If you are a Hacker, you will be overwhelmed by the great amount of development tools that are much easier to handle than on any other system.
There are very few reasons nowadays not to use Linux.
However, I think it's very important to understand, and go into it with the mindset as follows:
You're not going to have the same programs. You'll have similar programs and very good alternatives (Photoshop/GIMP, 1Password/KeePass, etc.)
Once I realized that I probably shouldn't try to shoehorn a program written for only a specific OS into what I was doing, I found the experience much better.
Sure, some of the alternatives aren't as good. If you really need them, then you should re-evaulate why you're switiching.
GIMP is to Photoshop what mspaint is to GIMP.
Never said that one was better than the other, just that there are alternatives. :)
Again, if one really, really needs Photoshop, then they need to evaluate how much they want to change Operating Systems.
It's an alternative in some restricted circumstances. Calc.exe is an alternative to Wolfram Mathematica. People who didn't just pirate Photoshop probably don't use the small subset of functionality that GIMP provides because if they were they'd be using GIMP before switching to Linux.
This is not actually a selling point to a lot of people. Some people just want a device to work, and not have to worry about it.
> There are very few reasons nowadays not to use Linux.
One should use the right tool for the right job. Sometimes, that's just not Linux.
Windows 10 is excellent. We moved our all-mac company (~20 developers) off Macs and onto Windows over the past year, because Apple no longer supports the high end. We do GPGPU programming, and you can't plug a high end NVIDIA card into a MacPro. (The Mac Apologists will say you can, but you can't -- not in any useful performant reliable way.)
But I play too many videogames to run it as my primary machine.
procmon: strace.
tcpview: netstat, wireshark.
They're all pretty easy to use.
and let's not forget the whole corporate global space, where Exchange+Office suite rules unchallenged. whenever i try to see some excel in what gmail has for previews, i cry and run away (and those are simple excels out there, without any complex scripts for example).
Why not at least consider it? I run Arch + GNOME3 on my desktop and I haven't had any insurmountable problems, nor any that would be easier to solve in Windows.
That is a fair question. However, it all depends on your personal use case and because of that Linux just isn't an option for most people. If you value gaming you can fine tune wine till the cow comes home ... it will never feel (always) right. If you're into music production Linux gives you another "screw you!" Then, there is this huge amount of software for which it seems as if Linux offers reasonable alternatives. But if you really consider what a user actually wants Linux doesn't cut it. For example, Word could be replaced with Libre Office or (my personal favorite) an intriguing combination of markdown and pandoc. If, however, Word is what you want to use (even though I do not understand that) then every click that is different poses as a minor frustration that together with all the other minor frustrations adds up to a huge disappointment.
It's so bad that I believe it's unethical to offer it for download as working software because people with work to do on short timescales (as I had) may choose to rely on it and then get screwed.
I haven't but I worry that some VSTi plugins might not work.
For example: https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-bugs/2012-January/3072...
Could you explain why you wouldn't consider Linux for the desktop? Wine isn't horrible, if you want Windows compatibility, and it offers a huge range of functionality otherwise. It's the best platform for compiling and running stuff, for sure.