[adontz]

These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11.

But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to make a living? Inevitably yes.

[Aurornis]

I have a Mac laptop, a Linux workstation, and a Windows workstation for different purposes and I use them all. I agree. Every time someone says they switched OSes and they don’t miss anything, it’s revealed that 90-100% of their work was in generic outlets like the web browser, terminal, e-mail, and Slack.

To be fair, that could cover a lot of people.

In my experience watching people make the switch in the real world, the failure point is either the last 10% of software that they actually need, or the first time they encounter some Linux quirk that they didn’t expect. Then it reaches a point where there isn’t really any upside for people who aren’t ideologically motivated and who don’t get triggered by Windows 11 design choices or occasional pop-ups.

I have some specific engineering software that must run on Windows, period. I’ve gotten flak from the software engineers at every company whenever it’s discovered that my second machine is Windows, but outside of software devs nobody else questions it. Using Windows for work is perfectly understood by most other disciplines

[user34283]

Windows 11 isn't running half as bad for me as most here seem to say.

I experience no delays with the start menu, and it's perfectly smooth on my 240 Hz monitor.

I also never encountered crashes like described as OP's reason for the switch.

So what do I have to gain from using Linux? A bit better compatibility for my software work, but much worse game compatibility. Fewer annoying popups, but they aren't that frequent on Windows either. Probably a worse update experience, and more time spent configuring.

[leptons]

The only reason I'm not using Linux on my work-provided computer is due to the security software. None of it runs on Linux, it only runs on Windows and MacOS. Glad I don't have to use any software that only runs on Windows to do development. Hopefully the security software will someday support Linux.

[BuddyPickett]

Windows pop-ups can all be turned off. I have them all turned off on my machines and nothing pops up anymore. Windows is extremely customizable and modifiable and it runs 100% of Windows software which is most of the software being produced in the world today.

[8bitsrule]

>90-100% of their work was in generic outlets like the web browser, terminal, e-mail, and Slack. To be fair, that could cover a lot of people.

It does ... for them Linux is a very good substitute for their needs. OTOH, for certain specialties, software available for Linux is NOT the best. 2012 was the Linux year for me ... but while FOSS is OK, sometimes a $200 app is a far superior choice for non-technical people. (Musicians for example.)

[Eupolemos]

Target audience is probably especially anyone not in the US?

It is beginning to look a lot like war is brewing between Europe and the US over Greenland. US media working super hard to make an "acquisition" sound reasonable and "FreedomTM".

[layer8]

Windows 11 is actually less annoying in the EU than in the US, thanks to the DMA.

[rdm_blackhole]

I don't believe a "war" is brewing.

If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case. Maybe a few politicians will go on X/twitter and complain but every country in the EU knows that they are no match for the US military and I am saying that as someone who lives in the EU.

I suppose the EU could go after big US tech companies but since most of Europe's needs are covered by the very same companies, I don't think this would be viable solution either and let's be honest the EU people are not just going to switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning.

It's unfortunate but it's the reality.

[shevy-java]

We really need to make LibreOffice much better. I am tired of Microsoft really.

[WesolyKubeczek]

This begs the question of who “we” are.

[lukaslalinsky]

Maybe Windows should remain as a professional tool for using these applications. Most people don't need them. They need a web browser and not much else. Maybe some games for kids. Something like Ubuntu can serve those needs just fine. If you need VS for developing Windows apps, then you obviously stay on Windows.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

“ They need a web browser and not much else.”

These people will probably use a tablet or phone.

[nikanj]

Target audience is anyone who will click it. They don’t make money from you installing Linux, they make money from you wanting to read how the switching went

[pelagicAustral]

Yeah, but I guess part of the point is that MS themselves have been moving their desktop stack to the cloud making it even better for Linux users to maintain some degree of interoperability between the two OSs. I never particularly liked the Libre alternatives to Office, but now with 365 I can keep up with my colleges stack without having to switch to a VM or some other artifact just to collaborate on a document.

Drawing, yeah, true... design as well... closest the Linux world ever was to get something decent in the design department was the Serif/Affinity products, but they never made the port.

[cbozeman]

Not even remotely true.

You're making the exact same argument everyone here is making, and that's because you're attempting to argue from technical parity / superiority. Windows isn't the dominant desktop OS because of it's technical superiority to Linux, it's dominant because of deeply entrenched compliance and industry reasons.

Healthcare, finance, legal, engineering (less so today, but still very sub-discipline dependant), and government all have very specific software needs that no one in their right mind will bother writing new software, or rewriting existing software, would do for 6% desktop market share.

EMR programs (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), Practice management and billing, Tax and compliance, Legal discovery and case-management tools, Niche hardware and it's control software

This is all the realm of Windows. Most of these applications are Windows-only (Win32 / .NET / ActiveX legacy), they're only certified and validated on Windows, and they're only contractually supported on Windows.

Even if Wolters-Kluwer rewrote the entire CCH ProSystem fx suite for Linux, now there's recertification, regulatory review, vendor retraining, staff retraining, potential issues with auditors and regulators, etc.

There's currently no upside large enough to justify: Vendor finger-pointing, Compliance risk, Training costs, Downtime risk

It's negative ROI all the way down.

Windows has to become so bad that switching to Linux for desktops overcomes all of the above.

[stevekemp]

I guess it depends on your field, for the past ten years I've worked in companies that use Google workspace, google docs, google drive, etc, etc, and slack.

I've not had any lock-in to Microsoft software and I don't think I've deal with a .doc file in all that time. I need a terminal to run devops stuff, and emacs to write it with, but almost nothing else.

Artists, and so on, are probably tied to Adobe, etc. But random developers and sysadmins are certainly capable of switching I think.

[ottah]

Krita and Inkscape have successfully replaced Photoshop and Illustrator for me. There isn't any good video editing options and lightroom still beats Gimp.

For me the biggest sticking point to windows is cad/cam software, lightburn and anything proprietary needed for hobby equipment. I'm glad though that 3d printer software has always had equal Linux support (as long as you don't use Bambu).

[erikbye]

Davinci Resolve for video editing. It's what I'd use on Windows, as well.

Lightroom vs Gimp does not make sense, should be Gimp vs Photoshop if anything.

For photos you can use digikam + darktable/rawtherapee.

[neop1x]

Kdenlive is good enough for my video editinf needs

[manuelabeledo]

Don’t all of these run in the browser nowadays?

[Neywiny]

While office can run in the browser, the browser version sucks and I commonly need to open the files in the desktop version. This often happens when there's a browser version or a mobile version or an app version. There's a lack of feature parity.

[alkonaut]

The browser versions aren't as good as the desktop versions. And Googles alternatives aren't as good as Microsofts. Both do 60% of the job, which is probably enough for 80% of the people.

[thom]

The browser versions (and the mobile versions) are nowhere near parity with the desktop Windows version, even in quite basic matters of styling. To be honest this annoyed me enough in the end that I just moved to a PandaDoc/CSS/PDF workflow and honestly I now have both a simpler editing process, and a more powerful engine for customisation.

[g947o]

I don't think you'll ever see a web version of Visual Studio.

[layer8]

Only limited versions, and the usability downgrade is severe.

[morcus]

> I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is.

Are you all expected to provide your own personal hardware?

Maybe this depends on location, but everyone I can think of has a corporate-issued laptop on which their corporate software runs.

[worksonmine]

Have you tried replacing Microsoft Office with Libreoffice? It's been perfectly usable for years and I'm even comfortable sending anyone .odt files. I haven't got a single question or comment about it. You may not be able to but in that case just use the .docx extension, install whatever fonts your colleagues expect and continue exactly as you were.

I can't take these kinds of arguments seriously because I regularly read, edit and create documents and spreadsheets and never felt the need to use Word or Excel. It seems most people I've met who claim they can't use Linux because they need X, Y or Z never really tried when I ask. It's just an assumption and they deal with Microsoft based on it.

It's a shame, we could have a world without data-mining and vendor lock-ins if we were principled and didn't always choose the easy path.

[nlkl]

I see this argument again and again, but I would imagine most people reading this have separate work and home computers?

For the average home user I can see gaming - while hugely improved in recent years - could still be a showstopper.

But surely for the average user Libreoffice or online versions of MS Office will suffice? Surely there cannot be _that_ many average PC users that need the full power of Photoshop?

Of course I expect the average HN user to be quite different from the average user in general, but I really do think that many casual users get no advantages from Windows apart from familiarity.