I know the usual argument is that you need Windows to game, but why make your gaming instance your main work instance too? Why not dual boot and use Linux for work and Windows for gaming?
Most annoying on my laptop there is some input issue with the keyboard where it would drop a couple of key inputs per minute, usually grouped. I spent a month trying to figure out why and trying different solutions, never did find out.
But more than all of that... even on the hardware where everything worked out of the box and none of the above limitations were a problem... I still have to customize the install. Sure, I may not have to remove sleezy/privacy invading stuff like on Windows but it's not like I just click one button and get the exact packages I want.
I love Linux but only as a VM or single purpose bare metal box, for a daily driver (work or home) it's simply easier to use Windows and run WSL or Hyper-V if I need something Linux specific.
That phenomenon is what keeps me from using Linux as my main laptop OS. I have done, for long stretches (and probably will again), but I'm always driven to either OS X or Windows by a waning desire to spend time troubleshooting or on sysadmin. If not for that I'd use Linux f/t as I prefer many of its traits.
Having to reboot (even with an SSD) is a very destructive action because it means suddenly all of your work is shut down and unless you script a way to rebuild your environment (which never works flawlessly even with a lot of effort), you'll have to set everything up again when you come back. So even if it only took 2 seconds to dual boot, you'd still have to deal with that tear down / set up process.
But, it's also not just gaming that keeps people on Windows. For example I do screencast recording and editing where I record software dev related videos but the tools I use only run on Windows, and they can't be run in a VM because the thing I want to record is my dev environment (I use WSL in Windows).
And in my case, it wouldn't work because I need to be able to record a Linux environment but record / edit videos in a Windows environment, so both OSs need to be running at once.
I have windows for gaming/VR but zero development.
I have Fedora for literally everything else including C#/WPF development (I run my dev environment for windows inside a VM as it makes it very simple to backup and I know that the somewhat irritating setup is perfectly replicated).
Essentially at this point Win10 is relegated to been a massive console OS.
I could likely run a lot of my games on Linux but I'm not enough of a purist that the hassle makes it worth it, down time is precious and I'd rather not fight it debugging why a particular game is been weird.
I'm likely to upgrade my 2700X soon so I might slap an ATI card in alongside my RTX2080 so I can use the 2080 with an iommu pass through and then I could game on a separate windows VM inside Fedora.
I was encouraged to try it after I saw its platinum rating on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/
I don't think I'll ever do GPU passthru though; that's 3hard5me.
I may play with Proton at some point though if the games I play are properly supported, mostly though my gaming time is spent on the Rift S playing Project Cars 2, combined with a nice force feedback wheel and pedals (Logitech G920) its a really good experience, I didn’t expect VR to be so compelling actually, it’s not perfect but damn is it impressive when you are going the Nurburgring in the dark as snow blows past your car and you look left and see a car coming up in your mirrors.
I think I’m a convert and I’m eagerly waiting for what the next generation can bring.
Elite Dangerous is incredible in VR as well btw.
Linux on servers (mostly because of price), Windows for regular everyday use.
Although, I admit, now Linux vs Windows is less relevant as most of the good stuff MS does is now cross-platform and Win ships with Linux kernel. I personally can't live without pwsh.
For me no it isn't. I am a nomadic VB/C# .NET developer and while most things now run cross platform flawlessly, there are many components that don't.
e.g. SQL Server is a major sticking point. Visual Studio on Windows has a concept of a SQL Server project. There is simply no cross platform equivalent. SQL Server projects typically serve two purposes 1. Let you easily develop a local database 2. Let you easily deploy your database changes (the deployment profile can be configured per environment that your organisation has).
Bonus: much fewer online multiplayer cheaters on a current-gen console.
Well I get the linux dev tools, which is all I really want from linux, in wsl. Windows works well on my machine, and I find it less trouble than linux. I wouldn't say I like it, but there isn't a good desktop OS in 2019 - it's a matter only of 'least worst'
(That said, I'd never run this silly script)
I do run an "optimizer" on Windows 10 called Kerish Doctor. It's cheap and in my experience one of the few programs in that category that work well.
Visual studio for mac might cut it, but I don't have a mac. My other laptop runs Linux and that's where I prefer to be.
But the truth is that while Microsoft have been spending lots of money and effort on making on-windows-for-linux dev simple, the reverse (understandably?) isn't viable.
A couple of years ago (when Skylake was new CPU) I tried dual-booting Linux with the then-current version of Arch and it crashed (completely froze) when using integrated intel graphics. Tweaking kernel boot parameters (turning on experimental support for the chipset) as suggested in the documentation didn't help either. Not to mention I have a HiDPI display and tweaking appearance of everything was a pain.
Suspend didn't work. With windows, I don't turn off the computer, I choose "sleep". Uptime regularly over 1 month, usually interrupted only by Windows updates.
Wiped the whole thing. Now, if I need Linux tools, I boot up WSL.
EDIT: Before I was a long-term Linux user. Never worked smoothly (e.g., concurrent audio playback/mixing from different programs), always had to tweak this and that. It was fun when I was younger, Linux was newer, and less bloated and more easily understandable. Now I just need to get shit done w/o OS getting in my face all the time, so I use Windows.
Some common reasons:
I need that Office document to look presentable when opened from Windows.
Skype for Business being the default, whenever there is a conference call I need Windows.
Even in 1-on-1 calls, if screen sharing is required, I need Windows.
Exactly. I have one sole system running Win10 + Steam and Linux runs all the rest of my systems. Best setup.
I still ran a similar type of debloat on my Win10 system though... just because f*ck MS and their telemetry.
One, when I bothered trying to debloat my Windows gaming machine in the past, many of the changes would be undone when windows updated from time to time and this was frustrating.
Second, I don't know what the advisability of running a bunch of unvetted scripts is. Sure it's open source, but who is actually going to go thru and read all those scripts one-by-one before running them.
I could do without Win32 but I'm a freelance, work from home, and sometimes I like to open a game to unwind for a couple minutes. That makes dual boot unfeasible.
But then I realized typing on a computer also sucks. And then I realized that there's no voice-to-text software available for Linux.
And then I realized that it's not readily-available for computers in general. You can go out of your way to get it, but it's on our phones by default. How weird. Apparently, Cortana can't easily be used for voice-to-text dictation though, and it'd be limited to Edge. So I still don't really understand the point of Cortana.
But it'd be nice if there was some generic, voice-to-text functionality in regular OSes. It'd be super nice if it was locally-processed too. Is the hardware power not there yet?