There is a critical work applications that I need. I’ve tried everything to get it to run on Linux, so I really can’t do it.

Bought a Mac instead to at least get away from windows. The day that app can run on Linux, I’ll be switching back to it.

Main reasons are:

• Work - I use my PC every day, all day, for work, so making OS level changes is something I'm not keen to do for fear of breaking something. I had meant to get a cheap laptop to practice Linux on, but time/money got in the way of that.
• Lack of knowledge - I'm far from a novice with computers, and am frequently the person people turn to for help, but I've never really used anything but Windows (Mac for a year, once, but only intermittently) and I know nothing about drive partitioning, etc.
• Software - I use Adobe products frequently, especially Photoshop and Première and while I know people say that there are alternatives, I don't feel like I have the energy to start learning again with new programs.
• Time - I just don't have the time to spend on all of the above.

All that said, I'm going to have to do something about it! Ugh.

• I don't have a personal computer, just my work computer right now so I don't need it.
• I work in graphics so I'm wary that not everything I use now will be available (I know there are alternatives, but they aren't equal).
• I got a steam deck for my gaming (not my day to day).
• my wife and I use Mac's and iPhones and I'm worried it'll be hard for her to switch and the ecosystem is very convent and easy right now.
• I acquired a gaming computer for my kid and promptly put mint on it.
• I only pretend to be technologically savvy and am not confident to answer all the questions my family needs to go full Linux. It's more at the testing hobby level.

My main reasons boil down to availability of programs, no necessity yet, and ease of the new ecosystem isn't as simple.

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.

Personal: Linux with a secondary, occasionaly used box for things that only seem to work on Windows. Would just do a VM if I didn't already have a spare hand-me-down box.

Work: I'm not fighting that battle. If they deploy Windows, I'm using Windows.

Going 100% Linux, even just in personal use, is still not feasible for someone who doesn't want to make it one of their primary hobbies.

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.

Fusion 360.

Blender is not suitable for me because from what I've read it's good for sculpture work but not good for dimensional accuracy.

There is Free cad but last time I looked at it, it was very far behind in terms of features. But as soon as that can do STL mesh to editable object conversion I'll switch.

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.

I'm a lazy bastard who keeps pushing it off

For my laptop, 90% of. The reason is pc game pass. I like trying random games out for a few hours.

That said, my old desktop is still on windows 10 and there's some shitty update that occasionally causes boot failure after which I've to either rollback the update, restore to a system restore point or (once) do a full windows reinstall.

The problem happened again a couple days ago. Since it's not my daily driver anymore, I just don't have to energy to fix it. I think it might be time to move to Linux, except I've no idea what distro to go for. For work, I've used a bunch of centos and rocky servers, but they've always been cli. I've no idea what kind of good ui based distros will work for me.

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

My main workflow is on Linux, but I do have to keep a couple of Windows machines around. One laptop for work stuff (bought out of pocket, employer has BYOD policy, go figure) that needs or works more reliably on Windows. Then a repurposed e-waste laptop at home for the occasional Windows-only utility or proprietary interface software for various old gadgets. The latter forces me to have a physical Windows machine since getting bespoke hardware to pass through reliably to a Windows VM isn't a high ROI activity.

VR support, that's it for me.

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.

You could always dual boot - have a secondary drive to ease into Linux and keep your Windows drive as you work on setting things up/functioning in Linux.

My PC is hooked up to my main TV as a gaming/home theater thing.

I think my setup is pretty cool, it's synced up to my Philips hue lights, surround sound, the whole shebang.

For whatever reason, I assume some sort of DRM nonsense, the light sync doesn't work through the hue sync box and I have to use the PC app

The Hue app doesn't support Linux, and from what I can find the app doesn't work right through proton/WINE/etc. there's a handful of people trying to cobble together their own Linux hue sync apps but none of them seem like they're quite there yet.

I'm pretty sure that with the advancements made in the last few years I can probably run just about any game or program I want (most of what I use aside from games is FOSS anyway) but I do still have a bit of a bad taste lingering in my mouth from trying to get games and stuff running on Linux over a decade ago.

At work its because all the tools work on it. That's it.

Although there's a minority that is moving to phone and Mac. And they are growing. Its interesting to see the transition last 2 years. A lot of the vendors have put their products online after covid so there is less and less reasons to use windows.

And the last crowd strike issue made management OK with deploying on Linux. So about 2/3 of the servers a that are in existence are now on Linux. Guess between windows server and Linux are the most stable?

I tried messing with my boot settings since it was required for playing the new battlefield open beta or whatever. After changing the settings, my computer could no longer find the boot drive and I was stuck in BIOS. Managed to revert and everything was ok, but with all that will be involved in transitioning to Linux, I don't feel like risking my PC for that when everything works now, as much as I would love to be on Linux.

I know dual boot exists, I'm not interested - have to cut my storage volume to do that and I'd rather it be all or nothing.

I know I can test drive Linux by booting from a USB drive, not interested cause I've already done it in the past and it was fine, but it doesn't fix the issues with transitioning.

I know I can back up all my data and proceed from that point - so what, all my data is backed up, my drives are formatted, and then what do I do if I run into the issue of not being able to boot from that drive again? Or even another issue I don't know about yet that bricks my shit?

Beyond all of that, transitioning will involve a lot of work and investigating to set everything as I like it and fix any problems I run into. I only have so much time in the day and so much attention to give things and with the risk consideration added on, it's just not worth the time and effort and attention it would take.

That said, I'm considering once I get a lot of free time to commit to it somehow or I replace my current pc

I switched to Bazzite 9 months ago, it's played every single game I've tried. No more need for excuses.

I used Zorin back in like 2014 on a cheap laptop that didn't have a good enough battery or much RAM, so windows was pretty annoying on it. The hotkeys didn't work, but that was still better than dealing with windows on it.

A few years later, I tried dual-booting for my work laptop with Mint and it would break frequently. After reinstalling both OSes for like the 4th time in a year, I just gave up and went back to windows only due to specific software I needed windows for at the time.

Been meaning to give Linux another try, but been procrastinating on it like lots of other projects.

I'm lazy and already have windows installed/know how to use it.

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.

Adobe and games. But actually mostly Adobe.

Irfanview, MYOB, and a lack of virtual file system in Nextcloud.