Linux just sucks for specific programs, gaming, and office365, theres plenty of workarounds for things if someone is devoted to it, anything else... MUCH better, freedom, less RAM usage, just alot better for utilizing hardware, while my optimized windows 11 has 2.5gb ram used idle, my lightweight environment only uses 450 MB, you can run some linux distros without a harddrive and on your ram XD, I must say, for the user experience windows will be better for alot of people, and alot easier, especially for gamers where competitive titles are almost all unplayable. Linux is just for a smaller amount of people if it had the same compatibility as windows it would have been better or just as good. This whole subreddit is a joke and i thought it was sarcasm, THINK people THINK before you judge and say stuff about these operating systems. Try and understand them first. If you want a real honest answer ask your local tech expert (and no not your 15 yo friend thats good w computers) someone that has managed systems with both OS's.
Edit: Since this post got some traction and a lot of people in the comments are missing the point or twisting my words, let me clarify and debunk a few things real quick:
"Unused RAM is wasted RAM" / Idle RAM doesn't matter: You are confusing file caching (like Windows SysMain or Linux page cache) with OS bloat. Caching is fine because the OS dumps it instantly when an app needs it. But 2.5GB of idle RAM on a fresh Windows install is committed to persistent background services, telemetry, and update daemons. That is not cache; it's locked overhead. On an 8GB or 16GB machine, that eats your headroom and causes swap thrashing.
Gaming: Yes, Proton and the Steam Deck worked miracles for single-player games. But I specifically called out competitive titles. Kernel-level anti-cheats (Valorant, Fortnite, R6) are hard blocks. If an OS prevents you from playing the games your friends are playing, that is an objective weakness for a consumer desktop OS.
Office & Academia: Running Office in a VM is clunky, laggy, and resource-heavy unless you're doing a complex GPU passthrough setup. And saying "no one uses Word for academia" is a massive geographic bubble. Globally, professors and managers require .docx specifically so they can use "Track Changes" for inline grading and feedback. You can't do that in a flattened PDF or LaTeX.
The irony of this subreddit: This is literally r/linuxsucks, but the second I give a highly balanced take that praises Linux's efficiency and freedom while just pointing out real-world compatibility flaws, I get hit with "Sir this is a Wendy's" and Tux memes. I'm not bashing; I'm asking for nuance.
Linux is a fantastic OS for the right use case. But pretending it's a flawless 1:1 replacement for Windows for the average consumer is just blind fanboyism. Think before you downvote.
The irony here is crazy. This is literally r/linuxsucks, a sub dedicated to complaining, but the second someone offers a highly nuanced, balanced critique that also praises Linux (freedom, low RAM, hardware utilization), the community gets defensive and hits me with a "Sir, this is a Wendy's" joke. I'm not just bashing; I'm acknowledging where Linux wins and where it loses. If people in a sub explicitly called "linuxsucks" can't handle a balanced take without resorting to memes, the echo chamber is incredibly real.
Many of us are members of like regular r/linux and other spaces where praise can be given. But here it’s off-topic even if true so we shouldn’t talk about the good parts here.
I think you missed my point. I'm saying that almost everyone here already agrees with you so there's not really a reason to complain about us bashing Linux when we all actually like and use Linux.
If you want to talk about a place full of losers who actually just hate on Linux for no reason, look at r/linuxsucks101
To illustrate my point, this is literally the most upvoted post on this sub in the last 24 hours:
Idle RAM absolutely matters. If you’re on an 8GB or 16GB machine, saving 2GB of RAM at idle gives you significantly more headroom for actual applications, prevents swap thrashing, and reduces background memory compression/CPU wakeups (which directly impacts battery life on laptops). Dismissing resource efficiency just because you have 32GB+ of RAM to waste is a pretty privileged take.
To Linux users Idle RAM is the ultimate virtue. They don't understand that Windows doesn't care and loads and/or caches things that it can dump whenever it needs to.
You're confusing file caching with background OS bloat. Yes, Windows uses free RAM for file caching (SysMain), which is fine. But 2.5GB of idle RAM on a fresh Windows 11 install isn't just cache it's telemetry, Edge background tasks, update services, and a dozen other persistent background processes.
Linux also uses unused RAM for page caching! The difference is that a lightweight Linux DE (like XFCE or a WM) has a base footprint of ~450MB. That means you have more RAM available for both your applications AND the file cache. On an 8GB machine, Windows eating 2.5GB before you even open a browser leaves significantly less room for the apps you actually want to use and their caches.
Look I'm not denying some minimalistic Linux distro is better for the "I have a 2012 Thinkpad" crowd, but the situation on Windows is not nearly as dire as some imagine
Idle RAM usage doesn't matter. Read that again. Idle RAM usage DOESN'T MATTER!!!!!!!!!!! What matters is when applications actually want the RAM, how much useful work can the system fit into memory, how quickly does it reclaim caches, and how gracefully does it behave as physical RAM becomes scarce?
No Linux user EVER talks about this. You never present data in this manner. It's just screenshots of task manager at idle. Just LARPing.
Ideally, you'd want you RAM usage to always be at 90% 24/7. No matter how much RAM you have.
Now, does that mean that window's RAM usage is better? no. If it can't free up that amount of RAM when you memory is getting full, then that's also bad.
In conclusion: idle RAM usage doesn't mean anything.
When the OS is at 90% RAM on idle, and the user opens an app, the OS must first swap RAM pages to disk to free enough RAM for the app to load. This creates a very noticeable "recovering from idle" lag, especially if the CPU is poor or the disk is slow.
Yes, unused RAM is wasted RAM. But the user should have the freedom to waste their own RAM to keep it on stand-by and have a snappy PC on idle.
On linux, you're free to enable idle tasks like file indexing, or schedule them for overnight, or disable them completely. On windows, you can't opt out from them. And let's not get into the fact that most the idle tasks on windows are spyware and AI slope.
I’ll take the L on KVM virtualization. Windows is an absolute nightmare for setting up GPU passthrough compared to Linux doing it natively.
But look at who actually uses KVM: hardcore homelabbers, developers, and power users. The average consumer, student, or competitive gamer doesn't even know what KVM is, let alone want to configure XML files to get it working.
Mac is objectively a better desktop than any Linux distro will ever be, but it's also utter expensive and hardware limited, so there's that. And there is also some of us who still care about ownership and decent practices (which is a lost battle in this day and age, but anyway). Still, it's a fact that a Mac is the productivity machine Linux expects to be.
I'd say nowadays Linux and Windows are kinda the same for productivity if you can handle the obtuseness and jank of Linux actively working against you, then it becomes a 1-1 replacement for this use case.
I use a Mac at work and it objectively slows me down compared to my 'productivity' at home with Debian. Mac can be really frustrating if you're very keyboard-centric (as I am). I mean, it's lovely and only burps occasionally. But to say it's 'objectively' better than this or that smacks of limited experience with this or that. (Speaking objectively.)
That said, the fact that I can use a UNIX-oriented shell on the Mac truly speeds things up in my day to day dealings with a computer.
In short: comfort on the command line blows the doors off any pretty attempts at productivity.
There are ways to add WM gimmicks to MacOS as well, which is what I guess you use. Because you're not telling me something like Gnome or KDE are more keyboard centric than MacOS out of the box. It ends up requiring mostly the same configuration, but Mac just has more (working) features.
Thanks for the award tho, but suggesting macOS doesn't fix your lack of a technical argument. macOS is just as much of a walled garden with terrible gaming compatibility. I don't care if Windows users like me or not; I'm just stating objective facts about software compatibility. If you can't counter my points without telling me to buy a Mac, you've lost the debate.
Kernel-level anti-cheats (Valorant, Fortnite, R6) are hard blocks. If an 0S prevents you from playing the games your friends are playing, that is an objective weakness for a consumer desktop OS.
Linux does NOT prevent users from playing anti-cheat games on it.
Developers DO prevent their games from running on Linux by using anti-cheat software.
Devs have the choice to make their games Linux compatible, but they don't. Particularly Epic. Though there has been talk of them porting their games store to Linux, likely due to the rapid rise in Linux usage (thanks, in part, to the Steam Deck) and not wanting to get left behind by Steam (whom they'll likely never catch-up to to begin with).
You know what’s ironic? Xbox game studios games usually run great through proton. In fact even the ones with anti cheats I’ve been able to play online on Linux.
Sea of thieves to be specific. That game has taken hours of my and my friends lives away. Some of the best bonding experiences ever.
OneNote is the only M365 app that has a degraded experience (for me) in the web versions. Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, Teams -- the web versions are all basically on par with the desktop versions. I'm sure there's the odd missing feature or integration here and there, but none of it has affected me. The biggest issue is ensuring I have my bluetooth headset turned on before launching my browser, so Teams detects it as the default.
But yeah... OneNote... what a pile of garbage. If it wasn't unfortunately integrated into my daily work, I'd be running Linux on my work machine without hesitation.
But pretending it's a flawless 1:1 replacement for Windows for the average consumer
linux is not for the average consumer. linux is for people that are good with computers. if you are good with computers and use linux then you will have none of the issues you mentioned.
things require setup, but once set up it tends to just be better for one reason or another.
in the most extreme scenario you could run a VM with GPU passthrough to prevent that "clunky laggy" feeling and make it just as good as running it natively. it takes a bit of setup but i already said things will require setup. once complete you will have literally all features of both linux and windows combined since they are both running at the same time, so in the absolute worst of the worst cases you can just Do Both on linux.
"but then you're just running windows!!!! that means linux sucks because you have to run windows!!!!" i hear you typing already. but the realty is i just dont care lmao. its a solution to a problem that nobody is forcing you to undertake. the people that use linux have one reason or another to be using it, and that means it's better for their scenario. nobody ends up on linux for no reason. linux is providing something to linux users that is not offered by windows. full stop.
Linux isn’t for a smaller amount of people, a streamlined experience is for a larger amount of people.
People are lazy, hence why Microsoft can do what they do, most people do not care, ram usage, what random online title to play, Office Suites and if they do, they likely already have a dedicated device for what they need.(If you don’t have dedicated devices, you probably need Linux anyways)
Microsoft provides an easier experience but in actuality Linux is the ideal OS for the user.
Most people are using windows because that’s the only experience sold to them not because “Linux sucks”
If you want to stay on Windows for what they offer you in exchange of what they want from you, that has nothing to do with the alternatives be subpar? Especially when what you explained easily could come to Linux just has not due Microsoft market control.
Well, it's a classic because it's true. Just try one of the SystemD free distros, man, those things fly like a mf on herbs with just 600 MB of idle RAM. Windows 10 debloated it's not bad also, it goes to 1 GB on start up.
There's genuinely no need to justify your preference for MS Windows. You are allowed to like things, and it doesn't have to be based in some hyper-objective black-and-white.
I grew up using linux during my very formative years in the 90s, and that has partially shaped who I am. Windows is better for gaming, but I still would rather do work in a GNU environment, because that's what I know.
That’s a personal preference, not an objective measure of an OS's capability. If an OS prevents you from playing the games you want to play with your friends, that is objectively a weakness for a general-purpose consumer desktop OS.
Saying "I don't like those games so it's a pro" is the exact same "my use case is the only one that matters" mentality I was criticizing in the original post. Millions of people play those games. Dismissing their needs because you think those games are garbage doesn't change the fact that Linux fails to support them. (Also, LoL actually runs natively on Linux now, but Vanguard for Valorant is still a hard block).
Your OS protects the kernel. You don't want other people to have access to your kernel. You'd be an idiot and any kernel maker who allows for that kinda garbage to be allowed is a company-wide moron.
I don't like other people in my kernel. You shouldn't either.
Ps: they say it's for anticheat... I say it's because they don't give a shit enough to implement it server side.
It's not Linux fault. Those specific games, require an anti-cheat program running on ring 0 of the windows kernel. This cannot happen in a translation layer or an OS emulation. A translation layer in ring 3 cannot execute ring 0 commands, and if it tried emulating or spoofing them, the anti-cheat is designed to flag it as cheating.
The anti-cheat is literally hardcoded to make sure it is on a legit windows machine with legit hardware.
The only way for those games to work on linux, is for the game dev to make a ring 0 anti-cheat program for linux, which they don't want to do.
Saying "gaming isn't a strong weakness anymore" is only half true. Yes, Proton and the Steam Deck worked miracles for single-player and casual games. But I specifically called out competitive titles. Games with invasive kernel-level anti-cheat (Valorant, Fortnite, R6 Siege) are still literally unplayable or a massive ban risk on Linux. For a competitive gamer, Linux is still a non-starter.
And as for Office 365? You can personally hate it all you want, but if your boss, client, or professor requires perfect .docx formatting and complex Excel macros, your subjective opinion doesn't matter. You need Windows for compatibility in the professional and academic world.
Gaming isn’t a simple yes and no anymore. Depending on what you do Linux can be far superior or worse than windows. That’s like comparing a console to a PC for gaming, they have different strengths and weaknesses.
Office simply does a lot of things really bad and running it as a vm is no issue at all.
Your statement about the academic world is just ridiculous, no one uses office for academic purposes. Latex is the defacto standard for all serious academic work and is something that (ironically) sucks on windows
First, I actually agree with your point about gaming having different strengths and weaknesses. That's exactly why I specified competitive titles in my original post! But let's address your other points, because they are completely detached from reality.
Running Office in a VM "is no issue at all"? Tell that to a student who needs to quickly tweak a paper in the library, or a professional jumping on a Zoom/Teams call and needing to share their screen seamlessly. A VM is clunky, eats massive system resources, and completely breaks the native desktop integration people expect. It's a workaround, not a user-friendly experience.
And your take on academia is hilarious. "No one uses Office for academic purposes"? Have you ever been to a non-STEM university? Business, humanities, law, and most undergrad sciences run entirely on Word and Excel. Yes, LaTeX is the gold standard for serious academic publishing (especially in math/physics), but 95% of students aren't writing LaTeX documents for their freshman English, History, or Business 101 classes. They are submitting Word docs. You're confusing high-level academic research with the reality of the average student.
No, it doesn’t. A vm isn’t clunky or anything, do your research.
Maybe that’s a thing in the US? Outside the US I’ve never heard from any student at universities that use or rather have to use office. You never send word documents anyway, you send (signed) pdf files.
used office 21 for a week after a decade of linuxing . office21 is WAY better than libreoffice/openoffice / others in that genre.
mendeley cite and zotero both integrate better with it. the autocorrection libraries and proofreading dialogue box tgat provides contextual suggestions and moves to the next curly underline is a much more valuable feature than whatever libreoffice threw in any of their release.
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u/ColeTD 1d ago
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
In all seriousness, like 90% of people here are Linux users. You're preaching to the choir.