I can think of a few reasons not to, as someone who tried to use Linux first when switching away from macOS. The most notable of which is using Linux with a high-density 4k+ display is nightmarish at best; everything is either too big or too small, and at least in Ubuntu, fractional scaling is too broken to use on a daily basis – also requiring a ton of manual config and tweaking to even get usable. Windows, by contrast, works out of the box really well with HiDPI displays, and generally has a really well-refined experience these days, particularly between WSL2 and the Windows Terminal experience. It's the best of both worlds, without the hassle of dual-boot or manual config, IMO

FWIW, but I've had pretty good results from GNOME fractional scaling since like Fedora 26, across a wide range of hardware.

It's not perfect, but it's fine. WSL2 is also great for some use cases, but for anything JVM-based I expect first-class support for JetBrains tooling and that really doesn't work well. Keeps me solidly on a Linux desktop for now.

It was really really really slow when I tried it. My ass end mac mini with 1.5x scaling on a 4k display on macOS is noticeably faster than Fedora on a Ryzen 7 3700X with GTX1660 which lags like hell. Not impressed.

I'd buy performance issues, but on that hardware that surprises me. My desktop was a 2700X with a 980Ti and I didn't notice issues, but it's good to know that that mileage still varies.

(Now it's a 3900X with a 2070S and surprise, still none.)

It doesn't surprise me. It is Nvidia. Nvidia doesn't run Wayland. Of course your HiDPI experience will be bad.

Here, 4k with Vega and Mutter/Wayland is flawless.

That makes sense then.

A few Windows HiDPI problems I've experienced with an external 4k display: all the task bar status icons are blurred nearly unrecognizably after a while, Qt-based applications seem to be twice as large (text scale, and widgets) than win32 based ones (sure it's a Qt thing, no Windows), Steam can't figure out where the pointer is after a while (seems to track the pointer as 1/4 of where it is in x/y coordinates), and win32 applications often appear blurred and require some compatibility setting via the .exe file's properties thing which I don't understand because it seems to make no difference.

Honestly, Pop_OS! on the same setup is much smoother. Probably something to do with the HiDPI Daemon it has running.

The only flawless operating system on this 4k external setup has been macOS. Can't think of any problems and that's my daily system.

Are you on Windows 10's 2020 release? That doesn't resonate with my experience at all – macOS has been vastly more frustrating to deal with on 4K displays in my experience, constant reflowing and forgetting window states, takes forever to recognize the displays when plugging in or resuming from sleep, etc... I even have all of the pointer and icon problems you describe with the top bar. Sometimes, with a 4K display plugged in, it takes 10+ seconds to figure out how to use it. Meanwhile, none of that on my Windows machine!

> 2020 release?

Probably. It's Windows 10 build 2004 or something.

The mac I have is mid-2014 w/ Mojave (also Catalina), and I'm using the hdmi out. It seems to remember the display, moves the applications I had on it last time to it, with all the other details like wallpaper scaling settings. It takes maybe 1/2 second to display.

To be fair that Mac was one of the greatest ever made, haha – I blame most of my issues with all of this on stability issues with the 2019 MBP I'm forced to use for work.

I've never experienced the issues you describe with status icons or steam having pointer issues except perhaps when changing the DPI settings without logging out and back in. When was the last time you tried it?

With regard to Win32 apps appearing blurry, I think that's a fair compromise considering Windows heavy focus on backwards compatibility.

Same here. I honestly thought they were talking about Linux, not Windows. Windows 4K/HiDPI support is just great with many different compatibility options.

The primary display at login time determines the windows system dpi, so will have apps scaled correctly and if they are dpi aware they will appear sharp. If apps appear wrongly scaled on the primary display at login, they implemented dpi awareness in the wrong way. So, if you make sure the external 4k is primary before you login to windows, you should have a better experience.

On other screens with different dpi basically the only apps that look right are the ones using the latest dpi aware api’s.

Running Manjaro Gnome on a 4K display; it works perfectly without any of the problems you describe. You might want to give Linux a chance again.

Last time I did it was February, and it was just as problematic back then – I'm not sure what advantage it offers over WSL2 (which is containerized) when combined with all of the benefits of Windows these days, for the hassle.

After you start understanding how the system works, you can do things that are simply not possible with Windows. WSL2 is nice, but it's always still a VM. You don't have the flexibility of running a full Linux distro on real hardware. For instance, I made a portable work environment that boots straight from an SSD in a USB 3.1 case; it is fully encrypted, and it boots the same on every single machine under the sun. I can even quickly boot it in a VM using QEMU.

I personally use pretty much all the major OSes, and I think each one has its ups and down. I still think that Linux can potentially offer a much leaner and snappier experience than the other OS, because you can actually control what goes into your system and what runs and when. I also think that "easy" operating systems (and with them I also group distributions such as Ubuntu and similar) tend to give more advanced users an illusion of reliability that then sorely bites you in the back as soon as something goes awry. A few weeks ago I lost hours trying to understand why Windows was refusing to update to 2004, because Microsoft has hidden every single detail of how the system works away from the user.

I think that many people don't really know how to properly administer Windows systems, and that when things go south you still need to know what to do just like with every other OS.

Windows containers aren't the same as Linux containers, as Windows containers run via Hyper-V, and Linux runs container processes natively.

Fractional scaling on Plasma Desktop works just fine on Ubuntu 20.04. I wouldn't use it if that wasn't the case.

Counterpoint, I've been running 4k screens with various scaling (27", 28" and now 43") with kubuntu and now fedora for over 3 years without any issues, using both Intel or AMD cards.

I tried Kubuntu with KDE (on Macbook 2015) and am amazed at how good and polished it is, even compared to later versions of macOS. Fractional scaling works perfectly, even on NVidia cards (my desktop).

Even the Windows issues with HiDPI are non existent on Kubuntu. Really a good OS.

A MacBook Pro doesn't have a HighDPI 4K display, which is where it falls apart. Indeed, it works fine on a MacBook because Retina is not the same thing! :)

I also have a computer with NVidia gpu (which turns fractional scaling into an unresolvable problem on Gnome currently, that's why I tried Kubuntu in the first place) and 28" 4K display running Kubuntu and use the display with the Macbook too. Works flawlessly.

I also use Windows for music production. I built a Ryzen PC for around $1500 which is more powerful than the $6000 base Mac Pro. Thank god I left Logic years ago.

Oh absolutely, but to be fair the specs of the base level Mac Pro aren't really relevant to anything. If you're spending less than 5 digits on your Mac Pro, you're not doing it right.

I wouldn't need to spend that much.

It seems the highest MT score on Geekbench is the Mac Pro W-3275M with 19,189 points.

An AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X gets 24,049 points and costs less than $4000.

I've never worked somewhere that uses Linux dev machines. Almost always Mac these days, but otherwise it's been Windows. At least a good option exists for *nix tools on Windows now.

And WSL2 is good enough for personal development that I use it on my desktop as well -- I don't want to waste time fucking around with drivers or dual booting for something I do infrequently anyways.

I've never understood what drivers you people are "fucking around with". On Windows I have to go to netgears website and download a driver or use the included CD to get my WiFi dongle working. On Linux it works out of the box.

I've always found Windows to be the huge pain in the rear end, not Linux.

Lucky you? Usually it's my bluetooth adapter, or my AMD graphics card, or my thunderbolt, or my 4 button mouse... or.. or... the list goes on and on. For a normal experience yeah it generally could work out of the box if I just want chrome and facebook like normal people. But none of us here are normal are we?

- Dunno what bluetooth you're using, but cheapo USB ones off Amazon work as well as my laptop's Intel built-ins.

- `radeon` is in the box (for Fedora, I assume Ubuntu) and has worked on half a dozen different cards over the last decade. I've never installed `amdgpu` but it looks no more difficult than nVidia's proprietary drivers?

- Thunderbolt is a continuing problem, though TB3 is significantly improved IME. Docks and multi-monitor over DisplayPort MST are fine. Haven't tried PCIe extensions.

- Many-buttoned mice work better than they do on Macs, I'll tell you that much.

AMD cards now with AMDGPU are vastly more convenient than Nvidia ones under Linux. AMDGPU is fully open source, so everything JustWorks™ without installing anything. Everything is shipped in Mesa and the kernel itself, and it does not require anything else.

Cool, good to know. I didn't realize that it was more like `nouveau`. That's awesome!

None of these cards need any additional driver under Linux, unless it's extremely obscure hardware made by some Chinese company. Damn AMD has even rewrote its entire Linux graphic drivers from scratch, now they are fully open and work fantastically out of the box. I bought an RX 580 specifically because now I can just install Linux and have everything working perfectly without caring about even installing a single package.

I bought a WiFi + Bluetooth PCIe card last month; it was one of those cheap Chinese no-brand cards that consist in an Intel WiFi chip slapped on a board. It worked instantly without installing anything, with just the drivers shipped in the Linux source tree that every distribution has. My mouse is a Logitech mouse with 5 buttons and it too works out of the box.

How long has it passed since the last time you installed Linux? It has changed a lot in the last 10 years; lots of things work flawlessly now. I haven't had to meddle with any driver since at least 2010, when my shitty ATi Radeon X1600 still only worked under FGLRX or when I tried to use a crappy Chinese WiFi dongle whose drivers were only distributed as source on a CD (damn you realtek)

If you want chrome and facebook you go to an american shopping building and get a chromebook or a rebranded mass-produced bottom-shelf el cheapo laptop with whatever it has preinstalled. Heck, normal users don't see a device in terms of hardware and software, it's just "the flip-open-thing that gets me cat pictures".

Laptop suspend, ALSA sound, Bluetooth, and WiFi are almost always sources of constant frustration. I loved Linux but until they get that ironed out, I won't use it for a desktop solution.

I hate getting jerked around by Apple but not as much as I hate driver issues.

I won't buy non-Thinkpad laptops because I'm reasonably assured that they'll work with Fedora, but IME desktop hardware has a much higher chance of Just Working.

Who are "they", and why would they care about someone's demands? Don't get me wrong, I got bitten by some of these issues occasionally, too, but Linux is not an actual product I pay for. It's a bunch of free code. I can choose to contribute or not, but I can't expect that anyone is obliged to care about my demands.

This is a straw man argument. I wasn't making demands, never claimed Linux wasn't free, and never said anyone was expected to care about my situation.

I just said until they (contributors, obviously) have a better solution, I'll choose to pay for a desktop environment that suits my needs.

But why pay Apple tax for a Mac when you can pay $0 extra for a Thinkpad/Thinkstation that's certified tested to run multiple GNU/Linux distros well, or a Dell XPS “Developer Edition” or System76, Purism, or similar laptop with one preinstalled, and not be 'jerked around by' a single company?

Windows:

Sometimes Windows Update can't automatically find an appropriate driver the first time a device is connected and I have to install one manually. Time lost: fifteen minutes, tops.

Linux:

Last time I bought a USB wifi dongle, I bought one with a Linux penguin on the box. It turned out that the driver was a realtek fork and I had to manually apply their patches and rebuild every time my kernel updated. Could never get DKMS working quite right. Time lost: two hours.

I have dual monitors, one running on an Intel integrated card, one running on NVidia. Either one can run on the open source drivers alone, but I cannot activate both at the same time. The Intel drivers output hot garbage when Nouveau is running. There's a "flicker free" mode which eliminates a similar problem, but the Intel driver appears to ignore my config in this duel head configuration. Time lost: eight hours.

Windows: Still has no package manager. Setting all software up takes time. Hardware was done by the laptop manufacturer, don't know how much work that would be. Works fine for the most part. Keyboard, mouse, wacom etc require a bit of fiddling.

Linux: Software setup is really easy. All hardware worked out of the box.

MacOS: Reading instructions, preparing installer etc. Got it "working" in a VM but without graphics accel, which makes it not really useful.

Time lost: A few hours more for windows, but quite comparable.

There technically is a “Windows package manager” https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli, though it doesn't manage installed packages yet (that seems to be planned for v1.0 sometime next year https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/master/doc/wind...).

Windows has like six 3rd party package managers. Chocolatey and Scoop have large repos and have been around since Windows 8. Modern Windows devices ship with the specific drivers required for the hardware and download drivers for unknown hardware automatically. Building my gaming PC from scratch, I didn't have to manually install drivers for anything. I've never even heard of a keyboard/mouse that didn't work out of the box.

My experience:

WiFi device comes with CD but I have no CD-ROM. Then I try to google this no name brand and find the official website but fail.

I plug the device in Linux and figure out exactly the real chip used (many devices reuse same chips and put their own antenna and branding on top).

Now I know the real chip name but the guys that make it do not offer driver downloads to regular users, so I need to Google and find some driver.

Then the next problem, what website that offers driver downloads should I trust? I never heard of any of them, in the end I remember that many years ago I was downloading stuff from softpedia, decided that I already spent too much time on this and since it was my son PC I can risk it and grabbed a few potential drivers from there.

After that I needed to refresh my memory how to install drivers when you don't have a wizard and read a quick tutorial and follow it.

Conclusion, there are tons of hardware , as a Linux users in more then 15 years I can list only this issues(I am not using 4K or multiple screens setups):

- a few years back AMD catalyst driver dropped support for my 1 year old laptop (maybe the chip was older) forcing me to decide if I use older software or the crappy at that time open source software ( this costed AMD sicne I bought NVIDIA next time)

- for latest NVIDIA driver I just need to google , find and enable and official repository and now I can install from a list of drivers versions, I do not need to make an NVIDIA account to get updates.

- my Cannon printer was detect fine, I had to select a similar model from a dropdown and change a setting from RGM to CMYK (I had to google this)

- I had issues with microphones on cheap headphones, my solution was to buy USB headphones - they just work (including Microsoft ones) no driver installs

I never had to install an audio or network driver on Linux, on Windows I had issues with same hardware where installing drivers from Windows and not from the original CD would make the audio and network conflict (both were Realteck chips and Windows would get confused).

Btw I am not saying your experience is not happening, I am sure that some new hardware will be missing support and some other hardware might experience bugs, I added my experience to put things in balance.

Usually when a new series of GPUs is first released the driver support on Linux is pretty bad and even if it works its unstable.

The vast majority of corporate shops do not have a story for IT management of Linux machines. Accordingly, all employee PCs need to be either Windows or Mac -- and until WSL, for webdevs they were mostly Mac.

> The vast majority of corporate shops do not have a story for IT management of Linux machines.

Oh, that is changing and very quickly.

Even Microsoft is on board, for some reason.

Most corporations don't even support Macs and very often also don't support iPhones for mobile device management. Even in the IT department, you are very lucky if you can be "on your own" and use what gets the job done best/ you are most comfortable with. Oh and Bring Your Own Device isn't much of a thing here in middle Europe.