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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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Okay, look, I don't want to be a hater, I promise. I have a setup with a Linux dual boot in my computer right now. But man, the crazy echo chamber around this issue is not just delusional, it's counterproductive. Being in denial about the shortcomings isn't particularly helpful in expanding reach, if that's what you all say you want.
So, in the spirit of balance, my mostly unbiased take on the listicle:
1 - Web tools get the job done: This is true when it's true. I work with Google's office suite, so yeah, many tools are indistinguishable. But not all tools are web tools. A big fallacy in this article is that just because a subset of items have embraced a solution doesn't mean that the solution is universal. If you need to work with Adobe software you're still SOL. MS Office still lacks some features on the web app. Some of the tools I use don't work, so I do still need to run those in a native Windows app. Since I'm not going to switch OSs every time I need to push a particular button, I'm going to default to Windows for work.
2 - Plenty of distros to suit your preference: This one is an active downside, and it pisses me off when it gets parroted. When I last decided to dual boot Linux I had to try five different distros to find one that sort of did everything I needed at once, which was a massive waste of time. I'm talking multiple days. Yes, there are a ton of distros. I only need to use one, though. But I need that one to work all the time. If one of the distros can get my HDR monitor to work but not my 5.1 audio and another can get my 5.1 audio setup to work, but not my monitors, then both distros are broken and neither is useful to me. This actually happened, incidentally.
3 - Steam has a decent collection of Linux games, plus Steam OS: Yes. Gaming on Linux is possible and works alright, but it's far from perfect. Features my Nvidia card runs reliably on Windows are hit-and-miss under Linux. Not all games are compatible in the first place, either. And while Heroic does a great job of running my GOG and Epic libraries, which are themselves just as big as my Steam one, it is a much bigger hassle to set up to run under the SteamOS game mode UI. Don't get me wrong, this has made huge strides but again, I'm not going to change OSs every time I hit a compatibility snag. This is the least fallacious of these points, though.
4 - Proprietary choices on Linux: Yes, there are some. Like the web app thing, the problem isn't what is there, it's what's missing. Also, as a side note, I find it extremely obnoxious when you have to enable these manually as an option in your package manager. As a user I don't care if a package is open source or not, I just want to install it.
5 - Electron makes app availability easier. Cool. Will take your word for it. Acknowledging the ideological debate behind it goes to the same argument I made in the previous point. And as above, it's not about what's there, it's about what's missing.
6 - No ads in your OS. I mean... nice? I still get ads for my selected distro on first boot, as well as on web apps and notifications for installed apps. Beyond a few direct links to first party apps in the one page of Win 11's settings app I don't find anything in Windows particularly intrusive, either. Which is not to say I don't dislike some of the overly commercial choices in Windows, they're just not a dealbreaker... yet.
7 - Docker, Homelab and self-hosting: This is... off topic, honestly. I do self host some things. Even used Docker once or twice... in my NAS, where the self-hosting happens. You don't need to switch your home desktop to Linux for that, and nobody is questioning that Linux is the OS of choice for a whole host of device ranges, from servers to the Raspberry Pi. Linux is great as a customizable underlying framework to build fast support for a niche device with a range of specific applications. We should be honest about how that breaks down if you try to use it as a widely accessible home computer alternative where the priorities are wide compatibility and ease of use.
Well, that became a huge thing, but... yeah, I guess I was annoyed enough by the delusion to rant. Look, I'd love to step away from Windows, and it's a thing you can do if you're tech savvy and willing to pretzel around the limitations in your hardware choices and your willingness to tinker... but it's not a serious mainstream alternative by a wide margin. I wish it was. Self-congratulatory praise within the tiny bubble of pre-existing fans (and why are there fans of operating systems in the first place?) is not going to help improve or widen its reach.
Well, that's your opinion. For others it works fine. I've been using Linux since 1995 and exclusively for both home and work for well over a decade now. And there are rarely issues these days. Teams is a piece of shit, but my coworkers on Windows agree on that. Apart from that everything works for me.
Well, yeah, I think "Teams is a piece of shit" is a very uncontroversial statement.
I think "there are rarely issues" is demonstrably wrong, though. At least if we agree on the definition of "issues". Every Linux forum I've visited looking to fix my HDR monitor support seems to agree that HDR support in Linux is tentative at best, which I'd call an "issue", or that setting up a Nvidia card in distros that don't come preinstalled with the proprietary drivers can be a mess, which I'd call an "issue".
Linux desktop is certainly functional, but having learned to work around the limitations, to live without certain features or to purchase the better supported hardware alternative is different to there being no issues for a user migrating whatever PC they have over and expecting everything to work first time.
LOL. Never tried HDR on Linux but I find it very funny that it sucks on Linux because it sucks on Windows too. What the hell doesn't it suck on? I need to try it my wife's Macbook.
Nah, man, they finally fixed it at some point on Windows 11. PCs for the longest time struggled with it, but these days out of four dedicated PC monitors being used by different people in my house right now three are HDR-compatible and working just fine on Windows out of the box, as are multiple portable devices (including, incidentally, the Steam Deck OLED). Plus all TVs in the house, obviously.
HDR was standardized for TVs and started getting content almost a decade ago, it's been a gaming and video default on consoles for two hardware generations and is increasingly a default feature on even cheap PC monitors. I agree that Windows took waaaay too long to get there, which was incredibly frustrating, considering MS were supporting it just fine on Xbox, but it works well now and I miss it immediately when shifting to Linux on the same setup.
VRR, too, but the situation there is a bit different.
I run W11 daily and it isn't fixed. Sure, HDR content works but my screen needs to flicker for a bit before it gets enabled and sometimes it doesn't. Don't even get me started on games that require you to have it on in the system before you can turn it on in the game. Sure, I could just leave it on all the time but then SDR content looks washed out. I'm not saying it doesn't work, just that it's kinda annoying. As you mentioned, I can just turn on my TV, play an HDR video and it works, then switch to a SDR content and it also works. When am I getting that experience on PC?
Hm. SDR content on HDR containers have been working well for me on both DP1.4 and HDMI 2.1-enabled GPUs, no washed out content, which I did use to have. It did not work over HDMI on an Intel A770 I tested where their weird DP-to-HDMI adaptor didn't support HDR at all (I hear it's working on the Battlemage cards, thankfully), but it does work over DP, and it also works well out of the box on my monitors using the integrated HDMI out on a 7 series Ryzen APU, so I'm guessing it's doing fine on newer AMD cards, too.
I do believe you that it's borked for you, and if you're on a last-gen card with HDMI 2.0 I have seen it do the old "washed out SDR" garbage even under Win11, so I absolutely concede that it's still crappier than the way more reliable solutions for TV-focused hardware. Still, it works way more reliably than it used to on Windows and it's way more finicky and harder to set up on Linux than it is on Windows these days (or outright unsupported, depending on your flavor of DE).
I actually upgraded to Windows 11 specifically because I was told they fixed HDR. I do have an RX7600 so it's technically "last gen" but I'm running DP (I have no idea which version but it has to be at least 1.4 because it runs 1080p at 180Hz). Washed out SDR content isn't that bad, I actually didn't even notice until I dragged a window playing SDR content to my second monitor that doesn't have HDR and the blacks looked, well, blacker. I don't doubt that it's worse on Linux, I wasn't trying to defend it. Just wanted to point out that it seems like no OS that isn't designed to run only on TVs gives a crap about the HDR experience.
Man, I hated it. The only reason I give Windows (and GPU manufacturers, I suppose) credit for improving it this gen is that I was trying to output PC games to a HDR TV fairly early on and I ended up having to choose between the crappy SDR output or playing worse looking games on console with HDR enabled and it was a dealbreaker. It is a godsend to be able to leave HDR on all the time on my monitors and just... not have to think about it.
SDR for me now either looks fine as-is or is picked up by AutoHDR and remapped. It now works as I would expect, and at high framerates and resolutions, too, as it seemed to automatically pick out the right type of DSC to fit my setup.
I'll be honest, when I got a high refresh rate monitor I was completely sure I wasn't going to be able to get it all working at once, based on previous experience, but it just did. It sucks to learn that experience isn't universal. Especially since the RX7600 should have all the hardware it needs to do this. That integrated AMD GPU I mentioned did it all just fine out of the box for me as well and is of that same generation, the 7600 should work the same way.
The temptation is to try to troubleshoot it with you and suggest it's a setup issue, but my entire point here is that it should work out of the box every time, or at least tell you what to push to change it if it's supported, I don't care what OS we're talking about.
I am only saying that I rarely have an issue. Even HiDPI and scaling works just fine for me. The only annoying issue I am having is that the Ctrl keys are not working in a VMWare remote desktop session when using barrier with another machine being the server.
HiDPI and per-screen scaling work well on my Wayland KDE Plasma install, too. The addition of the word "even" there is telling, though, and if I had chosen to stick to a different combo of distro, DE and compositor I would be annoyed by that on the daily. And that would be an issue.
That's what I'm trying to impress here. You can tinker until you find a setup that works for you, I'm not questioning that. But "I've solved all the issues over the past decade of tweaking this setup" is not the same as "there are no issues", and it's important to acknowledge the difference if you're going to be out there recommending that every normie user shifts to Linux.