Yeah I've been using Linux exclusively for maybe 9 years and the only time I've ever seen a kernel panic was when I was messing around with Gentoo on a cheap machine I have just for that sort of screwing around, and I accidentally told it to literally overwrite the kernel. It got pretty far giving itself a lobotomy before it died, too.
Meanwhile, the last time I used Windows (in order to install Linux on a new laptop, lol), it blue screened four times just trying to mount a simple USB flash drive.
> it blue screened four times just trying to mount a simple USB flash drive
With Linux these problems can typically be solved by googling it on your phone then appending a text file with some nonsense string you found on a 10 year old forum post. I'm still holding my breath for Windows to catch up with that level of UX.
The basic difference and reason for me to have stuck with Linux for so long is that when there is a problem with Linux it is all about how much I can persevere trying to fix it. All code is there and I have the skills to fix it.
With Windows, if it doesn't work, there is a chance there simply is nothing you can do about it. There is no source code. The support people are completely useless. If you can't fiddle with it until it somehow works or find a person on the Internet that fiddled with it until it worked and they were gracious to share the solution, your only option tends to be to reinstall the entire thing and hope for the best.
So true lmao. One of the things that I noticed after moving from Mac OS to Linux is that like, yes, sometimes things don't work perfectly on Linux, and sometimes the Linux user experience is more awkward or arcane, but you can always, always figure out how to fix it or get it to work the way you want with like an hour of Googling tops and a little simple modification of configuration files or running a few terminal commands. There's no point at which something is so far gone that you can't just fix it yourself if you want to, so the choice is always there, it's just a matter of what's worth the effort for you. Meanwhile, with Mac OS, the last time I used it for a couple years I couldn't get it to consistently connect to external monitors correctly, and it was just an endless pain in the ass and there was nothing I could do about it.
Meanwhile, the last time I used Windows (in order to install Linux on a new laptop, lol), it blue screened four times just trying to mount a simple USB flash drive.