You've got to admire Microsoft's support of open source software. They're doing their best to push users to Linux! By making their UI as ugly and difficult to use as possible so that users don't feel too much of a bump in usability when they try Linux.

I'm sure MS can get the job done and kill off their OS with just a few more years of obnoxious bullshit forcefully shoved into their operating system!

Agreed. Windows 11 and macOS 12 finally gave me the kick necessary to switch to Linux full-time (Lenovo Carbon X1).

macOS 12 cannot maintain a USB 2.0 connection. Not by dongle. Not by dock. Not by monitor. Not with 3rd party. Not with Apple-approved hardware. No way, no how. This is known, reported and totally Apple's fault (some of the earlier macOS 11 builds work fine). And this is the standard problem with Apple, "It just works--until it doesn't. If it doesn't, sucks to be you." I'm done with that.

Windows 10 was already bad enough with "Please, sir, can I have some compute?" with "I say thee NAY! I will now upgrade for the next 40 minutes. Hah!" Add in even more telemetry and inconsistency and I just gave up.

The whole point of Windows and macOS was to NOT have to dork with my OS and just get my work done. If I have to dork with my OS to make it not suck, I should be on Linux! At least then, when I figure out how to make my OS not suck, I'm helping instead of contributing to Microsoft or Apple profits.

So, yeah, I'll maintain a Windows desktop for the few times I need it (Fusion 360 and some videoconferencing stuff), but otherwise it's been Linux full-time for me. And Apple can just go pound sand.

jeroenhd

My conclusion is that all mainstream operating systems are now iterative and constantly in a state of semi-breakage, just like all modern apps, in an attempt to be more "modern" and to cut down on costs. I'm especially disappointed in Microsoft for their obsessive data collection. I've never experienced the "good old days" Apple fans seem to be referring to, so I can't comment on macOS (other than that it's clearly not for me).

It's quite absurd, really, because while the Linux desktop environment is certainly good for novices and advanced Linux users, anyone that falls between those categories (and that's a lot of people!) will definitely struggle when they try to switch to Linux. You're either content with the default setup, or need to dive into the terminal at some point, and the fact commercial operating systems are making their UX worse than Linux would be impressive if it wasn't so disappointing.

For what it's worth, I've managed to get Fusion360 running on Manjaro with a script a friend linked me online. I can't remember where I got it from exactly, but it involved auto downloading a bunch of Wine requirements and then just running the setup.

If you're not interested in tweaking your system, feel free to skip over the rest of the comment. If you're willing to give it a go, I've got some experience with Windows stuff on Linux that you may be interested in.

I barely use Fusion360, but the few times I used it, it worked pretty well in Wine. Even had decent 3D acceleration, though you can probably get a lot better performance with more trickery (DXVK etc. to enhance the 3D acceleration for example). Lutris (https://lutris.net/) has an install script (https://lutris.net/games/autodesk-fusion-360/), I recommend you give it a try. Lutris can help enable performance tuning tricks for productivity software quite easily, even if it's originally developed for playing video games. Might work for you, or it might not; if it does, it might just cut down on more unnecessary reboots. If it doesn't, you'll at most lose the time it takes to download the installer and remove the failed installation.

As for the video conferencing, you might be interested in Cassowary (https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary), a tool to run Windows executables in a Windows VM through RDP, with suspend/resume of the VM on demand to cut down on resources used when you're not using Windows. It requires a bit of setup, but the guide is quite comprehensive in my opinion. You can forward your webcam to the Windows VM through USB forwarding to get it to work with video, and modern RDP should just be an RDP stream so there shouldn't be too much quality loss. Even if the Cassowary setup doesn't work, you can probably use the VM anyway.