I think that's pretty damn impressive. And BeOS blew me away with its multimedia performance.
It wasn't until Windows 7 came out, that I decided to switch to Linux full time (started with SuSE, then Fedora and switched to Arch a few years later). Basically my reason for switching was because I wasn't eligible for Microsoft's student discount and I couldn't afford to pay the full price for 7, and I was actually really looking forward to it and really wanted to buy it instead of pirating it, thinking I could get the student discount... but no. I got really ticked off at Microsoft and decided to just format my PC and switch to Linux for good.
I agree, but that's possibly because my experience with Linux in the age of 95 and 98 was Dragon Linux, which was adapted to sitting next to a Windows installation on a FAT partition and had some limitations and instabilities.
Once I got my first consumer high end PC that was really my own and payed for with my own money, with one of the early hyperthreading CPU:s, it didn't take long until I made the move from Windows to Slackware and never looked back. I've used later Windows versions quite a lot, but spent more time in Putty sessions against Linux and BSD boxes than anything else on them.
it was the better os for me in 2005 because it allowed me to do everything I needed for class on the only laptop I could afford at the time. windows mistake edition just didn't work at all beyond booting and running a browser and even that caused it to crash several times per hour.
Linux has remained the best operating system for me since that time despite multiple upgrades to more powerful machines. everything I needed was available in the package manager. when I turned it on to work, it turned on and I worked. when I turned it off, it turned off. it didn't start upgrading and then hang, like my friends computers.
In fact I kept supporting friends on windows for a few more years, but after that I just told them I didn't know how it worked, because windows was just such mess to support.
Linux is now the better OS on the desktop for many more people after the other one got significantly¹ worse than it used to be.
It has been the better OS server-side and for appliance applications (routers, media players, …) for a long time, Windows may be drawing equal but does that count if some of it is due to WSL?
It has been the better OS, or often just the equal OS for a lot of desktop users for a fair while also, particularly non-gamers who don't need other specific tools that don't have a sufficiently compatible Linux offering/alternative. Many use it because the cost is hidden and might use something else given a properly informed choice.
I wouldn't put it in front of my Dad, even though pretty much all he does is no different on Windows than Linux and has been for years, because of compatibility concerns with printers/scanners and because there are others in the family able+willing to support Windows so he isn't stuck waiting for me if he ever has trouble while I'm difficult to contact.
I don't run Linux on my main desktop due to inertia (games are largely what kept me with Windows long enough to have to make the 8->10 transition) but that is not enough any more, partly because it just isn't really there (lack of things keeping me on Windows because they don't work well easily elsewhere, and irritations with Win11 applying a noticeable retrograde force) and partly because my use patterns have changed (modern games are not a thing in my life ATM, my hobbies have changed considerably in the last decade). That machine will be switching over to Linux when I get around to it, or it might just be shut off (almost all data is on Linux on the little house server, and off-site copies, already anyway) in which case the laptop will just gain a dock so it can better use the big screens & whatnot.
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[1] I might also take issue with significantly, as that might imply the change is sudden and due specifically to the Win10 EOL. Windows, both 11 & 10 and 8 before them, has been going downhill slowly enough that each extra irritation has faded into something that people put up with before the next one comes along. Recent changes (more ads etc) are generally small² but are the final straw.
[2] Recall (and the justified consternation it creates) is the one recent change that I would call significant in its own right. As irritating as the other AI stuff nagging us to give it something to do is to those of use that don't want it, in many places it just feels like an evolution of Cortana's presence from a UX PoV more than a revolution in its own right, and doesn't feel nearly as invasive overall as the Recall subset does on its own.
I think the better way to look at is that no matter how good Linux gets, if MS didn't shoot themselves in the foot it would always struggle to make headway. Even the modest headway it's made over the last couple years.
It's not about quality, it's about market dominance. Walk into any major retailer, 95% of the computers they sell have Windows on them (100% if they don't sell Apple). Go to any company and see what they run on almost all their computers, Windows. Go to any school, probably the same thing (though years ago Apple would have had a strong presence too).
And that's not even talking about business software like Office. MS built that dominance back when Linux was almost entirely focused on the server space. What Desktops did exist where mostly hobby projects or relatively small companies. Shit Linux itself was a hobby project lol.
MS has had that position for over 20 years. Windows is the Xerox of computers. A lot of people don't even realize there are options out there. In that environment, even if the Linux Desktops got better than Windows, it should have taken an absolute killer app or some big evolution in the space to get people switching. All MS had to do was keeping offering a competent product. Or even a kind of shitty one that didn't actively give people a reason to switch.
But they can't help themselves. Most of the money isn't enough, they need all the money. And they've degraded their product to the point where it is actively driving people away. And even now it'll probably take another decade for Linux Desktops to break the 10% mark.
Modern Ubuntu, for me, is akin to Windows 7 (peak Windows), but with some added benefits like real package management and mnemonics (the underlined letters in menus you can access with alt+underlined letter), and other cool things like middle-click anywhere on the window to resize.
Even Mac is pretty bad by comparison.
Again, this is just me, but I wonder if people saying Linux is bad are really just complaining it's different? It does help that I only buy hardware I know works.
Linux desktop has improved a lot, but the huge momentum of the competitor has prevented many people (including OP) from switching or even remotely considering it. Anything that decreases the momentum of Windows lets the improvements of Linux show.
I think it has improved significantly. For the last few years KDE has been great and getting more polished.
The pain points are nothing worse than the crap Windows 11 throws at you. The only difference for the average person is that their go to tech support person might not know Linux. And paid support options like the India call centre stuff that gets thrown in with a laptop purchase for a month or so doesn't exist for Linux.
As with anything, there are transition costs. If your current solution becomes worse, those transition costs become relatively lower. So it says a lot more an issue of moving over than anything about linux
Yes, of course? Linux could be immaculate, but having less than 5% user share is a bigger issue that is best solved by the current market leader cratering.
Linux being the best OS didn't just "happen". It was a long process in many fronts (usability, devices, drivers, games, etc). But despite that, people are still reluctant to even try Linux, so Windows screwing around is the best thing that can happen to Linux.
I think it counts. If the most popular airline in the world suddenly started forcing you to commit to a subscription model to travel, one would consider less popular airlines going forward. Sometimes consistency of doing the job without adding hassle is more important than arriving at every destination under the sun. The problem with the Linux Desktop is it that it has a reputation as a scrappy alternative until it hits that random problem that grounds it. It will never replace Windows but it can take bigger and bigger chunks of users out of it.
The argunent is that it forced people to break their habit. Which is always the main hurdle for adoption. There is nothing innovative about Linux 2025 compared to 2024 or 2023, Windows just got worse. I say this as a 12+ years linux user. The biggest shift for the normies was Proton, and we got steam to thank for that. But Linux is more secure, reliable and hard tested as ever.
I think you missed the point. Linux was already good: it didn't become good because its competitor became worse. Rather, the competitor becoming worse gives some people the push they finally needed to make the switch.
I didn't have the time as a working Adult for distro hopping and Gentoo compiles, but the thought of having to live with Windows 11 made me try out modern linux again, glad I did.