I use Linux heavily (work and home) but it's never played as well with hardware as I'd have liked. HDR is basically non-existent, G-Sync is basically impossible in windowed mode, 150% high DPI is only really functional in KDE, it's extremely painful to use a custom keyboard layout (and the method seems to change yearly), both Firefox and Chrome run significantly slower/use significantly more power, not all of the non-Linux apps I need work well in WINE, and when new hardware is timely supported I still have to upgrade the kernel (many of the times manually).

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.

> I spent a month trying to figure out why ..

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.

Dual booting is something I used to do. It's not a fun work flow.

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).

You can hibernate both instead of cold reboot.

Yeah that's not a bad idea. It's still a big context switch to dual boot tho. Also dumping your entire machine's RAM to disk on an SSD seems questionable for the lifespan of your SSD. That's a huge amount of writes, especially if you're dual booting a few times a day. But maybe it wouldn't matter? I haven't measured how much of an impact that would have.

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 think the SSD write cycle fears are overrated. I might be wrong. I've been doing it for years with extremely cheap Kingston SSD's. I also need to edit videos, not too often, hence I need windows. Switching takes like 6 seconds, most of the time from waiting for the grub menu. It might be worth to try out the workflow.

I have used Windows, Linux and macOS fairly regularly over decades, and Linux is a clear loser when it comes to the internationalization---the ability to use softwares in any locales. Note that I don't even care about the localization---the translation and tweak of softwares to suit a particular locale; I have to write my own language in the desktop after all. The Linux input method story is still suboptimal (I can't believe that I had to use my own toy VIM IME [1] as I couldn't easily fix the basic IME issue) and I expect that it won't be any better in the foreseeable future.

[1] https://github.com/lifthrasiir/hangeul.vim

I do dual boot.

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 doubted Proton for so long. It's not problem-free, but I get 144 Hz in Elite Dangerous, and all it takes is the "force this game to run in Proton" checkbox in Steam. Wow.

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.

It’s gotten better but yeah there still issues, that’s why I like dual booting, windows gives me no issues for gaming if that’s all you do and Fedora has been rocksteady back to 25 when I switched, my work machine has gone from 26 to 30 via in place upgrades which I always expect to fail but so far never have.

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.

I would absolutely love to get iommu VM pass through working for gaming, but it’s never been a good experience for me with nvidia cards (vbios is usually the problem I think). AMD cards seem to be much more successful for that.

I've relied upon Unraid and its awesome community, and now I'm a happy NVidia on AMD gamer in my Win 10VM and code in Debian. There were still hurdles to get IOMMU working with Threadripper boards, but it all eventually worked. With that I have a NAS and "app store" like Docker experience I use for databases, testing new OSS projects, and game servers. Best $60 I've ever spent! Dual booting sucks.

But given that you are only gaming on Windows, why run the debloating script?

I used all systems A LOT. Windows is clear winner for me in all aspects except community. I can do almost anything as on Linux (I do love it too, but I love Windows more) and there are many things Win exclusive (Autohotkey, Total Commander, Everything search engine...). OS X feel like Windows 95 to me (used it for about a year with great pain and hated it almost every moment).

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.

> I have to ask, for anyone that cares this much, why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux?

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).

One could also go single-boot GNU/Linux for almost everything, and compartmentalize gaming on a console.

Bonus: much fewer online multiplayer cheaters on a current-gen console.

Or you can docker.

> why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux?

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)

Maybe this is a good time to point out that Windows now comes with a Linux kernel. Not sure how this effects VM workflows. I used to run Mac with Parallels but now I just use pure Windows, just much less of a hassle especially with the release of tools such as VS Code.

Dual boot is a hassle. If you want to use linux and occasionally need windows or want to play games under windows it's more convenient to go through the hassle of setting up GPU passthrough once so you can run it in a VM.

That's what I do. I use a mostly unmodified Windows 10 for gaming and audio, and Linux for work. If there is something wrong with Windows, it doesn't affect me. The Linux system, on the other hand, is constantly backed up.

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.

I keep an older windows laptop around for maintaining a couple of wpf and Xamarin apps.

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.

That is my set-up, but I find myself booting to Windows more often than I would like.

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.

> easier to just use Linux? need Windows to game

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.

I also do that, but I stream all my games to my underpowered linux machine

Excel

Autodesk products only work on Windows, and there's too much momentum to move my group to a different product.

Why dual boot when you can debloat?

That is an interesting take on it. I guess my problem with debloating is two fold.

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 need Win32 and DirectX.

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.

Really? Between webgames (2048, Ager.io, Krunker, ...) and instant Linux games (Cube2, STK, ...) there are more than enough options.

I've heard this argument many times. I have some games I want to play. I don't want to replace them with other games. In other words, it's not that I can't play games, but that I can't play the games I want to play.

I haven't used Windows as a daily driver in nearly a decade. I have to use it occasionally for work reasons and I'm always shocked by the Stockholm syndrome Windows users must have. Even just booting an OEM Windows machine for the first time raises my blood pressure. I hear that Cortana monologue in my nightmares.

I used to not really understand the point of Cortana. Typing on a phone sucks, so I only used my phone's voice assistant when I wanted to search a moderately-long series of words or something.

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?