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Comment by Redster | Hacker News Reader

I know that there are enterprises and individuals who need Windows. I also know that I had been on Windows my whole computing life and made the switch late in 2023 and there's never been a better time to switch to Linux. I could have switched much sooner!

I have found my Windows apps for everything work (or have equivalent or better Linux versions) and will soon be switching my non-technical wife over to Linux to avoid Windows 10.

For her, I've looked at her workflows and setup a configuration that I can use on her new machine that will setup all of her apps and menu settings so it's as seamless a transition as possible. She rarely needs to update her computer or apps, the latest Debian 13 "Trixie" release is what I'm going to try for her.

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For majority that want to switch but can’t yet, gaming is the biggest pillar still very far behind. Many popular games (and game related apps) don’t work on Linux, sadly. I don’t know if it’s ever going to change either because of it being a chicken or egg scenario where they don’t want to spend the time supporting it cause it’s not enough users, but it’s also not enough users cause it’s not supported.

The biggest problem is probably work-related apps not working. Adobe products, MS Office, and certain niches like the music industry just aren't supported on Linux.

Many ultra-popular games don't work due to anticheat, but some do. Dota 2, Counter-strike, Marvel Rivals, Overwatch 2, among others work perfectly fine. We've also reached a point where virtually every offline game will work too.

If you aren't using advanced features, Google's online suite can easily replace MS Office.

> I don’t know if it’s ever going to change either because of it being a chicken or egg scenario

We don't even need native games. Proton, when it works, is amazing. Win32 is effectively now the stable ABI that Linux always needed but never had.

The real problem is kernel level anti-cheat, which will never happen on Linux, but more importantly, gamers should be pushing back against it even on Windows. It's invasive. The latest of which you can't even enable virtualization support in Windows if you want the anti-cheat to run, which also means you lose virtualization based security, no WSL, etc. It's completely obnoxious and I hope Microsoft cracks down on it, because if they do then more games will run on Proton.

> It's completely obnoxious and I hope Microsoft cracks down on it

I hope they don't. Competitive gaming has been begging to stop cheaters for a long time. Ring 0 anti cheat has shown to be very effective against the vast majority of cheaters. Compare CSGO with something like Valorant. It's clear it's effective. Is it invasive? Sure. Is it mandatory? No (sorry you just cant play the game).

Por qué no los dos?

Bring back private lobbies/private servers then. Make the anti-cheat optional. Those that want to play in public lobbies have to rootkit their PC or play on console, those that don't still get to play the game without it but not in public lobbies.

Depends a lot on what kinds of games you play, I think—I built a PC in 2020 and originally set it up to dual boot Linux and Windows, but over time I used the Windows partition less and less and wound up deleting it last year.

I realized recently that at some point I stopped even checking ProtonDB before buying games on Steam, I guess because its been so long since I've run into one that didn't work. I play a pretty wide variety of games, but not so much the type of competitive multiplayer FPS that seems to have the worst Linux compatibility due to anti-cheat.

If anything, gaming is the pillar that is furthest ahead, thanks to SteamOS and Proton and everything else surrounding it.

The main issue is that a lot of people I know need things like Photoshop or propriety CAD apps or video editing software where the alternatives are simply not acceptable - sure I can mention some OSS alternatives but it's not really my field; this is their job and they can't really take the velocity hit, or waste time finding out mid-project that it can't do what they need it to do.

True, a huge number of games work great with those.

Games requiring anti-cheat however are a big issue that still require a dual boot Windows or VM.

My biggest hope is Valve can pivot Steam OS into a general free OS that devs/publishers can and will want to target if it starts getting traction.

Also, I have found for tweaking and customizing my own Linux machine, tools like Claude Code allowed me to be much more adventurous and fast at making my machine exactly how I want it to be. I don't bork my machine because I have my machine's configuration (I'm on NixOS, but this could apply on Arch or elsewhere) versioned in git and things tend to build correctly or they don't.

Gaming seems to have been improving massively as well, in no small part due to Valves efforts if I’m to understand correctly.

Other than that, there’s literally nothing I need from Microsoft currently.

MS is little more than a rent seeker to me.

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