Yeah, I’m going to have to call you on that whole "Windows just works"TM business. I just had to install drivers, during setup, for a regular hard drive in Windows Server 2019. Last time I tried to run the game Rust on Windows 11 it just wouldn’t run and I blew hours and never could find a solution. Had to go back to Win 10 to get it to run. It’s also pretty easy to pay attention to any news feed and see an endless string of Windows is now broken like X on basically a weekly basis at this point. MS Fired their entire QA team and only tests on virtual machines now. Zero surprise Windows breaks in all sorts of new and interesting ways when it finally meets the real world. Anyone who makes this statement is at best naive and at worst a bold face liar/shill. I do try to assume most people are the prior of course.
That said the rest of your statement is spot on. Right tool for the right job will never not be relevant.
It’s situational, I’ll tell you that. I build PCs and repair them as a side hassle and I’m not saying I never come across issues with Windows (even dating back to the XP days) but I find the troubleshoot process much easier than on Linux regardless of the distro. What I mostly come across is viruses and malwares which I have to clean up on those machines.
Windows breaks in all sorts of new and interesting ways when it finally meets the real world.
I would love if you could elaborate on that, I don’t want to misunderstand. If I have to guess, for some users the “real world” doesn’t go past office work.
I don’t doubt a serious Linux power user would find their way out of most situations. The steep learning curve for Linux is what’s keeping most people (the ones who don’t need rely on Windows for some types of exclusive softwares) from switching. When I first “switched” I was a 16 year old with a lot of time to spare and I started figuring it out to an extent. Can’t say the same about everyone, at least not the people that come to me asking me how to stop programs from opening on their own at startup.
I suppose I can search the internet for you.
QA team fired. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-did-microsoft-lay-off-programmatic-testers/
A few of the big issues I could find with a real quick search. Just yesterday… https://www.techspot.com/news/99291-buggy-windows-11-update-could-slowing-down-ssds.html
Problem since march, just now fixed, article from today. https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-manages-to-fix-windows-11-defender-local-security-authority-protection-off/
https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/24/23735639/microsoft-surface-pro-x-camera-not-working-error-fix
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23485717/microsoft-windows-11-gaming-performance-issues-fix
https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/9/10952524/microsoft-edge-windows-10-update-inprivate-fix
MS breaking other peoples software, chrome in this case https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/malwarebytes-issues-fix-for-chrome-broken-by-windows-11-kb5027231/
I mean, the problems go on and on and on. https://www.theverge.com/search?q=windows+problem&page=1
To be entirely clear Linux isn’t without problems either but your statement “It just works out of the box…” is patently false.
The problem is that we’ve all learned to work around all the issues Windows poses. This becomes the status quo and we forget how much work and time it took to learn all these hacks and work around over time. At some point applying them all is just what you do. It’s normal now and business as usual which feels like it just works. But it doesn’t.
At least for me I haven’t had any issues with Win11.
Linux is just too much work, even as someone who knows how to use it a decent amount. Even getting something basic to work that works out of the box with windows takes too much googling
I love Linux though and I can’t wait for the day when it’s a drop-in replacement for windows (if that happens). That said it’s gotten a lot better over the years and is really close in some regards
