Post from u/BestRetroGames on the r/kde, not mine. Interesting perspective nonetheless
Actually I started with a Commodore 64, so command line OSs have never been a problem for me. As a matter of fact MS DOS remains my all time favorite OS. I still have it and use it on my retro machine.
But Windows has always made my life very easy and every single time I had tried Linux since the time the first Matrix came along and I was a little bit into hacking, I just didn't feel like it was worth the sacrifices (gaming on our campus was huge).
I tried Ubuntu in 2013 , then in 2018 .. I know a well polished SW when I see one, this was not quite there. And honestly, I was still running Windows 7, which is one of the best OSs ever as far as ease of use is concerned. I can appreciate the power use functions of an OS.. but I just wanted the OS to do what is supposed to do with minimum input/tweaking from my side. Win 7 did this very well without hogging my PC with all kinds of background running crap. There was a time where I knew every process by name as I maintained a lean running OS.
Windows 10 came along. Suddenly with every other update, slowly but surely the OS was no longer serving MY needs. I felt like I am no longer fully in control of my own PC (hello mandatory updates, un-uninstallable bloatware and 100s of background processes/services that take 5-10% of my CPU on Idle).. Suddenly it felt like I have no clue what is running on my own system. NOT A GOOD FEELING. I gave one more try of Ubuntu in 2020.. not quite there yet.
But Windows 10 kept getting worse.. well I said at least I got it for free as an upgrade from Win 7. The thing is, apps for Windows keep getting bigger and more and more bloated + many are adopting subscription based models (I HATE those). But I said.. I love gaming.. can't do that easily on Linux.
Some misguided people told me to switch to MAC. MAC? I hate MACs more than anything in the world. Their closed monopoly crap drives me nuts.. not to mention the crazy price.
Now for productivity, I work in a mega corporation, we are on Win 10 fully integrated into Azure so that is kind of set in stone. I don't care, it runs my e-mail, chat and MS Project. But everything else?
I tried again 2 days ago. Downloaded Kubuntu this time. And yes... this is it guys... you have finally done it! Finally Linux as far as Desktop is concerned has in my eyes surpassed Windows. Yeah yeah I know it has always been more powerful in certain ways but ease of use has never been its strong side.
Now it is also better from a point of view that the OS is making my life simple. I don't need to care about anything.. install & go.
Had a look at some videos.. really nice selection of distributions.. I love the fact one can choose one that is suited towards certain needs.
And now I see also there is huge compatibility with Steam/Epic Store games? Unbelievable. Don't have much time to game anymore but those couple of games I DO play, nice to know I can play them.
I am planning on buying a Mini PC to replace my home media center laptop (an old Asus G51JX from 2010) and my condition was that it had to come with a Win 10 Home because I couldn't be bothered to install anything else... but now? Hell no.. I am putting Linux on that machine.
Another last thing the Linux community has finally gotten it. It has to look beautiful out of the box, animations, effects, all of it.. while remaining fluid, fast and responsive. And yeah.. again.. you have done it. It looks more beautiful than Windows (which in my eyes peaked at Windows 7 with Aero)
I've been into IT for 40 years now.. since I was 5 years old. I work in IT.. and I am pretty sure Linux has a really good chance of spreading to the home desktop space like never before. Especially with Windows going down the drain real fast. Can't wait to see how Linux evolves in the next 5 years. Exciting!
I understand this is not your opinion, but surely someone told him that Kubuntu has looked and behaved the same for year. Here are screenshots of Kubuntu 18.04 and Kubuntu 23.04, and even before that KDE has been very constant in how it looks and feels for a long time, default themes have changed but you can probably get an old Kubuntu with an old Plasma and be able to achieve the same result since the usability and etc have remained almost constant.
Also I don't think wine has gotten significantly better lately, mostly because for a while it already runs almost everything that is not actively trying to prevent it from working (i.e. DRM).
I'd argue that wine continues to improve as Valve submits upstream patches. Linux users can install Proton and take advantage of additional wine modifications that work around more issues, including a few DRM fixes.
By the time the entire Steam library is proton-compatible, I suspect proton will be better at running Windows games than modern Windows is, given the support for older games that require significant effort to use on Win 10/11
Yes, wine is an ever evolving piece of software, but the original posts mentions trying Linux in 2018 and 2020, and realistically nothing significant changed since then. There has been constant improvements, but even back in 2018 the only games that wouldn't run on Linux were games that were specifically trying to prevent it, emgm anti-cheat and DRM, I don't think anyone could look at the state of 2018 and say it was significantly different from today.
That being said Valve does deserves a lot of praises for getting it to where it is now, and we should vote with our wallet so they know it is appreciated.
But I think 100% Steam compatibility will never happen, like I mentioned the games that don't run on wine today are in their vast majority games that actively try to prevent you from running them in wine, most of those games even if you were able to bypass whatever protection they have you're risking getting banned.
This is where the tiny teensy QOL, bug fixes, and performance improvements come in. Over time, they made enough of a difference that they became qualitative and made this Reddit user fall for KDE.
A lot of things around wine got better too like dxvk and vkd3