except that for a majority of users, windows is where their applications are at - such as gaming, word processing, or some other thing. Sure there are replacements (somewhat) for each of those categories, but they are not direct replacements, and require a cost of some kind (retraining, or a substitute quality). This is esp. true for gaming, and it's only recent that gaming has made some inroads via the steam deck (steamOS), which isn't available to a general PC (only handheld PCs with AMD processors iirc).
People who say "just switch" to linux hasn't done it for their family/friends.
> I mostly game in a Windows 10 VM running on my Linux desktop computer. Single keypress to switch to Linux workspace.
> This is not because Linux gaming is horrible broken, but rather it gives me a fully separate leisure desktop, and my main Linux desktop is work only.
> It also gives me 100% compatibility, unlike wine.
You would get a fully separate leisure desktop if you were running Linux in that VM so it sounds like you are running Windows in the VM because Linux gaming is not adequate.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I'm in a situation where I want GPU passthrough to Linux guests. The problem is that the Looking Glass guest application for linux is unmaintained. This makes it impossible to have the same setup but with a linux guest instead of Windows.
If you want to have GPU accelerated video output from a guest vm to a linux host, the only way is with a Windows guest (to the best of my knowledge). If you just need compute then that is different.
Of course it depends on what you're playing, but VM gaming is not 100% compatible, lots of anti cheats will ban VM users and it's a cat and mouse game to not get detected.
It is maybe 95% of native performance or in that ballpark, according to benchmarks I've seen.
I have a dedicated M2 disk that I pass thru fully to the Windows VM in order to have snappy disk, and I reserved 64 GB ram to that VM alone using hugepages (because I multibox a old game that requires lots of RAM for my use case).
I also pass thru the bluetooth hardware into the VM as I don't use bluetooth on my host, so that I can use my dualsense controller while gaming in the VM.
Web has become the default platform, where most people run most of their app/spend most of their time. Even Microsoft has had no choice but to embrace it, and Outlook (as in, the one from Microsoft office) is now a web first app (normal outlook is rebranded "classic" and we all know where this is heading, for better or worse). In a way, that makes switching OS much easier.
If you add to that that Windows itself is getting major visual overhauls from version to version (sometimes even within) it's not like sticking with it protects you from having to learn different UX paradigms and habits.
And regarding gaming, well, linux with Proton runs games faster than Windows nowadays, that's how little Microsoft cares about gamers/how good Valve is (depending on how you look at it), but the fact of the matter remains.
I was going to post a rant on drivers in Linux, but on my newest Lenovo laptop Linux Mint/Ubuntu off the shelve driver support is actually complete and Windows 10 (unsupported by Lenovo) extremely lacking (no wifi driver, no lid driver, no proper standby). And there's no way I'm going to start using Windows 11.
So yeah, maybe this is the year of Linux. After decades on this planet :p
> (steamOS), which isn't available to a general PC
Most of its secret sauce is either in Proton or upstreamed into Wine, DXVK, SDL, etc. All available to a general PC.
Unless your focus is competitive online games, which often come with Windows-only anti-cheats, you've got a huge catalogue of great games playable on Linux distros. I did the switch about four months ago and I'm not missing Windows, the only pain point has been Nvidia drivers and I'll be solving that by switching vendors.
Web version sucks compared to desktop version, unless you use the apps minimally. That said, the Winapps repo is a good linux solution, running a windows VM and accessing the office apps via RDP so they feel like a native app. As soon as it gets wayland support, I'm making the full switch. Winapps in Xwayland has some issues.
Fedora Bazzite it's Steam OS. And with Flatpak and Lutris you can have that setup everywhere, but some distros optimize the setings and compilations for the desktop better than Others:
except that for a majority of users, windows is where their applications are at - such as gaming, word processing, or some other thing. Sure there are replacements (somewhat) for each of those categories, but they are not direct replacements, and require a cost of some kind (retraining, or a substitute quality). This is esp. true for gaming, and it's only recent that gaming has made some inroads via the steam deck (steamOS), which isn't available to a general PC (only handheld PCs with AMD processors iirc).
People who say "just switch" to linux hasn't done it for their family/friends.