 A reoccurring question that viewers of the channel often ask me is, hey DT, do you ever miss Windows? Is there anything about Windows that you miss? Do you ever want to go back to Windows because there was something you had in Windows that you don't have in Linux? And I understand the reason people ask this question, especially people that are either brand new to Linux or they're still on Windows and they're thinking about making the switch to Linux. They want to know about some of the potential pain points. If they make the switch from Windows to Linux, what is going to cause them grief, heartache? What is the issues that they're going to run into that may cause them so much frustration that maybe they can't even stay on Linux. Maybe they switch to Linux and realize this is not going to work for me and I have to go back to Windows. So let me give you a little bit of my story when I switched as far as the things that were an issue for me and the things that weren't. So first, let me answer the question, do I ever miss Windows? Now being a strictly Linux user for at least the last 15 years or so, no. I don't miss anything about Windows. I don't really know Windows anymore. Windows is, it's kind of like all those years that you've been a Windows user. Did you ever miss Linux? Well, of course not. You never use Linux and now it's kind of that way with me after using strictly Linux forever. Do I ever miss Windows? No, because I don't even know what's going on in the Windows world. So it's not an issue for me now, but it is always going to be an issue for everyone when they first switch from any operating system to another operating system, whether that be switching from Windows to Linux, Mac to Linux, or if I switch from Linux to Windows, would I have pain points, frustrations? Yes, there would be a lot of things that I have on Linux that I wouldn't have on Windows and it would frustrate me. So let's talk a little bit about there's really three areas we should discuss as far as if you're going to miss anything from Windows, you're probably either going to miss something as far as the desktop experience, the software support or the hardware support. So let's focus on those three areas. So let's start with the desktop experience. Did I ever miss Windows, the desktop, the desktop environment, the start menu and the panel and all of, you know, the look and feel of the Windows operating system? Did I ever miss it? No, I really didn't care for the Windows desktop environment. I really didn't know there were any alternatives. Actually, one of the things that really calls me a lot of excitement when I switched to Linux on the desktop was when I started playing around with all of these Linux distributions, many of them had different desktop environments. And then I realized there's like a hundred different desktop environments that I could play with and choose from all of them were very different. All of them were unique. And it was really easy to go and find a desktop environment or a window manager to suit your needs. And I loved that flexibility. I loved having all those options because on Windows, obviously, you didn't have an option. You had the Windows desktop. I hope you like it. On Linux, you have choice. So for me, I didn't miss the Windows operating system as far as the desktop environment at all. It was a very smooth transition for me. And honestly, I think it's going to be a smooth transition for you because you have even more choice than what I had 15 years ago. We have so many more desktop environments, for example. Now, and many of them, if you want something that very much mimics Windows as far as like Windows 10, Windows 11, that desktop experience, there are desktop environments that can mimic that very well. KDE Plasma does a great job of mimicking that Windows 11 kind of desktop experience. Some of you that like some of the older versions of Windows, like Windows 7 or even going back to like Windows 2000, the XFCE desktop environment is very good as well. The Budgie desktop environment is kind of a little more modern looking and it mimics Windows very well. So we have options. I don't think anybody is going to switch from Windows to Linux and miss the desktop experience, the workflow, the paradigm as far as how you go through a menu system and open a window and then it floats the window and you can drag it around with the mouse. All of that works the same in Linux. So let's move on to the second big category of where people are going to potentially miss Windows when they switch to Linux is software support. Now, this will be an issue for almost everybody when you first switch from Windows to Linux is some of the software you are used to on Windows is written for Windows. That's the only operating system that that program will run on because the developers of that piece of software, they only wrote it for one operating system, Windows. They didn't write it for Linux. On Linux, you're going to have other pieces of software and some of those pieces of software are actually only written for Linux. They won't have a Windows version. So it's, you know, it's one of these things you have to understand and a lot of less techie people just imagine that any piece of software should work on any computer regardless of the operating system it's running whether it be Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, any of the BSD operating system, whatever it happens to be, Unix. But that's not the case, right? The program has to be written specifically for a particular operating system. And, you know, it's nobody's fault. It's not Linux's fault that Windows software doesn't run on Linux. Of course it doesn't. Linux software doesn't run on Windows either. That's kind of, that's just the way it works. So just know that if you have any typically proprietary Windows only software, you know, you're not going to be able to run it on Linux unless you run it in a virtual machine. If you have a decent enough machine, actually virtual machines have become very powerful and actually very performant, especially here in the last five years, keeping a Windows 11 virtual machine around just to run some of your Windows only programs is actually a pretty viable option. I was really lucky when I switched from Windows to Linux 15 years ago because I already knew what free and open source software was and I never used Microsoft Office. I had always used Open Office, which then became LibreOffice. So for the last 20 years, all I've ever used is LibreOffice. So it's an easy transition. LibreOffice is the standard Office suite on Linux. The only browser I had used since around 2000 was Firefox. And before that, I used Netscape Navigator. I never use Internet Explorer. Don't know anything about Internet Explorer. So obviously I didn't miss it when I went to Linux because on Linux, typically the default browser is Mozilla Firefox. And you know, I was already using things like GIMP and Inkscape and things like that. A lot of the standard free and open source software that is already there on Linux. So it really made my transition a lot easier than what it will be for most of you. Because I know a lot of you are very tied to things like Microsoft Office, for example, because of work or because of school. And there is Office 365 that kind of works on Linux. And of course you always have these cloud solutions for some of your things like Microsoft Office and Google Docs. So that's less of an issue now, but if you need the desktop clients for Microsoft Office, yeah, we don't have that on Linux. So that could be a big deal. Another big deal for some people is the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, obviously. It's not on Linux. Adobe doesn't want to support Linux. They're never gonna write their software to run on Linux. And unless Adobe writes their software to run on Linux, it's never gonna run on Linux. That's an Adobe problem. That's not a Linux problem. I know people love to complain to the Linux community. I hear it all the time. Man, your Linux operating system sucks because Photoshop won't even run on it. Well, that's not a problem of Linux or free and open source software developers. That's a problem of Adobe and the garbage management team behind that company that for whatever reason chooses to ignore the Linux community who would gladly pay for some of their software if they had that choice. By far the biggest hurdle when I switched from Windows to Linux 15 years ago for most users was games. We didn't have any games on Linux 15 years ago. I mean, practically no games. The only games we had were free and open source games. Many of them still around. SuperTux cart, all the first person shooters and zero AD was around back then. But we didn't have any of the proprietary games. Any of the stuff on Steam, like none of that stuff was on Linux. None of that stuff had a Linux port. We had very, very, very few games on Linux. So if you were a gamer, you really couldn't use Linux full time. You had to keep a Windows installation around, you had to either dual boot or have a second machine, one Linux machine and one Windows machine just for gaming. That is no longer an issue because once Steam came to Linux, and this has been what, five, six years now that we've had Steam on Linux, once that happened, it totally changed the game because now it's hard to find games that don't run on Linux. Pretty much 90% or more of the games on Steam I think run on Linux. I don't know the exact number. I'm not a gamer. But I do know most games now on Steam run on Linux. There are some that are only four Windows still, but there are very few that it's enough that if you're a gamer and you want to run Linux full time, you can. The only problem with software is the software you are already using and maybe you fell in love with a particular game and then you switched to Linux. And that's one of the games that doesn't run on Linux. That's hard for people because now you gotta make a choice. Do you just give up playing that game and start playing some of the games that do work on Linux? Or do you say, what, you know, it's not worth it to me. I love this game so much. I have to stay on Windows. You've gotta make those kinds of choices. For me though, I made the choice right away. I wanted to be on Linux more than I wanted to run any of that proprietary Windows only software, but this will be different for different people. Now let's talk about the third area where you might miss Windows when you switch to Linux. And that is hardware support. Now, one of the things, even 15 years ago when I switched and it's much better now is Linux actually supports pretty much most of the hardware out there. It certainly supports all of your basic hardware. Like if you're building a computer, you never have to worry about, does Linux support my CPU, my GPU, my RAM, or yeah, well, these monitors work on Linux. Well, this printer work on Linux. The printers, sometimes you will find oddball printers that don't work on Linux, but it's rarely the case these days. It was a little more of an issue when I switched 15 years ago. Keyboards, mice, things like that speaker, all of that standard stuff. Anything that's a normal part of a computer that pretty much every computer user uses. Yeah, it's gonna work on Linux. One of the things though, sometimes you will go by specialty devices, really niche things like gaming peripherals, gaming accessories, RGB lighted keyboards, RGB mice, any kind of keyboard or mouse that has any weird displays built in it, like a little monitor or whatever. You get those weird devices, maybe streaming devices, like the Elgato string deck, which is the little, it's like a macro keyboard. It's got a display with some buttons. It's not real buttons, but it's a screen that you can click on buttons and it does stuff on your computer. Pretty much none of that stuff is gonna work on Linux because all of that kind of stuff requires drivers to work. Those drivers typically are written for Windows only. That's just the manufacturer of these devices. Typically only write Windows drivers. The reason is because these kinds of products are really niche. They're not gonna sell a ton of these kinds of specialty devices. So why write drivers for Linux? Because we're gonna be such a small percentage of the people that buy, and already a small number of people are gonna buy this product anyway, right? They're pretty much just for cost effectiveness. They're only gonna write a Windows drivers if it's a really niche kind of piece of equipment. For me personally, I had absolutely no issues with hardware support when I switched from Windows to Linux 15 years ago. Everything I owned, including the printer, at the time when I said printers were a little iffy back then, but I was fortunate like everything worked on Linux. And then from that point forward, I just made sure every piece of hardware that I bought, I always checked the box. If I go to Best Buy and buy a new printer, for example, I'm gonna check on the back of the box because it's always gonna tell you the operating systems that it supports. It's gonna say Windows, Mac, Linux. Typically I buy HP printers, by the way, because I know HP, pretty much all of their stuff. They're external hard drives and SSD drives and printers and whatever, HP is a really big supporter of Linux. Most of their products, if you turn the box around and look at the back, it'll say sports, Windows, Mac and Linux. And you'll see the little penguin on it. And that's great. I love supporting companies that support Linux. So I typically buy a lot of HP products. So do I ever miss Windows? Well, let's cover those three areas. Do I ever miss the desktop experience? No, I never did. Do I ever miss any of the software? No, because I wasn't using much proprietary Windows only software when I switched. Do I ever miss the hardware support? No, I was lucky in that area because I wasn't running any weird niche kind of devices that were Windows only. Now, again, I mentioned I was kind of lucky. I just happened to fit everything as the software and hardware I was using. So I was very lucky in that 15 years ago. And of course, now being so far removed from Windows, of course I don't miss Windows. I don't even know what's on Windows, right? Windows doesn't even exist to me now. So yeah, I'm good in this area, but let's talk about you because I know some of you are thinking about switching some of you actually already have switched because I see people on forms, on subreddits that talk about the things they miss. And oddly enough, most of the things you're complaining about when you say you miss Windows, you're not actually missing Windows, you're missing other stuff. And what I mean by that is, do you miss Windows, the desktop experience, the desktop environment, the look and feel, the workflow, that whole Windows paradigm? Do you miss that? Is that why you say you miss Windows now that you've switched to Linux? For 95% of the people that say they miss Windows, they're not talking about the desktop experience. Had you been talking about that, it makes sense. Yes, you're actually missing Windows, but what people are really missing typically are the category two and category three, right? The software support and hardware support. That's typically where they run into problems. They don't really miss Windows. They miss some of the software that was written for Windows only. That's what they miss. Or they miss being able to use some of their weird specialty niche gaming devices that only have a driver for Windows. They don't miss Windows. They just miss the hardware support specifically for some of the equipment that they've already purchased. I would say 95 times out of 100 when somebody tells me that they miss Windows now that they've switched to Linux, really what they miss is being on the most popular operating system. They don't miss Windows. They miss the popularity of Windows, the operating system and all the benefits that came from that. And of course that's going to be hardware support and software support. Now, I do want to talk briefly about, I know this is going to be controversial, but there is one area where I kind of miss Windows. I'm not going to lie. And that area where I miss Windows having been in Linux for the last 15 years is I kind of miss the lack of a community that Windows had. And by that I mean sometimes the Linux community in the free and open source software community is just a really bad place. I don't like it. I don't like interacting with many of the people in that community. And this was never an issue with Windows because Windows has no community, right? There's really no community aspect to it because Windows is a piece of proprietary software made by a proprietary software manufacturer, right? There's, you and me have nothing to do with Windows. The direction it goes, building Windows, and you have the programming, the coding, the artwork, the documentation. We have nothing to do with anything involved with Windows. Where in Linux, of course, the community is a part, an integral part of everything. And because of that, everybody in the Linux community, as I say, as a voice, anybody can speak up and some of those people are not the nicest people. Now I do want to say that the free and open source software community, it's great most of the time. Most of the time, and honestly, most of the people that I conversate with in the community are great. They're really nice. They're really respectful. They're really helpful, right? They're just genuinely good people. But sometimes there are certain people in the community that go a little crazy. They're just, they're just all, they're just nasty negative people. Probably, they're this way in real life. So obviously they're going to be this way or even more so sometimes online. And they're nasty, main spirited, obnoxious, right? And you'll find this on forums, IRC chat rooms, and subreddits, especially when you criticize anything in the free and open source software community because there's much to criticize. I mean, you want to point out the areas that we can do better in. The areas that we're failing in, the areas that could be improved, that is part of making free and open source software better. But the problem is sometimes you will go and criticize a project. Now, legitimately criticize, not being nasty or negative. That's like, hey, this is a problem. You really need to improve this. Sometimes you can even offer help. Hey, I'll help you improve this particular aspect of this problem. And you'll get attacked. You'll get attacked for even suggesting that that project had anything wrong with it. Whether this be just a piece of free and open source software or a Linux distribution, I've actually seen maintainers of Linux distributions. The lead maintainer of sometimes some big Linux distributions get into personal attacks on a forum or on Twitter on a subreddit attacking people for criticizing the distribution that he helps maintain. Again, not people that were criticizing in a crazy really negative way. It was just genuine criticism. Hey, this is a problem. You might want to fix this. And then they go and personally attack that person. That's a problem. So in some ways, I kind of miss the lack of community around Windows. Sometimes maybe that's just the introvert in me, but that's an area of concern to me is the free and open source software community. It's an area that we really need to work on improving. Peace, guys.