I promise I'm not trying to troll here. I really would like to see things get better. I feel that a large percentage of PC users would like to give MS the middle finger, but it seems like Linux has been perpetually 20 years away from an acceptable level of functionality for the last 20 years.
-Speed. Despite claims from the Linux community, Linux is always outperformed by Windows in terms of speed when performing everyday tasks. The speed difference becomes more apparent as you have more apps open. More than 1-2 apps running in the background can bring some weaker systems to their knees. Meanwhile the exact same hardware can have 7-8 apps running with minimal slowdowns in Windows. Top end hardware doesn't seem to do that much better in Linux.
-Help with issues that arise. Modern versions of Windows mostly "just work", but when you do run into issues it helps to be using the OS that 3/4 of the planet is using when it comes to resolving error messages and "how do I " " in Windows" type questions. I'm not dismissing the huge amount of effort that has gone into building Linux support communities. Many of them are very good, but I prefer to just Google my questions. Doing that for Linux yields highly outdated information, forum posts full of the blind leading the blind, and brick walls where there currently isn’t a solution. It’s really depressing when you’re having an issue that people have been complaining about for 10+ years and there STILL isn’t a solution.
-Software availability. I’m sorry. Open source programs are a joke. 9 times out of 10 there is a program that has the functionality you need. 70% of the time it even has a GUI. 50% of the time it functions at a level that one would consider acceptable, 30% of the time it’s good, 10% of the time it's excellent, and almost never it’s undisguisable from the Windows version. The only 3 examples I can even think of are Google Chrome, Firefox, and Kodi. Pretty much everything else is junk vs the Windows equivalent. Maybe if WINE was like 5000% better that would help bridge the gap, but then what is even the point of running a “free” OS if you are just going to run closed source software in it?
Fragmentation of effort. Think of it this way. What if there were, at any given time, around half a dozen versions of Windows. Each being worked on by a completely different group of people. Each version had about half a dozen sub versions, also being worked on by completely different groups of people. Each sub version had dozens of sub sub versions, and each of those sub sub versions had dozens of forks and sub sub sub versions. Every version is being worked on by different people with completely different goals, biases, motivations, and levels of expertise with the vast majority of them getting paid nothing. How well would you expect ANY of those versions to function? A couple thousand people being paid to work towards commonly agreed upon goals is likely to produce a better end user experience than hundreds of thousands of unpaid people working towards hundreds of thousands of different goals with very little common agreement.
-Speed. Despite claims from the Linux community, Linux is always outperformed by Windows in terms of speed when performing everyday tasks. The speed difference becomes more apparent as you have more apps open. More than 1-2 apps running in the background can bring some weaker systems to their knees. Meanwhile the exact same hardware can have 7-8 apps running with minimal slowdowns in Windows. Top end hardware doesn't seem to do that much better in Linux.
-Help with issues that arise. Modern versions of Windows mostly "just work", but when you do run into issues it helps to be using the OS that 3/4 of the planet is using when it comes to resolving error messages and "how do I " " in Windows" type questions. I'm not dismissing the huge amount of effort that has gone into building Linux support communities. Many of them are very good, but I prefer to just Google my questions. Doing that for Linux yields highly outdated information, forum posts full of the blind leading the blind, and brick walls where there currently isn’t a solution. It’s really depressing when you’re having an issue that people have been complaining about for 10+ years and there STILL isn’t a solution.
-Software availability. I’m sorry. Open source programs are a joke. 9 times out of 10 there is a program that has the functionality you need. 70% of the time it even has a GUI. 50% of the time it functions at a level that one would consider acceptable, 30% of the time it’s good, 10% of the time it's excellent, and almost never it’s undisguisable from the Windows version. The only 3 examples I can even think of are Google Chrome, Firefox, and Kodi. Pretty much everything else is junk vs the Windows equivalent. Maybe if WINE was like 5000% better that would help bridge the gap, but then what is even the point of running a “free” OS if you are just going to run closed source software in it?
Fragmentation of effort. Think of it this way. What if there were, at any given time, around half a dozen versions of Windows. Each being worked on by a completely different group of people. Each version had about half a dozen sub versions, also being worked on by completely different groups of people. Each sub version had dozens of sub sub versions, and each of those sub sub versions had dozens of forks and sub sub sub versions. Every version is being worked on by different people with completely different goals, biases, motivations, and levels of expertise with the vast majority of them getting paid nothing. How well would you expect ANY of those versions to function? A couple thousand people being paid to work towards commonly agreed upon goals is likely to produce a better end user experience than hundreds of thousands of unpaid people working towards hundreds of thousands of different goals with very little common agreement.
