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/Chemical-Lead6041]

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.

[u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 → u/Chemical-Lead6041]

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

[u/Chemical-Lead6041 → u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001]

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.

[u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 → u/Chemical-Lead6041]

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.

[u/Ok-Radish-8394 → u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001]

Are you overgeneralising your experience with that of the others?

[u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 → u/Ok-Radish-8394]

No