> The only reason I'm not on Linux full time is video game compatibility.

Let me see if I can leverage this to help you understand why other people don't use Linux: WINE and Proton do a pretty incredible job of allowing Windows games to run on Linux, why isn't that good enough?

Now take whatever your response was, and replace "gaming" with "engineering", "audio production", "accounting", "video production", or whatever. You're viewing these things from a perspective of casual understanding and saying that Linux seems "good enough", but when you've got a deeper level of knowledge in something (gaming) you readily see the problems.

> The only reason I'm not on Linux full time is video game compatibility.

Have you tried Steam within the past 6-9 months with Proton?

Steam is bundling a version of wine that Just Works(tm) in the Linux Steam client. Valve is claiming responsibility for all the goofy workaround configuration that accompanies setting up wine for any given game.

Native Linux games are listed alongside emulated Windows only games. This includes dx11 support. In the past 3 months they apparently added DX12 support, but I haven't tried it.

dx9 games have better framerates in Linux than windows on open source drivers. (not Nvidia) dx10/11 games have comparable framerates. Can't comment on 12. Obviously opengl or vulkan games have no issues.

It does not help with multiplayer games that include draconian anticheat mechanisms. Nor does it help you with Ubisoft's or EA's stores, but fuck them.

> It does not help with multiplayer games that include draconian anticheat mechanisms. Nor does it help you with Ubisoft's or EA's stores, but fuck them.

Easy to say when the OS is more important to you than the games. But when games are more important than the OS it's a different matter. Most gamers just want to click on the game and have it run, they don't want to mess with WINE or proton or Lutris or playonlinux

Anecdote: I recently purchased a laptop which came preinstalled with Windows 10. After trying 6 different Linux distributions -- Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Manjaro, Suse, MX Linux -- and none of them working (issues ranging from the installer not working to being totally unable to boot after the install to frequent freezing), I gave up and have gone back to Windows. I think I could've made Gentoo work with enough effort, but I don't have the patience for Gentoo that I used to.

I mean, maybe my experience would've been different with a different laptop, or maybe I could've put more effort in, but this is what stops Linux from being a daily driver for me. I don't want to spend all of that time just trying to find a distribution that works, followed by even more time trying to keep it working.

I disagree with Windows' direction more and more. I very much want to like Linux and use it as a daily driver -- I tried 6 popular distributions trying to get just one to work! -- but the reality of it stops me. If this is what someone who wants to use Linux experiences, how will it ever be able to catch on for regular desktop use?

(The best experience was with MX Linux. The hardware compatibility wasn't ideal; installing proprietary nvidia drivers broke the boot; power usage was kinda poor relative to Windows; but overall, I was able to at least use it.)

New laptops (or hardware in general) need a while to get going in Linux, I've noticed.

My mom got herself a new laptop while she was here to visit me, I installed Ubuntu on it, Wi-Fi kept crashing. It wasn't really stable.

Due to an unfortunate chain of events, her laptop spent another half a year with me, before she came back over to pick it up. I wiped it clean, reinstalled Ubuntu again, and now everything was working fine.

This was maybe a year or two ago.

It really depends on your dev workflow. If you're a Visual Studio user, you might find it quite jarring, but if you are, there are probably plenty of other reasons not to switch (it's switching away from your target environment).

For non-devs, it depends on how much MS infrastructure and solutions they've already adopted and have resources invested in. For a lot of companies, all that really matters is that they have hundreds or thousands of excel documents being passed around, and they can get better support and licensing through Windows.

Online versions of a lot of these reduce this to some degree, but most people would probably prefer to run Word and Excel natively than through an online app, even if they sync to shared storage and occasionally use those to view/edit something.

Add to that the fact that MS offers an end-to-end environment where you can buy something for whatever you find your needs are and find directions on how to integrate it, and there's really not much to compare.

Proton is nearly there and integrating in to wine in to Steam.

However if the game in question makes use of the Windows Video decoding APIs results are currently very disappointing; the last time I tested it (which was earlier this month) I still couldn't actually play Obduction (the Myst like game) due to none of the puzzle explanations / video data that make up the story of the game running.

Proton is improving but a lot of games still don't work or have random issues.

And for linux, forget any game that uses BattleEye for anti-cheat detection.

Yep, Proton is really good for lots of things.

Unfortunately, it's not a 100% complete solution. For example, no-one seems to have gotten Crysis (the original - and best ;) - version) to work, due to some kind of DRM thing in Crysis itself. :(

Things have really, really come a long way. I've got Centos 8 running Steam, and huge swaths of my library just work. I was not expecting that.

I recently started to change over to linux for gaming and I was pleasantly surprised by how many games work through lutris.

For gaming, as long as you're not playing a Microsoft-exclusive game, Lutris seems to work pretty well for most stuff.