Agreed. To expand on your OS comment, SerenityOS is an operating system that was largely written by one guy. Then he started a web browser for it ( Ladybird ).
Despite having a lot more help on the browser, he expects it to take longer. It is very clear that a modern web browser is a much bigger undertaking than the OS.
A browser engine is such a significant investment that even Microsoft sees it as too much effort. They dropped their internal engine to switch to Blink ( Chromium ).
Yes, because it would be crazy to learn keyboard skills for text editing. Such a super great point.
The thing about the vi keystrokes is that almost all programming editors support them. There are few skills that will save you more time and retraining than vi movements as you inevitably move from editor to editor.
Vim, IntelliJ / Rider, and VS Code. If you know the vi movements, you are productive in any of them right away.
Runs fine on Linux.
Well, now you are hitting on my real recommendation which is to use Distrobox. Distrobox allows you to install multiple userlands that are all isolated from each other but all seem native on your system and give you full access to shared files and resources ( even the GUI desktop ).
It is very common to work on something not that just has outdated packages but that targets a specific distribution. If you are building something that will target an Alpine container in the cloud, it is handle to create an Alpine Distrobox to have all the same libraries. Similarly an app might target a specific version of Ubuntu. One of the products I worked on last year was based on Ubuntu 18.04. I could easily create an Ubuntu 18.04 Distrobox to work on that.
Distrobox also means I can prevent the build-up of cruft from all the little specialty tools and dependencies that projects require that I will not need long term. Remove the Distrobox and remove all the junk.
This is different than pure Docker to Podman though since Distrobox still gives you full access to your base system. You only have to install what you uniquely need in Distrobox. So i am not necessarily installing all my tools in Distrobox. Just the specialty ones.
Anyway, this is a more complicated answer and setup. In my view, the host environment still matters a lot and what I said above still stands.
In my view, you need a distro that has up-to-date packages. It also helps to have repos that have all the obscure tools you are going to want to ensure compatibility with everything.
Those two criteria eliminate a lot of distros. Arch or an Arch derivative like EndeavourOS are my picks for these reasons.
Not the OP but he may mean that application authors have unintentionally made Windows a monopoly.
Either way, I am not sure I agree about the intentionality. App devs didn’t slip and support only Windows by accident. They may not have explicitly intended all the consequences of Windows monopoly but one dominant platform is an advantage for the app vendors too. Too many targets to support is part of what keeps commercial software off Linux.
The only ones hurt by a Windows monopoly are the consumers. Well, and commercial Windows alternatives obviously. But all the app makers are fine with it.
Valve ( makers of Steam ) can be seen as an alternative platform for gaming. This is why you see Valve investing so heavily in Linux even though they make all their money on Windows.
I cannot speak for the OP but most of the pepper claiming they are waiting will not switch. They may use an illegally patched or trimmed version of Windows 11. Many won’t even do that.
The biggest risk for Microsoft is that everybody stays on Windows 10 without updates. Or that massive customers will force them to push back the “enterprise” date over and over. To encourage migration, expect Microsoft to make Windows 10 just as bad as 11 before support expires.
Windows is a platform for Office. Linux is not a supported platform for Office. Most businesses will not migrate their desktops off Windows because they will not migrate their workforce off Office.
Beyond that, Windows is not as important to Microsoft as it used to be. The real money makers are Azure and Office. With Azure, they do not care if you run Linux. They even have their own distro ( Azure Linux — previously CBL Mariner ).
Azure is the future ( even for Office ).
Since Windows is less strategic, Microsoft is looking to milk it as a cash cow while they can. So, Product Management is tasked with finding new ways to monetize it. Data is worth a lot of money. The best way to farm data from users these days is to frame it as security ( or AI ).
Expect a lot more SIngle Sign On. Expect a lot more AI. Expect a lot more cloud integration. Expect all of these to focus on data harvesting.
A bit later, expect “services” for Linux that attempt the same. Like Google on Android. This is harder though as Windows does not have monopoly control over Linux as a platform. I am sure they are having many meetings about how to change that.
When it takes 5 days to boot, you don’t have time to wait for IF statements
So you don’t support Wayland yet?
Newer kernel matters and can actually make the distro more new user friendly for sure.
Newer packages as well which prevents you from having to find newer versions in PPAs and other places. In my view, this makes a distro less stable and harder to maintain.
In fact, I think Arch can be more stable than Ubuntu precisely because Arch users hardly ever have to look beyond the repos. I think Arch users really less on Flatpak for the same reason. In theory the AUR is no different than a PPA but it causes way fewer problems in practice ( especially conflicts ). There is something about APT as well that handles conflicts by removing stuff ( stuff you may really need ). Pacman and dnf do not seem to do that.
If they are having to add compat, it is because it is a popular site that is already ignoring Firefox. I am sure they have communicated the problems. The website operators don’t care.
What hurts Firefox market share is when regular users have problems on the sites they frequent. The lower Firefox market share, the fewer sites care about it ( as you seem to understand ). Firefox has to make these kinds of fixes.