Heyho, recently asked for the silliest reasons, but as someone who has suggested linux to many people, I often encounter people having valid reasons for staying with Windows or switching back.
The most boring but valid one is “I have to use Windows for work. It is a requirement (of some software I have to use)”. But there are also other answers that fit. My sister for example tried Linux, but while installing software constantly encountered issues that I helped her solve and eventually switched back because she felt like she had less control than over windows. While I am aware that this is fundamentally wrong, it is valid that some amateur users do not want to invest enough time to get over the initial hurdles of relearning how to install software.
What are the best reasons people have given you for not wanting to try Linux?
It’s really the only thing keeping a few of my friends and family members from switching.
Yeah, I could spin them up a VM and do some RDP trickery, but these aren’t super technical people - the friction would mean emergency tech support calls that I’m not ready to answer.
Yup. Friction is the number one answer. Things just aren’t quite exactly as they expect or there’s just this one weird niche app they have to have. For my mother it was a cobbled together from parts of visual basic java and a few other things. That wine CAN run. But between the different tools and toolkits. The menubar renders incorrectly.
The solution however was not to drop Linux. Fortunately, there was an Android version, which I couldn’t get running properly with waydroid because of poor integrated Intel graphics support, at least for non-XE cores. But a $200 tablet solved that problem. Nice big screen et cetera for her.