🐧 Why i came back to windows.

Heyo :)

This is bound to get hate on here, but oh well haha.

Just like most people, windows was the first OS i used. Then eventually as i started tinkering with stuff I found out about linux... you can guess the rest.

Anyway, i've spent the past few years either just running linux or dual booting. Every now and then i would go back to windows, but then get bored and switch back to linux. However, i've been back on just windows for a few months now, and I dont feel like switching again.

Ofcourse there is stuff i miss from Linux, but here is why i'm not going back (for now):

Gaming.I've gotten more and more into gaming recently. I know that linux has increasingly good gaming support, but a lot of stuff either requires hours of tinkering for it to break in a week or straight up won't work. Im glad that linux *can* be used for gaming now, depending on the games you like, but unfortunately its still behind windows on this. Same extends to general app compatibility.

UII've always quite liked the windows UI. Currently, i use my start menu as an app drawer with nothing on the desktop and then i just have some rainmeter widgets. My problem with all the linux DEs ive tried is they all have *some* kind of issue. Its always small stuff like how this one menu is wierd or i dont like how the clock looks. I know it can all be customized, and thats exactly what i was doing, but eventually i just gave up. I find a clean, good looking setup important. If i go on r/unixporn all i see are Tiling WMs like i3 and openbox and a bunch of setups that look good in the pics but are useless for doing stuff. Gnome looks bad imo. xfce was my faveourite, but still didnt look amazing unless you spend 3 months customizing it. etc etc.

Windows is becoming less... Windows?

One of my favourite linux features is the package manager. Recently microsoft added "winget" which is basically windows apt-get, and it has support for a lot of apps. Powertools, another new feature, has some cool things already and its showing potential. The new windows terminal is better than any console for linux (apart from maybe hyper but thats available for windows too anyway). Many microsoft projects are going open source and so on.

There is also the 3rd party chocolatey which is neat.

WSL(2)

I've always liked being able to have a "swiss army knife" of any tool i use, OSses included. Linux can run some windows apps well with wine, but many dont work properly or at all. Windows however, in pretty much any case i can think of, either has a better or equal windows alternative/port, or you can just run the linux app in wsl. WSL used to be pretty useless but WSL2 means it runs pretty much full linux almost on metal. With a 3rd party x server you can run GUI apps and have them be handled as normal windows without any issues, and microsoft has announced that they are brining this feature into the os so that its supported natively. You can also pin linux apps to the start and have them integrated quite well into the system. This is really cool imo.the only thing i am worried about here is that it looks like microsoft is attempting the embrace extend extinguish technique, which whilst it is nice to have all these features, it is worrying to me.

I always needed windows installed somehow anyway.

I always needed either a vm or a dual boot of windows to be installed. With what i do i could never fully make the switch in the first place.

A lot of the issues i had with windows are gone.

The updates bs from before? Seems to be sorted now. I got 1 update in the last 5 months that needed restarting, everything else was installed in the background. It dosent pop up in your face and beg for you to restart it anymore.

The inconsitency is being worked on and they have already announced teasers of the next few updates that are (finally) smoothing things out.

Privacy: maybe i dont care enough anymore but i already handed my life to google so... i dont care enough anymore.

Anyway, knowing me i'll probably come back in like 6 months because i will be bored again but these are just my two cents for now. Let me know what you think of it, especially the part where windows is embracing a lot of the stuff people like linux for. I wanna know what people think of that.

:)