I've already mentioned how games get better frame rates on Windows than even native Linux ports, so there's one thing off the bat.
Yes, and no. Most native Linux ports get done by third parties. Take Firaxis for example. All their native Linux ports were done by either Aspyr or Feral. The main teams at Firaxis are completely focused on making the Windows version work as well as possible and probably only think about Linux when the port team needs something to make the game work.
If you take some examples from Valve, who are creating the Linux versions in-house, you'll see that the performance is either the same (
https://flightlessmango.com/benchmarks/LfE_EQQvD5o) or better (
https://flightlessmango.com/benchmarks/F2xv7n0gklw) than the Windows version. Nowadays you're even starting to see that games running through Wine are outperforming the game running on Windows (
https://flightlessmango.com/benchmarks/h-XnlUMfkjM).
Some of the software I use in Windows doesn't have a Linux equivalent such as waifu2x-caffe which I'm using as part of the process of ripping the individual frames from old anime episodes to PNG files and then using the waifu 2x AI to upscale and denoise the frames before converting back to video. Linux doesn't do everything I need it to do and the things it can do it just does worse. I could honestly go on all day about it but nothing will convince Linux cultists that their operating system just isn't as good for most things as Windows. I won't deny that Linux has niche things that it excels at but none of them are things that the average home user is going to be doing or even most power users.
When it comes to software compatibility, especially for proprietary software, Windows is king. I won't deny that at all. Having the largest install base will do that. That said, I have trouble buying the idea that Linux "just isn't as good for most things as Windows." That's a pretty vague statement. Now you're probably not going to be running Microsoft Office or the Adobe suite on Linux at all or without a bunch of fuckery, but you can almost always find alternatives. I can't think of anything you can do on Windows as a concept that you can't actually do on Linux. I can think of things on Linux that you can't do natively on Windows like containers (OS-level virtualization). Something like Docker (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(software)) can only run on some versions of Windows thanks to WSL (which is like Wine, but in reverse, from my understanding).
Now I understand if you think Gimp is shit in comparison to Photoshop. I also understand if you don't want to fuck with Wine, Wine Tricks, Proton, Proton Tricks, custom Proton forks, etc. in order to get your games to work. I get it. I think you should use the OS that best lets you do what you need to do. If you're big into video editing, you'll probably be using Mac OS. If you're big into running the latest games, you'll probably be using Windows. That's cool. Use the best tool for the job. But I think Linux should be the default OS everyone starts with. Whether you're a complete novice who only does web browsing and email or if you're a software developer, Linux should be the starting point.
Also, while waifu2x-caffe doesn't run on Linux it looks like waifu2x and something called waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan do. I'm not sure if they do the same things though.
I probably used the wrong term here. I'm just comparing exe/msi to .deb and .rpm. With software installation in Windows I can see where the files are going and have options to change where they go if I want as well and options for where they are going in the start menu. In Linux all of that is obfuscated and I have less choice which I dislike. I had to spend a lot of time learning the directory structure of Linux just to figure out where shit goes and I never had to do with with Windows. I was able to learn that stuff naturally just through using it and paying attention to what the installers tell me.
They're obfuscated if you're unfamiliar with the Unix directory structure. Windows lets you install things where ever you want because it has the Windows Registry. It's like a giant database that contains all the OS, application, and user settings. In Linux, things are instead stored in particular directories. OS-level settings are stored in /proc, application-level settings in /etc, user-level settings in /home and so on. It has its pros and cons. One pro is that when your package manager is maintaining the installation and knows where to find everything, it can easily uninstall the software later. With an .exe, you're kind of just hoping that the uninstaller will do that right thing. The uninstaller might maliciously leave some spyware hanging around on your machine or it might be skittish about removing or updating registry settings that could potentially break your computer. This is part of the reason why Windows installations get bloated and sluggish after a while and need a fresh re-install.
This is aside from the fact that there isn't a standard that all distros can use. If there's not a .deb or .rpm (whichever you need) and the software you want isn't in the repos for your distro, you are pretty much screwed unless you want to compile shit yourself or jump through other hoops. Thank god for Arch and the AUR which makes that shit a lot less painful but it's still worse than just downloading an exe or msi file on Windows. Most of my Windows software keeps it's self up to date or alerts me when there are updates so I don't need something like a Linux package manager to handle all of my software for me and it comes direct from whoever makes the software instead of relying on someone else to keep the repos updated.
I don't think compiling from source is terribly difficult, but I'm also a developer so I'm probably biased. That said, you're talking about fragmentation, which is a very real problem on Linux and part of the reason why proprietary software struggles on Linux. The AUR is pretty cool, but there are distro-agonstic solutions that are coming around. AppImage is like a self-contained .exe that doesn't install anything. It completely runs from the file. Flatpak and Snaps can run on any distro that supports their underlying technology. Those last two in particular are really cool. They are completely sandboxed applications that only touch the minimum amount of OS that it needs to or you allow it to. I can run Steam in a Flatpak and run it without giving network privileges so it thinks it's running offline, when my network is working fine. It's like Docker, but on an individual application level!
One thing I love about Linux is that I can run the updates (all updates from OS, applications, drivers and firmware) from one location and on my time. Some cross-platform applications like Steam perform their own updates and I hate it. I'd rather ensure my applications are up to date BEFORE I run them, so I can get into using them immediately instead of having to stop what I'm doing to download and install updates. The last time I booted into my Windows partition, I had to wait 3 hours for it to install all the Windows updates after not using it for months. That never happens on Linux because it respects my time. I also have the option of getting updates immediately and direct from whoever makes the software by simply adding the PPAs. I added Nvidia on my desktop to ensure I get the latest video card driver updates and added Dell repos on my laptop to get their updates for my particular hardware rather than waiting for them to be pushed upstream.
I don't know what to say. Windows isn't for me. It's just seems, I don't know, in the stone ages of operating systems. Like did you know that on Windows 10 you still have to defrag mechanical hard drives? Windows 10 does it transparently in the background, but it's ridiculous that an OS would have to do that. You haven't had to defrag mechanical hard drives in Linux since the release of Ext2 in 1993. Things like virtual desktops which were introduced in Windows 10 have been on Linux since the early 90's. App stores are just watered down package managers with better UI. Windows doesn't offer anything new and it's constantly playing catch-up.
I can only assume that you think this because you are very confused about what the Windows Subsystem for Linux is and what it's purpose is. If that's not the case then I'm going to need some evidence.
Not really, i am not refering to this. There is plenty of evidence for that but i am not going to list them here, if you disagree it's fine, you are going to be using a Linux distro named Windows in the not so distant future anyway, whether you believe me or not is irrelevant.
There's speculation that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows and that Microsoft is planning on doing what Google does with Android and Chrome OS. Microsoft's most recent operating system, Azure Sphere OS (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Sphere), is just a custom Linux OS. I don't think there's any concrete evidence of it though. People just see Microsoft becoming more of a service-oriented/data company and doing things like turning IE/Edge into yet another Chromium browser and see them doing the same with Windows.