I'm a Systems Reliability and DevOps engineer for Netdata Inc. When not working, I enjoy studying linguistics and history, playing video games, and cooking all kinds of international cuisine.
Personally, hardware support was the only big issue for me. It's gotten a bit better since I first tried Linux (about a decade ago now), but still has issues with certain types of hardware. I'm a bit of an odd case though, I already was mostly using FOSS programs for my regular workflow, and most of the other tripping points for new users (for example, the significantly different filesystem semantics) were just me shifting to a paradigm that made more sense to me.
Honestly though, most of the issues I see with new users other than having to change software come solely from being confused by things that aren't often explained very well. The differences in the VFS layer are probably the biggest thing here for people coming from Windows, permissions always end up covered, but there are lots of other things that aren't (mostly other POSIX semantics that catch people off guard, like being able to delete files that are in use without breaking things), but there are others to consider (like really driving home that you should be using the package manager for installing software if at all possible).
Thanks for sharing your experience. Ahhhh you just reminded me how painful that was for me in the beginning with linux filesystem. Being nearly an expert in windows, trying linux couldn't find where programs were installed, or how to uninstall something. Where is my C:\Program Files folder lol.
Very good points on your last paragraph!
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Personally, hardware support was the only big issue for me. It's gotten a bit better since I first tried Linux (about a decade ago now), but still has issues with certain types of hardware. I'm a bit of an odd case though, I already was mostly using FOSS programs for my regular workflow, and most of the other tripping points for new users (for example, the significantly different filesystem semantics) were just me shifting to a paradigm that made more sense to me.
Honestly though, most of the issues I see with new users other than having to change software come solely from being confused by things that aren't often explained very well. The differences in the VFS layer are probably the biggest thing here for people coming from Windows, permissions always end up covered, but there are lots of other things that aren't (mostly other POSIX semantics that catch people off guard, like being able to delete files that are in use without breaking things), but there are others to consider (like really driving home that you should be using the package manager for installing software if at all possible).
Thanks for sharing your experience. Ahhhh you just reminded me how painful that was for me in the beginning with linux filesystem. Being nearly an expert in windows, trying linux couldn't find where programs were installed, or how to uninstall something. Where is my C:\Program Files folder lol.
Very good points on your last paragraph!