Windows users think of the command line as an antiquated thing from the past, what they don't realize is that the command line is actually far more effective than a graphical environment. Here's an example: Installing Firefox.
On Windows:
- Open IE
- Search for Firefox
- Click the top Link
- Click Download now
- Click view downloads
- Click on the firefox setup exe
- Click yes on the UAC message
- Click Install
On Linux:
- Type `apt install firefox`
In Linux land, the command line is a versatile tool that can do pretty much anything you can do in a graphical environment. In Windows, it's a toy. For a video format I think it'd be funny to have a race where a Windows user tries to set up the basics (office package, browser, media player, etc) vs a Linux user just typing `apt install libreoffice firefox vlc`
2) Customization - A Linux distro is just a collection of applications, the desktop itself is an application, the panels / menus are all just an application. You want KDE but with no panels so you can have an OSX style dock? Sure. Don't like the file browser? Just uninstall it and swap it out for a different one. Good luck uninstalling explorer on Windows - On Linux, this is no problem. Themes are also very nice too.
3) Resource usage - Simple one, Linux being so customizable allows you to not have lots of background processes that eat resources. For example my Linux PC doesn't have network manager (the utility for connecting to WiFi / other networks) - why? because my PC is permanently connected via ethernet and doesn't even have WiFi. There is no point in wasting resources on this. Many more examples exist, but at the end of the day, having more free resources for what you actually want to do is never a bad thing.
4) Problem resolution - On Windows, you tend to get error code 66 and left to your own devices. In Linux land, things tend towards giving you real explanations as to what the problems are. This can often lead to you solving the problem yourself. On top of this, if you're handy with a bit of code, you can often fix problems or add features yourself.
5) Education - I've always found it ridiculous that we teach kids computing using operating systems where everything is a trade secret. You aren't legally allowed to delve into the code and make changes. In an ideal world the kid would be able to take the stuff they are using apart as much as they want. On top of this, Linux is typically free (as in beer) meaning that poorer families have access to all the same software that richer families would. A Windows and office license costs £75 and you'll need a reasonably modern laptop with >2GB of RAM to run them. Meanwhile Linux will run on any old clunker, and you can install stuff like Abiword or libreoffice if you have more RAM available. I hate that many schools don't at least accept files in open formats (odt for example). You can get a reasonably computer for education for like £40 (Raspberry pi 4) and that'll run everything you need for basic education - the hardware and the software for less than the cost of a windows 10 license without office.
6) Privacy & Security - Proprietary software is very difficult to find backdoors / spyware in. Open source is much more likely to have that found. Obviously, people don't audit every line looking for security vulnerabilities, but at least having the option do to so makes things more secure.
7) Out of the box hardware support - Linux wins, Windows has more hardware support once you include third party drivers, but, for just plugging stuff in and having it work straight away, Linux wins. Linux also loads drivers as required, so you can transplant a drive into a different machine and it'll boot, which is nice.
8) Interoperability - Linux tends to work with everything, it'll read Microsoft NTFS or exFAT partitions, APFS (OSX), it'll talk to Windows file sharing networks, whatever you want. You can't say the same for Windows. Linux tends to be capable of doing whatever you want it to do.
9) File layout - Linux does stuff very differently files wise. It's hard for a Windows user to wrap their head around. There is no C:\ - There is root (/) and drives are mounted anywhere on the tree. You pretty much always have a drive mounted at / for everything to sit on, and typically extra drives will be mounted at /media/DRIVENAME. Linux also does a pretty good job of storing everything to do with a user (config files for applications, user files, etc, at /home) this means you can get a small cheap SSD (32GB is plenty) and put it at /, and a large HDD for /home - and you get most of the performance benefits of a SSD (since your OS & apps are on an SSD) but all of the storage too (since everything you save will typically be in /home).
Background: I first dabbled in Linux use on the desktop when I was 12 or so. By the time I was 14, it was my primary OS, but I would still dual-boot for gaming. As an adult, I've gone exclusive: I haven't booted Windows on my own hardware since I was 18, now ten years ago. I started out on one of those cutesy WIndows-imitation distros (Xandros, an ancestor of Linspire (formerly ‘Lindows’)), terrified of the terminal, tried every distro that ever came in the free DVD bundled with a Linux magazine from 2005-2010, and eventually made my way over to my favorite weird-ass boutique distro, NixOS.
Respect: freedom, privacy, and control
The most important thing for me about using a free software operating system is that free software operating systems are the only ones that allow me to feel respected as a user. macOS is condescending and restrictive: ‘You will follow our paradigm and you will like it, idiot.’ But the Linux desktop makes no pretensions about the best way to use your computer; even distros designed with a very specific paradigm will stay out of your way should you go to change them. Windows is invasive and controlling: ‘Before you use this computer I'm gonna need you to agree that I'm allowed to spy on you at any time for any reason. I'll be cool about it, but you gotta sign. And oh yeah, you should definitely log into your local machine using a cloud account. It makes perfect sense. What? You don't want to? Alright, take a walk around the back.’ After so many years on Linux, the idea of agreeing to a EULA to use my operating system is very alien, and frankly, deeply offensive to me. The walled garden approach and the nagging panopticon are both insulting to my values. Linux feels just right.
Software management: ease and trust
Once you get used to it, Linux-style software management is something you miss everywhere else. Other operating systems allow every program to go rogue, nagging you for its own update, spawning background processes and using custom installers for each and every program. And on Mac and Windows, operating system updates are handled by totally different mechanisms from the updates of ordinary software! On top of it all, both Mac and Windows OS updates frequently require you to reboot, sometimes multiple times for a single update or series of updates! Frankly, that's caveman shit.
Linux software management, on the other hand, is uniform: you update everything the same way, and all at once. The only upgrades that actually require reboots are upgrades to the kernel (and maybe sometimes the init system or a driver update). And in those cases, you can reboot just once after all of your updates are finished, and nothing hijacks your first boot after the upgrade to ‘finish installing updates’ (wtf is that??). You can literally verify that everything on your system has the latest security patches in one place, and that's not info you get from some stupid, performance-draining, anti-virus program that hooks itself into your system like a rootkit that you had to pay for— it's a native part of the software management system.
Manually navigating the web to download executable installers which can contain arbitrary code is the sketchiest possible way to install anything on your computer. On Linux distros, you can put some trust in your distro maintainers and other repository providers to vet the software that is made available to you. In most distros, packages are securely signed, and there's a formal review process (which takes place out in the open!) for adding packages to a distro repository.
Transparency: an ‘open-world operating system’
Free software operating systems leave you totally free to explore and inspect the system. When there's a problem, you can always dive deeper, from error messages to terminal output, to debug symbols, to source code. Nearly every component is replaceable, every application has alternatives, and there's always a clear path from your current knowledge level to something more advanced. But Windows is opaque; it's full of invisible walls from the moment you boot it up and it hides what the operating system is dong before you get to your desktop. macOS demands to be used in its peculiar way: the main quest is your mission and that's that. But Linux has no invisible walls; even its most fatal errors are rarely dead ends, and nothing the distro developers have put in place is too sacred for you to use or abuse as you see fit. Linux is an operating system for explorers, for side questers, for archaeologists, for detectives, for vandals— for adventurers.
Driver integration: when it's there, it's excellent, and it's there to stay
Unlike other operating systems, where hardware vendors are expected to produce drivers and bring them to the OS, Linux often has to fight tooth and nail for the drivers it has, to extract them from uncooperative hardware makers. The selection sometimes suffers for that. But when hardware is supported, that support is extremely well integrated. There is no plugging a damn mouse in and waiting for the OS to figure out that it's a mouse. There are no tedious hardware auto-recognition wizards. If you take a page out of the Mac (or Hackintosh) user's book and buy systems, components, and peripherals with your OS in mind, you will have a very good time. Moreover, unlike with either macOS or Windows, once a device's drivers are integrated into the Linux kernel, support tends not to age out. You won't really find Linux users doing things like installing an older version of whatever distro just so they can get old hardware to work, a choice Windows users are sometimes faced with, as has even happened at LMG.
First-class terminal: the GNU hotness
GNU/Linux provides the most featureful, well-integrated terminal experience available, period. I stress GNU here because it is GNU utilities that drive full-fat CLI experiences: GNU grep, GNU awk, GNU find, GNU sed, and GNU coreutils. Apple can brag until the cows come home about how their OS is genuine Unix, but their CLI environment is insanely outdated and so much less capable than the GNU alternatives that the first thing many developers on macOS do is install various GNU utilities in some form. Linux has a vastly superior selection of terminal emulators. The most popular terminal emulators and command-line environments and tools on other operating systems somehow routinely have performance problems, but even the default terminal emulators for Plasma and Gnome (both Linux exclusive) are feature-rich and admirable performers, as are the CLI utilities themselves. And of course, Microsoft's current emulation layer-based approach to the command-line essentially concedes that Linux has the terminal to beat.
Real community: even, you know, people who actually hang out together
The word ‘community’ gets thrown around a hell of a lot these days; a manufacturer of tablecloths might refer to their customers, most of whom have never spoken to a single other such customer, as a ‘community’. But in Linux, the community is the real fuckin' deal: there is probably a Linux users group in your city. They do things like get together at the library once a month to walk newbies through tough installs or setting up tricky hardware, educate one another on interesting new Linux toys, teach new users how to make their way, and go out for beers and pizza when it's all done. Folks from the Linux users group mailing list in my hometown have done things like drive 50 miles to go help another user's blind mother physically plug in a computer, in exchange for dinner. There are many actual, real Linux communities, and they're characterized by a spirit of generous volunteerism and goodwill. Randos pasting mysterious things like ‘Error Code 0x0001’ into Stack Overflow just don't compare, and neither does Apple's cult of conspicuous consumption. And like their standout in-person counterparts, roots in online Linux communities run deeper than anything you'll find for other operating systems, full stop.
Damn, that came out long.
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