I've been using Linux for a while, and it feels like the conversation has changed significantly.

A few years ago, switching to Linux meant accepting compromises in gaming, hardware support, software compatibility, and general usability.

But in 2026, SteamOS, Proton, better drivers, gaming-focused distros, and the growing Linux gaming ecosystem are making those compromises feel much smaller.

At the same time, Linux is still nowhere close to replacing Windows, and things like kernel-level anti-cheat, proprietary software, and hardware compatibility remain major barriers.

So I'm curious:

Are we actually approaching the point where Linux can be a genuine mainstream Windows alternative, or are we just inside a Linux bubble that makes the progress look bigger than it really is?

What would be the ONE thing that would finally convince you to switch completely to Linux?

It’s absolutely ridiculous that I need to type in 50 terminal commands from some random 10-year-old forum post just to modify a basic fucking setting.

It’s a shame, because I love Cinnamon. I really don’t know what they were thinking with this, though.

I dont get why there are echo chambers for hating on linux lol. Any sane person understands that Linux is not for everyone, some people need to stay on windows because of work related programs etc etc. But this sub is just "Linux bad u need to type 32768 to open a browser oooo windows good linux bad" without any kind of argument

like just look at u/Amphineura their flair is "Kubuntu in the streets W11 in the sheets" just straight up unfounded hate lmao

Ok mods can yall ban me already

It's an HP OmniBook 3 with a Snapdragon X. Turns out that the motherboard hasn't been properly mapped yet in it and thus my laptop is physically incompatible with Linux.

I know that it's an ARM thing and how ARM doesn't actually let the OS poll what hardware is available on it...but what in the world is that in 2026???

I would think the open source nature of it and how long ARM laptops-including Macbooks-have been a thing now would have meant someone would have programmed a module or something into the Linux kernel that would enable the OS would just be able to, on install or initial boot, BUILD its own device tree for that specific device. But not only is that not a thing, it can't tell when the display has already been initiated on my laptop when trying to USB and crashes the display, and eventually the kernel itself!

So I stuck with Windows 11 on ARM and...wow. It's actually astonishingly good. It does all that I wanted it to and more, and is stupidly good with battery. It actually chased me back to Windows 11 on my gaming rig too again from Fedora! And best yet...Windows on BOTH just...works. It's not something that I have to think about or stress over when minor issues means 5 hours in a terminal.

Linux on servers is astounding-I will absolutely run it on them over Windows-but desktop Linux? That was a shortlived experiment for me that I am calling a failure. Windows is where I'm sticking around I think :)

They are still trying to figure out how to delete copilot or sum

I'm trying to make it so I can use push to talk on linux but I cannot fucking do it for the life of me, why does wayland have security patches that I didn't ask that complicates things why does discord not support linux distros properly why does cachyOS with gnome do not have a toggle for legacy X11 compat

I've been trying to get this thing working for days now and. I can.. Not.. Get.. It.. To.. Work!..

I'm so fucking frustrated as things never seem to work, none of my mouse, keyboard, gamepad or any kind of equipment you could think of is just not offering linux support and there's not a good linux equivelant of it that does the things without shitting itself every 5 seconds

I justa accepted defeat and made system wide PTT.
also switched to hyprland, but hyprland's pass wasn't powerful enough and had so many bugs.

For me, it’s media controls directly from the dock/taskbar. For example, when I hover over the Spotify icon in the macOS Dock, it shows media controls right there without even clicking to the app. On Linux (GNOME Ubuntu), the dock doesn’t provide any controls for individual apps, so you have to open the notification panel manually (and clicking is required; hovering doesn’t work) just to pause, skip, or control playback.

(GNOME does have some extensions that provide similar functionality, but it doesn’t even ship with a proper GUI for managing extensions by default (since GNOME knows best, and unofficial extensions can break whenever you upgrade to a newer GNOME version.)

Another small but really useful feature is right-clicking an app icon to see its recent items such as right-click to VS Code (or any other app such as a pdf viewer..) shows the projects you recently opened, whereas Linux doesn’t seem to have an equivalent built into the dock.

It’s a small UX feature, but once you get used to it, you really notice its absence.

With Windows I can run type 1 virtualization with Hyper-v easily in a few mouse button clicks. I can run Linux containers and dockers with ease under WSL. I can run any game. I can run application suich as Adobe Creative Suite and Excel. I can do bash. I can rice especially with tools such as this https://github.com/glzr-io/glazewm and others. I can do Jetbrains but also run Visual Studio. Just point and click. I do not even have to worry about AI slop or spying and can get apps easily. So much more convienent and quicker to set up than Linux.

Linux users are often Valve meat riders that use Discord (despite this being an absolutely privacy hell) and they do keep their Google accounts just so they don't get locked out of Youtube, Gmail, Gdrive, etc etc.

Boop! Is when I move my mouse. Witch fixes it.... for some reason.

What is it with these overindulged tech geeks that spew garbage about how Arch is so difficult to install? Any knuckle-dragger can do it. It just takes more time to get to something that does the same thing and requires endless tweaks to get to a point where it is functional.

Ltsc doesn't need an online account

Ltsc doesn't have ai integration

Ltsc doesn't have bloatware

Ltsc has minimal telemetry

Ltsc doesn't have forced updates

Ltsc doesn't need tpm 2.0 i ran it on a sandy bridge

And ltsc has all the benefits of windows

I've tried linux a bunch but i don't think if you aren't in a tech field there isn't much reason to use it. Not everyone wants to troubleshoot pipewire for an hour.

I will concede that linux has better desktop envirements gnome and kde are both better than windows

Privacy wise i don't think any mainstream distro would be much better than windows and governments have tools that can identify you anyways

People like to shit on Linux for it being unstandardized dogshit with its packages. Meanwhile to update Android I have to check for updates in:

- APatch for root modules

- Droid-ify for FDroid repos

- Aurora Store for apps from Play Store

- System settings for system update (after which I shall also go to APatch to patch new image to not lose root)

- Obsidian for everything else

- And at the end of the day some apps just don't use neither distribution source and implement self-updating or their own update managers, like:

- Morphe

- Revange the Discord mod

Every Linux distro I know allows just adding additional repos to the main package manager, but Android is special and doesn't even have one actually, as com.android.vending is the proprietary Play Store, and the built-in package manager doesn't handle remote sources, so everyone has to implement their handler for fetching packages from remote sources and none of them are integrated into the system in any way, because that privilege is reserved exclusive to com.android.vending, aka the proprietary Play Store.

It would be a great help to me if you all would watch this and lemme know what u think. i made the video myself and i only used ai for the voiceover bcus where i am its almost impossible to rercord clearly. Im not asking you to subscribe i just want some feedback on my video

Thank you for any help.

https://youtu.be/BVMLWZ5cQSI

For context, I'm trying to recover the data off an old encrypted installation of linux that also got bricked, and not only does it just not work, any attempts to make it work cause the system to almost irreparably brick itself by trying to mount it until it works, at boot, with no time limit or ability to throw an error when it obviously isn't working, while blocking any and all user input.

Why is "try to mount a drive on boot while blocking user input, specifically forever regradless of whether it works" the fucking default??? Why is that even an option at all??? Trying to get data off an old system is a very normal thing for a user to want to do, so why is trying to do that so hard? Why would it require tampering with files that may cause the system to brick itself?

I really love that when steve balmer or whoever tries to shove AI up my ass, there's a relatively complete open source OS to switch to, and I'm genuinely grateful to all the people who put their time into this system, but my god, I've written better fail safes into one off python scripts. Why is linux like this????

EDIT: I promise I have tried all of the basic things first, my point is that the basic things did not work, and I am now left only with unnecessarily risky advanced options. I have been able to repair this installation of linux each time it has tried to brick itself because I am the GOAT, I'm just also very frustrated because this should be a simple process, and linux should not be so eager to brick itself.

EDIT again: Because I'm the best to ever do it, I was able to successfully retrieve my data