My personal answer is because my audio/sound setup is obnoxiously complicated and I've tried to get a variation of it working on my steam deck but never managed it. I'm sure there are ways to do it, but on windows I know how it works and how to fix it if some update breaks it. If I switched it would require a lot more fussing around and special software that may or may not continue being supported and I just don't want to deal with it.
My excuse is that I don't even own a PC.
My work provides me a laptop that I use for what I need to do.
I don't really have a use for a PC other than maybe gaming, but I don't even have a lot of time to do that. I barely play my PS5. I did buy a Steam Deck and play it more than the PS5.
"I don't have time to learn it."
Although it's weird now, because we usually have this conversation while they wait for Windows to crash, restart, search up a patch, apply it, and reboot.
It's awkward. But I still kind of get it. Who has time to try something new when the current thing barely works.
They didn't want to.
Honestly, I'm not here to badger people into using Linux. If they feel uncomfortable learning a new system, or they just don't want to switch, that's fine with me. To each their own, I got better things to do with my time than trying to peer pressure people into using a particular OS. And honestly, if you disagree with that, then whoever it is you're pestering probably secretly thinks you're super annoying.
Honestly, the very best i got from a client of mine, a veterinarian who is about 80, he runs his whole Praxis on a Commodore PET (i mean, its a natural choice for a veterinarian), which he bought somewhere around the time i was born. His reason: "I don't need no Windows, i need no Linux or anything other than the computer i am accustomed to. It does what i need and it will do so till the day i die".
Based.
And the Vet won't get any AI Slop. Good for them. But the PET? Please update to the C64 or at least the VIC-20.
Why? The PET does what they need and has a crisp, clear, built-in display and a reliable power supply.
This is the point. About twenty years ago when I first met this guy I thought I HAD to convince him to upgrade to something more modern because, well, "new is better" I guess. Luckily he declined my offers and stayed with this system.
Now, this man is for me what would call a living legend. He bought this system when the PET was brand new, state of the art tech and was perhaps the first veterinarian in a radius of 100 km with a computer. From this point on he wrote himself tons of software for his personal use, modified this software for changing circumstances (and still does so!) and kept this system running.
THAT is permacomputing!
mostly from my field of work but generally it's either very niche software or adobe. I have no idea about anything CAD related but apparently there are a few very important CAD tools that don't work on Linux. Again I dont' know specifics but that's just what I've been told.
And finally Adobe stuff which speaks for itself. This mainly boils down to graphic designers and what have you.
There seems to be very few CAD options on linux sadly. And despite the decades of marvelous work on GIMP, it's still not on par with photoshop.
I need Microsoft Word for freelancing and I don't want to pay $100/year for M365.
It's really the only thing keeping a few of my friends and family members from switching.
Yeah, I could spin them up a VM and do some RDP trickery, but these aren't super technical people - the friction would mean emergency tech support calls that I'm not ready to answer.
Yup. Friction is the number one answer. Things just aren't quite exactly as they expect or there's just this one weird niche app they have to have. For my mother it was a cobbled together from parts of visual basic java and a few other things. That wine CAN run. But between the different tools and toolkits. The menubar renders incorrectly.
The solution however was not to drop Linux. Fortunately, there was an Android version, which I couldn't get running properly with waydroid because of poor integrated Intel graphics support, at least for non-XE cores. But a $200 tablet solved that problem. Nice big screen et cetera for her.
"My graphics programs." Printmaster in particular. That was a long time ago and now she's more open to Linux. We'll see what happens next time Windows does some bullshit.
Adobe apps
Not enough games for linux 🤣
Many games on Steam should be playable on linux. Except for games requiring kernel level anti-cheat.
if the game is not on Steam, you can find launcher (Lutris / Heroic) that launch the game for you, or proton wrapper (umu).
What game do you play? You can find its compatibility here https://www.protondb.com/
It's getting better; Proton has really advanced this.
What's hurt this movement, is the lack of support of AntiCheat games, whether that being due to kernel level anticheat or games not supporting server side anticheat.
Quite frankly, the potential of server-side anti-cheats is nearly entirely untapped. In Minecraft (Java Edition), some anti-cheats have made cheating much less overpowered, going as far as to patch 99% of movement cheats, and many combat cheats are ML-based, at this point.
Not only that, theres also an increasing number of anticheat's that supports linux, however they have it intentionally disabled so when you run the game it either blocks you or in worse case bans your account as a whole
I'm waiting for when the current official SteamOS is available to be installed on any PC to give it a whirl again. I know there is Bazzite, but I'd like to see exactly what a Deck user experiences, but on my desktop. They said it's coming, but with the recent announcement I'm wondering if they just meant this new Steam Machine and not like the old SteamOS which was kinda dookie but can be installed on any machine.
I’d like to see exactly what a Deck user experiences, but on my desktop.
Don't they see Steam's Big Picture mode? I think you could just run that and Gamescope on whatever distro you like. No need to wait for SteamOS 3.
too hard
They allowed Microsoft to control their means of production
...suckers
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