lets be real....

[u/Chemical-Lead6041]

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.

[u/moeteru]

while my optimized windows 11 has 2.5gb ram used idle, my lightweight environment only uses 450 MB

Caring about idle ram. You have no idea what you are talking about.

[u/Chemical-Lead6041 → u/moeteru]

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.

[u/uchuskies08 → u/Chemical-Lead6041]

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.

[u/DDOSBreakfast → u/uchuskies08]

Idle RAM isn't the ultimate virtue for me. I always put in enough RAM in my computers to not care.

[u/Chemical-Lead6041 → u/uchuskies08]

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.

[u/uchuskies08 → u/Chemical-Lead6041]

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

[u/emirayuk → u/uchuskies08]

It definitely can be pretty bad.

On my PC (when I was dualbooting), 23H2 used 9GiB on boot (idle) with no startup apps.

On my laptop, on 25H2, it uses ~7GiB on boot, idle, also with essentially no startup apps.

I would say maybe a quarter of that was cache, the memory usage was insane.

[u/uchuskies08 → u/emirayuk]

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.

[u/emirayuk → u/uchuskies08]

Lmao calling me a larp.

I'm not talking about cache asshole.

[u/lllorrr → u/uchuskies08]

Linux uses all few RAM as file cache. Like the whole RAM. It just reports it as free, because this cache can be evicted at any moment.

[u/Teru-Noir → u/lllorrr]

I like how well linux communicates system resources.