I’m not sure what distro you used or how long ago this was - but I’ve been using Pop!_os as my general OS + dev env (and more recently switched off Windows to Bazzite for gaming) - and I’ve never once had to battle with audio or weird twiddling with settings to get stuff to work. In my experience - both have had the kind of out-of-the-box experience I’ve come to expect from Windows. If anything - Windows has required a lot more fiddling with settings and hunting down drivers as of late.

Try using a Bluetooth headset in online meetings. That's only the tip of the iceberg... Another is when you're trying to mix multiple inputs/outputs in Linux across various pro audio accessories, which only Mac seems to get right.

I use my Bluetooth headset on discord, slack, and google meet without any problems on Pop and Bazzite ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Funny enough - I have less problems with audio on Pop/Bazzite than my Mac (where my headset mic can be muted by flipping up - but is unable to unmute without power cycling the headset) or Windows (which cannot ever remember which device I want to use for which app).

I held off on switching to desktop Linux because of horror stories on places like HN. But it’s seriously not been my lived experience. I can only think that maybe these were problems 5+ years ago - or it’s folks that went with super customized Arch installs or something.

TBF, it's not as bad as it used to be.. the main issue is that unless I manually switch to mono mode before going into meetings, then back to stereo to listen to music after, I tend to have issues.

I mostly just use my webcam's mic, despite my headphones being better so I can leave my headset on bluetooth/stereo.

Usually PipeWire handles these situations better than PulseAudio, which is still the default audio daemon in many/most distributions.

To properly support Pro Audio you have to completely switch the audio stack to JACK - which I also used in MacOS a few years ago because Apple's audio stack wasn't up to the task as well.

It's more that Mac and Windows do better at auto-switching to mono+mic mode vs stereo audio mode than Linux in practice. If I don't manually switch in the audio settings it's problematic... I usually just use my webcam mic and keep my headset on stereo despite the reduced quality for others hearing me.

Work laptop on Ubuntu 20.04 with pipewire, I've used several bluetooth headsets over the years from all different brands and haven't had any issues across Google Meet, Zoom, or Teams.

Coworkers with wired headphones (also on Ubuntu, but I don't know if they switched to pipewire) tend to have problems regularly.