Linux

i never saw one to begin with

My daughter wants to play Sims 3 and use her Zune. I'm sure it's possible to do both with enough work and time spent tracking down old utilities but how much time do I want to spend on that when I could just crank out a VM.

"Anymore"? I haven't ever owned a Windows machine, and I haven't used a Windows machine since 2015. I do have to fix a random issue on my wife's work laptop about once a month.

I get that there are some things some people can't do without and which keeps them in Windows: games, and requirements of their business (Word, Excel, PPT), but nothing about Linux has gotten significantly better in recent years. Incrementally, over there past decade, sure, but no big, recent change that might justify the title.

Except in the same way I've never needed Windows: in a very specific, individual way.

Why is this thread getting flooded with people saying how they can't use Linux? Isn't that a little odd coming from a Linux community?

Me neither, if anything it's the other way around.

Okay, look, I don't want to be a hater, I promise. I have a setup with a Linux dual boot in my computer right now. But man, the crazy echo chamber around this issue is not just delusional, it's counterproductive. Being in denial about the shortcomings isn't particularly helpful in expanding reach, if that's what you all say you want.

So, in the spirit of balance, my mostly unbiased take on the listicle:

1 - Web tools get the job done: This is true when it's true. I work with Google's office suite, so yeah, many tools are indistinguishable. But not all tools are web tools. A big fallacy in this article is that just because a subset of items have embraced a solution doesn't mean that the solution is universal. If you need to work with Adobe software you're still SOL. MS Office still lacks some features on the web app. Some of the tools I use don't work, so I do still need to run those in a native Windows app. Since I'm not going to switch OSs every time I need to push a particular button, I'm going to default to Windows for work.

2 - Plenty of distros to suit your preference: This one is an active downside, and it pisses me off when it gets parroted. When I last decided to dual boot Linux I had to try five different distros to find one that sort of did everything I needed at once, which was a massive waste of time. I'm talking multiple days. Yes, there are a ton of distros. I only need to use one, though. But I need that one to work all the time. If one of the distros can get my HDR monitor to work but not my 5.1 audio and another can get my 5.1 audio setup to work, but not my monitors, then both distros are broken and neither is useful to me. This actually happened, incidentally.

3 - Steam has a decent collection of Linux games, plus Steam OS: Yes. Gaming on Linux is possible and works alright, but it's far from perfect. Features my Nvidia card runs reliably on Windows are hit-and-miss under Linux. Not all games are compatible in the first place, either. And while Heroic does a great job of running my GOG and Epic libraries, which are themselves just as big as my Steam one, it is a much bigger hassle to set up to run under the SteamOS game mode UI. Don't get me wrong, this has made huge strides but again, I'm not going to change OSs every time I hit a compatibility snag. This is the least fallacious of these points, though.

4 - Proprietary choices on Linux: Yes, there are some. Like the web app thing, the problem isn't what is there, it's what's missing. Also, as a side note, I find it extremely obnoxious when you have to enable these manually as an option in your package manager. As a user I don't care if a package is open source or not, I just want to install it.

5 - Electron makes app availability easier. Cool. Will take your word for it. Acknowledging the ideological debate behind it goes to the same argument I made in the previous point. And as above, it's not about what's there, it's about what's missing.

6 - No ads in your OS. I mean... nice? I still get ads for my selected distro on first boot, as well as on web apps and notifications for installed apps. Beyond a few direct links to first party apps in the one page of Win 11's settings app I don't find anything in Windows particularly intrusive, either. Which is not to say I don't dislike some of the overly commercial choices in Windows, they're just not a dealbreaker... yet.

7 - Docker, Homelab and self-hosting: This is... off topic, honestly. I do self host some things. Even used Docker once or twice... in my NAS, where the self-hosting happens. You don't need to switch your home desktop to Linux for that, and nobody is questioning that Linux is the OS of choice for a whole host of device ranges, from servers to the Raspberry Pi. Linux is great as a customizable underlying framework to build fast support for a niche device with a range of specific applications. We should be honest about how that breaks down if you try to use it as a widely accessible home computer alternative where the priorities are wide compatibility and ease of use.

Well, that became a huge thing, but... yeah, I guess I was annoyed enough by the delusion to rant. Look, I'd love to step away from Windows, and it's a thing you can do if you're tech savvy and willing to pretzel around the limitations in your hardware choices and your willingness to tinker... but it's not a serious mainstream alternative by a wide margin. I wish it was. Self-congratulatory praise within the tiny bubble of pre-existing fans (and why are there fans of operating systems in the first place?) is not going to help improve or widen its reach.