4 reasons why I paid for Windows 11 Pro and why I'll never switch to Linux

Published Oct 10, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Abhinav pivoted from a career in banking to pursue his first love in writing. Even while working full-time, he continued contributing as an editor-at-large, a role he has held for more than 7 years. A lifelong tech enthusiast who has built three gaming and productivity powerhouse PCs since 2018, his passion for technology keeps him closely following the semiconductor industry, from NVIDIA and AMD to ARM. His MSc dissertation explored how artificial intelligence will reshape the future of work, reflecting his curiosity about the wider social impact of emerging technologies. There are more reasons to switch to Linux than ever before, perhaps more so than ever in the history of computing. Proton is more mature than ever, the hardware bar is non-existent for any machine that can run Windows, there's no bloatware, no background service snooping about, and you get an operating system that, by and far, truly belongs to you. And yet, users like myself still continue to have no choice but to stick with Windows, because even in the face of the numerous advantages the Penguin offers, it can't replicate everything that surrounds my PC experience. Whether it's about the hardware I own, the little conveniences that I take for granted, or the software I'm able to run, Linux comes with a catch every time, and I don't want to be caught off-guard when I've made an OS switch. Half of what my GPU does exists only on Windows RTX HDR, RTX VSR, DSR... I could go on I've said it once, and I'm happy to say it again. When you buy a GPU in 2026, you're paying for more than the silicon that pushes the pixels on your screen. You are, in fact, paying for a suite of features that come with it, and that's a major part of its value proposition. As such, if you're not making the use of those features, you're literally not getting some of its value back. That's exactly why owning an RTX GPU and running a Linux distro stings. Sure enough, I'll have the Nvidia hardware, but the software that turns the tensor cores into daily quality-of-life wins is tied to Windows because of the Nvidia app. Proton has caught up with some of the features it missed before. I won't find myself missing DLSS Frame Generation, Smooth Motion, or overclocking controls on Linux anymore. But the other features I've grown used to, like RTX HDR, which makes my older games feel right at home on my QD-OLED, RTX Video Super Resolution, which helps 1080p YouTube streams hold up at 1440p, and DLDSR, which sharpens my games rendered at higher than native resolution, are all still missing from the Linux experience. Windows 11 Pro earns its license fee the moment you spin up the Sandbox I've come to rely on Hyper-V and Windows Sandbox Windows Sandbox is one feature on Windows 11 Pro that I'll always mention whenever anyone asks me to justify paying for an operating system, because quite frankly, on more than one occasion, the feature alone has paid me back tenfold simply thanks to how useful it is. Nowhere else can a single click get me a fully functional Windows install within seconds. Having Windows Sandbox means I can safely vet every GitHub script I recommend in an article, test shady utilities that I find on subreddits, and perhaps even more importantly, do it quickly and easily. In my workflow where I need to purposely break things so that they aren't broken for other users, it's irreplaceable for me. This is not to say Linux does not have disposable VMs. GNOME Boxes are the most popular option, but they're not quite the same. You still have to source a Windows ISO, install it into a template VM, clone it, and manage snapshots. Even the strongest advocates for Linux concede that the experience doesn't get close to the convenience Sandbox gets you. Windows Hello is more sophisticated than most people give it credit for It's impossible to go from biometric authentication to typing passwords again It's impossible to say goodbye to Windows Hello once you've gotten used to it. It's one reason I do not remember any of my passwords, and I don't miss the absolute cognitive friction they imposed upon me for the longest time before Windows Hello became a thing. The greatest injustice to this feature is assuming that it saves you a few seconds every time you boot up your PC, because it simply isn't just that. Windows Hello is deeply ingrained into the Windows authentication suite. Credential Manager sits behind it, so every stored sign-in, every network share, every work resource I've ever authenticated just opens at a glance at my webcam instead of a trip to a password manager. On the Linux side of things, you sometimes maybe get into the login screen, and then that's pretty much it. Fingerprint readers work on a handful of distros through fprintd if your sensor happens to be on the supported list, face unlock is a third-party project called Howdy that most people have to configure by hand, and not one of them plugs into a system-wide credential vault the way Windows Hello does. Anti-cheat is still a dealbreaker No one supports it, but no one can work around it Is it really possible to ask someone who has over 300 hours (and counting) on Fortnite to give it all up, even if it was for a better OS? Every time the subject of choosing between a Linux distro and Windows comes up, I'm reminded of what might be Proton's last significant remaining Achilles heel. This is where I blame the rest of the industry rather than any operating system. In an ideal world, kernel-level anti-cheat shouldn't exist, because simply playing a competitive game does not warrant running software at the highest privilege at kernel level. But modern competitive games have marketplaces that publishers want to protect, a reputation they want to defend, and ranked ladders they can't let cheaters poison. Ring 0 is therefore the blunt instrument of choice, and once a publisher commits to it, Linux is out by design. Unfortunately enough, this means that kernel-level anti-cheat is something I have to endure to enjoy an evening of Fortnite with my friends and siblings, and I imagine it's quite the same for those who play Valorant, Call of Duty, PUBG, and numerous other titles that are victims of this method of control. Until any of this changes, Windows is where I'll do my computing, not purely by choice, but because it's the one OS the rest of the industry has decided to meet halfway. Linux is evolving, but the industry around it isn't The story of Linux and its place in the industry frustrates users, and it very well should. Linux has done the work. Proton has done the work. The gaps that I and millions of users like myself keep running into aren't the kernel's fault, they are everyone else's. Kernel-level anti-cheat has no business sitting at ring 0 to referee a shooter where Scooby-Doo occasionally fires a rocket at Fishstick, and publishers who could enable Linux support with a few clicks keep choosing not to. Similarly, hardware vendors ship Windows-first drivers and Windows-first configuration tools and treat Linux parity as a nice-to-have that never makes it onto the next quarter's roadmap. And Nvidia, a trillion-dollar company, still treats the OS running most of its data center revenue as an afterthought on consumer desktops. Until any of that changes, Windows 11 Pro is where I'll do my computing, not purely by choice, but because it's the one OS the rest of the industry has decided to meet halfway.