And I don't plan to switch back either. Everything is just better on Linux for me

I've been doing that since 2013. I run Arch btw.
- me too, but only since late 2022
  
  Here is my operating systems timeline:
- I use Manjaro BTW

Me a few months back when I accidentally formatted the Windows drive I was keeping for dual booting just in case.
"Guess I'm a full timer now"
- Me accidentally installing Fedora on BOTH my hard drives...
  
  I heard you liked Linux so much, I installed Linux on ALL your harddrives

So serious question - are you supposed to dual boot window / Linux for some reason?
When I got frustrated with Windows - I wiped my hard drive and just installed Linux mint having literally never used Linux in my life. I didn't like mint so I tried pop_os (someone here recommended it, thanks again!) and I see zero reason to go back to Windows now.
What is the point of going back to Windows when I can run everything i ran before on Linux now?
My games work better and I've found so many free open source alternatives to everything - it's been really eye opening just jumping in. I'm glad I did.
Edit - I should have clarified Windows other than work, I understand Windows is the life blood of the corporate body - good points on forrnite / valorant / destiny - I don't play those so I didn't know.
- My Windows install does two things
  Piracy/modding for consoles when there isn’t a Linux app available < I could probably use Wine
  Figuring out tech support for other people when they refuse to use Linux
- I thought you're supposed to dual boot until whatever version of windows you have EOLs and then look up the price of updating windows, say "fuck that" and just not boot windows again for a while and then eventually wipe it when you need more disk space.
  Am I the only one?
- Maybe some sort of software that runs better on Windows when you can’t run it through a tool similar to Wine. Even for that subset of software doesn’t work after running it within a VM gets smaller too.
- I dual boot purely as a way to help me separate my hobbies. Windows is where I play my games. Linux is where I stay on to my work or work on my personal projects. Separating the OS's is basically just an organizational set up and it works for me.
  
  Funny, it's the opposite for me haha. Windows on work laptop. Linux on play laptop.
- One of the biggest things stopping me is that my partner loves to play fortnite so i play it with them a lot, is there anything to allow you to play EAC games? Iirc epic said they don't want to account for security across every Linux distro
  
  Basically the only road block I've seen is a lot of games using anti-cheat software just refuse to allow Linux. Some of it even has an option to allow it to run under proton and the devs don't enable that option so it's blocked. It's basically them saying they don't trust the Linux community not to cheat.
  Then you get into the root-kit anti-cheat stuff like valorant uses which wants to load before the os and then control and monitor everything the os does and what hardware is connected... I've stayed away from the invasive as fuck anti-cheat games for years even before my move to Linux, so nothing lost there.
  
  Heroic Launcher makes Fall Guys work fine for me and it uses EAC. It looks like Fortnite doesn't work with Heroic's EAC implementation; however you can play it in a browser window through Xbox Game Pass (no sub required).
  
  is there anything to allow you to play EAC games?
  Steam has EAC available under Linux, you just install it just like it is its own game.
- I used to dual boot for some work tasks and to play games. With OnlyOffice and Office365 in a browser, I can do everything I used to need desktop Window apps for. With Wine, Proton, and Proton-GE I can play all of my games in Steam or Heroic Launcher, so I don't need Windows for games anymore.
  There is still a usecase for people who need Windows for specific usecases; but for most people the only obstacle is learning curve (and don't come at me with Mint, Ubuntu, and ElemntaryOS you're lying to yourselves).
  
  There was def a learning curve - but I kinda just forced myself to do it. I'm still figuring things out - but I have solved every issue I've run into so far - so I feel good about that.
- If you program hardware some tools are only available on windows. Easier to just use windows in that case.
  
  Or just use it in a virtual machine
  
  What hardware do you mean specifically?
- It is hard without a transition period. Sometimes you have to do work stuff on your computer.
  For me it is Visual Studio that holds me back. Maybe Microsoft Teams as well. Yes, work.
  Since I am a power user it will take. Especially now Wayland is very much work in progress. I have some problem with keyboard bindings, text expander. Pidgin and Hexchat works but thinks they are located left top for right click on tray icon.
- I've never been a fan of dual booting myself. The computer just ends up spending all of its time in one OS or the other. Plus Microsoft doesn't seem to like to play nice with your bootloader.
  I just started using Linux on secondary computers. Once I had gotten things down so the experience was smooth on those machines, moving the main desktop from Windows to Linux was pretty seamless.

Finally switched (again) full time to Linux early last year. With the current state of Steam proton I have finally 0 reasons to go back. If a game doesn't work natively on Linux, I refund and move on. There's so many games out there, I have no reason to go out of my way for any one.
- Huh, interesting, never thought to do that. Been missing Photoshop. (GIMP just isn't the same)
  
  I’m sorta, kinda, mostly illiterate, when it comes to what you are doing with adobe. Are you just installing like normal and then copy/paste the Adobe folder from the programs folder into a wine directory?

There's like literally 3 games that are preventing me from dropping windows entirely.
- Which ones?
  
  I cannot, for the life of me, get Hogwarts, Forza 5 and Immortals of Aveum to run with wine.
- Hogwarts via steam's proton runs flawlessly.

I dual... Just kidding, been running Linux since 2008. I'm done being old Billy's dumpster raccoon.

Daily driving linux since i accidentally started formatting my windows drive while installing NixOS. Best mistake of my life.
- Is this the new "I use nixOS BTW"? just sneak it into a nomal conversation like nothing happened? Legend.
  
  I'd tell all the NixOS evangelists to shut up, but they're immutable.

Oh god... I just switched yesterday. Borked my windows partition while at it, so linux-only it is. The pain I had yesterday... Out of the box, WiFi was busted, fan curves were busted, RGB was busted, HiDPI's is still busted, evdi is also still busted, solved surround sound just a few minutes ago. But hey, five problems solved in a day with two left to go is still much better than windows where a single damn bug in AMD software kept me going nuts for months with no fix in sight.
- It gets better too. I suppose it depends on your distro and hand ware mix as for what works out of the box.
  Eg. my pure AMD Rog Zephyrus laptop worked with Fedora pretty much “out of the box” once I enabled 3rd party drivers.
  It’s kinda like switching to stick shift— it’s touch weird, but once you’ve daily driven it a bit the system is second nature.
  
  Huh, stangely, I too have zephyrus laptop, but it's a duo one, with quite unorthodox display setup, too. The wifi indeed automagically started working after install, audio required some pactl trickery as it has two sets of speakers connected to separate audio outputs, evdi might require some actual coding, since there's no way to run one of the screens without it, and both synaptics and manufacturer-provided drivers look pre-alpha and don't even compile... For the rest, https://asus-linux.org/ is a godsend. For HiDPI, maybe got any tips? I have a small 4K main panel, and a couple of big FHD displays. It looks like my options are to either leave dpi unchanged and have everything too small on main panel, or set it to 2 and have everything too big on secondaries, or to use gnome, not sure which is worse... Is there like a daemon, that can dynamically change the window's DPI value, like windows does, that I don't know the name of?

On my duel booted system I still have windows. But I haven't had to use it in a couple weeks and at this point might just delete it and go fully into Linux only. Just a few windows only apps that are making me unsure. Might try windows vm.
- Honestly if I played any games that had anti cheat I would run a windows vm in QEMU/KVM. Go the GrapheneOS route and sandbox the spyware (cough Google and Microsoft cough)
  
  Some anti cheats can detect that they're running in a virtual machine and if they do, you'll probably get banned for some reason.
  
  Isn't GrapheneOS a mobile OS? How would it work on a pc?
- I like the idea that Linux and Windows have a duel every time your system boots and the winner gets to start up.
- I have a Windows install that I haven't booted up in 2 years. I didn't really use it anyway. I just had one thing to finish there, but I am lazy.
  I only used it for a few weeks after getting that laptop while waiting for Linux kernel 5.8 which would finally support that hardware as nothing older booted up.

It felt so great when I finally wiped my Windows drive back in the day. Suddenly I had an extra drive to distro hop to my heart's content without having to wipe the previous distro 👌

Personally I do see how windows can be useful, but for 99% of the things I need to do on a PC I can just do on Linux. For (most) anything else, I can just use windows running on a VM in linux.
- Do you know an alternative to Sony Vegas for Linux?
  
  Davinci resolve? Its Linux support is a bit obtuse, but it works.

Once I'd tasted Linux Mint in 2019, I just gave up on Windows altogether. Linux and BSD all the way!

It is a fantastic feeling when you just finally say fuck it and run Linux only as your daily driver.

Took a sip of Ubuntu and now im addicted to arch. Dont do linux kids🙏🙏

There are three things holding me back from making the switch full time, I use a stream deck from Elgato for automating a lot of tasks, I stream VR titles from Steam, and I have an Nvidia graphics card.
- Thank you for giving me 3 huge reasons not to switch, cause I've been a bit tempted lately.
  
  I switched to Pop_OS and it's honestly been great even with an Nvidia card. Haven't found a game that it won't run, only thing I'm missing is lack of gsync/HDR support
- Have you tried Boatswain for your Stream Deck?
  
  This looks really fascinating. Looks like this may have some more features that I need for my Stream Deck compared to other ones for it on Linux. Might have to hope on a Live USB and check it out. Thanks for sharing!!
- There are three things holding me back from making the switch full time, I use a stream deck from Elgato for automating a lot of tasks
  Maybe this can help you out?
  https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2019/10/using-the-elgato-stream-deck-on-linux-just-got-a-whole-lot-easier-with-streamdeck-ui/
  
  I did take a look at that once before and it didn't quite have all the features that I use daily on my Stream Deck, but thanks for linking to it! Maybe I should take a look again since it's been a year or so.
- I'm going to look into this myself. Been using Ubuntu for a about 6 months but also want to mess around more with VMs

Everything was running fine on Ubuntu for months until an update. Now it just crashes, trying to load.
Turns out Linux doesn't play well with NVIDIA.
- Oh, trust me, we know.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
  
  I'm just glad that AMD got their shit together at about the same time Nvidia went downhill. It used to be that you needed to get an Nvidia card to get decent Linux support since, even though its drivers were closed-source, at least they worked at a time when AMD's Linux drivers were absolute garbage. Imagine if things had stayed that way on the AMD side while Nvidia went on its current trajectory; Linux users would be completely out of luck.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

I switched to Linux in 2018 because my lovely to use MacBook stopped getting updates despite being a perfectly capable machine. It really sank in for me, how much Apple relies on planned obsolescence etc. I switched to Elementary OS and was fascinated by how it worked. That was nearly 6 years ago and now I use Linux on fucking everything.
I have come across times when I've needed Windows but I can usually just set it up in a virtual machine temporarily. However the times when I need Windows are becoming increasingly rare, thank fuck.
It's been absolutely phenomenal in the last 6 years to see how far the Linux and open source eco system has grown. My Steam Deck (Steam OS 3), Jellyfin server (Ubuntu) and even my Starlink (OpenWRT) Internet connection are all great examples of that. And I hope it continues.
- Is not getting updates such a big deal for MacOS?
  
  Wasn't the end of the world but I didn't like Apple not shipping new features etc, just because they wanted me to buy a new machine.

haven't used windows in years. never looking back
- You should try it. Quick and easy way to get some fresh air…

Windows 11 used to consume 3.5GB of RAM and Solus Budgie 4.5 consumes only 1GB...
- For me Windows 11 used to consume 7GB of RAM, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma only uses 2GB
  
  Damn 7GB is alot! Dafuq Microsoft was doing

Welcome to the dark side, we have cookies (the good one, not the browser ones)

By the time i got my current pc I hadn't booted into windows for several months in the old one, so it never got installed on this one.

I've been running Linux KDE desktop only (mostly Ubuntu) since 2003, so well over 20 years, only reason to look at windows was either work, or family who again for the nth time had a forked up windows install
- Forked? Like Atlas and Ghostspectre?
- Yep. It's been getting slightly more unstable recently too.

I am running mint on my dell and the only thing i am surprised is the bad battery life on Linux. I'm getting 1 hour backup while on windows i was getting close to 3 hours. Can someone help me out here?
- Try a few of the options here. I personally have used powertop and tlp and they help, but the best mix for your hardware might be different.
  
  I can second TLP, it's wonderful.
  There is a GUI for it as well that works well.
  
  Also do you really need a full DE when just using a browser on the go? I use i3wm without a compositor on battery and my wifi+firefox battery life went from 5h to about 7-8h.
- Power management is quite frustrating on Linux, as this is supposed to be tuned by the OEM, but many OEM never bother to tune it on linux.
  Even large OEM like dell only ensures all their hardwares "work" on linux, but don't do much further tuning. And many like hp and lenovo sometimes don't even to bother make their hardware work.
  This is why buying from small manufactures with good linux support is important. They not only support both windows and linux well, many often come with additional perks like built in country with reasonable labor practice, repairability, upgradablity, no phone tree in support, and supporting Linux desktop development.
  Personally, my framework AMD has great battery life on linux by default. And I am sure manufacture like system76, tuxedo, slimbook, starlab, novacustom, etc. all works well.
- Check the power saving settings of your desktop environment. Also check the CPU performance settings if they are separate.

My only thing holding me back is my kids play Roblox and for the life of me I can't get it working since they blocked it last year. Tried all the troubleshooting, vinegar, juice box, etc nothing works
- i play roblox through vinegar all the time and it works perfectly out of the box
- I use Grapejuice. It's a simple flatpak that I can install and it just works. You just need to go into its settings and choose between Vulkan, D3D11 or something else if the performance isn't good.
  EDIT: just found out about Vinegar, I'll try it later. Apparently it's better than Grapejuice
  EDIT 2: the game doesn't launch with it even after following the troubleshooting instructions, so if this doesn't work for you use Grapejuice
- I play along with my kid using Grape juice, was a bit fiddly to get cooperative but after a reboot it works consistently for me on Deb 12 through Flatpak/Flathub.
  
  Yeah I wish it worked, I tried it on Ubuntu and Manjaro (which is my daily driver)

I think the only devices in my house that aren't running Linux are running VXWorks or some random embedded OS. Been this way for ages.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but I've heard that steam vr does not work well on Linux. Is that still the case? Occasional vr is the only thing keeping me from nuking my windows install.
- Running Steam VR using Proton works great for me.
- Works great. Very occasionally I get an error (black screen) requiring me to disconnect and reconnect the display port adapter but I get the same occasional nonsense with my regular monitor too so 🤷.
  Usually that happens after new Nvidia drivers too so...
- SteamVR on Linux works out of the box if you have a Valve Index or a HTC Vive.
  There are some others that work via ALVR but can't speak about that.
  Two caveats though:
  Valve likes to break SteamVR for Linux with every third update and then takes weeks to fix it
  It works but there's a lot of issues with it. From incorrectly scaled UI, to missing features, to SteamVR Home not working for a year straight
  Most of the time there are community workarounds but there's only so much they can do.

Just realized I've got a wide selection: Windows, MacOS, Android, and EndevourOS, and Manjaro. (I haven't booted the Windows box in MONTHS...)

I'm Sr IT so I have to stay familiar with Windoze or I confuse the help desk when I ask about trouble shooting they've already done before kicking shit up to me.

I've been using Linux every chance I could since Red Hat 5/Mandrake 6 - available at your local Walmart for $20US for a boxed set CD. So I now have a Cheap, Cheerful, Chinese mini desktop box just to install Linux on since all my old laptops have slowly given up the ghost one by one. I've always been a distro hopper and I missed the exploration. I've been running LM with Cinnamon for the last year and really like the stability, but it's been a few years since I looked in on Fedora. And I'm getting the itch to switch again.
I have one laptop left that is running Win11 that I needed for some specialty software and now since I'm retired, there is little to no reason to keep it that way anymore. I suppose I will need to choose a single distro for that one. Maybe Ubuntu or SuSe Tumbleweed?
It's amazing just how easy choosing a distro and getting it up and running has become. From RTFM and spending a month trying to compile a driver get a Sound Blaster Gold sound card to work on a 486, (I still have PTSD from that dependency hell), to just 20 minutes from start to finish on a new install and everything works.

What all are better than Windows?

Keep this up and we'll start treating lunuxers like vegans.
How do you know someone runs Arch Lunux?
Don't worry, they'll tell you.

- Why do you think so?

Still not there and seems very hard yet, today I was just trying to compare two folders from external HDD using something
Can't find a decent folder comparator on Linux
I found a kinda of one but I can't find external HDD on it cause some mount bs in Linux
Such a simple task in windows, Linux is hardly better for regular use.
Edit: so 4 replies one of them is about using commands prompt ( hardly useful for new users) , one says its windows fault, one of them.might be answer and one of them is related to driver issue for drive. And at time of edit i am -4 on votes. So much for linux Community and help.
Why a simple person won't consider windows ? Now I await more minuses I think.
- What's a folder comparator? Showing the difference between two directories can be done with diff -qr dir1 dir2 or with a gui with mold (one Google search away my dude). If installed via flatpak you may need to give it permission to your files (flatseal is nice for that)
- I've found meld to be a good graphical tool to do this sort of thing. Should be in the repos.
  Would be nice if it could be launched by file managers though.
- You need drivers for your external USB most likely. Unfortunately, a lot of brands only support microsoft's malware of a OS and use unnecessary proprietary firmware...

Once I can install a program without using the terminal, Linux'll have a chance in the primetimes
- I want to add, most of the program you can think of is in the store (most of the time, by default!), including many properties tools used in industry.
  Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, spotify, discord, signal, thunderbird, chrome, firefox, brave, steam, OBS and many more are all installable with one click!
  This store is the only store that is actually usable across all three major OSs.
  Just saying that, because people coming from other OSs have a hard time believing a usable app store on desktop can exist.
  
  I use Lubuntu for my home theatre PC, typically with a wireless mouse. But the amount of times I had to pull out the keyboard and open a terminal and add repositories and then apt get update all and then reboot and then try to install my program and then turns out I added the repositories for the wrong version of Ubuntu and now I gotta add the right one and also I can't double click someting cause it will open it up as a text file instead of an executable.
  Look, I like Linux. This isn't a bad faith propaganda. I honestly think Linux could replace Windows if the developers tried, just tried, to make it user friendly. I work with multple programming languages daily, I'm not computer illiterate, but I appreciate ease of access. When I was a kid, you could install and run things easier on DOS than on Linux today. Why is it so hard to make an installer? Every answer I get on this subject is either whataboutisms or gatekeeping.
- You... can? That's been a thing for ages. Windows has literally been taking queues from Linux on how to makes installing packages and apps easier.
  
  Windows has literally been taking queues from Linux on how to makes installing packages and apps easier.
  Not to argue with you, but I think it would be fun if you can provide the source for this. I am very interested in how Windows is improving (not that I will jump back)
- One of the reason I use linux is because there is no reasonable way to manage/update program on Windows using GUI.
  The only reasonable program management tool on Windows is chocolatey, which is in the terminal. I need to remember typing choco upgrade all in command prompt from time to time, and stop all my work to wait for it updates (since it will close your program during updates). And then I will restart to wait for 20 mins for Windows to update itself.
  Honestly, I don't mind a break, but remembering thing is not my strong suit; also there are certainly circumstances where stop working for 20 mins is not ideal and Windows just insist on updating itself.
  On linux, I install all my program straight from the store (very pretty GUI, even without ads!), and they all automatically update in the background without bothering me at all. Even my OS updates in the background. Every time I reboot, I just boot into a brand new OS, without waiting for any update. (Could use a notification after update is installed, but I think it is broken in gnome...)
  I never use the terminal in Linux besides installing and using development tools.
- People say this is u friendly but don't bat an eye at needed a group policy or registry edit to keep edge from stealing your tabs and making itself the default.
- Agreed. Terminal commands for installing simple programs is a huge turn off for Windows users used to opening an exe and it's idiot proof. Getting the casual base will be the crucial point
  Edit: oof. Guess this is why it doesn't have a mainstream audience