>asking me to decide whether to increase the limit

I think once every 2-5 years I get a new Linux computer, hit the inotify.max_user_watches thing, do a search, run a command once, and then never think about that particular problem on that machine again.

I'm not a windows user anymore, haven't been for a decade or so, but it wasn't until a couple months that I finished the switch when I moved from windows to bazzite in my gaming rig.

Which is why this statement is surprising. Not because I disagree with it, Linux friction is indeed unpredictable even for those of us that customized our own installation ad infinitum and know intimately the architecture of the system.

It's because friction in windows is even more unpredictable, at least with the limited interaction I had with it recently. Peripherals will disconnect randomly and removing them in order to reconnect fails. You still have to use decades old interface like regedit end device manager often to fix those issues. Random update reboots, updates that fail without useful logs, only generic error codes. And the whole culture of downloading and installing execs is the worst if all. There is the windows store, which is terrible, and chocolatey which is nice, and they aren't a full replacement for going online and downloading random binary blobs, which is a huge source of unpredictability, because suddenly every software needs to implement their own private supply chain to deliver their updates.

So all in all Linux has less friction than windows. It breaks down with updates, you go online and can usually find resources to help you fix it. Windows breaks down and it usually takes someone inside to acknowledge the problem, fix it and release in the next update, because there are some classes of problems that just aren't fixable in windows, and those that are will usually take you through a journey into the system registry that, if you asked me, didn't age too nicely.

It is largely what one is used to but for me windows was always this unknowable black box, sure, you could get good at it but there was always so much, no source, many interlinked subsystems. when things work it is not so bad. when they don't... Linux was a lot better, especially if you use a more minimal distro, But even it is this huge confusing mess. What really clicked for me was when I tried openbsd, it was the first time I felt like I had a system I really understood. I started with a router, now I am one of those wierdos who use it on the desktop. I would not actually recommend it to anyone, like I said it is largely what you are used to. but for me linux always felt more knowable than windows.

In my experience, I've seen this get messy having to have some apps on the windows filesystem and reading and writing back and forth to the WSL layer for various files. It works, it's just a degraded experience compared to what I have seen going all in on either side.

Is there a reason you don't do the contrary?

> I don't like Linux on the desktop

The massively wide variety of desktop options makes your opinion difficult to assess. Which have you tried?

Seriously! On my windows desktop, I have to let the computer sit a minute after booting before i touch the keyboard otherwise it completely wigs out and becomes partially unresponsive due to some weird issue with the AMD chipset drivers. I can see my mouse move, i can move windows around, but nothing responds to clicks and i can't open anything.

Even if Windows didn't have those weird things, there are a bunch of intended behavior things that make Windows a more frustrating experience than the occasional weird things a Linux system may do.

I'm glad it wasn't just me... the nice thing about those mysterious issues on Linux is usually you can actually fix the issue. With Windows I needed a hacky solution just to move the stupid taskbar, or wait for Microsoft to fix it.

> For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence.

Funnily enough, I have that exact issue but the opposite. It takes nearly as long to shut down. Which I do often because still, in 2026, even on the Snapdragon surface laptop, I can't trust Windows to actually sleep when I close the laptop lid.

I've had less issues with Linux, even sleep, than any modern windows box, and even less issues (pretty much none at all) on my daily driver MacBook Pro (plenty of annoyances and quirks here too though)

>The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me.

That's not what the author said. And anecdotes are perfectly fine - in fact, they are literally are all we have to write about.

In this case, everything I've experienced and heard from others suggests that the author is correct. Linux distros are amazing, and their issues are generally fixable with experience, but the problem is that their issues are usage-blocking. Windows issues are much more common, but they are just fucking annoying. They are either solvable without a comp sci degree, or (and this is the important part) simply ignorable while still being able to use the computer (albeit with varying degrees of misery).

I switched to Linux again because on this PC Windows suddenly just doesn't run stable anymore. Even a complete reinstall didn't fix it, I assume it is some driver issue or something like that.

It took me a while to convince myself it wasn't a hardware defect. I had very frequent single tab crashes in any browser I used. And regular bluescreens, sometimes multiple a day. But it runs entirely stable on a parallel Ubuntu installation with the same hardware.

If you're unlucky, you can run into weird issues that are hard to impossible to fix as a regular user.

> For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence.

I know you're not asking for tech support here, but I wanted to share that a friend's laptop was doing this, and the problem turned out to be a massive amount of files in %TEMP%. So many that I had to write a little PowerShell script to remove them all.

Yeah, like key bindings in IntelliJ that might make sense on Windows or Macintosh, but conflict with Linux defaults. I switched to Linux couple of decades ago, but this second class treatment of Linux desktop is one of the reasons I'm still doing most of my work in the terminal.

Haven’t used Windows in a while, but I remember hating the seemingly completely random “restarting in 5 minutes for a system update.” Usually at the least-opportune time

I have some issues with docking and audio with Arch. Maybe I am asking too much to have a docking station work perhaps. I still don't feel the need to go back to Windows however.

30 years of Linux here. Windows issues are easier to fix as they are usually consistently broken and well documented due to the huge user ase.

The article is a bit hand-wavey. I won't deny their issue, they had it, but of course people here will have their opinion about the tradeoffs. For me CachyOS working near flawlessly on multiple machines. It's truly free with no forced ads or telemetry or product integrations.

If Windows works for a person or they need it for certain software that's fine. For me, I'm living a Linux-default life for the first time and it's nice.

I've actually experienced this, but I don't know if it's related.

In my case, installing linux on a laptop and while everything was fine, there was an unexplained network delay. What ultimately fixed it (and I really don't know why) is I had to fix the time on my system clock to the right date/time and then got ntp setup and working correctly. My system clock was far in the past. I THINK (but don't know) that the root cause was in certificate validation. Perhaps hiccups because the certs were issued in the future?

I generate and read enough claude-generated documents to spot that this is most definitely generated content.

It may well be generated from some real descriptions of issues, but it also is certainly not the author's own voice.

I would bet any money this is AI generated.

Because who the fuck outside of corporate brand guidelines or an LLM properly capitalises Edge, Windows and every single other trademark?

100% agree. The two examples are garden-variety computer problems and not articulated with any degree of precision for someone who claims to have attempted to troubleshoot them. It's either AI-generated or the author has only elementary Linux know-how (which is cool, but we don't need to take their wholesale dismissal of an entire ecosystem quite as seriously).

100%. I was finally about to permanently switch a year ago and agents have been a game changer.

Of course people are going to generally prefer the thing they’ve already been using and are comfortable with, especially if they are forced to use something else entirely.

On the flip side, I run a Windows gaming laptop alongside my Mac. It is a constant source of rage to the point that I am genuinely shocked at how bad things are and regularly suspect that the people who choose to use it are the victims of some sort of Stockholm syndrome.

I think Windows (and some, but not all, Linux window managers/DEs) are really kings of "general productivity" type work that macOS is really unintuitive about.

I daily drive a MBP now, and have since the M1 air released, but even this many years later I still think the more windows-y desktop metaphor is superior for any type of work that requires heavy multi-tasking (which I do as a sysadmin type role).

Apple tends to assume you are working inside one app at a time, on one workspace at a time. This is evident from the get go with how the OS treats apps & windows/documents as separate, and how Cmd+Tab only switches between apps, not app windows.

Without third party tools, it's a terrible OS for actually managing multiple windows and contexts and that throws people off because nearly everything else outside of mobile doesn't use that paradigm. Context switching is expensive on macOS, by design, but most general user's and office workers work involves heavy context switching, and frequently.

That was a long time ago - from your experiences, you think Linux has changed for better or remains same?

Similar to this, but NixOS. Having AI to help me through made this so much easier. I was sold on the idea of an 'IaC' config based machine, after a general push to move all of my processes towards full GitOps. Windows had been pretty good to me (running 4 years on the same laptop install), but it had started overheating with fans sounding like a vacuum cleaner and it was time to start over. The difference with NixOS is that sure there are issues and preferences to work through, but when I fix them, they get committed in config, and thats an investment in time rather than something that will be right until next time I have to do it. I was able to reproduce, and rebuild on a separate machine with minimal hassle (it's good to go through this process to be sure you've got it right) and that really was amazing to see. SSH keys, SMB share, monitor configurations, themes, apps, utilities - a fully set up dev machine, everything is just there. I've been planning changes on a Copilot integrated taskboard I built (https://www.agentkanban.io) and then handing them off to the agent, reviewing the changes in the VS Code git client and then apply, commit. Being able to see the number of commits makes me realise how much I was doing manually, every time I set up a new machine.

Using Linux is a learning experience. You will inevitably face and solve numerous problems over time, but every time you do, you come out of it understanding what's going on under the hood a little more.

Still, it can be dreadful to face even small issues when you only feel like using your computer and not fixing it. Having an LLM agent help with fixing issues is a lifesaver. Ask it what you don't understand, take note of the commands it uses or suggests while troubleshooting and fixing your issue, and you'll supercharge your learning and not get as hung up on the issues.

If someone doesn't care much to learn though, I'd say Linux is still tough to recommend.

That's basically just *nix + a fancy (but less so by the day) DE + product lock-in.

Libreoffice is also pretty good these days if you need to edit office files, impress has the most compat issues but they are rare even there. In many ways it is more capable than office ime.

That is true regarding prior experience. It feels better learning such well known canonical tools that have (and very likely will continue to) stand the test of time.