I've been on and off Linux desktop for more than 25 years.
I always gave it a chance, for home use and work use as well. And it always failed to prove it worth the effort.
For home use it failed most miserably when it booted up with a black screen after a version update due to an already reported bug with the Nvidia driver, which no one cared to fix before release. Then struggled again for years with finding useful applications, even games, without success, so I gave up.
For work use (as a software engineer) I tried to make myself productive on Linux, and yes I liked the terminal, and that was it. Everything else just sucked. Coming back from suspend e.g. was gambling. Multi-monitor usage sucked. PDF editor? Forget it. Productivity suite on desktop, OneDrive synchronization, DTP, Music - all half-baked, full of bugs and incompatibilities. Thank you, not any more.
For a server, of course I'd use Linux. For a phone, of course. But for desktop, if 30 years was not enough to mature to something usable, I would stop hoping for seeing it as a gold mine. Always promised, always failed.
Sometimes its just a tiny thing: systemd-login started to suspend machines per default from around 2015. This has resulted in countless "not working" Linux installs on all machines that have a buggy suspend. I literally could not run systemd GNU/Linux on my Acer Aspire because it would "crash" after some time.
I've only used Fedora for the last 3 years as my main OS but some things you've mentioned (which I consider important examples) are far better than you might think. What I know of that has been solved well:
- "Multi-monitor usage sucked" - GNOME with Tactile extension gives you basically what PowerToys doeas for managing windows in Windows which is the top productivity experience of what you can gat on the desktop in general. Better than anything on MacOS for instance. And zero issues with multi-monitor.
- NVIDIA drivers failing on updates - I dind't have a chance to experience that during the last 3 years and I use one of the worst GPU setups that are known to have stabilibty issues on Linux - a gaming laptop with 2 GPUs, Intel + Nvidia.
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Moreover, the overall OS stability is top notch. If it's not a clever GNOME extension called Another Window Session Manager saves my work and all opened windows every couple minutes or so (a GNOME session can be revoked after restart).
- "Music (half backed)" - a free Strawberry music suite is one of the best you can get and if that is not enough you can buy Jriver which is one of the top 3 best music platforms in the world. Or host a Logitech Media Server in a docker container locally. Plenty of very good options.
(I'm a hardcore audiphile myself).
> "full of bugs and incompatibilities" - I wouldn't say that at all. I consider myself a kind of person that doesn't like even minor unnecessary issues in my life and if Linux wasn't good enough for me I would not use it.
(With a disclaimer that the fact that there's nothing like Linux from the privacy and freedom standpoint I'm willing rarely to swallow an issue with it here and there to remain free person in the lengterm).
> Linux might not be OK for content creators, though. Or people depending on a lot of niche software, etc. In that case do what I did and find alternatives. Before you start thinking about switching an OS! Apps are more important than the OS.
To be honest I'm pretty sure that with what the future might bring regarding how major operating systems work (as hostile entities) one might want to consider alternatives now regardless of how inconvenient it might feel... Linux is fine. You'll make it work if you want to.
I've been giving Linux a chance every few years since the 90s. Last year I got a new Framework and decided to try again. I tried Fedora and Pop and I can say I'm here to stay. It's Pop's version of Gnome with the tiling manager that I love. Windows has nothing close to it.
I do a decent amount of work in pdfs and I'm surprised that's not good for you. If you're willing to pay for some software there are some really good options. I was using Acrobat before and I am more than happy now, not just because I'm no longer paying $15/mo.
I haven't had a hardware problem on Linux in a while. When was the last time you tried to install it? If you have modern hardware you might be pleased with that part of the experience now.
Pop OS's keyboard experience is phenomenal as well. There's something incredibly intuitive about how easy it is to manage tiled windows + workspaces + accessing common apps with the keyboard shortcuts on popOS that I can't imagine working with anything else now.
Uh, windows has pretty great tiling builtin (albeit disabled by default) and it gets even better by installing Microsoft powerToys (FancyZones) .
It's not fully automated (or "dynamic") like i3/sway but works great. it's in many ways a lot better (i.e the preconfigured tiling setups you can quickly activate by hovering over the maximize buttons etc).
In other ways it's indeed worse, mainly because its not dynamic. But it's not just worse
But if you'd want workspaces you'll get exactly 4 from another 'power toy' and it'll break some video conferencing software for unclear reasons.
I use Windows sometimes and have people I work with that use Windows and in comparison Debian is a breeze. No problems with drivers, no waiting for three minutes because some kernel adjacent service wants to check every file you're deleting in a batch of some thousands, no ads or useless popups about the weather two hours ago, &c. &c.
I agree. Certain DEs and WMs are fun to play with, Void Linux is a fun minimal system to tinker with, Debian is perfect for a fire up and forget server but ultimately commercial software always has the polish and edge I need to get things done at home or for work.
I.e. Affinity vs GIMP, or MS Office vs LibreOffice, Sony Vegas vs whatever crashfest NLE I install on Linux.
So my current pattern is a neutered W10 LTSC for gaming and video editing complimented by a Macbook for work/coding/internet.
I will say that for my parents who just want a desktop with a web browser and basic word processing, Linux Mint + MATE is fine and much more predictable than Windows. I don't have to teach them everything from scratch every few months, as would be the case if they were on Windows and some PM rules that everything must be revolutionised again.
I can confirm. Using latest KUbuntu + KDE. It's very nice usually, but almost every time I do a major upgrade something breaks. Now, after suspend, the freaking keyboard is not detected. Like, at all. It thinks I am on a tablet, I believe, maybe because I have a touchscreen monitor. This only started after the latest upgrade, and I spent hours trying to fix it, to no avail :(.
And this is a laptop that came from factory with Ubuntu (Dell XPS13)!
Quite frustrating. I really like the KDE DE but because of this sort of problem (it has been touchpad problems and sound issues before) I am seriously considering something else, probably plain Ubuntu though I hate the defaults they come with nowadays.
I use Linux in both my work and personal machine, and I fully agree with you. It's kind of painful. In my case I keep using it because I just cannot stand windows UI, and because I do a lot of work on docker/linux for servers, a d I prefer not to have a virtualization layer.
But yeah, sleep/wakeup never works properly, bluetooth connections are unstable and battery life is abysmal. Among others.
I wish Dell would make their own custom distro tailored to their hardware.
