I’m mainly going into the negatives because the positives are fewer in number. Though those few do outweigh the negatives I’m about to write about. In my opinion at least
From what I’ve read it’s a lot better than what it used to be, but you can still bump into some weird issues that require more knowledge of your computer (compared to Windows) to get it fixed. Usually it’s audio, Flatpak permission issues or some application that comes preinstalled but crashes anyway. (i.e. Kontact on Fedora’s KDE spin). And in one case NetworkManager just disappeared on the family computer.
Gaming can be an issue, depending on what you like to play. AAA games with an important online component usually don’t work on Linux because of their anti-cheat. Not all of them of course like CS2, Rivals, and Dota 2. It was a bummer since I switched to Linux with the expectation that I’d still be able to keep on playing League, only to see it being unusable after a year. But if your friend group doesn’t play those kind of games (and I got lucky on that part), you’re fine. For example Peak and Gambling with Friends just worked on launch. I didn’t even bother looking at ProtonDB
I’ve seen a lot of people downplay the fact that you may not be able to play the games with invasive anti-cheat. But if that’s the game you (or your friends) like to play, that’s the game you like to play. No shame in that, especially if you don’t care/mind the anti-cheat. It’s your computer, you don’t have to be fully into foss to use Linux and you should (in my opinion) be able to weight the pros and cons yourself.
Another con (for people who just want to use their computer) or pro (for those who like to thinker around) is choice. There are so many distro’s with a ton of DE’s and ways of customising those DE’s where a new user will probably get stuck just deciding what they want to pick. Or you can just as easily look at something more technical and decide what compositor or init system you want to use. It’s a lot and for many users the deeper stuff doesn’t really matter to them.
I wasted* at lot of time tinkering with my Nix configs and my Arch install to not even use either distro anymore. It can get a bit much, especially if the thing you’re tinkering with is your main computer. Now I just have a separate second hand laptop to mess around with now so it doesn’t get in the way of actual work.
All of my most painful issues wouldn’t have been too bad if I just had someone to guide me in the right direction. This became really apparent when a friend of mine bumped into a lot of the same issues I did when he switched. He got his fixed fairly quickly since I was there to explain, for example, what was wrong with his fstab config and why he got into emergency mode because of that.
*It was a ton of fun looking back at it (and educational). But if you go into it with the idea that it’ll help you (in part) with productivity, you’re going to have some regrets with the time you actually spent on it in the moment
I’m mainly going into the negatives because the positives are fewer in number. Though those few do outweigh the negatives I’m about to write about. In my opinion at least
From what I’ve read it’s a lot better than what it used to be, but you can still bump into some weird issues that require more knowledge of your computer (compared to Windows) to get it fixed. Usually it’s audio, Flatpak permission issues or some application that comes preinstalled but crashes anyway. (i.e. Kontact on Fedora’s KDE spin). And in one case NetworkManager just disappeared on the family computer.
Gaming can be an issue, depending on what you like to play. AAA games with an important online component usually don’t work on Linux because of their anti-cheat. Not all of them of course like CS2, Rivals, and Dota 2. It was a bummer since I switched to Linux with the expectation that I’d still be able to keep on playing League, only to see it being unusable after a year. But if your friend group doesn’t play those kind of games (and I got lucky on that part), you’re fine. For example Peak and Gambling with Friends just worked on launch. I didn’t even bother looking at ProtonDB
I’ve seen a lot of people downplay the fact that you may not be able to play the games with invasive anti-cheat. But if that’s the game you (or your friends) like to play, that’s the game you like to play. No shame in that, especially if you don’t care/mind the anti-cheat. It’s your computer, you don’t have to be fully into foss to use Linux and you should (in my opinion) be able to weight the pros and cons yourself.
Another con (for people who just want to use their computer) or pro (for those who like to thinker around) is choice. There are so many distro’s with a ton of DE’s and ways of customising those DE’s where a new user will probably get stuck just deciding what they want to pick. Or you can just as easily look at something more technical and decide what compositor or init system you want to use. It’s a lot and for many users the deeper stuff doesn’t really matter to them.
I wasted* at lot of time tinkering with my Nix configs and my Arch install to not even use either distro anymore. It can get a bit much, especially if the thing you’re tinkering with is your main computer. Now I just have a separate second hand laptop to mess around with now so it doesn’t get in the way of actual work.
All of my most painful issues wouldn’t have been too bad if I just had someone to guide me in the right direction. This became really apparent when a friend of mine bumped into a lot of the same issues I did when he switched. He got his fixed fairly quickly since I was there to explain, for example, what was wrong with his fstab config and why he got into emergency mode because of that.
*It was a ton of fun looking back at it (and educational). But if you go into it with the idea that it’ll help you (in part) with productivity, you’re going to have some regrets with the time you actually spent on it in the moment