Linux

Linux is how home computing was supposed to be.

Being as this is a Linux community, there's definitely going to be more insight into the pros of Linux from responses here. My professional background is as a systems engineer in Windows from xp, vista, 7, 8, 10, 11 and windows servers 2003-present as well as centOS, RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian, and Kali Linux. I've also supported Mac OS X and OS X (currently macOS) server in a more limited capacity and have used laptops of all 3 operating systems.

Windows benefits: I'd say Windows still holds the crown for corporate use. I know this probably isn't what most care about but integration with intune (microsoft mobile device management) and security features such as bitlocker, tpm integrations, FIDO2 passkey support, and directory managed (Entra ID) policies and controls are much stronger under Windows. Windows generally does a good job with backwards compatibility and gaming.

Linux benefits: free as in beer (usually) and FOSS is pretty huge. For the average user its entirely serviceable for web browsing etc. With recent advancements in Proton id say 95+% of gaming requirements are met. More control and much less bloat. You're much more in control of your system but it requires a level of technical proficiency to leverage that control. It's not spying on you. Personally I like Linux permissions system over Windows too for file administration, etc. They tend to have their package management systems be more established too.

Mac benefits: some people enjoy a walled garden. Turn your brain off and go all in on apple products and services. Terrifying to many here but that's a benefit to some. Because everything is so tightly integrated I notice things tend to break less frequently. Great for the technically illiterate and performance is still really good for those who do need video editing, etc. It's surprisingly good for power users too with the BSD underpinning. Better privacy than windows imo.

What I miss? When using Linux and mac i miss the windows familiarity since it was my first OS. But IMO vanilla Debian is a very enjoyable daily driver. I just occasionally break something that takes me an hour to fix. When using windows I get frustrated by how it hamstrings everything and tries to half ass thints. Search breaks all the time. More hanging. Performance dips that make no sense. Windows is easily the least stable in my experience. When using macs I feel the end user experience is quite fun. Snappy. More intuitive. But sometimes I want to do something advanced and itll get in its way reminding me that im a power user and it was seemingly not built with that in mind. A bit too glossy, if that makes sense.

Sorry for the messy formatting. Sending from my phone.

Windows is a hot steaming pile, so I won’t get into that. You really should set you bar higher.

Pros: everything except super cutting edge hardware runs painlessly, right out the box. You can get software for pretty much anything, and it will be free. You can keep using super old hardware until it physically dies. No ads, hardly any telemetry or tracking, no AI junk.

Cons: each program looks and acts different, and might be super opionated and janky. But that’s the situation with Windows anyways. No customer support for private end users, and if you dare ask about your problem online, elite users will berate you and get on your case with arcane commands.

Bottom line: if you feel comfortable with a computer and won’t get scared if the icons and menus look different, try it out.

I can't think of a single thing I miss. I use Windows for work and it's a relief every evening when I can switch to my Linux desktop.

Linux Cons:

• there is always some minor thing that doesn't work quite right, or it takes a lot of searching to find a fix. However this is true on Windows too
• on a fast moving distro things can randomly break here and there, but usually are fixed fast
• some games and apps won't work. Usually when they're trying to do something invasive. Be prepared to find an alternative (or dual boot)
• some hardware doesn't work because the vendor doesn't provide drivers and no open source version exists. If they are actively blocking foss versions, they're a good candidate for the never buy list
• no Copilot (/s)
• if you want things to "just work" and you don't care about personalizing anything and you don't care about your privacy, you may happier on Windows or Mac because you can just take it to a shop and have them fix it. There are just more resources for an OS that commands 80% of the desktop market

Linux Pros:

• my computer is mine and I can control everything
• I can customize things much more than on Windows
• I can upgrade when I'm ready and opt out of any shenanigans
• Everything I care about works. I switched to open source for photo editing. There was a learning curve, though
• software development, even with Microsoft tools (!), is just much nicer on Linux. You don't need WSL when it's already your OS

Workarounds:

• I choose to not buy unsupported hardware
• I choose to not buy unsupported software and games
• I put vendors hostile to freedom on my never buy list (e.g. Adobe)
• I have access to a Windows PC if I need it. But I have not needed it in the last year or so I've been full time on Linux

Not saying going full time Linux was necessarily easy (I gave up Adobe Lightroom and I can't play some AAA games) but I have no regrets. It was actually easier than I had feared.

It's like diet and exercise: it's not easy to change but you'll feel a lot better in the end.

After working with it for a bit the only con I have at this point is my drafting program isn't supported so I run it within a virtual machine on a second monitor. It's hard to even tell it's running in a vm but it's kind of annoying. So far drafting and robust PDF editors have been the only weak area. That's not even Linux though, it's a lack of support from software vendors.

Pro: You own your computer.

Con: You own your computer (and you have to work on maintaining it).

I'm mostly joking. Generally if you have a problem with Linux, you can get help on it. The myth that there are more Windows users, so therefore it's easier to get help with Windows is problematic for a few reasons. One, the number of Windows users who are actually passionate about it are comparable to the number of passionate Linux users, or Mac users. I'm not sure which one leads the others in power users who are happy to help, but I feel like it's Linux. Nobody has Linux because of the computer they bought (or, almost nobody). Windows and Mac have a lot of users who just use the computer they bought with the software that came with it. Virtually no one has Linux who didn't choose it, and they chose it for reason that are important to them, and it's in their best interests to help you learn it, too.

The other myth is the command line. Windows, Mac, and Linux all have a command line/terminal. It's not needed on any of them, but on all of them, there are a couple things you can do that are not easy to do in the GUI.

Honestly if you have Windows, get a live distro and run it. You can run it inside Windows. The performance won't be the same as running it on bare metal, but you can see how it handles your hardware. For most distros you shouldn't have a problem.

(Disclosure: I'm a happy Mac user. I've used Linux off and on (mostly off though) for over 20 years. My favourites have been Red Hat (when it was a home OS; it's called Fedora now) and Ubuntu. I prefer the GNOME interface. I'm comfortable with the command line. I understand that macOS is UNIX, and I also understand that it's not and why it's not.)

Linux's only objective is to get better.

Any commercial OS has the sole objective to make money for its owner.

There are no cons

Pros :

• Reliable, I have nothing to fix and no unusual behaviors or settings on Cachyos. If I set something up the setting won't change on its own.
• Private, no telemetry. No NVIDIA service sending all the apps I launch to HQ.
• No forced software. I can choose to remove most components I dont like and replace them.
• Gaming works as well or better than Windows once its setup.
• I can revert to a previous image of my system right at boot. Very reassuring to know it's easy to revert to a previous state/version of my system.
• More lightweight system, I use way less RAM on idle than on Windows. That's more RAM to use for actual useful stuff like gaming.
• it's free. Doesn't require an account to use.
• it's secure. Much less risk running a linux system than windows. You are a harder target and also a less attractive one for hackers.

Cons :

• I can't play games with kernel level anticheats.
• I sometimes have to spend 10mn when installing a new game to set it up on proton.
• You are still expected by most people to handle their proprietary files coming from Microslop. You have to be able to sign PDF files and return office files.
• HDR support is not really good for games and it often is difficult to have working.

Overall, having switched 4 months ago, I have no regrets and honestly it was a great upgrade for me. Beside the money lost on a game like BF6 I'm very happy to be on linux.

I was really annoyed by my W10 setup anyway. I constantly had settings that would change on their own. I often had bad days where you feel the system struggling even though nothing changed. It was very frustrating. Linux solved that. I dont have bad days on my system. It runs exactly as I left it when it was shutdown. And this expected stability is very comfortable for users.

Highly recommend the switch to cachyos for all Windows gamers. And even for non-gamers it's a very functional and reliable operating system.

This is both a pro and con vs Windows, but definitely something to be aware of. There is a ton of information/documentation available. However, because of how flexible Linux is and the sheet number of distros, you may have to sift through a ton of information to find the solution relevant to your issue. This gets easier over time as you settle on the distro(s) and features you like. Filtering out irrelevant information will almost become a sixth sense.

Pros

I get to own my system. I get to do what I want, if something is not to my liking there's likely a way to make it work like how I want.

Cons

I have to own my system. If something breaks I have to fix it, if something doesn't work I need to figure it out.

and what if any do you miss from windows?

Expect things to work. Linux is a minority of users, any manufacturer or dev HAS to make their products work for Windows, so much so that Windows users don't even consider the possibility that something is not made for Windows.

A pro is that is not Windows 11

No enshittification. You can trust it to get better in the long run.

Pros:

• Easy to manage firewall rules (UFW)
• Different distros based on need
• in conjunction with the above, it's also easier to customize the os (I would say this is depending on the distro) to do exactly what you need and nothing else.
• Terminal usage to handle certain tasks can be much quicker than using the GUI under some circumstances.
• Choice of DE (KDE, Gnome, etc)
• Way less resource intensive with a stock build than a generic windows build (sans maybe an enterprise build but even then those still use more resources on average than most distros).

Cons:

• Distro hopping for new users can be confusing due to different package managers and just overall differences in them. Pick one and stick with it for a little bit to get a feel for how Linux works (unless it is just absolutely not your thing) so you aren't getting confused/overwhelmed by how different they can be.
• Certain tasks can be a bit more complicated for new users (mounting drives on boot, file shares over network)
• Solidworks. I know there is freecad and blender and openscad and onshape, and they do work. But swapping over is painful. Onshape is super similar and browser based but you're also limited by their terms for free use.

My favorite pro is league of legends support.

Pros - My hardware is mine. If I don't like something that shipped with Debian or Mint, I can just remove it. If I'm on Mint but miss something from Debian, there's usually a one line command that will add it back.

Also, most versions of Desktop Linux are free. I don't mind paying for software, but keeping track of Windows license keys was a pain in the ass.

Cons - I mean, it's still a computer. Computers are dumb. Installing it - while way simpler than a Windows upgrade, still took me a few minutes of clicking "next".

I intend for my next computer to ship with Linux Mint pre-installed, because I'm that lazy.

What do I miss from Windows?

Nothing.

I used to dual boot Windows for gaming, but now there's only 5 games in my Steam Library that don't run on Linux.

Five.

I gave up five games, to kick Windows out of my life.

I would tell you which ones, but I haven't actually run across which ones. I only know it's five because I can subtract the numbers before anand after I click the "only show me Linux compatible games" filter button.

Pros:

• I have the source. I don't have to wait for fixes or features. I just do it myself and send a patch or PR upstream.
• I can run it on just about anything, and well.
• Sane defaults and handling of user permissions - by design
• Modern filesystems that don't silently rot your data
• Full control
• No forced updates
• No telemetry

Cons:

• Not a priority for pro applications
• Not fully POSIX compliant

I haven't used windows in almost 30 years, but.. I probably missed some games at first that DOSBox couldn't run well (yet). Not a problem any more.

Pros: it's Linux :D

Cons: it's Linux ;(

I think the only thing anyone ever misses is the driver and software support. Love wine but some programs will never have full capabilities.

Pro: It does what I need an OS to do. Mostly, I need it to manage my hardware devices and staying out of my way.
Con: It's a pain in the ass when it occasionally decides to stop managing my hardware devices and gets in my way.

What do I miss from Windows: Nothing. I've been using Linux since 1997. Back then Win95 was absolute shitshow. Idk what it is now. I don't much care.

Pros:

• Better UX for system. On Windows and Mac you're stuck with the old-style window movement desktops which suck and are chaos with lots of effort to maintain when trying to do anything productive. Even with third-party tools it's nothing like being able to have something like Niri. It's just better on the Linux world.
• It actually meets your needs instead of making your change your needs. The customization is insane, but usually you don't even have to go very far to be happy.
• No bloat, no forced features like AI (tho you can get your own AI stuff if you want), less privacy concerns, better tools generally

Microsoft Windows is actually a complete piece of crap

Unfortunately, cons of switching:

• Have to use non-standard apps for certain things like office files or DAWs for audio production
  • Tho, these are less bad these days. In fact, some are better like I'll take Blender over Maya any day, and I use OnlyOffice even on Windows, bc why pay for the "Copilot App" (formerly MS Office) when OnlyOffice is just as good and is fully compatible?
• Some games don't work (esp multiplayer), and sometimes for no good reason other than the devs don't like Linux users, e.g. Bungie.
  • Also far better than it used to be. Very few things I miss out on
• MacOS clearly has the better app distribution system. A single folder with all necessary deps save a couple core libraries. Simple, effective, can still be put in a store. Instead we have an obsession with sandboxing or overcomplicated packages. AppImages were so close to being right. But nope. We can't have nice things sometimes

I've been using Linux-only since around 2019 (having used it alongside Windows for gaming before then) when Proton finally started getting good. I'm also an engineer, artist, writer, gamer, musician, maker, and more, so I feel like I have touched a lot of the different ways in which computers are used. I've used several distros for extended periods, and my fav is Arch (tho Nix is a close second; it's just not quite ready for primetime)

Linux is absolutely a viable alternative, but you have to know what you want from your PC. How do you want it to function? Pick that choice. It's not ice-cream flavors where all are equal and you have to decide; form follows function here. Decide what you need and then build your own system from that - bc Linux is yours. Refuse to be spoonfed slop no matter if the slop is from Microsoft or from a Linux distro. Slop is slop. Cook your own meal. It tastes better. If you don't like mushrooms, don't get mushrooms.

Fedora 44 Cinnamon user.

My last "computer" was an Android tablet with a physical keyboard and trackball so I can't really answer your second question.

As for the pros. Free, runs great on old used hardware, updates don't really bugger the system, super easy on system resources, my used computer has 8 gb of ddr4 and that is plenty for my usage.

Con. Doesn't play all video formats. When I first switched to Fedora 42 I tried for a week to get videos to play. Every "tutorial" and forum gave the same ineffective answer. Now I just copy any video to my old Android tablet and watch them that way. Please, no advise on this, I'm happy with my solution, thanks.

Nothing missing from windows. From Mac though? Being able to text from your Mac, easily airdrop, easier network shares, support for Lightroom, fusion 360, most cad and photo software really.

But it’s an immediate replacement for windows. Zero reason not to switch. Even if you love games that don’t work on Linux, you should switch just to force those makers to support Linux

Pros: Customization, privacy, ease of use (And yes, it's much easier to use than Windows when you are fully aware of its "ins and outs".)

Cons: None.

Then again, if I -REALLY- had to use Windows, I'd use it on another PC (preferably w/o internet) while leaving my "main" PC for Linux only. Scary, I know.

Disclaimer: This is obviously subjective. YMMV.

Pros:

• It's open source.
• It is not actively spying on me.
• Downloading software from a package repository is so much better than grabbing the install file through your favorite internet browser.
• The OS does what I want. And does not do anything I don't want.
• Freedom to do whatever you want with your OS. For example, yesterday I literally swapped out my desktop environment for another. M$ doesn't offer this freedom.
• On that note, the workflows that WMs allow are absolutely chef's kiss. Also a boon to your productivity. They look gorgeous as well.
• I don't have to deal with criminally long updates anymore. No multiple reboots for updates either.
• It has made me love the terminal.
• Software development is so much better on Linux.
• I don't know why..., but it feels like I got more time 😅. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if my mental health has also improved since I've started using Linux.

Cons:

• No Windows Defender. Yes I said it. Even if it hoards/saps a lot of resources. While it is a retrofit solution to combat how easy it is to get malware on M$, I can't deny how much I'd have loved something similar on Linux. ClamAV simply can't compare.
• Some software regard Linux-users as second-class citizens. Anecdotally, Davinci Resolve worked pretty nice on Windows. On Linux, it didn't. Instead, it has brought me sorrow and agony 😭.
• Some hardware regard Linux-users as second-class citizens. For example, the ThinkPad I bought last year has worked absolutely lovely on Linux. But my previous laptop, a HP Pavilion, had some glaring issues that got never fixed...

what if any do you miss from windows?

Windows Defender.

Pro: I can update when I want. Updates don't have me guessing every single time if they're going to completely override my configurations. The updates themselves aren't bug riddled AI garbage installing yet another electron app. My Linux mint uses about half the RAM a Windows 11 install used on the exact same PC and doesn't constantly thrash my SSD or spike my CPU. Every issue I've run into has just been a lack of knowledge on my part, and easily fixed by guides online. Last time I had to help someone with an issue on their Windows 11 it took more time sifting through guides trying to find where the hell they'd moved settings and failed to document something than I ever want to spend again.

Cons: I genuinely have not found one yet personally. I'm not saying Linux is perfect, just I've had zero real issues myself.

Pros: all mentioned in other comments con: I personally find it difficult to manage nvidia gpu drivers