Every few weeks, I get really tempted to ditch Windows completely and switch to Linux (I have two desktops; one Windows and one Linux. My main laptop is Windows, and I install Linux on my old laptops and have a couple of Raspberry Pis). I love Linux, and most things I do, I do in a browser or with FOSS (free, open-source software) such as GIMP, Kdenlive, Inkscape etc. Linux is free, really stable and runs with very low overhead (compared to Windows). It never just crashes, and doesn’t go into those unpredictable 2-3 hour reboot/update cycles.
With Ubuntu, Linux recently doesn’t look all that different from Windows. Most casual users will be able to use Linux with no problem. I did install a Linux PC at a workplace where people who didn’t have any experience with Linux were able to use it without any problem.
PC’s are mostly used for web-surfing, getting on social media, emailing and things like that, most of which are done in the browser. So for those people, Linux should work fine. There is a need to work directly on the command line, though, even though that is not too hard. You can google what you need to do and just copy it. But some knowledge of bash might be helpful.
Having said that, sometimes I reboot my Windows machine and my keyboard doesn’t work. Or the sound doesn’t work. And I have to go through all these steps, finding, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers and all sorts of things which may be too much for non-technical people. So it’s not like Windows is easy to run and maintain either.
At the end of the day, the problem for many with Linux is going to basically be software. My teen kid won’t go Linux as gaming is all Windows. If you are going to have custom-built, high-end gaming machine with the latest graphics card and want to play the latest games, you are going to do it on a Windows machine. Not Linux. Same with things like Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and things like that, which are not available on Linux. I love GIMP and Darktable, but if you are a hardcore Adobe user, Linux isn’t going to work.
I can’t really think of any software I use that can’t be used on Linux, at the moment. I don’t play games, don’t use Adobe, and although I use Microsoft Office at times, I can do most of the same on Google sheets/Docs and with the Libre Office suite.
The only thing that is holding me back at the moment from switching is that Windows has become much stabler after Windows 10, and I am hooked into OneDrive. This allows me to work from my home PC and laptop seamlessly wherever I am. You can do this with Google Drive, DropBox and maybe Box, but I haven’t set anything up there yet. Anyway, one of these days I will probably make a clean break from Windows, but not yet.
