 One of the questions that I've pondered many times on this channel is asking the question What prevents you from using Linux now? This comes as a weird surprise to a lot of my audience that use Linux exclusively There are actually a lot of people who watch this channel and many other Linux youtubers who don't actually use Linux either at all or exclusively most of them actually spend most of their time on Windows or Mac and Still they watch this channel or they watch other Linux youtubers and you know that surprises a lot of people But there are many people in my audience that don't actually run Linux as their daily driver and One of the questions that I always have for them and many other people have had for them over the years is what? What prevents you from using Linux this topic actually came up on Reddit and I'm asked it on recently and I'll put those posts in the Description below so you can actually go through them and the vast majority of the comments are all over the place Actually, you would think that there was just a few pain points left Like we always talk about the big pain points to preventing people from using Linux. We talk about the installation, right? We talk about getting past secure boot and getting past the boot menu and it's actually burning a USB key right we get we talk about that and we talk about the poor support for Nvidia cards Or we talk about the lack of Adobe support we talk about those three things and then we kind of pretend that that's it Those are the big ones. Therefore. That's what is causing, you know, if we solve just those three problems Everyone would use Linux and it would be awesome and we know have no longer have any need of Windows or Mac But it's really not that simple. There's actually a lot of pain points still with Linux that we don't really pay attention to Because we're Linux fans or just because we don't we don't experience those problems Now some of the problems that I saw in the threads that I'm gonna link to in the description below Were things that either are skill issues, right? And I absolutely despise people who You know when someone asks a question or has a problem, you know, they're trying to troubleshoot something and then The person responds skill issue. I hate that but but Some people just don't have the interest in learning how to solve something or they don't have the time or they don't have the inclination Whatever to solve something. Therefore, they don't have the skills so so they just use Windows because that's what they know That's what they have the skills to use. That's fine And that's one of the reasons why a lot of people still use Windows and Mac another cause of some of those pain points Isn't a skill issue, but instead lies with just disinterest a lot of people Do have interest in Linux, but they don't have that much interest in Linux so much so that they you know Take the steps to go through and actually use it because it does as I've talked about many times in this channel actually require Quite a bit of effort to switch from Windows to Linux. You can't just do it I mean you can just do it But you're gonna be if you're not prepared for the changes that you're gonna have to make It's going to be a rough journey for you and nine times out of ten if you're in that situation Where you just did it and you didn't prepare for it You're probably gonna eventually but end up back on where you started from either Mac or Windows that's just kind of the way it actually works for a lot of people and That's still something that we as the Linux community kind of have to keep in mind Is that not everyone is a Linux nerd not everyone is We think that they are because we we as a Linux community surround ourselves with Linux nerds Therefore we think that everyone is a Linux nerd Unfortunately, that's not the case It would be awesome if everyone was a Linux nerd, but it's just absolutely not the case the vast majority of people and I We shouldn't tell anybody this but the vast majority people aren't nerds at all, right? They're just normal people, you know the vast majority of people just use their computers as Tools they go to their computer to get a job done You know, maybe they do it for work or if they you know It's at home or whatever they used to check email or maybe browse YouTube But the vast majority people are even browsing YouTube on their computers. They're doing it on their Cellular device, right? It's just they don't People don't use their computers like they used to right when I first got my computer back in the early 2000s You know, we went to comp USA and got a whole bunch card making software and all this free stuff because Back in the day, you actually had to go to the store to buy software And you know that was the and even before that when you know, I was in school Computers were neat. There were things that Interested almost everybody because they were still fairly new in the 90s, you know, yes They'd been around for a long time, but they didn't have, you know, vast proliferation inside of public schools here in the United States until the 90s and that's when I was in you know Did most of my schooling was in the 90s and you know That that's what got me interesting computer I got a lot of people interested in computers, but these days the kid You know if you were born in the late 90s or beyond You've probably always had a smartphone or you you've always had a computer in your house. It's not something Special to you. It's something that has always been there, right? And well, that's obviously a broad generalization, but it does cover a lot of people They just don't consider a computer a hobby like a lot of us do a lot of us Linux nerds do They consider it just a tool and a lot of them don't even use that tool anymore They're using a tablet or they're using their smartphone to do all of their computing services and that's just what they do, right? that's just the reality of it and we forget that sometimes as Linux nerds that not everyone is like us another area that really surprised me going through the actually I could probably just show You guys the threads that I'm talking about if I go through some of the stuff that's in this thread here I'm ready and even on on Mastodon one of the things that surprised me about how often it actually came up was gaming Because we've been tooting our own horn for the last two years about how Awesome gaming has become on Linux, right ever since the steam deck came out and proton has gotten really good and you can use a but ton of Games on Linux that you never were before like I was playing madden on Linux the other day I've played fours of five, which is exclusively a windows game, right? I've played it on My steam deck of all things and it runs perfectly fine I've played halo, which has always been like an xbox exclusive game And it played wonderfully on Linux. So there are Tons of examples that we've taken for granted over the course of the last two years To us prove that Linux is now ready for gaming but Anti-cheat is still a big big deal for a lot of games and while I can't name those games I mean this person here talks about destiny 2 and apex legends But I'm pretty sure fortnite is also in on that and there are several other big big big games that just Don't run on linux probably never will run in like so And especially in the case of destiny 2 the developers of that have specifically come out and said no There's no linux support. Never gonna happen. Uh, the epics guys the ones that are behind Fortnite they've come out and said and tell the steam deck has tens of millions of users They're not supporting linux. They actually had that when when they purchased rocket league They actually pulled the linux version off of their servers And disabled linux support completely if you want to run rocket league now You have to run it inside of proton and because of anti-cheat You can't play online at least as far as I know at least the last time I tried it just doesn't work Right. So there are many games that we sometimes forget about as linux nerds that just don't run on linux at all because of this problem right and I think that a lot of gamers like actual like real-time gamers that aren't linux gamers but are just Gamers like they have a dedicated awesome $4,000 pc rig that has a 4090 and Maybe two of them and you know, you know, they have custom water cooling loops and all this stuff those types of gamers Who spend thousands and thousands of hours gaming in their lifetime? those guys See us touting linux as gaming ready And laugh at us because it's not as gaming ready as we like to make it out to be So this is another big pain point for us that we don't really talk as much about as we probably should Especially outside of the games here. I know a lot of linux gamers still do understand this problem So i'm not just saying like if you're a linux gamer, you don't realize the anti cheat is a thing You obviously do but the rest of us who aren't really into the gaming scene But who have still been riding high on touting how awesome gaming is to the rest of the world We have forgotten about this or at least some of us have and it's still a problem Right. It's still one of those things another thing that i've saw in this thread Are problems with the transition from xorg to wailand specifically when it comes to gaming and also Nvidia support So a lot of people have been left behind by this transition from Xorg to wailand because they have basically felt themselves being forced to do so because a lot of desktop environments have moved Exclusively to wailand and have basically depreciated their xorg support because of obviously good reasons But it still has happened so like ubuntu and genom and kde and fedora and a whole bunch of other distros and desktop environments have Either gone directly to only supporting wailand and just kind of having xorg. There is a fallback just in case to actually getting rid of xorg all together and a lot of times this Transition has left people behind specifically people who have specific versions of Certain and video cards like they don't have the latest and greatest that supports wailand fairly well They have an older card that doesn't have the wailand support that we take for granted nowadays Right, so i've seen that a lot of times in this thread There's also a lot of things like adobe and autocad which are still problems to this day and will always be problems Here's another one that says anti cheat and then there's ones like this one here that have Basically said that they're willing to switch to linux but are prevented to do so because of Their family members not necessarily because their family members are saying no You can't use linux But mostly because they either share a computer with their significant other or their family or like this person here or Because they don't want to have to support two different operating systems inside of their home Like if they have two different computers and one person just will not or does not want to switch to linux That kind of forces them if they don't want to support both to stick with what their significant other or their family member does Right, so there's the whole point of this isn't because i'm going to go through this entire thread I'll like i said i'll link it below But there are Way more pain points to switching to linux than we think about when we talk about this, right? We we we talk about blue in the face about the lack of adobe support Even the invidious stuff we've talked about many many times over the years, right things like the difficulty of Installation which is something that i've harped on on this channel many times over the course of the last three years Those are all big pain points, right? That i do still think that are obviously still there and then are preventing a lot of people from trying linux adobe is like A big big one But there are many other points pain points that prevent people from using linux full-time and i do think that this is something that We do have to kind of think about Especially people who consider themselves linux evangelists that try to get other people to switch to linux We tend to Over simplify the process of switching from windows to linux like all you need to do is find yourself A distribution that looks like windows and you're gonna be fine. You're gonna be you're gonna be great Sure, you'll have to find some applications that you know That are alternatives to what you'll use on windows, but you're gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine but Maybe not right Everyone's situation is different. Some of them have specific hardware needs like they have peripherals that just Don't work on linux things like you know audio interfaces or gaming interfaces that you use Gaming headsets whatever, you know, a lot of people have peripherals that just won't work with linux and they're obviously spent money on those things And going out and buying something that does work with linux is probably not an option Right the economy is terrible and not everybody has discretionary income Just to replace something that works perfectly fine Just because they want to be a nerd like the rest of us who use linux, right? So These pain points are things that we do need to keep in mind, especially when we try to convince others to use linux because Not everybody can And it's not always a skill issue Like sometimes sometimes it is a skill issue. Some sometimes it's you know, they just they just don't want to develop the skills Right, that's fine. Some sometimes they don't have the time or interest or whatever All those things are possibilities when it comes to why someone doesn't use linux, but they're also Legitimate roadblocks to a lot of people actually using linux And it's not that they don't want to some a lot of the people in these threads who say they can't switch They legitimately do want to switch and use linux full-time because they really really like linux But there are these certain things that they do Using their computers that just don't work well on linux And that is an issue because developers do have a habit sometimes Of solving problems that aren't necessarily problems that need to be solved They create you know and that's fine because they have their own interests They want to solve problems for themselves not necessarily solve problems for the great masses who would then thank them For solving a problem. They're solving a specific problem for them and maybe their small community, right? That's that's the way development works and that's perfectly fine But you can see the problem here, right? That a lot of people who are on the outside looking in who want to switch and have these pain points see developers solve problems that weren't really problems that need to be solved like creating another package manager or another package format Yeah, it doesn't really need to be done. Let's solve one of these other problems first You know and you know they see that and they're like, well, you know I'm never going to be able to switch to linux because these problems are never going to be solved Now some of these problems like anti-cheat aren't things that our developers can actually Solve at all those those are going to be things that are only going to be solved When and if linux has enough actual users to justify those companies You know supporting linux and getting rid of the anti-cheat that doesn't support linux And it's also linux had I've talked about this before when it specifically when it comes to anti-cheat linux has a image problem Use linux. You're a hacker, right? You're a cheater at games or whatever, you know A lot of the companies who use anti-cheat to prevent you from using linux Do so because people a lot of people in the past have used linux to cheat at those games So they automatically have blinketed all linux users as cheaters therefore They don't want to you know support them through anti-cheat right now They're obviously more technical other reasons for that The way anti-cheat works doesn't really mesh well with the linux kernel at least in some cases But all that stuff has been solved already There are other versions of anti-cheat They they've also got some workarounds with wine and stuff like wine now works and supports a lot of the anti-cheat softwares So that the technical stuff has mostly been solved But there's still that image problem that a lot of people actually You know a lot of companies actually have a lot especially a lot of gaming companies actually have And that's another issue on top of all this stuff, right? So a lot of the people who want to switch to linux see these problems is never going to be solved Therefore they they're have entrenched themselves in the ecosystem that they already exist in because the stuff that they want to do Actually works Even if they have big big problems with windows or big big problems with mac The fact that they can still do the stuff that they want to do Wipes away those most of those problems, right? And despite their interest in switching to linux without those problems being solved There's not much they can do to actually do to take the plunge and switch to linux and as a community the linux community We just kind of need I think we do need to keep this in mind as we preach because I do this too. I do this a lot of my videos. I preach to people It's not it's not it's not a good habit to have but but it's true We do tend to preach to others on the outside saying how awesome linux is But we have to also remember that even we as linux nerds have problems a lot of times with linux and We do tend to forget that when we're talking about how awesome linux is So just something to keep in mind So that's it for this video if you have thoughts on any of this stuff You can leave those in the comment section below. I'd love to hear from you You can follow me on mastodon or odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon kofi and the youtube membership stuff All that stuff will be in the video description below You can also head on over to the merch shop, which is available at shop that the linuxcast.org there you can find desk mats and hoodies and hats and Cups and mugs and all sorts of stuff t-shirts all that stuff all the proceeds from that go directly to Support the channel, which means more than next content for you guys Thanks everybody who does support me on patreon youtube you guys are all absolutely amazing without you the channel Just wouldn't have made anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very very much for your support I truly do appreciate it. You guys are awesome. Seriously. Thank you. Thanks everybody for watching I'll see you next time