Why I'm still not moving to Linux as my daily driver

I generally love linux and have been working professionally with it for the last 20 years as a programmer.

Still nostalgic when I think of the times when Ubuntu first came out on preloaded CDs (ordered 100s to give to friends!) or Redhat advertising every tech magazine to install their OS.

Been distro hopping as a secondary system for that period as well and generally never felt Linux was stable enough to be a daily driver. There would be always that special "something" which felt off, didn't work or just plain be an annoyance - never mind the distro/DE you ended up with.

My main gripes for not adopting it personally (as a gamer, programmer and new dad) are as follows:

- Kernel updates breaking every now so often. Fedora arguably might be the best of the lot for stability but still it's a matter of time before you end up with a "BSOD" -> Black screen of death. Recompiling kernels are not something I'm looking forward on a sunday evening that's for sure.

- Games (duh!) - CachyOS, Bazzite, Steam, Proton, Wine et al have made substantial community progress over the years but let's not kid ourselves that this is the year of linux for games. Been hearing this for over a decade and whilst I don't doubt things will eventually become much better, there's always gonna be that next bit of technology which Linux won't have so whether it's DLSS 5 or when DirectX13 comes out, there's always going to be an adoption lag. I have a Steam Deck and it works - but is it going to replace my gaming PC? Hmm no!

For Nvidia users, you can blame Nvidia's lack of driver support for all we want but as gamers, Nvidia generally rules the roost and having a 30% FPS discount (compared to Windows) hurts in most cases.

And for AMD users, Even if you did end up with the best AMD GPUs, let's not pretend you're having solid 240+ FPS in most AAA games on a 4k HDR monitor with no artifacts/freezes/crashes.

- Lack of Dolby Vision - Not Linux's fault since it requires licensing but hey as a consumer of the OS I expect mainstream emulation to be better if the hardware exists. If i have a DV monitor, I want to use it and not settle for inferior tech like HDR.

Some folks will tell me to research hardware before any purchase which makes total sense but there's always going to be hardware compatibility or licensing issues which will never be adopted by Linux! DV2 might change this though.

- Poor Dolby atmos support (hmmm let's not pretend that 7.1 spatial audio for your BT speakers/headphones work flawlessly without cackling, lags or sleep issues when hibernating - it doesn't period and that's the case for both Pipewire or PulseAudio)

- Windows is "Spyware" and Linux respects privacy - hmmm let me think..."Age verification anyone?".

"Spyware" has always been present whether it's through legit distros such as Ubuntu's Amazon shopping search"feature" or through obscure distros which sometimes EvilGnome/FinSpy as backdoor RAT agents. Viruses like Linux.Encoder.1 or GafGyt represent the "proof in the pudding" of Linux vulnerability.

- Printer support ( i mean in this day and age we still expect folks to research about PPD like really?). Some distros fare better here but try installing a network printer via CUPS which isn't too mainstream and get back to me without wasting hours in research and ending up messing your system. Again fedora might fare a bit better here than Arch or Debian.

- "Proper" Office format support - let's again not pretend that Libreoffice/OpenOffice is fine to use for real world business (no it's not!) - i mean yea you can get away with it until you don't. Over the years, I always ended up installing windows in a VM specifically to open a xls file which the 3rd parties (being some fortune 500 companies and they have no time to accomodate my spreadsheet viewer needs in Linux).

- Whatsapp? The most popular messaging client in the world isn't supported natively and lacks notifs support in GNOME or KDE or any other DE out there. Sure you can install whatsapp web, but that's not what we really want do we?

- Toxic culture among elitists (Try to spend an evening reading Arch Linux's forum posts for troubleshooting and you'll be greeted with "BTW RTFM" instructions for just about anything).

Linux has evolved into cult-like behaviour propaganda for just about any package, kernel, driver or app. Ever met of those folks who always blames the user for not being "smart enough" and intentionally downplaying the distro/kernel's drawbacks and how it always seems to work better for them than Micro$lop.

With those attitudes, I fail to see why Linux would be adopted by the normal folks anytime soon. If Linux is for the community, then community needs to support each other.

If you really want to know what I'm using as my daily driver - Windows 11 and MacOS on bare metal. Fedora Linux in VM.

/Rant Over. Back to gaming/coding.