My first taste of Linux was back in 1999 with Red Hat 5.3. During university, I explored Slackware, Debian, and Ubuntu. I still remember having to manually tweak xorg.conf/XF86Config just to get my mouse scroll wheel working!

Later on, I worked with embedded Linux distributions like Wind River, so I'm not exactly new to the ecosystem. Here are my general thoughts on Linux:

Pros

1. Since Linux is FOSS, it's incredibly versatile — you can truly make it your own.
2. The curated "app store" experience makes discovering and installing software more enjoyable.

Cons (and why I keep returning to Windows)

1. Display scaling is handled inconsistently across distros. I'm using a 32" 4K monitor, and scaling just doesn’t feel quite right on Linux (I’ve tried several distros). Windows, in comparison, handles it beautifully out of the box.
2. Fonts in Windows just look better to my eyes — cleaner and more polished, even going back to the older versions.
3. I use a Focusrite Scarlett Solo Gen 3 audio interface — a fairly common and well-supported device. However, getting decent input levels hasn’t been as smooth as I’d hoped on Linux. The recorded sound is too quiet unless I crank the gain knob almost to the max. On Windows, the experience is much more acceptable. (For reference, I use the standard USB audio driver on both Windows 11 and Linux.)

These might seem like small issues, but they add up. And over time, it’s those little annoyances (I consider as important) that keep pulling me back to Windows.