Linear is probably the best-designed ticket system on the market. That is exactly why it is such a useful comparison point. It proves that even when the software is elegant, the underlying model may still be too heavy for some teams.
What Linear gets right
It is fast. Opinionated. Much less bloated than older project-management tools. If your team already believes in issues, cycles, and backlog discipline, Linear is a strong answer. It cleans up a lot of pain without pretending to be everything for everyone.
That matters because the alternative to Linear is not automatically better. A lot of teams really do want a cleaner ticket workflow.
Why some teams still want less
Because even the best ticket system still creates ticket gravity. The team still has to define and maintain issue objects. The backlog still accumulates. The work still has to be translated into tracker-friendly units before it can be tracked elegantly.
For a small team that mostly needs shared awareness and lightweight ownership, that can still feel like too much machinery around the work.
What “even less” looks like
It looks like moving the center from tickets to a shared feed. It looks like replacing assignment with self-owned plates. It looks like daily triage instead of backlog maintenance. It looks like letting stale work expire instead of preserving it in a beautifully organized graveyard.
Linear is what you choose when you want the best issue tracker. Paperwork is what you choose when you are no longer convinced the issue tracker should be the center of the system at all.