Linux

It's not frustrating if someone starts with linux without using windows once.

Some things just don't work properly on Linux without doing a lot of tinkering, while on Windows doing the same particular thing works effortlessly. For example, if you want to have an overlay that shows performance stats such as FPS, CPU Temp, CPU Utilization,etc..., while playing a video game, on Windows you can just run MSI Afterburner, simple as that. On Linux, there this tool called Mangohud, while it's a great tool, it doesn't come with a GUI (of course it doesn't, many Linux developers are GUI-phobic for some reason.) So, you either have to do a lot of tinkering with configuration files to get it work and then run it from the terminal, or you use another program called GOverlay, which is a graphical program that utilizes Mangohud among other tools. But guess what? It's broken at the moment, the thing just outright refuses to work properly, so you're stuck with using configuring Mangohud on your own! This is just one example of the many things that are frustrating on Linux but are otherwise convenient on Windows.

I only touch windows when I absolutely have to, and luckily that is getting rarer over time

There is some software that it will plain just not run. I moved over to fedora from Windows and was loving it for about 6 months, but I needed CAD software for work that I could just not get to work, no matter what tinkering I did.

It’s not plug and play

Most of the time the frustrating thing is it's users. If you look for help about something that is obviously badly designed somehow... You get gatekeeping or "you're using it wrong" responses.

Well, why should the average end-user use Linux, actually? If your answer is privacy, taking control back or something in that general line, you're essentially advocating for a technological solution on the individual level as a solution to what essentially are and always have been political and ideological problems. Expecting that to work out is wishful thinking at best. I have growing suspicions, though, that it's more like a different ideological layer, and in that regard quite akin to making the climate catastrophe about choices of individual consumers (of which they often have very few, actually).

You are doing something wrong. I stopped distrohopping ~13 years ago and never had to reinstall OS after that. If I get error messages, they are helpful enough to figure out the root of the problem (unlike that in Windows, where everything under the hood is hidden from user). For me Windows and macOS are frustrating, not Linux.

Maybe Linux is not good enough for you, maybe you are not good enough for Linux. Anyway, don't constrain yourself, use software that you are comfortable with.

I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited.

I used to use Ubuntu for a long time and had a similar experience where there were constantly annoying issues. I have since distrohopped around and ended up with fedora, which even though it is a more cutting edge distro, the experience has been a lot smoother and more stable, even compared to windows.

Maybe Linux is not good for beginners working full time?

I mean any OS takes time until you get fully into it and I would say Linux does take maybe a little more effort simply because there are more options in terms of pretty much everything. First, you need to be familiar with the concept of having different distros and be familiar with the differences between distros. Then you need to actually figure out how to install a new OS, which can be tricky to most people who are not that familiar with IT.

Another thing is that an experience with an OS can depend largely based on what hardware you are using. That's why apple strictly controls the hardware on which their OS can run on. Microsoft has also started restricting this slightly. Linux goes the complete opposite direction by trying to allow running linux on any possible system.

It's not that Linux is hard, it's that people are used to other stuff and have very little interest in learning something new for no good reason.

Unless you really convince someone that there is a good reason to put in the work, how little it may be, to get used to something new, they won't do it and complain.

Is a different paradigm. The way you do almost anything is different from windows, from updating drivers to downloading programs. It's frustrating in the same way driving in the wrong side of the road can be frustrating, or going a whole day using only your non dominant hand.

I've tried to convince a couple people over the last few years to convert, and their issues always baffle me, until my brother tried for a week and I finally understood. It's just unlearned everything they've been doing for years, to do things a different way.

Basic features wouldn’t work properly if not at all.

I just installed Debian 12 on my Surface Go 2. The camera isn’t working, touch is broken, casting screen not working, on screen keyboard isn’t working.

Mind you I’m a full stack developer and i have a linux server at home so I have decent technical knowledge and a little bit of time.

I have used Linux for around 10 years. My daily driver has changed a couple times but I always go back to Mint. I think its better than Ubuntu personally. Its what I always recommend and I've been a sys admin for 5 years and dealt with production environments across all the core distros.

All that said it really depends on what programs you are using. Some have alternatives sure but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you will have a program that just pins you to Windows until you don't need it anymore.

You should list out what things you use that you need. Take some recommendations on their alternatives or how to set them up in Linux and see if it sounds like it'd work for you.

I hope that snaps, flatpaks, AppImages, etc., will make a big difference in terms of adoption and ease of use. As @Millie@lemm.ee said, if complications arise while trying to install or use software, then you're basically screwed unless you have a really good tutorial or deep knowledge. I've been using various Linux distros as daily drivers for the past ~10 years, and in that time, I still haven't figured out why there's such a big emphasis on compiling software. Your average Windows user has probably never even heard of compilation let alone been required to compile software in order to use it. For better or worse, the emphasis in Windows is on shipping binaries that the user can simply double-click to run. And if we want to reduce frustration for new Linux users, we can't expect them to know how to compile software. Snaps, flatpaks, and AppImages definitely move us in the right direction even if there's a lot of internal debate about which of those is best.

It's also nice to see big flagship projects like Gnome finally really taking off in terms of quality. Of course, the Gnome desktop environment won't appeal to everyone aesthetically, and it's generally much more resource-intensive than Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE, LXQt, etc.; but distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop!_OS, etc., look really great and work really well out of the box for most people. Same with Linux Mint. And I personally don't care for KDE, but it's another DE that's pretty solid.