Only about 10 years full time here, but yeah, unless I needed to run Adobe tools or run a handful of games with Anticheat features, yeah I can't imagine why I would ever touch Windows again.
Same. I only recently went completely Linux but I’ve been using it personally and professionally since the 90’s. Gaming was my last windows holdout. Everything I play works fine with proton so no more need for windows.
I first tried Linux with Slackware in the 90s and maybe once a year or two I'd give it a go since then to see if it can really replace Windows.
X11 and gaming were the biggest problems. I don't know when it got better regarding X11, but I remember for ages my biggest annoyance was that the desktop always felt laggy/jittery. Nothing moved right and it felt terrible to work with.
I know that was no longer the case by around 2018, but I don't recall when or what fixed it. So around 2018, I always had a Linux system, old computer, old laptop. Mostly used for work. But my main system was still Windows.
When I heard Windows 11 being announced, I decided it's time to move over to Linux as my main, so I did. I think around mid 2021. It went much better than I expected. Other than a few games not working, it was much more usable as my main than I expected, but I still kept Windows 10 on it for the games that wouldn't work.
About 3 months ago I finally got rid of my Windows partition, after realising I hadn't used it once in over 6 months. Proton is just so much better now, probably because of the Steam deck, that except for hardcore multiplayer games, Windows isn't needed any more.
Nothing I miss from Windows. Though admittedly I do have a Windows VM, which I need to use for some of my work.
Same, I started on kernel 2.2 and It was glorious when kernel 2.4 came out because we went from ipchains to iptables.
Compiling the kernel on a 486 was fun.
First distro being Mandrake from a magazine CDROM. Then Red hat for a short while till the switch to Debian Potato with Window Maker and later e16 on AMD K6-III 450 (big jump from the previous Cyrix system)
It felt... Zen
For gaming I had modded OG PSX then modded Xbox. Also had another Xbox running debian as a home server. I think I may still have it somewhere but it hasn't been powered on in decades.
Latest system is a Lenovo loq. Upgraded to 64GB RAM & 4TB + 512GB NVME
Optimized for KVM Host & Dev
I have steam and installed and optimised ~93 games. Haven't spent much time playing any of them, though they are ready to go. Using Xbox Series X|S Wireless Controller (was a bummer that I had to install Windows 11 on a spare PC to update the controller firmware before it worked over Bluetooth in Linux)
___
After reading what I wrote, I think it's time to stop configuring & a gaming session is overdue.
Big question: Which game to start with? 🐱🎮
My heart says RoboCop Rouge City as that was my favourite movie as a kid.
I tried to play Stray and I got too anxious worrying about the ginger cat 🐈 getting hurt and being away from his cat family.
As for pixel art games, on a tangent Selaco is fun. I played a bit of the demo for a 10-15 minutes & the sprites are amazing!
Maybe your system can run it
[https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/05/awesome-gzdoom-shooter-selaco-will-delist-the-demo-but-you-can-still-get-it/](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/05/awesome-gzdoom-shooter-selaco-will-delist-the-demo-but-you-can-still-get-it/)
Switched 2 weeks ago. Had no interest in the hassle of dual booting, so I just immediately switched.
So far so good.
The only thing I'm missing is gamepass, and once the new fifa comes out, probably that too. But those aren't worth going back to windows for.
Tbh. The ea app turned me away from fifa And that was on Windows. Things completely borked, apparently you can run the ea app in lutris. Plus run fifa from steam too..
The app was so bad I unistalled all my ea titles
I run the ea app via Lutris to play F1 23.
But with the new anti-cheat both F1 24 and fifa 24 doesn't work.
It sucks, because I only play offline anyway.
Yeah I'm just saying the ea app is shockingly bad in general. It was completely broken on my win 11 install. Not bothered to install it on my Linux machine.
I hate being asked to fix Windows computers. Nothing is straight forward. I remember having to boot my wife's computer into something that felt like an old school Mortal Kombat cheat code. Why can't I just "sudo?" Oh right, because MS needs to control users. 🙄
> and then you have to explain them they can't play Apex and Fortnite because of "linux",
I'm playing Apex on linux rn.
Fortnite is the dumb one because they Don't want to enable Linux.
Epic has not enabled Linux support for the anti cheat so you will just get kicked for anticheat not running unfortunately. The infrastructure is there, Epic is just choosing to not let us connect
I'd imagine Mac households would have similar problems. It's really an issue with the monopoly that Microsoft has over the desktop. It's got miles better than it was and hopefully it'll get even better.
I've been a penguin since I was a kid, so it's actually possible haha
Never really had a need for Windows (other than organizations like schools that insist on their lockdown browsers and such) that wasn't solved by WINE or Proton.
All my kids have used Linux as soon as they were old enough to use a computer. My desktop has been Ubuntu for years. I can play windows games on it and it serves my purpose, not some corporate overlord.
I think it's a lot more depressing that you seem to argue against them learning it for themselves. To me that just sounds like you promote laziness and dependence for kids.
Except the original commenter is pretty clearly saying he's withholding help *because of the OS* not because he's trying to teach them to problem solve and learn for themselves. It's the same elitist attitude you see all over Linux-related subs and communities.
All of the nuance in their situation is available in the comment and they never make a decision with more depth than “Microsoft bad”. We know this because *checks notes* this is Reddit, and obviously no one ever simplifies a situation on Reddit, especially not for humorous hyperbole.
It's kinda funny, the last time I helped my kid with a problem with her computer, Windows decided to lock me out of logging in altogether because I tried turning off all non-MS services and all startup items, like I did with older versions of Windows. Apparently this breaks logging into Windows now. I had to jump through crazy hoops to get the computer running again. So, yeah, I'm actually kinda hesitant to help her with Windows issues now.
Does the bloat really matter for normal use case?
Whatever you need is a quick search from the start menu away.
Linux is, especially for troubleshooting, in my opinion an even more bloated mess because you need to look up the services, service files, then configuration files, installed programs given you at least know which service or program fails. And in my experience it takes years to grasp and remember where to look for all these things. And even though that, I still have a problem at the moment I couldn't figure out yet. Well reminds me to post it on another sub in hope to get some clues.
> And in my experience it takes years to grasp and remember where to look for all these things.
Took me a long long ass time to learn where all this same stuff was on Windows, and tbh even after working with it professionally for almost 10 years it still had layers hidden in corners that were hard to find that are trivial to lookup on Linux...
You arent remembering when you had to do all the same steps on windows. You didnt come out of the womb knowing about eventviewer for instance.
I still have a Windows install on a separate SSD but if you ask me when I did boot the last time into it, I must guess ... Around June last year. And that's because my wife's a teacher and her grading software is Win only.
I'm missing nothing. All my apps are working, all my games are working. Everytime I log into Windows I don't like it. And I'm (or better was) a very OS agnostic kind of guy a go by the line "Use the tool that fits your needs". But I don't need Windows anymore.
I have a small 256 GB SSD with Windows on it for exactly one game because my friends still want to play it. Rainbow 6 Siege. I don't particularly enjoy the game anymore (I don't like how they've changed the maps and operators for the last few years), but enjoy playing with them enough that I'll reboot into a super stripped down Win10 for them.
I built my own desktop and it’s never had windows on it - I saved myself the license fee. I game on it all the time, Valve has done so much for Linux gaming in the last few years that I have no problems.
Great, I have also proceeded to assemble my gaming pc and have not been booting a windows system for a few months now. What kind of distro are you leaning toward? With what DE and video card?
I am currently using Fedora 40 which seems to be the most stable. I would love to be able to use Wayland because I love it but I necessarily need the 555 drivers which not being stable…they show some little problems.
Very slight flickering on VM machines and some games on lutris. This is on both GNOME and Spin KDE. Even on KDE sometimes there are problems loading the driver and in some cases the login is slow. In other cases it logs out by itself.
The only currently stable solution is GNOME with X11 enabled by the GDM conf.file.
currently using fedora 40 on a 7900XTX as my main display driver. I've had a very positive experience with Wayland, except for discord video chat and some occasional steam link desktop issues in my living room.
I didn't switch from Windows. I was a Mac user and a big reason for switching to Linux was that I wanted a computer that I could tinker with, upgrade or repair myself. So I bought a PC with Ubuntu preinstalled in late 2019. I could have tried turning it into a hackintosh and install Mac OS on it, but Apple announced their switch to ARM processors shortly after in June 2020, so there didn't seem to be much point. I took the plunge and switched entirely to Linux. I had configured several of my old Macs to dual boot Linux, but I find dual booting to be a pain in the ass, so I rarely touched the Linux partitions. There's a lot I miss from the Mac (mainly the more polished and consistent user interface), but there were also many things that made me no longer feel at home on the Mac platform. (I've never owned a Windows computer and switching to Windows was never a consideration.)
Yo at some point OSX became shittier than Windows. When I can't choose Linux, I go with Windows. Longtime Hackintosh user with tiny contribution.
Only thing I miss about commercial OS is HDR support, like BT.2100 color space. (Apple is behind the game afaik lol) Big hope for Wayland contributors.
been a macos user for almost all my teenage (got my mac at 13 and it stopped working when i was 19) Mac gives a good system ootb but whenever you want to do something different you really can't (you actually cannot think different on apple). Linux gives you power. As for UI there are some really polished uis on linux nowadays, like gnome (that i don't like); pantheon or kde (that may be a bit buggy). Only thing i may miss about apple is Logic pro
Yea you would be correct. But either way I can't stand modern Dota. It's bloated and boring. And all my favourite heroes have been getting reworks that transform them in a way that they don't feel unique and interesting anymore.
It really is a sad time for MOBAs, League has Vanguard and Dota has been getting worse and worse with every update since 7.00 imo.
I can play other games (or just do something else) with my friends but League is definitely something that is making me think about putting Windows on one of my spare SSDs.
>It really is a sad time for MOBAs, League has Vanguard and Dota has been getting worse and worse with every update since 7.00 imo.
Naaah, without changes games become stale and boring.
I guess it's just grown man in you screams internally "stop to feed me new useless info which comes with each new patch, gimme old back so I do not need think!!!"
Which is fine, I guess that's the reason why I play only two games and can't stand anything else.
I like HotS too ! It's not natively in steam tho
Do you use Bottles, I believe it has an option to configure a Battle Net launcher, or Lutris ? I'm curious
I switched relatively recently, about 2 years now. There is nothing I can't do on Linux that I could on Windows, in fact my old printer won't work on Windows anymore.
I think I am lucky in my choice of games that I play and haven't had any anti-cheal issues.
Do I miss Windows? Absolutely not. In fact I am reminded of how much worse it is getting when I have to install it on family hardware. The fact that you have to trick it into allowing you to set up a local account, says it all for me; add adverts and telemetry to that and you have moved so far away from a nice OS experience to an advertising platform that comes with an OS, it's just not something I'd ever want to experience again.
I’m not really an Open source purist. I fully understand all the benefits of open source but my use cases never really demanded I have it. I’ve gone through phases of being privacy focused and it’s almost never been worth the hassle. My work machine is an iPad from work (I work in housing construction). My personal machine has nothing work related on it.
The real change was how good proton got. I’ve always been a guy who will wait 3 years for a steam sale to buy what’s “an old game”. And I upgrade my video card every other generation. I know windows 10 is going to be killed off soonish. I don’t use any software that can’t be easily replaced.
Once it became clear windows was changing to include AI, even more telemetry, and it’s dubious explanation for screen recording I knew it was time to switch. Simply because I can’t support that behavior. So I put Ubuntu 24.04 on and haven’t looked back or had a problem.
You have done very well. What video card are you running on Linux?
I have a 4070ti and at the moment my choice is back to GNOME which apparently seems to be the most compatible and least problematic with the 555 beta drivers ispared to KDE 6.0.
Activating X11 on GNOME also seems almost no difference at first glance with Wayland which, unfortunately, still gives me some flickering with VMs.
A 7700xt. It’s been seamless really with Wayland. It took some getting used to not having adrenaline and looking for updates etc. Now I’m so used to it just working all the time I don’t think about it.
Basicly, dualbooting is both time and space consuming, and I don't really play games that doesn't work on linux. Ofc, some of my friends ask why I don't play fortnite or valorant etc, but I often just answer "It doesn't work on my computer". And that I don't really like shootergames in general.
I still have windows on my school laptop (I tired running Linux only on it for about a month, but it sadly failed (the school-system also has anticheat it seems ;D )). Now I have a semi-dual boot, that will say, I have a external drive with Linux on it (that I mostly use for coding and general computer-work, as I have moved to dedicate my desktop to gaming and my laptop to "serious work")
Another thing that stopped me from dualbooting, was the hassle of "updating windows" EVERY SINGLE TIME I used it.
I dual booted for a year or so. Did use windows during the first month maybe 20% of the time. After that I stopped. After half a year I realised I do not need windows at all. Next time I installed Linux i removed windows.
Some school programs are easier to use on linux and rest is the same.
I personally don't see much reason to dual boot anyway nowadays. If I would really need windows I'd preder to use it through vm
This is killing me right now. Just wanted to pick it back up but switched fully to booting only Linux. Trying to play it on PS5 with a controller is not great for me.
I used to keep a "debloated" windows partition until 2021, for valorant, faceit, adobe and what not.
Then I decided to have another 120GB of free storage space on my nVME.
Gaming on Linux is cool but honestly it doesn’t replace gaming on windows. What will replace gaming on windows is the amount of time you’ll spend tinkering with games on Linux to try to get them to work (which is a hobby and a game in itself).
I just run windows in a virtual machine for work vs dual boot. Cleaner as well because I only have work stuff on my VM and only personal stuff on my Linux desktop
I've been a dos/windows user since the introduction of the PC. First as a hobby, and later professionally. I have also tinkered with linux, starting back in the early days where I was installing slackware and compiling my own kernels on 486 hardware, up to more professional use... most recently using ubuntu 18.xx while doing some consulting back during the pandemic.
About a year ago, with MS ratcheting up the talk about requiring ms web logins for my local computer, and the first hints that ads were coming to the desktop, I decided to bail completely.
I removed the windows drive (just in case) from my main system and installed ubuntu 22.04 LTS shortly after it became available. I have used it every day as my only platform. I use it for browsing, steam (solo) gaming, 3d modelling, programming, most recently for learning more about AI.
About 3 months ago I formatted that original windows drive for use in a NAS project.
I have zero regrets and will not be going back.
Installing my games from DVD in Windows were much easier; some games had better performance on Windows, or did not start on Linux at all. And Windows and apps UI were more consistent.
I gave up Windows dual-boot due to efi partition became invalid multiple times after updates. I never really wanted to return to Windows afterwards.
I've dual booted Debian for a while during my second (I think?) yeah in uni, mostly to keep myself from gaming uncontrollably. Really liked Gnome 3 at the time (still adore it, but don't use it) and the system in general responded to all my needs except gaming... that is, until I discovered that Steam and most of the games I played worked on Linux already (it was right around the time Proton started gaining real momentum too)
Wiped the Windows partition after realizing it's been months since I've actually booted into it
I accidentally blew up my windows install when installing Linux. I have just been to lazy to reinstall it. I do kind of miss just being able to install a game and go. Which happens most of the time with Linux. Other times it take a bit of google and elbow grease to get working.
I use only linux since I got a gaming pc in 2021. I use to play on windows when XP was a thing. So not much to compare.
But I haven't had a game not work on me yet. Some bugs, sure, but so far it all works for me.
I recently moved from Fedora workstation to bazzite and it's super stable still.
I like atomic distros (silverblue, etc) a lot more. Bazzite has the advantage that I can create my own version with a github pipeline (blue origin build)
PLUS I don't know what they did, but the stability issue if my amd 6700xt ARE GONE. it used to crash I soon as I wasn't gaming. So not a big deal for a gaming machine but still, whatever they're doing, it's amazing.
There's also hdr and all those things... I honestly don't see the difference in gaming. So... i don't care much. But it's there.
Since BDO changed their AC and it is now available on Linux and my GPU only works on Linux I dumped windows permeantly, if I have to I'll just use a wm
On my main rig I have pure Linux and I don't miss anything. I sometimes have issues with proton but that's Nvidia's fault and mostly solvable by choosing a different version
I'd do the same on my laptop but the fan controls are bios locked and only work correctly through a bloatware windows app, so I need to dual boot. This won't be the case for my next laptop
Tbh idk why I use Linux.
Everything says "go back, Linux is big time investment and restriction, Windows just works" but I guess I'm bored on Windows.
2 games I play works fine but 2 programs I need for work does not work but I do not really need them at home so f 'em.
I dualbooted like more than 10 years ago, but got screweb by microsoft fucking up my bootloader, so i gave up on that. Just decided to abandon windows alltoguether and have a happy life with linux at my side.
I've completely switched early this year (to Nobara 40 KDE), got full AMD, so no problems haha.
I really don't miss it, the only thing taht I still need to figure out is getting FLStudio to run, gamedev tho (Godot Engine) works perfectly. Gaming too, tbf I only play non Kernel Anticheat Multiplayer games and also most of the singleplayer games run haha.
really glad I finally switched.
I miss PUBG and Media Player Classic. Also, depending on the desktop environment and window manager, proprietary apps like Steam misbehave sometimes when they need to be scaled.
Other than that the overall experience is much better for me and it´s great to actually fully own my PC and my operating system again. I have to use Windows for work and am constantly reminded how annoying it can be
Basically I miss some apps, but I don´t miss Windows
It's a lot worse than original, has annoying quirks but maybe you'll find functionality you miss?
[https://github.com/mpc-qt/mpc-qt](https://github.com/mpc-qt/mpc-qt)
I did last year, I don't miss anything from Windows and looking at the direction Microsoft is taking, it was the right decision. Life is just better on Linux.
I still have a very small windows partition which i havent touched in a year or so. It is possible there will be something I will have to run there. maybe.
For now, linux is enough. Sure I am still kinda missing a proper HDMI support, HDR, VRR, and maybe some photo editing AI apps, but I think I'm more or less settled with darktable. Yeah, and missing a bit proper resolution in streaming services - drm stupidity, like if anyone have any issue pirating this crap. Some browser plugins helps.
I enjoy hyprland and customization. Programming is great. Gaming is ok, but still there is a bit of overhead in certain situations. I don't play games which are not available on Linux and not planning to. If Helldivers works, or hell let loose, anything else should as well.
I dislike lack of proper underlying communication standards - different ways to handle windows, people wasting time on discussion. I like Gnome for it's simplicity, but I hate how strongly opinionated and simply clueless direction they took. Issues with screen sharing, hardware compression for screen recording, and similar are still there as well.
Linux is still bit rough around the edges. I would be careful recommending it to a non technical person, unless there is very little customization to do.
Count one more because I did dual boot just briefly, I did ditch Windows as fast as I hit it with the shovel, and from then it will be six feet under.
>What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop?
It just works, not only how I need but how I want too.
>Do you find the same gaming features again, or do you miss something you can't have on Linux that you had before with the Microsoft operating system?
No, everything works, so any fancy feature has been forgotten, or there are suitable alternatives in my use case.
>Do you miss your "old" Windows?
Not at all. Nothing. Not a single bit of it.
I'm not playing better, but I'm playing more, and more comfortable on Linux, for whatever the reason it may be.
I made the switch to Linux last year and I do not miss Windows at all. I do however miss some user experience stuff and think that a few things are overly complicated on Linux but that basically is based on two things:
* I chose Arch as my first distro (I use Arch btw).
* I used Windows for most of my life for personal use, so of course there is a transition period where I need to get used to things.
So I can't blame anybody but myself.
I switched 5 years ago now. I ran Mint for 30 days on an external drive. Didn't need to boot into Windows once. Instead of messing with dual boot, I just went full Linux. That being said, I don't game a ton on my PC. My needs have changed over the past 5 years so I suspect I'll be doing more gaming, I have an HTPC box I'll likely put Bazzite on (currently Chimera OS) and that will be a lot of my PC gaming/testing fix.
On the hunt for the right distro for game dev, streaming, and some occasional gaming/testing, may end up sticking with Arch. But I need to see if I can get an immutable distro setup for it.
I would like to be able to work more easily with certain hardware. I'd also like some of the Nvidiia enhancements. But I switched from Windows because I just got so irritated with the OS that I wasn't using my personal machine at all.
I have Ubuntu only on all my Daily devices, except my Gaming PC (Dualboot), which works as a gaming server. I use Steam RemotePlay on my other Devices. But I'm thinking about getting rid of Windows on that machine, too.
Doesn't it make you nervous not to see fully functional features like DLSS or some games with DX12 that don't work as well as on windows at 100% of their power?
I left nVidia behind for Linux, as AMD just runs easier. I have a RX 6950 XT and game on 1080p with 60fps, maybe I won't notice a difference. Of course, I will try it first with my favorite games. I'm a bit more afraid of things like Denuvo that may block me from some games. FSR seems to run fine with Proton.
I actually never dual booted Windows and Linux, I just wiped my HDD and installed Linux. I was tired of Windows 10, it was resource hungry and slow, the UI was terrible, and updates would often either break a feature or break the OS.
Sick of all that I moved Linux looking for an OS that was stable, light on resources, fast. I started with Manjaro at first and I'm not very fond of it, always had performance issues with Manjaro. I bounced between Manjaro and Kubuntu, until I settled on Ubuntu.
I do not miss Windows in the slightest, my only complaint is about the inferior performance of Chromium-based browsers in Linux, and the hardware acceleration that doesn't work very well. Besides that I don't miss Windows and I'm never going back to it, Microsoft has lost my trust. In the near future I plan to ditch laptops and use tablets instead.
I did recently. After a very positive introduction to Linux on the steam deck, I installed Bazzite on my main rig. Never ran a dual partition, just said fuck it and went full Linux. Microsoft will never get another penny from me or make another penny from my information.
I switched to Fedora about a year ago when I heard windows 10 was going eol. I knew I needed time to adjust to Linux so I wanted to switch early. I've had few issues getting my games to work, but I've been able to get them all figured out and my games work fine. One thing I haven't been able to find an alternative to is the HTX spacial audio software. I've tried a few things, but nothing seems to work as well, but that's an easy sacrifice for the benefits Linux gives me. I finally fully enjoy using my computer.
The moment i switched to linux i completely abandoned windows. The functionality of it all just feels way better.
Every now and then ill consider moving back because there are some games you simply cant run on Linux, but then I go back to work where we use windows and see how frustrating the microsoft experience is. Buggy, inconsistent, convoluted and limiting. And i'm supposed to pay for that kind of half-baked service?
I did a year ago (dual booted shortly), reason? My laptop has limited space, and frankly, I had stopped playing Destiny 2, LoL I don't really miss, and everything else... The only really difficult game I have had to deal with thus far is RuneScape. Everything else has worked with minimal effort out of the box, and sometimes better than on windows. My scripts run better, it is far easier to run them, system boots faster, and the dumpster fire that is windows 11 is not making me consider going back to windows.
My main issues:
- Finding a headset that would work without tweaking, which could even be tweaked in a VM if needed, and the subsequent tinker with trying to make it fully work. (Wired headsets with microphones are surprisingly hard to come by nowadays)
- Getting the settings on LibreOffice set in a useful way (on-going annoyance).
- Difficulty forcing a driver update to fix the "frozen screen unless you move your mouse" issue for external monitors. (Which succeeded eventually)
I don't have an issue with needing to tinker a little bit, but it simply hasn't been needed for most things. I am using Nvidia as a graphics card, hence the bug.
I've definitely killed my dual boot two years ago.
I was only keeping it around for some games, but with proton and EAC support I have completely given up on windows.
I mostly code and write and thus have no need for windows specific softwares. In fact I'm turning my career towards kubernetes and I have little to gain from using windows on this.
The only thing I miss is being able to play vermintide 2. For some reason this game still has issues with linux, every patch borks it and even when it works it has conditions (such as needing to be "the host" for multiplayer to function)
The reason I stick exclusively to linux is because I always liked the freedom that came with it. Freedom to use, freedom to experiment and freedom to not be observed.
I fully switched to Linux back in 2019. The only thing I missed was COD Black Ops 3 zombies and proper ReShade support, but that has been fixed long ago. I miss nothing, in fact I enjoy using my computer a lot more because I can customise it the way I want to, I don't have to deal with annoying Windows "features" that constantly harass me by asking for my data, my OS is a lot lighter, etc.
I did, about 16 years ago. I had a windows 7 partition that rarely got booted until it bluescreened one last time and I realized I could use the disk space for something productive.
I've been using Linux exclusively since about 2008. When I first switched I did have to walk away from a lot of gaming, but I was very busy at the time, and the tradeoff of not having to fight with Windows all the time was worth it for me. At the time, between Wine, native games, and emulators, I had all the gaming I could handle in the small amount of time I had for gaming.
Now I have a lot more free time for gaming: Proton fills all my needs. Any games that don't work on Proton are usually games that I wouldn't ethically want to run, even on Windows.
I would love to see the system specs along with these. How many people say with a 4090 use it only under Linux., VR headset, HDR monitor, etc. Like how many full time Linux users do it while giving up on hardware features of hardware they already own.
This is exactly what I would like to know. The real "challenge" is to install and use linux exclusively on relatively new hardware. I own a 4070ti and with linux life is not easy at all.
Nothing works as it should on the first try but it takes tons of fixes. It is also true that I hate the windows politics and I love to use power with linux while avoiding microsoft.
Some people install linux because their hardware on Win11 is simply not supported. I admire those who instead on their 4090/4080 decide to leave only linux installed exclusively by fighting over that
My main rig is high-end, i9-13900KS/4090 FE & 3090 FE GPUs/64 GB DDR 5 RAM/20 TB total NVMe PCIe 4 storage, multiple HDR monitors with one OLED and multiple VR headsets, an Index, Quest 3 and waiting for the PS VR 2 PC adapter to try out the PS VR 2. And of course the obligatory RGB peripherals. And I have a 1 TD SSD drive I've had in it since I built it in January 2023 for dual booting whatever Linux distro, currently on Garuda Plasma 6 KDE for the HDR support.
There's no way to effectively use this rig for gaming under Linux. Actually, scratch that. Even with the number of things that don't work under Linux with this hardware, the performance it will still provide a better gaming experience that most gamers, be they on Linux or Windows. But even with Linux users who say they have great running systems that play all of their games, this setup will likely play all those same games even better, especially if that Linux gamer is also using an nVidia GPU.
But then throw in things like reliable and solid VR, VRR/HDR monitors, DLSS 3 frame gen, all the various games that don't work due to anti-cheat (personally the one thing I care about least in running Windows over Linux). It's like all of this stuff was built to be used on Windows. Because it was.
Linux PC gaming is perfectly viable but it's still not Windows PC gaming because Linux is not Windows and virtually everything that comes to PC gaming gets Windows support.
So much hardware paradoxically would be wasted using only and exclusively a Linux distro. Perhaps for the mid-previous gen people a linux system would be ideal, but for those who have spent money and who have such powerful hardware, they will never (at least nowadays) have 100% of the functionality they are potentially capable of.
To make linux work I see as quite a challenge that only a true enthusiast would be able to take on considering how much spent in time economically
I tried Linux about 4 years ago for the first time. After some try and error i stuck with PopOS. I was still dual booting at the time. I "killed" Windows about 2 years ago and went with Pop solo ever since. I don't miss much from windows. Ok some games still don't work or have minor hickups but of all my steam games 99% just work.
Linux also just works with my daily tasks. I had no issues with hardware like printers and even when i got a problem with something there was always some guide or a kind soul in the community to help me.
Been running Linux only at home for more than a decade.
Early on, I missed the games support. There were only 10 games or so I could play that I liked. I was happy after a couple of years to save more time and money on games. I started social dancing, talking to women, and learning how to have better relationships with the humans in my life.
I'd end up waiting a few years to play the games I wanted when they were ported or had enough community support to be easier to get going. So I turned into a budget gamer and don't spend more than $200 on games per year. Steam and GoG sales are great. No subscription to play online like with consoles either so it's a no-brainer for me at this point. And now there's Linux support for thousands of games (even helldivers 2!).
For the first few years on Linux, I spent quite a bit of time fiddling with things here or there, sometimes breaking things, learning to fix them, or just experimenting because I was curious and pursuing a career in IT. Using Linux at home helped me accelerate that.
Now I run Pop!_OS on an older laptop for everything but gaming and it's stable and does everything I need it to do quicker and easier than I can with my company mac. There's enough things to fix at work that I just prefer my PC at home to just work. And it does. I can still game on it, but I prefer my Steam Deck OLED for that now. Support for Steam Deck only gets better which in turn makes support for all gaming on Linux better. I think the Deck is the way to go if you don't need/want to play the shiniest games that just came out. It's got about the same power as a PS4 while also being a Linux PC.
The only recent issue I've had in years was recently a problem with on my desktop. The zoom client missing the 'original audio for musicians' feature.
I'd say the biggest hurdle is finding and learning to use tools I needed to collaborate with stubborn, non-linux users. That's super easy now compared to a decade ago though (to a point it's not much of a hurdle). Most of those sorts of apps are hosted in the cloud now and accessed through a browser (MS Office, Google docs, etc). Other apps I use are likely to be more private and secure than anything I'd find on Windows imo.
I use my machine mostly for web-browsing, tinkering with developer projects, and gaming. So yes, I don't miss anything anymore and don't have any interest in running Windows for any reason.
What got me to stick to Linux was the freedom and empowerment that came with better understanding what my computer was doing because it makes it easy to see, being able to use cutting edge programs on my computer years before they were supported on Windows (if ever), autotiling features in Pop!_OS, stack overflow, and my values.
I care about scientific principles like peer-review, reproducibility, and non-judgemental curiosity. I care about respecting people's consent, autonomy, and financial and accessibly needs. Generally imo, the behavior of Windows doesn't align with these things as well as Linux does.
I flip flop back and forth because I love reinstalling my OS (weird i know i like repetitive/efficiency stuff)
the only thing i actually reinstall windows for is r6s and warzone
It sounds strange but I also like to reinstall the OS applying what I learned from a previous installation...I also need it so that I don't repeat the same errors
Switched almost 6 years ago, don't miss it for a single second. I have to use Windows at work and I am constantly reminds me of how mediocre it is.
As far as games go, perhaps I am lucky that the kind of games I like are the kind that tend to not have issues running on Linux or via Proton.
Windows broke on me for the final time and I didn’t want to reinstall in late 2022, so it was already going to be just Linux or try to go back. - Luckily I didn’t need to, so it worked out mostly.
There’s still an issue with getting some things to run, few games, of which most just work, and some hardware with community made stuff (thankfully).
The only things I miss are the full-screen start, which was just great in Windows 10 (and probably unknown to many), as well as the image gallery on the lock screen (though that could probably be done in Linux-distros somehow).
So yea, I have been on Linux only for about 20 months now and it’s like little changed but getting rid of the bloatware and some strictly Windows-only software that don’t have workarounds or alternatives. - Also my computer became more responsive and streamlined.
I installed Linux back when 7 EOL'd. I bought a new drive, did a clean install on it. My thought was that if needed, I could just swap back to the other drive and go back to windows if needed. 2 years later, after never having used the drive after the initial install (copied my docs, pics, etc.. over), I ended up formatting that old windows drive and it's now my second Steam library drive. I see no situation in which I'd ever go back to windows.
Honestly I used to dual boot years ago, but Windows Update got confused about the arrangement somehow and bricked itself. Never experimented with it again.
For a while I was full Linux, but had to switch back to Windows for work. But after being acquired by Netflix, who insisted on separate machines for work, and then recently seeing the news about Win10 being end-of-life'd next year, I switched my main gaming PC back to full Linux (frankly the only thing I really miss from Windows is Clip Studio, which does not run properly on Wine, but I also recently started getting used to using Krita again and honestly since the last time I used it it's gotten a lot more features)
I run strictly Linux on my laptop I used to dual boot. I dual on my desktop still and I never used windows, except for adobe programs. So probably use windows like once every few months.
I did not even dual boot and kicked Windows straight from the disk. I was aware, that some things would not work.
Such as my Soundcard (Soundblaster AE9, sold on ebay), or games like League of Legends. I did not want to continue playing competitively anyway so that was fine.
In the end all 13 of the games I had installed on Windows also ran more or less flawless on Linux. I was kind of positively suprised. Of course some games will not be playablr, but instead of whining I will promote games that do run.
What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop?
* Windows Vista being a resource hog with buggy drivers. Also bought a new box and Xp was constantly blue screening on it
Do you find the same gaming features again, or do you miss something you can't have on Linux that you had before with the Microsoft operating system?
* Well it's been quite some time ago, but I have been playing PC games on Linux since day one, just not always the once I've wanted too. However I have been playing Guild Wars 2 since its release 12 years ago exclusively on Linux. It is my all time favorite PC game now.
Do you miss your "old" Windows?
* I miss when flat design was not the norm. You know, how stuff mostly looked on Linux 12+ years ago
Since I'm a web developer, I've switched to open-source software long before I switched to Linux; therefore, there was no need for Windows-only apps. First I switched on my work machine, and it improved my workflow; and after some time I did that with my laptop too.
I was a dual booter. Then I switched over to linux full time ... a few months later i decided i wanted to play league of legends and RUST so i kicked my linux distro off .. after about 1 day of using windows again i repented for my sins and reinstalled Arch w/ i3wm.
I never realized how much of a shithole windows was until i went back to it. These days i'm clean of that virus.
I did back in 2002 after dual booting from 2000 until 2002 to get familiar with Linux and making everything work. I couldn't get away from Windows fast enough, so I've never missed it even one bit.
Once Apex Legends worked on Linux in 2022 I nuked my Windows partition. I had already been using Linux on and off since 2017 (dualboot desktop, only Linux on laptop).
The only things left on Windows at the time were Apex, Warzone, and Valorant. Apex was the only one I was super into so I decided I could live without playing the other 2 anymore.
Years ago it was a chore to find suitable replacements, I would use Windows partition for stuff like Adobe Premiere and Photoshop all the time. But once I got comfortable with a workflow in Kdenlive and got more used to GIMP and other foss image editing tools there wasn't much of a need anymore.
The only thing I miss about Windows is being able to try every new game and use whatever software my friends recommend while knowing it will probably just work straight away. But that's a small price to pay for how much more fun I have doing things on Linux. Every time I try out Windows for a bit now I run into a bunch of things that frustrate me pretty quickly. In terms of gaming I've had a pretty high success rate trying through proton and doing a bit of tinkering to join my friends in whatever they're doing.
I'm deep enough in the Linux and foss rabbit hole at this point that I'm more than happy to use alternate software for the mainstream Windows options and have found so many cool tools through Linux communities online that I may have never encountered if I had kept using Windows full time.
There was some point where I stopped using softwares that works only on windows. No more reasons to boot into windows so I wiped the partition to get more space
I still have my old windows install on another drive but haven't used it in a year. The only thing I miss is League of Legends, but I'm not installing a virus
I did. Like 2 months ago. I use my PC mostly for gaming and I have an Nvidia GPU so I've generally felt discouraged from doing so.
I'm glad to say I've yet to encounter any issues. Fingers crossed.
I just did last week. The games I play on Windows work perfectly (maybe less performant on some). That's all I was waiting for.
I use Linux at work so I'm very happy.
I don't miss windows. I tried dual booting years ago but never actually used the Linux bit. I swapped to Linux on my desktop two years ago after using it in VMs, and on my laptop exclusively for over a decade. Proton has made a huge difference but even if it didn't exist I'd just play fewer videogames
Ever since I got Genshin Impact working on Linux, I've had zero reason to go back to Windows and finally wiped my drive. May consider reinstalling briefly just because I have some classes that may require Windows software, but I will see what if I can get away with using the web version or LibreOffice as replacements.
Something very different about the Linux desktop experience that people don't mention, is that you look *forward* to updates. And if you don't, well there's distros supporting that too.
I don't have to wake up and worry about reading the news to see that a big company is pushing some more anti-consumer bullshit on to my OS. Instead I have the opposite, I get excited. The only thing thing I don't look forward to with updates is Gnome breaking extensions, but that gets fixed pretty quick lol.
I mean imagine who's happier: someone used to an XFCE desktop and eagerly watching the updates for Wayland support, and glad to see all their updates. Or, the Windows user who is watching the news seeing all this AI shit and now Recall being built into their OS. The Linux user is going to be living a happy and stable life with positive things to look forward to. The Windows user will be stressed and be at the whim of a big corporation. Anti consumer shit like that just doesn't happen in the Linux Desktop, and won't happen. It wins the long term game.
Linux is the best it has ever been and will only get better. Aside from odd proprietary professional software. The only thing that doesn't work on Linux are root-kit anti-cheat games (fornite, valorant) and really it's because the developers won't enable linux support built into those anti-cheats (as bad as they are). I say, if that is holding you back just get a ps5, if possible and be done with windows.
Only thing that keeps me going into windows right now is that the Tobii tracker 5 doesn’t work on Linux (playing star citizen). If that does at some point then I’m out.
Switched from Windows ME to Linux in 2002, and don’t miss anything about Windows. :)
I’ve had a Windows VM around from time to time as required for some classes when I was in school that required Windows only applications, but aside from those few instances I’ve been using Linux and FreeBSD full time since then. Funnily enough those classes were actually computer science classes that required me to use MSVC compiler and didn’t accept gcc. :/
My Windows install broke (though it was kind of my fault, lost power during a kind of deep reaching Update. Took a while to setup my kind of abandoned NixOS config properly, but not having the Windows boot option available made the transition easier. I also could have set up a new Windows install in about an hour probably and get back to work (had a script to install all my programs etc. with winget), but my laptop was 10 years old and I wanted to see if I would get nicer performance with Linux (didn't really happen except in the terminal, my PowerShell config was really badly optimized for startup times).
But I really enjoy NixOS right now and have no intention of going back. `steam-run` works great, and I've even finally managed to get a proper workflow with Python going (probably the biggest pain point for me on NixOS by far). I do have to debug some stuff pretty regularly if I want to update something (since I'm on unstable). But it's quite hard to get a permanently broken install since you can so easily rollback.
ik this question isnt for me,, but i wouldnt switch to linux only just cos i play quite a few games that just wont run on linux. theres a lot of games where the devs completely refuse to allow linux users access, and when i dont use windows it doesnt affect my linux install one bit.
I swapped fully a couple weeks ago when my SSD that had my Windows install failed. Decided to go with Linux rather than deal with installing Windows again, especially after my experience with my Steam Deck. Very happy with the switch so far, not really missing anything from Windows. I've used a couple distros (Kali, Parrot) as I work in cyber security and have been in a pentesting type role in the past, so I had some familiarity prior to making the switch on my machine.
I haven't really used windows in a while but I still have the dual boot setup for the occasional windows app that wont work on wine.
I used to miss windows alot until I moved to Ubuntu and realised they have copied all the obscure productivity shortcuts from windows like F2 to rename, WIN + P to toggle monitors and right click on task bar to load task manager. All that was missing was Dash to Panel and ArcMenu gnome extensions and I felt right at home.
Whenever I go back to windows in takes about 5 minutes before I'm thankful Linux exists, its just so inconsistent from boot to boot used to drive me mad.
I did, 2 years ago I switched to mainly Linux, about a year ago I don't dual-boot anymore as I don't play Tarkov anymore and all of the games I play work great.
Do I miss my old Windows? Let me tell ya - everytime I have to use Windows for a while (at work mostly) I'm oh so glad I don't use it at all anymore...
I never dual booted. But I did ditch my Windows machine for a VM, and then the VM for Wine/Proton.
> Do you miss your "old" Windows?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA … oh. Serious question.
I started going away from windows ever since about windows 10 released. It felt way too bloated and my computer at the time couldn't fair very well.
Back then, I didn't switch to linux yet, wine was not as developed as it is today, but i did have a dual boot with ubuntu and wished to keep to it more because it made my computer run significantly lighter
everything after that was gradual, i think. The more bad decisions Microsoft made i kept getting put off, and as of about 2021 i gave up on them and moved to linux
i stick on windows just for fortnite, but i'm planning to atart playing it on my ps4pro and abandon windows for a while. I also used to play lol but since i do not do it anymore or Just once in a while i would not miss it so much. I am a CS student and at my university everything is done on linux + i love linux for the high customizabilty, FLOSS software, privacy and great communities
Linux is way better now than ever, though it still have some problem(looking at you freeze when shutdown/restart) it is pretty stable so I dont think I will ever go back to windows.
I do miss windows yes, I miss playing games with anti cheat out of the box, but that alone is not worth it for me.
Technically one of my older rigs still has a windows partition. Booted it recently to grab my wife's Sims save files. A little bit of nostalgia seeing my old dev setup. Bit like seeing a rotary phone.
I don't miss Linux, switched and I miss.nothimg, I don't play online games so I don't care about anti-cheat, everything just works and Flatpak is a godsend
Technically not a Linux only system. I do have a dual boot buy windows only used for my Home office work.
After work hit reboot -> Pee -> Auto boots into my Endeavour -> Game
So because this is linux_gaming. I won't count my Work stuff and just going to claim I'm not dual booting.
I sometimes do miss Valorant and now League but it is what it is and after a few minutes I come to the conclusion that even on windows installing that spyware is not going to happen.
So I pretty much miss nothing. Maybe except DLSS FG and HDR still needs some work but it's still pretty hot out of the oven so.
I used to have a damaged motherboard that somehow worked fine. The only difference between windows and Linux was the former constantly crashed with blue screens and the latter just notified me about kernel panic.
The moment Proton was created, I abandoned Windows almost altogether. a moment later it got updated and and all games I care for works well under proton. I then reformatted the nvme drive with windows and remade it as my dedicated /home partition.
>What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop?
the same that made me switch to linux in the first place:
- win10 greeted me with a screen that looked like the first time setup several times... just to "trick" me into finally use an online account
- win10 greeted me with a full screen ad for edge after boot
- win10 kept restoring all the bloat that i removed after every other system update
- win10 always messed up my sound settings when i plugged something in that it recognized as sound device. even game pads are sound devices these days
- win10 often suddenly has new features that i never asked for and that i don't want
- automatic driver installation of microsoft can interfer with your manual effort to install a driver
- win11 can't even be used with an offline account (without workaround)
- microsoft keeps settings dialogs that are decades old but it takes more and more clicks to actually find the setting you want to adjust
- when a problem exists, it is usually not very verbose about what the actual problem is
- i don't really trust microsoft anymore in terms of privacy.
on windows it just feels like you're more fighting with automatisms that don't work great or against the shit that microsoft wants to force on you... and for actual computer problems, you sometimes have to rely on decade old third party tools (DDU for example), where you don't really know what it is doing under the hood, and often it's just easier to simply format and reinstall windows.
sure, linux is also not perfect. specially bleeding edge distros do require that you fix a problem here and there (happened to me 3 times in the last 2 years on manjaro). but that usually is more logic than on windows, more verbose and in most cases you find the solution rather quickly.
>Do you find the same gaming features again, or do you miss something you can't have on Linux that you had before with the Microsoft operating system?
i did note that VR gaming does work better on windows. thats pretty much the only thing. nieche gaming hardware can sometimes be a problem. fortunately there is a driver for my force feedback wheel, my joysticks don't even need a driver and my head tracking solution was already opentrack on windows, which also works on linux.
>Do you miss your "old" Windows?
nope
I had, until I bought a Virpil throttle controller. Beautiful hardware, but the configuration software absolutely demands Windows. Running it through Wine didn't work, it seems the USB emulation isn't low level enough to allow USB passthrough. I didn't try a VM, instead I popped an old SSD into an old laptop I had (which is running Fedora Workstation very nicely!) and installed Win 10 just to configure the throttle.
Now I can use it in Linux just fine, and just swap SSDs on the laptop whenever I want to run the config software. It's inconvenient enough to almost make me want to reverse engineer the damn software. Couldn't be that hard, there's a standard ATMega microcontroller in there.
I run only Linux on my laptop, and I'm in the process of ditching Windows on my desktop. I kept Win10 only for VR, but I just bought a second hand Vive to replace my WMR headset so I no longer have a reason to boot Windows.
So I will be Linux only as soon as I get around to deleting the Windows partition.
Technically I'm still dual booting, but I haven't switched to Windows in a few months. I simply don't need to. The only issue is some games not running as well, but if it's bad enough to bug me I'll just play one of my other million Steam games.
I've been using some Linux desktop for 20 years, and ditched windows during the XP era. Mainly some form of KDE (or KDE Plasma in the later years as it was renamed).
But, a lot of the time I do other things besides gaming. Despite things improving on the Linux side, if all one cares about is Gaming, it makes no sense to switch to Linux IMHO. But if you don't (need to) use proprietary software, can choose which games to play - you are more likely to be happy on a Linux desktop (with no dual-boot).
However, in real world it's about weighing the pros and cons. In the recent years, the ux in windowses have not exactly improved but gone for the worse, and on Linux side it has been getting better, even for gamers... so YMMV!
Personally, I don't miss anything on Windows. I've never been that much attached to any game I would like to keep the installation around, my work does not force me to use any software at home, I don't do creative stuff for which I would need windows-only proprietary software etc...
**EDIT:** On the converse, **there are many things I hate about Windows**, which I'm forced to face when I use Windows at work, updating my close relatives Windows computers, or firmware upgrading peripherals with no way to upgrade the FW in Linux (I boot Windows in a VM for FW upgrades, networking disabled whenever possible).
Your personal mileage may vary according to questions like:
* Do you use any other proprietary, windows-only software (with no viable alternatives on Linux)?
* Are you annoyed by Windows shenanigans, and how much?
* Do you play games (with heavy DRM) which can not / will possibly never be runnable on Linux?
* Are you computer-illiterate; i.e. can you read Wikis and man pages, or instead need to rely on YT Videos for learning how to install and configure stuff?
* Do you like tinkering within the OS?
* Do you want to avoid / care about Windows telemetry?
I had to remove the option to dualboot to actually give Linux a chance, because otherwise I'd be on the system that justworked already (this was even the case with JustWorking distros like Linux Mint as well because it was easy to escape setting up the minutia when Windows already had all of my minutia)
My only lament nowadays is I personally struggle with android emulation/wayland because I have a very unfortunate nvidia gpu (pre RTX lol), but the process of troubleshooting is a thing I found somehow entertaining even if frustrating on windows.
I love the options for free programs that fit my usecases now that I'd always felt were taunting me on Windows because I didn't yet properly know how to run them which I felt this environment taught me, and they're a lot easier to search for now
This isn't my recommendation to never have a Windows backup, my mind's probably just fucked
Gonna do that when I can confidently officially use SteamVR with Motion Smoothing on my RTX 3090 and valve index. The final hurdle for me is that, not anticheat.
I have found too many linux killer apps to stay on the increasingly frustrating windows, like bottles >!(which is a killer app because of the "full backup" option and ease of use that separates it from other wine runners)!< and gamescope >!(I play a lot of older games so being able to tame their resolutions for modern monitors is awesome)!<.
I miss nothing about Windows. I was technically dual booting until about 3 weeks ago when I wiped my secondary SSD to dualboot openSuSE with Gentoo instead of Windows, but I can count the number of times I booted into that Windows installation on one hand.
I really only used it for some games like Fortnite or VALORANT because my friends wanted to play them with me once in a while.
We pretty much only play games that run well on Linux nowadays so I don't have any reason to have a Windows installation.
Oh and what made me stick with Linux? Control, privacy, performance, ROCm... A lot of things actually.
I'm pretty much only into single player games and emulation, the only exception has been Elden Ring and even that game works online on Linux, so for me the switch has been very easy. I'm also not that much into modding like running Skyrim with 500 mods. On average I play a mod for something like Final Fantasy but only one at a time, and they're pretty easy to set up.
I also never cared about features like HDR, VRR, 4k etc. I play on a relatively mediocre system and for me playing at 1080p and 60 frames is more than enough. I'm currently playing through Triangle Strategy which is a pixel art game and it won't benefit from the above features in any capacity 😅
> What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop?
I wanted to try Linux and, for me, the best approach has been to completely get rid of Windows, so I switched 100% to Linux from the get go. I have kept a W10 VM for emergencies like random applications that don't work on Linux but I have powered it on maybe twice in 3 years, once was to mod Majora's Mask and it was easier on Windows with PowerShell and the other was to open a PDF with Adobe to digitally sign it.
> Do you miss your "old" Windows?
I don't really dislike Windows, I think they're going in the wrong direction, but the OS is still solid and perfectly usable. I miss W7 tbh, I think it was the best version they've released. Nowadays I do prefer Linux tho, I find Linux more intuitive and much more customizable.
At home I am full Linux since many years +10 y , using Linux in my job since +20y . For gaming pivot point has obviously been Proton , 4y ago approx . Then my gaming PC immediately became a Linux based computer , even if at the beginning it was far from perfect I did not hesitate for a second . I ll never go back .
I did long long time ago when I was first learning linux back in like... high school?
I realized I wouldn't bother booting into linux at all if I dualbooted, so I nuked my windows laptop install (my only computer at the time) it and went for linux only through the end of high school. This is when drivers were actually sort of an issue
After that I did go back to windows only until recently where I switched everything to linux (including my other computers which are regulated to headless servers) except 1 for some extra applications & capture card (because it's not uvc)... though I did order a new capture card that does have uvc so it's extremely likely that in a few days I will completely nuke windows from all my systems.
I don't really miss anything, sure there's some games I can't play and some things (android emulators) that I can't do 100% okay, on the emulator level... but I like that my scripting setup is a first class citizen instead of like 3rd+ class citizen. (and I don't care enough that it justifies going back in any capacity to windows... not to mention recent windows related and adjacent updates don't really help that case in it's favor)
Well I did, but that was like 15 years ago. I don't miss anything, the advent of Proton has killed any reason to ever boot anything else.
Same here. Having to use Windows at work is a constant reminder never to do so voluntarily.
Same
Only about 10 years full time here, but yeah, unless I needed to run Adobe tools or run a handful of games with Anticheat features, yeah I can't imagine why I would ever touch Windows again.
I can't imagine giving Adobe that much money.
~~who's gonna give money~~
EAC works on Linux, as long as the game developers remember to check the box that tells it to.
Yes but some choose not to, like Destiny 2, or use an anti cheat that doesn't support and may never support Linux, like Valorant
You don't want that ring 0 anti-cheat on your system anyhow.
Lol for a sec I thought you meant https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ EAC lol I got excited because one of the only reasons I keep a Windows VM lol
I left windows behind when i realized i need neither adobe nor i need to play every game there is.
About the same for me too. That was a good year for Linux! 👍🏽
Proton is a bless. Lack of Pubg and Fortnite is a feature, not a bug.
Only 7 years. Yeah but Proton made it for me and I miss absolutly nothing. Also work OS is with a Linux distro
Yup. I haven't run windows since ~2006/7. Just shy on 20years. Was dual booting for the previous ~10+ years... Mostly so I could get Linux working.
Same. I only recently went completely Linux but I’ve been using it personally and professionally since the 90’s. Gaming was my last windows holdout. Everything I play works fine with proton so no more need for windows.
I first tried Linux with Slackware in the 90s and maybe once a year or two I'd give it a go since then to see if it can really replace Windows. X11 and gaming were the biggest problems. I don't know when it got better regarding X11, but I remember for ages my biggest annoyance was that the desktop always felt laggy/jittery. Nothing moved right and it felt terrible to work with. I know that was no longer the case by around 2018, but I don't recall when or what fixed it. So around 2018, I always had a Linux system, old computer, old laptop. Mostly used for work. But my main system was still Windows. When I heard Windows 11 being announced, I decided it's time to move over to Linux as my main, so I did. I think around mid 2021. It went much better than I expected. Other than a few games not working, it was much more usable as my main than I expected, but I still kept Windows 10 on it for the games that wouldn't work. About 3 months ago I finally got rid of my Windows partition, after realising I hadn't used it once in over 6 months. Proton is just so much better now, probably because of the Steam deck, that except for hardcore multiplayer games, Windows isn't needed any more. Nothing I miss from Windows. Though admittedly I do have a Windows VM, which I need to use for some of my work.
I just played console games until Steam machines came out and games and graphic card drivers started giving a crap about frame rates on Linux.
Same, I started on kernel 2.2 and It was glorious when kernel 2.4 came out because we went from ipchains to iptables. Compiling the kernel on a 486 was fun. First distro being Mandrake from a magazine CDROM. Then Red hat for a short while till the switch to Debian Potato with Window Maker and later e16 on AMD K6-III 450 (big jump from the previous Cyrix system) It felt... Zen For gaming I had modded OG PSX then modded Xbox. Also had another Xbox running debian as a home server. I think I may still have it somewhere but it hasn't been powered on in decades. Latest system is a Lenovo loq. Upgraded to 64GB RAM & 4TB + 512GB NVME Optimized for KVM Host & Dev I have steam and installed and optimised ~93 games. Haven't spent much time playing any of them, though they are ready to go. Using Xbox Series X|S Wireless Controller (was a bummer that I had to install Windows 11 on a spare PC to update the controller firmware before it worked over Bluetooth in Linux) ___ After reading what I wrote, I think it's time to stop configuring & a gaming session is overdue. Big question: Which game to start with? 🐱🎮
That really depends on what you like. I'm really into pixel art style games personally. But I'm on a laptop with Intel graphics.
My heart says RoboCop Rouge City as that was my favourite movie as a kid. I tried to play Stray and I got too anxious worrying about the ginger cat 🐈 getting hurt and being away from his cat family. As for pixel art games, on a tangent Selaco is fun. I played a bit of the demo for a 10-15 minutes & the sprites are amazing! Maybe your system can run it [https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/05/awesome-gzdoom-shooter-selaco-will-delist-the-demo-but-you-can-still-get-it/](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/05/awesome-gzdoom-shooter-selaco-will-delist-the-demo-but-you-can-still-get-it/)
Switched 2 weeks ago. Had no interest in the hassle of dual booting, so I just immediately switched. So far so good. The only thing I'm missing is gamepass, and once the new fifa comes out, probably that too. But those aren't worth going back to windows for.
Tbh. The ea app turned me away from fifa And that was on Windows. Things completely borked, apparently you can run the ea app in lutris. Plus run fifa from steam too.. The app was so bad I unistalled all my ea titles
I run the ea app via Lutris to play F1 23. But with the new anti-cheat both F1 24 and fifa 24 doesn't work. It sucks, because I only play offline anyway.
Yeah I'm just saying the ea app is shockingly bad in general. It was completely broken on my win 11 install. Not bothered to install it on my Linux machine.
I miss...nothing about windows. My kids has windows and I shrug every time they need support. That bloated mess of a OS is depressing.
I hate being asked to fix Windows computers. Nothing is straight forward. I remember having to boot my wife's computer into something that felt like an old school Mortal Kombat cheat code. Why can't I just "sudo?" Oh right, because MS needs to control users. 🙄
Indeed. It's such a chore to fix.
Time to get them to use Linux while they are young
One uses Linux, but 2 of them don't. All games the linux one plays works. And the windows user need support 2-4 times a week.
and then you have to explain them they can't play Apex and Fortnite because of "linux", and that's a easy way to make them prefere Windows
> and then you have to explain them they can't play Apex and Fortnite because of "linux", I'm playing Apex on linux rn. Fortnite is the dumb one because they Don't want to enable Linux.
You can play fortnite kinda using lutris you can launch Epic Games and install fortnite im not sure if it still works though
Epic has not enabled Linux support for the anti cheat so you will just get kicked for anticheat not running unfortunately. The infrastructure is there, Epic is just choosing to not let us connect
That's nice! Didn't know Apex finally got support :)
[удалено]
I'd imagine Mac households would have similar problems. It's really an issue with the monopoly that Microsoft has over the desktop. It's got miles better than it was and hopefully it'll get even better.
I've been a penguin since I was a kid, so it's actually possible haha Never really had a need for Windows (other than organizations like schools that insist on their lockdown browsers and such) that wasn't solved by WINE or Proton.
All my kids have used Linux as soon as they were old enough to use a computer. My desktop has been Ubuntu for years. I can play windows games on it and it serves my purpose, not some corporate overlord.
> My kids has windows and I shrug every time they need support Not helping your kids with Windows because they use an OS you don't like is depressing.
I think it's a lot more depressing that you seem to argue against them learning it for themselves. To me that just sounds like you promote laziness and dependence for kids.
Except the original commenter is pretty clearly saying he's withholding help *because of the OS* not because he's trying to teach them to problem solve and learn for themselves. It's the same elitist attitude you see all over Linux-related subs and communities.
All of the nuance in their situation is available in the comment and they never make a decision with more depth than “Microsoft bad”. We know this because *checks notes* this is Reddit, and obviously no one ever simplifies a situation on Reddit, especially not for humorous hyperbole.
You seem touchy about this, did someone not help you with your PC and now you're looking to project that anger?
It's kinda funny, the last time I helped my kid with a problem with her computer, Windows decided to lock me out of logging in altogether because I tried turning off all non-MS services and all startup items, like I did with older versions of Windows. Apparently this breaks logging into Windows now. I had to jump through crazy hoops to get the computer running again. So, yeah, I'm actually kinda hesitant to help her with Windows issues now.
Does the bloat really matter for normal use case? Whatever you need is a quick search from the start menu away. Linux is, especially for troubleshooting, in my opinion an even more bloated mess because you need to look up the services, service files, then configuration files, installed programs given you at least know which service or program fails. And in my experience it takes years to grasp and remember where to look for all these things. And even though that, I still have a problem at the moment I couldn't figure out yet. Well reminds me to post it on another sub in hope to get some clues.
> And in my experience it takes years to grasp and remember where to look for all these things. Took me a long long ass time to learn where all this same stuff was on Windows, and tbh even after working with it professionally for almost 10 years it still had layers hidden in corners that were hard to find that are trivial to lookup on Linux... You arent remembering when you had to do all the same steps on windows. You didnt come out of the womb knowing about eventviewer for instance.
I still have a Windows install on a separate SSD but if you ask me when I did boot the last time into it, I must guess ... Around June last year. And that's because my wife's a teacher and her grading software is Win only. I'm missing nothing. All my apps are working, all my games are working. Everytime I log into Windows I don't like it. And I'm (or better was) a very OS agnostic kind of guy a go by the line "Use the tool that fits your needs". But I don't need Windows anymore.
I have a small 256 GB SSD with Windows on it for exactly one game because my friends still want to play it. Rainbow 6 Siege. I don't particularly enjoy the game anymore (I don't like how they've changed the maps and operators for the last few years), but enjoy playing with them enough that I'll reboot into a super stripped down Win10 for them.
I built my own desktop and it’s never had windows on it - I saved myself the license fee. I game on it all the time, Valve has done so much for Linux gaming in the last few years that I have no problems.
Great, I have also proceeded to assemble my gaming pc and have not been booting a windows system for a few months now. What kind of distro are you leaning toward? With what DE and video card?
Debian Stable with Xfce, and my GPU is the AMD Radeon RX 6800.
Unfortunately, my choice had fallen on NVidia, and my life on linux has not been so easy.
What distro and DE do *you* use, and are there any issues you're still having that you haven't solved yet?
I am currently using Fedora 40 which seems to be the most stable. I would love to be able to use Wayland because I love it but I necessarily need the 555 drivers which not being stable…they show some little problems. Very slight flickering on VM machines and some games on lutris. This is on both GNOME and Spin KDE. Even on KDE sometimes there are problems loading the driver and in some cases the login is slow. In other cases it logs out by itself. The only currently stable solution is GNOME with X11 enabled by the GDM conf.file.
currently using fedora 40 on a 7900XTX as my main display driver. I've had a very positive experience with Wayland, except for discord video chat and some occasional steam link desktop issues in my living room.
*Wayland on the fedora KDE spin.
Gnome. Much different to Windows. Clean, fast, app focused and reliable. VRR works flawlessly with 46.2.
I didn't switch from Windows. I was a Mac user and a big reason for switching to Linux was that I wanted a computer that I could tinker with, upgrade or repair myself. So I bought a PC with Ubuntu preinstalled in late 2019. I could have tried turning it into a hackintosh and install Mac OS on it, but Apple announced their switch to ARM processors shortly after in June 2020, so there didn't seem to be much point. I took the plunge and switched entirely to Linux. I had configured several of my old Macs to dual boot Linux, but I find dual booting to be a pain in the ass, so I rarely touched the Linux partitions. There's a lot I miss from the Mac (mainly the more polished and consistent user interface), but there were also many things that made me no longer feel at home on the Mac platform. (I've never owned a Windows computer and switching to Windows was never a consideration.)
Yo at some point OSX became shittier than Windows. When I can't choose Linux, I go with Windows. Longtime Hackintosh user with tiny contribution. Only thing I miss about commercial OS is HDR support, like BT.2100 color space. (Apple is behind the game afaik lol) Big hope for Wayland contributors.
been a macos user for almost all my teenage (got my mac at 13 and it stopped working when i was 19) Mac gives a good system ootb but whenever you want to do something different you really can't (you actually cannot think different on apple). Linux gives you power. As for UI there are some really polished uis on linux nowadays, like gnome (that i don't like); pantheon or kde (that may be a bit buggy). Only thing i may miss about apple is Logic pro
Everything is better on Linux imo. I just miss playing LoL with my friends now that it no longer works on Linux..
Dota - back to the roots. But even if you will do it I do not think friends will follow you and it's sad.
Yea you would be correct. But either way I can't stand modern Dota. It's bloated and boring. And all my favourite heroes have been getting reworks that transform them in a way that they don't feel unique and interesting anymore. It really is a sad time for MOBAs, League has Vanguard and Dota has been getting worse and worse with every update since 7.00 imo. I can play other games (or just do something else) with my friends but League is definitely something that is making me think about putting Windows on one of my spare SSDs.
>It really is a sad time for MOBAs, League has Vanguard and Dota has been getting worse and worse with every update since 7.00 imo. Naaah, without changes games become stale and boring. I guess it's just grown man in you screams internally "stop to feed me new useless info which comes with each new patch, gimme old back so I do not need think!!!" Which is fine, I guess that's the reason why I play only two games and can't stand anything else.
I'm playing heroes of the storm with some of my lol friends now. Getting my moba fix that way
I like HotS too ! It's not natively in steam tho Do you use Bottles, I believe it has an option to configure a Battle Net launcher, or Lutris ? I'm curious
I switched relatively recently, about 2 years now. There is nothing I can't do on Linux that I could on Windows, in fact my old printer won't work on Windows anymore. I think I am lucky in my choice of games that I play and haven't had any anti-cheal issues. Do I miss Windows? Absolutely not. In fact I am reminded of how much worse it is getting when I have to install it on family hardware. The fact that you have to trick it into allowing you to set up a local account, says it all for me; add adverts and telemetry to that and you have moved so far away from a nice OS experience to an advertising platform that comes with an OS, it's just not something I'd ever want to experience again.
I’m not really an Open source purist. I fully understand all the benefits of open source but my use cases never really demanded I have it. I’ve gone through phases of being privacy focused and it’s almost never been worth the hassle. My work machine is an iPad from work (I work in housing construction). My personal machine has nothing work related on it. The real change was how good proton got. I’ve always been a guy who will wait 3 years for a steam sale to buy what’s “an old game”. And I upgrade my video card every other generation. I know windows 10 is going to be killed off soonish. I don’t use any software that can’t be easily replaced. Once it became clear windows was changing to include AI, even more telemetry, and it’s dubious explanation for screen recording I knew it was time to switch. Simply because I can’t support that behavior. So I put Ubuntu 24.04 on and haven’t looked back or had a problem.
You have done very well. What video card are you running on Linux? I have a 4070ti and at the moment my choice is back to GNOME which apparently seems to be the most compatible and least problematic with the 555 beta drivers ispared to KDE 6.0. Activating X11 on GNOME also seems almost no difference at first glance with Wayland which, unfortunately, still gives me some flickering with VMs.
A 7700xt. It’s been seamless really with Wayland. It took some getting used to not having adrenaline and looking for updates etc. Now I’m so used to it just working all the time I don’t think about it.
Basicly, dualbooting is both time and space consuming, and I don't really play games that doesn't work on linux. Ofc, some of my friends ask why I don't play fortnite or valorant etc, but I often just answer "It doesn't work on my computer". And that I don't really like shootergames in general. I still have windows on my school laptop (I tired running Linux only on it for about a month, but it sadly failed (the school-system also has anticheat it seems ;D )). Now I have a semi-dual boot, that will say, I have a external drive with Linux on it (that I mostly use for coding and general computer-work, as I have moved to dedicate my desktop to gaming and my laptop to "serious work") Another thing that stopped me from dualbooting, was the hassle of "updating windows" EVERY SINGLE TIME I used it.
I dual booted for a year or so. Did use windows during the first month maybe 20% of the time. After that I stopped. After half a year I realised I do not need windows at all. Next time I installed Linux i removed windows. Some school programs are easier to use on linux and rest is the same. I personally don't see much reason to dual boot anyway nowadays. If I would really need windows I'd preder to use it through vm
There's only one single motive that makes me don't quit linux, Destiny 2 (I enjoy playing with my friends).
This is killing me right now. Just wanted to pick it back up but switched fully to booting only Linux. Trying to play it on PS5 with a controller is not great for me.
Maybe I will try an xbox series s with MnK only for destiny and then switch all my environment for linux
Btw loved the eris morn profile
I used to keep a "debloated" windows partition until 2021, for valorant, faceit, adobe and what not. Then I decided to have another 120GB of free storage space on my nVME.
Gaming on Linux is cool but honestly it doesn’t replace gaming on windows. What will replace gaming on windows is the amount of time you’ll spend tinkering with games on Linux to try to get them to work (which is a hobby and a game in itself).
Sad raw truth
There just aren’t enough options of games that play well on Linux. Especially if you’re into multiplayer.
I just run windows in a virtual machine for work vs dual boot. Cleaner as well because I only have work stuff on my VM and only personal stuff on my Linux desktop
I've been a dos/windows user since the introduction of the PC. First as a hobby, and later professionally. I have also tinkered with linux, starting back in the early days where I was installing slackware and compiling my own kernels on 486 hardware, up to more professional use... most recently using ubuntu 18.xx while doing some consulting back during the pandemic. About a year ago, with MS ratcheting up the talk about requiring ms web logins for my local computer, and the first hints that ads were coming to the desktop, I decided to bail completely. I removed the windows drive (just in case) from my main system and installed ubuntu 22.04 LTS shortly after it became available. I have used it every day as my only platform. I use it for browsing, steam (solo) gaming, 3d modelling, programming, most recently for learning more about AI. About 3 months ago I formatted that original windows drive for use in a NAS project. I have zero regrets and will not be going back.
Installing my games from DVD in Windows were much easier; some games had better performance on Windows, or did not start on Linux at all. And Windows and apps UI were more consistent. I gave up Windows dual-boot due to efi partition became invalid multiple times after updates. I never really wanted to return to Windows afterwards.
League of legends remains the one thing i play that i can't do on linux especially since the anti cheat
I've dual booted Debian for a while during my second (I think?) yeah in uni, mostly to keep myself from gaming uncontrollably. Really liked Gnome 3 at the time (still adore it, but don't use it) and the system in general responded to all my needs except gaming... that is, until I discovered that Steam and most of the games I played worked on Linux already (it was right around the time Proton started gaining real momentum too) Wiped the Windows partition after realizing it's been months since I've actually booted into it
I accidentally blew up my windows install when installing Linux. I have just been to lazy to reinstall it. I do kind of miss just being able to install a game and go. Which happens most of the time with Linux. Other times it take a bit of google and elbow grease to get working.
I use only linux since I got a gaming pc in 2021. I use to play on windows when XP was a thing. So not much to compare. But I haven't had a game not work on me yet. Some bugs, sure, but so far it all works for me. I recently moved from Fedora workstation to bazzite and it's super stable still.
I'm on Fedora WS 40 too, what differences have you noticed on Bazzite?
I like atomic distros (silverblue, etc) a lot more. Bazzite has the advantage that I can create my own version with a github pipeline (blue origin build) PLUS I don't know what they did, but the stability issue if my amd 6700xt ARE GONE. it used to crash I soon as I wasn't gaming. So not a big deal for a gaming machine but still, whatever they're doing, it's amazing. There's also hdr and all those things... I honestly don't see the difference in gaming. So... i don't care much. But it's there.
Since BDO changed their AC and it is now available on Linux and my GPU only works on Linux I dumped windows permeantly, if I have to I'll just use a wm
On my main rig I have pure Linux and I don't miss anything. I sometimes have issues with proton but that's Nvidia's fault and mostly solvable by choosing a different version I'd do the same on my laptop but the fan controls are bios locked and only work correctly through a bloatware windows app, so I need to dual boot. This won't be the case for my next laptop
Couple weeks ago i turned off my desktop, installed ubuntu on an old asus gaming laptop, so far so good. Clean install, no trace of the windows,
Tbh idk why I use Linux. Everything says "go back, Linux is big time investment and restriction, Windows just works" but I guess I'm bored on Windows. 2 games I play works fine but 2 programs I need for work does not work but I do not really need them at home so f 'em.
I dualbooted like more than 10 years ago, but got screweb by microsoft fucking up my bootloader, so i gave up on that. Just decided to abandon windows alltoguether and have a happy life with linux at my side.
I've completely switched early this year (to Nobara 40 KDE), got full AMD, so no problems haha. I really don't miss it, the only thing taht I still need to figure out is getting FLStudio to run, gamedev tho (Godot Engine) works perfectly. Gaming too, tbf I only play non Kernel Anticheat Multiplayer games and also most of the singleplayer games run haha. really glad I finally switched.
I miss PUBG and Media Player Classic. Also, depending on the desktop environment and window manager, proprietary apps like Steam misbehave sometimes when they need to be scaled. Other than that the overall experience is much better for me and it´s great to actually fully own my PC and my operating system again. I have to use Windows for work and am constantly reminded how annoying it can be Basically I miss some apps, but I don´t miss Windows
It's a lot worse than original, has annoying quirks but maybe you'll find functionality you miss? [https://github.com/mpc-qt/mpc-qt](https://github.com/mpc-qt/mpc-qt)
Yep, I have. Dual booted for about 6-12 months. Formatted my windows drive a few weeks ago. Goodbye Windows 11.
I did last year, I don't miss anything from Windows and looking at the direction Microsoft is taking, it was the right decision. Life is just better on Linux.
I still have a very small windows partition which i havent touched in a year or so. It is possible there will be something I will have to run there. maybe. For now, linux is enough. Sure I am still kinda missing a proper HDMI support, HDR, VRR, and maybe some photo editing AI apps, but I think I'm more or less settled with darktable. Yeah, and missing a bit proper resolution in streaming services - drm stupidity, like if anyone have any issue pirating this crap. Some browser plugins helps. I enjoy hyprland and customization. Programming is great. Gaming is ok, but still there is a bit of overhead in certain situations. I don't play games which are not available on Linux and not planning to. If Helldivers works, or hell let loose, anything else should as well. I dislike lack of proper underlying communication standards - different ways to handle windows, people wasting time on discussion. I like Gnome for it's simplicity, but I hate how strongly opinionated and simply clueless direction they took. Issues with screen sharing, hardware compression for screen recording, and similar are still there as well. Linux is still bit rough around the edges. I would be careful recommending it to a non technical person, unless there is very little customization to do.
Count one more because I did dual boot just briefly, I did ditch Windows as fast as I hit it with the shovel, and from then it will be six feet under. >What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop? It just works, not only how I need but how I want too. >Do you find the same gaming features again, or do you miss something you can't have on Linux that you had before with the Microsoft operating system? No, everything works, so any fancy feature has been forgotten, or there are suitable alternatives in my use case. >Do you miss your "old" Windows? Not at all. Nothing. Not a single bit of it. I'm not playing better, but I'm playing more, and more comfortable on Linux, for whatever the reason it may be.
I made the switch to Linux last year and I do not miss Windows at all. I do however miss some user experience stuff and think that a few things are overly complicated on Linux but that basically is based on two things: * I chose Arch as my first distro (I use Arch btw). * I used Windows for most of my life for personal use, so of course there is a transition period where I need to get used to things. So I can't blame anybody but myself.
Single booting Linux, most of the time, for 6 years now. Never going back.
I switched 5 years ago now. I ran Mint for 30 days on an external drive. Didn't need to boot into Windows once. Instead of messing with dual boot, I just went full Linux. That being said, I don't game a ton on my PC. My needs have changed over the past 5 years so I suspect I'll be doing more gaming, I have an HTPC box I'll likely put Bazzite on (currently Chimera OS) and that will be a lot of my PC gaming/testing fix. On the hunt for the right distro for game dev, streaming, and some occasional gaming/testing, may end up sticking with Arch. But I need to see if I can get an immutable distro setup for it. I would like to be able to work more easily with certain hardware. I'd also like some of the Nvidiia enhancements. But I switched from Windows because I just got so irritated with the OS that I wasn't using my personal machine at all.
I have Ubuntu only on all my Daily devices, except my Gaming PC (Dualboot), which works as a gaming server. I use Steam RemotePlay on my other Devices. But I'm thinking about getting rid of Windows on that machine, too.
Doesn't it make you nervous not to see fully functional features like DLSS or some games with DX12 that don't work as well as on windows at 100% of their power?
I left nVidia behind for Linux, as AMD just runs easier. I have a RX 6950 XT and game on 1080p with 60fps, maybe I won't notice a difference. Of course, I will try it first with my favorite games. I'm a bit more afraid of things like Denuvo that may block me from some games. FSR seems to run fine with Proton.
from 2006 I use Linux exclusively in my computers
I actually never dual booted Windows and Linux, I just wiped my HDD and installed Linux. I was tired of Windows 10, it was resource hungry and slow, the UI was terrible, and updates would often either break a feature or break the OS. Sick of all that I moved Linux looking for an OS that was stable, light on resources, fast. I started with Manjaro at first and I'm not very fond of it, always had performance issues with Manjaro. I bounced between Manjaro and Kubuntu, until I settled on Ubuntu. I do not miss Windows in the slightest, my only complaint is about the inferior performance of Chromium-based browsers in Linux, and the hardware acceleration that doesn't work very well. Besides that I don't miss Windows and I'm never going back to it, Microsoft has lost my trust. In the near future I plan to ditch laptops and use tablets instead.
I did recently. After a very positive introduction to Linux on the steam deck, I installed Bazzite on my main rig. Never ran a dual partition, just said fuck it and went full Linux. Microsoft will never get another penny from me or make another penny from my information.
More than 25 years ago.
I switched to Fedora about a year ago when I heard windows 10 was going eol. I knew I needed time to adjust to Linux so I wanted to switch early. I've had few issues getting my games to work, but I've been able to get them all figured out and my games work fine. One thing I haven't been able to find an alternative to is the HTX spacial audio software. I've tried a few things, but nothing seems to work as well, but that's an easy sacrifice for the benefits Linux gives me. I finally fully enjoy using my computer.
The moment i switched to linux i completely abandoned windows. The functionality of it all just feels way better. Every now and then ill consider moving back because there are some games you simply cant run on Linux, but then I go back to work where we use windows and see how frustrating the microsoft experience is. Buggy, inconsistent, convoluted and limiting. And i'm supposed to pay for that kind of half-baked service?
I did a year ago (dual booted shortly), reason? My laptop has limited space, and frankly, I had stopped playing Destiny 2, LoL I don't really miss, and everything else... The only really difficult game I have had to deal with thus far is RuneScape. Everything else has worked with minimal effort out of the box, and sometimes better than on windows. My scripts run better, it is far easier to run them, system boots faster, and the dumpster fire that is windows 11 is not making me consider going back to windows. My main issues: - Finding a headset that would work without tweaking, which could even be tweaked in a VM if needed, and the subsequent tinker with trying to make it fully work. (Wired headsets with microphones are surprisingly hard to come by nowadays) - Getting the settings on LibreOffice set in a useful way (on-going annoyance). - Difficulty forcing a driver update to fix the "frozen screen unless you move your mouse" issue for external monitors. (Which succeeded eventually) I don't have an issue with needing to tinker a little bit, but it simply hasn't been needed for most things. I am using Nvidia as a graphics card, hence the bug.
I've definitely killed my dual boot two years ago. I was only keeping it around for some games, but with proton and EAC support I have completely given up on windows. I mostly code and write and thus have no need for windows specific softwares. In fact I'm turning my career towards kubernetes and I have little to gain from using windows on this. The only thing I miss is being able to play vermintide 2. For some reason this game still has issues with linux, every patch borks it and even when it works it has conditions (such as needing to be "the host" for multiplayer to function) The reason I stick exclusively to linux is because I always liked the freedom that came with it. Freedom to use, freedom to experiment and freedom to not be observed.
Me, but only 2 years ago. The only thing I miss is smooth scrolling with mouse middle click.
I fully switched to Linux back in 2019. The only thing I missed was COD Black Ops 3 zombies and proper ReShade support, but that has been fixed long ago. I miss nothing, in fact I enjoy using my computer a lot more because I can customise it the way I want to, I don't have to deal with annoying Windows "features" that constantly harass me by asking for my data, my OS is a lot lighter, etc.
I did, about 16 years ago. I had a windows 7 partition that rarely got booted until it bluescreened one last time and I realized I could use the disk space for something productive.
I've been using Linux exclusively since about 2008. When I first switched I did have to walk away from a lot of gaming, but I was very busy at the time, and the tradeoff of not having to fight with Windows all the time was worth it for me. At the time, between Wine, native games, and emulators, I had all the gaming I could handle in the small amount of time I had for gaming. Now I have a lot more free time for gaming: Proton fills all my needs. Any games that don't work on Proton are usually games that I wouldn't ethically want to run, even on Windows.
I would love to see the system specs along with these. How many people say with a 4090 use it only under Linux., VR headset, HDR monitor, etc. Like how many full time Linux users do it while giving up on hardware features of hardware they already own.
This is exactly what I would like to know. The real "challenge" is to install and use linux exclusively on relatively new hardware. I own a 4070ti and with linux life is not easy at all. Nothing works as it should on the first try but it takes tons of fixes. It is also true that I hate the windows politics and I love to use power with linux while avoiding microsoft. Some people install linux because their hardware on Win11 is simply not supported. I admire those who instead on their 4090/4080 decide to leave only linux installed exclusively by fighting over that
My main rig is high-end, i9-13900KS/4090 FE & 3090 FE GPUs/64 GB DDR 5 RAM/20 TB total NVMe PCIe 4 storage, multiple HDR monitors with one OLED and multiple VR headsets, an Index, Quest 3 and waiting for the PS VR 2 PC adapter to try out the PS VR 2. And of course the obligatory RGB peripherals. And I have a 1 TD SSD drive I've had in it since I built it in January 2023 for dual booting whatever Linux distro, currently on Garuda Plasma 6 KDE for the HDR support. There's no way to effectively use this rig for gaming under Linux. Actually, scratch that. Even with the number of things that don't work under Linux with this hardware, the performance it will still provide a better gaming experience that most gamers, be they on Linux or Windows. But even with Linux users who say they have great running systems that play all of their games, this setup will likely play all those same games even better, especially if that Linux gamer is also using an nVidia GPU. But then throw in things like reliable and solid VR, VRR/HDR monitors, DLSS 3 frame gen, all the various games that don't work due to anti-cheat (personally the one thing I care about least in running Windows over Linux). It's like all of this stuff was built to be used on Windows. Because it was. Linux PC gaming is perfectly viable but it's still not Windows PC gaming because Linux is not Windows and virtually everything that comes to PC gaming gets Windows support.
So much hardware paradoxically would be wasted using only and exclusively a Linux distro. Perhaps for the mid-previous gen people a linux system would be ideal, but for those who have spent money and who have such powerful hardware, they will never (at least nowadays) have 100% of the functionality they are potentially capable of. To make linux work I see as quite a challenge that only a true enthusiast would be able to take on considering how much spent in time economically
I tried Linux about 4 years ago for the first time. After some try and error i stuck with PopOS. I was still dual booting at the time. I "killed" Windows about 2 years ago and went with Pop solo ever since. I don't miss much from windows. Ok some games still don't work or have minor hickups but of all my steam games 99% just work. Linux also just works with my daily tasks. I had no issues with hardware like printers and even when i got a problem with something there was always some guide or a kind soul in the community to help me.
Been running Linux only at home for more than a decade. Early on, I missed the games support. There were only 10 games or so I could play that I liked. I was happy after a couple of years to save more time and money on games. I started social dancing, talking to women, and learning how to have better relationships with the humans in my life. I'd end up waiting a few years to play the games I wanted when they were ported or had enough community support to be easier to get going. So I turned into a budget gamer and don't spend more than $200 on games per year. Steam and GoG sales are great. No subscription to play online like with consoles either so it's a no-brainer for me at this point. And now there's Linux support for thousands of games (even helldivers 2!). For the first few years on Linux, I spent quite a bit of time fiddling with things here or there, sometimes breaking things, learning to fix them, or just experimenting because I was curious and pursuing a career in IT. Using Linux at home helped me accelerate that. Now I run Pop!_OS on an older laptop for everything but gaming and it's stable and does everything I need it to do quicker and easier than I can with my company mac. There's enough things to fix at work that I just prefer my PC at home to just work. And it does. I can still game on it, but I prefer my Steam Deck OLED for that now. Support for Steam Deck only gets better which in turn makes support for all gaming on Linux better. I think the Deck is the way to go if you don't need/want to play the shiniest games that just came out. It's got about the same power as a PS4 while also being a Linux PC. The only recent issue I've had in years was recently a problem with on my desktop. The zoom client missing the 'original audio for musicians' feature. I'd say the biggest hurdle is finding and learning to use tools I needed to collaborate with stubborn, non-linux users. That's super easy now compared to a decade ago though (to a point it's not much of a hurdle). Most of those sorts of apps are hosted in the cloud now and accessed through a browser (MS Office, Google docs, etc). Other apps I use are likely to be more private and secure than anything I'd find on Windows imo. I use my machine mostly for web-browsing, tinkering with developer projects, and gaming. So yes, I don't miss anything anymore and don't have any interest in running Windows for any reason. What got me to stick to Linux was the freedom and empowerment that came with better understanding what my computer was doing because it makes it easy to see, being able to use cutting edge programs on my computer years before they were supported on Windows (if ever), autotiling features in Pop!_OS, stack overflow, and my values. I care about scientific principles like peer-review, reproducibility, and non-judgemental curiosity. I care about respecting people's consent, autonomy, and financial and accessibly needs. Generally imo, the behavior of Windows doesn't align with these things as well as Linux does.
I flip flop back and forth because I love reinstalling my OS (weird i know i like repetitive/efficiency stuff) the only thing i actually reinstall windows for is r6s and warzone
It sounds strange but I also like to reinstall the OS applying what I learned from a previous installation...I also need it so that I don't repeat the same errors
Switched almost 6 years ago, don't miss it for a single second. I have to use Windows at work and I am constantly reminds me of how mediocre it is. As far as games go, perhaps I am lucky that the kind of games I like are the kind that tend to not have issues running on Linux or via Proton.
Windows broke on me for the final time and I didn’t want to reinstall in late 2022, so it was already going to be just Linux or try to go back. - Luckily I didn’t need to, so it worked out mostly. There’s still an issue with getting some things to run, few games, of which most just work, and some hardware with community made stuff (thankfully). The only things I miss are the full-screen start, which was just great in Windows 10 (and probably unknown to many), as well as the image gallery on the lock screen (though that could probably be done in Linux-distros somehow). So yea, I have been on Linux only for about 20 months now and it’s like little changed but getting rid of the bloatware and some strictly Windows-only software that don’t have workarounds or alternatives. - Also my computer became more responsive and streamlined.
I didn't find myself needing to boot into Windows anymore like 4 years ago and decided to wipe it from my hard drive to free storage.
I installed Linux back when 7 EOL'd. I bought a new drive, did a clean install on it. My thought was that if needed, I could just swap back to the other drive and go back to windows if needed. 2 years later, after never having used the drive after the initial install (copied my docs, pics, etc.. over), I ended up formatting that old windows drive and it's now my second Steam library drive. I see no situation in which I'd ever go back to windows.
Honestly I used to dual boot years ago, but Windows Update got confused about the arrangement somehow and bricked itself. Never experimented with it again. For a while I was full Linux, but had to switch back to Windows for work. But after being acquired by Netflix, who insisted on separate machines for work, and then recently seeing the news about Win10 being end-of-life'd next year, I switched my main gaming PC back to full Linux (frankly the only thing I really miss from Windows is Clip Studio, which does not run properly on Wine, but I also recently started getting used to using Krita again and honestly since the last time I used it it's gotten a lot more features)
I run strictly Linux on my laptop I used to dual boot. I dual on my desktop still and I never used windows, except for adobe programs. So probably use windows like once every few months.
I did not even dual boot and kicked Windows straight from the disk. I was aware, that some things would not work. Such as my Soundcard (Soundblaster AE9, sold on ebay), or games like League of Legends. I did not want to continue playing competitively anyway so that was fine. In the end all 13 of the games I had installed on Windows also ran more or less flawless on Linux. I was kind of positively suprised. Of course some games will not be playablr, but instead of whining I will promote games that do run.
What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop? * Windows Vista being a resource hog with buggy drivers. Also bought a new box and Xp was constantly blue screening on it Do you find the same gaming features again, or do you miss something you can't have on Linux that you had before with the Microsoft operating system? * Well it's been quite some time ago, but I have been playing PC games on Linux since day one, just not always the once I've wanted too. However I have been playing Guild Wars 2 since its release 12 years ago exclusively on Linux. It is my all time favorite PC game now. Do you miss your "old" Windows? * I miss when flat design was not the norm. You know, how stuff mostly looked on Linux 12+ years ago
Since I'm a web developer, I've switched to open-source software long before I switched to Linux; therefore, there was no need for Windows-only apps. First I switched on my work machine, and it improved my workflow; and after some time I did that with my laptop too.
I was a dual booter. Then I switched over to linux full time ... a few months later i decided i wanted to play league of legends and RUST so i kicked my linux distro off .. after about 1 day of using windows again i repented for my sins and reinstalled Arch w/ i3wm. I never realized how much of a shithole windows was until i went back to it. These days i'm clean of that virus.
I did back in 2002 after dual booting from 2000 until 2002 to get familiar with Linux and making everything work. I couldn't get away from Windows fast enough, so I've never missed it even one bit.
Once Apex Legends worked on Linux in 2022 I nuked my Windows partition. I had already been using Linux on and off since 2017 (dualboot desktop, only Linux on laptop). The only things left on Windows at the time were Apex, Warzone, and Valorant. Apex was the only one I was super into so I decided I could live without playing the other 2 anymore. Years ago it was a chore to find suitable replacements, I would use Windows partition for stuff like Adobe Premiere and Photoshop all the time. But once I got comfortable with a workflow in Kdenlive and got more used to GIMP and other foss image editing tools there wasn't much of a need anymore. The only thing I miss about Windows is being able to try every new game and use whatever software my friends recommend while knowing it will probably just work straight away. But that's a small price to pay for how much more fun I have doing things on Linux. Every time I try out Windows for a bit now I run into a bunch of things that frustrate me pretty quickly. In terms of gaming I've had a pretty high success rate trying through proton and doing a bit of tinkering to join my friends in whatever they're doing. I'm deep enough in the Linux and foss rabbit hole at this point that I'm more than happy to use alternate software for the mainstream Windows options and have found so many cool tools through Linux communities online that I may have never encountered if I had kept using Windows full time.
There was some point where I stopped using softwares that works only on windows. No more reasons to boot into windows so I wiped the partition to get more space
linux only here
I still have my old windows install on another drive but haven't used it in a year. The only thing I miss is League of Legends, but I'm not installing a virus
I did. Like 2 months ago. I use my PC mostly for gaming and I have an Nvidia GPU so I've generally felt discouraged from doing so. I'm glad to say I've yet to encounter any issues. Fingers crossed.
I just did last week. The games I play on Windows work perfectly (maybe less performant on some). That's all I was waiting for. I use Linux at work so I'm very happy.
Switched like a year or so ago, except for inventor, I don't look back at all
>What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop? Microsoft doing everything in its power to make their own system unbearable.
I don't miss windows. I tried dual booting years ago but never actually used the Linux bit. I swapped to Linux on my desktop two years ago after using it in VMs, and on my laptop exclusively for over a decade. Proton has made a huge difference but even if it didn't exist I'd just play fewer videogames
Ever since I got Genshin Impact working on Linux, I've had zero reason to go back to Windows and finally wiped my drive. May consider reinstalling briefly just because I have some classes that may require Windows software, but I will see what if I can get away with using the web version or LibreOffice as replacements. Something very different about the Linux desktop experience that people don't mention, is that you look *forward* to updates. And if you don't, well there's distros supporting that too. I don't have to wake up and worry about reading the news to see that a big company is pushing some more anti-consumer bullshit on to my OS. Instead I have the opposite, I get excited. The only thing thing I don't look forward to with updates is Gnome breaking extensions, but that gets fixed pretty quick lol. I mean imagine who's happier: someone used to an XFCE desktop and eagerly watching the updates for Wayland support, and glad to see all their updates. Or, the Windows user who is watching the news seeing all this AI shit and now Recall being built into their OS. The Linux user is going to be living a happy and stable life with positive things to look forward to. The Windows user will be stressed and be at the whim of a big corporation. Anti consumer shit like that just doesn't happen in the Linux Desktop, and won't happen. It wins the long term game.
Linux is the best it has ever been and will only get better. Aside from odd proprietary professional software. The only thing that doesn't work on Linux are root-kit anti-cheat games (fornite, valorant) and really it's because the developers won't enable linux support built into those anti-cheats (as bad as they are). I say, if that is holding you back just get a ps5, if possible and be done with windows.
Only thing that keeps me going into windows right now is that the Tobii tracker 5 doesn’t work on Linux (playing star citizen). If that does at some point then I’m out.
The fact that calculator doesn’t take 5 minutes to open
Moved from Windows about 2 weeks ago to Garuda, all games I play run flawlessly. Will never be going back. And no, I don't miss my "old" windows
Switched from Windows ME to Linux in 2002, and don’t miss anything about Windows. :) I’ve had a Windows VM around from time to time as required for some classes when I was in school that required Windows only applications, but aside from those few instances I’ve been using Linux and FreeBSD full time since then. Funnily enough those classes were actually computer science classes that required me to use MSVC compiler and didn’t accept gcc. :/
My Windows install broke (though it was kind of my fault, lost power during a kind of deep reaching Update. Took a while to setup my kind of abandoned NixOS config properly, but not having the Windows boot option available made the transition easier. I also could have set up a new Windows install in about an hour probably and get back to work (had a script to install all my programs etc. with winget), but my laptop was 10 years old and I wanted to see if I would get nicer performance with Linux (didn't really happen except in the terminal, my PowerShell config was really badly optimized for startup times). But I really enjoy NixOS right now and have no intention of going back. `steam-run` works great, and I've even finally managed to get a proper workflow with Python going (probably the biggest pain point for me on NixOS by far). I do have to debug some stuff pretty regularly if I want to update something (since I'm on unstable). But it's quite hard to get a permanently broken install since you can so easily rollback.
ik this question isnt for me,, but i wouldnt switch to linux only just cos i play quite a few games that just wont run on linux. theres a lot of games where the devs completely refuse to allow linux users access, and when i dont use windows it doesnt affect my linux install one bit.
I wiped my windows install by accident and since then I kept using linux
I swapped fully a couple weeks ago when my SSD that had my Windows install failed. Decided to go with Linux rather than deal with installing Windows again, especially after my experience with my Steam Deck. Very happy with the switch so far, not really missing anything from Windows. I've used a couple distros (Kali, Parrot) as I work in cyber security and have been in a pentesting type role in the past, so I had some familiarity prior to making the switch on my machine.
I haven't really used windows in a while but I still have the dual boot setup for the occasional windows app that wont work on wine. I used to miss windows alot until I moved to Ubuntu and realised they have copied all the obscure productivity shortcuts from windows like F2 to rename, WIN + P to toggle monitors and right click on task bar to load task manager. All that was missing was Dash to Panel and ArcMenu gnome extensions and I felt right at home. Whenever I go back to windows in takes about 5 minutes before I'm thankful Linux exists, its just so inconsistent from boot to boot used to drive me mad.
I did, 2 years ago I switched to mainly Linux, about a year ago I don't dual-boot anymore as I don't play Tarkov anymore and all of the games I play work great. Do I miss my old Windows? Let me tell ya - everytime I have to use Windows for a while (at work mostly) I'm oh so glad I don't use it at all anymore...
me, i don’t miss it except occasionally when I’m supposed to use an MS Office product. everything else i’ve needed to do is easy on linux
I never dual booted. But I did ditch my Windows machine for a VM, and then the VM for Wine/Proton. > Do you miss your "old" Windows? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA … oh. Serious question.
I started going away from windows ever since about windows 10 released. It felt way too bloated and my computer at the time couldn't fair very well. Back then, I didn't switch to linux yet, wine was not as developed as it is today, but i did have a dual boot with ubuntu and wished to keep to it more because it made my computer run significantly lighter everything after that was gradual, i think. The more bad decisions Microsoft made i kept getting put off, and as of about 2021 i gave up on them and moved to linux
I don't miss windows. All my games are working and the customizing of KDE is better than windows.
I only miss Honkai Star Rail, but nvm. Life goes on. Never windows again!
Pretty sure honkai is working using "an anime game launcher" same as genshin.
It was so long ago, 2014 or earlier? idk.
I did on day one because windows somehow nuked itself out of existence
i stick on windows just for fortnite, but i'm planning to atart playing it on my ps4pro and abandon windows for a while. I also used to play lol but since i do not do it anymore or Just once in a while i would not miss it so much. I am a CS student and at my university everything is done on linux + i love linux for the high customizabilty, FLOSS software, privacy and great communities
did 6 years ago. don't miss windows at all
Linux is way better now than ever, though it still have some problem(looking at you freeze when shutdown/restart) it is pretty stable so I dont think I will ever go back to windows. I do miss windows yes, I miss playing games with anti cheat out of the box, but that alone is not worth it for me.
I needed the space for my games. Back then, the hard disks weren't the size they are today you know...
me me me, about 3 years ago I ditched dual boot and never get back to windows on my main machine.
Technically one of my older rigs still has a windows partition. Booted it recently to grab my wife's Sims save files. A little bit of nostalgia seeing my old dev setup. Bit like seeing a rotary phone.
Been dedicated, single boot, linux since 1997.
I don't miss Linux, switched and I miss.nothimg, I don't play online games so I don't care about anti-cheat, everything just works and Flatpak is a godsend
Technically not a Linux only system. I do have a dual boot buy windows only used for my Home office work. After work hit reboot -> Pee -> Auto boots into my Endeavour -> Game So because this is linux_gaming. I won't count my Work stuff and just going to claim I'm not dual booting. I sometimes do miss Valorant and now League but it is what it is and after a few minutes I come to the conclusion that even on windows installing that spyware is not going to happen. So I pretty much miss nothing. Maybe except DLSS FG and HDR still needs some work but it's still pretty hot out of the oven so.
I used to have a damaged motherboard that somehow worked fine. The only difference between windows and Linux was the former constantly crashed with blue screens and the latter just notified me about kernel panic.
The moment Proton was created, I abandoned Windows almost altogether. a moment later it got updated and and all games I care for works well under proton. I then reformatted the nvme drive with windows and remade it as my dedicated /home partition.
I went balls deep into Linux mint a month ago. 2 days ago I went into Tumbleweed and now I am rocking Nobara. I don't think I can use Windows anymore.
>What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop? the same that made me switch to linux in the first place: - win10 greeted me with a screen that looked like the first time setup several times... just to "trick" me into finally use an online account - win10 greeted me with a full screen ad for edge after boot - win10 kept restoring all the bloat that i removed after every other system update - win10 always messed up my sound settings when i plugged something in that it recognized as sound device. even game pads are sound devices these days - win10 often suddenly has new features that i never asked for and that i don't want - automatic driver installation of microsoft can interfer with your manual effort to install a driver - win11 can't even be used with an offline account (without workaround) - microsoft keeps settings dialogs that are decades old but it takes more and more clicks to actually find the setting you want to adjust - when a problem exists, it is usually not very verbose about what the actual problem is - i don't really trust microsoft anymore in terms of privacy. on windows it just feels like you're more fighting with automatisms that don't work great or against the shit that microsoft wants to force on you... and for actual computer problems, you sometimes have to rely on decade old third party tools (DDU for example), where you don't really know what it is doing under the hood, and often it's just easier to simply format and reinstall windows. sure, linux is also not perfect. specially bleeding edge distros do require that you fix a problem here and there (happened to me 3 times in the last 2 years on manjaro). but that usually is more logic than on windows, more verbose and in most cases you find the solution rather quickly. >Do you find the same gaming features again, or do you miss something you can't have on Linux that you had before with the Microsoft operating system? i did note that VR gaming does work better on windows. thats pretty much the only thing. nieche gaming hardware can sometimes be a problem. fortunately there is a driver for my force feedback wheel, my joysticks don't even need a driver and my head tracking solution was already opentrack on windows, which also works on linux. >Do you miss your "old" Windows? nope
back in 2012
I had, until I bought a Virpil throttle controller. Beautiful hardware, but the configuration software absolutely demands Windows. Running it through Wine didn't work, it seems the USB emulation isn't low level enough to allow USB passthrough. I didn't try a VM, instead I popped an old SSD into an old laptop I had (which is running Fedora Workstation very nicely!) and installed Win 10 just to configure the throttle. Now I can use it in Linux just fine, and just swap SSDs on the laptop whenever I want to run the config software. It's inconvenient enough to almost make me want to reverse engineer the damn software. Couldn't be that hard, there's a standard ATMega microcontroller in there.
I run only Linux on my laptop, and I'm in the process of ditching Windows on my desktop. I kept Win10 only for VR, but I just bought a second hand Vive to replace my WMR headset so I no longer have a reason to boot Windows. So I will be Linux only as soon as I get around to deleting the Windows partition.
Technically I'm still dual booting, but I haven't switched to Windows in a few months. I simply don't need to. The only issue is some games not running as well, but if it's bad enough to bug me I'll just play one of my other million Steam games.
I've been using some Linux desktop for 20 years, and ditched windows during the XP era. Mainly some form of KDE (or KDE Plasma in the later years as it was renamed). But, a lot of the time I do other things besides gaming. Despite things improving on the Linux side, if all one cares about is Gaming, it makes no sense to switch to Linux IMHO. But if you don't (need to) use proprietary software, can choose which games to play - you are more likely to be happy on a Linux desktop (with no dual-boot). However, in real world it's about weighing the pros and cons. In the recent years, the ux in windowses have not exactly improved but gone for the worse, and on Linux side it has been getting better, even for gamers... so YMMV! Personally, I don't miss anything on Windows. I've never been that much attached to any game I would like to keep the installation around, my work does not force me to use any software at home, I don't do creative stuff for which I would need windows-only proprietary software etc... **EDIT:** On the converse, **there are many things I hate about Windows**, which I'm forced to face when I use Windows at work, updating my close relatives Windows computers, or firmware upgrading peripherals with no way to upgrade the FW in Linux (I boot Windows in a VM for FW upgrades, networking disabled whenever possible). Your personal mileage may vary according to questions like: * Do you use any other proprietary, windows-only software (with no viable alternatives on Linux)? * Are you annoyed by Windows shenanigans, and how much? * Do you play games (with heavy DRM) which can not / will possibly never be runnable on Linux? * Are you computer-illiterate; i.e. can you read Wikis and man pages, or instead need to rely on YT Videos for learning how to install and configure stuff? * Do you like tinkering within the OS? * Do you want to avoid / care about Windows telemetry?
I had to remove the option to dualboot to actually give Linux a chance, because otherwise I'd be on the system that justworked already (this was even the case with JustWorking distros like Linux Mint as well because it was easy to escape setting up the minutia when Windows already had all of my minutia) My only lament nowadays is I personally struggle with android emulation/wayland because I have a very unfortunate nvidia gpu (pre RTX lol), but the process of troubleshooting is a thing I found somehow entertaining even if frustrating on windows. I love the options for free programs that fit my usecases now that I'd always felt were taunting me on Windows because I didn't yet properly know how to run them which I felt this environment taught me, and they're a lot easier to search for now This isn't my recommendation to never have a Windows backup, my mind's probably just fucked
Gonna do that when I can confidently officially use SteamVR with Motion Smoothing on my RTX 3090 and valve index. The final hurdle for me is that, not anticheat. I have found too many linux killer apps to stay on the increasingly frustrating windows, like bottles >!(which is a killer app because of the "full backup" option and ease of use that separates it from other wine runners)!< and gamescope >!(I play a lot of older games so being able to tame their resolutions for modern monitors is awesome)!<.
I recently realized I still had a partition with Windows in my Laptop. The extra space was nice.
I miss nothing about Windows. I was technically dual booting until about 3 weeks ago when I wiped my secondary SSD to dualboot openSuSE with Gentoo instead of Windows, but I can count the number of times I booted into that Windows installation on one hand. I really only used it for some games like Fortnite or VALORANT because my friends wanted to play them with me once in a while. We pretty much only play games that run well on Linux nowadays so I don't have any reason to have a Windows installation. Oh and what made me stick with Linux? Control, privacy, performance, ROCm... A lot of things actually.
I'm pretty much only into single player games and emulation, the only exception has been Elden Ring and even that game works online on Linux, so for me the switch has been very easy. I'm also not that much into modding like running Skyrim with 500 mods. On average I play a mod for something like Final Fantasy but only one at a time, and they're pretty easy to set up. I also never cared about features like HDR, VRR, 4k etc. I play on a relatively mediocre system and for me playing at 1080p and 60 frames is more than enough. I'm currently playing through Triangle Strategy which is a pixel art game and it won't benefit from the above features in any capacity 😅 > What made you stick exclusively with Linux on your desktop? I wanted to try Linux and, for me, the best approach has been to completely get rid of Windows, so I switched 100% to Linux from the get go. I have kept a W10 VM for emergencies like random applications that don't work on Linux but I have powered it on maybe twice in 3 years, once was to mod Majora's Mask and it was easier on Windows with PowerShell and the other was to open a PDF with Adobe to digitally sign it. > Do you miss your "old" Windows? I don't really dislike Windows, I think they're going in the wrong direction, but the OS is still solid and perfectly usable. I miss W7 tbh, I think it was the best version they've released. Nowadays I do prefer Linux tho, I find Linux more intuitive and much more customizable.
Over a decade as Linux only. Wish I could say Windows is a distant nightmare but my daughter switched to Windows a couple years ago.
At home I am full Linux since many years +10 y , using Linux in my job since +20y . For gaming pivot point has obviously been Proton , 4y ago approx . Then my gaming PC immediately became a Linux based computer , even if at the beginning it was far from perfect I did not hesitate for a second . I ll never go back .
I figured out single GPU passthrough :-)
I just never used Windows or MacOS to begin with.
Proton was the last straw for me. I used to keep a windows around just for gaming, that just isn’t necessary anymore
I did long long time ago when I was first learning linux back in like... high school? I realized I wouldn't bother booting into linux at all if I dualbooted, so I nuked my windows laptop install (my only computer at the time) it and went for linux only through the end of high school. This is when drivers were actually sort of an issue After that I did go back to windows only until recently where I switched everything to linux (including my other computers which are regulated to headless servers) except 1 for some extra applications & capture card (because it's not uvc)... though I did order a new capture card that does have uvc so it's extremely likely that in a few days I will completely nuke windows from all my systems. I don't really miss anything, sure there's some games I can't play and some things (android emulators) that I can't do 100% okay, on the emulator level... but I like that my scripting setup is a first class citizen instead of like 3rd+ class citizen. (and I don't care enough that it justifies going back in any capacity to windows... not to mention recent windows related and adjacent updates don't really help that case in it's favor)
I did. Linux is the only OS.