Traches

If I came across as argumentative, judgemental, hostile, or condescending I am really sorry, that was not my intent. Your tone here is super hostile, and that honestly hurts my feelings a bit. The simple fact that we're on this forum says we share a common interest, and at the end of the day we're both nerds who could probably sit down with a beer and have an enjoyable conversation. It's an operating system, it's not something to get in fights over. You are right that I want people to switch to Linux, so long as it meets their needs. I think the privacy and security improvements are in their best interest, and I think growing the community is in everyone's best interest. My entire case is that Linux is better than you give it credit for, and windows is worse than you give it credit for. That doesn't necessarily mean windows isn't your best option, it's just not the only option for gaming anymore.

Regarding GUI vs CLI: They're tools. Both have their place. A GUI is a layer of abstraction over a CLI, which in some situations greatly improves the experience, and in others can only serve to slow down an experienced user. A GUI Has "discoverability". This means that a new user can sit down and figure it out without outside reference. This is huge. Helps users out, to some degree. Visual design allows dangerous options to look dangerous, and important options to look important. A well designed GUI feels intuitive, because it guides the user along the path they're most likely trying to follow. Allows you to work with things that aren't text. Also huge. Could you imagine a command line implementation of photoshop? It would be terrible. Tends to be mouse focused. A CLI: Requires outside reference. Often requires more mental effort to use than a GUI. In many use cases, this single drawback outweighs all other benefits. Allows an experienced user to accomplish many things much faster than through a comparable GUI, and to multitask more easily. Is keyboard focused, which is generally faster. Is easier to develop applications for. Many GUI applications are simply wrappers for existing CLI applications. Is easier to develop applications which communicate with each other. It's trivial to write a script to run command line instructions programatically (for example, resize many images in a folder, or rename many files based on certain rules) Requires a tiny fraction of the computing power that a GUI does. This allows the use of old or limited hardware. Related to the previous point: SSH is much less bandwidth intensive than remote desktop. Transmitting text input and output between 2 computers is far simpler than remotely mirroring an entire desktop environment. The better you get at using a command line, the closer you get 'to the metal' and the more you understand how your PC works. It is an amazingly powerful tool; calling it 'stone age' is pretty ignorant. That said, any distro targeted towards general use must be completely configurable without the use of a terminal. My fiancee called me earlier today because she had accidentally hit the 'insert' button on her keyboard and couldn't figure out how to fix it; she is not going to be changing her desktop background via the command line anytime soon. She is certainly capable of learning that, but she shouldn't have to in the same way that you shouldn't have to know in detail how a car works in order to drive one. The baseline mental effort required to use most Linux distros is too high for most people, and that is one of the single biggest obstacles to its adoption.

Subjective opinion I guess; I got tired of it after many years of using it. Also I don't like being spied on, and I don't like the fact that windows answers to Microsoft first, and the user second. That's a deep, fundamental, unfixable problem. Linux's problems are fixable. Nobody says Linux is perfect. Literally all of us know that there are huge problems with Linux, because we've dealt with them personally. Look at how popular Brian Lunduke's "Linux Sucks" videos are-- we laugh because we can relate. We're saying they're worth it, because Linux brings some huge advantages that you don't find on proprietary operating systems. You're yelling. Why are you yelling? I'm not ignoring the usability issues. I'm not saying Linux is the ultimate operating system for all use cases on all hardware. For example I'd never suggest that a pro photographer switch to Linux, because the Adobe suite doesn't run on it and the FOSS alternatives aren't up to scratch. It sucks but it's true. The same is true for gaming-- if you're building a dedicated gaming rig, and your only concern is gaming performance and convenience, you'd be better served by Windows. My point is that there's more to the story than convenience. I'm making mountains out of molehills here a bit, but take ads in the start menu for example: They demonstrate that Microsoft is willing to actively and deliberately harm its users when it benefits them. And that's only one example; who knows what information it sends back to the mothership? With forced automatic updates, even if it respects your privacy now, there's nothing to say that can't change any day. You, and the community at large, has no way to review new changes to ensure they are in your best interest. The fundamental difference between a proprietary operating system and an open source one is control. When you run Linux, you are 100%, completely in control of absolutely every aspect of your system. Should you choose to, you can allow or deny absolutely every single thing that your computer does, every entity it communicates with, and every bit of information it sends to them. Even if you don't care to learn those things, others in the community do and you can benefit from their efforts. That is simply not true of Windows, and no amount of yelling changes that. Security and privacy are crucially important issues. At the risk of being overly dramatic, have you read 1984? A big theme in the book was a complete and total lack of privacy at all times. A lot of Big Brother's power came from complete control of information, both as a consumer and a producer. The biggest instrument of this was the 'telescreen', which is basically a tv with a camera and a microphone. People could be monitored at any time, without their knowledge. Smartphones are basically the same thing these days. Obviously that book is fiction, but it's well regarded for a reason. Right now, your computer, your phone, and your google account are sharing with strangers a volume of detailed information that you would never voluntarily provide even to your close friends and family. These people don't have your best interest at heart, and they arguably know more about you than even you do yourself. They are simply trying to profit from this information by any viable means, and that's before you even get into the terrifying implications of a government with access to this amount of information with only a subpoena (and often not even that!) The potential for abuse is breathtaking, but because it happens quietly in the background nobody cares. The only reasonable solution to this problem is free and open source software. If nobody can read the source code, nobody knows what it does. There shouldn't be black box programs spying on people from their own devices, it's immoral and harmful. You're completely right that Linux can be an absolute pain in the ass sometimes, trust me I know. It's still worth it. Linux is not a single, unified product delivered by a single organization. It's many groups of people building parts-- this has the benefit of not answering to anyone, and giving the end user an outstanding array of options to choose from in every aspect of their system, but it also complicates support and leads to fragmentation. There's no single piece of software you are forced to use; if you don't like something, literally anything, you can change it. That's not true on windows. Fragmentation sucks in some ways, but in other ways it's truly amazing. Yeah, unnecessary forking is an issue. But having many different choices can be a good thing. You're also very angry. I'll say a few things: It's getting better. It's far from perfect, some things blow windows out of the water, others are a huge pain in the ass, but overall it's miles better than it was even a few years ago. You can download things from a browser just fine on Linux. You don't lose that capability, you just get a better option: Download from a repository where an independent 3rd party has reviewed and signed off on the software as not being malware. The terminal really isn't that bad. It's just different from what you're used to. If you can build a PC, you can learn a little bash. Seems to me like the anti-linux guys are the angry ones. I'm not here to say everyone and their mother should ditch Windows, I'm here to say that Linux is a viable option for many use cases, rises to the dizzying heights of "better than windows" in some cases (programming mostly), and those use cases are expanding as time goes on. Also, personally I don't like being surveilled by my own computer.

Disclaimer: I haven't personally tried any of these games. Which distro shouldn't matter too much; Mint Fallout 4: https://www.protondb.com/app/377160 Looks like you need to install some special audio packages and make some launch tweaks. Getting a mod manager running may be a bit of an ordeal, but it's doable. League of Legends looks to be a bit more difficult. You can run it under wine, or possibly as a 'non steam game' with steam play. https://www.unrankedsmurfs.com/blog/lol-linux Witcher 3 looks pretty good, many say it worked right out of the box with no tweaks. https://www.protondb.com/app/292030

Overall I agree with your post, but I'd like to point out that Windows isn't good, it's just familiar and we'll supported. It has plenty of quirks and problems, and I'm not convinced that anybody actually likes it. Also, privacy and security matter and you compromise both by using a proprietary OS. They're not usually particularly important to any one individual in a practical, daily sense, but when we in aggregate lose them the implications become horrifying. Society as a whole would benefit from an open source OS replacing windows as the default. It's chicken and egg, nobody uses Linux because hardware and software support sucks, and developers don't support Linux because nobody uses it. That's why I'm so stoked about proton-- gamers tend to be on the nerdy side, tech support for friends and family, often tired of windows and looking for a better option. I know I fell into that boat for a long time. If proton is what finally pushes Linux into viability for that group of people, maybe it snowballs from there. Gaming on Linux right now is objectively worse than windows. You should still do it.

Why would someone make a "we can help" post if they are "pushing the narrative" that it just works? Pushing a narrative would be pretending that problems don't exist, not offering to help fix them. And no, "just works" isn't black and white. All operating systems require some amount of configuration, setup, and even troubleshooting. The question is how much; it's a gradient. The point is that Linux is better and more viable as a desktop than ever before, especially as a gaming platform. It's not perfect, it's not polished, but it's doable with a pretty reasonable amount of effort. For many workloads and hardware configurations, it arguably does "just work", and it provides many advantages over closed source, proprietary operating systems.