edit: hey guys, 60+ comments, can't reply from now on, but know that I am grateful for your comments, keep the convo going. Thank you to the y'all people who gave unbiased answers and thanks also to those who told me about Waydroid and Docker
edit: Well, now that's sobering, apparently I can do most of these things on Windows with ease too. I won't be switching back to Windows anytime soon, but it appears that my friend was right. I am getting FOMO Fear of missing out right now.
I do need these apps right now, but there are some apps on Windows for which we don't have a great replacement
- Adobe
- MS word (yeah, I don't like Libre and most of Libre Suit) it's not as good as MS suite, of c, but it's really bad.
- Games ( a big one although steam is helping bridge the gap)
- Many torrented apps, most of these are Windows specific and thus I won't have any luck installing them on Linux.
- Apparently windows is allowing their users to use some Android apps?
Torrented apps would be my biggest concern, I mean, these are Windows specific, how can I run them on Linux? Seriously, I want to know how. Can wine run most of the apps without error? I am thinking of torrenting some educational software made for Windows.
Let me list the customizations I have done with my xfce desktop and you tell me if I can do that on Windows.
I told my friend that I can't leave linux because of all the customization I have done and he said, you just don't like to accept that Windows can do that too. Yeah, because I think it can't do some of it (and I like Linux better)
But yeah, let's give the devil it's due, can I do these things on Windows?
- I have applications which launch from terminal eg:
vlcwould open vlc (no questions asked, no other stuff needed, just type vlc) - Bash scripts which updates my system (not completely, snaps and flatpaks seem to be immune to this). I am pretty sure you can't do this on Windows.
- I can basically automate most of my tasks and it has a good integration with my apps.
- I can create desktop launchers.
- Not update my system, I love to update because my updates aren't usually 4 freaking GB and the largest update I have seen has been 200-300 mbs, probably less but yeah, I was free to not update my PC if I so choose. Can you do this on Windows? And also, Linux updates fail less often, I mean, it might break your system, but the thing won't stop in the middle and say "Bye Bye, updates failed" and now you have to waste 4GB again to download the update. PS: You should always keep your apps upto date mostly for security reasons, but Linux won't force it on you and ruin your workflow.
- Create custom panel plugin.
- My understanding is that the Windows terminal sucks? I don't know why, it just looks bad.
I am sure as hell there are more but this is at the top of my mind rn, can I do this on Windows. Also, give me something that you personally do on Linux but can't do it on Windows.
Connect a printer and have it just work.
My printer doesn't work. Though tbf it doesn't work on windows either.
Bought a Brother printer. Opened up "printers" on Windows 11, it picked up my printer wirelessly, I clicked "add" and it was done.
No garbage software or anything.
So printers definitely do just work on Windows.
I think its a brother thing. Brother printers also work automatically on linux (fedora at least)
I plugged my Linux Mint computer into my main home network for the first time and it immediately detected and installed my wifi Brother laser printer. I didn't even need to click anything.
On my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed computer I just had to tell it to look for the printer and it did the whole setup flawlessly.
I have several Windows PCs and I'm forever trying to persuade them to reconnect to the printer. They fail to find it, fail to print, give incorrect status reports, create duplicates of it, and so on. Linux has been amazingly unproblematic by comparison.
Same with my printer.
On Linux, I had to configure CUPS. This meant finding out which of the 30+ different drivers for my printer model actually worked. Then it meant determining which of the dozen or so different "devices" would actually work. And until I got it working correctly, it randomly crashed.
There are plenty of things Linux is better at but it isn't that great at handling standard devices with any ease. I'm sure that I can do a lot more now with the Linux driver, but sometimes I just want to tell my computer that's my printer and I just want this printed.
My shiny new printer will not work with windows. The drivers a pain in the ass. Even if it did, the drivers are bloatware.
With linux there is no garbage drivers and scanning. Copying and printing just work. With native dialogs no less.
It's funny, printers used to be a huge pain in the ass on Linux, and some probably still are. But I got a low end Brother about a year ago. Had been using MacOS because I was trying to move away from Android, and buy into the whole ecosystem. Now that that experiment is thankfully over, I installed Fedora on a new laptop. Wouldn't you know it, it automatically found my printer on the network without me even asking it to, and selected the correct drivers straight away.
But printing can be a pain on every OS, it's very dependent on the printer.
Wrong
My printer "just works"
On all computers and phones in my home
Same but with scanners. Plugged in a canon protable scanner, which requires their software to work on windows while it just works on linux. The cherry on top was that when I then had to make a single pdf of the things i scanned, I just ran
pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf ... output.pdfand guess what... it also just worked.