Technology

It's not a failure to consider the alternatives that slows adoption, it is the very real material problems with those alternatives.

It's not fair that a multinational corporation gets to wield virtually limitless power to starve the alternatives of oxygen and create as much friction as possible in the process of switching, but it is a very real problem, and blaming the users won't solve anything.

I’m not allowed to do my full-time job from any other computer besides the windows one assigned to me.

Yes, because I need Adobe to do my meh wage part-time job in developing country from my one and only working laptop and I don't have the luxury of surplus money, time, and mental energy to do anything about it.

But I get your point. If I have the means, I will fix my broken Thinkpad and definitely install Linux there the first chance I get. Either that or Adobe finally release Linux version, which will probably be released after Half-Life 3.

I can't wait to try Endeavor (so I can finally be an obnoxious person who say "I used Arch^-based^ ^distro^, btw")

Most people believe they will start seeing problems where there were none before. They need to invest time into research about their use-cases, which is a cost even before switching.

The typical user used Windows since before they became scared of change, so that's what they'll stick with.

The pain of using Windows still can and will be higher without the majority of people switching to anything.

Doesn't apply to the author here, so I don't understand why you brought it up?

I gave Linux a try 2 or 3 times back when I was in school. It was a horrible user experience and games wouldn't work back then.

Now that games on Linux are a thing, I would love to give it a try once more. But now I have a full-time office job and a family. When I'm off work, I just want to fire up the PC and have everything work, which it does with windows. I also have the Pro version of Windows 11 and don't experience all of the ad horror that everyone here is talking about.

If I gain back the free time and mental capacity, I'll give it a try.

Give it a couple weeks and maybe by then I'll hopefully have upgraded from win10 on my desktop to either Spiral or Netrunner. Only thing holding me back from upgrading on my desktop right now is how much stuff I have to save to my new external drive and how it feels like a Herculean task.

Linux won't work for my needs. I would switch if it did.

I can relate to the anxiety that comes with the thought of switching and finding out you're missing something essential.

It wasn't a big deal for me since I've used FOSS alternatives for almost everything even on Windows and was hardly gaming anymore when I made the switch (but somewhat ironically I started again on Linux). But that's hardly the position most unhappy Windows users are in.

You know it's not the same person posting every time

Some people have moved passed thinking about it. Others have just started. Its a growing sentiment and more people are starting to feel it.

It's not easy committing to the change when you have no knowledge of the platform. The status quo is always easier until it no longer is.

Having seen how different Linux is from what it was 20 years ago, it's way more approachable than it used to be. Most people could adjust pretty quickly, but with so much of the technical bits hidden from sight, the average PC user these days isn't as tech savvy as they were many years ago, and making the switch can be intimidating.

Only computer I have Windows on is my laptop and that's only because it's fairly new and laptops are notorious for proprietary hardware that's hard to get decent drivers for. My desktop has had Linux for a couple of years and everything else runs Linux.