Once you stop playing games (it happens eventually for many of us), your need to have Windows around will drop considerably.
Are there any killer apps other than games to have Windows around @home?
Are there any killer apps other than games to have Windows around @home?
I guess that doesn't count as home use. Personally, I've been on Linux for over a decade. I don't feel like I'm missing out on any "killer apps", but there's always some odd bit of software that only works on Windows - like the freeware RC helicopter simulator I use. Wine's great.
It's just the path of least resistance for most people.
Plus I really don't use Word/Outlook for home stuff, though sometimes LibreOffice doesn't cut it for spreadsheet stuff.
It's a program that's a combination of a universal file sharer, screenshotter, image editor, screen recorder (which can output gif) and a seriously unbelievable suite of tools like OCR, image combiners, a QR generator, etc.
When I say universal file sharer, I mean everything. It uploads to different sites based on the filetype, be it drive for files, gifycat for .mp4's, pastebin for text, whatever. And there isn't a linux equivalent. Which sucks.
Also Photoshop is pretty much the gold standard for image editing, but I could be happy running that in a VM.
Should you want a sandboxed VM, Windows in KVM/Qemu with USB passthrough, and GPU passthrough might solve all your audio/photoshop needs.
Worth keeping an eye on if you want to get off Windows though.
By what means are you measuring these considerations? Do you have some sort of citation?
As a developer, the biggest reasons for me to stay on Windows are Office, IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Nothing on any other platform comes close the the usability of these.
Furthermore, knowing these products really well gets you a lot of easy work...because almost every business on the planet runs Windows.
Anyway there's no reason to single out Microsoft here since both Apple and Google are some mixture of anti-choice, anti-freedom and anti-privacy. And the EFF wants you to quit all of them too. They recommend moving to the equivalent of a hippie commune where you'll enjoy spending time milking your own cows instead of feeding other companies' cash cows.
Do you think it will ever reach parity with the Windows version though?
Microsoft is acutely targeting devs who build cloud apps for the public or for very large organizations with the Linux version of SQL Server. Devs like me who build apps that are self-hosted (almost always in-house) for small and medium sized businesses. My customers need all that Windows integration including (among many, many other considerations) Windows authentication, Windows file sharing and security, SQL Server Integration Services (none of which are probably available on Linux...SSIS for sure) and they need it running on Windows because that's all they know or want to know.
There are certainly more developers like me than their are of the other type.
Also, VS isn't exactly a compelling reason to stay on Windows. Last time I installed VS 2015 it sprayed 30+ GB's of files all over my SSD and installed about 30-40 apps in the process. To say VS 2015 is a bloated pig would be an insult to bloated pigs everywhere.
We're not talking about best of breed for "the cloud" either. SQL Server and IIS are absolutely best of breed for in-house, self-hosted business apps.
And your big complaint about VS 2015 is lacking any kind of substance. Do you measure the quality of all software solely on how much disk space it takes up or is that one you just reserve for Microsoft? I run 6 or 8 instances of VS2015 at a time and my Windows machine stays lightning fast. Meanwhile, I run one instance of Xcode (all I'm allowed on OS X, on my Mac Pro) and it's dog slow.
You didn't name anything you think is better either. Says a lot.