I think we mostyl agree
I just differentiate between my personal viewpoint and what I see “out in the field” when I do service for “normal users” and try to gather as much obejctive user experience as possible…
It often comes down to a very personal set of “which compromise am I willing to go for” and “which shortcoming do I personally feel important or not”…
Of course there are many examples where linux is way easier to work with or is able to detect and use hardware which is long abandondend in the windows world - or where driver support because of a very strong community is much better than in cases where a manufacturer doesn´t exist anymore or doesn´t want to put any effort into support for an older product.
When I put some old healdess Kepler GPUs in a Linux machine - all I have to do is swithc to the proprietary driver and its fully supported out of the box, rendering everyhting on the bigger headless GPU, outputting it on my smaller GPU attached to the screen. Doing the same in Windows often involves registry tweaks, driver hacks etc…
And - as I already said - in many cases, it still works right out of the box. I fully aknowledge that a lot of what people say about Linux is simply based on prejudices and in many cases plain wrong or long obselete.
But if I go to a customer, lets say a dentist… And they want to implement the security thingy (a fixed VPN in this case) presented from the medical association which they have to use by law - the desktop Software they use for it is a windows software. The software they use to model the 3D-models for the teeth implants is a windows driven solution. The calender/Calender/etc… are all windows based front ends on windows machines… Of course, I could get everything somehow to run into a Linuix environment - but as soon as I need the support of any of these companies, no one has a clue on how to deal with that indivdually tweaked system anymore… It doesn`t matter that in theory this all could be done in Linux and probably would work better here and there - no one cares - it simply has to work, time is money and the company offering the one solution you need to buy simply does it on windows…
Or: my neighbour who is no PC affiliate / technical person… wants to go for a new Laptop, wants to integrate his heart beat monitor smartwatch, watch netflix, connect his new Gameconsole, etc… (all made up examples, but you get the point) and has trouble doing “small things” - he can ask his son, his other neighbour, call the support, etc… and chances that he will get it running are - statistically speaking - higher if he is in windows. not because linux can´t do it in general, but because there are far more poeple and companies “knwoing windows”…
Or: I go to an old friend with a creative studio, who did a lot of print and still does - he doesn´t care if ot COULD be possible to do it in Linux - he buys a whole machine from the companie offering the Linotpye support for his print-on-demand center machine he bought for 2 million bucks - and this machine is based on windows - he doesn´t care whats under the hood, he pays 2000 bucks a month for a service contract - and the machine that comes with the whole soultion is a windows one… So he uses that, the support he calls knows that - and as soon as he or me tamperes with it, he gets no more support. So he rather lives with the fact that 3 functions are buggy (that would work in linux flawlseewlee), rather than changing anything and having no support any more…
I am fully aware that there are countless examples of “Linux could do the same or even better” - but decision often are based on a totally different gorund of arguments than the technical basis we are covering here. Around 10 years ago, many cities in europe started to switch to linux in order to get rid of contracts, open up the systems, make them exchangeable (city 1 develops solution, city 2 takes it for free), etc… I loved it… the idea was great and "somebody has to start (chicken / egg) "
10 years later, the governement changed and the new people in charge where close minded enough while also being close enough to microsoft representatives who tolled them that “all the problems they have would be gone when they switched back to windows”… So … they tossed everything out again - and bought everything new - from Microsoft… Personally, I think this was a desaster and I certainly would have made myself the advocate for the linux solution IF I were in charge…
But I also realise that the market/people/companies simply “work” like this - and the reasons why someone takes a certain route in decision- making is often suboptimal from one viewpoint and good from another…
And after decades of dealing with all kinds of implementations, solutions, service, etc… I just see the point that “doing a linux version” of a piece of software still is not something that is profitable when talking about desktop software… Most decision makers simply don´t care if linux could also do it or even better - the MAC or windows solution is good enough, everyone knows it - so just buy this… (beleive me, I spend my years trying to argue the other way and try to change peoples minds…)