I like to install Linux on old computers which lack the performance to properly run Windows 10. Additionally, I do this only when the user is not going to do any serious work outside the web browser.
The biggest issues with Linux for me are:
- the fonts suck. Sure, the Ubuntu, Liberation and a few other font faces look nice in the UI, but try browsing the web for a while longer. You will see kerning issues, the browser ignoring your selected font filtering setting and using wrong Windows font substitutes. No, installing Windows fonts is not the solution, because of the kerning and filtering issues. The fonts that look good - they look good, possibly even better than on Windows, but most of them have those two issues.
- gimped file browsers. I understand the philosophy of Linux programs is "don't do anything you're not designed to do", but not being able to see image thumbnails of RAW images is laughable. I think only Dolphin can do this out of the box, while others need extensions which either don't work, because they are no longer developed or are so slow it's pointless anyway. Another thing is file copy dialogs - Linux being kind of an OS for geeks, having a file copy window less informative than on Windows is a joke. Gnome just shows a small chart in the window corner. Clicking it will show a simple progress bar, without any info about filenames or source/destination. KDE puts the copy dialog in the notification center. The only way to get a pretty progress bar with verbose information is to use Midnight Commander in the terminal. It's a pretty nice piece of software, but I keep encountering a bug when... the file operation dialog will not come up, the process will continue in the background while MC itself looks like its hung. "Linuxers" told me I'm simply using it wrong.
- GUI inconsistencies. You think Windows 10 looks inconsistent? Try a Linux distro. I understand the mess stems from different window managers or whatever they're called, with KDE and Gnome being totally different from each other, but that's not what I mean. I mean many programs with a GUI look off, messy and unintuitive. It's most likely because the programmer designed it - and programmers generally cannot into user experiences.
- there are things you can easily click through in Windows that are not available in the UI on any Linux. You have to modify config files, which is not a bad thing in itself, but google a thing you want to set up and you will receive several, completely different instructions. You're using Ubuntu 19, but found a solution for Ubuntu 18? No go. Use something Arch based? If it's not on Arch wiki, information for Ubuntu or Fedora will not apply.
- no native support for NTFS. Sure, each distro supports it, but it's implemented through FUSE and is slow. Maybe on high end machines it's not as noticeable, but on low end laptops it will hurt if you often copy files to/from NTFS drives (because dual boot, for example). Additionally, when volumes are mounted in the default way, ntfs-3g will generate hidden metadata files that are compatible with Linux's implementation of file security and shit. These files are created in random physical locations, are tiny and unmovable by Windows defrag software. After a longer period of using an NTFS volume in Linux, thousands of such tiny files will be generated and will cause extreme file fragmentation that cannot be fixed in any other way than a format. There is a way to mount the volumes in a "safer" way, but you need to be aware of it first. Of course, it's not entirely the fault of Linux - NTFS is guarded by Microsoft. ExFat support was recently implemented within the kernel but with all the "Microsoft loves Linux" thing going on, I don't see NTFS being opened anytime soon
- games are always slower. Wine, DXVK, etc but also native. The gap between Linux and Windows became much smaller in recent years, but it's still happening. On a powerful machine, you may not care whether a game runs at 300 or 270 fps, because you will g/free/v-sync it to 60, 144 or whatever your display supports, but if you're using a lower end machine, you may not like the fact that a game that barely keeps 60fps on Windows will run at 40 on Linux
So why would anyone install Linux on a home PC, not related to work?
- it's generally faster than Windows. Use something lightweight, like xfce and you will find that your ancient laptop still works and even lets you browse websites and shit
- the I/O is faster, perhaps unless you're using NTFS often. I noticed the disk cache tries to keep more data in memory than Windows and that significantly speeds up access to often used files. Cold Firefox start is faster, too
- you want to feel free from any kind of spyware, telemetry and other shit. Because Linux is open source, someone will sooner or later find code that is nefarious in any way, so it usually doesn't happen, at least not without consent
- you want to learn new things or are just tired of Windows and you got nothing better to do with your life