I have a Mac laptop, a Linux workstation, and a Windows workstation for different purposes and I use them all. I agree. Every time someone says they switched OSes and they don’t miss anything, it’s revealed that 90-100% of their work was in generic outlets like the web browser, terminal, e-mail, and Slack.

To be fair, that could cover a lot of people.

In my experience watching people make the switch in the real world, the failure point is either the last 10% of software that they actually need, or the first time they encounter some Linux quirk that they didn’t expect. Then it reaches a point where there isn’t really any upside for people who aren’t ideologically motivated and who don’t get triggered by Windows 11 design choices or occasional pop-ups.

I have some specific engineering software that must run on Windows, period. I’ve gotten flak from the software engineers at every company whenever it’s discovered that my second machine is Windows, but outside of software devs nobody else questions it. Using Windows for work is perfectly understood by most other disciplines

Windows pop-ups can all be turned off. I have them all turned off on my machines and nothing pops up anymore. Windows is extremely customizable and modifiable and it runs 100% of Windows software which is most of the software being produced in the world today.

Windows 11 isn't running half as bad for me as most here seem to say.

I experience no delays with the start menu, and it's perfectly smooth on my 240 Hz monitor.

I also never encountered crashes like described as OP's reason for the switch.

So what do I have to gain from using Linux? A bit better compatibility for my software work, but much worse game compatibility. Fewer annoying popups, but they aren't that frequent on Windows either. Probably a worse update experience, and more time spent configuring.

The only reason I'm not using Linux on my work-provided computer is due to the security software. None of it runs on Linux, it only runs on Windows and MacOS. Glad I don't have to use any software that only runs on Windows to do development. Hopefully the security software will someday support Linux.