I should've used it sooner rather than last year when they announced AI integration to Windows. Every peripheral I tried is just worked without needing to install drivers, and it works better and faster than on Windows, just like today when I tried to use my brother's 3D printer expecting disappointment, but no, it just connected and was ready to print right away (I use Ultimaker Cura), whereas on my brother's Windows computer I have to wait like 20 seconds; sometimes I have to disconnect and reconnect it again for it to see and ready to use. Lastly, for those who are wondering, I use Vanilla Arch (btw), and sorry for bad English.
Every time I see someone write "sorry for my bad english" their writing is several times better than many of the native speakers I interact with on a daily basis.
For a while now Linux has been better at most personal computing things except gaming. And for server uses an even longer time.
There are some specific hardware/software situations where you'll need Windows but it's unlikely to happen at home. Unless you have very peculiar hobbies.
These kind of posts make me a little happy. I don't know exactly why but it does.
Having used Linux on for 25 years or so and now hearing about people who switch from Windows and really enjoying the experience warms my heart a little
I've been screwing with Linux for decades, but somewhere along the line, Linux got easier and more reliable than Windows. I was as surprised as anyone. My last couple Linux installs were a cake walk.
I also like Linux more than Mac, but I'm a tinkerer at heart, and Mac's (relative) lack of fiddly bits (customization options) has kept me from staying on it long.
You would be suprised how cool Linux can get when you go deep down the rabbit hole, if you really want to go deep into Arch I reccomend trying a tiling window manager like Sway or Hyprland :3
I recently made the switch to linux as well and I have it on my laptop and gaming PC. I do keep a portable install of windows on an external drive for more niche cases, such as music production which I had terrible luck with on Linux. When I booted up my laptop with the windows drive, I noticed that my keyboard backlight wasn't working. And it took me a second to realize that Windows doesn't come with basic drivers... In Linux mint, my keyboard backlight worked right away. I also wish I made the jump to Linux much earlier.
I wish I could experience this pain free Linux I keep hearing about on this website. Programs constantly stutter and glitch out, and if the computer goes to sleep while running my Linux partition it absolutely will not wake up again. I know this is a skill issue, but I've already spent many hours troubleshooting this... I've tried several distros as well. Even the steam compatibility everyone raves about only seems to work for me if I don't use wayland. I can say with certainty that the average person would be completely unwilling to deal with the experience I have had.
I've been using it on and off since 1994. I still have a slackware dist on CD with the 1.1 kernel. I think Linux is great although I still prefer to use Windows, and Linux via WSL which is my optimal set up these days.
My personal experience has been frustrating each time. I've tried to switch over at least 3 times over the years, but I always gave up. This time, I installed Ubuntu and immediately had to spend 3 hours trying to get my Xbox controler dongle to work, but just couldn't do it. Found a driver online that people said would work, it didn't because it wasn't properly signed, tried to sign it but the signing app just didn't create the certificates needed. Gave up, I have Bluetooth so I'd live, though I'd rather use the dongle if I can.
I then immediately encounter another problem that couldn't be fixed (for the life of me I can't remember what it was exactly) and just gave up.
The previous time I tried it I remember that among other things, one of my main problems was the lack of clipboard history (which I use extremely often). I tried installing an app for it but all of them either didn't work or didn't work the way I want them to or I just didn't like their look and feel.
I also hate the font rendering on Linux, it always looks blurry compared to Windows, and the double titlebars most apps have (e.g. Discord, at least on Ubuntu), I like my screen real-estate.
Only problem I ever had with Linux was having too many different versions of the Nvidia driver installed, so it would take lots of storage. It was easy to fix.
That's good to hear about the 3d printer as I have yet to connect mine to try the same thing. I just have to learn freecad though, as i used to use fusion 360 which is not packaged for Linux.
Lucky. I couldn't get HDR working properly, and most of my GPU features were missing because Nvidia refuses to support Linux (and AMD GPUs can't keep up). So I had to go back to Windows.
Been trying to switch to Linux since 2004. I'll try again in 5 years.