If the average person can not use your OS, it is not ready. Period.
For example:
Windows - Open File Explorer > Add Network Drive > Find/plug it in > Enter creds > Bam. Ready to go and will automatically log you in at boot. Very nice, very intuitive UI.
Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
In my own experience, I was able to get the hang of Windows with no one showing me how a computer ever worked, at the age of 10! Intuitive enough a child can do it.
On Linux, you have to read manuals/documentation, ask random (mostly rude) people on the internet, or give up because why the fuck would I want to go and enter 5 commands just to have something as simple as auto mount a network share? Not intuitive, therefore not easy to learn as you go.
I get it, Linux people like knowing how their computers operate, they like ensuring everything is working the way THEY want to, and that's awesome! What's not awesome is recommending Linux to the general populace and then getting upset at them for asking why they can't do something or why don't they just do these steps to do whatever it is they are having issues with. Then, you have a person who doesn't even know what a terminal is confused as hell because they were told Linux is so much better than Windows.
Until we get a more intuitive (GUI focused) way of doing what I would consider normal computer tasks, it will not ever be ready. That's just the way I see it.
Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
While many things will work 'out of the box', many won't. Hell, for like 3 months HDR was causing system-wide crashes on Plasma for Nvidia cards, so the devs just disabled the HDR options until there was an upstream fix.
There are still a host of resume-from-sleep issues, Wayland support is still spotty, and most importantly - not every piece of software will run.
Linux is my daily driver, I have learned to live and love the jank. My wife uses windows and does not want to be confronted with a debugging challenge 5% of the time when she turns on her computer, and I think that is fair.
These kinds of posts paper over lots of real issues and can be counterproductive. If someone jumps into the ecosystem without understanding, these kinds of posts only set them up for frustration and disappointment.
Linux has been ready since 2008. Literally not had a single real problem since Ubuntu 7.10 kept turning my monitor off while booting. Everything just works and has for 17 years now.
Every problem I see people have now (IRL not online) is 'I don't like the default theme' tier nonsense.
HDR isn't all that great for gaming yet, in my opinion. It takes too much tweaking just to get it working, because apparently games/proton still aren't able to natively pass that metadata to Wayland?
Running every applicable game or all of Steam through Gamescope brings its own problems with how it handles the window, so I end up never using it at all. I just want it to be as simple as it is on Windows, man! 😩
Also, VRR seems to make my screen flicker at an unnoticeably-high-but-still-irritating rate at random whenever I alt+tab, never figured that out yet...
Finally, I do wish there was a simpler, more paint.net-like editor rather than GIMP, and I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but otherwise basically every thing on that list of features works well enough for me.
I worry about Wayland for the features it drops from X11. Wayland will never have xdotool support, due to its security model. I worry about onscreen keyboards for drawing tablets and screen readers for the blind.
Calling Linux's version of DVR a "viable video editor" is rich given that a. It doesn't work on most distros (it's designed for Rocky Linux. It throws a fit on any other distro. You need to jerry-rig it), requiring a whole thang to get it to play nice; and that b. It doesn't support any of the video formats and codecs people actually want to use, for seemingly no reason, since the Windows version supports those formats just fine.
KDENLiVe is like, fine for a simple project, but you quickly start hitting your head on its limitations. Plus its UI sucks just in general.
Video editing is the reason I keep a small Windows install, because sometimes I need to do video stuff for work and -- Sorry. No. No Linux video editor even compares to the likes of Premiere and Vegas. They're still barely above Windows Movie Maker.
GIMP is a perfectly serviceable image editor, and yes, GIMP 3 is a major improvement -- But it's kinda missing a lot of things Photoshop users take for granted, and its UI and hotkeys are very idiosyncratic, which makes migrating very hard (... I sorta have the opposite problem though. I learned image editing on GIMP and all my muscle memory is GIMP oriented, so even when I'm on my 'time to work' windows install, I only really open PS if I desperately need one of its exclusive functions)
Can someone more plugged in than me show me what I gotta do to get that 'Discord Wayland sharing' working? I literally installed Vencord a month ago because every time I tried to share a window or my screen on discord it would hard crash.
Can't wait for Wayland to be ready in cinnamon. Possibly mean that literally as X is a laggy mess with fractional scaling. Maybe fedora with gnome will be my first distro hop.
Ever since I stopped gaming as much, linux has become infinitely more fitting to me. My main driver is Mint 21.3, it does everything i want it to. Its fun, and a great learning experience. Though obviously you gotta want to learn how to fix things if things go wrong, which they still do, but mostly at the beginning. After installing the right graphics drivers, and fixing touchpad scroll speed, everythings smooth sailing.
Half my peripherals not working/having linux software support is a major blocker for me. Plus a ton of QOL stuff or ways of doing stuff that I've gotten used to on Windows.
Hah. I just saw this on the back of some other guy berating me for complaining that Steam exploded when trying to get it to acknowledge Steam libraries on NTFS drives. I'll stop complaining the moment my stuff works.
But hey, I hear my HDR monitors are supposed to have stopped artifacting out on the latest Nvidia drivers I installed last week, so if I ever get Steam to work again maybe I can give that another try and see if I can scratch that one from my routine.
Meh, never mind me. I'm just cranky from all the troubleshooting. I really thought I had this down semi-permanently a couple weeks ago.
The thing that's fucking me up in the last month since I switched is the fact that when I press Windows Key + P to switch Displays to just my second monitor (when I want to use my consoles), switching it back causes KDE to count the monitors as separated for some reason. Like they are virtually spaced apart, so I'm stuck in one monitor instead of being able to use both. It also resets my second monitor to the primary one for some reason. Very strange, never an issue on Windows.
Wish it was ready. I have it dual booted with windows. Until these things work for me I can't permanently switch:
Adobe
H264/5 in davinci free
Battle.net working (I can't get it to work even with tutorials. Works in windows)
AMD adrenaline/Nvidia control panels and shadow play.
AMD frame gen.
I've had Windows installations that chugged along for 10 years with only regular software updates. It does get slow and bloated over time, but it keeps working without any maintenance or fixing.
Meanwhile I can't find a Linux distribution that doesn't self-destruct in about 6 months of regular desktop use. Every time some software update corrupts GRUB, breaks X/Wayland, or something else that unexpectedly makes my computer unusable and requires me to spend hours fixing it or in some cases giving up and installing a different distro.
Let me know when a desktop Linux distro is as reliable as my 10 year old Windows install please.
all wife needs is Mahjong and shopping. not like I need to run Mine Sweeper. just a browser with Internet. Most could not install any operating system so charge for the install labor. lan-splaining is a waste of time. bring a book if Mom needs her windows fixed. thinking about putting her on linux when her machine finally pukes.
I really want to transition to Linux but the dual boot issues that risk bricking my windows installation (I really have to use for work and for gaming) really put me off.. Is it even fixable? I'm not blaming Linux but just wondering if there's even a solution for what (from what I read) seems quite an serious issue and a deterrent for adoption..
I wish I could use linux, most (not all) of the apps I use regularly are better on a linux distro. I self host a lot of services on linux machines, and god I would love to rid myself of Microsoft. But my main computer OS? still stuck with Windows.
I just (a few years ago) upgraded my graphics card and at that time NVidia had a better deal then AMD.... I'm not sst to upgrade for at least 5 years still.
Every distro I've tested have weird problems that cannot be solved by a few lines of code, all seem to point to Nvidia, but it's hard to say without testing without.
My main computer is working as is with Windows, until there is a linux distro that just works with nvidia, I'll stick to it and the many tools I have to keep my things as private from Microsoft as I can.
One of the many problems I've had is the task bar/desktop/windows hang/freezes, have to go in the terminal to reboot or force a shutdown. If I have to reboot everytime I want to use the computer and reset all my apps, when the only times it happens now is when windows forces it : not for me thanks.