Linux

As a person with a full time job, a significant other, and several hobbies, I just don't have time to invest in learning a new operating system. I grew up with windows (95, 98, xp, 7, 10), so that's what I'm familiar with. I recently switched to linux (mint), and it's fine. Just getting started though is something that was rather involved, and I would never expect a normie to be able to figure out. If microsoft wasn't insisting on making win11 a dumpster fire, I wouldn't have bothered. Now that things are running smoothly, there's some minor annoyances that I'd really like to change, and the prevailing sentiment from the linux community is "that's just how linux is" or sometimes "here's a hacky workaround that barely works in only certain controlled cases". It's better than it was 10 years ago, so there is that.

I just got to work and plugged my surface pro into my external monitor. It didn't switch inputs immediately, and I thought "Linux would have done that". But would it?

Nope. My laptop for example doesn't automatically use an output when plugged in, but that doesn't bother me because I know other DEs would do that, and it's my choice of having a minimal window manager that causes that.

And this goes into your next point, because I know that this comes from decisions I made, I'm okay with that. I also know I could probably fix it somehow, even if just by running a script in the background that checks if an output is plugged and tries to use it.

And for me that's the big difference. As a general rule when things break or don't work are not the fault of Linux as a general, but of a specific piece of the stack, and more often than not it's because that piece was backwards engineered without any help from the manufacturers of the hardware it's meant to be controlling, so I can be very tolerant of these errors since the bad guys here are the third-party who's refusing to make their things work on Linux. But even things that don't work as I want to, I can make them do so, and that's a huge change in viewpoint.

In other words, on Windows I used to be of the thought of things you can do, and things you can't, with time I noticed that in Linux this thought shifted, to the point that the only question I ever ask myself is: "HOW do I do this?". This implies that there are no impossible things in Linux, which is obviously false, but I would argue that the correct way to think about this is "things that are impossible on Linux, for now", and that's a huge difference, because Linux is always evolving and getting better and better, things you thought are impossible now might be trivial in a few months or years whenever someone with the knowledge to fix it gets bothered with it.

I had this exact same thought but than I booted Windows. I get less frustrated because if use Linux I feel like I’m working with it and it is acceptable if there are mistakes. If I use Windows I feel like I’m working against it, and a big part of that is that a lot of issue aren’t there because they are bugs (of which there are probably as many as on Linux) but rather just bad/anti user design

At this point, Linux or even any given distro isn't the problem. The problem is the software library.

I call it GIMP syndrome. There's a lot of capable and powerful apps in the FOSS ecosystem and most of them have some kind of critical functionality gap or the UX of an Oregon Trail era disease. A lot of them, with the notable exception of GIMP, are actually working on it now.

We've been having this discussion in the group I game/ play TTRPGs with. Like 7 of us total all windows, me and another switched to Linux, a third is a computational scientist who is forced to work with redhat frequently, and a fourth member was thinking of switching. After me and member 2 switched, member 4 saw that we had problems (entirely discord for me, all games have honestly worked so far) and changed his mind about switching because he doesn't want to deal with stuff not working OOTB.

I can't fault people who want that, hell I do, Linux is well worth it to me but I will begrudgingly admit there are draw backs to Linux.

For me it's I can make Linux do this when I see another system perform well, in contrast with they took my vertical taskbar in windows 11 and I have to gut the system to get it back

I do have to remind myself that I'm still used to living in a world where Linux enjoyed immunity to most "consumer" malware just because it wasn't a popular desktop. Ultimately Linux is not more secure than any other system unless someone put in the work to make it that way.

My experience is generally it doesn't just work straight away unless it's something I've hammered out myself

I am also using one of the more DIY distros and window managers though, so I wouldn't expect it to without some attention from me to get it hammered out first

That said, once it's hammered out it continues to work exactly the way I want it to, it doesn't spy on me, it doesn't shove ads down my throat every 5 minutes

Would be an interesting experiment to see how non techy windows/mac users would get on if you just put stock mint/pantheon on their systems but I get the feeling it would not be as smooth as if they just had the thing everyone knows all the flaws of already

For me the main difference is Linux only does something when I ask it to.

Windows does whatever Microsoft wants it to do.

Both have major usability issues. But Linux gets a higher tolerance level, because of higher trust levels.

I'm inclined to give Linux more benefit of the doubt than, say, Windows. That's because of the motives behind it.

Microsoft have a very long history of making design choices in their software that users don't like, and quite often that's because it suits their interests more than their customers. They are a commercial business that exists to benefit itself, after all. Same with Apple. Money spoils everything pure, after all. You mention privacy, but that's just one more example of someone wanting to benefit financially from you - it's just in a less transparent and more open-ended way than paying them some cash.

Linux, because that monetary incentive is far less, is usually designed simply "to be better". The developers are often primary users of the software. Sure - sometimes developers make choices that confuses users, but that over-arching driving business interest just isn't there.

I think most of us have a good idea of the benefits and drawbacks of Linux/Windows/Apple.

I have a Windows machine for media production, because Linux doesn't support all the software I need for media production. I use Linux for absolutely everything else, because it's better for literally everything else. In truth, a MacBook Pro would be better for media production but they're too expensive.

The Linux kernel is wild and has more features and support than I have seen anywhere else. Everything from namespaces (containers) and virtualization to support for strange serial devices.

IMO more people should be critical of the systems and tools that they use instead of shitting on the tools that others choose to use.

We do assume too much of our tools, but many people here are guilty of assuming that other OS's are broken in ways that do not reflect the average customer experience.

It depends on who you ask. If you ask this to a M$ refugee, they will praise it. If you ask a *BSD user, they will bitch about it.