this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Could be small or big.

My answer has always been that, Linux can't handle everything I'd ask out of it that I normally can with Windows. I know the games issue has been progressing far from the days when that used to have been an archaic flaw with Linux for the longest time. Games might not be the issue except for some concerns I have for some games.

I was taking some time a few moments ago, to check if a program called Firestorm Viewer would work on Linux Mint which could've been my distro of choice. And the description written on the linux page described exactly the kind of concerns I'd have for compatibility and usability from going Windows to Linux.

They said that their viewer was tested and designed to function mostly with Ubuntu and while it could work with other distros, it's not to be expected to be smooth.

That's the kind of sentiment and concern I have always had with Linux if I were to go from Windows to it. There are programs and tools on Windows that I have that are used for specific purposes and I know they will not function on Linux. Furthermore, incase anything breaks down, any and all solutions would only be applicable to that thing that would be far easier to solve than just being SOL if I was on Linux.

It is something as a user that I just can't simply afford to deal with on a regular basis if I made the switch.

So while I may not have too much of an issue running games, I won't have too much of an issue using alternatives, I won't have to deal with the Windows ecosystem .etc I will just be running into other walls that would simply make me second guess my decision and make me regret switching to the point where I would dip back into Windows in a hurry.

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[–] Dragonstaff@leminal.space 2 points 45 minutes ago

Every couple years I decide to switch to Linux, spend few weeks trying to get everything to work right, then give up and go back to Windows.

I feel like I'm in a "Goldilocks zone" where I'm enough of a power user that doing what I want in Linux takes quite a bit of work to get set up, but not enough of a power user that I enjoy the technical challenge.

Most recently I was trying to play a couple modded video games, and run a headless HTPC. One thing would work on one distro, another would work on another, but I couldn't get everything to work at once.

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 hours ago

Not sure what to get considering I want something fully European.

[–] obey@lemmy.wtf 2 points 21 hours ago

Pirated games

[–] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

I'm a lazy bastard who keeps pushing it off

[–] MarieMarion@literature.cafe 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm convinced it's much less straightforward than people here say it is.

I hate Windows, but I only use my computer for OpenOffice, some liiiiight browsing, and old-school light pirating (light enough TPB fits all my needs), so meh.
My new neighbor is an old leftist techie though, and when my 9 year old laptop dies, I may ask him to convert me. Maybe.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 day ago

it is not, but for the simple use case you mention, it's actually more intuitive.

you can try it out straight from the usb.

[–] Kagu@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Unfortunately I'm addicted to a game that requires kernel level anti cheat. So I dual boot Fedora and Windows, but pretty much the only thing I use the Windows partition for is the game and that rare application that just works ™️ on Windows

[–] nizvicious@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Same here, fellow Fedora and Windows dual boot. I have a seperate hard drive for kernel level anti-cheat games: Escape From Tarkov - some PVE maps do run under Linux but PVP and parts of the map require anti-cheat.

Battlefield games from 5 onwards

Call of Duty games Coldwar onwards - do not open a call of duty game under Linux, there have been posts where it is an instant ban.

Ghosts of Tabor

I do have hope that one day the anti-cheat situation will work out where it doesn’t matter what operating system you are running but for now if I want to play some of the above games with friends for now I dual boot.

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[–] variouslegumes@reddthat.com 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You'll find some things are broken and janky in Windows and Linux. Just different jank you're not used to. I have friends who complain about how they have to do weird workarounds for Linux and then turnaround and fuck with RegEdit. You get used to either given enough time.

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

then turnaround and fuck with RegEdit.

LOL, forgot about this. And they say they ain't tech savvy enough

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I'm lazy and haven't gotten around to it yet

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[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

audio production in Linux is awful.

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

While we are nearly an "All Linux" shop at home, there is one machine that I won't change.

It is a HP oscilloscope running a heavily modified version of Win98. Back then, it cost as much as a new car, and it still works mostly fine (and where it doesn't, I know, and can work around). The Windows is basically an afterthought to the hardware, and I don't think I could get any kind of drivers for the hardware - not even for a newer Windows version. So that remains.

But even my wife wants to switch to Linux now instead of going Win11.

[–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 2 points 21 hours ago

If it works, don't fix it.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Most recently when I used Windows was because of work. I've been seeing these posts for a while now and I can make some valid arguments.

  • Anti cheat games
  • Adobe products (Web is not the same)
  • MS Office desktop
  • Work has processes linked to Windows specifically (server that only works on IIS Express maybe?)
  • Big legacy codebase where they don't match filename casing.
  • Specific Visual Studio scripts or plugins for a DSL.
  • Security requirements that need windows APIs (like mandating crowdstrike)
  • Music production with a Ableton (it works but it's not noob friendly).
  • You have deep knowledge of Windows and getting up to speed on Linux would take a year without guarantees you have a comparable system.
  • Your client is on Windows and you're making a desktop Windows app that's not cross platform.

Thankfully none of these apply to me so I'm on Linux but I can see how this is an issue.

[–] Whitebrow@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Isn’t mint based on Ubuntu? So that should work without a hitch for you. Worst case just boot into the live usb without installing it directly and just try it there.

As for me, I dual boot on separate drives because I have specific software that requires windows sometimes. Otherwise it’s primarily Linux on all machines in the house.

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[–] KingDingbat@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I have tried several times, with both Ubuntu and Mint, and it never ends well for me. I even use Ubuntu as a web server for years, and have similar problems there, just in a different use case. I don't even get to a point where I'm unable to run apps that can run on Windows. It always seems to work fine during the first few hours and while doing the setup and config stage, I eventually run into a never-ending troubleshooting wormhole that leads nowhere but aggravation. I'll spend hours upon hours scouring the internet for solutions and it always ends the same way "I have this same problem, and this fixed it." and whatever "this" was never fixes it for me, whatever it is. I feel like Linux is just so always evolving that there's no standards and a command that works for one user on a previous version/distro is just completely useless for me because of some obscure technical glitch or difference whatever my installation has. Dealing with repositories, updates and endless dependencies is always just impossible and it's completely alien to someone who's used Windows for 40 years.

My current iteration is I'm running a dual boot machine with Mint and Windows with the intention of phasing out Windows, but I'm unable to trust Linux Mint to be there when I need it. After a day or so of installing apps and configuration, it became unstable. I attempted to update the video drivers to the "recommended" version and it seems to have borked the whole Linux installation and nothing on the internet seems helpful, and the communities aren't very friendly to n00bs.

So I always end up back on Windows, even though my hateful soul wants to ditch it badly. As much as I hate Windows and MS, Windows rarely has severe stability issues.

Are you me!? What you described is exactly my experience with Linux. I really want to completely ditch Windows, but I'm not keen on the idea of spending full days of my life every year on maintaining a Linux installation. I tried Ubuntu, Manjaro and PopOS, all of which have bugs preventing audio from being played on my laptop (I spent so many hours troubleshooting and couldn't figure it out). Finally tried Mint and audio works most of the time, but Mint is a super mediocre experience that I'm not excited about and I don't understand why people rave about it. My laptop is dual boot and I use Mint 95% of the time but it's pretty lame and doesn't feel like "my" OS.

Linux enthusiasts scratching their heads wondering why the masses aren't switching over to Linux need to understand that it's nowhere near ready to go mainstream. Even after decades of development it takes more troubleshooting and customization than 95% of people are willing to give it.

[–] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Maybe you should try something Arch-based like Cachy OS? Coming from Mint I don't think I could live without the Arch wiki now. Just like you said, I was tired of the never ending obscure forums. I'm personally using EndeavourOS and everything just works™️. I'd like to think it's due to the fact that less things are pre-configured, so my configs are the singular source of truth. I would say Ubuntu based distros are not good for extensively modifying.

[–] KingDingbat@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Again, thank you for the recommendation of CachyOS. I whipped it up last night on my computer, and other than a small blip that the drive doesn't appear in bootable devices on my BIOS unless I go deep digging and manually click it to boot, it's been very smooth and reliable. I've been using it all night/day and it is really nice. I just have to figure out why the drive doesn't appear in my boot order menu when it's clearly a bootable OS.

[–] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Glad to help!

If you're trying to use grub(im not sure which boot loader you're using), you'll need to add the drive ID to the boot config. You can use something like lsblk -f I hope that's enough information to help you keep going.

[–] VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 14 hours ago

I second CachyOS. That shit just works on every machine I slap it on.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 4 points 2 days ago (7 children)

I want to be able to rely on all the things I want to do on my PC "just working" I don't want to come home after a long day of bullshit looking forward to playing a game or working on a project and have to do a bunch of troubleshooting because something is fucked up. I'm not there yet with Linux. To be fair I'm not there yet with Win 11 either so I'm in a tight spot.

I did buy a laptop so I could try it out more aggressively but have ran into a lot of roadblocks and just have a lot of things that I haven't had time to figure out yet.

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[–] for_some_delta@beehaw.org 3 points 2 days ago

I still need to provide binaries for Windows, so build and compile for multiple operating systems.

I love Linux. Deploying software to customer sites was historically challenging on Linux due to system dependencies. Containers alleviate most of those problems.

[–] PetteriPano@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I flipped in 1997, so any software I might have missed since those days are probably not around anymore.

Windows 95 was pretty shitty in comparison to Linux, and a lot of software broke with NT 4.0

It was an easy choice at the time. Linux was the operating system for this new fancy thing called the internet. Software development turned into a career, and Linux is just a very nice stack for building backends and infrastructure.

I do have an old ThinkPad around running windows 10. I've only used it three times in the past five years: To unbrick an Android phone, to set the MMSI on a marine radio, and to update the maps on my car's satnav.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

I ended up doing it, but my hesitation prior to the switch was gaming. I did it anyway though, and now with Proton I don't miss a thing.

Get a couple USB sticks and backup your documents folder. Having backup, aside from being a generally good idea, should make you feel safer to test and experiment.

I do understand the general concern about running your Windows apps, but I'd say just trust yourself and see what you canake work, and what you can find good alternatives for. I'm at a point now where there are Linux apps that I really like but can't get to work quite right on Windows. It's not a one-way thing.

[–] thenewred@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (3 children)
  • CAD
  • Photo editing

Gave FreeCAD and darktable a solid try hoping to switch my main desktop, but they have significant usability problems

[–] Badabinski@kbin.earth 5 points 2 days ago

CAD was a big problem for me as well. I've been happy enough with OnShape (coming from Autodesk Inventor), but the extreme SaaS nature of it makes me worry.

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So many folks seem to be the opposite of me…

Linux just works now. Shit with my printer, device drivers, LAN things, stuff like like is like wrestling an animal on Windows for some reason, and… just works with KDE. It’s like they’ve swapped places.

Random Windows apps works better in wine than they do in actual windows, sometimes. With no fuss: I double click and they launch, that’s it.

Don’t even get me started on security.


But Linux is (mostly) not performant for gaming, at least not on Nvidia. It’s… fine, but I’m not going to take a 10%+ hit, sometimes much more severe, and poorer support for HDR, frame limiters, mod tools and such when I can just boot neutered Windows instead.


So I’m not getting away from Windows in the near future, but to frank, I don’t understand why more folks (who get past the admittedly tall hurdle of learning about partitioning and installing an OS) don’t dual boot, or seek to use certain poorly supported Linux native apps when double clicking exes mostly just works.

But my point is you don’t have to pick and choose. And there’s no commitment. You can have your cake and eat it, and send the cake back if you don’t like it.

[–] sjkhgsi@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Drivers. I've got a bunch of music stuff that lets you edit presets on the computer and they just don't make drivers for Linux

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Edit: These are reasons I use Linux because I read the title too fast... Doh...

Because I dont think its normal to have an American tech company recording what I do at my computer. Its a bit shocking that people have given up and just let them watch everything now.

Its not only that, its also that windows always is annoying. Weather its constant sounds, notifications, ads, user interface changes or bugs, its all so annoying.

Linux is just beautiful, quiet, fast, no ads. Doesnt get slower with time. Updates are actually adding features you may want.

The entire open source idea is beautiful. Sharing solutions, working together, without profit motives.

[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Mac OS has always worked well enough. It's much worse now in my opinion than it was since High Sierra but it's still fine. Also, I fear it'd be quite difficult to get Linux working on an M2 MacBook Pro for dubious benefit to me.

If I was on a PC though, I'd definitely try Linux out, really don't like Windows 11 and didn't love Windows 10

[–] compostgoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I did. But I could easily see how people are put off by the “fan base”. I actually avoid talking about Linux at all irl because I don’t want people to think I’m a fossbro

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[–] pleaseletmein@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don’t think I’m good enough with computers not to just fuck it all up.

I professionally develop software on Linux, and still managed to fuck up an Arch system a few years back. So don't feel so bad.

These days, I rather spend time with my young child than tinkering with a Linux setup. So my trusty 10yr old PC (that has seen a few GPU upgrades) is still running Windows for the occasional gaming when I have the time.

[–] fufu@feddit.org 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

I've found real solutions to pretty much everything but this. For Fusion, I still just have to run it in a windows VM under Linux.

[–] Eiri@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Because my PC is an entertainment box. I don't want to turn it into a problem to solve.

Also, Nvidia.

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