So first of all, this is not a “help me like linux” post but desktop linux specifically and it’s not a “linux is shit” post either.
I run a whole bunch of linux servers (including the one that hosts the instance I’m posting from), the first thing I install on a Windows machine is WSL and I’ve compiled my first kernel about 20 years ago so that’s not the problem we’re facing here. I understand how linux works and considering the end of support for Windows 10 this is as good an opportunity as ever to fully make the switch.
My problem is more that specifically linux on a desktop still feels more like an unfinished prototype than like something I’d want to use as a daily driver. About once a year I challenge myself to try it for a while and see how it feels. I look around for a distro that seems promising, put it on a spare SSD, put it either into my Framework laptop or my gaming machine and see where the journey takes me, only booting Windows in an emergency.
And each time, I get fed up after a few days:
- Navigating a combination of the distro’s native package manager (apt, pacman, rpm, whatever), snap, flatpack and still having to set up the maintainers’ custom repositories to get stuff that’s even remotely up-to-date somehow feels even messier than the Windows approach of downloading binaries manually.
- The different UI toolkits, desktop environment, window manager and compositor seem to be fighting each other. I feel like even for something simple as changing a theme or the UI scaling, I have to change settings in three different places just to notice that half the applications still ignore them and my login screen renders in the top left corner of the screen but the mouse cursor acts as if the whole screen was used.
- All of that seems to be getting worse when fractional scaling is involved which is a must for the 2256x1504 screen in my Framework 13.
- The general advice seems to be “just wait until you run into a problem, then research how to solve it”. For my server stuff, this works really well. But for desktop linux, it feels like for every problem I find five different solutions where each of them assumes an entirely different technology stack and if mine is even slightly different I eventually run into a step where a config file is not where it should be or a package is not available for what I’m using.
- I do a lot of .NET programming and photo editing. I could probably replace VS with VScode or Ryder but it’s an additional hurdle. For photo editing, I haven’t found a single thing that fits my workflow the way Bridge, Camera Raw and Photoshop do. I’ve tried Gimp, Krita, Darktable, RawTherapee and probably a couple more and they all felt like they were missing half the features or suffer from the same unintuitive UI/UX that Blender had before they completely overhauled it with 2.8.
Sooo… where do I go from this? I really want this to work out.
Because enshittification is becoming more and more unbearable. So far, Windows 10 (and to some extent even Windows 11) works for me but it’s getting worse and worse every year. I have no interest in OneDrive, Copilot, Recall and whatever MS wants to sell me next. I’d rather have a system that does exactly what I need, nothing more, nothing less. On servers and embedded systems, linux has done a great job for me over the last 20 (!) years.
Kind of defeats the purpose if I run my two most-used applications in a Windows VM, doesn’t it?
I’m more than open for using something different and learning a different workflow as long as I can eventually get to the point where I can get roughly the same results in roughly the same time. I like tinkering with stuff and I’m not even opposed to write my own tools for closing a few gaps in the applications I use (see my recently started immichtools). But there is a limit. I just can’t afford to spend half my day working around problems that I wouldn’t have had on Windows.
Edit: formatting
Let me try to help you in a more psychological way: try focusing on how much more important those issues of privacy, respecting user self determination, etc are than all those little trade offs (which sound to me as much like a cranky resistance to change as anything else). You are going to have to accept changes you don’t like along with changes that you might eventually see as improvements if you give it a chance. But even if not, the enshittification element should outweigh all that.
I gave up Windows for Plasma 4.something, over a decade ago to avoid the enshittification of Windows 10, and even then I felt like it was a user interface improvement and it was painful going back every time I booted my window partition. I can’t even imagine how someone can put up with the shit Windows 11 imposes on you. But, hey everyone weighs things differently.
Personally, when software I paid nothing for, made by volunteers, has a flaw or doesn’t meet my preferences, it pisses me off a whole lot less than when software that I’ve paid for, made by a corporation with more money then God, blue screens or forces something on me that I didn’t ask for.
That’s why the why matters. Some people might just not trust Windows to keep private data secure, but be comfortable running certain software on it in a VM, possibly a VM that isn’t usually allowed network access.
If you’re sufficiently motivated to get off Windows to invest time learning different workflows, there certainly are options. It sounds like you’ve tried some for image processing and found gaps. People might be able to help fill them if you go into detail about your current workflow, but there is no 1:1 replacement for Photoshop on any platform. If you’re a heavy Photoshop user, there may be no path to happiness for you.
There’s surely a 1:1 replacement for Visual Studio outside of Windows-specific development (which wouldn’t make much sense to attempt on Linux anyway).