I’m a Batch 4 owner who switched to Pop!_OS in September after about 10 years of Windows. Here is my initial comment on deciding to switch.
I quite enjoy not being forced to use Edge or Teams without any ability to uninstall them, as well as only having one privacy toggle (location) and a fully open-source operating system. I also had quite the amount of blue screens in Windows over the years, and while Linux hasn’t been without its own OS panics, I’m finding it to be much better (and actually giving me a useful error code when something does go wrong).
But to be completely honest with you, it has been a bit of a challenge, even for someone like me who knows his way around a computer. I say this because I would love to be able to recommend Linux to my friends and family, but I simply cannot in its current state, which is sad since they’ve had 20+ years to make it ultimately noob friendly. However, I understand it’s difficult to maintain compatibility, especially when companies like NVIDIA and Intel don’t always play the nicest, and when there are so many distributions to choose from. I still have screen tearing issues that I haven’t been able to fix with any of the Intel driver suggestions I’ve found online. Additionally, I ran into many problems with getting my fingerprint reader set up and then trying to figure out why it died on me. I was able to get it working again, but only after help from @Henry_Luengas and @Devyn_Cairns. I don’t have any gripes with getting my hands dirty with an OS, but your average person just wants to be able to turn on the computer and be ready to go.
Between Microsoft’s bloatware, spyware, $100+ price tag, and all the OS panics I’ve ran into, I was ready for something else. Additionally, the fact that Valve is shipping the Steam Deck with Linux made me confident in the fact that big companies will embrace Linux and make their products compatible with it in the future. As I understand it, gaming on Linux was pretty nonexistent only a few years ago, but now with things like Proton and Lutris, it is in a much better state. Also, some companies, such as Dell, even ship computers with Ubuntu if the user asks for it.
I chose Pop!_OS since it was based on Ubuntu (which I understand is one of the most widely used distros) so I knew compatibility would be okay, plus it isn’t made by Canonical and it was fully open source, which I liked since I’ve seen Canonical has had some data collection controversies before. Also, the Pop!_Shop makes it easy to install widely used programs like Zoom, Spotify, and Discord. I know people will complain about using Flatpaks or AppImages, but your average person just wants to be able to install their apps, and things like the Pop!_Shop make that easier.
But not everything worked out of the box. One of the strangest things I found was that mp4’s were not playable until I installed some codecs. Additionally, there was no webcam app like Microsoft’s Camera app, and I’ve had issues with Cheese.
And, while this is no one’s fault other than the developers of the programs, certain programs I use simply weren’t available on Linux, such as Garmin Express or iTunes, and even trying to get them to run through Wine didn’t give me the compatibility I needed. As such, I keep a secondary SSD with Windows on it that I swap in every now and then. While I’m talking about Wine, I think it’s also worth noting that I completely broke my OS when first installing Wine, kind of like how Linus did when installing Steam in his Linux challenge. Had I not performed regular backups (through Aptik with Linux), that would have made me panic over all my lost data.
TL;DR Linux has its ups and downs like any other OS, but I’ve been enjoying it and sticking it out over the last few months. However, I wish it wasn’t something I had to stick out and it could just be installed and ready to go so that I could more easily recommend it to people, and so there were more readily available OS choices on the market.