Modding a steam installed game is horrible. on Windows: point to the exe & done. Linux:
Don't even talk about running cheat engine.
Asides from that Linux is .. Fine.
I can't think of anything I miss. Windows is so primitive compared to Linux.
No.
Not really. I've for several years removed any ties to windows and have been running linux for some time now!
I still have to boot into windows for Autocad and laser cutting software. Please lightburn bring back Linux support!
Like others said, a lot is just nostalgia. I liked a lot of the aesthetics of the time, from 90's to XP, to Vista/7.
Also like others said, a majority of actually-affordable peripherals use some sort of specific driver system that's Windows only. Big example being my cool Mechland keyboard I really like, but it's one of those where trying to give it cool effects in OpenRGB would brick it, and only their Windows software can access some of its main features.
Not the worst though, I just have a Win10 VM I fire up exclusively to update those peripherals.
WAIT, KNOW WHAT? WORKING VR. I MISS THAT. But M$ themselves killed that one so it's kinda moot? My WMR Odyssey+ worked GREAT, and since M$ decided it's a paperweight now, the awesome souls behind Monado are our only hope for decent VR before the Steam Frame. (Which now terrifies me thanks to RAM inflation...)
The only thing I miss is paint.net.
The flying toasters in the After Dark screensavers
I'm tempted to say "copilot" just for the ragebait
WinKey+period to enter emoji and other Unicode characters. I've got some workarounds, but they are all just slightly kludgy, especially with the Wayland clipboard.
I use Linux 100 percent full time. I have to remote into windows, Azure, deal with Office 365 and Windows servers for work.
I always do it from Linux because I need something to just work and is reliable.
I miss NOTHING about windows. Using it ALWAYS reminds me of how bad and anti productive it is. Every day I curse something about it. I left when Windows XP came out, the enshitification was clear.
I am writing this now because once again, windows is doing stupid things that are pissing me off.
If windows went away tomorrow I would miss absolutely nothing, and in fact would be a cause for celebration. Although I would probably have to work harder, because the only good thing about windows is if you are getting paid to deal with it, everyone knows it is slow and wastes tons of time.
Not only do I miss nothing from Windows, but also the decisions MS has made each and every year since I dumped them has only increased my conviction that I made the right move in doing so. Not one time have I read a MS/Windows headline and felt I was somehow missing out on anything I would ever want to be a part of.
the sun
Jokes aside, most of what I'd use in a baremetal installation, I can also do in a VM. The few things that don't work revolve lack of proper hardware acceleration for XP/Vista games, of which I have some.
One thing i noticed windows does better is managing multiple screens.
90% of the time when i undock/dock my laptop, the windows go back to the screens they were previously on
the only thing i miss is having every vst work (i've learned ot live without the broken ones which are only a couple in my collection, besides that all of them work beautifully, aside from a few that have flickery UIs). FL Studio on Linux is awesome.
Middle click to free scroll
AutoHotkey
nop. my overall desktop experience has improved substantially after I carved out my own niche of 'creature comforts'.
feels lovely to have a system that works for you, rather than something that's so adversarial.
Games, though it's more of a game company issue. I like Apex Legends.
Microsoft Office stuff. Every now and then I need to make a presentation, and LibreOffice Impress to Microsoft PowerPoint isn't that good. I resort to Google Slides for now.
Cursor trails. I tried making it myself until I stumbled on the concept of hardware cursor. I still want to do it, but man, putting an image where your pointer is at is harder than I thought. So much more if you're on Wayland apparently.
(Lack of) general ecosystem fragmentation. I still don't understand why I can't paste image that is clearly present in both xclip and wl-paste over Remmina. It does work if I open LibreOffice Draw, paste it there, then copy it back, and paste it in Remmina. Emacs on Xorg is blurry and requires xwayland-satellite but smooth, and Emacs GTK is sharp but stuttery.
Vendor support. Some hardware and software vendors still only care about Windows.
I thought I did, until having to use it for a few days last week after having swapped to Linux in December.
There are things I miss from Windows 95, 98, NT, and XP. There's nothing I miss from Windows 7, 10, or 11. Everything I cared about had been deleted by the time of Windows 7.
Nope
Windows 7 era notepad
Windows 7 era paint
MusicBee for playing my local music library.
I've switched to Strawberry and it's not bad, but I will always yearn for MusicBee.
I miss windows 2000 professional
Only irfanview.
Playing games with kernel level anti-cheat. Some of them were pretty fun. I get why they don't support Linux, but it is still annoying.
I had a fairly high end drawing pad no matter what I did, I could not get it to work properly on Linux. I needed up purchasing another and it worked perfectly fine with very little setup required. My work used to require Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere, but not long ago, maybe a year, they changed the workflow and I am no longer on the team that has to use those tools.
Otherwise, I've had very little issues, even with gaming. I think I've ran into 3, maybe 4, titles that wouldn't work on Linux, but they were kind of niche games. Most modern titles with even a moderately large audiences work just fine.
I really really really like MS Paint. I'm trying to like gimp, but I liked MS Paint a lot.
I also miss the smoothness of excel. I love libre office too but Microsoft just has more money to sand off the rough bits.
Nothing for me. All the games I care about run great, I'm much happier with my UX/UI using KDE Plasma, I'm very happy being able to use a bash shell in a terminal emulator of my choice, etc.
Full Software support and functionality from device vendors.
Clippy
The ability to update Xbox controllers, though when mine dies I'm probably switching to a similar priced high end brand with better joysticks.
And on that note, I also miss being able to assume anything I want to use or install is available for my operating system. I was looking a month or two ago at buying one of 8bitdo's pro 2 controllers, but it didn't support Linux. I never had to check if anything was windows compatible, everything either was or loudly said it wasn't.
Still not going back
No. There used to be some nice things on Windows, but Windows 11 has thoroughly ruined them.
The other day i couldn't play a multiplayer game with my friend. So i had to boot up windows and the xbox app to play a game on steam that "works" without the xbox app we swear. So after booting up windows after a few months now i can confidently say that i don't miss a thing
Not quite miss, but my fingers still type for the wrong programs in the start menu: task manager, notepad, etc.
I liked the Windows XP wallpaper. That's it.
Ableton
Obscure stuff that needs update software thats windows only
The ability to upgrade my cameras' firmwares, as it requires specialized Win/Mac utilities. Other than that, nothing.
Driver support for various old peripherals and nvidia cards
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