3 things Linux needs to have before I can make the swap

Over the course of my post-secondary studies, I was exposed to plenty of different operating systems. Like many people, my bread and butter is Windows, but I'm no stranger to macOS either, doing most of my work on the go with my M2 MacBook Air.

I also had the pleasure of working with Linux extensively, using many different distros during my time at school. I got pretty comfortable with the file system, the command line, and all the other usual functions of an operating system. I'm no stranger to Linux, and I've even had an inclination to swap over my main workstation at times, but these 3 things have always stood in my way.

3 Anti-cheat support

I play too many games that require it

The gaming experience on Linux has improved exponentially in the last few years, mostly thanks to Valve and their development of the Steam Deck. Many games that aren't supported natively can still run just fine on Linux because of the work done on Proton, but it's not a cure-all.

Essentially, anything that has an external anti-cheat won't work on Linux, and it's due to a lack of support from the AC developers. Things like Easy Anti-Cheat and Battleye (to a degree) don't work, and won't work without support from the developer. There's no way that I, as a user, can use a workaround for this, besides just dual-booting a Windows installation.

For me, this is somewhat untenable. A lot of the multiplayer games I like to play rely on third-party anti-cheat systems, most of which just don't run on Linux properly. Escape from Tarkov is the main one, but there are plenty of others that just won't work natively.

2 Adobe support

A primary part of my workflow

Now, before the readers that daily-drive Linux get out their pitchforks: yes, I understand that there are great open-source alternatives to Adobe products. My main workflow includes Photoshop, Premiere, and sometimes After Effects—all of which have a somewhat comparable open-source counterpart.

To be completely honest, I'm just not willing to learn another application at the moment. It can't be that hard to swap to GIMP from Photoshop, and if this were the only thing holding me back, I might just bite the bullet. But along with the other objections on this list, it just feels like a tedious task I can avoid for now. I have a lot of respect for users who have made the swap off of Adobe stuff and onto open-source alternatives, irrespective of operating system, but for me, I just have to stick to what I know for now.

1 A better OOB experience

Specifically, with SteamOS

This is a bit of a me problem, I'll admit, but if I'm going to make the plunge over to Linux, having it optimized for gaming out of the box is important for me. I don't want to be fumbling with drivers or anything like that. SteamOS seems to have solved most of those issues in terms of the OOBE, but because it's not made for productivity, everything else needs to be setup manually.

Package managers, productivity apps, browsers—anything that isn't gaming-centric needs to be installed in the Desktop mode. I do understand that SteamOS is just Arch with some Steam-related special sauce, but I do want that special sauce. I also understand that it's not exactly ready for primetime on a desktop.

I don't always need to have my cake and eat it too; I can deal with a little bit of setup, but one of the reasons I've stuck with Windows and macOS for so long is that everything works when I need it to, even after a fresh installation. Getting up and running with any given Linux distro is much better now than it was, say, 10 years ago, but there's still a plethora of little things that come up throughout the first few days of using Linux that, quite frankly, I just don't have time to deal with.

I'm just not ready...yet

Unfortunately, these things are mostly outside what the developers themselves can control. Things like anti-cheat support and first-party Adobe support are just deal-breakers for me at this time, but if my needs change, Linux will be a primary consideration for an operating system, regardless of the distro.