this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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It's not.
it really is. creating a bootable USB drive takes all of five minutes, and if you pick a beginner-friendly distro, it guides guides you through the process from then on
The actual installation is easy, the finding equivalents for your years of accumulated workflow is the part that isn't.
I just spent 4 hours trying various window managers and shell extensions to replicate what I had with fancy zones in Windows. Finally came close with the gTile gnome shell extension, but it's still not quite what I had.
It's not even a Linux deficiency or anything, but let's not pretend that switching operating systems is a trivial endeavour.
Even creating the boatable USB is already too complicated for 80-90% of users, but considering that we are on lemmy, most people here should be able to do it.
Choosing a beginnen friendly distribution means reading and comparing distros for hours if you are a complete newby. Just googling "easy Linux distro" or something like this will net you 15 different results.
Switching itself is easy if you define it as booting up Linux, but then what? You need drivers for all your hardware, a replacement for the MS office suit, alternatives for lots of programms, to relearn even the most basic commands and shortcuts and you have to manually transfer a lot of savefiles.
And that is ignoring the general pain that setting up your pc again is, especially if you have slow Internet.
yeah, you're mostly right (although driver support is a lot simpler on Linux in my experience, since drivers are part of the kernel), but most of the pain of switching to Linux is true for any switch of OS, since you have to get used to the new software and tools it comes with.
That's no different when you switch your phone from an android to an iphone, or if you switch to windows from a mac, and really not Linux' fault. It takes commitment to switch your daily OS and deal with all that entails, but that's why it's great how easy it is to dual boot Linux, while getting used to it
This is why I said it wasn't easy to switch.
Oh well, the downvotes were worth it.