Why are you fighting the wind(ows)mills? Linux desktop is in it best shape since its inception. Mint (doesn't siphon), Ubuntu (siphons responsibly) or Manjaro (if you miss rolling updates, but for humans)... Why suffer needlessly?
There are always problems. Bluetooth breaks often, the MFC device on upgrades, enterprise wifi is iffy (and now it's only enterprise wifi but up until very recently, it was 5GHz wifi) ...
I am now on Windows 10 w/ Linux subsystem for Windows. The big upgrades are put off with Group Policy, the small updates run overnight because I leave the laptop docked and powered when I am sleeping. But reboots are rare. The big upgrades I wait 4-5 months with installing. This is a solved problem. O&O Shutup10 deals with the privacy issues, I think (also I think this is overblown, the privacy fight is lost already).
So why suffer needlessly with the Linux kernel?
Linux used to be terrible on laptops, but I recently bought a laptop, installed Linux (Fedora with KDE) on it, and everything just worked out of the box.
You're probabaly waiting for the "except..." - but there is no "except". Everything works the same or better. I get hours more battery life than windows after installing powerTOP, and about the same before doing that.
I ran Arch before I tried Fedora, and from that experience I found that the only way to get Enterprise WiFi is by using network-manager and nm-applet (both of which come with KDE on Fedora so I had no issues when I switched).
It's magical.
I'd rather get a cheap piece of shit than an expensive piece of shit.
Most engineering softwares are only and exclusively available on Windows. I’m a Mechanical Engineer.
Linux, I use for writing code with open source tools (gcc, clang).
Mac, I use for general purpose computing and media consumption.
From there you can turn off or on any feature or function.
I specifically use it to disable all windows defender applications and firewalls (which also automatically kills windows store and updates unless turned back on)
With something called execTI. It lets you modify the registry as a TrustedInstaller so you can turn off any services running aka the 5 or 6 different windows anti malware, defender, firewall, and security services.
If you want more instructions I will help because it is extremely annoying and every update does turn everything back on for the most part. So I do this cat and mouse game about every 2 or 3 months.
My laptop usage on 16GB of ram goes from 25% idle to just under 10% idle. which is my entire point of doing it so I can save battery life that I don't really have.
Out of curiosity, does it run under Wine or it has some DRM that prevents it?
I used Linux on the desktop for over a decade, usually with a highly customized FVWM2 config. I found windows 8 to be okay, and windows 10 to be a pretty good minimal desktop.
All my dev work is done remote on PuTTY anyways, so beyond a browser and terminal, other features are really the deciding factor.
Yeah, that's a big one. There is no other C/C++ IDE out there that can measure up to Visual Studio. Either you use vim or emacs with a hundred cobbled together plugins to sort-of approximate a productive development environment (and you still don't have a usable debugger); or install one of KDevelop or Code::Blocks, which are fine for toying around with toy/academic projects of less than 100kloc; or you shell out lots of money for one of Qt Creator or JetBrains' CLion and get a product that is almost as good as Visual Studio 5. I'd say if you want to actually write software, just install Windows in a VM and do a full restore every so often. It's a bit of a pain, but you get the absolute best C/C++ IDE ever created and can enjoy unrivaled productivity and unmatched performance.
Have you had any luck running it with Wine?
Edit: I realize you may have been talking about HotS, not OW, but according to Google that should also work if you configure esync: https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki/How-to:-Esync
If you have a laptop with switchable graphics, you will need to use nvidia-xrun to enable Vulkan passthrough to the dGPU, but aside from that I just followed these instructions: https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki/Game:-Overwatch
Note that the Blizzard app will fail to launch with DXVK enabled, so you have to disable DXVK, launch Battle.net, enable DXVK, and then click the 'Play' button to start Overwatch. I made a few scripts for this, so I just do `./disableDxvk ... ./startBlizzard ... ./enableDxvk ... click play` to run the game.
WINEPREFIX=~/.overwatch_wine/ setup_dxvk64 # enable DXVK
WINEPREFIX=~/.overwatch_wine/ winecfg # disable DXVK: delete the overrides from Libraries tab
exo-open Battle.net.desktop # launch the Blizzard app, the .desktop should be generated on installOut of curiosity: how does Microsoft stand in the way of developing with GCC and Clang?
Yep, in the front.
Stuff works. You don't need 32GB of memory to run anything. The system doesn't get locked down all the time while the OS uses the entire IO capacity. The computer does not misbehave all the time and instead does what you order. You get software for almost everything right from the package manager, and it works for you, instead of shoving ads or licensing constraints into your face.
I see Windows using the entire IO capacity of my work computer every working day, 1/3 to 1/2 the time.
Windows update destroying your configuration isn't even news anymore. It restarting when people don't want is a widely known fact, and more than 1/4 of the times I have a half-hour meeting at work the computer stays there updating for 1 hour or more.
Windows software installation is a worst in class experience on nearly any dimension. It's not something that happens once in a while.
I don't know what you call "cherry-picking". Those "ultimate worst experiences" happen every day.